Ned
He had disappeared a week ago, and the Stark household had come charging to a halt. There was nothing else to do--a kind of helplessness Ned didn't care for, to stand in the frozen eye of a media hurricane. But Catelyn had taken it harder than anyone. He watched her now, standing in the middle of the living room, her hands wrapped too tightly around a mug of coffee that had long gone cold. It was a monstrous thing, to lose a child.
“They’re going to find him, mom.” Robb, their eldest, lingered awkwardly in the doorway. It wasn’t reasonable to keep him home any longer, him or his sister, though Cat had made it clear she’d rather they never leave her sight again. Ned was sorry to be one more absence. But Robert could only carry on so long, and leaving Robert to his own devices was a dangerous game.
“Go, you two. You’ll be late,” said Ned, not unkindly. Robb took Sansa by the elbow and led them both out the door. Sansa, poor girl, old enough to understand what was happening and not old enough to do much about it. Not that any of them could.
A little boy’s voice broke the silence. “Give it back! ”
No sooner had Ned turned around than a big grey dog came barreling through the doorway, a ragged-looking stuffed bear caught in his jaws. Ned’s youngest daughter was close at his heels. The dog stopped barely short of running into Ned, and she ran directly into him, tripping herself and ending up in an ungainly dog-girl pile on the floor. Rickon, out of breath on his short little legs, came stumbling in after them. “Nymerian took my bear!”
“We were just playing,” said Arya quickly. Nymerian dropped the bear and shifted into his favorite form as a ferret, scampering up onto her shoulder. “Here, take your stupid bear.” She threw it.
“You should let your mother rest,” said Ned. Rickon failed to catch the bear, and cried out in anguish, collapsing down right there on the floor like he was about three seconds away from throwing a tantrum. His dæmon shifted into a bird and picked it up with her beak, depositing it back into his arms.
“There’s no one else to play with, and he’s too little to be any fun,” Arya complained. “Can I go play outside?” Arya was nine, and not coping very well with her mother’s new stay-at-home order. Every day since Bran had disappeared she’d asked if she could play outside, and every day the answer had been no.
“Soon,” he promised, though he had no real idea how long it would be. At least until they found the children. And he hoped to God that would be soon enough. Arya was resilient, and she accepted her defeat with a meager huff, tearing out of the room, Rickon not far behind.
Ned sighed. “I’m gone.”
“Go,” said Cat, giving him a little smile that looked painful. “You’re needed."
“You’ll be alright?”
“I’ll be alright.”
Ilona, his direwolf dæmon, leaned down to Cat’s little rabbit Pysari, with all the gentleness such a big creature could manage. “Robb is right. They’ll find him.”
Cat nodded. “Go make sure of it.”
Coming back to work was a shock to the senses. Where Ned’s life might have frozen in place, the White House never stopped moving—Someone was always hurrying somewhere, never short of crises to avert. He'd already fought off a half dozen reporters grappling for a comment. Just then, it almost felt like too much to bear.
“Ned!” Robert Baratheon’s bellowing voice rang in his ears. “Thank God. This place doesn’t run without you.”
It wasn’t the most heartening thing to hear, from the leader of the free world. “Will you have someone fill me in?” He knew better than to ask the President about what went on in the White House.
Robert waived his hand. “I’m sure there’s a briefing on your desk. God, It’s good to have you back.”
“I hope you won’t take it personally that I should rather be home.”
Robert furrowed his thick brow. “I’m sorry about your boy,” he said, and Ned didn’t doubt he meant it. It didn’t make this any more pleasant. “How’s Cat?”
“Staying home with our youngest.”
“We’ll find the bastard who’s doing this, Ned,” Robert said, clapping him on the shoulder with a gruff sort of finality. All the manpower of the United States government, he thought. If you can’t find him, Robert, who will?,
His office looked exactly the same as he’d left it, save the untouched and growing pile of paper that had been steadily collecting on his desktop. He moved the stack to the floor so he’d at least have somewhere to work. A warm welcome indeed. So this was what he was giving up his wife for: Paperwork.
“You’re back.”
He looked up. Of course. He couldn’t have expected to avoid her for long. “Barely. Whatever you need, I probably don’t know.”
“I don’t need anything.” Cersei Lannister spent far too much time in the west wing, for someone with no actual position. Ned didn’t like her. Her father was bad enough on his own, but Lannisters were all the same: entitled and overcrowding, with their hands in every damn political pot they could nepotize their way into.
Ned sighed. He had too much catch-up work to be playing word games with the first lady. “Mrs. Baratheon, I’m very busy. If you don’t need anything…”
It was then that Vasalis joined her, slipping silently in the doorway. He was surprisingly subtle, for his size, Ned had always thought he moved more like a fox than anything. But there was no denying what he was. Ned was suddenly face to face with a lion, massive and imposing. He should’ve dwarfed her. She wasn’t a very large woman, it should’ve been ridiculous. But it wasn’t. One way or another, Cersei stood tall enough to match. She smiled. Ned hated her smile.
“Of course you are,” she said, raising her hands, as if in surrender. He knew better than to think it was. “And at home, too. It must be impossible for you.”
At his side, Ilona bristled. “I’m managing.”
“No one would fault you if you chose to step down, for a while,” she said, softly, almost sounding genuine. Almost. “You should be with your family.”
“I’ve already taken more time than I can afford,” he said.
She nodded. “Well, good. I’m glad. Robert can’t burn through another chief of staff already, you’re so new as it is.”
“Thank you.” He sat down behind his desk, all but bracing himself. “Is that all?”
“No.” So she did need something. No surprise there. “They want to know if you’re coming tonight.”
“To what?” Robert hadn’t mentioned anything, but chances were that he’d forgotten too. The irony, of the whole mess, was that the woman in front of him probably knew more about the state of the union than the President did. Not that it was a high bar.
“It’s a conference,” she said. “To talk about the missing children.”
Ned closed his eyes. Nothing sounded more torturous. Sitting around with Robert and Tywin, with politicians and officials, with whatever experts they managed to scrape up as if there were an expert in the world who knew anything about this . But he’d promised Cat he’d try. Whatever it took to find Bran. “I’ll be there.”
She nodded. He couldn’t tell what she thought of that. “I’ll leave you to your work.” He wished she would. “And, my condolences, Mr. Stark.” And she left the room. But her lion lingered a moment longer, one final look that left Ned cold.
"How do children just disappear ?" Robert demanded. He was hunched over the table, quick to anger and angry with the lot of them. Ned was too. But Robert's methods rarely helped.
"We don't—We're working on figuring that out." Ned didn’t recognize this man: skinny, easily intimidated, representing one of the half dozen agencies they'd invited to discuss this. They should’ve known better than to send someone like that.
"Dammit. This is useless." I agree. Although Robert was probably just being impatient. He usually was. Ned hadn't said a thing all night. He was only here because of Bran, and Bran was the reason he should be at home. "The press are having a field day. We look incompetent. You're all making me look incompetent."
Ned saw the first lady quietly take a sip of the water in front of her.
Why was she here, anyways? It wasn’t as if she had any sort of clearance, any sort of expertise. In spite of that, her gall was remarkable—She never seemed to question her own god-given right to do whatever it was she wanted. In turn, hardly anyone else did either. Robert had mostly given up. “I'm tired of hearing her voice,” he'd told Ned. “If it keeps her mouth shut, she can set up shop in the fucking Oval Office, for all I care.”
Maybe Robert's disdain for politics was enough to persuade him to ignore his wife and her conspiring, but it unnerved Ned. Tywin was an overpowered Vice as it was, they didn't need another Lannister tipping the scales. In fact, it was almost a miracle his sons weren't doing the same. True, Jaime Lannister spent a great deal of time at the White House, but he'd never run for office, as everyone assumed he would. Most people thought he could've won his father’s old California senate seat, if he’d tried. But he'd gone straight to West Point, and Iraq after that. And Tywin wasn’t exactly jumping to do his youngest son any favors.
“We should call in the military,” someone suggested.
“And do what with them?” It was Tywin himself who spoke, his cool, patronizing voice. “Parade them around like showboats? Fire a warning shot? Or shall we just assign a guard to every child in America?”
“How do you not have anything on this yet?” Robert yelled in the face of the CIA director, a bald and eccentric man called Varys. Ned liked him better than Tywin—but not by much.
"I have my best people on it."
"Your best people are idiots."
"Your best people can't seem to get much done either," said Cersei. Ned closed his eyes to spare himself the look on Robert's face.
"You need to make a statement. You look like you’re spinning your wheels." Tywin was both the voice of reason, in meetings like this, and the man Ned was most apprehensive about. He’d seen the cartoons in the Times like everyone else: the puppetmaster caricature of Tywin, pulling Robert’s strings, the eagle leading the boar. Anyone with sense knew there was some truth to it.
“I’ll have something drafted for the press briefing Monday. ” The communications director, Petyr Baelish, with a fox for a dæmon. Ned didn’t know what to make of him. “In the meantime, sir, I think you should call the families. Let them know their president hasn’t forgotten about them.”
Robert frowned. “How many are there?”
“Fourteen.” said Varys. “From thirteen families. Two were brothers.”
“Very well.” said Robert. “Yes, arrange it.” Several people made a note.
“Cersei will speak too,” said Tywin.
She looked surprised. “At the briefing?”
“No, not to the press. To Americans at home. We’ll arrange you a slot on primetime.”
“Why?” demanded Robert.
“Because she’s a mother. Every mother in America is worried about her children, the president’s wife should be seen to empathize with them.”
“On national news,” said Baelish, an inexplicable smile.
“Precisely.” From the back of his chair where she was perched, Tywin’s golden eagle Pyrros readjusted her wings. “The speech doesn’t matter, Baelish. Make it fluff.”
It made Ned sick to hear these families discussed so flippantly, as constituents to be appeased, items to be checked off a list. Would Robert make a call to him, as well? Would Cersei Lannister play the bleeding-heart mother to win the love of his wife? There were times when governing felt more like a performance than a reality, a play-act of the jobs they all purported to do. He stood. “Excuse me.”
“Where the hell are you going?” asked Robert.
“Just let him go,” said Cersei. For once, he was grateful. Leave them to their games, he thought, as he pushed through the door, headed back to his office to pack up his things. His wife was waiting for him. That was more important than this farce of a conference. Good luck, Robert. He’d need it.
They all would.