The Little Wolf

Hollow

King's Landing

Blood that once flowed through her father's heart now flowed across the timber, staining it red. 

Lyra was dried of her tears, and her throat was ripped so raw from her dreadful screams that blood trickled down toward her stomach, making her churn.

She  lost all her awareness, and felt herself become faint. Or maybe her heart was gone. Or her conscience. Maybe this was untrue. Maybe this was a nightmare.Maybe...maybe mercy didn't exist. She closed her eyes and dreamed of her soul, free and flying, doing everything she longed to do - escape. 

The same voice - "there is no such thing as mercy" - barked behind her, and she felt herself forced to the ground. She knew then she was right about mercy. There was no mercy shown to the honourable Eddard Stark, and now there would be no mercy to the fatherless monster that she was. Not only was she a Monster, her father was deemed a traitor. A traitor's monster. 

Strangely, she smelt it first. Then sense of touch returned to her, and she made herself hesitantly aware of where she had been pushed.

Blood. Father's blood. 

The thick red substance slopped up her knees, her arms, some even splattered on her face. It bonded with her tears, and united they escaped down her cheeks.

"Clean it up, Monster!" the colossal man shrieked, his face twisted into unimaginable hate.

In the crowd she thought she heard Arya scream, yet when she looked the only faces were strange ones, laughing at her father's head as it was spat upon. Above the crowd, her father's head was held by the hair, blood dribbling out of the bodiless neck. His grey eyes stared at her forevermore, open and dull, but looked not  in the way Lyra could ever be happy with.

Her insides churned and her reflex gagged as realisation hit her once more; she was wading in a pool of her father's blood. Shakily, and with eyes squeezed shut, she pressed a cloth into the pool to soak it up, to clean up the mess, the spillage. The blood was strangely warm, and as it oozed through her fingers it soaked the rag. In a bucket beside her, she ringed the blood out, and returned to the pool to soak up more. She kept her mind averted, yet cried and gagged her way through the cruel task. 

She thought of her mother and father, her brothers and sisters, her direwolf and her old life. She thought of her chambers at Winterfell, the carving of a direwolf on the stone wall, the wooden toys strewn meticulously on the floor for her Septa to step on. She remembered Robb lifting her to reach the top of a shelf in the kitchen when they weren't supposed to be there but supper was long off, she remembered Bran teaching her to climb and calling out sweetly, "look at you go, little sister, one day we shall climb together!". She remembered the songs, limericks and funny stories she and Jon would create together as they bonded as outcasts. She remembered Rickon sticking his tongue out at her cheekily as it was her to time to retire in the evening but not his, but still remembered to send a raven on her fifth nameday, a day in which she was absent from home.

She remembered and her heart drowned in the sorrow. It rattled around inside her chest and Lyra knew she was becoming hollow.

Her father wasn't the only thing killed; her innocence, the Gods and mercy were also casualties in this brutal attack. She wept for her father, her own moral casualties and the new darkness in her heart.  

"Monster" was spat at her, and "traitor" at her father's corpse.

Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster.

Her mind repeated, and her Soul, she felt, grew further apart.

Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. I'm a monster.

She was so focused on her new, dark being, that she very nearly was oblivious to Ser Deacon rip her hair out again, and drag her back to her cage. Nearly.

The pain ripped through her body, but she refused to scream. What is physical pain when your family has died? What is torture to the body, if the Soul is tormented further?

She was returned to her cell, and she kissed the name of her father in which she had carved from the bar of her manacles on the stone floor. Then, she kissed the remainder of her family. 

Her own name she had carved below her family. They were all together. She felt a twinge of sorrow, and whispered: "I am Lyra Stark of Winterfell. Daughter or Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn Stark. I am strong enough to withstand the storm, because I am the storm. I am my father's little wolf".

She curled up over the names of her family, gently stroking them with her chained little hand. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered herself to sleep with her own lullaby.

"Eddard. Catelyn. Robb. Jon. Sansa. Arya. Bran. Rickon".