Chapter 1
When Daenerys turned and saw that the strong arms dragging her away from the beheaded wight did indeed belong to Jorah, she gleefully smiled up at him. Her heart leaped in gratitude. Of course it would be her knight, sensing her distress and running to her at her moment of need. He had such a way of eluding death, it sometimes seemed to her he was more unbelievable than her dragons. Her children sadly didn't have his knack to dance through the fingers of Death.
Moments before, she had been face to face with her doom and terrified out of her wits. Now, as she trudged in the nearer pile of corpses to find a suitable sword, she found her mind basking in wonder. In a weird way, it was the first time in a while she felt so at ease with herself. There she was, yielding a sword for the first time. Behold, wights! she exulted. She was actually pulling it off: they were holding their ground. She didn't have her babies nor her army. She was standing on her own two feet, a Queen of her own right, with only her knight by her side. He was her strength, and she was his. With him, she felt pride in herself once more. She felt invincible.
Yes, her heart screeched every time a sword scraped Jorah; the world seemed to hold its breath for the grain of time it took her to believe he and her were both still poised on their tightrope. This was how time worked now. An exhilarating drink of the night, then a shudder; and again the jubilation that they were still there, still together, still unstoppable. Her faith in them was infinite.
It all went tumbling down as Jorah staggered. His misstep hit her straight in the guts, as if she had swallowed fear fresh and sharp. She reached to him—her hand on his arm meant take all my strength. He remained standing, a step before her, and she pinned him there with her gaze, convinced that if she blinked he'd keel over. He squared his shoulders and raised his longsword and her fear abated a little; a thirst for safety rather than drowning in horror.
Her heady confidence was lost. She felt so tired, her arms ached. All she could see was that night stretched out before her. The wights kept coming. This would never end. Could a Queen and a Bear live longer than an endless night? The battle took on a foggy quality; the world narrowed to a foot around her. All she had ever known was the Long Night. She had been cursed on this field, battling a foe as permanent as the night which spawned it. When the wights fell as one, she didn't drop her guard: surely it was a ruse.
But they didn't raise. A small beacon of light trudged through her senses. Jon must have finally defeated the Night King, he must have! She inflated in pure hope; turned to Jorah as he was dropping to his knees then further on his back, and her hope turned stinging in her mouth. She fell too, gathered him in her arms. He was sputtering, gasping, his lungs in pursuit of his breath. There was blood everywhere, and she didn't know what to do, oh gods, he couldn't leave her, he couldn't, he…
"I'm hurt," he said, oh gods she knew, but why didn't he move? She felt as if she had turned to ice, her hair raising, her skin going numb, her blood freezing all the paths to her heart. She held him close in her arms and said no again and again, for she knew he would heed her words if he could. Hope leaked from her in tears, turned to sobs, sliced out of her in cries of disbelieving agony. She heard his voice in her mind, all intense as he professed "You know I would die for you" and her heart screeched as she forbade him to.
She could feel him slip from her power to that of the realm behind. As she beheld the void he would leave, she recognized for the first time what he was for her. Her love. She had found him and lost him and found him again, and he loved her the most. The memories reeled. Shadows danced round and round in the blackest of all nights. She could see it all now; the staggering disbelief that could have made her throw up her heart when his betrayal was revealed: it had been her heart rebelling that someone she loved could have done this to her. The wonder when he had given her a peach in a desert, it had been love. The elation she had felt when he came back to her, again and again and against all odds; this was love. The exhilaration as she witnessed him healed. All the softer beams of sunshine when he smiled shyly at her, all the intimacy she craved when she wanted him to cuddle her when she was lonely or sad or had lost track of her faith in herself. The fact that she trusted him above everyone else, that she trusted him enough to let him change her mind, the sweet infuriating way he had of disagreeing with her—stubborn Northerner! All of her memories of him were sewed in love and she hadn't even realized.
Oh she knew she had loved him, as her oldest friend and most trusted advisor. But she hadn't thought—she thought romantic love was the sexual infatuation she had felt with Jon Snow, and now she realized that she had it upside down. She wasn't sure that she wanted to have sex with Jorah but she had been wrong, oh she had been so wrong… her greatest love had always been by her side, and now he was dying.
But she wouldn't allow it. He had to come back to her side. She would bring him back. She sliced his armour up to better see his wounds and gasped as she saw his chest thrice pierced. Tears froze on her cheeks as she tried to stop the bleeding: it couldn't be too late. She had to save him as he had saved her. He couldn't die for her, he had to live and stay by her side as he promised he'd do.
She heard Drogon land behind her. Her child brought her to her senses. She was the Unburt and there was one element she could use to save him. Fire.
"Ser Jorah, you have a duty to your Queen. I forbid you to die. You are blood of my blood, blood of my own heart. I forbid you to give up."
She called Drogon over. She could see flashes of Jorah holding him up gingerly when Drogon had been a baby, how her child had once singed his beard and he had only laughed; a sound so rare she could hear its echo now. Now Drogon was so big his head was as large as Jorah. And yet he was breathing gently on her knight as he nuzzled the wounds and whined, a sound so desolate that Daenerys scolded him: "We will save him. We have to". Drogon breathed smoke through his nostrils, his eyes letting her know he understood how important Jorah was to her. After all, apart from her, he was the only human Drogon had known all his life.
"Perzo Vūjita," Daenerys whispered, holding Jorah's flesh together as Drogon put a brand-hot tongue on his chest, welding the damaged skin. She prayed to whatever Gods were listening that it would work, that Jorah was enough of the dragon to endure the flame and let it heal his wounds. Twice more Drogon did this. The sizzling flesh smelled horribly like charred meat, but it seemed to stop the bleeding. The burn was ugly but it had to hold until help could reach them. It just had to. She had Drogon set fire to a pile of wights to provide some heat for Jorah. The smell was repulsive but she had no other way to keep him warm. She couldn't see if he was still breathing; she couldn't hear a sound and was cold to the bone. She couldn't hear his heartbeat but her own was ringing so loud in her ears she wasn't sure she would have heard a Dothraki chant.
She held his hand between her own two, let go to stroke his cheek, let go to comb his hair, let go to feel his chest, let go to hold his hand tighter. She didn't know if he was kind of warm because of the raging fire nearby or because there was still a spark of life in him. She rocked on her heels, waiting for his eyes to open and for him to smile or frown—by all the Gods, he could do what he wanted if he only lived. She didn't know whether she could hope to hope, or if it was all much too late; and so her tears ran freely down her face, as she waited for any sign that he had not left her for good.
Why didn't she realize she loved him sooner? Why hadn't she known what her emotions were called? She had been so focused on the awe in his eyes, she had utterly failed to look into her own feelings. How could she have put all these men whom she didn't love before him? How blind she had been. How foolish. How trusting she had been that he was above the laws of men and that she alone may govern him.
Maybe if she had desired him from the start… but she had been so young. She had needed the thrill of the chase to awaken these feelings, and he was so steady and so fixed. She had been confused for a time, thinking she was starting to want him; and Daario had turned up. How powerful she had felt, seeing his heart break, revelling in the fact that she could test him so and he would remain true to her. She was ashamed of it now. And then Barristan had gone and exposed his betrayal; would that he had shut his mouth, would that Jorah had begged her forgiveness. But he had been sure in his loyalty to her, and too proud to beg; and then it was too late. From there she craved his presence so much she couldn't have distinguished it from desire. How cruel she had been to him; she could see them now for what they were, the trials she had crafted for him to show her the depths of his love.
Did she long for his kisses now? Even now she didn't know; she couldn't think of it as he lay bloody and cold, all of him spent in service to her, never asking anything in return. And yet, now that she recognized love, she remembered everything as with new eyes. Now she stood at the brink of disaster and face all that she had disregarded. She recalled the warmth in his blue eyes. Oh how he looked at her, her own light when all else was dark. She remembered the soft growling way he had of uttering Khaleesi, and even now it made her stomach clench.
Don't leave me, she thought earnestly. I love you too. You mustn't give up.
But he didn't wake up. His eyes stayed shut, even as her tears had cleaned rivulets of fair skin on his bloody face.
At last dawn was upon them; they found them. They tried to take him from her; but she clutched his hand harder so that they would not pry him away. She couldn't speak: if she stopped thinking about him for a moment, he would leave her. As they carried him on a stretcher, she held on to his hand and prayed that it would be enough for him to find his way back to her.
Pain. All his senses were ringing with it. He could not feel his own body. Pain exploded further than him. The entire universe was made of raging tearing twisting agony.
He fell backwards in a cloud of nothingness and kept falling. He closed his inner eyes and drifted off, slowly, peacefully, to sleep. Thereafter was peace at last. Rest. He breathed out a long silence and let go—and was jerked back into pain as something more powerful raged in him. Khaleesi!, it shouted, or maybe that was him? All the pain roared back to life. He saw screeching reds and tasted raw blood and shouted hurt and heard a ringing torment. He didn't think—he couldn't. But he knew that he had to embrace the pain, accept it, live with it. He had not been dismissed. He had not. He had not. A night curtain closed on him, and he dreamed of a shiny string, tied around him and tethered all the way across the sky.
Then he was no longer dreaming. He could feel his body; maybe if he focused hard enough he could lift his eyelids? There was something of his wit inside his head. He pried open his eyes and he saw her; Daenerys. He smiled because he couldn't speak, didn't remember how one spoke. His heart did the smiling; he didn't have the strength to move his lips.
She raised her head and gasped, her hand clutching his arm, her eyes lighting up. Jorah, she may have said. But he was already drifting to sleep again, and in dreams he couldn't be sure anything of her was real.