Chapter Text
Admittedly, Robb Stark hadn’t woken up this morning thinking it would be a much different day than his usual.
Okay, given that his usual right now is running around the Red Keep trying to corrupt some of the staff so that he can get in and try to interview the almighty PM Tywin Lannister about the upcoming referendum regarding whether the Iron Islands will stay into the Seven’s Union or secede, it’s probably not what regular people would consider normal.
Still, while Robb knew that journalism didn’t pay much in this day and age and while he’s probably lucky that he landed an internship for WesterosFeed for which he does not come up with dumb quizzes, he also would like to fucking upgrade from ‘we like you but we can’t hire you for good, are you all right with another three-months long contract without a single benefit’, and maybe if he can get to interview Lannister when no one else has managed in the last couple of weeks he can at least ask them to consider a contract with some benefits.
He’s really burning to ask him why, for the love of everything, did you put that referendum in your electoral program if you think those idiots leaving is suicidal - fine, he knows the answer, but he’d really like to hear it from the man himself.
The answer being, he wanted votes in the islands and since Balon Greyjoy, the local representative and founder of the IIIP - Iron Island Independence Party, couldn’t he have picked a dumber name - has been gaining extreme right-wing votes proclaiming that if he was elected he’d leave the Union and fuck all those continental bastards who stole rightful money from their sacred islands and forced them to adhere to fishing quotas. If Lannister promised the referendum he’d beat them at their own game, right?
Robb frankly fucking hates Balon Greyjoy, but what can you do other than hoping that his fellow Ironborn are smarter than he is.
Anyway, trying to corrupt one of the staff to see if they’ll let him in is the reason why he’s standing on the banks of the Blackwater river, near the Red Keep - the seat of Parliament - at fucking nine in the morning after waking up at six (commuting is hard but he can’t afford an apartment in King’s Landing - hell, he and Jon, who has an internship for another way less trashy magazine, can barely afford to share one in Rosby).
No one else from any other newspaper is there - they’re all in Highgarden covering Margaery Tyrell being officially appointed head of the Rose, the Reach’s only party that has still some weight at election times, having given up on talking to Lannister. Personally, Robb thinks that naming a party after a damned flower is ridiculous, but then again there’s a reason why he’s in journalism and not in politics.
However, that’s why Robb is the only journalist on location when the floatilla appears on the horizon.
Robb first doesn’t know what to make out of the forty fishing boats coming down the river.
That is, until he notices LEAVE and PYKEXIT signs hanging over all of them, written in gold on a black banner. He rummages in his bag, maybe he had a binocular with him - he finds it and takes a better look at the frontrunner boat.
What in the seven hells?
--
--
He sends that tweet and then immediately calls Jon - maybe he knows something?
Jon picks up at first ring.
“Robb?” He asks. The line sounds - disturbed?
“Jon, am I hallucinating or Balon Greyjoy is leading a fucking floatilla up the river?”
“Er, no. Actually, I’m on his boat?”
“What are you doing on his boat?”
“Mormont sent me there the moment I got into office this morning, but the asshole hasn’t talked to any of us yet. I mean, there’s me and a few other people, but -”
“Yeah, right, they only called people from the respectable newspapers. It’s fine, I’ll, uh, see what I can cover from here. Gods, how fucking many are there?”
“Forty-two. I don’t even want to know what was going into his head, but he recruited a bunch of fishermen along the road.”
“You mean, he actually started from somewhere else?”
“Yeah, he left from the Stoney Sept this morning along with most of the boats.”
“Right. Well, thanks, I’ll try to cover it anyway.”
“Believe me, you want to be outside, not here.”
The line falls at that, but Robb knows enough. He figures it’s useless to stay where he is now - he takes a look at his twitter feed. He has already thirty retweets and a couple of people asking if he’s joking.
He takes his scooter from where he parked it, bless the journalists’s reserved spaces, and drives down the river - thankfully the boats aren’t going too fast. He’s at a decent distance in a couple of minutes. He parks on the side and goes down on the banks, then snaps a picture and posts it.
--
--
Well, he thinks as his phone starts vibrating - it’s all the likes and retweets, he hopes -, maybe I could try to board the ship. Or at least one of them.
He sees one coming just near the shore.
“Hey!” He shouts. Some guy who’s definitely from Pyke from the looks of it turns to look at him and moves closer to the ship’s rail.
“What do you want?”
“Uh, I’m - I’m a journalist, I was wondering if you’d let me up there so I can cover this story?”
The guy looks at him, then another next to him starts laughing. “Have you heard the accent? Come on, Maron, he’s from fucking Winterfell.”
“Yeah, good point. Sorry, no bloody northerners on my ship.”
“But -”
They both turn his back on him and go back towards the inside of the ship.
What a couple of bloody assholes, Robb thinks. His Twitter feed, meanwhile, is exploding.
Gods, what is this madness? His last tweet has just hit 150 retweets and 300 likes - since when?
That’s when he hears the music.
The last thing he had thought was that someone would start blaring Clash songs from one of those boats, but that’s definitely Should I Stay or Should I Go, isn’t it? With a damn good sound system, if he’s not wrong. And it’s obviously coming from farther down the river, probably where the first boat is. Not really far then.
Robb takes a breath and breaks into a short run, and that’s when he sees that -
There’s another boat. Which is covered in IN signs. Which is putting itself more or less in front of Balon Greyjoy’s.
He’s also pretty sure that Oberyn Martell is standing on deck with a megaphone in his hand.
Robb doesn’t have a clue of what the hell is one of Westeros’s most famous musicians and humanitarian activists, never mind political activists (he never made a mystery of voting for Mance Rayder at every election - too bad that Mance is too radical left for about ninety per cent of the entire Union and he never wins) doing on a fucking boat covered in IN signs in front of Balon Greyjoy’s, neither of why is Tyrion Lannister, the PM’s estranged son, standing next to him with another bunch of people - he’s sure one of them is Oberyn’s niece Arianne, a fairly famous actress, the others he can’t really see, but then again… Balon Greyjoy is riding across the Blackwater with a floatilla himself.
Oberyn’s boat has a great sound system, though. Robb is close and his ears might be about to burst -
And then the sound gets shut off and Oberyn Martell clears his throat, and then -
“Here are the facts about fishing, Balon! Pyke makes more money than any other realm in this union from fishing, and it has the biggest quota for fishing in Westeros! You are no fisherman’s friend! You are in the Union Parliament’s fishing committee and you only ever attended one of the meetings on forty! You are a fraud, Balon!!! Go back this river and use a paddle because you’re on a fucking canoe!”
The nearest Pykexit boat erupts in insults and screams.
Robb takes out his phone, zooms on Oberyn’s boat, snaps a picture of him saying again that Balon Greyjoy is no true fisherman’s friend, and opens his Twitter account with shaking fingers.
--
--
“What the fuck,” Robb says as his notifications go off the roof. He has no idea of what the hell is going on here, but maybe if the Pykexit people were assholes, this crowd might not be?
“Hey!” He screams, and a guy on the side actually turns and notices him.
A very nice looking guy - dark hair, a bit taller than him, dark eyes, well-dressed, and wait, isn’t that one of Balon’s sons? Not one of the first two - sure as fuck those two were with their dad, they’re as reactionary as he is. Heck, Robb is sure that one of them was in the boat that turned him away earlier.
“Yes?” The guy - shit, what was his name, Robb can’t remember - at least isn’t looking at him as if he’s a complete moron.
“Uh, I -” He clears his throat and tries to shout more, there’s a lot of noise. “I’m a journalist! I’d like to cover this! Can I come over there?”
“Wait a moment!” The guy turns and talks to Arianne Martell for a moment, then shrugs and looks back at him.
“Sure. Go back a bit, we’re coming to get you.”
Robb goes a bit further down and waits for Oberyn’s small-size cruise ship to move closer to the bank, then hops up on the rail and manages to get himself hoisted in. Fine, he grabs at the side and then he has to fucking climb over the rail since it’s not a regular boat, good thing he goes to the gym regularly because Jon drags him. He eventually crashes on the wet pavement harder than he’d have liked, but then Totally Hot Guy from before helps him up and Robb decides that maybe undignified isn’t too bad for now.
“Hey,” Hot Guy says. “Sorry about that, but - er. Oberyn needs to go back in the field. Like, probably now. God, this is fucking embarrassing.”
“For you? By the way - thanks. Robb Stark,” he says, extending a hand.
“Theon Greyjoy,” he gets for an answer. Right. Theon. That was the name. “Sorry to meet you in these circumstances. Shit, this is fucking ridiculous, but if you disagree with your bloody family’s politics what can you do. I have to make a stand, here. Also Oberyn’s right, my dad’s a fucking fraud.”
“So wait, you aren’t for... Pykexit?”
“Are you insane? If we leave we’re more fucked than you are. My dad’s an asshole and I’ve know that for years, I’m just sad people are voting for him. Anyway, if you want to ask Oberyn or Tyrion I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you.”
“Gods, you might be saving my not exactly brilliant career up until now,” Robb says with a sigh.
“Really,” Theon replies, and then - he winks at Robb. What? “I’ll remember that. Hey, Oberyn, you think you have five minutes to talk to him? Maybe he can give us some good press!”
“Yes, since all the journalists went with them. Well, the ones who aren’t in Highgarden when there are a lot more pressing matters to cover here,” Oberyn says at once, and turns a frankly disarming smile on Robb. “We’ll take the ones we get.”
Robb clears his throat and hopes to the gods that he asks the right questions.
--
--
“This is outrageous!”
There are moments when Jon regrets that he got the traineeship at the Wall magazine. Like this one. Why does director Mormont think that he should be always sent to interview the assholes? Ah, yes, because it’s the way you toughen up in this job.
Sure as fuck Jon would rather be anywhere else. Possibly not on the head boat of Balon Greyjoy’s floatilla. Especially since he’s surrounded by bloody Pykexit signs. He already thinks that the Iron Islands leaving would be disastrous, and he has to interview the son of a bitch who had the idea in the first place? Why did he get any votes again? Jon voted for Mance Rayder, damn it.
“How dare a bloody multimillionaire singer without any clue of what he’s doing dare making fun of the exploitation of honest Ironborn men and women?” Balon sounds furious - he’s definitely pissed that Oberyn ruined his show.
“So, uhm, I imagine that you will keep on until the Parliament even if you ran into… an opposition?” He asks.
“Of course, who do you take me for? If I start something I finish it, boy, and be glad that I can’t kick journalists out. Northerner bastards on my ship. Fucking hell.”
Jon would like to tell him as if you’re the first person who ever told me, and he notes down the answer. Then he notices Balon taking out a cigarette.
Thankfully Tris takes it - at least they had the sense of sending the only other reporter from the islands with him. “Mr. Greyjoy, I remember that you made that campaign to quit smoking a few years ago?”
“I did quit, boy,” the man replies. “I just think that doctors have it wrong about it.”
Jon wants to throw himself into the fucking Blackwater - he doesn’t just because he knows that it’d be certain death if he did.
He takes out his phone, reads the text Ygritte sent him earlier - she’s on some neutral boat going up and about the river - and then thinks for a moment, should I?
Then he decides that this is already too fucking ridiculous and Robb started a trend unwillingly before anyway, so why the hell not?
He smiles as he logs into his Twitter account, too.
--
--
If there’s something Ygritte would like to ask fucking Balon Greyjoy - she did text Jon with it before but she doubts he’ll ask i for her, but then again she can understand that he wouldn’t want that bastard to throw him out of the boat - is, how did you think this stint was good advertising?
Never mind Oberyn Martell’s soundsystem drowning everything out and making her detest the Clash at once, but at least she’s in a good position to take the pictures she’s paid for. She snaps another few, and then looks at the shore.
What the hell.
That’s definitely Balon’s brother Aeron standing on the riverbank. Without a shirt and with his hands in the river. There are a few other people next to him who are - praying? What the fuck?
She motions Gendry - the poor guy who got saddled with driving her around the river today, he most probably didn’t expect this when he signed up for bringing tourists up and down the Blackwater - to move closer. Aeron is definitely saying something as he dumps handfuls of water on the other people’s heads.
“May the Drowned God bless us all!”
What - is he - oh, no. The Iron Islands already have a weirdass religion that everyone else in Westeros thinks is a cult, but whatever, their business. But is he really performing ablutions with water from the bloody Blackwater river? They’re all going to die of some non better specified illness within two weeks if their immune system isn’t made of pure steel.
“May the Drowned God bless our independence!” Everyone else parrots as they go near the bank and drink the godforsaken water just after Aeron does.
Gendry’s eyes are so wide it’d be almost comical.
“Miss, are they seriously asking the Drowned God to bless… Pykexit?”
“I wish I could say we’re hallucinating, but I’m not hallucinating that wanker’s brother floating up the river with forty boats, am I?”
Fucking hell, she thinks as she snaps another could of pictures, they’re all insane. No one who’ll see this will want to vote yes to bloody Pykexit.
Then that’s when she hears the noise from the main boat.
“Gendry, move closer,” she tells him - good thing that she’s a good photographer and Mormont paid for her to have the boat all to herself. Gendry does, and they move closer to Balon’s boat, where -
Wait a moment.
Oh, no.
“You know nothing about the plight of our fishermen!” Balon shouts. “Go back to your mansion and let us pass!”
Then a young man with a look of pure pain flashing across his face - or so Ygritte can see from here, but she’s fairly close - motions for Oberyn to hand over the megaphone.
“Dad, fuck’s sake, you’ve never set foot on a fishing boat for all your life, are you for real?”
“What are you doing there? I told you countless times I never wanted to see you again, you traitor!”
Ah, right, has to be Balon’s infamous fourth son who moved from the Islands a while ago and is never mentioned or shown in any family portrait that gets usually shown around in election times.
“Likewise, but you’re being bloody ridiculous!”
“Aren’t you?”
Ygritte is snapping pictures as fast as she can by now, but then -
Then Balon’s brother Victarion, who she hadn’t seen up until now, shows up next to his brother with a hose in his hands.
No. No, he’s not going to -
The flagship moves closer.
Victarion opens the darned thing and hits the boat with the fucking hose - the water hits poor Theon in the face, at least, and a few other people.
Ygritte looks back at her pictures after making sure she captures as much as she can, and wait -
Was that Jon’s brother on the Remain boat filming the entire thing?
--
--
“Fuck, I knew it,” Theon sighs, shrugging off his wet jacket.
“Hey, that was a valiant stand,” Tyrion Lannister says, patting him on the knee as he walks past. “I’ll make mine when we get to the Parliament.”
“Yeah, that’s why you boarded this bloody ship in the first place.”
Shit, of course Theon hadn’t planned on actually talking or making sure his father noticed his presence, but that was just too ridiculous and he had to say something. Especially since he knows that his father really knows shit about what he’s talking about most of the times, he’s lived with him long enough to know that. Now his jacket is definitely ruined, his shirt is too because that was most probably polluted as fuck river water and he’s just glad he hasn’t accidentally drank any of it, and given how chilly it is he’ll probably end up with a cold by the time this entire farce is done -
“Hey,” Robb Stark says as he moves closer, and Theon turns to look at him - well, at least one of them isn’t wet. “I’m sorry, that was shitty of them.”
“That was ridiculous, you mean,” Theon sighs.
“No, what your father said. I mean, I knew he was an asshole anyway but just - you don’t say that shit in public about someone you’re related to when you know people are recording you.”
Theon can’t keep the smirk in at that - if only.
“Believe me, that’s not the worst he could have done. Or that he’s done. But thanks, that’s appreciated.”
“Wait,” Robb says, taking off his nondescript green jacket and handing it over. What? “It’s cold, you’ll catch your death if you stay in a wet shirt. Just put it on.”
“Won’t you be cold?”
“I grew up in Winterfell,” Robb smirks. “I think I can handle King’s Landing.”
Theon knows he’s smiling back for real as he takes the jacket, and given that he hasn’t had that many reasons to since he left Pyke a couple of years ago, it’s - well, it’s not a bad feeling. He could get used to it.
“Why, I even brought a true knight in shining armor on this ship, didn’t I?”
“Let’s not exaggerate,” Robb replies, flushing, and damn but now that he took off that jacket Theon can see how nicely toned he is under his t-shirt, which adding to the fact that Robb Stark is pretty damned attractive in the first place, isn’t making him regret having tried to flirt with him since he crashed on the boat’s floor.
“Well, thanks anyway. Guess I’ll just get rid of the shirt.”
Robb’s eyes go slightly wide just before he moves away his stare from Theon’s naked chest, and Theon decides that maybe he’s not going to stop flirting anytime soon. He shrugs on the jacket - it’s a bit large on him but then again Robb has larger shoulders - and smiles to himself again.
At least something is going right in the middle of this shitshow.
--
--
What in the seven hells is this shitshow, Davos Seaworth thinks as his poor river-sea vessel finds itself in front of an entire squadron of - ships. A floatilla, actually.
He wonders if there’s some kind of strike going on, but he’d know - never mind that he’s in the union, usually when it happens he gets a warning. He can hardly try to surpass them, they’re blocking the entire river, and he has the darned onion cargo to deliver in King’s Landing before midday - do these people know that someone still works for a living in darned Westeros?
He really needs to get through. Especially since from what he’s gathered the onions he’s carrying are for a catering service that’s in charge of Stannis Baratheon’s last campaign event before the Iron Islands vote on whether they should leave the union. Baratheon wasn’t who Davos would have picked for the Socialist party head, certainly, given that he comes from a well-off family - Davos was hoping Mance Rayder would stop being an independent and finally run properly. But Mance didn’t and Baratheon won out and up until now he’s been a really pleasant surprise. Sure, he could be less conservative on some issues, and he’s kind of scary for how much he doesn’t want to come down to compromises, but he has a clear party line, he doesn’t fuck around, he always says things the way they are even if it means sounding rude and he hasn’t compromised on the basic party principles.
In short, Davos isn’t sorry that he’s going to vote for him at the next elections, and would really like to not be the reason why the event’s schedule gets fucked up and the poor bastards at the catering lose their minds. Then again, the darned boats are somehow going forward, even if fairly slow - maybe he can just join them and hope that it doesn’t take them two blasted hours to let him pass.
Good thing that his boat is small and Sallador won’t go and tell him to wait.
“Sallador?” He goes next to the wheel where his second in command and only other crew member is.
“Have you seen that?” Sallador asks, sounding as baffled as Davos is. “I mean, what the hell?”
“I know. Can we, like, surpass them slowly?”
“Sure. As long as you stop me if you see that I can’t pass.”
“Great. Let’s see if we can do it. I need to deliver this in time, damn it.”
The fact that they need to avoid hitting other boats - sure as hell he doesn’t want to get sued, he can barely make ends meet as it is - is why he just pays attention to the space they have and why Sallador does the same. When people on the darned boats wave and say hi he just waves back and tells Sallador to move forward - he doesn’t even pay attention to anything else.
That’s it, until he’s in the middle of them and sees that on the other side there’s a cruise ship covered in IN signs.
… IN?
“I told you countless times I never wanted to see you again, you traitor!”
Wait a moment. Isn’t that the voice of that absolute wanker who founded the IIIP and wants the Iron Islands to secede from the bloody Union?
Then he sees one of those ships throwing water at the cruise one with a hose.
Wait a bloody moment.
He stops the boat and looks around himself.
Oh, fuck him, he’s in a bloody floatilla where every goddamned ship is covered in Pykexit signs.
And that wanker Balon Greyjoy is on the ship that just sprayed the other one. He guesses that whoever’s on there they actually would like the islands to stay in the Union, and while this entire thing looks like a complete fucking ridiculous shitstorm that has nothing to do with how you do politics for real, like hell Davos is going to stay in a group that wants a Union secession.
Especially since he’s currently among a bunch of wankers who hate Northerners so much that they want to put a restricting ban on how many of them can emigrate to the Islands should they choose to (why would they is beyond Davos’s imagination, but never mind), who want to close the frontiers to emigrants from Essos - which is fairly fucking hypocritical, given that two centuries ago they had colonies over there and exploited the shit out of them -, want to demolish the National Westeros Health Service and keep on blathering about how horrible taxes are when they don’t realize that paying taxes is a lot more convenient for everyone and are in general the incarnation of his nightmares in such a way that if he had to choose between Greyjoy and Tywin Lannister he’d probably vote for Lannister.
Shit, he feels dirty just for having thought that.
Fuck this. It’s ten AM. He has to deliver by midday. He’s sure he has some time to make a stand here.
“Sallador.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Don’t call me boss. We need to get over there right the fuck now, so now I am taking control because we need to be fast, you tell me if I’m getting too close and put on the fenders. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Davos goes back behind the wheel. He’s not going to stand in this bunch longer than he has to.
Obviously, people do notice when he goes into his attempt at slaloming in the middle of the bloody floatilla.
“Aren’t you with us, mate?” The guy asking him from the next boat over is most probably drunk. He also looks like Balon Greyjoy’s eldest son, if Davos doesn’t remember wrong.
“First, I’m actually working here, differently from all of you,” he shouts, figuring that the more of them hear him, the faster they’ll let him get away. “Second, I come from Flea Bottom and your party policy would have turned me into a criminal had you been in charge twenty years ago. Third, I vote socialist, you bloody bastards. Now, can I fucking pass or do I have to sink your ship to do it?”
--
--
“Dad, you have to look at this!”
Stannis sighs - he doesn’t know how his daughter can be so enamored with bloody social media, she’s a smart girl, she used to read so much back in the day… well, all right, she also reads a lot to this day, but she’s also checking Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and whatever else all the time, and he just doesn’t get why people have to overshare that much -
But then again that’s why he has an entire team that deals with his own social media.
Stannis misses the times when politics could be done without social media.
“What’s going on?” He asks. “If it’s about Balon Greyjoy’s ridiculous stint -”
“Well, yes, but this guy who was on the river for work ended up in the floatilla by accident and then he moved out of it and went with the INpeople and said that he votes for you!”
“Wait, what?”
“Here, someone took a video!”
Stannis stands up, leaves his folder with the speech he was drafting for the next time he tries to put Tywin Lannister in difficulty at the next Parliament hearing, and moves to where Shireen’s sitting. She turns her phone horizontal and presses play on a video that someone obviously shot from the river bank.
There’s a middle-aged guy on a river-sea vessel, dressed all in black and looking fairly angry at his surroundings - Stannis gets him - who also has to be in excellent shape, because he climbs over the IN ship where Oberyn Martell and his ridiculous crowd are. Stannis thinks that countering Balon’s idiocy with more idiocy just makes everyone look like complete time-wasters, but the middle-aged man certainly didn’t look like a complete time-waster.
The man reaches the top of the cruise ship, goes towards Oberyn, tells him something as if he’s not some kind of celebrity, and then Oberyn smirks and hands him the microphone.
“First thing, you’re all complete idiots - if you really care about hardworking men and women as you always say, then can’t you let them work instead of occupying the whole bloody river without even giving the unions a warning? Or anyone a warning, same as people who strike do? Second thing, like hell I was going to stick with the lot of you just until I had time to get out, I wouldn’t vote for your stupid party if I had a gun pointed to my head. Have you bloody learned anything during the winter of discontent as in those fifteen years when Aerys Targaryen was implementing your same policies?” Then he takes in a deep breath and Stannis almost wants to clap slowly - that was an excellent speech. No frills, straight to the point. He likes this guy.
“Third, what is this even? Publicity stint? Advertising? What the fuck are you hoping to accomplish? I’ve voted Socialist my entire fucking life and I’d pick Tywin Lannister over you right now even if he played a dick move with promising the referendum in the first place. Okay, he plays dick moves in general because that’s how he works, but he’s still better than all of you. And if I hadn’t liked Baratheon up until now, I’d have started right this moment because it seems to me like he’s the only one who doesn’t think politics are a bloody circus. Good luck fixing your economy if your precious Pykexit works and your GNP goes as low as Aerys Targaryen’s popularity when he got kicked out from his own bloody party. Also, good luck throwing immigrants out, I’m sure you’ll totally be better off for it. And with this I have to go to work, damn it.”
The video stops as the guy hands Oberyn back the megaphone.
A moment later, his phone rings, the landline does, and every phone in the office does, as well.
Stannis has a feeling that his PR wants to tell him that they’ll try to get hold of the guy for official statements.
In other occasions, Stannis would have refused, but right now - right now he thinks he won’t.
--
--
“This is fucking hilarious. God, my father must be fuming.”
“Easy to say for you. Where are you even?”
“On the next bridge over taking pictures of course,” Jaime says, sounding fairly gleeful at the prospect of keeping on recording this spectacular fail.
Brienne, who was supposed to finally meet officially the father of the guy she’s supposed to marry in two weeks who’s also - not for her luck - the more or less estranged son of fucking Tywin Lannister , who took a vacation day especially for this and who’s currently stuck on the opposite riverbank a few hundred meters down the bridge where Jaime is because she was on a bus and the traffic was so congested that she had to get down, isn’t at all surprised that Jaime is actually relieving in this madness.
“This isn’t funny.”
“This is more than funny. Hey, my illustrious father will be so pissed at lunch that he’ll forget to be a complete jerk to you and he might even agree to let us have the small wedding without press, look at the bright side!”
The not so hilarious thing is that Jaime might actually be right, which says everything about the dysfunctionality of his family - then again, they met when she was ghostwriting speeches for his sister fresh out of university. She knows even too well what she’s getting into.
“If I get there in the first place.”
“Come on, I’ll wait for you on the bridge and then I can take the blame if we’re late. And look at it, there’s some other ships coming your way with IN signs, you can ask for a ride!”
Fact is - there is actually one. It’s small, and there’s a redhead snatching pictures on it, along with a tall and dark-haired young man driving it.
“Hey,” Brienne calls, “I - uh. I have an engagement dinner. Can you two give me a ride until the next bridge over?”
The redhead photographer turns at her and smirks, motioning for the guy to come closer to the bank.
“Sure,” she says, “I’ll help a sister in need. Don’t worry about the signs, I put them on just to fuck with the IIIP people, I’m actually working for a newspaper. But you know, I couldn’t resist.”
“Thanks,” Brienne says, mounting on the ship.
And that’s when someone from the Pykexit floatilla moves closer to them and sprays them with river water, damn, and that was her only nice pantsuit.
--
--
The cruise ship has floated down to the Red Keep by the time Tyrion Lannister stands up and grabs the megaphone.
Robb doesn’t know if he’s terrified or not - up until now they’ve been sprayed thrice, there’s been the guy who voted for Stannis who said in Robb’s opinion the most sensed things since this entire shitstorm started, his follower count is in the hundreds when until yesterday it was maybe fifty people, he’s seen Euron Greyjoy’s naked chest on the other boat too many times to count, and he thinks his eardrums are shattered because they might have one boat, but there’s a better sound system than Balon’s has if they put together every ship on their floatilla.
At least Theon’s had the decency of keeping his jacket closed, because the last thing he needs right now is the guy he’s sort of attracted to standing next to him with Robb’s jacket on and showing his naked chest, damn it.
“Tell me he doesn’t have a speech planned,” Robb groans as he tries to not drop his poor phone - it’s quite literally burning by now. He had to turn off Twitter notifications or any other notifications and he knows he has at least ten emails from his boss, but he’s honestly scared of reading them.
“He has it if my father has one, too. And I have a feeling that he does.”
“This is going to be embarrassing, is it?”
“Very much. I think Oberyn has alcohol somewhere in this bloody ship.”
“Thank you, but I’m gonna have to cover this and talk to my boss before touching anything stronger than orange juice.”
“Why, didn’t your boss send you here?”
“No. I kind of did it myself to see if they’d consider hiring me for good.”
“Huh. Well, I can appreciate people with some initiative myself -”
“Lannister, you’re going to lose this time!”
“... And that’d be my father, fuck .”
Robb turns his attention to the Pykexit flagship again - it managed to go close enough to the Red Keep’s bank.
“You can’t keep us in with your false bribes! Our people know!”
“Balon, didn’t you even realize that he’s gotten elected for the last fifteen years with the entire continent knowing that he bribes other people ?”
That was Tyrion Lannister.
“Never mind that your bloody islands already voted for him last year, or do I have to remind you that you didn’t even get a quarter of the votes?”
“Liar!” Theon groans the moment he hears the reply. That’s not Balon - that’s the other brother. Who, Euron?
“Not the psychopath,” Theon says under his breath. “Now he’s going to try and board the boat.”
“What?!”
“Just you wait.”
“Euron, do I have to remind you that your party only got to an overall twenty-five per cent just because there are dumbasses who vote for you even if they come from completely different places and are bitter old assholes just like your brother?”
Robb does manage to take a picture of Euron - who’s shirtless and wearing an eyepatch, fuck’s sake - staring at Tyrion in a frankly menacing way before -
Before he runs and actually jumps into the fucking river and swims towards them ?
“Is he bloody insane?”
“Yes, and he also thinks that the Drowned God blessed him, so he couldn’t get sick from drinking that blasted water.”
“ Seriously ?”
“Why did you think I hightailed out of Pyke and went to a fashion academy in King’s Landing, Stark?”
That… sounds like a fairly sensible option, given what Robb is seeing.
He doesn’t look at the fifteenth email from work that he has just received and opens his Twitter account again. The notifications are off the charts. He’s sure he has at least one thousand retweets last he checked.
He smiles slightly to himself and figures he might just go for it entirely.
--
--
“ What ?”
“Yes,” Ygritte screams into the phone - the line is disturbed and the music blaring from Oberyn Martell’s boat along with Balon’s screams are making the entire conversation hard to understand. “I just gave a ride to Jaime Lannister’s fiance, he jumped on our boat from the bridge he was waiting for her on, he insulted very creatively whichever son of Greyjoy’s that dared ruin his fiance’s pantsuit since they were supposed to have lunch with his father -”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Jon, you’re on the flagship of a floatilla covered in fucking Pykexit signs , do you think I have enough imagination to come up with that story?”
“Okay, fine, that’s - that’s true. So, then what happened?”
“They drenched him in water, too, at which he said that it doesn’t matter because he knows he looks dashing when he’s wet and he knows she appreciated it. She about clocked him in the side and he seemed to enjoy that a bit too much, then he asked them if they agreed with their father about women needing to stay in the kitchen or the bedroom before gleefully informing them that his future wife currently earns more than he does and that he’s always glad to let her top, then they made out in front of those idiots. She was red in the face but she didn’t stop him at any point, and they were both drenched in water.”
“What the - what does Jaime Lannister even do right now?”
“He says he’s writing a book about his time when he was in Aerys Targaryen’s security detail when he was barely seventeen years ago. Apparently being in a secret relationship with his sister’s former ghostwriter of political speeches, who right now is the head of Stannis ’s campaign, was what pushed him to say fuck it to the family business and follow his brother out of it. Meanwhile she was on the phone with her HQ and they’re trying to track down the guy who made that amazing and on point speech on Oberyn’s boat before.”
“And now?”
“Oh, I left them at the Red Keep. He says that his father can handle having lunch with them if they’re wet, at this point.”
“Can I write all of that down?”
“Why do you think I’m calling you and not Aliser Thorne, who’d have loved to hear all of that gossip?”
“Because you’re my girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t be your girlfriend if I thought you were shitty at your job. Please, proceed to piss off anyone involved in this story when you write it. Except the Remain people. They were cool. And the dude who voted for Stannis. He was the best.”
“Duly noted. Don’t worry, I have absolutely nothing nice to say about my hosts.”
He so does not .
“And who were you talking to?” Balon suddenly asks him, noticing him for the first time since this morning - like hell he has answered one of his questions anyway.
“The magazine’s photographer? Who also happens to be my girlfriend. She’s around, we need to keep in contact. Some of us actually want to work.”
“Fuck, not just the northern bastard, now he also has to sound like that socialist wanker from before.”
Fuck this noise , Jon thinks, at the next elections I’m not doing the radical vote and I’m picking Stannis .
--
--
“Sir?”
Podrick Payne should have never accepted to intern for Lannister. Oh, sure, internship at the Seven’s Union Parliament sounded like a great prospect especially for a student fresh out of university, but Tywin Lannister is terrifying on his own on a normal day.
On a day like this , the moment the man looks at Pod, he feels like spontaneously combusting.
“ Yes ?”
“I, uh, have the news round-up. About the situation. Taena gave it to me -”
“Get it over with.”
“Uh. The Remain boat is still not moving. Balon Greyjoy wanted to get down from his and come up here to give you officially the requests from the Ironborn fishermen, but - he kind of physically can’t. Since the Remain boat is in its way.”
He can hear speakers blaring Should I Stay or Should I Go even up here.
Tywin looks murderous. “Then?”
“Your son - Tyrion, I mean - he has talked to some journalist and told him to publish that he hopes you don’t lose this round, because no one wants the Union to fail except Balon, but at the same time he hopes you’re enjoying the entertainment. Mr. Jaime and his fiancé are waiting for you at the Red Keep’s mess hall - they excuse themselves for the wet clothes in advance but - as your son put it, it was the Pykexiters’ bloody fault . #Pykexit, as in, hashtag Pykexit, is actually Westeros’s first trending topic. Since a few hours, at least.”
“And?”
Pod breathes in. “Uh. This isn’t official, but - sounds like - well, they asked Stannis Baratheon what he thought of the guy’s speech in his favor. I mean, the one who changed fleets. Even if to be honest the Remain crowd wasn’t a fleet. Anyway, uh, he said, I quote, I haven’t heard anyone making so much sense about politics in a long time and I wish there was someone like that in the party, I would make them VP .”
“He said that.”
“Literally. Sir.”
“All right. Leave .”
Podrick Payne is not looking forward to see how Tywin Lannister gets when he’s really angry, so he just nods and runs out of the room.
Regardless of whether he keeps his job, next elections he’s definitely voting for Stannis, if only because he looks like he’d be a least emotionally traumatizing boss.
--
--
Robb’s inbox is pretty much exploding.
“Afraid of looking at them?” Theon asks, looking over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Either I got promoted for real or they just fired me.”
“No in-between?”
“I doubt it. That said, are you okay? Because your uncle -”
“Eh, not any news, but at least he’s in jail and they made themselves look like the idiots they actually are, I think I can deal with a black eye for a week or two.”
Robb shakes his head as he looks at Theon - shit, black eye. That’s an understatement - considering how hard Euron hit him when he boarded the ship before it’s a miracle that he didn’t break any bone, good thing that Arianne dragged him off Theon a second later.
“Not any news?”
“Too bad that my dad thinks that if you can’t take a few hits from relatives you aren’t a real man. But whatever, it was years ago and I couldn’t wait to leave for a reason. So, are you looking at that inbox at any point soon?”
“Fine, fine,” Robb says - after all, he doesn’t have to check the situation anymore, it’s winding down at this point.
He opens his inbox.
“Ah, fuck,” he says under his breath as he reads from the bottom to the top.
“Bad news?”
“Er, they wanted me to stop after the first two. Apparently your father, uh, paid some generous money so that we wouldn’t give him bad press.”
“So I accidentally killed your career instead of kickstarting it when I said you could get on board?”
Robb has to laugh - fine, it was a little funny, all right?
“Er. Well. Wasn’t much of a career to begin with -” He starts, and then his phone starts ringing. And wait, it’s Jon?
“Jon? Did you survive Greyjoy’s flaghship?”
“You don’t even want to know,” Jon sighs. “I escaped when that asshole Euron went and jumped into the river, it’s not as if anyone was answering questions. Anyway, my boss is here.”
“Who, the infamous director Mormont?”
“Yeah, and he wants to speak to you. Wait a moment.”
Robb swallows as the phone obviously changes hands.
“Robb Stark?” Someone asks on the other side of the line - presumably director Mormont.
“Yes, sir.”
“How formal. Well, at least you have manners. So, let’s cut it to the heart of the matter - I hear that my illustrious colleague Baelish has just let you go, hasn’t he?”
“He might have. Apparently I, uh, gave bad press to one of our main sponsors. I didn’t even know he was a sponsor.”
“Well, I believe in the free press,” Mormont says. “And it looks to me like you’ve done an outstanding job today. You saw your opportunity, you managed to get into the thick of it and gave a fairly appropriate report keeping it updated all along, and that’s more work ethics that half of my staff has. Your brother is not included, of course.”
“Why, thank you, but I just was - doing my job.”
“And you’re obviously wasted on that joke of an online rag. Would you consider joining your brother at my magazine instead?”
For a moment Robb feels like he could faint - damn, The Wall is a lot classier magazine, never mind that it’s a real magazine that actually gets printed on paper, and he was frankly fed up with making up quizzes about which one of Margaery Tyrell’s evening dresses is more suited to the person taking the test when they didn’t know what to make him do.
“If - well, of course, I’d be honored, I don’t know what to say -”
“Can you come into the office with your brother next week so we can finalize it?”
“Oh - sure. Sure, of course I could.”
“Then good, I’ll see you next week. And take pride on your livetweeting, for the second-class rate journalism Baelish forces people to do it was masterful.”
Then he closes the call and Robb just stares at the phone for a long, long moment.
“I gather you lost your job but might have found another?” Theon asks a moment later.
“You gather right,” Robb smiles. “And in a better work environment.”
“Nice. Sounds like at least I didn’t kill your career.”
“No, you might actually have saved it. It’s a way better magazine, I’d get to work with my brother and I know that they pay them a lot better.”
“Glad to have helped out then,” Theon grins, and damn but he really has a lovely smile and he’s still wearing Robb’s jacket and Robb really likes him, okay?
He breathes in and puts a hand on Theon’s arm, just touching. “And what if I wanted to buy you a drink to say thanks?”
Theon’s eyes go slightly wide before realization dawns - thankfully he seems to have understood at once where Robb’s headed here. That said, maybe he should specify.
“Unless I read the signs wrong, because it seemed like you might have said yes, but if you don’t want to -”
“Robb Stark,” Theon cuts him, “I think that while I’d usually never accept to be seen in public with a black eye, no proper shirt, a jacket that doesn’t fit and smelling of fucking Blackwater, I might just make an exception right now.”
“Would you?”
Theon moves slightly closer. “Let’s say that when I boarded this ship I did it just for a question of principle, but meeting you definitely was a perk.”
“Then I’ll totally show you my favorite bar. Don’t worry, they don’t mind if you smell of polluted river.”
Theon breaks out laughing at that and Robb kind of really wants to kiss him because that’s a gorgeous smile and it makes him look so radiant, how is anyone supposed to resist -
“Hey,” Robb tells him, glancing at his left, “your father’s flagship is right in front of us.”
“Is it,” Theon says, looking the same way. “Does this have anything to do with the drinks you’ll buy me?”
“Given what your father thought of Lannister approving same-sex marriage last year, if you’re amenable and I’m not rushing things too much -”
“Robb?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a genius,” Theon says, still smiling that frankly blinding grin, and then his hands are on Robb’s shoulders and when he kisses him right over the rail, Robb is wholly ready for it.
--
End.