ulfur | The Sphere: IC Inbox

The Sphere: IC Inbox

[a generic automated greeting in a synthetic voice: 'you have reached the inbox of Ned Stark. please leave a message.']

It was a mistake I made, it would be hypocritical of me to blame you.

[But he's still upset and feeling somewhat cold. He can't explain why, only that part of him hoped that his father was a different man than him. So long he was on a pedestal, but how quickly he fell.]

Your mistake - and mine - was the despair. Not the temptation. Before Jeyne came, you were a dead man with a dead wife. As I am. If your mother never comes - if Jeyne never came - that means living out the rest of our days alone.

You know what I will return to. What you will return to. When our time here is done.

Jeyne was dead, but it didn't change my feelings. I should have held firm to my vows and been honest with myself. I wasn't, I was craven and coped with my grief and nightmares in the ways of a weak man.

I shouldn't have turned to her in that way. I'm tired though of being told vows end at death.

Not for me, not about her.

Then that is what you should do. If you hold to your vows even beyond the grave, I honor that.

I do not think it weak to live here as a widowed man when that is what one is. But you must follow your own heart in this, Robb.

How you live your life is your decision. If you find a woman to love, so be it. It isn't my way, but what of it?

But forgive me, if you continue with Eponine, I can't stomach it.

[ Eponine succeeded at least in one way: hurting the two of them and their precious time together. ]

Your way is suddenly clear now that Jeyne is here.

It will not happen again.

So Eponine said as well and I'm fortunate, but I still loved her even when she wasn't and as much as Eponine wanted me to, I couldn't forget or replace her. I felt I was still married.

I thought you would approve.

[But he's not sure what to think anymore.]

Thank you.

I approve of whatever path leads you to be happy with the man you have become.

I will simply say this. You would not exist if your mother felt that same way about her first betrothed.

Mother didn't marry for love. She married for duty.

Father, why does it matter. This is how I feel, why keep pressing it?

As did I.

I pray you and Jeyne will have the joy of a new life here together.

[ He remembers the babe Robb said they lost, and knows that Robb may never understand a father's desire to see his child happy and fulfilled in their path. It is a different one than he had walked. And it was good that his son would not simply walk in his footsteps but make new steps of his own. ]