the prerogative of the brave . . .4/?
title: the prerogative of the brave . . .
author: Eena
disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em.
category: Game of Thrones/Vampire Diaries (the first, right? *Bounces happily*)
characters/pairing: Caroline, Caroline/Robb Stark
spoilers: Season One for GoT, Up to 3.03 for TVD
summary: It is a world without Elenas, Bonnies, Moms, Tylers, Matts, Stefans, and yes, even Damons. It is a world where she is overwhelmed by a surging seas of constant companionship. The loneliness is the same.
~0~
It is not hard to live at Winterfell, only different.
Lady Catelyn doesn’t expect Caroline to spend her days sewing and praying. Rather, she would have Caroline walk the halls with her, learning all things necessary in how to run a house such as Winterfell.
“One day, you will be the Lady Stark of Winterfell,” Lady Catelyn explains as she shows Caroline the house ledgers. “These things will be your responsibility. It takes practice to learn how to run a house properly. I don’t believe you’ve had the chance to practice as such in King’s Landing. But the king tells us you did well at his council meetings, and that you know of these matters fairly well. Just a little practice, my dear; that’s all you need.”
But the work delights Caroline in ways her good-mother doesn’t understand. Papers, quills, charts, lists-these are things that Caroline can handle. In fact, she excels at handling them, and while she had not run a house in King’s Landing, he ran half a school in that other world, organized and ordered and collected. Winterfell is not the same as a carnival or parade, but the little control-freak of Mystic Falls loves the challenge.
However, that doesn’t mean she is spared sewing entirely.
There are few ladies at Winterfell, nothing compared to the multitudes of the capital. But they are no different in the north. They sit in a room, pull needles and thread through fabric, and gossip to their heart’s content.
Sansa, at eleven, is closest to her age. Caroline’s good-sister has her own group of little ladies who giggle over this and that while they sew. They are overly excited by Caroline’s presence, ask her endless questions about southern fashions and tournaments and all those feasts.
Arya, at nine, hates sewing, the gossip, and the giggles. But the tournaments pique her interest as well.
“Have you ever seen anyone die?” Arya asks one day, righ tin the middle of Jeyne Poole’s sighing over Ser Uncle.
“Arya! That is not a question you ask of a lady,” Septa Mordane, the mother hen of the sewing room, looked angry and exasperated. Arya, for her part, doesn’t even care to look embarrassed.
“I have,” Caroline answers, because she finds Arya’s question far more interesting than the rest, be they morbid or not. “Four men, to be exact.”
The other girls pale and a tense quiet invades the room.
“That must have been horrible,” Sansa, ever compassionate and polite.
“It was,” Caroline nods and looks at the open curiosity in Arya’s eyes. “It is not something that I delight in recalling. A bad waste of good men.”
Caroline doesn’t add that more than four men have died in all the tournaments she has witnessed. The four she mentions are the only she has seen with her own eyes, all of the joust. The melee, that barbaric and chaotic play, has claimed more. She never watches the melee, can’t abide the sigh of bloody and broken men. The confusion of it, combined with the bodies of the ground, always remind her of the deaths she has seen before, lives ended at her own hands.
“You shouldn’t speak of Death so casually,” she continues, eyes for Arya only. ‘It is one thing to speculate, it is another to understand. Have you ever seen the life disappear from the eyes of a man?”
Arya shakes her head.
“Pray that you never do. It’s a sight that stays with you, even years and years after you think you have forgotten it. You will always remember it, to the day the light goes from your eyes.”
The name Carter comes to mind as Caroline speaks. She takes a second and remembers the man with concern in his voice and blood dripping from his nose. To this day she can’t recall if Damon ever told her where he put the body, or where he put the bodies of her mother’s deputies. It seems absurd, every time she thinks of them, that she wouldn’t know where they were buried. She ended their lives-how could she not know?
“You poor thing,” Sansa looks near tears. “How horrible for you, princess.”
Caroline smiles and picks up her sewing once more. “Caroline,” she corrects gently and resumes pulling needle and thread through fabric once more.
Only Arya fails to comply with this silent signal. “It’s different, if you’re the man on the other end. How could he still compete if he always remembered something like that?”
“Memory does not require halting, Arya. In fact, it does its best work when a person’s in motion. Men who have killed in competition remember, and hopefully never do it again.”
“And if they do? And if they don’t care?” Arya, all stubborn pout and insistence, refuses to forfeit the point. Caroline isn’t sure when this degraded down into an argument, and for all the smiles and quiet tones, that’s what it was. But Arya sits, defiant by her half-finished needlework.
“Then they are men who don’t learn,” Caroline shakes her head, trying to rid herself of images of creatures with sharp teeth and bloody mouths. “And those men are not worth knowing.”
At night, when Caroline’s head rests on Robb’s chest and his finger lightly traces the curve of her neck and the bend of her shoulder, her husband lets out a soft laugh. “Arya says you’ve taken to lecturing her too. She says I should have just married Septa Mordane if that’s what I wanted in a wife.”
She smiles and looks up at him. “I’m not sure Septa Mordane would have you. She has high standards. I don’t think you could meet them.”
Robb frowns. “I’m the son of the Warden of the North-the future Warden.”
Caroline shrugs and does her best to hold back a giggle.
“You married me,” he points out, tone a bit petulant now.
“Perhaps my standards are not so high. I’m just a lady princess of the realm-Septa Mordane, well, she’s Septa Mordane.”
“You’re hurting my feelings, love. It’s cruel.”
And now she does laugh, because the playful look on his face is just too much. “How angry is my sweet good-sister?” she asks when the laughter dies.
“Sweet? Not usually a term one hears in regards to Arya,” Robb presses a kiss to the top of her hair. “And she’s not that angry. She likes you, actually. She only picks fights with people she likes. Everyone else she ignores, or fixes with that glare of hers.”
“She does have an impressive glare for a nine year old.”
Robb laughs, but it’s a distracted laugh now. “You do like it here, don’t you? I don’t you must still miss your family and your city-but you’re happy here, aren’t you?”
She sometimes forgets how young her husband is-or perhaps she forgets how old she is. These are the times that remind her, regardless.
“Of course I am happy, my love.”
~0~
Her fifteenth name-day arrives before she knows it.
Seven months in the north, and perhaps she does not feel she yet fits as such.
“That takes time,” Lady Catelyn tells her. “It took me years, and there are still days when I feel like an outsider. All girls feel that way when they come to their husband’s home.”
Caroline nods and smiles, but thinks no girl in Westeros has felt as much an outsider as Caroline has felt all these fifteen years.
She wakes that day to Robb’s smiling face and the absolutely stunning silver, jewel-studded hair piece in his hands.
She surprises them both by surging forward and pressing her lips against his.
“I take it you like my gift,” he says when she releases him.
“You remembered.”
And that makes him frown. “Of course I remembered. Why wouldn’t I?”
She can’t tell him of all the boys who haven’t remembered, or didn’t care when they did. She can’t tell him of the birthdays spent alone at home because Liz was too busy, or supernatural nonsense used up her friends’ time. It was different in King’s Landing; there was an army of servants responsible for reminding her family of her name-day. Father never surprised her on her name-days; he had a large display of gifts brought before her and told her to pick her favourites, or to keep them all, whatever she desired. The gifts were all selected by her maids and Caroline knows Father has never even looked at them before they are brought to her. Her true present comes at the feast, where Father drinks less and waits for her to retire before falling into his cups and his whores. But that is Father’s way and is certainly more than what he does for anyone else.
This is different, and more special than she is capable of explaining.
So she just kisses him again.
~0~
The gifts do not stop there.
At breakfast, a meal composed entirely of her favourites is waiting. She receives many warm wishes and Rickon wants to sit in her lap because it’s her special day. Caroline lets him, despite his parents’ admonishments, and remembers similar breakfasts with Tommen and Myrcella as she lets her youngest good-brother eat all the treats off her plate.
“Rickon, you little beast, leave some for her.”
Rickon emits what can only be described as a growl. Robb’s frown deepens, especially when Theon begins joking to Jon that Robb is overly protective of his wife’s treats. Caroline just smiles good-naturedly, feeds Rickon more sweets than his mother would approve of, and leaves the breakfast table with Lady Catelyn, Sansa, and Arya in tow.
“It’s a good day for a ride,” Lady Catelyn remarks just before Caroline enters her room and sees the new set of riding gloves and boots waiting on her bed.
“You do like riding, don’t you?” Arya asks with an obviously pointed look at Sansa.
“I do.” And Caroline does, though there has been little enough opportunity since the wedding. Her own horse, Majesty, given to her by Father when she was ten, had been left behind in King’s Landing. She had bequeathed it to Myrcella, who loved the horse as much as Caroline. The few times she had gone riding with Robb had been short outings, as the cold would get to her sooner than him. A horse has always been provided for her on these occasions, a different one each time. She assumes the same will happen today.
She’s only half wrong.
Lord Eddard is holding the reins and Robb is checking the straps of the saddle and Sansa’s giggles are the last clue.
“Frost,” Lord Eddard tells her before handing her the reins. “A little young, but you shall both grow together, yes?”
Caroline makes some noises which she hopes sound close enough to a thank you. Her eyes are wide as she steps up to Frost, runs hand down over the beautiful gray-white mane. Majesty had been a rich chestnut colour, but Frost is a breathtaking white. Robb laughs at the look on her face as he helps her mount.
“It’s your name-day,” he says, like she’s forgotten somehow.
The whole family rides out, Sansa seated behind her father while Arya races circles around them. They go through fields of green grass, past houses, homes, mills, and many more of Lord Eddard’s people. They pause at a hill, just before the line of the woods, and the servants put out sheets and pillows and food and drinks. Caroline collapses happily next to her good-mother and watches the children start their play. The men are crowded together, producing spears and bows she hadn’t seen before, and Caroline knows a hunt when she sees one.
She spends the morning with Lady Catelyn and the younger Starks. They hear the occasional shouts and horns from the woods, but it is mostly peaceful. Caroline alternates between chatting with Lady Catelyn and Sansa and chasing after Bran and Rickon. She also helps Arya to mount Frost, lets the younger girl ride the horse around the hill because Arya is still upset she wasn’t allowed to go with Robb, Jon, and the others.
“It’s just a hunt,” Arya complains from atop Frost. “And I’m better with a bow than some of those men. But it’s not lady like. No one ever asked if I even wanted to be a lady, but they tell me to act one all the same.”
“That’s because they know what your answer will be,” Caroline teases. “Though it’s not fair, is it? You’re a wolfgirl, aren’t you? They shouldn’t ask you to be tame.”
Arya grins, a flash of teeth that is frighteningly wild, and spurs Frost into a gallop.
~0~
They return after lunch.
The men come out of the woods triumphant, a doe and a few rabbits as their spoils. Robb’s eyes are wide and bright, the adrenalin still pumping through his system as he swoops in for a bruising kiss. Caroline blushes red as the men explode into whistles and cheers and Lady Catelyn tries to remind her son of decorum. Arya makes loud retching noises from somewhere behind Caroline, and this sets off Bran and Rickon.
Robb laughs, and kisses Caroline again.
She understands, the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the kill. She thinks that she probably knows it better than any man here. For all their bows and spears, they don’t know what it is to be a true predator. They don’t know the feel of the wind against their face, the crunch of dry leaves and twigs under their feet, the look of fear in the prey’s eyes when they are face to face. They don’t know the taste of blood, spewing hot and rich on their tongues, fur and skin and tendons jammed in the spaces between their teeth. They’ve never held a prey so close that they feel the bones shudder and crack in the folds of their arms.
Caroline knows these things, knows the shameful joy in the taking of life. She is fifteen years removed from the monster that Katherine Pierce made her, but Caroline still remembers.
She is deep in those memories upon her return to Winterfell, when Maester Luwin tells her that Lord Eddard would like to see in the godswood before she retired to prepare for the feast.
The walk there feels oddly similar to the rare walks she made to the principal’s office before. The godswood, with its heart tree and pond and silence seems a daunting place. She has not often returned since her wedding, feeling more comfortable with the septon than the weirwood.
“It’s the old gods,” Lady Catelyn had explained. “They are faceless, but strong in the north. And it is hard to feel at home with gods who do not show their faces.”
But Caroline thinks it’s more than that, that the ice of the north makes the difference. None of the Starks appear uneasy before the heart tree, nor do any of the northerners. They see nothing chilling in the red eyes of the weirwood, feel no uneasiness because the tree sprouts from the same earth that bore them. The Starks, Uncle Tyrion had told her a year, claim to be descended from the First Men. They have the history to fee at home here.
Lord Eddard is sitting beneath the heart tree when she finds him. He rises, offers her a hand, and helps her settle beside him.
“You’ve been enjoying your day?”
Caroline smiles, nods, spouts the usual affirmations, and wonders incessantly about why she has been called here. Lord Eddard is a serious man, often more stoic than expressive, but with a warmth inside that shows itself in the quirk of his lips or the softening of his eyes. His is completely and utterly unlike Father in practically every way. And perhaps she worries what Lord Eddard thinks of her, because she can’t tell what’s on his mind.
“Caroline, are you happy to be here-so far from your family?”
And that is a question she is not used to hearing from anyone other than Robb. “My lord?”
Lord Eddard sighs, reaches behind him, and hands her a roll of parchment. “Your mother, the queen, has written me. She inquires after your health, whether your mood has improved since she last saw you, and encloses a gift. She sounds quite upset in her letter, quite worried for you sake. But why does she need to write to me for answers you can provide better?”
Because Caroline has provided Mother with nothing since King’s Landing. Letters upon letters have come to her from the south, and she replies to all but those sent by the queen. In her pettier moments, Caroline burns them unopened. The others she keeps, also unopened, at the bottom of the drawer where she keeps all her letters.
But she cannot say that. So she looks to her hands instead.
“Robert told me-he said the queen did not agree with the match. He said she has caused unnecessary tension in the family with her stubbornness. He also said other things that I’ll not repeat to you. They are your parents-I know this contention has upset you, though you hide it well enough.”
She can’t help a smile at that. “I’ve had fifteen years of practice, my lord.”
Lord Eddard frowns, an openly curious glint to his eyes. Caroline can’t hold his gaze, drops her eyes again, and summons the courage to talk of the very things she’s kept silent in King’s Landing.
“I heard you and Father, that first night. He was making some jest about ‘making the eight’. You looked uncomfortable, but laughed anyway. Do you know, he’s made the eight himself? Actually, if one pays actual attention, they would see Father’s made the twenty-four by now.”
Caroline stops, forces herself to look at her good-father before she continues. “Mother is angry with Father, for a good reason. He dishonours her daily, often publicly, and expects her to bear it with good grace. And she bears it, but she has only so much grace to give. He exhausts her stores, whatever they are, and she does not always handle her anger in the best ways. In fact, sometimes she chooses to deliberately handle them in the wrong way. I’m not laying blame-they both should know better. But there is too much wrong in their marriage, and not enough right.”
He does not like this explanation. Lord Eddard clasps his hands together and frowns off into the distance. “And what of this letter?”
“She is my mother, whatever her problems with Father. That should matter more than her pride.”
And Caroline tries her very best not to sound overly petulant, but she knows she’s pouting and she can’t stop it.
“It was my wedding,” she whispers softly to the earth.
He takes her hand, turns it over, and presses something cold and glittering into her palm. “We must learn to forgive our family. We have them for much less time than we think, and when they are gone, they are just gone.”
And he would know the truth of that.
“She still should have come.
He laughs, a little. “Baratheons-stubborn to a fault.”
Her lips twitch, a smile threatening. “You would know, my lord.”
He takes her free hand with his own, a familiar quirk to his lips. “Father, if it would not be too uncomfortable.”
It might be, but she’s ever a people pleaser. “Of course, my lor-father. My lord father.”
He smiles. “Well, that’s a start.”
~0~
The day ends with a feast, and more presents than she can keep track of. They come from all over, from King’s Landing to Dragonstone to Storm’s End to Casterly Rock to Riverrun. There’s gowns, jewels, books, brushes, hair pins, shoes, gloves-even carved boxes, jewelled boxes, woven tapestries, and pelts of gloriously soft fur. Father sends two whole chests, bursting full of more clothes and shoes than she would ever need.
She’s wearing the hair piece Robb gave her that morning, and the dress he surprised her with after her return from the godswood. He slips a ring onto her finger at the dinner table, kisses the back of her hand while she blushes, the ladies sigh, and the men howl.
Lady Catelyn presents a necklace, Lord Eddard another gown. She remembers to call them lady mother and lord father, and though the titles are still formal, both are pleased nonetheless. Bran and Rickon bring her flowers at the head table, and Rickon reclaims his place in her lap, despite his eldest brother’s protests.
The feast goes long. There’s music, much to Sansa’s delight, and much dancing. The hall feels stuffy and hot halfway through, and they throw open the doors to let in the northern air. Caroline goes from warm to chilled fast, but Robb takes her for dance after dance, and soon she doesn’t even notice the cold.
Dinner is wonderful, full of meat, wine, fruit, bread, and an enormity of pies. She eats until she thinks she will explode, drinks a bit more wine than usual, and ends the night falling into bed-gown, jewels, shoes, and all. Robb gallantly offers to help her out of her clothes, and that quickly devolves in the most delicious ways.
She’s catching her breath later that night, bare body covered by a mound of furs and Robb’s arms around her. Her head rests on his chest and she’s seconds from tumbling into sleep.
But she has something to say.
“You don’t need to do this,” she murmurs into his skin, eyes heavy with sleep.
“Yes, but I rather enjoy it,” Robb chuckles. “And I had assumed by all those little noises you make that you enjoyed it as well.”
“Don’t be crude, husband,” she turns her head upwards and offers a tired smile. “And I meant you needn’t do so much, all the time. You don’t have to compete with King’s Landing.”
He stops smiling immediately. “You’re a princess, and-“
“And I’m happily married to my northern husband, who does his best every day to keep me pleased. I know what I had in King’s Landing, Robb; but that was the life of a girl. I’m married now, the future Lady Stark of Winterfell. You don’t have to treat me like a princess, just like your wife. And you do a brilliant job of that.”
He is silent, face turned slightly to the left, away from her. “I don’t want you to miss anything.”
And she laughs at that. “Husband, what I miss of King’s Landing has nothing to do with feasts and presents, or any of those things. I miss my family, not because of the things they gave me, but because they are my family. Believe me, Robb, I want for nothing here, and you shouldn’t feel like you must make up for anything. I am happy here, with you.”
He turns to face her, his expression gravely serious. “Are you capable of showing me how happy, my future Lady of Winterfell?”
And the gleam in his eyes and the twitch of his lips is all the warning she gets. Robb pounces, and she shrieks and laughs as he pulls her underneath him once more.
It’s so much like a fairytale ending that she wants to believe in it, with all her heart.
But her life has never been a fairytale.
~0~
author: Eena
disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em.
category: Game of Thrones/Vampire Diaries (the first, right? *Bounces happily*)
characters/pairing: Caroline, Caroline/Robb Stark
spoilers: Season One for GoT, Up to 3.03 for TVD
summary: It is a world without Elenas, Bonnies, Moms, Tylers, Matts, Stefans, and yes, even Damons. It is a world where she is overwhelmed by a surging seas of constant companionship. The loneliness is the same.
~0~
It is not hard to live at Winterfell, only different.
Lady Catelyn doesn’t expect Caroline to spend her days sewing and praying. Rather, she would have Caroline walk the halls with her, learning all things necessary in how to run a house such as Winterfell.
“One day, you will be the Lady Stark of Winterfell,” Lady Catelyn explains as she shows Caroline the house ledgers. “These things will be your responsibility. It takes practice to learn how to run a house properly. I don’t believe you’ve had the chance to practice as such in King’s Landing. But the king tells us you did well at his council meetings, and that you know of these matters fairly well. Just a little practice, my dear; that’s all you need.”
But the work delights Caroline in ways her good-mother doesn’t understand. Papers, quills, charts, lists-these are things that Caroline can handle. In fact, she excels at handling them, and while she had not run a house in King’s Landing, he ran half a school in that other world, organized and ordered and collected. Winterfell is not the same as a carnival or parade, but the little control-freak of Mystic Falls loves the challenge.
However, that doesn’t mean she is spared sewing entirely.
There are few ladies at Winterfell, nothing compared to the multitudes of the capital. But they are no different in the north. They sit in a room, pull needles and thread through fabric, and gossip to their heart’s content.
Sansa, at eleven, is closest to her age. Caroline’s good-sister has her own group of little ladies who giggle over this and that while they sew. They are overly excited by Caroline’s presence, ask her endless questions about southern fashions and tournaments and all those feasts.
Arya, at nine, hates sewing, the gossip, and the giggles. But the tournaments pique her interest as well.
“Have you ever seen anyone die?” Arya asks one day, righ tin the middle of Jeyne Poole’s sighing over Ser Uncle.
“Arya! That is not a question you ask of a lady,” Septa Mordane, the mother hen of the sewing room, looked angry and exasperated. Arya, for her part, doesn’t even care to look embarrassed.
“I have,” Caroline answers, because she finds Arya’s question far more interesting than the rest, be they morbid or not. “Four men, to be exact.”
The other girls pale and a tense quiet invades the room.
“That must have been horrible,” Sansa, ever compassionate and polite.
“It was,” Caroline nods and looks at the open curiosity in Arya’s eyes. “It is not something that I delight in recalling. A bad waste of good men.”
Caroline doesn’t add that more than four men have died in all the tournaments she has witnessed. The four she mentions are the only she has seen with her own eyes, all of the joust. The melee, that barbaric and chaotic play, has claimed more. She never watches the melee, can’t abide the sigh of bloody and broken men. The confusion of it, combined with the bodies of the ground, always remind her of the deaths she has seen before, lives ended at her own hands.
“You shouldn’t speak of Death so casually,” she continues, eyes for Arya only. ‘It is one thing to speculate, it is another to understand. Have you ever seen the life disappear from the eyes of a man?”
Arya shakes her head.
“Pray that you never do. It’s a sight that stays with you, even years and years after you think you have forgotten it. You will always remember it, to the day the light goes from your eyes.”
The name Carter comes to mind as Caroline speaks. She takes a second and remembers the man with concern in his voice and blood dripping from his nose. To this day she can’t recall if Damon ever told her where he put the body, or where he put the bodies of her mother’s deputies. It seems absurd, every time she thinks of them, that she wouldn’t know where they were buried. She ended their lives-how could she not know?
“You poor thing,” Sansa looks near tears. “How horrible for you, princess.”
Caroline smiles and picks up her sewing once more. “Caroline,” she corrects gently and resumes pulling needle and thread through fabric once more.
Only Arya fails to comply with this silent signal. “It’s different, if you’re the man on the other end. How could he still compete if he always remembered something like that?”
“Memory does not require halting, Arya. In fact, it does its best work when a person’s in motion. Men who have killed in competition remember, and hopefully never do it again.”
“And if they do? And if they don’t care?” Arya, all stubborn pout and insistence, refuses to forfeit the point. Caroline isn’t sure when this degraded down into an argument, and for all the smiles and quiet tones, that’s what it was. But Arya sits, defiant by her half-finished needlework.
“Then they are men who don’t learn,” Caroline shakes her head, trying to rid herself of images of creatures with sharp teeth and bloody mouths. “And those men are not worth knowing.”
At night, when Caroline’s head rests on Robb’s chest and his finger lightly traces the curve of her neck and the bend of her shoulder, her husband lets out a soft laugh. “Arya says you’ve taken to lecturing her too. She says I should have just married Septa Mordane if that’s what I wanted in a wife.”
She smiles and looks up at him. “I’m not sure Septa Mordane would have you. She has high standards. I don’t think you could meet them.”
Robb frowns. “I’m the son of the Warden of the North-the future Warden.”
Caroline shrugs and does her best to hold back a giggle.
“You married me,” he points out, tone a bit petulant now.
“Perhaps my standards are not so high. I’m just a lady princess of the realm-Septa Mordane, well, she’s Septa Mordane.”
“You’re hurting my feelings, love. It’s cruel.”
And now she does laugh, because the playful look on his face is just too much. “How angry is my sweet good-sister?” she asks when the laughter dies.
“Sweet? Not usually a term one hears in regards to Arya,” Robb presses a kiss to the top of her hair. “And she’s not that angry. She likes you, actually. She only picks fights with people she likes. Everyone else she ignores, or fixes with that glare of hers.”
“She does have an impressive glare for a nine year old.”
Robb laughs, but it’s a distracted laugh now. “You do like it here, don’t you? I don’t you must still miss your family and your city-but you’re happy here, aren’t you?”
She sometimes forgets how young her husband is-or perhaps she forgets how old she is. These are the times that remind her, regardless.
“Of course I am happy, my love.”
~0~
Her fifteenth name-day arrives before she knows it.
Seven months in the north, and perhaps she does not feel she yet fits as such.
“That takes time,” Lady Catelyn tells her. “It took me years, and there are still days when I feel like an outsider. All girls feel that way when they come to their husband’s home.”
Caroline nods and smiles, but thinks no girl in Westeros has felt as much an outsider as Caroline has felt all these fifteen years.
She wakes that day to Robb’s smiling face and the absolutely stunning silver, jewel-studded hair piece in his hands.
She surprises them both by surging forward and pressing her lips against his.
“I take it you like my gift,” he says when she releases him.
“You remembered.”
And that makes him frown. “Of course I remembered. Why wouldn’t I?”
She can’t tell him of all the boys who haven’t remembered, or didn’t care when they did. She can’t tell him of the birthdays spent alone at home because Liz was too busy, or supernatural nonsense used up her friends’ time. It was different in King’s Landing; there was an army of servants responsible for reminding her family of her name-day. Father never surprised her on her name-days; he had a large display of gifts brought before her and told her to pick her favourites, or to keep them all, whatever she desired. The gifts were all selected by her maids and Caroline knows Father has never even looked at them before they are brought to her. Her true present comes at the feast, where Father drinks less and waits for her to retire before falling into his cups and his whores. But that is Father’s way and is certainly more than what he does for anyone else.
This is different, and more special than she is capable of explaining.
So she just kisses him again.
~0~
The gifts do not stop there.
At breakfast, a meal composed entirely of her favourites is waiting. She receives many warm wishes and Rickon wants to sit in her lap because it’s her special day. Caroline lets him, despite his parents’ admonishments, and remembers similar breakfasts with Tommen and Myrcella as she lets her youngest good-brother eat all the treats off her plate.
“Rickon, you little beast, leave some for her.”
Rickon emits what can only be described as a growl. Robb’s frown deepens, especially when Theon begins joking to Jon that Robb is overly protective of his wife’s treats. Caroline just smiles good-naturedly, feeds Rickon more sweets than his mother would approve of, and leaves the breakfast table with Lady Catelyn, Sansa, and Arya in tow.
“It’s a good day for a ride,” Lady Catelyn remarks just before Caroline enters her room and sees the new set of riding gloves and boots waiting on her bed.
“You do like riding, don’t you?” Arya asks with an obviously pointed look at Sansa.
“I do.” And Caroline does, though there has been little enough opportunity since the wedding. Her own horse, Majesty, given to her by Father when she was ten, had been left behind in King’s Landing. She had bequeathed it to Myrcella, who loved the horse as much as Caroline. The few times she had gone riding with Robb had been short outings, as the cold would get to her sooner than him. A horse has always been provided for her on these occasions, a different one each time. She assumes the same will happen today.
She’s only half wrong.
Lord Eddard is holding the reins and Robb is checking the straps of the saddle and Sansa’s giggles are the last clue.
“Frost,” Lord Eddard tells her before handing her the reins. “A little young, but you shall both grow together, yes?”
Caroline makes some noises which she hopes sound close enough to a thank you. Her eyes are wide as she steps up to Frost, runs hand down over the beautiful gray-white mane. Majesty had been a rich chestnut colour, but Frost is a breathtaking white. Robb laughs at the look on her face as he helps her mount.
“It’s your name-day,” he says, like she’s forgotten somehow.
The whole family rides out, Sansa seated behind her father while Arya races circles around them. They go through fields of green grass, past houses, homes, mills, and many more of Lord Eddard’s people. They pause at a hill, just before the line of the woods, and the servants put out sheets and pillows and food and drinks. Caroline collapses happily next to her good-mother and watches the children start their play. The men are crowded together, producing spears and bows she hadn’t seen before, and Caroline knows a hunt when she sees one.
She spends the morning with Lady Catelyn and the younger Starks. They hear the occasional shouts and horns from the woods, but it is mostly peaceful. Caroline alternates between chatting with Lady Catelyn and Sansa and chasing after Bran and Rickon. She also helps Arya to mount Frost, lets the younger girl ride the horse around the hill because Arya is still upset she wasn’t allowed to go with Robb, Jon, and the others.
“It’s just a hunt,” Arya complains from atop Frost. “And I’m better with a bow than some of those men. But it’s not lady like. No one ever asked if I even wanted to be a lady, but they tell me to act one all the same.”
“That’s because they know what your answer will be,” Caroline teases. “Though it’s not fair, is it? You’re a wolfgirl, aren’t you? They shouldn’t ask you to be tame.”
Arya grins, a flash of teeth that is frighteningly wild, and spurs Frost into a gallop.
~0~
They return after lunch.
The men come out of the woods triumphant, a doe and a few rabbits as their spoils. Robb’s eyes are wide and bright, the adrenalin still pumping through his system as he swoops in for a bruising kiss. Caroline blushes red as the men explode into whistles and cheers and Lady Catelyn tries to remind her son of decorum. Arya makes loud retching noises from somewhere behind Caroline, and this sets off Bran and Rickon.
Robb laughs, and kisses Caroline again.
She understands, the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the kill. She thinks that she probably knows it better than any man here. For all their bows and spears, they don’t know what it is to be a true predator. They don’t know the feel of the wind against their face, the crunch of dry leaves and twigs under their feet, the look of fear in the prey’s eyes when they are face to face. They don’t know the taste of blood, spewing hot and rich on their tongues, fur and skin and tendons jammed in the spaces between their teeth. They’ve never held a prey so close that they feel the bones shudder and crack in the folds of their arms.
Caroline knows these things, knows the shameful joy in the taking of life. She is fifteen years removed from the monster that Katherine Pierce made her, but Caroline still remembers.
She is deep in those memories upon her return to Winterfell, when Maester Luwin tells her that Lord Eddard would like to see in the godswood before she retired to prepare for the feast.
The walk there feels oddly similar to the rare walks she made to the principal’s office before. The godswood, with its heart tree and pond and silence seems a daunting place. She has not often returned since her wedding, feeling more comfortable with the septon than the weirwood.
“It’s the old gods,” Lady Catelyn had explained. “They are faceless, but strong in the north. And it is hard to feel at home with gods who do not show their faces.”
But Caroline thinks it’s more than that, that the ice of the north makes the difference. None of the Starks appear uneasy before the heart tree, nor do any of the northerners. They see nothing chilling in the red eyes of the weirwood, feel no uneasiness because the tree sprouts from the same earth that bore them. The Starks, Uncle Tyrion had told her a year, claim to be descended from the First Men. They have the history to fee at home here.
Lord Eddard is sitting beneath the heart tree when she finds him. He rises, offers her a hand, and helps her settle beside him.
“You’ve been enjoying your day?”
Caroline smiles, nods, spouts the usual affirmations, and wonders incessantly about why she has been called here. Lord Eddard is a serious man, often more stoic than expressive, but with a warmth inside that shows itself in the quirk of his lips or the softening of his eyes. His is completely and utterly unlike Father in practically every way. And perhaps she worries what Lord Eddard thinks of her, because she can’t tell what’s on his mind.
“Caroline, are you happy to be here-so far from your family?”
And that is a question she is not used to hearing from anyone other than Robb. “My lord?”
Lord Eddard sighs, reaches behind him, and hands her a roll of parchment. “Your mother, the queen, has written me. She inquires after your health, whether your mood has improved since she last saw you, and encloses a gift. She sounds quite upset in her letter, quite worried for you sake. But why does she need to write to me for answers you can provide better?”
Because Caroline has provided Mother with nothing since King’s Landing. Letters upon letters have come to her from the south, and she replies to all but those sent by the queen. In her pettier moments, Caroline burns them unopened. The others she keeps, also unopened, at the bottom of the drawer where she keeps all her letters.
But she cannot say that. So she looks to her hands instead.
“Robert told me-he said the queen did not agree with the match. He said she has caused unnecessary tension in the family with her stubbornness. He also said other things that I’ll not repeat to you. They are your parents-I know this contention has upset you, though you hide it well enough.”
She can’t help a smile at that. “I’ve had fifteen years of practice, my lord.”
Lord Eddard frowns, an openly curious glint to his eyes. Caroline can’t hold his gaze, drops her eyes again, and summons the courage to talk of the very things she’s kept silent in King’s Landing.
“I heard you and Father, that first night. He was making some jest about ‘making the eight’. You looked uncomfortable, but laughed anyway. Do you know, he’s made the eight himself? Actually, if one pays actual attention, they would see Father’s made the twenty-four by now.”
Caroline stops, forces herself to look at her good-father before she continues. “Mother is angry with Father, for a good reason. He dishonours her daily, often publicly, and expects her to bear it with good grace. And she bears it, but she has only so much grace to give. He exhausts her stores, whatever they are, and she does not always handle her anger in the best ways. In fact, sometimes she chooses to deliberately handle them in the wrong way. I’m not laying blame-they both should know better. But there is too much wrong in their marriage, and not enough right.”
He does not like this explanation. Lord Eddard clasps his hands together and frowns off into the distance. “And what of this letter?”
“She is my mother, whatever her problems with Father. That should matter more than her pride.”
And Caroline tries her very best not to sound overly petulant, but she knows she’s pouting and she can’t stop it.
“It was my wedding,” she whispers softly to the earth.
He takes her hand, turns it over, and presses something cold and glittering into her palm. “We must learn to forgive our family. We have them for much less time than we think, and when they are gone, they are just gone.”
And he would know the truth of that.
“She still should have come.
He laughs, a little. “Baratheons-stubborn to a fault.”
Her lips twitch, a smile threatening. “You would know, my lord.”
He takes her free hand with his own, a familiar quirk to his lips. “Father, if it would not be too uncomfortable.”
It might be, but she’s ever a people pleaser. “Of course, my lor-father. My lord father.”
He smiles. “Well, that’s a start.”
~0~
The day ends with a feast, and more presents than she can keep track of. They come from all over, from King’s Landing to Dragonstone to Storm’s End to Casterly Rock to Riverrun. There’s gowns, jewels, books, brushes, hair pins, shoes, gloves-even carved boxes, jewelled boxes, woven tapestries, and pelts of gloriously soft fur. Father sends two whole chests, bursting full of more clothes and shoes than she would ever need.
She’s wearing the hair piece Robb gave her that morning, and the dress he surprised her with after her return from the godswood. He slips a ring onto her finger at the dinner table, kisses the back of her hand while she blushes, the ladies sigh, and the men howl.
Lady Catelyn presents a necklace, Lord Eddard another gown. She remembers to call them lady mother and lord father, and though the titles are still formal, both are pleased nonetheless. Bran and Rickon bring her flowers at the head table, and Rickon reclaims his place in her lap, despite his eldest brother’s protests.
The feast goes long. There’s music, much to Sansa’s delight, and much dancing. The hall feels stuffy and hot halfway through, and they throw open the doors to let in the northern air. Caroline goes from warm to chilled fast, but Robb takes her for dance after dance, and soon she doesn’t even notice the cold.
Dinner is wonderful, full of meat, wine, fruit, bread, and an enormity of pies. She eats until she thinks she will explode, drinks a bit more wine than usual, and ends the night falling into bed-gown, jewels, shoes, and all. Robb gallantly offers to help her out of her clothes, and that quickly devolves in the most delicious ways.
She’s catching her breath later that night, bare body covered by a mound of furs and Robb’s arms around her. Her head rests on his chest and she’s seconds from tumbling into sleep.
But she has something to say.
“You don’t need to do this,” she murmurs into his skin, eyes heavy with sleep.
“Yes, but I rather enjoy it,” Robb chuckles. “And I had assumed by all those little noises you make that you enjoyed it as well.”
“Don’t be crude, husband,” she turns her head upwards and offers a tired smile. “And I meant you needn’t do so much, all the time. You don’t have to compete with King’s Landing.”
He stops smiling immediately. “You’re a princess, and-“
“And I’m happily married to my northern husband, who does his best every day to keep me pleased. I know what I had in King’s Landing, Robb; but that was the life of a girl. I’m married now, the future Lady Stark of Winterfell. You don’t have to treat me like a princess, just like your wife. And you do a brilliant job of that.”
He is silent, face turned slightly to the left, away from her. “I don’t want you to miss anything.”
And she laughs at that. “Husband, what I miss of King’s Landing has nothing to do with feasts and presents, or any of those things. I miss my family, not because of the things they gave me, but because they are my family. Believe me, Robb, I want for nothing here, and you shouldn’t feel like you must make up for anything. I am happy here, with you.”
He turns to face her, his expression gravely serious. “Are you capable of showing me how happy, my future Lady of Winterfell?”
And the gleam in his eyes and the twitch of his lips is all the warning she gets. Robb pounces, and she shrieks and laughs as he pulls her underneath him once more.
It’s so much like a fairytale ending that she wants to believe in it, with all her heart.
But her life has never been a fairytale.
~0~