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The winter stretches on.
Baela bathes in his tub, sits in the steaming, soapy water until her fingertips wrinkle and her hair frizzes from the heat. It makes the shiny pink scars on her tits and belly and back sting but she welcomes it, welcomes the way he watches her, the way his eyes drag over her scars. She wonders if, had she never said Jace’s name in her drunken state, his hungry mouth would have licked at the dripping lines of her burns, if his teeth would have scraped at them as if he could somehow find a way to strip her of her pain like bark from a tree. If he would have turned her around in his lap, her shift pushed up to her armpits, and put his mouth to her back as well. No stone unturned, no wound ignored. He was nothing if not dutiful, surely he would have.
She wants him drunk again, wants a second chance, but he refrains and recent events have shown her that she’d have an easier time felling the weirwood with only her hands than bending his will.
(Baela remembers him sat beside the fire, wet cloth dripping in his hold, suds caught in the lines of his hands, his chest, his neck. The twitch of his lip, a laugh caught behind his teeth. He’d caught up more water in that wretched bucket and bent over the tub to pour it through his hair, smacking away her hand when she reached for him, and when he was finished washing himself he wordlessly changed behind the folding screen and went to bed with her still in the tub.
She’d sat there for a long time, considering if it’d be worth it to take that bucket and pour the water over him in bed once it’d gone cold. And then it had gone cold, turning her miserable and pathetic, so instead of revenge she’d crawled into bed in one of his shirts and pettily shoved her cold feet against him. He caught them in his hands, ready, waiting, and oh. She’d never quite realized the size of his hands until that moment. It was easy for him, like picking up a knife, a cup, one of Rickon’s little discarded shoes-)
The winter stretches on.
Some nights, she wakes unwell. Sometimes it's for no reason at all, no dream or cruel memory, just waking to the aching feeling of grief. Of emptiness. It’s all-consuming, like the very world is closing in on her, pouring her out like wine into the sea. There is nothing there, she is alone in the dark. One night Baela brings her scarred palm to her mouth, scrapes her teeth against its ridge, presses her tongue to it as she tries to imagine the blood welling up red and coppery. Secondhand. Two blood oaths separating her and Jacaerys, bound up together in this shiny pink scar in her palm. She’s the farthest from him she’s ever been. It’s the closest she’ll ever be again.
Her world blurs, she drifts. Wakes sobbing. A broad hand brushes at her nightshift, purposeful and careful as it makes its way to rest between her shoulder blades. He’s heavy and warm there through the thin cloth, moves with the fill and stretch and scream of her lungs, stroking up and down to the dip of her lower back. Acquainting himself with the notches of her spine that are no longer as visible as they were all those months ago when she had arrived. Soothes her like he would a babe, half-awake hushing-
Her world blurs, she aches, she hides away. Buries herself in a bed, a nest, a grave of fur. Draws the heavy velvet curtains closed around the bed until only slits of light remain. Her stomach rolls in the abyss, she squeezes her eyes shut until sleep takes her-
Her world blurs, the curtain breaks open, cold sun burns through. Splits open the top of the coffin like a shovel-strike, cracks the yolk of sunlight as it spreads, spreads, spreads. A little body in the furs that isn’t her own, chubby cheeks and sticky hands. Sticky cheeks too, with sticky red jam around a sticky-sweet smile. There’s a tart in Rickon’s hand, fruit squished between fingers, crumbs dancing across the furs. She can’t help but reach out and ruffle his blond baby curls, even as he squirms and giggles and holds out the tart to her. Unbidden, in her eyes he is Viserys, chubby-cheeked and spoiled, holding out a treat just to pull it back to his own mouth with a peal of laughter.
The winter stretches on.
A raven bears news of Rhaena. Baela abandons the Lord’s Quarters to sit on the settee in her untouched room with the thin scroll. Ser Corwyn Corbray, the name brings forth a memory tinged with wine, Rhaena’s head laying in her lap as she spoke sweetly of her time in the Vale. She remembers trying to smile, brushing her sister’s hair out of her face with care, numb to anything but the slosh of wine in her belly and the lingering feeling of betrayal in her bones.
Pregnant, she reads, she can’t quite believe, even as she reads it a dozen times over. More than that, till she slips into a somber state and the sun slips with her mood below the horizon and she can no longer quite make out the words on the parchment.
Her world blurs, the emptiness finds her. Threatens to swallow her whole. She is so full of longing that she cannot recall what it feels like to not be. She longs for home, for the bitter, sulphur smell of Dragonstone on a calm day, for the sea-smell on a windy one. For Rhaena, for Egg. For Father, for Mother, for brothers, for the babes who died and other babes who never were. Who never will be.
The rest of the world has gone on. It has not faltered, it has not stumbled, it has kept on at the same pace as it always has, unrelenting, leaving her behind to make new plans for itself.
Her world blurs, sharpens, Cregan is there. She is so cold that the touch of his fingers to her jaw feels like fire. She presses back against it, tipping her head into his hand, but he withdraws. A rustle of cloth and body and then fur around her shoulders. His cloak pools around her on the settee, drenching her in warmth and scent and familiarity. His hands take hers, rubbing warmth into them, palms broad and strong and calloused.
Rhaena is married, she tries to say, but fails, Rhaena is pregnant.
Baela wakes, it is late in the night. His arm is outstretched beneath her head, the burning line of his chest and hips against her back, and the curtains of the bed are open enough that the fire illuminates the sharp pink of his scarred palm. She stretches out, aligns their palms as best as she can, a burn to her fingers where they strain against the broad span of his own hand. The scars press, kiss, and his other arm unconsciously shifts around her to pull her closer, tighter, fingers wrapped around the jut of her hip. Her nightgown rides up her thighs, bunching beneath her, and she thinks it’d be easy to be distracted if he would be agreeable to it. She’s been good, hasn’t she?
She squeezes his hand again, relishing in the aching stretch of her fingers.
His other hand tightens around her hip, a warning press of his fingertips against the thin skin.
“I’d like to write to her,” Baela whispers into the dark, “Do you think they read her letters?”
He makes some sort of grumbling, affirmative sound against her back as he squeezes her hip again.
“You’ll protect me when they come?”
She already knows the answer but she cannot help it. She's never trusted easily. She trusts him more than she's ever trusted any other.
Cregan’s whole body moves behind her like some great wave as he rolls her to face him. His eyes are closed even as he brings her scarred hand to his mouth, teeth against her palm.
There has never lived a Stark who forgot an oath, she thinks, knows, believes, and Cregan Stark will not be the first.
She grins into his chest, tears burning in her eyes as his arms close in around her once more like a fortress, like a cave, a den. Never a cage. He would never be so foolish.
The winter stretches on.
She wakes in his bed aching in a way she’s almost forgotten. Her thighs are sticky and damp and yet, somehow, the red on the sheets beneath her is still surprising. Was it truly so much before? Surely someone would have to die to leave so much behind? She’s frozen for a moment, just staring at it, furs tossed aside. She can’t even count the months on both her hands since she’s bled, since her body ran dry in grief, and it strangely makes her feels like a little girl bleeding for the first time again. Like she’s being dragged unceremoniously into womanhood a second time over, shedding and scraping all she is and all she’s lost from the walls of her and giving it to the tide.
When she slips from the bed, red-wet cotton stuck to thighs, it wakes Cregan. He stares, blinking, bleary-eyed, at the stained cloth on bed and thigh alike, back and forth, back and forth, and he shakes his head to clear it when she calls his name. There’s a furrow in his brow as he drags the furs from the bed, tossing them in a pile as she calls for a maid, for a bath. He doesn’t bother waiting for them, pulls the sheets from the bed himself as she wraps a dressing gown around her bloodied nightshift. The red bloom remains on the mattress and his jaw clenches, sweat beading on his back and staining his nightshirt as he lifts the featherbed alone, flips it to its clean side without a word.
He leaves too quickly to even remember his boots, a maid comes to fetch them while she’s in the bath. The room smells coppery beneath the lavender smell from the bath oil, thick with steam and smoke from the fireplace, and before she can even think it through she stumbles from the tub naked to the windows, undoing latches and unbarring the shutters. The freezing wind feels like a physical blow, sharp against the water on her skin, and she takes in one burning breath before pulling the glass pane shut again and retreating to the water, the winter-sun cutting through the clouds of steam.
Her chest screams from the icy chill above a stomach swollen and aching and cramping, above aching hips, aching thighs. The steam rolls off the water in the pale light like incense. She breathes it in, exhales it to disrupt the lazy curls, to watch them scatter-
(She remembers later, when Cregan misses dinner, that Arra Stark died in a bed of blood.)
The winter stretches on.
Cregan says spring is on the horizon.
She seals the letter to Rhaena with the direwolf of House Stark and signs it with her name.