A Song of Ice and Fire fic: Say Something (I’m Giving Up On You)
Title: Say Something (I’m Giving Up On You)
Fandom(s): A Song of Ice and Fire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,372
Summary: She doesn’t ask him for flowers anymore.
Author’s Notes: Response to this prompt.
For the record, I definitely don’t think Rhaegar was a rapist, and I believe that Lyanna went with him willingly at the outset, but I also find it hard to fathom she would be totally content hanging out in a random tower in Dorne for a year. While he likely wasn’t unkind per se, the prophecy definitely impaired his ability to make good judgments. For my own sanity, I’m leery of labeling it pure non-con, but dub-con is probably accurate. Had Lyanna lived, I imagine she’d have quite a few words for him.
Say Something (I’m Giving Up On You)She meets him mere miles away from where they met: from that haunted castle blackened by dragonfire.
(That should have been her first clue.)
He’d put a wreath of blue winter roses on her head; to everyone else, simply because he found her wolfish fierceness beautiful. To the two of them-to only the two of them-it was for valor, for bravery, for talent, for unseating three dishonorable squires in the name of a crannogman. She’d found it at once mortifying and flattering. He shouldn’t have shamed his wife like that, but by the same token, that crown was the only recognition she’d ever get for not being a proper lady.
He wrote to her only once after that, a short, hasty letter, weeks after her wedding date had been set, as if he knew.
Lyanna-I can take you away from him, from all of them. You needn’t be confined by your sex anymore, by your station. Leave with me and you’ll be free. I’ll be waiting on the eastern shore of God’s Eye lake a fortnight before your brother’s wedding. I hope to see you there.
And she’d gone, without hardly a second thought. She’d gone, and she’d urged her horse into a gallop, letting herself laugh, feel the wind on her face, be free. Not even Robert Baratheon would be able to steal her away now. Not even the prince’s melancholy or Ser Arthur Dayne’s quiet solemnity could stifle her happiness. She could finally be her own person, without her father’s demands, without her betrothed’s infidelity, without anything tying her down. It’s a heady feeling, and she loves it.
The scenery flashes by in bits of green and grey and blue, then finally to red and brown when they enter the borders of Dorne and stop at a tower so tall it blocks out the sun. The Red Mountains at their backs, the heat that has her dressing not in thick wools but thin sandsilk, she’s at peace-Rhaegar had promised her the world, and he’d delivered.
For a few months, she was happy. History wouldn’t tell it that way, and eventually it got hard to remember herself, but she was. He’d spend days singing songs meant only for her and reading fantastical stories, and she convinced Ser Arthur to help hone her swordfighting, and there were no expectations pressed on her: it was bliss, utter bliss. He would bring her winter roses and even though they wilted within days in the hot Dornish sun, they smelled of home and hope.
Six moons after her fifteenth name day, Ser Arthur worked her especially hard and she flounced up the tower steps sweaty as a pig and red as a cherry but exulted. And his eyes had gone dark, more black than purple and he’d kissed her, pressed her against the wall with his lean, hard body bracketing hers. And though she’d never kissed anyone before, she was a quick learner, and soon they’d moved to the bed in a daze of ripped clothes and breathy moans. It didn’t hurt when he entered her like everyone warned, just a mild pinch and then pleasure and he was attentive and soft and it was better than the raunchy stablehands bragged.
When she missed her moon blood, she hadn’t thought much of it; she’d always been irregular. But when it hadn’t come for three straight months, when her breasts got tender and her stomach queasy, she knew what it was. She got scared-this wasn’t supposed to happen! I’m only five-and-ten-and he’d been so happy it was almost unnerving. He’d been convinced the babe growing inside her was a girl, picked a name so quickly she couldn’t help but wonder if, unlike her, he’d wanted this to happen.
And as her belly grew, she began to realize: that’s exactly what he’d wanted.
What if it’s a boy? she remembers asking. What’s wrong with a boy? We could name him Brandon. I know he’s a bit wild, but his heart is true. Or maybe Eddard, who hasn’t a single mean bone in his body.
It won’t be, he’d replied curtly. The babe you bear is a girl, my Visenya, and she shall save the world.
The swordfighting lessons stopped immediately, her blunted practice sword vanished, and before long he’d spirited a woman into the tower, some young midwife from Starfall. The woman was kind, she supposed, but blunt. Efficient. Secretive.
Her bed was moved away from the window-we can’t risk you overheating, sweetling-into the shadows, he spent yet more time reading, none of it aloud, his songs growing more melancholy. It wasn’t all bad: every now and then he would get that look on his face, the one he’d had in the beginning, and he’d kiss her and massage her back that ached so and pleasure her with his fingers or his tongue so thoroughly she’d forget her own name.
She wrote letters regularly, every two weeks or so, to each brother and her father-even Robert, once-explaining everything, asking for forgiveness. They never replied, which at first she’d chalked up to them being angry. It wasn’t for quite some time that she wondered whether they’d ever received them at all. Ser Arthur was always so kind to her, but she wasn’t his prince, she wasn’t his commander, and mayhaps he’d never sent her letters after all.
As she gets closer to birth, he pays her less and less attention, sparing his thoughts and pretty words for the babe, as if she’s merely a vessel. It gives her the courage to ask, Is this why you ran away with me? Because your wife couldn’t bear you any more children? Did you care about her at all? Do you even care about the children she nearly died to give you?
He doesn’t answer-he so rarely answers anything these days-except for one concession: Of course I love my children.
Elia is left out of the equation entirely, and for the first time, she thinks of the other woman, how she must be feeling. Left in the dragon’s den with a mad king and two small children to raise, and a husband who’d holed up with a fifteen-year-old girl. She weeps that night, whispers to the arid breeze, I’m sorry, Elia. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Forgive me.
He announces he has to leave suddenly, when she’s just eight weeks from her due date, but he won’t tell her why, just that it’s urgent. He’ll be back before she knows it, he says, certainly before the baby comes, and not to worry. He asks her if there’s anything he can get her before he departs, but she stays silent, just stares out the window.
Flowers, she would have said once. Those pretty winter roses, or those ones the color of sunshine that grow after a snowmelt.
Not now. She doesn’t ask for flowers anymore.
It wasn’t a frivolous matter, was it? she demands a month into his absence. Please don’t lie to me. He did enough of that.
Arthur looks at her with such pity that she wants to slap him. No, my lady, he says. There is a war going on.
He tells her why, he tells her what happened, he divulges everything. Tells her how Brandon had ignored his wedding in favor of demanding the prince’s head and how he’d strangled himself while her father burned inside a suit of armor. How her former betrothed now battles her baby’s father, ostensibly in her name.
Lightheaded, she sits down on the bed, and it’s then that she feels it-a trickling down her legs and a sharp pain in her abdomen, and all she can think is, No, it’s too soon and, to her shame, You said you’d be here! I can’t do this without you, please come back as though he hasn’t for so long been a different person than the one with whom she absconded.
Rather horrified, Arthur asks how he can help.
I want to go home, she begs, right before a wave of agony steals her breath.
I’m sorry, says Ser Arthur Dayne. You’re not going anywhere.
Fandom(s): A Song of Ice and Fire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,372
Summary: She doesn’t ask him for flowers anymore.
Author’s Notes: Response to this prompt.
For the record, I definitely don’t think Rhaegar was a rapist, and I believe that Lyanna went with him willingly at the outset, but I also find it hard to fathom she would be totally content hanging out in a random tower in Dorne for a year. While he likely wasn’t unkind per se, the prophecy definitely impaired his ability to make good judgments. For my own sanity, I’m leery of labeling it pure non-con, but dub-con is probably accurate. Had Lyanna lived, I imagine she’d have quite a few words for him.
Say Something (I’m Giving Up On You)She meets him mere miles away from where they met: from that haunted castle blackened by dragonfire.
(That should have been her first clue.)
He’d put a wreath of blue winter roses on her head; to everyone else, simply because he found her wolfish fierceness beautiful. To the two of them-to only the two of them-it was for valor, for bravery, for talent, for unseating three dishonorable squires in the name of a crannogman. She’d found it at once mortifying and flattering. He shouldn’t have shamed his wife like that, but by the same token, that crown was the only recognition she’d ever get for not being a proper lady.
He wrote to her only once after that, a short, hasty letter, weeks after her wedding date had been set, as if he knew.
Lyanna-I can take you away from him, from all of them. You needn’t be confined by your sex anymore, by your station. Leave with me and you’ll be free. I’ll be waiting on the eastern shore of God’s Eye lake a fortnight before your brother’s wedding. I hope to see you there.
And she’d gone, without hardly a second thought. She’d gone, and she’d urged her horse into a gallop, letting herself laugh, feel the wind on her face, be free. Not even Robert Baratheon would be able to steal her away now. Not even the prince’s melancholy or Ser Arthur Dayne’s quiet solemnity could stifle her happiness. She could finally be her own person, without her father’s demands, without her betrothed’s infidelity, without anything tying her down. It’s a heady feeling, and she loves it.
The scenery flashes by in bits of green and grey and blue, then finally to red and brown when they enter the borders of Dorne and stop at a tower so tall it blocks out the sun. The Red Mountains at their backs, the heat that has her dressing not in thick wools but thin sandsilk, she’s at peace-Rhaegar had promised her the world, and he’d delivered.
For a few months, she was happy. History wouldn’t tell it that way, and eventually it got hard to remember herself, but she was. He’d spend days singing songs meant only for her and reading fantastical stories, and she convinced Ser Arthur to help hone her swordfighting, and there were no expectations pressed on her: it was bliss, utter bliss. He would bring her winter roses and even though they wilted within days in the hot Dornish sun, they smelled of home and hope.
Six moons after her fifteenth name day, Ser Arthur worked her especially hard and she flounced up the tower steps sweaty as a pig and red as a cherry but exulted. And his eyes had gone dark, more black than purple and he’d kissed her, pressed her against the wall with his lean, hard body bracketing hers. And though she’d never kissed anyone before, she was a quick learner, and soon they’d moved to the bed in a daze of ripped clothes and breathy moans. It didn’t hurt when he entered her like everyone warned, just a mild pinch and then pleasure and he was attentive and soft and it was better than the raunchy stablehands bragged.
When she missed her moon blood, she hadn’t thought much of it; she’d always been irregular. But when it hadn’t come for three straight months, when her breasts got tender and her stomach queasy, she knew what it was. She got scared-this wasn’t supposed to happen! I’m only five-and-ten-and he’d been so happy it was almost unnerving. He’d been convinced the babe growing inside her was a girl, picked a name so quickly she couldn’t help but wonder if, unlike her, he’d wanted this to happen.
And as her belly grew, she began to realize: that’s exactly what he’d wanted.
What if it’s a boy? she remembers asking. What’s wrong with a boy? We could name him Brandon. I know he’s a bit wild, but his heart is true. Or maybe Eddard, who hasn’t a single mean bone in his body.
It won’t be, he’d replied curtly. The babe you bear is a girl, my Visenya, and she shall save the world.
The swordfighting lessons stopped immediately, her blunted practice sword vanished, and before long he’d spirited a woman into the tower, some young midwife from Starfall. The woman was kind, she supposed, but blunt. Efficient. Secretive.
Her bed was moved away from the window-we can’t risk you overheating, sweetling-into the shadows, he spent yet more time reading, none of it aloud, his songs growing more melancholy. It wasn’t all bad: every now and then he would get that look on his face, the one he’d had in the beginning, and he’d kiss her and massage her back that ached so and pleasure her with his fingers or his tongue so thoroughly she’d forget her own name.
She wrote letters regularly, every two weeks or so, to each brother and her father-even Robert, once-explaining everything, asking for forgiveness. They never replied, which at first she’d chalked up to them being angry. It wasn’t for quite some time that she wondered whether they’d ever received them at all. Ser Arthur was always so kind to her, but she wasn’t his prince, she wasn’t his commander, and mayhaps he’d never sent her letters after all.
As she gets closer to birth, he pays her less and less attention, sparing his thoughts and pretty words for the babe, as if she’s merely a vessel. It gives her the courage to ask, Is this why you ran away with me? Because your wife couldn’t bear you any more children? Did you care about her at all? Do you even care about the children she nearly died to give you?
He doesn’t answer-he so rarely answers anything these days-except for one concession: Of course I love my children.
Elia is left out of the equation entirely, and for the first time, she thinks of the other woman, how she must be feeling. Left in the dragon’s den with a mad king and two small children to raise, and a husband who’d holed up with a fifteen-year-old girl. She weeps that night, whispers to the arid breeze, I’m sorry, Elia. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Forgive me.
He announces he has to leave suddenly, when she’s just eight weeks from her due date, but he won’t tell her why, just that it’s urgent. He’ll be back before she knows it, he says, certainly before the baby comes, and not to worry. He asks her if there’s anything he can get her before he departs, but she stays silent, just stares out the window.
Flowers, she would have said once. Those pretty winter roses, or those ones the color of sunshine that grow after a snowmelt.
Not now. She doesn’t ask for flowers anymore.
It wasn’t a frivolous matter, was it? she demands a month into his absence. Please don’t lie to me. He did enough of that.
Arthur looks at her with such pity that she wants to slap him. No, my lady, he says. There is a war going on.
He tells her why, he tells her what happened, he divulges everything. Tells her how Brandon had ignored his wedding in favor of demanding the prince’s head and how he’d strangled himself while her father burned inside a suit of armor. How her former betrothed now battles her baby’s father, ostensibly in her name.
Lightheaded, she sits down on the bed, and it’s then that she feels it-a trickling down her legs and a sharp pain in her abdomen, and all she can think is, No, it’s too soon and, to her shame, You said you’d be here! I can’t do this without you, please come back as though he hasn’t for so long been a different person than the one with whom she absconded.
Rather horrified, Arthur asks how he can help.
I want to go home, she begs, right before a wave of agony steals her breath.
I’m sorry, says Ser Arthur Dayne. You’re not going anywhere.