Chapter Text
His brothers are dead.
Robert was dragged from the battlefield by the Kingsguard after being bested by Rhaegar Targaryen. The rumours say one of the Dornish spears that struck him earlier in the day was poisoned and impaired his movements. They are shut down as soon as they are spread, of course. Rhaegar needs to be known as the man who bested an usurper. But the story continues. The prince — now king — offered him mercy, but Robert refused. Jon Connington advised Rhaegar to bring him back in chains to King's Landing and have him executed there for the people to see what happens to traitors to the crown.
Renly didn't see this brother die. He'd closed his eyes when the sword came down. He'd only heard the wet sound of flesh being sliced through and the crowd's cheers, and it had been agony and relief, maybe, at the thought that it was all over after all. Robert had died with pride, insults to the king on his traitorous lips and a yearning for his fiancee in his eyes.
Ned Stark's howl had rung in his ears and he remembers thinking that the man sounded like a wolf. Eddard was more of a brother to Robert than Renly ever was, and it showed in his grief. It makes the boy angry in that helpless way he is getting sick of.
Renly saw Stannis's end so closely it almost felt like his own. He supposes his innocence died with him too, wrenched away from him by a brother always too envious for the things he didn't have. A brother who still tried to protect Renly, little ingrate that he was.
His brother was holding him as he took his last breath. It was ragged and smelled like desperation.
Like rot.
Renly remembers his bloated stomach, his emaciated cheekbones, his eyes sunk in and glazed over. He remembers the way Stannis didn't even have the strength to grind his teeth as he usually did. He'd wanted to turn away but couldn't bring himself to do it. He stared into Stannis' blue eyes as he died, and thought he loved him better at the Stranger's door than he ever did when they were both healthy.
It sickened him so much he tried to banish the thought.
(He failed.)
He remembers his brother's last orders.
"Keep him fed," he'd told his men. "At any cost."
They'd tried. Seven Heavens, they'd done their best, damning themselves in the process. But then they heard news of Robert's death and they knew there was no point in delaying the inevitable. They had no longer a reason to maintain the siege. So they negotiated for his survival and surrendered the nine-year-old Lord Paramount of the Stormlands to the care of the Tyrells.
When he saw the fat belly of Mace Tyrell, the man full to bursting when Renly had to witness his brother and their men die a slow death to keep him alive, he almost launched himself at him. He wanted to claw him open and tear out his beating heart, make antlers out of his ribs and wear them as a crown. He was only stopped by his own weakness. Sheltered as he had been from complete starvation, Renly had still known hunger like never before. Gone was the baby fat on his cheeks and the comfort of knowing the next meal would always come. His dizziness got the better of him and he swayed on his feet before he could even take a step.
Tyrell must have seen the hatred in his eyes, however, because he'd grimaced and left him be. He'd tried to keep his boasting away from him. Renly still heard him, though. And he'll remember it.
Stannis could hold a grudge like nobody's business.
Renly finds out the hard way that sometimes there are things you can't let go of, no matter how hard you try. He thinks his brother would be proud of him.
The thought hurts him, so he pushes it away.
Instead, on the way to King's Landing, he dreams about consumption. Delirious, he imagines himself sinking his teeth into a chunk of meat. He thinks, he knows it's venison. A stag. Renly is eating a stag.
He wakes.
A maester gives him clear broth. His uncle Eldon, his mother's brother wipes his sweaty forehead with a wet cloth. A guard watches them both, a hand on the pommel of his sword. On his chest, a bowman is depicted.
Renly feels hunted.
Nausea rises in his stomach at the idea. He twists to the side and pukes into a basin, his hand curled into his stomach. Fingernails digging at the meat of him. The maester shifts his body so he doesn't choke, then tells him to get some more sleep. His uncle leaves. The guard doesn't.
Renly is too exhausted to stay awake. He drifts again.
He wakes.
A maester gives him clear broth.
It is a challenge to keep things down. Renly thinks Stannis would have ground his teeth in anger if he'd seen how much food he's wasted since the siege has ended. Robert would have called him a little girl. This thought is what keeps him alive; he channels one brother's grit and the other's obstinacy, and keeps swallowing broth after broth, until he can stand on his own.
Once, they try to serve him meat.
It smells like stag. It might not be. Renly can't tell anymore. All he can smell is desperation and rot.
He bucks at the maester and bellows like a cornered animal when they try to force him to eat. He resists until he exhausts himself and falls unconscious.
They don't serve him meat again.
He's told that he'll be a ward of the crown alongside the other boys meant to inherit a traitor's seat.
It's Jon Connington who tells him in clipped tones, the newly-named Hand of the King announcing his fate unfeelingly before the maester of King's Landing examines him. Renly is recovering well, the man says, he'll be able to bend the knee in front of the king without needing assistance to get back up.
Your House is sworn to Storm's End, thinks Renly scornfully. My Durrandon ancestor raised you from the muck for you to talk to me like this. Then he remembers that the king on the throne is in fact his cousin and the anger subsides. Maybe one should not blame a House for their divided loyalties when they live in a kingdom split in seven where kinship means nothing even to kings.
Still, he can't help but dislike the Griffin Lord, and the sentiment is mutual. Connington does not think him appropriately grateful for the king's mercy. He believes other Houses should have been raised to the Lord Paramountcy, and the names of Baratheon, Stark, Tully and Arryn should have been lost to oblivion. Renly thinks he's a cunt.
The next day, he is escorted by guards to the throne room. On his way there, he meets Jaime Lannister, disgraced Kingsguard to the court and acclaimed Kingslayer to the people. Rumours swirl about him. They say he killed Aerys to save the city. They say his father's threats were the only reason why he kept his head.
Renly nods at him without thinking about it. "Ser Jaime," he says and passes by.
(He does not know this is the first time someone addresses the teenager since his trial.
Jaime Lannister made of his steel a mirror of unpleasant truths for the nobility of the Seven Kingdom. He showed to everyone that Tywin is the most powerful man in Westeros, and to the royal family in particular that the life of a king is not worth a million people to a knight sworn to him, a knight who had witnessed the same king rape his own wife and order traitors and innocent alike burnt alive. He showed them that Robert didn't die for treason, but for loyalty. He inspired three Great Houses to stand with him in revolt and for that he had to die.
Jaime's revolution was done in the shadows, and didn't stay a dirty secret only because the servants of the palace who were at his trial spread the word. But although he is a hero to the small folk of King's Landing, he is a pariah to his peers.
People are known to shun unpleasant truths.)
He enters the throne room thinking that the lion looks as thin as he is. He soon forgets about it when he makes eye contact with Jasper Arryn.
The boy is two years older than he is, he remembers, and his father was killed in battle. They called Denys the Heir the Darling of the Vale.
Strong and virtuous, a hero of the Eyrie and a friend of Robert who died like his cousin Elbert and his great-uncle Jon because of the whims of mad kings.
Renly remembers the order sent for Jon Arryn to surrender Robert and Eddard Stark. He remembers the events that prompted it, the burning of a Lord Paramount and his Heir, the kidnapping of a betrothed lady before that. Jon Arryn's refusal to relinquish the wards he loved like sons brought only misery to the Vale, but it is ultimately a Targaryen's fault that Jasper's father is dead.
Jasper is a kindred spirit, he understands, and smiles at him shyly. It must look horrible, he thinks, conscious of his sunken cheeks and damaged teeth, but does not let it stop him. Jasper returns it and shifts to reveal Edmure Tully hiding behind him. The boy, only a year younger than Renly, waves slowly, his eyes lowered. His sister Catelyn — who Renly hadn't yet noticed — is fretting nearby, agitated by the tense silence of the courtroom. Lyanna Stark stands paces away from them. She is holding herself straight, her eyes unseeing. She does not look like someone who eloped with a prince. She looks like Robert had before Renly closed his eyes.
She looks like she wants to spit on the gods.
Eldon stares at her with hatred in his eyes as they all kneel, but Renly cannot share his uncle's resentment. She is the one who understands him most in the room. Her kin did not die in the honour of battle like Hoster Tully and Denys Arryn. She lost them to the whims of a prince and a king. She lost a brother and father to the worst agonies known to men and another brother to disgrace, because Eddard Stark might not be dead but he is gone in shame all the same. It is not a kindness to let a man live his life as a traitor, Renly's uncle should know that.
Renly keeps his resentment for the Targaryens cold and his hatred for the Tyrells warm instead. He doesn't have enough blackness left in him to direct it to a girl with a babe.
It should have been Robert's, he still thinks as he stares at Jon Stark, then remembers his brother has left at least two bastards out in this world. He'll have to talk to Arwen Arryn and ask her if she might let him write to Mya Stone.
Benjen Stark arrives a sennight after his sister has left.
The three other wards of House Targaryen have spent their time huddled together since then, an uneasy friendship forming as they are left alone save for sporadic dinners with the King and his court. They are assigned to be taught by Willem Darry, the Red Keep's master-at-arms. The man hates them for being the kin of traitors, it is obvious. He is especially harsh in their training, but they will be stronger knights for it. Renly has no complaints. Sword training takes his mind off other things.
Benjen looks frightfully like his brother, though Renly finds him prettier. His features are sharp, and he has the long nose of the Starks, but his eyes look made for laughing, though Renly can tell there isn't much he finds funny these days.
He is a solemn boy, Benjen Stark, and does not speak unless spoken to. He keeps his own counsel, or so thinks Renly until the four wards find themselves alone.
"This place is crawling with rats and snakes," tells the boy bluntly, his Northern accent thick and his disdain obvious in his eyes."They either wish to make us bend or to break us. What are we gonna do about it?"
Hearing this stunned Renly. He might have nursed his resentment at each cutting remark from the Hand, pitying glance from the Queen and condescending smile from the King, but he'd not thought about doing anything with that resentment but grind his teeth like Stannis did and endure.
"What can we do?" had asked Edmure resentfully.
Benjen had looked at him patiently, "Bide our time. Figure out our goals for the future. And you three can prepare to be the most belligerent lords Westeros has ever seen."
Renly stared. He liked the sound of that. When he turned to the other boys, he could tell they did too. He'd not considered the fact that their helplessness would only last for a time. Soon they would be Lord Paramounts, heirs to the Alliance of three of the Seven Kingdoms, the first to have dared stand against Targaryen rule since the Conquest.
And while they were here...
"We can do things here too," he said suddenly, hope rising in his arms at this call to arms. "This place is miserable, and we're not the only ones who feel it. The more unwise lords antagonise us now, but many others know we won't always be hosta... wards of the Crown. This is the centre of Westeros' power. If we don't give them reason to doubt our loyalty, we'll have the chance to do something. Gather allies, build influence. Make our own opportunities. They made a mistake by allowing us to stay together, and we can make them regret it," he finishes with a newfound conviction.
Jasper's expression is gleeful at the idea, Edmure's cautious but intrigued.
If it were not for Benjen, perhaps Renly might have let go of his hatred.
Perhaps he might have chosen to forgive and forget. He would have convinced himself that Robert was in the wrong and Stannis' demise was unfortunate but such was the fate of traitors, that war is war and he should let bygones be bygones. He would have still had nightmares of crowns of bones and bloated stags, but perhaps in the morn he might have risen and forgotten them, then allowed a thorny rose to turn his head and ignored the smell of rot under its sweet scent. He'd have still gagged at the smell of cooked meat, but he'd have simply shrugged and pretended to prefer fish.
But maybe there was something to Robert's fascination with his own Stark, because Renly finds himself drawn in to Ben like he never has been to any other. And Ben has sharp eyes, grey as flint, and that is what a hunter uses to stoke a fire. Ben keeps his hatred warm, but his heart bright and light too. He makes him look forward to the next day.
In the following weeks, the four boys meet in hidden corners and plot and plan for the future. They don't quite agree with what they want the end goal to be and they're too young to know what is realistically achievable in their position, but it does not matter. They are doing something, that's what's important.
And in the meantime, Renly watches Benjen. He finds it hard to look away. The boy always walks with a straight back and obeys the master-at-arms' instructions with no complaints. He's unphased every time the gents of the court call his kin fools, traitors and whores, and only ever says of the nephew he's never met that he's a wolf, not a dragon.
Like every Stark, he says his House words like a mantra, but more than that he adds another phrase, which he says is of the North.
We remember.
Ben tells Renly the only way not to be hunted is to be a hunter.
Renly is a social creature. He hates the scorn, the isolation, and if it weren't for Ben he would have let himself be brought back into the fold, shutting out the parts of himself that want to buck at the chains around his neck and tear things apart.
But Ben is there, and his quiet confidence in their agency bolsters him. He makes him want to fight, for his brothers and most of all for himself. Renly learns to play the game of thrones because a boy believed they could do it and even better, because he believed they should.
"A Targaryen without a dragon is just a lizard, and critters like that don't survive in the North," says Ben. "I'm not afraid."
Renly is not afraid either. He's no place for fear in his heart. Because he is the fury, and he carries Stannis and Robert's too.
Rhaegar is barely seen at court.
They say he spends his time at the library, researching obscure Valyrian scrolls and summoning Red Priests to come and examine his infant son. They hear him talk about the need for peace in the realm, about the greater war that will come and how his son will lead the realms of men in victory.
Some murmur that he is raving mad, but he is still their silver king, and they like his folly better than Aerys'. Others believe him, and their zealousness frightens the wards.
When he has time to care, he singles him out. He tries to leverage Renly's kinship with the Targaryens. He tells him the situation was regrettable, and he wishes things hadn't gone the way they did. He says he mourns his cousins.
Renly describes to him how Stannis died in detail, his eyes distant and his nails raking gouges in his palms. Rhaegar looks pained, but he stays silent. He asks him if taking Lyanna Stark was worth it.
Rhaegar says yes.
There is nothing else to be said after that.
(Renly does not eat for three days following this discussion, and does not stop skipping meals until his friends confront him about it. They do not ask — yet — but press a warm bowl of fish stew into his hands. Renly only keeps it down because they are watching, and the urge to press fingers inside his mouth and spit it out is almost overwhelming.)
Seeing as his attempt to gain Renly's understanding if not his loyalty has failed, the king tries to push him to befriend Viserys instead. That is perhaps his greatest mistake.
The prince of Dragonstone is mad, and his sister Daenerys takes the brunt of his cruelty. That she is but a babe does not stop him, and the queen dowager is not mentally present enough to stop him. He is truly his father's son, thinks Renly, disgusted.
As the years pass, Daenerys becomes the only Targaryen he can stand. It appeases the royal family, especially as it also brings Renly closer to the children of the king, whom he cannot blame for the sin of having a father.
Rumours start to rise about a possible betrothal. Renly lets it happen, though he has no intention to wed the daughter of the Mad King.
Let people believe he wishes to ingratiate himself back into the Targaryens' good graces or that he has designs on the Iron Throne.
Let them mistake the forest for the trees. They all believe there is nothing greater than the ugly chair Rhaegar sits on, but Renly dreams of a time where kings had the blood of the gods, and the men were heroes. Renly dreams of storms, and of the name Durrandon.
Jasper says Jon Connington killed his father.
Edmure says no one told him who slayed his, so he suspects it must have been the king.
Renly suggests they channel their anger in whatever ways they can, lest they snap like he almost did when faced with Mace Tyrell. He has to tell them what he almost did when the Siege was lifted, and talk about feeling like prey being smoked out, about starving in a lavish castle.
Edmure, the more reasonable one, focuses on the people. His love for the smallfolk knows no equal, and every time the hate gets too much, he sneaks out of the castle and into the streets. Renly is convinced he'll be the best of them.
Jasper is petty. He takes to wearing a bell around his wrist. It rings when he cuts his meat, and the sound always irritates Jon Connington, who remembers the Battle of the Bells as a humiliating defeat and an affront he takes personally. Jasper plays at innocence, saying that a maiden gave it to him as a gift.
Connington does not believe him. He comes to the training yard and asks Willem Darry to let him get the measure of the boys.
He spends an entire afternoon beating them down. He calls Ben's sister a whore, Robert a pig, Hoster Tully a craven opportunist, and Denys Arryn a weakling with a self-inflated ego. He hits them where it hurts, over and over again, and only stops when Ser Arthur Dayne pulls him off of them.
It will serve them, later down the line. Connington's suspicion of them will be taken as irrational hatred and overzealousness coupled with a rumoured envy for Lyanna Stark.
As it is, it only stokes their hatred for the man. They nurse their wounds and their hatred, and adopt the North's saying as their own.
We remember.
Benjen's letters to his sister are being read more extensively than any other. Not because he says anything egregious, but because Connington trusts him least of all of them.
They struggle to find a solution for it, until Ben leads Renly to the Godswood to show him a white raven with gleaming eyes, murmuring excitedly about wargs and a solution to pass secret messages to his sister and anyone else they wish to contact.
Renly has not been to the Godswood of the Red Keep before, but he thinks he likes it better than the Sept. He prayed for food during the Siege, and only the Stranger answered. He finds that he cannot kneel in front of the Seven without feeling like he needs to retch.
Ben only shows Renly the queer magic that allows him to control animals, and when he asks why, Benjen shrugs, "I thought you'd understand."
Renly is not sure he does, but oh he wishes to.
They are expected to squire for loyalists.
Jasper is picked by Oberyn Martell, who is greatly amused by his dislike of the Hand of the King but still wishes to keep an eye on the hotheaded future Lord Paramount of the Eyrie. As the Arryn Heir is older by two years, he squires first. He remains in King's Landing for the first year, then Oberyn takes him to Sunspear and around. There, he meets Arianne Martell, unofficial betrothed of Prince Viserys and Heir of Sunspear.
Edmure squires with a Tarly knight, and Renly is assigned to Monford Velaryon, the Master of Ships. Benjen is of the North and the Old Gods do not believe in knights, but the small council questions his loyalty when he tries to refuse his appointment. Queen Elia intervenes, and a compromise is made; Ben will squire, but no one will knight him. He is sent to learn under Alliser Thorne.
This is the first time they are allowed to leave King's Landing, and the first time they spend longer than a few hours apart. It is hard on Renly, who is the most reliant on his friends' companionship. He does not do well alone. He does not do well without Ben.
Renly is twelve and missing his best friend when he realises the love he holds for him is something the Seven would forbid.
He tucks this realisation away. He'll not see Ben for some time, he reasons, it might go away.
It doesn't.
Renly is fifteen when Balon Greyjoy declares himself King of the Iron Islands.
He should feel apprehension at what this means for the realm. At the lives that will be lost, and the possibility of his own death. He brushes with the Stranger again, six years after the Siege, as the Last Baratheon. He should feel something close to fear, or at least a sensible amount of caution. But he only feels giddy.
He will see his friends again, and his bannermen.