#honorable mention: pining like a lady waiting for her soldier boy to come home but instead its pixal

[writer-room]

Love that Dragons Rising wasted no time and already gave Zane an identity crisis in the first season. Good job writers, you already understand him perfectly! That boy has never felt confident in his identity from day one and it ain't about to change now

[blackholeofprocrastination]

We’d Up And Fly If We Had Wings For Flying 1/?

Originally written for the @jonxsansaremix Summary: Another bastard finds a home within the halls of Winterfell. Canon Divergent. A Robin Hood AU.

So @sansapotter reminded me that I started this little nugget for last year’s Remix. In true Emmy form, it is incomplete...but dagnabbit I will finish it one of these days! In the meantime, here’s the first chapter.

Before they set out from the Gates of the Moon, father gifts her with a fine new cloak.

It is a pretty thing, lined thick with sable, and fastened together with a silver broach inlaid with moonstones. She thinks it too fine for a bastard girl, no matter how beloved, but Alayne accepts it with a smile and an obedient kiss to father’s whiskered cheek.

She dons it over her riding clothes the morning they are to leave, desperately trying to quiet the secret part of her heart that calls for another cloak, the one that was promised to her.

“They will love their Young Falcon…and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden’s cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back” father had said. “Why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright.”

But in the end, father has no need of Harold Hardyng or the sword of any Vale knight. All he needs do is wait.

Wait for the Boltons and Stannis Baratheon to destroy each other on some lonely field outside Winterfell. Wait for the Tyrells and Martells to put aside past grievances and rally behind the Stormland’s Mummer Dragon. Wait for the Iron Fleet to fill Blackwater Bay. Wait for Queen Cersei to be desperate enough for Littlefinger’s aid that she would reward him with his heart’s desire.

Winterfell.

Father placates her with talk of setting things right in time, of restoring her to her birthright, but it is Littlefinger who says the words, not father or Lord Petyr, and Littlefinger is not to be trusted.

“Harrenhal and Winterfell both,” she overhears Ser Albar scoff over his ale one night. “The queen has honored our lord Littlefinger with two ruins.” Those around him laugh at the jape. There are few in the Vale who will mourn the loss of their Lord Protector.

Still, there are some that will be sorry to see Alayne go.

Myranda Royce with her teasing and bawdy jests. Dear Mya Stone, dressed in leathers with straw in her hair. Alayne’s lord, her Harry. Though he is not hers, she reminds herself. Not anymore.

And Sweetrobin. Sweetrobin, she knows, will miss her most of all.

Alayne is alarmed when she first learns father intends to leave the boy with Lord Royce. She did not think he would be willing to part with Sweetrobin after fighting to remain his guardian. Father only smiles at her protests, gently insisting that Lord Arryn’s rightful place is in the Vale.

The Lords Declarent are pleased by this turn in their favor, but as Alayne watches Sweetrobin fiercely embrace his stepfather in farewell, tears running down his pallid little face, she wonders if they truly have reason to be happy. Sweetrobin holds a great affection for Alayne and her father both. Lord Royce may have succeeded in separating his liege lord from Lord Baelish’s control, but the boy he takes to Runestone now will be harder to sway than the one he sought to foster after Lady Arryn’s death.

Love is poison, she remembers. And the loyalties that spring forth from love are more poisonous still.

Alayne wants to weep when they first ride through Winterfell’s gates.

From the Kingsroad the outer walls stand solidly against the snows, but the keep within is nothing more than a burned shell. Broken stone and charred wood lay everywhere blanketed by thick drifts of snow and ice tinged grey with ash.

Alayne recalls another Winterfell, one crafted from snow and memory in a garden above the clouds. It too was a ruin now, crushed beneath Sweetrobin’s heel in a fit of temper.

Few of the rooms in the Great Keep are truly habitable, but father offers her the pick of them. She chooses a small cell tucked off of the spiral stair that leads to the long corridor of family rooms. It is a humble place that can boast a hearth and a narrow bed, but little else. Father balks at her choice but she insists the room will suit. After all, it has housed a bastard of Winterfell once before.

The Boltons had started on improvements to the keep. A new roof was raised over the Great Hall, and rows of barracks were erected near the armory. Most else remains in ill repair, the Boltons’ efforts halted from lack of coin and men. Father has plenty of both.

He wastes no time, setting immediately to finishing what the Boltons had begun. Each day great sledges bearing timber felled in the Wolfswood are pulled through the Hunter’s Gate to be fashioned into beams and rails and shingles. The fires in the forge burn warm against the chill as the smith father brought all the way from Gulltown hammers together hinges and supports.

A fire is kept blazing in the Great Hall at all hours. The serving women of father’s household gather there, weaving fresh rushes and bundling straw for thatching. Alayne sits with them most days with a basket of mending at her feet.

She misses Mya and Myranda and her life at the Gates desperately, but she is not so alone here, surrounded by the women’s gossip and laughter. The serving girls are much too timid to make a friend of her but they let her sit amongst them easily enough.

“...fifty or more they found,” says Pale Meg, as they gather close to the fire one afternoon. She is the boldest of the kitchen girls, a girl of seven-and-ten with hair the color of straw. “Some were missing eyes, others fingers, but all had the skin flayed clean from their back.” She pauses a moment, and the others press closer to hang on her words with morbid fascination. Alayne listens too, her needle stilled in her hand. “They weren’t nothing pretty to look upon and the Lady Bolton was the worst of the lot. The dogs had been at her.”

“Stop tellin’ tales!” one of the other girls scolds her face gone sickly white.

“It’s the truth!” Meg insists. “Tom told me hisself! He were there when they found ‘em. His lordship had the bodies burned. But you can still see the blood,” she confides, her voice dropping to a salacious whisper. “It’s stained the flagstones, thick and dark as pitch. No amount of scrubbing’ll lift it. There’s a dark curse upon it.”

A titter of anxious whispers break among the group, their work momentarily forgotten. Alayne is quiet. She grips the pair of hose she mends so tightly she tears the seam.

That night she dreams of blood.

It pours in thick rivets down the spiral stair of the Great Keep. It drips from arrow slits and merlons onto the yard below. It fills the Great Hall and trickles under the thick oak doors. It floods her humble cell, rising and rising until it covers her in her bed. It stains her bed linens and her nightrail, creeping closer like crimson fingers set to choke the breath from her throat.

She leaves the keep just as first light crests over the outer walls. Her dream hangs about her, heavier than the bearskin mantle she pulled over her shoulders when she fled from her bed. She makes for the godswood on silent feet.

Alayne is a stranger to these gods. She was raised in a Motherhouse. Born into the light of the Seven. Still, she does not fear this place. She is content as she weaves through the ash and hawthorn and soldier pines, the path familiar. She reaches the hearttree and her heart sings to find the carved face unchanged.

The Boltons did not destroy this at least.

She seats herself at the base of the weirwood in the same place Eddard Stark had often sat in prayer. Above her the bone white branches sag heavily under the weight of a hundred dark shadows.

Maester Luwin’s ravens.

Alayne had overheard Maester Medrick despair of it to father. The rookery is naught but ash and the birds will not be coaxed from their perch.

They can sense the evil that lingers here, Alayne thinks, remembering Pale Meg’s talk of curses.

She draws a hand to the face of the hearttree. Her fingers touch the red sap, so similar to the blood that haunted her sleep.

“Sansa!”

She snatches her hand back, her heart seizing in her chest. For a moment it sounded as if…

Bran.

But it cannot be. Brandon Stark is dead. Killed by the turncloak Theon Greyjoy. Another ghost to walk the halls of Winterfell.

She places a tentative hand upon the bark, willing to hear the voice again but the only sound is the creak of branches and the restless flutter of wings overhead.

On their journey North, their ship had made port in White Harbor.

Lord Manderly feasted the new Warden of the North and his company upon their arrival.

Alayne was seated well below the salt, as was proper, but even from her vantage point she could see Lord Wyman had looked worn and sickly. He’d suffered injury when he was last called to Winterfell. Freys, it was said, were at fault. An anger that did not belong to her welled in Alayne’s breast and she scowled when she heard one of her father’s men make jests about ‘Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse’.

Father had hoped to find a kinship with the Manderlys. They were the most Southron of the Northern houses, with their knights and septons. The most likely to welcome a Southroner as their leal lord.

Father was to be disappointed.

Lord Wyman was not so great a fool to openly challenge father’s claim to the North, but when the time came for toast-making the effusive mentions to the memory of House Stark quickly dampened any overtures of friendship father made. Still, for all their pretty speeches, the Manderlys were not so loyal to the Starks as to refuse father’s coin when offered.

A deal was struck. Father would be allowed to freely make use of their port, in exchange he would grant them a portion of the Bolton holdings. Lord Manderly even provided an escort of knights to accompany their party to Winterfell as a show of good faith.

Alayne knows that father does not trust the Manderlys after all that had passed at the Merman’s Court.

“But they are too weakened by that folly with Stannis to be a danger,” he assures her, reaching across the wheelhouse to squeeze her hand. “So long as I dangle the Dreadfort within his grasp and my ship’s tariffs line his pocket, Lord Wyman will play my game.”

Alayne is not so certain.

They have been at Winterfell nearly two moons when the first of the wagons arrive.

Alayne watches eagerly as crates of apples, sacks of barley and oats, casks of wine, and all manner of things are unloaded into the main courtyard. After a poor harvest and two sieges, the keep is poorly provisioned. Father sent his fastest ship South for this bounty.

It is not enough, Alayne thinks grimly, watching as the barrels and crates are added to their meager stores. Father is a kinder castellan than the Ironborn or the Boltons but they are not prepared for the hardships ahead.

Winter is coming.

Already smallfolk flock to the Winter Town. Hastily cobbled hovels of sod and straw and sticks sprout around the outskirts of the village daily as more souls seek the protection of the keep.

Alayne does what she can, finding places for kitchen boys and scullery maids in her father’s service. There are many who are orphaned and alone from the wars. She hires as many as she dares, but there are not positions enough at Winterfell to take in every hungry mouth that comes to their gates.

Once, over a private supper in his solar, she suggests father rebuild the glass gardens.

“I think not, sweetling.” He frowns, wiping his hands clean on a cloth. “Good quality glass is worth more than gold, and the men who craft it even more so. There are far better uses for my coin at present, hmm?”

He chucks her under the chin affectionately, the matter closed.

Stone by stone the castle is restored to its former glory. Soon it is nearly identical to the Winterfell of her memories...save for the mockingbird banners that fill the keep.

They fly over the parapets and against the outer walls. They line the corridors and the head of the Great Hall. A flock of fifty or more, each stitched by a hand other than her own.

Alayne tries to avoid looking at them, tries to stifle the treacherous voice within her that cries out “They do not belong here!”

She holds her tongue. She is a good daughter. The prettiest bird in her father’s keeping.

Father likes to keep her pretty. Along with the wagons of grain and stores come bolts of silk and lace, baubles and trinkets of every kind. She keeps theses fine things ferreted away in her room, out of sight. None in the North have yet to see past the layers of Alayne. She’d rather not draw any undue notice if she can help it.

One night, Father bids her to wear some of her gifted finery. He chooses the gown and jewels himself, selecting a dress cut of dark blue velvet and chain studded with onyx and pearl.

Alayne soon finds the reason. There are guests in the keep. Lord Robett Glover and his ward, the newly named Lord Hornwood.

A modest feast is held in the Great Hall. Alayne sits below the high table, but close enough that she can observe their visitors easily.

She absently sips from her cup of mulled wine and watches Lord Robett speak with her father. He is a hard looking man, his hair streaked generously with grey and his eyes sharp as flint chips. He is courteous enough with father, but he never smiles.

His ward is less guarded in his displeasure. A reedy lad nearing four-and-ten, Larence Hornwood pokes sullenly at his pease and venison, speaking little and ignoring the pointed glares from his guardian every time he asks for his wine cup to be refilled.

Alayne had the truth of it from the serving girl who was sent to help her with her hair before the feast. The boy was Halys Hornwood’s bastard get, raised up by King Tommen as his heir. It was her father’s doing, though from the way the young lordling looks at Lord Baelish, she wonders if he is at all grateful for the act.

At her father’s suggestion, Lord Hornwood sulkily rises to ask for her hand when the dancing starts. Alayne accepts with her most winning smile. She has played this game before.

It is not until they take their places on the floor that she sees the apprehension that lies behind the lordling’s scowls.

“I’ve never been very good at this,” he confesses when he steps on her toes a second time.

“Fear not, my lord,” Alayne says cheerily, a teasing twist to her lips. “I’ll see to it we both finish the dance upright and untrodden.”

He stares at her a moment, startled out of his sulk. Alayne begins to fear she’s caused insult when the lad chuckles.

“See that you do, lady.”

Lord Hornwood appears as sullen as ever when he returns to his seat, but Alayne does not miss the shy glances he casts her way from time to time.

Nearly a sennight after the Glover party departs for Hornwood, Alayne is roused from her bed by the sound of mail and boots on the spiral stair outside her door. Donning a robe, she quietly follows the direction of the footsteps to the door of her father’s solar. She hesitates, uncertain whether to knock or return to her chamber. She’s decided to tread back to the warmth of her own bed when the sound of raised voices from within stops her in her tracks.

“And Manderly’s men?” her father demands. Alayne has seldom heard him sound so cross.

“The Manderly escort only went as far as the fork in the White Knife.” Alayne recognizes the answering voice Ser Lothor Brune, father’s captain of the guard. “My lord, you don’t suppose…”

Father laughs sharply.

“I suspect our Lord Wyman is capable of a great deal, but I do not think even he would stoop to highway robbery. Besides, what purpose would it serve? If he wanted steal from me, why not seize the goods the moment they came into the harbor? Why go to the mummery of providing an escort only set upon them on the Kingsroad?”

“As you say, my lord.” Ser Lothor pauses a moment. “And what of the other matter? The bastard?”

Alayne strains to hear, her pulse quickening. Surely they did not think Lord Hornwood involved in such a scheme?

“The North has been improperly governed for too long,” Father says, his voice more measured than before. “I dare say we shall see more of these outlaws and their ilk. They will be dealt with accordingly.”

“And Jon Snow?”

The name sends Alayne’s heart hammering in her ears so loudly she nearly misses father’s terse reply.

“As I said, he will be dealt with accordingly.”

To be continued…