"It's not the way of men to say they love one another," Jon said. Now that he was older, he understood it, but as a boy all he'd wanted was to hear his lord father say that he loved him and to feel like he was just as much Ned Stark's son as Robb had been. Jon never begrudged his brothers and sisters anything but he did, very much, want to be an equal in Ned's eyes.

"I just know that I wish I'd said it before I went to the Wall. I wish I'd had a chance to say it before you'd died and I never got to say it. You ought to know how much you mean to me and I don't want it to ever be a mystery again. We Starks need to stick together here in this place, all of us."