Chapter Text
This will be the first good night’s sleep they’ve had in many, many months. And this will be the first night in just shy of a year where they might lay down together and close their eyes, knowing that the Night King no longer keeps court at King’s Landing and that the dead no longer walk in Westeros.
In her cradle, Jeorgianna sleeps already. Her tears from the escapades of the day are long dried and when she fell asleep it was with Daenerys close by, stroking that tiny fist with her thumb, brushing back a few wispy strands of silver hair, smiling. The baby will sleep through this night soundly, as will her mother and father, as the long wars that have plagued these kingdoms are finally over.
Tonight, they’ve earned their rest. All of them.
Oh, it’s been a day.
Daenerys hopes that Jeorgianna will remember nothing of what happened in Shireen’s Tower before the spell was broken and Grey Worm was restored to them. Jorah assures her that she won’t. She’s too little, he promises her. He comes near, bending down towards Daenerys, where she sits on the edge of their bed, combing out her hair and preparing for the night hours. Softly, he presses a kiss to the top of her head.
As he stands straight again, he says, “She’ll remember nothing but that her mother loves her and came back to her.”
“Her father too,” Daenerys beams up at him. They journeyed to the darkest, coldest realms of hell today and came back, alive and unscathed. They saw wonders that many will not believe in years to come. They won’t talk about it for a while yet—the ice castle, the weirwood tree, the splintered Lights flickering around the city, the dragons fighting in frost skies, all those ice-blue eyes turning back to brown, green and a softer blue, glittering with life again.
They can’t talk about it, not even to each other, as it was too much. And what words could explain half of it? And what wonders could compare to coming home and having Jeorgianna in their arms again?
Jorah slips his belt off and tosses it on the chaise by their seaside window. He stokes the fire with an iron poker before hanging it back on the mantel. Daenerys smiles a little more as he strips off his shirt, finally making himself ready for bed as well. But before he can don his familiar, slate-blue night shirt, she reaches for him wordlessly, her smile lessening only in her scrutiny…as she eyes the greyscale scars that cover his back and torso. There are other scars there too, many from Winterfell, and older marks from across the sea, written together in a tapestry on his skin.
She’s looking for new scars—or new scrapes that might add to the rest—examining him frankly, perusing the familiar contours of his body. The old scars aren’t as angry as they once were and they promise to fade in years to come. But she knows them all by heart. She’ll continue to trace them with her fingertips long after the more distinct marks disappear.
She finds a few new bruises, that cut on his face and minor scuffs and scrapes on his hands that she’s already tended. But nothing more. Her smile deepens into a satisfied grin, her gaze lingering on him for other reasons now.
Soon, Daenerys pulls him down to join her on the bed. She takes the nightshirt from him, setting it aside, wanting his back bare to better press kisses against his shoulder, another against the tired muscles at his back. Even if he shows few bruises, she knows he must ache. With Longclaw, he fought back the wights in the Night King’s Throne Room for too long and his muscles must be sore and screaming.
After her kisses, she sits up on her knees, to massage the muscles there gently, murmuring in his ear, “Tell me if this hurts you.”
“You could never hurt me, Khaleesi,” he murmurs back, breathing deeply on the way her hands knead against him, with skill, with knowledge of his body that no other woman in the world possesses. “And you have the hands of an angel.”
“Only when I warm them up first,” she grins again, as she drops another kiss at the spot between his shoulder blades, in awe, as always, at how broad her husband is. The vast span of his back makes her feel small, as always. She rests her chin on his shoulder for a minute, while nodding at a bookshelf across the room, upon which she keeps many things, odds and ends, seashells and sea stones, old books, little treasures from across the sea.
Letting her arm come around him, she presses against his ribs softly, nudging him, “Do you see that blue vial? That’s rose and bloodroot oil from Qarth. You’ll sleep better if I rub some on these sore muscles.”
“Mhmm,” he allows, his tone betraying that he’s amenable to the idea. He’s happy to have her hands on him for the rest of the night. With unchecked affection, he cups her knee and turns for a kiss before he rises. She catches his hand, letting their fingers meet and slip loosely away, as he fetches the oil, knowing he’ll return to her within moments only.
Or will he…?
He hesitates at the bookshelf, as there are two vials in blue, but she points him to the correct one with another smile. He marvels at the pretty bottle, the opulence and mysticism of Qarth etched into the fine glass. He muses, “I’m surprised you kept this.”
His eyes scan the rest of the bookshelf in half-hearted curiosity, wondering what other treasures he’s missed. He’s shared this chamber with her since they returned from Winterfell but, with everything that’s happened, his recovery, the baby, shadows of darkness and death gathering just across the Blackwater, there’d been little time for such frivolous investigation.
He sees little mementos that she’s gathered over their journey from east to west. A length of lavender ribbon from Pentos, those vials from Qarth, scrolls from Meereen, silver rings and Dothraki beads, and those books he gave her on her wedding day. His expression goes soft, remembering a long ago day at the edge of the shimmering sea…
But then his eyes narrow a little. There’s a torn edge of parchment tucked between the pages of one of those books. He knows he didn’t put it there and perhaps it’s just a bookmark that Daenerys slipped in later.
Yet, something compels him to pull it out, his eyes falling on the desperate, hastily written lines at once.
I can’t do this without you. Please come back to me. Just come back to me.
Jorah, please…
Daenerys had been reaching for a goblet perched on their nightstand, seeking the dwindling wine within, only realizing what Jorah has in his hand belatedly, his eyes already traveling over the lines of that letter, his brow furrowed.
The letter.
The letter she wrote when she thought she’d never see him again, that night when she was so miserable and so despondent, so alone, she thought she might abandon these shores forever…
Please come back to me.
His expression betrays baffled confusion as his eyes flicker up from the page. Does he notice the stain of her tears too? She breathes deep on the memory of terrible pain in her breast, a feeling of being torn apart, that had her spilling that ink on paper, pleading with the gods and whispering his name in the dark.
With Jorah and Jeorgianna in this chamber with her, it’s harder to remember how hopeless she’d felt not so long ago, how alone, how cold. For this chamber is brimming with hope and warmth these days. And despite all that happened today in King’s Landing, and how close they might have come to the end of everything…it was on the iced and bloody moors above Winterfell where she’d been forced to reckon with her darkest fears.
“It was when you were at the Citadel,” she bites her bottom lip gingerly, her fondness for him shining through her fixed gaze. She admits, “I didn’t know where you were. I felt so alone and I kept going back over and over what I’d said to you in Meereen…”
“Daenerys…,” he begins, his tone reminding her that those times are long mended. She knows, giving him a smile that says he’s not to worry, she’s not regretting it any longer. The time for regrets is over.
“I didn’t know where to send it,” she explains, then shrugs. “But you came anyway.”
“I will always come back to you,” he promises, with his own rugged grin. And to prove it, he sets the letter aside, taking the blue vial from its bookshelf perch before returning to her side directly. Her face is upturned with bright expectation and he reads it well, taking a slow kiss from her lips, one that continues as her hands rise to his bearded face, drawing him down to join her on the mattress once again.
He rasps against her lips, “I wrote you a letter too.”
Her eyes light up. Oh? she doesn’t need to say it, her curiosity piqued.
“It was the night I thought I might…,” his expression goes a little grim and he doesn’t finish, having no desire to darken the light mood between them, deciding to hand her the vial instead. He finishes simply, “I’m glad neither letter was needed in the end.”
“Me too,” she replies, opening the stopper before pouring some of the fragrant oil on her hands and setting the vial on the nightstand beside the wine goblet.
As she rubs her hands together, she makes a motion with her head to tell him he’s to turn again, so she can go back to nursing his sore muscles. He relaxes under her touch naturally, and she smiles at this, pleased as ever with her power to soothe him. That grin remains even minutes later, as she asks, “What did the letter say, Jorah? Do you remember?”
“Aye,” he says.
“Tell me?”
She might guess its contents. She should know them well, as she’s heard similar endearments spoken at her ear nightly for the better part of a year now. But he’ll give her more, he’ll give her all.
He begins, in dulcet tones, quoting the lost lines by heart, “Khaleesi, I came to the Citadel in the last hope…”