Holy cow, am I writing aSoIaF?

I must be out of my damn mind, considering I'm only halfway through the first book and have never seen the show, and am therefore for all intents and purposes a total virgin (maiden?) to this fandom. Please forgive me, I depend heavily on the wiki for information because I am dreadfully impatient.

But alas, this came to me last night and I wasted way too much time better spent being a productive adult into putting colors into words. But this is what you get.

D: Not mine.

(red: energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination, passion, desire, and love.)

Sansa- wine

She had never had much of a stomach for wine.

Not the light, honeyed liquid which graced the tables at Winterfell of course. That had been sweet and gentle enough for even the children to drink, holding no secrets in its golden depths, clear enough to see the facets cut into the bottom of her cup when she held it to her lips. If she could taste that again she would feel some semblance of safety, of home, of being a Stark...but it was not to be.

For now she was a Stone, and instead of reminders of summer sunshine on her tongue, all she tasted was the bitter burn of the strongwine Littlefinger favored, a tang that left her sputtering at her first swallow and still brought tears to her eyes with every sip she forced herself to take. She didn't trust the way the murky burgundy swirled in her goblet, dark and secretive just like the men who were so fond of it. The same men who were left staggering around her in their cups once the skins had been drained and refilled and drained once more, their lips stained dark and their breath strong with it, close enough that she could smell its pungent scent and feel their moist exhalations against her skin. It left their eyes glassy and leering at her in a way that made her long for the protection of an animal she was supposed to have never seen and brothers she wasn't to ever speak of.

She choked it back now, her throat seizing in protest against the harsh drink she forced upon it. The wineskin she had smuggled from the kitchens into her chambers under her skirts was still almost full and already she felt the effects of what little she had managed to consume flowing through her, buzzing in her veins and swirling dizzingly inside her head. It was horrid, the way her body behaved as though it was not her own, and she found herself contemplating the allure of making oneself feel this way not for the first time. But still she did not stop. Pressing her lips desperately against the cold opening, she drank directly from the skin, no time to fumble with glasses, not for Baelish's baseborn daughter.

Harry the Heir had refused her. Word had come on a raven this very eve after they had supped, and she didn't need to see her "father's" reaction to the letter to know that he would not be pleased. He would come to her tonight, she was sure of that. The way his eyes had lingered, his fingers had pressed, it took little effort to surmise that his desires for her were less than paternal. And now that her one usefulness had been taken from him, he was certain to take what he had desired from her, no longer bound by the promise a betrothal could bring to his house. Petyr would be angry, and he would be drunk, and she would be ready for him.

When her door slowly swung open she took one last desperate swallow and set the skin aside, the darkness hiding it amid her furs. When he approached her, stumbling and with lips drawn back tightly over teeth tinged maroon, she stared him straight in the eye, trying to ignore the sickening way the room spun behind him. The smell of him was repulsive, and when he pressed one hand to her breast, the cold metal of his rings hard and unyielding against her clammy skin, she could not control the violent lurch of her stomach.

It was red, the vomit on his doublet, dark like the wine in their bellies and the handprint across her cheek

Jon-hair

They had told him to kill her.

He almost shivers at the thought, and for once the cold all around him has nothing to do with such actions. He could have done it, he knows, knows better than any of them how close he had come. He had known she was a girl, and still he had advanced upon her, not stopping until her hood shook loose from around her face. The spark of cold up his spine is due to his disgust at himself, to the fact that he is capable of such actions now, that he is a killer of men, if not of women.

She was, is a wilding, and they say that makes the difference. They think him weak for his balking, for taking a prisoner instead of making a corpse when she would have no qualms about staining the ground dark with their blood had the situation been reversed. But he cannot acquiesce, and so he sets his jaw and hones his blade with purposeful strokes, his words speaking of propriety and honor and duty and all the things a bastard has no business knowing about.

For he cannot tell them, that in the middle of it all, with his sword raised and the clang of metal and cries of death all around them, what it was that gave him pause. Cannot say that it was red, the kiss of fire so vibrant against a world of white, that knocked the breath out of him as surely as a mace to the gut.

They would never understand the emotion, searing and twisting as true as any blade, that the mane escaping from beneath her cloak instilled in him, how it reminded him of auburn locks he saw now only in his mind's eye. It was brighter, more offensive than the hair of a little sister who would never really be his, but it was close enough to evoke images of the ones who had been lost to him forever. The dull ache which took up residence in his insides when he lowered his weapon was only worsened when she was brought before him and he could see clearly her face, bunched with anger and dirty with blood and sweat, but still so young, not much older than the girl herself. Just a child, and already...

Word of King's Landing did not come often to The Wall, but he knew enough to lose sleep at night. She might have never wanted him to be her brother, but he had always wanted her as his sister, to care for her as he had done the little ones. She was not like the others, not knowing any defense except running to her lady mother in times of trouble, and he often drew blood from biting the inside of his cheek so hard at the thought of her alone among the lions. He could have kept her safe, he could done what family was meant to, but now he was here, thousands of miles away and lost in a world of ice.

This wild one desired his protection no more than his half-sister ever had, and yet he still felt most compelled to bestow it. As an atonement, even if it was one of which he would never voice aloud, one that was never asked for and would likely mean little to anyone but himself.

He shivered again, wondering if there was anyone left in the South to grant safety for the other girl with red hair, whose only weapons were her smiles and courtesies. The cold crept into his bones as he felt the wildling's hungry eyes on him, for he knew the answer to his question already, knew it as surely as he knew his act of penitence would make no difference either way.

Rob- eyes

In the dark, sometimes he thinks he sees them.

Always in the pitch of night, when the rest of his camp is sleeping save for the watchmen camped around them and quiet reigns for once over the raucous clamor of men and steel. Grey Wind is gone, having left as is his custom at night to do his own hunting. He dreams of it, sometimes, of what he can only imagine his direwolf sees, cliffs and woods and other beasts close enough that he can almost feel the hackles raise of the back of-but no. This is not a dream, as those surely are. He is almost certain his eyes are open when he sees them, that something has woken him, though what he is never sure.

For they make no sound, not the snap of a twig underfoot or the exhale of a breath into the wind. Nothing at all but a pair of eyes, glowing crimson in the black of night. Always at a distance, too far to make out anything else, but nevertheless distinct in their ferocity and familiarity. He blinks once, and they are gone, just as they always are, and he is left entirely unsure whether the sighting is welcome or not.

If it is...what he thinks, then what of...

He hardly lets himself finish the thought so heavy is the weight it puts on his chest, but regardless of his effort it always comes back to him, just like the vision, or whatever it is. He tries instead to assure himself of things he knows to be true. He is the King of the North. His mother is safe. His brother is on the wall. His father is dead. But none of it brings him any comfort, and there is so much he doesn't know that he soon runs out of things he does.

Surely there are other animals that roam around them. This is proved true every morning when Grey Wind settles next to him at the fire, muzzle red with the blood of a successful hunt and eyes closing in the lethargy of a belly filled with fresh game. That one of those creatures might be an albino, a freak, as Theon put it, is not too wild a guess. A deer, most likely, or mayhaps even a wolf, a normal one, not a direwolf, and certainly not Ghost.

But the eyes are too bright, and their gaze...it was red, too red to be anything else but his half-brother's companion. He longs to call out to them, to cling to anything that would remind him of home, of his family, he dares not admit he is afraid to do so.

If it is Ghost, then where is his master? He knows that the direwolf would never leave his brother of his own will, that the animal's loyalties know no bounds and that nothing but death could part the two. If Ghost was here, then his brother was not on the wall, of that much he was certain. But where then? Dead, his Stark features frosted in an early, icy grave? Or as good as such, a deserter from the Watch and a hunted man for anyone to find?

He both feared and yearned for his brother to join him on his march South. There was none he so wanted beside him in battle as the boy he had learned to spar with, but he knew the cost of forsaking the vows, and that their price would be placed upon him to collect.

And so he bit his tongue when the red eyes appeared to him, and his lips ghosted over a prayer for what he hoped the darkness didn't hold.

Arya-blood

It was red when she had seen it had spurting out of men.

Rather pretty, actually. A deep scarlet which soaked steadily through coarse and lush fabric alike, saturating the dull tones worn by peasants and the richer shades of royals with equal disregard, its fatal hue a stain which would never truly be removed entirely. Some of the men tried, beating it out with stones in the river and scrubbing with whatever they could find, but naught for any real good.

Whether it be the life's blood of a dying man, cursing the clothes his killer had stolen off of his body before it was cold on the ground, or blood of their own, wrought from wounds poorly wrapped and ill-tended, it made no difference to her. She wore those bloodstains as a badge of honor, remnants of battles and brawls from which she had walked away with her life, securing her place among the ranks of those older and bigger than herself. She fought to belong, and acquiring her own stains among the secondhand tunics and breeches only made them feel that much more her own, that she deserved to wear them as much as any man she met with steel in her hand.

The steel made it glisten, red reflecting off the metal surface and illuminated in the sunshine as bright as any rose at court. It made her think of the Knight of Flowers, and she wondered how well he would fight here, stripped of his blossoms and pretty steed, fighting for a chance to draw a next breath and not a purse full of silver and gold. She could make him bleed, she thought, given a chance. They all bleed the same, bastard boys and knights of the Kingsguard, it was the same red that came from a man's flesh, slick and shiny against his skin.

It did not scare her, not matter how much blood there was. Not when it came bubbling from the mouth of a man skewer deep in his belly with her blade, spittle flying in her face as she wrenched Needle free, nor spewing from a raw stump where a limb had been attached moments ago. Blood was life, and blood was death, and anyone who thought differently was a fool.

But this...this was an entirely different matter.

This blood was darker, more rust than ruby, and something in the deepening of the shade made her feel weak and utterly naïve to its nature. She felt it before she saw it in the early morning as she slipped away to make water, sticky on her thighs and then her fingertips, the smell of it sharp and familiar as she raised her hand closer to her face while her eyes adjusted to the near darkness. For a moment she remained frozen, a panicked confusion coming over her as she realized what was happening. It was everywhere, and the sight of it on her breeches and on her skin made a part of her body deep below her stomach twist painfully and left her clutching for something, anything to hold onto, leaving dark fingerprints in her wake.

This couldn't be happened, not to her. She was not a quivering maiden, waiting anxiously to flower to be given in marriage to some worthless lord and live a life of stitches and whelping. She was faceless, a ghost, a weasel, a killer, anything but some highborn girl scared to death of a bit of red between her legs.

But blood was death, and in the silence of that sunrise, she felt the weight of it a thousand times more than any time she had taken a life.

Well, that was a color fic, about the elder Stark children (and Jon), roughly 600 words apiece. So, yeah...what do you think?