Her breath quickened as her heart beat loudly. Not for romantic feelings or joyful ones. She was dying slowly inside as the words of her sister marrying the man she loved echoed in her head.
The man she had danced with until to morning.
The man she had given her maidenhood too.
They had told each other's dreams.
Painted up a future that was only for them and their loved ones.
He was a faithful and trustworthy man.
He was a man among men.
Her other half.
All that she had wished in someone he had and yet it is the cruel play of the fate that had to tear them apart.
She doesn't go to their wedding to witness them because she knows that she would rather die than see the man she loved have another woman in his arms. It was her beloved sister of course but a woman nonetheless. It was hard but it was for the best that she left her past behind.
Hunger.
It was something that she hadn't needed to feel since she was little. She grew up in a prominent family and never knew of poverty. Yet here she was now learning how to beg. There were younger children than her there though so she didn't feel sorry about herself.
She had gotten used to the terrible stench in King's Landing and also somehow by luck or fate met with someone who could save her from the miserable state she was in.
She was so dirty nobody had recognized her and her hair had become white because of the lack of nutrients and days of living underground.
Becoming the Nanny to Queen Ellia Targaryen wasn't bad. She at least had her children to distract her from her painful past.
Lyanna doesn't recognize her and she is suddenly filled with dread as she is able to predict the outcome of the girl secretly marrying Rhaegar Targaryen.
Nobody seem to think about the consequences and she takes it into her hands to help them.
Not even fate could predict this as this had been willed with human power.
They had all been tricked so cruelly.
First by rumours that told a lie and then now as they knew that they never really won the battle.
The Targaryens were all alive and well and so was King Robert Baratheon's fiancee Lyanna.
"Why, Catherine…", 'he' whispered too shocked while hugging her lifeless, heavily damaged body.
Some loyal servant had posed as Rhaegar through a face mask made very well. They all thought they had gotten him when Jaime Lannister cut off the man's head. They thought the war was over. They also thought they had gotten Elia Targaryen although not her children. They simply thought the children had been managed to be saved or something. The men who were there to raid King's Landing were not nice men. They were bloodthirsty brutal men.
She had always known Ser Gregor Clegane was a cruel and evil man and so when she saw him she knew that her end was gonna be humiliating and brutal.
Yet she accepted her fate. She had used fate's strings to cut them off of the people that should be there and place it on others with price of her own life.
Ser Gregor Clegane doesn't notice that she isn't really Elia so she knew the disguise was working and was saying her last words in her hand. He asks her where her children is and she simply tells him that they are in a place where he would never find them. He tells her that it was too bad since he wanted to make her watch them die before he rapes her. He doesn't hide it and she tries to flee but it's no use. All of his men is over her in a second. Ripping her clothes apart, calling her humiliating names as they hurt her over and over again.
Her body becomes like a doll as she simply has stopped fighting. When she thinks it is over, while her brain tells her it isn't, she see him holding his sword over her. The image is blurry and she is glad that he would finally end her misery.
Like a dream she sees Ned. Her eyes are dead and empty. She knows he can see her and then she remembers her death and she looks away because she doesn't want him to see her tears.
"Bye Ned", she whispered.
He tries to hug her but in an instant she disappears like nothing had happened.
Robert Baratheon is angry as he cries over Lyanna's dead body. Ned should do too but something feels off but he leaves those thoughts like that. He thinks about what happened to Elia Targaryen but is glad that her children managed to escape.
That's when Oberyon tells him secretely that it wasn't Elia Targaryen yet he pretended to be sad and angry about the other woman's death because he didn't want them to seek his sister. Oberyn knows he can trust Ned. He might be friends with Robert but Ned was loyal and knew how to keep promises and Ned promised to keep it a secret that the Targaryens are probably alive. But then who was that woman that had died in Elia's place?
Ned decides to take a look and is filled with a bad feeling as he reaches the room. The servants are all trying to clean the room to the best but the body is still lying there since yesterday. They had it covered with a white cloth.
Then he sees the finger…
Her beautiful smiling face appears. He put his self made ring onto her finger as something of a promise. They had thought they really would be together forever.
Then he falls to his knees and crawls slowly to the body hoping is not… not…
"NO!"
His cry is heard all over the palace and his people enter the room.
Robert is the one who squeezes past the masses and he sees his friend crying, not caring that people are looking. Robert doesn't understand. Surely he felt pity for Elia Targaryens death but they weren't close enough for him to cry so madly over her dead body. That's when he sees the face that clearly had been cut in half. He suddenly understands and tell everyone to get out of there and then the doors are closed leaving Ned to cry over his dead lover's body.
He gives her a proper burial after every suffering she had to go through. An anger rises within him along with a sadness that beckons him to follow her. Yet he knows there is a child waiting for him at home. He knows that he has to return to the North where his wife awaits with their newborn son.
The word wife is dry on his tongue.
He didn't love Caitlyn but it was his duty as her husband to do it.
His heart had longed for Catherine since the first moment he fell in love with her to the moment where she ran away. They told him that she had run away with a male servant and he thought she had played with feelings, using him to cover her real lover. His heart was devoid of any feelings for her until now.
He didn't understand. Why was she here looking like that? Where is the real Elia Targaryen? Why did she die for her?
He looks up to the sky and wonders when will he have those questions answered.
Years later he would look at the sky as he is about to be killed while being falsely accused of treason.
And the last face he would see would be hers.
It was always her.
The last few years he had lived in sadness and anger over her death along with Caitlyn who really enjoyed the thought of torturing Ser Gregor Clegane.
When night came he found himself being saved from the nightmares as he heard Catherine's voice always sing that lullaby she had come up with for their future children. He knew she would be a good mother and wife. Strong, faithful, intelligent. Everything he wanted in a woman was in her.
Perhaps it was like she always said. They were each other's halfs.
He has many regrets and making Arya see his death becomes his last regret as he descends up to heaven. He meets his mother and his brother along with all the loved ones that have died. Yet he doesn't see Catherine anywhere. His mother smiled sadly at him, telling him that she was gone forever. Her soul had ceased to exist. It had been by her own will.
Catherine and him would not meet even in death or after and Ned wished he had fought to be her when he could.
He kept looking for her in his later reincarnations always searching until he forgot what he was searching for and the fate gave him a new half to keep him happy with. A similar soul to Catherine's. And it kept him happy and made him stop searching madly for something that could never exist again at least.