Run
"You are my daughter, Arianne. The little girl who used to run to me when she skinned her knee. (AFFC)
Two times Arianne ran to her father when she was hurt, two times she didn't, and one time she wished she could.
(i)
Her father had not seen her yet. No one had seen her; this bad girl crouching and hiding behind the pillar, hands over her ears, trying to drown out the sound of her mother screaming in pain.
You did this!
I didn't do anything!
You poked the baby and now it's angry and hurting Mother.
I only want it to stop kicking Mother. Mother said the baby kicks a lot.
But Mother had seemed happy when she talked about the baby kicking. She was smiling and rubbing her belly. How could you be happy about being kicked? Arianne didn't understand that at all.
Another scream from Mother's room. This one went on forever. Arianne whimpered, crouched down lower, tried to make herself invisible.
"Come here, child."
It sounded like her father's voice, and yet it could not be, for she could see with her own eyes that he was still standing right outside the closed door, tight-lipped, not saying anything. He was pacing, back and forth, back and forth, and when the screaming got louder, he made a startled move to open the door. Hotah's voice stayed his hand.
"My prince," Areo Hotah called out. "The maester knows his work. Lady Mellario would not wish you to see her in this state."
Her father's hand that was going to open the door clenched tightly instead. That look on Father's face … Arianne had never seen her father looking that way. He looked scared, and Father never looked scared. It scared Arianne, that look, almost as much as Mother's scream was scaring her. Fresh tears assailed the little girl, and this time, they were not silent tears. She sobbed and sobbed, shoulders hitching.
"Arianne?" It was really her father's voice this time, calling for her. "Where are you, child?"
She ran. Ran to her father as fast as she could. In her haste, her feet tripped and she fell, unceremoniously. Her father's arms, safe and warm and familiar, scooped her up from the floor. Knees, elbows, face; his eyes roamed all over her. Finally satisfied that Arianne was unhurt, he dried her tears with his palm. "Now where have you been hiding, Arianne?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, Father! I really didn't mean to."
"You did not mean to do what, Arianne? Run in the castle? Well, I will not tell your mother if you promise you will never do it again," her father said, smiling, but the smile looked strange, crooked, not right. Wrong, it was all wrong.
Father knows, Arianne thought. He knows what I did and he's angry. Tears started falling down her cheeks again. Her breath hitched, trying to stifle the sobs.
"Tell me," he said, gravely, the crooked smile gone from his face.
That was all it took. Arianne told him everything. How Mother said the baby liked to kick very early in the morning, often waking her from sleep. How Arianne had poked Mother's belly and told the baby not to be a bad girl, that she must not kick Mother in the morning because Mother needed her sleep. How Mother had laughed and asked, "How do you know it's a girl, Arianne?"
"I just do," Arianne declared. She went on to describe in great details all the games she would play with her sister, and then Mother said there were games you could play with a brother, too. And then they must have fallen asleep for a long time, Arianne and Mother, because it was hot when Arianne woke up.
That was when Mother started screaming.
"I did it. I hurt Mother. I poked the baby and made her angry, so she's hurting Mother. That's why Mother is screaming," Arianne told her father, amidst her tears and her sobs.
"It's not your fault at all, Arianne. The baby needs to come out now because it's time, and it always hurts when a baby is coming out. Do you understand?"
Arianne nodded, relieved; for a while, at least, before fresh horror struck her.
"It always hurts?"
Her father nodded.
"Did it hurt when I was coming out? Did Mother scream like this too?"
Her father looked uncertain for a moment. He finally said, "She did, yes. But it was not your fault then, and it is not this baby's fault now."
"So Mother was not angry at me?"
"No, of course not. She cried when the maester put you in her arms. "
"She cried?"
"Yes. She cried because she was so happy, about her little girl."
Did you cry, Father? Arianne was going to ask her father that, but a piercing shriek from behind the closed door interrupted. Maester Caleotte came out, smiling. "A son, my prince. Lady Mellario has given birth to a healthy boy."
(ii)
You could not see the blood at first, because of the color of the fabric. Crimson red. Lannister red. A sharp voice protested, "They are Martells, not Lannisters." The fabric was swiftly changed to Martell colors.
"There, now you can see everything," the same voice declared with satisfaction. And indeed you could, much, much more than you would ever want to see.
Arianne screamed. Opened her eyes, and finally sighed with relief. A dream, that's all it was. A horrible dream. She reached out to the other side of the bed for Tyene, but her hand met no resistance.
Arianne groaned. Of course. How could she have forgotten? Tyene was not at Sunspear. Tyene was away visiting her mother the septa.
How could you leave me? Tyene was the one who insisted that Obara told them everything. Told them all the things they had not known about how aunt Elia and her children really died. 'Evil men murdered them when King's Landing was sacked,' had been the shallow extent of Arianne's and Tyene's knowledge on the matter, before that.
"Are you certain you want to know everything?"Obara had asked them repeatedly. Arianne was not certain at all, in truth. But Tyene was. "I must know why our father is so angry," Tyene had told her sister.
Obara turned to Arianne. "And what about you, little princess?" Obara's harsh voice often softened when she spoke to Arianne, Tyene had said once, sounding almost envious. But Arianne was not sure if it was something to be envied after all. Perhaps Obara thought Arianne a weak, pitiful little thing, not as tough as her own sisters.
"I must know how they really died. I must know why my father is so sad," Arianne said, trying hard to sound just as determined as Tyene.
And so Obara told them everything she knew. Baby Aegon ripped from his mother's breasts, his head bashed repeatedly until his face was beyond recognition. Cousin Rhaenys dragged from under her father's bed, and stabbed over and over again. Their aunt Elia, mutilated and violated.
It was Rhaenys who was most often in Arianne's dreams. She had held baby Rhaenys in her arms once, Father said, but Arianne remembered it not at all. Rhaenys who was hiding under her father's bed when her murderer came, perhaps still believing that her father would save her, would protect her. Had she been told that her father had died at the Trident? A child of four, what would she truly understand about death, even if she had been told?
Run, Arianne had screamed at her little cousin, in one dream. Your father is gone. He cannot help you. He cannot save you. He cannot protect you. But the child had not heard her scream.
A knock on her door startled her. "Arianne?"
She sat up. "Come in, Father."
Her father stood at the door. "I heard a scream," he said. "Are you –"
"It was a bad dream," Arianne replied quickly. "It was only a dream," she repeated, trying to reassure her father, not wanting to add to the lines of worry on his brow.
"You must miss Tyene very much."
Arianne shrugged, as if it did not matter. "I have the bed all to myself, and no one to fight with for the blanket," she said with a grin. Five days. Tyene had been gone for five days. Not that Ariane had been counting the days and the hours. Not at all.
"What was your dream about?" Her father asked.
Blood. Dead children with dead parents.
She said nothing, squirming under her father's gaze.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't wish to." His expression turning grave, he continued, "But if you do, you can always come to me, Arianne. You know that, don't you?"
Arianne nodded. "I know, Father."
What kind of a father would abandon his children for the sake of a pretty face? What kind of a husband? That was the question Arianne really wanted to ask her father. What kind of a cruel father would leave his children and the mother of his children unprotected while he kept his mistress safe under guard?
Your father was too busy protecting his wolf girl to save you, Rhaenys. Too busy making sure Lyanna Stark was safe at Tower of Joy to worry about protecting his own children.
You wouldn't have done so, Father. My father would not have abandoned his children so cruelly.
Her father turned to leave the room. "She must have been so scared," Arianne blurted out, not wanting him to leave, not wanting to be alone in the dark.
Her father turned around quickly, facing her once more. "Who?"
"Rhaenys. She must have been terrified, under the bed. Her father's bed. She didn't hide under her own bed, she went to her father's room and hid under her father's bed."
Arianne's father finally left his place near the door, and came towards her bed. He sat down. "How much do you know, Arianne? Who told you?"
"Why did they have to stab her over and over again? She was only a little girl."
"I don't know. What they did to Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys … the cruelty, the savagery, I really don't know why."
He truly didn't, Arianne saw. And the not knowing was torturing him.
His palm grazing her cheek, he asked, "Was that what you were dreaming about? Elia, and her children?"
Arianne nodded. "I didn't know …. how bad it really was. Before. I only knew they died."
"Was it your uncle Oberyn who told you?"
Arianne shook her head quickly. Father and uncle Oberyn had been quarrelling a lot lately. Her father must not be allowed to think that uncle Oberyn was to blame in any way.
"You heard it from Obara, I expect. And she heard it from her father, no doubt."
Arianne stayed mute. Don't ask me more, Father! Her eyes pleaded.
He sighed. "I would have told you about that, and more, when you are older, Arianne. When you are ready to hear it, ready to bear it."
I am ready now, she was about to say, but the look on her father's face told her that her father was the one who was not yet ready. "Tell me a story, Father," she said instead. "Tell me about Princess Daenerys and the Water Gardens."
It was a story her father had told countless times, but Arianne never tire of it. Her father smiled. She was glad to have made him smile. He never smiled at all, these days. "Do you still lit candles and pray to the Maiden, to –"
Arianne blushed. "She is ever so beautiful. I wish I would grow to look like her."
"You are beautiful as you are, Arianne."
(iii)
One day you will sit where I sit, and rule all of Dorne.
Burn the letter, that had been Arianne's first thought. The candle was right there after all, the perfect instrument at hand. The candle that was to blame for her finding the letter in the first place, for if Arianne had not gone to her father's desk to blow out the candle, she would never have seen that accursed letter. Her father's letter to Quentyn.
Burn the letter, burn the letter, burn the letter. As if by destroying those words and the parchment they were written on, she could erase all trace of her father's true intention.
Why, Father? Tell me, why?
She could not understand it at all. Her father had not seemed displeased with her. He had never shown any marked preference for Quentyn over Arianne, had never spoken about wishing for his son to follow him as ruler of Dorne. If her father had been different, it would have made it easier to understand. It would not have hurt so much, Arianne thought.
To believe, all these years, that you were loved, that you were cherished, and then to have it brutally snatched away by a few words on a parchment …
She did not burn the letter, of course. She put it back, carefully, where she found it. Tears started streaming down her cheeks.
It hurts, Father. Make it better!
But Arianne was not a child anymore; it was her birthright she was losing, not just some skin and flesh from her knees and elbows; and her father, her father was the one hurting her this time.
She did not go to him that night, when she cried herself to sleep. Or the next night, when she did not sleep a wink imagining her father's smiling face as Quentyn sat under the spear in the throne room. Or the night after that, when she dreamt that she was the one hiding under the bed.
(iv)
"Your mother spoke to you?"
Arianne nodded.
"You may visit her at Norvos from time to time, of course."
"Thank you, Father. That is very generous of you."
How cold her voice was. How indifferent she sounded. But then her father was even colder, announcing his wife's departure as if he was announcing the departure of a mere visitor.
Her father was staring at her, his gaze softening. "This must be difficult for you, Arianne. And for your brothers."
"Quentyn is at Yronwood."
"Even so …" Her father looked like he had more to say.
"Is there anything else, Father?"
He looked away. "No, no, that is all." Then, changing his mind before Arianne could leave, he said, "We tried, your mother and I. In the end it was just too … difficult."
"I understand, Father."
"Do you?"
Did she? No, she did not understand at all. She did not understand how love could so easily turn into indifference, to aversion.
Once she might have asked her father about that, and more. Once she might have said, "Tell me everything, Father. I am old enough to know. Old enough to bear it."
But her father would never be ready to tell her everything, Arianne realized that now. He had not told her about stealing her birthright after all. Her birthright: not just Dorne, but his love. Her father's love.
(v)
He was dead. Quentyn was dead. Her brother died a horrible, painful, lonely death, a long, long way from home.
She could not even imagine Quentyn's face now. That was the worst of it. Like Father, she had once thought. Quentyn looked like her father. He looks like you, he thinks like you, is that why prefer him to me, Father?
Arianne winced, recalling her former doubts and suspicions. How angry she had been, not just with her father, but with Quentyn too. Why you? Because you are his son and I am not?
She never knew him, this boy, this man, this brother. And now he was dead, and she would never know him at all.
The depth of her grief stunned her.
"I never really knew Quentyn. Why does it hurt so much?" she asked Daemon Sand. For once, the Bastard of Godsgrace had no ready answer to give.
"You are grieving for your father," Daemon finally said. "Prince Doran must be devastated." The letter about Quentyn's death had been written by Maester Caleotte. Her father had been too distraught to write.
Her father putting Quentyn in her arms; Arianne remembered that. Her initial disappointment that she was not to have a sister after all, swiftly forgotten when the baby started pulling her hair. A baby was a baby after all, someone to scare, to entertain, to play with. Little Quentyn toddling unsteadily after Arianne and Tyene at the Water Gardens. "No, you're not old enough to go in the water," Arianne scolded her brother, afraid that he would drown. By the time Quentyn was old enough to play in the pools and fountains, he had been sent to Yronwood, and Sunspear and the Water Gardens were no longer his home.
Arianne stifled a sob. Daemon came closer, hesitated, and then engulfed her in his embrace. She buried her face on his chest, grateful for his comfort, but all the while knowing that it was her father she really wanted.
It hurts, Father. Make it better!
He could not make it better, she knew; even if she was by his side instead of a long way away in the Stormlands. And she could not make it better for him, either.
Still, that did not stop her from desperately wishing that she could run to her father this very moment.