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ravenA few days ago I wrote:
"My fannish engagement with [Game of Thrones] probably goes like this AU where Ned Stark is married to his gorgeous South Asian wife Catelyn, who worships different gods to him, and they've got one kid who's a fashion designer and another who's a disability activist who yells at the TSA a lot, and Ned is an unwilling transplant into politics from the simple academic life even if it is really fucking cold up north."
This is that story.
fic:: you shine in love you are born annointed
by Raven
4000w, gen, Game of Thrones, the Stark family ensemble. "Your net contribution to the world, Eddard Stark, is sitting out there in lawn chairs playing Clue and drinking bad Riesling."
They don't go in much for security theatre up here. Ned is able to walk down through the space of the tiny airport, go past the very short row of check-in counters, stop underneath a suspended half-scale model of a biplane and meet Robert straight out of the gate.
They hug and clap each other on the back and then there's that moment, tinged with all the shadows and echoes of a long, long friendship, where they step back and look at each other. "You look good," Robert says, after a moment. "This place seems to suit you, God knows how."
Ned smiles. "You've put on weight."
Robert snorts and pats his belly. "Yes, because I have so much time to put in at the congressional running track."
"Such is the state of the federal government in this country," Ned observes, "that I have no idea if you're being sarcastic or not. Your bags come out over here, come on."
"Carry-on only," Robert says, so they walk on out into the crisp, bright afternoon, Ned fumbling in his pocket for his car keys while Robert hoists his bag more firmly on his shoulder. "It's a flying visit."
"After so long, you're staying such a short time," Ned says, wistfully, as he edges carefully out of the parking lot, out onto the road, and then they pick up speed and the landscape is changing quickly around them, the tiny planes and small artefacts of industrial life giving way to heavy forest, to distant glimpses of the lake, as chilly blue as the afternoon, both cut from the same cloth of winter.
"About that."
Ned is driving, so he can't turn and look, but he knows the expression on Robert's face intimately; the half-defiant, half-triumphant look that means his friend has made a decision, for good or evil, and the rest of the world must rock with it or be engulfed in that will.
"Yeah?" Ned says, after a while, with practised nonchalance.
"I’m done, Ned." Robert smiles at him in the mirror. "Three terms is enough, I'm not running again. And don't open your stupid mouth and ask if I'm going for the Senate. I'm done."
"I see." Ned thinks about it. "What will you do?"
"Move back."
Ned doesn't have to ask where back is; they were freshman roommates at Berkeley, but they inhabited bodies scarred by the landscapes of other places, Ned by the bleakness of upstate New York, and Robert by the lush fecundity of the South. It's been a long while since Ned has been to Georgia, but he suspects he'll be going back pretty soon.
"You remember the old house, Ned?" Robert asks, a little plaintively. "I guess it'll be home for good. Maybe I'll marry again."
Ned laughs. "Not till you've made your merry way through all the respectable dowagers of the town. And some of their daughters."
Robert chuckles. "Women don't like it when you get out of breath on stairs. Maybe I'll come off the bourbon and find me that running track first."
"I'm sure they have them there." Ned pauses, breathes in and out. They're coming up on the edge of the town now, the road lifting slightly with the curve of the valley. "Well. Congratulations, Mr. Baratheon of New York. They were good years."
"Thank you, Ned." Robert is smiling.
"Any thoughts on a replacement?" Ned asks idly, slowing for traffic and just making it through a turning stoplight. "I guess the party will want to put on a good show."
"Yeah, about that." Robert grins, and it's wicked, suddenly. "How about it? Ready to drop that honorific, Professor Stark?"
Ned nearly drives into a pick-up in front of them on the way up Dryden. "Robert, you can't mean…"
"I do." Robert's unruffled. "It's why I came. I want you to run as my replacement, Ned Stark. There's no one I know who'd do the job better."
"Robert," Ned's saying, "Robert, I can't…"
"You don't have to decide straightaway," Robert says, unruffled. "Talk to Catelyn, talk to the children."
"My children," Ned says, with more feeling than he'd meant to. "My children! Robert – my children, I love them, I do."
"Yes, you do," Robert says, mildly, "so mind what you say next."
"But…" Ned pauses, takes a deep breath. "I have one daughter who majored in sociopolitical jewellery design, and another who is hell-bent on being the baddest, butchest lesbian in New York City. Rickon's still in high school, and then there's Jon, and Bran, Robert! Imagine what my political enemies would make of…"
"Of Brandon Stark, named for the economist Brandon Stark and seeing fit to follow in his footsteps?" Robert says. "And screw 'hell-bent on', Ned, Arya is. And Jon…"
Ned groans. "Let's go home. I need a drink."
Robert brightens perceptibly. It's only the fact he's driving that stops Ned from putting his head in his hands.
*
Sansa is waiting on the corner of 101st and Broadway, tapping her heels. "You're late."
Arya takes a moment to note the perfect coiffure and immaculately-styled outfit, with complementary colours and Tiffany's chain dropped on her neckline, drawing the eye downwards just far enough. Sansa wouldn't ever normally wear something designed by someone you'd heard of, but their mother gave them the chains when Sansa was twelve and Arya was ten. Her own sits warmed by her skin beneath the Gaslight Anthem T-shirt and ratty NYU sweatshirt.
"We can't all have your virtues," Arya gripes, and they start walking towards the subway, Arya's sneakers silent on the sidewalk, an irritable itch in her muscles. Getting showered and out of the apartment was her achievement for the morning; no time for a run, too.
"Well," Sansa says, "you could at least try, Arya. You can do better. And you can do better than that damn sweatshirt, too, do you ever wear anything else?"
"I do wear other things," Arya flashes back. "And sometimes I think about something other than my goddamn outfits, and sometimes I even get naked…"
Sansa stares at her, then laughs. "Seriously, that's what you've got? That's what we're going to do all the way to JFK?"
They're on the steps now, going down into the murk. Arya grins as she reaches for her Metrocard. "All the way to Ithaca, if necessary."
Sansa grins back. "God, I hate you, little sister."
"You too." Arya pushes the turnstile, enjoys Sansa's look of distaste at the grimy bars coming her way. The train is drawing into the station and they both run, Arya gracefully, Sansa's heels tapping, and drop into orange vinyl seats as the train heads into the tunnel.
Sansa looks up, the flashes of light bright on her face. "So, who was she?"
"Who?" Arya's rummaging for her phone.
"The girl who left your building two minutes before you did with unwashed hair and wearing your shitty Mets jacket."
Arya laughs delightedly. "My, my, Sansa, we do pay attention to the world around us after all!"
"Anyone that badly dressed could only have been with you," Sansa says, comfortably. And then: "You should tell Mum and Dad about her, if you like her."
"Like you've told Mum and Dad about any of your girlfriends." Arya glares as the train draws with a shriek into 96th Street.
"Be fair," Sansa says. "I never told them about my boyfriends, either."
Arya smiles. "Downtown local!" shrieks the voice on the platform, distorted as the doors close.
"Sylvia," she says, quietly.
Sansa asks, "Do you like her?" – and they hurtle into the tunnel, wheels shrieking on the tracks, lights flickering.
Yes, Arya mouths. Yes, yes, in rhythm with the train.
*
Catelyn is home when Ned crosses the threshold, leaving his shoes next to the door. She's doing aarti, eyes alight with flame, and she smiles to see him. "Back so soon? Where's Robert?"
"Out making friends and influencing people," Ned says, looking around him, suddenly, with new eyes. At this house, with its view of the jetty with its evening frosting of ice, at the solid timbers, wide doors, odd L-shaped kitchen with steaming pots and bright plastic utensils. At Catelyn, her hands full of light.
"Sounds right." Catelyn smiles and raises her right hand towards his hair. He ducks for the blessing. "He'll be here for dinner, of course."
"Of course." Ned goes to leave his papers on his desk, but he doesn't sit down. He steps forwards, steps back. "Where are the children?"
"Making their way." Catelyn sets down the tray on the kitchen worksurface and starts to pull vegetables from the refrigerator: cucumber, tomatoes, carrots. "Ned, if you're going to stand around being aimless, can you chop while you do?"
He smiles at her, feeling himself begin to blush, and reaches for the bunches of cilantro leaves, tearing them rather than chopping them so the bruised leaves give up their fragrance. They work in silence for a few minutes, taking turns to toss the chopped salad in the bowl, Ned reaching for salt and pepper while Catelyn squeezes limes. She's searching for olive oil for the dressing when she asks, "What's bothering you, Ned?"
Ned hesitates, then sets down the salt cellar. "Robert's not running again."
Catelyn nods. "I can't say I'm surprised. He seemed to be ready to leave politics. Are you so disappointed?"
Ned looks at her. "He wants me to take his place."
Catelyn raises her eyebrows. "Really? As representative?"
"Yes." Ned knocks over the salt.
Catelyn smiles and sets it right. "Nothing in life is that much of a sure thing, my love."
Ned says, wryly, "In this district, with the full support of the party machine. There aren't much surer. He wants me to do it."
Catelyn nods, slowly. "Well, then. You should."
"It's not that simple. My life here, my work…"
Catelyn shrugs. "It's as good a reason as any for a sabbatical, and two years is just right. After that you could reassess, see how you liked the life, stick around or come back to Cornell."
"Catelyn, you're taking this awfully calmly."
Catelyn laughs. "Ned, you sound exactly like your mother. Everything awfully and frightfully and whatnot."
"Catelyn…"
Catelyn places a hand on his arm. "How I'm taking it, in the end, doesn't matter. How are you taking it? Do you want to do this, Ned Stark? Can you?"
"I'm going for a walk," he says, abruptly. Crossing the space beneath the timbers, he thinks he sees a flash of Catelyn's smile in the glass against the lake.
* This isn't a great time for Robb. He's got papers due in a couple of weeks, he's got finals in admin law and federal taxation coming up, but as his mother noted, that's always the case for at least one of them. Last year Sansa had an exhibition in late October; the year before that, Arya had a broken ankle. They both came, anyhow, because that's what they always do: when the festivals of lights come and the snowflakes are settling on Ithaca, the Stark children return to the north.
Well, Robb thinks, except Jon. He's driving on autopilot, thinking, the conifers at the side of the road a sliding green blur, but he comes to himself abruptly before he quite forgets about Bran. Swearing gently, he turns off and the textbooks in the back seats pile up against one door.
Bran comes out to meet him, eyes amused and accusing. "You nearly drove right past, didn't you."
"I never," Robb begins, but gives up, because Bran always knows. Bran smiles, wheels back to pick up a few things while Robb clears the trunk, and pretty soon they have the chair stowed and Bran installed in the front seat.
"Sure I'm not too heavy for you?" Bran enquires, wickedly.
"You're not heavy, you're my brother," they chorus, and both laugh.
After that the conifers zip past again and neither of them speak, but the silence that stretches is comfortable, not awkward. Robb glances at Bran in the mirror from time to time, trying to guess what he's thinking and failing as always: there is always something unreadable as still water about Bran, something incalculable.
He's startled when Bran asks, "Have you told Mum and Dad yet?"
"Have I told them what?"
Bran gives him a tiny half-smile. "They'll be, ah, startled. At least public service gets your loans forgiven after a while."
"Damn you, Bran, I'm not sure…"
"I think you are." Bran smiles properly this time. "You aren't made for the corporate associate life, Robb. You should have stayed in academia."
"Law school is academia."
"Whatever." Bran chuckles, and the late autumn sun splashes in the wing mirror and in his eyes, so he looks momentarily unearthly against the backdrop of the bleakness of the landscape. The moment passes and it's just Bran, grinning like the Cheshire Cat who knows a secret.
Robb smiles back at him, a little unwilling. He hasn't told anyone but Bran, yet, and he hasn't told Bran this: that part of what is drawing him back is the land beneath their wheels and feet, the world he grew up in, and the yearning inarticulacy of it all, that desire to work, to serve, in – after four years of undergrad and three of law school – what is still the only world he knows.
They're a few miles out from home now, the curve of the lake spreading below them deep and blue.
* Dinner is served at eight.
Ned grew up in a household where they gave thanks before every meal. His father used Robert Burns' Selkirk grace: sae let the Lord be thankit. Ned remembers reciting it for Robert in college, making him laugh. The words work their way through his mind like knotted string, even now, and he smiles.
Catelyn touches his shoulder, her fingers carding roughly through his hair, and then the children are coming in and taking their seats – they always claim their own chairs when they return, take back their places in the history of this house – with the red tikka on their foreheads. They're laughing and talking, Robb and Bran discussing some book they both read recently, Sansa and Arya having some argument about who said what to whom some at some point in the last twenty years.
Ned smiles as Rickon takes his own customary place on Ned's right side. "What are you thinking about?" he chirps, and Ned startles. Rickon isn't looking at him, reaching for cooked spinach and a ladle amidst the general hum of conversation, but this is a level of perspicuity Ned generally associates with Bran.
"I have to make a decision," he says honestly, after a moment. "I'm having trouble."
"If you should flunk someone?"
Ned laughs. "No. That's never usually such a hard decision."
"Toss a coin," Rickon says, seriously. He has been planning campus visits recently, poring over prospectuses and websites with a nickel in hand for important decisions. Ned finds it endearing.
"Maybe I will," he answers, and sits back in his chair, looking down the table. Catelyn and Sansa are discussing something very intently – from the gestures, Ned guesses it may be hemlines – and Arya is attempting to balance a napkin ring on her nose.
"The children were all raised to eat with their right hands and do party tricks with their left," Ned remarks to Robert, who chuckles.
Robb's looking up, looking serious, which is characteristic. "How's the law review?" Ned asks him, not having had a chance to ask since Robb's elevation at the end of the previous semester, in a blaze of glory and celebratory beer pong.
"Good," Robb says, looking a little confused. "It's a lot of work. I kinda have to talk about it, actually."
Ned nods, seriously, meaning, we can. He looks away just in time to see the napkin ring fall into Arya's dal.
"Guess you like this," Robert says to him. "Having all your brothers and sisters around again."
"They make a lot of noise," Rickon confides, and Ned laughs again.
"What's funny?" Bran asks, and without waiting for an answer, takes the spinach from Rickon. "What, you're Popeye now? What's so funny?"
"You are," Ned says, with affection, and wonders for the twelve thousandth time how he could go on without them all.
* The children are in the back, wrapped up against the cold with scarves, hats, kerosene lanterns and a heat lamp. From the sound of laughter and accusations of cheating, they're playing a board game. Bran came in, thudded down the little ramp and grabbed the last bottle of the wine too quick for anyone to react; Catelyn laughed and blew kisses after him as he disappeared. Now Ned is clearing, absent-mindedly, picking up glasses and plates and carrying them to the kitchen, but one by one, without trying to gather them all.
"Well," Robert says, and Ned and Catelyn look up. "I'd hoped to carry the news of my decision back with me."
It's not a demand or even a question, but Ned stops, puts down the glass in his hands and goes to sit on the couch, pushing a red cushion to the floor. "I don't know," he says, in a low voice. "I don't know, Robert.
"I can't handle my own family half the time. I found out at dinner that Arya has been dating a woman for a year, that Bran's not happy where he is. That Robb is turning down Dewey and LeBoeuf for the DA's office in Syracuse."
"That's a wise move." Robert nods.
"My point is," – Ned hesitates – "that when the responsibility is only this, I can't…"
"Ned," Robert says. "You’re a decent man and a conscientious academic. Your books are well-researched and may have been read by possibly one or two people who weren't on your dissertation committee. Sometimes first-year poli-sci majors cite your papers. But they're dull as ditchwater and your scholarship is never going to set the world on fire."
Ned says, "Is there a point to this?"
"Your net contribution to the world, Eddard Stark, is sitting out there in lawn chairs playing Clue and drinking bad riesling."
Ned shakes his head. "They will be scrutinised, and so will I be, and you, Catelyn. There will be talk of pagan gods. God, they'll make it so Arya's tattoos are some sort of sigil for her moral fibre. There will be nauseating op-eds about Bran, and the sins of the father visited upon Jon."
Robert says, "That's the world they already live in."
Ned makes to get up, stays seated, gets up properly, sits down again. "I can't leave here," he says. "This is my home." Eyes on the lake, he says, "This is Ithaca, Robert."
"Call yourself a political scientist," Robert says affectionately, "you demented lit crit."
"Catelyn," Ned says, in quiet entreaty.
"Fuck you, Ned Stark," she says, softly. "Fuck you for being the one with least to fear. Fuck your fear."
There is no sound, then, other than the wind, the distant laughter, and the lapping of the lake on its shores.
* "Letter for you, Stark," says Sam, breathing a little raggedly. He's from Montana somewhere and can't deal with the humidity; Jon likes it, the way it gets under your skin, washes away old aches. "Sent care of the Peace Corps, via New Delhi 10001 blah blah blah and probably been in transit a million years. Why are your family so against email, anyway?"
"They're not," Jon says, thoughtfully, which is true: when he has access to a computer he gets emails from all of them; punchy ones from Arya, perfectly punctuated if infrequent ones from Sansa; thoughtful ones from Bran. Robb tweets at him instead, because, as Jon has often noted, Robb is just that much of a hipster soul.
But his father likes letters: old-fashioned watermarked paper, the tiny imperfections of writing with ink. His fluid script is obvious from the envelope, even before Dear Jon at the start of the two tightly-packed sheets.
"Must be a good one," Sam observes several minutes later. "You've usually annoyed me with five little chuckles and hey Sam you'll never guess what my sister did by now."
Sam, despite the fact he's never met them, has often said that he feels as though he knows Jon's family intimately, or at least well enough to pick them up out of a line-up. Jon has always promised that when they're back in the States, whenever that may be, he'll take Sam home with him and subject him to the full force of a gestalt Stark personality battering and charm offensive. He always puts it in exactly those words, and Sam always laughs, wistfully; he doesn't care too much for his own family, back in Bumfuck, Montana, as he puts it. Jon laughs at that in his turn. It's no wonder they're friends.
"Yeah," Jon says, slowly, looking up for a moment before the final paragraph. A mynah calls from a few feet above, on its way from one tree to another; some guy on the road is selling vegetables, calling hoarsely. Jon's eyes drop back to the page.
…in the end, Jon, I believe I would regret it if I did not. Of course it may never happen; Catelyn observes nothing in life is a sure thing, but she may be erring on the side of caution this time.
One final thing: should it all come to pass, I'd like it if you were to return for the opening of the new session. Of course, if you can't, you can't, but I would like it.
With love…
…trailing into illegible scrawl and Ned Stark's distinctively illegible signature. Which might, Jon realises with a start, soon grace greater documents than this.
"Well?" Sam says, hands on hips.
Jon smiles. "It's really, really hot in DC in summers. You ever been?"
"I've gonna pretend that makes sense somehow," Sam grumbles, and makes to grab the letter away.
"You'll like it," Jon says, neatly evading him. "I guess we both will, for a time."
"Why am I going to DC, now?" Sam says, and swats a mosquito on the way to swatting Jon.
Jon dodges him, folds away his letter and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking out at the sunlight on the dust, the bright, brilliant autumn. "Guess you'll see," he says.
end.
"My fannish engagement with [Game of Thrones] probably goes like this AU where Ned Stark is married to his gorgeous South Asian wife Catelyn, who worships different gods to him, and they've got one kid who's a fashion designer and another who's a disability activist who yells at the TSA a lot, and Ned is an unwilling transplant into politics from the simple academic life even if it is really fucking cold up north."
This is that story.
fic:: you shine in love you are born annointed
by Raven
4000w, gen, Game of Thrones, the Stark family ensemble. "Your net contribution to the world, Eddard Stark, is sitting out there in lawn chairs playing Clue and drinking bad Riesling."
They don't go in much for security theatre up here. Ned is able to walk down through the space of the tiny airport, go past the very short row of check-in counters, stop underneath a suspended half-scale model of a biplane and meet Robert straight out of the gate.
They hug and clap each other on the back and then there's that moment, tinged with all the shadows and echoes of a long, long friendship, where they step back and look at each other. "You look good," Robert says, after a moment. "This place seems to suit you, God knows how."
Ned smiles. "You've put on weight."
Robert snorts and pats his belly. "Yes, because I have so much time to put in at the congressional running track."
"Such is the state of the federal government in this country," Ned observes, "that I have no idea if you're being sarcastic or not. Your bags come out over here, come on."
"Carry-on only," Robert says, so they walk on out into the crisp, bright afternoon, Ned fumbling in his pocket for his car keys while Robert hoists his bag more firmly on his shoulder. "It's a flying visit."
"After so long, you're staying such a short time," Ned says, wistfully, as he edges carefully out of the parking lot, out onto the road, and then they pick up speed and the landscape is changing quickly around them, the tiny planes and small artefacts of industrial life giving way to heavy forest, to distant glimpses of the lake, as chilly blue as the afternoon, both cut from the same cloth of winter.
"About that."
Ned is driving, so he can't turn and look, but he knows the expression on Robert's face intimately; the half-defiant, half-triumphant look that means his friend has made a decision, for good or evil, and the rest of the world must rock with it or be engulfed in that will.
"Yeah?" Ned says, after a while, with practised nonchalance.
"I’m done, Ned." Robert smiles at him in the mirror. "Three terms is enough, I'm not running again. And don't open your stupid mouth and ask if I'm going for the Senate. I'm done."
"I see." Ned thinks about it. "What will you do?"
"Move back."
Ned doesn't have to ask where back is; they were freshman roommates at Berkeley, but they inhabited bodies scarred by the landscapes of other places, Ned by the bleakness of upstate New York, and Robert by the lush fecundity of the South. It's been a long while since Ned has been to Georgia, but he suspects he'll be going back pretty soon.
"You remember the old house, Ned?" Robert asks, a little plaintively. "I guess it'll be home for good. Maybe I'll marry again."
Ned laughs. "Not till you've made your merry way through all the respectable dowagers of the town. And some of their daughters."
Robert chuckles. "Women don't like it when you get out of breath on stairs. Maybe I'll come off the bourbon and find me that running track first."
"I'm sure they have them there." Ned pauses, breathes in and out. They're coming up on the edge of the town now, the road lifting slightly with the curve of the valley. "Well. Congratulations, Mr. Baratheon of New York. They were good years."
"Thank you, Ned." Robert is smiling.
"Any thoughts on a replacement?" Ned asks idly, slowing for traffic and just making it through a turning stoplight. "I guess the party will want to put on a good show."
"Yeah, about that." Robert grins, and it's wicked, suddenly. "How about it? Ready to drop that honorific, Professor Stark?"
Ned nearly drives into a pick-up in front of them on the way up Dryden. "Robert, you can't mean…"
"I do." Robert's unruffled. "It's why I came. I want you to run as my replacement, Ned Stark. There's no one I know who'd do the job better."
"Robert," Ned's saying, "Robert, I can't…"
"You don't have to decide straightaway," Robert says, unruffled. "Talk to Catelyn, talk to the children."
"My children," Ned says, with more feeling than he'd meant to. "My children! Robert – my children, I love them, I do."
"Yes, you do," Robert says, mildly, "so mind what you say next."
"But…" Ned pauses, takes a deep breath. "I have one daughter who majored in sociopolitical jewellery design, and another who is hell-bent on being the baddest, butchest lesbian in New York City. Rickon's still in high school, and then there's Jon, and Bran, Robert! Imagine what my political enemies would make of…"
"Of Brandon Stark, named for the economist Brandon Stark and seeing fit to follow in his footsteps?" Robert says. "And screw 'hell-bent on', Ned, Arya is. And Jon…"
Ned groans. "Let's go home. I need a drink."
Robert brightens perceptibly. It's only the fact he's driving that stops Ned from putting his head in his hands.
*
Sansa is waiting on the corner of 101st and Broadway, tapping her heels. "You're late."
Arya takes a moment to note the perfect coiffure and immaculately-styled outfit, with complementary colours and Tiffany's chain dropped on her neckline, drawing the eye downwards just far enough. Sansa wouldn't ever normally wear something designed by someone you'd heard of, but their mother gave them the chains when Sansa was twelve and Arya was ten. Her own sits warmed by her skin beneath the Gaslight Anthem T-shirt and ratty NYU sweatshirt.
"We can't all have your virtues," Arya gripes, and they start walking towards the subway, Arya's sneakers silent on the sidewalk, an irritable itch in her muscles. Getting showered and out of the apartment was her achievement for the morning; no time for a run, too.
"Well," Sansa says, "you could at least try, Arya. You can do better. And you can do better than that damn sweatshirt, too, do you ever wear anything else?"
"I do wear other things," Arya flashes back. "And sometimes I think about something other than my goddamn outfits, and sometimes I even get naked…"
Sansa stares at her, then laughs. "Seriously, that's what you've got? That's what we're going to do all the way to JFK?"
They're on the steps now, going down into the murk. Arya grins as she reaches for her Metrocard. "All the way to Ithaca, if necessary."
Sansa grins back. "God, I hate you, little sister."
"You too." Arya pushes the turnstile, enjoys Sansa's look of distaste at the grimy bars coming her way. The train is drawing into the station and they both run, Arya gracefully, Sansa's heels tapping, and drop into orange vinyl seats as the train heads into the tunnel.
Sansa looks up, the flashes of light bright on her face. "So, who was she?"
"Who?" Arya's rummaging for her phone.
"The girl who left your building two minutes before you did with unwashed hair and wearing your shitty Mets jacket."
Arya laughs delightedly. "My, my, Sansa, we do pay attention to the world around us after all!"
"Anyone that badly dressed could only have been with you," Sansa says, comfortably. And then: "You should tell Mum and Dad about her, if you like her."
"Like you've told Mum and Dad about any of your girlfriends." Arya glares as the train draws with a shriek into 96th Street.
"Be fair," Sansa says. "I never told them about my boyfriends, either."
Arya smiles. "Downtown local!" shrieks the voice on the platform, distorted as the doors close.
"Sylvia," she says, quietly.
Sansa asks, "Do you like her?" – and they hurtle into the tunnel, wheels shrieking on the tracks, lights flickering.
Yes, Arya mouths. Yes, yes, in rhythm with the train.
*
Catelyn is home when Ned crosses the threshold, leaving his shoes next to the door. She's doing aarti, eyes alight with flame, and she smiles to see him. "Back so soon? Where's Robert?"
"Out making friends and influencing people," Ned says, looking around him, suddenly, with new eyes. At this house, with its view of the jetty with its evening frosting of ice, at the solid timbers, wide doors, odd L-shaped kitchen with steaming pots and bright plastic utensils. At Catelyn, her hands full of light.
"Sounds right." Catelyn smiles and raises her right hand towards his hair. He ducks for the blessing. "He'll be here for dinner, of course."
"Of course." Ned goes to leave his papers on his desk, but he doesn't sit down. He steps forwards, steps back. "Where are the children?"
"Making their way." Catelyn sets down the tray on the kitchen worksurface and starts to pull vegetables from the refrigerator: cucumber, tomatoes, carrots. "Ned, if you're going to stand around being aimless, can you chop while you do?"
He smiles at her, feeling himself begin to blush, and reaches for the bunches of cilantro leaves, tearing them rather than chopping them so the bruised leaves give up their fragrance. They work in silence for a few minutes, taking turns to toss the chopped salad in the bowl, Ned reaching for salt and pepper while Catelyn squeezes limes. She's searching for olive oil for the dressing when she asks, "What's bothering you, Ned?"
Ned hesitates, then sets down the salt cellar. "Robert's not running again."
Catelyn nods. "I can't say I'm surprised. He seemed to be ready to leave politics. Are you so disappointed?"
Ned looks at her. "He wants me to take his place."
Catelyn raises her eyebrows. "Really? As representative?"
"Yes." Ned knocks over the salt.
Catelyn smiles and sets it right. "Nothing in life is that much of a sure thing, my love."
Ned says, wryly, "In this district, with the full support of the party machine. There aren't much surer. He wants me to do it."
Catelyn nods, slowly. "Well, then. You should."
"It's not that simple. My life here, my work…"
Catelyn shrugs. "It's as good a reason as any for a sabbatical, and two years is just right. After that you could reassess, see how you liked the life, stick around or come back to Cornell."
"Catelyn, you're taking this awfully calmly."
Catelyn laughs. "Ned, you sound exactly like your mother. Everything awfully and frightfully and whatnot."
"Catelyn…"
Catelyn places a hand on his arm. "How I'm taking it, in the end, doesn't matter. How are you taking it? Do you want to do this, Ned Stark? Can you?"
"I'm going for a walk," he says, abruptly. Crossing the space beneath the timbers, he thinks he sees a flash of Catelyn's smile in the glass against the lake.
Well, Robb thinks, except Jon. He's driving on autopilot, thinking, the conifers at the side of the road a sliding green blur, but he comes to himself abruptly before he quite forgets about Bran. Swearing gently, he turns off and the textbooks in the back seats pile up against one door.
Bran comes out to meet him, eyes amused and accusing. "You nearly drove right past, didn't you."
"I never," Robb begins, but gives up, because Bran always knows. Bran smiles, wheels back to pick up a few things while Robb clears the trunk, and pretty soon they have the chair stowed and Bran installed in the front seat.
"Sure I'm not too heavy for you?" Bran enquires, wickedly.
"You're not heavy, you're my brother," they chorus, and both laugh.
After that the conifers zip past again and neither of them speak, but the silence that stretches is comfortable, not awkward. Robb glances at Bran in the mirror from time to time, trying to guess what he's thinking and failing as always: there is always something unreadable as still water about Bran, something incalculable.
He's startled when Bran asks, "Have you told Mum and Dad yet?"
"Have I told them what?"
Bran gives him a tiny half-smile. "They'll be, ah, startled. At least public service gets your loans forgiven after a while."
"Damn you, Bran, I'm not sure…"
"I think you are." Bran smiles properly this time. "You aren't made for the corporate associate life, Robb. You should have stayed in academia."
"Law school is academia."
"Whatever." Bran chuckles, and the late autumn sun splashes in the wing mirror and in his eyes, so he looks momentarily unearthly against the backdrop of the bleakness of the landscape. The moment passes and it's just Bran, grinning like the Cheshire Cat who knows a secret.
Robb smiles back at him, a little unwilling. He hasn't told anyone but Bran, yet, and he hasn't told Bran this: that part of what is drawing him back is the land beneath their wheels and feet, the world he grew up in, and the yearning inarticulacy of it all, that desire to work, to serve, in – after four years of undergrad and three of law school – what is still the only world he knows.
They're a few miles out from home now, the curve of the lake spreading below them deep and blue.
Ned grew up in a household where they gave thanks before every meal. His father used Robert Burns' Selkirk grace: sae let the Lord be thankit. Ned remembers reciting it for Robert in college, making him laugh. The words work their way through his mind like knotted string, even now, and he smiles.
Catelyn touches his shoulder, her fingers carding roughly through his hair, and then the children are coming in and taking their seats – they always claim their own chairs when they return, take back their places in the history of this house – with the red tikka on their foreheads. They're laughing and talking, Robb and Bran discussing some book they both read recently, Sansa and Arya having some argument about who said what to whom some at some point in the last twenty years.
Ned smiles as Rickon takes his own customary place on Ned's right side. "What are you thinking about?" he chirps, and Ned startles. Rickon isn't looking at him, reaching for cooked spinach and a ladle amidst the general hum of conversation, but this is a level of perspicuity Ned generally associates with Bran.
"I have to make a decision," he says honestly, after a moment. "I'm having trouble."
"If you should flunk someone?"
Ned laughs. "No. That's never usually such a hard decision."
"Toss a coin," Rickon says, seriously. He has been planning campus visits recently, poring over prospectuses and websites with a nickel in hand for important decisions. Ned finds it endearing.
"Maybe I will," he answers, and sits back in his chair, looking down the table. Catelyn and Sansa are discussing something very intently – from the gestures, Ned guesses it may be hemlines – and Arya is attempting to balance a napkin ring on her nose.
"The children were all raised to eat with their right hands and do party tricks with their left," Ned remarks to Robert, who chuckles.
Robb's looking up, looking serious, which is characteristic. "How's the law review?" Ned asks him, not having had a chance to ask since Robb's elevation at the end of the previous semester, in a blaze of glory and celebratory beer pong.
"Good," Robb says, looking a little confused. "It's a lot of work. I kinda have to talk about it, actually."
Ned nods, seriously, meaning, we can. He looks away just in time to see the napkin ring fall into Arya's dal.
"Guess you like this," Robert says to him. "Having all your brothers and sisters around again."
"They make a lot of noise," Rickon confides, and Ned laughs again.
"What's funny?" Bran asks, and without waiting for an answer, takes the spinach from Rickon. "What, you're Popeye now? What's so funny?"
"You are," Ned says, with affection, and wonders for the twelve thousandth time how he could go on without them all.
"Well," Robert says, and Ned and Catelyn look up. "I'd hoped to carry the news of my decision back with me."
It's not a demand or even a question, but Ned stops, puts down the glass in his hands and goes to sit on the couch, pushing a red cushion to the floor. "I don't know," he says, in a low voice. "I don't know, Robert.
"I can't handle my own family half the time. I found out at dinner that Arya has been dating a woman for a year, that Bran's not happy where he is. That Robb is turning down Dewey and LeBoeuf for the DA's office in Syracuse."
"That's a wise move." Robert nods.
"My point is," – Ned hesitates – "that when the responsibility is only this, I can't…"
"Ned," Robert says. "You’re a decent man and a conscientious academic. Your books are well-researched and may have been read by possibly one or two people who weren't on your dissertation committee. Sometimes first-year poli-sci majors cite your papers. But they're dull as ditchwater and your scholarship is never going to set the world on fire."
Ned says, "Is there a point to this?"
"Your net contribution to the world, Eddard Stark, is sitting out there in lawn chairs playing Clue and drinking bad riesling."
Ned shakes his head. "They will be scrutinised, and so will I be, and you, Catelyn. There will be talk of pagan gods. God, they'll make it so Arya's tattoos are some sort of sigil for her moral fibre. There will be nauseating op-eds about Bran, and the sins of the father visited upon Jon."
Robert says, "That's the world they already live in."
Ned makes to get up, stays seated, gets up properly, sits down again. "I can't leave here," he says. "This is my home." Eyes on the lake, he says, "This is Ithaca, Robert."
"Call yourself a political scientist," Robert says affectionately, "you demented lit crit."
"Catelyn," Ned says, in quiet entreaty.
"Fuck you, Ned Stark," she says, softly. "Fuck you for being the one with least to fear. Fuck your fear."
There is no sound, then, other than the wind, the distant laughter, and the lapping of the lake on its shores.
"They're not," Jon says, thoughtfully, which is true: when he has access to a computer he gets emails from all of them; punchy ones from Arya, perfectly punctuated if infrequent ones from Sansa; thoughtful ones from Bran. Robb tweets at him instead, because, as Jon has often noted, Robb is just that much of a hipster soul.
But his father likes letters: old-fashioned watermarked paper, the tiny imperfections of writing with ink. His fluid script is obvious from the envelope, even before Dear Jon at the start of the two tightly-packed sheets.
"Must be a good one," Sam observes several minutes later. "You've usually annoyed me with five little chuckles and hey Sam you'll never guess what my sister did by now."
Sam, despite the fact he's never met them, has often said that he feels as though he knows Jon's family intimately, or at least well enough to pick them up out of a line-up. Jon has always promised that when they're back in the States, whenever that may be, he'll take Sam home with him and subject him to the full force of a gestalt Stark personality battering and charm offensive. He always puts it in exactly those words, and Sam always laughs, wistfully; he doesn't care too much for his own family, back in Bumfuck, Montana, as he puts it. Jon laughs at that in his turn. It's no wonder they're friends.
"Yeah," Jon says, slowly, looking up for a moment before the final paragraph. A mynah calls from a few feet above, on its way from one tree to another; some guy on the road is selling vegetables, calling hoarsely. Jon's eyes drop back to the page.
…in the end, Jon, I believe I would regret it if I did not. Of course it may never happen; Catelyn observes nothing in life is a sure thing, but she may be erring on the side of caution this time.
One final thing: should it all come to pass, I'd like it if you were to return for the opening of the new session. Of course, if you can't, you can't, but I would like it.
With love…
…trailing into illegible scrawl and Ned Stark's distinctively illegible signature. Which might, Jon realises with a start, soon grace greater documents than this.
"Well?" Sam says, hands on hips.
Jon smiles. "It's really, really hot in DC in summers. You ever been?"
"I've gonna pretend that makes sense somehow," Sam grumbles, and makes to grab the letter away.
"You'll like it," Jon says, neatly evading him. "I guess we both will, for a time."
"Why am I going to DC, now?" Sam says, and swats a mosquito on the way to swatting Jon.
Jon dodges him, folds away his letter and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking out at the sunlight on the dust, the bright, brilliant autumn. "Guess you'll see," he says.
end.
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on 2012-05-09 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-05-13 09:11 pm (UTC)