If you are a stickler for canon, read no further than this very word. I'm serious.

Still reading? Well, you asked for it...this thing is out of control. I have molested the hell out of timelines, taken advantage of plots, and in general had my selfish way with GRRM's world like some sort of shameless whore (and I am not the least bit sorry for any of it).

Beware aged-up characters, book and tv non-compliance, AU + OOC-ness, and overall madness galore. I name no names, but I think you can figure it out. If you are confused...well, you cannot say you have not been warned.

I wish I had the patience to hash out all the little moments and conversations and details I so crudely left out in what follows, but alas, the plot bunnies were already running away from me and I just need to throw what I have out there and get some feedback.

(Hint, hint.)

D: Not mine.

"How do you find the North, my daughter? You might be lady of this castle one day one day, how might you like that little one?"

"Oh, for true Fa-"

"She is still a child for many years yet, it does not do to fill her head with such things, Your Grace."

Once, and though it were not so many years past, it feels as it were someone else's lifetime, dreams had a different meaning to her. When she closed her eyes at night, she had not seen kittens and crowns and cakes dance behind her lids, for when she woke they lay before her more real than any veil of sleep might hold. Others might have longed for what she had taken for granted, but if they did she knew not of them or of what they dreamed. Neither did she think upon the loving embrace of a father or a sister's whispered confidences which she lacked, for such things were hidden from her and of their existence she was blissfully unaware. Lack or want had no place in her world, and as her life had already been made of dreams, so her dreams were made of the future.

Once she had dreamed though waking, through her lessons and whilst she embroidered, dreams so vivid they didn't have any choice but to come true. Dreams of her husband, a man good and powerful and handsome, who would adore her as fiercely as any knight ever loved a lady in a song. Mayhaps even more, so that new songs would have to be written to describe such a love as had never been before. He would be the very best sort of man, she was sure of it, with strong hands and a kind smile, and eyes as deep and as blue as the ocean. In this, her dreams were not so very different from those of the little girls who had never been her friends, except, of course, in their likelihood.

Once, her dreams had seemed as certain as her reality, for the face she saw did not belong to a nameless stranger. She did not long for a sworn man of the Kingsguard, or a gallant tourney champion as so many were want to do, but instead for a boy who battled with a wooden sword and a smile. She had seen his face, spoken his name, seen the sigil of his House to be one deserving of the hand of a princess. Once, she had dreamed of the perfect match, one her father had promised and her naive heart had beat madly for in anticipation.

Once, when she was young, and beautiful, and royal, and nothing could have ever, ever, hurt her, she had dreamed of him.

They had been lovely thoughts, but in the end that had been all they ever were, and even a princess must learn the difference between dreaming and reality eventually.

For dreams of promise had turned to nightmares as fathers turned to corpses, and home had become a distant place across the seas she wasn't sure she had ever really known. Her surreal little life had crumbled around her, taking with it her childhood, her hope for a match, and her broken family, exposing the golden stag princess as nothing more than a scarred lion bastard. Had he ever really been that girl, who spent her days playing with porcelain dolls and filling her head with such worthless yearnings, or were the memories only figments of dreams she could not make herself forget?

"You won't forget me, Mother, will you? Even if I...even if they..."

"Not ever, dearest heart. One day you will come back to me, I promise."

The heat of the sun and sand and sea had been too much for dreams so sweet, and they curdled on her tongue as the stifling press of it whilst she sweated beneath her borrowed bedding was enough to drive out prayers for anything save an escape.

And yet, it had seemed like she was dreaming once more when he came to them at Dorne. She was not so beautiful any longer, but not a child either, no little girl to be disregarded in favor of playing at swords in the frozen yard. He had been almost a man when she last saw him in the North, and now he was one grown, the sort that those who had been princesses once had hoped to give their heart to. Or had given, really, for one glance and she felt the breath rush into her lungs almost painfully the very same way it had those many years ago. It was so easy, to let hope slip back in to where it was once welcomed, to give in to dreams she had once known so intimately, that to stop herself was almost impossible.

He came to talk of wars and men and allegiances, sounding and acting every bit the courageous leader the rumors of ravens had made him out to be. Even here, in the closest thing she had to a home in the land of her failed match, tales of the Young Wolf had been spread to the corners of the land. How valiantly he had fought alongside those who followed him, the battles he had won and intricate strategies he had accomplished. His arrival in Dorne, which had remained almost isolated upon itself for the duration of the war, raised the pitch of the whispers which had begun to circulate of an end to the fighting. They spoke of the Dragon Queen so close to being seated on the throne, and the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch having left his Wall, and the Kinslayer dying a slow death in his camp, deserted by more of his men every day.

Such a thing could never be said of those the King of the North commanded, men were who were so irrevocably loyal that even Dornishmen could not help but to show their leader the same sort of unquestioning respect almost instinctively. His very presence commanded an instant reverence among the people who flocked to his side, and with so many vying for his attention, she could not believe her own good fortune when he shared a smile with her across them all. He was a good man, they all said, and she knew it in her heart to be true, for he spoke to her as though she were the daughter of his father's dear friend, and not the sister of his murderer. When his blue eyes peered into her own green ones, she did her best to listen raptly, storing up knowledge of what made the corners of his mouth peak in a smirk or his jaw set in displeasure. She was courteous, and demure, and tried to remember how his lady mother had behaved in the home in the north, to imitate the sort of woman she knew he loved so.

But sometimes his eyes would catch on the gold of her hair, and the face she adored would turn as cold as the lands he reigned over, and she knew he was remembering another woman, one who instilled nothing but rage in him. She hated the hard way his brow furrowed at such bitter memories, and she poured her soul into separating herself from her mother, and had hoped fervently that he would be able to do the same.

Perhaps she had not been so wise to do so. Her mother would have known better. She would have guarded her heart more closely, kept it safe from the lovely man with eyes so blue and kisses so sweet. Mother would have known better than to let herself dream of such songs, of a Kings who comes to rescue the stranded princess...but Mother had made grave mistakes with her heart as well, mistakes which hurt so many more people than she had ever given thought to caring for.

She cared, though. Above all else, she cared, too much mayhaps.

She had no place, of course, beneath his furs or against his skin, but she found herself there all the same. Wine and kisses, blushes and hands everywhere in darkened corridors, filled her every thought until she could scarcely breathe but to bring him to mind. His voice was low and his laugh like a million bells, soft and sweet and it made her tingle all over as it reverberated where the ruined side of her face lay pressed against his chest. Her dreams had been that of a little girl, and they did nothing to prepare her for the overwhelming rush of emotions which accompanies the love a woman feels for a man, for the feeling of his flesh against her own, of these secret nighttime meetings and hushed whispers of sweet things in the dark.

"Oh do stop it, your beard, it tickles horribly!"

"Tickles? Beards don't tickle, sweetling. Fingers tickle...like this."

"No, don't, quit it R-!"

Always in the dark though. A place where dreams should stay.

For golden tresses had no place to lie entangled with auburn curls in the sunshine. It was different in Dorne, true, but not so different that a girl of illegitimate means could walk hand-in-hand with the man who might be king for all to see. She was not so useful to her surrogate countrymen now, and no one cared much whose bed she warmed in the night, so long as the dawn found her in her own chambers, alone. Amid the light of day they spoke courteously enough to one another when was proper, but for most purposes kept to their own, for their paths did not cross often. Whether or not his men knew where their leader spent his nights, or with whom, was none of her concern. The young wolf was free to claim who he pleased...or so she had thought.

He had sighed through gritted teeth, wrung his hands together roughly from where he sat perched on the edge of the bed and offered up a string of hateful curses directed at the parchment the raven had brought him. His bare shoulders were tense in the candlelight, and she had pressed her forehead into the taut muscles between his shoulder blades, willing herself to believe the promises he made one after the other with feverish determination. He mumbled the words into her skin as he pressed her back into the bedding, chanting his intentions to honor one and refuse another aloud over and over, as if in a fervent effort to convince himself, moreso than her, of their truth. Even her own name, when he whispered it into her the curve of her shoulder, sounded false and hollow, like it belonged to another person entirely. When he rolled off of her and grew still with the word still on his swollen lips, she wondered if he had felt her there at all.

And when the day broke, they each rose to greet it alone.

He had caught her eye once or twice in the days before his departure, and each time held it for a moment longer than could have been excused as an accident, a desperate kind of intensity burning within those blue depths. And each time, she refused to acquiesce to what he begged of her wordlessly. She would not step aside and humble herself before him as though she were a valiant fool, willing to forsake her own broken heart for the hope of a mended kingdom. She would not urge him to build some ridiculous bridge, would never assure him of his mother's wisdom in such matters and recount how the keeper of the Twins had once benefited his cause. That there was a debt to settle there was no doubt, and she of all people should have understood the danger it might pose him to renege on such. But it was not her obligation to repay. Pride boiled within her at the thought of demeaning herself to plead for her own honor, and in the moment before she sent her wine goblet shattering into the wall, she dropped it to the ground in shock. That this was all she had been to him, a pretty girl to warm his bed, but nothing worth fighting over, shamed her, though none so much as the possibility that more of a Lion's cruel heart might beat inside her than she had realized.

He did not come to her again before he left to retrieve his betrothed, a fact which brought her neither surprise nor relief. She felt only a dull numbness towards him, and accordingly their only farewell was exchanged publicly with all the civility that could have been expected between two people who, for all intents and purposes, might as well have been strangers. Or at least, they should have been. Could have been.

Alone between her sheets after he was gone the humiliation only built with every memory replayed in every dream she could not make herself forget, utterly cruel in their attention to details she would prefer to forget. Their sweetness caused her stomach to roil in response, had broken over her in waves of mortification that kept her from sleep and left her quaking and ill, covered in a sweat. She longed for the comfort of tears, but felt nothing at her eyes save for the burning tiredness of squinting into the blackness for endless moments until dawn finally broke. Night after night passed all the same, and if anything brought a semblance of a smile to her face, it was the dull tinge of vindictiveness in her belly when she caught sight of the shell of her former self in a mirror.

No one said she resembled her Mother now.

There is a bit more where this came from...

Title is from the Right Away, Great Captain! song "Like Lions Do." I highly recommend it for listening music!