“Duty Kept Me Here, Serving Edelia, When I Should Have Been At His Side. Blaming You Was Easier Than
“Duty kept me here, serving Edelia, when I should have been at his side. Blaming you was easier than facing my own guilt. Promise me you will take care of him,” he scoffed. “That was never your responsibility to bear.”
“But it was,” Gem interrupted. Frustration roiled in her chest, swelling like a rising tide. “I loved him too.”
Danyel’s jaw tightened, and he looked away. “Love doesn’t excuse what he put you through. It doesn’t make it right that you had to shoulder a burden that wasn’t yours.”
“And yet, I chose to,” Gem said softly. “It wasn’t your responsibility, and it wasn’t mine. It was my choice. It was his choice, Danyel. It always was.”
“He was my brother. He needed me.”
“And your students needed you, too.”
“My duty—”
“What does it fucking matter!” she burst out suddenly. “What even is duty? Duty to Tomix, duty to family, duty to Edelia, duty to Lore—what do you do when they pull you in different directions? You can’t do it all. I can’t do it all. What if it’s all meaningless?”
Danyel didn’t reply immediately. He studied her, jaw tight and knuckles white where his hands gripped the wooden ledge of the spiritloom. “You think it’s meaningless?” His voice was low, almost disbelieving. “You, the Hero of Falconreach?”
“I—I don’t know anymore.” Gem's voice cracked, and she looked away. Apprehend Sepulchure. Vanquish Drakath. Help the Rose. Stand by the Vind. Banish Envy. Save Tomix. It was too much. “What has duty ever done for me? And what did it ever do for Tomix? Did it save him? Did it save your family?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “All it did was leave you alone, just like it left me.”
He flinched as if struck. “So tell me—should I just abandon it? Pretend it doesn’t matter?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t know. I just… I just wish it hadn’t cost us so much.”
More Posts from Lucennia and Others
Cat of the Canals/Arya in Braavos
Cat had made friends along the wharves; porters and mummers, ropemakers and sailmenders, taverners, brewers and bakers and beggars and whores.
A Basket of Ribbons - Guillaume Charles Brun (1869)
I found a drawing I never finished in middle school and it made me sad because I've completely forgotten how to art and haven't even picked up a pencil in years
Lyanna Stark was made for the North. She was made to race horses with Brandon and cross swords with Benjen and pick blue winter roses from the glass gardens for her lord father. She wasn’t made to wear silken gowns in the chafing southron heat as a prize for stupid Robert Baratheon. She wasn’t made to be a queen.
Tears stung her eyes. That made her angry, so she swiped them away before they could fall. She was five-and-ten and flowered now, a woman grown. Too old to cry. Above her, the ancient gaze of the weirwood seemed to strip her bare, its long bone-white face cold with contempt even as its eyes wept rivulets of blood. Even the gods thought her too old to cry. I should pray, Lyanna thought suddenly. She went to her knees, clasping her hands together beneath her chin.
Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Don’t let me marry Robert with his wandering eye and his bastard in the Vale. Dearest Ned says that he loves me, that he is a good man and true, but he is blinded by his own love for his friend. He does not see Robert for what he is. I do not want him. I do not want to be a pawn in my father’s southron ambitions. I do not want to be queen. Please, old gods, let me be free.
Was that enough? Did the old gods hear her? Carefully, Lyanna cracked one eye open and peered up through her lashes. Only the same twisted face of dried red sap glared back at her, unchanged in its hateful ugliness. She chewed her lip uncertainly. If only they could give her a sign. Perhaps I should close my eyes again. She squeezed them shut even more tightly, but all Lyanna could hear was the wind, blowing a soft shivery sigh through the rustling oak trees. And… and something else.
Footsteps. A pair of them, crunching on the dead red leaves. People were coming.
Lyanna’s eyes flew open as panic seized her throat in its terrible cold fist. There was no time to hide. She grabbed for the nearest weapon—an old rotting tree branch—and whirled.
── ⟢ ・⸝⸝
A snippet from A Crown of False Spring on AO3. My take on the Harrenhal Conspiracy, which theorizes that the STAB Alliance was plotting to use Rhaegar's Harrenhal council to depose of the Targaryens and put Robert on the throne.
Lots of Arya references.
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