sixthiterationlogs | you could taste heaven perfectly; [OTA]

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you could taste heaven perfectly; [OTA]

WHO: Robb Stark
WHERE: The field
WHEN: October 12, morning
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Closed to new threads

There had come a point approximately three days ago when Robb had legitimately begun to wonder whether the rain was ever going to cease. Never in all of his life had he ever even heard of such rain, from dawn to dusk and all through the night, an unending torrent that kept the skies murky gray and made the days smudge disconcertingly into one another.

When he'd woken today, something had felt off -- Just a bit to the left of where it ought to be. It had taken several drowsy minutes of laying in his bed, listening to the earnest warbles of the early birds to realize that the strangeness was that the rain had stopped. He'd almost not believed it, had felt certain he'd step outside and find the shower was simply lighter than before, but there was nothing but an early-morning mist rambling across the lawn and the first soft rays of sunlight smearing over the broken clouds.

And gods, it was practically blissful to step down onto the front walk and stay dry. It didn't even bother him that there was now so much to do, so much time to be made up as hastily as possible. The serendipitous feeling wouldn't hold, he understood that well enough, but he might as well throw himself into what needed to be done while it lasted. Winter was coming.

He'd still not grown relaxed enough to work without a shirt on, but he was down to his sleeveless undershirt today, the white long ago turned to gray and now streaked with dirt as he applied himself to working amongst the beans in the humid mud of the field. It was early yet, but he had a feeling that the small group of them out there would quickly grow once the sun was properly up.

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"I assure you, I've never been afraid to get my hands messy," Peggy promises, not even needing to roll her sleeves up thanks to the short-sleeved required wardrobe this place has seen fit to impose on them. "What's our task today?" She hasn't made a stop to see what deserves first priority, but it seems that Robb seems to be quite clear on what he's doing, so she can certainly help.

She should also introduce herself, she realizes, given that while she knows him, it's through other people's information. "I'm Peggy," she says. "I know Margaery," she goes on, thinking it only fair to forewarn him of her connection with the other woman.

"That would explain your eagerness to become a field hand, then," Robb replied with a slight, bewildered shake of his head. The community's need for willing hands still warred with his own ideas of what a lady could be reasonably expected to endure, and that was without taking into account how bad Margaery seemed to be at it.

"I've been told to ensure the soil's not washed away from the base of the plants and build up a bit more where it has been," he continued. "You might want gloves if you're serious about helping."

She cranes her head over to find where the gloves seem to be stored, heading over to pick up a pair before returning to Robb's side. She may be intending to help in order to ensure the community is in good shape, but she's also quite good at multitasking and certainly intends to probe into the man's intentions, while he can.

Kneeling near, she glances up at him and debates where she wants to begin. "Is there still a happy engagement to be congratulated?" she asks, in order to ensure her information isn't out of date.

Robb slowly stilled where he was crouched with his hands pressing soil in around the base of a plant, his face going fleetingly pinched. He and Margaery were still betrothed, of course, but it was a complicated thing, and he honestly couldn't fathom why she'd go about announcing it when she'd been so firmly against it, to the point of tears, and they both had avoided speaking of it since the night he asked.

"Last I checked," he said at length with a glance down to Peggy with a small, measured smile. He'd never had Sansa's gift for hiding his own discomfort, but honestly didn't see the need.

She watches him carefully, masking her curiosity with bland innocence as she takes in the pinched look on his face and the way he doesn't respond instantly. "In that case, I'm happy to offer you my sincerest congratulations," she says, all smiles as she tugs on the gloves, not taking her eyes off of him. "Now," she continues, "let's continue to the part where I tell you that I quite like Margaery and she's become a dear friend of mine."

Still smiling, Peggy doesn't take her eyes off Robb for an instance. "Don't hurt her," she says plainly. "You won't like what happens if you do."

It's honestly laughable, really, and for a moment Robb can only stare at her in a sort of impressed astonishment at her gall. It isn't the threat itself that's surprising -- He has sisters, he knows the retribution a woman can exact -- it's that she in any way believes this to be her concern.

Yet, this is a woman, so he can't simply challenge her presumption the way he would a man.

"I assure you, bringing harm to Margaery is the last thing I intend to do," he finally says, his words carefully measured. "I appreciate that you worry for her, but you may put your fears to rest on that count."

She wishes that she could rest her fears, but she's had so many unlucky turns in her life that she needs to do something to at least spackle a cover-up before regret can make a hole too big. She can't afford to let Margaery become another 'what if' like Steve or Colleen or even Chief Dooley.

"I don't mean to suggest that you would cause her any harm, but neither do I want to think of it passing you by," she says, cautiously, aware she might be projecting her own fears, but still feeling she needs to say it. "But still, it's happy news."

"You're Jon's brother too, yes?"

Happy news, perhaps. From the morning after he'd proposed until now, Robb had been trying to sort that out and had failed. Both he and Margaery had such complicated pasts, it had been stupid of him to think being together could honestly be so easy.

Gods, but he missed his father. He'd know what to do.

"I am," he replied with a nod. "Although I'm not certain he'd claim me if he could see me just now," he added with a faint smile and a glance down to himself, smeared with mud and with so little idea of what he was doing.

"He seemed quite happy to claim you when I spoke to him," Peggy says, a touch gentle and tender. She doesn't want to presume, but Jon had seemed quite open about the fact that he had been grateful for the chance to be with his brother. She does have to hide the quirk of a smile when he gestures to himself, already starting to get down into the muck herself in order to help. "Besides, is it really so strange? We're all of us in a terrible state," she teases him. "I assure you, I don't look like this normally."

She still takes great pains, obviously, to keep her hair in shape, but her nails and makeup have long gone the way of being useless. "I'm fairly sure that I would give anything for a day at the spa, right now."

"I suppose that's true enough," Robb allowed with a conceding tilt of his head. "Although I'm afraid my enthusiasm is far beyond my actual ability in this case." Would he be less messy otherwise? It was difficult to know.

"...spa?" he echoed, looking back to Peggy with a curious crease of his brow. "I'm afraid I haven't heard this word before."

"It's sort of a place of relaxation, where men tend to go and steam themselves silly," Peggy says, wondering if it also co-opted your sense and made it so that you wanted to sit in the heat. "They had them in ancient Rome, too," she says. "And in England, though it was the baths there and not quite a sauna the likes of which occasionally seem to be used for business."

"It would boil the dirt layer off my skin," she admits, having admitted that she's going to have to live with it. "Do you ever feel like we'll never be truly clean again?"

There was so much oddness in what Peggy was saying, and continued to say, that for a long moment Robb could only stare at her despite knowing it wasn't entirely polite. He'd only understood perhaps half of what she'd been going on about, but finally blinked himself out of his confusion and arched an eyebrow in reply.

"I can't say that I have." Perhaps he'd gotten used to filth while at war; it was difficult to say. At any rate, he'd rather not boil himself regardless.

She's still having to remind herself that people are from all different walks of life, here. If she had arrived in the midst of the war, perhaps Peggy might have had a similar answer, but she's been lucky enough to have the privilege of Howard's hot water and his lavish mansion. "I hope you don't mind my asking," she says cautiously, "but what was your world like? Both Margaery and Jon don't often speak of the world itself, so much as the people."

Robb settled back on his heels and squinted into the early-morning sunlight. The question seemed simple on the surface but the answer was difficult to quantify.

"Well, I've only got this place to compare it to," he began with a considering tilt of his head. "Jon and I are from the North of Westeros, which is very different from where Lady Margaery is from, in the Reach. I actually don't think Jon's ever been out of the North." Not that he could say much better, barely getting south of the Neck.

"The land isn't completely unlike this," he continued. "A lot of the same sort of trees, but colder, and vast. It snows a lot, even in summer. Jon and I grew up in the largest castle in the North, Winterfell, been there thousands of years. Bigger than this entire town." He paused with a faint smirk. "You ought to ask Jon about the Wall sometime, although you might not believe him."

"Why on earth wouldn't I believe him?" she asks, slightly taken aback given how she can't imagine how just a wall might pose a problem to her belief system. Castles and vast lands, she can understand. "Wouldn't it be just like any other wall? Hadrian's or the Great Wall of China, perhaps?" Even as she says it, she realizes that he likely hasn't any clue what on earth she's talking about and feels a bit silly for even bringing it up.

"Are you lords, then? Royalty?" she wonders, seeing as the pieces are rather obvious and don't even require that much putting together.

"Kings," Robb replied. "Were, at any rate. I was King in the North, and Jon apparently was, as well. Lady Margaery was a queen three different times." But not in the North. She would have loathed it, he thought.

"But not here. Here, we get by the same as anyone else does." And perhaps that was better for them all, when it really came down to it. Being royalty in Westeros was a risky business.

"But ask Jon about the Wall sometime. He can do it better justice than I could. He lived there. I've never even seen it." He really ought to have, but now it was simply one more thing he had overlooked. "And he could do with talking to a pretty woman. He was always terrible at it," he added with a faint smile.

Edited 2016-11-15 06:01 (UTC)

There still lies in Peggy enough decorum and respect that hearing that this man is a King makes her stand a little taller, even if that translates to her shoulders arching back just a little more in order to be at attention. "Margaery has never mentioned that," she says cautiously, not sure whether there had been reasons. "And I enjoy conversation with Jon," Peggy assures.

"He's perhaps not a terribly verbose conversationalist, but it serves well enough," she says. "And I'm most certainly not royalty of any sort. My family is well enough off, but...well, no one's putting a tiara on my head."

"Well, I don't think it's something any of us are particularly looking to shout from the rooftops," Robb allowed with a conceding quirk of his smile. "I'm proud of it, that my people trusted me with it, but it means nothing here in this place." And even less when you were dead.

"Where are you from, Peggy? Is it simply Peggy, or Lady Peggy?" He arched his eyebrows, politely curious.

"Oh, no, it's just Peggy," she hurries to insist, not meaning to cause any confusion as a result of her name. While the family was well-to-do, there were no titles to speak of, which was good. Peggy didn't think she could have managed to do half of what she had, if she'd borne the title of a Lady. "I think it does say something, that you're all royalty and I've hardly known," she says, constantly battling with the impulse and the need to bow, somehow. It's decades of respect for the monarchy in her bones and she has to fight it with every ounce of herself. "I'm from London, but from what I've been told, it's not a place in your world."

"Jon's told me quite a bit about what Winterfell and your world is like. It sounds quite different," she praises. "Like a place you wouldn't mind going on holiday for a while," she says, though she thinks that she'd still always want to come back home.

Her turn of phrase caught him off guard, his brow creasing as he squinted back at her. "I'm afraid I haven't any idea of what that is, a holiday?"

It sounded almost like holy day, something the Southerners might celebrate with a lot of bowing and chanting to their Seven, but Robb couldn't imagine that Jon, of all people, would give anyone the impression that Winterfell was a good location for anything like that.

She opens her mouth to explain, but as soon as she does, she realises that she doesn't think she's ever had to explain holidays to anyone. Even during the war, the lack of them had been a point of frustration for all, but they all still knew about them. "It's a break from your regular life," she says. "Back home, I was on holiday before I arrived." True, her holiday had simply been work that Jack hadn't approved, but there's no need to talk about her flagrant disobedience.

"You don't have those where you're from?" she assumes, given his lack of knowledge on the subject.

"No," Robb admitted with a slight shake of his head. "And quite honestly, I'm still not certain I entirely understand. Do you mean like a festival or a tournament?"

Living as he had in Winterfell, he hadn't really had the occasion to travel for anything like that, with one notable, terrible exception that he swiftly pushed to the back of his mind. But his father had ridden in tournaments when he was young, traveling across the South with Robert Baratheon in the days before the rebellion.

Peggy's not sure that she knows how to explain this without at least some context. "They're really meant to give you a break from your life. You go travel or relax or you do something entirely outside of your routine. I suppose, in that regard, then it might be a little like a festival or a tournament, yes," she agrees, feeling a little bad that he doesn't know, but at the same time, it's hardly like she's ever used hers for its intended purpose.

"Usually, it's quite enjoyable, though. This place...well, I don't think it quite passes muster."

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