Baby Baratheon [Robb Stark//Game of Thrones]

Chapter One: A Mother's Love

The sun was setting in beyond the horizon of Black Water Bay, just over the walls. The sky was mixed with oranges, blues, and pinks as the clouds were only threads of cotton. A single star appeared above, shining brightly even with daylight still out. I sat in a dark wooden chair with cushions of red velvet, facing a tall, open window with a small balcony that I could step out onto. 

I stood from my chair and approached the railing, looking over King's Landing. Houses and buildings clumped together with narrow streets full of waste. It reeked down there, but I was too high up to smell anything unsavory. People--human beings--lived in the worst conditions here. I wanted to reach out my hand, feed and nurture each one of them. But I cannot. I am only a stupid little girl, as my father would put it. He loved me, yes, but he thought that my bleeding heart, as my mother would say, was a stupid ambition that I needed to give up. That I could never save everybody and as the Princess of the Seven Kingdoms, I needed to learn better. But that never happened, and that I still cling to this dream that I become Queen of the Westeros, then I will help them. I would make this place great, but Joffrey had birthright.

"Your mother wants to see you, milady," my handmaiden said as she opened the door to my chamber. I jumped with shock, then spun around to see her head bowed and her right hand folded over her left.

"Do not bow to me, Ayda, for I am not a God," I told her, for approximately the tenth time this week alone. She nodded silently and she picked up her head. "Thank you, Ayda, please send her in. You may go," I smile kindly as she nodded once more before leaving. 

Not a moment later did my mother come in. Her long, baby blue dress with a feminine golden breastplate sewed in, dragging behind her. Tall and slim with long blonde hair reaching past her waist and pale blue eyes that I did not inherit. I looked much like my father, Robert, King of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. I had dark, long, curled, hair with a button nose and his dark blue eyes. My mouth and everything else was my mother's—one of the most beautiful Queen's ever to rule, I have been told.

"Good afternoon, Mother," I beamed as she came and sat on my bed. I sat beside her, folding my dress over my legs neatly, as is the proper thing to do. 

"My beautiful child..." She stroked my hair and placed it behind my ear. Her empty hand grabbed my own and squeezed as if for support.

"You only call me that when you're going to tell me something dreadful," I muttered, giving her an uneasy glance.

She placed her hands back on her lap and only looked at them, not glancing back up at me. "My sweet, sweet girl..." A silent pause, then a small sob erupted from her throat. A tear rolled down her cheek, but she swiped it away fast.

"Is it my father? Is he okay?" I asked, not knowing why she was crying. I all but went into a panic but composed myself for her sake. If something had happened to him, she need not my hysterics. As the oldest, I would have to be the strongest.

"Your father is fine," she said, unfazed with a bit of tartness; as if she wished he was hurt. "It's..." she took a deep breath before looking up at me, her eye seeming to turn red with anger. "I don't know how to tell you this, but you need to know." She seized my hand again, squeezed it tightly, bringing it to her lips and kissing the back of it. "Your father, as well as the small council... well, they have decided that we should strengthen our alliances."

"And why is this bad?" I asked her. She didn't respond to me, only looked blankly ahead. "With whom are we strengthening, mother?"

"The Starks, my child. Of Winterfell," a tone of bitterness was in her voice as her tongue ran over her teeth beneath her lips. "The noble house that has been Warden's of the North since the beginning."