you hit the stage and smile cause, shit, what else can you do?

As soon as Lysa heard Hoster say it, she knew: the marriage was to be a punishment to her. A punishment for daring to try and have something of her own. Her father wanted to shunt her away, loveless and forgotten up a mountain with an old man, to wither and die.

No.

Good gods no.

Lysa was not going to let her father pack her off to be married to Lord Arryn, to be forgotten and miserable in matrimony to a man old enough to be her father. If Lysa was to marry Lord Arryn, then she was going to have a good - nay, a content, a happy marriage with Jon Arryn, or Lysa would kill someone trying.

Lord Arryn and Lysa faced each other in the bed chamber, stripped for a bedding that neither is certain how to begin. Arryn was watching her, Lysa was calculating her words.

Lysa says nothing beyond the mild pleasantries the entire time, deciding to save blunt honesty for when she knows this stranger, this husband, better.

Jon Arryn snores with his breaths, and Lysa gazes at his back, at the moon through the window, at the door through which she had been flung from into this new reality. there is war, her new husband spearing the head - the thought occurs to her that she may become a widow before she is truly a wife, but it is quickly brushed aside in favour of considering the future that is just a possible. with a deep breath, Lysa decides that, in all, the situation could be far, far worse.

She and Arryn lie together three times while he stays in Riverrun, before the war effort is resumed - postponed for two weeks in which she and Cat were wed and bedded by each husband.

The morning the men all march off together in their grand procession - off to kill a king and a prince and overthrow a dynasty and save a fair maiden - Lysa and Cat and Ed all stand together to say farewells. Ed is crying, both from being left behind and from the pall of potential, probable death hanging over the men in the yard- Father and Uncle are to return within weeks, but they will fight, and could still die. Arryn and Lysa had said their goodbyes in the early morn, Cat and her stone-faced northron husband speaking quietly to one side. Lord Tully watches her, something that Lysa cannot name in his eyes, but does not approach her except to pat her face and tell her to be a good girl for her sister and the steward as they rule Riverrun in his absence.

Lysa silently seethes at his patronisation - first he poisons her babe from her belly, casts Petyr from his longest home, then weds her to Arryn, and yet he still treats her as if she is still a foolish, airheaded child, unable to sort his lies from his truths? Lysa feels something like bile rise in her mouth, but it is quickly dispelled with a hug from her Uncle Blackfish; he may always love Cat most, everyone loves Cat most, but Lysa has always felt softer toward her nuncle than the man who sired her.

Lysa screams. She screams and screams and screams until it appears the pitch of her voice has put a crack in the glass-paned windows. Between her legs, her child is screaming too, announcing their presence to the world, beginning the moment her babe is aware that they are no longer in her womb.

Lord Arryn strides into the room, his eyes locked on the image Lysa knows she presents - a tired, successful wife with a living, breathing child in her arms, the first for the both of them.

He stops just shy of the bed, not appearing to believe his eyes. Lysa levels her gaze to meet his.

"The heir to the Vale, my lord. A son."