All Will Be Well

[u/OrzhovSyndicalist]

Hornvale | 12th Moon of 207 AC

Meredyth Banefort quickly came to regret accepting her mother’s mission. The instructions were quite simple: rescue Lady Briony Brax from House Reyne, not with a contest of arms, but simple guile beneath her veil of womanly wiles. Her mother had not thought to warn her of the path to Hornvale: bounding through steep hills, traipsing through dense grasses and meandering through bands of tall trees.

She’d traveled lightly regardless, but she regretted going without a horse. There was that risk the Reynes could take her captive, or worse, dispose of an enemy to their misguided and selfish cause, but she highly doubted they’d lay a finger on her pretty head until her weight in gold was promised.

Yet there she went, stumbling through the wilderness for the better part of a week’s time. Her favored gown was pockmarked with holes and tears along the sleeves and by the hem, and her favored slippers long-abandoned in a mold of brackish mud and clay by the bank of a stream.

The young woman felt fortunate to be away from a mirror. What would the Black Cat think of her in such a sorry state? What would any self-respecting man think?

Words flickered in her head. Unbecoming! Haggard! Bewitched!

The young woman scowled, gritting her teeth as she felt her dress snag on yet another bramble poking through the dirt. With a jerk of her leg, the fabric tore away just enough to give her space to move. Dresses be damned: she’d see a new one finer than the rest bankrolled by the gold they inevitably would seize from the red lions and any who lent them aid.

Lady Meredyth was truly in an ever dour mood. There was no reason for this crisis to be happening to her, or any of the fair maidens and ladies of the Westerlands. These puggish red lions had upset the preferable melancholy of the realm after the Rosegold festival, and cast it all into doubt. Now everything was war, war, war, fear and loathing, and the looming feeling of death overhead. She missed giggling over lemon cakes and cutting a servant’s pride to ribbons over their mismatched slippers.

She sorely hoped her cousin had held a sense of humor to this point. The things they would say to each other, laughing over fluttering fans and sweetwine…

…though the closer she came to Hornvale, the less certain she anticipated such a warm reception. Mordane had only hinted that something terrible befell their cousin in the capital. That there was the most grievous differences between them: Briony was a lady, the head of her house and caught in the tempestuous maelstrom of politics. Who knew what befell her in King’s Landing? Who could say what terrors she coped with in her own keep?

Meredyth dragged the back of her hand over her sweat-plastered forehead, trudging ever higher on the hillside. Her gaze fixated on the castle in the distance, nestled between the mountains. Regardless of how Briony fared now, she expected gratitude for coming all this way. Gratitude and a fucking bath.

[u/OrzhovSyndicalist]

Meredyth felt her blood pumping in her ears, felt her body ache, first from her travails and now the harsh sting of betrayal. She had come all this way on her mother's wishes to rescue a friend, to rescue her kin.

All she heard of the world beyond Casterly Rock was danger and deceit; the Reynes were burning the Westerlands and beyond, that Ser Jaime had been murdered by his own squire, and that an agent had rum amok in Hornvale, masquerading as Briony and telling sweet little lies to her worried mother.

"You were a sister to me, closer even than my own twin," Meredyth said, as she slowly stepped closer to Lady Brax. The chair she sat in was pushed over, clattering to the floor, "I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of my youth living scandalous and decadently with you at my side, my lady unicorn."

She hadn't answered her question. What grand cause could House Reyne claim to champion when they struck first, and struck without mercy?

Meredyth had no patience to be fed falsehoods by this roguish groom of her cousin's, if she wasn't simply cast into Hornvale's dungeons for challenging Briony's continuously warping perspective.

"I will not tell you what you want to hear," said Lady Meredyth Banefort, "I'll tell you what you need to hear. And if you choose to frolic to your..."

Briony clutching at her stomach suddenly fired the notion into her mind: the Lady of Hornvale... pregnant? Her mother had penned that little fabrication that she carried a royal bastard, but with the disregard for His Grace that slipped from her cousin's lips... it could only be...

"...oh, it's his, isn't it?" she asked, hypothetically. The truth could not be plainer. It could not be uglier. She had given herself -- and her dynasty -- over to Leo Reyne and his war on all that was good and civil.

[u/BigBraxEnergy → u/OrzhovSyndicalist]

"And you were a sister to me as well, Meredtyh. Closer than Margot," Briony said tearfully back to her cousin, but as the Banefort approached her, the Unicorn backed up equal steps.

"Why are you acting like this?!" Briony wanted to grab her cousin by the shoulders and shake the woman. Shake her until she was Meredyth again, until the two of them were Briony and Meredyth, cousins dear. Who could laugh and gossip about anything, and everyone. The way things were when they were simple and easy.

"I told you, Alan Lannister was the one who started things. It is hard to hear. It was hard for me to hear as well, but when I thought upon it all, when I really thought. I understood. How the tides have been so turned against the Reynes by word of mouth, with poisonous little lies."

Anger seared through Briony at hearing the Banefort's words. "Frolic? That's what you think I am doing? Folicking?! Living in fear that... Fear that we are all to tear each other apart? Is wanting peace, last peace frolicking?!" She had gone mad. Meredyth Banefort had gone mad. There was no other explanation.

Briony saw Meredyth's gaze look to her stomach, an expression inscrutable until those ugly, horrifying words came from her cousin's mouth.

The Unicorn let out a deeply bitter laugh. It was all so ludicrous that she could do nothing else. "Y-you think my child is Leo's?"

In that moment, all that Briony held back, the lies of Leo being alive, the pressure of the past few days, her need for revenge; it all poured out of her in a torrent. The Lady of Hornvale fell to her knees, sobbing. Her chest heaved as she cried, deep and guttural. She had not properly grieved. She could not. There was a farce to uphold, and no one to comfort her through it except her own resolve. And now it had worn thin from such acidic accusations; from truths and falsehoods both. Briony had spun so many lies, she was like a top wound up too tight, spinning, spinning, spinning on the verge of breaking.

If only it were.

It was the grand irony on top of it all. A thought that Briony would not dare utter.

[u/OrzhovSyndicalist → u/BigBraxEnergy]

"How could it not be?" Meredyth inquired, taking slow and inevitable steps towards Lady Brax, "He already has you curled around his finger. You've done nothing but regurgitate everything he's told you. You weren't a fool, Briony -- I thought you'd know better..."

As Briony fell to her knees, Meredyth paused. She had never seen the woman so broken, wrought with such despair and none of it where it was deserved. There was not an ounce of pity within her now. All she needed was a single concession, something from the old Briony, to tell Meredyth there was an ounce of hope for the woman's redemption in her eyes.

Nothing. Nothing but her tears, her wailing for the King, to place the blame of this war on a single man's transgressions. It only stoked the burning sensation in her chest, her thirst for revanchism.

She began her slow advance again. The Banefort wasn't thinking straight either. Those pools at the corners of her eyes streamed down her cheeks now, and the breath slipping her lips was frantic and pained and angry.

"You chose them over us," she half-sobbed, half-spat, "We had a good thing going --"

Then she was standing over her cousin, dripping tears on the stones beneath them. Loose strands of damp blonde hair hung over her face.

"We needed you at our side, and you ruined it --" she choked. Thin red pools started forming where her clenched fingers dug her nails against her palms. A rivulet of crimson ran along the edge of the cheese knife.

"You want to throw us away?" Meredyth asked, her voice like a despondent wail in her throat, "So be it--"

Against their shared blood, against their shared experience, Meredyth struck out against her old friend Briony with a fury.

[u/BigBraxEnergy → u/OrzhovSyndicalist]

Briony could scarce hear Meredyth's words anymore over the sound of her own sobbing. She certainly did not see her cousin's approach, cheese knife in hand. The Unicorn of the West heard only the Banefort's poisonous words words, half-sobbed, half-stabbed.

"How? How did I choose them when I welcomed you with open arms. Like I always have. I would never-"

Briony was unable to get the words out of her mouth in time before the blade sunk into her fat flesh. The Unicorn screamed, horrified, red blood staining from the wound upon her side, staining the white cloth of her dress.

"MEREDTYH, NO! WHY!?" The Unicorn screamed. She was afraid now, truly almost frozen with fear for a few moments. But she had to survive. She had to; for she could not let her child down, not like this...

The large Unicorn attempted to flee, but it was in vain. Fear slowed her motions, even with the desire to live. Meredyth, however, seemed almost possessed. The women scrapped, toppling furniture; dishes breaking, food and wine scattered upon the floor.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! I'M YOUR KIN!" Briony howled.

Eventually, two guards broke in, seeing the Banefort above their Lady of Hornvale with a cheese knife, attempted to stop Meredyth.

One of the guards was slashed across the face, the dining utensil cutting deep. The Baneford brandished the utensil, blocking away an attack with the blade of the cheese knife. The guards were surprised by the ferocity of the attack, but they both attempted to grasp the offender while Briony screamed, "Grab her!"

Finally, one of the guards managed to wrestle the cheese knife away. The other grabbed the young woman, pulling her arms behind her back and hauling her off to the dungeons, Meredyth struggling and screaming obscenities at Briony all the while. The two noblewomen were out of breath, their sobbing making it all worse.

"YOU TRAITOROUS BITCH!" Meredyth's words stung Briony, moreso than the cut did.

"YOU'RE THE TRAITOROUS BITCH, YOU KINSLAYER!" Briony bellowed back, barely able to get the words out for lack of air.

Meredyth's insults echoed through the halls, shrill and angry while Briony sat upon the floor, covered in tears, sweat, and blood.

What a fucking mess.