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Though some seemed to expect it of her, her being the closest shape to a ‘Lady Stark’ who might kick up such a fuss, Lyanna did not make any public habit of disapproving of Brandon’s beer-drinking. For Brandon only did it with other men, and when that was on his restless nature would invariably turn him rowdy.

Beer-brave, he’d spout off proclamations, herding the crowd to their horses or whatever other awesome task. Sometimes Lyanna would be able to go along— whether she slipped in unnoticed until it was impossible to chase her off, or was brought with as something of a novelty, an adorable thing to entertain the men— and sometimes Lyanna would be left behind, to undertake her own adventures. Those usually involved Benjen, who followed her like a puppy might a prophet anyway.

All in good sport. Lyanna did not enjoy beer herself but being in its company hardly vexed her, when it came to her brothers.

Lyanna was closer to misliking Brandon’s wine-drinking, as it tended to put him in one of several moods with no way of foretelling which. Occasionally he’d haul Lyanna into the crux of his arm and bewitch her with stories, or command her to tell him something amusing, which she’d do and didn’t mind doing. Her eldest brother was an insouciant listener but he could always snag the juicy bits, adding on himself until the stories became of both their creation. That was the Brandon she liked best.

The worst by far was when he grew horns. When great big bellows joined with careless strength, all channeled through a vile tongue. There was no reasoning with him then. It was never clear to Lyanna what he was raging against; she had learned well not to try and find out.

And rarer still, Brandon would grow sullen. Run off to ride the hills, or sharpen his sword for hours. Brandon usually liked to have women about him yet there were such times when he had no use for a little sister. Lyanna had these periods herself, when she could not bear even their customary arguments whose ends were long since sawed off, so she knew better than to bother with coaxing anything accommodating from him. Much less disapproving, which only ran the risk of rousing his ire.

Thus it was that Brandon, drunk and well sore off two lost wagers, granted Lord Robert permission to escort Lyanna from the stands to the Stark tent. 

Lord Robert was the one to propose it, but the matter was decided by a lazy wave from the highest-ranked Stark present. Lyanna was at a loss for a polite way to indicate to Brandon that she did not want to— nor could she be sure that Brandon would heed her, if he even bothered to look her way. Ned, the slug, turned to Lyanna only long enough to give her an encouraging smile. Said smile accomplished nothing it sought to. Her patience had been short for days, her body yet sore from her... well. Her moonblood, far as her clueless brothers knew. Not to mention the exercise she’d received the day she stole into the forest.

However ill being alone with Robert while in her flummoxed state seemed to bode, Lyanna saw quickly that she could not fight it. And perhaps she should speak to Lord Robert: come to know more of him, him know something of her. Lyanna could see the sense in that. If only her body wasn’t so sore.

So wonderfully, gloriously sore.

“Had you guested in Harrenhal before, my Lord?” she asked Robert politely, with a hope (soon to be rewarded) that he would undertake the majority of the conversation, until she could find her footing. Or be relieved of him, she thought unsportingly.

“No,” Lord Robert said, chuckling. Laughing... at me? Lyanna wondered. She hadn’t been south of the Neck before— which was obvious, somehow, written on her face for strangers to read. But it wasn’t so simple a matter as her youth. Rather, five years of Winter had dampened the travelling spirit in Father. Five years had made him… older. Greyer, less yielding, like the statues of Kings in the crypts.

Robert smiled toothily at her. He had a bright and friendly smile, Lyanna noted. A broad chest from which everything emerged big, larger than life.

“No, lady. I’ve hawked and hunted at Maidenpool and Darry, though, and stayed at the Crossroads more times that I can count. Riverrun I’ll see soon enough, for Lord Brandon’s wedding, and there’s said to be good rafting there. Harrenhal only from the road. The first time for you as well, I know.” His smile tilted to one side and became a grin. “Did this beastly place shock you, sweetling? Those twisted towers like burnt candles?”

“It was as it was described,” Lyanna said brusquely. In truth Harrenhal had surprised her. She’d never seen aught like it, and it repulsed her just as much as a burning desire to explore it all had struck her. 

She would not admit this if he’d laugh at it, however. 

Robert hooted. “A Stark answer if ever I heard one! Fear not, lady, Storm’s End’s magnificence will surely find a way to impress you. Mine is a castle with a man’s unbroken strength and a woman’s smooth skin! We’ve white cliffs and blue sea and a garrison five hundred soldiers proud, aye, you’ll come to love it, Lyanna, but at first sight you will feel only awe.”

She could believe that. “Winterfell castle would affect you likewise, Lord Robert.”

“I have been given to believe that,” he said, nodding eagerly. “And visit we shall, once we’re wed, without unnecessary delay. There’ll be the Eyrie first, most naturally, for you to know her tall white spires and waterfalls which weaned Ned and I, magnificent they are, I swear you there’s nowhere like it. And then a ship from Gulltown to White Harbor. Ned will receive us, no doubt, so from there across, with elk-hunting along.” His voice went softer by a pinch. “It pleases me, lady, that you and I share a roving spirit. Aye, I am no husband who will confine you to some lonely castle. We will guest, often, and be guested just the same. Riverrun, the Eyrie, Winterfell. Those only the beginning.”

A twist twanged in Lyanna’s stomach. A guest in Winterfell. Could it be that way?

She did not wish to believe so.

“My lord father thinks to do a progress in the North, you know, now that the Winter is over,” she said in stride— an assertive strength close at hand, these days. “My brother Benjen and I have been making plans for the places we wish to see along the way. We’ve both known Bear Island but neither of us the Wall. The mountain clans either, from whence our lady mother came. High time for it though, seeing as they’ve fended for themselves three years now. There’ll be plentiful grievances and challenges to hear, so many that Father is like to bring both his stewards with him. And myself, I hope— he was drunk and gay when he said it, to be sure, yet he did make the noise of granting me some rights to hear some of the women and younger girls’ matters. There’s been no queenscourt since Lady Lyarra my mother passed away, and... erm...” 

Lord Robert’s grin was touching the corners of blue eyes. Abruptly Lyanna caught the sense that she was being half-listened to, same as Brandon and his friends did when she was being amusing. She concluded hastily. “Benjen too. Shall be involved, I mean. As a scribe. His penmanship is superb beyond his years.”

When she stopped speaking, she found she dreaded his reply... and also felt foolish for dreading it. Yet his reply surprised her.

He touched her. Her shoulder. Casually.

A touch was a touch, though. And her shoulder was already bruised.

“You dote on your little brother, do you?” Lyanna nodded silently. “I knew it. Girls are always soft on their lads. Not like men, we are beasts to ours. Aye, but women, you do spoil the little devils and spin them round in your old dresses.”

Oh. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “Ned?” Ben’s nature… she had not thought Ned to be as cruel on the topic as Brandon was wont to be, at times. Though, should I be surprised? They were both polite with my delicate Howland, yet they would never think to defend him as I did. All of Winterfell japed about how Ben needed toughening, his hard-handed family no less, and Lyanna was forever fighting them, even Father, insisting they leave him alone.

Never before Ned.

Robert squeezed her shoulder, laughing. “Not so, not so! ‘Twas a jape, only a jape. Ah, I forget how delicate you all are about your first boys. My own girl cousin took me as her own at a young age as well, though I was forever a menace and tearing up all her gowns, getting at her whenever she took me for a picnic beneath the fruit trees. Shall we picnic, you and I? On the morrow. Little lord Benjen could be our chaperone.”

“We would miss the jousting if we did. And you might menace me, rip up my gown.” She realized as she spoke the impropriety of her words, but Lord Robert only looked down at her, giving her a terrible wink.

“Aye, I cannot promise to always behave,” he said, speaking deviously. He seemed closer than before. “Though I shall make every effort to follow your lead.”

“How do you mean?”

That seemed to tickle him. “However you like. Wrangling the young wolf, for one. Your brothers shall be mine, soon enough, as Lord Eddard already is. One day you and I will wrangle children of our own, but until that day comes, Benjen will be swell practice. What games do you two play together? Come into my castle?”

“Once, yes. We’ve others now. Our jaunts do not ever boast beer or wine, though.”

Robert took that as a jest— which was good, for it had been said unwisely. It scratched at Lyanna, though. You drink, and you make loud vows, ones that are unfair, treat people like traitors, even if you couldn’t possibly know. Lyanna could hardly imagine telling him, either. He might find it funny.

“Do you disapprove?” he asked, mischief shot through his tone. “Wounding! I drink beer, that’s no lie, but it makes me jolly and generous, nothing else. Your brothers like beer as well, lady, even the littlest one will soon enough, when he’s a man. Surely you won’t forsake us all?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t mind beer, really, it’s just… sometimes a drunk man is more dangerous than he knows. His words, or his weight. And,” she added, “Benjen’s close enough to a grown man that he doesn’t like to be called a little boy. Not in a way that japes him.”

“Is that how it is for him in Winterfell, with Lord Brandon and your lord father?” Robert asked, rubbing his dark beard. Lyanna faltered for a beat too long. “Aye, that’s their lot. The youngests. S’why they all go off to join sellsword brotherhoods in the Free Cities soon as they're of age, and fight like lions. The truest way for the second sons to earn their manhood, I say! I wanted to send Stannis that way once, when his first master died before knighting him, but all the old men in Storm’s End fought me, they insisted Renly would collapse and never eat again. Oh he’d remember soon enough, I imagined, soon as a fresh batch of applecakes came from the kitchens. Coddled little brat. I had a mind to do it anyway and send Renly a few years later, to squire him, but Stannis is so bloody sour I doubt any of the good brotherhoods would have him. Har!”

Lyanna floundered for polite response. Hand slipping to her elbow, Robert regarded her with eyes bright enough to blind. “I do like children, you know. Mistake me not for a strict lord and father, indifferent to joy.” Lowering his voice further, he said, “if I may, lady? I have heard that Lord Rickard is not known to be a warm man.”

Oh. 

“He was, once,” Lyanna defended lamely. “Before my lady mother died.”

“My lady mother died, too,” Robert said, plowing on. “She was a grand woman, really, Lady Cassana. Just grand. She’d laugh and wrestle with us when we were boys. Aye, even me! And it was she who gave me the name Robert, along with the ones of my brothers, when we were but bugs, hardly Baratheons at all. Naming their own is the honor due to women, I think, for the gift they give us of children. So you see, I am not cut of the same stuffy cloth as your Northmen, Lyanna. I am a hair more understanding than that.”

And all of this you know because you already have a child? she wondered. A bastard whose mother who named her, somehow it’s an honor that you did not give the girl your name? Perhaps Lyanna should be brave and say that aloud, speak the truth so she could have some answers of him… Robert spoke of honor and Lyanna knew something of that, she did— teach your squires honor! rung through her head like a bell and lifted her up, for a moment. Honor as a prince had said it, scrupulously yet there’d been something in his eyes. Something which knew. 

The memory made Lyanna feel braver. Bigger. She turned to Robert with the intention of speaking to him forthrightly— Robert, mouth yet moving, took it for a different sort of advance. The touch of his large paw glanced downwards, passing her hand to find purchase on her waist. 

“You’ll give our firstborn boy a strong Northern name, won’t you?” he said conspiratorially. It was not a question; she could see he’d pleased himself greatly. Words deflated in her mouth, sinking back down her throat and clogging up everything, melting like snow so she had to cough to clear it. “Together, lady, we shall mold him into a Baratheon knight supreme!”

“And how might I do that, my lord? When I am no knight?” Lyanna asked pointedly. Sidestepped as well, but Robert either did not notice, or would not let her go so easily. 

“Why, as own mother did,” he answered enthusiastically. “My angel, I wish she could have known you. She would have loved you, truly, rejoiced to have a daughter so beautiful. My aunties used to tease her about having only boys, you know, that was her lot, yet she’d always wished for a girl. With Renly—” Robert laughed and the sound boomed, rippling the tents, his black mane shaking. “She wept and wept! Men must have their sons, my lady, but women pray for daughters.”

“If that’s so, then Northern prayers differ from the southron in more ways than one.” 

Though it was merely a cool remark the defiance still came difficult, snow and mud making sludge. The Stark tent was at hand now… but everything felt far away. Alone with Robert, the world just seemed so ungraspable. Why? She was still the Knight of the Laughing Tree, wasn’t she? Steel-capped justice, bruised yet true? Robert didn’t know about that though. He only knew Lady Lyanna, and her not well. So she was what she was but only to herself, and that made it less somehow.

“A healthy babe seems blessing enough,” Lyanna muttered, red-faced and sanding off her comment. Even that was a rich compromise. “This is hardly a soft world for a daughter to be born in.”

Robert seemed to take that as a challenge. “I will make it a soft world for ours, Lya.” Lya? she thought, blanching. Only my brothers call me Lya. Robert’s other hand found Lyanna’s waist then. The position was respectable enough, it would not be out of place at a fete, in a dance, yet it chilled her. How could he touch her like this, she lamented, moving back. He followed. Blue eyes strikingly sure.

“I will. Mother and daughter, you both will be warm and safe with me. And adored.”

Lyanna wanted to scream. “What if I don’t want all that?” she asked, hoping against hope that he might understand. “What if I want to ride out into the joy of the howling winds? What if I want to climb my mother’s mountains, and make justice for the clan girls with wilderness in their hearts?”

“Why shouldn’t you do so? You will. With me by your side, always.” He spoke from his large chest, a furnace swallowing all the air between them; he spoke with large breaths that (so close now!) reeked thickly and inescapably of beer.

His dark hair hung in his face, smile stretching across his face— all the things serving girls and wedded Northern ladies had teased her about, the handsomeness which they swore would eclipse all Lyanna’s senses… was this what they’d meant? 

When women spoke of men, this was how it was? 

Robert’s hands met behind her back. Lyanna’s quick hands went to his shoulders and stuck there, trying to push him away without making a scene, but she couldn’t budge the bull. He went on grinning his stupid grin. “I know what you’re thinking, you know.”

“Do you?” she asked, voice tight. “Really?”

“I am not entirely ignorant of the fairer sex,” he said, halfway bashful. “I know you have heard things of me. Dearest Ned warned me to be delicate.” The betrayal froze Lyanna to the bone. That... traitor! “Angel, you must know that every other woman pales in comparison to you. You’re already my love, when we’re wed you’ll be my wife. And I’ll be your lord. Only yours. I promise.”

She shivered— he misunderstood it grandly, laughing, so bloody happy. “Aye, you’re an icy thing, Lya, but thaw you down and you’ve the same soft heart as all women do.”

Did she? Mere days past Lyanna had decided she must have a heart of iron and fang. Where is that heart now? she despaired. Why wasn’t she doing more, saying something? Where had all that fire gone, in the face of Robert who was growing alarmingly fond, who had her now between a wooden beam and the sweltering heat of his body? 

She reached for herself, said, “No, Robert, n—” but he didn’t hear it or didn’t want to. He was even beginning to pant, his mouth turning red and wet.

“S’alright,” he assured her hotly. He cast his eyes about furtively, ensuring they were alone, before leaning down to her. “It’s only us here, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of bit. Lyanna, love, put your arms around my neck. It’s alright, I promise, we’re so close to it anyway...”

She kept her hands at his shoulders, pushing him with her strength that felt outrageously small beneath him. It couldn’t even stop him dipping, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Or going lower, that same cursed mouth, meeting her brow, her cheek, the other cheek. Lyanna slipped then, and her arms could not help but clutch his neck for balance though he was the reason she was imbalanced, and he—

“One little kiss,” he cajoled her in a whisper, hot beer-breath fanning over her face. “Kiss me, Lyanna, only a little one, we’re only a little early...”

Nothing was little about him. It felt like the ground had fallen out from under her. Robert was kissing and kissing her closed mouth, a hand hot as char climbing up her back. Her braid hung uselessly— Don’t touch my fucking hair! she tried to protest— words so pointless they wouldn’t even come out. Oh, a noise escaped her, to be sure, but it was stupid and… and it sounded like a laugh, really.

Robert laughed too. Everything was wrong. He was going to throw her down and rape her, maybe, and meanwhile she’d be laughing, letting him, why was she letting him? 

“Robert, Robert,” she tried again— Lyanna, Lyanna, he replied, swallowing her protests and the rest of her too, she was lost in him. Where was the great sound which had come from her only days past, a booming louder than screaming wind— Teach your squires honor— where was steel bravery— my father…!— or the crown prince in the forest— you bastard!

All gone, she didn’t have it anymore, mayhaps never did if she couldn’t make herself move now. Absurdly, Lyanna thought: this must be why the Prince had so brusquely dismissed her, when she’d tried to speak with him after he’d done what he’d done with her shield. Wasn’t it? When she’d wanted to say I am sorry the King— and he’d frowned, turned away, as if whatever had ‘been’ in the forest entirely ‘was’? He must’ve known, somehow, that her strength only lasted to the tree line and then it was downhill, quite literally, unworthy of his notice…?

She summoned the man with that thought. Just as another useless Robert, stop! was made into mush by the laughing, crushing lips of a man who’d be by her side, always— just then, a pair of strong arms pulled them apart.

Princely arms they were. Familiar and wearing a ruby ring on knuckles that had subdued Lyanna once, though they’d let her go later. The entire length of those arms separated Robert and Lyanna.

She wished it made him feel farther. But it didn’t.

Prince Rhaegar stood between them, in the middle of what was meant to be Lyanna’s rape. He stood violently still, and the silence was violent too, even though it was full of harsh breathing. He stopped Robert, she saw. Like it was so... stupidly easy. Had nothing truly happened, then? Or... had it happened? 

Lyanna was not sure. All she knew was that she felt sore. Everywhere. In places she was only now coming to the horrifying realization existed at all. 

The Prince was speaking with Robert, Lyanna numbly pinching the sleeve which had moved from her shoulder. She tried to exhale, act less injured, but her hands spasmed and only grasped for her braid. And he was harsh beneath his aristocratic calm, this Dragonstone. Commanding like the wolf was meant to be. Like Lyanna had thought she was. Wasn’t she? Wasn’t she?

Or maybe she was just the sheep protected by dogs, until it was time to shear her naked and eat her. Like the lamb, she’d cease to be a Stark of Winterfell soon. She’d be Robert’s wife and… it’d happen. Then. She could see now there would be no unnecessary delay. Nobody would stop it, she clearly couldn’t, a hundred times or a thousand until she was the mother of bugs— for God’s sake, she’d laughed!

By then Lyanna could hear the words being exchanged. Lost myself. Only a bit early. Then I insist Ser Arthur escort you, lest you lose yourself once more. She could hear words being spoken to her, too.

A hovering hand which caught itself.

Because I’m fragile, right?

He couldn’t touch her lest she shatter. She didn’t want to be touched, comforted dispassionately, awkwardly— even if soon enough she’d be raped— so she closed her ears and dashed away, letting the tent she shared with her brothers envelope her in it’s safety, though she was alone in it and it offered no true protection.

The Prince didn’t follow her, thankfully. Viciously, she hoped he’d just forget all about it. Maybe it happens all the time and he saves women from being raped every day after dinner, in his big castle. Really Lyanna mourned herself as she’d been in the joust, in the forest. If she was not that, then at least to be remembered that way; if not Prince Rhaegar, then perhaps Howland, her darling Howland, the only person in the world who still loves me! Her brothers were already done with her, yes, it was just a matter of formality, a little time... 

Gradually Lyanna calmed herself down. She drank water and braided her hair over, smoothing her sleeves. She assured herself that there was yet time. It didn’t matter if it was ‘only a little’; if she savored each minute, each hour, each day and did not let them pass without her attention, then it would at least feel as if her marriage would never come. The rest of the tourney was still left to her, between now and then. 

That laugh, though.

Her laugh haunted her. She’d frozen— fear could do that, Lyanna knew, it shamed her yet it was truth. But why laugh? The sound echoed in her ears. Blue as her stupid bruises.

Her brothers returned soon enough, bringing with them their usual fracas. Ned asked her quietly how it had gone with Robert, and she hummed the right sounds, thankful for the numbness or else it might’ve broken her heart, knowing she could not be honest lest he betray her. Deep down she’d already known it. And he’d think differently of me, too. She was even short with Benjen, whose hurt she felt worse than her own. It was awful but she couldn’t bring herself to play their old games anymore, couldn’t he see those were only children’s follies? He didn’t, he was still a child himself (she prayed he’d long remain one, that the song of swords in the Free Cities would never tempt him) but Lyanna was not anymore. Not after what had transpired.

All that was over for her.

Laughter (or rather, one awful solitary laugh) had echoed in Lyanna’s mind for a pair of days. So when the laughs died for true there was a moment, reserved only for her, when nothing was happening at all.

The sound of the wind racing to the treeline.

The dancing rays of sun in her eyes.

A familiar scent brought her back into the world which she’d been hovering above, somehow. Not only familiar but beloved, cherished and missed. She blinked. Before her a silent knight sat ahorse, black armor shining red beneath the sun. His lance sloped downwards to her lap— not touching her, though. And on it’s tapered end dangled a crown of all blue.

Oh.

For his helm Lyanna could not see his face, merely the slits of his eyes. And they did not dance or cast across the field, nor did they dart up to where the King sat. They were for her alone. 

No freeze came over her, even as the noises of everyone else not comprehending pitched together into a tent of confusion, badly built, prone to collapsing. When Lyanna took the crown, it was for the irresistible urge to smell it. The frost and beauty and home of it pricked the back of her eyes. So this is the way it is, she understood, oddly calm. All her half-notions melting away.

That was the end of wondering.

Lyanna stood and donned the crown, allowing it to touch her hair, her brow. It settled with a rightness that overcame the small touch of thorns. For a moment she wanted to weep… Prince Rhaegar nodded and galloped off, giving her the strength not to. Mourning and burial lived in her, for she was a Stark of Winter, the season for those things— but as blue roses burst through snow a new sense did in her as well. A new breath, cold as frost and racing, laughing past the people and into the forest of trees.