#— house pilgrim; self-para. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

realmofcestuasau · 3 years ago

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𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐬

In his sleep, which waxed and waned each passing hour by an infant’s cry or a frightened wildling insisting upon seeing a wight between the inky bark of the trees in the Riverlands, Lionel dreamt of things he should not have thought he would ever dream of. After his resurrection he didn’t believe he could dream again, not after death, the ultimate dream. Or perhaps the penultimate one. He wasn’t at liberty to say, despite his vast experience of living to tell the tale of death. However on this night as the dead marched on them and the Riverlords were at their wits end — he dreamt of the Red Woman. He did not know where she fled, only that she couldn’t be spotted anywhere in the city during their week-long endurance of unyielding battle. But he dreamt of her still. The brown ringlets of hair that framed her delicate, crescent shape lips and delicately pointed nose and crystalline eyes, the hidden whispers in the cruxes of words that spilt from her tongue, and the sharpened shape of her hand caressing his neckline, beckoning him to balance the order of life and death; to acknowledge both once more, to become who she wanted him to be, the Prince Who Was Promised. All by giving unto her a seedling of life. And he couldn’t do it. He wondered, now, just before it all melts away, if he fulfilled that purpose anyway. Or if maybe you need only mount a sorceress to achieve greatness.

The night is dark and full of terrors.

As he awoke with a start, a feeling dawned on him. That of uncertainty and guilt, which plagued the marrow of his bones as he sat alone in the tent set up for him. He worried first for the whereabouts of his children, newly born, if the nightmares that paralleled the dreams had come true and they were snatched from him in his deep slumber and relinquished to the Night King for his bidding; like what Craster had done to his daughters when they bore him useless sons, good just for white walker fodder. It was this that reminded him that he was king, too, that there was himself and Queen Avril and the Night King. All fighting against him. Two entities he need either unite with or destroy in its entirety.

He didn’t know how to unite the kingdoms come Becca’s reign. She was a foreigner, no matter her well-known name, she hadn’t stepped a foot onto the country’s grass until she was twenty years old, and her ancestor burned their cities to the ground and slaughtered their families. She hadn’t seen their faces, felt their turmoil, endured their suffering under an unworthy lineage of kings in less than a decade, she only knew her own troubles, those that stem from a world away. Her Hand might have once had the most influential family in the kingdoms in his pocket, now he was a traitor to his blood and a nuisance to the rest of the realm. It wouldn’t have even mattered, either, if the North’s independence wasn’t guaranteed by her rule. Sure, they could have gone to another war for it, but what was that any good for? Just more dead men to burn and bury in their fields. They’d have done more use for the realm by having their bodies ingested by the worms below and shit back out as fertilizers for grass and wheat.

If Thomas weren’t humbled by the Citadel and the gravity of Lionel’s past, he might yet have already told everyone the truth about the half-elf. That his father never kidnapped his mother, never meant to incite war, never raped the woman Andrei Welker loved. That they were married in the eyes of Gods and men, that they had a son, a little prince turned a bastard overnight. Lionel knew that he did not want to rule the Seven. He hardly wanted to rule the North, he was content enough managing the lot of slavers and rapers at Castle Black for all his days — but he could remember something the maester telling him shortly after the boys were born; when they were still bright pink and shrieking like Children of the Forrest.

“You’ve given up your crown for the good of others,” Thomas said as he cradled the first born, a bit heaver and ears with clean slopes to tell him apart from his slightly more elvish twin. “But would she give up hers?” Because, as much as he would deny it and how much Gabriel denied it in turn, by tenfold it seemed, the law and the ultimate truth could not.

Lionel was the last living male Pilgrim. His children were Pilgrims. All heir to the Iron Throne, one after the other, and if he took it...

“The realm would know no better peace with you in the South and Lady Saskia in the North.” The maester said. He was smiling cheekily at the boy in his arms, and Lionel then wished he could’ve been there to see him hold his own son for the first time when Lucy gave birth.

Plenty could contest to that. Many would think it unwise. However, no one knew this was a possibility. He was the same bastards to these people as he had been his whole life. If they knew, though... If they knew, then this wouldn’t be a very difficult decision after all. And although he didn’t want the throne, he thought, in his delirious stupor, that every contender deserves to know who they’re facing. He called in the guards, who then escorted his half-sister into his tents. It was then he realized the boys had been there all along; cloaked in silence within their respective slumbers. Must’ve been why his rest was so peaceful. He exhaled relief then, glad neither dreams nor nightmares manifested in that tent.

The red-head lowered herself unto her knees beside Lionel. “They told me,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Well, the maester. Thomas? He said it might be treasonous, but I shall tell you anyway.” A giggle parted her lips as she reached forward so she could tuck some hair behind his ear. “... I was surprised when I saw you and saw you had elf’s blood. They said you were a bastard, but I didn’t know what kind.”

It struck Lionel then that Thomas only disclosed what would’ve appeared to be the information of least import, but was instead of most, which would urge the king’s decision. Smart crow. “The little one has them, too,” he gave a reply after a moment’s drawn out quietude.

“Does he?” Becca’s eyes flickered over to where the small swaddled creature was. A fond, almost crestfallen smile touched the corners of her lips. “... I had a son once. With my husband, he... Well, I’m sure you all know of Khal Drogo.”

“... Many have heard of the Dothraki, your grace.” Lionel said in return.

She nodded solemnly. “Yes, of course. We had a son,” she continued. “But... When the Khal fell ill, I asked a witch I rescued from a ransack to bring him back to life. What I didn’t know was that I would be trading my son’s life for his,” Tears prickled on her waterline, and Lionel listened intently although didn’t solidify any expression. “And when I saw him after, he was... A husk. There was nothing left. I had lost them both.”

“I’m sorry,” was all the king could think of to say.

“It was not meant to be,” Becca said as she looked him over. “I have the blood of the dragon. I have— had,” she stumbled on her words. “Three dragon children. I could never mother someone like you or me.”

Lionel’s brows knitted together. “Perhaps you still could.” he supplied.

“No,” Her words were nearly muted by the rushing wind flapping the entrance to the tent. “But I’m always happy to see others with them. It’s life’s greatest gift, raising something from birth. Something all your own.” Cerulean hues drifted toward him. “You may be a bastard to the rest of the realm, but once I have my throne you will be the king of your own people and the Gods will remember you as such.”

His lower lip quivered at her words, to which she seemed perplexed by. “I’m not a bastard,” he said — and while his body shook his voice didn’t. “Thomas told me things I shouldn’t know, either. Things he’s read from the Citadel.”

“... What is it that you mean” she inquired gently.

“Your father,” he spoke after. “... Was my father, too. And Clarisse Mercer my mother.” he admitted, the sheer weight of it all collapsing off of him. He wasn’t sure whether or not it’d take him down with it yet. “He did not kidnap her, or hurt her. They married.”

Becca swallowed dryly at this. Not another threat to her reign. Not here, where the Northerners needed her pledge above all pledges to free them, where they may indeed have inherited themselves another traitorous king.

“I knew my father did not hurt her,” Becca sounded harsher, then, like she had stumbled and was regaining her footing. “I knew that. No one had to tell me. From what the Magister told me he was loved by all. He sang and danced and the people loved him.” she seemed to prattle on.

“She gave me to her brother when father died,” It was odd, naming someone else his father after Adrien had raised him all the years Jesse Pilgrim couldn’t. “So that King Andrei wouldn’t kill me.”

“They can’t have married. He had my mother,” she insisted. “Ser Jorah told me that my father was framed for the kidnapping and instead forced into facing Andrei in a duel that killed him. I trusted Ser Jorah with my life. Just as you trusted his father with yours.”

Lionel tried to keep his body from quivering. “I trusted him as much as I trust Thomas now,” he struggled to say. “He eloped with my Aunt Clarisse. She had me in... In a tower in Cindune and died there. And you and your brother were shipped off across the sea, and no one knew who I was besides Adrien Mercer’s bastard. No one still knows. Except for you.”

Her eyes steeled and she glared at him as if she were plotting to exhale fire unto him for his treasonous words. Thomas wasn’t wrong, after all. “Do you intend to seize the throne from me?” she asked, each word dripping in acid. “Make these boys your heirs?”

He looked over his sister’s form; rigid where it was once softened and relaxed, stern and cold features, eyes that meant to incite fear but rather exuded it. He shook his head slowly, and although a thousand different men lied and betrayed her, Becca’s shoulders slumped inward. For twenty-four years she crawled toward that throne, outliving all her other remaining relatives just so she could taste the iron that dripped from the dozens of swords and daggers that made it a throne to warrant possession at all. She was the blood of the dragon. He could’ve been exactly like Matteo and been scorched at the touch of fire where she would remain unburnt. Though she reckoned that seldomly they would consider her the rightful heir based solely on her resistance to heat, as everyone often favored the male heirs for whatever Gods forsaken reason.

“... You will have the North if you tell no one,” Becca whispered as their gaze lingered. “I swear it by all Gods. The North will be its own dominion and you will rule it, or whoever you see fit to. I’ll never come to harm you or your children for your heritage, I will not repeat an angry man’s mistakes, not my grandfather’s mistakes, I swear it.”

Lionel saw, then, crystals shedding from where they once formed in her eyes, giving him permission to break as well. He reached out for her hand —— the warmth unlike he felt in any other, the warmth of someone he wished he’d have known sooner, the warmth of someone he could not have for long if at all. This exchanged appeared mutual as Becca’s eyes reflected a rejoice of meeting your family once more.

“I am a Mercer, your grace,” he said after a while and reached for her hand. “My children are Mercers. I am the blood of the First Men, blood of the wolf, and King in the North.”

She accepted his hand and squeezed it, nodding along. “I am a Pilgrim,” she echoed. “I am the blood of the dragon, ruler of the Six, and protector of the realm.”

#— house pilgrim; self-para.#— house mercer; self para.

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