Disclaimer: These characters belong to George R. R. Martin.
Title from 'The Good, the Bad, and the Dirty' by Panic! At The Disco. Thank you bencofhiddles from twitter and real life for the help in finding the perfect title and for giving your input. And thank you V, for helping me plan this fic.
English is not my first language and this is not completely betaed, so forgive and please point out any mistakes you see.
All Of The Good Girls Act So Good
When Myrcella is thirteen, her father has one of his more foolish ideas, most likely fuelled by drink. The fact that Father spends most days with a goblet in his hand and a whore in his lap means that no one can change his mind. Lord Arryn tries to convince him, and Mother rages with tongue and fists, but Robert just keeps drinking until he forgets he is a king, and once again decorates her mother's skin with purple bruises. By the time Robert realises what he has done, the letter has been sent, and he is too ashamed to take back his offer. Until the day she dies, Myrcella will remember that the pride of a king is worth more than his daughter.
Myrcella travels North a fortnight after her fourteenth birthday, with Ser Arys Oakheart as her new sworn shield and her uncle Jaime riding beside her. Her mother wanted her to ride in the wheelhouse, but Robert would have none of it.
"The northerners will want a strong lady that can measure up to the late lady Stark," he'd said, only half sober. "They mustn't see a scared southron girl, but a Baratheon princess. You be a good girl, Myrcella."
Myrcella had nodded in silence, fighting back the tears.
Joff rides with her, as golden as the rest of them. Myrcella thinks they look like her mother and her uncle might have looked a long time ago, when they were as young as cubs. Joff is cruel, though, and he laughs at her whenever there is mention of her upcoming nuptials. Sharp words and a twisted smile in a face that is a reflection of her own —they are not so different, she is just better at pretending they are.
The sight of Winterfell gives her pause, and she feels herself shaking until Uncle Jaime smiles at her.
"If your husband is unkind to you, my princess," he says, "Ser Arys has my leave to gut him in your name."
They all say Lord Stark is honourable and kind. They also say he loved his lady wife very much. Myrcella is afraid, her father had loved his lady Lyanna too, and now her mother suffers his grief. Sometimes it is loss, not war, that makes monsters of men.
When Lord Stark kisses her on the lips before the Godswood, Myrcella can tell he's cold within. She wonders if he's revisiting a time when he had fastened the Stark cloak on a Tully maid, or if he's thinking at all. Her stepchildren cheer quietly, a stark contrast to Joff's loud mockery, and the southerners' joy. A wedding is a wedding, whether the maid is four-and-ten, or four-and-twenty. No one says a thing about how the eldest of her new children is now older than her.
At the wedding feast, she sits where a different lady sat not too long ago, and she drinks from the same cup as her husband. Sansa seems enamoured with Joff, and Myrcella would like to tell her to stay away from him, that he is mean, but she doesn't really have the strength for it. Joff will return to the South, and he will marry the Tyrell maid, if the rumours running around the Red Keep are true. Let Sansa keep her girlish dreams, Myrcella has not grown so mean-spirited yet as to crush her hopes with her dainty, little thumb.
Lord Stark dances with her once, and then he passes her to his younger brother Benjen, who tells her tales of the Wall. After, Robb takes her in his arms and talks about his father, tells her how kind he is, and how sad he's been since—
He hopes Myrcella can make him happy again, he says, but Myrcella can tell he doesn't mean it. He is not her son, and she is no one's mother, so it doesn't really matter.
Theon Greyjoy dances with her at some point, and Myrcella hates him. She truly does. He says horrible things about girls who marry young, and how she'll grow cold and barren this far north with only Lord Stark to keep her bed warm. He is drunk, she can see, and saying nonsense, but she won't forgive him.
"I am your lady," Myrcella says, "don't forget that. For this, my father could have your tongue. The Starks have been kind to you, but if I asked, the King would make lord Robb himself hack your head off."
She says my father, not my husband. She threatens him with his friend, not her husband. She is not stupid. Afraid, yes, but not stupid. For all that she is a Baratheon, her mother has taught her well.
Theon laughs afterwards, and spins her around.
Robb dances with her again before the bedding begins, so he is by her side when Joff shouts, "Bed them!" Myrcella can see her Mother's blank face, and schools her features into the same coldness. I must be strong, like my lady mother. Lionesses do not weep.
Joff is by her side in a moment's notice, tearing at the lace of her wedding gown. A man named Smalljon helps Tommen with the laces at her back, and all the while Robb just stands there as they hoist her up, still half dressed, to march her through the doors. She doesn't know where her husband is, she doesn't care. Midways, when they're tugging at her shift to rip it open, her uncle puts a stop to it. Joff laughs and keeps at it, but the Smalljon puts her down, and Ser Arys undresses her quickly and takes her in his arms as if she were a babe. They're all looking at her, men she's never met and men she's known her whole life.
"Lucky Stark," she hears someone say, "he gets the ripest piece of fruit in all the south, it seems."
She's blushing from chest to forehead, and almost crying. She wants to go home.
"This is shameful," someone else says, someone older, "I was there when he wed Lady Catelyn. He speared her the bedding, why not this new bride of his? She's a princess."
She knows Mother had insisted on sparing her the bedding, and Lord Stark too, if what Uncle Jaime says is true, but Father would have none of it. Mayhaps he liked tradition, mayhaps he just enjoyed making Mother mad. Either way, she is to be paraded in front of men naked as her nameday, only her long, blonde hair covering her somewhat. Ser Arys keeps the men at bay, but truly it is Uncle Jaime's glare that makes them weary. A princess shouldn't suffer such shameful attentions, she thinks, but of course doesn't say so. Her father is a mad and whoring drunkard and she hates him for this, she shall never forgive him.
When the doors close and Lord Stark bars them, Myrcella weeps.
"My lady," he says.
Princess, Myrcella wants to shout, I am a princess still. She doesn't, if she opens her mouth, she will choke on her sobs.
Lord Stark leads her to the bed, and when he touches her arm, goose bumps rise all over her flesh. Beneath the furs, his body covers hers. She can tell he is trying to make this good for her, and she is grateful (somewhat), but she's as dry as a wasteland. She can hear her mother's voice in her head, telling her to lie back and think of a man as handsome as her brother, or as her Uncle Jaime, with golden hair and eyes of emerald, and so knightly that he'd put the Dragon Prince to shame. She tries to imagine this man as Lord Stark's fingers try to give her pleasure. At some point, Robb's face comes to mind, but as soon as she sees his blue eyes staring back at her, Lord Stark gives a sigh and crawls down her body. When she feels his mouth there, she jumps back and scrambles to rise.
"Please, no," she cries.
"My lady, I am trying to make it easy for you. It will hurt less if—"
"Let it hurt. Please just do it already, I just want a babe. Please, give me a babe," she's openly sobbing now, and afraid her tears will anger him. Joff gets angry if she ever cries.
Lord Stark strokes her hair and kisses her all over her face, and sets himself between her legs. Myrcella manages to stop her sobs, even when she feels him stretch her and feels the burn deep within her, even when she wants nothing more than to cry in pain loud enough for her Uncle Jaime to come save her, she keeps quiet. Tears spring to her eyes with the pain, but she saves them for later, for when Lord Stark sleeps beside her.
When he is done, Myrcella scoots to one side and says, "I am sorry I have cried, milord. You were very kind."
His seed is still sticky between her thighs when he falls asleep.
He doesn't come to her bed anymore after the first night. For that, she is grateful. Her family leaves within the fortnight, leaving Ser Arys behind with her, but Jeyne Westerling and Alysanne Bulwer, who have shared her bed since they became her mother's ladies-in-waiting, return south, and she feels lonely. Sansa's courteous, and Arya's fun, but they have their own friends, and they do not know how to behave around her. She hears Sansa calling her "my new lady mother" one morning, and Myrcella wants to rip her own hair apart. Bran is sweet, but shy, and Robb doesn't like her, she can tell; he looks at her as if saying "How dare you? How dare you take my mother's place?" But Rickon does like her; he's young enough to look at her with bright eyes and sincere curiosity.
She feels terribly lonely, though, and when her moonblood comes, she weeps. Maester Luwin comes at her bidding, smiles gently at her and sits by her side.
"You should lie with your lord husband often, if a babe is what you want," he tells her, knowingly, "and eat meat and turnips every day to keep you healthy."
"My friend Elinor oft said that wine and honeyed-milk help, too," Myrcella says in a whisper, too shy to raise her voice, "and flowers freshly picked. She is married to Lord Ambrose, and she's birthed two healthy sons."
"I was here to deliver four of the Stark children, my lady, and good hips were all that was needed. Yours are wide enough, and you are young and healthy."
She nods and thanks him, and sits at her solar with her needlework in her lap. She is not used to being alone and unattended, and she thinks it would be good to have some ladies in the castle. It is time, after all, that she act as the lady they've made of her. She would rather be a princess.
When the moonblood leaves her, she orders her maids to bath her in rosewater and brush her hair with a comb of bone. They leave her shivering in towels of silk as they leave to fetch her husband, and she takes her mother's words of wisdom to heart. You will not love him, but you will love his children. It is children she wants, babes in her arms and toddlers stumbling by her feet.
He finds her still wet from the bath, her hair a tumble of wet curls, dark as old gold.
"A babe," she whispers when he takes the towels off her body, "a babe would make me happy, my lord."
The good news come five months after the wedding, when she's already three months along and her breasts have begun to swell. She tells him over breakfast. It is the first time he truly smiles at her, not a polite smile or a sympathetic one; his smile might be small, but he's as overjoyed as she is, she can tell.
Over dinner, she invites her good-daughters (it is still so strange to her, to call them that) to share her bed that night, and when she looks at her husband, he seems surprised, but pleased. The boys are all very polite, even Theon, and Myrcella misses Tommen's sweet smile and rosy cheeks. She writes to her mother that night as Sansa and Arya are busy reading by the fire of her solar.
"Boy or girl, it doesn't matter anymore, I know: my lord husband has heirs already. But I was hoping I might name the babe Joanna if I birth a girl. With your permission, of course," she writes. Arya reads the letter over her shoulder when she gets bored of her book, and when Myrcella looks up from the parchment, she can see the girl's face pinched in dislike.
"You should give her a northern name," she says, "or the lords will think you weak. Joanna is a pretty name, but for a second child better. And pray for a boy as a firstborn."
"I'm praying for a girl so you'll have more reason to despise me."
"Lady Stark!" Sansa gasps.
"And Joanna is a strong name; southron it might be, but it's still strong. Jo-an-na, open your mouth as if to scream when you say her name."
"Jo-an-na," Arya says, stopping sharply at every syllable. Her accent is so thick it's almost funny.
Myrcella smiles and nods at her, and then she stands to walk around the room, her furs rustling with every step.
"I do not know many northern names. Only yours."
"Search for them in the Stark family tree," Sansa ventures, and Arya adds, "Lyarra, Brandon, Serena…"
"I still prefer Joanna."
"What about Jeyne?" Sansa offers, and when Myrcella shakes her head, adds, "Alysanne? Lorra? Alys?"
"Why are we discussing this?" Arya asks.
"Wait, Alys? Is it short for Alysanne?"
"Mayhaps," Sansa says, "but Alys Karstark is just Alys."
"I like it. For a second daughter."
Sansa giggles, and Arya barks in laughter, and if they weren't her daughters, she would consider them her friends.
"Alys Karstark… Is she promised to anyone?" When Sansa shakes her head, Myrcella adds, "How old is she?"
"Seven-and-ten, I think," one of the girls says, Myrcella isn't sure which, for she is too busy searching for a spare piece of parchment and her quill.
"I've been thinking, you are both old enough to wed, and I will be terribly lonely once you leave me here by myself. I am in need of some ladies, and it is my duty, as lady Stark, to take in ladies from my husband's vassals. Do you think Lord Karstark would part from his daughter and send her here with us?"
It is her duty, yes, but it is also a necessity; she needs people who are loyal to her, not her husband. Girls who share beds and clothes and furs, who whisper secrets at each other in the dark and practise kissing when no one is looking, stick together even in death, she's learnt.
Sansa giggles again, and covers her mouth with the back of her hand, her cheeks ablaze.
"Lord Karstark has been meaning to wed Alys to Robb since they were children," Arya supplies.
"I will need your help; I do not know which families have girls my age."
By the time they're through, she's written down seven names: Alys Karstark, Wylla Manderly, Meera Reed, Jorelle and Lyanna Mormont, Arla Umber, and Arra Norrey. She hopes at least two of them accept.
There have been more wildlings than usual coming south of the wall. When lord Eddard tells her, she takes her eyes for a moment from the parchment before her and smiles at him the sweet smile her father's court always loved.
"Take Sansa and Bran with you, my lord. I need ladies in waiting, Sansa might convince the lady Arla to come, and Bran is old enough to learn from you."
"Ladies in waiting? Is it wise to take on such a task when—"
"More than wise. I must do my duty, and besides, they will be of great help when the babe comes, I have never done this before!"
Lord Eddard smiles at her as if she were a cute dog to cherish, and suddenly she wants to claw his eyes out.
Her husband has been gone for three days when news of Domeric Bolton's death come to Winterfell. Bad belly, the raven says, but over dinner Robb whispers what people are saying. It is the first time he has truly talked to her, and even though he has been as cold as the land that is now her home, she is eager to have him talk more.
"Was Domeric lord Bolton's only heir?"
Robb nods, "He has been a widow for long, now."
"We must write to him immediately, offer our condolences. He will need an heir, though; he is not too old to have more sons."
She has been studying the North's history, and house Bolton troubles her. Highgarden and Sunspear may hate each other, but no one tells frightening stories about them. She wants the Boltons happy and loyal, and the bastard away from the Dreadfort. Mentally, she is compiling a list of all the unbetrothed maidens of the highest birth she can remember, but she can't remember whose loyalty is unquestionable.
"With a young and fertile bride, he should father as many as he likes," Theon says.
They all dine together in uncomfortable closeness. She can guess it's because she's with them, that were she anywhere else, they would fall back into a familiar rhythm she is not a part of. It's ridiculous, she thinks, because she's educated enough to be charming and sweet and polite; all her Septas and the governesses and the ladies have made sure to make a doll out of her, but these northerners do not care, they do not allow themselves to be charmed by her, and she doesn't know what else she can do. She misses Sansa and her perfect and warm manners, she misses Bran and all his sweet, shy smiles and the stories about knights he likes to tell. Most of all she misses Tommen, and her mother, and her uncles.
"Tell me, Robb," she says, keeping her tone soft, "what is lord Bolton like? Is he brave?"
Robb's uneasy smile says it all. He takes a sip of wine and Myrcella waits as his neck tenses when he swallows. How old is he? Nine-and-ten? Twenty? And yet unmarried, and unbetrothed. He is handsome and chivalrous, and kind to others (everyone but her, actually, with her he is just… cold), and if she'd been another woman (someone who was not sold by her own father to an old man with six children already), she'd have fallen for him, she thinks. Instead, she just blushes when he looks at her, and she is disgusted with herself and the warmth that pools deep within her belly.
"He is… brave, of course, and deadly in battle. And stern, severe."
"Scary," Arya supplies, smiling from behind her cup.
"Cold," Jon Snow says, not looking her in the eye. She can count on one hand the number of times she's crossed paths with her husband's sullen bastard.
"My father mistrusts him," Robb says, "Roose Bolton—"
"Has no apparent feelings," Theon says.
"Mayhaps you could advise your father to supply him with a bride, Robb, when the time is right and his mourning has subsided."
Robb nods at her, and lets his eyes rest on her face for a fraction of a second too long. It was not her intention to displease him, but nothing she ever does with him seems to be right.
Robb waves the white flag at her when the cramps scare them all half to death, and Maester Luwin orders her to take to bed. Bedridden and scared of miscarrying, everyone seems to forget she is nothing but the southron princess who was brought up North to brighten their lord's days. They fear for her, and for the babe she's carrying, and no one dares to put into words what they're all thinking: that her blood is weak, that she is frail, a pretty vessel to look at, but empty and insubstantial inside. Lady Catelyn was a southron, too, she wants to shout, and a fish, at that. I am a lioness, I am a Baratheon. Silly girl.
Robb tells her everything that is going down in the castle, even the smallest detail. Sometimes Jon sits with them, but more often than not it is just the two of them at the time of the day when Arya is busy teaching Rickon to ride, Theon is busy flirting with everyone and everything, and Jon is training in the yard.
"I do hope you get well soon, my lady. As you know, my mother died in the birthing bed, and this trial is even more daunting than it would normally be, it is keeping us on edge."
"Let's not dwell on that, Robb," her smile is strained, everything within her aches from the lack of movement. It's her baby that is in danger, her life at stake. How dare they? "I was planning on naming the child Joanna, like my grandmother, but my lady mother has asked me not to; and your sisters have advised me against it. What is your counsel, then? Is there any name you'd prefer? I find I quite like Rickard."
"Rickard is a good name, you would be honouring my grandfather."
"I thought your father would like that. And for a girl?"
"Perhaps one of my sisters would be better suited to help you with that."
"Oh, Robb, please humour me. Back in King's Landing I would talk with my brother Tommen about the children I'd have one day, and there would always be little girls with blonde curls among them in my mind, but their names always changed. I need a good name for my child."
"I will look into it, then."
He can be kind to her, too. She knows she shouldn't, but she likes that. And there is nothing wrong in loving your family.
"Name her Robyn," Robb whispers to her when the worst is over, when Maester Luwin declares her stable enough to be able to eat dinner in her own solar, on her most comfortable chair, instead of her bed. "Name her Robyn, after me, if she is a girl."
She births a boy instead, and calls him Rickard, for her husband, even if through the whole ordeal she's holding Robb's hand instead.
"I wish my mother had been here," she says, with Rickard in her arms peacefully asleep, "and lady Sansa too."
"I'm sorry I fainted at the sight of blood," Arya says, blushing like a pomegranate, "and I'm sorry you had to endure Robb's hysteria instead of my own. He was half crazy, barging into the room like he did. I think he could not stop thinking of our late mother. But I am glad I talked some sense into him all those months ago, and that now you are close enough to be friends."
The statement takes Myrcella by surprise, but she is made of steel, and nothing must ever phase her.
"My uncle was just as fierce when I was born," she says instead of asking Arya the details of that conversation, "My father always made sure to be out hunting when my mother went to the birthing bed, and my uncle Jaime would barge into the room and face the matrons with a sword in hand. Sometimes men are like that, you know, they get emotional, and then deny everything."
Arya laughs, everything seems like a joke to her lately, but Myrcella can still feel Robb's hand on her forehead, pushing back loose strands of sweaty hair, calming her feverish body.
"I just hope your father comes home with some bearskins as a gift. That's what my father used to do, at least."
He arrives not with bearskins, but with silks and ribbons and rubies. There are new furs for her, and necklaces that shine like a thousand crystals on the hollow of her collar, and a perfume so rich that just a drop forms a cloud around her shoulders.
Eddard kisses her on the lips in front of his children and takes the babe from her arms, and Cella thinks she might be happy still, so far north.
She's walking down a corridor when she hears the giggles of one of her maids, one of her northerner maids. She's walking alongside the Mormont girl and sweet Sansa, whose arm she still needs to stabilize her in her weakness. It's been seven weeks since she birthed Rickard, but her legs are still made of butter, and her loins burn when she's at her worst.
"Oh, Jeyne, would you please bring me my ribbons? Will you please do my hair? Would you please be so kind as to bring me something to eat? I am feeling so very weak."
The maid's voice has a tilt that Myrcella recognises. She had never thought that she could feel so betrayed by a maid, that her own words made her sound like a child, like some spoiled, insignificant princess. She sounded courtly, and that's what they are mocking, she realises. No, not her speech, they are mocking her, the lady of the castle, a Crown Princess.
Sansa looks at her, taut expression masking her real feelings. Her daughter is good at diplomacy.
"Not here," Myrcella says to the Lyanna girl, whose demeanour screams of disgust.
They turn around on the next corner, avoiding the maids so carelessly toying with their own lives, but Myrcella makes a note to remember her face, her name, her expression when she usually sits her before the vanity and brushes her hair until it crackles under the soft bristles.
Rickard doesn't take to her tits, and that's another failure. They call a common wench with breasts full of milk to the castle, and Myrcella can hear them murmuring between the silks the list of all her shortcomings. The North is slowly draining her, and she finds that her golden hair is turning brittle.
Lord Ned worries for her, but she wonders if he finds her weak, nothing but a shadow to what his beautiful wife used to be. Sansa insists on soaking her in baths of milk and honey, and Arya takes her riding, believing exercise will do her good. But she takes a leaf out of her mother's book, and she rejoices in making her maid's life a challenge. Jeyne's face is always sour, but her other maids seem happier now that they needn't worry about the hardest tasks. She had wanted her tongue, of course, that's what her mother would have done, but they would have perceived her as a spoiled southron child, too hard and unforgiving, too cruel, too capricious. She is no mad woman, she can control her petty whims —something her queenly mother never learnt to do.
She takes Rickard to the Godswood with Bran and Rickon in tow, and her legs feel surer now, even with the added weight of her fat babe in her arms. Rickon takes the fabric of her skirts as he walks and tells her about a mother he doesn't remember, while Bran opens the path for them. They take a seat under the shadow of the trees and she sets Rickard on her lap to suckle at her finger.
Rickon is hers, too, she thinks. She's five-and-ten now, she has been living in the North for a little over a year only, but still Rickon feels hers. Sansa still calls her 'my lady mother', or 'my lady', or even 'Your Highness', and she loves her step-daughter for that, but Rickon calls her 'Cella', much in the same voice Tommen used back in King's Landing, and her heart is weak and hungry for affection, and she latches on what little she receives. She rejoices in these little moments with the children, with Bran reading out loud for them, all her responsibilities forgotten for a while just to enjoy the quiet and the peace. Children grabbing at her skirts, that's what she wants, and even though her first pregnancy has been terrible and scary, and even though her husband has more than enough children, she still thinks she'd like many more. Motherhood is terrible, and her love for the babe sometimes feels like a fire eating at her loins, but she loves it, loves it so much. Of course women feel the need to have more than one child, she thinks looking at Rickard's pink face, they must need to share the love, divide it so it won't consume them.
She hears the breathing before she sees the beasts, and Summer and Shaggydog jump over the tall bushes to land near Bran, who pats them on the neck and makes space for them to lay. But soon a whistle distracts them, and Greywind appears, followed by Ghost, and Myrcella knows this means Robb and Jon are near. The wolves don't make her quite as nervous as they used to. They are a bit like her, she thinks, they could easily rip her throat, but they choose to be sweet instead. Lion or kitten, it doesn't matter, she can be both.
Robb arrives first, he always does. Sometimes Jon feels more like a shadow than a person. Myrcella understands, of course, what it is to be forgotten, not quite to the level Jon is, but she remembers being second best to a golden prince. She pats the space beside her, invites them to sit near. Summer is slowly giving way to autumn, and the ground is moist and cold, but the air is fresh, the trees are not quite golden, and the Godswood still whispers of lovely days spent in the wild.
She has Jon on one side and Robb on the other, and as she turns to her husband's bastard she leans on one hand to keep her balance and her fingers brush against Robb's. She doesn't move, she can bearly breath as she asks Jon a question. His hand is cold, but then again, so is hers. Goosebumps crawl up her arm as his thumb moves against her hand, just a spasm, a tick of his hand.
There's a silence Bran fills with his book, and a burning so deep within her thighs that she's surprised. She flexes her other hand, the one that's holding Rickard on her lap, and the babe fusses in his blankets, demanding her attention. The connection is severed, she takes the baby with both hands and rocks him against her breasts so he can hear her heartbeat, sketched against her ribcage, trying to break her bones into a million pieces. The tales of Bran the Builder are water on her ears, but Robb's fingers pressed against the small of her back make her tremble, and a flush creeps up her collar to the roots of her hair. There's a chord in her loins about to snap, something keeping her alive and tethered that doesn't quite work.
"I think... I think I am feeling unwell, my lords."
She looks at them sideways, scared that they will know, that they will see it etched on her face, but Robb's expression is unreadable, cold and cruel. He knows, she is sure of it, he knows and despises her, is disgusted at her presence. He should be, something is so very wrong with her that she wants to press her cold body to his, seep the warmth of him onto her skin.
They help her to her feet. The year she'd been born there had been an earthquake; nothing serious, just a light shaking of the earth underneath the maester's feet as her mother pushed and bled and screamed. She'd been her mother's hell, the difficult one to bring to the world. The Gods had graced her with wisdom and bravery, the Septon had said, but in truth the Gods had flipped a coin over her soul. Seven coins they had flipped, one for each: one turned her into a harlot, the other into a mother, the Warrior into a weak craven, the Smith and the Crone had been merciful, the Stranger had made her a shadow. The Father... the Father had forgotten about her, of course. He always did.
Rickard fusses in Jon's arms, but Myrcella can't think about him —she feels dirty and unworthy, and the Mother knows she can't hold her child and taint him with her sins still fresh between her throbbing thighs. Robb's hand burns against the crook of her elbow and she thinks she might throw up. But she doesn't; even now, with desire coursing through her veins, she is more Cersei than Robert.
Sansa is the one to tuck her in while Robb calls for Maester Luwin and disappears. She keeps up the farce long enough for Maester Luwin to think motherhood still exhausts her, but the moment she is alone in her chambers, she buries her face in the pillows and her hand in her smallclothes. A harlot princess born of a harlot King.
She kisses him first. She'd like to say it's mutual, but she knows it's not. She wants to kiss him, that's all; as he comes to apologise for upsetting her, for toeing the line, she wants to kiss him, forget about the easy way out he is offering her, and smash his lips against her own. Her head is clear and she's aware of every nerve on her body as she stands on her tiptoes and grabs him by the doublet, pulling him down to her mouth. And so she kisses him and flees. She is, after all, a coward.
She goes to her husband's bed every night afterwards as penance, until he has her falling apart with just his fingers.
On Sansa's nameday there is a feast and a betrothal to a son of the North, the Umber giant. They know each other only by name and little else, but the Smalljon comes bearing pelts and ribbons and winter roses, and Sansa smiles her pretty smile for him. She had smiled like that for Joffrey, too, a lifetime ago, but the Prince now lays forgotten so far South in favour of the seasoned warrior.
"I am happy," she answers when asked, "he is a good man, Father says, and brave and powerful, a warrior like the North hasn't seen since the time of my uncle Brandon. He is rather course, though, don't you think?"
"Joffrey was not brave at all," Myrcella says before Arya can answer, loud enough for the sisters to hear, but not anyone else, "and neither was he a good man. It seems your betrothed is far more princely than my brother."
Arya laughs, but Sansa frowns and makes a show of disagreeing —Surely the Crown Prince is an admirable man, surely he takes after his father in temperament, as much as he takes after his mother in looks.
"He does, he really does, sometimes," she whispers, leaving confusion in her wake.
Down the dais, after the toast, her subjects dance, lords and ladies who came to her wedding, who stripped her naked and carried her to her husband's arms. Lords and ladies who saw her eyes shine with unshed tears, who danced with her, around her. And among them, Robb's blue eyes following her like a wolf's, jumping among lady Jorelle's brown curls to the beat of the music, always glued to her skull. The skin on her arms crawls under her sleeves and suddenly she's spinning in lord Eddard's arms.
"Rickard grows stronger by the day, he is a big baby."
"He will grow into a little man soon, like his father, like my father," she says, and waits for him to flinch —he never disappoints. It's almost a game to her, to see him recoil at her youth, at her lost innocence, at the childhood she should have spent playing with his younger children, not being their mother. Almost a game, almost. It is, in truth, nothing short of a nightmare, a punishment.
After lord Eddard comes Theon, and afterwards the Smalljon. He spins her in a circle of furs and golden curls, lifts her off the floor to twirl in the air, and then both her feet are on the ground and she wants to tell him how soft and sweet and lovely Sansa is, but they switch partners before she can say anything, and much like on her wedding day, she is faced with a scowling Robb.
"My lady," he says.
"Fear not, it will not happen again. I was wanton and sinful," she lowers her voice, even though the beat of the drums is deafening, " and the Gods will punish me as they see fit, and I will suffer in silence. I will not put you in that situation ever again, dear son."
Robb bites his lower lip, and the pink turns to white and the white to yellow and green. She waits for the blood to come, for a little red drop to make its way down the creases of his lips, to taint his pretty teeth and his lovely tongue. But he opens his mouth before he can tear into the skin.
"That is not —"
The steps of the dance pull them apart before he can finish and she is in Eddard's arms again, beeing spun to the last notes of the drums while the soles of her feet catch fire, she is so tired. Sansa is in the center of it all still, her beautiful hair coiled to the crown of her head, leaving her face clear and radiant. They form a circle around her as Myrcella returns to the dais to rest, a hand on her belly where her breath catches, and the Smalljon meets the auburn haired girl there to lead the next dance, the night's main event.
Arya is sitting on the dais, on her father's stead, having refused to dance with anyone except her brothers.
"All she's ever wanted was to be the lady of a castle. But back then she used to dream of your brother and Southron courts."
"And now? Will she be content with our lord Jon?"
"She is the perfect lady, the Umber's household will shine and thrive with Sansa there."
"And what do you want, Arya? You, too, will soon be married off to the great son of a great house."
"I," she says, elongating the word with her lips curved in the deadliest of smirks, "I want to be an outlaw. A knight. I wanted to be a warrior like Queen Nymeria, and rule a castle like my lordly father."
"You wanted that, but what do you want now?"
"I want a choice to do what's right for me. They will never give me that, so I don't think it really matters what I want."
"You are your father's favourite child, even I can tell that," everybody can, she thinks, "if you asked, wouldn't he try to give you the sun on a silver platter?"
"He would give me the sun, but not my freedom," Arya says, her cheeks pale as winter. She holds her chin on the palm of her hand, and looks almost a woman. Arya is her age, though, and there is something on her cheekbones and something on the rueful turn of her mouth that makes her look like the little girl she was when Myrcella first arrived. There is still something of the wild little girl in her, even if her long braid is all tucked in and pinned around her pretty little head like a crown, and not a bird's nest.
"He married you. His lieges offered him older, more mature ladies, widows mostly, their own sisters and mothers and eldest daughters, and he refused. But he married you. He is no better than the rest, not really, and he is my father."
"He had no choice, or that's what he thought. It was his King offering, it is a great honour to marry a Crown Princess. And if not his King, than it was his childhood friend asking, trying to unite House Stark and House Baratheon at last, as it should have been so long ago with your aunt Lyanna and my own father. Either way, the choice seemed clear."
Arya's hand is resting on the table, near her goblet, and there are small white calluses under her fingers right where they meet the palm of her hand. Small hands where Myrcella's are long and elegant.
"You should have married my brother Robb, or even Bran," Arya says, breaking the silence once more in her obliviousness, making Myrcella's heart contract with all the pressure, "and I should have been born a pirate."
She can't say anything, the words just won't come out, but she steels her nerves against her ribcage, quiets them down until they almost disappear, and only then does she allow herself to look Arya in the eye and smile a crooked smile that's filled with something she can't name yet, not out loud at least. They hold hands in silence, watching Sansa dance in a sea of blue and grey fabrics.
"I, too, have sinned."
His voice is low in her ear, his breath warm. Boys —men— like him are the ones her Septas warned her about. As if cut from a picture, she stands before the window of her chambers, the one that faces de green slopes that surround Winterfell, and behind her he stands, looming, his fingertips ghosting over the back of her neck. He is no one, she is no one; they don't look at each other as his hands travel south, as he unlaces the pretty silken dress his father had ordered for her.
"I, too, have desired something I couldn't have."
He kisses the skin where the cowlick of fine hair lays, right where her neck meets her back —Tommen has one, Joffrey has one, they all do—, and his nose is cold against her flesh. It feels so mundane, that quick volt, the surprise because her skin is heated and burning, and they are both alive. Or not. But maybe she is so dead she feels alive. Something corrupt has killed her, killed her inside, made her as good as dead in the eyes of the Gods.
They are both trembling by the end of it, there are juices as thick as honey dripping from her cunt, and Robb has fucked her long and he has fucked her good. Fuck, what a funny word. She feels thoroughly fucked, like the proper whore she is. There is a fire dying in her loins, and still she craves more.
He falls asleep afterwards, much like his father on her wedding night, but he rests his head on her belly and curls his arms around her like a child, with his auburn hair sticking to her skin, and she can't hate him, but she can't love him either. She wakes him before dawn, lest her maids find him on her chambers, and watches him go with his deep blue eyes clouded with something akin to guilt, but not quite there. He liked it too much, and so did she.
Her thighs are still aching with pleasure when she sits to sup with her family, but the pleasure dies when Robb enters their private hall with a busted lip and his knuckles all bloodied.
"Well, someone got into a fight," Arya drawls, her eyes shining in mirth. Her spine cracks when she stands, and she's waiting, hunger on her bones, for the story to be told.
"I was defending a maid's honour, Father," he says before lord Ned can ask, and Theon is by his side, smirking as he always does, but also worried and slightly tense, his charming smirk a fine line of pink against his smooth cheeks.
She searches for Robb's eyes, but they are watching past her, towards her husband, and Ned nods, doesn't belief his son, but he doesn't scold him either, and Myrcella lets out a shaky breath, steels her face into a sweet smile, and swoons at Robb's heroics like a blushing virgin of twelve.
"You are your father's son, indeed. My love," she says, turning to Ned to place her hand on his arm and flick her blonde curls over her shoulder, "such chivalrous sons you have, and such lovely daughters. I wish they'd learn in the South that a pretty face does not make for a noble soul."
Her ladies-in-waiting all nod, and Sansa agrees with her, lightening the mood. And Robb takes his sit beside his Father, right in front of her, but she turns her head, lest her feelings and her secrets all spill in front of them, and asks for Jon to pass her the bread.
And have you learnt yet that the lion cub was also raised by snakes?, she means to ask, but of course she can't, she's not that brave.
They don't talk about it, they don't even address each other. It's as if it never happened, except that they were sort of friends, before, and now they are back to being strangers. She feigns a headache when she spots the love bites on the inside of her tights, on her breasts, on her stomach. The Maester wants to check on her, but she pushes him away and closes the door on his face, barring it even if it takes all her strength.
They pound at the door, threaten her with tearing it down, but she won't let them. She wants to be left alone. She will fast, she tells them, and pray to the Gods for more children, a safer pregnancy, anything that comes to her mind. She is unhappy, she cries at them, unhappy, weak, southron, alone.
"Let her be," she hears her husband say at last, his voice hurt, "she misses her family, she misses home."
"This is her home now," she hears Sansa say, her sweet, lovely lady, and her voice is so laced with worry that Myrcella feels like whimpering.
I fucked your brother, I've fucked your father.
Arya, bless her heart, comes climbing through the window and nearly scares her to death. It's past midnight, everyone's gone to sleep except for the cooks, she knows, because that's how this house is run. And Arya comes through the window, having climbed several feet at the risk of dying, to lay beside her on the bed and spill her hair on the pillows. Neither say anything, they hold hands as they fall asleep.
Arya comes and goes as she is confined to her rooms, and leaves bread and cheese and apples on her vanity, always making sure to pretend she hasn't done anything. Rickon is too young to climb, she says, and even though Bran is the best of them he can't come without raising suspicion at his disappearance from his lessons; Sansa wants to come so desperately, but she can't climb at all; and Jon refuses to disrespect the lady of the castle with his presence at such a dire time as this.
"And Robb doesn't trust Theon in any women's room, he says; not his sisters', not yours. He will come, though, my brother, when he can. He's said so, he's worried."
"He shouldn't worry, none of you should. I... I am not a good person, Arya, and I don't deserve your thoughts. I've..."
"We've all sinned, Cella. I think, in your stead, I would have done the same."
"You don't know what I've done."
"But I can imagine."
Her moonblood comes, and she weeps. This time, she weeps in joy. Oh, how times have changed them all.
Robb comes with lemon cakes, which is kind of ridiculous, but she devours them.
"Does my husband know that his children climb through my window?"
"We wouldn't tell him, not even Sansa."
"I am all right, you know? I am not angry, I am not sad, I am not sick. I'm just guilty, and dirty and horrible. But I have no shame, you see, I am my father's daughter after all, and it is not that which is keeping me here."
"Then what is it?" He takes a step forward, rests his warm hand on her forearm, where the night air has raised goosebumps, and the tears clog her throat in an instant. She has to swallow them, feel them passing down her throat. She takes the neckline of her nightgown, tugs it down her breasts so he can see the purple fading on her skin.
"I don't want your father to see. Or my maids."
"They would think it was lord Eddard who put them there."
"But he would know it isn't true. He'd have my head."
His hand comes to palm her tits and with the other he grazes the skin right where her breast folds, the tips of his fingers making her jump into goosebumps around her nipple. He's got his head between her legs before she can think to stop him, but that's the thing, isn't it? She thinks too much, or she barely thinks at all.
The nights she doesn't spend with Robb's manhood in her mouth, she invites her lord husband to her chambers, spikes his wine and has him believe the next morning that he fucked her senseless.
"I never knew you to be such a beast, my lord," she says, coy smirk on her lips, "it is, indeed, always the quiet ones."
"I'm sorry, my lady, I never meant to hurt you." He doesn't like looking her in the eye afterwards, not when he sees the lovebites and the purple of fingers blooming on her perfect porcelain skin; marks that his own son has left there, marks that she hisses are his. Lies, lies, lies, always poisoning her soul.
"I enjoyed it, love," she says, all sweet and innocent, letting her eyes grow big in that way that has him smiling at her as he smiles at his daughters, "you made me feel good, and alive, and loved. I liked it, no need to stop. I'm hoping for a babe soon, and what better way to make a babe than with love and pleasure?"
She doesn't love Robb, not yet, and she's not sure there is enough sweetness in her anymore to love anyone but Rickard, anyone but the babe she knows she's carrying already.
"Robyn," she whispers in his ear, "if it's a girl, don't you think?"
Robb's eyes get all big and blue, icy blue and pretty, and he fucks her against the wall all nice and slow, and damn intense.
"Are you really with child?" he asks her afterwards, their skin all damp. "Mine?"
"Yours, truly yours."
He brings her a pink carnation the next day, just because, and looks at her all sweet, and she thinks he might be falling for her faster than she is. It scares her. It excites her.
She thinks she might love him just a little bit —certainly more than she loves Eddard—, even more so when they place both babes on her arms and she sees them —Willem and Robyn, her baby boy and her baby girl— with their matted tufts of strawberry blond hair and their closed eyes.
Sansa is married off and shipped away when the babes turn three months old, and Myrcella watches her auburn head disappear on the wheelhouse, and something inside her snaps. She'll miss the child, because Sansa's still a child after all, and it's not until Arya takes her hand that Cella understands that she's not truly alone, although Arya will end up leaving her too.
Rickard says, 'Byn' while pointing at his sister, and Cella thinks she might have everything she needs, anyways.
Her father's letter comes to shake her world when the twins are one year old and Rick is smacking Rickon with a wooden sword, well aware of what he's doing if his giggles mean anything.
Ned tells her "I have to go South, your father's asking me to be his Hand."
"Lord Arryn?"
"Dead. Arya, Bran and Rickon will come with me, Robb and Jon will stay here and rule in my stead."
She knows what he's asking without him having to say it. And she knows what she wants, she knows her choice the moment he says he's going to be Hand. Because as much as she hated Winterfell when she arrived, she hates King's Landing more. At least in the North she is free, and forgotten. She might not be a princess, but she's not under anyone's thumb either. Somehow she's made friends, and she's found her place and they let her do her own thing. Lady Catelyn's shadow hanging over her is better than her brother's fingers against her throat.
"I will raise my children in the North, for that is where they belong. They are Starks, they must grow in Winterfell, they must live up North, away from the Court, so they learn to be kind, and noble and dutiful like their father. There they can be corrupted, they can become like me and my family, and I can't let that happen. They are not Princes, they are not cubs, I was wrong; I might be a lioness, but they are pups, true Direwolves."
And if she wants to stay behind because of the way Robb looks at her when she asks him to hold one of their kids, well then, no one can really blame her, can they?
"I will miss you most of all," she tells Arya before they leave. She'll miss them all, really, but Arya is Arya, and so when word comes to Winterfell of Arya running away with some bastard bull, she raises a toast to her sister's happiness, and to her own.