6 It wasn’t what was promised!
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[William's POV]
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I had read in an article that at the moment of our birth our sight is by far our least developed sense, so when the Valkyrie told me I would be reincarnated in a baby's body I knew that I wouldn't be able to rely on my eyes to understand my environment, and considering my present state I was right to think that…
Currently I was unable to see clearly beyond 20 centimeters and not even 1 hour ago my eyelids were glued against my eyes so I was literally blind…
Due to this, the only notable thing I've seen so far was a breast, which was pretty cool until the time came to suck it. Anyway, I won't go into how humiliating an experience it was, it's bad enough knowing that maternal milk will be my only food for several months.
In the same article I referred to earlier it was also said that our hearing at birth is extremely sensitive, and I was quite happy (at first) to find out that just like the sight this information was correct because I figured that what I was going to hear was going to help me to understand what was happening around me, who I was, where I was and at approximately what year I was born.
And, well… let's start directly with the bad news, anyway, I had nearly nothing to say that wasn't; after having listened to several conversations, I had come to the conclusion that one of the men of my family was named Brynden and another Hoster, so deep down I understood what House I had ended up in, however, because I didn't want to believe that I had been sent there I had remained in denial of my identity, but now that my 'father' had just given me my full name I couldn't escape the reality anymore, I was a fucking Tully!
What's wrong with being part of House Tully? Well, the list is very long and in order not to discourage myself even more than I already am, I will quote only some points; the history of this so called Great House is by far the least prestigious compared to the others, it is not respected by the major part of its Vassals, it doesn't really stand out whether it is militarily or economically speaking and it rules over the Riverlands.
In the same vein as why I was VERY dissatisfied with my House (damn I feel unconfortable every time I tell myself that it's my House), why the Riverlands sucks more than any other Region in Westeros?
Here, the list was even longer so I will be just as brief for the sake of my sanity; this Region is one of the only 2 with the Crownlands which isn't considered to be a Kingdom (and in the case of the Crownlands the name is self explanatory as to why it isn't the case), almost all the Lords of this Region have a reason to hate at least one of their neighbors and since it is situated in the middle of the Realm and it is sharing borders with a lot of other Regions of Westeros, every time there is a war between Kingdoms, the Riverlands will most likely suffer greatly even if that war doesn't concern them...
Anyway, to illustrate my point I don't think there is a better sentence than this one (I don't remember where I heard it, but it stuck in my head); the King eats and the Hand takes the shit, the same is true of the Riverlands, the 7 Kingdoms piss and the Riverlands change clothes.
When it came to determining the date of my birth, it was a complicated thing to do. The only time reference I had at first was the fact that the brothers Hoster and Brynden were both alive and quite young based on their voices, but that wasn't enough to give me an accurate idea...
What really helped me subsequently was discovering that 'my grandfather' and Hoster's wife were still alive. If my memories from my not so useless researches on the lore of Game of Thrones were right then Hoster's wife was supposed to die shortly after giving birth to Edmure, Catelyn and Lysa's brother, that is to say after year 270. As for 'my grandfather', he had died at about the same time as Edmure's birth, which gave me the certainty that I was born before 270...
An assumption I made since I hadn't come accross any child so far was that I was born before 264, which was the year Cathelyn was born, but I couldn't be sure of that without another element complementing that reasonning and the fact that my existence had already caused a change in the flow of the original plot of Game of Thrones was a valid reason for me to treat every piece of information with caution.
The change I was referring to was that I was the son of Brynden Tully and a woman named Bethany to whom he was married, whereas in the original plot the reason Brynden's nickname was the Blackfish [the equivalent of a black sheep but adapted to the sigil of House Tully which is a fucking trout] was because he had always refused to marry despite being pressured by his brother...
Knowing this, I was conflicted on whether or not to treat this as good news because on the one hand I wasn't supposed to inherit the title of Lord of the Riverlands (yeah, that's supposed to be the bad thing here) and on the other my father was the only Tully I liked in Game of Thrones...
I mean, I didn't know anything about 'my grandfather' or 'my aunt' so I didn't know what to think of them, concerning Hoster, you only had to look at the generation of morons he had raised to have a bad opinion of him, as for Brynden, he was a war hero, a punchline machine and someone with a morality with which I could see mine align…
For example, if I had been in his shoes, I would have handled the problem of the maester in the same way he did.
And yes, I was aware of that little incident, the smell of blood emanating from my father's hands wasn't something I missed (I didn't remember what the article said about newborn's sense of smell, but I guess it was pretty sharp considering mine) unlike the woman who 'fed' me, but well, I guess she was too mesmerized by the money 'my father' offered her to notice…
Never mind, the maester hadn't left me with a very good impression of him anyway (I WONDER WHY), so I was preferring to think about the other major event related to my birth, that is to say, my mother had died giving birth to me.
When I realized this, the first thing I did was to get anxious because given the hatred that Tywin had for Tyrion for this very reason, I was afraid that 'my father' would also resent me for it...
However, it wasn't the case and that made me believe that maybe he didn't like my mother because the impression he was giving me was that he was happy that I was alive and that was all that mattered.
Personally I didn't know what to think, I was certainly sad that my existence had taken the life of 'my mother' but not that much, I mean, maybe she was a horrible person, maybe she wasn't, but either way I wasn't going to show empathy before knowing that, that would be hypocritical. I had a certain amount of respect for her because she was 'my mother' but that was it.
"Now that you've stopped whining, I think it's time I introduce you to your grandfather." My father said to me with a sarcastic tone seeing that I had 'digested the news that I was a Tully' before walking somewhere with me in his arms.
'So I'm going to meet the current Lord Tully.' I thought unimpressed since although I didn't know my grandfather, I was aware that Hoster was considered to be a more capable Lord than the majority of his predecessors.
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As our 'journey' to my grandfather was dragging on, I began to think about the future and what it held for me. Many questions were filling my head; would I be old enough to participate in the rebellion? Would I have time to meet all the characters I wanted to meet?
Every time I was asking myself a question, the only thing that was worrying me was the time, not the how or the why but the when, and there was a good reason for that; my wishes...
Knowledge is power, I more or less share Littlefinger's opinion on this point so my first 2 wishes were focused on that.
The fact that I came from the 21st century didn't mean that I had the necessary knowledge to revolutionize anything, so to compensate for my ignorance I had wished to have in my head all the knowledge that had been accumulated in my former world (needless to say, I made sure that there would be no side effects to this before I confirmed this wish).
For my second wish, I had tried to integrate it into my first one at the beginning by telling the Valkyrie that I would like to have in my head all the knowledge that was accumulated in my old world and the next one but she refused and even forbade me to make a wish of the same kind to acquire knowledge about the world of Game of Thrones, so I made a wish that would greatly facilitate my learning in general and that would prevent me from forgetting anything by demanding an absolute memory.
All this being covered, the last thing I wanted was to protect me from 2 of the things I feared the most in Game of Thrones; poison and magic. For this purpose I simply asked to be immune to both, the Valkyrie said no and she shouldn't have because after that I asked for the same thing plus a bonus while making her an offer that this time she couldn't refuse (and now that I'm thinking about it, depending on how much and in what way she wanted what i promised her, maybe I'm the one who was screwd here)...
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Asgard
At the same time
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6 gigantic 'women' in armor were gathered in a room similar to the one in which William had woken up after his death, they were sitting next to each other on a couch adapted to their atypical builds and in front of them was a huge flat screen showing in third person what was happening to William.
One of the interesting features of this flat screen was that it was revealing William's thoughts, "She shouldn't have because after that I asked for the same thing plus a bonus before making her an offer that this time she couldn't refuse..."
*CLACK*
After hearing this sentence one of the woman sit in the middle of the couch and who turned out to be the Valkyrie that William had seen earlier turned off the screen by snapping her fingers, "That's enough." She said, keeping a neutral expression so that her sisters couldn't determine what kind of offer it was.
All of her sisters turned to her with a curious expression, and the one on her right couldn't help but ask her the question that was on everyone's mind, "Knowing you, I doubt it's that, but if I'm wrong and it's what I hope it isn't, do you think that it's morally right for a 15000 years old Valkyrie to accept the promise coming from a 17 years old teenager that once he will die he will allow the said Valkyrie to drum on his ass?" She inquired while being barely metaphotical and praying to Odin that there wasn't an ounce of truth in what she said.
The scene her sister had just described having ignited a fire in her heart that should never have been lit, blood of a golden color began to flow from the left nostril of the Valkyrie William had met and when she start to reply with her eyes full of an insane ecstasy it made everyone understand that the words she was going to pronounce were going to be fucking false, "Hmmm... I have no idea what you are talking about."
