The Song of Winter
By MADJACKc1940
This work is original to GRRM, I claim no credit to his books or the show.
Chapter 18
Sansa had been quiet for days after learning of Bran's death. The night he appeared to them in the wolf dreams as a talking weirwood had been both sad and oddly comforting in its final closure. The lack of knowledge on their brother's condition had been a constant worry in the back of the minds of the remaining Starks. Bran had explained to them about his first dreams of the former three-eyed raven and his journey north of the Wall. His consciousness now lived on as the three-eyed raven after the death of his lamed human body.
The morning after he had first spoken to them, Sansa had woken Jon with a choked sob. He consoled her, fighting his own sorrow. He held her, his hand resting softly on their growing child in her womb. His own feelings were conflicted. He was both sad for the loss of his brother and glad for his newfound freedom.
"Don't mourn for me," Bran said to Sansa in the mind of Nymeria. His voice was bland and expressionless, as if nothing new would ever be seen in the world.
"Even while I still breathed as boy, the Bran you knew was no longer after I became the three-eyed raven. I became the living memory of Westeros and the Old Gods. My experience as your brother is but a drop in the lake to what I had become. Take comfort that I am no longer a cripple, and that I exist as the three-eyed raven and will climb to great heights as I always wished for before Jaime Lannister threw me from the tower in Winterfell. So long as you and your children pray to the Old Gods, I will always be with the Starks."
Many nights since then, Bran had visited them, speaking through the tree or showing Jon what he saw through his third raven eye. He saw the invasion of Daenerys Targaryen's forces and her rage and sorrow at the loss of two of her dragons. His first vision of the woman who was truly his aunt was a woeful memory.
Jon had witnessed the undignified deaths of the black and gold dragons. He learned from his advisors that they were called Drogon and Viserion. He felt anger at the cold pirate, Euron Greyjoy. Jon lost all good faith he held towards the Greyjoys following Bran's own description of how Theon had treated with the Winterfell citizens and the two Stark boys that he had been raised with. Any gratitude Jon felt towards Theon for delivering Sansa from the Boltons had always been tempered in reasoned caution. Theon had likewise been escaping an awful situation from the man who had unmanned him. There had also always been bad blood between the North and the Ironborn, and one generation's mixed actions weren't going to solve a thousand years of raiding and war.
Jon did not know how to feel towards the dragons. They represented a threat towards the North but were also the symbols of a once-great House. And that same House, under different circumstances, could have once been his own.
Had Rhaegar Targaryen driven his sword through the neck of Robert Baratheon at the Battle of the Trident, it would be very likely that Jon would be in King's Landing. His name would be Aegon, and he would be second in line for the Iron Throne, behind his elder half-brother, who had also been called Aegon.
The woman who fell to her knees in grief at the death of her dragons wouldn't have to have been a war-hardened queen of Essos. She might have been a kind woman, much like Sansa when she wasn't putting on airs as the Queen of the North. Daenerys' mother was said to have been a quiet, sweet woman, a victim of the Mad King's proclivities. Perhaps Jon and Daenerys might've been friends, they were of similar age. In the manner of the Targaryens, she may have even been his wife.
Jon was firmly dedicated to the cause of the North, but he could not lose the thought of a different existence. A happier, more peaceful existence where there was no War of Five Kings. Lyanna Stark wouldn't have died. Perhaps Eddard would have been pardoned and spared the executioner's sword for following the cause of Robert Baratheon at the behest of his sister, the rightful wife of Rhaegar. Jon would be the prince, but he might have squired in Winterfell and been friends with his Stark cousins.
He didn't voice these compunctions to anyone. He did not wish to give Sansa fears that he would do anything but act in the best interests of the North. For the best interests of the North were the safest options for Sansa and their unborn child, and openly that took priority over any sympathy he felt for a wayward aunt. Jon knew that he would do what he must, when the time came to ensure that Starks continued ruling Winterfell, as was the will of the Old Gods.
. . .
Missandei dutifully attended to her Khaleesi. Progress on the campaign had slowed, but not stalled after she reported the deaths of Drogon and Viserion. The Mother of Dragons had been stone-faced in her public appearances. Occasionally a twitch of her countenance would bely the true state of her inner turmoil, but only those who knew the woman personally would catch the fleeting breaks in her armor. A vein bulging when she was angered, a twitch of the cheek or the lips when she was displeased. It was different from before in that she had always been more expressive in public displays. She had controlled her emotions into a careful mask like any monarch, but now she wasn't controlled, she was repressed.
Lately, Daenerys would call for Missandei to her tent in the night.
"Stay with me," the Queen said.
On the first night, Missandei expected that the Queen had sought a different sort of comfort, despite not having shown interest in other women before. The Naathi translator joined her Queen somewhat nervously in her bed. She had been trained in the ways of pleasure like most of the pretty female slaves in the former Slavers Bay, now known as the Bay of Dragons. However, her experiences as a slave had been predominantly administrative before she was liberated. When she went in to press her lips to Daenerys', the Queen gently pushed her back.
"Just lay down," Daenerys requested.
The dark-skinned girl relaxed and laid on her side. Her Queen laid beside her, placing an arm over her from behind. They stayed like that for several minutes, Missandei began to fall asleep when she felt the Queen's form shuddering against her back. Quiet sobs that could not be allowed to be seen or known to anyone issued from behind her. Missandei had once offered to sing Naathi lullabies to Daenerys the night before the Battle of Yunkai, when she had been too restless to sleep. At the time, Daenaerys had refused, feeling that such an action was unnecessary for an older woman who would be Queen.
This time, Missandei began to quietly sing a song that her distant mother once sang for her, not asking if the Queen wished for her to do so. She softly rubbed Daenerys' arm that embraced her as the Mother of Dragons sobbed with her face buried between her neck and the pillow. The Queen continued asking for Missandel nightly until Missandei came to her tent without having to be asked. Neither ever said a word about why she was there, and none of Daenerys' advisors questioned the behavior.
The invasion continued as it moved through the Crownlands. Rhaegal never left the Queen's side; he was almost always seen in her presence. The great drake even crowded about her tent she slept at night, scaring any passerby and only tolerating those the Queen had already given leave to get by the loyal dragon. Rhaegal was named after her heroic, yet controversial brother and for some it even seemed as if the great beast was fulfilling the protective role of a dutiful older brother. It was actually quite a different relationship. The Queen was protecting her last child, and the once-independent beast clung to its mother fiercely after it had witnessed the death of Viserion and smelled the blood of Drogon on his disembodied eye.
The proud creature had been humbled. The beasts had been the top predators their entire lives and in one night it was revealed to the intelligent beast that it was not invincible. Much as he did when he had first hatched, he cleaved to Daenerys as if his life depended on it in this hostile land. She even hunted with him now when he needed feeding, guiding him towards the safe herds from above where he would then dive and eat his fill. This reduced level of autonomy gave the invasion force less mobility. They did not move without their Khaleesi flying over head on her dragon's back, watchful of dangers and guiding their path.
In this manner, the Crownlands slowly but surely reared its soft underbelly. After The Whispers, they veered North and took Dyre Den with as little struggle as taking the first keep. However, Daenerys had been more inclined to put the lord and his family to the sword.
"Save your Fire and Blood for my sister," Tyrion urged as Lord Brune knelt before the conquering Queen nervously.
"I urge you to treat Lord Brune as fairly as you did with the Lord of The Whispers and surely, they will be loyal to you after you sit the Iron Throne. Isn't that right, Lord Brune?"
The cowering lord knelt lower and repeatedly assured the Queen and her looming dragon of his fealty. His wife and young children cowered behind him. His children clung to their mother's skirts, all of them sobbing except the older heir, who looked at her pleadingly.
Daenerys looked on the defeated lord with a neutral countenance, a vein throbbed on her left temple. Rhaegal let out a low hiss, smog rolling from his nostrils as he leered at the begging nobleman. One of the lord's daughters began crying in earnest, which drew the Queen's gaze.
"Place them under confinement in their quarters and see that they remain there until I say otherwise," decreed the Queen after a period. The vein had relaxed on her head; her eyes were cast downward.
Lord Brune all but collapsed to the ground, prostrating himself before Daenerys as he expressed his gratitude and promised unending loyalty to her. He and his family were ushered away by her Unsullied. Tyrion visibly relaxed at her decree, exchanging a nervous glance with Missandei at Daenerys' initial savage intentions.
"Garrison the keep adequately and make camp, we march for Rook's Rest in the morning," Daenerys continued, as she mounted Rhaegal and flew away without another word.