Game of Thrones - One Shots/Imagines: Part Three

Young!Robert Baratheon X Stark!Reader - Welcome Home

A/N - This chapter is based on the song 'Welcome Home' by Radical Face. In this H/C Lyanna was never betrothed to Robert Baratheon and was never 'kidnapped' by Rhaegar Targaryen. I hope you all enjoy it. 

You sighed as you rolled over in your bed, attempting to find a position that would lull you into a peaceful sleep. It wouldn't happen, you knew it wouldn't. The only time you really slept anymore was when you were so exhausted that you couldn't manage to fight the drooping of your eyelids, and you had reached that point last night. It would be a long time before you got to sleep properly again. 

Before you had met your husband, you had never thought yourself to be an anxious person. Sure, there were moments of self-doubt, the sort that most people had, but you had never struggled to control your emotions as you did now. Ever since your father had died you had been in a constant state of worry, and now that Robert had gone riding off to war with your brothers, the worry had only grown stronger. 

Lyanna had tried to comfort you at first, telling you that they would be fine, but it had done little to soothe you. Women far younger than you had been made into widows, and by things much less deadly than war.

"You know," she had uttered one morning, looking at the bags under your eyes with the worry of a mother rather than your younger sister. "When they come home you'll feel silly for all this fretting you've been doing."

You released a small sigh, placing your cup back on the table and frowning at her. "And if they don't all come home?" you murmured, sitting up a little straighter. "At least when I worry I am preparing myself for the worst. I will either be right and ready for what is to come, or I'll be pleasantly surprised." 

Lyanna rolled her eyes at your comment, sipping at her own tea with the air of a woman twice her age. Wisdom had come easy to her, and she had always adored spouting it off to you during your regular meetings.  "You are such a pessimist," she told you. 

"No," you corrected, shaking your head. "I'm a realist," you continued, your brows furrowing with concern. "Where war is involved men die. That is the way the world works. We've already lost Father and Brandon. I'm not sure I could handle another loss." 

"They know what they're doing-"

"Benjen is still a boy," you finally spat, your calm demeanour shattering to reveal the sheer mass of stress that had been hidden behind it. "They are all just children playing at a grown man's game, and we will be the ones who have to deal with the ramifications when they are all dead and buried." 

Lyanna sat quietly whilst you composed yourself, her eyes fixed on the table as though it held the answers to all of your unasked questions. "They didn't have a choice," she uttered, her voice so soft that you felt guilty for ever having raised yours in the first place. "You know they wouldn't have gone if there was any other way-"

You released the breath you had been holding. "I know," you murmured, shaking your head at your own outburst. "It just doesn't seem fair." 

*Time Skip*

The war is over. The four words you had been longing to hear from the moment your husband had left your home, and finally you were getting to read them for yourself. The letter Robert had penned to you was sweet, a note so full of the sheer adoration he had always held for you that you had resented your own mind for how it had allowed you to ever feel anger at him for leaving. 

He was due home just about as soon as they could tear themselves away from the capital, and then he would be with you again. Nothing in the world had ever sounded better to you than that sentence. Soon enough he would hold you again, and the worry would be able to just slip away from you. It would be completely glorious.