Game of Thrones/ A Song of Ice and Fire AU.
In which Catelyn Stark watches her children as they fall in love. Or not.
Robb x Margaery // Jon x Myrcella // Sansa x Theon // Arya x Aegon // Bran x Shireen // Rickon x Lyanna
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Three: Of Grey Eyes & Realizations
Ned
Ned Stark refuses to move. He can't.
Catelyn Stark lays in the same four-poster bed unconscious, just has she has for the past day and a half.
Ned refuses to leave their chambers. He's terrified that if he leaves the room he'll return to find Catelyn gone.
He twines a lock of his wife's auburn hair around his finger. Catelyn's hair was the first thing he noticed about her. Ned can still remember it, the way her hair seemed to glow in the sunlight. Back when she stood at Brandon's side rather than his.
The same hair that adorns the heads of the two sleeping children down the hall. Unaware and innocent. Ned hasn't seen Robb and Sansa in two days, not since Catelyn gave birth but he has heard them. He listens to the stories Old Nan tells them before bed, Robb's curious questions as to his parents' whereabouts and Maester Luwin's skillful evasions.
The Lord of Winterfell scoops up the babe who has been resting a wooden cradle.
He cards a single finger through her single dark curl. Her curls aren't the same as Robb's. The girl's were chestnut rather than copper. Like Jon's.
The single dark curl stands out against her pale skin, a spill of ink against parchment.
She can fit in the palm of my hand, Ned marvels.
Ned doesn't remember Jon or Sansa ever being this small. And he never laid eyes on Robb until he was nearly half a year old.
She was born too soon, the midwife had explained.
It was why the infant was so small, so frail.
He wonders if she will always be tiny.
Robb had always been taller than most of the lads his age and Sansa not much shorter than Jon, despite the years between them.
She doesn't seem frail, he thinks, as the newborn babe stares up at him with the steely grey that characterizes House Stark.
Small, but not weak.
Maester Luwin remarked that she resembled him, while Robb and Sansa took after their lady mother.
The little girl did have look of the Starks, with their wintery grey eyes and dark curls.
She does have my look. Ned thinks.
And father's, and Brandon's and Lyanna's. But he never said that part aloud.
Ned's chest tightens. I can't lose her. I can't have another pair of grey eyes close forever, haunting me. Not again.
The babe stares at back at her father, defiant, as she if she knows what he is thinking and is affronted by it. "You're a fighter, aren't you, little wolf?" He whispers to the bundle in his arms. His daughter gurgles in agreement. "Winter is hard, but the Starks endure. And so will you." He smoothes down her single dark curl. "There is wolfs blood in your veins." He swears that the babe smiles at him. "You are too stubborn to go down without a fight."
