Jon woke up every morning with a muffled scream and the feeling of blood on his hands. Around him was the sound of construction, reconstruction, as workers attempted to fix the damage done to the Red Keep, but in his cell he could not know if they were accomplishing anything.

He didn't see many people, servants, mostly, occasionally guards. It was odd, how all of them were so deferential to a prisoner, someone who apparently the people in control (including his own family) seemed to despise. But the common folk saw him as a hero, a "dragon slayer" who saved them from the Mad Queen Daenerys. He thought he was given better food, cleaner clothing, than a prisoner would normally receive, because of it.

Sometimes they spoke to him, as well, told him the gossip around King's Landing. He still remembered how one of the maid's voice had shaken with outrage as she spoke of how they would not give him the throne. How one of the guards had spat and insulted the nobility for overlooking the people's hero.

A part of him was not the least bit surprised when Tyrion came to tell him he was being banished to the Wall. They couldn't kill him, the outrage that would spark at this point would be too much for them to handle, surely. But they also couldn't leave him there-not while the people loved him. Not when they whispered "your grace" as they served him or spoke of "King Jon" when no nobility was near.

He thought he'd simply be banished, though, that he'd be set on a ship to Essos or dropped off at the abandoned docks of Hardholme. The mummer's show they made of him joining the Night's Watch-defunct, useless, a place now to only banish criminals and not the "home for bastards and broken men" that Tyrion claimed. There was no honor in guarding nothing at all for no reason.

Jon didn't regret what he did-he'd saved lives, he knew that. He might not be fully fluent in High Valyrian or Dothraki, or any of the other myriad of languages Daenerys' people had sometimes used, but he'd learned enough during his stay on Dragonstone to pick out what she told them. To know that she'd bring fire and death to anywhere that didn't immediately bend the knee to her.

But he regretted how he did it. He regretted admitting he had done it. Drogon had flown off with her body, he was gone before anyone else came into the throne room. He could have lied. He should have lied.

Whether he acted honorably or dishonorably, he was always punished.

He whispered to the servants, to the guards. Plans upon plans. They knew people, who knew people, who could help in their own ways.

Jon was gone before his escort came to get him, simply disappeared from the cell as though he'd never even been there. The tunnels under the Keep had largely collapsed, but there was enough of a way through, still. Out, into the countryside, into the Crownlands that still yearned for a just Targaryen on the throne.

He'd hide for now, but soon enough he'd come back for them. Dany hadn't been right, to kill the smallfolk, to kill those surrendering, but she had been right about other things-the nobility would only ever understand one thing, and Jon would soon be ready to bring the Fire and Blood.