sixthiterationlogs | [no amount of remembering the better things will make the bad ones go away]

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[no amount of remembering the better things will make the bad ones go away]

WHO: Eddard Stark
WHERE: The Stark Family Cabin
WHEN: August 15 and onward
OPEN TO: OTA; feel free to jump in at any point during his halluciations.
WARNINGS: None; will updated as needed

It had started with redness of the skin, first on Ned's hands. It spread like blood-red ink across the paper of his skin, up his arm towards his shoulder, down his back, around his torso. It made decades'-old battles scars scarlet and renewed, the pain of touch excruciating, as though the wounds had only just been made. And then, the heat. At first, he thought it a continued byproduct of the summer temperatures, but it was the absence of perspiration that had drawn his brows together in confusion and realization: he had gotten ill.

Half a fortnight later, having spent the majority of the time bed-ridden and unable to leave the confines of his room, the visions had started.

He’d first seen his siblings’ faces: Brandon, Benjen, Lyanna. He imagined Brandon’s death, simultaneously feeling the constriction of his airways as Brandon tried to rescue their father, and wakes to a coughing fit while gasping for air. Benjen he imagined in black, half-human and half-crow, taking to the skies and soaring back to The Wall. Lyanna, he had seen bloodied and ghostly pale, her trembling hands leaving crimson paintings against his skin with every touch, while the rage and pain and impending loss stormed within him.

Second, Robert’s face - glossy-eyed and slender, the way he’d been when they’d grown alongside each other under the care of Jon Arryn. He imagined them wandering the grounds of the Eyrie, practicing their fighting with one another, Robert daring him to draw closer and closer to the Moon Door. His half of these fabricated conversations are audible to anyone near enough - even through the closed door of his chambers. None of it makes any sense, especially out of context, though it’d be easy enough for someone familiar enough to surmise that Robert was on his mind.

Next, he’d seen visions of Catelyn at their wedding; the hatred and betrayal in her face when he’d revealed to her that he had returned from war with a dark-haired babe in tow, a newly born Robb still in her arms, which she clutched tighter to her breast; the way she’d peer up at him as they lay under their furs and in each other’s arms with only the soft glow of the fire as their audience; when he’d last seen her, outside of Littlefinger’s brothel in King’s Landing, the blue scarf wrapped over her fiery crown. He reaches for her, when he imagines her with him, hands and fingers fumbling in the air for a woman who no longer exists.

Then, he’d seen each of his children at varying stages of their lives, from birth to the last he’d seen of them: Robb at Winterfell, when Ned had left for King’s Landing; Sansa when he’d knelt at the steps of the Great Sept, silently praying for her rescue; Arya when he’d spotted her in the crowd, crouching by Baelor the Blessed, doing the only thing he could to keep her safe by signaling Yoren to take her into his custody; Bran, unconscious in his bed, unsure if he’d ever open his eyes again; Rickon in the yard at Winterfell, too young to understand the weight of the world and his father’s departure beyond a glaring absence; and, though not a child of his own creation, Jon at the crossroads to King’s Landing and The Wall, promising to tell him about his mother upon their next meeting. These memories are strong enough to make a weakened, unwell Ned weep, crying out for the family from which he’d been taken, his feverish mind no longer remembering he has four of them still with him, whether by fate or by the blessings of the Old Gods.

He floats in and out of consciousness, back and forth between the world of Westeros he’d left behind and the world of the village - his second chance - though he cannot seem to convince himself that the latter exists. He wonders if he’s returned to the Children of the Forest, to the Old Gods themselves, to the Weirwood back in the Godswood of Winterfell. All the while, the skin affected by the rash blisters and reddens, leaving smears of blood on the linens underneath - though, if there is one light in the darkness, the intensity of his hallucinations seems to negate the pain from the rash, and he seems blissfully unaware of the sores.

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"You are my sister," Ned begins, his voice echoing the tone of a lecture, however weakened his state, "And my duty as your brother, as your family is to protect you from all that I can. I know how closely you held him to your heart," he cannot quite bring himself to say Rhaegar's name, "But he is not my kin. I have no obligation to shield him from unjust hatred and scorn." His words continue slurring together, like a singular piece of leather twine, being pulled out of his throat and out of his mouth. Although there is some sense to what he says, the inflections of his voice, the melody of it, lend themselves to making him sound more like a mad man than a rational one.

"You were not the one who set the fire ablaze beneath father's feet," he reprimands, his voice showing a sudden burst of strength. "You were not the one who tightened the noose around Brandon's neck and placed a sword out of his reach. You were not the one who sat on a throne and watched with delight while father burned alive and Brandon brought death upon himself in an effort to save him." They haven't yet had a brutal conversation about the deaths of their father and brother, and the words fall out of Ned's mouth without regard for Lyanna's sensibilities or sensitivities. There's a glint of fire in the ice of his eyes, however, as they pierce the air to his sister's face. "You may have brought them to King's Landing, but you are not the reason they were murdered." He manages to lift a hand, press the palm of it to the side of her face. "You cannot live buried underneath the weight of something that was not your doing."

"You shouldn't have shielded me from anything." But she knows why he did. It would be the same reason that she would protect him from any distasteful stories or unflattering rumors. He was her brother and she loved him. It didn't change her feelings of guilt or her wish to share the same burden that Rhaegar was forced to. Though perhaps it was better that she didn't. None would know of Jon and he would be the safer if she was thought to have been abducted. Even if the idea made her stomach turn.

She shook her head, pressing his palm against her cheek. "I didn't, but I should have written. By the time we reached Dorne, father and Brandon were dead. I should have told them, I should have told you, you would have understood." At least, she prayed he would understand. She didn't know if Ned had loved anyone then, but perhaps he could imagine why she wanted Rhaegar. "Gods, Ned. Please forgive me." Someone should absolve her, if it were possible. The Old Gods were unfeeling, but her brother was not.

"How can I not carry this? I knew what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I didn't think of the consequences and everything that happened afterwards was the result of that." She took a shaky breath, pressing her brow to his shoulder. "Would I have been happy if I had accepted Robert Baratheon? Do you think I should have?" She never doubted herself before, but under the weight of her guilt, she had to wonder, she was left questioning the intelligence of her decisions. "I didn't love him."

"It matters not what I should or should not have done; it has long since passed. The shadows of the past follow us, even here, but it is because we let them." It is less a reprimand to her than it is a scolding to himself. There were too many ghosts that trailed behind him like the tail of a comet; he knew that only he could shoo them away, but he's also somehow aware of his weakened state and his inability to do so for the moment.

"I do not know if father and Brandon would have believed you. They might have thought you to have been forced to write such a letter, under threat of pain and death." He withdraws his hand away from her as another fit of coughs wrack his body, his breathing heavy once it's over. "I might have been reluctant to have taken your word, but I've always known you better than they had. I know your Wolf's Blood, your strength." His eyes find her, with some effort, and there's the spark of something amused in them when they do. "Your stubbornness."

His fingers drag the length of his hand across the mattress in search of hers.

"You would never have been happy with Robert, Old Gods know. It would not have been a life in which you would have stayed." He falls quiet for a few moments, lips moving with silent, unaired words. "Were you happy? Before I found you in the Tower?"

If they could return to the past and change what had been done with the "should have done", Robert's Rebellion would never have been successful. Perhaps Brandon and their father would have lived, Elia and her children would not have been killed, the kingdom wouldn't have been torn apart. She would spend her time in this world reflecting on it all, carrying that guilt as only a Stark could.

"Perhaps not. Brandon was hard headed." He acted without thinking, much like Lyanna. It wasn't a stretch to imagine he would have charged ahead anyway, still furious and offended by Rhaegar's proposal, reacting rather than considering her happiness. "I should have written you at most." She waits for his coughing to pass, gently rubbing his arm as he calmed. "You might have told..." she trailed off. Robert wouldn't believe her anymore than Brandon would have.

He doesn't need to search long, her hand links with his once more.

She smiled sadly, "I was as much as I could be." The moment they arrived, the kingdoms were at war. It was difficult to treasure that time together when it came at such a cost. "I was happiest the day he wed me, there was no reason to be afraid. When I found I was pregnant, he was so proud. For a time, we had the chance to dream and imagine our future." She paused, holding onto her brother tightly. "I love him, Ned."

"I wonder who among us might have inherited such a trait," Ned asks, pretending as though it nothing more than a simple question, such as the state of the air outside in the village. He knows they can exist like this, living amongst conjecture and hypothetical situations, but what good could come of it? They at least seem to agree about the traits of their eldest sibling, even in retrospect. Ned thought he had long since put that guilt to rest, though talking of it with his sister seems to stir it up again, like mud clouding a clear river. One thing remains constant in regards to their brother, Brandon, however: Ned still believes that he would have met his end in King's Landing, with or without a raven from Lyanna, and he's grateful for the opportunity to have voiced such an opinion to her. He lifts a brow to consider her as she begins to suggest Ned playing messenger to Robert, but he's satisfied to see her reach the same conclusion on her own; there was no stopping Robert, once he knew what - or whom - he wanted.

The muscles of his body stiffen slightly at the proclamation of love that falls so quickly from her lips, but it isn't long before he's eased back into a more relaxed (and exhausted) state. He does not have the energy to try to imagine a Targaryen falling in love with a Stark, but - he hears the earnestness in her voice. He knows she speaks her truth, and he will not disregard it or try to dismiss it as nothing.

"You know it hard for me to condone it all, given the importance of oaths and promises - but knowing that you were at least happy, and that you truly loved him - makes it easier to accept. I do not harbor anger or resentment towards you now, just as I never had back then. You were always the better part of me, Lyanna."

She pressed a kiss to his knuckles. "Wolf blood...it's strong and it makes us strong, but it snuffs out like a candle. When it's gone..." she trailed off. It didn't need to be said. There was a reason that Ned had survived while she and Brandon perished. They were the reason and the impetus for the conflagration that erupted across Westeros. Wolf's blood burned brightly, but it extinguished with just a single gust of wind. She doesn't want to linger any longer over Brandon or their father. No matter how often she was absolved, it wouldn't change her guilt or the part she played in their deaths.

"Was I really worth a war?" Robert had claimed to love her, but she had never believed him. Obsession was strong and just as potent, but it wasn't as real or deep as love. She was only a woman, one woman compared to a realm full of people. She may not have been the complete reason for Robert's Rebellion, but he used her as a symbol and martyr.

She held him tighter, letting her head rest under his chin. "You were the better part of me too. If I had been in your place...I couldn't have survived seeing you..." seeing him die. Gods, she would have broken. Living alone without him somewhere in the world, her heart couldn't withstand it. "You have to get well, Ned. You need to recover. Please. I need you."

"To Robert, you were," Ned replies simply. He had realized, carrying Robert's banner and waging his war, that they were fighting for two wholly separate things. Robert was fighting to reclaim the woman he supposedly loved, the woman over whom he felt he had ownership. He was fighting to win and prove his strength to the entirety of Westeros. Ned, on the other hand, was fighting his way back to his beloved sister - not to plant a banner at her feet, but rather to be back at her side, to bridge the unbearable distance that separated them both. And, at the time, to save her from what he believed to be her jailer. Doing it all in Robert's name was more straightforward, though his heart had never aligned itself with Robert, not in that regard.

"I would've burnt all of Westeros .. to bring you back home safely .. if I knew it was what you had wanted."

The fever begins to creep its way back into his mind. He begins to flinch, almost rhythmically, as though in response to something constant, like the clanging of swords. "I watched him kill them all," he murmurs, seeing the face of Ser Arthur Dayne. "Two swords. He used two of them. I'd been bested, he was going to kill me. He was going to keep me from you." His head turns to one side, eyes closed and brows tugged together. "Howland. Howland! I took his life, but only because you had saved mine, Howland."

His head turns the other way.

"I heard his voice. I heard him call me. I hadn't known it then, how could I have? But I heard him. He called me 'father.'"

"Robert didn't know me." He believed he did. He was so enamored with the idea of becoming Ned's brother that the marriage became overblown in his mind. He looked at her face and created an ideal to match the union he wanted. It was never about her, it was what Robert wanted. He didn't see the dirt on her cheeks or her tangled hair. He didn't look at her fraying hem or her grimy fingernails. She wasn't wild or a wolf to him, only a proper southron lady in her silk dresses that embroidered and sighed for a husband. He went to war for that woman, but never would have won her, even if Lyanna had lived. "When he spoke of me, it always seemed like he was describing another woman. If he wanted a stone idol, he can find her in our crypts."

She sighed, instantly regretting her words. The subject of her death was painful to Ned and it wasn't what he needed to hear while he was ill. "I know you would have." She clutched his hand tighter. "When Rhaegar died, I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew though that you would take me home and keep me safe. If I couldn't be with my husband, I would be with you."

The fever seemed to make him speak nonsense, insane nonsense. She quickly applied another cloth to his brow and tried to shush him, urging him away from topics that would excite him. "Don't think of that now. Ser Arthur isn't here. He isn't keeping us apart." Howland though. She hadn't seen him and hadn't asked what became of him, afraid to learn that he died. He was with Ned, at least. Ned wasn't alone in the end.

"Heard who? Who did you hear?"

"He cursed you having been buried there," Ned slurs in between breaths. "He demanded you be buried in a meadow with the sun on your face, surrounded by flowers." He can recall the conversation as though he'd only just had it, standing amidst the flickering torches and constant drip of melting ice against stone. "I told him you were my sister. You belonged at home." It was back-and-forth they'd had on a number of occasions, and Ned's answer to Robert's demands had always been the same. Lyanna was a Stark, she was his sister; there was nowhere else she could have been laid to rest, in Ned's mind. "Was that the right thing to do?" he asks, suddenly worried he might've made the wrong decision. Would she have preferred to have been buried elsewhere? At the Tower? With Rhaegar? At Dragonstone with the Targaryens?

He stirs at the feeling of the cool, damp cloth against his scorching forehead, but it does little good to still the words that continue to bleed out of his mouth like a gushing wound.

"My son," he murmurs. "My son, my Brandon. I'd heard his voice, though how could I have? He hadn't yet been born. How could .. how could he have .. I heard him, Lyanna. I heard him call me."

"I suppose he would have had me buried in the tradition of the New Gods rather than our own." She gave a huff. It was an eerie feeling, discussing her death so flippantly. She could remember how it felt to be steadily approaching that moment, the lightness in her body, the freedom from pain. Everything seemed to be wrapped in a gauzy veil, a web of haze around her. To know how close she was to death, it was frightening and liberating. She was afraid of it, but knew there was no more fighting. She hadn't told Ned, but it was almost a relief.

She smiled gently, brushing a kiss against his brow. "I am a Stark of Winterfell, Ned. I belong with my family and our Gods." She would have wanted to be buried with Rhaegar, but she couldn't say what happened to his body. It was something she didn't want to consider or think about. The man she lay next to at night, mutilated or worse. Wherever he rested, she couldn't follow. Buried in the crypts of Winterfell, she would be near her son and perhaps, if the Gods were kind, her soul could watch over him.

There was a sharp chill of fear through her, listening to Ned's delirium. "Try not to think about that, Ned." She murmured, hoping to distract him from the rest. It sounded like madness. "You need to rest."

"He wanted you for himself," Ned replies, his tone a bit more sour than it had been moments earlier while discussing his dear friend. For as deeply as he loved Robert, even now, there was much the two failed to agree upon. Especially when it came to matters of one Lyanna Stark. Still, it had been the mutual grief at the loss of her - for Ned, his beloved sister, and for Robert, the betrothed he would never know - that had brought them together again after their years at the Eyrie. Despite their differences and disagreements, Ned would not speak ill of Robert, not beyond the discontent he'd already expressed.

"It is one less shadow to cover the sunlight whenever my days fade into darkness," Ned sighs, relieved at having made the correct choice for his sister's final resting place. So much talk of death and loss, he thinks. It heavies his heart.

"Yes ... yes, I .. suppose you speak the truth ... Rest. Rest would do me good."

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[no amount of remembering the better things will make the bad ones go away]

i hate my life

I made myself cry

jesus take the wheel

Just put this on my gravestone

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