Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eriha Baratheon was odd. Odd not because she lacked manners or grace or any of the many expectations of a lion, but odd because when people looked upon the face of Eirha, they saw a sort of strange absence-as if she was not, in any particular sense, inhabiting her mind. And while the vacantness could be (and was often) put down to a lack of higher sharpness in the child, it was in reality a product of a wandering mind.

Due the fact that many of the activities considered normal and acceptable at the city of King’s Landing failed to pin her wandering mind, Eirah tended to spend her time imagining that she was deeply involved in other activities-which tended, more often than not, of the adventuring sort. During the long evening after she had finished her etiquette, dancing and reading lessons she would walk (not sneak, as she knew people found sneaking strange) away to some forgotten corner of the Red Keep and sit for hours. A smart child, she knew that the better she performed in her lessons the faster she would go, and never put up any sort of fuss about them, taking them with a good-naturedness that was often seen as suspicious to the more observant among her family.

And so, after her lessons, sitting in a crumbling window frame or perched upon a decripate trellis of some sort, she would while away the hours in a different world, mind filled with wonders of magic and adventure, knights and castles. Her imaginings, at that age at least, did not have the range of most children’s, as she had barley ever left the towering walls of the red keep, and took most of her inspiration from the tapestries that adorned the innumerable walls. It was only because of uncle Tyrion that the world of her mind grew (but more of that later.)

As a child, having seen about six years pass by (during which she had been even lonelier than she was with her siblings, as they were all yet to be born) she didn’t form many strong opinions about the different members of her family. They were simply there, part of her life, part of the decoration of her strict daily routine, not unlike the tapestries hung round the Keep. Her mother was the most common fixture, and like any dutiful child, Eirha did of course love her mother. Her mother seemed to love her, she noted, and it seemed only right that the same courtesy was extended to her in return.

She was, of course, a polite child.

Her siblings, as they came into the world year after year, she learned to like. Despite their differences, she felt a fondness for them which was much greater than any emotion she felt for her mother and father (something that puzzled and alarmed her in equal measure.) Myrcella, despite their very different modes of thought, was seen as very dear to Eirha-she loved the little girl deeply, and they both seemed to at least share a love of flowers. To that end, the two girls would often spend hours in the gardens, wide eyes admiring the bright colours. They did not talk, as talking opened up the world to all they did not have in common. Instead, they simply looked and kept themselves together in this way. Tommen, she found, was sweet and kind, fun to play with and also shared a love stories. She cared for him greatly-just as much as her sister. And despite the fact that they never seemed to be able to understand what she meant when she described her imaginings or adventures, she loved them all the same.

Jeoffery was another matter. He had been the first of her siblings, and the reason she had been greatly worried that she would not be able to love her other siblings (which, after watching other women throughout the keep, she felt sure would arrive at some point.) When she had first met him, a pink and screaming infant, she had felt a certain measure of happiness, and she grew to have although not quite love, but perhaps what might be called tenetive caring for the little creature. As he grew, before the arrival of Marcella, she did what she saw all the other little children doing-she played with him, took him on walks, was kind, and tried to teach him how to imagine his own adventures. Although considered an odd child, Eirha did have a few friends among the castle folk, and she knew what it was to create a bond.

But when he reached the age of four, Eirha realized that there was something not quite right with her little brother. Something almost invisible, something so small and almost unnoticeable that she seemed to be perhaps the only person to notice it (she later realized that her uncle Jaime, less blinded by paternal fondness than her mother, often regarded Jeoffery with the same strange look she seemed to feel inside.) For another year, this feeling of wrongness about Jeoffery lay inside Eirha, unexplained and lacking any sort of concrete explanation, just as real (she thought) as her adventures.

But one evening, in the pounding heat and thick air of Summer in King’s Landing, her spark of worry was given all the kindling it could ever need.

One evening, after finishing her adventure (in which she had visited the far-away land of Dorne and climbed an orange tree only to find the oranges were in fact droves of burnished gold, for all the world looking like her uncle Jaime’s armour) she had been slipping down from the window of the owlery to walk quietly bad to the gardens when she heard a noise from the courtyard below. A choice few knew of her wandering, and although she had never actively hidden it from her parents, (her father she often forgot to think about, and since she suspected he also often forgot to think about her her lack of thought did not worry her) she was careful to be sure that none of her walks would be worth reporting-however, she still by instinct slipped under the frame of the window, hiding all but the top of her golden head from the sky. And, with that unabashed curiousness that children of age eight tend to have, she peered down into the courtyard below.

Eirha, young as she was, knew enough of children to understand what life was, and how children were birthed into this world and grew older to stand as tall (or as short) as her uncles, mother and father. And she also knew, in a sense as abstract and trusting as is common for children, of death-or at least the idea that the growing and the laughing were to end one day. It had made a certain sort of sense to her-the world would be full to bursting without it, and there would be no space for any adenveturs.

Peering down from the window, Eirha understood for the first time what death really was-how easily and quickly a vibrant life can be cut short. She understood this because as she looked down from the peaked owlery window, she was her darling baby brother dash open the head of a kitten upon the stone of the pavement.

She learned another thing that day, too.

She learned that not all the people in adventures are good.

Some are, in fact, the very opposite.