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reginarubie · 2 years

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Queen you shall be ~ book vibes + show foreshadowings of the book-plots

Queen you shall be, the old woman had promised, with her lips still wet and red and glistening, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear. — Cersei III, AFFC

The queen, Cersei Lannister and the possible candidates for the role of younger, more beautiful queen.

She dreamt she sat the Iron Throne, high above them all. The courtiers were brightly colored mice below. Great lords and proud ladies knelt before her. Bold young knights laid their swords at her feet and pleaded for her favors, and the queen smiled down at them. Until the dwarf appeared as if from nowhere, pointing at her and howling with laughter. The lords and ladies began to chuckle too, hiding their smiles behind their hands. Only then did the queen realize she was naked. — Cersei I, AFFC

"I govern the realm." Seven save us all, you do. His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. She had been giddy as a maiden when she learned that Stannis had abandoned Dragonstone, certain that he had finally given up the fight and sailed away to exile. When word came down from the north that he had turned up again at the Wall, her fury had been fearful to behold. She does not lack for wits, but she has no judgment, and no patience. "You need a strong Hand to help you." "A weak ruler needs a strong Hand, as Aerys needed Father. A strong ruler requires only a diligent servant to carry out his orders." She swirled her wine. "Lord Hallyne might suit. He would not be the first pyromancer to serve as the King's Hand." — Jaime II, AFFC

Though she had been too young to witness the spectacle herself, Cersei had heard the stories growing up from the mouths of washerwomen and guardsmen who had been there. They spoke of how the woman had wept and begged, of the desperate way she clung to her garments when she was commanded to disrobe, of her futile efforts to cover her breasts and her sex with her hands as she hobbled barefoot and naked through the streets to exile. "Vain and proud she was, before," she remembered one guard saying, "so haughty you'd think she'd forgot she come from dirt. Once we got her clothes off her, though, she was just another whore."

If Ser Kevan and the High Sparrow thought that it would be the same with her, they were very much mistaken. Lord Tywin's blood was in her. I am a lioness. I will not cringe for them.

The queen shrugged off her robe.

(...)

"Harlot," a voice screamed.

(...) I am not afraid. I am a lioness. She walked on.

— Cersei II, ADWD

Daenerys Targaryen, queen in the East, claimant to the Iron throne

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver's Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne. — Daenerys VII, AGOT "Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now." — Daenerys X, AGOT

I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer. — Daenerys II, ACOK

"Sellswords have their uses," Ser Jorah admitted, "but you will not win your father's throne with sweepings from the Free Cities. Nothing knits a broken realm together so quick as an invading army on its soil."

"I am their rightful queen," Dany protested.

"You are a stranger who means to land on their shores with an army of outlanders who cannot even speak the Common Tongue. The lords of Westeros do not know you, and have every reason to fear and mistrust you. You must win them over before you sail. A few at least." — Daenerys III, ACOK

It was hard to summon the will to speak, to recall the words she had practiced so assiduously. "I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros." Do they hear me? Why don't they move? She sat, folding her hands in her lap. "Grant me your counsel, and speak to me with the wisdom of those who have conquered death." — Daenerys IV, ACOK

Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at all. "Remind your Good Master of who I am. Remind him that I am Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, trueborn queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. My blood is the blood of Aegon the Conqueror, and of old Valyria before him." — Daenerys II, ASOS

“I know what Aegon proved, I mean to prove a few things of my own” (...)

"Done," the old Grazdan answered in his thick Valyrian.

The others echoed that old man of the pearl fringe. "Done," the slave girl translated, "and done, and done, eight times done."

(...)

"Is it done, then? Do they belong to me?"

"It is done," he agreed, giving the chain a sharp pull to bring Drogon down from the litter.

(...)

She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy's fingers above her head for all the Unsullied to see. "IT IS DONE!" she cried at the top of her lungs. "YOU ARE MINE!" She gave the mare her heels and galloped along the first rank, holding the fingers high. "YOU ARE THE DRAGON'S NOW! YOU'RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!"

(...)

"Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!"

— Daenerys III, ASOS

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father's household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father's house, and the other had joined the queen's soldiers as one of the Mother's Men. He wanted them both hanged.

[btw, people still think she'll accept either Jon or Aegon as Rhaegar's children? — I mean this boy is basically a foil of either or both of them, his elder sibling(s) has been killed by two men as his father has been slaughtered, his mother raped and later killed... does this not remind anyone of Elia, Lyanna, Rhaenys and Rhaegar?, Yet Daenerys refuses him, even knowing her slavers have done something hideous to someone she should feel inclined to protect a woman, who possibly had no agency and a child]

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters. — Daenerys I, ADWD

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I. — Daenerys II, ADWD

"None, this one grieves to confess. We beg your pardon."

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon's mercy. "Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply."

"I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him."

"Do as you think best, but bring me names." Her fury was a fire in her belly. "I will have no more Unsullied slaughtered. Grey Worm, pull your men back to their barracks. Henceforth let them guard my walls and gates and person. From this day, it shall be for Meereenese to keep the peace in Meereen. Skahaz, make me a new watch, made up in equal parts of shavepates and freedmen.

— Daenerys II, ADWD

Margaery Tyrell, briefly queen consort to Joffrey Baratheon, consort to king Tommen Baratheon

Margaery was different, though. Sweet and gentle, yet there was a little of her grandmother in her, too. The day before last she'd taken Sansa hawking. It was the first time she had been outside the city since the battle. — Sansa II, ASOS

But why? Sansa wondered when she was alone. It made her uneasy. I'll wager this gown is Margaery's doing somehow, or her grandmother's.

Margaery's kindness had been unfailing, and her presence changed everything. Her ladies welcomed Sansa as well. It had been so long since she had enjoyed the company of other women, she had almost forgotten how pleasant it could be. — Sansa II, ASOS

I will need to move carefully with that one. The city was full of his men, and he'd even managed to plant one of his sons in the Kingsguard, and meant to plant his daughter in Tommen's bed. It still made her furious to think that Father had agreed to betroth Tommen to Margaery Tyrell. — Cersei I, AFFC

The old woman was twice as clever as her lord son, that was plain. — Cersei II, AFFC

She is pretty enough, she had to admit, but most of that is youth. Even peasant girls are pretty at a certain age, when they are still fresh and innocent and unspoiled, and most of them have the same brown hair and brown eyes as she does. Only a fool would ever claim she was more beautiful than I. The world was full of fools, however. So was her son's court. — Cersei III, AFFC

But the king was deaf to sense, thanks to his little queen. "If we mingle with the commons, they will love us better."

"The mob loved the fat High Septon so well they tore him limb from limb, and him a holy man," she reminded him. All it did was make him sullen with her. Just as Margaery wants, I wager. Every day in every way she tries to steal him from me. Joffrey would have seen through her schemer's smile and let her know her place, but Tommen was more gullible. She knew Joff was too strong for her, Cersei thought, remembering the gold coin Qyburn had found. For House Tyrell to hope to rule, he had to be removed. It came back to her that Margaery and her hideous grandmother had once plotted to marry Sansa Stark to the little queen's crippled brother Willas. Lord Tywin had forestalled that by stealing a march on them and wedding Sansa to Tyrion, but the link had been there. They are all in it together, she realized with a start. The Tyrells bribed the gaolers to free Tyrion, and whisked him down the roseroad to join his vile bride. By now the both of them are safe in Highgarden, hidden away behind a wall of roses.

— Cersei VI, AFFC

Brienne of Tarth, the ‘great beauty’, sworn shield of lady Catelyn Stark and sworn to find and protect her daughters.

"Children are a battle of a different sort." Catelyn started across the yard. "A battle without banners or warhorns, but no less fierce. Carrying a child, bringing it into the world . . . your mother will have told you of the pain . . ."

"I never knew my mother," Brienne said. "My father had ladies . . . a different lady every year, but . . ."

"Those were no ladies," Catelyn said. "As hard as birth can be, Brienne, what comes after is even harder. At times I feel as though I am being torn apart. Would that there were five of me, one for each child, so I might keep them all safe."

"Brienne, I have taken many wellborn ladies into my service over the years, but never one like you. I am no battle commander."

"No, but you have courage. Not battle courage perhaps but . . . I don't know . . . a kind of woman's courage. And I think, when the time comes, you will not try and hold me back. Promise me that. That you will not hold me back from Stannis."

Catelyn could still hear Stannis saying that Robb's turn too would come in time. It was like a cold breath on the back of her neck. "When the time comes, I will not hold you back." — Catelyn V, ACOK

Brienne curled up beneath her cloak, with Podrick yawning at her side. I was not always wary, she might have shouted down at Crabb. When I was a little girl I believed that all men were as noble as my father. Even the men who told her what a pretty girl she was, how tall and bright and clever, how graceful when she danced. It was Septa Roelle who had lifted the scales from her eyes. "They only say those things to win your lord father's favor," the woman had said. "You'll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men." It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game. A maid has to be mistrustful in this world, or she will not be a maid for long, she was thinking, as the rain began to fall. — Brienne IV, AFFC

"A daughter." Brienne's eyes filled with tears. "He deserves that. A daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name. Galladon drowned when I was four and he was eight, though, and Alysanne and Arianne died still in the cradle. I am the only child the gods let him keep. The freakish one, not fit to be a son or daughter." — Brienne VI, AFFC

Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.

She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand. "Leave her be. If you want to rape someone, try me."

The oulaws turned as one. One laughed, and another said something in a tongue Brienne did not know. The huge one with the broad white face gave a malevolent hiss. The man in the Hound's helm began to laugh. "You're even uglier than I remembered. I'd sooner rape your horse." — Brienne VII, AFFC

Sansa Stark, princess in the North to her brothers, currently hiding in the Vale.

"The night's first traitors," the queen said, "but not the last, I fear. Have Ser Ilyn see to them, and put their heads on pikes outside the stables as a warning." As they left, she turned to Sansa. "Another lesson you should learn, if you hope to sit beside my son. Be gentle on a night like this and you'll have treasons popping up all about you like mushrooms after a hard rain. The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy."

"I will remember, Your Grace," said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me. — Sansa VI, ACOK

Across the city, thousands had jammed into the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's Hill, and they would be singing too, their voices swelling out over the city, across the river, and up into the sky. Surely the gods must hear us, she thought.

Sansa knew most of the hymns, and followed along on those she did not know as best she could. She sang along with grizzled old serving men and anxious young wives, with serving girls and soldiers, cooks and falconers, knights and knaves, squires and spit boys and nursing mothers. She sang with those inside the castle walls and those without, sang with all the city. She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall. She sang for her mother and her father, for her grandfather Lord Hoster and her uncle Edmure Tully, for her friend Jeyne Poole, for old drunken King Robert, for Septa Mordane and Ser Dontos and Jory Cassel and Maester Luwin, for all the brave knights and soldiers who would die today, and for the children and the wives who would mourn them, and finally, toward the end, she even sang for Tyrion the Imp and for the Hound. He is no true knight but he saved me all the same, she told the Mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him.

But when the septon climbed on high and called upon the gods to protect and defend their true and noble king, Sansa got to her feet. The aisles were jammed with people. She had to shoulder through while the septon called upon the Smith to lend strength to Joffrey's sword and shield, the Warrior to give him courage, the Father to defend him in his need. Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him. — Sansa VI, ACOK

He had not been dead when she left the throne room. He had been on his knees, though, clawing at his throat, tearing at his own skin as he fought to breathe. The sight of it had been too terrible to watch, and she had turned and fled, sobbing. Lady Tanda had been fleeing as well. "You have a good heart, my lady," she said to Sansa. "Not every maid would weep so for a man who set her aside and wed her to a dwarf."

A good heart. I have a good heart. Hysterical laughter rose up her gullet, but Sansa choked it back down. The bells were ringing, slow and mournful. Ringing, ringing, ringing. They had rung for King Robert the same way. Joffrey was dead, he was dead, he was dead, dead, dead. Why was she crying, when she wanted to dance? Were they tears of joy? — Sansa V, ASOS

A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here.

Yet she stepped out all the same.

She pushed two of her snowballs together, added a third, packed more snow in around them, and patted the whole thing into the shape of a cylinder. When it was done, she stood it on end and used the tip of her little finger to poke holes in it for windows. The crenellations around the top took a little more care, but when they were done she had a tower. I need some walls now, Sansa thought, and then a keep. She set to work.

The snow fell and the castle rose. (...) It was only a castle when she began, but before very long Sansa knew it was Winterfell. She found twigs and fallen branches beneath the snow and broke off the ends to make the trees for the godswood. For the gravestones in the lichyard she used bits of bark. Soon her gloves and her boots were crusty white, her hands were tingling, and her feet were soaked and cold, but she did not care. The castle was all that mattered. — Sansa VII, ASOS

"When Robert dies. Our poor brave Sweetrobin is such a sickly boy, it is only a matter of time. When Robert dies, Harry the Heir becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie. Jon Arryn's bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon . . . and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden's cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back . . . why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright. So those are your gifts from me, my sweet Sansa . . . Harry, the Eyrie, and Winterfell.” — Alayne II, AFFC

"What if Lord Nestor values honor more than profit?" Petyr put his arm around her. "What if it is truth he wants, and justice for his murdered lady?" He smiled. "I know Lord Nestor, sweetling. Do you imagine I'd ever let him harm my daughter?"

I am not your daughter, she thought. I am Sansa Stark, Lord Eddard's daughter and Lady Catelyn's, the blood of Winterfell.

"A touch of fear will not be out of place, Alayne. You've seen a fearful thing. Nestor will be moved." Petyr studied her eyes, as if seeing them for the first time. "You have your mother's eyes. Honest eyes, and innocent. Blue as a sunlit sea. When you are a little older, many a man will drown in those eyes." — Sansa I, AFFC

It had fallen out just as Petyr said it would, the day the ravens flew. "They're young, eager, hungry for adventure and renown. Lysa would not let them go to war. This is the next best thing. A chance to serve their lord and prove their prowess. They will come. Even Harry the Heir." He had smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead. "What a clever daughter you are.

It was clever. The tourney, the prizes, the winged knights, it had all been her own notion. Lord Robert's mother had filled him full of fears, but he always took courage from the tales she read him of Ser Artys Arryn, the Winged Knight of legend, founder of his line. Why not surround him with Winged Knights? — Alayne I, WOW

All of them are strong, they simply display strength in a different manner. All of them are clever and goal-oriented, the way they go about achieving those goals differs. All of them are passionate, the way they purpose that passion differ. All of them love their family, the way they honor them differ. No matter which man is the catalyst of what happens to them, no matter who victimises them, they are the real players, the real achievers. They are resilient and they endure.

#daenerys stormborn #queen sansa #sansa stark #margaery tyrell #brienne of tarth #ymbq #queen cersei #cersei lannister

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jackoshadows · 1 year

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I do think Sansa staying in the Vale is the most likely option for her, but how do you think her becoming Lady of the Vale will work? With her marriage to Tyrion, her being wanted for king-slaying, and with no way to verify her identity I don't imagine that her revealing herself is going to go smoothly. And there's only so much that can be done through LF's manipulations and we don't even know his real intentions. I only ever seem to see theories that gloss over these details.

I think GRRM has indeed been laying the groundwork/some foreshadowing/parallel journeys (both characters pretending to be bastards after going on the run from KL for ex.) for Sansa and Tyrion.

For me, the biggest thing is consent. Whichever character ends up with Sansa, I need for Sansa to want to be with that character/love that character. Considering her imagining kisses with the Hound, it's clear she desires him, burned faced not withstanding. While in the Vale she also thinks more fondly of Tyrion, wishing she could flee from Littlefinger and go to Tyrion if she knew where he was.

Slowly but gradually, Sansa seems to be moving from just good looks in terms of what she desires. It could be that this happens with Tyrion and that marriage is not annulled and Sanrion end up in Casterly Rock at the end.

If Sanrion does not happen however, then I see her making her base at the Vale. She likes it there, she feels alive once again. Once she gets the gist of playing the game and wields an iota of power, it could be she likes being the behind the scenes player holding all the power.

I don't see Sansa openly being Lady of the Vale as long as she is married to Tyrion and the Lannisters hold power in KL. As you point out she is currently wanted for murder by the crown. I can see her trying to get the Lords of the Vale on her side and slowly take away LF's power. And if by the end of the series, Harry the Heir is still around (I think SR is a goner), and she genuinely likes him, they get married.

Or there are the Mountain clans and Timmett son of Timmett who are Chekov's gun waiting to be fired. Timmett also has a right to the Vale

“Which brings us back to the five remaining daughters of Elys and Alys. The eldest had been left terribly scarred by the same pox that killed her sisters, so she became a septa. Another was seduced by a sellsword. Ser Elys cast her out, and she joined the silent sisters after her bastard died in infancy. The third wed the Lord of the Paps, but proved barren. The fourth was on her way to the riverlands to marry some Bracken when Burned Men carried her off. That left the youngest, who wed a landed knight sworn to the Waynwoods, gave him a son that she named Harrold, and perished.” - Alayne, AFfC

Or it could be that the Hound gets to the Vale and it's him she loves, despite being married to Harry. We just don't know enough of what it is that Littlefinger is planning to do to speculate on who Sansa will marry etc. Which is why it's baffling to me when readers want her to go North asap in the next book. Like how?! There's so much plot to cover in the Vale!!

Or Sansa finally gets rid of Littlefinger by dragging him out the moondoor with her! Recall that Sansa was one of the characters who is most likely killed by Jaime on his way to the Iron Throne in the OG outline. All the characters who die in the OG outline - Ned, Cat, Robb, Drogo etc. - also die in the books. No doubt GRRM has expanded Sansa's story in the series, but it could be she still has the same ending considering GRRM's insistence that he is still heading for that same 1991 ending he has in mind.

#asks

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waitingforwinterwinds · 1 year

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A Clash of Kings - 33 CATELYN IV (pages 449-458)

Cat prays, connects some dots, and returns to Renly's camp in time to witness a magical murder. Brienne joins Team Stark.

It was full dark before they came upon the village. Catelyn found herself wondering if the place had a name. If so, its people had taken that knowledge with them when they fled, along with all they owned, down to the candles in the sept.

Hey look, it's Cat's turn to find an empty village!

The wealthy septs of the cities had statues of the Seven and an altar to each. In Winterfell, septon Chayle hung carved masks from each wall.

Oh that's interesting. Like I know it's probably a common enough alternative where they can get them, but I just like how the masks of the Seven kind of mimic or mirror the carved faces of the Weirwoods. I wonder if it was intentional, either by GRRM or the characters to sort of... meld some kind of common ground between Cat's gods and theirs.

- but these charcoal scratchings wre so crude they might be anyone. (...) The Warrior was Renly and Stannis, Robb and Robert, Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow. She even glimpsed Arya in those lines, just for an instant.

Ohhh? Well that feels like vague story/character arc type foreshadowing. ... assigned warrior at Rorschach test.

I have come so many thousands of leagues and for what? Who have I served? I have lost my daughters, Rob does not want me, and Bran and Rickon must surely think me a cold and unnatural mother. I was not even with Ned when he died...

Oh Cat, 🫂 She's just carrying so much, trying to help who she can only to feel like she's failing everyone else and then failing the one she was trying to help because things are so far out of her control.

I like this bit in the sept, it's very reflective, not in a shiny way, just that "the seven are one and all part of each other" part that reminds Cat that even though the Rorschach test of the abandon sept might say a character is this type of character, there's more to them than just that. Like how Cersei is assigned the role of mother, she's still as fierce in her protection of her children like the warrior, and though Arya has a warrior's strength of heart, she is still a maiden, a young girl.

"Yields?" Lord Rowan laughed. "When mace Tyrrel laid siege to Storm's End, Stannis ate rats rather than open his gates." "Well I remember." (...) "Near the end, Ser Gawen Wylde and three of his knights tried to steal out a postern gate to surrender. Stannis caught them and ordered them flung from the walls with catapults. I can still see Gawen's face as they strapped him down. He had been our master-at-arms." Lord Rowan appeared puzzled. "No men were ever hurled from the walls. I would surely remember that." "Maester Cressen told Stannis that we might be forced to eat our dead, and there was no gain in flinging away good meat." (...) "Thanks to the Onion Knight we were never reduced to dinning on corpses, but it was a close thing. Too close for Gawen, who died in his cell."

... shit that's dark. Like I know this series goes dark places, but damn.

I had to reread that section because for a second my brain interpreted that as "Stannis ordered the men flung from the walls so the dead wouldn't tempt the hungry" but then I realised no, no he put them in cold storage for when the rats ran out. My gosh the level of trauma that entire populace must have from that...

"Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother do the same," she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. "Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has never seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them."

Oh!? Oh my gosh. one sec... *plays season 8 finale* you son of- "we'll chose our kings form now on." Tyrion Lannister stole Catelyn's notes!

I know she probably just means in this instance, and not as a standard moving forward, but let me have this? Just for the lulz.

When they saw Renly in Brienne's arms, and her drenched with the king's blood, Ser Robar gave a cry of horror. "Wicked woman!" screamed Ser Emmon, he of sunflowered steel. "Away from him, you vile creature!" "Gods be good, Brienne, why?" asked Ser Robar.

these men are idiots. Brienne literally cried out "Your Gr- no!" No one's sword is out of their sheath, and I understand how it looks, but why is No One asking "what happened!?" And I do understand how it looks, but why are they assuming Brienne did the murder? No doubt at all, not even a whiff of suspicion someone else was in the tent? Y'all really think there's zero chance your security is less than air tight? And given Brienne' personality and crush... how did this not raise flags for them?

You know, I doubt it's even going to occur to them that a sword shouldn't be able to cut a steel gorget like a hot knife in warm butter. (I mean I assume based on the description, though I suppose it could have been slipped under and between the gorget and breastplate, just odd to me to say "the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there" if the metal itself isn't being compromised.)

Yay! Robar redeems himself by trusting Cat's honor! (and also logic despite "evil shadow did it")

He had forgotten Catelyn, until the iron brazier came crashing into the back of his head. ... "This way," Catelyn urged, "and slowly. We must not run, or they will ask why. Walk easily as if nothing was amiss." ... "Ride," Catelyn commanded her escort when they were all ahorse. "If any man tries to stop us, cut him down."

When not emotionally compromised, Catelyn is amazing under pressure.

#a clash of kings #a song of ice and fire #catelyn stark #catelyn tully #a chapter a day reading #acok #asoiaf

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asoiafreadthru · 5 months

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A Game of Thrones, Bran II

Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them with fascination, never quite daring to speak to them.

Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust.

Ser Jaime Lannister looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn’t count anymore.

The greatest living knight was Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when they reached King’s Landing.

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sweetaprilbutterfly · 2 years

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Bran Appreciation Month: Day 7 - Hopes & dreams

Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them with fascination, never quite daring to speak to them. Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust. Ser Jaime Lannister looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn't count anymore. The greatest living knight was Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when they reached King's Landing, and Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine. A Game of Thrones - Bran II

And now he could not climb, nor walk nor run nor swordfight, and the dreams he'd dreamed of knighthood had soured in his head. A Clash of Kings - Bran I

#branstarkmonth2022 #Bran Stark #branstarkedit #gotbranstark #asoiafedit #gotedit #iheartgot #gameofthronesdaily #starkhousesource #housestarkedit #GoT #Game of Thrones #ASOIAF #my edits #gotasoiafsource #asoiaf quotes

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ladyviserra · 2 years

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Hi can I request a Jaime x reader where he gets super jealous

Jealousy | Jaime Lannister

Pairing: Jaime Lannister x Reader

Summary: Jaime gets jealous of a knight being flirty with you.

Warnings: None

A/n: I got this a day after anon asked me did I get it, I hope the anon who requested likes it.

Being firstborn always has its advantages. You were the oldest child in your family. Together with your younger sibling, you were sent to court.

And that's when your love story with the kingslayer began. When the two of you met, you knew you were doomed with those green eyes drowning you.

How did it come to be a relationship? Well, it just happened, the moment was right and your hearts connected.

There was love between you, but it was secret, and you didn't like it. You didn't like to hide, you liked to show what you have to offer to the world, your and Jaime's relationship was completely something different for you, something new and unexplored.

He was a sworn knight of the Kingsguard, so it would be quite inappropriate for him to have any romantic partners.

Both of you would be dishonoured of your name, with the dirt he had on it from before this one would just make things worse.

The risk was major, but the things you do for love should be risky. Do you even love someone if you wouldn't sacrifice yourself for them?

You did believe he loved you. If nothing else his reactions showed so.

Once there was a knight that flirted with you, out of nowhere he appeared and started speaking with you, with time he became a little more open and the compliments were dropping from his mouth. You blushed at his charm, not knowing your partner has been watching.

Jaime got to your side, taking your hand and pulling you away from the man.

" Excuse us. " The light smirk was pointed at the knight as you moved from him.

" What was that for? " You asked Jaime hoping he didn't get jealous, again.

" I thought he was too nice to you. "

" Too nice to me? " Laugh followed your words. " Are you saying he should be nice to me? " The joke made his eyes go wide at the thought you might have been offended.

" Of course not, he was too close to you. It looked like he didn't give you the space to breathe. " He reasoned, jealousy dripping from his features.

" Jaime, are you jealous? " Teasing was on your mind, he quickly got defensive.

" No, I just don't like how he treats you. " He explained, trying to find excuses just so he didn't need to admit his feelings on the matter.

" It's alright, he was nice. " You spoke. " But not as nice as you. " Your hand traced the armour he was wearing.

" Y/n... " He spoke your name, whispering it with his breath, his eyes travelled behind you, to see if there was anyone to spot the two of you.

" You have nothing to be worried about. I am all yours, Ser Jaime. " You bowed innocently, teasing him with every move you made. The green eyes of a Lannister just observed, not daring to interrupt.

Suddenly, the steps announced from the hall how you weren't alone. People were coming your way, immediately you straight your back, head high.

" Meet me later. " They passed as he threw the words at you. " You know the place and time. "

" I surely do. " Walking past him you touched his arm, leaving him to face the rest of the hall alone, having to wait to see you later and suffer until time comes.

#jaime lannister #jaime lannister x you #jaime lannister x reader #jaime lannister imagine #nikolaj coster waldau #a song of ice and fire #game of thrones #asoiaf #asoiaf fic #asoiaf imagine #got imagine

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istumpysk · 2 years

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Operation Stumpy Re-Read

ASOS: Jaime II (Chapter 11)

I'm on my bnf ish today.

At the end of the dock, a flaking shingle swung from an iron post, painted with the likeness of a king upon his knees, his hands pressed together in the gesture of fealty.

[...]

Ser Cleos answered. "This is the Inn of the Kneeling Man, my lady. It stands upon the very spot where the last King in the North knelt before Aegon the Conqueror to offer his submission. That's him on the sign, I suppose."

"Torrhen had brought his power south after the fall of the two kings on the Field of Fire," said Jaime, "but when he saw Aegon's dragon and the size of his host, he chose the path of wisdom and bent his frozen knees."

I'm confident I know exactly what will happen in this story, and it does not involve a Dothraki army travelling north in winter to fight an ice dragon on horseback.

+.+.+

"We were hoping for capon." Jaime heard his companions entering behind him. "The crossbow is a coward's weapon."

Hahaha.

"Silence, fool." Joffrey lifted his crossbow and pointed it at her face. - Sansa III, ACOK

Tyrion's finger clenched. The crossbow whanged just as Lord Tywin started to rise. - Tyrion XI, ASOS

+.+.+

"Did you kill them?"

"Would I tell you if I did?" The man spat. "Likely it were wolves' work, or maybe lions, what's the difference?

Robb you are losing this war in more ways than one.

+.+.+

The clink of his chains accompanied his every movement. An irritating sound. Before this is done, I'll wrap these chains around the wench's throat, see how she likes them then.

Props to @fedonciadale for spotting this amazing Tyrion foreshadowing!

+.+.+

"Lord Beric, as it please you, ser. They call him that 'cause he strikes so sudden, like lightning from a clear sky. It's said he cannot die."

They all die when you shove a sword through them, Jaime thought.

No.

+.+.+

"If m'lady cares to wager her skin on that I won't stop her . . . but if I was you, I'd leave this here river, cut overland. If you stay off the main roads and shelter under the trees of a night, hidden as it were . . . well, I still wouldn't want to go with you, but you might stand a mummer's chance."

Get it? Do you get it? A mummer's chance. The Bloody Mummers capture them.

+.+.+

Hundreds of fat black flies swarmed amongst the straw, buzzing from stall to stall and crawling over the mounds of horse dung that lay everywhere, but there were only the three horses to be seen. They made an unlikely trio; a lumbering brown plow horse, an ancient white gelding blind in one eye, and a knight's palfrey, dapple grey and spirited.

There's a theory these three horses represent Hodor, Bloodraven, and Bran. We'll keep that in mind as we read.

+.+.+

The gelding come wandering up one night, and the boy caught the palfrey running free, still saddled and bridled. Here, I'll show you."

The saddle he showed them was decorated with silver inlay. The saddlecloth had originally been checkered pink and black, but now it was mostly brown. Jaime did not recognize the original colors, but he recognized bloodstains easily enough. "Well, her owner won't be coming to claim her anytime soon." He examined the palfrey's legs, counted the gelding's teeth. "Give him a gold piece for the grey, if he'll include the saddle," he advised Brienne. "A silver for the plow horse. He ought to pay us for taking the white off his hands."

[...]

She took the plow horse for herself and assigned the palfrey to Ser Cleos. As threatened, Jaime drew the one-eyed gelding, which put an end to any thoughts he might have had of giving his horse a kick and leaving the wench in his dust.

+.+.+

"Yes," said Jaime, "and the sooner the better. There's far too much horse shit about here for my taste. I would hate to step in it." He gave the wench a sharp look, wondering if she was bright enough to take his meaning.

Are you even a Lannister if you don't believe you're the smartest person in every room?

+.+.+

"He was no innkeep." She hunched gracelessly in the saddle, but seemed to have a sure seat nonetheless. "The man took too great an interest in our choice of route, and those woods . . . such places are notorious haunts of outlaws. He may have been urging us into a trap."

"Clever wench." Jaime smiled at his cousin.

Shades of Catelyn and Tyrion.

+.+.+

What a wretched creature this one is. She reminded him of Tyrion in some queer way, though at first blush two people could scarcely be any more dissimilar.

And here I thought comparing her to the Hound was as bad as it was going to get.

+.+.+

You would not like the truth. He had joined the Kingsguard for love, of course.

I wonder if Prince Aemon the Dragonknight did the same.

+.+.+

Aerys would want a young man to take his place, so why not a roaring lion in place of a sleepy one?

"Father will never consent," Jaime objected.

"The king won't ask him. And once it's done, Father can't object, not openly. Aerys had Ser Ilyn Payne's tongue torn out just for boasting that it was the Hand who truly ruled the Seven Kingdoms. The captain of the Hand's guard, and yet Father dared not try and stop it! He won't stop this, either."

"But," Jaime said, "there's Casterly Rock . . ."

"Is it a rock you want? Or me?"

[...]

He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest.

Cersei Lannister, plotting to destroy her father's empire from the jump. Lol

I wonder if she ever considered this would make Tyrion the heir to Casterly Rock. Probably not.

+.+.+

Instead of being together, Cersei and Jaime just changed places, and he found himself alone at court, guarding a mad king while four lesser men took their turns dancing on knives in his father's ill-fitting shoes. So swiftly did the Hands rise and fall that Jaime remembered their heraldry better than their faces. The horn-of-plenty Hand and the dancing griffins Hand had both been exiled, the mace-and-dagger Hand dipped in wildfire and burned alive. Lord Rossart had been the last. His sigil had been a burning torch; an unfortunate choice, given the fate of his predecessor, but the alchemist had been elevated largely because he shared the king's passion for fire. I ought to have drowned Rossart instead of gutting him.

Sounds like the alchemists have a debt to pay to a lion of Lannister!

+.+.+

"It is a rare and precious gift to be a knight," she said, "and even more so a knight of the Kingsguard. It is a gift given to few, a gift you scorned and soiled."

A gift you want desperately, wench, and can never have.

Hmmm.

+.+.+

"I earned my knighthood. Nothing was given to me. I won a tourney mêlée at thirteen, when I was yet a squire. At fifteen, I rode with Ser Arthur Dayne against the Kingswood Brotherhood, and he knighted me on the battlefield. It was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around.

I call horse shit on that one.

+.+.+

But when he closed his eyes, it was Aerys Targaryen he saw, pacing alone in his throne room, picking at his scabbed and bleeding hands. The fool was always cutting himself on the blades and barbs of the Iron Throne. Jaime had slipped in through the king's door, clad in his golden armor, sword in hand. The golden armor, not the white, but no one ever remembers that. Would that I had taken off that damned cloak as well.

When Aerys saw the blood on his blade, he demanded to know if it was Lord Tywin's. "I want him dead, the traitor. I want his head, you'll bring me his head, or you'll burn with all the rest. All the traitors. Rossart says they are inside the walls! He's gone to make them a warm welcome. Whose blood? Whose?"

🚨🚨🚨

STOP EVERYTHING.

We're solving this ending right here and now.

This requires some backreading. Scroll down to Dark Daenerys Highlights & Laughs, where you'll see the author appearing to build on a theme of the throne "rejecting" (cutting, slicing) those not meant to sit on it.

In the previous chapter, Davos is gifted a dagger, which he plans to murder the fire lady with, after the slaughter in King's Landing. Sounds familiar, right?

We skip forward to this Kingslayer chapter where we're told Aerys liked to cut himself on the throne, there's traitors in the walls, and Jaime ended the king's life.

There's rats in the walls.

Dany could hear sounds within the walls, a faint scurrying and scrabbling that made her think of rats. Drogon heard them too. His head moved as he followed the sounds, and when they stopped he gave an angry scream. - Daenerys IV, ACOK

In the Red Keep a man did best to hold his tongue. There were rats in the walls, and little birds who talked too much, and spiders. - Tyrion I, ASOS

The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the Cruel had built were as familiar to the rat-catcher as to the rats he hunted. Using a forgotten passageway, Cheese led Blood into the heart of the castle, unseen by any guard. - The Princess and the Queen

Long windowless halls. Right, not left. Rats in the walls. What does this remind you of? The House of the Undying.

Arya in the secret passageways under the Red Keep:

"Dragons," she whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand.

The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She held Needle in her left hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist. Hot wax ran down across her knuckles. The entrance to the well had been to the left, so Arya went right. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of snuffing out her candle. She heard the faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a pair of tiny glowing eyes on the edge of the light, but rats did not scare her. - Arya V, AGOT

Arya, The Rat.

We already know Arya, the rat, will be underneath the Red Keep when Daenerys goes dracarys.

THE NEXT CHAPTER AFTER THIS ONE.

"You will bring Shae to me through the walls, hidden from all these eyes. As you have done before."

Varys wrung his hands. "Oh, my lord, nothing would please me more, but . . . King Maegor wanted no rats in his own walls, if you take my meaning. He did require a means of secret egress, should he ever be trapped by his enemies, but that door does not connect with any other passages. - Tyrion II, ASOS

King Maegor!

At the end of the war council, Maegor remained behind alone in the throne room to brood. He was found dead the next morning by Queen Elinor, seated on the Iron Throne with his robes covered in blood and his wrists slashed. A spike from one of the swords on the throne behind him was impaled through the back of his neck. How Maegor died was never discovered. Some say he had been killed by Queen Elinor, others that he had been killed by a knight of his own Kingsguard. Yet others say he had been killed by a builder who escaped the slaughter three years earlier and desired revenge, and many believe that Maegor had been killed by the throne itself. - A Wiki of Ice and Fire

"Have you ever seen the Iron Throne? The barbs along the back, the ribbons of twisted steel, the jagged ends of swords and knives all tangled up and melted? It is not a comfortable seat, ser. Aerys cut himself so often men took to calling him King Scab, and Maegor the Cruel was murdered in that chair. - Davos IV, ASOS

They say the Iron Throne can be perilous cruel to those who were not meant to sit it. - Sansa VIII, ACOK

Arya learned those passageways for a reason! She's the traitor rat in the walls. She'll appear, stab Daenerys with a dagger, vanish, and the smallfolk will say the throne rejected her.

Daenerys can't simply be killed by a Faceless Man, it has to have a unique humbling/hilarious/embarrassing component. The throne "killing her" is about as poetic as it gets.

WATCH.

Also, @agentrouka-blog reminded me of Varys and Kevan in the ADWD epilogue.

We start the chapter with another anecdote of Aerys often cutting himself on the throne. Amazing how that keeps popping up during these pivotal moments. Snow (ash) covers King's Landing.

Kevan goes beneath the rookery where he's greeted by Varys, who appears to have entered the room through a bookcase. He downs Kevan with a crossbow. While dying, Kevan remarks that he's cold as ice (Bwah!). Finally, a bunch of children show up with daggers and kill the man. They presumably leave through the same walls, ensuring Kevan's murderer is never identified.

WATCH.

+.+.+

Rossart says they are inside the walls! He's gone to make them a warm welcome. Whose blood? Whose?"

"Rossart's," answered Jaime.

Those purple eyes grew huge then, and the royal mouth drooped open in shock. He lost control of his bowels, turned, and ran for the Iron Throne. Beneath the empty eyes of the skulls on the walls, Jaime hauled the last dragonking bodily off the steps, squealing like a pig and smelling like a privy. A single slash across his throat was all it took to end it. So easy, he remembered thinking. A king should die harder than this. Rossart at least had tried to make a fight of it, though if truth be told he fought like an alchemist. Queer that they never ask who killed Rossart . . . but of course, he was no one, lowborn, Hand for a fortnight, just another mad fancy of the Mad King.

Woah. Wait. Hang on a second here. I'm trapped in a POV.

You're telling me the alchemist Hand of the King, who planned to light the wildfire, was already dead by the time Jaime reached Aerys?

Uh.

Am I missing something here? That tells me murdering Aerys was not remotely necessary in that moment, and should not have been done by Jaime.

Your great deed was stopping Rossart, not killing Aerys, you schmuck. You did that because you wanted to.

+.+.+

Ser Elys Westerling and Lord Crakehall and others of his father's knights burst into the hall in time to see the last of it, so there was no way for Jaime to vanish and let some braggart steal the praise or blame.

Couple of things,

Westerling... father's knight. Ugh.

Jaime intended to vanish after the kill. 👀

+.+.+

He thought for a moment of the boy Viserys, fled to Dragonstone, and of Rhaegar's infant son Aegon, still in Maegor's with his mother. A new Targaryen king, and my father as Hand. How the wolves will howl, and the storm lord choke with rage. For a moment he was tempted, until he glanced down again at the body on the floor, in its spreading pool of blood. His blood is in both of them, he thought.

It's also in someone else.

+.+.+

"Proclaim who you bloody well like," he told Crakehall. Then he climbed the Iron Throne and seated himself with his sword across his knees, to see who would come to claim the kingdom. As it happened, it had been Eddard Stark.

You had no right to judge me either, Stark.

Straight out of Tyrion's playbook.

Why is Ned Stark so hostile towards me???

A lord with a bared sword across his knees is making a traditional sign that he is denying guest right. - A Wiki of Ice and Fire

+.+.+

In his dreams the dead came burning, gowned in swirling green flames. Jaime danced around them with a golden sword, but for every one he struck down two more arose to take his place.

Jaime Lannister has prophetic dreams!

Final thoughts:

-> return to menu <-

#operation stumpy re-read #asos #jaime ii

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astradrifting · 3 years

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AGOT - Jon I (Chapter 5)

There were times—not many, but a few—when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard. As he filled his wine cup once more from a passing flagon, it struck him that this might be one of them.

I don’t know why D&D decided Jon could never lie, when literally the first line in his POV is a lie. He’s so good at it he can even lie to himself!

****

A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations.

A singer with a high harp and a ballad seems like a vague Rhaegar allusion. That Jon can’t actually hear him makes me happy in a very petty way.

****

His lord father had come first, escorting the queen. She was as beautiful as men said. A jeweled tiara gleamed amidst her long golden hair, its emeralds a perfect match for the green of her eyes. His father helped her up the steps to the dais and led her to her seat, but the queen never so much as looked at him. Even at fourteen, Jon could see through her smile.

I think this part is actually Jon being indignant on Ned’s behalf that Cersei was rude to him, by not looking at him when he escorts her, not that she never looked at Jon. Also, there’s those observation skills. He’s never been taken in by a pretty smile.

****

After them came the children. Little Rickon first, managing the long walk with all the dignity a three-year-old could muster. Jon had to urge him on when he stopped to visit.

Adorable!!!

****

Jon noticed the shy looks she gave Robb as they passed between the tables and the timid way she smiled at him. He decided she was insipid. Robb didn’t even have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning like a fool.

Jon’s a mean drunk I guess 💀

****

Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon’s vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his sister’s hair and his mother’s deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.

Joffrey according to Jon: 👁👄👁

But Sansa looked radiant 🥰

****

He was more interested in the pair that came behind him: the queen’s brothers, the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. The Lion and the Imp; there was no mistaking which was which. Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered “Kingslayer” behind his back. Jon found it hard to look away from him.

This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed.

Giving me big ‘muscled like a maiden’s fantasy’ vibes there, Jon.

Also, curiously enough Jaime’s introduced wearing black and red, Targaryen colours. Maybe a nod to the incest storyline, possibly leftover foreshadowing from when Jaime was going to become king, as per the outline.

Otherwise this means that, like everybody else in this story, Jaime is a secret Targaryen. He and Cersei can join the ranks of Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Mance Rayder and while we’re at it… *spins a wheel of names* Meera too.

****

His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their wolves to the banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too.

His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke.

Jon spends half this chapter on the verge of tears, my angsty little lad.

****

Jon looked up happily as his uncle Ben put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair much as Jon had ruffled the wolf’s.

They actually call him Ben and ‘uncle Ben’ a few times in the series, which I honestly think might be a Spider-Man allusion. Surrogate father figure Uncle Ben’s early disappearance/death kicking off the plot… There’s also a saying that nobody stays dead in comics except for Uncle Ben - considering all the other resurrections in the books, metaphorical and literal, yet GRRM says that Benjen isn’t Coldhands, it might be the same for this Uncle Ben too.

****

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”

"[Garlan] is a great knight," Ser Loras replied. "A better sword than me, in truth, though I'm the better lance." (ASOS, Sansa I)

Love a Jon-Garlan parallel! Also thinking about Garlan being the older brother made me realise - in the story everyone thinks that Jon is younger than Robb, but timeline-wise, he has to be older, because Robb was conceived in the two weeks before Ned left to fight at the Trident, and Rhaegar must have at least already been in the capital by then to rally the loyalists, so Jon was conceived weeks, if not months earlier. Which means that Ned has definitely lied about when Jon’s birthday is.

Jon being the product of a ‘youthful indiscretion’ before he was married is less of a stain on Ned’s honour than him betraying his marriage bed but I imagine Catelyn’s fears about Jon usurping her children might have had more basis if he was known to be the eldest, so maybe that’s why Ned lied about how old he is.

****

“Daeron Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

"A conquest that lasted a summer," his uncle pointed out. "Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn't a game." He took another sip of wine. "Also," he said, wiping his mouth, "Daeron Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?"

Jon is unfortunately, a jock. And a bit of an idiot.

There’s something about Jon’s hero dying at 18, Waymar dying at 18 just a few chapters ago... Jon has them all beat by dying at 17.

****

"You are a boy of fourteen," Benjen said. "Not a man, not yet. Until you have known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up."

"I don't care about that!" Jon said hotly.

"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son."

Jon felt anger rise inside him. "I'm not your son!"

Benjen Stark stood up. “More’s the pity.”

Establishing Benjen as a somewhat contentious father figure to Jon - even more fuel for my brand new Uncle Ben ‘theory’.

****

The wolf pup padded closer and nuzzled at Jon's face, but he kept a wary eye on Tyrion Lannister, and when the dwarf reached out to pet him, he drew back and bared his fangs in a silent snarl.

"Shy, isn't he?" Lannister observed.

"Sit, Ghost," Jon commanded. "That's it. Keep still." He looked up at the dwarf. "You can touch him now. He won't move until I tell him to. I've been training him."

Possibly he and Sansa are the only ones who properly trained their direwolves, considering how the rest of them will end up behaving.

****

“If I wasn’t here, he’d tear out your throat,” Jon said. It wasn’t actually true yet, but it would be.

Pffffft! Edgy edgy edge-lord 💀

Though I also always feel like issuing casual threats to Tyrion Lannister so I can’t really blame him.

****

Standing, he was taller than the dwarf. It made him feel strange.

He’s got a weird preoccupation with comparing his height to Lannister men in this chapter. My headcanon for the books is that Jon’s quite tall by ADWD but evidently he’s tiny in AGOT if he feels strange being tall next to a dwarf.

****

final thoughts:

Believe it or not, I didn’t actually have Jonsa in mind with my new Uncle Ben theory, but I did just remember that brown haired Peter Parker’s main love interest is red-haired MJ :P

#astra re-reads #agot re-read #jon chapters

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dreadwulf · 3 years

Text

prompt #1: The Green Knight

(Warning: Major Character Death. Not the Major Character you think. Be warned.)

The Green Chapel stands still and silent when the Golden Knight arrives.

Once he had expected a fine cathedral to await him at the of his journey, but by now he is unsurprised to find a crumbled ruin overgrown with ivy. Only the stone walls remain of this “chapel”. The sunken paving stones admit dirt and weeds between them enough that it is barely distinguishable from the forest floor, and the roof is long since fallen in. Everywhere it is overgrown with thick green leaves and vines, and surrounded by a canopy of trees that opens only enough to admit a slice of night sky directly above.

Ser Jaime Lannister enters watchfully, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The Green Knight is nearly invisible to him at first: concealed in greenery, grown into the landscape as though part of it. The bark of his skin is encrusted with moss, leaving no visible gap between himself and the plants around him. Judging from the growth, the Knight has not moved in a long, long while.

Has he stood exactly here for the entire year, waiting for him? It looks more like a statue, or a tree carving. Something long abandoned. Much longer than a single year.

“Ser Knight,” he announces, “I have arrived per our agreement.”

Silence.

There is only him here, and a tree that looks only a little like a man.

He is early, Ser Jaime realizes. Will be it dawn of the day, or the very hour of their meeting? He may be here for some time. It will be hours to dawn, and it had been another sundown after that when the Green Knight had ridden into Robert’s court on his enormous steed.

One year hence, the Knight had said. Well, at least he is not late.

The pre-dawn hours are quiet here, and the grove is peaceful. The trees overhead open out onto a pretty sprinkling of stars, and all the noise of the forest and the brook which has lead him here has faded away. He can see why the locals call this the Green Chapel. It is the sort of place that encourages one to pray, and to contemplate, at least if one is given to introspection and piety.

Which he is usually not.

The Golden Knight quickly grows restless. Waiting is not a skill of his. He is impatient by nature, impetuous and impulsive. Faced with delay he will rush things ahead, or abandon his course. Unless, as in this case, he has no choice but to wait, and then he will be overcome with unease.

He paces. His fingers twitch. His gaze darts around, landing on this and that.

There is no sign of movement from the Green Knight.

If he had not seen him walking and talking, he might assume this to be only a sculpture, and not a living being. He might wonder if he had been tricked, and if some unseen enemy hovered nearby laughing at his predicament. But he has seen the Green Knight up close, and ran him through with his own blade, and watched as the great gnarled hands pulled the greatsword from his own breast as casually as a thorn from his finger, and tossed the weapon aside as though it were a child’s plaything.

His hands curl around the same greatsword at his belt. He has carried it for a year, this sword. It was his prize for accepting the Green Knight’s challenge, and ostensibly he is here to return it. When he does, the knight will return him the same blow, and stab him through the heart.

Was it worth it? What, after all, did he do with his fine sword?

Ser Jaime sighs and sits on the wet ground. He can grow no more muddy and disheveled than he is already. He left King’s Landing in his extravagant golden armor, wearing his lion’s helm, and riding the finest horse in his stable. But he arrives in the Green Chapel on foot, with no helm, dressed in shabby clothing and battered bits of armor. Even his golden hair is shorn, and only a thin growth of hair remains of his famous golden curls.

The only thing of value remaining to him is the sword. And to be quite honest, the Green Knight is welcome to it. If he could, he would exchange it for something much more valuable that he had found, and then lost, along the way.

It had taken many weeks to get him here. There were some diversions - misadventures, a strange episode in a Keep, and a good deal of wandering around lost - but he has come a very long way from Robert’s Court to find himself here. He had managed the journey only with the help of his squire.

The girl had joined him on the road on the very first day. She was part of the crowd that had followed him from the gates, those knight-hopefuls who so frequently followed his footsteps around the city. Most wanted some of his glory, hoped for it to spill onto them by mere proximity. Some wanted merely to see him meet his fate, others to be part of that tale if they could. But there was very little glory in this journey. They had been beset by bandits, wild animals, bad weather, and strange side-tracks from almost the very start

There had been six, even eight of them at a time, during the ride through the Westerlands, but as he traveled further and further from the capital and the weather worsened their number dwindled, and by the tenth night there was only her. Her name was Brienne. If she had another he has already forgotten it.

She was a strange girl, ungainly large, and dressed all in armor, in imitation of a knight. She had a face like rotten fruit, softly misshapen. Her straw-blonde hair, ruddy and pox-marked skin, and stubborn pout completed the picture. Her very presence proved subtly irritating. If a maid cannot be beautiful she might at least keep herself out of sight; or else be a servant, who are barely women to begin with.

His followers quickly decided to make a servant of her. This did not go well. Ser Jaime came upon her fighting three of the men on the third night. One of them had blood streaming from his nose already, another was sitting on the ground looking dazed from a blow to the head. The last was seemingly unfazed by the fate of the other two, and Ser Jaime observed him take a good punch to the chin that left him spitting out teeth. They were trying to steal her supper, she said. The girl should be cooking for us all, the men said.

“She is my squire”, Ser Jaime told them, deciding upon it at that very moment. “She will cook supper for only me.”

“Like hell I will,” the ungrateful wench spat at him.

Ser Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish to be a knight or not? First you must be a squire.”

She did at that. She did wish it, very much. He can see it in her eyes -- striking blue eyes, with a determined gaze.

Brienne did cook his supper, the next night, over the campfire. Not very well, and he did not insist again. But she also tended his armor and sword, and that she did very well indeed. She handled his greatsword with tremendous respect and care, such that it touched him to see. He had long since stopped being impressed by the blade, after carrying it for a year.

Brienne proved a loyal squire, if not the most typical one. When wolves attacked she proved herself courageous, stood herself well in front of older and more experienced men. When there was work to be done she would be first to do it, and without being asked: gathering firewood, tending the horses. Drudgery she avoided, but practical, necessary things she performed without complaint.

She had very blue eyes. Sky eyes, clear and bright. He would have liked to look at them, except that she would be looking back, and that seemed to frighten her. She did not like to look him in the face. A shy maid, for all her armor and prickly temperament. He liked to tease her, and tell bawdy jokes with the other men until her face turned a pleasant pink.

A skirmish with the Brave Companions lost three of his would-be-knights and all of their horses,and it lead to their capture for a brief time. When they managed to escape, they were left traveling afoot, and without their supplies. His other followers drifted off then, losing their taste for adventure. Only the girl remained, and walked beside him along the road North uncomplaining through the long days ahead.

She was good with a blade, better than most. Not so good as Ser Jaime, who had a prodigious talent. But on the occasions he challenged her to spar with him, she got his blood up and roaring in a way he had not felt since he was a young man himself, and all his adventures before him.

She was kind. Too reserved to be gregarious, but generous in spirit. She took pity on every foundling, every poor farmer and milkmaid they encountered along the way. She wanted to help them, rescue them all; if he had not restrained her they would have been fighting for the honor of each individual cow from the Westerlands to the Neck. She was much disappointed that they hadn’t. What is a knight for, if not that?

She would learn, as he once had. The Knights of Robert’s Kingdom were more tarnished than a starry-eyed squire suspected. Heroes and legends in tales were only men in the flesh, and men with a bit of money and renown all went the same way. Given the best of everything they would indulge themselves, would grow greedy, would came to expect what had once been freely given. They fought not for gods and country but for glory, and mainly fought each other. They plundered wealth and women, sat by roaring fires, went slow, went soft, forgot hunger and killing cold.

Honor was a facade, nothing more. To become a knight was to learn it. It made him glad she would never be knighted, and fail that lesson.

“Entertain me, squire,” he said to her as they rode side-by-side, needling her. “I have heard all of the songs and stories of this land, and they bore me. Tell me a tale of yourself, Squire Brienne. What adventures set you on this course to become a knight?”

She bowed her head. “I have no tales to tell, my lord. It is only a wish, and an aspiration. But I have no adventures but the one we are on now. But you, my lord, are a famous knight, and must have many stories to tell. I would be honored to hear them from your own lips.”

Ser Jaime had hundreds of tales. He has boasted of his adventures to innumerable audiences as they looked on him admiringly, the great Golden Knight. Wins at tourney, duels with other knights, riding to war for King Robert. But for some reason, as he turned them over in his mind, he discarded each of his favorite stories one by one. He did not want to tell them now; those stories are not for her.

“I also have no tales to tell,” he said.

“Are you not on a quest, my lord?” She looked over at him quizzically, her blue eyes innocent. “I hear tell you are riding to the Green Chapel in the north…”

“I am, and to meet the Green Knight. But even I am not so bold as to tell that tale when I do not yet know its ending. But it sounds like you could, Squire Brienne.”

Again she frowned at him for that title. But she did know the bare outlines of the story, how the strange Green Knight had rode into King Robert’s court and invited the bravest and boldest of his knights to face him in battle, to strike a single blow and receive a blow in return, and for it they would gain his greatsword as a prize. How the Golden Knight had taken up the challenge, and in a blow of great talent and precision stabbed the Golden Knight through the heart, finding the weakest point in his armor on a single try. But instead of falling down dead, the Green Knight had easily pulled the blade from his own chest and mounted his horse. He told the Golden Knight to meet him in one year at the Green Chapel, where he would return his blow.

“And I see you do not hesitate to keep your word,” Brienne concluded the tale. “You are as bold and brave as all the stories say. But what will you do when you get there?”

“Fight him, I suppose.” Ser Jaime’s hand tensed around the ruby-encrusted pommel of his borrowed sword.

“Ser?” She blinked back at him in confusion.

“What, you expected I would meekly bow my head and be murdered? Of course not.” Ser Jaime’s shoulders shook. “Twas not a fair bargain, when he has such dark magic that he can take a sword through the heart and survive. I have no such magic, and it isn’t a fair exchange.”

“But you did not have to strike a deathblow. By the bounds of the agreement you might have only scratched him, and taken only a scratch in return.”

Well, yes. In hindsight, that would have been wiser. If he had taken the time to think it over, he might have put that together. But by nature he rarely takes that time.

“He was a large and fearsome Knight, and I thought only to prevent the return blow. Of course if I had known he would survive it I would have acted differently. I know it now. And when I see the Knight this time I will fight him with everything I have, and he will fight me with everything He has, and we will see who is the victor.”

“But you made a promise…” She sounded faintly disappointed, and it irritated him greatly.

“It was a trick, girl. A trick to snare a knight by his honor. Would you have me die for a trick? What good will that serve? No, I will keep my appointment as promised, but he will have to work to land his blow against me. I’ll have my skill and my wit to defend me, as he had his magic.”

“Are you not afraid, Ser?”

“Afraid to fight? Never. It will be a fine duel, perhaps the finest of my life, and I am eager for it. It will be the battle that will make my legend, the kind that songs are sung of, and I look forward to that.”

Brienne said that she hoped to see it, and let the matter lie.

She did not see it, of course. They came to the Crossroads instead.

An inn stood at the crossroads, and cast-offs from the Riverlands sheltered there. Orphans and strays. Jaime and Brienne arrived only long enough to see a great many helpless faces before bandits came riding, meaning to plunder the kitchens, and carry off the women and children.

Jaime told the girls to run away as best they could, and aimed to do the same. If they were quick about it, the raiders couldn’t catch them all.

Brienne, on the other hand, meant to defend them. They would not survive alone in the forest, she said, and if the bandits took away the food, the little ones would starve.

“Better the bandits take them then, one or the other,” he said quickly, tugging at her. “But we had best retreat. We will not manage another fight in our condition, and not without more men.”

This was entirely reasonable, to him; better knights than he had often advised the same. There was no glory in failure, and certainly none in a pointless death in the middle of nowhere.

“No.” Brienne grew taller under his grasp, and would not be moved. “What good is a knight if he will not defend the innocent?”

“You stupid girl.” He holds her by the shoulders. “There is nothing you and I alone can do against so many men, no matter how skilled you are with a blade. They will surround us and cut us down -- it won’t even buy any time for your orphans. The best we can do is live to fight another day.”

“Someone must do something,” she says stubbornly. “I will not run.”

“Not to no avail! A battle is bravery, but this is suicide. It’s foolish, meaningless. It will make no difference whether you intervene or not - either way the women are taken and the children are killed. You will only add another body.”

“Someone must fight for them,” she insists. “Even if there is no hope. I am not enough, but if there is no one else, then it will be me.”

With that, she had shoved him in the larder, with a sudden and ferocious strength, and barred the door.

“Let me free, you stupid child!” He slammed his weight into the door sharply with his shoulder, enraged.

He could hear her through the door, her voice steady and clear.

“Someone must fight for them. If there is no one else, then it will be me.”

“Damn you,” he swore at her. “Open the door and I will fight with you. Two against a dozen is better odds than one. Open the door!”

“You have an appointment to keep,” she said, and then there was silence.

Jaime could not see what happened after that, but he could hear it. He could hear the disdainful laughter of the brighands, and the drawing of many blades. He could hear for a time the blades clashing, and much shouting, and one unfamiliar cry of pain, and for a brief moment he was hopeful that she might prevail. She was a talented swordfighter. If they fought her one at a time he had no doubt she could best them.

He could tell, even without seeing, that they did not. The fight turned, became a slaughter. He heard a single cry that he knew in his gut was Brienne, taking a blow she would not survive. There came more noise then, more steel and blows, and then the screams of the women and children being dragged from the Inn.

He screamed too. He wept, and clutched at his useless greatsword in a rage, wanting to throw himself through the door and impale himself on them like an arrow, these animals who would dare to touch a true knight. None of them seemed to hear him, or proved interested in the larder.

He didn’t know how long he had been left sitting there on the floor, with tears on his face and the earthy smell of raw meat weighting him down in the cool darkness. He waited for one of them, any of them, to remember him in the kitchens and come back, but no one did, and that was how he knew that no one remained. He wondered if he would be left there to rot. To moulder away with the bits of cheese and bread that remained there until he was nought but bones and a borrowed sword.

Eventually, quietly, a small boy with enormous eyes unbarred the door, having emerged from his hidey-hole only hours after the vicious intruders had left. Seeing Jaime huddled in the dark, he fled again and hid himself away in the Inn.

Jaime emerged into the twilight reluctantly. When he looked down the road, he imagined he could see them. The prisoners being taken away in the back of some wagon, women and children and women who were really children still, huddled together and weeping, down the long road and away. It was all for nothing, all of this. The brigands had taken them anyway.

There was no glory in this defeat. There was only a bloodstreaked trench in the mud where a terrible battle occurred, and in the middle of it a sad heap of metal. She was unrecognizable there, cut to pieces. Only a few strands of pale blonde hair remained to know her by.

The blacksmith’s armory had implements enough to break the cold ground. He dug a hole right beside the crossroads while the rain bucketed down on him. His chest hurt from the strangled sob caught in it. He put her in the hole and blanketed her again with the mud. If there had been flowers anywhere in that season in all the land he would have found them and laid them there above her grave. One day, he hoped, grass would grow.

It was a meaningless gesture, and made no difference to the blue-eyed girl. But it meant something to Jaime.

It was not meaningless to them, the shivering children and the sad-faced women riding away in the wagons. They had looked back, mournfully, at the place in the road where her body lay. Looked back down the long road, into the distance, through the rain and the trees and the tramping feet of the bandits’ horses and out of sight, and they kept looking. They would look back long after the rain and wind had wiped away any traces of what had happened there. They would not forget. When the enemy came for them, someone took up a blade in their cause. Someone thought they mattered. Someone thought they were worth dying for. They did not face their fate alone.

When evil comes, so long as at least one person stands against it, there is still some light left in the world.

He left the shovel there in the road and went back to the Inn. It took some time to locate the boy and persuade him to come out of the trunk where he had hidden himself. He carried the boy with him North to the next village, where he left him wordlessly at the Sept, and turned North again, alone.

The rain never stops now. The ground is crusted with snow and the air is wet and mossy and somehow the rains never wash anything away. It only soaks into the dirt and grime and ice and blood and weighs it down. Makes it heavier. Makes everything impossibly heavy.

There are more strange things that happen to him then: how the road curves and wanders beneath his feet and doubles him back to the start as though trying to throw him off his course. There were strange dreams, and visions, and he walks in a sort of fever. Nothing seems quite real after the Crossroads, nothing except the sword in his hand and his goal: the Green Chapel. He has an appointment to keep.

He grows only more determined to reach his destination.

The nights grow colder. He wakes up shivering, rolling over, trying to wake the embers of the fire, and every time his eyes open they are looking for the foolish girl in her armor. They find only blackness and he remembers then the crossroads and the hole he dug besides the road.

He missed her terribly.

He misses her still, sitting here before the Green Knight. It is a persistent ache, a weight that grows heavier by the day. It makes him feel ancient to contemplate. He sounds like one of the rusty old knights who cluster around Robert, lamenting the roads not taken, the women they might have settled down with. Lost loves. It has been only days and yet it seems like years ago, and a road already overgrown and impassable. He can see it already, the enormity of his mistake. His life might have become something entirely different, improbably better. The opportunity came to him, and he wasted it.

Brienne. The Maiden Knight. She could have been his lady love and his brother-at-arms all at once. Would anything have been so perfectly suited to him as that? He will never find her like again, and even if he did he would not want it; he will only want her, for the rest of his life.

Jaime muses over these memories through the hours. The journey, the past, the world around him. Time seems to settle into a hazy blur.

The sun rises slowly, impossibly slowly. He cannot see it past the trees, but the world gradually brightens, with gentle insistence. The greens grow ever more lush and verdant all around him. The wall where the Green Knight stands turns from grim grey to a lively grass color, the dark ivy wound around in loops that seem to form an altar of deep mossy overgrowth around the still and sleeping form of the Knight.

His hands worry at the hilt of the greatsword that he had come to return. He might leave the blade on the altar and go. Would that fulfill his word?

What did Jaime do with his famous sword, during the year he had it? Only held it aloft for others to see. Used it to threaten, and to cajole. Boasted of it to other lords. But the only time he had just cause to draw it he had chosen to retreat instead, and in doing lost the only thing of any value he had ever found.

If only he had gone with her. Agreed right at the first, without hesitation. If he had stood at her side it might have ended differently. One had no chance, but two, perhaps, might have survived. He might have taken her with him to the Green Chapel. He might have taken her home to the King. He might have seen her made a knight, and stood proudly beside her at the king’s table. The tales he might have made with her, he would be proud to tell.

The Knight’s form comes into clearer and clearer relief: looming over him, impossibly tall, improbably wide.

Jaime knows with cold certainty that the Knight is going to wake very soon. As the light grows stronger, the Green Chapel is waking around him with a thousand tiny movements. He can almost make out the subtle sound of leaves uncurling to the sun, and worms crawling in the earth.

The sword, Oathkeeper, quivers in his hands, as though outraged. How did he dare to carry that blade to this place intending to lie? To break his promise? More and more he thinks he did not. He came here for something else entirely.

Jaime finds, for the first time that he can remember, his hands are trembling. It is one thing to go to battle, but another entirely to go to an execution. His heart beats in his ears with a deep drumbeat of doom... doom... doom...

He’s not here to fight a duel, is he? What, then, is he here for?

Glory? Judgement? Mercy? Absolution?

Or only the cold, mechanical means of his inevitable end?

Was all this journey only for that? Is he truly here only to get a blade through his chest? And if so, might it be worth his while? After all, is there any better way for a knight to die? Will it not be a fitting end to his legend?

But he isn’t ready to die. Not willingly. Not without redeeming his honor, making something of himself. If he had another year… but would he do any more with that than he had the last? Than he has with all of the years thus far? Is there any amount of time that would make any more of himself than he has already?

The time he needed was these weeks on the road with Brienne. That showed him what kind of man he’d like to be. But he failed her when it mattered most. Perhaps he should be judged for that. Not a year from now, nor twenty. Today.

The sun rises higher in the sky, and paints the Green Chapel gold. The air warms, and birdsong calls to him on the breeze. The day is relentlessly pleasant, with a promise of endless more such days to follow. A bittersweet longing fills him. It has never seemed half so lovely to be alive as it does in this beautiful place. If only he could have brought her here.

I will be brave, he says to himself. Like Brienne.

All at once there is a great creaking sound of wood bending and tearing, and when Jaime looks up the green altar is moving. Green leaves tremble and wave purposefully, and twigs and small branches snap and fall away to rest in the dirt below. The trunk of the altar pulls itself free, excavates itself from the enclosure in the leaves and branches. Limbs pull free, and something nearly human rises out of the green, the bark of its skin glistening, newborn.

The Green Knight is standing.

Jaime looks up, and up, and up, from where he sits on the mossy floor of the green chapel, and his hand grips the hilt of his sword.

He is ready to fight, by instinct, and to flee, by sudden impulse. He is afraid, he realizes, afraid in a way he has never been before. There is more than a blow to the heart to fear here. There is the fate of his soul, which is suddenly entirely in question. Before his journey he had no doubt of his own worth as a knight, and now he is just as certain in the opposite direction. Is he worthy? He is not. He is not.

Slowly, he stands. The sun shines down on him through the same corridor in the trees where he had watched the stars the night previous, and its warmth is a rebuke; why should the sun shine upon one such as him? He is the golden knight no more. He is only a man, a man with a sword that does not belong to him.

His eyes raise last of all.

Jaime finds through the golden light the Green Knight’s face. The eyes first, through a thin bloom of leaves and moss, and then the nose, the jawline. He has never seen it so clearly before, not even when he had stabbed her through the heart. With slow realization his eyes travel down and up again, taking in the shape of his host, and her nature.

The Green Knight is a woman? Why didn’t he realize it before?

It seems only too clear now. The slight narrowing of the waist and wrists, and in the face… not a pretty face, but undeniably feminine. Full lips, round cheeks, and the eyes...

Blue eyes. Beautiful blue, sad blue, noble and sorry. The lost blue of long-forgotten clear skies.

When he sees them his hands stop shaking. All is well. His grand sword slips from his fingers and settles softly in the grass, sinks gently into the ground, is welcomed.

“It’s you,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you.”

The girl from the Crossroads is standing before him.

He doesn’t understand how it is possible. Was she always the Knight? Was all an illusion? Was the Knight in disguise when he met her, or was the Knight once that girl? But it doesn’t matter. Whoever she is, she is here now, and it is good and right that this happen to him.

Her voice is low and rusty, like a hinge that has not moved in many years, and slow in its opening.

“You... kept... our appointment,” the Knight creaks.

His mouth is gone dry. “One year hence. You gave me time enough. And so I am here.”

He thinks he sees her smile, faintly. With the crackling sound of breaking branches, the Knight gestures to his feet.

“You... dropped your sword... my Lord.” Ser Jaime glances down at Oathkeeper, already disappearing beneath the twining vines on the forest floor. “Is it not time... for our blades to cross? A duel to make your legend?”

“I made you a promise,” he says faintly, and puts a hand over his unguarded heart. “It seems my word is all I have, and if it means nothing to anyone else, it means something to me.”

She smiles. An oaken hand reaches out and touches him on the face, gently. “My brave knight.”

Her eyes are the bluest skies he has ever seen. He is not afraid. Not anymore.

“Are you ready?” she asks him, still stroking his cheek.

“Yes.” He is eager for it now. “Strike your blow.”

“Straight through the heart,” she agrees. Then she reaches out with her other hand to touch the other side of his face.

She kisses him.

#dreadwulf fic #jaime lannister #braime

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