The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

10.03

Gabrielle smiles softly before rising from her throne and moving silently towards Jon as the wolves and dragons raise their heads to watch them, ever aware of keeping them safe...but more so now with Gabrielle. She shifts to sit herself across Jon's lap as they once did when he was King in the North, but their previous passionate romance has been replaced with a steady and real marriage that has both its ups and downs. Rubbing a hand over his chest—where he was once stabbed by his brothers—she watches the man wince under her embrace, and she moves her hand up to his cheek instead, asking, "It's hurting again?"

"Aye. Sometimes I sit here and hear the words of the people petitioning us, but I do not truly listen. Sometimes I feel the death of my soul as it were that night, ripped from my chest and then shoved back in by the Red Witch. It's hard to listen when I feel that way," Jon softly reveals, her eyes rising to his with a look of sadness and understanding that derives not from the same experience. Sure, her father tried to kill her, but she is still invincible to the pains of man.

Jon wraps her closer in his arms and into his chest, as he imparts, "You're the only thing that makes it go away—holding you like this."

"Slightly ironic seeing as I am half death," Gabrielle grins, and Jon snorts in response, rolling his eyes and yet pulling her closer. So tightly pressed into him, she can feel every plane of his body, her eyes meeting his with a heat as his breath catches at that passionate look...only to be disrupted by the growl of Grey Wind nearby.

Jon's eyes waver and then cast outwards towards the wolves that have risen around the Walker children, the dragons seemingly on alert as well. And Grey Wind has stepped closer than the rest, his eyes shining with displeasure at their closeness, but it is not quite as threatening as it could be. Gabrielle rolls her eyes and mutters bluntly, "Ignore them. They've been especially protective ever since they smelled it on me. The dragons too."

"Smelled what?" Jon asks, eyes finding hers and forgetting about the direwolf who only means to protect this woman.

"The baby," Gabrielle replies easily, her hand coming down to rest upon her flat stomach as Jon blanches white in sudden understanding. "I missed my moon's blood, and Sam verified it. I am a little over a moon."

For a moment, Jon just stares at her, taking it all in and listening to her words as he stares at the woman he never truly expected to have children with. He had accepted that—and yet, he had pleaded with the gods for children with blonde hair and blue eyes running through this Keep and through the streets of Winterfell with their cousins, the children of Winter but born with a Stark heart. And Jon doesn't know what to say as he stares into those hopeful blue eyes that sing of the present and future happiness, in reassurance that everything will be alright. He doesn't think himself capable of words to express how happy he is—truly incapable beyond a bright and open smile that wraps itself across his face, the largest Gabrielle has ever seen him express, and needing nothing other than that. Tears stream down his face blindly as she echoes his expression, heart beating firmly in her chest and above the small child as he lays a fierce yet loving kiss to her lips...promising that this is just the first child in the years to come.

|||||||||||||||

Gabrielle sighs wearily as she rushes in the muddled disarray—made messy only by the King's Guard that surround herself and Jon from the people and soldiers nearby, something she finds far from necessary but Jon deemed completely necessary given her state at the moment. Sending him a burning look, she turns her head to look anywhere other than the focus of her anger—likely due to pregnancy hormones—and decides that while this is a muddled chaos, it is also very organized. Streams of Northern soldiers march nearby in less armor than what may be necessary, streaming out of the King's Landing gates with herself and Jon and into the dusty sand where the battle once took place. While tall, she has a hard time seeing much else than feet and air, and she might have been lost to their reasoning had Varys not told her moments ago.