To Touch A Falling Star

Davos

They buried them at the same ceremony, mother and daughter, as the first stars started twinkling in a sky that was as purple as their eyes and beyond the crypt, the Torrentine whispered its mournful song. Almost everyone of any significance in Dorne had arrived to attend, for Lady Dyanna had been friend to many and as merciless combatant in the resistance and the dance of the Stranger that had filled the last four years as she had been a kind and generous ruler and little Astra's fate, coming home from her prison at King's Landing only to die stirred many hearts.

As the two coffins were lowered into the opening in the floor, Elsbet Toland stole a look at her betrothed – still her betrothed, for he had not refused the match just yet. Davos Dayne was looking straight ahead, not at the lids of the dark coffins taking his last family into the crypt but at some point at the wall. His eyes never wavered and were dry. The cold in the crypt didn't seem to register with him. He looked like a statue among the effigies, only he was too thin and frail to look like he belonged here. Elsbet wondered what the old Kings of the Torrentine resting just under their feet thought of the plight of their House, left to depend on a boy who was still on the mend and a girl whose dishonour was known to everyone. About her, people whispered about Lady Dyanna's last days.

"I looked at her and I couldn't believe it was her. She didn't look like herself. She'd been unable to eat for weeks. She had white hairs."

Yes, war had not been kind on the lady either. Elsbet knew that as one of the chief leaders among those who had resisted the Young Dragon, Lady Dayne had been followed and harassed incessantly, even here, at Starfall where the attempts to curtail her power had been unconcealed. The worry over her daughter, a hostage at King's Landing, had been another burden for her to bear.

"She wouldn't stop asking about Astra till her last day," the woman went on, as if she had read Elsbet's thoughts. "Her maids say she could hardly talk but that was her question: hadn't they returned yet?"

"Shut up already!" someone hissed and the women guiltily did.

"Look!" Elsbet's little brother whispered as soon as they were out, tugging at her hand. "Look – a falling star…"

Through the haze of tears, Elsbet looked. A tiny light was approaching the Torrentine in a rapid, suicidal flight. A little bit of beauty lost to the world just before the heavy mists of the river engulfed the world and the island of Starfall was the only true, real thing there was. She shivered and looked away, suppressing the urge to reach out and touch that short-lived glory.

Elsbet had never paid Davos Dayne much attention before – he was just her betrothed's younger brother. She hadn't known even Vorian this well. Her brothers knew the Dayne boys better.

Well, just Davos now. Was he still hers? No one would condemn him if he refused his dead brother's intended, now besmirched with the Young Dragon's touch, no matter how unwanted. And still he paid visits to her, still he tried his stilted conversation – she remembered that he had never been clumsy with words before. He had been a joy to be around. She didn't remember much about him but she remembered the joy. His gift, and Vorian's as well.

"Is a year wait good enough for you, my lady?" he asked her one night as they sat in the cool courtyard of the Old Palace and listened to the voices of the Prince and the Targaryen king which came to them faint and distorted. No one of the other people attending spoke – neither Lord Yronwood nor Elsbet's mother or stepfather. A soft night was descending upon them, softer than the one before and softer yet than the one before that one. It whispered of spring that was so far yet and so close still, so nearly within reach.

She held her breath. Until now, he hadn't mentioned anything either way. But he seemed to take her silence as displeasure. "I am sure I will be fine then," he added and Elsbet startled. In the moonlight, his violet eyes twinkled like amethysts, staring at her intently. She had been so engrossed in her own fears that she had never thought that he might have those as well. For the first time she realized what a burden his new state was. Two years had passed since he had been questioned by Daeron Targaryen's torturers to say where Elsbet and her mother and brothers were hiding but he hadn't. And he was still paying for this – he could no longer run or even walk without dragging one leg ever so slightly. He would start gasping for breath without warning often. His left shoulder was stiff because a bone had been broken by the torturers and then once again by the maesters in a desperate bid to correct the twisted way it had reattached itself. It had worked but he'd need years to regain fluidity of movements in this part. He who had always been a blur of pure physical energy, a storm of movement. Could he think that she wouldn't want him? Especially when she had Vorian to compare him to. Vorian who the Stranger had made as perfect in death as he'd been in life. Davos is stuck with life as it is, Elsbet thought, just like I am. A part of her fear melted away.

"It'll be happy to wait," she said most sincerely. After all, they were both so young. The more they delayed, the more time she'd have to heal as well.

At the end, the waiting period turned to three years and Elsbet cherished every day of them. Others, not so much. "If he wants to break the betrothal," her stepfather said, "he'd better man up and say so."

"He has no such intentions," his son assured him. "He just needs some more time to recover."

"He looks pretty recovered to me! Certainly recovered enough to do his duty in the first night."

Elsbet steadied her lip with her teeth. He was saying this out of care for her, she knew. It wasn't his fault that her pride would never let her admit how terrified she was by the very thought of the first night. She didn't want to prolong Davos' suffering but every day, every hour that delayed the physical side of the marriage was a good thing in her book.

Her mother didn't say a thing. Rightly so, Elsbet thought angrily. Ileria Toland knew better than everyone just how important good health was in a husband. After all, wasn't Elsbet born out of her despair with her husband's long illness when the young, strong, healthy Alyn Velaryon had caught Lady Toland's eye? Many certainly thought so! Hasn't the Oakenfist used knowledge about Ghost Hill gained through their illicit affair to conquer it, smash their ships, take away Ileria's son's life? Elsbet knew it for certain. It wouldn't be the same circumstances for her but for now, she was glad for her mother's tacit support. No matter the reasons.

When spring was in full bloom and in the Prince's gardens, there were no flowers with edges seared and blackened by the sun but only the breathing of fragrance and renewal, they were wed in a sept in the shadow city. Not at Starfall where Elsbet had always imagined her wedding would take place before. Not even in the palace sept. A small, dilapidated one. A ceremony officiated by a septon who stank of cheap wine and hadn't changed his robes since winter which had ended two years ago. Even the images of the Seven were quite pitiful. The Father lacked a piece of his nose and Elsbet supposed he had lost it when the smugglers had been dragging their commodities by… in a place like this there simply had to be smugglers. There wasn't any shortage of open-mouthed, shabbily dressed inhabitants of the shadow city who couldn't miss the wedding of the handsome boy who had to be a lordling, with those fine boots of his, and his so clean lady.

"I still have no idea why we're getting wed in this place," Davos whispered.

"Because I want so," Elsbet replied.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell your mother? I am really uncomfortable at neglecting them so. They're at Sunspear, they should have been invited…"

"Not when I say I want just you and I," she said calmly and then her hands went cold with fear and tension as the slovenly septon started droning. All of a sudden, she thought about the Targaryen king. Was he officiating a ceremony right now? She knew that he had repudiated and imprisoned his Queen and felt more than a little malicious content at the thought of Daena Targaryen pacing around the same vault where Elsbet and the rest of them had been imprisoned.

"It doesn't need to happen now, you know," he said later… much later. "I can wait."

That sounded so good, so lovely…

"No," Elsbet said, although her voice was shaking. "Now! Although you might not feel much pleasure with me."

He reached out to take her hand and she was almost sure she heard him mutter, "Nor you with me."

She didn't.

Sometimes, happiness swam out from the mists and golden surface of the river. A look, a shared smile, the first time she had stayed cuddled up to him after lovemaking without feeling any desire to shake his arms off and bolt out. The day when, closing the book of accounts, she realized that in the last year, Starfall had again reached the income it had gathered before the war. The kicks as she swelled with their first child after three years of marriage and thanked the Seven for not punishing her for that vile potion at King's Landing, after all. The warmth in Davos' eyes when he drank to her health, praising her to their friends. The soft splash of the waves when the two of them sat in the small boat and he rowed, his shoulder and arm finally strong enough. The sight of a falling star when he swept her in his arms and carried her to the window, so she could see it and make a wish... and she didn't startle in blind panic at the unexpected touch.

But it never came to stay. It never was something to take root. While their wounds slowly healed, there was no hiding from the fact that Davos himself was a wound, from neck to knee. Scars that could never be erased. Pains that returned when least expected. Because of me, Elsbet thought, doubling her cares for the ruin of his body. He got those because of me. He'd never think to blame her but she blamed herself and guilt made her withdrawn, retreated into herself, her efficiency almost inhuman.

When Astra died and Elsbet had the feeling that she once again she was attending the funeral of the first Astra and her mother as Davos stared ahead, only breaking out of his numbness to say a few words to Ultor and Dyanna whose wide, not quite comprehending eyes were moving between their father, mother, and the coffin being lowered down. They both moved closer to him and Elsbet realized once again that all her children preferred their father to their mother as the last one went quiet in her womb, terrifying her with the sudden fear that he or she might have died and was lost to her, just like Astra.

Later, the other women came. Elsbet often wondered if it was Astra's death that had prompted Davos to seek others. Sometimes, even she saw herself the way he saw her – quartered in the marble crypt that she had built within her to house her grief. She kept going on because surviving was all she knew. But while happiness had come to slits and pieces to her before, now unhappiness was all there was. There was nothing that could compare to the loss of a child but she still hurt when Davos finally decided that he was tired of waiting for her to want him as much as he wanted her. Tired of the sudden involuntary jerking of her body sometimes when he reached out to embrace her. Tired of her inability to feel explosive joy the way he could, the children could. Tired of everything about her.

"And the worst thing is, I cannot even blame him," she confessed to Marisia, a fellow former-hostage and now her goodsister. "Fifteen years! What more could any woman want from a man? He's kept faith with me for fifteen years despite my… peculiarities."

"You can change." There was plea in Lady Jordayne's voice. "I am sure you can if you try. He loves you, you know that."

But Elsbet knew it was impossible. It had taken years for her to stop herself from trying to deter Davos' desire instead of accept it. Their girl's death seemed to mark a line of acceptance that they would never have what they want. And each of them dealt it in their own way.

He was still with her, of course. In her bed, in her life. Sometimes, she even enjoyed the bed part. More often now, when it was no longer reserved for her alone. She doubled her attempts to please him in their everyday life and found out that it pleased her as well, for he didn't want anything that she did not desire herself. And he reciprocated. Perhaps his infidelities could be the very thing that could bring them together in a better way than before? Elsbet didn't know but hope sprouted, as gentle as a flower in early spring, as pale as Ultor and Astrea's hair as around them, the world changed. A young and charming prince died, having turned into an obese monster unable to rise from his bed. A realm bowed to a new king who revered books and knowledge and the Dornish queen next to him. A girl of silver hair and brilliant smile arrived in a palace built for her to start a life meant to be hope itself. In the castle of falling stars a king announced that Elsbet's daughter was to be his goodaughter. Dyanna was deliriously happy and once again Elsbet felt the falling star so, so tantalizingly near, yet getting out of her reach.