aviary | open | prompt five

[ for anyone else it would be love talk. ( i wouldn't wish to live without you. )

but for robb it is real. for robb it is, if i am dead and gone what shall become of you? for robb it is, i would never let you die in the first place, so let us speak of something else. for robb, it is the memory of the raven bringing the news of his father's death, and how that revelation had derailed his entire world. ( i'll kill them all, every one of them. ) for robb, these words make his jaw clench and his chest tighten, and he shakes his head at them, solemn and cold as the north, ( he wishes to turn his face from them, but kings do not turn their faces away. ) a dismissal, a rejection. ]

No one would ask that sacrifice.

[ no one is so selfish to ask for that. i am not so selfish as to ask for that. ]

[and jon, who is not a king, will never be a king, who will wear no crown and hold no lands, looks determinedly into the distance, fixing his eyes on something just beyond robb's head.]

No one had to ask.

[for the north. for the realm. for robb. there are vows he doesn't mean to break.]

[ there is another shake of the head. robb looks so very much like eddard in this moment, cold and unyielding. if he were to die, he prayed that none shall follow him. ]

I wouldn't want it.

[ all he'd ever wanted was for his family to stay safe, safe and alive.

I won't let you lose this war.

[and if he takes up robb's arms, he will die with them, he knows. he is not robb, not a king, only a general, and he will fight in the name of his brothers and sisters, with everything he has.]

You have your own duties, Jon Snow. I would not make an oathbreaker of you.

[ for was that not why robb had burned those letters? jon snow, your brother has need of you, he'd written and cast into the fire. of course now, now things were different. if he legitimized jon, then he was his heir and the vows would be released. it would be as robb commanded, as the king commanded.

robb sometimes wonders what his father would say, but the thought does not please him, so he does not consider it. ]

[jon knows that, he knows, but faced with the reality of his brother, and the real possibility of his brother's death, he finds it increasingly difficult to believe. and besides:]

There's a war there, too.

[but how long would he live to fight it, if robb fell? jon was mormont's steward and his squire, no blind maester, a real threat. an assassin hidden in a load of recruits, lannister men dressed in black, their own men, gods forbid, paid well for their troubles--the wall offers no protection from the south. but between the wights and the wildlings, would it even need to?]

[ there is war everywhere, it seems. the seven kingdoms are ripping themselves apart, shattering into a million fragments. it doesn't surprise him, hearing that even the wall is consumed with fighting. ]

What foes do you face? Wildlings?

[ there's something in the query that rings of a boy wishing for a story. tell me of glory and honor, jon snow, is the echo, for can a king not demand to be entertained? ]

[that's a very good question, robb. jon sighs, long-suffering.]

The Wildlings march on the Wall. The Watch marches north to meet them. A Wight attacked the old Bear in his own chambers, before we left. [he clenches and unclenches his burned hand, reflexively.] I killed it. There was a man...Craster, he's called. Breeds his own wives. If they give him daughters, he weds them too. If they give him sons, he leaves them out for the White Walkers.

[it all sounds so unbelievable, laid out like that. he shifts, glances away. it's a story, an old story, but there's no glory and honor in it, only terror and cold and bare-bones survival.]

[ and here robb had thought the wall a dull place. ]

Sounds like one of Old Nan's stories. The beginning of one, anyway.

[ and later would come glory in the form of some crushing victory, or just barely-evaded death. robb knew well how the stories all went. and it's easier to think of things like that, like a story where all ended neatly and the hero came home wreathed in honors.

even if robb knew very well how different the reality could be. ]

[jon remembers those stories well, but he remembers the nasty ones too, that bran liked, where there weren't any heroes at all, only murderers and traitors and rat cooks and punishing, implacable justice come only once the suffering's through. he tries not to think about those stories.]

I saw giants, too, astride on their mammoths. A whole band of them. They're all huge and covered in hair, even the women.

Bran will be jealous.

[ there's wistfulness in robb's tone. ]

He always wished to see such things.

He may yet.

[if the Wildlings take the Wall. or perhaps some of the giants might be made prisoner of the Watch, and Bran could come see them. they'd have to clear out a whole castle.]

open | prompt five | ENDINGS

robb stark; asoiaf

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