[closed] The Days Are Stacked Against What We Think We Are

[northerndragon]

Who: Jon Snow, Claire Fraser, et al.
When: January
Where: Solvunn, possibly the Horizon
What: Jon & company deal with the fallout of him learning of the events of Season 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones, which make him feel like an all-around terrible person who has nothing to go home to.
Warnings: Mature content, plus canon-typical content for Outlander and Game of Thrones (mentions of incest, extreme violence, and mass death). Will update if relevant.

Give me a poke detectivefiction or on Discord if you want something!

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Closed to CLAIRE

[northerndragon]

Those first days in Solvunn seem an idyll to Jon. He helps where he can, around the Settlements or around Claire's house and land, dines with her, shares her bed, shares her life, the way he has wished to all these past moons. It's their dreams come true, and he's happy -- too happy to put words to it or question it. He latches his fingers with hers at supper and wakes with her every morning.

Until, one night, another sort of dream comes.

Much death in it, and much truth. Sins he can't erase. Someone else's old lies, with the best intentions; his father's kindness and unintended cruelty. The Army of the Dead, vanquished; the cost of it stretching out to the horizon when they burn all the bodies on the pyres.

A woman, very young, exquisitely beautiful. She and Jon love each other, fail each other, betray each other. No choice he wants very much; blood on his hands, flames all about.

It never would have been his; they never would have let him live so long. None of it matters except in the way it sets fire to everything now. A dragon indeed.

In the end, they have made his brother Bran king, and Sansa takes the North. Jon has spent weeks in a cell, waiting for someone to do him the mercy of taking his head, but the mercy never comes. Instead, he's sent back to the Wall, and after a long journey by ship, he meets Ghost and Tormund and what's left of the Free Folk. He rides, the Haunted Forest in front of him, his whole life and everyone and everything he's ever loved behind him.

He won't be seeing them again.

He wakes before Claire, and sits for a long time with his feet on the floor at the side of the bed and his head in his hands. He's had bad dreams before. Night after night, he's fought the Dead, or the Night King, or anyone he's ever known and loved in the shape of a wight, and he's known it to be a nightmare. This felt nothing like that. This felt like he's slept for a very long time. Like he returned, and --

He stares for a while, then, at his right hand. Clean. It had been a long time, in any case, since that day; of course his hand would be clean. Touches his face, his hair: they are as they should be, his beard trimmed and his hair loose around his face and longer than it had been when --

The sick feeling rises, and he sets the thought aside.

He does not wake her with a kiss. He is remote over breakfast, offering sad distant smiles and the excuse of bad dreams, and keeps himself busy during the day, not really able to hide a distracted, unhappy air. It's not until that evening, after supper, that he steels himself, presses his lips together, stares at the ground, gives a few jerky nods, and says, soft and low and dismal, "Claire. We need to talk."

She should not want him.

[beautifullies]

For her part, Claire has known the days of happiness wouldn't necessarily last as they were. It was too good, that Jon found himself in Solvunn; with everything else, she hasn't expected that part, at least, to last. She's spent the happy, quiet days attempting to soak it up, and unbeknownst to Jon, some late nights have been spent wondering when it will all go to hell. It's her life, the way it always has been: find something good, be somewhere she wants to be, have some sort of happiness, and it won't last. It's only a matter of time, literally, for her and those she loves.

She hadn't thought she would be immune to it this time, but she'd hoped. And she'd hoped for Jon, for his sake, that this would be ideal for him. A life with her, free of whatever obligation or burden except to be content. A time for his mind and body to rest.

The day she wakes and he's distant, she knows whatever she worried would change things, has happened. Still, she doesn't push, doesn't press. If she asks, whatever he has to say will only happen sooner, and at least she can pretend, for a while, that all is well. Claire's braced herself all day, but when he finally asks to speak, she feels her stomach roll a bit. She hasn't eaten much, too anxious despite her eagerness to pretend it was all fine.

Draining her wine, she nods and delicately wipes her mouth. The last time he told her something, the entire life they'd built together was revealed to be manufactured. She wonders what this will be.

"I assumed as much. Would you mind if we speak in the back garden?"

At the very least, whatever he has to say, she'll be in the place she loves the most. As if that softens whatever blow may come.

[northerndragon]

He gives her a questioning look, and when he speaks, there's a hint of his usual mild humor in his voice, in spite of everything.

"It's colder out there. And I've more than a little to tell you."

But if you like, Claire. It is the work of a minute to retrieve cloaks for them both.

Then, he thinks, there is a difference between the green boy he had been, the boy who fought the Dead, and the man who has seen what close on a thousand years might make of him. He should have learned something by now. So, he hesitates on the threshold, looks at her, all torment and discomfiture.

"It's nothing you've done. I went home. I'm not -- I didn't wed another." He does not mean to part ways with her; it's that he thinks she is like enough to want to part ways with him before the night is through.

[beautifullies]

Whenever there's bad news, or she anticipates bad news, the outdoors is where she prefers to be. Rain or shine, aching cold or blistering heat, it doesn't matter. She thinks of blankets and furs, starting a fire in the pit, but it's all a distraction and she'd rather get to the meat of it.

And then he does, before she can make a final decision.

"Oh."

It's so little and rings flat in her ears, so she blinks and tries again, the expression on her face one of apprehension and confusion before she manages to turn it into something more neutral.

"...Are you alright?"

His own men stabbed him through the heart, she has no love for his old life, and even while he stands in front of her, she realizes he could be a different man now. Who knows what happened that he remembers, that changes him or them. She also has her suspicions about his parentage; the story he told her in the crypt of Winterfell had some gaping red flags, but she never felt it was up to her to point them out to him, that she couldn't even be sure. Now, she wonders.

Instead of walking outside, she's stuck staring somewhat dumbly at Jon in between the threshold and the kitchen, so she turns and forgets the gathering of warm things and decides to make tea instead. Anything to keep her hands busy and distracted.

[northerndragon]

He has more than one reason to silently thank the gods that she turns away from the door, seeming to abandon her idea to go outside after all. He's had too much talking about this out under the trees, in the cold, and it isn't like to be a brief conversation. The last people he had told... bitterness twists in him. He had sworn them to secrecy, and one had not kept that vow much longer than a day or two.

Claire has gone to occupy herself -- making tea, he is certain, because he knows her -- so she is not facing him when he answers her. "No." The word comes out on a miserable, helpless little laugh. "No. But I can set your mind to rest on one thing: I have survived against the Dead. We beat them, Claire. At great cost, but we beat them. The Night King is gone." He had had so little to do with it, in the end, but that didn't matter. It's one of the few good things that had happened.

He tries not to think of what it had smelled like, then and after, when they burned all of the fallen. It makes him wander back into the house after her, closing the door absently behind him, sitting heavily on her settee. He puts his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

[beautifullies]

She sags against the countertop when he says he survived. For a moment she doesn't hear anything else, too relieved to focus. But she quickly composes herself and takes a breath, turning to face him as she listens. The water has to boil, so she steps behind him and places both hands on his shoulders.

"Please don't feel as though you have to tell me everything, or anything, right now. And what you choose to share, I—I understand if you need to keep things to yourself."

Claire wants to know everything, every detail, but she doesn't know what it is to wake up from one of these dreams, to have so much happen in the span of one sleep, only to wake still in Abraxas. She can only assume it must be overwhelming, and so she knows the story needs to come at his pace.

Squeezing his shoulders, she lingers and rubs his back until the kettle whistles then turns back, still able to see and hear him perfectly well in her open space while selecting leaves and herbs to steep.

[northerndragon]

When Claire comes up behind him and puts her hands up on his shoulders, rubs them, some of the tension goes out of him.

It makes him want to weep. He has no right to, though he can remember that, in that cell and on that ship, back in Westeros, the tears would come no matter how much he bid them stay.

It is good to have Claire's hands on him. He doesn't deserve them, but it is good. It's her way to give what comfort she can -- something she can do, he knows. He does not stop her.

After a time, he raises his hand up to his shoulder to catch one of hers and hold it there against him, close to his neck. He leans his face against it.

Gods, but he loves her. It rises in him fierce. If he had been able to remember it -- what would have been different? Not enough, he suspects, and that tears at him too. If he and Daenerys had not been lovers, they would have been enemies sooner, and the North might have suffered for it. Who, then, would have died because of the choices he had made, the choices she had made? How many? The whole world, in the end?

When Claire pulls away, he lets her go, but he feels her absence. He wants to hold her close to him, tell her that the tea doesn't matter, but he does not. All he wants is her.

"I mean to tell you as much as you can stand to hear. Only -- Claire. It may change how you think of me, in the end."

He says it carefully, as though it costs him something. He has thought on it through supper -- that tomorrow, he might need to find other lodging. He can't help that he's laid with another woman, in another life. He'd had no knowledge of it. His love for Daenerys had been true and his desire for her had been sincere; in this life, he wishes he had not done it. But he had killed her, too, a woman who had trusted him... well, had trusted him enough that he had been able to put a knife in her heart even while kissing her. She had also made it clear to him, in little ways, that she could kill him if she wanted to, could kill his whole family. Claire may not much grudge him all those nights with Dany, though she may not much like to hear about them, either. But how will she ever be able to rest easy in his arms again, knowing who he's killed?

And so he begins to tell the story from the beginning: he had gone to Dragonstone to treat with Daenerys Targaryen, and at first, it had been very bad. She wouldn't bend, wanted the North, kept him on the island as a sort of prisoner, but let him mine the dragonglass. She wasn't always there, herself. He found her imperious at first, proud, frustrating, though bit by bit, she began to seek his advice. He speaks of Daenerys haltingly, unwillingly. They'd had a common enemy in Cersei, and it had been hard to convince Daenerys the threat was real. When he'd finally left the island, after several months, it had been at his own insistence, to hunt a wight to take to Cersei. He'd thought he could prove it to both of them. And things were not so cold between him and Dany by then. They'd become friends, of a sort.

(He calls her Dany. Claire might notice that. When he does, he decides it's better not to try to correct himself.)

He is looking at the floor, ashamed. They'd run into trouble on the wight hunt, you see. Their party, trapped by the whole Army of the Dead. He had almost died, been left behind. She'd had to fly in to save them. A dragon had been lost, and that's how the Night King got his hands on one, how Jon ended up having to fight a wight dragon in the end, though that fight came later. (He doesn't mention yet that he had been riding a dragon in that fight.)

And that was how he gave away the North, all on his own. --He knows how it sounds, he says. They'd gone back to King's Landing, all of this took time they didn't have, the end of the world, finally Cersei believed it, stopped trying to get him to pretend like he wasn't Dany's ally, joined the fight against the Dead. Except that Cersei never sent the bloody troops to Winterfell. They got to Winterfell, all the Unsullied, the Dothraki, two dragons, and the only Lannister man that came was Jaime Lannister, Cersei's brother. Just one man.

A heavy sigh, and then he lets out a strange, soft, miserable little laugh. He looks back up at Claire, where she's finishing the tea. The Kingslayer, he thinks. I wonder what all seven kingdoms call me now?

Wish they'd just forget me.

But he doesn't say that part to her -- not yet.