#things that would make ned stark shit himself | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

axelsagewrites · 2 years ago

Text

Robb Stark*Dream Part Two

Pairing: Robb x f!reader

Summary: After finding out the reader had a special dream about Robb, Robb decided to show the reader what he had dreamed about her.

Warnings: Smut, dom rob, f receiving oral, 18+

Word count: 3214

Masterlist Here

Part 1 Here

You knew as soon as you left the table Theon or Jon would tell Robb exactly what kind of dream you had had but you also could not take the smirks from Theon and Jon awkwardly looking away from you. Once you realised there was no escape from Robb finding out you decided distance was the thing you needed. You excused yourself and began to make yourself far too busy for any of the boys to start their ruthless teasing.

The worst of it was Robb didn’t even know it was about him. But you knew so now you had to act like no one knew encase he figured it out. So instead of risking it you did every task you could imagine over the next three days.

You showed Sansa some new embroidery stitches, helped Arya with her aim in archery, talked with Lady Catelyn about her upcoming nameday celebrations. At one point you even ended up in the kitchen peeling potatoes till Ned happened to see you and insisted it wasn’t necessary of his Lady ward.

After being ushered out of the kitchen you ended up walking to the courtyard, looking for Bran to entertain. This was around the time that Jon and Robb went horse riding so you assumed you would be safe. You soon realised you were wrong as Robb and Jon rode into the courtyard earlier than expected. As Robb began to dismount his horse you saw Bran and Rickon playing and quickly walked over. Robb obviously noticing your pace changed dismounted even faster to catch up, Jon on his heels.

“Lady- “Robb started but you crouched down to Bran and started talking over him.

“Wanna play hide and seek?” you tried to sound innocent, but you could feel Robb staring at the back of your head.

Bran and Rickon instantly perked up at the idea as the older Starks and you typically did not want to play their childish games. “Yeah!” Bran said as he ditched his toy soldiers on the ground.

Rickon was fast behind, “All of you?” the little shit inquired and unknowingly ruined your plans.

“Yeah, little man!” Robb said as he gave his youngest brother a fist bump to celebrate and gave you a knowing smirk. “Jon you in? “Jon must’ve read Robbs mind because he instantly agreed. “Should we do teams? If so, I call dibs on (Y/N),”

You stood up, feeling the colour drain from your face, but thank fully Rickon was not all bad as he quickly pointed out, “We can’t! There’s an odd number,”

“Rickson’s right. Every man for himself,” you agreed causing the youngest Stark to now fist bump you. “Who’s counting?”

“Jon,” Robb said before anyone could object.

Jon sighed but reluctantly went along with his brother’s plan. As Robb was whispering something to Jon you started to back away, giving yourself as much distance from Robb as you could for a head start. Bran quickly explained the rules of how they played hide and seek, you couldn’t hide in bedrooms or in the woods, as then told Jon to count to one hundred.

By the time Robb had turned around you were already at the opposite side of the courtyard and Jon then began to count. Jon had barely said the letter one when you sprinted for the stairs. You would never usually cheat when playing with children but this was a matter of life and eternal embarrassment so you ran as quickly as you could to your chambers, knowing how much of a stickler to the rules the starks were.

You were panting like a wet dog when you arrived at your chambers and flung the door closed behind you. As you took your cloak off to try and cool yourself down you heard footsteps in the corridor outside. You weren’t as clever as you thought.

As quickly and silently as you could you began to slide under your bed, hearing a knock when you were finally underneath. Would Robb really come into a lady’s chambers without permission?

Turns out he wasn’t as much of a stickler as you thought as you heard your door slowly open and saw his boots walk in. Robb gently closed the door behind him, not wanting people to think he had ill intentions or his mother to find out, and he began to walk into the room before suddenly stopping.

You cringed as you realised you weren’t wearing the cloak anymore that you must have dropped in your hurry. There was no point in trying to run now as Robbs boots walked over to the bed before he crouched down, his head peering under the bed and right at your face. A wolfish grin was placed on his face as he reached under and grabbed your arms to pull you out from under your own bed like a child. “Funny finding you here,”

You grumbled under your breath as you pulled yourself up to sit beside Robb on the floor next to your bed. “You cheated,”

“You cheated first.” He shot back but then the grin fell from his face, “You’re avoiding me,”

“Prove it,” you said, more stubborn than any other in the North but it was to no avail.

Robb rolled his eyes, “I just pulled you out from under your bed,” he said before asking, with hurt in his eyes, “Did I do something?”

Your heart clenched as his puppy eyes stared into yours, not realising before how he would feel by your sudden avoidance. You realised you had only made things worse in your attempts to avoid it, “No you didn’t,” you said before flinging your head back with a groan, “It was me okay? I was embarrassed so I wanted to hide until you forgot about it or something I don’t know, okay?”

Robb began to chuckle at your now flushed face, “Its okay,” he said as he took your hand, “It happens its alright. Theon was just wanting to wind you up about it but its whatever. Its not like we can control it,”

“Yeah, but it was just weird cause like,” you started to say but you realised there was no easy way to explain it, “I didn’t want you to know,”

Robb paused for a moment, and you could feel the clogs turning in his head, “Why just me though? Were you avoiding all of us or…?” he asked, trailing off as he looked at you.

You closed your eyes and sighed, “Just you,” you finally whispered, and you felt his hand slip away from yours.

Reluctantly you opened your eyes to see Robb had turned himself to face you straight on, a smirk playing on his gorgeous lips, “Who was your dream about?” he asked the dreaded question, and you felt your cheeks grow hot. His eyes widened as he saw your flush and how your eyes would look at anywhere but him. “Was it about me?” he asked with a new strange shine in his eyes. You glanced at him before nodding and closing your eyes, waiting to be laughed at. Robb chuckled but it wasn’t at you. It was deep and perfect, but it wasn’t mocking or amused. “And what was I doing in this dream?”

You opened your eyes as you felt him lean in closer, his face only a couple inches from yours, his breath fanning your face. “You don’t think im some creep?” you asked, ignoring his original question.

“I’d be a hypocrite if I did,” Robb started as his eyes roamed your face and down your body, his hand moving to rest on your thigh, “But you didn’t answer my question love,” he said as you felt a wetness beginning between your thighs that his hand was so close to yet so far away, “What was I doing to you in your dream?” he asked as his eyes landed back on yours.

His gaze was even stronger than that in your dream and you struggled to speak at first, “It was more me doing things to you,”

“What kind of things?” Robb leaned in closer, his lips grazing your cheeks, “I’d like to dream about them too,” he said as his hand moved further up your clothed thigh to land on your hip, “Maybe try some out as well if you’d like,” his hand gripped your hip tighter and you felt your stomach flutter.

“I was on my knees,” you started but Robb cut you off by gripping your hip and pulling you to straddle his thighs which caused your dress to ride up. You felt your breath hitch in your throat as his hands found the small of your back, “and you were on the bed,”

“What was I making you do dove?” he asked as he took your chin into his fingers, forcing you to look him in his eyes while you admitted your secret dreams to him.

You cleared your throat and tried to look away, but he held your head in place, “You were making me suck your cock,” you finally whispered, and you saw the wolfish glint return to his eyes.

“Is that so?” he said, and you could only nod. Robb grinned as he leant into whisper in your ear, his lips on the edge of it and his breath tingling your face, “Did you like it?”

“Yes, my king,” you said without even thinking about it and now you were face to face with Robb again, his nose brushing off of yours, “Sorry its just- “

“Is that what you call me? In your dreams?” he asked causing your face to flush and eyes to water before you nodded. Robb placed a kiss to your check, “I like that,” he said as he brought his hand to your face, his thumb rubbing against your check, “Don’t be so sad love. I’ve had my own dreams too,”

“You have?” you asked, and Robb nodded.

“So many nights I’ve had dreams of you,” he admitted as his lips fell to start littering kisses from your neck to your jaw as he spoke, “of how you would look underneath me. I would imagine how you would look as you came undone around me,” he said which caused you to shiver and you could feel his smirk as he kissed your jaw before pulling back to have his lips hover over yours, “I’ve dreamt of kissing these pretty lips of yours,” he said as his thumb moved to rub over your bottom lip like he had in your dreams before, “Would you like that?” he asked and you quickly nodded.

Robb wasted no time in closer the gap between you. His lips crashed onto yours and they felt better than you had ever imagined. They were soft but had become slightly rough from the cold northern air. They moved perfectly in sync with your own and the need for air did not seem to matter anymore. His hands crept down to land on your waist, pulling you closer, and on top of his clothed member which you could feel hard under his clothes. Your hands found his chest, feeling how toned he was through his tunic and wanted nothing more than to pull it off. Robb must’ve sensed this as he only broke the kiss to remove his tunic, leaving him in his undershirt, before he latched his lips to yours again.

This time he began to nip at your bottom lip for entry and you were no one to deny your king whose tongue slipped in as soon as you allowed. You moaned into the kiss when you felt his hips buck beneath you, his member rubbing against your clothed wet spot.

Eventually you had to break for air and the feeling of Robbs warm breath against your lips drove you crazy. “Would you like to know what I see in my dreams?” he asked, and you nodded, unable to speak from your desperation.

“I see you and me,” he started before pulling you to your feet from the floor, turning you around to pull the laces of your dress lose, “in my chambers with you in your pretty little shift,” he said as your dress fell to the floor. You shivered at the cold and the touch of his fingers on your back. Robb spun you to face him, your hands resting on his chest, “In bed,” he continued, this time pushing you to fall back on your bed, “kissing you,” he said as he began to crawl over you, leaving a trail of kisses from your thighs to your chest to your throat, “everywhere,” he finished as he kissed your lips again.

Your hands tangled into his hair as one of his moved to squeeze your breast causing you to gasp into the kiss allowing him entrance. You moaned as you felt his finger tracing around your nipple over your thin shift. “I always wondered what you’d sound like,” Robb broke the kiss to say as he continued his teasing, his fingers pinching it in just the right way to cause your whines. “Or how you would feel,” the loss of his hand left you are wishing from more, but your body shivered as you felt it brush up your thigh before settling where you wanted him most. He traced a finger up it is causing you to whine and him to chuckle, “Did you ever dream about this too?” he asked, and you nodded but this time he tutted, “Use your words,” he said as he began to place kisses along your jaw.

“Yes, my king,” you said, and he finally slid his fingers in, stretching you as he did. You moaned as you felt them move into you and more when he began to curl them inside of you.

Without thinking your eyes closed but this was not good enough for Robb, “Keeps your eyes on me or I’ll stop,” he warned and you quickly opened them to see him gazing at your face, “Good girl,” he said as he began to curl his fingers again, “I wanna see those pretty eyes of yours while I fuck you with my fingers,” he said, his thumb now moving to press onto your clit, a whiney moan leaving your lips. “You’re such a pretty little whore, aren’t you?” he said causing the knot in your stomach to grow.

“Thank you,” you whispered causing his smirk to grow, “Please don’t stop,” you begged.

“Do you want to know what else I want to know?” he asked, and you told him yes. “I always wanted to know how you tasted,” he said, and your breath caught in your throat at the idea, “Do you think you deserve that? To have your king in between your legs kissing you in unspeakable ways?”

“Please,” you begged, his fingers still curling inside of you, “I’ll be good please. I promise, I’ll be good for you,” you moaned, and Robb placed a firm kiss on your lips as he removed his fingers from you causing you to whine.

Robb trailed his kiss away from your mouth to kiss down your body finally arriving where he had told you about, “Your so impatient,” he chastised, his breath fanning over you causing you to shiver. Without warning Robb licked up your wet cunt and you let out a strangled moan as your body instinctively pulled away. Robb used his hands to press your hips down in the bed, “Let me take care of you,” he said as he licked again, another moan falling from your lips, “my queen,” he finished before his tongue began its assault on your core which he was now lapping up and moaning into. His vibrations sending shivers down your spine as the knot in your stomach grew huge at the knew sensation of his tongue. He moved his head to line his nose up to your clit, nudging against it with every lick causing you to almost explode at his touch. His tongue began to move in and out of you causing you to bring your one hand out of his hair and up to your mouth to try containing your moans. “You taste so fucking good,” he muttered against your core, “and you sound even better,” he said as he moved his fingers to your hole, diving in and out, curling with every thrust, so his tongue could move to focus on your sensitive nub.

Even your hand struggled to contain your moans when Robb began to suck on your clit. You felt an exploding pressure in your stomach which you struggled to contain but when Robb grazed his teeth against your clit you felt your whole-body tremor beneath him as you came undone from his mouth. You were almost gasping for breath, your eyes wet from the relief that flooded your body. You felt Robb pull away from your core as you stared at the ceiling panting like a dog.

His breathing was also heavy as he came up, his face now covered in your wetness causing you to blush, but he paid it no mind when he placed a strong kiss on your lips. “You are so perfect,” he murmured against your lips. “I don’t think I will ever get enough of you,”

“Good,” you said, your hand moving to hold his face in your hand, “Because I will never get enough of you,” you said as you felt an overwhelming tiredness wash over your body.

“You should rest love,”

“But you didn’t- “you tried to argue but Robb would not hear it.

Robb pressed a kiss to your forehead, “You can return the favour later sweetheart,”

You lay with Robb in a perfect silence, almost fully drifted off when you heard pounding on your door, “We know you’re in there!” Bran yelled through the door, and you felt all the colour drain from your face.

You looked at Robb who was also stark white, “You cheated!” Rickon yelled.

As they tried to open the door Robb sprang out of bed to hold it close. You could hear Jon in the background and quickly scrambled under your covers. “Tell them I fell and hurt myself,” You whisper shouted to Robb who quickly nodded and yelled for his brothers to wait, and he’d let them in. he quickly shoved his tunic over his head and opened the doors as innocently as he could.

Rickon and Bran stalked into the chambers with Jon reluctantly following behind, making sure he was not about to be scarred by the sight in front of him. Rickson’s face dropped in confusion, “Why are you in bed?”

“She fell- “

“-up the stairs- “

“- I had to help her here- “

“-we didn’t cheat,” you finished your story which thank every lucky star Rickon believed. Bran clearly had his doubts but was too young to understand what Jon knew had happened. However, at Robbs suggestion they get to play with his real sword Bran dropped the subject. Lady Catelyn may be upset when she finds out what Robb had let them do but you both knew it would be far worse if she found out what you had done moments before they had barged in.

Taglist: @clairacassidy @twilightrows

#robb stark x reader #robb stark imagine #robb stark #robb stark smut #game of thrones smut #game of thrones #game of thrones imagine #Robb stark x reader #game of thrones x reader #got x reader smut #Robb stark x reader smut #fanfic #smut #smut x reader

1K notes · View notes

elissanatok · 6 months ago

Text

﹒•˒⟿⭒「𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐄 ❞」ʿʿ ⟿☼ 2

↳✉⭒˞˔˙ː❛ -ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡?✹⋮

◌༄۵ !𝖺𝗏𝖾𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝗌𝗈𝗎𝗅𝗆𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝖺𝗎 !

!𝚂.𝚁. //𝙱.𝙱.// 𝙿.𝙼. //𝙿.𝙿. !

𝖱𝖾𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗓𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗌𝗈𝗎𝗅𝗆𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝗂𝗌 𝖺 𝖼𝗎𝗍𝖾 𝗇𝖾𝗋𝖽 𝖺𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗇𝖾𝗐 𝗌𝖼𝗁𝗈𝗈𝗅 𝗂𝗌 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝖽𝖺 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝖿𝖾𝖼𝗍. 𝖱𝖾𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗓𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌 𝗂𝗇 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖿𝗋𝖾𝖾𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾, 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗐𝗁𝗈, 𝖺𝗌 𝗐𝗁𝗈, 𝗂𝗌 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝖽𝖺 𝗌𝗁𝗈𝖼𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗈𝗋 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝗅𝖾𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝗆𝗂𝗇𝖽 𝖻𝗅𝗈𝗐𝗂𝗇𝗀. 𝖱𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍??? 𝖶𝖾𝗅𝗅 – 𝖱𝖾𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗓𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗈𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗌𝗈𝗎𝗅𝗆𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝖿𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗈𝖿 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖾𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗁𝗌 𝗆𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗂𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝗁𝖾𝗋𝗈𝖾𝗌 𝗂𝗌 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝖽𝖺 – 𝗐𝖾𝗅𝗅 – 𝗅𝖾𝗍'𝗌 𝗌𝖾𝖾.

a/n: this is complete fluff I guess

Peter Parker felt his fingers twitch for the thousand time this morning. He wished he could give the one cup of coffee he had that morning the fault for this, but he knew something was wrong. He knew his senses were even higher than usually and the strong grip on the strap of his backpack did nothing to release some tension.

He did send Mr. Stark a message telling him something was wrong, but the moment he told him his problem was finger twitching Tony stopped answering.

His brown locks were ruffled, and Ned's eyes widened when he met him in the halls. "Woah what happened to you man?", he asked, analyzing his friend from head to toe. "I – I don't know. Something is wrong." He started rubbing the itching art on his body. Usually, he loved it. The fine sketch of a woman who's reading a newspaper, keeping her legs crossed, was his favorite part about his body. Although it wasn't really about him. It would make his day - looking at his waist in the mirror and tracing the lines till they had burned themselves into his mind. God, he loved the idea of her feeling his touch. And even after he found his favorite part to be the favorite part to three other men, he still couldn't help but give himself butterflies every time he thought of her.

Her.

Snapping out of his trance, he looked at his friend who was raising an eyebrow at him. "Did you listen to me? Hey dude where is your mind. I just told you the best thing ever!", "Sorry.", Peter mumbled, biting his lip. "So there's this new girl, alright. I have math with her. She's hot. So hot bro. And- and- ", "Yeah she's cool I guess." Both guys snapped their neck towards MJ, who was slightly smirking as she stopped next to them. "Yeah- so- ", "What's her name?", Peter asked wanting to meet her now that his friends already got to know her. "Y/n. Cool right?", Ned said grinning. "Yeah -cool. Look – I should go.", "You alright Pete?", asked MJ, to which he nodded, before he speed walked to his next class, just to freeze in the door.

Her hair was beautiful. Braided in some kind of pretty bun which he had no clue about. Her nose was wrinkled as she looked down at the notebook, the pencil tightly held between her fingers and her lips in a pout. "Shit.", he whispered, looking at her lips. They were rosy, not red, not too big, but not too small. The perfect match to his.

Wrinkling her eyebrows Y/n slowly looked up, but came to the conclusion she must have imagined the feeling of someone starring at her, because no one was standing in the door. No- the boy who was leaning outside of the room, with a rapid beating heart and red cheeks couldn't look into her eyes.

Everything he imagined could come true now, but he wished oh so dearly for it to be Steve or Pietro who got to meet her first. Look- Peter was an awkward, shy boy most of the times and even tough he would be the one to spend some time with her alone before he had to tell the others, he was scared shitless.

She wouldn't laugh at him if he started to ramble or said something that sounded wrong. Right?

Peeping around the wall he took a deep breath. Her legs were crossed, the same way the lady from his soul mark did. Another deep breath followed, before he closed his eyes and- he opened them again and fell right into a deep pool of y/e/c.

Y/n’s head was tilted slightly as her mouth went dry. "H-Hi.", she whispered and started fumbling with the rings on her finger to prevent from falling around his neck immediately. "H—Hey", Peter coughed out, getting even redder cheeks when he took in her smell. "So- you're my soulmate huh?", she asked, trying to ease him and herself a little bit. "I guess."

"Is that bad?", she asked nervous. "I mean is- am I- "Her self-consciousness was interrupted by her teacher walking thru the door next to them. "Mmh." She didn't find the words she was searching for, so she pointed at the door and left in a hurry. Great. Just Great.

It did exactly go like he always imagined. Not really tho.

He sighed, as he rubbed a hand over his face. He didn't even know where to start from here. He didn't know if he should tell the others first or get to know her. He was going to have a heart attack at the age of seventeen and it would be her fault. Y/n St. Lorenz would be the death of him.

Slightly she took her eyes of her book, when the sound of the chair next to her being pulled backwards met her ears. Peter -again- took a deep breath. "It's – uhm- fantastic.", he smiled, and tried to memorize her face. "What?", she whispered, and looked in his eyes again. "I- uhm- you know- you are – it's not bad that you're my soulmate. It's perfect. You're perfect." A blush spread over both their faces. "Oh- You don't even know me.", "But I would love to."

"I guess that can be arranged.",

"Great. I'm Peter -Parker uhm- Peter Parker.",

"Nice to meet you, Peter Parker. I'm Y/n.",

"Perfect.",

"Yeah- Perfect."

70 notes · View notes

ironspiderfics · 10 months ago

Text

this is supposed to be a vacation

for @meilz

by @iron--spider

Tony loves this kid.

It’s a montage at the beginning of a movie—Tony was crazy about Peter almost immediately, couldn’t accept it, his own damn daddy issues courtesy of Howard Stark, then he had to accept it because the kid kept trying to die, then things settled, they worked together, then they unsettled and the kid dissolved in Tony’s hands, and a year of heavy-drinking and nearly exploding himself in the lab wound up with all the dissolved people undissolved and the kid back and Tony in a hospital bed. Three-week coma. Whole screaming celebration when he woke up loud enough to bust his eardrums and restart his heart.

But Peter was there. Peter was there.

Time slowed to a crawl, sped up and slowed down again, and Tony tried to recover. He knew Peter and his friends went on that European trip—he encouraged it even though Peter was worried about leaving after everything. May and Happy chaperoned, and then everyone nearly died because Quentin fucking Beck decided to roll out of Tony’s past to try and kill off someone he loves. He failed, because Peter is Peter, and Fury and Happy shut down the false allegations Beck tried to put out there before he was arrested, and everybody came home.

It’s been about two months, since then. And Tony had just gotten back on his feet a week or so before Peter left, and he’s even steadier now. Getting steadier by the day.

But he loves this kid. More now, than ever. The son he never had. He loves May, he loves the kids that come along with his kid, he loves everything Peter has to say and everything he doesn’t, he loves keeping an eye on his missions, he loves the way he fits so snug into Tony’s little family.

And he loves him enough to know when he’s crashing. When his eyes are tired and his patrols aren’t as succinct and punchy as they usually are. When he needs a vacation from his recent vacation. As if nearly being killed by some asshole in London is the vacation any of them need.

So, Tony makes a couple decisions.

After all the shit they’ve gone through, what the hell could go wrong with a break?

Peter knew Tony was planning something, because he isn’t secretive when he’s excited, and he found out what he was planning when Tony asked if Ned and MJ’s families would mind if he took them out of the city for a few days.

And about a week later, they were heading upstate to Mohonk Mountain House.

And Peter hasn’t been complaining, at least not to Tony, but his tiredness has been bone-deep since he got back from London. Since before that, really. Coming back from the dead can do that to someone, and he doesn’t even like to call it dead, and apparently they were all tiny particle souls inside that infinity stone but it doesn’t matter because that’s a whole other can of worms and he gets more tired and more weary every time he even thinks about any of that.

He swung right into a wall the other day. Slap right into it. He almost broke his nose again. He feels like that might have been the moment Tony decided on this vacation—Peter could tell by the look on his face when he told him that he’d crossed some kind of line.

They walk inside the main lobby of Mohonk and Peter keeps hearing Ben’s voice in his head. You’re gonna catch flies, Pete. But he can’t stop gaping at everything. Like…he’s been in a Hilton and this is so much better than a Hilton.

“This place looks straight out of a Hitchcock movie,” May says, and she knocks Tony on the arm.

Tony laughs, and Pepper turns around, raising her eyebrows at May. “Let’s just hope we don’t have any Hitchcock-type events happen while we’re here.”

“What would that mean?” Ned asks, catching up to the group and trying to whisper in Peter’s ear. “You’ve seen Hitchcock movies. I remember you watched that weird apartment one a hundred times.”

“I love that movie,” Peter says. Rear Window. He never wants his leg to be broken. He knows he’d go insane just like that.

“You haven’t seen Psycho?” MJ asks Ned, hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulder.

Ned hums a little bit. “No. I know about it though. No crazy Grandmas for me.”

“That’s not what happens.”

Leather couches and tall ceilings and intricate carpeting and columns and everything somehow looks really rich but really comfortable at the same time—

“No,” Tony says, turning around and pointing at them. “No, no, and no.” He points at May too. “No. No Rear Window, no Psycho, no Vertigo—maybe a little bit North by Northwest—no, you know what, no. Not that either. This is going to be the lamest movie you’ve ever—this isn’t even gonna be a movie, there’s no—there’s no plot, this is just—a family video. A home movie. That’s it.”

Family video feels warm, and Peter grins.

“Of course, Mr. Stark—”

“It’s gonna be fine—”

“Absolutely nothing—”

“Listen, I’m hitting that buffet—”

“I’m just gonna sleep,” Peter says, as they approach the huge front desk. “Just the entire time.”

Tony smiles softly at him, and he winks. “You deserve it,” he says, and Peter can tell that he means it.

They hear crashing, something that sounds expensive hitting the ground somewhere behind them, and they all turn around and see a bunch of employees running around to try and take care of it. A whole big production and two guys trying to hold up a big bear statue that’s trying to fall over.

“Okay, step to,” Happy’s voice says, and Peter hears him before he sees him, and then he breezes by, striding out in front of them. “Let’s go, come on, follow me, let’s get this in the books—”

“Oh, there he is,” Tony says, patting him on the shoulders. “There he is.”

Peter and May could never afford a vacation like this. They could never even afford to imagine something like this. Peter feels like they would have charged him if he’d even looked at photos of this place. A big, historic, mountain resort in upstate New York, on the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake?

But now they’re here. They’re here with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Peter was able to bring two friends. Happy drove them all in a big plush rental van. They’ve got a line of suites on the sixth floor and they had steak and lobster for dinner on their first night.

It feels unreal. But things feel unreal a lot. Especially things involving Tony, involving Spider-Man. Any of it. Like he’s having a long, prolonged dream before Ben wakes him up for school.

Peter stands on one of the terrace balconies with Tony while the others are arranging activities for tomorrow, and he stares off at the lake and the way the moon hits it. Light rippling on the water.

“You really think you’re gonna sleep the whole time?” Tony asks, leaning on the railing. “Because nobody would judge you for it. Kayaks can wait. Ballroom dancing can absolutely wait, as can all of May’s Dirty Dancing comparisons, because I can feel them building up, like an aura around her—”

Peter snorts. “No,” he says. “But I probably will mostly just…relax. Take it easy. Just sleeping, no alarms—”

“You deserve it, like I said,” Tony says. “It’s thrilling to me that you’re even giving yourself a break.”

“Look who’s talking,” Peter says, giving him a look. “You were trying to get down to the workshop when your arm was still holding on by one string of muscle.”

Tony’s entire face contorts. “That is a terrible, disgusting image, Mr. Parker—”

Peter snorts again, choking on his laughter.

Tony knocks him on the arm. “You’re awful, a menace, making fun of an injured old man—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it’s true,” Peter says, swatting him back, and still laughing. “You’re the one who needs—needs this. Like Happy always says, I’m a ‘spring chicken’, I—I can bounce back.”

“I had enough bedrest for the next ten years,” Tony says, and he’s giving Peter that look again. Concern. Like he’s trying to read his mind. “You—I know you like to act like it all doesn’t affect you, but you were going through hell on the daily before that purple asshole snapped his fingers. Then there was all that, and the right after that, and the coming back from that, and me wasting away in front of you—and then Quentin Beck flaunting his dickheaded tendencies on your school trip—that was supposed to be your relaxing time and it got away from you too and I just—like I said, you deserve your time. You need it. Don’t—you’re not selling yourself short if you say you need some rest. You put everybody first all the time, yourself last—you deserve to relax, that’s all.”

Peter blows out a breath. He doesn’t even really try to deny it in his head anymore. He doesn’t try to compare himself to other people who have it worse. He’s tired. He’s beat. He feels older than he is.

Tony clicks his tongue and looks out at the lake. “I know this place is kind of old, kind of dated, rooms kind of look a little bit like grandma was head decorator, but—I, uh—I’ve got fond memories here. Mom used to bring me, when Howard was, uh…in some of his dicier moments. And sometimes we’d just relax, too. Recover from…knowing him.”

Peter is just kind of staring at him, because it always takes him off guard when Tony starts talking about Howard. They’re close enough now that he hears stories about his personal life all the time—his growing up, his insane college years with Rhodey, meeting Pepper meeting Happy and everything in between, but Howard is still…something they don’t really talk about, past flippant comments about Tony striving to be a better father figure than he ever was.

“Then I’m glad you brought us here,” Peter says, his voice cracking a little bit. “I’m glad you brought me here.” And in his head he hears I’m glad you brought me back. Because he thinks about that all the time.

Everyone’s back because of you, Peter. He never gave up on bringing you back. It was about saving you.

Tony looks like he’s about to say something else when there’s a bunch of rustling in the trees below them, and a loud thump, and more rustling. They both peer over the railing, and Peter can see the trees moving, but not anything else.

They share a wary look.

“Probably just a skunk,” Tony says.

“Oh, great.”

“Or maybe a band of feral cats.”

“Okay that’s better. Hopefully not too feral. Like, I hope they’re receptive to petting.”

They keep staring down at the trees, but it all seems quiet again.

Tony and Pepper have one room, Peter, MJ and Ned have the one in the middle, and May and Happy are on the end in a single room together even though Peter is refusing to acknowledge what that means or what might be going on in there. Tony mentioned that the rooms were dated, but they feel more like what a royal castle might look like inside, and for the longest time Peter is worried about wrinkling up the sheets. And then eventually it’s Ned’s snoring keeping him awake.

And then, when he’s finally mostly asleep—

“Peter.”

MJ’s voice. Peter’s in the bed with Ned and she got the other huge bed all to herself, but she sounds like she’s right next to him. He turns over onto his side, towards her voice, and then she’s—

On the ground right next to his face—

He startles a little bit, and she grabs his hand.

“MJ what—”

“There’s someone in the room.”

She’s whispering, and his heart speeds up a little bit. What the hell? There’s no way.

“Are you sure it’s not Happy?” Peter asks, as Ned lets out a rip of a snore. “Sometimes he likes to do perimeter checks—”

“It’s not Happy!” she whisper-yells.

Peter blinks, and she’s already pulling the sheets off him and yanking him out of bed, and he feels like he’d be more paranoid if something was actually happening, like he’d feel it pulsing and burning in his head, and she’s tugging on him and they’re stumbling over to the wall and—

“MJ—MJ—”

She flips on the light—

And Peter only sees him briefly—a man, standing over by the bathroom, and Peter barely gets to see what he looks like before the lights go out again.

But he wasn’t Happy he wasn’t Tony he wasn’t supposed to be here, and Peter’s heart rockets into his throat and he hears MJ gasp and he hears feet moving and Ned is still snoring, and Peter rushes towards where the man was and tries to catch him tries to fight, but he only meets open air.

MJ yanks the door open and she’s already running out into the hallway, yelling Tony’s name, yelling for Peter to follow her. And the hall light is streaming into their room now, and Peter looks around, breathing hard, trying to find the guy—

Nothing. Nothing.

Nobody’s here.

Ned is still snoring.

Tony stands next to Peter while the manager shows them the video footage. He watches their doors, completely still and closed from the hallway cameras, and then he watches MJ race out, and Tony and Happy run in a few minutes later. Followed by Pepper and May a few minutes after that. And then Ned finally looming out into the hallway, still half asleep.

“As you can see,” the manager says. “No one entered the room.”

Peter can feel Tony’s anger simmering beside him, and he takes it as a compliment that Tony is all-in on believing that they saw someone, even though he didn’t see him himself.

“Can I get the outside view again?” Tony asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Of course, Mr. Stark.”

They switch to the outside view again, which they’ve already seen about three times. The cameras aren’t great out there, and Happy found out they’re in the process of an upgrade. Peter can see their floor from a distance, he sees a little flash of light that they can’t identify, and then nothing else. No one scaling the building. Not in a way they can see, anyway.

“When will the upgrade be complete?” Tony asks, his tone clipped.

“After your stay, sir, unfortunately.”

Tony huffs, and doesn’t say anything else, and he turns and takes Peter’s arm and leads him to the door. They walk out into the hallway, where MJ and Ned quickly back up.

“Don’t need to listen through the wall,” Tony says.

“Uh, we weren’t,” MJ says. “We were just—”

“Looking at the wallpaper,” Ned says. “It’s—so cool.”

“Uh huh,” Tony says. He moves so they’re in a little circle, and he grips Peter’s shoulder. “Do you want to leave?” he asks, looking around at the three of them. “Because we can leave. We can go somewhere else, figure something else out. Or we can move rooms, we can go down to the Grove Lodge so we can all be closer together—we can do whatever we want.”

Ned’s eyes go wide. “I mean, I didn’t see anything, I was sleeping—”

“It’s fine,” MJ says, fast, glancing at Peter. “I feel like we—Peter and I must have been—I mean, we’re—everything that happened, we’re always thinking about it, and Mysterio was about like—making us think we were seeing things that weren’t there or were there but different—it’s fine. Joint hallucination. Or maybe I made him think he saw something because I was saying I saw something.”

That would normally be a Tony joke cue, but he just looks at her intently. “You don’t have to make excuses,” he says. “I don’t want you guys feeling…unsafe. Despite the presence of, uh—enhanced individuals. Unnamed.”

“It’s okay,” MJ says, and she looks at Peter and nods.

Tony looks at him too. And Peter knows that if he said anything about being worried, Tony would move them in an instant.

What the hell did he see?

Were they really just tired?

Did he think he saw something because MJ thought she saw something?

“It’s okay,” he says, slowly, because…he isn’t entirely sure. But MJ seems sure and Peter doesn’t want to blow up the trip if they were just in a PTSD-addled nightmare. It is their first real vacation since that shit with Beck happened, it still feels like a knife in his gut sometimes.

“You sure?” Tony asks, and he shakes Peter’s shoulder a little bit.

Peter looks at MJ, and she nods at him.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’m sure.”

They go back to bed after that without any more incidents, but Peter mostly stays awake, staring off into the darkness. MJ is awake too, through a lot of the night, and they text because Ned is sleeping and snoring like there’s nothing wrong and there’s never been anything wrong, ever.

I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.

I wouldn’t let anything happen to you either. Nerd :)

Over breakfast, Tony lets them know that Happy is setting up Friday to do sweeps and is doing his own personal perimeter checks.

“I want him to enjoy his break too though,” Peter says, pushing his waffle around on the plate.

“He’s enjoying it,” May says, through a mouthful of eggs.

Peter frowns at her. “I don’t like that. I don’t—I don’t need—”

She shrugs. “Well.”

“Okay, Miss Kiss and Tell,” Tony says, laughing as Pepper sits down next to him. “But it’s good. He’s on it, and I’m on it too.”

“Here,” MJ says, coming back from the buffet and sitting down next to Peter. She puts a cinnamon bun on his plate, smiling at him. “They just brought them out. Ned is trying to barter for more.”

“They can’t deny him,” Pepper says. “It’s all inclusive.”

“Exactly,” Tony says. “And after last night, we should be getting extra—I still think they sent someone in to check on something and didn’t want to admit it. I’m not gonna go all I’d like to speak to the manager on them, even though I did—do that—but either way—”

Peter hasn’t landed anywhere on it yet. He keeps trying to think back on it, trying to remember exactly what he saw. His spider sense, newly minted, is usually pretty bang on if something isn’t right, if he feels like he’s in danger, but he’d just woken up, he’s foggy in the mornings sometimes—

He figures his mind was just playing tricks on him. But MJ too?

She rubs his leg, like she knows he's agonizing over it, and he reaches down and holds her hand.

“Okay,” Ned says, walking back over holding a plate. “They let me take five of them. They’re all really warm and gooey, I feel like this is a promising start to the day.”

Peter isn’t exactly a spa guy, so he doesn’t join May and Pepper when they decide to go there, even though he feels like it might help him if he ever figured out how to relax. But going there is supposed to help him relax, so how can he ever relax enough to get to the point of going there—either way, he goes out onto the lake with Tony and Ned and MJ.

MJ and Peter both get their own kayaks, and Ned and Tony are in a canoe.

“He wouldn’t get into one of these,” Tony yells. “Honestly, if Happy’s not still doing security shit, he’s probably golfing. He’s terrible at it and he never likes to do it when anybody he knows is around. I’ll message him in a little bit and make sure but that’s probably where he is. Ned. You have to keep that thing on just in case we turn over.”

Peter snorts, looking back at them, and he sees Tony adjusting Ned’s lifejacket on his shoulders.

“Happy’s just afraid of racing,” Peter yells, cutting his oar through the water. “MJ remember when—”

“Yes,” she says, a little out ahead of him, and she’s already laughing. “I don’t even know why he was trying to chase you in New York traffic. While you were swinging in the air above him. You didn’t have any cars in your way, nothing was stopping you—”

Peter snorts again, bending over and laughing a little bit. “He was so mad. He didn’t talk to me for a week. He made me talk to Friday specifically.”

“I gave him shit for that!” Tony yells. “He shouldn’t have been trying to chase you. The gas leak had nothing to do with you. He’s always tossing blame around willy nilly.”

“Yeah he still blames me for the time those columns collapsed on that old garbage building,” Ned says. “A line of code can’t do that, that building was old I didn’t do anything there was no way he should have yelled at me at all let alone for twenty minutes—”

“He’s just dramatic,” Tony says.

“He just gets worried,” Peter says, glancing over his shoulder at their boat. And Ned makes big eyes at him, because yeah, uh, they’ve seen why he gets worried. They’ve dealt with why he gets worried. And now, after last night, Peter feels like he’s making himself worried. He needs to stop, they’ve already moved past it, they’re still here, it’s all fine.

“Yeah, I imbued him with a worrying virus that will never be cured,” Tony says. “And now the next generation has to deal with it. Here we are.”

Peter shakes his head, smiling. He’s gotta relax. The sun is shining on the lake bright and beautiful, and May is actually getting a massage for the first time in years and everything is fine. It’s fine.

He hears Tony chastising Ned again about his life jacket, gently, and Peter starts rowing out and around the outside of the lake. They’re the only ones out here right now, and he wonders how long that’s gonna last. He wonders if that’s something the resort set up, because it’s Tony, because of what happened last night, because Happy’s been intimidating people, and Peter simultaneously appreciates it and balks against the special treatment. But he’s with Tony, he should know it’s gonna happen.

He feels like he’s going a little faster than he should be going based on the way he’s rowing, like he’s really moving along. He glances over at MJ and she’s even further away from him, moving in the direction of the hotel.

“We’re not racing yet!” he yells, and he feels like Happy—constantly worried. But he’s worried about her in a different way and actually starting things with her in Europe made the whole thing worth it in a way, and now they’re together and it’s amazing but he’s just so worried all the time.

And now he’s stopped rowing all together, and he should be slowing down, but he’s still moving. Moving….fast. Maybe even getting faster.

Should that be happening? He doesn’t really kayak. He shifts around a little bit and looks down, and feels a little bit tucked in here.

“Hey!” Tony yells. “You’re moving like you have a motor on you!”

Peter’s brows furrow, because he is, and he’s not rowing, and he should have lost any propulsion at this point, and he looks up and he sees MJ looking back at him, and she’s not moving anymore, and he glances back and both Tony and Ned look concerned—

And he gets the worst feeling in his chest, like an alarm, like his spidey sense but more warped and panicked, and he tries to get up without toppling over, because the kayak is still moving for no reason, speeding along and it’s going faster and faster. He drops his oar, and balances precariously for a few seconds before he leaps into the water.

Bubbles all around him, and muffled calls of his name—

And he’s only submerged for a couple seconds, because of the life jacket pulling him back to the surface, and he comes up just in time to watch the empty kayak lift up into the air, careening into the forest and disappearing into the trees.

And he floats there, treading water, staring.

“What the fuck?” Ned yells. “Peter? Peter?”

“Peter!” MJ yells.

“Pete, we’re coming!” Tony yells. “Hold on!”

But Peter is just sort of. Staring. Staring off, at where the kayak disappeared. He stares over there. He stares.

No thoughts, just. Insane.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Peter asks, his voice squeaking. “Is that—MJ you should probably—you shouldn’t be in there if you’re not, uh, prepared to go—flying—did anybody see it explode? Did it explode? Or did it just shatter, uh, well, wooden—wooden kayak, was it wooden? Or plastic? Either way I bet it’s not a full kayak anymore—”

He feels himself being lifted out of the water, and it’s Tony pulling him into the boat. He doesn’t know how they got here so fast but to be honest a kayak just went full fighter jet on him so he can’t be that confused.

His shock has him gripped and he just sort of lays there like a rag doll as Tony and Ned pull him up, and he sees MJ rowing over to them. Thankfully, she’s still in her kayak, and it’s not—flying through the air.

“Hey, hey,” Tony says, once Peter isn’t in the water anymore. He’s got both arms around him, and Peter is laying against his chest, and Tony is patting his cheek and trying to peer around and meet his eyes. Ned has his hands on Peter’s knees and he’s just staring at him.

“I just got a defective one,” Peter says, pointing over at the forest. “It’s okay. It was just—a flying one, we didn’t make sure we didn’t get a flying one. I hope MJ doesn’t have a flying one and it’s just not like. On a time delay I don’t know. MJ, just—hurry over here—” He waves her over. He wants her to hurry up.

“Peter,” Tony says, and he pats Peter’s chest. “Are you alright? Did you twist anything when you jumped out, can you breathe—”

“Are kayaks supposed to do that?” Peter asks, feeling like he can hear his own voice echoing everywhere. “I didn’t think that was, uh, the case—”

“It’s not the case,” Ned says. “No. It’s not. It’s not the case.”

“Peter.”

MJ finally rolls up alongside them—

“I think you should get out of there,” Peter says, pointing at her. “It’s unsafe—”

“Something is going on,” MJ says, and she’s not looking at Peter. She’s looking at Tony.

Tony loves this kid, and this is supposed to be a fucking vacation. Tony loves this kid, and he believed him when he thought someone was in his room, even if the hotel was trying to sway them away from the idea. Tony loves this kid, and he just had to watch him abandon his kayak because said kayak was lifting off and destroying itself somewhere on the property. And kayaks don’t just fucking do that.

Tony stands close to Happy, well into his personal space. He’s got his hands on his hips, like a stern stance is gonna bring him any closer to an answer, and Happy sighs.

“I’ve done ten sweeps,” he says. “There’s nothing going on. There’s nobody here that isn’t supposed to be here. We even looked at the remains of the goddamn kayak and I didn’t find anything wrong with it.”

“There was something wrong with it,” Tony says. “It was flying. It was flying, speed wise, without Pete even rowing, and then it was flying, literally, after he had to abandon ship.”

“I know. It was in a million pieces.”

Tony sighs. They moved down to the Grove Lodge after it happened. Nobody told Pepper and May why, because Peter was insisting on not telling May, and he was also insisting on not leaving even though Tony wanted to leave, because if they left then they were leaving danger behind for the poor unassuming Mohonk guests. And if they leave, danger will probably follow them anyway, and Tony doesn’t know what move to make.

He’s upset, because this was supposed to be a relaxing break for all of them, but especially for Peter, after everything he’s goddamn gone through. He’s upset because this place felt like his place, his haven, a place where he could get away and be secluded and safe, and now something is pursuing them here. Something is trying to hurt them.

“You haven’t found anything?” Tony presses. “Nothing?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Happy says, and he glances back at the front door of the lodge again. “I’m still looking, I’m not giving up, and I think we should be better located down here because we rented out the whole house and I told them not to come in for room service or cleaning or anything. I know we lose the nice high-up view—”

“It’s fine,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s afraid to even be discussing this in public. Anybody could be anywhere listening.

He doesn’t like feeling like he can’t protect these kids.

“It looks like they’re targeting Peter,” Tony says, as quietly as he can. “And I can’t tell if that’s because of me, that they think—I mean the whole goddamn world thinks he’s my love child at this point, thinks May is my secret mistress or the sister of his secret mother, God knows, I don’t know what the most recent story is. But I can’t tell if they’re targeting him because of me or because of the other thing—”

“And the other thing is worse—the spider thing—”

“I didn’t specify on purpose, Hap,” Tony says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Right, right—the innocuous other thing—”

“We’re lucky we got out of Europe with the other thing intact—”

“Yeah,” Happy says, shaking his head, and Tony wishes he had been there with him, had been there period. He would have torn Beck in half had he laid eyes on him.

Why do they always target people he loves? Why not him? Blow him up. Kidnap him. But he guesses he’s been there already. He guesses they’ve done all that and it’s old hat to these assholes to go to him directly.

But this could be about Spider-Man too. There could be people that know who he is. People always find out, no matter how hard Tony tries, and Peter has made plenty of his own enemies. His own gallery of rogues looking to take him down.

“Just don’t tell May, if she asks,” Tony says.

“Oh, and don’t tell Pepper either?” Happy asks, in that stupid voice he uses to make fun of Tony. Tony glares, and Happy glares back. “They know by now something’s going on. They’re not dumb. They’re just not saying anything. But May will beat someone to death with anything she can get her hands on and so will Pepper, so maybe we should be sticking close to them.”

Tony sighs. “I just wanted—”

“I know—”

“And now—”

“I know,” Happy says. “We’re on it. We know it’s real, now, even if these people won’t cop to anything. I’m in their walls. Literally. Maybe I’m doing some things I shouldn’t be.”

Tony steps up onto the porch. “Don’t even tell me.”

“I won’t. But maybe I am.”

“Ned, why are you in here while I’m in the bathtub?”

“She’s in here!”

“I’m dating her.”

“Wow, that’s great,” Ned says, not making any move to get up from his spot on the gold lounge chair. “That’s great, I see how things are going. I see what direction we’re heading in.”

Peter scoffs. He warmed up a long time ago, and he’s getting really pruny, but he doesn’t want to get out just yet. He feels like something is gonna happen if he gets out. Like it’s all gonna start up again and maybe the house is gonna explode or their fridge is gonna grow arms and start trying to fight them or something.

And he isn’t lazy. He’s always ready to fight.

Maybe he’s a little lazy. But not usually. He thought Europe was gonna be a Spider-Man free trip and look how that turned out. And he thought this was going to be calm and relaxing but now it’s become suspicious. And worrying. And he’s torn between leaving and staying and telling May and not telling May and he doesn’t know if she’s in danger too and sometimes he feels like everybody would be safer if he lived out in Alaska somewhere and nobody knew him.

Peter sighs, and MJ rubs his shoulder. Ned is still giving him that look and Peter ignores that look. He’s never been in a little claw-foot tub like this before. Tony doesn’t even have these in the compound. And a bubble bath? He hasn’t had a bubble bath since he was a kid and Ben was still alive. It almost distracts him from… whatever the hell is going on here.

“We’ve got two more days,” MJ says. “And we’re sticking it out.”

“We’re sticking it out,” Peter says. “I got my webshooters, I guess I’ll wear them if we go hiking tomorrow.”

“Someone is gonna push you off a cliff,” Ned says, raising his eyebrows.

“We’re all going together, so nobody is gonna push anybody,” MJ says. She leans down and presses a kiss to the corner of Peter’s mouth. “Okay let’s leave so he can—get out.”

They both get up, and Peter watches as they argue.

“Oh, you’re not gonna help him?” Ned asks.

“Oh, you’re not?” MJ replies, nudging him as they move towards the door. “I thought that was your job, guy in the chair—”

They have dinner in the main building, and Peter watches his back. He only jumps once, when someone drops a tray full of plates, and he winces at the shattering and runs over there to help clean it up before they usher him away. They visit the horses in the stables, and Peter checks every nook and cranny to make sure somebody isn’t hiding in there. They watch May and Happy bust into the late jazz class that’s going on in the ballroom and Peter forgets to do anything because he feels like his face is going to catch on fire from all the blushing.

And he remembers to be paranoid when they get back to the Grove Lodge, and he can tell May is suspicious and they’re all watching him like hawks and he gets worried that Tony is the real target of whatever is happening here and he’s just a distraction.

He can’t let anything happen to Tony. He can’t let anything happen to any of them.

Or maybe nothing is happening. And nobody was in their room. And the kayak was just—Parker luck. Too much strength, or something.

He wakes up around three in the morning because he can’t stay asleep, and he sits down in the ‘great room’ and stares out into the darkness of the night.

“Don’t jump,” Tony’s voice says, but Peter jumps anyway, twisting around and seeing him on the stairs. “You jumped! I said don’t jump! You heard me, I said it—”

Peter snorts, shaking his head. “You can’t just tell me not to jump and expect me not to jump—especially if you’re stepping out of the shadows—”

“There’s no shadows,” Tony says, stepping off the landing. “No shadows. I’m fully illuminated—”

Peter sighs. “You can’t sleep either?”

“Nah,” Tony says, walking over quietly. “Sleep and I, we have a very contemptuous relationship.” He shakes his head. “I just feel like shit because you can’t have a normal vacation. Whatever the hell is or isn’t going on here. You just deserve—Jesus, a full day, at the least, without something happening you have to question.” He sits down next to Peter and lets out a sigh.

“It’s not your fault. At all.”

“I mean—it might be. We’ve seen Europe as an example of very much my fault.”

Peter narrows his eyes at him. “That wasn’t your fault either. You know it wasn’t your fault, idiots blaming you for their own stupidity is not your fault—”

A huge crash outside. It sounds like one of those big weird planters falling over and knocking into the other planters and then it sounds like a bunch of feet shuffling and this isn’t Parker luck, this isn’t a hallucination, this isn’t a kayak doing non-kayak like things—

They both leap out of their chairs. The noises don’t stop and Tony is immediately stepping in front of Peter and holding his arm out, as if to shield him.

“Kid, go back upstairs—”

“No,” Peter whisper-shouts, grabbing his arm as the two of them move forward very, very slowly towards the back porch doors. “You almost died recently—you’re wearing pajamas and a house coat—”

“You don’t even know what a house coat is—”

Another crash, more skittering feet, and Peter focuses—he can hear separate heartbeats from the hearts he loves in this house. Two of them.

“Tony I’ve got my webshooters on—”

“That doesn’t matter you’re wearing pajamas too you’re not prepared—”

And when they’re just close enough to open the door, there’s a flash of bright white light. And Peter closes his eyes against it, and he can feel Tony turning around, trying to block him from it, and it must be more than just light because he hears a loud bang and the windows are shattering and it feels like a cataclysmic boom is pushing them through the air. The two of them fly backwards, and hit the far wall, and the last thing Peter hears before his head snaps back too far is

GOD DAMMIT ALFIE YOU’RE TWO SECONDS TOO EARLY WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS JUMPING THE—

Peter gasps awake. His gasp echoes, and he sits up, and looks around, and he’s…nowhere.

He scrambles to his feet. He’s alone, and he’s nowhere, there’s nothing but blackness and his ears are popping like he’s high up and he sees—

He sees—

A kayak? Flying through the darkness?

He watches it, cascading like a majestic bird, and he stares at it, and then it just—blinks out of existence. Like it was never even there.

Maybe he’s just dreaming. Maybe he never even woke up and went downstairs and talked to Tony. Maybe none of that happened at all. Maybe he’s still asleep and Ned is snoring somewhere and MJ is saying not beets in the salad in her sleep again and maybe—

God dammit, Alfie, I swear. I swear I’m gonna whack you in the head.

Peter spins around, in the complete darkness. He can see himself, his own body and his hands and his pajamas and his webshooters, like he’s got a spotlight on him. “Hello?” he calls. “What the hell is—whoever that is—”

And then the London Bridge appears huge and massive above his head and he starts to duck, nearly collapsing in on himself, and there’s no way this is actually happening this isn’t real and he shoots a web at it and it goes right through it and it hits—somewhere—somewhere in the darkness, it sticks, it—

ALFIE I THINK THEY’RE BOTH—

I KNOW IT I CAN TELL OKAY I’M NOT MORONIC—

It clicks in Peter’s head. This is someone using Beck’s tech. It’s someone using Beck’s tech. That’s what this is. This is some idiots using his tech and not knowing how to use it properly and—

Peter starts yelling. “Whoever you are, you’re—you’re not good at this—this isn’t gonna work out for you—”

The bridge disappears, and Peter starts running. His spidey sense is going berserk, and he can’t tell where the danger is, what direction, how far. He can’t tell what’s underneath his feet, it feels—crunchy, and a little old, maybe? All he knows is he needs to get the hell out of this illusion. It feels unstable.

He starts shooting his webs everywhere, and most of them fly away without hitting anything, and that makes him wonder where the hell he could be with so much space—

STARK IS DOING SOMETHING WITH HIS AI—

Peter’s heart lurches.

“Tony!” Peter yells, still running, and he holds his hands out and tries to find something, anything, and he shoots webs fucking everywhere, and then—

SHIT—

He runs right into someone. And they push him off, and then he gets a brass-knuckled fist to the face before he can get a hit off of his own. He stumbles backwards through the sharp pain, wrestling with the instinct to just fight even though it’s only darkness all around him and he can’t see who the hell he’s fighting with.

Instead, he spits out a line of blood and keeps running.

Pulsing, face pulsing, beating with ripped skin and metal—

A massive kayak blips into the air briefly, and then it disappears.

Peter narrows his eyes, shaking his head, and what the hell is with the kayak—

He runs smack into something, like a train going accordion against a wall, and he stumbles backwards again, clutching at his crushed nose and trying to stay on his feet. The punch and the goddamn running into whatever that was has him dizzy, has him mangled and seeing stars in this manufactured darkness and then he hears Tony hollering his name at the top of his lungs—

“Peter! Peter!”

He sounds like he’s behind him—

“Tony!” Peter yells, all nasally. “Tony! Hey I’m over here—”

He turns around, changing his trajectory. And the darkness blips, breaking in large pixels, and Peter keeps running towards Tony’s voice and the darkness blips again, turns bright white, and then—

The illusion, or lack of one, breaks all at once, and Peter can see—

He’s on the roof of the main Mohonk building—he can see the lake, and the forest, and the mountains, settled in the calm of the night that feels decidedly not calm for him in particular, and he skids to a halt because he’s nearly running off the roof—

And he feels someone grab his arm and tug him back, and he spins around and it’s Tony, thank God it’s Tony—

“Hey!” Tony yells, and Peter looks at him and grabs his arm and they both look up and—

There are just two guys standing there. Two guys, both on the shorter side, definitely unkempt, and they’re holding a little gray box and they’re both just hitting it and hitting it and hitting it—

Peter aims his webs and just starts shooting. He feels like he shoots the most amount of webs he’s ever shot. The two guys fly backwards and get stuck to one of the upraised red parts of the roof, and they’re both gritting their teeth and trying to get out like they’re Scooby Doo villains.

“They must be associated with Beck,” Peter says, trying to catch his breath. His entire mouth tastes like blood. “They’ve gotta be.”

“I figured, with their shitty illusion attempts,” Tony says, and he sounds angrier than Peter’s ever heard him. He glances at Peter, starts to glance away, but then he looks at him again, fast, his brows furrowing severely. “Jesus Christ, you’re—bleeding everywhere—”

“Yeah, it feels—it doesn’t feel good—they didn’t hit you?” Peter asks.

Tony takes Peter’s chin gently, tilting his head and wincing. “No,” he says. “They didn’t goddamn hit me—”

“Well, the nose was from—running into something—I think that, uh, I think that’s a chimney over there, I think I ran into it—you didn’t run into anything—”

“No, I didn’t—”

“Oh, that’s great—”

Tony looks like he’s about to breathe fire, and he lets go of Peter and starts stomping towards the webbed bad guys.

“Why the hell would you be loyal to a moron like him?” Tony asks. “Beck? He couldn’t even keep a job at Stark Industries—”

“Yeah, buddy, because you stole his idea,” one of them hollers. They’re both still wiggling around, trying to get out.

Tony sneers. “He worked for my company executing an idea I designed and commissioned and decided to weaponize it when it was created to help deal with trauma and mental health—have you never had a job, an occupation—you know what, I don’t care, I don’t care—”

“Well he didn’t say that, he didn’t say any of that exactly,” the other guy says, the one with the longer hair. “He just said—”

“Nothing he says is true,” Peter yells, wincing when he touches his nose. “That guy is a liar, and a freak, and you believed him enough to follow us on vacation and—screw up every attempt you made to kill us—it was one of you guys in my room—”

“No, that was just testin’, that was just—we was just testin’, it was—you guys acted really dramatic—”

Peter scoffs. ��Dramatic?”

And the two guys start giving each other nasty looks, even though they’re webbed shoulder to shoulder. “Maybe if you hadn’t dropped that dart gun in the lobby when they first got here—”

“Maybe if you hadn’t fallen out of the tree—”

“Maybe if you had made the goddamn kayak explode instead of fly—”

“Stop!” Tony yells, cutting his hands through the air like an angry teacher. “Stop. Stop. I’ve never wanted to hear Boston accents less. Stop. You’re arrested. We’ve arrested you.”

“You can’t do that, the Avengers aren’t cops,” the shorter one says. He’s got a tattoo on his neck that says GOLDBARES with a Haribo bear icon and Peter squints at it and he feels like his entire face hurts worse just from seeing it.

“You’ve committed several crimes,” Tony says, still pointing at them. “It’s—my personal security already—”

There’s a click. A very loud click. And both guys clam up real quick.

“What was that?” Tony asks.

Peter’s spidey sense is—ratcheting up, clear into his teeth—

“Tony!” he yells, because it feels like something is coming, and, just like in the Grove Lodge, there’s a big boom and they’re blown backwards by a seismic wave—

And they’re launched off the roof, and it feels like they’re moving in slow motion, through the dead dark of the night and the reflection of the lake, and Peter screams like a moron. He just screams, and then he shoots a web right at Tony and pulls him in with it, and then he shoots a web at the building and swings back around with him.

They don’t land well, because Peter’s brain is on the backburner and there’s nothing on the front, and they roll in a heap, Peter tucking his face into Tony’s shoulder. When they come to a halt Tony pulls back, sitting up and touching Peter’s cheek.

“You in there?”

“I’m in there. Here,” Peter says, and he feels like he’s bleeding worse, somehow. “Did they blow up? Did those guys blow up? It sounded like they blew up.”

“We didn’t blew up we’re still over here but maybe I wish we woulda blew up because—”

And they start shouting at each other, but Peter tries to tune them out.

“Thank God you brought those things,” Tony says, tapping Peter’s wrist. “Thanks, bud.”

Peter blows out a breath, shaking his head and still just. Laying there. “Oh yeah, no problem. All good, just—completely normal.”

Tony sighs, and his eyes cut to the side. “Any other late traps ready to explode?” he yells, over his shoulder.

They stop arguing with each other. There’s a brief silence.

“Uh. I honestly got no idea. We just brought the whole bag of tricks, I don’t know. There’s shit everywhere.”

Tony looks at Peter, slowly shaking his head.

“Fantastic,” Peter says. “Wonderful.”

“So, you weren’t in there watching us when we were getting our nails done in the spa?” Pepper asks. “I thought it was weird. I told May it was weird. That was these guys—”

Tony scoffs, and he feels like he instantly gets a headache, a migraine—

“Of course I wasn’t—of course—you thought I was just standing there? Staring at you in the spa? You didn’t think that was out of the ordinary—”

Pepper gives him a look, and Peter laughs from the hammock behind them.

“Yeah, when I went to get my nails done later you kept walking in and out,” Happy says. “But I thought you were just—I don’t know what I thought. But then you told me about the kayak thing later and I thought—well—I attributed it to that.”

“Happy went and got his nails done,” Ned whispers, somewhere behind Tony, too. “We could do that?”

“Who’s stopping you?” MJ says, quiet.

“Well, the whole—the whole situation stopped me, I guess, but I didn’t really think about it—”

“I’m glad it wasn’t you staring at us,” May says, standing near the railing and peering out into her binoculars. “Pepper said it was normal, but it was concerning me.”

Tony glares at Pepper, but she just bats her eyes at him like the picture of innocence.

“Sometimes Peter does that to me,” May says. “Just stares at me from behind a Lucky Charms box in the kitchen. That’s how I know something’s wrong.”

Tony snorts, and he turns around as soon as Peter starts protesting.

“I do not!” Peter says, shifting around in the hammock. “I do not do that.”

“It sounds like something you’d do,” Ned says.

“You’ve done that to me,” MJ says, clearing her throat.

Peter huffs, and everyone laughs at him, and Tony tries not to laugh too hard, because this started with his own wife acting like she thinks he’s capable of acting like some weirdo who stands around staring at people.

Tony sighs. He turns around, walking over and peering down at Peter. He braces his hand on the tree his hammock is attached to. “How’s the nose?” Tony asks.

“Broken.”

“It’s not broken anymore, we reset it.”

“It knows it was broken. I know too.”

He’s still got the butterfly bandages on the bridge of his nose, and it’s bruised and angry looking. He’s got a burst blood vessel in his eye, and the white part is dipped with red. Tony feels like shit because he got out of the whole ordeal relatively unscathed. Just a few bumps and bruises. Some whiplash. But Peter broke his nose again.

They hiked up to the Sky Top Tower, and the kids wanted to hang out once they got up here. They all thought Peter had earned the hammock. Happy refused to come, and he’s in charge of the security situation, anyway, so he couldn’t exactly abandon it to do a hike he didn’t want to do.

They had to clear the whole damn resort out to get rid of any remaining traps and illusions. Tony had to bring in a whole team. Rhodey made fun of him on the phone when Tony told him, laughing for a good five minutes.

And sure, it’s stupid. Those guys are stupid and they had no idea what the hell they were doing, they couldn’t even attack properly. But that’s what happens when stupid people follow more powerful stupid people. They hold grudges. They make up shit in their heads. They cause problems.

And it’s never really funny when Peter is bloody at the end of it.

“I feel like I’m sinking,” Peter says, his brows furrowing.

He reaches out his hand, and Tony takes it, and he pulls him out of the hammock as MJ and Ned push on his shoulders. Peter groans like he’s a hundred years old, and Tony claps him on the shoulder.

May looks away from her binoculars. “How you doing, honeybunch?”

“Fine,” Peter says, letting go of Tony’s hand. “Incredible. Amazing.”

“Just a normal day for a hero,” Pepper says. “MJ, you’ll get used to it, May, you’ll never get used to it—”

“And Ned,” Ned says to himself. “You will be there every step of the way.”

Tony looks at Peter, and he wants to apologize. For all of it, for being a hero at all, for the goddamn radioactive spider at Oscorp and everything that came after. For stupid morons like Quentin Beck, who know the quickest way to hurt Tony is to attack this kid he’s nearly adopted as his own.

He doesn’t know what the hell to say, because Peter wouldn’t accept his apologies anyway. He never would. Peter is just appreciative of every moment. Even if the moments aren’t ideal.

“We’ve got the whole place to ourselves,” Tony says. “How about we have a pie bar when we head back down there? I can tip the kitchen staff two hundred percent when I ask. I don’t think anybody would be pissed off.”

He sees May smiling softly at him over Peter’s shoulder. Trust in her eyes, even after all this bullshit.

“Can there be…at least four key limes?” Peter asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Four or five,” Tony says, ruffling his hair. “Or six or seven. Depending on the number of ovens in the joint.”

Peter grins at him, still bright and lively, despite everything.

Maybe they can salvage this vacation yet.

#iron dad #iron man #irondad #irondad fic #marvel fic #peter parker #spider-man #tony stark #iron dad fic #works by iron_spider

107 notes · View notes

queen-helaenas-pet-spider · 5 months ago

Text

Listen, I know it's SUPER out of character for him, but I CANNOT stop thinking about what would happen if Sandor crowned Sansa the Hand's Tourney's Queen Of Love And Beauty instead of Loras?!?!

Like all I can see is him getting a wreath of flowers {bonus points if they're blue winter roses, the same flowers that Rhaegar gave to her aunt Lyanna before shit hit the fan}, making eye contact with Cersei {who's narcissistic ass is GRINNING}, only for him to just turn back around and walk directly towards Sansa, the supposed younger and more beautiful queen that will take everything from Cersei?!?! It would be so funny to watch, but it's also a HUGE risk for him to take for two reasons:

1. USUALLY the women that get crowned QOLAB are either the wives, fiancées, or crushes of the men that crown them. It's no secret that Sandor is attracted to Sansa in MANY ways, but he's ashamed of himself for thinking such things about her, which is one of the reasons why he tries to scare Sansa off. Also, a man crowning a woman while he or she is either already engaged or married is a BIG scandal {cough cough Rhaegar crowning Lyanna instead of his wife, Elia cough cough}.

But surely, if Loras could get away with it, then so could Sandor, right?! WRONG!

The biggest difference between Loras doing it and Sandor doing it is that Loras wasn't the crown prince's bodyguard. Sandor was. Plus, at that time I don't think that Sansa and Joffrey's engagement was known by the rest of the public, they just knew that Ned Stark became the new Hand of the King, and brought his daughters with him. Can't blame Loras for not knowing, but Sandor knew.

2. Him crowning Sansa would instantly put a target on both of them {though they were already targets the moment the Lannisters laid eyes on them, but still}. Sansa's life and reputation would be at risk, the Lannisters would accuse Sandor of being a Turncloak, Sansa's lover, or both, he'd be killed, and Sansa would be alone.

So as funny as it would be to see Cersei's face while she's watching her slave crown his queen instead of feeing her ego, I'm glad they didn't have him do that. Cause despite their VERY rocky relationship, Sandor is the ONLY person outside of the Stark's that truly loves and respects Sansa.

27 notes · View notes

thebeesareback · 1 year ago

Text

The big Robert Baratheon thoughts

There are several characters within the ASOIAF universe who could comfortably be the protagonist of their own book/series, and GRRM has spoken about how, when writing a character, he tries to see all the major events through their eyes and how it would have affected their lives. Dany and Oberyn are good examples of this, and a shorter book/series could comfortably have either one of them as the main character. If a fic writer is looking for any inspiration, I think a lot could be drawn from Dany in Vaes Toloro.

Another of them is a character who almost seems like a false protagonist in GOT: King Robert Baratheon. The people who don't know him think he's amazing, the people who do know him despise him. He has a fleshed-out backstory, character and the power to influence the plot in many different ways. Yet he's killed off quickly, and I think the fan community often overlooks him as a simple drunken idiot. So I'd like to dig a little deeper.

Robert's life can easily be sectioned into three parts: pre-rebellion era, the rebellion era and the post-rebellion era. Most of what we see comes from Ned Stark, and later we have flashbacks from Cersei which show a much darker and thoroughly rotten man.

To start: Robert is the first born son of House Baratheon, a clan with significant power and influence. He's exactly the kind of young man the Westerosi patriarchal "might makes right" system rewards -- the sort of son Randyl Tarly would love to have. He's an excellent fighter, charming, good looking ("muscled like a maiden's fantasy", oh Ned). There's also a kindness there. When he's fostered at the Eeire he sends for a gift of oranges for Jon Arryn, and although the fruit goes bad, he's not upset and instead plays with the other teenagers. It's silly and funny and the most childish we ever see him.

He isn't always lovely, of course. In Stannis' memory, Robert is unpleasant. He mocks Stannis' falcon and, therefore, Stannis himself. However, Stannis is a miserable shit, and this comment comes after they've spent years disliking each other, so there's obvious bias. Robert seemed to be happy to be away from his family, and so some alienation from his brothers does make sense. Robert and Stannis go through the ordeal of watching their parents die, and it's understandable that this would cause issues in their relationship. Perhaps that's why they pushed each other away. Having a walking, whining reminder of that trauma can't have been pleasant, and the desire to pretend that everything is ok and ignore problems gets more persistent as the years go on.

The third thing we hear about from Robert's pre-rebellion era is his relationship with Mya Stone. I'm not totally clear on the timeline, so I don't know if it's 1. parents' death > 2. Mya's birth > 3. the rebellion or if 1 and 2 are the other way around. Either way, Robert seems to adore his daughter. Ned thinks about how frequently they visited her, and how much Robert enjoyed spending time with her. In a kinder story, Robert would have always been close to Mya. Then the rebellion starts.

There are, of course, lots of things which lead to the rebellion. I don't think Tywin was going to put up with the Mad King for much longer, and Rhaegar felt the same way. Then you have the coalition between the Starks, Baratheons, Tullys and Arryns, and at some point Varys and "Young Griff" would have popped up. For Robert, though, things were straightforward: he wanted Lyanna, and Rhaegar took her away. He remarks to Ned that "Seven Kingdoms couldn't fill the whole she left". It's clear that he didn't actually know Lyanna that well, and it could easily be argued that the reason he worshipped her memory was a mix of affection for Ned and a desire to return to a time where he wasn't traumatised.

Obviously, war is traumatic. That's kind of the point of the series. Everyone who fought in Robert's Rebellion is changed in some way and the scars, literal and metaphorical, run deep. Stannis broods over his "rewards". Ned misses his sister, brother and father. Catelyn is aware of the loss of her betrothed, and Lady Dustin crystalises her rage. Jamie is ostracised and bitter. Jon Connington promises more violence. The list goes on. The things Robert sees during the campaign clearly change him, and this brings us back to Mya.

One of the key themes of the series, most prominently in the first book, is the idea that the innocent should not be sacrificed. That's why Ned works so hard to protect Jon and why he resigns his handship when Robert wants to kill Dany. Something happened to Robert during the rebellion, where his hatred of the Targaryens solidifies so much that it becomes the only thing he really wants. Other things, like his love of his daughter or the belief that children should be protected, all go and he's left with Tywin Lannister and the corpses of Rhaenys and Aegon.

Robert doesn't have to make peace with the Lannisters. In fact, lots of people (the Starks, the Dornish and the people of King's Landing) would be much happier if he didn't. Tywin ordered a horrific thing, and Robert rewarded him. For me, this is where Robert becomes the man we meet in Game of Thrones. He's so broken inside that he does nothing, and tries to pretend that he's still the person he was as a teenager.

After the rebellion, Robert goes on to have plenty more children. If he loved Mya and wanted to see her all the time, after the rebellion he forgets her. And she's the lucky one! Robert must know that Cersei has his twins drowned, he ignores Barra and Gendry, and he only acknowledges Edric Storm because he has to. Then there are the kids who are legally "his", even if biologically they're not. I don't think we ever see him interact with Tommen or Myrecella, and his relationship with Joffrey isn't good. Sure, Joffrey is a little shit, but you could argue that it's partially because of Robert's treatment. Stannis thinks, at one point, that Robert might have killed Joffrey because he hit him so hard.

Why does Robert detach? Well, there's the trauma, the general depression, the loneliness, the disconnect between *conceiving* children and *the actual children*. I think, as well, there's the knowledge that, by allowing Tywin to get away with the murder of the Targaryen children, he's set a precedent whereby the same thing could easily happen to his own kids. If someone needed to get rid of Robert -- and there are people who would like him gone -- they would come after Joffrey, Tommen and Myrecella, and perhaps his bastards, too. He can't protect them, and it shames his chivalric ideals, so he disconnects, doesn't care, and drinks excessively. It might be a way of dealing with guilt, or a way he protects himself from losing anyone else. Ultimately, Joffrey, Tommen and Myrecella are doomed; Edric only escaped sacrifice because of Pylos and Davos, and might well get mixed up in a Varys/"Young Griff" scheme; all of the bastards in King's Landing are killed; and if Gendry survives, it's because of plot armour. Nobody cares about Mya, really.

There's plenty to say about the Robert/Cersei match. Firstly, I'd like to mention how much I enjoy the show-only scene where the two discuss their marriage. It's heartbreaking, well written and beautifully acted, and gives some depth which makes the experience richer.

None of the Lannisters like Robert, with the exception of Tyrion. Tyrion likes Robert because Cersei doesn't, but their creepy and destructive bond is a whole other issue. Ned thinks that Robert was a man with "big appetites", and a clear desire to be loved. It probably means he wasn't ever going to be a good husband, which Lyanna points out (in a line which I cannot imagine a 14-year old ever saying, but I digress). Robert loved the thrill of the chase and the first few weeks of a relationship, but wasn't willing to really emotionally attach to anyone. Perhaps it's because, like with his children, he had to keep people away in case he lost them, like Lyanna.

Cersei is her own woman and, to be honest, not a very good wife. Robert thinks he would have been happy with Lyanna, Cersei thinks she would have been happy with Rhaegar: both are wrong. She starts her wedding day by having sex with her brother; she regularly cuckolds her husband, and then she finishes off by murdering her husband. You could argue that her behaviour is driven by Robert's physical and sexual abuse, and his emotional distance and obvious disdain. I don't think that's incorrect, per se, I just think there's a nasty mix with the two of them. They're bad alone and worse together. They're a toxic, unhappy, traumatised mix, and a solid argument for Westerosi divorce.

Finally, there's Robert's alcoholism and his love of food. There are a number of reasons for this -- the genre's enthusiasm for descriptions of feasts; parallels with Henry VIII of England; possibly GRRM simply likes adding his favourite meals, similar to how he created House Estermont so there could be turtles, because he had pet turtles. Obesity is the sort of thing that's pretty common in middle age men who used to be very physically active, because they had to eat lots to make up their calorie deficit, and when the exercise stopped, the food continued. As for alcohol, it gives Robert an opportunity to forget his (admittedly plentiful) responsibilities and woes, makes him feel like a hero, and gives him an excuse for his abuse of Cersei. He rapes her, and when she brings it up, he says "it was not me, but the wine", then REACHES FOR A BEER. I'm certainly not qualified to talk about addiction and trauma, so if anyone has thoughts on this, please add a comment.

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the eponymous character snatches the crown at his wife's goading, and then finds that things disintegrate around him. There's a scene in the play where two servants talk about what's going on in Scotland, and one says that two horses fought, and one ate the other. When a monarch is usurped, in literature, nature goes against itself. In real life, revolutions are messy and complicated and difficult. Robert Baratheon fought a rebellion to get his fiance back, whilst others used him and worked alongside him for their own reasons. He was left holding a rotten crown. Abused and abuser, surrounded by toxicity and exuding his own hatred, one could easily create a novel about his disillusionment.

141 notes · View notes

jackoshadows · 2 years ago

Text

GRRM sometimes throws in these nuggets that highlights the unfairness and irony embedded in the world of ASoIaF with characters like Jon Snow and Joffrey Baratheon.

Jon Snow and Arya Stark, separately as characters and their relationship are, for example, clearly written as foils to Joffrey and Sansa as characters and their relationship with each other. One relationship is deep and unconditional, the other is shallow and superficial.

In Arya I, AGoT, Arya disparages Joffrey and defends Jon while Sansa defends Joffrey by disparaging Jon Snow.

She looked at Arya. “What did you think of Prince Joff, sister? He’s very gallant, don’t you think?”

“Jon says he looks like a girl,” Arya said. Sansa sighed as she stitched. “Poor Jon,” she said. “He gets jealous because he’s a bastard.”

“He’s our brother,” Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower room.

“Our half brother,” Sansa corrected, soft and precise. - Arya, AGoT

In the same chapter, GRRM then drives this point further in for readers with prince Joffrey in the practice yard being ‘truly a little shit’ while the bastard Jon and Arya watch and discuss the unfairness of classism and sexism.

“Why aren’t you down in the yard?” Arya asked him. He gave her a half smile.

“Bastards are not allowed to damage young princes,” he said. “Any bruises they take in the practice yard must come from trueborn swords.” “Oh.” Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today, Arya reflected that life was not fair. (---)

“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.”

“The woman is important too!” Arya protested. (---)

Jon shrugged. “Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister.” - Arya, AGoT

The irony of course being that Joffrey is a bastard and Jon is possibly not one as Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son. Even if Jon is a bastard, the irony is that he is a far better person than the prince despite high society deeming it otherwise. This is then extended to when Robert decides to engage Sansa and Joffrey to get an alliance that was supposed to happen with Lyanna and Robert himself.

We were meant to rule together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.” - Eddard, AGoT

As we start the story, without knowing anything about these characters, Sansa and Joffrey is presented to the readers as righting a past wrong. Meanwhile Rhaegar’s son Jon Snow has the closest, most loving bond with Arya Stark, who resembles Lyanna and has her personality.

“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words.

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.”

Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born.

“Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.” He lifted the sword, held it out between them. - Arya, AGoT

These similarities are first mentioned by Ned when he and Arya discuss Needle, the sword that Lyanna’s son Jon secretly gifts her. Ned recollects the painful past with Lyanna and Rhaegar around Needle, a symbol of the bond between Jon and Arya.

We see Jon/Arya and Sansa/Joffrey as foils when Arya’s love for Jon is such that she refuses to betray him even to their father. While Sansa’s love for Joffrey is so great she sides with him against Arya and betrays her father to Cersei.

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”

Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father. - Arya, AGoT

“He prob’ly stole it.”

“I did not!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a thief. - Arya, ACoK

After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in pain, his breath ragged. Sansa knelt beside him. “Joffrey,” she sobbed. “Oh, look what they did, look what they did. My poor prince. Don’t be afraid. I’ll ride to the holdfast and bring help for you.” Tenderly she reached out and brushed back his soft blond hair. - Sansa, AGoT

Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. “Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them.”

“It’s not the same,” Sansa said. “The Hound is Joffrey’s sworn shield. Your butcher’s boy attacked the prince.” - Arya, AGoT

“Littlefinger made the arrangements. We needed Slynt’s gold cloaks. Eddard Stark was plotting with Renly and he’d written to Lord Stannis, offering him the throne. We might have lost all. Even so, it was a close thing. If Sansa hadn’t come to me and told me all her father’s plans . . .”

Tyrion was surprised. “Truly? His own daughter?” Sansa had always seemed such a sweet child, tender and courteous.

“The girl was wet with love. She would have done anything for Joffrey, until he cut off her father’s head and called it mercy. That put an end to that.” -Tyrion, ACoK

“Did you see the boy attack Prince Joffrey?” Lord Beric Dondarrion asked the Hound.

“I heard it from the royal lips. It’s not my place to question princes.” Clegane jerked his hands toward Arya. “This one’s own sister told the same tale when she stood before your precious Robert.” - Arya, ASoS

The same holds true for the way Sansa has a low opinion of characters like Jon and Tyrion by nature of their birth and looks while holding high stock in the knights and high born lords and princes of the songs she loves, like Joffrey because he’s so beautiful and handsome.

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. “ - Sansa, AGoT

Sansa thinks that there are no heroes since Joffrey, whom she blindly loved because he was a beautiful highborn prince (soon to be king), turned out to be a ‘little shit’. The people she idealized and loved ended up failing and disappointing her. And yet she fails to look beyond those ideals.

It’s Tyrion who strips Janos Slynt of his power and sends him to the Wall for his betrayal of Ned. It’s Jon who executes Slynt for failing to obey orders and exacts revenge for what was done to Ned. And yet Sansa would never consider them heroes because they don’t fit her ideals and standards of what it means to be a hero.

Meanwhile Arya continues to think of Jon as a mentor and protector who would want her even if her own mother and brother refuse to pay a ransom for her. Her faith in him is steadfast, no matter what.

Alone, she slid through the shadow of the Tower of Ghosts. She walked fast, to keep ahead of her fear, and it felt as though Syrio Forel walked beside her, and Yoren, and Jaqen H’ghar, and Jon Snow. - Arya, ACoK

When at last she slept, she dreamed of home. The kingsroad wound its way past Winterfell on its way to the Wall, and Yoren had promised he’d leave her there with no one any wiser about who she’d been. She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon . . . but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything. - Jon, ACoK

“He’s with the Night’s Watch on the Wall.” Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn’t care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair . . . “Jon looks like me, even though he’s bastard-born. He used to muss my hair and call me ‘little sister.’” Arya missed Jon most of all. Just saying his name made her sad - Arya, ASoS

“I know where we could go,” Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He’ll call me “little sister” and muss my hair. It was a long way, though, and she didn’t think she could get there by herself. She hadn’t even been able to reach Riverrun. “We could go to the Wall.” - Arya, ASoS

Jon/Arya and Joffrey/Sansa act as further foils and the contrast is heightened as we get to ADwD. Sansa becomes the target of Joffrey’s sadistic abuse while she is in KL and Jon Snow breaks his sworn oaths, chooses love over duty and decides to attack the Warden of the North for Arya Stark.

Jon/Arya get the Bael the Bard parallels with Rhaegar/Lyanna as Jon sends ‘Abel the bard’ to steal a Stark Maiden from Winterfell and get her ‘home’ to Jon Snow. This and Jon’s decision to call for war leads to the breaking of 8000 year old oaths of neutrality, mutiny and assassination. In contrast the Stark/Baratheon marriage and alliance never ends up happening, ever. It failed with Lyanna and Robert. It fails with Sansa and Joffrey. While Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son thrives and rises to be Lord Commander of the NW.

Arya looking beyond mere looks and birth, fosters a relationship with Jon Snow and she is rewarded with a love, admiration and loyalty that leads to the Lord Commander of the NW sending two Kings to help her and breaking his sworn oaths. It’s clear that GRRM intended for Jon/Arya to be a stark contrast and a clear foil to Joffrey/Sansa, as a more pure love based on understanding each other for who they are as people, rather on looks and titles.

#Jon Snow #Arya Stark #Needleheart

203 notes · View notes

gwandas · 3 months ago

Note

Okay but what are the top 5 bullet points for hating MCU Spiderman? His arc? The actor? Accuracy?

You probably forgot you sent me this but I DIDN'T. This is a very serious question to be asking me and thus this is probably much longer than you initially bargained for <3

His friend group is ass. MCU MJ and Ned exist to be his yes men, they always help him, they always get along, it sucks and it's boring. People always dog on the Raimi movies because the Peter-MJ-Harry triangle is toxic but honestly that's nothing compared to the drama the original Peter-Gwen-MJ-Harry-Flash had going on. That shit would kill an MCU stan they were SO messy... and that was what made it fun and juicy. Peter's complex interpersonal relationships are so so crucial to Spider-Man. One of the reasons he became so popular is because the Peter Parker part of his story was just as interesting as the Spider-Man part, people loved his personal problems! That's why his supporting cast are just as well known by even casual fans.

Stole too many plot points and personality traits from Miles Morales. For example, see point no. 1, MCU Ned Leeds is literally just Ganke (Miles' best friend) that they slapped a Ned Leeds nametag onto.

Tony Stark and MCU Peter's desperation to be an Avenger. I actually cannot stand the desperation it's pathetic and unbecoming. Comic Peter Parker would tell MCU Tony Stark to go fuck himself on the regular if he pulled the stuff he does in the movies. Spider-Man is also not even close to as fun when he has access to all the toys and funds he could want. Also the first time he meets the Avengers in the comics they literally stalk him trying to get him to join and he keeps going "LEAVE ME ALONE" so I think it's funny MCU Peter is so desperate to be one

The personality could not be worse. One of my favorite things about Peter is that he's a reluctant hero. He wants to do the right thing, use his powers for good, but it always comes at a cost to his personal life. The constant push and pull and deliberate decision to be a good person when he doesn't want to... I love that about him. There are always hard choices in a good Spider-Man story. I once saw a movie critic that said "MCU finally gets Spider-Man right. He's a happy go lucky guy that loves being a superhero." Literally every word of that sentence is incorrect. People think that because comics are so vast, with different authors and different ways they're written that you can do whatever you want in the movie and it's fine... NO. There can be some variance, sure, but Peter has always had a distinct personality. Sure sure sure you can tweak things here and there, I'm not saying Peter always has to be portrayed as a selfish asshole who's always broke and never happy (because obviously there are times in the comics when he isn't those things) but you can't change EVERYTHING at once. Making him a guy that loves being a superhero and has zero personal life problems (aside from ??? wanting to vacation in europe and get with the girl he likes)... literally destroys everything interesting about the character.

Less about him and more about the conversation around him, my biggest pet peeve used to be people that would go "well this is the third reboot, of COURSE he's different." well NO because the MCU chose to adapt Peter Parker and Peter Parker has a specific personality and storyline. "Of course they changed the storyline" first of all they had a million options and could've just inserted an adult Peter into the MCU if they didn't want to do his origin story, but his origin story is important... I honestly think the decision to skip over it is what caused the terrible writing because without that origin you've removed all his motivations and drive. You can't just say hey we'll use Peter Parker but in order to differentiate ourselves we'll make him unrecognizable... just use a different character at that point... LIKE MILES which is what SO many people said before Homecoming came out.

Bonus: My favorite hate posts I found on my blog from like 2019 or whatever

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187539416484/beerecordings-portrayal-of-aunt-may-really-tells

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/188036695984

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187480534389

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187177201644

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187158420054

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187154929204

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187153389594/mcu-had-the-audacity-to-have-a-grown-women-force

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/187152145584/peter-parker-is-leaving-the-mcu-i-didnt-know-he

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/186857669531/wlwintersoldier-here-is-my-argument-on-why-tony

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/186839380098

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/186835788169/wow-i-sure-do-love-peter-parker-who-made-his-mark

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/186758593029

https://gwandas.tumblr.com/post/186450361464/spidermanwlw-me-and-the-girls-when-a-new-mcu

#answered #sorry kate you opened pandora's box with this one #like i said y'all have not seen REAL haterism from me #back in 2019 i was wishing death on a minor #<- i'm talking about mcu peter here to be clear i was NOT sending real people death threats #mcu spiderman

14 notes · View notes

horizon-verizon · 1 month ago

Note

What’s Elia’s legacy, lmao ? GRRM belittled her himself by giving her four sentences in 5 books and zero characterization. Barristan is also a bitter incel because he called Elia a “kitchen drab” while comparing her unfavorably to Ashara Dayne ??

(A Dance of Dragons -- "The Kingbreaker")

Barristan is not really "bitter"; he is tired & anxious for Dany to return in the wake of Hidzhar's attempts to undermine her, and that inevitably went to his past with the Targaryens' fall. To reiterate, because he was already thinking about how he didn't want to fail Dany, his thoughts go to his years as a Kingsguard and tasked to protect the now dead Targaryen family.

This is how we end up in his regrets over Rhaegar, which, just like in real life with real people, ors into a semi-related "tangent" about his crush on Ashara Dayne. It's supposed to be very candid flow of his thoughts between the past and the present. And nearly every adult character in this story are haunted by what happened before said war that up-ended everything, whether they were more or less really sound, questionable, or pretty morally bankrupt, there is a gamut. Jaime, Cersei, Catelyn, Ned, Barristan, Jon Con, etc. Esp those who were the closest to those who caused or were triggers for said war. All reflect on how they did not or did perform their duties or how limited they felt they could do when they were performing their duties.

This series is about people, who are products of their world, and this world is pretty sexist (understatment). Ned Stark has thoughts similar to Barristan; Catelyn has words about how thick or wide-hipped a certain girl should be before she marries as she inspects her like some sort of broodmare with a sort of coldness because she herself was anxious about getting her brother, father, uncle, etc. to help her and Robb in the war and wanted things to fall through for them; Jon Snow has frequent resentments against his sister Sansa; she does about him and his bastardry pre-Ned's death (she shouldn't be exactly blamed but it is till an indication how this world runs on classism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. and is built into many character's perspectives). We really need to remember that these PoV chapters are almost stream-of-consciousness, which means we're getting their unfiltered immediate thoughts, reactions and longer thought processes to problem solve. All of which, if you can imagine, are not ever guaranteed or CAN BE morally pristine, esp under stress.

I also ask that you think about even the "nicest" dude around you or that you trust and dare yourself to actually believe they also did not think some sexist or otherwise pretty unfair shit? Or even some woman around you whose actively and verbally non sexist...we, too live in a pretty sexist society, we're not going to have great reflexive thoughts or realize that something we think is sexist until we think about it more.

I'm not saying, again, this is wasn't unfair of Barristan...but what did you expect? Barristan, unlike many other people we could have PoVs of and we know are twisted, demonic people (Craster, Ramsey) or those we do have PoV chapters of and are not really that moral (Cersei, jon Con, Jaime, Tyrion) are not at Barristan's "level" or morality...the man is at least trying to make up for his greater failures and is not trying to oppress Dany in the way Jon Con definitely would. And why? Because unlike Jon Con, Barristan hasn't totally lost himself to his own guilt or developed what another anon describes as extreme "tunnel vision". And thus he is far more useful for Dany, which is a win. Like her bloodriders, who themselves can't have shunted every single prejudice they have developed from childhood once they joined her, but they are still her bosom and most trusted people for very good reason.

Finally, it's unfortunately part of the deal with Westerosi to compare the beauty of women and put it to a hierarchy.

Even outside of Barristan's crush on Ashara, though Elia was recognized as pretty and many of us modern readers would just say she is beautiful to not entertain this idea of a hierarchy of beauty...that very hierarchy of beauty that I'm describing some modern readers are actively trying to delegitimize when they refuse to score a woman's beauty is unchecked in this society/universe! And their diction or vocab is going to reflect the classism, sexism that exists-- "kitchen drab" (female servant of the kitchens who is not as attractive bc she works manually and is thus not going to be able to maintain her appearance like a noble woman can) is used metaphorically for that purpose as much as we might say "look at what the cat dragged in".

Women like Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, Ashara Dayne and men like Jaime Lannister, Rhaegar are at a league of their own/the "top". Ellaria Sand is described implicitly as "sexy" by Sansa, but she is still as "beautiful" as Arianne Martell. Thus "the most beautiful" both bc of pleasing features and those features matching the beauty standards Westerosi Andals have. Elia was, to them, low-tiered and "fell behind" Ashara, Cersei, etc. because she didn't immediately present those ideal physical features. Elia was also constantly told to us as not being as remarkable as other women by other people.

So it's really not just Barristan who is doing stuff like this; he's not uniquely sexist and he's not actually dangerous or evil as you are trying to make him to be. We must remember that he was talking about appearance.

"legacy": the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc. that took place in the past, or of a person’s life

In general and not even talking abt Elia herself, "legacies" don't have to be positive; it's certainly what you want and the point of having one is for a society to remember you positively and have a positive meaning. But it's really about leaving an impactful enough impression of your own importance on the rest of society in some way. You can have a legacy (what people remember you for and why/how you matter) while not having done much, like many women in Westerosi history who are remembered for being good passive queens, tragic queens like Helaena, for being so "patient" and charitable, etc.

The ideal "legacy" for women within the world we're talking about is usually not so much about what she did or what sort of person she is unless it deviates from the rigid definition of "good woman". The you got cultural legacies of Rhaenyra's that was itself botched/inherited from the sexist lens many used to assess this war and her actions.

The kind of "legacy", anon, that you are talking about is the impression more made on the reader than the one made in the world and in this society. If Rhaegar had lived, become King, and ascended the throne for Elia to become Queen, perhaps Elia would have made some some of impact the way consorts typically do...perhaps not as she was severely ill after her pregnancies. Also, Queen Rhaella--Aerys' own sister wife and Rhaegar's mother--doesn't really have a "legacy" that isn't dependent on Daenerys or Rhaegar? More women before her have not really had a strong political legacy so much as a dramatic one if they were silent, more or less. And that is kinda the point: women were/are shunted in the pursuit of all these political stuff, whether purposefully or as a consequence of their extant role as subsidary heir-givers for men. Elia got the shortest end of the stick, yes, but that doesn't negate every other bad end for women in this world and it coming from the same place. (And no she nor the Dornish are "PoCs".)

So women's "legacy" is, as I said, very pre-determined and rigid.

The primacy of Elia's (Watsonianly) legacy is how she died, her kids, and being consort to a prince; the other parts, like with Lyanna with Ned, have to be brought up by a brother or some other living and active character because she herself is dead. Both her and Lyanna can only be remembered and characterized through the memories/thoughts and quick words of their brothers, and only through them do we get personality.

Is it unfair she got then end she got, yes, that's the entire point; she is also a secondary character who is serving her purpose as a 2ndary character whose gender is going to inform her narrative role.

I do agree GRRM could have not made her so ill OR leave her ill and still somehow be more active as to "take her out of the action" so to speak, to accrue more influence in court and through that we get to hear/witness what sort of person she was a little so we could have that love vs duty, Rhaegar-Lyanna storyline that is meant to support Dany, Jon, and basically the entire pathos AND logos of this entire series. At the same time, even if she did, we'd still have a dead Elia who got cheated on & likely still have her slighted at a tourney, so...

And as I said in a post about Rhaegar and Lyanna:

not that he used Lyanna for it, but that these two things AS WELL AS HIS KIDS, likely came at odds in terms of "what can I do to make these two things happen without compromising the other"...perhaps, after a life of performing "duty" towards his family, dynasty, the "world", Lyanna is the "love" that NARRATIVELY becomes his "weakness" in a long career of putting "duty" first [embodied by the marriage to Elia]

Is that fair to Rhaegar, Lyanna, or Elia...fuck no, that's pretty much a point. Elia is in a place where her body is used against her in a a marriage arranged for her where she'd have to be faced w/the possibility of a husband who doesn't love her in the way she could have and she "sacrificed" her health entirely to produce heirs for "the prince"/the dynasty/her own Martell family's interests. Rhaegar and Lyanna have a love that causes strife instead of staying "good", an "impossible" one because of how marriage (a political institution made for resources) works against them. And especially women--Lyanna would have been in Elia's place except worse, as Robert once more would have never respected her and even abuse her. Rhaegar's gender doesn't produce as as dire consequences being a man and esp being a good warrior, but he also found a grand purpose within those duties as a prince, grew up with a man with a lot of power and insanity behind him who abused his mother yet still obligated to him as his king...again not "comparable"...but...compelling.

The Rhaegar-Lyanna thing is not really meant to be purely moral and not in the way some people have convinced themselves it is (Elia was a PoC wife Rhaegar hated and chose a white woman to love instead; he abandoned his kids for her; he's to blame for Elia's death bc he didn't make sure she and the kids were at a safe location; Rhaegar kidnapped and r*ped Lyanna).

This relationship was grand and a (Watsonianly) true and born from pure affection and authenticity on both their parts...it was ALSO still was a trigger for the war that ended a dynasty, foreshadowed by at least 3 other broken engagements in Westerosi history (Duncan, Shaera, and Jaehaerys II). Elia was "stuck" in a way that is different but immediately more obvious than how Rhaegar was and much more similar to how Lyanna was. Like how the saying in the books goes, love is the "death" of duty; and "duty" can be a thing of love like how I feel an obligation towards a sibling, but duty can also limit one towards prioritizing an undeserving family member...then is it love? (Elia was not undeserving, but we don't know enough what happened or what their relationship was like AND the point is that this world is...morally questionable.)

That also doesn't mean you have to like it or GRRM's choices. It also doesn't mean that there isn't something to the Rhaegar-Lyanna relationship that is worth noting and liking, either, or to make as if it isn't a reflection and a different take/aspect of a core thing in the book that does illustrate it simultaneously.

#asoiaf asks to me #elia martell #elia martell's characterization #agot characterization #asoiaf writing #asoiaf #agot

11 notes · View notes