▌│█║▌║▌║ open post ║▌║▌║█│▌

[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

[nighted]

Jon goes pale, the realization that he may not be Ned Stark's son drowned out by a different horrifying prospect.

"Are you implying that I am the product of—"

Everyone knows what happened to Lyanna Stark. She was kidnapped, raped, and killed. If he was born in the tower in which she died, that would make him the result of a terrible act. It's a wonder Ned Stark could even stand to look at him.

He feels sick and angry all at once, and he wants nothing more than for this truth she's trying to feed him to be nothing more than a well fabricated lie. Part of some game she's been playing with him from the start. Perhaps Davos was right about her after all.

[comprehender]

She feels the suspicion immediately, and it hurts more than she thought it might. More than the constant stream of it from Davos, even Sansa. But even louder now than Ned's truths are Lyanna's, written in every remaining cell of her body and echoing out of her statue's eyes.

River's eyes go unfocused again, looking at Jon but not seeing anything, overwhelmed as if speaking even as much as she has out loud has opened a floodgate that won't be quiet until she speaks all of it no matter what Jon may have done to her after.

"I am his and he is mine," said soft, and she can't parse it at first. She knows the stories, had assumed them true, but now realization creeps in and plants it's roots. "The stories were wrong. She ran to him, took his hand..."

[nighted]

"Impossible."

Jon knew his histories. He was educated alongside his siblings, making the transition from lordless bastard to reigning king far smoother than it otherwise would have been had he had no formal upbringing at all. Most in his situation weren't as lucky, but Jon could name all the members of the great houses several generations back, could put dates to events, could tell you the battle tactics that were used during the Battle of the Trident.

A battle where his supposed father fell to Robert Baratheon's hammer.

(A hammer that would have been brought down upon his infant head had King Robert known that the baby Ned came away from Dorne with had been a Targaryen princeling, a living heir to the throne he had seized.)

"He was married to Elia Martell. If the Dragon Prince is my father as you so claim, then I am still a bastard. A bastard who was shown a great kindness by a man who did not father me by allowing me to believe I was conceived during far more honorable circumstances instead of those that helped to spark a war."

[comprehender]

"Annulment," she says, clipped and defensive.

It's disconcerting, speaking to him like that, feeling the need to, and the tone in the room isn't one she finds any comfort in. There's the sensation of snow melting underfoot with no solid ground beneath it, of an edge unseen but barreling closer every time she opens her mouth.

River, at the moment, would prefer to run. Take her leave and hide in her room and await some inevitable disaster. The possibilities for which, those that are too many and her imagination too prone to bias the dire end of sad fairytales, would haunt her until she's-- cast out. Thrown in the dungeon. Called a witch and tied to a stake.

She forces herself to stay, to look at his face and do her best to speak past the tremor in her voice to tell him, "It's the truth. I've only ever told you the truth. You don't have to do anything about it, and I swear I won't say a word of it outside this room, but... Before you go to meet her, you need to know."

[nighted]

The sharpness of that word, that lone word, grazes against his skin like the cold steel of the knives his former brothers in the Night's Watch had driven through his chest. It pierces his heart with whispers of possibility instead of the promise of death; he's completely taken aback by it.

Could it be possible? Could Prince Rhaegar have annulled his marriage to the Dornish Princess and married his ill-fated aunt — mother? — instead? But then... If they were wed, the ill-fated part of her story takes on new meaning. It changes the entire premise of Robert's Rebellion entirely.

He doesn't know what to do with the prospect of this new narrative, nevermind the very real possibility that he's a Targaryen.

"Say I believe you. What do you possibly expect me to do with this knowledge, stroll into Dragonstone and announce to my dear aunt that he beloved nephew has come to ask her to fight alongside the North against the Night King and his army of the dead?"

[comprehender]

"Maybe?"

She doesn't like not having an answer. Not when it should be simple. Not when she was so sure he had to know, and now isn't sure of how to advise him at all. There's the hint of a direction from the people that brought her to his gates, but...

River holds her arms to herself, hands on elbows, head down. Her hair isn't braided today and hangs now in front of her face. A shield, kind of. A way to hide her own unsureness.

"There would have been blood, if you didn't know. Mistakes. It felt like fire and shame, and I don't know what you do with it now." She hugs herself tighter, eyes closed and white knuckled squeezing against the sensation that all she's made up of is wisps of smoke and if she compresses it tight enough she'll see where to turn. Where to turn him.

Carefully, slowly, she lifts her head back up and opens her eyes. There's still hair in her face, and she must look mad when she finally looks at Jon and sees.

"There's going to be more fighting. Living and dead, and... I can't make the choices for you. I can only you where they are."

[nighted]

He has questions and she doesn't have any answers. Who does he even ask about any of this — Davos? The sister that is actually his cousin? What would they say if they knew he wasn't Ned Stark's son? All these Northern lords chose him to be their leader because he was the last living son of the great Eddard Stark. And now he's nothing more than his sister's orphaned boy, a spark amidst a war fought in the wake of two people who loved one another saying fuck all to duty and honor and running away together in the hopes of being happy.

His parents' quest for happiness started a war. By the Seven...

Jon rubs his hands over his face, peering at her over the tops of his fingers. That crazed look on her face, the way she stares at him so intensely— She's never lied to him. He knows this. Somehow, he knows. Perhaps what they say about the Valyrians and the magic their blood is rooted in is true. Perhaps he got some of that from Prince Rhaegar.

Quietly, he stalks past her and out the door. Should she go looking for him, she'll find him in the crypts beneath Winterfell, staring up at the great stone statue carved in Lyanna Stark's likeness.

[comprehender]

Jon swoops out of the room and the air seems to leave with him, oxygen chasing after him to feed the new flame.

She doesn't follow immediately. At first she sits, curled up in a chair, knees to her chest and her face in her hands as she breathes (the air isn't gone, it's just a metaphor, it's just a sensation and not a fact) through the confusion of the moment. Truth is overwhelming, and it carries her away even when none of it is hers.

Outside in the hallways Davos is upset. Wonders where his King has gone, what was said to him, and River collects herself enough to brush her hair back into something less mad, grab the letter, and go to where Jon is.

It's quiet, in the tombs. She knows it wouldn't be if Jon didn't know already. That bones would be screaming out to her with truth and pain. But now, it's quiet.

When she approaches she does so just loud enough not to surprise him. So he knows she's there before she says, soft, and maybe it's to him and to the statue he's facing, "I'm sorry."