a_better_man | Abraxas Inbox

[Mat glances up from his book, sprawled on his back in his own bed with the curtains open.]

Yeah, sure. What's on your mind?

[Half the time when Jon prefaces a question or statement with a warning it's odd, it's not as odd as the fellow thinks.]

Well, I was talking to Claire last night. We were talking of what might have been happening where I came from, with me no longer there.

[He is lying back on his bed, in a shirt and loose trousers, hands behind his head, not reading a book.]

When they summoned me here, I was a king. It doesn't matter here, but I was. And I was on a journey to meet a woman. She has three dragons, and obsidian besides -- I needed her aid. The North needs her aid. The dragons to fight the White Walkers, the obsidian to make weapons against them -- it's nearly the only thing that will kill them, and kill the wights.

I left Sansa as regent in the North. She knows nothing of me ever being gone. There's a chance that the woman I was going to meet will ask me to give up my throne to her in exchange for the aid my people need to have a chance to survive. My ancestor bent the knee to hers once, long ago, and hers ruled mine for close to three hundred years. But my people fought hard for their freedom. They bled for it. My brother died for it.

You told me there was a time when you remembered more of your own world than you had when they summoned you. What was that like? Had you just gone on, making decisions without knowing it, until you returned to yourself to find it all already done? Claire said there are some among us who think that's how it must be. But she says she thinks I'll do the right thing, no matter what.

[He sounds as if he finds this prospect dubious, but he also seeks reassurance that this isn't how it would be -- that he will not wake one day to find that he has given away the North to the Targaryen woman behind his own back.]

Edited 2024-11-14 00:52 (UTC)

[Mat simply stares for a moment, then shakes his head.]

Wasn't like that at all. It was like no time had passed at all. I was right back where I'd been taken from.

[Odd as it had been for there to be a seamless flow of memories when there ought not be. But it had been seamless, as though he'd never stepped out of the world. Only he had, and he'd woken up in his bed in Thorne and really the whole thing was a damned headache.]

That's how it was for the others I know, too. That went through it, I mean. So I wouldn't spend time worry about it, you haven't done a thing you don't know about.

[Jon stares back at him, then gives a firm nod, then sighs.]

Thank you. It's a weight off. I can't tell you how completely ridiculous it sounded, but, well -- I couldn't tell Claire that. [Never, in a thousand years, would he ever tell Claire that something she had said to him sounded even a little ridiculous. Not wise words from a man who wants to stay married -- happily, at any rate. And in all honesty, this was the first thing he had ever really doubted. Might be that he had just misunderstood her, because he had been so happy to be showing her all the Starks in their crypt.] And then I began to wonder, what if they were right? It wouldn't be the first thing to happen here that sounded completely mad before I saw it myself.

Edited 2024-12-01 02:59 (UTC)

Nah, magic can be odd. And we are hardly experts in how it works, this hopping between worlds.

[What do any of them know, save what they've experienced? And how many of them talk in any detail about this. Mat knows he hasn't, not to very many people.]

Better to ask than make the assumption. And lucky you, I'm right here to ask. It was damned strange. Left me a bit...off kilter for a day or two. All those new memories.

[Not to mention leaving him with a fear of being locked in rooms.]

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