(no subject)

[ungentle]

Daenerys knew the North very well by now, as much as she knew it wasn't hers.

She'd spent practically her whole life in Winterfell, under Lord Eddard's -- protection?  Care?  Watchful eye?  Possibly some combination -- and truly, she was grateful of it.  Surely her life could have taken other, less civil turns: exile, perhaps, or being killed like the rest of her family.  She wasn't a Stark, she had always known she didn't quite belong, but she was looked after by the Starks, this for reasons she was only just beginning to understand.  (It fascinated her that not killing children was considered a matter of politics and not of basic decency, but then, she was only a young girl, she wasn't meant to understand these things.)

It wasn't uncommon for the once-princess to seek out privacy and quiet when her day's work was done.  She'd been a striking girl and she'd grown into an even more striking woman, and even despite the whispered worries about her lineage, she had always received a great deal of attention; she was as good and polite as she could be when approached, but this tendency to run off and hide, though not entirely ladylike, stemmed from a desire to avoid such attention.  She often retreated to the godswood, though not from any particular religious inclination so much as that she knew it was unlikely she'd be disturbed there, at least by anyone who wasn't welcome to disturb her.

Today's earlier raven from King's Landing, though innocuous enough, had sent Daenerys into a mood: carefully disguised, hardly noticeable to most, but nonetheless one she felt she needed to be alone, or mostly alone, to sort through.  If anyone were to look for her, or just to stumble across her, they'd find her in the godswood, bundled in a cloak and deep in thought.

Comments

[ungentle]

Honestly, Daenerys could barely understand all of it herself, let alone begin to explain it. She didn't often show her fear, she wasn't used to even thinking she ought to, but in this moment, she couldn't much think of an alternative, and that at least was fairly easy to read on her face.

"I think you wouldn't be happy trying to be one," she amended, diplomacy and truth rolled into one. "Too much putting on airs, I suspect. It wouldn't suit you."

It was because he was honest that she knew what he said meant something. What, she wasn't sure, but he was sincere, and she didn't know if that made it better or worse. Possibly both. "It wouldn't be me shining," she murmured before she could think better of it. There would, after all, be only so many things a dead king's daughter would be seen as good for, and none of them would be her own idea. "But thank you."

[blackbastard]

He looked back at Daenerys and nodded. She saw him, saw exactly the kind of man he was as clear as day. Just more proof for him that the two of them really were kind of a pair, growing up in a place where not a hell of a lot of other people could really understand their situation.

"Wish I could stay here and watch over Winterfell for Father. It's always been my home, I'd like it to stay that way."

Despite himself, Jon found himself smiling. "Very sorry to tell you, Princess, but you wouldn't have much choice in the matter. You do it already all the time. Just might be a bit harder to see up here in all the snow."

[ungentle]

[[Psssst, you tagged the other thread with a different account journal, just in case you'd want to know]]

"I wish that for you, too," she said softly. "I..." I think you deserve at least that much, maybe, though she was finding it getting stuck in her throat. Or I'd stay back with you even if it is damnably cold, or something like.

She went pink, like she did most times she got called "princess" (not that it wasn't based in fact, but then it wasn't strictly true anymore, either). Sweet, decent Jon; she couldn't be sure in what way he meant what he told her, but because he was one of the few, if not the only full stop, who could understand her fully most of the time, she knew he meant it at least sincerely.

"Thank you," she repeated, and propriety be damned she scooted closer and hid her face against his shoulder like a child before she added in a rush, "They might dress me up and -- and parade me, but it wouldn't be me, it would be what someone else wanted." She'd been remarkably safe from being used as too much of a political pawn at Winterfell, sheltered from the machinations of King's Landing, but she could only imagine it.

[blackbastard]

[Yeah, I caught that but had to wait until I could fix it. Sorry.]

When she blushed, it did something inside of Jon's chest that made him feel as though he'd done something very right. Complimenting her had always come easy, since he knew what it was like to live on very few of them at all and he didn't think anyone should have to do so. But when she curled against him, the movement and her sudden closeness did something else to him.

Jon wrapped an arm around Daenerys' shoulders and hugged her tightly against him and he didn't care who might see. The life she spoke of was a cruel, unfair and ignoble one and he wanted nothing more than to protect her from it. Lady Catelyn would have scoffed and said it was an impulse that he'd inherited from his father, always standing up for impossible and unwinnable causes in the name of honor. If that was so, Jon would be proud to be that kind of fool.

"If I could stop that from happening, I would. No one deserves to be treated like... a thing. If Father allowed be to be castellan, you would always have a place here with me."

[ungentle]

[[Oh it's no worry, I just know sometimes people would rather be told so they can fix, so just in case.]]

Daenerys did not consider herself vain or particularly attention-seeking, but she did treasure the compliments she was given, especially by Jon. Sure, she believed that there was at least some sincerity in the way that Rickon would praise how she read him a story or Sansa would say something about how nicely she'd done up her silver-blonde hair, but Jon's kind words always meant more, felt realer somehow.

Once he had wrapped an arm around her, though, all bets were off. She rather collapsed against him, sighing and very carefully not crying but certainly sniffling.

"I know, I know you would," she murmured, because it was true. It seemed silly to complain of what amounted to a gilded cage when what suddenly stood before Jon was so much harsher, but she couldn't help it, it all came spilling from her lips. "I suppose it could be worse, I could have spent my whole life there like some sort of pet, but what other purpose would they have for me?"

[blackbastard]

[It's much appreciated.]

She was even closer, and more than that, it sounded like Daenerys was right on the verge of crying. Jon just held her closer and wished that he had more to wrap around her than a cloak or an arm, something that would shield her from people that would use her like an object or a trophy simply because of who she had been born. It cut deeply with Jon in so many ways and now his own worries about being sent to take the black were all but forgotten.

"I can't even start to imagine," he answered her quietly. "Those games are played by people with more cunning and more ambition and more brains than I could ever hope to have. Even Father hates them, which is why he's been so content to stay up here in the North."

Concern became boldness. Jon leaned his head over and kissed her right on the crown of her head, amongst the soft, silvery hair. "You don't deserve that life. You deserve a home and comfort, like anyone else."

[ungentle]

There would be no need for him to worry: Daenerys had trained herself out of crying when others could see when she was a child. It was never worth it, the embarrassment she felt just made it worse and it called the sort of attention to her that she very much didn't want. But she was closer to it than she'd been in a long time, caught up in these anxieties.

"You're plenty smart," she insisted, though she wasn't moving to lift her head yet. "You're just not cruel, which I imagine is the difference." Despite his cloak and his arm around her both, she shivered a bit at the thought.

And though he couldn't see it, she blushed yet more when his lips found the top of her head. "I think perhaps it's not a matter of deserving," she mused, because it was easier somehow than thinking about how his assurances made her insides flutter. "If it were, the world wouldn't be as it is."

[blackbastard]

"I'm sure you're right," Jon replied, giving her a squeeze when he felt a shiver run through her. "I can't understand all those things that Father tells us about what it's like in King's Landing. All those plots and lies-- no wonder he stays up here." He chuckled despite himself after a moment.

"Daenerys, you need to stop being so right all the time, it's getting harder to comfort you."

And then he sighed when she was right some more about what people deserved and what they got. They were living, breathing proof of that, something that Jon had never felt so keenly as right at that moment, holding Daenerys against his chest in the godswood. "No, I like to think in a fair world, I'd have the choice to live a simple life here where I belong, have a few responsibilities, maybe settle down."

[ungentle]

"It sounds horrible," she agreed, nuzzling a bit closer. "Everyone so worried about petty little things, hurting each other for power but -- but how can they have the time to do anything with it when all their time is otherwise spent?" Of course, she wouldn't presume to know how things actually played out, but it seemed rather skewed from where she sat.

She shook her head very adamantly. "I'm not right all the time," she declared before a playful note crept into her voice (she wouldn't have dared with anyone but Jon, but she couldn't help it). "Only most of it."

How was it that someone so clearly of the North, someone so comfortable in the cold, could feel so warm? Daenerys wasn't sure, but there was Jon contradicting that logic. If there wasn't anyone like him in King's Landing (she doubted there would be) she wouldn't be half as warm there. "Choices," she murmured, nodding. "In a fair world, we'd all have more than we're given. Your hopes aren't so extreme, they should be able to come true. If things were fair."

[blackbastard]

"Oh, I see," he said with a smile. "Only most of the time. I stand corrected." Even that little bit of lightness is more than appreciated; by both of them, he was sure.

The fact that they were speaking of what might happen should both of them be separated from Winterfell, a place they had both called home for years, was weighing heavily on Daenerys, that much he could tell. Jon hadn't anticipated how it would weigh on him, as well.

"If things were fair," he repeated. "All right, princess. What would you do if things were fair? How would you live? Where would you go?"

[ungentle]

Honestly, most of the lightness in Daenerys' life came from moments with Jon. She'd not thought about it so directly, but it was true: she couldn't really be the same sort of playful with any of the trueborn Starks, mostly it didn't bother her but she had never felt fully comfortable, with her position here being ambiguous at best. Jon, though, Jon she could trust and tease accordingly. Like now, not quite responding but managing to offer an almost cheeky little grin.

Winterfell had been the only home she'd known, it was true; it wasn't exactly home in the real sense, but it was close, and it was much more home than the city looming ahead of her. That was what burdened her the most, but in her way she knew she'd miss the North even if she didn't belong to it.

"I'm not sure, exactly," she admitted. "I'd want to be comfortable, of course, but I don't know that I'd need a lot of grandeur or high society. I'd like to be somewhere where it wouldn't matter who I was or where I'd come from." A little shrug. It wasn't a wild fantasy, but it was the closest she could get, and given the circumstances of her life still enough of one.

[blackbastard]

The smile that Jon suddenly found pulling at his face was wider and more genuine than he could've expected. "You know, that sounds not half bad, the way you put it. Maybe better than that, even." It wasn't something he'd ever considered, really. Jon loved his siblings and was proud to be a Stark, even a bastard one. And truth be told, he all but idolized Lord Eddard. But a bastard he was and would always be, and the idea of no longer being "Ned Stark's bastard" and just being Jon? It was tempting.

"Yeah, a clean start doesn't sound bad at all," he told Daenerys wistfully. "And your version of it sounds a damn sight better than the one I'd get in the Night's Watch. Is there room for one thickheaded Northman in this special somewhere?" Once again, the words escaped and it wasn't until they were well on their way that he realized how they could be taken, depending on the ears they reached.

[ungentle]

A part of her expected that she should have fancier tastes than she did, royal blood and all that. She should have dreamed of palaces and courtiers and knights like Sansa did, maybe; perhaps it was that she knew why she would be surrounded by such things in real life that she didn't crave them in her imaginings. She wasn't picky, she just wanted to be happy, maybe to find some way to do good for people while she was at it.

She regarded Jon with some curiosity when he spoke. Indistinct fantasy could be anything she wanted it to, or anything that anyone else wanted it to be, of course it was open enough to be nicer than anything, one way or another. "It's -- it's the best thing I can imagine," she agreed slowly.

There was no mistaking how she'd heard it when, after a weighty pause, she added in a whisper, "And of course there is."

[blackbastard]

[sorry, I usually try to tag at least once on the weekends, but this one was a pain]

"That's, um--" Jon swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry and tight. "That's good."

The godswood was suddenly much warmer than he ever remembered it being, and yet he wanted to shiver at the same time. He'd had his arm around Daenerys, who had been raised right beside him, a hundred times or more but now he found he couldn't recall a single one of those times.

"I'd hate to miss out on a wish that good," he said, the words tumbling out of him without thought once again. "And I'd really hate to think that you might be out there, having a fine life... but being lonely."

[ungentle]

[[no worries I figured as much]]

Her own voice was rather labored, her skin was warmer than she could have wished it to be an hour ago and altogether uncomfortably so in this moment. Irrationally, she wanted to shrug off the cloak, let the air cool her, but then she figured not even that would work. It was a different kind of warmth she was feeling just now.

"Who would I be to deny you such a thing?" she asked, trying for lightness and probably failing completely. "Anyone deserves such a nice chance, I think."

She took a breath, and maybe it was impulse, maybe it was recklessness, maybe it was not knowing how much longer she'd have the chance, but she leaned her face yet closer to his. He could take it as he would. "And nobody deserves loneliness," she added in a whisper. "Not me, not you."

[blackbastard]

"You wouldn't deny me," he replied again with no hesitation. "You wouldn't deny anyone a chance at being happy, that's what-- that's what's so good about you." Jon had always seen it, had always felt it. If there was one thing that had made her like the Starks with whom she grew up, it was a basic decency and honor. But more than that, Daenerys, he knew, was kind. At least, he knew she would be if she had the power to be.

She was closer now, close enough that he could feel her breath on his cheek. There were thoughts running through his head now, mad thoughts that were making his chest feel hollow and full at the same time.

"You won't ever be lonely, not if I have any say." Daenerys was so much like him, and so very good to him, and Gods so very pretty... Jon was teetering on the edge of something, and he honestly wanted to fall.

"I really want to kiss you," he said, the words barely audible and the saying of them turned out to be the last push as Jon closed the last inch between them and did exactly that.

[ungentle]

"I would never," she agreed. That had always been something she felt strongly about, really all of this had; perhaps on account of her circumstances, perhaps on account of temperament, she'd always been insistent, if quietly, on as much fairness as she could manage.

She smiled just faintly at his somewhat-promise, had to resist the urge to just lean against him and stay there -- not the first time she'd been so stricken, but she'd resisted before, she could do again.

Except apparently she didn't need to, as Jon was doing one better and moving in to -- oh. Oh, suddenly she realized this was what she'd been really wanting this whole time, and it was so perfect and wonderful and she was quick to return the kiss, swallowing a sigh.

[blackbastard]

While they were ticking by, Jon was absolutely certain that these were the very best seconds of his entire life. Daenery's lips were soft and full against his and he had no idea that a person could taste sweet, but she did to him and there was a there was a sound like drumbeats that had to be his heart. It was so very right that he nearly cursed when forced to tip his head back and breathe.

"I'm... I'm sorry for not waiting for you to tell me if that was all right to do or not, but I'm guessing now it was."

Jon could have slapped himself for saying such a fool thing, but he wasn't thinking well, even for him. All he knew in that moment was that he'd just done something he'd been wanting to do for ages without knowing it and would never regret that he finally had.

[ungentle]

Jon's lips were rougher, no surprise, but they weren't as rough as could be imagined, and the relative delicacy with which he moved them against hers could make up for anything. This -- this was the sort of thing that caused all of the sentimentality in the songs, all unexpected and simple and sweet as it was.

She had to smile at his apology, murmuring, "Thank you, though you're correct in that guess." After all, the fact that he'd think to apologize, albeit after the fact, even knowing he didn't really need to, was something that reflected what she treasured about him. He wasn't much for words and expressing feelings, but he was better at understanding some things than he might think. He certainly could understand her.

She scooted even closer, fumbling for one of his hands to hold onto. "I don't know what happens now," she admitted shyly. Now in their specific case, that was (she'd long understood the technical progression of things). "What this means for... us." Even referring to them so had a different tone now.

[blackbastard]

He was happy to take her hand-- another small revelation, as a young Jon could never really understand why a small gesture like that could have been important between lovers, when there were supposed to be so many more interesting things to do. But to hold Daenery's hand, to show her support and connection and affection through that simple thing was a wonderful, singular pleasure.

"I think... I think we're probably going to have to enjoy every last bit of anything we can get from now on." After all, hadn't their conversation begun with the speculation that they'd soon be separated? And how heartbreaking that was a thing to contemplate now. "But to be honest? If that kiss is the last thing I take with me to the Wall, I'll never be cold again."

[ungentle]

It was one of those things, Daenerys supposed, that couldn't really come clear without evidence, that perhaps you didn't think about wanting or needing to do until there was someone to do it with. Surely, there were other things that could be done, but sometimes this was -- not enough, but what a moment needed, and considering the nature of this moment it seemed only right.

In the light of this development, the fates they would soon be meeting seemed crueler than even they had already, but in that way he didn't realize he could be, Jon was right once more. "We will," Daenerys agreed. "Borrowed time, isn't that it? But we can -- we can take advantage of that, I'm sure."

That last undoubtedly got her blushing, though, and she ducked her head to keep from showing her silly, girlish smile (it was probably a futile effort) and squeezed his hand even tighter. "You're not off yet," she murmured, suddenly bold. If they were having to fit an entire affair into who knew how long, there was no point being too shy. "I'm making it my objective, then, giving you plenty more to take with you."

[blackbastard]

"Borrowed time," Jon repeated. It was a good way to put it, even though it was now the absolute worst thing he could think of. Looking at Daenerys as she hugged him close, he decided that wasn't true. The worst thing, now, would have been to never realize how he'd come to feel about the girl and how she felt in return.

His smile widened, suddenly feeling playful and lighthearted. She was absolutely right-- if the time was running out, then they couldn't waste a bit of it. Jon leaned back to lay on the ground, taking Daenerys with him. "Is it now?" he said, looking up at her. "And exactly what are you proposing?" His hand reached up and found her cheek before he kissed her again, this time with more confidence. "More of that, I hope."

[ungentle]

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Daenerys wondered if maybe she wouldn't regret this some, knowing it was due to be ended. They were meant to be split apart, ripped from this place they'd always known and used as little more than pawns, and who knew when they'd so much as see each other again. But -- no, that line of thinking wouldn't do. She was as glad of this as she could be.

She'd started it, but it still took her a bit by surprise when Jon laid down like that and his expression suddenly turned almost mischievous. Good, sweet Jon -- maybe for this little while her good, sweet Jon -- was rarely so bold, though she certainly didn't mind. She returned the kiss almost hungrily, murmuring approval against his lips. "Much more of that," she agreed.

And then, because she couldn't help herself, she added, "And now that I think of it, I might need a few nice thoughts to keep me company in that city I'm set for, too."

[blackbastard]

He noticed that Daenerys was surprised by what he did, and Jon supposed he couldn't blame her. Never once had he been accused of being the spontaneous, playful one in the family, but never before had he felt anything like what this revelation between them was making him feel, so he reckoned he had an excuse to be a little wild.

That wildness seemed to be infectious, as Daenery's kiss was tinged with it, too. Jon responded in kind and once more, he was on the verge of breathlessness from it.

Jon's hands found her tiny waist and he held her close that way. "Name it," he told her, as earnest and honest as he had ever been. "Anything I can give you, Daenerys, it's yours."

[ungentle]

It wasn't in keeping with his usual demeanor, no, but it was very welcome just now. She didn't know quite what to expect from this new, considerably more passionate Jon, but that was half the fun: he could surprise her, but she trusted him.

And besides that, wildness was much preferable to the melancholy that had been surrounding her before they had kissed. Now that they had a whole new plan for filling the time, she couldn't worry about what was going to happen in the future, she could only concentrate on what was going to happen in the immediate present.

Daenerys swallowed a breath, rested her forehead against him for a moment. She hadn't thought about it before this moment, but suddenly she realized she'd always sort of expected what she was about to mention would come to pass; it only made sense, the bastard boy and the not-princess, it was practically expected. It's not as if that's not where they were headed anyway, but discussing it was something altogether different. "If you would -- would give me all of yourself, I would give you all of myself in return," she whispered, raising her eyebrow in such a way to suggest her true meaning.