DISCLAIMER: I hold no rights whatsoever to A Song of Ice and Fire, Romeo and Juliet or Lolita. No money is made of this.
WARNING: Mentions of suicide and violence; dark themes
The centered lines are excerpts taken from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" (Act II, Scene 5 and Akt V, Scene 3)
Red Rivers and Blue Roses
Sometimes she wondered if it was really the Lannisters holding her captive, or if it was him. It was hard to tell, after all, when she didn't even remember why she had been taken. She thought no one had ever told her, but she could have been wrong. She had been told so many things, so many pretty lies, so many gruesome truths; she couldn't be expected to keep them all.
Sometimes she thought they'd just forgotten about her, until someone came to bring her food, or drink, sometimes even a newspaper.
Petyr brought her books sometimes. She was not sure if he knew what they were doing to her.
She often caught herself sinking in grey-green depths and wondering if it was really the Lannisters holding her captive, or if it was him. It was hard to tell.
In the cold light of dawn, the golden bars in front of her window looked like they were made of silver.
.
.
They found a book next to her, they told him. A little red paperback.
He didn't have to ask for the title. He knew, because there was that one that lay on her bedside table every night.
"It gives me nightmares," she'd whispered a couple of weeks back, her blue eyes very bright, and he'd laughed at her.
.
She couldn't remember when he'd first come, it seemed like a lifetime ago. He had entered without a word, sat down on her chair and looked at her.
She had thought being alone was torture, but his relentless stare was worse. There was something about his eyes that could strip her bare with a single look, melt her skin, and left nothing to protect her from the world. She had desperately looked for something to say, something to break the silence, but her head had been utterly empty. And he'd just smiled, making it all even worse.
"I did warn you," he'd said very quietly, that mocking smile still playing around his lips. "You should have listened."
Life is not a song. Sansa had almost laughed. "As if anything I could have done would have made a difference."
"That's probably true, sweetling," he'd replied with a shrug and had left the room before she could muster a reply.
Ever since that evening, she lived in strange anticipation of his visits. A part of her – the sensible part – was scared witless at the thought of him sitting there again, watching her. The other part, however, hoped to hear steps outside the door that didn't belong to the guard.
Some nights, he would just sit there and watch her, like that first time; some nights, he told her stories of the city outside. She didn't know if they were true, and she didn't care, either. They were not the pretty songs that she had once loved so much. They were scary, full of greed and blood and betrayal, and the girl she had been before would have been horrified.
But there was something undeniably fascinating to them now, in all their morbidity and bitterness, and his quiet, husky voice breathed life into his dark fairy tales.
.
He remembered her sitting on her bed across the room, hugging her knees, her bright eyes never leaving his face. She thought he was watching her, but in truth, it was the other way around.
"Why do you always come here?"
Her guard had called her the little bird, and that moment he knew why. Her bright voice, so innocent, it always had a little bit of song in it, even when they had caged her.
"Perhaps I enjoy your company," he'd replied with half a smile, but she'd shaken her head.
"I never say anything."
"You don't have to, sweetling."
.
Then came the nightmares, and the book, and the kiss. One of them had come first, but no matter how often she tried, she couldn't get it straight in her head anymore.
The book had been before the kiss, of that she was fairly certain. Its cover was red as the blood that ran through his words and his gloomy anecdotes. She had read it before, in school, a thousand years ago. But now, it felt so very real to her, she was drawn into the plot to an extent that she knew to be dangerous, but she ignored that warning.
She had not felt so alive in far too long.
.
He sat at his desk, flickering through the pages of the little book, trying to calm his nerves. What had that girl done to him?
He felt so unsettled, almost sad, almost… almost guilty.
A book on the shelf opposite him drew his attention, not for the first time. He tried to ignore it, had been trying for hours, but of course the book was still there, no matter how much he wished it wasn't. Wedged between two heavy volumes of some encyclopaedia, hardly noticeable, and yet right on eye level from where he sat.
Nabokov. As if his housekeeper had known something all those years ago when she'd put his books on the shelf.
The main characters had both died, too, hadn't they?
That was a parallel too many between that cursed novel and the one on his desk.
There was a smudge of rusty brown across one of the pages, and the passage right underneath was no less foreboding:
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Petyr shivered and threw the book into the paper bin.
.
In her dreams, she was wandering through a strange land where the rivers were ruby-red and the trees had the colour of polished bone and leaves of silver and gold. And on the forest ground grew roses, their thorns pricking her ankles. Their blossoms were of a pale blue.
Her heart was racing when she woke up, and when her eyes fell on the book, she cast it off her bedside table in panic.
.
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book.
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave.
A grave? O, no, a lantern, slaughtered youth.
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
He would never get that fucking play out of his head again, he thought as he stared down at the carelessly engraved names on the gravestone.
"You could've at least given them a funeral," he heard Jaime say sourly, but his sister just scoffed.
"I would have given her one, if she'd been of any use. Besides, I could have hardly buried Clegane with pomp and glory after I had him executed for being a sloppy good-for-nothing who couldn't even keep his prisoner alive, right?"
Petyr suddenly realised she was looking at him, so he forced a smile on his lips and replied calmly, his voice just a iota too low: "No. Wouldn't have sent the right message."
.
Petyr picked the book up the next evening and put it back on the table.
"It gives me nightmares," she whispered, and he laughed at her and kissed her goodbye.
There was a bird singing outside the bars that shimmered silvery in the moonlight.
A nightingale, perhaps, or maybe a lark.
.
.
Sometimes he wondered if it had really been the Lannisters who had driven her insane, or if it had been him. It was hard to tell.
In the cold light of dawn, the golden bars in front of her window had looked like they were made of silver.
.
.
.
*Author's Note* Before any questions of that nature arise, this is just me trying out things in my writing, I'm not depressed or anything, I am perfectly happy :)
This is what happens when I'm supposed to study... I found a Romeo and Juliet-themed post on tumblr, and I have to read the play for my A-levels and then somehow this happend. I don't actually know how Lolita got in here (apart from the obvious reasons), I just thought it fitted in a way.
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