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freshly-picked-pineapples · 7 years

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Summary: Lyanna deals with the aftermath of Rhaegar’s death. Modern AU.

They won’t even look at her, her brothers, not even Benjen.

If Brandon were here instead of Ned, she thinks, blinking back the tears. If Brandon were here, he would at least smile at her. Call her little sister. “You beat me to it, Lyanna,” he would say, ruffling up her hair.

She knows she has brought shame upon their family, but she fails to understand why everyone is acting as though she is some sort of pariah.

“When can I see my baby?” her voice is small.

“Soon, sweetheart,“ one of the nurses tell her, “As soon as we finish examining you.”

The nurse has her change into a white hospital gown. The clothes she is wearing are put into numbered plastic bags and taken away. They take samples of her hair, swabs from her mouth and body. She is poked and prodded until she feels like she might start crying. She hears words like “underage”, “rape” and “child molestation.” Words she knows but can’t quite put into context.

“We were married,” she tells the doctor tearfully, “he would never hurt me. He would never rape me. He was my husband.”

But they only look at her sympathetically and nod unconvincingly. They tell her it will be alright. The nurse strokes her hair and hands her wads of tissues to wipe away the tears that keep trailing down her face.

After, they bring her a set of clothes that still have tags on them and she changes into them.

“Can I see my baby?” she asks again, and this time, they take her to see him. She weeps at the sight of him.

At first, she thinks father is too furious with her to see her. She thinks Brandon is still away on business. She thinks it is anger that makes Benjen look away from her, that the grim line of Ned’s mouth is just disappointment. She had lied to them, after all. She must have caused a right ruckus, ending up on the tabloids with Rhaegar Targaryen’s arms around her shoulders, disappearing when she had in the middle of the night.

When morning comes and it is Ned who comes to drive her and the baby home from the hospital, she finally dares to ask. “Is.. is father very angry with me?”

"Oh, Lyanna,” Ned sighs. Instead of answering her question, he pulls the car off to a side, braking it next to the curb. “There is no good way to say this, Lyanna,” he says, taking a deep breath and finally looking at her for the first time since they’d found her. They are sad, Lyanna notices. Sad and tired, not accusing. “Father is dead,” Ned tells her, “Brandon is dead too.”

Her tears are dry by the time Ned pulls into the drive-way. She has barely stepped out of the car when Catelyn Tully appears. Catelyn, Lyanna remembers, had been Brandon’s fiancee.

“You poor darling, you must be exhausted,” she says, hands already reaching for the baby “Here, let me hold him while you get cleaned up. Does he have a name?”

“No,” Lyanna says nothing else. She lets Catelyn take the baby.

“We must give him a name,” Catelyn says as they make their way to the foyer. “Do you have anything in mind?” Lyanna shrugs. Right now, the last thing she wants to do is think of names.

“Cat.” Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Ned shake his head slightly. They walk her all the way up to her room, as though a year away was enough to make her forget the house she’d lived in for fourteen years.

Her room looks different, as if someone had very carefully dissected every part of it and then put it back together again. The furniture is as she remembers, but there are posters missing, books misplaced, items rearranged. The crown of dried roses she’d so carefully hung on her cupboard is conspicuously missing.

Lyanna doesn’t know how long she stands in the shower. Is it until her teeth starts to chatter from the cold? Until she feels the icy burn on her skin? Until her lips turn blue and she stops feeling her limbs?

It is old Nan who finds her, collapsed and shivering on the bathroom floor with lips as blue as a winter rose. “Oh, Princess, what have you done to yourself?” she hears old Nan say in her leathery, old voice.

When Lyanna wakes up, she is swaddled in blankets that weigh heavy on her. She can hear the spittle of fire in her fireplace even though it is almost summer.

“Lyanna!” Ned’s face is pale from where he peers over her. “Are you alright?” his voice is kind.

“Aren’t you angry with me, Ned?” she asks, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes,

“No,” Ned says. She feels the bed sink with his weight as he sits down. He puts his hands on her shoulders. “No, Lyanna. I’m not angry with you. You’re safe. Your child is safe. That is all that matters.”

“But father-” she blinks, wiping her eyes, “-father and Brandon. They are dead because of me.”

“No,” Ned’s voice is firm. “They are dead because Aerys Targaryen shot them, and for no other reason.”

“But if I hadn’t-”

“Lyanna,” Ned takes her hands in his, “Aerys was already looking for a reason to get rid of Father. He didn’t like that Father stood against him.”

“But,” Lyanna sobs, “If I hadn’t gone with Rhaegar, if I had stayed and- then none of this would have happened. None of it.”

“Shhh,” says Ned, gathering her into his arms, “It will be okay, Lyanna. It will be okay. You have to be strong now. You have to be strong for your son.”

Ned names him Jon, after his foster father.

Jon.

It is a nice name as any, she supposes. She could hardly name his Aemon like Rhaegar had wanted to, could she? Not after everything that has come to pass, not after learning that her father and brother had died at the hand of his.

She is glad Ned hadn’t named Jon after her father or their brother. She didn’t deserve the honor of having her child carry their names, not when she had been the reason for their untimely demise, no matter what Ned said.

Ned’s own son is perhaps a few weeks older than Jon, and Catelyn Tully is gracious enough to let Jon share little Rob’s nursery and nanny.

If Catelyn is curious about where she had been for an year, and what had happened during that time, she doesn’t show. She smiles at Lyanna and says all the right things, asks all the right questions that doesn’t dig any deeper than a child’s spade on concrete. She steers clear of the tabloids, which had taken less than a day to pick up Lyanna’s return. Even the paparazzi loitering outside their gates with their flashing cameras and microphones do not seem to faze her one bit. But despite the air of polite hospitality, Lyanna can tell that Catelyn disapproves of her.

After all, Catelyn has been the perfect daughter, the good student, the gracious wife. Catelyn had done everything right by her family, and her fiance, and still had had to deal with the repercussions of her sister-in-laws flight of fancy. It was Lyanna who had inadvertently caused her fiance’s death, Lyanna’s fault that her name had ended up in gossip columns alongside the Starks and the Targaryens, Her fault that she had ended up marrying the brother of the man she loved to appease her father.

Lyanna finds that she can hardly begrudge Catelyn Tully her reproachful looks.

For the first month, Lyanna attends her sessions with Dr.Smallwood without complaint. They are a mandatory part of her ‘rehabilitation, especially if she wants to keep Jon.

Dr. Smallwood is perfectly nice, perfectly polite, and sometimes, Lyanna feels like she might help, but every time she talks about Rhaegar, Dr. Smallwood has to say something to remind her that he is not a good man.

“I know it is hard Lyanna,” she says today, hands crossed over the clipboard on her lap, “but you must stop putting him in a pedestal. You can mourn him, but you must realize that what he did you was not right.”

“We loved each other,” Lyanna says angrily. She is already tired of this line of conversation. Tired of having to sit through this two times every week. “He never hurt me.” The sessions make her anxiety worse, leaves her more lost and miserable than she is before. If Dr. Smallwood is supposed to offer any semblance of comfort, she is doing a very bad job of it.

“Lyanna, sweetheart, did you go out, at all, during the months you stayed there?”

“It wasn’t safe to go out,” said Lyanna. She kept her chin up, eyes focused on the doctor.

“Did you want to go out at all?”

“No.”

“Not even once?”

“No.”

“Sweetheart, in the eleven months you were there, didn’t you want to see your family even once? Or go shopping? Or see a movie?”

Lyanna doesn’t answer.

She hates it.

She hates that they are planting seeds of doubt in her brain, hates that she sometimes think Dr. Smallwood might be right about some things, hates every thing and everyone that are set on proving Rhaegar to be some sort of monster.

He’d always been so kind to her, unlike Robert, who’d laughed at her the first time they’d met and then spent the rest of the night flirting with Ashara Dayne. Robert was the sort of person they should be on the look out for; every bit as arrogant as he was good-looking, and every inch an arsehole, not Rhaegar.

Rhaegar had actually talked to her, taken the time to know her. They were the same, him and her. Stuck in arrangements they did not want because of their families’ ambitions, bound to a life of duty without love.

Rhaegar loved her. She knows he did.

She refuses to think of the times in that house when she’d been lonely, when she’d begged him to let her return to her father, after she’d found out she was pregnant. My father wouldn’t turn us out, she’d told him, Not now. He would accept you.

No, He’d shaken his head, pacing around the room. No.

Please, let me just talk to him, Rhaegar. Or my brother. Brandon would understand. We can’t stay here forever.

You’re fourteen, Lyanna. That is the problem. You’re fourteen, And he’d looked at her, stricken, Shit. What have I done?

Jon is an easy baby, unlike his cousin Robb, who fusses and cries and would only be held by certain people at certain times. The older they get, the more inseparable they become, first crawling, then waddling down the hallway on unsteady little legs until finally, they have grown big enough and strong enough to run.

Ned names his second son after their father. Jon adores baby Brandon. Sometimes, Lyanna finds him beside Bran’s crib, standing on his tiptoes as silent as a ghost. “Shh,” he’d tell her then, and together, they’ll stay with Bran until Lyanna picks him up and carries him away with the promise of something more entrancing.

When Jon turns one, Ned makes her enroll in a Special Education class. She is less than thrilled, but just like her therapy sessions, this is a requirement, and so she goes. She is pleasantly surprised when no one asks her about her past.

Lyanna gets her High School Diploma a few weeks after Jon turns three. By now, the fanfare around her escapade has died down, and Lyanna finds that she can live a normal life. Well, as normal a life a teen mother can live.

When they are out as a family, everyone assumes Jon is Catelyn’s, much to Lyanna’s embarrassment. When they are out just the two of them, she still gets identified as a sister, or rebuked when people realize she is a mother.

“A mother! At your age!” People were fond of saying, “Well, I never! You should be in school, child. Not popping out babies.”

Sometimes, people are not so polite. Lyanna finds that a young mother, and a single one at that, needs a thick skin, and so she grows one.

Jon is a beautiful boy, and she is proud to be his mother.

With each passing day, Jon looks more and more like her. There is nothing about his face to suggest that he is Targaryen, but for the melancholy air with which he carries himself. The way he broods over anything and everything is so reminiscent of Rhaegar that Lyanna is sometimes startled.

“You have to smile at people when you greet them, Jon,” she reprimands him lightly, on the drive back from kindergarten.

“But I don’t like Joffrey,” Jon says, looking more sullen than ever. “He is a brat. I won’t smile at him.”

“That isn’t polite, Jon.”

“I don’t want to be polite.”

Lyanna sighs.

Two days later, she gets called into the school office, this time because Jon has punched Joffrey in the face.

“Because he called you a bad name, mummy,” Jon tells her, looking every bit as proud and regal as his father, “I won’t apologize to him. He deserved it.”

Sometimes, Lyanna wonders how it would have been if Rhaegar had lived. Would they have lived in secrecy for the rest of their lives, hidden away in a little cottage by the lake, surviving on supplies brought by Rhaegar and his friends? Would he have allowed her to go back to her family? What about Jon? How would his life have been?

She didn’t like all the questions her mind came up with. She disliked the answers they led to. At her most idyllic, she liked to imagine that they would live in a large, white picketed house in the suburbs, with a little garden for Jon to play in and a garage to park their five cars. And cats. A lot of cats.

She knows though, deep in her heart, that it would never have ended like that. Eventually, life would have caught up with them. Would Rhaegar still be in jail, if he hadn’t died? Would they allow her to see him? Would Jon be allowed to see him? Would Rhaegar’s other children?

It is through a tabloid article that she learns about his children. At first, she thinks it is a mistake. ‘Survived by a wife and two children’, she reads, confused.

It should be one. One child, Lyanna thinks. Survived by a wife and son.

‘Aged seven and four.’

She stares at the line for several minutes before the meaning hits her. Before her heart drops to her stomach and she feels like the air has drained of oxygen.

That cannot be right.

She would have known. He would have told her. Someone would have told her. There had to be a mistake. It had been years, and a wife cannot materialize out of thin air, she reasons. It must be some ploy to get her to come out. They’d been hounding her for an interview for years.

But as she looks up the articles dating further and further back, Lyanna finds several mentions of the nonexistent other wife and children, in addition to her own name.

‘Elia Martell, wife of pop sensation Rhaegar Targaryen, was unavailable for comment. Authorities are still on the look out for the missing teenager, Lyanna Stark(pictured top, right) who was only Fourteen at the time of her disappearance, and was last seen at coming out of a private Mansion-’

‘“How could he do this to a child when he has a daughter of his own?” said Tywin Lannister in his interview with the BBC. The usually stoic man had tears in his eyes as he shared his long history with the Targaryen family.’

‘Rhaenys Targaryen,1, pictured with mother Elia Martel at the Fall Collection last June.’

Lyanna slams her laptop shut.

How could she not have known? How is it possible that she hadn’t known? But she already knows the answer. Back before she’d met him, Lyanna simply hadn’t been interested in celebrity gossip. She hadn’t even used a computer back then. And afterwards, she had carefully kept away from any and all news articles and TV, and her family and their influence had kept everything else at bay.

Ned would have known. Benjen must have known. Why hadn’t they told her?

“Mommy?” She looks up to find Jon’s eyes on her.

“I’m fine, Jon,” she says, wiping her eyes and plastering a smile on her lips.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Lya,” Benjen looks abashed.

“I expect this from Ned,” she says, crossing her arms across the table, “But not from you Benjen.”

“You were doing so well, Lyanna,” he says gently. They are at the apartment Ned has given her, Benjen having arrived after the frantic voicemail she’d sent him after putting Jon to bed. “At first, Ned didn’t think it was a good idea to tell you. You were so young Lyanna, and you’d been through so much. You were still so out of it, still in denial over what happened,” he shakes his head, “and afterwards, you started doing well. You finished school, you got a job, and it just seemed better to let it be.”

"Two kids,” Lyanna closes her eyes, “Two. I thought Jon was his first.”

“Oh, Lya,” Benjen squeezes her hand.

“They were right, weren’t they?” Lyanna says bitterly, “They were all right, every one of them. He was a liar and a cheat. He never even loved me.”

“You don’t know that,” says Benjen. Empty words a brother would say to comfort his sister.

“I want to meet them,” she says.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Lyanna wipes her eyes. Her decision is made. “Jon cannot grow up without knowing his siblings. And I need to meet her, Ben, I need to.”

It takes a little over two months before Benjen finds Rhaegar’s other wife and children, and a few more weeks before Lyanna finally musters up the courage to pick up the phone and dial them.

“Hello?” Lyanna almost hangs up when a woman’s voice answers.

“Hello,” she forces herself to say, “I am calling for Elia Martel.”

There is a pause, and then, “who is this?”

“Lyanna. Lyanna Stark.”

This time, the pause is so long that Lyanna is about to hang up when the woman answers. “I don’t know who gave you this number or which magazine you work for. Do not call this number again, or you will be answering-”

“Wait, please,” Lyanna says hurriedly, “I am Lyanna Stark. Please, I need to talk to you. Please.”

Perhaps it is the desperation in her voice, but the woman, thankfully, does not hang up.

“You have thirty seconds,” she tells Lyanna. “If I think you’re lying, I’ll hang up after that.”

The Elia Martel she meets the following Saturday is much nicer than Lyanna expects.

“I didn’t know about you,” is the first thing that comes out of Lyanna’s mouth the moment she is seated across from Elia. “If I’d known... I wouldn’t.. I wouldn’t..”

“It’s okay,” Elia says. She reaches across the table and takes Lyanna’s hand in hers. “It’s okay. Breathe.”

Lyanna takes in a shaky breathe. She is mortified to find that there are tears in her eyes already.

“I know what Rhaegar is like,” Elia continues, “He can be so charming when he wants to be. So convincing. And you were just a child. Don’t blame yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyanna says, looking at her lap.

“If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else, sweetheart.”

“I just..” Lyanna trails off, not sure how to articulate what she wants to say, “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me. About you.. the children. He just-”

“He was a troubled man, Lyanna,” says Elia firmly, “I cannot blame you for what he did. It was no fault of yours, or mine.”

“I would..I would like it if your children became a part of Jon’s life,” it takes all her courage to say the words, but she does, and Lyanna is proud of herself.

“I would like that too.”

At four years old, Jon doesn’t understand how he suddenly has a brother and a sister, but at four years old, he accepts it without question. Rhaenys is bronze skinned and brown haired like her mother, light on her feet and quick to befriend. Her eyes though, is that of her father’s. She is making Jon giggle and beckoning Aegon to join them before Lyanna even finishes making tea for herself and Elia.

Aegon, on the other hand, is Rhaegar reborn a child, and from the sullen look on his face as he glares at his sister and Jon, Lyanna knows looks are not the only thing the boy has inherited from Rhaegar.

After that first meeting, Jon and Aegon are quick to become friends, with the occasional squabble, of course, which Rhaenys is more than happy to settle.

There are questions that Jon will ask, and one day, when he is old enough, Lyanna would have to sit him down and tell him the story of a girl who fell in love before her time and the mad who might have taken advantage of it. Still, after five years, she still cannot bring herself to think of Rhaegar like that. She would have to deal with it, eventually, because no matter how she put it, what Rhaegar had done hadn’t been right. But right here and right now, she is happy to have her son grow up surrounded by friends and family who loves him.

#gotfic #Lyanna Stark #Rhaegar Targaryen #AU #fic

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tinybibmpreg · 6 years

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Day 65 // ft. Maura, Oliver & Alban, and Lord Teigen & Ashara

#51 / Tickets

“Calm down! You’re scaring me!” Maura cried, near tears. Oliver dropped the pipe he was holding and turned to her. He panted, hands trembling. Looking down at the ground, he could see that he was standing in a shallow puddle of blood. His sandals were thick enough that it wasn’t touching his feet, which he was grateful for. His bearer had told him that blood from other people was dirty, and could get him sick, that any blood was a hassle to clean up.

Since he and his brother were always so ill and often coughed up blood, Oliver was certain that his bearer knew what he was talking about.

Their attacker lay dead at his feet, and Oliver didn’t bother to wonder why Maura hadn’t been afraid of him killing them. No doubt her master’s clan had killed many people in front of her as she grew. But her master’s clan had a code of honor, and hitting the corpse until it was nothing but a mess of gore was frowned upon. They held respect for the dead and their bodies.

Oliver’s people did as well, but he was a frightened child protecting his infant brother and their companion, so he did not follow the honorable path.

Still, he turned to the human girl and apologized sincerely. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I got carried away. I shouldn’t have.”

“It… It’s alright. He did surprise us.”

His brother whimpered, and Oliver quickly went to Maura’s side to peer at the baby. “How’s Alban?”

“He’s fine. I guess all that yelling woke him up. He’s cranky when he’s woken up, huh?”

Oliver nodded. “Yes. Our bearer says it runs in the family, though it skipped me.”

“Oh. I always wake easy. I find it difficult to fall asleep. I guess we should be grateful that Alban falls asleep so easy…”

He hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of sleep since he’d found his brother being stolen from his crib. His bearer had told him it was his reptilian instinct refusing to allow him to let down his guard when he was in danger. Oliver had whined and said his human half didn’t care about instinct, it needed sleep. At the time, his bearer had chuckled softly, and pulled him onto his lap to help him fall asleep. Oliver doubted his bearer would find it funny now that his half human physiology was starting to affect him even more negatively.

After killing a pursuer, he needed to rest, but couldn't. They had to get far away, find help.

Maura put a hand on his shoulder. “Oliver? Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t believe him, but didn’t say anything about it. “We have to keep moving. If we don’t get to the river by midnight, we’ll miss the ferry ride, and have to survive a whole nother day in the city.”

“I need to get rid of my sandals. They’re ruined.”

“There’s a dump up the street that we’re going to walk by. You can toss them in there.”

The ferry was neutral ground, and Oliver could have cried with relief as they paid for three tickets and got on board. The price for the tickets varied from person to person. Since Alban was a baby, they allowed Maura to pay his fare. Oliver handed over his sash to the masked person selling tickets, and Maura gave a sun shaped earring, along with both of her servant armbands.

Before they were handed their tickets, the person hooked the earring to the side of their mask, put the armbands on like bracelets, and wrapped the sash a few times around their head. They adjusted the earring, and gave Oliver all three tickets. He gave Maura hers and Alban’s tickets, and the three of them stepped onto the large boat.

Their tickets showed that the three of them were to be seated near the front of the boat, on the top level. People stared at them as they walked up the stairs, and Oliver knew that they were staring at him and his brother more than they were staring at Maura. She looked like any other servant girl, but he and his brother were not only Reptilian, but hybrids. Oliver was a partial albino chimera, and Alban was completely albino.

They reached the top of the boat, where there were cots and baskets of food laid out so they could look up through the glass dome atop of the ferry at the stars. After finding their designated area, Oliver was glad to see that there was a bassinet instead of a third cot for Alban. Two stones with heat charms on them were in the center of the little circle, along with their food basket and a container of water.

Settling down, he and Maura ate and drank. She gave Alban some water and soft food, and then let Oliver rock him to sleep. He laid his brother down in the bassinet, and put one of the stones next to him. Maura laid down on her cot, and Oliver took his place on his, pulling the other stone into his arms.

He fell asleep easier than he had in weeks, his stress gone for the night.

When Lord Teigen stepped up to the ticket booth for the ferry the next night, he was immediately taken aback by the sight of the seller. For as long as he’d known the crew of the ferry, they’d all worn the same uniform, a long black cloak and a white mask with large horns and a skull-like face.

They wore his clan’s servant armbands on their wrists, and a familiar silver earring on their mask.

“I need tickets for myself, my servant, and my entourage.” He handed them a bag of jewels. They took it and cooed.

His servant finally looked up at the seller. “That- that’s my daughter’s earring!”

“Quiet,” he hissed at her.

“Teigen, that’s Maura’s earring…” she whispered back, eyes wide. “Why is it wearing it?”

“Payment for a ticket. It’s the only thing of value she had.” Though it didn’t explain why the seller had her armbands as well. Perhaps she still had the hybrid baby with her. Without her earring, it would make tracking the two much harder.

Even quieter, she said, “That was her most treasured item… I can’t believe she would give it away…”

Teigen looked around, and then asked the seller, “How much would you want for the earring?”

“What are you willing to offer?” a cacophony of whispering voices asked.

Whatever it takes, he wanted to say. Instead, he replied, “Any reasonable price you ask for.”

They heard what he said within, and pointed down towards the ground. His servant looked at him in confusion, but he understood what the cost was. He rolled up his pant leg until he could unstrap his prosthetic leg. He pulled it off and placed it on the counter. A hundred different cackles rang in his ears as the seller took it and tucked it behind the counter. They removed the earring and armbands, and handed them to his servant. She quickly tucked them into her pocket.

He used his servant and his cane as support, and tickets in hand, made his way back to his entourage to pass out the tickets.

#oblio's fics #original #Maura (WRiE)#Oliver (WRiE)#Alban (WRiE)#Lord Teigen Cosmos #Ashara Spades #What's Right in Exchange

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