A Song of Benjen and Benjen

After Jaqen, the remainder of Saskia's weekend went by in a flurry. She was starting to become accustomed to life in Westeros, as horrible and smelly and full of vuvuzela-armed bastards as it was, and was starting to become accustomed again to a life of lectures that, really and thankfully to Saskia, wouldn't matter at all back in England beyond being alive and sane enough to be allowed to write fanfiction. She was even becoming accustomed to and knowledgeable about the staff here—the staff besides Robb, shockingly.

Sam, for one, was a bit bumbly and awkward, but knew his Westerosi history and gave lenient marks for at least trying to learn canon and not acting so bratty. Out of all Saskia's lecturers, Sam was by far the nicest. Tyrion, more often than not, spent half his time being amused by his students' failures, the other half slightly miffed that they were that idiotic to begin with, and a hundred percent of the lessons at various levels of drunkenness, to everyone's amusement (but mostly his own, and definitely not Tywin's). Stannis and Tywin's strategic brilliance made up for their respective lack of souls, if you cared about the strategic brilliance thing at all. Stannis might've ground his teeth too much, and Tywin might've overused the 'creepy and penetrating stare to bend you to my authoritarian will' thing, but aside from that, she did suppose they were both masters of… domination, as wrong as that kind of sounded. Luckily, though, because she was a girl and thus was forced to take Domestic Arts, she very rarely had to deal with Tywin like the lads did, as they had to take Political Scheming instead.

Brienne was very concerned about your well-being and learning in a 'new teacher'-esque way, even if you literally threw yourself at her and had your arse literally eaten out by dragons for your troubles, even if she did seem to have no idea what to do with you. If she ever had to go to any of her teachers for anything, Saskia reckoned she'd be safest with Brienne. Ser Onion Knight, despite now having the reading level of an eight-year-old and being a pirate (or a smuggler, as he corrected), was extremely knowledgeable about honour and too devoted to Stannis and Stannis-like methods of punishment. Plagiarising the upcoming paper on ladylike or gentlemanly behaviour in the presence of a king would get you multiple body parts lopped off, Davos had threatened, and Saskia didn't doubt that he wouldn't hesitate to carry through (though, surely, he'd do the honourable thing and treat the wounds himself so you'd not die in Qyburn's mysterious hospital-lair thing).

Robb and Jon were, more often than not, oddly bemused at their students fancying them, Robb especially. He was fit and he knew it, but certainly not cocky about it—all of which made Saskia need him more. And he was brilliant, so brilliant at all that useless battle tactic stuff. And fit. And Saskia didn't know about Bronn and Oberyn, but as far as Ygritte was concerned, the worst she'd do was laugh at you, smarmily make fun of you, and allow Little Hitler, otherwise known as Olly, to assault your genitals. Sansa, on the other hand, was more fond of throwing serious shade, Jeyne of disapproving silences, and Catelyn of downright motherly scolding, all of which, it seemed to Saskia, were very much needed in a class full of unladylike supposed ladies who, like herself, admittedly, acted more like peevish Disney princesses than highborn Westerosi girls.

Saskia even had, to her own surprise (and Tyrion's), done her readings promptly and on time for Canon for Feeble-Minded Fanbrats; Robert's Rebellion was mostly new to her, but pre-canon events were certainly violent and dramatic enough to hold her interest. And she'd even done her drabble for Miss Oloi's writing workshop with very little complaint, as the prompt was "[Character of your choice] dreams. 100 words. No OCs", and whilst that meant no Lyalyah allowed, she could at least write a short bit on the love of her fictional life. The only other thing that sucked about the exercise was not having Microsoft Word to keep the length in check.

Robb dreamt of wolves howling at the gates of Winterfell, and of weirwoods white as moons shivering in the harsh brunt of winter. Beyond the snows and ice of the North, a great army was arising—blue-eyed and straggling, advancing with the tides of wind.

The North was rising, too, behind him, rallying forth their unfurling banners, sigils dark against the whitened sun on the far shores of the Lands of Always Winter. And with an immense clash of spear and helm, sword and hauberk, the North was won, and spring soon could come again to bless the buddening earth.

Whilst this drabble, which Saskia titled 'A Dream of Winter', wasn't the best thing she'd written – 'A Sweetness There: The Eternal Innocent in the Poetry of Hemans and Baillie' took the prize there – Saskia was satisfied with it, and, seeing as how she'd made neither spelling errors nor baby dragons, the exercise was a success. Saskia, though, theretofore had been able to spell 'Robb' just fine, and Ned, and Sansa. She could even get Arya, Catelyn, Walder Frey, Tywin Lannister, Grey Wind, Jaime, and Rickard Karstark, and, of course, the stupid keyboard-mash names she'd given her own characters, like Jurndow and Lyalyah Ranford, Illeriah Brootyn, and Olwyn Blactard. That was all she really needed to know, after all, because weren't there thousands of named characters, and weren't the fair majority of them (excepting Robb, Catelyn, Tyrion, and Lyalyah, who wasn't even canonical, but whatever) almost absolutely irrelevant?

Orla, naturally, did one drabble for each of her far too many OTPs, because Jaime whinging about wanting to see Brienne naked was evidently not enough, and nor was Sansa dreaming of Sandor's uncharacteristically fluffy Valentine's Day sexing, because, in Orla's odd and uncanonical world, Valentine's Day was a thing in Westeros, and Sandor loved it. It wasn't even a modern AU— although, Saskia admitted, if it were a modern AU with a younger, more naïve Sansa, a less smutty version of the premise might actually work. Most offensively, Orla's prose read like a worse-than-usual-but-that's-not-saying-much Nicholas Sparks novel— in other words, monosyllabic, obvious, sappy, and impertinently dreadful.

Despite that Orla's writing sucked, she could at least spell. In fact, they were almost all careful with spelling (who wanted to make dragons and incite the wrath of Tywin Lannister?), and Tywin was as happy as Tywin could be—that is to say, he still appeared stone-faced, but only slightly annoyed at the insolence of the fanbrats' very existence. His tactic of hashing and rehashing the spelling of characters' names so far seemed to be working, and did work… until Monday morning, at least.

Esther Whenlock, the mousy-haired Cockney girl in 1104 who was always whinging about there not being enough slash and crack in canon, the one who had written Jaime/some kind of jester smut, had apparently not done her homework for Canon for Feeble-Minded Fanbrats, and had rushed in front of Saskia and Lucy on their way to breakfast, clutching a quill, a bottle of ink, and the worksheet Tyrion and Sam gave them the lesson before. The girl was furiously scribbling something now, dotting the table and her eggs with splotches of ink in her haste, biting her lip bloody when she paused to think.

Idiot procrastinator, Saskia thought. That assignment was easy. Benjen is Ned's missing little brother, and he was First Ranger of the Night's Watch. How much does she need to explain? Wait, it's Esther. It's got to be bullshit.

Saskia would have paid Esther no more attention and returned to her damn amazing maple-bacon porridge had Esther not spawned miniature hell out of thin air just ten seats away. As the girl scrawled something down, there was a grumble and an ear-splitting crack in the air before her that caused everyone in the vicinity to shriek and many to jump out of their seats, spilling ale and food as they did so. Almost as immediately as the air went turbulent and grumbled, a tiny orange dragon appeared out of literal thin air and got at once to shrieking. It was on the small side for a mini dragon, and its blue eyes were so bright that it seemed almost a wight or the Mary Sue of dragons—though striking as it was, still the thing was terrifying.

Saskia watched, half amazed and half terrified, as the wee dragon flew into Jon Snow's lap, whimpering for a share of his food and thrashing its little scaly body against his when he deftly dodged its snapping jaws to pop the last bit of streaky bacon into his mouth. Infuriated, it headbutted his dick and vomited in his cornflakes before taking off out the half-smashed window overhead, shrieking and hissing flame.

"Congratulations on another little misspelt Ygritte," Daenerys crooned to Jon, doubled over in agony, passing him a fresh bowl of cereal and a much-needed mug of ale. "Those always go for the crotch."

"Grmdsjffff," he grunted into his ale.

"Cool!" Carolina breathed, watching the wee dick-violent thing abscond. "I wanna make one!"

Tywin was up at once, and Tywin was Not Pleased™, and stood gripping the podium, mostly stoic but almost unnoticeably trying not to seethe. "Indeed. Esther Whenlock, you will go upstairs and change your smallclothes at once. You will leave your work with me. From now on, you will do your assignments at night, using books as a reference. You will also spend five hours in spelling detention after supper tonight. Begone, and be sure to be back in time for your lessons."

"Seriously, Lucy, that thing was awesome. I wanna make one."

Esther, whimpering, stood up, clutching her coursework in one hand and her conspicuously wet gown with the other, and brought her work up to a twitchy-lipped Tywin, sniffling the whole way. Lucy, without a thought other than, Saskia presumed, oh my god adorable dragons and we can birth them with just ink and idiocy, scrambled for Esther's abandoned quill and passed it to Carolina.

"Lucy, no!" Saskia hissed.

Letty shushed her. "Scared of a little dragon, eh?"

"Have you not seen them burn people?! Remember Sophie?"

"That was brilliant and you know it."

"You pissed yourself, Lettice."

"Did not."

"Jaime Lannister had to drag you out from under a desk by your wee-wet ankles!"

"Did not."

"I was right next to you!"

Lucy glanced up at the staff table and nodded to Carolina. "Tywin's back to eatin'. Now."

"Carolina! Lucy! No!"

Bron is sexy, Carolina wrote on the table.

Lucy peered at the table, blue eyes narrowed. "Oh, nothin's happenin'. There's got to be a Bron already."

BRAWN IS SEXY.

BRAWN, emerging from nothing right above a plate of now shat-upon breadcakes, was not sexy. BRAWN was anything but attractive, in fact. BRAWN, in accordance with its name, was very large for a tiny dragon, near to the size of Greger and Gragor, and was much more terrifying than whichever one Esther had spawned, for BRAWN had Jerome Flynn's life-sized head in place of a dragony one, and was spraying shit everywhere to boot. BRAWN was unable to support its Jerome Flynn-y head as it careened and squawked its way through the air and crashed headlong and at once into the staff table, earning a shriek from Sansa and laughter from Tyrion as it landed before them, splattering them both with porridge and fruit and, most like, dragon poo.

"The fuck is that?!"

"I… I think it's a dragon, Tyrion?" Sansa whispered, pulling a stray fig out of her cleavage in an unsexy and perfectly ordinary way that still made a multitude of fanboys moan, the Cryptkeeper of course included.

Jaime and Bronn took one look at the writhing, absolutely retarded thing lying twitchingly on a platter of grapes, and cracked up.

"A true beauty, Miss Nelson!" Bronn called. "Honoured, truly!"

Tywin, naturally, was less than happy. Way less than happy, in fact.

"Carolina Nelson and Lucy Hothersall will spend ten consecutive hours in spelling detention tonight, and they will spend the weekend shovelling dragon droppings with Hodor, since they like the beasts so much," he seethed at them. "And the next person who dares to intentionally spawn a dragon will find himself or herself fed to it alive."

"Ten hours?!" Lucy wailed. "An entire weekend?!"

"You will no longer find my babies so adorable after a weekend of tending to them day and night, and sleeping amongst them, I assure you," Daenerys called.

The morning wasn't about to get any less weirdly terrifying in its own peculiar way, for as soon as Saskia and Lucy stumbled into Canon for Feeble-Minded Fanbrats, Tyrion and Sam were perusing all their homework, tsking and looking only here and there pleased.

"Welcome back to the third part of our lesson on who's who as the books begin, Who Is Benjen? Not Me!. Now with fewer activities and more lectures, mind, courtesy of my lord father's preferred instructional methodology."

"I hope you did the readin'," Sam said with a shy smile.

Saskia beamed. She had done not only her writing, but her reading—the first twenty chapters of A Game of Thrones in all, plus an adapted bit of A World of Ice and Fire on basic Westerosi geography—and all, she thought proudly, without procrastinating or whinging and sulking like a bratty child. She was clever. She knew where the Lands of Always Winter truly were, and had written a decent drabble about Robb with no OCs involved, and hadn't made any dragons in the process. Could everyone else say the same? Was anyone else as devoted and clever as she was?

Tyrion, though, was less than happy (though not to Tywinly extremes), and took a long swig of wine as he perused their papers and continued to lecture at them in a likely Tywin-approved manner. The class setup certainly looked to be Tywin-approved: rows of desks occupied by silent and attentive students, A Game of Thrones in hand, and nothing entering their minds but sweet, sweet canonical information practically shouted at them.

"Yes, Miss Hothersall, Benjen, spelt B-E-N-J-E-N, is Ned Stark's younger brother. Very good. He is the son of Rickard Stark of Winterfell, was incredibly close to his older sister Lyanna. It seems you've been reading, Mr Huge. Thank you for an in-depth page and for citing multiple sources. For those of you who are confused, we will be starting with the Starks' canonical backstory on Friday. 'I don't know' is not an acceptable answer, Miss Moore and Mr Ramirez. You will both rewrite the assignment tonight. Ah, Miss Whenlock's. The one that spawned a dragon. Why am I not surprised?"

Gods, this was going to be good. And by 'good', Saskia meant 'absolutely batshit'. Tyrion certainly suspected so, too, as he chugged the remainder of his wine and immediately poured himself another massive flagonful.

"Miss Whenlock, Benjen Stark is Benjen Stark, younger brother of Ned Stark, and the as-of-right-now-in-book-canon missing First Ranger of the Black Brothers— as we most often call them in canon, the Night's Watch. Repeat after me: the Night's Watch. It is not funny to call them the Black Brothers."

"It's a bit racist-soundin', you know," Sam said.

Hannah nodded so hard that her chartreuse cat-eye glasses slipped off her pudgy nose. "Very problematic!" she hissed in Esther's direction.

"Not my problem you're offended at everything!" Esther shot back.

"That much about Benjen is true, at least, girls," Tyrion continued with a slight groan, "and so is the notion that Benjen wanted Jon to, as you put it here, 'get his dick wet and go a million times to fuck-town'. But Benjen, you see, is not a warg. He did not die north of the Wall and resort to warging Ygritte, spelt Y-G-R-I-T-T-E, so that he could fuck his own honour-obsessed nephew and show him what he's missing. She did not fancy Jon because she was Benjen. Benjen did not purposely get his host killed to avoid consequences for his nephew-lover when he ended up returning to Castle Black. Benjen did not switch to warging Satin afterwards because, uh, Bengritte enjoyed getting fucked by his nephew so much and wanted to reciprocate with a penis. You are disturbed and you have failed this assignment, but I do appreciate that you have been reading the books enough to know who Satin is and are curious enough to frequent ASOIAF boards to know about crackpot Benjen theories. I admire the creativity. The incorrect answer's usually 'who's that?' or 'Daario', and that got old years ago."

Sam appeared confused, as if his brain had ceased to function at the sheer idiocy of Esther's theory, and proceeded to drink directly from a ladle in Tyrion's enormous personal keg of Dornish Red off in the corner.

"Well, that's what I always thought Lord God GRRM was implying." Saskia hadn't got to A Clash of Kings yet, but she was pretty sure that Benjen was just Benjen, and was not into warging widling girls for the purpose of fucking his own nephew. And who was Satin? Esther looked just as confused, and sat there staring at Tyrion with squinted eyes, her nose wrinkled, her thin lips pursed, her brow furrowed. Did she actually believe this bullshit? "Who is Benjen, then, Lord Tyrion?"

"A better question is, who isn't?" Keeley asked.

"I don't think Ned or Robert Baratheon could be. Maybe Catelyn is?" offered Amy.

"Or Nimble Dick and Big Bucket Wull!" Edrick suggested. "Septon Meribald? Ser Cortnay Penrose?"

"Who?!" sputtered ninety percent of the class.

"Benjen is Benjen is Benjen is only just Benjen, as we've discussed?" said Sam quickly, before any other readers could get a word in on characters beyond the scope of non-readers.

"Benjen is Benjen is Benjen is only just Benjen," Saskia could hear Letty mumbling to herself, rocking slightly in her chair as if she were going a wee bit mad. "Only just Benjen. Benjen is love. Benjen is life. Benjen is Benjen. Benjen is god."

The fuck?

"And Benjen," Tyrion added, "is missing at best, and dead or undead at worst in book canon. Miss Whenlock, you will also be rewriting this assignment. Sanely, I must add, and using the books as a reference. The last thing Her Grace needs is more dragons."

"And the last thing this fandom needs is more incest," came a stern voice from somewhere in the back of the classroom. "There is enough disturbing incest without you to encourage it, Tyrion."

It was, of course, Tywin Lannister, looking exceptionally stern today all in black and a Lannistery scowl. As he prowled down the aisle between desks, Tyrion forced a lopsided smile and Sam visibly cowered. Not a fanbrat stirred nor spoke.

"Ah," said Tyrion, as if to say dear fucking gods, not you again, draining his goblet once more."As opposed to pleasant incest, Father? Is that the type that happens under your own roof?"

Tywin stiffened. "Those are rumours."

"Are they rumours if they're true? We do not need to put on a show for the students. They have some familiarity with canon, enough for all of them to know the truth about Jai—"

"Get out. All of you," Tywin commanded. "Except you, Tyrion."

"JAIME AND CERSEI."

"Get out. Now."

"Very well, very well! You must listen to my lord father," Tyrion conceded, sliding off the desk and shooing them out. "Do not forget your assignment! Write 'Benjen is Benjen is Benjen is only just Benjen' a hundred times! Sam will be counting! Jaime and Cersei will be fucking!"

"No, they will not."

"Oh, but Father, they have. Where do you suppose dear departed Joffrey came from?" Tyrion said as the students all scrambled to leave. Saskia would take her own sweet time packing up her quills and ink and papers, Lucy doing the same, as this was a conversation that neither of them wanted to miss. Tywin had to know about Cersei and Jaime, right? Did he know about Jaime and Brienne, if they were a thing as they kind of seemed to be?

"They have not."

"Have too."

And with that, Tywin turned on Tyrion and came face to face with Lucy, standing stupidly behind her desk with nothing packed up and a far too intrigued look on her face.

Tywin seethed. "Out, Lucy Hothersall. You are in enough trouble as it is. You too, Saskia Crockett. Lord Manderly will be needing you. Go immediately. Leave your things. Shoo. Shoo."

"Well, that were a mint mornin'!" Lucy breathed as the door clicked shut behind them.

*For those of you who don't frequent ASOIAF boards, there was a dumb theory aeons ago that Benjen is Daario. He's Euron. He's Coldhands (which, okay, was a reasonable theory until Leaf's 'they killed him long ago' line). He's Syrio, he's Jaqen, he's the Night's King and the Dusky Woman, but he's probably just Benjen. And dead. I've not ever seen Benjen = Ygritte = Satin, but, then again, I was massively drunk when I came up with that on a night out, because a night out almost always includes me drunkenly pondering absolute bullshit on a dance floor whilst strange blokes try to snog me. It sounded like a totally reasonable theory at the time—like, I mean, what if she says 'You know nothing, Jon Snow' all the time because she's trying to hint that he doesn't know she's Benjen? You may thank Captain Morgan for my insights into these books and for the existence of this fic.

*See any horrid misspellings of a character's name? Let me know in a review or PM and there shall be a mini x