#Davo needs to come back soon and save him from responsibility

[poolparty13]

When Connor is out of the lineup and now everyone is asking you what the plan is….

[a-libra-writes]

Game of Thrones - Love Letter and Handwriting Headcanons

In this preference, you'll be writing to: Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Benjen Stark, Jory Cassel, Eddison Tollett, Yara Greyjoy, Daenerys Targaryen, Jorah Mormont, Missandei, Grey Worm, Tywin Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Bronn, Petyr Baelish, Stannis Baratheon, Davos Seaworth, Margaery Tyrell, Brynden Tully, Edmure Tully, Brienne of Tarth, Ramsay Bolton, Roose Bolton, Oberyn Martell, Arianne Martell

my own silly fanfic made me think of this bc there’s letter writing later on in that. whee!

Ned Stark

His handwriting is neat, evenly spaced and fairly plain. It’s easily readable, which is the point - he knows not everyone is well-versed in letters and he tries to make it easier. Ned typical sends ravens, only writing a full letter for when he has to give instructions or relay something important. He has a formal Stark wax seal for this… and yes, he uses that same formal seal when he sends something to you. The more you exchange letters, the more relaxed he clearly becomes in writing. He knows he isn’t romantic or poetic by any means, but he hopes his affection for you comes across.

Robb Stark

Goodness knows he’s had endless lessons on writing properly and expressing the right words, but Robb just has no interest in it. His handwriting is perfectly legible but obviously hastily written, and he doesn’t care if there’s a few smudges or the paper gets dirty. When he’s writing to you, he’ll try to be neater… but sometimes he’s just got so much to say, and he’s so eager to send it, he doesn’t even notice the mess. Robb never thought he’d anticipate letters, especially romantic ones, but he loves receiving things from you. If you live far away, he feels the distance strongly and starts to rely on your letters to feel more connected to you.

Sansa Stark

As expected, her penmanship is pretty and neat. If she's in a good mood she'll add little flourishes here and there, but normally she's a bit embarrassed to do it. It feels childish to do that now. When she finds a nice stationary, she saves it until she writes to you. Her envelopes have the usual Stark direwolf with some wildflowers along the border. Honest and romantic words used to come easy to her, but now she’s more subdued. She’ll include pretty poetry she heard and wanted to share with you.

Jon Snow

His writing would be neater if he just slowed down, but he’s often in haste, especially once he becomes Lord Commander. He never cared about the proper penmanship or address because who would a bastard write to? Really, it’s lucky he was taught letters at all. He’d do his best to write neater for you, but the words keep escaping him - It’s hard enough to express how he feels in person, writing it isn’t any easier, no matter what Sam says. Jon always responds if you write to him, even if he’s blushing and feeling stupid the whole time.

Benjen Stark

He’s perfectly capable of writing neatly, but Benjen rarely bothers to. He jots down what he needs, though he at least has to make it legible - there’s only so many men that know their letters at the Wall, and Benjen has to keep his orders neat. When you pass him a secret letter, he’s grinning like a boy. He thinks it’s adorable that you went through the effort of finding supplies and writing something so sweet. He’ll ask to read it in front of you, but if you make him do it in secret, he’ll want to run and find you as soon as he’s done. He’d fold it up tight and keep it in a safe pouch tied to his belt. 

Jory Cassel

His handwriting is pretty messy. Jory was never bothered by it until he had to write you something. Oh no. Wasn't there a proper way to address you? What if it was too personal, or too standoffish? Poor Jory overthinks his letters unless you two write with frequency. His handwriting won't get better, but he's more comfortable writing sweet things. He likes to keep his envelopes and papers plain so no one suspects anything, which is a good habit if you’re dating in secret, but a silly once if you’re married. 

Eddison Tollett

He jokes it’s a small miracle that he knows his letters, poor as his family was. He likes to pretend he doesn’t, just so the higher ups on the Wall won’t give him extra duties like they did Sam. Reading never interested him, and he had no one to write to, so it’s just not something he thinks about. When you slip him a letter, he just stares at it dumbly for a minute. Once Edd has a chance to open it up, he’s a little taken aback. What… should he do? Should he talk to you? Respond to it? He’s never had such a nice gesture given to him, never had anyone write such nice things to him (has he even received a letter before??). So the next time to meet him, he still has a stupefied look on his face. And here he was thinking nothing on the Wall could surprise him anymore.. 

Yara Greyjoy

She was taught writing and reading by her nuncle - because the Gods know her father hardly bothered - so she actually has fond memories of both, even if she hardly does it. Yara would be very curious by anything you sent. Was something wrong? If it smelled of perfume or had a pretty stationary, she’d snort… but once she read the contents, she’d just grin and laugh. If the letter is more romantic, she finds it silly, but so like you. Very endearing. If it’s more saucy and risque, well … she’s going to read this in private and take her time.

Daenerys Targaryen

Her handwriting wasn’t as neat as it could’ve been, given her upbringing. It’s a point of embarrassment, so Dany practices pretty lettering and uses interesting inks she’s found around the markets. It’s a bit relaxing, though when she’s writing something official as Khaleesi and Queen, she makes sure it’s perfect. She’s pleasantly surprised when you write her something - has she ever actually received something this sweet before? She’ll write you back with a smile on her face, and she likes any chance to use that fancy Targaryen seal. Dany will still love to receive and send letters even if you both are staying in a palace together. It’s just one of many romantic gestures she thought she’d never enjoy.

Jorah Mormont

Jorah's handwriting is nice, but he usually writes in haste, so several letters end up smudged. He doesn't like to waste paper and start over. Jorah really can’t believe that you’d send him something romantic and sweet; he tries to hide his grin and blush, but he’ll wear it the whole time he’s reading. When he's writing something really sweet to you, it gets him flustered and happy, so whole words end up smudged. He doesn't notice the ink on his hand until he's already put the letter in the envelope. He keeps whatever you’ve sent him in a protective leather book so they can’t get damaged.

Missandei

She has lovely handwriting in many languages, as she was taught. The neatness of the lines and letters really is impressive. When she's writing something sweet to you, she pauses and struggles with the words for a while. Missandei always has the sweetest, most thoughtful letters - more sentimental than romantic. Her letters are punctuated with citrus smelling paper and a modestly decorated envelope.

Grey Worm

He’s only recently learned to read, and writing is still a struggle - he’d be very intimidated at the idea of writing something to you. When you give him something to read for practice, it takes Grey Worm a few minutes before he realizes it’s something you wrote. And it’s for him! And about him! He’s very happy but also very flustered. It takes him longer to get through it, but he can’t stop smiling all day once he’s done. He aspires to write something just as nice, once he’s practiced more. He’d keep your letters in a safe place, and wouldn’t want anyone else to see them.

Tywin Lannister

His penmanship is near perfect, which you expected. It’s always written in a stark black ink on fine, almost marbled paper that has an equally officially looking gold Lannister seal on the envelope. People whisper it’s liquid gold that seals it, but you know better. Tywin’s letters are for business only, so he doesn’t expect you to send him anything romantic… He wouldn’t know what to do with it, besides read it with some amusement and tuck it away for later. You might think he never read it, until he’ll tease you by quoting it weeks later. 

Tyrion Lannister

His handwriting is elegant and flawless, as it was meant to be. When Tyrion’s tired he’ll smudge here and there, and depending on how important the letter is, he’ll start over entirely. When he receives your first letter, he’s surprised by the pretty stationary and envelope - this is for him? - and the contents are even better. Tyrion might have a small mental shutdown if you write him something romantic and kind. He’ll re-read it over and over and be distracted through much of the day. This is really for him? He has to respond, of course, and he’ll do it while his emotions are high. For once he doesn’t think on carefully crafted words, he writes what he feels and picks a more subtle stationary (no giant Lannister seals) so attention isn’t drawn to you.

Jaime Lannister

Gods, he hates writing. Just sitting down to write a report is bad enough, but when it's something important? When it's a response to something lovely you wrote? He struggles. The letters start moving around like they used to, he remembers those awful lessons with his father and he's just put off by the whole thing. Seeing you in person is far better. Jaime's handwriting is neat, because it had to be, though when he's upset he'll write a few letters backwards.

Sandor Clegane

It's a mess. Really, the fact his words are readable is a miracle. 'Chicken scratch' is a generous term, though his name is passable. If you wrote him a letter, he'd have no idea what to do with it, let alone how to respond. Sandor doesn't do sentiment like that; seeing you in person can be conflicting and confusing enough. He'd probably rip it up and burn it after drinking too much (and immediately regret that in the morning).

Bronn

He's barely literate, and not a man of flowery words anyway, so don't respect a response. If anything he'd hand the letter to Tyrion and ask him to read it - only for it to be handed back once Tyrion realized it was very personal and... revealing. Bronn doesn't worry about a response or consider you getting upset about it. If you are, he has ways to make up for it. 

Petyr Baelish

You expected him to have neat penmanship, but you didn't expect it to be this nice. And of course, his way with words shows in his letters, but it's even better. You might even blush and have to excuse yourself to read it in private. Petyr loves to write on fancy paper with fancier envelopes that have his sigil, but if they're meant to be secret, the only indicator is a little symbol on the envelope's seal. He delights in anything you send him, especially if he can smell your perfume on it.

Stannis Baratheon

Stannis writes very neat letters with equally impossibly neat rows. He has a habit of gripping his quill too tight, but his letters are concise so his hand doesn’t hurt. While he usually writes quickly because he knows what to say, when he writes to you, he pauses far too often. Sometimes ink drips on the paper while he’s thinking, sometimes he misspells a word he’s never gotten wrong before. It takes a long time, especially if he’s responding to something that was very sweet and romantic. His first letters were very awkward and halting, but they’ve steadily improved. Mostly. 

Davos Seaworth

You were the one who helped him with writing, after helping him read as well. Davos isn’t happy with his penmanship, but he didn’t think he’d make it this far, so he keeps trying when he has time. It’s messy but legible enough. Davos is always pleasantly surprised when you write to him; he loves that you took the time to send something so sweet. It’s hard for him to reply efficiently, or to put what he’s thinking into words, so sometimes he’ll wait for you to get back instead. He would use your letters to practice reading… but it gets him terribly flustered to read the same kind things over and over again.

Margaery Tyrell

She doesn't mind taking the extra time to make her letters extra beautiful, to press dried flower petals and put them in the envelope, to look through dozens of stationary to find one that's just right for her mood. For most people, they're lucky to get one of these little rituals - you get all of them. She'd be delighted if you took extra care in your letters, too, and naturally she keeps whatever you send her in a special box (that absolutely no one will find). 

Brynden Tully

It's no surprise that his handwriting is simple and gets the job done. His brother used to complain that he wrote like a soldier, not a lord, and Brynden is proud of that. He won't wax poetic to you, but he will plainly state that he misses you and he always writes back promptly. Brynden feels bad that his letters take so long to arrive, so he'll make them longer with funny anecdotes and things he's heard from travellers. He folds his letter a few times and wraps it in a protective parchment, just in case rain comes or some idiot drops it.

Edmure Tully

He writes well enough, with neat letters that are jotted down in haste. Edmure almost never stays and lingers on words and sentences, he just writes what comes to mind and moves on. He’s shocked in a good way when you write something to him - you missed him that much? Enough to write all this? He re-reads it several times, and keeps whatever you send him after that. He’ll eagerly write back, and even if it’s silly and awkwardly worded, you can feel the love in every letter. His letters are often a bit crumpled and are plain except for the Tully seal.

Brienne of Tarth

It might surprise some that she has a lady's penmanship. It was never something Brienne had trouble learning, though she often accidentally broke the quill by holding too hard. Though she cherishes the kind things you send her (and she blushes terribly as she reads them), she struggles to send something in return. Her words fail her and she feels embarrassed for trying, but she does try. Seeing you in person is so much easier, though. She likes to keep your letters in a safe place and read them when she's feeling down.

Ramsay Bolton

The letters are messy, but legible enough. The real issue is all the stains on the paper, usually a combination of mud, blood or water. He has little care for the proper way to write or address others; Roose may have given him the bare minimum and not expected him to actually use it. Ramsay is very surprised and amused by anything you send him, though. He considers writing something back, but decides to wait or just go and see you directly. That’s far more fun.

Roose Bolton

His handwriting is functional and his words are to the point. There's nothing outstanding about the letter or its contents, save for a blood-red Bolton seal on the envelope. Roose rarely sends full letters, though; it's a quick Raven or nothing. Though he won't mind anything you send… he'll be very pleased with how personal they become, and he still won't send anything back right away, if he does at all. Better to keep you in anticipation.

Oberyn Martell

Oberyn has a stylish flourish to his letters that’s unique to him. If that didn’t give it away, the pretty gold ink or embellished envelope will. Often it has the spear as a seal, sometimes it’s some interesting and strange stamp he picked up from his travels. There’s always a slight scent to his letters, and you can’t always place it. The actual words themselves are often scandalous and teasing, though he’s sent plenty of heartfelt things, especially if you enjoy it. He’s no poet, but he’s honest and romantic. Oberyn much prefers to see you in person, but he likes to receive sweet things and re-read them.

Arianne Martell

Her handwriting is beautifully elegant, and she loves getting ahold of pretty colored inks and papers. Her letters straddle a fine line between romantic and a little scandalous, and she likes to use pet names, as if you both are writing in secret. Her envelopes have a pleasant smell, and the official Martell seal. If she wants her letter to be sent especially fast, she’ll take her father’s seal. She keeps anything you send her in a pretty, hand carved wooden box with a lock and key.

[raya-rhaenyra-ahsoka]

Why Daenerys Should've Stayed Longer in the North Than Attack Cersei Too Soon (Which is a dick move, really) PART 2

This is a continuation from my other post, as promised. Here’s the link to Part 1 here.

ALLIES FROM THE SOUTH

The Stormlands. With Dany recently legitimizing Robert Baratheon’s last living bastard, Gendry (Yay!), and appointed him as the new Lord of Storm’s End, I think he had pledged his loyalty and full support to her.

Now since the Baratheons are the overlords of the Stormlands, it ultimately makes the Stormlands part of Dany’s new rule in Westeros. And if the Stormmen questioned Gendry’s legitimacy, there are two people who can back him up: Ser Davos Seaworth, a landed knight, and Ser Brienne of Tarth, literally the heiress to Evenfall in Tarth Island. Both of whom are from the Stormlands and have served the late Baratheon lords, Stannis,

and Renly, respectively.

TV show-wise, Gendry had taken over Edric Storm’s plotline. Edric Storm was another one of Robert’s many bastards and it was him who Ser Davos saved from being killed by Mellisandre in the books, not Gendry. Gendry himself was grateful to Davos for saving his life and he sort of stepped up as his own parental figure. I also think Gendry reminded Davos of the son he lost during the Battle of Blackwater Bay.

As for Brienne, she and Gendry never shared a conversation in the show, but in the books, he even saved her life. Brienne came from Tarth, an island in the Stormlands, where her father Selwyn Tarth is lord and one of the many bannermen of the Baratheons of Storm’s End. Brienne came across Gendry in the Inn at the Crossroads while she was searching for the Stark girls. When she saw him, she literally thought he was Renly because of his striking resemblance to his uncle. Their exchange went something like this:

Brienne: Oh my god, Lord Renly?!

Gendry: Uh, what? Lord? Lol no, I’m just a smith.

I wished it happened in the show, it would’ve been funny.

Dorne. There isn’t much plot regarding Dorne in the show. (Again, f*ck D&D for ruining a great sub-plot of the story!) But in the books, the Martell heiress, Arianne was the ultimate feminist icon. She supported and fought for Myrcella Baratheon’s claim to the Iron throne over her younger brother, Tommen, and she hoped that the rest of Westeros would follow after Dorne’s right of inheritance regardless of gender and order of birth. But no! They disregarded that seemingly important plot that even George R.R. Martin was disappointed about the changes. (We hear you, George!) Nevertheless, Arianne would’ve supported a queen, yes. But between Daenerys and Cersei, she’d probably go with Dany mainly because of their family ties. In case you forgot, Rhaegar’s late first wife, Elia Martell, was Arianne’s aunt. Also, because of what happened to Elia and Oberyn Martell in King’s Landing, the Martells practically loathed the Lannisters. In the show, Oberyn Martell’s paramour Ellaria Sand, and his bastard daughters, the Sand Snakes, hated the Lannisters, that’s why they sided with Dany. But with all of them dead and House Martell now extinct, I think the new prince of Dorne would’ve allied himself with a tamer ruler, not one who plays with wildfire. (Note: this is when Dany stayed in the North and did not march south yet.)

Spies. In the Art of War, the use of spies implies gaining knowledge of the enemy, knowing their motive and their next move. With Lord Varys the Spider in Winterfell, who’s still serving under Daenerys, has its advantages. Vary’s networks of spies or as what he called them, his “little birds” are literally scattered across the seven kingdoms.

His little birds are actually children, and appearance-wise, cannot be easily identified as spies. With his intel, they could easily formulate a plan to defeat Cersei.

DEFENSE AT SEA

 If Cersei couldn’t do it by land, she’ll go by sea. Which, Daenerys of course, have the appropriate fleets to defend, covering both the Narrow and Sunset Seas. Here's a map:

(Source: pinterest.com)

Enemies to the East. If Cersei will be stupid enough to attack through the Narrow Sea by sea, Daenerys has the fleets to defend. The Northern fleet, a.k.a the Manderly Fleet of White Harbor and the Arryn Fleet in Gulltown in the Vale will join forces.

Enemies to the West. And if they invade through the Sunset Sea, they’d have to pass the Iron Islands, where Yara Greyjoy’s Fleet will intercept them, with the help of the Mallister Fleet in Seagard.

Who would win depends. The only other person that’s probably as good as Euron at sea is his niece, Yara. The rest of Dany’s fleet would have to get lucky or outnumber the number of ships in a fleet.

At this point, you’ll probably be like, oh, what if they steer clear from the fleets and enter the North’s weakly defended areas? Okay, that job falls to the castles nearest to their borders. The northernmost castle is the Last Hearth, the seat of House Umber, which is practically already deserted. On the south is Greywater Watch, which has the strongest defense out of all four cardinal directions. On both east and west hold the seat of two branches of House Flint, with Widow’s Watch on the east, and Flint’s Finger on the west (Again, refer to the map above). Once they see Cersei’s fleet, they’ll inform the people in Winterfell.

People tend to forget that Daenerys has the only air support with her dragons. So when she hears about this, she’ll easily burn the enemy fleet with one dracarys away.

That is, if Qyburn hadn’t installed that big-ass crossbow in one of the ships, then she’ll have to be better at dodging them. It gets better if Jon’s willing to help her with Rhaegal, but we’ll never know.

OUTNUMBERED AND SURROUNDED

The map shows the Crownlands and its neighboring kingdoms of the Vale, the Riverlands, the Reach, and the Stormlands. (Source: pinterest.com)

Territories. With Cersei sacrificing Casterly Rock to tighten her grip on the Iron Throne, she technically had also sacrificed the Westerlands, which meant everything north of King’s Landing is Dany’s territory now. With Dany’s army and territories secured, the Crownlands, where King’s Landing is, is technically surrounded by the Vale, the Riverlands, the Reach, and Stormlands. I included the Reach because, well, she roasted the Tarlys and took the remaining men to her cause with a choice, bend the knee or die in a blaze of glory.

Armies. Dany has the combined armies of North, Vale, Riverlands, Westerlands, Reach, Stormlands, and maybe Dorne, plus, the Unsullied; fleets of the North, Vale, Riverlands, and Yara’s fleet from the Iron Islands; and the only air support, her two remaining dragons. Cersei on the other hand, just had the army of the Crownlands, King’s Landing’s City Watch, the queensguard, plus, the Golden Company without elephants; and Euron Greyjoy’s fleet.

I think it’s obvious that Dany outnumbers Cersei’s army, by a lot. And at this point, Dany has enough allies to lay a siege on King’s Landing.

DAENERYS VS. CERSEI

Let’s discuss the difference in the personalities and motives of Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister.

They both have blond hair, are the only girl among three siblings, and are queens in their own right. But that’s where their similarities end.

Cersei currently sits on the iron throne, and she is loving the perks that came with it. Endless Power, which meant she can do whatever she wants and not care about what people think, like sleeping with her brother. With the news of Dany coming back to Westeros, she sees her as a threat and wanted nothing more than for Dany to disappear so she could stay in power.

Daenerys, however, claims that being the queen of the seven kingdoms is her birthright, as it was the Targaryens that reunited the whole continent of Westeros. Of course, it’s still power, but at the same time, she sees it as a responsibility as well. (With great power, comes great responsibility. Wow, I’m quoting Spiderman now.) She believes that as a queen, it’s her job to take care and provide for the needs of her subjects and even makes an effort to hold court as she listened to their demands. She also thinks that slavery is a big no-no, so she freed them.

The key to becoming a great leader is finding the balance between being loved and feared by your subjects. Cersei is more likely feared than loved. She also doesn’t care about her people, a fact that she admitted to her brother, Tyrion once. Daenerys most likely had the scale tips on balance, with her being equally loved and feared by her subjects. She’s loved because she actually takes time to listen to the people’s needs, and feared because she could take you out using her dragons with one word.

If Dany did lay siege on King’s Landing (again, we aren’t counting her major mad queen moment), the only thing Cersei can use against Dany is the people living within the city walls. Cersei might have heard that Dany’s been freeing slaves in the cities surrounding Slaver’s Bay, and figured out that she has a soft spot for the common folk.

In conclusion, if Daenerys had simply waited out and took her time planning and gathering allies and supplies against Cersei, she would’ve been successful in her campaign to retake Westeros. But then again, we aren’t the writers for this show. In the end, they had Jon battling through himself while he chooses to reply with either of his two favorite lines, She’s my queen or I don’t want it. Or that Sansa and Arya doesn’t like Dany at all and think that she’s a power-hungry, dragon-riding bitch. Or that Bran doesn’t give a f*ck about anything. So, yeah. What do you guys think?

[lostinmirkwood]

Gendrya Kinktober Day 12- Phone Sex

Find on AO3 here.

It started with a picture. 

Arry (9:08am): I have to say, my tits look fantastic in this top today. I needed someone to admire them. 😈

Gendry had to agree, they did look fantastic. She’d taken a timed picture showing just her shoulders and chest with her folded arms resting on her desk just under her tits. As he was typing a response another message came through. Same angle, same position, but two buttons undone, a hint of her lacy red bra peeking out of her navy shirt.

Gendry (9:10am): Dammit Arya. I have a presentation in 20 minutes!

Arry (9:10am): 😘 Good luck!

Gendry shook his head and tried to refocus on his notes for the client presentation he was about to lead. It was for a sustainable and affordable housing complex near the city center that had been a passion project of his for the past six months and he knew he needed to wow the investors.

His phone buzzed again just before he entered the boardroom. The message made him smile and gave him a final boost of confidence for his presentation before he turned off his phone.

Arry (9:25am): I love you, you’ll knock them dead!

---

The presentation had gone off without a hitch. The investors were excited about his designs and the city had greenlit the plans to go ahead with only a few minor tweaks to the design. After a celebratory lunch with his team Gendry turned his phone on back in his office. It buzzed several times as it powered on and he was unsurprised by the slew of texts that waited for him.

The Starks 🐺 (7 messages)

Arry (3 messages)

Hot Pie (10:30am): Sry 4 the late text, had dough tht needed attn. Good luck mate!

Davos (9:45am): Marya and I send our love lad, you’ll do just fine. You know what you’re about.

He shot off quick replies to Hot Pie and Davos thanking them and summarizing the meeting before scrolling through the Stark group chat quickly. Rickon had sent a meme about being the youngest child that had his older siblings up in arms. He shook his head at their antics. They might never stop talking to each other but he was pleased that he was included in their group chat. With some trepidation he opened Arya’s messages.

Arry (10:47am): Let me know how it goes when you’re done!

Arry (11:51am): You know… we should celebrate when your proposal is approved. With me naked and bent over your desk. Could be fun 😉

Gendry gulped, the next message was another picture.

Arry (1:10pm): Thinking about you taking me in your office. 😘

She must have locked herself in her office and drawn her blinds. She was angled against her desk, shirt unbuttoned again. This time her hand was at the cup of her bra, nearly revealing one of her deliciously pink nipples to the camera. She’d also managed to hike her skirt up enough to reveal her creamy thighs and the lacy tops of her stockings. Gendry groaned, his cock filling in his slacks, pressing uncomfortable against his zipper as he sat in his desk chair.

Gendry (1:34pm): ARRY. 

 Gendry (1:34pm): Have mercy on me woman.

Gendry (1:35pm): Also thanks for your support love. The plans were fully approved by both the city and the investors pending a few small design changes.

Arry (1:36pm): That’s wonderful Gendry! I’m so proud of you!

Arry (1:36pm): So, about that celebration?

Gendry (1:36pm): You won’t be able to stay quiet for what I want to do with you tonight. We’ll have to save that for the holiday party.

Arry (1:37pm): Oh? Do share.

Gendry (1:39pm): Tonight? Tonight I want to strip you out of your work clothes, but you’ll keep your bra, stockings, and heels on. I want to get on my knees before you and eat my fill from your cunt with your legs around my ears. 

Arry (1:39pm): I like the sound of that. But why am I keeping my bra on?

Gendry (1:40pm): Because I said so. 

Arry (1:40pm): Yes sir.

Gendry (1:42pm): Once you’ve come for me on my mouth I’m going to slide a finger in and begin to work you. I want you to take all three but I’ll work you up to that. Feel them pressing on that spot inside you that only I have found. It’s mine Arya. 

Gendry (1:42pm): I’ll use my free hand to fondle your tits through that red lacy bra. They’ll be sensitive and the lace will be driving you crazy. When you’re dripping down your thighs…

Arry (1:43pm): Can I come on your hand? Please Gendry, let me come with your fingers deep inside me.

Gendry (1:44pm): No love. You’re not coming again until I tell you to. 

Arya gasps in her office. She’s glad she’s been left to herself today to work on quarterly reports. She shifts in her chair, trying to relieve some of the ache building between her thighs. She wonders if she can manage to get herself off quickly and quietly enough after this when her phone buzzes again.

Gendry (1:45pm): When you're dripping down your thighs I’ll throw you on the bed and bring those stocking-clad legs up to my shoulders. I want to take you deep, Arya. This is why you’re keeping your bra on. 

Gendry (1:46pm): Because when I start to fuck you I want to fuck you hard and long until your tits come out of that red lace. I want you screaming around my cock and begging for release. Once I’ve fucked them free then, and only then, are you allowed to cum. 

Gendry (1:47pm): Now love, this isn’t entirely about me. I want you to tell me about where you want me to come. Do you want me to pull out and come all over those lovely tits and that sinful bra? Do you want me to cover your pretty swollen clit? Do you want me to roll you over and come all over that lovely arse of yours?

Arry (1:48pm): Inside me Gendry. Please come inside me. I want to feel your release deep inside me and feel it dripping out of me. I love it when you make a mess of me.

Gendry (1:49pm): Good girl. I’ll come inside you and spread it over your thighs as it slides out of you. I want you to smell like me.

Another picture message comes through from Arya. It’s looking down at her lap as she sits in her desk chair. Her shirt is unbuttoned slightly, showing a lovely flush over her chest. Her skirt is hiked up to her waist and her hand is sliding towards the black lacy knickers he knows she’s wearing from kissing her good-bye as she was getting ready this morning.

Arry (1:49pm): Gods Gendry. Can I come now? Please? I want you so bad, I’m so wet.

Gendry (1:50pm): No Arry. You have to keep your hands to yourself the rest of today. I told you, you’ll only come when I say you can.

Gendry (1:51pm): Be a good girl and don’t touch yourself. That means no rubbing yourself on your chair using those lacy knickers for friction. No teasing your nipples as you rebutton your shirt. No putting your phone between your legs and calling from your desk for the vibrations. Nothing. I want you dripping when you get home.

Arya mutters a few choice swears under her breath as she does as he says and fixes her shirt and straightens her skirt. She knows she could get off in a minute with how worked up his words have her but how commanding Gendry was and the anticipation make her follow his instructions.

Arry (1:53pm): Yes dear. I’ll wait like you want me to. 😩

Gendry (1:54pm): Good. Now get back to work you naughty girl, I know you have reports to write. I’ll see you tonight 😉

Arry (1:54pm): Love you!

Gendry (1:54pm): Love you too Arry. Always will.

How Arya manages to get through the rest of her day she isn’t really sure. It passes in a lust filled haze as she rereads Gendry’s plan for the night every hour or so. She’s not sure why she’s torturing herself but she knows the pay-off for tonight promises to be more than worth it. 

As she’s on the train home with her headphones in her phone buzzes again in her hand. Glancing down she realizes that Gendry is calling her. Her stomach tightens as she picks up. Not wanting to be that person on the crowded train she quietly says, “Hello Gendry, is everything alright? I’m three stops from ours, do I need to pick something up?”

Gendry sighs down the line, “No love, just wanted to hear your voice. And for you to hear this.”

Arya smiles for a moment before she registers what she’s hearing. On the other end of the call is the slick sound of flesh on flesh, confusedly she asks, “Gendry? What are you...? But, I’m almost home!”

“I know Arry. I told you I wanted you dripping, so I’m making sure you are.”

Hanging up is the last thing on Arya’s mind as she listens to Gendry moan and sigh as he works himself over, getting himself off while she’s on the phone with him, surrounded by her fellow commuters that (hopefully) have no idea what’s happening in her earbuds right now. She’s trying to keep her blush from spreading over her cheeks and her skirt prevents her from crossing her legs to try to relieve the growing pressure. She loses the battle with her blush when he starts gasping her name as he gets close to coming. She nearly misses her stop listening to him, only catching she’s at her platform when the woman sitting next to her nudges her to move so she can also get off. 

Arya stumbles slightly as she gets off the train. Gendry had just growled her name and sighed in her ears and she almost stepped into the gap between the train and the platform. She stutters out, “Did you just?”

“Yeah,” comes his panted reply.

“Well I just got off the train. I’ll be home shortly. Asshole.”

Gendry chuckles, “You did that to me Arry. I said I wanted you ready and I bet you are,” she is, but she doesn’t want to give him any more satisfaction, knowing he’ll get plenty tonight. “I bet your knickers are soaked again for me. Don’t worry, you’ll more than get yours. I wanted to make sure you’d get it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still bloody unfair with so many people around though.”

“That was half the fun. Love you, Arry. I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you too. I’ll see you in a few.” She hung up the phone and picked up her pace down the street. Gendry was waiting for her.

[orangeflavoryawp]

Jonsa - “A Violence Done Most Kindly”, Part 5

Okay, I know this chapter is excessively long, but I didn't want to break it up and lose the cohesiveness of it, so yeah, here it is. This one was fucking difficult to write, so I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

“A Violence Done Most Kindly”

Chapter Five: Herald of War

“It’s a promise, Sansa realizes.  If we fall, you fall.  Because she figures, one way or another, dead or alive, the North will come for those who abandoned them to winter.”  -  Jon and Sansa.  Stark is a house of many winters.

Read it on Ao3 here.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 fin

* * *

“I was under the impression this was a summit for peace,” Tyrion says.

           “It is,” Jon sighs.

           “And yet you’re asking us to go to war.”

           “A war against the dead is not the same as one against the living.”  Jon frowns with his explanation, harsh and deep.

           Sansa can see the frustration in the lines around his mouth.

           “You’re asking for quite a lot on faith,” Jaime points out, lounging quite comfortably in his chair.

           “And do you think I’d be here, inviting some of my house’s oldest enemies into my very home, welcoming their armies North, if I weren’t speaking the truth about this?” Jon barks.  His nostrils flare with his vexation.  He spares a dark look Theon’s way.  “Soon you shall all see the evidence of our claims.”

           Somewhere in the crowd of lords, a scoff is heard, an accompanying snort, a rush of heated murmurs.

           “Let’s say what you claim is true,” Tyrion starts, pacing away from his place beside Daenerys and toward the center of the room, glancing around the other gathered lords.  “Have you even a plan to kill them?  Do you even know how?”

           Jon’s eyes flick to the dragon queen, and Sansa’s gut clenches when he tells them, “We know that fire kills them.”

           Daenerys adopts a smug expression, leaning back in her chair as she eyes Jon.  “You need my dragons.”

           He clenches his jaw, nodding just the once. “Aye.”

           “You already know my demands,” she answers easily, eyes shifting toward Jaime.

           A cruel smile curls along Euron’s face while he sits beside Daenerys.  “Looks like you’ll be bending the knee, after all.”

           Jon ignores Euron with great effort, his hands bunching into fists at his side, and then slowly unfurling.

           Tyrion looks to Daenerys, something calculated in his gaze that Sansa can’t quite identify.  She straightens in her seat, voice echoing throughout the room. “Westeros will need more than just dragons to survive the Night King and his army.”

           Daenerys cocks her head at Sansa, an amused smile playing at her lips.  “’Just’ dragons, you say?” she asks in a tone that sounds nearly insulted.

           Sansa swallows tightly, words measured as she looks at the dragon queen.  “Your might is not to be disregarded, Your Grace, but this endeavor will take from all of us.”  She takes a breath, waits for Daenerys’ rebuke, but continues steadily when there is none – none but a look of mild intrigue.  She looks about the room.  “We will need food from the Reach.  And we’ll need the numbers of the Lannister forces.  We’ll need the forces of the Riverlands to secure safe passage of Northern refugees through the Neck and past the Twins.”  Sansa shares a glance with Edmure Tully, who nods in answer, jaw set. She allows a grateful smile to touch her lips, before she turns her steel-cut gaze back to the other lords. “We’ll need the Knights of the Vale,” she goes on, looking to Lord Royce, and then tentatively to Robin Arryn, an inclination of her head both affectionate and demanding, “The greatest mounted cavalry in the known kingdoms,” she says with a flattering flourish that has Robin beaming with pride.

           “We’ll need dragonglass for weapons,” Davos says. “And we’ll need every blacksmith you can spare working day and night to forge them.”

           Jon nods beside Sansa, a dark look to his face. He stands then, taking in the room. “And we’ll need more than that.  Carpenters and masons to help build the defenses around Winterfell.  Healers and cooks and seamstresses, before, during, and especially after the battle, which means they’ll need to stay in Winterfell while we send the other refugees south.  And we’ll need all our armies marching North if we expect to have any hope at defeating the dead.”

           “What do they look like?”

           Jon turns at Robin’s question, confusion drawing over his face.  “My lord?”

           Robin shifts excitedly in his seat, an inappropriate glee pulling at his features that sets Jon’s jaw to clenching.  “What do they look like, these wights you speak of?” he asks again.

           Silence reigns in the room.

           Sansa shifts in her seat toward him.  “Dear cousin,” she begins gently, “I don’t think – ”

           Jaime’s scoff interrupts her, his scornful chuckle swallowed up by the fist at his mouth.  

           Sansa sends him a glare.

           Sighing, Jaime’s hand lowers from his mouth, a sardonic glint to his eye.  “Not like anything you’ve ever seen before, I’m sure, boy.”  His eyes flick to Jon’s.  “If they even exist.”

           Robin’s face pinches at the insulting address but before he can wail his offense, Lord Royce stands from his seat, chest puffing out. “You will speak to my lord with the proper respect his station demands, Ser Jaime, or this summit will be at an end soon enough,” he nearly bellows.

           Jaime only leans back with an amused smirk, Tyrion sending him a desperate look that seems a plea for silence.

           “They look like the dead,” Jon sighs in aggravation, his temper flaring at the need for such an explanation, “In all the gruesome ways death can take a man.”

           Sansa can see how the frustration builds beneath his skin, rippling the cords of muscle at his neck when he swallows. “Now, can we continue?” he asks gruffly.

           Robin scowls at the answer, disinterested immediately.  “I only wished to know what they looked like,” he mutters.

           Sansa sends an urging look Arya’s way, and with a twitch of Baelish’s lips in her flesh mask, she leans over with a false face of appeasement to the young Lord of the Vale, a pat of her hand to his bunched fist.  “And you will, my lord, when you ride North and take the field alongside His Grace. You’ll look the dead in the eye, and – with the Knights of the Vale at your back, heralding your name – you’ll vanquish them from our lands forever.”  A gratifying smile plants itself along Baelish’s face, and Robin grins in response.

           “Yes,” he agrees, straightening in his seat. “Yes, I shall.”

           Lord Royce grumbles something under his breath when he takes his seat, eyes shifted toward Baelish in a mix of reluctant gratitude and poorly disguised mistrust.  

           “And why should I follow you North like a gullible child, Jon Snow?” Daenerys asks coolly, eyes nearly rolling (if such a motion could be queenly) at Royce’s outrage with the pointed barb.

           “My queen,” Tyrion tries, stepping toward her and then instantly stopping at the subtle motion of her hand to stay him.

           Behind Daenerys, and behind Jorah Mormont and the newly met advisor, Missandei, and the commander of the queen’s armies, Grey Worm, somewhere in the slants of shadows, Sansa catches the flicker of tense deliberation along Varys’s face at his queen’s words.  His hands stay linked through heavy, concealing sleeves, his lips pressed into a perpetual purse, eyes watching the hall pensively.  She shifts her gaze away from him before he can meet hers across the hall.

           She remembers all too well that he’s seen the work of the Targaryens firsthand – some being her own blood.

           Sansa pulls a steadying breath in, focus back on the quickly spiraling summit.

           “Why should I commit my forces North on the word of a bastard king when the people are crying for their rightful ruler to save them right here in the South?” Daenerys asks coolly.

           Sansa’s eyes flutter shut, bracing for the inevitable.

           Lord Glover pushes from his seat so violently that it scrapes against the stone and topples back with a loud clang.  “I would follow any son of Ned Stark to the depths of all seven hells before I swear to some murdering Targaryen whore!” he bellows.

           The room erupts into madness.

           Grey Worm steps forward, a cold wrath lighting his features, and the line of Unsullied along the wall at Daenerys’ back uniformly brace their spears to their shields in a motion of readiness, the heavy metallic clash setting the rest of the hall rising into an uproar.

           Jaime barks a laugh.  “Yes, the people are just clamoring for you, Your Grace,” he throws out at Daenerys with raised brows.

           “Ser Jaime,” Brienne hollers from her place behind Sansa, “This is hardly the time.”

           Several of the lesser lords push from their seats, Lady Mormont shouting for them to sit down and stop squalling like children. Jon braces a hand back at Lord Glover, keeping him from stepping further into the circle.  Davos and Tyrion call for order and are subsequently ignored. Northern and Riverland guards edge around the hall toward the swarm of incensed lords.

Jaime lets out another ragged laugh, arms stretching wide to encompass the chaos.  “This seems exactly the time, Lady Brienne!”

Daenerys shoots a deadly glare at Jaime, Ser Jorah at her elbow instantly. “I should take your head right here, Kingslayer.”

           “Please, Your Grace,” Edmure urges above the shouts from the arguing lords.  “This is a summit for peace.”

           Daenerys stands swiftly.  “Then you all should have remembered that before calling the dragon to your table.”

           Brynden swears at Sansa’s back.  “Oh for the love of – ”

Lord Royce advances on a particularly vocal lord from the Stormlands when he throws a casual insult at the young Lord Arryn.  False-Baelish slips back from the mob, staying at the edge of the ring of seats, Sansa always in sight.

Euron stands from his seat, a sneer along his lips.  “I think a little respect would do these Northern bastards some good.”

“Uncle,” Theon says, firm and reproachful.  He stands from his seat, but Sansa’s hand on his arm stays him.  He looks down at her with hesitance.

“Ah,” Euron laughs, a predatory glint to his eye, “This the Northern cunt that bewitched you?”

Brynden’s hand is on his sword instantly, Brienne moving similarly beside him.  “Call my niece that again, you pissant, and I’ll hang your entrails from your own ships’ bow.”

“You can always trust a Lannister to –”

“ – damn Northern pride will be the death of –”

“ – bloody Ironborn – ”

“And where have you cowards been all this – ”

“ – her and her foreign band of rapists and murderers – ”

“Enough!” Jon bellows, his voice echoing off the stone walls, a deep, resonant growl following the words.  “That is enough!”  There’s something wild to his form then, a murderous glint to his eye that settles anyone who catches sight of it into an instant stillness.  He whirls on the room, teeth bared.

At Daenerys’ raised hand, Grey Worm orders his men down, Missandei calling out similar orders to the Dothraki bloodriders alongside the Unsullied. Lord Glover rights his chair, dropping back down to it with a huff.  Lady Mormont glares the other Northern lords into silence.  The lords of the Stormlands slowly retreat to their corner, Robin tugging on Lord Royce’s sleeve to get him to sit back down.  Jaime sits just a bit straighter, his smile falling. Daenerys remains standing, chest heaving.  Beside her, Euron gives one last leer to Sansa and Theon before he slumps back into his seat, Brynden and Brienne finally unhanding their swords.  Slowly, the hall comes back around to silence, tense and perturbed though it is now.

Jon heaves a labored sigh, rubbing at his chin, eyes flashing dark with his fury. “How can you all sit here and squabble over such pettiness when the dead are practically at our door?  How can you call yourselves lords when you would trade your people’s lives for a crown – a crown that will mean absolutely nothing when the dead wash through your lands?” he bites out, gaze landing on Daenerys. “Because make no mistake, if we fall, you fall.  That isn’t a threat.  That’s fact.” he growls out, glancing at each of them in turn.

It’s a promise, Sansa realizes.

If we fall, you fall.

Because she figures, one way or another, dead or alive, the North will come for those who abandoned them to winter.

           “This is all very riveting, to be sure, but if you’re all done beating your chests, I have a question for the King in the North.”  Lady Olenna interrupts for the first time that afternoon, elbows resting on her armrests, hands wound together in a familiar nonchalance, as she stares insistently at Jon in the center of the room.  

All eyes turn to her in the tense quiet.

She clears her throat, settling more comfortably in her chair.  “This summit isn’t about trying to persuade us that peace is our best option, because we wouldn’t be here in the first place if we believed otherwise.  So you can save your thrilling little speeches, Your Grace.  Anyone unwilling to fight for the kingdoms has no claim to them.”

Mutterings begin among the lords once more, Daenerys slowly returning to her seat, hands curled like talons along her armrests, eyes landing on the Tyrell matriarch like flint to steel.

Jon nods stiffly to her, jaw clenched tight.  “And your question, my lady?”

Olenna huffs impatiently, shifting to tap the nail of her forefinger along her armrest.  “When your war is won, and the dead are defeated, will the King in the North acknowledge the independence of the other kingdoms, or is this alliance simply a ploy to seize power?”

The mutterings throughout the hall stop entirely, a taut silence blanketing the room.

Jon turns fully to Lady Olenna.

Sansa remembers suddenly, the way he looked that last night before the Battle of the Bastards – the heat in his eyes, the desperation lining his mouth (that mouth), the dangerous arch of his shoulders and unmistakable incline of his body, the way he shouted at her, pressed her, the way he instantly folded beneath her admission –

If Ramsay wins, I’m not going back there alive.  Do you understand me?

The way he’d wound his hands through her hair and stumbled her back, a growl at his lips, bracing her back against the beam of his tent, his breath panted against her mouth, her hands winding around his wrists, the ragged exhale that left him when he told her, when he demanded of her –

“Shut your mouth.”  Like a wounded, cornered beast.

She’d blinked at him wildly, indignation splashing across her face, breath hitched in her throat as he bore his whole weight into her suddenly, forehead braced to hers, fingers flexing in her hair.

Her throat was parched, her chest heaving.

“Shut that mouth of yours, Sansa, because I can’t – I can’t – ” And then he’d licked his lips, chocking back a sob, his mouth already so close to hers that she thinks she might have tasted his breath in that moment, shared the heat of him, felt the tremble of his mouth against her own just a moment before he kissed her, desperate and ragged and insistent.

Like trying to eat his own terror.

She’d known in that moment, and every moment after, that she’d never follow through on the promise – not so long as he lived.

His hand was hitching up her skirts, his groan filling her mouth, his own reckless promises painting her flesh, well before she’d finally recognized his demand as the plea it truly was.

Stay with me, his body had begged.

Yes, her own had granted.

           Sansa looks to Jon now, eyes easily catching the sharp line of his shoulders, and the clench of his jaw, and the evenness of his gaze on Lady Olenna.

           It must be so exhausting, she thinks, to live always on the precipice of death – to share an intimacy with it so violent that even to refuse it feels like a betrayal of the self.

           I’m not going back there alive.  She should have known not to say such words to him, after all.

           But perhaps that was the start of it, the catalyst to this dangerous dance between them.  He’s become so vibrant in her hands, so thrumming of life, so very not dead.

           She knows now, what it means to linger –

           Stay with me –

           She knows.

           “I never sought this crown.  And I’ve no intention to seek another,” Jon tells Olenna, low and resolute, his shoulders sagging with the weight of it.

           Never sought, no, but he’s grown covetous of it all the same, Sansa thinks.  And even still, Jon has made it clear where his interests lie.

           With the North, and with her.

           Nothing else can sway him.

           It’s the sort of truth that should trouble her, but she can’t find it in herself to be anything but covetous in return.

           “Well then,” Lady Olenna says, fingers linking together, a barely discernible smile crinkling the edges of her mouth.  “You might be the only one in this room who can claim as such.”  She chuckles, leaning back in her chair.  “I like you. Even if you are rather cross and sullen.”

           Jon blinks at her, mouth parting, but no words follow.

           Sansa ducks her head to hide her unexpected smile.

           “Highgarden agrees to the alliance,” she promises, eyes flitting to Sansa for the briefest of moments, “Granted this ‘evidence’ of yours makes itself known.”

           Sansa’s smile steals from her mouth instantly, eyes narrowing at Olenna.

           The older matriarch only shrugs, a hidden smile playing at her lips.

           “You’d follow this whelp?” Euron scoffs, leaning with one hand braced to his knee.  “Just because he can spin some pretty words?”

           Lord Glover almost upends his seat again, but Sansa’s instant narrowing of her eyes in his direction, chin lifted in a motion to heel, has him grumbling his acquiescence, settling back along his chair.

           Olenna grants Euron an unimpressed look, an amused huff leaving her lips.  “I owe you no justification, Lord – what was it?”  She pauses, considering.  “Are you even a lord?”  And then she waves her hand dismissively.  “Never mind, you’ve clearly already answered that.  I suppose even a dog may be allowed to beg for scraps at its master’s table.”

           Euron stands instantly, face screwed up in an ugly disdain.

           The room tenses.  Jon takes an even step forward.  Olenna smirks triumphantly.  Edmure frets uncomfortably.  Daenerys opens her mouth.  Sansa speaks.

           “Perhaps we should leave it at that today, my lords, my ladies.”  Sansa rises smoothly, hands clasped before her.  “I’m sure we each have much to discuss with our respective advisors.  I look forward to renewed talks tomorrow.”

           Jon glances to her, brows furrowed, his impatience warring with his exhaustion, before he nods imperceptibly.

           “I agree,” Tyrion interjects, turning to his queen.  “We have much to think on.”  His gaze is imploring, his mouth set into a thin line.

           Daenerys takes a deep breath, a dissatisfied expression gracing her features as she meets her Hand’s gaze.  Ser Jorah at her elbow is soft but firm when he addresses her. “Khaleesi.”

           She looks to him out of the corner of her eye, softening somewhat.

           The unexpected shift has Sansa blinking dumbly at them.  Words pass between the two, quiet and short, and then the dragon queen is rising swiftly from her chair, barely giving even the courtesy of a nod in farewell before she’s stalking from the room, her advisors in tow.

           Jon closes his eyes and releases a breath, frown deepening.

           In moments, the hall is all but cleared, and Sansa stays watching the silhouette of Jon in the afternoon sun breaking through the windows.  Her lips purse tight, her words stalling in her throat.

           His shadow stretches long, she finds.  Its edge peters out just before the toe of her boots.

* * *

           Jon finds his way to Sansa’s rooms that night, greeting Brienne at the door with a weary face and a sigh of exhaustion. “Will you announce me, my lady?”

           “Of course, Your Grace.”  Brienne tips her head in a motion of respect.  “Ah,” she says, straightening, voice dipping to a whisper, “My lady is in conference with your sister at the moment.”  Her eyes shift down the hall momentarily, watchful.

           Jon nods, voice low.  “I expected as much.  Announce me, Lady Brienne.”

           Brienne raps on the door, short and expedient. “His Grace to see you, my lady,” she calls through the door.

           “Come in,” sounds through the wood in Sansa’s familiar lilt.

           Brienne opens the door for him and Jon stills immediately upon stepping through.

           Seated across from Sansa in a similar armchair by the fire, leaning closely toward her, is Baelish.  For a moment, Jon’s vision goes white, a sharp breath sucked through his lungs, rage rising in his throat, until he remembers.

           (His slumped form along the snow beneath the wierwood, the wash of blood over his chin, the curl of his frozen, grasping fingers stiffened into claws.)

           Baelish is dead.

           The familiar face turns to him.

           Arya, he has to remind himself, the breath raking from him slow and measured.

           She cocks a brow in Baelish’s face that has Jon’s expression souring instantly, the unease branching through his chest.

           “Jon,” Sansa greets, grabbing his attention.

           He looks to her, shaking his head, shutting the door behind him.  “Sorry, I – I just – ”

           The eerie copy of Littlefinger stands with a sigh and a decidedly un-Baelish-like roll of the eyes.  “Please, Jon, you can’t have this reaction every time you see me like this.”  She plants her hands on her hips and Jon scrunches his nose up at the sight.

           Arya sighs dramatically, hands thrown up in the air as she stalks toward him and the door.  “Gods, what I would give to be back home and out of this skin.”

           The words sober Jon instantly.

           Arya stops just before him, catching the look on his face.  He doesn’t know if he’s any good at hiding it, but then, hiding never did him any good when it came to Arya.

           It’s hardly the first skin she’s worn, he realizes. hardly the first life she’s taken.  His little sister.  His Arya.

           Something constricts inside his chest dangerously like regret.

           Arya seems to see something in his face, because her expression schools back into a keen observation so naturally reminiscent of Baelish’s own attentive eyes that Jon has a difficult time separating the two. It only makes his chest clench tighter.

           A stilted silence passes between them, until Sansa is clearing her throat, standing from her seat with a soft grace that flutters her skirts about her legs.  “Keep clear of Lord Varys,” she warns Arya.  “We cannot know if your act will fool him well enough.”

           Arya turns back to Sansa with a single piqued brow.

           Sansa huffs.  “You’ll be careful?” she presses.

           Lifting her chin, smoothing her hands down the silk front of her robe, Arya nods her acknowledgement, the incredulous expression leaving Littlefinger’s face at the note of concern lining Sansa’s voice.  “As careful as a mockingbird.”

           It’s not the kind of comfort Jon thinks Sansa is looking for, if he’s going by the worried expression on her face, but it’s the only kind of comfort he imagines Arya capable of.  It’s just another piece of truth to mourn.

           Arya turns back to Jon, watching him for a quiet, tense moment.

           The steady stare of Baelish this close is unnerving, to be sure, but perhaps even more unnerving is the subtle recognition of Arya’s own stare through a dead man’s eyes.

           She looks to Sansa for a moment, and then turns back to Jon, frown deepening, brows furrowing.  “Do not disgrace her in our mother’s house,” she tells him quietly but firmly, a slip of her own voice threading through the words.

           Jon blinks at her, the image of Baelish throwing him even now.

           Sansa scoffs indignantly, arms crossed behind Arya.

           But Arya only has eyes for their brother.

           Jon nods, unable to curb the pain that etches across his face, the resentment.  “I wouldn’t,” he answers her.

           Arya nods just the once, lips pursed, thoughtful. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day,” she says.

           Jon gives her a moment, expecting something further.  When she only stares at him, he rubs at his chin, words coming haltingly and unsure. “Yes, it will be,” he says finally, hesitant to say more.

           Arya’s mouth thins into a line as she clears her throat, a quiet affection coloring her words now.  “You should get some rest.”  And then she’s stalking from the room, shutting the door behind her without a further farewell.

           Jon stares at the closed door for many long moments.

           “She loves us,” Sansa says softly.  “She does.”

           Jon stays staring at the door, a sigh leaving him.

           “Perhaps she isn’t rather adept at showing it but – ”

           “Sansa,” he interrupts, finally turning to her, a hand rubbing at his mouth as he tries to shake off the lingering unease.

           She lifts her brows expectantly, arms uncrossing, the indignation having bled from her instantly.

           (She doesn’t stay mad at her sister for long these days, but Jon is too hesitant to name such a thing as hopeful.)

           He softens his features, catching the thrum of disquiet in her stiff posture.  “I know,” he tells her, attempting a smile.

           Sansa nods, lip pulled between her teeth.  She glances out the window, hands smoothing over her skirts.  “Well then,” she starts, looking back to him far more put together than she had been only moments before.  She motions a hand toward the now vacant seat across from her.  “Your Grace,” she offers.

           Jon takes the chair easily, shrugging off his cloak – her cloak.  He catches the way her eyes follow it when he sets it along the back of his chair and a flare of prideful possession streaks through him.  His hand curls along the furs before releasing reluctantly, settling across from her.

           Sansa takes her own seat gracefully.

           Jon leans his elbows along his thighs, hands grasped between his knees.  An exhaustive sigh leaves him.  “Arya has word about Meereen then?”

           Sansa nods, leaning back in her chair. “Baelish’s sources say the city has fallen into disarray.  Daenerys’ appointed representative, Daario Naharis, and the small council she established before leaving, have been slaughtered.  It’s chaos in the streets, last we heard.”

           Jon nods, gaze dark and considering.  “We can use that.”

           “It’s a fine line to walk.”

           He raises a brow in question.

           Sansa brushes at a wrinkle in her skirt.  “It can sway the other kingdoms to our side if they see that their alternative is incompetent when it comes to governance, but calling out such incompetence could also wound her pride enough to make her withdraw.”  She levels a meaningful look Jon’s way.  “And Bran was adamant we sway her to our side, as well.”

           Jon groans, shaking his head.  “She sees herself as a savior, he said.”

           “Yes.”

           He frowns.  “And how do we use that?”

           Sansa purses her lips, silence overtaking her for long moments while she turns the question over in her head.  He can very nearly see the moment illumination lights her features.  “Give her a target,” she says in answer finally.

           “I haven’t exactly kept the Night’s King a secret, Sansa,” he says exasperatedly.  “If ever there was a target for her, that would be it.”

           Sansa shakes her head, a huff leaving her.  “You’re thinking about this all wrong.”

           Jon’s frown deepens, head cocking like a reminder for caution.

           Sansa sits a touch straighter, her hands curling over her armrests in anticipation.  “She hasn’t gone to King’s Landing yet.  Why?”

           His brows draw down.  “Because her enemies are no longer there.”

           “Precisely.  And yet she claims the people are clamoring for her deliverance.  So why won’t she go?”

           Unclasping his hands, Jon leans back in his chair, huffing his frustration.  “I don’t fucking know, Sansa, I’m hardly privy to her council.”

           Sansa’s nostrils flare with her momentary annoyance. “Think, Jon.”

           “Oh, like I’m not trying to?”

           “Not very hard, it seems.”

           “Sansa,” he warns, a hot expel of breath.

           Sansa shakes her head, hand outstretched to stop his admonishment.  “Listen to me, Jon, please.  Just listen.”

           He gives her a spiteful look, but he does not argue further.

           “Starvation and anarchy are hardly foes she can burn into subservience,” she says.

           Jon blinks at her, the realization slow and half-formed.

           She continues.  “Her crusade for freedom across Slaver’s Bay only worked temporarily because, while crucifying the Masters and burning their ships makes for an intimidating show of power, it doesn’t solve any of the problems still plaguing the cities.  She’s not a ruler.  She’s a conqueror.  It’s what she does best.  So we give her someone to conquer.  We give her a body, a living, tangible foe.  We give her a target in the North and she will go North.”

           Jon stands swiftly, hand swiping over his mouth as he stalks to the hearth.  “Sansa, what exactly are you suggesting?”  He looks back at her with dark eyes, half-shrouded in firelight.

           She swallows tightly, rising from her seat as well. “We need Jaime Lannister.”

           Jon’s jaw tightens at the name, drawing in a deep breath.  “We’ve no indication he even believes us, let alone has any inclination to fight for the living.”

           “Brienne vouches for him.”

           Scoffing, Jon gives her an incredulous look.  “And that’s enough to think he’d join us?”

           Sansa steps closer, hands clasping nervously before her.  Jon eyes the motion with a sense of foreboding.  She makes it to the other side of the hearth, standing across from him, when she finally speaks.  “He knew I didn’t kill Cersei.  More importantly, he knew I couldn’t.”

           Jon stares at her, a tightness in his chest.

           He remembers when Bran told them the news, the raven’s scroll from King’s Landing slipping unread from his still-gloved fingers as the three of them met in Winterfell’s dawn-lit rookery.

           He remembers the harsh laugh that broke from Sansa, streaking through the silence with a brand of delirium so striking he actually took a step back from her.

           But she couldn’t stop, a hand braced to her chest, the other moving to steady herself along the rail, her eyes glistening, laughing and laughing and gasping, chest heaving, face screwed up in sudden pain, fingers curled around the rail, her other hand clutching the hook-and-chain necklace at her throat, and then she’s sobbing so instantly her body actually quakes with it, a laugh choked into a wail, and she’s sinking down suddenly, knees giving way, dragging her form down the rail, gasping, keening, howling.

           He’d been unable to do anything for long, immutable moments but stare – watching the wash of relief and grief and release rake through her like a storm.

           He remembers leaning down behind her and gripping her shoulders, pulling her back to his chest and holding her through it.

           When he’d looked up next, Bran was already gone.

           “That doesn’t mean anything, Sansa,” he grits out. It’s a lie, he knows.  Because it has to mean something.

           Sansa closes her eyes, breathes deep, and something shutters beneath her skin he hasn’t a name for.  It’s gone the instant she opens her eyes again.  “It means there’s still something he wants.”

           Jon steps closer, a growl brewing in his throat, the realization inking into color a moment too late.  “Sansa – ”

           “Tell him we can give him his sister’s killer.”

           Jon expels a harsh breath with a muttered curse, dragging a hand through his hair.  “Seven hells, Sansa, you can’t just – ”

           She closes the distance between them instantly, eyes imploring on his, the heat of the fire licking across their forms.  “I don’t mean giving up Arya.  I’d never – I couldn’t – ”  She stops, swallows, eyes shifting anxiously between his.

           Had she expected him to think that of her? Had she expected him to know her so little?  Jon’s shoulders slump at the thought.  He reaches for her arms instinctively, a familiar measure of comfort between them, his rough palms curling around her elbows.  “Sansa,” he breathes lowly, evenly, “Tell me what you mean.”

           She relaxes somewhat, face softening.  “He’s a remnant of a man, Jon.”  The words come out sad beyond measure and Jon doesn’t know what to do with them.  In the wake of his silence, Sansa reaches up, curling her fingers along the leather of his jerkin, eyes fixed to the motion.  “This grief has unmade him.  It’s plain for all to see.  He has nothing left.”

           Jon’s hands slip up her arms and then slowly back down, watching the curve of firelight dip across the bare edge of her collarbone.

           He doesn’t like to think about what that sort of grief would feel like – what that kind of loss does to a man.

           (He doesn’t like to think that he understands Jamie Lannister, if only a little, if only when his fingertips bare their mark on his own sister.)

           “He has nothing left but vengeance.”

           Jon blinks back up at Sansa.  “You mean to use it.”

           She nods, lips pursed tight.

           “And Arya…?”

           “We have Baelish’s spies, his face, his influence. Let us use it.  Let us offer Jaime Lannister a chance at the vengeance he craves.  Arya will be safest when she’s the one controlling the information he receives.”

           “And when he comes North with us, when he agrees to this alliance – ”

           “It will be the largest threat to Daenerys’ sovereignty.  She cannot take such an alliance lightly, especially when the other kingdoms inevitably fall in line.  She’d never allow such an alliance unless she had a hand in it, and she’d want to keep a watchful eye, work to dissolve it from the inside, rain fire and blood if she had to.  But she would go North.  She would not leave her enemies to treat with each other behind her back.  If we cannot tempt her empathy, then we must tempt her with this.”

           Jon heaves a labored sigh, thumbs brushing along the material of her sleeves, winding slow and unmeasured circles.  His eyes fix to the motion.  “Even if she helps us win against the dead, how can you be sure she won’t turn on us the instant the war is won?”

           Sansa sighs, hands uncurling from his jerkin, smoothing over his chest.  “I have to trust that Bran would not urge us to bring her North if he didn’t have the knowledge we’d need to protect against her.”

           The discontent brews in his chest, releasing itself in a gruff exhale.  “Such a risk…”

           “I trust our brother.”

           Jon clenches his jaw, his eyes roving her face, leaning toward her without realizing it.  He stops breaths away from her.  He lifts a hand to trace up her arm, along her shoulder, dipping down toward her collarbone.

           Sansa sucks a breath between her teeth, swift and quiet.  She does not pull from him.

           Jon’s eyes follow the trail his fingers make along the edge of her dress.  “The lords will not like an alliance with the Lannisters.  I’m not sure I like an alliance with the Lannisters.”

           Sansa huffs, and the sound almost makes him laugh, his smile a worn and weathered thing when it touches his lips.

           “They will follow you if you lead them,” she tells him, and it seems such a simple thing when she says it.  It seems such a simple, indisputable thing.

           His eyes flick down to her lips, his hand around her elbow dragging her to him, bracing her against his chest as his other hand slips back along the nape of her neck.  He revels in the mute gasp that leaves her parted lips, the flex of her throat beneath her swallow.  “You can be so sure?” he asks, not knowing why it should matter so much.  Not knowing and yet –

           Knowing exactly.

           “King Jon of House Stark” she’d called him.

           (How he wants to hear the words again – how he wants to watch them stain her lips when he takes her.)

           Sansa lifts her chin, baring her pale throat in the low firelight.  “They’ve followed you thus far,” she says.  “They will follow you further yet.”

           She’s a slight thing, even for her height – all spine and teeth – but she fills his hands seamlessly, his palms fitting perfectly to the mold of her.

           “Tell me again,” he whispers at her mouth, suddenly ragged with the need, suddenly quaking in his own skin.

           Sansa’s brows dip down in confusion, her mouth parting.

           Jon steps into her, walking her back, past the hearth, its flames spitting hot and unrelenting at their retreating forms through the shadows. Sansa stumbles when she hits the desk, one hand going out to steady herself along the ledge, the other still held at his chest.  “Jon,” she breathes, voice catching.

           “Tell me again,” he demands.  “King Jon of House Stark…”  It’s a heavy pant at her lips.

           Sansa’s eyes flash with understanding.

           He presses his hips to hers, pins her there against the desk.  He braces his mouth just above hers, his hand winding into her hair to keep her to him. “My name,” he tells hers – begs her, teeth clenching behind a desperate mouth.

           Sansa slides her hand up his chest and then along his neck, sinking into his hair.  “Your Grace,” she breathes at his mouth, fingers clenching at the nape of his neck.

           With a throaty moan, Jon’s hand leaves her arm and winds around her waist, fisting in the folds of her dress, digging into her hip with an urgency that sets them both to trembling.  “Sansa,” he pants against her.

           “My king,” she whispers darkly, and he groans in response, hand clenching in her hair, tongue wetting his lips, breath raking from him in ragged, unrepentant bursts – so close, so devastatingly close – and damn Arya’s warning, damn their disgrace – not now, not here – with her so warm and pliant in his hands and he leans in, eyes fluttering closed, a needy sigh already teasing his lips, the taste of her – just there – and –

           A knock at the door.

           Jon groans his frustration, lips half a whisper from hers, hands already fisted in her hair and her dress and the intoxicating, breathless whole of her.

           “Your Grace,” sounds Davos’ voice through the door.

           Jon pulls back from her, just slightly, just enough to meet her eyes.  “What is it?” he barks.

           Sansa hums quietly at his chest, nails dragging at the base of his skull.

           Jon closes his eyes to the lure, smothering his own impulses.

           A quiet shuffle sounds on the other side of the door, and then his Hand clears his throat.  “A raven from Eastwatch, Your Grace.”

           Jon glances toward the door, mouth parting. He looks back to Sansa in his arms, watches the shift of heat in her eyes dim to a familiar cold calculation.

           “Tormund,” he says softly, eyes still fixed to hers.

           She nods, seems to steady herself, head dipping low, breath easing into something slow and manageable, her fingers thrumming just the once along the nape of his neck to return his attention.  “Go,” she tells him, when they finally lock gazes again.

           Jon swallows thickly, hesitating, his chest still heaving, his mouth still aching for hers.

Her hand slips from his neck and he feels the loss instantly.  “Go,” she says again, almost reproachfully this time.

He growls his frustration – with Davos’ interruption, with Tormund’s sudden letter, with her own sense of practicality.  Jon curses beneath a sharp exhale – a heady, breathless thing – but he’s already pulling from her, already disentangling from her enticing heat.  He nods, lips turned into a harsh frown.

           She releases him first, but her touch lingers long after he’s left her side.

* * *

           The summit recommences the next morning. Everyone resumes their places from the day before, and Sansa has to admit to her surprise at every seat still being filled.  She half-expected to find certain lords (and queens) to have abandoned their efforts at peace.  There is hope yet, she finds.

           Or perhaps that is being generous.  Perhaps it is better to say that there are still demands to be made.  Perhaps it isn’t peace that keeps them here at all.

           It is of little matter, she tells herself. Jon will get them North, one way or another.  This she knows, because to accept anything less makes them as good as dead already.

           Sansa glances to Theon beside her, eyes searching. He shakes his head slowly, a grim expression on his face.

           No word from Yara, then.

           Sansa takes a deep breath in, turns back to the floor, to her brother making his way to the center once greetings have been properly addressed.

           “My lords and ladies,” he starts, and then to Daenerys, “Your Grace.”

           She nods appreciatively.

           Jon continues briskly.  “I’ll not waste any more time.”  He raises a hand, an unfurled raven scroll resting between his fingers.  “Last night I received a raven from Tormund Giantsbane at Eastwatch.  The army of the dead is already at the Wall.”

           Murmurs break out amongst the crowd, unsettling them. Tyrion steps out from beside his queen to reach for the scroll.  

Jon hands it to him for confirmation, not waiting to continue.  “I don’t think you all quite understand the level of this threat, the numbers we’re facing.”  His voice is low, gravelly, a strum of anger already lighting it.

           They’ve wasted enough time already, to have come to this.

           “The dead are quite literally climbing the Wall,” he stresses, pacing the room to look each occupant in the eye. “Thousands of them – hordes of them – climbing over each other, body upon body toward the top, cascading over the edge like a waterfall.”

           Sansa closes her eyes to the image, her throat tightening beneath the latent fear.  She smothers it well.

           “A fall like that may kill a man, but the dead feel no such effects.  They topple over the wall in a flood, resuming their march on the other side – on our side.  And they do not stop,” he bellows, looking around the room.  “The dead have no need for sleep, or food, or rest of any sort.  We’re losing precious time.  And we need to be there now.”

           Daenerys bends her ear to Tyrion when he returns to her side, something whispered between them that never makes it to air. Jaime sits straighter in his seat, eyes focused in a way Sansa hasn’t seen before.  Euron stews impatiently in his own seat.

           Jon gives the crowd a moment, but only a moment, and then he’s plowing on.  “The time has passed to argue the North’s sincerity.  You either believe me, or you don’t.  But that isn’t the point anymore.  So, let’s cut all the horseshit and talk about why we’re all really here, hmm?” His eyes grow hard.  “Everyone in this room wants something.  Now, some of those things are in my power to grant, but others,” he says, gaze flickering toward Daenerys, “are not – and neither should they be.”

           “If I may – ” Tyrion starts, never getting the chance to finish.

           “Theon Greyjoy,” Jon calls out, turning to the man swiftly.

           Tyrion stares dumbly at Jon as he ignores him.

           Theon blinks up at Jon, standing swiftly, a measure of uncertainty lighting his frame, even with his shoulders straight and chin raised.  “Your Grace,” he answers.

           “You and your sister want the North’s support for her claim as queen of the Iron Islands, and our acknowledgement of your kingdom’s independence.”

           Theon’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. Finally, he simply nods, hands folding behind his back.

           Jon eyes him darkly, and for a moment, Sansa thinks he may take it all back.  His word, his assurance, his trust.  She sucks a quiet breath between her teeth, wanting to reach for Theon and yet knowing that she shouldn’t.  She stays deathly still – hanging on a precipice.

           Jon’s eyes find hers for the briefest of moments, something passing over his gaze she can’t identify, but then he’s looking back at Theon, and she has to remind herself to breathe.

           “You shall have it,” Jon says finally, jaw clenching after the words.

           Euron scoffs across from them, moving to rise in objection when Daenerys’ upheld hand halts him.  She stays watching the exchange intently, lips dipped into a frown. Euron grumbles his reluctance as he retakes his seat.  

           “Your Grace,” Theon says, half question, half disbelief, his brows dipping low, and Sansa wants to hold him suddenly.  She resists the urge to the point of pain.

           Jon doesn’t forgive Theon, she knows, and he might not ever.  But she has never asked him to, and never will.  She has learned to lay her brothers down in the deep.  She has learned to let them rest.  Not because forgiveness comes easier to her, but because survival does.

           Sansa learned long ago to bury her loves, or they will bury her.  It started with Lady, and then never seemed to stop.  There are holes in her heart dug in the shape of graves, and she knows now that some unearthings can never be.

           She does not ask of Jon what he cannot give.

           “Lady Olenna,” he goes on, turning to the Tyrell matriarch.  Theon sits back down, hands fluttering over his knees in a motion to calm.

           Sansa blinks back the ache, focusing.

           Olenna cocks her head at Jon in expectance, a familiar, challenging smirk tugging at her lips.

           Jon nods to her.  “You want my assurance that I’ll not seek another crown – that the North keeps to the North and does not interfere with the sovereignty of the other kingdoms.”

           Her only answer is a purse of her lips, a lone nail tapping along her armrest.

           “You shall have it.”

           “And your proof of the dead?” she eggs on, smirk still steadily put.

           Jon releases a low chuckle, hand wiping down his mouth.  “And my proof,” he repeats, mumbling the sentiment as though to himself.  He shakes his head, not even sparing Theon a glance. “That’s seeming more and more unlikely as time persists.”

           Olenna steeples her hands together over her lap, considering, but Jon isn’t one to linger.

           “Ser Jaime,” he says, turning to the Lannister knight.

           A single, cocked brow is his only acknowledgement.

           Jon licks his lips, fingers flexing at his sides. “You want your sister’s killer.”

           A thick silence pervades the room.  Tyrion dips his head, shoulders bunching with his unsteady exhale.  Jaime stares unblinkingly at Jon, his one good hand curled stiffly over the armrest.

           Jon takes a breath, jaw grinding.  “You shall have it,” he promises lowly.

           Jaime stands swiftly, pushing from his seat with such a fervency Jon’s Northern guard shifts into a ready stance, the clang of their arms resounding in the room.

           Everything goes eerily still.

           Jaime stands staring at Jon, his face screwed up into a visage of quiet wrath, a dangerously still vehemence.  “What did you say?” he breathes out, the words slipping through bared teeth.

           To her credit, Arya does not flinch a single muscle in Baelish’s skin.  Sansa can see her watching the exchange from her place two seats down from the Protector of the Vale.  Somewhere behind Sansa, Brienne shifts, a barely-heard rustle of armor.  But it’s there all the same.

           Jon turns fully to Jaime.  “The North will pledge to search for Cersei’s killer and bring her to justice.”

           Somewhere behind him, Lord Glover grumbles a curse but Lady Mormont’s sharp gaze silences him.  Sansa sends the girl a grateful look and Lyanna nods in return, chin tilted high.

           Jaime takes a step closer, stiff and warring. “You know who killed her?”

           “No,” Jon lies easily enough, a trickle of pity lining his voice just enough to lend it some truth.  “But we will.”  A short pause.  “Lord Baelish,” he calls, turning to the mock Littlefinger.

           Arya offers a perfectly piqued brow.

           “You are a man of the world.  You must lend your efforts to Ser Jaime’s quest. Commit your resources to discovering Cersei Lannister’s murderer.”

           In Baelish’s skin, Arya takes an expected moment of silence, seeming to consider the request (or command, rather).  She doesn’t spare a glance to either of her siblings, only nodding slowly to Jaime, a twist to her lips with just enough reluctance to seem credible.

           Jaime exhales loudly, staggering back a step, eyes fixed to the false Littlefinger.  There’s a pleading to his gaze that strikes Sansa with its earnestness, its unhindered sincerity.  She tightens her hands over her lap at the sight.

           Jon glances to his Northern guard, motioning for them to stand down.  Jaime drops back down to his seat, glancing over to Tyrion.  They stare silently at each other, and Tyrion is the first to look away, a wet sheen to his eyes that Sansa does not miss.  It is hard for her to fathom anyone mourning the loss of Cersei Lannister, but then she remembers that day long ago in the gilded cage that was King’s Landing.

           “Love no one but your children.  On that front a mother has no choice.”

           It’s perhaps the most honest, the most vulnerable, that Cersei has ever been with her.  The moment wears at Sansa some nights, when she lays awake staring at the ceiling, an unspeakable sadness crashing through her.

           Perhaps Cersei’s greatest mistake was in loving all the wrong people in all the wrong ways.

           Sansa blinks back the sudden wetness at her eyes.

           It doesn’t matter.  It never did.  Because dead is dead, and there is no way to love that into un-being.  

She knows.  She’s tried.

(The muddy steps at Baelor’s Sept will always be the start and end of every nightmare she ever has.)

Jon sighs heavily, shifting to face Daenerys, brows dipping down in consternation.

Sansa turns away from Jaime, ignoring the way he stares blandly at the floor, eyes grievous, jaw tight.

“Your Grace,” Jon addresses, stepping closer.

Daenerys lifts an interested brow, a look of amused curiosity crossing her features.

He licks his lips, taking a steadying breath.  “You want the North – and others – ” he says, motioning toward the room, particularly to the silent, dwelling Jaime Lannister, “to declare you our queen, to welcome back a Targaryen reign – to bend the knee.”

Daenerys looks on smugly, back straight, a regality to her posture that Sansa imagines took years to turn from practiced to intrinsic.  

           Silently, Sansa waits for the break.

           “But I cannot give you that,” Jon says firmly, eyes never leaving the dragon queen.

           The room goes dead for many moments, and Sansa swears she can hear her pulse thrumming frantically in her own ears. She swallows back the trepidation, eyeing the room cautiously for any particular reactions.

           Most telling is Daenerys herself, of course. It takes her a moment, a perfectly groomed eyebrow twitching in displeasure, but the shadow that crosses her face can be called nothing but Targaryen in its darkness.

           Tyrion’s eyes widen, and he glances swiftly to his queen, then back to Jon, stepping forward as though to speak.  Daenerys beats him to it.

           “Just as much as you want me for an ally, Jon Snow, you would not want me for an enemy,” she guarantees evenly, a touch of calm to her voice that tells Sansa she is no stranger to voicing such threats.

           It tightens the ball of anxiety in her stomach.

           Euron smirks beside her.

           Ser Davos tries for diplomacy.  “Your Grace, please.”  He takes a deep breath.  “You’ve come to Westeros at an ill time.  We’ve barely survived the carnage that the War of the Five Kings rained across the continent, and our people are tired of war and subjugation.  A man just wants to till his own soil, to put food on the table for his wife and children, to swear to a lord that honors the protection of his own.  That is the kind of freedom the North – and Westeros – wants.”

           “And you think I cannot give them that?” she challenges, chest heaving with her indignant breath.

           Jon steps forward, standing partially in front of his Hand.  “What I think is that the last city you promised such freedom to has paid that price tenfold in blood.  So, you’ll forgive us our skepticism, Your Grace.”

           Her lips purse, nails digging into her armrests. “Come again?”

           False-Baelish rises smoothly from his seat before Jon can speak further.  “Your Grace, you must know by now the fate of Meereen?  Your last conquest?”

           “Know what?” she snaps.

           Arya lets slip a barely held smirk across Baelish’s thin lips.  “Daario Naharis is dead, Your Grace, as is the council you put in place before you abandoned the city.  The Masters have made war on their former slaves.  The streets run red with the blood of your promised ‘freedom’.”

           Sansa sometimes thinks Arya plays her part too well, or rather that she enjoys it too well.  Either way, it gets them a reaction.

           At first, Daenerys is stiff, hardly moving, her eyes widening only minutely with what seems to be a previously unknown revelation, her nostrils flaring in her outrage.  But then something shifts, a crease to her brow, a quiver to her jaw, the quick blinking of her violet eyes.  It’s gone but a moment after it passes over her face.

           Daario Naharis.

           Sansa’s eyes narrow at the dragon queen.  There was affection there.  Perhaps there still is.  Her heart clenches at the realization, a sliver of empathy bleeding out into the light.  She smothers it instantly.

           Daenerys clears her throat, the momentary exposure shuttered up with cool authority.  “Lord Varys,” she calls, glancing toward him out of the corner of her eye.

           He steps forward gracefully, head bowed.

           “Is this true?”  Her voice is low, a decibel away from being called a hiss.

           Varys glances toward Baelish, eyes narrowed in consideration, a thoughtful breath leaving him.  Eventually, he nods, his face shifting into one of remorse.  “I apologize, Your Grace, for not informing you early.  I thought the news would…detract you from your current goal.”

           Her spine snaps impossibly straighter.  “You are not responsible for deciding what it is I should or should not know, Lord Varys.  You will inform, and you will advise, but you will not omit.  You will not presume to think for me, do you understand?”

           “Of course, Your Grace.”  Another bow of his head, hands still hidden in his sleeves. He keeps his gaze from Baelish this time, flicking toward Sansa instead.

           She sucks a mute breath through her lips, face a blank visage, giving nothing away.

           He only looks just a moment, but it’s enough to prickle her skin with unease.

           “I suppose that’s what you should expect when you leave the running of state to a sellsword,” Lady Olenna throws out, shifting in her seat to a more comfortable position.

           Daenerys gives her an unamused look.

           Olenna rolls her eyes in the most ladylike fashion Sansa has yet to master.

           “My queen, we must continue to look forward,” Tyrion interrupts, stepping up to her seat, just at her side.  He raises his hand as though to settle it over hers on the armrest, perhaps in comfort, but a swift glance from her stills his hand mid-air. He flexes his fist, dropping his arm back to his side.

           Sansa watches the quiet exchange with interest.

           Tyrion clears his throat.  “Your vision takes time.  It takes patience, and endurance, and fortitude.  But Westeros can only benefit from such vision.”  He looks about the room, addressing the rest of the occupants now.  “You say you want freedom?  Well, sitting here before you is the Breaker of Chains.  You want a strong leader?  They call her Mhysa and the Unburnt.  You want a way to win against this ‘Night’s King’?  She is the Mother of Dragons!”  He pauses, takes a breath, steadies his voice.  “We’ve all had our failings – some of us more than most.”  He hardly dares to meet Jaime’s eyes across the way.  “There isn’t a person in this room who can say otherwise,” he says critically, voice hardening.  “But Daenerys is the queen we need.  Now – at the edge of this ‘Long Night’ – and always.”

           Sansa bristles at the words – even more so with the fervency with which he says them.

           This is not the man she remembers.  But then, none of them are who she remembers. Every person in this room is a stranger of sorts – even Jon.

           None of these faces filled her childhood.  It is not something she mourns.  It is just a truth.  Just the way of life.

           (She does not think she could have Jon the way she does now if he still wore the face from her childhood.)

           “You’ll forgive my reluctance to follow a Targaryen, brother,” Jaime says finally, “given my history with the last one I served.  A pretty face is not enough to save you from madness.”

           Daenerys flashes unforgiving eyes his way.  “Brave words from a murderer.”

           Jaime leans forward suddenly, face screwed into something ugly.  “And I’d murder him again, given the chance.”

           Daenerys steals a heated breath through her lungs, eyes darkening dangerously, mouth curling into a sharp scowl.  “Shall I just present my back to you now?  Would that be sufficient invitation?”

           “’Burn them all’,” Sansa says with a dark inflection, the words staining her lips in their heat.

           Daenerys snaps her violet gaze to her, sharp and focused, mouth tipped open as though to speak, but no words come.

    ��      Jaime turns stiffly to her as well, but his gaze shifts quickly to the sworn shield at her back, and she doesn’t have to look at Brienne to know that she’s staring resolutely away from Jaime.  Sansa swallows tightly, meeting Daenerys’ incredulous stare.  “That’s what your father told him.”

           Murmurs break out across the room once more, and Jon swings his startled gaze to Sansa.

           (It’d been a moment of quiet confidence when Brienne admitted to her conversation with Jaime, his confession in the hot pools. She’d vouched for him, and not without reason.)

           This is the man who almost killed their father in the open streets, bringing him to his knees, and back into the Lannister fold, where he eventually lost his head.  

           Sansa swallows down the bile.

           This is also the man who killed the king who brutally murdered their grandfather and uncle, who would have brutally murdered more, had he not acted.

           She is tired of trying to understand Lannisters. She doesn’t want to anymore. She wants nothing to do with them, really.  But she’s played the game long enough to know that sometimes enemies make the best allies, when you know how to shift the board.  She won’t forget that lesson easily.

           Baelish taught it to her well, after all.

           (Some wounds linger, she remembers.)

           “Just before Ser Jaime here stuck a blade in him, that’s what your father said – with caches of wildfire buried beneath King’s Landing.  ‘Burn them all’.”

           Daenerys swallows thickly, eyes riveted to hers.  Her ire bleeds from her slowly, almost imperceptibly, if one wasn’t watching closely enough.

           But Sansa is watching.

           The murmurs around the hall grow louder, shouts interspersing the rush of whispers, a wave of agitation and confusion sweeping over the room.

           “Would you do the same?” Sansa asks her evenly, gaze a frost blue.

           Daenerys opens her mouth, stops, huffs her frustration, clamps her mouth shut tightly.  The words pry beneath her skin, Sansa knows.

           “Would you do the same, Your Grace?” she urges, not letting up.

           Chin raised, Daenerys blinks back the daze.  “I am not my father,” she seethes, voice a tremulous wind, something of pain seeping through.

           Sansa only stares at her.  Jon sighs, wiping a hand down his mouth, looking about the room.

           “Your Grace,” Ser Davos begins, an imploring look on his face, “You’ve given us no proof of that one way or the other.  But perhaps, this is your chance.”

           Daenerys throws a withering look at Davos, but she makes no comment.

           “The last Targaryen to sit the Iron Throne murdered our grandfather and uncle in open court, and then demanded that Lord Arryn of the Vale break guest right and kill our father, as well,” Sansa continues, back straight in her seat.  “King Aerys broke faith with his lordships first, and the Starks have more reason than most to refuse Targaryen rule, yet here we are, asking you for help, putting aside past grievances – justified grievances – because none of this will matter if we don’t stop the dead.  None of this will matter when we are the dead.”

           Daenerys takes a heavy breath, the ire now dimmed in her eyes.

           Jon steps forward, dark eyes steady on Daenerys. “Make no mistake, Your Grace, that’s exactly what’ll happen if we don’t stand together – all of us, every single person here.”  He turns to take in the room.  “I can’t promise that we’ll win.  I can only promise that the North will fight regardless.  Now, I’ve come here to ask the same of you.  You’ve all heard my arguments, and you’ve made your demands.  But it’s time to decide.  I understand if you need your proof, but the North can’t wait any longer.  The dead are already at our door and we leave for Winterfell in the morning, with or without allies.”  He looks pointedly at Jaime, a barely discernible nod sent his way.

           Euron looks as though he’s ready to object when Daenerys’ upraised hand silences him in his seat.  He grumbles reluctantly, but she’s looking at Jon with an expression of serious consideration.  Sansa is too practical to call the feeling that brews in her chest hopeful, however.

           Another silence pervades the room, this one so stilted and heavy that Sansa can feel it in her lungs.  A shuffle of feet here, the creak of a chair there.  A cough, a grumble, the rustle of fabric as someone shifts in their seat.  It’s suffocating suddenly – this stagnation, this utter and useless stillness.

           Sansa wants to howl for it.

           “You won’t be leaving alone, Your Grace.”

           Sansa’s gaze snaps to her uncle, watching wide-eyed as Edmure Tully is the one to rise from his seat, hands tugging his jerkin into place, chin raised even while his jaw quakes.  He nods to Jon, swallowing tightly before speaking.  “The Tullys broke bread with the Starks once, not so long ago.”  His gaze shifts to Sansa, infinitely tender and resolute all at once.  “’Family, duty, honor’.  I’ll be damned if I’m the first Tully who disgraces those words.”

           Sansa’s heart swells.

           Just behind her, Brynden lets a gruff smile grace his features, eyes crinkling.

           Jon’s brows rise in surprise, but only for a moment, before his face softens into a weary gratitude, nodding stiffly.  An appreciative smile tugs at his lips as he allows himself the smallest sigh of relief.

           Sansa cannot hide her smile at the sight, glancing down to her lap.

           “The Vale is with you, Your Grace,” Lord Royce pledges as he stands, glancing down toward Robin, who looks up at him only mildly alarmed before he settles back in his seat at the nod of reassurance both Royce and Baelish give him.  “Aye,” the young lord croaks out, clearing his throat, trying again.  “Aye, King Jon, you have the Vale as well.”  Robin puffs his chest out with the words, shoulders pulled back in a show of confidence Sansa is sure he doesn’t entirely feel, but is grateful for, nonetheless.

           Jon turns to address the rest of the lords but never gets the chance.  The sound of boots thumping on the hard stone sounds just moments before a Northern guard bursts through the door to the hall, panting, eyes wide.  “Your Grace!  Your Grace!” he shouts, taking a large gulp of air after his apparent sprint.

           Davos stands swiftly.  “What is it, man?”

           “At the gate,” he says, bracing his hands to his knees as he tries to breathe.  “It’s – it’s Yara Greyjoy!”

           Theon jolts to a stand, eyes wide, and the room erupts behind him, Euron the loudest of them.

           It’s moments later that Yara breaks into the hall, blood dried at her temple, hair and coat still speckled with snow, kicking a shackled undead into the center of the room, its snarl chocked off by the leash around its neck.

           Daenerys stares on in dawning horror.  Jaime’s jaw sets, his eyes hardening.  Olenna blinks back the shock, glancing toward Sansa.

           “Good thing these fuckers hate the water,” Yara says, wiping a hand under her nose, a brilliant smile breaking across her mud-streaked face as she braces a boot to the back of the scrambling corpse’s neck. “So, when do we leave?”

* * *

           It doesn’t take long for Jaime Lannister and Olenna Tyrell to pledge to the North after Yara’s dramatic entrance, with the lords from the Stormlands following suit shortly after.  Daenerys makes a grand enough speech about fighting for the people, about burning the evil away, and Jon suffers through it as stoically as he can, knowing it’s a small price to pay to guarantee her forces come North.

           Euron Greyjoy, however, has different plans than his queen.  He takes one look at the wight and renounces his support, cursing all of them for fools, ignoring Daenerys’ call to heel when he turns his back on her and makes for his ships at the coast.

           They’re already on their march North when they hear word that Euron hadn’t even made it to Harrenhal, let alone Gulltown.  Daenerys Targaryen doesn’t take too kindly to desertion it seems, having burned him where he stood.

           Jon’s sure it’s as much a punishment for Euron as it is a warning for the rest of them.

           Do not betray the dragon, the warning says.

           Jon feels the sinking dread like a stone in his gut when they pass through the gates of Winterfell and the shadow of dragon’s wings blankets the courtyard, darkening the image of their brother’s face as Bran sits waiting for them in reception.

           He doesn’t have time to think about it though, because they throw themselves into preparations quickly enough, shoring up the walls, building trenches, forging weapons with the dragonglass Daenerys promises from Dragonstone.  Tormund and his people make it to Winterfell days later, and Jon’s war council lasts long into the night that first eve of their return.

Sansa takes to the crypts more often of late, and this is where Jon finds her in the short hours before dawn once the council has let out. He’s been hesitant to breach her solitude, her sanctuary.  She stitches black direwolves to her handkerchiefs these days, and it’s a likeness he wishes he could forget, but the severed head of Shaggydog is as haunting a memory as the arrow-riddled body of the young boy who loved him.

           The brother who loved him.

           Sansa stands before Rickon’s statue with her hands folded before her.  A ring of winter roses lays at the base, slowly wilting.

           She heaves a sigh, and it seems to take all of her, but her voice is steady when she tells him, “We’ll have to burn them.”

           Her admission jars him into movement, a hand coming up to brace at her elbow.  “Sansa.” There’s a question laced through her name he doesn’t know how to ask.

           She turns to him then, just slightly, just enough to catch his gaze over her shoulder.  

           He has learned, after many moons, how to read Sansa Stark’s grief – how to discern it by the lines of her face, the stiffness of her frame, the heady weight of her silence.

           His fingers curl more surely around her elbow.

           “If we want to survive the Long Night, then we will have to burn them.”

           Jon looks past her down the long tunnel of crypts.  It’s a shadow-drenched cavern of memory and stone and deep, still quiet that takes him – an ages-old memoriam of long dead Starks.  It’s a line that stretches far, and he remembers suddenly, that it’s a line he is never to join.

           King in the North he may be, but never a Stark.

           Jon grinds his teeth, the ache in his jaw an easy distraction.

           He’d hoped to be buried here one day.  A child’s dream, perhaps.  A foolish wish.

           Jon wants to laugh suddenly.  To laugh and laugh and choke on it – because what a joke.  The gods have ill humor, and he has little appreciation for it.

           Sansa reaches a hand to his side, fingers clutching at his furs.  He sends a baleful look her way.

“I’ll light the fires myself,” she says softly at his side, and he has to swallow back the tartness, eyes fluttering closed at the breath that stains his lungs.  “With Bran and Arya,” she finishes, voice softer than he’s ever heard.

He reaches a hand to the small of her back, dragging her against him.

She settles a palm at his chest where his heart lies, beaten and floundering.

           “I would not have you buried here,” she mutters against his shoulder.

           Jon grips at her dress, fingers bunching in the material at her back.

           “Not yet,” she finishes, mouth sliding against his throat.  “Not for many years to come.”

           He should take it as the hope it is, as the single, rare confession it is – that she isn’t ready for him to leave this world.

           But something too long festered flares to life at the words.  Something too darkly honed.

           The hand bunched in her dress draws upwards, dragging the material with it.  He presses into her, backing her up against the wall.

           Sansa looks up at him with a flicker of concern, hands bracing at his shoulders.

           He’s silent as he unfastens his cloak, letting it fall to the cold ground at his feet.  He pulls his jerkin free of his breeches, unlacing it with practiced ease.

           Sansa stares at him, breath hitching.  Her hands hover uncertainly in the air above his shoulders, her hips pinned to the wall by his.  “Jon.”

           His jerkin hits the floor alongside his cloak, his eyes never leaving hers. He pulls his tunic free of his breeches, hands moving to the laces at his groin.  Sansa’s hands fumble to stop him.

           “Jon, please, what are you – ”

           “I’m a Stark, aren’t I?”  It’s a guttural rush of air that leaves him.

           Sansa’s hands still over his.  She blinks furiously at him, mouth parting, cheeks heated at his stare.

           “You said it yourself,” he whispers, chest heaving.

           Sansa’s eyes shift between his, tongue darting out to lick her lips in her anticipation.  “Jon.”

           “You said it yourself,” he hisses now, accusingly, a bite behind his words he hasn’t a name for.  And then he’s rucking up her skirts, a hand gliding to the back of her knee, tugging it up over his hip.

           Sansa gasps, arching against the wall instinctively.  She pushes her skirts down frantically, chest rising and falling so fast she’s getting lightheaded.  “Jon, wait, this isn’t – this isn’t – ”

           His mouth finds her throat, his tongue reckless and heated against her flesh. Sansa’s head lolls back against the wall.  “Jon,” she pants, fingers stilling at his shoulders with a fierce grip.  “Jon, what – ”

           He grabs at her wrists, tugging them up above her head, holding them there with a single, calloused palm.  His other hand undoes the laces of his breeches completely.  “I’m a Stark, aren’t I?” he asks again, the heat of resentment and longing and regret flaring white-hot inside him.  It comes out a growl.  It comes out a desperation.

           Sansa’s chest heaves against his, tongue wetting her lips.  “Jon.”

           And he’s just so tired of hearing that name.  Just so fucking tired of it.

           He rucks her skirts up, tearing at her smallclothes, fumbling recklessly for the heat of her, that throbbing, sodden heat of her.

           Jon groans when his fingers find home.  He nips at her lips, catching her hitched breath between his teeth.  “This is where I belong,” he says without repentance, sliding into her on a hissed breath, his head dropping to her shoulder as he shudders against her, a deep-seated groan leaving him.

           Sansa’s sharp inhale sounds against his temple, her hips pushing up to meet him.

           Jon releases her wrists, grabbing for her thighs instead, hoisting her up against the wall as he thrusts deeper, drawing her legs around his waist.

           A sigh of contentment breaks against his ear, his name lost in the space between their pants, and he remembers suddenly.

           He remembers where they are.

           “Don’t stop,” Sansa moans breathlessly.

           He grinds his hips into hers faster, deeper, with a mercilessness that almost scares him in its intensity.  One of her hands reaches out to steady herself, bracing against the base of Rickon’s statue.  Jon looks decidedly away from the motion.

           He only fucks his sister harder.  

           The crypts fill with their ragged pants, their dark curses, the fumble of their forms against the crude stone.

           “This is where I belong,” he groans against her mouth, biting down on her bottom lip.

           Sansa cries out, nails digging into the naked flesh of his hips, drawing him deeper into her, and he feels himself breaking, crashing, barreling into her with a ferocity he’s never felt for anything – anyone – no one but her. “Mine,” he growls into her mouth, fingers bruising on her thighs, teeth etching their mark along her throat.  He braces a single, trembling hand against the wall at her back, the rough stone cutting into his palm as his thrusts grow frantic and uneven.  He curls his bloodied hand along the stone wall, nails catching on the rock, and he anchors himself amidst the tide.

           “Mine.”

           It’s a shadow-drenched cavern of memory that takes him.  A place of no light.  A hollow of stone so entrenched with the dead he finds a familiar home.

           Sansa does not let him go.

           Even when he spills inside her.

           Even when he mars her thighs with the discoloration of his need.

           Mine, he swears.

           The declaration clatters around the stone crypts like a herald of war.

* * *

{“Fire sows no seeds,” he tells her.  “It molds no stones.  It tills no earth.  How could it ever fashion life from death?”

           Sansa stops, looking down at her still brother, knuckles white where her hands grip at each other in their wringing.  She slinks slowly back to her chair, the wind rushing from her in something not unlike defeat.  She is just so lonely, suddenly – so desolate and worn and without him.  

Without Jon.

“You knew all along?” she asks almost plaintively, exhaustion echoing along her words.  “You knew the dragons weren’t…”  She stops, swallows, tries again.  “You didn’t bring them here to defeat the dead.  You brought them here because only the dead could defeat them.”

           Bran gives her a look that could only pass for calculating – foreign and jarring though it is on her brother’s tender features. “She was never the solution,” he answers her.}

[sheikah]

My thoughts on Friki’s 8.01 leak

Ok so first and foremost I just want to say that this information is received second and even thirdhand. I do not speak Spanish and did not watch Friki’s video. As it was playing @adecila was kind enough to translate for @muttpeeta who was kind enough to chat with me. My bff @dracarysqueen was also feeding me some info (thanks my love!) and I read a somewhat broken English and at times unclear translation here. It gives you a gist of the video and I’m grateful to u/hang_the_dj2 for making it.  Edit: Here is @adecila‘s leak translation so that you guys can draw your own conclusions without my salt about these revelations haha. Her translation is the undisputed best and I didn’t see it prior to writing this post, though my response is still the same!

One of the first things I read about the leak was the bit about Gendry/Arya. Essentially Gendry makes a weapon to Arya’s specifications. He calls her “m’lady” purposely to fluster her. There is “sexual tension” between Arya and Gendry. HELLO??? I can’t fucking wait. This is going to take over as like the whole world’s GoT OTP lol calling it now <3 

Arya apparently also reunites with the Hound. My takeaway from that bit of the translation is that Sandor mentions something about how Arya didn’t go through with killing him, and I guess he’s grateful for that now? That part was a bit unclear to me in the translation I read. 

Arya also reunites with Jon (!!!!!) where they share a tender hug, compare weapons with one another, and generally have a sweet and positive interaction. Arya is wary of telling Jon that she’s a Faceless Man, and Jon asks Arya to try and talk Sansa into coming around re: Dany. It is obvious that Sansa dislikes or distrusts Dany and Jon is troubled by this and asks for Arya’s help. I’ve heard from one person that Jon also asks Arya to talk to Dany herself. I’m really pleased by the prospect of this because I knew that Arya would support Jon no matter what, and that that support would extend to Dany since they’re obviously in love. 

Speaking of, Friki did make note of the fact that Jonerys is obvious to everyone else: Davos, Tyrion, Varys, etc. Sansa can see it too and asks Jon point blank if he bent the knee out of love or if he did it to save the North. Apparently Jon is extremely taken aback that she would ask this question. We aren’t told more about this moment but I’m guessing Jon is offended that she would ever think he would do something as serious as swearing fealty to Dany simply because of his romantic feelings, and not with the best interests of his home and family at heart. I’ll be interested to see how that conversation ends.

Also, I realize we all already knew this (and have been knowing this literally forever) but these revelations all completely disprove political!Jon. Yeah, it was already disproven by the scripts and basically everything else about canon but this is just another nail in the coffin. Jon having apparently private conversations with both Sansa and Arya about his love for Dany pretty much solidifies that he isn’t secretly playing her in the interest of Stark supremacy or independence. 

That independence, though, is something that is still important to the Northern lords. Lyanna Mormont is outspoken in her disapproval of Dany as queen. She notes that they chose Jon as king, not Dany. Again, we knew this was coming, but I’m stricken again by how silly this is. It’s literally the end of the world. Can this discussion not wait?

Anyway, the Northern lords are not a fan of Dany and it is obvious. Apparently Dany attempts to ingratiate herself to Sansa. Something along the lines of her telling Sansa the North is beautiful. I guess this isn’t successful given the bit about Jon talking to Arya about how much Sansa dislikes Dany.

The Northern lords also tell Jon and Dany soon after their arrival at Winterfell that the Night King has turned Viserion into a wight and is riding him. Dany is distraught by this information and encourages Jon to ride Rhaegal already, in episode 1, BEFORE he finds out about being a Targaryen. They do this to try and get an edge over the Night King. 

Jon does ride Rhaegal while Dany rides Drogon, it’s a great time, and they have a pretty passionate makeout session afterward lol. Friki specifically said this was a good episode for Jonerys scenes. I obviously love this bit of info and think it’s hot and exactly what I want for them both. Who wouldn’t get turned on by riding a dragon with Dany???? (also, lol at how accurate @muttpeeta‘s fic is!!!!) My only wish is that the dragon riding happened after the reveal. I just think it would be a more significant acceptance of his identity for Jon to reach this milestone after discovering he’s a Targaryen. At the same time, I like this because it shows how much Dany loves and trusts him already. Before learning he’s a Targ, before learning he has a claim to the IT, she is already willing to share everything with Jon--even her “children.”

Also at Winterfell, Dany and Jorah break the news to Sam about the death of Randyll and Dickon. This is the part I really don’t like, so I apologize in advance for the rant here. So Dany shares this information and Sam is unbothered by the death of his father. Good. We expected that. He is, however, perturbed by the death of Dickon. While he thanks Dany for sharing the information with him, he is upset and apparently leaves to seek out Bran for more insight. Bran stresses that it isn’t important and that Jon needs to know the truth of his parentage. So Sam leaves Bran and finds Jon in the crypts. 

The first thing Sam shares with Jon, though, has nothing to do with Jon or his parentage. Sam finds Jon to tell him that Dany killed Randyll and Dickon. Jon, understandably, isn’t really phased. There are more important things to worry about, and Jon points out that not only do they need Dany, Dany is the queen. This is the moment when Sam drops the bomb. He tells Jon the truth of his parentage. Jon is shocked and denies it. Sam pushes further and tells him that Dany doesn’t have to be the queen because Jon is the king. 

This is the part that really, really bothers me. A lot. I knew there would be friction about Jon’s parentage. I knew there would be friction about Jon’s claim to the Iron Throne. What I didn’t expect was for the Tarly deaths to be brought up again (literally they brought these unimportant characters back in s7 just to kill them, just to cast doubt on Dany’s decision-making by her male advisers) in the same breath as Jon’s parentage reveal. These things are not of equal importance. The world is literally ending and we’re supposed to be worried about Dany’s judgment again? And to say she “killed” Randyll and Dickon is silly anyway. Let’s not forget: Dany didn’t break into Horn Hill with a dagger and kill Sam’s unsuspecting family in their sleep. Sam’s family betrayed Olenna Tyrell, sacked the Reach, wiped out the entirety of House Tyrell leaving no survivors at Highgarden, and allowed their liege Lady to be murdered in cold blood by Jaime Lannister. Dany retaliated on behalf of her slain allies and even offered mercy to the Tarlys if ony they’d swear allegiance to her instead. They refused, and died for their crimes. Why is this still being discussed? I genuinely don’t understand. 

By comparison, the Umbers and Karstarks betrayed their liege and were killed, but that act was seen as so egregious that Sansa suggested (and was supported in this suggestion by many Northerners) that even the descendants of the traitors be rooted out of their homes in retaliation for treachery. So why is Dany’s righteous vengeance on traitors still an issue? Why?

The episode apparently ends with Sam telling Jon that he is the heir. Again, I understand that. Westeros is built on male-preference primogeniture. Jon’s claim could trump Dany’s (for multiple reasons) and Sam and others would see that and likely push Jon to see it. The natural extension of that argument would be to suggest that Jon and Dany marry and unite their claims. Instead, Sam is possibly (again, we just had one brief video and multiple translations and interpretations of this video. I’m not sure exactly what Sam said) encouraging Jon to press his claim as king because 1. he has a potentially better claim and 2. because Sam might not believe Dany is an ideal queen due to the Tarly execution after the loot train battle. 

I just hate this. I find it massively OOC for Sam to use the huge moment of Jon’s parentage reveal to air his grievances about something Dany did. I find it massively OOC for Sam to be so concerned about Dickon in the first place, especially now. We have not been shown a positive Sam/Dickon relationship in canon, and Dickon was aware of Randyll’s abuse of Sam--he witnessed it firsthand--and did nothing to protect Sam or stand up to his father. On the contrary, Dickon loved and looked up to the brutal Randyll enough to willingly die at his side. This was not a man who was overly concerned about Sam, or vice versa. But now, suddenly, Sam loves his little brother enough to complain to Jon about Dickon’s death in a way that disparages Dany? Additionally, Sam is one of the few people at Winterfell who knows exactly how big of a threat the Night King and the White Walkers are, and we’re supposed to believe his main concern right now is what happened to Dickon? We’re also supposed to believe that Sam, Jon’s best friend, would think he could talk Jon into being king of the 7K, despite Jon’s multiple explicit statements about how much he abhors ruling?

So we’re going to have a delightful week between episodes 1 and 2 during which the antis compose dissertation-length dark!Dany meta like crazy. We have to suffer under what I consider to be a very poorly manufactured conflict that was written just for petty drama. I literally spent the day today at a conference on Women’s Leadership and one of the key topics discussed was how women with true power are seen as threatening and have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. Glad to see Game of Thrones doing literally nothing to challenge that idea where Dany is concerned. 

Moving on. 

We also apparently learn that Theon saves Yara early on, early enough to be back at Winterfell in time for the Battle of Winterfell. I’m thrilled as a shameless Yara fangirl :)

In King’s Landing Cersei receives word of the Night King and wight!Viserion. She also sees that the Golden Company arrives but not with the force she expected. Apparently they were supposed to have elephants, and they don’t? She’s angry about this, but still sleeps with Euron as payment for delivering her army. I also read somewhere that back at Winterfell, Tyrion is aware that Cersei has commissioned the GC and that she plans to use them against the North instead of as aid against the Night King. This is interesting considering Friki’s other leak involving some treachery by Tyrion later in the season.

Overall, the episode sounds compelling at least and I’m excited about Gendrya, a Jon/Arya reunion, Jonerys getting horny from riding dragons together lol, and Yara living. But Sansa still being a constant voice of opposition for Jon, and the petty Jon/Dany/Sam conflict is really unsettling to me and I’ve very tired of hearing about Randyll and Dickon Tarly. 

[7deadlycinderellas]

if the summer of our lives could just come again, ch3

AO3 link

 Davos

Leaving Shireen again is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Waking up in bed with Marya had been surreal enough, it had seemed decades since he had seen her. Going through the keep to encounter all seven of his sons, even Dale, too, had felt nearly like a dream. They’d come to visit, he remembered suddenly. Steffon’s name-day had just passed.

That whole day, he had tried to enjoy it.

When the older boys began to leave, is when he had to set his plan in motion.

Faking summons from Stannis was easy enough, turns out he had been planning to send for him soon anyway. Getting to Dragonstone was also shockingly easy.

Stannis had been his usual self, gruff and straight-forward. He had asked him to help him go over changes to shipping schedules what the effects of the late summer droughts on the tides. It had ended far too slowly.

Then on his way out, he had heard a small laugh.

“I’m supposed to be in lessons, but I had to come see you Onion Knight!”

Shireen was as small as she had been, her arms and legs had not yet begun to lengthen. Her face still bore the roundness of youth, her blue eyes shining.

Davos’s heart seizes as he allows himself to hug her tightly, without breaking. “Not having anymore dragon-dreams are you child?” he asks, remembering the nightmares that had plagued her.

Shireen looks confused. The comet, Davos remembers, her nightmares had begun with the coming of the comet.

“I haven’t dreamed of any dragons, I wish I did though, it sounds more exciting than the boat dreams I’ve had lately.”

He leaves her with just that single hug, trying his best to banish the image in his head of her burning.

Returning home, Davos recalls that Maester Cressen had once suggested betrothing Shireen to Robyn Arryn and sending her to the Eyrie, but Stannis hadn’t agreed.

Davos couldn’t imagine marrying Shireen off to that sickly, ill-tempered boy, but he wondered if he could somehow convince Stannis to let her be fostered somewhere else.

Renly, it hits Davos suddenly. Stannis’s brother had no children, but the court at Storm’s End was always bright and lively, fitting with it’s Lord’s showy and dramatic personality. And perhaps with his daughter so near, Stannis might not wish to lay siege to it.

It ended up, in the end, not truly being difficult at all.

“Storm’s End is the Baratheon ancestral home, it would be good for Shireen to see it. And I think having her around might put some responsibility into your brother, being that he currently has no heirs.”

Stannis’s eyes are hard to read, part distaste, part uncertainty.

“Last he saw her, Renly said she was ugly.”

Davos laughs softly in derision.

“Your brother may be thoughtless, but he isn’t needlessly cruel. Shireen may not be a great beauty, but she is a sweet, good child with a fine mind. She will win Renly over as easy as she won me over.”

He tries not to sound desperate, but Stannis is already speaking of the mystics, and he knows Melisandre may soon come to him.

And Stannis agrees, and Davos feels like maybe he’s won this time. That maybe they will win this time.

A week later, the agreement had been pounded out. Davos wonders if perhaps Renly simply saw a way to one-up his brother, but if it ends with Shireen safe, then it’s good either way.

Stannis asks him to accompany her. He would have offered anyway.

“Where are we going now, Onion Knight?” She asks him.

“We’re going on a quest.”

“Me too?”

“Well we’re going to need someone to read me all the books about all the old quests, so I know how I’m doing it right.”

There’s a touch of disappointment on her face. He takes her by the hand to help her into the wheelhouse.

“I have to go and rescue someone, then we have to ride north and try to stop some monsters.”

“Who are you rescuing? A princess in a tower?”

Davos laughs. Shireen did often have an affinity for the trapped princesses.

“A prince perhaps, though he would likely spit if he heard me call him that. I need to help him get back to his princess.”

Shireen wrinkles her nose.

“Not Prince Joffrey right?”

Davos can’t even imagine a laugh here. If half the stories he’s heard are true, the crown prince was more likely to need people rescued from him.

“No, this boy doesn’t even know what he is yet. But he will rise to greatness anyway. I’d like you to meet him someday, he’s one of your cousin’s actually.”

“What’s his name?”

“Gendry”.

He could remember the boy before, in his cell hopeless and ashamed. He could remember the man he became, who had wanted to help people even before learning he was of noble blood. Davos had believed Danaerys had intended to legitimize him for his heroism during the battle against the dead. She hadn’t had the chance. And part of Davos wondered if he would have even wanted that.

“Why does he need to be rescued?”

Davos sighs deeply.

“Because some people with a lot of power will want to hurt him, and he can’t save himself from where he is.”

A bastard boy on the streets of Flea Bottom. He was beholden to his apprenticeship unless released, and any route out of the city would be fraught with danger. Bandits, pirates, men who might try and sell him, all the worse if anyone got a good look and maybe figured out who he was. Ned Stark had figured out the Queen’s secret easily enough, but it would be a falsehood to say no one in King’s Landing ever questioned her fair haired children before.

“Do you know how you’re going to rescue him?”

That makes Davos smile.

“Do you remember why I told you your father cut off the tips of my fingers before knighting me?”

“Because you were a smuggler?”

“Which means I am excellent at getting things out of places and getting them where they aren’t supposed to be without being found out.”

He put his fingers to his lips to remind Shireen that she shouldn’t tell this to anyone, then taps her on the nose and shuts the door and moves to mount his horse so that they could leave.

He hopes he’s right.

 Sansa

Sansa carries Lady through the hallway and into her chambers. When she turns, she notices Arya sitting on her bed and yelps, dropping Lady to the floor. The wolf, now the size of a regular wolf, gives her a look of disgust, and pads off, taking a step onto the trunk at the end of Sansa’s bed and climbing up to curl up and fall asleep.

Arya cocks an eyebrow.

“I thought you had more nerve than that.”

“What are you doing here?” Sansa asks her, slipping off her shoes and stockings.

“Can I stay with you tonight? I had a bad nightmare last night.”

Sansa sighs, slipping one hand up to undo the ties at the top of her gown.

“Can you help me undo my straps?”

Arya reaches out and yanks the strings, loosening them. Sansa slips out of her gown and into her nightshift with ease before speaking again.

“Should I even ask which one?”

There were so many to choose from that they were both having. The Long Night nightmares, the watching Father get beheaded again nightmares, the ones where going through the anomaly just put them straight back in Hell (Ramsey for Sansa, Harrenhall for Arya).

“The one about Hardhorne. I think I had it because Jon left yesterday.”

Damn. Neither of them had been at Hardhorne, but Jon’s stories were so vivid and descriptive. The piles of bodies being climbed by walkers before they too rose, the people who ran straight into the water, clawing their way towards the boats trying to run. They had both had this one too.

Arya distracts herself by petting Lady.

“You really shouldn’t carry her everywhere now, she’s getting too big.”

“I’ll carry her for as long as I can. It will make me stronger.”

“She’s going to be bigger than you soon.”

“Then maybe someday she’ll carry me instead.”

Arya is quiet after that, and pulls off the cloak she’d thrown over her night shift in case one of the servants came by. She leaves it on the trunk next to Lady.

“Bran told me the Reeds should be here sometime tomorrow.” Sansa tells her as she crawls under her furs.

Arya bites her lip.

“That means we’re going to have to tell everyone tomorrow.”

Sansa laughs hollowly.

“Jon was hard enough...I can’t imagine how we’re going to tell Robb or Mother.”

Arya feels her stomach tighten. She could barely look at Gray Wind when he followed along with Robb after having seen what had become of them before.

“I can’t believe you managed to have the eloquence to tell what we know to Tyrion in just a single letter.”

“Well it was pretty rambling and confusing. I told you, I told him I saw things in visions. That King Robert was in danger, that people would look more closely at Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella. Not to trust a damn thing Littlefinger says. More politics, fewer ice zombies. Besides, I had that trump card to make sure he paid my words due.”

Arya frowns.

“I saw you give him the letter when he was leaving with Jon. What on earth did you tell him?”

She hadn’t been close enough to hear their conversation, But whatever Sansa had whispered in the Imp’s ear had affected him enough that his eyes had gone wide and he’d stood in the same spot, seemingly dazed until Uncle Benjen had prodded him and he’d tucked the letter into his satchel and rejoined everyone.

“I told him the name of his first wife.”

Arya’s surprised.

“I never knew he was married before you.”

“Most people don’t. No one outside his family should know anything about it. That’s why it worked.”

“What happened?”

Sansa smiles grimly.

“It’s not my story to tell. The only reason I think he even told me was because we were in the crypts sure we were going to die that night. Airing our sins and all that.”

Arya rolls over to face her.

“I guess I just don’t really understand your relationship with him. I couldn’t imagine you being so close to someone you were forced to marry.”

Sansa laughs. It is somewhat ludicrous, and her thirteen year old self would have screamed in horror had she known.

“He was forced into it as much as I was, and he was always kind to me. Beyond that, he tried to protect me, to make me feel better about things that happened. Though of course there was no way he could.”

Sansa turns suddenly pensive.

“And I got a front seat to exactly what his family thinks of him. Jamie aside, the rest of the Lannisters seemed to delight in tormenting him as much as they did tormenting than me. And it made me so incredibly angry. He once told me that people were going to spend a lot of time underestimating me, and that ended up being incredibly true too.”

There’s a long silence after, and Sansa really doesn’t want to have to talk about this anymore.

“Get some sleep Arya. Tomorrow’s going to be rough enough as it is.”

Laying all the way back down, she feels Arya shift beside her.

“Uhh, fair warning? I’ve been told I’m an angry cuddler.”

Sansa’s eyes pop back open.

What on earth was an angry cuddler?

She finds out the next morning when Arya has managed to migrate halfway down the bed and wrap both her arms so tightly around one of Sansa’s legs that she’s woken with the limb heavy and prickly, and entirely unable to stand up.

 Bran

Bran wakes, his stomach already in knots.

He gazes out the window, noting the clear skies. He notices Summer isn’t sleeping underneath like he usually did, perhaps he had an early start.

He manages to dress himself, though he only has one pair of breeches that have been cut to fit over his cast. His boot takes the longest, but he laces it up tightly before reaching for the heavy metal crutches Mikken had made for him when it became clear that he was not up for staying in bed until his leg healed.

Hobbling on the crutches had been hard to learn. The splinted wrist was one thing, but he could hardly admit that it had been near on a decade since he had walked properly at all.

So at least he had an excuse for his staggering.

In the hallway, he bumps into Arya, who’s rubbing the back of her head.

“What happened?”

“Sansa pulled my hair until I woke up and let her leg go.”

He’s not going to question that.

Rather than join the rest of the family at breakfast, Bran has Arya slip in and grab them a platter of oatcakes with honey and sliced apples.

“Where are we going?” Arya asks.

“The stables.”

She makes a face.

“They won’t let you ride with the cast.”

“I’m not going to ride,” Bran tells her, “I’m going to see Willas.”

Arya’s stares at him confused for a moment before it hits her.

“Oh, Hodor.”

“That’s not his name,” Bran says roughly. “So I won’t call him that. He died protecting me, that’s the least I can do. Especially since the other is my fault.”

Arya is quiet most of their slow walk out to the stable. Bran has never been overly forthcoming about what exactly happened to everyone north of the Wall.

When they reach the stables Willas is finishing up with the morning chores. The other grooms have already gone down to breakfast, leaving the three of them alone.

“Hodor,” he says, upon seeing them.

“Have breakfast with us,” Bran says, and Arya offers him the platter.

The three of them sit and eat their cakes in silence. Arya licking a bit of honey off her thumb and Bran leaning over to steal one of her apples.

When they’re finished, Willas stands, and with a “Hodor,” leaves them to haul water for the troughs.

Bran chews thoughtfully on his last bite while Arya wipes off the tray.

Arya finally fixes Bran with a gaze while he chews.

“You’ve been weird since you told us the Reeds were probably going to arrive today, so what is it?”

Bran doesn’t say anything, and avoids her eyes.

“Come on, out with it. Sansa said Meera left almost immediately when you two returned to Winterfell, and you didn’t even mention her again. When you lead us down to the Neck, she didn’t even look at you. What in seven hells happened?”

“Nothing. And that was the problem. We were north for, gods it must have been two or three years. Meera helped keep us safe, she hunted to keep us fed. Underneath that tree, she did her best to keep me sane even though she seemed completely lost after Jojen died. After...Everything that had happened to us, everything I had felt...I suddenly didn’t care. I would have died a hundred times over without her, it didn’t matter“

He’s quiet for a long time.

“I remember, the way Meera was looking at me, before I touched the weirwood tree to see what happened at the Tower of Joy. If she had looked at me like that before...I probably would have died of a heart attack. That’s what she said before she left, was that Brandon Stark died in that cave.”

“Well you didn’t, and you’re alive again,” Arya tells him. “So quit acting like you did die. We all get second chances now, that’s sort of the point isn’t it?”

“All three of them have cause to hate me.”

“Well they definitely will if you stay this way when they all show up. So come on, and lets try and prepare.”

She helps him get back onto his crutches and they hobble back to the keep to try and head off the storm.

 Jojen

Jojen Reed was not used to being confused. His prophetic dreams aside, he had always been clever, and good at his lessons. Feeling completely in over his head was not something he was used to.

But two weeks before when he had woken to his older sister running into his room and hugging him tightly he had been completely at a loss for words. Normally, he would have thought she was ill, but when she dragged him down to breakfast, their Father had been in a similar state. Both of them had looked incredibly tired, but somehow energized, with wild looks in their eyes, babbling on about things that didn’t make any sense.

Then they sat down, and tried to tell him, and it made even less sense.

And even after they had left Greywater Watch, it hadn’t stopped.

He wakes the last day of their travels with a feeling of creeping dread in his gut.

And for the first since she lost her mind, Meera seems as unsure as him.

They’re packing up camp, Father leading the horses to water when he finally brings it up.

“You seem anxious. You and Father were so sure we had to go north to Winterfell when we left, now it seems like you don’t want to.”

Meera laughs.

“We were both so sure we had to go north before. And look how that turned out.”

Jojen doesn’t really know what to say to that. She’d told him he had died on the journey before, which explained her exuberant reaction to seeing him again, but it didn’t really explain her despair. True, she had also mentioned that his body had immediately exploded, but still…

“I know you were probably upset that I died…”

“It wasn’t just you,” she cuts him off. “Everyone. The last time I left home, everyone around me ended up dying, you were just the first. We were under there for over a year, I didn’t even know why anymore, but I trusted the Children of the forest. Then the Night King found us and attacked, and they all died. All of that history, and they died. Then Summer died protecting us, and Hodor died so we could get away, and we ran. “

They’ve finished the packs, and so Meera just pokes at the ground with a stick when she finally continues.

“We got back to Winterfell, and it turned out even Rickon and Osha had died after we left them. I wanted to go home, but I didn’t feel like I could. I went to talk to Bran, and it was like he was gone too. Whatever the Raven did to him in that cave, his body was still alive, but what made him him was gone. He was little more than a shell.”

Father returns to the clearing, leading the horses. They begin loading the packs onto them, when Meera continues. Her voice goes quiet, with a tone in it Jojen’s not sure he’s ever heard come from her before.

“I thought what the two of us had gone through- as hard as it had been, I thought it was special. I thought it was important. I don’t know anymore, I still don’t know if it was worth it. The end of the world still came after all. I don’t know what I’ll do if we get to Winterfell and Bran is still...that thing.”

Jojen can’t really say anything to soothe his sister’s words, so he just listens. He supposes that must do some good too.

They ride for a bit in silence. They’re not far, could reach the keep by mid-day easily. Jojen can still feel Meera sitting stiffly in the saddle. They could have taken a third horse, but neither of them are good riders, having not had much way to practice, given that horses don’t suit bogs well.

As the day goes on, he suddenly feels Meera go still.

“Either of you hear that?” She asks, eyes staring straight off into the trees. When neither him nor Father reaction, she slides off the horse, and grasps her spear.

They aren’t far from Winter Town, it could just be another traveler or someone out hunting, but Meera’s muscles are pulled taut as though she expects this to end in a fight.

She’s still, still as a rock upon a cliff, when the leaves of the underbrush shift and a figure emerges from them.

Jojen feels his heart quicken when he realizes the figure is a wolf.

Meera, on the other hand, softens.

“Summer?” She calls out, in an unsure voice.

Both Jojen and their father watch as Meera kneels in the road, and the wolf approaches her slowly, carefully. Jojen watches in amazement as the beast rests it’s muzzle on top of her knees, and she reaches to rub the top of it’s head.

“You did everything you could,” She assures the wolf, “You were your best, you did your best.”

[bisexualgendryas]

gendrya + jonsa au: bastard lords and hidden ladies (part 1)

so, this is very much not the whoooole concept as I practically just switch from Cat!Arya to Alayne!Sansa (this post is basically just Gendrya + Alayne!Sansa, sorry, not even written Jonsa, but I promise the full concept includes happy married!Jonsa (two versions, too, lol)), but I am tired af whilst simultaneously being really pumped that ppl wanted to see this idea so here’s (much of) the longass outline of the thing I posted about earlier:

au wip, a legitimized-boys, secret-identity-sisters canon divergence piece, where: Stannis becomes king (and keeps Gendry alive), Arya accepts Jaqen’s offer to work for a courtesan and Gendry finds her while on business for the Crown, Jon gets legitimized after taking Ramsay down, and Baelish makes a betrothal for Alayne to Gendry that she later basically manipulates Stannis into changing into one with Jon after Gendry and his true love ditched the whole ass crownlands. It’s got a lot of book plot overlap too but I have no true concept of the timeline in terms of when different canon events happened. If you want more of this or have ideas or anything, feel free to share them!

Instead of Gendry having to escape from Stannis, Shireen finds out that her father’s found a cousin of hers - a true one, not one of Cersei’s bastards but one of her uncle’s - and especially with pressure from both her and Davos, Stannis ultimately decides he’ll keep Gendry alive, have him taught to behave properly, how to manage lordly duties, and so on.

Jaqen realizes that Arya may not be perfectly cut out for being Faceless, and makes her an offer - that he could find her employment of a different sort. As he’s noted, she’s taken by the allure of the courtesans, whose jobs include far more than just the sexual duties shared by those who work in brothels.

At first, Arya insists she can get better, but then Mercy!Arya ends up becoming friends with a girl who works on one courtesan’s ship, and after hearing many stories about how the women play instruments and tell stories and sing songs, she decides that perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing to try out. She talks to Jaqen, tucks Needle in a belt, and makes friends with Mercy’s friend with her own face, as Cat, and then the friend convinces the courtesan that Cat’s a charming young woman who should come work with them.

Stannis first loses at the Blackwater, but then with assistance from the Iron Bank and much of Westeros, as well as some more magic, he later manages to topple Tommen and take the Throne.

Needing to be sure of where the Crown stood with their Essosi allies, Stannis sends Gendry and Davos to Braavos to speak with the Iron Bank. As the Starks were always so keen to remind everyone, winter was coming.

And, ahem, the men sent with Gendry and Davos certainly intend to as well. And, only naturally, after a couple nights of well-enjoyed brothel trips, some of them decide they all ought to take advantage of their being in Essos and seek out some renowned courtesan as well - they had Westerosi lords and knights, after all, one of whom was in line for the bloody Iron Throne! Surely someone would love to host them!

Spoiler: yes, someone absolutely would. (Especially considering that Robert had quite the reputation - not as a particularly fun partner, but definitely as a man who’d finance the purchasing of a week’s worth of alcohol in two nights and come back to bed every pretty girl an establishment had afterwards.) How many Braavosi courtesans or whores can say they were bedded or courted in any manner by the son of a Westerosi king? Not many.

Contrary to expectations, Cat ends up being one of them, though not so much while they’re in Braavos. And as sweet and reassuring as it is that her friends, her companions in training, are certain that this lord immediately realizes how pretty she is, she knows the moment that Lord Baratheon meets her eyes he can see Arya, buried deep beneath Cat, and when she speaks in response to the courtesan he and his men are visiting, he hears her as well, though she’s glad to see he’s smart enough not to have his shock blatantly on display.

After a couple visits, his men return to the brothels, the enchantment of listening to old songs more lost on them than the enjoyment of fucking - but Gendry keeps coming to the barge, even though it’s only him and his uncle’s Hand at that point, and after a couple nights of only them, trading stories with the women and listening to songs in languages that have barely been heard since Westeros’ common became, well, common, he actually asks to have time with only Cat.

And of course, the parts of them that are closest to the Arya and Gendry they once were have an awkward but heartfelt reunion - but the parts of them that have grown up are acutely aware of how different they are, how different their places are. Still, he’s not surprised she became an assassin, and she’s not surprised he doesn’t enjoy the vast majority of what’s involved in being at court. They don’t share everything, but they share quite a bit, almost falling back into the sort of friendship they’d thrived off having. On following nights they talk more about things - about Shireen, about the Hound, about the Red Woman, even a bit about King’s Landing girls and Braavosi dockworkers.

It takes a couple more nights, but after a while she decides to remind him that, while it’s not something guaranteed simply by seeking out a courtesan, he is allowed to bed her. (With permission from her employer, of course, as payment and whatnot would be arranged, but…it’s him, her friend, grown and handsome, so Arya doesn’t mind giving the suggestion.)

He asks, though, what would be the cost just to kiss her. For all the time she’s spent learning people, especially men, it’s embarrassing to be caught off guard as she is, but she manages to gather herself and say that it would depend on who he intends to be telling. She doesn’t really let him consider that, though, not the first night, because she simply does kiss him.

They don’t explicitly tell people they’ve started kissing, but they’re terrible enough at hiding their affections that they’re quickly the talk of their respective social groups. Everyone among them, and probably others who view the barge consistently, knows that he keeps coming back, after all…until their few weeks in Braavos are coming to an end, at least, Iron Bank negotiations and all other necessary business of the Crown having been handled.

But then, before Arya’s really made to think about the fact that he found her on the other side of the world and inched closer and closer to becoming a lover only to have to leave her again, Gendry asks her to leave with him. He can’t give her back her home or her family, but if nothing else they can live safely, together - and more than that, he simply wants not to leave her, ever. From what he’s said of his own family, she doesn’t imagine she’ll get a warm welcome, but she can’t stand the idea of him leaving her either, so she packs up what few belongings Cat has and says farewell to her friends, and to Braavos.

Other than the scandal of her coming with, none of the men seem to think much of her taking a place in his cabin. It’s there that he ultimately decides he’s free enough to bed her for the first time. They’ve not yet made it to King’s Landing by the time he realizes he’s completely and irrevocably in love with her.

Arya’s mainly right to think she won’t get a warm welcome; both Stannis and Selyse almost immediately denigrate Gendry for following his father’s path, the path of foolish men, for what kind of lord openly brought a whore to their castle? She’s not actually a whore, he cares to remind them, even though it stokes the fire of the fury. He has his own to match Stannis, though, and it’s clear and it’s spectacular in its own way. So, too, does Shireen - lovely, kind Shireen who’s so happy for the prospect of a friend that she again begs her father on Gendry’s behalf, and reluctantly, Stannis allows Cat to remain, with some strict guidelines, many of which Arya has no complaints about meeting.

Up North, though, Jon has heard about Arya’s marriage to Ramsay, and decides to reach out to Stannis for help on the matter, help of some sort, any sort. It’s not immediately granted, especially as Jon is already asking for Other help, but ultimately, Stannis starts to consider it. Ramsay was only ruling in the North because of a series of betrayals against those who would rightfully rule it - if the last known living child of Ned Stark, a man who died for speaking the truth of Stannis’ claim and denouncing Cersei’s bastards, was asking for help, to save his family, was it not Stannis’ duty to give it?

He does decide that having Jon as an ally is his best move, and begrudgingly he sends some troops North with Davos and Melisandre, to assist Jon’s wildlings in taking back Winterfell. The Night’s Watch doesn’t all take kindly to the Lord Commander’s priorities, but by the time mutiny drags down Jon Snow, Melisandre is in residence at Castle Black and she brings him back, having seen him at battle at Winterfell in her flames, knowing it needs to follow.

He takes Stannis’ sent men and his wildlings and begins to march south, only for a broken Theon to bring to him Sansa’s friend Jeyne, whose identity Theon had hid so that she could be believed to be Arya. The battle is hard-won, but they win it still, and Stannis gives him his father’s name for the victory, but it’s hollow.

Hollow, too, is the love promised to sweet Alayne, whose false father seeks out his best excuses to wed her to the highest bidder, a title claimed all too soon by the king and queen, part of their plan to change the behavior of the king’s nephew and part of Petyr’s plan to return to power in King’s Landing. A bastard lord for a bastard lady - to Stannis that’s like to sound fair, but to Sansa, it’s everything but. She’s learned to pay attention to whispers and rumors, and with this…Petyr intends to mold her into Cersei, it nearly seems. A Baratheon with a temper and a love, and he’d have Alayne marry him, if only to return to seeking the power of the crown. She knows he’d been speaking with Lord Bolton, which still boils her blood even now that she knows it wasn’t her sister who had been made to be his poor wife - she’d doubted it always, especially with the recollection of how Arya had once raised her own sword even to Joffrey - but he still will drag her back to residence in King’s Landing rather than let her go home…unless she can work something out with her betrothed, and perhaps she can.

Not that he intends to give her the chance, though - the moment that Stannis informs him of the betrothal is a bigger, louder fight than they’ve ever had. Stannis might be king, but he owns Gendry no more than he ever could his brothers, and Cat even less, and he won’t be allowed to forget it. There’s a ship bound for Braavos in the bay, and soldiers intended to take her to it, soldiers who are meant to grab her from Gendry’s chambers while she’s alone there and escort her so that he doesn’t get a say.

Stannis, though, doesn’t know that only some parts of any woman are soft, and Gendry’s the only man with rights to ask for any of her softness. Even without real context she knows the soldiers are only obeying their king, so Arya focuses on injury and little more, rushing down underneath the castle, down where she’d ran when Syrio had told her to do so. And, as if by magic - perhaps, actually, by magic, for she wouldn’t know - Ser Davos finds her. He takes her to a dusty corner, hands her a wine skin and one of Cat’s other dresses, and tells her to wait for him to come back…and so she does.

She waits until the entire area is getting dark, only the trail of the sun and no lanterns or sconces to show her the possible way out, and holds tight to Needle until after the sun is set and he scurries back to her, Gendry at his side, rushing to her like never before. Davos has given him clothes that once had belonged to a son of his, and grabbed them some food.

They make it out of the city on a ship manned by one of Davos’ other sons, a trade ship headed for the Riverlands - straight for Hot Pie, as far as they’re concerned. Arya might cry, in part from feeling terribly anxious and in better part because he’s so terribly kind.

Alayne and her father arrive in their carriage a few days later, to a very apologetic royal party, and Alayne spends much of her first days back in the city thinking how horribly fed up she is with men for all their machinations. Princess Shireen, though, is very clear that while it’s a pity someone was hurt by it, her cousin is deeply in love, and in their private company she calls her father foolish for thinking he could ever sway him. It’s so very Sansa of her, that Sansa herself is easily swayed to their side, though she knows Petyr is having much more difficulty accepting the rejection.

It’s all very much a lovely love story to Sansa, though, as it is to Shireen, and Alayne bonds with the princess easily. She even enjoys Shireen’s stories about this woman Cat, and finds herself wanting to know more and more, especially as she realizes that in a way she has taken the other woman’s place, just in Shireen’s life as a friend as opposed to in her cousin’s. Stannis and Selyse, though, really do stew in their displeasure. Petyr does a better job of hiding his, but she knows that’s only because his intentions are about power and not family, let alone love.

Then, one day, about a fortnight after their arrival, Stannis mentions a part of the plan she’d been unaware of, one she might be able to use.

He wanted to secure the Vale support so that he could support Jon - Jon Stark, now, newly legitimized Lord Stark, warden of the north, the man who had beaten down House Bolton but needed more of his king’s support to fight a larger, more pressing battle, one against the dead, one for the living. As Petyr says, the details make it sound like madman’s words, but King Stannis has magic on his council and more importantly, this was Jon, and Jon was…Jon. Surely if he declared that the dead could be raised by some unnatural force and made to fight the living, he was speaking the truth of it.

She confronts Petyr in private - had the Vale not already been sworn to House Stark? He disagrees, cautiously - House Arryn had been truly bound by House Tully, and Jon had no Tully to speak of.

“Jon Arryn, my uncle, fostered my father, Jon’s father. He called his banners against House Targaryen in defense of Rickard Stark and his children, and Jon is as much Ned Stark’s son as Robb or Bran or Rickon, no matter where your loyalties lie.”

“Your cousin -”

“My cousin trusts his beloved stepfather not to mislead him,” she finishes, proud that she can see in his eyes how the remark wounds him, and then she takes a walk to the godswood to get her head around her situation.

She wounds Petyr again the next day, by bringing to court a proposal of a marriage between her and Jon - she prefaces by saying that she and her father had spoken of it, just gently enough that no one would doubt her, for Lord Baelish keeps his expression so very static, his surprise just barely visible to even an educated viewer. It’s a good offer, to Stannis, and on the surface it’s good for Petyr as well, though no one would say it’s better than putting his future grandchild in the line of succession for the Iron Throne.

Stannis, though, is perhaps realizing he’s glad to have removed a contender from his line, and he’s quick enough to agree to write to Lord Stark with little more than Petyr’s confirmation that the Vale would give its strength in this war of Jon’s.

Petyr makes his displeasure known, but Sansa is sure enough that Jon will side with her that he agrees not to raise a fuss. She knows she’s made the potential error of keeping either of them from an heir, but if it allowed her to go home with her brother, she’d manage what she had to manage.

Jon, too, agrees, surprised for an offer but happy for it all the same, writing back to Stannis days before he’s actually set to leave for Dragonstone to mine dragonglass on the island, another part of their deal. Jon would remain the ever-vigilant guard of the realm, and Stannis would provide him what he needed to hold such a position well - that was how Ser Davos had said it.

They could figure out heritage when this great war was won.

[thebeltanequeen]

Updated GOT Predictions!!

As much as I don’t want some of these characters to die, or as suspicious as I am that they will just bc D&D love subverting expectations and everyone expects certain people to die, this is how I think it should end LOGICALLY if they follow the path characters were set up for in the books and in combination with the show

Cersei

I agree with pretty much what the entire fandom says. Jaime will kill Cersei then himself, dying a tragic hero. I don’t think Cersei lied about being pregnant. I think she either is pregnant still, was pregnant and something happened, or thought she was pregnant but realized she went through menopause instead. Jaime will confront Cersei when he gets to KL and they’ll have a huge fight I imagine. That’s when we’ll figure out the baby situation. I’ve never questioned that the baby was Jaime’s bc, for those of you who haven’t noticed, Cersei HATES Euron and would NOT have his baby. If she had her way, she’d kill Euron after they won the war. So whatever answer we get will play a huge role in the way she’s killed emotionally. Anyway, so Cersei will either be winning the battle, ergo Jaime steps in to stop her from using wildfire as the finishing blow, or she’ll be losing the battle and Jaime still prevents her from using wildfire, but he also doesn’t want to see her brutally murdered. He just doesn’t guys. It would be OOC for him to suddenly want her to be massacred. I don’t think Cersei will fight Jaime physically when he does kill her. I’m thinking she’ll be relieved it was him and that the prophecy is being fulfilled, so she no longer has to live in fear and grief anymore.

Jaime

As I said above, Jaime is going to commit suicide after he kills Cersei (and their unborn child if she is still pregnant). After he heard Sansa talk about wishing to see Cersei executed, he realized he wouldn’t stay in Winterfell for multiple reasons. He can’t let Cersei win, and he can’t let her be brutally tortured and executed. Jaime became so cold to Brienne at the end of this episode to protect her. He knows he needs to go to KL and that he probably won’t live. Brienne would want to come with him, and she would be in danger too. He also probably doesn’t want to make her feel like she needs to choose between him and Sansa. Confronting Cersei is something Jaime needs to do alone. He is on his way to KL to talk sense into her head to save her and their baby (Like I said, we’ll figure this out then. Cersei is just too damn heartbroken about it every time it’s brought up). He will of course fail for multiple reasons. Cersei is too stubborn, too powerhungry, too vengeful and too frightened to stop. Cersei also won’t be willing to listen to him after he left her, but she won’t be able to kill him. She can’t kill Tyrion, much less Jaime. After Jaime kills her, he won’t be able to live with himself. He’ll die a hero though.

Arya, the Hound, the Mountain, and Brienne

So I actually think Arya and the Hound will tag team killing the Mountain and perhaps even Qybrun in the process. The Hound will die afterwards from his injuries and he’ll have a touching moment will Arya, who WON’T leave him to die alone. After the Hound dies, I think Arya will head for Cersei and instead of killing her she’ll SEE Jaime do it and hear why he’s done it. She’ll watch the twins go out, and it will be Arya who tells everyone that Jaime saved them all. This will directly parallel when Ned walked in after Jaime killed the Mad King, but he was too stuck in the old ways to hear him out on what happened. Arya will right one of the few wrongs her father ever did. She’ll have been the one to save everyone from the Night King, and she’ll recognize that Jaime saved everyone from Cersei. Then I think Arya will roam the lands as she pleases, just as Nymeria does. Perhaps Gendry will give up his lordship and he’ll travel with her. He could give Storm’s End to Davos if he survives KL. Brienne will hear about what Jaime did, she’ll understand that he was protecting her all along, and she’ll write about his good deeds in the book. I actually think she might end up pregnant, and she’ll have a baby (I hope it’s a girl who also becomes a knight I would LOVE IT) and she’ll tell their child about their heroic father. Brienne would be a great mom and it’ll finish her arc nicely *cries*

Jon, Sansa and Bran

I have a theory that whatever fate the direwolves had, the same fate will befall their respective Starks either literally or figuretively. Lady was the first to die, and Sansa is arguably the Stark who has changed the most drastically. The girl she was is dead. She is no longer the little dove, or the little bird, but she is now the undisputed Lady of Winterfell. I actually think Sansa will be Queen of the North by the end of the show. Sansa being Queen has been foreshadowed all eight seasons. I think the Iron Throne will be destroyed, and the seven kingdoms split back up, but peacefully. Sansa will rule. Jon will be the one who orders the Iron Throne destroyed after Cersei’s death. I imagine Arya will tell him of the twins’ death and Jaime’s sacrifice and Jon will honor that by getting rid of the one thing that started this mess in the first place. A Targaryen built the iron throne and it will be a Targaryen’s responsibility to destroy it. Jon will then leave to roam the free lands with the free folk, as Ghost will be. Jon never wanted to be King, and after he destroys the throne and elects Sansa to rule the North, he deserves peace after all his fighting. He’ll embrace his Stark name and live and die a Northman. Summer is dead and Bran is figuratively dead as well. I could actually see him peacefully passing away at Winterfell from old age. Whether he trains a new 3 eyed raven or not is debatable.

Dany, Greyworm, Drogon and Varys

Dany and Greyworm are utterly devastated over Missandei and rightfully so, but they’ve fallen for Cersei’s trap just like Jon did when Ramsay killed Rickon at the Battle of the Bastards. Dany is also mourning Rhaegal and she is not thinking clearly. Dark Dany is happening for sure, and it’ll be tragic because we all know why and can understand what she’s thinking and doing. She’ll destroy King’s Landing, and the carnage will be so brutal and she’ll feel so triumphant that Westeros will turn on her, especially when news of Jon’s parentage gets out, at which point Varys will be executed for treason. What’s been made abundantly clear this season is that Dany is an outsider. Westeros does not want her, they want Jon. She and Jon will get into an argument at the end of the battle, and she’ll allow the Iron Throne to be burned by Drogon once the haze has cleared and she realizes how many innocent people she just killed. She’ll be devestated and will retreat to Dragonstone. She broke the wheel, but she lost everything, including her humanity for a brief period of time. As for Boatie, I don’t think Dany is pregnant, but if she is I think she’ll also give up the throne to raise her child in relative peace. I think she’ll either stay at Dragonstone and try to make that her home, or she will return to Essos with Drogon. Her particular storyline is one that can go in many different directions, so it is the most confusing to pin down for me. I can see Greyworm dying in battle after killing Euron (if Yara doesn’t show up in battle and do it herself), but I honestly don’t think he will. I think he will go to Naath and the last we see of him will be him smiling on the beach. I think he gets a tragic, but beautiful ending.

Tyrion

Ah, Tyrion. The one everybody loves, whether he’s suffered in the writing department the last few seasons or not. Out of all the Lannister’s, he’s most likely to live, but I don’t think he’s going to. I’ve actually only recently decided this, but I was reminded of the brilliant Charles Dance’s line in season one about how “soon, all of us will be dead” and “only the family name lives on.” Although this was said to Jaime, I think it applies to Tyrion too. I now think all the Lannister’s are going to die, but their name will certainly never be forgotten. I’m not sure how, but Tyrion might go out. Perhaps Dany kills him for treason even though he was trying to defend her despite his own fears? Or maybe there’s a time jump at the end of the show and we see Tyrion dying at old age as Lord of Casterly Rock? I would not be surprised either way, but I want him to go out doing something heroic, not dying for something he didn’t actually do like in season 4. He is too fantastic of a character to go out in a shitty way. He deserves an amazing ending to his story.

[choupetit]

GOT Recap: The Bells

Airdate: 5/12/19  Season 8, Episode 5

I know it’s not good form to start off a post with “What in the actual hell just happened?!” but that’s all I have at this moment. How do I phrase this, exactly, without giving away everything right at the beginning of my recap?  All I can say is that this past episode of Game of Thrones was an epic and visually stunning piece of work and it also left me livid and disappointed in the turn that the creators have taken for the show.  We knew big things were coming, and come they did.  So without further ado, let’s dive in to the recap of “The Bells”:

Lord Varys sits at his desk at Dragonstone penning some letters – we get a glimpse of the scroll he is working on and it appears that Varys is spreading the word about Jon Snow’s true lineage as Rhaegar Targaryen’s legitimate son.  Wowzers, the master of whisperers is wasting no time with his agenda to rally the kingdom behind Jon’s claim to the Iron Throne!

There’s a knock on the door, and Varys quickly stows away his stationary.   A little girl of about 9 years enters to inform him that Queen Daenerys still isn’t eating and Varys says they’ll try again at suppertime. Apparently it’s been two days now and Daenerys Targaryen has holed herself up in her room, refusing to see anybody and turning away all meals.  The girl expresses worry that the guards keep watching her and Varys says “What did we discuss?” – “The greater the risk, the greater the reward.”  He sends his little bird off to the kitchen where she works.  Hmmmm, the nuanced conversation makes it unclear, but I’m wondering if Varys is trying to poison Queen Dany.  After last episode, it wouldn’t surprise me.  Yikes, Varys the spider is weaving a dangerous little web here.  His days are numbered for sure.

Later in the day, Jon Snow arrives via boat at Dragonstone and Varys greets him at the shore – Tyrion Lannister watches from a distance with a mix of concern and trepidation on his face. As they walk together, Jon lets Varys know the Northerners are two days away from King’s Landing.  Varys hints that he thinks Dany may be going crazy, and that Jon would be a much better Targaryen ruler.  As usual, Jon rejects the notion of ruling the realm – the dude doesn’t want it, ok? -  and he professes his loyalty to his queen before he trots off, leaving Varys behind.

Tyrion manages to pay a visit to Daenerys in her room.  She looks out her window as she speaks in a disconcertingly detached and monotone voice. “Somebody has betrayed me.”  -“Yup.” Without turning around she says, “Jon Snow.”  When Tyrion corrects her that it’s actually Varys, Dany does some creative deductive reasoning:  Varys knows about Jon’s parents because Tyrion told him – and Tyrion in turn found out from Sansa Stark whom Jon told.  Boom! Jon’s the traitor.  Case closed. Only wait, it’s not closed, because guess what? Queenie ain’t happy that Tyrion spoke with Varys without consulting her first.  She also points out that Sansa was playing Tyrion because she knew she could count on him to blab the info to Varys, which may as well translate to leaking the news to the Westeros Enquirer.  Tyrion attempts to defend his actions – he asserts that, as Hand of the Queen, he needs to know about information that is a threat to his boss, and yes, he made an error in judgment by not consulting her first. When he points out that Dany’s advisors are all trying to do what’s best for the world – Varys more than anyone- he realizes it doesn’t really matter. Daenerys agrees, it doesn’t.  Ruh roh, Varys!  I think we all were pretty certain he was gonna bite it soon – especially after Melisandre told him last season that he’d die in Westeros.   Looks like his time has officially run out.

It’s evening and Varys sits in his chambers, once again composing rebellion letters to his Westerosi – and maybe even Essosi – pen pals.  He hears footsteps marching down the hall and hastily burns his letter, then calmly removes his rings.  Dude knows what’s coming.  Unsullied guards enter his room and Grey Worm holds manacles in his hands.

At the shore, Varys is escorted by armed guards to face Daenerys, Jon and Tyrion.  Tyrion gives him the decency of letting him know it was he who snitched on Varys – in response Varys just nods.  “Yeah, that tracks.  I just hope it turns out I was wrong about Dany and that I deserved this.” I’ve gotta say, Varys who used to be so good at stealth and sneaking around has done a horrendous job at keeping his intentions a secret, so none of this is terribly surprising, even to him.  He bids Tyrion farewell with a warm squeeze to his arm.  Man, it’s so bittersweet.  Varys and Tyrion’s friendship and banter was something that was always super enjoyable in earlier seasons.  It’s sad to see it end like this, but he did have it coming.  Daenerys steps forward, and in that same detached voice from earlier, she informs Varys that he’s been sentenced to death.  She drones, “Dracarys” and out of the pitch dark behind her appears Drogon’s giant face.  Her dragon steps forward, stretches himself up and takes a deep breath, baring his teeth.  Then, POOF! Varys is engulfed in flames.  Yowzers, that was tense.  Jon just looks at Dany like “Khaleesi, you’re scary.”

Later that night, Dany sits sullen in a chair by the fireplace in her room, as Grey Worm stands nearby.  Daenerys hands Grey Worm a slave collar and tells him it was the only possession that Missandei brought with her when they crossed the Narrow Sea to come to Grey Worm. With a stoic frown, Grey Worm takes the collar and tosses it in the fire.

Jon approaches and Daenerys dismisses Grey Worm so they can speak in private.  He waits for Dany to speak first, and the monotone words that pop out of her mouth are “What did I tell you would happen if you told your fam? Ya know, Sansa is just as much to blame for Varys’ death as I am, because she couldn’t keep her big mouth shut. She betrayed you.” She goes on to lament that she was beloved back in Essos and here nobody loves her – all she has is fear. Feebly, Jon hits his soundboard button that bleats out “I love you. You’re my queen.” But it’s not the kind of love Dany wants.  And somewhere in heaven Ser Jorah is probably saying “See what it’s like, Khaleesi???!!!  It ain’t fun, is it?”  She leans in to kiss him, but when Jon pulls back she scowls and mutters “Ok, fear it is.” What the heck?  May I ask why Jon even bothered to come back if he isn’t going to at least try to talk Dany down from the bad place she is in?    

Also, I’m thinking if Daenerys made more of an effort at Winterfell, she probably could have won some people over.  Really, she just needed to do a few shots with Tormund during the feast, dance with Jon in a Scottish reel and then balance on her tippy toes and I’m sure the entire North would’ve gotten behind her.  Maybe not everybody will get my Titanic reference, but for the 4 people who do, it was worth it.

The next day in the throne room at Dragonstone, Daenerys talks battle strategy with her only two remaining advisors:  Grey Worm and Tyrion.  After Cersei killed her bestie, and Grey Worm’s girlfriend, they both are ready to torch King’s Landing.  Daenerys even goes as far as to blame the people of King’s Landing for not turning on their queen, as a justification for wanting to burn the city.  In a last ditch effort to reason with her, Tyrion tells Daenerys that the people of King’s Landing are scared to fight Cersei, because she’ll kill them and their families.  “Lame excuse! Well, guess what, Cersei thinks she can exploit my mercy as a weakness, but she doesn’t realize that my mercy extends to mercy killing future generations so they don’t have to live under a tyrant.” “Ummmm, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, Crazy. Would you please consider a route that doesn’t involve killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children?  If they ring the bells,  that means they surrender.  Listen out for the bells, ok? Please???” Dany gives a grudging nod to Grey Worm and then tells them to wait outside the gates of King’s Landing until she gives them the signal to attack - they’ll know it when they see it.

Before Tyrion leaves the throne room, Dany goes “Oh, and by the way, my guards stopped your bro Jaime – he was on his way to King’s Landing.  So guess what, you were wrong AGAIN.  He hasn’t abandoned Cersei.  If you fail me one more time you’re toast. ” –“Ok, I got it.” –“No dude, like, literally. I will toast you with my dragon.” –“Yeeeeah…I got that part.” –“But really.  You’re gonna die.  With dragon fire.  M’kay, byyeee, see ya at happy hour!”

That evening, Jon and Tyrion arrive by boat to join Dany’s and Jon’s forces camped outside King’s Landing. The rear guard for the North won’t get there till morning and Tyrion says that Dany wants to fight asap, but Jon confirms, nothing’s gonna happen till daybreak.  Tyrion pulls Davos aside and asks “Davos, my man…I need you to do me a solid. You’re the world’s best smuggler, right?”  Davos knows he’s going to regret whatever comes next.

The Hound and Arya arrive outside King’s Landing that night and they make their way through the Northern camp.  When a soldier stops them, the Hound tells him it’s Arya Stark, the hero of Winterfell and she’s gonna kill Cersei. The confused soldier goes to talk to his manager - and the Hound and Arya just traipse past.

Meanwhile, Tyrion approaches a tent guarded by Unsullied soldiers – he pulls rank and dismisses them, then walks inside the tent to find Jaime Lannister tied up.  Tyrion tells his brother he’ll only free him if Jaime agrees to get Cersei out of the Red Keep.  He informs Jaime of a secret passageway that runs from the basement of the Red Keep outside to the shore, and he’s arranged for a boat for them to escape.  Tyrion makes a big deal about telling Jaime to be sure to ring the city’s truce bells before he and Cersei make a run for it.  When Jaime asks him why he’s risking his life, Tyrion tells him he’s repaying the favor, if his death means saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, it’s a fair trade.  Then Tyrion gives us all the feels when he tells Jaime that he was the only person that was ever kind to him when they were kids.  They hug and Tyrion sobs.  Awww, this is a really touching moment! I may have shed a tear or two.

The next morning, Euron and his Iron Fleet, lay in wait in the bay and ready their dragon-killing spear launchers – fun fact: that weapon is called a Scorpion.  You learn something new every day, folks! Team Cersei’s army prepares for the battle and it’s an overall tense scene with people clearing the streets – lots of shots of small children and babies being whisked indoors.  Among the frenzied crowd, Arya and the Hound walk into town.  They join a mob of commoners frantically running to the gates of the Red Keep to seek safety inside its walls.  The Golden Army marches outside the city gates and stands in formation.

Across from the Golden Army are the Northerners and Dany’s army, ready for battle.  Tyrion reminds everybody again to listen for the bells, as that is the sign that King’s Landing has surrendered.

From her tower balcony in the Red Keep, Cersei smiles smugly as her courtyard fills with innocent citizens – aka dragonfire fodder.  The guards start to close the gates – Arya and the Hound manage to squeeze in before the gates are shut.  Jaime is among the crowd of people who didn’t make it in.  He waves his golden hand around like a backstage pass, hoping the Lannister guards will see it, but they don’t.  Finally, he ducks down an alley, presumably to find another way into the castle.

The suspense builds as we get multiple shots of people on both sides waiting silently for the fight to start.  All’s still as the Iron Fleet looks out to the horizon for a glimpse of Daenerys and her dragon.  Euron suddenly turns to look up into the sun and sees a dragon coming down in a divebomb. The Iron Islanders scramble to aim their Scorpions at Drogon, but they’re too slow and a stream of dragon fire obliterates a line of ships.  It’s incredibly satisfying to see Dany and her dragon lay waste to the entire Iron Fleet in a matter of seconds.  

Daenerys then switches course for the walls of King’s Landing.  It’s really nice to see her actually using some type of strategy here – she keeps her dragon low along the water, then pulls up suddenly, expertly avoiding any incoming spears and again, she takes out a ton of Scorpions.  

On the other side of town, the Golden Army stands at attention outside the city gates – Captain Strickland stares off at Grey Worm and the rest of the Unsullied, Dothraki, and Northerners across the way.  Everybody waits in anticipation.  The Golden Army hear distant explosions from behind them when suddenly: BLAST!!! Dragonfire obliterates the wall and engulfs the Golden Army.  Dany’s and Jon’s forces charge into the city.  

The action plays out like a horror movie as we see glimpses of a dragon’s tail followed by more dragon fire and scorpions being torched.  It’s chaos in the streets as civilians run in a panic.  Cersei’s soldiers fight the advancing Dothraki, Northerners and Unsullied.  

Cersei watches it all from her balcony and her smug confidence wavers just a smidge.  Things aren’t going quite as expected.  

Tyrion makes his way through the burning carnage outside the city walls. 

 Meanwhile, Qyburn fills Queen Cersei in on the state of the city and it ain’t pretty:  All the Scorpions have been destroyed.  The Iron Fleet can’t defend them because…they don’t exist anymore.  And that fancy Golden Army?  They’re dunzo. Qyburn suggests they move on to Plan B and get the hell out of Dodge, but Cersei refuses and states that the Red Keep has never fallen before, and it won’t today.

Grey Worm, Jon Snow, and Ser Davos Seaworth lead the charge of men through the city until they come upon Cersei’s army barring the way.  Both sides stand in tense silence – neither one makes the first move.

Tyrion’s desperate gaze is fixed upon the bell towers in the distance.  They stand still and silent.  Jaime Lannister, in the meantime, has found a back way around the castle walls.

Daenerys and her dragon swoop over King’s Landing as the civilians below gasp in fear.  Drogon lands on a wall and lets out a ferocious roar. The crowd below is terrified. Dany waits.  After a long moment, Cersei’s army drop their swords.  A voice calls out “Ring the bells!”  Then another voice.  Over and over, people call out “Ring the bells!”  Cersei looks out at the city, she doesn’t give word.

From Dany’s perch on her dragon, she looks down across King’s Landing and then up at the Red Keep where she just knows Cersei is looking back.  It’s a 5-mile stare-off y’all and it’s super intense.

After what feels like an eternity, the truce bells finally chime.  Jon heaves a huge sigh of relief, as does Tyrion.  Dany glares at the Red Keep.  She sobs and there’s a brief internal struggle.  Hatred burns in her eyes and her dragon takes to the sky and flies toward the Red Keep.  Cersei watches as the dragon swoops overhead a crowd of civilians scrambling  in a panic.  And then…Drogon unloads a stream of fire, torching men, women, and children. Are you effin’ KIDDING ME?!  How is this happening???

What ensues is a senseless massacre as Dany and her dragon continue to burn street upon street of innocent citizens.  Back where Grey Worm and Jon Snow stand, the Lannister army hears a commotion behind them. The captain looks at them like, “Hey, what load of crap are you guys pulling?”  As the Lannister soldiers look behind them to see what’s going on, their captain turns back to face his enemies and Grey Worm launches his spear into the unarmed man’s chest.  Whoa, this is some serious foul play.

The Unsullied and Northerners charge into the unarmed soldiers.  Slow mo Jon Snow is NOT down with what’s happening.  I feel ya, Jon.  I feel ya.  He stops his guys from advancing and Grey Worm shoots him major stinkeye “You’re gonna betray your Khaleesi like that?” and continues onward with the Unsullied army.

The rest is a 40 minute long sequence of unspeakably horrific and brutal genocide as Dany and her dragon lay fiery waste to King’s Landing.  The streets have been turned into rivers of fire.  Cersei is STILL in her tower and looks on with the nervous realization that things are looking pretty bad for her.  Ya think?

On the ground, Ser Davos helps to steer the panicked crowd in a safe direction.  Women are raped and murdered in front of their children as Northerners, Dothraki and the Unsullied ravage the city.  Jon is still watching everything around him on the slow mo channel. What is even going on here?!

Dany’s dragon reaches the Red Keep and takes out a tower.  Meanwhile, Jaime has made his way to the secret entrance into the Red Keep, but guess who’s also there for absolutely no reason whatsoever?  Euron Greyjoy.  Yeah.  All Euron wants to do is be a d-bag and fight Jaime.  The two go at it, and eventually Euron critically wounds Jaime with a stab to the gut.  Spurred on by love, adrenaline, and lame writing, Jaime manages to fight back with a fatal blow to Euron and then Jaime continues on his way to save Cersei.  As Euron bleeds out on the ground he cackles like a madman  that he got Jaime good.  Really? We can’t spare any screen time for Daenerys’ descent into total madness but we can show this pointless scene?  Ok.

Even though the Red Keep is under fire, Cersei is holds on to the notion that things aren’t totally over for her – ahhh, denial!  Qyburn finally gets her to go with him to try their chance at escaping into exile.  As they head down the winding stairwell, we see the burning city and intermittent green explosions go off.  Wildfire reserves?  Were these remnants from the Mad King’s rule or did Cersei plant them as booby traps throughout the city?  I guess we’ll never know!!

While Drogon makes his rounds over the Red Keep, the Hound and Arya have snuck inside the castle and are in the map room where the walls are crumbling down. The Hound gives Arya a quick chat about revenge and what it does to people – he’s been after it his whole life. “Do you want to turn out like me?  If you go with me, you’re going to die here.” His words strike a chord and Arya realizes she chooses life.  She thanks him and hightails it out of the Red Keep.  Wait, what?  I was promised some Arya-Cersei revenge killing, with the possibility of face swaps, are you telling me that’s not going to happen?

Cersei and Qyburn scramble down the staircase with the Frankenmountain while the roof falls in around them.   As large boulders crash down, Cersei presses up against the wall and she is miraculously unscathed.  As the rubble and dust clear, they notice the Hound blocking the way.  It’s Cleganebowl time, y’all!  The Mountain is suddenly in Hound fighting mode – he doesn’t even listen to his queen’s commands and he smacks Qyburn out of the way, instantly killing him.  As both men stare each other down, Cersei nervously walks past them. “So…I can see you two have some unfinished business, Imma just squeeze by here and leave you to it. K, bye!”

When she gets to the map room, Cersei looks around with no direction.  She’s on her own.  But wait…no she’s not because…ta daaaaa, there’s Jaime!  Cersei falls into his arms, a sobbing mess.  Ugh!!

The Hound and the Mountain go at it while Arya navigates her way through the chaos of King’s Landing. She encounters crumbling buildings, hysterical mobs and burn victims at every turn.  At one point, Arya loses her footing and is trampled by the panicked crowd as dragon fire continues to sweep across the city.  We get a lot of cutaways between Arya and the Hound – both seemingly going through the same pain.  Everytime the Hound gets in a blow to the Mountain, it has no effect whatsoever. He manages to knock off Frankenmountain’s helmet in the fight and it’s like Darth Vader unmasked. As the Hound is brutally beaten by his big brother and pushed down to the ground,  Arya is squashed by the running mob.  She fights in vain to get back on her feet.  Maybe the cutaway technique is supposed to be poetic storytelling, but at this point I just feel so manipulated by the showrunners that I can’t even appreciate it. A woman helps Arya get back up again.

The Mountain simply will not die, despite numerous wounds that would have killed anybody else.  And then we are treated to his signature move:  boring his fingers into his adversaries’ eyes.  It’s so grotesque and I’m praying he doesn’t squish the Hound’s skull like a watermelon a la Oberin Martell.  The Hound fights Frankenmountain off with a dagger to his skull – it barely phases the bigger, badder Clegane.  In a last ditch effort, the Hound lunges at his big brother and they both tumble over the wall into the burning wreckage below.  RIP Hound, we loved you!  Sorry your bro is a weird undead zombie that can’t be killed!  Sorry you didn’t actually stand any chance whatsoever of winning that fight!  And sorry the writers suck!

On the ground, Jon Snow takes in the devastation around him.  Explosions of wildfire go off here and there and he commands his men to fall back.

Elsewhere in the burning city, Arya has passed out from falling debris.  She comes to, very likely concussed, and gasps for air. White ash is everywhere. More buildings crumble to pieces as she continues her escape out of the city. 

There’s a short-lived attempt to rescue some cowering women and children – the only one who follows her is the same woman  who helped her up earlier when she was being trampled.  Hold on, hold on…might this woman be…Jaqen H’Gar in disguise??? They’ve been giving her a lot of screen time.  But no, she’s just a random person we’re suddenly supposed to care for.   She and her daughter get charred to smithereens in the next scene when Dany’s dragon unleashes another blast of fire – Arya ducks out of the way in the nick of time.  Of course.

As the Red Keep continues to cave in and crumble around them, Jaime and Cersei head down to the basement only to find all exits blocked by rubble. There’s no way out.  Cersei finally realizes this is the end.  She blubbers that she wants to live and wants her baby to live and begs Jaime “Don’t let me die! Don’t let me dieee!” Ugh. Too little, too late, Cersei. Jaime holds her in his arms and comforts her.  He tells her nothing else matters besides the two of them.  The tune of The Rains of Castamere plays over the action and the ceiling crashes in on them. Ugh!  That’s how they die?  Lovingly in each other’s arms? No prophecy where her younger bro strangles her? Maybe I’m a spiteful jerk, but Cersei deserved much worse of a death.  And also, it seems pretty inconsistent that Cersei of all people has been reduced to a sobbing damsel in distress looking for a man to rescue her.  I’m so over this episode and the abominable writing that is going on throughout.   Arya should have killed Cersei, wearing Jaime’s face.  That’ something I think we all could have gotten behind.  Not this lame death where we’re supposed to feel sorry for queen biatch Cersei.

Hey guess what?  It’s time to watch Arya once again attempt to make it out of King’s Landing alive.  She sees the burnt remains of the mom and daughter she was helping, and a tear falls down her cheek.  As she looks around her, there stands a white horse just feet away.  She carefully approaches it and takes the reigns. Maybe this is supposed to be some heavy-handed symbolism, but I’m not feeling it.  Arya gallops off – presumably to safety.  Roll credits.

Wow.  What a heaping pile of you know what.  The aren’t enough question marks or expletives in the world to capture the incredulity and disappointment I feel about this episode.  Really, I was hoping this was just an elaborate Snickers commercial and at the end, Crazy Dany bites into a candy bar and turns normal again while a voiceover goes “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”  

But seriously, what the eff? Screw you, Weiss & Benioff!  What a betrayal of the viewers – the creators took years of complex character development and threw it all in the toilet with a cheap, lazy plot twist to turn Daenerys into a super villain with ZERO explanation of how she got there.

And making the audience watch 40 minutes of brutal slaughter and suffering was completely unnecessary. I’m so mad.  In the past, with these sprawling epic battle scenes, the viewer always had an investment and a side they were rooting for.  Just watching the genocide of an entire city with no chance of victory did not need to go on for as long as it did.  Clearly the creators wanted to drive home the point that there is no coming back from this for Daenerys.  We all have to hate her now and there is nothing redeemable about her.

Mostly I’m pissed because there was no transition from the Dany we saw to this monster who – after the city surrenders – torches all these people who are now her own subjects.  It doesn’t compute.  Sure, there were hints in the past that Dany could take brutal measures at times, but they at least had some kind of logic or rationalization behind them.  Killing a bunch of innocent people after you have been handed over the city and the throne that you so badly wanted…I don’t get it.  And it’s not my job as a viewer to fill in the huge gap of additional character development that needed to happen in order to get Dany from an angry, mourning queen, out for vengeance against Cersei into a psychopathic Hitler, killing everybody.  This is the same woman who locked her dragons up for who knows how long because they killed a little child when they were hunting for sheep.  Give me at least some way to understand how she could have changed other than just saying “She’s crazy everybody!!” Also, it ticked me off that they didn’t show Dany’s face even once after she went crazy. Hey, maybe Bran is actually evil after all and he warned into Drogon and did this all just to make Dany look bad!

All right, I’ll quit my whining.  This episode has kinda ruined the show for me and I don’t have high hopes for the ending. My guess is that Daenerys has to be killed now.  I don’t care if or how they do it.  Maybe Bran will warg into Drogon and kill her?  Maybe she’ll try to torch Tyrion and we’ll find out he’s a secret Targaryen and she’ll go even more crazy wondering just how many damned Targaryen sleeper cells are out in the world.

If Varys ever got any of his letters delivered, my assumption is those people will now back Mr. Jon “I hate responsibility” Snow.  He’ll probably also bite it or run off to the North to become a Wildling.  Then everybody will decide to put Sansa and Tyrion in charge, or better yet, they’ll break up into separate countries and Sansa can rule the North.  It’s not like there is actually a capital left in Westeros to rule from.  

At this point I’d also be totally fine with a Wizard of Oz ending where Bran wakes up after falling from the tower and tells everybody about his fabulous dream.  Sorry to end this all on a downer, but as Mad Queen Dany would say “It’s not my fault. It’s the writers’. They have betrayed you, gentle reader, not I.”  Just know, you’re not alone in your feelings.  Hang in there and I’ll see you next week, my friends. It’s gonna be a doozy.

[christabellanikolai]

Winter’s End, Chapter 3

I saved thousands that night, but I couldn't save my family.

Archive of Our Own Link 

They had been riding for what Jon had assumed was two days straight, only stopping for a few short times to eat. As they continued south along the King’s Road their horses became tired, slowing their pace. Finally, Theon and Jon had decided to take a break, setting up a small campfire along the road, cooking their first proper meal in days. Two other members of the Night’s Watch had also joined them. Jon did not recognize them, he assumed they had joined after he had become King in the North or even Warden of the North.

“Is it true you climbed the Wall?” asked one of the men, Jon had learned his name was Crann. “What was it like?”

“Hell,” said Jon, unsure if the boy was speaking of the steps or when he scaled the side to cross over with the Free Folk. “There is a reason we have a lift.” All four laughed as Theon began to pass around pieces of charred meat. “What about you two? How did you two become members of the Night’s Watch?”

“Our families died in the wars your grace.” said the boy who had introduced himself as Orwen, his face similar to that of Grenn. “When there was nothing left for me I ended up riding North to help rebuild, somehow I found myself at the Wall.”

“I was living in the foothills just outside the Eyrie when the fighting for King’s Landing broke out. My family refused to take sides and was murdered by the Lannister army. I ran and hid out the war in an abandoned holdfast.” said Crann “When it was all over I began to wander, explore what was left of Westeros. The Lord Commander found me and brought me to the Wall. The first time I saw it, it felt like I had reached the edge of the world.”

“I am glad to see that the Watch is prospering,” said Jon

“It really is the Queen’s doing.” said Theon, “Jaime says she is the first ruler on record in many years to actually visit Castle Black.” Jon then remembered what one of the boys had said in passing that night in front of the statue on the Wall. How Daenerys had lit the flame herself. “She told me she wouldn’t let the Night’s Watch die, she wanted it kept alive in your memory.”

Later that night Jon lay awake, staring up that stars. Each time he closed his eyes he saw her face. At first, she had been smiling down upon him, memories of their blissful nights together. Though as the hours' pasts and the cold winds began to blow her face changed, tears pouring from her eyes as she begged him not to go, to stay back as his armies fought one last battle with the Night King.

“Jon…” his brother Bran’s voice ringing in his head. “Jon, go down the hill, there you will find a Godswood.”

It was as if his feet began to move on his own. Soon he found himself standing face to face with a heart tree, the eyes streaked with red sap. “Reach out your hand.” he heard Bran say. “You must begin to see.”

Jon did, just as his hands touched the bark he felt the world around him disappear. No longer was there a Godswood in front of him but his Brother Bran, his hand held out. “Don’t be afraid, soon you will understand.” Flashes of images played out in front of him, they were so quick he struggled to see them clearly. In one he reached for Longclaw, stopping suddenly as he found the blade ablaze. He then swung it toward the Night King, hitting him in the abdomen. Just as the Night King’s form began to break apart, a spear made of ice was pushed forward. He felt the sharp end enter his stomach. A flash of pain before his hands fell upon warm blood as it poured from the wound. “Dany…” he whispered as he fell to his knees. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s too late. He is gone.” he heard an unfamiliar voice say. He saw himself lying on stone, his body surrounded by branches. Children of the Forest stood around him. “We need to try.” another voice said.

“Do it.” he heard his Brother say. He looked up to find Bran among the branches, standing above him. “This is the only way to prevent the Army of the Dead from ever rising again.”

A sudden stabbing pain in his chest, he heard himself scream out as his body lurched upward. Slowly the scream turned into one that was no longer his own, but Daenerys. He turned his head looking for her, terrified by her cries of pain. “No!” he heard himself yell. “No more!”

He ripped his hand away from the tree, once again within the Godswood. His heart was racing and his breath unsteady. “Jon!” he heard Theon yell as he ran toward him. “Jon, what’s happened?”

“I should have been there,” Jon repeated. He couldn’t understand why he was saying this, nor did he know where he was speaking of. Only that whatever had made Daenerys scream in such pain, he should have been there to protect her. “I should have, she shouldn’t have been alone.”

“Jon, what are you talking about?” he felt his friend placing his hands upon his shoulder, pulling him back to reality. Theon looked toward his friend and then the heart tree, he somehow understood what was happening. He heard rumors of Northmen having such abilities. “What did you see?”

Jon swallowed hard as he continued to breath heavy. Clutching his chest. “I was beyond the wall, the Night King stabbed me but Bran he was there. I heard Dany, she was screaming, but I couldn’t find her. It was awful.”

Theon took Jon’s shaking hands in his own as he kneeled in front of him. “It’s over now, look at me. You aren’t there anymore, you are with me in the North, and we are going to King’s Landing. Daenerys is Queen now, she is waiting for us.” It was something he had found helped not only himself but his sister as well. Whenever their past traumas haunted them, they simply needed to be reminded of the present. It seemed to help Jon as his breath began to slow and he was able to rise to his feet. “Let’s get back to riding for the capitol. We should be near Winterfell soon.”

“My Queen, please accept these gifts.” One of her subjects stood before her in the throne of the Red Keep. She sat upon the iron throne, holding court with the people of Westeros. While the lines had been short during the early days of her rule, they had grown longer as the weather began to change. “Your gentle yet strong leadership saw that not only Westeros, but the lands beyond the Narrow Sea survived this long and hard winter. For this, we bring you jewels from across the waters. They are from lands you once visited while in exile. I hope they serve as reminders of how far you have come.”

“Your gesture is wonderfully kind.” said Daenerys as her she admired the set of jewelry held within a small trunk. From where she sat she was unable to tell by the cut of jewels where exactly they were from. She nodded toward her Queensguard as the man closed the trunk before passing it to one of the Unsullied soldiers. “If there is anything you need to rebuild please do not hesitate to ask. We hope to provide any resource needed to help people rebuild their homes.”

“Today I only hoped to say thank you my Queen.” said the man as he bowed, taking his leave.

“Was that the last one?” she asked Missandei who nodded. “Good, Tyrion have Yara and Davos brought to my chambers.”

As she headed toward her private chambers she could hear her son receiving a lesson from Samwell in one of the studies. “Whose sigil is that?” she heard him ask. She stood in the doorway, watching the two look over a large book containing the sigils from each of the houses in Westeros.

“That is a new one.” said Sam “A bear looking upon a maiden. House Giantsbane, they live in the North. Your Father helped to bring them from beyond the wall.”

“They knew Father?” asked Aegon, his face lighting up at the mention of Jon.

“Yes, Tormund was a great friend of his.” said Sam “Maybe he will visit us for the wedding. You could ask him how your Father thought Tormund was a King the first time they met.”

“He will be here.” said Daenerys as she sat down across from them. “Brienne once served in your Aunt Arya’s own personal guard.”

“My Queen! I am sorry I did not see you come in.” said Sam as he struggled to quickly rise to his feet. Daenerys giggled, shaking her head at the unnecessary formalities. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, I was just hoping to ask if you received any more responses from the Maesters.”

“Not since yesterday, but I did receive this one from Jaime at Castle Black this morning.” He passed a rolled up parchment toward Daenerys. She took it, her hands shaking with worry that it may be a response to her request. Sam took her hand in his, shaking his head.

‘Theon Greyjoy and 2 others have begun their journey toward Kings Landing. They should arrive in time to represent the Night’s Watch in the celebration of the union between House Stark and House Baratheon. They bring with them a gift for both Arya Stark and her grace Queen Daenerys. - Jaime Lannister, The 1000th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.’

“A gift for myself and Arya?” asked Daenerys confused by the wording of the letter. She ended up rolling her eyes as she read it once again. Sam laughing in response to her candor. “Of course he would be vague.”

“It seems any gifts should be shared among Gendry and Arya, not between the Queen and the Bride.” said Sam causing Daenerys to smile.

“That has always been the only tradition I have known,” said Daenerys before heading over toward Aegon. The boy wrapped his arms around his Mother and pulled her closer. “When you finish your lessons we can have dinner in the Gardens.” She whispered before heading for her chambers.

As she stepped inside, she watched as Yara and Davos rose to their feet, bowing their heads. “Sit, sit,” she ordered. It had been a long afternoon of holding Court, and she was done with formalities. “These silly things really do waste time. Yara I am sure you are probably wondering why I asked you to here a bit earlier than the rest of the guests.”

“I believed it was because you have missed my company.” said Yara in her sarcastic flirtatious tone. “Though if it is for an arranged marriage between this man and myself, I am afraid my Queen that you are far off from my preferences.”

“I would never do such a thing.” smiled Daenerys. “No, I have a proposition that involves both you. As it appears Winter is over, traveling the Narrow Sea should be much easier. You two know more about traveling the seas than anyone in the Seven Kingdoms. I also think it’s time I grow the Small Council. Yara I would like to make you Master of Ships and Davos I would make you the Master of Trade.”

“What of my duties as Master of Law your grace.?” asked Davos, having previously put in charge of keeping order among the people and maintaining the Dungeons during the Winter.

“Ser Jorah has agreed to take on that role should you accept this new position.” answered Daenerys. “You two would obviously be working closely which is the reason I have brought you both here.”

“What would you like us to do first?” said Yara, immediately agreeing to the Queen’s request. She was exciting not only by the opportunity but also the fact that another woman had recognized her skills and abilities such a way.

“Ser Davos meet with the people of Flea Bottom, I want you to work with them to identify something that is only available from across the Narrow Sea. It needs to be something people will buy, Flea Bottom will then become the hub from where it is sold.”

“My Queen…” said Davos “This is a brilliant idea. I am quite sure the people of Flea Bottom will be grateful for this opportunity, thank you.”

“It is a small step, but if we are going to build that part of the cities economy then we have to set them apart from other traders in the city, may even the country.” said Daenerys “Yara, your first task will be to go to the harbor. There are some old ships, left by the Lannisters and your brother’s fleet, I want you and your men to see what needs to be done to convert them into trade ships.”

“Yes my Queen,” said Yara.

“Good, I want regular reports from you both at Small Council meetings.” said Daenerys “Also we should be sure to share our plans with Gendry when he arrives. He grew up there and would have invaluable insight into what can be done there.”

“Yes your grace.” agreed Davos “I hope he is excited for this as I am.”

The highest towers were gone, the stones surrounding the walls were crumbling. They stood on the hills overlooking Winterfell. He was finally able to see the damage that had been left over from the last time he stood within the walls of the Northern capital. As he rode forward toward the gates, he thought of the last time. He was riding hard away from the gates, toward a dragon, his wife calling to him. Above him he could see the Night King surrounding the castle, riding upon the back of Viserion. In his arms was Arya, screaming for him to allow her to go back for her.

They were quickly able to ride through the gates. All of them silently dismounted from their horses before walking into the courtyard. The entrance ways and halls had been burned out. Many of the structures had collapsed or were on the verge of doing such. He walked toward what was once the entrance to the training yard, an arrow, it’s tip made of Dragonglass lay on the ground. A small reminder of that horrible night.

“Winterfell fell that night.” said Theon “But it was on that night that you began to push the Army of the Dead further North. You saved thousands in the South that night.”

“Thousands, yet I couldn’t save her.” said Jon

“Who?” asked Theon.

“My sister, Sansa,” said Jon, his head hung low. “I tried but the flames... this courtyard went up so fast. My men pulled me away, I was even lucky enough to grab Arya when I did.”

“You don’t know…” said Theon, his voice low. “I feared you did ride off before the raven arrived.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Jon “What raven?”

Theon had rescued his sister from Kings Landing just before Winterfell fell. While he had wanted her to return to the Iron Islands, she insisted on going North to fight with Daenerys. The seas wouldn’t be safe. Instead, they had sent a ship as a decoy, sailing toward White Harbor. They then began to travel North by horseback. When they came upon Winterfell, they saw the destruction left over by the attack. They walked the courtyard in silence, stepping over charred bodies of those left behind. “This can’t be…” said Theon, fearing his allies and friends were dead.

“There was no sign of the army south of here.” said Yara “They must have pushed them back North, we have to keep going.”

They quickly began collecting any of the dragonglass weapons that had been left over. As they did, they heard a voice shouting to them from the trail leading to the crypts. “Greyjoy! Get over here now!”

“Clegane?” asked Theon, both himself and his sister ran toward to crypts. There they found Sandor Clegane, the Hound motioning for them to follow him. “You have to help me get her out of here.”

“Who?” asked Theon, but his question was answered as he came upon the tomb of Ned Stark. There at the foot of the statue lay Sansa. Her skin was burned, she was shaking, and Theon was unsure if she was conscious. “Sansa! What’s happened to her?” Theon fell to his knees, pulling the young woman toward him.

“Theon…” he heard Sansa say as she weakly reached her arms around him. “What are you doing here?”

“She was in the main hall when the army of the dead arrived.” said Sandor “Fire, there was..blue fire everywhere. She must have somehow made it out of the hall and came here. When I was running something hit me in the head, when I came to, I found her while looking for survivors.”

“Smart little thing.” said Yara “This whole area is made of stone.”

“She has been too weak to move these last two nights.” said Sandor “We need to find the closest Maester, bring her South if we have to.”

“If we bring her South then Cersei will surely have her killed.” said Theon

“What would you have us do then Greyjoy?” yelled Sandor “There are no Maesters left North of here, and we can’t just leave her here to die.”

“Calm yourself Hound!” said Yara “East, we can bring her East and then go South if we have to. There is a Maester on the Iron Islands, he could help her, and it would put distance between her, the fighting and Cersei.”

“No…” Theon heard Sansa say. “It hurts too much, just go and leave me. Jon and Daenerys need you.”

“I’m not leaving you to die alone here.” Said Theon rising to his feet with Sansa in his arms. He ran with her as the statues of those he had previously betrayed looked on.

“We got her to the Iron Islands on a stolen ship we found in the bay.” said Theon. Jon stood silently staring toward the entry to the crypts. “The Maester there helped her the best he could, but we had to bring her to the Citadel when it was safe.”

“But she is alive?” asked Jon.

“Aye she is alive.” smiled Theon, “She wrote to me a few months ago from Riverrun. Though I imagine she will soon head to Kings Landing for your sister’s wedding.”

“Theon…” said Jon as he stepped forward, pulling the other man to him, his arms wrapping around him. “Thank you.”

“Riders are approaching!” yelled Crann from the gate. Theon quickly reached behind Jon pulling the hood above his head. “What are you doing?” he heard Jon say as he tried to stop him. “This is still my home.”

“Do you remember how you said you wanted to get to your wife quickly.” said Theon “That will not happen if you are found here. Now do your best to keep yourself hidden and let me do the talking.”

“What are men of the Night’s Watch doing here?” they heard the riders asked they came through the gates.

“My apologies if I have disturbed the ruins.” said Theon “I was raised here and just wanted to pay my respects on my way to King’s Landing.”

“And who are you?” asked one of the riders. Jon was able to see them now, though he continued to keep his face hidden. They too wore black cloaks, though a sigil of a dragon and a wolf was embroidered on the front. They were from King’s Landing. He assumed they had been ordered by Daenerys to keep watch over the ruins until Winter ended and it could be rebuilt.

“Theon Greyjoy.” informed Theon “I was kept as a ward here for many years. I am on my way to the wedding by invitation of Queen Daenerys.” Jon watched as Theon handed the man a scroll, he assumed it was the invitation to King’s Landing from Daenerys.

“Apologies.” said one of the guards. “Your companions, they are members of the Night’s Watch as well?”

“Yes,” said Crann before introducing himself and explaining where he was from. Orwen also did the same.

“You over there.” said one of the guards toward Jon. “Who are you? How did you join the Night’s Watch?” Jon froze at the question, a feeling of uneasiness passing over him. In anticipation of traveling King’s Landing, and in trying to figure out what exactly happened to him and his family, he had forgotten to plan for this type of moment. He turned to see Theon, a look of worry and anticipation across his face.

“My name is Clovis,” said Jon in an almost hush voice. “Joined the Night’s Watch when my home was destroyed in the war with the Night King.”

“Think you are gonna become the next King in the North with that sword there.” said the guard in a joking tone as he noticed Longclaw on Jon’s hip. “So many boys running around with Longclaw replicas. Saw one almost burn his hand off dipping his into a fire the other day.”

“Well we won’t be doing that.” said Theon “Now I think we should be heading for King’s Landing.” The four men then began to head back toward their horses. As Jon made his way toward the gate, one of the guards stopped him by grabbing him by the arm. Jon froze as the man looked closely at him. “Sorry, I thought I recognized you from somewhere,” he said before letting him go.

Jon quickly mounted his horse, riding forward, ahead of the rest of the group. While he could hear them shouting for him to slow down, he ignored them. There was a fear that he had been discovered and if word got out, it would slow him down. He needed to get as close to Daenerys as he could before any of that happened.

[boothsheridan]

In periods when it iscloser to the Sun as it is now the temperature of Pluto's solidsurface increases, causing the ice to sublimate into gas.

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[it-was-so-human]

From now on our troubles will be out of sight

A jonsaexchange for @alittlestardustcaught. I hope you have the happiest of holidays! 

Her lips pink and soft. (And he wonders not for the first time, though it a terrible thing to wonder, how they must feel.) OR The Westeros version of your family bombarding you with relationship questions during the holidays. 

He finds her standing on the battlement, looking over the walls of the castle. As if she was keeping guard over all of Winterfell by herself.  

Without turning around, she addresses him, “The Harvest Feast traditionally takes place during the harvest season. There are lords who take the delay as a slight by the Throne.”

Jon knows this, he should have arrived well before the first snow had fallen. Had been kept busy by the Queen. His visit meant as a sign of goodwill to the North coming off more as an insult.

He knows this. But he does feel the desire to reprimanded by Sansa Stark.

But when she turns around, he sees there’s a small smile playing on her lips.

“I suppose the Dragon Queen is unwilling to be parted from you for long.”

He holds in an audible groan. His relationship with his Aunt had strained heavily during the Great War and the first blush of romance had given way to a tense dynamic. Now he is only her nephew and reluctant temporary heir.

“She rather I be out of her way as much as possible these days.”

Sansa shakes her head, “I hardly blame her.”

A broad grin spreads across his face. 

She’s older since he’s seen her last. Her features more refined. The last traces of girlhood gone. A sophistication in their stead, transforming a pretty young lady into a beautiful woman.

And he realizes that she looks even more like her Lady Mother, an image of Catelyn Stark. He wonders if he should feel some pain or anger at her resemblance to a lady who shunned him. Or perhaps feel a resentment over her rightful claim to a title he desired his whole life.

But no, seeing her there with her strength and grace? The last of her family name?

Jon only felt a wave of pride. And affection.  

She may look like her mother, or carry herself with the honor of her father. But Sansa is truly only herself.

Her auburn hair was covered in part by her cloak, and perfect snowflakes caught on her lashes and melted on her lips.

He feels his throat tighten from some other emotion he cared not to name.

She looked ethereal standing there. No. No, that was not it.

She looked so very real. Real enough to touch.

Her lips pink and soft. (And he wonders not for the first time, though it a terrible thing to wonder, how they must feel.)

“Winterfell looks almost fully restored. The improvements in winter town are impressive. Your ravens don’t do you justice.”

The ravens he receives with missives in her neat elegant handwriting. (Letter he covets, reads and rereads.) 

((He’s missed her.))

Sansa seems pleased with his praise—a slight blushing on her cheeks—and nods in acknowledgement.

She seems to hesitate for a moment, before finally asking, “Did the Queen send a husband for me?”

He’s taken aback, that was a question he did not expect.

“A… a husband?”

“The lords and vessels are whispering. They fear they must act quickly.”

“To do what exactly?”

She gives him a soft smile, “To find a husband for Lady Stark, of course.”

“A what?” He’s repeating himself. He feels foolish, but he must have misheard her.

(She’s suffered through two marriages and many betrothals. How could any loyal Northerner ask this of her? Just as she’s regained herself.)

“A husband. A reliable Northern husband. Before the Queen picks a Southron lord to stake a claim.”

“No. You are my sister, under my protection. How dare anyone—“

“I am your cousin. And it is only practical. How long can a woman without an heir be able to wield control of the North?”

He hears himself let out a small growl in protest.

“Just because they are tired of fighting, doesn’t mean peace comes easily. They want security, Jon.”

“And you can marry—when you are ready. Someone of your choosing. A man you may love,” he manages.

“I am not upset by this; their concerns are legitimate. I have stopped dreaming of princes and love long ago.”

“Sansa…”

“After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve lost? It’s an easy enough sacrifice to protect those we love.”

And he has no words so he opens his arms and she falls into them easily. Nestles closer him, and he holds her close.  

“Welcome home, Jon.”

Home. The word was sweet. 

He lets out a thin laugh. (He did not realize how tired he truly was until just then.)

- - - 

The Harvest Feast felt so very much like… a Winterfell Harvest Feast. Despite the long winter and slow returns, it was a hearty and welcoming fare.

Sansa Stark was able to do the work of both the Warden of the North and lady of a great house.

The hall decked and alight with candles and the feast gave way to dancing. Not the level of opulence as King’s Landing with the elaborate musicians and foreign performers Sansa had dreamed of as a child.

But still Winterfell’s held a warmth all its own. (And the walls of Winterfell felt more alive than the keep in King’s Landing ever did to him.)

And to Jon’s surprise, he was welcomed back into the fold, not as a Targaryen but a Northern son.

But the whispers Sansa warned of rang through the room. It seemed to be the task the lords aimed to resolve this Harvest Festival.

And when he brought his concerns up to Davos, there was little help on his part.

“Aye, she does have to marry.”

At Jon’s protest the older man only shrugs, “Is it not the way of things for lords and ladies? You too will have to marry.”

He tries, and fails, not to choke on his ale. 

The young Lady Mormont is sitting next to him and nods wisely, as if it obvious. “We were surprised you haven’t married your Queen, but I can’t imagine you won’t marry someone soon enough.”

And throughout the night his hands are fisted, knuckles white to keep from attacking the crude babbling he overhears. The disrespect falling from the lips of drunken noblemen.

“I pity the man who would marry her, she’s like steel.”

“Ahhh, but imagine being the one to bed her. Warm her up a bit?”

Sansa didn’t deserve a man who would be weary of her or one who would see her as a conquest merely or duty.

She should be… respected and cherished. Adored.

Just look at her. 

She was standing cross the room from him and practically glowing. Her auburn hair sparkling in the candlelight. Thick eyelashes framing bright Tully-blue eyes. Long elegant fingers that during the war delicately stitched skin and knitted socks and tallied grain supplies and comforted the dying.  She catches his eyes, and gives him a small nod. A barely notable wink directed at him, breaking her ladylike countenance. 

(How could any man not love her?)

He wonders if he should ask her to dance. Wonders if he should save her from silly youths and scheming lords.

(Because perhaps he still wants to be the knight, wants to try his hand at saving a lady in distress.)

But as she smiles and accepts the hand of an elderly lord, he realizes doesn’t need him. Politicking and diplomacy is where she excels, not him.

So instead he resorts to glowering at the unworthy men in the hall.

(And he feels as sullen and broody now as he did as a child at his last feast in Winterfell, but there’s no helping it really.)

- - -

At Davos’ advice, he trudges through the snow towards the godswood to find Sansa. To ask her what decision she has made before the lords meet that evening.

The snow was swirling, flurries creating a blanket of all that was pure and possible.

He should be tired of the snow. Should relish the sweet long Southron summer. Be dreading the chill the goes straight to the bones. Should be sickened of cold winds and curse at drifting flakes.

But instead he finds them haunting his dreams.

He dreams of memories of laughter ringing through the halls of Winterfell. Of untainted crisp winter snow, full of possibilities and untarnished hope.

Of Robb and Theon and snowball fights before the advent of destiny and war and blood in their lives. Of Arya, Bran, Rickon, and Sansa with frost covered hair.

(Despite the cold, his childhood always felt warm.)

She’s standing there, but he doesn’t want to disturb her. Not until he finds the right words.

He reaches down and touches the snow, soft and powdery. The perfect consistency for a snowball.

He sees her straighten, she’s sensed him and is waiting.

His fingers itch to break the silence. To do… something.

No one would dare throw a snow at Lady Stark… and yet he feels his hands packing together the perfect snowball and sending it flying towards.

It splatters against her beautiful locks, and her recoil in response makes his stomach tighten. He should have known better. Should not have ever surprised her—

But she only shoots him a glare, a glint of excitement in her eyes.

And quickly collects snow before running away to a more strategic location.

The laughter that escapes him as he follows after her is… joyous. (When are the Lady of Winterfell and the Crown Prince allowed to just… be.)  

And they bombard one another with snowballs and when he finally catches her she surprises him by rubbing a handful of snow in his hair

And she is laughing and her otherwise perfect porcelain skin is the brightest of reds and her hair mussed with wild strands escaping her braid and snow is everywhere and she looks absolutely beautiful.

He feels his hand move on its own accord yet again, and now he’s tracing the hollow of her cheek with his knuckles.

It hurt to remember the excitement in her eyes upon her betrothal to the bastard Baratheon boy now replaced with yesterday’s simple resignation and duty.

He will do whatever he can to protect her from even more heartbreak. 

“Is there a man who will make you happy? One who may be worthy of you?”

And in response she only comes closer. And he can smell her soft floral scent and the crisp winter snow in her hair.

And she leans even closer, placing a kiss against the corner of his mouth. Her lips soft and warm and he feels the world go still.

And after a pause, as his lips meet hers (soft and warm and as perfect as he ever imagined) he understands. 

The gentle unsure movement of her lips against his giving way to a slow exploration and the sweetest feeling he has ever known.

He feels her lips smiling against his, and it is simply… it is simply right.

She is his family and she is his home.

(And nothing could take him away again.)

- - -

Also on AO3. 

[wendynerdwrites]

Now take Han Solo. The dude was presented as a smuggler looking for profit. Soon we learn that he is in debt to a very dangeourous gangster who has put a bounty on his head. What does this man do in the end of the movie? He could have gone to Jabba, paid his debt and live without a target on his back. Instead he chooses to come back and help Luke destroy the Death Star. (To be continued)

We are in Empire. He still got the bounty on his back and wans to settle it. What does he do? He went throught a blizzard in the middle of an ice planet to rescue his best friend. He risked his life to save Luke. With the Empire attackin Hoth… does he leave the base? He stays until he is sure that Leia leave the planet safely. He refuses to run even when Leia gave him permission to do it. (To be continued)

We jump to Return. Jabbae is dead. He is free of his debt. He can finally live in peace. He goes back to the rebellion and chooses to personally lead a suicide mission so the Empire can finally be defeated? He even let his firends to choose on their own terms to go with him on that mission. At the end of the movie he tells the woman he loves that he won´t stand in her way to happiness with Luke. (To be continued)

Jump to Force. He reappears again and chooses to help our runaway trio to find the Resistance and get BB8 map to safety. When the First Order starts it´s destructive rampage he chooses to help the rebellion, put it´s personal input on how to destroy the Starkiller (he raises the Resistance morale) and volunteers to infiltrate and put it´s shields down and rescue Rey. Finally he confronts his own son and tries to bring him back from the Dark Side. (To be continued)

What does this means? That Han Solo narrative is consistent. They presents us the character as the good guy deep down and he acts like the good guy deep down. Daenerys it´s a total failure as a character. She is presented as the character who will bring a new era to the world. But so far her Mereen and Westeros arcs haven´t show us any of that supposed change. Instead we have seen her creating mess after mess.

The visual narrative of season 4 and 6 suggests that Daenery’s wants to be worshipped in whole level ahead of a queen and more in a godlike manner. I’m speaking of the mysa moment and when she burned the dosh-khaleen temple. Plenty of critics of the problematic of such narrative have been written.

The slaves of slave’s bay submitted to mysa. The dothraki submitted to the stallion who mounts the world. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she is expecting the westerosi to submit to the Dragon. Olenna stroked her ego by telling her to be one. Then you got her whole speech full of self entitlement to Jon in their first meeting. Just think Jon talking that way to the wildlings in Hard home.

I definitely see your point in Han being an anti-Daenerys, but it should be noted that Han’s background and motivations are nothing like Dany’s. He’s never had some sort of legacy pressed upon him, or been wrapped up in carefully planned mystical shenanigans, nor did he aspire to power and/or authority, ever. In fact, he seemed to downright resent the responsibility that came with having a command rank among the rebels. 

There’s of course nothing wrong with wanting power, of course. I’ve always despised the notion of “Not wanting power is the reason X person should be the one to have it!” It’s fucking gross and stupid. It’s a mentality that ignores the fact that power = responsibility and tries to discourage ambition from people by framing “knowing one’s place” as a virtue and aspirations as a vice. The person who doesn’t want power is a person who has not prepared for it. Reluctant Kings have, historically, tended to be as disastrous as any ruthless tyrant (and, on top of the failures of their own reign, often pave the way for said ruthless tyrants to take power). The problem isn’t wanting power. It’s clear that Leia is personally ambitious and very comfortable with authority and power. Wanting power is not the problem, it’s not understanding power as, ultimately, responsibility that’s the issue. That’s what Davos spent four seasons telling Stannis. 

Daenerys, after personally losing a dragon, is now claiming she’s coming North to “save it, not conquer it”, but it’s very, very clear that she expects those things to go hand in hand and that saving it is secondary to taking the throne. Otherwise, she would have said to Hell with the ceasefire with Cersei and just gone North. She would not have ever even thought to fly to Winterfell instead of approach them like an ally. And it took a) developing an infatuation for Jon, b) him risking his life with only a dozen men to get her a wight for HER ceasefire, c) a promised armistice with Cersei, d) seeing the enemy with her own eyes and e) losing her “child” to agree to point her armies at the ARMY OF MONSTERS COMING TO KILL EVERYONE, INCLUDING HER AND HER PEOPLE. 

She left Meereen a literal flaming shitpile with one criminal without an army to handle things there as she sailed to take her throne. She claimed that she would rule in Meereen to learn to be a leader, but Meereen, despite having a clear and present need and threat facing it, was really just a means for her to take her prize. Then she stopped caring about “learning” when it got really, really hard and she decided she didn’t care to do any followup after setting everything on fire because that big, shiny throne she’s never even seen is waiting for her in the West and is more appealing than making sure she’s preserved her “liberation” of millions of former slaves, which turns out to be much harder than she thought and a problem that isn’t solved with fire. And she takes literally EVERYTHING, all her means of security/preservation with her to Westeros without even bothering to check if MAAAYBE there might be some OTHER major powers wishing to restore slavery to the three cities. 

She can believe in a prophecy that says SHE is the ultra-special hero of legend, but when someone shows up telling her of inconvenient monsters threatening to destroy everyone and everything, complete with witnesses and evidence of this, suddenly she’s a skeptic of the devastating oncoming threat because dealing with it means a) spending time and resources on something OTHER than the shiny throne she’s never actually seen and b) involves her acknowledging and tolerating someone with a title and rank equal to her own, and WE CAN’T HAVE THAT! (Regardless of what the actual people might think about that). 

She only acknowledges what Jon said about his people AFTER he gave her what she wanted, and took it at face value when he told her that it wouldn’t matter after all because of course they’ll see she’s too wonderful to deny. That should tell you everything you need to know about how she views people, responsibility, and power. Literally everything about the people of the North (which she has no interest in) will melt away for her and the power she wants.

 She shows no concern for her allies once they are no longer useful to her. She accused Jon of “pride” for not bending the knee after he downright told her his PEOPLE wouldn’t accept her and held the survival of literally everyone in Westeros hostage over a title, ignoring the point about the actual wishes of the people, because it’s not really important to her. She doesn’t care that Jon tells her, point blank, that his people won’t accept a Southern ruler. She doesn’t even bother asking why that might be. She is ignorant, and willfully so, of everything that has happened in Westeros that doesn’t directly involve her, and she has a double standard about anything in Westeros that involves her but is inconvenient (see: “My father was bad but don’t judge me for it, meanwhile, you totally should have to live according to a vow your ancestor made under duress three hundred years ago.”)

She only intends to help after SHE loses something of HERS in a way that directly threatens her power (losing a dragon.) and even then it’s conditional. AND EVEN THEN she doesn’t spare a thought towards, “Hey, maybe someone should send a message to the Northerners that one of my dragons died right in front of a terrifying enemy who has the power to reanimate corpses.” Because she isn’t interested. If that ended up mattering in a way beyond “oh, woe is me, I lost my child”, that would be inconvenient. Daenerys wants to assume power without caring for the responsibilities that come with it.

This is basically Dany’s theme song:

(substitute the “Janet Janet Janet Janet!” With her stupid ass list of titles)

But instead, the soundtrack is playing this triumphant, heavenly choir:

And to me, that’s the ACTUAL problem with narrative the show is trying to sell us, rather than the writing itself, necessarily. Or, rather, Dany’s words and actions on paper. Those two clips are basically Reality vs Perception to me when it comes to Dany, but the show is trying to sell us on the Perception, and it’s becoming more and more blatant and overwhelming how much this. Does. Not. Work.

For me, it isn’t what the characters say/do itself that makes the story poor, so much as how it is framed. Han claims to be in it for himself, but his actions tell a different story. The presentation makes that clear and works with that. Then you have things like Fifty Shades of Grey. 50SoG wouldn’t be a problem if it was a story about a controlling, psychotic predator, but it’s supposed to be a genuine romance, not a horror story and/or cautionary tale.

Same problem with Daenerys in GOT. Sure, she claims to be an altruistic messiah figure who cares about doing good, but her actions are every bit as contradictory to her claims as Han’s are to his. Only, as Han proves, it’s not saying one thing and doing another that’s the problem. It’s how this is framed. The way she is portrayed operates as if her words are to be taken at face value. She burns Westeros’s last autumn harvest and triumphant music swells. She spews her hypocritical BS about Jon’s pride and is given the last word. Jon’s response isn’t to be all “Is this motherfucker serious?!” but to look all guilty and self-reflective, as if what she said had any merit to it and WASN’T just a delusional, oblivious, moronic heap of bullshit so big that they can smell it in Yi-Ti. Sort of like how Arya’s shitty behavior since season 1 is framed as “cool”, “empowering”, and “strong” and her “Most girls are idiots” line is framed as being clever and of course SO TRUE and isn’t Arya just so great for being Not Like Other Girls. It’s not the writing itself that’s inconsistent. It’s the presentation that makes it so skewed and poorly done. Hell, they even go so far as to trot Missandei out every so often to give a speech about how great Dany is (even a speech about how Dany is a CHOSEN QUEEN NOT JUST BECAUSE OF HER DADDY thank you very much after scenes of Dany dismissing even the mention of any people’s wishes and holding everyone’s safety hostage because of who her Dad was). Missandei’s only function in the show is to talk about how wonderful Dany is. Incidentally, that’s become Tyrion’s only function in the show now, too (aside from constant failure, stating and somehow simultaneously ignoring the obvious, and reminding everyone of how smart he is, of course).

[nyangibun]

GoT S07E03 Thoughts

And here we go again.

As always, these are my rambling nonsensical thoughts on the episode, but disclaimer, my stream lagged so i missed maybe 30 seconds to maybe a minute of the episode. Let’s begin. 

Jon and Tyrion’s conversations had to be some of my favourite scenes from this episode. That shared smile between them when Jon first lands on Dragonstone and they greet each other was so pure. There is potential for a great friendship between them. They both have an understanding for each other that they don’t share with anyone else. Jon as a bastard and Tyrion as a dwarf. This was evident in earlier seasons too, but more so now that they have both found their places in the world. They respect each other, but they’re fighting for very different causes (and for different reasons) and I wonder if this fledgling friendship will become a point of contention for them later in the story.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say that one of my favourite scenes had to be Tyrion and Jon’s conversation about Sansa. What I loved about this scene was although it was fleeting, it still gave us Jonsa feels (if you’re inclined to read the scene this way anyhow). 

When Tyrion says, “does she miss me terribly?” Jon is very quiet and they let that silence play on long enough for it to be a significant marker in a conversation. Jon didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it was absolutely an annoyed, aggravated silence. And then what’s great is that Tyrion immediately went on the defensive and says that the marriage was never consummated. 

It’s a strange thing to say, especially when they were so friendly earlier. Wouldn’t it be safe to assume that if Jon had any suspicions that Tyrion had hurt/touched Sansa against her will that exchange would’ve gone very differently? There was clearly no need to mention it at all, but yet Tyrion did and Jon’s response was “I didn’t ask” in a clearly annoyed tone that suggested if this topic didn’t end soon someone was going to get choked out. Either Jon really hates the thought of Sansa with another man he turned into grumpy kitten Jon or he doesn’t want to think about his sister having sex at all. But bear with me here, if it’s the latter, why have this dialogue at all? There’s no narrative reasoning for this whatsoever unless Jonsa is a real possibility in the future and we’re supposed to continue to think about Jon, Sansa and ‘sex’ in the same line of thought.  

Okay, okay, admittedly my shipping goggles are on, but I still maintain the fact that it’s a weird piece of dialogue to have. If all they wanted to do was establish Sansa as a real political player, they could’ve cut that entire 2-3 lines out and just went straight into:

“She’s smarter than she lets on.”

“She’s starting to let on.”

And now that we’re onto the topic, I absolutely believe the mention of Sansa’s intelligence here serves two purposes. The first is to establish Sansa as a real political player here. She’s been underestimated by everyone in Westeros, but she’s far smarter than anyone gives her credit for (yes, even Jon).

In fact, jumping straight to Winterfell, you are given a whole scene of Sansa demonstrating that intelligence – not only in keeping everyone fed, but in keeping the soldiers protected. She understands what it takes to rule. But what I love about this sequence of scenes is Littlefinger praising her then going on to claim to know Cersei better than everyone and Sansa just shutting him down, saying she knows her better. Once again, we’re being forced to consider all that Sansa’s learned from Cersei. She just didn’t learn how to play the game but she learned Cersei herself. If anyone can outplay Cersei, we’re being led to believe it’s Sansa. 

Why I think this is important is how this episode also demonstrated that Cersei is once again one of the smartest and most devious rulers in Westeros. She completely outmaneuvered Tyrion, Daenerys and Olenna. People think her ‘madness’ from losing her children will make her weaker, but she’s still as shrewd as ever. She is very much Tywin’s daughter, but she’s much more ruthless. Tyrion may be smart, but thus far? He’s not as smart as his sister. 

But who is? 

Well, there’s a ‘queen’ in the North who is, and the more I think about it, the more I think this quote is actually referring to Sansa: 

“Aye. Queen you shall be… until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”

Because Cersei is right. Dany is a revolutionary, not a ruler. She can conquer and free slaves, but she doesn’t know how to rule. She’s not nearly as intelligent as Cersei in playing the Westerosi game, but Sansa is. She’s learned from the very best after all. Whether I’m wrong or right, I am convinced Sansa’s role in this war will be far greater than just ruling Winterfell in Jon’s stead. 

Its second purpose is basically to reaffirm Jon’s faith and trust in Sansa and her judgement. But what I found interesting is the way he says it is almost in an exasperated way, like he knows she is and she continues to “twist him in a way no one else can” because she’s too smart for her own good. But alas, the shipping goggles are on, so take that what you will. 

Now onto the big anticipated meeting. Honestly, I enjoyed Jon and Dany’s interactions. The juxtaposition of them as individuals and rulers were pronounced in the last episode, but they were even more glaringly so in this one. While Dany continues to talk about her rightful place and her indignation that he refuses to acknowledge what is hers, Jon continues to fight for his people and the war up North. I mean that’s just the thing, isn’t it? Every mention of Dany being this benevolent ruler who cares about the people doesn’t actually come from Dany. She doesn’t actually say she wants to save the people of Westeros. It’s always someone else because maybe, just maybe it’s not really her true purpose here in Westeros. Yes, I don’t believe she would be indifferent to the loss of innocent lives, but if it was the only way to get her to that throne, wouldn’t you think she’d do it? Wouldn’t Dany say ‘to hell with all of it’ and fly her dragons and burn everything in sight for that throne? If it was her only option, she would choose herself over the people. 

Hell, she even says it. After her speech about all she’s overcome, she says the only way she’s endured any of that was because of her faith in herself. While it’s a good speech if you take out the context, Dany’s survived and persevered this long because of her unwavering belief in her birthright, which was to rule on the Iron Throne. Everything else comes second to that. And I refuse to believe that the ultimate hero of the story is someone who believes themselves a hero and entitled to a kingdom. 

Whereas Jon was thrust into his position. He would choose the people over himself and that difference was emphasised by this quote they just had to repeat twice: 

“…took a knife in the heart for his people.”

Also, the fact that Jon cut Davos off before he could blab about Jon’s resurrection and Dany’s fixation on this feels highly foreboding. It’s definitely going to come back up, but in what way, I don’t know. 

Objectively speaking, I could see how Jon3rys could be hinted in this episode, as Jon and Dany come to understand each other, but personally, I believe it’s a tentative alliance at best that borders on an impasse rather than actual understanding. Right now, they can work because Dany has bigger fish to fry and Jon needs dragonglass. But when their objectives clash? What then? You could even see this opposition highlighted in the way they were filmed on that cliff. They’re standing together yet they’re facing opposite directions. They spend far more of that scene looking away from one another than looking eye to eye. Having their first one-on-one interaction being filmed in the light is also quite telling. The sun can be a symbolic source of goodness, but it can also be an oppressive force. Actually, it made me think of this quote from Albert Camus’ The Stranger: 

“The sky was already filled with light. The sun was beginning to bear down on the earth and it was getting hotter by the minute. I don’t know why we waited so long before getting under way. I was hot in my dark clothes […] it was inhuman and oppressive.“

Jon is a man of the North. His season is winter. I’ve said in previous metas that having Jon’s resurrection coincide with Winter’s arrival was symbolilc. Where usually in literature winter represents a time of stagnancy or even regression in the hero myth, for Jon, it represents rebirth and growth. Winter is a time for Starks. Having such sunlight bearing down on them in this scene (looking more like summer than winter) and Jon still wearing his furs seems to forewarn perhaps bad consequences with this alliance. 

For my Jonsa shippers, this is the exact opposite in how Jon and Sansa’s scenes are shot. They’re almost always in dimly lit areas or surrounded by candlelight, and snow is usually falling. Their reunion also coincided with Winter’s coming, so don’t despair if you are over Jon3rys meeting. 

Speaking of how scenes are shot, Sansa and Bran’s reunion couldn’t be more of a stark (ha ha) difference to Jon and Sansa’s. Yes, he was never going to run towards her, but she didn’t nuzzle him. I’ve always said the choice of having Sansa nuzzle Jon’s cheek was a bizarre one. It’s just odd. People don’t nuzzle their family members. But maybe she wasn’t in the nuzzling mood, fine. Go to the godswood scene though and there just seems to be such a distance between Sansa and Bran. I think that’s partially Bran being the Three-Eyed Raven as well because the distance was also entirely about who he is now as well.

Anyway, Clearly in the books Bran’s importance and power is more obvious, so they had to demonstrate somehow that Bran as the Three-Eyed Raven can see everything. But why does he bring up Sansa’s wedding? If they wanted to show off his power, they could have him bring anything else up, so why her wedding? Why bring up Ramsay at all? Shouldn’t Bran know better than that? Especially to tell her she looks beautiful that day after already implicitly saying he knows what Ramsay did to her. It feels unnecessarily cruel for Bran who, while seemingly distant, does love her. It has to serve a purpose for them to write that in. Perhaps foreshadowing a future wedding in the cards for Sansa? Perhaps a fake one to LF? Or maybe something further down the line where it’ll be the opposite of everything she had with Ramsay. No godswood, no beautiful white dress, no snow falling, but with someone she loves and who loves her. I don’t know but I’m just speculating here. 

Moving on to my favourite scene in the episode though: Cersei with Elaria. Honestly, Lena Heady is a phenomenal actress. Everyone is so focused on Cersei being this horrible evil villain, but you forget the real nuances to her character. When she asks Elaria why she killed Myrcella, it was delivered in such a vulnerable tone. You really, truly get a glimpse of the heartbroken, grieving mother who just tried to do her best for her children (whether that best was actually good or not), but then immediately after, you get the vindictive, cunning and formidable Cersei as she kisses Elaria’s daughter. It was amazing. Horrible but amazing. 

Second favourite scene had to be Olenna’s. What is there to say? She is the Dowager Queen of Badass Bitchery and Snarky Comebacks. Give me a great, complex female villain any day! I wouldn’t even call Olenna a villain tbh. But what I mean is I would 150% take morally grey or morally corrupt female characters over your atypical one-dimensional girl-next-door ones any day, week or month.  

Stray thoughts that I don’t have time/energy to write about:

Did anyone else get flirty vibes between Tyrion and Dany? 

And does anyone think Jorah’s “perhaps our paths will cross again” sound entirely too foreboding for Sam?

[empressofsloth]

Something that really irritated me when Jon met Danielle, is how she acted. Like, she’s got a reputation for being rude (bookverse and showverse) but it made me realise the how it anti-parallels to how other characters in Westeros meet people.

As a massive disclaimer, I’m prone to overanalysing and all of these have a reason for how it could be disproved, but I thought I should mention it regardless.

At the very start of the show, in season 1, the King and his family come to visit. The entire household of the Stark family assemble outside to meet them. Now, this could be because they are the royal family and they are visitors to their home. 

When Jon met Danielle, he was met by Tyrion and Missandei and was made to walk up a bazillion stairs where dragons roamed free. Dragons who have a reputation of burning people alive when they get too exited. As soon as he walked in, he had Danielle's long-ass titles read to him, and was spoken to rudely by Danielle.

I completely understand Danielle's need to assert herself as having the power in the situation, but something about how it was done really annoyed me. Jon and Davos have just sailed all the way from the North and were greeted by armed guards taking their weapons and only way back. It seems... threatening. Controlling, even. Forcing them to acknowledge that Danielle had the power. 

I mean, even Cersei allowed Danielle to meet her directly in the dragon pit and didn't have an excess number of guards. Danielle’s people were allowed to keep their weapons and Cersei didn't make a dramatic entrance, instead allowing Danielle to, as she’d probably expected her to. Also, I know other people have noted this, but Danie barely spoke at the meeting, allowing her Hand to do it all for her (even when he was insulted, it was Cersei and Jaime who stopped it) when we never heard Qyburn talk at all. Is that the quality of a strong leader? Maybe it was better she didn’t speak because she’d only say something to destroy any chance of a truce before it started. 

Also, I’d like to point out, that being late to anything, especially something as important as this, is just rude. And for Danielle to just turn around and be snide back when Cersei reminded her of this, really irritated me. This isn't a responsible mature woman. It was petty and transparent. If someone did that in today’s world - rode in on a tank or super-tech aircraft and terrified everyone at the meeting and was rude for one of the few times they spoke at the meeting, it would be a serious thing. It’d be front-page news.

The North takes these things very seriously, so when they don’t immediately start kissing ass, I think the Northern Lords are going to be in big trouble. Though, to be honest, I’d rather Danielle kill the Northern Lords and breach Guest Right, alienating her from ever ruling the North with their peaceful consent, then for some arguments to happen before Danie saves them and wins them all over, and Lyanna suddenly realising that Danie is the best thing for the North. That would kill me.