Characters are aged up. Myrcella should be around fourteen, and Jon is around seventeen.

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Myrcella notices the bastard after Robb has taken her on a particularly nice walk through the Godswood.

At first she eyes him disdainfully, as if he would try to steal her necklace, or the particularly pretty cloak she has on. It's girly, but it looks nicer than his, a black one with snow clinging to it. He has a pretty face, nicer than his brothers, and the same curls even though his are black and his brother's are more red-brown.

Everything her mother has told her of bastards is mean, and Myrcella stays away from this Jon Snow as though her were the plague.

Robb, on the other hand, is a perfect gentleman.

He walks with Myrcella and Sansa, and holds his arm for her to take and leaves her giggling in her rooms later with a blue rose clutched under her cloak where her mother can't see. Myrcella doesn't know why, but somehow, she thinks her mother would think badly of Robb if Myrcella were to tell her how gallant he is, how princelike, how like the songs.

And then everything goes to hell.

Bran's fall impacts everyone. The king roars that they will not leave for another fortnight until they are sure Bran will not die, and suddenly the entire Stark family is behind locked doors, praying around Bran at all moments of the day.

Without Robb to distract her, and refusing to go anywhere near Joff, Myrcella seeks out the bastard. Maybe he will provide some entertainment.

After all, she does have a fortnight left in Winterfell and no one to spend it with.

one

She finds him in the Godswood. His eyes are red rimmed and he is kneeling before a tree with the most horrible face carved into it.

"Who carved it?" she asks, and Jon Snow spins so hard that he falls in the snow. Myrcella tries to swallow her laughter, but she can't.

Anger rears in his expression, until he says, oddly calm for a boy with such rage in his face, "No one carved it. The gods of the North live in the trees."

She looks at the tree. It doesn't look godly. It frightens her, how the eyes bleed blood and stare at her.

"Take me from here. I don't like it."

Gritting his teeth, Jon Snow stands up and dusts off his cloak, "Yes, princess."

He starts walking, leading her away when she clears her throat and looks pointedly at him. "You're supposed to offer your hand to a lady."

He glares at her, and instead of being angry, Myrcella feels guilt. She doesn't know why, so she marches over (not truly, that's not ladylike) and inserts her hand in the crook of his elbow. "There," she beams.

two

"Why aren't you with your family? Inside with Bran, I mean," Myrcella asks, and Jon, who is sharpening his sword with a whetstone, looks up sharply.

"Why do you think?" Jon says, and then adds, "Princess."

Myrcella just stares at him. "If you think sharpening your sword will scare me off, you're wrong. Why aren't you with Bran?"

"Because. Lady Stark won't let me see him."

"But he's your brother!"

"I'm a bastard. No one cares if I'm his brother."

Myrcella lays a hand on his knee.

He stops moving and looks up at her, surprised.

She pulls away, flushing, "You should still be able to see him."

Jon flashes her a look that could almost be a sad smile, if only he's move his mouth a few centimeters.

three

"Take me riding."

"No," Jon says as he finishes with his saddle.

"Why not?" Myrcella scowls at him.

"It's not proper."

She gapes at him. "What do you mean, not proper?"

Jon gets angry with Myrcella quickly, it seems. "Because. You're a girl and a princess. I can't take you riding without servants and the like. 'Sides, you mother will flay me if I touch you. Wouldn't want to get bastard on her precious baby girl."

Myrcella stomps her foot, "I'm not a baby. And I'm not afraid of touching you! See?"

She puts a hand on his chest.

Myrcella freezes the moment she touches him. Jon's eyes are locked on hers and she is aware that she is too close to him. He clears his throat. "I need to go."

She watches him get on the horse and ride away, but she can't move until he disappears from sight. He looks like he's trying not to turn and look back.

four

Myrcella won't talk to him and she can see it's wearing him thin. She doesn't care. She'll just hang around Tommen, the big baby, until it's time to go. Then she sees Joff baiting him.

"Come on, bastard. You think you can fight me? Give it a try then," Joff sneers. "I'll just beat you."

Myrcella can see Jon's face tightening as he whispers, "I am not a good fighter, Prince Joffrey."

"I'll have to instruct you, then," Joff taunts.

Myrcella isn't sure who she helps when she steps in and says, "Gods, Joff. He wouldn't even be a challenge. Why don't you fight that Greyjoy boy?"

Joff looks at Theon and smirks, and Jon leaves quickly. She knows she's hurt him, that his swordplay is a point of pride for him. But she's also protecting her brother from his idiocy.

five

Myrcella finds him in the Godswood again, and whispers, "I'm sorry, Jon."

He looks up at her, and she sees that he's been crying for his brother again. "Bran has a fever now. They don't think he will live."

She sits beside him, and gathers him in her arms, pushing his head into her lap and brushing his hair out of his face.

"Shh, shh, he will be fine."

She kisses his forehead, like her mother has done to her, and he stiffens. Then Myrcella realizes. No one's ever kissed his forehead like this.

She cries a bit too, but not for Bran. For Jon, and the lonely life he's lived.

six

Bran's fever breaks in the night, and Robb joins Myrcella for breakfast. He talks to her and she smiles in all the right places, but grows weary of his compliments quickly and when he leaves her, she looks for Jon.

He is in the training yard, and so she waits for him to finish.

"I've spoken to my mother," Myrcella says, "she says I can go riding if I stay in the Wolfswood, within sight of the castle, and take a guard. I've asked the cooks to make a lunch. Do you want to come?"

And there it is. An anxious feeling in her chest, as though he would say no.

He squints at her, sweat dripping down his face, "I-uh, let me change and I'll be right in the stables."

Their lunch is quite fun, and her uncle Jaime watches her and Jon warily, but amused, as if he can tell that Jon is uncomfortable with the attention he gets from Myrcella.

When Jaime isn't looking, though, Myrcella feeds Jon a raspberry and he flushes so red, she thinks he might burst into flames. She's teasing him, until she feels his lips on her fingers. And then it's not so funny anymore.

seven

Myrcella's kissed boys before, for fun and for practice. The first was Trystane Martell when he visited court two years ago.

She's never kissed a man before, and that's what Jon is, isn't it? He's seven and ten, a man grown, and when she kisses him in the stables, hidden by the walls of the stall they're in and the servant's cloak she's stolen from her maid, she doesn't expect the rasp of his beard on the corner of her mouth. Because although she's planned this kiss since last night, she can't have planned out Jon's gasp, and then his gentle grip even as he kisses her roughly. And his apology immediately after, whispered into her lips, for being so rough, even though she loves it. His beard scratches her mouth and leaves marks on her cheeks that fade only when she rubs her face later, after he is gone.

And he is gone by then, after he seems to realize what he's done, what he's allowed her to do.

Before he leaves, though, he kisses Myrcella once more and when he pulls away Myrcella sees the intensity of his gaze.

She will try again tomorrow, she supposes. Jon's far too good a kisser for her to just have done it the once.

eight

"Myrcella," he groans, as she finds him in an alcove overlooking the training yard. "Who told you I'd be here?"

"Arya. She says you come here sometimes."

"Well, now I'm leaving."

Myrcella blocks his exit. "No you are not."

Suddenly, Jon is angry, "You're a princess, Myrcella!"

"So?" She is suddenly angry with Jon, angry with everyone.

"We don't know each other. Barely," Jon amends, and then looks like he wants to swallow his words up.

Myrcella is speechless. Although she's only known Jon truly for eight days, it feels like forever.

He goes on, speaking quietly, voice terse with something Myrcella feels deep in her chest.

"You're a maid, not flowered-"

"I'm flowered!"

"-barely," Jon adds again, "and I'm a man, already."

"Barely," Myrcella spits at him.

He looks hurt for a moment and then his expression is hardened. "Besides, I've decided to join the Night's Watch after the king's visit is finished. You're leaving in five days," he reminds her.

Myrcella blinks, and he is gone.

nine

She doesn't talk to him all day, but not for lack of trying. Jon avoids her, and she is so desperate for company she takes Robb from Bran's rooms and goes for a walk with him.

She's started thinking of him as Jon, not Jon Snow, and she wonders how she could feel this way about a stranger.

Because he's not a stranger. You know him. You're a child, Myrcella, a girl who loves too easy and doesn't know how painful the world is.

She cries at night, her bed shaking softly as she thinks of him.

ten

"Jon," she says, and there is a moment where he looks up and smiles with his eyes, the way she knows he does without moving his mouth at all. But then he remembers who she is, and who he is, and his face contorts into a frown.

It's only hours after Myrcella shed her last tear and gotten up. The morning has not quite started yet, and she's in his chambers, dressed as a maid in the cloak from their kiss in the stables.

He isn't asleep when she creeps in.

"What are you-princess, you need to leav-"

"Don't call me that," Myrcella says angrily. "I don't want to be called Princess, Jon, not by you."

She knows that she is not as...developed as a woman grown, but she is beautiful. And it's time Jon realized that again. Myrcella's mother always told her that beauty is a weapon. So Myrcella wields it tonight.

Her hair is loose, and she knows that he's never seen it this way before, and it shines in the dimness of the room. Jon's eyes are drawn to it, devouring her face, her hair, her eyes, all with a single look.

It helps, Myrcella knows, that she's wearing a simple red shift, and that it makes her look curvy and mysterious, like her mother.

"Myrcella," Jon's voice is choked, "I'm trying to do the right thing."

She knows that, she's always known that. But Myrcella is a princess who's always gotten what she wants, and she wants Jon, by the seven, she wants his kisses and his beard tickling her skin and her neck, and she wants him above all.

So she leans forward and grabs him roughly by his nightshift (he's not wearing anything else, she knows, and her heart stutters and she can't breathe).

"I don't care," she growls. "I don't care," she kisses him where she can reach, and that's his collarbone. "I don't care," she whispers and drags him down to her level and finally he lets her.

His beard scratches her face, and she loves it. It makes her feel free.

Myrcella's never been in a man's room before, and the sudden fear makes her knees shake, when he lays her on the bed. "I won't do it," he whispers, and she relaxes, until she feels his lips go lower, and then she bites her hand to stop her from making noise.

When Jon's done kissing her there, he kisses her lips again. Her thighs are red where his stubble scratched, but Myrcella doesn't care.

She doesn't think she ever will. Her heart is bursting and she can barely breathe. Neither can Jon, it seems. Soon, she has to get up and leave, but at that moment, Myrcella holds him, chest heaving, and doesn't let go.

eleven

Mother tells Myrcella that people are talking, and that she must stop spending time with Ned Stark's bastard. It is beneath her.

Myrcella's thighs rub with that sweet soreness from last night, when she snuck into Jon's room again, and she knows she won't stop. Jon is too good to her.

Her uncle Jaime looks at her as if he knows what she's thinking. He can't know, but Myrcella feels like he does, anyway.

He finds her this time, and she is in the gardens, her guard left at the gate.

They do nothing but the talk seems less than innocent to Myrcella, as she imagines again for the millionth time his head between her thighs, his smile against her cheek, his mouth against hers.

He is asking her about her family, and they talk for an hour about Tommen and Joff and Mother and Father. She giggles when he does an impression of Tommen fighting in padded armor, and he laughs when she mimics Joff to him.

Myrcella thinks she's in love.

twelve

If this is love, Myrcella is a jealous lover.

Jon talks to a serving girl at dinner, and even from across the dining hall Myrcella's stomach is in knots. The serving girl is older, curvier, filled out, and leaning against Jon when she laughs. Her breasts are almost falling from her corset, and Myrcella thinks of her own, which Jon had touched carefully. They'd been small, tiny, against his hands.

Stupid 'Cella. You're a little girl trying to be a woman, playing dress up with the big boys.

It almost makes Myrcella happy that Jon is going to the Watch as soon as she leaves. She wants him to only think about her.

The thought sobers her up. In two days, she will be leaving. Then he will, as well. No more hurried kisses, no more hiding marks on her chest from the maids. No more Jon.

She cries out in pain when Tommen drops a plate on her hands. Her mother allows her to be excused, and Myrcella runs to her rooms, shame and longing twisted in her chest like a snake.

thirteen

Myrcella tells her mother that she thinks she's in love.

Despite any faults, Queen Cersei is smart and observant, and she knows that something has happened. Myrcella cries into her mother's shoulders, sobbing, about how she knows she shouldn't love Jon, but she does.

Cersei holds Myrcella, and finally tells her, "Darling girl, I know what it's like. Shh, don't cry. We're leaving tomorrow, and we must pack."

At lunch, Cersei surveys Jon, and then Myrcella, and although she is filled with contempt for this bastard, she knows what it's like, to love someone she shouldn't.

She follows Myrcella-discreetly, of course- to the Godswood later, and watches the bastard hold her weeping daughter.

"I'm going home," Myrcella wails, and the bastard holds her, kissing her hair, "And you'll go to the wall. Oh, Jon, what do we do?"

"What can we do, Myrcella? You knew, didn't you? When you first kissed me, you knew this would happen."

The bastard boy's voice is choked, and for an instant he looks like a young Ned Stark.

"We could-we could run together, Jon. We could! You can hunt, and I-I could sew and we'd be husband and wife, and I-"

Myrcella realizes how she sounds, and stops.

"Myrcella. Look at me. You would hate your life. If we did that, you would hate it. You would hate me."

"Never," Myrcella snarls, and Cersei sees the boy touch her shoulder. "I would never hate you," she hissed.

"Myrcella, you're a princess. You've grown up in luxury. You need- you need a lord, who is out of the songs, who will know poetry and be a knight, and-"

"I don't care! I don't want that. I don't want a lord, Jon. I want you."

He kisses her sadly, and to Cersei, it is Ned Stark kissing a younger version of her. Maybe she would have been happier with him, though gods know she hates the man now.

fourteen

They are leaving.

Myrcella spent the night in Jon's room, and they do little more than kiss and cry (she cries, he just holds her) even though she wanted more. Jon had shaken his head and told her that he wouldn't take her maidenhead.

"You're a princess, Myrcella. I love you, but that's not something I can take from you."

After, she cried because she loved him too, gods damn him.

"It's all my fault," she'd said, in a quiet moment. "I shouldn't have spoken to you that first day."

Jon touches her face. "I'm glad you did."

"I love you." Myrcella's voice is even, and she kisses him, hard, with teeth, the way he's shown her, "I will love you forever. No one else, Jon."

He nods, "No one else."

She leaves, and his heart shatters.

When the royal family comes back to King's Landing, Varys watches them. They seem much the same, but now the Princess's smiles are daggers, her words sharp as a sword.

Somehow, the princess has become a player in the game during her time away. Varys resolves to find out why, and waits for his little birds to whisper in his ears.

Jon sees her later, after wars have torn Westeros, after he's fought on the wall, after everything has happened and she is queen of Westeros. There is a scar on her face, and both her brothers are dead, but she's alive, and she's beautiful and fierce and everything he dreamed of on the cold, hard wall.

"You've come for men?" Myrcella says, her voice strong and hard in the throne room.

"Yes, your Grace. The Watch has just fought a war against the White Walkers, and we need more men. The previous rulers did not meet our needs, but I have decided to come petition you myself."

Myrcella smiles, and the court holds their breath. Jon Snow doesn't know, but this is her first kind smile in years.

"Of course," she breathes. Because she knows now why he, the Lord Commander, really left his post on the Wall for such a long journey that any man could have taken.

To see her.

So, I made Cersei kind of nice here, because it's important to remember that she was once in Myrcella's shoes (but hers had a little incest spiked in) and she loves her children. She's not ALWAYS a bitch.
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