Victarion and Stannis/Jon ficlets

[linndechir]

I wrote these for the Tourney of the Hand contests. Reposting them now that the tourney and the voting and all that is over. N°1 is a slightly bloody revenge-themed Victarion ficlet, n°2 is a drabble about Stannis, Jon and food. ;) Personally I really like the Victarion ficlet, if I say so myself, and I'm just incredibly proud of myself for remembering that quote as a fitting title for the Stannis drabble (it's a Pratchett quote, fyi).

Saltwater

The one thing the Seven Kingdoms seemed to agree on was that revenge was sweet, like a cool drink in the Dornish desert, like a soothing balm on a festering wound. The Martells drew their vengeance out over decades, while the Baratheons exacted theirs with impatient fury. The Lannisters prided themselves on never letting a debt go unpaid. They all thirsted for revenge as if it could ease even the greatest suffering.

The taste in Victarion's mouth was anything but sweet. It was the metallic, bitter taste of blood. It should have been familiar, he had tasted it since he was a boy, but this time it almost made him feel sick. There was a hollow emptiness in his chest, where his heart was still beating too fast, too loud, and the angry knot in his stomach had turned into a heavy lump. He licked his lips as if to clean them, but it only bathed his tongue in more blood. It tasted like his own, and he suddenly wasn't sure anymore if all blood tasted like that, or only his brother's.

Euron had been like a cancer, eating away at Victarion's happiness, at his very sanity for more years than he cared to count. Somehow Victarion had always thought that killing him, that purest act of them all, would rip this festering sore out of his soul. He had not expected it to be sweet, no, but liberating. More than he had wanted to kill Euron, he had wanted to be free of him.

Blood was cooling and drying on his fingers, a sickly smell filled the air. He stared down at the broken mess of his brother's face, but he didn't see crushed bones and torn flesh. As if through a thin red mist, he saw Euron's face as it had been before: almost too handsome if not for his blue lips, the eye patch, that glowing blue eye. And his smile. Victarion's fists had broken Euron's teeth, but he could still see his smile. He kept seeing it even as he closed his eyes, eyes that burnt with angry tears – he had been crying, too, when he had killed his wife, but those had been tears of sorrow as much as of anger. He wasn't weeping for Euron now, never for him. He was weeping again for the wife Euron had taken from him – he was seeing her face, too, whenever he closed his eyes, she haunted his thoughts at day and his dreams at night, and she turned the pleasure he found with any woman to ash. He was weeping for himself, too, for thinking he could find peace so easily, for thinking he would tear out the cancer when all he had done was to rip himself open for nothing.

After his wife's death he had been in such a rage that Balon had put him in chains for two days, and only let him out after Euron had sailed away. The kinslayer is accursed in the eyes of gods and men, Balon had said, and although Victarion had known that to be true, he had never understood what it meant until now. That the one deed that could have brought him peace would haunt him for the rest of his life. The true curse was that he would never be free from Euron now.

The Dornish were wrong. Revenge was no sweet nectar. It was saltwater. And the Ironborn knew better than anyone else that saltwater would dry you up from the inside.

Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg.

A boiled egg, cut in half, the yolk a sickly yellow. A piece of smoked ham that looked as stringy as leather. Two slices of stale, dry bread, so hard it might well serve as a weapon. For almost an hour the plate had been standing untouched on the large table, and Jon could hardly blame the king for not eating. Even an empty stomach couldn't make this look appetising.

Still, it was better than no food at all. With any other man Jon might have used kind words, or made a joke about how that ham looked older than the two of them together, but he knew Stannis better than that.

“Your Grace,” he said finally when Stannis took his eyes off the map for a moment. “Our larders won't get any fuller if you let this go to waste.”

Stannis glared at him, then at the plate, as if the very idea of eating personally offended him. Jon had to bite back a smile, the first one in a week. But the king didn't argue. For all his stubbornness, he was a man who listened to reason. Without even acknowledging that Jon had said anything, the king's thin, strong fingers grabbed one slice of bread angrily. His eyes were already back on the map by the time he took a grudging bite, and he had barely swallowed before he pointed out another weak spot in their defences.

Jon refused to answer until Stannis had taken another bite. This time he couldn't quite hold back his smile when the king complied.

Comments

[housecreepy.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling that the Victarion fic was yours. :)

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Big surprise! ;) I'm not surprised it didn't win anything because nobody cares about Vic, but at least I had fun writing it.

[housecreepy.livejournal.com]

That's how I feel about the one that I wrote (the Roose & Lothar fic)!

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Yep. My initial plan had been a letter from Sansa to Stannis, post-series, about the whole revenge vs. justice topic, but somehow that turned into a total mess and I was like, "just write Vic killing Euron, that's easy".