Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

Then the pain started. You could feel your back aching, sometime burning like fire, other time you felt like something....moving, and everyone noted the changing. It was like your body was developing two kind of humps and that the body was trying to follow as fast as it could the change. It was horrifying, you were scared and your aunties didn't know what to do or who to ask. All the medics had said the same things, that two masses were forming and they needed to be surgically removed, that your life was in danger...

They performed the surgery, they did what they had to...it was such a good things that the sudden opening of your skin caused the wing to smashing against the medic in charge that day.

Wings...you were growing wings.

How? How did it happened?! The Warp? Psykers?!

....Your...father?

No one know, you sere just a scared kid that was trying to regain some balance, while your aunties were terrified about the story to being spread.

This wasn't normal! Just one Demi-God have wings, white like snow, and he was a Primarch!

This was blasphemy!

In the name of love people make mistakes, your aunties decided to fix the problem to the root. They couldn't go to a doctor, too risky,especially with wings large like those!

They...took things in their own hands. It was gruesome, they made you drink wine hoping it would had soother the pain. It did for a few minutes, then the spund of the broken bones in your wings made you cry.

It worked, you seemed fine, no infection! Just a ragged up back! Fine as ever!

Untill the feather started to grow again, small protuberances like thorns growing were the scar was still fresh. A few days and they were grown back.

It wasn't a matter of making them go away now, it was just of making them less visible, like thrimming a plant that refuse to die.

It was awfull, they didn't even had enough money for drugs to mitigate the pain. They could just try to hold you, promising it would be quick and get over it. It was never quick and you felt miserable after.

If hiding allowed you to breath, you secluded yourself in your room, hoping that maybe, some day,something may happen to those damn wings and you would just...live.

Your cousins tried to cheer you up, bring you gifts, trying to make your seclusion less darker by bringing you the only thing that seemed to make you happy.

How silly, you thought once, that you deeply felt captivated by the man that was just like you but you feared as well.

You were obsessed by that primarch, the lord of the IX legion, the Emperor angel, the perfect one. While even move was painfull you could stare for hours on that small collection of yours, a personal shrine, a book full of his images, of photos that has been given to the public, the posters, everything. Big as a tome, since before your change you couldn't stop being a little...fanatical over the Angel.

Fanatical was a good way to put it, your aunties had made you once a plushie of him and made you promise to never show it around, fearing people disapproval.

Maybe, you had wondered once, oit must have been destiny. Your body aware of your curious connection and created this fascination towards him. And when your wings had decided to stay, you wanted to say that something was in fact connecting the two of you, and your childish crush became the sole consolation of a life that had lost any meaning.

Not like he would even know your existance. You were sure that, if he had ever known about you, he would had gladly dispose of the freak you were. He would have been disgusted and thought of the good deed he had done by eliminating you...

He would think you're disgusting ...

Or he would tink nothing, just eliminate you and get on with his life...

It always made you tear up, thinking about how similiar you were but how distant...

And while you holded woth your teeth the muzzle while the metal grater kept on sorking against your back, you could only try to hold your screams and tears.

It was always too much, no matter how many time they kept on reducing them, they grow like nothing had happened, always stronger, always sensible, far too sensible for your like.

Your nails digged in your cousin, his voice trembled while he encouraged you, that it was almost over, that it would be done in a minute. The monute always last hours, oxygen completely gone from your body from your cries, your gums bleeding from your teeth sinking in the wood.

It was over only when you felt the water Washing down chunk of meet, bones, blood and feathers, when you felt the cotton of the blanket agains your exposed skin, when they freed yoi from the muzzle and you could finally breath.

As awlways you felt heavier, exhausted, and like every time they helped you dragging you in your room, to allow you to sleep away the pain while they medicate you. Your eyes felt heavy, your long breth reclaimed oxygen in your sistem, you just wanted to lay down and forget that you had to redo this process in a few weeks. You just wanted to sleep, to ignore the smell of blood around you, to believe that even the slightly touch did not made your back quiver in pain.

You just wanted to wait for the night to move one, as your family did as well. You were all in this mess together, you had to bare it the best way you could.

And while your cousin took you to your room, only your uncle noticed the figures approaching the house.

///

He wished they were bad.

He wished they were cruel to you, that they didn't care, that what they did was merely for a sick enterteinment. It would had made thing easy, for them to accept the gold in exchange of you, for them to just take it and forget about you, about your existance, about your gift.

He would had painted himself as the hero as everyone believe he was, coming to his star cross loved one to save her form the torment of people that see the monster instead of the beauty.

He wished he didn't had to unleashed his son, he wished to not had to make sure their body disappeared.

But he also wished for you.

Sanguinius, the angel, the hero, the warrior, the protector. But also the loneliest creature in the universe.

He was different, not only for the normal men standards as a Primarch, but from his brother as well. He shared even with Komnrad, his so haunted brother, a bond that cannot be matched by many. But always felt that rift, between himself and the reality around him.

Too perfect, always too much for everyone. His wings, a remark of that state, a forever warning for people to stay away from him in fear of contaminate him. They had decided to condamn him to a solitary life, one he wanted to escape but felt the cage so tight on him.

And then you appeared.

He mistaken it as a daily fantasy, the vision of someone sharing his trait: white wings like a cloud, soft feathers and strong muscles made for soaring the skies. It was a glimps, an image of someone admiring the view of Baal from his tower, smiling and gasping.

He smiled, of course it couldn't be real...Or so he thought.

The image became constant, the scene changed many times, the fantasy became a clear manifestation of a something real. He saw him teaching her how to open her wings correctly, he saw her trying to pluck out the old feathers, he saw her moving like a bug in the sand trying to clean herself like he did. And he smiled, and he laughed, and he was happy.

He saw himself kissing them gently, telling her how perfect she was, how happy he was to had found her...and he saw the scars.

Who? Who could had hurted such a precious gift? Who could had even dared to lay their hands against somethign so pure?

Long scratches, deep, multiple, all of them around the base, old, present. The oldest one were chirurgical, but the recent ones...a torture device? A sick game?

He saw her flinching, never showing her back towards him, always hiding, always her back on the wall like an animal.

Shame...

Everytime he lauched to the vision, begging her to not hiding from him, that he wanted the name, that he wanted to avenge such cruelty! And he did, he truly did!

Then the vision became clear: a house, a simple one, for a simple family, not too rich, not too poor. He saw people, your family perhaps, and he saw her hiding away from the world, crying in her red stained bed, torso covered in bandages. He saw her begging for this to be over, that death was mercy against this horror. He...he saw that scratchbook., he saw himself.

Your smiling face holding the pages while add a new piece to your collection...him. His face, his fights, the events he had been protagonist, the tragedies...you had taken all.

You wanted him as much as he wanted you.

That was enough, he finally told himself while still holding your poor body. You weren't wealthy enough to take the drugs that should had help you ease the pain and you just needed a small dose to succumbs to a deep sleep like that.

You were so small in his arms, not just because you were a baseline, but everything made you small and delicate. His free hand kept caressing your hair, only his breath and yours were audible in his private quarters of his ship. He should had feel happy for having you in his arms, but he could only feel pain and remorse.

Your wings were gone now, but by the look of it it seemed that they were capable to grow back. A good news...

He kissed your head, the horrendous sensation that he had taken so long to find you was like a dagger in his heart. You have knew only shame, fear that they may hurt you, that you would be hunted down, that he would hate you...

No, no, no he would never hate you! Never you his little star!

He'll fix everything, he'll teach you how to fly, he'll adorn your wings with jewels and pearls, he'll show you that it's not a curse but a gift! He'll protect you from everyone, from the one that may point their fingers and call you monster. He'll make them suffer, he'll rip their chest open and gift you their still beating heart! He'll make sure you're protected on Baal, where his sons will love you and cherish you like he do.

“This world doesn’t deserve an angel like you.” He finally spoke, understanding how this universe create beautifull thing only to be destroyed by others.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye; If it could speak as well as spy, This were the worst that it could say - That being well, I fain would stay, And that I loved my heart and honour so, That I would not from her, that had them, go.

— John Donne, “Break of Day”

“SO YOU MEAN to tell me,” Connor says, in the aftermath of a lengthy silence, “That he saved your life, and delivered you back to the Colonies himself?”

“Yes. Gave Faulkner quite the fright seeing his flag flown in the waters,” you add, finding yourself perturbed at how Connor hasn’t yet turned to face you. The Assassin has one ear tuned to you and another to the stag he’s been tracking in the snow. Only his insular, hard-set profile can be seen underneath his beaked hood as he nocks an arrow, and it makes you wonder what it is exactly he’s thinking between the knot of his brows. 

Connor inhales. Draws his bow. Relea—

His usual perch creaks in uncharacteristic protest. In a flash, the stag startles, and leaps into the underbrush, vanishing beyond the thicket.

He huffs.

You never thought you’d imagine yourself saying, “Speak your mind, Connor,” to the bluntest, most forthright man alive you’ve ever had the grace of knowing (and, in a way, raising), but alas, here he is answering you with that usual impassive look that rattles you to the core. He always looked so much like his father whenever he pulls that face.

“I’m glad you are well,” he allows, truthfully, once both of you had descended the treetops. Though Achilles had done most of his training, you’d also been enough of a presence in his life to be a second mentor when you came by, and grew to be an even closer friend. “I was beginning to think the worst when you didn’t write back. Come. Let us check the snares.”

You both lead yourselves further out the forest, back towards the border of the Homestead. Connor tells you what he’s done so far while you’d been away; recruitments, marshaling intelligence with Aveline in Louisiana, and restrengthening the foundations of the Colonial Brotherhood again. 

Achilles would be proud, you’d told, and after he’d gathered and skinned his game, and quietly made headway back home, finally caved.

“Shay Cormac,” Connor begins curiously. “What is he to you?”

“He’s an--”

“Idiot,” you murmur, in an undertone that buries into the Captain’s very marrows. “…You should’ve left me behind.”

Never, is the instinctive thought. Then, bitterly: Aye, I should’ve left you a long time ago— In the bloody past; as I had done with the Brotherhood.

“That so?” Shay says instead, between the battledrum of alarum in his ears. His words are surely wavering from the crippling panic, but he has to keep you conscious for as long as he can. A buck-shot in the gut is too dangerous to let you fall asleep on. “An’ why’s that?”

You still feel the warmth of his palm around your nape, holding you close and safe and secure to his chest; where you can hear the rampant thundering of his heart. He’d done this before, once upon a time, neath the tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, when you two were everything but— 

“Enemies,” you shiver. The bloodloss has you feeling cold. “We’re enemies, Shay.”

And yet. 

Here you are. In the arms of a Templar; the sworn enemy.

For weeks during the hunt you’d teased him on the irony; how God must’ve been playing a cruel joke on him to have to chase turncoats of his own Order. You can hardly piece together how or when this truce even came to be. Something about both of you going after Templar-turned-mercenaries, except his intent had been borne out of duty, and yours out of vengeance for a late friend. 

“Aye,” he laments. “That we are, dove.” Then, chidingly, “An’ still y’took the bloody shot for me.”

Your laugh is sudden. Weak. 

Wet with blood and barely a whisper, really. And if Shay hadn’t known you as intimately, then he might not have heard it at all— but he does, and so he did. “Well, I must surely be dying, then.” Your winsome smile is damningly red, and so, so tired. “I haven’t heard you call me that in…”

Ages, you mean to continue, beginning to slip from him. When we were on the same side.

Shay calls your name. It’s distant. Underwater. Vibrating from the hollow of his high-collared throat you’re tucked firmly against, and travelling like a soothing frisson into your aching bones. You’re drifting, unmoored, somewhere between a sea of blinding pain and of numbness; of the waking world and the dreaming. 

“No, no, none’a that, c’mon. Y’can’t go to sleep yet, dove,” he hurries. “Eyes on me, now, aye? Attagirl.”

Had they been closed? You didn’t realise. The world’s tilted and swaying at an angle, and you can’t recall just how long you’ve been fighting to stay awake the moment Shay had whisked you away in his arms after the firefight you’d both encountered. It’d been an ambush. You’d caught the silver glint of a flintlock in the starlit night, and a blink later, you’re lying in a puddle of red where Shay should have been instead. 

(Instinct. It’d been instinct to take the hit. You’d have done it ten times over, because you’re a fool like that. Somewhere in the blurry haze, you think you can hear Liam grumbling defiantly over your shoulder like he always used to do when you came to Shay’s defense.) 

Y’bloody amadán, Shay had scrambled, looking the most terrified you’d ever seen him. Why’d you fuckin’ do that?!

“Why not?” you answer him now, delirious from the bloodloss. You’ve carefully been deposited onto a cot, it seems. A silhouette shifts quickly about the room. The air clots thick with the disgusting tang of metal and the sharp salt-winds of the sea. It makes you want to heave.

“Because if y’do, then I won’t see those pretty eyes’a yours, dove,” Shay replies, smart as ever. “Come now, keep talkin’ t’me, aye? Y’know I like hearing your beautiful voice.”

Liar, you hiss. At least, you think you do. Every sense in your body is guttering wildly between nothingness and white-hot pain. You want to tell him everything hurts. That your stomach feels flayed and you want the pain to stop. You want to tell him that you’re fucking terrified; that you don’t want to die. You want to tell him everything. Anything. I missed you. I hate you. I’m sorry. I love— I don’t love you. Why did it have to be this way? Why did you go? Please, don’t go. Not again.

“Thought y’wanted me to leave y’behind, dove?” comes his answer. Had you spoken aloud? There’s a thread of dry amusement in the low timbre of his words. You recognise the raw fear in them, regardless. It’s crept to the hazel-brown of his eyes. 

“Hey, look at me. Doctor’s gonna keep your body an’ soul together, aye?” He must have pulled a chair to your side sometime earlier, wherever it is you are now, because he’s come to meet your half-lidded gaze in a doting hush. “S’alright, m’not goin’ anywhere. Y’have my word. Just stay awake, dove. Stay with me.”

Stay with me. You try to recall why that sounds so familiar. 

“Hey, hey. Eyes open,” he reminds you, voice faint as the Doctor makes quick work with removing every musket ball embedded in your flesh. The shot had been poor; a desperate attempt at a final, killing blow. It’d fortunately only clipped through your side as you shoved Shay from the crossfire.

When you writhe at the surgical digging, let out a whine that’s caught between a pitiful cry and a howl— “I know, I know,” Shay breathes, all teeth and grit and grief as he muscles you back down. He couldn’t flat out say, you’re gonna be alright, you’ll pull through, because he couldn’t lie to save his own life— much less yours. 

It’s inadequate, but it’s all he can offer you as he cradles your face and pets your hair, “Lord above, it should’a been me. I’m sorry, dove. I’m so sorry.”

Your eyes go dazed and faraway as your head lulls. You think you hear the Doctor saying something about your strength failing, beneath the gossamer cloud of the void. “Shay?” 

“M’right here, dove.”

I’m glad it wasn’t you.

His hands are trembling from adrenaline. When had he removed his gloves? You suppose it doesn’t matter. You like it when he touches you. You like the feel of him swiping at the strands across your forehead, of him thumbing away the tear running down your cheek. There’s something about seeing the tender side of him again that makes you feel safe, underneath all the split knuckles and the rough around his edges. It reminds you of—

“—Home.” You choke back your tears, but they well anyway when you abruptly plead, blindly reaching for him between the marbling spots in your vision, “I want— I want to go home.”

Something splinters in Shay’s heart. You’re reduced to a dizzy, disoriented mess of homesickness, mumbled between sharp, staccato breaths: Nostalgia for the docks. Back in New York. Days of youth, with Liam. When the three of you were young and dumb and free, and neither the Brotherhood nor the Order had stood between you all. When war and bloodshed and being torn asunder sounded like the makings of a bad dream.

“Aye, love, we’ll go. We’ll go, then,” he soothes. There’s a burn licking up the back of his eyes as your grip in his hands begin to loosen. His voice rasps like stone. Liam is long gone. Home is gone. Now it seems you might be taken from him, too. Surely this lie, great as it is, wouldn’t count against him; not when it’s meant to give you a measure of peace?

“We’ll take the Morrigan, an’ we’ll set sail. Might even let you steer ‘er yourself, how about that? We’ll spot a whale or two. Y’ever seen one’a those? You just— Just stay with me, aye? Stay with me, love, please. Just a little longer.”

Stay with me, he’d said, that time you’d first crossed paths with him following his apparent death. You remember now. It’d been like meeting a phantom. Please. We can save the world together.

“I can’t, Shay,” you reply, then; Now. “I can’t.”

The world dips into dark.

Shay doesn’t pray, but it’s a very close thing.

He isn’t exactly the type. He thinks he ought to, though, for someone as warforged and broken as him. But repentance had been more his Ma’s thing, as far as he remembers being told of her Catholicism. The gold cross he inherited is just that. Memorabilia. A vestigial haunt of the past. A slow, tightening noose around his neck—

A lot like you.

“If she breaks the fever, she may just make it,” the Doctor had said. “You’re lucky you got her down to me quick enough.”

I make my own luck, comes the lightning reflex. But he catches himself. Glances at you in the cot. Your pulse is as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, chest rising and falling so minutely he had to keep making sure you’re still breathing to calm himself.

You’ve been balancing the tightrope for days; Threading the needle. This is far from lucky.

He shifts his collar, unclasps the cross from his neck, and closes it gently into your palm. It isn’t him who needs a miracle, after all, and repentance does not fit the likes of Shay Cormac.

Revenge does.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

— John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”

You wake, and sleep, and wake, and sleep.

Between it all, Shay’s voice croons like an interlude. Shifting in the peripherals of your diaphanous, muslin-thin haze somewhat like an angel, incandescent with righteous fury smouldering in his eyes. He promises home. He promises justice. He promises divine retribution. Fallen, you correct yourself. A fallen angel.

You glean the Morrigan’s been anchored at Port La Joye for nearly a week, after you’re able to reconcile your left from right and your dreams from reality. 

The crew are good, honest, working men. Fathers who have daughters; brothers who’ve sisters; sons of mothers. Shay runs a tight ship, but he’s made sure to not involve and tie them into Templar-Brotherhood shadow business, you gather, because they rejoice once they see you back on your feet (“Glad to see ye right as rain, lass! So will the Cap’n. Never seen his face lookin’ white as a ghost before.” “More like Hell on earth! Ach, I pity th’ poor souls he’s after, truly.”), and more than willingly help you with filling in the blanks of the timeline from when you’d been shot back in Halifax and untethered from existence.

Then it takes another 3 days before the Captain returns to his ship—

And only a mere second to cross the distance between you two once he sees you, idle in his quarters.

“You’re awake,” Shay breathes, as if he’d just breached a terrible tidal wave; as if seeing you is like daybreak after a seastorm. “You’re—”

“Please tell me that’s not your blood, Cormac.”

He blinks. Takes in the dread reflected in your eyes. Right. He’d hunted down the scents of the remaining Templar turncoats that’d slipped from him back in Yarmouth and, like a starving hound to fresh meat, had slaughtered them as a farmer would a voluntary culling. “Aye,” he agrees, grimly. “None’a it’s mine.”

His face is practically drenched with dark splatters, and his usual calm temperament has gone withdrawn. In the dim, swinging lantern light, he looks like the slow-crawl beginning of a ghost story. “I take it they’ve all been… handled.” 

Shay doesn’t skip the bitterness in your tone. “I would’ve saved y’one,” he replies, “For y’to avenge your friend yourself. But it’s not like y’were in any condition.”

A seemingly endless moment passes. 

“Thank you, Shay.”

He winces. 

“Don’t— thank me, for murder.” Shay knows enough about himself to still find the act of killing repulsive, however much he had an affinity for it, or so Haytham constantly liked to claim. (He hasn’t yet managed to shake out the way the turncoats begged and bayed for mercy; hasn’t yet silenced Adéwalé’s final words those years ago—)

“I mean for saving me,” you correct, pointedly. “I’m not the type to appreciate people killing in my name.”

Shay drops his shoulders at that. Hadn’t realised just how tense he’d been. The long weeks of voyage, fretting over you, and the blind pursuit for reve— justice— suddenly seemed to weigh on him. There are old aches he’s been ignoring that sting now, like angry, insistent contusions. 

“I’ve set course back to New York,” he says, stiffly, unsure how else to inhabit the silence.  “With the winds an’ a little bit’a luck, we’ll be there before winter.”

A beat. 

You finally look at him. Truly look at him. Beyond the blood stains and the prickly defensive walls he’s put up since you’d first dealt the truce with him. Beyond the donned Templar uniform and the Captainship. 

He’d been afraid, you realise. Has been. You try to imagine what it might’ve been like from his perspective; that it must have been terrifying to have been in his shoes, watching the last of his childhood friendships die out (and for him, no less); watching a piece of his heart d—

Shay is still. Glacially so. 

There’s that post-adrenaline jitter in his eyes that you’re familiar with yourself; caught somewhere between fight-flight-freeze. Paralysed in survival mode. The ugly type that lingers after gruesome violence, and you’re left scorched with little else of your humanity but the animalistic remnants of raw, buzzing energy that leads you spiraling downwind if you don’t steady yourself quick enough. 

(Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget Shay Cormac is just a man doing what he believes is right.)

“Christ,” you sigh, before reaching out to grab his lapels. You tug him to you, ignore the confusion in his eyes as you set him on his bed with a stubborn Sit down, Cormac, and draw a chair (the very same, you later note, that he’d sat in to watch over you through the restless nights when you’d been recovering) beside him. 

“A little bit of luck?” you parrot, unimpressed. You toe the pail of fresh water prepared by the bedside closer to your feet, and reach in to wring the frayed cloth damp. “Don’t you make your own luck, Cormac?”

“You—” He elects to protest, but when your hand sets on his cheek demandingly, and you begin to clean away the blood splatters and cruor on his face, he finds the words fail to take shape. 

Shay should stop this. It’s the right thing to do. Neither of you owe each other anything now. He had saved your life as you did his; the scales are balanced. Scores even. Debts repaid. With this distance, this proximity— knees bumping against knees, face inches apart— all it would take to cut down another crucial pillar of the Brotherhood is a swift blade to the jugular. 

He could be done with it. He could be done with you. He—

—wants to kiss your palm.

When had been the last time the both of you had trusted each other enough to be this vulnerable? Unarmed. Armours off. Skin against skin. Nothing but the hope, the blind faith, that the other wouldn’t strike at the open opportunity?

Shay finds himself leaning into your touch near imperceptibly, instead. 

You press your palm to his jaw, thumb at the scar below his eye. His gloved hand circles your wrist, relishing in the pulse, the warmth—

“You’re alive,” he finally manages. Chants it in his head, practically, like Church prayer and hymn, along with the rest of his rioting thoughts that’s unspooling like yarn: of doldrums, how still the sea gets, how his Da used to tell him the calm is the most dangerous kind of waters to sail. He thinks of how still you had been, boneless in his arms and slack on the cot with nothing but blood on your face and stomach and hands. 

Then he thinks of his Ma, too; (She must’ve been like that after he’d been born. Motionless. Still.) And is reminded of the gospel his Aunt once read to him on a lown Sunday: of the tale of Lazarus, who’d been raised from the dead with nothing but words. Shay thinks of you here, now, resurrected; has half the mind to properly worship God again like you’d been a miracle come to life. 

But calling it a miracle would’ve been generous. You fought to live.

“I must sound crazy,” Shay swallows, awkwardly. 

Your eyes dart between the bob of his Adam’s apple and the seam of his lips so quickly he could’ve been imagining it.

“No, not really.” You tear your gaze away, soak and wring the cloth from the tinges of dull crimson. “I know a little bit of what it’s like to see a ghost too, remember?”

1756. When Shay had all but abandoned the Brotherhood, and you’d gasped out a plea while you tried to intervene Chevalier from firing right at him— and then, reappearing the year afterwards like an apparition, except this time you had called out for him in a whisper of nervous recognition. You’re alive. 

Shay Cormac is your ghost just as much as you’re his.

You move to take his hand, carefully remove his gloves to clean the split knuckles, the old scabs. The dried blood sitting in the cracks and crevices of his palms, his fingernails. (Pontius Pilate, Shay shudders. Are you absolving him, he wonders? Or had he lost your forgiveness the day he decided to turn his back to the Brotherhood?) 

“Y’don’t have to do this,” he rasps, and very nearly tags dove at the end of it. “Not for me.”

“You’re right,” you hum. “I don’t.” 

You don’t stop. Shay just sits and stares at you. The lantern illuminates above you like a proverbial halo, and Shay takes the opportunity to admire; to carve into memory every divot and slope of your face lest he never gets the chance again.

“You’re—” 

“Don’t,” you say, teeth set at the familiar tone.

—Beautiful, he doesn’t get to say. Angelic. “Alive.”

“Yes,” you patiently say. “I am.” 

He’s bruised and scratched and sweating from the exertion of his manhunt, now looking at you in that deep, soulful way you’ve always known him for— but his expression, you notice, is open and unbearably, unrepentantly soft. 

“Before I forget.” The cloth is returned into the bucket, and you lean back to your seat to reach your collar. His Ma’s gold cross finds its way back to him. 

“Y’needed it more than I,” he says.

You huff. It’s a far cry of your trademark smile. Shay hangs onto the rare sight of it regardless. “Well, not anymore. Besides, isn’t it the faithless who need it most?” 

Shay isn’t quite sure how to answer. 

But he settles on just saying “Aye,” because declaring It’s you who makes me believe in God would’ve been too candid.

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more.

— John Donne “A Hymn to God the Father”

“--old friend of mine.”

“He wanted to kill the old man.”

“No,” you scold, in the most motherly way you can summon. “Haytham wanted to kill Achilles. It was Shay who convinced him otherwise.”

“It changes nothing. He is still a Templar, and a traitor.”

You wince at that. Connor notices. “Yes, as so everyone often likes to remind me. But Shay Cormac was my friend first. We grew up together in New York.”

Now that. That he hadn’t known. He hadn’t gathered your relationship with the Captain may have predated even your allegiance with the Brotherhood.

Unbidden, Connor couldn’t help but think of Kanen’tó:kon. Of what and how much he would give to go back to simpler times. “I understand,” he says, at last.

“Yes. It’s hard not to care,” you admit, as the Homestead came into view. Your hand settles on your stomach, where the healing pockmark wound of the killshot still marrs your flesh in taut, pale scar-tissue. Connor eyes the movement. “Quit looking at me like that,” you say, put out by his scrutiny.

“Like what?”

Like Haytham; like Achilles. Like I’m a turncoat. “Like I’m pregnant,” you blurt, offended. “I was shot in the stomach, Connor. Are you touched in the head?”

“I’m not,” he retorts childishly, wrinkling his nose. (It makes you wonder if it’s a trait of one, or an elision of both his parents.) “If we cross paths with Shay Cormac again—” he begins to deflect, and oh, now he truly is sounding like the Haytham Kenway and Achilles Davenport you knew—

“I came to that realisation long before you have, Connor,” you cut, in a manner which meant for him to tread lightly. But he’s a Kenway through and through, and states, boldly: “Yet here you stand, by his mercy.”

You frown. Land softly from off a bough and into the glittering snowbank beside him. In hindsight, it isn’t unfair for Connor to question your loyalty. You hadn’t yet confessed to him you’d been the first one to act out of turn and warrant Shay’s indebtedness, after all. 

“Speak plainly, Kenway.” You needn’t tell him twice. Connor is not one to skirt the edge or beat around the bush. 

“I think--”

“Any closer, an’ you’ll fall overboard,” warns Shay. “Won’t save y’a next time around.”

But he figures you might not care at all, and he couldn’t blame you: Beyond the stern a lovely gam of whales have been breaching the white-capped waves, playfully trailing after the Morrigan’s wake in delightful song, where you listen, enthralled; captivated.

“I might just,” he hears you lament to yourself. “Oh, I wish I could take one home.”

There’s a small, sincere smile on your face that you’re not completely letting him see, but—

Jesus, Mary an’ all the Saints, Shay admires. You’re heaven-sent.

All of the Morrigan thinks so too. Not even a week into the voyage, the crew had taken to their new lady-guest with welcoming arms, and Shay’s never had the pleasure of witnessing his merry band of seamen trip over their own heels trying to make your sail back home as comfortable and hospitable as can be until now. You recover, and acclimate well and swiftly, so it’s no surprise they like you;

The easygoing angel-face who could not only take a joke but could also give one, who isn’t soft to fierce thunderstorms nor spoiled rotten to turn your nose up at hardtack; who offers sage advice on their womanly woes and whispers embarrassing tales of their rough-around-the-edges Captain every now and then when the sun beat too hard. 

Shay allows the tongue-in-cheek jabs, ofcourse. He claims so on the pretense of boosting good morale— really, he just likes listening to your voice; especially when it meant you spoke of him in that wistful manner he hadn’t heard in years: fond, and so charged with… something. 

“Childhood friends with Cap’n, eh?” Someone had mused, one sluggish, warm sunrise. “Nothin’ else beyond that, m’lady? What? Oh, come off it, Hoskins— I may not be her type, but she’d surely never give your sorry face a chance!”

“We’re—” you’d caught Shay’s wandering eye from the helm. “—friends,” you allowed, between the crew’s jostling. “Until New York, that is.” 

Shay had held your gaze until you turned away. 

It isn’t as if the atmosphere between you two is cold, though neither is it exactly pleasant. It’s been cordial, and amicable, and perfectly courteous, yes— but there’s something high-strung in the air even the salt-winds couldn’t cut through, and any man aboard with sense and a working pair of eyes could see it. 

(“Ach, friends?!” Came a whisper that late night. It was the Morrigan’s Navigator, their most keen-eyed; it seems, even in people. “I been tellin’ yous since we left port, mates: No man comes back bleedin’ like the Devil ‘imself and suffers like the Cap’n did for their own glory. To him, she’s worth the pain, and twice more.”)

Howbeit, he’ll take what he can get, Shay supposes. An unspoken agreement seemed to have solidified that the usual back-and-forth arguing from when you’d both first started the truce would be pointless now, and most of all useless on your trip back. That means conversations are brief and civil, but it’s far better than animosity or being completely ignored.

“Fancy havin’ a go of the Morrigan?” Shay offers out of the blue, amid an uneventful afternoon. It’s more a measured, wary gesture of banter. Then, before you can decline; “C’mere,” he reaches for your hand, guides you to stand between him and the steer. “Go on, she doesn’t bite.”

“Shay, this is a terrible idea.”

“Y’survived a gunshot, lass,” he snorts as he settles you at the helm. “You’ll be alright. I’m here.”

(A flash of memory. Hands caressing your cheek. M’right here, dove.)

It takes little to notice his nebulous presence step up close behind you. “Heavier than it looks, aye?” Shay hums, gently ghosting the edge of your wrists. The heat of him stirs something deep in your chest. “But be easy, still. She isn’t a horse y’can yank. Go with the currents; there shouldn’t be too much give.”

A tentative, studious moment passes. When he’s satisfied—

“Attagirl.”

—he pulls away. Shifts to lean casually against the guardrail facing you. All that fills the sea air now is the creak of the Morrigan, the flap of canvas, and the echo of his saccharine praise in your ears, drowned out by the droll of the crew singing Leave Her Johnny.

You try not to feel the way his eyes unabashedly linger on your face. 

“I always wondered how you ever knew which direction you’re going. It’s just a horizon to me.”

He cocks his head to the sun. “Rises east to west. See where it’s setting? That means west is dead ahead. Y’keep the sun just off your left shoulder— or portside— an’ you’ll stay on course.”

“And when night falls?”

“Compass. Constellations guide our way too. I’d show y’tonight, but,” he turns over his shoulder, where a smatter of clouds in the distance have begun to look like trouble. “Storm might be brewin’.”

You’ve seen the celestial maps that Faulker had gifted Connor once upon a time, when he’d gotten the Aquila repaired. “Polaris? The North Star.”

He raises his brows, impressed. “That’s one of ‘em, aye.”

“Aye, Captain,” you narrow.

“Oh, you’re learnin’, y’are,” he twits, unruffled. He strides over to set his tricorn on your head, and you roll your eyes when he crosses his arms with a satisfied look. “There. Don’t y’look a right gentle-woman, Captain?”

“It’s loose. Your head must be abnormally huge, Cormac.”

“I fancy that’s just ‘cause I’m smarter than you, Captain.” 

You turn your nose up playfully. “Fishes live in the sea,” you begin to recite in challenge. “As men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.” 

And had Shay been in a sour mood he might’ve taken the passing jab at the Order more personally— but how could he? The dusk light has broken through, painting you saffron and ethereal, limning you in saint-like radiance. 

For a treacherous moment, he allows himself to imagine he isn’t harboring an Assassin of the Brotherhood; that Shay Cormac is just a Captain, and you are just his— friend? His lady? His passenger? (Whatever it is; anything but an enemy.)

“Let me guess,” he says instead. “John Donne? No? Plato, then.”

“William Shakespeare, actually,” you smile, triumphant, and it’s a sun-bright sight: warm and beautiful and soft. “Though, I must say, I’m impressed.”

“Impressed?” he exclaims, although he couldn’t hold heat to it— you’re happy, after all, and he can’t help but smile too. “An’ what’s that supposed to mean, then?”

You shrug in faux-nonchalance. “Didn’t take Shay Cormac to be such a learned poet, is all.” 

“Aye? You’re the one who’s all high-society—”

“Oh? Enlighten me, please, when have I ev—?”

Your musical laugh is cut short.

You yelp.

The Morrigan had lurched, sails having caught rogue wind, and before you register it—

A hand over yours on the helm; chest firmly behind your back. 

(Heart against heart.)

Shay has steadied you. 

(…That lightning reflex has always been such a frustratingly attractive feat of his.)

“S’alright,” he soothes, voice going a low, fetching timbre. His words ghost above your shoulder, eagle eyes trained on the luffing sails. “Rogue wind, is all.”

Shay stays, this time. Steadfast as a plinth. Rooted behind you like a Cypress tree. His other hand tentatively slides a lick of fire from your elbow and up your forearm, until it finds its rest on yours. It’s rough, firm. As expansive as the broad of his solid chest fitting like a perfect puzzle against your spine, where he’s dipped his head just a little to accommodate the height difference as he speaks:

“Easy, now… Jus’ a few degrees.”

He’s a looming tower. A formidable force. Shay Cormac has always been able to inhabit and command an entire room with nothing but his sheer presence, and here you are—

Caged, yet again, between the space of his unyielding arms. 

A pleased hum— mmh— rumbles from the hollow of his throat and travels through you. It’s dizzying. Fogs all rational thought in your mind. Makes it wander, elsewhere, to a distant time you heard him groan it when you’d touched his bare flesh—

“Attagirl,” he praises.

Something zips through your nerves.

Christ. He must be doing that deliberately, you think (or hope?), because it’d be far more eliciting otherwise. That gravel-deep undertone that seeps into your skin and makes your blood run rampant. Surely— surely, he could feel the thunderdrum of your heart beating into his own ribcage too, from how he’s sidled— pressed— stood— his weight securely against you. 

“You talking to me, or your Morrigan?” you try to deflect, and you hope to God he hadn’t heard the tremble of your voice. The yen.

“You, dove. Ofcourse.”

Later, amid a friendly round of Liar’s Dice with the crew, you think (or rather, come to a conclusion) that that may have been the tipping point. In him calling you dove; that sanguine lilt in his tone, blanketed by the air of casual off-handedness: Shay hadn’t noticed at all that the petname had even slipped out his tongue— it was second nature.

Who is so safe as we? where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two.

- John Donne, "The Anniversary"

The thunderstorm had passed without too-destructing an effect. The crew escapes waterlogged, but it’s hardly the worst; they’ve faced fiercer weathers and conditions than a bad lashing. You’d gone out of your way yourself, much to Shay’s disproval, disappearing below deck to help with the wounded and with fastening any loose cargo from tipping over. In the aftermath, the crew had managed to cajole their Captain into allowing them reprieve in rum stored from the hold.

“Go on, lass, sing a song for us!” someone suggests to you, when the last of the pour had passed, and the sky cleared into a cloudy, starlit night. There’s a chorus of excited agreement: “A lullaby, perhaps?” ; “Bet you’ve a lovely voice, m’lady!” ; “Aye! Don’t shirk repayment, miss.”

“Boys,” Shay says, by way of warning. 

They shrink quickly.

And you couldn’t stop but colour warmly at that; the hair-trigger instinct of his when it comes to— well, you. He hadn’t said a word until now. Shay meets your gaze then; knows you aren’t the performative type, not even when you were children.

But you let him see your quiet smile. It’s sincere.

“I suppose I do owe you good folks a song or two for your labours,” you say, peaceably, and make way to the mainmast to bow theatrically as they rejoice. “And to the Captain, for doing good on his promises to me throughout the voyage so far, despite my… being trouble.” 

Shay laughs. It’s a small sound of assent as he nods his head to you from where he’s leant starboard.

You’re not in your usual mufti of assassin robes in favor of the wet weather: you’d forsook your leather boots after they’d overflowed with rain, and you’d turned to layering the cotton raiments of a usual sailors outfit so you wouldn’t be weighed down too heavily as you busied in the belly of the Morrigan. 

Regardless, the crew take to you as they always do, hanging onto every word you sing like dazzled sailors to a siren song— rapt with attention as they clap and stamp and cheer along to your coltish, barefeet song and dance: To Téir abhaile ‘riú, to The Jolly Beggars, to Spanish Ladies, and a number of other unheard shanties or cantatas you’ve picked up from your worldly travels. 

Then, when you’d grown tired—

“Very well, then,” you yield, “But the Captain shall pick the last song. So, what shall it be; happy or sad?”

A beat. 

“Sad,” Shay decides.

You hum. “Alright. But I’ll warn you; it’ll break your heart.”

And perhaps it’s the alcohol rendering him loose-lipped— but Shay had huffed out a weak laugh, and with a defeated shake of his head, muttered: “Already broken.”

You don’t know what to say. You never have— not when faced with Shay and his frustrating habit to wear nothing but naked truth upon that weary, scarred face of his. 

You don’t know what to say; so you stand on the crate leant against the spar instead, and begin the slow croon of The Parting Glass as a drizzle begins to fall. A lament; a bid farewell to sailors and friends and comrades and enemies. 

Shay watches you throughout it all. Basks in you, practically. Of too-old times and bygones and things he can’t take back.

God must be cruel, he reflects, To punish me with a woman so beautiful upon my ship, an’ have her want nothing to do with me.

“Should be 2 days before we port to New York, with the winds carryin’ us,” he informs you, after applauding your stellar performance. He had moved towards the eddying crowd sometime during your song. “Get some rest, aye?” 

He offers a hand to help you down your stand.

(Ever the gentleman.)

It’s an excuse to touch you; And a greedy part of him wants to hold on forever— but he watches you go in the end. It feels like wherever you touch him glows.

(Shay can’t help but flex and unflex his hand.)

In Gist’s absence, his Quartermaster claps him on the back instead. “Looks to me another lashin’ll be comin’ down. Lay your head to rest, Cap’n, why don’t you? We got it from ‘ere,” he says, “An’ spare yourself the grief, brother. Go talk to her.”

“There’s nothin’ to talk about,” Shay brushes off.

“Well then, don’t talk.”

“What?”

“Y’heard me.”

“Shut your gob,” Shay says flatly, in the way he’s learned from Haytham how not to allow anyone to get a rise out of him. But he finds himself trailing after you, anyway. 

“Hello, Captain,” you greet, when he’d stepped into his cabin he’d given up to you for privacy. “Or shall I say broken-hearted man?”

“I prefer Shay,” he says, only barely managing to reign in: When it comes to you. 

You hum. Run your fingers through your half-damp hair to untangle the snarls. Shay idles by the Mercator globe, lit under sull moonlight shining through the sea-weathered bay windows. For all his repertoire of being a ruthless hunter, and for all the way he seems to be able to cut a mean, menacing figure under that damning scar of his and his Captain’s gear— 

He looks out of place in his own cabin. Perhaps because you haven’t exactly seen him inside of it since he’d lent it to you, but even then, he looks almost slightly… out of place. The quarters is a charming, comfortable nook under the helm; sparse yet graciously spacious in a way all Sloop-of-Wars tended to be. Pieces of Shay catch and cling in its corners: 

Anthologies, novels and an old hardback bible collecting dust on a bookshelf by the red chaise; A navigation desk with tools and notes in his handwritten-scrawl of bearings, strewn over fading nautical charts— all carefully arranged in a way it didn’t scatter over to the simple bed by its side. 

(Not that it matters, you’d thought, the first time he let you in here. The bed had kept its firmness because it’s hardly been slept on. Shay must have preferred the canvas hammock he’d strung up in the other corner of the room, the true seaman he is.)

All this to say: Sleeping in here alone throughout your voyage these countless nights, with nothing but the lap of ocean waves and the droll of the Morrigan— it feels alot like a glimpse into the barebones of Shay Cormac’s soul. 

A manifestation of his sea-pelagic loneliness.

“Hope you’re not looking for a private song,” you say, carefully, unravelling the long sleeves of your sailor’s shirt-turned-chemise. The size is comically large on you, but it’s comfortable.

Shay starts. Blinks. He hadn’t calculated trailing in after you would’ve immediately been taken as a come-on, but he wasn’t about to risk stumbling through an awful explanation over himself. “I… wanted to talk.”

“Well,” you uncross your hands, lean back at his desk. “I owe you as much.”

“Y’don’t owe me anything,” he replies, quickly. It’s honest. “We evened the scales back in Halifax. I…” 

“Yes?” you say, after the silence had stretched a moment.

“I think I just wanted to see you,” Shay admits, on an exhale. “Before y’go.”

Go. How final it sounds, in spite of the 2 days that remain. “Funny,” you say, tracing the gridlines of a discarded map to distract yourself from just how… raw this conversation is; where it seems to be heading. “I imagined you had your fill of me long before I even ended up— broken on your ship.”

“We were allies, once,” Shay says dutifully, as measured as he could. He hadn’t said friends, nor lovers, but you find, for some reason, that it stings more that way. 

“Once,” you repeat, keenly, blinking long enough to picture the Homestead in its prime: of Liam, Hope, Kesegowaase, Chevalier, Achilles, Adéwalé. “And then again, at Halifax, in a way.” He watches you hesitate before continuing. “What does that make us now?” 

You don’t ask Or in two days? Because you don’t think you’re ready to hear an answer for that yet. (Shay is glad you hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been ready either.)

“A Captain, an’ a passenger,” he says, pragmatically. But there’s nothing rational about the rattle in his bones from the sight of the cotton blouse you still haven’t had the chance to change out of, damp still from the rain, and sticking to your dimly-lit silhouette at the seams. 

He tramples the thought. It’s natural to confuse nerves for— yen.  “And to you?” he asks.

“A broken woman,” you begin, light and humorous when you lift your shirt to show the bandages around your abdomen. He wonders, privately, if you’d caught him staring earlier. “On the ship that belongs to a broken-hearted man, apparently.”

“We were both broken a long time ago,” Shay says, resolute. 

“Is that what you think?” you ask, something genuinely surprised and pensive in your eyes. “Is that why we… never actually happened?”

Something in his chest lurches.

(Happened, by way of meaning: Something that could’ve been serious; could’ve been true. Something that went beyond clandestine trysts and touchy dalliances under everyone’s nose in the Brotherhood before—)

“I…” Shay inhales. It’s strained. “…How much have y’had to drink, dove?

Dove. You purse your lips, a dry laugh bubbling from you. “What a darling you are,” you say, bemused. (You're glad the lantern light is dim enough to hide your shy fiddling.)  “Making sure I’m not going to say anything I regret, hm?”

“Or do. Aye.”

“I had one bottle, Shay. And I’ve had plenty of time recently to realise that rarely do I ever regret alot of things when it involves you.” 

“Liar,” he snipes, if only to curb that tide of dangerous affection in his stomach, and the unbidden memories where both of you would fold against each others arms in countless, restless nights from before.

“Which part?” You raise your brows, and when he’d tilted your head to give you a look that roughly translated to All of it, obviously, you snort critically. “I don’t regret you ever coming into my life since we were children. Nor taking this bullet—”

He seems to bite his tongue in a flinch.

“—But I do regret not being drunk enough now to forget my own terrible performance just then.”

“I told y’the first time y’were here,” he reminds: “Y’have a beautiful voice.”

Reflexive, again. As if he always teeters the water’s edge; Could never hold back from the truth— could never hold back from you. It makes something hot stick in your throat. “And how much have you had to drink, Captain?”

“Not nearly enough.”

Something charged passes in the air. 

Shay shifts to move towards you. It’s hesitant. Tentative. The Morrigan creaks underneath his slow stride, until he stands a foot from you. His eyes are trained on the bindings beneath your threadbare blouse, hand hovering where the old blood had blotted through like a bastardised version of the Ursa Major constellation. “Y’put the heart crossways in me, y’know?” 

You don’t say anything. (There’s nothing you can answer to that other than an apology, after all, and you aren’t in the habit of apologising for something you don’t regret.)

“Y’were so still,” Shay describes, going somewhere far away in his mind. It’s the softest you’ve ever heard him speak. An’ the waters were still, an’ so were the winds, an’ the world, an’ my heart. All of it. All but my mind. “I thought, for sure…”

He finds himself brushing his fingers against yours. 

For a terrifying minute, the idea makes itself known.

“…We shouldn’t,” you say.

But you interlock your hands with his. Meet his gaze.

“We shouldn’t,” he agrees. 

It would be a terrible, terrible thing. A betrayal to the Brotherhood and the Order each. It’d be a fork in the road; a turning point; a watershed moment. The same way his eyes opened to the truth after Lisbon: Tectonic plates coming together to herald nothing but destruction, when the world gave way beneath his feet into a— a divide. Between you and him. The Assassin-Templar shadow war, this gaping maw; the uncrossable— 

“Dove,” Shay wavers, thumb smoothing behind your palm by way of quiet permission. “Are you… cold?” 

Goosebumps line your skin. “Yes.”

—Crossed.

Kissing Shay Cormac feels like coming home.

Nostalgia comes in the slow, satisfied hum that carves out of his throat and into your parting lips; Homesickness in the way your nose fits like a slot perfectly against his, in the familiar sea-brine and bitter-rum taste of his tongue.

It’s deep and delicate and perfect. Akin to anchoring at your true port of call; your true North.

His free hand slips to cover the thin of your cheek curtained under your hair, honey-slow and shaking, as if he’s afraid you— he— would shatter at any moment.  

“Tell me to go,” he shudders, between another breathless kiss that threatens what remains of his resolve. “Please, dove,” he rasps, voice as rough as stone from sheer restraint. “If y’don’t, if y’don’t want this—”

“Christ, no. I want you,” you pant, and press your face closer into his open hand. “Please.” Shay watches your long lashes flutter shut, watches you turn to kiss his palm with the kind of pious reverence you’d only see between candle-lit pews at Sunday Mass. “I’ve always wanted you, Shay.”

You’re looking up at him now with radiant hope: Doe-eyed, like a wicked siren calling him to a watery grave— to damnation. 

Fuck.

He yields. (His emotions are never far from the surface these days— and when it comes to you? Always. Always.) 

His lungs deflate. Shay dips his head back down to kiss you, purely fervid with the only longing to hold you. To shelter you. To protect you. “You’ll be the death of me, d’y’know?” he says. Confesses. Mouths the words against your jaw as he breathes in the rainy scent of you like it’s something sacrilegious. 

“And the cold will be the death of me,” you jest, when he slides his hands up to peel the shirt off your wet skin, rivulets running from your hair down your navel, to where you’ve tugged your breeches off. 

Shay loops a single, steady arm around you and lifts you onto the desk edge, all solid muscle and terrifying ease— it’s paralysingly attractive. A reminder of just how much that pristine, lean build of him belies the pure strength and utter brawn he possesses.

It’s that which does it for you. Zips arousal down your spine and kindles something primal in you.

(The Assassin Hunter, they call him. The Brotherhood’s Bane. No wonder.)

It shouldn’t have been a thrill to feel so subdued, pinned beneath him and his tenebrous gaze like a helpless animal waiting for a slaughter, and yet— 

And yet.

(Ever the gentleman:)

“Let me, then,” Shay asks, ghosting his lips gently to your brow. So how could you not let him? When a Man of God sins for you? When a Templar Knight bends his creed just to kiss you; who cradles and covets you like you’re a very piece of Eden itself? 

“Lemme take care’a you,” he repeats, brogue accent gone deliciously, sinfully thick from fervor. “Aye. I’ll warm y’up, dove, hm?”

Please do, you’d meant to answer, but you surged forward instead to meet him halfway. He is warm. Infernally so. Shay Cormac has always run hot as a blaze since you’d first met. A pillar of effervescent sunlight that had drawn you to him; the burn of his noble righteousness pouring out the cracks of his soul and through his skin, lighting him aflame and scalding those who never understood him the way you have. 

(It makes you all the more desperate to disrobe him and cling onto him; to tuck yourself impossibly at the spaces between his ribs, burrow yourself into his beating heart. You want every iota and inch of him. You want him in a way that no word can possibly describe.)

“Shay,” you keen, seeking his mouth again. And to hear his name whispered like this— like a prayer coming from you; like saying my beloved, my heart, my God— Shay thinks he might just truly offer pieces of himself up to you on a silver platter. “Touch me.”

The plea is a strike of a match.

The tenderness melts away into something more ardent.

God, he shouldn’t be doing this. He truly shouldn’t— 

You can feel the molten heat of him sinking into your very marrows when he presses against you, hard and eager; all while laving his tongue over your naked body, skin still wet and cooling from the storm’s wake. Shay’s ungloved hands are broad, smouldering— calloused from years spent climbing ashlar and knotting sails— abrasive enough to roughen you up, to curl at the base of your throat and to knead the flesh of your breasts.

Then they wander. Lower and lower; deliberately careful. While his mouth canvasses every dip and divot of your neck, his fingertips trace the margins of your tremulous body in tandem, skating over your hips and tugging off your thin underlinen, where he can feel, finally, the warmth of you— the soft, wet, seam of you.

“Jesus, fuck.” His voice is coarse. Laden with desire. Your noses bump when he leans his forehead to yours. All it takes to have you slick and needy is nothing but his blistering touches and open-mouthed kisses, it seems. “Already, dove?”

“I missed you,” you whine, tinny and saccharine. The concession has him groaning. Your left hand rakes up his nape and cards through his hair in anticipation; right hand a plinth to support your weight from the inevitable bliss he’s going to bring you to. “Please, Shay, please—”

He sinks one, gingerly, to the knuckle.

The gasp that escapes you is choked. Shay swallows it with a heady kiss. “Easy, now,” he grunts, ragged and humid, when you sidle your hips closer to the edge. “S’alright, dove. M’not goin’ anywhere. We got all night.”

We’ve got 2 days, you want to retort, but a pinched moan wrenches out of you instead. He’s pushed in another thick finger. The stretch makes your toes curl when he moves; makes him curse at the way he can feel you pulsing and pulling him in. If you’re this plush, this tight from his fingers alone—?

Shay feeds a third not long after. Works it in with effort. Mutters praises at your ear as he does so, teasing and rubbing your sensitive clit with his palm. Attagirl. Aye, y’doin’ so good for me, dove.

He watches, transfixed, at the glisten of his fingers as they noisily glide in and out of you, mouth watering at the lewd sight and sound he can draw out your body; mewling and writhing right infront of him, barely able to keep your eyes open or string your words coherently from sheer dizzying pleasure. Yes, Shay— Hah, yes— s’good. So good, please—

Ofcourse, it’s good. Shay’s touched you like this before. Hurried or unhurried; he’s memorised, intimately, how to pet and play and punish you. He knows where you’re weak: that lovely spot deep in your cunt he brushes with a perfect hook of his fingers— “Ah— fuck. Shay. Right there, yesyesyes—”, or the bare spot right below your jaw he enjoys marking up with a biting bruise— “You’re mine, dove. Mine alone. Y’hear?”

The hoarse sound of him makes you shiver. It’s brassy. Matches the malevolence he carries in presence even when he looks wrecked just from watching you be taken apart by his hands: broad chest rising and falling in deep breaths of your scent in the stifling air, underneath all the uniform layers of dark leather and glinting buckles. 

(He looks like a hawk, a villain; raking his scarred eyes over fresh kill. The thought makes you stir. Sparks an old memory in your head from when he’d gone territorial over you in an old mission long ago, and he fucked you so hard you swore you’d be branded by every inch of him on the inside for the rest of your life.)

“You’re close,” Shay says. States. He knows. He always does. Recognises it in the feather-tremble of your body and the way you arch your back, clutching at his wrist (your hand is so small compared to his. Drives him fucking crazy—) as if you couldn’t tell whether you wanted him to stop or continue fingering you. “Aye, y’are, aren’t you?”

You nod mutely. Vision crossing. There’s nowhere for you to go, so you burrow your face against his throat like you want to hide from the world as you come undone. 

Shay lets you. It’s an endearing moment, and he’s sweet like that. Even if he wants to study your face as you get off on grinding against his palm, even if he wants to swallow your tongue and every susurrus moan that he ekes out of you. He slides his hand up your spine and settles it there instead, holds you up when your own arm fails you and curls over his neck for support. 

“So good, dove. So beautiful,” he whispers, at the scant space below your ear. Shay damn near smiles at the way the words involuntarily opens you further, allows his fingers to smooth and stroke and scissor— until your legs abruptly snap shut around his wrist like a vice, astrolade clattering to the floor from your blinding, seizing orgasm.

You’re gasping. Moaning. Twitching like a fragile fawn in his arms. “Shay— I— ah, ah—”

“Easy now, love,” he soothes, nuzzling at your temple. 

The sight of you melting from your hot, silken climax prompts something primal— something instinctive in him. (Wolves, he imagines. Perhaps hounds. One’s already been satiated with having you fall apart because of him, the other still longs to shield you; to fold you into his arms and shelter you with whatever goodness is still left in his damned soul.) 

He slides his soaking fingers out. A puff of a sigh escapes you. Relieved. Sated. “C’mere,” you mumble, blearily nosing forward for another kiss—

“S’alright,” he says, dodging you by resting his thumb on the dent beneath your lip. “Tell me to go, dove, an’ I will. I will. We don’t… we don’t have to.”

(There it is again. Taking care of you and leaving himself out to dry. Ever the gentleman. It makes your heart jump.)

“I want to,” you promise. Your voice dips into something dulcet; dangerous. “I’ve been wanting to.”

Something flickers in his eyes.

He swallows so hard you can hear the click in his throat.

“I’ve been wanting…” You trail off, grasp his hand holding your chin. He watches, rapt, as you splay his fingers apart, your slick still sticky between them, and then—

Press them into your mouth.

His ring finger. His middle. 

It breaches past your bitten-red lips, slow and sinful, smarting against the wet glide of your curling tongue, coated in saliva as you suckle at the ichorous taste of them. 

“Fuck, dove,” he says, and more inwardly: You’re a minx. Shay knows you. Knows you’re teasing him with his guilty pleasures; his oral fixations. The perverse texture and sound and feel of you: your tongue laving hungrily and sucking at your own slick, choking from his fingertips catching and going beyond your molars because of how far you insist on taking him. 

It makes his cock twitch from the depravity; makes his skin simmer like a low-grade fever under his clothes. He wants to slip something else into that glorious, tight mouth of yours—

“Still cold, aye?” he rasps. Slides his fingers out the tight seal of your lips with an obscene pop. “Need somethin’ else to warm y’up, hm?”

He kisses you before you can reply. Brain-melting. Desperate. A low, amorous groan into you that roils your insides. Then you’re picked up— once more, by those delicious sailor arms of his— and deposited onto his bed like you weigh nothing. 

Good God. “Christ, Shay, you’re…” 

You falter, suddenly shy of all things. Here you are, naked and exposed with nothing save bandages around your stomach, supine and heaving on the untidy linen of his sheets— and you’re curiously, girlishly, timid over complimenting him.

It makes him laugh. Quiet. Airy. “Use your words, dove.”

But you’re too busy staring— ogling him where he stands at the foot of the bed. Shay’s undressing himself, patient and meticulous, and enjoying is an understatement for how you feel watching him divest and strip himself for you. (There’s something incredibly intimate about being allowed this, to witness him dismantle the precious armour— the defenses and image— he presents to the world.)

“Go on, then,” he croons, “What did y’want to tell me?” 

Shay tugs his shirt over his head from the neckline. Swift. Smooth. When he crawls over you, unclothed, you think you finally understand the true, biblical epitome of temptation. 

The sturdy contours of him, lean muscle cording across his torso and his vast arms; body smattered with forgotten scars and wounds both old and new that make him all the more roguishly handsome; the happy trail from his navel leading down to the heavy, leaking, length of him—

“Strong,” you concede, breath skittering when his shadow descends over you like doom itself, and he slowly settles some of his weight on your body. Your hands have wasted no time in pawing eagerly against his chest, gripping at his firm biceps when he smothers you with an indulgent kiss. “You’re so strong. I’ve always— mh— admired that about you.”

“Admired, aye?” It’s a teasing sound. A huff of sincere laughter ducked into your shoulder. He’s preening at the rare stroke of his ego, the bastard. “S’my hands all it takes to have y’this sweet on me?”

“Shut up,” you bite your grin, feel the blood rush to your cheeks again. “You’re insufferable.”

“You’re perfect.”

Your heart stutters. Skips. Stumbles. Then Shay kisses you, sweet and brimming with loving affection— and kisses and kisses and kisses. Hand cupping your cheek, and the other stroking at your nape. The type that’s full of utter devotion: like you’re salvation; the only person capable of ever delivering him utter Absolution.

Shay digs his fingers into the meat of your thighs, sangfroid, and begins to pry them apart.

You can feel the hard length of him throb, tip spitting prespend against your navel.

“Shay,” you call out, tugging at his hair when he tongues the swell of your breast and latches to your nipple, gropes at the other with a rumbling groan he couldn’t seem to bite back.

“Aye?” he says, before pulling away entirely in a worried blink, “Your stitches. Did I—?”

“No, it’s not that,” you say, meeting his concerned gaze and his touch running over your bandages. “I just, I’m not— It’s been awhile since—” 

Oh. Oh. “S’alright,” he reassures, taken aback by the way his own lungs unwillingly expand from the new knowledge; the sudden rush of appetite flooding him. “Been some time for me too, dove.” He tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear, and gives you the thousandth kiss of the night. “Jus’ tell me if I’m hurtin’ you, aye?”

(Ever the—)

“Gentleman,” you smile, petal-soft. You press a chaste, delicate kiss on his cheek, at the crooked scar splitting it. 

Something basal rattles in him at the tenderness. Startles a flutter of sparrows in his chest.

And then—

You curl your fingers around the base of him.

Shay jerks with a start. Hisses something guttural in Gaelic. “Fuck, dove—” He ruts forward, face digging to the crown of your head, where you’ve taken to licking at his jugular: tasting the masculine, heady sweat of him as you squeeze his cock.

Shay can feel the molten heat of your folds splitting at the nudge of his weeping head. 

He might ruin you.

(He wants to. Greedily. To fuck you until you see the stars of Cassiopeia beneath your eyelids; until everytime you swore loyalty to that damned, wretched Creed of yours, all you would ever remember— ever feel— is how full you were when you were taking Templar cock.)

But he’s a restrained, merciful man for all his notoriety of pitiless bloodshed. A distinct dissonance; a paragon of irony. It’s hardly a surprise, really, if you think about it.

Shay Cormac is a Man of God, and men of God are raised to deliver only two extremes: grace and retribution.

So he’ll be gracious. Generous.

His hand falls to your right knee, thumbing the flesh beneath it; And pushes once more to spread yourself to him, to accommodate the thick of him as you guide him up into your soaking, eager cunt—

You whine at the fit. 

The wrecked, immodest sound alone unmoors him. 

Makes him all the more desperate to take you apart. “I know, dove,” he coos, emblazoning into memory the way your face twists in half-pleasure, half-pain; eyes misty at the edges and brows furrowed into a pinch. “Missed y’too.”

When Shay buries to the root, he distracts you from the scathing ache with another nip at your jaw and lip; gropes and moulds his hands over your thrumming skin and flesh. The pull of you inside— the nigh-virginal tightness of you (how long has it been again?)— has his vision swimming from the scorching decadence. 

Then you’re pleading his name. For him to move. To satisfy. A murmuration of Shay, m’so full. S’good. Please. Pleasepleaseplease—

It tears a depraved moan out of him once he shifts to ease in, and out. Yeah? Feel good, dove? 

From where you’re eclipsed, pinned underneath him, his gold Cross swings above you with every bated breath and every forceful thrust; A twisted reminder of your heresies. (The both of you will reason this truce out, someway, somehow. Chalk it off as filling the boredom of your recovery and voyage— but either of you know better. Know the truth.)

A sacrilege of the Penitential Act: For what I have done (“I love you.”), and have failed to do (“You shouldn’t.”); Forgive me.

(…But forgiveness is in neither of yours’ hands.)

Clawing down his back, legs greedily bracketed around his hips to siphon every inch of him in, the ferric sheath of him in you has liquid pleasure crackling through his veins. Between all your wanton purrs and his crude growls the room drowns in impurity under the pelting rain outside;

It’s breath mingling with breath, heart thundering to heart, skin sliding against skin. He white-knuckles your hip when he hikes you up harder into the bed, each urgent rut of him reaching further inside your pulsing cunt as you grip into the sheets. 

“Oh, hah— fuck—” you choke. “Yes, Shay. God—”

“No Gods here, dove,” he grunts, devilish, and you swear you can hear him smirking that canine-sharp smile of his. “Jus’ you an’ me.”

You shiver. Whimper into his devouring mouth when he seals you into another kiss, and he grinds into you so hard you’re sure the curve of him would poke at your navel. The thought alone— of being full of him, of him breeding you with every drop of his seed that it might just take— has Shay shuddering against you. 

He shouldn’t. Heavens above, he shouldn’t.

Even here, right now, he shouldn’t even be this demanding with how he’s fucking you. Gorging at the searing feel of your sex giving in and stretching to his girth— he ought to be a little more gentle, given your quivering state.

(He likes brutal. He wouldn’t have made a brilliant soldier for either the Brotherhood or the Order at all if he couldn’t handle being a brute; If he hadn’t indulged— or at the very least, been a little bit familiar with that dark skeleton in his closet.)

Shay’s trying to be gentle, ofcourse, which is already everything to you. He’s restraining every fibre of himself, and you know this. Can feel it in the deliberate brace of his hard cock inside you; in the way he stifles his animalistic noises to your ear, outmatched only by the noise of your flush cunt. Can see it in the pretty furrow of his brows, as if laid with proverbial thorn; the hitch of his lungs at each inhale of you.

He sets a perfect pace. Keeps to it until you can feel your nerves fraying at its edges. The knot formed where his hips are meeting yours in circadian rhythm tightens, has you gasping his name in anticipation when he palms down your arched spine and cants you closer to the fierce nudge of him. 

Aye, doin’ so good, Shay hums, knowingly. He sneaks his hand to your slit, petting and teasing at your swollen clit until you’re clamping around him. Y’gonna give me what I want, love? Y’close?

The answer is stolen from you.

It’s an engulfing crescendo of all-too-much. Your orgasm splits you from the lower belly up, synapses firing wildly from the all-encompassing feel of him still battering into you, overwhelming every single sense you possess. Your eyes roll. Your mind whites out into pure pleasure. Aching muscles aren’t your own, inner walls and legs spasming and quivering around his throbbing length; And throughout it all: Attagirl. Attagirl, love. A chuisle mo chroí. Mo ghrá.

His release stutters close after. 

It takes more coaxing, grinding; More time before the growing tension in his groin snaps like a wire. He’d fucked you through your climax, but now you’re egging him on, velvet-voiced and seductive, despite the sweltering edge of overstimulation creeping on you. “I wanna— ah—  feel you. Please, Shay. Harder. I wanna feel you inside me— mh— for weeks—”

It sparks him closer to his edge. Inside? he’d ground out, sparing a glance between your sticky thighs, where his cock slots into you like you belonged here. Fuck. Y’know I can’t do that, dove. 

But he entertains the thought anyway. Chases the thrill. Tells you how good you feel around him and spreads you just a little bit more. Imagines notching and seating so deep into your aching cunt until you couldn’t possibly spill a single drop of him; until you’d taste him from the inside out. 

Shay rucks you up higher into the bed, allows a sliver of his viciousness to slip through in the unbridled way he carves himself into you with every thrust. (“Please, I can take it. Harder, Shay— hah, C—Captain—!”) The feeling of you leaving crescent-indents on his biceps and shoulders as you clumsily clutch onto him, surging helplessly as he groans and grunts into your balmy skin, and takes and takes and takes what he selfishly wants— 

“F–Fuckin’ hell—” It’s a jagged rasp. Your name tumbles from his wet lips, husky and corrosive and dangerous. The growling sound alone makes you keen, reminds you of who exactly it is that’s just fucked you raw and is now painting your body with his cum: 

Shay Patrick Cormac. The Templar’s very own Assassin Hunter. 

Your natural predator.

Sex and sweat and Shay’s scent clots the very air. Ropes of his molten hot spend spurts over your torso as he pulls out to fist his jerking, fluttering cock into satisfying completion (“Been so long, dove. S’all for you. Saved it all— Fuck, ah— Just for you—”); the white, pearlescent threads of him shooting even up to your chin and bottom lip, still glossy and shiny from drool after your sloppy kisses. 

Not even a moment later, Shay watches your red tongue dart out to lick it up. 

Bloody hell—

“Oh,” you purr, breathless. (He tastes salty. Masculine. It’s intoxicating.) “So you do prefer being called Captain, hm?”

“Don’t,” he pants, half-laughing as he drops his head on your shoulder, trying to navigate through the cloying fog of his mind-melting orgasm. 

There’s something grimly satisfying about seeing and having you— a Grandmaster Assassin of the Brotherhood— like this. Ravaged. Conquered and sprawled beneath him like a puppet with its strings cut. An unfurled flower. Bruises mottling your flesh like blossoms. Activates something carnally possessive in his hindbrain.

(And to think he’d been holding back all this time—?)

Eyes flitting shut, Shay presses another series of delicate butterfly-kisses: shoulder, cheek, nose, forehead. Non-sexual spots. It’s, ironically enough, infinitely more intimate than the fact you just coupled exhaustively on his own bed. 

Then, after he’d gone to clear the debris and remnants of him off you: “Still cold?” he humors, melting into rest underneath the scratchy covers beside you.

You huff a soft, tired laugh. Tangle your sore legs with his and scoot closer to his bonfire warmth after he lets you doze in his embrace. The vestigial high has both of you drifting back to earth slowly. “Mh. Warmest I’ll ever be for a long while,” comes your content, nuzzled reply, feeling him comb through your hair as you intertwine your fingers with his again. 

It feels like old times, tucked into him. It feels like the day you’d taken the shot and he scooped you up into his arms— like everything has changed, and nothing at all.

Still, we’ve changed, you think, thoughts piecing back from the sex in a way you hadn’t noticed before. There’s a new scar slicing across the hairs of his chest, and another unfamiliar pockmark wound on his collar that looks to have come from a ricocheting bullet. Testaments of time and battles that’s passed between you both.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he ensures.

A beat.

“You could never hurt me.”

Yes, he very nearly agrees. I could never.

“Shay,” you whisper, before the bravery escapes you.

“Dove,” he acknowledges.

His voice rumbles from his sternum and into your ears. It’s a painstakingly mellow sound. It’s home.

“What did we just do?”

His hand stills. You can only hear the hum-drum of his heartbeat echoing in his chest. 

“I think,” he says, faintly, “We’ve just said our goodbyes.” 

Against all odds, however—

You laugh. It’s sudden. As bright as tide breaking on shore. “What?” Shay says, unable to stop his smile against the crown of your head. 

“Told you you were a learned poet.”

“Lord, I ought to throw y’overboard, woman,” he sighs.

Another laugh. The banter is a glimpse into the domesticity you’d once shared so often, and he couldn’t help it. He’d nudged a kiss to your forehead and went, “I’ve missed you,” and met your lips before he could confess: I miss you already.

“We’ve voyaged weeks,” you point out.

“You know what I mean, dove.”

“Ah, the sex, then?”

“Being close to you,” he corrects, unimpressed yet amused. “Having you in my arms.”

You do know what he’s trying to say. The loving; the freedom of being just you and just him. Of loving with neither guilt nor shame from the fact you both construe the world in different light.

“Have I told you how much I hate it?” you say craning to meet his half-lidded gaze.

“The sex?” he volleys easily, smiling like a serpent as he sneaks his hand between your thighs again. “I think I remember y’enjoyin’ yourself plenty, dove.”

“Bastard,” you swat playfully, pinching at his forearm as he laughs out. “I was going to say how safe you make me feel.”

Shay doesn’t say a word, but his expression rings louder than any reply: he’s glowing; a spark of sincere and profound fondness in his eyes, that has to be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He hadn’t even seemed to mind at all that you’d mentioned you hated it.

“What an inconvenience that must be,” he finally says, and as much as he’s tempted to tease you further for it, settles on giving it a rest for now. “We’re all guilty of something, whether we admit it or not.”

“Original sin,” you hum. “I forget you’re a Man of God, Shay Cormac.”

A beat. For a moment, you wonder if you’d said something you shouldn’t have.

“Well… You make me believe,” he says, softly. The quiet concession matches the tentative unfurling of affection in you. 

“In what?”

Everything. “In God. In goodness. In love.” 

Shay tugs you into a doting kiss. The deep and fiercely kind that translates everything he can’t put into words; the kind that rattles the very foundations of your soul and every mighty defense you’ve ever built around your heart.

“I love you,” he exhales; like he’d been holding it back for centuries. “Please remember that. Please remember that’s never changed.”

“Oh, Shay,” you begin, and kiss him once more for good measure, instead of telling him:

I--

“--think you do not have it in you to kill Shay Cormac, when it comes down to it.”

A narrow look. You don’t even bother starting with the surety of Connor’s choice of words: when, over if.

“Just because I trust him onc—”

“No,” he overrides, suddenly, inexplicably fierce. “You love him. There is a difference.”

He’s learned this dilemma for himself the hard way. He had faced a ghost of his past, forged a truce, and naïvely dreamt of an impossible unity. In the end, all he received was the black blood of his own father on his hands, and a terrible guilt that would last his entire lifetime and the next.

But, he had, by the grace of whatever watches over him, not learned what it is to be at the very brink of death in the same way you had been after you were shot— To walk the precipice and return home with only a scar to show for it; and he prays he will never understand what that’s like for a long time. Perhaps it’s because he is his mother’s son (and yours by charge), too, that makes him lower his hackles.

“Se:nikónrarak,” Connor re-attempts, determined, though less hostile this time. “If you are not careful with your heart, it may prove to be your demise, again.”

You stop short. “Again?”

“I am no fool,” Connor says knowingly over his shoulder, where you’ve rooted yourself at the frost-pathed foothills leading up the Homestead. “You are the quickest Assassin I know. You would not have been shot, unless you wanted to be in the crossfire.”

“I don’t—” you hesitate, dismayed. “I don’t love him.”

Connor disappears from your view.

In the far distance, a lone rooster crows.

What sea soever swallow me, that flood Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood; Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes, Which, though they turn away sometimes, They never will despise.

— John Donne, “A Hymn to Christ”

Cregan stood upon the battlements of Winterfell, the wind whipping through his dark hair. Below, the courtyard lay swathed in twilight, the torchlight catching the frost on the stone.

You watched him from the window of your new rooms, your fingers clutching at the heavy fur of your new cloak. It was well-made, as was everything in the North, the pelts of snow bears and wolves stitched together with an expertise that spoke of generations of survival. Your new cloak, for your new life.

A life with Cregan Stark.

The thought sent a tremor through you, though the chambers were warm. A great fire crackled in the hearth, chasing away the Northern chill, but it couldn't chase away the knot of dread in your stomach.

You felt like cattle at the market when the raven arrived at the keep that housed your late husband's family. The steward had presented the letter to you with a bowed head, the seal of the direwolf unmistakable. An invitation. A request. A command, your hands shaking so badly you could barely break the wax.

Cregan Stark needed a new wife. And you were a widow. Simple, clean, an exchange of one life for another. This one, however, was in the North. A thousand miles from all you have ever known.

He was a good man, they told you. A noble lord, just and fair. He had been kind to you in your brief courtship by raven and then the handful of days you spent together before the ceremony. You couldn’t help but compare his gentle touch when he took your arm to your husband's rough handling. Cregan's eyes held a warmth that seemed to melt the frost around him.

But kindness in the courtyard and in the great hall was one thing. The bedchamber was another.

Your late husband had been a man of duty. Your marriage had been a contract, a merging of lands and titles. He had done what was necessary to secure an heir, though the gods had not blessed your union. It was a thing you dreaded more than the cold of winter. A quick, clumsy, painful affair that left you feeling soiled and insignificant. You had learned to endure it, to lie still and think of anything, anything at all, until it was over.

Cregan could see you from where he stood. The window was a square of golden light against the dark stone of the castle. You were a silhouette, small and still. He had hoped this would be easier for you. A widow, like himself. You had both known the sharp sting of loss. He thought it might create a space between you, a quiet understanding that he had not felt with anyone since his Arra had passed. He imagined you sharing stories of your lost loves by the fire, building a new life on the foundations of the old ones.

But all he sensed from you was fear.

He sighed, his breath pluming in the frigid air. He had seen the way you flinched when a man raised his voice too quickly in the hall, the way your hands folded in your lap, trying to hide their trembling. He had seen the wariness in your eyes, a deep-rooted caution that spoke of more than just the grief of a widow.

He turned from the battlements and made his way through the familiar corridors of his home. Now your home. The thought gave him a pang of guilt. He had uprooted you, dragged you to the end of the world for his own needs. The Stark line. The duty that never ended.

When he entered your shared chambers, you were standing by the bed, the heavy coverlet already turned down. You were wearing a simple nightgown of fine linen, the fabric so thin it was nearly translucent. Your hair was unbound, a curtain over your shoulders.

It had been mere hours since the wedding. A simple affair in the godswood, hands bound beneath the weirwood tree. A kiss on the cheek, vows made, and that was it.

Now, in the quiet of the room, you did not look at him. Your gaze was fixed on some point on the floor, your shoulders rigid. And without saying a word you crawled on to the bed, moving to the very center, and laid down on your back, your hands clasped over your stomach. You closed your eyes, a muscle twitching in your jaw.

Cregan felt a cold wash of rage, not at you, but for you. For the man who had taught you this was all you were good for. A vessel to be used.

For a long moment, he just stood there, the firelight carving the hard planes of his face. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but also weep for the sorrow of it.

"What are you doing?" He whispered gently.

Your eyes flew open, wide with a fear that made his heart ache. "My lord?" you whispered, confusion warring with the terror in your face.

"Cregan," he corrected gently, moving further into the room. He didn't approach the bed, not yet. He gave you space. "You do not have to call me 'my lord' in here. We are husband and wife."

You flinched at the word, and he knew then, with a certainty that chilled him, that your previous marriage had been a battlefield, not a partnership.

"I am ready… Cregan," you said, your voice a breathy, broken thing. You sounded so young. So lost.

He saw a single tear trace a path from the corner of your eye to your hairline, and watched the way your whole body seemed to tremble.

"Ready for what?" he asked, though he knew. He needed to hear it. Needed to understand the depth of the wound he was being asked to heal.

You swallowed hard, your knuckles white where they gripped each other. "To do m-my duty," you managed.

He let out a sigh that was half groan, and slowly, he sank into the large, high-backed chair by the fire. He ran a hand over his face, the stubble scratching against his palm.

You sat up, "Have I displeased you?" you asked, your voice small.

"No," he said, and the simple word was so full of a strange, gentle emotion that it made your chest tighten. "Gods, no. You have done nothing to displease me."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Look at me," he said, not unkindly.

You hesitated, but obeyed, slowly raising your eyes to meet his.

"Whatever your former husband told you," he began, his voice softer now, "whatever he did... that is not what it is between us. Not what it will be."

Another tear escaped, the shame was a physical thing, a burning in your throat. "But... we are married. It is my wifely duty to..."

"Come here," he said softly, cutting you off.

It was not a command. It was an invitation. But still you froze, unable to move.

"To the fire," he clarified, as if sensing your turmoil. "You are cold."

You slid from the bed, your bare feet silent on the thick wolf-skin rug. You clutched the front of your nightgown, a flimsy shield, and made your way to the fire, standing a few feet from his chair, still radiating tension.

He gently pulled you forward, and you let out a surprised yelp as he effortlessly lifted you, settling you on his lap.

He wrapped one of the heavy furs from the back of the chair around your shoulders. "Better?" he asked, his voice a low rumble in your ear.

You could only nod, your heart hammering against your ribs. One of his large, warm hands rested on your waist, the other came up to gently brush the hair from your cheek.

"You are my wife," he said, the words a simple, undeniable fact. "And it is my duty to care for you. To protect you. To bring you joy."

"Oh." You said softly, pressing yourself a little closer to him, his warmth seeping into your skin.

"Tell me," he said, his thumb stroking a slow, hypnotic circle on your waist. "Did your late husband ever bring you any joy?"

The question was so direct, so gentle, it shattered the carefully constructed wall around your heart. You buried your face in the crook of his neck, unable to let him see the fresh tears, the vulnerability. You shook your head against him, a small, miserable gesture.

He made a soft, pained sound. His arms tightened around you, a secure cage, a safe harbor. You could feel the steady beat of his heart against your cheek, strong and true.

"What a fool he was," Cregan murmured, more to himself than to you. "To have a treasure and to only see the stone."

You didn't know what to say to that, so you said nothing. You just breathed him in. He smelled of pine, of cold air, of leather and woodsmoke. He smelled of safety.

After a long silence, he spoke again, his lips brushing against your temple. "There is no debt to be paid between us. No duty to be endured in this bed. Do you understand me?"

You nodded again, your throat too tight to form words.

"I want to share a life with you. All of it. The days and the nights. The joy and the sorrow." He paused, his hand moving from your waist to splay across your back, a brand of warmth through the thin linen of your gown. "And in the nights... I want to give you pleasure. Not take it."

Your head shot up at that, your tear-stained face turned to his. "What do you mean my lor- … I mean.. Cregan?"

A small, sad smile touched the corner of his lips. "May I show you? May I teach you what it should be?"

You looked into his eyes and saw no hunger there. No demand. Only a deep, abiding tenderness, a patient desire to undo a wrong you hadn't even realized you endured. The fear was still there, a cold knot in your belly, but something else was blossoming alongside it. A flicker of curiosity. A spark you never allowed yourself to feel. You nodded, a single, jerky motion.

"Good," he whispered as he gathered you into his arms.

He carried you to the bed, laying you down upon the furs as gently as if you were made of spun sugar, your head sinking into the soft pillows. Then, he leaned over you, bracing a forearm on the mattress beside your head.

"Our bed," he said, his voice a low caress. "A place of warmth and rest." He lowered his head and kissed your lips, a gentle, unhurried brush. "A place of pleasure."

You let out a breathy little gasp at that, and his mouth found yours again, more firmly this time, his hand cupping your cheek. His kiss was a slow, sensual exploration, a lazy slide of his tongue, a nip at your lower lip. You felt the tip of his thumb trace the line of your jaw, his fingers sliding into your hair. He tasted like mead, his beard soft against your skin.

You didn't know what to do with your hands. They lay stiffly at your sides, unsure.

"Touch me," he whispered against your mouth, and it was the most sinful, beautiful thing you had ever heard. "Like this."

He moved your hand to his chest, placing it palm down over his heart. It beat under your touch, strong and sure. Then, he moved his lips down, his beard tickling the soft skin of your neck, the hollow of your throat. It tickled, and you let out a small, breathless giggle.

"Good," he murmured, kissing the corner of your jaw. "Laughter in the bedchamber is a good thing."

He kissed lower, over the curve of your shoulder, nudging the strap of your nightgown aside to reach the delicate skin beneath.

You were breathing harder now, your chest rising and falling as his lips traced the path lower, down over the fabric, his teeth grazing the hard peak of one nipple. It felt good. A slow, building sensation, a warmth spreading through you. You arched a little, letting out a low moan.

He slowly pushed up the hem of your nightdress, exposing the soft skin of your thighs, your stomach. You could only watch, your breath coming in ragged gasps as his fingers reached the edge of the linen.

"May I?" he asked, his voice a dark, silken rumble.

"What... what are you going to do?" you asked, uncertainty and need mixing in the words.

"This," he whispered, and before you could protest, his head disappeared beneath the covers.

You felt his breath first, warm against the inside of your thigh, a soft moan escaping your lips. And then his mouth was on you, a slow, languid lick along the slit of your sex, his hands hooking under your knees and lifting them over his shoulders.

The slow build had now turned into a blazing fire, every nerve in your body alive and singing. You cried out, your hand reaching blindly for his head, tangling in his dark hair.

His tongue found a rhythm, swirling over the little nub that sent sparks shooting through you. You couldn't seem to stay still, your hips bucking, your legs tightening around him. It was so good, the heat building in your belly, a tension gathering inside you.

"Cregan," you moaned, unable to stop the sounds spilling from your mouth.

You could feel him smile against you, the scratch of his beard adding another layer of sensation. "Just let go," he murmured.

You didn't know what you were supposed to let go of, did he mean his hair? The way your thighs were squeezing him?

And then he did something with his tongue, something that sent a wave of pure, blinding bliss crashing over you. You arched your back, a cry on your lips, every muscle in your body tensing. And then it released, a pulse that spread through you, warm and electric.

You collapsed back onto the bed, gasping, your skin flushed. You could feel him slowly licking at you, his hands stroking the insides of your trembling thighs.

"So beautiful," he said, his voice a satisfied rumble. He moved up, kissing your stomach, the curve of your breast, the hollow of your throat.

When he emerged from beneath the blankets, his lips were shiny, his eyes dark with lust. But his hands were gentle as they moved the hair back from your face, his thumbs stroking the apples of your cheeks.

"I don't believe that is how we make heirs," you murmured, a giddy smile touching your lips.

"No," he laughed, "it isn't...but it helps."

You blushed at that, and he chuckled again, lowering his lips to yours. You could taste yourself on him, a salty sweetness.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his forehead resting against yours.

"Yes," you breathed, your hands finding his shoulders, his upper arms. He was so solid, his muscles bunching under his tunic. You were suddenly aware of the ache between your legs, the slick heat.

"Do you want me to continue?"

You nodded, your hands drifting down to tug at the hem of his tunic. "I want... I want to see you," you managed, a sudden shyness creeping into your words.

"Alright," he whispered. He sat up, straddling your hips, and pulled his tunic off over his head.

You had seen a man's body before. Your former husband's unappealing shape. But this was different. Cregan was young, his shoulders were broad, the muscles defined, his chest covered in a dusting of dark hair. You couldn't help but reach for him, running your hands over his stomach, the trail of hair that disappeared below his breeches.

"You feel... Firm," you said, not knowing how else to put it.

He chuckled, "thank you, I think."

"How do I make you feel good?" you asked, a sudden boldness in the words.

"You are," he said.

You frowned. "But..."

"Trust me," he said, his fingers moving to the ties at the front of his breeches. "It feels very, very good."

You watched him remove his clothes, feeling your cheeks burn. His cock was long and thick, already hard and jutting toward you.

"It's very...," you couldn't say the rest, feeling a nervous thrill as his weight settled over you.

"Your former husband was lacking, then?" he said, his tone playful.

"Cregan," you hissed, smacking his arm.

He laughed, a low, rich sound, his lips pressing against the side of your neck.

"Do not be embarrassed. It is not your fault."

You giggled at that, the ridiculousness of it all. Your late husband would have been appalled, perhaps even insulted, at such levity. But you liked it. You liked his laughter, the way his smile lit up his whole face.

"Now," he said, his mouth ghosting over the shell of your ear. "Let's see if I can't get you to make that pretty noise again."

He took his cock in his hand, stroking it a few times. Then, he guided your thighs up, his hands behind your knees.

"Wrap them around me," he murmured.

You obeyed, your calves pressing into his back, the position opening you up to him.

"How did your former husband take you?" he asked.

You blushed at the question, biting your lip. "He would... lie atop me, flop on top of me, really. And..."

"Pound into you like a battering ram," Cregan finished.

"Something like that," you replied, laughing again.

"He was an idiot."

"Perhaps," you replied.

"He was," Cregan insisted. "Because he had this," and his cock slid through your sex, a teasing pressure, "and did not appreciate it."

"Oh," you gasped, arching against him.

"And he missed the best part," Cregan added.

"What's that?" You asked, your voice high and breathless, your hands clutching his shoulders.

"You'll see," he whispered, slowly pressing himself inside you.

There was no pain. Just the delicious stretch of him, the slow, careful slide. You let out a small gasp as his hips met yours, fully sheathed.

"Are you alright?" he whispered, his eyes searching yours.

You nodded, a breathless yes.

He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm, a push and pull that sent sparks racing along your nerves. His lips found yours, a lazy, open-mouthed kiss, his beard a rough contrast to the softness.

It felt good. Different. Your hands tightened on his back, urging him closer, and he obliged, his thrusts speeding up.

"Do you like that?" he murmured.

"Yes," you whispered, a flush warming your skin.

His hands tangled in your hair, his thumbs tracing the line of your cheekbones. He watched you as he moved, a look of intense concentration and pleasure on his face.

One of his hands slipped between you, finding the little bud where the pleasure coiled, and began to stroke.

The tension returned, the delicious build of it, the heat. Your hands clutched his chest, a breathy whimper on your lips.

"Look at me," he demanded, a raw, possessive edge to the words.

Your eyes met his, and you couldn't have looked away if you wanted to. The world seemed to shrink to the small space between your bodies, to the pleasure building inside you, the feel of him.

You knew what he meant now, about the best part. As you neared the edge, the moment before falling, a sense of freedom, a connection so intimate and deep it almost scared you.

And when the climax took you, the world fractured, everything unspooling, and you were clinging to him, nails scratching down his chest. He moved faster, harder, until with a groan, his own pleasure crashed over him, his hips stilling.

For a long moment, he just stayed there, inside you, his face buried in the crook of your neck. And then, he kissed your cheek and slowly rolled onto his side.

His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm. One hand came up, rubbing a palm across his face. He looked spent, the tension gone from his body.

You did what you had always done before. You turned onto your side, facing away from him, and closed your eyes.

But a strong arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you back against him, his body a wall of warmth.

"What are you doing all the way over there?" he mumbled, his lips brushing the shell of your ear.

You felt a laugh bubbling up, and tried to smother it. You had always been taught that men wanted their sleep undisturbed.

"I... I wasn't sure if you wanted me near," you managed, rolling over to face him.

"Always," he replied, his hand sliding down your hip, pulling your leg up and hitching it over his.

"My former husband used to kick me out of the bed."

A shadow crossed his face, a fleeting expression of rage, quickly replaced by amusement.

"I do hope you are jesting," he replied, his hand squeezing the curve of your backside.

You shook your head, a giggle escaping.

"That man was a fool," Cregan said, his hand drifting over the swell of your breast. "To have a woman like you, and to send you away."

You leaned forward, nuzzling the hollow of his throat. He felt warmer than the furs, his heartbeat a steady, reassuring rhythm against your skin.

"I'm sorry," you murmured, tracing the line of his jaw with a fingertip. "For the loss of your first wife... I am sure she was a wonderful woman."

He made a soft, sad sound, and gently kissed the top of your head. "She was. She would have liked you."

You weren't sure what to say to that, so you just snuggled closer, one of your hands finding his, threading your fingers through his.

"We will make a good life, you and I," he said softly, his voice heavy with sleep. "I will not be a demanding husband, or a cruel lord. I promise."

You lifted your head, a strange tightness in your throat. "I trust you."

His eyes opened at that, meeting yours. He smiled, the warmth in his gaze filling you. "And if the gods bless us with a child, I will be a loving father."

A single tear escaped, and he wiped it away with his thumb.

"Don't cry," he whispered. "It's our wedding night, after all. There should be no sadness here."

"Happy tears," you managed. "I am very happy."

"Good," he said. And then, his lips touched yours, and you felt yourself melting into his arms.

"I think I like wedding nights," you murmured, a smile curling the corners of your lips.

"Well then," he said, a wicked glint in his eye, "I'll make sure the rest are just as enjoyable."

The northern air was cold and biting, you felt it more than each clash of practice blades ringing through a hidden corner of the godswood.

You ducked under Robb's swing, his sword hissing past your ear, a miss so close it stirred the loose strands of hair escaping your braid. You came up inside his guard, the flat of your blade slamming into his ribs. A grunt of surprise, a flicker of annoyance in those blue eyes. He was too used to winning. Before you could press your advantage, another presence closed in.

Jon moved in silence behind you, every motion spare, deliberate. He feinted high, then swept low, forcing you to leap back to avoid a sharp rap against the back of your thighs. You found yourself sandwiched between them, the familiar dance now feeling strangely different.

Perhaps it was because this was the last time. Tomorrow, you would be in a wheelhouse rumbling south, bound for King's Landing. A gift, your father called it, a place for you to learn courtly graces and, perhaps, make an advantageous match.

But you would have rather stayed with your two favorite northern boys, your best friends since you were all old enough to hold wooden swords. Another kind of heat bloomed beneath the sweat and strain, one you didn’t dare name.

Robb grinned, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his glove. "Getting tired?" he taunted, circling to your left. "All that courtly training must be softening you."

"You're just mad I scored two hits on you, my lord," you shot back, a smirk playing on your lips.

Your gaze flicked to Jon, who remained serious, his dark eyes watchful. "What about you, Jon? No witty remark?"

He offered the barest hint of a smile. "I prefer to let my sword do the talking."

"Then both of you better start talking better," you challenged, dropping into a ready stance. "Or I'll be the one telling tales in the capital of how I bested the future Lord of Winterfell and a Night's Watch recruit."

Before they could react, you lunged. Not at one, but between them, a fluid pivot that had you swinging your blade in a wide arc. It was a reckless, foolish move, meant to impress. Instead, your boot caught a root. The world tilted.

A yelp escaped your lips as you twisted midair, landing hard on your backside. The breath left your lungs, and your sword skittered into the moss. Silence descended, thick and heavy. You lay there, stunned, your face burning with a mixture of pain and humiliation.

Jon and Robb both burst into laughter, but it wasn't unkind. They dropped their swords and were at your side in an instant.

"That was the stupidest move I have ever seen," Robb gasped, grinning as he offered you a hand.

You slapped it away. "Leave me be. Let me die of shame here." But your lips twitched despite yourself.

Jon plopped down beside you, wrapping his arm around you."You almost had us."

"I did have you," you insisted, pushing him off playfully. "Until this wretched tree decided to conspire against me."

Their laughter subsided, replaced by a lingering quiet. They sat on either side of you, their shoulders brushing yours.

"I will miss you both terribly," you confessed, your voice barely a whisper. "It will be dreadfully dull in the capital."

Robb's smile faded. "We'll miss you more," he said, his voice low and earnest.

"Aye," Jon added, his gaze lingering a moment too long on your lips. "Winterfell won't be the same."

"My father wants me to try and gain the attention of Renly Baratheon, or even Joffrey," you said, the name tasting like ash in your mouth. "I fear his ambition will see me married to someone I can't stand."

Robb let out a sigh and gently took your hand. "I hope you find someone worthy of you." He leaned closer, his voice dropping. "Someone who makes you feel... good. Better than good."

"I would rather stay here," you admitted, your eyes shifting from Robb to Jon and back again. “No marriage or title, not a single penny to my name if I could remain in the north."

"And we'd have you," Jon said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to hum right through you.

"You could marry Jon, that would really anger your father," Robb teased, elbowing you in the ribs.

"And what would you be, then, my lord?" you asked, your voice laced with playful challenge.

Robb's eyes darkened. "Your other lover, obviously."

You giggled. "Would that be alright with you, Jon?" You turned to face him, looking at him with wide innocent eyes.

A slow, wry smile spread across Jon’s face. "I could be convinced."

Robb laughed and suddenly stood up, his arms wide as he made a mock announcement. "Then it is settled! I shall announce to our fathers that Jon and I shall both be your husbands."

You laughed despite yourself, standing and looping your arm in his. "And how will that work, my lord? Will you take me in the morning and he takes me in the evening?" Your voice was light, but the question hung in the air, heavy with implication.

"If you have the stamina," Robb shot back, his blue eyes glinting.

Jon got to his feet too, his laughter a rare and precious sound. He pulled you close by your waist. "We’ll take turns," he said. "Robb one night, me the next."

"And when you both want the same night?" you teased, pressing your hands into his chest, Robb behind you, his hands on your hips.

"Then we share," they said in unison.

All three of you fell into a fit of giggles, a rare moment of pure joy and freedom.

It was your laughter that finally died first, your smile fading as you looked between them. "What a life that would be," you sighed, your gaze lingering on Jon's face, then Robb's. "Being fought over and shared by the two most handsome men in Winterfell."

"In the north, you mean," Robb corrected, his hands tightening on your hips, pulling you back against him.

You laughed, the sound echoing through the godswood. "You two are ridiculous."

But as you spoke, your heart stuttered, realizing how close they both were. How much the silly idea actually sounded wonderful.

A wild, reckless impulse surged through you. It was said in jest, but it was the truth, you wanted them both. Something to take with you. A memory of home, of them, that no southern lord could ever erase.

You pushed both of them back, laughter still dancing in your eyes. "Well then, whoever catches me first can have the first kiss," you declared.

Before they could process your words, you turned and fled, the fabric of your tunic fluttering as you sprinted through the woods. The sound of their startled laughter quickly gave way to the pounding of footsteps behind you.

You weaved through the ancient trees, your heart hammering against your ribs. But you didn't get far. Jon's arms closed around your waist, lifting you off your feet, squealing as he spun you around. You were still giggling when he set you down, your back pressed against the rough bark of the nearest tree.

"I believe I won," he murmured, his dark eyes intense.

Robb caught up a moment later, breathless but grinning. "A lucky catch, Snow. I was just about to grab her."

"I was always faster than you," Jon retorted, but his gaze never left yours.

You looked from one to the other, your breathless laughter quieting. You knew Jon nor Robb would ever press their advantage. They were always so kind and honorable. But you wanted it to be them. The first men to ever kiss you. The first men to ever touch you.

"I suppose you did," you said to Jon, your voice a little shaky. “Take your prize, then.”

His gaze dropped to your lips. He leaned in slowly, giving you time to pull away. You didn't. You leaned in too, meeting him halfway. His lips were softer than you imagined, hesitant at first, then firm and sure, tasting of the northern air and something uniquely him.

You quickly pulled apart as quickly as you'd met. Jon smiled at you, a true, genuine smile that reached his eyes.

You turned to Robb, your cheeks flushed, a silent question in your eyes.

He didn't need to be asked. He closed the distance between you, his hand coming up to cup your cheek. His kiss was different from Jon's. It was confident, demanding, a claim. 

When he pulled away, you were breathless, your head spinning. You were sandwiched between them again, but this time there were no swords, no sparring. Just the heat of their bodies and the thunder of your own heart.

"Well," you said softly, your voice barely audible. "This is... new."

"A good new," Jon said, his thumb stroking your hip.

"A very good new," Robb agreed, his lips trailing down your neck.

"My father would kill us if he saw us," you whispered, but there was no real fear in your voice, only a thrill.

"Aye, he would," Robb murmured against your skin. "But he won't. We're alone."

You shivered as he nipped at your earlobe, your hands coming up to tangle in his auburn hair. Jon's hands moved from your hips to your waist, pulling you back against him, his lips finding the other side of your neck.

You were lost. Lost in the sensation, the sheer, overwhelming pleasure of it all. You'd never felt anything like this before, never imagined it could be like this.

A sudden surge of anxiety flickered through you. What were you doing? This was madness. You pushed them both back, your chest rising and falling.

"We can't," you panted. "We shouldn't."

Robb's eyes were dark with desire, but there was a question in them. "Do you want to stop?"

You looked at Jon, at the earnest hope in his dark eyes. You looked at Robb, at the confident smirk playing on his lips. You thought of King's Landing, of the gilded cage that awaited you, of the strangers you would be forced to please.

"No," you whispered, the word a surrender. "I don't."

That was all the encouragement they needed. Robb grabbed your hand and started guiding you towards a small clearing you all knew of, a hidden spot where you'd often sneak away to talk as children. Jon followed behind, his hand resting on the small of your back.

The clearing was bathed in the dappled sunlight of the late afternoon. Memories were made in a sacred, secret place like this.

Robb turned to you, pulling you in for another kiss, this one deeper, more urgent. Jon came up behind you, his hands sliding around your waist to rest on your stomach. He pressed a soft kiss to your shoulder, then another, higher up on your neck.

You arched your head back against Jon's shoulder, a soft moan escaping your lips as Robb's hands roamed over your body. He pulled away from the kiss to tug at the hem of your tunic.

"May I?" he asked, his voice low and respectful.

You could only nod, your breath catching in your throat. He slowly unlaced your your tunic, his eyes never leaving yours. Jon's hands moved from your stomach to your back, helping pull it off your shoulders.

You stood before them in just your smallclothes, the cool northern air raising goosebumps on your flesh. You felt exposed, vulnerable, but the way they looked at you. With such reverence, such awe, it made you feel powerful.

"I confess I have thought often about what you look like under your clothes," Robb said, a tinge of pink blooming on his cheeks. 

"Aye," Jon added, his hands tracing patterns on your back.

You smiled, pulling them both closer. "And now you know."

Robb's gaze dropped to your chest, his hand coming up to cup your breast through the thin fabric. "You are even more beautiful than I imagined."

Jon's lips found that sensitive spot just below your ear, his hand moving around to join Robb's on your other breast. You gasped, your body arching into their touch.

"You are both too overdressed, don't leave me waiting," you managed to say.

They both chuckled, their hands leaving you for a moment as they quickly shed their own tunics and breaches. You watched them, your heart pounding. You had seen them without their shirts before, of course, during training sessions, but this was different. This was not the familiar sight of your childhood friends, but the breathtaking view of two men in their prime.

You couldn't help but reach out, your hands exploring the hard planes of their chests, the ridges of their stomachs. The three of you stood there for a long moment, just touching, just looking.

"...I fear I have no experience in this matter," Jon admitted, his voice a low rumble.

"Nor I," Robb said. "But I am a fast learner."

You smiled, taking both of their hands and pulling them closer. "Then we will learn together."

You giggled as they touched and kissed you, Robb's hand moved between your thighs. He gently parted your legs, his fingers stroking you under the fabric. You moaned, leaning back on Jon for support, your head resting against his shoulder.

"The sounds you make," Jon whispered in your ear. "I could listen to them all day."

Robb slowly eased a finger inside you, and you gasped at the intrusion, a strange, pleasurable ache spreading through you.

"Is this alright?" he asked, his voice tight with restraint.

"Yes," you breathed. "More."

He added another finger, moving them in and out of you in a slow, deliberate rhythm. Jon's hand moved from your breast to your chin, turning your head so he could kiss you His tongue swept into your mouth, a slow, sensual dance that mirrored the movement of Robb's fingers.

You could feel the hard press of their cocks against you. One against the small of your back, the other against the side of your thigh. You reached out and touched each, stroking them.

They both let out a soft groan, pressing themselves closer to you. Robb suddenly pulled his hand away from you, panting at the way you were touching him. "I'm- I'm going to-" he panted.

You felt him spill over your hand. His whole body shuddered against yours. You smiled, watching his face as he rode out his pleasure. He was beautiful, auburn curls plastered to his forehead with sweat, his face flushed.

"That was... fast," he panted, a little embarrassed.

You just leaned in and kissed him. "It was perfect."

You turned to face Jon, who was watching you with dark, intense eyes. Without a word he backed you up against a nearby tree, lifting you into his arms, his hands squeezing your bottom. You wrapped your legs around his waist, his cock pressing against your core. He held you there for a moment, his gaze locked with yours.

"May I have the honor?" he asked.

You nodded, and he slowly lowered you onto his length. You gasped as he stretched you, a mix of pain and pleasure that took your breath away. He filled you completely, and for a moment, you just held each other, joined as one.

The bark against your back chafed, making you wince. Jon noticed and tried to shift you.

Robb, having recovered, quickly positioned himself behind you, his back against the tree. "Here," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Lean on me."

You leaned back against Robb's chest, his arms wrapping around your waist, his hands on your hips. Jon began to move, slowly at first, then faster, finding a rhythm that had you gasping.

It was clumsy and rushed, Jon's lips on your neck, Robb's hands on your body, the scent of pine and damp earth. You could hear Jon's harsh pants in your ear, could feel Robb's heart hammering against your back. You were a tangle of limbs, a mess of tangled hair and heaving chests.

You were so close, your whole body tightening like a bowstring. Jon's grip on your hips tightened, his thrusts becoming erratic. He let out a low groan, burying his face in your neck as pulled out, spilling his release on your stomach.

He slumped against you, both of you breathing heavily, then he began to chuckle. Robb joined in, his chest vibrating against your back.

"I don't think we did that right," Jon said, his voice muffled by your hair.

Jon set you down gently and Robb turned you around in his arms. "You didn't find your pleasure, did you?" he asked.

"I almost did," you said, your voice still breathless.

"Perhaps I can try?" He asked, a twinkle of confidence in his blue eyes.

"What are you going to do?" You ask, biting your lip.

He just grinned, and scooped you up, his arms supporting your back and under your knees. "Hold onto my shoulders," he instructed.

You did, and he gently lowered himself down onto the mossy ground, setting you on top of him. Your breath caught, realizing what he meant.

"This will work better," he said, his eyes sparkling.

Jon let out a sigh, "don't make me look bad brother," he teased, moving behind you, reaching out to brush a strand of hair out of your face.

Robb just grinned, his hand moving between your legs. You gasped at the touch, already sensitive. "One of us has to be better," he shot back.

"Stop, this is not a tourney," you giggled. "And I am not a prize."

"Of course not, my lady," Robb said, his fingers moving in a slow, delicious pattern. "We are merely two knights fighting for your favor."

Jon just shook his head, rolling his eyes, but you could tell he was fighting a smile. You leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips.

"Don't worry, Jon, I won't tell a soul of this," you said.

"I will hold you to that, my lady," he said, a playful glint in his eye.

Robb's hands were on your hips now, guiding you down onto his cock. You let out a soft sigh, it felt so good, but it still burned, not used to the feeling yet.

"Does it hurt?" Robb asked, his eyes dark with lust, but concerned.

"A little," you confessed, bracing yourself against his chest.

"Tell me if it gets too much," he said.

Slowly, he began to move, guiding you with his hands. You gasped, the sensation overwhelming. It was so different from when Jon had been inside you. But just as good, the pleasure building quickly.

You could hear Robb's soft groans beneath you, the sound sending a thrill of excitement through you. Jon leaned in, his lips ghosting over your neck, his hands tangling in your hair.

You lost yourself in the moment, in the sensations, something was building inside you, like a storm about to break.

"I think... Something is happening," you said, your voice a soft gasp.

"Just let it happen," Jon whispered in your ear, his hand caressing your cheek.

"I can't, I don't know what-"

"Trust us," Robb said, his grip tightening.

The pressure inside you built and built until it snapped, a wave of pleasure rushing through you. Your whole body shuddered, a cry escaping your lips. It was like nothing you'd ever felt before, the sensation so intense it almost hurt.

Robb groaned beneath you, his own pleasure cresting. He quickly lifted you off of him, before his own release came. He spilled over his hand, his face a mask of pure bliss.

You all collapsed together, a mess of tangled limbs and sweaty skin, laughing, kissing, talking. You knew this could not last, this fragile, beautiful thing that had grown between the three of you. It was too wild, too dangerous.

"Promise to always remember this," you whispered, the afternoon sunlight fading to a dusky golden glow. "Even if you are inside another woman." You added with a giggle.

Robb's eyes twinkled. "I don't think I'll be able to look at any other woman without remembering this."

Jon just gave a short laugh. "I know I won't."

"Promise?" you asked, holding out your pinky fingers.

Robb hooked his pinky finger around yours, grinning. "Promise."

"Promise," Jon repeated, hooking his finger with the other two.

"And may your future husband weep every time you lay with him, knowing he can never give you what we have," Robb declared.

You all fell into a fit of laughter, holding each other close as the shadows grew longer.

"I fear we must get back," Jon said, getting to his feet and helping you up.

"Aye, Mother will be wondering where I've gone," Robb said, picking leaves out of your hair.

You smiled, despite the pang of sadness in your heart, helping each other get dressed, stealing kisses and soft touches.

As you stepped out of the woods, the castle looming before you, you felt a sense of dread. It was too easy to forget here, in the safety of Winterfell, that the world beyond was cruel and harsh. That it would always seek to tear things apart.

"I will always remember this," Jon said quietly, taking your hand.

"Me too," Robb added, taking your other.

You squeezed their hands, your heart aching. "Better than any bit of sparring."

Robb and Jon shared a smile, then they both leaned in and kissed you on either cheek.

"I'll miss you," Jon said softly.

"Aye, always," Robb added.

They both reluctantly let go of your hands and started heading towards the castle. You watched them, a smile on your lips, a heavy ache in your chest.

"Jon! Robb!" You called out suddenly.

They both turned, their eyes bright with hope.

"If... If I ever return to Winterfell," you said, swallowing the lump in your throat. "Will you... will you find me? In the godswood?"

Jon nodded, a gentle smile on his face. "Of course, my lady."

"Whenever you need us," Robb added.

You watched them walk away, tears threatening to spill.

"Thank you," you whispered, the words carried away on the wind.

The north is always cold and wild and unforgiving. But it had given you this. This beautiful memory. And you would always carry it with you always.