Railroads
Then
A great peril was whispered on a frigid northern night. A voice crooned from far beyond a great ice wall, a voice of something fair, something beautiful, but heartless and cold. A crown of blue roses frozen in winter dons her pale brow. Her voice is carried on the swirling autumn cold. She's talking to someone, calling to them in their uncomfortable sleep. Her lovely slender figure, her beautiful frozen eyes, and cold touch hypnotize as she dances in the dark shadows of dreams. Her ghostly, lovely voice, enticed the wonder of joyous fun that she promises for the price of your love. On this dark night, the ethereal goddess hums her poisonous songs on the cold winds that blow from the edge of the world. And when her longing reaches her children's ears, it pulls them little by little into the darkness of her midnight garden of shadows.
The fires burned low. The candle light flickering in a closed room and the collective whimpers from the Kennels created a great feeling of an evil phantom's lovely slender fingers twirling and toying with the occupants of the grand ancestral fortress. A stronghold she had coveted since she had stolen its heir's seed too many centuries ago. On the darkest of nights, the shadows of the grand castle whisper to the children whose very blood comes from this unholy union. Her love for them is frozen within her breast, cold, uncompromising, and sharp. It is with a frigid fury in which she hates them from how much she loves them, and how long she's longed for them to be returned to her. A childless lord had stolen her son from her suckled breast. Taken to this fortress, an affront to her people, and there her own child was taught to forget. Her cold beauty, her ice magic, her very existence erased from history. But on nights like this, her wailing can be heard on the chilled air, her dark shadowy voice calling to her children, all of them.
On this dark and evil night, the Night's Queen sings her sickly sweet promise that she'd return for them. She whispers her vengeful love to every bone in the crypts and every living child sleeping under furs. Every Stark, every bastard, centuries of death and betrayal was but a nap for her. But now she has awoken. And the time was coming for when she'd take all of them back to her lovely bosom. Blackened frozen corpses and skeletons alike, every Stark will return to their mother's loving embrace, forever.
When the young man closes his eyes, he can hear the voice in the wind, as did all those with her frozen blood in their veins. It was the comforting bait in a nightmare before the monster leapt out. Under a fair and beautiful lulling façade, there was a cold cruelty. Like a spoiled child whose toy was taken. Her love is nothing but ego, a princess of unspeakable beauty and evil of an ancient people, who was spited. Now she'd stop at nothing to have back what was taken from her. He doesn't know all of this, because, he doesn't commune with her. His father had always warned him, them, against doing so. His lady wife would tell him to stop such non-sense talk at their table. But every child with wolf's blood knew of what the solemn man spoke of. Now, after Hardhome, he knew what was out there. He had seen the extent of what this cold mother's love would bring and the threat of it to all her coveted descendants whose heart still beats.
"She's close tonight …"
"Oh yes? And what does this ice princess want?"
The wind kicked up, flickering the fire and candle light that threw odd and twisting silhouettes on the warm stone walls. The young man did not turn around to see the expression on the older face. But he heard the scratching of quill on parchment stop abruptly as an unnatural darkness fell over the room. The whistle of the wind now roared against the western battlements and towers, the windows creaking with the violent rush of cold against the warm air inside. There was a sudden startle as the cracking sound of glass followed a fissure within the window. Both occupants of the room waited for it to break, to shatter, but instead it was suddenly covered by a thin layer of ice that snapped and crackled into the gaps of the glass. Then … it became very quiet.
"All of us." The young man whispered his answer with frothing breath.
Slowly the warmth returned to the room, and like water through the drain, the unnatural darkness funneled away and the vibrancy of candle light returned to the chambers. There was a collected intake of breath as the howling wails of a mother's love died and the snow fell gently once again as the storm passed. Within moments, the tantrum of an ethereal princess disappeared, and the world returned to normal as if nothing was ever amiss.
A silence fell over the chamber for a long baited moment. But then slowly the chair creaked and the writing of quill on parchment continued. The young man, who was leaning against the stone wall, his dark eyes looking out the window, turned in surprise. The strangeness of the sudden invasion of the supernatural upon his ancestral home would've knocked the courage and reason out of a dozen of the bravest southerners. But it didn't seem to bother the stern, unshakeable, man at the desk.
Jon Snow watched Tywin Lannister scribble his notes, dispatches, and raven's letters with machine like dedication. The Lord of the West was the type of man that focused on the things he could control and wanted to control. He seemed to disregard all the others he did not. It was a blind spot built on inhuman disinterest and dastardly arrogance. He was a stern man who knew what he wanted to know and saw what he wanted to see. Being in his presence was intimidating from all the stories they have told of him over the years. But when he was at the bottom of the social standings, as he was now, it seemed very easy to see why he had no idea of the inappropriate and deplorable relationship between his two, beautiful, golden children. One wondered if he had known. If there was ever a time, a place, a glance, a grumble in his sharp mind, in which he had realized it, and simply … went back to his quill and paper.
It seemed like forever that the silence carried on in the chamber. It was a contest, one in which Jon knew was the opening salvo in their battle of wills. Tywin Lannister was trying to balance the engagement by asserting dominance over the terms of the confrontation. He wanted Jon to feel as if the world was shaped and continued at Tywin's bidding. It was a good tactic for children, but Jon Snow hadn't been a child in years. Not since he killed the Half-Hand and gained a Wildling wife in the action.
"I don't see the point in delaying any longer, do you?"
A stern voice broke the quiet revelry of the witching hours of this type of cold night. Jon turned his head to see the cold golden flecked emerald eyes of the Warden of the West watching him with stony arrogance of a man who thought himself playing games with a child. The raven haired youth only turned back to his window.
"Lord Commander …"
Tywin Lannister twitched an irritated eyebrow at the young man's words. He did not respond, obviously taking the tact that he did not need to verbalize his confusion at the simpleton response the bastard gave to his question.
"When you address me, you will do so with Lord Commander, My Lord." There was no hint of hesitation or argument to the order the younger man made of the Lord of the West.
A flicker of agitation broke the smug arrogance of the proud man. It was a sting that showed only momentarily before he went back to his cold indifference. He was a man who knew much more than the boy did and had dealt with this kind of defiance before. He had become quite familiar with it in a very familiar young woman who insisted to be called "Your Grace" instead of the name he had given to her himself. It made it all the easier to navigate the terms.
With the sanding of the ink and a blow away, he didn't take his hard glare off the young man at the window. "Very well, Lord Commander, I don't believe we have much to discuss in terms of your options." He pulled a fresh sheet of paper in front of him.
"No …"
The writing commenced. "Then we're in agreement." It was not a question.
"The answer is no."
The writing stopped abruptly. With a creak of his chair the man leaned back and glanced up at Jon with a tick of something unreadable behind his stoic look. He seemed taken off guard by the Lord Commander's response. He studied him quietly for a long moment before he went back to his letter.
"Hm." He grunted in the back of his throat. "I see, Lord Commander." He continued to write with a long sigh of irritation. "The Wall is yours." He commended as he sanded his note. "You may leave for it at once, or whenever it is convenient for you." There was no breaking his concentration.
There was a look of surprise on Jon's face that he hid in the shadows as he turned. He was on trial for murder and betrayal of an oath. He had killed two of Tywin Lannister's men, the accusers had seen the blood on his blade, and he had not denied it. There were no judgments handed down yet. It seemed almost like a trick that so suddenly he had been let go to return to his post. Even the rebuff of his offer seemed to slide right off the Lion Lord's back. Something was at play here that he was missing. But he would not give the man the satisfaction of letting him hold it over him, or making him ask what it is.
He nodded in a non-verbal departure and moved across the drawing room of the Winterfell apartments. When Tywin spoke again, his eyes were concentrating on the red wax he poured ever so carefully on the folded note.
"I'll even allow you final words with your Wilding Princess before you leave."
Jon stopped cold in the center of the room and turned. Tywin Lannister had the look and posture of a father who was only slightly amused with a child's tantrum. He would allow this moment of rebellion, of fleeting triumph, before he'd crush the boy's resolve with the cold logic of his way of thinking. The Lord of Casterly Rock seemed only momentarily interested in Jon's reaction, before he went back to stamping his sigil on the wax.
"You're gonna continue to imprison Ygritte, still?" Jon said with a stirring anger.
Tywin pressed down on the red wax. "I'm not going to imprison her …" He replied without looking. "I'm going to hang her." He corrected the young man.
Jon took a threatening step toward the man behind the desk. But Tywin Lannister was unintimidated as he began folding the other note. "She did nothin wrong!" He protested with a snarl.
"Didn't she?" He began pouring the wax.
"It was your men who attacked her, came after her in the night!"
"You can hardly blame my men for reacting to an enemy that was on the wrong side of the Wall."
"Ten-thousands of them are across the wall now … They came after her, and her only!"
Jon had not forgotten the storm at the Queenscrown, the fight, the escape, and Ygritte plugging him with arrows as he rode away. He knew of the anger, the rage that drove her in their battle with Mance at the wall. She could've killed him, maybe she was going too, had Tormund "Giant's Bane" not come rumbling through their pause mid-battle. He wasn't sure whose arrow it was, Olly or Ygritte, who impaled the mighty warrior in the back of the head as he raised his Axe to split Jon in two. When it was all over, only Ygritte was left of the raiding party. Jon had locked her away in the officer's quarters where Sam had kept Gilly and the baby. Both the young lovers took turns guarding the young woman hobbled by a crossbow bolt in the thigh. He had felt guilty about shooting her, but then she was willing to fight to the death rather than be Alliser and his prisoner. Shooting her seemed the only way to save her life. He'd suffer for it for weeks as she spit, cursed, and even tried to knife him once.
When Tywin Lannister came to their rescue, he allowed Jon to keep Ygritte, use her as an ambassador after Jon was forced to behead Mance. He did not want to do it, but Lord Tywin drove a hard bargain for his aid, and it seemed like the only clean death for the King of the Wildlings, considered what type of men were in the Lannister's Army. It was just one more sin in the Spear Wife's eyes. Lord Tywin Lannister was a hard man, and Jon had been groomed to hate him, being the son of Eddard Stark. But the Lord Paramount of the West was more than willing to help Jon from the moment he arrived at the Wall. He encouraged the youth to put his name in the running for Lord Commander. After Sam did it anyway, without Jon's permission, the young man was somehow unanimously chosen by the brothers to become Lord Commander. It seemed shocking, seeing Ser Alliser was pushing so hard against him. But it was only afterward that he had heard of the private meetings the officers had with Lord Tywin between the voting. Ser Alliser accused Jon of robbing the position from him by using Lannister gold and intimidation through Queen Cersei's name to win the Lord Commander position. Jon called him false, but in the back of his mind he began to wonder what the Lord of Casterly Rock was playing at by taking such an interest in him.
Jon had spent many weeks in cold contests with Lord Tywin and his men as they squatted in The Gift. Day in and day out Jon was receiving messages from all the Lords of the North, reminding him that the Lannisters were their enemies, his family's enemy, and that to house them was a traitorous action. It certainly felt like it, but he held fast to the Black Brother's neutrality in conflict. It was a strange thing that Tywin Lannister would land an army just to protect the Wall. Counting men, he didn't even have enough to contend with the northern levies left behind after Robb's departure for the Riverlands. It made the Lord Commander nervous and suspicious of the motives of the man with the damaged reputation. But maybe it should've been all too clear upon the night he received a raven from King's Landing with the Queen's sigil in wax. When he read what she had wrote to him. He should've known it was connected, that the Lannister army arriving at the wall sometime after his letter. But it didn't occur to him till after he was imprisoned, after the show trial. It was not till this moment; standing in his father's halls, that he understood what Tywin Lannister actually came here for.
It was after Hardhome, upon his return with Ygritte, Edd, Grenn, and all the rest of the surviving Wildings. Ygritte had been in a near rage when they left, she swore she wouldn't defend him to her people. But she didn't waste even a moment of the Lord of Bone's insults of the traitorous married couple before she opened his neck with her knife. Whether Jon liked it or not, whether it was a betrayal of his vows, or a betrayal of an oath, Jon Snow had defeated Ygritte twice, had spared her life twice, and stolen her twice now. In the eyes of the Wildings and in the eyes of everything the beautiful red haired girl believed in, she belonged to him now … she was his wife. After the disaster there, the Wights, the Walkers, the Night's King, seeing the dead rise. It seemed to have shaken the ice from Ygritte's heart, quelled her anger after an afternoon of saving one another from horrors beyond belief. When they returned, when Gregor Clegane held Alliser at sword point so he would open the gates to all of them, the Spear Wife took her place in Jon's bed and didn't care who knew it. Those nights, feeling the warm flesh of her pale nakedness under his hand as she slept, he knew that he was making a mistake. He knew that this break of tradition, of the oath, would be their undoing.
The night that it happened was the night Tywin Lannister first threw to him the offer, a queen's ransom. Jon had said no to this plot to rescue Queen Cersei from King Robert's dungeons. He knew now what was out there, beyond the Wall. When you see the dead rise, you don't idly throw those memories away, because of what the most beautiful woman in the world had written in a note to you. His command may have been just fifty men, and even if it was just two, he'd still not leave his post. Eddard Stark's honor ran blood deep. But he should've known then that no one said no to Tywin Lannister … for a Lannister always pays his debts.
They must have waited till Jon was coming, sent someone to tip him off. Because it was a Crakehall squire boy, no older than Bran, who had come up to tell him that the stable doors were closed and that there was something going on inside. He had grabbed Long Claw, told Sam and Gilly to stay, not sure what the men were getting up too. Dice, drinking contests, it could've been a dozen things to break the stress and fear that had gripped what was left of the men of the Night's Watch. But what he found was two of The Mountain's Men, Polliver, and a man known only as "The Tickler" standing around a wooden board. There in front of them was a beaten and swollen Ygritte that lay naked, bound by leather straps. They were chortling, spitting on her face as they held a torch to the bottom of a bucket that was turned upside down over her tight pale belly. Her eyes were wide, her sculpted hips bucking in pain as a horrid squealing of vermin rattled from inside the aluminum pale.
It was a pity that they died fast, and that the torch bearer never saw who had even run him through.
It seemed all so convenient that Lannister Guardsman and Ser Alliser had arrive just in time to see a Wilding Spear Wife sobbing into Jon's leather. She had rat's blood in her mouth where she bit the creatures head off in a feral hatred. The Lord Commander's Valyrian blade was dripping with the blood of the two dead Lannister bodies.
"You've been setting this up since I got back from Hardhome!" Jon snarled.
Tywin stamped his sigil on the red wax. "No …" He replied sternly. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I've been setting this up since before I left the Riverlands." He arched his fingers together and studied Jon with an amused arrogance. These were the moments that Tywin lived for, the moments when he had utterly and completely defeated his enemies in every way possible.
This only made Jon angrier, not only at the Lord of Lannister, but at himself. He should've known that he'd find a way to use his friends … his wife, against him. He knew that he was inviting the vipers in his door the moment he allowed Lord Tywin to reinforce the Wall.
"This cannot be a unanimous decision!" Jon argued. "Bran, my brother, would never agree to this execution! Torment and attempted murder is still a crime! Even Maester Aemon would agree!" He pointed a finger.
"The Tribunal was for you, Lord Commander." Tywin used every syllable of the title against Jon with a bass of contempt within his measured voice. "Your Wilding Princess, Night's Queen, Queen Crow … whatever your men call her behind your back, is completely under my judgment as it was my men who died, and she has sworn no fealty to the Starks." He explained.
"I'll fight any man you put in front of me, Crakehall or Clegane … I'll burn your camps to the ground, before I let you hurt her!" The measured Jon Snow had lost all control of himself for a moment of rage. He had done something seldom seen in years in Winterfell … he let the wolf out.
To these threats Tywin seemed unimpressed. As it were, he had seen this type of anger before. For near forty years he had, on occasion, come against this type of push back from the woman the Lord Commander had inherited his temper from. He simply gripped his chin with a tug and rested his elbow on the arm rest of Catelyn Stark's desk chair.
"And how will you do that when you are dead?"
Tywin stood for the first time in three hours. He held his hand up to halt the boy's angry rebuttal. He quietly, smugly, walked from the desk to Lady Stark's tray where a steaming pitcher of mulled wine sat next to silver chalices with the engravings of the Trout of Tully. He began to pour the wine. Before he spoke, he looked up at the stone, watching the intermingling of the two men's flickering shadows in front of him.
"Let us talk of your future, your plans for the Wildlings." He placed the pitcher down with a clank. "They've been the enemy of the Seven Kingdoms since the moment that ice wall went up. They've killed, raped, and pillaged Northern Lands for thousands of years. That is a bitter wine with quite a distilment." He sipped his cup.
"If you were at Hardhome, you wouldn't think that half as important as what is out there. If you wait long enough you just might see what I mean."
"But I won't." Tywin cut in. He turned and looked to Jon from the corner of his hawk like features. "I'm taking my men and I'm leaving this place in a fortnight. And then who will you look too to keep you safe when I'm gone?" he asked.
"I don't need your help."
"Don't you?" He asked rhetorically. "It was foolish of you to bring them here, any Northerner, any brother of the Night's Watch, would see this act as an intolerable blasphemy. When I'm gone, who's to keep them from ambushing you on the way to the privy, drawing you out in the open to open your chest?" Tywin spoke as if he was teaching a slow child how to read.
"They'd …" Jon didn't know what to say. He knew what he wanted to say, but after the incident in Craster's Keep, after what happened to Lord Commander Mormont …
"They wouldn't do that?" The Lord of the West read Jon's mind. He took another sip and made a smug grunt. "You've grown accustom to these "rugged" surroundings and these people, Lord Commander … but you've forgotten why they're here in the first place, what they've always been. You think that a bastard born boy from Winterfell is any different, any better, than a disgraced Northern Lord to cut throats and rapists?" He walked back to Catelyn's seat.
"You think that they'll murder me in my sleep?" He asked indignantly.
"Yes." His answer was short and to the point. "Along with Samwell Tarly, his Wilding girl, her baby, and the rest of your friends. They'll send a raven to your brother Brandon, say that the Wildings came on a raid, killed you and your friends … maybe even some of the Northern Lords will help cover it up, if it meant pushing your refugees out of the North." He sat back in his seat with a creak.
"It's simple, if you stay here, you will die." When he was done, he took a sip from his cup. His hard eyes sharply peeked from the upraised cup.
Jon nodded. "Aye, I pledged my life to the Night's Watch, from that night and all the nights to come till my watch ends. It seems a fair trade to protect the living from the dead after I'm gone." He was immovable.
"And what of the girl's life? Did she make that same vow?"
And there was the great trap of so many lost nights. It was the great trap that had ensnared Jon Snow's entire existence, his very being, and everything that made him. The mirror between what was right and what it was to want. Honor pitted against the basic human need for love in all the hard places of this earth. All the songs, all the tales, they tell of the heroic choices of men of honor. But they don't tell what it is to have nothing all your life and then one day, one moment, to have something that was all your own, a beautiful girl who looks at you in a way that no one ever had before while you worked inside her. How do you give up something like that? How do you reconcile it to the cold hard medal of all that was expected of you at the edge of the world? Jon wondered how his father had done it, how his father lived with it. He had loved a woman once, a woman who was not his wife, and he lived with that every day. He tried his best to immolate Ned Stark in everything he did, but Jon wasn't sure if he was that strong. Jon wasn't sure he could choose anymore. With White Walkers and their dead men wandering the earth, he wasn't sure what the difference between a Wildling and a Brother was anymore … he didn't know what was right and what was wrong. Did vows and words spoken to a dead tree matter so much when he saw first-hand what could happen after you die?
"The Council has already agreed to absolve you of these deaths." Tywin explained. "The punishment is not withstanding, seeing as how if you return to the Wall, your death awaits you. But if you accept my offer, I will set loose your Wildling Princess and the council will move to exile you from the Wall henceforth, never to return." He sipped his wine.
"Exile me from a prison?" Jon snorted in amusement.
"You will have your pick of men for your "task" at hand. Your brother has already agreed to equip and provide you with an escort when the time comes."
"Bran knows about what we're planning."
There was a ghost of a grin when Tywin heard the word "we're" in Jon's phrasing. "He knows only that you will be going to King's Landing in order to resolve this matter before the King, not what your true intentions are." There was a warning in the way he spoke. It was to be a secret mission. No one knew what the truth of the matter was … and that was treason.
"Of course …" Tywin drew out. "The choice is yours, Lord Commander."
Now all these questions that have plagued him all his life have come to the forefront of his whole future. He was standing on the edge, waiting for the right answer to come to him. Was duty more important than the life of a single girl? A girl he loved and who loved him. Would his pride even allow him to play right into the hands of the kind of smug arrogance that had put her in so much danger already? But beyond Ygritte, beyond the threats, there was a letter in his pocket, a raven scroll. In perfect and romantic handwriting were scribbled words that didn't make sense, and yet were all the answers, the only answers that mattered anymore. Somewhere a beautiful golden queen was imprisoned and within her was the key to the young man's whole life, his identity, and the answers to all the questions of what could and should be done in this grey world of thousands of miles of fog around the righteous paths. And what would he give up, what would any man in his position give up for that one moment of absolution in a life of confusions and uncertainty. Would it be his duty, his honor, his very own life … his own wife?
He focused his eyes and thoughts out the window, on the yards he knew so well. He knew where the blacksmith's smithy was, where he commissioned his little sister's Needle. The archery range where Robb and himself were taught how to work a bow and where they had tried to teach Bran. But for most of his time, the youth watched the swordsmen station. He watched the straw dummy with the rusted half helm and shield. It shook and rattled in the breeze, creaking under the weight of the snow's accumulation. It was where all of this begun, he thought. That was where this whole mess started. He wasn't sure what would've happened if he hadn't been so angry that night, so indignant of the whole visit of the king and his absence from it. But he knew that he wouldn't have been brought home in chains, sat in front of a council of judges to await their judgment of his and Ygritte's fate. Even now when Jon closed his eyes he could still hear the clear ringing of his sword on the dummy's helm, the ruffle of straw, and the snap of wood on impact. And with each angry tremor a voice shouted at him, encouraging him, snarling at him in a shared moment of the basest rages of their unmovable lot in life.
"Harder!"
"Harder!"
"Harder!"
"HARDER!"
The young man turned, and with a hard, brutal, swing of a fist. He struck Tywin Lannister across the face. There was a mighty clatter as the proud man fell out of his seat and tumbled to the stone floor, hot wine spilling on his chest and papers. Blood was on his cut open lip and the bruise on his jaw would turn yellow before he went back home to the Westerlands. Enraged and shocked, golden flecked eyes followed the young man to the door that he threw open.
"It seems only fair that our deal should be struck in your blood, Lord Tywin. I'm sure I'll be spending the rest of mine before this is all over."
Now
There was a continuous and deep silence within the large drawing room of the manor house. The only consistency of noise that could be found and add upon was the snap and crackle of the flames in the fireplace on the cold night. Their orange and red light danced in odd and chaotic shapes that enticed and hypnotized those with a mind far afield. It was an odd time of night when demons and dark things of the mind plague those with regrets. Questions of honor and tragedy call out like the siren's song to the long lonely time before dawn. And in those hours come the memory of the past and the torment of so many could've been and never were. Weaker men go to vices to shut out the voice, follow their baser needs to whatever ends it might lead them. But the stronger ones, brood the nights away, lamenting the weakness of their moments of the past. Mourn its calling like a lost lover. A tragic life breeds tragic tales and on nights like these, on the eve of days like tomorrow, a man condemned with a great choice before him often thinks of all the things he might have done over. All the things that he could've and should've said and done when it mattered. It was night of reflection of who and what he was.
But what was a man who did not have the answers to these questions? What of a man whose tragedies in life was built upon the damnable quest for such knowledge? What it is he should call himself in the absence of any self-knowledge but that of clawing for any tidbit of understanding of one's own origin? Was he truly a man at all, or was he but a phantom of some semblance of humanity, drifting in the winds like a leaf blown from a tree, following the paths of destiny? They were all so many questions for one night at the crossroads of destiny. Pitching a tent and watching the trees between the two roads in the foggy forest.
They were an odd assortment of shadows that played across the brooding face of the young man that sat slumped in one of the two cushioned chairs in front of the fire. In the dichotomy of the light and dark only an orange tint in the half-light shed any sort of visibility to the youth who rested his nose against his fist. In the ember glow only the scar that ran across his dark eye was visible as the rest of his face brooded in the shadows of the dark room. He watched the flames intently, making order out of chaos, pictures out of moving flickers. He saw mighty dragons, fair riders, and fangs of black slobber consume them. There was strange whispering with each snap and crackle of the fire, as if in the darkness around him lay thousands of these creatures. Each had their own agendas, their own desires, whispering such dark things to the man, as if praying to their god.
He could hear the calling from up the stairs, the pulsing evil at the source. It was a burden of a mistake, of a miscalculation of what was needed to fulfill a quest that had taken so much from him already. At all hours of the day and night he could feel it's phantom calling, the same retread of sins and tragedy of his own choices playing out in all the familiar voices in head and heart. Every wrong he had done, every wrong did to him, and all of it trying to tick him off, garner an impossible anger and rage that would drive him into a fit of violence until the hatred of himself and everyone and thing around him destroyed completely. It was his own price to pay for the answer that was promised to him for the question that we all ask in our own time.
Who was he really?
"Well if you ask me …"
"I didn't."
Tyrion Lannister only smirked into his wine goblet in the seat next to Jon Snow. He seemed, as usual, amused by the snip in the young man's brooded mood. The dwarf found the Starks propensity to dwell on their horrible past, rather than drink it away, to be very counter-productive to the fun-loving nature of life's and brothels little mysteries. It might have also been the fact that it was the first time that he had ever been close to anyone who tried so hard to be noble. It was an educational experience to sit next to a person who mourned all the bad things they've ever done, rather than celebrate it as one more cobble on the road to whatever means they wish to achieve. Tyrion Lannister was cynical enough not to see the point in the dwelling, but not so cynical as to not find its own virtue in the Northman's coping of all the events that led to this night.
"I say …" the dwarf pointed with his wine cup, rolling over Jon's snap. "We take the first ship in the morning, and go to Volantis. I've always wanted to see Volantis." He sipped his alcohol. "Tiger-men and Elephants, the great red temple of the Lord of Light, the great bridge … the food might be shit, but then it's got to be better than what we ate at the Wall. What do you say, Bastard, wine, whores, and song from Bravos to the Smoking Sea!" He offered.
But the young man didn't take his eyes off the flames. He was elsewhere, thinking on the heavy issues that weighed on his mind on this night. There were only three people in the city that knew of what was supposed to happen tomorrow, what the ideal outcome of all of this was supposed to be. The question before him was if he would allow it to happen, or choose to make a stand. To see through what he started and live with all the consequences that came with his actions.
There was a long beat of silence. "I'll never understand how she does it …" Tyrion snorted into his cup.
Jon turned his head slightly in interest. "Who?" He asked.
The youngest of Tywin's brood just shook his head. "How my sweet sister finds these idiots." He lamented. Jon gave the dwarf a cold look, a familiar look that momentarily gave Tyrion a reprieve from his insult. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not stupid in the ways of desire or lust. I understand that she's quite beautiful … so they tell me." He took a drink. "And maybe in different circumstances I might have even been her willing slave for a promise of watching her bath."
The Lord Commander rolled his eyes and looked away with a shake of his head.
"But!" Tyrion chuckled at the blushed maiden reaction of his companion. "You are a special kind of idiot, Jon Snow." He saluted.
"Oh yeah?"
"Aye …" He agreed with a drunken northern impression of mockery. "My brother, I understand, they were born together, and they're twins. I mean, I don't understand, but I understand. Do you?"
"Not at all."
"Well, we're two and half bottles in and you haven't been pulling your weight, Snow." Tyrion criticized as he began to pour more wine into his cup. "How can we properly have an improper conversation, when I'm making up for all the slack here?" He pushed the cup into Jon's chest and settled back into his seat. "Now drink. Maybe it'll start coming to you naturally." He reached for a new glass. "As I was saying …" He began to pour again.
"Jaime I understand. It's not entirely sane, not entirely legal … but then neither am I." He shrugged. Jon shook his head and took a sip of the Arbor Red. He looked into the challis tasting a strange fruity flavor of some added ingredient as Tyrion continued. "Your father …" To this Jon looked back at Tyrion with a warning. "Your father I understand …" He toasted his companion. "He doesn't want Tommen and Myrcella to get hurt. You know, Justice, Honor … Winter is Coming, all the nonsense that makes you so dull." He smirked mischievously as Jon gave him a dirty look while taking another sip. "But you Jon Snow … you're a special kinda idiot." He studied the Lord Commander hard.
"I agree."
"Don't agree with me before I've insulted you, it robs the point."
"Fine, you're wrong."
"Ah! But am I?"
"Couldn't say shit faced or shit shoed, dwarf."
"Here's why." Tyrion announced. "I understand Jaime and I understand Ned Stark for one simple reason. My sister's lovely lips, either one of them, are wrapped around their cocks. No, sit down, I'm not done yet. Now, as a man in this position as much as humanly possible, I sympathize, if not so necessarily agree with their choice of cunts. But you're an idiot, Jon Snow, because you're the only man in this mess, who hasn't sniffed the sweet nectar between my sweet sister's milky legs, as the other fools."
"Nor do I want too."
"No, please, don't prove my point for me."
"Is it so hard to believe?"
"For her or for me, Snow? The answer is gonna be the same."
There was a long silence that followed the exchange. Jon looked back into the fire and within the moving hazy interpretations of chemical motions he saw faces. Edd, Grenn, Pyp, Ser Roddick, Lady Stark, Ygritte … all of the people who died on the way to this moment, to this house. The memories rubbed raw the internalized abyss inside him. A black tar like voice echoed from inside it, telling him that this golden queen should pay the price for the blood spilled on her behalf. Naked, with a golden collar around her pale throat, fucked till she was bowl legged, kept chained to his bed. She was his property now, his, his, OURS!
"She's more important than that."
Jon broke the silence with a solemn voice that was measured stoic. Tyrion watched curiously as the youth squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if someone had screamed close to his ear. He gave a shake of his head and seemed normal again. He took a long draft of his wine and set it down on the table between them.
Tyrion just snickered mirthlessly into his cup. "She's not what you think she is." There was something serious about his tone. It caught Jon's attention and with a creak of his chair he turned to his drinking partner. "You grew up on too many stories, Bastard." He was seemingly belligerent in a annoyed kind of way. His anger came from the same place as a concerned family member frustrated at a young man for not heeding sage advice.
"Since the day Cersei was born, she's gotten whatever she's wanted. Our father, gods damn the man, raised my sister to believe that she can have whatever she wants, that all things were possible for her. All my life, I've seen her, do or say anything she had too to get what she wants. She'd spread her legs to give an old crone a taste of the golden purse for the gowns she spun. For once in her life, she's being held accountable for her actions, and you're gonna throw your life away for free?"
"Not for free … she owes me …"
"Answers?" Tyrion finished for him. "Of what? What could my sweet sister possibly know? She'd say anything, Jon, anything to get out of this. She gets what she wants. She wanted a crown, Jaime killed the king and father made her queen. She wanted children, Jaime gave her the seed and father legitimized them. She wanted love! Jaime went to war for her and she's taken Lady Stark's place. She wanted to be rescued, Father paid and a nameless bastard boy gave her his blood …"
"Don't you think I know that?"
"No, I don't think you do. I think you left Winterfell and believed that you were doing the right thing. That there was nobility in rescuing the beautiful damsel from her cruel, beastly, husband's tower. Than your friends … your wife! They were murdered and you told yourself that this was it, that this woman was all you had left. So you've idealized this golden goddess, just like the rest of the idiots. You think when the Kingsguard splits your stupid head open for killing the King, that she's gonna even remember your name, Bastard?!"
"I know that!" Jon roared into the quiet of the house.
Tyrion's entire face was tight as he slammed his cup on the table, the sloshing liquid spilling on the polished wood. He held his hands out, squeezing them into fists, head jerked to the side in frustration. "Than what in the Seven Hells are you doing here, Jon?" He asked. "Runaway, get out while you still can, for the love of the gods!" the dwarf pounded the arm rest.
An emotion of helplessness ripped through Tyrion at the way the words came out of his mouth. For the first time in so long, he thought of Tysha, those long years after she had gone. He remembered all the dark and sorrowful emotions over the woman that made him who he was. He only had met Ygritte once, not quite the lady that he was used too, she stared at him too much. Tyrion was the first dwarf she had ever seen. The Wildlings saw them as bad luck. But his displeasure aside, just sitting at the table with the couple at the Inn, he saw the way the girl looked at her Lord Crow. Her crystal eyes said she had wanted to tell Jon something. Her hand was always resting on her belly in her secret glances. Sometimes, since that horrible night, Tyrion wondered if Jon knew. If he even suspected what it was she had wanted to tell him that night. Whether he did or not, it would be the Wildling girl's secret that died with her. Tysha was a hard to swallow, losing her the way Tyrion had, but he knew it was nothing like the way Jon had lost his wife. Some mad nights Tyrion thinks he'd go across the sea and find Tysha again, take her home, wherever that might be someday. But Jon did not have the luxury, the pretty girl with wild red curls was gone forever leaving the stoic man who loved her behind to the belief that there was nothing left for him.
Suddenly Jon produced a scroll and held it out to the dwarf. There was a deep frown on his face as he looked it over. He took it from him, watching the young man stare into the flames, his scarred eye, a gift left behind by the Red Viper, seemed colored golden in the light. The scrolled parchment had the symbol of the Hand of the King on its seal. He slipped it off and unrolled the paper. Quietly he scanned through Eddard Stark's own handwriting.
"Faceless … how did that happen?"
"Dungeons."
Tyrion read on and slowly looked up when he finished it. "That is madness … if anyone saw this." He held it up.
"You're the only one who has." Jon said darkly.
"Since I'm guessing that King Robert didn't change his mind on the order, that you'd be committing treason by doing what your father and Varys are asking you to do." He reread the note.
"Aren't we doing treason already?" He didn't tear his eyes from the fire.
Tyrion suddenly got a mischievous smirk after a long moment. "I guess that pile up on The Blackwater, the sword duel with Stannis Baratheon on the docks of Bravos, the narrow escape, and all the rest of fuck ups has given you quite the reputation as a rescuer of Queens, huh?" He chuckled with a shake of his head. But when he had hoped that Jon was sharing in the camaraderie of their misadventures that were planned much differently months ago, he did not take his stare away from the fire.
"Well …" Tyrion sighed. "This might be the wine talking, but let's go." He stretched.
Jon was quiet and transfixed on dark thoughts.
"You, me, Bronn, and Tommen, we leave in a couple of hours on the first ship to Volantis. I dare say it'll be a few good months before we reach Meereen, but it might take our face changing friend a couple of months to make his move …"
"We're not going." Jon cut off the dwarf.
"Well as long as we're being sensible and cautious." He ticked his throat and took an irritated inhale of air through his nose.
The dwarf now wondered if the young man had completely lost his mind. No woman, certainly not Cersei, was worth this type of devotion to a losing cause. If Jon wins tomorrow, he'd still lose. The Kingsguard would never let a King slayer walk out of the fight alive. No matter who wins, there would be bloody chaos throughout the realm. The truth was that any man walking into that duel tomorrow would not come back alive regardless. Lord Stark had handed his son a reprieve, passage out of this senseless fight over a senseless cause and still he would not take it.
"Is your damn honor so important to you, Bastard?" he made the last word sting and hoped it did. "Is it so important that you'd die for it? Die for the honor of a queen who doesn't have a shred of it? How many Baratheon men did you kill at Duskendale, Bravos, on the Blackwater? How many Wildlings, fellow Black Brothers? You forget I was there at the Inn at the Crossroads … I saw what you did in your rage to those young Frey's who raped and murdered Lady Stark … What your wolf did. If you think that you'll be washed of the things you've done Jon Snow, by dying for a whore like my sister, you're wrong."
He was hoping to get something out of the young man sitting next to him, but he couldn't find an emotion. It drove him mad endlessly to see someone, to be near someone, who did not share the same sense of self-worth and importance of one's own life. Tyrion couldn't think of one cause in his whole life that was worth dying for. So he couldn't understand Jon Snow. He couldn't understand what was holding him back from simply accepting the help, the escape from this nightmare that every one of them was offering.
Tyrion got up from his seat in disgust, tossing the scroll on the table. "Well …" he said flippantly. "Offer a drowning man a hand, if he doesn't take it, who's the fool?" He asked as he waddled away.
He stopped at the entrance of the drawing room and looked back at the youth sitting in the dark alone. There was something tragic and sinister about the figure he cut in the twisting shadows of the fire light. Tyrion Lannister did not believe in otherworldly things. The gods were nothing but things people made up to justify their own claims of doing an action or an action being done to them. But seeing Jon Snow sit there, he could feel something else in there with him, many something else's in that room. It was a feeling that came over him around this time of night within this house. It was a cold chill that ran up his spine, a figure standing just out of his eyesight, and the incessant whispering of things and people that were not there. It was a feeling that he wasn't alone. No matter how many candles he lit, he could not shake these dark feelings that prickled him in his books at night. And all of it that had been spread throughout the house at all times during the day and night since the Tarly boy sent them Jon's black armor, was now coagulating around the young man. It was following him, settling around him like a dark cloud of whispering shadows. Tyrion Lannister's only hope was that it must have been the wine.
When he was gone, there a new silence that echoed through the room. Alone only with his thoughts, Jon Snow sank into the depths of his despair. Darkness consuming his figure in the flickering flames as he slumped in his seat and covered his eyes. Fore in the flames he could see her. Her silvery blond hair, violet eyes, her beautiful smile, and squinched expressions of happiness. Through flames they were connected, by the fire he could feel her near him. But it only brought torment to his sense of honor and duty, fore he was the reason she was made to suffer.
All night, all day, he had went into seclusion from all happiness, all life. With Tyrion Lannister's words echoing through his mind, Jon Snow was ashamed of this thing, this blasphemy, he had done to himself. He had done it in the name of looking for all the answers to the questions that he thought were owed to him. Arrogantly, stubbornly, he had thought himself entitled to truths that were kept from him. He paid no mind to the warnings of others, forgot all of his father's teachings, and threw away the lives of his friends, the life of his wife for just one moment of weakness. And now in that weakness he felt the beasts voice every hour, every minute, every second. It was feral, savage, and filled with rage, each day it was becoming harder and harder to control. At all times it called to him, piercing his heart and soul, perverting his future with every glossy silver tress he dreamt of. The great and ancient evil latched onto him, every word, every synapse, every thought, trying to infect him with an enduring sickness.
Now this violet eyed girl, the one he saw in every open flame and in every dream was in danger. Now, in her desperate hour, when she needed Jon the most, he could not be there. In his long pursuit of a golden queen, ensnared by her beauty, her words, and their few precious moments together shared in his chambers and on a cold night in the yards of Winterfell, he had robbed this silver princess and himself of aid. It was fear. It was the terrible visions of her perfect skin gashed, a babe ripped out of her swollen belly. She calls to him in love even as she dies a bloody, horrifying death. It was what waited for her, for him, if he did all the things that his father and the spider asked of him today. It was a terrible fate he had made for himself and a nameless girl half a world away. He could only pray that she'd somehow elude the assassin's knife, or if it finds her, let it be swift and painless …
For his death will be neither incased in the abyss of a metal demon.
While covering his eyes, slumped broodingly, thinking on the sins of the past and future never to come, a figure seemed to glide into the room unannounced. Jon didn't seem to notice or much care. The halls were filled with servants that filtered and fluttered about the Lannister home. The person did not even know that they weren't alone when they took his cup, the bottle clinking against it as they paced to the fire. The sound of a sniff and a snort of detest of whatever it was that Jon and Tyrion had been drinking echoed in the room as silent as a tomb. The sudden roar of the fire caught the boy's notice that snapped him out of his brooded revelry. They had tossed the wine into the fire and was pouring themselves a new glass when Jon finally focused on the figure.
She was slender, with perfect posture, lady like, even in resting. She had long tresses of waving golden hair that fell elegantly down her bareback. She wore a nightgown of sinfully soft material, nearly see through, glimmering in crimson. The shadows of the room made odd shapes on her perfect milky skin. Like Jon, she seemed lost in her own world of memories on this sleepless night filled with odd whispers and regret.
The Queen stopped Jon's heart for a beat, a prickle running down his spine. It had been years since he laid eyes on the woman. It had been years since he had seen this kind of beauty in a real woman this close up. It was distracting, enticing, and made him lose himself entirely in her presence in this late hour. Jon had never seen lovelier figure, nor a lovelier sight then Cersei Lannister in the witching hours of night, unguarded, and angelic in her silky nightwear.
A sniffle escaped the Queen's nose, and from his voyeur angle, tears began to fall down her pale cheeks. She cradled Jon's challis to her breast, her other hand resting on her lower chest as she stared into the fire. The interchanging flames reflected in her emerald eyes and the colors turned the beauty's tears to stained glass works of art. He wasn't sure why, but there was something wrong, something heartbreaking of seeing the strong predatory lioness so vulnerable in her private moment. He felt as if he needed to leave the room or go to her, to sweep her into his arms and carry her to somewhere warm, somewhere safe. An impulse that he wondered came inherited from his own father, who had spent a better part of a year and a half as her protector.
"You know …" Jon said. "If my old Maester saw me throw out a vintage that old, the way you just did, he'd have my guts for father's bridle. But I guess you can afford it, can't you?" He asked rhetorically.
Startled by the sudden voice, Cersei turned quickly, alertly. Her eyes searched the room a moment, grasping through the dark till she found the half shadowed young man sitting in the chair. She squinted a moment, till Jon stood and walked into the light.
The challis made a warped noise when dropped onto the fireplace tile and rolled over the spilled alcohol. The Queen's eyes were wide in shock and surprise. For a long moment they did nothing, said nothing, and thought of nothing. They basked in one another's company. Neither thought that they'd ever see the other again. Feeling that the silence and the moment becoming incredibly intimate very fast, Jon took a step forward.
"Your Grace … your Champion has arrived."
Acknowledgements
"Railroads" - Holly Williams
First 30 seconds of live action Beauty and the Best trailer - Jon's mindset.