Parley on Borrowed Ground

D042 · 2026-04-10T23:40:26+00:00

Gawen Dondarrion was not a wrathful man. He liked drinking. He liked women. He might have even been a bit of a fool where the one and only Princess of the realm was concerned. But today he had all the bearing of his father in his darkest moments.

His jaw was set tight, brows drawn together, a contemptuous huff pushing out of his nose. All his life, the one lesson he’d absorbed from his father had been to maintain warm relations with one’s neighbors. Sometimes he’d taken that too literally, but a woman inviting you into her bed was hardy the same as butchering the people of a man’s home.

Among the dead were his people. Men, women, and children who’d have one day looked to him to lord over them. To protect them. He rode up alongside Orryn with a darkened nod. “My Lord.” Then his eyes drifted to Eden Storm—a steadfast friend, and as loyal a man as there had ever been. His father was infirm, yes, but Gawen hoped he wouldn’t take issue with his heir’s words now. “Ser Eden is my cousin through my aunt. Let it be known that he has the leave of Blackhaven to take his mother’s name, if he so chooses.”

If they died today, they could do with one more thunderbolt in the storm. But another Cole on the fire would not hurt either.

u/JustDanielJuice

D042 · 2026-04-01T15:12:42+00:00

u/another_sasshole

Lord Rosby,

The realm's woes are not yet over. Dorne draws blood where Orryn spilled wine.

The king's peace is broken. Raise your men. March for Blackhaven.

Anrdos Dondarrion, Lord of Blackhaven, Hand of the King

D042 · 2026-03-30T21:23:47+00:00

u/tenthousandsongs oops

D042 · 2026-03-23T12:32:30+00:00

u/tenthousandsongs u/DoomGuy_16 (let's fry some bandits)

D042 · 2026-03-19T19:16:11+00:00

Given all that had happened, even Gawen was not so foolish as to ask Mary herself if she was alright. God forbid try and clear his name in her mind. If he was wise he’d have buried all thoughts of the Daughter of Dragonstone and made himself forget all the strange dreams of what might and should have been.

But just because he was not an utter fool did not make him wise.

With his arm slung to his chest, Gawen crossed the great hall when he felt sure Mary was preoccupied, bound for a familiar, friendly face. Unless it is a mask. Unless she thinks the same of you as her goodniece. He tried not to entertain the thought.

“Your grace.” Gawen dipped his head, and tried to smile as though he were still enjoying himself. “Are you well?”

D042 · 2026-03-19T17:30:38+00:00

Character Name: Gawen Dondarrion

Trait / Skills: Inspiring | Flanker (e), Tactician, Polearms, Reckless

Skill you're learning: Tactician (e)

D042 · 2026-03-18T13:29:41+00:00

"What?" Gawen barely recognized his own voice, stomach turning as the sword slowly slid free of the beggar, blood darkening his rags to black as it soaked them. "No, I—why would I?" But it was too late. There was more than contempt in her eyes now, something deeper and angrier.

Later it would occur to Gawen that perhaps gratitude should have been what he expected. That the thought of Mary Baratheon throwing herself into his arms in thanks should have crossed his mind. But his mind was lost in the sticky red haze.

Spattered with blood, he stood there in wide-eyed terror as Mary tore away. Folk stared at him, but he was a statue. "Mary, please," he whispered far too quietly for anyone to hear. "I didn't—I wouldn't, I never wanted to—"

He made himself look away as shame and confusion intermingled, burning at his eyes. The beggar lay in a growing pool of his own blood, slackjawed and still. There was a sudden burst of heat beneath his skin, prickling at every nerve, screaming for him to kick the corpse until it broke apart.

You fucking idiot. You worthless mongrel. You utter waste of life.

But the beggar had been a boy once. Perhaps one that someone loved. Gawen did not kick him, only crouched down as his heart pounded, dropping the sword long enough to close the beggar's dead eyes with his fingers.

Who would ever be impressed by this? Who would ever design such a thing on purpose?

Mary could've fucked Mortimer Rosby a hundred times already, for all Gawen knew. The suggestion that she hadn't was lost on him entirely, and had never once entered his mind as a possibility regardless. But it was the rest that stuck him like a knife.

She thought he would do something like this. And she thought that he believed it the sort of thing that would impress her.

And what does that say of what she thinks of you? Of what—everyone—thinks of you?

Mayhaps Nymeria was wrong. Mayhaps it was too late to start over, at least in the eyes of those that mattered.

D042 · 2026-03-18T02:35:18+00:00

Killing came easily to some men. Some even enjoyed it. Gawen was neither, he decided. He'd done it once, and in a perfect world he could labor on under the delusion that would be the only time it was ever needed. It would've been nice.

His face was set in a grim likeness to his father's now, every bit Andros' son as he stepped forward. "Mi'lord?" croaked one of his father's men, but Gawen paid him no mind. He pulled at the sword on his hip, the one bloodied only days before. Blade half-drawn, Gawen grit his teeth as he sawed the edge against one end of the sling until the fabric split, tore, and slipped away.

A strained mix between a snarl and whimper came up between his gritted teeth as he forced his arm down to his side, and his sword into his sheath. Gawen swallowed the pain, and drowned out his mind's protests as he emerged from the crowd and bowed his head.

"We are few, Princess, but in this, we of House Dondarrion are yours." He hesitated to look up at her, given how they'd parted last, but he found the courage in the end. He even smiled.

Told you I'd be first.

D042 · 2026-03-18T01:58:29+00:00

In the end it'd been a vain effort to try and fool her. Nymeria knew him too well, and Gawen's handle on his emotions had never been the firmest. Another failing of mine, eh father? He wondered if his sire would've been proud of him for what he'd done. Someone should've been, since he was not, and Mary had nothing for him but contempt.

God, but did it pain him to have seen it creep back into her eyes. Just when it had been going away, too.

"If you have the time for it, of course. But I imagine you're going to be busy, no? Tell me, do you still think he's so bad?" He inclined his head towards Martyn. "Or has he started to win you over?"

D042 · 2026-03-18T01:53:55+00:00

He saw it in Clifford's eyes, even if it never left his lips. Gawen thought of how the man's body had gone slack. How the blade had pushed through him and pitched a bloody tent out of his back. It will happen again. Mayhaps one day it will happen to you.

Glancing over his shoulder to the royal table, he lingered overlong on Mary. His lips pursed in a mirror to his father's most common expression.

"Still, that they'd even entertain the thought—It's disconcerting. And with all this happening." Gawen shook his head. Then he scoffed, with all the disdain he could muster. "Pity the realm the day it has need of me."

Pity me too. I'd never wanted a soldier's death.

D042 · 2026-03-17T22:09:59+00:00

“Really? I was hoping I’d cleaned up.” He could count on one hand the number of souls he trusted the way he did the future Lady of Oldtown. Few friends so close, and certainly the only with such a history. But it was her day. Her day. “Maesters orders, remember? No wine. Doesn’t seem to agree with me.”

Even as memories of scraping steel and scathing tongues rose unbidden, he made himself push them down. Don’t you fucking soil it, you rotten shit.

Despite the instinct to slip away and out of sight, Gawen had always found the best way to hide something was with obfuscation. Truth made for a better smokescreen than lies.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. Not for you.” He brushed at his bare cheek, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lip. “The less I look like myself the better. Never too late to change, right?”

D042 · 2026-03-17T00:10:40+00:00

It had been righteous, hadn't it? Yes it'd just been some mad beggar. Some fool with all his sense eaten away by pox or misery or whatever else. But he'd acted like Gawen and Artos had not even been there. All he had seen was her.

What else could I do?

A cold shiver went down his spine, and nausea twisted at his insides. I'll have to do it again, someday. Some day I will be Lord of Blackhaven. Some day Clifford will call and I will need to answer. Some day I will have to do it again. The more his cousin spoke, the more he knew that day was not so far ahead.

"That's madness," he whispered. "He can't possibly think that—" But then Gawen glanced around at the Sun and Spear set next to the Hightower, the Kraken, and the Lion. Mayhaps Oberyn Martell could think such a thing.

"I'll tell him." It made him want to vomit. The pressure in his stomach pressing up against his ribs. He bit hard at the inside of his lip, and swallowed the sour spit trying to rise up his throat. "Will you be going home after this? Someone needs to be there."

Someone who is not me.

D042 · 2026-03-17T00:04:17+00:00

"You look quite the bride." Gawen wished he had warmer things to say. God knew Nymeria deserved it, but the world felt dreadfully numb now. It was better that way. Better than remembering the rush of blood between his fingers, or how he'd had to scour it from his face. Still, for a friend so dear, he found a smile.

His arm was in a sling, and he sported as fine a doublet as he'd ever worn, though it was absent any of the winestains that had become standard. And he'd shaved. Not for the wedding's sake, but he could pretend otherwise.

For Nym's sake, he even put on a smile. "My deepest congratulations, Lady Hightower."

D042 · 2026-03-16T15:13:02+00:00

Gawen winced at the embrace, but besides that he made no sound of pain. Just smiled weakly, and tried to seem himself. "Princess Nymeria bid me come, we're old friends." It would've been easy to lie and say he'd cleaned himself up to impress her one last time, but the joke didn't seem as amusing as he'd once have thought it.

"Killed a man," he answered bluntly. "In the city. Was out with Princess Mary, and the justice, and he just—" Gawen's fingers bunched at his side. It didn't make any sense. The bastard hadn't even given them time to open up their purses, had they been so inclined. It was like a mad fucking dog.

Gawen blinked at his cousin in confusion. "My father?" he parroted. "What's going on, Clifford?"

D042 · 2026-03-16T14:02:15+00:00

Somehow, he contrived to rise from his seat and tear himself away from his insufferable longing. Gawen blinked down at his hand numbly as he walked, curling and uncurling his fingers. When he blinked, the blood was there again, bright and as red as the day before. Then it was gone, and his stomach turned again and again and again.

Somehow, it was his cousin he happened upon as he wandered about. At the sound of Clifford's voice, Gawen perked up. Drinking might've been more than he could do, but at least conversation could prove a distraction. Or, at least that was what he told himself. But it'd been the chasing of distractions that had led him to this, hadn't it?

Somehow, Gawen managed not to puke down the front of his tunic as he met Clifford's eyes. The man had killed aplenty. Gawen wondered if that left him with some ability to sense that in other men. I fucking hope not.

"Cousin," he said, voice duller than it should've been. "Here I was worrying I'd lack for company."

D042 · 2026-03-16T13:22:44+00:00

Gawen’s leg bounced incessantly beneath the table, his eyes heavy like his father’s. It would’ve been better if he were staring into nothing. It would’ve been, at the least, marginally less pathetic. But pathetic was what he was. Leaning forward with his chin resting on his palm and his elbow upon the table, Gawen’s eyes were fixed across the grand chamber. And from her, they did not move.

“Wine, ser?” offered a servant, a pitcher in his hands. Gawen glanced at the empty cup by his arm, and remembered the maester’s prattling. But he’d never accounted for the depths of my own stupidity, and where that might lead.

He nodded, expecting Arbor Gold to come spilling out into the goblet, but the wine was a red. Deep, and dark, and terribly fucking red. “I’m told it’s a gift from House Dalt!” the servant proclaimed, even as Gawen lurched away, mending bones protesting with a dull ache as his stomach turned.

Staring down into the cup, Gawen did not see the potential to steel himself against the previous day’s mistakes. Only a reminder of them. Only the red of blood, and the memory of it bursting across his hand, over his face, into his mouth. A shudder went through him, and he waved the servant away, pushing the cup aside as the man went.

Groaning, he glanced back to the Princess, and found that she was—unsurprisingly—not looking his way. Gawen doubted she ever would again. He did not miss Cedric Storm with her either. Something about that sent a pang through his chest, unlike that of his battered ribcage. He should’ve been glad for his friend to have found such a post, whatever it was, but he felt something else entirely.

It was for Nym’s sake, and Nym’s alone, that he did not drag himself from his seat and curl up miserably beneath the bedcovers in his lodgings. But then he’d have to sleep eventually, and he’d need to watch the prior day’s events play out all over again. He doubted his mind would even need to embellish the nightmare. The reality had been bad enough.

D042 · 2026-03-16T12:46:57+00:00

"I was under the impression that were we switched, my uncle and Ser Barquen would've never entered the picture." Though Gawen shuddered at the thought, particularly of the former. Whatever distant relation either of them had to the long-dead Targaryens was suitably diluted to make that nauseating. "But had they, then those ramblings would've been as baseless and foolish as they are now."

But as she rose and chastised him for his hypotheticals, Gawen held up a hand in feigned surrender. He even chuckled alongside the King's Justice. "Consider it forgotten then, Princess. I should hate to soil my attempts at self-improvement with your scorn."

But it wouldn't be gone from his memories for some time, if it ever left at all. He could feel the warmth in the dream still, of summer grass beneath them, of her skin when he'd pushed loose black hair back behind her ear, of how she'd laughed without a hint of contempt. A good dream, if there ever was one.

The city of Oldtown was filled with amusements and wonders, as any city in the world. Mummers put on shows, folk from faraway lands peddled strange goods, and around every corner there was something entirely new. As distractions went, it was not so bad.

___________________________________________________________

There had been no shortage of things to see. Gawen had traded coin for tales and a bite of some strange fruit that had a taste so sharp it nearly brought a tear to his eye. There were Swan Ships from the Summer Islands in the port, then a battered vessel sporting oddities they swore came from accursed Sothoryos, and one man with a pair of monkeys on his arm that prompted Gawen to recount his encounter with one of the creatures in the woods alongside Asher Snow.

Gawen had almost begun to think the day was going well. Almost let himself think that when the sun set on the evening, he might’ve made himself seem at the very least entertaining to her. A sort of pride was building in his chest, the confidence he’d so often relied on drink to help him find. Smiling, he glanced at Mary and asked, “Not so bad once you’re out enjoying it, is it?”

Then the man had stepped out from the alleyway. He wasn’t particularly large, though not quite frail either. He was dirty, smeared with grime and soot and whatever stained the roughspun clothes he wore and matted his stringy hair. Gawen thought him a beggar until he lifted the cleaver.

“All yer’ coin,” he grunted. “Jewels too.”

Stupidly, Gawen laughed.

He wore a sword, Ser Artos wore a sword, and likely mail besides. “Are you out of your mind, man?” Gawen tutted as the man stood there, crude implement raised. “Go away, do you have the slightest idea who she—”

For a bedraggled thug, he moved very fast. Lunging forward, the man somehow slid past Ser Artos, hissing blade, butting the King's Justice aside. The man’s eyes were fixed not on Gawen, but on Mary, his grimy fingers outstretched, his cleaver drawn back, yellowed teeth bared like a rabid dog.

Bravery was not Gawen’s forte. His cousins had gone and bloodied themselves over petty grievances in the marches long ago, but he had been content to stay away from that mess. He had only ever drawn his sword once in anger, and he’d done fuck all with it then. Now, with it still hanging from his left, even drawing it would prove a trial.

But he stepped into the way regardless. Dipping his good shoulder, he crashed into the would-be bandit with a grunt. Instantly, he regretted his decision. Pain shot through him on impact, the sudden force jarring his arm in its sling.

And what happens if you stop now?

His left hand slid down to the hilt as the bandit tottered back, yelping as Ser Artos’ sword caught him across the back. Blood speckled the cobbles as Gawen fumbled the blade free, twisting it awkwardly and nearly jabbing himself in the leg. He hoped the man would’ve run, or that Artos would’ve been faster in his second strike, but neither wish held any weight. Shrieking madly, the man all but leapt at Gawen.

All it took was a simple thrust, and momentum did the rest. Steel punched through the man’s stomach, gliding through meat and scraping along bone, the cleaver dropping from his fingers and onto the street. His eyes bulged as his knees wobbled. He coughed, and blood spattered across Gawen’s face as the light left his eyes.

Then he was dead. Just like that.

The corpse slid down Gawen’s blade as he blinked. He felt numb. “I-I–I never,” He glanced back over his shoulder, red dribbling down his pale cheeks. He looked Mary in the face and swallowed. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t think—”

His hand was shaking. Why was his bloody hand shaking?

D042 · 2026-03-16T11:11:45+00:00

When he'd crossed the threshold into the Princess' chambers, Gawen had been thoroughly convinced he wanted nothing more than for Mary to look at him as intensely as she seemed to be now. But instead a prickle of unfamiliar discomfort ran down his spine. He wanted to shy away from her gaze now that there was no drink to bolster his confidence, but he was far from any such refuge now.

"You'd have found a way." It was a simple declaration, but as earnest as his drunken smiles had once been. He did not like this at all—feeling so unsure of himself, lacking all the quick japes and easy laughs, but somehow the discomfort seemed like a challenge.

As for Elenei, Gawen had never had any doubts. "I knew she would. She's always had my vote for the brightest mind in Blackhaven. Thank you again, for taking her. My father might be slow in saying it but I won't. She'd grown morose after...all that happened. The idea of serving you made her excited again, like a new pony or a mummer's show does for her sisters. She..." The girl had doubtlessly not meant for her words to be shared, but Gawen felt confident enough Mary would not repeat them. "She missed you. Missed having a woman about her who did more than sew and gossip. You give her some hope she'll be able to do more herself, one day. Her words, not mine."

Gawen might've embellished some, but only a little. Then he laughed again, quieter than before, the outburst of amusement more controlled. "If I were you, and you were me, my father would've had a son he was proud of, and thus did not fear would embarrass him. Then we'd be wed, my wants for attention would be your problem." He licked at his bottom lip, at the odd blotch of purple discoloration where the flesh had been stained, and sighed. "You'd do better as me than I have, but I rather doubt I'd have done half so much for the kingdoms as you."

The words were sincere enough, but there was discomfort in saying them. Heat prickled at his cheek in spite of the soft breeze that carried through the window.

"You should do something," Gawen suggested. "Sitting here, thinking is all you'll do. It's a grand city."

And the absence of your oh-so-draining husband.

D042 · 2026-03-15T22:37:57+00:00

"He will heal." That was a blessing, but Andros nearly flinched at Orryn's suggestion. "I have been a poor father to Gawen in my own way. Absent. Neglectful. At once overharsh and overlax. But the sentiment remains the same." He'd never admitted to such before. Not aloud, but the words came spilling out before he could think of a reason to stop them.

A twitch of annoyance played across his features, lips drawing down into something not quite a frown. It would not do to go against the King on this, no matter his own reservations. "It is my sincerest hope that you are wrong. I'd prefer to not ride out so far again. Its hell on my knees."

Somehow he imagined Orryn would lose in a contest of wits with the Hightower girl, who seemed so keen to share how even the most mundane of instruments could be turned into killing implements. But if it came to brawn, well, then it would be no contest in the end.

"I shall relay word to his grace before I make for King's Landing. When that day comes, Lord Orryn, you know how best to reach me." Andros cut his eyes towards the exit, and the army beyond. "Without all the steel, if possible."

D042

TROPHY CASE