Chapter Text
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
Prologue
The explosion in his dream made him shot his gaze up, ruins were falling all around him, overturning and crashing into the paved road, people were screaming as two enormous shadows passed forth above his head setting against a pale sky. Red and black met bronze and green into the sky, green flames exploded at his left, mixing with red sparks. People were screaming, crying and running all around.
A wolf, a ghost of a wolf, howled in the distance as snow started to set onto green and mud brown fields, white tree trunks and dark trees...
...red leaves and blood red eyes.
When the snows fall and the white wind blows, the lone wolf dies... a man with a hoarse, but warm voice said, his voice carrying as if brought forth by the cold winds. Yet he did not feel cold, he felt refreshed and freer than he ever had.
... but the pack survives. Completed a woman's voice, sweet and ringing almost like the bells in Daenerys short hair, but hiding a spine of steel underneath it. Red leaves, shining almost copper and white dusty gray tree trunk, a weeping face crying blood-red amber.
Suddenly he was standing under a duvet of leaves above his head, so thick he could not see the sky but for a small snippet - the red tailed comet slowly fading, it heralds my children's return - there were leaves crunching under his feets and the noise of a wet-stone upon a blade. He followed that noise and found himself in a clearing with a small pond of dark waters, a young man was sat near the pond, an immense sword balanced against his hip in between his legs as he dragged the wet-stone over it.
The boy had short copper hair and blue eyes, yet he wore a doublet of gray and green with two snarling direwolves facing eachother and up and he had a three eyed raven on his shoulder, he looked up and his eyes were as blue as the depths of the Narrow Sea.
He smiled and his smile was almost wolfish, a wolf howled - or were they a thousand? - in the woods and he made to follow the howling in the thick of the woods.
He took a step, giving his back to the boy when he finally talked, his voice clear and ringing in his ears as if coming rather from his mind than from the other's mouth "Do not go in the forest, if you can't face the wolf."
He turned to demand an explanation of the boy but he was gone as if he had never been there, his sword though laid where he was had sat. He bent down and wrapped his hand around its hilt, the hilt was not made of gold or alabaster or bone, no, it was of wood - it looked like the wood of the tree with the weeping face - and it was carved as to style a snarling direwolf with its eyes closed, he brought the handle closer to his face and followed the curves and dips of the carved wolf, the rips in the wood a dark red - the same color of the leaves and the amber coming from the tree's eyes - he grasped the handle better starting to feel as if the sword was an extentions of his arm and tried to swing it gathering the weigh and balance of it. The steel of the blade was strangely ondulated and dark.
It was perfect.
A gust of wind moved the leaves aside and caressed his face, warm and welcoming. The boy was there again. He was tall, almost taller than him, and he stood with his hands behind his back and a lock or copper red hair falling before his blue eyes.
"You know our words" the boy's voice sounded like thousands of voices talking together but instead of creeping him out it made him want to come closer. The boy smiled. "You know our words" he repeated.
The boy looked at the weeping tree and he did too, he had a shield looking like that, only the tree painted on it was laughing instead of weeping. It had been his mother's, the only thing he had of her.
He knew next to nothing of his mother's family and House. Of her homeland, the North. No one had wanted him to learn of them, of his mother's family.
They didn't want you. But again, who would want a bastard?
But he did know her House words. House Stark's words. He had felt wilfull and disobendient but as soon as he learned to read he had searched desperatly for news on the family he still had in the North, why they didn't want him?
"You know our words" the one-thousand and one voice reminded him and he looked at the young boy and he again had that three eyed raven upon his shoulder - what a strange animal - the wolf howled in the distance again.
He is calling me, he thought.
"You know our words" He blinked and almost stumbled back in surprise because the boy was next to him, just a breath away from him, so close he could count the small, pale freckles on his nose.
He took a deep, steady breath. He had never said them out loud. "Winter is coming"
The rustling of the leaves stopped immediately and the sword in his hand vibrated, he looked down to it and suddenly the wood-carved wolf snapped his eyes open, they were blood red and he feel oddly freed. He repeated the words and a dark flame engulfed the blade.
"Aye," the boy said "winter is coming." His voice resounded again as if a thousand voices and more "and in winter we must protect each other, look after one another."
A young man's voice, diffrent than the one of the boy carried through the leaves.
I once asked my father, can a man be brave if he is afraid?, he felt the voice resounding against his very bones, he replied "that's the only time a man can be brave"
He looked down when he felt as if he had kicked some methal. There, on the ground laid a broken crown, it was of hammered bronze with nine - two were missing - steel spikes styled as long swords.
There was laughter and he suddenly was far away from the crown, there was a small short, female shadow moving in the back, between the trees, she had a long, thin sword she was training with. She was water dancing, he had seen it. In Braavos.
Then there was a girl, wrapped in silver and gray with green leaves in her copper red hair, long, straight and reaching to her talons, her feet bare, as she crunched in the snow and took the broken crown. He could see her shoulders shaking from the sobs and wanted nothing more than to go to her and offer comfort and to get vengeance on whomever dared to hurt her. He saw her taking the broken crown in her hands and getting it back together, painfully so - there were bristles in her hands making them seep blood on the white now - he couldn't see her face but he wanted to protect her.
Family, Duty, Honor - a child said - family comes first.
Drogon's fauces were near him, ready to spit fire, when Rhaegal slashed at his brother to attract his attention away. Someone was riding him, he was clad in dark colors and he threw a spear at Drogon.
Was it Jon? He was good with a spear, though not as good as with a sword. The sword in his hand hummed again as if evoked. Could it even be him?
Only Targaryens can ride dragons, Jon. My children won't settle for anything else unless I say so.
Suddenly the water dancer was gone, and a man made of ice, with long white hair, blue skin and buzzing noise following him appeared next to the girl, he raised his ice-spear up in the air, ready to strike down the girl still working on the crown with her bleeding hands. He tried to shout to warn her, to make her run, but she didn't ear him. The sword vibrated in his hand, but it was too late.
Fire and blood, nephew - Daenerys' voice told him, dark and looming - that's what I was born to give our enemies. And you by my side. I was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms and I will.
He woke up in cold sweats.
Jon I
He left belowdeck finally coming up on the deck after the terrible night he had had. It was mothns that he kept having these spiraling dreams. Sometimes there was a maiden slaying a giant in a castle made of snow, sometimes it was a girl with poison dripping from her hair, but this night past it had been the strangest the dreams had ever gotten. Stranger even than the one in which he wore a black armor and brandished a flaming sword.
"Look who finally rose from the dead!" lord Tyrion, the Imp, chirped jovially, his mismatched eyes shining in mirth, his golden hair shining in the sun, the wind and salt from the weeks spent at sea making it curl on the top of his deformed face. The scar on his missing nose making him all the more creepy.
Jon stiffened feeling the bite of the raw steel against his chest again and the cold of the methal embed in his skin, he remembered the foul stentch of a boar and the taste of a good prey under his jaws and the refreshing coldness of the snow - he had never seen snow in his life - under his hands and feets... but he was not cold. Then there had been a burning sensation working its way from the pit of his stomach, to his throat, to his unbeating heart. He had believed to be about to combust, but he had just woken up covered in ashes and gruesome salt of the sea settling against his skin, Meereen Great Pyramid and the missing Harpy right before his eyes in the distance. He was fuming. The city too was fuming.
Kinvara had smiled at him, her small creepy smile that had made him understand that if he could feel the rush of panic his heart was beating again. Death by fire, she had told him, is the purest of deaths. Our Queen purified the city of infidels. Jon would never forget how nauseated he had felt at that.
"Oh, someone is in a brooding mood" the Imp commented to Missandei of Naath and Rakharo both on deck next to him. The shining Hand of the Queen pin against the Imp's breast. He didn't know what his aunt had been thinking when she named him Hand, one thing was ser Barristan and there was not a day that passed by that Jon did not miss the old knight - he had been the one to pick him up from the ashes on the beach near Meereen, wrapped him in his white cloak and helped him limp back into the pyramid - who had died during the pestilence and siege while his aunt was in Vaes Dothrak as he fought to keep Meereen in her hands and fighting against the mecenaries.
Jon had been the one to find his corpse. And he had been the one to mourn him the hardest.
Rakharo gave him a nod "Athdrivar sajaki" he greeted him, the nod made the four bells in his hair ring, the long braid almost reaching his waist now.
Death riding. That was his name among the dothraki after he had been woken from death.
When Jon had met him they were roughly build the same, but with time Rakharo had grown taller and more muscular, with his great arakh he was a worthy opponent, but before the man had died Jon had been trained by the Sword of the Morning himself so he was one of the best swordsman in Essos - he had won his aunt many a victory in single combat avoiding any useless bloodshed - so when they sparred they were evenly matched but Jon usually came up on top.
"Commander Jon" Missandei greeted him with a small smile, her curly hair being caressed by the slowly getting colder winds "Queen Daenerys requests your presence in her cabin" she said.
Jon sighed "Did she say if it was urgent?" he wondered. He didn't want to talk with his aunt, he was not in the mood and she always was in the mood of being hailed, complimented and Jon had already scarce patience with it.
"I'm afraid so, commander" Missandei offered with a small smile.
Jon pinched his nose but nodded "I will go there presently" the interpreter nodded and run to tell so to her queen.
Jon sometimes thought that Daenerys relantionship with Missandei was her only redeeming quality, she truly cared for the girl even if he often suspected that care would be long forgotten the moment Missandei actually asked to be given the means to return home to Naath.
Still, Missandei was loyal to fault and he doubted he'd ever have to see if his suspicions were right or not.
He watched the sea. They had departed from Meereen leaving the city worse than they had found it - but at least the slaves are freed, the Imp had commented on it once. - weeks ago, they had been at sea - thousands of ships Daenerys had seized from the defeated slavers - since then.
Daenerys was less moody when at sea, because she maintained she felt free and unheaved by the burdens of ruleship. Jon instead couldn't wait to touch land again.
His homeland.
He was born in Dorne, at the Tower of Joy and from there ser Arthur Dayne had taken him into hiding in Essos. They had laid low for much of his childhood, with his dark colors Jon could easily pass off for Arthur's son and for a while they had been happy.
Yet, when Jon thought of his homeland all his mind could picture since he was a boy were great expanses of steppe, white slim tree trunks, red leaves and dark ponds. Snow.
When he thought about homeland he thought about his mother. He thought about the North.
He closed his eyes and inhaled, a sudden warmth surprised him and he snapped his gray eyes open.
Rhaegal was flying next the ship that, in fact, was going a bit sideways due to the air moved by the wings of the dragon and the consequential waves on the sea surface.
He had not been there when the dragons had been born, he and Arthur were following the khaleesar to Vaes Dothrak and back hoping to get a glimpse of Daenerys after the news of her marriage to khal Drogo had reached them and they had found her only after the dragons had been born, after she had left Qart. They had camped, just the two of them, for weeks in the Red Waste near Qart convinced she would have to leave the city sooner or later and she had.
The dragons were still as big as big cats but they had just started to spit fire by that time. Jon, Arthur and Daenerys had sat together and Arthur had told her their story, Daenerys had been skeptical at first, but when Rhaegal had padded on the table between them to him nuzzingling his small head against his hand until he was pet she had finally accpted the truth.
She had been so young, younger than him really, but she already styled herself as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Jorah Mormont at her side didn't help her case - the man spoke as if she hung the moon in the sky - and Jon had accepted that.
He knew full well that his parents weren't married though they had eloped together, so he was a bastard. A royal bastard he might be, but a bastard still. So he had accepted her authority as Head of House Targaryen and had bowed to her and her claim to the Iron throne. She was his family after all.
Family, Duty, Honor. Family comes first.
They didn't want you, but again who would want a bastard?, after Arthur had died to protect him in the taking of Astapor Jon had felt alone in the world and Daenerys for a time had been affectionate to him, almost too much. When Jon had refused her avances Daenerys had become cold, colder than ice, and she had started lashing out more, especially after her troops nicknamed him the Black Prince. She always strived to put him back in his place, but Jon knew his place all to well.
Jon smiled sourfully and outstretched a hand caressing Rhaegal's hotter than the sun snout. He then nudged the dragon with the hand "Sovas" he told him and the dragon cocked his head to the side but then obeyed.
Jon knew his aunt knew nothing of the fact that Jon had managed to learn a couple of commands and drill them into Rhaegal - she would throw a fit if she ever learnt of it - and that was the way it was supposed to stay. He meant nothing by being close to Rhaegal and the dragon sough him out more often than not.
He steeled himself and turned facing the sombering gazes of the Imp and a couple of sailors. Thankfully Rakharo was nowhere to be seen which meant he probably had not seen his small stunt with Rhaegal and therefor could not report it to his aunt, least she threw an anger fit.
He straightened his shoulders and went below deck walking at a slow pace to his aunt's cabin, recognizable thanks to the three headed dragon ingraved in the wood of the door. Jon's own emblem was the Laughing Tree, and she didn't mind since it distanced him even more from being a prince of House Targaryen.
Jon wasn't a Targaryen and he wasn't a Stark. So what was he?
He knocked.
"Enter" his aunt called from inside, her voice had that edge which meant something displeased her.
He entered the cabin. She was sat at a long table on a big engraved wood chair with the headbord styled as a dragon's head. Jon found all of that dragon imaginery a bit too much for him, but then again, Daenerys wore her family name proudly and well. She was Fire and Blood.
"Your Grace" he offered making show of a small bow.
"Nephew" she hissed as if a cat stirred from its sleep at the worst time "You took your time to obey my summon"
"My apologies, aunt" he offered bowing his head as if contrite as he stepped closer, she waved a hand urging him to sit.
"I want to talk about Aegon Targaryen" she said, immediately down to the business, her short silverly bangs adorned with amethysts that complimented her eyes and rubies to go with her red and black Targaryen attire.
"I thought you say he was in imposter - he murmured defeated - that he was stealing the Iron throne" he quoted.
Daenerys blinked "He is"
"Then why bringing him up? - Jon asked - if you know him a pretender and his claim to be foul, we know how it is going to end don't we?"
Fire and Blood, he thought, that's how. You'll not give him a choice, you'll show him Fire and Blood.
"Yes - she said - I will take what is mine. I was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms and I will."
"So what's there to talk about?" he asked starting to get annoyed by her.
Quite frankly he himself didn't quite buy the story of the infant Aegon being smuggled out of Kings Landing as a babe and raised in Essos by Jon Connigton. He had to believe it untrue, because if it was Arthur - who had passed most of his life after the Rebellion repenteant because he hadn't been able to protect and save princess Elia and her children, stuck instead with him, the bastard son - would have died knowing nothing of the prince as he often referred to his brother being alive and most surely in need of protection.
It would mean he had a brother out there who knew nothing of him. Someone else who shared his blood.
But then, who would want a bastard?
He shook his head "I want to be sure - Daenerys offered, her tone shifting, not in the dominating manner she was displaying a moment ago, her tone more silken almost convincing - if he was truly who he claims he'd be your brother."
Her tone implied she felt sorry for him, that she was understanding, but could really a woman who had not shed a tear over her own brother's murder before her very eyes ever understand? She was often like this, trying to be charming and getting the people to feel as if she was understanding when really she was manipulating them in believing her perfect.
She had done it to Jon too, but Arthur had been wary of her and even before dying he had warned him to stay out of her clutches and after having see her proud smile after having crucified all those people without even doing an investigation, having that wineseller daughter tortured before her father's eyes... Jon felt as if a curtain had fallen from his eyes shedding light to the truth.
Still. Daenerys was family, the only family who had wanted him.
You are no prince, Jon. Don't you ever forget that. Not even your family wanted you, but then again who would want a bastard?
Who would want a bastard?
"I would believe you would treat him as family if his claim was to be true" Jon commented, Daenerys had rested her hand above his in a gesture that should have meant comfort but was instead to assert dominance over him; after his reply she drew back as if burned by his touch, her purple eyes aflame.
"Of course" she murmured, not wanting to appear as ruthless as she was deep down "But clearly that will not be the case - she said - you should know though that this imposter will try his best to work on our weakness to make us look ruthless."
As if your actions do no speak for themselves.
"He will feign interest in you - she continued as if she was speaking to a small child - even fondness" she added "he'll do his best to make you believe he considers you his brother in truth"
Jon swallowed feeling where this was going, her purple eyes shone again and with the light coming from the small window of the cabin, its blinders left open now, she looked almost angelic, like a princess from a song.
How could someone so charismating and riveting be also so ruthless and domineering? How could she be so cruel?, he wondered as he braced himself for what was to come. Her hand was on his again, small and dainty, the cold methal of her rings against his skin as if a way to ground himself and not forget himself.
"And - Jon asked, unable to help it - would it be so bad? Could my brother really not love me?"
Her face turned almost sweet, gentle but still condescending "Oh Jon, you are wonder that's for sure. You believe everyone will act like you and I do - she said - but the world sadly is made of terrible people, it's why I fight - she added - to rid the world of tyrants and oppressors. The world is filled with people that will use your emotional weakness to weaken us all. Do you understand me?" she asked.
Jon looked at her hand above his and forced himself not to clench his fist under her hand least she noticed his anger toward her. If he managed to conceal it in his gaze - which by her satisfied gaze he hadn't - he nodded stiffly.
Her smile was so sweet it was almost rancid.
"Afterall Jon, if he was your real brother he would not want you. You would represent everything your father did to him, his mother and sister. Not everyone is as magnanimous as I am - she added looking far off to the side and to the waves barely visible from the window - to forgive what you represent"
Jon said nothing, she did not look at him again before dismissing him. Jon stood rigidly, bid her farewell with a Your Grace and a small bow before leaving her cabin closing the door behind himself, he walked his fists clenched as he continued until he turned the corner and managed to reach the door to his cabin. He threw it open in his anger and slammed it shut, then as if all fight had left him he slid down, his back against the wooden surface and hung his head low between his knees as he panted and tried to regain control of himself, his eyes shifting between gray and red.
His vision shifting, without occuring to him of what he was doing he tried to regulate his breathing and closed his eyes, the tears of anger streaming down his face and he leaned his head back against the door, he banged it a few times and then exhaled. Slowly he unclenched his fists and felt as if a gentle caress against his head, as if a mother carding her hands between his dark locks or brushing them back from his sweaty forehead.
When he was calm he opened his eyes slowly and they settled on his mother's shield, the laughting tree staring back at him.
You know our words the thousand-and-one voice reminded him in his head. He was slowly going mad since returning from the dead, yet he had never felt saner, less blind.
"Winter is coming" he murmured and for a moment he believed to see the laughing tree nod at him.