"Even when Rhaegar did what he did and bid us help," Uncle Arthur continued. "Even when Lyanna followed him like the naïve little girl she was, I never believed in prophecy. I simply obeyed. Then I watched Jon grow, watched him become... More. He is the product of the Pact of Ice and Fire, even if it was mishandled. The Song of Ice and Fire, Rhaegar would have said. He is the Prince that was Promised. I do not know what that means. I do not know what it is he is meant to defeat. But if anyone could do it, it is him. I can still beat him in the training yard, true. But I had less skill and less talent at his age, and no more drive than your nephew does. He is a king and a commander, not only raised or trained, but born. I suppose you have to give Rhaegar his due the one time it was truly earned outside of composing ballads."
Wake up.
"So that is the great secret?" Uncle Benjen asked, and he sounded both toneless and as though he was close to tears. "Ned never sired a bastard, nor did Brandon, but Lyanna carried one.
Ned protected him, and lied even to me. And there is yet another plot afoot that will devastate the North and bring instability to the whole of Westeros."
"Ned never sired a bastard," Arthur said. "Nor did Lyanna carry one. They wed on the Isle of Faces. I was one of two witnesses. Ned protected his nephew, after he had seen the boy's brother and sister slaughtered like they were less than cattle. He protected his secret to protect those around him, like any soldier betraying his general would. And the only plot afoot is to right the wrong that was done to your own nephew." His voice was so even, so matter of fact, and Jon's head was pounding. Everything inside him rebelled. His stomach was turning and his throat was so tight he thought he might never breathe right again. He could not comprehend what was being said. Could not even begin to. It was too much, so far beyond anything he had the ability to deal with.
As if from far away, he heard Uncle Benjen draw in a breath to speak once more, and suddenly he knew with such certainty that it brought him actual, physical pain, that he could not bear to hear what he meant to say. He turned away from the cracked door and walked towards his chambers.
Wake us up, his brain screamed.
Without stopping to think or consider, he made his way back to his chambers. Hands scrambling, he tried to assemble a bag for the stones that had been heating fruitlessly for almost two years. They burnt through his sheets and cloaks and mantle before he gave up. As careful as he could be with his limbs shaking, he stacked the stones in his arms instead, utterly unable to figure out what he was doing or why, even as he did it. It was only when he made his way from the dungeons to the catacombs below that he realised he was not alone.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Loras there.
"Not a word," he heard himself say. "Please, not a word. Right now, I do not wish to know if you knew or not. I do not want to know if your sister did. Let me do what I need to do. Not a word."
To Loras' credit, he simply nodded, mouth slammed shut, and followed Jon into the steaming innards of the island, shadowing him step by step. Jon resented his presence nearly as much as he felt grateful for it.
It might have been days upon days or less than a few hours before the heat rose to a level that was nearly unbearable. Steam and noxious fumes rose from holes in the floor, and Jon was suddenly all too aware of the fact that it should have killed him, or at least made him too sick to continue. Instead, he breathed in the brimstone as he had on sleepless nights for years, and felt comforted and reinvigorated rather than set upon. He did not stop to think on it, let alone consider what it meant. Instead, he kept going, deeper and deeper, half aware of the fact that he had left Loras behind, coughing and hacking, a while back.
Wake up, the voice that had been living in his mind since he first set foot on Dragonstone, and which had only grown stronger after he recovered the stones, cried. Wake up, wake up,
wakeupwakeupwake.
The tunnel he was in widened abruptly, and suddenly he found himself in an enormous chamber, lit red, like he was standing in the midst of a live fire. The shadows flickered and spluttered around him. The heat called beads of sweat to his face, soaked through his tunic and doublet, made him feel soggy and disgusting, somewhere far away in the distant corner of his mind that still cared about such things. Still, he stepped closer and closer until he came upon a cliff. He walked to the edge of it and looked down, and all he saw was bubbling red, distorted by the heat steams. Molten rock meandered past his line of vision, blowing bubbles in his direction every few minutes. Some foreign corner of his mind suggested that he ought to feel afraid, but Jon was not sure he knew how to feel afraid anymore. Without stopping to think, he hauled the rocks he carried into the maw of the Dragonmont one by one. The chest of his doublet was seared through, he realised. His tunic too. His clothes alone made him look as though he had stepped right out of someone's funeral pyre. A hysterical voice in the corner of his mind insisted that it was his own.
Once he had let go of the final stone, he collapsed to his knees. He was distantly aware of his own sobs, his own cries of fear and despair, of the fireball spat up from the mountain itself.
He was no longer certain what it was that made him act so madly in the first place, let alone why it all hurt like a knife to his heart. A sob racked his body, and then another and another until he thought he might just die from it.
He did not realise the heat of the volcanic chamber and the fire that had exploded upwards had set him aflame until he felt strong arms encircle his chest and pull him out of the burning mountain. It was only when he rested against cool bedrock that he realised that most of his clothes had burnt away, leaving him half-naked and so horribly exposed. Loras was behind him, he realised then. His goodbrother's chest was pressed to Jon's back, heaving for a half-proper breath. His clothes were more soot and rags than anything bearing his grandmother's signature stitches. Even his skin was so distorted with soot that Jon barely recognised him.
A sudden shriek wrenched his thoughts asunder. The sound chilled and warmed him all at once. He turned around, his whole body shaking, and then he saw them. He could only gape and watch as a tiny, unnatural form emerged from within the fiery end he had nearly doomed himself to. And then another and another and another. They staggered like newborn foals.
Their entire tiny bodies glittered with scales the colours of the dragonglass caches all around them. Their tiny wings fluttered about them, and Jon was almost certain he was dreaming, because whatever it was his uncles had said, there was simply no way any of this was real.