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summary. ivy wallis was supposed to be a background characterâuntil she got hit by a truck and realised sheâs in a badly written fanfiction.
now she has unreliable, fear-triggered plot armour, a growing hatred for the author, and one goal: donât die.
this plan gets significantly more complicated when mark grayson starts noticing things he definitely shouldnât.
full work.
trial. The walk to school is something Ivy doesnât really think about most days, mostly because she doesnât have to. It's fifteen minutes, give or take, depending on how fast she feels like going, the kind of distance thatâs just long enough to justify not bothering with a ride but short enough that it never really becomes an effort. She walks it so often that itâs less a journey than a transition, a quiet stretch of time between one place and another where nothing much is expected of her, where she can just exist without needing to do anything in particular. Her parents only ever insist on driving her when the weather turnsâwinter mornings where the cold bites through layers no matter how fast she moves, or rainy days where the sky just opens up without warningâbut today isnât one of those days, today the air is warm and clear. The sky is a flat, uninterrupted blue that makes everything feel a little lighter.
She settles into her usual pace as she moves down the sidewalk, one earbud in, music playing just loud enough to fill the space around her without drowning anything out completely, her fingers occasionally tapping lightly against her bag in time with the rhythm. Now and then, she hums along under her breath, not fully committing to it, just enough to follow the melody as it loops through her head, her attention drifting in and out of the song as she passes the same houses she always does, the same parked cars, the same stretches of sidewalk broken up by driveways and neatly cut grass. Thereâs a comfort in the repetition of it, in knowing exactly how long itâll take, exactly when sheâll need to turn, exactly how far she has left at any given point without needing to check.
By the time she reaches the main road, the quiet of the neighbourhood gives way to something busier, the low, constant hum of traffic threading through the air as cars pass by in uneven intervals. She slows slightly as she approaches the crosswalk, stopping where sheâs supposed to, just behind the line, her weight shifting onto one leg as she waits for the signal. The light is still red, the small digital timer counting down at a steady pace, and she lets her gaze wander across the street, not really looking for anything in particular until something out of place catches her eye.
A cat is sitting on the opposite sidewalk, just off to the side of the crosswalk, still and upright like itâs waiting for something, and Ivyâs expression softens almost immediately, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth without her thinking about it. Itâs pitch black, darker than it should be, really, its fur, or what should be fur, looking less like something natural and more like a solid shape, like ink spilt into the outline of a cat and left to settle there.
Thereâs something slightly off about it, something she canât quite place at first, like the edges of it donât sit right against the world around it, like itâs been drawn in and not quite blended properly, but itâs still a cat, and itâs sitting there patiently, and thatâs enough for her initial reaction to stick.
âHey, kitty,â she murmurs under her breath, the word barely audible even to herself as she watches it, her smile lingering as the timer ticks down. She used to play with her grandmaâs cat growing up, dressing the poor creature up in her doll outfits and forcing him to sit and attend teaparties she threw for all her toys.
The cat eyes her through half-lidded yellow eyes, flicking its tail lazily and then, as if it mulled it over in its mind, it stands. Doing that arched back stretch that cats do when they're getting up, mouth open wide as they yawn, showing all of their little needle-like teeth.
It steps forward, off the curb and into the street, moving toward her with a slow, deliberate pace that immediately makes something in her chest tighten, her smile faltering as her focus sharpens. Waitâno! Her mind screams, her posture straightening as she leans forward slightly, like that alone might somehow stop it. Teeth clenched and body already wincing like she's about to start the day by watching a poor cat get turned into roadkill.Â
A car passes in front of it, fast enough that it should have been a problem. Still, the cat just⊠isnât where it should be for a split second, its body flickering, stuttering, like a skipped frame in a video, and then itâs a step further forward than it should be, continuing as if nothing happened.
Ivy blinks, her brow furrowing in confusion at the sight.Â
The cat keeps going, unbothered. Another car rushes past, closer this time, and Ivyâs breath catches as she instinctively takes a half-step forward despite the red light still holding her in place, her voice raising slightly without her meaning it to. âHey! Go!âgo faster, kitty, come onââ
The cat glitches again, more noticeably this time, its shape distorting for a fraction of a second, stretching wrong, flattening slightly before snapping back into place like something correcting itself too quickly, and then, just as it reaches the middle of the road, it stops.
It sits, it sits down. Right there, directly in the path of oncoming traffic, and as if to really rub it in her face, it raises a delicate dark little paw and begins to groom itself nonchalantly.Â
âOh myâare you serious?â Ivy mutters, her pulse kicking up as she looks from the cat to the road, then back again, the timer still counting down like none of this is happening, like everything is proceeding exactly as it should.Â
Ivy can't help the yelp she lets out when a third car barrels past, missing the cat by what feels like inches, the rush of air it leaves behind barely disturbing it, and thatâs it, thatâs the point where something in her just snaps from watching to acting.Â
She steps off the curb before the light changes, her feet hitting the asphalt as she moves quickly, weaving between the gaps in traffic without fully thinking it through, her focus locked entirely on the small, unmoving shape in the centre of the road. Thereâs a shout somewhereâdistant, indistinctâbut she ignores it, closing the distance in a few quick strides as another car passes behind her, too close, too fast, but not enough to stop her.
She reaches the cat just as it flickers again, its outline briefly doubling, misaligned with itself, and she doesnât hesitate, scooping it up in both arms in one smooth motion, her grip tightening instinctively as she pulls it against her chest.
For a second, just one measly second, the world seems to hold. The cat is warm, or at least it should be, but the sensation is strange, not quite solid, not quite real, like holding something that hasnât fully decided what it is yet, and Ivyâs breath catches as she looks down at it, her heart still racing from the sudden movement.
She lets out a breath of relief, she's got it, she reached it in time before anything hit it. The pedestrian signal is about to sound, which means they're both fine, but they're not fine; she's calculated it all wrong, and while she may have reached the cat when she looks over at the timer, it's still counting, nowhere near ready.Â
Then a horn blares.
Loud, sudden, blaring through her music so violently that it rips her straight out of her thoughts, her head snapping up as if dragged by an invisible string, and for a split second her brain refuses to process what sheâs seeing because it doesnât make sense, it canât make sense, because theres a truck barrelling straight towards her and the shape of it stutters as it moves, its edges breaking apart and snapping back together in rapid, jarring shifts, like itâs phasing in and out of existence with every fraction of a second, its form not quite stable, not quite anchored to the road beneath it, the color of it flat in places where it should reflect light, the details lagging behind its motion like theyâre struggling to keep up.
She doesnât move, not because she chooses not to, but because the command never arrives.
Her body just⊠it just stops responding, like the signal got lost somewhere between thought and action, like sheâs been disconnected from herself at the exact worst possible moment. Thoughts stuttering into static as her mind scrambles uselessly for something to do, anything to do. Thereâs a strange, distant awareness that slips in then, something quiet and detached and horribly out of place:
This is it.
She is going to die.
The impact is immediate and catastrophic, the force of it slamming into her body with enough power to lift her clean off her feet, the sound a sickening, dense crack that echoes out across the street as bone gives way under pressure it was never meant to withstand. Her body folds unnaturally around the front of the truck for a fraction of a second before being thrown forward, the momentum carrying her several feet through the air before she collides with the asphalt hard enough to tear skin on impact, the surface ripping against her like sandpaper as she skids.
Thereâs a wet, visceral quality to it, the kind of violence that doesnât pull back or soften itselfâthe sharp snap of something breaking in her arm as she hits, bending wrong, the immediate bloom of dark red spreading across the pavement beneath her where her head struck too hard, too fast. The world spins, disoriented and loud, the screech of brakes coming too late, the truckâs tyres dragging against the road as it tries to stop after the fact.
And the pain, God, the pain.Â
It is everywhere, all at once, not sharp and precise but overwhelming and total, a white-hot flood that drowns out thought, that reduces everything she is to a single, desperate awareness of wrongness, of things broken and tearing and not where they should be, her body no longer something she inhabits but something happening to her, something she cannot control or even fully understand as her mind scrambles to catch up with what has already occurred.
For a second, everything narrows, sound dulls, vision blurs at the edges, her body refusing to respond properly as shock floods through her system, her grip loosening without her meaning it to.
The cat slips from her arms, at least she thinks it does. Or maybe it was never fully there to begin with. It flickers once more as it falls, its shape collapsing inward before snapping out of existence entirely, leaving nothing behindânot even the suggestion that it had been real.
Ivy tries to breathe, and she can't tell if it really works. Is her mouth open because she's taking in air or because she's screaming?
Something is wrong, everything is wrong, her chest tight, her limbs heavy and distant like they donât belong to her anymore, the metallic taste of blood flooding her mouth as she coughs weakly, the movement sending a fresh spike of pain through her body that barely even registers properly.
The sky above her is still blue.
And as the world starts to dim at the edges, the last thing she hears is the echo of that horn, still ringing, still too loud, as everything else begins to slip quietly, steadily, out of reach.
summary. ivy wallis was supposed to be a background characterâuntil she got hit by a truck and realised sheâs in a badly written fanfiction.
now she has unreliable, fear-triggered plot armour, a growing hatred for the author, and one goal: donât die.
this plan gets significantly more complicated when mark grayson starts noticing things he definitely shouldnât.
full work.
trial. The walk to school is something Ivy doesnât really think about most days, mostly because she doesnât have to. It's fifteen minutes, give or take, depending on how fast she feels like going, the kind of distance thatâs just long enough to justify not bothering with a ride but short enough that it never really becomes an effort. She walks it so often that itâs less a journey than a transition, a quiet stretch of time between one place and another where nothing much is expected of her, where she can just exist without needing to do anything in particular. Her parents only ever insist on driving her when the weather turnsâwinter mornings where the cold bites through layers no matter how fast she moves, or rainy days where the sky just opens up without warningâbut today isnât one of those days, today the air is warm and clear. The sky is a flat, uninterrupted blue that makes everything feel a little lighter.
She settles into her usual pace as she moves down the sidewalk, one earbud in, music playing just loud enough to fill the space around her without drowning anything out completely, her fingers occasionally tapping lightly against her bag in time with the rhythm. Now and then, she hums along under her breath, not fully committing to it, just enough to follow the melody as it loops through her head, her attention drifting in and out of the song as she passes the same houses she always does, the same parked cars, the same stretches of sidewalk broken up by driveways and neatly cut grass. Thereâs a comfort in the repetition of it, in knowing exactly how long itâll take, exactly when sheâll need to turn, exactly how far she has left at any given point without needing to check.
By the time she reaches the main road, the quiet of the neighbourhood gives way to something busier, the low, constant hum of traffic threading through the air as cars pass by in uneven intervals. She slows slightly as she approaches the crosswalk, stopping where sheâs supposed to, just behind the line, her weight shifting onto one leg as she waits for the signal. The light is still red, the small digital timer counting down at a steady pace, and she lets her gaze wander across the street, not really looking for anything in particular until something out of place catches her eye.
A cat is sitting on the opposite sidewalk, just off to the side of the crosswalk, still and upright like itâs waiting for something, and Ivyâs expression softens almost immediately, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth without her thinking about it. Itâs pitch black, darker than it should be, really, its fur, or what should be fur, looking less like something natural and more like a solid shape, like ink spilt into the outline of a cat and left to settle there.
Thereâs something slightly off about it, something she canât quite place at first, like the edges of it donât sit right against the world around it, like itâs been drawn in and not quite blended properly, but itâs still a cat, and itâs sitting there patiently, and thatâs enough for her initial reaction to stick.
âHey, kitty,â she murmurs under her breath, the word barely audible even to herself as she watches it, her smile lingering as the timer ticks down. She used to play with her grandmaâs cat growing up, dressing the poor creature up in her doll outfits and forcing him to sit and attend teaparties she threw for all her toys.
The cat eyes her through half-lidded yellow eyes, flicking its tail lazily and then, as if it mulled it over in its mind, it stands. Doing that arched back stretch that cats do when they're getting up, mouth open wide as they yawn, showing all of their little needle-like teeth.
It steps forward, off the curb and into the street, moving toward her with a slow, deliberate pace that immediately makes something in her chest tighten, her smile faltering as her focus sharpens. Waitâno! Her mind screams, her posture straightening as she leans forward slightly, like that alone might somehow stop it. Teeth clenched and body already wincing like she's about to start the day by watching a poor cat get turned into roadkill.Â
A car passes in front of it, fast enough that it should have been a problem. Still, the cat just⊠isnât where it should be for a split second, its body flickering, stuttering, like a skipped frame in a video, and then itâs a step further forward than it should be, continuing as if nothing happened.
Ivy blinks, her brow furrowing in confusion at the sight.Â
The cat keeps going, unbothered. Another car rushes past, closer this time, and Ivyâs breath catches as she instinctively takes a half-step forward despite the red light still holding her in place, her voice raising slightly without her meaning it to. âHey! Go!âgo faster, kitty, come onââ
The cat glitches again, more noticeably this time, its shape distorting for a fraction of a second, stretching wrong, flattening slightly before snapping back into place like something correcting itself too quickly, and then, just as it reaches the middle of the road, it stops.
It sits, it sits down. Right there, directly in the path of oncoming traffic, and as if to really rub it in her face, it raises a delicate dark little paw and begins to groom itself nonchalantly.Â
âOh myâare you serious?â Ivy mutters, her pulse kicking up as she looks from the cat to the road, then back again, the timer still counting down like none of this is happening, like everything is proceeding exactly as it should.Â
Ivy can't help the yelp she lets out when a third car barrels past, missing the cat by what feels like inches, the rush of air it leaves behind barely disturbing it, and thatâs it, thatâs the point where something in her just snaps from watching to acting.Â
She steps off the curb before the light changes, her feet hitting the asphalt as she moves quickly, weaving between the gaps in traffic without fully thinking it through, her focus locked entirely on the small, unmoving shape in the centre of the road. Thereâs a shout somewhereâdistant, indistinctâbut she ignores it, closing the distance in a few quick strides as another car passes behind her, too close, too fast, but not enough to stop her.
She reaches the cat just as it flickers again, its outline briefly doubling, misaligned with itself, and she doesnât hesitate, scooping it up in both arms in one smooth motion, her grip tightening instinctively as she pulls it against her chest.
For a second, just one measly second, the world seems to hold. The cat is warm, or at least it should be, but the sensation is strange, not quite solid, not quite real, like holding something that hasnât fully decided what it is yet, and Ivyâs breath catches as she looks down at it, her heart still racing from the sudden movement.
She lets out a breath of relief, she's got it, she reached it in time before anything hit it. The pedestrian signal is about to sound, which means they're both fine, but they're not fine; she's calculated it all wrong, and while she may have reached the cat when she looks over at the timer, it's still counting, nowhere near ready.Â
Then a horn blares.
Loud, sudden, blaring through her music so violently that it rips her straight out of her thoughts, her head snapping up as if dragged by an invisible string, and for a split second her brain refuses to process what sheâs seeing because it doesnât make sense, it canât make sense, because theres a truck barrelling straight towards her and the shape of it stutters as it moves, its edges breaking apart and snapping back together in rapid, jarring shifts, like itâs phasing in and out of existence with every fraction of a second, its form not quite stable, not quite anchored to the road beneath it, the color of it flat in places where it should reflect light, the details lagging behind its motion like theyâre struggling to keep up.
She doesnât move, not because she chooses not to, but because the command never arrives.
Her body just⊠it just stops responding, like the signal got lost somewhere between thought and action, like sheâs been disconnected from herself at the exact worst possible moment. Thoughts stuttering into static as her mind scrambles uselessly for something to do, anything to do. Thereâs a strange, distant awareness that slips in then, something quiet and detached and horribly out of place:
This is it.
She is going to die.
The impact is immediate and catastrophic, the force of it slamming into her body with enough power to lift her clean off her feet, the sound a sickening, dense crack that echoes out across the street as bone gives way under pressure it was never meant to withstand. Her body folds unnaturally around the front of the truck for a fraction of a second before being thrown forward, the momentum carrying her several feet through the air before she collides with the asphalt hard enough to tear skin on impact, the surface ripping against her like sandpaper as she skids.
Thereâs a wet, visceral quality to it, the kind of violence that doesnât pull back or soften itselfâthe sharp snap of something breaking in her arm as she hits, bending wrong, the immediate bloom of dark red spreading across the pavement beneath her where her head struck too hard, too fast. The world spins, disoriented and loud, the screech of brakes coming too late, the truckâs tyres dragging against the road as it tries to stop after the fact.
And the pain, God, the pain.Â
It is everywhere, all at once, not sharp and precise but overwhelming and total, a white-hot flood that drowns out thought, that reduces everything she is to a single, desperate awareness of wrongness, of things broken and tearing and not where they should be, her body no longer something she inhabits but something happening to her, something she cannot control or even fully understand as her mind scrambles to catch up with what has already occurred.
For a second, everything narrows, sound dulls, vision blurs at the edges, her body refusing to respond properly as shock floods through her system, her grip loosening without her meaning it to.
The cat slips from her arms, at least she thinks it does. Or maybe it was never fully there to begin with. It flickers once more as it falls, its shape collapsing inward before snapping out of existence entirely, leaving nothing behindânot even the suggestion that it had been real.
Ivy tries to breathe, and she can't tell if it really works. Is her mouth open because she's taking in air or because she's screaming?
Something is wrong, everything is wrong, her chest tight, her limbs heavy and distant like they donât belong to her anymore, the metallic taste of blood flooding her mouth as she coughs weakly, the movement sending a fresh spike of pain through her body that barely even registers properly.
The sky above her is still blue.
And as the world starts to dim at the edges, the last thing she hears is the echo of that horn, still ringing, still too loud, as everything else begins to slip quietly, steadily, out of reach.
synopsis. reader is a skilled woods witch who heals with herbs and whispered spells, summoned to the red keep she must heal a dragon or watch him die.
content. slight canon divergence ( vaccinated valarr arc?? ). graphic depictions of illness & death. plague descriptions. probably incorrect folk medicine. sexism. canon typical themes. lots of grief and angst. comfort. possible tragic ending ( haven't decided yet )
word count. 6.2k
note. sobbed writing this...
part i. part ii. part iii. end.
The forest had not changed, not in any way that mattered, and that was perhaps the strangest thing of all, because the world beyond it had been broken and burned and remade in ways that still did not sit cleanly in your mind, and yet here the trees still stood as they always had, tall and unmoved, their roots buried deep in earth that remembered nothing of kings or sickness or the weight of loss that had swept through the Seven Kingdoms like a tide that could not be turned back.
Morning light filtered pale and thin through the canopy above, catching on the lingering mist that clung low to the ground and turning it silver in places where it drifted between the trunks, and your steps carried you along the narrow path with the same quiet certainty they always had, your body remembering what your thoughts did not always allow you to forget, because this was a place that had shaped you long before the Red Keep and its stone halls and fevered rooms had ever touched your life.
The basket at your arm was already half full, its woven sides lined with cloth to keep the gathered plants from bruising, and your fingers moved almost without thought as you paused now and then to kneel beside some low-growing cluster of leaves or a thin-stemmed flowering herb, cutting carefully, never taking too much, never leaving the plant stripped bare, because that had been one of the first lessons you had been taught, long before you understood the weight of any of it.
âTake only what you need,â the old woman had said, her voice still as clear in your memory as the scent of crushed sage beneath your fingers, âor the forest will remember.â
You had believed her then, in the simple, unquestioning way children believed the world was full of unseen balances, and perhaps you still did, in some quiet, unspoken way, because even now you found yourself pausing, considering, choosing with care, as though the trees themselves watched and measured your actions.
The air smelled of damp earth and pine resin, clean in a way that made your lungs feel lighter with every breath, and yet beneath it, faint and lingering, there was something else that had never quite left you, something that did not belong to this place at all, no matter how far you had come or how much time had passed.
Smoke.
Not the comforting curl of it from a hearth fire or the soft scent of herbs drying above warm coals, but something heavier, thicker, something that clung to memory more than to the senses, and for a moment, without meaning to, you found yourself standing once more in that vast, echoing space beneath the Dragonpit, where the air had been choked with it, where the sky above had been darkened not by clouds but by ash.
You could still see it when you closed your eyes.
The pyres, built high and endless, one after another until the ground itself seemed swallowed by them, the flames rising in great, terrible waves that consumed everything placed upon them, bodies wrapped in cloth, carried in silence or in sobbing procession, until there had been too many to count and no one left who could pretend that the sickness would pass without taking something from them all.
You had left soon after.
Not because there had been nothing left to do, though that had been true in its own way, but because there had been nothing left you could bear to do, because the work had become something else entirely, something that no longer resembled healing, and you had felt, for the first time in your life, as though your hands were no longer enough.
Your grip tightened slightly around the basketâs handle as you straightened, the memory slipping back just enough for you to breathe again, though it never truly left, not entirely, not in the way some things never did once they had carved themselves deeply enough into you.
The sickness had burned itself out eventually.
It always did.
The body could only endure so much before it either fought or failed, and the same seemed to be true of entire kingdoms, though the scars left behind were not so easily mended, because even now, years later, there were places where the silence lingered too long, where fields went untilled or houses stood empty, where the absence of those lost could still be felt in ways no one spoke of openly.
You moved again, slower now, your gaze drifting across the undergrowth as you searched for the next plant worth taking, though your thoughts had already begun to turn elsewhere, drawn back as they so often were to those last days in the city, to the rooms that had grown darker with each passing hour, to the faces that had changed under the weight of fever and time.
Prince Matarys had been the first of them to fall.
The memory came sharp and sudden, as it always did, refusing to soften with distance or repetition, because there had been no slow fading, no gentle slipping away, only a sharp, brutal turn that had taken him from something fragile but hopeful into something final in the space of a single breath, one moment his chest rising, uneven but present, and the nextâ
Stillness.
Vallar hadn't woken yet.
Not when you whispered his name in the quiet hours when the castle seemed to hold its breath, not when your voice softened into something almost unrecognisable to your own ears as you spoke to him the way you might soothe a frightened child, not when your hands trembled against his skin as you adjusted cloths that no longer cooled him for more than fleeting moments, nor when exhaustion blurred your vision and turned the passing of time into something shapeless and cruel. You spoke to him constantly now, as though silence itself might allow him to slip further away, as though the sound of your voice might tether him to somethingâanythingâthat still existed beyond the fever.
But he still did not stir.
And beyond the fragile stillness of his chamber, the world continued to unravel in ways you could feel even without leaving his side, the quiet corridors growing heavier with each passing day, the murmured conversations sharper, more desperate, until even the maestersâwho had once spoken in measured tones and quiet certaintyâno longer bothered to hide the strain that had begun to fracture their composure. You heard it in the way they moved, in the clipped edges of their voices, in the way their treatments grew more frantic, less certain, as though they too had begun to understand that whatever held this sickness within its grasp was not something they could easily command.
You tried not to listen.
You tried to keep your world contained within the space between you and him, within the slow, uneven rhythm of his breathing, within the fragile warmth that still lingered beneath your hands when you pressed your fingers to his wrist to count a pulse that seemed to race one moment and falter the next. But there was only so much you could ignore, only so much you could pretend did not matter, and when the shouting began, it tore through the fragile barrier you had built with a violence that left you no choice but to face it.
It came like a crack in something already breaking, sudden and sharp and wrong, voices raised in a way you had not yet heard within these walls, no longer restrained by decorum or fear of who might overhear, but loud and uncontrolled and threaded through with something that felt dangerously close to panic. You stilled immediately, your fingers tightening around Valarrâs hand as though instinct alone might keep him anchored, your breath catching as the sound carried down the corridor and reached you in fragments that refused, at first, to make sense.
Then you heard it.
A name.
Matarys.
Your heart lurched so violently it left you momentarily breathless, your gaze snapping toward the door as the noise grew louder, closer, until it pressed against the edges of the room itself, demanding to be acknowledged, demanding that you leave the fragile stillness you had clung to for so long.
You did not want to go.
The thought came sharp and immediate, rooted in something deeper than reason, something almost childish in its desperation, because leaving himâeven for a momentâfelt wrong in a way you could not explain, as though the simple act of stepping away might be enough to tip the balance entirely, to let whatever fragile thread held him here finally snap.
But the shouting did not stop, and something in itâsomething in the urgency, the rawnessâtold you that you could not ignore it.
Your hand slipped from his reluctantly, your fingers lingering for a moment longer than necessary as though committing the shape of him to memory before you forced yourself to stand, your legs unsteady beneath you as you crossed the room and pulled the door open, the sudden rush of cooler air doing little to steady the tight, suffocating pressure in your chest.
The corridor was in disarray.
Servants moved too quickly, their usual quiet efficiency replaced with something frantic, something uncontained, and further down the hall, a cluster had gathered outside a chamber you knew all too well, their voices overlapping, rising and falling in a chaotic blur that made it difficult to grasp anything clearly.
âHeâs gone.â The words cut through everything else with terrifying clarity.
It felt as though the air had been pulled from your lungs entirely, your body swaying where you stood as the meaning settled slowly, heavily, refusing to be anything other than what it was.
No.
No, that wasnâtâ You had seen him, you had been there.
You had watched him breathe, watched his chest rise and fall, had measured his pulse, had told yourself that he was improving, that he was holding on.
âOne momentââ someone was saying, their voice shaking, âhe was breathingâand thenââ
You did not hear the rest. You could not, because your mind had already begun to race ahead, already begun to unravel in a way that had nothing to do with Matarys and everything to do with the man you had left behind in that room.
Valarr.
Your body moved before your thoughts could catch up, your steps uneven, unsteady as you turned and made your way back, the corridor blurring around you as the weight of it pressed in from all sides, your hand brushing against the wall to keep yourself upright as a single, terrible thought repeated over and over in your mind.
He will wake.
He will wake and ask for him.
And you will have nothing to give him.
The door closed behind you with a soft, final sound that felt far too loud in the quiet that followed, your gaze snapping immediately to the bed as though you expectedâneededâto see something different, some sign that the world had not just shifted irrevocably beyond your control.
But nothing had changed.
He lay exactly as you had left him, his breathing still faint, still uneven, his face untouched by the chaos that had just torn through the castle beyond these walls.
âValarrâŠâ His name broke from you, softer now, fragile in a way it had never been before, your steps carrying you back to his side as your hand found his again, your fingers curling tightly around his as though the contact alone might steady the storm rising inside you.
âYou have to wake,â you whispered, your voice trembling despite your effort to control it, your other hand lifting to brush back the damp strands of hair clinging to his temple, âyou have toââ
Your breath caught. The words refused to come, because saying them made them real. Made it final.
But you could not keep it from him, even like this.
Even now.
âMatarysâŠâ The name felt heavy on your tongue, wrong in a way you could not reconcile, your gaze dropping to where your fingers held his as though you might find strength there, âyour brotherâheââ
Your voice broke completely.
âHeâs gone,â you managed at last, the truth slipping free in a whisper that felt too small to carry the weight of it, âhe didnât evenâhe didnât have timeââ
You waited without meaning to, some part of you clung to the impossible hope that he might react, that somethingâanythingâmight reach him through the fever, through the silence, that he might stir, might frown, might do anything at all that would tell you he had heard.
But there was nothing.
No movement.
No change.
Only that same fragile, distant breathing that now felt unbearably hollow.
And the realisation of itâof what it meant, of how far beyond your reach he truly wasâbroke something inside you so completely that you could not hold yourself together any longer.
A sob tore from your chest, sharp and unrestrained, your grip on him tightening as your other hand came up to cover your mouth in a futile attempt to contain the sound, though it was already too late, the grief spilling over in a way you could not stop.
âHe would have wanted you there,â you whispered brokenly, the words tumbling over one another as your thoughts unravelled, âhe would haveâhe always waited for youâyou were always thereââ
Your forehead lowered against his hand, your shoulders shaking as you tried to breathe through the overwhelming weight of it, through the sharp, aching knowledge that he had not been there, that he had not been able to be there, and that he would never know.
âYou were supposed to see him get better,â you said, your voice quieter now, hollowed out by the force of your grief, âyou were supposed to stand there and watch him wake up andââ
You could still remember the sound of your own voice, low and unsteady, words spilling out without thought, without caution, as though saying them might anchor something that was already slipping beyond your reach.
You swallowed, the memory pressing too close now, and forced yourself to move again, to focus on the forest, on the present, on the simple act of gathering that had always steadied you before.
King Daeron had not lasted long after.
The castle had mourned him as kings were mourned, with ceremony and solemnity, with voices raised in grief that echoed through stone halls already too full of it, but beneath it all there had been something else, something quieter and far more dangerous, a shifting of power that had nothing to do with sickness and everything to do with what came after it.
Valarrâs uncle Aerys had been named regent while he lay motionless, unable to rule the kingdom that now belonged to him.
You had heard the announcement as you moved between chambers, your hands still stained with the work you could not seem to stop, and you had felt the weight of it settle into the air around you, though you had not fully understood what it would mean, not then, not while your thoughts were still consumed by fever and breath and the fragile line between life and death that you had been walking for days.
There had been others watching.
There were always others watching in a place like that.
But one had stood apart.
Brynden Rivers had not spoken to you when you left, had not called out or offered thanks or question, and yet you had felt his gaze as surely as if it had been a hand against your back, steady and unyielding, following you as you passed through the gates and onto the road that would carry you away from the city and everything it had taken from you.
You had not looked back.
You had not wanted to see what expression he wore, whether it was one of curiosity or calculation or something else entirely, something that might have unsettled you further had you allowed yourself to meet it.
The forest closed around you again as you stepped off the path, drawn toward a cluster of pale flowers growing in the shade of a fallen log, your fingers brushing lightly over their petals before you cut them free, adding them carefully to your basket as the familiar rhythm of the work began to settle your thoughts once more.
Time had passed.
More than you had first intended.
At first, you had told yourself you would return when the worst of it had eased, when the sickness had loosened its grip on the city and the people within it, when there might still be something left for you to do there, something that justified the distance and the weight of memory that clung to it.
But the seasons had turned.
Once.
Then again.
And with each passing month, the pull to return had grown weaker, replaced instead by something quieter, something that rooted you here in a way you had not expected, because the cottage had remained, and the forest had remained, and the workâsmall, steady, unendingâhad continued, as it always did.
You adjusted the basket against your arm, your steps turning now toward the narrow path that would lead you back toward the clearing, toward the place that had once felt too still, too empty after all that had come before.
Nowâ You exhaled softly, the thought unfinished, lingering somewhere just beyond the edge of words as the trees began to thin and the light grew stronger ahead.
The forest had not changed.
But you had.
And whatever had been left behind in those stone halls, in the smoke and ash and silence of a city that had burned its dead until the sky itself seemed to darken with it, no longer held you in quite the same way.
The memory returned not as something distant and softened by time, but with a sharp, breathless clarity that pressed in on all sides, as though you were once again standing in that dim, suffocating chamber where the air had grown too thick with sickness and fear to draw easily into your lungs, where every soundâthe rasp of his breath, the faint crackle of the brazier, the quiet, measured movements of the maestersâhad seemed unnaturally loud against the fragile stillness that had settled over him.
You had been on your knees beside the bed for so long that your legs had long since gone numb, though you had not noticed, your entire world narrowed to the weight of his hand in yours and the terrible, unyielding stillness of his body beneath the blankets, your fingers curled tightly around his as though you might anchor him there through sheer force of will, as though letting go, even for a moment, might mean losing him entirely.
âPlease,â you had whispered, though your voice had long since broken into something unsteady and raw, your forehead resting against the edge of the mattress, your tears soaking into the fine linens without thought or restraint, âplease, if you can hear me, if there is anything left of you that can hear me, you must come back.â
He had not moved.
The fever had burned through him without mercy, leaving his skin pale beneath the flush, his lips dry and parted with shallow, uneven breaths that seemed to grow weaker with each passing hour, and for the first time since you had begun treating him, for the first time in all the years you had spent learning how to mend broken bodies and ease suffering, you had felt something close to helplessness coil tight and suffocating in your chest.
âI will stay,â you had said then, the words tumbling from you in a rush as though they had been waiting there all along, buried beneath everything you had tried not to feel, everything you had told yourself you could not afford to want, âdo you hear me? I will stay, I will not leave you, not for the city, not for the court, not for anything, I will go wherever you go, I will build whatever life you ask of me, we could leave this place, we could go somewhere quiet where no one knows your name, where there are no crowns or councils or expectations pressing down on you, just a small house and open air and the sound of wind through the trees, I could grow herbs again, and youââ
Your voice had faltered then, catching on something too fragile to name, your grip tightening on his hand as though the future you spoke of might slip away if you did not hold it fast.
âYou would not have to be anything but yourself,â you had finished softly, your breath shaking, âyou would not have to carry all of this alone.â
Silence had followed.
Long enough that the hope you had not realised you were clinging to began to fracture, splintering into something thin and painful, your eyes closing as another sob tore free from your chest, your head bowing lower as though you might disappear into the space between one breath and the next.
The shift came like a blessing from the gods.Â
So slight you might have dismissed it as nothing more than wishful thinking, had his fingers not tightened faintly around yours in response, the movement weak, barely there, but unmistakable.
Your head lifted sharply, your breath catching in your throat as you stared at him, your heart stuttering painfully against your ribs as you leaned closer, scarcely daring to hope, scarcely daring to believe.
His lashes trembled, and then, slowly, with an effort that seemed to cost him more than any battle ever could, his eyes opened.
They were unfocused at first, clouded with the lingering haze of fever and exhaustion, but they found you all the same, as though drawn there by something deeper than sight, something instinctive and unerring.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke.
You could not.
The relief that flooded through you was too great, too overwhelming to be contained within words, your grip on his hand tightening as though to reassure yourself that he was truly there, that this was not some cruel trick of your own desperate mind.
His lips parted slightly, his breath shallow but steadier than it had been, and when he finally spoke, his voice was rough and quiet, barely more than a whisper against the stillness of the room.
âIâd like that.â
The words settled between you, fragile and impossibly heavy all at once, and you felt something in your chest give way entirely, the last of your fear breaking apart beneath the weight of something that felt dangerously close to hope.
The weeks that followed passed in a strange, uncertain rhythm, marked not by the steady passage of time but by small, hard-won victories that felt far more significant than the turning of days, each one carrying Valarr further from the edge he had come so close to slipping beyond, each one drawing him slowly, stubbornly back into the world he had nearly left behind.
The fever broke.
The strength returned, though slowly, unevenly, leaving him thinner than he had been before, the sharpness of his features more pronounced, the lingering shadows beneath his eyes a quiet reminder of how close he had come to death, though there was something else there now too, something steadier, something that had not existed before the sickness had stripped everything else away.
By the time he was well enough to sit through the long, exhausting council meetings that now filled his days, the castle itself had begun to shift around him, the quiet mourning that had followed the deaths of his brother and grandfather giving way to something more practical, more pressing, as the matter of succession could no longer be delayed.
He was king now.
The crown had not yet touched his head, the ceremony postponed until the realm had steadied itself enough to bear the weight of such a thing, but the reality of it had already settled into place, shaping every conversation, every decision, every expectation placed upon him by those who now looked to him as their ruler.
And with it came the whispers.
You heard them in passing, in the quiet corridors where servants thought themselves unobserved, in the careful, measured tones of the lords who lingered too long in doorways, their gazes lingering just a moment too long whenever you crossed their path, their words dipped in politeness that did little to disguise the disapproval beneath.
A woodswitch. Too close. Unseemly.
And always, inevitablyâ A wife.
He must take a wife; the realm required it, and the line must continue.
It was not said to your face, not directly, but it did not need to be; the meaning carried easily enough through the looks, the silences, the subtle shifts in conversation whenever you entered a room.
And you felt it.
Even if you tried not to.
It was late when he spoke of it at last.
You had been in his chambers, the familiar space quieter now than it had been during the height of his illness, though the traces of it still lingered in the arrangement of the room, in the herbs that remained on the shelves, in the table that had become your workspace in those long, desperate days.
He sat near the window, the fading light catching in his hair, his posture still touched by the remnants of his recovery, though there was strength there now too, something that had returned to him in the weeks since he had first opened his eyes again.
You moved quietly as you checked the last of the tinctures you had prepared for him, your hands steady even as your thoughts drifted elsewhere, to the things you had heard, the things you had not allowed yourself to fully consider.
âDid you mean it?â he asked suddenly, his voice breaking through the quiet with a softness that made something in your chest tighten.
You stilled, your fingers pausing against the glass vial in your hand before you turned slightly to look at him.
âWhat?â
âThe night I woke,â he said, his gaze fixed on you in a way that made it impossible to look away, âyou said you would stay, that we could leave, that none of this would matter.â
The memory rose instantly, vivid and unrelenting, and for a moment, you could not find your voice, the weight of those words settling heavily between you.
âYes,â you said at last, though something in your tone betrayed you, something softer, more uncertain than you intended.
He noticed, of course, he did. His expression shifted slightly, something thoughtful, searching, as though he were piecing together something unspoken.Â
âTheyâve been speaking,â he said quietly. It was not a question. You did not answer. You did not need to. The silence stretched just long enough for him to understand.
âI donât want it.â
The words came without warning, sharp in their certainty, and you looked at him fully then, something in your chest tightening further at the intensity in his gaze.
âI donât want to sit a throne built on ashes,â he continued, rising slowly to his feet, the movement deliberate, grounded in something deeper than the moment itself, âI watched what it did to my father, how it consumed him piece by piece until there was nothing left but duty, until he died for it, and now my brother is gone, my grandfather is gone, and I lay in that bed thinking I would follow them, thinking that thisâthis place, this crownâwould be the end of me too.â
His voice softened then, though the conviction in it did not waver. âAnd I realised I did not want to die here.â The words hung between you, heavy with everything they carried.
âI donât want to be king,â he said simply.
Your breath caught. âThat isnât something you can justââ
âIt is,â he interrupted gently, stepping closer now, his gaze never leaving yours, âit is something I can choose.â
âAnd the realm?â
âThe realm will have a ruler,â he said, âit does not have to be me.â
You stared at him, searching his face for any sign of doubt, any hesitation, but there was none, only a quiet certainty that settled something restless within you, even as it frightened you in equal measure.
âAnd what would you choose?â you asked, your voice softer now, barely more than a breath.
His answer came without hesitation.
âYou.â
The word landed between you with a weight that stole the breath from your lungs, your heart stuttering painfully as you held his gaze, the world narrowing once again to the space between you, to the choice he was placing before both of you.
And in that moment, you knewâ He had already made his.
The voices that carried through the forest like bird song grew clearer as you stepped out from beneath the trees, no longer carried faintly by the wind but grounded in the quiet familiarity of the clearing, low and unhurried, as though they had always belonged there, as though they had been waiting for you to return and simply resumed in your absence.
You slowed without meaning to, your steps soft against the earth, your breath caught somewhere between caution and something far more fragile, your fingers tightening slightly around the handle of the basket as your gaze lifted toward the garden.
For a moment, you saw only movementâsmall, quick, unsteady.
A child.
He stood near the low stone edge of the herb beds, his balance uncertain in the way of one still learning the world through trial and fall, his small hands grasping clumsily at a sprig of green he had no doubt been told not to touch, his pale hair catching the late sunlight in soft strands that gleamed almost silver where the light struck them just so.
And beside him, seated on the low wooden bench you had built with your own hands seasons ago, as though it had always been his place, as though the years before this moment had folded themselves neatly into something quieter, something kinder, Him.
Valarr.
The sight of him did not strike like it once might have, did not shatter the world or steal the breath from your lungs in some dramatic, impossible way, but instead settled slowly, deeply, like something long known finally stepping into the light, something your body recognised before your mind could fully catch up, your heartbeat shifting not in shock but in a quiet, steady certainty that rooted you where you stood.
He looked different.
Not in ways that made him unrecognisable, not in ways that erased the man you had known, but in the small, telling details that time carved into those who survived it.
His hair had grown slightly longer than it had been in the Red Keep, the dark strands falling softer around his face, the pale silver streak still catching the light as it always had, though now it seemed less like something set apart and more like something naturally woven into him, as though it belonged.
There was colour in his face again.
Not the sharp flush of fever, not the hollow pallor of sickness, but something steadier, warmer, though still touched by the faint remnants of what he had endured, the lines of strain softened but not entirely gone, the shadows beneath his eyes lighter now, though still present if one looked closely enough.
Alive.
The word did not form fully in your mind; it did not need to.
You already knew.
He was watching the child, one arm resting loosely along the back of the bench, his posture relaxed in a way you had never seen within the walls of the Red Keep, where tension had always lived in his shoulders, where duty had shaped every movement, every breath.
Here, there was none of that. Here, he looked at peace.
The child turned suddenly, as though sensing something beyond sight, his small head tilting before his gaze landed on you, wide and curious, and for a moment, he simply stared, taking you in with the open, unguarded attention only children possessed.
Then his face lit, bright and immediate.
âMama!â
The word rang across the clearing, clear and certain, cutting through whatever distance remained between you, and in its wake, something in your chest shifted, softened, broke open in a way that left no room for anything else.
He stumbled toward you without hesitation, his steps uneven but determined, arms lifting in that instinctive reach that trusted without question you would catch him, that you would always be there.
And you were moving before you even realised it, the basket slipping from your hand to rest forgotten in the grass as you dropped to your knees, your arms coming around him just as he collided with you, small and warm and very real, his laughter muffled against your shoulder as you held him close.
Behind him, you heard the soft scrape of wood as Valarr rose.
You did not look up immediately.
For a moment, you simply stayed there, your cheek pressed lightly to the childâs hair, breathing him in as though to anchor yourself fully in the present, to remind yourself that thisâthis life, this quiet, this impossible, fragile happinessâwas not something that could be taken from you as easily as everything else once had been.
Only then did you lift your gaze.
Valarr had stepped closer, though not so near as to intrude upon the moment, as though he understood without needing to be told that this belonged first to you, that there were things that needed no words.
His eyes met yours.
And for a heartbeat, everything else seemed to fall away.
There was recognition there, of course.
And something softer.
Something that had not been there before the sickness, before the long nights and whispered promises, before the world had narrowed to the space between one breath and the next.
It lingered in the way he looked at you now, steady and unguarded, as though whatever distance had once existed between you had long since been worn away, leaving only something quieter, deeper in its place.
âYouâre here,â he said, his voice low, familiar in a way that settled into you just as easily as everything else had.
Not a question.
Never a question.
You nodded, your hand still resting against the childâs back, your fingers absently smoothing over the fabric of his small tunic.
âAlways,â you answered softly, though the words carried more meaning than they seemed to on the surface, stretching beyond the simple act of returning from the forest, beyond the day itself.
His mouth curved slightly at that, not quite a smile, but something close, something warmer than anything you had seen from him in those early days within the castle walls.
The child shifted in your arms, already restless again, his attention caught by something small and unimportant, as childrenâs often were, his world not yet shaped by the weight of memory or loss or all the things that had once defined yours.
Smiling you picked up the basket that lay beside you and scooped your son up into your free arm, resting him against your hip. And as you rose, stepping fully into the clearing, into the life that had grown here in the quiet absence of everything that had come before, you felt, perhaps for the first time since that night, since that whispered promise spoken through tears and desperation.
That it had not been in vain, that something had answered.
And that thisâthis small, sunlit moment, this man standing before you no longer a prince bound by duty but simply himself, this child held safely in your armsâ Was the shape that answer had taken.
âYouâre thinking again,â he said quietly, stepping closer, his voice low enough that the child in your arms would not notice.
âOnly a little,â you replied, meeting his gaze.
His hand brushed yours briefly as he reached for the basket, taking it from you without asking, his fingers lingering just a fraction longer than necessary, and something warm and familiar settled in your chest at the contact, something that had grown slowly, steadily, over time until it no longer felt fragile, no longer felt uncertain.
Something that simply⊠was.
âCome inside,â he said, nodding toward the cottage. âYouâve been out long enough.â
You hesitated for only a moment before nodding, shifting the child more comfortably against your side as you followed him, your steps falling into easy rhythm beside his, the three of you moving together across the clearing in a way that felt so natural now it was difficult to remember a time when it had not been so.
Behind you, the forest remained.
Unchanged.
Enduring.
But aheadâ Ahead was something else entirely. Something you had once thought impossible, something you had once believed you would never have.
And yet you did.
Because sometimes, against all reason, against all expectation, against all the quiet, inevitable pull of loss and time and fate, the body chose to fight. And sometimesâ
It won.
note. Well, that's a wrap! Thank you so much for all the love and support for my work. I was really nervous about posting here, but you guys are literally the sweetest readers alive. If you enjoyed this, please check out my other longer works on AO3 and keep an eye out here for more short series and oneshots that I have planned! ily guys xx
( ps. do you think their son's name is Baelor or Matarys? )
I stumbled upon your writing last night, and OMG im so so glad my tumblr fyp brought me where dragons lay dying. you are a phenomenal writer!!! I stayed up so late knowing I had an early uni lecture in the morning because I just could not stop reading. so I'm just sending love, cant wait for the next part!!!
