𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 || 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑾𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝑪𝒓𝒚 𝑶𝒖𝒕

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭

[CHAPTER V]

__________________
"WHAT COMES NEXT"
301 AFTER CONQUEST

꧁ BENGET ꧂

He had kept the watch over her last night. Tormund and Alys had insisted that he should get some rest, with only his response of being dead was sleep enough. Now Ben simply sat there and dozed off for a few moments every now and then, only proving his friends right though he would never admit to that. He sat beside the hearth with Sansa still sleeping in his bed, tossing and turning he heard throughout the night.

""Reading by firelight will make you go blind, boy.""

Ben rolled his eyes a little, his own joke and quote from Old Nan humorless on its release as Ben sighed, still staring into the fire inside the hearth. If he wasn't staring at the flames, the way they danced ever so seductively now, he stared at the black leather vest he held now in his hands, covered in dry blood.

Staring at it with glossy eyes, his fingers trembled when he grazed them across the holes and tears in the leather, the dried blood turned flakey and crusty under his touch as he shuttered, a single tear falling, turning from clear to crimson as it bled into the blood trailing down the leather.

"I do not want you burned.."

Ben wiped his eyes with his wrist in a vain attempt to hold back any emotion. And yet it still broke through clear as day.

"I-I know I have to. I want you back..but not like her."

Blue eyes like a clear blue mountain lake...

"I..I don't know why it has to be me that has to uphold this dream or sing this song, or whatever those fucking lunatics have come up with in their own heads, but..I..."

He couldn't even finish the sentence when he dropped Jon's vest and began to cry quietly into his hands, his body shaking like a leaf in the fall wind.

I'll never see you again.

It took some time, but Ben did eventually calm himself, though he could barely call it that as he just stared into nothingness, the fire in the hearth having died somewhere in the night as the morning sky did come. It was bleak, grey and miserable, of course. Fitting for a killing.

The door opened quietly and he heard armor click and clank as the great tall woman entered.

"My Lord?"

Ben didn't bother glancing over his shoulder as he nodded.

"Brienne of Tarth."

He learned, though it fell on ears that barely listened to anything or anyone anymore, that the woman had saved Sansa from Winterfell. Like Barristan the Bold did, he thought with a dark sort of ironic amusement. Except he saved a fucking madman.

"A reason for your calling?"

Ben's voice was quiet in the way he spoke, and Brienne spoke loudly and with a dutiful sort of confidence that he knew was fitting for her station as a Lady. Always talking down to lesser men, it seemed as he raised his hand to indicate for her to be quieter, to let Sansa sleep.