Disclaimer: I do not own ASOIAF.
"Don't leave me," Vycca whispered her plea, hot tears stinging her eyes as she held onto her husband's fur lined doublet. Jory Cassel wrapped his arms around his wife and held her close. She cried into his chest when he did not answer or promise that he would stay. He lowered his head to her wavy brown hair and pressed a kiss.
"You have all my love, Vycca," Jory said into her hair. Vycca cried harder and Jory hugged her tighter. Her sobs wrenched at his heart and he cursed the king for the millionth time for making Lord Stark the Hand. He did not want to leave his home, he did not want to leave Winterfell. He did not want to leave his wife or his two sons or his newly born daughter. He did not want to leave the four graves that bore his son's names.
"Please, Jory. Don't leave us."
Jory didn't speak. They both knew he had to leave. He had no choice. Lord Stark had instructed him and fifty other men to accompany him to King's Landing. Jory would be the Captain of the Hand's household guard. He'd much prefer to remain the Captain of the guard at Winterfell, but no one had asked him what he preferred.
Lord Stark had spoken to him in private after instructing him to choose fifty men, apologizing for tearing him away from his home. Jory had seen the same pain in Lord Stark's eyes that he felt now, holding the wife he might never see again. Lord Stark was leaving his lady wife, his sons, his home - and he had to rip his men from theirs as well. Lord Stark had said that Jory might bring his family with him, that Vayne Poole was, as if this ability could soften the blow the King leveled at them. Even as Lord Stark gave the words voice, they both knew Jory would decline the option. Jory would be the only Cassel to ride south.
Lord Stark had to bring Lady Sansa and Lady Arya with him despite his own reservations. Jory knew Lord Stark wanted to leave his children in the safety of Winterfell. But even in his disquiet, the Stark daughters would be a comfort to Lord Stark.
Jory would leave everything he held dear and take no comfort with him.
His thoughts were deep and troubled when Vycca drew him from them with a soft kiss to his lips. Quietly, Jory cheated his hands up her back to tangle in her hair, pulling the soft strands back from her wet cheeks and tilting her face up towards his. He watched her eyes as they kissed. The sweet blues were watery and shot with red from a fortnight's worth of tears.
The babe began to cry in her cot, the plaintive wail quiet and doleful. Jory pressed a final chaste kiss to Vycca's lips before stepping from her arms, crossing their bedchamber and bending at the waist to lift the bundled babe into his arms. She was cradled in a the same soft woolen blanket that had warmed Martyn and Jurian and Urien and Carac - the four other children who had lived long enough to be swaddled.
"Hello, Thea," Jory smiled at the infant as he rocked her, hushing her crying and silencing her tears and he shifted his weight back and forth, from foot to foot. With a calloused finger, he brushed dark curls from her forehead and leaned down to kiss his daughter's cheeks. His breath caught in his throat when he stared into those big, doe eyes of hers. She would never remember him. When he came back - if he ever came back - she would look upon him as a stranger. His precious daughter, who bore his eyes and his cheeks, would not remember him should she see him again, or if she shouldn't.
Urien was six. He might keep faint memories of him as he grew older, but they would be faint and hard to recall and vastly unimportant. Jurian was barely past his fourth name day. Jurian would remember him no more than Thea would. He would leave them now and be wiped from his children's lives forever. Urien would play with Bran Stark, should the Gods let the boy wake, and Jurian with the youngest Stark, Rickon, as they always had and none of them would truly remember the fathers that loved them.
Pain struck at his chest, worse than any physical blow he'd ever received, and he nearly crippled from the ache of it. He sat on the bed, clutching the bundled Thea to his chest and holding her tightly enough that, if she were any other child, she might cry. But his Thea, so like him, remained quiet. How could he let go? How was he supposed to let go of his daughter and simply ride away? He remembered watching his father leave and not return. He'd been old enough to keep that memory. His daughter wouldn't even remember.
Tears burned his eyes and he willed them away. He had never cried in front of Vycca. Brom and Dicun both born dead, Jurian dead of a hacking cough two months after birth and their firstborn, precious Martyn, dead at just three years old after being kicked and trampled by a sellsword's horse. Four sons buried and he had never shed his tears before his wife. Now he could barely keep them from falling.
Vycca sat on the bed next to him, slipping beneath his arm and nestling herself against his chest, lifting her legs to lay them across his lap. Jory held her so tight with his one arm that she could scarcely breath. Every few seconds or so he shook ever so slightly, just barely enough for her to feel the movement at all. She could see the tears brimming at her husband's tightly shut eyes, but knew better than to mention them. Physical evidence of his pain was not for her to see or comment upon.
It wasn't until he dropped a kiss against her cheek that she looked to him again, glancing nervously at his face for fear the expression was not for her eyes. When he face was raised enough, Jory leaned his head to hers and kissed her thoroughly, still holding Thea securely against his chest.
"You are the bright love of my heart," Jory whispered to her and Vycca reached a hand up to caress his face, the gentle shadow of stubble a familiar tickle upon her palm.
"And you are mine," Vycca assured him, leaning up to kiss him again. "My heart is within you, Jory. Take us with you since you cannot stay here," Vycca insisted, twisting her hands into his patched doublet. "Please, Jory."
"No," Jory shook his head firmly. "I will not take you or our family to a place like King's Landing. Lady Stark will need you as Lord Stark will need me. Besides, the King's Road is no place for a suckling babe, Vycca. You know that. Thea needs to be here. The boys need to be here. You need to be here."
He stopped himself before adding 'where it's safe,' which weight heavily on his tongue. He had uneasy feelings about King's Landing. Vayon Poole might be fool enough to bring his family with him, but Jory was not. He did not like the way the Lannisters looked upon the Starks or the way Jamie Lannister acted above the King and the King's justice. The very fact that Jamie Lannister wore the garb of the King's Guard instead of being half-rotted beneath the ground was proof enough that he was not to be trusted. And man who was fool enough to trust the Queen deserved the fate he was dealt. Jory did not know what to make of the Drunken King.
No, he would never allow his family to venture into the lion's den he feared he and his liege lord were riding towards.
A knock came at the door, soft, from a child's hand, and Jory called out for the knocker to enter. Urien was holding Carac back, as if Carac had been trying to enter without knocking, like the child often did.
"Father?" Urien said his name tentatively, still restraining Carac, who looked as if he wanted to run and jump onto the bed. Jory nodded and Urien let go. Carac ran across the room on chubby young feet and lifted his arms to his mother. Vycca slipped her legs from Jory's thighs and bent to lift the child into his father's lap.
Carac leaned against him and snuggled into the doublet with his thumb in his mouth. Jory didn't have the heart to pull the hand away. The child did not understand. He kept asking when Jory would be back, not grasping the finality of his father's departure. Urien understood, and he moved towards the bed slower. Jory watched as Urien climbed onto the bed without making a sound and leaned heavily against his father's side, his curly brown hair disappearing into the brown wool of Thea's blanket.
His sons. The sons that shared his smile and his expressions, but had their mother's eyes. He'd never see them again. He'd miss watching them grow or seeing his uncle learn them at swords. Ravens would not make up for missed name days or meals together. If he should be lucky enough to set eyes on his sons, they would be older with unfamiliar faces that looked like his. He would be grey to their eyes, nothing more than a name in their mother's stories.
As he held Vycca to him with his daughter in his arm, a son in his lap and another leaning against him, Jory realized something that twisted another knife through his gut. Lord Stark was leaving his lady wife, yes, and Jory knew that Lord Stark loved Lady Stark dearly. But it could be nothing compared to his love for his own wife. Lord Stark had learned to love Catelyn Tully after his brother was killed, had learned to love her well after she'd already born him their first son. Jory had loved Vycca since he was a child. There had been no learning to love her. He just had.
He'd always loved her, always known he would marry her when she came of age to be married. He couldn't remember not loving Vycca, but he knew he loved her before his father left to fight in Robert's Rebellion. He must have been barely fourteen, if he could count his years correctly, and Vycca the stubborn, dirty and wayward eleven-year-old sister of his combat partner, Hallis. He'd never not known her and he'd never not loved her. And he'd never not intended to marry her.
Lord Stark would never know what it was like to have a love that ran the course of an entire life. Lord Stark had learned to love Catelyn Tully and it would hurt to leave her, but Jory had been born loving Vycca Mollen and leaving her would be leaving his heart behind. How did a man live without his heart beating in his chest?
But now he had to leave her for a king who was so fat and red with wine that Jory doubted he could lift a sword much less wield it. What respect was there to be had for a king who so carelessly tore apart families and lives, who had to be helped to bed after drinking enough wine for a dozen men, who bedded any girl who let him? Where was the king he'd heard stories of, because this fat drunkard could certainly not be him. But this king had brought the peace and he'd kept it.
He'd been fourteen when his father rode away to overthrow the Mad King, five years younger than Lord Stark and too young to ride with them. When Lord Stark had returned without Martyn Cassel, the land had known peace. Fourteen years of peace. Fourteen years where Jory had formally courted Vycca, asked for her hand, built a life with her and a family and never needed to leave them for longer than a fortnight, a month at the most, but always leaving with the return in sight.
His wife, his sons, his daughter... they'd given that peace meaning. He had his post, yes, and he filled it joyfully, enjoying his time chasing Bran along the rooftops and corralling Arya Stark from the stables, riding with Lord Stark and leading the guard at Winterfell. But the meaning and true joy of life came at coming home and holding his own children, listening to him and teaching them, at kissing his wife, talking with her, listening to her and sharing her bed.
The peace had given him his family, but that peace was gone now, he could feel it in his bones as sure as he could feel the air in his lungs. The knowledge was locked next to the hand clenched around his heart that told him he would never see his family again once he rode through the King's Gate.
A/N:
Jory's my favourite character out of ASOIAF. I know it's been like... four books since he died, but he's still my favourite. I love him. So what do I do? Give him seven children and then kill four. I think I need to figure out this whole love thing.
Anyways! Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it and, please, tell me what you think - good or bad!
Love, Thal