#grey wind

———————

Robb Stark was confident, he was well aware that he was good looking and that he had a well defined physique. But for whatever reason, anytime he tried to speak with you, that confidence vanished.

You were his mothers ward who had moved to the North when you were just young. It was easy to talk to you when he was younger, when you were both just children. There was no pressure to be perfect then, but now that you had both grown, Robb was determined to be perfect for you. He was determined to make you swoon.

Marriage was something that Robb was always aware about, as the heir to Winterfell and future Warden of the North, he would have to wed. At different feasts and gatherings other Northern lords and ladies would practically throw their daughters at him but none of them stuck. Ned was not blind when it came to young love and he could see the way his son stared at you. So after much discussion with him as well as Catelyn, Robb would be allowed to begin courting you.

But even with permission from his parents, Robb still struggled. So rather than going to Sansa who was your closest friend or his father who had experience in winning a woman’s heart, he went to Theon for advice. Looking back on it, it was an awful idea and even Robb thought some—all—of what Theon suggested was…questionable.

“Girls don’t like it when you’re real sweet on them, it makes you look weak.”

“Steal her books when she’s reading! Hold 'em above her head to show off your height!”

“Be cold, act as though you don’t care what she thinks, that drives girls mad.”

“Every other Lord and Lordling is going to be playing for her hand the same nice way, tease her, annoy her, that way you’ll stand out.” 

“Telling a girl you hate her dress is the fastest way to get her naked, even if you love her dress.”

Robb did scold Theon for that last one. In fact, Robb didn’t like any of the advice. It went against everything his father had raised him to be. Robb didn’t want to tease you, to annoy you, or treat you badly. But Theon was older so against his better judgement, Robb trusted him.

It had started off simple, with Robb hardly looking at you at the dining table. Every time he would, Theon would kick his shin to remind him that he’s meant to be ignoring you. It was getting hard though, especially when he saw the small frown on your face out of the corner of his eye. You managed to quickly put on a smile and go back to your conversation with Sansa but still you’d glance at him every few moments to see if he was looking over. Then it escalated, Robb would take your quills during lessons and even your books.

Little did he know that you went to Sansa’s chambers to complain about his behavior.

“I just don’t understand,” you say softly before flopping onto her bed.

Lady who was laying down on the floor came over to nudge her nose against your leg, just like the other wolves, Lady always craved attention. Lady and Grey Wind were particularly needy when it came to wanting you to pet them and you always welcomed them. 

“I’ve been telling you for years that he’s a fool. How in love you are with him…it will never make sense to me.”

You pull your head up and sigh, “You don’t get it because he’s your brother,” you sit up before reaching down to pet Lady’s head, “it would be weird if you got it.”

“Regardless, he’s an idiot. Especially with how he’s acting now.”

“He isn’t acting like himself!” you say, frustrated, "he’s acting like…Theon…Gods, I miss him being sweet like when he’d pull out my chair for me in the morning, when he’d get my cloak for me if we were all to go out, when he brought me flowers because I was sad—now he won’t even look at me!”

“Like I said, idiot.”

“I’ve always thought…I thought maybe was courting me…maybe unofficially until he would ask properly but now…I think he hates me!” 

You sigh once more and pull your legs to your chest. Sansa could tell how upset you were and as your best friend, she wanted nothing more than to cheer you up.

“Tonight,” she says, changing the subject, “Father said that Maester Luwin believes it’ll snow a lot tonight, that lots will stick. Tomorrow we’ll go play in the snow, we can build how we used to!”

“Really?” you perk up a bit, your lip quirking up into a small smile.

You weren’t sure if it had to do with the fact that you moved to the North at such a young age but you absolutely adored the snow and the cold which was something that set you apart from the other Southern ladies. Just another reason that Robb had fallen hopelessly in love with you.  

Sansa nods, smiling excitedly at the idea of getting to play in the snow and at the fact she had managed to make you smile.

True to her word, before you would even wake normally, Sansa was knocking on your door to go outside. You both bundled in your warmest furs and made your way down to the courtyard which was coated in fresh snow. You found a nice spot off to the side where you wouldn’t be in anyone’s way if people had to get through quickly. But you knew the Starks, and you knew the Starklings; when it snowed this way, you would all often play in the courtyard rather than go to your lessons.

Jon and Robb were always early risers but it seemed they had been woken even earlier by Arya, Bran, and Rickon who wanted to have a snowball fight. You were sure that Lord and Lady Stark would soon find their way outside as well as watch over everyone with fond eyes. 

You noted Sansa’s watchful gaze on you when Robb had entered the courtyard. But if he wouldn’t look at you, you wouldn’t look at him either. Instead, you focused your attention entirely on the snow castle in front of you. Since you had gotten outside, you and Sansa had been working on creating a minarture Winterfell. Your fingers were freezing but it was well worth it.

You could hear the laughter from the youngest Starks who were pelting their eldest brothers with snow. You did want to join them but you couldn’t, you wouldn’t. 

Theon was the last one to rise as per usual and he grinned at Robb when he entered the courtyard. He grumbles when he’s pelted with snow by Bran but it just makes him grin as he gets an idea after seeing the snow castle.

The snowball fight stops but only for a second so that Theon is able to talk to Robb, “This is your chance,”

“What?”

“Throw some snow at them while they’re working on whatever it is they’re making,” he half points towards you and Sansa.

“Do not do that,” Jon cuts in, “you’re just gonna make her mad, and Sansa too.”

“That’s the point,” Theon says as if it’s obvious, “Girls love that.”

“I don’t think they do,” Jon answers, making Theon narrow his eyes at him.

“And what do you know about girls, Snow?”

“Clearly more than you, Greyjoy.”

“Alright, enough!” Robb says suddenly, “I…I don’t like that idea Theon, I don’t want her to hate me.”

“You want her to think she does, but all that frustration is going to manefist…” Theon does a gesture making Jon roll his eyes.

“I told you to stop talking about her like that,” Robb reminds the Greyjoy boy who clicks his tongue in response.

“Fine, fine, but trust me,” Theon bends down to pick up a handful of snow, “you’ll be thanking me!” and then he tosses it towards you.

The snow hits you in the back of the head making you and Sansa both screech. You turn to look over your shoulder and when you do, you’re hit right in the face with more snow. And finally, a third snowball is thrown, landing right in the middle of the miniature Winterfell. When you wipe the snow from your eyes you see Robb, standing front and center and Theon behind him laughing. Rickon, Arya, and Bran all begin to laugh as well making the humiliation sting even more.

“They’re playing now too!” Rickon giggles, running over to you so he can throw snow as well.

Bran and Arya follow suit, now tossing snowballs at Sansa as well. And pretty soon, the tiny Winterfell you had spent all morning making, was completely destroyed.

You sit in shock for a minute before Sansa shoves Arya away, yelling at her in a way that told Arya this wasn’t her older sister's usual anger or annoyance. That's when the younger girl finally looks at you, hair dripping wet with melted snow, red cheeks, and the tiny tears that were pricking the corners of your eyes.

Arya backs away and tugs Bran with her, “Let’s go play somewhere else,” Rickon was a bit confused by the sudden change but follows anyways.

Sansa pulls you up from the ground and looks at her older brother. Robb looks like a kicked puppy as Theon drags him away cackling, Jon right behind them shaking his head.

You were more chilled now, some of the snow had snuck its way under your furs and melted, effectively freezing you. You quickly make your way back to your chambers to get out of the wet clothes. You were angry, it took you and Sansa so long to build that castle. You wouldn’t have been as bad if it was an accident but you knew it was intentional from Theon’s laughter. Most of all, you felt humiliated, the boy you’ve fancied since you arrived at Winterfell had purposefully embarrassed you in front of everyone in the courtyard, you were humiliated in front of him.

Sansa had offered to stay with you, to help you change but you declined the offer, stating that you wanted to be alone. So she decided she was going to confront Robb on the matter. It was easy enough to find him, he was sitting outside sulking as well. Theon and Jon took one look at the angry expression on her face and bolted.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I just—“

“You just what? You’ve been acting like…like…like an arse lately! You’ve been treating her terribly!”

“I—“

“I’m telling father about this! And mother too! They would never allow you to treat anyone that way, especially a lady!” she spins on her heel.

“Wait! Sansa, please!” Robb sighs, “I just, I like her a lot…”

Sansa narrows her eyes and turns back around, “You what? You like her?”

“Yes, I want…I would like to court her…to marry her…I don’t just like her, I’m in love with her.”

Sansa laughs at the ridiculousness, “You’re in love with her but you’ve been stealing her things? You’ve been taunting her endlessly? You’ve been ignoring her? And now today, you humiliate her!”

“I was just doing what Theon said I should!”

“You went to Theon for advice?” She asks, exasperated. 

“He has experience with women!”

Sansa scoffs, “With whores,” she whispers, “whores he has paid to spend time with him… to… engage… in acts…”

She shakes her head, no longer whispering, “Gods, you’re an absolute moron! You should have come to me! Or father!”

“You? You would have told her immediately!”

“Oh I would not have!”

“Yes you would have!”

“The most I would have done is made sure she wore her best dress and had her hair done perfectly when you’d ask!”

“I’m sure,” he rolls his eyes, leaning back before sighing, “It doesn’t matter now, I’ve ruined it by being a fool.”

“You’ve embarrassed her, Robb… and…” She pauses, not wanting to betray her friend's trust but on the other hand, she wanted to help her brother right his wrong.

“And?”

“And…she’s fancied you for ages, that’s why she’s so upset. You need to fix this.”

“She fancies me?”

Sansa nods.

“She actually fancies me?!”

“Yes, Gods, Robb. I just said that.”

“I need to fix this.”

“I just said that as well.”

Now that Robb was aware that he had fucked up, he was determined to fix it. Then he would make you swoon.

He was done with Theon’s advice.

While many would have seen Robb heading to your chambers alone as improper or scandalous, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He needed to fix this immediately. But he knew that you wouldn’t open the door for him.

“Go away Lady!” You yell when you hear a direwolf whining outside your door.

The wolf does not leave and begins to paw at the door. Letting out a sigh, you get up from your bed. You did love the wolves and their company so maybe cuddling with Lady would make you feel better. But when you open the door you’re not greeted by Lady, you’re greeted by Grey Wind who is holding a single red rose in his mouth.

As upset as you were with Robb, you could never be upset with his direwolf. You let out a little laugh, and crouch down to pat his head before taking the rose from his mouth. Grey Wind makes a noise of content and walks into the room, he stretches out by the fire. Robb would definitely be searching for his wolf soon and you grin at the idea of him running around frantically looking.

You stand quickly, ready to shut the door and trap Grey Wind in your chambers but before you can, Robb appears in the doorway.

“Please don’t shut the door.”

He’s holding a bouquet of red roses and a plate of your favorite strawberry tarts. You look at him, then at the flower in your hand, then at Grey Wind, and then at him once more.

“Why shouldn’t I?” 

“Because I’m in love with you.”

“Robb—“

“I think I always have been, ever since you first came to Winterfell. Since the day you got out of your carriage I have loved you.”

You're silent and Robb feels as though he is going to cry, perhaps Sansa had lied to him as a cruel joke, a way to get revenge for what had happened in the courtyard.

“Say something please,” he begs.

“You humiliated me today, you’ve been treating me awful for the past week. How does that in any way convey that you love me?”

“And I am so sorry for that… I just, I wanted so badly to impress you and I took advice from Theon which I shouldn’t have… I actually wasn’t the one to throw the snow, that was Theon… I should have just spoken with you or Sansa… or anyone other than Theon.”

“You went to Theon… for advice?”

“Yes… I know—“

“Theon… Greyjoy?”

“Do you know any other Theon’s?” he asks with a hesitant smile.

A hesitant smile that was contagious as it took over your face as you began to laugh, “You’re an idiot, Robb Stark.”

His face flushes bright red, making you laugh more. You take the plate of tarts from him and set them to the side before taking the roses as well.

“You’re an idiot, but you’re my idiot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” You smile, allowing him to pull you into a hug which you practically melt into.

Robb looks down at you in his arms and holds you tighter before leaning down and pressing a kiss to your head, “Perhaps Theon was helpful…” he jests.

“Oh absolutely not.”

You almost laughed. Not because it was funny, in part the absurdity of it was, but because you did not know what else to do with the honesty of it. Men did not usually bother saying such things to you. They usually just told you what would happen and expected you to arrange your face into gratitude.

"Then let me tell you what I want," you said, carefully, testing how much he actually cared. "I want to be useful. Not paraded about in silk to be admired like a horse at market, not tucked behind walls because someone decided I am too delicate for the world outside them. I could help people. Not just my people, not just some abstract notion of my people, but actual people, with actual suffering, and instead I am told I am too fragile, too precious, too much a lady to be trusted with anything that matters."

"That sounds exhausting," Robb said.

"It is."

"I didn't mean the world you're describing. I meant carrying that anger around all day."

You looked at him properly then. "You think I'm angry."

"I think you're right to be." He said it plainly, without the flourish men usually gave such statements when they wanted credit for saying them. "My mother has spent years making certain the smallfolk of Winterfell know they are not forgotten by the lords who rule over them. She rides out. She listens. She settles disputes with her own hands when she must. In the North, the good lords do not hide from their people behind gates and titles. They cannot afford to. The winters are too long and too cruel for anyone to survive on pride alone."

"That is your mother," you said. "Not necessarily what will be expected of me."

"It could be exactly what's expected of you." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, and there was something almost boyish in the eagerness of it, though nothing else about him was boyish at all. "If you were my lady wife, you would not be shut away. I would not want that even if you did. I have watched what it does to a place when the lord's family hides from it. I don't intend to make that mistake."

"You keep saying if."

"I won't force a lady to marry me."

"It's not you forcing so much as it is my duty."

"If you were my lady wife I would not do anything you would not wish, I would not force you to carry out your 'duties' and anything that encompases that."

For one unguarded moment, you let yourself want to believe him.

"You're a good man," you said, and meant it, which surprised you more than it should have. "But I don't think it's possible. Not really. Not the way you mean it. There will always be someone reminding me what a lady is meant to do, and what she is not, and eventually you will be too busy being a lord to remember what you promised a girl in a garden."

"I don't forget my promises."

"Everyone says that before they've had the chance to break one."

"You say that as if you have faced many a broken promise."

"Your surprise tells me you have not." you said, plainly. "I do not have the luxury of believing promises. A mans word such as your own holds little weight, especially without a witness."

"Then hold me to it."

You looked at him properly then, certain you had misheard. "What?"

"If I forget," Robb said, "you must be the one to remind me. That seems only fair. I don't want a wife who simply trusts I'll keep my word and says nothing when I don't. I want one who'll tell me plainly when I've been a fool, and expect me to do better because of it." He said it so easily, as though the idea had cost him nothing at all to arrive at, though you suspected it had cost him rather a lot to say it out loud to a girl who had spent the whole conversation making it clear she didn't want him.

"That isn't how it works," you said, but softer than you meant it. "Wives don't correct their lords."

"Mine will."

"You say that now."

"I say it because I mean it." He rose from the bench, and it struck you again, unwillingly, how well he wore his own height, how the last of the sun caught in his hair and made him look like something out of one of the songs you had always privately thought were exaggerating. It was an inconvenient thing to notice about a man you had every intention of resenting. "I don't want an ornament, sitting quiet in my hall while I forget she has a mind of her own. I want an equal. Someone who'll argue with me when I deserve it, and who I'll have the sense to listen to."

You did not know what to do with the warmth that spread through you at that, unbidden and entirely unwelcome. It would have been easier if he were cruel. It would have been easier if he were dull, or vain, or one of the hundred lords you had already imagined and dreaded, someone you could hate cleanly and be done with it. It was not easier. He was none of those things, and worse than that, he seemed to actually mean every word, and some small, traitorous part of you wanted very badly to believe him.

"You don't know me," you said. "You've met me once."

"Then let me meet you again. And again after that, until you believe me." He held your gaze, and there was nothing performative in it, no courtly flourish, just a plain, steady sort of certainty that unsettled you more than any of his prettier words had. "I'm not asking you to trust me today or tomorrow or even in the next year. I'm only asking you not to have already decided against me."

You had not decided. That was the truth of it, however much you wished otherwise. You had walked into this garden certain of your own bitterness, and you were walking out of it less certain than you had any right to be, and you resented him faintly for that too, for making the simple, comfortable anger so much harder to hold onto.

"You're a good man," you said again, quieter this time, and meant it more than you wanted to. "That's rather the trouble."

"Why is that trouble?"

"Because it would be so much simpler if you weren't."

Something shifted in his face at that, some flicker of understanding, as though he had heard the thing underneath the words rather than the words themselves. He did not press you further. He only inclined his head, the way a man does when he has decided to let a matter rest for tonight, confident there will be other nights to raise it again.

"One day it will be simple," he said, a small smile creeping up his features. "That is if you are my lady wife."

You laughed, a real genuine and unguarded sound that left you lips before you could stop it. Face flushing a red of red you did not know it could turn as abruptly stopped.

You stood then, because you did not trust yourself to stay a moment longer without giving away more than you intended, and because whatever this feeling was, warm and unfamiliar and entirely inconvenient, you were not yet ready to look at it directly.

"Thank you my lord," you nodded at him avoiding his eyes, you could still see a playful smile on his lips, "I look forward to our next meeting where we are to be wed."

"If." he corrected, voice quieter now as if he were trading some secret with you that your maid outside was not allowed to hear.

"If." you echoed back, voice as small as his.

You nodded quickly and left him standing there among the winter roses, and if you had looked back you might have seen that he did not look disappointed, only thoughtful, the way a man looks when he has been given a puzzle he intends to solve and rather likes the shape of it.

But you did not look back. Not because you did not want to. Because you knew if you looked back your fate would be sealed and you would forever be wondering what if...?

★・・・・・・★

Robb thought about the conversation more than he meant to.

He turned it over that evening while his squire fussed with the buckles of his jerkin, and again at supper, half listening while his mother spoke of the wedding preparations, the guests already arriving, the northern lords who would want to see their future lady with their own eyes.

Word of your beauty had traveled well ahead of you, whispered about in halls that had never once laid eyes on you, since your father had kept you closer than any of his other daughters and turned down every offer of betrothal that came before Robb's.

When his father first suggested the idea to Robb, he was taken aback. He'd heard the stories of the countless rejections other men had faced from you, or rather from your father; but being heir to Winterfell meant Robb came with an offer no father could easily ignore, the promise of power, even if it meant parting with the jewel of his household.

The first thing he did once he'd given his blessing to his parents to confirm the betrothal was tell Jon and Theon, mostly because he knew if he didn't tell them himself they'd hear some mangled version of it from a stable boy by supper and never let him live down the difference.

He knew their reactions would be interesting. He didn't quite expect this.

Theon nearly fell off his chair. "You're betrothed. To her?"

"You say that like you know who she is."

"Nobody knows who she is, that's rather the point." Theon leaned forward, delighted, the way he got whenever a rumor landed in his lap fully formed. "A father who's turned down half the eligible lords in Westeros, a girl nobody's laid eyes on since she could walk, and now she's yours. Gods must like you more than I thought."

"He hasn't turned down half of Westeros, and we're only betrothed. She's not mine yet."

"That's the same thing and you know it. You know what I heard? Her father rejected a Tyrell, a Baratheon cousin, and some prince from over the narrow sea, if you believe the wine merchant who told me." Theon ticked them off on his fingers like a man counting coin. "And here's Robb Stark, gets one offer in, and suddenly the man says yes. What do you have that a prince doesn't?"

"An actual army at his border, probably," Jon said, without looking up from the knife he was sharpening.

"Nobody asked you."

"You asked a question. I answered it."

"I asked it rhetorically."

"You don't know what that word means."

"I know exactly what it means. I simply chose not to use it that way." Theon waved this off entirely and turned back to Robb before Jon could argue further. "As I was saying, everyone agrees on one thing at least. She's meant to be beautiful. Every man who's glimpsed her from across a hall swears to it. Meek, too, they say. Quiet as a mouse, raised behind locked doors with a maid on either arm."

"You say that like it's a fact and not three drunk men's guesses."

"Three drunk men can't all be wrong about the same thing."

"They absolutely can," Jon said. "I've watched you and three drunk men agree the moon was following you home."

"That was one time, and the moon was doing something strange that night."

"The moon was doing exactly what it always does."

"You weren't there."

"I was there. I carried you home."

Theon pointed at him without missing a beat. "Which is precisely why I trust your judgment so little on matters of the night sky. You're clearly biased against it." He turned back to Robb, undeterred. "Beautiful and silent, Robb. Gods, you've won the whole game before you've even played it. Most men would kill for a wife who doesn't talk back."

"I don't want a wife who doesn't talk back."

"That's because you've never had one. Give it a fortnight." Theon leaned in, positively gleeful now. "But truly, doesn't it worry you a little? All that quiet? What are you meant to do with a wedding bed full of silence? You'll be up there working terribly hard and she'll just lie there like a woman waiting for a septon's blessing to end."

"You're disgusting."

"I'm practical. Someone in this room ought to be."

"There is a difference," Jon said, "between practical and whatever that was."

"Was I asking you?"

"You're never asking me. I offer anyway. It's a gift."

"It's a curse, is what it is." Theon rolled his eyes and pressed on regardless. "And what if she cries? Highborn girls do, you know, the sheltered ones especially. All that softness and none of the nerve for it. What's your plan then, my lord? Comfort her? Apologize? Do your wedding duty regardless and show the sheets stained with blood and tears?"

"Theon, how dare you—"

"I'm just saying she'll probably cry and you won't know what to do with yourself."

"She's not going to cry."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you," Jon pointed out. "You've built this entire woman out of rumor and wine-merchant gossip and now you're weeping on her behalf before Robb's even met her."

"I'm not weeping on her behalf, I'm preparing him. There's a difference." Theon smirked anyway, unbothered. "Maybe you ought to visit one of the pillow houses in town beforehand, Robb. Practice your comforting. Wouldn't want your first attempt at soothing a weeping woman to be on your own wedding night, with the whole North waiting outside the door for proof you managed it."

"I am not visiting a brothel to prepare for my marriage."

"Suit yourself."

"He won't need to," Jon said. "Her father might take one look at him and change his mind. She's supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, and, Robb, I hate to be the one to tell you this—"

"Shut up, Snow," Robb grumbled.

"Maybe Theon was wrong. Maybe it'll be you who weeps, once your lady wife's rejected your affections."

"Oh, my lord Robb, my betrothed," Theon mocked, "I did not mean to cause offence, I only assumed after all the rejections that my husband would at least have a large di—"

"You've both made your point," Robb sighed, cutting off Theon. "She's beautiful and may cry. Do I need to know anything else before I regret coming here at all?"

"She may not be beautiful," Theon added. "She may have two heads. No one's seen her."

"I don't care what she looks like, or her temperament. I will do my duty, and I'm sure someone born of her status will do the same. If she's scared, I'll make the North feel like home. If she cries, I'll comfort her, not with a bedside manner learned from a brothel, but with the shared understanding that if we're to be wed, then we share a life, equal parts hers and mine."

They were quiet for a moment before Theon spoke again. "I still think the brothel idea is a good one. If nothing else, it might help with the comfort—"

"He's better at comforting people than you are at anything, Theon, present company included," Jon cut in before Theon could finish.

"That wasn't a compliment to me and I resent it."

"It wasn't meant as one."

Theon opened his mouth for a retort, seemed to find none worth the effort, and settled instead for shoving back his chair with a great deal more drama than the moment strictly required, throwing both hands up as though he genuinely meant to walk out on the pair of them.

He got exactly as far as the door before he turned back around, apparently unwilling to miss the rest of it, and dropped back into his chair with the wounded dignity of a man who has decided, on reflection, that storming off would only deprive him of an audience he wasn't quite ready to give up. "Fine. Laugh at me now, both of you. When Robb's stood there on his wedding night with a beautiful, silent, possibly weeping stranger and no notion what to do with any of the three, you'll both wish you'd listened to my advice."

"You've made that point three times already," Jon said.

"I'll make it a fourth if the two of you keep looking at me like that." Theon settled back properly then, reaching once more for his cup, apparently unable to leave well enough alone. "Still. Whatever she turns out to be, at least the alliance is a good one. Her father's coin alone makes her worth the trouble, quiet or not, weeping or not. You could do a great deal worse than a pretty, well-dowered stranger, Robb."

"She's not a purse with a pretty face attached, Theon."

"I never said she was."

"You said it exactly like that."

"I said her dowry was worth something, which it is, and no lord in the Seven Kingdoms would tell you otherwise, present company excluded apparently." Theon shrugged, unbothered. "That's simply how these things work."

"That's how you think of them working. It isn't how I intend to think of her." Robb said it plainly, without any real heat, though there was something underneath it that made even Theon pause. "She's not a piece of her father's estate I'm collecting along with the North's borders. Whatever she turns out to be, she'll be my wife, not a line item."

Theon studied him a moment, something almost like respect flickering behind the usual mischief. "Gods, you actually mean that."

"I usually mean what I say."

"That's going to be exhausting for everyone eventually," Theon said, though not unkindly, and let the matter drop.

Jon set down the knife at last, and something in his face had gone quieter, the teasing folded away. "For what it's worth," he said, "I don't think it matters what she looks like, or whether she's silent, or what anyone's heard. You've never needed a woman to be a legend before you cared whether she was treated fairly. That's just how you are." He shrugged, like it cost him nothing to say, though Robb suspected it had cost him a little. "Whoever she turns out to be, quiet or not, crying or not, beautiful or not, I think you'll do right by her. You always try to."

Robb didn't say anything back. He wasn't sure there was anything to say that wouldn't sound foolish out loud. But he turned the words over more than once that evening, while his squire fussed with the buckles of his jerkin, and again at supper, half listening while his mother spoke of the wedding preparations, turning them over the way a man turns over a coin he isn't sure yet whether he's been given or lent.

Robb still remembered, with an embarrassing sort of clarity for a man who prided himself on composure, the moment he had first actually seen you in the flesh rather than in rumor, and how the breath had gone clean out of him for one unguarded second before he'd managed to arrange his face into something more fitting of a future lord. It had not, he thought now, been your face alone that had undone him. It had been the way you'd spoken to him after.

There had been something in it. Not simple bitterness, though there was plenty of that too, but a kind of grief underneath it, as if you had already mourned some version of yourself you were not permitted to become. He recognized it because he had seen it before, in men forced into roles too small for them. He had simply never seen it in a woman before. Perhaps he had simply never been paying attention. Or, the more likely truth, women who felt like that were forced to disappear into a suffocating silence.

He decided, somewhere between discussions of the fish course and his mother's third mention of marital expectations, that he would speak with you again before the wedding. Properly this time. He would tell you that he meant every word, that he was not the sort of man who promised things he did not intend to keep, and if you still did not believe him, well. He had years to prove it. He was not in a hurry.

He went to bed certain of his plan, praying to the gods old and new that you would be honest with him once more, a weight of what the morning meant to him resting on his chest.

Morning came.

He had a plan.

But you were gone.

He learned it the way everyone else did, through a maid's scream somewhere in the guest wing and then a great deal of running feet and raised voices that all seemed to be asking the same question without anyone able to answer it.

Where were you?

Your chambers were empty.

You were gone.

Naturally speculation started about who had taken you, the sheltered lady who's first excursion into the outside world got her kidnapped before her wedding day, the dutiful father who was right to keep her locked up for her whole life.

Your window was open. Your horse, a grey mare you had ridden arround the castle courtyard only a day before, was gone from the stables, along with a cloak, a satchel, and, more tellingly, weapons from the amoury were missing.

You had not been kidnapped.

This is what you chose.

And that thought sent a strange ease through Robb.

He wanted to marry you. There was no question in that. You were beautiful, there was no doubt in that either; but above all he knew you to be fierce, strong and kind after only one conversation. He knew that you would have make him a better man in the years he was supposed to be by your side, but maybe, a quiet part of his mind whispered and he had no choice but to listen, maybe you leaving would make him a better man anyways. You left because of how the world is, he needed to change the world so you could choose your own path without having to run away, and that in itself would make him a better man, he thought with a resolute clarity.

"She's run," his mother said, standing very still in the doorway of the empty room, and there was something almost like admiration buried beneath the alarm in her voice, though she would not have admitted to it.

Robb stood in the middle of the room and felt strangely calm.

"Search the grounds," he said. "Quietly. I don't want this spoken of outside these walls until we know more."

They searched. They found nothing. No sign of a struggle, no ransom note, nothing but a single line of parchment left on the table by your bed, unsigned, the ink slightly smudged as though it had been written in haste.

I am sorry. This is my choice, and mine alone, and no shame for it should fall on my family. Let no one say my father failed to keep his word. I have sisters who can wed in my place for the sake of the alliance, who are more willing than I, and more fitting Ladies. Please do not look for me. I will be well.

And Robb, you did say if. Forgive me, if you can.

Robb read it three times before he set it down.

"Should we send riders?" his father asked later, in the privacy of his solar, the two of them alone with the weight of what this meant for the alliance your family represented, for the peace it was meant to secure, for a hundred things far larger than one girl in a garden.

"No," Robb said, and surprised himself with how certain he sounded. "Let her go."

"Robb."

"She said she'd be well. I believe her." He looked at the note again, at the careful, deliberate hand that had written it. "She isn't a fool, Father. Whatever she's done, she's done it with her eyes open. I won't hunt her down, catch her and thus force her to be my lady wife. You raised me well father, you raised me to respect the choices of others even when I think otherwise." He set the note down. "I won't force a woman to marry me who has made it this plain she doesn't wish to. If she's run, then she's run, and finding her is her family's trouble, it is not the job of Winterfell to chase her, I will not hunt her with half the guard behind me."

His father studied him for a long moment, the way he often did when he suspected there was more to Robb's thinking than Robb had said aloud, and then he simply nodded, and the matter was, officially, closed.

You had ran.

He would not chase.

But he would think of you often.

He wondered, privately when alone in his bed chamber that you were supposed to be warmly nestled beside him, where a highborn girl would go when you vanished into the world with a collection of weapons, a horse and no intention of coming back. He found, somewhat to his own irritation, that he remembered you far too clearly for a girl he had met only once, the particular way you'd looked at him in that garden, more beautiful for how little you'd seemed to care whether he noticed.

He wondered if you had left because of him; because you were repulsed by how he looked, or the way he spoke, or held himself or a great deal many things.

He wondered if you had left because of him; not because you hated him, but because he had seemed to have given you a taste of freedom you couldn't refuse, he had, without realizing it, given you a way out, and you took it. Not because you had to, but because if you didn't, you may never get a choice again. Somewhere he stopped wondering about the why, because so matter how much Jon or Theon teased him, he knew why you had ran, and that though seemed to help him sleep at night.

He instead wondered if you had found whatever it was you had wanted so badly that you could not stay for it. He hoped, in a way that surprised him with its intensity, that you had.

★・・・・・・★

The stories started slowly, the way stories about masked strangers always seem to.

No one had ever seen his face, only the work of his sword, quick and merciless when it needed to be and merciful in every other case, and so people did what people always do with a shape they cannot quite make out. They filled it in themselves. He became, in the space of a season, some highborn son gone renegade, waging a solitary crusade for the ones no lord bothered to protect, too honorable to kill without cause and too skilled to be caught doing it. No one questioned the shape of that story. It fit too neatly to bother questioning.

A tax collector, known for skimming more than his lord permitted and beating those who could not pay the difference, was found bound to a post in the village square, every coin he had stolen returned to the doors he had taken it from, a note pinned to his chest naming his crimes for all to read. A lord in the Riverlands who had made a habit of forcing himself on the girls in his household simply disappeared one night and was found three days later, alive but broken in ways that made the maester who treated him go pale and say very little about it, he was alive but faced a fate worse than death. A merchant caravan carrying grain meant to be sold at cruel prices during a bad winter was found scattered across the road, its guards unharmed but thoroughly humiliated, its grain distributed among the nearest villages before anyone even learned who had done it.

Always the same signature. A masked figure, cloaked, quick, said by those who claimed to have glimpsed beneath the mask to be strikingly, almost unfairly handsome, depending on who was telling it and how many cups of wine they'd had while doing so. No house. No banner. No mercy for cruelty, and, just as consistently, no death dealt to anyone who did not deserve it by the hidden figures's own particular reckoning. Some called him a hero. Some called him a menace who took justice that belonged to lords and kings and did with it whatever pleased him. Most people, in the quiet of their own homes, simply hoped he would come if they ever needed him.

Robb heard the stories the way everyone heard them, secondhand, embellished, half of them probably invented entirely by bards who liked a good tale more than they liked the truth. He did not think much of them beyond a passing curiosity, and a private, unspoken satisfaction whenever a particularly deserving man was said to have been humbled by this unnamed knight. He had his own war to think of soon enough. Lords did not leave much room in a man's mind for masked strangers in other men's stories.

He did not think, not once, to wonder where such a knight might have learned to fight so well, or why he never let himself be seen without the mask, or why, of all the crimes in the world, it was always cruelty to women and children that earned a man death and nothing less. Every song called him a man. Every story simply assumed it. No one, least of all Robb, had ever thought to question it. The only part of the story worth questioning is if they were even true.

★・・・・・・★

The company was three days from where the fighting was said to be gathering when they came upon a holdfast in the riverlands, one Robb recognized by reputation more than sight, its lord known less for hospitality than for the taxes he wrung from villages too poor to refuse him. They had meant only to water the horses and be on their way by nightfall. Instead they found the gates already standing open, no siege about it, no army waiting beyond them, only a single figure moving through the courtyard with the unhurried purpose of someone who had done this many times before, coin sacks already stacked by the gate, the lord himself bound and gagged and considerably more frightened than dignified, slumped against the well where he'd been left to consider his sins.

Robb's men, being the sort who could not simply ride past a lord in distress regardless of what that lord might have done to earn it, had their swords drawn before Robb had fully decided whether he wanted them to.

It was over strangely quickly after that, though not in the way Robb would have expected.

The masked figure fought like something out of a song for the first several exchanges, all economy and speed, disarming one man and turning his own sword against the next before anyone had quite understood what was happening. Then, abruptly, less so. It took only three men to bring the knight down where the stories should have demanded a dozen, and something about the ease of it sat wrong in Robb's chest, a stubborn, wordless unease that had nothing to do with the sight of a masked stranger finally on their knees in the dirt.

He was smaller than the tales of his glory suggested.

Watching a legend fall so easily should have felt like victory. Instead it felt like walking into a room a moment too late to see who had rearranged the furniture, as though the whole fight had been shaped toward this exact ending by someone other than the men who thought they'd won it.

It occurred to him, absurdly, that the knight seemed almost precisely where they wished to be, and that thought frightened him considerably more than a longer fight would have.

A fifth man, laughing in that particular way men laugh when they've won something they weren't sure they would, reached for the mask.

"Let's see the face that's got half the riverlands in love with itself," the man said, and pulled it free.

Hair spilled loose the moment the mask came away, longer than any of the stories had ever accounted for, and a face that took every man in the company a full breath to make sense of, because whatever they had each pictured beneath that mask, none of them had pictured this.

"That's no man," someone said, stupid with disbelief, as though his own eyes needed a witness to confirm what they were seeing.

It struck Robb, in the strange scattered way details assemble themselves after a shock, how many small things suddenly cohered. The frame that had always seemed a touch too slight for the strength the stories claimed of it. The mercy shown again and again to men twice the knight's size, mercy that had never actually looked like mercy so much as choice, a fight won by speed and precision rather than force because force had simply never been the tool available. He had assumed the legend would fit the shape everyone expected, and he understood now, with the particular clarity of a man watching his own certainty come apart, how easily that shape had been assumed rather than earned.

Robb, still mounted, still some ten feet back and watching the whole business with an unease he could not yet name, felt the world tilt sideways beneath him.

For a moment his mind simply refused the rest of it, the way a man's mind will refuse a thing too large and too sudden to be believed all at once. He had built up an entire idea of this knight over the months of hearing the stories, some faceless figure out of a song, and it had never once occurred to him, not for a single moment, to put an actual face to it. Certainly not this one. Not a face he had spent more nights than he cared to admit trying, and failing, to stop thinking about.

It was you.

Older. Harder around the eyes in a way that spoke of things he did not know and suddenly, desperately, wanted to. Still, unmistakably, unforgivably, you, the girl who had sat across from him in a garden years ago and told him you did not believe a word he'd said, and then proved it by vanishing into the night rather than marry him. The one that took his if as permission. The one who had not left his mind even after all this time.

"Gods," someone breathed. "That's the missing Lady. That's Lord Stark's bride."

The word spread through the company like fire through dry grass, disbelief and astonishment and, in more than one man's voice, something like awe, and through all of it you simply knelt there in the dirt with three men's hands still on you and looked up at Robb with an expression he could not immediately name.

"Hello, Robb," you said, and your voice was exactly as he remembered it, low and steady and entirely unbothered by the indignity of your position. "It's been a long time, my lord."

He did not trust himself to speak at first. He simply looked at you, at the mask discarded in the dirt, at the sword that was rightfully yours lying just out of reach, or rather his since it was stolen from Winterfell's amoury, and felt something in his chest that he did not have a tidy name for.

Kneeling there in the dirt with three men's hands still bruising your arms, you found that you were, against every sane expectation, glad to see him.

You had imagined this moment more times than you cared to admit, in the quiet hours between towns, in the dark before sleep finally took you, and it had never once gone like this. Dirt on your knees. Stranger's grips still tight on your arms. Robb Stark staring at you like a man who has just watched a ghost step out of a story he'd half convinced himself he made up.

"It's you," he said finally, which struck you as an embarrassingly obvious thing to say, and you had to fight down something uncomfortably close to fondness at how plainly stunned he sounded.

"It's me." You let the corner of your mouth lift, just slightly, not quite a smile. "You look well. Command suits you."

"You look—" He stopped himself, and you watched him remember, all at once, that there were forty men present to hear whatever he'd been about to say. He cleared his throat instead. "We should get you off the ground."

"How generous."

He nodded and the men holding you hoisted you to your feet, their grip still tight, unwaverig on you; with a confidence of men that thought you weren’t running away this time.

"We'll see you delivered safely to your family," he said, and you felt the cage close around the words before he'd even finished saying them, felt your whole body go tight and still the way it always did whenever someone decided, on your behalf, what was going to happen to you next.

"I think not," you said, pleasantly enough.

"It isn't a request."

"No," you agreed. "I didn't imagine it was." You glanced, almost fondly, at the men still gripping your arms. "You'll want to let go of me now."

"Hold her arms, don't loosen your grip on her," Robb said, sharper than you expected, and you were already moving before he'd finished saying it.

It was, you would allow yourself to admit later, rather satisfying. You had no weapon and did not need one, twisting free of the grip on your left arm and using the momentum to put the man holding your right off balance entirely, and from there it became a blur of elbows and knees and a viciously well placed boot that put a grown man twice your size on the ground gasping for air. You did not kill a single one of them. You did not even draw blood, beyond a split lip here and a bloodied nose, moving through Robb's best men the way you might clear brush from a path, efficient and entirely without malice, until you stood at the center of a ring of groaning soldiers with your sword back in your hand and not a hair out of place.

No one moved to stop you a second time.

Robb swung down from his horse, sword drawn, though you could see plainly enough that he wasn't certain what he meant to do with it. "Yield," he said, more out of habit, you suspected, than any real expectation that you would.

"No," you said, not unkindly, grabbing your own sword from the floor then sheathing it, looking at him now that he stood level with you instead of above you. "But I'll give you this much. Your men fight well. They simply have never fought me."

"You could have killed any one of them."

"I could have. I chose not to. Just like I chose not to kill this Lord you decided so nobely to try and save." You said it simply, because as far as you were concerned that settled the matter entirely. "I hope to see you again soon, my betrothed."

"You still call yourself that?" he asked, and later wished he said anything else, but he was unable to keep the disbelief entirely out of his voice.

"Would you rather I didn't?" You tilted your head, the way you had once in a garden, all those years ago, when you had been deciding whether or not to believe him. "You should have married one of my sisters. I told you as much myself, in the note. Would have saved you all this trouble."

"I didn't want your sisters."

"You didn't know my sisters."

He sheathed his sword at last, the motion slow, almost absent, as though he had only just remembered he was still holding it, and closed the last of the distance between you until there was hardly space left between you, so that only you could hear his next words.

"I didn't need to." He said it plainly, the way he'd always said things to you, without any of the polish he gave the rest of the world. "I didn't want any maiden they could have sent in your place. I wanted you, or I wanted no one, and I've spent long enough now proving to myself which of those it was."

You held his gaze a moment longer than was easy, then looked away first, bending to retrieve your mask from the dirt.

"Where have you been," he asked, quieter now.

"Everywhere I was told I couldn't go." You turned the mask over once in your hands before tucking it away, and when you looked at him again you let something almost gentle show through, buried under all the rest. "You're the one who set me on this path, whether you meant to or not. Do you remember what you told me in the garden? That the good lords don't hide from what needs doing, and neither should their ladies."

"I remember."

"I've thought of it often." You said it simply, without performance, wanting, foolishly, for him to understand exactly how much weight it had carried. "More often than I probably should have."

"Then come back," he said, and you could hear, even through the command he was trying to give it, how much it sounded like asking instead. "Not to a cage. I meant what I said. I still mean it."

For a moment, just a moment, you let yourself consider it. Something old and soft rose up in you, wanting, before you put it away again, deliberately, the way you had learned to put away most things you wanted.

"Maybe I will," you said. "When I've finished what I started. Not before."

"That could be years."

Something reckless surfaced in you then, some old itch you had not indulged in nearly long enough, and before you could think better of it you had swept your sword back out of its sheath, tossing it once between hands with a flourish you knew perfectly well was entirely for his benefit. "Draw your sword again, Robb Stark. Let's see if command has taught you anything besides how to watch. If you win I will return with you, and if I win... then we can rematch next time we see each other."

Robb fund himself laughing at your request, not out of malice; but how it was so plainly... you. He draw his sword to meet yours, his smirk matching the one you wore.

You felt something warm settle in your chest an chose not to examine it for a moment longer than necessary.

You couldn't deny the small thrill that the challenge you made sent though you, you found yourself wishing that you and Robb had met under alternative circumstances, that you were both not of high birth, you would be lying if you said you didn't want to marry Robb stark, the issue was you couldn't marry the lord of Winterfell.

It started tentative, the two of you circling, blades meeting in slow testing arcs while each of you took the measure of the other, and you found yourself almost fond of the caution in it, the careful respect of a man unwilling to underestimate you twice in one day. Then something in him seemed to loosen, some old restraint giving way, and he came at you faster, sharper, no longer sparring so much as actually fighting, and gods, he was good. Better than you'd expected when you challenged him. You had to work for every parry, had to think two moves ahead instead of simply reacting, and there was a boyish, unguarded pleasure written plainly across his face that you suspected he didn't know was there, the look of a man finally allowed to be exactly as strong as he actually was.

You were still better. Not by much, and not without effort, but enough that you laughed outright when you slipped a strike that would have ended the bout against a lesser swordsman, dancing sideways just out of reach, feeling reckless and light in a way you had not let yourself feel in longer than you cared to count. He was breathing hard and grinning despite himself, and you thought, with an ease that startled you, that you had missed this. Not the fighting. This. Him.

"What is this?" he asked, breathless, parrying a strike that would have put a lesser man flat on his back.

"Foreplay," you said, delighted at the way his concentration nearly broke entirely around the word. "I never did get to spend a night in your bed, my lord. This will have to do instead."

You used the moment his balance faltered to hook a boot behind his ankle and put him properly flat on his back in the dirt, sword point resting light and almost affectionate at his throat, and you allowed yourself one long moment simply looking down at him before you straightened and sheathed your blade.

"You'll have years to decide whether you meant what you said, if you really do intend to wait more years for me my Lord." You were already backing toward the tree line, unhurried, entirely unafraid of forty armed men who had already learned exactly what happened when they tried to stop you. "For what it's worth, my lord, I am glad to hear no one else has been warming your bed in my absence. It would be terribly inconvenient for both of us if you'd gone and fallen in love with someone sensible."

"I haven't," he said, too quickly, and you heard the laughter of his men behind him and found you did not mind it in the slightest.

"Good." You let your smile come fully then, the first unguarded thing you had allowed yourself since the mask had come off. "Then I suppose I'll see you soon, Robb Stark. Maybe if you keep practising you might be able to best a woman in combat… only maybe."

You were gone before he could answer, picking up the bags of coins and mounting your house with ease, riding into the trees, moving the way you had always promised yourself you would when you finally left, like something that had never once belonged to walls or gardens or the shape other people had tried to press you into.

Robb stood in the middle of the road with his men groaning around him and thought, with a clarity that surprised him, that he had never in his life wanted anything the way he wanted to see you again.

"My lord," one of his men said weakly, from somewhere near his boots, "should we pursue?"

"No," Robb said, and could not quite keep the smile from his own voice. "Let her go."

He had said those same words once before, in his father's solar, believing it was the end of something.

He understood now that it had only ever been the beginning.

★・・・・・・★

a/n: this was so fun, i want a sword so badly omg