we signed our names on the dotted line;
It all seemed to have happened in a blur. Protests ringing among one another in camp, his Father’s bannermen -- no, his now, -- protesting to what knee should they bend. Greatjon Umber spoke up in that booming baritone he’d known most of his life, pointing steel at none other than himself.
For a moment he felt as if he ought to have cried for help. In that fleeting minute he thought he very well might have shouted that this was not his place. Back in the ancient days when the Kings in the North had knelt were gone, and it seemed fitting -- and so many eyes were upon him. So many, even his Mother’s. In that instance it seemed as if Robb Stark had suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but ‘King in the North’ in his place.
But even within that time he thought of Father. Those steel grey eyes that would never harden or soften at him again. That would never offer him counsel on how to lead, how to protect those eyes that had watched him so proudly as they knelt. The head of the pack was gone ..and the eldest of the pups was to succeed him.
He knew at the least he could not fail, or his sisters failed. His family failed and the families that served them all would crumple on the rise and fall of his very breath.
Instead of immediate planning he requests a moment, one that his mother’s eyes follow, anxious to pursue him. He thanks them, as is proper, and promises them that he will strive to be worthy of their fealty.
They assume it is grief and perhaps it is but Robb Stark feels numb. Glancing at pieces across a map of the Seven Kingdoms he can only feel the chill of the winter for the first time and remember his Father’s words. Surely it had come, if it would crown boys as kings and think it just.
It is only the shuffling of the tent that breaks him from his thoughts, the suddenly impossible weight of duty that doubles even that of Lord of Winterfell. When he looks, he sees that it is only his closest friend, smiling as he always did, suddenly a stark change from the seriousness in which he swore to him with bent knee. It felt wrong of him to do so, even if he had been his Father’s ward.
He tries, beneath a stoic mien, to muster a faint smile beneath a growing beard -- but it is weak at best.
“Here to offer a jest of some sort? Can’t say I have much to entertain you with, Theon. Now isn’t the time. “ He almost wanted to tell him then that there might never be a time because he was no longer just Robb anymore. He was King Robb.
“Or are you here to laugh? Fealty has never stopped you from laughing before. At me, with a crown on my head? “ His voice sounds more dry than he intends, lifting blue eyes that are not feral, not proud -- but almost stricken, even if his face does not break the infamous Stark expression.
I didn’t want this. I never asked for this.
What if I fail? Father tell me, Father tell me what to do.
....but Father wasn't there.