[ it is hot in the south. the servants whisper amongst themselves in the halls saying, these northmen shall melt, but before long they whisper different things.
robb stark has brought the winter to king's landing.
but however cold it gets, this place shall never feel like home. it shall never be anything but a castle in which his father once lived, where those who murdered his father once lived. (lived and died, and now golden heads sit upon pikes on the highest wall, put there by robb's own hand as a warning to all.) in those early days, he had commanded the lord varys to tell him of what happened in this throne room, and varys does, spills out terrible, blood-filled truths, and robb's jaw grows tight and he orders the floor scrubbed yet again, though nothing will purge this room of joffrey's reign.
he sits the iron throne, runs fingers along the sharp points of swords and his father once sat here, varys said, in king robert's stead. robb's namesake, varys adds with a thoughtful little hum. it seems you were so very aptly named, your grace, says his lord of whisperers and robb dismisses him. for all his usefulness, varys has a way of speaking such unsettling words.
when they do not speak of hunting down the lannisters who managed to escaped robb's seige and fear them rallying behind the kingslayer, his small council urges him to marry margaery tyrell. a widowed king breeds no heirs, and each time the raise the issue robb feels his face turn to ice and stone. he tries not to think of it, of jeyne and her masses of thick, dark hair and how she'd shivered when he'd touched her cheek. he does not think of how she'd screamed when the first arrow had pierced her thigh, nor of how she'd called his name the instant before roose bolton had stabbed her through the heart. (jaime lannister sends his regards, your grace) she had called for him, reached out for him, and robb had not managed to do anything more than put his sword through roose bolton's neck and then cradle his lady wife's body as she bled out upon the floor of the twins.
(failed, i failed her and i lost her. i should have been faster, should have made her stay behind, how could i have let this come to pass...)
but even so, even were he not lost to old memory and made a ruin by betrayal and death, robb does not know that he finds it wise to take the woman he widowed with his own blade into his bed. but the idea does not die, and someday robb will have to square with it. someday robb will have to take a new wife to replace she who had been lost (jeyne) whether it be the dragon queen across the sea, the threat that could be neutralized with the sweep of a direwolf-emblazoned cloak about her shoulders, or the rose maiden of the house tyrell who smirks sideways at robb in a manner that makes his cheeks heat.
but robb wishes something else.
in his childhood, he'd ever assumed he'd wed sansa, for was it not the way things go? it was the way everything in their lives had been done, hand in hand, sansa at robb's elbow and robb ever at her side, the eldest, the ones who learnt duty and responsibility from the time they'd taken their first steps. and sansa's well being had ever been robb's duty, so naturally he'd marry her, for who else could be entrusted with the task of caring for her?
it was a child's thought, but robb thinks of it now with a grim smile as he takes his leave of the small council. he takes his leave and dismisses his kingsguard (ser loras tyrell in his resplendant armor) and climbs flight after flight of stairs with grey wind at his heels to knock upon a door and beg entry into the chamber that had once been the room of the hand of the king.
[ The servants hate it, the cold that has come to King's Landing, and they spare no opportunity to gossip and prattle about it — out of the king's earshot, of course. The spider's birds catch every whisper nevertheless and later sing them back to him in foreign tongues that only he can understand. And, on occasion, these songs are passed on, are moulded into something either pleasing or displeasing, to tease reactions out of the Young Wolf (who is no longer young, who is no longer the Boy King, but simply the King).
Sometimes she catches wind of these whispers herself, having grown accustomed to sitting behind the latticework of the windows and straining to hear the voices that carry down stone hallways and resound against vaulted archways. It is not safe for her here, there are spies among the rabble, and those Lannisters that escaped the capital in the wake of Robb's onslaught look to find a means to wound the newly seated king and bring him down upon the pikes he so brashly displayed. Even a fool could readily speak the answer, for there is no greater chink in Robb's armor than his sister, his one remaining sibling, the last of his kin save the bastard in the north: dear Sansa, the little bird, (Tyrion Lannister's wife). There'd been plans, dozens upon dozens, but in the end the simplest was to kill her in the fray and smear her blood on already bloodied Lannister hands.
And so Sansa Stark fell and the king hid his grief behind a mask of duty and in her place another girl rose. Black of hair (the color of pitch) and pale of skin and lovely of face. She names herself Shyra and there's no one left to remember how the Starks had a guardsman with two twin girls, one of which was named Bandy and the other Shyra. What Shrya does in the service of the king, no one knows (not even Shyra herself). Her days are filled with needlepoint and songs, but they are modest luxuries that she shares with only the wind, having been stripped of any possible company save the king when he is willing and able.
She is busy stitching a golden crown over the wolf's head on one of Robb's doublets when the knock comes at the door. Nervously, she stands and affixes her hair even though Sansa knows it is only Robb and there is no need for such affectations. With a held breath she waits for the second knock (when they were children they had codes, a series of knocks they'd use to speak through the walls, a pattern of whistles to find one another in the wolfswood as they hid from their parents). It is not until the second knock comes that she moves to open the door and when she does, it is only a silver.
A single blue eye, wide and the color of Riverrun sky. A long tendril of curled black hair and a loose hung braid, frayed at the edges and untidy. She does not look like a lady at all. She does not look like Sansa (and that is the point). ]
Your Grace, [ she whispers and then steps aside to let him in, her body positioned just so, keeping the door always between her and anyone who may look to see her. ]
[ it is grey wind who enters first. it matters little which man bears the title of hand, for grey wind has ever been the hand of the king, since the young wolf was a pup, before any of them had known war. grey wind enters the room and it is grey wind who greets sansa, nosing into her skirts and begging for her hands in his fur before robb has even cleared the threshhold. and though robb does not understand, he knows that there is connection, that grey wind reflects all that robb feels and on occasion it is more revealing than he'd like. robb stark wears a mask day in and day out, and there are moments when his direwolf betrays him, gives out robb's hand before he has a chance to play it.
but here is the one place where it does not matter, for there is no one he trusts the way he does sansa.
the mask doesn't fall until the door has been barred. he is the iron king until the click of latch has sounded, and then it falls away and he is simply robb stark, a man with a sad smile and a heavy burden upon his shoulders that he can never quite cast off. ]
You needn't call me your grace when no one is here to listen.
[ no one but varys, who hears everything, but he is meant to be robb's man. these southerners do things so very differently, but varys serves the realm, and there is trust there, but only so much. the lord of whispers serves so many, and robb cannot be certain who else is given a summation of all the things there are to be heard in king's landing.
someday the wrong person will hear the wrong thing and all shall come crumbling down. that is the thought that wakes robb in a terrified sweat in the middle of the night.
he'd slaughter thousands of lannisters to keep her safe. that is a promise he made to himself when he found her again, held her tight in his arms and kissed her hair once more. he would never let her slip from his side. he would keep her safe, safe until this war was over and all was settled again.
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robb stark has brought the winter to king's landing.
but however cold it gets, this place shall never feel like home. it shall never be anything but a castle in which his father once lived, where those who murdered his father once lived. (lived and died, and now golden heads sit upon pikes on the highest wall, put there by robb's own hand as a warning to all.) in those early days, he had commanded the lord varys to tell him of what happened in this throne room, and varys does, spills out terrible, blood-filled truths, and robb's jaw grows tight and he orders the floor scrubbed yet again, though nothing will purge this room of joffrey's reign.
he sits the iron throne, runs fingers along the sharp points of swords and his father once sat here, varys said, in king robert's stead. robb's namesake, varys adds with a thoughtful little hum. it seems you were so very aptly named, your grace, says his lord of whisperers and robb dismisses him. for all his usefulness, varys has a way of speaking such unsettling words.
when they do not speak of hunting down the lannisters who managed to escaped robb's seige and fear them rallying behind the kingslayer, his small council urges him to marry margaery tyrell. a widowed king breeds no heirs, and each time the raise the issue robb feels his face turn to ice and stone. he tries not to think of it, of jeyne and her masses of thick, dark hair and how she'd shivered when he'd touched her cheek. he does not think of how she'd screamed when the first arrow had pierced her thigh, nor of how she'd called his name the instant before roose bolton had stabbed her through the heart. (jaime lannister sends his regards, your grace) she had called for him, reached out for him, and robb had not managed to do anything more than put his sword through roose bolton's neck and then cradle his lady wife's body as she bled out upon the floor of the twins.
(failed, i failed her and i lost her. i should have been faster, should have made her stay behind, how could i have let this come to pass...)
but even so, even were he not lost to old memory and made a ruin by betrayal and death, robb does not know that he finds it wise to take the woman he widowed with his own blade into his bed. but the idea does not die, and someday robb will have to square with it. someday robb will have to take a new wife to replace she who had been lost (jeyne) whether it be the dragon queen across the sea, the threat that could be neutralized with the sweep of a direwolf-emblazoned cloak about her shoulders, or the rose maiden of the house tyrell who smirks sideways at robb in a manner that makes his cheeks heat.
but robb wishes something else.
in his childhood, he'd ever assumed he'd wed sansa, for was it not the way things go? it was the way everything in their lives had been done, hand in hand, sansa at robb's elbow and robb ever at her side, the eldest, the ones who learnt duty and responsibility from the time they'd taken their first steps. and sansa's well being had ever been robb's duty, so naturally he'd marry her, for who else could be entrusted with the task of caring for her?
it was a child's thought, but robb thinks of it now with a grim smile as he takes his leave of the small council. he takes his leave and dismisses his kingsguard (ser loras tyrell in his resplendant armor) and climbs flight after flight of stairs with grey wind at his heels to knock upon a door and beg entry into the chamber that had once been the room of the hand of the king.
sansa, will you let me in? ]
no subject
Sometimes she catches wind of these whispers herself, having grown accustomed to sitting behind the latticework of the windows and straining to hear the voices that carry down stone hallways and resound against vaulted archways. It is not safe for her here, there are spies among the rabble, and those Lannisters that escaped the capital in the wake of Robb's onslaught look to find a means to wound the newly seated king and bring him down upon the pikes he so brashly displayed. Even a fool could readily speak the answer, for there is no greater chink in Robb's armor than his sister, his one remaining sibling, the last of his kin save the bastard in the north: dear Sansa, the little bird, (Tyrion Lannister's wife). There'd been plans, dozens upon dozens, but in the end the simplest was to kill her in the fray and smear her blood on already bloodied Lannister hands.
And so Sansa Stark fell and the king hid his grief behind a mask of duty and in her place another girl rose. Black of hair (the color of pitch) and pale of skin and lovely of face. She names herself Shyra and there's no one left to remember how the Starks had a guardsman with two twin girls, one of which was named Bandy and the other Shyra. What Shrya does in the service of the king, no one knows (not even Shyra herself). Her days are filled with needlepoint and songs, but they are modest luxuries that she shares with only the wind, having been stripped of any possible company save the king when he is willing and able.
She is busy stitching a golden crown over the wolf's head on one of Robb's doublets when the knock comes at the door. Nervously, she stands and affixes her hair even though Sansa knows it is only Robb and there is no need for such affectations. With a held breath she waits for the second knock (when they were children they had codes, a series of knocks they'd use to speak through the walls, a pattern of whistles to find one another in the wolfswood as they hid from their parents). It is not until the second knock comes that she moves to open the door and when she does, it is only a silver.
A single blue eye, wide and the color of Riverrun sky. A long tendril of curled black hair and a loose hung braid, frayed at the edges and untidy. She does not look like a lady at all. She does not look like Sansa (and that is the point). ]
Your Grace, [ she whispers and then steps aside to let him in, her body positioned just so, keeping the door always between her and anyone who may look to see her. ]
no subject
but here is the one place where it does not matter, for there is no one he trusts the way he does sansa.
the mask doesn't fall until the door has been barred. he is the iron king until the click of latch has sounded, and then it falls away and he is simply robb stark, a man with a sad smile and a heavy burden upon his shoulders that he can never quite cast off. ]
You needn't call me your grace when no one is here to listen.
[ no one but varys, who hears everything, but he is meant to be robb's man. these southerners do things so very differently, but varys serves the realm, and there is trust there, but only so much. the lord of whispers serves so many, and robb cannot be certain who else is given a summation of all the things there are to be heard in king's landing.
someday the wrong person will hear the wrong thing and all shall come crumbling down. that is the thought that wakes robb in a terrified sweat in the middle of the night.
he'd slaughter thousands of lannisters to keep her safe. that is a promise he made to himself when he found her again, held her tight in his arms and kissed her hair once more. he would never let her slip from his side. he would keep her safe, safe until this war was over and all was settled again.
and he would not fail in this. he could not.
he would not be able to bear it if he did. ]