summary: Valarr continuously finds himself withholding his thoughts and feelings from his wife.
wc: 3.0k
content: ig angst and comfort
author's note: hi!, I haven’t written a fic in a while, i hope you enjoy. I realised as writing it theres error in timing. Im just a lazy bum who wasn’t bothered to rewatch the show for accuracy. I really don’t enjoy my writing so feel free to message me abt where i can approve. As well, unfortunately wasn’t read thru properly, sorry T-T
dividers credit: @pixopix
Smoke whisked in the wind, it danced in every direction. Subtly rose above. Dark hues poured into the unsoiled, pristine blue. Dissimilar shades perfectly blended together. Until the whole sky was darkened.
The muted blue sky frowned upon all. Dimmed clouds conjugated together. An impenetrable shield that hid the sun.
Down below laid the burning body, Baelor rested in eternal peace. His beautiful face corrupted by the inferno. Eyes shut to never open again.
The realm's beloved prince had succumbed to an endless night and left forever young.
Flames spreading on him rose high. Untamed and harsh. It devoured the resting corpse swifter than mould decaying a forgotten fruit.
A distinct smell arose. It was an unbearable scent, it harshly scraped against the inside of the nostrils. Irritating the smallest hairs embedded onto the surface.
But that was minor issue to the sea of black and red robes that stood before the lifeless body.
Their eyes watched on. Fury, sadness, or detachment plastered on their faces. Each coped their loss in different ways. Some more extreme than others.
Carefully your eyes stared.
You inspected the inferno as it was manipulated by the wind. It rose and frll. This focus on the body distracted you. But your fascination on the funeral procedure was peculiar.
But you told yourself, it was better than letting your emotions get a hold on you.
Baelor was exceptionally kind to you. He had eased you into your role as in the royal household. Treated you exactly like a daughter. Always made sure you were comfortable and cared for. You felt as if you were forever in his debt.
But you didn't know him truly. Always thought he did it out of duty. He was a prince after all. Thus, you saw no point in weeping. But of course you still paid your respects.
Your attention was immediately ripped away once you felt someone getting closer. It was Valarr inching closer. Either intentionally or absent-mindedly.
Your eyes were removed from the corpse to the man beside you.
Gazing up you witness a solemn expression laid upon his face. You knew what was behind this emotionless mask. His tightened jaw hid his true feelings. Perhaps a whimper or cry pushed back deeper. His intense stare was an impassable dam that hindered any tears from escaping and falling down his delicate cheek.
Your gaze was left unreturned. Valarr didn't glance back. He had an inkling you knew the truth. Therefore, avoiding your gaze would prevent unmasking it.
His mismatched eyes remained ahead. Closely studying the flames that were marking his father's body. Similarly to you, he wished to distract himself.
Now he was closer to the throne. Valarr knew he had to keep appearances. A moment of weakness would ruin his image. No one wanted an heir who couldn't control his emotions. Even if that meant suppressing them until they'll suddenly explode all over.
He stood completely rigid as if he was chiselled out of stone.
Your sadden eyes remained watching his lack of movement. His frozen state provoked a weird feeling at the pit of your stomach. It was eating at you.
It felt like relentless torture watching your husband do this to himself. Shutting off his emotions because of some title.
If you ever said that out aloud, you'd be met with numerous protests. To the Targaryens it wasn't just a title. It was everything.
Even so, you found it unnecessary for him to do this to himself. Not only did it harm him but you also.
Slowly your hand moved towards his. Bridging between the suffocating gap between you. An invitation to comfort and warmth.
At first, he made no sudden motion to meet your hand. Valarr's hand was kept beside him. No attempt was made to meet yours. It was un-prince of him to stand without proper manners.
This rejection left your expression contorting downwards. Darken eyes returned to watch the macabre display.
The body was completely consumed by the flames. There was nothing left of the admirable Baelor Breakspeare.
Again you meticulously comprehended small aspects no one else dared to.
Such as the deflating inferno, its life soon came to a halt much like the corpse. The red-orangey blaze continued to fight. It battled its inevitable end for another chance against the wild wind.
And in the air, the putrid smell still lingered. Its presence had you questioning if anyone else noticed it.
Possibly everyone had ignored it unlike you.
Ignoring it was hard because it left a bitter feeling within. Shamelessly twisted with the dark feelings that harboured deep inside.
Suddenly an ice-cold touch met your hand. Possessively grasping it. Fingers enveloping yours. It made no sign of letting go.
This sudden touch quickened your heart rate. Pulsating through your chest, irises left shrunk in fear. Your mind didn't waver off this unknown grip.
You watched the pale hand that grasped yours. Its noticeable veins spread across it like an intricate spider's web. Gradually your eyes trailed up his black sleeves. Yours eyes met a familiar jaw. Soon examined the same cheeks you always kissed. The passive stare his multicoloured eyes gave. And the copper hair your fingers always played with.
The hand belonged to the prince beside you. Valarr had finally reached out to you. He sought out your comfort.
A tranquilising calmness washed over you. Releasing your body from the grasp of fear
You fought an endearing smile that wished to appear on your lips. Immediately stifled behind an impassive expression.
It was entirely inappropriate given the circumstances. You didn't wish to be caught and condemned for improper manners.
To Valarr this was one layer of his well-made defence in sheltering the accumulation of emotions deteriorating right in front of him. Unbeknownst to him more layers would tumble down like unbalanced dominoes. He could no longer control his fortress of reinforced etiquette and manners from crumbling.
You knew with time, it will all come crashing down. And amongst the rubble would be his true feelings. Undeniably exposed. You knew you'd tend and care for them. As you always did.
Your hand tightened around his. Neither you or him wished to disturb this peace.
Grey skies still loomed over Ashford. Sluggishly hovering over until it weighed upon the castle. Most believed the building was submerging under the immense pressure.
Inside the stone walls, the heavy atmosphere clung onto anything inside.
Along with your thoughts, this invisibe weight was dragging you down. Pulling at the ends of dress. Urging you to surrender to its abnormal effect. Leaving your stance unsteady.
To divert your mind from this unseen force, you urgently searched for a distraction. Eyes widened. You absorbed the interior of the confined space.
During your time spent in this temporary chambers, the aging appearence was apparent.
The walls lacked life. All that was left was a faint colour it formerly was. Perhaps it was decaying right in front of you. A somber thing to imagine.
Your eyes peered elsewhere.
Age teared at the wooden floorboards. Marked and defaced the organic material. The grains appeared like wrinkles that creased across elderly skin.
You wonder how much time this room has withstood.
You internally debated how many wars and battles have reigned while the castle stood still. Surviving just for old age to consume it.
This fixation clouded your mind. A foggy mist that distorted irrelevant thoughts and responsibilities.
Until your attention was drawn to the bed before you. It had been your comfort but also unfortunately your husband's cage.
Your mind dwelled onto several nights you were subjected to witness Valarr's attempts of sparring mental battles. He fought the night terrors like a valiant soldier on the battlefield.
Every twist and turn was a sign of combat.
In his mind, he mercilessly slain them all with a Valyrian steel sword. Yet his victory didn't grant him freedom, he was forced in this loop of conflict.
He became undeniably restless, he was untameable like a wild beast. He thrashed against the pillows and sheets. Searching for a release and escape from his imaginary torment. Sweat droplets cascaded down his forehead. And his face contorted in fear or anger.
All you knew was you couldn't keep watching this. Thus you'd intervened when you saw too much.
"Valarr.." you'd whisper. Moving closer you'd reach out, the mattress weighed underneath. gently you'd wipe the sweat from his face. Carefully persuading him to waken. Again, you called out to him.
Slowly his eyes fluttered open. Widened to absorb the dim room. They glanced from wall to wall. His mind remained in thought. As if he had to remind himself of his surroundings.
To calm him down, your fingers combed through his brunette hair. Then you'd hummed a familar song.
His tensed body surrendered to this serenity.
Once he was calmed, you eventually disrupted the silence. "Valarr, my love, what vexes you?", your voice as smooth as honey. It laid spread on upon your words.
But your inquiry fell on deaf ears. He'd always redirect the attention onto you. Instead he asked if he had awoken you or disturbed you. He felt great remorse. Therefore, immediately apologising for the disturbance and promised it would never happen again.
You remembered how much it frustrated you. You belived this wasn't the time for his selflessness. You were always swift to assure him, he was no nuisance. And reinforced you were here for him.
Even when told, Valar made no effort of revealing his forlorn emotions. He coerced you towards him, your chest against his. You'd find yourself lying against the mattress with your head on the pillow. Once face to face he moved in, laying a soft kiss against your lips with his arm around your body. You'd melt into his affection. When your lips departed, you were already in the comfort of slumber. Just another night he had successfully concealed the truth.
"Are you alright, my lady?" One of your ladies inquired. "You seem unwell, may i fetch the maester?"
Once woken from your rumination, you quickly adjusted your expression and posture. A disarming smile appeared upon your lips. "There is no need, I do not require the maester. Just bewildered with mindless thoughts, that is all." Fonding for a slight chuckle.
The same lady-in-waiting flashed you a smile of ease. She definitely could tell it was more than that but didn't press any further.
You had to remind yourself that this return to the Ashford castle was solely to collect your belongings. You couldn't plague your mind with awful memories.
The Targaryen party was expected to embark the journey back to King's Landing by midmorrow. Your womanly concerns couldn't delay them any further.
"We must make haste, my lady." Another lady interjected.
"Yes, of course." You replied pleasantly.
You were simply tasked to oversee the servent's and work efforts.
Servants scurried across the wooden floor like rats, their footsteps pattered in an irritable manner. With them, they carried different belongings and transferred them outside the castle.
You found your presence there entirely useless, you should be with your husband.
It wasn't long before you were embraced by the cold air. In its heatless hug, shivers rippled across your skin. The hair embedded on your body stood up in protest. All you could do was seek warmth in the cape you wore.
Outside the castle, were multiple carts and horses. All tasked with different purposes.
You stood with your ladies as every servant preformed their duties. Soon you were ushered to the wheelhouse. This was your form of transport because you didn't enjoy horseback so you found yourself in the comfort of the carriage.
Even so your mind drifted to Valarr. You hadn't seen him since you departed after the funeral. You even arrived to the castle separately. Now you were returning home alone.
You wished he was here with you but he rode ahead of the party along with his family.
The entire journey home, you found yourself plagued with the thought of him. Even when you shut your eyes, his conjured presence in your mind stifled out your ladies' gossiping and it all blurred out.
You found yourself staring at the ceiling. Nothing had changed about it since you left but you still examined it. Grasping at anything to silence the troubling voices in your mind.
Your chambers were devoid of sound and light, nothing offered solace.
Not even the covers that lied upon you, instead they weighed on you like old bricks, its heaviness sunk you deeper into the large mattress.
The smallest thing in the room became your biggest concern.
Even so, you tried pondering of happy thoughts such as your homelands, family then to Valarr.
But the emergence of Valarr in your mind reminded why you worried so much. He had yet to return to you.
You had overheard from your ladies, as they readied you for bed, that he had duties to attend to now as the first heir to the Iron throne. So, he was busy and neglected your shared bed by pure accident.
You weren't entirely satisfied with that answer, it hardly silenced your tempestuous train of thoughts.
You missed him, that was all, now you relied on your mind to conjure him like he was a figure of your imagination. Purely fictional.
This sulking ceased when the sound of the doors to your chambers opened, alerting you of someone's entrance. Instantly, you had sat up with your back against the headboard and the covers pooled at your waist. Your eyes peered forwards to the newcomer.
They approached the bed once the door shut behind them.
Their features abstracted due to the lack of lighting. All you could distinguish was the height of the strange man. Your eyes squinted in order to detect more of this man's attributes.
Leisurely his legs carried him towards your bed.
His presence only quickned your heart. Your fingers tightened on the blankets as your back straightened. You couldn't believe this man made it past the guards at the door
Once the man made it to the edge of the bed, a chuckle escaped his lips. "Did I frightened you, my lady?"
Your body loosened once you recognised the familiar voice. Your back leaning against the board. Your hands flattened against your legs. "A humourless jest, my prince." You stifle a smile as you feigned for annoyance.
"My apologies, reader, I'll make a note on that and never jest like that again." He confessed, Valarr knew there was no weight to your supposed anger. A mischievous smirk pressed on his lips.
Your body warmed seeing him smile again. Ever since the arrival to Ashford, a smile from him was a rare jewel. It never occurred often. Now there wasn't really anything to smile about.
You tried not to think about this for too long.
He eventually sat down on the mattress. The bed subtly dropped under his weight. Here he was sitting in front of you. With no duties or obligations.
Your arm gradually moved towards him, you hand delicately pressed against his cheek. Your thumb stroking it as you leaned forwards. Observing everything about him.
"Are you well?" Your lips parted to express this sign of care. A gentle smile appeared.
His smile faltered a bit as there was something in his eyes. He realised you were the only one who had asked him this the entire day. No one ever ponders. But he urgently composed himself so you couldn't tell.
You weren't blind so you saw that glimpse of .
"I am as well as any man." He assures you with a very diplomatic answer before he steals a kiss.
Your lips promptly met his. It was a chaste kiss, not too rough nor too sweet, you pulled away with a sigh. "My words are sincere, Valarr"
Now you were only met with a stoic expression. His eyes stared at you. You internally questioned where has his spark gone.
For a few seconds there was no answer thus you spoke up.
"You are my husband and I am your wife. You can speak freely with me, I am no man from the small council. Formality is behind us. I will not judge you because I love you." You hand remained on his cheek as you gazed into his eyes searching for the truth. "Judgement is for the gods and I am none."
His eyes flickered, he wished to conceal something. But in his great efforts, a tear had fallen down his right cheek. He felt a swarm of emotion, he closed his eyes for control. Yet he could not govern these tears.
Your other hand met his cheek. You held his face lovingly as you wiped the tears away. You remained quiet and allowed him to come to terms with these overwhelming emotions.
"I am unfit to be the heir… but my father wasn't." He delivered these words in a broken manner. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes so they remained shut. "I.. I.. should've persuaded him not to partake in the trial"
"You cannot say that."
"But it is true, it should had been me in his place. It was a cowardly act on my behalf. I am no prince."
"Yes, you are. You cannot blame yourself for his own choice. He chose to uphold the principles of knighthood. You should be proud of him."
"But… I willingly let him blindly follow the tune of death. he danced with it to no end and now he is gone."
"It was out of your control. If your father could see you now, taking the blame for his actions, he'd profusely disagree." You pleaded as you attentively watched him. Your eyes began watering while you witnessed him.
At last, his eyes pried opened, now observing the sadden look on your face. Despite the tears that fell down your cheeks, a smile tugged on your face.
He was finally understanding the serenity of your words and actions. It took him a bit to process someone didn't care for his title and its responsibilities.
This revelation had him seeking the warmth in your neck. His face was pressed against your neck and shoulder. Your bodies combined as one. You could feel the wetness that developed their as he cried. You both held each other tightly as if you'd drift away at sea.
Yours fingers snaked into his hair. Playing with every strand as a subtle hum left your mouth.
"I love you.."
well i hope you liked it, this has been a wip for too long. Even so this is so bad. Simply bc im lazy but also had a assignments to focus on :(
summary: your husband pushes you further, and you near your breaking point
tw: abusive marriage, heavy violence, dubcon, child abuse
wc: 12.5k
********************************************
Your father often told you stories of his friendship with the Targaryen prince.
Prince Maekar, the extra spare, the fourth son of King Daeron II, the prince who would most likely never inherit the throne.
Because of his birth circumstances, Prince Maekar was not required to remain in the Red Keep the way his older brothers were. He was given free reign on where to receive education, and entertainment. He often wandered outside of King’s Landing during summers.
The Prince became especially fond of Duskendale.
Your father, Robert Darklyn II, was born the same year as Prince Maekar. More so, he was born the same month, as well as the exact same week. During Maekar’s summer trips to Duskerdale, your father was placed along with him as his companion. Their friendship grew stronger every year.
“A brother through everything but blood,” is how your father described him.
During your childhood, Maekar continued to visit House Darklyn each summer. You would see him often, though you did not speak to him. Your mother was very diligent in keeping you and your siblings away.
“He is a prince,” she would say to you, “He has no time for entertaining an unruly child such as yourself.” Your mother would say these things with a laugh, but you did not think they were a joke. She did find you unruly. Out of all your siblings, you were the one scolded the most often.
“Sometimes, it is better to listen than to speak,” she would tell you, over and over. But it is a lesson you were slow to learn.
Maekar brought his sons to visit Duskendale very few times. Around the age of eleven, your mother tried to merge the families together in the dining hall for their visit. But your father decided your siblings were too disruptive, so you did not communicate with the princes any further.
When Maekar’s wife, Lady Dyanna, began declining in health, he requested your father’s presence at the castle, desperate for the company of the only man he knew he could trust. He spent several months as a guest at the Red Keep. You and the rest of your family would visit him for two days at a time every three weeks.
You did not care to keep royal company. Your mother let you wander outside if you had a guard with you, saying it was easier to keep you out of trouble if you were out of the castle.
As a girl, you enjoyed fishing. Most afternoons in Duskendale you spent near the water. During your trips to the Red Keep, you found yourself often seeking out the lakeside.
“It is not good for a girl your age to still be interested in these activities,” your mother would tsk. “It is high time you began learning embroidery.”
But sitting by the lakeside kept you quiet and out of the way, so when the family visited the Red Keep, they would allow you to do so.
Most days, however, you didn’t even try catching fish. You just wanted to linger by the water instead of by the royals. They made you wary. Especially the boys.
You did not like Maekar’s son.
Daeron Targaryen was the eldest of all the children. He made you feel unwell when he was around. His eyes tended to...linger. Though, he was quick in his looks, and part of you would always convince yourself you imagined it.
Until once, during a feast held to celebrate the birth of Rhae Targaryen, Daeron sought you out in a way that could not be ignored.
You had been standing behind your family’s table when he found you. You had neither seen, nor heard him. It felt like he had appeared out of nowhere.
“You are the only one of your family members to not be dancing.”
His voice started you, causing your shoulders to flinch. He laughed at it.
You smelt alcohol on him. He was only five and ten, four years your senior, yet he smelled like an old drunkard.
“I am not good at dancing,” you said to him, hoping that would send him off.
“Perhaps you should give it a try with me.”
You felt put under pressure. You were shy to answer, “Thank you, Prince Daeron, but perhaps another time.”
You felt wary when he didn’t make any move to leave.
“I insist.”
Your stomach dropped.
…Could he do that? Could he insist?
“I feel unfit for dancing at the moment,” you say, slow and unsure. “But thank you.” You shuffle back a step.
His hand falls on your shoulder, “I will help you.”
You pull yourself from his touch. “I must repeat my refusal, Prince Daeron.” You step back again. “Perhaps one of my sisters-”
His hand reaches out and latches onto you. A sharp gasp leaves your lips.
“Allow me just until the end of this song.” He pulled on you. “Try it with me.”
You panic, trying to push his hand off, “Wait-”
He yanks you, his drunkenness causing him to use more strength then he intended, making you stumble forward. “You will have fun, I promise.” A laugh. “I’m sure you will enjoy it.”
You try to pull away, but it only results in another yank. This time, you stumble so hard you almost fall. “Prince Daeron!”
“They are playing music from Darklyn, haven’t you noticed-?”
“Let go of her this instant,” a voice spits.
You are quickly released.
A hand darts out and grabs Daeron from the back of his collar, tearing him away from you.
“Dismiss yourself from the hall,” came the swift and stern voice of Prince Maekar, whose fist shook his son by the back of the shirt. “Take yourself to your chambers. Now.”
“Father, I was only hoping for a bit of fun-”
“Remove yourself immediately before you embarrass me any further.”
“No one is even looking this way-”
“Which I am lucky for. I would hate for more whispers of my drunken son being overly abrasive to our guests. Go wallow over dreams in your private chambers.”
Daeron ripped himself from his father’s hold. His face was tinted red from embarrassment. His eyes fell to you, then back to Prince Maekar.
“Worry not, father. I am done here anyway. Your guests are very...” His eyes fell on you coldly. “…unentertaining. I will take my leave.”
Daeron exits the hall. As he does, you feel he is too close. You take a step to the side, barely missing a brush of his shoulder.
“Lady (Y/N).” Prince Maekar’s voice is still stern. “Go find your mother. Do not loiter alone.”
“I did not mean to loiter, Prince Maekar,” you are quick to say. “My-My father said to remain at our table, so that is where I have stayed.”
He exhaled loudly, like he was annoyed. You were not sure if the annoyance was at you, or his son. “Regardless, it is time to find your mother.”
Your eyes fell to the floor. You give an obedient nod. “Yes, Prince Maekar.”
You hurry to find your mother, but you feel too embarrassed to explain what happened.
At the end of the night, Maekar called a meeting with your parents and explained things himself.
After that day, you were kept at home with your young siblings when your family went to the Red Keep during the summer.
********************************************
There is a specific sound your husband makes when he is displeased with something his father has told him.
It is a low grunt, mixed with a scoff.
You hear this noise at breakfast the next morning, as food is being served around the table, and wine is already overflowing for the men.
“Daeron has been spotted,” Prince Maekar announces to the family.
Aerion was audibly disappointed.
Valarr frowns, leaning forward. “Spotted where?”
“At a tavern. It was a brief sighting from a guard. They claim the moment Daeron saw them, he took off, and they were unable to catch him.”
Baelor asks, “What of Aegon?”
“No sight of him yet.”
Aerion let out a low hum, bringing his third cup of wine up to his lips. “Perhaps Daeron killed the little rat and that is why he’s hiding.”
It is hard, but you manage to control your face from physically reacting to his words.
Maekar glares. “You will hold your tongue from making any further comments.”
“Apologies father, I am only trying to soften the blow for when Aegon’s body is found.”
You have never seen someone rile up another person the way Aerion riles up his father.
Or, perhaps you have. Perhaps this is what it looks like when people say you push Aerion to the point of striking you.
The maids whisper of your ‘uncontrollably tongue’. Just this morning, when Aerion ordered them into the tent to apply your makeup and hide any lingering bruising, you heard them gossip about you beneath their breath. “She enjoys his rage,” you heard one say. “She does not care who pays for it.”
You hate them, you realized just today. You hate the serving girls. They pull your hair too hard when braiding, they yank the brush too hard when brushing, they pull your corset too tight because they are angry with you.
They take their anger out on you, yet they do not dare harm a single hair on Aerion’s head.
Aerion, the one who sliced one of their faces open. He is not punished for it, you are punished for it, even though you have remained merciful to them. You do not make sounds when they hurt you, because you know Aerion would react badly to it. You let them mistreat you without complaint, because you know he would strike them if you made a complaint. You have protected them, yet they still lie about you, spreading rumors that you are as sadistic as your husband.
Even here, in the breakfast hall, you notice the way the cupbearer refuses to meet your eye as she pours more water into your glass, yet she smiles at the Princes when she fills theirs. You wonder what lies Madam Pricher has fed her.
“The entire kingdom holds its breath for the safe return of Aegon,” Valarr says to his uncle. “I am sure if anyone finds him to be in trouble, they will give him shelter and food.”
“Yes, because Ashford is so respectful towards royalty,” Aerion hums. He holds his glass to be filled. Another cup of wine. His fourth. You become nervous. It is his fifth glass that brings out his more horrible behaviors. “The same animals that stormed the arena.”
Valarr eyed his cousin. “Hm. If only it were Prince Aerion who went missing, they would have stormed the streets in celebration.”
A small chuckles leaves Baelar. You quickly bite the inside of your lip. You glance at Aerion for his reaction, only to see he is again staring directly at you, his eyes casing your face. You wonder what would have happened if you had smiled. You recall his earlier threats of whippings, and pulling nails off. You recall the way he held your hand to a desk, and tried to cut your finger off. Your body turns cold, and you turn your eyes to your lap.
“I will not joke about the health of my sons,” Maekar grunts. “The guard who let Daeron out of his grasp has already been reprimanded. I have all others on high alert looking for them. They’re believed to both be in the city.”
You risk looking at Aerion’s cup. He is halfway though with the wine. You realize you may have less than an hour before his mood turns drunk and violent.
“(Y/N),” Maekar calls out.
Your eyes snap his way, startled by being spoken to.
“You have been wandering the city. Have you heard any whispers about the boys?”
You cannot help but look to Aerion, as he has specifically told you not to say a word during meals.
“She has heard nothing.”
“I did not ask you,” Maekar quipped.
“Have you heard anything?” Aerion tests you. “Speak if you have.”
You imagine answering him, and being punished with a breakfast plate being smashed over your head. You keeps your mouth shut.
“There,” your husband says. “She has heard nothing.”
Valarr scoffs. “Has anyone checked to see whether or not Lady (Y/N) still had her tongue? Or has he cut it out already-?”
Baelar makes a small tsking sound, and Valarr quiets.
Aerion straightens in his seat, his eyes narrowing the slightest on Valarr. “My cousin worries for you, (Y/N),” he tells you loudly. “Aren’t you lucky, to have the future king so concerned for your wellbeing?”
You try to take yourself out of your body. You clasp your hands together, and you try to think of how nice the day is outside. How the wind keeps it from being too hot. How the flowers are all in bloom-
“Show him there is nothing to worry about,” Aerion commands you. “Stick out your tongue for him to see.”
Your face flushes hot, eyes widening at the request.
“Go on,” Aerion says again. “Put his concern to rest.”
Surely, this was only a jest. Your husband would not make you stick your tongue out like some trained animal in front of his family?
Baelar sighs. “Aerion-”
“Valarr is worried, uncle, let us relieve him.” His hand falls to your knee, and he gives it a warning squeeze. “Stick your tongue out. Now.”
Everyone stares at you, even the servants.
Humiliation makes your hands shake. His hold tightens on your knee. Slowly, you part your lips.
“I did not say open your mouth,” Aerion says. “I told you to stick your tongue out. If not, he’ll accuse me of planting a false one.”
“That is enough,” Valarr tells him.
Aerion brings his hand higher to your thigh, and you feel a pinch on your leg.
There is no getting out of this. And you suppose in the grand scheme of things, this is mundane in terms of things Aerion could demand of you to do.
So you obey him. You stick your tongue out, keeping your eyes on the wall to try to suppress some of the humiliation.
You shut your mouth quickly when Aerion begins to laugh. “Satisfied, Valarr?”
You do not look at him, but his voice is softer now. “I did not ask for that.”
Aerion pushes out his chair. There is still laughter in his voice. “Come, (Y/N). We are done here.”
You rise from your seat as fast as you can. You follow after him, face still hot with embarrassment.
When you exit the dining hall, you see Madam Pricher and Ser Thenty standing near the exit. They follow behind you and Aerion as you leave.
Your husband walks with a new strut. He chuckles. “How utterly bashful he became. He should know better by now than to make comments about things that belong to me.”
As a woman, you should have not been offended anymore by being told you ‘belonged’ to someone. Yet, it still irked you. To belong to a man was one thing, to belong to this man was your greatest shame.
A sigh leaves his lips. “At least he decided to hold his outburst until after I was done eating. It’d be a shame if he continued day after day ruining our meals.”
He ruined the meal?
Of course.
Valarr Targaryen. The future king. He was the one who ruined the meal.
You walk under a shaded archway of the castle. You are relieved to be in the cold shadow of the building. You risk wiping the sweat off your brow. Aerion remains walking with a fast pace, and he is hard to keep up with.
When you round a corner, Aerion grabs you and pulls you to a stop.
You quickly shift around, looking for any of the Ashford guards. Aerion has ledged you in a spot that has none. Madam Pricher and Ser Thenty still trail along, but they linger further back as they notice Aerion has stopped.
Your whole body tenses as Aerion brings his hand up to cup your face.
What does he want? What the fuck does he want from you?
“You know that’s what he wanted, don’t you? He wanted to see you open your mouth on command, and that’s why I gave him what he wanted.”
You swallow. You give a quick, obedient nod.
“No,” he drawls beneath his breath. “You don’t see it the way I do. You think of him as the good son. The courageous heir to the throne.” His hand moves to grip your jaw. “He is not as innocent as he pretends. Best believe the only reason he thinks of your tongue is to picture it running up and down his cock-”
You rip yourself from his grip, disgust on your features.
Ha laughs again. “Don’t be so naive to think it false.”
You physically bite your tongue so hard it hurts.
He is quiet, as if waiting for you to say something. When you do not, he presses further. “Unless you know it to be true? And perhaps you find enjoyment in it?”
You grip your skirts in fists, and you glare at him. He waits again. But you know better now. You do not speak.
But is he unrelenting. As if he wants you to speak. Because he wants to correct you.
“It seems my whorish wife gets excited at the thought of other men stroking their cocks to the thought of her.” He notices the way you flinch at the brazen words. He worsens his behavior. “Next dinner, I should give them something to really look at. I should just order you to pull up your skirts and show them your cunt-”
You shove his chest away from you, disgust drenching you.
He breaks out with laughter. His laugh, which you hate most out of anything in the world, is what finally makes you snap.
“How dare you speak to me with such crudity?” you spit at him, unable to handle the seething rage you feel.
“Crudity.” The word amuses him. “My, my, how sensitive you are for someone that enjoys whipping naked women.”
You turn away from him sharply. “Ser Thenty, I wish to be escorted to my tent-”
Aerion grips your upper arm and yanks you back to him. He is still amused. “Settle, woman.”
“You are barbaric,” you spit at him.
A laugh. “Barbaric?”
“I am your wife,” you whisper in a hiss, trying to rip your arm from him. He does not let go.
“I am aware.”
Your rage seeps through your words. “Yet you debase me so openly.” Your fists open and close on the fabric of your skirt. “Is it not bad enough to have me humiliated in front of so many spectators in the city, you must do so in front of the royal family?”
“I forgot how much my cousin’s opinion mattered to you.”
Aerion is jealous of his cousin, you remind yourself.
So you taunt him with the things he envies.
“The opinion of the future king will always matter over yours-”
Aerion hits you so hard that you fly back against the stone wall, barely catching your balance on it. Pain hinders you as you clutch your cheek.
“That is your only warning,” Aerion says to you.
Your hair falls in front of your face. You let it stay so that you do not have to see him anymore.
You make a quick attempt to get to Ser Thenty and Madam Pricher, who stand at the end of the small courtyard, watching. You manage to stumble only a few steps towards him before Aerion’s finger grip around your arm.
“Barbaric,” he repeats. “You find your own husband barbaric. Do you know how barbarians behave?”
“Let me go,” you say, your voice feeling raw as you hold back the tears forming in your eyes from the stinging slap.
“I will show you what it means to be debased so publically,” he tells you. “So that next time you will be more appreciative of the husband you have.”
He yanks you towards the willow tree.
“Stop it,” you whisper. You try to pull back, grounding your feet in the dirt. “Aerion-”
He flings your body towards the tree.
Your blood freezes as you watch his hands fall to his belt, and he unfastens the buckle.
No.
No.
He did not mean to do that here.
He would not abuse your body here. In someone else’s home. In someone else’s courtyard.
He was more than barbaric. He was a barbaric, hateful, spoiled, evil bastard.
You take a quick step back as his belt is dropped to the ground, and he begins to unbottom his britches.
“Behind the tree,” he orders you.
You do not move.
“Or not,” he says. “Who am I to care if we have more onlookers?”
“This is the Ashford’s castle-”
“It all belongs to the Targaryens.”
Your hands are shaking again, and your eyes dart to a single guard you see up ahead. “They-They will not forget this disrespect if word of it reaches them.”
You could picture the gossip now. The uncontrollable Targaryen son fucked his wife publically in an Ashford courtyard.
His whorish wife, they would call you.
Your eyes sting as you imagine what else they will say. You look back at the guard. Will he watch?
“They will survive.”
“It will reach your father,” you tell him, flinching as he steps closer.
His voice remains uncaring as he unbuckles his top coat, carelessly letting the jacket fall to the ground. “Gods, whatever will I do if my father hears?”
This could not happen. Not out in the open. Not in such a beautiful place. “No, Aerion, this-this is unacceptable-”
“I know. It’s barbaric, isn’t it?” he taunted with another short laugh.
You are desperate as you call, “Ser Thenty!”
“They will wait behind the gate of the courtyard.” Aerion shoos them away. “Go. A husband requires privacy with his wife. You will wait beyond the gate.”
They obeyed. They both stepped on the other side of the stone wall as if you were not begging for help.
“Behind the tree. Now.”
“Okay,” you whisper, taking a cautious step back. “Okay. Okay.”
He nears you. You wait for him to come closer, and the moment he steps behind the tree with you, you dart out the small opening behind it. You force your feet against the ground and try to run to Ser Thenty.
Aerion snatches you fast, gripping your hair and yanking you back behind the treetrunm.
He is laughing still like he is having the time of his life. “How pitifully slow you are.” With a firm shove, you tumble to the ground. Aerion kneels over you. “The more noise you make, the more of an audience we will have-”
“Get off of me!” you scream at him.
You writhe on the ground, using all your strength to try to get out from under him. He pins your hands down with ease, and amusement covers his expression. “You can either give me your body, (Y/N), or I will take it. And believe me, I would have much fun in taking it.”
It was all just a game to him.
Your torture was a game to this horrid excuse of a man.
Fire burns in your veins. You spit in his face.
You hear half a laugh before you feel the blow to your face.
You shut your eyes tightly, the slap causing your head to spin.
Aerion’s hand moves down your legs, which you writhe and kick with all your might. He grabs your skirt and lifts it to your waist.
Aerion frees himself from his trousers, and with abruptness, and no thought to your dryness, he shoves himself into you.
The pain of the harsh intrusion causes you to cry out.
Your brain tries to shut itself down. Your mind tries to leave this place.
Your husband makes a low groan, his hands tightening on your dress, and he buries his face in the crook of your neck.
You should be protected. That is what Prince Baelor promised you. He said you would have a knight that protects you.
But Ser Thenty is useless.
You have no idea as to why he is not serving his purpose, so you flood your mind with ideas as to how to make him.
You can do nothing but scream. So you scream.
You open your mouth and scream as loud as you possibly, possibly can.
It works in the smallest of ways. It catches Aerion off guard, making him pull his face back. He reaches out and grabs a broken tree branch, snapping off the top, and shoving it against your lips to force you quiet.
An idea sparks immediately. Your hands flies out to feel the ground beside you. You find a different branch, smaller, but enough to grip onto.
You recall exactly where you stabbed Aerion nights prior. So you grab the small stick, and you jam it in the exact same spot.
“Ah!” Your husband hunches back. “You fucking whore-!”
You rip the stick from your mouth, and slam the pointed end against his face. You hit his cheekbone, and you see the blood as you shove him back from you.
Flipping over, you try to crawl out from under him. He grabs you, yanking you back to him. You reach for something new, and you find grab a rock this time. You turn and slam it against his forehead. You hope it kills him.
But he only hisses in pain, his hand finding your throat, squeezing it so hard you see stars. He lifts you up by the throat, and slams you back to the ground.
Your hand flies out again feeling for anything you can teach. Your luck reappears as you feel a large, fallen branch. It is almost too heavy to lift with one hand, but you are able. You bring it up and slam it against his face. Once. Twice. Three times.
He screams louder.
One hand still pins down your shoulder, so to get it off of you, you turn your head and bite his arm as hard as you can.
Aerion rips his hand away, and you force yourself out from under him. You snatch the large branch off the ground, and you slam it down to his body. Then again, and again.
You hear him laugh. A long, elated laugh. “I am going skin you alive, you stupid whore-”
You slam the branch down against his head. You scream as you do so.
Aerion catches your wrist, yanking you down and knocking you off your feet. It does not make you stop. You grab his hand, and bite his wrist once more, as hard as you can. When he rips it away, you raise the branch as high as you could and bring it down on his head.
You want him dead. You hit him again. You want him dead. And again. You want him dead and gone and burning in hell-
“Lady (Y/N)!”
The scream was so loud that your whole body jolts, your heart sinking to your stomach.
“Get off of him now!”
You flinch so violently the tree branch drops from your hands. You fly to your feet and whip around.
Ser Donnel of Duskendale stands with a face red with anger. “Get away from him, you stupid girl!”
Your body quivers as you grip onto your dress, patting yourself down and making sure you are not exposed. “Ser-Ser Donnel-”
“Step away from the Prince!”
You take fast steps away from your husband.
Aerion had been right, your screaming had eventually drawn a crowd. There are more than a dozen guards near the entrance of the courtyard now, Ser Donnel’s harsh command the only thing keeping them from entering.
Your body stays tense with panic, but a different kind now. You are no longer fearing for your safety, you are fearing your punishment.
They are going to punish you for this. Oh god, they were going to hurt you for this. You wanted to burst into tears.
“H-He was-” You gulped. “He was-”
“Quiet, woman!” Ser Donnel hollers at you. He kneels in front of your husband. “Prince Aerion, do you require a maester?”
A lazy smile formed on his face. “Not as much as I require my dagger. Hand it to me so that I am able to slice that bitch’s throat open.”
“Ser Donnel,” you choke, “I was only defending myself-”
“For fuck’s sake,” he snaps at you. “I just witnessed you beating the royal prince with a tree branch. Have you any fucking idea what this will cause for you?” He grabs hold of your husband. “Allow me to assist, my prince.”
He raises Aerion into his feet. Your husband sways, before resting an arm against the tree trunk, leaning over, and puking out red wine. Ser Donnel wrinkles his nose in disgust.
“He forced me behind the tree,” you try to say rapidly. “He-Ser Donnel-He was forcing himself on me, and-” You choke on your own panic. “He would not stop, I did not know what else to do.”
There is a flicker of sympathy in his eyes. You see his anger subside the smallest amount, but his voice stays stern. “Yet it is you who will face punishment for this.”
You fall apart, breaking down right then and there.
“Quiet,” the knight orders you.
Aerion wipes his mouth, but stays resting on the tree with his eyes shut, wincing as he places a hand over his torn stitches. “Shove a fistful of dirt in her mouth to silence her.”
You wish you had the speed to grab Ser Donnel’s sword and kill Aerion with it.
Tears stream down your face. “Please, do not tell his father,” you beg the knight.
Ser Donnel places a hand on your jaw, turning your head back and forth. “Prince Aerion caused these markings?”
You did not know what your face looked like, but you assumed the slap to the face, hitting the ground, and having branches shoved into your mouth did some visible damage.
You shake from your crying. “I beg of you. I beg of you, do not tell Prince Maekar.”
“Prince Aerion, what was the cause of this?”
“My wife is excited by bloodshed-”
“He is lying!” you say to Ser Donnel. “He is a bastardly liar-!”
Ser Donnel hisses, “Hold your tongue!”
You had been trying.
All day, you had been trying your absolute hardest to hold your tongue. You stuck out your tongue on command, in front of the soon to be king.
You tried to hold your tongue but Aerion wouldn’t let you.
He escalated and escalated and escalated and you wish you had the strength to have driven that stick into his skull.
“I must take you to Prince Baelor and Prince Maekar at once.”
A sob escapes your throat. “No-”
“You have been warned about this,” Ser Donnel spits beneath his breath. “What did you think would happen?”
“He will not understand,” you cry.
“You will put yourself at Prince Maekar’s feet, and you will beg for his forgiveness.” Ser Donnell snaps. He gestures for the guards to move forward. “And if he is merciful, perhaps you can save yourself from the same fate you saw after your incident with Prince Daeron.”
The incident with Prince Daeron. Your body still shudders at the memory from your maiden years.
“No,” you say again. “Please. Aerion-” You suddenly grasp onto your husband’s hand. “Aerion, do not let your father hear about this.”
Aerion drags his hand over his mouth, and he catches a drop of blood that comes from a cut just above his mouth. “And why should I defend the whore who so viciously attacked me?”
“Please,” you cry again. “I am sorry. I will never dare do something like that again. Aerion-Aerion, I-” You search your mind for anything you think might trigger some form of sympathy.
You recall how calm Aerion was in his armor tent, how tender his words became when you massaged him.
So you force yourself forward, clinging to him, burying your face in his chest. “I beg for you to forgive me.”
You dare not look at his face. You keep your face against his chest, gripping his shirt like he is your hero rather than your tormentor.
“Do not let him force me inside, my prince. Please, I am sorry.”
There is a moment where you hear nothing, and you can only imagine Aerion is exchanging words with Ser Donnell through looks alone.
“Lady (Y/N) is my lawful property,” Aerion eventually speaks. “What she does is no business of my father.”
“Prince Aerion,” Ser Donnel urges. “I must warn you, he may hear about this through gossip either way. There are guards witnessing this, and they will tell tall tales if no disciple is given to her.”
“The disciple comes from me, not my father. She is mine, not his.”
You can feel Ser Donnel’s agitation. Yet he holds back any further comment besides, “Very well.”
“Come, (Y/N),” Aerion commands, pulling you away. “Let us return to our tent.”
You cannot bear to meet Ser Donnel’s eye. Aerion holds your upper arm, and he leads you out of the courtyard.
As you pass the entryway, your blood freezes as you see Ser Thenty and Madam Pricher waiting exactly on the other side of the archway.
Standing there.
As if nothing was happening.
As if they had not so clearly heard you screaming.
They begin to follow after you, as if nothing had happened.
*******************************************
You do not return to the Red Keep until the death of Lady Dyanna.
Your entire family makes the journey as soon as your father hears the news.
Never in your life had you seen a grown man weep until the day you arrive at the castle, and Prince Maekar greets you father with tears still in his eyes.
The Prince loved his wife. And your father loved your mother. You were raised with this belief-that husbands and wives loved each other. It was a kind thought in the cruel world.
“You will be on your best, most respectful behavior,” your mother told you all before the funeral. “The Targaryens are grieving. They should be met with empathy and compassion only. Does everyone understand?”
Your siblings were obedient. You tried to be too.
Yet, when your siblings were sent out to begin their walk to the funeral cathedral, you were the one held behind.
“It is very important to your father that you remain silent today,” your mother tells you with both hands on your shoulders. “Can you do this for him?”
“I do not speak out of turn,” you tell her.
“Yes, but...a proper girl must bite her tongue even when insulted. Do you understand?”
You did not. Yet, you replied, “Yes, mother.”
“Be respectful to the princes. Even Prince Daeron-”
“Prince Daeron is the one without respect-”
“(Y/N),” she criticized. “He lost his mother. The only words you should speak are condolences.”
“…Yes, mother.”
She gave a heavy sigh. “Go and behave. I believe in you.”
The funeral was a somber event. The princes lined the front of the building as people drawled on about the will and plan of the gods.
When it was time to leave, you followed after your siblings to the front of the building. “We will offer our sorrows,” your father tells you.
You walk along with your siblings, each of them offering condolences to the princes as they passed.
Maekar’s children are there, even the babies held by wet nurses. You divert your eyes as you pass the sons, as to not make eye contact with Daeron.
You stand next to your father as he passes his friend. “She was a beautiful, kind mother, Maekar. The kingdom will miss her.”
You do not know how it tumbles from your mouth, yet it does. Maekar stands so tall, so noble like. You are so young, you are not smart or well versed in how a kingdom works.
Stupidly, you try to console him by saying, “She would have been a well loved Queen-”
Your father’s hand clamps down on your shoulder, silencing you. “Forgive her,” he says quickly. “She is ignorant to titles.”
“All is well,” Maekar dismays. “She...would have done wonders as a queen.”
You are pulled away, and your father hisses, “What were you thinking? Maekar is a fourth son, he will never take the throne, his wife would have never been queen.”
“That is not certain-”
“Go to your mother,” he demands. “You will stay by her side for the entirety of the feast.”
“Why is there a feast?” you ask him. “You said the castle is in mourning-”
“Enough. Go with Ser Donnel,” your father commands you.
Ser Donnel, one of the guards from your home in Duskendale, was now a knight of the Red Keep. He was still loyal to House Darklyn and was the escort to your father during his visits.
“Little Lady (Y/N),” Ser Donnel greets you with a short laugh. “Your father has already warned me to keep my eye out for you.”
“Take her to the feast. Ensure she does not linger with any company,” your father commands him.
You are sent away with a knight like you are a criminal at risk of escape.
******************************************
What fucking use is he?
What use is that pathetic, empty-headed, cowardly, bastard of a knight.
There is rage in your eyes as you stare at Ser Thenty from across the room.
The feast was lively tonight. The first week of jousting had officially ended, and there was a city wide celebration thrown.
Aerion forced you along for it, despite your body aching from the earlier incident.
“You had been right not to involve my father,” Aerion had told you when the two of you got back to the tent. “He would have punished you publically. I will not.”
Aerion had settled on a…martial punishment.
It was brutal, but it was bearable. And you were grateful that he did not break any of your fingers as he so often threatened to.
You got off easier then you would have had Prince Maekar gotten involved.
“You were lucky for Ser Donnel arriving,” your husband told you. “I would have walked you back to the tent stripped naked had you hit me one more time.”
No, he wouldn’t have. That was something you were learning.
Aerion could not stand the thought of someone else seeing you naked. Your body belonged to him, and he wanted it to be only for him.
He would even force Ser Thenty to face the wall when he had his way with you.
Ser Thenty, who did nothing.
He was tasked to protect you, yet he would stand by and listen to you scream.
He would have allowed Aerion to continue to rape you right there in the courtyard. He heard you screaming and crying and begging for help, yet him and Madam Pricher stood by as if nothing happened.
You were wrong. Ser Thenty was not a good knight.
He was as evil as every other man.
You hated Ser Thenty.
You hated Madam Pricher.
You hated your husband.
You hated everyone at this feast.
Everyone was dancing and laughing like it was the time of their lives, and you were practically chained to your chair and living on the mercy of a tyrant.
You had nothing to look forward to. Nothing to keep you at peace.
Just...nothing.
Depression hits you with a numbness. You did not think, you only stared ahead, no thoughts in your mind. You sat empty headed and hoped you would die in the upcoming year.
You were numb to the point that when a cupbearer filled your cup with wine, you drank it.
And you kept drinking. You kept your cup to your lips, because it kept your husband from speaking to you.
Until Aerion suddenly snaps at you, “Slow down. You will be sick tonight if you continue that quickly. And I will not have patience with a sick woman.” He takes another chug of his own wine bottle, then wipes his face with his sleeve like an uncivilized child. “Pull yourself together or everyone will think low of you.”
Your insides twist. “They already think low of me for being your wife.”
“They would think low of you for being anyone’s wife, you do a horrible job at it.”
You stare blankly at the dancers that perform in the middle of the room. Aerion seems quite taken with them, yet part of you wonders if he only watches the women because he knows it get under your skin.
Aerion’s family sits far away from you two. You understand why. You take a moment to finally get a good look at Valarr, as you have never been able to before.
He is handsome, and perhaps that is why Aerion is so worried about you speaking to him.
Though, in another life, you would have found Aerion as the most handsome man in the world. But his attractiveness was ruined when he first opened his mouth.
Your eyes dart to Ser Thenty as he circles the room, before coming to Madam Pricher, who rests against the wall behind you.
“I will return in a moment, Madam Pricher,” you hear him tell her.
“Very well. Be swift.”
You glance behind you, and you see him leaving the feast hall.
Your anger blooms once more, spiking your heart rate.
“I feel as if I will vomit,” you tell Aerion.
“Hm.”
“I must step outside for air.”
“Convenient timing,” you hear him say, a hint of irritation in his tone. But your husband is angry about everything, always, so you do not care.
The room spins when you rise to your feet. You hold yourself still for a moment to make it stop.
You walk swiftly after Ser Thenty. He goes outside. In suspected privacy, he begins to lower his pants to urinate against the tree.
“Ser Thenty!”
He flinches, and quickly tucks himself away and recomposes himself. “Lady (Y/N), where is your chaperone?”
Anger bites in your voice, frustration deleting all your hesitation. “Is it not supposed to be you?” you accuse. “Were you not the one Prince Baelor charged with maintaining my safety?”
“What?” Ser Thenty fastens his pants as quickly as he can. “You should not be out here. Return to the feast inside.”
“What purpose do you have?” you drawl, the wine draining you of all common sense you had about decency. “What is the point of you following my husband and I if he is able to do whatever he pleases? Strike me whenever he pleases? Rape me whenever he pleases-”
“Lady (Y/N),” he cuts off sharply. “We are not meant to converse alone.”
“And you are not meant to witness my torture, you are meant to prevent it!”
“I apologize,” Ser Thenty tells you. “But there is little for me to do. Aerion is a Prince of the seven kingdoms. No matter my orders, I am forbidden from harming him.”
“So I was right in my doubt of you? You cannot do anything because you are a small, cowardly man?”
His tone loses patience. “You must return inside. We cannot be caught out here without a chaperone.”
You did not care for a chaperone. The wine gripped your heart and rid you of your common sense.
Your hand shoots out and you grab Ser Thenty, gripping his arm with a tight squeeze. “Are you not ashamed of yourself for this-?”
He shoves you, hard. So hard you stumble, your anger faltering as your mind reminds you this is a man capable of harming you.
“Do not touch me,” he snaps at you. “You know what your husband will do if he sees such a thing.”
“Of course I know what he will do! You are the one who ignores his actions-!”
“You are alive, Lady (Y/N). You are alive, without any broken bones. I am completing my duty.”
“You are a liar as much as a coward!” you scream. “You sat and did nothing as I called to you!”
“I would have went to you immediately if you were in actual distress, my Lady.”
Your heart spikes with blood curdling anger. “You walked away as my husband raped me!”
“He is your Lord husband,” Ser Thenty tells you. “A man cannot rape a woman that belongs to him.”
And there it was.
There was the answer right there, all along.
You do not get protection from a knight like a man would.
Because you are a woman, meaning you belong to someone.
Why would an object be valued over their owner?
Tears sting your eyes at the frustration of this life.
“You are a craven bastard!” you cry. “And I hope you are tortured in the pits of Hell for all you have allowed to be done to me!”
Heads are turning from the guards outside. More eyes have fallen on you too.
Ser Thenty appears flustered now, less bold under the attention.
“I am going back to the feast,” he tells you. “You should try to sober yourself. You are likely to upset your husband this night.”
You suddenly bend down, pick up a rock, and throw it at the coward.
Ser Thenty ducks it, his eyes widening.
You hear the insult he whispers. “Unrestful cunt.”
He leaves you alone with only the guards that pose along the tent.
You do not want to return inside. Inside is Hell. Outside is Hell. Everything is Hell.
So instead, you drop yourself on the ground with your back against the tree.
You hide your face, and you break down.
*******************************************
You pick at the food on your plate boredly as you watch the nobles dance their way around the hall. “Has a fourth son of a king ever become king himself?” you ask.
Ser Donnel stands beside your chair. He gives a nod as his eyes scan the room for trouble. “Aye. A few times in history. Though, is it not too common.”
“Could Prince Maekar be king one day?”
“It is possible. Though, not too likely.” He glances at you with curiosity. “For what reason do you ask?”
You lean back in your chair. “My father is angry that I told Prince Maekar his wife would’ve been a good Queen-”
“He told you not to speak,” came your sister’s voice from beside you. “You always have such stupid things to say-”
“Be silent,” you snap at her. “I am talking to my knight.”
“Your knight?”
You ignore her and say to Ser Donnel, “It would have been possible for Lady Dyanna to have been queen one day. And if she had been, she would have been well loved. What I said was not incorrect, why must I always be punished for speaking?”
“Because you don’t speak properly,” your sister tells you. “Mother says that is why they will have to arrange your marriage. You will never be courted because you are loud.”
“You will never be courted because you are nosy-”
“Girls, settle,” Ser Donnel chides. “We must keep respect on a day like this.”
“How is any of this respectful?” you ask. “People are drinking and laughing. They are meant to be crying.”
Your sister huffs. “You are still so very loud with your opinions-”
“Enough of you.” You push yourself to your feet. “I will be retiring for the night.”
“Your father requests you remain here until the feast is over,” Ser Donnel tells you.
You lean back in your chair with a heavy sigh.
“Prince Daeron is dancing,” your sister comments.
You say, “Prince Daeron is drunk-”
“(Y/N),” Ser Donnel chides again.
“He is stumbling,” you say. “He has stepped on his partner’s feet several times. She looks as if she is in pain from him. Should you not put a stop to it, Ser Donnel?”
“His mother has passed. Let him grieve how he needs to.”
A frown forms. You watch Prince Daeron, unimpressed.
Finally, the song ends and the girl he danced with rips herself from his grip and flees off the dance floor.
He is not able to find another partner by the time the next dance starts. So he returns to his table and slumps down in a chair beside his brother, Prince Aerion.
Prince Aerion is different then the others. There is a glare on his face as his eyes take in the events of the room. You wonder if he finds it all disrespectful as well.
His eyes continue to cross the room. Then, without warning, his eyes dart to you.
Heat rushes to your face and you quickly look away. You wonder if he noticed you staring. You risk a glance back, and see Prince Daeron whispering something to him. Both of them look at you. You quickly stare at the table, and try to convince yourself you did not see them.
But then the horrid unthinkable happens. You hear him.
Coming from your left, you hear his voice. “Lady (Y/N).”
Your head turns. Prince Daeron stands there, drunk as always, a smile too wide for his mother’s funeral feast.
“I was hoping to have that dance with you now.”
You look at Ser Donnel first, and it is clear this has caught even the knight off guard.
“Prince Daeron,” you slowly begin, “I am…still not well at dancing-”
“I do not mind.” He holds a hand out. “Shall we?”
His eyes are glazed over from drunkenness. You risk glancing at his shoes, which look heavy, and you imagine them stepping on your feet.
“I am very sorry, Prince Daeron, but my father has ordered me to stay seated-”
“Dance with the prince,” your sister urges you. Her voice drops to a whisper. “It is his mother’s funeral. Why are you being so cruel?”
You are jolted as Daeron puts a hand on your chair, pulling it out. “Exactly. It is my mother’s funeral. You would not reject me for a dance at this time, would you?”
“I-” Before a word gets out, he grabs your arm, and pulls you up out of your chair.
“Prince Daeron,” Ser Donnel speaks, “You appear unsteady.”
“I am perfectly alright.”
“I think it would be best if you took a break.”
“Your concern is noted.” Daeron’s hand remains on your arm. His head jerks towards the dancing. “Shall we?”
You do not know what to do.
So you try to think of what your father would advise. He would surely tell you to be respectful, and not to embarrass him.
Placing your hesitation to the side, you agree, “Perhaps you can accompany me for…one dance.”
As you are taken to the dance floor, you feel a sweeping nausea that you must suppress.
Daeron is an awful dancer. He refuses to use any proper dance moves, and he refuses to let you do any either. Instead, he pulls you into him. Your body hits his with a startled gasp, and his hands fall to your waist. He sways with you, though his swaying feels more like stumbling.
Your closeness is inappropriate. Your eyes dart around, fearing your father will see it.
At least those around you look sympathetic rather than judgmental. They know you do not want this dance.
“I have not seen you in so long,” Daeron says to you.
You turn your head as you speak, the alcohol on his breath almost too strong to bear. “My father prefers traveling on his own when he visits the Red Keep.”
“No,” he mumbles. A short shake of his head. “I have not…seen you. I saw you so often before. It’s as if you are…hiding from me now.”
You do not understand him, and you do not want to.
Moments pass without anything said.
“I am very sorry about your mother,” you tell him, because you do not know what else to say. “I cannot imagine your grief right now. I will pray that you are able to get through it.”
“Yes, my mother.” A light smile. “She would have made a very good queen.”
Your shoulders slouch, and you think he is mocking you.
Until he says, “One night, I saw my father on the throne with the King’s crown on his head. He did not believe me.”
It confuses you. “You…saw him?”
“Dreamt of him.”
You do not know what to reply to that, so you say nothing.
A larger smile rises to his lips. “You know, my brother-” He pauses, and laughs. He does not continue.
The music comes to an end. You try to take a step back from him. He does not let you.
“Once more,” he says.
It would embarrass your father if anyone saw you argue with Daeron, so you stayed where you were, and allowed him one more dance.
“You are ten and three now?” he asks you.
“Yes. Ten and three.”
“Have you become a woman yet?”
The question startles you. Your face flushes hot. “P-Pardon?”
“Have you bled yet? And entered womanhood?”
Yes. You began bleeding almost a full year prior to this. But it was not his place to know. You refuse to meet his eye. “No.”
“You would not lie to your Prince, would you?”
You glance around the room to try to see if your father is watching. “We mustn’t speak of such things.” Your voice wavers with your desperation to get away from him.
“Why not?”
You feel choked with embarrassment. “It-It is improper.”
Your eyes search for Ser Donnel.
“And what of maidenhood?” he asks. “Are you still a maiden? Or have the men in Duskendale already seen to that?”
You try to rip yourself from his hold. He holds you tight.
“That is an abhorrent, s-sinful thing to ask,” you tell him. “Let me go at-at once.”
“It is a simple question.”
He grips tightens on your waist so hard it makes you shout a panicked, “Ser Donnel!”
Heads begin to turn your way.
Daeron keeps a tight hold on you. “You needn’t be embarrassed. It is only a question-”
“Let go of me,” you try again, but with no resolve. You feel hot and unable to breathe.
He pulls you against him harder. “Take it as a compliment that your beauty has stirred such scandal among royal princes.”
“Please, let me go,” you have resorted to begging. “I do not wish to dance any longer.”
“He speaks as if he already owns you, can you believe that?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Yet he mocks me for my behavior. He mocks me as if I do not have the power to ruin what he wants.”
His drunken ramblings mean nothing to you. “Please, my prince, my mother will worry if she-”
Daeron leans down, and he places his lips against yours.
A hard, painful, brute of a kiss. His face slams so hard against yours that the inside of your lip is cut from your own tooth.
You are struck with panic. Instinctively, you stomp your foot down onto his, you shove his chest away, and you slap him in the face as hard as you can.
The hall falls hauntingly quiet. The band has stopped playing, all conversations cease in an instant.
You have struck the King’s grandson, and everyone has seen it.
********************************************
“What has happened, Lady (Y/N), are you hurt?”
It is Ser Donnel that approaches you.
He has heard your cries from his post at the front of the feast, and he recognized them. Hearing you crying so often in your childhood, the tears ring as familiar as your voice.
You hide your face from him.
“Lady (Y/N), please, tell me. Has someone hurt you?”
“You know who hurts me,” you whisper.
“Do you require a maester?”
The words cause you to cry harder. “I require a divorce!”
“Lady-”
“I require a jousting accident that makes me a widow!”
“You should not say these things aloud,” Ser Donnel tells you.
“I do not care who hears!” you weep. You place your face in your hands and cry harder. “I wish for a window to jump out of and end my misery!”
A somber sigh leaves the knight. His hand falls on your shoulder. “The days will get easier, my lady.”
“No, they will not!” Your tears stream down your chin. “They get worse every day that passes! My husband ripped me from my home and forced me into marriage! Then he threw me into solitude for months! Now he has decided to use every waking minute to break my soul!”
You are so swept up in your emotions that for the first time in your life, you have no room to be embarrassed. You are a horrible wreck of a crying woman and you do not care.
“I am doing nothing but awaiting my death!” you scream with hot tears leaving your eyes. “I hate that evil man! I hate him! I-I-!” You cut yourself off by choking on your own son. You bury your face further in your hands. “I wish to never see his face again!”
Ser Donnel is silent. You cry beside him as if he was a confidant. You did know if he was, if anyone was, but you appreciated that he did not force you back to Aerion.
“I will write to your father,” he eventually tells you. “I will have a letter sent this very night, letting him know that there is…concern to be raised about your treatment. I will request his immediate visit to the Red Keep. He is sure to get there by the time we return from the tourney.”
“Aerion will have me dead by then,” you sob. “He will have sliced my throat and thrown my body to the wolves-”
“He will do no such thing, Lady (Y/N).”
“You have no idea what he is capable of.” You choke on your own tears. “He wants me dead, Ser Donnel. He wants to rip me to pieces and burn me to ashes.”
“He does not.”
“He despises me.” Your words are muffled. “And he wants every person to know it.”
“Have I not told you what he wants from you?” Ser Donnel asks. “He wants an obedient woman-”
“He does not!” You finally pull your hands from your face. “He riles me! You do not believe me, but he does! He wishes for me to speak out of turn because he wants to punish me in the most despicable ways!”
“Aerion was most insistent on your wedding. He would not go through such great lengths only to have you die by his hand.”
His words cause a stir in your body. They begin to sober you. “…What great lengths?” you whisper.
Ser Donnel seems to hesitate, as if unsure if he is spilling a secret.
“Aerion claims I was chosen by him,” you say. “But-My mother said it was his father who insisted on such a marriage between houses.”
“Prince Maekar, nor your father, would have ever wanted the houses bridged through Aerion.”
“What?” You do not understand, and the confusion makes your head ache even more. “Why-Why then was the marriage permitted?” Why were you given to that monster?
Ser Donnel glances towards the knights at the entry way. He lowers his voice. “…It was not permitted. Not by Prince Maekar, not by your father. Aerion went to his grandfather, the King, for permission.”
Your blood runs cold. “…The king?”
Ser Donnel seems uncomfortable now. “I fear I have said more than I should have.”
He stands, and you quickly reach out to grab his arm. “No. No, don’t go. Why did he go to the King-?”
“I have no authority to answer such questions,” he tells you.
“My life is on the line, Ser Donnel-”
“It is not,” he insists sternly. “Lady (Y/N), if your husband meant to kill you, do you think he would have spared you from facing his father after your violent actions against him this morning?”
“My violent actions were justified-”
“I have no doubt they were. He has always been a cruel boy, and I’m sure he wants you scared, but he does not want you dead. You will live through this. But be better about it.”
“What am I to do?” you ask him with a pitiful cry in your tone. “What will make him stop?”
“Perhaps obedience is not all he wants,” Ser Donnel tells you. “He is a jealous man, as I am sure you’re aware. He wants a good wife, but perhaps most of all a wife who knows she is his. Let yourself belong to him.”
Belong to him. Belong to Aerion. Is that not death itself?
Another long sigh from Ser Donnel. “I am sorry about this marriage, (Y/N). I warned your father about this. I told him that your sisters were the ones who were wifely, that you were the more troublesome. He had said himself that you were not meant for any marriage, with any man, especially not a man that is so…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “But it is done now. And I will ensure your father is made aware of your mistreatment.”
You stare at him, his words falling heavy on you. “…My father said I was not meant for marriage?”
He looked at you as if he pitied you. He probably did. “Do not lament over such things. Come, step inside. It is time to return to your husband before he notices your absence.”
*******************************************
Your mother holds you against her, pleading, “I will send her home immediately, my Prince. You will never see her here again.”
The hall is quiet, sounded by only harsh whispers that have spread through the room like fire.
“I apologize for her, she will be punished-”
Prince Maekar silences her. “Do not speak.”
Your body trembles, and your mother holds you tighter.
Maekar talks only to your father. “Your daughter has struck my son.”
“She will be punished for this greatly.”
“Mama,” you whisper, “He forced a kiss upon me-”
“Do not speak!” Your father shouts at you, his anger louder than Prince Maekar’s.
You hide your face in your mother’s dress.
Maekar’s voice is so cold it gives you shivers. “Your daughter has struck my son on the day of his mother’s funeral.”
Another man steps up to speak. You do not know, nor recognize him. “Perhaps this should be settled privately.”
“Perhaps not,” Maekar spits. “It was done publically.”
“She is a child, brother, and your son is not known for being gentle with girls.”
“The consequences of a woman striking a royal are stated clearly in the law book.”
Murmurs break out in the dining hall.
You’re confused by the voices jumping around. You keep your eyes shut tightly.
“Seven whippings.”
You hug your mother tighter. “I am sorry-”
“Shh,” she shushes.
“Please, my prince,” you hear your father say. “She is a stupid girl, but she is not a traitor to the crown. Give her a chance to correct this.”
There is more whispering done by your father and the prince, but you are too far to hear it.
Finally, Maekar announces, “A compromise has been made. She has the chance to bend the knee to Daeron. Here. Now. Bend the knee and ask for forgiveness.”
“(Y/N),” your mother whispers, pulling you away from her. “(Y/N), go to your father.”
You look around to see the crowded room stares directly at you. You walk to your father with shaky steps. Your eyes clouded with tears.
“Kneel down before Prince Daeron,” your father tells you. “Apologize for your sins and beg him for forgiveness.”
Your lips quiver. “Kneel?”
“Kneel.”
You finally lay eyes on Daeron again. He is slumped along a chair, but rises to his feet with a look of smugness. “Beg for forgiveness,” he says, “And maybe I will give it to you.”
The amount of people watching you makes you feel sick.
Your eyes return to your father. “...He was improper to me-”
“Kneel and apologize,” your father stresses through gritted teeth. “I will not ask again.”
Taking hold of your shoulder, he forcibly turns you and forces you towards Daeron.
“Kneel,” you are instructed again.
You stare at Daeron.
And suddenly, the worry you feel-you fear you feel-is replaced by nothing but complete and utter outrage.
How dare he?
How dare he rip you from your seat, force you against his body, ask about your womanhood, and force a kiss on you?
This drunken, perverted bastard disgraced you.
And you were meant to apologize to this fool?
You would not.
To apologize would mean to say you were wrong. He was wrong. He deserved more than a slap, and you will not claim you are sorry for it.
You whip back around to your father. “I will not bend the knee to him.”
Prince Maekar’s eyes grow wide with anger.
Your father spits, “Get on your knees-”
“He spoke of the most abhorrent things,” you announce. “He asked about my bleeding, and my maidenhood, and he forced a kiss upon me-”
“(Y/N)!”
“He forced his hands on me, and I will not apologize for defending myself against him!” you cried to your father. “He does not deserve any apology! I do!”
Maekar snaps at your father, “She will kneel, or she will be whipped.”
You speak before your father does, “Then I will be whipped!”
And so it was.
Maekar grants his friend the sole favor of allowing your father to whip you himself.
So right there, in the middle of the feast hall, in front of nearly every noble in the realm, you are bent over a table and whipped seven times.
*******************************************
Ser Donnel coaxes you to your feet. He leads you inside, ushering a nearby servant to wipe your eyes and fix your powdered face.
The servant returns you to your seat beside your captor.
“You were gone for a long time,” Aerion comments. His eyes are on the entertainment, but all his attention seems focused on you. “Where did you go?”
“I was only getting fresh air.”
“With whom?”
“Myself. And two guards.”
“Which guards?”
“I do not know the names. I did not speak to them.”
“You were out for so long without speaking?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” He snaps a finger in the air. “Madam Pricher.”
You feel a coldness as she steps forward. “Yes, Prince Aerion.”
“Who was my wife outside with?”
“I only needed a moment alone-“
“She followed Ser Thenty out, Prince Aerion.”
His eyes finally settled on you. “Did she now?”
The urge to begin weeping fell upon you again.
“Ser Thenty,” he all but snapped. “What business was so important you had to discuss it with my wife?”
The knight’s eyes dashed between the two of you. “She followed me outside, my prince. I did not ask for it. I corrected her immediately and excused myself, reminding her there should never be a time we are alone without a chaperone.”
Aerion’s hand moves towards you. You flinch, even though he merely places a gentle hand on your wrist. “You so often forget the rules I have placed for you.” His thumb brushes your skin. “What was so urgent that you needed to run after him like a whore left unpaid?”
You stared at the table in front of you, wishing you could sink into the floor.
“Answer me or I’ll beat it out of him.”
The threat of harm caused Ser Thenty to quickly say, “She felt I was not doing my job properly. I disregarded her and returned inside immediately.”
Disregarded.
That is exactly how you felt.
And it made you feel so cold.
But the chills truly hit your body when Ser Thenty added, without prompting, “Ser Donnel is the one she was out there with.”
Your heart skips a beat, your head snapping in his direction to stare at him with widened eyes.
“There were other guards nearby, but they were sitting out of range of being heard,” he continued. “I do not know what they conversed about.”
You stare up at Ser Thenty with eyes of horrific betrayal.
He has thrown you to the wolves to save himself.
You watch as your husband’s eyes darken. You try to quickly tell him, “He was only consoling my distraught mood-” You hiss in pain as Aerion’s hand snakes up the back of your head, tugging tightly on your hair.
His thumb brushes the back of your ear, his fingernail pushing deep against the skin. “And what secrets were being whispered into my wife’s ear by dear Ser Donnel?”
“There were no secrets-” You flinch, your mouth shutting as you feel the sliver of something sharp on your skin.
Your husband’s dinner knife. It is in his hand, pressed against the back of your ear. Your hands fly to push him arm away. “Aerion-”
“Place your hands on the table. If you cause a scene, you will not like the outcome you find.”
Your hands are trembling now, yet you force them flat against the table. You look around, desperate for someone to have noticed already, but it seems nobody has.
“Shall I take an ear?” Aerion taunts you. “To punish you for continuously not listening?”
You shut your eyes tightly. “Nothing was done, the-the guards can vouch for me,” you quickly spudder out.
He gives a short, unconvinced, “Hm.”
Your whole body flinches as you feel the sting of a small cut against the back of your ear. Your hand flies out instinctively to try to push him away, “Aerion-”
“Hands flat on the table.”
You force yourself to do so. But he presses harder. Your eyes sting with tears from the sharp pain.
Aerion leans forward, his face painstakingly calm. He brings his lips to your ear. “Was I not the one who saved you from Ser Donnel’s wrath just this morning?” he asks you. His voice mimics being emotionless, yet...something was there. You could hear something in that tone, whether it was jealousy or hatred, you did not know. “He would have ripped you from my hands and delivered you to my father to be whipped.”
You try, once, to get out of the situation. “Ser Thenty, he is hurting me-”
He presses the knife harder. A sharp cry leaves your lips. It turns a few heads of those sitting beside you. Your hand flies up to cover your mouth. The small batch of blood you felt now becomes a trickle down your neck.
“You think he wants to spare you from this?” Aerion scoffs. “Do you think Ser Thenty does not see what a disrespectful cunt you are?”
“I am sorry.” You do not know what else to say.
You feel defeated by this world.
There is no more fight left in your body, it is just...pain. It is always pain, and it will always be this way.
The tears in your eyes begin to spill over.
“I am sorry. Please, forgive me.”
That is all you do anymore. Beg for forgiveness.
Your stomach churns with how sick you are of all of this.
“I-I did not call on Ser Donnel.” You try to keep your voice quiet and even. “He saw me in distress, because I was weeping. That is all. We spoke of my father. I-” The blood trickles down to your shoulder. “I would never call on him.”
His hold on you barely loosens. “You will repeat every word that was said when we return to the tent.”
“I will. I will repeat every word.” You are desperate for relief of this pain, so your hand moves to his thigh, and you clutch the material of his trousers. “I am sorry, husband, I did not mean to disrespect you, I-I know better. Forgive me.”
He is quiet a moment, but he finally pulls his hand away, the knife leaving with it. You shudder a long breath of relief.
He places a napkin in your hand, and pushes it against your ear. “Pull yourself together. The tears make you look so ugly.”
You hope you bleed out and die.
The edge of Aerion’s knife is coated in your blood, and it has dripped down to his wrist. He brings the knife to his mouth. You feel sick as you watch him draw the knife along his tongue, ingesting the crimson red until it is gone.
“Go clean yourself off,” he tells you. “The tears and blood will be gone when you return.”
You swallow. “Yes, Prince Aerion.”
You push out the chair quickly.
When you turn around, you see those two bastards just staring at you.
Ser Thenty and Madam Pricher watch you like nothing has happened. As if they were not your protectors that have been carelessly witnessing your torture.
A rage builds in your soul and you are unable to swallow it down.
You have been held hostage by your husband, living only by his mercy. And this pitiful excuse of a knight seems to think you deserve it? That it is your role of wife, that being beaten without complaint is you staying in your place?
Perhaps Ser Thenty would see his sins for what they were if he were the one forced to survive Aerion’s rage.
He threw you to the wolves. Did he not deserve for the same to be done to him?
“Ser Thenty,” you announce. There is an expression of guilt on his face. But you have seen enough guilt. That will not save him now. “You have failed me.”
His shoulders slouch. You hear the slightest chuckle from Aerion.
You wish to wipe that smile off your husband’s face with violence. But you have no violence that will harm him.
So you aim to harm that pathetic heart of his.
You steady your breath, your hand still holding the napkin to your ear.
“But you are my favorite knight,” you say. “So I forgive you.”
Ser Thenty’s eyebrows knit together in a frown. You can see your husband’s head turn to stare directly at you now.
With Aerion’s eyes on you, you take a step toward Ser Thenty, you raise yourself higher, and you place a kiss on his cheek.
The squealing of Aerion’s chair is so instant and loud it makes you flinch away.
Then you flee. You take off out of the dining hall, walking quickly down the hall as the door shut behind you.
Suddenly, there is screaming. More than one person screaming.
You heard Madam Pricher’s voice. “Prince Aerion! Prince Aerion, please-”
There is commotion so loud that all you make out is more screaming. Then the door slams open again, and billowing footsteps follow as guests storm out of the hall.
People are leaving-no, evacuating.
You walk fast, but there are people running now. They hit your shoulders as the crowd begins passing you.
One hand still covers your ear with a napkin. As the screaming grows louder, you raise your other hand, and you cover both ears.
summary: you have been told your service is needed to help aid young prince daeron, but there are whispers that ormund hightower has kept you in oldtown for another purpose
tw: mentions of child abuse
wc: 6.7k
********************************************
People whisper of a beast that lives in House Hightower.
A beast that bludgeons men who anger him, destroys rooms, and burns down buildings.
You hear the servants warn each other of it, their whispers reaching your ears during quiet spells in the night.
During your first months at House Hightower, you wondered if this beast actually existed, or if it was a mere horror story told between serving staff to keep them on their best behavior.
But slowly, as more time passed during your stay in Oldtown, you began to hear it.
Shouts carry through the hallways. You hear screaming from areas you did not know existed. You see servants running from something that you have not witnessed yourself.
Prince Daeron is the one to finally explain it to you.
The two of you sit together in the Hightower library reading through histories of the Gardening when you hear the sound of glass shattering on one of the floors above you. You then hear heavy footsteps, and a crash that is so loud it makes you flinch.
Two guards run past the library doorway, and you begin to fear something is wrong.
“It is only my Uncle Ormund,” Prince Daeron tells you, noticing your expressions. “You needn’t worry, he will not come down here.”
“Lord Ormund?” Your shoulders jump as you hear another crashing of glass. “Is he okay?”
“He must have received a letter he did not like.”
“It sounds worse than an ill-received letter.”
“It is actually quite tame for him.”
You don’t understand it.
Lord Ormund Hightower appears to be the very definition of prestige and class when you are near him.
He is a man that never slouches, never curses, never complains. He is a compass of what a good man should be, and he carries himself as if he is the role model for the world.
“He hides that side of himself from you,” Daeron once confessed to you. “He is easily angered, and is quick to react with violence. He tries to pretend he is well tempered but he is not.”
“I have seen him angry,” you tried to reassure him. “You have not seen him angry. You have seen him upset. He is different when he is angry. He will break everything in his path. He will destroy an entire room. He will wound servants that are near him.”
“It is a sin to harm an innocent in anger-”
“He is different,” Daeron insisted. “That is what I am warning. He believes you to be too gentle to see such a thing, so he hides it, but he is a beast at times. You must be careful.”
A beast. His word choice set you on edge.
It was difficult to believe the almighty Ormund Hightower was the beast everyone spoke of, and not the dragon that lived in the lowest level of the tower.
Even after all the warnings, you still thought people must have been exaggerating to scare you. For months you lived in Oldtown, and you never once saw Ormund raise a hand to anyone.
Until you reached your second year with the Hightowers.
That was when you first saw him physically punish Daeron with a slap to the face. It had been a petty crime Daeron committed, being caught having a taste of his uncle’s wine when he thought he wasn’t looking. It scared you so badly you could not look the Lord in the eye for a week.
By the time your third year here came around, Ormund would frequently discipline the Prince by striking the back of his hands with a leather rod.
Seeing such things made you…wary of him. But he never placed an unkind hand on you.
Daeron says he’s soft for you.
Now, as you neared your fourth year in Oldtown, you find yourself unsure of your attitude towards Ormund. He was a Lord, so you respected him. You try to remember how you have been raised, all the politeness you must show, so you put your personal feelings aside so that you can do your duties properly.
Your duties, which involve the education and faith of Prince Daeron, are difficult at times.
Especially today.
You have sat Daeron down in the library, and you are attempting to get him used to more diligent notetaking, yet he is fighting back with everything he has.
“We spend so many hours in this library,” he complains. “Can we not go somewhere else?”
“We can visit the Sept.”
He lets out an uninterested grunt.
“We can take a break once we reach mid-hour,” you offer. “We’ll take a walk through the gardens.”
Daeron fidgets in his seat. “I wish to visit Tessarion.”
“You know that is not allowed.”
“It’s not recommended. I am the Prince, I can order you to take me anywhere if I really want to.”
“It would be much easier if you just finish your notetaking.”
He sighs as he looks down at the paper. His quill finally starts moving again.
“Perhaps we can ask your uncle at dinner if he can take you down to Tessarion.”
“He would never agree to that, he dislikes her.”
“There is no harm in asking him. The worst he can do is say ‘no’.”
You hear Daeron chuckle, like you have made a joke. “Only you would say such a thing.”
You place down your book. “And why is that?”
“Because you are the only one he does not throw a fit in front of. He’ll hold his tongue for you.” Daeron risks another smile as his quill scrolls across the paper. He uses a mocking voice. “Uncle Ormund says that you are a proper woman, and should not have to bear witness to such foul, abhorrent language.”
You straighten yourself to better posture, surprised by the comment. Lord Ormund was one of the most prestigious, well-classed men you have ever met. To hear such a compliment from him was beyond meaningful.
“Well, that is true,” you say. “Foul language should not be said around ladies.”
“And what of your foul language?”
“I do not use foul language, it is a sin.”
Daeron’s smile turns to a smirk. “You do not think of the word ‘bastard’ as foul? Or do you assume your context of calling the street merchant a ‘bastard’ acceptable?”
Your shoulders slouch, and you feel heat rush to your face. “That was a moment of wrongfulness, and you heard me pray for the Mother to forgive me for it.”
“Perhaps I should tell Uncle Ormund all the words I’ve heard you use so that he is less worried about exposing you to such language-”
“You will not.” Your words come out flustered. “I hardly ever use such language and-and if I have it was well deserved.”
Daeron is even more amused. He leans closer, and fakes a gasp. “You dare believe someone deserves such a name? And here I thought you were supposed to be aiding me in my ethics of the Seven.”
“You stop it,” you tell him. “I have prayed for my wrongdoings. But even if I didn’t...that merchant ripped my coin pouch right from my hands. Had you not retrieved it, your uncle would have never allowed us back to the market again.”
Daeron chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Alright, I agree. The bastard was deserved. And I have to admit it was quite humorous to hear my proper teacher shouting that word across a crowd.”
“You should be finishing your notes, not trying to rile me up,” you tell me. “Let me see your paper so I can be sure you complete your studies before dinner.”
“Let me see your paper,” Daeron counters.
He reaches over, but you quickly flip the book over. “I am not the one who needs to take notes.”
“But let me see yours, so I know I am taking notes correctly.”
You pull your book away.
He smiles wider. “Unless, perhaps, my teacher has not been taking notes. Perhaps she has just been drawing.”
Your face grows hotter in embarrassment. He knew how to get under your skin so easily.
“As the teacher, I am asking to see yours-Daeron!”
He reached over and snatched your parchments from you. He laughs, flipping it back towards you to say, “It is a beautiful flower you have drawn.”
“I have learned these lessons before, I can draw if I wish.”
“Shall I tell Uncle Ormund that you are wasting time in the library with such drawings?”
“You will do no such thing.”
You would be humiliated. You could picture it now. His stern stare looking down at the stupid flower, and then back up at you, silently labeling you as incompetent for the rest of your time here.
“I will keep my mouth shut if we end lessons early today,” Daeron says. “And you allow me to visit Tessarion.”
“Lord Ormund is displeased when you visit her.”
“He would also be displeased by this,” Daeron countered, waving your drawing in front of him.
You are tired of the library anyway, so you figured there was no harm in a quick visit downstairs. You sigh. “Fine. But you must wash before dinner so that he does not smell her on you.”
Daeron smiles again, like he tricked you into giving him the upper hand. Though, in all honesty, he was the Prince. He could have left the library at any time, and you had no true power to stop him.
“May I at least see that you have taken notes?” you ask.
He flips his book around to show you his parchment.
There were no notes. There was only a drawing of you sitting in front of him, drawing a flower.
You open your mouth to lecture him, but quickly shut it. “We will be going to the Sept tonight, and we are going to pray about your lack of enthusiasm for your education.”
He paid no mind to your words. “Come on. I’m sure Tessarion had been missing me greatly.”
The days are always like this with Prince Daeron. Amusing. Frustrating. Happy. Exciting. Nerve wracking. You feel every emotion with the boy everyday.
And it brings you more joy than anything.
When you first arrived at House Hightower, nearly four years prior, Daeron hardly spoke to you.
He had recently turned the age of ten, and at the time you were barely ten and six. He was a quiet boy, and you were a quiet girl. It was extraordinary to see the difference in him now.
Originally, you had been sent to Oldtown by your father, who was a strong believer in the Faith of the Seven. He wanted you to learn how to pray from the Septas of Oldtown, the most devoted women in the realm.
It was Gwayne Hightower that offered for you to stay in House of Hightower, your mother having been a dear friend to Alicent and him in their younger days.
You were meant to be in Oldtown for one month, and then you were to be sent home.
But the gods had a different plan for you.
It was Ormund Hightower that spoke to your father about you becoming an aid for the young prince.
Lord Ormund was a man of religion. He visited the Sept every morning and every night. He was quick to notice, staring on the morning of your arrival, that you did as well.
He admitted to your father that he was impressed with your faith, and even more impressed with how often you partook in prayer.
“Daeron has become very lonesome being so isolated from his siblings,” Lord Ormund had said to you. “It would be beneficial for him to have the company of a girl as mindful as yourself. A girl proper in her ways, and a devoted servant to the Seven.”
When the offer of a more permanent stay was first given to you, you were wary of it. “This is the first time I have been away from home,” you admitted. “I do not know if I would be able to assist the Prince as well as a Septa could.”
“Septas know only scripture,” Ormund reasoned. “They are the education of the spiritual world, and you will help teach him the ways of the physical one.”
In honesty, you felt too young for such a position. Ten and six, you still felt like a child. You were frightened to be so far from your mother, and even more frightened to be in a position responsible for royalty.
And in the beginning, you were frightened of Lord Ormund as well. You had been so scared to talk to him the day he brought his proposal up to you. You had never spoken to him prior to it, and the only reputation you knew was that he was a serious man who was easily disappointed.
So you try to be honest with him, hoping he would understand your hesitancy. “I do not know if I am equipped to handle such a task, my Lord.”
He had smiled at you. A warm smile that made him appear as such a kind and considerate man.
Placing a hand upon your shoulder, he told you, “You are a good girl, (Y/N). All I need is your help in raising my nephew to be just as good.”
Now, nearly four years later, Oldtown feels more like home than your homeland ever did.
Because your brother is here.
Daeron Targaryen, Prince of the realms, will always be the brother you never had. Not a blood brother, like the ones from your homeland, who were cruel to you in your childhood and would throw things your way when you became bothersome. Daeron was a real brother, and seeing him grow up to be kind was the best gift the Mother could ever give you.
“Come,” Daeron hurried you as the two of you descended down the staircase to where Tessarion was kept. “She has been alone for so long, she must be dying for company.”
You disliked the way the Hightowers treated Daeron’s dragon. But you knew it was not your place to interfere with such a thing.
Daeron’s face lights up like the boy he is as he sees her. You stay back against the staircase as Daeron jogs down the steps and over to the creature. “Here I am, girl. I promised I would return to you.”
The sight of the large dragon always makes you wary. Even as she makes screeches of joy as she sets her eyes on her rider, you feel yourself fearing for him.
Yet, he nuzzles his head against hers, and she appears to nuzzle him back. “There you are,” Daeron whispers with a laugh. “Shh. Shh. I told you, I can come down here more often if you are quiet.”
“Be cautious of her claws,” you say as she paws near his feet.
“She knows her strength, she will not harm me,” Daeron assures you.
You rest against the wall, and listen to him whispering soft words of admiration to her.
You are patient as he takes a brush to draw over her scales, grooming her body. He glances over to you. “She is not a monster like they say,” he tells you. “I have raised her to be good.”
You give a soft nod. “She is good, I know.”
“Would you...” He hesitates. “...Would you like to pet her?”
You take a quick step back, shaking your head. “I will keep my distance.”
“She will not harm you, you have my word.”
“Lord Ormund warns they are unpredictable with those that do not have the right blood.”
“Please,” Daeron says. “She sees you so often. I want her to actually meet you.”
Your eyes take in the creature. You stiffen as she stares right at you.
Daeron holds a hand out. “I will be right beside you.”
“What if she dislikes me-?”
“She will not. I promise.” Daeron steps close to you with his hand out. “Trust me, Lady (Y/N).”
It takes a moment of contemplation before you finally decide you do trust him. And if your trust gets you burnt, so be it. You take his hand, and he leads you to the dragon.
He lifts your arm and slowly places it on Tessarion’s head. The texture catches you by surprise and you flinch back.
He chuckles. “It is an odd feeling, isn’t it?”
You choke back a scream when Tessarion moves her head against your stomach. You stumble back, but Daeron places an arm out to steady you. “Daeron-”
“It’s alright. She just wishes to feel you too.”
You force yourself still. The dragon runs her head along your abdomen. Slowly, you lower your hand back onto her. The scales are not so frightening now.
“See,” Daeron smiles. “She likes you.”
“That is very relieving,” you laugh.
“Sometimes I think she can sense how I feel about people,” he tells you. “And that’s how she judges them.”
“Does that mean if you decide you hate me, she will eat me?”
“I would never hate you,” Daeron says. His voice grows more somber. “You are the only true companion I have ever had.”
“For now,” you say. “I am sure you will gain allies over time.”
“Allies,” he repeats. “Not friends.”
“I have no other friends either,” you tell him. “It is not so bad.”
As an aid to royalty, you are secluded from the outside world. Lord Ormund has insisted on it.
‘There is no room for distractions when it comes to your care of my nephew,’ he told you when you first arrived. You were just a girl then, so it made sense to you. But now, nearing your twentieth summer, you feel the seclusion is less necessary. Yet, he still insists on it.
It does matter your opinion, however. It never does with him.
Lord Ormund is the man of the house, so you must bend your knee to his orders.
Daeron is quiet for a moment. He brushes along Tessarion’s back.
“...I wish you were my true sister,” he whispers. “So that I did not have to fear you leaving.”
He has said this before. It makes you feel sympathy that he is so far from his real family, he sometimes forgets he actually does have a true sister.
“I would not leave,” you quickly insist. “I promised I would remain at your side for the rest of your youth.”
“And after?” he asks.
You sigh. “I do not know the plans my father has for me after.” You look again at the creature that has settled comfortably with leaning against your body. “But Tessarion will be here forever, at least for that you are certain. So be good to her.”
“I am,” he swore to you. He leaned his head against the dragon’s once more. “Aren’t I good to you?” he whispers to the dragon.
A few weeks pass, and the weather becomes warmer. It causes Daeron to lose energy in the day.
“It is shameful to sleep in the Sept, Prince Daeron,” you chide softly, “It is best you wake before someone else sees you.”
The boy barely stirred. Head resting on the pew in front of him, arms folded beneath him, he muffles, “I am not sleeping, I am praying.”
The yawn was still in his voice, and it made you chuckle. “You’ve been unmoving for fifteen minutes.”
“Deep in prayer,” he insists.
Another laugh. “It is almost time for dinner, Daeron. Come. Raise your head, and pray with me once more before we go.”
Daeron slowly lifts his head. He rises from the bench, and comes to kneel beside you in front of the candle altar. He clasps his hands together, and waits for you to begin.
You let your eyes flutter closed and pray, “Mother, please grant us peace of mind in these upcoming weeks. Give us honor in what we do.”
Daeron repeats, “Mother, please grant us peace of mind in these upcoming weeks. Give us honor in what we do.”
“Warrior, please send strength to King Viserys. Please give him health and extend his kingdom.”
Again, Daeron repeats after you. “Warrior, please send strength to my father. Please give him health and extend his kingdom.”
“Crone, please give Prince Daeron wisdom in his studies, and the foresight to see the consequences of laziness-”
“I am not lazy.”
You laugh, and continue, “Please make him into the best scholar he can be.”
Daeron eyes you, before praying, “Mother, please give (Y/N) a kinder heart that is less overbearing-”
“Shh,” you laugh, sticking out your hand to cover his mouth. “Do not say that to her.”
Daeron smiles as he continues, “Crone, give her the wisdom that reminds her I am her Prince, therefore I am in charge-”
“Daeron,” you scold with amusement, “We do not play with the gods.”
“I am not lazy. Take it back.”
“You were sleeping in the Sept.”
“Exhausted, not lazy.”
You huff, yet a smile still plays on your face. “Fine. You are not lazy. But you better be careful. What would you have done had Lord Ormund heard you snoring?”
“I do not snore.”
You shrug. “You would not know.”
You catch him rolling his eyes, to which you criticize, “Do not roll your eyes in the house of the gods.”
“Then let us leave the house of the gods. I am starving.”
“In a moment,” you tell him. “Allow me to do a prayer for our food.”
He sighs, but he stays kneeled beside you. He is patient with you in the Sept, just as you are patient with him with his dragon.
When you two are finished, the guards escort the two of you to Lord Ormund.
It became customary over the last few years for Daeron and yourself to have dinner with Lord Ormund in his private study. The Lord often complained that the Hightower dining hall was unappealing, that it was too close to the kitchens, the aromas were too strong, and he was unable to eat there. The difference in rooms mattered very little to you. You did not mind eating in his study. In fact, it felt like a compliment that you were even invited. It made you feel more valued that your company was enjoyed by both the Lord and Prince.
You are still laughing with Daeron over mundane things as you make your way through the halls.
“What brings such laughter from my nephew?” Ormund asks as the two of you arrive at his study.
You greet the Lord with a curtsy of respect. “Good evening, Lord Ormund.” You rise and smile, “Daeron speaks of plans for his fourteenth nameday.”
“Ah,” he grins. “Yes, that is arriving soon.”
As always, Lord Ormund stands as you enter, and he pulls out your chair for you. You take it with a gracious, “Thank you, my Lord.”
“What kind of celebration would you like?” Ormund asks as he takes his seat. He sits at the head of the table, as always. You take the left side of him, Daeron is sat on the right.
The prince smiles shyly. “I need nothing extravagant. I only wish to have a feast with the three of us, as always. With cake. Perhaps Uncle Gwayne can be here.”
“I can prepare you a cake,” you tell him. “It would be my honor.”
“You need not do it,” Daeron quickly says. “We will pay a baker.”
You tilt your head. “You do not trust my cooking?”
He chuckles. “No offense, my Lady, but I have yet to see you in a kitchen. It seems you do not get much practice at it.”
You let out a laugh. “Is that so?”
“Careful, Daeron,” Ormund chides. “Insulting a woman’s cooking is as if she were to insult your sword fighting.”
“She knows I jest,” Daeron says. “But either way, you should not waste time on such things, Lady (Y/N). Any day that honors me should honor you as well.”
The words warm your heart, and you wonder if this is what motherhood is meant to feel like. “You flatter me.”
“It is true. I feel I am becoming a great man due to your teachings. You as well, Uncle Ormund. I believe I am growing into my strongest self here in Oldtown.”
Ormund smiles proudly at his nephew. He reaches over and places a hand on his shoulder. “The Father smiles upon you, Daeron. You are a blessing to us all.”
“My father sends coin on my nameday,” Daeron says. “I would like to purchase gifts for the two of you. As well as Uncle Gwayne.”
“That is very thoughtful of you, Prince Daeron, but it is not a day you must buy gifts for others. Others should buy gifts for you.”
“I want to,” he says. His tone becomes shy. “I…would like to show my appreciation. With something you will be able to cherish.”
The idea warms your heart.
“Besides, I need nothing,” Daeron says. “And I want for nothing. I would donate my coin rather than hoard it.”
You smile wider, and you meet Lord Ormund’s eye. “He is a very noble boy, your nephew. You should be very proud of him.”
“I am,” Ormund smiles. “My nephew is growing to be flawless.”
“Flawless.” Daeron chuckles. “Except for the snoring, I suppose.”
You laugh. “Yes, except for the snoring.”
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Lord Ormund lean back against his chair.
“I am very much looking forward to hearing from my mother,” Daeron continues. “She writes to me an especially long letter on my name day each year. My father as well.”
“Perhaps you can have a portrait made to send them,” you suggest. “I’m sure your mother misses your face dearly.”
He lights up at the idea. “A portrait. Yes. I have not had one of those done in a few years.”
“Me neither,” you admit. “I fear my mother has not seen a new portrait of me since I was the age of ten and seven.”
“Then we could all have portraits done. Uncle Ormund, do you think you could call upon an artisan to-” Daeron’s smile drops and his words cease.
Your attention turns to Lord Ormund. A pit forms in your stomach.
He is not looking at either of you. He is simply staring ahead, silent.
Daeron becomes tense. “…Uncle?”
Ormund continues staring ahead, only his finger moving as he taps upon the table, quickly and precise, as if counting the seconds.
“I need no portrait,” Daeron quickly says. “It was only an idea.”
Lord Ormund is angry. You do not know why, or over what, but you know that this is his first stage of anger.
He stares.
He stares, and it gives him time to think. And the more he thinks, the angrier he gets.
Daeron becomes a shade paler at the lack of response. “I-I do not look forward to hearing from my mother as much as I look forward to seeing you, Uncle,” he spurts out, going through every last word he said to think of what could have angered him. “I do not take my place here for granted.”
Ormund’s head tilts to the side, his stare still blank and ominous.
When his eyes land on you, his gaze is so piercing that you flinch.
“My nephew snores?”
You blink, caught off guard by the question.
His hands open and close. “How would you know my nephew snores, Lady (Y/N)-?”
“I fell asleep today,” Daeron quickly cuts in. “I apologize for it. I drifted off, and she-she merely teased me for it.”
Ormund’s eyes don’t leave you.
You have been scolded by Lord Ormund before, plenty of time in fact. But there is something different in his voice now. Those scolding were small corrections, his voice never, ever rose at you. Even now, he speaks calmly. But the look in his eye makes you feel cold.
He does not speak again, simply waiting and watching for you to answer.
“It was only for a moment,” Daeron repeats with worry. “No wrong was done.”
Ormund continues to wait for your response only.
You swallow before speaking, “The Prince drifted off today, as he said. I allowed him to rest for a few minutes because he was tired. I should not tease a Prince about such things, I am sorry.”
“Where did he fall asleep?”
Daeron’s posture is rigid. You bite your lip, considering the consequences of your answer.
“Lady (Y/N).” He speaks your name softly, but there is an edge to his voice that you did not want to press.
You look again at Daeron, and feel as if it would be against your faith to tell on him. Daeron must’ve seen it in your eyes that you were unwilling.
Internally, you make the decision not to answer. You did not fear his uncle harming you for your silence.
But Daeron feared it.
Daeron quickly answered for you, “It was in the Sept.”
His uncle frowned. His head slowly turned to his nephew. “In the Sept?”
“Yes-”
“In our most sacred place of prayer?”
His voice is only a whisper. “I am sorry.”
Ormund slowly pulls his napkin off his lap, folding it and calmly placing it onto the table. He stands to his feet, his boots heavy on the floor as he walks to stand behind Daeron’s chair. He asks, “Did you pray for forgiveness before you left?”
“I...” He swallows. “I did not think to pray for that specifically-”
“Both hands flat on the table.”
Daeron’s face goes completely pale.
Ormund crosses the room to his bookshelf.
Your heart slams in your chest as you rush to your feet, hurrying over to Ormund’s side, trying to match his quick strides. “He said prayers before leaving, my Lord.”
He ignores you. He grabs the leather strapped rod he keeps on the shelf.
The sight of it surges your panic. You struggle to remain by Ormund’s side, placing a hand on his arm to slow him. “He did not mean to offend the gods. He was only tired from the heat of the day-”
“If he did not pray for forgiveness, I will administer punishment.”
“He will not commit the offense again.”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child. He will receive seven lashes. One for each god he offended.” He snaps at Daeron, “Both hands flat on the table. Now.”
Daeron shuts his eyes tightly, doing as told.
You run forward and force yourself in front of your prince. “The lashes should be mine,” you tell Ormund.
Daeron tries to push you away. “No-”
“I was in charge of him, the fault is mine. Allow me the lashes, not him.” In a surge of protectiveness, you try to hide Daeron behind your body. “I offended the gods, not him.”
Lord Ormund watches you with critical eyes.
You knelt down, and place both hands flat on the table.
Daeron’s voice is a quiet whimper as he says, “(Y/N), get up, this is not your punishment.”
You physically push his hands back to his lap, and lay yours flat on the table once more. You stare up at Lord Ormund, whose eyes are still so meticulous.
He stays staring at you a moment longer, and every second that passes, you feel your heart will give out from beating so fast.
Finally, Ormund drops the rod onto the table. Slowly, he kneels beside you and rests his elbows on the table, clasping his hands together. “Lady (Y/N), lead us in a prayer of forgiveness for Daeron’s offense.”
A shaky breath of relief escapes your lips. “Y-Yes, my Lord.”
Daeron quickly kneels beside you as well.
“Mother, please forgive the transgressions of Daeron. He has committed an offensive act that he shall not commit again. Please, allow him grace and hospitality.”
Daeron quickly repeats, “Mother, please forgive my transgressions. I have committed an offensive act that I shall commit again. Please, allow me grace and hospitality.”
Ormund speaks next. “Mother, please forgive the transgressions of Daeron. He has committed an offensive act that he shall not commit again. Please, allow him grace and hospitality.”
Another nervous breath. “Mother, please-please put mercy in the heart of Lord Ormund. Please allow him to grant us the patience and grace that you would.”
Daeron hesitates, his eyes shooting to his uncle, as if terrified of the consequences of this prayer.
“Daeron,” his uncle urges.
Daeron follows, “Mother, please put mercy in the heart of Lord Ormund. Please allow him to grant us the patience and grace that you would.”
Ormund finishes, “Mother, please put mercy in my heart. Please allow me to grant them the patience and grace that you would.”
“And so it is.”
“And so it is.”
“And so it is.” Ormund rises to his feet. “Let us finish dinner.” He pulls out his chair for you to sit.
The rest of the dinner is silent. You have lost your appetite, but try to finish the plate anyway. Lord Ormund is strict with your diet, and if you do not eat now, you will not be allowed food again until morning.
The time ticks by slowly. Daeron fidgets more and more as each minute passes.
“Daeron, you are excused,” Ormund speaks after he is finished with his own meal.
You see in the prince’s eyes that he does not want to leave you.
“Go on,” you tell him. “I will see you in the morning at the library.”
He hesitates only a moment longer. Ormund clears his throat, and he finally goes.
You are left alone with Lord Ormund.
“It is not your place to stand between that boy and his punishments,” he tells you.
You stare down at your hands. “I apologize, Lord Ormund.”
“You apologize, yet if it came down to it, you would do so again.”
You do not lie. “I would.”
Ormund sighs. He rises to his feet. He walks to you, and leans upon the table beside you. His fingers ghost your chin, and he tilts your head up to face him. “I hope you are not allowing your loyalty towards him to cloud your judgement.”
“I am not.”
His fingers graze the side of your face, pushing your hair behind your ears. “I do not only feel responsible for Daeron, (Y/N), I also feel responsible for you. I want what is best for you, I hope you know that.”
“I do, my Lord.”
His hand brushes down the back of your hair. “You have always been such a good girl for me.” His hand stops on the back of your head, and you flinch as his hand suddenly grips your hair. “But I need you to remember that your obedience is to me before my nephew.”
His grip does not hurt, but it frightens you.
You force your hands to remain in your lap. “Y-Yes, my Lord. I remember.”
“The next interference, I will not spare the rod on you.”
You swallow. “I understand.”
Ormund smiles at your agreement. His hand loosens on your hair, and he cups your cheek instead. “I have been told I have a weakness for you, Lady (Y/N). That I am too lenient when you are around, that I lack appropriate sternness.”
You have been told the same thing about him. That he is fond of you, that he treats you kinder than others, that your faith in the Seven makes him more gentle.
Ormund’s hand lingers on your cheek a moment, before he turns your head to the side, and reaches out to wipe away a bead of sweat that began to form on your temple.
“You would not dare use that against me, would you?”
“Never, my Lord.” You realize your hands are forming sweat as well. You open and close them to try to release the nerves. “I-I appreciate your mercy, but it is never expected.”
“Good.” He turns your jaw to face him head on. “Because my patience is not limitless.”
You do not know what he wants you to say. You wonder if he even wants you to say anything at all, or if he just wants to frighten you so you do not interfere again. You simply repeat, “I understand, my Lord.”
You think he will let go of you, but he does not.
Instead, he leans closer, and you hear his long inhale. It is what he does whenever the serving boys bring him new scented powders.
“You smell of candle smoke,” he tells you.
“From my prayer in the Sept, my Lord.”
Your answer satisfies him.
Another moment passes of uncertainty for you. You have never been alone with Ormund for this long before. Your mind goes back to Daeron, and where he might be.
“I think it is time we find a perfume for you.”
The comment catches you by surprise. “A perfume, my Lord?”
“Noble women choose perfumes for themselves. Ones they reorder time and time again. They spray it upon letters when they send it away, and sometimes gift small portions of it to women in their service. It will help mask the scent of the other tasks you attend to during the day. You are old enough now to go and choose your own.”
The idea uplifted you. “I will be able to choose?”
“You will be taken to the market tomorrow. You will pick three scents you like, and I will make the final decision on which one will be yours.”
“Any perfume?”
“Any you desire. There is no budget when it comes to a woman’s cleanliness.”
You feel yourself getting excited over the prospect of shopping. Lord Ormund usually hand picks everything for you, without your opinion on things.
Your excitement makes you bold. “May I choose a new dress for myself as well? It has been a long time since I have had myself fitted.”
His eyes flicker over your face. “You push your luck.”
Your heart drops, and you think you have angered him.
But he merely asks, “What would it be for?”
“For my visits to the Sept,” you quickly tell him, because you know he will not refuse this. “A dress with a thicker skirt so that my knees do not ache at the end of the day.”
Ormund leans back and contemplates. “You recall the rules of modesty for clothing?”
“Of course, my Lord. Neckline higher than the collarbone. Skirts passed the ankles. Arms to the wrist.”
He reaches down and drags his hand up the side of your arm, feeling the material. It was as if he was imagining something new. “Very well then. You may pick up a new dress.”
Your smile grows. You lean up, and you place a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Lord Ormund.”
His smile warms, and his expression turns kind. He is happy with you, and you hear it in his voice as he relents, “I will allow two dresses, if it pleases you.”
“Yes.” Your spirits raise even higher. “Yes, it pleases me greatly, thank you.”
Ormund chuckles at how elated you have become. He leans down and places a kiss onto the top of your head.
He lingers for a moment. You hear his gentle inhale, his quiet judgement of what he smells.
“What oils are used for your hair?”
“Roses, my Lord.”
“Do not choose roses tomorrow. This scent is tied to your girlhood with Daeron. You must find a new scent for womanhood.”
You find the comment odd, so you risk a laugh. “I am already a woman, Lord Ormund.”
His response is just a repeated, “No roses.”
Your laugh goes away. You shake your head. “No roses.”
“You are excused, Lady (Y/N). The guards will escort you to your chambers.”
it was theon who spoke first, brows knitting as he moved quickly to the king's side. he pointed an accusatory finger your direction. "it's you!"
there was a variety of men circled around a table that held a large map, different pieces of wooden sigils spread across it. theon watched your eyes flick to it and quickly moved to step in front of it, but you returned your gaze instead to the north's king.
"your grace," you said with a small smile, noticing immediately the way he seemed to soften at the slight tease. he still had that kindly way about him, though he stood stronger and taller with the confidence of a battle-hardened victor. he seemed less a boy than he was back at winterfell as he faced you
his advisors seemed more than confused, one man with a curt voice asking sharply, "who is this?"
"lady y/n," the greatjon answered for you, nodding your way.
the first man sighed heavily, rolling his eyes at the umber lord. "and her last name?"
"what's your house, lass?" umber asked you, but theon was answering for you.
"she's a tyrell," he said quickly, frowning deeply. "she's jaime lannister's wife."
the entire energy of the room shifted even though robb didn't, simply watching you with curious blue eyes and a tilt of his head. you didn't miss the way his eyes ran over you quickly, almost respectfully, and instead of asking what you were doing here, he asked, "have you eaten?"
the man from before knitted his brows, and so did the large woman next to him. "your grace-"
"she's not a threat, lord bolton," robb answered, holding your eyes still. "at least, i don't think she is." he raised his brows, the corner of his mouth tilting up. "are you?"
you breathed out a laugh, shaking your head. "i don't think so, my king. though, i was wondering if we may have a word in private."
there was an instant objection from all his advisors, but he ignored them, giving you a firm nod instead. "as you wish, my lady."
"robb," theon said sternly, turning to him with a piercing gaze. "she is the kingslayer's wife, a lion. we cannot trust her."
"she's a rose, theon," robb answered quietly, shooting you a sideways glance. "she was good to my sisters, and my father. and you forget that she's a victim in this - i doubt she likes her husband much more than we do right now."
that resonated with theon and it seemed to calm him just a touch. finally, he let out a huff and nodded, stepping back and waving a hand your way. "do as you will."
robb looked back to the men filling his tent and nodded dismissively to the door. "go on and get your supper." his eyes met yours quickly then. "do you need food?"
"i'm alright for now, thank you," you said with an appreciative smile. you watched his advisors leave, meeting each pair of eyes with a nod and maintaining your gentle look.
you couldn't seem a threat if you wanted any sort of cooperation.
when the door was shut again, with one last look from lord bolton, robb finally turned to you. he smiled gently. "it's been a while."
"i was worried you wouldn't remember me," you admitted, tilting your head as he moved to lean against the foot of the table, only a short distance from you now.
he shook his head. "yours isn't a face easy to forget, my lady."
heat rushed to your cheeks and you breathed out a laugh, glancing away from him to collect yourself once more. you weren't used to compliments - people back home were as hard as the rocks the place was named for, and jaime wasn't necessarily an eager husband when it came to making you feel good. the most compliments you got were in king's landing when baratheon-sworn knights hit on you without knowing who you were married to.
of course, you were gorgeous. it was half of what your family was known for. but, since your leave of highgarden, it wasn't brought up so much. at least, not in the wholesome way robb just did now.
"i've heard much of your successes," you told him, eager to return the favor as you turned back to him. "i'm impressed."
he laughed. "even though they've been against your husband and father by law?"
"especially since they've been against my husband and father by law," you answered, grinning slightly. "they're hard people to win against, and you've done it three times."
"soon it will be four," he hummed, relaxing more against the table. "i appreciate your admiration."
"well, someone has to put the lannisters in their place," you said. "the lions could use a bit of a knock in their pride. they aren't as perfect as they believe themselves to be."
he considered you for several long moments, a wolfish grin pulling at his lips. “you don’t think so?”
“no,” you answered easily, folding your hands in front of you. “no, i think the lannister name needs a bit of a rebrand, to be honest.”
“do you?” he said, raising his brows amusedly.
“yes,” you hummed. “which is why i’m here, actually. unfortunately to clear our name i’m going to need jaime back. i’ll bring you your sisters in return.”
your words surprised him, the man faltering a bit as he watched you. “our name?” he echoed. “you still claim the lannisters as your own? have you been told what the kingslayer has done? what the queen has done?”
you sighed, eyes flicking to the floor for just a moment. “i have,” you told him with a sure nod.
“and you don’t hate him for it?” he asked, furrowing his brows.
you breathed out an ironic laugh. “i never said i didn’t hate him.”
“and yet you’re bartering for his release,” he said then, crossing his arms over his chest as he tilted his head. “forgive me for my bluntness, but he didn’t deserve you before, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve you now. why should you help him?”
that shocked you.
not many people dared to actually say truth aloud, especially not the people who surrounded you most often. and, this was a truth that was hard to say, hard to comprehend, even if it was right.
jaime didn’t deserve you. and he didn’t deserve to be saved.
it was a shame that you were sworn to him still.
“i’m sorry?” you asked in surprise, brows raising high on your head.
“you are beautiful and young and kind,” he told you as if it were a simple sort of truth. “you seem very intelligent and you are very conscious of public image. i imagine you’re one of the only things keeping people from believing that jaime and cersei had an affair in the first place.”
you thought back to cersei’s lie about your pregnancy.
you laughed unsurely. “your grace-”
“i hardly know you, my lady,” he continued anyways, pushing off the table to come to stand at your front. “and yet even i can see clearly the fault it is to continue to come to your husband’s aid. he’s already used you and betrayed you - who’s to say he won’t do it again?”
"nothing," you admitted with a nod. he held your eyes and you sighed, his gaze overwhelming you to the point that you glanced away. "look, i just need him back. not for me, but for the lannister image."
he frowned. "and why do you care about the lannister image?"
"because i am one," you told him as you met his eyes again, matching his determined frown. "i'm a lannister, your grace. it's my image he's ruining too."
a beat passed and then he said, "you speak of image but what you mean is honor." slowly, he shook his head. "you won't find it in their colors."
"it's still my house," you answered quietly.
"no," he disagreed with another shake of his head. he took a single step towards you, his gaze intense and knowing. "it's your cage."
you let out a harsh breath, stepping away and glancing to the side.
who did he think he was? he didn't know you, he hardly knew your husband, and he certainly didn't know what it meant to be bound to a house that was barely even yours.
and yet, he was right. he was impossibly right.
"which is why i'm trying to change it," you told him finally, meeting his blue eyes that seemed to have dulled in the few seconds it took you to come up with a response. his shoulders had slumped slightly, and the way he looked at you screamed sympathy.
but not pity. robb stark did not give pity.
"you have other options, you know," he said.
"i don't," you answered firmly, shaking your head. "i don't. i thought i did too, but my grandmother is set on me having some sort of control on this family, and cersei would never let me get-"
you paused, realizing suddenly that you were admitting exactly too much information to this boy king that you hardly knew. and yet, you wanted to continue. you hadn't spoken to someone who genuinely cared since your short conversation with ser barristan several weeks prior.
robb watched you with great intrigue, head tilted slightly. gently then, he told you, "you're not my enemy." he paused to hold your eyes, nodding once as if to cement his words. "you have done nothing against my family, and from what i've heard you've tried to help my sisters. for that, i owe you a great deal." you held your breath, waiting for him to finish. "you have a place here," he said then, word firm and resolute. "if you want away from the lannisters, just tell me, and you can be free from them."
it was the most tempting offer you'd ever received in your life.
all the hatred and frustration for jaime and cersei and even tywin now began to bubble within you, every barb cersei ever threw at you, every sideways comment from jaime, every time tywin demeaned you or ordered improvement rising to the forefront of your mind.
and so did your marriage vows.
a touch to your hand threw you from your mind, the king holding your hand gently as he insisted again, "you can be free from them."
he was the opposite of jaime in nearly every way, in regards to the physical and personality. auburn hair versus gold, curls as opposed to straight locks, blue eyes against green, freckled skin counter to jaime's smooth tan. and then, there was the fact that there wasn't a single stark who had ever broken an oath, and at this point, jaime was an expert at it. that along with lying, scheming, killing, and cheating.
robb was honest. you'd learned as much in this simple conversation, much easier than any real conversation you'd had with jaime.
and yet you wish that you had had these conversations with jaime. perhaps they would've endeared him more to you.
robb stark was an honorable man, a just one too. and those gorgeous blue eyes certainly didn't hurt as they held yours with a sort of promise you weren't used to.
still, you sighed. "i can't."
his brows knitted; the king was perplexed. "you can't? you owe them nothing."
"i swore an oath," you told him. "in our vows, jaime and i promised each other our lives. it is my duty to stand by him."
"do you understand what i'm offering you?" he asked, searching your eyes for a moment. he squeezed your hand, nodding as though it would encourage you to say yes. "freedom from him. you will not be bound by him or his family any longer. i am a king, i can annul your marriage."
you smiled small. "you are king in the north, your grace," you said slowly. "but not in the south. my vows were said in the south. you cannot break them, and neither should i."
he didn't understand you, not in the slightest. he shook his head. "you have a clever mind," he told you. "i should like that you be by my side, and join my council. you know tywin better than most, you can help us. stay, aid me, and i will be king in the south, and you will be free."
there was something in his eyes, a warmth and near desperation about him that made you curious. and it made you wonder about his true intentions.
you raised a brow. "are you looking for a queen, your grace?"
"no," he answered shortly, but then he grinned lopsidedly, tilting his head. "but, if you're offering..." you rolled your eyes, breathing out a laugh as you took a step away. he chuckled, pulling you by your hand to stand in front of him again as he shook his head. "i would not ask that of you if it weren't your intentions. though, if after this war is complete and you find yourself husbandless... i wouldn't mind getting to know you better."
you couldn't help but laugh again, much more amused this time. "is this your way of telling me you're not willing to trade for jaime? you going to kill him instead?"
"nah," he said with a grin, shaking his head. "he's worth nothing to me dead." you chuckled again and he watched you with a softening smile. "you have a kind soul. arya wrote as much in her letters home."
"she wrote of me?" you asked with raised brows.
he nodded, smile remaining. "a lot. said you spent too much time with sansa, though."
you scoffed, rolling your eyes good-naturedly. "i spent time with all of them. it was all i had to do in the capital."
"well, there is much to do here," he hummed. mischief glinted in his eye as he continued, grinning, "and in winterfell."
"it is a beautiful keep," you answered with a nod.
"it is," he agreed. a great pause passed between you both, his eyes flicking quickly over your features. then, he let out a sharp breath, "the kingslayer doesn't deserve a woman as beautiful as you."
you laughed, shaking your head. "you're too young to say that, your grace."
he raised his brows, smirking. "oh? and you're not half lannister's age?"
"nine years is not half his age," you answered with a roll of your eyes.
he squeezed your hand, gaze flicking to your lips for just a moment before he told you softly, "well, i'd be willing to bet there's less than nine years between us."
you both knew he was right, given that jaime was even younger than robb's parents and you were already practically a decade younger than he. you'd be lying if you said that didn't entice you more to the king.
"i'm not too young to call you beautiful," he finished surely.
you had to focus a bit on your breathing as he looked to your lips again, not expecting this to be the way the evening ended. especially since you still hadn't come to a conclusion on whether he would trade for jaime or not.
jaime.
jaime.
the vile, yet beautiful man was likely covered in dirt and shivering in a cage at the edge of camp, all dreams of being rescued lost with the wind. and with it, any hope of restoring the lannister name to any sense of honor or pride.
your thoughts were cut short by a soft pair of lips pressing to yours, and a hand rising to cup your jaw just as gently.
it was near instinct to shut your eyes, to lean into his touch and into the kiss, even as his hand dropped yours to take hold of your waist and draw you closer to him, even as his kiss deepened and his mouth moved more firmly against your own. your hands rose to his shoulders, one threading through the curls at the nape of his neck and reminding you of how jaime's felt in your grasp.
you raised onto your tiptoes to reach him better and he dipped down to meet you, but it wasn't exactly what you'd wanted. normally, jaime would just tilt your chin where he needed it, and you were happy to let him. robb came to you, not half as lazy in his kiss, and yet it was odd to you.
in fact, this whole situation was odd to you.
it felt wonderful to kiss a man who was actually decent, especially when he pulled you flat against his chest so you could feel the firm muscles that definitely proved to you that he was not the boy you'd met in winterfell near a year prior. especially when his hand ran over your side and tugged at your waist, and when his tongue ran questioningly over your bottom lip.
except, you hardly knew him, and he was the king of an opposing kingdom, fighting against your husband. oh, yeah, and you had a husband.
you pushed away from him, gasping as you stepped back and looked up at him with wide eyes. instantly, his brows furrowed, but he didn't try to approach you again, just held a hand up in wonder.
"i shouldn't have," he started, fumbling with his words for a moment. "i'm sorry. you didn't want me to kiss you."
except you did.
you ran a hand through your hair, shaking your head as you stepped back again. "it's not..." you sighed. "it's not your fault. it's fine, i just - i can't. i'm married, your grace."
"robb," he said then. he tried at a small smile. "you're free to call me robb."
but, you shook your head again, offering him a thin, nervous smile. "i shouldn't. i fear we've already gotten too comfortable."
that made him laugh gently, but you didn't want to hear it. his words, his voice, his face, his body, his laugh, it was all too perfect and too tempting and making you question everything you'd come here so determined to do.
you just hadn't expected the king in the north to be so grown and so charming, even if he had been kind to you once back at winterfell.
"i'm married," you reminded thinly, trying at an awkward smile as he eyed you thoughtfully.
"and if you weren't?" he asked then. when you faltered and avoided his gaze, he stepped forward again, not touching you, but catching your attention nonetheless. "he cheated on you with his own sister. for the entirety of your marriage he has broken his oath to you."
"no need to remind me," you said, taking in a deep breath as you stepped away from him towards the door.
"i fear you need to be reminded," he said, knitting his brows. "y/n... you owe him nothing. he's done nothing but wrong against you."
he wasn't wrong. jaime had done everything wrong since you'd been married. and yet, you were still his wife, and he was still your husband. you didn't want to participate in the lying and scheming that your family did - lannisters or tyrells. all of it frustrated you to the point that you ran from king's landing with a lame attempt to rebrand a centuries old house famed for its glory and greed.
you met his eyes again, resolute suddenly in the one thing you knew of a surety. "his sins do not absolve my own," you told him softly. he sighed and moved to answer, but you started again. "i am a woman of my word, your grace, without it i am nothing. i have nothing. and unfortunately for us all, my word and my life belongs to jaime lannister. will you allow me to trade for him?"
thrown off by your sudden demand to get back on track, the king faltered, mouth open for a few moments before thought returned to him. and he shook his head.
"no," he told you. "i'm not in the market to trade the kingslayer."
"jaime," you said. "his name is jaime. and i will give you your sisters in return for him."
again, he just stared at you for a few moments before stepping away fully. "i cannot ensure that my sisters will be brought to me," he told you. "i'll keep him with me until i reach king's landing when i can see their faces myself."
"please," you tried then. "the girls can't stand for much longer there. cersei is cruel, joffrey is cruel to sansa, and i'm not even sure arya is still there. she's been missing for days, there isn't time."
"if they were of such a worry to you, you would've brought them now," he said with a shake of his head.
"sansa refused and arya is gone," you told him sternly, a frown settling on your lips. "trust me, your grace, i tried. but, it seems the two of you are on the same page - she'd rather wait for you in the capital."
he nodded shortly. "i suppose i should get to it then."
he passed you, making his way quickly to the door, but you caught his arm with a sigh. "robb."
he met your eyes, raising a brow at the use of his name. "yes?"
"i promised your father i would get your sisters back to the north," you told him, trying not to get caught up too badly in his baby blues. "i intend to make good on that promise."
he smiled small, nodding once. "yes. you are a woman of your word, as you've said." simultaneously, you both let out short sighs, and you watched the other. finally, he added quietly, "if you want to see him, you can. but, i'll escort you."
for a moment, you didn't want to. the thought of seeing him after knowing that he'd been sleeping with cersei for fifteen years made you want to heave, but then you stopped.
you wanted to know why. you wanted to know that it had happened, and hear it from him. you wanted him to confess and apologize, if he was capable of it.
and you wanted to know why he'd left that note for you.
you nodded, mustering a small smile. "thank you."
he searched your eyes for a reason, and you wondered if he found one when he said, "come on," and then pulled his arm from you and stepped through the tent door, holding it open for you to follow.
it's the way i wrote a whole chapter for one conversation with robb stark. i'm in love. hopefully we all are understanding miss girl's motivations now though - the whole "don't be like the lannisters" thing, be honest and good, even when the king in the north is actively seeking you out
supper with the starks was easy and quickly became routine. you never spoke of anything too grave for the girls' ears, and when you approached him with the topics after their leave (wondering mostly of the rumors about him visiting the city and questioning robert's whores, about his intrigue with jon arryn's last words), he seemed weary of you.
you couldn't blame him. a rose in the skin of a lioness questioning the wolf - it wasn't a good look.
but, still, he was kind to you and you appreciated his company.
"you ask a lot of questions," he hummed, resting his forearms against his desk as a small smile pulled at his lips.
"i have to, my lord," you answered, breathing out a laugh. "otherwise no one tells me anything. and even when i ask, they still don't tell me anything."
it was true. other than whispers and gossip around the keep, you knew nothing about the obvious dramatics happening around you. cersei was conspiring, that much you were sure, because she was requiring more of jaime and had been making odd comments about the fate of the kingdom while at supper. robert was as oblivious as ever, especially when petyr baelish was sneaking about with even more wonder than usual.
even ned seemed on edge, and you were determined to reveal the cause.
one of the things you had managed to overhear was the attempted murder on lord stark's son. bran's mother and direwolf saved his life, but it was a mystery as to who had sent the hired knife in the first place.
everyone's weariness and suspect behavior around the keep made you wonder the connection between it all.
"perhaps it is wise of them to not tell you anything. there are certain things too heavy for shoulders that small," he told you, and though by his steady smile you knew he meant it in a fatherly sort of way, you grew a touch defensive.
"my shoulders are strong enough. i promise you that, my lord," you answered, lips pulling into a thin line. "if there's anything you feel you can trust me with, i'd greatly appreciate it. unfortunately, even my closest family are keeping me in the dark, and i'd only like to understand what's happening in the castle."
he considered you for a moment, furrowing his brows. "jaime hasn't spoken with you?"
"no, my lord," you said, shaking your head.
"and cersei?" he wondered then.
you snorted, letting a short smile through as you met his eyes again. "you'll find that the queen and i aren't as close as most sisters - though we're not truly sisters at all."
"don't you have true sisters, my lady?" he asked you, knitting his brows.
you shook your head. "i'm an only child. perhaps you're thinking of my cousins, margaery and alanna, both still safe at highgarden."
he nodded. "not married?"
"no," you said, humming loosely. "so far, i'm the only tyrell forced away from home." you paused, tilting your head. "do you see how easy it is to answer a few simple questions?"
ned chuckled softly, shaking his head. "i can't answer your questions, my dear, because i haven't the answers yet."
"but, you're looking?" you asked, raising your brows.
he paused for just a moment, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. then, he let out a breath, admitting a sore, "yes. i'm looking."
"for what, exactly?" was your next question as you leaned forward.
he smiled at you. "i admire your gall, lady tyrell, but unfortunately i cannot share such information at the moment. as soon as i come to a conclusion myself, i'll ensure that you are informed. i fear it will have much to do with you."
you knitted your brows. "much to do with me?" you repeated. "why would jon arryn's-"
you stopped, eyes widening as you breathed out a laugh. ned raised his brows, smile dropping as he tilted his head at you.
for everything olenna taught you, apparently she did not teach you discrepancy.
"i think it is time you left, my lady," he said with a nod, gesturing to the door.
you smiled thinly, nodding as you pushed from your chair. "i hope you'll still allow me to visit with your girls. they're lovely."
"they are," he agreed, though he didn't give you one answer or the other. he stood, bowing cordially. "have a good day."
"you as well, my lord," you said, curtsying in return before turning on your heel and exiting his office.
as you padded down the stairs to the tower of the hand you let out a heavy sigh. that would teach you to be blunt. unfortunately, it seemed, even with starks this game was played in whispers and silent alliances.
you left the tower feeling slightly foolish, but also certain: there was something amiss in the castle, and no one trusted you enough to say it aloud.
the red keep was quieter at dusk, the shadows bouncing off the halls in almost an eery sort of way. the sun dropped low until finally it dipped below the cover of the walls, leaving you in dim light as you walked the corridors towards your rooms.
supper had finished shortly with the starks and you weren't expecting jaime to be back for some time, which left you an evening to yourself.
which was good. there was much you needed to do.
you locked the door behind you after entering, kicking off your shoes and crossing quickly to the desk you shared with jaime. you lit the candles with a careful hand, blowing out the match and tossing it into the bin beside the desk. then, as you sat, you reached to undo the tie on your corset, letting out a relieved breath at the instantaneous comfort that came with it. now relaxed, you reached for two pieces of parchment and your quill, unfolding the first and dipping your pen into the inkpot to begin.
dearest grandmother,
i find myself at odds with this place and the people in it. i regret to inform you that i am actually beginning to miss casterly rock. if that doesn't tell you anything, i'm not sure i can help you understand further.
there is something happening here in the capital, i'm sure of it. unfortunately, i haven't been able to deduce exactly what - no one wishes to speak of it. i've never felt more helpless and clueless in my life, and i would like to remedy this quickly. it's not right for a tyrell to be ignorant.
you told me once that i must learn to play by the rules of the game as they are, not as i wish they were. please tell me how i can survive a table of liars and cheats without becoming one myself, and how i can convince a liar to tell the truth for once. or, at the least, how to deduce the truth from their lies.
i hope all is well in highgarden. i quite miss it as of late.
your favorite granddaughter
you smiled slightly as you signed the parchment, blowing on the ink to make it dry quicker. once it became matte, you sealed it with the small rose stamp your grandmother had gifted you on your wedding day. the green wax glistened in the candlelight and the sight of it made your smile soften ever so much.
rolling it and tying it with a green ribbon, you then set it to the side and turned to the second piece of parchment.
you let out a short breath as you began, dipping your pen again and putting more careful thought into the next bit.
lord tywin lannister,
i find myself missing your company the longer i stay in king's landing. this place is vile and filled with secrets, and has no favor for our name. when the people think of the lannisters, they think of a cruel queen and a betrayer kingsguard, not of the power and honor i know you wish for.
i write to you not as your daughter by law, but as one looking to restore the lannister name to its former glory. i have done my best to establish myself amongst the people, but i fear cersei and jaime are continually losing favor.
you have taught me many lessons in our time together and i am in need of one now. how does one make the lion beloved when the world has grown tired of its roar?
lady y/n lannister
this one was stamped with jaime's stamp and a deep red wax.
you sat back, eyes flicking between both sealed letters - one a thorny rose, and the other a roaring lion. two sides of yourself, perhaps.
the door opened harshly, a heavy sigh sending your heart soaring in your chest as you pushed the letters to the side and turned sharply.
emerald eyes met yours, both wide as they met the other's. jaime slowly pushed the door closed, locking it and kicking off his boots. "hello, darling."
"jaime," you answered, mustering a thin smile. "you're early. i didn't expect you back until late."
"yes, well, you've chastised me enough about that so i thought i'd come home at a decent time," he told you, matching your expression as he pulled at the ties of his tight leather tunic.
home.
he'd never referred to anything to do with you as his home, and yet he just had.
maybe there was some progress being made between you.
"well, thank you for being aware," you said, turning more fully to him and pulling your hand away from the letters.
still, he caught sight of them. approaching you with long strides, he raised a brow. "been writing?"
"i haven't been back to highgarden in years," you explained. "i've been missing my grandmother."
"and the other?" he asked, nodding to the lion-marked seal.
"your father," you hummed, mustering a gentle smile. you'd sworn to tell the truth, so you would. though, it may require a bit of bending. "believe it or not, i grew fond of the man during my time at casterly rock."
he seemed amused as he leaned back against the desk, eying you. "just checking in on the rock, then?"
"what else have i to do?" you asked in return, tilting your head. "despite the size of this city, there is very little to do." he opened his mouth to respond, but you cut him off with a sigh. "and do not tell me to spend time with your sister one more time. you know as well as i that she practically despises me."
"despise is such a harsh word," he said, smirking a bit. "she's just... protective is all."
you hummed, sitting back and crossing your arms over your chest. "that must be why we don't get along, then, because so am i."
he held your gaze for several long moments before pushing off the edge and reaching a hand to brush your hair gently from your face, fingers stalling at your jaw. "how are you feeling tonight?"
"sore," you answered honestly, the corner of your lips quirking slightly as you pulled jaime's hand from your face to hold it in yours instead. "you?"
he shrugged, smirking still. "sore." he kissed you anyways, free hand finding your chin as he tilted your lips up to meet his.
you pulled back with a small smile, standing and crossing the room. "you're an impatient man."
"one of my fatal flaws," he agreed, shrugging as he stepped towards you with a sideways grin.
"and unfortunately i'm a demanding woman," you continued. "i'd like you to tell me about your day first. talk to me, like husband and wife would."
he let out a breath of a laugh. "what modern husband and wife truly discuss their days?"
"just because cersei and robert don't doesn't mean it isn't common practice, jaime. ned and catelyn stark are rather in love. my grandparents too. from what he's told me, your father loved your mother a lot," you answered. "it's not impossible."
though, with the disappointed and sort of apologetic look crossing his features, you wondered if it was for the two of you.
"it's not," he confirmed, nodding once.
and he said nothing more.
instead, he crossed to the wardrobe and began undressing, changing into his night clothes and tossing the dirtied ones into the hamper beside the desk.
you glanced at your letters, sighing through your nose.
you hoped you would get responses soon.
the next morning you sent the ravens off, praying for quick flights, and by the time you returned to your rooms to prepare for lunch with the girls it was midday.
and jaime was there, and in a panic.
"jaime?" you asked, brows knitted. "what's happened?"
he shoved a few pieces of clothes into a bag, turning and scribbling something onto a slip of parchment. "the starks have captured tyrion and refuse to give him back. we got in a bit of a scuffle and now i'm going to casterly rock."
"casterly rock?" you echoed, worry evident in your tone as you stepped towards him. "why?"
"this is how war works, darling," he sighed, signing his name at the bottom of the paper and leaving it there before turning sharply to you. "we attack and they retaliate. i would like my army behind me before they do."
"war?" you asked with raised brows. "jaime, you can't go to war with the starks."
"and why not?" he answered, knitting his brows and frowning as though what you'd just told him was the single most idiotic thing you could've said.
"there's already something happening in the city, i can feel it. this conflict is unnecessary and preventable. what charges are they levying against tyrion?" you said.
"they say he conspired to kill their son bran," he told you.
you frowned. "alright, well, he obviously didn't. all we have to do is give him a fair trial and prove his innocence. there is no need for violence."
he laughed, shaking his head. he raised a hand to your jaw, running his thumb over your cheekbone as he clicked his tongue thrice. "oh, my sweet wife. how naive you are when it comes to the ways of the world."
and then he moved swiftly past you, making way for the door.
infuriated for just a moment, you whirled around and demanded quickly, "i'm coming with you."
and then, he laughed again, shaking his head as his hand found the doorknob. "you're not."
"i am," you told him sternly, and he finally stopped to look at you. "if you are going to be at casterly rock, then i will be there too. i should not like to be here when war breaks out."
"it is the safest place for you to be," he answered with a shake of his head.
"no, casterly rock is," you said with a furrow heavy between your brows. "i don't know this place, jaime, and its people seem to hate us. or, you, more like. i'm better off at casterly rock with you and your father."
"we will be leaving practically as soon as i arrive."
"even better for me to be there and run the place in your absence," you said, raising your hands as if you'd just solved the problem entirely.
he stilled for just a moment, expression hardening before he shook his head. "it isn't your place," he told you, voice lower than you'd expected. "one day it will be. one day you will be the lady of casterly rock, but that is not this day."
you sighed. "yes, but i'm still a lannister-"
"hardly," he said, eyes boring into yours as his lips thinned into an uncharacteristic frown.
every small moment, every little touch and nickname and attempt to better your marriage seemed to slip away. with one word, all your progress with jaime unravelled, and your heart fell with it.
you froze, and never before had you felt such frustration and anger boil in your chest, overtaking the sudden sadness. your hands shook at your side before you raked one through your loose hair, glancing away from him with a disbelieving laugh. "all i do for you and your damned house and this is the response i get."
"what the hell have you done for my house?" he asked, tilting his head. "you sat at casterly rock for four years and did nothing. you come to king's landing and do nothing. you refuse to make friends with my sister, to wear my colors, to call yourself by our name, and yet you're offended when i tell you that it isn't yours."
"and you're right in that!" you said, hands flying out in frustration. "it's not my name. but, i'm trying to mend that, i'm trying to make it mine."
"well, you can stop," he answered coldly. "we have it well under control."
you simply held his eyes, unable to hide the plain sneer on your lips as you shook your head. "i hope you lose your fruitless war," you told him then. "i hope the starks beat you."
he smiled. "at least that way you wouldn't be my concern anymore, and you'd be left to the dogs." he pulled the door open. "goodbye, wife."
it slammed harshly behind him and with it came your shout of frustration. there wasn't a single moment in which you had a leg up on anyone or anything in this damned castle. and still, you hadn't a clue of what was even happening.
so you did something about it.
you marched quickly down the corridors towards the hand's tower, climbing the steps and finding the queen fleeing ned's bedroom, a dark red mark beginning to form on her cheek. you looked to her with a frown. "what's happened?"
"haven't you heard?" she asked with a thin smile. "our house is being attacked."
she pushed past you and descended the stairs quickly, even as you turned to ask her more questions. you grunted out a frustrated sigh, moving to the door, but being stopped by the gracious ser barristan.
"my lady," he sighed, holding a hand to keep you from the door. "you shouldn't be here."
"and why not?" you asked, frowning still.
"lord stark is speaking with the king, and well, his injury has made him irritable. especially if he were to see you," the older man answered honestly.
you knitted your brows. "he's hurt? did jaime do this?" he nodded once and you let out a frustrated sigh, running your hand through your hair again. "how bad is it?"
"lord stark's leg is severely wounded and half of his guard was killed in the attack," he told you with a grimace.
your eyes snapped to his. "his guard? is ser jory alright?" just barristan's expression alone was enough to tell you that your fast friend had fallen in your husband's violence, and your heart fell heavy to your stomach. "i see."
you hadn't expected this to happen in a million years, though you hadn't thought much about the starks' investigation of who attempted to murder bran in his sleep. you knew it was likely undergoing at the moment, but you never once considered that tyrion would even be a suspect.
what cause would the youngest son of tywin lannister have to kill a boy of ten? though, what cause would anyone have to kill a boy of ten?
unless, you realized then, he'd seen or heard something in winterfell that he wasn't meant to hear.
and since his fall wasn't enough to silence him, a more efficient murder would have to do.
but, what did bran hear, and what would tyrion of all people have to hide?
"i must offer my condolences," you told ser barristan. "i had nothing to do with my husband's actions, and i fear what will happen if we do not remedy them quickly."
"i admire your concern, my lady, but i would advise you to wait a while," he told you gently, offering a short smile. "the conflict between the starks and the lannisters began long before you married lord jaime, and it won't be solved in a single conversation."
"what will solve it?" you asked, looking up with knitted brows.
he had given you more information than you'd received in the months of you being here, and you predicted that his wisdom would be the most you'd get for a long time.
the lord commander of the kingsguard shrugged then, letting out a sore sigh. "i've recently began to wonder the same, my lady."
"if even you're wondering," you breathed out softly. "then, perhaps none of us know how to stop it."
And what if I said reader got the ick from Ormund after he pulled a muscle after the rough sex incident and that contributed to her leaving because she was like “fuck I need someone that’s not this old” 😭🤭 Ormund needs to suffer, the men don’t suffer enough
The Ick (Pathetick)
Ormund Hightower X Reader
Part of the ''The Whore'' series
TW: possessive husband | extreme jealousy | accusations of infidelity/incest (false; jealousy over stepson) | emotional and verbal abuse | rough/punitive sex | degradation | humiliation | unhealthy relationship dynamics
The evening had started so well, that was the thought you kept returning to, later, as you lay in the dark with the blankets pulled up to your chin and the silence pressing in around you like a living thing. The evening had started so well, and now here you were, staring at the canopy overhead, your body still aching, your cheeks still tacky with dried tears, your mind turning over and over the thing that had just happened.
Supper in the great hall had been a lively affair. The long trestle tables had been crowded with household knights and visiting bannermen and the usual retinue of servants and attendants, and the noise of conversation and clattering plates had filled the vaulted space with a warm, convivial din. You had been seated at Ormund's right hand, as always, your chair positioned just slightly closer to his than was strictly necessary, a placement that made you feel cherished or like a possession on display depending on the situation.
The children had been in good spirits. Even Lyonel.
Lyonel, your stepson, who at seven and ten was caught in that awkward limbo between boyhood and manhood, his limbs too long for his body and his voice prone to cracking at the worst possible moments. He had been sullen when you first arrived in Oldtown, retreating into silence whenever you entered a room, answering your attempts at conversation with monosyllables and shrugs. You had understood. You were only two years older than him, a stranger who had married his father and taken his mother's place, and he did not know what to make of you. But lately, slowly, things had been thawing. Lately, he had been looking at you with something other than resentment. Lately, he had been smiling.
Tonight, he had been positively animated, he had leaned forward across the table during the second course, his dark curls falling into his eyes—the same dark curls as his father—and asked if you might teach him some High Valyrian.
"Father says you speak it fluently," he had said, his voice earnest. "And I thought it might be useful. For when I am lord someday. For diplomacy and such."
You had been genuinely, sincerely pleased. This was progress. This was the connection you had been hoping for, the bridge between you and these children who were now, legally and spiritually, your own.
"I would be honored," you had said, smiling. "It is not an easy language, but you seem clever enough to manage it. We can start with the basics tomorrow, if you like."
His face had lit up. "Truly? I would like that very much. Thank you, my lady."
"Call me Y/N," you had said, and you had reached across the corner of the table and touched his arm. Just a brief touch, your fingers brushing the sleeve of his tunic. A gesture of encouragement.
You had not noticed the way Ormund's knife had stilled on his plate. You had not noticed the way his jaw had tightened, the way his eyes had fixed on the spot where your fingers had brushed his son's sleeve, the way his knuckles had gone white around the handle of his cup.
You had been too happy. Too comfortable. Too secure in the belief that you had done nothing wrong, now you were paying for it.
The walk to your chambers had been silent. Ormund had not spoken a single word as you climbed the winding stairs of the Hightower, your footsteps echoing on the ancient stone. He had walked a pace behind you—usually he walked beside you, his hand on the small of your back, a gesture of guidance and possession—and the absence of that touch had felt like a warning.
You had tried to fill the silence with chatter, nervous and light. "Lyonel seems to be doing well. His studies are progressing, I think. He has a good mind for languages—he asked about Valyrian declensions, the fact that he asked me and not a measter—"
Ormund had said nothing. "He has been much warmer lately," you had continued, your voice growing thinner with each unanswered sentence. "I think he is finally starting to accept me. It has been difficult for him, I know, with his mother gone and a new wife in the household, but I really do think we are making progress—"
Ormund had said nothing. You had reached the door to your chambers. He had opened it and gestured for you to enter, and you had stepped inside, your heart beginning to beat faster, your palms suddenly damp. The room was warm but you felt cold. Cold in the way you always felt cold when he looked at you like that.
He closed the door behind him. The latch clicked into place with a sound that was very soft and very final, he walked to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of wine. He did not offer you any. He drank it in one long, slow swallow, his back to you, his shoulders rigid. Then he set the cup down with a deliberate, careful motion that was somehow more frightening than a slam would have been.
"Ormund?" Your voice came out small. Uncertain. "Is something wrong?"
He turned, the look on his face made your stomach drop. It the look of a man who was holding himself in check, who was savoring the anticipation of what was to come. "Take off your dress," he said.
"Ormund, what—"
"Take. It. Off."
You had obeyed. You always obeyed. Your fingers had moved to the laces of your gown with a trembling urgency, fumbling with the ties, and the silk had pooled around your feet in a whisper of fabric. You had stepped out of it, standing before him in your thin shift, your bare arms prickling with goosebumps. The fire was warm at your back, but the cold was inside you.
He crossed the room slowly, the footsteps of a man who had all the time in the world. When he reached you, he took your chin in his hand and tilted your face up to his. His grip was firm. Just shy of painful. "You were very friendly with Lyonel tonight," he said.
Your brow furrowed in genuine, uncomprehending confusion. "Lyonel? He asked about Valyrian. I told him I would teach him. He is finally warming to me—I thought you would be pleased—"
"You touched him." His thumb pressed into the soft flesh beneath your jaw. "You put your hand on his arm. You leaned close to him. You smiled at him as if he were your suitor, not your husband's son."
"Suitor?" The word came out as a startled, incredulous laugh—not because it was funny, but because it was so absurd, so utterly ridiculous, that your mind could not process it as anything else. "Ormund, he is ten and seven. He is a child. Your child. He has spots on his chin and his voice still cracks when he gets excited. I was being kind to him because he is my stepson and because I want our family to—"
"Our family." His voice was ice. "You are not his mother. You are my wife. And I will not have my wife making eyes at a boy barely out of the nursery."
"I was not making eyes—"
"You were." His grip tightened, and the words died in your throat. "I saw you. Everyone at that table saw you. Leaning toward him like a flower toward the sun, touching his arm, batting your lashes. Do you think I am blind? Do you think I am a fool?"
"I think you are being insane." The words slipped out before you could stop them, fueled by frustration and disbelief. "Lyonel is your son. I have never—I would never—the very idea is disgusting—"
"Disgusting." He released your chin and stepped back, his expression unreadable. "Yes. It is disgusting. And yet you did it anyway. You sat at my table, in front of my household, and you made a spectacle of yourself with a boy who is young enough to be your brother."
"He is two years younger than me. He is practically my peer—"
"Precisely."
The word hung in the air between you, heavy with implication. Your peer. Someone your own age. Someone young and unlined and full of the vitality that you should have been sharing with a husband who was not twenty years your senior.
"You are my wife," he said, and his voice had dropped lower now, rougher. "You belong to me. And I will not have you forgetting that. I will not have you behaving like a—"
He stopped himself before the word came out. But you heard it anyway, hanging in the silence like a foul smell.
Whore. He had been about to call you a whore. Again.
Something in your chest crumpled. Your eyes burned with the threat of tears, and you blinked rapidly, trying to hold them back. You did not want to cry. You did not want to give him the satisfaction, but then his hands were on you, pulling at your shift, dragging it over your head, and there was no more time for thinking. No more time for arguing. Only the cold command of his voice and the rough insistence of his touch and the overwhelming, suffocating weight of his body pressing you down onto the bed.
His hands were rough, his grip too tight, his pace punishing and fast. He positioned you the way he wanted you—on your stomach, your face pressed into the pillows, your hips raised—and he took what he wanted without preamble, without any of the whispered endearments that usually accompanied your coupling.
"You are mine," he said, his voice strained and harsh against the back of your neck. "Say it."
"I am yours," you gasped.
"Louder."
"I am yours."
"Good. And do you know why I have to do this?" He punctuated the question with a particularly hard thrust that drove the breath from your lungs. "Do you know why I have to remind you who you belong to?"
"Because I forget," you said, the words coming out in a sobbing gasp. "Because I forget who I belong to."
"Yes." Another thrust. "You forget. You smile at other men. You touch them. You lean close and let them look at you and you forget that you are mine. So I have to remind you. This is what happens when you forget."
"I did not forget," you whimpered, your fingers clutching at the sheets, your body rocking with each brutal thrust. "I was only being kind—"
"You were being careless." His hand fisted in your hair. "Thoughtless. Reckless. The same way you were careless with that dress, the same way you were careless with Aegon at the feast. You never think. You never consider how your actions reflect on me, on my house, on my name. So I have to think for you. I have to correct you. Do you understand?"
"Yes," you sobbed, though you did not understand, not really. You did not understand how a touch on the arm could be worthy of this—this cold, punishing, relentless taking that felt nothing like love and everything like retribution.
"Good. Now be quiet. I am not finished with you."
You were crying. You had been crying for a while now, you could feel the tears streaming down your cheeks, soaking into the pillow beneath your face, mixing with the sweat that slicked your skin. Your body was trembling, overwrought and overstimulated, caught somewhere between pain and a pleasure you did not want to feel. You hated that your body still responded to him. You hated that even now, even like this, he could coax a reaction from you that you could not control.
He was saying something else but you were not listening anymore. You had stopped listening. You had retreated somewhere deep inside yourself, somewhere safe, somewhere his words could not reach.
"Fuck," he said, it was a groan. A pained, breathless, agonized groan. The kind of sound a man made when something had gone very, very wrong.
You turned your head, confused and lost, your vision still blurry with tears, your body still trembling, your mind still struggling to catch up with what had just happened. He had rolled off you and was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to you. His posture was wrong, hunched and contorted, his spine curved at an angle that looked almost grotesque. One hand was pressed hard against his lower back, his fingers splayed and rigid. His shoulders were up around his ears. Somehow still half-hard. His breathing was ragged and uneven, each exhale tinged with a barely suppressed sound of pain.
"Ormund?" Your voice came out as a croak, hoarse from crying and muffled by the pillow. "What—what happened?"
"Nothing." The word was bitten off, sharp and defensive. "I am fine."
He was clearly, patently, absurdly not fine. He tried to straighten, and another spasm of pain shot through him—you saw it happen, saw his whole body seize up, saw his teeth clench so hard the muscles in his jaw stood out like cords. He made that sound again. That awful, old-man sound. A grunt of pain that was half gasp and half groan.
"Did you—" You pushed yourself up on your elbows, your hair a tangled mess around your face, your skin sticky and damp. "Did you hurt yourself?"
"I pulled a muscle." The words came out through gritted teeth, each one a separate, painful effort. "In my back. It seized up. It is nothing."
You stared at him, and the tears were still wet on your cheeks, and your body was still aching from the force of his thrusts, and your mind was still reeling from the accusations he had hurled at you. And now—now he was sitting on the edge of the bed, half-naked and hunched and groaning, clutching his lower back like a decrepit grandfather who had tried to lift something too heavy.
Your husband, your powerful, commanding, dominant husband, hunched over like a gargoyle on a rooftop, his spine contorted, his face twisted in a grimace of pain and humiliation.
Because he had pulled a muscle. During sex. While he was trying to punish you. While he was trying to remind you who was in control. The absurdity of it hit you like a wave. A hysterical, disbelieving, almost giddy wave that rose up from somewhere deep in your chest and threatened to spill out of your mouth in a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. You bit your lip hard, forcing it down, forcing yourself to stay quiet.
"Can you—" Your voice came out strange. Thick. "Can you move? Should I fetch a maester?"
"No." The word was almost a snarl. "I do not need a maester. I do not need anyone. I just need—I just need a moment."
He tried to straighten again. The muscle seized again. He made that sound again—that grunting, gasping, humiliating sound—and hunched even further forward, his hand pressing so hard against his lower back that his knuckles went white.
You should have felt sympathy. You should have felt concern. A good wife would have rushed to his side, would have helped him lie down, would have sent for a warm compress and a maester and done everything in her power to ease his suffering.
But you were not feeling like a good wife right now, you were feeling like a woman who had just been accused of trying to seduce her stepson. A woman who had just been taken roughly and coldly as punishment for a crime she had not committed. A woman who had been crying into her pillow while her husband grunted and thrust and called her careless and thoughtless and forgetful.
And now he was the one who could not move.
You watched him, and something strange was happening inside you. Something you did not have a name for. A cold, distant detachment. You were looking at him and you were seeing things you had not noticed before.
The way his shoulders were not as broad as they once were. The way the skin on his back was beginning to sag, just slightly, around the edges of his shoulder blades. The way his hair—when had his hair gotten so grey? Not just at the temples anymore, but threaded through the dark, spreading like frost across a winter field. The way his body was not the body of a young man, not the body of the knights in the songs and stories, but the body of a man who had lived nearly four decades and was feeling every one of them. He was old.
You had always known, that your husband was older than you. Twenty years older, to be precise. It had been a fact, a number, something that other people commented on but that had never felt real to you. He was your husband. He was Ormund. He was the man you loved, the man you had chosen, the man who had courted you and won you and made you his.
But now, looking at him—hunched and groaning and utterly, pathetically vulnerable—it was suddenly, viscerally real.
He was old.
His body was failing him. His back had given out in the middle of a sexual act. He had been trying so hard to be dominant, to be powerful, to be the man who could punish his young wife for her supposed transgressions—and his own body had betrayed him in the most intimate, most humiliating way possible.
Your husband was clutching his back like a decrepit invalid because he had been too vigorous in his attempts to put you in your place, and he looked pathetic.
You pushed the feeling down, horrified at yourself. This was your husband. This was the man you loved. You should not be feeling this. You should not be looking at him like he was a stranger, like he was something pitiable and slightly repulsive. You should be sympathetic. You should be concerned. You should be a good wife.
But the feeling would not go away. It sat in your chest like a stone, heavy and cold and immovable. He tried to shift his position, and the muscle seized again, and he made that sound again—that grunting, gasping, old-man sound—and something inside you curled up and died.
"I am going to lie down," he said, his voice strained. "I just need to—I just need to find the right angle—"
He eased himself down onto the mattress in a series of awkward, ungraceful movements. First onto his side, then rolling slowly, carefully, onto his stomach, his hand never leaving his lower back. He ended up face-down on the mattress, his head turned to one side, his arms braced awkwardly beneath him. He looked like a turtle that had been flipped onto its back and was struggling to right itself. He looked like an invalid being arranged by a maester. He looked, frankly, pathetic.
And he knew it.
That was the worst part. That was the part that made the silence so thick and suffocating. He knew exactly how humiliating this was. You could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders—shoulders that were still, even now, too stubborn to fully relax. You could see it in the way he would not look at you, would not turn his head, would not meet your eyes. You could see it in the tips of his ears, which had gone a deep, mortified red.
He was embarrassed. He was utterly, completely, devastatingly embarrassed.
And he should be, a small, vicious part of you whispered. He should be embarrassed. He just spent the last quarter-hour accusing you of trying to seduce his teenage son. He just took you like a brute, made you cry, called you careless and thoughtless. And now he is the one who cannot move. Now he is the one who is pathetic and weak.
You did not say any of this. You did not say anything at all. You just lay there on your side of the bed and watched him struggle.
"Are you—" he started, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Are you all right?"
"I am fine," you said, your voice was flat.
Silence.
"It was the angle," he said suddenly, his voice defensive and tight. "I was at a bad angle. My leg was twisted, and the muscle just—it just seized up. It could have happened to anyone. It has nothing to do with—with anything else."
"I am sure," you said.
"It is not because I am old." The word came out like a curse, sharp and bitter. "If that is what you are thinking. It is not. It was a bad angle. That is all."
You said nothing. He turned his head on the pillow, trying to look at you, but you were on his bad side and the movement pulled at the muscle. He winced and gave up, settling back into his awkward, face-down position.
"I am not old," he said again. Quieter this time. More to himself than to you.
You did not answer. You did not know what to say. You did not know how to tell him that it did not matter whether the pulled muscle was because of his age or because of a bad angle. What mattered was that he had been inside you—cold and cruel and punishing—and then he had made that sound. That awful, grunting, old-man sound. And now you could not unhear it.
You pulled the blankets up to your chin and turned onto your side, away from him. The fire had burned down to embers, and the room was growing cold. You could feel the chill seeping through the stone walls, through the thin sheets, through the thin barrier of your own skin.
"I hope your back feels better in the morning," you said. The words were polite. Proper. The words of a dutiful wife.
"Y/N—"
"Goodnight, Ormund."
You closed your eyes, and as you drifted toward sleep, you held onto that image. The image of him hunched over on the edge of the bed, clutching his back, groaning in pain. The image of him pathetic and weak and old.
pairing: bobby franklin x f!reader x entity!bobby (bb)
contents/warnings: graphic violence, blood, body horror, self-worth issues, internalised blame/anger suppression, mentions of past emotional neglect in relationship.
notes: This part got very long so if there's crustiness I'm sorry, but this one is vvv important for overall plot and setting up future stuff. Genuinely thank you SO much for the insane amount of warmth and support on the series so far!
📹 better bobby series masterlist.
You wake up still pressed into his chest.
For a moment, you don't remember why, and then you do. All at once. The grin in the dark, the teeth, the wet, tearing sounds. Your whole body tightens. Better Bobby's hand is already on your back, moving up and down your spine, languid and unhurried, like he's been doing it for hours. Maybe he has.
You don't know how long you were out. Sleep here isn't sleep the way you understand it. It's more like your body surrenders to exhaustion while the yellow hum rocks you under, and when you surface, it's never with the feeling of having rested. Just the feeling of having stopped.
You pull back. Slightly. Just enough to see his face.
He lets you. His hand stills on your back but doesn't lift. He watches you with those pale eyes. They’re Bobby's eyes. Exactly Bobby's, the same shade, the same lashes, the same way they catch light and hold it. His expression remains open and patient under your scrutiny, and he doesn't fill the silence. He just waits. Let's you look at him.
You've never studied him this closely before. You've been careful not to. Because looking too hard at Better Bobby means seeing the places where the seams should be and aren't. Confronting how good the copy is, how flawless. The earring sits in his lobe at the exact same angle, and the chain drapes across his collarbone with the exact same weight.
Even the small scar on his jaw from when real Bobby walked into a cabinet door at nineteen is right there, a perfect replica of a wound that happened to someone else's body.
You sit up. Put distance between your body and his. Not much—a foot, maybe less—but enough that the air between you becomes a boundary instead of a shared warmth, and you see him register it. The slight tension at the corner of his mouth. The way his hand hovers where your back was and then settles, open-palmed, on the blanket beside him.
He doesn't chase you. He lets you keep your distance.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asks.
His voice is soft. Bobby's voice is never careful, not even this version, but soft, like someone asking a question they're not sure they want the answer to.
You don't answer that. Instead, you say, “Are you going to hurt me?”
He blinks.
“The way you hurt that thing.” Your voice is steadier than you expected. Flat, almost. The flatness of a person who’s run out of room for new fear and is now operating from somewhere clinical. Survival-practical. “Whatever it was. The sounds it made. The sounds you made.”
There’s movement behind his eyes. He doesn’t flinch, but you spot a shift, a recalibration, like a camera adjusting focus. He remembers what you heard. That low rumbling from his chest that didn't belong in any throat shaped like a human's.
“No,” he says. Immediate. No hesitation, no pause to consider. The word comes out of him with absolute certainty, like a reflex. “No. Never.”
You watch him closely. He looks back at you. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, casting that flat, shadowless yellow across everything. Better Bobby's face is open and sincere, but you don't believe him. Not completely. Not after what you heard through your closed eyelids. The shrieking and the wet dragging sound and the silence after, the horrible, total silence. The way he'd come back to you without a drop of anything on him. Like unmaking something in the dark was a minor errand.
And not after Bobby. Not after learning what it looks like when someone says I would never and means it and does it anyway. With the slow, grinding, erosive negligence of a man who might have loved you once but still started disappearing while standing right next to you.
Bobby never hit you. Never raised his voice in a way that carried a threat. Not once. Bobby simply stopped. Stopped seeing you, stopped hearing you, stopped reaching for you in the morning, and the absence was its own kind of violence, bloodless and total.
Now you're in a yellow hallway with a thing wearing his face telling you never with the same mouth and you cannot—you cannot—take that word at face value. Not from that face. Not anymore.
And he sees it. The disbelief. He reads it on your face the way real Bobby used to read light through a viewfinder. With instinctive precision, without needing to be told what he's seeing.
Better Bobby reaches out. Tips your chin up with one knuckle. Gentle. So gentle. Guiding your face back to his when you'd started to drift, to look away, to find a spot on the yellow wall that was easier to stare at than his eyes.
“Why do you think I chose this face?”
He says this face with an edge to his voice. Not quite contempt, not quite amusement. But snide. A little sharp. The closest thing to edge you've ever heard from Better Bobby. This brief flash of awareness that the face he's wearing belongs to someone else. Someone who wasted it, and he knows it, and he wears it anyway because—
You're silent.
Better Bobby smiles. Gentle. The sharpness folds back into warmth the way a blade folds back into a handle.
“I heard you,” he says quietly.
Your breath catches.
“From the other side. Through the wall.” He says it simply, his thumb working carefully over the dip of your chin. “He used to come to the store. Bobby. In the beginning. Before you worked the night shifts alone. He'd come hang out, and you'd be downstairs together, and I could hear you. Both of you. I could hear what it sounded like when he was still—” He pauses, expression twisting. You see him choose and settle on his next words. “When he was still trying.”
The lights flicker. Once. Settle again.
“And then he stopped coming. And you were alone down there. And I could hear that too.”
Your chest goes tight.
“You used to talk,” Better Bobby goes gently, watching your face. “Not to anyone. Not on the phone. Just—out loud. To the room. To yourself. To him, even though he wasn't there. Do you remember?” His thumb traces your jawline, feather-light. “You'd say things like he doesn't listen anymore. And he didn't kiss me goodbye again today, that's the third day in a row, am I keeping count now? Is that what I'm doing? Keeping count?”
Your eyes burn, blurring his familiar features.
“And I don't think he sees me. I'm standing right in front of him, and he's looking through me like I'm furniture. Like I'm one of Clark's display pieces. Something you walk around.”
“Stop,” you whisper.
He doesn't stop, but his voice goes softer. Almost tender.
“You were so lonely.” He says it like it's the saddest thing he's ever learned, and maybe it is. Maybe loneliness sounds different from the other side of a wall. Rawer, louder, the way a voice sounds in an empty room because there's nothing else to absorb it. “And so sad. And so angry, baby—”
You flinch because you don't—you weren't angry. You were hurt. That's a smaller, quieter, more acceptable thing than anger.
Because anger would mean admitting that what Bobby did wasn't just a failure of attention but a choice. Night after night after night, a man choosing the path of least resistance over the person lying next to him, and if you let yourself be angry about that, then the whole careful belief of maybe it's me, maybe I'm asking for too much, maybe love is supposed to feel like this after a while collapses, and what's underneath it is—
“—you were so angry, and you didn't even let yourself feel it. You said it like it was your fault. Like if you could just be more interesting or prettier or less needy, he'd—”
Hot, liquid feeling surges up from your chest to your throat. “Stop.”
He stops. But his eyes don't leave yours, and in them you can see that he knows. He heard it all, you realise. Every whispered self-indictment, every quiet renegotiation of your own worth to accommodate Bobby's shrinking attention.
He heard the thing underneath it too, the thing you buried so deep you forgot it was there.
The rage. The white-hot, screaming, incandescent fury of a woman who gave everything to a man who couldn't be bothered to look up from a television screen, who turned your love into background noise and let you stand in doorways wondering if you were still visible.
You buried it because anger felt like giving up. Because if you were angry, it meant something was wrong, and if something was wrong, it could be over. If it was over, then you'd given your whole heart to someone who let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, and that was unbearable. So you turned the anger inward instead, folded it into self-doubt, and let it eat you rather than the situation, because at least that way the situation could still be saved.
Better Bobby heard you bury it. He heard the burial, and he heard the body underneath it, and he's looking at you now with something that isn't pity or judgment. Isn't the performative concern that Bobby used to deploy in those final months when he bothered to notice you were hurting at all. That tight-jawed what's wrong that really meant please don't make me deal with this.
This is something else. Recognition. The look of a thing that knows what it sounds like when someone swallows their own rage until it poisons them. Until it makes them abandon everything they once knew for a world of yellow, buzzing lights and monsters in the dark.
“It wasn't you,” he says, his hand cupping your cheek. His palm is cool, his fingers curving, and he holds you there. There’s no force, no hard grip, he’s just holding. Cradling. The way you'd hold something you found in the dark that was shaking. “It was never you. You could've been perfect. You were perfect. And he still would've pulled away because that's what he does. That's how he's built. He gets close, and it scares him. So he retreats, and that's his malfunction, not yours.”
It’s then you start crying.
Not like earlier. After the attack. That was shock, adrenaline, your nervous system shorting out.
This is different. This is slow and terrible, coming from somewhere so deep you didn't know the room existed.
It's the crying you should've done months ago, in the apartment in Santa Clara, on the nights when Bobby was asleep three feet away, and you were staring at the ceiling, wondering when you became the kind of woman who measures love in absences. He didn't kiss me today. He didn't ask about my day. He didn't look up. Keeping count. Tallying the deficit. The anger you didn't let yourself feel and the grief you couldn't afford mixed with the loneliness you absorbed like radiation, quietly, invisibly, until it changed the composition of your bones.
Better Bobby pulls you in when the first sob breaks. Slow and careful, his arms folding around you, and your face presses into his chest.
He holds you while you shake apart. His hand moves on your back, but there's more uncertainty in it now. He pauses at your shoulder blade. Adjusts. Resettles his palm. Like he's figuring out the right pressure in real time. Learning the weight of comfort.
His chin rests on top of your head, and you can feel the slight furrow of his brow against your hair, the way his body is holding very still around the motion of his hand. He’s noting each shudder, each ragged breath, trying to understand the mechanics of this. What crying is. What it means. Why your body does it and what it needs from his.
“I love him,” you choke out. Waterlogged. Muffled against his chest. “I love him so much. And he just—he stopped. He just stopped, and I keep thinking if I'd done something different, if I'd been—”
“No.” Firm the way a hand on your shoulder is firm when you're about to step into traffic. “Don't do that.”
“—if I'd been less”—”
“No.”
His arms tighten around you. You feel his jaw clench against the top of your head, a brief flash of what might be anger.
At the sentence, at the shape of the thought, the idea that you would carve yourself smaller to fit inside Bobby's shrinking attention span. His hand on your back goes still and then resumes, slower, like he's reminding himself to be gentle.
“You did nothing wrong,” he says into your hair. “You loved someone. You loved them well. And they couldn't hold it. That's not a flaw in the love. That's a flaw in the hands.”
You cry until there's nothing left. Until you're just breathing, wet and ragged, against his chest. The sobs eventually thin to hiccups, then to shudders, finally settling into a deep, wrung-out stillness, the exhaustion that comes after.
Better Bobby holds you through all of it. Doesn't shift. Doesn't pull back. Doesn't ask if you're okay, which is a kindness in itself because the answer is obviously no and being asked to say it out loud would be one more weight.
When you finally pull back, your face is swollen, and your eyes are raw. Better Bobby looks at you with an expression you've never seen on Bobby's face. Open and bewildered, creased with tenderness in a way that seems to be happening to him without his permission. Like he reached for the right emotion, grabbed something bigger than he expected.
He touches your face. Thumbs the tears off your cheekbone, one side and then the other, careful, methodical. His brow furrows. Curious. The furrow of a thing encountering a phenomenon for the first time and finding it far more complex than anticipated.
“Sad,” he murmurs. Almost to himself. Almost wonderingly.
You sit together in the yellow light for a long time. The hum fills the silence.
Then you reach out and touch his face.
Your fingertips on his cheekbone. Tracing the line of his jaw. The scar from the cabinet door. The corner of his mouth where real Bobby's grin always starts, one side before the other, that lopsided asymmetry that used to make your heart stutter.
Better Bobby goes still.
Then he hums. Low in his throat. Warm. A sound that starts in his chest and travels up through all of him like a vibration through a struck bell. His eyes close. His head tips into your palm like a cat pressing into a hand, like he's been waiting for this, this specific thing, your skin on his skin, voluntary and gentle, initiated by you.
The difference matters; it matters enormously, you can tell by the way his breath changes, goes uneven, almost delicate.
His lips part, just slightly, lashes fluttering against your thumb.
“That feels good,” he whispers huskily. And then, quieter, with a note of genuine wonder, “How odd.”
You watch him lean into your hand, and the expression on his face is unguarded in a way that makes your chest ache. Bobby's face, but not Bobby's expression. It could never be Bobby's expression, you realise suddenly, because Bobby would've turned it into a joke by now, would've kissed your palm or made a quip or done something to break the sincerity before it got too heavy.
Your hand stills on his cheek. He opens his eyes. Looks at you.
“I need you to make me a promise,” you say.
There’s another ripple in his expression. The tilt of his head. That almost animal curiosity, the slight cock to one side that doesn't quite track as human body language. “A promise?”
“Yes.”
He studies you. Processing. “What is a promise?”
The question is genuine. Not rhetorical, not evasive. He's looking at you the way he looked at your tears. With concentration, focus, and a desire to understand. You can almost see the gap between knowing the word and understanding the weight, and he's standing at the edge of it, waiting for you to build the bridge.
“It's—it's a commitment. Something you say that you can't take back. Something you keep even when it's hard. Even when you don't want to. Even when circumstances change.” You swallow thickly. “When you make a promise, you don't break it. That's the whole point. It's the one thing that's supposed to be unbreakable.”
Better Bobby is quiet. Considering. His eyes move across your face in that precise, reading way.
“I understand,” he says carefully, solemnly. Like he's holding the concept in his hands and turning it to see all sides. “An oath. A contract between two beings that supersedes circumstance.”
You blink. “Something like that.”
He angles his face closer, attention fixed and unblinking on you. “Then ask.”
You drag your eyes over his face. Bobby's face, Bobby's eyes, Bobby's scar. The face of a man who loved you and couldn't say it and showed it by looking away until you forgot what it felt like to be seen. The face of a thing that isn't that man and chose to wear him anyway because it heard you through a wall and wanted to be the version that stayed.
“Promise me… you won't hurt me,” you say quietly. “Not the way he did.”
The words hang in the yellow air. The hum shifts. Not louder, but denser somehow, as if the walls themselves are listening, as if the promise is being registered by something larger than the two of you.
Better Bobby's expression changes. Curiosity dissolves. What replaces it is—
You don't have a word for it. Not solemnity, a gravity older than language. It rises from the part of him that isn't Bobby: the vast and ancient thing beneath the boy’s face. The part of him that understands what you are asking is not a small thing. That the promise you want is, for a being like him, a kind of architecture. A structure that, once built, holds.
“I promise,” he says. No hesitation, no charm, no Bobby-grin to soften the weight of it. Just the words, low and clear, carrying the same absolute certainty as his no earlier. A reflex, a law carved into whatever he is at a level deeper than the face, deeper than the voice. “I will not hurt you. Not the way he did. Not any way.”
His hand covers yours on his cheek. Presses it there. Holds it.
“I don't know how to break a promise,” he tells you, quieter now. “But I think that's the point.”
You nod, unable to speak. Your hand is on his face, cool to the touch, and his hand is on your hand. You watch each other for a long time, unwilling to move first.
He breaks the stalemate first, taking your hand into his.
“Come with me,” he urges with that restrained excitement in his eyes, barely contained behind Bobby's careful coolness. Something almost boyish in its sincerity. “Somewhere that's not yellow.”
You look at his hand, using your other to wipe the tear tracks off your face. “Is it safe?”
And then it returns.
Not the gentle Better Bobby who strokes your hair and says I've got you. The other one. It surfaces behind his eyes like a shape moving under dark water. Vast, amused, ancient. His chin dips slightly. His mouth curves.
And for a half-second, the thing looking out at you from Bobby's face is not performing warmth or mimicking tenderness. It's something that has walked these hallways since the beginning. Something that heard you through a wall and chose to want you rather than simply take you, and the distinction between those two things is the only reason you're still breathing.
“Baby,” he drawls, and his voice is Bobby's, but the tone is deeper, older. “I am what's safe here.”
It lasts a second. Less. Then he blinks and the ancient thing submerges and Better Bobby is back, warm-eyed and easy-mouthed, holding his hand out to you in the yellow light like nothing happened.
“Come on,” he says, lighter now. Normal. That crooked half-grin back. “Trust me.”
You take his hand, and he pulls you up.
He leads you through the hallways. Different route this time. Sharper turns, narrower corridors, and Better Bobby moves through them with liquid confidence, his hand secure around yours, his pace unhurried. You pass through a section where the carpet gives way to tile, and the tile gives way to something that feels like packed earth beneath your feet.
The walls shift from yellow to grey, and you tense, your grip tightening, and he squeezes back. Once. Reassuring.
Then the hallway opens.
You stop.
It takes your brain a moment. Several moments. Because what you're looking at doesn't belong here, can't belong here, is fundamentally incompatible with everything you've experienced in this place so far, and yet here it is: sky. Actual sky.
Not blue exactly, but deeper and richer. The colour of late afternoon, easing toward evening, a gradient of gold and amber, close to violet at the edges. And beneath it, trees. Dense, old-growth, the kind of towering canopy you'd find in the Santa Cruz Mountains, all ferns and filtered light and the rich, complex smell of living earth. A path winds through them, beaten dirt, dappled with sun.
You can feel it on your face. Not quite the real sun of your world, but it’s not fluorescent.
You stand in the threshold between the hallway and the forest, and you don't breathe because if you breathe or blink, it might disappear.
“Level 14,” Better Bobby announces behind you casually, tracking your reaction. “Some people call it Paradise.”
“How—”
“Doors.” He shrugs. “Everything here has doors. Entrances and exits. You just have to know where they are.”
You step forward. Grass. Real grass, or something so close you can't tell the difference, and the sensation is so overwhelmingly normal after the carpet and concrete and yellow that your eyes fill again, and you press your hand over your mouth.
Better Bobby steps up beside you. He's watching the trees with that curious expression, head slightly tilted, but underneath it, there’s satisfaction. Quiet pride. He found this, and he brought you here because you were crying on the floor, and he didn't know what else to do except find you somewhere beautiful.
You grab his hand.
Hard, sudden, fingers lacing through his, knuckles blanching. Because there are trees and you don't trust anything that looks like the real world, because the real world abandoned you.
Better Bobby looks down at your joined hands, and his lips part. That smile appears again. The new one, the one still taking shape on features designed for smirking, learning in real time how to hold something softer. Slow. Almost shy.
He doesn't comment. Doesn't tease. Just holds your hand back and starts walking.
“It's safe here,” he tells you, feeling the tension in your grip, the coiled readiness. “This level is safe. Nothing hunts here.”
“You said the yellow—Level 0 was safe.”
“Level 0 is my territory. Things occasionally wander in.” He says my territory without emphasis, but the words land heavily anyway, carrying the weight of what you saw behind his eyes a few minutes ago, the brief flash of the creature that owns these hallways. “Here—” He gestures with his free hand. The amber light moves across his skin, and he looks different in it, softer. More like Bobby at golden hour on the fire escape back home, and the resemblance hits you like a fist. “Nothing wanders. Nothing wants to wander. It's peaceful. Even the things that live here are gentle.”
You walk. He leads you deeper, and the canopy closes overhead like a ceiling, green and gold, light falling in shafts through the leaves and landing in warm patches on the path. You hear birdsong. Birdsong. You haven't heard birdsong in… you don't know how long. The sound cracks something open in your chest that you thought had scarred over.
Your grip on his hand loosens. Slightly.
The path winds along a stream. Clear water over smooth stones, the sound of it gentle. Nothing like the dripping in the pipes on Level 2. Simply water moving over rocks because gravity says so.
The path opens into a clearing. Tall grass. A meadow ringed by trees, the canopy breaking to reveal that impossible sky, and in the centre a fallen log covered in moss, the kind of thing you'd find on a trail in Big Basin or Castle Rock. The kind of thing you and Bobby used to perch on when you went hiking in the early days and kiss until your mouths went numb.
Better Bobby guides you to the log. You sit. He sits beside you. Hands still joined.
A bird—small, brown, ordinary—lands on a branch above you and turns its head and looks at you with one bright black eye, and you stare back at it, your chin trembling. Because it's a bird, just a bird, and you'd forgotten how much of the world you were missing.
“I didn't think this place could be beautiful,” you say quietly, looking at the amber light filtering through the canopy, the way it falls on the tall grass in warm pools. “I thought it was just… yellow. And carpet. And things with teeth.”
“Most of it is,” Better Bobby replies honestly. Not sugar-coating it.”But most of anywhere is. The trap of this place, if you can consider it one, is that you’d never want to leave. How could you? When everywhere else there’s death.”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
“Because it shouldn't exist. Because this whole place is wrong. It's not supposed to be here. None of it. And somewhere inside all that wrongness, there's this—” You gesture at the meadow, the sky, the bird, the stream. “It doesn't make sense.”
Better Bobby is quiet for a moment. Watching you the way he does—full attention, total focus, the listening that feels less like politeness and more like study.
“Maybe that’s exactly why it exists,” he says. “Maybe it was built by mistake. Or maybe it exists because nothing is ever just one thing.”
You turn to look at him. He's sitting beside you in amber light with his earring catching gold instead of fluorescent. And his face is Bobby's face, but the expression on it is something Bobby hasn’t worn in a long time, if ever. Patient, present, content with simply being here without reaching for a camera, without filtering the moment through a lens, or needing a barrier between himself and the thing he's looking at.
“I don't want to call you Bobby anymore.”
He goes still.
The uncertain one. A brief, visible tension through his shoulders, his jaw, the hand holding yours tightening by a fraction. His eyes flick to your face, and the light in them is guarded in a way you haven't seen from him before. Wary. Like you've touched something unexpectedly tender and he's bracing for what comes next.
You see the calculation, the quick processing, and you understand. He thinks this is the beginning of something else. A rejection. A pulling away. You're not Bobby, you'll never be Bobby, and I don't want the reminder. He's already building the wall behind his face, that smooth, easy mask he can slip back into, the charming nonchalance to protect himself.
“You're not him,” you go on quickly. Before the wall finishes closing. “That's—that's the point. You're not him. You're something else. And it feels wrong to call you by another person's name when you're your own—” You fumble. Gesture at him, at the clearing, at everything. “Your own being. Your own person. Or—whatever you are. Whatever the word is. Entity?”
His jaw loosens, shoulders dropping a fraction. The wall stops building.
“What would you call me?” he asks quietly. Like the answer matters more than he wants to show.
“Maybe… BB?” You say it, and it feels right. Simple. Still him, still connected, but his. Not borrowed. Not a copy of a copy. “If that's okay?”
He's quiet for a long moment, simply gazing at you. The light shimmers on his face, and his expression shifts through layers. The careful architecture of Better Bobby rearranging itself around this new information, this small, enormous thing you've just given him. A name. His own name. Not the one he stole. The one you chose.
You lean your head against his shoulder lightly.
You can feel it through the contact between you, through the place where your temple rests against his shoulder. Something in him settles. Deepens. A satisfaction so total it's almost palpable, like a beam slotting into place.
He likes it. Being seen as separate, being known as his own being. Not the understudy, not a replacement, not the better version of someone else, but simply a version of himself. You can feel how much he likes it in the way his thumb resumes its slow circuit over your knuckles, in the way his head tips to rest on yours, in the breath he lets out that sounds like it's been held for centuries.
“BB,” he repeats, testing it. His voice comes in a low, warm rumble. Bobby's timbre with something deeper underneath, and the two letters sit in the balmy air, small and perfect.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “BB.” A beat, then, “Thank you. For hearing me.”
A hum starts low in his chest, a thrum you feel before you hear it. It travels the length of his arm to where his fingers are laced through yours. He squeezes once, and when he speaks again, the easy charm has drained out of his voice, leaving it quieter, almost reticent.
“I was lonely too,” he admits.
Your heart squeezes, quick and helpless.
You sit together for a long, long time, the light pooling thick and lazy around you. And for the first time since you fell through the wall, what settles in your chest isn't fear, isn't confusion, and not grief.
It's peace.
The walk back is different.
BB leads you through the same threshold, and the yellow returns, followed by the buzz that resettles on your skin like a coat you forgot you were wearing. But something in you has shifted. Loosened. The meadow is still sitting inside your chest, warm and quiet. You carry it back into Level 0 the way you'd carry a cupped handful of water.
And you're talking.
Actually talking. Not the halting, guarded exchanges of the past weeks. Or the questions that go in circles, the silences that stretch like hallways.
You're talking, and BB is listening. Somewhere between the threshold and the familiar territory of your room, you say something about Clark—about the time Clark tried to assemble a display bookshelf himself and got the shelves in upside down, and you'd had to redo the entire thing at midnight while Clark stood behind you insisting it looked fine—and BB laughs.
It's a good laugh. It's Bobby's laugh. Low, surprised, that huff through the nose that real Bobby does when something catches him off guard, and it makes you smile. Actually smile. Your cheeks ache with it.
You can't remember the last time your face did that.
“He sounds like an idiot,” BB remarks, grinning. That cocky half-grin, the one that crinkles one eye.
“He's not—okay, he's a little bit of an idiot. But he means well. He’s just going through a rough patch right now. He doesn't know how to—”
“Accept help?”
“I was going to say read an instruction manual.”
BB snorts. “Same thing.”
He bumps your shoulder with his. Easy. Playful. And you bump him back, and the normalcy of it—the sheer, stupid, ordinary normalcy of walking and talking and bumping shoulders with someone—is so sweet it makes your throat tight with a different kind of ache. An emotion closer to joy, which is worse because joy in a place like this is borrowed.
“You know,” you begin, squinting at him, “for a—” You stop, gesturing vaguely at him. “You're not bad company.”
“Not bad company.” He puts his hand over his chest. Bobby's mock-wounded face, the one real Bobby used to pull when you beat him at cards. “I'm overcome with emotion.”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, I'm serious. I'm going to treasure this moment. Not bad company. I'm getting that tattooed.”
“Can you even get a tattoo?”
His mouth hooks into that infuriating half-smirk that unfailingly warmed your blood for years, “Baby, I can do whatever I—”
He stops.
Mid-word. Mid-stride. His body goes rigid so fast it's like watching someone get hit with a current. Every muscle locking at once, his hand tightening on yours hard enough to hurt. His head turns. Not the way a person turns their head. The way a thing turns. Too sharp, too angular, his chin cocking to one side at a degree that doesn't belong on a human neck with a faint click. His eyes go flat and dark, and the creature behind them surges to the surface, breaching deep water.
You suck in a breath, eyes snapping around you, searching. “BB?”
He doesn't answer. He's listening. Every line of his body orients toward something you can't hear, his nostrils flaring slightly, and the hum in the walls shifts tone. Barely. A semitone. Like the whole level just inhaled.
“BB, what—”
He moves.
He doesn't explain. His hand releases yours and both of his are on your shoulders, turning you, walking you. Fast, with an urgency you haven't seen from him before, not even with the strange thing in the hallway. His jaw is set, eyes scanning the corridor with a focus that's mechanical, inhuman, processing information from sources you can't perceive.
“Please talk to me—”
“Shh.”
It’s not BB's voice. But an older rumble. Something that's done calculating, moved on to acting, and doesn't have the bandwidth for warmth right now.
He takes you to your room. The warm nest. The blankets. He guides you down with one hand on the back of your head, the way you'd ease someone into a car, pulling the blankets around you, and you grab his wrist because his eyes are wrong. They're flat, black, and old.
The thing in the hallway, whatever it is, has made him become the thing he was in the dark with the Smiler, and that version of BB is a version you can't reach.
“Stay here,” he instructs sternly. His voice is low and tight, thrumming with that sub-frequency that vibrates in the walls. “Don't move. Don't make a sound.”
“What's happening? What's—”
“Stay.”
He looks at you. One second. A flash of the warmth—buried deep, almost submerged, but there, still—and then his expression closes like a door slamming. BB straightens and turns toward the hallway.
You blink, and he's gone.
Just gone. Between one blink and the next, the space where BB stood is empty. The air where his body was is settling, displaced, like water closing over the place where a stone sank.
The hum holds its earlier shifted note. That slightly wrong semitone, tense and high, like a held breath.
You sit in the blankets with your knees pulled to your chest, heart in your throat, and stare at the empty doorway and beyond it, listening intently.
Nothing. No tearing. No shrieking. No sounds at all. Just the hum and the buzz and your own breathing and the silence so total it frightens you more.
You wait.
The meadow is still inside you: the bird, the stream, the warm light, the way BB laughed when you told him about Clark's bookshelf. The stupid, gentle joke about the tattoo, the way his shoulder bumped yours, and you bumped him back, and for thirty seconds, you forgot where you were and what he was, and the whole impossible situation felt like a walk home from somewhere good with someone you liked.
You press your face into your knees. You wrap your arms around yourself.
You wait.
BB comes back eventually.
You don't know how long it's been. Time in the Backrooms is a broken clock. Sometimes the minutes stretch into hours; sometimes what feels like an afternoon is over before a thought can finish forming.
You've been sitting in the blankets, knees to chest, listening to the hum slowly, slowly settle back to its normal pitch, the tension of Level 0 releasing one degree at a time. You didn't sleep. You didn't move. You just sat and breathed, holding the meadow inside you like a candle flame in cupped hands.
You hear him before you see him. Footsteps. Slow. The particular rhythm of his walk. Bobby's gait, but smoother, more intentional, the way a predator moves even when it's not hunting. Then his shape appears in the doorway.
Something's off.
He's standing the way he always stands—one shoulder against the doorframe, hip cocked, that easy lean—but the details are wrong. Slightly. His edges are too sharp. The line of his jaw looks as if it were drawn rather than grown. His skin has a quality to it, like wet paint, freshly applied. And his eyes.
BB’s eyes are settling. That's the only word for it. The flat, black depth that swallowed the warmth when he left is receding, draining away, and Bobby's eyes are rising to the surface again. You watch it happen. You watch him reassemble himself.
He was something else, you realise. Whatever he went to do, wherever he did while away, he dropped Bobby's face to do it. And what you're looking at now, standing in the doorway, is the process of putting it back on. Climbing back inside the shape of a person. Buttoning up the human suit.
“BB.”
He blinks. The last of the darkness drains from his eyes. He looks at you, and the warmth returns. In layers, like watching a photograph develop, his shoulders relaxing at the sight of you. The too-sharp lines of his face soften into the Bobby you know, and his mouth does that almost-smile, the one that says I'm here without words.
“Hey, baby.”
“What happened?”
Not a question. A demand. You say it flat and steady, holding his gaze, and you don't let him do the easy-grin deflection, the don't worry about it. You've had enough of that for one lifetime. You made him promise.
BB reads it on your face. The refusal to be contained.
He exhales through his nose—Bobby's habit, the one that means I don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to—and pushes off the doorframe and comes to sit beside you on the blankets. Close. His knee touches yours.
“There's something new,” he says after a pause. “In the Backrooms. Something I haven't encountered before.”
You stare. “An… entity?”
“Yes.” He turns the word over like he's not sure it's sufficient. “It’s been… circling. Mainly the perimeter of Level 0. Not entering. Not yet anyway. Just... moving along the edge. Testing it.” His jaw works. That muscle at the hinge, the one that flexes when Bobby's thinking, when Bobby's holding something back. “It's been doing it intermittently. Coming close, then retreating. Like it's taking measurements.”
A shiver skitters down your spine. “What does it want?”
“I don't know.” And you understand that BB doesn't say I don't know often or easily. BB is the thing that knows this place, that moves through it like blood through a vein, that owns Level 0. Admitting ignorance is not in his nature. It sits wrong on his face, like a shirt buttoned crooked. “It's different from the others. Not like the Smiler. Not like the Howlers, either. Not like anything in my experience. It's very new.” A tense pause, then, “And very, very powerful.”
The way he says powerful makes the hum in the walls dip. Just for a second. A brief, almost subliminal drop in frequency, as if Level 0 itself heard the word and flinched.
You stare at him, your heart thrumming in your chest. Bobby's face, creased with a concern that doesn't quite fit the cocky architecture of it. BB in a rare moment of honesty about his own limits. Something new, he said. Something powerful. Something that makes a thing that unmade another entity with its bare hands sit next to you on a pile of blankets and admit it doesn't have an answer.
You exhale, turning to stare at the yellow wall instead.
“I want you to teach me,” you tell him after a moment.
His head turns. The dog-tilt. Quick, surprised.
You look back towards him. “About this place. The levels. The entities. The doors, the rules, whatever—I want to understand it. I don't want to just—” You gesture at the blankets, the room, the warm patch you've been sleeping in for however long you've been here. “I don't want to be something you put in a nest and guard. I want to know what's out there. How to move through it. I don't want to be helpless whenever you leave.”
BB studies you. That long, reading look, line by line, extracting meaning. You expect resistance. Protectiveness. The instinct to keep you in the soft, warm place where nothing can touch you, where he can fold himself around you like armour and pretend the world ends at the walls of this room.
Instead, slowly, he nods.
“There are rules,” he insists. The caution is audible. Measured, considered, a thing that’s used to absolute control, negotiating the edges of a concession. “I go with you. Always. You don't wander alone. Not until you understand enough.”
“Okay.”
“And there are levels I won't take you to. Places where my presence doesn't offer the protection it does on 0. Places where—” He pauses, choosing his words the way you'd choose a path through uneven ground. “Places where going would be… foolish.”
“Okay. Deal.”
You watch him watch you, just like earlier in the sunlight. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I'll teach you.”
Time passes.
You don't know how much. The Backrooms don't have seasons, don't have sunrise and sunset. No reliable Monday into Tuesday into Wednesday that structures a life on the other side of the wall. What you have is rhythm—the rhythm of sleep and waking, of walking and resting, of BB's hand on yours as he leads you through doorways you're learning to see.
You miss the real world.
It hits you at strange moments.
Not when you'd expect, not during the long stretches of yellow or the nights when the hum shifts pitch and BB goes rigid and watchful beside you. It hits you in the quiet. In the nothing moments.
You'll be sitting in the nest sketching a corridor layout, and the pen will skip, and you'll shake it the way you used to shake the pens at Clark's register. And the muscle memory will drag the whole world through.
The smell of the showroom, lemon polish and particleboard, the radio playing low from the boombox behind the counter, the particular quality of California dusk through the front windows when the strip mall parking lot emptied out.
The apartment. The couch. The sound of Bobby's camera clicking in the other room.
You miss rain. Not Level 14 rain, or drizzle of the Poolrooms. Actual rain, East Bay winter rain, the kind that hammered the apartment windows and turned the parking lot at Clark's into a shallow lake and made Bobby curse because he'd left the car windows cracked again.
You miss the smell of wet asphalt. You even miss traffic. The dull boredom of a slow Tuesday shift with no customers, leaning on the counter with a magazine, watching the clock crawl toward closing.
You miss cereal. The specific crunch of it, dry, eaten by the handful out of the box at midnight because you were too tired to make real food after a close. You miss the weight of your own blankets on your bed, not the gathered nest-pile BB assembled for you. You miss the answering machine clicking on. You miss the phone ringing at all.
You think about going back.
Not the way you thought about it in the first weeks. That was rantic, clawing, animal desperation to find the wall you fell through and push back to the other side. That's burned out. What's left is quieter. More deliberate. A slow, circular calculation that runs in the background of your brain like a programme you can't close: Is there a way? If BB knows the doors, if the doors go between levels, if levels connect to each other in ways that don't follow geometry, could one of them connect back? Could there be a threshold that opens onto Clark's storage basement, onto the real world?
You don't ask BB. Because the calculation always stalls at the same place, the same, indestructible wall.
The wall in your chest. The one built from the last six months of your life in Santa Clara, from every unanswered question and unfinished sentence and cold sheet and blue TV light and grunt.
The wall that asks one simple question: Go back to what?
Go back to the apartment where Bobby looked through you like glass? Go back to the doorway where you stood with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he didn't look up? Go back to being the woman who measures love in deficits, who keeps count of kisses the way she keeps count of inventory, watching the numbers dwindle, knowing exactly what the shortage means, and not being able to stop counting.
Bobby is probably relieved.
The thought arrives fully formed, mid-step, on a walk through Level 4, and it stops you so completely that BB turns back, his hand sliding to the small of your back, his head doing that quick, concerned tilt. You wave him off. Fine. I'm fine. But the thought is there now, lodged behind your sternum like a splinter, and you can feel it every time you breathe.
Bobby is probably relieved. Bobby is probably sleeping diagonally again. Bobby is probably eating cereal over the sink, leaving his bowl on the counter. Watching TV with his feet up and the apartment is probably messier, quieter. Less cluttered without your books and your magazines and your shoes by the door.
Your presence in every corner asking to be noticed.
Bobby is probably lighter, breathing easier. Maybe he looked up from the television one day and realised the doorway was empty and felt—what? Guilt? Or the guilty cousin of relief, the exhale of a man whose obligation to pretend has been finally lifted?
You haven't felt needed in months. Not once.
The realisation surfaces slowly, a gradual saturation of a truth you've been standing ankle-deep in since before you fell through the wall.
Bobby didn't need you. Bobby needed the idea of you—the girlfriend, the warm body, the person in the apartment who made it feel less empty—but he didn't need you. The particular, inconvenient you who wanted to be talked to and looked at and held and kissed goodbye every morning. That version of you was too much work.
That version required maintenance he couldn't be bothered to perform.
But the ache—god, the ache. It hasn't faded. You thought it would. You thought time and distance and the sheer alien absurdity of your circumstances would erode it the way the Backrooms erode seemingly everything. Until the original shape is unrecognisable.
But the ache for Bobby sits in the centre of your chest like a second heartbeat, stubborn and alive, and it doesn't care that he let you down.
It doesn't care that the last thing he gave you was a grunt. Love has no quality control. Love doesn't audit the recipient and adjust its intensity based on merit.
You still love Bobby with the same enormous, stupid devotion you loved him with on that Thursday morning when the sun was on the sheets and he ignored the phone and pulled you closer and rasped stay. That love has not diminished by a single degree despite every reason it should have, and the persistence of it is the cruellest thing about being here.
Because it means you’re aching for a man who made you feel invisible while standing in front of a being who has never once looked away.
You cry about it. Once. In the nest, in the dark, turned away from BB, muffling it in the blankets.
He doesn't say anything. His hand finds your shoulder. His thumb moves, once, twice, a slow circuit over the curve of bone. He doesn't ask what's wrong because he already knows—he's always known, he heard it all through the wall—and the kindness of his silence, the restraint of it, the choice to hold space instead of fill it, makes you cry harder.
You stop crying. You wipe your face. You pick up the notebook.
And you start mapping instead.
BB finds the notebook for you. God knows where, god knows how, a composition book with a mottled black-and-white cover and pages that smell like basement storage.
You hold it and the weight of it in your hands feels so familiar it aches. The pen he gives you is a ballpoint, blue ink, the cheap kind that skips if you press too hard. You uncap it and the click of the cap settles something in your chest. An old reflex. The same one that used to kick in when you opened the inventory binder at the store.
The satisfaction of a system, a structure, a way to organise chaos into a shape you can hold.
If you can't go back, you'll go forward. If you can't be needed there, you'll be needed here. Anything but the slow decay of being unwanted. And then, one day, when you're ready, you'll ask BB to find you a door back.
One day.
Level 0 comes first. The hallways you know, the ones BB takes you through, the turns and junctions and the places where the carpet changes texture and means something. A border, a threshold, a shift in territory.
You draw diagrams. Floor plans. Rough, imprecise, the proportions wrong because the proportions are wrong. Because the hallways don't obey geometry in any way you can verify. But the act of drawing them—of putting pen to paper, using the things Clark used to tell you about rendering shapes and rooms—makes it less vast. Less formless. Containable.
The pen moves and the world shrinks and for the first time in months you have purpose.
BB watches you work with undisguised fascination.
He sits beside you while you sketch, his chin on your shoulder, his breath warm on your neck, and sometimes he corrects you (that corridor turns left, not right or there's a junction there you haven't found yet) and sometimes he just watches your hand move and hums in his throat. That low, warm rumble that you've started to associate with contentment.
His chin digs into your shoulder when he leans in to see your shorthand and you flick his nose without looking up and he huffs—offended, amused, delighted, nosing closer—and the exchange is so easy, so thoughtless, so much like two people who’ve known each other long enough that the edges have been worn smooth by repetition.
Half the time you forget he's not human.
That's the truth you don't examine too closely. Because it would mean confronting what it says about you, about your standards, about how broken your idea of normal has become.
But BB sits beside you with his chin on your shoulder and his warmth against your side. He asks about your shorthand, remembers the answer, asks follow-up questions. He brings you food without being asked.
The line between an inhuman entity wearing a man's face and a person who cares about me blurs until it's less a line and more a smudge, a gradation, a slow dissolve from one thing into the other.
He cares for you. Genuinely. Not the way you care for a pet.
You see it in the small things first. The way he checks the temperature of the carpet before he lets you sit, and how he positions himself between you and the corridor when you sleep. His head turns toward you when you shift in the nest, tracking your movement the way a compass tracks north.
Most of all in how he says your name. Not baby, not the endearment—your actual name, the one he uses rarely, carefully, like he's holding it in his mouth and tasting each syllable. When BB says your name, it sounds like a discovery. Like a fact he's still pleased to know.
“You're organising it,” he says one day. Amused. Impressed. “The way you organised the inventory at the store.”
“It helps me think.”
“You're applying human systems to a place that doesn't follow human rules.”
“Is that a problem?”
He considers this. His head tilts. “No,” he replies slowly, like he's arriving at a conclusion that surprises him. “No, I think it might be… useful. No one's ever tried to map it like this. Most wanderers are too busy surviving to catalogue."
“Well,” you say teasingly. “I've got you for the surviving part.”
He goes quiet. You glance up from the notebook. His face is going through layers again, rearranging, the cocky default giving way to the newer expression underneath. The one that showed up when you named him. A door opening inward.
He catches you looking, and the default snaps back, the half-grin, the raised eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he drawls lightly. Entirely failing to conceal the sudden warmth radiating off him like heat from a furnace. “Yeah, you do.”
You add to the notebook every day. Layouts, landmarks, and the sensory details that serve as navigation.
BB takes you exploring.
Not every day. Some days the hum is wrong, or BB is tense in a way he won't explain, or you can feel the level holding its breath the way it did the night he disappeared and came back wearing a freshly assembled face. On those days, you stay in the nest. You write in the notebook. You read the pages you've already filled and trace the paths you've already walked and commit them to memory because memory is the only filing system you've got.
On those days, the ache comes back—Bobby's hands, Bobby's mouth, the way he used to drop his forehead against yours in the dark and whisper your name, just your name, over and over—and you let it sit in your chest and you don't fight it. But you don't follow it, either.
You just write around it. Inventory the grief the way you inventory everything else. Label it. File it. Move on to the next entry.
But most days, BB takes you out.
Level 1, first. BB walks beside you, and his posture changes here. Subtly mostly, the ease tightening into a coiled attention. His head on a swivel, hand at the small of your back with a pressure that says I'm tracking everything in this room and nothing will get within twenty feet of you.
You sketch the layout in the notebook while he stands guard. You mark the exits, the supply caches, the places where other wanderers have left graffiti on the shelving units. Messages, warnings, crude maps of their own.
You get braver. You ask questions. About the Smilers, the Howlers, about the hierarchy of things that live here. How they relate to each other and what makes some dangerous and some merely present.
BB answers. Not always fully, not always clearly. There are concepts here that he doesn't have a human language for. Mechanics that exist in the gap between what he perceives and what your brain can hold, but he answers, and you write it all down, and the notebook fills.
You develop a routine. You wake up, eat whatever BB has found or produced, and you walk. You explore together, map, and come back. You sit together in the nest afterwards and talk.
And the talking is easier now, less charged, less careful. You tell him about your life. The books you loved. The way you used to organise your bookshelves by colour rather than by author, because it made you happy to look at them. The hiking trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Big Basin and Castle Rock, the way the redwoods smelled after rain.
He listens the way he always listens. Total attention. Full presence. The thing Bobby couldn't do. The thing BB does like breathing.
And you catch yourself, one evening, doing something unthinkable.
You’re sitting in the nest with your notebook open, pen behind your ear, telling BB about the time you got lost on the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. You had to navigate back using a park map you'd annotated so heavily it was more your handwriting than cartography. BB’s laughing. That low huff through his nose, his shoulder pressed against yours.
You're laughing too, and the yellow light is warm, and you realise, suddenly, that you haven’t thought about Bobby in three days.
The guilt is instantaneous.
A hot, lurching, physical thing that grabs you by the sternum and pulls. Three days. You went three days without the ache, and the absence of it feels like a betrayal so total it makes you nauseous. As if the love you carry for Bobby is a fire that requires constant tending, and you let it gutter, and that makes you—what?
The kind of woman who forgets? The kind who moves on? The kind who finds comfort in a pair of borrowed eyes while the original owner of those eyes is somewhere in Santa Clara, probably sleeping diagonal, probably relieved?
You go quiet. BB notices.
His shoulder presses against yours (a question, not a demand), and you shake your head, picking up the pen. Start sketching a corridor you mapped that morning, but the lines are slightly too hard, the ink pressing dents into the page.
BB watches your hand and says nothing, and the nothing is the right thing, the exact right thing, and you hate him a little for being so consistently, unbearably right.
You grow comfortable.
Not comfortable like safe, or comfortable like home. Because this place is neither of those things, and you know it. The notebook full of entity classifications and danger ratings is proof that you know it.
But comfortable the way you get with a person—a being, entity, a whatever-he-is—when enough time has passed that their presence stops being a question and starts being an answer.
You stop flinching when he appears in doorways. You stop tensing when his hand finds yours. You lean into his shoulder when you're tired, and he holds steady. The meadow on Level 14 becomes your Sunday, your weekend, the place he takes you when the yellow gets to be too much, and you need to remember what sky looks like.
You stop keeping count.
You don't notice it happening. It's quiet cessation of a habit so ingrained you didn't know it was still running until it stopped.
No more tallying. No more, he didn't today, that's the fourth day in a row. Because BB doesn't generate deficits. BB doesn't create gaps to count. He’s present the way the hum is present. Woven into the structure of your days so thoroughly that his attention isn't an event anymore, it's an environment.
You live inside his attention the way you live inside Level 0. It's just where you are.
But the ache for Bobby doesn't go away. Only migrates from the centre of your chest to somewhere deeper, somewhere quieter, a room in the back of you where it can sit with the memory of your first kiss and his arm around your shoulder by the ocean and the way he used to say stay and mean it.
You don't visit that room every day anymore. But you know it's there. You can feel its weight when you lie down at night, BB's arm around your waist, his breath on your neck.
The ache says remember, and you say I know, and you close your eyes, and you stay.
Your handwriting fills the notebook. Page after page. The careful, slightly messy script. A system. A structure.
A way to survive.
“It's circling again.”
You look up sharply.
BB is standing at the edge of the nest, head tilted, that almost-human listening posture—chin cocked, eyes unfocused, his whole body oriented toward a frequency you can't hear. His jaw is tight.
You set the pen down. “How close?”
“Closer than last time,” ee says evenly, too evenly. “It's running along the edge and then pulling back. Then running a little further.”
Ignoring the sudden chill at your nape, you say, “Like it's looking for a gap.”
His eyes flick to you. A beat of surprise follows. Quick and subtle, the kind he still has when you demonstrate that you've been paying attention to the lessons, that the notebook isn't just busywork but comprehension.
“Yes,” he agrees. “Like that.”
You pull your knees up. Wrap your arms around them. The notebook sits open on the blanket beside you, the page half-covered in your shorthand. A corridor map, danger annotations, the new symbol you invented last week for an unknown entity, and behaviour unclassified. You used it for the first time yesterday. The ink is still dark.
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to check the perimeter. See if anything's shifted. If it's been probing a specific section or moving along the full boundary.” He's already calculating. The ancient one surfaces behind Bobby's eyes, not all the way, just enough to sharpen the edges. To give his posture that predatory geometry that doesn't belong on a twenty-something in a crop top. “I want to understand its pattern before I kill it.”
“BB.” You say his name, and he stills. Focuses. The ancient thing recedes a fraction, and the warmth returns to the surface. You hold his gaze and say, carefully, gently, “Be careful.”
His mouth parts.
He crosses the nest in two steps. Drops into a crouch in front of you, his knees on the blanket, and his hand finds the side of your head. His fingers glide over one side of your face slowly. He strokes, long, gentle, from your temple to the nape of your neck.
“Stay here,” he says gently, his thumb tracing the curve behind your ear. “Stay in the nest. Don't go into the corridor. Not even the first junction.”
“I know the rules.”
“I know you know.” His hand stills in your hair, cupping the back of your skull. He dips his head until his forehead is close to yours, not quite touching, his breath warm on your face. His eyes are darker, layered, and the thing behind them is looking at you, too. For a moment, both of them are present. BB and the creature he's built on top of, and both of them are saying the same thing. “I'll be back.”
“You better be.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. Just barely. The private curve that's his and not Bobby's, the one you named into existence in a meadow on Level 14. He presses his lips to your forehead. Holds them there for a beat. You feel the hum vibrate through the contact, that low sub-frequency that lives in his chest and transfers through skin, settling behind your sternum like a second pulse.
Then he straightens. His hand slides from your hair. The softness drops from his posture in a single clean motion.
What's left is the thing that walks these hallways, silent and certain and very, very old.
He rounds the corner, and the yellow swallows him.
You pick up the pen. Open the notebook to a fresh page. You write: Entity X — perimeter — closer. Testing the boundary for gaps. BB checking pattern. Unknown motivation. Unknown capability.
You underline unknown twice.
Eleven minutes.
You know this because you've been counting.
Your brain just does it now, keeps a running tally of the seconds since his silhouette disappeared. Because your body has learned that when he's not here, the math of your survival changes.
With him, you’re the safest thing in this strange place. Without him, you’re a girl sitting on a damp carpet in a place that eats people. But BB always comes back, you remind yourself. Always.
You're sketching the rough map of the corridors you explored yesterday, trying to get the proportions right on a hallway junction that you're fairly sure had five walls, when you hear the footsteps.
Not his. His steps are almost silent, a predator's tread, weight distributed in a way that isn't quite human. These are boots. Multiple sets. Heavy, deliberate.
You close the notebook slowly.
Six figures come around the corner.
Not researchers BB warned you about. Wrong uniforms, wrong insignia, a logo you don't recognise stitched onto black tactical gear. They're armed. Not with the improvised weapons most wanderers carry. Real weapons. Professional grade. The kind that suggests funding, organisation, a chain of command that exists somewhere outside this place.
The one in front spots you and signals the others to stop. He says something into the radio on his shoulder, clipped and fast, and you catch the words “confirmed,” and “companion” and “entity absent.”
They waited for BB to leave.
“Ma'am.” The lead one steps forward. Voice flat. Professional. “You need to come with us. We're here to extract you.”
Your body tenses at those words, coiling, and you stand at once. “No.”
It comes out sharper than you expect. Hard-edged. The backrooms have made you harder than you realise.
“Ma'am, that's not—”
“I said no,” you repeat firmly. “I'm not going anywhere with a bunch of strangers.”
His jaw tightens. He glances at the others. Some signal passes between them. A shift in posture, a nod, the silent language you’re not privy to.
He reaches for your arm.
You hit him.
A closed fist, fast, driven by weeks of survival instinct and adrenaline and the specific, white-hot fury of being grabbed by a stranger in a place where the only person who touches you has earned it inch by inch.
Your knuckles connect with his cheekbone. The man’s head snaps sideways, and for one bright second, you feel savage satisfaction.
Then three of them are on you.
You kick. You bite. Drive your elbow into someone's throat and hear someone choke behind you. You're feral with it. No technique, no training, just the scrappy, vicious fighting of a girl who's survived the backrooms and is not going to be dragged by men who couldn’t even bother to introduce themselves.
Your nails rake across someone's forearm and draw blood. You wrench free of one grip and slam your heel into a kneecap. Someone swears, loud, furious.
“Fucking—hold her, HOLD HER—”
A hand fists in your hair. Yanks. Your neck snaps back, and your eyes water. Someone wrenches your arm behind you hard enough that the joint screams. You thrash, snarling. Your free hand catches someone across the mouth. You feel a tooth cut your knuckle.
The lead one is in front of you again. There's a red mark blooming on his cheekbone where you hit him, and his professionalism has curdled into something uglier.
“You want to do this the hard way?”
You spit at him. It catches his vest.
He hits you.
Open palm across your face. Your head rocks to one side. The world around you whites out for half a second, and then there's carpet under your hands and knees. Your lip throbs, burning numb, and you can taste copper in your mouth, dribbling. A boot slots between your shoulder blades, pressing you flat, and your cheek presses against the damp fibres.
Your wrists get pinned behind you roughly at an angle that sends bright, screaming pain up to your shoulder.
“Stay DOWN—”
You’re on the floor, bleeding. There’s a boot on your back and hands pinning your wrists. You’re away from the only safe thing in this place, and the carpet is wet against your split lip. You’re afraid. For the first time since your encounter with the Smiler, you’re terrified. Immediate, animal fear of being held down by someone stronger than you.
You open your mouth. You fill your lungs.
And you scream.
“BB—”
One word. It tears out of your throat raw and desperate, hitting the yellow walls, and the walls absorb it, and the walls move.
The fluorescent lights don't flicker. They detonate.
Every tube in the hallway blows simultaneously, glass raining down like ice, and in the darkness that follows, the hum of level 0 drops—drops—drops into a frequency that you feel in your teeth, in your ribs, in the boot on your back that suddenly isn't pressing as hard because the man wearing it has stopped breathing. Not dead. Frozen.
The way an animal freezes in terror when it smells something at the top of the food chain.
The walls crack. Clean fissures running floor to ceiling, splitting the drywall in deliberate, surgical lines, as if something were tearing its way through the building's architecture. The carpet ripples under your cheek. You feel it. The backrooms responding, contracting, the whole of level 0 seizing like a body in pain.
The boot lifts off your back.
Not because the man chose to move it. Because the floor tilted. Subtle. Just enough to shift his weight. Just enough to free you. The backrooms—him, it, the thing that is both—clearing the path.
You hear them before you see them react. The soldiers. Breathing fast. The click of weapons being raised. Someone screaming “what the fuck what the fuck what the—”
He comes out of the dark.
Not through a door but from the dark itself. Like the darkness peeled open and someone stepped through the seam.
He’s not fully human-shaped.
The Bobby suit is slipping. Shoulders too wide. Arms too long, hanging at angles that make your hindbrain scream. His fingers have too many joints—you can see them in the fractured emergency glow of the one tube that didn't shatter—long and wrong, curling like they're remembering a shape that predates hands.
His face is still Bobby's face but the geometry behind it is pressing outward, cheekbones like blades, jaw too sharp, too angular, the skull beneath rearranging itself into something that was never meant to be looked at directly. And his eyes are black. Fully, completely, endlessly black. Two holes in the front of his skull that open onto something without a floor.
He sees you on the ground.
The blood on your lip. The bruises on your skin. The tear tracks cutting down your face.
BB sees the boot print on your back.
There’s a sound.
It booms from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling simultaneously. From every surface of level 0, because he is level 0, and every square inch of it is snarling.
The remaining fluorescent tube doesn't shatter.
It melts. The glass softens and drips. The carpet under the soldiers' feet goes wet, soaked, saturated, as though the floor is turning into a swamp.
You press your face into the carpet and close your eyes.
It takes less than a minute.
You don't watch, but you hear it. Screaming that starts human and ends keening. Wet sounds. Heavy sounds. The particular acoustic signature of a body being opened by something that doesn't need tools. That horrible, snarling, clicking growl of pure rage.
One of them manages to fire a weapon, and the sound of the shot is enormous in the enclosed hallway. It cuts out, followed by a crunch of bone, and another, and another, and another—
Then there's nothing.
Silence.
The level settles. The hum reasserts itself, climbing back up from that sub-basement frequency to its usual buzz. You can feel it in the carpet against your cheek, scratchy and too warm.
One fluorescent tube fizzes back to life overhead. Yellow. Sickly.
You feel the air change. The temperature drops, and you know he's close before anything touches you.
When it does—a hand on your shoulder, delicate, so delicate—it's not quite a hand yet. Too many joints. The fingers too long, still retracting to Bobby's proportions, still remembering how to be the thing that strokes your hair instead of the thing that just—
You turn over.
He's crouching over you. Still wrong. The proportions haven't settled. BB’s arms are too long, and his spine is curved at an angle that doesn't work with human vertebrae. His face is a rough draft. Bobby's features sketched over the older, sharper one. Black fluid coats his hands. His jaw. His chest. Not all of it is black.
His eyes are still dark, but the blue is bleeding back in around the edges. Like ink dropped into water, spreading, reclaiming.
You reach for him.
Your hands are shaking so badly that you miss the first time.
Your fingers slip against the wrong texture of his jaw, the skin too smooth, too cool, still settling back to its bony configuration. You reach again, and this time you get his neck (too long, the vertebrae too prominent, sharp ridges under your palms where Bobby's neck was smooth), and you pull.
You pull yourself into him, and you cling.
Arms around his neck, face buried in his throat, legs curling up, making yourself as small as possible against his chest because if you can get close enough, maybe nothing will ever reach you again.
You wrap yourself around him with a muffled sob. One sob, then another, then a third that breaks open into something ragged and ugly and not at all brave.
You’re shaking and bleeding, crying into the neck of a monster, and you don't care. You don't care about the wrong temperature, the wrong shape or the black fluid soaking into your shirt.
You don't care.
BB freezes. One second. Two. The violence still running, the gentleness needing a moment to boot up. You feel it. The exact instant the system switches. His whole body shudders once, and then his arms come around you.
Tight. So tight. He scoops you up like you're nothing—one arm under your legs, one around your back—and pulls you into his chest and holds you against him like he's trying to absorb you. Like he could fold you into his body and keep you there where nothing touches you ever again.
His chin comes down on the top of your head. His whole body curves around you. You feel the strength in every inch of him. The same strength that just did what it just did, repurposed. Every ounce of force that tore six armed men apart, now calibrated with impossible precision to the exact pressure of holding without breaking.
“I'm here.” His voice. Rough. Not fully Bobby's voice yet. There's an edge underneath it still, something vast and deep, like hearing someone speak from several floors down. “I'm here, baby. I'm here.”
You press closer. Your fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket. Bobby's jacket. Your face is against his throat, and you can feel the absence of a pulse under your cheek. No heartbeat. Just the hum. His hum. Vibrating through his chest and into yours.
“They—” Your voice is thick, muffled against his skin. “They grabbed me, they were trying to—I fought, I tried to—”
“I know.” His hand finds the back of your head. Cradles it. His fingers—the right number of joints now, almost fully Bobby-shaped again—thread into your hair the way they do in the nest, slow, gentle, the careful repetitive motion that means safe, you're safe, I'm here. “I know. It's over.”
“There were six of them and I couldn't—”
“You don't have to.”
His other hand finds your face. Tilts it up. His thumb traces your split lip with a touch so light it barely registers. Just the ghost of contact, the pad of his thumb skating over the cut, and you watch his jaw tighten. The blue in his eyes flickers. Darkness swims underneath it, surfacing and submerging, and you know he is looking at the blood on your mouth, and memorising who put it there, and the fact that they’re already dead is not enough. Will never be enough.
“Does it hurt?” Quiet. Bobby's voice now, almost entirely. That specific soft register he uses in the nest, the one that makes your chest ache.
“A little.”
His thumb moves to the bruise on your cheekbone. Traces the edge of it. Down to your jaw. Along the finger-shaped marks on your wrist, and the sound he makes is barely audible. Low, tight snarl. A vibration caught behind his teeth.
“I should have been here.”
“You came.”
“Not fast enough.”
You almost laugh. What comes out instead is a wet, clogged sound. “You came very quickly, BB.”
“Not fast enough,” he repeats, and means it.
You put your head back against his chest. He holds you tighter. He hums. Shaky at first, the frequency wobbles. Then it steadies. Finding its rhythm. His song. The one that doesn't exist anywhere outside of him.
You feel the backrooms settle around you both. The lights dim softer. Temperature rises, degree by gentle degree, until the air feels like a room in a house instead of a hallway in purgatory. He’s doing that. Rewriting the space around your body because you’re shaking, and he can't make you stop shaking, but he can make everything else softer.
“BB.” Your voice is small. Muffled against his chest.
“Yeah?” Immediate. Soft.
“Don't leave.” You swallow. Press your face harder into the fabric of his jacket. “Just—for a bit. Don't leave.”
His arms tighten, cheek pressing against the top of your head. You feel him breathe—not because he needs to, but because you need to feel it, and he knows what you need, even before you know it yourself.
“Never,” he whispers.
One word. A law. Written into the fabric of this place. Never. As in: the sun will come up. As in: water runs downhill. As in: I will be here.
You close your eyes.
The shaking ebbs, not all at once but in increments, your body releasing its grip on the panic the way a fist unclenches. One finger, then another, then another. His hand keeps moving over your hair. Rhythmic. Patient. He will do this for as long as you need.
He will do this forever if you let him.
You stay like that. On the floor. In the hallway. Curled in the lap of a thing that’s just killed six men.
The backrooms are changing. You can feel it beneath you, a shuddering grind. Hallways folding. Routes sealing shut. The architecture of level 0 quietly, methodically, permanently rearranging itself around you both. Doors that used to lead here now lead nowhere.
He’s taking you somewhere no one will find you.
And you let him. Eyes closed. Face against his chest. Listening to the hum.
On ██/██/199█, at approximately ██:██ hours, a six-person tactical unit operating under the authority of ██████████████████████████████████ (hereafter "the Agency") conducted an unauthorised extraction attempt on the individual designated "the Companion" in M.E.G. Entity 0 documentation.
M.E.G. had no advance knowledge of this operation. We were not consulted or informed. We were not given the opportunity to do what we have spent the last eighteen months doing, which is explicitly and repeatedly recommending against exactly this course of action.
Our recommendation, stated in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier and reiterated in no fewer than six inter-agency memoranda, was as follows:
"Do not intervene. Do not extract. Do not, under any circumstances, threaten the Companion's safety within Entity 0's perceptual range."
The Agency disregarded this recommendation.
All six members of the tactical unit are dead.
RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENTS
The following timeline has been assembled from recovered equipment (three body cameras, one partially functional radio unit) and corroborating seismic data from M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Levels 0 through 3.
██:██ — Six-person tactical unit enters Level 0 via access point ██████. Equipment and insignia consistent with ██████████████████████████████████. The unit is armed with ██████████████████████████████████. They are equipped for a hostile extraction. This was not a rescue. This was a retrieval.
██:██ — Unit locates the Companion in a hallway junction on Level 0, sublevel ██████. Entity 0 is not present. Body camera footage confirms the unit waited for Entity 0 to leave the Companion's immediate vicinity before approaching. This indicates prior surveillance. The Agency was watching. We did not know they were watching. This is itself a security failure that is being reviewed separately.
██:██ — Unit lead makes verbal contact with the Companion. Instructs her to comply with the extraction. Companion refuses. She states clearly, on camera, that she does not wish to be removed. Her exact words are "No" and "I'm not going anywhere."
██:██ — Unit lead attempts physical restraint. The Companion resists violently. Body camera footage shows her striking the unit lead in the face, drawing blood from a secondary operative, and disabling a third with a knee strike before being subdued by multiple operatives simultaneously. She fought like someone who has been surviving the Backrooms for ██████, and it shows. The Companion is subsequently struck across the face by the unit lead and forced to the ground. Bruising consistent with forcible restraint is visible on both wrists.
I will repeat that for the record: a civilian who had clearly, verbally, on camera refused extraction was beaten to the floor by a six-person tactical unit.
██:██ — M.E.G. seismic monitoring stations on Levels 0, 1, 2, and 3 register a simultaneous anomalous event. The reading does not correspond to any known geological or structural phenomenon. Dr. ██████ has described the waveform as "an earthquake." I am including her analysis verbatim because I do not have a better description.
██:██ — The Companion screams.
██:██ — Entity 0 arrives.
The gap between ██:██ and ██:██ is approximately 1.3 seconds. Entity 0's last confirmed position was ██████████████████████████████████, an estimated █████████████ meters from the Companion's location. It covered this distance in 1.3 seconds. We do not have a theoretical framework for this. We are not going to develop one. It doesn't matter. What matters is what happened next.
██:██ (CONCURRENT) — What we did not understand at the time—and what has only become clear through post-incident analysis—is that Entity 0 did not move through the Backrooms to reach the Companion. It moved the Backrooms.
Temporal monitoring equipment across Levels 0 through 266 recorded simultaneous, catastrophic time distortion events at the moment of Entity 0's displacement. On Level 1, clocks ran backwards for approximately 3.7 seconds. On Level 2, a monitoring team reported experiencing the same eleven-second interval twenty times in succession. On Level 49, two operatives aged approximately 6 years in the space of 1.3 real-time seconds. Medical examination confirmed accelerated cellular turnover consistent with temporal compression. Both operatives have been placed on medical leave.
Entity 0 tore through the temporal fabric of the Backrooms to close the distance between itself and the Companion. It did not navigate. It did not transit. It ripped a hole through the structure of the intervening space.
The damage on the lower levels was temporary. The damage on Level ███ was not.
Level ███ is gone.
Level ███—a fully mapped, documented, and intermittently populated level of the Backrooms—no longer exists. It was not sealed. M.E.G. operatives who attempted to access Level ███ via three separate confirmed entry points found nothing. Not empty corridors. Not blank walls. Nothing. The space that Level ███ occupied is simply absent. As though it was never there at all.
Entity 0's transit path between its last confirmed location and the Companion passed directly through Level ███. The conclusion is unavoidable: Entity 0, in the 1.3 seconds it took to reach the Companion, annihilated an entire level of the Backrooms as collateral damage. The way a bullet destroys the wall behind the target. Level ███ was simply in the way.
We do not know if there were casualties. Level ███ was classified as intermittently populated. Wanderers passed through; some may have been sheltering there at the time of the event. We will likely never know. There is nothing left to recover. There is nothing left to examine. An entire level of reality was erased in 1.3 seconds.
Dr. ██████ has requested that this section of the report be classified as Level 5. I have denied this request. Everyone needs to read this. Everyone needs to understand what we are dealing with.
██:██ through ██:██ — Body camera footage for this period is partially corrupted. What remains has been reviewed by myself, Dr. ██████, and Dr. ███████████. Dr. ████ has declined to review it. Her decision is respected.
Entity 0 was not in its standard manifestation. I am not going to describe the specific deviations in this report. The footage is available for personnel with Level 4 clearance and a strong stomach.
The engagement lasted approximately 42 seconds.
Entity 0 did not use weapons. Entity 0 is the weapon.
All six operatives were killed. Cause of death for four: ████████████████████████ Cause of death for the remaining two: ██████████████████████████████████. Recovery of remains has been deemed inadvisable at this time, as Entity 0 ██████████████████████████████████.
██:██ — Final body camera footage shows Entity 0 approaching the Companion. It is partially restructured to its usual template, but not fully. The Companion does not retreat. She reaches for it. She clings to it. Entity 0 gathers her. The word "cradles" appears in three separate reviewer notes, and I am allowing it despite its lack of clinical precision because nothing else is accurate, and assumes a protective posture. Audio, though degraded, captures the Companion's voice saying something indistinct, and Entity 0 responding with a single word. Audio analysis has been unable to confirm the word. Dr. ██████ believes it was "never." The camera fails shortly after.
ASSESSMENT OF CONSEQUENCES
I said in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier that I did not want to see what it does to us. I have now seen it. I was right not to want to.
But the killings are not the primary concern of this report. Soldiers die. Operations fail. This is the nature of work in the Backrooms. The primary concern is what this incident has done to years of carefully maintained observational neutrality between M.E.G. and Entity 0.
Entity 0 tolerated us. That is not an exaggeration or a simplification. We have operated monitoring equipment on Level 0 for eighteen months. Entity 0 knew it was there. It knew we were watching. And it allowed it, the way a homeowner allows a bird to nest in their gutter. Not because they approve, but because it doesn't bother them enough to act.
That tolerance is, as of this incident, in question.
Within 48 hours of IR-0-27, the following changes were observed:
Level ███ remains nonexistent. Repeated attempts to locate it via all known access points have failed. Dr. ██████ has formally recommended that it be struck from the Backrooms cartography index. The level is not missing. It was unmade. The temporal scarring along Entity 0's transit path shows no sign of healing or regeneration. This is, as far as we can determine, permanent. An entire level of the Backrooms has been permanently destroyed as a byproduct of Entity 0's emotional response to a threat against the Companion.
M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Level 0, sublevel ██████ through ██████, ceased functioning. Not damaged. Removed. Every sensor, every camera, every seismic monitor. Gone. No debris. No evidence of destruction. The equipment is simply no longer there.
Three M.E.G. personnel conducting routine observation on Level 0 reported that the hallways they had used for months had "rearranged." Routes that previously led to confirmed Companion sighting locations now terminate in dead ends. Level 0 has been restructured. We believe Entity 0 has deliberately altered the architecture to prevent future observation.
The Companion has not been sighted since IR-0-27. She is not at any previously confirmed location. The blanket nest—documented across seven sighting reports as Entity 0's primary base of operation with the Companion—is empty. Every blanket, every scavenged item, every trace of habitation has been removed. As though no one was ever there.
Entity 0 has not been sighted on Level 0 since IR-0-27.
The implication is clear: Entity 0 has relocated the Companion. To where, we do not know. Dr. ██████ has proposed that they may have moved to a sublevel of Level 0 that is not represented in our current mapping. A level beneath the level, a space that Entity 0 has carved out or always possessed and simply never used until now. Until it had a reason to hide something it could not afford to lose.
We have, in the space of one unauthorised operation conducted by an agency that ignored every warning we provided, lost the single greatest research asset in the history of M.E.G. entity studies. The Companion is gone. Our access is gone. Years of carefully accumulated observational data has been rendered functionally useless because the subject has moved to a location we cannot find and sealed the door behind it.
FORMAL OBJECTIONS
I want the following on the record:
M.E.G. explicitly, repeatedly, and in writing recommended against any attempt to extract, contain, or engage the Companion. These recommendations were provided to the Agency through proper inter-organisational channels on ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/199█, ██/██/199█, and ██/██/199█. Each was acknowledged. None were followed.
The Companion was not a hostage. She verbally refused extraction, clearly, and on camera. The Agency proceeded with force. This is not a rescue. This is an assault on a civilian by a government-adjacent organisation operating without jurisdiction inside a space they do not understand.
The Companion was injured. She fought back and was beaten to the ground for it. She bled. And the thing that has been protecting her heard her scream its name. We told them what it does to things that threaten what belongs to it. We told them. They didn't listen. At least six people are dead because they didn't listen.
Entity 0 has, until now, operated within a framework that M.E.G. was beginning to understand. It was predictable. Perhaps not in its actions, but in its priorities. The Companion was the variable. The Companion was the key. And now the Companion is gone, and Entity 0 has demonstrated that its response to perceived threats is not merely violent but architectural. It didn't just kill the threat. It restructured its entire domain to prevent the threat from recurring. It sealed Level 0. It erased its footprint. It took its Companion, and it disappeared.
An entire level of the Backrooms was destroyed. Gone. Erased from existence as collateral damage during Entity 0's transit. If there were wanderers sheltering on Level ███ they are dead. Or worse. Or something we don't have a word for because the space they occupied no longer exists in any meaningful sense. We will never know. The Agency's unauthorised operation may have cost lives far beyond the six operatives they sent in, and we have no way to calculate the true body count because there is nothing left to count.
We do not know where Entity 0 is. We do not know if it will allow future contact. We do not know if, the next time an M.E.G. operative enters Level 0, Entity 0 will distinguish between us and the Agency. We may have inherited the consequences of someone else's stupidity, and we may pay for it in personnel.
RECOMMENDATIONS
All M.E.G. operations on Level 0 are suspended indefinitely pending reassessment.
The Agency is to be formally censured and barred from independent Backrooms operations until further notice. Their response to this censure is noted and disregarded.
No further attempts to locate, contact, or extract the Companion are to be conducted by any organisation, under any authority, for any reason.
If—and I stress if—Entity 0 re-establishes contact with M.E.G. personnel, the interaction is to be treated as a diplomacy scenario, not a research scenario. Entity 0 is not a subject. Entity 0 is, functionally, a sovereign power that we have just watched an allied agency declare war on. We will conduct ourselves accordingly.
Someone needs to tell the Agency what "apex predator" means. I have included a dictionary to help and clear the confusion.
Filed: ██/██/199█
Operations Director ██████
Addendum, handwritten:
She screamed his name, and the level cracked open.
I've been doing this for eleven years. I have never seen a response that fast. 1.3 seconds. It wasn't travel. He didn't cross the distance. The distance stopped existing. She called, and the Backrooms folded to put him where she was. And everything between them—every hallway, every corridor, every room, an entire level—ceased to exist because it was in his way.
The body camera audio from the aftermath is mostly static. But there is a moment, mostly degraded, where you can hear humming. And underneath the humming, faintly, a voice. Hers. Saying "don't leave." And then his. One word.
We are not dealing with an entity that lives in the Backrooms.
We are dealing with the Backrooms. And it is in love.
God help us all.
▓▓▓▓▓▓ END OF REPORT // FILE STATUS: OPEN — NEVER CLOSED ▓▓▓▓▓▓
YOUR 'BETTER BOBBY' FIC WAS SO GOOD! if you ever felt inspired would LOVE to read more about them. maybe another entity attacks them and they get separated? and alone and lost, reader can't help but miss the real Bobby ahhh. anyway, love you, thank you for writing!
I'm so glad you're all loving this idea, because inspiration hit me so hard I wrote this in one sitting. Continuation to this. Def let me know if you wanna see more 👀
warnings: horror (finally got to write my true love), and some gore (nothing explicit/implied)
series masterlist.
You've been here long enough that you've stopped counting the hallways.
That, in hindsight, should probably scare you the most. The fact that it doesn't scare you anymore.
The yellow used to make your skin crawl, that specific shade of institutional sick. Now it's just... the colour of home. Better Bobby's taught you that. Through sheer repetition of safety.
Every time he pulls you into a new room and checks the corners before letting you sit down. Every time he angles his body between you and a doorway without thinking about it. Or when he hands you something to eat. You've stopped asking where the food comes from. That's another question that goes in circles every time you try it. He watches you until you take a bite, satisfied, like feeding you is the only task on a list he takes very seriously.
You have a room now. Your room. He found it for you three (days? rotations? sleeps?) ago, deeper in Level 0 than you'd been before, tucked behind a series of turns that he walked so confidently you wondered if he'd planned the route in advance.
It's quieter than the others. The carpet is thicker, the hum lower, and there's a warm patch on the floor near the far wall where some buried pipe must be running. Better Bobby dragged every blanket he'd scavenged into a pile on that warm spot and when you'd looked at him he'd shrugged, one shoulder, earring catching the fluorescent light.
"What? You get cold."
Real Bobby used to steal the covers.
You try not to make the comparison. You try so hard. But Better Bobby makes it impossible because he's everything real Bobby was on your best days. Distilled and concentrated, with all the carelessness burned off.
He touches you constantly. Not sexually, just contact. His hand on the back of your neck when you walk. His chin on your shoulder when you're sitting together. His fingers finding yours in the dark when the lights flicker, which they do sometimes. And in those brief, stuttering seconds of blackness you can hear things moving in the walls and Better Bobby's grip tightens. He says I'm here like it's a fact of physics. Like his presence beside you is as fundamental and non-negotiable as gravity.
It's a Thursday, you think, or what you've decided is Thursday—you've started naming the days by feeling, which probably means you're losing it—when everything goes wrong.
You're walking. Better Bobby's slightly ahead of you, one hand trailing the wall, talking about something. He talks to you the way real Bobby used to, a constant low-level narration.
Except Better Bobby's commentary is about the architecture of this place, which hallways are safe, which ones echo differently than they should. The way the carpet changes texture near certain thresholds you should know about. You're half-listening, comfortable in the drone of his familiar voice, when he stops abruptly.
You almost walk into his back.
"Bobby?"
He doesn't answer. His head tilts slightly, the way a dog would listen toa distant sound. His whole body goes rigid in a way you've never seen before. Better Bobby doesn't tense up. Better Bobby is languid and easy and always, always calm.
"Bobby, what—"
"Don't move."
His voice is different. Stripped of the warmth, the lazy drawl, all the honeyed softness he pours over you. What's left is flat and hard. Something in your hindbrain fires that hasn't fired since you got here because Better Bobby has kept you so safe that you forgot what fear tasted like.
You taste it now. Bright and metallic at the back of your throat.
The lights flicker abovehead. Not the usual gentle stutter or dimming it does at random intervals. This is violent, a seizure of light, and in the strobe of it you spot something at the end of the hallway.
You can't process it. Your brain tries and slides off the shape the way water slides off wax. It's too tall, and wrong. So wrong. It takes up too much space for its size, like it's pressing against the dimensions of the hallway from the inside, and it's looking at you with something that isn't a face.
Better Bobby shoves you behind him. Both hands this time. Hard.
"Go."
"I'm not leaving you—"
"Go. Left, left, straight, third door. I'll find you." He looks over his shoulder at you and his eyes are dark and flat. Ancient in a way that makes your stomach drop because for just a second—just a flicker, shorter than the lights—the thing looking out from behind Bobby's face isn't Bobby, either. "Baby. Run."
You run.
Left, left, straight, except there's no third door. There's no door at all.
The hallway stretches and bends and the carpet under your feet changes from rough to damp to something that feels horribly organic so abruptly you almost skid. You're running and the fluorescent yellow is shifting with you, deepening in increments, and the walls are getting narrower.
The ceiling goes lower suddenly and you realise, with a lurch of animal terror, that you're not on Level 0 anymore.
You don't know when it changed. There was no door, no threshold, no moment. The hallways just... became somewhere else. Like you walked through an edit. A jump cut in reality.
You stagger to a stop. Your breathing is so loud it fills the quiet corridor.
It's dark here. Not quite pitch black, mercifully. There's light, but it's coming from somewhere wrong. Faintly blue, sourceless, the colour of television static.
The walls aren't yellow anymore. They're concrete instead. Industrial. Stained with something you refuse to look at closely. The ceiling is a mess of exposed pipes and dead wiring, and water (you hope desperately it's water) drips in a strange pattern that sets your teeth on edge
It's cold here. You're shaking, you realise a moment too late.
You press your back against the concrete wall and slide down to the floor, pulling your knees to your chest and try to make yourself small. Try to make yourself invisible. Because Better Bobby isn't here and without him you're nothing in this place.
Just soft, warm, alive thing in a place that is none of those things.
That's when you see it. From the corner of your eye.
It assembles itself in pieces in the dark, the way a photograph develops, the way something reveals itself to you only once it's already too close.
Teeth first.
A grin. Too wide and white, wrong, hanging in the blue-black dark about thirty feet down the corridor. Human teeth in a human smile except there are too many of them and the smile is too wide. It's not attached to anything you can see, either. Just the grin, suspended, luminous. The way a Cheshire cat would look if the Cheshire cat wanted to kill you.
It doesn't move. You don't breathe.
Then it's twenty feet away.
You didn't see it move. You didn't blink. Not once. It was thirty feet and now it's twenty and the grin hasn't changed, not even slightly. The same frozen rictus of delight, and you understand with a sick, cold certainty that it's not walking toward you. It's just... closer. Like the distance between you is a thing it can edit. A number it can change at will.
Fifteen feet. The grin widens. You didn't think it could widen.
You can see more of it now, or rather you can see the shape of more of it. The suggestion of a body behind the smile, darker than the dark around it, a silhouette that doesn't quite hold its edges. And the sound. There's a sound now, low and wet, like someone trying to laugh through a mouthful of something thick. A gurgling, hitching, delighted sound.
It's happy to see you. Whatever this thing is, it's so, so happy that you're here.
Ten feet. You can feel the cold coming off it. Not temperature, exactly, something else. An absence. A pulling. Like it's drawing the warmth out of the air between you one degree at a time and feeding the grin with it.
You open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.
"Close your eyes."
The voice comes from directly behind you.
You didn't hear him arrive. You didn't hear footsteps or breathing or the rustle of fabric. He's just there, the way he's always just there. His hand closes over your eyes from behind, firm, warm, his palm flush against your face, fingers curving over your brow.
"Close them. Keep them closed. Don't open them until I tell you to."
Better Bobby's voice is calm. Completely, impossibly calm. The same tone he uses when he's telling you to go back to sleep after the lights flicker. But underneath it—deep underneath, in a register you feel more than hear—there's something else now. An edge that doesn't sound like Bobby at all.
His hand lifts off your eyes. You keep them shut. You squeeze them so tight you see colours behind your lids. Bright, bursting phosphenes, and you press your face into your knees and you hear him move away from you. Toward it.
Then the sounds start.
You can't categorise them. You won't.
There's a tearing sound. Not fabric, or paper; something denser, wetter, something with resistance. A sound like a dog shaking water from its fur except heavier and it ends in a crack that reverberates through the concrete floor and up through your spine.
The gurgling laughter changes pitch. Goes higher. Then higher still. Then it's not laughter anymore, it's something between a shriek and a frequency. A sound that vibrates in the roots of your teeth, and underneath all of it is a low rumbling that you realise is coming from Better Bobby. A sound no human throat should make, a sound like tectonic plates grinding in the dark.
There's a splash. Something hisses, like water on a hot pan. The shrieking cuts out—not fades, cuts, abruptly, like someone hit a switch—and then there's a long, wet, dragging sound that moves away from you down the corridor and fades into the pipes and the dark.
Silence.
There's a ringing in your ears. Your fingers feel numb, heavy. You're biting the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste blood in your mouth.
Footsteps. Normal ones. The soft pad of sneakers on concrete.
"Okay, baby. You can open your eyes now."
You do. Better Bobby is standing in front of you, looking down at you with that soft, tilted expression. Same white tee. Same denim shorts. Trusty camera over his shoulder. Not a drop of anything on him. Not a wrinkle. His hair isn't even mussed any more than usual. His earring catches the faint blue light and throws a tiny star onto the concrete wall and he's smiling at you, gently, like you just had a bad dream and he's here to tell you it's morning.
There's nothing in the hallway behind him. Nothing on the floor. No sign that anything was ever there at all, except a faint smell. Ozone, copper and deeper beneath that, an almost rotten stench. You try to examine it but it's already fading.
You don't ask. You can't ask.
Your body moves before your brain does. You launch yourself off the floor and into him so hard he actually rocks back a step. Better Bobby, who's never been moved by anything in your presence, who stands in front of horrors like a wall moves this time. Your arms lock around his neck and you bury your face in his chest.
You're shaking. So violently that it's almost convulsive, these full-body tremors that you can't control, and the sound coming out of you isn't crying exactly. It's more animal than that, a high keening thing that you'd be embarrassed about if you had any room left for embarrassment but you don't, you used it all up being terrified.
Better Bobby catches you. He doesn't stumble again. His arms come around you and they're solid and warm. He holds you so tight that the shaking has nowhere to go, like he's absorbing it into himself, and one hand cradles the back of your head, pressing your ear against his chest. His heartbeat is steady, steady, so steady, and how is he so steady, how is he always so steady—
"Shhh. I got you. I'm here. It's gone."
You can't stop. You're gripping his shirt in both fists, knuckles blanching, and you're gasping against his collarbone and he just...
He holds you. Doesn't rush it. Or tell you you're okay or that it wasn't that bad or any of the things real Bobby would say in later months to make you feel silly for being scared. He just holds on and rocks you, the smallest movement, his cheek resting on top of your head.
Your voice comes out cracked and ruined. "What—what was that, what did you— how did you—"
He hums gently. "Don't worry about it."
"Bobby, that thing, it was—its face, it was smiling, it was—"
"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at you. Tips your chin up with his knuckle. That lazy smile, easy and warm and so perfectly Bobby it makes your chest splinter. "I know what it was. It's gone now. Don't worry about it."
"How did you get rid of it?" you rasp.
His thumb strokes your jawline. "Does it matter?"
"Yes."
He looks at you. For a moment something flickers behind his eyes. Something vast and patient and very, very old. Then it's gone, and he's just Bobby again, warm-eyed and soft-mouthed, tucking your hair behind your ear.
"I told you, baby. Nothing gets past me." He kisses your forehead. Slow. Gentle. His lips are warm and the concrete corridor is freezing around you. You lean into him like he's the last source of heat in the world. "Come on. Let's go home."
He takes your hand.
You let him lead you.
He leads you back through the concrete and the pipes and the blue-dark, his thumb rubbing circles on your knuckles, and you don't look behind you.
Not even once. Because whatever he did in that corridor is something you have decided you don't need to see the aftermath of, and also because some part of you—the part that still thinks clearly, the part that Better Bobby hasn't quite reached yet—understands that there is no aftermath.
That whatever Better Bobby does to the things in the dark, he does it completely. He doesn't leave evidence. He doesn't leave remains. He unmakes them, and he does it wearing Bobby's crooked smile, Bobby's silver earring and Bobby's cut-off shorts like a costume. Like a skin, like a love letter written in someone else's handwriting.
The concrete gives way to carpet. Just as abruptly. The blue darkens to yellow again. The cold lifts. The hum returns, and for the first time ever you're grateful for it. The way you'd be grateful for the sound of traffic outside your apartment window because it means you're back in the world, or at least, back in the only world you have left.
Your room. The warm patch. The blankets.
Better Bobby guides you down, wrapping the blankets snug around you. He tucks himself behind you and you press back into his chest, his arm winding around your waist. You're still shaking faintly, these little aftershock tremors, and he absorbs every single one.
"Sleep, baby. I'm right here."
And you close your eyes and you think about real Bobby.
You think about the apartment in Santa Clara. The kitchen counter where he used to roll joints with the window open because you didn't like the smell building up inside. The way his camera equipment colonised every flat surface, cables and lenses and that one light diffuser he was so particular about. You used to complain it and he used to say babe, genius needs room to breathe and you'd throw a dish towel at his head while smothering a grin.
You think about the night you fell in love with him. Not the day you realised it (you'd known for a while by then) but the night it actually happened.
You sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot off El Camino Real, sharing a joint, and he'd turned to you with the camera for once not in his hands and said, so disarmingly, you're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, and his face looked stripped of its usual cockiness. Bare. Scared. Young.
He was so young. You both were.
You wonder if he's sitting in that apartment right now with the TV on and the lights off, not really watching, just existing in the space you used to fill.
You wonder if he's looked at your toothbrush in the holder next to his. If he's opened the fridge and seen the leftovers you made two nights before you vanished (was it two nights? you're losing track of the real timeline, it's blurring at the edges, and that scares you more than the grin in the dark) and whether he ate them or whether they're still sitting there. Slowly going bad, a small decomposition that mirrors something larger in your life.
You wonder if he's picked up his pager. Scrolled to your name. Stared at it.
You wonder if his thumb hovered over the button the way it used to hover over the shutter release—that perfect hesitation, that half-second of do I or don't I—and whether he pressed it or whether he set the pager down and rolled over. Told himself he'd deal with it tomorrow the way he's been telling himself he'd deal with you tomorrow for months now.
You wonder if somewhere under the indifference and the exhaustion and the slow-growing cruelty there is still a version of Bobby who filmed you sleeping because the light was good. Who cut a Metallica shirt into a crop top with kitchen scissors and held it up like a trophy. Who said hold still, the light's doing something crazy on you and meant I love you, you're beautiful and couldn't say it any other way.
You wonder if that Bobby still misses you.
You wonder if he'd ever come looking.
Better Bobby pulls you closer. His mouth finds the spot behind your ear. The one real Bobby discovered during your second date together. The one that makes everything go quiet inside your skull.
"You're thinking again," he murmurs.
"I know."
"About him."
You don't answer. You don't have to.
Better Bobby is quiet for a long time. His breathing is slow and even against your back. The lights hum their tuneless hymn in your ears. Somewhere deep in the walls, something moves again, and you tense at the scraping sound.
Better Bobby's arm tightens around you. A reflex, instant, protective, the one thing about him that never feels performed.
"He's not coming, baby," he says softly. He doesn't say it meanly this time, either. Not triumphant. More so sad. Almost like he wishes it weren't true, for your sake. Because even this thing that wears Bobby's face and unmakes grinning horrors in the dark doesn't want to watch you grieve. "You know that."
Summary: As a girl, you hoped you would someday marry Gwayne Hightower. That hope disappeared with Gwayne the day he was sent back to Oldtown. Now, as Rhaenyra finds a parade of suitors filling the Keep in search of her hand, one arrives just for you. | Ft. Anon request for: "Do you never tire of your own voice?”, “Now you’re just tempting me to do something we’ll both regret.”, “Guess I’ll have to come inside you, then.”
Warnings: Potentially slightly off timeline, brief mention of Rhaenyra's wedding incident, Gwayne already thinks Criston's a little unhinged, unprotected PinV. Think that's it.
Pairing: Gwayne Hightower x fem!Targaryen Reader (Rhaenyra's twin) [Rhaenyra, Gwayne, Reader are all about 18/19 - Alicent is 20/21]
Word Count: 7.3k
HotD Taglist | HotD Masterlist
“Laugh all you’d like, you’ll be next.”
The sight of Rhaenyra dressed in red and gold - gilded, gleaming as a Targaryen princess should - stomping through the gardens, annoyance simmering in her violet eyes, drew your amusement, though you were quick to smother your smile as she drew closer.
Scowling - exhausted and annoyed after a seemingly endless barrage of boastful and presumptuous proposals, all from men who wanted little more than a royal mother for their heirs - she settled onto the plush blanket at your side. Without prompting, you closed the book you’d spent the afternoon reading and placed it on the grass, allowing her space to rest her head as your hand fell to her hair.
“I’m not laughing at you,” you assured her - though the glare she leveled at you adequately conveyed her disbelief.
It was true, you’d spent the morning giggling, not bothering to hide your smile as she was scrubbed and dressed and received a third - or thirtieth, you’d lost count - lecture from your father about duty. But, you weren’t laughing at her.
If anything, you were laughing at the absurdity of it all.
The King, the leader of the realm, was allowing a parade of potential suitors to offer themselves to Rhaenyra - his eldest, if only by a few moments - on a silver platter. The endless stream of lords was one she steadfastly refused to even consider, her heart already in the hands of the Rogue Prince, and you could not help but find amusement in the entire ordeal.
Viserys was going to the greatest efforts to secure a match for her, one that might leave her content - at best - while your own betrothal was not even a consideration.
Such was life.
“I do not believe you,” Rhaenyra insisted, violet eyes narrowing as she huffed. Still, she leaned into the feeling of your fingers carding through the silk strands of her silver hair. “You’re finding great joy in my misery.”
Despite herself, there was no heat to her accusation, no real belief that you found her pain amusing, but you still dutifully attempted to hide your smile.
“Believe what you’d like, sister. However, I do doubt I’ll be next,” you admitted, shrugging as you spared her a glance - somewhat grateful, somewhat incensed by the lack of consideration. “Father’s extended his best efforts to secure a match for you and you’ve succeeded in scarring half the lords in the realm,” you teased - laughing as Rhaenyra lightly pinched your forearm in mock scolding. “My own marriage is of little concern to him or anyone else. Perhaps, instead of a repeat of this spectacle, I’ll be sent away to become a septa,” you mused, only half-joking.
“What a shame that would be.”
Whatever reply lingered on Rhaenyra’s lips was swallowed as you both turned your attention to the young knight, remaining just a few steps from where you sat. Though you had not seen him in years, dressed in the rich emerald green of his house with flaming red hair, there was no question who stood before you.
Gwayne Hightower, once the very object of your girlhood affection, was a rare visitor to the Red Keep these days.
As children, you spent a great deal of your time together, nearly every waking moment you could spare. You, Rhaenyra, Alicent, and Gwayne were never very far from one another, though you, Gwayne, and Alicent spent far more time in the library than Rhaenyra, who enjoyed nothing more than soaring through the sky atop Syrax.
The four of you were certain that you would grow into adulthood together - Rhaenyra and Gwayne riding off to battle and glory; you and Alicent, settling into gentler, happier lives as you awaited their return.
That vision of the future brought you joy, excitement. But the vision that truly sustained you was the one in which you spent the rest of your life with Gwayne, happily married and blissfully lost inside a love you had little hope truly existed.
Unfortunately, that vision of the future disappeared in a plume of smoke.
Though his father had spent more time as the Hand of the King than Viserys had spent on the throne, after the death of their mother, only Alicent remained at court while Gwayne returned to Oldtown to live as a ward of Lord Ormund. He was nearly of age, and determined to become a knight, two prospects that meant he was well on his way to joining the City Watch - an order Otto despised, as deeply as he despised the man who occasionally commanded it.
Rather than allow Gwayne to fall into the hands of Daemon Targaryen, Otto sent his youngest son back to Oldtown.
The very moment Gwayne disappeared from your sight, auburn hair blazing in the sunlight as he began the journey to the Reach and blue eyes glittering as they met yours just before the gates shut, any hope of a shared future dissolved.
And the moment Aemma passed, any hope of peace between the Hightowers and Targaryens disappeared with her.
In the years that followed - the years that brought a union between Alicent and Viserys, babies Aegon and Helaena, and a handful of tourneys he should’ve competed in - you’d only seen Gwayne twice. And you found yourself nearly at a loss for words as you blinked at him.
“Ser Gwayne,” you greeted, offering a smile that, though tight - not the welcoming embrace of a one-time childhood companion - was more than you sister seemed capable of as she scoffed. “What brings you to King’s Landing?”
The tension in your shoulders, the tightness of your smile, the sudden weight that seemed to be pressing on your chest; each one answered the question you had no real need to ask. However, despite the discomfort you felt, you smiled politely as you awaited the obvious reply.
As the son of the Hand, a Hightower, he was a suitable match for a Targaryen princess. He would never be the first choice - the second son of a second son whose only acclaim was his lengthy turn as Hand - but everyone knew Viserys had long given up his desire for perfection and only wanted some measure of decency. He trusted Otto with his life and, if Otto put forth his youngest son, Viserys was apt to accept the offer without thought.
The parade of suitors arrived days earlier, each with a more ostentatious entrance than the last, and you knew he should’ve been among them. As ill as it made you feel, as much as you despaired the idea of Rhaenyra marrying the man you’d long dreamt of, if he’d only arrived with the others, there was little doubt Viserys and Otto would’ve been altogether too invested in making a match. And, despite his tardiness, if the King and Hand were so inclined, there was little anyone could do to prevent the pair from marrying.
No matter the damage that might do to your heart.
Seemingly unaware of your inner turmoil, Rhaenyra sat upright and frowned at Gwayne as he took a tentative step closer to where you sat. Bright eyes met yours, alight with an amusement you could not understand, as he hummed.
“My father sent for me,” he confirmed, seemingly unbothered by Rhaenyra’s narrowed violet eyes and sneer as he stated the obvious. “I’m sure it was to join the parade of suitors but I suppose I’ve arrived too late to be considered for Princess Rhaenyra’s hand,” he mused, sparing you a smile that seemed a touch too bright as he did. “How unfortunate.”
Despite his lament, Gwayne did not sound the least bit concerned, a fact both you and Rhaenyra noticed immediately. And while it struck you as both heartening and curious - you would not have to watch your sister wed a man you once dreamt of marrying, but what man in the realm did not wish to marry Rhaenyra? - it drew her annoyance, as did most things to do with House Hightower, of late.
“I can tell you’re positively beside yourself with grief, ser,” she declared, not bothering to conceal the roll of her eyes as she stood, unwilling to be in his presence any longer. “Perhaps your sister, the queen, may offer you some comfort.”
Rhaenyra, not bothering to spare either of you another glance, pushed past Gwayne - a step too close to be an accident - and retreated to the Keep in a flurry of shimmering gold and red.
Silence lingered for a long moment, something uncomfortable and heavy - something you never would’ve expected to experience with Gwayne - as you watched her disappear. Only then did Gwayne return his attention to you with a thoughtful hum. “Still a sore spot, then?”
The last time you saw Gwayne was at the wedding - both of you silently worrying - and he’d been an unfortunate witness to Rhaenyra’s misplaced anger at Alicent.
Unlike Rhaenyra, you did not blame your friend - you blamed her father, you blamed your father - but there was little you could do to mend the rift that had only seemed to grow ever wider with each day that passed. And, with a frown, you confessed as much to Gwayne.
“Alicent has tried, but Rhaenyra…” With a sigh, heavy and clearly communicating the weight on your shoulders, you moved to stand - nodding gratefully at the hand Gwayne offered. “I understand both, I think,” you confessed, retracting your hand and turning your head so he could not see the flush that lit your cheeks as you swallowed all thoughts about the warmth of his hand in your own and, instead, focused on the seriousness of the chasm you spent your days sidestepping. “I wish we could find peace, somehow,” you continued, hoping he did not hear the hitch in your voice as he took another step closer. “I mislike the tension and miss my friend.”
For just a moment, the statement lingered in the still of the garden. It was honest, as honest as you’d allowed yourself to be with anyone in a long time, and you felt a sudden pang of regret as you quickly pasted on your most polite smile.
“Enough melancholy,” you dismissed with a wave of your hand. “How was your journey?”
Blue eyes met yours, searching in a way most never seemed to be - questioning, analyzing, rather than accepting the answer at face value - and you felt an almost overwhelming sense of vulnerability beneath Gwayne’s knowing gaze. Just as he had when you were children, still growing into yourselves, he seemed able to understand you when few else did.
And, rather than push you to carry on a conversation you were obviously not looking to entertain, he allowed you to shift the line of conversation. “Long,” he lamented, though he answered with a smile. “It was uneventful, and for that, I am grateful.”
“I’m very glad you arrived safely,” you assured him, though your cheeks heated with the admission. When he dipped his head, hiding his smile for your benefit, you carried on quickly. “Though, I’m sorry you arrived after the suitors were dismissed.”
In a way he seemed amused, a thread of humor glinting in his eyes as he continued to assess you in that all-knowing way of his. “Are you?”
Gwayne’s doubt was evident, a playful skepticism that made your skin heat with something not quite strong enough to be considered embarrassment though it came close enough. Regardless of your words, of the well-plotted act you followed without deviation, he seemed to hear the truth.
Though you would never admit it, you were glad Gwayne seemed to hold no interest in marrying Rhaenyra.
“Of course,” you said, anyway - continuing to follow the script and play your part faithfully. “You’d make a fine match for my sister.”
‘An even finer match for me,’ remained unsaid, though you assumed Gwayne heard it just the same.
For a moment, Gwayne allowed the comment - and its unspoken counterpart - to linger. Instead of rushing to reply, to thank you for the compliment or brush it away with the confident, casual air only he seemed capable of wielding without causing offense, he simply stood with you in the quiet of the garden.
It was only when the clink of armor and the click of heels against stone sounded that he made an effort to reply.
“Your confidence is appreciated, princess, but I believe there are many and more, far finer matches for Princess Rhaenyra. I will lose no sleep because of it and hope that neither will you.”
As Gwayne spoke his last word, the sentiment lingering and charging the air with something so tenuous you feared the slightest breeze might destroy any shred of its existence, he met your eyes. It felt as if everything around you ceased to exist, as if nothing else mattered, as hope began to rear its ugly head.
The warmth of a long buried dream, a long dormant affection, began to simmer in your blood - only to be cooled almost immediately by the bright voice of Alicent calling out to her brother.
“Gwayne!”
With hurried footsteps and a smile brighter, and truer, than anything you’d seen from her in longer than you cared to admit, Alicent approached the pair of you. If anything about your moment with Gwayne seemed untoward - a Targaryen princess alone with a knight, unchaperoned and standing too close for the sake of propriety - she gave no indication that she noticed and, instead, simply smiled at you both.
“Father just told me you’d arrived,” she continued, “I apologize for not being there to greet you. I was with the children.”
Alicent’s arrival seemed to shatter the glimmering bubble that enveloped you for just a brief moment - something you pretended, hoped, Gwayne felt, too, as his smile grew regretful before he turned his attention his sister. And, as you returned to yourself, you felt the need to place as much space between yourself and the youngest Hightower as possible.
“If you’ll excuse me,” you began, cutting in before they could begin their conversation or dismiss you themselves, “I’ll go see about Rhaenyra and leave you both to catch up. Welcome back to King’s Landing, Ser Gwayne.”
With a parting smile and a squeeze of Alicent’s hand - a gesture you’d taken to providing when you could - you turned and set off in search of Rhaenyra without sparing Gwayne another glance. And as you wandered through the labyrinthine halls of the Red Keep, you could only allow yourself to wonder how long Otto might permit Gwayne to remain in King’s Landing and how long you might keep yourself from dreaming of a future that could never be.
Much to your surprise, keeping away from Gwayne proved easier than you imagined.
While his mornings were spent in the tiltyard with guards and a few members of the City Watch, yours were spent with Rhaenyra as she struggled to keep Viserys from shipping her off to Casterly Rock. While your father had no desire to see Rhaenyra trapped in a situation that would leave her entirely miserable, his patience had worn thin following the parade of suitors and what he deemed her indiscretions.
And following her dalliance with Daemon - and Criston, the truth of which only you knew completely - his patience dissolved completely.
The wedding was to be a grand affair with a feast and more merriment than Viserys’ own wedding - a much larger, brighter, more exciting affair than the solemn ordeal you’d been forced to witness. And, for a brief moment, it very nearly was.
Rhaenyra and Laenor had no romantic love for one another but as they danced, you felt hope they might at least find happiness and understanding in one another.
Even as Daemon stepped in to dance with Rhaenyra, his intention clear to all, things were fine.
Merriment descended into chaos so quickly that your mind was left reeling. Dancing gave way to shoving, lords and ladies scrambling away from the savagery of Rhaenyra’s sworn sword and the futile attempts of other guards to pull him away. Shouts of joy quickly became shouts of terror, then a stunned silence, followed by a cry of anguish as a man lay dead in the midst of the revelry.
As blood stained Criston’s white cape, Harwin Strong rushed Rhaenyra to safety - easily flinging her over his shoulder and carrying her off as Laenor watched his companion fall - and you were ushered out of the hall by another guard whose face remained hidden in the shadows and flurry of movement.
Confusion reigned for a few long moments and the entirety of the Keep seemed to settle into a stunned silence as you wandered, in something of a daze, into the gardens.
As time passed - just a few moments or, perhaps, even hours - you settled onto a stone bench and attempted to make sense of the scene you’d just witnessed. Though you knew someone would come looking for you sooner rather than later, you savored the silence as you wondered if there was anything you could’ve done to help prevent the misfortune that befell Rhaenyra’s wedding festivities.
And, though you would never admit it, you found yourself wondering if your own wedding - should you have one, after the disaster you witnessed - would be as memorable.
Before you could think too long and hard about the future - about what changes might be made in the event of your own marriage, about who you might be forced to marry to ease now doubtlessly fractured relationships, about how miserable you may someday be - a voice cut through the still of the night.
“Princess.”
Gwayne, auburn hair tamed and eyes shimmering in the light of the moon, approached slowly. There was a concern on his face, joined by a barely concealed hint of amusement, that struck an already frayed nerve as he joined the seemingly endless list of those who found the spectacle of your life to be the highest form of entertainment. However, despite the simmering annoyance you felt, the sight of him was something of a balm for your racing heart.
“I was hoping I might find you,” he continued, stepping closer - now fully illuminated. “Though, through all the ruckus in the hall, I feared another guard had snatched you away. Ser Strong lives up to his family name, it seems.” When you made no attempt at a reply, only exhaled heavily at his attempt at levity, Gwayne continued unbothered. “Cole, Rhaenyra’s sworn sword, is… intriguing. He is skilled but has an unquestionable temper that is easily triggered. But, perhaps -“
“Do you never tire of your own voice?”
The question, spat with a venom you hadn’t known yourself capable of, interrupted Gwayne’s soliloquy. If he took offense from, or was surprised by, the outburst, he hid it well. Instead, he simply ducked his head to hide his laughter before returning his attention to you.
“Mm, I’ve been told my voice is rather charming,” he confessed, lips curving into the ghost of a smirk as he stepped even closer. “Unfortunate that you do not seem to agree, princess.”
With a sigh, you shook your head. “My apologies,” you hummed, tone softer now. “It is not you I am frustrated by.”
Though it was a partial truth - your true frustration was caused by your father, by your sister, by your lot in life - Gwayne did play at least some small part in the unease that had settled in the pit of your stomach.
While it was not his fault that you wanted nothing more than to marry him, to disappear to Oldtown and leave behind the madness of the Red Keep and all its political misery, his presence only reminded you of what you could not have.
Still, Gwayne seemed unruffled. “I take no offense. It has been a rather… exciting evening.”
Scoffing, you nodded. “An understatement,” you huffed, before adding, “I wish for nothing more than a little peace.”
The smile Gwayne now offered was one of understanding, something gentler, as he offered you a hand. “Shall I escort you to your chambers, then? The feast has ended, I’m afraid,” he announced, smile growing just a touch brighter as you accepted his offer.
As you stood, smoothing your gown and inhaling the last breath of cool night air, Gwayne released your hand and waited. It was only when you began to move that he did, too.
Silence had never been one of Gwayne’s strengths - as much as you regretted snapping at him, he did seem to enjoy the sound of his own voice - but he remained quiet at your side for much of the walk through the Keep. It was only as you began the ascent to your chambers that he spared you a sidelong glance.
“Oldtown is most peaceful,” he declared, unprompted, body a respectable distance from your own - though still a step too close for true propriety - as you walked in-step. “Though it is a large city, there is a serenity King’s Landing has not yet achieved.”
“I would love to visit someday.” Much of your life had been spent within the confines of King’s Landing, with only the occasional visit to Drftmark or Dragonstone, and you wished to see more of the realm. “I’ve heard of the beauty.”
“The Red Keep, for all its grandeur, does not offer one a true image of life beyond these walls. There is much to see.” Gwayne’s words, while gentle, held a sadness - a seriousness - you’d never before associated with him. He’d long been bright smiles and sharp jabs, playful taunts and swinging swords. There’d always been a boyishness to him but you were reminded that he was now a man grown as he turned to glance at you. “Do you ever imagine a life lived elsewhere?”
Had the question come from anyone else, you might’ve found offense. Had anyone else asked, you might’ve denied the dreams that often consumed you.
But because it was Gwayne, you felt yourself falter.
“Sometimes,” you began, words trickling out slowly as you attempted to make sense of your own thoughts - of his line of questioning. “I love my sister, my father, Alicent. The Keep is beautiful and King’s Landing has always been my home. But I do wonder what it’s like, what it will be like. I won’t live here forever,” you confessed, casting your gaze to your shoes as you approached your door. “Whoever I marry, surely I’ll go to live with him.”
“Have you given any thought to that?” When you frowned, Gwayne elaborated. “To who you might marry.”
Gwayne’s gaze was intense, searching - overwhelming - as he waited patiently for your answer. There was a glimmer in his eyes, the same one you saw often when you were young, and you swallowed the dreaded hope that dared bloom once more.
“Rhaenyra’s betrothal was more of a concern,” you confessed, tipping your head in an attempt to hide the confession that remained unspoken - the one that told him you often felt an afterthought to your sister.
“My father sent for me,” Gwayne began, pausing only a moment to catch your eye. “It was to be part of the parade of suitors vying for Rhaenyra’s hand but I had no interest in taking part. I have never wanted to marry Rhaenyra,” he confessed, taking a step closer - toeing the line of propriety as he did so. “Surely you know my attention has been drawn elsewhere and has been for a very long time.”
Despite the sincerity, the earnestness with which he spoke, you felt certain that the moment was a dream - or nightmare, depending on whether the person who captured his attention was someone other than you. Though you desperately wanted him to have spent years imagining you would someday be his wife, it felt impossible to believe.
“Rhaenyra is beautiful,” you reminded him, voice small and almost frightened as you waited for him to confess that it was all in jest or reconsider his options.
“No more so than you.” Gwayne stated it as a fact and you blinked.
“She is bolder,” you continued, searching desperately for any reason he might have to want you over your sister - none of which made any sense to you.
“I think you plenty bold.” He took another step closer, now foregoing any pretense of respecting propriety, and offered you a patient smile.
“She will someday be queen.” It was the last reason you could imagine, the one that seemed to draw nearly as many suitors as her beauty, but Gwayne seemed entirely unimpressed as he shrugged.
“I have no desire to be king consort. I’m content with the life I lead, save for my want of a woman who does not seem to recognize her own value,” he mused, tipping his head to meet your bewildered gaze with a questioning look of his own. “What must I do to prove to you that you are the woman I wish to marry, the one I’ve wanted since we were children?”
Without thought, you demanded, “Kiss me.”
Before you could find it within yourself to be embarrassed, Gwayne laughed. “Plenty bold,” he teased, smile soft but real. “However, you are tempting me to do something we’ll both regret.”
“Why is that?”
Gwayne’s lips curved into a smirk, blue eyes glinting with an amusement that you’d always found charming, as he hummed. “I fear if I kiss you now, I may never stop.”
There was little doubt as to what Gwayne meant, little doubt as to why he kept himself a step from you, but you cared little. Despite your upbringing, the teaching of your septa, you cared little about anything other than finally having Gwayne.
“Then don’t.”
Blue eyes flashed with something dark, something hungry, and you could see the restraint it took for him to offer you a placating smile. “I’ve spent my time here waiting for the moment to ask for your hand. When I did, it seemed the Keep erupted in chaos,” he confessed, laughing when you blinked - stunned that he’d already asked. “Neither of our fathers had a chance to answer. If I take you and they choose to deny us, the king will have another scandal on his hands. Two wayward princesses - your jest about becoming a septa may become a reality,” he reasoned, though his hand lifted to your cheek.
“And if the answer is yes?” Unable to help yourself, you leaned into his touch and allowed yourself a moment to enjoy the warmth of his palm pressed to your skin.
“Then they’ll have no choice but to allow us to marry sooner rather than later.”
Gwayne knew the risk was, nearly, entirely your own to take. With his father serving as the Hand, he would not be sent to the Wall for stealing your virtue - you both hoped, anyway - but there was still a lingering fear of the shame that might befall you both if anyone were to see. If both your father and his denied the match, you would be hard-pressed to find a husband and feared you would be left in the same position as your sister.
Despite that understanding, the choice was one you made easily. For as long as you could remember, Gwayne was all you’d wanted, the only man you’d ever considered, and there was little hesitation as you pushed open the doors to your chambers.
“Both are consequences I am willing to accept.”
There was a moment of doubt, a wonder as to whether Gwayne would follow you or if he would allow propriety to dictate his choice, but the moment you stepped into the warmth of your own room, he followed close behind.
The heavy wooden door shut with a finality that seemed to seal your fate, a confirmation that the choice you made in the moment at hand would dictate your future, and you found that there was no fear in what was to come. You would either marry Gwayne, be sent away, or be married for political gain.
At the very least, you would experience his touch before your fate was decided.
Neither of you moved for a long moment, both almost uncertain - you, with inexperience; Gwayne, with a hesitation to potentially destroy your future - before he stepped forward and silenced the endless cacophony of doubt swirling in your mind.
Gwayne’s lips pressed to yours in a kiss softer than you’d anticipated, something almost gentle, as his hands returned to your cheeks.
Warmth bled into you, the heat of his body pressed to your own as he crowded closer - a dizzying sensation that had you clinging to his biceps in an effort to steady yourself. Everything about him overwhelmed your senses, made it difficult to remember anything other than the longing you felt for him, and you were glad of it as one hand fell from your cheek to rest at your hip.
There was no rush, no hurry, and it eased some of the nerves that still rattled you.
So many years had passed, very few of them with contact shared between you and Gwayne, but as he stepped with you, deeper into the interior of your chambers, it felt as if no time at all had passed. He’d always been there, in the back of your mind, and you’d long held hope that he would be there in the future - though, of late, you’d hoped that he would be in front of you.
To finally have him as you’d so long dreamt was nearly as instinctual as breathing and you settled into his embrace easily.
Both of you were content to to linger for a moment, one of his hands on your cheek while the other gripped your hip as your hands held tight to his biceps, and savor the kiss. His lips, warm and chapped slightly, moved easily against your own, chasing them each time you attempted to part to catch your breath. His tongue traced the seam of your mouth, a hum of approval escaping as you parted your lips and allowed him to taste you - wine, honey, lemon.
“If I’m to live the rest of my life apart from you, knowing the feel of your lips - knowing how you taste - I may go mad,” Gwayne declared, breaking the kiss and doing nothing to hide his awe as your chest heaved with the effort of catching your breath.
“Then let us pray we will never be parted.”
It was you who surged forward then, reclaiming his lips in a desperate bid to keep him as close as he would allow, and Gwayne responded in kind.
Hands, calloused from years spent wielding a sword, fell to your hips as he continued to blindly inch you closer to the canopied bed. Though you could only feel the warmth of him, just barely, you shuddered at the thought of feeling his bare skin pressed to your own.
Mercifully, as you stepped beyond the privacy screen with only minimal impact with objects unlucky enough to reside in your path, Gwayne’s hands moved to the laces of your gown.
“As eager as I am to take whatever you will give me, we can stop,” he assured you, voice soft, lips only an inch from your own - warm breath fanning across your face as he met your eyes. There was a look of understanding in his own, a compassion few had ever shown for you, and your heart ached. “We can wait, hope that we will be given leave to marry, and save your reputation if we are not.”
“I don’t care about my reputation,” you promised, lifting your hands to rake through the soft strands of his hair. “If we are denied, I’ll at least have this memory to soothe my broken heart.”
With your blessing, Gwayne reached for the final tie - hands holding the fabric in place for only a moment before allowing it to begin falling. As the red fabric began to slip down your shoulders, those warm hands were there to explore the newly exposed skin.
Gwayne’s attention fell to your body, lips no longer chasing your own as he watched your skin be exposed inch by torturous inch with eyes blown black with a hunger you’d never before seen.
One hand lifted to your throat, fingers brushing along your collar bone and across your shoulder - down your arm, pausing only to lift your hand to his mouth where he pressed a soft kiss to the back, those eyes never leaving your own - as the other moved to continue peeling fabric from your body.
Every inch of skin Gwayne touched, every inch he merely gazed upon, felt warm - kissed by the flames of a desperate need you’d never before felt. Though the room had been comfortable only moments before, it suddenly felt stifling, air thick with a growing want that you nearly feared, as he finally leaned in to press his mouth to your skin.
Soft kisses peppered your skin - delicate, careful things that made you feel revered, worshipped - as he walked you back, helping you step over the pile of fabric pooled around your feet.
The moment the back of your knees pressed to the mattress, Gwayne nipped at the soft skin just beneath your ear. “Lie back for me, my love,” he urged, not bothering to hide his smile as you sighed - just a little lovesick - at the term of endearment.
As you climbed onto the bed, situating yourself amidst the pillows and fabric, Gwayne made quick work of the clothes he wore.
Unable to help yourself, you watched with unblinking eyes as he stripped beautiful green garments and tossed them into a heap beside the red fabric of your gown. He’d always been beautiful, bright hair and eyes a stunning contrast to the dark green he always wore, but he was even more beautiful than you remembered as he stood before you. The pale expanse of his skin emerged, littered with silvery scars from tourneys and training, and you longed to reach out and touch him.
Before you could, however, he settled onto his knees at the side of the bed and reached for your thighs.
“It is my hope that I can spend the rest of my life between your thighs,” he declared, eyes bright as they lifted to meet your own. “Your sister will someday be queen of the realm, but you shall always be queen of my heart.”
The teasing comment was accompanied by a wink, exaggerated and playful, and laughter escaped you immediately. Even as Gwayne worked to pull the fabric of your small clothes from your body, you shook your head. “I fear I may have changed my mind, ser,” you teased, shifting to accommodate his body as his hands stroked your warm skin. “Is it too late to find a more serious suitor?”
“Entirely, I’m afraid,” he hummed, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the inside of your knee. “Though the ladies of the realm owe you a debt of gratitude for saving them from my awful jests.”
“Well, if someone must,” you teased, voice faltering as he continued pressing his mouth to the warmth of your skin.
Gwayne seemed pleased with the beginnings of your reaction, nearly proud at the way your breath hitched and your lips parted the higher his lips ventured, and you found yourself entirely unbothered by the thought of him drawing closer and closer to your most intimate area.
Curiosity and a breathless anticipation lingered in the pit of your stomach, entirely overwhelmed by the warmth now entirely consuming you, as Gwayne inched ever closer. His fingers dug into the plush of your thighs, keeping you still and pliant, as he glanced up at you once more. “And, if someone must taste you,” he hummed, “well, I suppose I cannot refuse my princess.”
There was no time to wonder what Gwayne meant - or where he learned any of what he now used to please you - as he leaned in and began lapping at the slick gathered between your thighs.
The warmth surrounding you was now a full on blaze, a fire consuming you entirely, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to care that it could easily burn you alive as Gwayne lifted a hand to your aching cunt. Every sensation was new, overwhelming, and you could feel a tingling at the base of your spine that spread throughout your entire body as he licked at the arousal he’d caused.
Though much of the Keep was likely still making sense of the chaos, returning to rooms and inns and dealing with consequences, you kept enough of your wits about yourself to lift a hand to cover your mouth as Gwayne’s fingers joined his mouth in exploring the most intimate part of your body.
Every touch was better than the last, each one pulling sharp cries of pleasure from your throat, and you could feel Gwayne smile as he pressed a finger to your entrance.
“The next time we lie together, I want to hear you,” he declared, breath warm and sending a shiver down your spine as your skin muffled the words.
Gwayne’s bold insinuation that there would be a next time, that you would be allowed to see one another again - perhaps even have the future you’d long dreamt of - had your hand lifting to his hair. A little sharper than you intended, you tugged at the auburn locks and swallowed a moan of his name as he groaned against your skin.
It was all too much, too overwhelming, and you felt the desperate need to have him impossibly closer settle in the pit of your stomach.
With a tug at his hair, you urged Gwayne up, leaning over you - drawing him into a kiss that knocked him off balance. Laughter bubbled once more at the clumsy gesture, as he tumbled onto the plush mattress atop you, but it was quickly swallowed as you both realized the position you were in.
The warmth of his bare skin against to yours, the weight of his body pressing you into the mattress, the bulge of his cock pressed to your thigh - each realization struck you and rendered you nearly speechless as your fingers tangled in his hair. However, the pause only lasted a moment before Gwayne encouraged you to shift back onto the mattress and make room for him in your bed.
“Last chance to be rid of me, princess,” he whispered, knees pressed into the mattress and caging your hips.
“I want you closer,” you assured him, free hand reaching for his shoulder in an effort to urge him closer. “I don’t want to spend more time without you.”
Assured that your decision was resolute, that you had no doubts, Gwayne leaned in once more. With his small clothes gone and your slick coating your thighs, he pressed his mouth to yours as his hand fell to his cock.
“It’ll only sting for a moment,” he assured you, words whispered against your lips as he notched the head of his cock at your entrance. “But once it’s done, you’ll feel incredible. I’ll make sure of it,” he promised, pressing his forehead to yours as he began to inch forward.
Just as he warned, there was a stretch - a slight pain that stole your breath and made tears sting at the backs of your eyes - but he stilled above you and began pressing kisses to the heated skin of your cheeks, lips, and chin.
“Now that I’ve tasted you, felt you,” he breathed, “I’m ruined for any others. I am yours and yours alone.”
“Being sent away to become a septa would be a kinder fate than being forced to marry another,” you agreed, breathless and nearly lightheaded as you attempted to calm the beating of your heart.
Gwayne did not allow you much of a reprieve, however, as the moment the words left your lips, his hips began to shift.
Though you both felt somewhat clumsy, inexperienced and desperate for the pleasure of the beloved you feared you may never feel again, the tingling at the base of your spine spread across your body. It needled at your nerves in the most pleasant of ways, curling your toes and sending your heart hammering against your ribcage as you focused on the feel of Gwayne pressed to you.
Every drag of his cock, every press of his hips to yours, had you seeing stars and you reveled in the pleasure.
“Gods, I don’t want to imagine a life deprived of this, of you.” Every whispered word of compliment, every grunt and groan of pleasure, chipped away at the negative emotions you’d felt for years and while it felt an awfully vulnerable thing to say - something far more serious than you intended for the moment at hand - Gwayne seemed all too pleased to hear the thought spoken aloud.
“Neither do I,” he promised, lifting his head to meet your gaze. “I suppose I’ll just have to spill inside you, then,” he decided, grin growing bright at the prospect - of what life might be like if there was no one to hand you a cup of moon tea and demand you drink it. “I don’t imagine our fathers will deny me your hand if there is a chance you’ll soon be with child.”
The earlier thoughts you’d had about the kind of match Gwayne would make - that he was not perfect for Rhaenyra - mattered little where you were concerned. Though a princess, you were the second and marriage was all that was required of you. A Hightower, the son of the Hand, would do fine for you.
“I don’t imagine they would deny us regardless,” you whispered, though it sounded far less assured than you hoped it would.
A fact he noticed. “Wouldn’t you rather be certain, princess?”
Gwayne’s hips snapped harder, pressing him even deeper, and you felt the breath disappear from your lungs with every thrust. It was more than you could handle, the heat growing impossible to withstand as it blazed across your skin, and you nodded desperately.
“If certainty means a lifetime of this, then by all means,” you urged, voice an eager rasp as you held tight to Gwayne.
Pleasure enveloped you both, then, a tidal wave dragging you under and refusing to relent for what felt like a lifetime. The edges of your vision blurred and your ears rang as you found your release with Gwayne following suit. The warmth of him settled atop you, buried inside you - spilling inside you - was more than you could bear and you bit down on his shoulder to keep from crying out as loudly as you wished.
As he promised, Gwayne filled you - his seed spilling onto the sheets with the evidence of your tainted virtue - before pulling away to lay beside you.
Strong arms wrapped around your body, pulling you tight to his chest, and Gwayne laughed quietly. “I will not accept no as an answer,” he promised, voice quiet but certain as he tipped his head to glance at you. “We will marry and you will find peace in Oldtown, with me. I think you’ll be happy there.”
“If I am with you,” you whispered, offering him a smile, “then I know I will be.”
And, true to his word, the morning after Rhaenyra married Laenor in the quiet of the hall, you found yourself joining hands with Gwayne in a similar affair. While her wedding had been a solemn occasion, the bride and groom both beside themselves with the grief of a life lost, your own seemed a touch happier.
There was the promise of a future with Gwayne, one that brought you an excitement you’d not felt in a very long time, and as you began preparing for your new life in Oldtown, you felt a sense of peace that you knew would suit your new life all too well.
________________________________________________
Author's Note: Clearly, I did not intend for this to get as long as it did. But such is life. Anyway, I have power and internet and water again (hurricanes suck) and am spending my newfound free time writing. Hoping to have a few more pieces up soon. Also first time writing for Gwayne so be gentle. He's younger in this so not quite as sassy and jaded yet. Also I usually try not to write such a specific physical reader and I may not again but this was fun. I don't look like a Targaryen but it's fun to imagine sometimes.
Summary : After breaking out of prison, you find out that Dex thinks you never broke up.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags hurt/comfort, fluff at first, hostage situation, guns, violence, blood, injury, death of a civilian, murder, moral corruption, grief, stalking, breaking and entering, obsessive behaviour, food, non-graphic sexual content. FBI Hostage Negotiator! reader. Starts three years before DD S3 and ends sometime after DDBA S1. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 18.3k
Notes : A little canon divergence note, guys! Julie doesn’t exist in this universe. Dex’s season 3 spiral happens because you and him were on a break. Enjoy!
FBI was called in twenty-three minutes after the first 911 call. By then, the second shot had already been fired.
It was not fired at anyone, thank fuck. It was fired into the ceiling, according to the first responding officers who had backed off fast enough to keep the situation from turning into a massacre. What started as a robbery at a midtown bank had become a hostage situation in under twelve minutes.
There were three suspects and at least seven civilians were visible through the front windows before the blinds came down. One security guard was injured but moving. One suspect was pacing near the teller counter with a handgun.
Three squad cars were angled badly out front because patrol had arrived first. Now there were barricades, news vans sniffing at the edges, uniforms pushing civilians back, radios talking over each other, and a command post being built out of wobbly folding tables.
Usually, this was the part where everyone got grim. People knew that one bad word, one twitch, one wrong movement could turn a lobby full of frightened people into a massacre.
And then you arrived carrying two coffees and three boxes of pastries.
“Okay,” you said, stepping under the tape and handing two boxes to the nearest tech like you had just walked into an inconvenient staff meeting, “I brought croissants! If this goes horribly, at least we’d all have had a decent last meal.”
Three people turned and nobody laughed.
You looked around at the armoured vehicles, the blocked street, the negotiator phone being unpacked, the SWAT team moving into position across the road, and sighed. “Tough crowd.”
Your supervisor shot you a look. “Agent.”
“I know, I know.” You tucked the pastry bag under your arm and started shrugging into your vest. “Hostages, firearms, massive public safety issue. I’m taking it very seriously. I’m also saying you all probably haven’t eaten since six.”
“That’s not relevant.”
“It will be when I start making decisions with low blood sugar.”
That got half a smile out of one of the younger agents.
Good.
That was why you did it.
You weren’t careless. You understood what was happening behind those doors. You knew there were women and children inside lying on marble, trying not to cry. You knew someone had a gun in their hand.
But panic did not need more panic, and fear did not calm fear.
“Where’s my line?” you asked, clipping your radio into place.
The commander pointed toward the opposite building. “Fifth floor. SWAT sniper position has the best view into the front lobby. You can set up with them if you need eyes while you’re on the phone.”
“I do need eyes,” you said, nodding at him.
“Suspect one’s name is Eddie Marlow. Twenty-nine with prior for armed robbery. No confirmed fatalities today, but a guard took a round to the shoulder, still moving as of two minutes ago.”
You nodded, taking that in as you looked back at the bank.
“Right,” you said, almost too calmly. “So, normal Thursday.”
“Agent.”
“What?” You took a sip of coffee. “It’s Thursday.”
You took one last look at the bank, grabbed the phone, then crossed the street with two tactical agents shadowing you toward the building opposite.
—
Dex was stationed across the street on the fifth floor of an empty office building, flat behind his rifle with the blinds cut just enough for a sightline.That was where he belonged: above from the noise, above the mess. His scope was steady, breathing steady.
He could hear command in his ear. Entry team holding. Negotiation line was being established. Sniper one in position?
Dex didn’t answer until he needed to. “In position.”
The room behind him was dim and mostly empty, littered with grey carpet, abandoned desks, and a tactical gear set. His spotter murmured updates into comms as someone on the ground, a junior agent probably, dropped something metal. Sirens pulsed red and blue against the ceiling.
Then the door opened.
Dex didn’t look away from the scope at first.
People came in and out all the time during operations. Sometimes it was commanders, other times it was spotters or techs with updates, maybe agents carrying folders. Dex ignored them, usually.
That’s when you said, “Oh. Hi.”
He knew that voice. His eyes lifted from the scope.
You stood in the doorway with a vest half-zipped over your blouse, a negotiator phone tucked under one arm, and a pastry box balanced against your hip like you had wandered into the wrong brunch and decided to make the best of it.
Your eyes brightened. “Special Agent Poindexter.”
His spotter glanced over. In that moment, Dex forgot how to be normal about his own name. “You know me?”
Your smile widened. The New York office was big, but not that big. “Your reputation precedes you.”
His spotter looked down at his clipboard as if it became very interesting all of a sudden.
Dex knew you, too, though not personally. But he had seen you around the office forever. In elevators, at the coffee machine, walking through glass-walled conference rooms with files against your chest. You were always moving, always talking, always being pulled into conversations because people liked you.
Agents smiled when you passed and techs forgave you for stealing pens. Your supervisors pretended to be annoyed but really, they loved you. Even Ray Nadeem had spoken highly of you, said that his wife liked having you over for tea and that his kid liked you because you brought sweets to brunch. Dex had wanted to talk to you after that. So many people admired you, he just needed to see for himself, right?
He had stood in the same hallway as you, watching you laugh with a clerk from crisis response and thinking that he could say something. Anything. Nice work with the Port thing. Ray mentioned you. Are you training the new HRT recruits?
But there had never really been a clear reason to talk to you. And without a reason, there was no script. Without a script, there was only the blank space where courage was supposed to go. So Dex had never said anything.
“Is this the best view?” you asked.
Dex nodded. “Yes.”
“Can I?”
He shifted, even though there was barely enough space for two, which meant when you lowered yourself beside him, your knee pressed against his thigh and your shoulder brushed his arm.
“Sorry,” you murmured.
Dex looked at the place your knee touched his, then at you. “It’s fine.”
You leaned toward the cut in the blinds, careful not to touch the rifle. Your cheek came close to his shoulder, close enough that he caught a whiff of fragrant coffee on your breath, sugar on your fingers, and city air clinging to your uniform. Dex decided not to think too much about that.
“Talk me through it,” you said.
He looked back into the scope. “Suspect one in the green jacket is Eddie Marlow. Right hand dominant, pacing near the teller counter.”
“Is he scared?”
“Agitated,” Dex corrected.
“Mm.”
Dex glanced at you. “Suspect two,” he continued, “with the red cap. He had a shotgun and had been sitting behind the manager’s desk.”
Your face changed, only slightly. “And suspect three?”
“Not visible. He was last seen by the west wall with hostages.”
You leaned in closer, trying to see through the narrow slice of the lobby. Your shoulder pressed more firmly into his arm as hip bumped his side. “Sorry,” you said again, absentmindedly.
“You’re not,” he said.
“No,” you admitted. “But I keep doing it cause’ it sounds right.”
His spotter made a tiny laugh, and Dex ignored him.
Finally, you opened the pastry box. The smell of butter and sugar swirled into the dusty room, absurd and warm. You pulled out a croissant like there were not three armed men across the street.
His spotter stared. “Are you eating?”
You took a bite as the pastry cracked softly between your teeth. “I’m preparing.”
A few crumbs fell onto your vest. One landed on his sleeve. Both of you looked down at it. “Oh,” you said.
Before he could move, you reached over and brushed it away with your thumb. It was a tiny touch, almost nothing but your knuckle grazing the inside of his wrist.
Still, Dex’s fingers tightened once against the rifle.
Your gaze dropped to his hand, then rose back to his face. Your smile changed, smaller now.
“Sorry,” you said, quieter. This time, it almost sounded sincere.
Dex didn’t know why, but his mouth had gone dry. “It’s fine.”
You held the pastry box toward him. “Croissant?”
“No.”
“You sure? You look like a plain pastry kind of guy.”
Dex tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Instead of answering, you only shrugged and took another bite. Dex noticed your vest was crooked because you had clearly zipped it in while walking. You looked entirely too kind for a sniper’s nest.
You settled closer again, eyes returning to the bank. “Eddie looks reasonable.”
“They’re criminals,” Dex scoffed, unimpressed. “When are they ever reasonable?” It was really just a line he repeated from his coworkers.
“Hey,” you joke-scolded, nudging his arm lightly with your shoulder. “We’re all people here.”
Dex didn’t look convinced.
Downstairs, command crackled in your ears. “Negotiation line almost ready. Stand by.”
You exhaled once and set the half-eaten croissant carefully beside his gear bag like it belonged there. Then you wiped your fingers on a napkin and stood up, reached for the phone on the table in the middle of the room.
Before lifting the phone, you glanced at him. “ Poindexter?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to need your eyes.”
For one second, he understood why people liked you. You made people feel wanted, needed. Then, briefly, he thought about telling you he already knew your voice. He already heard your laugh. He knew he had wanted to speak to you for months and never managed it because wanting was not the same as knowing how.
Instead, he lowered himself back to the scope. “You have them.”
You smiled at him one last time as you picked up the phone and the line clicked alive.
Pressed the receiver to your ear, one hand braced on the table, you said, “Hi, Eddie, I’m Special Agent—”
“I’m not talking to feds!” The shout cracked down the line loud enough that even the spotter looked up.
You didn’t flinch. You didn’t pull the phone away from your ear. You didn’t take offense to being screamed at by a man with a gun and a room full of innocent civilians.
You only nodded, like Eddie could see you.
“Okay,” you said. “That’s okay.”
“I said I’m not talking to you!”
“I heard you.”
“Then shut up!”
Dex’s jaw tightened.
Across the street, through the scope, Eddie Marlow was pacing so hard he almost tripped over his own foot. He could take him out so easily, Dex thought, but that wasn’t why he was here.
Because if he did, the other two suspects would probably open fire. There would probably be a bloodbath. That was why you were holding the phone, not him.
You leaned against the table like this was a normal phone call.
“You sound really upset,” you said thoughtfully.
“No shit!”
“Yeah,” you chuckled. “Fair.”
Dex blinked. His spotter stared at you for half a second, then remembered his job and murmured into comms, “Negotiator has contact. Suspect one highly agitated, still engaged.”
Eddie was breathing hard into the phone and you let him.
You were… patient. It was tender. You were letting this man be loud and terrified, and you weren’t punishing him for it. Dex had never understood that kind of kindness.
“Eddie,” you said, after the worst of his breathing settled, “what did you have for breakfast?”
Dex looked up from the scope. The spotter mouthed, What?
On the phone, Eddie went silent. “What?” he finally snapped.
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“What the fuck does that matter?”
“It might not,” you said. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’ve eaten today.”
“I’m in the middle of a fucking robbery.”
“I know. But you’re also a person with a body, and bodies make stupid decisions when they’re hungry.”
Dex’s mouth parted slightly. Oh, you were charming.
He understood what you were doing with that stupid, sweet little question, that was really a thread to his humanity. Just to calm him down, get him to think about something else other than the crime he was committing.
“I had coffee,” Eddie muttered.
“Okay. Just coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“No food?”
“I don’t know. A cigarette.”
You winced faintly. “Eddie.”
“What?”
“That is a terrible breakfast.”
For one bizarre second, Dex’s spotter made a strangled noise into his fist. Even Eddie went quiet, confused out of his panic. “You judging me right now?” He asked.
“A little,” you admitted.
Dex almost smiled.
Then Eddie’s voice cracked back into anger. “You think this is funny? You think I’m stupid?”
“No.”
“You think I’m some junkie idiot with a gun?”
“No, Eddie.”
“You don’t know me!”
“You’re right,” you said. “I don’t.”
That stopped him again. Then, you lowered your voice. “But I know you don’t really want to kill anyone, do you now?”
Through the scope, Dex saw that Eddie’s pacing has slowed down. It… worked. “You don’t know what I want,” Eddie said, smaller this time.
“No,” you said. “But you fired into the ceiling.”
“It was a warning.”
“I know.”
“I had to.”
“Okay.”
“I had to make them listen.”
“I hear you.”
Dex’s throat tightened. I hear you.
It was such a simple thing, and yet it sounded so easy coming out of your mouth. It was as if you were giving him a blanket, as if you were lowering yourself beside him on the floor instead of standing over them with a clipboard and a gun.
He wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have your voice turned on him like that. And not your jokes or bright comments you tossed across rooms full of coworkers. This voice.
Dex wanted it so badly it almost made him angry.
The thought hit him hard enough that his finger twitched beside the rifle. He forced his eye back to the scope.
Eddie had stopped near the teller counter. His gun hung at his side now, loose in his hand.
“Green jacket has stopped pacing,” Dex said, “Weapon still in hand.”
The spotter relayed it immediately. “Suspect one stationary. Weapon lowered. Negotiator has him slowing down.”
You glanced at Dex and he held onto it like an idiot.
“Eddie,” you said, “the guard needs medical attention.”
“He’s fine.”
“Is he?”
“He’s moving.”
“That’s good,” you said. “Moving is good. But he’s bleeding, right?”
No answer.
“Eddie?”
“I didn’t shoot him.”
Your face changed into a compassionate frown. Dex hated how beautiful it looked on you.
“I know,” you said.
“He went for his gun. Rob panicked.”
The spotter’s head snapped down to his notes. “Second suspect possibly Rob. Pass to command.”
You didn’t react to the name. You didn’t make Eddie feel like he had made a mistake, or make him feel like he was snitching on his friends. You only said, “That must have scared you.”
Eddie laughed, but it came out ruined. “Scared me?”
“Yeah.”
All you got back was silence, longer his time. Dex watched Eddie through the scope and saw the second the your words got under his skin. His shoulders moved, head dipping. The gun lowered another inch.
You kept going, careful as hands over broken glass. “People make worse choices when they’re scared. That doesn’t mean you have to keep making them.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Then tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Okay,” you said. “Then breathe with me for a second.”
Eddie scoffed. “Fuck you, lady.”
“C’mon, man,” you said mildly. “Just… breathe.”
Dex’s eyes flicked to your mouth before he could stop himself.
You smiled faintly, not because it was funny, exactly, but because you were giving Eddie somewhere to put the panic, somewhere that was not a trigger. “Breathe in,” you said.
“I’m not doing that.”
“That’s okay. I’m doing it anyway.”
Then you did. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Once. Twice.
On the other end of the line, Eddie cursed under his breath. But after a few seconds, his breathing started following yours. Dex heard it. Without realising it, Dex started to follow it too.
There was something hypnotic about your calm. The whole room had frozen around it. Even the radios seemed quieter, like the world was leaning into your warmth. Then, through the phone, you heard someone crying out inside the bank.
Eddie snapped away from the phone. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
Dex was back in the scope immediately. “Weapon coming up,” he said.
The spotter relayed fast. “Weapon rising. Suspect one agitated. Hold positions.”
Your hand lifted slightly, saying Wait.
Dex saw it and went still.
The shot was clean. Eddie was turned three-quarters away from the hostages, arm visible, head exposed. Dex knew exactly where the bullet would go. He knew what it would do. But your hand was up, so he waited.
“Eddie,” you said, firmer now.
No answer.
“Eddie, come back to me.”
The shouting on the other end cut off.
Come back to me. Dex gripped the rifle harder.
“Eddie,” you repeated, softer. “Come back to me. Don’t follow the noise. Follow my voice.”
He heard ragged breath. Then Eddie, frustrated now, said, “She won’t stop crying.”
“They’re scared.”
“I didn’t want this.”
“I believe you.”
“I didn’t want it like this.”
“I know.”
And somehow, you made it sound true, even though you weren’t forgiving him. You were not excusing him. You were simply giving him one human corner to stand in before the whole day swallowed him.
Dex had seen people beg. He had seen people lie. He had seen people pray. He had never seen someone be talked back into themselves.
“Eddie,” you said, “I think you can still keep this from getting worse.”
“It’s already worse.”
“It is,” you said. “But worse has levels. We don’t have to go lower.”
Eddie breathed hard.
“The guard,” you continued. “If he dies in there, this gets so much harder for everyone.” You paused. “You included.”
Eddie made a sound that was almost a sob, except he swallowed it too fast. “I’m fucked anyway,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” you said, so gently it hurt. “But not as fucked as you could be.”
Dex’s spotter blinked at you, but you kept your eyes on the bank.
“You can make one good decision,” you said. “Just one. I’m not asking you to become a different person in the next thirty seconds. I’m asking you to help the guard.”
“If I open that door, they’ll shoot me.”
“No.”
“They will.”
“They won’t unless there’s an immediate threat.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Eddie. There are guns outside.”
Dex’s teeth tightened again.
“There are snipers,” you said, glancing at the nest.
Dex blinked. What the hell were you doing?
“But they are there because people need to live,” you continued. “Not because anyone is excited to kill you.”
Eddie said nothing. You looked at Dex, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if you gave the command.
“So,” you said, “put the gun down. Tell Rob to stay back and let the guard out slowly. You help me keep everyone calm, and I promise no one shoots unless there is an immediate threat.”
“You promise?”
Dex heard it, and Eddie almost sounded like a child.
“I promise,” you said. “But you have to help me keep that promise true.”
Across the street, Eddie turned toward the guard.
“He’s looking at the guard,” Dex said.
The spotter relayed, “Suspect one looking toward injured guard. Possible compliance. Medical team stage.”
“That’s it,” you whispered. “That’s good, Eddie. Stay with me.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to die!”
“You’re not going to die, this isn’t The Town,” you said, gentle and absurd, “It’s real life, not a Ben Affleck movie.”
Eddie let out a broken little laugh.
Dex closed his eyes for half a second. Jesus Christ. You were going to ruin him.
“Okay,” Eddie said shakily.
Your hand tightened around the phone. “Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll send him out.”
The spotter straightened his posture. “Possible hostage release. Guard extraction. All units hold.”
Dex went fully still behind the rifle.
“Calm,” you told Eddie. “Nice and calm.”
Through the scope, Eddie moved like his bones had turned to water. He bent toward the guard, said something Dex couldn’t make out, then flinched when the guard recoiled from him.
“He’s helping the guard stand,” Dex said. “Left hand on guard’s arm. No immediate threat.” The spotter repeated every word.
You nodded as if Eddie could see you. “You’re doing good.”
The door opened. Every rifle outside seemed to hold their breath. Dex tracked Eddie’s face in the crack of the doorway. He was pale, wet-eyed, terrified. A criminal, yes. But for the first time that day, he was not beyond reach, be you had put your hand into all that fear and pulled until what was left of his humanity surfaced.
“Send him out,” you whispered. “Then step back.”
The guard stumbled forward and medical moved in.
“Guard is clear,” Dex said, though his own voice sounded distant to him. “Medical has him.”
The spotter echoed, “Guard clear. No shots fired.”
You exhaled, and it was so small nobody else would have noticed. But Dex did.
“Eddie?” you said into the phone.
He let out a shaking breath. “Yeah?”
“You did the right thing.”
“I’m still going to prison.”
“Probably,” you said.
Eddie gave another broken laugh, almost crying now.
“But not for murder,” you said. “Not today.”
Dex looked at you then, like he couldn’t help it. You were standing in a dusty room, and down an armed man like kindness was not weakness, And Dex wanted to be spoken to that way.
He wanted your patience, your belief that there was something worth saving even in people who had done unforgivable things. Especially in people who had done unforgivable things.
Then you breathed in and kept going. “Okay,” you said. “Now I’m going to want some of the people out too.”
Eddie went quiet.
You gentled your voice even more. “Women and children first, okay?”
“I can’t just—”
“I know.”
“Rob’s going to lose his shit.”
“I know, Eddie.”
“And David, he’s—” Eddie stopped abruptly, like he had realised he had given you another name, before continuing, “I have to talk to them.”
“That’s okay,” you said, looking at the spotter to relay the third suspect’s name. “Talk to Rob. Talk to David.
“They think I’m folding.”
“You’re not folding,” you said. “You’re thinking. You’re making sure everybody, including them, makes it out of there alive”
Dex watched Eddie through the scope. The man had backed away from the doors, one hand over his mouth, gun at his thigh. He looked less like a criminal now and more like a man finally realising the size of the hole he had dug.
You leaned closer to the phone. “I’m going to let you go for five minutes,” you said. “Okay?”
Eddie’s breathing hitched, as if you were his one and only life support right now. “You’re hanging up?”
“Just for five minutes. You need to talk to them, and I need to talk to my people.”
“What if—”
“I’ll call back,” you said. “And you’re going to pick up.”
Eddie said nothing.
“Eddie.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to pick up.” It wasn’t even a question anymore.
After a while, you heard a small and frightened, “Okay.”
“Good,” you whispered. “We’re counting on you.”
Dex felt it like a hand around his throat. We’re counting on you.
You gave that trust to Eddie like a burden and a gift at the same time.
On the other end of the line, Eddie exhaled shakily. “Five minutes,” he said.
“Five minutes,” you promised.
Then the line clicked dead. Then, you glanced at Dex over the phone, and he felt the look land directly under his skin.
“You still with me, Agent Poindexter?” you asked, sighing.
Oh, so this did take a toll on you, however much you try to hide it.
Dex lowered his eye back to the scope because looking at you was becoming a distraction.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he repeated your tone, “I’m with you.”
—
Afterward, everyone kept calling it a success.
The guard had gotten out. Three hostages followed twenty minutes later, two women and a little boy with one shoe missing, shaking so hard the paramedics had to guide them by the elbows. Eddie had picked up every time you called. He had argued with Rob, shouted at David, disappeared from the phone twice and come back both times breathing like he had run through a wildfire.
But he came back. By the fourth call, his voice had started to sound empty. By the sixth, he was crying and pretending he wasn’t. By the end, the remaining hostages came out with their hands over their heads, Eddie was the one who told Rob to put the shotgun down.
It wasn’t perfect, but it ended without another shot fired. So people congratulated you.
Your supervisor clapped a hand on your shoulder. The commander called it “excellent work.” Someone from crisis response said, “That was textbook,” even though it hadn’t felt textbook. It felt like pressing your palm to a cracked dam and smiling while water pushed through your fingers. You smiled anyway.
You accepted the praise and filled in the early notes. You let people tell you how good you were, how calm you were, how you had saved lives.
And for a while, you let yourself believe them, because the only injured person— the guard— had been alive when they loaded him into the ambulance.
He had been breathing. So it counted. It had to count.
Four hours later, you heard a knock on your office door.
You were halfway through typing your report when your supervisor stepped in with sweat beading on her forehead.
Your hands went still over the keyboard. “No,” you said.
She didn’t answer fast enough then, and that’s how you knew the guard had died at the hospital.
Not from the bullet, exactly. That was what she told you, as if the distinction mattered. It was a mix of vascular complication and too much blood loss, which in your head translated to: too much damage already done by the time you had convinced Eddie to open the door.
Still, you nodded like a professional.
“Okay,” you said.
Your supervisor watched you carefully. “Agent.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be.”
But you smiled anyway, because if you didn’t smile, you were going to cry, and a full grown woman was not supposed to cry for doing her job well. “I’m fine,” you repeated.
She didn’t believe you, but she left anyway.
For a while, you just sat there. The HRT floor was quieter at night, reduced to the hum of printers, distant phones, the occasional murmur from junior agents walking past with a folder tucked under one arm. Your office smelled faintly like cold coffee.
Your report blinked on the screen, trying to finish it up: Guard extracted at approximately…
You stared at the sentence until it blurred. You pressed the heels of your hands against them hard, like you could shove the tears back where they belonged. Like grief was just a reflex you could discipline out of yourself.
What a fucking joke. You didn’t even know the guy!
Then, a knock came at the door.
You inhaled quickly, wiped under one eye with the side of your thumb, and sat up in your chair. “Come in.”
To your surprise, Dex opened the door.
He was out of the tactical gear now, in his dark quarter zip with his badge clipped at his belt, hair slightly mussed like he had dragged his hand through it too many times. He stood in the doorway awkwardly, too tall for a room this small.
“Special Agent Poindexter,” you said, and your voice came out almost normal.
“I wanted to check on you,” he said. It was a lie. Or not a lie exactly. This was just an excuse to hear your voice again.
In truth, he had rehearsed the sentence and hated every version of it. He had walked past your office twice before gathering enough nerve to knock.
You tried to smile and it almost worked. “Oh,” you said. “I’m okay.”
Dex looked at you, seeing your smile trembled at the corner.
His eyes dropped to your hands, clenched too tightly together on top of your desk. He knew the anatomy of a smile. Yours was not real.
“You’re not,” he said.
Your smile stayed on because it had nowhere else to go. “I…” you started. Fuck. What was the point in lying? He had been there. He had seen the injury. He deserved to know, too, if he didn’t already. “The guard didn’t make it.”
Dex froze. “Oh.”
You nodded once, a bit too quickly. “Complications or something, I don’t know. They said a lot of words and I retained absolutely none of them.”
Your laugh came out wrong. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the way you were trying to make the room easier for him. Even now, with your eyes threatening to spill with tears and your mouth trying not to shake, you were still smoothing your own hurt down so he else would not have to feel awkward around it.
You looked exactly like you had on the phone with Eddie towards the end of the call.
Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was in the room with you, mission accomplished. What was he supposed to do now? “You got him out alive.”
You nodded. “And it still didn’t matter.”
Dex only looked down, unsure of what to say.
You shook your head, smiling harder now, which was worse than crying. “I know. We saved the hostages. We de-escalated the situation.” Your voice thinned. “All things considered, it was a good outcome”
Dex didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wanted to touch you, though he didn’t know if that was the right call. Maybe he should put a hand on your shoulder. But he didn’t know if that would help. He didn’t know if he was allowed. He didn’t know how to comfort you without making it strange.
So he stood there uselessly, watching you try not to fall apart.
“Poindexter, I…,” you said, quieter, “I talked to him for hours.”
Dex swallowed. “Dex.”
You blinked at him. “What?”
“My name.” His voice came out rough. “Call me Dex.”
For some reason, that was the thing that broke your smile, just enough for the tears to gather properly.
“Dex,” you repeated.
His name in your voice was catastrophic. He had wanted you to say it all day. He had it in that warm, coaxing tone you had given Eddie through the phone. Now you said it like you were standing at the edge of crying. And he would have given anything to fix it.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted.
That surprised you, maybe because people usually tried to fill grief with more grief. But Dex only stood there, honest and stiff and visibly uncomfortable with his own helplessness.
“I don’t either,” you whispered, and your face fell for half a second. You turned it away immediately, pressing your fingers under your eyes. Your smile was still trying. Dex had never seen anything braver or more painful in his life.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Smile.”
For a second, you forgot you were an agent in her office, staring at a report waiting on the screen. There was only you, too full of grief to keep pretending it was professionalism.
The first tear slipped before you could stop it. You looked furious with yourself, so Dex did the only thing he could think of.
He pulled the chair from the corner of your office, sat down across from you, and stayed.
You looked down, laughing under your breath as another tear fell. “You’re accidentally very nice, Dex.”
He swallowed. It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. “I’m not trying to be accidental.”
You laughed again, and this time, it sounded a little less ruined as Dex sat there, listening to your voice tremble and come back to itself, pretending he had only come to check on you. Pretending he hadn’t come because he wanted to hear you again.
That night, after he walked you to your car, Dex didn’t go home right away.
He wandered back into the building instead, into your supervisor’s office. Dex knew where the recordings were kept. He knew the system, he knew the labels, he knew exactly how to make it look like nothing had been touched. The hostage negotiation tape was logged under case number, time, location. His hand hovered over it for one second, before he copied it into his private drive.
At home, he sat on the edge of his bed with his headphones on in the dark and listened to your voice, steady and impossibly kind.
“Eddie,” your recording voice said, gentle as a hand against a fevered forehead. “Come back to me.”
Dex closed his eyes, jaw tightening. His hands curled over his knees. He knew it was wrong. He knew normal people didn’t steal recordings just to hear a woman speak kindly before bed. But then your voice came again. “Come back to me, Eddie.”
And in the dark, with his breathing gone shallow, Dex let himself change it in his mind: Come back to me, Dex.
For the first time in days, he slept well.
—
Dex kept finding reasons to talk to you.
At first, they were almost believable: A clarification for the report. A detail about Marlow’s prosecution. A question about the hostage order, even though he had heard every word of it through comms and then, later, through the stolen tape in his apartment.
Then the excuses got worse. Apparently, he found one of your pens near the fifth-floor sniper position and returned it. He asked whether you wanted a copy of the incident timeline, then stood awkwardly in your doorway while you told him you already had three. He brought you a file that belonged to someone else entirely.
You looked at the name on the tab, then up at him. “Dex,” you said carefully. “This is for Agent Alvarez.”
He tried to look confused, which failed. “Right.”
“Different floor,” you smiled. He hated how much he liked that you were kind enough to pretend not to notice.
For two weeks, he learned the sound of your laugh. He learned that you clicked your pen when you were thinking. He learned that you always forgot your coffee until it went cold, then drank it anyway. He told himself it was harmless. It was most definitely not.
Then one morning, he showed up at your office holding a paper bag.
You looked up from your desk tiredly, hair a little loose around your face. “Morning.”
Dex stepped inside and the bag crinkled in his hand. “I got you breakfast.”
You blinked. “Oh.”
He placed the bag on your desk like it might explode. “A croissant,” he said.
Your mouth into a small smile. “You remembered.”
Of course he remembered the crumbs on your sleeves and the sugar on your thumb. He remembered everything about that day. “Yeah,” he said.
You opened the bag and looked inside, then back at him. “Thank you, Dex.”
He nodded too quickly. “You’re welcome.”
He should have left. This was the normal time to leave. Instead, he stood there in the doorway, hands empty now, heartbeat hard in his throat.
You tilted your head. “Was there something else?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
He paused, then turned back“Yes.”
Your eyebrows lifted, and Dex looked briefly furious with himself.
Then he said, all at once, “Do you want to have dinner with me?”
You went very still. He immediately wanted to die.
“Not professionally,” he added.
Your lips parted. Did he… make it worse?
“I mean, it can be professional if that makes it less—” he stopped himself now, sighing to himself, “No. I don’t want it to be professional. I’m asking you on a date.”
You stared at him. Dex stared back, rigid and catastrophically earnest.
Then you looked down at the croissant, before looking back up at him. “Did you bring me a pastry as a bribe, Special Agent Poindexter?”
His face fell slightly, and you chuckled a little. “Dex,” you corrected gently.
His breath caught in itself.
You smiled properly then, almost merciful. “I’m just teasing.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t look like you know that.”
“I’m… processing.”
A sweetlaugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. There it was, the sound he had been trying to earn for two weeks. Dex’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.
You leaned back in your chair, still smiling, when you looked up at him through your lashes and said, “Okay.”
His face went blank. “Okay?”
“Yes, Dex. I’ll have dinner with you.”
For one second, he looked almost boyish and stunned. Little did you know, he had prepared for rejection, confusion, pity, maybe even HR involvement, but not you saying yes.
“Oh,” he said.
You bit back a smile. “That’s usually the desired outcome when you ask someone on a date.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I think so.”
You laughed again and reached for the croissant.
“Tonight?” he asked, a little too fast.
You raised an eyebrow.
He swallowed. “Or another night.”
“Tonight is good.”
He nodded once, then turned like he was going to leave before either of you could ruin it.
“Dex?”
He stopped immediately.
You held up the croissant. “Thank you for breakfast.”
His eyes lowered, barely. “You’re welcome.” Then he left your office with his heartbeat still pounding.
Behind him, you took one bite of the croissant and smiled into your coffee. Absolutely terrible at flirting. Very good pastry, though.
—
The date was cute, even though it had every right to be awkward. You were both still in work clothes, making it feel less like a date at first and more like two agents walking down the street after a long day, badges tucked away.
When you sat down at the restaurant, you noticed that Dex looked… nervous. “You look like you’re about to be interrogated,” you chuckled.
“I’m not.”
“Dex.”
“Am I?” He looked concerned for a second, because he knew you handled interrogations sometimes.
That made you laugh, and his shoulders loosened slightly, like he had survived the first round of af a boxing match.
When the waiter came, you ordered first. Dex closed his menu immediately. “I’ll have that too.”
You blinked at him. “You don’t even know what I ordered.”
“I heard.”
“You can order something else.”
“I want what you’re having.”
You looked at him for a second, then smiled into your water glass, thinking that’s either very sweet or very concerning.
And then, it got easier. It didn’t go smooth, exactly. Dex answered questions like he was afraid there was a correct version and he had missed the briefing. But he listened like every word out of your mouth belonged carved in a stone tablet.
You told him about terrible tea on the HRT floor. He told you about a sniper qualification day where a rookie threw up behind a barricade. You laughed so hard you had to press your napkin to your mouth, and Dex looked at you like he had just learned a new way to breathe.
By the time the food came, the candle between you had burned golden. You took one bite, hummed happily, and pointed your fork at him. “Okay. Can I tell you a secret?”
Dex stilled, a little more alert. “…Yes.”
You leaned forward over the table. “I went to Quantico a year after you.”
His eyebrows drew together. “You did?”
“Mhm,” you grinned. “Our shooting instructor mentioned you all the time.”
Dex froze.
You sat back, delighted. “Oh my God. You didn’t know how much he loved you?”
“No.”
“Dex.” You put your fork down. “You made my life a living hell.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You were spiritually there”
His lips parted slightly, offended and confused. “How?”
You dropped your voice into a gruff instructor impression. “‘Poindexter could do this with his eyes closed.’ ‘Poindexter cleared this drill ten seconds faster.’ ‘Poindexter didn’t need three tries.’ Poindexter this, Poindexter that.” You pointed at him. “Fuck, man.”
Dex stared at you before the corner of his mouth lifted. “You were bad at shooting?”
You gasped. Was that… a joke? “I was not bad at shooting.”
“Sounds like you were.”
“I was excellent,” you swallowed your food, “I was just not you.”
His smile got worse, almost smug.
“Our instructor once said, and I quote, ‘Poindexter could hit this target in a blackout with a concussion.’”
Dex looked down at his plate, but you saw the smile pull at his mouth anyway.
“He was exaggerating,” he said.
You raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, before laughing. And there it was again — that look on his face. He didn’t know how to hide his adoration fast enough.
“You made my target practice time a living hell,” you admitted. “Agent Benjamin Poindexter. Destroyer of confidence. Patron saint of aiming at moving targets, apparently.”
The restaurant noise blurred around the two of you. The cutlery, conversation, music from the speakers, all of it bled into the background.
“But then I saw you in New York,” you continued. “and thought, oh. That’s him.”
Dex’s throat moved. “And?”
“And,” you said, gentler now, “I thought you looked lonely.”
Dex glanced down at the table, fingers curling once near his glass. For a second, you worried you had gone too far, too honest.
Then he said, very quietly, “I noticed you too.”
You lowered your eyes a little, suddenly shy in a way you had not expected to be. “Yeah?”
Dex nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Ray talked about you a lot after that Wall Street blackmail corruption case you both worked on together.”
Your face softened at the mention of him. “Ray’s lovely.”
Dex nodded.
“I get along with his wife better, actually,” you added, glancing back up. “Seema gave me a really good chole recipe and now we’re bonded forever.”
Dex looked faintly confused by that detail, but he listened anyway, like he was storing it somewhere important.
“She said I was doing the spices wrong,” you continued, your smile widening. “Which, to be fair, I was. That, and I handled the chickpea wrong, apparently.”
That got a small laugh out of him, eyes flicked from your mouth back to your eyes.
“I’ve… wanted to talk to you for a while,” he admitted.
Your smile faded into a furrow of your brows. “You have?”
Dex looked down at the table, at his untouched water glass, at the candle between you, anywhere that wasn’t your face. “I just never had reason.”
The words sat there, painfully honest. He didn’t even try to be charming in the way guys usually tried to be with you. Still, it was sincere enough that it made your heart ache.
The candle flickered between you, gold light catching along the sharp line of his cheekbone. For a second, Dex looked almost panicked by the silence, like he had accidentally handed you a confession and had no idea what you were going to do with it. So you reached across the table and touched your fingers lightly to his wrist.
“Well,” you said softly, “good thing you finally brought me a croissant.”
Dex looked at your fingers, then back at you. And this time, when he smiled, it was not an imitation of anything or anyone.
—
You agreed to a second date. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually having one.
The next week turned into a mess before either of you could do anything about it. HRT got pulled into a fugitive barricade situation in Queens. Dex got sent out on a protection detail that lasted two days longer than expected. Your supervisor dumped three active threat assessments on your desk.
So the second date kept moving. Tuesday became Thursday. Thursday became Saturday. Saturday became, “I’m so sorry, Dex, I might actually die under this paperwork.”
Dex, who had appeared in your office doorway with his jacket still on, only looked at the files stacked across your desk and said, “That would be inconvenient.”
You stared at him before laughing so hard you dropped your pen.
After that, you started finding time to take your lunch together. The first time, Dex showed up with two coffees and a paper bag from the place down the street.
“I was passing by,” he said.
“On the HRT floor?”
“Yes.”
You let him in, obviously. Then it kept happening.
Sometimes you ate in your office with the blinds half-closed and your shoes kicked off under the desk. Sometimes you found him in the break room already sitting at the corner table, pretending not to wait for you while leaving the chair beside him empty. Sometimes he brought you pizza because you had forgotten to eat again. Sometimes you brought him coffee because he drank his like punishment and you had made it your mission to introduce him to flavour.
So the second date never officially happened, but he knew your lunch order. Still, Dex kept appearing during your break, and you kept pulling the extra chair closer to your desk until eventually he was sitting beside you instead of across from you, both of you hunched over paper bags and plastic containers and case files like this was a normal blossoming relationship.
One afternoon, you were both sitting so close your chairs were practically conspiring. Dex had brought sandwiches and one pain au chocolate “in case,” which made you stare at him until his ears went faintly pink.
“You really know how to treat a girl, Dex.”
Dex looked down at his pastry. “I’m being practical.”
You laughed and bumped your shoulder into his.
He looked at you then, and the whole office seemed to shrink. You were close enough to see the little shift in his breathing, close enough to notice his pupils drop to your mouth and shoot back up like he had been caught committing a federal offence.
“Oh,” you said, grinning. “That’s what’s happening.”
Dex went very still. “What?”
“You’re trying not to kiss me.”
“I’m not.”
“Dex.”
“I…” he trailed off. What was the point in lying anymore. “I’m trying not to do a lot of things.”
That startled a laugh out of you so badly you had to cover your mouth. And then he smiled.
You leaned closer, still laughing a little. “You can, you know.”
His face changed. All the awkwardness turned… stunned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned in like he was afraid you might disappear if he did it too quickly. One hand came up, careful against your cheek, and then his mouth was on yours, almost polite at first. It lasted maybe three seconds before you smiled into it, grabbed lightly at the front of his shirt, and kissed him properly.
Dex made a tiny sigh against your mouth.
The kiss went from sweet to a little desperate all at once, like both of you had been starving for weeks and then remembered you both kinda fell too much too quickly. His hand slid from your cheek to the side of your neck. Your chair squeaked as you shifted closer. His knee pressed between yours and you laughed into his mouth because the whole thing was ridiculous, hot, and happening in your office beside a half-eaten sandwich.
Dex pulled back just enough to breathe.
You both stared at each other, “Hi.”
He looked utterly ruined. “Hi.”
You laughed again, breathless, and his forehead dropped lightly against yours.
“This is not lunch,” he said.
“No,” you agreed, still holding his shirt. “It's not.”
—
The second date happened two months after the first.
By then, calling it a second date felt ridiculous. You had eaten lunch together a dozen times. He had kissed you in your office, in the stairwell, once against your car with his hand braced on the roof.
Dinner was a little awkward, still, because Dex would probably be a little awkward until the end of time, but sweet. He listened to you talk about your week like it was testimony under oath. He remembered tiny things you had said offhandedly weeks ago. So, when he took you home that night, it didn’t feel sudden.
He was sweet about it at first. His hands hovered before they touched, his mouth kept coming back to yours like he was checking he was still allowed, and every time, you sighed.
Then he got braver and messier. His shirt was half-open, your hands were in his hair, and he had you pressed back against his pillows when he suddenly leaned close to your ear, voice serious, and said, “You like that, sweetheart? Tell me you’re mine. Tell me nobody else gets to make you feel this good.”
It might have been fine if it hadn’t come out of nowhere, weird and aggressive, zero to a hundred with absolutely no warning. Hell, your trousers weren’t even off yet. So what the fuck?
You went still. Dex went still too. There was a little pause before you slowly turned your head to look at him. “Dex.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“What was that?”
His face fell. “Was it bad?”
“It was…” You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh. “It was very committed.”
“Was it bad?” He insisted.
“I just…” you held back a chuckle, “Where did you learn that?”
Dex looked like he didn’t want to answer. He eventually did, though. “I… researched.”
You stared at him. He stared back, very embarrassed, and very clearly hoping the word researched would be enough of an explanation.
“You researched sex?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God,” you whispered. “Dex.”
“I wanted to be prepared.”
“That sounded like it came from a man named Stepbrother Number Four.”
His ears actually went red. You covered your mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway.
Dex looked wounded, almost confused. “I thought it was appropriate.”
“It was… something.”
“It worked in the video.”
You stopped laughing and raised your eyebrows. “Video?”
His teeth locked. He had said too much.
Little did you know, a week earlier, Dex had gone through your phone in the office while you were in the bathroom. He had found your browser history, your saved tabs, your filthy little private collection. He sent them to himself and deleted all evidence of it, of course. He wasn’t an amateur.
And then he had watched six hours of porn, studying it like a psychopath. It was not pleasure or fun. It was Dex in the dark, dead serious, analysing the links you saved, what you watched, even if some of them might have been an accidental click. He was taking notes in his head, trying to become a sex symbol you would want.
Now he was above you, flushed and mortified, realising that pornography was apparently not a good idea to imitate.
“Dex,” you said carefully. “Is this your first time?”
His whole body went tense under your finger. “Yes,” he admitted, barely a breath.
Your heart folded in on itself. “Oh, baby.”
His face tightened like your kindness hurt. “I should have told you.”
“Yeah,” you whispered. “You should’ve.”
“I didn’t want you to change your mind.”
You reached up and cupped his cheek. “C’mere.”
He hesitated, so you said it softer. “Come here, Dex.”
He came down to you, like your voice had hooked into his ribs and pulled. You kissed him again, slower this time. Your hands smoothed over his shoulders until he stopped waiting to be corrected.
“No more lines,” you murmured against his mouth.
As you wished, he stopped performing. He stopped trying to be the man from whatever awful tab he had studied too seriously. He touched you like himself instead: careful, intense, a little overwhelmed, listening to every sound you made as if it mattered more than anything. And fuck, that was better.
His mouth against your skin, your fingers in his hair, his name leaving you in sighed until he started to understand that was what you liked.
Afterward, he lay beside you in the dark, warm one arm tucked carefully around your waist like he was still asking permission to exist in your vicinity.
You brushed your thumb over his wrist. “Good job, pornstar,” you teased.
Dex groaned into your shoulder, but struggled to hide his smile at the praise. “Please don’t.”
“You were so brave.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He went silent, arm tightened just a little. “No,” he admitted with his lips against your skin. “I could never.”
It was quite the opposite, actually.
He would tell you that for years after. Sometimes with his words, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with the way he looked at you like you were the only fixed point in a world constantly trying to move away from him.
But you were a federal agent who argued and calmed down very bad men for a living. Of all people, you should have known better. You should have known good things rarely ever lasted.
—
Ten Years Later...
You came home with blood on the heel of one shoe and a headache lodged so deep behind your eye it felt like someone had driven a nail into your skull.
You weren’t a federal agent anymore. You hadn't been one for a very long time. There were still people who talked about what happened ten years ago like it had just been one bad year. One scandal, one chapter the Bureau could close with a press conference and a few resignations.
If you closed your eyes, you could see everything clearly.
It happened three years after your started dating. Wilson Fisk in a white suit. FBI agents on his payroll. Dex told you, in confidence, that he had killed the remaining Albanians on the motorcade. You told him that you needed to go on a break because of that. You put in your annual leave to visit family because your boyfriend had just confessed to using lethal force after the enemy surrendered. Apparently, that’s why and when his spiral started, because when you came back, Ray Nadeem had a bullet in his head. Daredevil was framed and hunted while your boyfriend wore the suit. The Bulletin. The church. Father Lantom, who you didn’t know of but learned of later.
After that, faith in anything became difficult. Faith in institutions, faith in badges, faith in men who said they were protecting people while selling their souls behind closed doors.
So you left and built your own private security company from spite, savings, and sheer exhaustion.
You did everything from executive protection to crisis negotiation. Threat assessment, asset recovery, and corporate extraction. All very nice words for work that often felt like pulling teeth. And the thing about running your own company was that the job didn’t stop when you clocked out.
You still had payroll to approve and contracts to review. Clients to placate, insurance renewals, background checks, three missed calls from your operations manager, and junior associate who had accidentally offended la Russian client’s nephew. Just yesterday, you had a driver who quit over text as you received invoice from an arms consultant that made you genuinely consider crime in a more administrative capacity.
Sure, sometimes less-than-ethical people hired you. Triads, Russians, Italians, Irish. But at least, unlike the bureau, they never pretended to be saints. Monsters, you had learned, were never the real danger. It was hypocrites.
Tonight, you had spent fourteen hours in the back room of a private club, brokering a deal between a triad member and a client too rich to be as stupid as he was. Everyone had been polite. Everyone had been armed. You had spent the whole night dragging grown men away from their own worst impulses one careful sentence at a time.
No one died, and the client paid double. By your current standards, that was almost a success.
Still, by the time you got home, you were so tired your body felt like it was running on borrowed time. Your blouse clung damply to your back and your feet were screaming. Your phone had not stopped buzzing once, and you had started fantasising about throwing it into the river.
You unlocked your front door in the dark.
You stepped inside your apartment, dropped your keys into the ceramic bowl by the door, and kicked it shut behind you with one exhausted foot.
You stood barefoot in your own hallway and sighed.
You had listened to the radio the whole way home, a force of habit, really. Its just today, you found out that your ex-boyfriend had broken out of prison and tried to shoot Fisk at some gala.
Wow. Shocker.
Honestly, you would rather shut all of it out and go to bed. Thinking about him, about the man you had loved more than anything in the world, would only break your heart all over again.
Then you saw the paper bag on the kitchen table with your favourite bakery’s logo stamped neatly on the front. Your favourite croissant was inside.
For one long second, you only stared at it and a Post-it stuck to the paper bag, written in a familiar, careful handwriting: You haven’t eaten today.
You stared at the croissant for a long time, long enough for your phone to buzz itself toward death inside your bag.
You didn’t touch the paper bag, and not because you thought it was poisoned. Dex didn’t need poison. If Dex wanted you dead, which he almost certainly did not, you would already have a knife in your throat.
You were thinking more about how Dex had been inside your apartment. It wasn’t surprising, unfortunately. You exhaled, using the name you reserved only when you were mad at him. “Jesus Christ, Benjamin.”
You moved through your own home like you were clearing a client’s building. First the hall closet. Then the bathroom, bedroom, ensuite, guest room, and kitchen. You checked under the bed because you weren’t stupid, behind the shower curtain just in case, and the balcony because Dex had always been incapable of using a normal door when being unhinged would do.
Nothing.
Still, you found the kitchen window open three inches. You stood in front of it for a second, staring at the gap before you shut it and locked it. Then, you checked the lock twice.
Then, because you were tired and petty, you went around the apartment and did every other lock too. You even checked the little latch on the tiny laundry room window that no full-grown man should have been able to fit through, although Dex had a history of doing things no full-grown man should be able to do anyway.
Eventually, you took the croissant out of the bag, held it for one long second, then put it back.
“No,” you told the empty kitchen. “I have standards.”
You made it exactly five minutes before you came back, tore off one angry bite, and ate it standing over the sink because he had been right. You haven’t had a proper meal today.
What were you going to do now? Call the cops? And say what? Hello, officer, my ex-boyfriend broke out of prison, tried to kill the mayor, apparently swung by my apartment, broke in, and left me a croissant because he noticed I skipped dinner. Yes, that Benjamin Poindexter. No, I am not currently being held hostage. Yes, I own a private security company. No, I don’t need medical attention. Yes, this is going to jeopardise my brand and I’ll probably never get a client ever again.
Ha!
You threw the Post-it into the kitchen drawer then you went to bed.
You slept badly. Once, half-asleep, you thought you heard your name in the hallway, and your hand slid under the pillow before you remembered you had put the knife in the bedside drawer because apparently some part of you still believed in “healthy boundaries.”
By morning, you were still exhausted. Your alarm went off at six-thirty. You slapped it silent, lay there for ten seconds, then dragged yourself upright with the suffering of a woman who had payroll, a prison break, and a quarterly review of her employees all waiting for her before breakfast.
The city outside your window was grey and wet. New York rain hit the glass in thin lines. Your head still hurt. Your phone had nine missed calls, four news alerts, and one message from Seema that simply said: Please tell me you’re alive.
You typed back: Unfortunately.
Then came the three firm knocks on your door and you froze in the middle of tying your robe.
You moved to the door, silent on the wood floor, and checked the peephole to see an empty hallway.
You undid the locks one by one, slow enough to make a point to nobody, and opened the door with the chain still on.
There was no one there. Only a coffee cup sitting neatly on your doorstep. Beside it, a burner phone.
You stared. The coffee was from your favourite place. Extra shot with, because you had once mentioned a decade ago that nutmeg tasted like dust and cinnamon was better.
On the cup, in careful black marker, were three words: Can we talk?
You stared at it for so long the neighbour’s door opened at the end of the hall.
Mrs. Banerjee from 4B peered out, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes immediately dropping to the coffee, then to the burner phone, then back to you.
“Morning, love,” she said.
“Morning.”
She looked at the cup again. “Secret admirer?”
You looked down at the burner phone. The screen lit up to one message.
Unknown Number: Please.
You closed your eyes and Mrs. Banerjee made a small, interested noise. You picked up the coffee and the phone. “Ex-boyfriend.”.
—
You really did think about turning in the burner phone. Or maybe you should call your lawyer. You could call your operations manager, who was a former private investigator. You could walk it straight to 15th precinct, drop it on Brett’s desk, and say, congratulations, you have one prison escapee’s attempt at courtship. You even considered crushing it under your heel and leaving the pieces in the hallway like a very clear, very mature message: Get the fucking hint.
But because you were an idiot, because apparently ten years of therapy, firearms training, and owning a private security company had not cured you of Benjamin Poindexter, you did not crush it.
You brought it inside and locked the door.
Then you sat at your kitchen table, took the back off the phone, and found the tracker chip in under twelve seconds. Of fucking course the burner phone he left like some pathetic little peace offering was also a locator. Of course Dex could not simply say can we talk without also making sure he knew where you were when you ignored him. You should have expected nothing less of him.
You held the tiny chip between your fingers, looked at it under the kitchen light, and felt both rage and nostalgia twist behind your ribs. “Romance really is dead,” you muttered.
When you dropped the chip into a glass of water, the phone buzzed in your hand almost immediately.
Dex: Did you take it out?
You stared and sent nothing back, shoving it into your bedside junk drawer beneath batteries, old keys, a tape measure, and three expired pepper sprays.Over the next week, Dex kept finding ways to leave things for you.
On Monday, you found a paper bag with your favourite chocolate bar between an invoice and a threateningly glossy real estate flyer. You stared down at it in the lobby while Mr. Kowalski from 2A walked past with his pug. “Breakfast?” he asked.
“I think so,” you said.
On Tuesday, there was a carton of chocolate milk waiting on your window sill. Outside. Four floors up.
You opened the curtains and nearly had a stroke.The carton was balanced there neatly, like New York wind, gravity, and basic human decency didn’t exist.
You opened the window, grabbed it, and looked down at the street and found no sign of a psychopath in a tactical black suit making eye contact from across traffic like this was a part of the healing process. You drank it anyway, because you were angry, not wasteful.
On Wednesday, you found a book on your balcony.
That one actually pissed you off, and not because it was on your balcony. You had accepted, against your will, that Dex was apparently treating your apartment like a very emotional obstacle course. It pissed you off because it was a first edition of the stupid out-of-print novel you had complained about not being able to find for years. You had mentioned it once, maybe twice, back when you were still together, curled into the corner of his couch with your feet under his thigh and your hair wet from his shower.
There was a note tucked inside the front cover: I saw it and thought of you.
You looked at the note. Then at the sky. Then back at the note. “Are you kidding me?”
You brought the book inside. You didn’t read it. You put it on the kitchen counter, facedown.
On Thursday, there was a pastry box on your office desk.
Your actual locked private security office with cameras, keycards, a receptionist, two former Marines on the morning shift, and a very expensive alarm system you had installed.
You walked in at eight-fifteen, stopped dead in the doorway, and stared at the little white box sitting beside your keyboard.
Your assistant, who had followed you in talking about insurance renewals, went quiet. “Is that yours?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do we need to evacuate?”
You opened the box. Inside was one pain au chocolat and a folded napkin. You unfolded it: You forgot lunch yesterday.
You sighed, “no.”
You spent the next hour reviewing security footage and getting progressively more furious because, of course, there was nothing useful. There was nothing more than a camera flicker and a ten-second blind spot. The side door alarm that had been disabled and re-enabled so quickly it looked like a system error.
By Friday, you were in a mood so bad people started physically moving out of your way when you walked down the hall.
You went home late, half hoping there would be nothing and you were right. For once, your hallway was empty. Your mailbox was empty. Your windowsills were empty. Your balcony was empty. You checked all of them twice anyway, because apparently this was your life now. Nothing.
You made actual dinner out of spite: rice, protein, vegetables. You ate it standing in your kitchen because sitting down felt too intimate. Then you showered, changed into sleep shorts and an old quantico T-shirt, and tried not to think about the fact that you were kind of disappointed by the lack of gifts. Which was humiliating.
You were a grown woman. You ran extractions for millionaires and negotiated with armed mob bosses before breakfast. You were not going to have feelings because your escaped-convict ex-boyfriend skipped one day of stalking.
Then, at eleven at night, you heard tapping against your window.
No one was there when you opened it, but there was an envelope stuck to the outside of the glass.
You stared at it, then walked over, opened the window, and peeled it off. Inside was a note: Why are you mad at me?
You blinked and read it again.
For a second, you genuinely thought you were hallucinating. Then you looked down to your fire escape below your window to see a bouquet of daisies, the ones he used to buy from the deli down the street because you said you always like them.
“Oh my God,” you whispered to the empty apartment. “He actually thinks I’m playing hard to get.”
You picked up the flowers. And, because you were a very reasonable person, you leaned out the window into the damp New York night and shouted, “DEX!”
Somewhere below, in the dark, a car alarm chirped. A dog barked. Someone yelled, “People are sleeping, lady!”
You ignored them. You held up the flowers like evidence at trial. “‘WHY AM I MAD AT YOU?’ IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE?!”
Nothing, for a moment. Then your burner phone buzzed from the drawer. You stormed over, yanked it open so hard the batteries rattled, and dug the phone out from under three dead pens.
Dex: Are they the wrong flowers?
You stared and slowly sat down on the kitchen floor, because if you didn’t, you were going to throw the phone through a wall.
Because surely, surely, you had misread that. Surely the man you once had thought of as the love of your life, had not just asked if you were mad after he killed your mutual friend seven years ago.
The phone buzzed again.
Dex: I can get different ones.
You closed your eyes. For a moment, you thought you could feel your soul physically leave your body, look down at the situation, and decide it wanted no part in this, because he kept acting as if the issue was floral. As if this whole thing could be solved by a better bouquet and not, for example, an apology, a therapist, a complete understanding of privacy, and maybe not breaking into your apartment.
“Fuck,” you muttered.
Whatever, you thought. I don’t give two shits
You very much gave two shits. You gave several shits. You gave a whole municipal waste facility’s worth of shits.
In truth, you cared so much it made you furious. You had spent seven years telling yourself Benjamin Poindexter was not your problem anymore. Seven years building a life from the ruins he left behind. And now he was back in your life!
The phone buzzed again
Dex: Please talk to me.
You stared at the screen before you stood up. “No,” you said aloud.
You were not doing this through a burner phone. You were not typing out a long, literate paragraph about boundaries to a man who had apparently decided stalking was a valid love language. You were not texting your fugitive ex-boyfriend the basics of human decency. If he wanted to talk, he could talk face to face.
And because you knew Dex better than anyone should know a man like Dex, you knew exactly how to make that happen without sending a single message.
You went to your bedroom and changed, pulling on jeans, boots, a warm coat, and the black scarf with hidden pockets because practicality was important, even during emotional breakdowns. You hid a knife in your sleeve and a compact pistol at your back.
You walked back into the kitchen and looked at the burner phone on the floor.
Dex: Are you there?
You picked it up, turned it over once in your hand, then dropped it into the fruit bowl like it deserved to be punished among the bananas.
“I’m going for a walk,” you said to your empty apartment, before grabbing your keys and left.
—
Central Park at midnight was, objectively, a stupid place to go. You knew that. You literally charged people money to know that.
You had written entire security briefs for clients with more cash than survival instinct, and half the advice boiled down to: do not go into isolated places at night to meet emotionally unstable violent criminals.
Still, there you were, walking through the park under a wet black sky, boots clicking against the pavement, the city humming behind the trees like it was pretending not to watch.
Every instinct you had spent the last seven years wanted to look back: look at the tree line, benches, shadows. Check reflection in puddles and windows across the street. But you didn’t look, because looking meant admitting you cared whether he was there.
The path curved ahead of you, slick with rain and scattered leaves. A few lamps burned gold through the mist. The park was not empty, exactly, but it felt emptied out. You could hear footsteps and cyclists passing too fast. You kept walking. Past the fountain. Past the little bridge, until you reached the bench.
It had the same black metal arms, same damp wooden slats, same stupid plaque dedicated to someone’s grandfather who had loved chess and spring mornings.
You and Dex had found this bench years ago after a date went wrong because work interrupted dinner. He had been stiff beside you, still in his work shirt, tie loosened. You had shared cold fries out of a paper bag. You stole one from his carton and he let you.
After that, the bench became yours in the stupid unofficial way things became yours when you were in love. After late shifts and bad days, arguments you both pretended were not arguments. You kissed here stolen under orange lamplight, hand hovering near your lower back before finally touching.
You sat down anyway. The bench was wet. “Perfect,” you muttered.
You crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, looking straight ahead.
For one minute, nothing happened. Then two. Then three.
You almost laughed. Maybe this was it. Maybe you had finally overestimated him. Maybe Dex had left the flowers, sent the texts, and vanished into the night.
Maybe you had dragged yourself into Central Park at midnight for nothing. Maybe you were the unwell one.
Then, a sound came from the trees behind you, barely anything at all.
You didn’t turn around.
From the darkness behind the nearest tree, Benjamin Poindexter stepped out of the shadows. He looked older, bigger, still beautiful in that awful, inconvenient way that made you want to throw something at the sky.
Dex stopped a few feet away from the bench. For once, he didn’t come closer.
The mist clung to his shoulders. The lamplight caught the scar on his cheekbone. Then, he said, “Hi.”
Your mouth felt dry. “Hi,” you said back. Stupid. Pathetic. Human.
Dex looked at the empty space beside you, then at your face. “Can I sit?”
You almost laughed. Now he wanted permission? “Sure,” you said, voice flat. “Why start respecting boundaries now?”
He flinched like you’d rub salt in a wound. He sat anyway, carefully, as if the bench belonged to you now and he was only borrowing the edge of it. His thigh was too close to yours, so scooted away.
Dex noticed. His eyes dropped to the wet space you’d put between you, then lifted again.
For a while, neither of you said anything. The park filled the silence: dew ticking through leaves, traffic muttering.
Dex’s hands rested between his knees, visible, like he knew you were checking and armed.
“How are you?” he asked.
Of all the things he could have asked. Of all the impossible, cruel, stupid things.
How dare he ask like this was a coffee run. Like seven years had not happened. Like he had not crawled back into your life through windows and burner phones and pastry boxes, leaving little proofs of memory everywhere, every single one saying, I still know you, I still know you, I still know you.
You smiled and it was fake, Dex could tell.
“Oh,” you said brightly. “Great. Coping. The last seven years have been very normal and relaxing for me.”
Dex looked down.
You kept going because if you stopped, worse thingswould come out.
“I built a company. Paid taxes. I learned how to read insurance contracts without wanting to walk into traffic. Got eight hours of sleep, never. Oh, and I developed a fun little stress headache that lives behind my right eye.” You looked back at the path. “You know. Girl stuff.”
“That must have been hard,” he said quietly.
Your eyes closed. Fuck off. That one repetition you knew Dr. Mercer gave him that you told him was cute once. You opened your eyes and rolled them instead. “Don’t sound sad on my behalf.”
“I am sad.”
“That’s the fucking bare minimum. Catch up”
He took that, and you almost wished he wouldn’t. You almost wished he would snap back like you had always expected him to.
But seven years had changed parts of him. Dex, whose anger had been manipulated, had sat down on the prison floor and trained himself not to succumb again. Then he said, “I saw your apartment.”
You looked at him. “What about it?”
He hesitated, and you could see him trying to choose the right words, which was almost funny, considering he had broken into your home without needing words at all.
“It’s.. modest,” he said.
For a second, your brain refused to process it. Then you turned toward him fully. “I’m sorry?”
Dex’s eyes flickered. “That came out wrong.”
“You’re insulting my apartment?”
““I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh, please.” You laughed once. “Go on, Bullseye. Tell me what the fugitive home inspector thinks.”
His face changed at the moniker. “I meant,” he said carefully, “you always talked about more.”
Your throat tightened before you could stop it.
Dex looked past you toward the path, like maybe the memory was sitting there too.
“You said you wanted a house in the suburbs,” he said. “You said you wanted no less than five bedrooms and big windows. A kitchen with the blue tiles you liked. A bathroom with a copper bathtub that would’ve been hard to clean.”
You had been half-asleep when you told him that. Years ago, your legs in his lap, his thumb moving over your ankle bone, the TV murmuring some terrible late-night movie neither of you were watching. You had been talking nonsense because you were tired and happy and safe.
You swallowed the memory down hard. “I can’t afford more,” you said.
Dex frowned. “You can.” You owned a private security firm. You should be able to. Dex had seen the numbers you were bringing in.
“You don’t know anything about my life anymore,” you said, and your voice cracked just enough to make you furious.
His eyes stayed on you.
“I can’t because I… I pay two mortgages,” you said, words coming out quieter than you meant them to.
Dex’s brow furrowed.
“One for my apartment.” Your hand curled against your knee. “One for Seema.”
He stopped breathing for half a second.
You kept your eyes on the wet path because if you looked at him, you would see exactly when he understood, and you didn’t want him to see that.
“And I…I’m putting Sami through college, too,” you added, proud of the boy he had become. “He’s going to be a structural engineer.”
You thought of visiting Seema once in a while. You folded bills into drawers and pretended it was nothing. Seema pretending she didn’t notice. You were just two women building something survivable out of the wreckage men left behind.
Dex stared at his hands. “Oh.”
You smiled without looking at him. It hurt. “Yeah,” you whispered.
He looked smaller, though not physically. Dex still took up too much space. But he was folding inwards, like he had finally stepped on a loose floorboard and realised there was a whole room underneath the house.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
“No.”
“I would have—”
You turned to him then, anger saving you from the softer thing trying to crawl up your throat. “Don’t tell me what you would have done,” you said. “Don’t sit here and offer me imaginary help from prison like that does anything for anybody.”
Dex wanted to say the right things so desperately, you could tell.
You held up a hand before he could speak, “Stop.”
He knew that voice, that tone. He had stolen it from evidence and slept to it in the dark.
You saw the moment it hit him, so you hardened again. “Why are you here?” you said.
Dex looked at you for too long. “I wanted to see you.”
“Cut the shit,” You leaned closer, not because you wanted to be near him, you told yourself, but because you needed him to hear you. “Why are you here, Dex?”
Barely above a whisper, he said, “I wanted to see my girlfriend.”
For one second, you couldn't move. Girlfriend?
You stared. “I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”
Dex looked genuinely confused, not pretending or manipulating.
“We never broke up,” he said.
Your stomach turned. “Oh, fuck.”
“We didn’t.”
“We were on a break when you got arrested! I never visited you in prison, either, Dex!” you snapped. “Take the fucking hint.”
His face went sout first. Then his eyes changed, helplessness flashing there, quickly buried, but not quick enough. He was hurt, almost boyish in its disbelief, like it had never occurred to him that your absence was a hint at all.
“No, no,” he insisted, and you could almost see the story he made up in his head. “You didn’t visit because it wasn’t safe,” he said.
Your mouth opened slightly.
He kept going, voice gaining force desperately. “Because of the Bureau and your firm. Because if anyone saw you with me—”
“No.”
“I know why you didn’t visit,” he said “You had to protect yourself. I understood that.”
“No, Dex.”
“You needed time.”
You scoffed. “I needed more than time.”
“You were angry.”
“I was grieving.”
“You loved me.”
“Yes!” you snapped, and the word tore out of you so violently both of you went silent. It was the ugly, irredeemable truth. You swallowed, but it did nothing.
“Yes,” you repeated, smaller. “I loved you. I loved you so much I almost ruined my life because of it.”
His face broke open for half a second and You couldn’t look at him
“I sat outside that prison once, after you killed Nelson,” you said.
Dex let out a deep breath.
You laughed under your breath, but it came out nearly ruined. “I drove there after work. I parked across the street. I was in my car for forty minutes like an insane person.”
“You came?” he whispered.
“I didn’t go in.” you said, finally looking at him. Your eyes burned so badly it made the lamps blur. “Because I knew if I walked inside, I was done. I knew if I saw you, if you looked at me, if you said my name in that voice, I would forgive things I had no business forgiving.”
Dex was breathing shallowly now.
Oh.
He reached for you, too quickly, when he realized he was losing your attention. His fingers closed around your wrist and pulled, hard enough to hurt.
“Don’t,” he said.
For half a breath, you froze. Seven years ago, you might have let him. Seven years ago, you might have let him pull you close because he was hurting and Dex hurting had always made you stupid. You might have said his name. Might have touched his face. Might have coaxed him back to you gently, patiently, like he was one of your frightened men with a gun and a locked room full of hostages.
But you were not that girl anymore. Your wrist turned, thumb pressing to a weak point. You twisted down, stepped in, and pivoted, making him release you.
His eyes flashed, more surprised than hurt.
You caught his arm, moved behind his shoulder, and slid the knife from your sleeve with one clean motion, pressing the blade on the curve of his neck .
Dex went still, some part of him, some sick part of him, had been waiting seven years to be close enough for you to hurt him, if that was all you would ever give to him.
Your mouth was near his ear. “Don’t,” you said, “grab me like that again.”
Dex swallowed. You felt it against the blade. His eyes were fixed forward, dark in the lamplight.
Even now, you could feel yourself trying to regulate the room. Keep him calm. Keep yourself calm. No sudden moves. Name the feeling. Give him a choice. Bring him back to his own.
You almost laughed. Once a hostage negotiator, always a hostage negotiator. Even when you were brokering arms deals most of the time now.
“I left you alone,” you said. “For seven years, I left you alone. That was the kindest thing I could do for both of us.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
Your hand tightened around the knife. For a second, you couldn’t speak, because you knew what he meant. You had not given him closure. You had not given yourself closure either. You had simply walked out of the burning building and refused to look back in case he was still inside screaming.
He said your name, like he still had the right to use it. “You don’t want to kill me,” Dex said.
Your eyes burned so badly it made the park blur at the edges. You laughed once, but it came out broken. “Don’t be so sure.”
Dex didn’t flinch. He looked at the knife in your hand, then back at you, and his voice dropped.“If you wanted me dead,” he said, “I would already be dead.”
Fuck. Fuck.
Your heart broke again, and this time you almost heard it.
“Leave me alone,” you whispered. You stepped closer, teeth clenched, tears hot on your face. “Leave me alone, or I’ll fucking kill you.”
Then you flipped the knife in your hand, turned the butt of it toward him, and struck him hard under the temple to knock him out.
You stood over him for one second too long, breathing like an animal, waiting for yourself to regret it. You did, but you left anyway.
When Dex woke up, you were gone.
—
For the next couple of months, Dex actually left you alone. Which was good, right? You had to remind yourself that you did tell him to leave you alone or you’d kill him. It was a very clear instruction, a very reasonable boundary. It was very mature of him to respect it.
So why did it make you feel insane?
You told yourself this was healthy. You told yourself that, actually, most women would be thrilled if their escaped-convict ex-boyfriend respected a boundary after years of moral devastation. But apparently, you were not most women. Apparently, you were a fucking idiot.
At work, people started noticing. One of your freelancer caught you staring at a blank wall for too long and said, carefully, “You okay, boss?”
“Hm?”
“You’ve been holding that folder upside down for five minutes.”
You looked down. Ah.
Seema called twice asking you to come over for dinner. Both times, you said no. “It’s not safe,” you told her.
Then Seema sighed, and that hurt worse than yelling. “You always say that when you are punishing yourself.”
You hung up after promising to call again. You didn’t call, even though you kept the checks going.
Then one morning, every phone in your office buzzed at once. That was never good. Apparently, many of your clients wanted extra protection against an “unknown threat.
You wondered why until your assistant handed you a newspaper with the headline: THREE ANTI-VIGILANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN BROOKLYN.
Your whole body went cold.
You read the article, and that was all the confirmation you needed. You knew what Dex’s violence looked like. You knew he did this.
Your assistant said your name again. You looked up, and whatever was on your face made her stop talking.
“Cancel my morning calls,” you said as you phone buzzed.
Brett Mahoney: Do not get involved.
You almost laughed.
You knew then, that he had not left you alone because he stopped loving you. He had left you alone because he was trying to be good. And something, or someone, had just reminded him he wasn’t.
—
You started following Dex on his little crusade. It didn’t take you long to find him, really. You had once loved him too thoroughly to be normal about him now.
You knew which rooftops he would choose because they gave him height and had three clean exits. You knew he hated wet alleys unless they led to fire escapes. You knew he would never use the obvious door. You knew the little rituals he had during work.
So yes. Fine. You started stalking Benjamin Poindexter.
Fuck. How pathetic. You were a grown woman. You ran a firm. And now, apparently, you had a new hobby: following your fugitive ex through New York like a ghost with a concealed carry permit.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
You told yourself it was professional. AVTF had been leaning on your clients hard, forcing them into hiding, turning protection details into extraction jobs, calling it public safety while they raided apartments without warrants and threatened families in parking garages. They were dickheads, so yeah, you had no sympathy for them.
You followed the bodies, the rumours, the gaps in camera footage, the silence in neighbourhoods that had been loud twenty minutes before. And the more you followed him, the more you felt him following you back.
You noticed a shadow on a rooftop opposite your office, a reflection in the window of a closed deli. The certainty that when you walked home at night, something in the dark was following you.
You knew Dex had clocked you the first night and, instead of losing you, instead of warning you off, the sick bastard started letting you get closer, though not enough that you could grab him, never enough that you could put a bullet in him if you finally developed common sense. But enough.
Apparently, even when you kept saying you wanted him gone, your body didn’t get the memos
And Dex… Dex wasn’t any better.
Dex was worse. Dex was leaving you openings like love notes. He would stop too long on rooftops. He let you see the edge of his shoulder before he vanished. He let a camera catch half his face, just enough for you to know he was thinking of you.
Once, you found a dead AVTF agent slumped in an abandoned office with a heart shot into the wall beside him.
Fuck.
Eventually, you stalked his home. Well. Home was generous.
Dex didn’t have a home so much as he had a room to return to when the city stopped needing him bloody for five consecutive minutes.
It was a third-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, rented under a name so fake it was almost insulting. Tony? Where did he get that, huh?
He had no doormats or plants. He had no personal mail. You found it in four days. You told yourself that was because you were good at your job.
You watched the building from across the street with coffee going cold in your hand. Like a creep, like him.
The first night, he didn’t come home until 3:12 a.m.You saw him slip through the alley, hood up, shoulders tense, blood dark on one sleeve. He paused before unlocking the side entrance.
Dex knew you were there and the bastard still turned his head slightly, just enough for the streetlamp to catch the side of his cheek, the bruising near his mouth. Then he went inside.
You sat there with your hands curled around the steering wheel and hated him for being alive.
After that, you came back, but every night. You had clients to protect and employees to encourage into filling out paperwork properly.
Obviously.
—
One night, you followed him to the docks.
You told yourself it was reconnaissance. You told yourself it was work. You told yourself a lot of very reasonable, very professional things while walking into a half-rotted maintenance building with a pistol at your back and your heart trying to climb out of your throat.
But by then, you had stopped pretending you weren’t actively choosing him.
The building sat by the water like a body left to die, with rusted metal, wet concrete, and black windows. Task Force had picked it because they thought isolation made them clever.
It didn’t. Instead, it made them predictable.
You slipped through the side entrance and knew immediately something was wrong when you smelled blood, oil, and gunpowder in excess.
Your stomach turned. Not him, a terrified part of you thought before you could stop it. Please, not him.
When you were fully in, he had already been through the first two. One agent was at the bottom of the stairs. Another near the service corridor. A third was dragging himself across the floor, one hand pressed to his side, the other reaching for his radio.
He saw you, a stranger, and desperately rasped, “Help me.”
You looked at the badge on his vest; AVTF.
Then you looked toward the room ahead, where another gunshot went off so loud the whole building seemed to echo around it.
Your blood went cold. Dex.
You stepped over the agent, who was begging for you to save his life. “No.”
You ran instead, because you knew, somewhere in that building, Dex could be hurt. Dex could be cornered. Dex could die.
And the thought was so unbearable it stripped every lie out of you.
No. No. No. Not him. Not after a decade of caring about him. Not after you spent all that time hating him just to realise that hate was probably just you punishing yourself.
You reached the room and saw him. Dex was backed near the far wall, one hand braced against a pipe, blood at his mouth, shoulders heaving. His eyes were dark and wild, and still, somehow, he found you the second you entered.
For half a second, nothing stopped.
The agents. The prison. The motorcade killing of surrendering men. Ray. Fisk. The suit. None of that mattered anymore. Not really.
Then you saw the agent next to him, lifting his gun, Finger tightening to the trigger.
Dex didn’t see. He was distracted. He was watching you. Dex was watching you like you were the only thing in the room that mattered.
But you saw the gun, the angle. You saw the split second before the world took him from you.
No.
There was a sawn-off shotgun on the floor beside a dead man’s hand.
You picked it up before morality could catch up. The blast tore the room open.
The agent dropped. Your hands moved on instinct efficiently. You loaded in another shotshell. Another shot. The second agent went down before he could turn his weapon. Then the third.
Then nothing but smoke and ringing silence and your own breath coming out broken and a little too loudly.
Dex turned toward you slowly with blood on his cheek, mouth parted, his eyes locked on yours.
You had saved him, yes. You had crossed a line for him, yes. But Dex didn’t look surprised, not even a little.
He looked at you like he had always known, like he was waiting for you to come out of the dark and choose him. Like he had loved every version of you: the woman with pastries in a federal sniper nest, the woman with a knife under his jaw in Central Park, and now this woman, holding a shotgun because the idea of him dying had made her forget every boundary she had ever built.
Your throat closed. You wanted to scream at him. You wanted to kiss the blood off his mouth. You wanted to hit him for making you care this much. You wanted to fall apart against him and have him hold you like no time had passed at all.
You hated him. Or maybe you loved him so badly it felt like a heart attack.
Dex’s eyes dropped to the shotgun in your hands, then rose back to your face, so in love with you it was almost frightening.
You swallowed hard. “I don’t actually want you dead,” you admitted.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
Then the shotgun slipped from your hands. It hit the floor with a dull clatter, and it made you flinch for the first time in years.
Dex said your name, but you didn’t answer.
Your knees gave out before you decided to kneel. One moment you were standing there with smoke in your lungs and blood ringing in your ears, and the next you were on the concrete, palms braced against the floor.
Fuck. Fuck! What did you do? What the fuck did you do?
The agents were dead because you had killed them. You didn't even try negotiating or de-escalating. You didn’t even try buying time.
You had picked up a gun and blown three men apart because he had been about to shoot Dex.
“Oh my god,” you whispered, sounding thin and very much unlike the person you had convinced yourself to be.
Your eyes dropped to the shotgun on the floor, then up to your bare hands. Your… fingerprints were on it. Shit!
Your DNA and your hair maybe, your shoe prints in the blood and river grime. You had stupidly dragged your goddamn life into this room because you had followed a man you swore you hated into a trap and saved him as if he was still yours to save.
You had jeopardised everyone; your employees, the contracts and the clients. Seema and Sami and their mortgage payments and tuition fees. If you went down, they went down with you.
Your breath hitched so hard it hurt. “No,” you said, but it came out like a sob. “No, no, no.”
Dex moved toward you, boots scraping concrete, his body dropping down beside yours. You jerked back on instinct. “Don’t,” you choked out, though you didn’t know what you were telling him not to do.
Dex stopped for half a second, but he reached for you anyway, carefully this time.
His arms came around you from the side, one hand sitting between your shoulder blades, the other wrapping around your back like he could hold your life together by force if you just asked him to.
“It’s okay,” he said, even though it was the wrong thing to say. Nothing was okay, but in the end it was still Dex’s voice.
“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’ve got you.”
You made a sound, and you would have been embarrassed by it if you had any semblance of self preservation.
“Dex,” you gasped.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t- my fingerprints, I touched it, I touched the gun, I…. ” Your words tripped over each other, useless and frantic. “They’ll find me. They’ll know. My firm finished. Seema won’t… I-I—Sami’s tuition, Dex, I pay his tuition, I can’t— fuck! M-my employees, they’ll lose their jobs, I,… everything is tied to me, everything…”
“I know,” he said.
“You clearly fucking don’t!”
“Listen to me,” he said again, hand pressed against your back.
You shook your head, because listening meant being in the room. Listening meant admitting this had happened. It was basically a fucking confession.
Dex moved ever closer, until his chest was against your shoulder, his lips by your temple. “Nobody has to know,” he said.
Your breathing stopped abruptly, looking at him through the blur of your own tears.
His face was bruised, blood at the corner of his mouth, eyes so focused on you that it made you want to collapse all over again.
“Nobody has to know,” he repeated. “I’m going to help.”
You were terrified. You were relieved.
Dex knew what to do. Dex knew what to do with bodies, right? He can make this all go away, right? Right?
You needed him. Needed.
You turned into his chest, hands grabbing at the front of his jacket, fists twisting in the fabric, clinging to him with a desperation you had not shown to anyone in years. Your forehead hit his chest and then, before you knew it, you were letting out full-bodies sobs into his tactical suit.
Dex’s arms tightened around you immediately. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
You buried your face harder against him, shaking so badly you swore your teeth were gonna fall off. “I need you,” you said into his chest, barely audible.
Dex froze for a second, his hand sliding up to the back of your head, holding you there. “I know,” he whispered.
You clutched him harder. “I need you.”
—
Your body had been buzzing with too much adrenaline, your vision swam in and out of existence, and you barely remembered what happened. When you came back to yourself, you were in Dex’s bed.
His studio was small, nothing but one dim lamp in the corner, one chair, and one table. It should have felt temporary, but the sheets smelled like him,and that alone made you feel comfortable enough to ignore everything he had done in the past decade.
You were wearing his old FBI shirt, fabric hanging too loose on your shoulders, logo cracked from years of washing, like a cruel relic from a life neither of you got to keep. Your own clothes were gone: coat, jeans, scarf, and everything that had touched that you, or that warehouse.
The shotgun was gone, too, and you were willing to bet the same for the bodies. All of it had been taken care of by the one man you had spent seven years trying not to need.
Maybe he burned the clothes and sunk the agents. Maybe he sunk the shotgun, too. There was horror, but you felt sick, shameful relief all the same.
He stood near the sink with his shoulders slightly hunched, blood still drying near his mouth. He had washed his hands too many times; you could tell from the red and raw skin around his knuckles, as if even he could not scrub tonight off completely. When he turned the tap off, the apartment went quiet again.
You stared at him, and he stared back, and suddenly seven years were in the room with you. Seven years of pretending he was just another ex. Seven years of saying you hated him because hating him was easier than admitting that some nights you still reached across the bed in your sleep and woke up furious that he was not there to hold you.
You started shaking again. What the fuck were you doing here?
Your whole body felt like it was stuck on vibrate, teeth clenching, hands curled uselessly in the hem of his shirt. You hated yourself, because even after the hard-earned distance you tried to keep, you tried to earn, piece by piece, it was Dex’s room you fell apart in.
Dex walked toward you carefully, as if he had learned the hard way what not to do. He wasn’t going to let himself be taken over by sudden movement, so he just sat on the edge of the mattress, waiting for your next move.
You should have told him to stay away. You should have said thank you and left. You should have put your feet on the floor, gone home, burned his shirt and called this what it was: A mistake, or a relapse. It was just a catastrophic, near career-ending lapse in judgement.
Instead, a little sob came out of you. And that was all it took for his arms to come around your body.
You were so angry at how badly you needed that touch that you grabbed him, by way of both hands in the front of his shirt, fists twisting in the fabric, dragging him close like you were drowning and he was the only source of oxygen left in the world.
You cried into him. It was a heartbroken chest-breaking sob that you couldn’t swallow down. You cried because you had killed three men that hadn’t even been looking at you. You cried because you had wanted Dex to live so badly you have compromised the safety of everyone else in your life.
He held you tighter, hand finding the back of your head like muscle memory, fingers sinking into your hair with a familiarity that hurt so much you might as well have been stabbed.
“Come back to me,” he whispered.
You hated him for saying your line, but you hated more that it fucking helped. So you pressed your face deeper into the crook of his neck, breathing him in like a pathetic kitten that had been abandoned on the side of the road starving for years.
You missed your Dex, and not the one you had made into a monster, and not Bullseye. You missed this one.
“You shouldn’t have helped me,” you said, but it barely came out as a cohesive.
His mouth planted a kiss on your hair.
“I-I shouldn’t have needed you.”
Dex said your name so kindly it didn’t even sound like him.
You pulled back enough to look at his red-rimmed eyes. You had seen men beg before. You had heard confessions, threats, and prayers. You had talked far more dangerous killers into handcuffs and frightened boys away from ledges. But nobody had ever looked at you the way Dex looked at you now.
“But I did,” you whispered, then kept going because you had already bled too much to pretend you were fine.
“I needed you to make it go away. I needed you to know what to do. I needed you to hold me, and I hate that after everything, I still knew you would.”
Dex didn’t look away. “We have always needed each other,” he said.
You wanted to slap him for that, because he was right. Even when you stayed away from the prison,some shameful, locked-up part of you had always known that if the world suddenly wanted to swallow you whole, it was Dex you would look for in the belly of the beast.
Because he was yours. And love, real love, did not follow reason. It didn’t care what made sense or what was deserved. It barely had to read case files or prison records or moral philosophy. It just… endured.
You touched his face with shaking fingers. His eyes closed instantly. You brushed the dried blood away with your thumb.
You leaned in first. Maybe you meant only to press your forehead to his, or you had only meant to sync his breath to his.
But when you felt his breath on yours, you couldn’t help but kiss him.
Dex made a surprised little sound, caught off-guard.
Soon enough, his hand tightened in your hair and he kissed you back. It was desperate and clumsy with relief, his mouth opening against yours as he couldn’t believe you were letting him have you like this again.
You grabbed at him harder, morals be damned.
He shifted closer immediately, angling his body toward yours with one knee pressing into the mattress. His hand slid to your waist through the old shirt.
He was careful, even when you could tell he was losing control. Fuuuuck.
Dex, who had broken into your apartment, tracked you, killed for you, covered up a triple homicide for you, still needed to know that you wanted him as much as he wanted you.
At this point, his lips were split. You tasted blood and yet didn’t pull away. You kissed him until the room blurred into a void. And when you pulled back, you only did it because you had to breathe. Still you didn’t pull back far.
“I… I don’t know what I’m doing,” you whispered.
He had no answer to that.
You were doing this against your better judgement, against every red flag that had been waved to warn you. But in the end, you were doing it anyway.
“You’re a fucking criminal,” you said, as if thinking out loud. Dex saw it exactly for what it was: you, trying to talk yourself out of this, and failing miserably. Still, you continued, “you were the one who told me once that they’re never reasonable.”
In that moment, you saw the memory pass through him. He remembered it as vividly as you: that first proper meeting on the fifth floor of an abandoned building. You were both much younger then, much more naive in what the world would eventually offer to the two of you.
His hand slid up to the side of your neck, finding your artery and pressing his palms there.
“We’re all people here,” he said.
Oh.
You were just a person. You were just human.
You could not be reduced to a principle or a badge anymore, not when you were willingly staying in the bed of the horrible man you loved, wearing his shirt, unable to regret what you had done to keep him alive. And maybe because you were human, it wasn’t your fault that you could not resist him.
So, this time, when you kissed him again, you kissed him with a genuine smile.
—end.
Note: these are the five songs I listened to over and over again while writing this!
Please send in an ask or message if you want to be added to the dex general / series specific taglist! Comments get lost sometimes! Let me know if I missed anyone!
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
origamiaround
izzy806
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
