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She dreams of wolves, and he of roses.
She’s twice a queen, twice widowed, still unbedded.
He’s twice widowed—he lose Jeyne to a fever within days of their marriage, and Alayne(the Frey girl he’d married, who his mother had been grateful for) to childbirth(the child too), and he is the King in the North now, as he was always meant to be.
When Renly dies she’s saddest for her loss of a kingdom, and her brother’s loss of a love. When Joffrey dies she feels nothing but disappointment, for she was to be the queen, and now she has nothing.
Robb mourns for his love the first time, and his family the second.
Neither of them expects that they’ll be safe from a third marriage, for that is how things are done, they are still young and merely trade goods for use for the good of the kingdom.
They have no choice in the matter(nor would there be much of a choice to make, even if they could)—and there’s no such thing as marriage for love, and all happiness can only be incidental.
~~
Stannis Baratheon dies, Jon Snow is the Lord Commander, Tommen and Myrcella are outed as Lannisters and relieved of their claim to the throne, and the Mother of Dragons comes home to roost, with Tyrion Lannister as her Hand.
Margaery can clearly not marry Dany(as she is given leave to call her in private), and Robb Stark is given lordship over the North, as he’d fought for, because Daenerys dreams of a great battle in the North, and she knows she cannot hold it, nor protect it, without a Stark in Winterfell, and so Robb Stark is king, and Margaery is to be his queen.
There is little to argue about, and all involved know that winter is here, with storms and a war the likes of which the Seven Kingdoms have not seen in hundreds of years. Everyone must play their part, Daenerys says, turning slightly to smile at her cousin Aegon, who is to marry Sansa Stark, and Margaery feels a burning rage within her, for he’s more likely to be king than any child of Dany’s.
Alas, Daenerys is the Mother of Dragons, the queen in every way that matters, and her words are law, her dreams come true, and this is as she bids it.
~~
It’s less than she’d wanted—she’d wanted to be the queen, but she knows as well as everyone else does that that honor is never to truly be hers. Both her kings were mere pretenders, usurpers as most call them. Her Lord Robb Stark is a true king, though of the harsh and bitter North, which must be protected, which shall be in ruins by the time that the white walkers are done with it, if the rumors are even a little bit true.
But Margaery Tyrell, soon to be Stark, is a queen, and she shall do her duty. It isn’t as if her heart belongs to another, as if she has some other sort of destiny to adhere to, some other duty to fulfill. When Daenerys gives her the news, Margaery simply bows her head and says, “As you bid,” in private, and lifts her head with pride, her back straight and shoulders squared.
Daenerys smiles slightly, sympathetically, placing her hand upon Margaery’s. “Not every marriage that begins in necessity must stay so. I hear he is the Young Wolf, and soft on the eyes. You are the great rose of Highgarden.”
They always say that, Margaery thinks, as if it means something. She isn’t quite sure that it does, truly, except that they gift her around, and she feels herself wilting, not growing strong as she should. But she is a Tyrell, and she will not show such weakness. “Thank you, your grace.”
“Dany in private, sweet Margaery,” Daenerys reminds her. “I wanted to tell you of this in private, though the deal is done. The North, the Wall, and all beyond it must be fortified. I meet the Lord Commander and King Stark tomorrow. The North is still part of Westeros, but it cannot be held by it any longer, nor can we drain it through war and expect it to still protect us from wildlings and white walkers.”The Mother of Dragons simply looks towards her children, and Margaery bows her head.
“Your—Daenerys,” she compromises, “Why don’t you marry him yourself?” She’s sure it must be inappropriate to question a Queen’s motives or intentions, but she’s curious. It would bond the North to the rest of the kingdom rather firmly.
Daenerys turns back to face her, her own face unreadable. “My advisers had suggested it,” she says slightly. “Alas, my dreams say otherwise, and my dreams are . . . prophecies, of sorts.”
Margaery considers that. “I dream of wolves,” she whispers softly. “Grey, and fast as the wind, swirling around me, cornering me. Trapping me, maybe.”
Daenerys tilts her head lightly to the side. “We’re all trapped. Only death releases us from our bonds,” she philosophizes, and that is the end of that.
~~
The wedding arrangements are all a blur--Robb Stark does his duty just as Margaery does hers, and they follow the script laid before them, and they're married and sitting next to each other at their reception, and they've yet to converse beyond those lines.
Margaery is grateful when Daenerys stops talking to her long enough to dance with the Lord Commander, and she feels slight pity at the look of interest on her face, and hopes that someone had thought to tell her of the oath of a night's watchman. She is distracted from her thoughts by the words of her husband, so soft she wonders if she's imagining them at all until she turns to see him speaking.
"I should like to say our words again before the old gods when we reach Winterfell," Robb says softly so as not to shift attention from the fools, the dragons, the dancing and revelry.
"My family does not favor them, but as you wish, your grace." Margaery intones dutifully.
"Thank you," he says, surprising her slightly, though she does not show it, nor start at all.
~~
Later that night, when he is to bed her, Margaery is somehow not terrified at all. She'd spent all that worry on two previous husbands, one who had chosen not to consummate their marriage, and another who had simply not had the opportunity. She has no true fear, except that he shall somehow not want her.
She knows she is beautiful, but she also knows that a man grieving for a past wife will not love her, at least not soon. Margaery does not wish to be the Queen Cersei to his King Robert, that much she is sure of. Yet there is little she can do about that if that is how it is to be, except to not let it embitter her.
She starts to undo her dress, but he stills her with a single word, and does it himself, removing her bodice and all underneath it, more slowly than he needs to, just enough to bring nerves she didn't know she had into a tense state. It isn't quite fear,she realizes.
Her nipples are hard, a breeze making her shiver, and her entire body seems poised on a great cliff, ready to fall into a great sea, ready to absorb the shock of the fall, the cold, the change.
When he slips inside of her, as her mother once told her a husband should, she’s surprised by the pain. It does not hurt as much as she’d worried, nor as little as she’d hoped, but that mingles with a sensation of fullness, which she’s simply never felt before.
She’s felt empty for a very long time—full of words with little meaning(and so much impact) and loneliness that threatens to consume her constantly.
She does not know this man, nor does she expect pleasure from their joining, but she’s pleasantly surprised by him being inside of her like this.
He, as men are prone to do(or so she hears), lets his seed spill inside of her, breathing heavily and he rolls over so that he can stare up at the ceiling.
“That was pleasant,” she says without thinking.
She’s rewarded with his laugh—full and shaky, almost as if he’s surprising himself with his mirth. There’s a warmth in her belly that begins with that noise, and she feels the beginning of a strange sort of an affection for this man she’s married to, though she will not show it.
“There are many more pleasant things than that,” he says. “We shall do any number of them.”
At that she almost wants to laugh, for it seems ridiculous. This, while more enjoyable than her mother had said, is still the mechanism through which she’ll give birth to his heir. She places her hand on her belly at that, comfortable with her own nakedness.
She closes her eyes, imagining a life inside of her. She’s surprised by a feeling of excitement.
“Do you think—“ she starts to ask, but stops because she doesn’t wish to seem the foolish child who understands nothing of the world.
“I hope so,” he says, surprising her by understanding and not mocking her as many a man has done in the past when her tongue has slipped(less and less so over the years as she’d learned her lesson, of course).
She falls asleep to the sound of his breathing, and wakes to find herself entangled in his arms. It’s . . . nice, she thinks. Not at all like she’d imagined(feared).
~~
His men love her—and the little lordlings within the North find her to be interesting, even though some are worried about having a southern flower as the winter queen.
She quickly dispels such ideas with her steadiness, her quickness of mind, and her gentle strength.
She wins everyone over except for Robb, who continues to watch her carefully as if he’s sure she’ll die any day now(she knows the feeling, as she watches him with a similar carefulness). One day, when he sits down after speaking to his men, and she can see only his hands shaking, she places her own on top of his, and he calms, and that tiny act of spontaneity and kindness shapes them, makes them what they are.
Their couplings continue to be pleasant, and often much more than that. She’s particularly fond of when his head is between her thighs, doing things she knows can’t possibly be conducive to producing the heir that half the Seven Kingdoms waits for. The other half watches as Daenerys Stormborn grooms her nephew for her throne, assuring them all that she shall rule, but she shan’t take a husband.
Their people take to calling Margaery the Winter Rose, and she rather likes it.
~~
He falls for her quickly, and yet slowly, and not quite all at once—he topples from respect, and admiration into love with little warning, and yet he knows it is all little things that make him adore her, make him need her in ways he’s never needed anyone before. He's full of a darkness now from war and death--and every time he sends off more young men to their death at the Wall, he is only calmed by Margaery's hand in his, her lips on his--by her, truly.
He doubts she understands the depth of his need for her—even when he’s buried inside of her, or when he’s telling her his worries before bed, and she assures him that everything will work out, or she quite practically tells him how to make sure that things will work out.
They’re a perfect team, and he doubts she even realizes that, and that’s another thing that’s sort of maddening, but wonderful about her.
She knows exactly how amazing she is, he doesn’t doubt that, but somehow he doubts she’s used to others appreciating that about her.
One day, she starts talking back, and he knows that for sure, and soon enough it’s clear that he loves her, even if his heart seems to ache and stop him from saying the words.
~~
Margaery had always known that she would make an excellent queen—her goals, her dreams, her aspirations had always been for so much more than her life, which hadn’t exactly been simple to begin with.
She is now a queen, ruling with her king, and there’s a war brewing beyond the Wall, beyond this world, with dark forces she’s certainly not prepared for, but the white walkers shall be fought back and destroyed with the power of the dragons themselves, and Margaery’s people shall be well-fed and taken care of to the best of her ability.
She will do her duty, as she always has(though it is better than she had ever hoped it might be).
~~
"You are more a wolf than I," Robb says one night, as she's curled against him, her head on his chest, his hand on her heart. "I should think I am the rose," he muses softly.
"A rose has thorns, your grace," Margaery counters lightly. "We're an abominable pair either way, my king."
"You are not abominable," Robb assures her, caressing her skin, his hand sliding from her chest down the side of her breast to her stomach, and past it to her womanhood.
She’s surprised by the thrill she feels at his words. She knows he’s married for love before, and that he cannot possibly love her—even as they discuss his fears, his worries, his kingdom, his former lady wives, she knows she is nothing more than his wife, the future mother of his children(maybe he will love her then, she thinks, when she births his heir, and proves herself a queen), and maybe even a friend.
She feels his caress along her skin and drifts off to sleep with his voice soft and whispering words she doesn’t quite grasp as sleep overcomes her.
~~
“Your father returned from war with a bastard child,” Margaery says as a goodbye to her husband(maybe even as a warning). “I should hope you won’t make that same mistake, however much you love your brother.”
This is his duty—as hers is to watch as he marches off to defend the Wall with his brother’s sworn brothers.
Later that night, as she curls into their bed alone, somehow it feels emptier than the few other times they have not shared one, and she falls asleep with her head in his pillow, on the side he usually sleeps on, wrapped up in blankets, thanking the old gods and the new for the hot springs heating the walls of the Winterfell.
It feels colder than before—Winter is coming, she thinks, letting the words echo throughout her mind. Winter has come, she knows. It has already been four years by this point—twice the length of her own marriage, which already seems to have lasted for a lifetime(and yet no time at all, as its ease is unsettling).
~~
A long eight months later, Robb Stark returns victorious—as victorious as he can with men from all over the Seven Kingdoms dead for the protection of everyone south of the wall. Daenerys herself had come with him, taking her dragons to burn away the creatures beyond the wall.
Robb is surprised to see his wife not waiting for him, to see his home so much quieter than it should be, and his mind goes only to the worst of things.
She could have succumbed to the winter cold, he realizes, and his own heart aches with something he’d rather not recognize.
The maester sets him straight quickly, directing him towards his wife, mid-way through what seems to be a terribly painful birth.
“You’ll want to wait outside, of course,” the maester says, but Robb ignores him, hurrying over to his wife’s side, grasping her hand and kneeling by her bedside.
“Why didn’t you—“ he starts to ask, but she cuts him off with a squeal of pain and a look of judgment.
“Write?” she asks. “You have a war on your hands, my king. A child is a distraction, not a weapon.”
Robb looks down at his young wife, just barely younger than himself, and strokes the side of her face with his hand, softly as he possibly can, and kisses her forehead. “I love you,” he says, but Margaery simply howls in pain, and turns away from him, refusing to turn back to look at him, even as he takes her hand, and she holds it so tightly she’s surprised it doesn’t break.
Later—when she holds her baby boy in her arms, and she feels more disgusting than she did after fighting out in the sun all day with her brothers during Mid-Summer fests as a child, she doesn’t even look up from him to say, “You shouldn’t say what you don’t mean,” she says softly, not weakly.
“I—“ Robb starts to say, but then someone bursts in, and all Margaery hears is, “It’s the Queen, she needs you,” and Margaery doesn’t even look up, doesn’t show weakness as he hesitates and then leaves her alone.
“I think he loves you,” Margaery tells little Eddard. She irrationally hates him for a moment—her own child, and she feels such rage shake throughout her tired body that she calls out for a nursemaid, sending him away before she can grow to truly hate him.
~~
Margaery is quiet after that—going from easy friendship with her husband to mere politeness worse than the first days of their marriage, which had easily been filled with companionable silences and those easy conversations that come to those destined to know each other.
Now, of course, things are complicated by her husband running to Daenerys’ side for the birth of her child. Their child, Margaery thinks, correcting herself to fuel her own pain.
He is her husband, and he has disrespected their marriage bed, as most men are wont to do. She should not be surprised, but she had thought he’d had more honor that that, and hoped that those moments when he touched her, when he kissed her, that he thought of her, and wanted no other.
She knows she is beautiful, but she is not enough. She has been found lacking through no fault of her own. She is beautiful, she knows, and good at ruling, and perfect at everything else.
The lack is in him—in his honor.
She stares down at the child that bitch queen left behind—for this is most certainly a child of the dragons, and has those Stark features, and is most certainly proof that her husband has been unfaithful, and the Queen had certainly never been Margaery’s friend.
There are no friends in politics, of course, she learns.
~~
It takes her three weeks to visit her own child after his birth, and she immediately feels guilty, and loves him with everything that she is. This is her child, she realizes, of her blood, of her everything. He is innocent, and a child of love—for now she realizes her own folly, falling in love with a man who while her husband, will never be her love.
She holds little Eddard in his arms, and then looks next to him at the other child—the one her husband had come to her to tell her would be their ward, and she’d simply looked at him. “Let us make her our own, my king. The sister to our son. I don’t want the Seven Kingdom’s to believe me to be as big of a fool as your mother.”
He’d winced at that, and opened his mouth as if to explain, reaching his hand out as if to touch her, but she’d shrunk away, getting back into her bed(not theirs) and had simply refused to visit again up until today.
She places her own child back down, making sure his blankets are wrapped tightly around him, and gives the nursemaid leave so that she may be alone with her children. She picks up baby Lyanna, and realizes that this little girl will be the only one she’ll hold in her arms, for Margaery has done her duty, and will not take Robb Stark to her bed again. She is an Ice Queen, she thinks, even as she coos at the little girl.
It is no fault of Lyanna’s anymore than Robb’s father’s infidelity had been Jon Snow’s.
She vows on this day to treat them both equally, as her own. She vows a lot more than that, wrapping her heart up in layers of ice to protect it as Robb Stark had protected the North.
~~
Robb comes to her bed sometimes, at first, only to be turned away.
One day he seems poised to snap, to say something, to be angry with her, as if this is somehow her fault. It isn’t. He seems to realize this, and he sighs heavily before apologizing softly, and then leaving. He does not try again.
His brother Jon comes to visit two months after Robb’s return, and Margaery is thankful for the distraction, and almost considers seducing him into her bed, as that would be a true revenge. It takes her only a single look at her husband to scrap the plan entirely.
She goes back to being the perfect, gracious host, and two week’s into Jon’s stay she’s tired of the pretending. She’s been pretending her entire life, but it’s never been like this—before all of this she hadn’t had to pretend nearly as much, because Robb was her husband in every way, and it had been so easy.
She’s cooing over both of her precious babies when she notes that someone has entered the babies’ chambers, and she turns to find Jon Snow looking over at her with the strangest look on his face.
“I never blamed Lady Stark—“ he says without preamble,”Lady Catelyn, I mean, for not caring for me. I represented the worst of many things. Her husband’s infidelity, the weakness of men, of honor, of love.”
Margaery softly caresses Lyanna’s cheek before meeting Jon’s eyes. “Such things are often weak—love, honor, men.”
Jon smiles faintly at that. “True. I was weak. I broke my vows, discarded my honor, I—I made mistakes.”
Margaery tilts her head slightly. “Are you here to convince me to rejoin your brother’s bed? He might be better suited to a whore.” She snorts. “Though next time he won’t be able to excuse a bastard as easily.”
Jon’s smile fades and he steps closer, looking down at the babies. “Robb didn’t dishonor you.”
Margaery snorts again, and she knows it’s terribly unladylike, and while once is excusable, twice truly isn’t, but she can’t seem to stop herself. Robb talks, it seems, which means he’s broken yet another promise not to let anyone find out that he has dishonored her, but she should not be surprised. “I see the proof right beyond my face, Jon Snow.”
“I know he didn’t,” Jon speaks too freely, Margaery thinks, but he is family, and she cannot find it within her to be angry with him, or even to stop him, for she would like nothing better than to not fight back tears before sleep and wake up to wet cheeks.
“You know nothing, Jon Snow—“ Margaery says with an empty laugh.
He places his hand over hers, and she stops laughing, looking at him with an intensity that would make a lesser man pull away. Many greater men too, she imagines, but he has purpose. “Lyanna is mine.”
Margaery shakes her head. “No,” she says simply, because she cannot think of anything else to say.
“You must listen,” Jon says. “Robb loves you, even if he’s an idiot about it. He’s been protecting me. I—Dany—the Queen—we sparked. We were ice and fire, two opposites drawn together by our similarities, our strengths, our purposes. There was a night when we thought all was lost, and we gave in—it happened before Robb arrived with reinforcements, and—Lyanna is ours. But Dany is a queen, and she cannot lay claim to her anymore than I can. We would lose everything.”
“That’s a nice tale,” Margaery says, shaking, ready to believe, but unable to. “Why are you telling me this?”
Jon’s face hardens, and for the first time Margaery can picture him as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. “I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I broke my vows, that my child is here, claimed by another, that she will never call me father or papa. She cannot be mine. She is yours instead—yours and Robb’s. I appreciate your kindness to Lyanna now, but I—you and Robb should not have to suffer for it.”
Margaery says nothing, simply looking back down at the child, hoping to see some sort of sign that Jon speaks the truth,but she finds none except her own desire to believe.
“He loves you,” Jon says softly. “You two suit each other—you don’t burn brightly, or destroy everything around you, and your love is not rage. It’s steady and calm and full.”
Margaery simply leaves at that, without a goodbye, without another word or noise or indication that she’d even heard him at all.
~~
Jon leaves soon after—but not before visiting the babies’ chamber several more times, more than is appropriate, that much is sure, and if he is to be their favored uncle, they must be careful, Margaery decides, deciding to believe him without proof, without anything more than a simple hope in her heart.
The night he leaves, she finds her husband telling their children a story—one about dreams, roses and wolves and war and things best left for much later, yet they won’t remember them, so she does not stop the flow of his words, and simply lets him carry on, and enjoys the music of his words and the familiarity of the tale.
She remembers dreams about a wolf who guards a bed of roses, and the wolf falling asleep day after day upon them until one day he wakes up in the arms of a beautiful woman, with only petals left beneath them on the ground. She imagines it must be a story they’d had in common, that they’d both remembered as dreams, or dreamt about because of its romanticism and poignancy.
Later that night, she slips into bed with Robb, and simply lies there with him, listening to his breathing, letting him sleep without waking him.
She has made her choice to love him, whether Jon’s story is true or false, whether Robb loves her or not.
She stays, and dreams of roses and wolves.
~~
He wakes to her in his arms, and wakes her with soft kisses, letting his body know her again—it has been so long since they’ve done this—and she awakes with a cry, which he muffles with another kiss, and they simply lie there in the dawn light coming in through the window, staring at each other as if they’ve never seen each other before.
“I love you,” he says reverently, going back to kissing every inch of available skin.
Her breath catches. “Do you really?
“Yes,” he says, and she shivers all over, feeling it in every inch of her body.
Later, once they hear the chirping of birds—it signals the coming of spring, Robb tells her, for those birds dislike winter as much as most men.
Margaery traces her tongue along all of Robb’s new scars, kissing them each in turn, whispering I love yous against his skin until he’s murmuring broken I love yous back, nipping at his skin until he howls, softly sinking into him as the last bits of ice around their hearts melt away completely, leaving spring in more ways than one.