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m_findlowTitle: The things we do for love
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Jon Snow
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG.
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Spoilers for Season 8.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 117 - Happily ever after at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
fandomweeklySummary: Jon is faced with a terrible decision to make.
Jon stared out across the broken ruins of the Red Keep's outer walls. Everything was dusted in a continuous shower of white, but it was no winter's snow that fell in the capital, rather the hot, acrid flakes of ash, determined to bury what was left of the city until it ceased to exist at all.
There was a bitter taste that hung in the air with the falling ashes. It was the feeling of a genocidal purging. If Dany couldn't have King's Landing and the Seven Kingdoms, then no one was going to have it. Even when victory had felt assured, she'd kept pressing, burning everything and everyone.
The people who had lived here were innocent - just peasants and traders no different to the people who lived in the north. They lived simple lives that didn't involve power or politics. Making it from one winter to the next was all any of them could hope for. Now they were all gone, obliterated from existence, having never so much as raised a sword or a fist in defiance of her arrival. All they had wanted was safety, and instead they'd been lured into a trap that led only to death. Jon felt that same trap beginning to squeeze around him. There was a new sense of danger that permeated the ground, like it might at any moment split asunder and swallow him whole.
He tried searching Danaerys' face for the traces of the woman he loved but it was getting harder and harder to find her. She'd been a good person who wanted only to make the world a more equal place, but now he saw that she meant to rule and rule with an iron fist no softer than those that came before her.
Stories of the Mad King and his plot to destroy the city with wildfire no longer felt exaggerated and grandiose. They paled in comparison to what he saw here. A madman with a paranoia was one thing, but Dany had done this in full knowledge of the consequences. Perhaps she was as mad as the rest of the Targaryens. He shook the thought away. No, that wasn't true. He was one of them by blood, and he had never felt more certain that he was as sound of mind as any man. He didn't lust for power - never wanted it even when it was demanded of him - and had never felt the urge to look over his shoulder in fear of who might be coming to take it all away from him.
He wanted to love her still, but there was a division widening between them. She'd broken faith with what they'd all believed they were fighting for and Tyrion was already paying the price of having opposed the outcome, imprisoned until Dany decided whether dragonfire would serve. Those who weren't with her were against her, and Jon was already at risk. Arya had been the one to point it out to him. So long as he lived, no matter his promises of fidelity, Dany would always know he had the better claim to power, should anyone ever find out. What would it take for Dany to become as paranoid as her father, seeing him as an enemy rather than an ally? How long until he was standing in front of Drogon's gaping maw, preparing to be burned alive?
He hung his head in despair, watching the flakes of ash tumble from the top of his head, fluttering to the ground along with any hopes that things could go back to how they'd been before. Without power, Danaerys had been a force for good in the world, but with power came the right to decide who lived and who died, and definitions of good and bad were now polarised as those for and against her rule.
There was no happy ending for them here. With a heavy heart, Jon realised that there never had been. They wanted different things. For Dany, power would always come before love. For Jon, it was duty, not to his Queen anymore, so it would seem, but to the people that would be forced to live under her reign, or perish because of it. He felt more of an outsider now than he ever had as a bastard at Winterfell.
He'd loved and lost before. Thinking of Ygritte lying in his arms with an arrow through her heart still made his chest ache. He'd been forced to double cross her and it had cost her life to do so. He'd wanted so much for her not to fight him on what was right. They could never have been together, but it hadn't stopped Jon from wanting it. Now Dany threatened to direct an Unsullied spear into his heart if he dared to defy her. The difference, which Tyrion had made clear to him in their brief visitation, was that Ygritte didn't have to die to alter the course of her people and what they wanted. She didn't command an army that would destroy anything in its path. She'd paused long enough to see that long held views of who was the enemy and who wasn't could be changed; that one person's goodness wasn't defined by which clan they belonged to.
The wheel of old power may have been broken, but something new and even more terrifying now stood in its place. Things were going to get worse before they got better. He wasn't even sure they would get better. Maybe they'd simply get worse, until the only people who were left were those too scared to defy their queen. How was that any better than what the slaves and the peasants had endured before?
He'd been brought back from death for a reason, but until now, hadn't understood what that reason was. Perhaps secretly being the last Targaryen that lived was the reason, even if that meant killing his own flesh and blood. He would do it out of love.
Jon stared out across the broken ruins of the Red Keep's outer walls. Everything was dusted in a continuous shower of white, but it was no winter's snow that fell in the capital, rather the hot, acrid flakes of ash, determined to bury what was left of the city until it ceased to exist at all.
There was a bitter taste that hung in the air with the falling ashes. It was the feeling of a genocidal purging. If Dany couldn't have King's Landing and the Seven Kingdoms, then no one was going to have it. Even when victory had felt assured, she'd kept pressing, burning everything and everyone.
The people who had lived here were innocent - just peasants and traders no different to the people who lived in the north. They lived simple lives that didn't involve power or politics. Making it from one winter to the next was all any of them could hope for. Now they were all gone, obliterated from existence, having never so much as raised a sword or a fist in defiance of her arrival. All they had wanted was safety, and instead they'd been lured into a trap that led only to death. Jon felt that same trap beginning to squeeze around him. There was a new sense of danger that permeated the ground, like it might at any moment split asunder and swallow him whole.
He tried searching Danaerys' face for the traces of the woman he loved but it was getting harder and harder to find her. She'd been a good person who wanted only to make the world a more equal place, but now he saw that she meant to rule and rule with an iron fist no softer than those that came before her.
Stories of the Mad King and his plot to destroy the city with wildfire no longer felt exaggerated and grandiose. They paled in comparison to what he saw here. A madman with a paranoia was one thing, but Dany had done this in full knowledge of the consequences. Perhaps she was as mad as the rest of the Targaryens. He shook the thought away. No, that wasn't true. He was one of them by blood, and he had never felt more certain that he was as sound of mind as any man. He didn't lust for power - never wanted it even when it was demanded of him - and had never felt the urge to look over his shoulder in fear of who might be coming to take it all away from him.
He wanted to love her still, but there was a division widening between them. She'd broken faith with what they'd all believed they were fighting for and Tyrion was already paying the price of having opposed the outcome, imprisoned until Dany decided whether dragonfire would serve. Those who weren't with her were against her, and Jon was already at risk. Arya had been the one to point it out to him. So long as he lived, no matter his promises of fidelity, Dany would always know he had the better claim to power, should anyone ever find out. What would it take for Dany to become as paranoid as her father, seeing him as an enemy rather than an ally? How long until he was standing in front of Drogon's gaping maw, preparing to be burned alive?
He hung his head in despair, watching the flakes of ash tumble from the top of his head, fluttering to the ground along with any hopes that things could go back to how they'd been before. Without power, Danaerys had been a force for good in the world, but with power came the right to decide who lived and who died, and definitions of good and bad were now polarised as those for and against her rule.
There was no happy ending for them here. With a heavy heart, Jon realised that there never had been. They wanted different things. For Dany, power would always come before love. For Jon, it was duty, not to his Queen anymore, so it would seem, but to the people that would be forced to live under her reign, or perish because of it. He felt more of an outsider now than he ever had as a bastard at Winterfell.
He'd loved and lost before. Thinking of Ygritte lying in his arms with an arrow through her heart still made his chest ache. He'd been forced to double cross her and it had cost her life to do so. He'd wanted so much for her not to fight him on what was right. They could never have been together, but it hadn't stopped Jon from wanting it. Now Dany threatened to direct an Unsullied spear into his heart if he dared to defy her. The difference, which Tyrion had made clear to him in their brief visitation, was that Ygritte didn't have to die to alter the course of her people and what they wanted. She didn't command an army that would destroy anything in its path. She'd paused long enough to see that long held views of who was the enemy and who wasn't could be changed; that one person's goodness wasn't defined by which clan they belonged to.
The wheel of old power may have been broken, but something new and even more terrifying now stood in its place. Things were going to get worse before they got better. He wasn't even sure they would get better. Maybe they'd simply get worse, until the only people who were left were those too scared to defy their queen. How was that any better than what the slaves and the peasants had endured before?
He'd been brought back from death for a reason, but until now, hadn't understood what that reason was. Perhaps secretly being the last Targaryen that lived was the reason, even if that meant killing his own flesh and blood. He would do it out of love.
