❛ WE DON'T GET TO CHOSE WHOM WE LOVE. ❜ JAIME LANNISTER
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
PLOT in which the youngest sister of Eddard Stark finds herself carrying the child of her forbidden lover before Robert's Rebellion
◆◆◆
THERE USED TO BE A TIME when I would have been seized with happiness upon finding the rose he had left for me.
But now, as I held the delicate white flower between my fingers, I felt like it had just reached forward and slapped me in the face for being so stupid.
The stem of the rose suddenly snapped underneath the pressure that I had been unconsciously holding it with. The head soundlessly dropped to my feet, but I dared not to be reminded of its color again by looking down at it since the rose was in the same daunting white that I'd seen Jaime Lannister adorned in earlier that afternoon. The very same prominent white that marked him as a man of the Kingsgaurd.
"Fuck." I swore softly, willing myself not to cry.
My distraction, very oddly enough, came from Howland Reed, one of my older brother, Ned's good friends, who came knocking at my door as soon as the first tear met my cheek.
I hastily brushed it away and swung open the door to greet Howland with a smile. A smile that quickly faded when I saw the blood that was stained through his shirt. Upon seeing this, I whisked him into my chambers and sat him down on my bed so that I could treat him.
"You don't have to be doing this." He told me as he watched me dip the cloth that I intended to use on his wounds in a chalice of wine.
"You came to me remember?" I briefly raised my eyes to meet his only to immediately fixate them onto the nasty cut that split his lip on top of the injuries he'd suffered on his arm and the side of his head. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"No." He said so nonchalantly that I found myself reaching out with my fingers and tilting his jaw to the left with a slightly larger force than what was necessary to begin cleaning the blood that had dried over the wound on the side of his head. I didn't fail to notice how he'd pursed his lips, looking like he was forcing himself not to talk and to instead let me work.
My eyes lingered on his which he kept focused on the floor in an attempt, I knew, to avoid contact with mine. But I'd known Howland since we'd been children and knew how to get him to talk.
"They kicked you hard." I began. "Did you even try to fight back–?" He was already opening his mouth before I had finished speaking.
