IVY - ENDURANCE & FAITH
EVEN AS winter settles around the rest of Westeros, Highgarden retains the warmth that allows the people of the Reach to pretend that they are happy.
It has always been a castle of pretence, of lies built into the strong scent of flowers. The charade is a bee buzzing in the ears of the residents, and they simply allow it to come closer instead of swatting it away, allowing it to sting them until they become immune to the poison settling in their veins.
Horn Hill may have been lonely, but Caecilia had never noticed the lies that settled into the grass growing beneath her feet at Highgarden.
They act as if there is no war raging around them. She walks the lengths of the gardens and watches the women left behind laze beneath the winter sun that retains its heat despite the rest of Westeros starting to feel the cold. They allow their dresses to sit around their thighs and laugh as they drink wine. It is almost like their husbands, their sons, their brothers are not currently dying somewhere too far to reach. Caecilia sits by the Mander, staring at the cattails growing beside the running water, and thinks of her husband whom she has not heard from in weeks. He could be dead.
She could be a widow and she may not even know.
And the rest of the women are flouncing around as if there were no husbands to begin with. Someone has started to sing and her friend has started to strum the guitar that was strapped to her back. The other ladies they are with are dancing, light-coloured skirts spinning around their legs. They are laughing and dancing and singing. Trevyr could be dead. She dips her feet beneath the still waters and allows the chill of the water to shock the bones beneath her skin.
Trevyr could be dead.
And she has not heard from Jaime since the tourney.
Oh, Jaime. Her sweet Jaime. Her dear Jaime. He must be fighting with Prince Rhagaer, his beautiful blonde hair stained with the blood of the soldiers he cuts through. Maybe he is fighting beside Trevyr. Maybe they have become friends solely for the battlefield. Maybe, he is also dead and she has lost him forever.
She lets the cold rush right up her spine.
If Trevyr is dead and Jaime is dead, she would rather stay a widow her entire life than marry anyone else. There is nobody else worth it. Nobody else who can know her as fully as they have. She has been loved so entirely by both of them, that there is no more space in her heart for another man.
She would rather her womb remain barren than hold another man's child.
"Excuse me?"
The voice is far away, but carries on the gentle breeze. She is sure she recognises it. Her entire foot slips beneath the water and she wishes she would get swept beneath the current. It is better not to live in this world than without Trevyr and Jaime.
"Excuse me?"
Some of the ladies giggle as the man gets closer. The only men they ever see anymore are the merchants, the butchers, the bakers, the men they need to keep them alive so they are not allowed to go to war.
"I'm sorry, I'm looking for my wife. Have you seen her? It's been so long since I last saw her and she said she would be here. Caecilia Tyrell? Have you seen her?"
Caecilia scrambles to her feet, water splashing around her. Her toes have started to turn a deep shade of blue at the cold. She stares at the man standing only metres away from her. The haggardness to his usually clean clothes. The beard he has started to grow, unable to shave as he fights for their King. The scars that are already starting to settle on his skin. He is skinner in the middle but wider at the shoulders. She yells his name and he turns, finally, to see her. His eyes stare haunted with the memories of war and he is not the husband she said goodbye to almost a year ago.
The grass is soft beneath her feet as she races up the short hill towards him. He catches her around the waist as she launches herself into his arms and allows him to spin her around and around and around as they laugh, clutching each other, so close they could almost be fused together. Her husband. Her Trevyr back in her arms. He is alive. He is alive. He is alive.
She pulls back just slightly to look up into his eyes.
They are not the eyes of the husband she said goodbye to.
"Hello, my dearest." Trevyr's rough-fingered hand curls around her cheek. It is scarred from the sword. His hands used to be so soft. "Oh, how I have missed your face. My beautiful, beautiful wife." She smiles up at him, trying to bring back the softness she has always known from her husband.
Trevyr is the gentle one. The kind one. His fingertips have always been light on her skin and his smile has always held the beauty of the softest sun inside of it. Jaime was the rough one, the fierce one. He kissed her as if he would never taste air again and he fucked her hard enough to spring tears to her eyes.
Now, with these hands upon her face, she is not so sure who has come back to her.
"I have missed you too, darling."
Trevyr kisses her softly, in front of all the swooning ladies, and for a moment she can pretend there is no war. She is with her husband, at home, and nobody is hurt, and nobody is dying, and she is happy. She could even pretend that she is pregnant and she is making her husband proud, knowing that she is carrying something he has helped create, knowing his legacy will live long after he is gone. She could pretend that this is entirely what she wants. That he is the only man she wants.
She could pretend but she has grown sick of all the lies.
"May we have some time alone?" Trevyr's eyes flicker back and forth between his wife and the women who refuse to tear their eyes away. "I would like to just be able to talk to you. As we always have." She nods and excuses herself to pick up the slippers she kicked off. She takes Trevyr by the calloused hand and leads him back to the castle. The golden-pillared, white-walled castle that has started to infuriate.
Does nobody care for war?
Does nobody care for all the death? The destruction of beauty? The hatefulness?
Her Trevyr is alive, but the same cannot be said for her brother, for many of the Tyrell bannermen, for Jaime. Her grip tightens on Trevyr's hand as she leads him through the airy hallways. She can hear her brother boasting of his victories in the dining hall and imagines him puffing out his chest as women swoon around him. Has he even greeted his wife, who has been rearing his children by her lonesome while he has been playing at hero.
She has been raising them by herself far longer than that.
She locks the door behind them once they reach her bedroom. Pale sunlight pours through the wall of windows, half-hidden by pale green curtains that are too light to truly keep the sunlight out. It washes over them as she moves past her husband to tidy up the long couch near the windows for them to sit on, picking up chiffon and silk dresses that she has grown accustomed to since being back in Highgarden.
"I was surprised to see you without Lunette," Trevyr's voice is light and airy. She cannot tell if he is truly high-spirited or is just trying to appear like her Trevyr to keep her from growing more afraid. She will always be afraid. The war has taken her husband and hardened him. She is not sure what to think of it. To think of him. His gentleness has been ripped from him.
"Her father is not at war because of an injury he sustained in the last. Every week, they go to Honeywell so they can have time to themselves. That's the nearest town, it is within walking distance so they spend all day together."
"That is nice."
She sits beside her husband and they let their knees knock together. It is the softest of touches. The smallest hint that her kind, gentle husband is somewhere hidden behind those hardened eyes. He leans forward so that his elbows sit on his knees and he tilts his head so that he can stare up at her. When she smiles, lopsided at this angle, he looks like a puppy found in the wild, cared for finally after all this time. She cannot help but reach out and run her fingers through the mess of mousy hair. He always had it trimmed so neatly. Now it tumbles almost to his shoulders. He has washed recently, she can tell by the softness to his hair. He must have cleaned up just enough before coming to see her.
He wanted to look and smell nice just for her.
Her soft, kind, gentle husband.
How could she ever believe him to be anything different?
"Caecilia. I believe that I would be content to just sit here and stare at you–"
"Touch me." She does not know what primal part of her it comes from, but she does not want to take it back. It has been so long since she was touched. It has been so long since she saw her husband. "Trevyr," she begs, fingers still curled in the strands of his hair, "put a baby inside of me. My darling Trevyr, please."
He stares up at her, slack-jawed.
"I thought–"
"I want you."
She is a good wife and she will have her husband's children. And she will love him as no woman has ever loved a man before. Her husband has come back from war, alive and well, he is right here for her. She will love him because he is her darling husband. She will love him because he deserves to be loved for all that he has done right in this world.
She will birth Trevyr Tarly's mousy children and his family will no longer laugh at him behind his back.
Trevyr kisses her long and slow. It is the deepest kiss they have ever shared, his mouth dragging along hers, his tongue just barely pushing past her teeth. He holds her against him with one arm tight around her waist while the other slowly unlaces the back of her dress. The fabric kisses her skin as it unfurls from her, deliciously lethargic in ways she is not used to. With Jaime, everything was rushed, always afraid of being caught, always desperately wanting each other enough to tear clothes and care about the consequences later.
Trevyr takes his time with her.
Nobody has treated her body so kindly.
WHEN SHE wakes up, there are no bruises where Jaime usually leaves them.
Trevyr's naked body is curled around her, hand barely grazing her stomach, sleeping so soundly she is not sure she would wake him if she tried. She stares at the light still pouring through the window, just a little darker now that it has started to slip ever so slowly away from them. The room is bathed in orange and she would lay here forever if she could. It is the first time she has woken beside her husband and not immediately felt the need to leave his warm embrace.
She slips even closer to him as she can, allowing his chest to press against her back. Jaime has never held her like this. He has never had the chance. He fucks her and sends her on her way before they are caught, rushing through the act, feverish to feel and touch and fill each other up with the essence of the other. She is forced only to remember rather to relish.
But, Trevyr holds her close and his arms are soft around her middle. She has missed her husband, but he is not at war any longer and he can hold her for as long as she wants him to.
When they die, she wants to be buried like this, his arms around her, his lips on the back of her neck. Bury them with seeds so that beauty can grow from their rotting corpses. How beautiful they will look even in death.
Trevyr kisses the top of her spine.
"How long have we been asleep?"
"Not long. It is not dark yet."
He hums and it reverberates through her spine, a chill she does not want to rid herself of. It is not love that she feels for Trevyr, not the same way that she does for Jaime, not the kind of love that rips her heart out of her chest when they are so far apart. But, she loves him as she loves Lunette, enough that his absence has felt like a hole in the middle of her stomach, enough that she has calmed in his presence.
"There is something I need to tell you."
Caecilia tries to scramble out of Trevyr's arms. She does not want to hear anything right now. In her mind, the war is over and her husband is back and she can be happy. She can live with her best friend and they will have children and she will tell herself every morning that she is happy. The war is over. Trevyr is back. She may not even have to think of Jaime again.
She will never know if Jaime has survived.
"Let me get us some wine. Some cheese, maybe. We can laze in bed for the rest of the–" Trevyr grabs her arm before she can pull herself out of the bed. She sits on the edge, feet dangling just above the marble flooring, staring over her shoulder at her husband.
"Stay in bed for now, my dear, let me talk to you."
She nods. Suddenly, there are stinging nettles climbing up her throat and she is too afraid to speak less she pukes them all up. She crawls back to her original space in the bed and sinks beside her husband. His arm wraps around her shoulder to pull her as close as possible, her cheek resting on his bare chest, listening to his heart beat softly against his ribcage. Her heart thuds harder and faster. She is so sure Trevyr can hear it. The tightness that clutches at it. The badumbadumbadum that does not seem to be slowing down.
"My – Caecilia, I cannot stay for long."
Her sweet, kind Trevyr must go back to war. This time he may not come back. This time he may come back entirely too different to recognise. She is not sure which is worse.
"Your brother and I have made a plan."
Trevyr and Mace have been talking. They have been whispering plans to one another. They have been standing in the same tent, around the same map, moving pieces and arguing over the best route, the best fight, the best plan. They have been scheming with their heads bowed together.
They will all keep fighting.
She may lose her heart forever.
"We are to believe Storm's End from Stannis Baratheon. Mace will lead the siege and I will fight as his second-in-command. If this goes according to the plan, we will take a major strong hold and–"
"When do you leave?"
"In a week. Just before the weather changes."
She sits up, hand on Trevyr's chest, just above his heart.
"Then, we shall make the most of it. And when you return, you must tell your child about the victories you have procured."
He laughs as he takes her by the waist and pulls her down on top of him. He kisses along the freckles stretched across her shoulders, claiming to love her, to adore her, to belong solely to her. She smiles as he kisses her and she runs her fingers through his hair as he licks the sweat from her skin.
Every night they fall into bed together, arms circled around the other, watching the ivy start to cover the windows.
When Trevyr leaves a week later, she is still without child.