agogelogs | [OPEN] Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin

"Melisandre, yes." She tilts her head up enough to return his confused look. "She came to Dragonstone the night I told Tyrion to send you a raven."

Of course, the priestess' disappearance so soon after her arrival was strange, but there were other things to worry about.

"She was the reason you'd been told to attend."

He pushes his eyelids together, still a little sleepy, and tries to process what she's said.

Where did Melisandre go in the time between when Jon exiled her and when she turned up on Dragonstone? She'd ridden off alone from Winterfell, and any voyage to Dragonstone would have needed a ship, even if she'd taken the Kingsroad most of the way. But she might as easily have sailed from White Harbor as anywhere further south. How soon had she known to go to Daenerys, and why?

"How long had you been at Dragonstone when she came to you? And what did she tell you?"

She watches him for a beat too long, her silence ringing in the small space.

What does it matter? The Lord of Light doesn't have many followers in Westeros; its lack of sway on the continent was unsurprising in some ways. Many of the Essosi seemed to be more tolerant to religious differences, whereas the Westerosi were settled in their ways with very few gods to follow amongst the kingdoms.

"She asked me to summon you. To listen to what had happened to you, the things you'd seen."

The things that have happened to him... those are all tied in with the dream he's just had, the dream Daenerys had walked into. And they were, indeed, why he'd gone to Dragonstone, but Melisandre couldn't have known about the information about the dragonglass that Sam had found at the Citadel.

Could she? She saw things, she said, but she was wrong about them... so unforgivably wrong, and what she'd done --

"I had just exiled her from the North. She -- killed someone. Stannis Baratheon's young daughter. A sweet girl, Ser Davos doted -- " He falls into slightly confused silence. The thought of Shireen's fate still causes a tight knot of anger in his belly.

It would have been reasonable for Melisandre to assume that he might go to Daenerys to ask for her help because of the dragons. If she knew anything about the history of his land and of his family, it would also have been reasonable for her to think he might need an extra push to go, particularly when he had so newly been made king.

She tilts her head, gaze sharpening with interest... until the one murdered is named a young girl. Then her eyes go shuttered as she looks away. The Usurper's brother deserved whatever fate awaited him for his participation in the decimation of her family. He came to kill her when she was nothing more than a baby girl.

But to murder his daughter? This doesn't align with her impression of the priestess. The Lord of Light's followers had aided her in Meereen. Melisandre spoke in favor for Jon. She'd followed Stannis--and admitted to mistakes she'd made.

"For what reason?"

He sees her eyes go shuttered. The knowledge that he'd see that much is what had initially kept him from saying more. The same tension is mirrored in him, and he speaks slowly and reluctantly when he answers her question.

"She said Shireen's parents agreed to sacrifice her to their god when they tried to take Winterfell. They all burned her at the stake."

Her eyes fall shut, whether to block the imagery from her mind, or to imagine it, she doesn't know. She wants both, neither.

"Murdering little girls. I wonder just how many times he'd done it in his life." Almost her. Already his daughter. Both innocents. He's a wretched man, and she has no regret that his corpse rots somewhere. Let the worms eat his decaying body, the scavengers rip him to shreds. He is no king.

...But to think that one would sacrifice a child for whatever the cause? It's sickening, much like the Masters and their crucifixion of so many children. Melisandre spoke of being a slave. She should know better. And yet she'd truly burned a girl at the stake...?

"You exiled her, and she still spoke highly of you. Why?"

He frowns. His expression is inward, and he lets out a heavy, closed-mouthed sigh, but he also strokes Daenerys's arm where he holds her in his.

"I can't say, but maybe...

"All she was interested in was fighting the dead. She knows what I've seen, and after Stannis died, she thought I was the man to lead the fight. Not hard to say that when I can't think of anyone else who's seen the Night King and could rally support in the North, and from there, it's not much of a leap to think that your dragons might be a great help in the war. I don't think she knew about the dragonglass, but maybe that's something she saw rightly."

He shakes his head slowly, still looking thoughtful.

"Do you know what the Night's Watch vows are? That dream puts me in mind of them. All the lads who take them will remember them as long as they remember anything, though some don't always hold to them."

Edited 2018-01-06 03:37 (UTC)

"Our people make mistakes, and instead of killing them for their betrayals, we banish them." Her laugh is dry and humorless. It's a silly thing, really, no point to make the comparison but she does regardless. How similar this is to ser Jorah's betrayal, and yet how different it is all at the same time. "Yet they always manage to find a way back. To help us."

Doubtful Jon views Melisandre's aid as helpful in any way, and she cannot blame him for such a stance. To murder a child in such a way is unforgivable.

"I don't know them all, and of those I do, it's details. Like taking a woman to bed."

"I don't want her help. And I may not be able to do without it," he admits. "And it may be the end of her if she gives it."

If Melisandre comes back, he'll have to kill her, and if he doesn't, Davos will. Exiling her had been mercy: as much as she unsettles him, as angry as her role in Shireen Baratheon's death had made him, he knows that in some way, he owes his life to her, and that had made him unwilling to pronounce a death sentence on her... at the time.

Since then, he's occasionally wondered if he's lied to himself about it. Was it a way to preserve her life for her potential usefulness in the struggle ahead while appeasing Davos at the same time? Or was it only that Jon himself hadn't had the heart to kill her after so much death in taking Winterfell? There was also the memory of the pale, hopeful face Melisandre had turned to him after he'd awoken to a new life on the long table in his quarters at the Wall, her wide, lovely eyes, the awe in them. There is some beauty to her, and there had been some temptation when she'd offered herself to him, but it rides alongside something he finds profoundly unnerving. His body would have been willing, but every part of his instinct had told him to resist her.

For now, he decides not to tell Daenerys exactly what kind of intimacy Melisandre had attempted to establish with him.

"I told you that the Watch had lost sight of its purpose. The vows are old, probably as old as the Wall itself. Taking a woman to bed... well..."

He shrugs expansively, indicating her position in his arms: he's not in the Watch anymore, but she can judge the extent to which he still upholds these vows for herself.

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."

Whoever holds the North is a fool if he doesn't think himself beholden to the spirit of them, if not the letter.

She cranes her neck to look up at him, ignoring (for once), the soothing drag of his fingers on her arm. The way he speaks of her hints to things she may not wish to learn the answer to, but it will be answers she reaches for, nonetheless.

"What has she done for you?"

Whatever it is, it must be important to proffer banishment versus death. That was a mercy, was it not? Melisandre did not appear to be in distress upon her visit. She was calm, much like the Lord of Light's other followers in Essos were. Regret swam in her eyes when she hinted to mistakes.

Despite herself, she feels pity for the woman. Perhaps she truly does make it a terrible habit of comparing her own experiences to those around her.

Her mind is quick to jump back to conversations past, and even her questions on Dragonstone with both Jon and Tyrion. The look Jon had given ser Davos...

He took a knife in the heart for his people. He gave his own--

He wishes for children with her... and he may very well have children in the future. He wishes to marry her. He's won himself glory, and he wears a crown as King in the North (perhaps not literally).

"You're no longer a Crow, you said."

But he still fights as the sword in the darkness, she thinks, if the undead are that darkness. And he attempts to shield the realms from that evil which had killed Viserion.

His pulse quickens, and he worries, as he feels it thumping, that she can feel it too.

"No, I'm not. Melisandre -- "

As he hesitates, he seeks Daenerys's hand with his own, places his palm against the back of it, and laces their fingers together.

"-- has some kind of faith in me that I didn't have in myself."

But he knows that Daenerys has seen the scars... so many times now, sometimes with a question in her eyes, but never actually asking about them. She seems to be trying to ask about them now.

They're never going to be easy for him to talk about. He's never going to be less reluctant.

"Are you asking about what happened to me that caused me to leave the Watch?" His voice is very soft, hardly above a whisper. But the room they're in now feels safe to him, even though there's no reason it should other than that they're together. "There was a mutiny."

Edited 2018-01-08 02:19 (UTC)

There are things to push for, and things to remain patient for. When it comes to Jon, she pushes when it suits her (oftentimes failing in achieving the result she sought, so early on) and otherwise leaves things alone. If he wishes to tell her of his past, he will make mention of it in some way. It still doesn't lessen her curiosity about ser Davos' words, or about the scars on Jon's chest.

"Do you have that faith now?" Her fingers shift against his, curling, settling.

Upon mention of leaving the Watch, she intentionally does not look at his chest. The wispiness to his voice, like smoke in the air, makes her think this was a poor line of questioning on her end. But what did he wish to tell her, when he began asking of those vows?

"...A mutiny against who?" She doesn't dare move.

Please don't say him.

He doesn't answer her first question yet, and when he speaks, he doesn't try to coat his words in honey. It's easiest for him to just say them, though they're hard to say and though he expects them to be hard to hear... easiest for both of them if he explains calmly, if he's honest and forthright.

But his hand threatens to tremble a little, something he's able to still; his jaw is tense, and his heart continues to race. What it felt like to die, and what it felt like when life surged into him again: both come rushing back as if they had only happened yesterday.

"Against me. For my decision to allow the Wildlings to pass through the Wall, so no more of them would be killed by the White Walkers."

Edited 2018-01-08 12:29 (UTC)

Me. He'd said men disliked him. His own brothers at the wall, courageous men and cowards within the ranks. And those who hated enough rebelled.

"He wasn't exaggerating." Not a question, but it is one all the same. Ser Davos had said he'd taken a knife in the heart, and she'd attempted to ask Jon about this as well before ser Jorah interrupted. The northerners and their fancies...

She feels numb, as if the Night King's touched her and the ice of the Wall's seeped back into her limbs. She doesn't quite realize that the color's drained from her cheeks as she sits up at meets his eyes, the blues of her own reminiscent of a stormy sky. Her grip is tight on his, even as her gaze dips to his chest... even as she reaches out with her free hand to drag the tips of her fingers against his skin. Not on the scar, just on the edge of it, before his skin lifts.

"Are--" She swallows, licks her lips, frowns down at each and every wound. "--are these all from that night?"

At first, he doesn't know who she's referring to, or what she means about exaggeration, and then he remembers. Davos had said too much at their first meeting, and she'd asked about it later, and he'd told her that Davos gets carried away. That's true when it comes to speaking for and defending the men he follows, but not true at all when it comes to what he'd said about what had happened to Jon.

He looks at her, almost apologetic, shifting his grip on her hand so that they're palm to palm. What isn't remorseful in his gaze is haunted and pitiless.

If he thinks about it too much, he can still feel an echo of the sensation of a knife twisting against ribs and cartilage into his heart, and the way everything slowed and went cold. And now there's her hand, warm and welcome, but she can't make the scars less livid or knit them away out of existence. They've been slow to heal, though better than the gaping wounds he'd awoken with, and the one she traces is the one that had been fatal.

"Yes."

Edited 2018-01-09 01:19 (UTC)

It doesn't matter the betrayal: each and every one leaves a gaping hole. His are manifested, bared to the world if those in it only cared to look. How could she possibly blame him for wearing his layers like a second skin at Dragonstone... even when they were all so relaxed around him, otherwise?

A sharp shake of the head punctuates how very uninterested she is in apologies. He's allowed his secrets. But these wounds... her fingers hover before she balls her hand into a fist. Knuckles soon turn white, four crescent indentations growing more and more pronounced in her palm as she clenches her hand, trembling.

How could they do this to him? His eyes are so very dark and distant, in some ways, despite his hand being so warm and solid in hers.

"How did you survive?"

He looks at her for a passage of time -- he isn't sure how long.

She still doesn't understand, he thinks, but he doesn't blame her. Who could understand this? Didn't it sound mad to him, and isn't it embarrassing, in its way, as if anyone who he tells will doubt him, as if they'll think he thinks he's more than a man? What would that say of him?

No one knows better than him that he's only a man.

"I didn't. Survive."

Part of him is distant and separate from all of this. He has to be able to stand aside from it, to look at how the story sounds to others, and in another way, to think of it as something that happened to someone else, to the boy he used to be. The rest of him still feels sorry for what he's telling her, for the way it will hurt her, even though it all happened long before he knew her.

Because people don't survive these sorts of things. Drogo hadn't, and his wound was nothing more than a scrape. Ser Barristan hadn't, and he was famed as a great knight and warrior... one who still succumbed to his injuries. There are no such thing as miracles, save her dragons, and even their flames can be snuffed.

Or so she's told.

Dany cants her head, outwardly frowning. The longer she stares, the blurrier the scars become until she sniffs, reaching up to shove wispy strands of silver from her forehead. There are none there; it's a useless motion which betrays the tremble to her hand.

"You're here now." Her voice is clipped as she skirts familiar behavior, falling into that neutral mask she wears before all others, all whilst her mind races. How can he have died and stand before her now? How is he not undead? How is he not like ash upon the wind? Drogo, Irri, Rakharo, Viserys, ser Barristan, Rhaegar, on and on the list continues, so many have fallen, and none have returned. Why him?

Her expression waivers as she meets his gaze. Thank gods it was him.

There's a temptation to reach out for her as she tries to reconcile what he's just told her, an urge to take her other hand, or to trace the line of her cheekbone with his thumb, or to brush away the same hair that she tries to brush away, the hair that isn't there. He sees her pulling away; he would do the same. Another reason he's never been eager to tell her, a reason he's been willing to take it for granted that she must understand.

The corners of his mouth pull in and slightly down, giving his face a contemplative set, and he answers, "Aye, I'm here now." And he sees the cool steel of her begin to melt away again. "I don't know how or why. I was dead for a night and part of a day and -- the Red God, she said he brought me back."

How little he understands this, how little sense it has always made to him, is apparent in his voice.

The Red God. Melisandre brought him back from death, gave him a second chance, and then pushed for the two of them to meet. Far be it from her to understand the thoughts of the devout; they believe in her in Essos. They aided in maintaining the peace in Meereen in her absence.

And this god brought Jon back.

"Do they hurt?" Do you hurt? Of course he must--how does one die and not... she shakes her head, exhaling.

After another moment's hesitation, she pulls him into a tight hug. She's not nearly as bulky as he, but that doesn't stop her from trying to wrap around him as if she could shield him from his own memories.

"You're here now," she says again, the meaning entirely different this second time.

"Not anymore, but they did at fir--"

The words are cut off by her pulling him into a fierce embrace.

"I'm here now," he replies, hugging her just as tightly, words coming now with more urgency. "I won't go again. For a while I wasn't sure I wanted to be," (here, he means, alive, something he hasn't really admitted to anyone before,) "but then I did, and then I met you."

Tension still rings through her frame, and it goes ignored as she presses her lips to his temple. They hurt, of course they hurt. How is one supposed to feel when they're brought back to life? Not the sort of question she'd ever imagined entertaining...

And then he goes on, speaking of how he was unsure of returning back to life. Back to their world where cruelties remain hidden at every turn, be it a look, a word, an action. Where betrayal and abuse of power walk hand in hand, and the dead haunt the living.

Souls as strange things, and she's unsure if she has one, or if it's merely a figment of her imagination, an idea proffered by the devout to cow those who don't know. But something inside her is raw, and it screeches for him, leaving jagged claw marks which feel as if they rip her lungs open, filling them with fire and ice all at once.

"You're not alone." Seems silly to say. What were the thoughts which crossed his mind as he... died? "You won't be. Not anymore, do you understand? So long as my heart beats."

And even after it ceases, she doesn't say, because that's a darker path she's not yet ready to entertain. It's one Tyrion wished to, when he broached the subject of her heir.

He turns his head and kisses her.

"I know. You won't be either. For a long time, I thought I would probably fall in the war to come... the dead are so many, and people who haven't seen them don't understand. And I would have given my life to end that threat... I still would. But Dany -- Daenerys, I don't want to. I want to stay with you."

Pulling back, he tries to catch her eye.

"I never wanted to tell you like this."

What he means is: it scared him. Every part of dying, and then every part of not being dead anymore when he knew that he had been moments earlier. He had been given what so many other dying men sought... and why? For what? Did the fiery Lord of Light only want him to fight the King who seems sculpted from ice and hoarfrost?

Hearing that something like it had happened to her would shake him to the core. He knows she's strong, but their love is so new, and he hasn't wanted to hurt her or frighten her... especially not so soon after Drogo's second death.

"And after all that, I couldn't stay in the Watch. Not after some of my men had murdered me, and not when it was keeping me from fighting the Night King any better than I already was."

She leans into his kiss. It's a sweet press of lips versus something seeking to ignite.

"I know," she echoes, voice impossibly soft. Her palm settles on his stomach, and she's careful not to brush his scars. To hear what he says is both difficult and freeing. He's made it sound as if he had no other purpose save to defend the realm, nothing to keep him tethered to life. What might've happened to him after, if they'd not met? "You won't have to give your life to end this."

It's not something within her power to promise, but she will fight tooth and nail to see it to culmination, anyway.

Dany meets his gaze, her own troubled and unhappy. It's not an unhappiness on her behalf, though--this is for him. She aches for him. Every piece of her wants to soothe the hurts he's faced away, even the current one when he admits to not wanting to tell her of his death.

Something hardens about her as she sits up to cup both his cheeks. He's her strength when she grows weak; she would be his when he's vulnerable.

"It's all right." Not the things that have happened to him, no, none of that was fine. With a sigh, she straddles his lap to be closer to him, carding her fingers through his hair. From root to ends, over and over she does this, aiming to soothe him. "Now I know. You don't have to carry this alone."

Drogo's far from her mind in this moment. It does frighten her in some ways to think that Jon fell, but it many others, he's a walking miracle, much like her dragons. The Red Priestess did this for them, despite the cruelties she caused to another family, and while burning a little girl was a terrible thing, she's still grateful to the woman and her god.

"Who could expect you to after what those men did? You did what you had to, because you fight for what you believe in. It's more than so many others can say."

[OPEN] Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin

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