Chapter Text
The games start innocently, and when he thinks back upon it, Ned knows if they had not been meant harmless and in jest, they would not have started at all.
He is eight when he is sent to the Riverlands, and when he is told that he shall go there, he thinks there are a thousand other places that he would rather be. He would most prefer to be home in Winterfell, of course – Father was to take him hawking when the summer snows melted, and in the months before he left, Lyanna would constantly demand that Ned take her to the hot springs in the godswood to play (and who would take her now?). Little Benjen is barely more than a babe, and Lyanna but four, and Ned worries that he will be as much a stranger to them as Brandon has become. It may even be worse, he thinks – for Brandon is fostered in the North and so is able to return home upon occasion. Perhaps, Ned thinks, he would not hate the idea so fiercely if he did not have to travel so far south, to a strange land a thousand leagues from home.
Ned strives to be a dutiful son, to obey and respect his lord father, but he cannot help but object at the unfairness of it all, to protest that he should be fostered with one of the northern bannermen as Brandon is, a notion that makes Rickard Stark curl his lip in displeasure until Ned falls silent. “Brandon will be Lord of Winterfell someday,” he explains. “He should remain in the North. But there is much to be found in the South, Ned, and the Starks have been making northern matches long enough.”
And that is the reason he is sent, he learns – a match that Lord Rickard hopes to make, between his heir and Hoster Tully’s eldest daughter. “Ned is a good, quiet boy, he’s unlikely to cause trouble,” Ned had heard his father confiding in the maester soon before his departure, before he arrives in the Riverlands to serve as his Lord Rickard’s foothold in the south, a constant reminder of House Stark until Hoster’s daughter grows to an age suitable for betrothal.
Many of his lessons are taken with the Tully girls, for Edmure is still a babe, and for lack of other boys his age with which to play, Ned often finds himself spending the afternoons by the river with Lady Catelyn and Lady Lysa as well. Catelyn at seven is taller than he is, all thin long limbs and wild red hair – she is called ‘Cat’ but she reminds Ned more of a fawn than a cat, with all the awkwardness of new growth, making her somewhat clumsy and ungainly at times. Lysa is small as Lyanna had been, only five, but determined to keep up with her elder sister, clinging to Catelyn’s skirts so that she may follow on her short little legs. Lysa is quiet and shy, but her sister is not - Catelyn has the innate bossiness borne of an eldest child, so that Ned often finds himself acquiescing to whichever games she has decided they will play that day.
Come-into-my-castle is his least favorite as Catelyn and Lysa claim to be river lords that he does not know, come to pay heed on the banks of the Trident, and neither girl recognizes the bannermen of House Stark when he names them at the makeshift gate made of twigs and shrubbery. When they play Lord of the Crossing, and it is his turn to be the lord, he is too nervous to use the staff to knock the girls into the river, especially as Lysa is not yet a strong swimmer. He finds that Catelyn affords him no such courtesy when it is her turn to guard the crossing (and he suspects Lysa would not if she were big enough to lift the staff). This he minds less – the Riverlands are humid and warm and the bracing cold of the river waters is a relief to Ned, like a little piece of home that he can reach down and touch, let run over his fingers.
Occasionally, Catelyn will decide that they will play knights and maidens, and with her shift hiked up around her hips, so that her legs are immodestly exposed, she will wade to a small island that pierces the water’s surface in the middle of the river and demand that Ned fetch her. He is not as strong of a swimmer as she is – he has spent years in the Winterfell hot springs but there is no current to fight against there; and so the game most often ends with Catelyn leading the way back to the shore, her fingers clutched in his as they splash through the water to the muddy banks, and she teasingly declares him a hopeless knight.
One time he manages, from sheer determination to prove her wrong, to show that he will be a valiant knight when he is grown; he lets her climb upon his back, and she shrieks with laughter as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips. The water offers enough buoyancy to keep her nearly weightless until he nears the shallows, and then he grips under her knees as he tries to scale the bank with her now heavy and sodden and her arms like iron clamps around his neck. Her laughter only grows when he slips and they fall into the mud, and her joy is so infectious that he can’t help but smile in return despite his trepidation that the girls’ septa will see his ears boxed now that both of their clothes are dirty and torn.
She proclaims him a true knight after all, and there is a wicked gleam in her eyes when she adds that he should be rewarded as a knight in the songs. There are few singers in the North and Ned does not know to which songs she refers, but as he tries to wrack his mind, Catelyn closes the distance between them and suddenly presses her lips to his. They are wet and cold from the river, and her nose bumps his hard enough to hurt; shocked and perturbed, he draws back. He remembers the last time he saw Brandon, when his brother came to visit just before Ned’s departure for the Riverlands, and how he saw Brandon kiss no less than three of the kitchen maids in his moon’s length stay in Winterfell. “There is nothing sweeter than a woman’s kiss,” Brandon had told him later, when he had noticed that Ned had stumbled upon him.
Ned doesn’t see what the fuss is, he thinks he likes being kissed not at all, and before he can stop himself, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He feels guilty a moment later – he may not want to kiss her, but Catelyn is a lady, and he does not want to hurt her feelings. But she merely laughs again, unbothered, and scrambles to her feet, bounding off to join her sister where she plays by the edge of the trees, her wet red hair waving like a banner behind her.
He thinks perhaps it is a good thing that his father has determined that Brandon is to marry Catelyn, if they both enjoy kissing so much. He does not try again to win the game, the next time they play knights and maidens, in the hopes that it will spare him from future rewards.
And it does, for a time. And for that time, the games stop altogether, because when he is ten, Lady Tully dies in childbed and nearly overnight, Cat goes from a child to a lady, and she leaves Lysa and Ned to their own devices in the afternoons. Ned finds that he misses her steady presence, domineering as it had been at times, especially now that Lysa looks to him for guidance as to what she should do, and in her grief, is still prone to fits of tears. He has limited experience with little sisters, and Lyanna had not been nearly as delicate and sensitive as Lysa.
Catelyn, on the other hand, Ned never sees cry, even on the day of the water burial that is the custom of House Tully. The raft had caught alight in flames and Cat had squeezed her siblings’ hands tightly but not wept, and Ned had watched her from a ways back, studied her ramrod straight back and her bright hair drawn back and tied with a grey ribbon.
It is as though Cat’s childlike laughter and whims, her fondness of carefree games, had erupted in fire with the raft and thus been eviscerated. In the months that pass after her mother’s death, she instead spends time caring for Edmure, reading to him at night and seeing that he is well-attended by his nursemaids; she spends time with the stewards, making orders for supplies and for goods for the townfolk as though she were the lady of Riverrun in truth and not a mere girl of nine, and those orders are obeyed. Though Ned is older by a year, he feels suddenly that she is entirely too grown for him.
When she misses their lessons one morning, and Maester Vyman furrows his brow in displeased surprise at her absence, Ned offers to look for her. She is not meeting with Wayn to go over the household accounts, nor in council with her father who relies more and more each day on her enormous sense of duty and responsibility, nor in Edmure’s nursery, and so instead he wanders out onto the castle grounds, towards the edge of the godswood where they would once play.
He finds her there, stretched out on her back in the grass, far enough from the mud of the riverbank that she will not dirty her gown. Her eyes are closed, her face turned up to the sun even as the heat of it makes Ned swelter, sends a trickle of sweat along his temple and down his neck.
He hesitates, wondering if she is sleeping, but his question is answered nearly as quickly as he thinks it as her eyes pop open at the sound of his heavy boots clomping through the grass. She tilts her head back to look at him, and he sees a trace of guilt lingering in her eyes that her absence had been so quickly noted.
Ned waits, but Cat offers no explanation, no excuse; instead she sighs heavily and closes her eyes once more. He wonders if he should leave her, give her privacy, but instead he stretches out quietly next to her, looking up at the blue sky; the bright colors of the Riverlands are always so vivid, almost obtrusive, and he often finds himself longing for the bare simplicity of home.
“I’m just tired,” Catelyn tells him quietly, blinking her eyes open again and glancing over at him. When he meets her gaze, her eyes are the same shade as the sky, and they seem as glassy as the river’s surface on a lazy, calm day. For a moment, he panics, worried that she may begin to cry, and uncertain as to what to say if she does. Lyanna and Benjen had been too young to understand when their own mother had died, and Ned had bottled his grief up tightly inside; he does not know what to do, with a lady’s tears.
But instead she merely shifts closer to him, lifting her head and laying it on his chest, so that his view is entirely obscured by the red of her hair, and the strands of it tickle against his neck. He tries to think of the proper words of comfort to offer her, the way that Brandon was able to for him though his jaw had worked against his own pain, but nothing comes to mind and so he remains silent, as quiet as he ever is, and hopes she will not be offended by his lack of speech.
If anything, his silence seems to bring her comfort, and she sighs again, her body relaxing against his. Hesitantly, he puts his hand on her back, on top of the jut of her shoulder-blade through the thick fabric of her gown, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles, and he hopes that will be enough.
The heat is nearly unbearable, the sun blazing down, the plush green grass as thick and soft as a cloak beneath him, Catelyn’s warm body leaning up against him. But resolutely, he waits until the sun begins to dip below the horizon, when Cat finally sits back up and wipes her dress and rubs a bit at her eyes, though from what he can see, no tears have fallen. “Thank you,” she says simply, and he stares at her agape, uncertain as to what he did worthy of being thanked, wishing that he had known what to do more.
The next day, he receives a sharp rebuke from Vyman for using Cat’s absence to skive off his own lessons, and repentantly, he bows his head and does not protest. Catelyn smiles at him, for that, and in the weeks that follow, she sometimes finds the time to once more join him and Lysa by the river after the day’s lessons are complete.
--
The games are different, now, and less fantastical than they once were. Instead, Cat practices going to court, sweeping a curtsy, and mimics their dancing maester. She and Lysa laugh and spin in dizzy circles together, their colorful skirts in Tully red and blue swirling. She uses her embroidery lessons to weave together garlands of flowers in white and yellow and pink that she sets upon first her sister’s hair before making one for herself, and she runs through the godswood like a wood sprite with petals tumbling down her shoulders, calling for Ned to try and catch her.
He could, if he wished it – he has grown and he is now her height with long legs and a slim torso, and he thinks he is faster than her, too. He could catch her if he wished it, but he is not sure what would happen if he did, and so he lets her win, breathless and pink-cheeked in her triumph as she reaches the reeds at the edge of the riverbank.
He first catches her soon after her twelfth nameday, after her father acquiesces to Ned’s father’s wishes, and agrees that Brandon and Cat should be betrothed. The news pleases Ned for the sole reason that it means his father and brother come to visit Riverrun, to set the terms of the contract and so that Brandon may meet his future bride.
They stand at the gate with the rest of the household, Lysa breathless with excitement and her eyes shimmering, Edmure sitting in a most unlordly heap and playing with a small toy, and Cat white as snow in a dress laced far too tightly, to try and create the illusion of a woman’s body on her thin, straight shape. It is rather stupid, Ned thinks, for she isn’t to be married today and certainly his father and brother will have more of a worry about Cat’s health if she faints from not being able to breathe than if she appears not yet grown, but he does not offer his thoughts – nor is he asked for them.
The sight of the flickering Stark banners on the horizon, of the grey direwolf on the field of white, is like coming home. Ned’s heart leaps into his throat, and the longing for Winterfell is a physical ache in his chest. For all that he is well-treated and well-regarded in Riverrun, the humid south will never be his home and he will never quite belong in this riverside castle.
But when he sees his brother for the first time, when Brandon and his father dismount to greet them, Ned is stunned; in the time since they had seen one another last, Brandon has become a man, tall and broad and with the prickle of a beard beginning to form on his cheeks. He nearly crushes Ned in a fierce embrace, and he smiles charmingly at Cat and kisses her hand. “My lady,” he greets, his voice a low timbre, and Ned watches as a flush of pink stains Cat’s cheeks. She looks tiny next to Brandon, like a little porcelain doll that his elder brother could accidentally break, and instinctively, Ned tries to stand a little straighter, a little taller.
“She’s pretty,” Brandon tells him later, approvingly, when they sit at the feast welcoming the Starks to Riverrun. “Just a child, but she’ll grow.” And Ned looks at his cup of wine – just a small amount, whilst Brandon keeps heedlessly refilling his own despite their father’s glares of warning – and wonders if he should tell Brandon about Cat, if that is part of what he is expected to do, the purpose he is supposed to serve in Riverrun. Should he tell his brother the careful, sweet way that Cat cares for Edmure, so that he should be assured that she will be a good mother one day to the future heir of Winterfell? Should he mention the sorts of flowers that she likes to braid in her hair, that she most often wears blue? That she is courteous and kind to the cooks and maids, but sometimes will steal into the kitchen to filch a lemon from the stores, biting into the sour fruit and crinkling her face as though she is surprised at what she finds? Is he supposed to mention that though she is a high-born lady, she does not mind the plentiful rain they so often find themselves caught in, or mud between her toes and fingers?
Ned cannot imagine that Brandon would have any interest in such things, not when his brother laughs and drinks with his companions from the North and speaks of battle and wenching, of riding the Rills and of tales come from the Free Cities. That is why he hoards the information, he tells himself – because Brandon would not care. After all, he reasons, if he did, certainly he would ask, and Ned resolves that if his brother does ask, he will be truthful.
Brandon does not ask, but in the weeks after his departure, Cat and Lysa certainly ply Ned for information. Brandon is all that the two care to speak of – how handsome, how gallant, how tall and charming, building a man more of myth more than the brother that Ned knows. Catelyn brings her embroidery out by the river and works furiously to try and sew the direwolf, pleading with Ned to help her trace the pattern. Lysa sighs at her sister’s great romance, Hoster Tully chuckles at the sight of his practical-minded daughter swept up in giddiness, and Ned wonders to himself rather bitterly why his father and brother would ride off again and leave him here, now that the pact had been made. No longer would he serve as a pathway to his father’s ambitions; now he only served as a comparison to his elder brother, grander and greater than Ned could ever be.
What distresses him the most is how inadequate his answers to Catelyn’s questions are, how little he knows of his brother. He can see the puzzlement in Cat’s eyes, how strange it seems to a girl who has spent every day of her siblings’ lives at their side, as he tries to guess the songs Brandon likes (so that she may learn them), what sorts of foods he enjoys (Old Nan, Ned tells her, may remember when the time finally comes for Cat to go to Winterfell). The truth of the matter is that Brandon is more a stranger to him than the Tully children now, is nearly as much of a stranger to Ned as to Cat, and so Ned serves as a poor ambassador for his brother indeed.
He tires quickly of the discussion surrounding Brandon and the betrothal, of the fact that the entire household chatters as though the wedding is to take place within the moon and not years down the line. It reminds him all too keenly of the uproar that would take place in Winterfell, any time the heir would arrive for a visit, and he and his siblings would be quite forgotten in the excitement of seeing Brandon home. He is old enough now to know that it is a petty jealousy, a childish one, especially for one such as Ned who never relished being the center of attention. He should be glad that Cat found Brandon so much to her liking; he should be pleased that his father’s plans have come to fruition, so that Rickard Stark had had a smile on his usually grim face before departing, had clapped a hand on Ned’s shoulder and called him a credit to his house, and for a moment, Ned had stood nearly as tall as Brandon.
But in truth, it stings to be so quickly forgotten by those he has spent so much time with, as though he never mattered at all. Instead of continuing to offer poor answers to their questions, he tries to talk of other things; when the girls will not relent, he leaves them to spend extra time in the training yard, working at the archery butts and training with the Riverrun master-at-arms, who is so impressed with his redoubled efforts that he is finally allowed blunted steel rather than his wooden practice sword.
Cat comes to watch one morning, hovering at the gate to the practice yard, and he studiously ignores her, keeping his eyes pointedly averted, until he misses a series of parlays and he is abruptly dismissed until ‘he has his head together once more.’
“What is it?” he asks, an edge of irritation in his voice at his own missteps – he remembers Brandon, at the feast, boasting of his placement in his first tourney and how he planned on riding the lists again soon. Ned’s father had laughed then, had said he didn’t know where Brandon got his love of pageantry from, but he seemed not to mind, seemed amused by his son’s enthusiasm. Ned, on the other hand, has never seen the point of tourneys, thought them a stupid display of skill better held tight to the vest in case it was one day needed in truth. Just another way that we are different, he thinks, and he need not ask to know which of them is preferred in Riverrun. (And who would not prefer Brandon, he thinks – gregarious, mirthful Brandon?)
“Are you angry with me?” she asks boldly, and Ned glances briefly up at her – Cat has never been shy and retiring the way he is told ladies should be, but he prefers it that way, likes that he rarely has to figure her out because she is eager to tell him what is on her mind. He thinks things would be simpler if more ladies were that way. “Or with Lysa? Why have you been avoiding us?”
He heads into the armoury, hearing her soft slippered footsteps following in his wake. It is dark and sooty inside, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust after the gleaming sunlight of the yard. He grabs a rag with which to quickly polish the steel, though it is still fairly untouched, and has never drawn blood, and so it gleams like new already. The smiths working at the forge pause to greet Cat, to bow their heads and call her ‘milady,’ and she rewards them with a dazzling smile. “No,” he admits, hanging his sword and locking the cabinet as he has been taught, still avoiding her eye. “I’m getting too old to spend my afternoons playing with girls. I should be training.”
Cat snorts derisively. “Are you going into battle?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at him the way she does at Edmure, when she suspects he’s gotten into some sort of mischief, and Ned feels another flash of annoyance ripple through his veins. You were pleased enough to hear about Brandon’s ride in tourney, he nearly snaps, and he recalls that later that evening he had heard her beg her father to take her to the next one her betrothed would ride in.
But instead he shoves his hands in the pockets of his breeches, ducking his head and shrugging. It is better to be prepared, his father would say, winter is coming, but though they are the words of his house, it seems silly to say so. Here in the green, humid Riverlands, lush and growing, the world seems untouched by winter.
Cat grabs his hand, tugging at it and lifting her skirts with her other hand. “Come on,” she suggests, as though he has not rebuffed her. “Let’s go swimming. It’s so hot.” Her eyes dance merrily. “I’ll race you to the river. Lysa is dreadfully slow, it isn’t any fun at all.”
She runs, her fingers slipping through his. She doesn’t look back as she darts across the yard and out the gate, over the grass, trusting that he’ll follow.
He does; he runs hard, this time, harder than he normally does, as though in protest of her teasing him about his practicing. They are barely halfway through the godswood when he closes the distance between them to no more than a pace, and he reaches out and grabs at the back of her dress, his fingers catching in the lacing. Cat yelps in surprise, thrown off balance by the sudden deceleration, her hands flailing to try and grasp something to keep herself on her feet. He stumbles back when she falls against his chest, and puts his hands on her arms to steady her.
Her face is flushed from exertion when she tilts her face to look up at him. “Cheater,” she calls him, and he bends his head and kisses her. He thinks to turn his head, to that their noses do not collide as they did when she kissed him years ago, and he does not know why he does it other than the fact that she looks pretty with color in her cheeks and her hair falling from its coils, and her body feels nice close to his, and because long ago she had established that he would be rewarded if he won. Her lips are dry and warm this time, and he thinks that makes it much nicer; Ned knows that Hoster made sure that Brandon and Cat had next to no time alone, but he finds himself wondering if Brandon kissed her, while he was here.
Cat makes a surprised hum at the back of her throat, but she doesn’t pull back, and when he does instead, the corners of her lips quirk up in amusement. She pushes herself upright with a hand planted on the center of his chest, and then she is running again, laughing when she leaves him surprised in her wake.
She wins the race to the river, as she always does.
--
It does not feel wrong, it merely feels like a change in the game – sometimes, now, he is able to catch her and so he kisses her. He no longer thinks of the kisses as awful, but they are still awkward and overeager, trying to learn the way their lips fit together, the way his hand fits on her waist, child’s play rather than any semblance of romance. Lysa discovers this new addendum and demands to be kissed as well; Ned likes this less – Lysa is so young – and manages to escape most times by letting her win the races on her short little legs, so that she is breathless in delight at her triumph and forgets what she had wanted in the first place. They are harmless afternoons, and he barely thinks upon those days in the godswood when his brother dutifully visits, about once a year, to spend time with his betrothed. They are only games – hardly a betrayal.
Ned hates Brandon’s visits nearly as much as he loves his brother, nearly as much as Ned loathes himself for resenting him so. For a fortnight before Brandon’s arrival with his retinue, the castle is thrown into chaos to ready itself, Cat pulls out her best gowns to wear, and Ned resigns himself to being invisible until the Stark banners once more disappear into the horizon.
“After the wedding, we’ll both go home,” Brandon tells him on one such visit, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and Ned thinks it is the only thing he is looking forward to, returning to the North and leaving the humid South behind him. He would miss Edmure and Lysa, but he would miss Cat most of all, and he wouldn’t even have to miss her at all – she would obviously accompany her husband North. But I would not remain at Winterfell long, he thinks miserably – he would be expected to marry and rule a holdfast in his brother’s name. His father seems much less concerned with his marriage than he had been with Brandon’s and Lyanna’s, and no match has yet been suggested for him, so that he feels quite forgotten after all.
For his part, Hoster Tully seems in no rush to wed his daughter off, though Ned knows she has flowered and soon her fourteenth, then her fifteenth nameday passes. The delay bothers Brandon not at all; he never even mentions it during his visits to Riverrun, but Ned’s father inquires in letters he sends Ned, asking after Catelyn’s health, wondering if Ned knows why Lord Tully still seems so reluctant.
Catelyn herself seems in no hurry to wed, and Ned wonders if it is mere dutiful obedience that keeps her quiet on the matter, when she seems so enarmoured of Brandon. He asks her one afternoon, a few days after Brandon’s departure, while she leans up against a wide oak tree and weaves a strand of daisies together with deft, long fingers.
She shrugs, wrinkling her nose as the stem of one of her flowers breaks. “I am content to stay in the South for a bit longer,” she answers, avoiding his eye. It is easy enough for her to do – she keeps her eyes on her work and he is taller than her, now, having finally had a growth spurt, though he knows he isn’t as tall as Brandon was the first time he came to Riverrun, and Ned is older now than his brother had been then. She draws her bottom lip between her teeth ever so slightly, and Ned realizes that the North must be as strange-seeming to her as the South is to him, that it is natural for a girl born in a southron summer to have trepidation of going North to be the mistress of winter.
“Besides,” she adds, looking back up at him. “Edmure needs me, still.” It is true enough, though Ned thinks Edmure would soon be at an age where he would deny such a thing. Cat has been the closest thing to a mother that the little future lord of Riverrun has known for most of his life, and there are few things that Cat takes more seriously than her responsibility to him. She will be a good mother in truth one day, Ned thinks, not for the first time, but it is the first time he feels a strange pang in his heart at the idea.
He kisses her, then, beneath the shelter of the oak tree’s overarching branches, in the shadow of its leaves, pressing her up against the rough bark. She tilts her face up to his, her lips parting easily so that he can slip his tongue in her mouth. It is the first time he kisses her outside of one of their races, and somehow it makes it feel all the more elicit, all the more dangerous and yet thrilling. He finds himself wondering if Brandon has kissed her this way, open-mouthed and inquisitive, if that is where Cat learned such a thing. Ned imagines he must have, and he presses all the closer, his hands coming up to cup her jaw, fingers threading through the locks of red hair that frame her face.
He tells himself it is just practice, just child’s play, though neither of them are particularly children anymore. It is harder to pretend when he sees her swimming in the river the next morn, her dress laid out neatly in the sun to keep it dry and unwrinkled. When they were mere children, he would join her, heedless of the impropriety of it all, each naked as their nameday. Innocent as it had been then, when Cat’s uncle Blackfish had discovered them paddling in the river, he had firmly told them they were not to do such a thing. I know you mean no harm, but you will ruin her reputation, Brynden Tully had told him firmly, and Ned had obeyed – he never wanted to ruin Cat, never wanted to shame or embarrass her. Brandon, he thinks, would have laughed, would have called the Blackfish a dull old man and done as he pleased anyway, but Ned has always been as dutiful as Brandon has been wild, and so he listens to the order.
Cat rarely swims in the mornings, when the early dew is still cool on the grass and a chill (what is considered a chill in the South, at least) lingers in the air. It is that time of day that Ned finds more enjoyable, when the temperature is most tolerable, and so he enjoys walking before they break their fast, which is how this morn, he accidentally comes upon her.
He freezes, and cannot help but watch as she lazily strokes her arms through the waters, eyes closed and face turned up to the sun. Today the water is too murky for Cat to be dishonored, but he can imagine well enough the gentle swell of her breasts, the taper of her waist and curve of her hips lingering just below the surface – the body of a woman, no longer a child fit for games of knights and ladies.
She opens her eyes and looks up to see him watching, and Ned feels his face flush hot, and a thousand apologies are born and die on his lips, so that he can only stare agape at her, too stunned to even avert his eyes. For a moment she stares back, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth the way she does when she is thinking, and to Ned, she looks far less surprised than he feels. She hesitates, opening her mouth as though to call to him, and then closes it again. He takes a small step backwards, nearly tripping over his own two feet.
The moment is broken when Cat blinks at his clumsiness and then laughs, and ducks beneath the water before he can say anything. She doesn’t call for him to join her, the way she would in their youth, before they knew how much such a thing would be frowned up, but nor does she scold him for invading her privacy.
He hurries away before she can resurface, and later that night, he thinks of her laugh, of the slick of her hair on her shoulders and over the tops of her breasts, of the look in her eyes when she met his gaze, the hesitation as though she did not know whether to call him closer or send him away. He had spared her such a choice, he thinks, and now he would never know. (It is better that way, he tells himself – there is only one choice she could have made, should have made, and this way they are both spared.)
He takes himself in hand, lying on his back in bed, and thinks of soft, slippery, wet skin, of chasing Cat through the godswood as he had done a thousand times before and having her on the forest floor as he never had, as he never would. The image of her pretty face flushed pink with pleasure, her hair spilled upon the ground like a thousand autumn leaves swims behind his closed eyelids as he slides his palm along the length of his cock, and he wonders how it would feel to have her touch him instead. He spills his seed over his fingers and his face burns with the shame of it. It is wrong, he tells himself fiercely, as though sheer force of will could chase the thoughts and desires away. She is going to be my good-sister. She is going to be Brandon’s wife.
(Brandon, he thinks – tall, handsome Brandon whom any maiden would prefer, Brandon who knows nothing of Cat outside of the courteous, shy mask she puts on for his visits once a year.)
Ned is six and ten, has lived in the Riverlands for half his life, and only now does he realize that they were never really playing games, after all.