EDDARD

The sky was dark and ugly the day Balon Greyjoy was brought before the King to either lose his head or his pride. Thick, dark clouds hung above, and men firmed their feet on the wet stony ground to face the wind that blew from the sea. Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, looked at the water and saw his reflection staring back. "It won't rain, 'tis just damn ironborn weather," he heard someone behind him mumble, while far away, a lone thunder boomed.

The fighting had raged on for nigh a year, and Robert had come out of it more king than when he entered it. Jon Arryn knew it was a matter of time before some lord decided to test the sturdiness of Robert's crown, and had told Ned as much a few years prior in a visit to Winterfell. "I'll be there. When he needs it," was all Ned had said, angered at Robert for sending the Hand to do what should have been his own bidding. "Not before." The wounds of the sack of King's Landing were still wet to the touch, and love for Robert did not make Ned forget the taste of bile in his mouth when he saw what had been done to the princess and her children. "He was proud, Jon. He stood there before the bodies, and he was proud."

Ned glanced at the ragged kraken lord, half-fish, half-man, as he struggled to his knee, and wondered if Balon knew what he had done when he put the Lannister fleet to the torch.

Robert donned no helmet, and his black-black hair, thick with sand and grainy with salt, stuck to his forehead. His plate armor shone like pure silver, however, even under the dark, clouded sky, and he was still full of the beauty that made noble ladies fall for common knights. His voice carried all the hubris that used to cling to him like smoke after they sparred, and Eddard noticed being King had only worsened the smell of it.

Robert's words rumbled, their own kind of storm, for when His Grace spoke, the world grew silent to listen.

"One thing is to take a throne, Greyjoy. Another one to hold it. It seems to me–" Robert chuckled as he glanced around the circle of men that surrounded him, a jest for victors alone; Ned did not think Balon found it nearly as amusing, "–you can't do either."

The King stuck out his gloved hand, and Thoros of Myr stood ready to fill it with a wet circular garment made of thick wood and seaweed, honors he had earned by being the first over the walls of Pyke.

"Content yourself with your Seastone Chair, Lord Balon, and note that it is no true throne. Driftwood crowns are easy to break," Robert said as he took both hands to the crown and parted it down the middle as easily as one parts bread. "We won't hesitate to do it again."

The men around him cheered as he tossed the pieces to the wind, drunk on talk of tourneys, feasts, and women, yet all Ned could do was grimace at the sound of the splinters. He's bent the knee already, Robert, Ned wanted to say. He could almost hear the King reply, "And I'm making sure he won't be risin' so soon."

Jon Arryn had backed the public display, yet Ned thought the wreck of his castle and the loss of two sons had been punishment enough. Thoughts of Robb and Sansa filled his head for a moment, and underneath coats of fur, armor, and leather, Eddard Stark felt a chill down to his bones, wondering what kind of fate would have been reserved for his own children had Balon claimed his crown, as unlikely as that would be.

Balon's surviving boy stood next to Eddard, eyes wide with fear while he stared at his father, who did not once glance back his way. He wondered how much Theon Greyjoy's life was worth to a man like Balon. Is he a father before he is a king? Ned wondered, too, what Robert would reply if he were to ask him the same.

Theon will come to Winterfell with me, though he will never call it home, Ned knew. He agreed with Robert's decision to let the boy live, but Ned would not thank him for bestowing him such a burden.

Robert had been trying to reach Ned since he first joined with his forces at Seagard, and it had become increasingly hard to avoid him. He feared Balon's daughter and boy would have the same fate as Elia's babes, yet the Robert who summoned him to council to arrange the ordeal—and Eddard was half sure Robert had only chosen him so that they must meet again—was not the same Robert who had claimed the throne all those years back.

And it will be for nothing if Balon puts rebellion in his mind again. Ned felt his sword heavy against its scabbard, a weight bigger than his own pulling him down, and the numbing sensation in his fingers that meant he needed to pray. There was no godswood on Pyke, however, and the North stood some long miles further up. Can the Old Gods reach here, where they're not welcome? He hoped, for Theon Greyjoy's sake as much as his own, that the Kraken would not eat its young.

Part of Eddard, the part filled with hope and love, the part that missed Robert like the coast misses the sea when the tide is low and the moon is high, wondered if his friend—for that Robert never stopped being one was fact—had started to grow soft of heart as well as body. Though Robert still showed prowess in battle, Ned knew him too well to avoid noticing his breastplate had grown larger around the belly, and thought a fuller figure suited the King well enough.

It was hard to sustain anger when longing felt so much sweeter. He glanced at Robert, someone to whom laughter came often and easily, and wished they could be boys again, when their hardest battles were to pick where to go hawking come the morrow. Forgiving came easier to boys, too.

When Eddard Stark glanced at the sky again, he thought the clouds looked darker than before, swollen with water. The smell of rain was all around them.

. . .

The Eddard who agreed to take accommodations in Robert's ship as it made its way down the Sunset coast was an Eddard who'd spent far too long without his wife. A man too sullen for courtesies, too tired for arguments; a man with compliance at the tip of his tongue. Robert knew this in the way a wolf knows to tire prey before lunging, in the way it targets the sick, the young, and the old. The Stark bore the direwolf in its sigil; the Baratheons had the stag. Yet Robert bares the teeth, and I, the horns. The king had managed to do what he had been coveting since news of rebellion first reached royal ears: he had Ned cornered, and Ned was past too tired to run.

"Please, Ned, do me the honor! I need my councilors to counsel, and so does the realm, Gods only know. Will you shout advice from your northern skiff? I can't believe you folk call that ragged barge a galley." The King had said, as his men-at-arms, advisors, and admirers watched—men of importance who would notice, men who would talk.

Robert's voice was warm enough, but there was an edge to it that said he would not leave until he got what he wanted. Fighting would do nothing but make him sullen. Disagreement disagrees with Robert, Lyanna had told him once, long ago, when Robert had been friend, family, and lover in one skin, for everything else stood far away on the other side of the mountains of the moon. Ned knew, then, that Robert had never learned to see beyond those mountains. That the world was two young boys under a willow tree, and it ended at a stone wall. "The owners of it all," he used to call them, and what a small thing all was. Ned glanced at the King's crown, a fusion of golden antlers woven together like swords on a throne, and felt the softness of the direwolf cape on his own shoulders. Gods save us all.

"As you wish," Eddard mustered, and the words came off angrier than he meant them. Robert surely felt it, for his smile carried a sadness too, an understanding that chain mail did not protect him from all kinds of hurt.

Ned had seen King Robert's Hammer from afar, but meeting it up close was another thing entirely. The ship was colossal, an otherworldly beast with skin made of wood and insides made of men, its four hundred oars spreading across the ocean like the tendrils of a grapevine. Robert was not wrong: everything looked like a ragged barge next to it, yet Eddard found the accommodations chosen for him comfortable enough, and would not mind resting in its belly were the hammer someone else's.

Their war meetings had been taking place on Lady Lyanna as often as not, for the King believed his sister would grant them luck in battle, despite changing ships proving more burdensome than not. Promise me, Ned. Eddard Stark did not share his friend's sentiment and wished Lyanna could have brought luck upon herself.

Lord Tywin had been the only one to voice his complaints, though far from the only one to feel them, calling the ordeal "a folly unbecoming of a king" and Robert "too superstitious for his own good". Robert had let him talk, even laughed after he was finished, but they had met on Lady Lyanna's hull for as long as the Greyjoy flag sailed on western skies.

Ned warned Jory Cassel he needed rest and was not to be disturbed, but sleep took its time to reach him, with the sounds of sailors working their ship into the sea all around him. He could feel every creak and every crack of the wood below and above and beside him, the way the galley heaved and groaned, and a childish part of Ned, a part he thought long buried, supposed the big thing was tired too.

When Eddard entered his bedroom to sleep, noon was splattered across the sky; when he awoke to a voice and a knock on the door, Gods know how many hours later, his back aching from the hard mattress, and dry spit crusting on the corner of his lips, the world had gone dark.

"Lord Eddard. May I come in?" A man called, though he could not tell whom.

He covered himself before answering, "What's the matter?"

Robert's squire, one Cadwyn Payne, a man of one-and-twenty with oily dark hair and watery dark eyes, entered the room looking more disheveled than was his custom.

"King Robert asks to see you, my lord. He's waiting in his quarters." He spoke quickly and out of breath, as if he had been instructed to hurry. Something was amiss.

Cadwyn had lost a brother in the fighting, which had earned him a knighthood at Robert's hands, yet until they made to Lannisport where he could be properly anointed, the lad did not seem to be above his squirely duties.

"Now? What time is it?" Ned groaned.

"Past the owl, my lord."

"Gods be good. Did His Grace mention what sort of matters he wanted discussed?"

Cadwyn shook his head and avoided his eyes. He knows but does not want to tell me, Ned realized.

"Very well." Eddard gave Cadwyn his leave with a motion of the hand.

The squire was almost past the door when something stopped him. "He's… been drinking, my lord."

Eddard sighed. What have you told him, Robert? "I'll be on my way, Ser. Thank you for your time."

Ned chose his clothes carefully and found even the lightest of fabrics clung to his skin strangely as he sweat away on half a dozen different tunics. "You're not made for southern weather," Robert had told him once, though Ned did not know how mild coastal weather could make his heart beat faster, and his throat go bone-dry. He felt like a maiden on her wedding night. He is not a monster, Eddard tried to remind himself, only a man.

He settled for a tunic of white linen, a vest of grey-dyed leather, and a pair of well-fitted black breeches that stopped at his calves. He dressed in brown riding boots, too, though he lacked a horse, and had chosen them simply because of how they looked.

Ned glanced at it by chance as he was about to head out, though Old Nan would have argued that chance is but fate's comelier sister. A tiny mirror hung from the corner of the bedroom, so filled with rust and clogged with debris, he had not noticed it was there before.

He saw himself, then, amidst the muck and dust of the years. The tunic of white linen, the vest of grey-dyed leather, the pair of well-fitted black breeches, and the man who wore them. White, grey, and black. His colors. The Stark colors. I chose them by chance, Ned told himself, and found dread had carved a pathway into his tired, tired heart.

He did not know what it meant—that Robert called, and he came running, clad in all the honor of his house, to a most ungodly meeting at a most ungodly hour. You know what he wants, yet you pretend you do not. Chance and fate. He swallowed his pride and something else along with it, hoping Robert was past too drunk to notice the difference between the two.

The room smelled of him all over. Of men, and sweat, and Arbor Gold. Of roasted leg of lamb, good, home-made ale, and warm loaves of bread from the Eryie kitchens cooling by the window and ready for the grabbing. It smelled of long nights spent gazing at the stars, of the constellations they could see, and what others they could make up. It smelled of hawking, and horseback, and steel. It smelled of all the words they did not know, and of all the feelings they could not name, feelings that made boys fall in love with each other.

It smelled of Robert. Of the child that was, the man he is, and the king he could be, was fate a little kinder, and life a little sweeter.

It made Ned nauseous.

"You came." Robert looked beyond himself with surprise.

"You called," Ned answered, though he remained at the door, with a cautious hand still hanging by the handle.

"Not for the first time, mind you. But you were playing hard to get, you were. Don't look at me with those eyes, Ned, you know it's true."

"These are the only eyes I have," Ned replied.

The King sat hunched over his oaken table, an empty bottle of wine beside him, another half-empty in his hand, the traces of his dinner left to the side for the servants come the morrow. He already looked drunk, and his words came off slurred, in a way that said he'd been drinking and sulking and drinking some more for a while now.

"Well, don't be coy. You've been avoiding me!"

"Why do you think that is?"

Robert sighed as a lazy old dog might sigh when you ask it to move out of the way. "Have a seat, first. Come on, drink with me."

He wants you, you fool.

Ned Stark did not move.

There was still time. The door sat half-open. The window hadn't closed. Go away, Ned told himself. This is what Robert does. He would never stand up for what was right, so he clawed and threshed to get others to stoop low. Robert has only ever wanted that of you. He felt his stomach churning, his mouth filling with water. What does that make you if you choose to stay?

"Eddard. Please," Robert mustered when he saw Ned open the door.

"I do not know when I'll see you again, Seven Hells. It's– It's hard… being King, that is. We're getting old, we're not… we're not young anymore. Gods, I miss you, Ned. This time we've spent apart… No letters, no visits, no… no nothing? It's been killing me, and… you know I've always wanted a warrior's death, weapon in hand, battle all around me, not… I do not want us to die slowly, Ned. You, freezing your ass off in your little home with your little children. Me… from the wine, mostlike… or the wife. Maybe both." He chuckles, then. "If you want to fight, do it like a man. Do not hide in this woman's war, cold and… and uncaring. I have had enough of it already. Be kind to me, Ned."

Eddard sat down with a mournful kind of silence, though nothing of substance had died, and Robert, though unbecoming of the likes of him, let the silence linger, let it weigh down on both of them so neither would forget that Ned Stark had chosen to stay. Ned could see the thought settling inside Robert's thick skull, that whatever regrets and guilts might arise on the morrow, today they would wait… which might've been why Robert seemed so nervous, as if to pick the wrong word or to laugh at the wrong thing might scare Eddard off, and they would never see each other again. He himself was not so sure there wasn't any truth to that.

"Would you… care for a drink?"

Ned nodded and reached for Robert's half-empty bottle. The wine was sweet, though not cloyingly so, and he drank it all in three big gulps, hoping that if anything were to happen tonight, he could be drunk enough to blame it on the wine.

"Have you been sleeping better? With the war over and all," Robert asked when reaching for another bottle in his wine cabinet, and Ned watched him—the way the white blouse clung to his skin and let part of his back peek through the fabric; the tight leather pants that marked ever nook and every cranny of his thick thighs, and how his black curls sat, longer than Robert himself would've liked, Ned knew, yet it did not make him any less beautiful.

"I sleep the same. Not very well."

"You were always a restless sleeper." Robert chuckled.

"At least I never snored." Ned gave Robert a knowing look, and they laughed as if nothing had ever stood between them. Eddard chose to blame that on the wine, too.

"Do not remind me. Cersei complains enough of it as is. That woman… Gods be good. I've married a devil, Ned."

"It is not Cersei that worries me, you know that well."

"There you go again… Jaime is harmless, you rock-headed bastard. Tywin is… not easy. At least I don't have to sleep with him."

And so they drank and laughed as time flew by until night and quiet engulfed them again. They talked about the past, the war, and Theon Greyjoy, as well as court and council, Winterfell, and family. Robert asked about Benjen, and Ned replied that he had made a name for himself at the Wall. They talked about Stannis' incessant teeth-grinding during meetings, and Renly's latest obsession with a boy singer from the Vale. They talked about Jon Arryn, and the tragedy that took Lord Steffon, until their conversation finally ended where it always did when they drank together.

"Ah, Ned, I tell you. It would all be different if Lyanna were here."

Ned only nodded, for something in his heart that had shattered long ago still hurt when it heard her name.

"I miss her every day, Ned. There's not one morning I don't wake up thinking of her." They were well into their third bottle by now, and Ned could barely feel the tips of his fingers.

He remained quiet for a long time before finally saying, "I miss her too." There was nothing else he could offer beyond the truth.

They sat facing each other, though wine and yearning made them half lie on the table instead of bringing their chairs closer together. He saw then how Robert's eyes shifted—how they pierced through Ned as though undressing him of clothes and skin alike, as if no lie could remain hidden before them.

"You look like her when you're like this." His voice was husky from wine and sleep and lust. It made Ned shiver and his heart quicken. It reminded him of nights long past when Robert would practice saying his wedding vows to Ned, claiming he looked so much like his sister it was only proper they practiced together. He wondered, too, if it was ever Lyanna whom Robert loved, or if loving the sister had just been easier than loving the brother.

"Don't say such nonsense." Ned scoffed, hoping it would take the weight off of it.

"You look happy… wild, when you drink." Robert paused. "I do not love her, Ned. I do not love Cersei. My wife is a wench and a monster and… I don't think children can fix whatever's broken between us." Robert chose his words carefully, for a moment more sober than he had ever been in his life. "Do you love your wife?"

Ned did Robert the courtesy to ponder, to also choose his words with care, to make it seem as if the question burdened him when it was the simplest, most stupid one of them all.

"I love Catelyn more than I thought possible for a man to love a woman."

Robert stayed silent, and Ned prepared himself to be asked to leave and forget this night had ever happened. Instead, Robert set the bottle aside and asked, "Do you love only her?"

Ned had not taken his eyes off the ship's floorboards, yet he heard the desperation in Robert's voice, the kind that said he would not know what to do was the answer to the thing he asked anything other than what he wanted. Ned lost all resolve and let the question linger, afraid of what his heart craved to answer. So he heard Robert's chair creak in silence, and did not raise his voice when the king traced slow, steady steps towards him, until Ned's eyes stared at the floorboards no longer, but at royal boots instead.

Robert took a hand to his chin and lifted it gently until Ned Stark could do nothing but face the truth. He could smell his musk now, and the wine in Robert's every breath, feel how it made his own member harden in his pants, like a green boy stealing glances at passing clevages during summer.

Robert caressed his cheek, and Ned leaned into the touch when the King planted a soft, chaste kiss on his lips, with the sort of kindness Robert had only ever given him and no one else.

Ned did not kiss him back then, nor when Robert touched their lips again. It took the king retreating, a drunken excuse forming at the tip of his tongue, for Ned to grab him by the blouse and kiss him hard—a kiss that smashed their teeth together and said, do not dare to leave just because I falter.

Robert tasted of sweat and Redwyne grapes and victory, and Ned could feel the way the king's beard caressed his skin, trailing tickles across his face when Robert kissed him all over.

"Gods, I've missed you," Robert told him out of breath, stopping after a thousand kisses, and continuing for a thousand more. His hand went to Ned's waist and squeezed the skin underneath, crinkled the shirt, pinched the fat. He has been hungry for a long time, thought Ned. This is a man who has waited too long.

"I…" Ned whimpered softly when Robert burst his leather vest open, not knowing where to grab first, where to lick first. "I've missed you, too."

Robert took a long sniff off his chest, brushed a firm finger against his nipple, and used his King's voice to tell him, "Then show me just how much."

Ned was, above many things, a king's man, and such a man learns to do as he's told.

He grabbed Robert by the shoulders and led him firmly to the ground with a soft thump, more fierce than tender, as if to say a leash did not make him less of a wolf. Half straddling, half kneeling beside him, Eddard sat himself on top of his king. He could feel Robert's cock twitch and harden beneath him, and a soft moan escaped him, for Robert liked fierce things the most.

Eddard pinned Robert's hands to his sides and made to kiss him before reaching for his neck, leaving the king complaining to himself about northern chivalry. The nibbles turned to bites turned to sucking, and Ned slowly made his way down Robert's collarbone, to his nipples over his blouse—with its fabric so thin it barely made a difference—until he faced the hem of his pants and looked up.

Ned saw Robert staring back with those stormy blue eyes of his, anticipation splattered across his face. The outline of Robert's girth could be seen under the leather-and-linen garments he wore, begging to be set free, begging to be touched and stroked until Robert would forget about the war, and his wife, and his children, and all that remained was the pleasure that Ned had given him. Eddard seemed to be well on his way to forgetting, too.

Outside the cabin, it had started to rain.

Eddard caressed Robert's cheek while his other hand worked the front laces of his trousers. When the king grabbed Ned by the wrist and took one of his fingers in his mouth, sucking eagerly, Ned gasped. He could hear the raindrops falling all around them as Robert twisted and turned his tongue before planting a soft kiss at the tip of his pointer. Gods… so warm.

Memory and practice overtook him, and he swallowed Robert whole. He had missed this taste, too, the way his cock heaved and pulsed in his mouth. Everything else seemed to matter so very little then. What could be worth more than showing love to his king?

Robert groaned and reached for Ned's hair, giving him control to work his way from the base of his bush to the tip of his cock, before gulping it down in a single movement of his lips. He felt Robert growing in his throat, how it made him want to gag—and Ned had never known one could miss such a queer feeling.

"Ned…" Robert pleaded between moans, though for what Ned could not say—Robert could not muster to say more than his name.

Eddard stopped and pressed his face against Robert's cock, waiting for the king to look at him and see him completely, see him in fullness. Robert heaved when he lifted his head.

"You're fucking asking for it, aren't you?" Robert grabbed his head with both hands and fucked his mouth until slaver covered Ned just as much as Robert. The sounds made his own manhood twitch with want. "Tell me you've missed it," Robert ordered him, yet when Ned tried to speak, the king thrust himself inside him harder.

Shame settled deep inside Eddard's loins and pressed itself sweetly against his belly. The feeling made him squirm. He knew the king would not last much longer going at this pace, so it did not come as a surprise when Robert tore him off his cock—to which Ned whined—and, grabbing him by the waist, shoved Eddard against the desk. He moaned from the brute force of it alone. That got Robert to chuckle.

"Let me show you how much I've missed this, too. It's only proper." Though Eddard never saw, he could hear the smirk in Robert's voice as he made Ned lower himself against the table, clearing the wine bottles from atop it with a brush of his hand.

The sound of glass rolling through the floor made Ned flinch. "Someone might hear us–"

"You think they haven't heard you already? You?" He laughed, almost bitter. Ned felt himself getting impossibly hard. "Please, I've had common whores quieter than you, Eddard," Robert told him as he lifted his right leg and placed it on the table, stretching Ned all over, before finally moving away. "Stay down, I'll be back."

The lack of Robert's warmth was hard to bare, yet what was Ned to do but comply? The next thing he knew, he could feel the king's breath inches from his hole. He could tell Robert had taken his clothes off as he spread Ned apart and planted kisses on his thighs and loins and every single place but where Ned needed him to be. Eddard closed his eyes and let the sounds of the storm engulf him when Robert finally licked his entrance, and all he could muster was to grind against his king's face.

Robert grabbed his ass and, childish like only he can be, stopped completely.

"Robert… urgh." Ned whimpered and complained as he thrust into nothingness, desperate for his touch.

"If you want it, you have to ask–"

"Please. Please, Your Grace."

If nobody heard us before, they will surely hear us now. Eddard barely managed the thought while Robert licked him completely, spreading his cheeks and circling his entrance. He groaned and clawed and scratched at the hard oak beneath him, as Robert kept his leg firmly up.

Ned could not tell when Robert had glazzed himself, but he smelled the olive oil, and soon enough the king eased into him a thick, calloused finger, as Ned twitched and gasped for air.

"You're so tight," Robert told him in a whisper, his voice husky like the night.

Ned reached for his own cock, and stroked it to the rhythm of Robert's index.

"You're such a slut," Robert licked him up and down while his finger circled the right spot, teasing, toying, barely touching where he should be.

Ned grinded against him, arched his back, squirmed, yet Robert would not allow him to move where he wanted.

"Such a pretty thing," Robert thrust two fingers inside him, and Ned's vision blurred.

"I need you. Please," the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North begged while tears welled up in his eyes.

"What are you to command your King? Mad?" Robert trailed kisses down his back.

"Desperate." Eddard sighed.

"Then use your words." The king stopped Ned's hand and began stroking his cock himself. Ned could feel Robert's heartbeat, the way his hard nipples pressed against his back as Ned fucked Robert's hand. Something deep inside him found relief in being made to feel so pathetic.

"I… Robert…"

Robert thrust his cock inside, olive oil spilled all over. Eddard's mind vanished, and his body went limp. He could barely move his hips to the rhythm Robert set for them, so he stopped trying entirely, and lay on the cold, hard wood, letting his king ravish him as he pleased while groaning against his cock. The sounds made him blush—his, Roberts, and the ones they made together when skin touched skin.

"Harder," was all Ned could think to say. He did feel mad, mad for pleasure and drunk on desire as he tightened himself around Robert's length, and heard the king whine against him, needy like only sex and wine could turn him.

Ned felt Robert's hands across his belly, the roughness and scars that scratched him even as Robert tried his best to be gentle. He came all over himself when the king touched his breasts, firm fingers on his nipples as he rammed into just the right spot over and over again. He could think about nothing at all.

When Robert stopped to let him gather himself, prepared to thrust into him once more, Ned placed a hand on his chest. "Let me sit."

Eddard's legs had turned limp, and Robert helped him sit atop the table to face his king. "I want to see you," Ned told him, a soft hand on his cheek, and Robert had the audacity to blush.

"Do you, now?" Robert said as he smeared Ned's come over his own cock.

They stared at each other, both moaning as one when Robert slowly eased himself into Ned once more. He had felt empty without Robert's cock inside him, empty and cold.

Robert could barely keep himself standing as he thrust in and out of Eddard, eyes locked into his as Ned's hands rested on his belly. "Ned," Robert whispered amidst moans that grew stronger and louder with each stroke, foreheads touching while Eddard swallowed him completely.

"Robert…" Ned gasped for air. "I love you, too."

He did not know for how long they stood holding each other, but when Robert finally picked Ned from the table, his body aching all over, shy tendrils of sunlight spread into the room, the candles had melted completely, and the raining had ceased.

What does that make you if you choose to stay? The question nagged at him as he lay beside Robert on his bed, whose smile was so wide he seemed to be looking at a sky full of stars. All Ned saw as he stared at the ceiling was wood, nothing more.

"I should leave," the words left him with no resistance. If Eddard went away now maybe there would still be something in him worth salvaging. The longer the stayed, the hardest it became to believe that was true.

Robert held his hand, then, tender and desperate. "I know," he paused, his voice thin and airy, "but can you stay?"

Eddard Stark did not reply, but neither did he leave.