FicWad

Chapter 33: "I'm so drunk!"
TORMUND

I gave up on climbing up into the boat and just clung to it until we got to the ship. By then, my wounds had all closed up. But because of the Hypothermia, I needed help getting out of the water. After the boats had all been unloaded and brought back aboard, the anchors were weighed and we started to sail away from Hardhome, where the Army of the dead were still staring at us, Stanis turned to me.

“Tormund, you saved my life back there. I want to thank you. Kneel.”

“You ought to know by now we don’t kneel, on principle,” I replied as I shook my head.

“I’m trying to thank you!” growled Stanis. “I want to make you a knight!”

“And be kneeling and scraping to you all the time?” I asked. “No thanks! Besides, none of the others would respect me if I kneeled to you. You want to thank me? When the Others attack The Wall and you southerners go there to beat them back, send your ships to the islands. I’ll talk to my people, get as many of them as I can and we’ll send men and spear-wives to stand by your side and fight them off at The Wall.”


JOFFREY

The Wilding problem had finally died down South of The Wall enough that we could elect a new Lord Commander. My name was put forth, but I refused. No only because I knew I didn’t know enough to do the job, but also because I didn’t want to give up my music. My Father was a favored candidate amongst the Westlanders. And Benjen Stark was popular amongst the Northerners. But in the end, we elected Cotter Pike, an Ironborn veteran of the first Greyjoy rebellion. Like Lord Commander Thorne before him, he didn’t believe my in the Others or wights, no matter who claimed to seen them with their own eyes. Especially if that person was a notorious Lannister.


MARGAERY

It took a couple of days to help all the burn victims and some other people who had health problems severe enough that they were willing to give up their bodies. Then we had to spend a couple of more days because everyone at Court wanted to meet the real Child of the Forrest. I put on a dress and made my self look more normal before taking her to the Red Keep. The Lords and Ladies and even the King were very curious about her. But as the people I had helped by turning them into Children of the Forest began to move around the city, the novelty began to wear off enough that we were able to slip out of the city and return to Riverrun.


SAM

The rebuilding of Fleabottom was coming along well. I had persuaded the other owners of the paper mills to move their factories outside of the city. In the case of the paper mills, it made more good sense to place them closer to the forest that was source of the trees, than here, in King’s Landing. Some of the new apartment buildings were completed, and my wife and I were amongst the first to relocate there. It was a brick building consisting of three floors subdivided into dwellings for multiple families. Each apartment had several rooms, including one with its’ own kitchen fireplace, so that families could cook and prepare fresh meals that would be less expensive than purchasing preprepared food. I fully intended to prevent the revival of the ‘bowl of brown’ industry. Each apartment also had it’s own privy and the shuttered windows of the apartments provided sufficient ventilation as to prevent the smells of the sewers from filling the home unless the privy door were left open for an extended time. And those smells were decreasing week by week as Lord Tyrion’s renovation of the sewers in the rest of the City continued.

The Street of Sisters and Aegon’s way were both widened considerably, with the Fleabottom sides of those streets turned into commercial districts. There were also markets placed in convenient walking distance through out Fleabottom, so the residents could easily shop for the daily necessities. Although construction had not yet begun, the new Masonic Hall would be on Aegon’s way, as would the Public Library, Fire Department and the Newspaper. The Minutemen armories would be hiding throughout Fleabottom so that they would be beneath the notice of the High Lords.


The issue of our transmutation had changed the religious balance. The Church of the Seven saw Children of the Forest, especially us new ones, as abominations. As a result of this stance, many of the newly green citizens of Kings’ Landing had turned away from the Seven or even from religion altogether. It had helped to bolster the followers of the Old Gods, who no longer desired to grow a Gods’ Wood on the former site of the Great Sept. The Fleabottom Gods’ Wood had become the new focus for the veneration of the Old Gods.


Prince Stanis had recently returned from his last journey to transport the Wildings. The experience had left him crusading for the Seven Kingdoms to go North and Fight the Others. As soon as I get the Newspaper restarted I shall have to re-run that article on the effects of obsidian on wights.

JON

I received a raven from the King summoning me to King’s Landing. The Force tells me he doesn’t mean me any harm. So what could he want with me? At least it will be an opportunity to spend time with Shireen again. Just in case, I’ll bring all my troops and their families with me. I have trained the non-combatant women and older children to do the jobs that camp followers would normally do on a campaign. If we do go to actual war, I’ll probably leave them behind. But I created this army to guard my back in the city, not fight wars. Having their wives and families near will be good for morale.




MARGAERY

Edric wanted my help in creating a pair of God’s Woods, one near each of his tourist villages. The Twins had no pre-existing Gods’ Wood. So Bran made use of a portkey that transported myself, Meera, Jogen and himself to the Twins, along with all the seeds and gardening supplies I wanted to bring. We planted a Weirwood tree in the center of of each, which Edric grew into the triple trunk pattern forming a throne like the one at Riverrun. We made the Gods’ Wood extra large, so large numbers could use it at the same time and instead of surrounding it with walls, we grew a hedgerow around it, with trees, hedges and thorns forming a barrier that could not be easily crossed without a blade or fire. This Hedgerow had a gap in one place so you could easily enter there. I also added some special plants of my own, including some birth blossoms so I could easily get there on my own if I needed to. With the aid of magic, it only took a few days to complete the whole project.
At the end of the day we had a private celebration of completing our work and I must admit a drank a little too much. We all did. Bran and Jojen had already passed out drunk by the time I staggered to my feet and took Edric by the hand and announced:

“Come on! I wanna ride your broomstick!”

He let me pull him up, as he waved his wand and the broom came flying into the room, he clumsily caught it. We staggered out of the hall, as Summer followed us until we had made it to the North Gods’ Wood. Edric mounted his broom and I started to climb behind him before I hesitated . . .

“No. . . . No! I wanna do ‘dis as Plan’ Woman!” I slurred, as I turned green and began pulling off my dress. Once I’d stripped completely I tried to weave myself a skirt of leaves, but I was too clumsy.

“Fuck it! I’ll jus’ ride like ‘dis” I announced as a climbed on behind him.

We shot into the air like a rocket, as Edric starting doing loops and dives that he would never do with me while he was sober. I screamed with exhilaration the whole time! Finally, he landed back in the Gods’ Wood, near the weirwood tree.

“That was fantastic! Wooo Hooo!” I shouted as I danced around before finally collapsing into sitting on the edge of the weirwood tree.

I stared at him for a moment. . . .

“Hey. . . Come ‘ear. . . Come closer . . . I wanna give you somethin’ . . .”

“What is it?” asked Edric, as he peered at me with those intense blue eyes of his.

“This!” I exclaimed, as I pulled him into a kiss!



I woke up with Bran spooning me, Summer laying at our feet. I could feel his morning wood pressing into my back and his hand was gently fondling my breast. I was in the mood for some morning love. My eyes cracked open and I saw that my hand was green. Green? Why am I still green? Summer jumped down from the foot of the bed as I mumbled:

“Morning honey,” as I rolled over to find myself face to face with Edric. And beyond him, sitting in a chair, fully clothed, was Bran!

“Shit!” I exclaimed.

“I saw what you did last night,” stated Bran, coldly. “Why did you do it? He was my best friend! Don’t you love me any more?”

I sat up, clutching the sheet to my chest like one of those silly women on TV in my previous life. I’d never been very body shy. I’d displayed myself in nearly nothing all over Kings Landing when I was Plant Woman. As the Lady of the Forrest, I’d worn even less. But now, being caught in bed by my husband, with his best friend, I was feeling more naked than I had ever been in my life!

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I DO still love you. He’s still your best friend. It’s just-”

Right then, Edric tried to pull me close and mumbled something in a loving voice about “Ginny”

“Edric? Wake up!” I shouted as I poked him.

“Margaery? . . . Margaery! What are you doing in my bed!?!” shouted Edric, as he leaped away from me. “Bran! Bran! Look! I’m sorry! I-”

“Edric!” I shouted over him. “Look. The three of us DO need to discuss this. But Bran and I need to talk about this first. Can you meet us in the Gods’ Wood after we finish?”

“Sure,” replied Edric, as he grabbed some clothes and fled the room.

After we watched him leave, I turned back to Bran, who was petting Summer and looking at me sadly.

“This didn’t have anything to do with how much I love you,” I began. “You know how sometimes you want to do things that you know you can’t, like kill someone who just was rude to you? Well alcohol, that’s the part of wine that makes you drunk, takes away those inhibitions. It makes you do things that you want to, but know are wrong. That’s why men often get in fights when they are drunk and why sometimes people share their bodies with people they knew they shouldn’t. Don’t blame Edric. It’s all my fault. I am the one who seduced him. But no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been so drunk. Yes, he wanted to do that with me. But he knew better and could have stopped himself if he were sober. And as for me . . . I was even drunker than him. So when I found myself wanting to ‘ride his broomstick’, I made it happen. This sort of thing is not unusual. Most of the other lords have mistresses. I’ve known from the beginning that you might someday take on a mistress. It’s expected of you. Why do you think Great Ladies have Ladies-in-waiting? Not only are they the friends and servants of the Lady, the Lord’s mistress is often his Lady’s Lady-in-waiting.”

“My father doesn’t have mistresses,” retorted Bran.

“And your mother doesn’t have Ladies-in-waiting,” I observed. “Your father is the exception, not the rule. And as unfair as it is, I am not supposed to have other men. And until now, I have reserved this body only for you.”

I let the sheet drop.

“Edric is still your best friend,” I assured. “And I’m sure he feels awful about what we’ve done. But he’s my friend too. And so, when I got too drunk to stop myself, I deepened our friendship. Fucking him does not make me love you any less and I still have plenty of fucks to give you.”

“Promise?” asked Bran.

“Come join me,” I said, as I pulled aside the sheet. “Let me show you how much I still love you.”


EDRIC

I sat in the Weirwood tree, feeling like the biggest git in the world!

I knew exactly what Margaery meant when she asked to ‘ride my broomstick’ and I laughed it off and pretended that I thought she meant she wanted to go flying. And I knew what she wanted to give me when she lured me over to this tree. I also knew she puts a drug in her lipstick that mimics the Imperius Curse. But I can throw that off in a instant. She wasn’t going get me! Except . . . once I let her take control, I wanted to see what she would make me do. And I was enjoying the things she was making me do. And she wasn’t treating me like a slave in her power. She was reciprocating! She tried to please me just as much as I pleased her. Somewhere in all that I threw off the curse of her lipstick. Definitely before I entered her. I knew it was wrong. But by then, I wanted her so badly I couldn’t help myself! I threw away a good friendship for a few hours of pleasure!
I don’t know how long I brooded on this it seemed like for hours before Bran and Margaery returned, hand in hand. He was fully dressed. She was completely not, and had turned her skin a more normal shade, to boot.

“Why aren’t you dressed?” I asked.

“I consider this my ‘walk of shame’ of a sorts,” replied Margaery. “I left my clothes here and being seen by the servants walking naked with my husband does not look as bad as walking out of your room wearing your clothes would. Besides, people expect weird stuff from me.”

“Bran, I’m really sorry,”I apologized. “I never meant to hurt you like this.” 

“It’s alright, Edric,” said Margaery, as she started wrapping her small clothes back on before dressing completely. “I explained to Bran how alcohol can make you give in to whims that you would ordinarily never act on. I also explained the double standard about how Lords can have mistresses and Ladies can’t.”

“Except in Dorne,” I joked. “I think part of the reason for that is the issue of paternity. A Lord wants to know his Lady’s children are his. Look what happened with Queen Cersi and the Kingslayer.”

“Oh . . .” said Margaery, as she started to go pale.

“We can just do the charm and find out,” suggested Bran.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” scoffed Margaery. “If I am, Bran and I just made it impossible to be sure who the father is.”

“Um ... no,” I replied. “The charm will tell us if you are going to have a child and who the father is.”

“How is that even possible?” exclaimed Margaery. “It’s way too soon for fertilization to have occurred, much less implantation!”

“Magic,” I replied, before turning to Bran. “Do you want to cast it?”

“Go ahead,” huffed Margaery.

Bran cast the spell and there was a glow on her abdomen for an instant.

“I suppose I should congratulate you, Edric,” observed Bran.

“No. . . No! . . .No! No! No! No! No!” gasped Margaery, as he clutched her belly and fell to her knees. She then began pounding the ground with her fists, screaming: “You slut! You great big dirty slut! How could you do this to him!!!”

Bran bent down and held her until she’d cried it out.

“It’s all right, It’s all right,” he told her over and over.

When she finally got hold of herself, she looked up at her husband and said: “I can abort it. Over there, that plant has a fruit that will prevent implantation. It’s safer than moon-tea.”

“No! . . . No . . .” pleaded Bran. “You made this baby as a magical act, here, in the Gods’ Wood, on the Heart Tree. It would be wrong to undo that.”

There was a pause as we all stared at each other . . .

“If we do this, no one can ever know,” commanded Margaery. “Your Bannermen might rebel if I have a bastard baby. It just needs to stay between the three of us!”

“And Jojen,” added Bran.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “He’s almost as good at divination as you are. He probably knows, already. He probably knew about it before it even happened!”

“Jojen, I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this,” called out Bran. “What about Sansa?”

“Sansa . ... Sansa! Oh she is going to kill me! All this time she’s been bugging me to go ahead and marry her! And she keeps pushing me to do more that kiss and what do I do? . . I go a make a bastard baby with her brother’s wife!” I cried.

“Then, start giving her what she wants,” admonished Margaery. “Set a date and start doing more with her. But could you make the date at least 11 months in the future? I want to be able to attend the wedding.”

“I think as long as we keep the secret, no one need ever know,” agreed Bran. “But Sansa can not be one of us who keeps this secret.”

“And when the baby’s older, she can come and foster with me!” I offered.

“So we’re all good here?” asked Margaery, on seeing our nods of agreement, she suggested. “Then I think we should all go break our fast.”

When we arrived in the Hall, Jojen and Meera were already breaking their fast. As soon as he spotted us, he turned to me and said:

“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

“What secret?” asked Meera.


TRYSTANE

For months I had stayed here in Bravos, using my magic to cheat at gambling and spending my winnings of whores. I was delaying, in part, because I didn’t want to ride in a ship again and in part, because I couldn’t face my father with my failure to marry the Targaryan girl. One day, when I was relaxing in the parlor of a brothel after partaking of their services a group of sailors came in. From the style of clothes they wore, I assumed they must be Ironborn. But the strangest thing about them is that they appeared to be led by a teen-aged girl. Her accent was thickly Northern and Westerosi when she approached the deck and announced:

“I’d like to buy a lady for each of of my men,” announced the girl, as she set a heavy bag on the counter.

The madame lifted it to estimate the weight, then looked inside. “This appears to be sufficient,” the madame declared.

“Excuse, miss, do you have time to talk to a fellow westerosi?” I asked. “I’ll buy you a drink?”

“Sure. Why not. I have some time to kill,” declared the girl.

“I’m Trystane Martell, Prince of Dorne,” I introduced myself.

“Captain Arya Stark. I own the Silence.”

“It seems an unusual thing for a girl your age to be captain of a ship,” I observed. “Even stranger to see a ship captain buying whores for her men instead of letting them do it themselves.”

“My predecessor used to cut out their tongues,” explained Arya. “So I have to do it for them.”

“How did you get to be the captain of a famous pirate ship?” I inquired.

“The former captain, Euron Greyjoy, abducted me from Bear Island, which is about as far North up the West coast as you can get before The Wall,” started Arya. “At first, I thought I was going to be ransomed or worse, raped. I fought with everything I had. But Euron just laughed an me, especially when I got in a good lick. Instead of sailing South, we went West, across the sunset sea. Euron took me on as an apprentice of sorts. he taught me how to sail, how to navigate, how to do every job there was to do on the ship. And each night he would say to me: ‘I’ll probably kill you in the morning!’ All the way across the sea he did this to me. Finally, we reached land on the other side, a weird place called Carcosa. After that we stopped at a few other places in far eastern Essos that I had only heard of in legends. Finally, in Astapor, when Euron bought all the unsullied, freed them and sent them to kill their masters in an elaborate scheme to loot the city, I found my chance. I stabbed Euron in the back and looted the city myself. After it was all over, The crew made me captain, in part because I was the only one of them that could talk and give orders, and partly because they all recognised that I had paid the Iron Price for the ship. Along the way, I picked up a newly freed slave to be my first mate, a Wilding named: Toreg.”

“You know, I think I know your brother’s wife,” I mused. “Do you have a brother who is a wizard named: Bran Stark?”

“Bran’s married!?!” exclaimed Arya. “Wait a minute! Wizard!?!”

“You didn’t know?” I asked. “I haven’t actually met him but once, but I fought along side his wizard teacher in the Fleabottom riot. He does a very different magic than me. But now that I see you, I can see you have magic inside you too.”

“Tell me another tale,” scoffed Arya. “So who did Bran marry?”

“Margaery Tyrell of the Reach,” I stated. “She has weird plant powers.”

“Now you’re just making things up!” accused Arya.

“No really!” I assured. “They used to call her Plant Woman in King’s Landing before she moved to Riverrun.”

“Look, Euron showed me some weird shit, but there’s no way you can convince me that-” she stopped speaking she I suddenly stepped into the wereworld.

From her perspective, it appeared I had vanished before her eyes. I danced around behind her and returned to the normal world to tap her on the shoulder. She turned with blinding speed and had a long thin sword at my throat before I had time to register it.

“Who the hells are you?” yelled Arya.

“It’s still me, Trystane,” I said, as I shifted from my real appearance to the one I had worn before I had vanished, when she first met me.

“How did you do that?” exclaimed Arya.

“Magic,” I explained.

“Can you teach me to do that?”