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7deadlycinderellas · 5 years

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The Starks at War

(aka, I am a huge ww2 nerd, and you all will suffer for it)

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Truthfully, it must be said, that Winterfell had seen better days.

The once huge estate no longer provided any income of it's own. The grounds were cut when the council bought off the land to put a road through behind the house. The house was still grand, the gardens still it’s Lady’s pride and joy. The Lord of the house now owned a hand tool factory down the road, and the Lady oversaw a staff of only a cook and two maids (plus the children’s tutors of course, and Old Nan, who nursed the youngest). Even the stable of horses had been replaced by a motorcar.

The Starks themselves too, had known loss. Eddard Stark, only a second son, had not known he would inherit, until the loss of his brother in the Great War. His fiery sister Lyanna too, lost her life only a few years later, poisoned by the munitions factory where she worked to serve her country.

But it was clean, and well kept, and the Lord and Lady kept up appearances.

And the Stark children, it must be said, loved the place. The summer times they all spent on their families lands may well have been paradise to all of them.

Robb, the eldest of them, got his driving license that summer. Ned Stark spent most of the summer in London, leaving Robb to take the car down to the village where it attracted the attention of men and women alike. He would be going to university come autumn, and was appreciating his final months of freedom.

A word must be also spared for the children’s cousin Jon. Raised as their brother after his mother’s untimely death, he was often spoken about in hushed tones for the truth of his illegitimate birth. Though the Starks had planned to provide for his education as they had for their own children, his own pride led to him deciding against university, and spending his summer working for the newspaper office in the village.

Sansa, the eldest daughter, had returned home from boarding school. She had come bursting with stories of her classmates, who came from families older and more important than the Starks, who lived on huge country estates and gave her stories of grand parties and great romances. And if she spent most of her summer in the window seat of the parlour, reading paperbacks and writing letters, she was no less happy for it.

Arya Stark’s summer holidays were spent much the same as the rest of her year, though without her being scolded for trying to dodge her lessons. Earlier that year, she had received a bicycle for her birthday, and it carried her more days than not into the village. Far less touched by her mother’s concerns of propriety, Arya had many friends there, and carried back with her dime novels and packs of sweets. On her other days, she climbed over the rock wall marking the end of their estate into the land owned by their neighbors, the Reeds, such as it was, and joined the two children there in climbing the trees and swimming in the pond that was all that remained of their land.

In fact, it was Arya and the older Reed girl, Meera, who had a special project that summer: to get Arya’s younger brother Bran out of the house more.

Before the coming storm, it would have been said that the greatest tragedy to befall Winterfell that generation would have been Brandon Stark’s fall. An active and athletic child, at the age of ten, Bran had taken a bad fall from one of the manor’s windows. The injury had truly in the grand scheme of things, not been terrible. Bran could still bend at the hips and partially straighten his right knee, but both legs were left incredibly weak, and the left one nearly completely numb.

That had been two years ago, and the boy had resigned himself to spending most of his summer days sitting in his room reading or listening to plays on the wireless. Sometimes he would sit with Old Nan and Rickon, and listen to their stories, but he felt far too old for it now.

Neither Arya or Meera could stand for this.

So, one warm day in July, the two girls approached him when he was in the parlor, reading a book.

Both of them have their arms crossed, and Bran isn’t sure what’s going on.

“Come with us, we’re going swimming.”

Bran looks his sister up and down. She might have been wearing cast off work trousers of Jon’s and an old jersey with her hair in rough plaits, but she looks completely serious and at that moment, has a definite air of authority.

“I’m reading.”

Arya looks at him like he’s grown a second head.

“You can do that outside. Come one, you’ve been inside nearly the whole year, you look like a fish’s belly.”

And she isn’t wrong, so Bran decides to give in.

Admittedly, being in the sun again is nice. The window can only let in so much. The day is rather hot, and the water will be nice. The stone path leading out from the house is easy enough for him to push the wheels of his wheelchair on, though when they cut off onto the grass, it takes more effort.

“What are you reading now?” Meera asks him cheerfully, “Burroughs again?”

The last time Meera had come by, Bran had been finishing the Land that Time Forgot. He had enjoyed it, but ultimately preferred Conan Doyle’s take on a lost prehistoric world.

He shakes his head.

“Wells this time.”

“Island of Doctor Moreau?” Arya interjects, “If so, give it back, I didn’t finish.”

“War of the Worlds. It’s that one that was on the radio in America last year and made everyone think it was real.”

Arya wrinkles her nose. “Jon said that was bunk, made up to make newspaper seem better than radio.”

“I suppose Jon might know, working at the paper.” Jon had often told them that the men who ran the news office were a bunch of stodgy, stuffed shirts, who seemed to think they knew more than him simply by virtue of his age.

“Well it’s a good book either way.” Bran insists.

They’ve reached the end of the Starks land, marked with a low stone wall just above knee high. It’s easy to just step over. Just one more of the easy things rendered impossible to Bran now.

Arya looks at Meera,

“You take the top, I’ll get his feet. “

And suddenly, Meera steps up onto the wall and grasps Bran under the arms and hoists him in time with Arya lifting him up by his pasty, atrophied legs.

“Did you two practice this?” Bran asks grouchily, feeling rather like a slab of meat.

“You’re not that much different than moving a log.”

That’s not really any better, Bran thinks, when Arya sets him on the ground and moves to drag his chair over and help him back into it. He wishes the back of the device wasn’t so high. If it were lower, he might be able to drag himself over the wall like he does from the window seat. But he was already lucky that it was light weight and metal and not one of the huge wooden monstrosities he had seen when he woke in the hospital after his fall.

When they reach the edge of the pond, Bran slides himself out of his chair carefully, settling himself under one of the tall trees close to the water’s edge. He pulls off his shoes and socks, letting his lower legs float into the water, even though only righty appreciated it. Arya had been right, it was a good enough place to read a book.

The pond was large for a pond, feeding into one of the streams that led to the canals through the south. Good fish could still often be fished from it, and it was more than deep enough in the middle for swimming to be a bit dangerous.

Arya seemingly paid no heed to this, as she stripped off to the swimming costume she had on under her trousers beside the tree. She then climbed one of the branches that hung over the water to its end, and did a cannonball.

Meera goes back to the house and returns with a pole and line. She rolls up her trouser legs before taking a seat on a log near Bran and casting out her line.

“What’s happening now?” She asks Bran, gesturing at the book in his hand.

“A bunch of ships with people on them are fleeing the Martian tripods, so one of the Navy’s ships rams it so it the people can get away.’

“Do you think they’ll make it?”

Arya pops her head up out of the water,

“Doubt it, the Martians have heat rays.”

“Don’t give it away!” Bran says petulantly. This was another of the books he’d filched from Arya’s shelf, that consisted nearly entirely of science fiction and pulp adventures, to her governess’s despair. Arya had once told him they had contained all the adventures she was never going to get to have.

“Just saying, the narrator is just a journalist, and the tripods are enormous.”

That’s what made the story so good, Bran thought. It shouldn’t be very long, yet there’s still half a book left.

Not too much later, Meera’s brother Jojen sticks his head out the house.

“Mum asked if you all want sandwiches.”

“Tell her yes,” Meera calls back, and Jojen disappears inside.

Arya swims up to the edge and crawls out of the water onto the shore.

“Isn’t he coming out too?”

Meera’s gazing back at the house with a distant look in her eye.

“He had another seizure this morning, and was out of it for a while. Mum’s taking him to the doctor’s tomorrow to see if his medicine needs adjusting.”

Ah. Though most in the village had come to understand Jojen’s condition, Bran had come to feel kinship with the other boy’s vulnerability. Lady Reed had been a school teacher before she’d wed, and taught him at home before the doctor’s had been able to keep from having the fits anymore. Him and his sister both attended the village school now.

Jojen does join them when he returns with lunch, sitting between Bran and Meera on the dirt.

“What are you going to do now that you’re done with school?” Arya asks Meera idly, still chewing on a tough bit of green.

“Get a job I suppose. Father says one of the sailing clubs down at the marina needs someone to handle registrations and paperwork. Though I’m not eighteen until November.”

“That would just drive me mad. “ Arya responds, “All day, just seeing all the boats go in an out but being stuck in a little box.”

Meera shugs, “I don’t think I’d mind.”

“Not holding out to get swept up by some handsome Duke at a ball somewhere?” Jojen asks with a smirk.

Bran hides his face. He’s always known Meera was pretty- even if the other boys in the village didn’t appreciate her- but in the past year looking at her has made him feel like he was taking another long fall.

Meera laughs him off, “If the boys weren’t interested in me at school, they won’t be interested at the balls I won’t go to.”

The balls and derbies and garden parties that make up the London social season. They had never been something that interested Bran or Arya in the least. Mother occasionally spoke of the ones she had attended as a girl, and Robb had gone to the Windsor horse show as a guest of a school friend, but Father had expressed more than a bit of disdain at the opulence in the wake of the slump. The world was changing, he said, and they ought keep up.

It was not something the Reeds would have ever been able to take part in. While they maintained what remained of their family’s land, and kept the title, the only thing resembling a fortune they had was Howland Reed’s Navy pension and his earnings from his current role as the harbourmaster.

“Sansa sure won’t shut up about it though,” Arya comments.

God above, that was true.

Sansa had pled to be allowed to go to boarding school for her last few years of secondary education, and Ned and Catelyn had reluctantly agreed. While they indeed missed their eldest daughter, her education was important to them, and Cat in particular had recognized that Sansa, a social butterfly, would blossom surrounded by other girls of her station.

And blossom she had.

Sansa had left for school with a neat red braid, a pressed uniform, and a head full of dreams. She returned home with her hair pinned up, a purse full of smuggled make up, and dozens of tales of party invitations on the weekends.

Right now, she was at the table in the dining room with her mother. Having finished her lunch, she was writing to Margaery Tyrell, her house’s head girl, and one of the closest friends she had made during the year.

“Have you gone into the village to visit Jeyne yet?” Catelyn asked.

She had not. Jeyne Poole was the daughter of a man Ned had once employed who now ran a shop in town. Jeyne had before this year, been Sansa’s dearest friend.

“No, Mother. It’s just- I worry we won’t have anything in common anymore having been apart for a whole year.”

This was a half truth. It is what Sansa thought when she pondered her magical year away at school and tried to fit. Giggly Jeyne, who was so frightened of mice and snakes, and dreamed of one day being a film star, just seemed so far away from the sophistication she had come to know.

“You should go see,” Catelyn says, smiling, but firmly. “Pack a picnic and sit somewhere. I’m glad you’re so happy at school, but you musn’t forget your old friends, or where you came from. Winterfell may not be as grand as where your school friends live, but it is still your home.”

Sansa tried not to wrinkle her nose, but she takes her mother’s advice. The next day, Cook helps her pack a basket and she dons a straw hat and walks to the village and finds Jeyne getting her hair set in the beauty shop, and they share lunch on a bench in the park.

“At least without you around, there were a lot more boys paying attention to me,” Jeyne tells her, taking a sip from her bottle of cordial.

Sansa laughs.

“Oh forget about these village boys. I met so many lovely young men at school.”

Sansa tells her about Margaery’s brother Loras, with his golden curls, who was planning to study at Cambridge. Of Joffrey Baratheon, who had such a lovely face and was of such a good family. Even of Joffrey’s uncle Jamie, who was captain of football at their school, and such a good player, his feats were still spoken of to this day. He had joined the army after graduation, and the girls at the school whispered breathily of his exploits.

“Oh it sounds so wonderful,” Jeyne sighs, “I wish I could move to London, that’s where all the fancy people live. I would love to go to a ball or a tea party, instead I’m stuck here.”

Sansa purses her lips. The girls she went to school with were girls with estates, and titles. Little Myrcella Baratheon was even the daughter of a Duke. Truly, she did not believe any of them would invite a girl such as Jeyne to any of their occasions, but she can’t tell her that.

The potential awkwardness of the discussion is brought to an end by the honk of a car horn coming down the street.

Robb sticks his head out of the window and waves to them.

Jeyne hastily fixes her hat while waving back.

“How is your brother doing now? Any of those high-class ladies catch his eye?”

“Robb still has university to finish, I don’t imagine he’ll think of marrying at least until he’s graduated. I think he’s just having fun now, he’s probably driving out to visit Theon.”

Theon had been raised among the Stark’s as a child. Son of another man who Ned had known in the service, he had fostered the boy as both a gesture of goodwill, and a protection from the harsh reality that his life would be up in the industrial north. Now nearly twenty, Theon had moved out of Winterfell and taken a job at the dockyard.

He had already gone out there today though, in fact he was actually on his way home when he drove past Sansa and Jeyne.

A bit down the road, he also passed Arya.

“Want a lift?” He asks, head stuck out the window.

Arya waves him off.

“I still want to go by the newsstand, I told Bran I’d bring him the newest Strange Tales.”

Robb pulled on past her, and Arya stepped back on her bike and kept going.

She’d only gone out today because Jon had forgotten his lunch, but it was a good enough excuse.

Gendry had worked the newsstand for Mr. Dondarrion since he had left school two years ago. Initially, he had tried to dodge Arya as she pawed through the stacks, interrogating him about the contents of all the pulps. He seemed to have gotten more used to her in recent times though, and often would offer her recommendations.

After plucking Strange Tales, she turns to him.

“Anything else good?”

After a moment’s thought, Gendry passes her a copy of Astounding Science Fiction.

“There’s one in there about an alien. Incredible. “

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

When he rings her up, and takes her pocket money, he asks.

“So how’s it all go for the Starks up upon the hill?”

Arya makes a face.

“There’s no hill, the land here is flat.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

He had always been like this, ever since he found out her father was Lord Stark. It used to make him wary of her, now he seemed just to take the opportunity to tease her.

She shrugs.

“Most of the same. Sansa chattering on about school, me trying to drag Bran out more. Robb keeps driving places and still won’t teach me.”

“I’m with you, I’d love to learn to drive. Thought about going down to the next town, see if I can find a job working on them.”

Arya’s stomach twists at the thought of him not being in the village anymore.

“You won’t do it will you?”

Gendry makes a soft noise, and tugs his cap a little lower on his head. He puts his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on his hands.

“I don’t know. It would be a great opportunity. A chance to leave,” he gestures at the quiet street in front of him, “all of this.”

Arya’s in a bad mood the entire ride home. She tries not to agree with Gendry. The village was tiny. The shops, a newsstand, the post office, the newspaper, the church. That was mostly it. She’d often had the same sort of thoughts herself.

Much of the summer passes in the same fashion.

Bran turns thirteen in August. When asked what he wants for his birthday, he says,

“I just want Father home, he’s always gone for it. “

“Alas your father still has social obligations in London.”

Catelyn too, wished he could return, but some courtesies must be observed, no matter how much she missed her husband.

Bran sighs, he really should have known better by now.

“A new sketchbook would be good too.”

He gets the book, and spends much of the remains of the month by the pond with Meera and Jojen. He draws planes that he’s seen in magazines, and newspapers, or the few that fly overhead.

“I wish I could be a pilot.” He tells Jojen one day.

“I used to want to be one too.” Jojen admits.

“I guess neither of us are ever going to fly.”

It wasn’t fair, he thought, that the both of them were stuck grounded.

One day, Sansa peeks her head into Arya’s room.

“Can you come to Jeyne’s with me today?”

“Why?” Arya asks, confused. Sansa’s sudden appearance in her room was unusual enough. The two girls were not close, and Arya had often been pleased that they didn’t have to share a room like some of the girls she knew in the village.

“I’m going to cut my hair.”

That was a bit surprising. Sansa had always been so proud of her long, smooth, Tully red hair, so much like Mother’s.

“Why do you need me for that?”

“I’m worried I might chicken out.”

Well that at least made sense.

Jeyne’s aunt Ellyn did hair out of the family’s parlour. When Sansa was sitting in the chair, with Ellyn washing, combing, then snipping at her long hair, Arya would have swore her sister was in pain. But, Sansa insisted that long hair was terribly old fashioned, and she’d even seen pictures of Lady Lannister, Duchess of Casterly Rock, with her hair bobbed. When Ellyn’s done, Sansa shakes her head in amazement,

“My head feels so light!”

Looking at her sister, Arya has a queer notion.

“Can you do mine too?”

Both are a touch worried when they come back home that night. Sansa rides on the handlebars of Arya’s bike, like she had done with Robb when they were young children, and Arya felt for once like they might really be sisters.

When Catelyn sees them, she reaches out to touch the shorn ends of Sansa’s hair.

“I can show you how to set it properly later.”

Then she moves on to Arya’s.

“Did they use the hedge clippers on yours?”

But the cut proves very practical the next week, when Catelyn enlists her to help her dig up and move several of the rose bushes in the garden. It stayed out of her face, and reduced the sweat on her neck.

Ned returns to Winterfell near the end of the month. The only one not home when he comes is Jon, who’s working late.

When Jon returns home, only Ned is still in the parlour.

Happy to see his uncle, Jon moves to embrace him.

“Any particular reason your superiors kept you from my homecoming?”

Jon laughs, but he looks a bit uneasy.

“We had to run an extra edition. Thorne got word in last minute, Hitler has invaded Poland.”

Ned sighs deeply.

He stays up later than the others, alone in his study.

It would be a lie if he said he hadn’t felt the waves coming in in the past few years. Ned had served in the Navy during the Great War, and though he had had more than enough of war, he knew what he heard.

Jon stayed up that night too, switching through channels on the wireless, nearly all dead. He was in a unique position compared to the rest of the family, and wasn’t sure what he should say, if anything.

The next day is chaos, with Sansa packing to return to school, Bran and Arya having to be coerced into restarting their lessons, and Robb preparing to leave for university. Ned and Jon barely had time to think about anything.

September 3 was set to be their last breakfast all together. Sansa was nibbling at her eggs, which she swore the school cooks could not make as good. Arya was shoveling down her porridge so she would have enough energy to make a break for it after. Bran appeared to be attempting to demonstrate something to Robb using bit of his bacon as his models. Rickon had somehow already gotten jam smeared on him.

And Cat was watching Ned, with a smile on her face.

Jon didn’t usually turn on the wireless during breakfast, but he’d had an impulse that day. One that turned out to be prudent.

A hand reaches out and turns the volume nod, and the voice of the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is head:

“I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

The speech continues, but one by one, every face at the table freezes.

Ned feels something deep in his gut begin to ache. He hopes he can remember this breakfast as it is.

#game of thrones #gendrya #breera #theosa #jongritte #fic #couple of choices I make here will probably ruffle some feathers #theonsa

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