Comment fic meme #6
Here's the post-exchange comment fic meme. The rules are the same as always:
- please include the pairing/character (and maybe a short prompt/kink) in the comment title - both for prompts and for fills.
- there are both show and book fans in this community, so please warn for book spoilers beyond ACOK in the comment title. Please also warn for non ( Read more... )
- please include the pairing/character (and maybe a short prompt/kink) in the comment title - both for prompts and for fills.
- there are both show and book fans in this community, so please warn for book spoilers beyond ACOK in the comment title. Please also warn for non ( Read more... )
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Balon's daughter is headstrong and clever and, were she a man, there would be no reason for Victarion to be made captain of the voyage. But men do not follow girls, even girls who are women grown and who can out-drink and out-fight enough of their crew to prove themselves worthy to lead. Balon's daughter is Balon's daughter and so Victarion stands at the prow of the ship, knowing this is all a masquerade which both of them would dispense with if they could.
Still, he is not half as irritated as she is by the proceedings.
She says, "tell my men that we make for the Stony Shore," and "tell my men that the first to kill a greenlander shall be seated at my table and toasted half a dozen times at the least." She knows they are her men in all but name because her father has told her so. Her father has said that Victarion will do all that she asks, that she need only ask it. Balon must have told her this because she leans in close to him, stood on tiptoe to get her lips close to his ear (they graze his neck in truth) and she whispers, "is it true that you must do anything I ask, nuncle?" in a tone which could stir any man with sense.
He ignores her because he has no other way of dealing with it.
She moves away then, starts a longer conversation until she makes him agree that ships are wayward and men are hard to govern and then she says, tone changing quick as anything, "I know how to govern a man, nuncle. Come, I'll show you," and she reaches for him, as if she would press her hand between his legs.
When he steps back, alarm clear and equilibrium lost, she says, "I can steer ships and men both the way I want them," with the strangest pretense at innocence.
He doesn't want to tell her how much he'd rather let her do those things than keep up this mummer's farce of a command. He tells her instead that he has no doubts that she can govern a weak man as well as she can sail a small ship.
She calls out then, loud enough for the men to hear, commands he bid the men gather their blades and their wits because they are in sight of land. Victarion feels no shame that they will know, when he repeats it, that the orders come from her. He does not even mind that some few men take to their feet before he has repeated her words in his own booming voice.
When the reaving is over and they have returned to Pyke, he will tell Balon without bitterness how men will follow Asha, given time, and that some might even follow her already. He will not say that he might, if he were a weaker man; he will not say how much he wishes he could prove her wrong about her ability to lead a man, teach her how only weak men can be so led, show her what he might do to her for her insolence. (Though he doesn't realise that this is exactly what she would goad him to, that this is how she would lead.)
He fears Balon will trust her with too much but he knows she is not like to fail him.
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she whispers, "is it true that you must do anything I ask, nuncle?" in a tone which could stir any man with sense.
Classic Asha. I love her so much. ^^ And Victarion just desperately trying to ignore her is also very IC. And it makes sense that he wouldn't really be bitter or angry about her being a good leader, because Victarion is a follower at heart.
show her what he might do to her for her insolence. (Though he doesn't realise that this is exactly what she would goad him to, that this is how she would lead.)
Hehehe, poor Victarion doesn't even stand a chance. Thanks so much for filling this, bro. :D
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