Not The Plan

Time to continue on from that cliffhanger, it wasn't that bad ;p

The big parts which are in italics are a sort of flashback.

The story continues…

I do not own any of the characters or the TV show, this is merely my interpretation on it. No copyright infringement intended.

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There are always these moments in your life in which you wish you could have done something more, you could have prevented something from happening or tried to be someone better. But in the end it doesn't matter. For life is ruthless and there is nothing we can change about it. That's what scares us, that which we don't know scares us. And in life we know nothing for certain. We only know that one day we will all die. Even though death is something that we know, it still scares us. We do everything in our power to stay alive and to keep those we care about alive. We try our utmost to achieve that, but sometimes it just isn't enough.

Yara knew this. She learned this a long time ago. When she was sitting on the dirt ground with her small hands pressed to her mother's abdomen. The blood had been sticky and it had coated her hands completely. Even after her body had long been released back into the sea, her blood was still there. She scrubbed and scrubbed, but even if her hands turned red from the friction she was exerting on her hands she did not stop. For all that she could see was the blood that coated it.

It was the same now. Even if as a warrior she had been taught to never fear death, it wasn't death that she feared. It was losing someone she cared for deeply. As this ran through her mind she looked up again at the prone body in front of her. The chest that was rising and falling slowly, a body deep in slumber. She tried to calm herself with this comforting motion, but all that she could think about was that it could stop at any second. Yara had almost lost her. The only other time she felt as helpless as she did in that moment was when her mother was dying in her arms. She had not cried since that moment all those years ago, but now all she felt like doing was crying.

Feeling the tears start to well up she quickly squeezed her eyes shut trying to hold them in. As she felt the warm tracks going down her heated cheeks she knew that she had failed yet again. She couldn't safe her mother, she couldn't keep her tears in and she hadn't been able to protect Daenerys. She had been distracted. Had she been more focused she would have been able to detect the sound, recognize it, spot where it was coming from and dealt with the cause of it. Instead she had been so caught up with the blonde that her mind couldn't think properly and before she knew it, the other girl had been bleeding out on the pavement of her own city.

As their combined weight collided with the hard ground, Yara got a slight whiplash, because of the sudden movement she had used to try and prevent the assassination from succeeding. Quickly getting up and scanning to find the man again, she spotted him almost immediately. Wrapping her calloused hand around the hilt of her dagger, she slowly drew it from it sheath. Drawing her arm back to aim at the man who was trying to get away, she zoned in on one of the man's weak spots that would incapacitate him, but not kill him. He needed to stay alive to receive the punishment that he deserved and that which he deserved was not a quick death.

She brought the dagger forward and released it. Seeing it sail through the air before embedding itself in the man's left thigh. It would give the Queen's soldiers enough time to seize the man and have him locked away. Having taken down the man she knew she needed to look back at Daenerys to see if she was alright. Mentally preparing herself for what she was going to see, she turned around. She had not been prepared. On the ground before her was the blonde, paler than usually and with a slight sheen of sweat on her face. Eyes closed in pain and breathing laboured, she looked as if she might not make it through the day.

Yara sank to her knees beside her, uncaring of the blood that immediately soaked her pant legs. As she looked over Daenerys' dwindling form, her eyes were almost directly drawn to the prone arrow sticking out of her left shoulder. Looking the blonde over she knew someone who was shot by an arrow didn't immediately look this bad, there was only one conclusion: poison. Of course the arrow was poisoned, she thought to herself, it was a fail-safe. Even if the shooter was unable to shoot her through the heart she could still die. But that wouldn't happen, not on Yara's watch.

"Daenerys!" Yara called out to the girl, shaking her slightly before holding Daenerys' face between her hands.

The blonde grumbled and excruciatingly slowly she peeled her eyes open to look at Yara.

"Stay with me, okay?" Yara said to the blonde, looking deeply into those blue orbs, trying to make the other understand that dying wasn't an option. Not right now, not ever.

Daenerys weakly nodded and tried to keep her eyes open. Yara feeling satisfied with the answer quickly moved her hands from the blonde's face to her left shoulder. Carefully putting pressure to the wound, but she knew she needed to leave the arrow in to avoid causing more damage to the muscles. However the longer the arrow was in, the more poison would spread through Dany's veins. Not knowing how to fix the dilemma she just kept putting pressure on the wound, putting her hands around the arrow, hoping that someone had already called for the help of a healer.

In that moment it felt as if it was just the two of them in the world. A sort of barrier was between them and reality. All Yara heard was Daenerys' whimpers and ragged breaths. Abruptly Yara was being pulled out of their small reality by the insistent pulling on her shoulder. Focus slowly came back to her, making her realize how much yelling and sounds of distress there were around her. It was utter chaos. Looking up over her right shoulder without moving her hands or making any move to get up, she spotted who dared pull on her shoulder. It was Theon.

"Yara!" he yelled, seeing he had gotten her attention, he continued more softly, "You need to get up, there is a healer here and the Queen needs to be moved somewhere more private with better supplies for her wound to be treated."

Yara nodded and made to pick up Daenerys' small frame. Her brother asked her what she was doing and whether she was okay, she ignored him and focused on her task at hand. Moving Daenerys without jostling the wound too much and causing even more damage. Putting her left arm under the blonde's legs and her right arm under her upper body, she gently cradled the blonde in her arms with the girl's wounded left side against her chest. Getting up slowly she finally looked up at the healer.

"Lead the way." the Ironborn said. It was a clear command and it finally made her sounded like the Queen she was.

The best healers of the city had worked to save their Queen, but it had been a race against the clock with the fast-working poison raging through her veins. At first the poison had been hard to identify, until they figured out which rare poison it was and in turn found out which antidote had to be used. It had been just in time. This is what they had told Yara, for she didn't see any of it herself. She had been forbidden from being in the healer's hut. It might have had something to do with the fact that she kept pacing and screaming at everybody to just bloody save her.

She was sitting outside the hut when her little brother sat down next to her and raised his hand with his palm up towards her. In it he offered her the hilt of a dagger, not any dagger: her dagger. The one she had thrown at the assassin. Wordlessly taking hold of the hilt and putting it in her lap, before looking up again and resuming to stare out at nothing.

"There was nothing more you could have done." Theon spoke softly, before continuing more vehemently, "Don't blame yourself for something someone else did. They are responsible for their own actions."

"I just feel like there was so much more I should have been able to do. I should have been more focused, I should have…" Yara said, but she trailed off at the end deciding that merely blaming herself in her head for all that she did wrong was enough.

"Warriors do not blame themselves for the things they cannot control. You did everything you could have possibly done."

The brunette looked over at the Ironborn male and her only true remaining family. "Thank you." she said, before letting out a chuckle and continuing with a bit more mirth, "When did you become this wise?"

Theon smiled at her in return and pulled her into a sideways hug, which she sank into. She let her head fall onto his shoulder, before slowly closing her eyes and inhaling his scent, which reminded her of home.

After a few hours of working on the Queen the healers had come outside and told the soldiers waiting there that her Grace was stable enough to be moved back to the Pyramid. So that is what had been done, Daenerys had been carried back by one of her soldiers – not Yara this time, for the rush of adrenaline had finally left her and she was too tired to do much more than stand on her own legs. So not wanting to risk hurting Daenerys, she let someone else carry her – as the rest of the soldiers flanked her on all sides and so the small contingent of men moved back towards the biggest structure in the city. Daenerys had been carried up to her chambers and put on her bed. Yara had offered to stay with the Queen to make sure she would keep breathing and call for help if something went wrong to make sure the Dragonborn lived. That offer was as much for Daenerys' health as it was for her own sanity.

So that is where she was now. Sitting next to the blonde who was lying on her bed, she waited and waited. Hours passed by and servants came and went to bring her food and then take the untouched plates back with them again. She wasn't hungry. She couldn't think of eating, not while Daenerys lay here so sickly pale. She would be way too afraid that while eating she would miss it if the girl stopped breathing. She knew it was nonsense, that she should just eat and take care of herself, but she couldn't put herself up to the task.

Taking out her dagger she started twirling it in her fingers. Her fingers that were still stained slightly red. She scrubbed as best she could, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Daenerys for as long as it would take to clean her hands more thoroughly. Shaking her head to clear her mind she just started to focus on the mindless task of twirling the dagger. Round and round, sliding it through one finger and then the next, but never cutting herself, in an expert weaving pattern that was a lot more dangerous than actual weaving.

So enraptured in the deft movements of her fingers and the blade of the dagger that shone slightly in the candlelight, she almost missed the movement in front of her. Stopping the movement of the dagger she slowly sheathed it again and focused more on the human form in front of her. Questioning if lack-of-sleep was getting to her and she was just seeing stuff now or if the blonde had really moved. She truly hoped for the latter. Waiting patiently until she saw it again, the slight twitch of Dany's right hand. Yara grabbed it and squeezed, hoping to wake the blonde from her slumber to make sure she was alright.

"Dany? Can you hear me?" Yara spoke with hope in her voice.

Focusing so intently on the other girl she saw the slight movement behind the silver-headed girl's eyelids. Knowing it wouldn't take much longer now she repeated her soft-spoken words and waited with bated breath. Slowly eyelids were opened in a small crack before being closed again, another few moments later those eyes opened again and she saw the familiar blue of the eyes that she loved so much.

"Dany?" the brunette asked again, trying to get the other's focus to be on her.

Almost languidly those eyes moved over to her face. Slowly they came into focus and a few moments later she could see recognition in those eyes.

"Yara?" Daenerys spoke with a slight croak to her voice from disuse and lack of fluids most likely, Yara thought. But that didn't matter at the moment, because the blonde was alright. Yara's heart flooded with relieve and she let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. It felt like a weight had fallen away from her shoulders, that had been there ever since the moment that arrow was loosed and had embedded itself into the other girl's shoulder.

"Yeah, it's me." Yara replied breathlessly with a slight smile on her face. Daenerys smiled back at her and squeezed Yara's hand with the right one Yara was apparently still holding. They would be alright, the older girl thought, or well…at least for the moment, but that was enough.

-o0o-

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Xoxo

Vera