[no amount of remembering the better things will make the bad ones go away]

[learned_to_die]

WHO: Eddard Stark
WHERE: The Stark Family Cabin
WHEN: August 15 and onward
OPEN TO: OTA; feel free to jump in at any point during his halluciations.
WARNINGS: None; will updated as needed

---

It had started with redness of the skin, first on Ned's hands. It spread like blood-red ink across the paper of his skin, up his arm towards his shoulder, down his back, around his torso. It made decades'-old battles scars scarlet and renewed, the pain of touch excruciating, as though the wounds had only just been made. And then, the heat. At first, he thought it a continued byproduct of the summer temperatures, but it was the absence of perspiration that had drawn his brows together in confusion and realization: he had gotten ill.

Half a fortnight later, having spent the majority of the time bed-ridden and unable to leave the confines of his room, the visions had started.

He’d first seen his siblings’ faces: Brandon, Benjen, Lyanna. He imagined Brandon’s death, simultaneously feeling the constriction of his airways as Brandon tried to rescue their father, and wakes to a coughing fit while gasping for air. Benjen he imagined in black, half-human and half-crow, taking to the skies and soaring back to The Wall. Lyanna, he had seen bloodied and ghostly pale, her trembling hands leaving crimson paintings against his skin with every touch, while the rage and pain and impending loss stormed within him.

Second, Robert’s face - glossy-eyed and slender, the way he’d been when they’d grown alongside each other under the care of Jon Arryn. He imagined them wandering the grounds of the Eyrie, practicing their fighting with one another, Robert daring him to draw closer and closer to the Moon Door. His half of these fabricated conversations are audible to anyone near enough - even through the closed door of his chambers. None of it makes any sense, especially out of context, though it’d be easy enough for someone familiar enough to surmise that Robert was on his mind.

Next, he’d seen visions of Catelyn at their wedding; the hatred and betrayal in her face when he’d revealed to her that he had returned from war with a dark-haired babe in tow, a newly born Robb still in her arms, which she clutched tighter to her breast; the way she’d peer up at him as they lay under their furs and in each other’s arms with only the soft glow of the fire as their audience; when he’d last seen her, outside of Littlefinger’s brothel in King’s Landing, the blue scarf wrapped over her fiery crown. He reaches for her, when he imagines her with him, hands and fingers fumbling in the air for a woman who no longer exists.

Then, he’d seen each of his children at varying stages of their lives, from birth to the last he’d seen of them: Robb at Winterfell, when Ned had left for King’s Landing; Sansa when he’d knelt at the steps of the Great Sept, silently praying for her rescue; Arya when he’d spotted her in the crowd, crouching by Baelor the Blessed, doing the only thing he could to keep her safe by signaling Yoren to take her into his custody; Bran, unconscious in his bed, unsure if he’d ever open his eyes again; Rickon in the yard at Winterfell, too young to understand the weight of the world and his father’s departure beyond a glaring absence; and, though not a child of his own creation, Jon at the crossroads to King’s Landing and The Wall, promising to tell him about his mother upon their next meeting. These memories are strong enough to make a weakened, unwell Ned weep, crying out for the family from which he’d been taken, his feverish mind no longer remembering he has four of them still with him, whether by fate or by the blessings of the Old Gods.

He floats in and out of consciousness, back and forth between the world of Westeros he’d left behind and the world of the village - his second chance - though he cannot seem to convince himself that the latter exists. He wonders if he’s returned to the Children of the Forest, to the Old Gods themselves, to the Weirwood back in the Godswood of Winterfell. All the while, the skin affected by the rash blisters and reddens, leaving smears of blood on the linens underneath - though, if there is one light in the darkness, the intensity of his hallucinations seems to negate the pain from the rash, and he seems blissfully unaware of the sores.

Comments

[king_in_the_north]

The delirium had come on with startling quickness, and Robb wished he had some small knowledge of what might ease his father's fever and his mind. It was terrifying to think that after everything, Ned Stark might be lost to them yet again from something as simple as this.

"Father, it's me," he said, watching as his father struggled with the fever. "It's Robb. You've taken ill."

He pressed a hand to his father's forehead as he'd seen his mother do to the children and himself dozens of times. Finding the brow warm, however, gave him little enough clue what to do about it. There was a bowl of water and a cloth at the beside that must have been left by one of the girls, and after a tick of hesitation, Robb wet the cloth, wrung it out, and then pressed it against his father's forehead.

[learned_to_die]

"How could it be?" Ned inquires, brow stitching together with confusion and bubbling panic. He cannot seem to reconcile the small child he remembers and the grown man at his side, though he would be hard pressed not to admit that there were obvious similarities between the two. Nor can Ned ignore the fact that this man's voice is most certainly of the North; the drawls and curves of his manner of speaking are proof enough of that. "How could I have closed my eyes for but a moment to open them again and see you grown?" There's less accusation and more bewilderment in Ned's tone now, gazing down at his hands as he holds them in front of them, turning them back and forth on their attached wrists, as though he might find an answer in the callous and scars that litter his skin.

He flinches at the feeling of the cloth, but settles down quickly enough once he realizes - and feels - the desired effect.

"You are my son," he says, hands lethargically back at his sides, eyes scanning Robb's face. "You look so much like your mother." The lowering in temperature thanks to the cooler water seems to bringing some sort of lucidity back, if only a modicum. After a long silence, Ned lifts a heavy hand to place it on his son's forearm. "I know what happened," he says, words slurring like a drunk man's but with far more conviction and strength behind them, however weak Ned is from the sickness. "Margaery told me about Walder Frey, his daughter, your chosen wife. How you've carried this guilt with you ever since." The grip on Robb's arm tightens slightly, before his hand drops back to the bed. "You've made me proud from the moment they'd set you in my arms, and -" he hesitates, mouth and throat dry and hoarse, before inhaling a breath and forcing himself to continue, "- And I've loved you since then. None of that's changed. There's nothing you could do, Robb, to change that. You don't need to seek forgiveness, because there's nothing to forgive."

[king_in_the_north]

So Margaery had told him, then. She'd offered that day in the forest with the doe, when they'd found their way back to each other again, but Robb hadn't had the heart to ever ask if she'd gone through with it.

Eyebrows pinching together, Robb slid his hand into his lap and dropped his gaze to the cloth clenched between his fingers. His father was wrong, of course; there was so much to forgive, and just as he'd never accuse his father of speaking anything but the truth, he'd never seek that forgiveness, either. His burden was his own, and he would carry it for as long as he was permitted to live again. It was important, remembering the fullness of what he'd wrought.

"Thank you, Father," he managed after a moment, and forced himself to meet Ned's gaze despite the urge to look anywhere else. "We needn't talk about that now. For now, we need to see about you getting well again." He dipped the cloth again, wrung it out and dabbed it once more over his father's forehead.

[learned_to_die]

"These are words I should've shared more with you, while you grew under our care," Ned murmurs, half to himself and half to the man dabbing at his brow. "But such is not the way of the North." There'd never been a question - in Ned's mind nor Catelyn's nor anyone else who'd been in the company of the Stark clan - that Ned had ever been anything but proud of his brood, that he'd ever felt anything less than a bursting of love and honor to have seen them grow. But these sentiments were not things readily shared amongst men and their sons, even with fathers and daughters, though they had a slightly larger allowance for such things. Ned couldn't have known the fate that awaited him or the ones that were destined to the rest of his family, though he wished he could have predicted it - if only to have been more vocal and tradition-defying in his stoicism.

"Even if I were to be cross with you," he croaks, "It would pass as the sun overhead, and just as the sun rises and sets each day, you would still remain my First Born, my dearest son." He blinks up at Robb, trying to bring him into focus. "Should the sickness not leave me, Robb, I do not want you to live the rest of your life with that doubt. I will not say to not carry the weight of your guilt as it can serve as a reminder, but you need not bear the burden of the fear of having disappointed me. It is as impossible as all the seas of Westeros drying up."

[king_in_the_north]

Tears pricked Robb's eyes, and he swallowed roughly against the urge to let them fall, against the urge to plead with his father to please stop, to not say these things regardless of how long he'd yearned to hear them. He wanted to run away from the bald vulnerability of it as much as he wanted to climb into the bed and cling to Ned like a child.

"This illness is not going to take you," he said instead, voice made harsh with constrained emotion. "I'll be damned if I lose you again this or any other way. You'll be well again soon, Father."

[learned_to_die]

Once Ned had forced such thick, difficult words from his throat, he had settled back into the bed, his head on the pillow, eyes drifting shut. There is no threat of him falling asleep, his skin and body far too hot and uncomfortable to do so entirely. It's more to give himself a chance to gather his thoughts again, and to allow his words to settle into Robb's. He knows that hearing such candid talk from his father is jarring, especially after a lifetime of silence.

When his son's voice again fills the room, Ned opens his eyes and lets them search out Robb's face. He lays in quiet admiration of how strong the Tully side of his lineage has come through, strengthening over time. He cannot help but wonder if the eldest son and daughter had stolen all the copper for their hair, leaving only the Stark darkness behind for the rest who followed. The weathered lines of his face soften at Robb's words, his lips tugging ever so slightly into something like a smile.

"Old Gods be good, you are speaking truth and whatever this is will leave my body. But I could not risk letting all these things being buried again, in the event they see fit to close the book of my life." Permanently, this time.