a little bit of a witch @witchtoria22 - Tumblr Blog

hello! i've been following your blog since COA and have always found that you have a way with words that is just so easy to get lost in that is devastatingly beautiful ㅠㅠ

you recently wrote a bit about how your lady stark and lyonel exude "in another life" energy, and i find myself wondering what could have been.

this is the very first ask i have written, so i'm not quite sure how to go about it, but would you ever consider writing about lyonel and lady stark in that other life? and would baelor perhaps find himself looking on from the outside? or would he not have even had the chance to experience any semblance of unrequited love if lyonel had gained lady stark's interest first?

curious to know your thoughts or to read about it if you ever expand on it, and absolutetly love reading all that you write. many thanks for entertaining this ask and warmest wishes to you ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: In which stag and wolf dance instead, and a dragon prince gets a glimpse into a life he could have had.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: lyonel baratheon x f!stark!reader x (baelor "breakspear" targaryen)

⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 5.9k

⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes/content: stark!reader, smitten!soft!lyonel, you're in luuuve, angst, unrequited love (from baelor's side), pining and yearning but make it sad. Basically HW reversal au. The RLR parallels are, once again, diabolical.

read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.

“Genius,” you declare proudly, lifting your skirts just enough to show the muddy line up your boots. “Admit it.”

“Madness,” Lyonel answers, but he’s grinning like a man who would do it again twice over. Rain clings to his hair, turns the dark curls obsidian, and his doublet is spattered with the same earth you’ve trailed into the corridor. His hand is warm and solid at the small of your back, thumb rubbing an absent-minded circle through the damp wool. “Climbing the outer wall to see the city lights—”

“—was genius,” you repeat, unapologetic. The wind still lives in your bones, salt and cold and the dizzy drop beneath your heels when you’d looked out and seen King’s Landing sprawled below like a scatter of embers. “You just regret not thinking of it first.”

He makes a wounded sound, hand splaying theatrically over his heart before he steps closer, shoulder bumping yours. “My lady, you wound me. I am full of ill-considered ideas. It is practically my house’s sigil: a crowned stag on a field of poor decisions.”

You bite back a laugh and fail. The sound slips out anyway, bright and quick, echoing off the stone of the passage. Lyonel’s grin sharpens, satisfaction curling at the corners of his mouth; he’d scale ten more walls if it would pry that sound out of you again. His fingers catch at the edge of your sleeve, a light tug as if to keep you close, as if the storm itself might steal you if he lets go.

Down the corridor, half-hidden by the spill of torchlight and shadow, a tall figure pauses for the briefest of moments.

You don’t see him.

—

You had met Lyonel first under a different sky.

Storm’s End is nothing like Winterfell and too much like it all at once. It has that same old weight, the sense that the stone remembers things you do not and has judged you already. But where Winterfell holds its silence like a cloak, Storm’s End roars. Wind batters the walls. The sea claws at the cliffs. The courtyard is all hard angles and shouting men and the distant, constant thunder of waves.

You arrive damp, wind-tangled, your hair half undone despite your maids’ best efforts. The sea-salt stings your cheeks. You feel very far from the godswood and the quiet murmurs of the weirwood.

Then he comes down from the steps.

Lyonel Baratheon looks as if he belongs to this place the way the storm does—less a man than an answer to its challenge. Lithe, colourful cloak whipping behind him, rain pearling in his beard. He moves with the restless energy of a hound that has scented something worth chasing.

He bows. Properly, deeply, rain dripping off the end of his nose. When he straightens, he steps close enough for you to feel the warmth of him through the chill, his palm brushing the underside of your arm as if to steady you against a gust.

“My lady Stark,” he says, and the title comes out without a stumble, as if he has practised it alone where no one could see. “Welcome to Storm’s End. I fear we’ve laid on poor weather for you.”

You blink up at the louring sky, grey upon grey, and hear yourself answer, dry as the North in winter, “If this is poor, my lord, I would hate to see your good weather.”

There is a heartbeat of silence. One of your men shifts behind you, a soft warning under his breath. The wind claws at your cloak.

Then Lyonel laughs.

It is a sudden, barking sound, startled out of him rather than crafted, as if he’d been struck and found the pain delightful. The guards exchange quick looks. One of the castellans goes very still. This, you suspect, is not a sound the castle hears often from its lord unless he’s making merry.

“Seven,” he breathes out, shaking his head, still grinning. “You were undersold to me in every letter, my lady. I was told you were clever. Nobody warned me you were dangerous.”

He offers his arm, and when you take it, his hand closes firm and certain around your fingers, tucking them against the heat of his side. As the stormwind shoves at you both and he guides you toward the doors with a little flourish that has more respect in it than half the bowing you have seen in your life, you find that you are… not wary at all.

You think: He will never be bored, this one.

You think: Neither will I.

By the time the raven reaches King’s Landing with the formal notice of your betrothal, the stormlands are already telling stories of the northern lady who looked their lord in the eye over supper and said, “You’re too loud by half,” and then laughed when he raised his voice just to prove her right.

—

You hear about Prince Baelor long before you meet him.

His name comes in pieces: in the lords’ careful words, in your lord father’s measured tone as he explains the value of you going south, in the muttering of your own bannermen when they realise where your path is headed. Later, it comes on the tongues of courtiers passing through Storm’s End—spoken with respect, or with irritation, or with something like unease.

Righteous, they say. Temperate. Too gentle by half, others argue, with the air of men who only know two kinds of strength and cannot imagine any other.

They mention his mother, sometimes. Dornish. How he carries the sun in his skin and the sand in his temper; how he looks half out of place beneath the red vaults of the keep, like he should be standing in a courtyard of pale stone and orange trees instead.

You file it all away with everything else. Names, faces, the turn of this piece and that on the board. You are a Stark; your life has always been a matter of duties weighed and met. You learn the shape of the prince’s reputation the way you learn the shape of the coast: as something that will one day matter to you, whether you will it or no.

And then the summons comes, and you and Lyonel ride north.

King’s Landing is suffocating, where Storm’s End is raw. Too many bodies crushed into streets that twist like a knot, too much smoke, too much heat trapped between stone and tile. The Red Keep climbs out of the city’s filth like something grown rather than made, all red stone and sharp edges.

You are announced in the throne room with all appropriate ceremony. Lyonel strides in at your side, every inch the stormlord: cloak slung back, head high, his restless energy barely banked into courtly composure. He squeezes your hand once, quick and reassuring, before you step forward together. You move beside him, your steps measured, your back straight, the weight of northern eyes on your shoulders even this far from home.

The king sits on his throne, with his crown and the heavy weight of power and duty. To his right stands a man in dark, finely cut black and muted silver, a subtle pin of the Hand at his collar. His hair is mostly dark, worn a little longer than fashion favours, with the first fine threads of silver beginning to show at his temples and in the short, neat beard shadowing his jaw. His skin is sun-browned, a warm gold against the stone, as if he has spent more hours beneath an open sky than most men of the court could bear.

His face is stronger-boned than Lyonel’s, his mouth less quick to smile, but his eyes—mismatched, steady—take in the hall with a soldier’s sweep as much as a prince’s.

You know him instantly.

Baelor Targaryen’s gaze moves over the hall, over your escorts, over Lyonel. When it reaches you, it stops—and lingers, an extra breath, as if something in him has gone very, very still. He is not what you expected. You had imagined something ethereal, perhaps—a man more dragon than flesh, distant behind a curtain of silver hair and prophecy. Instead, he looks solid, human, and… tired. Not worn, but as though he has been standing in this hall too long, listening to too many petitions, carrying weights you cannot see.

And yet, when he looks at you, something in his expression clears. As if the fog of duty lifts just enough for a shaft of light.

You drop into a curtsey appropriate to your station, your arm brushing Lyonel’s as he bows deeply at your side. His fingers find your elbow as you rise, unobtrusive, steadying. The stone beneath your knees is cold even through the layers of your gown.

“Your Grace,” you say to the king. “Your Highness,” you say to Baelor when protocol allows, your tongue careful around the Southron titles. “You honour us with your welcome.”

“The honour is ours,” Baelor answers, and his voice is warm where you’d expected it to be distant. Measured, yes, but not disinterested. “The realm is stronger for this union. The stormlands and the North both stand high in our regard.”

His gaze flickers, just once, to where Lyonel’s hand has not quite left the crook of your arm. Lyonel makes some jest that draws a ripple of polite laughter, something about storms bending even winter to their will. You add a dry comment that sharpens it into something truer, refusing to let the North be reduced to a punchline.

Baelor’s eyes flicker again. Amusement—real and quick—glints across his face before he smooths it away. For an instant, you see him as he might be in another place: in sunlight, laughing freely, his beard shadow lifting with the curve of his mouth.

Later, when the hall has emptied and formalities have turned to endless recitations of names and titles, you find yourself speaking with him more directly. Lyonel is drawn into one of those loud, half-argument conversations he collects like trophies. Before he goes, he squeezes your shoulder—a quick, grounding press—and murmurs, “Shout if they bore you to death; I’ll come revive you,” drawing a reluctant smile from you.

Baelor steps into the quiet left at your side as if he would rather die than interrupt, and only when he is certain he has not does he engage. He asks you about the stormlands first. Of your impressions of the coast, of the smallfolk, of the changes you have suggested to Lyonel’s stewards. You brace, expecting the kind of soft questioning that hides a sharper judgment or dismissal.

Instead, he listens.

Up close, you can see the sun in his skin more clearly, the faint pale lines at the corners of his eyes that speak of years spent squinting into bright light, not just candleflame. There is a tiny scar along his jaw, disappearing into his beard when he turns his head. His eyes are dark and intent, but when you mention some small absurdity—a goat that keeps escaping the same broken stretch of fence—his gaze warms, the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth before he presses it back.

You speak of the erosion along the cliff paths, how the sea eats at the goats’ grazing land; of the fishermen who curse the storm even as it drives the richest catches into their nets. You mention the way Lyonel takes unnecessary risks in the practice yard, and the way his men watch him with that bone-deep loyalty that cannot be bought.

Baelor’s attention never wanders. There is a steadiness in him you did not expect, a hum of thought like a river under ice.

“You see much,” he says finally. “More than some who have held Storm’s End for a decade.”

You shrug, uncomfortable with the praise as well as surprised. “The land is loud,” you answer simply. “You would have to be deaf not to hear it.”

A corner of Baelor’s mouth lifts. Just a little. Enough that you see what he would look like, laughing without reserve, dark hair thrown back, that sun-golden face lit from within.

“If more lords were so deaf,” he says, “this hall would be quieter.”

For a moment, standing there beneath the painted vaults, you feel something stretch between you—thin and bright as a sword-edge. An understanding, perhaps. Or the ghost of one.

You might have said something then, something more reckless, if Lyonel had not returned at that moment with a goblet in one hand and an outrageous story in the other. He comes up behind you and, without thinking, curls his free hand around your waist, fingertips splitting the difference between possessive and protective. You lean against him, a fraction, out of habit more than thought.

Baelor’s gaze drops, just for a heartbeat, to where Lyonel’s thumb rests over the curve of your hip. When he looks away, the movement is careful.

Still, later that night, as you unpin your hair and listen to the distant murmur of the city, you remember the way Baelor’s expression had shifted—how his attention had sharpened on your words, how his smile had almost broken loose when you spoke of goat-fences and stubborn lords. It feels, faintly, like standing before a door in a strange house and seeing the outline of a room you will never enter.

—

Life in the capital settles into its own kind of rhythm.

You spend your mornings in the practice yard or buried in ledgers with Lyonel’s stewards, your afternoons in council or with the queen’s ladies, learning the shape of southern courtesy as one might learn a new blade’s balance. At first, you feel as if you are wearing someone else’s skin. Slowly, you begin to carve out room for yourself.

Lyonel finds every crack in the court’s solemn façade and pries it wider. He tells jokes when he should stay silent, picks at pompous lords until they either bristle or laugh, and drags you along in his wake with the blithe confidence of a man who has never doubted he belongs in any room he enters. When someone looks down their nose at your northern plainness, he slings an arm across your shoulders and grins as if to dare them to say more, teeth bared.

You scold him for it. You indulge him. Sometimes you spark the mischief yourself.

And sometimes, you sit at the long council table, ink on your fingers, and feel Baelor’s gaze on you from the far end.

The Small Council chamber is always too warm. Braziers burn low along the walls; candles gutter over piles of parchment. Men drone on about tariffs and grain levies, about ships lost to storms and coin gone missing between one counting and the next. You sit beside Lyonel, your chair a fraction closer to his than strictly necessary. His knee knocks yours when he shifts; his hand finds the back of your chair when he leans forward to argue. He smells of leather and steel and the faint tang of the sea that never quite leaves him.

A dull-voiced lord from the Reach is explaining why a tax will hurt his harvests not at all, but would surely ruin the riverlands. You listen, and you count, and you follow the numbers through the maze of his self-interest until something clicks out of place.

“That’s wrong,” you say.

The room stills. You feel rather than see the way some of the older men bristle. You are a lady, a northerner, Lyonel’s upstart bride with her ink stains and her blunt tongue. You are not meant to cut through their politely arranged lies in front of them.

“Explain, my lady,” Baelor prompts.

Just that. No censure. No softness. An invitation.

You do. You talk of river traffic and port tariffs, of how many casks a single barge can carry, of how many barges can run a river in a good season. You speak of the stormlands too, of what you have seen with your own eyes, of what will happen if the Reach hoards its surplus and everyone else goes to war over crumbs. As you speak, you see Baelor set down the quill he has been toying with. His mismatched eyes never leave your face. He follows every word, every turn of your thought, as if the rest of the chamber has fallen away and there is only this line you are drawing between cause and consequence.

When you finish, the room is quiet.

“Lord Merryweather,” Baelor says at last, voice mild. “It seems the lady of Storm’s End hears the land more keenly than you hear your own ledgers. We will not be implementing your proposal.”

You almost expect a wink, some small conspiratorial glance. You get something quieter instead: when you sit back, pulse beating hard, Lyonel’s fingers brush your knuckles under the table. Baelor’s gaze dips for a heartbeat to that small contact, and his throat works as if he has swallowed something sharp.

Afterwards, as the others drift away in murmuring knots, Baelor comes to stand beside your chair. His shadow falls long across the maps.

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?” you ask, genuinely puzzled.

“For saying what needed saying when it was not your duty to do so,” he replies. “That is… rarer than you might think.”

You shrug, uncomfortable again with his earnestness. “I only repeated what the numbers already told us.”

“Most people here do not like what the numbers tell them.” There is a faint, wry curve to his mouth now. “They prefer stories.”

“Stories don’t feed hungry bellies,” you say bluntly.

He looks at you a moment longer, something like warmth and pain mixed in his gaze, then inclines his head and turns away. As he goes, Lyonel slides an arm around your shoulders and drops a kiss into your hair, murmuring, “That’s my clever wolf,” against your temple.

The ache that twists across Baelor’s face at that sight is brief, brutally honest, and gone before either of you can see it.

—

On a high balcony overlooking the training yard, you stand with your hands folded on the stone, watching two young knights batter each other bloody with blunted swords. Lyonel leans against the balustrade at your side, one ankle crossed over the other, his shoulder pressed to yours. Every now and then, he nudges you with his elbow when one of the boys makes an especially foolish move.

“That one will break first,” he proclaims, nodding toward the taller youth—longer reach, pretty footwork, shoulders already drooping with fatigue. “He’s used to winning too quickly. Doesn’t know how to stay ugly in a fight.”

“And the other?” you wonder.

“Will win,” Lyonel replies. “If he doesn’t die of sheer stubbornness in some ditch before he gets the chance to matter.”

You hum, considering. “Sounds familiar.”

He slants you a look, feigning offence. “Are you calling me ugly, my lady?”

“I am calling you stubborn,” you shoot back, biting back a smile. “The ugly we shall leave to your enemies to decide.”

His laughter rolls out over the yard. Below, some of the soldiers glance up, startled. The sound always seems to surprise them, as if they have not yet grown used to hearing their lord’s mirth ring out over stone and steel if there’s no wine involved. Lyonel slides his hand along the back of your neck, fingers briefly kneading the tension there in silent thanks for the jest.

You do not notice the figure crossing the far side of the yard until his path angles toward the gate below your balcony.

Baelor moves with the unhurried tread of a man who knows a hundred eyes rest on him and refuses to let it hurry his steps. The sun catches on the faint silver at his temples, turns it to threads of pale fire against his dark hair. His skin is the same warm gold it was in the throne room, the set of his shoulders a little heavier now under the weight of the pin at his breast.

He pauses when he hears Lyonel’s laughter. When he looks up, his gaze snags on the two of you framed against the sky: storm lord and northern lady, your elbows nearly touching where they rest on the same stone, Lyonel’s hand absent on the back of your neck, your head tipped slightly toward him in a posture of easy intimacy.

You see him this time.

For a moment, the three of you hang there in a strange, suspended balance: you looking down, Lyonel still smiling faintly beside you, Baelor upturned toward the light. His face opens slightly, some guarded line easing as his eyes move from Lyonel’s careless grin to your own softer, more reluctant smile.

There is a flicker of something in his gaze—wistful, almost hungry, gone so fast you’re not sure you didn’t imagine it.

You incline your head in greeting. Lyonel lifts a hand, fingers splayed in a salute more appropriate to the yard than the court. Baelor returns it with that small, precise gesture of his and moves on.

Beside you, Lyonel makes a thoughtful sound.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing,” he says, tone too light, conversational. “Only that it’s always interesting to see which way a man looks first.”

You frown at him.. “And which way did he look?”

Lyonel’s grin turns wicked and fond all at once. He bends, presses a quick, chaste kiss to your temple, more teasing than solemn. “Oh, my lady,” he drawls, breath stirring the loose hair at your ear. “You truly do not see yourself, do you?”

You roll your eyes and aim an elbow at his ribs. He catches it in an easy, practised twist that says he has long since learned to anticipate your blows.

Whatever Baelor thought in that moment—if he thought anything at all beyond the dozens of concerns that surely circle his head like ravens—you do not know.

He, however, carries the image with him longer than he would like. There are moments later, over parchment and wax, when the memory surfaces unbidden: you in grey and storm-blue, Lyonel’s big hand splayed over the nape of your neck, the two of you laughing into each other’s shadows. Something in his chest tightens, quiet and sharp.

Baelor presses the feeling down. He has practice at that.

—

The corridor after the feast is half shadow, half torch-glow, smelling of smoke and spilt wine.

You have kicked off your slippers and gathered your skirts in one hand to move faster, long used to bare feet on cold stone. Lyonel strides beside you with that loose-hipped, predatory grace he wears even when drunk. His hair is mussed, his collar a little open, the line of his throat flushed from wine and dancing. He keeps a hand at your waist as you walk, thumb stroking idly through the fabric, tugging you nearer when the floor dips or the torches flicker. Once, when you stumble laughing over your own hem, he catches you with an arm across your middle and hauls you in against his chest, his mouth brushing your hairline in a quick, fond kiss before he lets you go.

“You are impossible,” he tells you, not for the first time. “You insulted Lord Fell to his face.”

“He needed insulting,” you say jovially. “If nobody tells him his idea to tax salt is folly, he will tax salt, and then everyone will die, and then we will have nobody left to argue with. I am preserving your entertainment, my lord. You should be grateful.”

He laughs, that deep, unrestrained sound you have grown to prize. There is no echo of courtesy in it, none of the careful, polished amusement courtiers learn. It is as honest as the sea crashing against the cliffs. His fingers curl around yours where your hand has found his, knuckles brushing your wrist.

“Genius,” you say again, thinking of the wall, the view, the way the wind had howled past you while Lyonel hissed below for you to get down before some poor guard had a heart attack.

“Madness,” he insists, but he is still looking at you like the night itself has grown teeth, and you have decided to bite the world.

You are so intent on the argument that you do not see the man at the other end of the corridor until he has already stilled.

Baelor stands with one hand on a jut of stone, as if he meant to rest there a moment between one duty and the next. He is dressed more simply than at court: dark doublet, the Hand’s pin at his breast, hair a little messy, shadowing his face. The lamplight paints warm bronze along his cheekbones, catches faintly on the silver at his temples and in his beard.

Without the crown beside him, without the hall’s heavy air, he looks younger. Or perhaps only more bare.

You falter. Lyonel does not.

“Highness,” he calls out, straightening a little, though not enough to pass for truly sober.

“Lord Lyonel.” Baelor’s gaze takes in the mud on your skirts, the grass stain peeking at your hem where you misjudged a jump, the way Lyonel’s fingers are laced through yours. His mouth tightens, not unkindly, as if something in the sight hurts in a way he refuses to name. “My lady.”

“Your Highness,” you reply, dipping a quick curtsey made awkward by your fists full of fabric and the way Lyonel still, unconsciously, holds your hand.

Baelor’s eyes rest there for a fraction of a heartbeat, on that small, casual knot of flesh and intent. Then he pulls his gaze up, forces it to your face. He could rebuke you. You see the awareness of your state in the press of his lips, the faint line between his brows. You are married into his court now; your folly reflects on more than just yourself.

Instead, after a pause so small most would miss it, he says, “I trust the evening treated you kindly.”

“Too kind, if the wine is any measure,” Lyonel drawls lazily, unrepentant. “The kitchens will curse us in the morning. My lady insists on climbing the outer walls like a cat.”

“Only to see the city,” you add quickly, as if that makes it better.

Baelor’s eyes flicker again—amusement, disbelief, and, under it, an ache so deep and brief you almost imagine it. “The outer—” He stops, breathes, recalibrates. “I am glad you were not seen. The court has little sense of proportion when it comes to scandal.”

“We were very stealthy,” Lyonel assures him, not sounding convincing at all.

You cannot help yourself. “He tripped over a flowerpot.”

This time, you see the almost-smile begin and lose its battle. The corners of Baelor’s mouth twitch; his eyes warm; then something—habit, duty, the memory of a dozen watching faces—closes over it like a hand.

“Try,” he says quietly, and there is a roughness in his tone now, a thread of genuine feeling, “not to die falling off the walls of the Red Keep, my lady. It would be… inconvenient for the succession.”

“Yes, Highness,” you say, chastened but not particularly repentant.

He inclines his head and moves past you. As he passes, his sleeve brushes your bare arm, the faintest touch through linen and skin. He smells of parchment and candle-smoke and something sun-warm and clean beneath it—citrus, perhaps, or some Dornish oil lingering from long-ago days.

When he reaches the corner, he glances back once.

Just once. Long enough to see Lyonel pulling you in against his side again, tucking you neatly under his arm, your head tipping toward his shoulder as you murmur something he cannot hear. Long enough for that quiet sting in his chest to flare and fade.

Then he turns away.

That night, he does not go straight to the sept. Instead, he walks the outer galleries until he finds a stretch of wall where the wind can reach him, cool and clean against his too-warm skin. Below, the city sprawls in its tangle of roofs and alleys, lights pricking through the dark like a second sky. Baelor stands where you stood, hands braced on the stone, and imagines you there—hair loosed by the wind, laughter torn away by the gusts, Lyonel’s wild affection wrapped around you like another cloak. The ache in his chest is sharp and oddly sweet, like biting into fruit not quite ripe.

Somewhere behind him, the door to that particular life shuts with a quiet, decisive click.

—

Some weeks later, Lyonel is called away.

Nothing dramatic, in truth. A border dispute. A minor uprising among Stormland petty lords who cannot quite keep from testing each other. The kind of thing that requires a lord’s presence and a firm hand and, if necessary, his hammer. He leaves at dawn, the courtyard still half in shadow. You stand in the chill, cloak drawn tight, while grooms bustle and horses stamp. He cups your face in both his hands before he swings into the saddle, his thumbs brushing your cheekbones.

“I’ll be back before the court can grow dull without me,” he promises, his grin rakish, warm around the edges. “Try not to climb anything I’m not here to catch you from.”

You offer him a flat look. “Try not to get yourself killed in some ditch over other men’s pride.”

He laughs, bending to press his forehead to yours for a moment, a brief, hard press of bone against bone, as if willing some of his stubborn life into you and taking some of your iron in return. Then he is gone in a thunder of hooves and stormland banners.

The day feels wrong without him.

You go about your duties. You walk the training yard. You sit in the council as an observer. You think of the road, of rain on Lyonel’s face, of mud and steel and the way trouble clings to him like a second cloak.

It is Baelor who finds you at the end of it, standing in one of the narrower galleries, looking out over the dusk-washed city.

“My lady,” he says, stopping a respectful distance away. “You are alone this evening.”

It is such an obvious thing to say that you almost laugh. “It appears so, Your Highness.”

There is a pause, and then, carefully, “If you wish company on the walls, I am bound that way myself. The city tends to forget to breathe when the sun goes down. It is… good, sometimes, to remind oneself it does.”

You could refuse. You could retreat, guard yourself. You do not. You walk together along the ramparts, the two of you bracketed by battlements and sky, the city falling away below in a murmur of life. His stride is measured, unhurried; yours matches it, your skirts whispering over stone.

You speak of small things. Of the smell of snow, which he has never known and cannot quite imagine, and of the feel of Dornish sun on the back of the neck, which you can only picture from his halting description. Of the way cities sound at night compared to holdfasts.

When you laugh, once, at some dry, self-deprecating remark of his, he goes very quiet, as if hoarding the sound.

There is a moment—just one—when your hands brush on the stone between you. He does not pull back. He does not move closer. He only looks at you, at the worn places on your knuckles from sword-hilt and quill, and says, very softly, “I am glad Lyonel does not have to stand alone.”

You swallow. “Neither do I.”

You part at the stairs, as you must. His hand rests on the pommel of his sword, yours on the rail. For an instant, it feels like standing at a crossroads neither of you is allowed to take. Then he inclines his head and lets you go, carrying that single shared breath of almost-contentment back into the web of duty.

—

Behind you, the torches crackle. Somewhere above, in a room you have never seen, Baelor Targaryen kneels before his gods.

He is not good at prayer, not the way the septons would have it. His thoughts wander. Tonight they drift to ink-stained fingers and sharp northern words, to the way you laughed in the corridor with mud on your skirts, to the ease with which you fit under Lyonel’s arm, to the quiet stretch of wall you walked together at dusk.

He bows his head, and thanks the gods for the alliance, for the peace, for the woman who might have been his and is not—because that means she belongs to a man he trusts to keep her laughter bright and her spirit unbent. He does not ask why the thought of it hurts. He knows better than to invite that kind of honesty into the quiet.

You do not know that. You do not hear the roughness in his whispered gratitude, or feel the small ache buried under it. Your life has never had the luxury of dwelling on might-have-beens. It is full enough of what is.

And yet, sometimes, when you stand on the battlements of Storm’s End or the gallery of the Red Keep and look down on the world from some dizzy height, the thought brushes the back of your mind like the wing of a passing bird.

In another life, perhaps, you might have walked these halls at Baelor’s side. Your bluntness might have found a different foil in his quieter humour. Your ink-stained fingers might have turned the pages of his ledgers instead of Lyonel’s. His stillness might have met your own, his sun-gold warmth balancing your northern iron in some gentler, steadier way.

In this life, you turn from that phantom door and find Lyonel, rain-soaked and laughing, daring you to climb higher.

You take his hand with too much love already in your heart.

Years from now, some singer will weave a lay of the wolf and the storm: of the Baratheon lord who loved too loudly and the Stark lady who never learned to hold her tongue, of battles and feasts and children who inherit both their stubbornness and their laughter. If Baelor appears in the song at all, it will be as a shadow at the edge of the firelight, a wise prince, a steady hand.

They will not sing of the way his gaze found you in crowded halls, or how he sometimes stood a little longer on the walls at dusk, listening to the city breathe and thinking of a life that was never his.

Below, in the hall where all the roads of the realm knot together, Baelor watches the two of you enter—a matched pair of storm and winter, his arm looped around your waist, your hand resting over his, loud and alive and unashamed. His heart tilts, very slightly, toward a path the gods closed before he knew it existed. He feels the shift, notes it, and sets it aside with all the other small, unkeepered hopes a man must surrender to serve something larger than himself. But it does not quite vanish. It remains a mild, clean ache, like the memory of sunlight on skin after a long winter.

In another life, he might have loved you openly.

In this one, he loves from the edges: your blunt tongue in council, your ink-stained hands, the way Lyonel’s laugh always finds you first, the way you never flinch from the weight you’ve chosen. He blesses the match with all the sincerity in him and carries the quiet, wistful knowledge like a relic:

It is enough that you are happy.

It is enough that this story exists at all, even if he only ever gets to watch it unfold.

an: this is why poly is ALWAYS the answer ‼