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Chapter Text

“Such a wee thing you were,” Ned huffs, leaning on his cane like the old man he isn’t, “- a real pair of lungs on you too - screaming with all your might,”

You could hear his wails for miles around - a tiny purple face, all screwed up with fury. It had run him ragged at first, all those years ago, but now the memory only makes Ned smile.

“I’d never held a babe before,” he muses, “- I had no idea if My Lady Wife had even taken to the birthing bed, let alone if we’d been blessed with a daughter or son,

“I’ll be honest Jon,” he confesses, turning to the boy with eyes as round as fresh, white eggs, “- I was terrified,”

Ned leans forward, resting his cane against the ice. He shakes his head, watching Jon watch him.

“You came early, you know?” Ned sighs, “-so small, the women thought you wouldn’t make it through the night, and your mother-,”

Jon stiffens. A long forbidden word to them both. How long they’ve waited for it to be spoken.

“Father-,”

Ned holds up his hand, stuttering Jon’s gaping mouth into silence.

“- I was ten and nine when the war began, and by the end, I’d spilled so much blood …I think most of us had forgotten things could be born at all,

“Any boy can swing a sword Jon, but when the smoke on the Trident cleared and I stood in the Red Keep-,”

The very spot where my brother and father were murdered.

“-I was both a husband and a Lord, and I truly felt that after everything, I was ready to take their place,”

He shakes his head.

“Then I heard word … about your mother,”

Something passes over Jon’s face, but Ned has the momentum to carry him now. It’s as if he’s stepped back from himself - floating away from the top of the world, with trees like splinters and Castle Black like a remote, glowing hearth. Distantly, and he’s grateful they are so high up - so far away. With the wind howling, the great distance from here to that rattling cage - the Wall truly feels apart from the rest of the world.

“She was already in labour when I found her - and I was there when they caught you, in the end,” he half whispers.

“There was an awful pause, waiting for you to-,” to live Ned remembers, that fear like nothing else he’d ever felt, “to take your first breaths,

“-and when you finally did, she reached out - called for you with … with what would be her last …,”

Steady Ned.

“…her last breath,”

She could barely speak then, Ned remembers, and her whole body was soaked red. They’d wiped a cool cloth over her brow as she sang to her little babe - something they both remembered from Mother when they were young. She pressed the tiny thing against her breast and fed him herself, even as life went out from her. She ran a gentle finger over his curled fists, murmuring nonsense all the while.

He looks back to Jon - the boy’s bloodless face drawn and pale.

“She-,” he whispers, eyes shining in the firelight, “-she’s dead?”

It hurts the same as it did fourteen years ago.

“Yes,” Lord Eddard Stark replies, “-she is dead,

“But-,” he interrupts as Jon leans back, hands trembling, “but Jon, please-,”

Ned goes to reach out, to comfort the boy whose world collapses around him like that ancient, stone tower. But he thinks better of it, instead-

“It had been a hard birth, Jon,” he tries to soothe, “- a long one, and she-,”

She bled. Jon’s mother was as strong as iron and would fight off a hundred men if the world would let her. But the birthing bed is another kind of battle - one that so many lose to the will of the gods, old and new.

Ned doesn’t tell Jon this. Instead, he sighs - sounding older than every grand-maester in the citadel.

“She wanted you safe,”

And there it is. There is the truth, in so many words.

But the Lord cannot stop now.

Can you do this Ned? he thinks as the boy clutches his own chest - shards of truth, cutting the boy's soul like glass. Can you really break the promise you made, all those years ago?

Yet he knows he has made so many more - to his wife, his friend, his sister and the wretched young man he sent this forsaken place. In the end, he must ask himself what means more. The debt to the living, or to the dead?

The Wall holds them high - alone as the two Northmen will ever possibly be. No shadows cast in the firelight - just a Lord and his bastard son - what more would any pair of eyes even see? How could they hear them, so far from the world?

“She wrapped you up in the sheets on her bed,” he continues, a strange, certain calm washing over him, “-she kissed your brow and made me promise to keep you safe,

“She beckoned me closer and had me take you from her,”

What a strange weight it was too. So light and delicate with flushed, wrinkled skin - still warm from the womb.

“She made me promise to keep you, to claim you - make sure that no harm came to you, and then -,”

Ned shuts his eyes.

“She told me your name - your first, given name,”

He swears he can still feel her breath in his ear, the damp sweat from her brow on his cheek as she pulls him close beside her - one shaking hand holding the babe’s soft-skulled head.

The last words of the rebellion, spoken like a prayer.

“I wish I knew what she said,”

Jon blinks, the meaning of the words settling on him like snow. His face twists - brows furrowed and lip curling.

“What do you-?” he starts, but Ned cannot stop now.

“Listen Jon,” he pleads, so far from the fearless Lord he once was, “-she was almost gone, exhausted, nearly with the gods, and all she wanted was for you to be safe,

“Her words were so faint - I - I’m sorry Jon, I really wish I knew,”

The boy stares as if trying to see the jest - looking for the trick in his father’s eyes. Ned wishes he could find it too.

“But I do know,” he sighs, remembering works like blood dripped petals.

Ned shakes his head, like defeat.

“-you were named by your father,”

The Wall stands silent as two pairs of eyes search each other, the wind screaming atop the icy fortress.

“-but,” Jon’s voice might as well be from Winterfell, his words are so soft, “- I don’t understand-,”

Ned opens his hands, as if to show him he means no harm.

“I promised her I’d take you, raise you as my own,” Ned confesses, “- and I knew what a choice that would be, for both of us - what a life that would give you,”

Ned takes in his boy dressed in black, shivering as frost settles in his tangled hair.

“-but it was a life, nonetheless and I-,”

Ned swallows.

“I loved my sister very dearly,”

The Lord almost thinks Jon didn’t hear him, his face is so still. Ned wonders if the gods will make him speak the truth again, when-

“Aunt … Aunt Lyanna?”

Jon steps back, his hands pressed against the icy edge.

“But - she died, Aunt Lyanna … she …,”

Jon’s words fumble like a blind man in an empty room, scrambling in thin air.

Then his eyes go wide.

“She was taken,” he breathes, “-everyone knows it, she … she was taken, kidnapped by-,”

The boy looks like he might be sick, running one hand over his forehead. His wolf presses into his side, nosing at Jon’s free palm, but even its silent comfort does nothing to soothe the wild look in his master’s eyes.

Ned can only nod.

“I don’t know it all,” he continues, words falling like a river over a cliff’s edge, “I wish I understood, Jon, I really do, but-,”

“What?”

Jon’s voice cuts through the wind - half a shout and half a sob - rising high and carrying along the snow-covered turrets and trestles of the last wall in the world. Ned raises his hands, swallowing a curse as he steps forward on his aching leg.

“We all thought the same, I thought the same-,”

He struggles for a moment, wading through memories he’d long hoped to bury.

“After the tourney, when he laid that crown of roses in her lap, the Prince’s interest … it was an open secret,”

One everyone thought would fade if we all looked away.

“When months passed and she’d disappeared, my Father and Brother, Robert and I - we all truly believed this was part of some great conspiracy or some cruel scheme,

“You have to understand Jon, the realm had been on a knife’s edge for years - like the gods had set pieces on the board just for us all to topple,

The Mad King had festered in the Red Keep for decades, he remembers, - perhaps it was only a matter of time before his rot spread beyond.

And when Lya disappeared, why wouldn’t we think his son was more of the same?

Ned sighs, running one hand down his face.

“It wasn’t until I received the call to Dorne and I arrived at Starfall to hear the truth from…,”

From my Lady, Ashara, he thinks, but now is not the time.

“From the sister of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Crown Prince’s trusted friend and King’s guard, that I knew that-,”

He shakes his head.

“Lyanna went with Prince Rhaegar willingly.”

By the Old Gods and New, Ned wishes he could understand. When he stood at the foot of that Tower, the greatest Knight to ever live dead at his feet and the blood of King’s Landing still staining his cloak, he had wondered what it had all been for.

When he left that same Tower one day later, a fussing babe tied across his chest, Ned Stark knew even less.

Did the dragon prince’s crown rob him of his senses? Did the doom of Valyria’s fading smoke blind him to such petty things as consequences. Did he truly not know what would happen when House Stark lost one of its own?

And Lyanna-

Was she truly so wild? Could she abandon them all, oblivious to the scars her choices would leave behind?

Did she miss her Prince, when he rode off to war? Was she frightened when the babe he gave her quickened, or when the labour drew nearer as she waited for word from the Riverlands? For word of its father’s fate?

Was she angry? Full of hope? Did she think she’d be Queen one day, even with her lover’s wife still breathing in the Red Keep? Did she think he’d set Elia aside for her? Or did she imagine they’d run off together, free of the throne to raise their child across the sea?

Did she hate him, did she love him?

Did he love her?

Those questions are as dead as the bones in Winterfell’s crypts, cold like the rubies in the river - not one of them will help their son, frozen in time with fire in his eyes, as he stands before Ned now.

“Jon?” he asks, taking a careful step towards the boy, “- I know that this is-,”

But Jon pulls away, shaking his head.

“I don’t, I-,”

He walks away from Ghost too, rocking left and right as if he can’t decide which way to run.

“And that’s why … Seven hells it all makes - of course -,” and Jon laughs then, a strangled, choking thing, “- protecting the prince’s bastard it-,”

The thought stops him again, his whole manner like a half-forged chain - missing and making links at random.

“A Prince’s bastard,” he repeats slowly, “-worse than a Lord, a Prince -,”

He laughs - a single huff that sounds more like a retch.

“Fuck,”.

Jon groans, his voice echoing down to the forest. Can Ned really bring himself to quiet him? Carrying this weight has been like holding in a scream, but the relief of sharing it has yet to come.

And Ned is not finished. He takes a look behind him, watching the way the braiser's flames flicker against the walls - listening for footsteps. The Watch takes no part he thinks again, and the Iron Throne is miles away.

“No Jon,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

“Not a bastard,”

The boy makes a noise, high and sharp like a knife through the chest.

“He was married,” Jon hisses - the weight of another man’s mistakes already like a rock on his back. Must he carry the sins of others all his life?

“He was,” Ned confesses, “I don’t deny it, but it’s clear Jon, think,”

Ned shakes his hands, resisting the urge to grab the boy by the shoulders - anything to make him understand.

“This man rode to war without his greatest sword - kept both of you tucked away in Dorne as far as he could from the fighting, and Ashara -,”

Ned sighs. He has to know it all. If Jon is to carry the weight of what his breath and his birth mean to the world, now is not the time to hold back.

“Lady Ashara spoke of a meeting beneath a heart tree - the last one in the south before they rode to Dorne, of ribbons and oathsand Jon-,”

What a Lord he is, pleading with a boy of four and ten.

“Even if that’s a lie - even if whatever maester or Septon decides what the law says and means - he’d claimed you before you’d even drawn breath in this world - gave you your name, and Lyanna-,”

Promise me, Ned. Promise me, protect him, he might be the last- those poor babes- and he, he-

“Lyanna might have taken your given name to her grave,” Ned decides, maybe in that moment, “-but she was clear what House he would claim you for -,”

How these thoughts had plagued Ned’s waking hours when Jon still squealed in his crib. Even if it weren’t true, he had mused in the quiet of his chambers, Cat sleeping peacefully beside him, the question alone would damn them all the same.

Perhaps the boy realises this too - his face melting in sorrow as a thousand truths sink in one by one.

“Who else knows?” he murmurs, his voice as grim as the grave, “who - is that why-?”

He doesn’t finish the thought, but Ned is just grateful for a question he can answer.

“Two houses - even then only one man and one woman living for sure,” he sighs, “Lord Reed was with me when I rode for Dorne - he was Lyanna’s true friend and will stay so till his dying breath,

“He took her belongings to the Neck when we rode north, all of them - I couldn’t bare to-,”

Ned pauses a moment, voice thick, but he has to recover.

“There is also House Dayne,” he continues, fists tight, “- two of their name were there when you were born, and their brother is, was a true friend, despite everything.

“One of their ladies even nursed you on the road North until we took to the ships, Wylla her name was - all of them sworn to secrecy,”

And so far have kept it, he thinks, like a plea.

“No one else?” Jon asks, his voice quiet again, like something has drained behind his eyes.

“Not a soul,”

A simple truth, yet one so hard to live with. It fractured his marriage, his family and his loyalty to his oldest friend - all before they’d truly had a chance to begin the new age they’d lost so much to make.

“Not even Uncle Benjen?”

Ned hesitates.

How he wanted to tell his littlest brother - the last of the House Stark he knew as a boy, young and green. Benjen and Lya had been inseparable as little ones, the former toddling after the latter like a shadow.

When Ned came home with his sister's bones, Benjen had said nothing about him nor the bastard babe in his arms - they’d hardly spoken of anything at all. When he’d announced he sought the Watch, not long after their father, brother and sister rested quietly in their tombs, Ned hadn’t tried to stop him. When he saw his brother again, months later, it was plain to see where something had frozen behind his eyes.

But still, the Lord of Winterfell is not quite the dullard the world believes him to be. Benjen has always been a joy in the lives of Ned’s children. When he had permission to visit his childhood home, all of Winterfell’s pups fell upon their uncle with audible, bursting glee. There was always a grin for Robb, a playful bow for Sansa - free shoulders for Arya and Bran to ride and a pat on the head for little baby Rickon.

But for Jon, there always seemed to be something more. Extra attention in the training yard, a few morsels spared at dinner - quiet asides by the fire or the shadow of the castle’s Godswood.

To the world, it looks like Benjen has a soft spot for the slightly scruffier, more solemn son of their Lord and Master. Born a bastard and second best, maybe he was in need of a black-sheep uncle to steer his way.

Yet Ned has seen the look in Benjen’s eyes - following the pack of boys for all these years like he’s searching for something.

Perhaps, like he’s already found it.

And the fact of the matter remains - ultimately, it was his brother’s idea to take the boy with no name north. Out of sight. Tucked away - with an eternal vow to cloak him from the burden of titles, destiny and the headsman’s sword. No matter what Ned’s final word decided - some understanding had passed between the second and third sons.

How Ned wishes to speak to him now - to tell Benjen what a fool he’s been. To tell him, no matter what he suspected, that some part of their sister lived on in the boy they both loved like their own.

Perhaps he’d know what to say to that very child as he swallows, pale and with tears in his eyes.

Jon must see the conflict in Ned’s face and either way, what more could he say to that? To all of this? The young lad, so nearly a man, looks out beyond the wall, the snowflakes dusting his cloak like ash.

“I…-,” Jon hesitates, not looking Ned in the eye, “- what do I-,”

He absently opens his hand and Ghost, the loyal pup, presses his muzzle into Jon’s palm. Ned watches how gloved fingers run smoothly over the wolf’s ears - a comfort for boy and beast - as Jon takes a steadying breath.

“I cannot speak of this,”

Ned shakes his head.

“You know what happened to the Prince and Princess-,”

Your half-siblings, he doesn’t say - the thought as foreign to the younger as the elder.

“- and the King’s wrath has not cooled in all these years,”

Once, Ned had watched Ser Gregor Clegane clean his nails - still crusted with flecks of rust-red to match the smear on the castle wall. Not a week ago, he’d pictured a young girl with silver hair - great with child - falling prey to the poisoned fangs of a perfumed spider.

Both times it was the blue eyes of his oldest friend staring him down, and Ned wishes he could say that he barely recognised the great booming boy he’d loved for so long.

But no - this was Robert as he’d always known him. Ours is the Fury his house words said - and the great hammer will forever fall on dragon’s blood, young and old.

You can’t get your hands on this one, can you?

Jon wipes a hand over his face, holding gloved fingers against his brow for a breath, and one more. Then he swallows, his eyes as dark as coal in the half-light.

You see now, child? Ned pleads, you see now why you must stay?

“What would you have me do, my Lord?” Jon whispers.

Be a babe again Ned thinks, remembering that squirming, warm weight against his chest. Let your only care be waking up with no one's arms around you, or wondering where your elder brother may be.

Be something small and simple, where your troubles can be simply solved and happiness easily given - a teether to chew or a gentle hum to lull you away.

Be that little boy I carried North like the treasure you were; too small to know what a burden you carry in your blood and in your name

But alas, Ned has not the power for such things.

“Jon,” he begins, wondering how to craft the right words that can soothe his boy, his first boy - if not by blood but in his heart, “-I,”

But then, as if answering a far away call, the Wolf jumps - startling them both. Ned had forgotten the beast was even there.

“Ghost?” Jon whispers, his voice shaken.

Silent as ever, the wolf’s tail stands straight as a rod and his front paws jump to rest atop the edge of the wall - nose pointing somewhere at the edge of the haunted forest.

“What, boy?” Jon mutters hoarsely, resting one hand on the beast's head as he scans the tree line. Ned gingerly steps towards the edge, following both their gazes to where the black leaves and spiny trunks leer like shades.

At first, Ned sees nothing - just the same, dreamlike landscape that greeted him when he first stood atop the wall. Unchanged in the face of the two men’s turmoil. But then he hears Jon gasp, leaning closer and … there.

Just to the west - a shadow, a shape. If Ned squints he can see something crumpled just where the wood becomes snow. In this light, you could take it for some stray log - a single branch stretching forward.

But the wolf snarls silently and Jon curses.

“Rangers” he chokes, staggering backwards - face still puffed and swollen from stifled tears, “-I have to, I have to-,”

He turns on his heel, pulling at his cloak. Ned can only watch as the boy falls on his duty like a life raft.

As he moves, a shadow falls behind them, blotting out the furthest brazier and Jon rushes to the cut hole in their watch post, shaking his head. He squints for a moment, Ned just catching the hurried flap of a long, woollen cloak, and Jon shouts.

“Rast,” he calls behind the high corner of the frozen wall, voice gravelled, “-get back here, Rast,”

After a moment a boy returns - a little older than Jon with a spotted, sharp-cheeked face. Wiry hair and black eyes, he breathes hard - as if caught in a dead sprint.

“Sound the horn,” Jon demands, grim and certain, like he has twice the years to his name, “-rangers returning on foot, in distress - we need riders to meet them on the tree line,”

The boy is red-faced and wide-eyed, looking between the two of them with something in his mind - as if he is untangling a looping, rigid knot. Rast stares dumbly like he hadn’t heard a single thing.

Jon growls.

“Seven hells,” he huffs, pushing past him - the call of duty something like the urge to flee.

Ned watches as both boys disappear, the white wolf on his master’s heels, and he is left alone. The wind hurries through his loose hair, urging him to follow, but the Lord feels frozen. Tethered here, in this moment.

Somewhere far away, a single, lingering note moans across the ice.