Daenerys sat with her back against the hard, stone wall, legs tucked up to her chest. Her dirty, disheveled hair hung limply, her eyes sunken into her skull gazed at the floor, unfocused and blurry with tears.

Across from her was Jon's tomb, hewn from dragonglass. The stone that had brought them together. Five days ago, she had brought his body to Dragonstone to give him a proper Targaryen burial, and found herself unable to leave. For a fortnight now, grief had wrapped its arms around her chest, embracing her, entrapping her, suffocating her. Jon was gone. Forever. Nothing she could ever say or do would change that fact. The only man she had loved nearly as much as she had her moon and stars, was gone. Another wave of agony swept through her whole body, causing everything in her to seize as she silently screamed into the empty void in her heart. Her life held nothing. Never again would she be able to hug him, kiss him, seek his comfort or his counsel.

Grief was an evil, relentless bastard. All her life it had tormented her. First her home had been taken from her, then her husband and child, then her khalasar, her dragons, her closest friend, and now her lover. Grief had given her only brief moments of respite since it first started its destructive rampage in her life.

Even those moments it had used for its own malevolent purposes though. The joy in those moments of happiness and peace had just made their end so much more agonizing. But this. This was the hardest of them all.

Thirteen days ago, she had held in her hands everything she had dreamt of all her life: the Seven Kingdoms, the Targaryen name returned to the Iron Throne, and someone who loved her as much as she loved them.

And yet.

Jon had betrayed her. She thought she could trust him to stand by her side, to understand her, to rule alongside her. But in that moment, that one moment when she had looked into his eyes, she had known.

When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die.

She knew what needed to be done to survive, to win, she had been doing it her whole life. Jon had never had to make the decisions and sacrifices she had. He had not been raised a Targaryen, hadn't clung to the promise of the Throne like she had all her life. He would have never understood her decision to burn the Dothraki Khals, nor to crucify the Grand Masters of Meereen for their atrocities. She had time and time again done what needed to be done in order to maintain her power.

It was her birthright. She had been born destined for the Iron Throne. Everything she had done, everything she had given up, she did so that she could make things different for those without power, to break the wheel. She had wanted change. But in order to enact change, one must have power and must know how to hold on to it. Jon hadn't understood that. His betrayal bit at her again, triggering another wave of grief at his loss. If he had just trusted her, had even tried to understand, she could have let him live, let him stay by her side forever.

She had wanted so badly to be enough for him. She had tried to reassure him, to show him her vision for the Seven Kingdoms. But he hadn't understood...and now he never would.

Again, grief struck her, this time driving the blow so deep into her stomach that she gasped and choked. She let a wail escape her, the emptiness threatening to overwhelm her, take her beneath its wave and drown her. She sat there for a while longer, waiting for the pain to take its toll so that numbness could follow.

It always did. In those brief times of respite, she sat dazed and shell-shocked, her body refusing to feel, her mind refusing to think. For those few hours, she paced the abandoned halls of Dragonstone, neither seeing the dragon heads etched into the walls, nor hearing the waves crashing on the rocks below the abandoned fortress.

Those moments brought their own kind of torture though. She could not sit still, could not pass the time any way besides walking, walking, walking. Once she tried to read a book from the vast library, but the words swam in front of her, the dull ache in her head acting like a shield around her mind. Nothing could get in... or out. Hours passed like that, as if a puppeteer operated her body, dragging her throughout the castle.

She had little memory of these walks, as if she fell asleep during them. The only evidence that she had walked miles and miles up and down the halls was the holes worn through her shoes. Eventually she had worn through every pair she owned and took to pacing barefoot, grinding blisters into the bottoms of her feet. The hallways became streaked in the blood from her split soles. The only times that the numbness did not erase her memories was at night.

At night the hours dragged on into eternity, every minute feeling like a day. Those nights, she lay in her bed, staring at the moon shining onto the ocean below and begging daylight to come.

Those moments made her anxious for grief to come back so that she could feel again. Could wallow in Jon's absence, her role in it. She could scream at the traitorous Starks, the bastard Lannisters, the usurping Baratheons. She could weep over Jon's grave, aching to touch him just one more time, to hear his voice speak her name. Anything but this nothingness, this prison of emptiness.

It was one such night that she laid curled up in her bed, the air in her chambers stale and sour. Bedclothes tangled around her legs as she stared out the window. Her entire body felt like an anchor, weighing her down, pulling her deep into the abyss. The moon twinkled on the sea below, but she did not notice. She was thinking of the way Jon's eyes had twinkled after she had shown him how to ride dragons. He really had been a Targaryen, blood of her blood. His heart had been a Stark's though, cursed by the ice and snow he had been raised in. She thought of the way he had kissed her after that ride, how they had talked of staying there for a thousand years, where no one could find them. She could almost feel his hands, hear his voice.

Dany.

His whisper seemed to echo through her chambers.

Dany.

Again, she thought she heard his voice. She sat up. "Jon?" she whispered, a treacherous vein of hope pulsing in her chest.

"Dany."

This time she knew she wasn't imagining it. "Jon?" she said, louder.

"Why?" the whisper came, fainter this time, as if it were moving away.

She threw aside her bedclothes and ran to the hallway.

"Dany."

She heard it again, from the end of the hall where she thought she saw a shadow turn the corner. She bolted down the corridor, barely registering the pain shooting through her blistered feet as they pounded towards the voice. Turning the corner, she saw the shadow disappear down the next corridor. She followed the whisper, its shadow taunting her, barely out of reach, until she rounded the final bend and skidded into the chamber containing Jon's body.

The room was empty and silent, save for the sparkling stone tomb in the center of the room. High above, the walls arched into nothingness, the night sky clearly visible. When they had first arrived, Drogon had torn through the ceiling of this room, trying to reach her when she had not been able to tear herself away from Jon's side for days.

Now as she gazed up into the void left by Drogon's talons, she could see her only remaining dragon circling the sky overhead. Moonlight poured through the opening, lighting the center of the room where Jon's body lay, but leaving the corners in darkness.

Slowly, she crossed to it, stroking its smooth sides, the runes carved into it. She traced the epithet hewn into its lid.

Here lies Aegon Targaryen, also called Jon Snow, the man in which the wolf and dragon danced.

A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek, splashing onto the engraving. "Oh, Jon," she whispered.

From the corner of her eye, a shadow moved. She whipped around. Not even ten paces from her stood the shape of a man, his face cloaked in shadows, but that silhouette... so familiar to her.

"Jon," she breathed.

"Dany," came the whisper again. The shadow stepped forward into the moonlight, his thick hair and beard gleaming, his dark eyes fixed on hers.

"It is you," she whispered, barely allowing herself to believe it.

"You killed me," he murmured, his voice rough, as he took another couple steps towards her.

" I had to," she begged. "I did it for the kingdom, for our people."

"Our people?" he said softly. "You mean your people. Your throne. Your destiny." He began to pace a circle around the tomb, eyes locked on hers the whole time. "You did this for you."

Tears streamed silently down Dany's face. "No," she whispered, pleading with him. "I did this for the Seven Kingdoms. Everything I've ever done has been for them."

Jon shook his head slowly, still circling her. "I was loyal to you through everything. And you killed me." She saw tears shining in his eyes. "I trusted you. I loved you," he whispered.

A sob escaped her throat. "Jon, I'm so sorry," she whimpered.

He stopped pacing, looked at her, his piercing gaze cut her straight to the bone. "Do you regret it?" he whispered.

She stared at him. She wanted so badly to tell him yes, yes she regretted it, she would do anything to change what she'd done. She wanted to say they could go back to the way things were, that she could forget the look in his eyes when she'd begged him to understand. But she knew she couldn't say any of that. They couldn't go back and she couldn't lie to him. "No," she whispered. "I don't regret it. I can't."

Something flared in Jon's eyes, sudden and violent and he growled. Then it was gone, replaced with unspoken grief and defeat. He stepped close to her, within a finger's-breadth. "If only I'd been enough," he said, voice choked with pain.

She felt a sharp ache in her abdomen, and looked down to see the hilt of a dagger protruding from her side. A dark stain blossomed around it, spreading quickly and soaking her nightgown. He stepped away from her as she continued to stare at it.

She'd been right. They had reached the ending that she'd seen all along. He would never have accepted her rule, what needed to be done. No matter what she did, they would always have arrived here, her death at his hands.

For the first time since Jon's death, she felt grief release its clutch. There was pain, yes, but also a strange relief. It was over, all over. Grief would never again ravage her mind, claim her body and heart for its own. Never again would she have to feel her soul splinter with loss or regret. She was free, the madness was over.

Her vision began to darken, and she collapsed to the ground. Her knees slid across the floor slick with warm blood and she slumped forward. The encroaching darkness filled her with both comfort and a sliver of panic. Dany was free, yes, but the Targaryen, the dragon inside her, continued to roar and demand life. She twisted on the blood-soaked floor so that she was facing up, eyes gazing into the endless heavens above her. Darkness descended on her and for a brief moment she thought this was the end, but then she recognized the leathery wings and reptilian snout of Drogon. He landed near her with a thud that shook the room and slithered towards her, encircling her body with his scaly one in a protective wall.

"Drogon," she murmured, the heat of his scales unable to combat the rapid cooling of her skin. She reached out to lay a hand on his smooth snout.

With a low rumble, he gently blew a stream of warm air across her face. She smiled weakly. The darkness around the edges of her vision was growing by the second. Through her drooping eyes she saw shadows above her, heard their whispers.

Moon of my life.

And the other, slightly higher voice. Mai. Mother.

She gasped, tears running down her face. They had come for her. Finally reunited, finally at peace, surrounded by those who loved her, the Mother of Dragons allowed the darkness to overcome her.