The face she saw reflected back at her in the looking glass made her want to cry.
Ross Stark never cried - she never laughed much either, no matter how much Lyanna called her dour, or Brandon teased her - but the sorry visage in the mirror made the weight of everything that had happened suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks and bitterness. She looked half dead. Her already long and sharp face was now nothing short of gaunt, her cheeks hollow and her skin holding a greyish sort of pallor that wouldn't have looked out of place on a corpse. The purple bruise smudging her jaw hardly helped, nor the raw scratch marks down one side of her face. Both eyes were shadowed with dark circles, and both were glassy, rather wet.
A sorry sight to behold, Lady Stark.
She mechanically pulled each pin out of her hair, one by one, letting it fall loose from the tight braided style it had been scraped back into my nameless handmaids, that only made her face look more pinched and plain. The dark strands hung dead straight, limp and listless, but at least concealed half her battered face. Ross knew she had never been beautiful, not like her sister, but she had never looked as pitiful as this in her life. And she hated it.
Underneath her dress - that hideous purple gown, gods she loathed that colour almost as much as she loathed the man who forced her to wear it - her skinny body was mottled with similar bruises and gouges, the skin broken in many places, and numerous scrapes and claw marks from where his hideous overgrown nails had torn at her. Some were fresh, some half healed, others fading to scars, but each and every one was another reminder of her helplessness, another addition to her frustration, more fuel for the furious, burning hatred that had been growing in her like a cancer since she arrived in the Red Keep and Aerys publicly mocked her for the first time atop the Iron Throne. No wonder Rhaegar took the other Stark girl, this one seems half-dead already for all the life in her. She knew that as she was almost a woman grown - and a daughter of the North - she shouldn't let petty insults from a madman hurt her. But she'd spent her whole life hearing the same thing. Ross had always liked to think herself stronger than the girl of almost sixteen that she was; she had been Lady of Winterfell since her mother's death when she was eight, after all, and had learned to run the entire household efficiently, as a lady should, ever since. If she couldn't be beautiful, then let her at least be clever, capable, made of steel. But this just showed that she wasn't even that. A sad, plain, weak little girl. Aerys hadn't said that; that was what she saw in the mirror. Tears welled in her eyes but she stubbornly refused to let them fall, even as her throat choked up. She never cried, and she wouldn't start for him.
She was too weak to go against him. Too pathetic to do anything but lie back and let the Mad King violate her. At first, she had merely been here as a guest ('guest', who were they fooling, she had been a hostage since the day she arrived) to ensure the North's good behaviour after the disaster at Harrenhal. Then Lyanna was kidnapped from her bed, then brave, reckless Brandon was imprisoned after yelling for Rhaegar to come out and die. The king had taken her for the first time that night. She knew then that her brother was as good as dead; if Aerys cared about making an enemy of House Stark, he would not have raped their eldest daughter. She had been a maiden, but that had hardly mattered. Her future marriage prospects were the least of her concerns at the moment.
And then Father arrived, walking into a trap she was helpless to prevent, and Ross' world turned to tangible ash before her very eyes. What followed had been over a moon ago, but she still relived it every day, every night, whenever she smelled anything burning, whenever she closed her eyes.
Rickard Stark, her proud, strong, stern father who she had loved and respected her whole life, was hung from the ceiling, screaming in unimaginable agony as his flesh melted to ashes, burning in his own armour. Brandon, her big brother, all raucous laughter and wild charm, dark, wolfblooded and hot tempered, roaring in hatred and fury and pain as he strangled himself trying to save him in the Mad King's twisted game. Both dead before her eyes. Her father would never again stand as Lord of Winterfell. Brandon would never again ruffle her hair and call her little sister as she scowled and ducked away. Both gone, forever.
She had tried desperately to help them, not caring for her dignity any more because Gods it was her family she was seeing die and she would've done anything to stop it. She had thought to hold onto her dignity with all she had during the last few months - it was all she had here in the Red Keep - but what good was it now? Ross had never acted more like her wild younger sister than in that moment. Aerys had ordered her to be restrained, but she had fought viciously against the man who held her, kicking and lashing out at him as she screamed and begged and cursed, desperately trying to reach the sword to give to her brother, or to hell with it all and run Aerys through herself, but her captor had been too strong, holding her arms behind her back in an iron grip, and she, at the end of it all, was just a skinny girl.
She hadn't saved them. Of course she hadn't. They had died in front of her, her brother catching her eye in his last moments - expression full of righteous fury, telling her to see the man that did this dead - before collapsing for the last time. After that, she had just... stopped. Staring at her brother's choked corpse, and the blackened armour containing what was left of her father, her expression had gone completely blank and stony. She stopped struggling, regained her composure, realising that the man holding her back was Jaime. As she stood up straight, the young knight didn't release his grip on her; he may not have trusted her not to do anything stupid, but then, though it wasn't visible, she realised she could feel him shaking behind her. Tilting her head back, his eyes met her, horrified green meeting deadened grey.
Ross looked back. She didn't shake. She was looking straight at Aerys, who currently had the sick gall to be laughing, cruel amusement in his mad eyes. The seeds of hatred against the King that had been planted in her over recent months - every time he'd humiliated her, mocked her, insulted her family, kept her from the North in the first place - were blooming, growing like an insidious tumour. She hated Aerys, laughing at murdering her father and brother. She hated Rhaella, standing mutely beside him, too craven and weak to even say a word; Ross could see herself in her, and that made her hate the woman even more. She hated Rhaegar, the selfish fool who had taken her sister and caused this entire mess with a crown of winter roses, a flowery noose now stained with blood. She hated Viserys, she didn't care that he was a child. She hated the name Targaryen and everything they had done. She wished nothing more for them all to burn in that hateful fire and drown in their own tainted blood.
"Write to Lord Arryn," Aerys had stopped laughing, with one of his disconcertingly abrupt mood turns. He was now cold and cruel, yet his eyes were just as mad and unfocused, alive with fire and blood. "I want the heads of Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Lord Eddard, now, I suppose," Malice coloured his tone. Oh, Ned... Her quiet brother would now be Lord of Winterfell. Aerys wouldn't get him too.
"He'll kill you," Her voice cut the silence, cold, sharp and matter-of-fact, and all eyes turned her way. "My brother will kill you. The North will take everything that's yours. And I will watch," Aerys sat forward on the throne dangerously, but Ross had already turned without another word, shrugging Jaime off her, face blank, dead. She left the throne room, walking steadily out of the room with fast measured strides. One part of her, the part anyone could see, was completely numb. It was a high insult to leave the presence of the King without permission, but what did she care anymore? What more could he do that could top what he had done already? The sounds of her boots on the stone floor had held the whole room's attention, as the only other sound apart from the King's laughter and the creaking of the still burning armour of Rickard Stark. No one followed her.
Jaime had been holding her so tight that she had bruises, she realised after. She wanted to hate him for it, but remembered his young, terrified eyes and couldn't bring herself to.
That had been over a month ago. Soon, word came of the Quiet Wolf and the Storm Lord raising their respective banners, of Jon Arryn and Hoster Tully assembling the armies of the Vale and Riverlands in support, all to march on King's Landing.
Aerys had come to her again that night in half a mad fury, half a vicious delight. It had been even worse than the first time, somehow, and afterwards she had lain there in numb shock. It turned out that he could take something more of hers, she realised then. He could take her pride. All whilst two of the Kingsguard stood outside listening, again, just as Jaime had always told her they did when the king raped the queen; Barristan Selmy and Gerold Hightower, she was sure to remember their names. The noblest knights in the realm, standing by and letting that happen, because their oaths and honour said they must. Shit on their oaths and fuck their honour, for neither did any good to anyone except keeping the wickedest man in the kingdom safe.
Aerys had taken her half a dozen times since then. Weren't women meant to be afraid of rape? Ross was not afraid, had not been afraid for a minute once it had started. Perhaps she truly was dead inside, cold as ice. There was dread when she knew he was coming, yes, because it was painful, humiliating, degrading. But it was anger she felt, a burning hatred deep down inside. It wasn't the act of rape itself that bothered her, in truth - he could've found far more painful ways to torture her than that - but rather the loss of dignity, her lack of power to do a thing, the feeling of helplessness. She hated feeling helpless, and she hated him.
Ross didn't care for the kind, well-meant smiles Lewyn Martell gave her. She loathed the grim looks of duty that Hightower, Selmy and Jonothor Darry wore, avoiding her accusing stare. And whilst Arthur Dayne ground his teeth at the injustice, clearly hating every second, that meant nothing to Ross. Actions spoke louder than righteous thoughts, and he did nothing; his precious morals might be being twisted by this, but that was hardly a hardship compared to what it was costing her. She occasionally found herself smiling at Oswell Whent's muttered sarcastic comments and dark humour; though he likewise did nothing to act against the King, at least he didn't pretend to have impeccable honour. No one would help her, and she was too weak to help herself. More often than not the king was gleeful in his torture of her, the pain he caused getting him off nearly as much as burning innocent people. Ross refused to make a sound no matter what he did. Refused to even move. Just stared at the ceiling and went away inside, for a long while after he left.
Lyanna would have fought. Lyanna would have done her best to kill the evil cunt, with only her bare hands. And Lyanna would have died. But at least she wouldn't be at his mercy, at least she would've chosen her own path. Ross had considered that option, more than once. It wouldn't be difficult. She still had her eating knife, it would be easy to stab Aerys with it when he came to her. But in the end, when it came to it, she couldn't bring herself to sign her own death warrant.
The knock at her door disturbed her from her dark thoughts.
She stiffened by reflex from where she sat at the mirror, but Aerys didn't knock. He was the king, she thought bitterly, of course he didn't. And he wouldn't come to her twice in one night. He didn't have the stamina. She remained silent, and the door soon opened anyway, a familiar figure slipping inside. She didn't turn around, rather watched his reflection, eyes staring straight ahead as the young man came to stand behind her. The seventh, and newest, Kingsguard knight. His green eyes narrowed in anger as he saw her battered face - she thanked the gods he hadn't had to guard her door himself during one of Aerys' visits yet (that couldn't be a coincidence) - but she raised her eyes to meet his own in the mirror and he closed his mouth from what he was about to say.
"Here," He said brusquely instead, setting the little bottle down on the dressing table. "It's cold, but the midwife said it should work the same," She had already uncorked it before he finished speaking and gulped the entirety of the murky potion down her throat without hesitation, fighting back a cough at the bitter taste. He watched her for a few seconds as she set the now empty bottle back down and set about removing the last few pins from her hair, never quite sure of how to act around her after a royal visit. "I can't stay tonight," He said eventually. "I can't. Look at you, it's not right," She fixed him with a glare and he broke off. He might know how to charm every girl under the sun, but there was something about her that always seemed to throw him slightly. That in itself was oddly satisfying.
"You didn't seem to mind last time," She said flatly. "This arrangement works for us both. You can shut your eyes and pretend you're fucking your sweet sister, if you like. I don't care," He still looked unnerved whenever she brought his sister up, clearly unused to anyone knowing at all, let alone speaking so casually of it. She had found out by chance, a slip of the tongue on his part - he had even threatened to kill her after; she had laughed in his face and asked who in the seven hells would she tell - but now she knew, the only one in the world who did. It didn't surprise her that he'd been with a girl before - look at him - and she found the fact that said girl was his sister was little more than incidental. Ross was sure if she thought about it hard enough she could find it wrong, disgusting, immoral, etcetera. But whatever had gone on with him and Cersei had been before Aerys, and anything before Aerys seemed irrelevant.
"Has anyone ever said how gentle you are with your words, my lady?" He said, tone no less irritated than before, his face twisting in anger but not at her. "I still don't know why you do it. After having that... monster all over you, surely the last thing you want is..." He trailed off, though the meaning was clear. There was a silence.
"He thinks I'm his," She said after a while. At his questioning look, she continued sharply. "I'm not. Not his," The knight's lips twisted into a bitter, mocking smirk that he hadn't worn half a year ago, a look that didn't belong on such a young face as his, no more than the fury in her own eyes belonged to such a young woman. Girl. Her sixteenth nameday wasn't for a month.
"So it's a 'fuck you, your Grace', then?" He snorted humourlessly. "Can't say I blame you, though I wouldn't have taken the icy Lady Ross for the reckless type,"
"What would you do if you were me?" She turned to him then, eyes flashing in anger. "Be a good, faithful girl and only let your rapist into your bed?" Jaime's smirk became even less amused.
"Oh, I'd have made him kill me long before that," She didn't doubt him. He was rather like her sister in that sense, proud, reckless and blazing with life.
"Every time he's here, I ask myself if I should do just that," She said, and his smirk slowly dropped, eyes darkening. "What life is this to lead? It wouldn't be difficult to do. Get him to kill me, I mean. It's what my sister would do. Who knows, she might have done it already. But I just... can't," She raised her eyes to his, a faint smile on her lips. A tired smile. "I tell myself it's a greater show of strength to live and suffer through this than take the quick way out. The truth is, I have never been that brave. Of all the reckless things I could do, fucking you is the least of them. I'm just too craven for anything else," Jaime was silent for a moment.
"I've met cravens," He said eventually. "I've met brave men too. Brave or craven, doesn't matter, they always lose their stomach at some point in their first battle. But I think you have a stronger stomach than all of them, Ross, even if you're not as made of stone as everyone thinks. You'll survive this even if the rest of us end up dead in the dirt. There are some women who would've thrown themselves out a window simply because their future marriage prospects were ruined," That's stupid, she admitted to herself. Better to be a spinster than dead.
"A survivor," She considered, more to herself than him, shaking her head. "Either way, my father would be turning in his grave if could see me now. Or he would, if he ever made it to his grave," Her face darkened at the memory. "I wouldn't be surprised if Aerys threw his ashes into the Blackwater. Along with Brandon," She fell silent, but then her eyes glinted with dark amusement. "If Brandon saw me now, he'd slit Aerys' cursed throat without a second thought," There was ice in her voice, but she spoke almost longingly. He paused.
"The day the Lord of Winterfell and his army hammers at those gates," He said, nodding to the window and the outside beyond. "I'll do it myself," She smiled then. A genuine smile, if small, which lasted a second and was mostly fuelled by hate. He returned it regretfully, neither of them truly believing that day would ever come - or if it did, that they would both live to see it, and they fell into another silence. "I still don't know how you can stand to have anyone touch you after him,"
"It's completely different with you," She said, because it was. The two weren't even comparable. Aerys was not her choice; Jaime was. There was all the difference in the world between lying motionless on a bed underneath a monster, burning with rage and hate, trying not to scream or kill herself, and to what she did with Jaime. There was another silence, which she broke with characteristic bluntness. "If you don't get this hideous dress off me then I swear I'll tear it to shreds myself," He laughed at that, mane of golden hair falling back off his face, and not for the first time she noticed how truly handsome he was. She didn't allow herself to dwell on that, or she wouldn't let it go. All he was was her escape from a Mad King. All she was was a poor (temporary) replacement for Cersei Lannister, the girl they called the Light of the West.
He stepped closer, and their lips met. Ross didn't let herself think of how she felt when his strong arms closed around her, drawing her close and warming her cold, stone self, so different from the brittle, grasping claws of Aerys. His hands were gentle but firm, experienced in ways she could never have expected. She didn't allow herself to consider the tempting possibility that he was doing this for her, that when he closed his eyes he wasn't picturing an achingly beautiful girl with blonde curls and a face like his own, instead of the dark-haired, cold girl he had.
They lay beside each other after, her turned away, staring at the opposite wall. She didn't allow herself to consider the small leap her stomach made whenever she saw him. Because she was not a foolish summer child, nor a sweet young maiden wanting a handsome knight to love her, nor even a secret romantic at heart behind a wall of bravado like Lyanna. Ross had never been like that, even as a girl, and gods knew she wasn't anything like it now.
She didn't allow herself to enjoy the lingering smell of him on the sheets when she lay awake at night, alone, unable to sleep, nor during the day when she could smell him on her hair. She was stone, she was ice, she was steel, and she would not be hurt any more than she had been already, least of all by a golden lion, least of all when it could be avoided.
Her maid - a spy, or maybe just as scared as she was - found her hidden bottle of moon tea the next day.
Ross was still hurting a week after that from what Aerys had done when he was told. Her moon tea was taken away, her room searched regularly for more, and every time he visited her she could never have enough baths or scrub hard enough to make herself feel clean. Predictably, within months her moon blood stopped and she spent each morning retching over the privy. There was only one conclusion, and the moment she realised she started retching all over again, wanting to claw it out of her with her bare hands, terrified it would come out a silver-haired, malignant beast with unnatural shades of violet and madness in its eyes. She couldn't stand the thought of some part of him growing inside her. She had begged (yes, begged) Jaime - who had cursed Aerys' name when he found out - to go and find a big rock.
"Do it," She said flatly as they stood in the godswood. He hesitated, eyeing her stomach, rock in hand.
"Ross, it could kill you," She rounded on him, letting a flash of her emotions show for the first time.
"If you don't have the guts for this, then you can just push me down the fucking stairs," She snarled like a cornered animal. "Or I'll - I'll do it myself," He gave her a pointed look at her hesitation, looking her in the eye as he dropped the rock deliberately onto the ground.
"You're not sure," He said. "I'd do it if that's what you want, you know I would. But you have to be sure. I'm not ending up as the man who killed your child if you regret this later," She had wanted to cry again - you don't understand... but you almost do, and that makes it worse - because there was also the impossible possibility that had been nagging at her, no matter how surely fate would never be so kind as to let her have this. Looking at Jaime then, she couldn't do it, even if the chances were beyond slim. What he said next convinced her further. "It'll be half Stark, no matter what. There's few enough of them left," Her resolve strengthened, and she made no protest when he left the rock on the ground.
Pregnancy was awful, but at least Aerys gave her somewhat of a respite, delighted over the fact he'd soon have his own 'great bastard'. Ross almost felt for Rhaella, who had to put up with not only the king's full attention, but also more abuse about supposedly being barren. Labour was worse, and lasted far longer than she'd imagined. However, she survived it. When the midwives carried over the bundle of swaddling cloths, she sat up, ignoring the pain, heart pounding. If she saw one glimpse of silver hair, she wasn't sure what she'd do.
But when she saw her son, Ross smiled a rare smile.
His hair was dark like her own, his eyes a bluish green. The one thing she let herself hope had become a reality when the child - her child, not a Targaryen monster, no matter how Aerys crowed that the Stark bitch had given him a bastard son, ordering a letter to be sent to Ned to gloat about the matter - was born. Ross didn't cry when she saw the boy, just held him close to her, never wanting him gone from her arms, burying her face in his tufts of dark hair, losing herself in his eyes. Aerys had seen the blue and announced with all his worldly knowledge that they would soon turn purple. They turned a more vivid green by the day; thankfully the king was irritated by babies crying, so didn't pay her son much attention. Good. She didn't want that monster laying his dirty hands on her son. She'd never felt love like it, and would gladly throw herself on a sword if it meant her son would be safe. It was unnerving to come to that realisation, but it was the truth.
Renan, she called the boy. A simple name, but it suited him.
Ross Stark sat in front of the same looking-glass a year and a half later, her son on her lap. She still looked half dead. More bruises and cuts marred her skin. She was still as plain, as skinny and as pale as ever. Aerys came to her most nights now, since Rhaella was gone, sent away to Dragonstone with Viserys as the rebels drew near. Ross was still in the same waking nightmare she'd been in for two and a half years. But nonetheless, things were looking up for once. She had seen the approaching army from the tallest tower of the Red Keep. Seen their numbers, marching down the Kingsroad, marching from the north. In that moment, she felt a grim satisfaction. Winter is coming, House Targaryen. The words had always been a warning, but never more so than now.
"Ned's coming soon," She murmured into her son's dark hair as she sat before the mirror. He looked up at her with intelligent green eyes, that didn't make her feel like a fool for talking to an infant. "He won the Trident, and Rhaegar is dead. That's one monster gone, justice for Lya. And the others won't be long for this world. We'll burn Aerys like he burned father. We'll choke the breath from his lungs like he did Brandon. We'll destroy his family like he destroyed ours. We'll make him pay, my boy. We'll make him bleed," She looked in the mirror, looked past the gaunt face, the limp hair, the bruises, the scars. She met the eyes of her reflection. Cold, grey and hard. The eyes of her father, her siblings, of thousands of years of Starks before her. Outwardly, she looked like a battered, beaten woman. But when she stood, she stood tall, her head held high, and her eyes held the coldness of ice, the strength of steel, the blood of the north. They always had, and always would. She was Rosennis, a Stark of Winterfell, and she would not be broken.
