Him
When he woke in the morning, it felt like a melting drift of snow had settled onto his chest. He thought for a moment that he might still be asleep, dreaming of a world where winter brought life and light instead of death. As his black eyes focused and the haze of sleep faded out of them, he realized his impossible snowdrift was actually a thick tangle of silver-white hair.
A bright beam of sunlight was illuminating her snow hair to a beam, face hidden behind a curtain. She rustled as he pulled himself up to half-sitting. What would such a woman's dreams contain? Dragons? Fire?
He wouldn't dare to presume he made any sort of appearance in her dreams.
Jon Snow knew what he had dreamt the night before. He had walked the grounds of Winterfell. The dream air had been cool but pleasant, and he had heard the whisperings from the leaves of the Godswood as the cold winds blew. They had sung to him sweetly and he had felt safe for the first time in years. His boots had crunched through glowing hills of powder as he'd made his way through a luminescent vacuum of silence. Around him the night had been so dark, its brightness had hurt to look at it.
By the time he pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the castle, he'd somehow sensed he was the only person alive for miles around. He wasn't frightened and he didn't feel the looming tension of battle. He'd only felt one thing and that was warmth. The walls surrounding him had emanated the heat of the steaming natural spring water that had thawed the Starks of Winterfell since the age of the First Men. As he walked, the heat grew and grew until he could almost hear it, flowing in rushes through the walls. When he passed under the entryway to the Great Hall, the sound of the spring water had risen into the roar of a hot ocean in his ears.
It was then that he'd woken up. It was then that he'd seen her curled up on top of him. Staring at the rough-hewn ship's ceiling above him, he'd run his callused fingers through her hair. Unbelievably soft. Beautiful, even without its intricate conqueror's braids.
The hot spring water of his dreams had been her, the heat of her humanity. Even in his sleep, he'd felt her living against him. For the rest of his days, however few they may be, he knew he'd never forget what she looked like in the light of a blazing fire, smiling beneath him.
"You remind me of home," he said out loud, his words drifting quietly into the bottled ocean air of the morning. When his eyes shifted from the ceiling to the Dragon Queen asleep at his side, he was met by her alert expression. Daenerys Targaryen was staring up at him, her chin making a depression into the flesh of his scarred abdomen.
"I've never known what that felt like before." Her voice was the jagged glass of sleep. It was all she said before grinning, just a little, and laying her head back down. She squeezed closer to him, adjusting back into the depths of furs and blankets and the comforts of well-deserved sleep.
Her
She thought they were being so careful.
Without discussing it, they'd known to spend their days apart. During Small Council meetings, they stood on opposite sides of the room, their various advisors like so many miles of land between them. If Jon Snow agreed with anything she propositioned, he always appeared disdainful of any order of business less significant than defeating the Night King. For her part, she was often short and taciturn with him, or else she remained silent, asking her Hand to confer with Snow after the meeting.
It wasn't much of an act for her to appear exasperated with her Warden of the North. The way he endlessly warned her and her advisors against upsetting his Northern banner men, you'd think they were sailing toward a group of petulant children. She didn't want children for allies. If she hadn't been certain that his concern was genuine, or that it was for her well-being as well as the loyalty of the North, she would have been offended.
Each day for two weeks passed like this. Long, lonely days rocked by the waves of the ocean, pretending to have to suffer each other as Queen and Warden, speaking in coded glances or through unaware interpreters.
And then her King in the North had gotten too bold.
Yet another meeting had been called by her Hand – she had thrown Valyrian daggers at him with her eyes from across the table – as soon as they'd finished their meal for the evening. Their stay with the Manderlys would be Daenerys' first impression in the North and it was important she demonstrated her power without showing too much of it. The whole meeting had gone rather well, perhaps because they were full of heavy food and desirous of sleep. Jon Snow and his people had made the first moves to leave. As Lord Snow was about to pass through the entryway, he turned back, stopping so close behind her she could feel his smoky breath on her neck, and leaned over the frayed map spread wide on the table.
"If we want to make the best impression, I suggest the ships go ahead of us, straight to Winterfell. They may be in need of supplies." As he said this, Jon Snow rubbed her hand with the back of his, their fingers weaving together for the slice of a second. He retracted his hand like a snapped length of twine and exited the room without looking back. It had left Daenerys feeling more flushed than she'd ever felt without standing in the heart of a fire.
Missandei followed her back to her chambers after the meeting. She undid Daenerys' braids, turned down her bed, and brought her a steaming mug of hot tea. When Missandei took her leave, Daenerys stayed where she was on the bed, staring at the hands lying limp in her lap. They were a poor excuse for his, even sewn together. The door slammed closed with more ferocity than Missandei ever used. She turned and saw her Hand standing with his arms locked like chains behind his back.
"Your Grace, do you have any idea what you're doing?" For a moment she stared at him, attempting to gauge his disapproval. She'd been expecting this moment but she had hoped they could make it to White Harbor before being found out.
Jon Snow hadn't asked and she hadn't brought it up. She didn't know what they were doing, but she didn't care to admit that to her closest advisor. Shaking her head and lifting her chin, she refocused on observing the way the hearth danced and crackled. Tyrion Lannister took three tentative steps toward where she sat on her bed.
"If the Northmen see the two of you together, Your Grace, they'll only be reminded of one thing. Surely you must see that." This stirred her. Just as she was not her father, so was she not her brother. Her face was set with anger but her voice came out in a waver softer than the folds of silk she was wearing.
"I may love him, but I am no fool." The silence that followed this confession sat between them like a nervous Septon. Without looking, because she knew her composure would break, she felt Lord Tyrion approach. He laid his hand on her shoulder, a familiar gesture he didn't often attempt, and squeezed reassuringly, the pressure somehow grounding her.
There were no more words spoken before he left. She fell asleep that night blanketed in a silence colder than any fire could cut.
Him
There were things he'd regretted when he died. When he was reborn, he was more than a little preoccupied, but as days and weeks went by, his mind was revisited by one nagging thought.
Did I ever tell Ygritte that I loved her?
He had been duplicitous, but it hurt his honor more that he couldn't remember.
As the marble-domed towers of White Harbor rose in the distance like snow-covered peaks, the former King in the North thought of things he might've done. Standing at the ship's railing and watching the men ready the mooring lines for docking, he felt her sidle up beside him. He felt her glowing warmth.
"Are you nervous, Your Grace?" There were eyes on them from all directions and she stood with a wide berth between them but it had been two and half weeks since they'd been alone together. When she turned to him, her eyes were like icicles dangling from castle eaves, ready to drop.
"I am never nervous, Lord Snow," she said in a cold voice, but half her mouth twitched upward in a joking manner and he knew she was pretending Queen with him again. An act they'd perfected on their journey north. He glanced around before laying his gloved hand over hers where it gripped the railing. Their bones fit together, just so.
"No Your Grace. Of course not."
Lord Wyman Manderly's son met them at the docks. Although he brought horses and greeted their party with deference, he referred to Jon Snow as Your Grace with a very pointed affectation. The ride to New Castle was a chilly one, the cold wind whipping the mermen banners in a chorus. Daenerys Targaryen rode right beside him, serenely quiet.
A few hours later and the Dragon Queen was impressing everyone with her charming sense of diplomacy. Despite their stifled resentment, House Manderly had prepared a magnificent feast for their arrival and Lord Wyman had spit out a good deal of it laughing at her exaggerated retelling of Cersei Lannister's fearful reactions at the Dragon Pit parlay. The Warden of the North laughed into his cup of ale, feeling even more proud of his Queen than when she'd descended Drogon in an elaborate show for the Lannisters.
"Seems to me, Your Grace," Davos cleared his throat beside him, "in another life, our Queen would've been a fucking good mummer in Flea Bottom." They kept their cups low but toasted to this unexpected success.
When the company had had their fill, Lord Wyman asked for the honor of escorting his Queen to her chambers for the evening. Alone in his borrowed room, Jon Snow couldn't sleep, despite the generous provisions. Thoughts raced through his mind and a tightness bloomed in his chest. Regrets. He'd learned to live with so many of them.
It was rather more well-lit than he'd have liked, going through New Castle's winding corridors. Had he run across anyone, he wasn't sure what he would have said but the shadows were with him this night. When he knocked on her door, the anticipation nearly strangled him. He expected to be beckoned, but the door opened just wide enough for her pale winter face to show through.
"I might have known it was you, knocking on my door in the middle of the night." Smiling, she opened the door wide enough for Jon Snow to gain entry, and closed it purposefully behind him. She stood facing him.
"You did well today, Your Grace. I never should've doubted you." He felt lame in her presence, the ghost of their night together haunting him.
"I'm a fast learner, Jon Snow." The ale from his dinner had thickened his tongue to uselessness. She stared at him with knowing eyes.
"Forgive me, Your Grace. I'll leave you to your rest, but I had to tell you. I had to tell you that," he halted, meeting her blue-violet eyes with a wrenching force. "Daenerys, I came to tell you, and I know I shouldn't be saying this, but I love you. I can't go on without saying it."
And with that, the Daenerys Targaryen shifted into him, grabbed his face between her hands, and kissed him for the first time in weeks. His eyes had clenched shut on contact but when he opened them, his black eyes were drowning in the rivers of her dilated irises.
Faces nearly touching, she whispered, "I know, Jon. As I love you. Dream of me," before gently pushing him, dazed, back toward the hall.
That night he slept well and deep and he did, in fact, dream of his silver-haired woman.
Her
This is either a dream, or I've finally been murdered.
It had been years since she'd had this many people staring down at her. Missandei, Lord Tyrion, Varys, Ser Jorah, Ser Davos. Jon Snow. She felt vulnerable, covered in furs and only a very thin shift. The longer the silence breathed the more apprehensive she became. She wordlessly threw her questions at them.
To Missandei: the Unsullied?
To Ser Jorah: the Khalasar?
To her Hand: My Dragons?
Each one in turn responded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. And then Jon Snow stepped closer to her bed than he ever would have dared unless it were a true emergency.
"Your Grace, we have to leave immediately. Your forces will be at Winterfell in a matter of days, just ahead of the supply ships. Lord Manderly is bolstering our forces with a thousand fighting men," he forced out in a jumbled rush. If only she could look in his eyes. She was sitting up now, not even bothering to cover herself. He kept walking to her bed until he was crouching at her level. There was fire in the dragon-blackness of his eyes. "We've received a raven from Castle Black. The Wall has fallen. The dead are coming."
How did this happen?
She let the question fall, frantically searching each of them of an answer.
"The message was…brief," he said, pushing himself up from his wolf-like haunch. They all stared at their feet and it sent her dragon spikes into a suspicious hackling, but there was no time to argue.
The next two hours flew in a flurry and for the first time since they'd met, she let her Warden of the North make all the commands. There wasn't a spare moment to interrogate him privately. Lord Manderly stayed behind to fortify the city – they might all end up back in White Harbor in the event of a quick retreat from Winterfell.
Jon Snow took the head of the vanguard as they marched off down the King's Road. They'd have to make haste if they were to catch up with her forces. Theirs was a much smaller troop of men (and women) and there wasn't much conversation, but who can talk when you're trying to outrun the End of the World?
The further they rode, the more frenzied the snow storm cycling around them became. She lost track of the hours. Her hips felt like the wishbone of a roast chicken, stretched to breaking from riding horseback without anything to distract her. The Targaryen blood did nothing to smother the cold.
There was something everyone wasn't telling her. She'd known it that morning, and she knew it that night when sleep overtook her in a sloppily prepared tent, alone and left to her thoughts.
The next day passed in a similar fashion. Driving snow. Whirling winds, chapping her face and bleeding her hands raw. Falling into bed, numbed to slumber by relentless pain in her hips. How did she spend so many days trekking across the Red Waste with her first Khalasar?
On the third day – around noon, although the colorless palette of the Northern winter sky made it impossible to tell by the sun – Lord Snow appeared beside her, having purposefully slowed his pace. She assumed he'd left Ser Jorah to guide the caravan's way north.
"Your Grace, once we make camp, I'd like to discuss our strategy for arriving in Winterfell. If you have a moment." He looked straight ahead when he spoke to her. Daenerys Targaryen was certain now that her King from the North had been avoiding her. Before answering him, she turned to her right and received a nod of approval from Missandei.
"Of course, Lord Snow. I know you must be anxious to see your home again." His nod was curt, formal, totally for the benefit of anyone who might not know he'd been inside her just a few weeks before. It hurt, and a dragon doesn't respond well to pain.
So hours later, when the black veil of night had draped itself across their camp, she'd ironed her face into the steel mask of a disinterested Queen. She could be curt and formal, too. Passing beneath the heavy canvas flap of his tent, Daenerys saw the broad back of Jon Snow hunched in a chair, curved over maps and papers like a mountain leaning into the wind. She cleared her throat.
"Lord Snow, I hope I'm not disturbing you. I can return at a later time," she announced, clasping her hands in front of her. He turned around immediately but he didn't respond. Instead, he stood up with such haste his chair fell over. He took the five widest steps she'd ever seen and crushed her to him with a shocking force that took her breath away.
"He has Viscerion. He has him. That's how he brought the Wall down." His staccatoed whisper punctured her. He held onto her in a vicelike grip while she collapsed into him like an empty sack of wheat. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know how to tell you."
A feeling overcame Daenerys Targaryen that made the edges of her vision blur and shimmer like a hot day in Pentos. There were no words. What could she say when she'd caused the death of her child? What could she say when he had become the most powerful weapon against them? Jon Snow bent down and scooped her up like she weighed less thanan empty sack and carried her to his pallet. It seemed she was unable to move.
His fingers shook like a drunkard's as he unfastened the delicate buttons of her cloak, but she helped him pull her own arms out of it. His own cloak gave him less trouble. When he crawled into bed next to her, she clutched onto him for dear life, sobbing without a sound and cold without shivering.
There wasn't much room for two bodies on that pallet, but they made do. The Queen of the Andals and her Warden of the North didn't much care who saw them in the morning, either.
Him
Sansa, Bran, Arya. Sansa, Bran, Arya. Sansa, Bran, Arya.
It was a mantra, an incantation that had miraculously brought back his family. He wasn't able to save Rickon or Robb, and he'd made peace with the loss of Bran and Arya years ago, but here they were. Alive and well at Winterfell. Maybe the Red Woman was right. Maybe the Night King was a fraud. Because he knew people could be brought back from the dead, still very much alive.
Jon Snow knew he shouldn't anticipate his arrival back home the way he did, considering the simultaneous of war at their doorstep, but this was his family, fragmented and tattered, back together again. Winter may be coming, but the North remembers and the Pack survives.
The snow was rough, but they'd kept a great pace – Manderly's men, the Unsullied, and Dothraki screamers at their backs. The combined forces had united the day previous. It had been three stretched days since he'd told her the truth about the collapse of the Wall. Somehow, it had settled whatever was between them into something more corporeal. No part of him could have maintained propriety after watching her crack like bone marrow. He'd held her close and kissed her eyelids and told her over and over again that he loved her. She'd never allowed herself to appear to so human before him and his heart simultaneously swelled and fractured all night.
Davos had walked in on them, rumpled and mussed, in the feathery white light of dawn the next morning. "Your Graces, we'd better be off," he croaked, before smirking and nodding at his King, turning tail out of the tent. The way he addressed them, already a unit. Two halves of a whole. No one mentioned a thing, but Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen both knew the whole vanguard sensed some kind of allegiance had shifted.
They two lead the way now. His hands resting on the pommel of his saddle, he looked at her, admiring the dervish patterns of furious snowfall cascading around her face, the synchronized way their horses had fallen into step with each other. She didn't return the gaze but even with the cloak of her hood hiding most of the features of her beautiful face, he could see that the dry, pearlescent skin of her lips had broken into a smile the moment his obsidian eyes landed on them.
Winterfell looked both old beyond age and like something new and extraordinary as it rose up on the horizon. Horns heralded their arrival. They could be heard through the wind. Ser Davos rode up on the other side of him.
"Begging your pardon, Your Graces," he said, "but they'll be expecting you first, Lord Snow. Perhaps we should ride ahead and let the Queen lead the forces to the gate."
Armed men opened the gate when Jon Snow and his Hand were still a good distance away. Approaching the courtyard and watching it teem with bustle and life, men-at-arms running from one destination to the next, he felt a lump in his throat. They have no idea what's coming for them.
And still, the men in their dark boiled leather and the vividness of the snowfall created a striking tableau. It was like he was greeting a very old friend and saying goodbye in one breath.
Jon Snow hardly noticed Ser Davos beside him as they rode beneath the overpass. All the activity around him had stopped at the sight of their King. Against the railing of the second floor of the castle, staring down at him from across the courtyard, stood both of his sisters.
Every time he looked at Sansa, since the morning she'd slipped into Castle Black, he was struck by how grown she'd become. She might be Lady Stark but anyone could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was no simpering maiden. Beside her was a smaller, darker creature, like something out of a dream he once dreamt or a life he once lived.
Sansa began making her way down the stairs, skirts held up out of the cold and wet, but Arya – in soldier's garb, no less – ran ahead of her. She jogged across the courtyard as Jon dismounted. Unbuckling her scabbard from around her waist, she let it splash in the mud where it landed. When she ran into his arms, it was a bittersweet remembrance of the last time he'd seen her, when they'd departed North and South.
Only this time, he was embracing no little girl, but a sword – a young woman sharp and strong, whose grip around his throat was surprisingly assured.
"I knew I'd see you again. I knew it," his youngest sister whispered, clinging tightly to him.
"You always were much smarter that I was," he said, squeezing her back. Dropping her down, he got his first good look at her. "You're so tall!" He rearranged his jostled hauberk and watched as she ran back for her sword.
"She's not that tall, Jon," Sansa reminded him, catching up to them.
"I'm not even as tall as you are, Sansa," he laughed and it felt good to laugh. Ser Davos dismounted and guided his horse to their circle.
"Where's your shadow, My Lady?" Davos asked, wrangling with Jon's horse behind them. He too noticed that Sansa's persistent, smirking shadow – Lord Petyr Baelish – was nowhere to be found. Bran had also missed their arrival. As Arya replaced her sword around her waist, she and Sansa shared a knowing look that filled him with disquiet. His fists clenched and unclenched, waiting for a response. Arya put her arms behind her back.
"Much has happened since you rode south, Brother," she said, and although her words spoke an ominous portent, she was smiling. At that moment, he noticed an identical narrowing of pupils and defiant lifting of chins from both his sisters. When he turned, he saw his Queen riding through the gates on her white horse, flanked by Tyrion Lannister and Ser Jorah Mormont, followed by Lord Varys and Missandei (who looked tremendously uncomfortable in the cold). He didn't quite know how to introduce her, but he knew whatever he said would never do her justice.
"Lady Sansa Stark, Lady Arya Stark. This is Queen Daenerys Stormborn, of House Targaryen. The Mother of Dragons." He gestured in her direction. She looked much less imposing, covered in furs and a hood, than she did when he'd first laid eyes on her. A shadow passed overhead, momentarily blocking out the weak winter sun. The entire courtyard looked up and he saw a collective jump, like a wave of movement, as Drogon and Rhaegal screamed their welcome. With dozens of eyes pointed upward, Jon looked at his Queen and she looked at him and he hoped she read what he was trying to communicate to her.
I love you. They will love you, too.
"Your Grace," Sansa's voice interrupted them. "Might I suggest we hold a council meeting? As soon as you're comfortable. We have much to discuss."