Archive of Our Own ^beta

The moment Ned arrives back North with Lya’s bones and their nephew, swaddled and nearly drowning in furs, Benjen makes a choice. He will defend this babe, his sister’s babe, until the day he dies.

A letter from Rhaegar arrives soon after, from perhaps the darkest raven he’s ever seen. It is formal, too formal, coming from the man who tricked their sister, who took advantage of her unhappiness and used it to further his own agenda of pipedreams and prophecies. He requests (demands) that Ned come south with his prince, his son (as if his sister’s boy will ever truly be Rhaegar’s son), and repledge fealty. Catelyn holds baby Robb against her chest tightly, who is all fuzzy auburn hair and cheery Tully eyes, knowing that it is a very real possibility that Rhaegar will request the Stark heir next. Hostages and fostered wards can be more similar than one might think, especially in times like these.

Benjen, a man in little more than name, nearly sixteen with all of the grief of a decrepit old wretch, declares that he will accompany his brother on the journey. The have their first real argument, then. Ned was never around, growing up, so their time spent together was always too precious to spend squabbling about. But this is no mere squabble, no.

This is a battle, a roaring match that ends the moment Benjen yells let me make my own choices, Ned. Fuck’s sake, this is exactly why she left! Ned looks at him then, as if he doesn’t quite know him, and perhaps (probably) he doesn’t. They are brothers, yes, but Benjen’s memories of Ned before his fostering in the Vale are slim to none. Ned lost his father, brother, and sister, as well, but he didn’t lose every single person that he saw every single day. He didn’t lose the person who taught him how count his numbers, how to wield a sword, or how to ride a horse. Jon Arryn still lives, if ashamed, hidden away in the Vale with his younger Tully wife and Targaryen loyalists breathing down his neck. No, the honor of that devastating loss fell solely to Benjen. (He doesn’t dwell on Robert’s death, and what it must be like for Ned, to lose a man who was more of a brother than his own blood. Of having to be with Lya when she died in a pool of her own blood, holding her hand so she’d know she wasn’t alone. He can’t begin to think of the pain Ned must be enduring, especially now. Benjen is much too indignant for such reason.)

A part of him resents Ned, the brother who was never quite his brother, this man molded into a stranger by their father’s southern ambitions. Such a difference between his solemn disposition and that of affable, brawdy Brandon and carefree Lyanna. He can remember the first time Ned returned after years away, and it had been so long that Benjen even forgot that he left. Allusions to Ned and vague discussions about his brother in the Vale were irrelevant to him, a boy whose only solace from a father who resented him were the siblings who adored him. He remembers seeing Ned, in all of his solemn, grey-eyed humility, and watching Brandon and Lyanna embrace the boy they called brother and thinking who is this and how could someone who’s our brother be a stranger?

Ned leaves the room, then, and doesn’t speak to him for a day before coming up to him at supper and hugging him more fiercely than he ever thought possible. I can’t lose you too, Ben. I won’t. Benjen doesn’t quite know what to say except that the lone wolf dies, Ned, but the pack survives. I’m not letting you go alone. I can’t lose you, either. They are all each other have left now, all that remains of their family, strangers or not. They set off together in a fortnight.

Benjen spends an inordinate amount of time with the babe during their journey south, humming Northern songs and cooing like a nursemaid. The babe is as serious as Ned, but Benjen finds there is one song which can always coax smiles and nonsensical murmurs from him: A Winter Rose at Midnight. It is fitting, considering Lya loved the same song so fiercely. She is the only reason he knows it, after all. He tries not to think about the possibility that Rhaegar knows the song as well.

As they approach King’s Landing, the pit in his stomach grows even more cavernous. He knows that going south never goes well for the Starks, but he tells himself that this boy is a Targaryen in name (as much as he may detest it) and he will not let what happened to their father, to their brother, to their sister, happen to Ned. The Targaryens have destroyed so much of their family. They cannot have what is left of it.

Benjen is just sixteen when they arrive to King’s Landing, and too much has already happened, it seems. Rhaegar (the same man who professed his undying love for Lyanna) has already married Cersei Lannister, her duplicitous (and suspectedly traitorous – although it cannot quite be proven) father noticeably absent from court, and her kingslaying brother noticeably alive.

He hears whispers, though, because King’s Landing loves its whispers, that even though he killed the Mad King and couldn’t save Princess Elia, Jaime saved the children from Gregor Clegane’s wrath. (It is a strange story, how the Mountain was secretly a Baratheon sympathizer who sought to kill the Targaryens, and yet only managed to kill their Martell mother, Rhaegar’s supposed wife. Benjen wonders if anyone truly believes such folly.) Rhaenys and Aegon are the only reason the Kingslayer remains alive, remains serving, and that gives Benjen an idea.

“I loved her, you know,” Rhaegar says, looking over Jon with a sort of morbid fascination and undeniable sorrow, still swaddled securely in Benjen’s arms. It’s strange, to have only met the man who destroyed his family in passing, years before. He always was such a sorrowful man, wasn’t he? Even then. He remembers Lyanna whispering of their evening meetings while they were at Harrenhal, wondering what in this world could possibly make him happy, if he had everything and was still so beautifully miserable. “She was my Queen, in the end.”

He convinced her that she was that thing, had to be that thing, and she could have been that happiness for so many other people, but he robbed the world of that privilege, Benjen cannot help but think. “You loved your dreams, Your Grace. Your prophecies. And you never have to pay the price, do you?”

The King looks up at him, then, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side, caught off guard, even though his dark purple, almost indigo, eyes betray nothing. Benjen doesn’t care anymore, though. He will not attempt to take comfort in romances he knows are fiction. Songs might be sung about their great love, but Benjen knows the truth. Benjen knows (knew) his sister. She didn’t leave for love, for Rhaegar. She left for herself, for her life, her freedom. And regardless, the way Rhaegar might have loved her wasn’t the love she deserved. “Excuse me, my lord?”

He is giving Benjen an escape, a chance to rectify his statement. Can you rectify all that has been done to my family? “You are king. All of your children live. You have yet another wife. I have no father, no sister, and one less brother. And you are the cause of that, Your Grace. You took my sister and now you take the one thing we have left of her. All of your success, your prosperity, and what did you sacrifice?”

Rhaegar does not have anything to respond, and it is justly so. Benjen continues to hold his nephew, as he almost always does in this cesspool, unless Eddard or the nursemaid give him a reprieve. He is all Stark, this Targaryen boy who is nearly a year old. Benjen is glad for it. His sister’s memory is better preserved with grey eyes than purple. “He is the Prince of Summerhall, my trueborn son. I’m having it rebuilt for him. He will be safe here, Benjen. That, I can promise.”

Rhaegar speaks to him as if he’s trying to placate a child who must share their toys, and the rage brewing in his bones cracks open.

“My family will have no more of your promises, Your Grace. I will stay here. I will protect my nephew the way you never protected his mother. I will not be a Kingsguard, no, because my loyalty is not to you. It is to my sister’s son. Consider me his sworn shield,” Benjen says, a boy of sixteen who tragedy has molded into a man. It is the vow of a lifetime, but he knows it well. He would have taken the black, anyway. At least now he can protect someone he loves for someone he loves.

The Targaryens have taken so much from him. Too much. His father. His brother. His sister. His lovely, wild, beautiful, brave older sister.

They will not take her son as well. Benjen won’t allow it.

Rhaegar stares at him, as he so often does since their arrival at court, and then back to his (Lyanna’s) son. Can he see the resemblance between brother and sister? Mother and son? Does he even care? “I shall make sure your chambers are close to the nursery, then.”

And he is gone. He wonders if Rhaegar always moves like this, in and out like a shadow. Did his sister even get to say goodbye, the last time she ever saw him? Or did he just disappear, like dust?

Benjen is not sure he wants to know the answer. He brings Jon to the Godswood, sets him down in the grass, and prays for his sister as he plays with her son instead.

Ned protests, albeit half-heartedly. Benjen knows it is because as much as he may disagree, Ned understands.

“You have a life of your own to live, Ben,” Ned says solemnly, as he says so much these days. Gone are the days when a youthful slight smile would accompany his words. Then again, there seemed so much more to smile about.

“And I will live it here,” Benjen replies, wearing a melancholy grin. Jon is crawling around on the grass before them, the center of both their attentions. A sigh escapes his lips. “I can’t leave him here, Ned. Not without family. Lyanna, she needs me here.”

And Ned looks at him, into the grey of his eyes, into the grey of the eyes all of his siblings shared, Jon now included, and understands. And that is that. “There will be holdings up North for you, when or if you ever choose to leave. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. You two will make a good pack, I think.”

Benjen never considered having children. Seven, he should still be a child himself. But no, now he’s the same age as his sister was when she died, caring for the son she only got to name. He finds kinship with Jon, in that way.

Benjen’s mother died to bring him into the world, and Rickard Stark resented his youngest for it, probably until the moment he died (and perhaps after). He fears being a father himself, now, in resenting his children for things they didn’t do, for things they could never fix. Rickard never hid his disappointment, his displeasure. It was as plain and honest as everything in the North. He was firm yet gentle with Lyanna, for all of her beauty that seemed to come from nowhere, but no such courtesy fell to Benjen, with eyes the shape of his mother’s and her smile (or so Old Nan told him).

Yet Rhaegar seems to resent all of his children in a different, resigned way, as if keeping away from them will remind him of their mothers’ deaths just a bit less. He dines with them, asks for their progress, but rarely speaks directly to them, or meets their eyes. He answers Rhaenys’s inquisitive questions with brief, perfunctory responses without meeting her gaze or entertaining such childish whims. Rhaegar’s never even held Jon, and while he doesn’t know for sure, Benjen would say it’s probably the same for Aegon. Now that he thinks about it, Benjen wouldn’t be surprised if Rickard Stark was the same. (Not that he can even remember. He seems to remember less and less about his family with each passing day and hates himself for it.)

But he sees Jon now, a gift from the gods, the smallest bit of his sister allowed back to him, and wonders how Rhaegar can continue to treat all of his children as if they are only ghosts of his failures and not miracles, divine opportunities for redemption.

Yet Rhaegar himself is different, starkly so, from the short time he saw him at Harrenhal. The proud prince who held his head up high and played his harp for the loving masses is no longer, leaving a haunted sort of husk in his place. Benjen wonders what finally pushed him over the edge. Was it starting a war that would kill so many? Was it all of the death and destruction he must have witnessed on the battlefield? Was it hearing that Arthur Dayne died, moments before Lyanna Stark did? Benjen understands why Rhaegar seems to remind him of a ghost, because he doesn’t think anyone can live with that many mistakes. But it makes Benjen’s blood boil all the same that the King treats his children like they’re a part of those.

“You are safe,” Benjen whispers quietly, holding Jon close as he lulls toward sleep. “And you are loved, Jon, so loved. You are a Stark, and I’ll make sure you never forget it. You’ll be better than us. I’ll make sure of it.”

And so, there Benjen sits, with the only other wolf for over a thousand miles, in the snake pit that is court. But in that moment, he doesn’t mind it too much, because he’s thinking of something he finds much more devastating. Jon’s childhood will take place in stifling summer days with duplicitous courtiers that will despise him for his blood, for his claim, instead of in Winterfell, running and riding through the wolf’s wood, listening to Old Nan’s stories, hiding from lessons in the Godswood. His homeland will never truly be his home, and Benjen hates the fact that Rhaegar has subjected his own child, his own children, to a place, to a life, like this.

Benjen finds the royal children (almost) frustratingly innocent, and he cannot bear to resent them as he does their father, as he does their house. The same can be said for Prince Oberyn with regard to Jon, and that is how their strange companionship begins.

“We both know who holds the true fault,” Oberyn murmurs, one hand clasping his niece’s as Benjen holds her other, swinging her up as she lets out a giggling squeal. “His fantasies have cost us all dearly. Your nephew is the brother of my sister’s children, their blood, and he will not come under any harm from me nor my family. I give you my word.”

Aegon is probably with some nursemaid, but Benjen is weary of the capital when it comes to his sister’s only son. The Martell dragons have a southern house backing them where his nephew does not. He keeps Jon in his sights at nearly all times, and the times he cannot watch his nephew, Mara is there to nurse and care for him. She is a good woman, a loyal woman, a Northern woman. He would not trust any Southerner with something so precious as Stark blood. It is in devastatingly short supply these days.

To make matters worse, he has taken to watching court, to becoming his own sort of spy master. Few see the silent, honorable Northman who came to protect his nephew, with little patience for the nature of court, as any true threat, and that is just the way Benjen likes it. It gives him the access, the clarity he wouldn’t otherwise have, and so he watches. He watches the way Cersei Lannister examines all of the King’s children, as if they are diseases she must go about cutting out. It is something Prince Oberyn has noticed as well: yet another reason for their little meetings.

He has heard tales of the Red Viper, of what he did to the knight who murdered his sister. No one knows for certain what happened to Ser Gregor Clegane, just that no one has seen him again, and his presence has not been particularly missed. Some say Oberyn beheaded him; others say he poisoned him; others say that Clegane is still in dungeons somewhere, and Oberyn inflicts whatever sort of horrors he wants. Benjen knows better than to ask for the truth. All he knows is that Oberyn protects his own. It is a trait he respects.

“You know you have nothing to fear from me, Prince Oberyn,” Benjen says as they lift Rhaenys up in the air once again. She is a joyous, gleeful child, with none of the frailness that people claim her mother was afflicted by. She is strong. She will need to be, in a family like hers, like his nephew’s. “The children are innocent. I am here to protect my nephew, to honor my sister. Nothing more.”

Oberyn watches him, then, and lets go of Rhaenys hand, ushering her to go and play in the gardens. She takes Jon’s hand from Benjen’s own and patiently helps him waddle toward the flowers. He feels a pang in his chest, remembering when Lya guided him around like that, naming each type of flower in her gardens, rambling on for what seemed like ages. He held no interest for flowers, then, and even feels a bit of resentment toward them, now, but the way his sister glowed, talking about things she loved, occupied his attention more than any of the flowers did.

The Dornish Prince smiles, then, in a way that Benjen can’t quite decipher. “I am the same, Lord Stark. I suppose we must be birds of a feather, then?”

“Neither of us are birds, my prince,” Benjen replies as he watches Jon’s grubby hands pick a Riverland Lily. Gods, Lyanna loves (loved) those stupid lilies, almost as much as winter fucking roses. “We are wolves and vipers, but we have bigger enemies to fight.”

“In that, we agree,” Oberyn nods, turning toward his niece and the gardens before pausing, swinging his head back. “It is quite refreshing to have someone as blunt and honest as you in the capital, my lord, but you must be careful. As you well know, being righteous and honorable does little good around here.”

He hears his father’s screams and his brother gasping for breath, his sister wailing as she bleeds out while Rhaegar reclaims his crown of fucking rubies, and his face is a mask of stone. “You’re right, Prince Oberyn. I do know well.”

Oberyn laughs, because while he does not know this Dornish prince well, he can already tell that given the choice of being solemn and mocking he will almost always chose the latter. “I enjoy you, Benjen Stark. Do try not to get yourself killed, or I might even call myself disappointed. After all, I would be without a very interesting friend.”

“Friends now, are we, my prince?” Benjen cannot help but question dryly, his eyebrow quirked in challenge, and it is that which makes the prince look back, but with a very different gaze.

Benjen is not bad looking. He may not be as handsome as his eldest brother was, but he’s close enough. (His heart clenches as he tries to remember Brandon’s smile, conjuring up an image that’s frustratingly fractured.) He is past seventeen now, and his frame his filled out considerably since he was last at Winterfell, a gangly boy of fifteen. He has trained hard, each and every day since Lyanna’s abduction (escape), for the chance to run Rhaegar through with a sword himself. He does it for Jon now. His body is rough, calloused, with defined muscles and scarred skin. His dark waves of hair has grown long, half pulled back in a knot. His beard is no longer the patchy thing he began at sixteen, and his eyes are quicksilver. Prince Oberyn seems to realize all of this immediately, and he does not seemed repulsed by it. Not in the least.

And Benjen does not mind him looking. No, not in the least.

“I suppose only time will tell, Lord Stark,” Oberyn retorts, his smirk nearly infuriating as his eyes blaze with fire. “But I should like us to be very close friends, indeed.”

“My friends say you are plotting,” Rhaegar announces disinterestedly, sitting at the desk in his solar, head bent over as he scribbles away on parchment. Benjen cannot help but wonder if this is what he looked like when he wrote to Lyanna, his eyebrows drawn and forehead creased with focus. Or perhaps he was languid, writing as he looked out on the sunset with a small smile on his face. How did he look as he wrote the letter, demanding Jon be brought to the capital? Perhaps he was weeping over Lyanna’s death, or perhaps he was sitting in bed beside his new queen.

“I was not aware that you had any friends, Your Grace,” Benjen remarked casually, one hand by his side as the other sits on the pommel of his sword. Passively, of course.

Rhaegar pauses his writing, looks up, and does not look particularly impressed. He motions for Benjen to come forward, to sit. Benjen stays in place, but it matters not. “Since when are you and Prince Oberyn so well acquainted, Lord Benjen?”

“Since my arrival in this pit, Your Grace. There is not much else to do here, besides train, watch Jon, and make small talk. I can do all three with Prince Oberyn. We have become acquaintances these past few years. He’s quite the intriguing character, actually. I am sure your Hand of the King is well enough acquainted with the Red Viper,” Benjen remarks, a jovial smile taking over his face as he looks over to the large, dour redhead in the corner. “You share similar tastes in a variety of pursuits, if I’m not mistaken, Lord Connington.”

Benjen and the King have an understanding of sorts. In the most basic of terms, Benjen says whatever the bloody hell he likes, and because the King is the reason his father is dead and the reason his brother is dead and the reason his sister is dead and the reason his nephew needs to grow up in this lion’s den, Rhaegar takes it. In all honesty, Benjen suspects that Rhaegar appreciates it, in a way, that there is at least one person who dislikes and resents him so openly, so honestly. Even Oberyn bridles his hatred with courtesy, but Benjen is a Northerner through and through. Falsities, courtesies, and small talk are not in his nature. Taking every chance to bait and remind the man that slaughtered his family about his sins, however, is much closer to Benjen’s current disposition. He has changed immensely in the face of tragedy. Benjen will not let Rhaegar’s ghosts lie, especially not when they take to screaming and sobbing in his own ears each night.

Jon Connington glowers at him from the corner. “Why, you little cunt… he could have your head for all this shit, you know? Have you executed before the day is out.”

“I don’t see why the King would need me executed, Lord Connington. Were my father, brother, and sister not enough?” Benjen challenges, because this man has his head so eagerly shoved up Rhaegar’s ass that he will not allow Jon Connington of all fucking people to threaten him.

As Hand of the King since Jaime Lannister did them all the unforgivable favor of stabbing Aerys in the back, Jon Connington has taken to power like a preening bird. Benjen has never much liked pride and grandeur. He found it pointless, pathetic, and Jon Connington is the practical embodiment of that.

Rhaegar looks between the both of them and puts his hand up in an attempt for peace. “That’s enough, Jon. No heads need to be taken today. We’ve actually called you in here on another matter, Lord Stark. You nephew, Robb, is nearly five. In less than two years’ time, he will be suitable for fostering. We believe Dorne to be the best option, perhaps Starfall, to satiate any bad blood. We want your opinion.”

And that is when Benjen snaps, really, truly, snaps. “Absolutely not. You are not taking my brother’s son anywhere.”

“That part of the proposal was not up for discussion, Lord Benjen. It has been decided since the war,” Rhaegar points out, his voice drawling as he looks Benjen over, as if he isn’t speaking of fracturing a family yet again. His face is practically unreadable, and for someone who has wrote and sung so many songs about love and beauty and tragedy, any trace of emotion is unexpectedly absent. Golden skin, silver hair, purple eyes… the perfect stone mask. What was beneath it? Anything? Did Lyanna herself even know? “House Stark must learn, unequivocally, that rebellion has a price.”

“Do not talk to me of prices, Rhaegar,” Benjen spits as though each of his words are putrid venom. “House Stark has more than paid its price. And, besides being a cruel deed, it’s a stupid one. The North Remembers. We remember the father and heir that you killed, we remember the daughter you stole, and we remember child you robbed. And now, you want to take a second heir? We Northerners bear a lot, but they will not stand for this. I will not stand for it.”

Rhaegar pauses for a moment, and then two, and then three, and looks back to his Hand, who has grown exponentially meek and equally venomous in the face of the King’s gaze. Connington’s jaw tightens as he looks out toward the city.

And then something dawns on Benjen. “You didn’t even think about that, did you? The brilliant, intelligent King with a whole room of advisors and they’re all so concerned about wiping your ass and throwing your power around that they’ll lead you straight into another rebellion.”

There is silence, and Benjen moves toward the door. He has had enough of other men making decisions about tearing his family apart. When he stops at the door, he does not look behind him. “Don’t rip another child away from their family, Rhaegar. Your peace is tentative, at best. The North will rebel. Cat’s Riverlands will rebel. Ned is popular enough in the Eyrie, and the Stormlands want retribution. The Greyjoys will take advantage of the chaos and launch a campaign of their own. You won’t survive, and taking another Stark from Winterfell will be the reason.”

“You know, many people at court do love to whisper about you, Benjen,” Rhaella teases, her smile just as frail as her body. She’s taken to the gardens as her place of solace, though, and who is Benjen to fault her for that? She’s endured more hardship than most people ever have or ever will. She is frail, delicate, but he would never call her weak. That is a word that does not suit.

“And what might they say, Your Grace?” Benjen asks, smiling genuinely in return. The Dowager Queen is a kind, gentle soul, her very being untouched by the trauma that has torn away at so much of her. But there is an edge, underneath, and it is that he admires even more. Court is full of the same false masks. Genuity is greatly appreciated, or should be, in his opinion.

“Ah, Benjen Stark, the youngest wolf pup. They say many things about you. Shall I tell you the most intriguing? That you are quite the swordsman. That no woman, or man, for that matter, has managed to warm their way into that icy bed of yours. That you loved your sister as Rhaegar did, as Prince Oberyn is rumored to have loved Elia.”

It is another thing he respects about his nephew’s grandmother: her ability to get straight to the point. It is refreshing this far South, to find people that do not honey words that are meant to bite. Benjen has learned over his years in this forsaken court that Rhaella speaks candidly, bluntly, with those she trusts. She leaves the honeyed words and false flatteries for enemies.

Benjen shakes his head at that. “I loved my sister as my sister, Your Grace. She was my closest and truest friend, yes, but Starks are a very different breed from Targaryens.”

Rhaella takes no offense, or if she does, she doesn’t show it, but Benjen thinks he knows her well-enough now to see when she’s truly annoyed. She is like Rhaegar, in that way, in that she appreciates his bluntness and cutting comments more than she’s offended by them. “Indeed. I know that well, my boy. I can see it, in the way you look at her son, in the way you tell him stories about his mother. You have a sort of boyish wonder in your eyes. Your describing the sister you worshiped, the sister you adored.”

The sister your son took from me, he wants to say, but he knows she doesn’t deserve it. He looks into her eyes, then, a light lilac, and he knows that she knows his thoughts well enough. She sips from her glass and looks out toward the bay. It is a beautiful spot, where the widowed queen has chosen to live out her days when in the capital. She looks healthier than she did when they first arrived at King’s Landing, all those years ago, and that was practically half a decade before, so she could be spending much more time in this garden, yet.

“You know, whether you or your honorable brother agree, Jaime Lannister is a good man,” Rhaella speaks, turning a brief gaze toward Daenerys and Jon as they chase each other around, quite quickly for children of six. Then again, he’s never quite recalled seeing any children of six besides himself when he was that age, so who is he to say for certain? “He told me stories of his sister, his strong, gorgeous sister, and even I fell a bit in love with the woman from his stories. It was part of the reason I encouraged the match, you know, part of the reason I gave my approval to Rhaegar’s decision to keep the Lannisters alive and in line. I wanted my son to have a woman who made him smile the way Ser Jaime did.”

But he did have that, Benjen’s traitorous mind spits. He had my sister, who could make anyone smile, who could make anyone laugh, and he let her bleed out in a tower in Dorne.

She takes another sip and motions for the serving boy, who stands too far away to hear, to refill her goblet. Her voice grows colder. “But Cersei Lannister is not the girl from Ser Jaime’s tales. She is a disease, and where before she was a disease with ambitions, now she is a disease with child. It took her long enough, but it is a threat all the same.”

Benjen understands why the Dowager Queen cares for the Kingslayer in the way she does. He is her savior, her grandchildren’s savior. Yet Benjen can never truly trust him. For a Kingsguard, he has too close of an allegiance to his family, to his sister. He recognizes that look in his eyes, the look someone has when they’re willing to do anything and everything for their blood. Jaime Lannister would slit Rhaella’s, Rhaenys’, and Aegon’s throats in an instant if it meant protecting his sister and her children. Seeing as how Rhaella is without her habitual golden shadow now, so close to Cersei’s birth, Benjen thinks she must already be aware of that possibility.

“That girl will give birth any day now, my boy, and if she has a son, all three of my grandchildren will be in danger, Jon and Rhaenys most especially. She would not dare go after Aegon until he was last. Now, with my granddaughter safe with her kin in Dorne, your nephew is the most vulnerable. Rhaegar will not allow him to return North, nor to the Riverlands, Stormlands, or any land which rebelled. He wouldn’t last a fortnight in the Crownlands. Some terrible accident would befall you both, I imagine, so that leaves Dorne, the Reach, and Dragonstone.”

And Benjen understands that there is no room for discussion or possibility in her tone. “And which would you recommend, my Queen?”

“I plan to return to Dragonstone as soon as my grandchild is born, without any of the Kingsguard. It would be the safest choice, I think, and Jon could get to know his aunt and uncle better. The Reach would be risky, but beneficial for connections, I suppose, and the Seven know how much the Tyrells resent the Lannisters. Dorne would be safe as well. Jon could spend time with his sister. I’m sure Prince Oberyn would convince Doran to agree. It seems you two have built quite the friendship, after all. It shouldn’t be too difficult,” Rhaella explains, and Benjen suddenly wonders how much better the kingdom would be if Rhaella had ruled, with her sense of justice and compassion coupled with a mind for politics.

His family would probably still be alive, whole and unburnt, safe in the North.

Oh, what a world that could have been.

“And how long would my nephew and I stay at Dragonstone?” Benjen inquired, his decision already made. The Lannister spies would not penetrate Rhaella’s household. Of that, he is certain.

“It would only be for a few of years at the most, so don’t fret, my boy. Just enough time the idea of death by ‘childhood illness’ to become as suspicious as the rest of her methods might be. Jon has always been a strong boy, but a chill has taken strong boys older than him. If she’s going to kill him after, she won’t be using that cowardly poison of hers. He’ll be safe at Dragonstone,” Rhaella declares, and she is one of the only people here that he can say with relative certainty that he trusts. For a place with as many snakes as King’s Landing, that is an impressive feat.

“I know you’ll probably hate me for this, but out of all the children, he reminds me most of Rhaegar,” Rhaella sighs, watching as Jon helps Daenerys up from a fall, picking a flower from the gardens and offering it to her meekly, a small smile on his face. Benjen cannot imagine Rhaegar being a drop as kind as Jon. No, Jon Targeryen has his mother’s heart through and through.

It makes Benjen worry more than he’d like.

“He would make a good king, that boy. Aegon was made for adventuring. He does not have the heart for ruling, nor the mind, even now, I fear,” Rhaella says, but the sharp look Benjen gives her makes her reconsider her next words. A sharp grin cuts at the corners of her mouth. “Oh, Benjen, my boy, do any of you Starks have an ambitious bone in your body? Even to think of such things… it’s only natural.”

“The crown cost my family everything, Your Grace. Jon will not have the misfortune of wearing it if I can help it,” Benjen says solemnly, and he knows he probably looks every bit as brooding as his older brother. Rhaella looks at him then, seriously looks at him, as she so often does, and lifts her newly filled goblet up to her lips.

“Would you consider taking a wife, Lord Benjen?” She asks, looking out toward the bay once again. “You are a handsome man, an honorable man. Your service to House Targaryen has proven invaluable. Oh, don’t look at me like that, boy. Whether you like it or not, which we both know you certainly don’t, your nephew is a Targaryen Prince, and your protection has saved him more than once. There are several ladies still eligible, and royal influence would make all the difference. The Crown owes you a debt.”

“The Crown owes me something it can never repay, my Queen,” Benjen smiles ruefully. “And I would not shackle a woman to a man whose heart is as bitter as mine.”

“I have known cruel, bitter, broken, horrible men all of my life, dear Benjen,” The Queen reminds him, her thin, wry smile veiling the raw truth of her torture. “I can tell definitively that you are none of those things. You’re in pain, and I find the greatest treatment for such pain to be love. Imagine it, a household full of children in a keep of your own. Give Jon more cousins to play with.”

“What are you scheming?” Benejn grins wryly, a ghostly life floating just behind his eyes. He has a wife, children, and daughters that look like his sister. But it is gone too quickly. Everything that’s too good to be true always is. “Who would I marry anyways, Your Majesty? I am the youngest son of a Northern House. What advantage would it serve to anyone?”

“House Stark was promised a Targaryen princess, once. A debt that can still be collected,” Rhaella articulates carefully, her lilac gaze boring intently into his. “My daughter is a Targaryen princess, and I want her to know none of the horrors I have. She will not marry her brother, either of them. No one else will have any say in the matter. I want her with a good man, Benjen, a kind man, who will treat her with the love and respect she deserves.”

For a moment, Benjen cannot think straight. “Your daughter is six. I am twenty. She is a child.”

“Less than fourteen years is hardly any difference at all. Jon Connington will have her auctioned off to older, like a broodmare, to fetch the highest price. You can marry when she bleeds. Later, if you’d like. I can find you a keep, away from the capital. Or your brother can arrange holdings in the North, I’m sure. Wouldn’t it be nice, to return to your homeland? I won’t have that red-headed oaf making decisions about my family. Rhaegar listens to him, and having the King’s ear is a dangerous thing.”

“Rhaella,” Benjen warns, because he will not be a pawn. But he’s seen the way Jon Connington looks at women. They have no value for him physically and even less intellectually. It is the way Aerys would have viewed Rhaella if he had not desired her as well. He agrees that Connington is dangerous, and having the King’s attention makes him lethal. “I will not marry her. Use it as pretense, if you must, to keep her safe or search for other matches. But I will not marry a girl who would not want me, who would not know better than me.”

“You are a truly kind soul, my boy. Don’t let the capital tear it out of you.”

“I’ve managed to survive for this long, Your Grace. I suppose only time will tell.”

Rhaella keeps their arrangement quiet for nearly three extremely pleasant years at Dragonstone. Frankly, Benjen enjoys the barrenness of it all, this island wasteland. It reminds him of the North in a peculiar, eerie sort of way. There is less need to worry about enemies because there are even less people. There is no godswood, though, much to Benjen’s disappointment. But, what Dragonstone lacks in the old gods and the North, Benjen makes up for in his stories.

“And that’s why the Starks share blood with wildlings,” Benjen smiles, the awestruck looks of Jon and Daenerys proving very entertaining. “Now, go on to your lessons, and I will tell you about Bael the Bard’s son with the Stark Princess tomorrow.”

He doesn’t interact with Viserys much, who seems to have no time for the childish stories that Benjen always seems to tell. He’s a bit reclusive, this angry teenage prince condemned to his silver brother’s shadow, scoffing at any and everything he deems to be nothing more than child’s play. It’s strange, how times have changed, to think at the same age, Benjen was playing guard to his nephew and Lyanna was unknowingly beginning a war. Viserys is traipsing around his Keep on his ancestral home with his kin still alive, whining. Benjen supposes he should be relieved, that no one need undergo suffering like he and his family did, but there is always a prick of annoyance behind his forehead whenever the little lordling complains.

Benjen has little to do here other than train, write letters, and speak with Targaryens, and so that is what he does. He still must respond to Oberyn, who sent with his letter detailing Rhaenys’ comradery with his daughters an offer to visit Dorne. Bring your nephew, if you want, Benjen, but the days of being his sworn knight are coming to an end. He is eight? Nine? The day will come when he is too old for you to be able to protect him. Just think about it, my friend.

But before he can even sit down, there is a knock at his chambers and he is summoned to the hall. Rhaella stands solemnly, her eyes looking a sort of blue in this room of dark stone and dragonglass. “Jon Connington was about to all but corral my daughter into the Lannisters’ filthy hands. Lord Tywin is looking for a wife for his youngest, his supposed heir to Casterly Rock. Eleven years her senior. Naturally, I could not let my girl into Tywin’s clutches, because that is where she would be. I had to tell Rhaegar of our arrangement.”

“Tyrion Lannister seems different from his family,” Is all Benjen contributes. Rhaella sighs in response.

“I do not care if he happens to be the kindest of all men to have ever lived. He is Tywin Lannister’s son, under Tywin Lannister’s influence. Tywin has been scheming for ages now to get Ser Jaime released of his vows and put back as heir, making her wife to a second son, a second Lannister son without holdings or influence, leaving her to wither away. The marriage would be a stupid move, personally and politically. The only reason that oaf Connington is so eager to make it is-”

“The price he will get for her,” Benjen finishes off, eyes glowering toward the window, towards King’s Landing.

Daenerys is a sweet child. She reminds him the slightest bit of his sister, if only in her innocence, her obliviousness to the ways of men, a way Benjen was himself, before everything fell to ash. She is a beautiful girl, too, he cannot deny, with the Targaryen silver hair and bright purple eyes. Her eyes are almost the color of Rhaegar’s, but just a bit lighter, without all of that perpetual sadness. She is beautiful, kind, and innocent. Like his nephew.

And he will protect her as well.

“My, my, Benjen, it seems you are learning the ways of court, after all,” Rhaella smiles teasingly, but her eyes hold worry. She thinks he is changing. She said it before, how she did not want him to become one of the men he despised.

And he will not. He will fall on his own sword before that happens. He is not changing, but evolving.

“Rhaegar has summoned us back to King’s Landing, all of us,” Rhaella continues, taking paces toward him to descend the steps. He can see her, then, in all of her regal and dignified youth, how utterly beautiful she must have been, this frail, delicate dragon. “Cersei is with child again, and if the gods are good, she will not survive. However, it’s unlikely, seeing as the gods do not seem to punish the wicked with difficult births. Young Aemon is by all accounts a Lannister, through and through. But Jon is a strong boy of nine, and Daenerys nearly ten. I told Rhaegar that preparations must be made, and that we will be there in four moons. It will take at most a week to get there, but let my son wait. Enjoy this time, my boy. It will be the last time for a while that you will be able to safely walk around a keep without your sword.”

And then the words are out of Benjen’s mouth before he can quite register them. “In that case, Your Grace, I would request time to travel to Sunspear. I owe a friend a visit.”

Rhaella lips curve into a small, as if she knows some secret of his. He does not know if he’s ever kept any secrets from her. “I shall have a ship take you there on the morrow. Go and spend the rest of the day with your nephew, Lord Benjen.”

When he enters the King’s Solar, Jon Connington throws him up against the wall by his collar. Benjen lets out a laugh, to which Connington growls. “You stupid shit. Do you even realize all of the fucking trouble you cause us?”

Benjen merely clears his throat, and pokes the dagger that he slipped out into Connington’s thigh with a bit more force. “I suggest you step back, my lord.”

“My sister is a child,” Rhaegar says, his eyes narrowed. Still, his tone lacks heat, as it nearly always does. He and Lyanna must have argued, must have disagreed. What did he look like then, Benjen wonders. He couldn’t have always been this dragon without fire. Lyanna always had a talent for riling people up, for inciting the anger and passion that lurked beneath their skin.

“So was mine,” Benjen retorts, with a sarcastic smile that would make the Kingslayer proud, masking the pain that stabs across his gut as he says it. He sees the appeal in Jaime Lannister’s sharp jokes, now more than ever. They channel pain, anger, and hatred in quite an effective manner.

“Do you realize how many gold dragons Tywin was willing to pay?” Connington seethes, now a safe distance away. “How he could have filled the Crown’s coffers?”

“Then sell him a fine pony. Not a princess. Not his only sister,” Benjen cannot help but sneer, looking toward Rhaegar, whose gaze snaps away. “Have you sold off Rhaenys yet, Connington? How much will the King’s daughter fetch as a broodmare? More or less than Daenerys? More, I imagine, considering the stock she’s from, considering her sire.”

Rhaegar’s eyes snap to him, then, his purple gaze ablaze. “You will not speak of my daughter in such a way, Benjen. I will have little qualms about taking your head after this. Even less about taking that wretched tongue of yours.”

Benjen’s wolfish smirk could cut glass, finely and precisely. “What is the difference, Your Grace, of speaking about exactly what you’re doing? You treat your daughter, your sister, like cattle, but if I confront you over it, I am to lose my head? How fittingly hypocritical.”

“Jon, leave us,” Rhaegar barks, his eyes focused on Benjen, and if he were a true dragon, his bones would melt right then and there. Here is the crack in the King’s armor, the fire beneath the cool, stone façade. When Connington, who seems too fucking stupid to understand just what his King says, stays still, Rhaegar’s voice sounds truly like a roar of fire. “Now.”

Connington does not even have the time to glare at Benjen before he storms from the room, the great doors echoing shut.

Rhaegar is holding some old, tarnished piece of paper in his hand, looking down on it intently, as he sits behind his desk. Benjen can see the toll these years have taken on him, how sulked and removed his gaze seems, as if he’s in another world. Oberyn mentioned how the Lannister influence has increased since Cersei’s first son, how the guards with Lannister sigils have become commonplace. “So, just what sort of game does my mother think she’s playing? Betroth Dany to you long enough for her to find a match she approves of?”

“And what would ever make you think that, Your Grace?” Benjen mocks, fire brewing in his chest.

“Don’t patronize me, Benjen. You never would’ve agreed to actually marry her. She’s a child, and you’re… you.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean, Your Grace?”

Rhaegar shows a slip of a smirk, as if he’s beaten Benjen at cyvasse. “Years ago, in this very room, you said that Jon and Oberyn shared similar tastes. Well, there are many who say you too share those… inclinations.”

Benjen’s eyes are stone but he mirrors the King’s grin. If rumors is all this King has to stand on, Benjen is amazed there isn’t already another in his seat. This man was built for prophecies, for whispers and dreams (and tragedy), not for ruling. “And there are many who say you are a strong, kind, honorable man. And yet there is the truth we both know.”

Rhaegar’s small smile hardens, and their years apart seem evident in the deep-set fatigue in his eyes. “You haven’t touched a woman since you came down from the North. At Court, in Flea Bottom, on Dragonstone.”

Benjen replies as though he’s brushing off lint from his tunic. “And have I touched a man, Your Grace, since you and your spies seem to know so much of my life? And how often do your spies report on my nightly activities, anyway, Rhaegar? Do they incite that much of your interest?”

“Before your return from Dragonstone, you spent nearly two moons in Dorne, with your good friend Prince Oberyn.”

“Yes… and his paramour, his daughters… your daughter, as well, if I’m not mistaken, Your Grace. And then there was Doran and his family, his children… could you be a bit clearer?”

“Do you mean to tell me you’re a maid?” Rhaegar asks incredulously, his anger with Benjen making it all the more hilarious.

All Benjen does is smile serenely. “I mean to tell you, Your Grace, that your spies know nothing because I want them to know nothing. I will not allow the relationships I have, romantic or otherwise, to be used against me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, I promised to escort my betrothed through the gardens.”

“You know, my queen has suggested that I take your head for treason. Plotting against the crown. She thinks Daenerys would be a good match for her brother,” Rhaegar calls, because he know it will stop Benjen from leaving, which it does. This man has a brilliant strategic mind when he wants to, and Benjen hates him for it (and so many other things).

“Your Queen Cersei wants every member of your family as far away from the capital as possible so her own spawn are unopposed. Daenerys at Casterly Rock bearing Lannister sons. I’m sure she’s recommended a match for Rhaenys with a son of that Frey aunt of hers, to ‘strengthen ties with the Riverlands,’ or something similar. She wants Jon labelled a bastard, dead, or at the very least, fostered somewhere far from the capital, and I’m sure she’s encouraging Aegon to be free, to go for an extended journey to Essos, the Free Cities and the like, so that way she can plot for that cruel, stupid son of hers to seize power. And she will bargain those two precious Lannister daughters to do it.”

Rhaegar watches him, then, as he’s so often done over this decade, but there is something different about this gaze. For these handful of moments, Rhaegar makes no effort to conceal his true thoughts, his true emotions. Benjen can see that all Rhaegar sees is fire. But it’s a trapped, feral thing, ferocious but unable to escape, like a dragon in a cage. “And then why have none of my advisors come forward with this folly if it’s so true?”

And Benjen cannot imagine how this man survived a war, won a war, if he cannot even see what goes on within his own court, the bars that have been built around him with Lannister gold. He despises how this man cries that he cannot see, all while keeping his eyes firmly shut. Why such willful denial? “My, my, Rhaegar. It seems all those years of prophecies and dreams has made you blind to what’s right in front of you. They don’t bring it to you because half of your council is firmly in her family’s pocket, and the other is too preoccupied by showering you with praise to keep whatever influence they can.”

Rhaegar’s eyes sear into his own, and Benjen is getting tired of pushing the King into reality. “Get your head out of your arse, Rhaegar, and rule the fucking kingdoms my father, brother, and sister died for.”

The first time Benjen almost dies, Jon is barely ten. And it is of a fever, of all the blasted things. At least, that’s what he thinks at first.

Seven knows how he even got it, but within what’s apparently a week, he’s condemned to his chambers and being told by a maester that while it’s no longer contagious, there is a very good chance that he won’t survive the night. He doesn’t remember much before, to be quite honest, being in a state of delirium, seeing people wander in and out. He remembers seeing Jon and Dany, just peeking behind his chamber door, and Rhaella and Rhaegar both visited him at some stage. It could’ve even have been more than once. Someone may have told him that Oberyn is travelling from Dorne, but that very well could’ve been another delusion. It should bother him, how he doesn’t remember much.

But now, sweating in his own sick bed that could very well become his death one, the first thing Benjen shouts for is Jon. “Jon, my nephew. Get me my nephew.”

He’s never seen the boy look quite as scared, and quite as brave. “You’re not going to get better, are you, Uncle Benjen?”

“I don’t know, little one,” Benjen admits, his heavy-lidded eyes fighting to stay open, to memorize each and every contour of his face. “But us Starks, we fight. You’re a Stark. Don’t ever forget that.”

Jon shakes his head, and Benjen can see tears glistening in his pale grey eyes, and surges enough energy to bring his nephew into a crushing hug. “I won’t, Uncle Benjen. I won’t.”

Benjen can feel the welling of tears behind his own eyes as well, and squeezes the closest thing he has to his own child, his own son, that much tighter. Jon’s hand goes to wipe away tears that haven’t fallen yet, and he speaks again. “Uncle… can you tell me about Mother?”

And Benjen sighs, because the ache in his chest isn’t only from the sickness trying to kill him. “What would you like to know, my boy?”

And Benjen can’t be sure whether it’s the sickness or just Jon contemplating, because it seems to be an eternity before he answers. “Just… what was she like? Some people say bad things about her. Others say she was beautiful, that she was a foolish woman. What’s the truth?”

“She wasn’t a woman,” Benjen says before anything, because he will only tell his nephew the truth. “She was a girl. A kind, compassionate, courageous girl, who loved flowers and horse-riding. She was just and honorable, she only… she only wanted her freedom. And she would be so proud of you, Jon. So proud.”

Jon is making no effort to quell his cries now, and he’s sniffling into Benjen’s shirt, and Benjen decides right then and there that he will live, because his nephew’s doesn’t deserve such sorrow so young. He will live if it kills him. “I love you, Uncle Benjen.”

“You are loved, my boy, so loved,” Benjen says, and his voice breaks the slightest bit. And when Benjen’s consciousness fades once more, it’s with Jon in his arms.

When he wakes next, Rhaella is applying a cool cloth to his forehead, and Benjen tries with all his might to jump out of the bed, but only manages to lift his head ever so slightly. “Jon, Jon. Where is he?”

“Having supper with Daenerys,” Rhaella says softly, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I couldn’t let her in to see you. I won’t give the gods any opportunity to take her from me. I hope you can understand.”

Benjen lets out a labor breath that he things would’ve been a laugh. “She’s a good child. Keep protecting her just as fiercely.”

“The maester says you will die tonight,” Rhaella begins after a moment, and her voice is different, more open, truly vulnerable in a way he hasn’t heard in so long, perhaps since him and Ned last spoke. Gods, Ned. His brother will learn of his death by a raven. “And that if, by some miracle, it is not tonight, it will only be a matter of time. Then again, Pycelle also said Daenerys would be plagued with sickness for her entire life, and not live past her sixth birthday, so I take his advice sparingly.”

“Will you make sure I’m buried in Winterfell, with my family, Rhaella? With my brother and sister,” Benjen asks suddenly, because while he may be a stubborn bastard refusing to die, the gods don’t play by human rules. “Tell Ned I love him, and I want to be buried next to Lya. And not to make a blasted statue of me – the others don’t look like them. I don’t want to be remembered as a lie.”

Rhaella looks at him then, and what a sight he must be, his body sweaty and sulken and dying, raising her soft, delicate hand to his cheek, and he can feel it shake ever so slightly. “The gods are never fair, are they?”

“I suppose I’ll have to ask why,” Benjen quips weakly, and the Queen lets out a soft laugh and looks like she wants to cry. “Do not waste your tears on me, Your Majesty. They have better uses.”

“You, Benjen Stark,” She begins, stroking his hair back. He likes to think it’s something his own mother would’ve done. “you are…”

He blinks awake again when it is dark and Rhaegar is sitting beside him, as if on vigil. Benjen cannot move, and so the mere opening of his eyes doesn’t yet alert the King, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Rhaegar so… unguarded. His hands pressed together, covering his mouth, and there’s tension in the rigidness of his back hunched over, but eyes are clear and all Benjen can see is exhaustion.

“You’re a terrible father,” Is the first thing Benjen whispers, his voice cracked and hoarse as the words crawl out of his throat.

And Rhaegar merely laughs, the corners of his mouth twitching, only just, but his eyes look shattered. “Those would be quite underwhelming last words.”

“You take him from his family, from his home, and you don’t even care for him,” And while Benjen’s insides are cracked and dry, tears leak from his ash-colored eyes all the same.

“I care for Jon. I love my son,” Rhaegar says seriously, his brows furrowed in what may or may not be confusion. “He has my name, is my heir. A boy should know his father, no?”

“You can’t even look him in the eyes,” And suddenly Benjen is weeping, for Jon and all the love and affection he deserves but will never get. For all of the love Rhaegar might have given Lyanna but can never give her son.

Rhaegar leans closer to him, then, not meeting Benjen’s gaze either. Perhaps he too is sick of Starks dying at his hands, even if this is the first he’s had to witness in person. “Benjen, you have to understand… it is… it is difficult.”

“You’re his father,” Benjen hisses, and it’s as if Rickard Stark is before him as well, and he’s staring into grey eyes as well as purple. “He’s your son. And he’s a stranger to you, that beautiful boy. Promise me, Rhaegar, promise me you’ll let him go to Winterfell once I die. Free him. He deserves… he deserves…”

Benjen’s eyes are falling; Rhaegar’s voice is hoarse and quiet, and for an idle moment Benjen wonders if the King too is dying. “I promise.”

Benjen opens his eyes to Oberyn’s onyx ones as the Red Viper pours liquid down his throat. “Drink, damn it. Benjen, drink.”

“Why?” He wheezes, taking a painful swallow.

“Eliaria’s seen this at work before. If it’s the poison she thinks, this will save you,” Oberyn hisses, emptying the last of a sapphire blue vial on to his tongue. “Now, we wait. It shouldn’t take long. You’re lucky we were travelling to the Stormlands when word reached, my friend.”

“I’ve been… poisoned?” Benjen coughs out in confusion. He is still unsure if Oberyn is an illusion or not.

“The sharpness of your intellect astounds me, Benjen,” Oberyn bites, his serious countenance softening as obsidian meets slate. “You are too soft for court, you frozen fool. It’s a miracle no one’s tried to kill you earlier.”

And now he is sure that it’s real. All Benjen can do is smile slightly. “You were worried about me, My Prince.”

Oberyn seems in no mood to joke, and in the back of his mind Benjen can understand, because if it were Oberyn on the brink of death he would be in no sort of humor. His friend looks shaken, like some sort of feral animal thrown into a cage. But Benjen is suddenly able to take in a full breath without debilitating pain and he knows that Oberyn saved his life, that he’ll live, and some sort of all-encompassing hope is awakened in him.

Oberyn grabs his arm and his gaze is piercing. “You should know by now that death is no laughing matter, Benjen.”

Benjen is suddenly thrown, because Oberyn is always joking, always mocking, and this seriousness is a foreign thing. He meets his closest friend’s gaze meaningfully and there is a new, abstract tension between them. “I agree, but then shouldn’t life be?”

There is a moment of silence, of stillness, before their lips crash together. And, the fever be damned, Benjen has never in all his life felt this sort of fire.

It’s a ferocious thing, almost like battle. Oberyn takes the back of Benjen’s neck with one hand, deepening the kiss as his other hand goes to the Northman’s beard. Benjen is weak but unyielding in all contact except the slackening of his lips to allow Oberyn’s tongue entrance. He lets out a low moan, one hand gripping on to Oberyn’s forearm as the other searches blindly for stability against the featherbed. Oberyn lets out a satisfied, humming little laugh without pause, the vibration of it setting Benjen’s entire body that much more ablaze.

It lasts for a moment and an eternity before Benjen pulls the slightest bit back, and a whine-like sound escapes the Red Viper’s throat that Benjen will never forget. “You really are completely, wildly unpredictable, aren’t you?”

Oberyn grins, then, and begins to pepper kisses down his throat and murmurs. “You can find out definitively in a moment.”

And that is when Benjen sighs, and Oberyn pauses to meet his gaze. It is a mirthful, wry, disappointed thing that chips away at his heart. “But I suppose you’ll tell me now why we can’t, won’t you, Lord Stark?”

“I’m betrothed, Oberyn,” Benjen reasons, and Oberyn’s quick, quiet laugh makes his obsidian eyes flash.

“To a child you will never marry,” Oberyn points out, but he knows Benjen, and he knows the argument is lost. They are each other’s closest friend for a reason. “But that frigid Northern head of yours will have you honor it anyway, won’t you?”

Benjen can only smile dejectedly, because how different would the world be, if he could let himself love Oberyn in a way that, now, can only really end in heartbreak. When he leans in, taking Oberyn’s lips in his own, it is softer, sweeter, sadder. It is a goodbye to something that could never really come to be in the first place. Oberyn is the one to pull away now, but only his lips. His head still rests against Benjen’s, and his hand stays almost desperately at the back of his neck.

“I cannot share well, regardless,” Benjen breathes, savoring the contact. “When I love, Oberyn, it’s completely. There is no room for others.”

Oberyn nods minutely, and pulls his head and hands back, and Benjen feels strangely bereft. “We are friends first, Benjen. Friends always. That will never change. I do hope you find your happiness, and whoever it’s with, I will welcome the day.”

When Oberyn leaves later on, Benjen cannot help but think that while he’s been given miraculous life, his only viable chance at happiness died when his kiss with Oberyn did. He feels the emptiness in his chest more severely than ever.

When he finds Jon holding back tears after one lesson, in which Aegon mocked him for being a dim-witted bastard, Benjen decides that they both need a break from the viciousness of court. He takes his nephew through the hidden catacombs beneath the Keep, emerging along the shore and journeying through the city. Benjen, dressed in his leathers, looks like a commoner nearly all the time, anyway. Jon wears a plain tunic. They walk the city, talk with the common folk. Jon plays games with their children while Benjen drinks with their fathers. It is only meant to be once, but then it happens the week after, and the week after, and four days after that, and sometimes, in even closer intervals.

And so begins their adventures as Tor and Bran, father and son from the North.

Jon is a quiet boy, but he comes to life in the anonymity of it all. Children flock to him, this boy of eleven, watching him with wonder in their eyes as he delegates the games and helps the young ones. He defends the weaker players and puts the bullies in their place. He is a marvel, truly.

Rhaella is right, Benjen cannot help but think. He would make a good king. A kind king. A just king. But as soon as the thought of a crown enters his mind, so does the reek of burning flesh and his bleeding sister.

“Your boy is one of the good ones,” The taverness smiles softly as she comes out to bring him another mug of ale. It is disgustingly hot in the capital during summertime, and the taverns are all twice as stuffy. So, Benjen is more than happy to join the rest of the patrons drinking outside.

A surge of pride electrifies the base of his spine, at the same instant a pang of guilt hits his stomach. Her boy, Benjen corrects in his head. “He is, isn’t he? His mother’d be proud of him, I reckon.”

“Oh, she no longer wit’ yeh?” The woman’s eyes twinkle with sadness, of a deep, universal sorrow that everyone knows now, even so long after the war. They are the color of moss, and yet reflect the same melancholy that his own do.

Benjen merely shakes his head, not trusting too many words. His smile, if you could even call it that, is strained at best. “Birthing bed.”

The woman puts a hand on his shoulder, then, and her smile as cracked as his own. “Apologies. Lost me sister the same.”

She goes, then, collecting empty tankards and heads toward the tavern door, but just before opening the door, she stops and turns to him. “I’d say you’re right. I reckon she’d be proud, too.”

And then she’s gone.

“Uncle,” Jon says curiously, quietly, on their way back to the Keep, through the catacombs. He keeps these excursions as secret as he can, from Rhaegar, from court, from everyone, because it would be all too easy for Cersei to arrange an accident. “Why did my mother name me Jon? I mean, instead of Brandon or Rickard or some other Northern name? After Lord Connington?”

A ghost of a smile comes across his face. “Fuck no, my boy. Definitely not. The old master at arms of Winterfell, Jon Cassel. He was a great swordsman, an even better teacher. He’d give Lyanna secret lessons with a sword, when we were younger, and the only reason he agreed was because she begged so fiercely, and even promised to name her firstborn after him.”

Jon’s eyebrows furrow in complete confusion. He looks like Lyanna did, all those years ago, when she first tried reading High Valyrian. “Really? That’s why?”

And Benjen lets out an enormous, booming laugh that echoes throughout the crypts, but in this moment, he doesn’t care. “Yes. Your mother was peculiar like that. Always kept her promises, even the silly ones. And, I suppose, to annoy Rhaegar. She loved getting under people’s skin. And you are the only one of his children without one of those ridiculous Valyrian names.”

Jon let’s out a giggle, then, because while he would never say it, Benjen is sure that he’s exceedingly grateful not to have a name like that. He’s an outsider, in look, blood, birth, and everything in between. A Valyrian name would seem no more than a shoddy attempt to fit in, to try and ignore his heritage. “I like it… when we talk about her, Uncle Benjen.”

And it is in that moment, Benjen realizes, that it was the first time thinking and talking about his sister resulted in laughter instead of renewed heartbreak. They enter the Red Keep without anyone noticing, while all Benjen can think about is how much this boy embodies his sister. It’s uncanny, and as painful as it so often is, it’s beautiful. “I do too, Jon. I do too.”

“Benjen Stark.” It is not a greeting, more of a statement. Yet, on her tongue, he knows it can just as easily be a warning.

“Your Grace,” Benjen replies evenly. He will not show the lioness any soft underbelly to strike at. “I trust you and your children are well. Your daughters look marvelous.”

Cersei’s emerald eyes drift toward her twin girls, wobbling about the gardens. She has come here perhaps a dozen times during her entire reign as Queen, and so Benjen has thought he’d be free of her. Yet, here she sits, drinking summerwine. He should not have been so naïve.

He is different from Ned, now. Ned is just, too just, in thinking that everyone abides the same moral compass that he himself does, and that those who offend it may feel remorse or even seek to rectify their mistake. But Benjen can see how wrong his older brother is in this Lannister’s gaze. These green eyes, that watch her daughters with so much affection, would kill, burn, torture and maim without a second thought, and she’d get her Kingslaying brother to help her.

“They are indeed, Lord Benjen. And, tell me, is your nephew keeping away from trouble?” Cersei replies, her eyes as sharp as her cutting smile, studying him like a cat (like a lion). She has never referred to Jon as his rightful title of Prince, and Benjen doesn’t think she’s about to start now.

“The Prince of Summerhall is as wonderful as always. He is studying his letters at the minute,” Benjen replies cordially, knowing full well that Jon is training with Barristan Selmy. He surprises himself, sometimes, just how skilled he’s gotten at lying, how natural it comes. It doesn’t bother him as much as he’d like.

It also doesn’t bother him as much as it should that he gets a significant amount of satisfaction from seeing how the Queen’s eyes narrow minutely at the mention of Jon’s title. He will always rank higher than her own children, regardless of what she whispers about him. And while Benjen hates the pressure that’s been placed on his nephew because of his father, he doesn’t hate how vehemently it seems to perturb Rhaegar’s wife.

He doesn’t know whether he hates or pities Cersei Lannister. He’s nearly sure it’s neither, but there are aspects of both. He’s still not sure if she’s behind his near feverish end (he doubts he’ll ever know, for sure, who orchestrated the incident, and it is just one of the many realities he must resign himself too). She isolates his nephew, makes him feel as though he is the bastard so many think him to be. He keeps close enough watch to never let her interact with him when unnecessary, but he knows what she whispers to her children, to her son, about halfbreed siblings. She can see the unadulterated hatred in her eyes, in those of her son, who should be too young to even know that such animosity exists.

And yet, for all that she and her family have done to keep Rhaegar and the crown in a cage, he cannot help but imagine a younger girl who must have yearned for love that the Crowned Prince was unable to give, because whatever his capacity for it had died when his sister did. He didn’t love Benjen’s sister the way she deserved, definitely not, but Rhaegar cared for her in his own way. And so sometimes all he can see when he looks at the Queen is a heartbroken, betrayed young girl in the shadow of his sister’s dark hair and quiet songs.

“I hear you are to marry young Daenerys,” Cersei tuts, almost like he’s a child that’s broken something valuable, about to be punished. “My congratulations. Though, I must say, my younger brother was quite fond of her. It is such a shame their own union couldn’t be finalized.”

Benjen has known for a fact that Daenerys has never set eyes on Tyrion, except during any assembly in Court. He is even more certain that the two have never even exchanged pleasantries once. “Well, I wish a prosperous match for Lord Tyrion all the same.”

“Yes. My family has lost much after the rebellion, Lord Benjen. We were in a very precarious position, before,” Cersei replies, her voice as even and measured as ever. “But no longer. People seem to forget just how much time has passed, how much they’ve lost.”

“I believe I can say that we all have, Your Highness,” Benjen retorts softly, before taking a quick bow. He will not stay near the Lion Queen for any longer than he has too. His dismissal of her seems to ignite something inside her eyes, like wildfire, and Benjen doesn’t intend to find out what it is. However, he cannot make his escape quick enough.

“Every night I pray to the gods that your sister never existed, that the world in which we now live is a fantasy, a nightmare. I pray that she died of fever in her youth, that she was bedded and wedded by one of those Northern barbarians before they ever could have ever met,” Cersei reveals calmly, as if she’s just commenting on the weather and not admitting that she wants the very person Benjen loved most to be wiped out of existence. “That Dornish whore wouldn’t have lasted another year, and then I’d have been Queen to a King who would love me, who would see no one else but me. I would be the sun.”

He looks at her, then, and sees the motley of broken pieces that cannot be put back together. A broken woman, defeated, and it’s the first time he thinks that perhaps she’s just as trapped as Rhaegar has become, vying so desperately to be a puppet master as she dances away with fraying but unbroken strings. He wonders if any part of her life has been her own idea, or if all of that youthful ambition has festered into absolute ruthless. Perhaps she’s on a leash of her own, and he can imagine her father is who holds it, just waiting to be freed. This woman could never be a sun: she was fire. Something erratic and destructive and all consuming, just waiting for an ember to hit tinder.

He thinks of her father, of Gregor Clegane, and of how his “sudden” betrayal couldn’t have been a surprise to the old lion. No, Elia’s murder was planned, so that out of all the blood and suffering Cersei would be able to claim the fallen crown, and it’s never been clearer than in the wildfire of her eyes. He thinks of Ser Jaime, and how much he knew, how willing of a participant he might have been. Did he watch as Clegane killed the Queen? Did he smile, thinking of how happy his sister would be? Did the guilt finally get to him, when Clegane turned toward the children? Did he even really save the children, or was their survival merely a way to guarantee his own?

“Elia Martell was the sun, Your Highness, and you are nothing more than the very placeholder that you never wanted to be,” And so, while Benjen may not be able to run her through with a sword, he can cut her with words. “And my sister was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life. Don’t you dare try to pretend whatever remains of yourself, of your cruelty, even compares.”

“It is a beautiful day. I remember being little, fearing every year there would be a storm as terrible as the one I was born into,” Daenerys sighs on the day she turns thirteen. A feast and giving of gifts is arranged for the evening, but she has never been much for spectacle.

“A beautiful day for a beautiful girl, my betrothed,” Benjen smiles, a twinkle of teasing laughter in his eyes. He feels like Brandon in moments like these, in his easy laughter with Daenerys.

He is not lying. She is indeed a beautiful girl, even so young. Her pale silver hair shone in the sunlight, her fair skin framing lovely purple eyes. He is not the only one to have noticed.

“Are you truly my betrothed, Lord Benjen?” Daenerys asks with a mirthful smile as he escorts her through the royal gardens that, after all this time, have practically become carved into his eyelids. “Because Mother and I have had a very interesting discussion regarding the matter long ago. It is kind of you to still pretend, though.”

He continues to grin, because this is a familiar pattern of theirs. He pokes fun at the situation, she acts as if it is the first time he’s ever done so. It is nice, to have something so stupid and inconsequential in his life that makes him smile.

“So, Princess, are you looking forward to your gifts?” Benjen questions, steering them away from Varys’ spies who are so obviously trying to listen in. “Your mother is quite confident that you will love her gift best. It is quite a good one, I must admit.”

Daenerys hums like she’s hiding something. “Actually, Lord Benjen, there is only one thing I truly want for my nameday, and it is something I would like you to give me.”

She sounds so regal, so confident, that who is he to deny her? “As you wish, Princess. What can I give you?”

He wonders what his sister would say, if she sees him now, arm and arm with a Targaryen princess, his (supposed) betrothed, in the capital. She would laugh, but not necessarily out of humor. Most likely, his sister would laugh because the tears she shed for their family dried up long ago. She can just take solace that Ned and his children are safe, and that he is keeping her son the same.

“I have never been kissed,” Daenerys confesses, considerably less confident than she’d been only moments before. “And I was hoping, as my betrothed, for my nameday, you would help me rectify that.”

And suddenly Benjen is shocked into reality, because as much as he may feel like Brandon on the surface, he does not have that measured ease his eldest brother was born with. Brandon could take any situation in stride. But, as he was so often reminded in childhood, he is not Brandon.

“Do you truly think it wise, Princess?” He asks, as they slip toward an even more private section of the gardens. It would not do well for others to overhear. “We may not be paired together for much longer.”

“Let me have what happiness I can find, my Lord, when I can find it,” She smiles softly, confidently, and suddenly he cannot believe she is only thirteen. “Besides, I would find that you’re my only appropriate choice, after all. Unless you think John Connington or Ser Jaime will be more obliging?”

And it’s here that he can see her youth, in her transparent teasing and testing, and how fearlessly she does something that might mortify someone older. His eyes narrow in playful distaste, because she knows him well enough to mention the two people he likes least. There is no tact in her actions, in her words, only purpose.

“As you wish, Princess,” Benjen acquiesces quietly, stepping in front of her. “Your wish is my command, after all.”

So, Daenerys Targaryen, in sunshine and summer, receives her first kiss surrounded by lilacs. It’s a quick, chaste thing. Two pairs of lips, one coarse, dried, chapped, and the other soft, small, sweet, meeting together in a moment of light.

It doesn’t ignite any sort of world-ending passion within the depth of his gut or make sparks zip down his spine, but it does make him feel something, something he’s almost sure he’s never felt before: contentness. As if, as if he could be happy, resigned to a life of holdings up North and disputes to mediate. He has always seen this as the illusion he meant it to be, but… what if? He knows how dangerous of a question it is to ask.

“Is it always like that?” Daenerys whispers after a second has past and they pull away. “So… pleasant? I’ve heard plenty of stories that say otherwise.”

“I will never do anything unpleasant toward you, Your Grace. On that, I can swear,” Benjen proclaims quietly, leaning his forehead against her own. “Betrothed or not, I will protect you, Daenerys. Always.”

She lets out a little breath, then, her gaze reaching his own and smiles. “I think that’s the best gift I can ever receive, Lord Benjen. Thank you.”

Jon is almost fourteen when his sister returns from Dorne for the first time since she was seven. It has been ten years since most of the capital has been graced with Rhaenys’ presence, and with her seventeenth nameday upon them in a few moons’ time, an extravagantly large tourney is planned, her betrothal to be announced at the end. Even now, the Keep is buzzing with talk of competitors, for both the tourney and the princess’s hand.

He’s an excellent swordsman, his nephew. Nearly as good as Benjen himself, now a man nearing thirty, with he and Barristan Selmy as teachers. Jaime Lannister keeps to himself and his sister’s children and is a proud uncle of two darling girls and a boy worse than hellspawn. With pride, Benjen can say that Jon is the best swordsman out of Rhaegar’s sons. He is also the kindest. He sees more of Lyanna in her son every day.

“Will you not ride in the tourney, Uncle?” Jon asks him as they exit the training yard, still dressed in their plain armor. Benjen hardly ever wears anything else since he arrived at King’s Landing all those years ago, save the plain leathers underneath. Consider him a creature of habit.

Benjen merely rolls his eyes, stopping suddenly to unsheathe his sweat-soaked leathers. The summer sun blazes unrelentingly upon them, if the tan on Benjen’s arms and face are anything to go by. “I will not, nephew. Let the Kingsguard have their glory.”

“Surely you’ll participate in something, Uncle Benjen,” Jon implores, sounding dangerously close to a whine, but catches himself as he meets Benjen’s raised eyebrow. “Why not the tilt? No one rides quite like a Northman.”

No one except your mother, Benjen thinks, and he all but curses himself for how raw the wound of her death still is, will continue to be. There are days when he pictures her walking up the steps of the Red Keep, laughing and smiling, saying that it was all a mistake. He’d forgive her in a heartbeat, he thinks, then, as long as she’d come home again. There’s never been anything to forgive her for, not really, but her dying has always felt like the slightest bit of a personal betrayal. He lost the person who loved him most.

“Not even in the melee?” A voice questions from above them, and it is Princess Rhaenys, descending the steps. She has a coy sort of smile on her face, this girl he hasn’t seen in a decade, save the couple of moons he spent in Sunspear, where she and the Sand Snakes seemed to have very little mind for Oberyn or his visitor. She is no longer a girl now, though. Her caramel skin looks radiant in the sunlight, dressed in loose lilac silks the very same shade as her eyes. Her hair is dark, and even in the blinding sunlight, it stands just a shade lighter than black, styled intricately down her back. She is beautiful. Truly, undeniably beautiful.

And the glint in her lilac eyes, not the eyes of Rhaegar, but of her grandmother, says that she knows it.

“Not even in the melee, Princess,” Benjen affirms, using his hand to wipe some of the grim from his face, pushing his fingers back through his hair. “I prefer my skill to be seen in the training yard and on the battlefield. There is little need for it elsewhere.”

She tuts in playful disappointment, a smirk curving her full lips. “It is sure to be awfully boring, then, won’t it, dear brother? Do you think there is anything we can do to convince your uncle otherwise?”

“We should not accost my betrothed so, Rhaenys,” Daenerys smiles, appearing from behind the girl that is two years her senior, yet still her niece. “I’m sure Benjen would be much more willing to ride in the tourney if he were asked nicely. Wouldn’t you, Lord Benjen?”

He sighs, knowing that he cannot deny Daenerys anything, as much as he might wish to. “Only if I may fight with your favor, my love.”

They’ve taken to using pet names for each other. He does not love her in the way a man ought to love his wife, but he cares for her deeply. They are friends, companions who have found comfort and safety in their arrangement. Rhaella has been slow to look for alternatives, and Benjen suspects that it’s because she knows just how well the two of them get along. She is hoping he will relent, that he’ll be the one to take her away from this horrible snake pit.

Jon laughs and Benjen watches Dany blush, her cheeks a lovely shade of pink. In a different world, he thinks, he could be elated with her, with a wife who can make him smile, in a holding somewhere North, with nothing more to do than mediate petty disputes and have babes. In a different world, we would be allowed, even expected, to want that. He thinks it’s a life he could’ve even had, once, if Brandon were Warden of the North and Lyanna could visit with her and Robert Baratheon’s black-haired babes. Ned would’ve had his own holding somewhere, or gone to beg for the hand of that beautiful Ashara Dayne, or, in a perfect world, both. But no matter how much he wants to want that, that simple happiness, it just does not seem a reality.

But there are times when he finds himself slipping. Daenerys has hardly any trace of girlhood left at fifteen (did Rhaegar see any childhood left in his sister?) and he catches his gaze following her form more and more often. A feeling he can’t describe blooms in his chest whenever he manages to lure a smile or laugh. Even a simple blush leaves him feeling as if he’s thirteen, leaving flowers for Clayre Poole, waiting for her to catch his eye and grin. It’s dangerous, Benjen reminds himself, to be this close to slipping into his own head, putting more concern on his own hopes than the safety of his nephew. And yet, he’s never felt the urge to stray from duty this strongly before. It’s distressing, but all he can do is have his gaze linger on her blushing cheeks and push the concerns from his mind. It can never be, he knows, not truly, because he gave his word all those years ago that it would only be for show, but it’s hard to look at this beautiful woman (girl) and not hope. (Look at where hope got Lya. He will not do that to her. He will not make her like his sister.)

“I would be honored, my lord,” Dany responds sweetly, her eyes looking at him with affection and something dangerously close to love. Benjen barely has time to fear it, though, (or have his heart leap at the sight of it) because a glance at Princess Rhaenys shows that her lilac eyes are on fire with something he definitely does not recognize, not on her face.

“Well, we should leave the men to their fighting, then, shall we?” Rhaenys suggests, the gaggle of girls in tow giggling in assent. The group begins to make their way toward the gardens, but Rhaenys sends him a look that sends a shiver of something up his spine. “And I look forward to watching you ride, Lord Benjen. Even though I must wait a few moons, it is a sight I am most excited to see.”

“My niece has taken a liking to you, Benjen,” Oberyn smirks as they look over the attendants for the feast. Nearly every Great House is here, and all of them shall be in a week’s time for the tourney, a lavish celebration set to last a fortnight that will commence in a moon’s time. The King is demanding everyone’s presence early, not just for his daughter’s nameday and betrothal, or so Benjen suspects, but to see any and all possible threats to his peace. Ned is bringing four of his children down, the fifth but a babe still suckling at Cat’s teat up in Winterfell. It is the first time Jon will meet any of his cousins, save Robb when in the cradle, and Benjen is the same. Ned writes that all of them have Catelyn’s Tully look, save Arya, and Benjen doesn’t quite know how he’ll react seeing a little girl who may look like his sister. He’s not quite sure how Rhaegar will, either.

Benjen merely holds back a scoff. “I’m betrothed to her aunt, Oberyn.”

“And how can you be sure I’m not talking about Arianne? Anyway, I have to say, the Northern look is quite appreciated amongst the Dornish,” the Red Viper laughs, suggestively if only to attempt to make Benjen uncomfortable. It does not succeed. He is not his solemn, soft-spoken brother. Benjen only grins wolfishly. “My daughters found you quite distracting as well, during your visit. You were the topic of conversation for weeks afterward. I’d have half a mind to offer you a betrothal with holdings in Dorne if you weren’t already promised.”

“Dorne is not a place I can live,” Benjen smiles good-naturedly. “Visit? Happily. But this lion’s den is South enough.”

Just then, Benjen’s eye is caught by the Lannister prince and princesses. The boy, Aemon, must be nearing eight, and the twin girls, Aena and Raena, could very well be five. All pristine golden heads with Lannister green eyes. Jon, and by extension, Benjen, does not spend much time with his younger half-siblings, no doubt on Cersei’s continuous maneuvering, as she insisted her own children receive lessons and training from their personal maester, septa, and that Aemon’s sword lessons be giving exclusively by her brother, Jaime, leaving Jon and Aegon to compete.

His eyes flit over to the Crowned Prince, and Aegon looks every bit as Targaryen as Jon is Stark, the only evidence of outside blood being his slightly tanner skin. And he fits into the role of a Targaryen, of Rhaegar Targaryen’s heir, quite well, with his fancy harp and sweet songs that make maidens swoon. Yet he is also ostentatiously arrogant where Rhaegar is subtly so, and hellbent on making Jon feel as though he is no better than the curses whispered about him. He is threatened, and Benjen sees it.

“Not all of the South is as horrible as this place,” Oberyn smirks, as if he knows some sort of secret, lifting his goblet up to his mouth.

“Too many memories that aren’t mine,” Is all Benjen can retort, smiling wryly, finishing his (ninth– he thinks) glass of wine. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have Targaryens to dance with.”

“A Dance of Dragons, indeed,” Oberyn quips, making Benjen’s booming laughter spill into the Hall as he walks toward his betrothed and the Dowager Queen, the fiddling music filling his ears as some other swell of emotion fill his soul.

“Your Grace, my sweet,” Benjen greets, a bow to each. Rhaella rolls her eyes at the teasing laughter and sarcasm in his eyes. “I was hoping you would honor me with this first dance, Lady Daenerys.”

Instantly, with her shy smile and blush, he realizes just how much he loves coaxing reactions out of her. Her grin feels like the sweetest victory he’s known in a while, and perhaps it’s the ale and wine buzzing in his veins, but she looks more woman than anything else. He can pretend. He can let himself pretend, tonight. “I would be honored, Lord Benjen.”

Rhaella’s got something just behind her eyes, looking at the two of them, and she nods with something more than approval. “I do hope you’ve taken dancing lessons since the last time I’ve seen you. I would hate for you to embarrass yourself, my boy.”

“I’ll be embarrassing you soon enough, Your Grace, after my betrothed tires of my dancing,” Benjen retorts, holding her hand a bit tighter than he’s ever done before. Whenever they’ve touched, it’s always been in fleeting, friendly touches full of care and warmth, but the space between them seems to hold a new sort of heat.

His hand moves to her waist, and he can feel her sudden inhale, and he looks down at her, finding her cheeks just a shade lighter than wine red. He cannot help but lean his lips toward her ear, the rest of him still at a relatively respectable distance, and tease. “Has someone had more than just a cup of wine, tonight?”

Her grin is blinding, even in the dim lamplight, and she leans in to reply softly. “I’ve found it doesn’t taste quite so sour if you keep drinking.”

And he laughs wildly, like Brandon used to, filing the hall with joyous noise, and it’s like he can see and hear their household, all of its love and laughter and life, and he wants it. Gods, there’s no pointing in denying how much he wants it, is there? That love. That joy. That freedom, from all of the darkness and suffering in the world. Here’s his salvation, right before him, with silver hair and violet eyes in the candlelight and he’s twirling her, dancing for what must be hours on end.

The end up outside the hall in a dark corridor, laughing like lovestruck children (like the child she is, like the child Benjen never got to be), and Benjen’s not sure who initiates, but they are kissing, and it is not the simple, chaste peck he gave her when she was younger. No, this is full of heat and wanting and wine. His hands cup her face and her arms feel frantically for the security and sturdiness of the stone wall. Her lips part quickly, for this rushed thing, but Benjen will not let it go any further, however much he wants it to. He knows in the back of his mind that this hope is a futile thing, and perhaps that makes it worse, still choosing to want it.

So, he receives what he can, and hopes he can keep kissing his betrothed in the dark, away from the scrutiny and horror of court, for just a little while longer.

Ned’s children are marvelous, and Benjen never thought that his heart would be capable of feeling so much utter love and devotion again. Before, he would’ve sworn that his heart’s ability to expand died when Lyanna did, and that it only held enough love for the Starks which remained: Ned and Jon. He thinks Lyanna would be happy that he was proved wrong.

Robb has Brandon’s bawdy personality and cheer without his troublesome wolfblood. He is a strong, stocky Tully boy with cheer and light evident in his bright blue eyes. He is loud and humorous and seems like the type to make friends in spades. Jon, surprisingly, in spite of his relatively quiet demeanor, takes to him quickly. He is a boy people will love and befriend rather than fear, and Benjen is pleasantly surprised by how close they become. Jon looks much like Ned, and while he can see Rhaegar look cautiously at the boy who was named after the man who nearly stole his crown, Benjen ensures that looking is all he does. Rhaegar has never been much of a father to Lyanna’s boy, to any of his children, really, and he doesn’t get to pick up the role whenever he likes. Benjen won’t have it.

Sansa is every bit her lady mother’s daughter as well. She is beautiful, even at her young age, and the perfect lady in practically every way. She takes to Daenerys easily, excited to speak with her ‘soon-to-be’ aunt. She watches Aegon in passing, when she thinks neither he nor his companions notice, but a small frown sews on to her face whenever she sees him insult Jon. It’s that small but undeniable display of emotion that convinces Benjen that she is just as much a Stark, as much a wolf, as himself. Wolves are very protective of their own, after all, no matter how docile they may seem.

Arya… makes his heart ache. He cannot stand seeing her for long, this girl who seems to be his sister reborn, if not even more willful with Ned as a father. He’s always had a soft heart beneath that cold, steel, honorable exterior, his brother, and Arya is the finest example of that, with her riding and archery and ‘dancing lessons’. She’s captivating, this young wolf girl who cares for nothing save her family and no one’s opinions save her own. He sees how Rhaegar glances at her, and they are only glances, because even he is not stupid enough to believe that no one else is watching him, and Benjen hates how he sees the forlorn wistfulness in those purple fucking eyes.

Bran is a quiet boy, nearly nothing like his namesake. He prefers silent adventuring as opposed to boisterous games, and prefers the company of books to people. He spends a bit of time with Tyrion Lannister, which makes something beneath Benjen’s skin tick, because while Tyrion might be a pleasant man, he is still a Lannister. But, apparently much of this is in the libraries and limited primarily to intellectual conversations. He takes whatever solace in that he can find.

Ned himself is different too, happy in a way Benjen so desperately wants to be. He could hear it in his brothers letters, but seeing it is surprising in a way Benjen can’t describe. His face is weathered but creased with laugh lines, his solid muscle softened into the fat of a man who knows peace, who has known justice and fairness and order. But Benjen worries for his fortunate brother, because the capital makes no allowances. It will take your fortune and happiness and burn it to the ground. But he will not let that happen to his family, to his people, to his pack.

The pack survives. The pack survives. It has to. Benjen has no other options.

Robb, with all of his boyish brawn and bravado, charms nearly all of the young women in court, Benjen’s betrothed included. It must be the sort of Northern disregard of such strict convention coupled with his innocence and Tully stock. He’s a shining light, something everyone is drawn to. Everyone, it seems, including Daenerys, and Benjen doesn’t know why he doesn’t not care about it.

He knows why, of course, but where before he’d always been able to rationalize his care for her, since the feast, it’s taken a life of its own. This desire is a wild thing, something he cannot fold neatly or keep in a sturdy cage. It is uncontrollable and it scares him, because wasn’t that sort of unbending freedom the reason Lya ran in the first place?

“The future Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North would be quite the match, don’t you think, Benjen dear?” Rhaella asks one day, seated in her section of the gardens, watching as Jon, Robb, Daenerys, and Sansa sit in the grass about fifty feet away with other young people of court, laughing and jesting away. She is looking at him now, but he will not meet her gaze. “And it would still satisfy our promise to Starks for a Targaryen princess. Perhaps I can speak to your brother about the matter before the tourney begins.”

Benjen looks at this woman and her cutting lilac eyes, and back to the laughing figure of his betrothed, and makes a decision. He’s never really deserved such happiness anyway, however much he covets it. Why should he keep two people from it as well? “It would be an advantageous match for both houses, Your Grace.”

Rhaella does something she’s never done in all the time he’s known her: she slaps him upside the head. It’s a soft gesture, probably more to get his attention than anything else, and it most definitely works. “You stupid, stupid boy. Twice her age and yet I’m sure she has more sense than you. I see the way you look at her, how you admire her. I’ve seen how she does the same. Don’t go about breaking both of your hearts. Will you not even consider making it a true marriage? She’s been bleeding for nearly half a year. We can have you wed before the tourney.”

He splutters a bit at that, because what else is there for him to do, really? “She deserves-”

“She deserves a husband who will respect her, cherish her, who will stay true to her above all. She deserves a quiet life, away from court and responsibility. I am through with ambition. Look at where it’s brought us. Being wife to the Warden of the North will only put a larger target on her back. Your nephew is a good boy, but that is all he is, a boy, naïve to the ways of men that you and I are not, that Daenerys still is. You will protect her. Of that, I have no doubt,” Rhaella says, straightening up just the slightest bit, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You’ve seen what the Lannisters have done to my family, my boy, to both my sons. Viserys won’t return any of my letters to Casterly Rock. Rhaegar let that whore wife crawl into his head, having him spend that time in the Westerlands. He’s not the same man he once was, before.”

Before your sister goes unsaid, but he hears it, anyway. “Is Tywin truly coming for the tourney? Will he set foot into King’s Landing after all he’s done?”

“His daughter is Queen, and his son guards the King. You’ve seen how the lions have made their den. He already controls more than either of us know, my boy. Rhaegar is not the King he could have been. That is why each day Daenerys sits unmarried and bleeding is another day for Lannisters to plot. You want this happiness. Take it.”

“I told you once that I would not be selfish, that I would not marry a woman who did not know better than me, and-”

Rhaella’s faze burns him worse than any wildfire ever could. “Seven, Benjen, you need to learn to be selfish at least once in your life. No one else will be selfish for you, you can believe me. People take and take until you’ve got nothing left to give them, or until you take some for yourself. How long will it take you to realize that your chance for happiness did not die when your sister did?”

One of Benjen’s deepest fears is forgetting his sister. Her face, her smile, her laugh. He keeps dreading that one morning he’ll wake up and all of his memories will have crumbled to ash, and she’d be just another faceless presence in his dreams with dark hair, weeping away. In his nightmares, she is almost always weeping. And if she isn’t, then she’s dying. Sometimes it’s both.

In all of his years at the capital, he’s never once really spoken to Rhaegar about her. There have been comments, digs, wistful sighs, but never any concrete conversation. But it is the anniversary of Lya’s disappearance, of her running away (of the last day he ever saw her), and Benjen misses her fiercely enough to begin with. But then, as he’s watching Jon, Arya, and Aegon in the yard, and Aegon says something that makes Arya push him down with such force, he’s brought back to Harrenhal, watching helplessly from the top of the tree where Lyanna shoves the Crowned Prince down and darts away in an effort to distract him from discovering the rest of that fucking armor. History will not, cannot repeat itself. He makes his way over to the children before he can even think of doing otherwise.

“That’s enough,” and he doesn’t think he’s ever sounded as serious as he did in that moment, not with the children. “Jon, escort your cousin to the stables. A ride around the grounds will do both of you good. Aegon, I’m sure your Uncle Oberyn would be happy to see you.”

“I will not-” Aegon begins, as utterly arrogant as only the heir to the Iron Throne (and perhaps Cersei’s eldest boy) can be, but Benjen is having none of it. Not today.

“You will, boy,” And Benjen doesn’t care who this silver haired, purple eyed prince thinks he is. It doesn’t matter how many have been fooled by his looks. Benjen will not be so easily swayed. The stone of his Stark grey eyes show just how serious he is, because Aegon has the sense to look away sheepishly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He enjoys all of ten minutes of peace in the Godswood before yet another silver haired, purple eyed fucker annoys him.

“Aegon demanded you be sent to the Wall, of all places. I told him it would not be much of a punishment, considering your love of the North,” Rhaegar remarks casually, sitting beside him. Benjen can see the deepset fatigue in his bones by just how low he seems to settle. “In truth, I am a bit glad. I have little doubt that Aemon would have demanded anything less than your head. I will not leave the Iron Throne in cruel hands.”

“Just arrogant ones,” Benjen quips, but it is without its usual bite. He is tired, and sitting here, he can feel it.

“I told her about this place,” Rhaegar says wistfully, the way he says nearly everything that’s got to do with his sister. “Believe it or not, I used to spend a lot of time here, in my youth. She said it sounded as ugly as everything else in the South. Still, I’d have liked to show it to her. I told her I would.”

Benjen lets out a hoarse scoff. “She’d have hated it here.”

“I know that now, but I wanted to believe she wouldn’t. I wanted to believe that after Jon, after the War, we’d finally be allowed to be happy. I set aside my marriage completely, annulled it, to have her as my queen.”

“She never wanted that. She wanted freedom. The crown would have been just another shackle.”

Rhaegar looks at him then, and smiles weakly with heavy-lidded eyes, and it is perhaps one of the most heart wrenching things he’s even seen in his life. “She deserved better, I know. She deserved her freedom.”

There’s a long pause before Benjen speaks. “Can I ask you something? And I need the truth.”

Rhaegar waits a moment before replying. “Of course.”

Benjen can hardly claw the words out of his throat. “Did she… did she want to leave, once she heard about our father and Brandon? She had to have found out, eventually. Did… did she ever want to come home?”

Rhaegar meets his gaze, then, and they look at each other for a long time. Benjen does not particularly want to know the answer, but he knows that he needs to. “After Rickard and Brandon, you have to understand, she was carrying my child. The third head of the dragon. I could not let her leave.”

Benjen’s brows furrow, a crease deep between them, and Rhaegar’s expression of regret, sorrow, and the slightest bit of fear make him if he’s living it, the time in that tower all those years ago. His sister, stomach barely swollen, weeping as she looks out of the window of that forsaken Dornish tower, begging to go home, begging to leave. He can see her fiery anger, pushing and kicking at Rhaegar and the Kingsguard as they force milk of the poppy down her throat. He can see her, completely and utterly miserable, hoping for anyone to come and save her and her child. Hoping for the sort of salvation, the sort of solace, that she was always so desperate to find, and never getting it. Perhaps when her death came, her last feeling was relief. Benjen wants to crawl inside himself and die.

He has a dagger out and along Rhaegar’s throat in an instant. “You kept her prisoner? She was your prisoner the whole time, wasn’t she? You just made her feel like she was special in the beginning, and the moment she wanted to leave, to mourn, you tightened the shackles?”

There’s something akin to fear in Rhaegar’s eyes, but not quite. It’s devastation, it must be, being reminded of it all. Benjen has no sympathy for him in this moment, though. Only burning hatred. “I loved her. She broke my heart.”

“And you killed her,” He says, and his voice cracks but neither of them seem to notice much. He’s there, the blade against Rhaegar’s throat, and it would be so easy to swipe just that much further, to get what little revenge he can. “She told me about you, you know, at Harrenhal, with all your songs and prophecies and how you proclaimed it was destiny for you two to find each other. She laughed about it, at first. She thought they were sweet words from a kind man, but they were just lies from a coward.”

He sees the thin line of red form on the edge of his blade, because he’s just broken skin and he’s so close to doing what he’s dreamed of for so long.

And it’s as if Lyanna is beside him, and her face has never been clearer (her eyes have always been that sad, haven’t they – like something’s missing, something she never got the chance to find). He can see her in his mind, a soft, sorrowed smile on her face that eerily mirrors the strained smile Rhaegar gave him only a minute before. And he knows it won’t bring her back. It won’t do anything, really, will it? Besides destroy everything that his family’s deaths helped to build. He won’t let them die in vain. He can’t.

The dagger is back in its holder the very next instant, and his sister’s face has vanished from his mind, but not his heart. “Jon is like his mother. I won’t let you, your manipulation, your arrogance, be the death of him as well.”

He turns away, standing up, when Rhaegar’s voice breaks. “Be on my small council. There are enemies everywhere, Benjen. At least you hate me openly, and you love the kingdom. You love my son. Please.”

He pauses, for a moment, still not facing this broken man who he should unequivocally hate. And, to an extent, he does, but he can’t help the prick of pity he feels for this wretched, royal creature. Trapped in a lions’ den of his own making. He almost wants to scoff. “Save the bribery. I will never forgive you, Rhaegar. I want you to know that.”

And then he’s striding away, toward the entrance of the godswood where Selmy is undoubtedly standing guard (not very well, Benjen can’t help but quip, even in circumstances such as these) and Rhaegar speaks again, but it’s a bit quieter, more to himself than anyone else. “I won’t either, not really.”

And for now, Benjen thinks, that will have to be enough.