Only A Northern Song ~ Game of Thrones / Willas Tyrell ~

Chapter Fifty Nine: If The Tide Turns

When they got Eddmina back to their chambers, she had passed out from exhaustion, curled up in her Uncle's arms. By the time he had placed her down onto the bed her tears had stopped and her breathing was normal again, though every so often she would sniff or shiver, and she was considerably paler than she usually was. The Maester of Riverrun, an old man with kind eyes going by the name of Vyman, was called to see her by one of the worried-looking handmaidens, and Willas stood off to the side in the corner of the room watching as Lady Stark recalled the story of the night, and the days before. He watched, knowing there was nothing to be done to help, knowing another presence at her bedside would be mere unhelpful clutter.

Brynden Tully stood slightly behind him, as if waiting to see if he would be of use again. His presence made Willas uneasy, because unlike everyone else in the room, his eyes were not fixed on Eddmina, but we're instead watching him, his gaze harsh and questioning.

"I hadn't spoken to her in days," Willas muttered lowly, not turning around to face his wife's great uncle properly. "I thought it best to give her space after what had been said, I thought she wouldn't want to see me after how we had spoken to each other."

He wasn't even sure why he was speaking, feeling as if it was just a way to talk through the shock and his shame of the situation, though it was also just out of awkwardness as he cracked under the pressure of the Tully man's hard stare.

"Probably not your best decision, telling her to go and get herself killed if she wanted," Brynden remarked dryly, and Willas felt his face grow hot as he realised someone had obviously told him everything he and his wife had last said to each other.

Those words had haunted him ever since he had said them. He hated himself for it, hated himself for everything he had said that night. Even if it had come from a place of love he had let his temper and protectiveness get in the way, not to mention his pride. It had stung, considering that his wife thought she would be safe against the violence of a man who had betrayed her family, especially since that man was someone she'd previously been entangled with. After his encounter with Amariah in the Stormlands, he had felt as though their previous engagements had begun to mean nothing, and though the situations were vastly different, he had still felt a little hurt to think that while he had set aside any prior romances, Eddmina was counting on hers to protect her home and brothers. Her stubborness too had been frustrating, and he had snapped before he had been able to stop himself.

He'd regretted it, but he'd not had the courage to apologise. It felt like an insult to his pride to apologise, and there was also a terrified part of him that thought that Eddmina would take his apology as permission, and she would go riding off to Winterfell and he would never see her again. In the days that had followed the conversation, he had avoided her in an attempt to protect them both, but in staying away he had made himself blind to what was really happening to his wife.

He had always known she was the sort of person who bottled her emotions up until it was too late and they all came spilling out. Hiding her emotions was her way of being strong, and it mostly worked, but not even Eddmina was strong enough to tolerate all the hardship and trauma without suffering. It would have been far healthier if she dealt with each blow as it came, but that was not her way. Instead she held everything in until she simply couldn't take it anymore. He had seen her crack under pressure before, but never to such an extreme extent, never to the point of turning to drink as a coping mechanism, never to the point of having a nervous breakdown.

Willas had never seen her in such a state. When one of the servants came rushing to find him, the urgency in their voice as they told him Lady Catelyn needed him had suggested it was bad, but nothing had prepared him for how bad. What made it worse was that clearly even Eddmina's own mother looked overwhelmed and out of her depth, clearly never seeing her like that; They were both in uncharted territory.