58A/N: This is a small (completely unnecessary) companion to The Assassin's Apprentice inspired partly by Junonia1991 who at one point suggested (demanded?) a handsome man one-shot. She has probably forgotten, but I have not. Or, more precisely, the handsome man has not forgotten. He has been insistent that I write this and will not allow me to concentrate on the final chapter of the larger story until I at least start this small side-project. He says his POV is "important" and that "people will want to know." He's sort of an arrogant bastard in that way.
My idea is to give sporadic accounts of events of the larger story from HM's perspective, but it starts out as a small dip into his dreams as they follow certain late events in the original story (scattered bits of chapters 56-58). I plan to skip around chronologically in this story, but I will let you know which chapters/events from The Assassin's Apprentice I am referencing at the start of each chapter of Morpheum. I hope this will minimize any confusion.
Most of this will be unlikely to make much sense to anyone who hasn't read The Assassin's Apprentice, making it a rather indulgent undertaking. Again, I blame the handsome man for that. I do not own anything in the ASoIaF universe, but I *do* own the fact that HM, in my mind, looks suspiciously like British male model David Gandy. I hope that neither he nor GRRM sue me...
Don't you find, some of the time, there is always someone on your mind...
that shouldn't be at all.
Even in the handsome man's dreams, his brother usually bested him, but there were times when he found that it mattered little.
Times such as now.
First, there was a familiar refrain.
"Someday, you will tell me your name," she had said in a low voice, almost a whisper, by way of greeting him. It might have seemed odd to him during his waking hours, but here, it made perfect sense that she would suddenly appear in his bedchamber and make such a bold statement. She had done so on countless other nights, ever since he began training her at the wealthy man's manse.
He curled up one side of his mouth and then reached for her arms, pulling her down onto his bed; onto him.
"But I had rather hoped that you might name me," he replied before he buried his hand in all her loose, dark hair, urging her head toward him, finding her mouth with his own.
Moonlight filtering in through his high window, illuminating one side of her face, poised just above his; outlining her lean body, wrapped in his sheet, her belly and chest pressed into his side. Long moments spent using his thumb, his lips, his tongue, to indulge his fascination with the sanguine bow of her mouth, the curve of her earlobe, and the contour of her neck. Reveling in his wonderment. Pursuing that gratified repose he longs to arrive at with her and finding it always just beyond his reach, for it can never be enough; he can never have enough of her. A soft sigh as she moves away from him, just a little; just enough to catch her breath. A cool palm, releasing his face and dragging its way down his neck, finding his collarbone and then tracing its length until it meets the pink, puckered flesh on his upper arm, a mark gifted him by that same hand.
"We are twins," he told her, turning his head so he could watch her one finger as it drifted over his arm, inspecting his scar.
She laughed, throaty, the ridicule undisguised but mild; gentle, like her tone when she next spoke.
"We are nothing alike."
Her voice became hoarse, as if she suffered a soreness of her throat. He was used to her voice as a commanding thing, or a mocking one, but assured, at any rate, and just... dense with her vigor and confidence. But he had kissed its strength away moments earlier, although the impish look on her face did not reveal that uncomfortable truth. She would never admit to weakness, even weakness as sweet as this.
"Our scars are the same," he insisted, his playful smirk appearing then. He lifted one hand and found the flaw in her white flesh, the small, silvered line on her right shoulder. He ran his fingers over the old hurt and lazily caressed it, as if to prove his point.
She recovered from her languor quickly.
"Hardly," she scoffed, her breathlessness gone, the rents and tatters of her tone knitting themselves together.
Always scoffing at him, even in his dreams.
"Pray tell, little wolf, how are they different?"
"Well, for one, mine is on my shoulder and yours isn't."
"Near enough."
"You certainly love your near enough," she laughed, and then added, "when it suits you. But that doesn't change the fact that the arm and the shoulder are two entirely different locations."
"Even so, the flaws are so similar, it's as if fate herself has marked us for one another."
"Fate herself has marked us?" the girl repeated incredulously, her finger still absently stroking his healed wound. Her tiny, impish smile hardened just a bit under her raised eyebrows.
"Just so," he agreed. "Or, the Many-Faced god, if you prefer."
She snorted. He continued as if he had not heard her.
"And a mere matter of two finger widths seems such a little thing when compared to the plan Him of Many Faces has for us." As he spoke, he laid his two fingers at the outer edge of her scar, folding them over her arm and showing how their hurts were indeed so close as that to one another.
"There is the matter of how we sustained our injuries, too," the girl persisted. "I didn't get mine while assaulting a helpless acolyte in her own bedchamber."
"Helpless, bah!"
His small smile annoyed her; he could tell by the way her finger froze over his healed injury that had been her doing and the way she snapped her head, pulling her gaze away from the scar, settling it instead upon his face.
"Mine was obtained in an innocent accident, not an act of betrayal," she continued, pursing her lips after she had spoken.
"Not betrayal, surely!" he delicately admonished. "Was it betrayal? Really?"
As she pondered the question, he sought to influence her judgment, his hands moving then to either side of her neck, gently guiding it down to his mouth. His lips found her throat and he placed a brief and tender kiss there before withdrawing infinitesimally, preferring to trace the underside of her jaw with his nose, inhaling her scent. She shivered.
"Betrayal... No, I suppose it wasn't," she sighed after a moment. Her concession was reluctant but he could feel her relax a little at his touch. He read her mood and her want of their accord, their reconciliation, in the way the tension gradually bled out of her but then she pulled back with a quickness and her wide eyes narrowed as she fixed him with her gaze, the grey of those eyes rendered as black as pitch in the dim moonlight. Thoughtfully, she warned him, "Perhaps it wasn't betrayal then, but it would be now."
"Because you've forgiven me?" he whispered, sliding his arms around her waist and shifting her easily, so that she lay atop him then. The flats of his calloused palms pressed into the bare flesh of her back and he pulled her firmly against himself.
"Because I've forgiven you," she agreed in a hushed tone, adding, "and we are nothing alike." She finished speaking those words just before his mouth melded itself to hers, all hunger and thirst.
He awoke with a start. Surveying his dim surroundings, he realized that it was still early, the first light of dawn painting his chamber in shades of grey.
Grey like her eyes, he thought before he caught himself. He snorted and rubbed hard at his face with his hands, trying to awaken fully so he could shake her off.
Damn these bothersome dreams! he cursed inwardly, but the condemnation was halfhearted. After all, they weren't exactly unpleasant, even if they could not be readily translated to his reality. Orders were orders, and his orders were to make her ready and to see that the girl was not... trifled with. Besides that, there was her ridiculous notion that she was in love with his brother. Even if he were inclined to disobey his master in this matter (he was not so inclined), her inane sense of loyalty would prevent her from doing anything which might displease her Lorathi master.
He was quite certain that engaging in a tryst with the little wolf would qualify as something his brother would find most displeasing.
He ran his hands over his face again, this time in frustration.
Duty, he thought grimly, and then threw his covers back, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. It was time to dress. There was work to be done.
It started as it always did.
"Someday," she whispered in his ear, "you will tell me your name."
"My girl, I have no name," he told her as he watched her straighten. Her thighs brushed against the edge of his mattress.
"Liar."
He smirked up at her as she gazed down at his reclining form, her accusing eyes bright in the moonlight which poured through his window. He reached out and pulled her down atop him. As always, she wore her black and white acolyte's robe when she stood over him, but once he pulled her into his bed, she wore only her own fair flesh and was wrapped partially in his sheet. He ran his hand slowly down her side, and the friction was the sort of sin he was most willing to commit. His fingers came to rest on her hip, wrapping themselves around the graceful curve.
"You don't fool me," she murmured, resting her head between his shoulder and his chin. Her unbound hair was soft against his neck. "I see you."
He was amused, but there was a part of him which felt a creeping apprehension.
"And just what do you think you see, my girl?" he asked her, though there was a tiny voice inside of him warning him against the question.
You will not like this, it said, but he was unable to stop himself from asking anyway.
He felt her fingers lightly sliding across his chest, the cool press of her flesh against his skin causing something to stir in him; something more than just lust; something that felt like... loneliness.
But that was absurd. He was not alone. She was here with him.
"I see that of all the men I have ever known, both within these walls and without, it is you who has the most need."
"You have said that before," he muttered crossly, rolling them both over so that he was pinning her to the mattress.
He began to kiss the hollow of her throat. She giggled uncontrollably.
"You are simply terrible at this," he complained.
"We are all of us broken," she retorted through her laughter.
"This isn't right," he remarked, and his distress was like a distant rider, racing ever closer. It gained on him. "This is all wrong."
She shrugged.
She always found him in his dreams. He always lost her to his awakening.
The sounds of the seagulls outside of his window caused him to stir, their noisy calls like laughter bringing an abrupt end to his reverie.
It had been a short dream; too short. He had not been given much time for sleep, his duties keeping him away from his bed the previous night.
Duty.
He stretched out in his bed, caught between the desire to go back to sleep so that he might invite his dreams again and the desire to get up, so that he might look for her.
He was always looking for her, without admitting to himself that that was what he was doing. Sometimes he found her, other times he simply sat waiting, his frustration growing when she failed to appear. The prior afternoon, he had caught her soaking in the bath. He enjoyed that more than was seemly, at least at first. He never saw more than a bare shoulder or some tiny, pruned toes when she propped her feet on the far end of the basin, but it was the idea that he might see more which he found somehow irresistible. The was something so seductive about possibility (and she was so full of possibility). Besides, her pruned toes were quite charming, really.
Of course, she had to ruin it, making it more serious than it needed to be, accusing him of... something. Some deficiency in his character. Some weakness he could not acknowledge. In that much, at least, they were twins. Neither could admit to any weakness.
But she had hers, did she not? Her weakness had carried her unconscious form from the great dining hall the previous night, after she had fallen asleep at table. Her weakness had been preparing to board a ship that would carry him away from her just a spare few hours ago. Her weakness was even now sitting in the council chamber, awaiting his judgment.
He sighed, thinking of how much more he preferred the dream from which he had just emerged to what was to come.
"Someday, you will tell me your name."
"Why do you want so badly to know it?" he asked her, impatiently tugging her down so that she fell against him. Her hair cascaded around his face, the inky waves soft against his cheeks.
"Why do you want so badly to keep it from me?" she countered.
He shifted, rolling to his side, facing her. He threw one leg over hers and draped one arm over her waist, subtly clinging to her, as if to prevent her escape; a desertion only he could foresee.
"I can't even remember it anymore," he murmured, leaning forward, his face nearly touching hers.
"Liar," she whispered before he swallowed her accusation with his kiss, forcing her next words back inside of her with his tongue.
His desire for her was profound in that moment. She appeared to feel his urgency in his fingertips.
"You seem desperate," she remarked awhile later, when he had finally allowed her use of her own mouth. "Almost as if you know something."
"I don't know what you mean."
He attempted to kiss her again, but she resisted, determined to be heard.
Always obstinate, even in his dreams.
"You can't hide it from me," she said. "I know."
"I have asked you to stay out of my head."
"I do not need to be in your head to see that you are unhappy."
"How can I be unhappy now?" he murmured, trailing a finger down her neck and resting it in the notch between her collarbones. "Everything I want in this moment lies just before me."
She tilted her head and regarded him with sympathy.
"You know that I am leaving."
"I don't want to talk about that," he insisted, petulant, rolling away from her to rest flat on his back. His usually smirking mouth was set in a frown.
She shrugged.
"Talk about it. Don't talk about it. It doesn't change the truth of it."
"Can't I have a moment of happiness?"
"I don't know," she replied. "Can you?"
He heard her voice, and it was different; heavy with slumber, soft around the edges, slurred. It pulled him out of his dream and he realized that she, too, was dreaming, and she was talking in her sleep. Ser Ilyn, she had mumbled. Ser Meryn. Queen Cersei.
The girl spoke in her sleep often, and he had heard this list before.
A prayer, she named it.
"Traitor... brother," she sighed.
He smirked and stretched. I must have fallen asleep in this chair, he thought. It had been a long night.
"The Kindly Man," she whispered clearly, and he froze mid-stretch.
That's new, he thought.
"Valar... mmmorrr..."
Her voice trailed off but he understood her well enough.
She's just dreaming, he told himself as she quieted. After a second, he admitted to himself that it was troubling nonetheless.
He watched her more closely after that, shaking off sleep and denying himself the pleasure of drifting back off. The Lyseni still loomed across the room, alternately pacing and leaning against the door, glaring at him.
He does not love me, the handsome man thought, but he does not need to. He watched as the boy began pacing again, intermittently flicking his eyes fretfully at his sister.
He loves her, though, the assassin realized as he watched the boy's movements. He wondered, not for the first time, what it as about the little wolf that engendered such depth of emotion and such blind loyalty. Was it some design of hers? Did she plant the idea into the heads of those who surrounded her and wait for it to grow?
The idea that the things he felt were influenced by anything beyond his own wit and reason and experience chafed at him, and he resisted the notion.
No, he decided, it is not her. I would have felt it if the idea had belonged to her. I would have known.
His mind wandered off to thoughts of his own dreams, and he considered her words to him about leaving.
They weren't her words, he told himself scornfully. They were your own words, spoken through her mouth.
Still, he knew them to be true. She was leaving today, as was planned all along. She would sail away from Braavos, away from him, and he did not know if he would ever see her again.
An idea presented itself to him then. An idea he had once found preposterous.
He could give her a gift, and then he would have a hope, however small.
He smiled a little to himself, and then he could feel her eyes on him. He turned his head to face her and spoke.
"Your prayer has changed," he observed, and he fervently hoped that she would take his words as warning. He hoped that she understood that if he knew, then his master would know too, and that it was impossible. He hoped that she would give up this foolish notion and not do anything stupid and just... be safe.
He hoped, but he did not believe.
He had left the girl's cell at the direction of his master. He thought about returning to her later, giving her his gift and bidding her farewell, for the idea that his last moments with her should be spent comforting her for her loss of his brother seemed somehow... unsatisfactory. Even so, he did not relish the idea of tracking her down in her cell in hopes of delivering a proper goodbye (the same cell in which his brother had sequestered himself for the very same reason only one night prior). And then there was the fact that nothing seemed to occur within the temple that was not known to the principal elder. He had no desire to divulge things he should not and he had no intentions of betraying the order in any way, but that did not mean that he wished for others to be privy to all of his thoughts. Some things were not meant for others to witness.
Some things, he thought, others did not need to know.
And so he found himself wandering the docks of the Purple Harbor, waiting for her ahead of her departure.
In the end, they had reconciled, in their way. There was a small part of him that longed to climb aboard The Titan's Daughter with her, but he understood that they all had their parts to play, and his part did not allow for him to leave with her. He was living proof that a man was not helpless in the face of his own desire, for here he was, doing his duty, despite his contrary inclinations.
A man need not abandon duty for the sake of his heart, he thought, wondering how different things might have been had his brother learned that lesson.
And then he thought of her nightly visitations; of her bare skin against his palms; of her sighs through barely parted lips; of the silken fall of her hair brushing his shoulders as she leaned over him. He thought, too, of her confident statement, made night after night; spoken into the grey depths of his dreams.
Someday, you will tell me your name.
He watched her climb the gangway and then she was peering over the ship's railing at him, waving. His heart began to pound mercilessly beneath his breast.
He gave her a small salute and said, "Gaelon."
It was pure vagary; a capricious impulse that he did not stop to question.
He spoke in a soft voice, knowing that she could not hear him; knowing that even if she could, she wouldn't care. This Arya had never asked him for his name. This Arya did not tumble into his bed every night with the familiarity and ease of an old lover. This Arya was the most important piece in his master's sweeping game of Cyvasse. But he thought that maybe if he told this Arya, then that other Arya, the one who haunted him through the midnight hour, would be appeased and would cease to torment him. Maybe if he told this Arya his name, then that other Arya would leave him in peace, for now that this Arya would no longer be around to be found by him every day, he did not know if he could tolerate dreaming of that other Arya every night.
If he could not have this Arya, he did not wish to be perpetually confronted by her shade.
Gaelon turned to leave and though he could feel the little wolf's eyes on him as he retreated, he did not allow himself to look back.
Don't You Find-Jamie T
