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After he rises, Jon dreams of Old Valyria. He knows in his bones that it’s Old Valyria and it’s the most beautiful place he has ever seen. Maybe all cities look like this, gleaming with marble and stone and something that can only be magic, but he doubts it. He’s never seen a city with his own eyes though, so he cannot say for sure.
He dreams of the Blacksmith more than he dreams of anyone, a man with freckled and sun burnt skin and long silver hair he braids just as Sansa braids hers now. He has cuts in his arms, glyphs that translate to strength and love and dragonfire. They are old wounds, reopened and healed over many times and there is a dragon, small and young, sitting in the corner. Sometimes, the Blacksmith smiles at the dragon and coos and plays with it the way you would a small child. Mostly though, the Blacksmith works and so does the dragon, though the dragon’s only work is to open its mouth and breath fire when asked.
The Blacksmith is beautiful. Jon knows this in a way that tells him that it isn’t solely his own thought, his own idea.
Jon opens his dream-mouth, the mouth that isn’t his at all, and says, “I like watching you work.” He says it in High Valyrian. It’s a language he finds himself thinking in sometimes these days, a language he knew only a little of before he died.
The Blacksmith laughs and Jon’s heart speeds up. “Goodness me,” the Blacksmith says. “The lord likes watching the blacksmith work. Is it the strangeness of it? You lot don’t work really, do you?”
“It’s more the arms and the muscles and the sweat. It’s nice.” Jon’s dream-mouth smiles.
The Blacksmith laughs again and begins working, murmuring spells under his breath and Jon awakes.
He painstakingly draws out the glyphs that were on the Blacksmith’s arms and writes the spells as best as he can remember in a small book he had taken with him from the Wall. At the bottom, he writes in High Valyrian ‘one of my ancestors loved a blacksmith.’
It’s an absurd statement, the Starks have no Valyrian blood, but he leaves it anyway because he knows it’s true.
The free folk are camped out on one side of Winterfell and the army from the Vale is camped out on the other. Sansa and Rickon are inside the walls of the castle. They dine with Petyr Baelish and Robin Aryn every evening and every time Jon sees Sansa she looks more wan and more angry.
He hides among the wildlings, because he can’t bear to see Sansa looking at him with angry, betrayed eyes. Eyes that say ‘I would not have had to call on Petyr Baelish if you had listened to me’. Eyes that tell him that he is another person who has betrayed her, she who has known nothing but betrayal since she marched for King’s Landing.
He had promised that he would protect her and he failed. They retook Winterfell, but what did it matter if his sister lives again under the thumb of the man who had handed her over to the Boltons?
He is Sansa’s half-brother again, in action if not in name. He wishes he knew how to fix it.
So he sits with Tormund and stares into the fire at night, feeling Tormund's thigh pressed against his own, and at the ground during the day. Tormund grumbles that he looks as though they lost the battle rather than won it and Wun Wun keeps patting Jon gently on the head.
He dreams of a dark haired woman with grey eyes. She looks like him, like Arya, like Father, like Uncle Benjen. She is beautiful. She is riding a horse, so fast he cringes to watch, but she’s laughing. There’s another horse following her, a boy atop it. He’s laughing as well. It’s supposed to be a race, but both knew what the result would be before the race began.
The girl’s older, though not by much, and her face is fierce and angry. There’s an older boy with her, almost a man. He’s grinning and his face is puckish and full of mischief. He looks like her too, dark hair and grey eyes. “A woman of the North is tougher than all these Southrons. They’re going to fly,” he crows.
The girl’s younger than Sansa is now, and pregnant. She kneels in a tower that Jon somehow knows is a prison. The life is gone from her eyes. “Please, please, old gods, please save us.” She places a hand on her belly. “I only want us to go back to my family, please, that is all I ask, please.”
When he awakes, he has tears on his face and an ache in his chest that will not leave him. Was that woman his mother? He goes into Winterfell for the first time in days. The godswood looks as it’s always done and he kneels in front of the heart tree and prays for her, whoever she was. He prays that she found rest, that she is somewhere with swift horses and plains to ride them in. He knows, without a doubt, that she is dead.
He prays that death returned life to her eyes. They had been beautiful, like Arya’s had been when she was getting ready to throw a snowball, or Father’s when he held a newborn child in his arms.
He doesn’t know how long he spent there, kneeling in the snow in front of the heart tree, but at some point Tormund sits down beside him and says, “Been here awhile. You alright?”
He is silent for a long time and then says “no” and laughs.
“Thought not.”
“I’m been having strange dreams.” He pulls out the book he’s been writing his dreams down in and hands it over to Tormund.
Tormund opens it and pages through it. He hums and then says, “Don’t read, Jon Snow.”
“Even if you read the Common Tongue, you wouldn’t be able to read that. It’s High Valyrian.”
Tormund frowns. “Valyrian. Think Mace sang about them sometimes.”
“The Targaryens came from Valyria before the Doom. They took their dragons with them. I only had a smattering of High Valyrian before--before.” Then, he says in High Valyrian, “I don’t know what’s happening. I know what Melissandre would say, but I don’t want her to be right.”
Tormund is silent for a long moment and then says, “Well. That’s fucking strange.” He stands and says, “It’s cold, Jon Snow. Time to go inside. You’ve been out here for hours. You should be freezing. You’re not, but you should be.”
Jon tries to stand, but while he may be immune to the cold now, he is not immune to his legs going numb from kneeling for too long and has to grab ahold of Tormund to keep his feet.
“If you wanted me to hold you, Jon Snow, you only had to ask,” Tormund says.
Jon shakes out one leg and then the other and only then lets go of Tormund, who has wrapped his arms around Jon in some sort of parody of a hug.
He has to physically grab Tormund’s arms and move them before he can step away.
Tormund is smirking, but his eyes are soft.
He dreams of the grey-eyed girl again, except this time there is a man holding some winter blue roses in his hands. He has long silver hair with purple eyes and a face as pale as hers, as Jon’s. He is beautiful as well, as she is, though he is the noonday sun and she the depths of night.
"Please, I just want to go home, go back to Winterfell, to what is left of my family," she begs. She has tears on her face and her eyes are bloodshot, her face red and splotchy. Jon's heart bleeds for her. He knows what it is to long for Winterfell, though he had longed for it far north and she far south.
"Once the babe is born, you can do as you like,” he says gently. "She will be a daughter, and mine."
Her face goes from despair to rage so quickly it makes him rock back on his feet, to try to retreat from her rage. He has seen the look before, on all his siblings faces. He wonders if he looks this frightening when he is angry. "Maybe he will be a son," she says. "And mine."
He turns and places the blue winter roses on the dresser. "The trader who will be stopping here has a supply of winter roses. Arthur has instructed him to keep bringing them with everything else. If you want anything—”
"Freedom," she says. "Winterfell."
"You are not a prisoner here," he says, pained.
"You saying it does not make it so. You have reduced the Knight of the Morning to a prison guard. How does it feel, to have brought your friend so low?" Her eyes are hard, not so much the fire of Arya's rage as the iciness of Sansa's. She wishes to hurt him, and hurt him she does.
He wakes up with tears on his face again. He had hoped that, somehow, Eddard Stark had been his father, despite everything. But he had that man’s nose, that man’s face. If it weren’t for his dark, curly hair and his dark eyes, he would look exactly like that man.
He wonders if Sansa knew, if Rickon knew, if they would care. If it would matter to them that their Aunt Lyanna had been his mother, that Rhaegar Targaryen had been his father. If he is less their brother this morning than he was before he knew this for sure.
He dreams of a silver haired woman and this one is not truly a new dream. He’s dreamed of her since he was a child, though the dreams stopped before he left for the Night’s Watch. She’s fierce and proud now, and he smiles when he sees her. The last time he saw her, she had looked sad and beaten down.
She tilts her head when she sees him, then says, “Oh. It’s you.” Then she smiles and looks up. Jon does too and his mouths falls open.
There are three dragons flying overhead. One of them dips down and flies towards them. When she lands, the whole ground shakes with the force of it but Jon barely notices.
She’s beautiful. Her scales are green, her eyes bronze and her teeth black. He takes a step towards her with his hand outstretched and she leans forward and nudges his fingers with her nose. He laughs, delighted, and steps close enough that he can run one hand down the scales on top of her head and another down the side. “Hello,” he whispers.
“I should have known you would be one of my dragonriders.”
“She’s beautiful,” he says, and then wakes up. Ghost is curled up beside him and he buries his face in his fur, wondering what’s more unlikely--that the girl he dreamed of as a child exists, or that there is a woman out there who has three dragons. It seems impossible that either are true, but he smiles anyway.
The second time he dreams of her they are standing at Hardhome, watching Jon and Loboda run for the Dragonglass daggers. “Where are we?” she asks.
“Hardhome,” he says. “Beyond the Wall.”
Loboda’s axe shatters against a White Walker’s blade and he is killed. Jon and his Valyrian steel blade shatter the White Walker and she grabs a hold of his arm tightly. “What--what is this?” she asks.
They both watch the survivors flee. The Night King raises his arms and she draws in a terrified breath when the dead wildlings begin to rise.
“Didn’t you know?” he asks. “The Long Winter is here. The dead rise and the White Walkers lead them. This world belonged to them once, before they were driven back beyond the Wall.” He turns and looks at her ashen face and says bleakly, “They want it back.”
The hand on his arm is trembling and, as he watches, her face hardens and sets into determined lines. “They can’t have it,” she says. “I won’t allow it.”
He laughs bitterly but then she points upwards and above them, above the army of White Walkers and wights, are her three dragons, circling. “I am no ordinary woman,” she says. “And you are no ordinary man. How else would we be here if we were?”
He awakes with his chest tight and his body alight with adrenaline. He has had a variation on that dream before and he will continue to do so until the day he dies a final time. This one was different though. The silver haired woman was there, refusing not to hope.
The next time he dreams of her, they are standing in the godswood and she’s staring curiously at the heart trees. She reaches a hand out and then pauses. “Can I touch the faces?”
“Yes. There aren’t really rules with the old gods, mostly just...don’t cut the heart trees down?”
She smiles and runs her fingers around the mouth of the heart tree’s face. “Where are we?” she asks.
“The godswood in Winterfell.”
She walks over to him and sits down, smoothing down her very light dress. “Warmest way to visit the North I’d think.”
He snorts. “Gods. To be warm. I think I’ve forgotten.” He has almost forgotten what it’s like to be truly cold as well, but that isn’t something he thinks about.
“You’ll remember, when Rhaegal comes.”
“I--what?”
She smiles again, and this time it is hard and full of teeth. “Rhaegal is coming to find you.”
“Who?”
“Rhaegal. My dragon. Your dragon. He will reach you before I do.”
This time, he awakes gasping and has to stand, get out of bed and walk around the camp before he can calm down. He tells himself that the idea that a dragon is flying across the narrow sea towards Westeros and the North to find him is absurd, because it is.
Yet all he dreams of for days is land and ocean and sky and the feel of wings beating at his back. It always takes him a moment when he wakes to reorient himself, to remember what it is to have arms and not wings, to have soft, pink flesh rather than hard, green scales, what it is to be human and not fire made flesh.
When he starts dreaming of the Blacksmith again, the man whose eyes he looked through before are gone. He just watches the man work, trying to listen to the spells the man says with such conviction and not to notice the way the man’s muscles move. He is wearing a leather apron, boots and loose trousers and nothing else. At first he is only distracted by the movement of his arms, of the way the muscles flex and release, but later he notices the shoulders and the back as well.
It makes him blush. He’s not meant to notice such things and he wouldn’t have if the man whose eyes he had seen through before had not looked at this man so wantingly.
He doesn’t think he would have, anyway.
Rickon runs wild through the free folk camp, more comfortable there than inside Winterfell. Jon isn’t certain Rickon even remembers having once lived at Winterfell but he is twelve now and already taller than Jon.
At first, guards follow the boy who is Lord of Winterfell, but eventually Sansa bids them to leave him be. Tormund insists none of the Free Folk would allow harm to come to a child and Ghost runs with him through the camp anyway and who would be fool enough to harm a child under the protection of a direwolf?
Jon still worries though. At first glance, Rickon does not appear a child, is tall enough even now to be mistaken for a man almost grown, not a boy who is not yet thirteen. He confides his concern to Tormund, who laughs and says he will make sure that people know that Rickon is a child and a Lord and that a direwolf will rip out their throats if they hurt him and let them puzzle the first two out for themselves.
He watches Tormund with Rickon, watches him correct Rickon’s sword technique, watches him laugh and play. It isn’t how Jon was taught, isn’t anything close to what Rickon would have been taught had Winterfell not fallen and he not spent years living with a wildling woman.
Rickon is more than decent with a sword though and, given time, he’ll be better still.
“You’ve got to learn to be quick,” Tormund says. “People will think you’re slow because you’re going to be tall when you’re grown but if you’re quicker than they think you’ll be…” He lunges forward, drops his sword and picks up Rickon. Rickon drops his sword as well and shrieks with laughter.
Jon smiles. Tormund’s muscles are covered by layers of leather and furs, but his still eyes fall on Tormund as often as they do on Rickon. More, maybe.
And Tormund notices. He catches Jon’s eye more than once and he’d gone from confused head tilt to a smirk as time went on.
Jon may not have been certain why his eyes follow Tormund, but Tormund seems certain that he knows. Jon’s stomach dips, half anxiety and half something else.
That night Tormund comes to Jon’s tent, closes the flap behind him and crouches in front of where Jon is sitting on his bedroll. They watch each other silently for so long that Jon considers actually saying something, anything, to break the tension when Tormund leans forward and kisses him.
Jon freezes for a moment but then kisses back because he wants to and what does it matter that he shouldn’t? He has died and returned from death. In his second life, these things seem unimportant. Are unimportant.
Jon is hesitant though and he’d be embarrassed about it if he had time to give it any thought, but Tormund doesn’t give him the chance. A firm hand grasps the side of his face, fingers half in Jon’s hair. His mouth is firm and unyielding and Jon just wraps an arm around Tormund’s neck and kisses back.
They kiss for a long time, long enough that Jon feels breathless and almost warm. When Tormund urges him down onto the furs, it takes only the slightest pressure of Tormund’s hand to make him lay down. Tormund’s heavy weight follows him down and settles atop him and for a moment Jon is breathless from the feel of it. He shifts and groans when he feels Tormund’s cock pressing against his leg and then moves so he can wrap one leg around his waist and let Tormund fall between his legs.
Tormund settles there, between Jon’s legs and lets out a quiet moan. He brushes his lips up against Jon’s neck and says, “Damn you, Jon Snow.”
It did not sound at all like damn you and Tormund began sucking kisses into Jon’s neck as he rolled his hips again and again. It’s only when Tormund’s hand comes up and covers his mouth that Jon realises that he must have been making noise, must have been loud. He tenses up and starts trying to choke back his moans and his whimpers.
Tormund’s hips still and he growls, “No. Don’t stop.” When Jon lets out a little whimper, Tormund begins moving again and murmurs, “Good boy.”
Jon shudders and comes and it doesn’t take long for Tormund to follow him.
He keeps dreaming of the Blacksmith and writing down everything he can remember. He isn’t sure why he bothers. Even if his dreams aren’t just him going mad and there really is a dragon flying its way towards him, what blacksmith would be mad enough to carve glyphs into their arms and bleed all over a sword they were forging? It was surely only Valyrian magic that had kept the wounds from becoming inflamed and he knows nothing of that. It is said that there is magic in the blood of Old Valyria, what if that was what was required to forge Valyrian steel? He knows of no blacksmiths with Old Valyrian blood. The idea of trying to find one is absurd.
Surely it was just a waste of time and parchment and energy to write all this down, even if there was a green dragon flying north.
Tormund had kissed him and left after they were done. It had been almost three days now and Jon had not seen him since. This was more Jon’s fault than Tormund’s, but Jon resented it nonetheless. Jon had been at the castle, watching Petyr Baelish as closely as he could get away with.
The morning after the...event with Tormund, Rickon had arrived at the free folk camp brimming with rage and stories of Baelish attempting to take liberties with Sansa. “He tried to kiss her but she turned away. He was angry.” Rickon had been shaking with the force of his anger and Jon had asked Ser Davos to look after Rickon while he went to the castle.
He had sat with Sansa from morning til night every day since then and he is fairly certain she is a meal away from murdering him. “There is nothing to be done about Petyr,” she had snapped as he left dinner the evening before. “We did not have enough men and so I found more. This is the price for it. It is nothing compared to what I have already paid.”
Eating breakfast with the wildlings is preferable to having to look at Sansa and think about what she has paid and what she will have to pay in the future. She thinks Winterfell is worth any price and Jon wishes he could be so sure.
He wishes they had had time to tell each other more about what had happened after they both left Winterfell. He had the broadest of strokes but that was all he knew.
Tormund sits beside him at breakfast and scolds him for the return of his sour look. When Jon says nothing in reply, Tormund says, “You’ve been away from the camp and Rickon hasn’t left it in days, Jon Snow. Why is that?”
“Petyr Baelish, who came to Winterfell with an army from the Vale at Sansa’s request, has been…” He grimaces.
Tormund’s face darkens. “The girl doesn’t welcome his advances I assume?”
“No. I’m not sure what we can do about that though. She thinks nothing. We need men to secure the North and fight at the Wall and he has that. He may even have the influence to ensure that she is no longer wanted for the death of Joffrey Baratheon.”
Tormund frowns. “Who?”
“A boy who was king on the Iron Throne. He and Sansa were to marry but that engagement was broken and he married another. During his wedding feast, he was poisoned and Sansa fled the city. In King’s Landing, it is believed that she had something to do with his death. They will kill her, if they can.” He grimaces and glances at Tormund, who looks thoughtful.
“You kneelers make all this too complicated. One man dies another takes his place.”
“It’s that way among kneelers as well.”
“No, a man dies and his son takes his place and that’s only if he has a son.”
“And a man dies and you have a war to decide who replaces him is any better?”
Tormund roars with laughter. “That only happens sometimes, Jon Snow.”
Jon watches him laugh and decides to abandon his plans to impose on Sansa after breakfast. “Would you come with me to the castle? I want to show you something.” Technically, the wildlings had free reign over most of the castle, though in practice most stayed away. Outside the Wall itself, such large buildings simply don’t exist north of the Wall and most seemed to have an almost superstitious fear of the place.
He takes Tormund to some of the hot springs underneath Winterfell. These ones were for use by the family only and he has memories of playing and laughing and bathing here. It was one of the few places in Winterfell where Jon had been allowed but Theon Greyjoy had not.
Inside the room it is almost unbearably hot in all the layers that keep them warm outside and he wonders why he hasn’t come here since he and Sansa retook the castle. Perhaps he should not have brought Tormund here, but brought Rickon and Sansa instead.
He mentally pushes the idea aside for later and starts pulling off his clothes. When he’s done, he turns to look at Tormund who has removed his cloak and his shirt but mostly seems to have been preoccupied with watching Jon undress. He blushes and turns his his face away to try and hide it. He sits down in the hot water, feels the heat soak into sore muscles and tries not to watch Tormund undress out of the corner of his eye.
Tormund does not sit opposite him, does not even sit beside him, but places a foot on either side of Jon’s body. Jon laughs a little and slides forward to let Tormund sit behind him, settling himself back against the other man’s chest. They sit like that for a long time, Jon’s head turned to the side so he can rest his forehead against Tormund’s chin and Tormund running the back of his hand gently up and down Jon’s thigh.
“Talked myself out of stealing you a few times, last couple of nights,” Tormund says.
Jon smiles. “I don’t think it would have been very fun for you. Wouldn’t have fought you much at all.”
That got a laugh. “Didn’t think the southerners would have appreciated it much.”
“No,” Jon agreed. “They wouldn’t have. Men aren’t...supposed to lay with men here. It isn’t considered right.”
“I know. You southern folk have weird ideas ‘bout a lotta things. I have two daughters, no reason I need to have any more children.”
“No reason to think any of us will live long enough for it to matter.”
Tormund’s knee knocks against Jon’s in a hit that would have been much harder outside the water. “Need to break you of this brooding habit, Jon Snow. Maybe we’ll survive. Maybe we won’t. That’s always been true, long as people walked the earth.”
“Hadn’t thought about it that way.” Jon shifts a little, trying to move so he can rest his head on Tormund’s shoulder, but Tormund groans and digs his fingernails into Jon’s thigh. Jon gasps and arches his back.
“Like that do you?” Tormund says and runs his fingernails up Jon’s thigh.
His hands fall down onto Tormund’s thighs and he presses his back flush with Tormund’s chest and lifts himself up just enough that Tormund’s cock slid between his arse cheeks. Tormund’s hard cock had been pressing into Jon’s back since Tormund had sat down but this was better.
“Good boy.” Tormund groans and runs his fingernails up Jon’s other thigh.
Jon gasps and moans and tries to get more from the feeling of Tormund’s cock so close to what he knows men do together. At the Wall, he had always looked away from the men who did these things, tried not to look too closely, to want too much. He’s not at the Wall now and Tormund wants him to want, wanted to steal him from his bed.
“You ever laid with a man?” Tormund asks and Jon shakes his head. “Ever been with anyone except Ygritte?” Jon shakes his head again.
Tormund pushes Jon to his feet and sits him on the edge of the hot springs stone edge and stands and heads towards his clothes. Jon frowns. Maybe Tormund had not wanted him so much after all. “Where are you going?”
“Getting some oil so I can fuck you good and proper.” Tormund pulls a small bottle out of the inside of his coat and then walks back towards Jon. Jon’s stares at Tormund’s cock, which is not small by any means, and then almost immediately looks back up at Tormund’s face, blushing hotly.
Tormund smirks as he climbs back into the pool and says, “You’re allowed to look. You go such a pretty shade of red when you do. And you were putting in a good effort to get me to stick it up your arse a few moments ago.” Tormund stands on the step, smirking down at Jon, his hard cock hovering in front of Jon’s face.
Jon reaches out with a hand to run his fingertips along Tormund’s cock and then leans forward to put the head of it in his mouth and suck gently. Tormund reaches down and grabs a handful of Jon’s hair and pulls hard. Jon cries out and bucks his hips. “You can suck my cock while I pull your hair another time, Jon Snow. I want to fuck you so hard you’ll think of me every time you fucking move for the next few days.”
Jon moans. Gods yes, he wants that too. “I think,” he says breathlessly. “That you can probably pull my hair while you fuck me too.”
Tormund pulls Jon’s hair again and reaches down with his other hand to run his fingernails down Jon’s chest, harder this time. “Ah!” Jon says and arches his back. His cock is so hard he’s leaking and he cries out again when Tormund runs his fingernails over Jon’s nipples. “Oh gods, please.”
Tormund pushes Jon back until he’s lying flat on the stone. It takes only the slightest hint for Jon to let his legs fall open enough for Tormund to settle between them, to arch his hips to let Tormund’s oiled fingers push inside him. This was what he’d wanted when he’d watched the Blacksmith work, this was what he’d wanted when he’d watched Tormund, when Tormund had settled his weight down on him a few nights before.
It hurts a little but he likes that too and he’d blush and wonder why if he weren’t so busy with the feeling of Tormund sucking bruising kisses onto his chest and running his blunt fingernails down his side.
When Tormund adds a second finger, he’s pushing down against them and moaning desperately. “Oh gods, more, please, please,” he says, panting.
Tormund groans and adds a third finger and it burns but it’s so good and he didn’t realise he could want anything this badly. He wraps both arms around Tormund’s shoulders and rocks against Tormund’s fingers, gasping and moaning. When Tormund’s fingernails dig particularly hard into Jon’s side he cries out, cock twitching. He doesn’t want to come yet, wants to come with Tormund inside him, so he pulls Tormund’s hand away from his side. “Too much, too much, inside me please.”
“I’m not a small man Jon Snow,” Tormund says.
“I don’t care, please, please.”
“Such a polite little thing you are, never been asked to fuck someone so nicely.” Tormund grins and pulls his fingers out of Jon’s arse and oils himself up before leaning over Jon and kissing him. He pulls Jon’s legs up and around his waist. Tormund bites hard on Jon’s bottom lip at the same time he pushes the head of his cock inside him and slowly moves forward until he’s balls deep inside Jon.
“Oh gods, oh gods,” Jon says. It hurts and it feels good and he arches his back to try to get more of Tormund inside him somehow, digging his heels into the meat of Tormund’s arse.
Tormund pulls out and thrusts inside again and again and hits something that makes Jon cry out every time he brushes against it. He clutches at Tormund’s shoulders. This was what he’d wanted. This. They both come not long after, Tormund collapsing on top of Jon’s chest, panting. Jon runs his fingers down Tormund’s back and doesn’t move his legs from around Tormund’s hips until it starts to hurt.
Tormund rolls off him and slides down into the hot spring, reaching out to pull Jon down with him. “Now that was a good fuck.”
Jon snorts and settles himself back between Tormund’s thighs, head tucked underneath Tormund’s chin.
It is late the next morning when Jon walks out to the edge of camp and waits, staring up into the sky. He’s still sore from yesterday but it’s the good kind of sore, like he trained hard the day before and his body wants him to remember just how hard.
He waits and he waits and eventually Tormund ends up standing beside him, staring up into the sky with him. Not long after Tormund arrives, a dark shape appears in the horizon from the east, moving fast in their direction. Tormund tilts his head as the shape gets closer and closer. When it’s close enough Jon is certain it’s a dragon, certain it’s Rhaegal, Tormund grabs ahold of his arm.
Tormund pulls on it, tries to get him to move, but Jon plants his feet and wrenches his arm out of Tormund’s grip. He will not run. A dragon will not respect a coward, would never allow a coward to climb on her back. Tormund lets out a wordless snarl and backs away as Rhaegal begins to descend to the ground.
He glances over his shoulder and Tormund has retreated almost to where the rest of the free folk crowd, pointing and shouting. Wun Wun is cowering behind Tormund, trying to hide. Jon wants to call out that Rhaegal wouldn't hurt them, but he knows they wouldn't believe him, that he wouldn't believe someone else making the same claim. He turns back to look up, to watch Rhaegal as she lands.
She lands softer than she did in the dream, but closer to him as well. He need only take a single long step to be close enough to hold out his hand, palm up. She sniffs it and then ducks her head, just as she did in his dream, so he could run a hand over and down her head. “Hello,” he says quietly. “I've been dreaming of you. Have you dreamt of me?”
She makes a quiet noise that he knows means yes. It takes him two tries to climb onto her back, but once he’s settled she flaps her massive wings once, twice and then leaps into the air.