The North smelled the same as it always had — pine sap, damp earth, old cold. It was a smell that clung to memory, the kind that made the past rise up uninvited, sharp and unkind. Thirteen years did nothing to soften it.

You stood at the edge of the courtyard, gloved hands folded tight in front of you, posture rigid in a way that betrayed how hard you were bracing yourself. The air bit through your cloak, but you barely felt it. Every nerve in your body was tuned toward the sound of hooves on frozen ground.

You hadn’t seen him since you were a girl pretending to be a woman.

And now you were a woman who had learned how to survive.

When Jorah finally dismounted, the world seemed to narrow around him. He looked older — not just in years, but in weight. His shoulders were broader, his beard threaded with gray, his face cut deeper by lines earned through exile, regret, and too many battles fought for causes that were never his own.

For one unbearable moment, he didn’t see you.

Then he did.

It was like watching a man walk into a wall he’d convinced himself no longer existed.

His steps slowed. His expression didn’t change much — Jorah had always been good at that — but something flickered behind his eyes. Not surprise. Not exactly. More like recognition paired with something dangerously close to grief.

You didn’t move.

Neither did he.

The space between you felt vast, stretched tight with everything unsaid. Thirteen years collapsed into a single breath — the days you waited, the nights you prayed, the child you carried alone, the truth delivered too late to spare your heart.

Once, you had been his wife.

Once, he had been your whole world.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said at last.

His voice was rougher than you remembered, worn thin at the edges. It wasn’t unkind — but it wasn’t warm either. It was the voice of a man who had learned how to survive by closing doors and never looking back.

“I could say the same,” you replied quietly.

Your eyes met his. Held. Neither of you smiled.

Gods, he had loved your smile once.

Silence stretched again — thick, heavy, deliberate. You noticed the way his gaze dropped briefly, involuntarily, to your hands. He remembered the way they used to tremble when you were nervous. He remembered too much. That was the problem.

“You look well,” he said.

It was a lie — or perhaps simply incomplete. You looked older, yes, but also harder. Less forgiving. The softness he had once taken for granted was gone, replaced by something steadier. Something earned.

“So do you,” you said. Another half-truth.

You wanted to scream. To ask him how he could stand there as if he hadn’t destroyed you. As if he hadn’t left you pregnant and hopeful and foolish enough to believe he would come back.

But you didn’t.

Because this wasn’t the past anymore.

This was two people standing in the wreckage of something that had already burned.

“I heard you were in the North,” you continued. “I didn’t expect… this.”

“Nor did I,” he replied. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

Still waiting, he meant.

“I stayed,” you said. “Someone had to.”

That earned you a flicker of something — guilt, sharp and fast, before it disappeared behind that familiar wall. Jorah had always been a man who armored himself in restraint.

“You should have left,” he said. “After everything.”