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It was Jon Arryn who pointed out the coincidence, if coincidence was not too monstrous a word for it.
"Your father was also four-and-ten, when he lost his lord father in the Stepstones."
Lost. As if they could be found again. As if the dead could be found once more. Stannis frowned. He despised the word, abhorred the pretend niceties of it. Dead. Murdered. Killed. Slayed. Butchered. Any of that. Any of that would do instead of lost. Instead of the cruel, false hope conveyed by lost.
"My father was four-and-ten, the same age I am now, when he watched his lord father being butchered by Maelys the Monstrous, you mean?"
Robert sighed, a deep, heavy sigh. "Must you be so rude, Stannis? Jon is only trying to comfort us."
He is trying to comfort you. He is here for you, not for me, not for Renly. Who are we to him after all? And when he leaves for the Eyrie, you will leave with him.
He would not ask Robert to stay. He should not have to do so. Robert should have known that it was his duty to stay. His duty as the new Lord of Storm's End. His duty as the guardian to his younger brothers.
Later, after Robert had left them for the training yard and Stannis was wondering why his foster father had not accompanied him there, Jon Arryn said, "I remember praying with your father over his father's body."
"You saved his life, Father told us." That day in the Stepstones, the day Ormund Baratheon lost his life in battle and Steffon Baratheon became Lord of Storm's End, had been the beginning of the close bond between Steffon and Jon Arryn.
"Nothing so remarkable as that. I did not save your father's life. I merely reminded him that it was his duty to his people to stay alive, that the stormlands could not afford to lose two Lords Baratheon in one day. "
"He wanted to avenge his father's death. He wanted to kill Maelys the Monstrous with his own hands."
Jon Arryn nodded. "Like any son would. But your father knew that he had to put duty before desire."
Duty before desire. Steffon Baratheon had drummed that same lesson to his sons, though not always so successfully with his eldest. "It is easy for you, Stannis. Doing your duty comes so easily to you because you do not have any desire at all," Robert often remarked, contemptuously, when his own conduct came under criticism from their lord father. "It is not even a matter of choice for you."
Oh but Robert was wrong. How Stannis fiercely desired to avenge the death of his father and mother. But there was no Maelys the Monstrous-like figure to slay, unless you counted the sea and the storm.
Nature is not cruel, Stannis, his father once said, it is merely indifferent. Indifferent to the travails and sufferings of humans. Indifferent to the grief and the wrath of orphans.
The king, then. The king who commanded Lord Steffon and Lady Cassana to sail to Volantis because no bride from Westeros was deemed grand enough for his son, the son he did not even particularly liked or cared about.
But no, not even a king could command the elements, could command nature.
You should not have gone, a small voice, almost unrecognizable as his own, whispered in his head. You should not have gone to Volantis, Father. You had misgivings. Mother had even more misgivings. You should have heeded those misgivings, hers and your own. You should have … you should … you –
How could you leave us? How could you leave your sons and take their mother with you?
He shook his head, violently, trying to dislodge that treacherous, treacherous thought from his head. How could he blame the dead? How could he blame his father? What kind of son would that make him? His father would never have blamed his own father for dying at the hands of Maelys the Monstrous. His father would never … would he … no, he would never -
Stannis looked up to see Jon Arryn staring at his face, intently. "What did my father pray for, when he was praying over his father's dead body?" Stannis asked, when what he really wanted to know was, Did he ever blame his own father for dying too soon, for leaving him when he was far too young?
"Your father prayed that he would grow to be as good a man as his father. As good a man, as wise a lord, and as loving a father," Jon Arryn replied.
The prayer of a good son, Stannis thought. A good son who would never dream of blaming his father, or mother, for leaving him too soon.
"Would you like me to pray with you, Stannis? Pray for your mother and father," Jon Arryn offered, extending his hand to Stannis the way he must have extended that same hand to Stannis' father eighteen years ago.
The father had taken the hand Jon Arryn offered with gratitude. The son, this son, he recoiled and turned away.
Clearing his throat, Jon Arryn said, awkwardly, "Forgive my presumption, lad. I'm sure ... with your great-uncle, you have prayed -"
"I am done with prayers," Stannis interrupted. "I prayed unceasingly on the parapet, and it made no difference at all."
"The ways of the gods -"
"- are mysterious to us mere mortals. I know. Our septon has been repeating that by rote. It is no mystery I wish to ponder, Lord Arryn."
Here, he thought, was finally the deserving Maelys the Monstrous-like figure for him to hate. To blame. To direct his wrath and his ire. Nature might be indifferent, but the gods, the gods were downright cruel.
If you're interested, I wrote about Jon Arryn and Steffon Baratheon praying for Steffon's father in Chapter 3 of Life after Life, and about Steffon telling Robert and Stannis about his father's death in Bury Me Deep. Aaaaaand that's it for Ariel's shameless self-promotion :P Thanks so much for reading <3