A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter! I got inspired so here's another much sooner than normal. :D

Winterfell

Riding Daenerys is not quite as painful as Jon feared. The cold bite of the wind does not truly bother him, and there is a place at the base of Dany's neck where the spikes along her spine stop before picking up again between the joint of her wings. It is the obvious place for a dragon rider to sit, and Jon spares a thought to wonder if the ancient Valyrians bred them that way.

So Jon is not bled in the act of riding his largest dragon, something he had thought a distinct possibility. Instead he lies prone along the hard scales of Dany's neck, trying to spread his weight as evenly as possible, arms and legs wrapped as far around as they will go to keep himself from falling. It proves untenable to hold Starkfire and Ice in this position, so Starkfire rides daintily perched on Lyanna's head, while Dany, being the smartest and thus most trustworthy, carefully carries Ice in her massive jaws.

Jon's entire front will be one enormous bruise when they land, but his odd positioning will lead to him still being able to father children, which is the important thing.

He isn't sure how long it takes them to reach Winterfell by dragonwing. The constant night makes it difficult to judge time, and it seems like both an eyeblink and an eternity thanks to Jon's relief at no longer fending for himself amongst the White Walkers coupled with Jon's fear of falling off Dany's back.

Once Winterfell is in sight they stay aloft, the dragons circling and soaring, waiting for one of the brief periods of day. Jon doesn't want to risk landing until the Walker's power is at its weakest, and he wants those still in Winterfell to be able to see and recognize him. He is flying with three big dragons and one small one, and well remembers how terrified he was when he first saw Daenerys, even with knowledge of his Targaryen blood. He doesn't want to be mistaken as an invader, not after all these people have likely already been through.

Except when day breaks, there are no people.

There is no one on the battlements. No guards training in the courtyards. Wintertown is silent and still, save for a frozen corpse lying here or there. And the castle itself, Winterfell… it lies partly ruined, walls destroyed in odd places, though for the most part it still stands. Those parts, Jon notes, are places he knows are carved with runes of the First Men.

Dreading what he will find within, Jon asks Dany and Lyanna to land, but has Tasherys stay in the sky as she is the least tired, not having carried anything. He knows the dragons need rest after their constant flight, but he wants one of them in the air keeping an eye out for danger while Jon conducts whatever business he needs to here. He conveys this idea to Dany with a brief warging and places her in charge of the watch schedule so that they can all get adequate rest, receiving a vague feeling of confirmation in return and smoke-filled snort for his trouble.

-l-

Jon makes for his old room in search of clothes first, only to realize after he gets there that he's long outgrown anything he had before he left for the Rock. He ends up in Robb's room instead, tears in his eyes and acid in his gullet as he pulls on breeches that are slightly too long and a shirt that is too tight across the shoulders. He follows it with a wool tunic in Stark grey and a leather jerkin he can't fasten. The boots are worn in the wrong places, but otherwise fit fine, as does the belt. The cloak and mantle of bear fur give him comfort, even if he does not feel the cold. He hasn't dressed this way since he went south and found out that he was a dragon, not a wolf. There is a sense of homecoming in wearing Stark colors and furs again.

Even if they belong to his dead brother-cousin.

"Jon Snow, is that you?"

Jon whirls, lunging for where he's left Ice laying atop Robb's bedcovers. Then he registers the sound of the voice and the fact that as far as he knows neither wights nor White Walkers speak. At least not in a language he can understand.

How long has it been since he's spoken to anyone but his dragons?

The sword in hand, Jon turns to face the doorway. A knot of dirty people stand there, faces drawn with hardship and dawning hope. Jon recognizes a young man with a crude black dagger in hand as a new recruit to Winterfell's guards a few years younger than Jon. Or he was before Jon left Winterfell. He is likely a full guard now. Jon can't remember his name.

But the person who holds Jon's attention, who has survived beyond all odds, is the old woman who used to frighten him with tales of snarks and grumpkins. The old woman who might now know more about how to fight their enemy than any lordly general.

"Yes, Old Nan," Jon says. "It's me." Now is not the time to tell her about earning his name, about no longer being a Snow. Not when he is so tired. Not when she looks so frail and cold.

"Lord Stark? Lord Robb?"

"Gone." Jon's voice sounds empty even to his own ears. "My sisters and Rickon are all that's left."

"Oh no." Old Nan's face crumples, but no tears come. Perhaps she's run out. Perhaps they're frozen. Perhaps she is tougher than any of them. "No… The little lord is gone too. They came. They came and we didn't know yet what parts of the castle would keep them out." Turning to shout at someone in the hallway that Jon can't see, Old Nan calls out, "Tell him what you saw, girl."

There is some shuffling as the knot of people in the doorway rearrange themselves. Jon can see, as he waves in those of them that will fit into Robb's room, that there are about twenty of them, mostly smallfolk who work as servants in Winterfell. That makes sense. All of the fighting men save whatever small force was left to garrison the keep would have died at Last Hearth. And he's already seen that Wintertown is empty.

We didn't know yet what parts of the castle would keep them out.

At last they are all arranged with Jon sitting on Robb's bed with Old Nan, others taking positions on the floor or leaning against the walls, or standing in the hall where they will be able to see and hear. A girl barely old enough to have flowered and wearing a dirty dress and smudged headscarf stands directly before Jon, her eyes on her feet.

"Tell the lord what you saw, girl," Old Nan orders again, no more gently than the first time. As tired as Jon is, the implications of Nan calling him 'lord' do not immediately come to him. He barely notices, putting it down to her trying to get the girl to comply in a back corner of his mind.

The girl nods and wrings her hands in the skirt of her dirty dress. "The little laird was in the courtyard, havin' his lessons with the maester. He had trouble mindin', wantin' to know when his kin would be back. The maester took 'em outside 'cause he minded better if'n he could have his wolf with 'em." She stops, swallowing hard.

"And?" Jon says, trying to emulate that gentle tone of voice Aunt Sansa uses when she is being Sweet Lady Lannister.

The girl looks up and blushes bright red through the soot on her face when Jon catches her eyes with his. "Then they came. Smashed the walls with monsters o'ice and shadow, giant spiders and the like. It were awful, it was, the sounds of them tryin' ta crash through. Most places the walls held, but in a few they fell clean down. We was dyin' tryin' to fight 'em, and afore we knew it they was through the holes and all around us. I ran and I ain't ashamed to say it, but I thought to grab the little laird on my way by. I made it to the door and looked back when I realized they weren't followin' no more. Felt I should watch, I s'pose. Least I could do fer the ones fightin' and dyin'. And that's when I saw it… Him…"

"Go on."

"He were the only one we seen. Not a dead 'un, but them. A White Walker. He had black spikes all 'round his head like a crown, 'cept they was growin' there. He had the little laird's wolf, and afore I knew it the little laird had pulled away and run straight to the Walker. It was so fast, I didn't even know it were happenin' 'til it were too late. The Walker took the little laird and… he did somethin' to 'em. I don't rightly know what, but afore my eyes the little laird turned pale and icy like they is. All the color leached out of his hair, and he started growin' so fast I could see it happenin'. He… he became one of them, m'laird. The little laird is a White Walker."

And before Jon can even process the horror of it, can comprehend that his last brother-cousin is gone, worse than dead, that Winterfell has fallen even if the keep is mostly intact, Old Nan chimes in. "You are the Lord of Winterfell now."

Murmurs go through the crowd of survivors, and then those that are still standing kneel.

"Lord Stark, Warden of the North."

For just a moment, a bare second, Jon exults in their claim. All he ever wanted to be before he left for Casterly Rock was respected as a Stark. And now, if he accepts the acclamation of the people… now he could give Winterfell to Tasha and his children, when before all he could offer was his blood tie to the Targaryens and his sword arm.

But no. No, he will not profit from the misfortune of his mother's family. He will not let people kneel and call him lord while Rickon roams the world as an ice demon, his very soul accursed as far as Jon knows.

He will not make Catelyn Stark's nightmare come true. That was the root of her hatred for him, wasn't it? Beyond being proof of her husband's purported infidelity, she always feared that he would somehow usurp Winterfell from her children.

It is true the Jon is the only male of Stark blood left, but he is not the only Stark. Sansa will be Lady Lannister in time, but Arya… She is to marry Clynt and he is a second son. He could easily take the Stark name and come to the North with Arya once all this business with the White Walkers is through.

That settled in his mind, Jon bids those around him to rise. "I thank you for your loyalty to the Stark blood," he tells them. "But I am not a Stark."

"We don't care if yer a Snow, a Snow has become Lord Stark before!" says one of the men. Jon thinks he might have been an apprentice blacksmith in Wintertown.

Unable to dredge up a smile, even though his lessons with the Lannisters tell him that it would make this revelation go over better, Jon merely gestures to Robb's window. "Have you looked outside?"

The men show no confusion at this seeming change of topic. Perhaps they are as tired as Jon feels. Perhaps they are so used to obeying lords that they don't bother to question him. Perhaps they will do whatever he says, simply eager for someone to be in charge.

"We don't go outside," says a woman Jon recognizes as an undercook. "We burn the dead in the courtyard so they can't come back, but we don't go outside."

That explains the soot on the clothes of most of the survivors, and the strange grey cast to the snow around Winterfell. Jon feels nothing but empty at this revelation, and wonders if he is cold inside now because he can no longer feel it outside.

"Look now," Jon commands, and those near the window obey. A touch of Jon's mind has Tasherys fly by and Dany climb the outer wall so that she is in sight of the family quarters.

There is a round of swearing and one of the younger men goes into hysterics while the woman next to him cries. But Old Nan, whom Jon is beginning to suspect is made entirely of determination and boot leather, is heard above all of them. "My eyes aren't what they use to be, m'lord. Are those dragons?"

"Yes," Jon says, expression blank. His face feels numb, but it can't be, because he is immune to cold. "I'm not a Stark. My mother may have been Lyanna Stark, but my father was Rhaegar Targaryen." He pauses. "I have taken the name Pendragon."

On cue, Lyanna lets out an earsplitting roar. Perhaps it is unwise to advertise their position to the White Walkers, but Jon isn't feeling very wise at the moment. He isn't feeling anything at all.

"Then you're not Lord Stark," Old Nan agrees with Jon. He lets out a relieved sigh. "You're the king," Old Nan continues. Jon's relief is short-lived, as now the people, even Nan, are on their knees hailing him as King Jon Pendragon, the First of His Name, Ruler of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

Jon isn't sure if his wife is going to be proud or horrified that he's been accidentally crowned the king of twenty people. He decides not to dispute with them, to tell them that he has no desire for the Iron Throne and he is king of nothing and no one. That is an issue for the future, and the way these people are looking to him now… They want a king, because they want someone to lead them. To save them. To be Protector of the Realm.

Jon will do his best.

-l-

The first time he sleeps in his old room in Winterfell (they try to make him take a better room, but if Jon really is the king he can sleep where he damn well wants), Jon dreams of Bran.

"You have to see," Bran tells him, looking older than Jon remembers. He is almost as tall as Jon now, and walks without a cane. A three-eyed raven perches on his shoulder. "You have to know," Bran continues.

"Know what?"

Jon's voice echoes strangely in the fog of his dreamscape. He looks down and sees he is wearing his old armor, the armor that was lost at Last Hearth, save for one difference. His winged direwolf sigil is now a single white dragon. It looks like Lyanna, a tongue of ruby flame coming from its mouth.

"What they are. Why you were born," Bran says. And then he points.

A vision coalesces out of the fog, and Jon sees a man tied to a weirwood tree. Strange beings with green skin and hair that looks like tree roots surround him.

"He looks like a Stark," Jon says, unaware that he intended to speak at all. It is a dream. Perhaps all his thoughts will be spoken.

"He is," Bran agrees. "A Stark before they were called Starks."

As Jon watches, one of the little green beings stabs the man through the heart with a dagger that glints black. Jon's hand twitches for one of his blades, but he remembers at the last moment that this is a dream. There is nothing he can do to help the man.

The little green beings step back and the man tied to the tree convulses, his blood watering the roots even as his skin goes blue and his hair turns pale as snow.

"They made the White Walkers," Jon realizes.

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"The Children of the Forest. They could not fight us when the First Men came, so they created the White Walkers to fight for them. They were made for one thing only: to kill men. They are weapons of ice and death with no will of their own. Or they were."

"I don't understand. Why are they attacking now?"

Bran gestures back to the vision of the man becoming a White Walker, saying only, "Watch."

The man stills, his life's blood run out, his final breath coming out in a long whispering rattle. Then his back arches and he screams, the black dagger in his chest disappearing as black spikes made of the same slick material sprout from his head in the shape of a crown. His eyes snap open, and they are so cold with hatred that they glow with it, like someone plucked stars from the sky and put them in the White Walker's face.

Those cold burning eyes catch on Jon, and he is struck with an eerie feeling that the Walker sees him.

"The Children used the Walkers to fight the First Men until the Pact was made at the Isle of Faces. There was peace, and the White Walkers became nothing more than beautiful ice statues that never melted. The Children and the First Men lived in harmony."

Bran gestures and the vision of the man becoming a White Walker changes to a beautiful grove of weirwood trees, their carved faces all smiling and happy. Dotted here and there are what look like statues of ice, beautiful things that catch the light and cast rainbows when it hits them just right. They look alive, save for how still and perfect they are.

Another gesture and the weirwood is burning and the once perfect statues are moving and killing, their icy blades crusted with frozen blood. "But then the Andals came and the Pact was broken. The Children brought the Walkers back to life and started to make more. But there was one thing they didn't realize. They didn't count on the fact that some of their race had mixed with some of ours. The Stark before they were Starks claimed one of the Children as his grandfather. And so when he was captured and used in the ritual to make a White Walker, something went wrong. They had sacrificed their own blood, however unknowingly, and the power of that blood protected him. His will was not erased. No mere weapon to follow the whims of the Children, but a sword without a hilt. And it turned in their hand."

The first vision is back, but this time beginning from the point the newly made White Walker opens his glowing eyes. As Jon watches, the Walker frees himself from his bonds and goes after the Children around the weirwood, succeeding in killing two with the sword of rimefrost that appears in his hands before the rest scatter. Throwing his head back, the Walker screams in a language that sounds like cracking ice.

"He is the Night King," Jon says, sure that the black-crowned Walker can be no one else.

"Yes." Bran confirms. "He hates all warm blooded things, for that is how the Children designed the White Walkers. The disgust the Others feel for anything and everything that gives off heat drives them to destroy all in their path. They cannot be reasoned with. They were not meant to have reason. But the Night King has the same powers as the Children and a mind of his own. He can create more Walkers. He can control his brethren. He can ignore orders from the Children. And he hates them for what they did to him. And so the Children were wiped out by their own creations, save for a handful who hid in obscurity until recently when they, too, were slain."

Understanding hits Jon like a bolt from the blue. "And without the Children to control them, they ran amuck, total annihilation their only goal. Because while he might still have his mind, the Night King is a White Walker. He hates everything but winter."

Bran smiles grimly. "And so we come to the tale of the Long Night and the Last Hero."

"I remember. Old Nan was right about more things than we ever knew."

Bran's smile turns a bit wistful. "Yes. Her tale of the Last Hero was accurate enough, save for one thing."

Bran shows him one more vision. The Night King is fighting with a man wielding a sword that seems to shine with sunlight itself, the light of it so bright that Jon can't rightly make out the Last Hero's features, save for the fact that one of his arms looks to be made of living metal. Not until the Hero plunges his Sword of Light through the Night King's chest.

The Night King falls. All of the wights surrounding the battle fall too. The other White Walkers Jon spots in the distance freeze as they turn back into statues of ice, weapons with no will.

Then the unthinkable happens.

The Night King dissolves and the Last Hero doubles over, a crown of black spikes sprouting from his long brown hair.

Jon turns to Bran as the vision fades, idly wondering if you can be sick in a dream. He determinedly doesn't think of Rickon's fate. "He became a new Night King."

Bran looks away, the three-eyed raven on his shoulder cawing. "Whoever kills the Night King becomes the Night King. A twist on the magic that can't be undone."

"Then why now!" Jon demands, reaching out to shake Bran. His hands go through his brother-cousin, proving Bran an apparition or trick of the mind, but Jon is not deterred. "Why didn't the war continue if the Last Hero just became the Night King?"

"He fought, Jon," Bran says quietly. "He was another with magic blood, far more than the Stark before they were Starks. He fought and through the power of his blood and the strength of his mind he managed to beat back the urges of a White Walker long enough to seek out the remaining Children. He'd been controlled by magic once before, you see. Made to do terrible things. He was determined it would not happen again, so he went to the Children and begged them to put him in an enchanted sleep to protect the world from the wrath of the Night King. He knew he would not be able to resist forever. So he slept. The Wall was built, and the Watch began."

Jon takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut and scraping his fingers through his hair. "But then he woke up," he says between clenched teeth.

"As the number of living Children dwindled their sleeping enchantment grew weaker. Around fifty years ago it broke completely and the Last Hero woke, a Hero no longer. He was the Night King, utterly and completely, and he immediately began preparing to carry out the mission of all White Walkers."

Jon laughs, if it can be called that. It sounds more like sobbing, like a wounded animal, a wolf wishing for pack. But no, he's sure it's laughter. If he doesn't laugh, he'll cry, and if he cries he'll never stop.

"They and their creations are all vulnerable to fire, dragonglass, and Valyrian steel," Bran tells him. "But you and only you must be the one to kill the Night King."

That cuts Jon's mad laughter short. (Mad laughter, ha! Perhaps he is going the way of his grandfather, perhaps this whole tortured dream is a symptom of Targaryen madness. He almost wishes it were so.)

"Why?" he croaks out.

That damned raven caws again. "You are the Son of Ice and Fire. The Prince Who Was Promised. It is prophesied, it is hoped that if you are the one to kill the current Night King, the balance of magics in your blood will allow you to remain yourself. Or else…"

Jon sees the truth in Bran's face. "Or else I'll simply die. The blood of the dragon will reject the magic of a White Walker and I'll be torn apart from the inside out. There will be no more Night King."

Bran says nothing. There is nothing to say.

Jon thinks of Tasha. Of Sansa, and Arya. Of Gerion, Clynt, and Uncle Tyrion. Of Uncle Jaime's training and Aunt Sansa's tutelage. He thinks of the twenty frightened smallfolk who knelt and proclaimed him their king.

"Alright," he says, so softly that he himself barely hears it. "Alright."

Bran bows to him. Then he turns to walk away, already obscured by the dream fog.

"Wait!" Jon calls out. Bran looks back and Jon finds himself blurting, "What was his name? The Last Hero, what was his name?"

"His name was James," Bran answers, face solemn. "James Barnes, but he preferred to be called Bucky. He came to Westeros from a far away land in an accident of magic, and hated the cold like nothing else."