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

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."

No one has ever, ever touched him like this. She puts her hands in his hair when he makes love to her, sometimes after, but though he's known kindness, no one has ever held him only for comfort. He's never thought he needed it, or that anyone could ever feel so close and warm and necessary.

He has an urge to kiss her, but withholds it. Instead, his forehead falls to her shoulder.

"It was a vow for life," he murmurs. "But my life ended... I didn't want it to hurt you, love.

"And now I know enough to be afraid. I almost died once, trying to retake Winterfell, and then again under the water north of the Wall. Both times, I found myself wanting to live."

Her eyes fall closed. One arm hooks around his neck to hold him close while the other hand continues dragging through his hair, gentle, as if she were handling her hatchlings. It's sad she never knew her mother. Would Rhaella Targaryen have sung to her daughter? Would Dany have had a song to hum to Jon, in turn?

"You're here with me now." It matters far more than his worry that the past would hurt her. "I'm angry for you. I hurt for you. I wish that I could--" With a sigh, her fingers trail down to the back of his neck, where she'll knead tense muscles. "--if those men still lived, I would hunt them down myself."

She doesn't know what to say in response to two near deaths since his revival. A chill threatens to work its way down her spine at the thought of it. Of losing him. Of him falling in battle. Anything could take him from her, even this next mission they're set to go on.

"Fear isn't terrible, so long as you keep it from paralyzing you. Fight with everything in you. It's all we can do when we've enemies at every turn. You know I'm with you, however much my dragons, Dothraki, and Unsullied may help."

"They don't still live. I listened to their last words and executed them myself."

He nestles his head against her, letting her rub the tight muscles in his neck. It makes him breathe more deeply, more slowly.

"And I know you're with me. I'm grateful for that." So much gratitude that it shakes him, and that it's hard to express. He has no way to repay her other than what he's already promised to her. But there's something about what she said a few minutes ago that her mention of the Dothraki brings to mind again.

"I'm sorry. About when you were first with the Dothraki, about the things that happened to you." He thinks of how he feels responsible to look after his sister -- his sisters, and his brother now, and how he had been unable to spare them anything. Daenerys's brother hadn't looked after her... he had sold her. If he had tried to spare her anything, there was a point where he had stopped. Her other brother might not have been any better if he had lived, and her father... her father never would have protected her.

He can protect her... or he can try. It may be that she doesn't really need it.

It doesn't matter if he had executed them. She still wishes to gain some form of retribution against these dead and faceless enemies... because Jon's enemies have, at some point, turned into hers. Jon has become hers--and what's hers is all the more reason to protect.

Eyes fall shut when he broaches the subject of her time with the Dothraki. There are so many things that are wrong. Things she's faced herself, others that her people have.

"I'm not." She'd have preferred none of it happened. It had, though. Her family died, she'd grown up moving from city to city, terror nipping at her heels. She'd faced betrayals, losses, so very many things that fanned the flames of her anger. "They became my people. It was the first time something was mine and not my brother's."

And Drogo... He was still her first love, no matter the circumstances upon which that love was birthed.

He exhales, thoughtful, and nods a tiny nod against her shoulder.

"I understand. It doesn't mean I don't wish I could spare you the suffering somehow."

Something that was hers and not her brother's. That rings true, albeit in a different way. How many of the things that Jon had wanted as a child had been marked for Robb -- or for Lord Stark's other trueborn sons? Yet at the same time, he had been lucky not to have been raised as a servant, lucky to be educated, lucky to have a family at all.

He can't change the past, and the past made them who they are, brought them to each other.

"All I can do is be at your side for as long as I can." That means helping her achieve her ambitions, not primarily because he loves her but because he believes she'd be far better on the Iron Throne than Cersei... but it also means trying to give her another child, and that's only because he loves her.

It's much the same as she wants for him. How odd. She's never had someone who openly wished to spare her from what she's faced.

"I don't know how our world could hurt so many of us." The tips of her fingers trace down his neck, the dip of his shoulder, then back up. "I feel as if every way I turn, there are so many stories. The Great Houses tearing each other down in Westeros, to little children shackled in Essos."

It's a wonder they're not all so broken beyond repair.

Her wolf, especially. They tried to break him countless times, and he remains whole in her arms.

"I don't want you anywhere else, my love." He's her husband in all but name. "You make it easier. You remind me that there's still good left."

As her fingers trace along his neck and shoulder, he turns his face and kisses her neck, softly and only once.

"I think the world must hurt everyone but the very lucky." Who would he call lucky anymore? Lady Stark, once, but she'd lost everything bit by bit until she was murdered at her brother's wedding, something that has never given Jon anything but dismay. The Tyrells, once a great house, now all gone like a snuffed candle. Cersei Lannister's children. If even they weren't lucky, who can be? Some fortunate farmer who manages to be left alone?

"How do I remind you of that? You remind me of what I'm fighting for."

"Some are hurt more than others. It's not right." Not that she can do much about right versus wrong. This sort of complaint is the type where there is no obvious resolution. She could not fix every problem in their world. But she could try to fix some of the larger ones.

It tickles, the brush of his beard against her skin. She tries not to fidget much, but her exhale gives her away.

"By the nature of who you are, what you've faced, who you protect." Fingers trace the shell of his ear, now. "Bravery, honesty..."

"It's not. I thought I'd failed after -- the mutiny. Ser Davos was there when I woke up... the chances that I'd be here without him are small. He told me to clean up as much of the shit as I can, and be ready to fail again. I can't give up."

That, as much as anything, probably explains to her why Davos is his most trusted advisor.

He catches the way she shifts away from his beard. But he's had it for so long, and even from his limited, infrequent glances in mirrors, he knows his face without it would look too young.

"I try to be honest. I try to be brave. But you don't try anything less." He almost laughs then. "We're quite a pair."

"He's a wise man. Smart of you to keep him by your side. I like him." Defensive of his king, even in the face of another monarch. A stupid thing at the time, but something no less respectable when Jon refrained from making such a correction himself.

It's a pleasant tickling, not one she really wants to escape. Likely, she'd be adamant about him keeping the beard were he ever to consider removing it.

"Quite the pair. Almost as if we were made for each other." A soft hum. She feels silly for making such a statement, as if the gods played a role in any of this. she doesn't think they do. Not really. "We're talking about you, though, and how you inspire me."

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

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