Spring is sprung...
Title: The Coming of Spring
Author: rachel2205
Recipient: margottenenbaum for got_exchange
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: Jon/Robb, Margaery/Robb, Lyanna/Rhaegar, Viserys, Sansa
Prompt: In which R+L=J, Lyanna is queen and Jon grows up heir to the throne. How he's different/the same, his interactions with Viserys, Daenerys, the Starks. Pairing-wise, Jon/Robb could be cool but I'm not picky.
Wordcount: 3500
WINTER
“When I’m king, you’ll be my Hand.”
“Will I, now,” said Robb, raising an eyebrow at his cousin, and Jon flushed, rubbing the back of his neck with his wooden practice sword.
“Well, I’d like it if you were. Would you?”
“Won’t Viserys expect to be?”
Jon made a face at the thought of his uncle.
“With Viserys as my Hand I’d always be wondering if he was going to strangle me in my sleep and take the throne for himself,” joked Jon, though really it was only half a joke. Lilac-eyed Viserys looked every inch the Targaryen, and had made it perfectly clear that he thought he’d make a finer king than that northern half-breed.
“Aye,” said Robb, “he might at that. He’s too much of a coward to try to kill you face-to-face.” His cousin’s blunt northern disdain made Jon laugh hard, his own solemn northern face briefly transformed.
“I’m glad you’re here, cousin,” he said.
“As my prince commands,” said Robb, giving him a mocking little bow, and Jon took the opportunity to hit him with the back of his sword. The rest of their training session was spent not in sparring, but in chasing each other around the exercise yard, air ringing with their laughing.
As the boys loped out of the yard they almost collided with Jon’s mother, pale in a gown embroidered with blue roses and trimmed in fur.
“Your Majesty,” said Robb with a bow, at once the heir to Winterfell. In these moments, for all he looked like a Tully, his bearing was all Eddard Stark, grave and true. Jon envied that a little, because though he might be a prince he never felt he looked much like one. He had none of his his father’s colouring, and little of his grace; instead he had the restless energy Ned Stark said Lyanna had once had, and a lean body and face that marked him out as foreign in this southern city.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Robb Stark, to call me Aunt Lyanna,” said the queen.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Robb stiffly, and Lyanna sighed and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. Once long and dark, it was now streaked with white. Jon’s father liked to tease her that it was the Targaryen coming through at last. Jon knew Rhaegar did it because Lyanna fretted over her hair; at two-and-thirty she should be too young for so much grey, but Lyanna had never been well since she nearly died birthing Jon, and in the sixteen years since she had aged a quarter-century.
“Aren’t you boys cold, running around without cloaks?” Lyanna asked, for winter had finally reached even King’s Landing.
“I’m a Stark, Your Majesty,” said Robb, polite and cool, which seemed to be all the explanation he needed to give.
“So am I, Robb,” said the queen, pulling her furs tighter about her throat, “but my blood always ran too hot for ice. Put on something warmer, Jon,” she added, turning to her son.
“I will, Mother,” said Jon earnestly, and as Lyanna walked away said quietly to Robb: “you could be friendlier, you know. She is your aunt.”
“I was not uncivil,” said Robb stiffly, as they walked back towards Jon’s chambers.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” said Jon. Robb just shrugged, and Jon let it go. Ned Stark may have saved his sister’s life when he found her dying in labour in the Tower of Joy, and he may have made peace with Rhaegar after the Mad King’s death, but he had never really forgiven Lyanna for her part in causing the war that had killed his best friend alongside countless others, and it seemed Robb had inherited his father’s disappointment - alongside a Tully disapproval for a decision that put love before family, duty, honour.
When Jon was very young, he remembered overhearing his mother shout at Uncle Ned. “Why can’t you forgive me?” she had said, and he answered: “you broke your oath to Robert, and men died for it.” “You know there was more to the rebellion that that,” Lyanna had cried, and from his hidden spot behind the curtains Jon could see her hands fly up in a familiar gesture of angry frustration. “When Rhaegar took me it just gave all of you an excuse for the war you wanted!” Ned had shaken his head, and been silent, until at last he answered: “sometimes I dream of Princess Elia’s body, and her children’s corpses.” Lyanna had said nothing after that, and the next morning Ned rode north again. When Jon was twelve Lyanna sent him north to live for a year with the Starks; she said to learn more of the kingdom where he’d one day be king, but Jon thought really it was to make peace. But though Jon and Robb were fast friends now, and Ned never said a cold word about his sister to any of his children, all of the Starks save Sansa viewed her with suspicion. Sansa, however, had begged to come to court with Robb for this long visit, and although she was nervous of her wild-eyed aunt she found her love story terribly romantic.
They turned a corner, and as if Jon’s thoughts had summoned her, there was his thirteen-year-old cousin - giggling as she held onto Viserys’s arm. Jon felt his mouth turn down, and glancing at Robb saw his expression matched there. Robb despised Viserys for his cruelty and arrogance, and thought it was unkind of him to flirt with Sansa when he had no interest in marrying her. Jon shared those feelings, but hid another inside him too, a dull throb of emotion like toothache. It made him look at Sansa and Viserys, hair gleaming copper and silver in the winter sunlight, and think moodily of how Sansa said he looked so like Ned that he could be her brother.
“Your Highness,” said Viserys, giving Jon a perfect little bow that somehow felt like an insult. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
“For what?”
Viserys gave him a superior little smile.
“The Tyrells are here.”
Mace Tyrell had stayed loyal to King Aerys, and for all Rhaegar had great misgivings about his father, he rewarded the Tyrells for their loyalty by making Mace his Hand. Mace had proved, however, to have little political skill, the Battle of Ashford his one victory. Had dull, plump Mace not had his son Loras, Jon thought his father might have quietly relieved him of his position. But Loras, handsome and brilliant, was a favourite of Rhaegar’s. Jon thought perhaps he reminded Rhaegar of himself when he was younger, a handsome young prince who gave a young Stark girl a crown of roses without a thought for what would come after. Jon was used to seeing Ser Loras at court, but this time he brought his sister with him, to be presented to the King and Queen for the first time. Jon had heard she was pretty, and so as he and Robb hastily made their way back to his rooms, he made some extra effort to look presentable. He made a face in the mirror at his unruly curls.
“They want to suggest Lady Margaery as a match, you know,” said Robb abruptly.
“A match for who?” said Jon, and Robb gave him a long look that made it clear he thought Jon was an idiot. “For me? But Mace knows that my father wants me to marry Daenerys.” Jon couldn’t bring himself to call her aunt, not when she was his own age and potentially his future wife besides.
“All the same, I think that’s why she’s here,” said Robb. He nudged Jon out of the way so he could look at himself in the mirror and straightened his jerkin. “She’d be a better match for you, if you’ll forgive me saying. They’re rich, the Tyrells, a good ally to have, and…”
“She’s not my aunt,” finished Jon, knowing his cousin shared most of the country’s distaste for Targaryen marriage patterns.
“Aye, that,” nodded Robb, giving Jon an apologetic look. “Come on, let’s go down.”
Jon stood at his father’s right hand in the throne room as they welcomed Lady Margaery to court. She was very pretty, Jon thought, though her soft brown curls and gentle face didn’t draw his eye the way Sansa’s high cheekbones and fiery hair did. He glanced across the hall at where Robb was standing, and saw that Robb was looking at Margaery quite fixedly. The girl turned her head and caught his eye for a moment, and gave Robb a sweet little smile before glancing away. Jon watched colour bloom in Robb’s cheeks, and felt his stomach give a brief, strange twist that he pushed away as Mace presented Margaery to him.
“My lady, welcome,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. Her fingers were very warm in his.
At dinner Margaery was sat with him. Jon kept thinking of what Robb had said, about the Tyrells wanting to match him with Margaery, and it made him clumsy, his conversation awkward. He looked down the hall to where Robb was sitting, talking easily with Sansa’s companion Jeyne, and envied him. Jon was never very good at talking to girls. Margaery was deft at conversation, her voice sweet, her questions gentle, and many men, he suspected, would have felt like kings sitting next to her. Instead he felt a fool, and ended the feast in awkward silence.
At the end of the meal he expected Mace to take his father aside, but instead was surprised to see him walking the hall with Robb. He put his hand on Robb’s shoulder as they strolled; Mace’s expression was jovial, while Robb’s was grave and thoughtful. Jon’s stomach twisted uncomfortably, and he returned to his rooms feeling restless.
An hour or so later, Robb came to him. Jon had rejected the guest rooms for his cousin, and Robb slept in Jon’s chambers, the way he and Robb and Bran and Rickon had all shared rooms - and sometimes when it was very cold, beds - in Winterfell. Robb had a cot in an adjoining chamber, but they always ended their evenings sitting in front of the fire in Jon’s bedroom.
“Sit down,” said Jon, “I have some wine warmed,” and Robb sat, but a moment later he was on his feet again, pacing in front of the fire.
“The Hand proposed I marry his daughter,” Robb said abruptly. Jon blinked. “I said I was sure he’d want you, and Lord Tyrell admitted that was the match he’d like best, but that your father had turned him down.” Jon felt a flash of anger that Rhaegar had not even mentioned it. He was no longer a child, to be left out of such considerations! But Robb was continuing, talking of the advantages of a match between House Tyrell and House Stark, and Jon’s heart was beating fast, a strange panicky feeling. “I said I’d have to speak with my father,” said Robb, ever-dutiful. “But I think it could be a good match for my family.” There was so much Tully in Robb, and Jon suddenly, unreasonably, hated him for it.
“Do you like her?”
Robb shrugged.
“I only spoke to her to say good evening. But she’s very pretty, and her family are strong and rich. My mother and father knew each other so little before they wed, and they are two of the best matched people I’ve seen,” said Robb. He stopped pacing at last, and sat down on the corner of Jon’s bed. “I don’t rightly know that I want to be wed yet,” he admitted frankly, “but I must do it some day, and this is a better match than many.”
Jon came over and sat next to him.
“It is a good match,” he said reluctantly. “She seems very pleasant. More your type than mine.” He looked at the gleam of Robb’s auburn curls in the firelight and thought of Sansa.
“Aye,” said Robb. He cleared his throat. “Lord Tyrell said your mother told him she’d rather you made your own choice of who to wed, when you are king.”
“She did?” said Jon, surprised. He’d never heard his mother expression an opinion on his marriage. But it made sense that she’d like him to make his own choices, given her experiences with love.
“Perhaps,” said Robb shyly, “you could marry Sansa. We’d be brothers then,” he added, and his face was soft and hopeful.
Jon leapt to his feet as if stung. He couldn’t explain his sudden feeling of fury, because hadn’t he thought about that very thing himself? But somehow the idea of Robb calling him brother gnawed at him more painfully than when Sansa had done it.
“I don’t want us to be brothers,” he said. He saw Robb’s face fall, expression clouded with a desperate hurt, and so he put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I don’t mean - Robb, you know you’re my best friend. I don’t want -” And then, looking at Robb’s confused face, Jon understood suddenly and entirely what he did want, and fell silent in horror.
“Jon,” said Robb, after a long silent moment. Jon could feel his pulse pounding, blood roaring in his ears, and when after another pause Robb reached out and touched Jon’s mouth with two trembling fingertips, Jon thought the rush of blood to his head might make him faint.
“Robb,” he said, voice shaking. “Robb.”
There was not much talking after that.
SPRING
Margaery rolled over onto her back in bed, luxuriating in the pleasure of having only a sheet over her. It was so warm. It had been years since she’d slept like this. For three years she’d been at Winterfell, three years of unbearable winter. Even though they had been in the capital for six weeks now, she still had nightmares about snow, awaking in terrified remembrance of the first time she saw snow fall deeper than the first storey of the castle, the terrible claustrophobic whiteness. There were times she thought winter would never end. But at last the snow began to thaw, and then King Rhaegar had died, and a raven from King’s Landing had brought Robb to his new king.
Margaery had insisted she go with him. He was reluctant at first, until Margaery had pulled out her trump card. “You know I suffer in this cold, Robb. Maybe that’s why I haven’t had a baby yet.” And so her kind and dutiful stranger of a husband had brought her south.
Now in King’s Landing, in the beautiful chambers set aside for the Hand of the King, Margaery found she missed her Winterfell family. She had come to love them all, from fierce little Rickon to gracious Catelyn, which had surprised her. She loved everyone, save her husband. Robb was kind, and polite, and courteous - and when they went to bed together he was fierce in a way that made her press her thighs together just thinking about it. It was strange to want someone so much and know them so little, she thought, because for all Robb behaved as a good husband should, he always felt distant. Only when they made love did she feel Robb let himself go; but even in the aftermath of sex, sweat cooling between them, she could see him retreat into himself, expression once again grave. After a year of marriage she plucked up the courage to discuss it with Catelyn, and found to her dismay that Robb’s mother did not understand it either, that Robb had been a cheerful baby and a good-humoured boy. “Now he reminds me of Ned when we were first wed,” she had said to Margaery, and squeezed her daughter-in-law’s hand comfortingly. “Perhaps, like Ned, he will relax with you in time.” Margaery, for all she had been brought up with a pragmatic sense of the purpose of marriage, could still not help being disappointed.
Perhaps here in King’s Landing, away from family and the chill of the north, things might be easier between them, Margaery hoped. But she saw very little of Robb, for there was much to attend to in the early days of Jon’s rule. They had endless Council meetings; Robb would return from them tense-faced, and then more often than not he would make love to her quite passionately. He would seem somehow ashamed, after, but Margaery could not understand it.
Being a Tyrell, she could not settle for not knowing. She bribed a guard: first by spending weeks being kind to him, so that he was quite infatuated with her, and then with gold, because a pretty face and money were time-honoured ways for Tyrells to get what they wanted. He let her have a hidden spot within the Small Council’s chamber, and she watched their meetings.
Margaery learned many interesting things about the governance of the country in those hours, but more importantly to her, she learned that Robb and the King acted as if they were almost strangers, Robb diligent and formal and proper in all his dealings in front of the other Council members. Sometimes at the end of meetings, her husband would stay to talk to the King in private, and there would be moments when they would relax and laugh together, both their faces lit up. Then Robb would remember himself, and retreat, and the King’s expression would look briefly, terribly hurt. Margaery went away thoughtfully, because now she understood.
Sitting in their chambers, Margaery was nervous. She knew she needed to speak to her husband, but it was hard to know how to start. Robb came in.
“Good evening, husband,” she said, smiling, and gesturing at the table said: “I have some honeyed wine, and some dried fruit if you are hungry.” Robb shook his head, and bent over her, kissed her firmly. She felt herself start to respond, and so she moved out of his embrace. “I need us to talk, Robb,” she said. Margaery wished she’d drunk a cup of wine to steady her nerves before this.
“Of course,” said Robb, ever-courteous. “What about?”
“Your friendship with the King,” she said, and Robb’s face went still at once, jaw set. Taking a breath she hurried on, deciding that perhaps it was best with a Stark to just be frank. “You - love him, and he loves you.”
“He’s like a brother to me,” said Robb, faint spots of colour appearing in his cheeks, and Margaery put a hand on his arm and shook her head sympathetically.
“Not like a brother, Robb,” and watched all the colour drain from his face. “It’s alright,” she said at once. “It is, Robb. My own brother, Loras - you’ve heard the rumours, and I know here at King’s Landing, and in the north, such things are frowned on, but at Highgarden… At Highgarden we know there are better things to worry about than that.”
Robb stepped away from her hand and went to the window. He stood with his back to her for a long time, and when he turned at last his face was filled with shame.
“I’m - glad it does not disgust you, my lady. But what was between me and Jon is in the past, I swear it. I promised myself I would never be untrue to you.”
Margaery went to him at once.
“Oh, my darling,” she said, and although she had called him that before, this was the first time she meant it. “Dear Robb.” She took his hand and squeezed it. His fingers lay lax in hers, and he looked at her with confusion. “You’ve been true to me in body, and true to him in your heart. Don’t you know that means you’ve been untrue to us both?” He looked as if she’d slapped him, and took his hand away.
“I never - I never meant that, Margaery,” he said, voice stiff. “I just… I didn’t want to dishonour you, or myself.”
“You won’t let yourself have him, and you won’t let yourself love me,” she explained. “And now all of us are miserable. How is that honourable?” She reached up and cupped his jaw, and this time he didn’t flinch away. “You belong to us both already,” she continued gently. “You may as well let yourself enjoy it.”
“But…” Robb began. Margaery put a finger to her husband’s lips, and then reached up to kiss him.
This time he was as passionate as usual in bed, but afterwards he kissed her hair, and held her as he went to sleep. Margaery smoothed his furrowed brow with her fingertips. Things weren’t right yet, she thought. But it was a good start to spring.
Author: rachel2205
Recipient: margottenenbaum for got_exchange
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: Jon/Robb, Margaery/Robb, Lyanna/Rhaegar, Viserys, Sansa
Prompt: In which R+L=J, Lyanna is queen and Jon grows up heir to the throne. How he's different/the same, his interactions with Viserys, Daenerys, the Starks. Pairing-wise, Jon/Robb could be cool but I'm not picky.
Wordcount: 3500
WINTER
“When I’m king, you’ll be my Hand.”
“Will I, now,” said Robb, raising an eyebrow at his cousin, and Jon flushed, rubbing the back of his neck with his wooden practice sword.
“Well, I’d like it if you were. Would you?”
“Won’t Viserys expect to be?”
Jon made a face at the thought of his uncle.
“With Viserys as my Hand I’d always be wondering if he was going to strangle me in my sleep and take the throne for himself,” joked Jon, though really it was only half a joke. Lilac-eyed Viserys looked every inch the Targaryen, and had made it perfectly clear that he thought he’d make a finer king than that northern half-breed.
“Aye,” said Robb, “he might at that. He’s too much of a coward to try to kill you face-to-face.” His cousin’s blunt northern disdain made Jon laugh hard, his own solemn northern face briefly transformed.
“I’m glad you’re here, cousin,” he said.
“As my prince commands,” said Robb, giving him a mocking little bow, and Jon took the opportunity to hit him with the back of his sword. The rest of their training session was spent not in sparring, but in chasing each other around the exercise yard, air ringing with their laughing.
As the boys loped out of the yard they almost collided with Jon’s mother, pale in a gown embroidered with blue roses and trimmed in fur.
“Your Majesty,” said Robb with a bow, at once the heir to Winterfell. In these moments, for all he looked like a Tully, his bearing was all Eddard Stark, grave and true. Jon envied that a little, because though he might be a prince he never felt he looked much like one. He had none of his his father’s colouring, and little of his grace; instead he had the restless energy Ned Stark said Lyanna had once had, and a lean body and face that marked him out as foreign in this southern city.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Robb Stark, to call me Aunt Lyanna,” said the queen.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Robb stiffly, and Lyanna sighed and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. Once long and dark, it was now streaked with white. Jon’s father liked to tease her that it was the Targaryen coming through at last. Jon knew Rhaegar did it because Lyanna fretted over her hair; at two-and-thirty she should be too young for so much grey, but Lyanna had never been well since she nearly died birthing Jon, and in the sixteen years since she had aged a quarter-century.
“Aren’t you boys cold, running around without cloaks?” Lyanna asked, for winter had finally reached even King’s Landing.
“I’m a Stark, Your Majesty,” said Robb, polite and cool, which seemed to be all the explanation he needed to give.
“So am I, Robb,” said the queen, pulling her furs tighter about her throat, “but my blood always ran too hot for ice. Put on something warmer, Jon,” she added, turning to her son.
“I will, Mother,” said Jon earnestly, and as Lyanna walked away said quietly to Robb: “you could be friendlier, you know. She is your aunt.”
“I was not uncivil,” said Robb stiffly, as they walked back towards Jon’s chambers.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” said Jon. Robb just shrugged, and Jon let it go. Ned Stark may have saved his sister’s life when he found her dying in labour in the Tower of Joy, and he may have made peace with Rhaegar after the Mad King’s death, but he had never really forgiven Lyanna for her part in causing the war that had killed his best friend alongside countless others, and it seemed Robb had inherited his father’s disappointment - alongside a Tully disapproval for a decision that put love before family, duty, honour.
When Jon was very young, he remembered overhearing his mother shout at Uncle Ned. “Why can’t you forgive me?” she had said, and he answered: “you broke your oath to Robert, and men died for it.” “You know there was more to the rebellion that that,” Lyanna had cried, and from his hidden spot behind the curtains Jon could see her hands fly up in a familiar gesture of angry frustration. “When Rhaegar took me it just gave all of you an excuse for the war you wanted!” Ned had shaken his head, and been silent, until at last he answered: “sometimes I dream of Princess Elia’s body, and her children’s corpses.” Lyanna had said nothing after that, and the next morning Ned rode north again. When Jon was twelve Lyanna sent him north to live for a year with the Starks; she said to learn more of the kingdom where he’d one day be king, but Jon thought really it was to make peace. But though Jon and Robb were fast friends now, and Ned never said a cold word about his sister to any of his children, all of the Starks save Sansa viewed her with suspicion. Sansa, however, had begged to come to court with Robb for this long visit, and although she was nervous of her wild-eyed aunt she found her love story terribly romantic.
They turned a corner, and as if Jon’s thoughts had summoned her, there was his thirteen-year-old cousin - giggling as she held onto Viserys’s arm. Jon felt his mouth turn down, and glancing at Robb saw his expression matched there. Robb despised Viserys for his cruelty and arrogance, and thought it was unkind of him to flirt with Sansa when he had no interest in marrying her. Jon shared those feelings, but hid another inside him too, a dull throb of emotion like toothache. It made him look at Sansa and Viserys, hair gleaming copper and silver in the winter sunlight, and think moodily of how Sansa said he looked so like Ned that he could be her brother.
“Your Highness,” said Viserys, giving Jon a perfect little bow that somehow felt like an insult. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
“For what?”
Viserys gave him a superior little smile.
“The Tyrells are here.”
Mace Tyrell had stayed loyal to King Aerys, and for all Rhaegar had great misgivings about his father, he rewarded the Tyrells for their loyalty by making Mace his Hand. Mace had proved, however, to have little political skill, the Battle of Ashford his one victory. Had dull, plump Mace not had his son Loras, Jon thought his father might have quietly relieved him of his position. But Loras, handsome and brilliant, was a favourite of Rhaegar’s. Jon thought perhaps he reminded Rhaegar of himself when he was younger, a handsome young prince who gave a young Stark girl a crown of roses without a thought for what would come after. Jon was used to seeing Ser Loras at court, but this time he brought his sister with him, to be presented to the King and Queen for the first time. Jon had heard she was pretty, and so as he and Robb hastily made their way back to his rooms, he made some extra effort to look presentable. He made a face in the mirror at his unruly curls.
“They want to suggest Lady Margaery as a match, you know,” said Robb abruptly.
“A match for who?” said Jon, and Robb gave him a long look that made it clear he thought Jon was an idiot. “For me? But Mace knows that my father wants me to marry Daenerys.” Jon couldn’t bring himself to call her aunt, not when she was his own age and potentially his future wife besides.
“All the same, I think that’s why she’s here,” said Robb. He nudged Jon out of the way so he could look at himself in the mirror and straightened his jerkin. “She’d be a better match for you, if you’ll forgive me saying. They’re rich, the Tyrells, a good ally to have, and…”
“She’s not my aunt,” finished Jon, knowing his cousin shared most of the country’s distaste for Targaryen marriage patterns.
“Aye, that,” nodded Robb, giving Jon an apologetic look. “Come on, let’s go down.”
Jon stood at his father’s right hand in the throne room as they welcomed Lady Margaery to court. She was very pretty, Jon thought, though her soft brown curls and gentle face didn’t draw his eye the way Sansa’s high cheekbones and fiery hair did. He glanced across the hall at where Robb was standing, and saw that Robb was looking at Margaery quite fixedly. The girl turned her head and caught his eye for a moment, and gave Robb a sweet little smile before glancing away. Jon watched colour bloom in Robb’s cheeks, and felt his stomach give a brief, strange twist that he pushed away as Mace presented Margaery to him.
“My lady, welcome,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. Her fingers were very warm in his.
At dinner Margaery was sat with him. Jon kept thinking of what Robb had said, about the Tyrells wanting to match him with Margaery, and it made him clumsy, his conversation awkward. He looked down the hall to where Robb was sitting, talking easily with Sansa’s companion Jeyne, and envied him. Jon was never very good at talking to girls. Margaery was deft at conversation, her voice sweet, her questions gentle, and many men, he suspected, would have felt like kings sitting next to her. Instead he felt a fool, and ended the feast in awkward silence.
At the end of the meal he expected Mace to take his father aside, but instead was surprised to see him walking the hall with Robb. He put his hand on Robb’s shoulder as they strolled; Mace’s expression was jovial, while Robb’s was grave and thoughtful. Jon’s stomach twisted uncomfortably, and he returned to his rooms feeling restless.
An hour or so later, Robb came to him. Jon had rejected the guest rooms for his cousin, and Robb slept in Jon’s chambers, the way he and Robb and Bran and Rickon had all shared rooms - and sometimes when it was very cold, beds - in Winterfell. Robb had a cot in an adjoining chamber, but they always ended their evenings sitting in front of the fire in Jon’s bedroom.
“Sit down,” said Jon, “I have some wine warmed,” and Robb sat, but a moment later he was on his feet again, pacing in front of the fire.
“The Hand proposed I marry his daughter,” Robb said abruptly. Jon blinked. “I said I was sure he’d want you, and Lord Tyrell admitted that was the match he’d like best, but that your father had turned him down.” Jon felt a flash of anger that Rhaegar had not even mentioned it. He was no longer a child, to be left out of such considerations! But Robb was continuing, talking of the advantages of a match between House Tyrell and House Stark, and Jon’s heart was beating fast, a strange panicky feeling. “I said I’d have to speak with my father,” said Robb, ever-dutiful. “But I think it could be a good match for my family.” There was so much Tully in Robb, and Jon suddenly, unreasonably, hated him for it.
“Do you like her?”
Robb shrugged.
“I only spoke to her to say good evening. But she’s very pretty, and her family are strong and rich. My mother and father knew each other so little before they wed, and they are two of the best matched people I’ve seen,” said Robb. He stopped pacing at last, and sat down on the corner of Jon’s bed. “I don’t rightly know that I want to be wed yet,” he admitted frankly, “but I must do it some day, and this is a better match than many.”
Jon came over and sat next to him.
“It is a good match,” he said reluctantly. “She seems very pleasant. More your type than mine.” He looked at the gleam of Robb’s auburn curls in the firelight and thought of Sansa.
“Aye,” said Robb. He cleared his throat. “Lord Tyrell said your mother told him she’d rather you made your own choice of who to wed, when you are king.”
“She did?” said Jon, surprised. He’d never heard his mother expression an opinion on his marriage. But it made sense that she’d like him to make his own choices, given her experiences with love.
“Perhaps,” said Robb shyly, “you could marry Sansa. We’d be brothers then,” he added, and his face was soft and hopeful.
Jon leapt to his feet as if stung. He couldn’t explain his sudden feeling of fury, because hadn’t he thought about that very thing himself? But somehow the idea of Robb calling him brother gnawed at him more painfully than when Sansa had done it.
“I don’t want us to be brothers,” he said. He saw Robb’s face fall, expression clouded with a desperate hurt, and so he put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I don’t mean - Robb, you know you’re my best friend. I don’t want -” And then, looking at Robb’s confused face, Jon understood suddenly and entirely what he did want, and fell silent in horror.
“Jon,” said Robb, after a long silent moment. Jon could feel his pulse pounding, blood roaring in his ears, and when after another pause Robb reached out and touched Jon’s mouth with two trembling fingertips, Jon thought the rush of blood to his head might make him faint.
“Robb,” he said, voice shaking. “Robb.”
There was not much talking after that.
SPRING
Margaery rolled over onto her back in bed, luxuriating in the pleasure of having only a sheet over her. It was so warm. It had been years since she’d slept like this. For three years she’d been at Winterfell, three years of unbearable winter. Even though they had been in the capital for six weeks now, she still had nightmares about snow, awaking in terrified remembrance of the first time she saw snow fall deeper than the first storey of the castle, the terrible claustrophobic whiteness. There were times she thought winter would never end. But at last the snow began to thaw, and then King Rhaegar had died, and a raven from King’s Landing had brought Robb to his new king.
Margaery had insisted she go with him. He was reluctant at first, until Margaery had pulled out her trump card. “You know I suffer in this cold, Robb. Maybe that’s why I haven’t had a baby yet.” And so her kind and dutiful stranger of a husband had brought her south.
Now in King’s Landing, in the beautiful chambers set aside for the Hand of the King, Margaery found she missed her Winterfell family. She had come to love them all, from fierce little Rickon to gracious Catelyn, which had surprised her. She loved everyone, save her husband. Robb was kind, and polite, and courteous - and when they went to bed together he was fierce in a way that made her press her thighs together just thinking about it. It was strange to want someone so much and know them so little, she thought, because for all Robb behaved as a good husband should, he always felt distant. Only when they made love did she feel Robb let himself go; but even in the aftermath of sex, sweat cooling between them, she could see him retreat into himself, expression once again grave. After a year of marriage she plucked up the courage to discuss it with Catelyn, and found to her dismay that Robb’s mother did not understand it either, that Robb had been a cheerful baby and a good-humoured boy. “Now he reminds me of Ned when we were first wed,” she had said to Margaery, and squeezed her daughter-in-law’s hand comfortingly. “Perhaps, like Ned, he will relax with you in time.” Margaery, for all she had been brought up with a pragmatic sense of the purpose of marriage, could still not help being disappointed.
Perhaps here in King’s Landing, away from family and the chill of the north, things might be easier between them, Margaery hoped. But she saw very little of Robb, for there was much to attend to in the early days of Jon’s rule. They had endless Council meetings; Robb would return from them tense-faced, and then more often than not he would make love to her quite passionately. He would seem somehow ashamed, after, but Margaery could not understand it.
Being a Tyrell, she could not settle for not knowing. She bribed a guard: first by spending weeks being kind to him, so that he was quite infatuated with her, and then with gold, because a pretty face and money were time-honoured ways for Tyrells to get what they wanted. He let her have a hidden spot within the Small Council’s chamber, and she watched their meetings.
Margaery learned many interesting things about the governance of the country in those hours, but more importantly to her, she learned that Robb and the King acted as if they were almost strangers, Robb diligent and formal and proper in all his dealings in front of the other Council members. Sometimes at the end of meetings, her husband would stay to talk to the King in private, and there would be moments when they would relax and laugh together, both their faces lit up. Then Robb would remember himself, and retreat, and the King’s expression would look briefly, terribly hurt. Margaery went away thoughtfully, because now she understood.
Sitting in their chambers, Margaery was nervous. She knew she needed to speak to her husband, but it was hard to know how to start. Robb came in.
“Good evening, husband,” she said, smiling, and gesturing at the table said: “I have some honeyed wine, and some dried fruit if you are hungry.” Robb shook his head, and bent over her, kissed her firmly. She felt herself start to respond, and so she moved out of his embrace. “I need us to talk, Robb,” she said. Margaery wished she’d drunk a cup of wine to steady her nerves before this.
“Of course,” said Robb, ever-courteous. “What about?”
“Your friendship with the King,” she said, and Robb’s face went still at once, jaw set. Taking a breath she hurried on, deciding that perhaps it was best with a Stark to just be frank. “You - love him, and he loves you.”
“He’s like a brother to me,” said Robb, faint spots of colour appearing in his cheeks, and Margaery put a hand on his arm and shook her head sympathetically.
“Not like a brother, Robb,” and watched all the colour drain from his face. “It’s alright,” she said at once. “It is, Robb. My own brother, Loras - you’ve heard the rumours, and I know here at King’s Landing, and in the north, such things are frowned on, but at Highgarden… At Highgarden we know there are better things to worry about than that.”
Robb stepped away from her hand and went to the window. He stood with his back to her for a long time, and when he turned at last his face was filled with shame.
“I’m - glad it does not disgust you, my lady. But what was between me and Jon is in the past, I swear it. I promised myself I would never be untrue to you.”
Margaery went to him at once.
“Oh, my darling,” she said, and although she had called him that before, this was the first time she meant it. “Dear Robb.” She took his hand and squeezed it. His fingers lay lax in hers, and he looked at her with confusion. “You’ve been true to me in body, and true to him in your heart. Don’t you know that means you’ve been untrue to us both?” He looked as if she’d slapped him, and took his hand away.
“I never - I never meant that, Margaery,” he said, voice stiff. “I just… I didn’t want to dishonour you, or myself.”
“You won’t let yourself have him, and you won’t let yourself love me,” she explained. “And now all of us are miserable. How is that honourable?” She reached up and cupped his jaw, and this time he didn’t flinch away. “You belong to us both already,” she continued gently. “You may as well let yourself enjoy it.”
“But…” Robb began. Margaery put a finger to her husband’s lips, and then reached up to kiss him.
This time he was as passionate as usual in bed, but afterwards he kissed her hair, and held her as he went to sleep. Margaery smoothed his furrowed brow with her fingertips. Things weren’t right yet, she thought. But it was a good start to spring.