Winter Is Here // Game Of Thrones

Now It Begins(Third Person)

Ever since Audelia could hear, she knew that one day she would be married off to a High Lord of a Castle, and would have to bear his children, and take care of his House, far away from home. She would be married in a Great Sept, and at the Godswood, with her Father walking her down the isle. Her mother would braid her hair, and help her choose her dress. She would explain to her what she must do for a man at the wedding night. Her brothers and sisters would all be present, and be the loudest at the feast, celebrating her 'happiness'.

Now her father, mother and brothers were dead. She had lost them too soon. Of course, Audelia was glad that her sisters, and her two brothers attended her wedding. But none of them were as they were before, as she remembered them. Each one of them changed, and not exactly for the best. But she still loved them, she always would.

It was early in the morning when she got out of her warm bed with Jaime, still sore from the night before, and took Ned out of his crib. He had already learned to stand, and was beginning to crawl. It wouldn't be long before he figured out how to get out of the crib.

Although the crypts were cold, and dark, Audelia was not cold, and Ned was not scared. Perhaps he knew that this was the place of his buried ancestors, or perhaps he was just curious.

Audelia lit a candle and put it in her father's hand, as she so often did. She remembered seeing him do that for her Aunt Lyanna, and Uncle Brandon, and Grandfather Rickard every year, at least once. She now guessed it was the yearly anniversaries of their deaths. 

In any case, she lit a candle for them too. Perhaps if nothing went wrong, they would have all been here for her wedding, and her Father would have walked her down. But then again, she wouldn't have existed if nothing had gone wrong. 

Audelia lit a candle for Robb, and put it in the hand of his new statue that she had ordered to be made to remember the King in the North. She lit another candle for her little brother Rickon, which she desperately wished to have seen alive one last time before his death. 

It could have been prevented, she knew, if she had just stayed a little longer at Winterfell, and waited to escape with him. She was sure she could have done it. But it was just dreams and hopes now. 

Audelia wanted to make a statue for her mother, Catelyn, but she realized that the Tully's did not do that, and her mother was a Tully before she was a Stark. She had been returned to the sea, and that was her resting place.

"Audelia?", Jaime called out quietly, in a whisper. Audelia turned around, Ned still in her arms, and faced her husband.

"Oh Jaime, what are you doing out of bed?", Audelia asked, a little surprised that her husband had followed her here. Her husband. It was nice to think of him that way.

"I know I'm not supposed to be down here-", Jaime began, looing around as he joined his wife and son.

"Oh nonsense. You are part of the family now, Jaime. You are allowed", Audelia replied. 

"Is that a command, Queen Audelia?", Jaime asked teasingly. She smiled, but bumped her shoulder against his arm.

Silence fell over the crypts again. Jaime wrapped his right arm around Audelia, giving her his silent support. He knew how much she wished her family were here. Jaime had his family here, what was left of it anyway, just as she did hers. But Jaime was never particularly close to his father, and he was too close to his sister. Audelia loved her brothers, and her parents, and she would always mourn them.

Jaime looked at Robb's statue. It didn't look like him, he realized. It looked like a perhaps younger version of him, but still, not him. The sculptors didn't remember their King in the North much either. Rickon's statue depicted an older boy than Jaime remembered, but he guessed the sculptors had remembered him better than his older brother, who had lost the North.