53

Chapter 53: EPILOGUENotes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE

317 ac

PENTOS

She wakes up convulsed and foggy-minded, wanting to grab hold of something and finding only the back of the settee where she had been when she finally slipped into the recesses of her memory, down a path to the past. The memories of the present becomes one with the memories of the past. Jon's face desperately pleading...telling her not to go.

Dany doesn't remember what she did next.

Except when her memories settle and then it all comes crashing down. 

Drogon, Rhaegal, Viserion. My children.

Where are my children?

Her heart plummeted. The Daenerys who began the journey is drawn back by grief for her dead children. But they were not. No more. She saved them from their impending fate.

And Missandei.

And Torgo Nudho.

Tears fall freely down her face like a freshly unfrozen waterfall.

She stands up, dizzy and with tentative steps, gasping for air. She looks around and nothing has changed. Everything remains the same, the walls, the engravings, the paintings and the tapestries.

This is Pentos. This is where it all began. 

"Brandon?"

Dany turns to look for the boy...the young man who had led her, but he wasn't here — was he supposed to be here?

It all had to lead to this. She could not stay behind, with Jon, because duty came first. That's what she chose. She remembers it clearly now as if it had always been so. Dany returns to the present, she is sobbing loudly because she remembers. She remembers that she left. It wasn't out of revenge, she did it out of duty.

Dany staggers through the corridors of the manor with one hand on her chest, feeling her rapturous heart pounding incessantly against her ribcage. She eventually collides face first with the body of another person.

Daario Naharis.

Gods, it had been months...years...hours. 

"What's wrong?" Daario asks, frowning. His concern is not feigned. "Why are you crying?"

"Where is he, Daario?" Daenerys finds herself demanding. "Where is the Broken King?"

He blinks, confused. 

"You mean the King of the Seven Kingdoms?" 

Daenerys nods. 

"I was coming to tell you that he's here. He's waiting for you."

Fine, Dany thinks. We are back at the beginning.

"Of course he is," she says with a saddened edge.

He's probably here just to make sure that things are well placed and settled. To put an end to this venture. She thinks that when she sees Brandon again she will try and find out about Jon's whereabouts, but she knows that it's over now. And part of her, she rejoices because she knows that at least this is the right thing to do and how it was always meant to be.

***

She stands in the gardens outside the mansion where she sees him again. Bran is in his chair, his back to her inside a stone cloister looking out to the endless sea stretching out before him.

Someone else is with him.

A slender figure in a dress approaches Bran and kneels in front of him, placing a hand in his lap. Dany recalls Meera Reed. She says something to him and Bran nods, but neither pays any attention to her. 

When she left, Meera Reed was not here. 

Her heart leaps when the unmistakable song of dragons comes from the sky.

Daenerys looks up and sees not only Drogon flying overhead, Rhaegal and Viserion also reign the skies. 

Just when she thinks she couldn't be more overjoyed, another group of flying figures follow in her children's wake.

One.

Two.

Three.

Her children's children.

Bran and Meeran are now looking toward her, their faces changed, but not the same Bran she left behind. Daenerys wonders if she herself looks different.

The Broken King.

But he was no king in the world they restored. That seems to have taken the edge off his grief, and seeing him there in that company, Dany realizes that he hadn't told him everything the first time.

Dany takes one step over to him when she's stopped by a familiar voice. 

"Daenerys," this says.

Dany slowly turns around.

"Jon?"

***

Sunlight pours into his shrunk features; he's squinting his eyes but watches her still. Dressed in a simple, light blue tabard. He's someone she has never seen before. 

She steps around completely, unease within her. 

"What are you doing here?"

Jon also starts over to her.

"You've returned?" he asks through a shaking breath. "I was waiting for you, Dany," he says as though that could answer satisfactorily what she seeks to inquire. He notices that there's a reluctance in her, so he adds: "I told you I will always wait for you."

***

Oh Rhaegal, she thinks while running a hand through the length of the side of her neck, which she extends for Dany to take. She's of the same size that Drogon once was, many a time ago. Daenerys imagines that it is the effect of this trance she is still wearing off but she's feeling through the three of them at once. Her children. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion. They're alive and well as she left them twelve years algo. 

"How do you feel?" 

His voice continues to stirring a series of reactions in her: fear, excitement, unease, joy. 

Daenerys looks over her shoulder at him. 

"Like I'm falling out of the sky," she simply puts it. It's the sensation that she's light in the air and yet so heavy to crash.

Jon nods as if having received what he wanted. An admission. 

"I understand you," he says. His eyes curbed to the entrance of the courtyard, where a solitary yet attentive Daario is watching back. "There it is the Daario Naharis," Jon observes. "A good warrior and excellent companion, I've been told."

"He's enforced my rule as much as he could," Dany tells him, breathing slowly through a bitter aftertaste, "Before — in the other life. He had to make sacrifices to uphold that legacy. And he stayed by my side even when I pushed him away repeatedly." Daenerys swivels around. "We've never...Not before, not in another life, not now. He is solely a friend."

Jon stares back. It's acute harsh to read through him. It makes Daenerys uncomfortable in her own skin somehow.

"What do you know about everyone else?" she prods him. "Am I missing something? I used to avoid hearing anything that comes from Westeros. In this life, too."

As she reveals that for him she does for herself as well.

"Missandei and Grey Worm are still together, sailing the seas, liberating other peoples and putting an end to slavers." Memories start to land like leaves falling. Her eyes swell with years. "Ser Jorah..."

"He lived a full life," Jon cut her off before she can continue and hurt herself with a loss already mourned.

He'd died a time ago of natural causes and it's been the only time that Dany has felt the urgency to break through her own will and fly back. 

She closes her eyes and sniffles a sob. There are things that perhaps changed but not the way she feels when the crushing loss of somebody comes again.

"Although, I have always sustained that he had been just as content dying defending you, Dany. He left behind a wife and child. Lyanna Mormont looks after them, and so do I. I'm sure you'll want to meet him. His name is Daeron, in your honor."

She knows this and yet it's struck unware. 

"I will," Daeron Mormont, she thinks. She will want that.

After a pregnant pause, she clears her throat, looking down at her feet.

"You did accept it."

"You spared me little choice, Dany. Just like with Jorah, I only wanted the best for you."

She looks for hints of reproach in his reply but it is merely an observation. Dany notices that there is a certain roughness in his features that indicates the passage of time and as such the acceptance of the things that could not be. She doesn't know if that makes her happy or sad. Any petty desire is quickly replaced with a genuine interest in his affairs. 

"Can I meet them...your family?" she asks softly. It is a contradictory feeling that overwhelms her but she tries to keep her composure above all.

Jon rounds Rhaegal so that the dragons stands between them.

"You've known them," he responds. 

"I mean, the new members..."

Jon nods. "Aye. They are ten and and eight. Robb and Eddard."

"Like your brother and your father?"

They are not names for Targaryens children but they are names for Jon's children.

"I think so. You will have to ask their mothers. And their fathers..."

Her belly churns and Dany looks up at him.

Jon returns a dead serious look

"Those are my nephews. Arya and Gendry's child. Sansa's child."

In the silence ensued, emotions brim out too rough and sickly for her to properly process them, and a solitary tear leaves from the corner of her eye.

Rhaegal lifts up his neck and there's nothing between them.

So Jon walks until he's towering over her, "Did you really believe I was going to simply move on?"

Dany starts back. She shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks as she looks down.

"I...became the King that the Realm needed."

"But your family, Jon..."

He puffs a breath.

"Please, just let me speak," he requests her, softly, "I did resent you; the Gods know I did. I thought that you must have felt the same, and I asked myself how did you find it in yourself in the aftermath to even care about it all. I was not a good man, I was not a good brother nor a good anything. Just a King." 

With every word she shakes her head. No. No. No. She wants to tell him that he is not all those things, but one indication from him is enough for her not to speak and listen.

"Someone one day told me that I had proved to be the kind of man who could not stand by your side. And then I understood. I understood that in spite of everything, and because I had to honor your wish and your sacrifice, I had to stand up and face the life I was still living."

"I'm sorry for causing you pain but I truly believe that it was the right way," says Dany.

"The right way to...?"

"To make things right. My dream—"

"For whom exactly?" He cuts her off. At her silence he lets out a soft breath and looks around them. "I didn't understand what that meant until I got to see it. What you've done here that is. What you meant to them. I used to...cursed over things and throw blame on everyone but...I do see it now. The importance that it carries. And I stopped blaming you for that."

Dany closes her eyes and let the tears flow. She simply don't know what to make of this now. 

He reaches out a hand that softly strokes her cheek.

"Do you still have your village?" he asks her, and she's taken aback a bit.

"Yes."

"Have you found peace there?"

She makes a pause to recollect an answer in her jamble mess of a mind. 

Jon blinks. An expectant look on his face. 

"Well enough," she says, "Just not enough to make a home."

He carefully asks her, "If you're so damn certain of your dreams' infallibility — why not make it room for yourself in there?"

She does not know what to say. This man in front of her is a stranger, and yet the most important person in her life. The only person she has ever loved to the bone. 

She loved him so much that she preferred him to live happily and far away from her if that was the right thing to do.

"If it's not even true. If all our hopes are in vain," she tries to say but Jon interrupts her.

"You can have your dreams, but I prefer the truth of things. The here and now and not something that's only good if you're not with me," he declared. Both his hands cradle her face, forcing her to look into his eyes. "How much sacrifice, from you and from me, to afford you peace? You may have dreamed what's best for me but do you know how many times I have dreamed of you?"

His weary eyes stare at her.

In them she sees her own reflection and realizes that unlike Bran, her face has not changed at all.

Dany traces the line of his jaw and then the scar on his eye. 

Love comes in the eyes, she's been told, and this one thing hasn't changed a bit in the man standing before her.

She smiles through her tears and Jon lowers his forehead onto hers.

***

322 ac

DRAGONSTONE

Sometimes such a feeling of harmony comes over her that she can only throw her head back, close her eyes, and let the sunlight soak her skin. Some would call this resignation but for Daenerys it was more like peace.

It was no like the warm weather of her village in the Lamb Lands but the sun in that often cool weather, was a welcome blessing.

Especially when she was this close to the shore, listening to the crashing waves kiss the coast.

Indeed, this was paradise. 

Maybe I am dead and I haven't realized yet.

She said this to Drogo once, in the House of the Undying when they meet again and second time they reunited but that time she was certain of her own mortality. 

Dany asks herself more oft than not if it could be that, this is just a dream. 

Amidst the song of the waters, she also hears children's laughter and a deep voice that is engraved in her soul. Jon and the girls at a distance from her, he with his breeches rolled up to his knees, feet sinking in the cold dark waters, introducing them to the fishing arts. 

She shadows her eyes to observe them. She had once a dream that was exactly like this. 

Maybe I am dead and I haven't realized yet.

A whimpering gurgle draws her attention and Dany looks down at the basket where her baby scrunches up his face in annoyance. His cry is a bawling cry. Sometimes it is hunger, sometimes he just wants to be held. At first, Dany didn't understand and cried in frustration too, until time and patience taught her to recognize her children's needs. 

Her children. Three children born from her womb. Two girls and one boy.

The first one had arrived almost a year after their reunion in Pentos, in the first winter blizzard of that year, slipping away from Dany without much a fuss, emitting no sound, with her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling as if curious.

Jon said she knew better than they did that it was only a matter of time.

The second one...they have contended so much about even the possibility of a second child. Her labors just as hard, painful and excruciating as it could be for a woman in her prime, the healers warned that were bound to grow difficult the older she was.

But Dany had the strength. She was a warrior after all.

Their second girl came kicking and screaming, claiming for a place in the world as it belonged to her already. 

And then came their boy...they were not expecting the boy.

She was beyond the age of hoping for another babe and yet he came one tranquil night, a fortnight ago, healthy and falling asleep in his father's arms just as easily as all their children have fallen previously. 

Months nursing within her body and yet the brats seemed only contented when in their father's arms. Dany couldn't blame them for she's fallen victim of the same weakness. 

Maybe I am dead and I haven't realized yet.

"Shhhh" Dany soothes the babe, cooing to him, meeting his eyes as she sings him a lullaby. "We all have dreams, we all must dream..."

Jon from a distance looks at her with a warm smile.

Indeed, we all must dream.

FIN.

Notes:

Thank you so much for following the story!

Originally, Jon was still going to the wall when Dany left. And it was his family who brought him back to King's Landing to serve as King and finally accept his place. I thought it was better to go this way.

I chose to allow the reader to fill in the gaps regarding the fate of the other characters. And on those same terms, Dany and Jon's three children are yours to choose names, characteristics and personalities although you can get a faint idea.