Ficlet Entry #1: Rains
Author: erolyn2
Title: Rains
Pairing: Edmure/Roslin
Prompt(s): When the day has come / But I've lost my way around / And the seasons stop and hide beneath the ground / When the sky turns gray / And everything is screaming / I will reach inside / Just to find my heart is beating "Bleeding Out" -- Imagine Dragons
Word Count: 581
Rating & Warnings: M, no warnings
Summary: Roslin Frey’s wedding night is perfect, but the morning after will not be.
Roslin stops weeping for the first time that night when her husband is pushed into the bed beside her and she finally sees him bare and plain.
He is the first man she has ever seen unclothed. Perhaps it is shock that silences her cries, or perhaps the gentle curve between his neck and shoulder when he leans toward her, the way that his unadorned skin makes him seem harmless even before he brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.
“We are alone now, my lady,” he says, his voice as soft as it was when he whispered to her in the hall. Tears well again when she remembers the hall outside; her father, the Stark king…
Hands reach around her face and lift her eyes to Edmure’s. “Do not weep, my lady.” His eyes dart to hers, and they match the smile that brightens his cheek in the soft candlelight. “My wife.” He kisses her cheek so lightly she hardly notices, his breath warm and sour with wine. “I will be good to you, I swear it. You needn’t be afraid.”
It is not her husband Roslin fears. From the damp, grey afternoon when she first saw his face, something in her has wanted to trust him, and his expression is so earnest now that she nearly confesses everything. That her tears are not in fear of him but for him. That already, only hours into their marriage, she has lied to him. Betrayed him.
He will know soon enough. He will know, and never again after he knows will he look at her the way he does tonight.
She cannot speak, and she will not weep again, so she does the only thing she can: her lips press hard against his, so hard that Edmure has to steady himself to kiss her back. His tongue slides into her mouth, and it’s like nothing she has ever felt before, nothing at all like the soft kisses they exchanged over dinner or the sweet one that joined them as man and wife. There is a need behind the embrace, need enough that she wonders if some part of him knows that all is not well outside the walls of their bedchamber.
He leans her down onto the sheets, positioning himself before he eases down to meet her, careful not to crush her with his weight. Roslin gasps; she can feel almost every inch of his bare skin along hers, pressing into her, and in this moment she knows she will love him all her life, even if he hates her tomorrow, even if one day he exacts his vengeance upon her for the lives of his kin.
She closes her eyes when he enters her. The pain feels like penance, the blood on the sheets no worse than the blood coloring the stones of her father’s castle, and like a sword thrust it is brief, and before long she just enjoys being one with Edmure, being with him as she has never been with another man, and never will be.
Tomorrow the reckoning will come, the blood will show, and this tentative union they’ve only just begun to build will be stamped out. But just for this one night she can pretend it is all real; her joyous wedding, her loving husband, her happy life.
Just tonight, she thinks, as Edmure falls asleep in her arms, and the tears begin to spill again as rain patters softly against the windows.