Born in Flames || Game of Thrones

Prologue

"Ah, how beautiful it would be to leave them all and go on your own!" King Robert Baratheon said as he sat down in a chair at a table spread out on the grass.

"I'd go with you." His longtime friend Eddard Stark replied, sighing softly and looking at the fields stretching out around him.

"So what do you say about that? Just us and our swords, and of course the wenches in the taverns to warm a little our old bones." Robert suggested, taking advantage of the food spread out on the table.

"You should have proposed that twenty years ago."

"Ugh..." he sighed and threw something on his plate. "We had our wars, women... But never youth."

"I remember it a bit differently..." Ned replied, making his friend laugh and then he smiled at the memory of the past.

"Including that one wench, how was she?" At this point Ned's mood turned a bit, but he didn't let it show. Nevertheless, he stopped listening a bit to what Robert had to say to him later and replied immediately.

"You mean Bessy?" He asked, as if looking at his friend, but his thoughts were somewhere else.

"Yes, Bessy... Thank the gods for her and her tits." they laughed lightly. "And how was yours? Alina...? Ugh, you know who I mean, bastard's mother."

"Waila."

"Of course... She had to be good to make Stark forget his honor." Robert noted. If he only knew the truth... "You never said what she looked like." maybe because she wasn't there?

"And I won't." Eddard declared, looking away from his friend and focusing again on the field and the forest in the distance.

"We were in the war." Robert began. "We had no idea if we would survive it." He seemed to be trying to comfort a friend who was all too good at hiding the truth. "You are always too strict with yourself and probably if I were not the king, you would have hit me." he said finally.

"And that's the worst drawback of your being king." He replied, smiling slightly.

Would he actually hit him? Who knows, but Ned himself felt he wouldn't have done it, despite everything Robert said. Even if it adds credibility to his lie.

"Believe me, it's not the biggest flaw..." Sighing, he reached into one of his pockets for a piece of folded paper. "A messenger arrived at night." He handed Stark the letter and leaned back on the chair.

"Daenerys Targaryen..." Ned read as he unfolded the paper. "...she married a Dothraki khal." He looked at the letter a moment longer, raised an eyebrow for a moment, and folded it back on the table. "You want to send her a wedding gift?"

"Yes, a knife, preferably a sharp knife and immediately with a hand that will use it..." he growled angrily, sipping a little alcohol, as was his habit often.

"It's just a child." Ned said dismissively.

"Which will soon spread her legs and start giving birth." His friend added.

"Wait... You are serious?"

"Fully, is it such a disgrace? It was a real disgrace what the Targaryens had done to the Starks, led by Rhaegar Targaryen and what he had done to your sister Lyanna! My beloved, destined for me!" Evidently Robert was irritated about the Targaryen. He leaned over the table a little and added one more sentence with fury in his eyes. "I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on!"

"You're not doing very well, three of them alive, including one in Westeros." Ned commented, making his interlocutor even more angry.

"Because bloody Tywin Lannister keeps her in his stronghold, hiding her from the world! And over the sea it is said that Khal Drogo has a hundred thousand warriors!"

"Even a million dothraki aren't a threat to us as long as they are on the other side of the sea, without ships!" Stark tried to explain it all to him as simply as possible, raising his voice a little at him to make it clearer.

"But there are still people who call me a usurper. If a young Targaryen ever stands on this land, there will be some rogues to support him.

"If. And yet he will not cross, the Dothraki believe that great water is poisonous. And even if he miraculously succeeds, we'll push him over to sea." Robert fell silent after his friend's words, and after a moment of watching him, he drank again.

Honestly? He didn't quite know what to think about it. It irritated him immensely that he couldn't kill this bloody lineage to the end, especially the person he had on the same continent. Once... He almost made it once, when he saw her when he arrived at Casterly Rock. But still the fucking child got away with her life, and she still dares to breathe in these lands. An innocent child? Idle talk, they've killed so many Targaryen children already and they've just decided to spare her? There had to be a purpose for it, he just couldn't get there yet.

"War is coming, Ned." Robert finally said, deciding not to share his thoughts after all. "I don't know when or with who, but I'm sure we will fight."