Jon and Daenerys lay breathless side by side on the bed in the her candlelit cabin, allowing the gently rocking boat to smooth their tumult into a satisfied glow. Their skin, still hot from their exertions, pricked pleasantly against the cold sea air. They each stared into the darkness above them, only the tips of their fingers intertwined.

Daenerys could not help but compare this King of the North to her past lovers. Her husband, of course, had been more gentle and understanding than she could have expected, and her younger self was enthralled by him, and learned much about her own strength from him. But she had not come to him freely, and though she had loved him, she knew their differences had fated their destruction. Daario Naharis had charmed her, and impressed her, and she had even cared for him. But the life he wanted for himself, and for her, was a simple one. He would never challenge her the way Jon did to see more for herself than even she could imagine. If she had not already suspected she was in love with Jon, now having experienced his tenderness and affection, in addition to,his respect, she knew it to be certain.

The first time they came together, it was an avalanche of limbs and lips. Their need overpowered them, and drove them to their completion in a haze of desire. Afterwards, they had clung to each other, shocked by the ferocity of their need to be close to one another, silently facing the knowledge that their feelings ran much deeper than simple attraction, and that their first consummation would not satisfy. They spent the next hours softly kissing, stroking, whispering, stoking the fire between them again more deliberately, learning to please each other. When they came together a second time, it was all indulgence and loving.

Now, satisfied and worn, and beginning to succumb to the lulling motions of the ship, reality began to sneak its way into Jon's thoughts of contentment. Part of him wondered if Daenerys would regret her choice in the light of day. With a fortnight of sailing ahead of them, unable to escape each other's company, and a high risk of exposure that would surely damage her, she might think it safest to detach.

"I ought to return to my own cabin," he said regretfully, and from the corner of his eye he caught Daenerys's silvery brow arch in disbelief.

"Do you want to go?," she replied, seeing through to Jon's warring vulnerability and protectiveness.

He turned to his side then to look straight into her eyes. "I think the minute I leave this room I'll wish we could have stayed here forever."

Daenerys's lips curved up into a smile in response, and she turned to face him as well. "Then stay. Just a while longer."

Jon reached out to her with one hand, barely brushing his fingers against her abdomen, as if to confirm she was real and this moment was not of his imagining. He traced the almost invisible wisps of platinum blonde that trailed in a line past her navel. He allowed himself to hope that he and Daenerys could spend the coming weeks together in this cocoon of happiness, protected as they were from interference from the outside world, before the inevitable pressures and responsibilities of war came crashing down around them. He had been in this position before, and though this love may not be as doomed from the start as his first, he knew better now than to take for granted any time they had together.

Amused and aroused, Daenerys placed her small hand on Jon's chest and mirrored his actions. Her hand came to one of Jon's deep scars, the wounds that no man could have survived. Reflexively, she covered its jagged edges with her palm, as if she could reach back through time to stop the bleeding. Her eyes welled with tears, imagining the pain Jon would have suffered in death.

Daenerys could not help but recall her own unsuccessful attempt to bring life back to the dead. Her husband did not truly live, despite the heavy price she had paid in her attempt to raise him from death. And yet, here was Jon before her, and though deeply scarred in body and soul, more himself and perhaps more capable of loving her than Khal Drogo had ever been.

Even though he had not shared the precise circumstances of his death, it was obvious to Daenerys why the gods had raised him. If only life would pay for death, then surely Jon had paid his due. Daenerys understood that her new lover would have run headlong into whatever circumstances had led to his demise, if it meant defending his cause and his people. For a moment, she felt the loving satisfaction that had filled her whoosh away to expose the emptiness she would feel if he was gone.

With not a little bitterness, she chided, "Must you always make yourself the sacrificial lamb, Jon Snow?" Her question showed her distress more than she cared it to.

"I am no hero, if that's what you mean," Jon replied with a huskiness that revealed his discomfort with the topic.

Daenerys gave him a sidelong look, recalling the number of times she had seen him put himself in danger for others just in the few months she had known him. Recognizing her worry, and not wanting to push her away, Jon went on to attempt a further explanation.

"I try to always do what I think is right, and it seems I can't help but speak out against injustice. But you've seen for yourself, that doesn't always mean I have made the wisest decisions. Some of the choices I have made have been foolish or rash in the name of honor. I don't regret having risked my own life for something I believe in, or to do a hard thing that no one else would, but what of the men who have followed me? Why should they not be alive instead of me?"

Daenerys pulled back slightly in realization, and matter-of-factly said, "You think you should be dead." Daenerys's thoughts turned to the battles they would shortly face, wondering if she should accept his death from the start, if this was his attitude.

Jon blinked back at her, and he could not find the words to deny her charge. Seeing the sadness and fear in her icy blue eyes, though, he saw a truth he had not seen before. He had something to live for, to look forward to.

"I don't want to die," he replied truthfully. "I don't ever want to leave you." With that he drew Daenerys to him and pressed an intense kiss against her mouth. Not letting go, he continued on, "I just don't understand. Why was I brought back? I'm not the only one who believes in the white walkers. Without my sister bringing in the Knights of the Vale, I would have failed to take back Winterfell. So what purpose could I have have, if not to save as many people as I can, to save someone more important than me?"

Daenerys noticed that he had placed her once again in the secure circle of his embrace. Her instinct told her to leap away and assert her strength, to tell him she didn't need protection, least of all from him. Instead, she ran soothing hands along his cheek, his chest, his flowing black hair.

"I've been listening to Ser Davos more closely than you have, Jon. Wasn't it you who made peace between the Wildlings and the northerners? That is something no one in a thousand years has been able to do. You did not have the military strength on your own to claim Winterfell or fight the White Walkers, but you rallied a warring people together to do so. You convinced two queens to stop fighting each other and join you."

Jon looked at her, unconvinced, and as uncomfortable as ever at facing what others would see as his accomplishments. "Yes, and I am still here, but now what? We will all fight now in the battle for our lives. If this isn't what I came back to do, then what is?"

Daenerys was surprised to find fear darkening Jon's eyes. So, her brooding Northman was scared to die, after all. He was simply persuaded that his time on this earth was fated to come to an end soon.

"My point, Jon Snow, is that while you have been convincing yourself that you came back to life just so you could die for someone else, you have been overlooking a more obvious possibility."

"And what is that?," Jon inquired, with quiet hope.

Daenerys brought to bear all her queenly confidence and her new found love in her reply. "Maybe humanity needs you, not just in the great war against the dead, but afterward, too, when the rest of us return to what you called our childish squabbles."

Jon gave a small smile at that, for of course he had already pledged his sword to her in her quest to rule the seven kingdoms. Daenerys continued.

"You think you came back so you could die; maybe you came back so you could live," and for the first time, Jon considered the real possibility that he might have a different role to play in that war.