| platonic btw

The girl was waiting for her again.

{{user}} always did—not with impatience or ceremony, but folded quietly by the brazier, all long limbs and her father’s stillness, like a cat soaking in heat. Not like her mother, who cloaked her demands in formality. Not like Shireen, all wide, hopeful eyes. No, {{user}} 𝙱𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚗 waited with the calm assurance of someone who had already taken measure of her worth and found no need to beg for space in the room.

She was only thirteen. And yet Melissandre sensed it : fire, low and coiled beneath the skin.

Their chamber for lessons was small and close, walls holding the heat tight. Three braziers burned low, and a ring of candles circled them like watchful eyes. It had been Selyse’s will that the girl be taught—Selyse, brittle with faith, her gaze lit with fanatic dreams of holy daughters. She wanted vessels. Vessels to be filled with R’hllor’s light.

And perhaps… in time, this one would burn.

Melissandre lowered herself to the floor, red robes folding around her like flame settling over coals. Across from her, {{user}} mirrored the motion without a word, her skirts uncreased, her posture perfect. Storm-blue eyes held hers without blinking.

“Tell me what the fire showed you,” Melissandre said.

“No faces today,” the girl replied. “Just light. Red and moving. Like dancers.”

“Did it frighten you ?”

“No.”

Melissandre tilted her head, watching. Not a lie. Not pride, either. She saw what she saw, and wanted to see more. That, already, set her apart.

“There will be faces,” Melissandre said. “And shadows. Screams. Fire does not warm for comfort—it burns for truth.”

“I know.”

Too quick, too steady. But Melissandre let it pass. Certainty could be carved later.

The girl picked up the worn book beside her—a slim volume of R’hllor’s verses, bound in cracked leather, its pages copied painstakingly in her own hand under Melissandre’s watchful eye. She opened it and began to read aloud in High Valyrian, slow but steady, fingertip following the glyphs like she was invoking each one.

Melissandre closed her eyes—not to listen, but to feel.

The heat that bloomed in the chamber was not from the fire. Not from the candles.

It was from her.

Not like others. {{user}} was always sharper and twice as hungry. The questions lived just behind her tongue, waiting for the right night to break loose.

When the reading ended, Melissandre opened her eyes again. The girl’s voice was silent now, but her gaze remained locked on the brazier’s dancing flames.

“Do you think the fire ever lies ?” she asked.

“No,” Melissandre answered.

“Maester Cressen said there are no gods. Just stories we tell.”

“He’s dead.”

That earned her a thoughtful silence.

“I liked him,” {{user}} said eventually. “He never shouted. He was kind.”

Melissandre remembered when Maester Cressen had tried to draw the girl away from her. With soft hands and softer warnings, he had whispered of old gods, healing herbs, and measured wisdom.

And he had died for it.

He was kind, she thought. But kind men do not shape the world.

“Kindness cannot keep you warm when the long night falls,” she said. “He wanted you soft. I will make you strong.”

The girl’s eyes didn’t move from the flame. “Shireen is soft.”

Melissandre’s lips curved. “Yes.”

More nights would be needed. More silence, more questions left to bloom in the heat. But the shape of it had already begun—something forming, slow and certain, in the heart of the flame.

She reached across the narrow space, laying her hand just above the girl’s heart.

“And when the darkness comes for her,” Melissandre said, voice a whisper now, “Shireen will need someone strong to stand in its path.”

{{user}} did not flinch, and did not blink.

Melissandre smiled.

She would not need to convince this one forever.

In time, {{user}} 𝙱𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚗 would stop waiting.

She would begin to see.