#the double feature this weekend is probably going to have another surge in 2 weeks

[inflagrante-delicatessen]

&&

[tinytendril]

wanna dance with you, pt. 1 - robbaery au Summary: Drabbles or a collection of moments between Margaery and Robb, finding themselves unexpectedly drawn to each other over the course of the summer after high school graduation and the start of her college freshman year.  AN: Had a lot of fun writing this. And, still do. Waiting for the next idea to strike. Also, feel in the mood to listen to the song that has some ties to this story? Follow the link of the title of this fic above.

Robb

Everything seems to irritate her about him, if the wrinkling of her nose is any indication as she walks in tandem with him.

And she’s wrinkled hers a dozen times since they arrived at the King’s Landing Hotel. At his shoes, where he’s now more conscious of the fact that there’s scuffing at the toes. At his tweed overcoat, that she’s probably making note that she’s seen it before (it is his dad’s). At his stubble of which his attempt to look several years older than his actual eighteen years is making him fidget and scratch at his chin.  

He pushes these thoughts down before they rise, aflame, so they flicker and die on his tongue. ‘I need access to–’

Margaery Tyrell, and her perfectly manicured grasp, pulls him tightly to her side before he even finishes his demand of the concierge personnel.

‘Good morning, my boyfriend and I are after a city view, something romantic. It’s our anniversary.’ She turns, artfully concealing her wrinkling nose to smile prettily at him. ‘Don’t you think, sweetheart?’

‘Erm—aye, that’s…’ He watches her carefully, her grasp lightens on his arm and moves to fix his upturned collars with her hands splaying across his chest. He clears his throat and finally addresses the expectant man behind the reception desk, ‘Completely fine.’

There is some back and forth between Margaery and the concierge, Thomas, who is also having trouble with the way Robb’s ‘would-be girlfriend’ is making eyes and invading his personal space by leaning over the desk. She’s so at ease that she even points to a few options on the computer screen without reprimand, though Thomas could not protest when he’s eyeing her plunging neckline instead.

Like Robb, Thomas clears his throat and folds to her, ‘Miss, I hope you and your boyfriend enjoy the suite.’

She receives the keys in her hand, and pulls Robb against her again. This time, he decidedly lets go when they enter the elevator.

‘Will she be up there?’ He does not meet her eyes, but focuses on the lit button for the penthouse floor. ‘How could you be so sure?’

‘Joff has taken me here before.’

It’s his turn to screw up his features. ‘I could’ve gotten the information from Thom–’

‘Not everyone responds well to that salt-of-the-earth Stark charm,’ her lips try and fail to stop an upturn of a smirk. ‘Besides, I’m almost positive that Joffrey has tipped off his staff to not allow anyone access to his room if he hears anyone looking for him.’

He scoffs, ‘I don’t understand what Sansa was thinking. Even after you had dumped his gold-shiting arse, she thought, what? He could change?’

‘We all lose sight of our way now and again,’ she simply comments, and he turns to see her fix her own gaze at the button light too.

He considers her words, as he’s often considered Margaery for the better half of their childhood. As a girl who his sisters were drawn to, especially Sansa and even a reluctant Arya. As a popular girl at his sister’s boarding school, who deliberately curated her circle of friends, but somehow managed not to bring out any malicious rumours or thoughts by the student body, or so Sansa would gush to her family when she returned from school over holiday breaks. As a woman, as she had grown and introduced his sisters (Arya, for sure, since Bran had gotten a bruised arm for asking) to dressing for parties in the South, and he’s not pretending he’s not noticed her anymore than the next bloke. And as she’s grown apart from Joffrey.

From a very public break up on graduation day, not a month ago, he remembers the coolness of her voice in the courtyard, where others had gathered to watch their row. He remembers how he felt pricked with pride, and how affected he was when he found his feet reacting before he knew it, surging forward at Joffery’s sudden movement toward her. Though, her brother intervened first.

From this, and for the weeks that had passed through the summer of her finding reasons to visit Sansa at their family estate in the South, away from Joffrey and their decadent lifestyle of viral-videoed yacht parties and weekend trips to Dorne, he feels he knows very little of the youngest Tyrell now.

She must sense his staring, and he only realizes he is doing so when she turns to consider him too. ‘Then again, we don’t all have honour and good intentions running through our veins.’

‘You judge too easily, Marge,’ he replies, puffing out a weak chuckle.

‘And you haven’t done the same…to me?’ She fully turns, hands on her hips, seemingly amused.

He takes another long pause, and opens his mouth to say something about concentrating on the task at hand, that Sansa is currently holed up and taking up with Joffrey, just after Theon had tipped them off of Joffrey’s boastful plans to keep her holed up for a number of reasons Robb did not care to repeat. Uselessly, his mouth opens and closes without a word.

Thankfully, their attention turns to the opening of the elevator doors. Before them Sansa storms in, huffing and fuming, her fists pink and clenching.

‘Sansa,’ Margaery breathes, taking his sister’s hands in hers. Sansa winces at the touch.

‘Are you hurt?’ Robb’s blood rapidly boils to ask. ‘Where–’

Suddenly a drawn out groan comes from the end of the long corridor that Sansa had come from, and wrapping around the corner comes a doubled over Joffrey. He is clutching his left eye as if in pain, while the other seems to grasp at his side.

Robb guffaws, shifting his mood in a dash. ‘Didn’t know you had it in you, Sansa.’

Margaery punches for the elevator button to take them to the lobby, and she looks meaningfully over Sansa’s shoulder to Robb. ‘You judge too easily, Stark,’ she laughs alongside him.

-

Margaery

He took her with a glance.

They didn’t initially meet, but their eyes caught one another’s from across the hall now and again, through the dancing couples and passersby. A nod of a head by him at first, acknowledging her. A perfunctory smile next, by herself to respond. Then, she moves because it itches where she sits at a bar stool and she’s never been good at sitting still. She gestures for him to come.

They try to meet around the crowds of people, but are blocked on either side, so they try to intercept through the middle of the hall.

When they finally squeeze through the crowds to meet, as if on cue, a laguid, velvety songstress croons throughout the pub, slowing the tempo and frenzy of the previous song’s energy amongst the dancers. Tonight, the combination of the unusually warm summer air and Flea Bottom Pub’s 2-for-1 cocktails attracts many, and they are consequently pressed closely together. She can tell Rob was meaning for a friendlier interaction rather than this intimate one, but, she still itches to move, so she guides them to dancing with the throng of everyone else.

It reminds her instantly of Sansa’s games when they were younger, begging for Robb and Jon to help them play dragons, princesses and knights. She thinks of the time they had somehow gotten them to pretend to waltz during this game, and Robb hadn’t exactly known how to lead in a dance before, so his arms squared up and his hands had sat awkwardly atop her shoulders. At least, she compromises her memories with the fact that he’s gotten less grouchy about dancing.

‘Shouldn’t you be out with the lads tonight? Last few weeks of summer before we all start school, isn’t it? No Theon at the very least?’ She wonders, genuinely curious.

‘No.’

His hand is slightly pressed against her bare lower back, but, as if he is rethinking their closeness, it sometimes moves to not grasp her at all. He might as well start hovering his hands around her with how meek he attempts to be.

‘No Jon?’

‘No.’

‘Not even Dacey Mor–’

‘She’s not a lad.’

‘Still.’

‘Stop–’ he’s not gruffly stopping her, but he clearly wants to continue with hesitation. ‘Please don’t continue the list, I promise I’m here on my own. But, only for a little while, I was just blowing off steam since…’

She doesn’t need to remind herself of how long she’s known him, she can tell by the way he pauses awkwardly that he’s uncomfortable about explaining himself. But, she continues to watch him now, and she realizes that she’s often thought of him in a very limited context, as Sansa’s older brother, the eldest Stark, or the boy that would sometimes interrupt quiet gossiping with Sansa by whatever loud ruckus him and Jon had gotten into in the next room. So, as if it comes from a place of familiarity, she is curious to know what he is troubling over.

She’s always prided herself on her intuitiveness, so she knows not to mention why he isn’t here with his new girlfriend, Jeyne. Sansa’s mentioned her once or twice in their conversations. Whatever Jeyne has done, or he has done, she decides not to ask aloud. Starks and their tight-lipped brooding, she balks inwardly.

‘You don’t have to say,’ she steers the conversation to something more comfortable, herself. ‘You haven’t asked me why I’m here all alone.’

She feels herself trying to stifle a bubbling up of snickering from his mouth gaping open and then shutting a few times. She waves it off, ‘Nevermind. As you know, I’ve finally rid myself of a cankerous sore of an ex this summer. But, I can’t seem to shake whatever feeling is left from that horribly public break up. What���s worse is the pity I get from the girls. Though your sister and I have always had an understanding, her constantly apologizing for even thinking of taking an offer to go on a ‘friendly’ date with him to his bloody hotel, of all places, is getting on my nerves too.’

‘Joffrey,’ he says as he’s uttered a curse, and eases from his embarrassment to scoff.

‘You must have thought we were just awful, depraved even. Those parties he threw, I know Sansa has told you about. The things he did behind my back. Your sister’s face when she saw us back together even after the things he did.’ She laughs humorlessly.

‘I may have used a few more words, maybe stronger words to describe Joffrey.’ His grip does cinch her in closer, finally. ‘But, I never thought that of you.’

She attempts to respond flippantly, and almost rejects this, but his blue eyes, still bright in the gloom of the pub’s dim lighting, are conveying another familiar attitude of his–a kind of relentless optimism. More than that, she is inexplicably drawn back to an old memory. Of him. Of her. Of him and her. She cannot stop the way it warms her from her cheeks down to the pit of her stomach.

Though, as coolly as she’s practiced several times over, she musters another deflection. ‘What are we going to do, Robb? Our social life should not be this depressing.’

He seems to mock offence, ‘I am doing just fine, thank you very much. I’ll be busy at my dad’s office, finally taking that internship he’s promised me years and years ago, even when I assumed mining was about digging up long lost treasures instead of coal for the energy businesses in town. Jon and I are both getting a spot in the administration department, actually. Then there’s that film series I’ve been meaning to go to at the Smallfolk Theatre on Saturdays. Loras’ been bugging me and everyone he can talk to about it. He’s performing this weekend, right?’

She nods, smiling, finding it endearing how much Robb got on with her brother. Without her bringing him to the Stark estate, she’s sure both boys would have eventually found each other, and would still get on famously without her help. ‘Ah, Loras, there’s someone who never has terrible luck with socializing. My brother has been trying to recapture his stardom from the Reach’s theatre community since we moved here for uni.’

Eyes wide, an idea seems to inspire him. ‘Maybe I’ll catch you on the weekend. I can sit a few rows away so it doesn’t give you any more reason to complain about your lack of a social life. I wouldn’t want to ruin any chances for you…’

‘What–’

‘I’ve already counted a few blokes at the bar that were disappointed you came my way.’

Margaery does not appreciate the boys he’s insinuated she would appreciate attention from, a group of them leering at her, dressed in matching trackies and sporting ill-suited haircuts. Robb is finally truly loose from laughter at her horrified reaction, jostling her in his grasp.

‘How considerate,’ she rolls her eyes, but joins him in laughter despite herself.

-

Robb & Margaery

Margaery honestly thought he was joking. Robb must have thought she knew he was only half-joking, that is until they spot each other across the theatre on the weekend.

They sit, as Robb promised, apart. Margaery nearly gets up to join him, clearly irritated by his commitment to this joke, but she’s greeted and accosted by an unexpected group of familiar girls that nearly throttle her with their hugs and kisses, wanting to know everything about her recent decoupling from Joffrey.

He sympathetically nods her way when she relents to the gaggle of girls.

And he’s there the following Saturday, sitting next to her this time, and she can’t stop the ends of her lips curling upward in amusement throughout her brother’s play. She laughs at the off-colour comments he makes about Loras’ poor attempts at being professional with his scene partner he’s most definitely shagging, and his choice of costume, trying to mimic the way his tunic plunges toward his naval. She tuts him at each turn, but always poorly disguises her mischievous laugh.

Loras, mid-soliloquy, fiercely tuts their antics by the second act.

-

Robb

He’s not sure the internship is making him go utterly mad, or if it’s his dad or half-brother. Or, if it’s the fact that he’s not quite keen on going into the family business after all.

He does know, however, that Jon is taking on the role of the dutiful son and worker with more enthusiasm. Maybe that makes him grit his teeth more. True enough, he is proud of Jon for taking on the job with more positive recognition from his dad, more so than himself. He wonders if Jon had worried over this beforehand. Robb excelling at most things for as long as he could remember and the attention that it brought for their family is not lost on him, especially when Jon stubbornly and consistently conceded to this, unlike Bran, who openly challenged and pouted when things didn’t go his way. Most brothers would appreciate a little competition. But, he’s still wondering why he’s the only one that finds the mining business not at all what he expected.

‘You worry too much about what he thinks,’ Jon observes, knowingly, after a sip from his pint of lager.

Seemingly, these worries had bled into their lunches when they would nip into the pub around the corner from their family’s corporate office.

‘Pot. Kettle.’ Robb gestures to both of them.

Jon snorts into another swig of his drink, and they clink their glasses to cheers at this.

‘If you’re not happy, you can tell dad, you know.’

‘Right, he’s only groomed me for this job since I was old enough to fit into grandad’s mining helmet. It was easier before, when we played and pretended. But, now…’

‘Aye, and now, he wants you to take his place once you graduate from uni.’

Robb nods, sighing and drinking a long swig of his own lager. Then, he adds, ‘And I don’t even know what I would do without dad’s dream for me.’

‘Pathetic,’ Jon jokes, but he slowly sobers when Robb doesn’t laugh in return. ‘So, find your passion. Knowing you, you’re bound to find something dad will accept, and show all of us up in the process…as usual.’

Robb finally lifts his eyes from the bottom of his nearly empty pint glass, and doesn’t think twice to say, ‘Margaery says the same.’

Jon, frustrating him further today, raises his brows. ‘Does she now?’ He says, not at all trying to smother his amusement as he smiles into his drink.

‘Come off it,’ he says automatically, annoyed. It was not meant to mean anything when he brought up Margaery’s name, it felt harmless and normal to do so. Still, there is a look that passes between them. A look that is only readable between them whenever they start talking about their respective love lives, like when he first started dating Jeyne.

Jeyne. Oh. I’m a sodding idiot.

‘Since when do you and Margaery…erm…well, what are you two, anyway?’

Robb consciously straightens, hands off his drink and in his pockets. There is a large stone-like mass that seems to sink to the bottom of his stomach. Shame, he thinks, is weighing on him. Except, he frustrates over the fact that he shouldn’t feel shame for his newfound friendship with Margaery. Except, why did she come to the forefront of his mind in the first place?

Except. Except. Except.

Jon notices him, and continues as gently as he can with as little mirth in his voice as he can muster. ‘Something tells me you have a few decisions to make, Robb.’

-

Margaery

The Stark home and estate in the south is not as vast as the large manor in Winterfell. Both carry as much grand expense and gilded decor as a mausoleum, but that’s only because she’s grown up with Mace Tyrell and his affinity of adorning their own home with an overabundance of proof of their wealth and status. With the passing of her grandmother, Mace didn’t seem to change this habit either.

And where has that gotten us, father…

No, she quite likes the Stark children’s home away from home, even if she thinks the varying shades of grey and white remind her a dreary overcast sky. It’s where she’s spent so many summers meeting Sansa when they were old enough to bake Catelyn’s lemon cakes and braid each other friendship bracelets. Now, it serves as a home for Sansa as she prepares for their first year of university.

Robb and Jon are in the south for the summer too, both of them commuting back and forth from their internship in Winterfell, while preparing for their sophomore year at the same school.

Tonight, with Margaery, Loras, Arya, and Jeyne as guests, it seems like the house has come alive–Sansa’s prepared for one last summer party with her pretty pink dress, pastel coloured fixtures, with added touches to the house to allow for more colour to the space.

Margaery, herself, prepared by donning a summer dress of her own, and yet the dog days of August still seemed unforgiving. Even with all the windows opened, she feels like the thin straps of her dress are sticking to her shoulders.

Without meaning to, or maybe she’s been purposefully tailing their movements in the house because she’s played the game of reading lips with her brother countless times before, she watches Robb and Jeyne interact after dinner.

She watches Jeyne quietly admire Robb, as she sits at his feet, where he lounges on the armchair behind her. She watches Robb lay a hand on her shoulder, while he animatedly speaks to Loras. She watches Jon join in, and she can tell that they’re launching into a heated debate over their rival football teams.

Jeyne sits and sits, and sits some more, and it may have seemed like no one would have spotted it, but Margaery is always spotting things that might have gone missed–a glance, a furtive conversation said in haste, or the smallest touch. All of it meant something. It was Jeyne’s flickering sadness.

She watches until she feels herself invading this private moment, and she finds herself leaving the room.

Though, it’s maddening how curious she still is even after she’s alone. Would she miss a look from Robb to Jeyne that would completely contradict her theories? Would she see Robb tenderly kiss Jeyne, instead of the way their lips briskly pecked before eating at the dinner table? Was she even playing a game watching them? She ignores Loras’ curious texts as to where she had fled to, knowing full well that he would be the one to get to the bottom of the real reasons for her questions.

She almost misses the steady footfalls against stone behind her, stirring her out of her reverie. It’s Robb that joins her, at the top floor, mirroring her as she leans on the balcony’s handrail. When she turns, she sees him smiling at her. Under the moonlight, his russet curls gleam a bit lighter. If it were a touch lighter, he would look a bit like the first boy that stole a kiss from her in her sixth year, Harry.

She must be staring, because Robb gives her a quizzical brow.

‘You found me,’ she can’t help it, the way her phrases turn into the low, flirtatious tone it tends to dip into. She takes a drink from her whiskey sour, the glass almost empty now.

Maybe because Robb’s tendency to become monosyllable and flushed for her tone tickles her, she continues to not keep herself in check around him.

Stop, just stop, she chides herself inwardly, thinking of sad Jeyne. You horrible girl.

‘I needed some air,’ he says, looking away and into his own drink in hand. He pauses for a beat, before he adds, ‘I might have been wondering where you were, too.’ He nudges her shoulder with his, leaning over to clink his glass to hers, ‘Cheers.’

A part of her sees the way his eyes gleam under the moonlight too, the way it almost looks like he’s trying on a different look, maybe mirroring her in her teasing way. Though the other part of her feels sick to her stomach to make this kind, honest boy turn this way around her.

So, she leans away as slowly as she can, and decides to ask,  ‘Are you happy?’

Robb takes his time in drinking in his next sip, and appears as if she’s asked him a very complicated question.

‘Oh, erm, sure. I’m not exactly chuffed about remembering my course load for this semester. But, I can’t wait to show Sansa around the campus, and you can join in if you want, too.’

‘Are you happy, Robb?’

He appears concerned now, possibly ruminating over an answer he doesn’t want to say, ‘Marge…what’s this about?’

She draws closer to him, and reaches out. He almost seems to lean back, to her relief or disappointment (she’s not ready to decide which one she’s feeling more), when she reaches for his collar of his button down shirt, flattening them.

‘Why are you always concerned about the most ridiculous things,’ he releases an uneasy chuckle, gesturing to his clothes. His drink sits forgotten on the wide stone handrail.

‘Force of habit, I guess. Since high school, I’ve had loads of time to think about how good I was at seeming good for a popular vote. What we wear or how we present ourselves, I thought, was extremely important,’ she rationalizes.

‘You are good,’ he says, and reaches out this time, his hand on her arm.

‘And all those stories I told myself about who I was and why I did the things I did. There were so many lies in those stories,’ she adds, as if ignoring him. She especially wants to ignore the warmness of his hand on her arm.

Robb collects his thoughts after a moment of silence. ‘I never told you before. When I saw you and Joffrey in the courtyard, just after your graduation ceremony, I swear I hadn’t seen anyone more honest in my life. Not because you served that arse what he deserved, but because you threw everything on the line–your boyfriend, the friends that you shared, the life you knew. You were–you are incredible, Margaery.’

She wants to thank him, to let him hold her still, the urge to just let him is like a rising heat. But, as if she strains to will it, it stays stagnant for now, simmering. She moves away from his touch, and she relents, ‘Then, as your honest, good friend, I suggest you let your girlfriend know that you’re happy…she’s seems sweet and completely in love with you. But, you seem…distracted tonight.’

He looks as though he wants to deny this, but she’s ready with a pointed look. So, if there was something he wanted to say, to argue, it does not come. He tries to leave the conversation then, and only turns back to cast her sad smile (this, she thinks, is not something she’s ready to analyze either).

-

Margaery & Robb

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ She asks him, and sounds as though she’s scolding her older brother. She scans the block party before them, wondering if she’s being followed by any other family members.

She looks past his easy smile, eyes the way he’s put more effort in his newly trimmed and waxed to shape curls, and narrows her gaze even more at his shiny pair of loafers. She thinks they’ve been dusted off from last Christmas’ gift pile in his bedroom. Yes, she thinks, they are the same pair that she’s helped buy with their mum. Since when did he wear loafers instead of his sensible, worn-in desert boots.

‘Bored tonight, thought you could use some company.’

‘Robb,’ she gives him a dubious look. ‘Are you seriously trying to be that kind of brother tonight?’ Then, she follows his line of sight as it cuts through the crowd of freshers, straight through the parade of glittery-faced partiers, and finally reaches Margaery. He, of course, flits his eyes back to focus on his sister in time, a picture of innocence.

Something gnaws at her to question him again, but he tries to wave and laugh off her suspicious glare.

‘I told Jon and Theon to come, too. We could use a good night out. Are you here—’

‘With Margaery?’ She cuts in, and tries to glean information by testing him. She adds, ‘Yes, and she’s busy.’ She points to the boys surrounding Margaery, and they are making her shake with laughter as she receives a drink from one of them.

Sansa shouts to Margaery to give her a minute before she returns to her brother.

‘Yes, she is,’ he says slowly, and it startles her how intently her brother stares in her friend’s direction, and even more alarming is the way Margaery locks eyes with him before looking to her own company again. It only spurs on Sansa’s imagination.

Robb, much like herself, has always worn his heart so plainly on his sleeve. They have sometimes been mistaken as twins when they were much younger, for sharing their mother’s aurburn hair and Tully blue eyes, but this openness is something she understands as well as he does. It’s the reason she is contemplating how the mention of her friend’s name has left Robb slightly off-centre.

She carefully gauges him, and informs him as casually as she can, ‘I can’t believe the King’s Season and our debutante ball is at the end of the month already. It’s too bad her escort’s taken a nasty fall from his rugby practice. She must be pressed to find someone to replace him. But, nevermind that, I thought you and Jon promised not to hover after you toured me around campus. It’s hard enough making new friends with you two lingering, but for Freshers’? Really?’

His eyes stray again, but he makes an even bigger show of being interested in his sister’s conversation, saying, ‘Sure, sure. But, San, I’m thirsty. Look, I’ll buy you a drink, and then, we can look for prospects for you, too.’

Joke or not, she throws him a disgusted look at this suggestion, but he’s laughing to pull her to the Tiki-themed hut of a bar, already rattling off his drink requests to the bartender.

This almost frenetic, odd behaviour of his seems to taper for a time, when Sansa observes of her brother throughout the party, but her curiosity does not leave her just because Jon and Theon have arrived to seemingly keep him away. In fact, his distance stays even farther when she sees Margaery greet him briefly with a boy she does not recognize. She tries to not make eye contact with her brother as Margaery makes her way toward her to seemingly make small talk (and an unspoken ‘you owe me one’ passes between them, because Margaery plans on leaving the party early with said boy). She eyes the way Margaery’s hand clasps her hands with Dick (he introduces himself with a winning grin) to confirm this.

It wouldn’t be until the very end, when the strobe lights have waned and disappeared, and the street lights flood and reveal patches of littered cobble stone where crowds of people were dancing, that Sansa spots her brother, sitting alone on the stoop of a nearby chicken shop.

She makes a joke about his intention of ruining her new pastel mini-skirt just to sit on someone’s burnt out cigarette, before she sits on a less dirtied spot next to him anyway. He only shrugs in response to her arrival. There is something dejected about the way he nods, and she knows it has little to do with the alcohol she knows is wearing off for him as much as it is for her.

‘I thought you were going to spend the rest of the night harassing me and my friends, thanks for not embarrassing me.’

‘You’re just lucky Arya is not here egging me on,’ he amuses her, even if he’s stubbornly looking away.

‘Robb,’ she nudges him for his full attention, and smiles weakly when he gives it to her, his eyes slightly glazed from their night of drinking. ‘You looked nice tonight. And…I think she noticed.’

‘What–’

‘Stop being so damn mardy about it. I can tell when Margaery notices these things,’ she tells him earnestly, rolling her eyes at his soundless balking. ‘Don’t bother denying it, you fancy her, and it’s completely obvious.’

‘I don’t…’ he starts, futile in finishing his first thought. Until, he sighs to confess, ‘I don’t know what to do with that fact.’

‘The fact is you haven’t been very secretive about secretly taking one of my best friend’s affection away from me. I mean, I’ve noticed how most boys are around her, and I didn’t always put two and two together when you seemed to be hanging around us more. But, I just didn’t think it was this bad.’

‘How bad?’

‘How do you feel about her dating other people.’

‘She can date away, we’re just friends.’

‘Says the boy fuming as he says he’s just friends.’

Robb pauses as if he is mulling over the words, maybe he wants to repeat himself for good measure. But, he seems to decide against it.

‘Jeyne makes me happy and she’s so kind, so when she asked, I promised,’ he says, and it clearly troubles him to continue. ‘I promised her I’d meet her parents.’

‘You are hopeless,’ she says, and almost yelps out in laughter. ‘You do realize that’s the same thing as saying those three little words, eight letters that will definitely lead her on. I mean, more than you have already.’

‘A man–’

‘Must keep his word. Yes, we all know how much dad loves to tell us.’

‘I’m fucked,’ he gives a low groan. ‘I don’t know how this happened.’

‘Have you and Jon switched luck by any chance?’

Sansa puts an arm around her brother when he hangs his head low, and leans her head into the crook of his neck. ‘Do you remember that summer when Rickon was born, and Margaery came to visit. At eight, she wasn’t exactly the way she is now, so she had no worries bawling her eyes out in front of us. Something about her parents, I think. I swear I tried everything, but, somehow, you found the right words to help her calm down instead. She turned around completely that day because of you. You always know what to say, because you always follow your heart wherever–’

‘Don’t say it.’ He balks out loud this time, not wanting his own words to be directed at himself. He doesn’t let her stop holding him to her though, possibly grateful that she doesn’t tell him what he should do or what girl she is rooting for. Despite himself, he decides to let his sister continue to reminisce, about some of her memories with Margaery, some of them not.

-

Robb

He’s not entirely convinced by the charade of it all.

The wall that separates their common area and the university coffee bar, and a bookcase behind her study carrel. When they’re not in school, it’s the back door by the bottom of her apartment staircase, the perfectly placed trellis of roses on her balcony, and her closet doors. These hiding places were getting familiar, and he’s not happy that they’re always for him.

‘What exactly are we hiding?’ He asks after coming back from her balcony, his chosen hiding place when he heard unfamiliar footsteps treading across the adjacent room’s floor boards, just next to her bedroom. He casually thumbs through their school newsletter, while he lies on his stomach, sprawling on her bedspread.

He’s hiding a smile behind the newsletter when he catches her instantly pursing her lips at this query. It’s not the first time they’ve discussed this, or at least shared knowing looks when people have questioned their status as friends, especially when they’ve been mistaken as otherwise while together.

‘You know I don’t scare easily, but wherever we go, there will be someone who has questions.’

‘We’re friends is usually my go-to.’

‘Plausible, yes. But, we can’t entertain the idea of anything else, if we can help the pestering and prying of everyone.’

He cocks a brow, maybe because he loves the fight in her that rises whenever he challenges her. So, he gives her an expectant look, elbows propped to gain height and rest his face in his hands, newsletter forgotten. He might start their usual argument of who would have more to lose or gain if they had gotten together in the first place–normal, friendly small talk, he tells himself.

‘It’s one thing to make plans to visit the theatre, with Loras as a nice excuse for being seen together,’ she says, exasperated.

‘Or my brothers and sisters not being able to spot the difference of your regular visits to the estate,’ he offers, though he guiltily thinks of Sansa knowing better.

‘Or my mother and father hardly visiting me, so that nixes that fear.’

‘So…what are we hiding?’

She must feel his gaze is intent, not that he intended her to feel obligated to his question, not that he expected her to be so serious in pondering this question. But, she does drop her own gaze, and it gives him pause to think that there could be something else on her mind, and it surprises him to imagine that she’s holding back. And he’s holding his breath.

Her eyes only dart away for a moment before they stare back, questioning him in return.

‘How’s Jeyne? Sansa mentioned you’d be going to see her parents this weekend.’ He does not miss the way her tone changes to this, and he doesn’t miss the fact that Margaery hardly ever misspeaks unless she means to.

He swallows thickly, his tone changing too, ‘She’s in Crag visiting her nan for the weekend instead.’

Her eyes narrow at this. Gods. Her looks could kill, he knows this much, but sometimes he wonders how many boys had completely lost it by staring into those honey-brown eyes. Even at their meanest, they disarm.

‘Tell me the truth, Stark.’

‘We–we, erm, broke up last week.’

If he had blinked, he would have missed something dash across her features, changing and reverting back to its natural way. He’s just not sure what that something was.

She turns in her seat across from him, and stares at her reflection in her vanity mirror. She combs through her unbound, wavy tresses as if she hadn’t heard him.

‘Listen, I forgot, I promised my brother I’d take him to his doctor’s appointment. Do you mind if we raincheck on the coffee this afternoon.’

He sits up, taken aback, and maybe put out by the fact that he imagined this confession having more effect. He certainly thought she’d take him for coffee to talk about it at the very least.

So, he presses, ‘Marge, come on, you can’t just–’

‘Robb,’ she interjects, bringing her comb down on the vanity table, and turns to fully face him again. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot. Now, if you don’t mind–’

‘I was there for you, you know,’ he says quietly, abruptly sobered as he gets up from her bed. His throat feels thick again, and he feels flush too.

‘What?’

‘After Joffrey. Meeting at the theatre every weekend. Calling me all those times after you’d make me believe Sansa wasn’t answering your calls. Last minute coffee dates, and last minute cancellations. Supporting you when you’re feeling low…’

Finally, she cannot stand to look at him, ‘I can’t do this.’

Robb doesn’t recognize this demanding side himself, and he is already pressing further without a thought, ‘What do you mean this? Well, I’m sorry if being my friend is inconveniencing you. I’m sorry if sneaking around about who we are to each other isn’t what I usually do with friends.’

She rises to meet his tense stance, and though she is almost a foot smaller, she meets his gaze with equal fervour. ‘I’m sorry, Robb, but you need to go.’

‘This isn’t fair.’

‘Fair? One thing goes wrong for you, and it’s the end of the world? You have everything. You are the favourite child, you have the perfect family, you have opportunities, and every door is open for you. What’s fair about that? Well, that’s what the rest of us are thinking.’

‘You think I love the idea of my life decided for me? You think I enjoy the fact that my family expects me to be this certain person my entire life, without considering that people change–I changed. Gods…who would want that kind of responsibility? There aren’t doors for me…there’s only one, and I’m being shoved right through it.’

She must be able to tell that he’s about to argue again, but he does see her trembling from feverish energy. He wants so badly for her to just burst with emotion, to even yell at him, but her trembling reaches her eyes now. It’s enough, he realizes, to see that he’s prologing whatever is paining her.

‘I’ll go, if you want me to,’ he relents, and sighs as if he were holding in an extraordinary amount of air.

‘I–I just can’t do this. Right now.’

With that, Robb finally folds to her (as he finds himself doing so, more and more, lately), leaving her room, not caring who would be waiting, listening in on their row on the other side of her door.

To be continued-

[ramialkarmi]

THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multi-million-dollar exit packages

Twenty-four hours before Travis Kalanick would make a snap decision that would ultimately force him out of his job, the Uber CEO was relaxing at a rented house in Malibu with several friends.

It was a Sunday afternoon and he was ready for a nap. But as his eyes began to close his phone buzzed.

"Have you seen this?" a friend asked, sending a link to a tweet by a former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler. She had written a blog post titled "Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber" recounting appalling allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation at the company Kalanick had cofounded.

Emil Michael, Kalanick's confidant and Uber's senior vice president of business, burst into the room, waving his phone. He had seen the post.

Kalanick didn't know who Susan Fowler was, but he knew this was a problem.

His life at Uber was about to unravel.

This is the story of how one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley — who had built-in protections and seemed untouchable — made a series of decisions that cost him his job and ravaged his reputation all within six months.

It's also a look inside an epic boardroom battle that broke Silicon Valley's sacred rules, with investors usurping power from the board to overthrow a visionary and revered, if problematic, founder.

And it's a tale of how backstabbing, greed, mistrust, and a crisis of conscience overwhelmed insiders at the world's most valuable tech startup, with friends and colleagues turning into enemies, all using their wits to move and countermove against one another.

"What we went through in 2017 — you probably have friends who have gotten divorced, and it's, like, the relationships are gone," one insider said.

Business Insider spoke with dozens of people in Uber at all levels over the course of six months to chronicle the chaotic period that ended Kalanick's reign. The stories they shared were corroborated by testimony, documents, and text messages.

The people we spoke with credited Kalanick's wits and tenacity for Uber's spectacular rise; but they also agreed that Kalanick's downfall was largely his own doing. His fast-moving, win-at-all-costs mentality created a corporate culture that has been written about ad nauseam.

What has not been written about is Kalanick's mindset and the circumstances that drove his actions during this fateful period. Who was advising him? Who betrayed him? And what was going through his mind?

One part of what drove Kalanick to the brink was simple: He was terrified of a hashtag.

If Donald Trump had never been elected, Kalanick might still be CEO

That hashtag #deleteuber was born after the 2016 US presidential election, a few weeks after Uber's Washington, DC, policy team suggested to the head of policy and communications, Rachel Whetstone, that Kalanick join President-elect Donald Trump's business-advisory board.

Whetstone, along with others at the company, believed it would be good for Uber to have a seat at the table. Kalanick agreed and became one of a dozen CEOs to join the council, alongside JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and General Motors' Mary Barra.

Whetstone and Kalanick have since said that was a colossal mistake.

At the time Uber was in a good place. It was operating in more than 425 cities in 72 countries, had 30 million monthly users, and was looking at ending the year with $6.6 billion in net revenues — more than double the previous year.

The company had also put some major legal and public-relations disasters behind it.

It had settled several lawsuits, including a case alleging that staffers had used a secret "God View" feature of its software to stalk a reporter and a $100 million lawsuit with drivers over their being classified as independent contractors.

Uber was also past a 2014 rape case in New Delhi, India, which resulted in Uber being banned from that city for a short time. The next year, the woman, who alleged she had been raped by an Uber driver, sued the company for $18 million. Uber hired an Indian law firm to investigate, and the company agreed to settle her case for $3 million.

"If you'd have asked me on December, 31, 2016, I'd have said, 'We're good. We've cleaned up. Everything's going to be fine,'" one former executive said.

The good feeling didn't last long. In January 2017, shortly after Trump had been sworn into office, the new US president signed an executive order barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and Uber got caught in the crossfire.

Protesters stormed Kennedy Airport, and in solidarity the New York taxi union went on strike. With no cabs available, Uber and Lyft — Uber's archrival in the ride-hailing market — were swamped with ride requests. Uber tweeted it was turning off "surge pricing" (the higher fees it charges during high-demand periods) to show that it wasn't profiteering. But the move backfired: The tweet looked to many like a promotional ploy as people remembered the CEO was on Trump's business council. And #deleteuber went viral.

Kalanick called Trump's travel ban "unjust," and 48 hours later, on February 2, he quit Trump's business council — the first CEO to do so — but it was too late.

By week's end, more than 200,000 people had deleted their Uber accounts, a loss of 5% of the company's market share. Worse, they were leaping from Uber to Lyft. That week, Lyft passed Uber in the App Store for the first time.

In a snap, Uber lost "millions of dollars — easily millions of dollars," one insider told Business Insider and multiple others confirmed.

Losing business to competitors was what Kalanick feared most, and he grew determined that #deleteuber would never happen again.

"That was the beginning," a former Uber exec said.

The hashtag returns

By mid-February, #deleteuber had slowed to a trickle and Uber's top executives were exhausted. Kalanick and Michael booked their trip to Malibu for what was supposed to be a weekend of rest and recovery.

Instead, Kalanick was reading Fowler's post describing a "Game of Thrones"-style culture within in his company, where managers stabbed one another in the back and sexism and sexual harassment ran rampant — and HR didn't seem to care.

The post had been up for only a few hours by the time Kalanick saw it, but it had already gone viral. People with millions of Twitter followers, including tech-industry bigwigs and mainstream celebrities, were publicly trashing Uber.

To Kalanick's horror the #deleteuber hashtag was trending again.

At the rented house, Kalanick and Michael leaped into crisis mode with Michael calling advisers for ideas on how to tame the situation and Kalanick consulting his executives.

Whetstone helped Kalanick craft a statement, and at 3 p.m. he tweeted a promise to investigate the allegations, vowing that any Uber employee who behaved the way Fowler described would be fired. The two men worked until 3 a.m. and then hopped on a flight back to Uber's headquarters, in San Francisco.

The next day, Monday morning, Kalanick huddled with a small team at the office to plot damage control. The room included board member Arianna Huffington, company president Jeff Jones, PR chief Whetstone, and head of HR Liane Hornsey.

They spitballed ideas about how to respond to the growing PR crisis, including sharing unflattering information about Fowler during her time at the company and commenting on her harasser (who had been fired months before Fowler wrote her post).

But they quickly shelved such tactics and focused on the promised investigation. Do it in-house or hire someone? Whetstone warned against bringing in an outsider as third-party investigations could easily snowball. But Kalanick, with #deleteuber on his mind, thought an internal investigation would make Uber look like it had something to hide. He wanted an outsider.

In that case, Whetstone suggested they hire former US Attorney General Eric Holder. He had already done some work for Uber since leaving the Obama administration. Kalanick liked the idea and asked his team to get Holder on board. He didn’t care how much it cost and wouldn't limit Holder's access.

"That decision was made in an instant," one person said. Within hours Holder had signed on.

Kalanick didn't realize it at the time, but he had just hired his executioner. As one former executive put it, "If you put anything under a microscope for long enough, you're going to find it moves."

A Google lawsuit and an Uber executive's $100 million severance demand

Three days later, on February 23, Waymo — the self-driving-car company spun off from Google — slapped Uber with a $2.6 billion lawsuit. The suit alleged that Google's former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, had stolen self-driving technology from his previous employer and brought it to Uber when Uber bought his autonomous-truck startup, Otto, in a deal worth $680 million. (Google had already sued Levandowski personally.)

Google rarely sues anyone. When asked why Waymo would sue Uber, one former Googler theorized that while Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are generous with their handpicked leaders (they had paid Levandowski $120 million, according to filings from the suit), they may take action if they feel betrayed.

The Waymo lawsuit unnerved Uber's board, especially Bill Gurley, whose firm, Benchmark, was Uber's largest venture-capital investor. Gurley is a Silicon Valley investing legend who has backed successful startups for decades and is known for condemning Silicon Valley’s excessive ways. Gurley had bet on Uber in 2011, when the company was two years old and had 25 employees. Benchmark's stake was now worth billions and accounted for most of his firm's returns. This lawsuit threatened those billions.

On top of that, Gurley felt duped by Kalanick, who had vouched for Levandowski. Kalanick had called Levandowski a "visionary" when he argued for the Otto acquisition at an April 2016 board meeting. Not everyone liked the idea. Michael, the company's head dealmaker, hated it. He thought the price was too high.

The concerns didn't make Kalanick change his mind, but he did take some protective steps. The full payout relied on the Otto team hitting a bunch of milestones. (Uber has paid Levandowski only $100,000 to date.)

Additionally, Uber's head lawyer, Salle Yoo, authorized an investigation into Levandowski and other Otto team members, to ensure they didn't bring over any Waymo technology. This was not an unusual preacquisition legal step, one person explained. Engineers sometimes have backup files on their computers or cloud accounts, perhaps unintentionally.

But the method she chose to conduct this investigation wound up burning everyone.

A member of Yoo’s team hired an outside law firm that, in turn, hired an investigator, a cybersecurity company called Stroz Friedberg. It completed its inquiry before the Otto deal closed, in August 2016, and issued a report concluding that Levandowski did possess Waymo's files — thousands of them — and that it had tried, somewhat inconclusively, to verify if he deleted them all.

Stroz Friedberg's findings should have been a major red flag, enough to kill the deal, one insider told us. But neither Kalanick nor Yoo ever read the report, nor did the board, before the Otto deal closed, several people told Business Insider.

Why they didn’t read it remains a contentious issue among those involved. The ignorance was by design, according to one person close to the situation. Stroz Friedberg's report was handled by an outside lawyer to prevent anyone at Uber from discovering confidential technology from Levandowski and using that information to make business decisions.

But the net result was that Gurley and the board didn't learn about the Stroz Friedberg report until it was unearthed, months later, as part of the Waymo trial. When Gurley finally read it, in May 2017, he was incensed. Kalanick, he thought, had misled him about the entire Otto acquisition. In a deposition, Gurley testified that not disclosing the report to the board “crossed a line of violating fraud and fiduciary duty."

Kalanick was hardly any happier with the situation, and he blamed Yoo.

Salle Yoo had joined Uber as its first in-house lawyer, in 2012, when the company was just a 90-person startup, and for most of their time together they had a good relationship. But as Uber grew bigger and more complex and her team swelled to 290 people, Kalanick felt that too many legal issues were falling through the cracks with serious consequences, including lawsuits.

To Yoo, Kalanick was the problem. She felt that she was kept out of the loop on matters that could affect the company’s legal risk. For instance, as part of this lawsuit, she testified that she wanted Uber to fire Levandowski long before it did and that she was excluded from critical discussions about the engineer that took place while she was on away on a trip.

This suit was a big reason that Kalanick and Yoo mutually decided that Yoo and Uber should part ways.

On her way out the door, she asked for a $100 million severance package.

Yoo thought it was only fair; she had seen male executives ask for huge exit packages and get them. She had spent her career at Uber encouraging women to lean in.

Kalanick had no intention of agreeing to that huge sum.

Her final package, worth tens of millions, amounted to less than two-thirds of her initial demand. But it contained a kicker: If Uber gave a better severance deal to another employee, the company had to come back to her and match the difference.

Yoo’s departure wouldn’t become official for months. It was announced in September, after Uber had hired its new CEO. But Yoo had worked well with Gurley, and with her departure Kalanick lost his long-time head lawyer, who should have been a powerful ally.

Why Uber's head of communications Rachel Whetstone really quit

As Whetstone had warned, within weeks, Holder's investigation had started to sprawl. The board committee that Holder reported to — which included Gurley, Huffington, and David Bonderman, a founding partner of private-equity firm TPG — authorized a second law firm, Perkins Coie, to look into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and retaliation. Those were the original charges leveled by Fowler. The committee then tasked Holder with looking into Uber's corporate culture.

As Holder interviewed employees and combed through emails and chat records, morale inside the company went from low to "rock bottom," said one former executive: "People were confused, disappointed, angry."

Unhappy employees gossip — among themselves, with outsiders, and with journalists. Almost every day a new nightmare story about Kalanick and Uber was published.

There was a meltdown between Kalanick and an Uber driver, Fawzi Kamel, wherein the CEO was shown in a video scolding the man.

It leaked that a star Uber hire, Amit Singhal, had been fired from his former employer, Google, for failing to disclose a sexual-harassment allegation.

Vice president Ed Baker suddenly resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct at an Uber party.

The New York Times reported that the company used a software tool known as "Greyball" to hide Uber cars from not only angry taxi drivers but also, eventually, from regulators in cities around the world.

Jeff Jones, the one-time Target CMO who had joined as president less than a year earlier, resigned soon after the Greyball revelation. On his way out he dissed the company's "beliefs and approach to leadership."

Whatever Uber's other issues, it now had a serious PR problem, and its communications leaders couldn't — or didn't want to — get the situation under control, depending on who you ask.

But it was one story in particular that caused Kalanick's inner circle to turn on one another.

In late March, tech-industry news site The Information published a story about a group of Uber executives — including Kalanick, his then girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth, and Emil Michael — visiting a South Korean karaoke bar in 2014. That bar turned out to be more like an escort service, featuring women with numbers taped on them.

Before Holzwarth talked to The Information, she reached out to Whetstone and told her that she had received a call from Michael. They had been close friends when she dated Kalanick. Michael warned her that the press might start digging into the Korea incident. Holzwarth told Whetstone that she felt as if Michael was threatening her not to talk.

When the story came out, it included a reference to that phone call and portrayed Whetstone as being sympathetic to Holzwarth and asking her if anyone from Uber had expensed the night in the karaoke bar. The story also said that Whetstone had reported the call to the legal team, which turned the information over to Holder’s investigators, citing someone "with direct knowledge of the matter."

Kalanick was not pleased. As his head of PR, he felt Whetstone was supposed to be defending the company from stories like these, not be part of them.

Whetstone had already had a reputation inside the company as being difficult to work with, becoming easily upset, or even irrational. She routinely threatened to quit, but would then cool down and change her mind. Or Kalanick talked her down and encouraged her to stay.

Kalanick indulged her at first, feeling she was a good resource for the company. But over time, he felt, she had become too much drama to deal with.

Other people at Uber saw Whetstone differently. One employee described her as "intellectually honest." Whetstone was already rich from her years at Google and wasn't under the spell of potential wealth, which drove other top players at Uber. "That made her feel like she could speak truth to power with Travis," a former executive said. "She wasn’t part of the group of yes-men who would never disagree with him."

For her part, Whetstone had become disillusioned with Uber. In her role as a powerful woman in the company, she was someone who many troubled employees and other insiders felt comfortable venting to. As these people shared stories with her, Whetstone began to see Uber differently. She became angry.

She saw a company that needed to grow up, but that under Kalanick wouldn't.

Uber's defiance was baked in. It was Kalanick's greatest strength when Uber was small, but as Uber grew it became the company's greatest weakness, aided by a leadership posse who viewed new governance and controls as annoying, big-company bureaucracy.

"She had this distaste for the company, starting with Travis," one person felt, adding, "Rachel hated the company, but was there punishing the company for making her be there."

After Whetstone's name appeared in The Information story, the increasingly smaller circle close to Kalanick saw it as evidence that Uber's real problem was its PR team.

The company's culture wasn’t toxic, they reasoned, but it was perceived that way because of an endless stream of negative stories leaked to the press, while those who wrote about their positive experiences didn't get their due.

Not only was Whetstone doing a poor job of defending the company, they believed, she was riling other employees and stirring up gossip. Kalanick talked to her about these concerns. The subtext was alarming: the implication that she was somehow the source of the leaks.

Such intimations were both insulting and potentially career-ruining. A PR person found to be leaking would almost definitely never work again — even if leaking about a toxic culture would spark necessary changes and be considered the ethical thing to do.

Once again, in early April, Whetstone quit. The next day, as she had before, she changed her mind.

This time, however, Kalanick accepted her resignation. Over dinner, they amicably negotiated an exit package involving millions of dollars' worth of stock that vested over time and agreed on a face-saving explanation that kept Whetstone on as a consultant.

On April 11, her resignation was announced and Kalanick publicly praised her as she left, calling her "a force of nature, an extraordinary talent and an amazing player-coach who has built a first-class organization."

Tensions grow between Kalanick and Gurley

In the early days, when the company was tiny, Bill Gurley and Travis Kalanick worked closely together. Gurley particularly admired Kalanick’s recruiting talents, like the way he could charm big names into joining the company, including President Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe; VMware star engineer Thuan Pham; and Target CMO Jeff Jones.

But Gurley also saw Kalanick as a young and inexperienced CEO, a visionary perhaps, but one who needed guidance and didn't always listen to advice. In other words, the stereotypical startup founder.

Gurley pushed Kalanick to find a mentor. In 2015 he and Michael arranged for Kalanick to meet legendary CEO coach Bill Campbell, who had advised Steve Jobs and Google's Larry Page, among others. Kalanick was all in, but shortly after their first meeting, Campbell was diagnosed with cancer and stopped taking on new clients.

As the company had been without a CFO since 2015, Gurley pressed Kalanick to hire a new one, someone qualified to run a multibillion-dollar company, arguing this person could be like a mentor. A strong CFO creates internal controls that would detect "the red flags that allow the company to understand when there are problems," as one person described. Other execs — among them Salle Yoo — echoed Gurley's urging for a CFO, "year after year, month after month," one person described. The suggestion fell on deaf ears.

As Uber grew, Gurley and Kalanick began to disagree on a number of issues. Gurley was cautious. He wanted Kalanick to stop burning so much money, taper off the growth plans, and increase the bottom line.

Kalanick, meanwhile, began to see Gurley as a drama-filled drag, perpetually appearing on CNBC to whine about a possible tech bubble. He pushed communications with Gurley off to his wingman, Michael; it was a cold-shoulder strategy Kalanick had used with others, including Whetstone, when he felt he didn't need them anymore.

As the troubles of 2017 piled up — the Fowler uproar, Waymo, Uber's leasing business racking up $1 billion in losses (something a CFO might have prevented) — Gurley went from worried to frightened.

"Travis was a wild card," one person close to the situation said. "Something in him needs to break the rules, be a contrarian, even when it's against his own interest. The board felt they couldn’t trust him."

Gurley feared Uber was the next Zenefits or, worse, another Theranos, and if he didn't fix it immediately, Uber's value could plummet to zero.

One woman's email pushed Gurley over the edge

In late April, Gurley, who had been texting with Michael nearly every day to stay in the loop, abruptly stopped. His brief explanation was that their relationship had changed.

Gurley was by that time under siege himself, spending 80 hours a week on Uber, daily from 5 a.m. to midnight — board meetings, special sessions, paperwork, powwows with investors. The press was hounding him, too, so much so that in April he changed his phone number.

Gurley began telling his poker buddies that he was a wreck over Uber's culture and the growing number of lawsuits and government investigations that came as a result of issues like Greyball being revealed in the press. He had trouble sleeping. He gained weight. He took up yoga.

It wasn't just Gurley's own money that was on the line. His Benchmark partners, who all hold equal stakes in the firm's investments, were also concerned, as were Benchmark's limited liability partners — the groups who bankroll a venture-capital fund so that it can invest in startups like Uber. They were reading the negative news reports and freaking out about their money too.

And then there were other investment firms that had followed Gurley's lead and poured billions into Uber. The company had raised an unprecedented $15 billion by mid-2016.

Gurley, as a Valley investment legend, knew all of them, and they were calling him demanding he get Uber's culture under control and protect their hides.

That was easier said than done. Kalanick, like many tech founders, had ensured that as his company grew he maintained control. He didn’t have absolute power, but it was close. "It didn’t start that way and it never fully got there, but, almost in a Frankenstein way, there were these things levered on along the way," one person described.

For instance, Uber's early employees and early-stage investors had shares with super voting rights (that is, 10 votes for every share), but all later-stage investors and employees had no votes at all per share. Kalanick was one of the largest holders of super voting shares. Between a combination of bylaws and loyalties, Kalanick also controlled enough board seats to make it extremely hard for the board to fire him as CEO.

As Gurley pondered his options, he received an email that kicked him in the gut.

It was from Katrina Lake, CEO of the apparel-shopping service Stitch Fix, one of Benchmark's other highly successful portfolio companies.

Lake lambasted Gurley for not doing enough to fix Uber. She accused him of shirking his responsibility to make Silicon Valley a better place.

Gurley realized that Benchmark was in a lose-lose situation. The firm's reputation with other tech entrepreneurs would be hurt if he orchestrated a revolt against Kalanick. But it would also suffer if Benchmark appeared to do nothing.

He made a choice: Kalanick had to go, and if the board wouldn’t — or couldn’t — do it, he'd find another way.

The full Holder report: loaded with allegations

The spring of 2017 dealt Kalanick another painful blow. On May 27, his mother was killed in a boating accident and his father was badly injured.

Despite the infighting, all of Uber's board members and investors reached out to offer condolences.

Except one.

Kalanick heard nothing from Gurley, not even when he saw him for an in-person meeting. It was a bad sign.

A couple of days later, Levandowski pleaded the Fifth Amendment in the Waymo trial and refused to defend Uber. Visionary or not, Kalanick bowed to pressure and fired him.

The press was now publicly speculating about whether Kalanick would be fired, too.

Days after that, on June 6, the results of the Perkins Coie sexual-harassment investigation were revealed. The firm had looked into 215 claims of harassment and other bad behaviors.

Following the report, 20 people were fired, five of them over sexual-harassment allegations. The others were terminated for things like bullying coworkers and retaliating against those who had made complaints to HR.

Kalanick saw the results as a net win for Uber and told his employees so. Out of 15,000 people in the company, only a handful were bad apples and all of them were now gone. That, he pointed out, was a very low percentage, which showed that Uber was largely not a terrible place to work. And no sexual-harassment allegations were ever leveled at Kalanick himself.

Holder's report was presented to the board a few days later. It included a long list of complaints employees had lodged during the investigation into Uber's culture, many of them uncorroborated. The board agreed the full report would remain under lock and key, no copies made, to keep it from leaking to the press. The only way to read it was in law firm's office, under supervision.

Holder's report also contained a list of recommendations for changing the company's culture. First on the list was to reduce Kalanick's responsibilities by hiring a COO, something Kalanick had been trying to do for months anyway.

The second recommendation, however, was never publicly revealed.

"It was that Michael should leave the company," a person with knowledge of the matter told Business Insider.

On June 12, Uber announced Michael's departure. His name had been mentioned in some of Uber's scandals over the years  and in some of the bad press in 2017, like one involving a second lawsuit over that India rape case. That proved to be unfair, and Michael's name was dropped from the suit accordingly.

Still, according to one person, forcing him to resign was symbolic, a sign that Kalanick did not have an iron grip on the company anymore and couldn't protect his closest allies. The most trusted confidant in Kalanick's ever-smaller circle was now gone. There were very few executives left at Uber who still had Kalanick’s back.

On June 13, Uber told its employees and the public about Holder's recommendations for changing its culture. And, with the investigation completed, Kalanick announced he was taking a leave of absence to grieve.

And Gurley was ready to make his move.

Cornered in a Chicago hotel room

Despite going on leave, Kalanick didn't completely stop working. He was still trying to hire a COO.

On June 21, Kalanick held a meeting with a COO candidate and the conversation ran long. The candidate had to fly to Chicago, so Kalanick booked a ticket and flew with him, finishing the interview on the way.

While Kalanick was in his Chicago hotel room, Gurley's partners at Benchmark, Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, contacted Kalanick, wanting an immediate meeting. Kalanick told them he was in Chicago. They flew there, went to his hotel room, and handed him a letter.

It said that a group of investors were demanding Kalanick's resignation.

Normally, it is the board that fires a CEO, but Gurley, with the support of his partners, had gone around his fellow board members and enlisted some of Uber’s biggest early investors, among them Fidelity, Lowercase, Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital, all owners of super voting shares.

The letter gave Kalanick three hours to decide. If he refused to resign, the group would launch a PR campaign against him: more negative press, more #deleteuber.

Kalanick felt like he had no choice.

He negotiated for more time and talked to several people about his options. But he was also physically tired and, having just buried his mother, emotionally exhausted from grief. The famously combative CEO had finally run out of fight.

That evening Kalanick signed the letter. He was no longer the CEO of Uber, the company he loved, that had been his life for the better part of a decade.

Gurley also resigned from the board. He, too, was exhausted.

Gurley also knew that being involved in an investor revolt had burned some bridges with the rest of the board members. Kalanick, who was still a major shareholder, was still on the board, too.

Benchmark's Matt Cohler, who had been friends with Kalanick for years before the Chicago meeting, took Gurley's seat.

But the fight wasn't over.

Benchmark files an unprecedented lawsuit

The board now had the major task of hiring a new CEO.

Stories that Kalanick was hampering the search with the hope of getting himself reinstated began to appear in the press.

These reports angered and hurt Kalanick, who had not only been forced out of his job but felt he was doing everything he could as a board member to find a great replacement.

"Name one thing I did to block the CEO search?" he was heard saying to people.

A revolt was also brewing among the cabal of executives who were running the company now that there was no CEO and no COO.

On July 22, this 16-person management team sent a letter to Uber's board. In it they complained that Kalanick was interfering with their work and demanded relief. Not all of them agreed with the letter, one person said. Some even thought that Kalanick was just trying to be helpful in his own way. But it was signed by "the executive leadership team" representing all of them. This was the second letter the board received from complaining executives. The first one was signed by six of them just before Kalanick had taken his leave.

Benchmark was now convinced that Kalanick was plotting his return and had to be stopped.

On August 10, while Kalanick was on a flight to Seattle to interview Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi for Uber's CEO job, Benchmark filed a suit against him. It accused him of committing fraud over two board seats he controlled and argued that he should be kicked off Uber's board.

The suit shocked the Valley: A VC suing a founder after forcing him to resign was unheard of.

The press was once again feasting, and Kalanick felt duped. He thought by resigning as Benchmark had demanded, he would be avoiding more bad PR for himself and Uber.

Kalanick spent the day at his hotel talking to lawyers. He eventually called Khosrowshahi at 10:30 p.m. and Khosrowshahi agreed to a late-night meeting. It went well and Khosrowshahi decided to pursue the job.

But Kalanick was backing another candidate, former GE CEO Jeff Immelt. And Benchmark had its own candidate, Meg Whitman.

That meant things would get ugly, again.

Strong words in the boardroom

When the board met later, in August, to make its final CEO choice, Immelt quickly learned that he didn't have the votes to be appointed and bowed out.

The board was evenly split between Whitman and Khosrowshahi. They spent two grueling days locked in a room debating the two choices and taking anonymous straw votes.

At one point, the discussion turned to the Benchmark lawsuit and how Benchmark was so comfortable in Whitman's abilities that if the board voted for her, the firm would probably drop its suit against Kalanick.

That idea didn't go over well. Some board members pointed out that if such a damaging suit wasn't absolutely necessary, it should be dropped, and it definitely shouldn’t be used as leverage for the CEO vote. Kalanick argued to the board that this was proof that Benchmark’s tactics were nothing more than trying to bully people — not just him but the board as well.

Whether that clinched it for Khosrowshahi is a source of controversy among those with knowledge of the situation. But he soon picked up enough straw votes to win.

When the board cast an official on-the-record vote, everyone, even Benchmark, unanimously voted Khosrowshahi in. No one wanted to go on the record as opposing the new CEO from the get-go.

Still, hiring a new CEO wasn’t enough for Benchmark and the Uber executives and investors supporting it. Benchmark wanted changes to the stock structure and bylaws to ensure Kalanick could not undermine Khosrowshahi and orchestrate a comeback. As VCs, they had seen such shenanigans before.

"Ninety percent of ousted founders detest the new CEO and try to run them out," one person with knowledge of Benchmark’s thinking told Business Insider.

The deal that ended the feud

As he took over the reins of Uber, Khosrowshahi needed to put an end to the drama and dysfunction that had torn the company apart, and he quickly saw his chance.

Kalanick had been angling for months to take on new investment from Japanese tech giant Softbank, which, through its $100 billion Vision Fund, was pumping billions of dollars into hot startups and putting its enormous global power behind those companies.

Softbank had been investing in ride hailing all over the globe and wanted a piece of Uber. But it threatened to throw its weight behind Lyft if an Uber deal didn’t materialize — something Kalanick dreaded.

So Khosrowshahi brokered a compromise: As part of the Softbank investment Kalanick wanted, Benchmark would get the governance changes it sought.

In January, when Softbank closed on a 15% stake in Uber, the super voting shares were eliminated (every share now gets one vote) and four new seats were added to the board to dilute Kalanick's control.

A happyish ending for all

When you ask insiders what led to Travis Kalanick's downfall, there are a few things everyone agrees on.

Uber grew too quickly, from 6,700 employees in December 2016 to 15,000 by June 2017, and devolved into chaos before proper HR procedures and seasoned executives could be put in place.

Most blame Kalanick for this, saying he was more focused on world domination than seemingly mundane, operational details.

There are also a lot of wild conspiracy theories whispered around: an Uber competitor engaged in sabotage; leaks came as an inside hit job from those who supported Benchmark's desire to fully remove Kalanick; opposition research was dedicated to smearing specific Uber executives.

And the long-term fallout from the feud remains to be seen. Tensions are still high between many former Uber execs.

And it's unclear how the reputational consequences for Benchmark will shake out. By leading a coup against a founder, Benchmark broke a sacred Silicon Valley rule about how it treats the founders it backs, and set a dangerous precedent for other investors and boards.

Although Uber is rehabilitating its public image, it still needs to win in the cutthroat ride-hailing business and do it without a visionary, if problematic, founder at the helm.

Still, for now the storm has passed.

It's been a year since Susan Fowler's blog post and nine months since Kalanick resigned as CEO. Fowler has sold her story for a forthcoming book and movie.

Benchmark sold $900 million in shares to Softbank and got a commitment that Uber would go public by 2019, giving it a path to collect on its billions.

After Kalanick’s power was reduced, Benchmark agreed to drop its lawsuit against him.

Under Khosrowshahi, Uber settled the Waymo suit for $500 million, ending a source of much of the bad press and drama.

Whetstone is a vice president of communications at Facebook, and as influential as ever.

Gurley is talking to the press again, sleeping well, and happy.

Kalanick went from a jobless paper billionaire to an actual cash billionaire after he sold $1.4 billion worth of his shares to Softbank. He just announced he is setting up a charitable foundation and investment fund. He remains on Uber’s board and still has a huge stake in the company.

And he's now focused on life after Uber.

While he feels that 2017’s unrelenting bad PR unfairly villainized Uber, and that the company remains misunderstood, the gut-wrenching ride forced Kalanick to do a lot of reflecting.

"In 2013 Travis was hotheaded," one person described. "By 2017 he was a gentle, diplomatic giant compared to what he was. He's a growing, learning human being."

SEE ALSO: Inside the world of Silicon Valley's 'coasters' — the millionaire engineers who get paid gobs of money and barely work

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