A/N: Butterflies are getting stared at from all over the place.
"-. 275 AC .-"
"NED!" The wind swallowed his shout. "OH NEEED!" The wind threatened to swallow his shout again, but he would beat it! No matter how far the other towers of the Gates of the Moon were. Especially when it wasn't the far end he was screaming at, though he'd surely conquer that distance in due time and win! He'd always win! He was Robert Fucking B-
"BART." What did he just call him!? "DO YOU EVER STOP GUSHING?"
"DON'T CALL ME BART!" Robert screamed, horrified. "IT SOUNDS LIKE FART!" The help was going to laugh behind their back for weeks.
But wait, that was a good sign! If they're laughing that's practically the same as gushing like everyone was gushing over Robert when he first arrived, so Ned"ll know how full of crap he was just now! Then maybe he'll eat his own words for once, and get it into his long-faced skull than Robert was entitled to gush as much as he wanted over whoever he wanted and whoa, that train of thought sure went strange places fast.
This task from Jon to 'train their command voice' was a disaster already.
"WHAT'S THAT?" Oh Ned was not allowed to pretend Robert was losing his voice yet. They'd barely been at this a few minutes! "SHOULD I CALL YOU FART?"
"DO IT AND I'll KILL YOU!" The wind swallowed everything from the third word and no, no!
"… WELL IF YOU'RE SURE?"
"I AM! I MEAN I'M NOT! DON'T CALL ME THAT, NED, OR I'LL-I'LL PUT A LIZARD IN YOUR BED!"
"WE SLEEP IN THE SAME BED."
"THAT'S RIGHT! THERE'S NOWHERE YOU CAN HIDE!"
"LIZARDS ARE HARMLESS."
"THEY'RE DISGUSTING!"
"THEY'RE DRY AND SPRY AND THE SIGHT OF THEM MEANS SUMMER IS GOING STRONG."
"THEY'RE SNAKES, BUT WITH LEGS! THERE'S NOWHERE TO HIDE FROM THEM! THE TALLER THE WALLS, THE HIGHER THEY CLIMB TO FIND THE SUN AND YOU'RE NEVER FREE OF THEM FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! UNLESS YOU GO TO A DIFFERENT KINGDOM! I SHOULD KNOW! WORSE THAN SPIDERS THEY ARE! AND THEN YOU TRY TO THROW THEM AWAY AND THEY DUMP THEIR TAIL RIGHT IN YOUR HAND AND UGH! THEY'RE THE WORST!"
For a moment, no reply came from the other tower. Then…
"…SOUTHRON WINTERS SURE BLOW LOTS OF HOT AIR."
Why that little-! "YOU-YOUR FACE IS FULL OF HOT AIR!" Robert shrieked-bellowed! He definitely bellowed!
"THAT'S WHAT I SAID."
"CRAP, YOU'RE RIGHT!" Oh gods, he didn't mean to say that out loud! Robert hoped the biting wind hid his blush – wait, no he didn't! There was nobody there to see it!
Again there was no reply from the other tower, but this time it went on for so long that Robert had to check to make sure Ned hadn't ditched him. With relief, he saw he hadn't-
"BARTFARTEON!"
Robert froze, then turned livid eyes upon the third tower of the Gates of the Moon. He barely got to see the tail-ends of the slamming door.
"ELBEEEEERT!" Robert screamed against the gale. "I"LL KILL YOUUUUU!"
Ned's voice, when it came again, was nothing if not exasperated. "HE'S ALREADY GONE."
"I SWEAR, WHEN I CATCH HIM…!"
"GIVE IT A REST ROBERT. YOU KNOW YOU'LL NEVER GO THROUGH WITH ANYTHING ON PAIN OF JON'S LECTURES."
"DON'T YOU START WITH ME! WHY DOESN'T HE EVER LECTURE YOU ANYWAY? OH THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE HIS FAVORITE!" Wait, he didn't mean to say that out loud either!
"… WHY DO YOU THINK THAT?"
Gods be good, he actually sounded like he didn't know. "ARE YOU SERIOUS? HE PRAISES AND LISTENS TO YOU AND DOTES ON YOU ALL THE TIME!"
"HE'S NOT LIKE THAT WITH YOU?"
Forget the help, they were going to be laughed at by the whole keep, and was Ned kidding? With all the trouble Robert gave the Septon and the Maester or Jon himself when they tried to teach him something? Of course Jon wasn't like that with Robert anymore! Not since Robert made it clear he didn't want it. Not… Not since Robert decided to be as much of a shit as possible. To him and his household and his kin. He really did get everything he asked for, Robert thought glumly. "HE CALLS YOU BY YOUR NICKNAME!" He yelled lamely when he didn't find anything better.
"BECAUSE I HAVE ONE." Ned's words this time came with the unmistakable slant of 'duh.' "I'M SURE HE'D DO THE SAME FOR YOU IF YOU HAD ONE."
"I DO SO HAVE ONE!"
There was an awkward silence, as if Ned and the world both decided to give Robert all the time he needed to realize what he'd just admitted to. Crapbaskets!
"OH REALLY?" Ned sounded outright interested now. "THIS I HAVE TO KNOW."
Robert panicked.
Fortunately, fate was on his side for once and the help came out onto both their rooftops with news about arriving guests.
Safe!
"-. 275 AC .-"
He was not safe.
"So…" Ned said after waylaying him half-way to their destination. "Jon calling me by my nickname hurts your feelings."
It does not! But when he went to say that aloud, Robert couldn't.
Ned looked up at him in surprise. "You're jealous of me."
Robert mulishly kept walking and refused to answer.
"It's not a term of endearment, Robert."
"What else could it be?" Robert burst, because his will was weak. Weak!
"An easier and shorter way to say Eddard."
"That makes no sense at all! How do you go from Eddard to Ned?"
"I don't know, how do you go from Robert to whatever your nickname is?"
By having a father that never misses even the most embarrassing of your attempts at baby talk.
"What is your nickname anyway?"
My Most Cherished Treasure. My Precious Son. Robert. Robb. Dear One. Baby Boy. B-
"You don't need to tell me if you don't want-"
"It's Bobby, alright?" Robert snapped and started walking faster. "I was trying to learn proper words but instead of Robert, I said Bobber – allegedly – and then refused to say it anyway else – allegedly – then Dad tried Robb and I skipped a few steps and was all Bobby this, Bobby that. Naturally, Dad thought it was a riot and it stuck." Up until Stannis used it in mockery for the first time. Then came the spar in the yard where Robert's fists drew blood for the first time and a lot of other things started sticking where the pet name had been.
The silence stretched. Robert glared at a raven that croaked at him from the other side of an arrow slit. The sun had descended into late afternoon at some point during their walk. He hadn't realised so much time had passed. Then he looked aside, surprised to see he was standing alone. He didn't remember having stopped. Turning, he saw Ned farther back in the hallway. "Ned?" Walking back, Robert belatedly realised Ned was watching him strangely. "Ned? You alright?"
"Your nickname is Bobby. Bobby Baratheon." Eddard Stark's voice was odd, like… like his whole world was realigning. "Bobby B."
Robert suddenly felt like he may have made a huge mistake. "You can't use it!" He blurted. "Only my Dad can. No one else. Nobody. Not even you, Ned. Got it?"
Ned blinked, snapping out of whatever that had been. "Right. If you say so."
Robert chewed on his lower lip, wondering why he felt so disappointed all of a sudden. "What was that? Why did you stop?"
Ned blinked a second time, then shook his head and started walking again. "Just realised something. It's nothing to do with you."
As if!
Robert asked and nagged and wheedled Ned about it all the way to the yard. Alas, it was to no avail. As always, Eddard Stark was the only person in the life of Robert Baratheon who didn't back down to him.
Mom and Dad didn't count.
A stout lad, that Ned Stark, good and true! Infuriatingly stubborn though. Especially considering he still hadn't hit his growth spurt yet.
Emerging into the yard was something Robert welcomed, even if he did have to live through Denys' gruff scolding at being so late. They must have really been walking slow if everyone else was already there, even knowing the convoy would arrive today. At least Ned got a few words too this time, even if it was only about herding Robert better – as if! Ain't nobody herding this auroch! He scowled at the sight of Elbert hiding behind Denys. What, did he think Robert would go and do something? He wasn't that scary, was he? He never put his fist to him, but Elbert still acted like he was one step removed from punching him or something.
"It's because you're big and loud, Robert," Ned told him. "Also, you bully him."
"I do not!" Robert hissed. "I never hurt him."
"Not with your fists, no."
"Don't you go soft on me."
"You have no idea what the word means, though it may be my own fault. Our first meeting might have pried certain things of yours loose."
Robert flushed in embarrassment, tried to find a witty retort, failed, and looked for a distraction. "Shaggy!" Robert roared, ignoring Denys' bark to get back in line in favour of going off to meet the new arrivals half-way. More precisely, one of the freshly dismounted men that was bigger than any other man Robert had ever seen save his father, except just as wide and twice as hairy to boot. "Shaggy! I told you it would all work out!"
"Little Lord."
"Little? I'm almost as tall as you already!"
"As you say, Little Lord."
"Just you wait! I'll be bigger than even you before you know it."
"Robert!" Denys came over to corral him. "Get back in line."
"Fine, fine." He waved jauntily as he got dragged off. "I want a full account later!"
Shaggy just watched him get dragged off with his usual halfheartedness.
Robert had first met Shagga Dolfsson about two months after Ned's arrival. Robert, Ned and Elbert were accompanying Jon down to one of the nearby villages for a dispute mediation, then lingered while Jon discussed the commissioning of a Sept at the behest of Septon Urizen. Being far too burdened with glorious common sense to stick around for that, Robert wandered off. Then he was smacked over the nose with the worst smell he'd ever smelled in his life. Naturally, he went investigating, despite the protests of the guard assigned to him for the day. His quest eventually led him to a big, rough and hairy pile of tattered furs that did nothing to hide that the man underneath stunk as if he'd never seen a bar of soap in his life.
Which was fair. Water's cold you know!
What wasn't fair was how the man went from village to hamlet and slept in hedges with nothing but his animal skins to protect him. And that was just when he wasn't camping alone in the wilderness. In winter! It wasn't even so much how he was living but the halfhearted way he talked about it when asked. Robert had talked and prompted and wondered and wheedled and then insulted the man outright, from sheer offense at the waste he was making of that amazing deep voice of his. That at least served to reveal the man's fierce frown and loud laugh, but neither lasted before the hairy lunk sunk back into his strange disregard of everything, including himself. That turned out to include the old farmer, young maiden and even younger boy whose charity had seen him survive and move on from the last three settlements he passed before then. All of which the man shared dully when prodded, then with a bizarre mix of resignation and relief when surrounded and questioned by Jon and his men.
Jon had thought he was a brigand. Then a poacher because of the skins he wore in place of clothes. Except the man didn't have a bow or anything else resembling a weapon, save for a pair of branches thick as logs that looked to have been broken by hand and could barely be termed clubs. In a bad light. If you squint.
When Jon went off the beaten path and decided the man was a mountain clansman, though, Robert put his foot down and adopted him. Shaggy looked the part and then some, but if he was from the clans, he was the worst mountain clansman ever. He didn't raid, he didn't rape, he didn't steal, he didn't hide, he didn't run when confronted, he didn't sneer down at them for being lowlanders. Hells, he didn't even have a knife! It was ridiculous!
Even after ordering Robert to have four guards around until further notice (which soon came and went because Robert was, of course, proven right about everything as usual), Jon had only reluctantly indulged him. After talking with the man without Robert there for almost an hour. Even then, Jon's permission was on the assumption that Robert wouldn't be able to control the man, let alone command him anything.
The look on Jon's face when he presented the big lunk freshly bathed and groomed the next evening still made Robert cackle at random times. It was Jon's own fault for underestimating him.
And his own niece! Alyssa Waynwood was with their party at the time and had thought it a great trick to play on her old and solemn uncle, so she enthusiastically contributed herself and her handmaidens to the effort of 'making the hairy beast presentable' in her own words. "Besides," she'd said. "It's about time us maidens fair got one over the bear for a change." Good thing too, or Robert might not have realized how young Shaggy actually was. Barely a year into adulthood! Hearing that deep voice of his squirm itself into yelps was great fun too. Almost as much as the mortification of being made to do the bidding of the women, only to realise too late what that bidding implied. But he was properly reluctant to go against what Robert asked him at that point, so it was all great fun and turned out just fine.
Which was good, because the man's reasoning was just silly when Robert finally got it out of him in trade for 'getting him away from all them handsy womenfolk.' "I'd like to see the inside of a real castle at least once before I die," he says. What kind of reason to live was that? A sad one, that's what! It was unconscionable! Inconceivable! Tragic! Robert wasn't going to stand for it!
And he didn't! He won! Again!
The victory didn't feel like crap this time either.
Robert even got to see Ned's jealous face at finding out what adventure he missed on. Served him right for ditching him in favour of 'seeing the southron faith at work with his own eyes.' Oh look, it's all boring talk, boring chants, boring walkarounds, and the occasional sneeze when the censer passes in front of you. Robert could have told him all that!
The only disappointment Robert had to deal with was how short a time Shaggy actually got to stay at the Gates of the Moon. Guess the way he trounced almost all the men-at-arms in training irked people more than Robert thought. Soon enough, Jon got Shaggy a job as a mule trainer and guide for caravans, so Robert started seeing less and less of him.
Oh well! Such was life!
Robert was satisfied knowing he'd got his way and the man would be alright. Shaggy still came over regularly, and sometimes he even remembered to bathe so he didn't knock out every nearby ox worse than Jon used to. And sometimes, like today, he happened to be with other people Robert was looking forward to seeing. It was like two gifts in one!
Speaking of gifts…
"Do you have it?" Robert eagerly asked Aly as soon as he was free to visit her in her rooms. Discreetly.
Shut up, he could so be discreet!
"Maybe," Alyssa told him with a smile. "But I'm not sure I want to just give it to you. You'll have to earn it. Two out of three."
"I'm not falling for that again. First one to twelve!"
"What do you take me for, an old widow with no other claims on her time? Three out of four."
"I'm not doing this without at least three tries to figure you out first. First to nine! Who knows how many new ones you have since last time?"
"Fewer than I'd like after how much work I've had to put into yours. Besides, I won't believe for a second you don't have new ones of your own. I know I'm not your only source. Four out of five."
"That's already cheating! You have half a dozen minions slaving away at your whims! There's no way I have more new ones than you!" He ignored whatever reactions Alyssa's seven handmaidens had at his words from where they loitered around Aly's room like two-legged lizards. "First to six."
"First to five and I'll throw a second card, how's that?"
"… What card are we talking about here?"
"The perfect pair to the one you ordered."
Robert was torn. On the one hand, he'd get twice the treasure. On the other hand, the treasure was supposed to be a unique gift for the most important person in the Vale. On the other other hand, he was being bribed, which insulted his pride – he should be able to get his way without people resorting to such unmanly things! Then again, Aly was a girl. That settled it then! "Alright. First one to five."
The Gwent decks came out and thus the war began.
The first match, Robert got one win and one draw for the first two rounds. Then he played the King of Winter, The Wild Wolf and the Knight of the Laughing Tree together, only for Aly to use the Bard Prince's special ability – subverting troops of lower war strength – to take his Knight for herself, and the Wildfire card to remove the King of Winter from the field, leaving the Wild Wolf at the mercy of her Dragonlord.
The second match, they won one round each, then Robert played the Arryn King, the Knight of the Moon, and two Noble Wards which received boosts to strength the more of them were in the field. He then played a Rally Horn card which doubled all of their field strength.
Aly conceded. "I don't have any weather cards or enough troops to match what you have there."
"That's a first," Robert muttered. Aly seemed to have done a major change to the basic deck, swapping lots of her old troop cards for tricks and sabotage. The opposite of what Robert had done to his own.
The third match, Aly won and pulled a draw in the first and second rounds with copious use of muster and scorch cards. Unfortunately, she was able to eke out a win afterwards, beating his Arryn King, both Wards, and the Knight Muster card that let him pull all the Knight cards from his deck (he had six). Aly used a Rebel Lord, three Scorpions and the Port Fortress card that doubled the strength of her siege cards, beating him by one point difference.
"I was getting worried I'd lost my groove for a while there," Aly teased him as Robert forfeited the tie breaker round. "But it was just a fluke after all."
A fluke. A fluke! The only fluke was how his last card was a Clear Weather. Weather cards didn't do anything without any troops in the field. He wasn't about to tell her that though. Then she'd just accuse him of whining, even though it wasn't true. And her minions were all there watching and would spread the lies to all corners of the keep by next morning. They always did that, girls were just the worst!
In the fourth match, Robert surprisingly won the first round despite being stingy with his special cards, then managed to beat Aly with overwhelming force in the second round. Aly did use a spy to draw two extra cards, and then used the Rebel Lord, three Scorpions and the Port Fortress card in a reprise of her previous strategy. She even deployed Biting Frost weather to make close combat cards impotent. But Robert deployed his Arryn King and the full Knight Muster again, then a Clear Weather that removed her Blizzard from play. With their strength matched, he then put down the Storm King, winning the round and the match, evening the score once again.
"Your deck only got more aggressive and straightforward since last time." Aly tsked. "How like a man."
"And yours is tricksy and dishonourable as if you can't handle commanding proper forces." Robert ignored the snide mutterings of the extras in the mummer's play his life had become. "How like a girl."
The affronted gasps of Alyssa's hangers-on were delightful.
Unfortunately, Aly won the fifth match. Barely, but Robert's hand really didn't do him any favors. He got all of his weather cards in his deck on the draw, which left him just two troops to work with. One Storm Lord and the Storm King. He hung onto the latter until the very end, but Aly still managed to beat him with her two Footmen, the Striding Huntsman, and the boost from the Rally Horn.
The sixth match, Robert drew and played the best hand he'd ever drawn. But then Aly gave him a Spy that let her draw two extra cards, used a decoy to remove his Ancient Dragon from the field, deployed The Shadow weather card to sap the strength of Robert's First Man Chieftain, then played the Stygai Horror to match his own Legendary card, Garth Greenhand. To add insult to injury, she then overcame his war strength advantage from her own crippled Shadowbinder with the two cards that same spy had earned her: two lowly shepherds.
Robert was getting worried. One more loss and he was out. Would Aly really follow through on her threat? Maybe he could talk her down to at least get the one card he originally came for – no! That's quitter talk! He wasn't gonna give up. War wasn't over yet!
On the seventh match, he threw round one, forced a draw on round two, and then won round three by suppressing the close combat boosts of her Rally Horn with his Tolling Bells, which acted as a morale equaliser for all troops that followed the Seven. With no weather cards in play, that left it down to direct matchup. Their siege and ranged forces were perfectly equal, so it came down to the close combat troops. And while her Hand of the King was better than his King of the Rivers and Ascending Spare individually, it just wasn't as good as them together, let alone with the Storm King added on top of everything else.
Eighth match was a wash. He got one win by beating her Bard Prince with his Storm King. A draw followed when he used Port Fortress to put his Storm Lord and Ballista on even footing with Aly's Reach Lord and her two ballistas. The tie-breaker round, though… wasn't. Robert had four cards left but Aly used her last card – a spy – to give him a small boost to strength in exchange for letting her draw two more cards. They happened to be Wildfire and the Dragonlord. She promptly disposed of his Kingsguard with the former, which put the latter on perfectly even footing with his Ascending Spare and Western Lord. They were both out of cards by the end with no winner. It was the first full match Robert had ever finished in a draw. It felt oddly disconcerting.
Match nine he won by pure luck. They both waffled back and forth in the first two rounds, but on the third he was able to use the full Port Fortress, Storm Lord, two Ballistas and Knight Muster setup. Aly, unfortunately, had somehow suffered his prior misfortune and drawn a bunch of weather cards, leaving her only one troop, the Foppish Lord – a joke card if ever there was one. Robert, being a gallant knight-in-training, refrained from commenting on the number of days the man and his assuredly grand army would have had to sit in front of the keep he was supposedly besieging without doing anything. That was the only way he could see that bizarre matchup transcribe in real life.
"Well," Aly said upon reaching the final round. The sun had gone lower in the sky outside. The welcome feast would be called any minute. "Here it is."
"Here it is," Robert muttered.
They stared at each other and shuffled their decks with twice the fervour for three times as long as ever before. It was the only explanation for the strange hands they each drew.
Round one, Robert's assumptions about Alyssa changing her deck proved truer than he thought. After deploying his Storm King in close combat and a Galley in siege mode, Aly pulled three Red Priest cards out of nowhere – ranged troop it turned out – and then had the gall to use the Windstorm weather card, reducing the strength of all cards to one and winning by one point. To add insult to injury, the Red Priests had a special ability that they would return to her hand at the end of the turn. Just once, but that was already too much. It figured that she'd come up with such unfair cards. Fuming, Robert started round two by deploying a recent addition of his own – the Lore Thief – and using his special ability to return the Storm King from his graveyard. Coupled with a Clear Weather and his Noble Ward cards, it was enough to beat the three red priests she'd re-deployed. They'd be having words about cards with abilities like that and whether they should even exist (they didn't!). The third round, though, was where the last and strangest matchup happened: Robert deployed the Legendary Bran the Builder and the Northern Blizzard weather card, which should have crippled any troops Aly could have pulled out. But then she pulled out the Last Greenseer, which was also a Legendary card – thus immune to weather effects – and while fairly weaker than his own, it also had the same ability as the Bard Prince to subvert enemy troops, except it could also reduce a troop of higher strength to 1 instead. Including Legendary ones.
Robert stared at the card. He couldn't help but feel as if the style it was drawn in was different from the other ones Alyssa had been pulling out of her backside. In fact, it looked a lot like the new ones that Robert had gotten through Ned from whoever was his supplier up in the North, back on Robert's own name day.
"Why so quiet?" Aly asked, not quite hiding that she was on the edge of her seat every bit as much as him. "Ready to give up?"
Robert shook himself and revealed that the last card in his hand was not, in fact, a weather card. A sunbeam fell oddly appropriately upon the card as he revealed it, making it look as if it shone with its own light. Lightbringer. It enhanced a troop's strength by half and allowed you to either equip it on an existing card or revive one from the graveyard. Robert chose the Storm King.
"… I guess this means I win."
There was a pause.
Then the suspense finally shattered and Robert was hard-pressed not to shake from his jitters. That had been intense.
Well. Well then!
"Good game," Robert said weakly. "You cheated though. The Red Priests are unfair."
"On the contrary, I did nothing that violated the letter of the rules."
"Just its spirit," Robert muttered, looking at the exquisitely hand-drawn and painted cards that he'd come here for, and which Alyssa had finally placed into his hands.
He beamed at the first, gaped at the second, and glared at Aly with all his hate, "You damn woman! You tricked me!"
"Did I? I beg to differ. The cards form the most perfect pair, and that's a fact!"
"… You fancy fat men, don't you?"
"… Get out."
Robert scoffed, scowled and left her room fuming, hurried to his room, and hid The Fat King in the deepest, darkest depths of his Grooming Kit. Nobody should find it there.
That done, Robert made to leave, only to turn back to the kit and decide to brush his teeth since he was already there. He'd already done it twice that day, and was going to do it again before bed, but one more couldn't hurt. He wasn't no Stannis, but he wasn't gonna be no Jon Arryn either. Not the Jon Arryn from before Ned anyway.
The Jon Arryn from after Ned was alright.
When he was done, Robert looked at his toothbrush thoughtfully, got some wrapping paper and packed the brush and a small chunk of toothpaste to carry with him just in case. Probably not what Ned had in mind for the things, but Robert was hard-pressed to think of better uses for the present Ned had given him on his name day.
Then Robert took The Quiet Wolf and went to give Ned the present for his name day.