Love and Control - A Game of Thrones Fan Fiction

Chapter XVII - Joffrey/Arienne

Chapter 17 is here!

I hope you like this chapter, it's quite long, but I really enjoyed writing this!

Enjoy!

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Joffrey

I've decided that Arienne cannot be human. She must be an angel. She's too perfect to be anything else. She's beautiful, smart, funny and kind. Not only that, she's athletic and can hunt better than almost any man I've met.

When I heard the crowds in Kings Landing chanting her name, I wanted to jump down from my horse and kiss her right there. The common people adored her, they lined the streets six people thick all of the way through the city, women leant so far out of windows that they could have easily fallen out onto the people below. Children sat perched on their father's shoulders, waving and cheering enthusiastically. They cheered for her as if she were the Queen.

I'd gone out with Margaery once, we'd ridden to Kingswood to hunt. But the people had only stared at her, watching with curiousity as she waved and smiled awkwardly, desperately failing to win their approval. Not that I'm much better, the common people all glared at me with so much anger I believed they would easily drag me from my horse and disembowel me right there, on the street. They seemed unable to forget my past actions. I remembered the day when we sent Myrcella to Dorne, and how when we'd been walking back some peasant had thrown some horse dung at my face and hit me straight in the cheek. Then they'd attacked my men and raped some of my women. I'm unable to forget their actions either.

Another thing about Margaery is that she seems incapable of staying silent long enough for us to actually catch something. Whenever prey came into view, she would open her mouth and begin to ramble on, and not only that, but she's useless anyway, though she insists that she learnt how to handle a bow when she was young.

The days I spend with Arienne are glorious. We wake up early each morning, where we eat some of the fruit we brought with us. We climb onto our horses after that and leave the guards to pack our tents away. Then we ride through the trees for the rest of the morning, waiting for prey. Sometimes we're lucky, other times not. But just having Arienne in my company is reward enough. Then we sit down for lunch somewhere and talk about anything and everything. Sometimes we play games, Arienne's idea, where the winner receives a kiss. I am only too happy to oblige of course. Then we ride straight along the road for the afternoon, occasionally passing through small villages, where the children and women come out of their wood-and-mud huts and gawp at us. None of them recognise me, or at least they don't say if they do. To them, we must look like two high-born people, passing through their village on our way to whatever grand citadel lays at the end of the path.

Arienne is right about us not needing any help. We only call for the guards for them to pitch our tents and we take care of ourselves the rest of the time. Arienne is - to my delight - a brilliant cook. She makes delicious meals out of the simplest of ingredients, the meat we catch, herbs from around the forest and vegetables that she had purchased from the farmers in villages we passed. We hunted on our own and ate on our own and the only time we saw the men was when we called them to set up the tents and when they sat outside at night, guarding us from any attacks or dangers.

Every night however, just as she had done the first night, Arienne would slip into my bed beside me and we would just hug each other. The warmth of each other's bodies was a soothing comfort in the cold nights, and we would always fall asleep in each other's arms. Nothing more ever happened, I had more respect for Arienne than that. She was a lady and so I would treat her like one.

On the day we arrived in Arienne's village, it was baking hot and glorious sunlight poured down from above, lighting the trail that led into the village. I could sense Arienne's nervousness from the moment we woke up, she was strangely quiet and prepared our food in silence. Whilst I cleaned it up and talked with a few of the guards who were waiting nearby, she disappeared for a little while into the trees. I didn't try to follow her, knowing how difficult today would be and that it would be wrong of me to press her into talking if she didn't want to.