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For the longest of eternities, Jon Snow knew nothing.
But then, he dreamed. He knew this because he suddenly could think again. He found himself surrounded by darkness, which initially caused him to panic. He imagined himself trapped inside of his own mind for the rest of eternity. He much preferred not existing at all, like he had only moments before.
But then there was metallic scraping to his right, like heavy chains being dragged across a stony floor. He turned his head, but saw only black. It was a long moment before Jon realized his eyes were actually closed. It was as if he was only half inhabiting his body, able to control it but not fully immerse himself.
Which is why he was puzzled when he found himself peering around a large room of deep indigo and purple. It wasn’t that it was painted or tiled in those colors, but as if he were peering through a colored lens.
The chains rustled again, and Jon started when he beheld a bizarrely colored behemoth right there next to him. A monster couched on the floor like an overgrown bloodbat, all neck and tail and wings.
A dragon. Although it was distorted in shades of bright orange and gold and red. As if it was the sun in the shape of a dragon. White eyes blinked over at him before turning slowly toward the opposite end of the room, where the heavy grinding of stone drew its attention.
Then it opened, and suddenly all of the bizarre colors washed away as blazing torchlight met Jon’s gaze. He heard a soft hiss escape unbidden from his mouth, but then he jerked his head up as he beheld a familiar figure.
It was truly a bizarre dream now, if it wasn’t before. In this dungeon beside a dragon, Jon found himself staring at the now miniscule form of Tyrion Lannister. The dwarf stood at the now open entrance with a fat, bald man. They both held torches and matching expressions of unease as they gaze down toward where Jon and the dragon were.
Slowly and wordlessly, Tyrion began down the stairs into the dungeon. He looked quite different than when Jon had seen him last at Castle Black-he had grown a beard, for one, and a great, ugly scar striped his face diagonally across the nose. His clothes were simpler and without any house insignias, Lannister or otherwise. In his hand was a blazing torch that cast a pool of light across the damp stone floor.
Jon edged forward toward the dwarf, and both he and Tyrion froze as heavy chains rattled. Jon’s mind reeled. Somehow, he knew he shouldn’t have possessed the strength tto move those chains. They sounded even thicker than the ones used on the lift at the Wall, and those had been large enough for him to fit his entire hand through the gap. One had to work a capstan to move those ones, and even then it was a hated chore.
A long moment passed. A trickle of water leaking through the ceiling onto the floor echoes from somewhere beyond reach, and Tyrion cautiously continued toward them. A dozen more paces, and he stopped again, looking slowly back over his shoulder at the bald man who had chosen to stay behind at the entrance.
The dragon rumbled deep in its chest and seemed to extend itself forward to meet the dwarf. Jon followed, again feeling that strange dissociation from his body. It was like he was merely puppeting something else.
The dragon opened its jaws. A flame gathered at the back of its throat for a moment before it lurched forward at Tyrion with a squawk. He staggered back, and it hissed as it drew back, baring multiple rows of curved, yellow fangs.
Jon stayed a bit behind the dragon, but Tyrion looked over at him as a deep grumbling warble split the air. It took Jon a moment to realize it came from him. Or rather, whatever he was supposed to be. He was fairly sure he knew.
A truly strange dream indeed. Tyrion paled as Jon’s dragon approached, its shuffle forward awkward due to the chain that rattled behind his head. The dwarf lifted a hand in an attempt to placate him.
“I’m friends with your mother.” He said in a thin voice.
Jon’s dragon grumbled again, then extended its neck to sniff Tyrion. He reeked of fear, but the dragon understood that he wasn’t prey. Not yet.
“I’m here to help.” Tyrion went on, not quite meeting Jon’s gaze. “Don’t eat the help.”
It was almost funny, but Jon’s faint amusement metastasized into a terrible chuckle that reverberated deep in the dragon’s chest. It startled him and terrified Tyrion, but amazingly, the dwarf barely showed it as he carefully drew closer, going around Jon’s head toward where the shackle was clamps on his neck.
“When I was a child.” Tyrion’s voice was soft, but more confident. He didn’t tear his gaze away from Jon’s dragon, even as it turned to watch his progress. “My uncle asked what gift I wanted for my name day. I begged him for one of you.” Tyrion paused in place. “‘It wouldn't even have to be a big dragon,’ I told him. ‘It could be little. Like me.’”
Only then did he tear his gaze away, stooping down to carefully set his torch on the ground. Hands empty, he turned back toward Jon’s dragon, who lowered their head so that the shackle could easily be reached.
“Everyone laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Then my father told me the last dragon had died a century ago. I cried myself to sleep that night.” Tyrion laid a hand on the dragon’s neck. All of his fear had ceased in that moment. “But here you are.”
His words were tinged in awe, and Jon vaguely wondered if Tyrion was seeing a monstrous beast, or some kind of fantastical, idealized version of a dragon like one would see in a children’s book or on a tapestry.
A long moment passed in silence, and then Tyrion reached up and pulled at the peg in the shackle. It and the restraints fell to the ground with a loud clang. Without waiting, he turned around to see the other dragon staring him right in the face.
It bared its teeth in a snarl.
And then Jon woke up with a gasp.
He found himself laid out on a hellishly uncomfortable, but surprisingly warm, bed. For a fleeting moment, he thought he had gotten drunk with Pyp and Grenn again, but remembered that they had been dead for some time now.
And if he recalled correctly, he was dead too.
He sat up slowly. The bed underneath him groaned and rustled oddly as he did so, and it took him several slow, sluggish heartbeats to realize he wasn’t alone. He looked up sluggishly, blinking slowly as he found a sea of stunned faces gawking at him.
Then his senses expanded further, and he realized that he was in the central courtyard of Castle Black. He blinked upward at the gray skies, and the wall of ice that bisected it. In his bewilderment, he mused for a moment at the coiled of black smoke that ribboned above him, then realized that he was sitting atop the sooty, smoking remains of a funeral pyre.
His armor was scorched and blackened, and-in some of the thinner places, glowing faintly red-but his skin was unharmed. Flames still licked at his thighs, and out of instinct, he scrambled to his feet to try and escape being burned, but his legs felt oddly feeble, and he only succeeded in crashing to the ground, which was a blackened mix of soot and cold mud.
Reeling in shock, Jon remained there on the ground. He laid in a position not terribly unlike the one he had died in, staring up at the wintry sky numbly. He tried desperately not to think too much about anything at all for a while. But his breaths begin to come in strangled gasps all the same.
Rapid footsteps approached, and the gray face of Davos Seaworth stared down with astonishment. Jon’s chest shuddered, and the grizzled knight snapped out of it and knelt down. “Easy,” he said in a low, soothing voice not unlike the kind one would use to calm a spooked horse. “Easy.”
He laid a hand on Jon’s shoulder. The leather was badly charred but mostly intact. Unfortunately, underneath the leather was a thin chainmail tunic. Davos cursed and cringed backward as his hand was burned by the incredibly hot steel.
Jon slowly sat up, staring hard at nothing at all. His panic was ebbing away to a numb, mute kind of horror. The snowflakes that landed on his hissed softly as they made contact with his skin and armor, which had begun to steam in the brutal, northern cold.
“Get away from him, Onion Knight.” The biting rasp of Alliser Thorne split the frigid air. The tall, balding man strode forward, unsheathing his sword. “This isn’t right.”
“It is the will of the Lord of Light!” A woman’s voice cried. The men in the courtyard parted to reveal the red priestess Melisandre, who hurried forward, her beautiful face slack with astonishment even as she admonished Thorne. “Move aside.”
Showing past, Melisandre knelt before Jon, who turned to slowly look at her. She reached out and laid a hand on him, but gave no sign that it caused her pain.
“What do you remember?” She demanded.
Jon’s mouth tasted like ash as he looked up into Thorne’s cold, stony face. “They stabbed me.” It was a hoarse, half whisper. Thick with fear and despair and a thousand other emotions. “Ollie…he put a knife in my heart. I…I shouldn’t be here.”
They were much too exposed and had far too many eyes watching. Only when Jon was escorted back to his quarters and the doors were guarded by Tormund Giantsbane and Edd (Jon was curious to know how Tormund and the other wildlings came to be at Castle Black) was he able to try and steady his breathing.
He was sat down on a stool and offered a drink from Davo’s wineskin, which he accepted gratefully. It was as cold as winter and had an awful aftertaste, but with how dry his throat was, he bolted down half of it anyway.
Melisandre knelt before his one more, this time level with his knees, and held his forearms as she met his gaze. “Afterwards,” she said. “After they stabbed you. After you died. Where did you go? What did you see?” Her maroon eyes burned with a fevered intensity as she awaited his answer.
“I…” Jon really didn’t think that Melisandre would be all that interested in hearing about some weird dream involving dwarves and dragons. “Nothing.” he lied. “There was nothing at all.”
“The Lord let you come back for a reason.” Melisandre insisted. “Stannis was not the Prince Who Was Promised, but someone has to be. That fact that you were spared from the flames has to be a sign. It has to.” It was half a prayer, half a statement of fact.
Jon hung his head low so they couldn’t see the tears welling in his eyes.
“Can you give us a moment?” Davos asked.
Melisandre hesitated, but then smoothly stood and left the room. Jon bowed over as Davos shut the door behind her and turned around to study him for a moment.
Then he pulled a stool out and sat in front of Jon.
“You were dead.” He said simply. “And now you’re not. And it's completely fucking mad, it seems to me. I can only imagine how it seems to you."
“I did what I thought was right.” Jon said. “And I got murdered for it. Now I’m back.” He looked up at Davos, no longer caring as the tears sizzled down his face. “Why?”
“I don’t know. What does it matter? You go on. You fight for as long as you can, you clean up as much of the shit as you can.”
“I don’t know how to do that.” Jon confessed. “I thought I did.” Regret washed over him as he recalled the horrifying scene of the dead rising at Hardhome. How many more would die before the Night’s Watch got over their stigmas and fulfilled their duty to defend the realm? All Jon had wanted was to allow the wildlings south of the Wall so they wouldn’t be added to the White Walker’s ranks. He prayed to whatever gods were actually out there-truly, he no longer knew what to believe in-that it wasn’t already too late.
“I failed.” Jon said bitterly.
“Good.” Davos said sternly. “Now go fail again.”