Chapter Text
She has always learned from Brandon.
Brandon taught her to walk, his hand sure and steady, to ride her first pony, taught her to use a sword (always careful to hide it from their lord father, they are good at hiding things), how to swing from the branches of the weirwood into the hot springs, and there is no one, no one she trusts more in the entire world, she loves all her brothers but Brandon has always protected her.
So of course it is Brandon, with the time quickly approaching that her betrothal to Robert Baratheon will become a marriage in truth, that she asks to show her how a woman and a man lie together.
He blanches, frowns, but his voice is unsure as he answers, “You should not ask such things, Lyanna.” She is so unused to seeing Brandon surprised and it gives her a secret thrill even as he denies her.
Lyanna pouts, unused to being denied. “You certainly know how, I’ve heard the girls in the village talk. Not to mention that Ryswell girl, her father would geld you if he knew.” Brandon rolls her eyes, used to her complaints of any girl he (any girl any of her brothers, really) pays mind to, from the serving maid he smiles particularly wide at to the girl in the south their father has chosen to be his bride.
She changes tactics, seeing that her indignation is not working, clasping his hand and looking at him with bright eyes full of fear that she does not completely feign. “Please, Brandon? I’ll fear it until my wedding night unless I know it’s over and done with. Robert is so…rough, at times, in just his embrace.” She is all honesty now, all eagerness. “I am…afraid. And whom do I trust more than you? Who loves me more than you?”
She wins him as she always does, and he sighs and grasps her wrist, pulling her deeper into the seclusion of the woods, and she feels a tremble of fear and something more pleasurable course through her body as she takes two steps for each of his, hurrying to catch up.
He backs her gently against a tree, and his lips brush against her earlobe as he leans in to whisper to her. “It will be in a bed after your wedding, of course,” and she thinks that she prefers this, the sweet smell of the godswood and the whistle of wind against her cheek, all the roughness of the North and home. He kisses her on the mouth then, and they’ve played at kissing before but this is different, headier, and suddenly his hand is creeping up her gown to reach for the laces.
He is gentle and careful and slow, as he is not when she spies on him with girls he makes swoon and sigh, and his fingers tremble almost as badly as her own as he helps her stretch out on the mossy ground, her dress cushioning them (it will be covered in dirt and stained, she thinks, but that is no different than usual and no one will think of it, she decides).
It hurts as she thought it would, her maidenhead giving way, hurts as it did when she first fell from her horse and Brandon catches her cry in his mouth and holds her close as he did then, and she feels more than anything relief, relief that she shall not be so vulnerable, so uncertain in front of Robert, she is always strong except for when she is the little sister. I was right to ask him, I am always safest with Brandon.
“Thank you,” she mumbles against his shoulder as he wipes the blood from her thigh and she thinks he has done this before but angrily she pushes that thought away, she does not like to think of all those other girls; Brandon belongs to her. “I am not so nervous now.”
“He will be gentle with you,” he swears, taking her hand and kissing her palm. “He is certainly fond of you. And if he ever mistreats you, you will tell me and I will kill him.”
He says it with such unyielding certainty that she has to smile, pushing him back so she can sit up, as though they have just been playing, wrestling as they did in their youth. “Ned says that Robert is a fierce fighter.”
Brandon snorts, unbothered, but she hears the earnest promise in his voice. “It does not matter. I would kill him still. As long as I live, I will never let anyone hurt you.”
He kisses her temple and Lyanna breathes in the scent of sweat still clinging to his skin. Safe, she thinks, and she feels more so than she ever had before. I am safe.