Mother of Winter; (Robb/Jeyne, M)
Title: Mother of Winter
Fandom: Game of Thrones/ASoIaF
Characters/Pairings: Robb/Jeyne
Rating: M
Words: ~2.450
Warnings: Spoilers through ASoS
Summary: "The crown still sits heavily upon her dark head, even here where there is no contesting it..."
Written for: the got_exchange prompt "Robb lives, Jeyne as Queen in the North, Jeyne getting back at her mother, unholy loosed upon the Freys, anything where Jeyne and Robb get to be happy (as happy as possible given that this is ASoIaF) together..." byredbells
+
The biting cold is the first thing that greets her, a chill so harsh she feels it in her marrow, knows it won't be long before it brittles her bones.
Winter is coming.
She's heard her lord husband say the words time and time again, has heard her good-mother and his bannermen parrot the very same. But, it isn't until they're north of the Neck that the weight of those words registers--truly registers--with her for what is perhaps the very first time.
I am the Queen of Winter now, she thinks, the very thought still as intangible and foreign to her as this strange, cold land.
I am queen of rubble and ruins, she almost thinks, the cruel malice of it not unlike the sound of Sybell Spicer's whispered words, as she watches the landscape through the slight opening in her wagon. It's stark in the contrast of its colors, coated with bright white snows and dark wood and grey stone--not nearly enough of which is intact.
"I know it's not what you expected, but everything will be restored--it'll all be just as it was before," he tells her, ever mindful of her comfort and the novel weight she carries.
"I do not doubt it, your grace," she smiles with a reassurance she does not quite feel, ever mindful of the fragile boy beneath the armour (weeping for his brothers, his sisters, his father, his home).
Her good mother offers them her chambers, the sympathy on her features plain as day when she watched Jeyne shiver like a thin leaf.
"You'll grow accustomed to it, child," she tells her, certain of the truth of her words through the trails of her own experience (a Southern girl made Mother of Winter).
Lady Catelyn's chambers aren't quite as warm as they once were though, much to Jeyne's misfortune and Robb's lament. The attacks on the castle seem to have taken a toll on even the passage of the hot springs.
"It'll be the first thing we consider on the morrow," he promises her, eyes earnest as they watch her bundled beneath a heap of furs.
"Thank you, Robb. But really--I'm fine."
She knows better than to call him by his title here when there's no one watching for reinforcement, has learned with time how to switch between some semblance of a queen and a loving wife at the cross of a threshold.
"Will you join me?"
She moves some of the furs aside to make room for him, watches through lowered lashes as he strips to his smallclothes before joining her.
They fit together in a way that is almost entirely hinged on instinct now, his arms surround her and she curls against him as he lowers his face for a kiss.
She's missed this (missed him), the intimacy they so frequently indulged in behind the closed door of their chambers in Riverrrun, the very same they've been denied more often than not on the near month long journey North.
There are no open wagons and never-ending roads between her and the press of his lips against her skin now, nothing between her and the light scrape of his beard and the heat that pools between her legs at his ministrations.
There's too much desperation between them for him to coax and tease, to shower every inch of her body with the searing open-mouthed kisses she craves (the ones she knows he loves to give just as much as she loves to take). She doesn't mind their absence so much when he's inside her though, scarcely has any room in her mind for anything besides the feel of him.
She knows she's moaning more loudly than is proper for a lady of any noble birth--or a queen no less--but she can spare even less of a thought for the guards just outside the oaken door.
"Gods<, Jeyne," he groans against the shell of her ear, and she knows then that he has missed her just as much as she has missed him.
He peaks before she does, rubs her with the pads of his fingers after until she comes undone with a scream she muffles against the furs.
The following morning she wakes to an empty bed, knows that Robb is likely the one person in Winterfell who slept less than she did. Nonetheless, there is an unbidden disappointment in the face of his absence. For a brief moment, it does not matter that she is privy to the burdens a king must bear--particularly a king with a broken kingdom.
For a brief moment, it does not matter that she is just as privy to the burdens that rest on the shoulders of such a king's queen.
+
The Freys are the first to reap what they have sowed, the price for their treachery paid with the edge of a sword at the back of numerous necks (so many, too many for her to count, to remember).
The crown still sits heavily upon her dark head, even here where there is no contesting it.
Jeyne has always been a slight girl--well endowed where the hips were concerned, as older women were always quick to note--but slight all the same, and she's certain this crown does nothing to attach a majestic girth to her being. She's just as certain that her lowered gaze does nothing to compensate for her shortcomings.
Her good-mother does not flinch when Robb's sword meets skin and bones, cuts through as if slicing a slab of butter. Her good-sister Sansa does not flinch, watches the grotesque procession with the same vacuous eyes that watched her brother hack Joffery Baratheon's (Lannister, Robb had told her) head from his shoulders when they marched into Kings Landing and declared Renly Baratheon King in the South.
He saves the Boltons for last, their treachery more reprehensible-- more vile--than even the Frey's.
They are of the North, and for that alone the North will always remember.
+
Sybell Spicer arrives no more than four moons after her daughter and her good-son, her distaste at what greets her far more apparent than Jeyne would have liked it to be.
"You are the queen of rubble and ruins, it seems," she snaps, and Jeyne could almost smile at her predictability if the words didn't sting.
"No matter, castles and walls can be rebuilt--claims however..."
She does not need her mother to put words to the thought, knows her too well to forgo her intent (how ironic, she thinks, that it is only after she parted with her mother that she has truly come to know her).
Jeyne has yet to provide her husband with an heir, and a king with no heir breeds a kingdom with little security. A queen that fails to provide an heir is even less secure than said kingdom. She does not doubt Robb the way her mother might, knows he's come to love her at least half as much as she loves him--but she does not forget that she has married a king.
She takes the tea her mother gives her, notes that it tastes far sweeter than the bitter brew she’s taken to sipping this past year, but says nothing of it.
“This is certain to put a son in your belly, the most potent of its kind.”
Jeyne still says nothing, but thinks that she may have taken to the North far quicker than she anticipated, for she’s certain she will always remember.
+
To this day, there are times when Jeyne watches Robb and marvels at the fact that he is hers, daughter of Sybell Spicer with her modest means and her questionable blood. Robb had cared for neither when he wed her, had only wanted to preserve the honor of a girl he thought gentle and kind (and beautiful, he whispers between wet kisses along her bare skin), undeserving of the kind of run that was sure to follow in his wake.
Though she loves him (wholly, fiercely), Jeyne cannot help the thoughts that surface in his frequent absences, in the face of his distraction even when he lies beside her at night.
"I know this isn't what I promised you," he whispers in the dark, his eyes fixed at some distant point above them (at something that isn't her).
"But, it won't be long before all is restored. I know it won't."
She also knows he isn't merely speaking of castles and corridors, knows his missing sisters and lost brothers are at the forefront of his mind, and suddenly she aches to soothe him just as she did that night he crumbled against her while the waves crashed against the shoreline beyond them.
The truth of it is that Jeyne cares as little for the aesthetic state of her kingdom as she does for her crown. Certainly, she would love to see her husband's home restored to its former glory, would love just as much to see its people warm within the walls of their homes with food aplenty on their tables and in their bellies.
But, when she took him into her bed (and her heart) that first night, Jeyne has not bargained for a kingdom or a crown--only for the boy who'd implored her to call him "Robb" and clung to her as if she were the difference between reality and illusion itself.
"No, it certainly won't," she whispers back, seeking out his hand and taking it into her own before turning for a kiss, sighs softly when the weight of him pushes her more deeply into the feather ticking of their bed.
It doesn’t occur to her until she’s in the throes of sleep, her body sated, that she thinks perhaps this place with its charred walls and crumbled towers is just as foreign to Robb as it is to her.
+
Jeyne ensures that her mother is the last to know, though how she manages the feat with Sybell's dark eyes trained on her face, her morsels, her belly, is a mystery even to her.
She knows she's with child long before she seeks out their maester for confirmation. She feels it in the tenderness of her breasts (Robb was nearly stricken when she flinched from his touch the other night), feels it in the turn of her stomach and the fatigue that plagues her waking hours.
She tells her good-mother first, and it is as much a slight to her own mother as it is a demonstration of the camaraderie and affection she feels for the older women. She's pleased with her decision when lady Catelyn embraces her with a kiss to each cheek and looks at her with more pride than she can ever remember finding in the eyes of another woman.
It's telling Robb that really tugs at her heart though.
At first she fears that he did not understand her, for he merely continued to watch her as if waiting for more--but then he smiled, a brilliant smile, perhaps the most genuine she's seen on him to date (it seemed every other had been tinged with a sort of sadness--at the faint bruise that marred her beautiful good-sister's cheek, at the memory of his lost brothers, at the absence of his father).
There is no sadness to be found here though. There is only the sound of his disbelieving laughter that's followed almost instantly by her own, only the feel of his arms around her, holding fast as if she's likely to disappear without their anchoring grip.
"Thank you," he whispers, his lips pressed against the delicate shell of her ear, her cheek, her lips.
No, thank you, she wants to say, but she cannot bring herself to turn her lips away from his own, cannot refuse him when he coaxes her mouth open with his tongue.
+
"I hear we're to expect a little prince within the year," her mother begins, wastes no time in chastising Jeyne with a look of clear dismay.
"You've heard the truth of it."
"Well, there's no denying that this is what we've been waiting for, though I'd much rather have heard it from you than from one of the maids."
There's no mistaking her anger at what she feels is an affront of the worst variety.
Good, Jeyne thinks.
"I would have much liked to have this child a year ago. But, alas, I was not so wise in where I placed my confidence then."
She lets the words hang between them, watches the glimmer of understanding in her mother's eyes and waits.
"Confidence has little to do with it," Sybell waves away her words as if they are no more than a bothersome fly. "These things are in the hands of the gods first and foremost."
"I want you gone before my child is born."
The words leave her lips before she intends them to, but she knows she cannot retract them now--knows just as well that she wouldn't want to.
"What in the seven--"
"I said I want you gone before my child is born," she repeats, far more firm than she'd been before. "And by the gods old and new I never want to see you here again."
"Stupid girl," she nearly spits the words. "You would not have gone anywhere near a king if not for my coaxing. You would not have that babe in your belly if not for--"
"I would have had this babe in my belly a year ago if not for your meddling," Jeyne cuts in, her voice barely restrained. "And only the gods know what would have become of my husband if your plans had come to fruition."
"Everything I did was done to secure your position and your safety, you dim-witted, ungrateful--"
"It is of no matter to me. I ask this of you now as a daughter, do not make me demand it of you as a queen."
The silence that follows Jeyne's threat is tangible in its tension, in the humming she can almost hear. Her mother's face is dark with the breadth of her rage, her eyes watching Jeyne in a way that would had her nearly writhing in fear not long ago. It does no such thing now.
"You will fail without me here."
"No, I will flourish."
She takes her leave before her mother can contest the statement, back turned and head held high.
It isn't lost on her that, for perhaps the first time since the crown was placed on her head, she feels the pride and strength worthy of a Northern queen, a mother of Winter.
+
Fandom: Game of Thrones/ASoIaF
Characters/Pairings: Robb/Jeyne
Rating: M
Words: ~2.450
Warnings: Spoilers through ASoS
Summary: "The crown still sits heavily upon her dark head, even here where there is no contesting it..."
Written for: the got_exchange prompt "Robb lives, Jeyne as Queen in the North, Jeyne getting back at her mother, unholy loosed upon the Freys, anything where Jeyne and Robb get to be happy (as happy as possible given that this is ASoIaF) together..." byredbells
+
The biting cold is the first thing that greets her, a chill so harsh she feels it in her marrow, knows it won't be long before it brittles her bones.
Winter is coming.
She's heard her lord husband say the words time and time again, has heard her good-mother and his bannermen parrot the very same. But, it isn't until they're north of the Neck that the weight of those words registers--truly registers--with her for what is perhaps the very first time.
I am the Queen of Winter now, she thinks, the very thought still as intangible and foreign to her as this strange, cold land.
I am queen of rubble and ruins, she almost thinks, the cruel malice of it not unlike the sound of Sybell Spicer's whispered words, as she watches the landscape through the slight opening in her wagon. It's stark in the contrast of its colors, coated with bright white snows and dark wood and grey stone--not nearly enough of which is intact.
"I know it's not what you expected, but everything will be restored--it'll all be just as it was before," he tells her, ever mindful of her comfort and the novel weight she carries.
"I do not doubt it, your grace," she smiles with a reassurance she does not quite feel, ever mindful of the fragile boy beneath the armour (weeping for his brothers, his sisters, his father, his home).
Her good mother offers them her chambers, the sympathy on her features plain as day when she watched Jeyne shiver like a thin leaf.
"You'll grow accustomed to it, child," she tells her, certain of the truth of her words through the trails of her own experience (a Southern girl made Mother of Winter).
Lady Catelyn's chambers aren't quite as warm as they once were though, much to Jeyne's misfortune and Robb's lament. The attacks on the castle seem to have taken a toll on even the passage of the hot springs.
"It'll be the first thing we consider on the morrow," he promises her, eyes earnest as they watch her bundled beneath a heap of furs.
"Thank you, Robb. But really--I'm fine."
She knows better than to call him by his title here when there's no one watching for reinforcement, has learned with time how to switch between some semblance of a queen and a loving wife at the cross of a threshold.
"Will you join me?"
She moves some of the furs aside to make room for him, watches through lowered lashes as he strips to his smallclothes before joining her.
They fit together in a way that is almost entirely hinged on instinct now, his arms surround her and she curls against him as he lowers his face for a kiss.
She's missed this (missed him), the intimacy they so frequently indulged in behind the closed door of their chambers in Riverrrun, the very same they've been denied more often than not on the near month long journey North.
There are no open wagons and never-ending roads between her and the press of his lips against her skin now, nothing between her and the light scrape of his beard and the heat that pools between her legs at his ministrations.
There's too much desperation between them for him to coax and tease, to shower every inch of her body with the searing open-mouthed kisses she craves (the ones she knows he loves to give just as much as she loves to take). She doesn't mind their absence so much when he's inside her though, scarcely has any room in her mind for anything besides the feel of him.
She knows she's moaning more loudly than is proper for a lady of any noble birth--or a queen no less--but she can spare even less of a thought for the guards just outside the oaken door.
"Gods<, Jeyne," he groans against the shell of her ear, and she knows then that he has missed her just as much as she has missed him.
He peaks before she does, rubs her with the pads of his fingers after until she comes undone with a scream she muffles against the furs.
The following morning she wakes to an empty bed, knows that Robb is likely the one person in Winterfell who slept less than she did. Nonetheless, there is an unbidden disappointment in the face of his absence. For a brief moment, it does not matter that she is privy to the burdens a king must bear--particularly a king with a broken kingdom.
For a brief moment, it does not matter that she is just as privy to the burdens that rest on the shoulders of such a king's queen.
+
The Freys are the first to reap what they have sowed, the price for their treachery paid with the edge of a sword at the back of numerous necks (so many, too many for her to count, to remember).
The crown still sits heavily upon her dark head, even here where there is no contesting it.
Jeyne has always been a slight girl--well endowed where the hips were concerned, as older women were always quick to note--but slight all the same, and she's certain this crown does nothing to attach a majestic girth to her being. She's just as certain that her lowered gaze does nothing to compensate for her shortcomings.
Her good-mother does not flinch when Robb's sword meets skin and bones, cuts through as if slicing a slab of butter. Her good-sister Sansa does not flinch, watches the grotesque procession with the same vacuous eyes that watched her brother hack Joffery Baratheon's (Lannister, Robb had told her) head from his shoulders when they marched into Kings Landing and declared Renly Baratheon King in the South.
He saves the Boltons for last, their treachery more reprehensible-- more vile--than even the Frey's.
They are of the North, and for that alone the North will always remember.
+
Sybell Spicer arrives no more than four moons after her daughter and her good-son, her distaste at what greets her far more apparent than Jeyne would have liked it to be.
"You are the queen of rubble and ruins, it seems," she snaps, and Jeyne could almost smile at her predictability if the words didn't sting.
"No matter, castles and walls can be rebuilt--claims however..."
She does not need her mother to put words to the thought, knows her too well to forgo her intent (how ironic, she thinks, that it is only after she parted with her mother that she has truly come to know her).
Jeyne has yet to provide her husband with an heir, and a king with no heir breeds a kingdom with little security. A queen that fails to provide an heir is even less secure than said kingdom. She does not doubt Robb the way her mother might, knows he's come to love her at least half as much as she loves him--but she does not forget that she has married a king.
She takes the tea her mother gives her, notes that it tastes far sweeter than the bitter brew she’s taken to sipping this past year, but says nothing of it.
“This is certain to put a son in your belly, the most potent of its kind.”
Jeyne still says nothing, but thinks that she may have taken to the North far quicker than she anticipated, for she’s certain she will always remember.
+
To this day, there are times when Jeyne watches Robb and marvels at the fact that he is hers, daughter of Sybell Spicer with her modest means and her questionable blood. Robb had cared for neither when he wed her, had only wanted to preserve the honor of a girl he thought gentle and kind (and beautiful, he whispers between wet kisses along her bare skin), undeserving of the kind of run that was sure to follow in his wake.
Though she loves him (wholly, fiercely), Jeyne cannot help the thoughts that surface in his frequent absences, in the face of his distraction even when he lies beside her at night.
"I know this isn't what I promised you," he whispers in the dark, his eyes fixed at some distant point above them (at something that isn't her).
"But, it won't be long before all is restored. I know it won't."
She also knows he isn't merely speaking of castles and corridors, knows his missing sisters and lost brothers are at the forefront of his mind, and suddenly she aches to soothe him just as she did that night he crumbled against her while the waves crashed against the shoreline beyond them.
The truth of it is that Jeyne cares as little for the aesthetic state of her kingdom as she does for her crown. Certainly, she would love to see her husband's home restored to its former glory, would love just as much to see its people warm within the walls of their homes with food aplenty on their tables and in their bellies.
But, when she took him into her bed (and her heart) that first night, Jeyne has not bargained for a kingdom or a crown--only for the boy who'd implored her to call him "Robb" and clung to her as if she were the difference between reality and illusion itself.
"No, it certainly won't," she whispers back, seeking out his hand and taking it into her own before turning for a kiss, sighs softly when the weight of him pushes her more deeply into the feather ticking of their bed.
It doesn’t occur to her until she’s in the throes of sleep, her body sated, that she thinks perhaps this place with its charred walls and crumbled towers is just as foreign to Robb as it is to her.
+
Jeyne ensures that her mother is the last to know, though how she manages the feat with Sybell's dark eyes trained on her face, her morsels, her belly, is a mystery even to her.
She knows she's with child long before she seeks out their maester for confirmation. She feels it in the tenderness of her breasts (Robb was nearly stricken when she flinched from his touch the other night), feels it in the turn of her stomach and the fatigue that plagues her waking hours.
She tells her good-mother first, and it is as much a slight to her own mother as it is a demonstration of the camaraderie and affection she feels for the older women. She's pleased with her decision when lady Catelyn embraces her with a kiss to each cheek and looks at her with more pride than she can ever remember finding in the eyes of another woman.
It's telling Robb that really tugs at her heart though.
At first she fears that he did not understand her, for he merely continued to watch her as if waiting for more--but then he smiled, a brilliant smile, perhaps the most genuine she's seen on him to date (it seemed every other had been tinged with a sort of sadness--at the faint bruise that marred her beautiful good-sister's cheek, at the memory of his lost brothers, at the absence of his father).
There is no sadness to be found here though. There is only the sound of his disbelieving laughter that's followed almost instantly by her own, only the feel of his arms around her, holding fast as if she's likely to disappear without their anchoring grip.
"Thank you," he whispers, his lips pressed against the delicate shell of her ear, her cheek, her lips.
No, thank you, she wants to say, but she cannot bring herself to turn her lips away from his own, cannot refuse him when he coaxes her mouth open with his tongue.
+
"I hear we're to expect a little prince within the year," her mother begins, wastes no time in chastising Jeyne with a look of clear dismay.
"You've heard the truth of it."
"Well, there's no denying that this is what we've been waiting for, though I'd much rather have heard it from you than from one of the maids."
There's no mistaking her anger at what she feels is an affront of the worst variety.
Good, Jeyne thinks.
"I would have much liked to have this child a year ago. But, alas, I was not so wise in where I placed my confidence then."
She lets the words hang between them, watches the glimmer of understanding in her mother's eyes and waits.
"Confidence has little to do with it," Sybell waves away her words as if they are no more than a bothersome fly. "These things are in the hands of the gods first and foremost."
"I want you gone before my child is born."
The words leave her lips before she intends them to, but she knows she cannot retract them now--knows just as well that she wouldn't want to.
"What in the seven--"
"I said I want you gone before my child is born," she repeats, far more firm than she'd been before. "And by the gods old and new I never want to see you here again."
"Stupid girl," she nearly spits the words. "You would not have gone anywhere near a king if not for my coaxing. You would not have that babe in your belly if not for--"
"I would have had this babe in my belly a year ago if not for your meddling," Jeyne cuts in, her voice barely restrained. "And only the gods know what would have become of my husband if your plans had come to fruition."
"Everything I did was done to secure your position and your safety, you dim-witted, ungrateful--"
"It is of no matter to me. I ask this of you now as a daughter, do not make me demand it of you as a queen."
The silence that follows Jeyne's threat is tangible in its tension, in the humming she can almost hear. Her mother's face is dark with the breadth of her rage, her eyes watching Jeyne in a way that would had her nearly writhing in fear not long ago. It does no such thing now.
"You will fail without me here."
"No, I will flourish."
She takes her leave before her mother can contest the statement, back turned and head held high.
It isn't lost on her that, for perhaps the first time since the crown was placed on her head, she feels the pride and strength worthy of a Northern queen, a mother of Winter.
+