what up, cannon fodder?

daryn hornwood for the cold winds are rising rp

[tryhardwood-blog]

now we're spinning laps around the sun | alys, daryn, robb & theon | during the imperial visit, 6 months ago

[starkr]

"Anything else I can get you?"

She looks so hopeful that Robb nearly feels bad for saying, “No, thank you.”

He hurriedly balances the drinks between his arms and heads for the table, eager to escape the barmaid’s attentions without looking back. She had been polite and charming, enthusiastically complimenting the ceremony that his family had put on for the Emperor’s arrival, but Robb thinks that if he doesn’t hear about the gala in the next ten years it’ll be too soon.

A night out with Theon, Alys and Daryn, just drinking and talking without a drunk Emperor groping the maids nearby, is exactly what Robb needs and wants right now.

The gala hadn’t been bad, all warm decorations especially designed to be welcoming to the visitors and hundreds of dishes that Robb had never tasted before, but just the sight of Myrcella Baratheon alone had been enough to make Robb’s limbs buzz with unease. (He had not yet forgotten that before Margaery Tyrell, there were talks of joining houses with the Baratheons - and what a better way to do that than marrying Ned Stark’s firstborn to a young lady that would someday become as beautiful as the Empress herself?). Adding the undeniable tension between his father and Jaime Lannister, his mother’s tight smile whenever Cersei Baratheon opened her mouth, Theon sitting right next to him with his sullen mood, Jon kept away like some dirty servant not worthy enough - it was no wonder that when the night was over, Robb collapsed on his bed with a sigh of relief upon his lips.

He’s ready for a drink now, one that doesn’t make his stomach churn, and maybe even Alys and Daryn being obnoxiously flirty will keep him from thinking about how foreign Winterfell feels with these people around.

"Sorry for the wait," he says, setting the drinks in front of his friends and taking his place next to Theon. "If you’re talking about the gala I can go get food until you’re done," he half-jokes.

One look at Theon and Robb can tell the cold is getting to him: his legs are firmly pressed together under the table, when he grabs his drink his hand hesitates for a moment on the freezing glass, and a muscle in his jaw twitches just slightly when he clenches it in a expression Robb recognizes as pure stubbornness.

Robb doesn’t take off his own coat, and instead he fixes the collar to bring it closer to his face.

"It’s cold here today," he comments, even though it’s not, really.

[tryhardwood-blog]

Daryn is mid-eye-roll at Theon’s comment when the great Robb Stark reappears, sliding into their booth next to his father’s ward and tugging at his collar with all that starry earnestness. Eyes follow him as he hunkers down, dividing the drinks. Daryn takes a bottle, pries the lid off for Alys and sets it back on the table. Then he slumps back in his seat. This time is turning out just like all the other times since they were all roosting in the capital - drinks on a damp tabletop, a frisson of bad-tempered wisecracks with the Ironborn, Alys’ trading flirtatious banter over the bottle caps with his friends (so what if he never really liked Greyjoy, and Robb was always a shade too young and a shade too impressive for Daryn to ever fully conquer his nerves around the kid, which, of course, had to manifest as something that always looked a great deal like indifference — Alys always had to have a good try at making everyone fall slightly in love with her.) It’s become so much of the routine in the last few months that Daryn figures he’s probably as used to it as he’s ever going to get. He doesn’t even really mind the flirting and the lack of the attention at this point — it’s just traditional that he always seems to be a bit miffed by it all. But this time is so utterly different than all the times before it that he almost wants to crack his fist on the table and make all the bottles jump. The Emperor is in the North — the fucking ruler of the whole system. Something is finally happening in the Winter and Robb and Theon can’t be asked to be bothered with questions about it? Daryn picks up his beer and takes a swig, letting the bitter fizz wash away the sour tone in his voice. “Must be we’ve grabbed a table lying right on the fault line between two completely different temperature systems, then,” he says, which is his way of letting Theon off the hook, “‘cause I’m just fine.” He gives Alys a quick, stiff grin. “But please-” he turns back to Robb, almost conspiratorial, crossing his arms on the table, “you can’t just say nothing. You met Cersei-fucking-Lannister, didn’t you? Is she even more of a stunner in the flesh?” He glances in Alys’ direction for a look of support and gets nothing good humoured in return.   Gods, he wishes Jon Umber were here.

[tryhardwood-blog]

now you wanna say i was a criminal | alys & daryn | FB: 3 years ago, wolfswood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

Fury surged through Alys’s veins, righteous and laced with sweet adrenaline that wiped away fear of any consequence.  She wanted to throw something hard and watch it shatter.

How dare Daryn speak to her this way, as if he had some sort if high ground to stand on, as if he hadn’t been with plenty of girls. Long after he had accepted the fact that their one make out session was all he was going to get, well, like 20 minutes later at least, when the liquor buoyed bliss had faded into panic and guilt, Jon Umber had attempted to assuage her by telling her that she had done nothing more than Daryn himself had on many occasions.

Anger drove Alys across the room, but it was only the stench of his blood, the way it dribbled down his wrist, that kept Alys from slapping Daryn right in his pretty face.

"First of all," she seethed, hands balled into angry fists, "I did only kiss you once. The other time you kissed me, so don’t go throwing that on my back."

Not memorable? As if she could forget the way her stomach jumped to her throat, or the flush that she felt in her body hours later.  

What a ridiculous complaint.  Was she supposed to kiss no one but him forever? How then would she knew if it was only Daryn that made her feel that way, or if any ordinary kiss could do it.  Kissing Jon Umber had been nice. He was certainly better at it than Daryn, though from what she could tell he had quite a bit of practice, but it hadn’t made her toes curl in her steel tipped boots.

"I’m not embarrassing myself.  I’m on my way up the flight sim leaderboard and I have friends, and yes that includes Jon Umber. You don’t get a say in who I hang out with!  From what I’ve heard you have no ground to stand on anyway.  It’s not like you’ve been particularly celibate in my absence!"

[tryhardwood-blog]

Her frustration should have been liberating - if he was making her defend herself, then it proved he had stepped on a corner of her pride - but Daryn felt more preoccupied with his injuries than any case for moral superiority. He tried to laugh at her for the quibble over who kissed who.

“Well, if you want to be a fucking girl about it then, sure: we’re one for one.“

-but he couldn’t quite deliver it as a joke. Daryn dropped her eye, made a grab for the ring-tab of the perfluorohex tank, and rolled it backward underneath the rounsey’s engine bank, fighting hard to keep the blush from his face.

If he had cared less, perhaps he could have been more forthright. As it was, hurt, frustration and confusion were fighting an all-out war underneath his ribs, pressing hard against his lungs, making his pulse race. Alys was carrying on with her pedantries behind him. He tried to ignore them; he didn’t particularly care about her flying or that she and Umber had spun their hook-up into camaraderie. None of that had any tangential connection to him.

This, he recognised, was jealousy. He was having a hard enough time reconciling that fact when Alys’ accusation came flying at him like a dagger.

Him? Salacious? It would have made him laugh, collapse against the coolant tank, driven to hysterical tears, if it hadn’t made him so exquisitely angry. He gripped the ring tab with his bloody, bound-up hands. The pounding in his hand had moved, with sharp clarity, into his head.

With a hand against the tank, he turned and edged his way back between the shuttle’s docking supports until he was back at a threshold with her. Alys’ hands were bunched up in fists. Her black, tangled hair gave her an edge of wildness, and her wolf eyes were furious. She did not intimidate him.

“Who told you that?” he said, his voice practically metallic. “Because I will fucking kill them.”

[tryhardwood-blog]

now you wanna say i was a criminal | alys & daryn | FB: 3 years ago, wolfswood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

It would be a lie if Alys said she was displeased to have followed the Smalljon (Umber) back to his room last week, and a bigger one if she pretended not to be pleased that their little make out session had been cut short by the arrival of one Theon Greyjoy.  Greyjoy took some sort of a liking to her, although Alys could not for the life of her say why, but she was grateful nonetheless for a friend, even if he was one who had earned have the enmity of the North by virtue of his surname alone.

Still, the score with Umber had earned Alys some much needed respect amongst her peers, as had the familiarity with any of the flyers.  It hadn’t taken the pups long to learn awe for the flyers. They had been to the black, and lived to tell the tale.  Umber was known as something of a manwhore, but evidently Alys had amused him in her refusal, and intrigued him in her leaving, and he had been nothing but friendly to her in the corridors.  With her name climbing in flight sim rankings, Alys was starting to feel like she just might belong here after all.

That, of course, is when Torrhen gave her a call.  It had taken her a full forty five minutes to convince him not to come down to Wolfswood that evening and “kick Umber’s ass,” and another half hour to persuade him not to tell Rickard.  Eventually he had seen reason, her marriage contract had not been broken, and there was no need to stir up bad blood between her father and the Greatjon, especially over something as insignificant as Alys’s honor, which in her eyes remained as uncompromised as ever.

Alys hadn’t known how he’d found out, in truth she hadn’t thought to ask, the Northern gossip network was well piled as any machine, and Eddie and Torr had no shortage of friends still at the academy, once her brothers knew, Alys realized how foolish she had been to think that they wouldn’t find out.

That was until Eddie texted her and dropped in that ever so crucial piece of information.  It had been Daryn who tattled on her.

That shithead.

A few innocuous questions at the mess table later, and Alys found out two key things. Firstly, where he was, and secondly, that he was likely to be alone. An audience would not have necessarily stopped her, but Alys was grateful for the privacy nonetheless. Perhaps this conversation, at least, would escape her brothers’ all knowing sight.

Stalking down the halls towards the engineering bay, Alys threw open the metal door with a clang, only to see Daryn with his hand wrapped, and was that blood on his hands?  Eyes narrowing, Alys shoved down the stupid traitorous parts of her that wanted to ask him if he was okay, and focused on her fury.

"You. Told. My. Brothers." Alys seethed through gritted teeth. "What I kiss you once and now I’m not allowed to have fun ever again?  What’s your damn problem?”

[tryhardwood-blog]

“Twice!” Daryn said, throwing up the requisite number of fingers on his injured hand. He dropped the torque wrench back onto the work-surface with a satisfyingly loud clang and groped about for an added strip of insulation foam to mop up the rest of the blood.

“Twice you’ve kissed me,” he went on, turning to face her for less than a second before he picked up the hand-comp and ducked back into the fuselage to unhook the wires from the smithdrive. There were drops of blood still on the steel tiles.

From inside, half-hidden from view, he felt braver with his indignation: “it was really memorable, I know!”

He coiled up the wires as cleanly as he could, but the blood was still throbbing in the tips of his fingers and he ended up coming back out with a spiral of silver hairs and shoving them onto the bench in frustration.

The way out of this was to just keep doing what he was doing originally. Drain the coolant, pry up the hydraulics, refuse the sockets. Alys would get bored and go away, eventually - though now she was here and his hand was frozen in pain, Daryn felt more alert than he had in days. None of this mattered, he told himself quickly. Seventeen more days and he’d be in the black. There was another boom and crash from the next hangar over.

“You can have fun,” he told her, spreading his hands with a grim smile, “just try not to embarrass yourself. It reflects badly on me too.”

[tryhardwood-blog]

now you wanna say i was a criminal | alys & daryn | FB: 3 years ago, wolfswood

The year’s first orbit launch was less than a month away; there were small, tidal changes in the Wolfswood civil waters. Gone were the flyers’ drunken nights and pickled mornings that had studded the first month of the year, replaced by adolescent austerity and grim-faced bravado.

The year’s earliest cadet rankings transformed into task selection grids at the moment of take-off, leading to crammed, serious study in the remaining few weeks. Some leaders were unlikely to be unseated: Robb Stark, regardless of his youth, would undoubtedly be first called to pilot the lead courser in zero-g tacticals.

At present, Theon Greyjoy was listed first for aero-physical mechanical aptitude, but not by much. Quietly, Daryn figured he was fucked if he was going to let an Ironborn outrank him in a Northern military unit. But there was plenty to be done in closing the gap between them before the launch date, and the commanders did not have much respect for flyers like Greyjoy who neglected to lend their hands to work during the lead-up.

On that particular evening, he hooked up the hand-comp system to the smithdrive and let it run its regular tests. The ship hangar was busy before mess hours, but during and after, most flyers were more interested in betting cards and socialising than squeezing in a few more shift hours. Daryn had skipped dinner in order to get on with the task at hand. The hangar was empty, and practically silent but for the click-click rotation of the rounsey engines as the test went through and the shouting and clanging from the next hall over, where the aurochs had set up a droid combat program and were running the codes for spectators.

The hand-comp spat out a maintenance report. Heat errors in the gyroscopic controls.

Three days ago, Torrhen Karstark, chewing on only three hours of sleep, had shown up to accompany Commander Cassel to Moat Cailin Station and given the engine a once over. His suggestions had been to swap out the cryogenic perfluorohex for a liquid hydrogen, if the engines insisted being so testy. Then he’d pulled out a flask and offered Daryn a splash of stim for his coffee and said, so, Hornwood, how’s my baby sister faring?

For a few minutes Daryn sat in the fuselage, looking over the rest of the report for some hint of a cause. Rocket engines had far simpler solutions than people - specifically, women. There had to be some sort of flaw in the system to account for an action failure. It was one of the reasons he felt he had a natural aptitude for mechanics; problems had causes, but problems also had solutions. The method of gains was laid out in a straight-forward manner. He didn’t have to navigate anything delicate or impetuous in order to achieve his ends. Machines were harder to misconstrue than human beings.

He was well aware that he was distracted, filled up with a sort of anticipatory dread birthed from the odd-coupling of guilt and confusion. It made his eyes slide off the report, unable to make sense of the readings. He got to his feet and jumped down from the deck onto the hangar floor.

Torrhen had reacted to the news of Alys sneaking off with Jon Umber the week before with the sort of pure, vengeful, sleep-deprived anger that Daryn only wished he could have shown when he’d first heard it himself.

They’d been watching the Dornish drag race broadcast on the glass screen in the flyers den when the Smalljon had slid through the door and onto a free seat with a strong air of Tyrellian smugness. There came the weighted pause while they silently pulled proverbial straws to see which one of them would have to ask, until eventually Greyjoy had said:

“You hardly waste a minute with the pups, do you?”

Perhaps if it hadn’t been Greyjoy who’d said it, if it had been someone without pre-knowledge, the effect wouldn’t have been quite so damaging. The Smalljon and the Ironborn talked to one another about the unnamed event over the broadcast for a few more minutes until Domeric rolled back his head and demanded to know which pup in particular this latest conquest was.

Since the Smalljon had sat down, Daryn had felt a sense of unease crawling up his spine. When Umber reached out and jabbed him in the arm and said,

“I took Lady Hornwood for a spin,” that sense of unease became a free fall into icy waters. He kept on staring at the screen while the others laughed. He couldn’t hear the announcers over the sound, but it didn’t matter. He was determined not to care, and when he found he really did care, he became determined not to show it.

“Don’t worry,” the Smalljon said. “Your contract’s intact.” His pronunciation of that last word made the muscles in Daryn’s fist jump. Tacitly, he knew that this was just Umber being provocative. He wanted a reaction. Daryn summoned a shrug, and that was all he managed to give.

Abstractly, he knew Alys could really do whatever the hell she wanted provided she kept within the formal limitations. Implicitly, however, doing whatever the hell she wanted with the Smalljon felt pointed, almost violently disrespectful in its explicitness. Alys has started an immature game the day she'd walked up to him, chatting with Wynafryd in the hallway, and dragged him down for a kiss. A hands off kind of warning that he hadn't seen coming.

Daryn couldn't have let that instance sit. The last time he's  spoken to her since than had been in that rushed moment after he’d tugged her aside and kissed her in the middle of the sims corridor. Up until that moment, he had been thinking about her robust claim on him, her you’re mine, every time his mind had wandered. So he’d let her have him, and thought that in that in saying so the opposite would instantly become true. I am hers as she is mine were how the vows went, after all. Clearly, he’d been wrong. He hated to be wrong.

After that, Daryn had done everything in his power to ignore her. He’d barely seen her, which had helped, but Torrhen’s appearance earlier that week had seemed like a golden opportunity to stab back at her through similar means. At least, that’s what he told himself afterward - that it had been a calculated move. In speaking to Torrhen however, with the caffeine humming in his veins, it had like been more like catharsis.

Daryn picked up a torque wrench from the hangar wall and opened up the hydraulics panel in the side of the rounsey. The pipes were still cold from the test run and he ran his grease-smudged hands along them to assess the temperature. There was an odd, icy bend in one of the crimped metal joints and, without thinking, he pressed his thumb over it. Immediately, the pain shot up the nerves in his arm to his elbow and he pulled his hand back, leaving a small strip of skin behind.

“Fuck!” he spat, feeling the blood blister beneath the skin and freeze from the lingering subzero cold. The pressure built up quickly, pain beating in his thumb, and he flexed his hand, trying to ease the stiffness in his knuckles. His fingers were shaking as if he’d just plunged his arm into a tank of the coolant, rather than merely touching its transitive heat. He sucked the frozen tip of his thumb, feeling fresh pain beat through his palm at the temperature change and the cold bite into his teeth. He tasted the black vinegar tang of the oil grease on his fingers. The upside, he supposed, was that he’d found the coolant block- and that, for a moment, he’d managed to stop thinking about Alys, though that train of thought instantly returned as soon as he’s assumed he’d vanquished it.

It had been three days since he’d told Torrhen about Alys’ indiscretion, and yet he’d heard nothing. Had Torrhen said nothing? Had Alys taken the inevitable scolding as read without any fallout? Again, that anticipated dread flooded back as the temperature in his hand began to rise. The blister thawed and began to bleed, filling his mouth with the sharp copper taste of blood. He spat, and moved quickly back to the workbench to find a scrap of sponge or engine insulation to put over it. Blood ran down his wrist toward his elbow; utterly overdramatic.

He’d barely managed to wrap his thumb in insulating bandage before there came an especially loud clang from the hangar entrance. The sound made him go rigid for half a second; he half hoped the auroch’s droid fight had busted through the wall, or that Greyjoy was coming to gloat over him. But it was that same feeling as when the Smalljon had come into the den. A spinal tap-sense of inevitable unease that he was soon going to be joined by the last person he wanted to speak to. He glanced back across his shoulder, seeing the whip of black hair and a slash of blue-blue eyes.

"Gods," he groaned, "you have the most injurious timing of anyone I've ever fucking met."

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

It wouldn’t matter in the end that she felt for Daryn, that she loved her home, that she valued her work, or would miss her brothers. She was a Karstark, she would do her duty.

(Even if it meant breaking her heart.)

"Missed my chance, did I?  I think you ought to know by now that Rickard taught me to always have a back up plan"  Alys laughed, and then ever so lightly tipped her beer over, spilling heavy foam onto Daryn’s dry shirt.  "I think you’ve got something on your shirt there, Apprentice Hornwood."

[tryhardwood-blog]

There had been a quip on the tip of his tongue but the moment he felt the cold beer spill across his stomach, Daryn was on his feet, cursing instead.

"Ahhh," he groaned, pulling the fabric away from his skin to inspect the damage. The beer had soaked straight through the fibres, practically ruined the thing. Not that this particular shirt was a clean or precious thing to him, but it was the implicit defeat he took issue with. 

"You are such a spoiled brat, Karstark," he told her, laughing though he was trying not to. Without pausing to acknowledge that she was getting her way, he pulled the shirt off over his head and tossed it back toward the palfrey. Then he snatched up her beer bottle and took it away. 

Daryn put a knee up against the camp bed so he was back on her level and took ahold of her hands, wrapping his fingers round her pale wrists and pushing her back onto the mattress.

"Now I have to make you pay for that," he grinned, lowering his lips to hers. 

[tryhardwood-blog]

now we're spinning laps around the sun | alys, daryn, robb & theon | during the imperial visit, 6 months ago

[ironsprince]

All in all, the last two days had left Theon badly in need of a drink.

It surprised him really – he’d been anticipating the Imperial visit ever since he’d first learned of it. Yes, the current Emperor had all but brought his house to ruin, turned the name Greyjoy from one that parents used to scare their children with tales of being whisked away by raiders if they didn’t behave, into one that was that was now usually accompanied by a mocking smile and smart remark about failed rebellions – but he was still the Emperor, and it was rare that anybody got to see their ruler in person, let alone meet the man. And he was bringing the entire Imperial retinue in tow, including the legendary Jaime Lannister, the youngest soldier to join the White Band in history.

Not to mention the fact that for once, Theon had actually felt like Lord Stark’s ward, rather than just his hostage. He had been instructed he would form part of the welcoming party, standing alongside the Lord Paramount’s own children and the highest ranking officers. His face had been flushed with a mixture of pride and excitement, as he watched the great luxe-ship’s doors open and awaited for the Imperial family to disembark.

It had taken several moments for him to realise the hulking fat giant that lumbered off the ship was actually the Emperor. Yes, he was dressed in finery as befit the ruler of the Westerosi systems but – really? Theon had realised then that broadcasts from the WNN rarely showed recent footage of the Emperor, he kept mainly inside the walls of the Red Keep, but instead chose to display recordings of the man in his glory days, such as his coronation or his wedding day.

Read More

[tryhardwood-blog]

Daryn studied the contents of his glass as the others came in, stripping off their snow shells and peeling back their hoods. Theon, then Robb, kissed Alys in turn before the Stark heir turned off to the bar to relieve them of a bottle of some liquor or other. Theon slid into a chair and Daryn gave him a contemptuous nod. 

He unwound his hand from Alys' own beneath the table to cup his drink in both hands.

"Slept through it," he said by way of a response, though Theon had been looking at Alys when he asked. "Caught the rerun broadcast, though."

For a moment, he considered saying something about how some of them had jobs, duties to attend to in order to keep the North in orbit, but figured it could just as easily backfire. Theon didn't have to work because he was living it up as a trumped-up hostage on the Starks' own coin; Daryn had to work because he wasn't notable enough to warrant an invitation to the Imperial welcome. 

Crofter's, for all its charms and its golden biolight, had a slightly seedy quality to it. The wind banged through the door each time another customer arrived and the grey walls were tracked with water stains. The slippery relics of melted ice make the tabletops slick and patterned in rings of condensation.

"You want some place to put your coat, Greyjoy?" he added, brightly, tilting his glass to him slightly. The rest of them had shrugged out of their padded outer-layers and hung them up by the door amongst the armory of others. Theon was still wearing his, grey mammoth-fur ruff encircling his neck and shoulders.

"You're going to start sweating soon."

[tryhardwood-blog]

now we're spinning laps around the sun | alys, daryn, robb & theon | during the imperial visit, 6 months ago

The Imperial image to which they had each paid homage on all the days of their military service did not match the one broadcast on the morning of the Emperor’s arrival. 

In his youth, Robert Baratheon had been an idealised cartoon of sun-ring masculinity - barrel-chested, fiery-eyed and bullishly handsome. The man who had arrived to cameras at the Wintertown shuttle link in a sable thermacloak and thick amber goggles, with a dozen White Band attendants and an golden empress in tow, seemed utterly unimpressive in comparison. A certain amount of disheveledness could be allowed for travellers to the North - the journey took more than a month and they weren’t used to the cold or the gravity, and their weak eyes could hardly bear the summer’s midnight sun as it lit up the snowfields like a soft, white quasar. But, all the same, the Emperor was a disappointing sight. Graceless in his step, swollen of stomach, with grey in his hair now. He was a corrupted copy, a bloated knock-off, of the legendary stormlord. 

Daryn hadn’t been awake to see the luxe-ship procession as it had dipped low in the white sky over Wintertown, and he hadn’t been invited to be part of the welcoming party, but he’d watched the party disembark at the Holdfast on the glass transmission screens in the common area of the repairs deck. Then he’d clocked out, gone home, swallowed a melatonin capsule, and tried to catch up on some sleep. 

‘Try’ being the operative word. Several long, grey hours passed in an exhaustive fugue state, unable to sleep, unable to wake. His pulse was vibrating in his palms, counteracting all medicated drowsiness. For the first time in months, Daryn felt as if the proverbial ice of normal existence was starting to crack. The Imperial tourists had brought a little heat with them - a little friction, and new weight. Something was beginning to give, finally. Something was beginning to change. 

After that, he must have finally dropped into a REM cycle because the next thing Daryn remembered was the shrill squawk of his hand-com from the bedside and picking up a call from Alys summoning him to a round of malt liquor and black tar rum near the Holdfast.

Despite the anticipation of the Emperor’s visit, the sleepless hours had wrecked his mood. Taken it out back and stamped on it in the snow. Daryn felt bitter and exhausted as he headed out into the summer’s shoddy excuse for an evening. The sun still burned at three-quarters in the sky, drowning out the few early, eager stars, making the clouds glow white and orange. A beautiful night, perhaps, for the royal sun-ring tourists to enjoy, but irrelevant to him. 

He was the first one at the Crofters’. Daryn stripped off his gloves and bought himself a drink which did nothing to improve his mood. Drinking with friends was all well and good, but he did not particularly feel as if he had been asked along for his company. He had little love for Theon Greyjoy, outside of a circle of social courtesy, and Robb Stark had always been too young and too impressive for Daryn to know quite how to speak to him once they had passed out of the Wolfswood. And Alys’ conduct of late made him think - perhaps unreasonably - that she was more interested in snapping the leash than actively making him into one of her friends; she invited him along to these things to poke fun at him with an audience and then, only later, when the others were gone, would she tell him she’d only been joking.

Still, this could be him poised for the change. Considering it all, there were few places he’d rather be on that evening than drinking with two of the Keep’s own residents, and the heir to the Winter himself. If Ned Stark was bound for the next shuttle off-world, then that meant Robb would be coming into his inheritance far sooner than anticipated. 

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

For a moment, no longer than a bat of her dark eyelashes, Alys feared that Daryn did know, that someone had let it slip the news she knew she could never tell.

Rickard Karstark is seeking other suitors. Alys Karstark and the wealth and weight of Karhold Iron was on the market. Come one come all. Perhaps that was over dramatic, but that was the heft of the secret that had burrowed itself into Alys’s conscience and lay down roots three years earlier, when their affair was still young enough to end with hearts more bruised than broken.

And yet in all their time together, Daryn had never doubted, not even when she reached her majority and Rickard still refused an official contract. A notoriously hard man, one who bargained seldom and gave nothing away, Alys figured Daryn had written it off as typical Karstark stubbornness and thought no more of it. Yet every time he mentioned her father, Alys froze, terrified that this time he had learned the truth of it.

What Daryn guessed instead was not untrue. She was shaken by the loss of Robert Baratheon, the monolith that had held their uneasy System together in the wake of Targaryen ruin. Smiling, Alys laid a kiss to the line of Daryn’s jaw. He always did know how to phrase things so the words laid just right, whether he meant to antagonize her or mollify her, it worked, which would be infuriating if it wasn’t so charming.

"Objectifying you, am I?" Alys asked, pulling back onto the bed, her arms disentangling from his. "Why then I’m doing a shit job of it. Maybe you should pose for me." Grinning, Alys gestured towards his mutt of a palfrey, his real true love, "C’mon, do me a Mechanics of Winterfell calendar. Though you should probably take off your shirt first. Just so it’s artistically honest."

[tryhardwood-blog]

The act of her shifting back onto the flatback bed jabbed at him like an added insult. On a particular level, Daryn knew he should take it all as read - she was teasing him, the way he usually liked, the way she always did to a point. But his instincts had him feeling brushed off, as if Alys had felt his hand at her back and rejected the invitation. He felt a little dejected, even as her big smile was inviting him to quickly get over it. 

After a moment's contemplation on what she had suggested, Daryn made the decision not to give in to the rise. And also not to tell her about the palfrey. Alys had eyes - she could see the ship was practically complete. But if she hadn't made the connection yet then he wasn't going to point it out, the same way she was refusing to draw him a map between the split halves of the conversations she was trying earnestly to spin back into one.

Daryn leaned forward and picked up the dark beer bottle left at the edge of the bed, then pushed back the chair with a rough metallic scrape. Taking a sip, he found it ale growing warm in the workshop's residual heat.

Moving back to the bedside and dragging the chair back to the bench, he said, "secondly - I was wearing nothing but my skin when you rolled in here fifteen minutes ago and woke me up and made me turn the heat off." He kicked the side of the space heater on his way back to the bed again and took a draw from the bottle, to further make the point. "So I think you've missed your chance there." 

With all the cracks and stiffness worked out of his hot, sleepy body, he moved with more smoothness and assuredness. He sat down on his bed and laid down, dropping his head haphazardly into her lap and resting the cold base of the beer against his stomach. Looking upward, Daryn could see more clearly the silvery blue clarity of her eyes, and the way her irises shifted like water droplets, like cats' eyes, as she steadied her gaze. He felt better here having pushed his way back into her physical space again. Backward, he reached up and pushed her hair back from her cheek. 

"I'll have to bring it up to your father myself that you've got shit for business acumen," he risked saying and then playing off. "Missed the opportunity to have me naked because you were too busy crying over the Emperor. Gods, Al, he's going to be so disappointed." 

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

"Well," she said, flexing her legs, feeling the strain in her calves sting pleasantly, "Perhaps they were ghost stories more than they were fairy tales.  Harry used to tell them to us when I was little.  We’d build bonfires in the quarries and I’d always end up screaming.  Rickard never had time for things like that."

It had been Harry who she had looked up to as a girl, strong and steadfast Harry who’d held her hand as she dragged him to the mining bay and named all the parts of the ships for her, at least all the parts he knew.  He’d been the one to tell her stories and humor her childish jokes, laughing just on queue.

All her father had done was promise her Daryn like a minnow on a line, and then drag it tantalizingly away, always close, but never quite hers.

Leaning forward, Alys hooked her legs around Daryn’s back and pulled him closer.  ”But I don’t want to talk about my father,” she said, kissing him lightly on the sharp line of his jaw, “You see I’m really very upset,” lightly, Alys threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging his head towards hers, “I think I need to be comforted.”

[tryhardwood-blog]

He half-laughed as her lips grazed his cheek. It was part bitter, part disbelief, but he managed to mask it as amusement. Northern girls were notoriously terrible coquettes (this he did not know from varied experience, but from long-term observation of inner-planet holo fictions) - they didn't need subtly or much in the way of innuendo and feminine wiles. Just a dig and a punch in the shoulder, and as much of a verbal sign-post to say, I wouldn't mind. Alys' attempts at seduction generally made him laugh or roll his eyes, but there was no question that they were still highly successful. Daryn didn't need seducing. He just needed the parameters. The perks of betrothal. By now, he felt as responsive to her touch as he thought he was ever going to be. As if he could read her thoughts in the brush of her fingertips, and that -in running his hands up the legs of her nylon snow pants and dragging her onto his lap - these things were automatic. But he reflected that even that fact, in and or itself, was frustrating. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing," he started, closing his eyes, tilting his head downward as she moved her fingers through his hair. He could feel the softness of her skin against his cheek, his brow, the bridge of his nose, and the heat of her breathing by his ear. He'd meant it to be a joke, but the slow brush and bump between them had made him go curiously still and taken the spurs from his voice. It depressed him, somewhat, that he could see what she was doing from a mile away and yet felt himself unwilling to stop her. In the almost year since she'd moved to Winterfell, they'd made no traction. Both in their majority now, unmarried still, and winter was coming. Every time he tried to broach the topic with her, raise the issue of her father, Alys found some way around it. She'd change the subject or lay a kiss on him or pull off her coat or suddenly need to leave. Daryn felt as if he were pushing a boulder uphill through thick powder, always slipping and sliding back, his feet ripped raw and his shoulders aching. Stopping and succumbing to the effort was euphoric - each time he did so, he lost more of his will to push on. He hated her a bit for that, for obfuscating the truth and being too cowardly to conduct a lie about it. As if she didn't respect him enough to bother with lies. And then, he wouldn't hate her so much. With her weight against him and her cold palms pushing him down, he'd happily succumb. He didn't need seducing. Daryn raised his head a little, determined to mislead her right back if that was the game. He met her eye and drew his hands around her back, finding the place where her clothes gave way to skin. "You want to grieve for your dearly departed Emperor by objectifying me, is that it?"

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

"Do you want the whole realm in the hands of a 16 year old boy, Daryn?  You’re an only child, so maybe you don’t remember, but 16 year olds are fucking idiots.  You, especially."

Daryn’s 16 had been the Midsummer that Alys, at 13, had stopped skinny dipping with him, suddenly aware of her own budding breasts and spreading hips, the awkward throes of adolescence pushing its way through her child smooth skin, painting spots on her face and red between her thighs.  He hadn’t known of course, or noticed as far as she knew, but it made his jabs that had summers before seemed impermeable had burned the same as the red sun’s rare heat, but she had hid it well, letting his accidental cruelty yellow like hidden bruises into her skin.

"But a new age of Northern opportunity, that sounds nice.  I haven’t heard a good fairy tale since I was a girl," teasingly, she smiled at him, her eyes bright with sport, "do go on."

[tryhardwood-blog]

The kick to the shoulder was expected and not minded. Alys had, after all, kicked him with full force in the past. Playing out the motions of violence with only a modicum of the effort needed was what passed for a friendliness in the North. Daryn batted her foot away and gave her a conspiratorial smile. He had the sense that he had broken through her veneer of worry and calmed her down. There had been a time he hadn't known how to do that at all, so he was grateful for small victories. 

"I was never an idiot," he said, running his fingers down her leg, "I was maybe just... a bad listener." He knew she'd object and roll her eyes, but as long as she wasn't carrying on about the state of the realm too much, he didn't particularly mind. His workspace was like his sanctuary. The outside world didn't have to encroach into it if he didn't want it to (he had made this salient point to Alys many times, but did she respect his preferences? No, of course she didn't.) 

"No, Alys, I'm talking... better political representation. Funding for a stronger power grid, wider food distribution. It's not like it'd be fucking hard to do, with all of us living in the same corner of the planet." He gathered his hands together and cracked his knuckles. Again, the reminder that he had something to tell her rolled through Daryn's brain and he promptly stopped talking, turning his mind over for a new thread of conversation.

"Wait, who in the Karhold ever told you a fairy tale?" he refreshed, in amused disbelief, pushing his knuckles into the ball of her foot. "I can't imagine your father ever suspending disbelief for long enough to do it."

Alys had been without a mother for most of her life, and he highly doubted Rickard had ever set her on his knobbly knee and told her a bedtime story. "Was it all just... miners myths? The boy who tapped through a wall and found the diamond heart of the mountain - things like that?" The Hornwood had its own versions of similar workers stories, all mostly culminating in someone tapping an old tree and finding it was full of molten gold. 

"Speaking of," he tacked on, subtly as he could. "have you spoken to the great man himself recently?" He had a habit for referring to Lord Karstark in terms of respect, whether grudgingly, as it was then, or no. He hadn't even seen Alys' father since the evening she'd finished at the Academy, when he hadn't seemed in particularly good spirits. 

[tryhardwood-blog]

"I was that close to crossing swords with the Kingslayer himself.” Theon held his hands two feet apart. “Daryn Hornwood came between us, and died for it.”

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

The truth was, each day Alys awoke afraid to check her messages, afraid her father had pinged her to let her know her betrothal was off.  She was twenty two, a year past her majority, and yet her father made no moves, and she and Daryn were forced to live on in secrecy.  What if this new Emperor was enough to convince her father he didn’t need Hornwood lumber.  Nonsensical as her logical train was, it terrified her.

Draining the bottle, Alys placed it on the floor and sat herself upon his camp bed, the metal skeleton hard beneath his worn mattress.  “You really need to get a proper bed in here.  I don’t even know how you sleep on this thing.  Or sleep at all in this heat.”  After a medivac shift her limbs felt frozen, her body stiff.  Stretching her arms above her head, Alys rolled her neck one way, and then the other, relishing each crack, luxuriating in the proper arch of her back.

Her eyes were hooded as she looked up at Daryn, knowing he must be watching.

[tryhardwood-blog]

Daryn had in mind to get to his feet and slide his arms about her waist, but Alys had flitted past him and sat down before he'd even made a move across the short threshold. Having stood up, he prowled across to the back of the palfrey, rolling his bare shoulders and trying hard to really listen to her. 

He recognised, without really being able to put it into meaningful words, that they had strikingly different approaches to change. For Alys, change was a phantom - it had stolen her mother away and made her father into a stern-faced malcontent. For Daryn, change was opportunity. He longed for it, dreamed of it, hungered for it. There was too much same these days, twisting the clock dials and stamping in and out of the working hours.  He wanted some things to change between them, but he was anxious - today - not to move too quickly, not to fuck it up and send them off kilter. Ironic then, that Alys thought he should throw out the mattress and get a new bed. Though perhaps her complaint was part of a static tapestry that maintained the edges of her world-view. Daryn lives here. The room is hot. He needs a new bed. She might've been more insecure without some of these constants.

He turned back and watched her stretch, lean arms raised and locked at the elbow, her dark hair falling across her shoulders as she moved her head. Alys looked up at him, her gaze a little tired and a little sullen in a half-inviting way. In silent response, he switched off the space heater closest to the bed and took a hexagonal glassware pitcher from the back of the small fridge. He poured her a coffee cup's worth of cold water and dragged one of the odd, galvanised metal chairs across the floor so he could sit down opposite her. She was obviously stricken, whether by this news or something corollary and coincidental. Daryn felt a little guilty for being undeliberately obtuse, and, as a result, somewhat forthcoming. 

"I'm sorry," he began, sitting down, "that I underestimated your deep and unwavering affection for the late, great Robert Baratheon." He handed her the cold water, wondering if he'd done the right thing or if she was going to roll her eyes.

"The prince is what, though?" he started. "Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that?" He leaned forward and picked up her left foot at the ankle, tugging off her thick snow-socks and running his hand up until his fingers could ease the tension knotted in her calf muscles. He had that sense, as ever, that he could comprehend her body better than he ever could her mind. Old academy habits dying hard; palms on skin as a mark of attempted empathy.

"Lord Eddard is going to end up handling the whole show for that little shit-head. You don't even know, Al - this could be the dawning of some brilliant new age of Northern opportunity." He tried to give her a smile; the optimism came out sounding thick and artificial, which he hadn't meant. "And then you're going to feel like the biggest moron for crying about Robert Baratheon like it's your first day at battle school."

[coldwindsrp]

DARYN HORNWOOD; The Planet of the Winter

"Daryn Hornwood was born, heir to an old family seat, in a stone longhouse at the edge of an ancient Northern forest. The Targaryen Space Age has little room for wood as a modern material and Westeros itself has no shortage of forests, but in the lands of winter, wood is a precious commodity. Unlike those other, more central planets, gently spit-roasting their oxygen-rich earth in the heat of the sun, life struggles in the North and trees - true trees - are few and far between. The Hornwood is located south-east of Winterfell, toward the cool Winter Sea, and is the greatest source of disposable lumber on the planet’s surface." [read more]

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | alys karstark & daryn hornwood

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

"Why is it always so gods damned hot in here," Alys grumbled, stripping off her sweater and throwing it over the edge of his ship, leaving her arms bare in her black dryfit tank top, the same military issue she had worn since she was at Wolfswood. She didn’t need to be military to appreciate the practicality of a uniform.  

"Robert Baratheon.  You know, our supreme ruler, protecter of the system etcetera etcetera?  He died in some sort of synthetic hunting accident."  Sweat dewing on her shoulders from Daryn’s incinerator of a room, Alys opened his mini-fridge with a hiss, grabbing bottle of thick brown beer and cracking open the lid with her keychain, before throwing one at the birds nest of blankets and shutting the fridge.

"Aren’t you going to say something?" The beer was thick and bitter with hops, the winter barley crops of Barrowton were fertile that year, a fact the ever present ads on the radio liked to remind her, and she was grateful for it.  If this was how summer ended, they had a long winter ahead of them.

[tryhardwood-blog]

Daryn, in fact, felt himself wanting to say many things, though he had to admit that none of them were particularly germane to the news at hand. Things like you know, I think I might've finally burned off my right thumbprint earlier today - isn't that interesting? Had he not just been yanked from a deep, blinding sleep, he might have had a go at a humorous non-sequitur - which Alys would have recognised as him admitting ignorance without using so many words and trying to play it off with charm. But her voice was sharp and a little reedy then; the stress was real and not worth making light of.

The beer bottle landed at the edge of the mattress and he sat up slowly to retrieve it, spine cracking as he did so, white sheets sinking to his waist. With his knees pulled up toward him, he tried to pry the top off the bottle with his fingers and then twist it off with the heel of one hand. He could have asked her for a hand, but in his nakedness he felt oddly sheepish.

"The Emperor, emperor?" He asked her, dumbly, casting his eyes up and toward her.

If it hadn't been for Robert Baratheon's visit to the North several months ago, Daryn would have hardly known the great man gave a shit about them all, out here in the ice. The Stark Warden's promotion to Imperial Hand had softened his opinion, however. Bestowing that sort of political trust was a great show of dependence, whichever way you sliced it. That still didn't quite explain Alys's frazzlement, though.

He was having no luck getting the cap off the beer. He tilted the bottle some and pressed it into the crook of his arm, twisting hard. It was a rather useful trick Jon Umber had taught them all after their first star patrol at the end of second year, when the need to get celebratorily shit-faced far outweighed the drive to hunt for a bottle-opener.

"Is that really such a big deal though?" He asked. With a slight burn to the skin, the metal cap suddenly gave and fell away. Dark beer foamed up from the bottle neck and he moved quick to take a swig and keep it from spilling onto the bed sheets. It wasn't until he'd had his first swallow that he realised he didn't actually want any beer at just that moment, only just awake enough now to really get the lay of the situation. He put the bottle down on the floor next to the camp bed, and shifted forwards, putting his feet on the floor.

"I mean, emperors have been dying for thousands of years. It's practically their one single uniting practice."

There was no parsing anything from the look on Alys' face. Her icy eyes were alive against the warm light of the workshop, and she had her arms folded, strong, pale shoulders drawn straight as a bowstring. Daryn realised - his sleep-addled brain volunteering spontaneous, inane sensory memories - that he'd hardly pressed his lips to those shoulders in nearly a week now. Behind her, he could see his own clothes hanging up on the light cable over the open engine. He'd been damp from snowfall when he'd finally trudged home and haphazardly hung them out to dry.

He put out a hand toward her, simultaneously reaching and gesturing past her shoulder to the makeshift line over the palfrey's engine.

"Hand me my pants, will you?"

[greywintersdaughter-blog]

gone where the goblins go | daryn hornwood

It was these thoughts that drifted through Alys’s mind as she traded her wings for a rail pass, watching as the mining city rolled by en route to Daryn’s place.  It was little more than a room, barely big enough for his dog bed and his mutt of a spaceship and him.  And Alys.  And usually the dumplings Alys picked up on her way, but tonight she was too distracted, too distraught to stop for food.  Keys rattling with agitation, Alys let herself in, his absurd door rolling and groaning on its well worn hinges and flicked on the light.  As the room yellowed, her eyes caught on Daryn, entangled in a mess of blankets.

“How are you asleep right now?” Alys said, rolling the door shut with a clanging thump.  “Robert Baratheon’s dead!”

[tryhardwood-blog]

The initial reason Daryn had liked this particular work space well enough to rent it, besides the relative need for it, was because it had no windows. Never mind the spectral threat of monoxide-poisoning pouring off the live engine as he worked on the palfrey - sleep was a hard enough thing to steal in the long, bright, unblinking summer days and it would have been harder still with natural sunlight pouring in through some crack in the wall. 

He'd stumbled back in from work three hours after sunrise, which was to say, roughly three hours before the rest of the North decided to wake up, and promptly stripped off and fallen asleep on the fold-out futon in the womb-warm darkness. 

It had been an exhaustive night on duty - eight solid hours of repatching crunched titanium hulls and loose mining sprockets. Real spanner and oil shit, which left him with an ache between his shoulder blades and blackish grease smudged up to the wrists. The kind of shift that made him wonder if this whole 'labor living' endeavour was even worth it in the long run. They'd had the sub-etha radio on the whole time in the garage, blurting out bubbles of music, punctuated every now and then by a crisp crackle of news. There had been nothing notable there that he could remember. Just trading forecasts and travel updates. Same old, same old.

These were the memories that crashed together in the front part of his mind as his body suddenly sparked, rudely, awake. 

The second reason he'd rented this particular work space was for the ceramic insulation system. The place was vastly overpriced for the square-footage, but heat was a luxury worth shilling out for, and this room held on to it like a dragon's egg. Precious heat that was now rapidly escaping out through the open door as reason-number-three suddenly rolled it open. 

He heard Alys' voice before he could bring himself to open his eyes. Daryn dragged the blanket up over his head in dissent against all the things that were suddenly happening far too much. The cold, the light, the noise and the news. 

"Shutthedoor," he managed to get out, muffled, even as it clanged behind her. He raised a hand to his head and rubbed at an eye with the heel of one palm, barely lifting himself up on one elbow as the shape of her came forward through the yellow light. Sometimes, in those short, fraught seconds right after she woke him up in the middle of a dream, he almost regretted giving her a key. 

"Who's dead?" he asked. They better be worth it.