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Chapter Text

In a large bedroom in the southeast wing of the grandest home in King’s Landing an uncommonly beautiful girl asked herself a very common question. 

It had to do with the piece of silk between her fingertips and whether it should go into one of the three suitcases currently open on her canopied bed. If she were packing for a trip to Dorne or the Summer Isles the answer would have been simple, she had already worn the dress in both places to great effect, but as she examined it in the warm afternoon light it seemed overwhelmingly impractical. 

“Oh don’t bring that, it’s such a waste of a beautiful dress,” a tone feigning boredom answered the question for her. 

Myrcella neatly folded the dress and wrapped it in tissue paper and placed it in the largest of the open suitcases. 

She looked innocently at her mother, who had raised an elegant brow, and said, “In case I have to attend a function for his work.”

“Work,” Cersei Lannister scoffed in the way that only a woman who had never worked a day in her life could about a man who had at least worked two or three.

Myrcella said nothing, because she had learned that whether she argued or agreed it would only send her mother into a diatribe about the great injustice of having been married to Robert Baratheon for nineteen years. Silence often inspired silence though, so she continued packing. 

If she had a different sort of mother she might ask her what the North was like and what things she should bring for a summer there. As it stood she was entering into the situation, like she had so many others, blind. 

She folded a grey cashmere sweater and settled it into the suitcase, and then a more lightweight cream one. 

“I still don’t understand why you’re going,” her mother said. 

If Myrcella were a different sort of daughter she might have told her mother that she was going because Robert Baratheon was her father and it wasn’t any of her business anyhow. As it stood she chose to handle this situation, like she had so many others, maturely.

“I know you don’t,” she said, “But try to think of what Dr. Qyburn says - sometimes it is more important to accept than it is to understand.”

“Oh don’t spew that hippy new age mindfulness bullshit at me,” her mother huffed. 

“He’s your doctor!,” Myrcella couldn’t help but point out with a smile because she had always secretly adored when her mother acted like a sulky teenager and she the parent. 

“He’sstillahippy,” her mother mumbled and then rolled her eyes. Her normally wildfire green eyes had calmed to more closely resemble Myrcella’s own and there was something she hadn’t seen in them in some time - fear. It was followed by a soft tone that Myrcella had only ever heard her mother use with her grandfather, “I just don’t want to lose you to her.”

Myrcella set down the rain jacket she had been about to pack and walked over to where her mother sat in the overstuffed armchair that overlooked the sea. Her mother, nearly 39 to the day, could still past for a woman in her mid-twenties in a certain light, but sitting there, in a chair far too large for her, her long legs appeared more gangly than elegant, and she herself looked like a sixteen year old, with the wounds of an unrequited first love still fresh in her mind. 

She took her mother’s hand in hers and promised, “You won’t. You’re my mother and no amount of summers spent with Lyanna Stark are going to change that.”

Her mother smiled, “And you’ll still be my baby?”

Myrcella fought the urge to roll her eyes. Tommy was the baby, Joffrey the golden boy. She had never really been sure where she fit in to any of it, but the idea of a summer apart from her mother made her feel generous and so she squeezed her hand. 

“Can you still be a baby at sixteen?,” she wondered. 

Her mother tugged on her hand and pulled her into her lap. She hadn’t sat in her mother’s lap since she was about nine years old, and she had to admit that it made her feel like a child in the nice kind of way that all teenagers secretly craved from time to time. She hooked her legs over the armrest and leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. After a moment she felt her mother’s fingers stroking through the hair that was so like her own, and she closed her eyes and revelled in the simplicity of the sensation. 

“You’ll always be my baby,” her mother said after some time, “And that little she-wolf better damn well know it.”

Chapter Text

Myrcella got the last of her luggage onto a carrier, sweeping her golden hair up into a ponytail. The flight from King’s Landing had been easy, though most things felt rather easy in First Class, and she’d finished one of her books and started on another as she sipped on an Arnold Palmer while the passenger next to her downed seven vodka sodas. 

The Wintertown International Airport was in desperate need of updating, nothing like the sleek new terminals in Kings Landing or Braavos, but all around her happy people reunited with other happy people - grandfather’s holding little girls with pigtails and mothers smoothing sons’ hair away from their faces. 

She followed signs for Ground Transportation, trying to ignore the nervous pit that she’d woken up with this morning. At this point it was little more than a sulky companion and she ignored it as one might a passenger sitting next to them on the train. 

She took the elevator down to the lower level, making a mental note to text her mother when she got in the town car. She had nearly balked at the request, her mother had never asked her for such a thing before, not when she went on holiday with her friends or to visit the family home in Casterly Rock. Since the divorce though her mother had become something akin to the helicopter mothers that she had always seen but never entirely understood. It didn’t translate into her always having snacks in her designer handbag, but it had manifested in the form of an overwhelming anxiety about her children’s well being that had forced her to start seeing Dr. Qyburn four times a week.

The doctor was at best a hippy, and at worst an enabling sociopath, and in reality probably a mixture of both, but given that her mother had finally allowed her to stop attending sessions with him she would ignore it for the time being.

The doors opened and she pushed the carrier towards where she saw a group of uniformed drivers holding signs. She’d asked her father’s secretary if she’d like her to make the reservation but the woman had demurred saying merely that she’d handle it. So Myrcella had emailed her the flight information and not given it much further thought. 

She scanned the signs for Miss Baratheon but didn’t see any. She checked her phone to see if she had any missed calls and to check the time to see if they’d gotten in earlier than expected, but found that they had arrived exactly on time. 

That nervous pit became an annoyed coil. 

It was so like her father to forget she was coming in that he wasn’t worth being annoyed at, but his secretaries down south had always been organised and efficient. 

This was exactly the sort of thing that she could never tell her mother about. Less because of actual concern for her well being and more because it was an opportunity to lambast his merits as a father and subtly imply if not outright say that she had warned her about this very possibility. 

Myrcella opened her car service app on her phone and started typing in her father’s new address. He’d probably be very surprised when she’d show up at his door Hey kid, you’re early! and she would smile and say that she just couldn’t wait to get here and they’d pretend for a few minutes that they were a normal father and daughter before he went back to ignoring her and she went back to ignoring the way that made her feel. 

She was wondering if it was too late to head to Dorne for the summer, where she would definitely be wanted, when she found herself being wrapped in a large set of arms and lifted off of the ground. Her first thought was that she was being very publicly abducted, and it wasn’t until she heard the belly laugh that she understood that it was her father’s arms that she was in. 

The laugh was familiar to her in a way that some children could recall family folklore they’d never witnessed. Something you knew, intrinsically, but could not place in your own personal history. She had heard him laugh, from time to time, but it was rare and often ugly and sad. The kind of laugh that men chose instead of crying. She wondered how she knew that this one, too, belonged to him.

His arms also felt foreign to her, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held in them. Even when he left it had been with a kiss to her forehead and a promise of visiting soon - which he hadn’t fulfilled. They were warm though and she was surprised when he pulled away to look at her that she could not smell whiskey on his breath. 

She looked into his blue eyes and saw them clear for the first time and to her utter surprise they seemed a little moist as well. He squeezed her once again, to the point that it was almost painful, but she wrapped her arms around him all the same and breathed in the smell of his aftershave. 

“Oh my little girl,” he said, as though to himself, and then set her down, “Let me look at you.”

She felt suddenly as though she were in front of her drill commander, and she found herself wishing she had polished her shoes. It was the way she most often felt around her grandfather, when his matching jadeite eyes efficiently appraised her for any signs of inadequacy. 

Her father’s blue merely crinkled at the edges as he took her in. She hadn’t changed on the plane, so she was wearing the outfit that she often traveled in - a sleeveless wrap dress made of a material that didn’t wrinkle and a soft, slightly oversized cashmere sweater for when the airplane got chilled. 

“You look thin,” he noted, “Doesn’t your mother feed you?”

She’d actually gained weight since the last time he’d seen her, but due to a growth spurt that had brought her to her mother’s exact height - 5’8’’, 5’8 and a half if her grandfather remarked on her posture - it didn’t really look like it. She felt a little like a young fawn, her new legs were gangly and unsure of themselves at times, but even still she didn’t like the implication that it had to do with negligence on her mother’s part. 

Robert Baratheon was in no place to criticise Cersei Lannister as a parent. He may be the only person in the world who did not have that right.

“Incessantly,” she lied, in the tone of feigned boredom that she knew she’d inherited from her mother. 

He looked like he wanted to say more but merely shook his head. He never argued with that tone.

In truth if anyone looked like they hadn’t been eating it was him. His large belly had all but disappeared, and he looked for the first time like the man she’d seen in pictures in his study. The man who laughed in that special way.

His head was still full of the thick black hair that neither she nor her brothers had inherited and his skin was bronzed rather than flushed and filmy as it had so often seemed to her as a child. He was a great beast of a man, 6’4’’ at least, but his body now seemed to have a purpose in a way that it never had before. 

“Myrcella, there is someone I’d like you to meet,” he informed her and she straightened up. 

She turned with a closed mouth, serene smile that would have been wiped off a less trained face the moment she saw the person in front of her. 

Lyanna Stark. 

The woman who had ruined her parents’ marriage before it had even begun. 

She wasn’t sure sure what she had been expecting. In her wildest nightmares she was a young, buxom vixen, with short dresses and too much bronzer, which was silly - at least the young part anyway, since she knew her father had known her growing up. 

The woman in front of her had a fresh face and wore a wrap dress similar to Myrcella’s own. She had thick black hair and calm grey eyes and a small smile that sprouted dimples on either cheek. 

“You are just as lovely as your Dad said,” she was saying in a Northern accent that somehow sounded delicate on her tongue. “So like your mother at your age.”

As though she realised the inappropriateness of mentioning her mother, the woman blushed a rose petal pink. It was that blush that made the coil unwind ever so slightly in Myrcella’s stomach and she smiled at her as warmly as she was able. 

“Thank you, Miss Stark,” she said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Lyanna’s grin widened and she shook her head, “Oh honey, it’s Lyanna,” and before Myrcella could do anything to protest, she was being wrapped in another set of unfamiliar arms. The embrace was warm and Lyanna smelled like suntan lotion and wildflowers, and her arms, though slender, felt the way she’d always imagined mother’s arms on television shows and in movies would feel like. So she found herself hugging her back, feeling treasonous as she did, relaxing into her until Lyanna said softly in her ear, “He’s so excited you’re here, he’s been on tenter hooks all week.”

Myrcella didn’t believe her. That was not to say that she thought Lyanna was lying, merely that she was being lied to. She had every belief that her father had played his part expertly, that of the doting father. He had always known the right things to say, whether he cared to say them or not. And Lyanna Stark was the love of his life, of course he would want her to think that he cared about his children. 

She merely smiled as Lyanna released her and she turned to find that her father had grabbed the cart of her suitcases. If he felt that she had overpacked he didn’t say and they lead her out of the airport through the underpass to the parking garage. 

She trailed behind them like a little duckling, and Lyanna went next to her father and placed her hand on the middle of his back, rubbing briefly. Her father turned to his girlfriend and smiled down at her lovingly, in a way she had never seen him look at anyone. There was a calmness to it that she had never associated with him, who had always been prone to fits of anger and melancholy, urged on by the liquor in his bloodstream. 

Lyanna didn’t seem to notice. As though she were so used to being looked at that way by him that it wasn’t even worth acknowledging. 

Myrcella hated her. 

They stopped in front of a large grey SUV and her father opened the trunk and played at grunting and groaning as he loaded her suitcases into it. He even wagged his tongue a little which brought a smile to her face in spite of herself. 

She went over to the backseat door behind the driver’s seat and she was surprised when she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder and a kiss pressed to the back of her head. He opened the door for her and she glanced back at him, as though they were in some Regency period piece where every touch seemed monumental. 

As though he too knew how unprecedented it was he made an obsequious bow and she stepped into the car and let him close the door behind her. 

He and Lyanna settled in and they made some small talk about how bad traffic had gotten near the airport due to the seasonals - those who only spent their summers here. She didn’t bother to mention that she might be considered a seasonal and the thought didn’t seem to occur to either of them. 

She wasn’t used to being driven by her father. In her memory there were not many occasions for him to do so, she had a chauffeur that took her to school until she was fourteen when she’d convinced her mother to let her take the subway. He did not often accompany her and her family to events and when he did he had been in no shape to drive. 

He seemed to be perfectly capable of the act though, and wove between lanes on the highway with all the clarity of a seer. 

Lyanna turned around in her seat, “So Myrcella, Jon is so excited to meet you.” Her father fixed Lyanna with a look and she rolled her eyes, “Okay well he might not be vocal about it, but he’s looking forward to it. He’s about your age, nearly eighteen.”

A bit older, then. Her sixteenth birthday was in three weeks time. It was Joffrey who had just turned eighteen. 

“I’m looking forward to meeting him as well,” she lied. 

Her father’s eyes on hers in the rearview told her that he’d heard the lie. She wondered briefly if it was her inflection, or perhaps the enthusiasm in her tone. Lying was an art, and she’d made a habit of studying its masters. Perhaps further study was yet needed. 

Her father did not remark on it, probably more for Lyanna’s benefit than her own, so she asked, “What will he be doing for the summer?”

Lyanna shrugged, “Not much of anything, really. He works after school at an autoshop in town, so he may pick up some hours there, but most of the time he does what the rest of the lake kids do.”

Myrcella had no idea what lake kids did, and neither of them seemed to feel the desire to explain it to her, so she merely nodded as though that seemed a perfectly reasonable way to spend a summer.

“So kiddo,” her father said in that booming voice of his, “We gonna get you up on waterskis?”

“Is it like downhill skiing?,” she wondered. 

“Not much,” he said, “But with your horseback riding and ballet I’m not too worried about it. We’ll get you slalom in no time.”

“Oh let her be!,” Lyanna ordered teasingly, then turned to her conspiratorially, “I swear he gets up on one ski once and -“

“Twice!,” her father cut in with a laugh. 

Lyanna acquiesced that it had been in fact twice and then her father started asking her about whether she’d seen a neighbour of theirs on the wakeboard the day before. They chattered happily amongst themselves and Myrcella stared out the window. 

He’d taken them off the highway and onto some country road. It was shady with large trees on either side, seemingly connected like a canopy above them. The leaves were dark green and lush and she rolled down her window, craving fresh air after the stale plane. 

She had half expected it to be cold, everything she had heard about the North was that it was always cold. A wasteland, her mother called it. Instead it felt clean, there was a bit of crispness to the air, she supposed, but only in contrast to the oppressive heat of the South. She let the wind trail through her fingertips, leaning her cheek upon her upper arm and wondering at what was mixing with the lake water to create the heavenly smell.

She didn’t realise that she’d fallen asleep until she felt someone nudging her gently. 

“Wake up, kiddo,” her father said, “We’re here.”

She blinked open her eyes and they fell upon a stone house, that seemed to have been built into a hill. It had black trim and one of the downstairs windows was open to reveal a white husky sitting on a window seat, sleeping as his face was warmed by the sun. She could see down to path off to the side that it lead right to a dark green lake, and there were jet skis and boats tied to the dock. 

Is this what he wanted the whole time? 

The mansion in King’s Landing was an ostentatious display, four stories high and the nearly the size of a city block. It had two separate servants’ wings, and enough servants to fill them, an indoor swimming pool in the basement and an outdoor one on the roof. Her room alone was probably the size of an entire floor of this home, with its large ensuite bathroom, walk-in closet, and the small sitting room that was for her personal use. 

The house in front of her was large and well situated, but it gave the feeling of a home in a way all the cool marble and expensive window treatments never could. 

She swallowed down the lump in her throat and smiled at her father, who opened the door for her. She stepped out and closed her eyes, relishing that scent, which was even stronger here. 

“Honeysuckle,” Lyanna told her and Myrcella opened her eyes to find the older woman had a slight blush on her cheeks, “The smell… I just figured…”

She realised for the first time that Lyanna was nervous to meet her. For some reason that endeared her to her father’s girlfriend. She must really care for him, and Myrcella could be happy for that at least. 

“It’s divine,” she told her with a small smile, which Lyanna returned ten-fold. 

Lyanna laughed as her father grunted trying to pull down two of the suitcases at a time, “Don’t kill yourself, I’ll go get Jon to help you.”

She realised in that moment that she’d never gone anywhere where there wasn’t someone to bring in the bags. All of her friends’ families had full time help just like hers did, the bags always kind of just appeared in the closet of her room, often with the garments hung up and put away for her. 

She had never felt so rottenly spoiled in her entire life, and she wasn’t keen for the boy who could very well become her step-brother to think of her as such.

“Oh, no, please I’ll bring them in!,” she protested.

“Nonsense,” Lyanna waved her off, “Teenage sons have to earn their keep somehow.”

With that she wandered into the house and they heard her calling Jonnnn. She and her father stood in somewhat awkward silence, until Lyanna came out with a red face, holding a piece of paper that clearly explained Jon’s absence.

“Let me guess,” her father said with a grin, “He’s off causing trouble with Robb Stark?”

Myrcella had no idea who Robb Stark was, but that was just as well. 

She’d never been one much for trouble anyway. 

Chapter Text

Her bedroom was charming. Unbearably so. 

Her bedroom in King’s Landing was officially named The Peony Suite. It had its own spread in Home + Hearth magazine and was equipped with everything a teenage girl could want - even a bottle of gin underneath the bed. But like the rest of the house it prioritised style over comfort, quality over warmth. 

The bedroom that her father lead her up to had a view of the lake on two sides, and was underneath a large tree that kept it cool - the way she most liked to sleep - even at the height of the day. It had a small vanity and a little bathroom with a beautiful old claw foot tub and a more modern shower. It had been stocked with a local shampoo and conditioner - jasmine, her favourite - and though the closet was not nearly as large as her walk in, she was able to find space for all three suitcases worth of clothing, shoes, and bags she had brought with her. 

The stack of books she’d brought fit nicely with the classics that had already been in the bookcase, and there was a bouquet of wildflowers in a small vase on her bedside table. 

Her father had placed the suitcases down and showed her the special way you had to jiggle one of the windows to open it and then left her to get settled. She’d been grateful to be left on her own, just like she was grateful that Jon had not been there to greet her. It was going to be a long summer, and she was a firm believer in pacing oneself. 

There was only so much lighthearted banter she could witness between her father and Lyanna, only so much calm sincerity she could accept from Lyanna, without it overwhelming her. 

She took her phone out of her bag and curled up in the oversized reading chair that was in the little alcove overlooking the dock. She found that she had a few text messages - one from her mother, one from Shireen, two from Trystane. 

She read the latter’s first. 

This tub just isn’t the same without you, Goldie

It was accompanied by a picture of Trystane’s already tanned legs extended in a lounge chair on his family’s yacht. She’d spent practically every day of last summer on that boat. Her parent’s divorce had just been publicised and Casterly Rock hadn’t been an option for any of them, not with all of the media attention, and rather than rally together as a family, her mother had thought it best for her children to get away - from King’s Landing, and her - and had sent them to Dorne.

She’d known Trystane for as long as she could remember, but when he’d knelt down in front of her beach chair and said, What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? it had felt new and exciting. He’d claimed that when he inherited the yacht from his father he was going to rename it Golden Hour in her honour. 

She wished she was there right now, with him. But not in the way he wanted her to, so she replied Scrubadubdub for me! and didn’t bother to read what he responded with. 

She put her phone down and leaned back, resting her heels on the windowsill. The afternoon sun had warmed just this spot of the room and she felt like Tommen’s cat Ser Pounce as she all but purred in delight. 

“Hullo?,” a gruff voice asked with an accompanying knock. 

She glanced around the chair and saw a boy with curls so dark they were very nearly black, with eyes to match, wearing a black t shirt and tight dark grey jeans. He looked more suited to the pages of a fashion magazine than to a small lakeside town, or some coffee shop in the West Hamlet where young artist types liked to go and brood and work on their brand. Something about the boy in front of her didn’t seem like he’d even know that people had brands though, and he was so indefinably masculine that it made the room, with it’s pretty blue wallpaper, seem almost painfully feminine. 

Something about him made her feel almost painfully feminine as well. Not in a romantic kind of way, as handsome as he was she felt no attraction to him, but in some way she didn’t quite understand. 

“Hello, you must be Jon?,” she asked. 

He nodded and gave her a closed mouth smile, which would have looked like a grimace if it hadn’t made his eyes glimmer ever so slightly. 

“Myrcella, I take it?,” he asked. 

She shook her head, “Oh, no I’m sorry, I just like entering people’s homes and enjoying their views of the lake.”

He smirked, “Well far be it from me to stop you, but my Mum wanted you to know that supper is ready, and since I already screwed up by not being here to greet you, I think she’ll murder me if I come back downstairs without you.”

She smiled. It was hard not to, his accent was so stereotypically Northern. All of his “to”s came out as “t”, and all of his “you”s came out “yuh”. And there was something charming about the kind of boy his clothing and demeanour would suggest him to be, being worried about his mother boxing his ears.

She furrowed her brow though and picked up her phone.

“It’s 5:30,” she told him. 

“6:30 actually,” he said and he gestured vaguely to her phone, “The internet is crap ‘round here, so it might not have updated.”

She felt like such an idiot. Of course it was a different time zone here. 

She deflected with a shrug of her shoulders, “Even still, dinner at 6:30?”

In Dorne they wouldn’t eat until 10 o’clock most nights, but even in King’s Landing people rarely had dinner before 8. 

He scratched his chin, “Yeah we’re early to bed early to rise types I guess, Robert’s usually passed out by 8:30.”

She flushed in embarrassment. Her father often hadn’t made it to dinner at all because he’d fall asleep well before, a glass of whiskey still in hand that one of the maids would discretely remove from his hand and place on an engraved coaster on the table in his study. It was a well known habit of his in King’s Landing, everyone down south knew about it, but even still she didn’t like that Jon did.

“Well I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble,” she said, because she had to say something. 

She went to walk to the door but he stepped in front of it and she raised an eyebrow. He didn’t seem the sort of boy that would try anything but she straightened her posture to her full height anyway. 

“You’ll probably want a sweater,” he said stiffly though, “We’re eating outside.”

He blinked after he said it, like he couldn’t quite believe he had. It was a normal enough statement but he kind of shook his head like it wasn’t. He also stayed planted in front of the door, and it seemed rude not to follow his advice, so she went into her closet and pulled out a dove grey cashmere turtleneck and wrapped it around her shoulders. 

“Is this alright?,” she wondered, looking down at her plane-worn dress, “I had planned on dressing for dinner.”

He furrowed his brow, “You are dressed.”

“Yes but -,” she started and then took in his outfit again and shook her head, “Nevermind.”

He nodded slowly, as though it were entirely possible that she was crazy, and turned on his heel and lead her down the hall. He walked slowly, purposefully slow, as though afraid she’d get lost, so she followed behind at a comfortable distance. 

He took her down the back staircase and out the back door. There was a long wooden table, with candles lit and a bouquet of wildflowers that matched the one in her bedroom, and cream dishware along with platters of food. 

Her father and Lyanna were already outside, her father was whispering something in Lyanna’s ear as she poured water in one of the glasses, a dimpled smile adorning her face. 

It was her father who looked up first and he grinned, “There you two are, you kids getting acquainted?” 

“I couldn’t find Myrcella so I brought her down instead,” Jon said and she rolled her eyes. 

Her father looked between them as though he didn’t quite understand, and it was nice being on the inside of something so she giggled and bumped her arm against Jon’s on her way to the table. 

“It’s already starting, isn’t it?,” her father asked Lyanna in a voice that was almost a murmur, as though she were the wisest and loveliest creature on earth. 

“Told you,” Lyanna cooed, as though she knew it. 

And just like that, she was on the outside once again. 

Jon rolled his eyes, though not at her, and sat down on one side of the table so she sat down across from him. 

Lyanna and her father settled in as well and everyone except her started grabbing things. Dinner was a colorful feast, with six different kinds of vegetables and a grilled salmon, different sauces in little bowls littered about the table. 

“This looks delicious,” she told Lyanna politely, and truthfully, then added, “I wish I had known you were cooking, I would have offered to help.”

Her father guffawed and she felt her cheeks flame. 

“I’m sorry, kid, but when was the last time you were in a kitchen?,” he challenged. 

Probably more recently than you and I had dinner together, another sort of daughter might have said. 

“Touché,” she allowed instead then looked at Lyanna and waved off the woman’s annoyingly sympathetic expression - as though she knew, as though she cared. “In fairness it’s probably best for all of us that I didn’t know, because no one needs to go to the hospital this evening.”

Lyanna smiled and took a sip of water, “Oh I know just what you mean, poor Jon here ate burnt chicken and chewy noodles until he was about four.” She then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, “If you ever wanted to learn…”

“Thank you,” Myrcella said. 

Which wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. 

She accepted the plate of salmon from Jon and put a small piece on her plate and loaded the rest up with roasted carrots and peppers, picking up the sauce that smelled of harissa and drizzling it on. 

She faded into the background a little, as her father and Lyanna chattered mostly, Jon piping in every so often. Lyanna asked her about school and ballet, about her horse and whether she’d like to ride at the stables down the road while she was here, and she listened politely as they discussed one neighbour or another.

“So Jon,” her father asked, “What do you have planned for tonight?”

“PartyatTheon’s,” Jon mumbled as he chewed. 

“Oh boy,” Lyanna sighed theatrically, and then there was silence. 

Too much silence. 

Myrcella looked up to see Lyanna looking in between her and Jon and Jon subtly, but definitively, shaking his head no.

“Leave him alone, Lyanna,” her father chided gently. 

Lyanna ignored both of the men at the table, which would have endeared Myrcella to her more than anything else had so far if it hadn’t followed that she turned towards her and said, “Why don’t you go with him? Theon’s parties are very popular with kids around here, you could meet some people, Jon could introduce you to his friends.”

“Mu-,” Jon started but his mother silenced him with a look.

Myrcella was well-versed in being wanted, and equally in being not-wanted, but it didn’t take someone with her experience to know how Jon felt. It was the most expressive he had been yet, made all the more painfully obvious by the fact that he was trying to hide it. 

“Oh what a lovely thought,” she said, “But I’m wiped from the plane.” Then, because she couldn’t let him off the hook entirely she turned to Jon and suggested primly, “You’ll give Theon my regrets?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, his mouth dropping open slightly before he closed it and gave her a smile and nodded, mumbling something about Theon regretting it, which she ignored because she had no idea why Theon would care about any of it. 

She smiled before stabbing a small piece of pepper and chewing on it gingerly. 

“Not too late though, right?,” her father asked Jon. 

“No I’ll be ready at 6 like we agreed,” Jon nodded. She must have looked confused because Jon supplied succinctly, “Fishing.”

“You fish?,” she couldn’t help but ask her father. It was nearly as ridiculous as her in the kitchen. 

He grinned and nodded, “Every Sunday,” he said and clapped Jon on the back. 

Every Sunday. 

Every Sunday her father woke up at 6 AM to go onto a lake with Jon and wait for fish to impale themselves on a hook. 

He only called her once a month. 

She took a sip of water, her mouth felt dry all of a sudden.

“What a nice tradition,” she managed. 

You forgot Tommen’s birthday two years in a row. 

“You know I really am awfully tired,” she said as though suddenly realising it and turned to Lyanna, “Would it be alright if I went to bed? I would offer to help you clear but -“

“No of course, honey,” Lyanna said gently. Annoyingly gently. “Go on to bed. Sleep tight.”

She nodded, and said goodnight to everyone and ran up the stairs to her room. She’d hardly made it inside when the tears started to fall. She abhorred crying, she hated the way it made her body feel heavy and the way it stung her eyes. 

Hated the weakness inside of her it betrayed. 

She couldn’t help it though. Big, dramatic, tears fell from her eyes and she covered her mouth so that they couldn’t hear it outside. 

She could be on a yacht in Dorne that would one day be named for her, and she’d chosen to come here, where she couldn’t even get an invitation on a smelly old fishing boat. 

She heard something that sounded like scratching, and then a whimper. She wiped her eyes and opened the door slightly, but there was no one there. And then she heard breathing. 

She looked down and saw the large white husky she’d seen earlier in the day. As soon as they made eye contact she was startled by his blood-red eyes, and even more so when he pushed his way into her room. 

Without warning he hurled himself onto the bed, walking around in circles a few times before settling himself down at the foot of it. 

When it became clear he had no intention of leaving she closed the door. 

“I’m Myrcella,” she said stupidly, but he rested his head on his paws like that stood to reason. 

She went into her chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of pink silk pajamas and put her dress in the hamper. She then went into the bathroom and washed her face and brushed her teeth and shut out the light.

She came back into her bedroom and the dog glanced at her. He was very large, and something told her very stubborn as well, so she didn’t think she’d have a good chance of moving him. 

“You should know that I’m not in the habit of letting strange men into my bed,” she told the dog as she pulled down the covers and climbed into bed. She pulled the covers up and leaned back against the pillows and he stood up and walked towards her and laid down again, his head resting on her stomach. She looked into his eyes, which had seemed so threatening a moment ago, but now simply seemed a little sad. For her, not himself. She stroked his head and his eyes closed. “Though I suppose I could do quite a bit worse.”

He hummed slightly, as though she certainly could. 

She let herself be lulled by petting his soft fur, and her heartbeat slowly returned to normal. She was nearly dozing off, in spite of the early hour, when she heard a knock on her door.

“Come in,” she called, because there was no convenient reason not to. She still had the light on after all.

The door open, and as she could have guessed, it was Lyanna.

She smiled, “Ah, I see Ghost has made himself right at home.”

“He has at that,” Myrcella agreed. 

“I just wanted you to know how happy I am that you’re here,” Lyanna told her once again. 

“Thank you,” Myrcella managed. 

“I can imagine it must be difficult for you,” Lyanna went on.

Crying had made her vulnerable, less able to mask her emotions, so it was with more ire in her tone than she normally would have allowed that she said, “I suppose I just miss my family.”

Lyanna didn’t point out that her father was her family. So she was smart, as well as pretty and kind. 

“We can be your family, if you’ll let us,” she said instead. 

So perhaps she wasn’t so smart after all. It was the exact wrong thing to say, and just like before, Lyanna’s discomfort made Myrcella all the more gracious.

She sighed, and said conspiratorially, though not without truth, “Well it seems like you may be the only one here who’d like to be but -“

“Let’s not forget Ghost,” Lyanna teased with truth as well.

“No,” Myrcella said, stroking his head, “Let’s not forget Ghost.”

Lyanna smiled at her, and though it seemed like she’d like to say more, she said, “Sleep well, Myrcella.”

She couldn’t quite manage a smile, but she laid back against the pillows and said, “Goodnight, Lyanna.”

With that the older woman left the room. 

Myrcella looked at Ghost, “So what do you think? Should I book a red-eye to Dorne?” Ghost huffed and lifted his head off of her stomach and then collapsed back on her, but somehow with more of his body covering his. “You’re probably right,” she yawned, realising that she was in fact tired. She stroked his head and turned out the light. “I can always look up flights tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

She woke with lead in her bones.

The room was still dark and though she was nice and warm thanks to her heavy blanket and the large husky planted to her side, it was clear the air was brisk - feeling more akin to a late October morning in King’s Landing than a June one. 

The air smelled fresh and clean and other than Ghost’s steady breathing and the call of a loon across the lake there were no sounds. She burrowed under the covers, reaching only a hand out to pet Ghost’s white coat. He made an acknowledging breath, pressing himself ever so slightly more against her, which she took as an encouragement and continued her attentions. 

After a time she reached behind her and grabbed her cell phone from her bedside table. It told her that it was 5:03 AM - and she knew that it really was as she had updated her timezone manually before falling asleep. 

She had never been one to be able to fall back asleep. Once she was up, she was up for the day, only succumbing to naps when she had a fever about once a year. She knew that she could stay in bed, watch an old movie on her laptop or pull one of her books off the shelf and sit in her chair, but curiosity got the better of her and she got out of bed. 

Ghost groaned as she tugged the covers he was resting on so that she could make the bed, but quieted down when she pressed kisses to his forehead in the spot that Ser Pounce liked. 

She went into her closet and pulled on one of her heaviest, oversized turtlenecks and stepped into her shearling slippers. She went into the bathroom and washed her face and brushed her teeth, and then pulled her comb through her golden hair until it fell in waves around her face. For the first time in a while she looked at herself in the mirror. While many girls her age liked to spend hours doing so, either admiring their reflections or assessing their flaws - real or imagined - Myrcella hardly spent anytime in front of one. If she wanted to know what she looked like, she need only look at her mother. Her face was so similar to her mother’s, even in the arch of their brow, that it didn’t even feel like it truly belonged to her.

She looked now though, and did something she had not for some time. She examined the lines of her nose and the freckle underneath her left eye - the only thing that was truly hers - her chin and the trail of her cheekbone. She looked at her jadeite eyes and the lashes that sprouted from them. It was a pointless exercise, one she thought she had long grown out of.

There was not now, nor had there ever been, one trace of Robert Baratheon in her. 

She shut the light off and turned away, walking towards the bookshelf. It was full of the classics, and she picked one up that she’d read many times before. Opening the front cover she came across a handwritten note. 

To my Queen of Love and Beauty, 

Words fail me - you banish them from me, rid me of them - and so I must give you the words of others along with my devotion. 

Ever yours, 

R

Myrcella closed the book and put it up on the shelf. She couldn’t imagine her father writing such a thing to anyone, yet Lyanna seemed to inspire in him feats he might otherwise be incapable of.

Grabbing one of her own books, sans inscription, off the shelf she made for the door. Ghost was at her side immediately, and she absentmindedly stroked his head, already used to his proximity. They made their way down the hall together and down the back stairs that lead into the kitchen. 

She opened the back door to let him out and filled the kettle up with water for tea. It was her first time in the kitchen and she looked around trying to imagine where tea might be kept. Her eyes fell to the counter to a row of ceramic buildings that looked like little shops, one that had Tea written out in cursive. Her mother might have called the kitschy in a dismissive tone but to Myrcella they seemed like the sort of thing a lifestyle magazine editor might have in their vacation home. 

Taking the lid off of the box revealed a seemingly endless group of little possets filled with tea. She picked out one with a little tag denoting it is Braavosi Breakfast tea and raised it to her nose, smiling to herself as she took in the melange of scents.

She reached into the cabinet above and pulled out a mug and placed the posset into it before going to the back door to let Ghost back in. 

“Where should we sit, hmm?,” she asked him. 

In response he laid down on her feet. She knelt down and scratched behind his ears until the kettle started boiling and then she ran the short distance so that its whistle wouldn’t wake the whole house. 

Once she had filled her mug she walked through the house and out onto the front porch, settling into the outdoor couch with it’s unparalleled view of the lake. The sun was just poking it’s head out and she could hear the water lapping at the shore. It was cold but too beautiful to go inside, so she patted the space next to her and Ghost hopped up and rested his body against her. 

She tucked her feet underneath her and raised her cup of tea to her lips. It was an exquisite blend, better than any she’d had since her last time in Braavos, and she took another nice long sip. Her book was resting beside her but it was nice to simply sit in the fresh air and the quiet. King’s Landing was never truly quiet, nor was Sunspear, or Casterly Rock. 

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there but she watched as the sun slowly crept upwards. 

The door opened behind her and her father poked his head out. He seemed very awake, despite the hour, and smiled when he saw her. 

“Hey kid, you find everything you need?,” he asked. 

She raised her mug in answer. He looked at her and nodded and went back inside. As far as conversations went it wasn’t exactly thrilling, but she wasn’t quite sure the last time her father had asked if she needed anything. That was what the nannies and cooks were for, she supposed.

She settled back against the couch and was about to pick the book off the table when she heard the door open again. 

It was her father once again holding a large knit blanket and to her immense surprise he draped it over her and settled on the other side of her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she felt herself freeze up a bit. He may have noticed or he may not have but he pulled her more firmly against him and she allowed herself to be. 

Just like that a doughnut appeared in front of her. 

“Don’t tell,” he mock-whispered in her ear. 

“Snitches get stitches,” she said stupidly before raising it to her lips. It made him chuckle anyway. She took a bite of the doughnut and all but moaned in delight. It was made in the old-fashioned way and it melted on her tongue. “This is amazing.”

“I know, a friend of Lyanna’s family makes ‘em,” her father told her, “But I’m not supposed to get them anymore. Doctor’s orders.”

Myrcella did not want to bring any attention to that. She could not remember in her whole life her father going to the doctor or listening to anyone about what he could or could not put into his body. Apparently, when you had something to live for you actually wanted to live.

It was no surprise to her that she and her brothers had not been enough. 

She ripped a small piece off of the doughnut and offered it to him, “Doctors don’t know everything.”

He took the piece from her and popped it into his mouth. 

“So any requests? Maybe a nice trout?,” he asked. 

She reached over him to grab her mug of tea and said, “I don’t suppose many sole frequent this lake?”

He chuckled, “Don’t think so, but we’ll slice ‘em so thin you won’t even know the difference… well, knowing you, you will.”

She didn’t remark on the fact that he didn’t know her. Not really. 

“A trout sounds lovely,” she told him instead, though it didn’t. It sounded fleshy and fishy if she were being entirely honest. Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she asked, “How did the tradition start?”

Her father was silent for a long while and then he said, “When I was drying out. Lyanna liked to keep me busy, away from temptation. There are no bars in the middle of the lake.”

“Oh,” she said after a moment, because she had to say something. “I didn’t realise.”

“Clean and sober for six long months. I nearly lost it when she first suggested it to me and Jon, it was the middle of February. We could hardly put the damn bait on the hook without losing a finger.”

“Why did Jon agree to go?,” she couldn’t help but wonder. 

Most of the boys she knew back in King’s Landing weren’t the sort of boys who did anything for anyone, least of all if it betrayed their own comfort. She couldn’t imagine Loras Tyrell holding the door open for Mace, let alone getting on a fishing boat in the height of winter. And Mace was his father, not some drunk his mother had taken up with. 

“Because that’s who Jon Snow is,” her father told her. He was silent for another beat and then said, “Jon has the peculiar habit of nearly always doing the right thing.”

“How nice for him,” she said before she could stop herself. 

“Don’t do that,” her father chided.

“I’m sorry,” she told him honestly. She looked over at him and said, “I’m proud of you. For getting sober, I mean. Really proud.”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it, “Sorry I didn’t do it sooner, kid.”

She nodded and there didn’t seem much more to say after that so they both left it there, as though they knew that the more they spoke the more obvious it would become that they truly didn’t know one another at all. That there were gaps in their knowledge that could turn at any moment into landmines and shatter the tenuous peace they had achieved. 

So they simply sat and watched as the sun settled itself in the sky, stretching as though it too were waking from a long slumber. 

Jon came outside a little while later, and she didn’t need to look at her cell phone to know that it was 6 o’clock on the dot. 

“Mornin’,” he said gruffly. 

“Good morning,” she returned. Then told him pointedly, “I’ve been promised a trout.”

He gave her that smirk that crinkled his eyes and told her, like a sworn vow, “Then a trout you will have.”

She smiled at that and her father stood up, pressing a kiss to her forehead as Jon ruffled Ghost’s head. If he was surprised to see his dog so settled against her he didn’t remark on it, and without another word he and her father walked down the steps towards the dock. 

Myrcella watched as they fell into step beside one another. They were both large men, with broad shoulders and purpose in their gaits. Joffrey would have looked out of place beside them, he was all slender wrists and lanky limbs, and Tommen might have looked like a puppy trotting behind them, still waiting on the growth spurt he’d long been promised. 

She knew though, deep down, that it would not be their golden hair or green eyes or lack of coordination that betrayed them as an outsider. It would be that her father never smiled at them as he did now at Jon, as he went to turn on the boat and Jon started untying the lines from the cleats. It would be the way he never threw his head back and laughed at something Joffrey had said the way he did now as Jon barked something in the early morning air. The way her father would never look proudly at Tommen as he moved out of the way so that he could steer the boat the way he did for Jon. 

She watched as they drove away and as though they both knew that she was they turned around nearly in tandem and each gave her a single wave. She raised her hand in acknowledgement and contented they both turned back around.

Myrcella opened her book and tried to read it but couldn’t seem to pay attention, so she closed it and went back inside, rinsing out her tea cup and placing it in the dishwasher and then ran up the back stairs to her room. 

She felt energy coursing through her body in an unsustainable way, so she pulled on her workout clothes and sneakers and pulled her hair up into a high ponytail as well. She placed some cash in the pocket of her zip-up and put on the watch that synced with her bluetooth headphones. 

She went back down the back stairs and found Lyanna there, in pajama pants and a bathrobe making coffee while Ghost ate his breakfast.

“I’m sorry, I would have fed him but I wasn’t sure…,” she trailed off because she wasn’t sure of a lot of things - where they kept his food, how much they gave him. 

Lyanna waved her off, “Jon should’ve before he left,” she turned to look at her and said, “Off for a run?”

Myrcella nodded, “I think so, I was pretty lazy yesterday.”

Lyanna smiled, “Your Dad said you are always on the go. I’m lucky if I get to yoga four times a week.”

Myrcella smiled, “I know, my ballet master wants me to do yoga but I just find it so…”

“Boring?,” Lyanna supplied. 

Myrcella couldn’t help but laugh and emphatically agree, “Yes! So boring. My cousin Shireen is obsessed with it so I’ll go with her when we see each other but otherwise…”

Lyanna smiled, “I know,” and then looked at her tentatively, “Maybe we could go together sometime. It might not be so terrible with a buddy?”

Myrcella knew about the butterfly effect, the chaos theory. The idea that it was small moments, decisions, that truly made the largest change. She knew that this could be such a moment. That Lyanna’s offer of family, though ill-timed, had been genuine, but who knew better than her that the swift slap of rejection could sting for years?

So she told Lyanna, “That would be great.”

Lyanna said conspiratorially, “And if it’s dreadful we can just go for coffee.”

“Or we could always go after,” Myrcella agreed, then teased, “That sounds like a way better tradition than fishing.”

Lyanna chuckled, “And we will smell way better afterwards.”

Myrcella couldn’t help but giggle and agree. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Jon or her father when they returned and hoped that Lyanna kept lemons somewhere for their hands.

“Is there a path you’d recommend?,” she asked her, “For my run?”

Lyanna thought for a second and then said, “If you go up to the end of the driveway and turn left you can follow the road all the way to town. Just stay on the sidewalk because sometimes cars take the road pretty fast. And would you do me a favor?”

Myrcella nodded, “Sure, do you need something in town?”

Lyanna shook her head and gave her a shy smile, “Just take Ghost with you. He’ll make sure you don’t get lost, and no one bothers you.”

Myrcella couldn’t help but grimace, “Is this a dangerous area?”

She found it a little hard to believe.

Lyanna chuckled, “Not at all - but you’re new around here - and haven’t you guessed the reason Jon didn’t want to take you to Theon’s last night?”

Myrcella blushed and shook her head, “It's not his responsibility to help me make friends…”

Lyanna smiled at her, “I think he thought it might be all too easy for you to make friends,” and then raised her eyebrows at her, “If you know what I mean.”

Myrcella’s blush deepened because she did know what she meant. She knew that her face, her mother’s face, was beautiful. Men had commented on it since she was five years old. Friends of her grandfather stood too close at functions, leaned in to hear her when they were seated next to her at dinner. 

What she didn’t understand was why Jon would care about that when no one else did. 

“Alright Ghost, get those fangs ready,” she said and Lyanna smiled and handed her Ghost’s leash. 

She waved to Lyanna and made for the back door. She and Ghost ran up the driveway and turned left as Lyanna had suggested. 

Ghost moved so he was on the side of the sidewalk closest to the road, and she wrapped his leash once around her wrist, knowing that if he decided to run off she’d have very little luck at stopping him. 

It was quiet up on the road, no cars were whizzing by, but she did see rabbits and squirrels, she was fairly sure she even saw a deer but it sprinted away so quickly that she couldn’t be sure. She looked down at Ghost to see how he was doing and he seemed happy trotting along at her side. 

He was a good running companion, he didn’t weave the way she had seen other dogs do, and he kept pace with her though she suspected he could go much faster. She could go faster as well but she wasn’t in such a hurry to get back to the house and she was looking forward to seeing a bit of the area. 

Most of the homes were set away from the road, but every so often she caught glimpses of yards with peony and hydrangea bushes and tree swings, green painted shutters and discarded tennis balls.

It was no wonder that Lyanna had laughed when she’d asked if the area was dangerous. 

After about two miles or so she started to see signs of a town. Painted wood signs and window boxes, though most places looked closed. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. 

She slowed as she got to a flower shop and poked her head inside and was immediately met with the smell of roses and tulips. An old woman smiled at her and she smiled back and with a little wave she walked back outside. 

Ghost settled in against her side as they continued down the road, seemingly unbothered when she stopped to look in the window of a boutique and then again in the bookshop. 

She smelled coffee brewing and her mouth started watering. The tea had been great to ease herself out of sleep, but the idea of something hot and milky and caffeinated made her mouth water almost as badly as Ghost’s. 

She stopped in front of the sign that said Nan’s Cafe and looked inside. There was a small line already in spite of the hour and she tied Ghost off at a pole where there was a water bowl already for him.

“Will you be a good boy and wait for me?,” she asked him and he nuzzled her cheek. “Should I get you a treat for being such a good boy?,” she asked him and he all but smiled in response. 

She stroked his head and went inside and took her place in line. There was a very tall person standing in front of her so she stood on her tiptoes to try to see over them so that she could read the board. That didn’t work so she stepped to his side so that she could peer around to look. 

She was reading about something called a snickerdoodle latte when she felt eyes on her. 

“Are you trying to cut me?,” a boy asked her. 

He was actually somewhere between a boy and a man. She would guess he was older than her though not by much and if she was being entirely honest with herself he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. He had ocean blue eyes and strong features, red lips so pillowy and lashes so long that it was almost criminal they hadn’t been given to a girl instead. He was broad but lean and had a dusting of freckles across his cheeks and nose. 

“Of course not,” she told him, “I was just trying to see what the options were, I’m new here.”

He grinned at her and she decided undoubtably that he was a boy. Only a boy could have a smile so wide and innocent - even as it hinted at trouble. 

“Well that much is clear, I would have remembered you,” he informed her.

“Smooth,” she all but rolled her eyes. 

He shrugged like he wasn’t at all embarrassed and gestured for her to step ahead of him, “Just please don’t take the last lemon scone, or today might be my last day on earth.”

She chuckled as she stepped in front of him, “Bold of you to place your life in the hands of a stranger - are they that good?”

He nodded, “They are, and if I return without one a very sweet girl will turn terrifying.”

She all but clucked her tongue and said primly, “Well we wouldn’t want to upset your girlfriend,” and then turned her attention back to the board. 

Goosebumps rose on her neck when he said in her ear, “My sister actually. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Warmth spread through her stomach and she bit her lip but only because he couldn’t see. She wasn’t entirely sure what was happening to her, she had never really reacted to someone like this before. It was like her whole body was aware of his, she was sucking in her already slender stomach and wondering if she had worked up too much of a sweat on the run here. 

“Oh,” she said stupidly, “That’s too bad.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said and she was trying to think of what to say when the person in front of her moved away and it was her turn to order. 

She looked at the display case of pastries. Along with the single lemon scone, there were blueberry muffins and vanilla scones, something called a pistachio loaf that looked delicious and a variety of bagels.

A kindly looking woman smiled at her, “What can I get for you, darlin’?”

“May I please have a vanilla cafe au lait, a slice of the pistachio loaf, and… a lemon scone?,” she asked in a sugary sweet tone.

The woman glanced warily behind her and then gave her a tight-lipped, less genuine smile than she just had as she went about pulling together the items. 

She could feel the energy change in the boy behind her and she did her best not to fidget. She pulled the money out of her pocket and handed it to the woman in exchange for her pastries and coffee and turned around. 

The boy looked, for lack of a better word, sad. It made her feel sorry for playing with him. 

She held up one of the bags and said, “For your sister.”

His mouth fell open in shock and turned into a smile halfway through, “Really?”

“Of course, really,” she agreed, “Do you think I’d get in the way of a brother trying to do a nice thing for his sister?”

He grinned further and shook his head. She smiled and placed a few dollars in the tip jar, thanking the woman again who smiled at her with sincerity once again, and then made for the door.

She was nearly to it when she heard him say, “Well wait, I don’t even know who should I tell her to thank?”

She gave him the smile that Trystane called her heartbreak smile, and said, “A jealous sister.”

He opened his mouth as though to say something more but she left before he could. There was nothing quite so satisfying as getting the last word in a conversation with a beautiful boy, and she didn’t want to risk ruining it by finding out that he wasn’t as perfect as he seemed to her now. 

She went outside and untied Ghost and continued down the road. She nibbled on her pistachio loaf, breaking off a small piece for him and sipped her coffee as she looked in all of the specialty shops - the cheese shop and the wine shop, which from the names seemed to be owned by a married couple, an antiques store and one which boasted hand-knit blankets. 

It was too early for any of them to be open so she turned back around and went back to the flower shop. She tied Ghost up outside and went in, and perused the selection. 

She was considering buying a bouquet of peonies when another bouquet caught her eye. She had never quite seen anything like it. They were roses, certainly, but they were the most peculiar shade of blue. 

“Excuse me,” she said to the woman, “What are these?”

The florist smiled at her, “They’re called Winter roses, aren’t they beautiful?”

“Nearly otherworldly,” Myrcella agreed, “Can I buy a dozen, please?”

The woman smiled at her and set about wrapping them. She covered them completely, saying that it was best to do so until they were back in water again, and Myrcella paid and thanked her and walked outside. 

To her surprise the boy was there, petting a very happy Ghost, who wove in and out of his legs.

“Trying to steal my dog after I gifted you a lemon scone? That’s dark,” she informed him.

He looked between her and Ghost and back again and then closed his eyes. She wasn’t entirely sure what that was about but there was a note of regret amongst his teasing when he informed her, “I have it on good authority that this isn’t your dog.”

Ghost looked at her quickly and came back to her side, nuzzling her leg. She gave him a ha expression and said, “Tell that to him.”

The boy chuckled and said, “No point, he’s a stubborn beast. Once he falls in love he’s not like to fall out of it.”

She scratched Ghost’s head, “If only all men were so loyal.”

The boy peered at her, “Haven’t you found them to be?”

She opened her mouth to say no, not really but then she thought of her Trystane, and the way her father had never stopped loving Lyanna, and the way her Uncle Jaime sometimes looked at her mother when he thought no one was paying attention. 

She unwrapped Ghost’s leash and nodded, “Sometimes to their detriment. So you must know Jon, then?”

The boy smirked and said, “You could say that we’re familiar.”

He didn’t seem as though he was going to offer anything further than that, and if there was some drama between him and Jon she had no desire to be in the middle of it.

“I should be getting back,” she told him. 

“As should I,” he agreed. 

She nodded and waved and despised herself for being disappointed that he didn’t ask for her number or try and get her name again. 

She started walking along and noticed that Ghost was walking a little slower than she was. She turned around to look at him, to make sure he hadn’t hurt his paw or didn’t need more water, when she saw that Ghost was looking at the boy who had also stopped walking as she turned around.

“What are you doing?,” she asked.

“Walking home,” he explained innocently. 

She nodded and turned and started walking again, and still Ghost was trailing behind. 

She sighed and turned around, “Well at this rate it will be dinnertime before we get home.”

The boy grinned and said, “Well we wouldn’t want that. I’ve got big dinner plans tonight.”

He seemed like he had a secret, and if she had to guess he had many, but she had secrets of her own and she liked the idea that they didn’t know one another very well, and that the electric currents were running freely between them unmuddled by the reality of who the other was.

He fell into step beside her and they continued walking up the road. She didn’t say anything and neither did he, and Ghost was silent as he walked with a little pep in his step between them. 

The boy halted in front of one of the hidden driveways and said, “Well, this is me.”

She thought it would be rude to peer around the edge, even though she was dying to, so she merely looked at him, “Well, it was… strange meeting you.”

He grinned, and raised a brow, “Well you didn’t, not really.”

“Fair enough,” she allowed and turned to leave, “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

He nodded, “Oh, you can bet on it.”

There was something in the quirk of his mouth. She knew he wouldn’t tell her whatever secret he was holding and she was not the type of girl to try to convince a boy of anything, so she saluted him and she and Ghost continued down the road.

They got back to the house and she let Ghost off his leash and she poured herself a glass of water. She started looking around for a vase, when Lyanna came in. 

“How was your run?,” she asked. 

Myrcella couldn’t help but blush, thinking of the boy’s blue eyes and the way they drank her in, “Beautiful.”

Lyanna looked at her, “Beautiful, is it? That sounds like trouble…”

Myrcella grinned, “Only a little. And I found the most interesting flowers that I had to bring home, maybe we could put them in the dining room, or you could put them in your room if you’d like?”

Lyanna blushed and smiled back, “What a thoughtful gesture, let me get a vase and we’ll see where they fit best.”

Myrcella sought to unwrapping them as Lyanna filled a vase with water. The older woman set the vase down on the counter and Myrcella placed the flowers inside of it, arranging them so that they were all getting enough water. 

Lyanna turned to look and went silent, her mouth falling open ever so slightly. 

“I know, aren’t they beautiful?,” Myrcella all but squealed. “They have the loveliest name too… frozen roses? No… what did she say again, was it -“

“Winter roses,” Lyanna supplied. 

“Exactly, winter roses,” Myrcella nodded. Lyanna hadn’t taken her eyes off of them, and though she loved them too, if they were that enthralling to the woman then Lyanna could have them. She could always get others tomorrow. Maybe she’d even run into the boy again. “Why don’t you keep them? I’m going to go shower.”

She didn’t wait for Lyanna to respond and she ran up the stairs, filled with more energy than she had been when she’d gone for her run. She stripped off her workout clothes and was about to hop into the shower when she caught view of the lake. 

It had warmed up on the walk back and though she imagined it would be cold, it looked too inviting to resist so she changed into her bathing suit and grabbed one of the oversized fluffy towels in her bathroom. She slipped on her flip flops and tromped back down the stairs and outside. 

She made her way down the dock and started to second guess herself. The air felt cooler all of a sudden, but then she thought of the boys eyes that were only a shade darker than the lake before her and her cheeks flushed and she felt warm enough to go on. Before she could think better of it she jumped off the dock. 

It was even colder than she expected but it felt good, vital, so she swam a bit. When she was satisfied she hauled herself out and spread her towel out on the dock, deciding to let the sun dry her off instead. She laid herself down and listened as the water slapped against the dock. 

The lake was waking up and she could hear boat motors starting and children laughing. She grinned like a fool and stretched out, feeling awfully decadent to be lazing about. 

She fell asleep at one point and only woke when her father and Jon returned. They chuckled at her and her pink nose and she rolled her eyes and let them tease. 

They informed her that they’d had a great haul and that the Starks would be eating well that evening. 

“The Starks?,” Myrcella asked. 

Jon nodded, “My aunt and uncle and cousins, we’re going there for dinner. I’m going to drop the fish off later and we’ll have it for dinner.”

Robb Stark, it made sense now that her father would guess Jon was with him. They were cousins. She must have been delirious yesterday not to realise it. 

They all went there separate ways. She went to one of the upstairs porches and read for the majority of the day, stopping only to grab herself a piece of fruit and jump in the lake at the height of the day. 

At five o’clock she motivated herself to get ready for dinner, and chose a light blue sundress and a cream cashmere cardigan, fastening the gold knot studs that her Uncle Jaime had given her on her last birthday into her ears. 

She applied a tinted chapstick and a bit of cream blush to her cheeks, pulling a mascara wand once through each set of lashes. She blinked and a bit smudged underneath her eye. 

She opened her medicine cabinet and looked for a cotton swab but didn’t see one, and had no luck when she looked in each of the drawers. She stepped out of her room and nearly collided with her father. 

“Hey kid,” he grinned at her, “You clean up nice.”

Her father was wearing a blue and white striped shirt and khakis, looking like a man far younger than himself thanks to his new clean and active lifestyle. 

“As do you, but I got in a fight with my mascara wand, do you have any cotton swabs?,” she asked. 

He nodded, “Yeah Lyanna keeps some on the bathroom counter, go help yourself, she’s downstairs.”

She thanked him and went into their bedroom. It was a little larger than hers and filled with little baubles and picture frames. She walked into the bathroom and grabbed a swab out of the canister and nudged the mascara off of her under-eye gently. When she was satisfied that there were no traces of it she stepped on the lever of the trash can and went to drop it in until she saw what was inside of it. 

Her beautiful winter roses. They were crumbled and tossed away. She felt a rage fill her body. That had been a gesture, she was in a new place with new people adjusting to her father’s new family and she had given his girlfriend flowers and she’d just… thrown them away? 

She tossed the swab in and let the trash can clang shut. All at once she regretted this evening before it could even begin and she trudged down the stairs.

Lyanna was there, looking annoyingly beautiful in white pants and a pretty light pink wrap top. 

“Oh you look lovely, Myrcella,” she said with a smile.

Myrcella wondered what lurked behind that smile. What intentions lay behind those doe eyes.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly.

Jon came into the room wearing his usual black and said, “How ‘bout you ride over with me?”

“Sounds great,” she said tonelessly and walked out the backdoor. 

He followed after her and she made for the truck in the driveway that she assumed belonged to him. 

“I thought we’d take the bike actually,” Jon said from behind her. She turned around to see him gesturing to a motorcycle. He raised his eyebrows at her, “Unless you’re afraid of mussing your pretty hair.”

She grinned, “Can I drive?”

He chuckled, “Absolutely not, but you can wear this helmet.”

She rolled her eyes and took the helmet he offered her, placing it on her head and tightening it until the strap rested snugly against her chin. He got on the bike and she stepped on as well, wrapping her arms around his waist. 

“So,” she said, as he eased down the driveway, “What are your cousins like?”

“A pack of wolves,” Jon informed her and her stomach lurched, “But if anyone gives you any trouble you just send them my way.”

“Why?,” she asked. 

“Because I’d make them stop,” he told her as though it was obvious. “Someone has to look out for you, don’t they?”

“First time for everything,” she said, thankful that he couldn’t see her blush. 

She liked the idea of being looked after. He seemed, from her limited knowledge of him, that he’d be good at it. 

He drove them down a little ways and pulled into one of the many hidden driveways as though he had a thousand times before, which was probably accurate. He pulled the bike over to one side of the driveway and helped her off and they left their helmets resting on the seat. 

She followed him to the front door, which he opened without knocking, letting out a howl. Howls came up from every corner of the house - some of them seemingly belonging to actual wolves - and all at once kids of all ages descended upon them. 

There was a little boy with russet hair and an older one with dark brown, and a girl with matching hair that seemed to be about Tommen’s age. 

“Jon!,” they all shouted, like a celebrity was in their midst. The older boy turned to her and said, “You must be Myrcella.”

“I am, it’s nice to meet you all,” she smiled at them.

“Are you really from the South?,” the littlest one asked. 

“Is it super hot down there?,” the girl wondered.

“Leave her alone, kids,” a tender voice chided.

It belonged to a startlingly beautiful girl with a wave of auburn hair and aristocratic features. Her eyes were the most amazing shade of blue, and seemed familiar for some reason.

“I’m Sansa,” the girl smiled, “Don’t let them overwhelm you.”

Myrcella smiled back, “Oh that’s alright.”

Sansa took her by the arm gently and lead her through, “Have you met anyone else? My parents and Uncle Benjen are out back. And Robb is around here somewhere.”

Myrcella nodded, wondering how she’d ever remember everyone’s name  - particularly because not all of the kids had introduced themselves. 

“Not yet,” she told her. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Sansa told her proudly, “You are too, right?” Myrcella nodded, “Oh good well we’ll have to spend loads of time together this summer. Jeyne Poole, that’s my best friend, is away this summer and I’ve been left with no one to entertain me.”

“What am I, chopped liver?,” Jon asked, coming up behind them and wrapping an arm around either one of them. 

Sansa rolled her eyes, “Jon, I love you, but as far as entertainment goes, you’re a rung below an informational video at the DMV.”

Myrcella burst out laughing and Sansa grinned at her with a wink. She liked the Stark girl, this one anyway, immediately and hoped that she wasn’t just being nice when she said that they should hang out. 

They all walked outside and it was like a fairy land with twinkling lights and heaps of food and dogs strewn about the lawn trying to catch fireflies. 

She met Mr. and Mrs. Stark and the man everyone called Uncle Ben. He told her that she should feel free to as well, but assured her as long as she didn’t call him Mr. Stark they would be just fine.

Lyanna and her father came out and greeted everyone and people started to settle around the table. 

“Myrcella, dear,” Catelyn Stark said, “Come sit by me. I’ve heard so many wonderful things from your father and I’ve been dying to meet you.”

Myrcella wasn’t sure that she believed her but she did as she was told, going to Catelyn’s side. She settled into her seat as did everyone else. 

“Oh Robb,” Catelyn said to someone behind her, “Come and sit, it’s so unlike you to be late.”

“What did you do to your hair?,” the brunette girl asked. 

“Nothing,” an annoyed tone said. 

She felt him at once. He had that kind of presence, and she turned just as he settled in his chair. 

“Myrcella, meet my eldest, Robb,” Catelyn introduced her. 

He was just the same, though somehow even more beautiful than her memory of him. He turned to look at her and grinned. 

“Nice to meet you,” he said, then squinted, “Strange, it feels like I know you already.”

The bastard actually winked at her then. 

“Strange indeed,” she agreed. 

Maybe I’ll see you around. 

Oh, you can bet on it. 

She stomped on his foot underneath the table. He grimaced but didn’t yelp the way she hoped that he might. 

He pressed his leg against hers. So she moved hers away, though she missed the heat immediately.

He turned to her and grinned, a small, private, weak knees kind of grin, and all at once Myrcella thought that maybe trouble wasn’t so bad after all. 

Chapter Text

“Chug!,” the boy shouted.

“No,” she scoffed. 

Jon chuckled at her side. She was sitting on a counter next to Sansa at some other boy’s house, holding a red cup full of something Sansa had called lover’s lemonade. She was pretty sure there was lemonade in it, she was absolutely sure that there was vodka in it, and it nearly crackled on her tongue, but Sansa had taken her by the hand, right past the keg and said We don’t drink that. 

It was the first time since she’d arrived - only a day ago, though it felt like longer - that she well and truly felt like part of a we. It was heady, she suddenly understood why other girls succumbed to peer pressure. Acceptance, belonging, they were like a drug, and in a world where you felt entirely on the outside you would do almost anything to get your next fix. 

But Myrcella Baratheon wasn’t other girls and she certainly wasn’t about to chug her drink to impress some drunk boy. 

“Leave her alone Theon,” Sansa chided, as though she were very used to doing so.

Theon gave Sansa a cocky grin, “Jealous?”

“You wish,” Sansa scoffed, in such a way that made Myrcella think she just might be. 

Theon grinned, mumbling something like Yeah, I really do and continued drinking his beer. It was his second since she’d gotten up on the counter, but it wasn’t his second of the night. If she had to guess it was his fifth.

Unfortunately, she had too much experience with guessing these things that she was never wrong. 

She placed her drink down on the counter and turned towards Sansa. The Stark girl had a pink flush on her dewy cheeks and a perpetual grin on her lips. It had been Sansa who insisted they come, telling Jon and Robb that if they didn’t feel like bringing them along she was sure that Harry wouldn’t mind. That had convinced Jon and Robb very quickly to pile into Robb’s truck and escort them over. 

When she met Harry she understood why. He was like some of the boys that hung around Trystane - tall, floppy hair, a generic sort of handsomeness and a perpetual weed-induced grin. His glazed eyes had focused as soon as he saw Sansa though, in a way that made both Jon and Robb puff out their chests just a little. It was sweet, but also just a little archaic, and Sansa had earned her esteem by ignoring all of them and leading her over to sweet Sam Tarly instead to introduce her. 

“I think I’ll get some air,” she informed her new friend.

Sansa grinned at her, “Theon does have a way of sucking it all out of a room.”

Myrcella giggled and hopped off the counter. She turned to grab her drink and saw that Jon was holding it. 

She raised her brow at him and he leaned in and said over the music, “You shouldn’t leave this unattended.”

“I just turned around,” she pointed out. He fixed her with a look as though to say and how long do you think it’d take for someone to pop something in your drink? so she grinned at him and took the drink from his hand stood on her tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek, “You’re a good man, Jon Snow.”

If she wasn’t mistaken he was blushing just a little and she turned and walked away, through the party. It was more or less the same as the ones down south - pretty people congregated with other pretty people, shots were being taken as were selfies. People were dressed more casually and there wasn’t as much cocaine, but a summer party was a summer party. 

She waded through the crowd until she could get out to the back deck. The house was also right on the lake so she walked down the stairs and through the backyard to the dock. It was empty, she was pleased to see, so she walked the length of it before she sat down. She took a sip of her drink and then dumped the rest of it in the lake. It was too sugary for her taste and she wasn’t much of a drinker anyway. 

She looked up and was struck by how many stars she could see. You couldn’t see any in the city but they glittered now like sequins in the sky. She lay back and looked up and wonder what kind of person she might be if she saw these every day. 

How could you think anything in your life was all that important when these existed millions of years before you and would continue on long after you were gone? 

She didn’t know any constellations but she started finding patterns in the sky - lions and wolves and dragons clashing on a field of roses. 

“I’ll give you ten dollars if you can point out the big dipper,” an already familiar voice offered. 

She felt goosebumps rise on her arms underneath her sweater. 

“It’ll cost you more than that to earn my forgiveness,” she told him.

He sat down next to her, and though he didn’t touch her, she felt warmer already. It was as though he was a space heater, or more accurately, a star - a great ball of fire that could warm an entire planet. 

Or destroy it, at his prerogative. 

“I’d like to apologise,” he told her.

“Go for it,” she offered, as though it didn’t matter to her either way. 

“The thing is though, I’m not sorry,” he informed her. 

“Your form needs work.”

He chuckled and she hated the way it sent warm caramel through her veins. He shouldn’t affect her like this. No one should. 

“The thing is,” he sighed after a moment, as though he’d been considering how to offer this next bit of information, “I liked the way you were looking at me.”

She was thankful it was dark out because she blushed a deep crimson. It was unlike her to be so obvious, but then again, she had never really felt like this before. She hated that it showed. 

“You know, I’ve just… I haven’t felt… that before and it seemed like you felt it too and it’s… addicting. And I knew once you knew who I was you’d stop looking at me that way and I just… I wanted it for a little while longer,” he told her.

He was right. Who he was complicated everything. Muddled that perfect image of him that she’d tried to hold onto. 

It was likely that in a year’s time Lyanna would be her stepmother and Jon her stepbrother. That would make Robb her step-cousin, if such a thing existed, but more than that it would mean that in some way, shape, or form their lives would always be interconnected now. 

This thing she, they, felt couldn’t last. It was too intense, too urgent, to be permanent. They were young and feeling the things teenagers felt. It was all hormones.

Then why does it feel like it isn’t?

Whatever it was would end but likely her father’s relationship wouldn’t. 

“Thank you,” she said finally. 

“For what?,” he asked. 

“Letting me feel it a little while longer,” she explained, looking up at him. 

He looked down at her, his eyes wandering over her face. She wasn’t sure she had ever really been looked at. All the men who leered, all the boys who tried to take her out on dates, even Trystane. None of them had ever looked at her the way he was now. 

“Why am I sad?,” he asked her, an incredulous grin on her face.

“Because you lost something perfect.”

He chuckled, “Your humility is inspiring.”

She smiled, “Not me. The potential. It was so short lived that it will always be perfect. Maybe that’s better.”

“Maybe,” he murmured.

She tugged on his short sleeve and he took the hint and laid down next to her, looking up as well. They lay like that for some time, not speaking, just looking up at the sky. She thought of all the lovers across time that had looked up at the same stars, wondering if their beloved was doing the same. 

“So where is the big dipper?,” she asked. 

“I have no idea, why do you think I offered you ten dollars to show it to me?,” he returned.

The laugh that escaped her lips felt like her first real one in a long while. Once she started she couldn’t really stop and soon it beckoned Robb’s laughter as well. They clutched their bellies like the children they still were, laughing for the pure joy of it. 

A simple, innocent kind of joy that couldn’t harm anyone. 

It was still there, that urgency, that immensity of feeling, but the laughter disguised it a little bit, tempered it, kept it at bay, so that they didn’t have to lose it all at once. 

They could be one another’s great perhaps, which was romantic in a disappointing kind of way. 

Eventually their laughter died down but neither of them rose to return to the party. They just kept looking at the stars, enjoying the quiet that only ever exists at a very loud party. 

And even though nothing could come of it, when the edge of his hand found hers, she didn’t dare move an inch. 

Chapter Text

“Now breathe out, good and breathe in,” the instructor directed, “Good, that’s it, good.”

“Someone should tell her that breathing isn’t an accomplishment,” Arya whispered in her ear. 

“Shush!,” Sansa hissed at Arya. 

“Girls,” Catelyn chided softly. 

Both Stark girls focused once again on their breathing. 

She had learned after only a week here that Catelyn was the sort of mother that could stop her child from crying by brushing their hair back from their face in just the right way, the sort of mother who could signal her eldest into action by a mere glance, restore order in a matter of moments. She could even stop her two daughters from bickering on a Saturday morning before they’d had their coffee. 

They were all in an outdoor yoga class that took place in a park overlooking the lake. There were about forty people in the class all together but her group of five had to be shushed more than once over the course of it. 

Lyanna had brought up the yoga class the day before in front of Catelyn and Sansa. Myrcella suspected that they had offered to come less out of interest in the class and more out of interest in her - all of the Starks seemed to have a nearly peculiar fascination with her - but Arya was here for Lyanna. Arya adored her Aunt Lyanna - a feeling that was absolutely reciprocated. The pair of them looked enough alike that Arya could belong to Lyanna, and seeing the way she gravitated towards her aunt, Myrcella wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that she’d prefer to. She was also the Stark sibling closest to Jon, apart from maybe Robb, but because the boys were so close in age (only six months and one grade apart) that was perhaps to be expected.

The dynamics of the Starks were an unravelling mystery to her. Catelyn had originally been meant to marry the eldest Stark, Brandon, before he met an untimely death in a manner that no one had offered to explain and she was not about to ask. She loved Ned wildly though, who had become the unrivalled patriarch of the brood - Benjen, who would be the black sheep of the family if he weren’t so beloved did not seem to have any interest in challenging him for the role. Their children were, as Jon had originally noted, a pack of wolves, prone to tussles amongst themselves but vicious to ill-willed outsiders. Jon was a de-facto part of the pack - with the kids falling in line at his word nearly as quickly as they did for Robb’s. 

Sansa was the lady of the bunch - as she’d so aptly named her dog - and it was clear that she was her mother’s favourite. So perhaps it was not so strange that Arya gravitated towards Lyanna, who shared something deep with her that had yet to make itself known to Myrcella. 

The Starks held a nearly peculiar fascination for her too. 

They always had. She had known long before her parents’ divorce about Lyanna. Her father used to whisper her name when he passed out, and after a time she became curious enough to ask. It was the only time her mother had ever slapped her, and she had never asked again. 

But over the years she had pieced a bit of it together. Robert had been best friends with Ned, and as so often happens when a boy’s best friend has a beautiful little sister, Robert had fallen in love with Lyanna. And Lyanna had fallen in love with him. Except maybe she hadn’t. Or she hadn’t loved him enough. Either way he had lost her, and then himself.

A move to the south and a wealthy bride hadn’t rid him of the memory of his northern beauty, and they all suffered for it. 

The interesting thing was that while all of the Stark children seemed to like her father, and as warm as Catelyn was to him, he and Ned never seemed to spend time together. Ned was not a man of many words it seemed, but there was something more to it. 

Something deeper, more precise.

“Oh Myrcella dear, do you mind helping me with something?,” Ned asked as she came inside to grab a bottle of water. 

“Of course not, Mr. Stark,” she said and hurried over. 

“It’s Ned, first of all,” he told her gently, “And do you mind just holding down the side of this paper? This breeze is pleasant but it’s also not terribly helpful!”

She giggled and held down the corner he requested. She’d learned the day before that he was an architect and he was working on plans to restore an old sept as part of his pro-bono work for the historical society. 

“This looks beautiful,” she told him honestly, “Have you commissioned someone for the stained glass?”

He shook his head as he traced another line, “Not yet. It’s on the board’s mind though. All designs’ll need approval. The joys of bureaucracy.”

She smiled, “I met someone in Volantis who still uses the old techniques. I can send you their website if you’d like to look over it and can make an introduction.”

He looked up at her, “That’d be terrific. Think they’ll travel here to do it?”

She nodded and then scrunched her nose, “But maybe not in the winter.”

His eyes crinkled and he chuckled, “That’s fair.” He looked back down to continue tracing his line but his eyes caught on her arm and he grimaced, “That’s an awfully big scar.”

She looked down and blushed. She’d had it for so long that sometimes she forgot about it. Sometimes. 

“Oh, I broke it when I was younger, I had to have surgery because they were afraid it would affect its growth.”

“How’d it happen?,” he asked. 

She didn’t feel the pain. 

You couldn’t feel pain after the fact she’d been told. Even if it felt like you could.

“An accident,” she told him. 

That’s what they told her to say. She looked him in the eyes though and she knew that he didn’t believe her. She practiced an old trick, she wouldn’t be the one to look away first. Liars never looked you in the face. 

“How old were you?,” he asked softly. 

“Eight,” she answered in a detached tone as though he’d asked her for the time. 

Ned shook his head.

She had spent time with all of them, each of them, even little Rickon. They were varied and nuanced and individuals, but they were truly a pack as well. 

And if there was one thing she had learned about the Starks, it was this - they hated bullies. 

***

“She’s a hack,” Arya declared.

“Arya she is a small town instructor… she isn’t making grand claims about revolutionising yoga as we know it,” Catelyn pointed out.

“Seriously Arya,” Sansa scoffed, “Why do you hate her so much?”

Arya flicked a piece of her chocolate chip muffin back onto the plate, refusing to look at all of them. Myrcella sipped her chai latte as the rest of them waited with bated breath. She knew what was coming though, she’d been retying her sneakers when the instructor came to speak with her. 

“She told me she could help me with my anger issues,” Arya said, the last two words in a nasally voice that was a pretty good impersonation of the instructor. “Which is ridiculous…”

“Right,” Sansa started and went on, “Because you’ll definitely need an exorcism for that,” at the same time that Arya continued on, “Because I don’t have anger issues.”

Without a hint of self-restraint, or self awareness for that matter, Arya chucked a piece of her muffin at Sansa’s face. 

“Arya!,” Sansa admonished.

“Girls!,” Catelyn admonished. 

Myrcella bit her lip to keep from laughing. Both Sansa and Arya looked shamefaced, the former’s made all the funnier by the streak of chocolate on her cheek. 

“I’m sorry Myrcella,” Catelyn went on. Then said pointedly, “This is not how I raised them.”

Myrcella waved her off. Like all of the Stark dynamics, the relationship between the Stark girls intrigued her. They could be absolutely horrid to one another one minute and the next they’d be nearly peeing in their pants they were laughing so hard about something only the two of them would understand. Myrcella had often wondered what it would be like to have a sister. Someone to tell all of her secrets to. Someone to depend on. 

That would be worth a few pieces of muffin to the face. 

Either way, antics or no, she was grateful they were here. Things had been going fine. She woke in the mornings and went for a long run with Ghost, followed by a swim. She read about a book a day, the house and garden were littered with different nooks to curl up in, and in the evenings she had started to help Lyanna with dinner. They didn’t talk very much, just went about their work quietly, music playing on the radio and Lyanna only pausing to explain a next step to her every so often. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for her not to have said more than Has Ghost been fed yet and How much basil should I cut until dinner time. At dinner she would listen mostly, only answering questions when asked, trying not to disturb the easy conversation that flowed between Lyanna and her father, occasionally encompassing Jon and herself. After dinner Jon would tug her arm and say something like bonfire in the woods, go put on something warm and they would be off. 

But the idea of going to yoga and coffee with Lyanna on her own had been nagging at her all week. She had tried to think of conversation topics that didn’t include why did you throw my flowers away and what happened all those years ago?

So having the Stark girls and their mother here as buffers had been a welcome development. 

Everyone finished up their tea and coffee and started making plans for the day. They’d all be together once again for a dinner at the Starks’ tomorrow evening and Lyanna was busy asking Catelyn what she could bring. 

Sansa tugged on the sleeve of her zip-up and whispered, “Huge party tonight, like huge.”

Myrcella grinned. Sansa loved a party.

“Dress code?,” Myrcella whispered back, as though Lyanna and Catelyn didn’t know the exact addresses they all disappeared to in the evenings. 

“Homicidal,” Sansa grinned wickedly and then added the coup-de-grace, “It’s a college party.” 

Myrcella wiggled in excitement as did Sansa. She had enjoyed the parties she’d gone to since arriving, enjoyed that they happened every night - giving her something to do, less time to think - but she had come to realise that it was the same people every night.

“Come over to get ready,” Myrcella ordered, adding, “Robb will never let you out of the house in something truly killer.”

Sansa nodded at the truth of that and whispered, “I’ll bring the champagne.”

They parted with promises of borrowed clothes and smoky eyes and while Lyanna got a ride with Catelyn and the girls, Myrcella grabbed the bike she’d borrowed from her. It had a basket in front, perfect for her mission, and she road through the quiet streets until she got to the corner of Last Hearth Avenue and Wintertown Road. 

It was love at first sight. Something she’d never experienced before. 

She got off the bike, unable to tear her gaze away, and walked right by the little sign that said Wintertown Library and up the steps. Within moments of arriving, she determined that it was her favourite building in the north. Not only because it housed literary treasures - and days of entertainment - but because of its beauty. 

She walked up the walkway and opened the big heavy oak door. Like the other historic buildings in town it had been built in the middle ages, it was all grey stone and pointed arches.

She smiled at the librarian who gave her a curious glance in return. She was used to curious glances by now, even after only being in the north for a week. It had become very obvious that the community had been the community for generations, that everyone knew one another, and even the group of families that only summered here rather than living in the North year round were well known. 

People had heard of her. Her father had been a staple in the North growing up, a constant guest of the Starks, and his return had been met with a mixture of confusion and relief from all except the bachelors who had been hoping for their chance with Lyanna. Rumors had spread that Robert Baratheon’s daughter had come North. That she was very little like him either in appearance or demeanour. That she was fond of her soon to be stepbrother’s husky and the oldest Stark girl. That she always tipped generously and never drank caffeine after noon. It was rumoured that her mother was quite awful and she’d left a trail of brokenhearted boys from Dorne to Wintertown. Depending on who you asked she was a socialite, a snob, a slut, or simply profoundly sad. Of Myrcella Baratheon, the people of Wintertown were convinced entirely of only two things - that she was an undisputed beauty, and that one day, she just might be the ruin of them all. 

So it was not entirely surprising to her that the librarian continued typing away on her computer without offering a smile in return. She was used to it. With her looks and family name she had long been treated with both reverence and reservedness from people had no cause to give her either. 

She walked towards the large stacks, feeling content in the way that she only ever did in a library. A sign saying Local History caught her eye and she headed towards it. She was more fond of fiction than non, but she had been so captivated with the local architecture that it made her curious about the people who had built it, lived in it, prayed in it. She had learned about the Rebel Kings of the North in Early Modern Westerosi History last year, and remembered being intrigued by the stories of sons waging wars to rescue imprisoned fathers and sisters leading armies when all their brothers had perished. 

She had read a historical novel about the War of the Five Kings on her last vacation, but it seemed as though all the truly wild things had happened before that. That the members of that war were nothing but puppets on a string, dancing the steps that had been predetermined for them a generation earlier. 

She went into the stacks and pulled out a large tome titled A Dance of Dragons and read the first few sentences. It was dry, so she placed it back and continued down the row. She came across another The Prince that was Promised: Prophecy and its Impact on the People of Westeros. 

She opened the first page and smiled at the author’s opening sentence. She closed the book and tucked it under her arm, continuing on. She pulled another off the shelf and her jadeite eye caught on a blue one. 

“Oh!,” she exclaimed quietly. 

It disappeared as quickly as she’d seen it, and she shook her head, wondering if she had imagined him. She hadn’t stopped thinking about Robb since the moment she met him. She could already tell the difference between his polite laugh and his real one. She knew that Jeyne Westerling was still half in love with him and that another dozen or so girls planned on marrying him one of these days. She knew that he was closest with Sansa and that Bran wanted to be just like him. She knew that his mother called him baby and and his father called son when he was proud and boy when he was cross. She knew that he didn’t look at anyone else the way he looked at her and she could feel it on her skin long afterwards. 

“Hello Miss Baratheon,” a teasing voice mock-whispered. 

“Stark,” she said primly. 

“What’s this?,” he asked her, taking her book out of her hands. He smiled, “You’ll like it.”

She took the book back and started walking, knowing that he’d follow, “Bold of you to think that you know what I’ll like.”

She could feel his grin though she didn’t see it, and he took the book from her hands once again, tucking it under his arm. She glanced at him and he made an obsequious gesture so she kept walking. She’d walk around this library all day long if he’d follow close behind.

“Bold of you to bring me here,” he told her. 

She scoffed, “I didn’t bring you to the library.”

He grinned, “I meant here.”

She was about to ask what he meant when her eye caught on a cover of a buff shirtless man with long hair clutching a woman in a corset. They were in the Romance section.

“Are you blushing?,” he teased, “The unflappable Myrcella Baratheon…”

She shoved the book against his chest, letting go of it and he caught it easily. She stomped ahead and he followed. 

“So are you stalking me?,” she asked offhandedly.

He chuckled, “I was here before you.” She bit her lip and turned around. It was clear by the look on his face that he’d heard himself say it. “I was going to say hello.”

She raised a brow and shrugged and turned on her heel and kept walking. “What brings you to the library?”

“Summer reading,” he explained. “Never make the mistake of lending your book to Theon.”

It seemed strange to her that Robb Stark had to do summer reading. To her, it was like he existed out of time. She understood logically that he was very much a part of the world, that he had friends and lacrosse practice and a loyal dog named Grey Wind. But as much as he excelled in this world he seemed ripped from another one, she could see him on horseback leading armies more than she could imagine him in gym class. 

“Good advice,” she allowed then added, “Though I’m wary of all things Theon.”

He chuckled, “Smartypants.”

“So what’s the book?,” she wondered.

“Aemon’s Travels,” he told her and a burgundy leather-bound book flashed before her eyes.

It was nestled snugly on her bookshelf. 

“What if I told you that I knew where you could find a copy?,” she asked. 

“Hmmm,” he mused, tapping his finger against his lips, drawing attention to them in a way he needn’t have, she could trace them in her sleep. He grinned, “Well I’d have to buy you an ice cream cone.”

She tried not to smile but she couldn’t really help it, “Two scoops?”

“And sprinkles on top,” he promised.

They made their way back to the front desk. The librarian who had looked at her so warily smiled sweetly at Robb, asking him about his family. He ate the attention up with a soup ladle as she set up her account and was humming to himself as they left the library.

“Are you always this happy?,” she wondered.

He looked at her and scrunched his nose, “Is that a problem? You know given your… get-up one would expect you to be sunnier of disposition.”

“My get-up?,” she asked, hands on her hips. 

He gestured vaguely towards her body and she looked down. She was wearing pink yoga pants, a cream and pink polka dot sports bra and matching cream zip up, and if she was not mistaken her hair-tie had little pom-poms on it. 

She shrugged, “I like pretty things.”

He grinned, “Well… so do I.”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed the bike and got on it. They went towards the ice cream shop in silence, him on foot, she on the bike. She liked the fact that he didn’t need to talk. She liked that he could talk, that he could carry a conversation, lead one. That he could tease and spar, but that he didn’t need to fill up the silences with nonsense. 

The man at the ice cream shop greeted Robb like he was his own son, and when Robb introduced her the old man smiled kindly at her. She had always had better luck with men. She ordered a scoop of black raspberry in a cone and he got a hot fudge sundae. They took their ice creams outside and Robb grabbed the bike and lead her back towards where she’d done yoga and plopped himself down on the grass. 

She sat as well and licked her ice cream. It was delicious, flavourful and creamy. She’d have to run three miles tomorrow just to work it off but it would be worth it.

“So what are you doing tonight?,” Robb asked as he scraped the bottom of his bowl for hot fudge. He had demolished it in record time. 

“Hanging out with Sansa,” she answered vaguely, pretending to be engrossed with her ice cream. 

“Doing what?,” he went on. She shrugged nonchalantly. Expertly. It would have worked on anyone else. But Robb said, “Myrcella.”

She sighed, “We’re going to a party.”

“What party?,” he asked, “There’s no party tonight, everyone’s parents are home.”

“I don’t know,” she told him and he nudged her shin with his foot. She looked at him innocently, “I’m new here, and Sansa didn’t tell me the name.”

He squinted and shook his head, as though trying to do a trigonometry problem in his head, “Everyone’s parents are here for that traveling dinner thing, the whole high school-no. You’re not going to that college party.”

“I wasn’t aware that you were in charge of the guest list,” she goaded.

“You guys are sixteen, and that party isn’t even college freshman it’s all older guys,” he explained.

She smacked her hands against her cheeks and made a mock-scream face, “The horror! College boys as far as the eye can see - my word.”

He scowled at her but then his face broke and he chuckled. He shook his head and sighed, “I don’t like it.”

“I can take care of myself,” she told him, more gently than she might have said it to someone else. 

“Yeah well maybe that’s not what I’m worried about,” he told her, looking her dead in the eye. 

Don’t. I’ll give in.

“Robb,” she demurred.

He nodded, “I know.”

They sat for a little while longer. She ate what she wanted of her ice cream and then offered it to him. For a moment it seemed like he was going to reject it but he took it from her, his fingers sliding softly over hers in a way that drove a shiver down her spine. She remembered the day she’d arrived, thinking of those Regency novels where every touch meant something. 

He looked at her as though he’d felt it too and raised her ice cream to his lips. She looked away and started walking back towards her bike and he followed wordlessly. 

They walked through the little town, by the wine shop and the cheese shop, by the coffee shop and the flower shop. 

“Want to get another bouquet?,” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” she said before she could stop herself. 

“Woahhh,” he said gently, as though he were trying to calm down a horse, “Just a suggestion.”

She grimaced, “Sorry.”

They continued walking and he asked after about a quarter of a mile, “Want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?,” she asked. 

“Why the idea of getting a bouquet of flowers is so controversial,” he said. 

Girls often like to believe that the boy they like notices everything about them. They practice the flip of their hair, they smile just so, confident that the boy, the right boy, is going to notice. That it won’t be their eyes or lips the boy loves but the little freckle behind their right knee, and the way only their left thumbnail is ever bitten. All most girls want is a boy to pay attention. 

Myrcella was beginning to realise that it could be horribly inconvenient when they did. 

“No,” she told him. 

“No it’s not controversial or no you don’t want to talk about it?,” he asked.

“No I don’t want to talk about it with you!,” she answered in annoyance. 

“What’s so wrong with me?,” he wondered.

She sighed, “Nothing, absolutely nothing, which in itself is a little annoying,” she said in a more teasing tone until he grinned, “But I can’t talk to you about it.”

He tugged on her sleeve until she stopped walking. She shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up at him. She didn’t want to, but there were certain things that someone wanted to look you in the eye about.

“There is nothing in the world that that’s true about,” he told her.

It was like chained canons blowing through her first line of defences. Perhaps she had it right when she thought he was born to lead armies. 

She turned and started walking again, he fell into step next to her. 

“I gave them to your Aunt Lyanna,” she started, “The flowers I mean.”

“That was kind of you,” he said gently. 

“I thought so,” she told him honestly. “But then I found them in her trash can.”

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Robb shook his head and she felt stubborn tears start to flood her eyes. It had been upsetting, seeing them there in the trash, but hearing the devotion in his voice speaking about Lyanna hurt even more. He looked at her and she grabbed her sunglasses out of the basket of the bicycle and put them on. “I believe you. I’m just… that’s odd. And… it must have been terrible to see them there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. Because in the grand scheme of things it didn’t. 

“Don’t do that,” he chided. “I see… the wall you have up with them. Your Dad and Lyanna. And you were trying to overcome it and you got smacked in the face for it and that fucking sucks.”

“It did suck a little,” she allowed.

He wrapped his arm around her, “That’s the spirit, Baratheon.”

She couldn’t help but lean into him just a little, and his knuckle traced up and down her arm gently. He stopped walking all of a sudden, and he still had his arm around her so she all but fell back from the shift in momentum. 

“Robb?,” she asked as he steadied her. 

“What kind of flowers were they?,” he questioned. She furrowed her brow, why could that possibly matter? He went on, “Were they blue?”

She nodded, “Winter roses.”

“Aha!,” he exclaimed with a grin, “My family has a weird thing about those.”

“Your family has a weird thing about a particular kind of roses?,” she asked in disbelief as they continued walking. 

He hadn’t taken his arm off of her shoulders and she made sure to stay in step with him so that he wouldn’t notice. 

He nodded excitedly, “Yeah, Sansa found some one time and made this crown when we were little, and my Dad flipped. I’ve never seen him like that. And a bush of them started growing on Benjen’s property and he took this big nasty set of shears to them…”

“What did they say when you asked about it?,” she wondered. 

“Huh,” Robb mused, “I guess I never thought to ask.” She looked up at him incredulously and he shrugged with a sheepish grin, “I don’t know… but the point is - it had nothing to do with you at all! Isn’t that great?”

She had to admit that it did make her feel a little bit better to know that the flowers incident might have had less to do with her and more to do with the actual flowers. As much as she had tried not to care, it had hurt her feelings to see them in there - and had made her suspicious of Lyanna, who was so warm to her. Who was trying so hard, who - 

She groaned and buried her face in his chest. 

“What is it?,” he asked, stroking her hair. 

“I’vebeenawful,” she mumbled against his shirt that smelled of laundry detergent and him. 

“What was that?,” he asked. 

She looked up at him, “I’ve been awful, to her.”

His eyes crinkled though he didn’t smile, “I’ve seen you with her. If that’s your definition of awful I suggest we go back to the library so that you can check out a dictionary.”

“You said yourself I had walls up,” she reminded him. 

“Yeah and I’ll bet there is a pretty good reason for that,” he told her. She searched for signs that he was just telling her what she wanted to hear, but it really didn’t seem like that. The truth was that he saw her, plain and simple, so maybe he understood her reasons even if she wasn’t entirely sure of them herself. “And I get it. I mean I saw your Dad when he first came here… it um… but you don’t have to with her, I promise you that. She’s the absolute best, warmest person I know.”

“See?,” she asked, she kept her tone soft to make it clear she wasn’t angry, but she told him, “This is why I didn’t want to talk to you about it - you don’t have the ability to be objective here.”

He looked down at her in that way of his and tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. She fought the urge to shiver and she knew that if he tried to kiss her in this exact moment she would have neither the strength nor the desire to say no. 

But he didn’t kiss her, he just smiled at her sadly and wondered softly, “Well, Myrcella, have you ever considered that you don’t either?”

***

“How about this?,” Myrcella asked, holding up a sea-foam green silk dress. 

She and Sansa were both clad in underwear and bras, mugs full of champagne next to them as they sat on her bed and reviewed options.

Sansa placed her mug down on the bedside table and gestured for her to give her the garment. She did and Sansa examined it, the way she might look at a painting, admiring it for the execution of detail more than the whole. 

“Stunning,” Sansa confirmed then scrunched her nose, “But more appropriate for dinner with the family.”

Myrcella took the dress from her and tossed it dramatically, the wisp of fabric falling to the floor. Sansa let out a giggle and shook her head, calling her a nut as she went to grab her champagne. She continued looking through the pile of clothes and pulled out a wisp of a pink silk tank top. 

Sansa smiled, “Now that has promise. Do you have a slightly baggy jean and a sinfully high heel?”

Myrcella pointed at her, “Get out of my brain!”

To put it simply, she and Sansa had clicked. She had gotten the feeling that Sansa would have been nice to her regardless. That a certain amount of motherly concern on Catelyn’s part and general good breeding would have made it impossible for Sansa to be unkind to her. She would have invited her out at night and gotten coffee once a week. Myrcella had never been anyone’s charity case and she had been determined to make that clear, but on their second night out together they had sat on a couch, drinks in hand though neither were really drinking them, and one of them had started talking about something and the other had built onto it and before they knew it the clock had struck midnight and Jon had come to fetch them. 

Sansa still had her girls, a group that had no interest in getting to know Myrcella, who she often spent her days with, but every day when she got off one of their boats or came in from a run she’d text her new southern friend. 

“So,” Sansa said as she stood up off the bed holding a midnight blue romper up against her slim body. “Robb didn’t eat a thing for lunch today.”

Myrcella blushed and looked away getting off the bed and heading towards her closet and looked for the pair of shoes she wanted. 

“Oh,” she said casually, picking out a strappy nude pair, “Is he sick?”

Sansa chuckled, sounding very much like her older brother for a moment, “He is indeed, the ooooldest ailment known to man. He’s heartsick.”

Myrcella turned around, holding up the pair of heels and Sansa nodded. Myrcella chided, “You’re being a troublemaker.”

Sansa chucked the romper she’d been holding and Myrcella dodged it, sticking her tongue out at her and picking up her mug of champagne. 

She took a tentative sip and picked up a dress off her bed. It was a beautiful steel grey that looked far better on her when she was fairer in the winter months. With Sansa’s alabaster skin it would be striking.

“Wear this, and I’ll do your hair,” she ordered. 

Sansa grinned and took the dress, pulling it over her head. It looked gorgeous on her, showing off attributes that she had more generous proportions of than Myrcella. 

Myrcella groaned, “Well, it’s yours now. It will look offensive on me now.”

Sansa laughed and turn around, looking in the mirror, her hands on her hips, “You’re right, they’ll have to pry this dress from my cold, dead, hands.”

“Sit down,” Myrcella ordered and Sansa sat at the vanity. 

Myrcella started by brushing Sansa’s hair. The Stark girl had the most beautiful auburn hair she’d ever seen, full and silky even after she’d been swimming in the lake all day. She slowly started gathering it, piling it on top of her head, and set about fastening it with pins, making sure that a few pieces around her face stayed artfully loose to give the impression that the whole thing had just happened spontaneously. It showed off her swanlike neck and Myrcella dusted highlighter on her collarbone and clavicle bringing it up and swiping her cheeks and nose. She covered her eyelids in it and then grabbed her eyeshadow palette and covered her finger in a slate grey and pressed it gently against the outer corner of Sansa’s eyes. 

“A bit of eyeliner, some mascara and some chapstick,” Myrcella prescribed. 

Sansa smiled and grabbed her make-up bag, a diligent patient. Myrcella went to her closet and grabbed a pair of jeans that were a bit too big on her. She pulled them on and undid her bra and let it fall of her and then grabbed the light pink silk shirt. She pulled it on and looked in the mirror and straightened it, twisting so that she could make sure the string-like strap across the back was laying correctly. Satisfied she pulled on the heels and grabbed her hairbrush off of her vanity, brushing her hair until it shone like sun gold, falling around her face. 

She went to pick up some mascara and Sansa stopped her with a hand on hers, “Don’t ruin it.”

It’s a common occurrence for two teenage girls, even two girls who share an affinity for one another, through no fault of their own, to come to the belief that they would do better if the girl beside them did worse. That there was only so much beauty to be appreciated, as it were. 

To an outsider it might appear that the Stark and Baratheon girls were so confident in their appearances that they did not fear being outshone, but the truth of it was far simpler. The pair shared something much less common and a good deal more important than their beauty - a generosity of spirit. It would never occur to either of them to get ahead by pushing another behind. 

So when Sansa advised Myrcella to leave her face fresh, there were no ulterior motives from the Stark girl, and no suspicion on the side of the Baratheon. 

They finished off the bottle of champagne and brushed their teeth, each of them placing the final touches on their outfit - for Myrcella it was her maternal grandmother’s wristwatch, for Sansa a spritz of a scent she’d created herself - before walking out of Myrcella’s room and down the stairs. 

They walked into the living room where her father and Lyanna were seated on the love seat, a bowl of popcorn resting on their laps. 

“Where are you girls off to?,” her father started. She passed by him and Lyanna to grab her phone from where it had been charging and he must have caught sight of her entirely exposed back because his voice was much less jovial when he asked, “Dressed like that?”

She and Sansa locked eyes, each of them preparing an answer internally that would be somewhere short of the truth without veering into the territory of a lie. 

Before either of them could though, a smug voice said, “We’re heading to a party.”

The voice belonged to Jon Snow who was followed into the living room by Robb Stark.

“No,” Sansa shook her head, voicing the sentiments shouting in Myrcella’s, “You are not coming.”

“I didn’t realise you were in charge of the guest list,” Robb said to his sister, though the wink that followed was addressed to her.

Her father chuckled and Jon smirked and Myrcella pointed at all of them, “CONSPIRATORS! You’re all in this together!”

“Aunt Lyanna,” Sansa pleaded, going over to the loveseat and squishing in next to her aunt. It was a good tactic and Myrcella was prepared to provide back-up if needed. 

Lyanna looked at her niece and then at her and then at her son and nephew and finally Myrcella’s father until she once again set eyes on Sansa. 

“The feminist in me believes that this is archaic and offensive,” Lyanna said, which bolstered Sansa but Myrcella could hear the but coming, “But the part of me that cares about your safety above all else is going to allow it.”

Jon and Robb chest bumped and Sansa got off the love seat in a huff. 

Robb turned to them smugly, “Well come along girls, we wouldn’t want you to be late…”

Jon grinned, “Yes, we wouldn’t want that. It’s such an important party after all.”

Her father chuckled and she narrowed her eyes at him and then turned to Robb and Jon with a serene smile on her face. 

Jon’s grin died first, but Robb’s followed quickly after. 

She held her hand out for Sansa’s, and when her friend clasped hers she tugged her slightly saying, “That’s just fine. If you want to come watch over us, that is just fine with me, you can come and watch every. single. thing. we. do. I do love an audience.” And with that she started heading for the door. Her father looked flabbergasted and she couldn’t help but add, “Smile, Father, you got what you wanted.” She tugged Sansa out of the room before he could respond and she offered behind her, “Come along boys.”

And if she put a little extra strut in her step knowing that Robb Stark was following close behind, who could blame her?

Chapter Text

“I just think you’re really special,” he told Myrcella.

“Is that right?,” she wondered tonelessly.

“Yeah you know I just think it’s so rare to meet someone and have this kind of connection,” he went on and she peered up at him, and he smiled down at her with blue eyes, “You know, Monica?”

She grinned as though he’d said something truly delightful, and looked up at him through lowered lashes. She pressed close to him and his eyes widened and she let her finger trail down his chest, “I know just what you mean. I need to go check in with my friend, wait here for me?”

He nodded dumbly, the way he appeared to her to do most things, and she gave him one last grin and turned on her heel. She sauntered away, turning heads as she did, and went inside having no intention of returning to him. 

When she got inside she was immediately hit with the smell of stale beer and too many sweaty bodies. In truth the party was not worth the effort that she and Sansa had put into getting there, but the pair were determined to make the most of it - delighting in torturing Robb and Jon in the process. 

She’d hardly had a thing to drink - high off purpose, which was far more potent to her than alcohol. 

As she made her way through she felt a large hand on her arm. She glanced up with bedroom eyes - though she didn’t know that that’s what they were called - into his. Her purpose. 

“Yes?,” she asked flirtatiously. 

“Are you ready to go?,” he returned grumpily. 

She grinned, “Not nearly,” then shrugged, “I have a few developments I’d like to see through.”

He let out a harsh chuckle, “You are unbelievable.”

She raised her eyebrows, “Oh I am unbelievable? What did you expect Robb? That you guys would just crash our night and we’d stand dutifully by you? Do you think it’s easy for me to have you here?”

His eyes darkened, “Do you think I want to be here? I don’t want to be here, watching every guy in here drool over you - but pissing me off is not a good enough reason to degrade yourself with one of them. You’re better than that.”

“You think so?,” she asked. 

“Yeah, I think so,” he argued stubbornly. 

She grinned and shook her head, walking by him. A poppy song came on over the speakers and she all but skipped into the kitchen. She swiped a bottle of whiskey off the counter and placed her hand on some guy’s shoulder, using him to support herself as she stepped up on a chair and then stepped onto the kitchen table. 

She raised the bottle over her head and said, “Who wants shots?”

Whoops erupted from all corners of the room and people started lining up. She walked along the length of the table, pouring whiskey into their mouths as she did, like pigs lining up for the slaughter. 

She danced as she went, draining the bottle as more and more people lined up. She was nearly finished with it when she found herself being tugged down and hoisted over someone’s shoulder. 

“Hey!,” she argued.

“Unbelievable,” they groaned. 

Jon Snow. Who else would it be?

“Put me down,” she ordered. 

“No,” he argued, “You’re acting like a baby and babies get carried.”

She waved flirtatiously at a few guys as he carried her outside. In truth she hadn’t been having very much fun so she wasn’t all that disappointed to leave. 

He walked her up the long driveway, not even breathing heavily, to his truck. She saw Sansa leaning heavily against the truck and Robb’s shoulder, his arm around his little sister’s waist. 

“The spooks got you too?,” she asked Sansa. 

“I think they’re onnnnnntous,” Sansa mock-whispered, descending into giggles. 

Unlike Myrcella, Sansa had made use of the punch bowl. 

Jon walked her around to the front seat and set her down inside of it as Robb helped Sansa into the back. She unstrapped her heels, which had begun to pinch, and placed her feet out the window, buckling her seat belt. 

Myrcella saw Robb looking at her in the side mirror, he looked sad. She covered her view of him with her foot. 

Jon came around and turned on the truck without speaking and pulled out of the driveway. 

He pulled onto the highway, as the party was a few towns over from theirs. It had been filled with more of a country bunch.

“Sansa get your foot out of my face!,” Robb complained from the back and Myrcella smiled. 

She loved to watch the eldest Stark siblings interact. They were as thick as thieves, and practically had their own language. They were both tasked with the incredible responsibility of setting an example for their younger siblings, and more often than not they succeeded in that. 

Myrcella had two brothers herself, Tommen and Joffrey. They all spoke the common tongue but never seemed to understand what the other was saying. 

She couldn’t remember when they had stopped trying, in truth, she wasn’t sure that they ever had. 

“I’m not going to tell your Dad,” Jon informed her. 

She glanced at him, “Feel free to.”

Jon smirked, “No, you’d like that too much.”

“Don’t do that,” Myrcella chided. 

“Do what?,” Jon asked, glancing in the rearview before switching lanes. 

“Turn me into a cliche,” she explained, “I’m not looking for his attention.”

He was silent for a moment and then he said quietly, “Nobody travels 3,000 miles to be ignored.”

She laughed harshly, swallowing a lump in her throat. It must have shown in her voice when she said, “This isn’t being ignored by my father.”

“What do you mean?,” Jon and Robb asked at the same time as Sansa asked, “Why do you call your Dad Father? He’s your Dad.”

“Forget it,” Myrcella shook her head, “Let’s just go back.”

Jon glanced in the rearview again and she looked out the window. He exited the highway at Exit 15, which was at least three exits before the one for Wintertown. 

She closed her eyes. There was no one quite as stubborn as Jon Snow.

He pulled into an empty parking lot and shut off the car. 

“Are we getting french fries?,” Sansa asked. 

“No, Sans, go to sleep,” Robb said gently, tugging his sister against him. “Myrcella.”

“It was just an expression,” she lied. 

“Bullshit,” Jon argued.

“How far are we from the house?,” she asked. 

“Ten miles,” Robb said, “You don’t have to worry we won’t say anything.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she argued, then sighed, “Just trying to figure out how long it would take me to walk back.” 

Jon slammed his hand on the steering wheel, “Damn it, Myrcella, what are you so afraid of? I’m going to be your step-brother one of these days - I’m supposed to protect you and how am I supposed to do that if you won’t talk to me?”

“You don’t have to protect me,” she pointed out, “You don’t owe me anything.” 

“That’s what brothers do,” Robb said from the back. 

She laughed, “Is that right? That’s what brothers do, that’s very good to know. I must have missed that memo while my brother was breaking my arm.”

The two boys in the car were, perhaps other than one all the way down in Dorne, the two boys who cared more for her happiness than anyone else in the world. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, they had the unrivalled ability to piss her off. 

And true anger was the only way to pull away at the mask she had created long ago. 

There was more than an enough anger in the car to go around now. Jon and Robb both shifted their positions, leaning towards her. 

“What are you talking about?,” Robb asked through gritted teeth. 

She knew when she was defeated. They had gotten the better of her, which was a rare occurrence, but there was no point in lying now. They wouldn’t be satisfied until they had the whole story. 

She held up her wrist, “You might not have noticed this scar, but your father did.”

“I noticed,” Jon said, then looked at her, “I was afraid to ask though… afraid that maybe…”

“I’d done it to myself?,” she supplied for him because he couldn’t seem to get the words out. He nodded, “No, this was created by a lovely team of doctors in King’s Landing. One evening my mother was out at an event, Save the something or other. Our nanny was supposed to be there, one of them was always there, but they weren’t. I don’t know why. So my father was in charge.” 

She glanced at them and might have smiled in another situation, they were both looking at her like a deer they’d happened upon in the woods. A creature long preyed upon that they wanted to assure would come to no harm at their hand. 

She let out a shaky breath and decided to rip the bandaid off, “I was bored, restless. We’d been stuck inside all day. I was sick of all of my toys, like a spoiled brat. Joffrey had gotten a new train set for his birthday, and he had been like a different kid that whole day. He’d let me and Tommen watch as he set it all up, and we’d shout out destinations of far off lands of where the train was going,” she couldn’t help but smile remembering that day. OLD VALYRIA! THE IRON ISLANDS! They hadn’t cared that you’d need a boat to get to both. She looked up at them and found them both grimacing, so she explained, “Joffrey never wanted to play with us, so it was special. I remember wanting to board a train to Dorne that day. Sunspear, to be exact,” she shook her head, “Joffrey wasn’t in there, and it was so beautiful, really, my grandfather must have spent a fortune. So I went over to it and picked up one of the blue trains. It had this old-timey script on it.” For the life of her she could not remember what the script said, but she could still feel the raised letter on her fingertip and how the graininess of it contrasted with the smooth paint on the train. “Anyway, Joffrey came in and flew into a fury. He wrenched me by the arm and,” she shook her head, she had never talked about this. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t, a dam had broken and if it drowned them along with her then so be it. “He slammed his door on my forearm. You know the funny thing is that my father was always on his case about being weak, but he was strong enough that the bone pierced right through my skin.”

She didn’t feel the pain.

You couldn’t feel pain after the fact she’d been told. Even if it felt like you could.

“I don’t remember screaming, but I must have loudly because the next thing I knew my father stumbled into the room. He saw me and grabbed Joffrey by his collar and smacked him across the face so hard that his nose and lip bled.”

“I’dve done the same,” Robb confessed, “So would my father.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, “But I bet your father wouldn’t have passed out right afterwards.”

“No,” Jon shook his head, she glanced at him and he repeated more firmly, “No.”

She nodded, “He stormed back into his study, angry, and he must have been so drunk that he forgot what he was angry about because he fell asleep. I only knew a few telephone numbers and my mother wasn’t answering. So I waited.”

“For how long?,” Robb asked. 

“Three hours and twenty six minutes,” she recited, then explained her precision, “I had just learned how to tell time.”

“Myrcella,” Jon started.

“So no, Jon,” she interrupted, wiping a stray tear, “This is not what being ignored by my father looks like.”

Neither of them said anything, Jon just turned on the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, back onto the highway. 

They road in silence until Jon pulled off once again, onto the familiar windy road.

“Why did you come here?,” Robb asked finally. 

“Isn’t it obvious?,” she asked, and they shook their heads. She rested her arm on the windowsill and laid her cheek upon it, closing her eyes and yawning, “It’s the one place in the world where I knew I wouldn’t have to see Joffrey.”

***

It was dark when Myrcella opened her eyes. Someone was nudging her awake. 

“It’s just me,” Jon promised quietly.

“Jon?,” she yawned, “Are we home?”

She stretched though and found that she was underneath her covers in her bedroom. He must have carried her in. 

“What time is it?,” she asked. 

“5:45,” he said and she shot up in bed.

“Why on earth are you waking me up then?,” she wondered. 

“It’s Sunday,” he explained, “We’re going fishing.”

“Jon…,” she demurred and he tugged her out of bed. 

“You’ll need closed toed shoes and layers,” he told her, “Downstairs in 15 minutes, Baratheon.”

He had reached the door when she said, “You don’t have to do this.”

He turned to look at her and smiled in that sad way of his, “If you don’t start getting to know him, then he’s always going to be the guy that did that.”

Jon left before she could say anything further, which was just as well because for the first time in her life, Myrcella was speechless. She thought back to last Sunday, when her father had told her that Jon Snow had the peculiar habit of nearly always doing the right thing. She wondered if the man she’d grown up with would have noticed a thing like that. She wondered how many more things he noticed now that he wasn’t bleary eyed all the time. 

Maybe she could be one of them. 

She closed the door behind him and stripped off the silky shirt and jeans she’d been wearing. She pulled on yoga pants and a tank top, pulling a long sleeve shirt over it. She went into her closet and grabbed a big cable knit sweater and a wind breaker and pulled out her sneakers. She pulled on a pair of socks and stepped into her sneakers as she went to brush her teeth and wash her face. 

Once she was ready she ran down the stairs and found Jon and her father in the kitchen. They both turned to smile at her and she managed a smile back.

“Hope you don’t mind that I’m crashing,” she said to her father. 

He shook his head, “On the contrary. I’m gonna show you how to catch those bass you like so much.”

He then crossed his eyes at her to show he was kidding. She’d barely managed to eat enough of her portion to be polite last week. She thought she had been clever about it.

Myrcella had a lot of experience it making it appear that she had eaten more than she had. To her knowledge her father had never noticed before. 

She couldn’t help but laugh, “Sounds like a plan.”

“Coffee?,” Jon asked and she nodded, taking the travel mug from him gratefully. 

They made their way out the back door, leaving a very grumpy Ghost behind. The air had a bite to it, and she pulled on her sweater, tucking her fingers in the sleeves. 

The three of them walked silently onto the dock, and Jon and her father started preparing the boat to leave. She felt a little useless standing there, since they seemed to have their routine down pat, so she hopped on board and turned on the boat. 

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll do that, kid,” her father said. 

She nodded and perched on the seat at the front of the boat, sipping her coffee. A loon was flapping its wings across the lake. Even it was doing something useful. 

Jon and her father made quick work of it and hopped on board, and her father pulled away from the dock. 

He drove slowly along the shore but as he veered off towards the middle of the lake he increased his speed. The wind was whipping and her nose was cold but she had always loved driving fast - especially on water.

All too soon he slowed the boat and then came to a stop. 

“Here good?,” he asked Jon. 

Jon nodded, “Yeah the Umbers had some luck round here yesterday.”

“The gods love to reward a fool,” her father sighed and she chuckled. 

He grinned at her and went into the back of the boat and came back with three fishing poles. Jon dragged forward a heavy bucket. 

“Alright, kid,” her father said, “We’re gonna bait this one for you and then you’re gonna cast your line, alright? Which - well maybe Jon oughta show you rather than us telling you.”

She nodded, watching as Jon pulled the lid off the bucket. He reached down and pulled a tiny fish out and pierced it’s body on the hook. It seemed simple enough to her. Gross, but simple. 

“K El just watch me,” Jon said and she was so focused on following his movements that she hadn’t registered what he’d called her. She watched as he pulled his arm back slightly and threw the hook forward. He then started adjusting it down a little, “See that?”

“I think so,” she said, and looked at her father, “Can I bait my own?”

He pursed his lips and grinned, “Sure, if you want to.”

She took the second fishing rod from him and reached into the bait bucket. She grabbed onto a fish but it hopped out of her hand, so she tried again. She squeezed it gently but firmly and pierced it with the hook swiftly, not wanting to prolong its pain. 

Myrcella turned to go onto the next step and saw both her father and Jon staring at her so she said, “Slippery little things.”

Jon grinned at her father and she stepped up next to him. 

“Kay now pull back, good, and bring it forward,” Jon encouraged her and she followed his instruction, trying to mirror his body movements. “Yep now press that button, that’s gonna let it go down a bit further. Okay that’s about right.”

She smiled up at him giddily and he nudged her with his elbow.

Her father baited his fish and cast his line on the other side of the bow. 

She looked towards them once he had and said, “Now what?”

They shared a look and chuckled, and her father said, “Now we wait.” 

She nodded and grabbed her mug of coffee, and took a sip. She felt a pull on her rod and she sighed in annoyance, putting the coffee down. She pulled her rod back and felt resistance.

“Jon I think there’s something wrong,” she tried not to complain, but she didn’t understand how she could have done something wrong already. She had followed their directions. 

“What’s going on?,” he asked her.

“I think it’s caught on something,” she said, tugging it a little bit. 

“Reel it in!,” they both said.

“What?, she asked.

“REEL IT IN!,” they all but shouted. 

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT A REEL IS!,” she couldn’t help but shout back. 

Jon shook his head and pointed “That’s the reel, now wind it and lift the rod up.”

She started reeling and felt something tugging so she tugged back stubbornly, reeling all the while. 

All at once a fish rose out of the water attached to her line. 

“THAT’S DINNER!,” her father shouted, “Reel ‘er in, kid.”

“I will if you won’t make me eat it,” she teased as she continued reeling. 

It was flopping around angrily, which was fair considering it had gone to get a little breakfast and gotten a hook through the face instead. It was looking right at her like it knew she was to blame. 

“Atta girl!,” her father said from behind her, “Let me do this part for you.”

She handed him her rod happily, standing behind Jon.

“Don’t worry, El, it’s definitely more afraid of you than you are of it,” he teased and she pinched his back, causing him to let out a pained chuckle. 

Her father unhooked the fish, which was still flapping around angrily. It made her feel a little guilty, to kill something that so clearly wanted to live. That would look a giant in the eye and continue to fight. 

“You might not want to watch this part, kid,” her father told her.

Myrcella was fairly certain that he was right, but she followed him anyway. Her father placed the fish down on a flat surface in the stern of the boat and pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt.

“Last chance,” he told her.

“Go on,” she said softly. 

Without further ado her father sliced the fish behind the eyes, dropping his head back into the water. He lifted the flat surface and she saw that it was a cooler filled with ice and he placed what remained of the fish inside of it. 

She went back to the bow and Jon gave her a thumbs up, so she reached back in the bait pail and hooked another minnow easily. 

She repeated the same actions that she’d done a few moments prior and let the hook sink deeper. Jon offered her the mug of coffee back which she took gratefully. She was just raising it to her lips when she felt a little tug. 

It was probably just seaweed, she thought to herself and she went to take a sip but she felt a persistent little tug again. 

She set the mug down and lifted her rod. 

“Bored already?,” Jon asked.

“No,” she shook her head, “Somethings on it again.”

With that she lifted her rod and reeled in. This one was stronger and she had to work a little harder, but sure enough a moment later a big beast of a fish came out of the water. 

“By the gods,” Jon murmured, “You okay with it?”

“Yeah,” she grunted, reeling as fast as she could. 

She ran daily, and rode horses and did ballet, all of which gave her very strong legs, but unfortunately her arms were not quite as toned and she struggled against the fish. 

Her stubbornness won out though and it came flopping in. She grabbed onto it, it was much larger than the first, and pulled it off the hook. It was still struggling so she handed Jon her pole and grabbed onto the fish with two hands.

She walked to the back of the boat and found her father’s knife there. 

She couldn’t help but let out a little squeal as she severed it’s head, certain some of it had spattered on her. She picked up the head with two fingers, holding it as far away from her as possible and flung it off the boat and then lifted the lid and threw the fish on top of the other. 

When she got back up to the bow her father was holding her pole with a grin on his face. He’d already baited it for her. 

“How’re you doing?,” she asked Jon. He merely nodded at her. 

She tossed her line, sitting down on the bench seat and yawning. She was exhausted, and she went to grab her mug when she felt a pull.

“Seven hells!,” she groaned, desperate for caffeine, as she started pulling in another. 

By ten AM the cooler was full and it was warm enough that she was only in her tank top on the ride back to the house. When they neared the dock she went to the bow and grabbed the line, knocking one of the bumpers down so that it rested against the side of the boat.

“I got that, El,” Jon said. 

They were feet from the dock so she shook her head, “No worries.”

She stood up on the seat and then the side of the boat and stepped onto the dock, “You’re good,” she told her father and set about pulling them in. She held her hand out for the line Jon was holding and he tossed it to her so that she stern could follow. 

Jon stepped onto the dock and she tossed the line back to him and she tied a cleat hitch with hers. 

She stood up, and found her father looking at her curiously, “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Dorne,” she told him.

In her defence she tried not to make it sound like he should have known it. And in his defence, he looked like he knew that.

She felt something at her side and her hand reached out to stroke Ghost’s fur, knowing it’d be him. Lyanna had followed him onto the dock and she was grinning ear to ear at all of them.

“How’d you do?,” she asked brightly. 

“She did great!,” her father exclaimed, “Got a whole cooler full, you shoulda seen her.”

“She had a bit of beginner’s luck,” Jon amended. 

She turned to him and couldn’t help but tease, “Oh don’t be jealous, Jon, next Sunday I’ll help you, don’t you worry.”

Her father chuckled and Jon shook his head, turning to her menacingly, “That’s it, Baratheon, you’re going in.”

With that he went to push her off the dock, and she grabbed him by the shirt, “So are you!”

They both fell into the water and came up laughing and it was her father’s hand who reached down to help her out. To her surprise he pulled her clean out of the water, she had never felt so small in her entire life. 

He wrapped a towel around her shoulders and rubbed her back, tucking her under his arm and leading her up the dock, “Come on kid, I’m making pancakes and you’re gonna tell me all about what else you learned in Dorne.”

Chapter Text

“So you don’t use a recipe at all?,” she wondered, looking around for a book or a page printed off the internet.

Lyanna shrugged and scrunched nose in the way she’d seen Jon do every so often. It was an adorable quirk, made all the cuter on Jon’s ruggedly attractive face, but Lyanna pulled it off as well. 

“Sometimes I do, if there is something that I know is very temperamental like a soufflé, but when I’m just throwing together dinner I tend not to,” Lyanna explained and she nodded eagerly. Lyanna turned to her, her eyes wide and amended, “But I used them all the time in the beginning.”

Myrcella didn’t smile at her, but she crinkled her eyes. She didn’t even realise that she had done so, it was a trait that she had learned from Jon, and it meant more than one of her smiles because she didn’t force it onto her face. 

Lyanna still walked on eggshells around her. It had been a few weeks, and things had been getting better. Sansa, Arya and Catelyn hadn’t been able to make it to yoga on Sunday and the two of them had gone on their own for the first time. They had both been nervous, but somewhere along the family dinners and the mutual laughter at Jon’s antics, a comfort had been created by the two of them. It was an uncomfortable comfort, one that was built upon very little except a mutual desire to have the other like them and proximity, but it was a comfort nonetheless. Even still, Lyanna was a deeply empathetic person and Myrcella was one who had encountered very little empathy.

In Myrcella Lyanna saw herself as she had been. Sixteen and too beautiful for her own good, with a mind stronger than just about everything except her heart.

“So where do you start?,” Myrcella asked. 

Lyanna smiled at her and pulled out a cutting board, “Well, what do you like?”

“What do I like?,” Myrcella wondered and Lyanna nodded. Myrcella thought about it, “Those carrots we got at the farmers market.”

Lyanna grinned and went into the fridge, “Good, your father likes these with harissa.”

Lyanna was the only one who had adopted Myrcella’s denotation for Robert. All of the Starks, even Jon, called him her Dad, but never Lyanna. Not after the first week. 

She knew, just as well as Myrcella did, that not all fathers were dads. 

“Oh I love harissa!,” Myrcella clapped her hands, excited as always for any sign that she and Robert might just have something in common. 

Lyanna grabbed the paste for her and showed her how much to spread onto the carrots, and as Myrcella did that, she started chopping eggplant and onions. To an outside observer they might look like a mother and daughter. There was some awkwardness between them, but that could be explained away by the time of life that the younger woman was in, a time in which a parent could very quickly become an enemy. 

Myrcella was trying consciously not to think of Lyanna as such. It was difficult at times. When she spoke with her mother and heard the fear in her voice. When she happened upon her and her father and saw her receiving more affection in a five minute conversation than Myrcella had known from him for the majority of her life. 

It helped when they were on their own. When they could almost pretend that it wasn’t Robert who linked them. When the similarities between them were more a connection than a prediction. 

An hour later, when Robert and Jon got off boat and they all settled in outside for supper, Robert smacked his hands together, “Well this looks great, I hope you two didn’t slave over it too much.”

“Oh no,” Myrcella shook her head, “We just threw it together.”

Lyanna glanced at her and Myrcella winked at the older woman, and for once, when Lyanna laughed, it was Jon and Robert who were on the outside. The two of them smiled at one another though, for they had long been hoping to be left out. 

***

Myrcella remembered being in the back of her father’s car on the way from the airport, when Lyanna told her that Jon would spend his time doing what lake kids did. She remembered not understanding what that meant, but now it was impossible to imagine. 

She had gotten up on waterskis, and the wakeboard. She taught little Rickon how to sail and spent long hours curled under a shady tree reading at Winterfell. She snuck in after curfew, Jon holding her shoes and showing her which floorboards creaked, and snuck out before dawn to get the cider donuts that her father loved. 

The sun rose and set and her fair skin turned to a deep tan, her golden hair streaked from the sun and a cluster of freckles sprouted on her nose. She’d gotten herself down to a six and a half minute mile and found that she actually enjoyed yoga - liking the different possibilities of her body and relishing the discipline it possessed. 

One Tuesday she didn’t text Trystane, and when he’d called on Wednesday she’d been swimming with Sansa and forgotten to call him back. To her the Dornish heat was now unappealing, preferring the unexpected warmth of the North. 

It was one of those brilliant lazy summer days. She’d drifted from one spot to another, the sunshine turning her limbs into rubber.

No one had much energy or desire to do anything, and Sansa was taking a nap on the covered porch and Jon was reading next to her. Myrcella lay on the dock now, Robb at her side, Ghost and Grey Wind alternating between lying with them and taking themselves for a swim when they got too hot. 

She lay on her stomach, her left arm hanging off the dock, her fingers trailing in the water, her right cheek resting on the dock and every time she opened her eyes she was met with the view of the dark green water and the activities going on in the middle of the lake. 

Robb was in a similar position, except his view was her and he rarely closed his eyes. 

“This reminds me of a summer we spent in Casterly Rock,” she said, her voice thick with sleep though she’d been up for hours. She did not have to turn to know that she had his attention. “It was the hottest summer on record and everyone lazed about for long hours, even my grandfather. Joff hated it, the heat made him grouchy, but my mother let me lay beside her and look at her fashion magazines with her, and we ate nothing but frozen grapes and pomegranate sorbet, and once a day she’d take me to swim in the sea… in all my life I don’t think I’d ever felt closer to her.”

She smiled at the memory, she could practically feel the salt water on her skin, her arms and legs wrapped around her mother like a koala bear. She remembered telling her that she was more glamorous than the women in the magazines, because she was - a white one piece bathing suit and big dark glasses, a deep red lip that never smudged, even in the sea.

“I’m sorry,” he said and she opened her eyes, her back tense. 

That was a happy memory, she wanted to remind him. It shouldn’t have been special, he would explain though, time with your mother. 

“Don’t be,” she told him, “I didn’t have a bad childhood.”

“Just a lonely one,” he added softly. 

She let her fingers trail over the water, “I suppose so. The thing about loneliness though, is that after a while you don’t even notice it. It just becomes a part of who you are.”

“Do you think it ever goes away?,” he asked. 

“I didn’t,” she admitted, and then turned her face towards him. There were certain things that you wanted to look someone in the eye about, “And then I came here.”

Robb breathed deeply. The fact of the matter was that the girl in front of him quite often made him want to cry. As a rule he wasn’t one much for crying, but something about the Baratheon girl made him feel like a little boy.

He didn’t know that it was because she was turning him into a man. 

Robb scooted closer to her on the dock. On the porch, Jon had woken Sansa and the two of them were watching in anxious silence. They had been hoping Robb and Myrcella would get together, having long grown tired of watching the pair of them stare longingly at one another, and alternate between flirting and bickering on a never ending loop.

Robb was still moving closer to her and Myrcella’s heart was thudding in her chest, a perfect echo of his.

He reached a tentative hand out and brushed a piece of hair behind her ear, the way they both had always seen done in the movies. It felt better than Myrcella expected, more sincere than Robb had. She closed her eyes and he kept his wide open. 

“Robb,” she whispered. 

He hated when she said his name like that. Usually he did a good job of hiding it.

Now he sat up and shook his head. Jon and Sansa raced back to the couch they’d been sitting on, praying that he hadn’t seen them - he had.

“How is this better?,” he asked Myrcella. 

She sighed, swallowing the lump in her throat. She had never wanted to be kissed by anyone as badly as she wanted to be by him. It felt, to her anyway, that no one in the history of the world had ever wanted to be kissed so badly.

She opened her mouth to answer, sitting up, as though a change of altitude might make it all clear. No words came out though. 

He took it as a sign that she didn’t believe that it was. Which was true, but Myrcella had grown long used to ignoring what was right in front of her. 

“Myrcella…,” he pleaded. She shook her head. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

While she was deft at hiding the truth from herself, she was terrible about hiding it from him. 

She hugged her knees to her chest and laid her cheek upon them, looking to him both like a scared little girl and the human embodiment of feminine beauty. 

“I could fall in love with you,” she admitted. 

He blushed a peony pink but managed to keep his voice deep as he asked, “Isn’t that the point?”

She was wise beyond her years as she told him, in a voice as ancient as an oracle, “Young love never lasts.”

He was smarter still when he shook his head, “Tell that to your father.”

She was speechless by him once again, which was just as well, because he stood up and walked off the dock. 

Myrcella was a girl who knew loneliness intimately, it was an old companion, if not a friend, and yet when this version of it snuck upon her she greeted it as she might a stranger - with a mixture of curiosity and fear. 

Chapter Text

Myrcella tiptoed down the hall. She looked behind her and saw Ghost doing the same. It should be impossible for a dog of his size to tiptoe, but Ghost was oddly silent and he would never give his girl up. 

He had become her partner in crime this summer. On the days when Jon and the Starks were busy, she and Ghost would have adventures. She’d take the boat out with him or take him for a run. There was a quiet swimming hole they liked where the water was warm and clear. She brushed his long coat, trying to make him more comfortable as they days grew hotter, and at night when it turned cold no matter how warm the day had been, he slept with his head covering her feet and his body pressed against the side of hers. 

Jon was less jealous of her than Grey Wind was of Ghost. The eldest Stark’s dog had developed a liking for her as well, and when she went to Winterfell she had a grey shadow rather than a white one. She adored him, with his kind yellow eyes and the way he puffed out his chest when Robb’s friends were around, their eyes lingering too long on her and Sansa in their swimsuits, and she loved him for Robb’s sake, for the piece of him he represented. 

Even still, Ghost was her most constant companion - and he waited by the door for and Jon each night, never barking to signal their arrival but eager for their return all the same. 

They made their way down the stairs slowly and Myrcella went to the hook and grabbed Jon’s keys. 

She was nearly to the door when she heard, “Ahem.”

He actually said the word rather than making the noise, which made Myrcella sputter out a laugh. She turned around, caught, and bit her lip when she saw Ghost step out in front of her, protective even now in the early morning light in the face of her grinning father. 

“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?,” he asked her, attempting a serious tone.

“A…,” she started, but suddenly her mind was blank of any and all possibilities. 

His grin faded into a look of horror and he said, “Myrcella, how are you not better at lying?”

“Father,” she admonished in horror, “Why do you want me to be?”

He pursed his lips and nodded at that, then shook his head, and got up on his toes and shifted from side to side, looking like a lacrosse goalie, “You gotta be quick, you here me? You gotta be nimble.”

She chuckled and shook her head. There were moments, brief moments, when the fact that he didn’t truly understand how to be a father was a source of amusement rather than sadness. 

“I’ll work on it,” she promised. He raised his eyebrows at her and she sighed. Ghost looked up at her with puppy dog eyes, pleading with her not to do it. She stroked his fur in silent apology and looked at her father, “Ghost and I were going to get cider donuts.”

“Ghost,” her father scolded, shaking his head. He walked over to Myrcella and even though Ghost was shamefaced, he didn’t budge from his place in front of her, the loyal beast. Her father took the keys from her hands and placed them back on the hook, and then to her utter surprise grabbed his own and whispered in her ear, “I’ll drive.”

With that he walked out of the house and the only thing for her and Ghost to do was to follow him so they did. It was cool, the sun had not yet fully risen, but after a month in the North Myrcella was prepared. She wore an old pair of Jon’s jeans, cast aside from his time before he’d discovered skinny jeans, belted with a vintage scarf of her grandmothers and an old fisherman’s sweater on top. The jeans still hung loosely on her slim hips and she had to roll them at the bottom so that she wouldn’t trip, but she liked the way they made her feel ready for adventure - like she could skip over a fence or help Jon wash his motorcycle. Like she wasn’t the most beautiful girl from the city known for beautiful girls, just a kid having fun. 

She opened the back door for Ghost and then hopped in the front. Her father started up the SUV and pulled out of the driveway. 

She looked over at him and couldn’t help but smile. He wore a t-shirt, impervious to the cold, and his hands were firmly at 10 and 2.

“You should’ve taught me to drive,” she informed him. 

His knuckled clenched on the steering wheel and he nodded, “I know, kid.”

A lump formed in her throat. She hadn’t meant it that way, but it was true all the same. 

“Uncle Jaime is reckless,” she explained. 

Her father glanced at her in horror, “That asshat taught you how to drive?”

“Dad!,” she scolded, the way she’d grown used to Sansa doing to Ned. 

She heard it as soon as she said it, watched him hear it too. She watched him turn his focus back to the road, shifting ever so slightly in his seat as though trying not to spook her the same way that Jon and Robb would when she’d tell them one of her stories. 

Stories about nannies taking her on vacation and the extra lock she’d had installed on her bedroom door. 

“Grandfather tried,” she went on, as though if she kept talking the truth of what she’d called him would dissipate. In truth she wasn’t ready to call him Dad, she had been merely trying it out in her head. “But I may have had an incident with his Bentley.”

“You scratched it?,” her father asked in delighted surprise. 

“No,” she admitted, “I adjusted the rearview mirror.”

The sound of her father’s deep belly laugh filled the car. It was, she’d learned that summer, the kind of laugh that was impossible not to join in on - particularly when you were the cause of it. It felt good to laugh, and she noticed that Ghost had settled into the back, lying down, off-duty. 

He drove the now familiar route and she could see the sun starting to poke through the lush trees. It was nice to be driven, she was a proficient driver but not a confident one, and she was grateful he’d caught her out. Grateful he’d come down the stairs, dressed and ready to -

“Where were you going?,” she asked. 

“Hmm?,” he responded.

She turned towards him, “This morning, where were you going?”

“Oh I was a…,” he started, trailing off. 

She adopted a horrified tone, “How are you not better at lying?”

He grinned, his eyes on the road, “I’ll work on it, kid.”

***

“Alright, you can do this,” she said, “Just focus.”

“Okay,” Sansa breathed deeply, “Okay.”

Myrcella’s heart stopped as Sansa released the ball into the air and seemed not to start beating again until it landed firmly in the cup at the opposite end of the table. Cheers erupted and she jumped into Sansa’s waiting arms. 

It had been a gruesome battle, close to the end. Jon and Theon were fierce competitors, even with Sansa distracting Theon now and again by stretching and letting the hem of her top reveal a sliver of toned stomach. Even still there was a kind of magic created anytime she and Sansa partnered in anything - croquet and spades, tennis and flip cup.

“Well fought,” Jon admitted. 

“A worthyyyy adversary,” she mock bowed to him and he grinned in spite of himself. 

No one had yet told her but she made Jon Snow smile more than anyone he’d ever met. What had started out as an understanding that she was his to protect and look out for her had developed into an affection he’d never felt before, not even for his cousin Arya. While the younger Stark sister held a special place in his heart, a kinship that he’d never understood nor questioned, there was something about the golden haired southern beauty that ignited something ancient in him. 

Something that had been alight in many Stark men before - though he did not bare that name, he was a Stark, perhaps the truest Stark of them all - caught fire around her. Thankfully it was not romantic, except in the way that a man fighting a war for his sister always would be, but felt like falling in love all the same. 

She smiled back because she had fallen just as deeply. 

“I’m going to get some air,” she informed him.

She blew Sansa a kiss and walked through the party, waving to this person and that. Most of the girls still had little interest in knowing her, but there were a few that had seen past her beauty and privilege long enough to develop a fondness for her. The boys hadn’t quite grown used to her but they had always been more welcoming, and she gave Sam Tarly a thumbs up when she saw him speaking to his crush Gilly Wilde.

Outside was just as packed as inside. Harry’s parties were always like that. Of all the people in the north she’d met, he reminded her of those she knew in the south the most. 

Which was perhaps why she liked him the least.

She saw a lone figure sitting on the dock and knew without really understanding that it was Robb. She had developed a sense for him knowing intrinsically when he was close by without really registering it.

Her feet carried her towards him and as she stepped onto the dock it was unmistakably him, his russet curls catching the light from the lanterns and the muscles of his back hunched in the way that always made him look like a little boy.

His feet were dangling in the water and a bottle of beer rested beside him, seemingly untouched.

He didn’t acknowledge her arrival, but he knew it was her all the same. He had developed a sense for her too.

“Sansa and I beat Jon and Theon,” she told him. 

“That was predictable,” he noted, his eyes focused on the water. 

She nudged his thigh with her foot and he looked up at her. 

“What’s with you?,” she asked.

He looked back towards the water and picked up the beer he didn’t even really want, raising it to his lips. 

She sat down, criss-crossed facing him though he wasn’t facing her.

“Robb?,” she prodded, pushing his arm gently. 

He shook his head, “I’m not in the mood tonight, Myrcella.”

“Oh come on,” she teased, “We can argue,” she goaded, resting her chin on his shoulder, “I’ll even let you win.”

His temple leaned against hers, and they both relished in the warmth of it. 

“Even when I win, I always lose,” he lamented. 

And though he held a beer in his hand his breath smelled of whiskey. She recoiled from it instinctually. 

“You’re drunk,” she realised. 

“Not nearly,” he told her truthfully. 

The injustice of it all had burned off the alcohol. 

That she was beautiful and kind, stubborn and lovely, more wounded than any girl her age should be. That he would meet her, like this, and not be able to have her.

The way he loved her a little more each time that he had to pretend that he didn’t.

Her phone buzzed where she’d placed it beside her. Trystane was calling. He didn’t call quite so often anymore but seemed to have a penchant for calling every time she was alone with Robb as though even in Dorne it was obvious what this Stark and Baratheon were to each other. 

Robb chuckled harshly, “Better get that, your boyfriend is calling.” 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she told him, “He’s just my friend.”

He nodded and then looked at her accusingly, “The way I am?”

“Robb,” she said and his stomach churned. 

“Don’t,” he shook his head, standing up, “Don’t say my name like that.”

She stood up as well, blocking him from being able to walk back down the dock. He could have made it by her easily, he could have nudged her out of the way, picked her up, pushed her in the water, anything. 

But he let her stop him, because he was desperate for her to.

“Like what?,” she asked in the small voice that always made him imagine eight year old her watching the seconds tick by on the grandfather clock in her foyer, waiting for her mother to come home so that she could go to the hospital.

He looked her in the eyes, “Like I’m alone in this.”

“What do you want me to say?,” she asked. Shoving his chest, “Tell me, what should I say?”

He grabbed hold of her wrists gently, his thumb trailing along the scar on the underside of her forearm. 

“Tell me I’m not your friend, Myrcella,” he pleaded. 

She shook her head, “I can’t. You… you are… you’re one of my best friends.”

“No,” he argued, “Sansa is one of your best friends, Jon, I’ll even believe you if you say Trystane but not me.” She opened her mouth to argue but he went on, “I can feel your pulse Myrcella, I can feel it, don’t you understand? This isn’t friendship. Friends don’t make you feel like this.”

Her heart was thudding in her chest and he was so large and he smelled so good and she was desperate for him. 

He let go of her wrists and she might have fallen at the lack of support had he not wrapped an arm around her waist, his other hand disappearing into her hair. 

“Look at me,” he pleaded. 

She didn’t want to but her eyes dragged up to his anyway. There was madness in his eyes amid the moonlight and though she didn’t know it, love and fear reflected in hers. 

“I…,” he started.

“Don’t,” she argued. 

Please, her eyes begged.

I’m sorry, his lamented.

“I have to. I have to say it, just once, and you just have to hear it. So that there is no room for misinterpretation. I have to tell you so that you can never claim you didn’t know,” he warned and even though it hurt she was hanging on every word. He took a deep breath, as though about to recite a poem he’d heard once as a child and wasn’t sure he’d get the verses right. “You are beautiful and irritating. You’re gentle and kind and you scare me sometimes because it feels like you’re going to slip through my fingers and retreat to one of your hidden places where no one can find you, not even me. But the thing is, I’ll never stop looking, I just never will, I never would. You say that up here you understand what it is not to be lonely, but since you’ve gotten here I’ve felt lonelier than I ever have because you’re always out of reach. And you know how I feel, you know that you do and you feel it too and you’re lying to me, which is fine, that doesn’t matter, but you’re lying to yourself too. And I’m tired of it. I’m so damn tired of watching you be afraid.”

Like many wealthy, prominent families in Westeros, Myrcella’s had a retinue of armed guards. They were thugs given uniforms and too much power and they often caused more trouble than they stopped, but there was one by the name of Arys Oakheart who had been in the right place at the wrong time. He’d gone in for an interview, even though his father had told him that he didn’t want to get mixed up with the Lannisters, and the head of security had kept him waiting. He sat in the ornate hall and waited, and watched as a little girl, no older than five, brushed her doll’s hair. 

Her mother and father came in screaming at one another and she just kept on brushing. Her elder brother threatened to take the doll away but she just kept on brushing. 

His father had told him that there was nothing in the Lannisters worth protecting, worth devoting - perhaps giving his life for, but his father hadn’t seen that little girl sit in the window seat, her legs tucked up underneath her and the sunlight dancing in her hair. 

He watched her grow up. He was off duty the night her arm had been broken, but he’d sat by her bedside and brushed her doll’s hair for her. And when he was on duty he always played cards with her. He went to her violin recitals even if he wasn’t meant to work that night, and when her father left one day with a kiss to her forehead, he found her sitting in the same window seat, the sunlight dancing in her hair, with dry eyes and steady hands. 

Undaunted he called her then. He would not recognise her now. 

“I called him Dad today,” she said softly. 

A tear fell out of Robb’s eye even as he grinned. He was happy for her, truly he was. That was how he knew he was well and truly in love. 

So he left her, with a kiss to her forehead, whiskey on his breath, just like his namesake had done a year earlier, but this time as the moonlight danced in her hair, her hands were shaky, and her eyes were wet. 

Chapter Text

“Sounds good,” she said as she tugged on a black cashmere turtleneck. 

“Huh?,” the voice coming through her speakerphone asked. 

She sighed and picked up the phone, “Sorry A, I said sounds good. I’ll just ask my… Dad to make sure that we don’t have plans for tomorrow night.”

“Fab, doll,” his deep, vaguely accented voice agreed. 

She took him off speaker phone and held the phone to her ear, holding the door open for Ghost and following him out of her room. She clunked down the back stairs, and turned down the corridor that lead to Robert’s study.

“So how’s Rhae?,” Myrcella wondered, thinking of the beautiful older girl who always seemed to have multiple boyfriends and modelling jobs all over the world. 

Joffrey had been in love with her from ages 12 to 14, even though she was two years his senior, until he saw her making out with Luke Dayne one night and told everyone she was a slut. Thankfully she had never taken it out on Myrcella, and the girls had developed a friendship in spite of their four year age difference. 

Rhae like to tell her that they were opposites in every way - she was dark where Myrcella was light, her father doted on her while Rhae had never even met Robert, and while Myrcella was waiting for the one, Rhae preferred the one, or two, right now. 

“Oh you know,” Aegon said in a bored tone. “I never know where that girl is.”

Myrcella chuckled and shook her head. The Targaryen siblings were thick as thieves - in fact, it had even been rumoured that they participated in distinctly non-sibling activities, but that was just petty gossip - but they were known for their squabbles. The pair had mercurial dispositions, and could bicker one moment only to dissolve into laughter in the next. 

She knocked on the door to her father’s study and he made a grunt of welcome. 

“I have to go, A,” she told her friend, “I’ll text you later.”

She hung up without bothering to hear his sign-off and stepped into the study. She found her father sitting at his desk, papers strewn about, glasses perched on his nose. 

He turned and smiled at her grimly, stacking the papers in a nonsensical way, “Hey kid, heading out?”

She nodded, tugging on the hem of her sweater, “Yeah I told Jon I’d meet him there, he got a ride with Theon, can I take your car?”

Her father nodded and took his glasses off, rubbing his eyes, “Course you can, but if there’s any drinking just call and we’ll come get you.”

“Oh I don’t -,” she started but he held up his hand. 

“If there’s any drinking, call.”

“Okay,” she promised and he nodded. 

“So were you just coming to ask that?,” he asked her in a tone that suggested he knew otherwise. 

She blushed, “No, not exactly. A friend of mine from down south has been traveling all summer, and he’s unexpectedly coming to Wintertown tomorrow. Would it be alright if we had him over for dinner?”

Her father nodded, “Of course. And this is just a friend right? Because I thought you and -“

“Yes!,” she all but shouted, not wanting him to finish that sentence, “Yes, he’s just a friend.”

Her father gave her an odd look but shrugged, “Well of course he can come to dinner, I’ll tell Lyanna so she makes a bit extra. Does he need a place to stay?”

She smiled, “No, thank you, Aegon has already made reservations at the Wintertown Palace Hotel, I’m sure. Thanks…Dad, sleep tight.”

She turned to leave but he stopped her, “What did you just say?”

She blushed a deep crimson, she had been hoping she could just sneak it in there. She wasn’t entirely sure if he even wanted to be called Dad, maybe he had preferred it before.

“Would you like to be called father?,” she asked in a squeaky voice that in no way resembled her normal one.

“No I love it,” Robert waved her off, “What did you say his name was?”

She furrowed her brow. Her father had never really taken an interest in her friends, except Sansa but that was only because she was going to be his niece one of these days. Not that that had ever made him care much about Shireen. 

“Aegon…” she repeated, “Why?”

He stood up from his desk, “What’s his last name?”

She felt the sudden urge to shrink away, and it was without surprise that she noticed Ghost was at her side once again. She allowed him to step in front of her slightly, not liking, as he didn’t, the nearly feral look in her father’s eyes. 

“Targaryen,” she explained, her voice not betraying the rapid beating of her heart. 

Ghost all but knocked her backwards when her father’s fist slammed down on his desk. He was no longer merely standing in front of her, he was approaching her father, his teeth bared. 

“Ghost to me,” she pleaded softly, but for once the dog ignored her. 

Her father went to step forward but seeing Ghost he stayed put. Intellectually she knew that he was sober, but it didn’t feel like it. The crazed look in his eyes, the ruddiness in his cheeks, the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He seemed as unpredictable as he might after a day drinking whiskey and she found herself sucking in her stomach and checking for exits. 

“What in seven hells are you doing hanging around a Targaryen?,” her father growled. 

“I…we know them from Dorne,” she said, “They’re Trystane’s cousins… I… I stayed with them the summer I was twelve…”

“You what?,” her father spat, his face red, “You did what? Where the hell was your mother?”

That raised Myrcella’s hackles, as all comments from her father about the parenting mistakes of her mother did. It was okay from everyone else, but not from him. 

“Trying to dry out!,” she threw at him. 

“Trying,” he scoffed. 

“At least she tried!,” she pointed out. “At least she saw that she had a problem!”

“Yeah well she’s still having a bottle of red for lunch,” he argued, “I’m the one who got sober! I’m the one.”

“Yeah and who did you do that for?,” Myrcella spat at him, “Because it certainly wasn’t me.”

With that she turned to leave and he threw after her, “That boy is not welcome in my house!”

“Who’d want to be here anyway?!,” she threw back. 

She ran down the corridor, grabbing the keys off the hook and running by Lyanna. Her eyes were blurry but she ran outside anyway, turning the key in the ignition and pealing out of the driveway on two wheels. 

The road was dark and she forced herself to calm down, turning on the high beams. She let out a guttural scream, not caring that all the windows were down. It felt better, for it to vibrate into the night.

She had no idea what had thrown her father into such a rage, but in the moment she didn’t even care. Memories flooded her mind - of shouting matches and broken vases, her mother wearing too much concealer on her left cheek. An errant word that beckoned a tirade, her nanny bringing her dinner to her room and reading a story loudly. 

Her father - she was foolish to think of him otherwise - hadn’t been like that all summer, but with him it was only a matter of time. A temper like his was a ticking time bomb and she was the idiot who’d gone too close to the blast. 

She pulled up at the party and parked behind a row of cars. She pulled down the mirror and made sure her face wasn’t splotchy and then shut the car off and slammed the car door on the way out. 

People tried to greet her as she walked through but she hardly saw them. She didn’t even look, she just let her feet move, knowing where they’d lead her. 

He was standing in the kitchen, speaking to a pretty brunette. She was twirling her hair with one hand and shoving his chest playfully with the other. 

Myrcella walked right up to them. She didn’t say hello, she didn’t say anything, she just slipped her hand into his and pulled him along with her. He followed her, as he always did, and she brought him outside. 

To her surprise and relief the back porch was empty.

“Myrcella?,” he asked. 

She turned around and caught one brilliant glimpse of him before she threw herself into his arms. He caught her to him as her lips met his - and everything else just faded away. It was like submerging her head under water, the quiet and the weightlessness of it. 

She’d caught him by surprise and he fell into it slowly, his arms wrapping tighter around her. All of a sudden it was him who was kissing her, his lips wandering over hers in a delicious erratic pattern. Her arms were around his neck and one of his hands was on the small of her back, pressing her gently against him. 

His tongue slipped into her mouth and she met it with hers, a shiver running down her spine. 

He set her down and then her back was to the side of the house and his hands were on her cheeks and he was leaning down to kiss her again. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tugged him against her and he groaned, causing goosebumps to rise all over her body. 

He released her lips and pushed her head back and latched onto her throat. He kissed down one side and over to the other, his fingers gripping into her hair. 

“Robb,” she cried. 

“That’s it,” he told her, his teeth at the shell of her ear, “That’s the way I want to you to say my name.”

“Kiss me,” she pleaded.

“Yes ma’am,” he teased and she caught his grin on her lips. 

The kiss was softer this time, more tentative, light presses of their lips against one another’s, their teasing banter taking on a different tune. 

Her heart felt full to bursting and she let her fingers slip into his soft curls, deepening the kiss. One of his hands slid down her body and onto her butt, squeezing it tentatively. It felt good in a way that nothing had but even still when she kissed him again her lips were shaking. 

He broke away from her, stroking her hair out of her face and smiled, “I’m sorry, I’ve been wanting to do that basically since the moment I first saw you.”

She blushed and her stomach churned and she wanted to forget it all again so she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him once more. 

He kissed her back enthusiastically, picking her up once again and kissing her lips and then one cheek and then the other and then her nose and her eyelids until she was a giggling mess and he finally kissed her lips once again.

He set her down and stroked her hair and kissed her forehead, and it was so different than the last time he had done so that it brought tears to her eyes once again. 

“Thank the gods,” he breathed against her skin, “Thank the gods.”

He tilted her face up to his and she let him kiss her, but when he tried to intensify it she stopped him with a hand to his cheek. He sighed against her and gave her one long, lingering kiss after another until she was breathless. 

He pulled away and hugged her to him, cradling her head. She wrapped her arms around his back and laid her cheek on his chest. It was strong and broad and she snuggled against him. It seemed to her that all of the nerves she had felt around him were merely anticipation, because standing in his arms, the sounds of a party going on behind them, the moon and stars above, she felt an overwhelming calm sweep through her boy. 

“What about your Dad?,” he asked after a while though and the blood turned to ice in her veins. 

“I don’t want to talk about my father,” she told him, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him once again. 

He didn’t kiss her back, instead he pushed her gently away, “Myrcella?,” and then as though he saw her face for the first time his turned to panic, “Myrcella? What happened? What did he do?”

She shook her head, “Forget about him, this is all you’ve wanted these past weeks and now -“

“But I don’t want it like that!,” he argued, catching her to him to soften the blow, “I don’t want you to be with me out of spite for him. Myrcella, sweetheart, just tell me what happened.”

She shook her head, “Nothing he just… he just got really angry at me and… and he…”

“Did he hurt you?,” he raged.

“No! No but…,” she stopped, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes, “He just… he went wild and he frightened me at first and then… well we both said some things and…”

Robb pushed himself away from her and started pacing, “Do you promise me he didn’t hurt you?”

She couldn’t do that. It had hurt, the way he had so quickly retreated into his former self. He had spoken to her the way he used to speak to her mother. It hurt her the way her Dad had become her Father with the flip of a switch. 

“He didn’t touch me,” she promised instead.

He sat down in one of the chairs and reached his hand out towards her. She took it and he tugged her gently, down into his lap. 

“It was real,” she told him, her lips at his temple, though he hadn’t asked. 

“I know,” he told her, though he hadn’t really been sure until she said it. He didn’t think that it was possible to fake that, but he was inexperienced and he knew that the girl in his arms had learned to deceive long ago. He couldn’t blame her for it, it had been the key to her survival. Even still it frightened him sometimes that he couldn’t always tell the difference. He let his knuckles trail up her arm and she tucked her head into the crook of his neck, “What set him off?”

“I asked if a friend could come for dinner,” she told him and he leaned away from her, clearly surprised at the innocuous nature of it. She went on, “A friend from Dorne. Everything was fine until he heard the guy’s name and-“

“Guy?,” Robb asked.

“Robb,” she chided.

“Right, sorry,” he agreed.

“Anyway he asked who it was and I told him and he just…flew into this rage, you know the way he used to be with my mother, you should’ve seen Ghost he nearly lunged for him, and then he… he brought up my mother’s drinking, well I suppose I did and… I just… I liked it better when I didn’t expect more from him.”

“Did you really?,” he asked. 

“No,” she admitted with a pout, “But it felt better than this.”

He stood them both up, and as wordlessly as she had, grabbed her by the hand. He tugged her through the party and signalled Jon who came to their side immediately and the three of them went out front to where all the cars were parked. The pair of them flanked her, the way they always seemed to now, her most faithful knights and confidants. 

Robb reached for the keys and she handed them over and they all piled into her father’s SUV.

It wasn’t until they were on the road that Jon said, “Robb, El, what’s going on?”

“Tell him what you told me,” Robb urged her.

Myrcella relayed him with the facts and she felt Jon’s strong hand grip her shoulder gently. It was a different sort of comfort than she felt from Robb, but a comfort all the same. Nothing truly bad could ever happen to a person if Jon Snow was on their side, and there was no one he was more loyal to now than her. 

“Where are you taking us?,” she asked Robb. 

He had just driven past the turn for Winterfell, where none of them had discussed going but where Jon and Myrcella both thought they would be. There would be guest rooms ready for the two of them, and a text to his mother would suffice as an explanation. In the morning, Catelyn would have baked fresh muffins and Rickon and Bran would be getting ready for camp. Sansa would lend Myrcella a swimsuit and they’d take the boat out, maybe pick up Theon. They’d go to the south side of the lake for the day, where there was a restaurant that served the best burger north of the Eyrie and they wouldn’t return until the sun was setting. 

In her brief time in the north it had become clear to Myrcella that Winterfell was where you went when things went wrong. It was a safe place in an unsafe world, where dogs piled up on nineteenth-century carpets and nobody worried about them shedding, where older siblings helped younger ones with their summer reading and there was always a puzzle half finished on the card table in the great room. Catelyn always had an extra pair of gardening gloves handy, and she’d show you how to repot plants and herbs until you got so lulled by the rhythmic earthy work that you started to tell her all of your problems and by the time it was over you felt new life growing inside you as well. And Ned always had time for his kids. And Jon. Even her. 

“Enough is enough,” Robb told her. 

She didn’t even bother looking back at Jon. When it came to her, they were united on all things.

To them, Robert would always be at fault, because he was the adult. Because he had let his daughter live sixteen years without ever really knowing if she was loved or not. Because he had fallen asleep while she sat in agony. 

No matter their personal feelings on Robert, and they both had many that they dared not share, that they felt guilty for each time he clapped one of them on the back or did something sweet for Lyanna or cheered in the stands at their lacrosse games, to them he would always be the man who had been given the perfect daughter and failed her. 

“I said some things,” she reminded them quietly, and she could feel both their eyes on her though she was looking down at her lap. “I can’t go back there.”

“That’s the thing about homes, El. You can always go back,” Jon promised.

Not for the first time she wondered the kind of person she might be now if she had been raised all her life alongside Jon Snow. If she had woken each day knowing that there would be someone to look after her. Long car rides spent playing I spy and someone who’d come looking for her under the bleachers when she’d had a bad day. Someone who loved her unconditionally, so that she didn’t feel the need to garner love where she could get it - even if it was a place from which she didn’t want it. 

She felt Robb’s eyes on her briefly and she turned to look at him and then at the speedometer. He was only driving fifteen miles per hour, waiting for her. Always, waiting for her. 

“Okay,” she told him and he pressed on the gas. 

Robb pulled down the long driveway and parked in her father’s usual spot. The light was on in his study and she felt beads of sweat gather at her hairline. She gripped the spot on her arm, over her scar, where she always seemed to hold when she was afraid.

Jon got out of the back and opened her door as Robb turned off the car. She stepped out on unsteady legs and Jon took her under his arm and shut her car door behind her. The three of them made their way towards the back door and if Jon minded that he was supporting most of her weight he didn’t say. 

She stopped walking and tugged at Robb’s shirt so that he’d do the same. They both turned to look at her and she wondered how to explain what she needed to. 

“I think you both should let me speak to him on my own,” she started. They both went to protest but she held up her hand, “He… can be violent sometimes. He never has been with me but he has a temper and I don’t want either of you getting caught up in that.”

Robb and Jon shared a look, a cursory one, and Robb answered for them both, “We can handle ourselves. He’s not going to get violent. We’re just going to talk to him.”

She shook her head, “You don’t understand, you can’t reason with him when he’s like this -“

“You don’t know that,” Jon interrupted and her eyes flashed to his, “Because you’ve never seen him like this. The man you grew up with, you couldn’t reason with him because he had a bottle of whiskey on his side. But he’s sober now, and I know it didn’t feel different tonight but I promise you that it is. If he had one drop I wouldn’t let you or my mother in a hundred yards from him, okay?” His charcoal eyes looked imploringly into hers, desperate for her to understand. She did. Even still, he would take no chances so he said, “You don’t have to trust him. You just have to trust us.”

On another day she might have teased them. They sounded like off-duty superheroes. But then she’d have to tell them that to her, they were. They didn’t have magic powers or super strength, merely the things that turned someone with those things into a hero. 

A good heart and a moral compass and the courage to put them both to good use. 

“Alright Batman,” she couldn’t help but joke. 

“I am not Robin,” Robb argued. 

She grinned, “Of course not. You’re Shazam.”

“Ooh no Ant Man,” Jon joined in. 

Robb grinned, less at their teasing and more at her smile. He’d suffer all manner of abuse if it caused that smile on her face, the way her eyes became little half moons and her nose scrunched without even trying. 

“You ready?,” he asked her. 

She took a deep breath and nodded, “Yes. Let’s go ask him why the name Aegon Targaryen threw him into a blind rage.”

With that she stepped forward and started climbing the stairs, confident that they’d follow close behind. 

“Aegon Targaryen?,” Jon asked from behind her. 

She turned to look at him and nodded. His mouth set in a grim line. 

“Jon?,” Robb wondered, “Do you know him?”

Jon shook his head, “No, I’ve never met him. But we better wake up my Mom.”

“Why?,” Myrcella and Robb asked in unison. 

Now it was Jon who curled in on himself and it was Myrcella who stepped down the stairs to go to his side, wrapping her arms around his. 

He turned towards her, and for a moment he was just a little boy who had also grown up unsure of his father’s love. 

“Because Aegon Targaryen is my half-brother.”

Chapter Text

Eighteen years earlier two handsome men and a beautiful girl made a mess of things. 

If they had known that eighteen years later they would still be dealing with the repercussions of that summer, they might have chosen differently. But then Lyanna would not have Jon and Robert would not know Myrcella, so it was not the actions of their past that they were regretting when a different beautiful girl and two handsome men walked into the living room, but rather that they hadn’t told the whole story long before. 

The three children who stood before them now had all the best qualities of the previous generation - determination and bravery and an incredible proclivity for love. But they had things that the previous generation lacked - a maturity, and a selflessness, and most importantly, one another. 

They appeared before them as a unit. The girl in between the boys as always was the case in these situations, but Robb’s arm extended over Myrcella to clasp onto Jon’s shoulder and she had hold of their shirts in either hand. 

Robert had been waiting in agony since she stormed out. Lyanna had overheard it all and convinced him not to go after her. 

You know where she’s heading as well as I do. It won’t be long now. 

They didn’t talk about what they were going to say. A story like theirs did not require rehearsing. They both remembered every beat, every measure. They knew that at times in it they all played the villain, and they would not pretend it was all Rhaegar’s fault simply because he was not there to defend himself. 

“Myrcella,” Robert started, getting off the couch and stepping towards her. Both Jon and Robb stepped in front of her, the latter going as far as to shake his head in warning. A lump formed in Robert’s throat, he was grateful that though he had given her nothing else, he had given her them. He nodded at Robb and stopped walking, and then he looked only at her. “I’m so sorry, kid. I shouldn’t have reacted that way, and I hate that I frightened you.”

In all her life Myrcella had never known the man in front of her to take responsibility for anything. An apology did not seem like he’d ever be capable of, let alone one from the heart and without reservation. 

From her maternal grandmother, Myrcella had inherited her cheekbones, a talent for forgiveness and a love of broken things. So she had already forgiven him a little before stepping inside the door. Aegon Targaryen was Jon’s half brother, and therefore she knew that Rhaegar Targaryen was his father, which meant that her mother had placed her in the home of the man who had ruined her father’s best chance at happiness for her own petty revenge. 

And she looked just like her.

In truth to her it seemed a wonder he hadn’t struck her, though she was the only one in the room who gave him credit for that. 

So it was not without effort that she stepped in front of her guards, “I didn’t know,” she promised, “Who they were.”

He smiled at her sadly, “I know you didn’t, kid. How could you? I never bothered to tell you. And it’s my fault that I didn’t know where you were spending your summers, not yours. Do you hear me?”

A tear slipped out of her eye and she nodded, forgiving him already, forgiving him anything, if only he’d promise that he’d speak to her with that voice and that compassion from this day forward. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Be her Dad. 

But it is easier to forgive a slight against yourself than it is to forgive one against someone you love, and so Robb and Jon were still unsatisfied. 

“I think it’s time you tell us what happened,” Jon told them. 

“All these years,” Lyanna spoke for the first time, “You never asked.”

“Because I didn’t want to know,” Jon admitted. “I didn’t care. And then he came here and it seemed like there was too much going on to ask. All that mattered was that he mattered to you, and he was in pain, and then you were happy. But now not knowing is hurting people and I’ll bet it’s been hurting you all these years not telling me.”

Robert sighed, “You better sit down.”

The three of them piled onto a single loveseat, and Robert sat back in his chair. Lyanna took hold of his hand and he raised hers to his lips. The way he had the night she’d left all those years ago. 

“I was your age, Myrcella,” Lyanna started, “The summer I met Rhaegar. I thought it was just the summer before my junior year, I just wanted to get a tan and have fun with my friends. I got a job waitressing just to make my Dad angry. Robert and I… we were having some problems.”

Robert took his cue and clarified, “I was drinking, and cheating.”

Jon glared at him. He was not surprised, but receiving confirmation of his suspicions did not endear him to Robert.

Lyanna amended, “It wasn’t quite cheating, because,” and now her attention focused on Myrcella, “I was keeping him at arm’s length, because I knew that of all the boys in the world, he was the one that could hurt me the most.”

Robb’s ears turned red in embarrassment, but Myrcella returned Lyanna’s gaze without hesitation. It felt good to be understood. To know that someone had been paying attention. She crinkled her eyes at her, so that Lyanna would know it was safe to continue. 

“One night,” Lyanna went on, running a small hand through her dark hair and looking to the three of them like a teenager once again, “The bartender called in sick, so I hopped behind the bar. I wasn’t supposed to, I wasn’t old enough, but the manager didn’t say anything because…,” she looked apologetically at Robb and Jon, “Men would keep buying drinks to stick around.”

Jon shifted uncomfortably and Myrcella pressed her arm against his side. They both knew it was going to get worse than that. Lyanna was only thirty-four. 

“There was a man at the end of the bar, young, with blonde hair so light it was nearly silver and the most peculiar set of eyes I’d ever seen,” she continued.

“Like amethysts,” Myrcella agreed.

Aegon and Rhae had them too. She looked over at Jon and realised that there was not a drop of his father to be found in him. He was all Stark, from his hair to his heart. 

Lyanna nodded, “He nursed a single scotch the entire night, while all the other men bought rounds and rounds, buying shots for their friends to show off. They all blew off steam and he just sat there. I had never seen anyone so still before.”

“That must have been a nice change of pace, a man who sat still,” Robb reasoned, then glared at Robert, “As opposed to one who could slip through your fingers.”

Robert met his gaze head on, “So like your father, aren’t you, boy?”

There was no animosity in it and yet Robb fumed all the same. Myrcella had refused to commit to him all summer, and he hadn’t run around chasing everything in a skirt. He knew that when you met the love of your life, she was worth waiting a summer for.

Lyanna continued, “When all the others cleared out, he stuck around. I didn’t think to ask him to leave, it would be like trying to push marble. And…”

“You didn’t want him to,” Jon sighed. 

“No, I didn’t,” Lyanna admitted and continued, “He sat there while I cleaned up for the night. He hardly spoke, which made me talk a lot. When it was time to turn off the lights he was right behind me, it was alarming, how quick he was after being so still. I turned around, hoping that he’d kiss me, but he didn’t, he just offered me his arm and lead me outside. I tried to pursue him, Take me somewhere I asked, It’s past your bedtime he told me. I lied and told him I was nineteen and he smirked and took me by the chin, I’ll bet you’re three years and a broken heart shy of nineteen. And that was that, he was gone.”

“Except that he wasn’t,” Myrcella ventured.

Too beautiful for your own good, men who lusted after young girls always said. 

Myrcella had been eleven when she first understood that the way her grandfather’s associates looked at her was not with admiration but with something darker. She had been thirteen when a friend of Rhae’s had given her iced tea without telling her there was vodka in it and laughed at her as her head slumped against his shoulder, his large hand holding her waist possessively. 

“No,” Lyanna confirmed, “He wasn’t. He started dropping by the restaurant when I was working. He never said much but he always had presents. A book…flowers.”

“Winter roses,” Robb guessed, his knuckles running down Myrcella’s forearm. 

Lyanna’s eyes flashed to her nephew’s, “How did you -“

“I found the ones I gave you in the trash,” Myrcella admitted.

Lyanna smiled sadly at her, “I’m sorry. That must have been very upsetting. Yes, winter roses. Only ever winter roses…Anyway, I thought that it was old-fashioned, courting. My friends all thought it was great that I had an older secret admirer. He never told me how old he was, but it was just obvious. He would reel me in and then push me away, I thought he was struggling with himself, but really he was just toying with me.”

“And where were you?,” Jon asked Robert.

Robert looked shamefaced but admitted, “Fucking everything I could. I was stubborn and unwilling to admit how much I loved her. I didn’t know about Rhaegar though until the night she left.”

“Why did you leave?,” Robb asked. 

Lyanna sighed, “I’d gotten in a huge fight with your grandfather, your Dad had seen Rhaegar dropping me off and your grandfather found us arguing. Your Dad was so scared, he had seen Rhaegar hanging around but hadn’t realised that it had gone further than some flirting. Your grandfather forbade me to see him, wanted me to quit my waitressing. I listened to him. The next night I went to say goodbye to Rhaegar, but he told me he loved me, that he couldn’t live without me, that he wanted me no matter the consequences. So I decided to go with him. I didn’t even have a toothbrush with me. We made a plan to meet behind the restaurant in twenty minutes. I was going to pick up my last paycheck and Rhaegar was going to go fill up his car with gas. I didn’t realise that I’d been followed.”

The three of them turned in tandem to Robert who looked haunted by that night even now. Who was haunted by it even now, his behaviour earlier in the evening being proof of that.

Robert spoke directly to Robb, “Your Dad and I had been on the outs all summer. He could hardly stand the idea of my dating Lyanna, let alone the way I’d been acting, and with your Uncle Brandon dead, and even with you on the way, he was trying so hard to step into his shoes and take care of his younger siblings the way you do. But something about Rhaegar scared him enough to come find me. We nearly came to blows, but he talked enough sense into me that I was scared too. We didn’t trust that it was over, so we decided to split up and look for her. Your Dad went towards the place where everyone partied in the woods, and I went to the restaurant. I pulled up just in time.”

“Obviously not,” Jon growled. 

“Jon!,” Lyanna chided.

The other two had been thinking it, so they all mumbled, “Sorry.”

Robert continued, “You’re right to be angry. If I had acted differently, none of it would have happened. But as it was I pulled into the parking lot just as your Mom was getting in Rhaegar’s car. I shouted to her, you know after all these years I can still remember the smile on her face when she saw me. And I’ll never forget the way it fell when I stumbled out of the car.”

“You’d been drinking,” Myrcella realised, a single tear falling down her cheek. 

She wasn’t sure who she was crying for. Lyanna, who might have been saved, or Robert who could battle everyone except himself. Maybe she was crying for Jon, who was the happy outcome of all the pain, or herself, who might have been spared all of it. 

Her father nodded, “Always was back then. Even still she came to talk to me, she was always giving me the benefit of the doubt. We exchanged words, I told her I’d be better, do better, do right by her. I told her I loved her. And she-“

“Said that love is sweet, but it won’t change your nature,” Lyanna finished. She looked at all of them and shook her head, tears running down her cheeks and letting out the most heartbreaking laugh that any of them had ever heard, “I was so sick of the other girls. Walking into a party and having to wonder which girls had slept with my… Robert. I wanted someone devoted to me and only me. So I left with Rhaegar.”

Myrcella didn’t know the rest of the story, but she could guess. Rhae was two years older than Jon, and he and Aegon were months apart. Elia, sweet Elia, would have been pregnant by the time Rhaegar met Lyanna. 

She thought about the Rhaegar that she knew. In all the times she’d seen him, he had been devoted to his children. But when she really thought about it, he wasn’t around all that much. The summer she’d stayed with them he only came around about once a week, and Elia was always happier when he was gone - sitting with her and Tommen and her children for long hours at dinner. Even Joffrey would hang around and listen to stories of her childhood. 

Myrcella hadn’t realised until this moment that Elia never said a word at dinner when Rhaegar was present. 

“How long?,” Myrcella asked and Lyanna turned to look at her, “How long until you found out?”

“Three months,” Lyanna told her, “The night I told him I was pregnant.”

Jon pushed off the loveseat and started pacing. 

“Jon -,” Lyanna started. 

“No!,” he whirled around, “What’s the point? What have we learned here? That you were a drunk? That my father’s a dick? I knew that! Tell me - tell me something, anything I don’t know! Tell me one thing that makes the way she grew up okay!”

It was Robert who stood, “I can’t, son. I can’t, alright? Me and your mom aren’t telling you so that you think better of us. We’re telling you because you’re right, it’s hurting you all not knowing. But you want to know one thing? One thing you don’t know? I’ll tell you. After all of it - everything. The lies and the pain and the regrets - I’m glad it happened. Because if it hadn’t then she wouldn’t have you. I wouldn’t have you.”

“Are you going to call Joffrey and tell him the same?,” Myrcella couldn’t help but wonder. Robert turned to look at her, and she raised her eyebrows, “How about Tommen? Are they the happy accident of all of this as well?”

Robert shook his head, “No.”

She felt as though she had been stabbed in the gut. Even now she admired his honesty, hard wired to see the best in him even when he acted his worst. 

“You piece of shit,” Robb growled. 

“Robb, don’t bother,” she shook her head, standing up. She looked at Robert square in the eye and said, “I’m happy for you. That you have the family you’ve always wanted. I guess I’m just confused, as to why you asked me to come here if you had no interest in my being a part of it.”

“He does want you to be,” Lyanna protested, standing as well and crossing to her. She took her cheeks in her soft, warm hands, in a way that no parent ever had. “That’s all he wants, Myrcella. To just get to know you bef-“

“Lyanna!,” Robert snapped. 

Myrcella had never heard him speak to her like that and by the way the older woman flinched she knew that it was not a common occurrence. Their eyes met and there was fear and sadness in the older woman’s grey, and the younger knew that it was not because of his tone.

And it took all of the anger right out of her. 

“Dad?,” she asked, her voice as thin and wobbly as her legs in that moment. 

He shook his head, “I didn’t. I don’t - I’m…”

Both boys caught on and turned towards him in fear. It was Jon who spoke, “Robert?”

Robert’s face had grown red and he shook his head, his blue eyes filling with tears. He sat down and both Jon and Myrcella went to him, kneeling in front of him the way they might have as children if he had been around to read to them. 

“I didn’t want to do this to you kids, not tonight,” he shook his head, and looked at Myrcella, “You probably didn’t see what I was looking over when you came into my study tonight, did you?” She shook her head no, and even she was not sure if she was answering his question or asking him not to go on. With an apology in his eyes, he did. “It was my Will. I’ve had my lawyers amending it.”

Another girl may have suspected that he was trying to write her and her brothers out of it, but that thought did not occur to her. Not when the truth was staring her straight in the face. 

“You’re sick,” she all but whispered. 

And it all became clear. Why he often fell asleep before she and Jon had even left for the evening, and why he wasn’t supposed to eat donuts. The way Lyanna had wanted Jon to carry her bags, and the reason he’d asked her here at all. 

“Don’t drink too much, kids,” Robert sputtered out an aching breath. 

“What is it?,” Jon asked, and his voice caused Myrcella to take hold of his hand. 

“It’s my kidney,” Robert sighed, “Too much booze and stress I suppose.”

“There has to be something we can do,” Myrcella reasoned, “Some medicine, or a transplant, something.”

“Myrcella, honey, I’m not a viable candidate,” he told her as gently as he was able. “You know I’ve beat up this body of mine and… it’s not just my kidneys. My liver is shot to shit and my blood pressure is too high. You know they’ve got to save the donations for people that’ve got a real chance.”

Jon shook his head, “But what if someone chooses to -“

“You’re AB, baby, just like me,” Lyanna reminded him, “You can’t.”

“But I can,” Myrcella said and if Robert could have stopped her from speaking, he would have. But she was a girl that loved having a purpose and she was vibrating with it now. She stood up, “Think about it, what better donor could there be than me? I’m healthy, I don’t drink a lot, I’m O blood type… and I’m your daughter.”

“Myrcella,” Robert said and something in his tone made her turn. 

She had a feeling of vertigo, the tenor of his voice told her that it wasn’t over. That the worst was still to come.

Everyone heard it, and Robb had stood up, desperate to hold onto her or shield her, steal her away if that’s what it took. 

But she was the only one who knew what was coming. Because when she really stopped to think about it, it all made sense. 

The way she didn’t share a single feature with him, and how he so easily walked away. The worst thought she ever had, the darkest hope she’d ever known. The simplest truth of all. 

“I’m not though,” she whispered, her voice breaking, “Am I?”

All it took was the shake of his head and her world went black.  

Chapter Text

When she was a little girl Myrcella liked to sit on the window seat in the formal sitting room of her family’s home and look out over the city. It seemed to her an entire world unto itself, with beeping car horns and helicopters landing on the tops of buildings. She wondered what it was like to walk around on the city streets, if Flea Bottom was really as dangerous as it sounded, she imagined packing a picnic and eating it in one of the parks by the sea. 

She had no idea that all the children of Flea Bottom, and all those enjoying their picnic lunches, looked up in awe at her family home and thought about how lucky the girl inside of it must be. 

Because to her, that home had never been one. Not really. 

One was not supposed to have to tiptoe around a home, get a special lock on their bedroom door so that their older brother couldn’t enter. A home was not supposed to be filled with yelling and the sounds of glass shattering as one of their parents dropped or threw a glass. 

A home was where you were supposed to feel safe, and loved. So she had never had one. 

Until she woke up in Robb Stark’s arms. 

Though they all had rushed to her so that she would not fall the entire distance to the floor, only he had made it in time, catching her in his arms and easing her down, cradling her. None of them had spoken after her eyes rolled into the back of her head, they all sat in suspended silence as though she were a princess in a fairytale with a curse placed upon her that affected the whole household. 

Ghost had come into the room moments before she fell, and he had rested his head in her lap, eyeing the rest of them warily. Every so often the perpetually silent dog would let out a half whimper. 

He was the first to realise she’d woken, but he stayed almost as still as a statue, merely pressing himself more firmly against her. 

She blinked her eyes open and immediately looked into Robb’s blue.

Without thinking she reached up and let her knuckles graze the scruff on his chin. It was the most intimate thing either of them had ever experienced, and Robert and Lyanna watched them and saw them for what they were, babes in the woods, two young people who had fallen in love.

A chance for a Stark and a Baratheon to get it right the first time. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Robb murmured softly, not caring a whit that his aunt and cousin and Robert overheard. 

Jon and Myrcella had listened to that story, all of it, down to the last beat and their worlds changed. Supposed truths turned to vapour, slipping through their fingers the more they tried to hold onto them. But Robb had heard the warning in all of it. The way decisions made when you are young can affect the rest of your life, the way a single decision ripples out and out until the flap of a butterfly’s wing can cause a hurricane in the middle of the sea. 

So he had vowed to himself that from this moment forward he would do right by her, if nothing else. 

“Hi,” she whispered back.

“Can you sit up?,” he wondered. 

Her brow furrowed, wanting to tell him that of course she could. She had a disciplined body that always did what she told it to. But when she tried to push herself up she found herself unable. 

Robb had eased to the ground with her, so she was now between his legs, his arm cradling her head. He moved his hands down her body, and though he had longed to touch her since the moment he saw her he did not linger lasciviously, rather he gripped her torso gently and eased her up, letting her golden hair fall over his shoulder as her head lolled into the crook of his neck.

“Myrcella,” Robert said quietly. 

All at once she remembered it all, and a film of sweat covered her body. 

“No,” she protested. Then pleaded, “No. No more.”

She couldn’t take it, not one more thing, not one more missing piece of the puzzle.

“Okay,” Robert agreed quietly, almost to himself, “Okay, kid.” 

He would have picked her up and carried her to bed, the way he never had when she was a child if he thought she would have let him. But the only thing harder than hearing the things he’d told her was saying them, and he did not have the strength to deal with her pushing him away now. 

Thankfully Jon stepped forward and knelt down, placing one hand around her back and the other under her knees, standing up again easily. In another situation she might have been embarrassed to be carried like a baby, but Jon’s charcoal sweater was soft and his arms were strong and they might be the only ones safer than Robb’s because she loved him in a way that wasn’t scary, and he loved her the same. 

“Let me take you to bed, El,” he said and she wrapped her arms around his neck and hid her face in his shoulder. 

“I can take her,” Robb offered, as though any of them might think he was unwilling.

“No,” Jon nearly snapped. Then, realising Robb was not the enemy softened his tone and explained, “I’ve got her.”

In truth he didn’t need to explain. Robb would not have let anyone walk out of the room with Sansa or Arya if he were in Jon’s place. 

If she had been any other girl she might have left without another word, but as Jon moved to leave, so softly that no one else would have heard if they were not so attuned to her in that moment she said, “I’m sorry you’re sick.”

Jon glanced at Robert, and it did not take a genius to know what he thought of him, and walked out of the room, Ghost at his heels and walked up the stairs, down the hallway to her bedroom. 

He had never given much thought to it, but the room suited her. He had never understood the need for a fancy guest room, everyone he and his Mom knew lived within five minutes from their home, but with Myrcella’s perfume bottles on the vanity, and a pile of freshly folded laundry on the overstuffed armchair, it didn’t look fancy. And it didn’t look like a guest room. It looked like it belonged to her. Like it always had. 

He laid her down on the bed and Ghost hopped up a second later. 

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. 

He sat down on the edge of her bed, “Don’t be, you’re light as a feather.”

“Not for that, I’m sorry for -,” she started but she had no idea where to begin. 

She was sorry that she’d known Aegon her entire life and she hadn’t known him. Sorry that she’d resented him at first, even though she was fond of him. Sorry that he was losing Robert. 

She was sorry that she’d gotten to sit at dinner with his father when he never had.

She was sorry for everything. 

“You shouldn’t have had to find out like this,” she said finally.

He shrugged, “There is no good way to find out the things we learned tonight. But I’m more worried about you.”

She smiled weakly, “Classic Jon.”

He smirked, “I told you I was gonna look out for you,” he shook his head and teased, “Had no idea what kind of check I was writing.”

She knew the answer but she had to ask, “Did you know, about… any of it?”

He shook his head, but refused to lie to her even a little bit, “I knew who my father was, but no, not the rest of it.”

He brought the covers up and tucked them under her chin. He had always been a bit jealous of Robb, that he’d had younger siblings. Even though his cousins had adopted him as one of their own, and he had always been welcome to sleepover as much as he wanted, it wasn’t the same as living at Winterfell day in and day out. Where someone always needed help with their homework or a squabble always needed sorting out.

For a very long time he had felt like an older brother without any siblings, and then he’d walked into this very room and seen a pair of skinny legs poking out from the armchair. He’d been terrified of her at first, she had the kind of beauty that could kill a man - not just from wanting to possess it, but from wanting to protect it - but then she’d hooked him without even realising it, without him realising it either.

“Well,” she sighed, her lower lip trembling in a way that made his bones ache, “Then you know more than I do.”

“We’ll find him, El,” he promised, “Whoever he is.”

She shook her head, “No, no I don’t want to know. Tonight I found out that the man I thought was my father, isn’t, and that my mother allowed me to live with a man who resented me for not being his my entire life, allowed me to wonder why he didn’t love me when she knew. If that’s what parents are… I don’t want any more of them.”

Jon didn’t tell her that she was wrong. Or at least that she was part wrong. She hadn’t been here before, when Robert was drying out. Hadn’t seen the stages of it. The regrets. 

All of them were her. 

Lyanna had finally asked What about the boys but Robert had merely shaken his head. Cersei’s sunk her claws into them too deep. They’re Lannisters - to the bone. But Myrcella…she’d be a Baratheon if I’d let her, no… not a Baratheon. Something better. 

He loved her now, that much was clear, but likely he always had. He’d just hated himself and her mother more. 

So really, he didn’t deserve defending. 

“Okay, El,” he promised, “No more parents. Get some sleep, okay?”

She nodded, “Okay,” but she looked wary at the prospect. 

“Do you want me to stay with you?,” he wondered, hoped.

She crinkled her eyes at him, “I’ll be okay. But let’s take a boat ride tomorrow. Just us?,” then her face fell, “And Ghost.”

He couldn’t help but smile, she was as loyal a beast as their dog. “And Ghost,” he promised.

He pat Ghost’s head and stood up, going back to his room and leaving her alone. She didn’t turn off the light, didn’t dare to. She just pet Ghost’s soft head, focusing on his red eyes. 

Another girl might have imagined who her birth father was. What he looked like, what he was doing at that very moment. If he knew about her, if he cared. But Myrcella had meant what she said. She thought of parents the same way she thought about tattoos - nice for other people to have but she had no desire for them herself. 

Instead she thought of winter roses in the trash and the smell of vodka being wiped off of counters. She thought of Lyanna, sixteen and pregnant knocking on her parents’ door. She thought of Jon being the first thing to make his grandfather smile since his daughter left. She wondered where Rhaegar had been. What he’d been doing. If he’d been holding Aegon as Lyanna changed Jon’s diaper. If Rhae had asked him where he’d been all summer long. And she thought of Elia, sweet Elia who was the pride of her family, and had ever only known love until she had gotten married. 

If Myrcella had to guess, Elia would have felt sympathy for Lyanna. Bitterness was not in her nature, and her ire never fell on the wrong party. 

In fact, no other person, apart from Rhaegar, knew both women as well as she. To her at least it seemed that they might have been friends in another life.

Men had a way of depriving such things of women. 

She had always known Rhaegar to be charming - though not her favorite of Trystane’s uncles. That title belonged to Oberyn, who moved like a viper and smiled like a snake but valued his family above all else. But Rhaegar had his own merits, always inventing games for the kids, even as they entered their teens. He’d name Rhae his Queen of - 

She shot out of bed and ran to her bookcase. Ghost stood up, wondering if they were going for a midnight cruise but then plopped back down in a hurrumph upon seeing her destination. She searched for the book and her slender fingers fell upon it as if by magic and she pulled it from its place. 

To my Queen of Love and Beauty, 

Words fail me - you banish them from me, rid me of them - and so I must give you the words of others along with my devotion. 

Ever yours, 

R

She had remembered reading those words and not quite believing that her father, or Robert, could have written them. Because he hadn’t. Jon’s father had. 

I thought that it was old-fashioned, courting, Lyanna had said. 

She could see it so clearly. Lyanna, beautiful with an untapped wildness in her, tired of the same stories over and over. Fresh with grief from burying her eldest brother, and lonely only in the way that girls who are supposed to have everything ever really can be. Too smart for boys her own age, too naive to stay away from men too many years her senior. A cheating boyfriend and an overprotective father. 

Robb had asked her why she’d left, Myrcella couldn’t imagine a reason that she’d stay.

The pad of her index finger hovered over the R, she touched it to the paper and she could feel the indentation on the page, the purpose in it. 

Someone fell through the window, making her jump back and nearly drop the book. 

“Robb?,” she asked. 

“Gimme a minute,” he pleaded, coughing. 

She placed the book back on the shelf and went to him, kneeling down. He looked winded but unhurt, there was a flush in his cheeks and one of his curls was matted to his forehead. She brushed it back and his blue eyes met hers. 

“How did you get in here?,” she wondered. 

She was on the second story and there was no balcony outside of her bedroom. 

He grinned at her, “I told you I wasn’t Robin.”

She didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile, she just wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He was surprised, but he recovered quickly and hugged her slender body to him, one of his hands clutching the back of her neck. 

Neither of them were very practiced in kissing. She had been kissed by Trystane a few times, but they had been gentle, tentative kisses that had made her feel nothing more than guilt. He had kissed a number of girls, he was eighteen and gorgeous after all, but rarely more than once and never like this.

So the kiss was not without clumsiness, but it was covered by enthusiasm and tenderness and the incredible understanding between them that there would be time to learn together.

“Myrcella,” Robb said, trying in vain to stop kissing her, “Myrcella,” he said once more against her lips. He kissed her once more firmly and then leaned his forehead against her, “This isn’t why I came up here.”

“Could have fooled me,” she teased and pressed another sweet kiss to his lips, squeezing him tighter and burying her face in the crook of his neck, letting the scruff of his chin scratch against her temple in an odd and comforting way. 

He kissed her soft cheek, letting the tip of his nose rub against her skin, breathing in her honeysuckle jasmine scent. 

“I came,” he explained, moving to stand up and bringing her along with him. “To see if you were alright. Which I know is a silly thing to say, because of course you aren’t, but I wanted to see if I could help.”

Myrcella’s breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him. It was more than that he was handsome, he was good. So well and truly good. It was like staring in the face of a god. 

“This is helping,” she said against his lips. 

He gave into her for a moment, because after wanting her a little more each minute since he’d met her, it was impossible not to. 

“I meant what I said,” he told her though, because she had to know. It was too important to him. “I don’t want it like this. I don’t want you to kiss me because you’re mad at him.”

Myrcella thought of Lyanna at sixteen, beautiful and willful, but perhaps not terribly brave - at least not in love. She thought of mistakes and missed opportunities and she knew that she did not want to ever throw flowers in the trash because she could not bear to think about the first time she herself bloomed. 

“Well how about because I’m in love with you,” she suggested, unwilling to allow history to repeat itself, and then wondered, half teasing, half serious, “Is that a good enough reason?”

The force of his kiss nearly knocked her off of her feet, but it was just as well because he was lifting her off of them, cradling her in his arms. There was no clumsiness in this kiss, both were quick studies, only desire and happiness and the fear of losing both. 

He carried her back to her bed and fell down upon it with her, making Ghost grunt in annoyance at the indignity of it all. Neither of them noticed.

Robb was on top of her and she was under him and their hands sought refuge on one another, grasping for anything they could hold onto, desperate and hormonal and in a deeper love than their years should allow. 

“Say it back,” she ordered in between kisses. 

“Hmm?,” he wondered, his arm wrapping around her waist and rolling with her so that she was on top of him, because he was afraid he might crush her but he couldn’t bear to lose contact.

“Tell me,” she ordered, confident in the way that only girls who are well and truly adored can be, “You love me.”

“Oh,” he broke the kiss and grimaced, “You see the thing is… I just don’t want to rush anything…”

She narrowed her eyes at him and he winked at her and though perhaps he had not come to her room for just this purpose - though she, and the gods, and even he doubted it - he had done what he’d set out to do. She did not resemble the girl who’d been carried out by Jon not even an hour earlier. 

She kissed his cheeks and his nose and his forehead and his eyelids, “Tell me,” she said before each kiss and after, “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

They were both laughing when he pushed her curtain of golden hair away from her face and looked into her eyes, but even still his eyes smarted and his voice dropped an octave and very nearly cracked when he said, “Alright, I love you.”

A tear fell from her eye onto his cheek when she leaned down and kissed him softly, slowly, once again, their laughter forgotten. 

They stayed up late, all through the night, like children having a sleepover. They told each other stories and let Ghost crawl in between them, smothering him with kisses and hugs. Robb pulled the covers over all of them and they whispered until the sun started waking up. 

And when Myrcella’s eyes started drooping Robb pulled her against him, playing with her soft hair and letting his lips follow the slant of her cheek. 

She fell asleep with a smile on her lips and promises of love in her ear and when she woke hours later, still in his arms, she snuggled in closer, happy for once, to be home. 

Chapter Text

During a good northern summer, there are three or four perfect days when the air is warm and the gentle breeze feels like a caress upon the skin, blue skies with enough clouds that sunbathers don’t feel the need to retire to a shaded spot at midday. 

Today was this summer’s sixth. 

Myrcella had woken up in Robb’s arms and he had told her all the things she already knew. That it was okay to be angry with Robert and still be sad that he was sick. That she didn’t have to want to know who her birth father was, but if she did he would be there with her every step of the way. That he loved her and that she’d never feel unloved again. 

Even still, it sounded better coming from him. 

They’d kissed goodbye a hundred times, and then half a dozen or so more the way that lovers throughout the centuries had done before, and when he hopped out her window and she saw him safely on the ground below she couldn’t help but hug herself in delight. 

It was no small thing to be loved by Robb Stark. Many girls had attempted it, but only someone with the right mixture of beauty and grace, stubbornness and kindness, intellect and bravery would ever have any luck. 

The truth of the matter was, he had been waiting for her his entire life, just as she had been waiting for him. So when they met it had made all the sense in the world that they would fall in love, and their game of pretending they hadn’t was exactly that - a game, a diversion before the inevitable occurred. The gods had given them no choice in the matter. 

Robb Stark would fall in love with Myrcella Baratheon and she would love him in return. 

But if they’d had a choice, if their lives were their own to do with as they wished, the result would have been the same.

She’d filled the large claw bathtub, adding in some bubblebath she and Lyanna had purchased a boutique in town and climbed in. And as she sat amongst the bubbles, the smile faded from her lips, and when she hugged her knees to her chest it was a different sort of a hug. Her hair hung in wet, limp locks and the pads of her fingers shriveled before she finally rose, feeling much older than she had before she got in. 

Because though being loved by Robb Stark was the sort of thing that could change a girl’s life, it could not actually change the current reality of hers. That her father was sick, dying, and he wasn’t even hers. That her parents had lied to her, her entire life. 

That there was a man out there who might laugh the same way she did, or hate cilantro… or love her. 

She wrapped her purple bathrobe around her and padded out, leaving thick wet footprints on the dark hardwood floor. Usually she would have grabbed her brush right away, eager to get on with the day. To see Sansa or Robb, to go for a run. Instead she took a seat in the oversized armchair, propping her feet up on the windowsill. 

The warm morning sun dried her toes and she watched as boats sailed by. Someone had lost their oar and there was a large production of getting it back to them. Teamwork involving someone in a fishing boat and another on a jet ski. 

There was a knock on her door and she took a deep breath, “Come in.”

“Myrcella,” a gentle, northern voice said. 

Lyanna. She had known it would be her. 

“Did you know?,” she asked. 

There was silence as the older woman shifted from one foot to another. The girl in front of her terrified her in a way that no one else ever had. To love someone, so much, to hope for them and pray for them, knowing all the while that sooner or later they were going to hate you, was the most inventive torture the gods had ever created. 

“Yes,” Lyanna confirmed, because she was a Stark and Starks never lied.

“And you said nothing,” Myrcella seethed, because Lyanna had lied and she held Starks to a higher standard than Baratheons or Lannisters. 

Lyanna stepped further into the room and Myrcella heard, lifting her feet off the windowsill and placing them on the floor. Ready to run. 

Lyanna grabbed the brush off of the vanity and walked slowly over to the chair, knowing that at any moment the girl before her might sprint. Knowing she had every reason to. 

Bravely she picked up a lock of hair. Myrcella’s back went rigid but she didn’t move otherwise, so Lyanna pulled the brush gently through her wet hair. She repeated the gesture with the next lock, and then the next. 

Myrcella sat perfectly still, trying not to wish that her mother had done this when she was a child. Lyanna moved purposefully, wondering if she could tell her that she’d always wanted a daughter. 

Tears welled in both their eyes, which were blinked away quickly. Sometimes similar traits run deeper than the color of one’s hair. 

“He loves you,” Lyanna said finally. 

“Does he?,” Myrcella asked, finally asking the question she’d long feared, “Or does he just love you?”

“I don’t -,” Lyanna started. 

“Haven’t you ever wondered why I’m here? Haven’t you ever questioned if it isn’t all just a show for you?,” Myrcella asked. 

Lyanna smiled sadly, “No, darling no. If he was putting on a show he’d have done a better job.”

Myrcella’s brow furrowed and she tilted her head to the side so that Lyanna could brush the left side of her hair. She had never really thought about that before, but Lyanna was right.

If Robert had wanted to act the perfect father, than he had done a terrible job of it, and it didn’t take a genius to know that Robert wouldn’t fail at anything he was doing on Lyanna’s behalf. 

So there were only two remaining possibilities. The first was that he felt guilt. This though, was unlikely, because if it were guilt alone he could have dismissed that by blaming her mother. The second, and far less believable option was in fact the one that all things considered made the most sense. 

That he wanted a relationship with her, whether he was her father or not. 

And this is the one that scared her the most. Because it meant that he knew he would not have much time left to create one. 

“How sick is he?,” she asked. 

Lyanna let out a shaky breath, her hands though remained steady. The repetition was soothing, the feel of bringing the brush through Myrcella’s silky hair comforting. 

“Lyanna,” Myrcella repeated. And then looked up at her, “I can handle it.”

Lyanna’s eyes welled with tears, and this time there was not enough iron within her to banish them. 

“I can’t,” she confessed. 

Myrcella stood in horror and pulled Lyanna by the hands and made her sit in the chair. She who had just fallen in love for the very first time could not imagine what it would be like to lose it. Especially not after having it back after so many years. 

She knelt in front of Lyanna and held her hands as the older woman cried. 

“He… he doesn’t have long,” Lyanna said finally, “It was you…coming… he was determined to get through the summer… he wanted to make it right… but now… he’s… I don’t think he’ll make it to Labor Day.”

It was hard to believe. Robert was a titan. He was in better shape than he had been since he was sixteen. His appetite was strong, his laughter boisterous. He was inappropriate and undependable and occasionally awful, but frail? Weak? These were not words that could be used to describe him. 

“I’m so sorry,” she told her honestly. 

“You’re so good,” Lyanna told her. 

In all her life, Myrcella had never heard that. It had been suggested, alluded to, but never said directly. It had never stood on its own. Only in relation to someone else worse. And to be better than someone bad was no great source of pride. 

She didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say to make it alright. So she stood up and Lyanna looked at her. 

Slowly she lowered herself into the older woman’s lap, tucking her feet up onto the chair. If it were anyone else, she might be afraid of their reaction, but even though she’d resisted it out of stubbornness and loyalty, she had grown to know Lyanna. 

And Lyanna would never reject her. 

As though to prove that, the older woman wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. Myrcella leaned her head on Lyanna’s shoulder and Lyanna rested her chin on top of her head. 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you,” she told her. She sighed, “The truth was, he wasn’t going to, because he’d decided that it didn’t matter to him, and I think he was afraid it would matter to you.”

“And the only thing I was afraid of,” Myrcella confessed, “Was that I didn’t matter to him.”

“Then, my darling,” Lyanna whispered into her hair, “Be fearless.”

*

Fearless, she thought to herself. 

Her steps were heavy on the oak floor. She had learned earlier in the summer which boards to avoid when she snuck in at night with Jon, but now she trudged without care. In truth she wanted to warn him. Give him the time to think, even flee. 

Because they’d only ever get to have this conversation once, and they both deserved to have it in the right way.

She knocked twice on the door. It opened nearly immediately, as though her warning had worked, and it was only with mild surprise that she found it was Jon who opened it. His eyes were rimmed in red.

“I can come back,” she offered. 

“I can go,” he extended. 

“Stay,” Robert said from his armchair. 

As though they had long been doing so, they arranged themselves as siblings might. Jon held the door open for Myrcella and she walked in, and when he closed it he went to her side, in between her and Robert.

It would take a man more foolish than Robert not to be struck by the beauty of the two of them standing there. The children who weren’t his, but who he cherished all the same. Impressive on their own, intelligent and good, strong-willed and kind-hearted, was nothing compared to the pair of them together. 

The loyalty they showed one another was the kind that turned good children into great people. 

The pair of them were inverses of each other in so many ways. Jon was dark where Myrcella was light, tall and broad where Myrcella was petite and slim, he was steady where she was mercurial. Even standing there, she had her hands clasped behind her back, her head held high, nearly unseeing, Jon had his in front him, in front of her, his chin lowered, his eyes watchful. 

It seemed to Robert, who in these past months, his reunion with Lyanna, and connection with Jon, his sobriety, and his illness, had become a bit of a romantic, that at any moment the pair of them might break into a ballet. 

He was not so deluded as to not understand that he would be the villain, the obstacle they’d overcome. That in the second act Jon would be caught in a tussle with him, full of strength and grace, the violins promising doom, but then ah! Myrcella. The princess whom everyone wanted to protect - she, she was the one who would bring about his downfall. A single, merciful blow. And he would exit, stage right, and the pair of them would dance among woodland nymphs, in a garden of righteousness. 

But he had too long played the villain. And his grand exit would not be a single, merciful blow. It would be hospital gowns and bad lighting, terrible food and huddled conversations with the doctors. Tubes and tests, none of which would make a damn bit of difference. 

So sitting here, before them, these children who had somehow come into his keeping, whom he had never deserved, Robert had no fight left in him. 

No strength, the booze had taken it all. But grace, perhaps, could just this once be his. 

“Myrcella,” he began, “I -“

“Wait,” she interrupted gently, “Please.” He had spoken enough last night and she had hardly said a word, and he had done things to her over the years that she’d not forgive, because no one ever really could, and if she wanted to scold him for them now, while she still could, then he would not steal the opportunity from her. She took his silence as permission and said, “I have one thing to ask you. Just one. And I don’t need to be coddled, or comforted. I need you to be the man that you were last night when you told us everything. Say anything, so long as it’s the truth.”

He looked at her and nodded solemnly, for there were a great many things he had no wish to tell her, but none he would keep from her now. 

“Can you separate me from Mother?,” she asked. She looked down at herself and shook her head, “Even though I look like her, and walk like her, and probably talk like her most of the time? For now, for the time we have left, do you think that you could try to separate me from who she is and what she’s done?”

“You’ve never looked like her,” he answered and she looked at him gobsmacked. He shrugged, “To an outsider, I suppose. You’ve got all the same features, but her eyes, beautiful as they are, look at the world and see obstacles, competition, enemies. Yours, more beautiful still, see possibilities, allies, friends. Her lips sneer, yours smile, her words wound, yours challenge. You are not like her, Myrcella, in any way, but looking at you is the only time I’ve ever been grateful to your Mother.”

“So that’s a yes, right?,” Jon asked. 

Myrcella and Robert turned in tandem towards him and Myrcella said, “Uh, yeah Jon, that’s a yes.”

Robert chortled and Jon nodded earnestly and then Myrcella let out a surprised giggle. He grinned at her and she at him and without speaking they both moved toward the other armchair. Myrcella sat in the seat and Jon on the arm. 

Robert leaned forward and said, “I know that was your only question, but I’d like to give you another answer. The reason I didn’t tell you I was sick, Myrcella, is because -“

“You didn’t want me to feel obligated,” she finished for him. She’d known that last night. “You didn’t want me to feel as though I had to forgive you all at once.”

Robert nodded. 

And for the first time Jon asked something for himself, “What about me? Didn’t I deserve to know?”

Robert looked at him, the boy he’d tear out his heart for, the one whose opinion he cared for so deeply that he’d gotten sober for it. Gotten through the shakes and the cravings and the moods for it. The boy who’d taught him to be a man. 

“Of course you did, son,” Robert said and only Myrcella who was sitting so close to Jon, heard the broken little breath of the boy who’d always wanted a father. She leaned against his leg. Robert pointed at them, “And that’s why I didn’t… Watching you two, this summer… has been the greatest, the greatest joy of my life. The two of you teasing each other at dinner, looking out for one another, sneaking in past curfew together -“

“You knew?,” they asked in tandem. 

Robert chuckled, “Of course I knew, what do you take me for?… I’d have turned you into a liar, Jon. Or made you pick and choose your loyalties. And I couldn’t do that to either of you. So I’m sorry, Jon. I chose your honor over mine, and I’d do it again because it’s worth a hell of a lot more.”

Myrcella looked up at Jon and he down at her. Wordlessly Myrcella scooted over in the chair and Jon slid down into the seat beside her. 

“So,” Jon said, “How much time do we have?”

Robert looked at his watch, “Well, I’m heading to the doctors in a few minutes,” and then looked at them, “But I don’t think they’ll give me an answer.”

Myrcella stood up, “Well maybe they’ll give me one.”

Jon stood up, “I’ll drive.”

“Kids -,” he started. 

“Dad!,” they both argued without thinking. 

Afraid of spooking them he nodded, “I’ll just go get Lyanna and my keys.”

And he was the only patient his doctors saw all day that greeted them with a smile. 

Chapter Text

That should have done it. 

The joyful reunion, unspoken but promised forgiveness, it should have done it. If the gods were just, they too would have stopped punishing Robert.

But the gods had not inherited Joanna Lannister’s talent for forgiveness, and broken things were broken further still. 

So there was no miraculous recovery, no donor or new treatment plan. 

In fact, as though the gods had extended all their mercy in giving Robert time to gain such forgiveness from Myrcella, they ripped it away suddenly, and finally. 

As Robert had suspected it was not a single blow. It was hospital gowns and whispered conversations with doctors, tubes and terrible lighting.

Jon and Myrcella grew pale underneath it. Summer tans faded after days spent at his bedside. No more Sunday mornings spent fishing, or hours tanning on the dock. And though they still teased one another at dinner, it was eaten out of tupperware on uncomfortable chairs. 

He convinced them all on the second week that they had to spend a bit of time away. He told them he was sick of them, and though none of them believed him, they all respected his wishes. 

Jon would come in the mornings, and be with him until Myrcella brought his lunch. Robert couldn’t stand the hospital’s food, and the doctors had assured them that there was no reason now to restrict what he was eating. So Lyanna and Myrcella spent hours in the kitchen, and when Lyanna had gotten stuck one afternoon Myrcella made the meal all on her own, and when she thought of how Robert had balked at her cooking at the start of the summer she laughed until she cried, and then cried until she could laugh once more. 

In the afternoons Myrcella would read to him. He liked crime novels, which she’d never cared for, but together they solved the case of the Volantis Villain, the Highgarden Homicides, the Meereenese Massacres. Myrcella had a talent for voices and accents, and sometimes a nurse or two would stay for a chapter, clucking their tongues when Robert offered outlandish theories just to make Myrcella laugh. 

And then Jon and Lyanna would bring dinner, and occasionally a Stark or two, and when they were done, Myrcella would tell Lyanna what the doctor had said that afternoon while Jon picked up, and the pair of them would go so that Lyanna and Robert could spend the evening together. There was an extra cot that the nurses had brought in for Lyanna so that she could hold his hand during the night. And every morning when Jon walked in Robert would hold his fingers to his lips and say Shh, I just got her to go to sleep. 

This was the schedule every day. So on Tuesday, at 2:47 it made perfect sense that Myrcella was sitting in a chair at Robert’s bedside, a chai latte in one hand and a novel about a strangler in Sunspear in the other. Robb was in the chair beside her, half listening and half admiring the way she looked in his navy blue sweater. And Robert was lying in bed, half listening and half admiring the way Robb was looking at her. 

Robb felt his gaze and turned to look at him. 

“Honey, I’m a bit thirsty,” Robert interrupted her. “Would you mind going and getting me some juice?”

“Orange or apple?,” she asked, hopping up. 

“Whatever’s fine,” Robert said. She fixed him with a look as though to say It might be the last juice you ever drink, mister, so he smiled and said, “Orange.”

“Robb, you keep reading,” she ordered, handing her boyfriend the book.

“Alright, sweetheart,” he agreed, though he knew he wouldn’t be. 

“Right here,” she pointed to the place where she’d left off.

“Right there,” Robb said, though he hadn’t looked. 

She pressed a kiss to Robert’s forehead and then to Robb’s cheek, and all the while their eyes were on each other’s. 

Myrcella walked through the familiar halls of the hospital, past the nurse’s desk and the maternity ward. She waved to a few familiar nurses and doctors. It wasn’t a very large hospital and the staff had taken notice of her and Jon. Seeing teenagers in the hospital this often was uncommon, and most of them would ask them about school and their favorite classes and ask them if they were going to parties as they headed out for the night.

They often weren’t. Usually they drove straight home, occasionally to the Starks’. They had both come to terms with what was happening, both had always been pragmatic, but it didn’t mean they could dance on docks and play beer pong as though they didn’t have a care in the world anymore. 

Robb and Sansa and Theon would often come over when they arrived home from the hospital. They’d usually bring some beers or a bottle or a joint. They’d make a fire and sit around, talking and laughing, and none of them ever complained about the parties they were missing. 

She got to the cafeteria and purchased an orange juice for Robert and a chocolate chip cookie for Robb. 

She walked back the same way she’d come and heard voices coming out of the hospital room. 

“You don’t have to ask,” Robb was saying.

“Well I am askin’,” Robert returned. 

Robb sighed and she wondered if she should go in and interrupt them. The two had been civil to one another since she and Robert had made up the day after his confession. She knew that Robb would never entirely forgive him, but he also would never denigrate a dying man. And he’d never let his feelings interfere with anything she truly wanted, so he drove her to the hospital every day, and sometimes he’d come in with her and talk to Robert about the old times that his Dad had told him about.

“Of course I will,” Robb told him before she’d made up her mind. “I love her.”

Her cheeks grew warm and she rested her head back against the wall. 

“I know you do,” Robert said, “That’s obvious. And if I could’ve chosen for her, I couldn’t have chosen better… but you’re young. Young love fades… and I need you to promise that no matter what, no matter what happens between you two, you’ll always look out for her.”

Her heart swelled in her chest and tears filled her eyes. It was so like Robert, this new Robert, to want to make sure she’d be protected long after he was gone. He was doing it with all of them. He’d made her and Jon each promise always to take Lyanna to her favorite restaurant in town on her birthday, and he’d made her promise that she’d call her once a week when she went back down south. He’d urged her to lean on Jon whenever she needed to, and had asked that she kept teasing him even when times were hard. 

It was the hardest part, he’d told her. Knowing that he’d never done enough for any of them, and now not having the time to do anything. 

Most importantly, he’d made them all promise to love each other. None of them had hesitated. 

“Is that your experience?,” Robb asked. “Young love fading? Yes. I’ll always look out for her, of course I will. Even if she gets sick of me and marries Trystane, I’ll always look out for her. Because she deserves it, and you’ve asked me to, and because I couldn’t stop even if I tried. But don’t count on my love fading.”

She took a deep breath and when it was clear that Robert had no answer to that she stepped away from the wall.

“Tell me I haven’t missed anything good,” she said loudly, as though she’d just arrived as she walked through the door. 

Robert looked at her and shook his head, “No surprises.”

The look he gave her told her that he knew she’d been listening. She handed him his juice and then Robb his cookie, who grinned like a little boy as he dug into it. 

Myrcella took the book back from him and rested her feet up on Robert’s bed and started reading once again. 

*

“This is such bullshit,” Jon was saying. 

“Jon, language,” Lyanna chided. 

“It’s not so bad,” Myrcella argued, “Perhaps you’ll become an artiste!”

Robert chuckled, which turned into a coughing fit. All at once the laughter stopped, as Lyanna hopped up to get him water and Myrcella checked in the hall for a nurse. 

The fits were getting worse, and every day he grew paler, weaker. Someone had to help him to the bathroom now, and the skin around his eyes and lips had yellowed. He looked as though he’d aged twenty years in two weeks, and they all spent more time at the hospital now. Convinced each meal might be his last. 

He didn’t like it to be somber though, when they were all there. Which was why Jon had just been complaining about his class schedule for his senior year. That, and because he was genuinely upset that he had to take a Painting elective and had been placed in AP Literature. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Robert said and the coughing had stopped so everyone retook their seats. 

Myrcella handed him the plate she’d been making for him and ignored him when he glared at her for fluffing his pillows. 

She then made her own plate. She hadn’t helped Lyanna cook today because she’d promised to go back to school shopping with Sansa. She’d felt terrible for abandoning her for something so trivial, but Lyanna had smiled and told her how important it was to do things like that. She’d been grateful, because she and Sansa had gotten iced coffees and listened to terrible music and made each other laugh trying on ridiculous new trends, and for a moment she had felt just sixteen again.

“Hey, am I late?,” a familiar voice asked and she turned and grinned. 

“Hi,” she practically cooed. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Robb cooed back and then looked around the room, “I uh, hope you guys don’t mind, I brought a plus one.”

And then Ned walked in the room. 

Myrcella fought the urge to cry, because this more than anything told her that it really was the end, and everyone knew it. Either Lyanna or Robb or Jon must have told him that if he ever wanted to make up with his old friend, truly make up, that he ought to do it now. 

In fact, they all had. 

She turned towards Robert and saw him trying to sit up higher. He wouldn’t want Ned to see him like this, and she felt terrible for him, because there was no hiding it. He grunted a little and Jon stepped forward and helped him sit up, moving the position of the bed slightly so that he could do so, and Myrcella draped the blanket over his leg so that the tubes going up his thigh would not be visible. 

“I hope I’m not intruding,” Ned said.

“You could never,” Lyanna told her brother. 

Myrcella turned to Robb, “Let’s go get a couple of chairs.”

He nodded at her and she took his hand and lead him into the room next door that had long been vacant. When they got inside she tugged him closer and kissed his cheek and his lips and his jaw. 

“Myrcella,” he groaned. 

“I love you,” she told him. 

He took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her softly. She still had not grown quite used to being kissed by him, and she sighed into his mouth, holding him around his waist.

She believed him when he said he wouldn’t stop loving her, because she knew she’d never stop loving him. Their love had been born amongst pain and anger, forged in it, and it was made all the stronger. 

And she could never stop loving the boy who gave Robert the final bit of forgiveness he’d need to allow him to meet the gods with no business left unfinished. 

“As I love you,” he agreed, kissing her forehead. 

They grabbed the chairs and went back inside and found the mood jubilant. Lyanna was red faced and Ned and Jon were laughing and Robert was shaking his head. 

“It was just a teaspoon!,” Lyanna protested. 

“What’s this?,” Myrcella asked, sitting down in the chair that Robb had placed for her and grabbing her plate.

Robert sighed, “Lyanna put cilantro, the devil’s herb, on the damn vegetables.”

Robb gasped in faux-horror, which sent everyone else into hysterics, but Myrcella felt faint. Her hands shook ever so slightly and she felt perspiration on her forehead. 

She glanced at Robert who was chuckling at something that Jon said in defense of his Mom, and placed her plate down on the table. 

She stood up and Robert glanced at her, “You alright, honey?”

Myrcella nodded, lying, “Yeah I just… I have to um… I just have to do something really quickly. You all eat, I’ll be back in just a little while.”

“I’ll wait and drive you home,” Robb told her. 

“No, I’ll wait and drive her home,” Jon argued. 

The adults in the room started laughing about their antics, but Myrcella walked out of the room in a bit of a daze. She walked down the hall to the nurse’s station and stood there for a moment. 

And then a familiar face walked by. It was Robert’s physician. 

“Doctor Luwin,” she said to the old man, and he turned around with a kindly smile on his face. “Can I ask you a favor, please?”

Chapter Text

Robert Baratheon, who had always been known for his boisterous voice and powerful laugh, died quietly in his sleep at 2:47 AM on August 16th. 

Lyanna was with him, and when she called Jon he woke on the first ring, as though he had known, and when he went to wake Myrcella he found her already dressing. 

Days at the hospital turned into days spent planning the funeral, and Myrcella and Lyanna didn’t bother cooking as fresh meals were dropped off nearly on the hour. There were always Starks around, Catelyn in the kitchen, Ned fixing things that had been broken so long no one seemed to remember they had once worked. Rickon took Ghost for a walk every day, even though Myrcella was still taking him on her runs, and Sansa walked around with plates of food, just trying to get one of them to eat. 

Robb all but moved in, but no one said a thing. Myrcella, for all her grace during the day - her decisiveness when it came to flowers, and coffins, and who would speak at the funeral - was lost at night. At night there were no more lawyers to speak to or people to call to make sure they knew, and she would toss and turn for hours, making lists in her mind. That was of course unless Robb was with her, and then her mind would very suddenly go blank as soon as she crawled into his arms. 

So when all the other Starks left, he stayed, and he’d sit out on the back porch with Myrcella and Jon listening to the water hitting the dock and the laughter across the lake, and when she’d yawn he’d stand up and she’d nod, kissing Jon on the cheek and telling him not to stay up too late. 

Sometimes they’d kiss and touch but mostly they’d just hold each other, sharing in their grief. Hers for the loss of Robert, and his for the impending loss of her. 

He never spoke about it, especially not now. He wouldn’t add to her pain, or ask her to divert it. So while she picked out the clothes they’d bury her father in, he began researching King’s Landing University’s politics department. His applications would be due in a few months and he’d never really considered anywhere except Vale, but now he figured he could start his freshman year there and transfer when she started at Vale a year later. She had told him in passing once that it was her first choice, before anything had totally started between them. He’d told her that it was his first choice too, and their eyes had met, and he’d imagined seeing her two years from now across the room at a keg party. She’d smile at him and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear before turning away. He’d cross to her, just as she’d planned, and when he got closer to her he’d ask Don’t I know you from somewhere? and she’d shrug and say You look a little familiar. And he’d sigh and say What took you so long? and she’d tell him I was busy growing up. And that would be that. 

They were always going to end up together, that much had been clear to him from the very first moment, and it felt that day as they sat on the dock that if he had to wait two years he could do it. But the very next day she’d said something impossibly sweet or funny or insightful and he’d realized that he was an idiot, and that he could hardly wait another two hours to call her his. 

The funeral was scheduled a week after Robert’s death, on the morning of August 23rd. They’d wanted to give people time to fly in, from Storm’s End and King’s Landing and even across the Narrow Sea. 

Myrcella sat at her vanity at 9 AM, pulling her hair back half-up-half-down. She tied a black ribbon around to cover her ponytail holder and spritzed a bit of her favorite perfume. She stood up and slid on the black flats she hadn’t worn all summer, smoothing the skirt of her dress. 

Robb was sitting on the bed and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She rested her hands on his forearms and leaned back against his sturdy chest. 

“Is it wrong to tell you that you look beautiful?,” he wondered. 

She smiled sadly and shook her head, “No, Dad would like it.” 

He kissed her temple and breathed her in, “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. He was so proud of you.” 

She nodded, thinking of her last conversation she’d had alone with her father. The way the sun had warmed the room and the tears had flowed unselfconsciously from their eyes. He’d told her just the same.

“Thank you,” she said, looking at him in the mirror, “I couldn’t do any of this without you.”

“You could,” he assured her, “But you’ll never have to.”

They walked out of her room hand in hand and found Lyanna and Jon ready in the kitchen. Jon and Robb shook hands, clapping each other on the back, the pair looking terribly fine and proper in their suits, and far too young to look so sad. Myrcella crossed to Lyanna, who looked stunning in a simple black dress, a shawl wrapped around her slender shoulders. She opened her arms to Myrcella who stepped into them without a thought, and the women gripped each other tightly before walking out, arms around each other’s waists to the car. 

When they arrived, they all snuck in the back so that they wouldn’t have to start the receiving line too early. 

Myrcella went to speak with the Septon as Jon and Lyanna stood with the Starks. She reiterated Robert’s wishes not to speculate on which of the seven heavens or hells he’d wind up in and the her eye caught on a bouquet that had a wilting peony in it so she snatched it up and brought it to the trash. 

When she got back she saw Lyanna standing rigidly with Ned, speaking to someone, and she went to Jon to see what was going on. 

“Who’s here?,” she asked, not being able to see past the sea of Starks. 

Jon looked at her, his face pale, and then Robb was there, her voice too bright when he informed her, “Sweetheart, your mother is here.”

They had all known she was coming, along with her two sons, but only Myrcella was unsurprised she’d approach Lyanna on today of all days. 

“Wait here,” she told the boys who looked as though they wanted to whisk her out the back. 

But though there were many things they would be more adept at shielding her from, now it was her turn to protect them. 

She crossed around Rickon and Bran and Catelyn to stand at Lyanna’s side. 

Her mother wore a black crepe dress and black veil, and was flanked on either side by Tommen and Joffrey, in matching black suits. 

“Mother,” she said, stepping forward in front of Lyanna and Ned to kiss her mother’s cheek. 

“My baby,” her mother cooed, pulling her into a stiff hug. Myrcella’s hands stayed at her side. 

“Hi Tommy,” she said to her younger brother, when she had been released, and pulled her little brother, who now towered above her, into a light hug. 

To her surprise he hugged her hard and she rubbed his back. 

“Hello Joffrey,” she greeted her eldest brother.

And though she’d told them to stay put, she could feel Jon and Robb right behind her. 

“Hello sister,” Joffrey said in that way that made her blood run cold, too jubilant for the occasion.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said politely, and then gestured to the second row of pews, “Please.”

“Come sit with me, Myrcella,” her mother ordered. 

She glanced back at Ned whose eyes crinkled at her and then turned back to her mother, “No, I’ll sit with the Starks. I’m speaking. But I’ll see you after, we have a lot to talk about.”

Her mother looked like she wanted to protest, but she turned on her heel and sat down in the front row. Jon sat next to her, and Lyanna next to him, and then Ned and Robb down to the littlest Stark, with Catelyn sitting next to Rickon to keep him from making too much noise. 

The service started with a hymn, which was beautiful and which Robert would have hated. The septon thanked everyone for coming and spoke a bit about Robert, though he hadn’t really known him. And then she was called to the podium. 

She squeezed Jon’s hand and he kissed her cheek and stood up, walking her up and holding her hand while she climbed the steps. 

She looked out over the sea of people, all dressed in black, and wish she’d written something down. But then she glanced at Jon, and Lyanna, and Ned and Robb. 

“Thank you all for coming, I know that it would have meant a lot - no, I can’t say that. The Robert Baratheon I knew would have said what are you all doing inside for? I’m dead, I don’t need your words,” she started and then crowd chuckled. “I’m also pleased that this is happening on a Sunday, because that means I was not forced out of bed and onto a fishing boat at 6 AM to catch some lousy trout,” this time she heard Lyanna laugh amongst the crowd, which was all she really cared about, and she smiled at her. “Robert was a titan. He lived loudly and powerfully, and he loved fiercely. He loved Lyanna, so much. In a way that softened him and strengthened him and made him better, the way all the greatest loves do. He wasn’t perfect, far from it. He made mistakes, big, bold mistakes and he paid for them, but he did a lot of good too. He became a father to a boy who needed one, and in doing so became worthy of a son like Jon Snow. He was loyal to his friends, fearsome to his enemies, defiant to the gods…,” she said and her eyes fell on Robb who smiled at her and then to Sansa, who had tears running down her cheeks and she thought of the night it all had come out, and what Sansa had said to her in the car. “I came up here not knowing what to expect. I packed some sweaters,” more chuckles, “And a lot of books, and set off into the great wilderness, because I’d never really known Robert Baratheon. I’d lived in the same house as him for most of my life, but I never really knew him. And then I came here, and I met my Dad. My imperfect, loud, occasionally boorish Dad, who taught me the gentleness of Sunday mornings and the merits of a good mystery novel. Who hated cilantro and communists, and loved football, and cider doughnuts… and me. He was a titan, and the world feels smaller without him in it. So, wherever you are Dad - and I promise I won’t speculate,” more chuckles, “I love you, and I miss you, and I’m so very grateful I got to know you.”

She moved away from the podium and was surprised that it was Ned who met her at the stairs. She took his hand, grateful for it because she was shaking, and allowed him to walk her back to her seat. 

He spoke then, and then Jon, and she and Lyanna cried as Jon got choked up telling everyone what an inspiration Robert was. How he’d pulled himself out of the dark into the light and so became the light for others. And then Ned and Jon and Robb, Theon, Stannis and Renly stood and lifted his coffin, and she and Lyanna followed behind, the Starks behind them. 

Lyanna took her hand and lead her to the town car that would take them to the cemetery, and they waited for Jon to get in before the driver pulled away. 

She and Jon flanked Lyanna and they road mostly in silence until the car stopped once again. 

“Ready Mom?,” Jon asked quietly. 

She turned as well, “We can give you a minute, either sit with you or leave you on your own.”

Lyanna took Jon’s hand and then hers and raised them to her lips. Myrcella’s eyes met Jon’s and his lower lip was trembling and so was hers, and wordlessly they reached for each other’s hands too. 

“You two,” Lyanna said in a wobbly voice, “Are the best things he ever did… let’s go say goodbye.”

They got out of the car as the first of the Starks were doing the same. She went to Robb’s side and he tucked her under his arm and they all climbed the steps together, two by two as all the school rhymes go. 

She smiled when she got to the top of the hill. It was one of the highest points in town, and it had a view of the entire lake. Robert would have loved it. 

“He’ll like it here,” Robb told her, his thoughts in line with her own as they so often were. 

She smiled up at him and nodded. 

“That was quite a speech,” a cold voice informed her. 

She turned to her left and saw her mother, flanked once again by her brothers as though they were a formation of crows. 

“Thank you,” she said politely. 

“Well,” her mother said and then asked, “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“Of course, Mother, this is my boyfriend, Robb Stark. Robb, this is my mother, Cersei Lannister,” she said. 

Robb’s eyes were not on Cersei Lannister. Robb’s eyes were on Joffrey Baratheon. The boy who had broken Myrcella’s arm. The boy who had caused her to get an extra lock on her bedroom door. The boy who was looking at him with a smug smirk at Robert Baratheon’s burial. 

Myrcella pinched his waist and he turned to her mother. 

“Ms. Lannister, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said politely, offering her his hand to shake. 

She looked down at it until he dropped it and then looked back at him, “You don’t look like your father.”

“No, I favor my mother,” Robb agreed.

Cersei gave him a simpering smile and Myrcella fought the urge to scratch her eyes out, “Something you two have in common.”

“I’m Joffrey,” her older brother informed him, as though he couldn’t help himself. 

At being addressed by him, Robb’s politeness faded and his jaw set and Myrcella held onto his suit jacket. 

“I know exactly who you are,” Robb said, “And if this were any other time or any other place, we’d be having a very different conversation. As it stands, I’m sorry for your loss, and with all of your permission I think I’ll go join my family.”

“Go on,” she told him, not wanting to give her mother the chance to say anything else, “I’ll join you in a moment.”

He glanced once more at Joffrey and then pressed a kiss to her temple and walked away. 

Her mother watched him go and said, “He’s handsome, I’ll give you that.”

“I’ll be sure to pass along the compliment,” Myrcella noted. 

“What’s gotten into you?,” Cersei asked. 

“My father died!,” Myrcella hissed. 

“He -,” her mother started and then stopped herself. 

Myrcella raised her brow, “He what?”

Cersei’s eyes flicked to hers, and to those passing by they almost looked like sisters. Every feature was the same, the arch of their brow, the slant of their cheekbones, their full lips and wide eyes. 

But for the first time in her life, Myrcella realized that she could never be so ugly as to look like her mother. For the first time in her life, her face was her own. 

Cersei looked as though she’d long feared this realization and had seen it take hold right before her eyes. 

“The boys will go home straight after the burial,” she informed her, “But I’ll stay until tomorrow and help you pack up. I’ve booked us on the 6 o’clock flight. That should give you time to say your goodbyes.”

Myrcella raised herself up to her full height and said with all the coldness her mother had taught her, “No need. I can say all my goodbyes straight after the burial.”

Cersei almost smiled, “Really? In that case I’ll see if I can change the flight.”

“Do,” Myrcella nodded and then met her mother’s gaze, “Because after today I never want to see you again.”

Her mother paled, “Myrcella.”

Myrcella strengthened, “Mother.”

“Whatever your father told you -“

Myrcella’s brow furrowed, “But I thought he wasn’t my father?” Her mother blanched. Myrcella smiled, forcing the bile back down her throat. “That’s what you told him, wasn’t it? That I wasn’t his, that none of us were? I wonder how you did it, did it take much convincing? Did he ask for a test? Probably not. But I did. And you know what I found out?”

“Myrcella, don’t make a scene,” her mother ordered. 

“Oh I have no intention of it,” Myrcella assured her. She then narrowed her gaze and ordered, “Just answer me one question.” Her mother’s jaw clenched. “Did you know? That I was his?”

She’d known before she got the result, but even still she’d sobbed upon reading them. She went into her Dad’s room and his face fell to see her so upset. Come here, honey, what’s wrong? he’d asked, and she did something she’d never done. She ran into his arms. She laid her head on his chest, and told him that she was his, that she’d always been his. He hadn’t understood and she handed him the paper, and he’d let out a sound she’d never heard before, a great wail that she hoped to never hear again. 

They had thought it didn’t matter. Choosing to love one another as father and daughter in spite of it. But seeing it, written down, they were haunted by the time they had lost, and grateful for the relationship they had found. 

Cersei said nothing, didn’t move a muscle, but Joffrey had all of her temper and none of her restraint. 

“You little lying bitch,” he hissed at her, his arm closing around her forearm, right over her scar. 

Her blood ran cold but then there was a wolf in front of her. A great big wolf in a black suit with curly black hair. And if anyone had asked him, Joffrey Baratheon would have told him that in that moment, Jon Snow’s eyes were red. 

“Don’t touch her,” he growled. 

Joffrey, stupid, petty, weak Joffrey, shoved him, “This is between me and my sister, it doesn’t concern you.”

Jon let out a harsh chuckle, “Actually this is between you and my sister, so yeah it fucking does. Walk away, Baratheon. Get away from her, get out of this town, get out of the North, because I swear to the old gods and the new the next time I see you touch her, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

There was no person or god that doubted him, and so with a final sneer Joffrey walked away and Myrcella never saw him again. He died a few years later, having inherited the worst of his parents and their addictions along with it. He was alone when he died, and only Cersei attended his funeral. 

Tommen looked between his mother and sister, unsure of who he should go to, and knowing he did not want to be anywhere near Jon Snow. 

Myrcella looked at him and suggested gently, “Write me when you get home, Tommy. We can be pen pals, you always wanted one, didn’t you?”

He nodded and she stepped forward and hugged him. Though Robert had never been much of a father to him, he went to say goodbye, because it was the right thing to do and neither of his parents had spent enough time with him to turn him into one of them. And he did write to Myrcella, and she wrote him back. Their letters were awkward at first, covering basic things that siblings should know about one another, but as the first snows fell the language between them softened into familiarity, and the letters got more and more frequent.

“You can’t imagine I’ll let that she-wolf steal you from me,” Cersei said. 

“Wake up, Mother,” Myrcella said, “Nobody is stealing me. You did this. You, and no one else. And the funniest part of it all is that all I wanted was to be your baby, but you didn’t care. You never really saw me, wanted me, you just didn’t want me to be anyone else’s. And for your information, Lyanna doesn’t even know. I haven’t even asked her -“

“Good, because you aren’t -“

“No!,” Myrcella forced herself not to shout. “Don’t you get it? I didn’t ask her, because I already know her answer. Because Lyanna would never reject me. Her love isn’t conditional. When she looks at me she doesn’t care what people think of her. I don’t have to do anything to earn it. It just is.”

Cersei’s jaw clenched, “They aren’t your family. This isn’t your home.”

“They are, and it is,” Myrcella corrected and stepped away. She almost left it at that, another sort of daughter might have. But Myrcella said, “I’m sorry, Mother. Truly. You’ll never know what is to have either, and that’s a tragedy. But I do, and you know what I’ve realized? It isn’t about your last name, or your blood. It’s about the people you rely on when the world has taught you not to rely on anyone. A home is the place you can always go back to. I have one now, and I think it’s time I get back to it. Goodbye Mother.” 

Cersei watched her walk away and in all her life she had never seen someone quite so beautiful. She didn’t stay for the burial, for all the things she and Robert had done to one another over the years she had expected to feel triumphant, but instead found that she could not watch him be lowered into the ground. It was too sad an end to their sad story, so the last thing she saw before she turned away was Lyanna wrapping a protective arm around Myrcella’s waist. 

She respected her daughter’s wishes, and the pair never met again. One day an envelope arrived from Wintertown and Cersei tore it open to see Myrcella smiling back at her. She was dressed in a wedding gown, and the man she’d once dismissively called handsome, stood at her side. On the back of the photograph was a note. 

Dear Cersei, 

I thought you should see this. She was a beautiful bride, the most beautiful bride the world has ever seen. 

And she’s happy. I can’t promise you much, but I can promise you that. 

Lyanna

Cersei never wrote back, but she kept the photo in a silver frame in her sitting room. And two years later she added a picture of a smiling baby boy with rosy cheeks, named Robert for his grandfather, though the note on the back explained that everyone had taken to calling him Bobby. Two and a half years after that, another picture arrived, a cherubic Bobby holding a little baby girl on his lap. Myrcella and Robb had named her Joanna. 

Myrcella walked up the hill and joined the Starks. She stood at Lyanna’s side and when the older woman wrapped an arm around her waist she leaned her head on her shoulder. Robb stood on her other side, Jon and all the Starks flanking them. 

They watched as Robert Baratheon was lowered into the ground, and when their palms were stained from the dirt they’d thrown on his grave, and the other attendees had gotten in their cars, they all remained. 

They looked out over the lake, and the town and then at one another. And some of them were crying and others itching to get out of their stuffy clothes, but they all looked at one another, wondering what to do next. 

So it fell to Myrcella to say, “Come on, let’s go home.”