Work Text:
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he quietly tells her, looking down at his hands.
“I should have,” she replies, and her tone is firmer than she had thought it would be. As much as she hadn’t thought it could be when she told Stannis Baratheon the whole truth after learning that he wanted to kill Theon.
She might have been terrified and unable to do anything to save herself, but it didn’t mean that she had no ears, and her now former husband had a tendency to brag about his supposed deeds. She’s known since a bit after her wedding that Theon never killed the Stark kids, and who had burned Winterfell, and a lot of other things that Ramsay Bolton probably never imagined that she would remember. And she told Stannis all of it, for a price.
“Now everyone knows that you’re not her,” he says, shaking his head. “That was what was keeping you safe.”
“No it wasn’t.” Someone would have found out sooner or later – better than Stannis learned from her than from anyone else, considering the kind of man that she pegged him to be. “And what was at stake was worth more.”
He turns on his side, looking straight at her – his wrists are chafed raw, she notices a moment later. Then again he’s been in chains until now, hasn’t he?
“I don’t really think so, but thank you nonetheless,” he croaks, his lips so cracked that they look about to bleed.
Jeyne reaches out slowly and holds his wrist in between her fingers, running her thumb over a piece of ruined dark red skin.
“There’s no way I can convince you that you’re wrong, is it?” She’s looking down at his hand as she asks. He shivers when she runs her fingertips over the empty space where his ring and outer finger should have been, but he doesn’t jerk back and she thinks she’d know if he was doing it out of fear or not. He looks fine with it, at least.
“You shouldn’t even be here,” he sighs, resolutely not looking at her.
“And why’s that? I’d still be back there if it wasn’t for you.”
“And you stayed married to him for weeks because I wouldn’t do a thing about it,” he answers a moment later, and she doesn’t think she’s ever heard someone sound this self-deprecating in her entire life. “I mean, I told you to go along with it. That – that, before, that was the least I could do, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“I – I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” she says cautiously at that, perfectly realizing that it’s absolutely inadequate but unable to come up with anything better.
“I think someone less weak would have tried earlier,” he sighs, and the worst thing is that he actually believes that. Or so it sounds, anyway.
She’s silent as he turns his back to her and lays down on the bed in the room where they’re sort of keeping him prisoner – better than the dungeons, at least. She doesn’t miss the way he tries to take as little space as possible. She wonders if she’s being dismissed or not, but she doesn’t think it’s the case.
She feels completely at a loss for words, and she wishes she could explain him that she’s thought the same enough times. If she had been the real Arya, from what Jeyne recalls, her husband wouldn’t have survived his own bedding. If she had been less terrified, less – less maybe she’d have handled it better than that. But she knows that she really couldn’t have done otherwise – her name never was Arya. Or Stark. And she did the best she could, and it’s not as if she blames him for having given her the best advice he could come up with, as bad as it was.
Not when she’s had weeks with Ramsay Bolton and he had months of it.
She sighs and lies down on the bed next to him, tentatively putting her hand on his hip, careful not to move any closer or touch any further.
“So you didn’t get me out the moment I showed up. From what I remember, you could barely keep yourself standing. Do you really think that I blame you for that?”
“You asked –”
“I did, but thinking about it now, what could you have done? And do you really think that out of everyone who attended that feast, no one suspected that I really wasn’t Arya Stark? That castle was bursting with people that could have helped, and no one did.” She takes a breath and tries not to think in detail about what she’s going to mention. “Don’t mention the bedding. I know you will. And I remember you being exactly as willing as I was.” Her voice goes down to a whisper at that – she has to raise her free hand to her eyes to wipe at them. She’d rather forget about that night entirely, but – he jumped with her instead of bringing her back and lying about how they were on the roof. He could have done that, but he didn’t, and she can’t forget that either.
“I didn’t even think it would work,” he blurts a moment later. “Their plan, I mean. I was sure that we’d get caught from the moment they roped me into it. How is that not weak?”
“You jumped from that roof instead of telling him that I was trying to escape on my own and that you caught me. How is that weak then?”
He says nothing at that, and she can feel that he’s breathing slightly faster.
“I think I can imagine why you’d – why you’d say that I made a poor bargain, but it was a lot less than you did for me. I don’t really think it was the case.”
“You shouldn’t even be here,” he says a moment later. “The more time you spend with me the more they’re going to hate you. It’s not worth it. Really.”
“No one outside this room has saved my life though, have they?” She takes a deep breath. “I used to want the same things Sansa did, once,” she sighs as she moves just a bit closer. “Well, she wanted to marry a noble king or highborn knight, like the ones in the songs, and I certainly didn’t aim that high. I would have been fine with one that wasn’t highborn. We did agree about him being handsome, sure, and gallant, and everything.”
“Sorry about that,” he replies, entirely serious.
“I wasn’t done. I haven’t seen her in years, though I think that she might have come to my same conclusions. But that’s not the point. King’s Landing was full of handsome knights, and no one lifted a finger when I was taken from my father and thrown into a brothel so that they could train me. Or when I was brought here in the first place. Or during the wedding.”
She takes another breath, trying not to think about the fact that she’s feeling how sharp his hipbones are under her fingertips.
“All things considered, I think I was a lot better off with you. You did something that would be worthy of songs if any of those was true, don’t you see it?”
“Not really,” he says as he slowly turns on the other side, finally facing her again. “But I’m glad that you do.”
When she slowly reaches out for his shoulders and moves forward, giving him all the time to move away if he wants to, he doesn’t back away. When she puts her arms around his back and gently moves so that his head is resting in the hollow of her neck, he leans into it after a few moments of keeping himself perfectly still, and his fingers are shaking as they touch the small of her back – she doesn’t even recoil even if whenever anyone’s touched her since their escape she’s flinched away.
She’s not going to tell him that since he’s not touching her with whole hands, she knows that it’s him and not anyone else, and it’s the only reason she hasn’t recoiled at first – she knows that it would be a bad idea, but it doesn’t mean that she can’t like it. She also knows that he wouldn’t believe it if she told him, so she says nothing.
It might not be this one, but she swears to herself that one day he’ll see it the way she does, and if she has to make him, then she’s entirely willing to wait as long as it takes.
End.