Chapter Text
It was a cold morning, and Asha wondered if winter was finally finishing up its long creep closer and closer, and had finally pounced on them. Those Stark words – winter is coming – somehow never grew old, no matter how many times Eddard Stark or Robb or Jon whisper-growled them in their suitably broody fashion.
It took a long time for Asha to orient herself in the mornings. Sometimes a part of her still anticipated, as she opened her eyes, that she would be waking up to a view of the ceiling of her old bedroom in Pyke, and that after brushing her short crop of sticking-up hair, she would cross the long wobbly sea bridge with bleary eyes, and walk into her father’s hall for a breakfast of crabs and seagull eggs and freshly caught tuna, and listen to him talk while he sat at the end of the table, a man-statue of sea-stone. It was not unpleasant to hear Balon talk to her, his only daughter (his three sons had no patience for their father’s annoying occasional spurts of sentimentality, especially given how hardened Balon was otherwise), when it was early in the morning and he was freshly awoken from dreams about her mother, and still finding himself to be in love with his dead wife.
So Asha quite enjoyed those mornings, and sometimes when she woke up in her bedroom in Winterfell, she felt tears stinging the backs of her eyelids, and reminded herself of what Eddard Stark had said to her: that missing home, missing the Iron Islands when she was here, a hostage (to put it baldly) at Winterfell, was not disloyalty on Asha’s part, nor was it ungratefulness for the Starks’ hospitality. Eddard Stark was smart like that. He sometimes knew what Asha was feeling almost before she could feel it, and he pre-empted her guilt.
Sometimes it felt like he cared for her almost as much as her father had.
Almost. She could still be loyal.
But Eddard Stark had also said one more thing, that Asha now smiled to remember as she changed from her night clothes into her morning tunic. He had said, smiling slightly into his greyish beard, his equally grey eyes grave:
“Neither is it disloyalty to your father, to slowly let go of your natural resentment which is due to the history of our houses, and form connections here.”
Asha felt a small pang, especially in the mornings, when she could hear Jon and Bran and Robb and Arya outside in the yard practicing the weapons and playing with each other, two things which were almost indistinguishable. Sometimes she remembered, with a guilty voice nudging her at the back of her head not to forget, how her brothers had died, the quick but gruesome deaths in the fire on the ships, arrows leaving a red trail in the water, bodies sinking into the deep, and all at the hands of the Stark lord and the Baratheon king.
But Asha was not foolishly fanatical in her love of her family. She knew who had started the Greyjoy rebellion, knowing the overwhelming forces that would be arrayed against him, and putting his sons at the helms of his warships anyway. Still, it hurt, and she let it. She had learned, through long experience, not to deny her feelings, but to feel them and let them be until they subsided of their own accord.
So the Starks were playing in the yard, and she was in here, and she longed to be out there, with them. Robb would be showing Bran how to draw the bow – expertly – and Lord Stark and his wife would be watching from the balustrade above, Eddard with his arm around Catelyn, and Jon looking up furtively once or twice, a small shadow appearing and disappearing on his face when he caught Catelyn’s eye. Bran would be concentrating, and Arya would be grumbling loudly so that everyone would hear how she was expected to be ladylike and sew when she could draw the bow and shoot better than Bran…and then Jon would challenge her to prove it, and she would. And Jon and Robb would mock Bran with slanted grins on their handsome faces, and Bran would scowl, until Eddard said “and which one of you was a marksman at eight?”
At least that was what had happened yesterday. Everyday was the same and different with the Starks – they were closely knit as a family, always had each others’ backs, but that did not stop the younger generation from mercilessly tearing into each other with words, and teaming up with one another for the average prescribed amount of sibling bullying. At least until Eddard or Catelyn stepped in.
It was a good thing they knew winter was coming, and kept their swords sharp, she reflected, because a family this kind really needed to have some teeth to survive in this world, which would otherwise have swallowed them up and spit them out.
Asha went to the window. It was much as it had been yesterday – Bran was trying his marksmanship, Arya, surprisingly, was practicing on a neighbouring target with her own bow. Eddard was standing at the head of the stairs, but his face was turned away from the view below towards his warden, with whom he was trying to hold a conversation above the din. Catelyn wasn’t out yet, probably with Sansa inside the castle walls. Robb and Jon were out in the center of the yard, each circling the other with narrowed eyes and heavy breathing, their hands holding blunt tourney swords. Both were excellent but could stand to excel more. Rickon – here was a surprise – held Shaggydog’s collar, standing at the sidelines, and was sucking his right thumb, a habit his parents were trying to get rid of.
It was Jon who spotted Asha first, at the window, and gave her a small smile. Asha smiled back. “Come try these new ones, they’re not like those accursed sticks we were using before,” he said, cupping his hand, and Robb used his distraction as an excuse to score a cheap blow with the sword Jon was just talking about on the back of Jon’s head. Then Robb turned his head towards Asha, and eyed the front of her half-open tunic, his eyes thorough in their appraisal before he lowered them. Eddard was now frowning at Robb. Asha rolled her eyes.
Sometimes it hurt how much she liked this family. It was stupid, her getting so involved with her captors. They would have to kill her, if her father invaded again, given that she was an actual hostage, not the guest they treated her as. And she would let them, because she was stupid. She wouldn’t even stop them, she wouldn’t even cry. She would tell Eddard to just do it, and be quick about it, with Ice. Eddard would not like it, not one bit. He would falter. He would look grave and haunted. He would try, until the end, to find excuses why he should not. But she would be strong, for both of them.
She wondered if something was wrong with her, that she thought about this so much. A masochistic streak. Her on her knees, her head on the plinth of wood, Robb and Jon not even bothering to hide their horror, Eddard holding Ice at her throat, just not able to do it. A self-sacrificing streak, she said to herself, but she knew it was about the attention. The drama, being center-stage. To prove to the Starks, once and for all, that she was one of them – even if it took her death to prove she had honor.
Asha washed her face, stuck a comb through her hair, and went downstairs, and joined their routine early morning swordplay. Both boys took turns handing her her ass on a platter. She told herself it was because she wasn’t used to the heft and balance of these new sticks, and went back to her old one, but they proceeded to beat her thoroughly once again, though they weren’t even teaming up, and then they laughed at her. The assholes.
Then there was breakfast. It wasn’t without any events of note. Bran threw a pie in Arya’s face, Arya retaliated, and then Eddard declared a forced truce between both parties, and also, as a bonus, an extra hour with Maester Luwin for both. All three parties looked downcast at this prospect, including the subdued maester.
Sometimes it was boring as fuck, to be this at peace. Asha reminded herself of the alternative. She dwelled for a short time on a mental montage of the horror of war, a lot of which she had had a good view of, and found herself glad, at the end of it, for this rather staid existence. It would be less staid if either of the Stark boys would agree to fuck her. But not only did they have Honor or something, but apparently, from some words Robb had dropped once, Eddard had had a Talk with them. It was complete with solemn promisings that neither of them was to take her maidenhead. Apparently it would be “improper” and “most dishonorable” to treat a lady who was their hostage so, especially if they were not going to marry her afterwards. It was likely that if it wasn’t for Eddard’s warning, one or both of them might have tried. Asha was not unattractive, even rather damn attractive in fact, with her pale skin and high cheekbones, and long slanted green eyes. Sometimes, when she looked meditatively into her mirror, she could swear she saw her mother.
Asha sighed, looking into the swirls on the surface of her drink. She eyed Jon as he sat eating heartily, and his gloomy beard, which he thought was making him look like a man. This highly experienced seventeen year old was thinking of joining the Night’s Watch, and what was more, his usually-not-dumb-as-fuck father had actually agreed. This was one of Asha’s pet projects, to convince Jon not to go to the Wall and join a permanent brotherhood mostly consisting of murderers and rapers and thieves and outcasts who would in all probability bully this castle-bred boy who thought he would find a home with them because he didn’t know and couldn’t appreciate how much he already had one. She was interfering, in what she considered a subtle, sneaky manner, mostly because she was bored, but also because she was – justifiably, she felt – concerned about this development.
She knew more, she told herself, about the world than Jon. That justified her meddling in his life. He barely knew what was outside the castle walls. He had been bred on tales of honor, and stories of his uncle in the Night’s Watch, and didn’t actually frigging know anything. Asha knew. She knew what deprived smallfolk, like the kind at the Wall, thought of highborns. She knew how warm Jon’s welcome was likely to be there. What was worse, she had actually been to the Wall, that time when Jon was a starry eyed fifteen year old, and the three of them – Jon, Robb and Asha – had gone with Benjen to the Wall, Asha arguing that she was a boy at heart, and cutting her hair extra short and saying that she would pretend to be one too, and not speak to anyone. Benjen had at last relented with a stiff face
But what Asha had seen at the Wall was not what Jon had seen. Jon had seen the high ice cliff, and the black trailing cloaks of the brothers, and the old haunted castles. All the romance of it. Asha had seen the drawn faces, the blank looks they received, heard the whispers and the muted sniggers when the Lord Commander and the First Ranger weren’t around.
She couldn’t help it, she told herself now, if she was this wise. She had paid the price for her wisdom. Jon hadn’t, and couldn’t be expected to understand. Some experience had to come from actual experience. She didn’t want Jon to have that, especially since it would be irreversible if he did something stupid before he realized the truth, like taking a lifelong vow in front of a heart tree.
Why she cared this much about this dark-haired bastard boy, she didn’t know. But as she rested her eyes on Jon, and he looked up at her, his mouth full of meat stew, his dark grey eyes like two deep pieces of sea, she found that she didn’t care if she didn’t know. He deserved a life, this bastard boy, born as this through no fault of his, like the one he already had. If he threw it away with both hands before he could truly understand what he was getting in its place…well, she wouldn’t be able to stand that.
He had never had a mother, and he wouldn’t appreciate it if she suddenly turned into one. But maybe she could think her way out of this situation. If only there was a way to…seduce Jon away from the Path of Honor. If only she was an attractive girl with tits. If only.
She started smiling.