TW; more violence and blood and death threats. Lyonel is struck with agony to see how badly injured you are, after being attacked by bandits- angsty angst angst
Lyonel can’t fathom the sight he’s watching happen in your very bed. Bitterly, he supposes, he must come to terms with it.
He’s stood at the foot of it. But he seems to see it from outside himself. To survey the scene as if he’s become a watcher on the wall; Someone placed outside his very body.
Through the thronging crowd of people in the room, he can barely make out your shape. Laid on the bed. Limp. Still unresponsive. Hair curling dark and wet, unbound sticky vines across a pillow that’s slowly being soaked with filth. Blood and road dirt upon your fine sheets.
He carried you up the stairs himself; cradled in his arms. Felt the hot blood and cold rain seeping off you. Hair dripping. Body trembling. Leaving pink rainwater droplets behind on the stone steps. He burst into the room and placed you kindly on the bed.
Now you are flooded with people. So much so, he had to take a step back. Slait and a maid are cutting you out of the dress and shift because they need to tend to the wound Seldan told them about. Another maid is yanking off your muddy boots.
He hears shouts. Calls in strange voices for clean linens. Wine. Willow bark. Milk of the poppy. More candles so they can see proper.
He tips his chin down. His black tunic is half drenched. A sheen hits it in the dull candle light. Your blood. When he cares to raise his arms, it’s gathered on his trembling hands. Sunk into the cracks on his palms. The rings he wears. Caked in the round of his nails. Some smeared across his cheek where he wiped searing hot tears with the back of his sleeve.
And now he’s helpless;
When they cut open the front of your dress. Lyonel chokes; his throat constricts and squeezes and no sound comes crawling out of him. But he feels his entire being seize. His famously sturdy spine puddles to the floor.
A nasty diagonal wound lay in the crook of your shoulder. It is by a dagger he is certain. Too small for a sword. Bleeding furious and welling with dark blood. Edges red and inflamed. Crimson rolling down your bared shoulder to the bed. Slait’s hands are caked in your blood as he mops the wound, finds herbs and does whatever the fuck else he can to stem it.
Your neck bears marks too. Scratches and red welts. Marks of where jewellery has been savagely ripped from you. The metal digging into your skin. All your rings are missing. Your earrings too. Every mark of nobility has been stripped from you. Yanked off by the filth that put you here.
His gaze finds itself stuck on your hand. Curled on the bed like a dead, limp root. Dirt crusted. Knuckles red, bruised, bearing scuffs that spoke of your fighting back. A nail or two torn. He watches a kindly maid take your hand and dunk it in a bowl to flush the clinging earth from your skin.
It’s then he notes the most gaping absence. It festers something new within him;
Your wedding ring is gone.
Even that too, they had torn from your body. Stuck you like a swine. Uncaring if you’d live or die. So long as they had their gold to sell.
He hears himself speak. Eyes shaking with tears as looks down the bed. “How bad? And don’t fucking feed me riddles. Give me truth” He rasps. Voice raw as brittle rushes.
Slaits mouth in pulled into a grim line. Expression dour. He turns back over his shoulders. Surveys his Storm Lord to give answers.
“The bleeding I can slow. My lord. But I fear for the fever that now grips her. We will starve it. And see-“
“See what-“ Lyonel snaps. His lash line trembles with tears. Hot and bitter.
“See if she will last the night.” The maester tells. Sorrow turns his words to long, gleaming coffin nails.
Lyonel turns away. Spitting profanities. Cursing the gods. The mother and the crone. Spittle flying into his palm as a sob breaks out of him.
Hand running down his face to finish smothering his mouth. A sound that came wrenched out, the way one would tug shrapnel from a wound. Birthed this burst of fear from his gut. Bone deep and awful.
His chest wracks once. He squeezes his eyes shut so tight, lashes stinging with salt. Chest heaving on the cry. Fury warring with the grief in him. A great battle indeed. One that fills him with broken glass. Viscera. Sharp broken bones. Shattered lances. Blunt swords taking to his courage.
He wants to yell; he wants to stalk to the headlands and howl into the winds til his voice grows hoarse. Pound the earth with his fists til they crack and break. Spit profanity in the eye of a lashing storm. He wants to take his long sword and personally cleave every bandit into four pieces like a butcher carving up bloodied haunches of meat.
He wants a slaughter. The burst of blood spraying across his teeth. The fetid stench of his enemies fear- the rolling white of their eyes when he comes for them. He’d make them beg for the stranger before ripping out their tongues. He wouldn’t grant them the sweet mercy of death. He’d give them nothing but desolation. A fraction of what he’s owed.
He finds himself thinking of the stranger. Dark robes. Hanging over this room like a vulture trying to wear a man’s skin. More animal than man. Skeletal hand clawing at the bottom of the bedclothes. Tugging. Slipping you to him. Ready to enfold you in his dark robes as his wraithful shadows sneak in from the corners.
He prays so hard the mush inside his skull rattles with it.
You will not take her. You hear me? You cursed cunt. Her you will not have. I forbid it.
Tears squeeze anew down his cheeks. Helpless grief sits plain, and crushing in his blooded hands. He’s ready to drown in it. All this wealth and power he wields and at the end of it. He is simply a humbled being, stood on this earth, asking the gods one thing;
Please. Don’t take her from me.
“Father?”
Horror fills him in a sickly-clammy wash, when he turns to the doorway. Spying his eldest son stood at the threshold.
Feet bare on the stones. Brown eyes wide as dinner plates. Sleep clothes rumpled. A wrinkled tunic and braies. Dark hair mussed.
He’s looking at the trail of blood across the flagstones.
When he speaks. His voice comes as no more than a weak shadow of its usual bold self. “Jory.”
Lyonel rubs his fingers into his burning eyes. He crosses the room in four strides. “You shouldn’t be up. Please. Back to your bed.”
He takes his sons small shoulder in his hand. Tries to steer his own body between the room and the view of you on the bed. “Please. Jory. I can’t have you seeing this.”
He’s no fool. He saw the pinched look on servants faces. Grief doesn’t lie. Nor spare. Everything that wasn’t being said. Clipped tones and maids scurrying with a weight of grief on their brow.
The blood on the stairs. His own father stood, leaking tears and looking smaller than he had any right too. The legendary laughing storm brought mightily low.
Jorys looks up at him. Eyes begging to understand. Mouth floundering. Hurt confusion etched across his face. Lower lip wobbling.
Lyonel breaks.
He cuffs the back of his boys neck and draws him bodily to his chest. Jorys sags into him like a boned fish. Crosses his arms around him. Feels him sob. His sons hands digging like hooks in the back of his tunic. Grief bridging between them like spiders silk.
He can’t even placate him with kindness or hope. Because he can’t grab onto any of it. He lets him get the tears out. Let’s him exhale and cry and be scared. Because Lyonel was right there with him.
His hand cups the back of his head. Small boyish hair tufted soft in his palm. He can do nothing but hold him. His tongue won’t spill with lies. Not for his blood.
When Jory pulls back to smear tears across his cheeks. He sinks to a crouch. “Look at me. Look. Listen-“ hand slipping for his shoulder again. Eyes intent and pleading.
“I can’t have Ceres or Liri waking and seeing your mother like this. You must go to them and be brave for me. Promise me? keep them in their rooms… and away from this. I will come get you if there are…” he inhales. “changes.”
“Will she die?” His son cries. Earnest. He can see every spec of emotion warring across his little face.
Lyonel falters. He can’t feed that fetid beast of a thought. If he does, he may just throw himself into the sea with stones in his pockets.
“Quickly now. My lad. Off you go.” He sobs. “Do this for me.”
Jorys turns for the door. More tears welling. They catch in the golden lowlight. The door creaks. A flit of a shadow and he’s gone.
He walks quietly back to the bedside. Fists a hand in slaits sleeve. “Anything you can do for her. Will be done. No remedy spared. Am I clear?” He barks. Mouth designed to cut in his bitten off rage.
Slait confirms with a nod.
Lyonel rolls his sleeves. “What can I do. Occupy me.”
“My lord-“ Slait begins.
“If you tell me to wait outside I will fucking geld you and hang you from the highest cross beam. This is my wife. The mother of my children. I am not sitting in the corridor twiddling my thumbs like an idle cunt, as the stranger looms for her. Tell me what to do.”
Even stalking the fringes of his desolation, the laughing storm can still bite when needed.
He feeds you milk of the poppy of a wooden spoon as they stitch you closed. Cups your cheeks and wipes your mouth when he spills some. He soothes your burning brow with a cloth. Hands icy and he presses the cloth into cool water again and again again. Til his fingers prune and his hands go numb.
Wordless. He watches his maester attend your every cut. Every bruise and scratch mopped. He helps lift you. Clean you of dirt and manoeuvre you into a new clean shift. A task usually left to maids.
Then comes the worst part. When the maids and the helping hands drift away. Slaits remedy’s all applied. When they are tipping away bowls of blood stained water. Used bandages. Tucking ointments and vials away. Then the dreadful waiting comes— silent and heavy as a dreadful crypts air.
He watches you. Limp and broken. Chest moving shallow. Rising up and down. Poppy milk on your tongue. A false sleep and fever claiming you. Brow dewy. Neck and shoulders glazed with sweat. They will starve the fever from you.
He settles into a hard, creaking chair by your bedside. The fire roaring high. He watches you succumb fully to the fever. Eyes glassy and unseeing. Not asleep nor are you awake. Suspended in the space between. Sighing when he presses that cloth to your brow again.
The soft wet gasp of your breath, the snap of candles in the room are the only sounds that then reign. The storm hounding tooth and claw at the walls softens. Yields a little. Soft rains sweep by.
He takes your hand. Skin bleeding unnatural heat. Never like you. Like you’d been left too long under a fierce Dornish sun.
He watches you writhe on the bed. Insensate. Twitching in a unnatural sleep. Slaked in fever sweat. Covered in bandages and half treated cuts. Hair damp and laying dark at your temples. He reaches over and pulls pieces of it from sticking to your skin.
He shakes his head. Tears sparkle in those huge expressive eyes. Swallowed in grief.
The only thing he has left is to beg.
He does it with your hand scooped in his. Sweat slicked fingers pressed to his lips. His bread abrading skin you’d usually smile at the feel of. He speaks. Words falling like hot silken petals across your skin.
“Please don’t.” His voice wavers. “Not like this. My love. Please not like this.”
You were his lightning storm. The fact you might, in all your stormy powerful fury, get taken from him in a silent, fevered sickness that could sneak your soul and spirit away in one long breath. That’s something he can’t pretend to stomach.
“Don’t.” He begs. Lacing your fingers together. Determined to watch the rise of your chest, til dawn creeps its sly pink reach across the ceiling.
He sends for Ser Seldan.
Time has slowed to a slow trickle. Midnight black, and heavy as fig syrup.
Lyonel splashes water from a clean new bowl across his face. Rinses his hands. Sheds his outer garments to leave him in boots, his loose collar dark shirt and breeches. Just the other side of the room.
Anything else would require taking him out this room, and he’s loathe to leave for even a slither of a second. He stays.
The air in here is now fugged, heavy and falling close, with the smell of geeen antidote and balms of Slait’s design. The roar of the fire is intense. They mean to sweat the fever out. Only one window is cracked, a cool slit of night air comes spilling in. Spliced with salt.
His attention is solely fixed on the rise and fall of your chest. The steady breaths that come. Even though he knows milk of the poppy can dampen them.
He doesn’t care if it’s late enough to be surprising. Or early enough to be rude. Hour of the nightingale or the wolf; this situation has robbed Lyonel of any of his - already limited - courtesies.
He knocks. Lyonel bids his entry with a clipped word.
The maid who was currently laying a tray of food at the far side of the room - one he will leave untouched much to his cooks chagrin - steps briskly to answer it. Swings it open.
The knight limps into the room. Not unbuttoned. Not dressed down. He’s never that. Incapable of relaxed dress. He’s still all leathers, axe blade angles, and darkness. Like he’d dressed to fight the shadows that appear in the way from his rooms to here.
A surcoat of black leather he wears. One that was so dipped into the scent of the armoury it’s a scent that never leaves him. Oil, and old iron. His coat layered over a washed grey shirt that’s loosed at his wrists. Raven hair swept back, wetly, to dry in curled ribbons in a way that suggested he’s bathed. A scuffed pair of grey boots hug his feet, scratched from hard Winterfell stones.
His arm and injured shoulder is bandaged. His face openly wore the cuts and bruises. His knuckles also torn to bloating, swollen shreds. He stands tall as usual but his shoulders sag. The seams on his old wolf are showing. As they’ve every right too, after the days events.
He realised how truly shocking that is; if this new scandal of his house can pit holes in even the sheer stubborn rockiness of this northerner.
Lyonel doesn’t stand. He’s too sapped. Stays to his chair. But he finds the energy to pin the man with a look so poignant, Seldan alters a little in his strong step. Not softens. But alters only a bit.
“Leave us, if you would.” Seldan asks the maid with a firm nod. Brow stern. She does. Bobs a curtsey. Slips out the door and latched it after herself.
Two words. That’s all Lyonel says. It’s been running in his head since they brought you in. Half tattered, stabbed and bleeding.
“What happened—”
Seldan looks to his feet. Flicks his dark eyes up again. Swallows. Lyonel tracks it down his dark bristled throat.
“Are you sure you want to know, Mi’lord.”
Those stormlander eyes flash. Snapping to the man in a way that would have lesser men taking a step back to shrink from the sheer weight of a grieving husbands fury.
The northern wolf has tempted the storm. And the storm has weighed that mighty black direwolf, and found it wanting-
“My wife was stabbed. Her horse shot with arrows. My bannermen killed like they were no more than game for sport. Yes I want to fucking know.”
“I don’t think it will ease your pain.” Seldan prompts. Mouth made for flat truths and he gives them bluntly. “It will worsen it.”
“Then best you say it and let me judge.” He commands. Snappish. Done with the nonsense of courtly politeness.
Seldan nods. He folds his hands at his front. Takes his eyes from his Lord for a minute. Landing on you. Shame flattens down those proud, wide shoulders by an inch or two. Had he acted quicker, a dagger may not have sunk into your flesh.
“The reports you had were right. There were a great number of them. The party that ambushed us was near twelve by my own count. We managed to slay four.”
“They showered us with arrows. Came out the sides of the hedgerows with bows drawn. Told her ladyship and myself to get down off our horses.”
Lyonel’s chest is slowly churning to molten fury. Anger was softer. Quick burning like a fast flash of flame. Anger was something that could happen to a man. Fury consumed. Ate whole. Dissolved bones. Fury could made a man become something else entirely.
He was beyond furious.
He doesn’t know where to set it down yet. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with the weight of something so mighty. So he must shoulder it until they find the culprits responsible.
“We obliged them. We got off the horses and their presumed leader stepped forwards. Had the audacity to inform us of the tax on their road that we were travelling down. ‘The fucking fat nobles pay their way here. Because we say so’ he says.”
“They wanted our weapons. Waterskins. Coins. The last of the supplies we were carrying. They made threat to take her at sword point out beyond the trees—“ his voice drops, grim.
Lyonel gets the grim picture. Eyes closing. Turns his head away in disgust. His tongue curdles up in his mouth at the thought. His eyes linger on your form on the bed. That bruise turning dark nightshade around your eye. The cut lacerated to your cheek from a fist.
“They made plain would be bloody and violent if we didn’t comply. And that they would cut her throat after they were all done taking turns.” Seldan sneers with vehemence. His northern chivalry balks at the mere intimation.
“We gave them what we could. But they pushed it. Grew selfish. Lady Baratheon acted in every right way. She made sure none of us came to harm. She told the guards to put their weapons down. We gave them what they asked for. But, the leader saw her wedding band.”
“He got it…” Lyonel asks. “It’s missing from her hand.”
“She didn’t give it.” Seldan informs lowly.
“They took it by force. That’s when the violence broke out. She told them the only way they could get that ring off, would be to break her fingers, or cut off her hand. And one of them produced an axe- and made move to grab her and—“ His words end, tearing out his mouth like ripping a bandage off a wound.
“I acted. My lord. I couldn’t stand to let them.” He explains. “Maybe that was wrong of me and if it is I’ll take the due punishment-“
He always spoke with a soldiers repeat of events. A report or a tally. Spoken harsh and true. A northern mouth that doesn’t waste its time spouting niceties.
For once. Lyonel is glad of it. Now he knows the depth of which his vengeance can plummet too-
“Willard told me you rode back for miles. Pouring rain. Clasping her to your chest, injured yourself. Riding your horse so hard you damn near killed the beast. You got her home, Seldan. You’ll see no punishment from me.”
“Did they know precisely who she was….” Lyonel asks.
“No, my Lord. When they asked. She said she was a cousin to house Baratheon. She knew well enough not to crow about who she really is.”
Because even if you’d hissed threats. Men like them soundly would not care. With nasty rotten grins and conniving hunger. Better a white lie, to let the true enormity of your power slip their notice. A wife of the powerful storm lord would fetch a pretty price. Dead or alive.
Or maybe just for your pretty head-
You made yourself small and insignificant. You protected your men. You did everything right- and it all went sour wrong anyway.
“She was smart to deceive. Heaven knows what she’d have been subjected too had they figured her a woman worth capturing.”Seldan remarks darkly.
Lyonel swallows a bitter bile back off his tongue.
“She is smart.” He nods in agreement. Eyes on you. “Quicker on her feet and a faster tongue than anyone I know.”
He hates speaking of you as if you’re already in a grave. The toll it’s taking. Already he has bags swelling to mulberry purple under his eyes.
Seldan looks down to where your fingers are linked through Lyonel’s. Slotted and melting as if you were one. Your hand limp in the hold was unsettling.
“I should have been there with you all. I should have moved heaven and earth to make sure she wasn’t out there, exposed.” He laments. Shame curling up his tongue.
An odd taste in his mouth. He finds; coming from the man who never seemed to know the shape of lament or regret.
“I want a new guard patrol on that route. Twenty. Thirty men I’d needs be. If that’s the one they were using. I want them hunted and found. And I will string every last one of them up in the dungeons by their necks.” Lyonel insists. Snarling.
“I do have some information on that front. My Lord.”
Of course, this old wolf has not been idle. Lyonel reckons.
He didn’t mope. He was a military man. He acted. He didn’t care what captains he had to rouse from sleep. What soldiers he had to chase through the halls. They kicked the north wolf, now they must deal with its teeth. He was changing routes and patrols. Rerouting soldiers. Pulling men off gate duty.
Sending ravens to their men in the ports and harbours. It struck Lyonel that the man would rather be riding back through the rain right this minute to collect his fallen men, than to linger on here in incertitude. His hands fall rough from use, and he’d beg to be useful otherwise they’d have to slaughter him. He knows no other way to be.
“Spit it out.” He commands.
“You might wonder why I sent the maid away…”
Lyonel leans forwards in his seat. A dreadful realisation dawns. No-
“It’s because I believe the word of our route was betrayed. Once more, betrayed by someone inside this house.”
Lyonel’s mood drops from grim, to somehow worse than that. Six foot deep of fury and cold, fierce rage. Rotten, conniving seeds of dissension and ruin sown from within his own walls.
“I heard the ruffians speaking behind as they came to snatch our supplies. I was able to glean enough. They’ve not been using roads. Not like we have. They were using shepherd lanes. Old paths barely carved in the land, that only a stormlander would know exist.”
“No sensible man would risk that path Those lanes are impassable after the heavy rain.” Lyonel insists gravely.
Seldan tilts his head. Openly. “They chose them precisely because they are unwatched. These men have more sense than we first thought.” Seldan mutters. “Our position was given away to them. How else could they happen upon us with the exact men to outnumber our party.”
“I trust you’ve set about to remedy this news.” Lyonel asks.
Seldans eyes take a dark and terrible shade. “Discreetly. My lord. Aye.”
“They’ll think us shaken to inaction for now. But that’s a path that ill suits me.”
“Me too. My lord.”
“If we move quickly, they’ll just scatter and regroup elsewhere. Crawl back into their ditches and hedges. I hate to say it, but we draw them out slow. Appear like a house in mourning. The families of those fallen guards I want written too with honour and support.”
“Aye. That I’ve had done already. Word has been sent. I have men combing the halls as we speak, too. Gently. If there’s messages going beyond our walls that we’ve unseen, we will catch them. It may take time. But I trust my men implicitly. They will reveal the source. And I shall be the first to come to you with news.”
Lyonel trusts Seldans word. He knows the route of this place like the back of his scarred hands. Knows when to dip into the mundanity of life to find an outlier.
A question asked too loudly by a waif of a stable boy. The prying eyes of a merchant lingering at the gate. A maid who dithers in cleaning a room for too long. To catch sight of the parchments on a desk. The washer woman who listens at a shadowed doorway where she ought not be.
His grizzled wolf has blood in his nose, and he won’t soon forget the grudge to his house.
“Good.” Lyonel sighs. Tired as he was. This news did not ease much of the tension hunching his shoulders. It was welcome, yet foul, and much as he disliked, he needed to hear it spoken.
“Go and get some sleep.” He dismisses. “You look done in. You old dog.”
“I won’t yet. My lord. There’s still much to be done.”
“Dawn must be soon on the rise. Seldan. You’ve been injured. I won’t have my best Knight drop dead.”
A flick of humour takes one side of his mouth. A flick of a carving etched in granite.
“I’d be amused to see him try. The stranger had already loomed for me once this night. My lord. He wouldn’t stand a fucking chance the second time around.” He grits.
He nods to you on the bed.
“Same goes for our lady. I reckon with her lightning temper, she won’t be easily gotten rid of. Try not to fret.”
Lyonel closes his eyes. Chest bouncing on a ln exhale. It felt like the first kind feeling that’s entered his body all day. He needed to hear that. A reminder of the exact shade of your pig-headedness. One Seldan gleaned from experience of you.
When your eyes spark to danger; when you give that wilful tilt of your chin. Shoulders square. Seven help any poor fucker that tries to disagree with you. Or get in your way. They’d come off bruised and blue. Cowering. They would yield because the lightning in you, never backed down
“Bid you good day. My lord.” He motioned to the day that started to break across the horizon. The cool purple slit of dawn. Punched with oranges and reds like a flamed dragon breath. Light climbs higher in the sky.
“Seldan?”
The man looked at him. Awaiting orders. Ready to decimate.
“If they’re found. Bring them to me alive.” He demands. Every dark, insidious meaning fully taking his words. His eyes remain on you.
Seldan bows his sturdy, stubborn head. Stalks for the door. And takes his leave through it. Back to the shadows. Back to his ruthless task of a manhunt. He’ll see it done. Leave one wolf alive, the sheep are never safe.
Lyonel sighs. Leans back in his chair. The creak of it cradling his back and aching shoulders. Neck strained and stiff. The burning in his bloodshot, salt stung eyes unceasing. An impolite reminder of his age.
He won’t break his fast. Even though he sees a breakfast left for him on the side. Carved ham and eggs. A bowl of porridge. Grilled small fish. A heel of fluffy buttered bread. A dark, red beer. He lets it all grow cold.
He won’t even move to go change, or bathe though his clothes must be ripe with sweat. He won’t dare leave your side. He vowed that much.
He goes back to the horrible trap of waiting. Detesting every passing second.
Forgive the random tags but I’m Tagging some phenomenal akotsk babes whose fics gave me life. Let me know if you want on/off the list. I’m new to AKOTSK so forgive my presumptions @the-darklings @jintaka-hane @mynameistocool @lovebugism @maekarsmistress @pearlessance @noxiiousstrawberriies @ingystark @oakleafing @marsrambles @just-some-random-blogger @vhagars-dementia @escapic-mezzanine @tearsweetenedtea @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @adumbgirlinloove @moonlitmaester @silens-oro @feral4youu @whatislovevavy @happinessisaloadedgun @faelinda @crayonbug @celestrys @sallymaywritings @captainfern @theprophaecy @multyfangirl @angstybadger @asterionex
I don't care to die today. It may be that I've killed you with my lie. And if so, I'm sorry. I'm doomed to some kind of hell, I know. Likely one without wine.
HENRY ASHTON
as prince Daeron The Drunken
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS
1x04 Seven
Do I SHIP IT ship it or do I just love the idea of Lyonel Baratheon, a gorgeous nuclear detonation of charisma who will dance shirtless in his skirts and party hat on a table to yellsing about how great ass play is on a Tuesday afternoon, who is without question the coolest motherfucker at every tournament he shows up at, going insane, heartbroken horny crashing out over fumbling a giant himbo with anxiety issues who sleeps under trees and thinks soap is uncomfortably luxurious
