Poison Under Her Skin
Alright, this is for Lenna (AKA lynyrdwrites/Lynyrd Lionheart) because it was her birthday ages ago, but I had exams so I couldn't do this then. But she requested GOT (which I secretly love doing) and she wanted Oberyn/Lyanna and I couldn't say no to that because Lyanna is bae. Anyway, happy birthday sweetie and hopefully this helps you sleep easy after those million questions from the Tower of Joy scene. As a side note, I don't own anything in this drabble that forms a part of the A Song of Ice and Fire universe. That all belongs to George R. R. Martin.
The heat sank into her bones and made them liquid.
She grimaced and sluiced the sweat from her neck. Sweat. She had never sweat in the open air before. Not until she came to this barren, sand-infested wasteland as some sort of punishment for the mistakes men had made in her name.
She snorted.
As if it were my fault. She thought, scornfully.
She stared out into the Water Gardens, small children playing in the pools, splashing water and laughing as if their hearts were as bright as the sun above them. She supposed that they were. They were Martell children and cousins, their skin as golden as the sun on their sigil. This was their home, Sunspear. It wasn't their fault that it was her prison.
It was a pretty prison, but a prison nonetheless. Sent her as if her mere face could start another rebellion. Was it her fault that Stefan had whisked her away with whispers of a prince who was promised that she would bring into this world or the song of ice and fire, such an apt name for their union? Was it her fault that Tyler – hardly knowing her but for Matthew's wistful memories while they were raised at the Eyrie – had started a war because he couldn't for the life of him believe that she could choose another over his whoring and drinking and she had gone with the Prince willing? Honestly, she still scoffed at the thought. For all of his Targaryen blood and the madness that had been in his father's and so many of his ancestor's eyes, anyone who knew Stefan knew that the man liked nothing more than to play his stupid harp. Of course, his hands had been rough on her body towards the end and there had always been that strange glint in his light eyes whenever he spoke about the child that deliver the world from darkness. The child that he somehow knew would be his son. But her son was her son. She had seen it in his eyes the moment he opened them for the first time, lying in that stupid bed, sheets soaked with blood, strangers gathered around her. His eyes were just like hers, like her brothers' – all of them, Lorenzo, she had thought with a pang. She'd be damned if she'd let the Dragon Prince – now King, unfortunately – ruin her son the way he ruined her.
"You know, your face will stick like that if you keep frowning." A rough voice came from behind her.
A breath blew between her clenched teeth and she turned around, facing the sultry blue eyes of one Niklaus Martell, Prince Elijah's hot-headed younger brother. The one they called the Red Viper, what with his sharp eyes and even sharper spear, often tipped with some poison.
Caroline was never one to forget her courtesies, not with how often her father had drummed it into her.
"Prince Niklaus." She said, swiftly, her knees bending in a curtsy.
Even if all she wanted to do was spit in the Dornishman's face.
When she straightened and look at him, she was surprised to see concern in his eyes. Out of everyone in the godsforsaken desert, he was the last she expected to ever look at her with any sort of kindness. A man who had made no secret of his distaste at having his sister's husband's ex-whore staying in their home. She still didn't understand what he had to be distasteful about. Rebekah Martell still sat pretty with her beautiful children beside her husband, King Stefan of the House Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Realm and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. She was Queen now – what with her husband's carefully-crafted coup to get rid of his insane father – thanks the gods for that –, and her children would be kings and queens after her. What was Caroline left with? A prisoner in a kingdom that hated her and torn apart from her son, who would be raised by his father, alongside his brother and sister, after being handed over by her brother who had keep his mouth shut when she was sent to the desert.
"Lady Caroline." Niklaus nodded at the children frolicking in the pools. "Why don't you join them?"
Caroline's lip quirked up at the corners. "I fear my presence would insult them." She said, wryly.
Niklaus snorted. "I doubt that. Dorne is a very different place to King's Landing, my lady. They've seen worse and not batted an eyelash."
Caroline raised an eyebrow. "Forgive me, Your Highness, but I've seen the way you look at me since I came to Sunspear. I can't imagine their reactions to me would be all that different to yours."
Niklaus shrugged, an abnormally comfortable gesture for a Prince of Dorne. "I won't apologise for finding your residence here in Dorne offensive. More on Stefan's part, than yours, though. Punishing you and punishing Dorne for his sins is distasteful. You clearly don't want to be here and we clearly don't want you to be here. But the King is the King. And what the King wants, the King gets. And we are but his humble subjects. Unfortunately." He muttered under his breath, to which Caroline's lips twitched.
"The King is the King." Caroline intoned, turning her eyes towards the sand pits on the other side of the hedges of the Water Gardens, where soldiers in loose yellow clothing, patterned with black sunbursts, were sparring.
Niklaus followed her gaze to the soldiers, his lip curling with amusement. "Do you fight, my lady?"
Caroline turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "You believe a girl can fight?" She asked, sceptically.
Niklaus smiled. "I believe a girl can do all sorts of things if she puts her mind to it." He said, teasingly, his viper eyes glinting. "And I believe a girl with claws like yours could hack many a man to pieces if she wished."
Caroline laughed, harshly. "Not the ones that count though."
She thought of violet eyes that she had once believed would be her deliverance from an endless life of needlepoint and curtseying and whores in her bed. She thought of the man whom she would rather gut right to the bone than think of with anything remotely resembling affection.
"I asked my brother Lorenzo once to teach me." She said, quietly, her teeth gritting against the grief that welled up inside of her at the mention of her long-dead brother's name. "However, he made it very clear that, while he enjoyed my wolfsblood – as they call it in the North –, swords are a man's domain and I should stick to needlepoint like a good little girl." She bit out.
"A fool, then." Niklaus said, heavily, knowing of which brother she spoke.
Caroline turned to him, her hair twisting in the salted breeze. "You think differently?" She asked, incredulity colouring her tone.
"You don't believe me?" Niklaus matched her disbelief.
"All men are the same."
"Yes, I suppose, from your experiences." Niklaus nodded. "However, in Dorne, we do things differently. We treat women differently." He stressed.
"Oh, really?" Caroline's amusement belied her tone.
Niklaus frowned. "If you do not wish to learn, I will not bother you." He said, carefully, turning to leave her with her introspection when her quiet voice – he never would have imagined her to have a quiet voice – drew him back.
"No, wait." Caroline licked her lips, dry from the heat that had seeped into her skin. "Teach me."
Her voice was quiet and determined, and he imagined his surprise and approval – grudging respect, Elijah would laugh at him – was clear on his face when he turned around.
Not even his sister, with all of the blood of Nymeria and the Rhoynar running through her veins, had wanted to take up a weapon.
He had believed her words only to be posturing. A weak girl pretending not to be weak.
Perhaps he had misjudged the She-Wolf.
"Why me?" Niklaus asked, curiously. "There are many soldiers that I could ask. Areo Hotah would-"
Caroline shook her head, her pale skin and golden hair distracting him momentarily. No. It would not be wise to let Caroline Stark of all women in this world turn his head.
"I've heard many stories about you." She allowed herself to smirk just slightly. "The Red Viper himself teaching me. Well, no one could resist that."
Niklaus studied her carefully, eyes stilling on her unblemished pale skin revealed by the gauzy material of her dress that he supposed bared more flesh than a Northern girl like her could ever be comfortable with. Looking at her now, all golden curls and blue-green eyes and skin like cream, he couldn't imagine her wielding a weapon. She looked as if she were more suited to the life Rebekah had taken as her own. Swaddling babes at her breast, a simple life of love and pleasure. But the steel in the She-Wolf's eyes intrigued him. He wanted to see where that steel would take her. Would she topple under its weight or bear it stronger and better than the fool Westerosi knights he had seen and scorned?
His damnable curiosity was the reason why he found himself in the sand pits, clutching his spear against his back with both hands, staring across at Caroline Stark, whose small hand curled around the hilt of her weapon. A spear like my own, he thought with no little pride and pleasure. There is no Targaryen in this girl.
If she had intrigued him prior to picking up the spear, he was thoroughly bemused once their spears started smacking into each other. Her face was twisted with concentration, her eyes sharp and narrowed, lips pursed. But still beautiful, he thought, followed by a furious shake of his head. He didn't need to be thinking of her like this.
"Dorne and the Stormlands are determined to call you a whore, the North a victim. I would very much like to know the truth of you." Niklaus said, easily.
Her smile was sharp, like the wolf teeth in her veins. "You want to know whether I went willingly or not." She said, definitively.
Niklaus tilted his head at her in agreement.
"Would it make it easier for you to hate me if I had gone willingly, Your Highness?" Caroline asked, curiously.
Niklaus sighed. "How is it that when you call me 'Your Highness', I feel as though you are insulting me."
Caroline smiled and lunged, her blade clacking with his. "Because I am." She said, sweetly.
Niklaus shook his head, smiling to himself at her teasing. The Wolf Girl had no fear, it seemed.
He pulled away, stepping back as she swung the spear at him, erratically. "You're leaving too much room for me to attack." He told her, gently. "You must be quick and precise. The slower the lunge and the wider the stance, the more of your body you give me as a cutting board."
Caroline dragged her teeth over her lower lip and held the end of the spear close to her chest before springing forwards again, managing to clip him on the shoulder with the point. He winced, reeling back, the tip sinking into his thin leather with the force only a blunted edge could do. He would have a bruise there come later.
He stared at her, approvingly. It had been a very long time since someone had been able to lay their blade on him. The She-Wolf was more distracting than he previously thought.
"You didn't answer my question." Niklaus said, pointedly, smacking the shaft of the spear against hers.
"Why should I?" Caroline asked, defiantly.
Niklaus smirked, although slight anger welling up at her insolence. "Because I was kind enough to entertain you today." He said, slyly. "You may have died from boredom otherwise. Dorne obviously doesn't have enough to hold your attention for very long." His voice was tinged with disdain.
Caroline tensed. "Can you truly blame me?" She asked, quietly. "This is my prison. I didn't do anything wrong." She hissed.
Niklaus pulled back, frowning, an angry disbelief surging inside him. "You didn't do anything wrong?" He said, incredulously. "Your actions started a war. Many died."
"No one – least of all I – asked Tyler to start a war for me." Caroline snapped. "He didn't even know me. He had heard stupid stories from Matthew and believed it to be love and fate and everything in a song. Am I responsible for one man's delusion? And all my father and brother wanted was to rescue me. It was the Mad King that started the war when he murdered my family." She muttered.
"So, Stefan took you against your will, then." Niklaus said, pointedly.
As he said these words, he realised with horrific comprehension that his beloved little sister had forgiven and defended a man who had kidnapped a highborn lady from her bed and held her hostage, while his wife and children rotted in the home of his mad father. Fury thrummed underneath the skin. Would that he could run his spear through Stefan's heart and watch him wither the way Rebekah's face had withered on that fateful day he had placed a crown of blue winter roses in Caroline Stark's lap.
"I went willingly at first." Caroline murmured, almost mockingly. Niklaus started, shock and sudden fury slipping into his eyes. "He was the Prince and I could hardly refuse." She said, pointedly, and his face shuttered. "And I had no desire to marry Lord Baratheon. But after I learned that the Mad King murdered my father and brother, I wanted to leave – I begged – but he wouldn't let me. Not until I gave him his prophecy child. His so eagerly desired Visenya." Her voice ended in a whisper so bitter that made Niklaus think that she hadn't told anyone this until him.
"Then you weren't truly willing." Niklaus said, sombrely, uncharacteristically for him.
He didn't know why he was willing to believe in the innocence of this girl who had admitted to his face her indifference to his sister's almost ruin. He should use their sparring as a chance to cut her throat and avenge his sister's honour, but all the girl had wanted was freedom. Freedom that had been denied to her by everyone around her that she loved. Her own brothers and father were determined to shut her up in a cage and Stefan Targaryen, whether married or not, was the only man willing to offer her something different.
He had never been one to underestimate women. He was the blood of Nymeria, after all. He knew the power that lay underneath a woman's soft, supple skin. And a woman like Caroline Stark was not made to be a Southern lack-wit lady that simpered and sang songs of knights and valour as if they were true. She knew they weren't true. She was ice and fire and blood and death in one beautiful body.
Nevertheless, Caroline continued.
"I raged and raged and raged, but he wouldn't let me go until I had borne him a child. He wanted a girl, but I gave him a boy. A boy I named for the wolf in his heart – the Stark in him –, not for one of those dragonriding idiots he went on about." She said, triumphantly. Her face fell. "I loved him. Then I realised that he only wanted me for his stupid prophecy. I realised I was just a child. A stupid child. I was everything I had tried so hard not to become. Nothing more." She paused. "Now thousands and thousands of innocent men, women and children are dead because I was a child." She whispered.
Niklaus cleared his throat. "You were a child." He agreed. "A stupid child. But children may be stupid. And men who should have been smarter and less of children made even greater mistakes than you did." He said, darkly. "It is not fair for you to pay for their mistakes."
Caroline laughed, harshly. "You are too kind, Prince Niklaus. Considering your sister's husband was the man I ran away with." She said, grimly.
Niklaus' face darkened. "Stefan made his own choices. Choices that hurt my sister as much as they hurt you and this realm. He should not sit on the throne. He does not deserve it. He does not deserve my sister or her children. Nor does he deserve you." He spat.
"He doesn't deserve my son either. But he took him from me all the same." Caroline said, bitterly. "And my brother handed him over without a word of protest. I will never see him again." Her voice fell quiet, her face clouded with grief and hate and pain, and marvellously, she shook her head. "All I can do is sit here and wait for death." She said, finally.
Niklaus was silent, unsure of what to say next.
"Sitting here would be boring." He finally said, a slow smile working onto his face. "Waiting for death would be accepting an undeserved punishment."
Caroline frowned. "What do you think I should do instead?" She asked, curiously, once she was pushed back by his spear yet again.
Whatever he may be – philanderer, drunk, hedonist – the Prince was good with his weapon.
"Fight." Niklaus said, sharply, knocking her feet back. "Fuck. Delight. Anything you want."
Caroline's blade lashed out and clipped on the shoulder with a harsh clang that it sent him to one knee in front of her, as if she were a queen. When he looked up at her, her cheeks were flushed with pride, skin damp with sweat, blonde curls flitting about her face as if they were made of air itself and blue-green eyes bright and beautiful.
Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
He smiled.
He could get used to this one – her heart like ice, her blood like fire.
Stefan had taken his sweet sister and turned her into a doll that turned her head to his dishonour and insults with a smile on her face. He would not take this girl – with such pretty, sharp wolf-teeth – as well.
She had been fierce, when her feet first touched the sand in Sunspear.
He would make her deadly.