Work Text:
One more night turns into five before Cregan can stop it, the days beginning to noticably stretch once more. There’s still snow lingering on the ground but it is distinctly spring. There is no escaping it.
A raven arrives, an attempt at subtlety, probing, Lady Rhaena heard from her sister, would you have any advice for us on how to address the matter of her return?
It sits on his desk, the deep red of the broken Targaryen seal mocking him, next to its twin, the one he gave Baela that prompted her own letter, Lady Rhaena is with child, thank the Gods. It is still early but the Maesters say they believe there is only one-
There’s a stack of parchment there beside it, half-written, thrown a half-dozen times to the fire as he tries to find the words to assure his King of his sister’s wellbeing in a way that will not strike the spark that sets the council alight. There’s no illusion in his mind that the King’s letters are his alone, he knows that aren’t, he knows that every word that reaches Rhaenyra’s youngest son will be examined and ripped apart by a panel of hungry men.
Your sister has claimed refuge in Winterfell-
I have offered your sister sanctuary in Winterfell-
Your sister has claimed Winterfell-
Your sister-
Lady Baela has-
Your brother, Jacaerys, had told me of your sister’s spirit, though now after spending time with her I have realized that he was understating the strength of her will by a significant margin-
He lights another candle, tries again, Fails. Holds out the slip of paper to the fragile flame and lets it burn away until it nearly reaches his fingertips.
“You didn’t come to dinner.”
She walks in without knocking, why would she? It’s never been Baela’s style, rather more likely to be found lying in wait in the very place you thought you could finally be alone. She knows his habits and routine just as well as he knows her own, appearing in his son’s nursery minutes before he arrives, sat on the floor and eating cranberries with Rickon, red juice staining her mouth, her hands, invisible yet soaked into the black cuffs of her winter dressses. Slipping from the shadows of the upper walkways, one of her (his? Whose had it been first? Did it even matter anymore? To the victor go the spoils-) fur cloaks around her shoulders, dark against the pale of her hair, watching the men train in the slush and the mud. If she’d been particularly ill-behaved the night before, he’d strip the sweat-soaked shirt from his back and go back into the fight with the cold against his skin, thoroughly enjoying the pinch of her brow when he glanced up.
Though, now that he thought about it, that likely hadn’t helped any sort of rumor about them. As if his bed and his bathtub and him dragging her by the arm out of the tavern hadn’t been enough to condemn him. To condemn her. Even Daemon Targaryen’s daughter, the slayer of Sunfyre, was still that, a daughter. His sins could be forgiven by the common man, hers would always be remembered before her victories.
“Cregan,” She says, insistent, sharp, her fingertips on the desk between them. She wears a ring there, on her thumb, barely fitting, a broad oval of a silvery three-headed dragon. Only a few months ago it would have slipped easily over and off the knuckle, now it clings to where she unconciously presses her thumb to the side of her pointer finger for security.
“I think it’s time you returned to your own bed,” He stops himself from wincing, though it’s no easy feat, “The maids will clean your rooms shortly.”
“Is that a request or a command?”
He’s not enough of a fool to answer that, instead he lets the silence stretch between them, watches the angry flush rise on her neck.
“My brother, the king, can command me,” She says, finally, an edge to her voice, “You cannot.”
“Your brother’s, the king’s, will is done by the hands and words of his council. A council that knows where you are and who will surely somehow learn where you lay your head at night. It would be far better for them to find you in your rooms and not mine.”
“It doesn’t matter where I sleep, if they come here they will try to take me back. You’re a fool if you think I’m sleeping alone and handing them a map to an easy capture.”
“You’ve never been an easy capture,” Cregan sighed, “You don’t make anything easy, my lady.”
“My lady? What happened to sweet girl?”
He had not called her that since the night she had said Jacaerys’ name in his lap and she had not mentioned it before now in all the months between. He had thought she did not remember.
“I was in my cups, I should not have said it.”
“In your cups or not, you still said it. Were you in your cups when you undressed yourself in front of me as well? I did not think the honorable Cregan Stark relied so heavily on his ales to get him through the days.”
Her smirk is betrayed by the uneasy set of her eyes.
“I have done many things that I should not have. You are the sister to our King, in another life you would have been Queen, my behavior has not been appropriate for our stations-“
“All they’ll say is I corrupted you, your precious honor will be preserved,” She says, almost playful, almost sweet. But not enough, the draconic, angry edge beneath shining through
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Isn’t it?
“It’s about decency.”
“Ah, now that you have been lacking in.”
“And that is something I must remedy.”
When she laughs then, there’s no joy in it. Bitter, sour, it turns his stomach just to hear it.
“What? Do you plan to call the banners if they try to remove me? There’s easier ways to go about this. Much more enjoyable as well.”
He can’t give her a response, his mouth will betray him. Will give her what she wants, what the weakness of his body wants, decency and goodness and honor thrown to the wayside.
She sniffs out his hesitation, bloodthirsty, sharp teeth flashing in a smile that is anything but carefree, “Would it be so bad, being married to me? Would it be so different than life is now, other than how your teasing will finally cease? Though, I wouldn’t be surprised if you continued the teasing, I’m sure it’s quite the thrill for a man as patient as you.”
Guilt, acidic and heavy in his throat. Sara’s voice rings, if Baela Targaryen wished to use you by marrying you, then you used her just the same in not doing so. Don’t act like you didn’t.
Baela’s face falls, truly falls, gives in to the coppery dread, “Gods. Maybe he was wrong about you. Maybe I was, too.”
Her ring, too big for her, scrapes against the wood, stretches the skin of her knuckle taut. He cannot look away. He wants nothing more than to look away.
“You whisper her name sometimes in your sleep, you know that, right? When you’re half asleep and you think I’m her and I just reach back and pet your hair and shush you until you fall back asleep. You’re no better than me, you know that. You’ve just had more time.” Her breath comes quickly, angry and hurried and sharp in the gaps between her ribs. He’s forgotten how to breathe without thinking about it, without the deliberate push and pull of it, a fight for normalcy in his body that he is quickly losing, “People like us, we don’t let go. We can’t. There’s something in our blood that’s older than us and it just won’t allow it. And I’m not just talking about Jace and Arra I’m talking about this, Cregan.”
That’s not something he can accept. He won’t. He refuses. It’s too close to the edge of a cliff that he can’t afford to fall from.
“Look at me and tell me that it wouldn’t bother you,” Her voice breaks, unsteady, betrayed by her own tears and grief in her anger, “the thought of me in another man’s bed. In his arms. With his son growing in me. Tell me.”
His mouth begs to betray him. Bile burns at his throat, jealousy at his heart.
He doesn’t allow it.
“It wouldn’t.”
The silence stretches. She looks at him with something akin to disgust. Pity, even. It makes his skin crawl.
“Liar.” She smiles in a way that reminds him of long ago, bloody and sharp and cruel. The smile Aegon the Conquerer must surely have had before bringing Westeros to its knees, before leaving Harrenhal a melted, charred corpse, “Let me tell you something, my Lord Stark. If you marry and put a wife in your bed, I will crawl over her because your bed is mine. You’ll never touch another woman for as long as I live, you craven cunt.”
Her promise lingers in the air long after she leaves him.
His bedchamber is horribly empty that night, he reminds himself it’s for the best.
He tries to write.
Your sister has asked for sanctuary in Winterfell so that she will not be forced to marry against her will by Your Grace’s council-
In your mother’s name I offered your sister sanctuary when she asked-
Your council is right to say that you should speak with Queen Jaehaera and perhaps take one meal a day with her, despite your hesitations-
I understand that loss can make these things more difficult-
Your sister has-
He feeds them all to the fire, ink smeared in the creases of his palm, his fingers. Stays in his solar late into the night, tries to convince himself its not because of the empty bedchamber. The dry tub. The cold bed. The oath knife in the bedside drawer.
No, it’s spring. It’s reports and correspondence and attempts to give advice to a boy-king who writes to him in a messy hand. He is simply busy.
(“People like us, we don’t let go. We can’t. There’s something in our blood that’s older than us and it just won’t allow it. And I’m not just talking about Jace and Arra I’m talking about this, Cregan.”)
She lives like a sickness in him.
He lies in a cold, empty bed, stretches his arms out across it, fingertips from end to end. Breathes in the smell of her from her side of the sheets and denies doing it all in the same inhale, holds the air of her in his lungs even as he silently insists that it is a good thing that she is not there.
Cregan unlatches the windows, brings in the freezing air by the lungful as if it will purify him, as if it will sweep away the traces of her in the room. How long can he leave a tub sitting empty of a body, full of steaming water, his solar calling with work that can wait till morning, just to see if she’ll steal it? To see if she’ll be waiting for him when he finally comes back, her skin and hair damp from the bath, the warmth of her soaking into his bed?
He thinks about replacing the mattress, but how could he justify it? Her blood is in the mattress and is corrupting my dreams, he could say to the Maester and be promptly thought of as senile.
The mattress is heavy in his hands as he flips it, an awful crashing sound to the fall, and he scrubs furiously at the stain. The red spreads in paler pinks the more water he works into the cloth, tints the bar of soap, drips, drips, drips to the stone floor beneath him. In a fit of frustration, he takes the oath knife out, carves the stain from it, brings forth a rush of feathers, red and pink and white-
(“Look at me and tell me that it wouldn’t bother you, the thought of me in another man’s bed. In his arms. With his son growing in me. Tell me.”)
The news comes. A ship bearing the King’s banners due to arrive in White Harbor in a day’s time.
Your sister arrived in Winterfell during the first snowfalls and by then it was too late for her to leave-
You sister called for sanctuary against the adventageous actions of men on your Grace’s council-
I welcomed her here in your brother’s name-
The reports-
My King-
Aegon-
He burns them all.
He flips the mattress back over.
He bathes in a cold tub.
(“Liar.”)
He sees her at breakfast, her heaviest winter dresses abandoned for warmer-weather permitting necklines despite the snow still on the ground outside. Traces of collarbone, of the slope of her neck, the dip of her chest. He forbids himself to look, to linger, but he can’t stop himself.
Not when there’s a bruise, thick and dark and suspect where her shoulder meets her neck, fluttering with her pulse. It takes over his brain like a fever, sharp and ugly and hot, and he can’t stop looking. Not until Sara clears her throat loudly enough that it startles Rickon, his little silver cup falling to the floor and leaving behind a rattling echo that bounces off the walls.
Liar, Baela’s smirk says, even when he looks away, Liar, liar, liar-
(Idiot, Sara’s eyes say at they burn furious into the side of his face, idiot, idiot, idiot-)
Sleep is fleeting, his restless mind shaking him awake every few hours in the name of a phantom cry from Rickon or a shift of the shadows in the corner. Cursed, he wants to call himself, wants to call on anyone who could fix it. Fix him.
Unfortunately for him, the only one who can do anything about it is down the hall in her own bed with a mark from some other man’s mouth on her pulse.
“It’s about decency.” His own voice mocks him in his head.
Where is the decency in how all he can focus on is the feeling of deprival? There’s no sanctity in him anymore when it comes to her, he’s a bottomless pit. He’s the winter at its darkest, all consuming, horrible. He wants to crack open the bones of them, find all the shattered places where they match and align, bind themselves together in a way that can’t be changed. That or find a way to purge her from himself, from his bed, his home, his mind. He’s thought about sending her away in these last few days as the King’s delegation looms on the horizon, to Deepwood Motte or the Dreadfort, maybe even the Wall, hiding her away until he can finally compose the letter to her brother that won’t betray the depth of his indecency. What’s a bit more treason added to his multitude of sins?
He sleeps in his solar, slips into it sitting up in his chair. Wakes suddenly, achingly, ripped from it in a violent way, though when he opens his eyes he is alone. The slip of parchment haunts him, taunting him from the top of the desk. The King’s men are so close, two days out with good weather, though the way the clouds look, they might have three. So close and yet he cannot form a plan or even a proper thought because she has cursed him. Corrupted his entire being with some kind of old Valyrian magic, their mingled blood in his veins attempting to destroy him from within, punishing him for separating himself from her.
And now she taunts him, showing up for meals with marks barely hidden by her collar, hearing her giggles in the hall as she runs by with some unknown, unseen man, and he is hopeless to ignore it.
Cregan stands so quickly it knocks a candle from his desk, reckless, wax and flame on the rug that is older than him. He stamps it out with his boot, breathing heavily, miserably, and after that he moves with the sole focus of ending this curse. She’ll remove it, she must. He’ll let her have his bathtub and his bed and what remains of his dignity if she’ll just remove it so he can know peace.
It’s disgraceful, the way he makes his way to her, but he cannot stop himself, his heartbeat ringing in his ear as he shoves open the door to her room. He’ll apologize later when he can think of duty and honor.
There’s a man there, in her bed, and the weight of the knife in his coat is suddenly so much heavier than normal. Unable to be ignored. His fingers itch for it in a way that he knows he needs to rein in immediately before everything spirals out of control.
And then he sees her face.
He had met Daemon Targareyn once, a long time ago, but he had never forgotten the man’s face. The way he smirked, the way his eyes glittered in that truly Targaryen way. The way that reminded all men who looked upon them of what they had done to Harrenhal.
Baela has never looked more like her father’s daughter than she does right then. That sharp smirk, those glittering eyes, the dragon who finally lured the man into the room it keeps its hoard in, the dragon who plans to steal all he has to add to it, even his life.
“I need to speak with your Lady,” He hears himself say, voice gruff, an edge of anger to it.
The man looks to her with wary, waiting eyes, sitting up in the bed. He’s one of her bluecloaks, Cregan’s sure of it, he’s definitely not Northern and there’s a faint recollection of a similar face in a tavern a long year ago.
“Go,” Baela says, “I won’t be needing you tonight.”
Cregan forces his hands to still, to clasp behind him, and his eyes remain on hers. She watches him like its some sort of victory, a twitch of mirth at the corner of her mouth. Her companion moves at the edge of his vision, thankfully clothed, and when the door shuts heavy behind him Cregan finally can trust himself to speak.
“What have you done to me?”
Her eyes glitter as she pulls back the furs to climb out of bed, dressed in one of her nightgowns, thick except for when she stands with her back to the fire. In those moments, it can never be thick enough, the shadow of thigh and hip against flame. It doesn’t matter that he’s seen her in nearly every state of undress, it remains a horrible distraction and she knows it. It’s cruel, though he cannot bring himself to call her out on it.
“Does it bother you? Seeing him here in your place? It seems like it does.”
“No,” He says even thought it very much does and he can’t even try to ignore it anymore-
“Liar,” She says, because she knows it, because he’s helpless to the sharp reality of it.
“You’ve cursed me.”
He stalks closer till they’re practically chest to chest, her head craned up to meet his eyes.
“I don’t sleep and I cannot think. Fix it, now. I demand it.”
“Oh, my Lord Stark,” a weariness slips into the cocky smile she wears, “don’t you think that if I could curse those who have done wrong to me to nights of restless sleep and lack of thought, we may have won the war without you?”
Her hand touches his arm, hot even through the layers of fabric, “Whatever ails you, I’m afraid I had nothing to do with it.”
Yes you did, he wants to say, but it feels childish. Though, when he glances down, he reconsiders for a long moment.
She’s wearing socks in bed with her bluecloaks, that brat. They never suffer as he has. She doesn’t steal so much from them as she ever has from him.
“Did you lie with him?” It slips from him unbidden.
Part of him wants to take it back, he doesn’t want to know. If anything, knowing she has will make his sleep worse than it already is.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She presses closer as if there’s any room for that, “What will you do if he did? Geld him? Kill him? Throw him in a cell to freeze for a night or two?”
His fingers itch-
“Maybe you’d sleep a little better, if you did.” She shrugs, “Or maybe not. You’d still think about it, still wouldn’t be able to sleep. Would you watch my waist to make sure nothing he could give me took hold? I have a feeling you would.”
He would. Not that he’s about to tell her that. It would drive him to madness.
“I won’t raise another man’s child in my house.”
He regrets it the moment his tongue betrays him yet again, her eyes lighting up. The lift of her brow. Hook, line, sinker-
“Then don’t.”
Brat, he wants to call her, brat, brat brat-
Instead he brings a hand up in the barely-there space between them, gently catching that smirking, upturned face by the chin.
“I won’t raise a dead man’s either. They’ll never be his, they’ll be mine or they won’t be at all.”
There’s hope in her face then, amidst the irritation and taunts, something that blooms like spring-
“If I just wanted a babe for him, they’d be born by now, my Lord Stark. There are many less stubborn men to be found for the task.”
And yet I stayed, the unsaid hangs between them, ringing loud, deafening, I wanted them with you.
As he lets go of her chin, he cannot help but think of Harrenhal again, of the smell of death on the wind. Of his ancestor bowing to the force of a Targaryen invasion for the good of his men, ending a war for the north before it could begin. Bending the knee and forging an alliance that stretched across hundreds of years to this very moment.
He thinks of a bathtub, stolen. He thinks of a council, all-powerful, destructive, hunting.
Harrenhal’s melting spires. The cold of her feet against his leg. The council’s letters, refusing to heed his advice and pushing her north, north, north-
All the way to him.
“Get your boots on,” He teeters on the edge of a cliff. Bends. Sways. Falls. “There's still snow in the godswood, my Lady Stark.”