[ fic ] the beast you've made of me ; jeyne, a song of ice and fire
Written for the prompt "vengeance built me hastily (Or, in other words, How Jeyne came and killed everyone)" by opheliahyde at the Fall Fandom Free-for-all, sort of a late reply that I started writing a month or so ago and totally forgot about until I opened a random doc and discovered bunch of half-written drabbles, oops. Originally posted here. It contains SPOILERS for a rather major event in ASOS, and is set post-AFFC. Other than that, idk, it's a bit ~random but I just like having all the stuff I've written here so... here it is.
the beast you've made of me » a song of ice and fire. jeyne westerling, robb/jeyne. pg-13. 1,179 words.
Jeyne gathers courage to stalk through the castle at night and enact a bloody revenge. warnings: murder, references to forced abortion. I don't own these characters.
She's never used a dagger before, and she has to curl her fingers tightly around the handle so they don't shake and drop it.
Be fierce like a wolf, she thinks-- and exhales. The words bring more bitterness than relief, a deep ache that twists inside her, twists until she feels it might turn her inside-out. Fierce like a wolf, he'd told her, his voice solemn even as his eyes betrayed a private amusement. Keep your head up even when you're nervous, be still instead of shaking when you're scared, and they'll never tell. He'd brushed his fingers against her cheek, and she'd thought how lucky she was that it was always easy to find the fondness in Robb - in his touch, in his words, in his look - so easy because he never hid it away, not from her. Even if he had, she would have looked far and wide until she found it.
Now she looks for him - her king, her husband, Robb - even when there's nothing to be found.
They killed him, she thinks, as forcefully as she can manage, and she clutches the dagger tighter. She stole it when they were traveling west, small enough to hide up her sleeve. Fierce like a wolf. They killed her husband, but she is still a wolf; they killed a king but she is still a queen.
Queens don't get married off by their mothers. And the wolves kill the lions. She thinks that is the truth, at least; she needs it to be. She wanted to growl when she was shown to the Lannister lordling. Keep your head up, she heard, and fingered the dagger inside her sleeve instead, as he leered at her. She tried to picture him bleeding, throat torn, red splashed on the floor, and a lion's head stitched atop his own, then blinked away hot tears before they could gather - be still instead of shaking - and clasped her hands together.
The dagger is in her hand now, not hidden away, because why should she hide? Jeyne Westerling shivers as she stares at the bed across the room, where her would-be-future-husband sleeps undisturbed. She has not slept through the night since they brought news of that horrible day, and the sight of him so peaceful makes her taste bile.
But she must be calm. Still instead of shaking. She does not know how many footsteps it takes her to cross the room; she does not count, but suddenly she is standing over him, and she does not know how she got here. She is a girl, not an assassin of the night. She is a wolf.
And wolves go for the jugular.
She does not know what she is doing, until she is doing it, grabbing his hair and sliding the blade across his neck with the the quick clumsiness of desperation before he can cry out. Blood spills, everywhere, and she imagines again his head cut off and a lion's stiched in its place. It would be so poetic, but she does not have time nor resource for that sort of poetry.
She wipes the dagger clean on the blankets, and leaves the body behind.
She could leave it at that, she tells herself. She could return to her chambers and crawl into bed and try to sleep through the night. She could leave the dagger behind and they would never know. No one would suspect. But she is not finished; there are still sins unatoned for, she thinks, and one hand goes to her stomach.
When she'd learned the truth of it, she'd wanted to collapse to the floor, or scream, any reaction suitably dramatic for what she was hearing. Instead, she'd remained standing as tears had slowly filled her eyes, and she'd folded her hands over her stomach much like now, and felt nothing but a dreaded numbness, an emptiness that sunk through her bones.
I would have been a mother, she thinks, and imagines a child as she stalks quietly down the hall. She imagines a little boy, with tufts of hair on his head and a smile that would stretch across his face. Mother, she thinks again as she comes to a door, and her own mouth twists savagely, distorted by all the rage and grief that has hollowed her out.
She pushes the door open, and tries to keep her feet light on the rushes that cover the floor. She is shaking and even Robb's voice in her head cannot still her. She is thinking of a crown ripped from her head, a hand that offered her poison and proclaimed it to be nourishing. Fierce like a wolf. Fierce for Robb. Fierce for your son that never was.
She hates this woman more than she hated the man she already killed, but her hands are shaking so terribly and she suddenly doubts that she has the strength to force the dagger through the flesh, because surely more strength is required when it is your own mother's jugular.
Jeyne leans over, angles the blade with her shaking hands-- and her mother's eyes open, just as she is pressing the weapon to her throat. For a second, her mother is confused, and then there is disbelief, and then she screams out, grabbing for Jeyne's arms just as her daughter slits her throat open-- and no, it is not any harder, in the end, steel cuts through flesh all the same, we are all flesh and nothing more.
Hysteria overcomes her, and Jeyne laughs. Laughs as she shoves the dagger underneath the blankets, not bothering to clean it this time; laughs as she backs away slowly, as if she can trace her steps through time and rewrite the sins she has just committed. Terrified laughter so brittle her voice cracks, and then she is running away, running down the castle corridor, running until she stumbles and falls to the floor, and then she is shaking too hard to stand up.
A guard finds her, with a startled exclamation and an outstretched hand that she does not accept as she gets to feet herself.
"I must have walked in my sleep," she tells him, and marvels at how calm her voice is. "I was having-- nightmares." And now her voice shakes, once. "I thought I heard my mother scream."
"You should return to your sleep, m'lady. Rest assured, all is safe," he says, and she wants to laugh, hysterical again. But she acts calmly, follows him back to her room and crawls into her bed. My hands, she thinks frantically at one point, but when she looks down she sees that they are white somehow. Odd, she thinks, and then she thinks no more of it.
It is warm in her bed, even though she sleeps in it alone. Jeyne thinks she hears the shout of guards, or perhaps she remembers her mother's single shriek, but the sounds do not make her shiver; instead, she closes her eyes and it feels like she can almost breathe again.