these hollow empty spaces (7)
"do what is right, not what is easy."
Synopsis: The youngest daughter of Tywin Lannister refuses to stand idly by, and the currents of fate shift.
Pairing: Robb Stark x Lannister!OC
Tags: slow burn, enemies to lovers
the red wedding folks. I think it's angsty but idk, let me know.
masterlist | first | previous | next
Edmure looks nervous, Robb decides, watching his uncle barely restrain from pacing along the steps of the dais. He keeps looking to Catelyn and Brynden, who are standing on the other side of Robb's wife, and giving Edmure reassuring looks. Robb doesn’t think it's working.
He glances around the hall. The underlying tension he can read under his bannermen's pleasantly cheerful demeanor makes him itch. Greatjon Umber slips into the hall and takes his place next to Maege Mormont -- Robb catches his eye and receives the barest hint of a nod: Umber has spread the word amongst the men to stay on their most vigilant behavior. Robb doesn’t really think Eleyna's warning of a wedding massacre holds any weight, but he won't leave his men unprepared in the case that it does.
Roose Bolton flashes a tight smile at Robb. Robb itches to pull his dagger and demand to know if Eleyna had been right about him. He wishes he had Grey Wind's fur to bury his restless fingers in -- instead he smiles politely back. His fingers rub at the soft, lightly furred sleeves of his formal tunic, then he reaches back and takes Talisa's hand.
"Hold him down!" pressure on his shoulders leather in his teeth rawness in his throat they are PULLING and
Robb's finally starting to relax as the feast begins. Roslin Frey makes a beautiful bride for Uncle Edmure, and Lord Frey seems... as happy as Robb thinks he ever gets. What a miserable place the Twins must be to live in every other day.
Talisa is laughing with Lothar Frey and Robb finds it hard to look away from her -- he's incredibly lucky this has all worked out. Eleyna Lannister had to have been wrong. The press of metal, the dagger warmed by his body heat, inside his sleeve won't let him forget her words though -- "My father has allied with Lord Frey and Lord Bolton. He means to have you and all who follow you killed here at this wedding." He hadn't believed her, not really, even though she provided the raven scroll with her father's words on it -- he didn't trust the Lannisters not to be trying to sow chaos among his ranks by planting seeds of suspicion. But Eleyna had... had been insistent that he not leave his men to be caught completely unaware, and so Robb wears a dagger, as he knows his bannermen do.
But nothing has gone the slightest bit awry.
something burns and he thrashes to get away his chest is on fire he doesn't want to be fixed he is screaming and
"G--- the mi--- the pop-- you must drink, your grace." something cool slips down his throat. everything goes blissfully dark.
The feast is winding down when Prestan steps up next to her and leans down to whisper. "There's a Frey man guarding the kennel with Stark's direwolf."
Eleyna frowns. Robb had rarely been without the direwolf a single moment when she'd been in Winterfell, and the wolf had been in Robb's chambers just last night. She looks around to make sure they aren't being watched. "Come on, then, they're probably planning to kill him too. We should set him free."
"Is it wise to be leaving the feast?" Prestan asks as they slip out the doors, Eleyna giving the Frey guard at the door a bright, falsely sweet smile as they go.
She nods firmly. "I've met Grey Wind before. Maybe he'll remember me? Know that I don’t mean him harm?"
Neither of them mention how uncertain her voice is.
The air outside is cold compared to the heat of the feast, and Eleyna wraps her arms around herself. The sounds of the celebration inside are muted, and not echoed in the surrounding camp. She feels guilty for a second -- it's her fault that Robb's men can't let loose for one night.
Prestan sneaks up behind the guard at the kennel and slits his throat, dragging him back into the shadows. Eleyna opens the kennel door and valiantly does not flinch at the snarls coming from inside. She takes a deep breath and holds out a hand, like the massive direwolf is one of Robert’s hunting hounds. "Easy, Grey Wind. I'm trying to help you. You and Robb."
Her hand is not shaking, thank you, as Grey Wind sniffs at it and then stalks past her towards the building. She swallows and follows the direwolf, Prestan falling into step just behind her.
They're just inside the hallway to the back entrance of the Great Hall when they hear the music change and the screaming start. Grey Wind tears the throats out of the Bolton men rushing towards them and Eleyna flinches as blood splatters her face. She swallows hard and waves it away when Prestan lays a concerned hand on her shoulder.
"I'm fine," she says, mostly to herself. "It's just blood."
The door ahead is unguarded -- clearly Walder Frey doesn't expect anyone to try to enter or leave through it, and why would he, when he expects the Northerners to be unaware? It's a disturbingly easy thing to slip in unnoticed in the chaos of the fighting. Robb is kneeling over his queen's body, seemingly unaware of what's happening beyond the woman he holds. Three arrows stick out of his upper body. Grey Wind howls angrily and bounds into the fray. To the right, Catelyn Stark has gotten up to her knees with a knife at Lady Frey's throat. Eleyna waves a hand at her and looks at Prestan. "Make sure she gets out? I'll go with Grey Wind and get Robb."
"As you say, my lady." He takes a few steps away before turning back and pulling Eleyna in to kiss her forehead. "Keep yourself alive, little sun." Then he's gone.
Eleyna makes her way towards Robb, dropping to her hands and knees under a table to avoid the swinging swords. Bile rises at the back of her throat at the slick red that meets her hands and stains her dress, an impending panic she shoves ruthlessly away. She chances a glance at the dais. Lord Frey's attention is completely on the furious direwolf tearing through his sons. The archers in the balconies have been distracted by Northmen attacking them. Dead men litter the floor. Ned Stark’s voice rasps a death-rattle "Traitor!" in her mind.
She can feel warm sticky liquid seeping through her skirts as she reaches Robb. His wife, Talisa, stares lifelessly at nothing, and Eleyna tries to ignore the way it feels like she's being stared at accusingly. She reaches out and touches Robb's shoulder.
"Your Grace." He doesn’t respond. She shakes him. "Robb!" He looks at her then, looks right through her unseeingly. She resolutely does not look back down at the woman in his arm's. "We need to go, Robb!"
"I can't," he says in barely a whisper. His eyes have already fallen back to Talisa. "I can't leave her."
Eleyna can see Prestan dragging Lady Stark out of the hall from the corner of her eye. She shakes her head and reaches out, forcing Robb to look at her. "Are you, or are you not, the King in the North?! Stand up, Stark!"
He blinks, his eyes clearing a bit. "Eleyna...?" He looks around, seemingly seeing the battle raging around them for the first time. He pushes himself to his feet. "I... I need to help them."
"You can't!" Eleyna ducks against his side, stumbling as his strength flags and his weight leans more fully on her shoulders. She looks around wildly. Robb's blood drips down her arm. She can't get him out on her own, but she can't... Prestan isn't in her sight anymore, and Grey Wind is...
"The King in the North arises," Walder Frey laughs. She can feel his eyes on her like a tangible thing, slimy and cold down her spine. "And a lying Lannister bitch as well. Lothar! Ki--"
Grey Wind tears out his throat. Eleyna drags Robb a few steps towards the door. Robb calls out a weak "Grey!" and the wolf bolsters his other side.
They make it out into cold air. Smoke and iron sting at Eleyna's nose when she breathes in. The chaos is muted out here -- the soldiers out here had been ready, and quick about dispatching the traitors.
"The King!" someone shouts, and then the weight of Robb is being taken from Eleyna's hold by a man in a bear-sigiled cloak. Grey Wind follows as he's taken away further into the camp. Eleyna takes a single step after them before her path is blocked by Stark guards.
The pen they throw her into is cold and muddy. "The Kingslayer's cell," they crow, as if she should see it as an honor that she's been locked in the same filthy pen as Jaime. "Fit for his bitch of a sister."
"More than either of you deserve," one man - an Umber, she thinks, though the sigil on his armor was almost too gory to make out - had spat at her, and in she'd been shoved. It matters not, apparently, that she'd betrayed her own House to bring their king warning of treacherous plots, nor that she'd freed the king's direwolf and dragged the man from the carnage herself. No, none of it holds water in the face of her Lannister blood.
Eleyna dares not sleep. Some of the men who pass by stop often simply to leer at her, and she worries sometimes that if she lets her guard down, she'll find herself no longer a maiden. She wouldn't be sleeping even if she could, anyway. The dreams of cold unfamiliar crypts had not stopped when she left Harrenhal, and every time her eyes have slipped shut in the days since the wedding, she sees Talisa Stark's lifeless eyes, feels the mud on her hands morph into slick warm blood. Sleep won't come easily for awhile, she thinks.
She can still feel the blood on her hands and face, dried and itchy now. She shifts, wincing as the ropes - tightly bound, since it seems her brother had made himself a nuisance of a prisoner - chafe against her wrists. One of them is surely broken -- Eleyna had caught the hilt of a man's sword against her wrist trying to drag an unwilling Stark, and she can still feel the sharp rattling pain. She flexes her fingers to try and get blood flowing again and bites her lip to muffle the cry of pain. She will not cry in front of these people. Lannisters don't cry.
Her head is starting to throb in time with her heartbeat when the cell is unlocked and the door swings open. Eleyna looks up and almost forgets to breathe. Robb Stark stands in the doorway, flanked by two loyal, sneering guards. The cold morning light illuminates him from behind, like some kind of holy light. What was it Tyrion had said, all those months ago? "His men speak of him like he’s the Warrior come to earth." Eleyna thinks she can see it - even pale and clearly wracked with grief, Robb Stark commands attention effortlessly. She can't stop her eyes from widening and raking over him - she hadn't known... No one had told her if he had lived. But here he is, and something loosens in her. She hadn't failed. He leans heavy on his wolf, sure, and she can just see the top of stark white bandages wrapped thick around his chest, but he lives.
He's staring at her, eyes hard. She schools her expression into something far less open.
"I'd stand to greet you, but," she shrugs lazily. "I'm a little tied up right now."
Robb Stark says nothing. His guard is not nearly so restrained. "That's the king in the north you address, you Lannister bitch. Show some respect!"
Robb raises a hand and the guard falls silent. It's almost impressive, the easy show of command. His voice is deceptively calm, his eyes like ice. "Eight hundred and fifty three of my men died that night. Still more are critically wounded and succumbing to their injuries every day. My wife..."
His voice broke. Eleyna swallowed hard, an apology sticking at the back of her throat, choking her voice -- Lannisters never apologize. She meets Robb's eyes. "My condol--"
"I don't want your apologies!" Robb snapped, cutting her off. "Your apologies mean nothing if they cannot bring them back!" Grey Wind snarled along with him, and Robb tangled his hand in the beast's fur, seeming to visibly restrain his temper. "Your family has once again taken everything from me."
Eleyna frowns at him, her eyes flicking pointedly to the direwolf at his side. She'd also seen Catelyn Stark walking through what Eleyna could see of the camp. Her eyebrow raises. "I wouldn't say everything. You're alive. And your mother yet lives, does she not? As well as your direwolf, and most of your men."
"But my wife and our child are dead," Robb snarls. "Thanks to your father, the Stark line will end with me."
Eleyna rolls her eyes before she can stop herself. "Oh, I'm sorry, were you castrated as well as shot?"
Her head snapped to the side, heat blooming over her cheek where the guard's hand had cracked across her face. "Watch your fucking mouth, Lannister."
She spits blood on the ground from her bitten tongue, and looks back at Robb. He's staring at her like he doesn't quite recognize her, his jaw tight and eyes dark. His wolf bares his teeth, a low growl rumbling through the quiet cell. Eleyna looks from Robb to his wolf to the guards ready to kill her, and swallows. Lets her shoulders slump. "That was an... unnecessary thing to say."
It's not an apology, but the wolf settles anyway. Robb shakes his head, exhaling hard through his nose. He waves a hand at Eleyna. "Untie her hands. Put her in shackles if you must, but the for the warning she gave us, we will not keep her tied like an animal."
He starts to walk away. Eleyna lunges forward, ignoring the sharp pain in her wrist. "Wait!"
He stops. Turns back to face her with an expression that says he is sick of her already. "What."
"Ser Prestan Hayard. I sent him to get your mother out," she says in a rush. She hadn't seen any sign of him since that night. "I... where are you holding him? I just need to know he's alive."
"The guard who escorted my mother out was your man?" Eleyna nods and Robb's face flashes with something that might be pity. "He came out of the Twins with a stab wound to the gut. He did not live through the night."
Eleyna's mouth falls open soundlessly, ears ringing. "What?" she whispers faintly. "He's..."
"My condolences," Robb says, but it's filled with sarcasm, a mockery of Eleyna's own earlier words. "How hard it is to lose a guard." He pauses, waiting for some kind of reaction. But Eleyna isn't even looking at him, staring past him blankly. He scoffs at her, then turns and stalks away.
Eleyna bites her lip hard as he goes, focusing on the sharp little pain to clear her expression of any grief. She would not give these guards the satisfaction of watching her grieve. She should never have made Prestan come here.
Prestan had been her mother's sworn sword before her, and when Aerys made Tywin marry Maryana, he'd followed her -- he had never forgiven the Ashfords for all but selling Maryana to Tywin. It had been Prestan who found his Lady's body cold in her own bed, and Eleyna curled up in Maryana's side. It had been Prestan who had picked Eleyna up and cleaned the blood off her face and out of her hair, and had coached her through the words of swearing him into her service. He'd been something like a grandfather for Eleyna's whole life, the only one to ever put her first since her mother's death. He'd never gone back to the Ashfords, even though he still had family in the Ashford lands. Eleyna had asked once, after her mother died, why Prestan had sworn to her instead of going home to his family. "You are my family, little sun," he'd told her solemnly, and that had been the end of it.
And now he was gone. Because of her.
Eleyna lets her expression settle into a blank mask of boredom. There wasn't room here for her to fall apart. She shakes out her arms as they're released, bites back the cry as her injured wrist protests movement, inhales sharply as a cold iron shackle is closed tight round that same wrist. Her eyes lock on to the tense line of Robb Stark's retreating figure, and don't leave him until long after he's left her field of vision.
taglist: @dipperscavern @justmymindandstuff @thecrownprincessbride
