who: @owenstark
where: the king’s personal audience chambers in winterfell, following the corpse of lady meera reed being placed in private quarters within the hand of the king’s wing in winterfell.
the labyrinth walls of winterfell were a blur. it felt as though the bile that sat at the very back of his throat refused to go down, constantly risking coming up at the mere thought. the mere memory. he heard the sound of his boots against the stone below him, but that was all he could hear and all he could feel - as though his legs were guiding him to where he needed to go. controlling where he needed to go, and yet it felt as though his being was somewhere else.
his being was in the room where his wife was laid out beneath a white sheet, in the bed that was their own within winterfell; the constant prayers being muttered around her in the sun tongue of karhold’s lands, her ladies crying quietly with their hands to their mouth.
it seemed as though his soul left his body the moment he saw the bruises around her neck; harsh purple against porcelain skin. and the sun of winter felt no shame in his household knowing their lord mourned for their lady; the beginning of something their union was supposed to be. the beginning to a new chapter in their lives. the strange reed woman people feared, forever lingering in the shadows of the great hall; in reality, too nervous to find a seat at table. he had made her their table. he would have done anything, and everything, for the woman he had taken as his wife beneath the godstree. and now, after everything, here they were.
and somewhere within him, that was a part of him, some twisted dark eclipse that felt his very chest caving in. how much had he lost? his sister dead at the hands of the wildlings. his wife dead at the hands of a false pretender king. his home and his land surrounded - where his mother and his brother remained. and there was a part of him that wanted to curse the king of winter, and his fucking fantasy he had built in his head - the amount of power the pretender had was startling. even the nights watch. even the fucking watch.
some things can be left alone. some things needed to be left alone.
there was one thing meera reed had left him; something that did not make him feel as though he would be able to sit and disassociate from his entire body. something that was more than the memories that only made him sob, memories he knows would make him smile one day - and those were men. men of greywater watch, and the lands of house reed. men he had picked up on the return north, summoning them to winterfell. and as he entered the chambers of owen stark, he saw his oldest friend.
he saw a king he had lost nearly everything for. and again, he felt the urge to be sick at the urge that came over him. he wished to slam him into a wall, he wished to bludgeon him with his fists. his fucking fantasy swung the odds out of power. such was the thin line when childhood boys, distant kin, are separated by king and crown.
“i’ll be gone in the morning, with karstark and reed men.”
