It was not like Robert to remember Stannis' nameday, so the gift came as a great surprise to Stannis. A hunting knife, its handle carved with the figure of the Baratheon's crowned stag. Regarding the gift with suspicion and disbelief warring in his eyes, Stannis said, "I suppose I am to read something from this gift of yours. Is this a hint that I must go hunting with you more often?"
Robert wasted too much time hunting and hawking as it was, as he did whoring and drinking, in Stannis' judgement. Not that Robert ever cared to hear Stannis' opinion on the matter. Look at him now, roaring with laughter, as if he had no care in the world, no realm on his shoulder, no duty on his back.
"Gods, no, Stannis. I prefer to hunt in peace, without your perpetual scowling and scoffing ruining my day. You may hunt in your own good time with whoever else you choose, except myself. The knife used to belong to our father. It was given to him by his own father. Father gave it to me on my sixteenth nameday."
On Robert's sixteenth nameday, celebrated not long before Lord Steffon and his lady wife sailed for that fateful journey to Volantis to find a bride for Prince Rhaegar.
Stannis studied the knife intently, imagining his father's hand handling the blade, his father's fingers tracing the carved stag on the handle. How he would have cherished it, would have treasured it above all others, if the knife had been given to him by his father. Instead, Robert was not showing any reluctance at all about parting with it, as if it was merely any other trinket in his extensive collection.
"I suppose you are giving me this knife because you prefer the hunting knife Jon Arryn gave you," Stannis said, resentful on his father's behalf. Always, it seemed, Robert privileged the bond of fosterage over the claim of blood. His foster father over his real father. His foster brother over his actual brothers.
Robert exploded. "Seven hells, Stannis! Is there no end to your suspicion and your resentment? Had I not given you the knife, you would have complained that it is because I prefer to give it to Renly, or to Ned."
Tracing the blunt edge of the blade with his finger, Stannis said, "Our father gave this to his eldest son. It should go to Joffrey as your eldest son."
If he is truly your son, that is. But no, he could not give voice to the suspicion until a definite proof has been found.
"Joffrey has a far grander hunting knife given to him by his Lannister grandsire. It shines with Lannister gold, bedecked with countless precious stones. I doubt he would care a whit about this one," Robert replied. "I am giving it to you because Father never had the chance to commission a hunting knife for you, as he had planned to do after his return from Volantis."
It was a somewhat touching gesture, Stannis admitted, grudgingly. And yet ... it had been nineteen years. Nineteen years since the day Windproud sank.
"Why now? Why are you giving it to me now?" And where have you been keeping it all these years? I have never seen you using it.
"This is your thirty-third nameday after all, Stannis."
Ah. Their lord father did not live to see his thirty-third nameday, and neither did their lady mother. Two of the three sons of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont have now lived longer than their father and mother ever did.
And what have they done with the blessing of those years, Robert and Stannis?
"We were never blessed with the kind of love they were blessed with," Robert said.
"We?"
"Cersei and I. You and your perpetually scowling wife."
"My marriage is not your marriage," Stannis snapped.
Robert was not listening, though. With a faraway look in his eyes, he said, dreamily, "If Lyanna had lived ..."
If Lyanna had lived, she would be flesh and blood, someone with thoughts and feelings of her own, someone who could disappoint and be disappointed, not a goddess on a pedestal whose perfection is forever unmarred and untouched by the passing of time, by the passage of life itself. It was a shadow Robert loved, not even the faint shadow of Lyanna Stark as she had been in her too short of a life, but a shadow he created out of the skeletons of his own needs, dreams, and desires.
The real girl, and the woman she would have become had she lived, had no place at all in this equation.
"I want it so badly, to have what our mother and father had," Robert said, his hand gripping his wine goblet so tightly that some of the content spilled out.
"You will not find it at the bottom of that goblet," Stannis retorted. "Nor will you find it in the beds of a different woman each night."
"Where, then? Where can I find it? Tell me, Stannis," Robert implored.
You cannot love, if you cannot truly see, Stannis.
What is it that we must see, Mother?
"You are asking the wrong person," Stannis replied to his brother.
"If she had lived -"
It was Stannis' turn to explode in anger. "She, she, she. That's all you keep harping on. Lyanna Stark is not a magical creature who could cure all your ills, Robert."
"I meant Mother, this time. I meant our mother. Ifshe had lived -"
"Then she would be disappointed in us." Us, you and me both, Robert. Not just you.
There, he had said it, finally, and in saying it, knew it to be the truth he held in his deepest of heart, the truth he had always refused to see before.
Robert was shaking his head. "If she had lived, if they both had lived, Mother and Father, we would not be as we are today. We would be different. We would be better."
"Better men, or better off?"
"Both."
It was tempting, so very tempting to believe that.
If, if, if. If only ...
No, it hurt too much to believe that, for it would also mean mourning the selves they could have been, the selves now forever lost to them.
He refused to believe it, refused to believe in that better future that could have been but never was.
"We were young men, almost fully-formed, not a babe in his cradle like Renly was when Mother and Father died," Stannis said, in a tone that brooked no argument, in a voice that told Robert that the conversation was at its end.