fortnight ago, he would have sworn his brother to hell and back. Not to the hell of his wife's new red god, but the hell of the old gods, if he was the type of man to swear.
But he isn't the type to swear, nor the type to pray; he is the type to curse men for their folly (it can't be helped for it is human nature) but even now, he knows his brother's peach will haunt him, for following the idiotic, illogical offering of the over ripe peach is the haunting bloodied death.
Absurdly, Stannis wonders if the peach had rolled from under his cloak as Renly fell, the spear lodged in his throat, or had he toppled forward, body crushing the mellowed peach against his fine silks and satins, a despondent stain never to be removed.
Did the juces drip from his chest as the ladies weep over their fie young faux-king?
Stannis can only wonder, can only wait.
Was that his purpose to make me show fear? Or was it simply one of his pointless jests.
"Tell me, when he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?" No one has an answer, not even his Onion knight who never fails to lay the truth at his feet.
Stannis will never know the answer, now his brother and the lavish tourney's are gown, burned to the ground. He sees Renly as he was, as he had been, an over grown child, easy with the courtesies and court-life, garbed in fine velvets, his pretty young bride.
Now, he admits to himself, to Davos , that he loved Renly in the way Stannis can love, which is a hard, inexorable in depth but casting no over affection. Stannis' love is incomprehensible even to himself, and he wonders if it is this austere love (from the seven kingdoms, not the brother he grew with) that sent Renly to an early grave.
Now, his little brother, the one everyone loved best, with their father way and raven dark locks is dead, dead under the soil, worms left to eat at his face.
Stannis Baratheon will be haunted to the end of his days by that stupid, senseless gesture of the red and gold apricot peach held twixt his dead brothers fingers, for this is what made up his brother.
In the end it is these little, insignificant gestures of a boy grown thta Stannis will take to his grave, these memories he buries deep within himself.
It is said that Stannis knows nothing of cruel, for he understands mockery as much as he does laughter (which is really none at all) but now he knows what it means to mourn, this grief that wells in his chest as stones placed at the foundations of a castle can be nothing but grief.
He will never shake it off, not as long as he lives.