Oh fluff, fluff and even more fluff! Can't stop it, and don't want to!

I have no excuse for what took me so long to get this out. Hopefully you haven't gotten tired of waiting on me and moved on. It isn't much to garner such a delay, but alas...it is finished nonetheless.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this ridiculous tale I have spun of a ship that was sunk before it even set sail as much as I have writing it, and maybe someone will feel inspired to spawn more J/M goodies for the world to partake of!

Well, a girl can dream, can't she?

(I switched up the tense on this from past to present, and yes it was intentional.)

D: Not mine.

"All of your mother's beauty...and none of her venom. Be glad of it, my niece, for such is a blessing from the gods."

"But what do you mean Uncle? Mother is the queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and the most lovely woman in all of the land. I hope to be just like her when I am a woman grown."

"You would make a better queen than your mother ever did, sweetling. Maybe one day you will get the chance."

He is uncomfortable this far South. He never says so aloud by day or by whisper in the night, but she feels it in the weight of his body next to her just the same. He has safety and a purpose and a family here in their new home, all of which he must have longed for in his previous life as a bastard, but it is so new to him that he moves along as though restless in his own skin.

It is a different sort of existence here, and it would seem he is not suited for adapting quite as readily as she. The heavy heat bogs down his lungs so used to the icy burn of the cold, and the bump and bustle of so many people closing in on him from every side makes his eyes narrow and flit about suspiciously. He doesn't trust them, these men who swear allegiance to his aunt and therefore to him, but his hair is not silver and his eyes not violet, and their gazes catch on his dark features with distrust etched across their faces. The Night's Watch have returned to their Wall, their absence taking with it the support he drew from his faithful companion the maester. His wolf echoes the unease, and spends his days pacing the corridors and growling at those who approach them, thrusting his nose into his master's side and whining when the threat has retreated. She often catches him giving the creature a look of sympathetic longing as he runs a scarred and calloused hand through its dense fur, murmuring to it in tones too low for her to understand.

Sometimes she steps back and allows these creatures of the North to share a moment in which to remember biting cold and bitter winds and so many other things she does not understand. He holds some memories so deep within him that she fears he will never speak of such in front of her, and there is such heaviness in his limbs and eyelids when she comes upon him in these moments that she is almost relieved to be spared. But then she thinks back on the night he allowed her to hold him in her arms whilst he unburdened his heart, and she is filled with a desire to share his every emotion, those of joy and those of pain and each in between. He does not open himself easily, her husband, but she is learning him for herself day by day, bit by bit, and with every fragment she uncovers about the man he is and the boy he was she feels a little more complete by his side.

It is on these days she pushes the light from her candle into their shadows and interrupts their mourning for a past she does not share. Her heart flutters in her chest with pride when she whistles to the wolf and he bounds to her without hesitation, and she feels the muscle stop altogether when his master slips between them and extinguishes the meager flame with a heavy breathe.

Some years ago, or even not too many moons past, she would have found herself frightened by the prospect of being trapped against a wall alone in the inky blackness with a man such as he. But now, as she laces her own tightly around his neck and pulls him into her, she has never felt as safe as she does when in his arms. She feels his body go slack against hers when the two meet, the tension and weight which he carries so heavily carried away with the smoke from the flame, and knows that it is her nearness which makes it so.

He is uncomfortable with the sun and the stench and the sigils he must bear in this place, but he is not unhappy. For all she does not know about him, what he has done, what he has seen, and what he cannot tell her, of this much she is sure, and it is enough. She does not need a candle in a corridor to see the way his eyes brighten at her voice, for she feels it truer than anything she ever has before.

He is not unhappy, and neither is she. When the wolf rests his muzzle against her knee or her husband's fingers trace lazy patterns on her skin or the queen flashes her a knowing look that leaves her blushing hotly...she is the very furthest from unhappy that she has been in longer than she can remember.

It is not perfect, but she is so far gone from the girl who thought life was a waking dream that she cannot quite remember what she thought perfect might be like. Mayhaps it means a world with more smiles than somber expressions gracing his face, and every time she coaxes one from his lips she feels a bit closer to a place two bastards had no place in coming to know. Especially not together.

But somehow they find it.

There is talk of rejoining with the North, of building an alliance upon the strength of brotherly love and trust to restore the divergence the war has placed between the Kingdoms. When her husband holds the parchment granting him lands to rule in the North, in the name of both his new house and the one he could never quite claim as a boy, and the smile that splits his face is bright enough to melt all the snow in what will soon be their very own kingdom. Ravens are sent and heralds are called and when she finds him sorting out his warmest furs from beneath his lighter tunics she smiles at his boyish anxiousness and slips in beside him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

All in due time, of course, she thinks to herself as she stills his premeditated packing. Because all she has seen of his happiness before dims in comparison to the moment when she tells him they must delay their plans for travel until after the babe has been born. The stone walls must reverberate with his proclamations of delight throughout the entire keep, and she thought eyes only twinkled in songs but she swears his put the stars to shame as he looks on her with the most awestruck reverence before taking her in his arms. His lips press feverishly against her belly, and she feels their heat radiate through all the cloth between them and thinks she could never be cold again, no matter what their new home might feel like.

"He doesn't know, that is, I never...I could tell him not to come, if you would wish."

"After all you have given me, how could I deny you what I know your heart longs for? I will look forward to his visit if for nothing else than the joy I know it shall bring you."

"I could not find joy knowing that my doing so might cause you distress, especially not now."

"You could not bring me anything but happiness, even if you tried otherwise.

She is pretty enough, the girl on the Young Wolf's arm when the King of the North comes to pay his respects to the Dragon Queen. No prettier than the one he was betrothed to and not a girl to risk losing his kingdom for, but pretty all the same.

There are worse things in the world than to be pretty. Better things too, but she cannot fault the girl for what she does not control. Mayhaps no one knows better than she, how one can neither control the beauty they were born with any more than they can the man their heart gives itself to. They are as fickle as the breath with which they both might slip just out of reach.

Love and beauty had long since ceased to be a crown granted by a victor, but a cause for war and a price which might be paid with much pain. She hopes this girl knows so more than she did, or for the better, might never have to learn through her own tears.

Though she thinks her guest but a girl, in truth the title is likely want to be misleading. It must be that the new Northern bride has seen more namedays than she has herself, but the demeanor she displays would argue otherwise. Whereas the younger girl has long since learned to school her face for the decorum of holding court, the nervous blush which darkens the visitor's cheeks whenever she breaks her stare with the floor makes her seem more of a child than a lady wife.

She keeps her eyes trained on the ground as she sinks down into a low curtsy before the throne, neither her nor her husband noticing the Crown Prince and Princess from where they sit silently observing their guests at their seats below Her Grace. From there they might be strangers, and for all that has transpired since their last meeting, they might as well be...and in truth she wishes it could be so. But their presence can not be disregarded when the names of the royal heir and his wife are announced and their eyes finally meet.

Is it his brother's seat so very near the Queen's side that causes the man before her to go white-faced and slaw jawed, she cannot help but wonder, or could it be the sight of the one whose hand he holds clasped in his own? Whatever he had read through their correspondence obviously had not prepared the Young Wolf for the reality of laying eyes upon the man he has spent his boyhood with draped in finery with a circlet resting in his curls and a princess upon his arm. He is mute and motionless for a long moment, and with the softening of his features he looks far more like the boy he should have been had he not been forced into manhood so young. Stepping out just slightly from behind her husband, the girl who is not truly a girl offers up a nervous but genuine smile as they approach, and it is with no resentment in her soul that her good-sister returns it with the warmest of her own.

May she never know the circumstances surrounding the betrothal of those before her, or of her own beloved's role in the matter. May she only see the fair-haired lady as the mother of her nieces and nephews, and, if the gods be good, as a friend.

It would be nice, to have a friend with whom to share life with while they watch their children grow up together. She doesn't know if she has ever really had a true friend before, and the wife of her good-brother, for that is all she ever wishes him to be to her any longer, seems a fitting start. A lady whose children whom she could love without wishing they were her own, not when her arms are filled with tousled heads of dark hair and her heart is full of love she never could have imagined knowing. She aches to feel the weight of such little ones in her arms, and though she knows that no babe will ever replace the one she lost, she feels a sense of peace in knowing for true that such things were not meant to be.

For when she looks upon him, she can see what she had hoped for in dreams could never have been so.

He would have been, and surely is, a good husband, this man with auburn curls and blue eyes, she has no doubt of it. Certainly he loves the girl at his side as truly as he knows how, and she does the same to fulfill her duty as the wife he risked so much to gain. Both of their eyes linger when they fall upon the swell of her stomach, and though his widen in unease, hers do so in excitement. She offers the girl a discreet smile of encouragement, and when she responds by blushing and pulling at her gown she cannot help but think to herself if their children might be as close in age as their fathers.

Her hands rest possessively over the bump while her husband leaves his seat to embrace the brother he had so long missed, and she does not begrudge him this small comfort. They are good men, the both of them, though she knows with all of her heart that she has the best of the two, she holds no ill will for the one who unknowingly pushed her into the arms to which she fits so perfectly into.

A bastard who had been the daughter of the King, for a King who had been a bastard. It is a dream so absurd she had never seen it behind her lids, but one so true that she lives in full with every breath she draws in.

Myrcella Baratheon might not have been enough of a princess for the Robb Stark, she was certainly enough of a queen for Jon Targaryen.

(Though he will never take any name other than that which blankets his lands. Snow.)

"Oh Mother, tell us of the first time you met Father. Did you find him terribly handsome? Did you know at once that you loved him, did you?"

"Calm yourself sweetling, your mother has been up all night tending to your sister and she needs her rest. Bring your brother and let us leave her be."

"Might you tell me then, Father? What did you think of Mother when you first laid eyes on her?"

"Truth be told...I thought her rather insipid."

"FATHER!"

So we all know my crazy OTP...so do tell, what is yours!? Who knows, it might even spark my own interest!

(Oh, and PS, Robb and Jon spend the night getting incredibly drunk and reminiscing over old times, and as a result Robb and his wife (Jeyne, of course, none of this dumb Talisa shiz) miss the Red wedding and don't die. But Catelyn does, because she's a bitch. Okay?)