#assuming that still works this was back on the original dash rather than beta | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tinytendril · 6 years

Text

softens // a robbaery fanfic

a/n: finally did it, without a beta (yikes). some characters are alive when they shouldn’t be or alliances and characters are not aligned with the books’ story. so for the sake of being patrolled by GOT fans, just know I am desparate to make book facts bend to my ignorant imagination. but, hey, robb and margaery shouldn’t be alive, and yet here we are...with talisa and his mother dead (along with most of his family), others dead from the wars, queen danaerys as ruler of westeros, and himself along with other characters brought back to life.

summary // Robb returns to Winterfell in a time of peace after the war of seven kingdoms, after wights have laid waste to Westeros. With the Stark clan survived by only two, Robb must deal with his return to his noble duties with Sansa and Lady Margaery’s unexpected presence.

Robb Stark knows the belief in someone’s honor by their word is the gravest mistake to make. You need only to see the bloodshed and brokenness in his own family to see the price you pay for a sentiment as noble as trust in even the closest of your bannermen, and the ghosts that visit him in his dreams at the dead of the night dwell there to remind him.

No, instead, he believes in the grit he’s had to earn and the calluses he’s had to grow, and he believes to steel oneself to survive. So, when the war of the Seven Kingdoms is over, when he returns to his home after several years, he doesn’t understand how else to cope with the deafening quiet that seems to surround him and permeate the air until it seeps into his bones, more arresting than the cold winters of Winterfell.

Sansa is tormented too, and he is sure of this because they are thanking the gods that they have survived, but the relief is not stronger than the grief. And they cling on to each other at times, much like the moment they first reunited, shaking and numb. The pack of wolves has fallen to two.

Sansa tells him that there is three left.

He remembers returning home and embracing his sister in a colder home than he remembered, even as he sees the modest furnishings throughout the castle that his sister must have commissioned to imply signs of regaining their losses. He remembers peering over her shoulder when she had first made him realize the third person she regards as family.

Margaery Tyrell, he assumes of the young woman rising from the foot of Sansa’s makeshift throne, is regarding the siblings with a respectful distance. From letters of his correspondences in the South, and from what they have written about the feats and tribulations of Margaery’s brief reign in King’s Landing, he didn’t expect someone small and slight, and even reluctant.

‘Your grace,’ she addresses him as he finally approaches her, exchanging pleasantries. ‘I am here for your family if you require it, and if you both need me here.’

Margaery in her fine dress, with her soft features and the way she is not shying away from his deliberate hard gaze stokes a mixture and kindling of the most abhorrent to the warmest of feelings. For the latter, it startles him that anything so compelling still lay home inside him. She does not know him, and yet she smiles as if she’s expecting kindness back, and he glances over her shoulder to where she had seemed to take such close comfort at Sansa’s side of the throne. She’s warmed many throne seats for such a young woman.

‘You may take your leave when you send a raven to your father, informing him about your returning home.’ He says tersely, and he waits, maybe for her to falter or show indignation. He’s not sure what he wants to search for in her eyes, ones that still do not stray from his.

‘As your grace bids.’ She bows her head finally.

If there was something flickering across her eyes to give her away, something to show the spark or the fight that so many have told about her nature, she would have done so after she stalked past him. She only takes pause to bid Sansa a goodnight.

He realizes to release the tight clenching of his fists that came from his exchange with Margaery when Sansa comes to his side, long after Margaery leaves them in the hall. Sansa is quiet, possibly keeping her reservations about his reaction to the only friend she’s had for her lonely time here at bay for now. ‘Robb...you need to eat and rest, tomorrow will be for our conversations.’

He takes a few days to acquaint himself with the remaining and new servants in the castle. He seeks each hand at work within Winterfell’s walls to remind them of his watchful eye and for his peace of mind, something he would not have done before all the missteps he’s endured from the moment he inherited his father’s seat on the throne, until he spots her. Margaery is in the stables when dawn breaks, beating him to his exact task of scouting for information on all grounds areas. Except, she’s cheery and not exactly prying at his servants.

She doesn’t seem to be helping the men tend to the horses either. In fact, her pale blue gown, under her long thick coat, just skimming the mud under her feet is certainly not suited here. But, the men are laughing at something they’re conversing about even as he treads closer on the path toward them, and they continue to pay her their rapt attention. She glances at him briefly before she continues to hand the servants rye bread and cheese, seemingly allowing them a break from their early morning work.

‘Good morning, your grace.’ She greets him when he reaches them, and allows the stable hands to bid him a good morning as well.

‘Good morning, Lady Margaery,’ he greets her, but can’t help but shift uncomfortably as he’s acutely aware that she’s received the news of her remaining at Winterfell longer than he originally intended her to. She must be pondering what changed his mind, or how much of his sister’s words have swayed him.

Young Wolf. King in the North. King Who Lost the North. These words have influence as well. Words that have certainly given him nights of toiling in his sleep. Sansa reminds him that words and names mean nothing until you’re staring squarely in face of the name, looking to their eyes for what lays behind them. She also reminds him that they are in a time of peace now, and they are in the position to seek the comfort where it is provided, and accept it from those that prove themselves beyond the names and reputations they are given.

Margaery’s brown, doe-like eyes are golden as the sun washes over them. He’s not sure what he’s gathering from them at the moment, just that they are not helping him think of what to say. Though, Sansa must mean for him to consider her actions and see that her eyes do not shift too often or reveal any doubt of her sincerity, not observing her for the obvious reasons many of her former court in King’s Landing and her own people have regarded her as the Rose of Highgarden. It is an inevitable observation, one he’s made not for the first time since meeting her, and he does not intend to feign ignorance or blindness of himself. Yet, he shifts uncomfortably again, wondering if this helpless distraction shows.

‘I am…’ He chooses his words carefully. ‘I am, now more than ever, protective of our home.’

‘I would not expect anything less from your position.’

‘Does it worry you that many people in our kingdom may find your presence, considering your history with the Lannisters, troubling, if not suspicious?’

It was almost accusatory, and maybe a part of him meant it to be. It may be far from the what he’s heard in passing in the servants’ quarters, as they talk of her kindly and almost appear hopeful when they hear someone from court is visiting them, and he doesn’t miss the confusion upon his arrival instead. Though, if he were to admit it out loud, a stronger feeling overtakes the confusion when he remembers that he’s not been able to cope with the fact that she married the very boy, a sadist and a tyrant playing at the idea of king rather than committing to the meaning of its title from what he’s heard from Sansa, who had sentenced his father to his death. What does that speak of her family, herself, for aligning with them? He feels the questions brimming, burning at his tongue.

‘Women have a unique position in our world--’

‘You were forced?’ He knows that question begs her to explain her feelings toward this rather than receive a skeptical brow about their duties as trueborn sons and daughters of royalty.

‘As any son inherits the crown, any daughter is born into the expectation of being a dutiful wife, and believe in that purpose. Maybe I blindly believed in my duties for my house, my family, at that time. I’ve certainly dreamt of the idea of a crown atop of my head, as many girls do when we are young and ignorant.’

He wants to say that siding with the Lannisters, after their treachery, would not begin to describe an ignorant alignment.

She must see the way he’s determined to probe her, so she adds, ‘Though not so ignorant to see Joffrey for the monster he was or see my own family catching the Lannisters’ infectious ambition…’

And, after a long while of considering what her admission might mean and what intimacies she’s had to endure with Joffrey, he nods, ‘Sansa used to want that crown as well.’

‘I am saddened,’ she adds, and he watches as she takes hold of his arm. He can feel the squeeze she attempts through the layers of his thick long coat and furs. ‘For your father, your mother, and your siblings. I know--’

Then, he steps away when she gestures for them to walk together. If he’d blink, he would have missed something unreadable, dashing over her sympathetic gaze, but he’s determined to simply offer a curt nod to bid her a farewell rather than analyse it further. ‘I must---I will see you later for dinner, Lady Margaery.’

The war of Seven Kingdoms did not leave a single kingdom untouched. He knows that they are the lucky ones, and how lucky having half of their kingdom in ruin from invaders and nearly over run from the Wights, he’s not sure. A venture into any part of their lands would give any foreigner pause to think of staying in Winterfell, and the commonfolk and their prolific, superstitious rock carvings of the Night King and his kin are an indication that a rebuilding to its former glory would take generations. Villages would have to carry on, with the rations and the lowered taxations to help them along. His worry extended to the families with small children, knowing there was little hope for all of them to survive.

Gods, he wondered, how could anyone cope with starting a new family in the gloom of this depression spread far and wide? What would his descendants have to look forward to if winters would be this bleak?

They are visiting commonfolk, delivering rations as Margaery insists it will help soothe and inspire the people’s thoughts of their returned king, when his own thoughts drift to where Sansa and Margaery see to a young mother with her baby who is wailing despite the mother’s attempts. Some farmers continue to thank him profusely, but he’s distracted when Sansa is offered the baby, appearing to try a soothing song and a rocking motion. Margaery tries too, and he finds himself straining, curious to hear her coo and giggle at the baby’s tiny hand clinging to her smallest finger.

If she catches him watching her, she does not seem to mind him. She only laughs on, and returns to entertaining the baby in Sansa’s arms.

‘I am sorry that you find it so difficult to have me in your home, your grace.’ Margaery seems to have materialized out of thin air to tell him, her tone is so surprisingly sharp considering the reserved statement that he abruptly stops at pushing through the door to his solar.

Robb, guarded, tries to lie, ‘I don’t know what would possess you to--’

‘You barely speak to me, let alone deign to look at me when I am in near you. Do not deny it.’

He opens his mouth to counter, to deny the conversation she certainly caught him having with his sister earlier in the morning, one of bitterness and cursing anyone associated with the vile Southroners, an obvious jab at the Lannisters and anyone who had links to their family. The talk of war and the language used with his bannermen during their battles still habitual on his tongue. But, he would be lying if he tried any other explanation for his opinions.

She does not falter for the second time that she stands her ground before him. He does not deny he is prolonging his thoughts because of this. Her eyes again, always so direct, slightly flutter before they close to him. Maybe she is reigning in other thoughts she’d like to say.

And when she does look up again, he recognizes that she is not casting him a doe-like gaze. There is certainty more than that, a steeliness that she could have only gained over years from more challenging obstacles than this awkward encounter, contradicting her youthful features.

She does not loosen her grip on the moment yet, her voice is sure when she starts again, ‘You have been gone from here for so long, fighting your family’s battles, rightly, but you might not realize that some may know your suffering all too well. Other families are also survived by their children, homeless or hollowed out by the ghosts of their dead mothers and fathers. I don’t mean to offend, but I realize now that you may not comprehend our shared loss.’ She says, matter-of-factly, though the sadness so clearly heard in her voice must mean she is drifting into her memories.

Regretfully, he’s only learnt of the extent of her family’s tragedies in the recent weeks of his return. He knew of Loras and her grandmother, but not her other brothers, and her mother too, who Sansa has mentioned died during the war. She, much like himself, had barely scraped through for her own survival against a plot against her life. Though having her here, flushed rosy and breathing harder from heatedly speaking on her family, shatters many of the words he thinks would be right to say at this time.

And sooner than he realizes, it is too late to apologize, as he starts and stops to feebly call her once she starts stalking away from his silence. It’s as if her intent is punctuated in every step she takes.

He doesn’t enter his solar yet, feeling all but eased before he intended to lay for bed, watching her round and disappear behind the corner of the long corridor. He grits his teeth as he feels the churning of words ruminating in his mind, maybe to call her with more conviction, or simply just to mutter pathetically to himself.

Sansa nudges him in the courtyard, where he was meant to be listening to her going over her marriage proposals they had planned for strengthening ties between the Northern houses. But, he realizes he hadn’t listened to a single string of complete thoughts for a long while now.

‘You know, you’ve not changed at all.’

He finally considers her fully for the first time since she brought him outside, and the upturn of her lips looks exasperated as well as amused. It confuses him. He’s sure she’s been treating him differently, because she’s commented on his habit to darkly shift his mood at times. He knows that his new stances on arranged marriages and political shrewdness have more than once surprised her. What could she possibly be seeing in him now that reminds her of how light and optimistic he once was when they were younger?

‘You are different in many ways now, brother. But, not so much in the important ways,’ she says, though he is still perplexed by this.

‘You are distracted because you are warming to Margaery’s presence. I see the way it troubles you to look at her the way you do. You cannot deny how her past betrays everything you believe in, and maybe the way you feel betrays the memories of your own past…’

He clenches his jaw at that.

She amends, ‘I only mean that you cannot stop yourself when father creeps into your heart and mind. She is outspoken, open to commonfolk as much as she is to any lords and ladies at court, and not at all like we were raised to be, but I think you are not blind in seeing the side of her that I have cherished in the time that I have been lonely in our own home. You respect her for this, you see that she has honour.’ She pauses to link her arms with him, walking slower as she wistfully reflects, ‘You have always been so much like father, you know. It’s a welcome feeling to know I haven’t lost him in a way.’

The only thing he can do is reach out and hold her hand from this admission, and it takes a long time before she continues on from her last observations about the temperaments she finds agreeable to the lords of House Umber and House Forrester.

Margaery sends ravens to her father as often as every week, or Sansa says she sees her traveling to the rookery this frequently. He wonders how understanding her father must be to let the only heir left to Highgarden’s throne to be away from home for months at a time. In fact, to his knowledge, she has been gone for one month since he met her, her third visit to their lands. Or, maybe, her father is writing her to come home. He wonders about asking her.

He thinks his sister has been right all along--the thought of Margaery has been consuming his thoughts more and more. More so since their last encounter, which has tainted every moment thereafter, leaving them without a single word passed between them at times, unless being cordial during dinners and in the presence of his sister.

What’s worse is the way his eyes are drawn to where she resides in the guest house, barely trying to convince himself that he’s merely peering over godswood without any inclining to think of her, and he wonders again. He wonders how someone who had gone through one and twenty years without indecision on speaking to any woman to troubling over the very thought of speaking to one particular woman. He thinks of Jon then, who would find this predicament irresistibly amusing and would certainly not be satisfied if there wasn’t at least a bit of suffering from this irony.

Talk of their lost family is usually kept to quiet corners of the castle, and when Robb sometimes walks with his sister in the godswood, he might reminisce about their father taking them here as children. He once quietly spoke of his late wife and their child, wondering if they would have been thrilled in the wood as they were as children themselves so many years ago.

He’s not sure Sansa is aware but, between their court duties and maintaining correspondences, he looks forward to their time together when he is able to talk without the formalities. Though it is his sister that tells him that he’s certainly more formal than he thinks he’s being, even with her. She says he’s lost his sense of humor completely since leaving.

So, he’s tickled by a thought so suddenly that it almost jolts him. Something like muscle memory tugs at his lips at the the thought of Arya. His mouth pulls taut to temper a smile as he reminds Sansa of the time she was chased around the castle grounds by her little sister with Old Nan’s makeshift knitting that resembled a rodent, and almost imitates her shrill cry when they are interrupted.

The part of the sept that seemed small and enclosed seemed to open and suddenly widen when Margaery came to them.

‘Sansa, your grace,’ Margaery, joins in, her smile seemingly perfunctory more than anything else. ‘I hope I wasn’t interrupting you.’

Robb straightens in his seat while Sansa proceeds to warmly greet her, leaving his side.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to interrupt. May I speak to you...alone?’ He asks, and Sansa almost mistakes this to mean for her, but then she looks to Margaery meaningfully.

His sister makes her way out, and he eyes the smile spreading across her lips as if she had some doing in this. He notes that he might think on another story to embarrass her with later.

‘Forgive me, my lady,’ he tells her when he finally watches his sister shrinking toward the castle, and she only slightly frowns at this apology. ‘I do owe you a chance to speak to me, from when you first kindly offered, if you were still inclined…’

Luckily, she takes the hand that he offers to bring her out of the sept. She releases from his grip just when he starts to wonder how her soft skin must feel in his rough, weathered hand.

The crumpling of the frost and dead leaves under their feet fills the silence that overtakes their walk in the beginning. Some stolen glances to her are for contemplating between what she must be thinking of this private audience and to absently watch her.

Then, he starts, ‘You know of the Red Wedding. Everyone has heard of my escape, and of my mother sacrificing herself so I could outwit the Lannisters at another turn. But, hardly anyone talks of what little triumphs there were afterward. I was happy with my wife, and I was still hopeful. But, warfare has hardened me, and even more so when she died giving birth to our first child. I was trying to cope even with this, but then our son died when he took illness soon after that. Gone before his first nameday.’

‘Your grace,’ she tries to rouse him, maybe because he grows quiet again. ‘I’m sorry, I knew some details of this tragedy, but not all.’

‘I have not been hopeful for a very long time, you see. And maybe that has changed my manner and my mood, and, unfortunately, how I treat those around me.’

She seems uncharacteristically quiet, and he can tell that not knowing what to say is something of a rarity for her from her visible unease, a growing crease between her brows.

So, he watches her carefully to continue. ‘I know you have lost too. I knew it scarcely before I had been judging you so harshly during your time here. But, I did know afterward, and I still remained cold toward you. I am sorry for this most of all.’

‘Loras and my grandmother, and even I knew the price we paid to play the games we had to to put me on the Iron Throne. I miss my family terribly, and mourn them everyday. I still want to avenge them, regardless of the fact that the wars had taken the lives of those that had wronged us before I could. But, I haven’t known tragedy as your late wife and son. I see now that I could never speak to your losses, your grace.’

A pause, a long one passes between them as he turns their direction to the Heart Tree, there he thinks of his father and then he thinks of his most privy thoughts he’s shared with her. It strikes him to realize that he’s shared enough sorrows enough times to want to remember them in a different light, and especially with someone who might know the pain of reliving them for the sake of weighing further on a heavy heart.

‘It’s Robb,’ he offers her, purposefully trying a small smile, and he finds relief to see her nod at this. ‘I think you can agree how exhausting it has been to keep regarding each other this way just to prove something to each other.’

A true smile from her, wide and almost bursting open to laugh, takes him over so wholly that he almost misses that they’ve stopped in their tracks with nothing to add to their conversation. This way, he can’t help but take her in without the conflicting thoughts he’s grown accustomed to use to distract himself with.

Snowflakes catch at her eyelashes, and he watches her trace her fingertips along the corners of her eyes, following them as they weave into the locks behind her ear. It’s when she curls her pink lips inward, then unfurls them forward to a lovelier shade deeper that he locks his gaze with hers.

‘Margaery,’ he says almost too faintly, as if he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

‘You presume to be so familiar, your grace.’

‘Robb,’ he insists through a surprising huff of amusement from her teasing.

‘Robb,’ she says as if testing it upon her lips, and there is something about the way she looks at him now that seems different from only moments ago. Maybe she is pondering that this, this lightness and ease akin to making amends with an old friend, has been long-awaited and only drawn out by his doing. Maybe she is as affected as he is by the weighty stillness between them now.

Margaery’s curated language, how she moves within court, with a precise economy to every encounter, and the way she sometimes smiles just so is not lost on him. As Sansa has brought up time and time again, possibly because his sister must think that he still harbours prejudice against Southroners, is something to appreciate and not to compare against their own family’s reserved nature.

Though he doesn’t judge her since he is learning that this is how she’s survived for so long. He knows that even a great beauty like hers would not suffice in outwitting her enemies or gaining allies. In fact, as he finds himself within her presence without their previous awkwardness, he grows increasingly curious to simply listen to her talk with the lords and ladies of court.

‘You often press your hand to your chest and lean in when you talk to the lords that you want to appear most intrigued by…’

‘Do you think less of me if I only appear interested in what the old lords think I want to hear about my duties as a princess of Highgarden, as if I’m not well aware of the fact that I’ve grown older and older from marrying age when I first left home?’

His cheeks are aflame, and he follows her in tandem to her steps away from the Great Keep. He watches the older men in question over his shoulder as they leave them in the hall, and when they are far enough he tries, ‘I only mean to make a simple observation.’

She ducks her head, and he lets out a relieved sigh to see her trying to hide her smirking lips when he catches up to her. He wonders if she finds it a sport to make him sweat for her sometimes.

The courtyard is lively during midday and Margaery greets a few passersby before she looks to him, finally replying, ‘You wear that older pin of your sigil. The direwolf’s sheen seems tarnished, but you do not replace it.’

They walk on, stopping only as they cross paths and find amusement in two young boys sparring with wooden swords.

‘It’s my father’s, he used to wear it.’ He palms it now where it is fastened just below the fur pelt on his shoulder.

‘We both keep to old habits or hold on to what makes us feel comfortable.’

‘Aye, and I only meant to say that you have more patience and shrewdness when you converse with the lords and ladies of our court than I do. I would not be so keen to keep them appeased if they were telling me what to do with my life.’

She only nods to this.

Though curiosity still nags him. ‘Have you been called by your father to return home yet?’

‘Almost every week he sends a raven.’

‘Are you planning on leaving soon?’ He wonders if she notices his curiosity piquing to wait on her answer.

‘I don’t think I am brave enough to go home just yet.’

He frowns when she does not elaborate, then grins in jest, ‘How mysterious.’

‘I am due to think of my duties as the noblemen here are telling me. But, I am not sure I am ready to face another duty that my father would ask of me again, when I have done so with haste and without question before the wars. It is quite a different time now, and I am offered more time since my brothers are not--well, they aren’t with the living to collect me now anyway.’ She thinks before she adds, ‘I will go when I am ready, and fulfil whatever duties my family asks of me, which is exactly what I will say every time I am asked that same question at court.’

‘If I had your insight and your way with words sooner, I may have done better by my crown in the past. I hope you do stay, if only to keep teaching me in this way,’ he says thoughtfully.

Her smirk twists up again, and it inspires him to do the same. ‘Am I your tutor as well as your friend now, Robb?’

‘Friends learn a great many things from each other, do they not?’ he asks.

Something touches her about this, and he can tell that something is whirring, like her cogs turning. If he’s observed her enough by now, he’s sure whatever she’s about to say could only grow in wit in the wait.

Then, he is awarded by her slyly offering, ‘I have never had such friends that studied me so closely for their betterment. Is there anything else about my figure you’d like learning from?’

He’s sure he’s looking flustered again, tempted to reply, but he can only muster laughter instead.

Margaery and Sansa could be mistaken for sisters.

Only the briefest of glimpses at the two women together could tell how much they adored one another, sharing smiles and, from what he could hear in passing, turning the mundanity of their court life into the most lively of conversations. He’s sure that Sansa would have desperately wanted her as a sister in another life, and even Arya, who Sansa loved despite their drastically different sensibilities, would not fault her sister in wanting to share this special kind of kinship with someone who did not share their blood.

If he was being quite honest with himself, at times he’d feel out of place when they are together as the two women would seem to carry on as if he were not there at all. Only after a long while, both of them would feel pity on him by asking him to make his observations of their conversations, even if the connection to him would be tenuous at best. But, he would tell them, humorously, it would be best to remain silent so as to appear astute and attentive when bringing up said conversations when he might feel less apt in listening to them in the future. Sansa throws him a scandalized glare, while Margaery quells his sister’s annoyance with whispered words.

He is revisited by some spectres in his mind, a habit he’s lived with for longer than he’s been home. He’s sure that Margaery knows the power she holds with them. Though as much as he marvels at her effect, he can’t stop himself from thinking of what she could do if she were the type of person to wish ill will on them instead.

Margaery pales as if she’s seen a ghost in broad daylight.

Garlan Tyrell arrives at Winterfell, recovering from war wounds and crippled akin to his older late brother, Willas, and found out to be in hiding for as long as Robb had been away from home. As quickly as he brings an arresting surprise, he also brings an instantaneous surge of happiness to Margaery who thought him dead for so long.

She takes over the nursing duties of the servants when a phantom pain comes from his missing arm, and Robb knows her absence for times in the day he might find her is warranted for her keeping her long lost brother company instead. Sometimes, he follows her, paying respects to the Tyrell’s efforts in the war, and other times he cannot help in giving him a sympathetic look to his absent limb, a fate that could have very well befallen him during his numerous battles. Sometimes, Margaery asks for privacy between herself and her brother since these looks spur on more insecurity than gratitude.

Though, when Garlan finds him alone, he spurs on Robb’s deepest thoughts as well. Even a man, only briefly returning to his own home in Highgarden before visiting his sister, and freshly navigating the realities of a life away from war, makes his own astute observations of Robb.

‘My sister is becoming more Stark than Tyrell. She hated the cold as a child, but, here, she looks warm and naturally swathed in Northern garb like your own. I’ve not heard from her in many years, my lord, but I’m sure she’s even speaking with a different voice. Does this mean Margaery is actually bending to someone’s will, rather than the other way around?’

Robb can’t recall what he had said at this time, only that he couldn’t deny the swift way he dismissed this thought, feeling surprisingly warm from the older man’s scrutiny.

‘Nevermind,’ Garlan he had said, suddenly aloof about it all. ‘She will soon again be home and feel like her old self. But, I am indebted to your kindness and generosity in having her in your home.’

Garlan’s words follow him at a feast at request of Margaery to celebrate this visit, and he’s conscious of the way Garlan’s eyes could be following the way Margaery links their arms at times or the way she touches him for any number of reasons he considers harmless and of the nature of their close friendship. But, he is certainly conscious of how it all looks.

Every touch, she passes as gestures of familiarity. The way her voice is changed with him, the lovely lilt in her laughter that he’s convinced she does not share with anyone else, not even with his sister. He does not miss these signs, because he’s wary of how much he craves her to be affected by him, and he invites her closer still, paying no mind to the mummers that follow them within the castle walls.

When he openly eyes her seagrass green, sleeveless dress this night, following a plunging neckline he’s never seen her wear before, he is only redirected when she she repeats herself, amused, ‘I know this is not at all how women dress here, but Garlan’s return has inspired some sentimentality in me. It is very different than you are used to in the North, is it not?’

‘It is.’ He swallows thickly, and adds, ‘But it is not an unwelcome change here.’

She smiles shyly, which isn’t something he’s not seen her express often if at all before, and it does not help his cause in trying to soothe his craving of these subtle cracks in the usual way about her, especially when he knows that they are left alone, while the rest of the castle itself seems to quiet for them. By a nearby hearth they have retreated to after dinner, they can only hear the crackling of the kindling wood stoking in the fire and their own shifting where they sit side by side.

Then, the unusual silence, which has always been filled by stories of her day and his seeking of her opinions for matters at court, goads him on. ‘You must say what is preying on your mind, Margaery.’

‘If I do, I may regret it.’

‘How mysterious,’ he echoes words that he’s sure she will recall and find humorous.

Only, she does not ease yet, and her laughter does not come. He watches the familiar way her lips retreat from her biting them inward, then curl forward. But, it is her intent stare that finally gives her away, and he is aware of the closeness of their sitting together, knees brushing and fingers inching forward until he feels them lacing together. She curls her fingers with his, and he sighs at the contact he wasn’t sure she’d accept.

‘Robb,’ her tone sounds much like a plea.

The fire from the hearth is heating him in the layers he wishes to shed now, if only to ease the breaths he’s taking in shallowly when she stops at the small dip of distance between them.

Her hesitance is burning him until her eyes close to him. Finally, ‘Marge,’ he whispers before he presses a gentle kiss on her lips, cups her face in his hands, and pulls back on the chaste kiss to watch her reaction.

He is not simply affected by her, he is weak.

He knows this more as he takes in her eyes fluttering open, not expecting the glow of the fireside to make her look even more entrancing, as if he were conjuring up a dream of her instead.

‘Robb,’ her voice jerks him out as if he were breaking free of a fever dream, especially with the pained expression that twists her features now. She gently removes his hands from threading through her curls. ‘I cannot do this. Sansa has told me of your plans to marry another.’

His stomach plummets as harshly as a stone, and he will wonder later on if she had intended to kiss him at all. ‘We have only spoken to lords that have expressed interest in the usual business of strengthening ties with our Northern families. There is nothing agreed upon. I would have told you myself, but I didn’t find any reason to speak on matters that are not true...not in the way Sansa meant.’

She does not hide the frown knitting her brows closer together still. ‘I would be remiss in interfering--’

‘Or maybe it does not matter because you would leave for home without regret.’ Robb realizes that he doesn’t mean to cut in until it is too late, but Garlan’s words are finally deafening to his ears. ‘Were you going to wait until your brother announced that both of you were leaving or the day you intend to ride out to tell me?’

He’s sure the implications in all they are admitting now confirms that there has been a surfacing of things left unsaid between them, and the growing dread he had been abating for so long blooms, thinking of times he had squandered in favour of folding to longing and indecision in his own mind.

He has been longing for her, he admits inwardly, frustrated.

Her eyes narrow, indignant to ask, ‘Am I the only one to be expected to be truthful, your grace?’

His title sounds as though she means it to be bitter on her tongue, and though he fully intends to explain all of it to her, a servant diverts their attention.

‘Lady Margaery, your brother seeks you, his pain…’ The servant stands a great distance from them, possibly understanding to approach with caution.

Robb follows her to rise to their feet, and she simply regards him with a perceptible sadness.

‘I will go to him.’ She means to face the servant when she says this, but she’s still holding Robb’s gaze. Only breaking it when she shakes her head and moves to walk away, bidding him goodnight under her breath.

If there was ill will or a thorn in her side from their last encounter, he would not be able to suspect it, watching Margaery listen intently to the commonfolk take turns in voicing their concerns in the throne room. Her head is held high, and tilting to listen to each man and woman seeking alms. Even though she does not sit with Sansa and himself, at the top of the throne room, she does not stay hidden within the crowd of noble people, while some drift and appear less concerned than she.

They are credit to their upbringing, he supposes, because he easily finds himself steadfast in his role once again, regardless of his wandering thoughts. Looking to his side, a welcome pang spreads warmth through his chest to think of Sansa as well, as he is certain years of his absence and her willingness to carry on in Winterfell has made her softness melt when she deliberately willed it to. This time, and other times, he admonishes any thought he had of his sister being incapable of such a feat.

Then there is his father’s and mother’s voices sometimes weaving in and out of his decisions on each request of alms or presentation of gifts to the crown, and he is certain he is seeing a slow building of trust in the weary of their kingdom with the passing of time through their current depression.

Though, without prompting, the tone shifts by someone appearing before the throne with significantly more desperation shivering through their body than the last.

‘My family’s farm is being ravaged by wildlings and their pagan ways, many of my animals slaughtered, your grace. I am at wit’s end. I cannot survive the winter if nothing is done, and I am not the only one in my village that is being affected.’ The man, ruddy in the face, wrings his hands nervously for Robb’s response.

A nobleman interjects before Robb replies, ‘Their season of worship will pass in the next few weeks. The king must focus on allocating royal funds where it is needed, like the curing of our sick that is seemingly growing from an outbreak, many children affected, even noble children.’

He looks to Sansa when a rabble of chatter erupts, some louder voices are thrown across the hall, and he mouths to his sister for different options to speak of.

‘Robb, Margaery and I have been speaking about these issues,’ Sansa says.

‘Oh? For how long?’ He simply replies. He is not surprised, they talk often. However, again, he admits to himself that he must not underestimate his sister’s competencies at court.

‘Since she arrived on her last visit.’

Sansa barely ruminates over an idea when she claps her hands for their attention, their guards roar for quiet for good measure. ‘My lords, ladies, respected subjects, we cannot tackle both grave concerns at once. We will see to both concerns if we have more than Stark subjects to support us. Luckily, I have on good authority that our allies at court will be generous in more ways than words for support.’ She looks to Margaery then, which causes a deep crimson to colour her friend’s cheeks.

Though, Margaery, far from a shrinking violet, steps forward to speak with determination, her blush slowly receding, ‘House Tyrell will do as much good as the Starks promise, Princess.’

‘We will discuss further, Lady Margaery, thank you,’ Robb adds, impulsively prolonging his attention on her, and he cannot help to add, ‘If you wish it.’

She nods, and he’s sure she challenges their eye contact as much as he does before they return to the next audience requested from the commonfolk.

He hears through a squire, at Garlan’s behest, that Margaery is in her chambers failing to attend to her own riding accident. If he were to voice it, he’d speak concerns over their supposed friendship which affords him little more than furious whisperings of her well-being through a number of other people, save herself. He knows that the night that they have not spoken of has affected him as much as Sansa says it does, but not in the way he speaks (because he has not spoken of their brief kiss or the returned coldness between them), though more so in his dark mood surfacing again.

And as a man possessed from this mood, he finds himself gruffly interrupting a servant that tells him that Margaery wishes to be alone, while he allows himself into her bed chambers before the servant can even attempt to apologize for overstepping him.

He means to speak plainly, firmly, but his gruffness falls flat from the way she toils at the nearby window for light, wrapping and unwrapping the bandages at her wrist, trying futilly to reassemble a splint.

‘Do not approach me, lest I wring these bloody bandages around your neck, Tildy.’ She whips around, surprised to see Robb instead, though the exasperation in her huffing breaths does not leave her.

‘Poor Tildy has already gotten a scolding from me, I wouldn’t want to give her any more abuse.’

‘I’m in no mood, Robb.’ She returns her attention to her wrist, not meeting his eyes. This does not completely allow him to forget the reasons he intended to seek her for words, but he softens.

‘Margaery,’ he tries gently, approaching her tentatively, hands outstretched. ‘Let me…’

She looks at him, then to her wrist, which he assumes is sprained from the accident that was described to him, and then back to him. A flash of defiance lights her eyes to see him still standing before her, persistent in the face of her irritation, but he sighs when she finally concedes to him.

She winces instinctively, even when he has only guided her to her bed, and they sit side by side as he unfolds all of the cloths from her affected left side. He makes busy work, holding her in place, as he wraps her trembling wrist into a firm splint without the pain she had inflicted on herself earlier.

She mutters quietly on the fact that she might have done this herself if she were given more time, to which he only chuckles out, ‘I am well aware that you are more than capable in many things, but there is nothing wrong with seeking help when it is necessary.’

When he fastens the last cloth in place, his hands find excuse to test the firmness of his handy work, warm hands wrapping around her wrist. They stay there for some time.

‘You are very skillful,’ she observes even-toned, and slowly takes her wrist back.

‘My late wife--she taught me. Life on the battlefield was taxing on her body, so she’s needed it as well, and I’ve also helped some of my own bannermen myself,’ he explains. ‘The only difference now is that I’ve had less fight in those I’ve helped during the war.’

She almost yelps in laughter, and it bursts something gloomy that seemed to be encapsulating around them. Her hands move away from his to smother the boisterousness of her laughter, his own throat shaking in reaction to her, and he laughs for no other reason than hearing her infectious one.

Curious, he asks, ‘What?’

‘You, Robb, have the least amount of tact of any man I’ve ever met,’ her words mean more to tease than harm, and she smiles despite his continued confusion. If there was any tension left within her, he’s wondering if it only remains brittle, slowly shaking free from her.

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘You speak of past loves so easily when you are meant to make me feel...a certain way. Only you would get away with this carelessness, without reprimand,’ she says, mirth still glinting in her eyes. ‘Maybe it is because of your devastating blue eyes and the fact that you are relentlessly kind, and many a maid have not had the heart to tell you how hopeless you are.’

He tries to stifle his laughter this time, smiling guiltily. ‘Truthfully, I have only been caught stumbling on my words with you.’

Margaery appears to mull over this, then tries to smile prettily to tease him, “Have you been beguiled by my innocent charms?’

He cocks a brow at that, and he tries his hand at making her laugh again, ‘I am not one of the lords at court, nor would I mistake you for being innocent.’

Her laughter is softer now, and she eyes the birth between them, and it is maddening that they have returned to this silence, words sat between them, unspoken again. She must know...something about how she leans in close, large brown eyes looking up through her lashes, slowly showing expectancy, maybe imploring...

So, he starts, determined by her rising her gaze completely leveled on his now, ‘You can’t be blind to see how I feel, how I’ve tried to show you, do you know…’ he stops himself, and without hesitation, his fingers reach for the corners of her eyes to catch the brimming tears that threaten to fall. ‘But, Margaery, do you know?’

She takes his hand and brings them to her lap, leaning toward him. Something about the way he asks her makes her break, and she shakily nods, admitting, ‘Of course, of course, I know.’

This time, she shares a sharp intake of breath between their small distance before she surges forward to kiss him, hands encircling his neck, anchoring him to her. Her lips on his lips, surer this time, kiss him deeply.

This time, he can intimately inhale the scent of primrose he has come to know her sprinkling in her hair, and taste something faintly sweet on her tongue, like the sugary tarts she thinks she is sneakily stealing away before their proper dinners at night.

Her hands to his chest, signals for their need for air. Robb is the first to release a sigh, sated for now, ‘Margaery, I promise you, this is what I want. You, that is all.’

‘And I, you,’ she replies as his lips press against her knuckles, kissing at the dips and peaks.

‘I promise to tell you exactly of all the matters that mean something to us. I won’t leave anything--’

‘Wait, I must tell you something first.’

‘The gods must be testing me…’ he jests, but listens on, seriously.

‘I have not just been corresponding with my father as if I were journaling my everyday mundanities. He has been advising me of marriage proposals as well, a new lord every chance he finds possible, in fact. And he has insisted I stay here in Winterfell as of late...to be your wife.’

Robb nods, and thoughtfully offers, ‘I have often wondered why your father would allow you to be so far from home for so long.’ Then, with a smile playing on his lips, he adds, ‘I have thought of us this way, married, that is.’

Margaery does not stray from his grasp, but her head hangs low to explain Garlan’s presence. ‘Garlan is meant to persuade both us to do so, or take me home. I am supposed to help bolster Highgarden’s position in the Reach. I could do this because I am not concerned of being a pawn to help along the political machinations at home, and I would be comfortable, and find my own way of living on my own terms. I was groomed to be the perfect wife to any king, as you have heard the stories as well as anyone else. But, I have had time to think in dungeons at King’s Landing, scraped by where my wits narrowly saved me from fanatical faith militants, and barely escaped a sept where I was meant to die. I can’t...You have seen it in me as certain as day, a throne would be ill-suited for someone who has only seen it as a game or a curse.’

She continues to add, ‘Forgive me, Robb. I do care for you, but I don’t know how I feel about all of this.’

All of her misgivings, abrupt mood shifts or the quiet thoughts she’s not shared with him have not aligned with the strong will he’s come to know of her over time. Now, as she is finally vulnerable to him, he pieces these ideas together. As content and untroubled as her stay has been in Winterfell, she has been touched by fear. He knows this feeling all too well.

‘I have been wary of my crown for longer than I have worn it, and I could have forgotten my title, and renounced it all,’ he says. ‘But, Sansa is here. And, as I’ve learned, Winterfell is not a home without each other. I cannot forget my name, or what it means to my family, my people, and carry on. Still, I understand your fear as well. I wouldn’t force your hand, but I mean to make you see that our home could mean something to you if you stayed.’

Her habit of folding her lips between her teeth means she is thinking, and he is grateful for this at least.

He tries to help her along, ‘As for marrying into our family, it is clear that your influence on my sister and our people are not from my help. Marrying me would not change this. I have known of the kindness you have shown my sister when she was held captive by Joffrey. I have seen your kindness follow her here. Then there is your work in helping our commonfolk, it isn’t some ploy for them to fawn over you the way they did in King’s Landing. I am no fool, I understand the motives and drive you had in those days, yet you continue to help our people now, even when you are no more ambitious than I am for power and influence. If it were in Highgarden or any kingdom, you would be a queen with real purpose, no matter where you reign. You would be a force.’

‘Don’t let our Queen of Dragons hear you speaking of me that way.’ She does not smile too much from her jape, but her voice carries less and less of her anxious energy.

All the while he watches her frown slowly fading, calmness smoothing over the creases in her features from his words, so he continues, ‘And, still, I know both of us have sorely needed hope again, for a happier life than we have known. I know that life would only be afforded to me if I had you by my side. Margaery, I feel as though, no, I hope the same could be said for you...would you marry me?’

A nervous puff of laughter comes through her, finally, ‘You are not so hopeless after all, are you?’

‘Not entirely.’ He matches her warm smile, as if he settled the strongest of her qualms for now. At least, the way she brings him back toward her, kissing him soundly, tells him so.

‘It is a yes, we are to marry, surely--’ He tries to clarify, but she stops him with her feverish peppering of kisses, breathing quick gasps of yes, yes against his lips.

Another Tyrell comes to Winterfell. This one is much older than he expects, and from dismounting from the carriage, he is slightly relieved that he is no more imposing than the elderly maesters he’s grown accustomed to as a child--kindly-looking and eager to please all those around him. Mace Tyrell, in ostentatious golden and green robes, makes strides to see his children first, Margaery and Garlan.

His greeting to his daughter stands out as especially happy when she kisses her lord father on either side of the face, and he whispers something in her ear. Margaery whips her head to face Robb then, and there is something so captivating about the unabashed pride in her smile she gives him.

Robb decides that the rapidly thrumming beat of his heart and the words he’s contemplated in speaking about their marriage, which have changed twice or thrice over, are only tempered by her unwavering sureness of him.

Margaery finds him by his mother’s garden after a morning feast with the Tyrells, with a beaming smile and eyes dazzling in the midday sun. The cold winter air chills her breath, and he can tell that she is huffing out exhausted breaths from running through the castle grounds to meet him, dragging her billowing gown up from her hurrying steps. The sight of her exuberant happiness is enough to bring the same jittery energy in himself, and he has to steady himself from her swaying embrace.

‘How did that appear to you, because I cannot know how I seemed talking to your father,’’ he postpones greeting to ask her.

‘You were brilliant. What you have said to my father--’ She starts.

‘Nothing, my love.’ He tries modesty, but she is quick to poke his side.

She smiles knowingly to tell him, ‘They were practiced words to ask for my hand, but they were spoken from the heart, and that was clear to my family. That is why my father is even more pleased with our upcoming wedding.’

‘Will he be trying to dress up our halls with extensive roses and filigree to match his own wardrobe for the ceremony?’ He couldn’t resist to observe, as they walk through his mother’s flower beds, musing on how they would not in the least match the pomp and splendor of the her father’s robes and jewelry, and he dodges her lunging open hand.

‘My grandmother would have certainly adored you,’ she says, fighting a smile threatening to spread her lips as she wrenches out her attacking hand caught in his quick grip.

‘I am honoured,’ he says, and fondly watches her become distracted by white blooms nearby.

‘We must have these.’

‘Helleborus, my mother’s favourite.’

‘Yes, I’d like these in my hair for the wedding day,’ she idly says as she plucks one flower through dogwood branches, shaking both free of snow.

Playfully, he snatches it from her, if only to keep rousing her fighting spirit again. Gods, she’s even more lovely whenever he kindles that bright, fiery look in her eyes.

‘You are especially giddy today as well.’

His hands move quickly, without her interruption, as he weaves the stem of the flower through her curls, wrapping it around her ear. ‘Aye, and curious as to what else you have planned to wear for our wedding day.’

Her eyes are slightly hooded at this, and he is certain they are both aware that they have consciously chosen the gardens to meet for its seclusion from intrusive eyes. ‘A dress you may admire,’ her voice is low in replying.

‘Only for a short while, until I can admire what lies beneath it,’ he rasps, tugging her closer so they are sharing heavier breaths. If he could convey how the simmering temptations that have passed between them since their confessions of their true feelings have been struggling to emerge, he’s sure he’s allowed it to be more and more palpable, and blatant now.

Margaery’s gaze is lit brighter now as if his double meanings urge her on, and she pushes him to the stone wall that completely obscures them from the castle, frosted climbing ivy do little to cushion the thud of the back of his head. And he’s sure the impact does not do anything to his concentration, but the way she grabs his hands to slip them underneath her plunging neckline surely does something to his vision so fixed on the milky skin threatening to spill completely out of her dress. He kneads the soft mounds of her breasts, the peaks of her nipples taut from his cold hands make his eyes half-lidded now too.

‘I’d rather you have me here than admire me later,’ she says boldly before she tiptoes to capture his lips.

With one hand grasping her warm breast still, as the other snakes around to cinch her waist forward so they are completely flush together, she gasps into his mouth at his tighter grip.

‘You would have me take you here, while everyone waits for us inside the castle, wondering where we are? If we are caught--’

His words catch in her mouth, hungrier for his kisses than his admissions. They move together, finally finding warmth from the chill that surrounds them, and her fingers tug at his own curls. And it’s no more pain than the way his hardening cock feels within his breeches, tightly restricted and needing her.

He could have her here.

‘My King!’ Someone bellows beyond the wall that they instantly shoot off of from this interruption.

They both right themselves before a guard finds them around the corner, panting as he jogs toward them. ‘My lord, word from the Wall. Your brother--’

‘What?’ Robb says automatically instead of who, for his brothers have all perished.

‘Lord Brandon.’ The guard appears to not believe his own admission any more than Robb does.

‘Explain yourself.’

‘A raven arrives telling you to aid him at the Wall.’

‘The ruins, you mean. Those have been abandoned, not a single soul has reported sightings of White Walkers, much less a human for that matter. How is this possible?’ Robb deliberates his own observations, and seeks Margaery’s gaze, as if she would provide some useful insight, even when he knows his mind has been made the instant his brother’s name had been uttered.

Margaery only takes a moment’s time to fix a serious look on him, that same steeliness he had seen once before that struck him so appears again. ‘This home is only a home with those that we love, you told me that. You must be careful, as I know you always are, and you must go because I know this will weigh on your heart until you know the truth. I cannot be the only one offered miracle of family returning from the dead, not when we intend to make our family grow larger and happier one day.’

He’s confidently admitted it to her father whilst asking for her hand, as he had done the same the night she accepted his proposal, but his admiration of her comes on even stronger now, bursting with the other competing feelings coursing through him, so the words come in a fierce whisper, ‘I love you.’ He brings her hands up gingerly to his lips, and kisses them.

‘And I love you.’

‘I will return.’ He senses that he must say this, if only to quell the start of the creasing of her brows, knowing this is as painful for her as it is for him.

‘You must, if you intend on marrying me.’ She smiles with eyes glazed.

His love, elegant and bold, holds herself in a way that unashamedly displays who she truly is. She will be a fine queen one day. Though, more importantly, only hours after his asking her father for her hand, she appears every bit of a faithful wife before uttering the words for the Old Gods to hear her--deeply concerned for him, but just as determined for him, without a thought to mask any of these emotions.

It is the way she holds herself now, knowing that he leaves for the Wall tomorrow, and how she insists that the turmoil in waiting and the Tyrell’s want for finery be damned so that they can marry in front of the Heart Tree like his ancestors at nightfall. She is a force that he cannot deny, and wholly agrees with her request.

Mace Tyrell frets over the propriety for almost the entirety of the day until the very evening of the ceremony, over her not changing from her gown from the morning and even the mudd wicking across all their attire as they trek through the godswood. But, even his foolish fussing is silenced by the tight line of his daughter’s smile. Robb can tell, and maybe even Mace had stopped to notice, that she could not be happier to bind her hands with Robb’s and recite the sacred vows, but the tinge of bittersweetness chases after her voice if you truly listened.

But, it is mostly the way she holds herself after they make love with another smile that is spread tightly into a line, strained, though her embrace that is as languid as it is decisive in ending at the break of dawn that leaves him with the notion that she means to let him go. Then there are her gentle words of support that do not say all she wants to say, but he knows the quieter thoughts as well as the way her deep gaze that gives them away. They mingle with vows she promised to him…

Mother…

Find Bran, and do not be harmed…

Maiden…

Husband, I will miss you…

Crone…

Keep yourself and your spirits warm, the nights will be long…

Come home, she finally says in her farewell kiss.

Come home, he sometimes hears whispers at the seams of his unraveling dreams.

There is no reprieve during winter in the true North. He remembers the lessons and the adages of his house. Though, the winter at the Wall is a maelstrom of something from nightmares and his side aches again.

The nightmare is his new wounds, gashes above his ribs, sore and poorly patched up from what little supplies he had brought with him. It is time creeping slowly by in the darkness of a cave he is being held captive in by a makeshift cage of what appear to be animal carcasses, darkness giving little away of what day or days have passed. It is being alone, the whole of his company have been slashed to shreds or scattered across the ruins of the Wall from an attack from who...he's yet to know yet. He ruminates again. They are not White Walkers, he rationalizes that his mind has sometimes been touched by memories from the past, but his captors are certainly human, as he’s killed and watched some die already. They are not wildlings as he's come face to face in combat with his own share of them. No, they are something else. Thin, gaunt people that wish to emulate otherworldly creatures. They colour themselves in chalky white from head to toe, clothe themselves in white-speckled fur, and smear dark kohl around their eyes. They hold the look of a men and women that knew how to match their surroundings of this desolate land well enough to ambush them. Disturbingly, negotiating with his captors was futile considering they communicated with little more than gestures and indiscernible grunts. Even the circumstances of his capture did not bode well, as something of a ransom would have motivated some, they had no certain plans for him. But, their leader, or the biggest, burly-looking one that seemed to be directing the others, carries on without a passing look to him. As if this was normal, to keep hostages, by a pathetic hearth crackling with little heat, while all (Robb counts 15) of them sit in a circle passing around some sort of game they had flayed and barely roasted. He hears cooing and wailing of children in another chamber of the cave. This was, or appeared to Robb, was their norm--for however long normal it might have been for them. If he were to empathize, because the cooing of babies nearby are troubling him still, it occurred to Robb that this is how some have survived the White Walkers, and surely this is how some have survived Queen Daenarys' canvassing of those for or against her too. This is what some might think is the only choice once they disagreed with the new world. Find Bran, my love, her whispers righting him again.

Yet, Bran was nowhere to be seen. Who sent that raven? Is Bran indeed alive? And who will send a raven to Margaery and Sansa to let them know of what has happened?

Husband, I miss you... At night, he often dreams of a warm hearth, snowflakes on fallen leaves, then on eyelashes, and a cascade curls of chestnut brown that curtain his face in before he tastes sweetness on his lips. Sweet Margaery. He dreams of her soft sighs filling his ears with yearning. His name tumbling off her lips as if it were a plea in prayer, again and again, mingling with his calls for her. She peaks with him, flush against him, slick skin to skin. He dots kisses along the nape of her neck, dotting promises to wake her with a reprise in the morning. This night, however, she whispers his name again, with a tremble of fear for him, eyes wide, knowing of some sort of imminent danger.

His eyes blink slowly to the scene before him, lashes sticking from frost. He had not been roused from sleep, but stupor and malnourishment. He is humiliated, thinking he were reminiscing of his last moment of bliss, when he is in fact on his knees, and being sentenced to death by beheading. In the middle of the frozen earth at the mouth of their cave dwelling, he sits, wondering if this was certainly how he were to die. Alone. The blunt axe touching his neck for sure aim feels as though it will not do slow work to afford him a quick death.

Decisively he closes eyes to chase bliss again. But it’s Margaery’s voice at first that he hears, in fear once more. But, then it isn't.

‘Robb!’ Someone hisses him awake once more. There is another cloaked figure next to his executioner, weilding a slender, short blade. They crouch down, whisper near his ear, ‘When I say so, you grab the man’s sword.’

He shudders with what energy he has left to look up at the hooded man who spoke, and then he sees him through bleary, but shocked vision. 'Br-Bran!' He breathes, lowering his voice as he remembers himself, then gathers himself up in straighter in his kneeling position. 'Your legs!' Bran Stark, standing a little taller than he remembered, with a deeper voice, shoves Robb’s head back down, and stands abruptly. Luckily, no one seems to react to Robb’s outbursts.

A beat passes, and Robb has questions, his blood is inexplicably running warm for the warring hope and doubt in his mind over this reunion. Then, he feels something fall, then the splatter of warm liquid stream across his fingers. He hears his brother again, hollering, ‘TAKE IT!’

A sword by his hand, and then it is in his hand next. Bran helps him to his feet, and the breath in he takes is the first that feels like a cold blast of ice to his senses. First, he sees clearly, Bran rushing toward the men that flank them. Then, he slices through two that try to overtake him, his blade gutting one and the other hitting the ground from Bran slitting his throat, blood soaking through the snow and ice.

‘ROBB!’

He is spun around, the hilt of the sword in his weak grasp jolts him as Bran pushes it to his chest, and, in a moment, his senses catch up with him again. He rights his stance, and thrashes the sword toward the man attacking him. The two men he kills lay at his feet, and he recognizes them as the men that had fed him food and water just before the whites of their eyes still completely, along with the life behind them.

Four more attack and surround them and, even with the pain that urges him to topple over, he works through half of them, narrowly missing the largest of the lot driving a sword past him, nicking his left thigh. Bran cuts the massive brute and the rest of them down. With the last man Bran kills, he has a moment to fall to his knees to watch his brother. It is clearly him, his features familiar like his father’s, but with blood splattered across his cheeks and brows, there is something more eerie than his healed crippling.

‘Bran?' Robb starts again once they are surrounded by the queer silence of death, but Bran is already taking his arm to sling around his shoulder, helping him walk forward with more speed. 'More will come.' Is all Bran provides for explanation. What little light is kindling in the centre hearth of the cave he’d been held captive in, along with the torchlight in Bran’s hand, allows Robb to see the splattering of blood across the ground, and it trails to the large hole that he had assumed had been where his captors had all huddled and slept. There, he sees a large pool of blood, and a stream still crawling toward them. He thinks he sees parts, shadows of limbs strewn amongst the blood. Even the brood of younger ones...he wonders how he didn't hear their cries. He distinctly feels that odd feeling toward his brother again. He can't recall if his brother ever showed capability of aggression, let alone taking lives. Not only that, but his mind wanders back to the silence of the children of the wild tribe. 'Bran, how?' Robb asks urgently, limping to stand on his own now. 'Why are you here, why did you bring me here?' Before his eyes, he is speechless to a grotesque sight, and he unsheathes a makeshift scabbard he had hidden away in his sleeve in defence. Bran peels skin off his face, no, his face is peeled off to reveal not his brother, but another face of his kin. Then, along with this same motion, his body morphs completely into another smaller, slender form. He's learnt of an old magic that allows transformations as he's just witnessed. But, who’s to say this is really…

'A-Arya?' Robb stutters, and winces from pain as he tries to back away from her outstretched hand. His sister has grown into a young lady, not exactly a lady in the sense his mother envisioned her to be, but her features are longer, older and the hardened look in her steely gray eyes is the same impression he's always known of his traditionally un-ladylike sister. 'It is you, isn't it?' 'Yes,' she says simply, and she holds fast to him again, because he sways from the pain in his side. 'And sometimes no,' she adds, which only confirms his knowledge of the Faceless Men that he's learnt about as a child. They escape to another bleak cave, this one with a fire that Arya starts easily from the large satchel of items that seems endless. With medicines and cloths to patch his wounds. She even helps him wrap himself into a thin cloak taken from her bag for warmth and a softer surface than the slab of rock he'd been lying on for days. Lying on his side, he fights the urge to rest, wanting answers rather than the terse comments she had made throughout their journey away from the massacre. 'How long have you been here for?' He tries. With her back to him, warming her hands by her fire, she answers, 'I've counted twenty moons.' 'Arya,' he means to tell her kind words of their reunion and to thank her for saving him, but instead he presses further, 'why the children?' 'Bran was killed because of the savages.' He gulps, as if to swallow his sorrow, though he had mourned for Bran long before he had hoped for a miracle of his survival. So the defiance in her methods of helping him was not easily brought down his throat. He is, as ever, his mother's son, and probes his concerns for his younger sibling, 'Arya, the children and their mothers did not have to die.' She only stares back at him, not in the same way she had long ago, with warmth and pride, but with a blistering coldness in her eyes. She is calculating, not judging him. 'I had learned that Bran was killed by savages from this tribe, so I became them as I can gain your trust as becoming Bran, and I have returned their gesture in kind. I needed you to help me track down all of their kin, all of them are responsible if they had watched and aided in his capture and death.' Robb does not agree, but tries, 'Am I of any use to you now?' He gestures to his affected side, wincing to shift again. He allows the silence to fill their shelter instead, as he waits to understand her plans, and maybe understand who his sister has become. 'I heard of your survival last new moon, and I have wondered if your skills of combat might help me track someone who I think knows of my skills, someone who may be trying to evade me, so I can finally catch up to the rest of those that had scattered once they learned of my tracking them. Two wargs are better than one. While we hunt, Sansa will be the Stark that stays in Winterfell. She has become deftly capable on the throne.' He does not question her knowing of Sansa or him. If she was capable of finding news of his whereabouts to send a raven to call for him, then she must be keeping up with information on all of them. It is scarily impressive. Though, he wonders of the strength of her powers or her need for him if he had never honed his skills as well as hers. 'There are two Starks at home now,' he corrects her. 'I have married, but you must know that already.'

'Yes, you're right, to that cunning Tyrell girl. She will be of great influence to your decisions. Now, you have two women to right you when you only see your enemies on the battlefield, and not the enemies at court.'

Though her words are not unkind, they still sound foreign on her tongue. He wishes to hear the mischief in her again, and her contagious laughter that always brought him to his own delight. But, it sobers him to realize that she does not include herself at Winterfell. And he is acutely aware that her words sound as paranoid as he felt before he returned home. 'Ayra,' he tries, 'will you come home with me?' 'No,' she flatly replies. 'You have avenged Bran, and the war is over. I know how hard it is to accept when you have to return home from it, but life has moved on. Would he want this of us?' Her quiet glare is fixed on him again, and maybe her mouth starts to twitch to express anger. But, instead she sighs, 'You don't understand.' She isn't a girl anymore, no, nor a highborn lady of Winterfell. His sister, dressed in men's breeches and a hard leather jerkin over a wooly tunic, with her words curt as well as her movements, truly has become all she has aspired to as a child--strong and as sharp as the angles in her stance as any strategist he's met during the war.

So, he feels no regret in the urge to treat her as any of his equals.

'I don't understand the want to avenge our family, our father? I don't understand what it feels like to take a life in the heat of anger, or the temptation to inflict pain on someone, thinking it will lessen your own? I don't know what has happened to you, Arya, and I mean to learn of your time away from home, but I cannot see this life you are leading as a life worth following through.'

Arya finally sits at his side instead of towering over him. 'You remember the tribe that had ambushed your men? They have seen as I've seen, that you need to make your own justice, your own life, to keep your dignity in this world. They, although wilder than the wildlings we had known as children, are smart enough to know that a life truly free is one that doesn't pick a side in war or bend a knee to a woman who claims to be your queen because she believes she has dragon blood running through her veins.'

'And if picking a side and bending a knee means I can be at peace with my family, and offer my kingdom some semblance of the comforts and stability of a future for their children, what do you say to that?'

'It is a lie. We've been fed lies the moment we were born into our wealth and status.'

He shakes his head, 'You mean to never come home to me or Sansa, to our family?'

He would have missed it if he had blinked, but there is a perceptible softness in her expression before she affirms, 'This is my life, and my justice, Robb.'

For the first time, he wonders if she is sizing him up as well, because there is something passing over her gaze now. It is certainly not a look that had once always been gleaned from any of his younger siblings, admiring and aspiring of him. Now, he wonders how Arya lists the ways to find him inadequate.

No words pass between them in the dead of the night, and when he awakes the next day to confront her again, wishing to change her mind, he finds that he is alone.

It isn't until he stirs from sleep again that he sees his sister return with kindling wood for their dying fire. Her eyes are fixed in his direction, but they are completely blotted out by a familiar glowing white, as if the whites of her eyes had engulfed all its colour. She is within another animal, he realizes. Just as he had done with Grey Wind when he was alive.

Then, she is looking at him.

Wordlessly, she moves toward him to help him sit up, and gestures him to lift his arm up so that she can inspect and tend to his wounds.

'The stab to your side is superficial, you will heal. And you haven't broken into any fever dreams, so it appears you will survive the journey. You must have many lives to spare, brother.' He doesn't chuckle as he's sure she meant to make him do so, but he asks, 'Journey?'

‘The bannermen that have survived have been seen with horses near the west of the wall ruins. I am leading them to us now. You will be going home.'

When he says nothing, she adds, 'This is what you want, is it not? I can't have you in my way, or dragging me down if you catch illness.' Then, just now, he feels a pang of remembrance, because some of her old ways slip into what she means here. Long before, if she meant to get her way, she always japed about the other not having enough wit or strength to accomplish a feat against her. She tended to take advantage of Jon this way too.

Her words meant to be taken seriously, and he knew their separation would haunt him until he'd find her again, but he went with impulse to say, 'You wanted me here to stop you. You knew I'd come, even though you're more than capable of finishing your tasks on your own. You want to go home.'

'I needed skill and strength, and you have neither for me,' she says matter-of-factly. 'I was wrong to send for you.' This finally strikes through him, burning at tongue, 'Now you lie.' 'You think I sent you here for you only to be captured by inexperienced savage warriors? You think because I have my brother here to show me the err of my ways, I will change my mind? I'm not who you wish me to be, a lady of our proud house, that wish died with our mother.' 'She died wishing for our family to be saved, so that we could find hope and peace with all that was done to us,' he spits out his anger. 'You lie because you didn't expect me to be captured, but, more importantly, you didn't expect me to travel days and days to find you, only to defy you.'

'You disappoint me!' She yells over his own heated tone, and finally unleashes, 'Of all the people I wanted to be here, I wanted you, and for you to understand. I wished for mother to survive, and I wept to hear you had lived. But, when I heard that Walda Frey had only met his fate from a sacking during the war instead at your hands, I just wanted to know why.' Listening to her trying to control her breaths, uneven and shallow, allows time for him to gather himself.

'I had my dark hour. I had scarcely recovered after my wedding, sword in my hand before I knew what my plan were, and just out of my sick bed when I heard Walda Frey had died before I awoke from my own presumed death. If I had a chance,I would have killed him, and I would understand you. I would have killed Joffrey for father. Gods, I would have done that for any of you. Arya, I've learnt that all men receive their fate to answer for their crimes, and I will be sure of that as king, but I know now that justice will not always be found by my sword.’ 'You can if you have a strong enough will!' She says, her voice dark and low.

'I have a stronger will to carry on with not only evil men I have slain, but innocent ones that were only in the way. Or, the displaced children of my dead bannermen of our own villages. What of the enemies' children, are they to suffer as if they had a choice in the matter? Arya, don’t you see…’

She stares long enough until it is as she has had her fill of his persistent, pleading look. Then, it is clear in her ducking her exhausted expression that she, like he has, reached a point where there is no returning from or coming back to the matter. And if his sister is still herself in one respect, it is her stubbornness. He hears Jon, who always knew how to ply Arya from herself, and his thoughts hovering over them, pleading for Robb to be wary of his next words.

‘I am not someone you need to save,’ she says pointedly, and as if in finality.

‘No,’ he agrees, releasing an uneasy sigh. ‘The women in my life have been doing that for myself enough times for me to admit this.’

He sits up taller, and reaches into his pocket, the only item he had salvaged from the tribe’s looting of his things. If there was a flicker of recognition, he misses it when he carefully hands the direwolf pin to his sister. Thankfully, she opens her hand to receive it.

‘Father’s,’ she quietly observes, delicately turning it in her hand, as if in reverence.

‘Yours, too. As it was mine. As Winterfell is ours.’ This is the last thing Robb says, hoping it stays with her, even when he is long gone.

Margaery tends to smooth lazy circles round his back, her words a hazy garble that soothes him back to reality, especially when the jolting nightmares come.

‘Sweetling,’ she murmurs against the nape of his neck, molding her front to his back as he rocks back and forth in their bed. The warmth of her, the hearth nearby and the furs swathing them, making his vision clearer. ‘It was a dream,’ she continues to reassure him.

He turns to see the even warmer effect of her gaze. She is familiar to him now as any of his family had ever been, familiar in the most intimate of ways, and what is slowing the racing timpani in his chest is the familiar curve of her gentle smile. It is her fingers lacing with his to squeeze and release him as if in rhythm. It is the swell of her belly not quite as it was as new life has grown within her since two moons ago when they had found she was with child. It is the words, her words, tethering the madness that tries to brim up whenever his dreams trigger him to his weakest.

She always knows what to say. She squeezes the knots between his shoulder blades when her timbre is quiet again, and she tries to coax him to listen, ‘You are home in Winterfell. Eddard is well. I am well. We are at peace.’

He groans again, shaking the remnants of the atrocious images from his head, and reaches up to where her hands grip his shoulders from behind him. He brings one to his lips, kissing the inside of her palm, and gives her his thanks. ‘Eddard, he was in my dreams...I..I will see to him myself.’

‘My love, he is most likely sleeping, dawn has barely broken.’

‘Still,’ he presses another kiss against her wrist now. ‘The dreams take time to settle, even after I see that he is well.’

She tries to bring him back to bed, but, in the end, she dresses them both in plain garbs and furs and joins him to seek their first born’s solar.

‘Eddard…’ He says, his breath caught in his throat, which seems to be constricting from his heart leaping into it, throbbing there. Behind him he can feel Margaery uncomfortably shifting to possibly looking to corners and shadows of his room, and shaking along with him when she finally grasps his hand.

‘Eddard!’ He shouts from his son’s window next.

He can hear Margaery charging to first guardsmen available, commanding them in a strained voice.

Their son, only seven years now, he understands is much like Bran at his age--an explorer, a climber of near impossible heights for someone so small. He does not have to wrack his brains to deduce this, and charge faster than the guardsmen, passing them to reach the grounds below his solar.

There, panting, he whirls around as if he is not accustomed to the new sounds and setting of their own castle grounds. The morning mist and dim orange glow make him feel dizzy, as if he is still envisioning his dream before him. It’s this that panics him the most.

He envisions Eddard surrounded by two beasts, growling and foaming at the mouth at the sight of him, and it as if his nightmare overtakes him again. He even wonders if he hears the beasts howling in the distance.

‘Eddard! Eddard! Eddard!’ He hears Margaery’s shouts mingling with his own cries.

In the godswood, where he finally pinpoints the sound of something large growling at the wooded core.

‘Eddard!’ Robb calls again, desperation in his gasping cry.

‘Father!’ he finally hears Eddard call back, but only briefly questions how calm and even jovial his son sounds as his speeding steps take him into the cold brush of the first frost of Autumn.

‘Eddard…’ he sighs, the feeling returning in his feet, frozen in the wet, dampness of the frost under him. He had not properly worn enough layers to warm his feet, let alone his body.

In a clearing, past the Heart Tree, his son does not stand next any beasts. No, not angry beasts, but family. Nymeria nuzzles at his son, and lovingly licks at him, lapping up russet red curls and his son’s cheeks.

As Robb steps closer, hesitant at first, he sees someone appearing from behind the large wolf.

‘Arya,’ he calls as certain as his steps forward, and sees that his son motions him over.

Arya, looking as if he she were lacking something heady and stormy in her eyes he had seen her wear from before, gestures for him to come closer. He does not have to be told twice.

When he reaches them, his first instinct is to capture his son in his arms, still wary. But, Margaery catches up to interrupt his actions.

‘You gave us a fright, sweetling.’ Margaery’s outstretched arms prompt their son to happily distract himself to fling himself toward her, swaying Margaery’s already unsteady balance on her knees. She peppers kisses on Eddard’s head, whispering her thanks to the gods. Her only distraction comes to eye Arya for answers, appearing less surprised than her husband, and more frightened than him as well. And she only needed to spur Robb with a single look to probe his sister.

But, Nymeria. His son meeting Arya by the Heart Tree. And Arya wearing not only the tarnished sigil of their house, but a look fixed to him that he had not seen for several years, even past their last encounter. She looks to him, and it is with familiarity, but he is certain she looks to his son and exchanges a glint of mischief and conspiring. Gods, this is his sister, and a pang shoots through him as a vision of Arya and Bran, and even Rickon exchanging the same striking glances to each other passes before his mind’s eye.

‘Arya, is Eddard a…’

Arya nods knowingly, ‘He is talented as his father, warging with Nymeria before I had even reached the castle.’

Margaery rises and brings Eddard next to Robb, their hands clasped. ‘His dreams of late have not been dreams, have they?’

‘Dreaming of a being a wolf, traveling from the Wall ruins. Treading through blistering snow storms, and taking shelters in taverns. Yes?’ Arya offers.

Margaery nods, curious rather than wary now. Maybe she senses Robb’s continued calmness.

Robb, indeed calm, considers Arya’s minimal satchel of belongings. Decidedly, he moves to take his sister in his arms. ‘Are you home?’ It’s a question that states the obvious rather than question her, but it is one that he hopes Arya will answer by way of her telling him the truth of her travels and how she had found her way back to Winterfell.

Arya is squeezing him close too, and he does not comment on the way his neck feels suddenly damp from droplets of her likely tears. It only warms his chest to have her hold him, and hear her breathe, ‘I am tired. Very tired.’

Robb nods, as if in agreement, not concerned with how or why she would say so, and certainly not how Nymeria found her way home with her as well.

‘You can rest in the castle,’ Eddard pulls away from his mother and is almost missed for saying, the two siblings so consumed with each other, and starts pulling at Arya’s sleeve.

Brother and sister release each other to peer down at the youngest Stark to regard him. Margaery bites her lip, amused at her husband’s wide-eyed, watery gaze.

‘Won’t you come?’ Eddard persists, his blue eyes expectant and purely curious for a response.

Arya almost physically shakes herself, maybe for her nerves, and maybe because she can sense the intent way Robb looks at her. It is possible that Robb keeps staring at his sister, his son, and Margaery as if it were all still a dream. So, it seems Arya wants to prove that it is not, and she takes the outstretched hand of Eddard.

‘Will you bring me home?’ Arya asks quietly.

Eddard looks to his parents for approval, and, finally, Robb shakily nods, wiping his tears away. Margaery took hold of him then, his hand clasped with hers, and they follow their son and Arya on their way along the path back to the castle.

#robbaery #robb stark #margaery tyrell #robb x margaery #got fanfic

48 notes · View notes

word-bug · 7 years

Text

Of Dates And Misunderstandings

Happy Birthday Sarah ( @lifeinahole27 ) <3

Here’s a little something for you. I am so glad that this time I got something out for your birthday. And I didn’t forget to tag you. It should have been up at your midnight but I will assume there is still somewhere when it’s just the beginning of your birthday.

Special thanks to @ladyciaramiggles and @space-whales for beta reading. Thank you so much. <3

Of Dates & Misunderstandings (T-rated) AO3

Emma’s leg started jittering as she waited for her laptop to power on. She missed the comfort of her bed but with the wine she had already drank she was reluctant to get too relaxed, lest her mind wandered to less than innocent territories that she wasn’t ready for yet. She still believed that online dating sites were a farce, especially ones with the cliched names like - Happy Endings. But, drunk Emma made questionable decisions and signing up to an online dating site at Ruby’s prodding was one of them. She signed in and carefully made her visibility selective. She didn’t want the entire world to know she was online and having to fend off sleazy come-ons that would put her perps to shame.

No, Emma was interested in only one - therealkillianjones.

Emma was intimately aware of the nitty gritty of an online dating website, she had used them too many times to lure in her perps. Men were predictable that way. Act a little coy, laugh, or in this case, send a winky emoji on their crass pick up line and -boom- you had a date. She had fake profiles set up on many of these platforms but Ruby raved about the advantages of finding dates through them, gushing about the men and women she had met. So one day, Emma sat with her friend after sharing a bottle of wine between them and proceeded to set up her profile. Though drunk, they had created her profile including as much information as they could without revealing too much. It was fun while it lasted. Together they had vetted potential suitors and fended off some sleazy ones - a nice way to blow off some steam. So, she was surprised to get a direct message from someone named therealkillianjones.

therealkillianjones - Oh My God! I love that quote and the book. It’s one of my favorites.

Emma was tempted to ignore it. Many people used celebrity names or a mixture of random words not wanting to give away their privacy. Emma respected that but Killian Jones was an actor that she really didn’t like. He wasn’t bad looking, on the contrary, the man was sex on legs, but he was overhyped, and Emma hated overhyped things. Every street corner had vendors selling magazines with his face plastered and what’s the saying - too much of a good thing is bad for you? Killian Jones was that good thing for her. It didn’t help that all the movies that he did were trashy flicks with a manic pixie girl as their protagonist. Emma hated those movies with a passion. So, hatred for Killian Jones was an acquired trait for her and it would take a lot for her to change her mind.

But for the first time, someone had actually gone through her profile, rather than just see her profile picture and send a pick up line. So she figured it couldn’t hurt to reply back and it wasn’t like her username, theswanprincess, was highly original. She figured, if the guy got too clingy, she could just shut the conversation down.

theswanprincess - Me too. The Princess Bride is my all time favorite. And the movie adaptation does it justice.

therealkillianjones - Aye. I agree. I am partial to the book, for obvious reasons. But the movie has a permanent place in my collection. I’m Killian by the way.

Emma scoffed, this guy was taking the charade way too seriously. She had been scrolling through his profile. He seemed nice on paper at least. All the fields of the profile were carefully filled with all the proper grammatical conventions. The profile picture was that of a pirate, she waited for it to download. When it became clearer she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. The picture was of Killian Jones, the actor, in the whole pirate regalia. She remembered seeing it on a magazine cover for his upcoming TV series or movie, she couldn’t remember. She was about to call him out on it when she saw the dots jumping, indicating he was typing.

therealkillianjones - Which house are you in? I was sorted into Gryffindor but in my heart I recognize myself as a Ravenclaw. My brother teases me that I am a Hufflepuff but he doesn’t realize that being sorted into Hufflepuff would be an honour, a fact the movies failed to capture.

All her thoughts to call him out on his choice of name and profile picture flew out the window as Emma launched into a full throttle response to his question .

theswanprincess - I feel you. Some of my friends are the same. Though I was sorted into Hufflepuff and I wear the badge with the honour. Tough luck!

Emma bit her lip resisting her temptation to add a wink at the end. She didn’t want to come on too strong but she was enjoying the conversation and prayed that he wasn’t a douchebag or something worse.

therealkillianjones - Touche, Swan! Rubbing my face in it. So tell me about yourself.

Emma was startled to see him address her with her last name. She hadn’t made her name public so she started working herself up about it, when it struck her that he was calling her by her chosen username. He did tell her that his name was Killian but she wasn’t sure whether it was his real name or not, so she decided an alternate way to find out.

theswanprincess - If you’re gonna call me by Swan, what should I call you? ;)

This time she let the wink remain to maintain the playful tone of the conversation. If he read too much into it, then what was the harm? She was here, after all, to date.

therealkillianjones - As I said before love, Killian will do. ;)

Emma learned over the course of month that he was English but had moved to the States after the death of his parents when he was a teenager. Currently, he was in Ireland for some work and their conversations would be cut short due to the time difference. Emma loved the time when she was on a stakeout the entire night and he had no work the following day. They talked the entire night and she loved it. After a while, she found herself constantly smiling. Ruby had nudged her for that very reason but Emma had waved her teasing aside saying it was just nice days at work. Thankfully, Ruby had forgotten about the dating profile so all was smooth sailing.

She and her online date hadn’t gone beyond the medium of the website to communicate, but no topic other than the specifics about their professional life, remained untouched between them - from past troubles to lost loves, from emotional scars to physical injuries. They talked everything out, she found the anonymity of a dating website helped her open up. He didn’t press her for more, not even a photograph, the one she had used as her profile picture hid some part of her face so no one could outright recognize her. She never did call him out on his username choice, figuring that it could be his real name. It did have an English ring to it, too. So they remained in the bubble. She had almost forgotten about his actor namesake until she came across the trailer for his new show. It was a modern retelling of Peter Pan but with Captain Hook as the lead. The actor Killian Jones was playing it and he looked nice. She was just reeling in what she had seen when the message from her Killian popped up. She didn’t even notice her use of the possessive pronoun when thinking about him.

therealkillianjones - Hey Swan! How is it going there?

theswanprincess - The same old. Nothing exciting. I finally did see the trailer of this new show. I think so it’s called Neverlanders? Neveravengers?

therealkillianjones - The Neverland Rangers?

theswanprincess - Yeah... The show in which the actor you is acting.

therealkillianjones - Did you like it?

theswanprincess - Surprisingly, yeah.

therealkillianjones - Surprisingly?

theswanprincess - Yeah… I mean I see this face on every newspaper stand and I am just so done. It’s just so obvious that the acting choices have been made to cash in on the dashing looks nothing else. I am really glad that this time it was on content matter rather than just looks. I hate people like that, no offense.

therealkillianjones - None taken. Glad to know what you actually think. Swan…. They’re calling me. I’ll get back to you. I had to ask you something.

Emma looked at the clock, confused as to why he was leaving so early when she saw the time. It was almost two. It must be around seven in Ireland, she mentally calculated the time. She was about to close her laptop when another message popped up.

therealkillianjones - Goodbye love. xoxo.

Emma knew what it meant but she didn’t know what to make of it. They had spent the last month talking and never even once had they sent a parting greeting. That was surely crossing a line, right? It was too intimate. But they were on an online dating website so wasn’t that what was expected to come out of a conversation in the end? She went to bed thinking about it and sleep soon engulfed her and, for the first time, she dreamt about her Killian Jones.

The next day, she made conscious effort to not sign in wanting to distance herself and test the waters. She didn’t know what he wanted to ask her so her mind was conjuring weird scenarios. Would he ask her something personal? Or for a photograph? Did it matter? Weren’t they already more intimate than they could physically ever be? So what he could possibly ask her?

The following day proceeded the same way,albeit, Emma was calmer than before. A day away from him had helped her put things into perspective. She realized it didn’t matter what he asked of her. She knew if she said no he would take a step back immediately. He respected her and she him. Suddenly, she wanted to know him, wanted to have a face to go with his name and it didn’t scare her. So when she went back home, she switched on her laptop and logged in, certain a message would be waiting for her. She waited in anticipation but her excitement crashed down on her when there was none. Emma glanced at the time. It was five. Maybe he hadn’t logged in yesterday? So she waited for him. His last activity was in the morning so he had come online but she didn’t understand why he hadn’t sent a message. There hadn’t ever been a day when there wasn’t a message waiting for her. She sat there, browsing aimlessly on the net waiting for a message to come but it never did. She didn’t know when she had drifted off, waking in the morning to find her laptop’s battery had died. She was tempted to switch it back on but decided against it.

When Emma returned home that night, she delayed going online for as long as she could but she knew it was inevitable, it was too much of a habit. She watched some random video and went to check her profile only when she was ready to sleep, not wanting to get excited about nothing. There was one unread message and Emma couldn’t manage to contain her excitement. She opened it but there sat a message from someone named wizardofoz.

wizardofoz - so ur a princess? Want me to use my wand and hv sm wicked ways with you?

Emma scowled seeing the message. It wasn’t from whom she was expecting and it was the worst written message she’d ever seen. She blocked wizardofoz when another message popped up.

therealkillianjones - I don’t know when you’ll get this as the connection is a bit problematic here. I am going back to New York tomorrow and I would really like to meet you. Here’s my number. I am sure I’ll be jetlagged so I won’t be able to message you straight away. Sorry for that. I’m hoping you would like to meet me, too, or we could stay as strangers. Though, I’d rather go forward than backward. Hope you’ll call.

And sure enough there was a New York number attached. If Emma let out a squeal seeing the number, no one would ever know. She really wanted to meet him. Emma glanced at the time. It was around eleven. Would he still be sleeping? She wanted to wait but she couldn’t contain her excitement. Double checking the number, she saved it and opened whatsapp to message him.

The contact list updated and she let out a snort seeing his display picture. Yet again, it was that of the actor Killian Jones but it was only his face with his hook resting near his chin. She had to admit he was kind of cute but she was sure he wouldn’t hold a candle against her Killian. Emma bit her lip, smiling like a schoolgirl with crush, she typed a simple greeting.

“Hey… Swan here.” - E

Emma wasn’t expecting a response. Sure there were double ticks but there weren’t blue ticks so he probably hadn’t seen it and forgotten to switch off his net. She was about to switch to another conversation, when his status changed to online and blue ticks appeared. Before she could process what was happening, her phone started ringing.

“Hello...”

“Hey… love...” came his husky voice and Emma lost her breath for just a moment. He was really English, his accent heavy in his voice. Emma bit her lips but then realized, hitting her forehead against her phone, she was behaving like a teenager.

“Hey… love you there?” His voice came again and Emma realized she still hadn’t replied.

“So you’re really English, huh?” Emma mentally berated herself. Smooth Emma. Real Smooth.

He let out a booming laugh and Emma decided that she really liked his laugh.

“Aye... love. I told you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah… yeah you… did.”

“I can’t believe that we’re really talking.”

“Yeah me too.” She whispered. They remained quiet, words failing them in the moment. Emma didn’t know what to say. They knew each other so well but she didn’t know how to talk to him like this. Suddenly, he was real and not just some stranger on the net. She wanted to say something but he beat her to the punch.

“So… I was wondering… I mean... shit I’m not normally this bad with words. I don’t even know your first name….”

“It’s Emma.”

“Emma….” It seemed he was testing it and Emma really liked hearing it from his mouth.

“Emma… Emma Swan… It’s…. It’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you.” She whispered back and the silence returned. She wanted to see him. She wanted to meet him but she didn’t know how to broach the subject.

“Uh… Emma… Swan… I was wondering… would you like to go on a date with me? I mean… like not a date… but like would you like to… uh… meet me. I would love to put a complete face to your name.”

“I would too.” Emma answered. She wanted to know what he really looked like.

“Huh?”

“I mean… I would love to go out with you.”

“Ohh.. great. Tomorrow at 7 at the Eleven Madison Park?”

“Yeah… sure… text me the address.”

“Yeah… sure. Bloody hell. I can’t believe this is happening.” He laughed nervously. He was adorable.

“Can’t wait to meet you.”

“Aye… me too, love.”

Killian had texted her the address as soon as they said their farewell. Emma was excited to finally meet him and put a face to his name. Seeing his profile picture for so long, she had started imagining him as the actor Killian Jones and it unsettled her because this Killian was a real person and she didn’t want to give him someone else’s face. When she had looked up the address she was surprised to see the grandeur of restaurant. She started thinking of the dresses that would match the place. Emma really wanted to call Ruby, knowing her friend had dress for literally every occasion but this thing with Killian was so fragile and she really wanted to keep it to herself for the time being.

In the end she went shopping for a new dress. She had her eye on a black and bronze number for so long but couldn’t muster enough strength to buy it - because there was no one she wanted to wear it for and she really didn’t want to wear it for a fake date with a perp. The dress was too beautiful for that. It was a one shoulder dress with a black upper bodice and minimal embellishments. The lower portion of the dress was in complete contrast, it had a flowing bronze skirt, finishing just above her knees with delicate embroidery that caught the light depending on the angle. Emma had paired it with black pumps that made her legs look shapely. She had gone with minimal makeup but had carefully curled her hair in perfect ringlets that weren’t too tight and flowed freely. She had forgone jewellery save for a set of diamond drop earrings that she had bought on her last birthday. She looked and felt beautiful.

When she reached the restaurant, she was, yet again, taken with the beauty of the place. It was elegantly lit with artificial candles that looked like diamonds floating in the sky.

When she reached the reception, she was guided to a more private dining area. It was intimate, with tables kept far away to offer privacy to the patrons, quite a contrast to the outer seating area of the restaurant. It was currently empty and she was glad there wasn’t anyone to witness their first meeting. She saw the fire crackling in the fireplace and got lost in the movements of the flame when she heard her someone speak.

“You’re way more beautiful in person.”

Emma turned around startled at his sudden entry.

“Fuck… you scared me….” her hand went to her chest trying to calm her breathing. She looked up but her eyes widened as she saw him. “Holy shit you’re Killian Jones.” The face that had haunted her for the last week was standing in front of her and she didn’t know what to make of it. He just looked confused as if she was being absurd.

“Yeah… and you’re Emma Swan. Are you okay, love?”

“Are you… are you insane? You’re Killian Jones. THE freaking Killian Jones. Star of Neverengers.”

“Neverland Rangers.”

“Yeah… The same. I am sorry. I think the maitre’d misdirected me. I was about to meet someone who, oddly, is also called Killian Jones. I think they mixed it up. I’ll just leave.” As she started walking, he came behind her catching her arm.

“They didn’t mix it up Swan. You’re here to meet Killian Jones. And I am Killian Jones.”

“You’re not my Killian.” Emma spoke exasperated that the actor couldn’t see reason. Was he just a pretty face? How could he be so dumb?

“Your Killian…” His eyebrows waggled hearing her call him that.

“Yeah… Now if you would please…”

“Swan… Wait...” he took her hand again, “I really am your Killian. You’ve seen my picture on my profile.”

“No I saw your picture...” she spoke pointing at him, it was getting exhausting, she really had to leave lest her Killian believed she had ditched him, “on my Killian’s profile who is a fan of yours.”

“What are you talking about? That was me. Why would anyone use someone else’s picture on a dating website? That’s insane.”

“Yeah exactly… This is insane. I am leaving.” For the third time that night, she was stopped from leaving.

“Swan… would you just wait? Who did you think I was? You really had no idea that it was me?”

“I mean… yeah obviously I had no idea. I mean why would you need a online dating profile? This just doesn’t make sense.”

“You love cinnamon on hot chocolate. It always warms you up and makes you feel secure and happy. ‘Your Killian’ has a ship named Jolly Roger that he wanted to take and sail towards the horizon. ‘Killian Jones the actor’ aka me should make better career choices and not rely on my good looks. Though, I was flattered to know that you find me dashing.”

“Yeah… well I’m not blind,” but Emma realised she was getting carried away. She also realized that she had criticized his career choices to his face.

“Shit… I called your career choices rubbish.” Emma covered her mouth in horror and Killian guffawed seeing her like that. She threw a venomous look towards him but that didn’t perturb him.

“Yeah… admittedly that was a little strange but then you said things I felt myself so I let it slide. Love… no one finds my career choices more rubbish than myself. But I needed to find my footing in the industry before taking riskier projects.” His voice then took a softer note, “you really didn’t know it was me? I thought you knew.”

“I swear I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were a fan and then you started talking about books and it was long forgotten. And why on earth would you need a online dating profile?” Emma asked wondering what he was doing on the portal in the first place.

“Too much drinking leads to questionable things in life. And the sort of anonymity that it provides… I don’t find that much in real life. Why do you have a dating profile? I can’t believe a lady like you needs to resort to these means.” Emma blushed under his appreciating gaze and Killian smirked seeing his effect on her. They were standing closer than before and he could smell her perfume and it was the sweetest thing.

“Well… When you go on too many fake dates to apprehend people who skip their bail, your dating pool gets kind of shallow.”

“So you’re a bail bonds person? That’s hot, no offense.” Killian spoke making Emma smirk. They slipped into silence, neither knowing what to do. Now that Killian knew she had no idea it was him who she was talking to, he couldn’t help wonder whether she wanted to go out with him or not. When they had started talking he had been happy because he had been connecting with a person who knew who he was but had chosen to talk to him for who he really was. But now things were different and he didn’t know what to do with the information.

“Uhh… well you’re welcome to join me for dinner. I mean you were expecting someone else and I mean I will understand if you want to go home,” he spoke hurriedly.

It took sometime for his words to register with Emma and she was touched that he was giving her the option to back out . She hadn’t imagined that she would be meeting a celebrity with the intention of going on a date with him. If she was to date him, her life wouldn’t remain the same. But she had been his friend for more than a month and it had been amazing. If he had been just Killian, she would have jumped on the chance to date him. Did it change if he wasn’t just Killian rather The Killian Jones? There was only one way to find out.

“Yeah… let’s have dinner,” she said, a grin covering her face and the smile she got in return rivalled the sun.

In the end, she didn’t just decide to stay for the date, she also kissed him and went on a second date with him. He had joked during the dinner that she should help him in vetting new scripts and few weeks later, she was doing just that, in his shirt, on his bed with him bringing her her hot chocolate and spooning her as they read one of the scenes together.

Happy Birthday Once Again, Love! Have a long and happy life <3

#cs ff #cs fic #Captain Swan #Emma Swan #Killian Jones #Of Dates and Misunderstandings #Vaish Writes #Happy Birthday Sarah #Finally Have Something #For you

146 notes · View notes

bonnissance · 7 years

Note

I wish you would write a fic about the adventures of pastel bi Morven Digby, and the loves of her life, and the lesbian foster mum Bernie Wolfe, who tries to help her along the way.

AAU? more like GAyAU I think (a.k.a THE GAYU GAYAAU OF G A Y). AAU ensemble cast, teen rating, 2600+, (canon compliment fluff).

So this ended up being w a y longer than I’d originally anticipated, so it’s under the cut to save everyone’s dashes, and many thanks to the darling @biancagrieve for the beta and half the title :)

Bernie heaves yet another heavy sigh as she flips the patient file shut and thumps the now complete paperwork in the out tray. She sighs again, possibly even harder, as she looks at the still looming pile and sneers.

��Bloody Ric,” she grumbles to herself, “coming in here, demanding all paperwork get done but not doing any of it himself.” She purses her lips, grabs the next file, and picks up her pen again. “I mean, I know it’s my paperwork, but he could still lend a hand till I’ve shifted this backlog,” she reasons, “that’d be more useful than posturing around the ward all day.”

She knows it’s petty, even if it is a bit warranted, but sometimes grumbling is good for the soul. So Bernie grumbles as she works her way through some of the stack while the ward is quiet. She likes to thinks it’ll make the time move faster until her shift is over soon.

She is still grumbling at the now almost finished pile when she hears a knock at the door.

She looks up, sees Morven blinking back at her, decked in civvies and presumably already clocked off.

“Fancy coming to Albie’s tonight?” Morven asks, chipper and beaming at Bernie in the low light.

“Ah, probably not tonight, I want to get this bloody stack sorted.”

“Ric had another go at you about paperwork?” Morven ventures and Bernie smirks.

“You know it,” she says with a chuckle. “Albie’s another time?”

“Oh, okay, see you tomorrow,” Morven says, close to a sigh, and makes to leave.

Bernie mightn’t be the most skilled reader of humans in the world but she isn’t completely dense; if she didn’t know any better she’d think Morven looks downright dejected as her rebuff.

“What’s up?” she asks before Morven can turn to walk away. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine, of course,” Morven reassures with a flap of her hand. Her face shifts as she seems to reconsider. “It’s just, ah, actually, I’ve got something I want to talk to you about?”

“Oh, okay.” She never liked the sound of “we need to talk”. “What’s Ric done now?”

“Oh, nothing!” Morven flaps again. “It’s not about the ward at all, and I, ah, I’d rather talk about it away from work, if we can?”

Bernie blinks, a bit confused, and wonders what it is that Morven needs to talk about, talk to her about, specifically.

“Ah, yeah, sure, of course.” Even if Morven has only asked to talk because everyone else she’s already reached out to hasn’t helped, she’s still asked for Bernie’s ear, and Bernie ever was one to leave a friend stranded. “Give me half an hour and I’ll meet you at the bar?”

Morven beams wide and nodded vigorously. “Great, I’ll see you there! Thank you!”

Bernie watches Morven as she races past the window and stops herself wondering what Morven wants to talk about. Instead, she turns her attention back the paperwork and does her level best to get it all finished before she leaves to find out what exactly it is that Morven needs to tell her.

Bernie walks into Albie’s and spies Morven sitting at the bar with an empty seat next to her, waiting for Bernie. She strides in, straddles the bar stool, and gets herself comfortable. She tries to flag down one of the bar staff.

“So,” Bernie prompts in lieu of a greeting. “What do you want to talk about?”

Morven snaps towards her, face shocked—Bernie notices the phone on her hand and assumes Morven had been too distracted to notice she’d arrived—before collecting herself and smiling. Bernie mumbles an apology and wonders what’s got Morven so jumpy. She is nervous, to say the least, and Bernie beings to wonder what Morven has to talk about it and why it has to be Bernie she talks about it to.

Morven brushes off the apology, says it’s nothing to worry about. The barman comes over and Bernie orders a glass of pinot gris. Bernie turns back to Morven and the look in her eye has Bernie more worried than ever and her brain goes to the absolute worse case scenario it can muster. The barman comes back and starts pouring as Bernie blurts out her suspicions.

“Has Cam got you pregnant?” Morven snaps her head towards Bernie and blinks. The barman keeps pouring the wine. Bernie’s hyper-anxious brain takes Morven’s silence as a “yes” and she just manages to keep herself from flying off the handle. “I’ll kill him, I swear to god,” Bernie rambles, reaching for her phone to give her son a right earful about safe sex precautions.

“What!” Morven’s shout gives her pause and Bernie looks up with her hand hovering over the call button. “No, god no, it’s nothing like that, I mean, we aren’t even together, I just—”

“You’re not?” She really ought to keep better track of what the kids are doing now days. She turns to her glass of wine, realises it’s ¾ full and the barman has slunk away rather than get caught in their conversation. She reminds herself to tip later.

“I mean, we’re not, we’re kinda dating, maybe?” Bernie frowns at Morven and carefully picks up her glass. “We, um, we both have things we need to figure out, about ourselves, so we’re keeping things very casual at the moment.”

“Ah, I see.” She doesn’t, not really, but she thinks it’s a good idea to sit back and let Morven lead this conversation than put her foot in it again. She’s going to stick to supportive “umms” and “oohs” until she knows what’s going on and sip her wine until she understands the world again.

“You do? Oh good! I was wondering if you’d heard about the catfishing thing or not, I mean you obviously has more important things to worry about at the time and—”

“Wait, sorry, catfishing?” Bernie wonders what the aquarium had to do with anything.

“You know, someone pretending to be someone they’re not online to, ah, strike up a relationship?”

“Right,” Bernie says incredulously. The things kids get up to these days. “And that’s a thing, that happened, to you, ah, recently?”

“Yes? I mean, you haven’t heard?”

Bernie shakes her head.

“Oh, right, well, Jasmine catfished me, pretending to be this guy named Nathan, and we were messaging a lot and he was really kind and sweet and funny and I really liked him and hoped we were dating but in the end it was just Jas trying to be nice and at first I was really mad but then it got me thinking I really liked Nathan, only Nathan was Jasmine and, ah, I…” Morven trails off and Bernie nods, trying to keep up—she didn’t remember dating being this complicated when she was young—and waits for Morven to figure out what else she needs to say.

“So, I figured out that what I was feeling was for Jasmine…and, ah, that got me thinking, about liking Jasmine…and liking girls…” Morven trails off again, rubbing her fingertips together and staring at the ground.

Bernie finally cottons on what this conversation is really all about.

“Ah, right! So, Jasmine…endeared herself to you while pretending to be this, Nathan fellow, and then you found out she’d just been lying to you only you weren’t as mad as you thought you should have been and it made you wonder if you might like her and then end up being a little, well, ah, gayer than you planned?” Bernie asks gently, hoping to coax Morven out of the nervous shell she’s encased herself in now.

Morven giggles, looks up at Bernie with a small smile, and Bernie smiles back.

“That’s the long and the short of it, really,” Morven says as she scrunches her nose and shrugs. “And I was, um, hoping you could ah, teach me how to ask out girls?”

Bernie blinks at Morven before bursting out into reams of honking laughter. Eventually she calms down enough to wipe her eyes and sees Morven has clammed up again.

“No, no, sorry, Morven, it’s just… I’m really not the best person to ask about that sort of thing, I’ve never really asked anyone out, not properly.”

“You haven’t?” Morven asks, disbelieving, and Bernie shakes her head.

She really hadn’t ever, except with maybe Serena and the dinner that never happened. But by that stage they were already best friends and half in love and muddling through, and that’s not really the same thing as asking someone out at all, Bernie reasons, and she rather doubts that suggesting to aim for that kind of situation is actually good advice. And with Alex, they were really just a rush of wanting and not thinking and it wasn’t as if they ever really dated, not with Bernie as Alex’s commanding officer, and no chance of being public about them at all. She hadn’t ever really gotten around to it with blokes either, there hadn’t been many before Marcus and he’d been the one to ask her out, all she’d done was say yes to pints after class one day.

Bernie scrunches up her face and shrugs.

“But I imagine it’s not very different from asking out blokes, and I supposed the best way to do it it just to, ask them out.”

“Oh, thanks,” Morven says, a touch snarky. “That’s very useful, never would have thought of that on my own.”

“No, I mean, literally, just ask, suggest coffee, or drinks one day, something casual, and see where it goes from there.”

“But, what if she’s not, interested like that?”

“Then she say no,” Bernie replies simply, still unsure how she managed to get herself into this conversation. “Maybe she’ll get a bit embarrassed, or flustered, and I know it’ll suck, especially if you already like someone and they say no, but really Morven, it’d hardly be the end of the world.”

Morven ponders the thought and Bernie retrospectives for a moment. “You’re still figuring yourself out, and it helps to be kind to yourself as you go, and don’t stress yourself out. Just, focus on the first step, on asking, before you get too worried about the rest of if.” Bernie smiles kindly at Morven. “Because if you get too bound up in the what happens after you ask, the what ifs and the maybes, you’ll never ask, and you’ll never know that the answer might have been. Isn’t it better to ask and know, than never ask at all?” God, her therapist would be proud of her right now.

“You’re right, I know, I guess I’m just nervous.”

“Oh, so you have got your eye on someone then?” Bernie asks, she had wondered. Morven smiles and Bernie has a thought. “God, it’s not Jasmine is it?” Even Bernie can see how that would be a less than stella idea, given what Morven’s just told her.

“No, no, it’s, ah, you know the new barista at Pulses?”

Bernie shakes her head and reminds herself to pay more attention when she orders coffee next. She smiles, eggs Morven to keep on talking, and sips her wine as she listens to Morven gush about the barista with the dreamy eyebrows and a peach perfect smile.

Bernie is midway through ward rounds with the F1s when Morven comes racing into the ward. Well, not really racing, given it would be highly dangerous to actually run on the ward, but more of a very fast waddle on the tips of her toes. She rushes up to Bernie, eyes sparkling, with smile so wide and practically bouncing.

“She said yes!” Morven hisses, trying to keep her voice down but evidently wanting to shout things from the rooftops.

Bernie snaps her attention to the junior doctors and excuses them both. “Be back in a moment,” she says as she guides Morven, gently and by the elbow, towards her office.

“Who said what?”

“Laura, the barista, said yes!” Morven eyes are still gleaming with excitement but she’s calmed down enough not to be bouncing anymore. “I was taking a break at Pulses and she had her break too and she come over and there were no other tables so she asked if I’d mind if she sat with me and of course I said I wouldn’t mind and we got chatting and she said she always like serving me because I was always smiling and I just, asked her out for drinks, thought coffee might be a bit too mundane given she works in a cafe, and she said yes!” Morven stops and sucks in a huge breath before adding, “I even got her number!”

Bernie beams wide, eyes bright, as she fully catching on to the conversation. “Well done you,” she congratulates Morven. “I’m very glad to hear it went well.”

“You were right, about not worrying what she said, and now I’ve got a date for Friday night!”

“That’s great!” Bernie exclaims, before frowning when she remembers. “Hang on, aren’t you covering for Fletch on Friday while he and Raf have date night?”

Morven’s face falls. “Bollocks.” She runs her fingers over the nape of her neck and scuffs her toe on the ground, looks up at Bernie with big pleading eyes. “Any chance that you could cover me covering Fletch?” she asks, voice sugar sweet.

Bernie purses her lips, huffs out her nose, and remember Cam is rostered on to work that night. They’ve not gotten a chance to catch up since her and Morven’s discussion and Bernie is still wondering what sort of soul-searching Cam has been doing recently.

“Oh, go on then.” Maybe if they’re both trapped on the ward she can get him to spill the beans. “I’ll take the shift.” Morven beams at Bernie and almost claps with excitement and Bernie can’t help smiling back. She turns serious again, just for a moment, to add “but you’ll own me, remember that!”

Morven giggles, nods her head vigorously, and dashes away. Bernie watches as Morven ends up getting flagged down by Fletch for a consult. She looks at Fletch and thinks of Raf, still upstairs in Keller but due back soon.

She looks away and thinks of Serena, gone from the ward and waiting for her at home. Thinks of waking up that morning with Serena wrapped around her. Thinks about how very hard it is to get out of bed each morning when it means leaving Serena still curled up in their bed. Bernie knows the only thing that gets her out of bed in the morning is keeping the ward firing on all cylinders, just the way she promised. She knows she only leaves the house to look after the ward the way Bernie promised Serena she would in her absence.

She looks back at Morven and Fletch and then behind them. She notices Lou chatting up the new agency nurse on the other side of the nurses station. She smiles as the new nurse chats right back, hand on her hip and ponytail flicking from side to side as she laughs at something Lou said.

Bernie turns her attention back the new brood of junior doctors: sees Jane making eyes at a patient as she asks how she managed to dislocate her knee (playing lacrosse, Bernie hears the response as she walks back up to the bed) and her two other doctors, John and Romesh, flirting with one another (they snap back to attention when she stands in front of them).

“Jesus!” Bernie thinks as she bites back a smile while Jane fills her in on the patient history she’d missed. “Is anyone on this ward straight?”

#Bernie Wolfe #Morven Digby #holby city #AAU? more like GAAYU I think #i wrote a fic #Gay Shizz(tm)#Good Shizz(tm)#literally everyone is a little bit gay like e v e r y o n e in this has more than a pinch of gay and it's great #Morven Digby: Pastel Bi w a heart of gold (tm)#tiny precious wolfe!puppy #alcohol mention for ts

39 notes · View notes

buttercup-of-kaer-morhen · 4 years

Text

Of Thorns and Buttercups

~Ch 6/?~

(Beauty and the Beast AU, Kiiiinda. It has definite elements of the original story cause I’m a sap for Fairytale AUs. I hope you enjoy. Also shout out to @sophiakuso1 for being my beta. Here you can find Beginning or Previous) Jaskier makes more progress into unraveling secrets and chipping away at Geralt's heart. Please enjoy this chaotic bard's adventures!

Note: Lew is still pronounced Lef because it is polish just as a heads up.

Primary Tags: Beast! Geralt, Belle! Jaskier, Memory Alteration Via Curse, It really only affects Jaskier right now Also on AO3!

————————-

Jaskier awoke with a start. His dream was... odd. Straight out of a fairy tale or romantic ballad if he were to describe it. His heart so desperate for a knight, metaphorical or literal, to come into his life to love him like in every sappy poem and song he ever dealt read or sang, it went to the extent of affecting his dreams. He could feel a flush of embarrassment rushing to his face as he remembered his own mind even put him in the place of a maiden who met a dashing silver haired knight in a picturesque autumn forest. The traitor! Jaskier couldn't help thrashing his arms and legs about in the bed before finally sitting back up with a huff. He would have liked to scream in embarrassment but thought better of it seeing as it would be rude and potentially more humiliating if the Beast were to hear him and come check what was wrong. But now that he paused and thought about the hair color of his knight in shining armor in his dream, it looked very similar to the Beast’s fur. It was a wintery soft looking white that appeared as striking and fluffy as fresh fallen snow. Focusing more on it made his heart ache pitifully while also making him yearn for the company of the Beast simultaneously. He decided then that it would be better to shrug off the odd painful emotion, however, and latch onto his desire for fluffy company instead. Whatever had occurred in the past had happened, and he doubted he could change that right then, so he might as well focus on helping his hopefully new found friend... or, well, he would dearly love to make friends with the Beast. They could both really use a friend right about now. Invigorated by his new goal, Jaskier climbed out of bed ready to face the day. Whether it meant getting to spend quality time with the fellow or him filling his day dutifully studying the flowers for any hint of a connection to the curse… all by himself... He would be completely fine either way, at least he would be helping! Honestly, he didn’t mind the idea of being completely and utterly alone all day again! It’ll be great, just like his days just after Oxenfurt, except he wasn’t on the road obviously.

He stretched in the warmth of his room, thanking whatever gods were above for granting him the luxury of having a magical fireplace to keep him warm in this cursed winter as he was setting about readying himself to face the day. Before he could even think about what to wear, he spotted another set of clothes on the trunk in front of his bed. It was almost scary how the great Beast could sneak into his room to leave gifts without disturbing Jaskier’s sleep with how big he appeared to be. The bard also couldn’t decide if it was sweet or creepy that he kept doing it, but he settled on sweet for now since he found all that fur rather endearing compared to a regular human stranger. The doublet and trousers, which were more bloomers this time, were a rich amber with burgundy accents which reminded him of the forest from his dream. The delicate embroidery on it even had a leaf motif as well. It may have been a coincidence, but he couldn’t help but smile nonetheless. The soft gauzy chemise and stockings to match the ensemble were a lovely cream color which seemed to tie it all together with soft dark brown boots that were set to the side. He gently put the garments on after he finished his usual morning routine--the importance of moisturizing, children--and when he turned to make the bed everything was already done just like the day prior. “You know you don’t have to be shy. You can do things in front of me just as you do with the Beast.” He spoke aloud into the empty room, not expecting any form of answer, but the curtains on the bed fluttered slightly. He took that as a yes and enjoyed another small victory.

For a moment, he considered going in search of the Beast, but that hadn’t worked out well yesterday, so he decided to just finish what he had started last night. After a short whole of skimming through his select few books that he had collected, he decided the Herbarium and Antidotarium were far too academically written for him to really understand. Besides, they both seemed to not really focus on flora at all. Plants in general, yes, flowers not so much. He set them aside to put back later, but the small stool he placed them on trotted out of the room with the books. “...Thank you!” He called after the silly thing, after his initial shock, realizing that the stool had most likely gone to return them for him. How kind! The Botanist's Companion to the Identification of Flora had proved quite useful for, well, identifying the flowers he didn’t know of course, but it didn’t go much further then that. So he then turned his sights on the homemade Alchemy text and the Assasination guide book. If the flowers had any use for magic or medicine, Jaskier was sure these would have it all there for him in black and white… Except after searching through the neat penmanship for a couple of hours-- pity these didn’t have an index--and jotting down notes as he went, he found there was no correlation. Some were poisonous, some were medicinal, some were magical, some were a combination of the three, and although he assumed magic and alchemy were practically the same thing, none of the four flowers had any use in the same potions or spells he found. Bottom line was that the flowers and their associated parts had no practical use as a whole together.

Changing his line of thought, he kept his notes, but turned to his final book and opened it. Symbolism was always the way to a bard’s heart, but he hadn’t expected a sorceress or sorcerer to pay much heed to it. Although, perhaps whoever it was to cast the spell was just adding insult to injury. It was like adding some kind of reminder or petty jab to taunt the Beast in his magical prison in the form of flowers. Odd, but not outside the realm of possibility really. He had once gone to such petty lengths as to bribe the laundress at Oxenfurt to “accidentally” dye all of Valdo Marx’s white linens and bed dressings to a color Jaskier knew he particularly hated for weeks just to drive the insufferable prat up the wall. Then to top it all off with a bow, he convinced the lady Valdo was courting at the time, that said color was his favorite and really got him going in the bedroom. He graciously assisted the fine lady to decorate her room in it, as well as oh-so-helpfully assisted her with picking out a stunning outfit to surprise and delight the odious weasel. It all proved to be worth it when the other man had been suspended for a week after he hollered at and practically mauled everyone who crossed his path. Now, many would think Jaskier was being unduly cruel, but in his defense, it was well and truly deserved. He only committed the act of vengeance after the vile piece of shit had stolen one of Jaskier’s early compositions which he had slaved over for months to complete and proceeded to present it as his own for the final examinations. It was butchered and Jaskier couldn’t bring himself to sing it ever again. So if whoever really disliked this Beast was petty enough, Jaskier wouldn’t put it past them to add a small detail of insulting foliage to the whole shabang.

Upon opening the small journal filled with a ladies delicate crisp script, he set to work. To his confusion, they didn’t all come together as a whole that meant fuck you or something as equally aggressive. It was more mournful and sad. Thistle carried the heavy tones of pain, anger, and pride, which was not at all surprising of the devilish little thing, from what the text said. The Zinnia spoke of an absence while the cyclamens implied a separation that led to the absence. The worst and most heart wrenching of them all were the little purple hyacinths that pleadingly asked for forgiveness. Jaskier didn’t really get the whole picture yet, but he did understand that, as beautiful as the back garden was, it was a reminder. It was a symbol of regret, and something was undoubtedly hidden in the center of the maze. Hopefully a major clue or, if he was lucky enough, the key to breaking the curse. Regardless, the bard was even more determined to unravel what it all meant now than ever. First, however, he needed to gather more flowers and try to pick his way through the maze to its center.

He set the sad blossoms to the side with the other materials and the journal before pulling on his bright cloak, ready to press on now that he had more stable footing underneath him. A glance to the windows showed that it was practically midday and he had skipped breakfast… again. Whoopsies. Not wanting to take too long though, he popped into the dining room and tucked some apples into his cloak pockets, also managing to remember to grab a couple for the mare--as he promised to do--from the table that was slowly clearing itself for dinner later in the evening. He left through the front entrance and made his way to the stables so he wouldn’t forget to give the lady her treat.

He stopped short upon entering, however, because the horse was not alone this time. It seemed he was her second visitor of the day. Standing at her side was the Beast, brush in hand, lovingly grooming her while whispering words Jaskier sadly could not hear. The bard couldn’t help but feel elated that he had such good fortune that day. He did, however, war with himself on whether or not he should disturb the tranquil, domestic scene, but the decision was made for him as the lady huffed in Jaskier’s direction, which had the Beast’s gaze snapping up to him. The troubadour’s bright smile was met with an annoyed scowl however, and had Jaskier regretting his mistake of accidentally interrupting. Before he could think of an excuse to quickly get out of the Beast’s hair, the rough baritone called out, halting his thoughts. “What?” It was demanding and clipped but not angry at least.

Jaskier licked his lips nervously as he stepped forward, trying to remember what he had come to do all of a sudden. Thankfully, the gentle knock of the apples against his knee, concealed in his cape, jolted his memory . “Ah! Oh, I just came to bring a treat to the lady. She helped me in a way yesterday and I wanted to thank her.” He could feel his cheeks warm with embarrassment as the words left his mouth. He realized how ridiculous it sounded, but at least it was the truth.

He expected a scoff or a growl to follow his ridiculous statement, but he was met with wide surprised eyes before the Beast’s face was back to its usual flat stare in the blink of an eye. The Beast said nothing further, but he did hum in acceptance, or at least that’s what Jaskier was going to assume it meant. When the Beast turned back to tending to the horse, Jaskier felt some of the tension leave him. He could do this, he could talk to the intriguing fellow and possibly convince the other to spend time with Jaskier in the day, not just at dinner.

Jaskier quietly moved towards the two in the stall and cautiously caught the horse’s attention, not wanting to startle her. “Hello, Madam! It’s lovely to see you again!” His mouth moved of its own accord, prattling on at the horse rather than the Beast to hopefully disperse his sudden onset nerves. “I have brought you a treat, as promised.” He continued as he stepped into the stall, putting him rather close to the great mass of fur. The space felt smaller than the other day with all three of them in it, and the bard felt his heart hammering in his throat, ready to run away with itself. He didn’t quite understand his own reaction, but he was tempted to blame it on the strange dream and how the Beast’s fur reminded him of the knight’s hair. He supposed he was needier for companionship then he thought, a matter he usually dealt with by finding some one night stand that gave him the physical if not emotional comfort he longed for. As he tried to quell his racing heart, the Beast shifted further away. The troubadour almost felt like an idiot as he realized the Beast could most likely hear the offending organ and it made him uncomfortable. Hell, if Jaskier could hear someone’s heartbeat race just by stepping into a horse stall which put them in close proximity to one another, he would think them strange too. All in all he was not making a good impression on the other who had already wanted to get rid of him. Mentally shoving down all the weird feelings, he fed the darling mare her treat.

He needed to act as charming and likable as he usually was, but he couldn’t understand why none of his usual demeanor came out around the other man. He cleared his throat, glancing over at the other. “I apologise for if I offended you in some way last night during dinner. I thought things were going well, but I suppose I must have crossed a line somewhere that upset you, and for that I am remorseful. I didn’t intend to be rude.” He began speaking to fill the silence. It was not anywhere near what he had intended to say, but it also wasn’t the worst way to start. Besides, it was the truth. He felt like it had been his fault that everything was abruptly cut short. An apology was far better than glossing over what had happened, acting like it hadn’t occurred, and talking about the weather. The Beast only hummed in response to Jaskier’s apology, so the bard continued on. “By the way, whose horse is this? She’s an absolute peach! Did she get trapped here as well?”

The Beast grunted slightly in reply, very articulate, and Jaskier assumed that was all he was going to get out of him until finally the low rumbling tone graced the bard’s ears again. “She’s mine. Had her for years, and yes, she is most likely trapped here by the same curse that traps us.” The stoic individual explained, and it was so very sweet how fond he sounded when speaking of his horse.

Except it was as clear as mud. The Beast hadn’t really given him anything but sparse details that told him nothing except for some reason, a Beast in a cursed castle required a horse that he most likely couldn’t ride with his size being what it was. Jaskier would just have to take solace in the fact that he had gotten more words to come out of him than the short, clipped responses… Also that did confirm he was most likely a man before all this if he had had a horse, but it still didn’t tell him anything of the Beast’s status, class, or profession. Anyone could have a horse as long as they could make enough coin to care for it. “Well she’s a darling. May I- Is there any way I can help?” He tried to offer but the Beast shook his head with a happy huff. Jaskier sighed softly in disappointment. Well this wasn’t going very far… Jaskier decided to try another angle. “So, Beast, I really do mean it when I say-”

“Don’t” The deep growl cut him off and Jaskier’s confusion was met with a deep glower before the Beast’s eyes looked anywhere but at him. He didn’t look just annoyed this time but outright angry.

“What?” Jaskier could only ask dumbly because he didn’t know where he had yet again misstepped.

“Don’t call me that.” He growled, looking genuinely distressed and the bard felt rather bad for it… “Beast..” He spit out the word like it tasted foul on his tongue, muttering mostly to himself.

“Well…” Jaskier started gently, taking a tentative step forward and laying a hand lightly on the Beast’s arm. He counted it as a win when it was not shaken off. “What should I call you? I--You have yet to give a name, but I apologize for the callous insensitivity I have displayed…” He asked, deciding that he should’ve at least apologized for putting his foot in his mouth again. Just because the Beast knew who he was didn’t mean he shouldn’t have asked the other for his.

The Beast seemed to consider him critically for a moment while deciding whether or not to answer. “Geralt.”

Jaskier couldn’t help but smile, finally knowing the Beast’s name. “It’s nice to make your acquaintance, Geralt.” He spoke with a flourish and a bow, smiling playfully at the Beast, who rolled his eyes at the bard’s antics, but it felt fond in a way. “Now, as I was trying to say, I really do wish to help break the curse… If you’ll allow, that is.” He offered and amended, fully planning to continue helping regardless but it’d be easier if Geralt consented and provided information.

The Beast sighed in annoyance, but Jaskier could tell that he was considering whether or not to trust the bard to help, so Jaskier waited patiently. “...The curse changes and shifts according to the person apparently.” He relented vaguely.

Jaskier was starting to think he and Geralt were going to need a little sit down to have a nice long chat about a thing called details. Really! It was a familiar exasperation that he felt, but didn’t dwell on it since the conversation seemed more pressing. “Sounds rather annoying and rather unfair of the caster to not even give you a hint on how to break it.”

Geralt nodded stoically, a word that was rather fitting of the cursed man, as he ushered the bard out of the stall. Both said goodbye to the mare before stepping out into the crisp winter scene. It almost felt like the Beast didn’t want the horse to hear their discussion and the thought nearly had him giggling, but he refrained. Must maintain a serious professional demeanor and all that to get any details. “Don’t know much else yet except that the spell provides anything I need to break the curse… And there’s a time limit.” His tone was grave and the notion sent chills up the troubadour’s spine.

“What happens if time runs out…” He couldn’t help asking as fear creeped into his mind. He may not know the Beast well, but he got a good feeling from him, and he didn’t want to lose yet another companion if he could help it. There was also the matter of what would happen to him if the curse’s time limit ran out since he was now stuck there. It was just as likely that he’d be freed as it was that he’d die with the Beast.

Geralt didn’t respond however. He shrugged and shook his head, not meeting Jaskier’s eye, telling the bard that even he didn’t know what fate awaited him, but it was most likely very grim. Jaskier didn’t like the somber air that had enveloped them after the conversation lapsed, so he tried to reassure them both with false bravado he didn’t quite feel in the moment. “Well, nothing to fear really. I’m sure with my help, we’ll be able to break this curse in no time.”

The Beast, however, snorted at his cheerful tone. “Oh? What could some bard do that I couldn’t already?” Now Jaskier could tell he was teasing, especially since there was an amused glint in the star like eyes, but he still wound up sputtering indignantly.

“Some bard!?” He nearly shrieked as the other openly openly chuckled at his flustered state. “How dare you!” Jaskier quickly stooped down, gathering snow into a ball and threw it at the highly amused Beast. He had been mistaken, the Beast had a lack of refinement and taste! “I’ll show you!” He threw another ball of snow to punctuate his sentence before continuing his rant. “I’ll break the damned curse just so I can shove it in your furry handsome face!”

He continued to pelt Geralt with snow, but now the other was returning fire, and Jaskier was scrambling to dodge while giving little shrieks of delight because as upset as he was, it was rather fun. “If your curse breaking is as bad as your aim bard, I shall fear for my life!” The other called out as they exchanged blows, his tone open and friendly. The man was apparently finding humor in ruffling Jaskier’s feathers, the insufferably gruff, intriguing bastard!

“In fact, I bet the curse brought me here because you were too busy brooding to figure it out!” His shrieks slowly morphed into delighted little laughs as they traded powdery blows. “An answer to your prayers!”

He ducked and ran through the front garden boasting as he tried to hit the agile Beast as the Beast chased after him. “More likely an added punishment brought to torment me.” The Beast countered, which rustled the bard more, most likely an attempt to get Jaskier to falter, which he almost gave into.

After a little while of cat and mouse in their little snowball game, he was tackled into the fluffy snow by his pursuer. He giggled looking up at the Beast. Jaskier was pulling in deep breaths to sate his burning lungs while Geralt seemed unperturbed by the exercise, but they were both unmistakably smiling in their own ways, Jaskier grinning broadly while Geralt smirked. “The solution to all your woes…” He breathed out softly between them which Geralt rolled his eyes at fondly at before standing up, breaking whatever small moment that had appeared between them. He was kind enough to help the smaller man up, however, so chivalrous he was.

Jaskier couldn’t help the soft, giddy giggles that sporadically slipped out from his lips, but as fun as everything had been, Geralt turned towards the castle. “I’ll, uh… I’ll see you at dinner.” Geralt offered before quickly going off and disappearing.

Jaskier was left standing outside once again, damp, but genuinely happy for the first time in a while. He would have felt like he had scared the Beast off again had Geralt not just confirmed they’d be dining together. A part of him wanted to hop around in victory, but instead he buried his blushing face in his hands and squealed softly in delight. Things may have started off rocky but now things were finally looking up. Wanting to press his good fortune, Jaskier quickly made his way to the back gardens to collect a few more flowers to look up. He may or may not have been skipping, but he was too happy to care. He collected three more, wanting to take his time and not misidentify anything, since they dried slightly in the time he looked each one up. This time he collected a small, delicate little flower, a larger yellow flower that looked like the ruffled layers of a ladies petticoats, and a vivid purple flower with lots of long thin petals and a bright yellow center. Spending time searching for and picking buds had left him feeling rather chilled, however, so he hurried around the keep and went back inside.

By the time Jaskier was back in his chamber, he realized just how frigidly cold he actually was. Frost has actually stiffened the damper part of his clothes. He shivered from the snow-dampened clothes, and a part of him knew it would be best to go take a nice hot bath, but he was suddenly very tired. So he stripped off his wet clothing, setting them to thaw and dry by the fire, and he set his newly collected blossoms with the others on his desk before dressing in the shirt he had slept in. Thankfully, from the position of the sun in the sky, Jaskier could tell he had a couple of hours until dinner. Which was just perfect! He’d take a nap for a little while, warm up, and then get all nice and freshened up for dinner. As he settled into bed, he wondered if Geralt would sneak him another outfit that he’d wish Jaskier to wear for dinner or not. The idea made him smile and laugh slightly before sleep pulled him into its sweet embrace.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing before the same lake he had been at in his dream before. This time however, most of the trees were waning in the late autumn fashion, and the sun was slowly setting on the horizon behind him. However, he was not filled with awe and the delight of meeting a handsome mysterious stranger in the woods this time. In fact, he felt rather heart broken, a feeling he knew all too well at this point, and was not thrilled to be feeling it again. Worst of all, he felt like he could do nothing to remedy the situation which brought the sting of hot tears welling up and overflowing. He tried brushing them away, but the fat tears continued to flow. His soft hiccuping sobs that had forced their way passed his lips were halted by Lew emerging out of the trees. His sharp features were softened by the solemn concern that he wore openly on his face. His piercing yellow eyes held Jasekier captive as the man-- no, Knight apparently-- approached slowly.

“I should’ve told you…” His voice was full of regret and Jaskier knew he had already forgiven him.

“It shouldn’t matter... “ Jaskier tried to offer, fully believing in what he said. It shouldn't have, whatever the drama was that his brain concocted, but it did.

“But she’s your only family and it made me appear to be dishonest.” The silver haired knight finished for him. “...I think she just needed an excuse to deny the proposal. You only have one another and I understand her fear of losing you.” He added, a deep misery settled in his topaz gaze. It seemed to be one of his overly dramatic nights where he put too much poetic flare on his observations.

“I know…” Was all Jaskier could offer pitifully, feeling more tears welling up and burning the back of his throat. He couldn’t hide his little hitched sobs in the silent evening that veiled them from the world they would eventually have to go back to. Lew stepped closer, taking Jaskier’s hand in his, tentatively checking if the touch was welcome. The bard couldn’t help himself as he buried himself in the larger man’s arms, modesty be damned. Lew instinctively tightened the embrace as he ran his gloved hand through his hair and down his back soothingly. The knight’s thick cloak shielded them from the rest of the night and kept the chill at bay. It was only when the other’s heat seeped into his bones that Jaskier realized how cold he had become. Jaskier had forgotten that he had run out into the night without his own cloak, and the long trailing jacket he wore was not enough to buffer the late autumn weather.

“I promise, I will fix this, dear heart. I will do anything to prove to her that my feelings are genuine and that I only wish to care and provide for you. I do not mean to whisk you away or disappear with you.” His voice was even as he murmured to the bard. Jaskier pressed further into the other, not caring about the cool armor between them. He knew his heart already belonged to this man, and it was terrifying, but it brought him comfort to hear the other’s feelings. “I must tell you that the only reason I kept my title from you was because I wanted to know you without any status or title coming between us… It was selfish, I know, but I wanted to be free by your side, even if only for as long as you’d let me. I should have told you sooner.” Lew’s voice was remorseful as he cradled Jaskier so gently in his hold.

The bard couldn’t help the small wet laugh that bubbled up in him as he looked up into his knight’s startled gaze. “I know, my dear. I know and I wouldn’t change even a second of the time we stole together.” Jaskier found himself declaring before he could second guess himself, but once the words were out, he knew they were true in his heart. Although his chest ached pleasantly compared to the heartache he had been feeling, something still felt false. This was all just a beautiful dream that he’d never have, and it made him want to weep, but he didn’t. He knew he was a cad and a flirt who played with one to many skirts, drawing the ire of husbands and other men. He knew with all his dishonesty, gallivanting, and cowardice he didn’t deserve such a sweet, faithful lover. He would not have such a fulfilling love unless the gods took pity and gifted him one last chance, but if he ever had a love in the waking world that felt like this, he’d follow them to the ends of the earth and back. He would faithfully love them and only them if he were just given a chance… But hadn’t he already had that chance? Wasn’t that why he felt as though there was a hole where his heart was that threatened to swallow him whole if he wasn’t distracting himself with other thoughts? It was why he felt jagged around the edges, something had been broken inside and hadn’t fit back together just right. He had wasted his one shot.

“I will make this right.” The knights rumbled softly, like a summer storm, and Jaskier was pulled back into the present of the dream even though the realization lingered in his thoughts. As much as the gentle treatment broke his already fragile heart more, the bard found himself smiling lightly as the man stepped away. A strong hand wiped away the last of his tears before bidding him farewell.

As Jaskier watched the knight disappear into the dark woods, he felt lighter and heavier at the same time. As he closed his eyes to savor the fleeting moment, he found himself blinking awake in his too warm bed. He tried to push down the regret welling up inside, but soon it was spilling out as he cried mutedly into his pillow. He felt so upset, and angry, and overwhelmed at the realization that he had somehow lost his love. To add salt to the gaping wound, he couldn’t even remember why or how! He couldn’t remember their face! Or their voice! All he wanted to do now was find them and fix everything, but he was here. He supposed the memory loss was also most likely his fault… An ill conceived memory spell undoubtedly procured from a backwater hag, presumably in an attempt to forget the pain after he got roaringly drunk. It definitely sounded on par with the foolish shit he had done in his lifetime, but it only served to wipe the man from his world, not the pain. The mind may forget, but the heart will always remember. As he felt entirely too warm and morose, as though this was the bed he would die in, he spotted a bundle of clothes left on the side table by his side of the bed. The thought of the Beast leaving them there after creeping carefully in to surprise him with the gift managed to quell his tears and bring a tiny hint of a smile to his lips. Although he had messed his life up somehow and he felt lost, adrift in a sea he no longer knew how to navigate, he was at least not alone. He had his dreams filled with lovely views and a darling knight, but more importantly, he had the company of his Beast. He very much preferred his Beast to imaginary knights if he was to get through this whole comedy of tragedies that was his life.

So regardless of how his body protested and how his head swam with sleep, he hauled himself up and out of the bed that remade itself. The light outside was almost completely gone which meant he had slept longer than he had intended. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to be on time. Jaskier found himself quickly freshening up in the wash basin to rid himself of the sweat he somehow drenched himself in as he slept while chiding the fireplace for stoking itself so high… and then he consoled the poor thing because he felt bad for being too harsh with it as he put on kohl to match the dark garments still neatly folded and waiting. When he picked them up, however, he finally noticed they were a deep purple velvet that brightened as the fabric shifted. The long doublet was trimmed with emerald braiding, and near the collar, emeralds were studded in a way to appear as though he were wearing an extravagant necklace. The simple velvet trousers were well fitted and clung to him like a second skin. His new chemise that went with the ensemble was lilac, and so delicate in his hands that it could only be made of silk. This outfit seemed terribly grand compared to the past outfits he had been given, and for the first time in his life, he was nervous to put on such finery, but it would be rude not to. So he dressed carefully, realizing then just how warm velvet was to wear, but he’d just bare it for the sake of his Beast. He also decided to wear the few silver rings he had to add a little touch of his own. As the bard was pulling on his new over the knee black boots, a knock came at his door and he realized with a small smile that Geralt had come to fetch him again. Muzzy headed with excitement, he quickly finished and strode to the door, pulling it open with a flourish and a big delighted smile. As he suspected, the Beast was truly there, hunched over to look less threatening, and he had changed out of his usual armor into clothes that seemed dressier, which had Jaskier’s woefully soft heart bubbling happily in his chest. Geralt had made an effort this time and, if Jaskier may be so bold as to wish, it was for his sake. “Geralt! Shall we?” He asked cheerily, looping his arm around the crook of the other’s elbow and waited for the other to lead the way.

#geraskier #Witcher #witcher netflix #the witcher #fanfic #geralt x jaskier #gerlion #Beauty and the Beast AU #beast!geralt #Buttercup's Writings

0 notes