[Author's Note : Ok dear one of you reading this, I thought I could do this, but I can't. I don't have the time nor the desire to keep telling someone else's characters' story. So the next 3 chapters (including this one) are gonna be two summaries intercut with a short chapter that was pretty much the first one to be written for this fanfic. So here's the rest of the story, I hope you find it interesting, or even good, but not sucky. That would blow.
Alright, enjoy !]
Lyanna Mormont is left in charge of Winterfell with orders to defend it (if the Wall falls, Winterfell will be the first refuge for the retreating army) and make sure it's stocked with food, and to make the women and farmers into soldiers. Reluctant at first, Jon will make her understand this is not a dishonorable assignment, but quite the opposite. She's the only one he trusts to be left in charge of his childhood home.
Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Brienne, Podrick, Daenerys, the North, and the Vale ride to Eastwatch.
On the road, Sansa is met by the other northern lords who tell her she has their support and that they doubt Jon. The conversation turns to what's to become of Jon and Dany once the war is over. Sensing that they don't have a grasp on the gravity of the situation, she doesn't rebuff them but doesn't encourage them either. She instead refocuses them. "What is to become of the North is not worth discussing until we have put the danger threatening its very being to rest. I understand your worries my lords but I beg of you not to get ahead of yourselves. There will be time for such topics to be brought up once we have secured a future for ourselves."
Upon arriving at the Wall, they find it much more prepared than Jon feared. Dismounting her horse, Sansa spots the Hound and a smile blooms on her face but she covers it quickly and doesn't understand why it was even there.
He bridges the few meters separating them. "Little bird is finally out of the cage. But still not free."
From this point forward, she will call him "Ser Sandor".
Thanks to the patrols on the Wall, they learn that a group of white walkers is doing something similar to what's happening in Eastwatch in front of Castle Black. [Here are some of the men of the Night's Watch's names I would have used for random rangers, builders, whatever : Kosh, Zuman, You, Rynok, Hikar, Isas, Azuht, Tobi, Soyo, Key, Adash, Ikke, Tetsu, Kik, Toka, Ui. Whoever understands the reference gets to call me Warchief]
At the next meeting of the leaders, Sansa says "We can't just do nothing, they're obviously having their way with us."
Bran tells them about the Wall's magic (that the Walkers cannot approach it). They find this to be a great piece of information and decide to attack them in a hit and run manner, harassing them. The plan is to have archers fire a few volleys at the front line, then a cavalry charge to clean up and bait the second line into chasing as they retreat and the archers cover their retreat to the safety of the Wall. Rinse and repeat.
Thanks to that strategy, they're able to slow the magic annulment (that's what was going on, the Night King and the white walkers were casting a spell to let them approach the Wall) and now the Night King has to place himself further away from the Wall.
At castle black, using the same strategy, the white walkers who were there in much fewer numbers decide retreat and rejoin the rest of their army.
During a discussion with Jon, Tyrion warns him about Daenerys' off-the-handle behaviour. "She is her father's daughter. More than she likes to admit."
Tyrion will learn from Sam and Bran the truth about Jon. He will convince them that Jon and Dany can never know. "You are a man of the Night's watch Tarly. You are the shield that guards the realm. And today that means guarding it from the truth. Telling the truth now will only divide us whilst we are facing our greatest challenge, and our very existence is being threatened. So I ask you to lie and ensure the vital unity of our forces."
After Sam leaves the room, and as Tyrion is about to follow, Bran stops him by saying :
"I loved a maid as bright as spring
With stardust in her hair."
[For the non die hard fans, it's a reference to Tysha, Tyrion's first wife]
A few days pass and Jaime finally arrives to Eastwatch with his companion now dressed as a septa. He gets to sit on the war council and warns that Cersei will not keep her word and the army is not coming. Dany is furious at the idea of saving Westeros from the Walkers just to give it up to Cersei.
Three weeks pass and the Wall bears witness to the arrival of the entire Lannister army led by Cersei and Qyburn making Jaime look foolish.
In the hallways of the castle, Cersei and her guards come across Jaime talking with Brienne and Sansa. "What a sight. Three king slayers. Perhaps we should take care of them before they get any ideas about the Queen, don't you think so ser Gregor ?"
For the next months, there's a lot of war room politics, backstabbing, tension, … (as it did in the early seasons of the show).
During that time, Arya strangely seems to spend a lot of time in Jaime's company.
And Sansa will stand up to Cersei when she comes after Sandor (with words) for his betrayal.
An encounter between Cersei and Jaime ends with him saying "I hate you for loving me."
Back south, the Iron Fleet has ferried the Golden Company across the narrow sea and the start their mission to retake complete control of everything other than the Vale and the North. (here are the Golden Company members that would have appeared : Captain-General Harry Strickland, Black Balaq, Lysono Maar, Franklyn Flowers, Tristan Rivers, and Marq Mandrake)
They end up learning this up at the war council of Eastwatch when Arianne Martell's company arrives with the news. (Ariane's crew : Daemon Sand, Joss Hood, Garibald Shells, Nate "Feathers", Jayne Ladybright, and Elia Sand) [for those paying attention, they're the ones Jaime and friend came across on the King's road back in chapter one]
It becomes obvious to everyone that Cersei is gonna stab them in the back at some point so Sansa devises a plan for Arya to take Cersei's face (nobody else knows about the plan, no one can know about Arya's ability).
Arya has killed Jaime a few weeks prior after having learned his mannerism. She took his face and obviously his place. And now with Jaime's face, Arya tries to kill Cersei but the Mountain stops her. She has to flee and leads him to the Hound and they kill him together [there, you get your Cleganebowl].
After that the tension is at an all time high but weirdly, Cersei doesn't fly off the handles and stays uncharacteristically calm and collected.
One day, a dead (reanimated) raven carrying a message arrives at Eastwatch. It's a request to meet signed by a white walker. For a reason only clear to him, bran gets curious about the raven and discovers that he's able to paralyse it with his mind.
A ship off the coast is the decided meting ground as a rowboat goes ashore on the northern side of the Wall. Once back to the ship, the Westeros delegation (Daenerys, Jon, Samwell, Bran, Qyburn) is surprised to see a female white walker : the Corpse Queen.
She explains what they want : the heads of the red priests who are the most dangerous to their survival and they want the entire island of Westeros. They wanted to cohabit at first, 5000 years ago, but the humans were scared so the white walkers retreated north to escape genocide and the humans pursued them but the surviving white walkers had already gone to sleep beneath the ice. So the humans built and protected the Wall with magic and guarded it. [white walkers' voices are scratchy, like ice cracking]
Corpse Queen : "We don't want to kill you. We have to. You want us dead. If we are to survive, you must die."
She points a finger at Sam. "This one know." [referring to when a walker ignored him in season 2. They also let a night's watchman go at the very beginning of the story]
Bran also tries his newfound ability to paralyse the dead on her but only manages to slow her down a bit. She turns straight towards him with sadness and resignation apparent on her face.
Down in the south, Euron receives a raven (from Cersei) calling him to the Wall. We see chat happened to the Greyjoy siblings : Theon came for her but was captured. She is now used as a way to motivate the men (the 10 who did the best job that day get to rape her) as well as for political gain (still rape + having her and Theon as hostages will give him an edge in potential negotiations with Daenerys's side).
Back to the Wall, Bran gets the idea to have Arya go north. He thinks Death will protect her or something since she serves it and she can sneak into the white walkers' ranks to kill the Night King, take off the head of the army.
She goes and comes across a teenage white walker and is about to kill them [I never made up my mind on whether it was male or female, so you can headcanon it as you wish] when they notice her presence. "Hello" they say. "Killing me wouldn't be very wise. They'd all turn on you (the dead)."
It's the beginning of a friendship. They will surprisingly get quite close. Arya learns that the Night King is not with the army at the moment. She also learns a bit about their society (she sees the baby white walkers created from Craster's offspring).
Her new white walker friend suggested that they simply chase humans off Westeros instead of killing them, after all there's Essos to live in. But it was refused as it was feared the humans would just regroup and try to invade back with more strength from Essos.
Arya's back at Eastwatch and during a sparring session, Brienne wonders where Jaime has gone. Arya tells her she killed him. It leads to Brienne breaking from the fight and tackling Arya. Gripping her shoulders hard she asks why. "Let's see… Threw my brother off a window paralyzing him, murdered most of my family with his, …"
When Brienne finally lets her go, she notices that Arya's dagger was placed in the weak spot of her armor, under the armpit, ready to strike.
Euron arrives at Eastwatch with some kind of justification (they need as many men as they can get or something).
The harassment team of the day [remember ? The tactic to disturb the white walkers) gets overrun and they see with horror that the dead are starting to climb the Wall.
Dead Viserion comes from the horizon and breathes fire on the Wall, melting the top 10 meters of it on an 80 meter wide portion. Then he goes down and starts clearing the (now sealed by the Night's Watch) tunnel by burning it to ash and steam. That's when Drogon attacks. He pounces and forces Viserion away, but the damage is done, the tunnel is 2/3 cleared and now the dead rush in to dig it further.
They stay at a sort of stalemate like this for a few days. Viserion has to be kept at bay day and night so that he doesn't melt the now magic protection-free Wall. So Drogon and Rhaegal take turns battling him, switching every 30 minutes, not allowing them time to sleep.
The war room discussions are now done in panic mode which leads to interesting interactions [which you'll have to imagine yourself because this is a summary :P]
After about a week of battle, during the swap of dragons to fight, Rhaegal fakes it out and charges back in from high up and to the side, catching Viserion and the Night King completely unaware. The Night King manages to escape but Viserion is permanently dealt with. It was a long term strategy devised by Arianne Martell and Tyrion and it paid off.
However it leaves the other two dragons exhausted and out of commission for a while.
The war room breathes a sigh of relief and moods improve. That's the opening Cersei was waiting for as Euron's and her men burst in the war room and attempt to murder everyone on Dany's side. There's an attempt on Sansa's life which is stopped by Sandor. However Cersei slits Tyrion's throat, Varys is overwhelmed by Euron's men, Jorah manages to protect a wounded Dany and escort her to safety.
However, knowing better than to overstay after this slaughter, Cersei and Euron cut and run before the guards collapse in on them, leaving Jon able to clean up the mooks with the help of Sandor and Arya who just rushed in.
Down by the Wall on the human side, the killing spree continues as the now sleeping Drogon gets skewered with the Lannister army's scorpions.
They had no angle on Rhaegal though and Dany rushes to him. The Lannister army had already started evacuating to the iron fleet and half the ships are already for away. Dany goes straight for them though and starts burning ships. But Rhaegal is tired and has to land again after 10 minutes, letting Cersei escape among her army (on horse since the ships close to the shore were destroyed) who's now moving south.
After a couple of hours of rest for Rhaegal, Daenerys wakes him up and presses him on once again, flying off after the army on her own, despite the protest of everyone.
She gets to Last Hearth screaming "WHERE IS CERSEI ?" and starts destroying the city.
After a few hours Rhaegal is exhausted once again and crashes to the ground where he passes out. This gave enough time for Jorah to arrive and get to Dany [I know Last Hearth is too far away for that to be realistic but fuck it]. He sees that she's snapped and doesn't care about the white walkers anymore and just wants revenge. She's so full of hatred that she didn't notice that the Lannister army did not go to Last Hearth and she mowing down civilians.
Seeing him, she orders him to cut everyone down until someone coughs up Cersei's location. And he realises what he has to do.
He unsheathes his sword and runs it through her.
Devastated by what he just did, he falls to his knees. He barely notices Rhaegal jerking awake and rushing him with a deafening roar. Jon arrives on the scene and places himself in front of Jorah, stopping Rhaegal's charge and managing to calm him down (he had been riding him during the week long battle against Viserion).
Upon pulling the sword out of Daenerys, it gets engulfed in purple flames. These flames cannot be extinguished and from now on, any undead coming close to it (3 meters) will catch on fire.
They come back to the Wall where Daenerys's body is burned, as well as Drogon's. And Rhaegal cries. A crying dragon is an unforgettable sound. [the chapter would have been titled "But the King is alive"]
The situation is dire with the dead almost at the top of the Wall, but neither Jon nor anyone else is able to get Rhaegal into the fight as he seems to be mourning. This gives time to the army of the dead to climb the Wall and the white walkers to resume anti-magic-ing another portion of the Wall. [the chapter would have been titled "The Walkers on the Wall"]
Cersei used to chaos to run away south with her army, leaving the northmen to fend for themselves.
She's tracked down to King's Landing by Arya and Tyene [Tyene Sand. She was Jaime's traveling companion at the beginning. He has saved her from Cersei's death sentence because he had a knightly moment, out of anger towards Cersei, but he left her mother to die not forgetting that she had killed Myrcella]. Tyene kills Cersei and Arya wears her face to send the Lannister army back north, along with the golden company and the iron fleet, saying that the Wall falling changes things. [the chapter would have been titled "Die a little better"]
Back up North, Jon covers the armies of the north's retreat by burning the dead who come too close to the rear guard, or the attempts to flank.
Lady Mormont receives word to abandon Winterfell and fo to Torrhen's Square where they can at least escapes by boat if necessary. Lady Mormont refuses. She says that if they hold Winterfell, they can buy them the time they need to set up Torrhen's Square's defenses and regroup.