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

[northerndragon]

WHO? Jon Snow (northerndragon) & maybe you!
WHAT? Open log including dream event prompts.
WHEN? December 2017! Backdated and forward dated are very welcome.
ANYTHING ELSE? Opening summary below cut, detailed prompts in the comments.

The surface of BASE may be unfamiliar, but it doesn't take long -- a few days at most -- for Jon to begin to realize that in its bones, it's a lot like Castle Black. Everything around them speaks of a military organization with stretched resources. The little machines are like builders and stewards and maesters, and he suspects they eat much less than sworn brothers do. And he can see evidence everywhere of attempts to keep everything in good working order and to reuse anything that can be reused.

As such, in spite of those surface differences, he begins to feel more at home.

Comments

[dorzalta]

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."

[northerndragon]

"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.

[dorzalta]

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.

[northerndragon]

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.

[dorzalta]

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."

[northerndragon]

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."

[dorzalta]

"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..."

[northerndragon]

"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."

[dorzalta]

"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."