( on the one hand, gwen's first, passing thought at the observation of sansa stark is no girl stays young, does she, but that isn't entirely the case. this twenty-four year old woman who'd never lived anywhere but school or with family until last year, whose father was paying the rent on that apartment and had veto power over where she chose to live, who's never had to work for a more compelling reason than disliking idleness before taking the position that had given daenerys such pause earlier. who's never not had the option of running home to daddy if everything goes tits up.
some girls actually get to be young for quite some fucking time, even as they age decades past their due in other ways. that's complicated, too, but mercifully it is less immediately relevant and she points back at daenerys with her own glass; ) You did say.
( ruminatively; ) I feel like I shouldn't tell Jon my parents weren't married. I've definitely come off the better of that arrangement. No one gave me a funny name.
It isn't my intention to gossip as to Jon Snow's birthright, or lack of it, [ Dany insists, gently. ] I know what it is, too, to not know your own mother.
[ A swig of champagne breaks up the moment. To give a skeletal structure to a friend of the myriads of tensions that divide the Westerosi, without bringing her anger into the conversation. To not blacken the afternoon, or have the champagne turn sour in their mouths.
If Tyrion were still here, he would have done a fine job. ]
But his father lived to be the Hand of the Usurper King, Robert Baratheon, until he was executed for treason against the Lannister House, married into the ruling family, participants too of the rebellion. Baratheon and his Lannister queen ruled over the Seven Kingdoms for as long as I was alive, while my brother and I lived across the ocean in exile. So, [ she says, like punctuation ] you'll have to forgive that many of those who come from my world will be enemies, until proven otherwise.
Jon has proven that, [ she says, ] and Lord Baelish, for all that our politics come with sharp edges. Sansa Stark is not her father, either.
Mothers are always complicated. ( a close-mouthed smile, and with it no desire to pursue the topic any further than offhand cracks. birthrights. it'd have gone a lot less well for her if she'd been born a few centuries earlier, that's all -
but they are still too sober for gwen to want to talk about anyone's mother.
enemies, though. not much safer territory, really - not always different territory, in her experience - but more pressingly relevant as the westerosi population grows and as gwen seems to insist on finding herself in their midst, intentionally or otherwise. best to know which way the wind blows, and who to avoid...
who from her world might come here, she wonders. somehow it doesn't feel like a promising notion. )
[ Speaking of enemies, proven otherwise. The last of Daenerys' champagne is knocked back, but she's not quick to refill, leaning to place her glass down and then sit back again, hands knitting together. ]
Jorah of House Mormont. A northern family, under the banner of the Starks, although Jorah himself is something of an outlier [ who shouldn't be counted ].
He is an exile of Westeros, but swore his sword to my brother, and then to me. In return, I promised to restore him to his House when I took back the Seven Kingdoms. Now, here, he works for Lord Baelish. Which perhaps accounts for my response, earlier, when you broke news of your employ.
[ If her gossip is just a touch restrained-- well, it is. There are details she'd rather keep from banter, complications that sound too, frankly, complicated to untangle here and now. ]
Not an enemy, but sodding off with all your people -
( the wine having flowed with freedom enough that Gwen doesn't think twice about casually slotting herself in there as Dany's people, yes; it isn't that she wouldn't think so, without it, it's just maybe she wouldn't have presumed to say so out loud. The problem with saying things like that out loud is that if you say them then people can tell you that you're wrong -
better to be secret with your friendships, so they can't say they aren't shared.
She tilts her glass, illustrative. )
It's strictly business. You're my favourite Westerosi, I just need...
( A deep sigh. )
Pretty things.
( That isn't all. That isn't even all she gets out of working for Baelish - she's good at what she does, likes it - but, you know, they are currently surrounded by the fruits of her labor. It feels terribly meaningful. She wonders about Jorah, about did he. and the way she necked that glass, but if she were Daenerys, she wouldn't want to be asked. )
[ Gwen needn't say more. Daenerys has been spoiled enough today that she smiles her knowing acceptance, the initial pang of disappointment and vague trepidation for even more potential complication to worry about now doused in complementary champagne. She doesn't even think it's just the pretty things either, and that's perfectly alright too.
Fortunately, she isn't drinking when Gwen asks this next thing, but does give her a long look -- or maybe through her. ]
I would propose we have more to drink, on that note, but I think that might be a terrible idea.
( The next involuntary reaction is, in a way, an unconscious reassurance: don't worry, Gwen couldn't lie to save her goddamn life. She chokes on the champagne, managing to at least swallow it before she starts coughing, recovering poorly-- ) Shit, really?
( Look, she didn't see that one coming. At this point, though, she maybe should have. )
[ They certainly must have entered uncertain territory, because Daenerys' half-smile at Gwen's response is more muted than it would have been a moment ago.
Still-- ]
Viserys Targaryen. Senior to me by a few years, although now we are almost of a like age -- he was taken from four years prior to the time from when I was taken.
Relatively recently arrived. I was as surprised as you are.
( It isn't what she says; it's how she says it. It's what she doesn't say. It's that it came up this way, and not another--
Gwen wonders what she'd do if Marc came here. Have a conniption fit, probably. Lock him in her attic until she figured out how to deal with him. Maybe see if someone with memory-suppressing powers could make him forget what he read in his own file about his powers.
But, you know, she'd be glad, as well. A bit. Her displeasure would be both genuine but also ostentatious and performed for an audience - she would expect them to live together, tell him her secrets. Keep his. )
[ She can pick up the appropriate cues, in tone, in blank space. ]
He hurt me deeply-- had hurt me, in ways I hadn't understood for a long time. But I hurt him back. [ Maybe a little more champagne. She leans to fill her glass to a modest height. ] We've decided on a peace between us.
[ She decided, dragging Viserys over the line by sheer force of will, more like.
Which is in her tone too, but also means she has cause not to dig up all the grisly details. Just enough to empower Gwen with context, should she require it, for both of their benefits. ]
We are the last two, you see. Targaryens. The throne might have been his, in another life.
( An understanding hum; all of those unsaid things, yes, but the grapple for position, too. A young man who might have been King is a dangerous thing. The memory that echoes back is none of that, though, it's sitting tired beside her father's bathtub, making herself smile, tilting his face and talking to him to keep him awake, exhausted and angry and thinking you're only my brother, you're not his son about a young man who is one thing when it suits him and another when it doesn't.
It isn't fair, of course; if he wanted it, she wouldn't share, and Emeric wouldn't ask it. But she had been so tired. )
I don't think men should have thrones, ( critically. ) I don't think historically that has ended well. I wouldn't trust my brother with a patch of garden, much less a kingdom.
( Better, worse, or just the high octane Tarantino sequel to Mean Girls that if pushed, they would probably both disclaim 'just an observation' as opposed to having any particular dislike of the man who is conveniently for the purposes of a segue Not Viserys Targaryen?
Gwen laughs. )
Sort of. He talked to me when I was, um, handling myself and my entrance into this world with all the grace and decorum it merited.
[ Dany has honestly very little against the man either. She circled him on the network, once, particularly after witnessing Jorah take the time to anonymously sass him, so really she isn't the most immature one wrt Theon Greyjoy in her cast.
Just the one that's been drinking, currently, and she suppresses a sillier grin in echo of Gwen's, just. ]
He... [ She thinks, then, to what she knows of him in her world, which is a slight dash of cooler water on her mirth. A broken man, then. Less so, now. ] Well, I don't envy him. Most of what I know of him concerns the histories of others, but it's fair to say he is no friend of the Starks any longer, but was raised by them as a child as a hostage of war. His House is no friend to the Mormonts, either.
Theon was taken from an earlier time, and so doesn't know me, but I know him, a little. He and his sister struck an allegiance with me -- ships, for independence. He was different, then, than he is here.
( Lazily, like a cat batting something with her paw; ) Less of a little tit?
( --which is more or less what she is, not any more malicious than that. Not particularly nice, either, but she's never pretended to be a nice girl. Or at least not with any real conviction. Plus, it made Daenerys laugh. She'll always circle a winning play a few times, though she catches the softening. )
It's all so ... it's very archaic, to me. From where I sit. But it's not even, in my world, so far -
( She thinks about Keir. She hasn't thought about Keir and his stupid castle and his stupid books and his huge fucking guns in a while, but she thinks of him. The floodlights. The security measures. The last. Elsewhere, Koschei who is not Koschei, and his sharp, terrible sorrows.
[ There's a-- no, 'tolerant' isn't the right word for the smile she gives Gwen, because it isn't like just anyone implying that her world is quaint, but certainly a knowing smile, small and hidden, partially, in her next sip of wine. ]
I've been here long enough to sense how different it is, to speak of these things. Not simply the clash between cultures, the perception of time, but-- well, to speak of one hundred ships to carry my armies across an ocean is a different concern than learning how to drive a hovercar. It isn't the subject for casual conversation.
I'm sure all of us have a bit of that, of course, [ she adds. ] But it is nice to be able to speak of it all, now and then.
(Tell her we will come, he'd said. And she'd said, she's not that thing, but there is so much more in the world than Gwen knows and Hasi had - known.
It can't hurt anything, to get the hang of some of this. Not quaint, no - fucking weird, for sure - and also not as irrelevant to her as the world war Eunike's still fighting and Gwen has only ever watched on the history channel with a hangover. Also, sort of pressingly, she seems to have inadvertently stepped into the middle of it, so the smart play is certainly to take it all very goddamned seriously-- )
Houses and all of that. Not so different. My father sold our ancestral seat, actually. To a cousin. But they kicked up such an ungodly fuss when he first said he was going to do it - I was all of about four years old or something, I don't remember, but my godmother tells the story - anyway they made such a grand thing of you can't possibly, it's the family, blah, blah, blah, and he got so fucked off he dug his heels in and made them buy it from him at market value. Bought himself a castle in Italy and took me off to be a princess.
( She gestures with her mostly empty glass-- )
Not a real one like you were. ( Prior to becoming a real queen. ) But I have a castle and a safe full of tiaras and I did fuck a man who'll be a Duke when his grandfather shuffles free the mortal coil.
[ She listens, chin in hand, elbow on the knee crossed high over the other. She smiles a little at the familiarity -- not just bloodlines and the buying and selling of title and power, but that fundamentally, people will be people. Petty disputes and tenuous friendships in the corners of history like so many cobwebs.
Stronger than that, though. Sometimes pivotal. ]
The castle and the tiaras are half the battle, [ she assures. ] And, frankly, so is--
[ But she stops. Her mouth opens, closes. She reaches over and takes Gwen's hand. She mentally waves away the fog of lazy inebriation she had been happy to relax into, her duty done, but it is not done. ]
Lannister. [ Important name. She's still holding her hand. ] The brother of the woman who married the Usurper, to rule as Queen. Jaime, too, is here.
And then I think that's everyone, for now.
[ But no, she has more to say, and also doesn't yet know about any others that might have crept in when she wasn't looking. She withdraws her hand, then, reaching for her glass, mostly out of desire to have a prop. ]
He was a member of the Kingsguard during my father's reign. When his father's Lannister army broke open the gates to the city, Ser Jaime broke his vows and slew my father. This was before I was born, [ she adds, as if to assure her slight alienation from all this drama ] as my mother had yet to birth me when she was forced to flee into exile.
It isn't the half of it, [ she adds. ] He is a vile man.
Jaime Lannister, ( repeated more dutifully. A traitor and a vile man. Not to be trusted and certainly not to be brought to anything as a plus-one, since Gwen did not fail to notice on which note Daenerys suddenly remembered his name. )
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some girls actually get to be young for quite some fucking time, even as they age decades past their due in other ways. that's complicated, too, but mercifully it is less immediately relevant and she points back at daenerys with her own glass; ) You did say.
( ruminatively; ) I feel like I shouldn't tell Jon my parents weren't married. I've definitely come off the better of that arrangement. No one gave me a funny name.
( did they not, gwenaëlle clothilde. )
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[ A swig of champagne breaks up the moment. To give a skeletal structure to a friend of the myriads of tensions that divide the Westerosi, without bringing her anger into the conversation. To not blacken the afternoon, or have the champagne turn sour in their mouths.
If Tyrion were still here, he would have done a fine job. ]
But his father lived to be the Hand of the Usurper King, Robert Baratheon, until he was executed for treason against the Lannister House, married into the ruling family, participants too of the rebellion. Baratheon and his Lannister queen ruled over the Seven Kingdoms for as long as I was alive, while my brother and I lived across the ocean in exile. So, [ she says, like punctuation ] you'll have to forgive that many of those who come from my world will be enemies, until proven otherwise.
Jon has proven that, [ she says, ] and Lord Baelish, for all that our politics come with sharp edges. Sansa Stark is not her father, either.
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but they are still too sober for gwen to want to talk about anyone's mother.
enemies, though. not much safer territory, really - not always different territory, in her experience - but more pressingly relevant as the westerosi population grows and as gwen seems to insist on finding herself in their midst, intentionally or otherwise. best to know which way the wind blows, and who to avoid...
who from her world might come here, she wonders. somehow it doesn't feel like a promising notion. )
Jon mentioned a Jorah Mormont, as well?
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[ Speaking of enemies, proven otherwise. The last of Daenerys' champagne is knocked back, but she's not quick to refill, leaning to place her glass down and then sit back again, hands knitting together. ]
Jorah of House Mormont. A northern family, under the banner of the Starks, although Jorah himself is something of an outlier [ who shouldn't be counted ].
He is an exile of Westeros, but swore his sword to my brother, and then to me. In return, I promised to restore him to his House when I took back the Seven Kingdoms. Now, here, he works for Lord Baelish. Which perhaps accounts for my response, earlier, when you broke news of your employ.
[ If her gossip is just a touch restrained-- well, it is. There are details she'd rather keep from banter, complications that sound too, frankly, complicated to untangle here and now. ]
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( the wine having flowed with freedom enough that Gwen doesn't think twice about casually slotting herself in there as Dany's people, yes; it isn't that she wouldn't think so, without it, it's just maybe she wouldn't have presumed to say so out loud. The problem with saying things like that out loud is that if you say them then people can tell you that you're wrong -
better to be secret with your friendships, so they can't say they aren't shared.
She tilts her glass, illustrative. )
It's strictly business. You're my favourite Westerosi, I just need...
( A deep sigh. )
Pretty things.
( That isn't all. That isn't even all she gets out of working for Baelish - she's good at what she does, likes it - but, you know, they are currently surrounded by the fruits of her labor. It feels terribly meaningful. She wonders about Jorah, about did he. and the way she necked that glass, but if she were Daenerys, she wouldn't want to be asked. )
Is your brother here, too?
( See, she thinks she's kidding. )
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Fortunately, she isn't drinking when Gwen asks this next thing, but does give her a long look -- or maybe through her. ]
I would propose we have more to drink, on that note, but I think that might be a terrible idea.
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( Look, she didn't see that one coming. At this point, though, she maybe should have. )
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[ They certainly must have entered uncertain territory, because Daenerys' half-smile at Gwen's response is more muted than it would have been a moment ago.
Still-- ]
Viserys Targaryen. Senior to me by a few years, although now we are almost of a like age -- he was taken from four years prior to the time from when I was taken.
Relatively recently arrived. I was as surprised as you are.
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( It isn't what she says; it's how she says it. It's what she doesn't say. It's that it came up this way, and not another--
Gwen wonders what she'd do if Marc came here. Have a conniption fit, probably. Lock him in her attic until she figured out how to deal with him. Maybe see if someone with memory-suppressing powers could make him forget what he read in his own file about his powers.
But, you know, she'd be glad, as well. A bit. Her displeasure would be both genuine but also ostentatious and performed for an audience - she would expect them to live together, tell him her secrets. Keep his. )
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[ She can pick up the appropriate cues, in tone, in blank space. ]
He hurt me deeply-- had hurt me, in ways I hadn't understood for a long time. But I hurt him back. [ Maybe a little more champagne. She leans to fill her glass to a modest height. ] We've decided on a peace between us.
[ She decided, dragging Viserys over the line by sheer force of will, more like.
Which is in her tone too, but also means she has cause not to dig up all the grisly details. Just enough to empower Gwen with context, should she require it, for both of their benefits. ]
We are the last two, you see. Targaryens. The throne might have been his, in another life.
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It isn't fair, of course; if he wanted it, she wouldn't share, and Emeric wouldn't ask it. But she had been so tired. )
I don't think men should have thrones, ( critically. ) I don't think historically that has ended well. I wouldn't trust my brother with a patch of garden, much less a kingdom.
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My brother would hope to continue my father's legacy, bloodthirsty and ruinous though it was. I have every hope of improving upon it.
[ After a bloodthirsty, ruinous war, no doubt. Details. ]
Theon, [ she says, suddenly, with a point. ] Greyjoy.
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Gwen laughs. )
Sort of. He talked to me when I was, um, handling myself and my entrance into this world with all the grace and decorum it merited.
( So none. )
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Just the one that's been drinking, currently, and she suppresses a sillier grin in echo of Gwen's, just. ]
He... [ She thinks, then, to what she knows of him in her world, which is a slight dash of cooler water on her mirth. A broken man, then. Less so, now. ] Well, I don't envy him. Most of what I know of him concerns the histories of others, but it's fair to say he is no friend of the Starks any longer, but was raised by them as a child as a hostage of war. His House is no friend to the Mormonts, either.
Theon was taken from an earlier time, and so doesn't know me, but I know him, a little. He and his sister struck an allegiance with me -- ships, for independence. He was different, then, than he is here.
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( --which is more or less what she is, not any more malicious than that. Not particularly nice, either, but she's never pretended to be a nice girl. Or at least not with any real conviction. Plus, it made Daenerys laugh. She'll always circle a winning play a few times, though she catches the softening. )
It's all so ... it's very archaic, to me. From where I sit. But it's not even, in my world, so far -
( She thinks about Keir. She hasn't thought about Keir and his stupid castle and his stupid books and his huge fucking guns in a while, but she thinks of him. The floodlights. The security measures. The last. Elsewhere, Koschei who is not Koschei, and his sharp, terrible sorrows.
Stories for another day. )
I just have to learn to keep up.
( At home, too. )
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I've been here long enough to sense how different it is, to speak of these things. Not simply the clash between cultures, the perception of time, but-- well, to speak of one hundred ships to carry my armies across an ocean is a different concern than learning how to drive a hovercar. It isn't the subject for casual conversation.
I'm sure all of us have a bit of that, of course, [ she adds. ] But it is nice to be able to speak of it all, now and then.
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It can't hurt anything, to get the hang of some of this. Not quaint, no - fucking weird, for sure - and also not as irrelevant to her as the world war Eunike's still fighting and Gwen has only ever watched on the history channel with a hangover. Also, sort of pressingly, she seems to have inadvertently stepped into the middle of it, so the smart play is certainly to take it all very goddamned seriously-- )
Houses and all of that. Not so different. My father sold our ancestral seat, actually. To a cousin. But they kicked up such an ungodly fuss when he first said he was going to do it - I was all of about four years old or something, I don't remember, but my godmother tells the story - anyway they made such a grand thing of you can't possibly, it's the family, blah, blah, blah, and he got so fucked off he dug his heels in and made them buy it from him at market value. Bought himself a castle in Italy and took me off to be a princess.
( She gestures with her mostly empty glass-- )
Not a real one like you were. ( Prior to becoming a real queen. ) But I have a castle and a safe full of tiaras and I did fuck a man who'll be a Duke when his grandfather shuffles free the mortal coil.
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Stronger than that, though. Sometimes pivotal. ]
The castle and the tiaras are half the battle, [ she assures. ] And, frankly, so is--
[ But she stops. Her mouth opens, closes. She reaches over and takes Gwen's hand. She mentally waves away the fog of lazy inebriation she had been happy to relax into, her duty done, but it is not done. ]
Jaime Lannister.
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That was a very sudden stop. And now her hand is being held? And they are also not finished? Gwen stares back at her, trying to mentally catch up-- )
Jaime Who-nister? What?
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And then I think that's everyone, for now.
[ But no, she has more to say, and also doesn't yet know about any others that might have crept in when she wasn't looking. She withdraws her hand, then, reaching for her glass, mostly out of desire to have a prop. ]
He was a member of the Kingsguard during my father's reign. When his father's Lannister army broke open the gates to the city, Ser Jaime broke his vows and slew my father. This was before I was born, [ she adds, as if to assure her slight alienation from all this drama ] as my mother had yet to birth me when she was forced to flee into exile.
It isn't the half of it, [ she adds. ] He is a vile man.
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What's he doing here? Besides being vile.