𓊝 THE INJURY OF FINALLY KNOWING YOU (EVERYTHING I EVER DID WAS JUST ANOTHER WAY TO SCREAM YOUR NAME) ⚓︎
(Starter with @ladyofthebite)
The fire in the hearth had burned low, casting long shadows over the stone floor. The hall was near-empty now, cleared of the day’s courtiers and company, save for two men seated at a table meant for six.
Benjen did not drink. Isembard did.
The older man swirled his cup with the lazy arrogance of someone who’d once been handsome enough to get away with anything. His grey beard was trimmed too neatly. His velvet doublet strained slightly at the waist. His smile never quite touched his eyes.
"You’ve grown into his face," Isembard said at last. "Same jaw. Same contempt."
Benjen didn’t rise to it. Not yet. "I’m not my father."
"A shame. I rather liked your father, once."
"You liked what he gave you. Horses. Hunts. The illusion you still mattered."
Isembard clicked his tongue. “I came to discuss an alliance, you know. The Sisters have enemies on every side—pirates to the east, treacherous kin to the west. What we need is stability. And the North could offer that, if we were bound.”
“Yes.” A beat. “You’re unmarried. I have daughters.”
Benjen turned his head, but not his body. “I’m not looking for a wife.”
“I didn’t come all this way for ‘looking.’ I came for doing. I came for loyalty, legacy—”
“You came,” Benjen cut in, “because your house is bleeding, and you thought to bandage it with mine.”
"I made offers. Your mother refused them."
Benjen turned sharply, eyes narrowing. "Because she had sense. She knew better than to shackle us to a crumbling house out of pity."
Isembard’s eyes flashed. For a moment, the old wound flared raw and unhidden. He turned away, walked to the hearth, pretending to admire the carved stone.
“I’m an old man, and I’ve buried more pride than I care to name. I won’t deny I loved Melantha. Loved her long before Elric ever noticed she was more than a pretty ward with sharp opinions.”
Benjen said nothing, and yet the air bristled.
“She chose him,” Isembard continued, voice going brittle around the edges. “And it ruined us. He married her not for love, but for spite. For victory. You think I didn’t know?”
“That union poisoned everything. The man I once called brother became a stranger. He stopped visiting. He stopped writing. And then she gave him a son and made it permanent.”
Benjen took one slow step forward. “You dare speak of my mother like she was some prize lost at tourney?”
“I speak of her as the one thing Elric ever won that he never deserved.” Isembard’s jaw tightened enough to crack. After a deep breath, the same poised smile came back to his face. “Elric kept a mistress on Sisterton. Did you know that?”
Benjen’s throat tightened. “You’re lying.”
“I was there.” He shrugged. “We were friends once, remember? Before she chose him.”
Isembard saw it. Of course he saw it. “She made her choice, and it wasn’t me. But your father, gods rest him, didn’t stop hungering. He scattered his seed like driftwood. There were whispers. Letters. A child, perhaps. Who’s to say?”
“I might be.” Isembard smiled like a fox, fingers tracing the Mormont coat of arms above the fire. “But the crown won’t care. They’ll sniff blood and start asking questions. Legitimacy. Inheritance. The line of succession.”
“I dare because I need to.” Isembard’s voice turned into a hiss. “We are surrounded. Pirates out of Tyrosh. Braavos. Worse. My son won’t wed, my bannermen are cowards, and your little kingdom has few allies. I came to you with an offer. I came to you like a friend.”
Benjen laughed, humorless. “You came like a vulture.”
“Better a vulture than a ghost.”
The words hit too clean. Too fast. Benjen’s hand shot out, knocking the wine off the table. It shattered against the stone floor, red streaking like blood.
The silence after was thick and ugly.
“You think I care what the court whispers? You think I’d trade my mother’s name for safety?”
“I think you’re scared.” Isembard stepped closer. “I think the little boy who disappeared all those years ago never came back whole. And now, you’re trying to wear Elric’s skin like it fits. But it doesn’t, does it?”
Benjen said nothing. His hands were fists at his sides.
“I see the way the island watches you,” Isembard went on. “Like they’re waiting for you to crack. For the beast to wake up again.”
Isembard leaned in, lips near Benjen’s ear. “Your father died screaming. I wonder if you sounded like him when it happened.”
Benjen grabbed him by the throat, windpipe against his palm. Isembard stumbled back, but he wheezed a laugh, wine-stained teeth bared.
Isembard straightened his coat, utterly unshaken as he was pushed away. “I’ll give you one week. Choose a daughter. Secure the alliance. Or I go south with a very interesting story to tell. And maybe, just maybe, the Bear Islands end up with a lord more willing.”
He turned for the door, but paused in the threshold.
“Tell your mother I said hello.”
The corridor outside the solar was silent as a grave, the stone walls pressing in like they’d been watching him all night. The air felt thick. Still. Like the island itself was holding its breath. His palms itched. Benjen’s head throbbed with the ghost of last night’s wine, but worse was the sound that would not leave him: Lord Sunderland’s voice, thin and smiling, like a blade hidden in velvet.
“I’ll give you one week. Choose a daughter. Secure the alliance. Or I go south with a very interesting story to tell. And maybe, just maybe, the Bear Islands end up with a lord more willing.”
He had laughed. Too loud. Too sharp. The sound of it had echoed off the stone, but it had not echoed within. Not truly. Even then, it had struck something raw; some dark, tender place long left to rot.
Now, with his knuckles brushing the familiar wood of his mother’s door, that laughter felt a thousand years old. Fossilized. Hollow.
He knocked but once, and did not wait for answer. He pushed open the door the way he always had, as though he still wore shortclothes and scraped knees, as though he could still be comforted by his mother’s voice.
Melantha was seated near the hearth, her dark hair pinned back, her face lit with firelight and shadow. A book lay forgotten in her lap. She did not rise, nor startle. She only lifted her eyes to him, steady as ever. That was her way, always had been. Grief had honed her into something sharp, something unshakable. She wore it as other women wore jewelry: not to dazzle, but to warn.
“You’ve been running again,” she said.
Benjen stood in the doorway, unmoving. One step further, he feared, and he might come apart.
“Lord Sunderland came to see me,” he murmured finally, his voice cracked from more than just drink. “He made his offer plain. If I refuse his daughters, he’ll carry his grievance to the crown. Says Bear Island needs a true lord. Not a ghost in wolfskin.”
He didn’t mean to smile, but it came out anyway. Twisted. Bitter.
Melantha didn’t return it.
Benjen flinched like she’d slapped him. His jaw locked. “So that’s what you think. That I’ve been playing at something?”
“No, Ben. I think you’ve been trying to disappear.”
He turned away from her, his breath caught. The fire cracked behind him, casting long, flickering shapes along the stone walls. Ghosts. Always ghosts.
“I never asked for this,” he said at last. “To wear his name. To hold his sword. I never wanted the weight. I never wanted his weight.”
He braced a hand on the hearth, as though the stone might bear what he could not.
“I grew up in his shadow. Heard his voice in every silence. Felt his hand in every quiet. I carry him still. In the shape of my mouth. In the way people look at me.”
His voice broke. He didn’t stop. “I see his face when I shave. Not mine. His. His brow. His mouth. His fucking eyes. Sometimes I think the gods laughed when they made me, giving you his face to look at every day even after he was gone.”
He shook his head. Swallowed hard.
“There are moments when I walk into a room, and people flinch. Just for a heartbeat. Just enough. And it kills me. Because sometimes... sometimes it’s you.”
He forced himself to look at her then, and his whole body tensed like a man bracing for a fall.
“You hold your breath,” he said. “When I’ve been away too long. When I walk past your door. Just for a second. Until I speak. Until you remember I’m not him.”
He startled, but she did not withdraw. Her thumb brushed his temple, steadying him.
“I do hold my breath sometimes,” she said, voice trembling. “But not because I fear you are him.”
She rose from the chair, the fire lighting her like a sunrise through fog.
“I hold my breath because I know what it cost you to live. To come back to me. To carry all of this.”
Melantha’s gaze did not falter.
His voice came out a rasp: “You knew?”
“I knew the night it happened.” She hummed, certain. “The forest went quiet. The trees. The sea. The world. It went still. Like the gods were watching. Like the island itself knew something had changed.”
“You knew I warged into the bear.”
“You knew I… killed him.”
Another nod. No flinching. No horror.
The question tumbled out. He didn’t mean to ask. Didn’t want to. But it had lived in him for so long it had grown teeth.
Her eyes shimmered, but she did not weep.
“Oh, my boy,” she said. “My brave, broken boy.”
Both hands came to his face then, as if he were still small, still hers. She held him like something sacred.
The sob broke from him before he could stop it. He fell into her, graceless and sudden, and she caught him as she always had. One hand cradled his head; the other pressed firm between his shoulder blades. She rocked him, as she had when he was young and fevered, after his first wolf died, after Elric bloodied his lip and called it training.
“I’ve been so afraid,” he said. “Afraid I’d become him. That I already had, and no one dared say it.”
“You haven’t,” she said fiercely. “You won’t. He was a wound wrapped in a man’s skin. You are flesh. And you have mysoul.”
He cried then. Not like a man. Not like a lord. Like a boy who never got to be one. Elric had always despised tears. Benjen had learned early to keep his pain dry. But now there was no pride greater than letting go. She cradled him through it. Rocked him like she had when he was little. Like he’d just broken his arm or buried a bird or watched his father spit hate.
They stayed there for a long time. Time folded in on itself, past and present braided tight.
Eventually, Melantha pulled back and turned toward the wall, toward the painting that had hung for too long. Elric, stern and false, looming over his family like a curse in oils.
“It’s time,” she said. “To hang a new portrait.”
Benjen blinked, dazed. “A portrait?”
She nodded. “One with you in the middle. As it always should have been. You. Me. No ghosts.”
He looked at the painting. For once, he let himself hate it. Hated the lie of it. Hated the curse it had cast upon their house.
He turned back to her, voice hoarse. “I’ll stop running.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll marry one of Sunderland’s daughters. I’ll—I'll be the man this island needs. Even if I don't feel like him yet.”
“You already are,” she said, brushing a lock of hair from his face. “You’ve always been.”
And for the first time in years, Benjen felt whole.
Not a relic of someone else's rage.
Her son.
The lord the Old Gods chose.
Benjen didn’t like getting drunk.
He did it often enough, sure, but he didn’t like it. It made him feel slow, sloppy, like his skin didn’t fit right. It had started when his left hand healed after his father shattered it under his boot. The pain had needed somewhere to go, and the drink took it for a while. That was all he needed back then. A few hours of quiet. A few moments where the ache in his bones and the memory behind it didn’t scream quite so loud.
Who would’ve thought the gods had hidden medicine in the bottom of a bottle?
Years later, with more bones broken and more silences endured, the pain had settled deep in his marrow.
And yet the drinking wasn’t working tonight.
Tomorrow, he’d sail for the Three Sisters, stepping into a title he’d once prayed would burn before it touched him.
Fine. It had been bound to happen eventually. Better now, while he still had a voice in it.
“Planning to drown in that?” came a familiar voice, wry and dry as ever. Hugo clicked his tongue and dropped onto the bench beside him.
Benjen didn’t answer. Just stared into the cup like it might offer him an exit.
Hugo. Cregan. Benjen.
The three musketeers, if the gods had a sick sense of humor. Glued at the hip since childhood, too close to be decent and too stubborn to grow apart.
“I didn’t know I was married already,” Benjen muttered.
“Is the idea of having a wife really that bad?” Hugo asked, already stealing his cup and getting a middle finger in return.
Hugo had always been the worst kind of right. The kind that poked instead of pried. He didn’t ask because he needed answers; he asked because he already knew them and just wanted to make sure you did too.
Benjen wanted to punch him sometimes. Or hug him. Or both.
Being the only one of the trio who wasn’t sweating love from his pores was its own punishment. Benjen wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.
“Then what is it?” Hugo prodded. “Is it about Marge?”
Benjen didn’t answer right away. He reached for the bottle instead, pouring another cup with a hand steadier than it should’ve been.
He thought about the docks, about his seventeen-year-old self. Skinny, angry, already half feral from home. Marge had been warmth then. Sweet, stupid warmth. The first person who touched him like he wasn’t made to bleed. She laughed at his jokes. Looked at him like he was good.
He asked her to run away with him, telling her they could leave it all behind—his father’s fists, her family’s plans, this entire gods-forsaken coast. South. Essos. Somewhere where the heat could melt the memories.
But she hadn’t come. Said she was promised to someone else. Gave him a kiss, maybe out of pity, maybe out of guilt, maybe because she loved him a little too but not enough. And then she left. Just… vanished.
He’d searched. For weeks, then months. Asked dockhands, sailors, whores, innkeepers, anyone with eyes. No one knew her. No one remembered her name. She might as well have been a ghost conjured up just to leave him behind.
She was probably married now. A proper lady. House full of children with her same soft mouth and sharp eyes. Blue-eyed little ghosts who looked just enough like her to twist the knife.
He drained the cup in one long pull.
“No,” Benjen said, voice quiet. “Of course it’s not about some silly infatuation.”
It was easier, pretending she wouldn’t know him now. That the man he’d become was a stranger to her. It was easier than admitting he still dreamt about her sometimes. That a part of him hadn’t grown up past seventeen. That he still hoped, against all odds, that she’d turn up one day and say “I made a mistake”.
No, she wouldn’t recognize him.
And gods help him, he was terrified he’d still love her anyway.
“You almost fooled me,” Hugo said, chuckling. He slapped a warm hand on Benjen’s shoulder, anchoring him to the present for half a heartbeat. “So… now that you’re a day away from becoming a married—” kill me “—responsible—” I’ll kill you “—and committed man, I have to ask: why widows?”
“You’re a handsome fella. I just don’t get why you only ever chased women—”
“Who were grief-stricken?”
“I do. I just hope you know too.”
Benjen ignored that and ripped into a piece of jerky like it owed him money. “Look at me, I’m Hugo Cerwyn, I understand everyone’s emotions, I married my first kiss and now I only drink imported wine. Blah blah. Fuck you, Hugo.”
He was, in fact, far too drunk for this.
“I’m only saying you could have the best.”
“Are you offering?” Benjen teased, tilting his head thoughtfully. “You’re exactly my type, but I respect Robyn too much.”
“Not me, dipshit. Marge.”
Benjen rolled his eyes so hard he saw gods. “Right, of course. How did I miss that plan? I’ll magically track her down, break into her house and say, ‘Hey, I know you rejected me once, but this time I’m asking you to abandon your husband and children and cause a diplomatic nightmare. Interested?’”
“Romantic,” Hugo whistled.
He took another drink. This one was for his headache, and the memories causing it.
“Why the fuck did I ever tell you about Marge?” he muttered.
“You were trying to drink yourself into an early grave. Me and Cregan figured one of us had to keep you alive.”
“Bullshit.” He downed the next cup just to prove it.
“I think it was fate,” Hugo said.
“Can you be serious for once?”
Benjen stared into the dark of the room, where the firelight couldn’t reach. No. He couldn’t take any of it seriously. If he did, he’d have to pull at threads he’d worked years to ignore. Love. Loss. Desire. Guilt. He’d have to admit that what hurt wasn’t just the memory of her, it was the part of himself he’d lost chasing her shadow.
"Can you?" he snapped instead. "I’m getting married, and you're sitting here trying to convince me to ruin it all."
“I’m trying to make you see life can be more. Love can be more.”
“Love got me into this mess,” Benjen said flatly. “And I’m going to solve it without it.”
He meant it.
He almost believed it.
The sea air hit Benjen like a slap the moment he stepped off the boat.
Sharp, briny, full of rot and wet rope. Welcome to Sisterton.
He’d barely slept. Still hungover from the night before. The salt wind scraped the back of his throat and made his stomach churn, though he wasn’t sure if that was seasickness or dread. Probably both.
He adjusted the cloak around his shoulders, spine stiff with ceremony. He was supposed to look like a lord today. Represent the Mormonts. Represent Bear Island. Represent everything he’d been running from for most of his life.
And waiting on the dock, beaming like he’d just shit gold, was the worst man Benjen had ever met.
“Isembard Sunderland,” Benjen muttered under his breath, jaw tightening.
The man was already talking. Of course he was.
“Benjen, my boy!” Isembard swept forward with arms wide, dressed in enough velvet to choke a whole forest. “Or shall I say Lord Mormont now? Isn’t it funny how the tides turn?”
No, Benjen thought grimly. It’s pathetic.
“Ise,” the man added with a wink. “They call me Ise the Blessed now, you know.”
Benjen forced a nod. The blessed what? Blessed with a bottomless pit for a mouth? If he had to hear that damn nickname one more time, he was going to eat a teaspoon just to spite the man.
He followed Isembard up through Sisterton. The town looked like it had been rebuilt too many times and was tired of trying. Crooked roofs. Salt-stained walls. Everything damp. And cold. Even in summer, the Three Sisters never really warmed up.
Benjen could feel the island’s bones underneath his feet. Thin, brittle, like something waiting to break.
Inside the keep, they sat. Talked. Or rather, Isembard talked while Benjen scribbled notes with a growing migraine. Dowries, alliances, grievances, naval routes, a trade embargo from someone’s grandfather's time, all dredged up like old fish guts.
Every time Benjen opened his mouth, Isembard said something worse.
And yet, Benjen told himself, at least there’s no more surprises. At least we’ve covered every possible way this day can go wrong.
Then Isembard clapped his hands and the devils beamed.
“And now,” he said, with the air of a man revealing the climax of a bard’s tale, “the moment I’ve been waiting for! Let me present my daughter. Margaery. Your bride.”
The ink blot spread across the parchment in a devouring void.
He looked up and everything stopped.
She stood in the archway, lit by the weak sunlight spilling in through the windows. Her dress was plain but elegant, the color of worn sand. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her. Her hair was swept back, pinned. A noblewoman’s poise. But her eyes—
No. This wasn’t happening.
His body went cold. Spine stiff. Breath shallow.
The girl who’d watched the tides with him from the ruined dock behind the net-weaver’s shed. Who’d snuck him crusty rolls from the market when he was working the boats. Who’d kissed him under the sea tower lantern, with salt on her lips and trembling hands.
She stood there now like a stranger in a familiar skin.
No. No, no, no. This isn’t real. This is some cruel joke, some trick of the sea air, some punishment I didn’t even know I deserved.
She wasn’t supposed to be here.
She was supposed to be a memory. A mistake. A ghost he’d learned to live with.
And yet, there she stood, the same girl he’d once asked to run away with him, the girl who said no and broke his ribs without touching him.
He saw it then. The shock in her eyes. The way her breath caught, just for a second.
Benjen’s mouth went dry. His pulse hammered so loud he couldn’t hear Isembard speaking anymore. Couldn’t hear anything but the roar of ten years crashing into him like a wave.
She was Margaery fucking Sunderland?
All the godsdamned years he’d spent wondering if she was happy, if she was safe, if she ever thought of him. All the guilt he’d swallowed over asking her to run away. All the fury. The heartbreak. The silence.
And she had been promised to him all along.
“I always told Elric—gods rest his stubborn soul—that it was fate. A match made by the Mother herself,” Isembard said, grinning like he’d orchestrated this moment with the gods themselves. “Back then I came all the way to Bear Island to propose this very alliance. Ten years ago, if you can believe it.”
I believe it, Benjen thought bitterly, throat closing.
“I even brought Margaery with me,” Isembard went on. “Wanted her to meet the boy she was promised to. But no one could find you, Benjen. Your father said you were… indisposed.”
Indisposed. A generous word for exiled.
Benjen remembered it all with sick clarity.
His father, Elric, screaming. The Sunderland crest flying outside the hall. The old tension sparking like dry straw. Isembard and Elric, once friends, now snarling about Melantha like dogs over a bone. Melantha, Benjen’s mother, Elric’s prize, Isembard’s heartbreak.
Then the verdict: Benjen wasn’t “fit” for court. Elric sent him away to “fix him.” As if labor could hammer the magic out of his bones. As if a forge could make him a son worth loving.
He’d been told nothing about the marriage pact. Nothing about the Sunderlands. Nothing about a girl.
Then came Marge. Just Marge. Met by chance at the docks. Her hair windblown. Her smile lopsided. He never told her his name, not really. Let the dockhands call him Bennard, Benjicot, whatever they wanted. She never told him hers either.
They were just two teenagers, half-drowning in freedom.
And for a few weeks, it was real.
He remembered begging her to leave with him. Remembered the way her hands trembled when she said no. She was promised, she said. To someone she’d never met. Someone frail, closer to a grave than the isle.
He didn’t realize until this moment that she had been talking about him.
Benjen stood slowly. His limbs felt foreign. His stomach churned. His pulse throbbed behind his eyes.
He crossed the chamber to her. Every step echoed like a scream.
He took her hand. Cold as it always had been. She didn’t pull away. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it gently. Like she was a stranger. Like this wasn’t tearing him apart.
“Marge,” he whispered. Then he corrected himself, voice louder, clearer. “Lady Margaery.”
He dropped her hand. For the first time by choice.
“You never know who you’ll find at the end of the world,” he said softly. Almost joking. Almost cruel.
Then he sat back down, hands trembling beneath the table, and didn’t look at her again.
How many nights did I dream of you? How many names did I curse, not knowing they were yours?
He wanted to scream. Or laugh. Or run.
He wanted to ask why didn’t you tell me?
He wanted to hold her and say I would’ve stayed. I would’ve fought for you. I did.
But none of that mattered now.
They were exactly where their fathers had always wanted them. Side by side. Hand in hand.
As if the ten years in between had been a pause instead of a ruin.
As if first love could survive this kind of betrayal.
As if either of them were still the people who met beside the sea.
