🍂 autumn fades

[tooktheblack]

WHO: Jon Snow
WHERE: 6I village, at Lucrezia’s Home
WHEN: 26 October
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: tbd

---

Jon had made a habit of going to see Lucrezia daily when he went to visit his family and when he didn’t see her for two days running, his heart sank like a stone. It wasn’t like her to be out often; she usually kept close to her home or to the inn and to not see her at all for two days meant that surely she must have gone.

The evening of the second day confirmed his suspicions completely. Her cat mewled and yowled, wandering about the steps and of Lucrezia’s porch seemingly in search of his mistress. It took Jon a moment to actually get the cat to come close to him but once he coaxed it near, he gathered him up into his arms.

“Barnabus,” Jon said quietly. “I fear she’s gone and left us both. No amount of looking is going to bring her back to us, all right?”

When Ygritte had disappeared, Jon had searched for her in the woods for days and only when he’d exhausted every hollow and dale that he had declared her truly gone. When Arya had gone, he‘d done similar.

Now, though, he simply felt hollow and empty. He’d lost another person he had cared for in this place and there was no telling who might be next. Would it be his Lord Father? Would it be his sisters? His brother? Lyanna? Jon hoped not.

Armful of cat, he walked past the home his family lived in and down the road toward the inn. Possibly there was a bit of milk or something he might be able to give the cat so it would stop yowling for the time being.

Comments

[tooktheblack]

"I'll keep it," Jon said, looking down at the cat for a moment. It was a strange situation, him bringing a cat along home with him since he'd only ever had Ghost as a companion pet.

"Hopefully Lyanna doesn't mind having having a cat around the house. I'd like to keep him - I think Lucrezia would want that."

[king_in_the_north]

"We can take it if Lyanna has some sort of insensible hatred of cats," Robb replied, and tipped Jon a knowing look. "It would be an easier compromise than arguing with her, I expect, and I doubt the girls would mind."

He felt a bit bad for Jon, honestly, having to live with their aunt, although he supposed Jon's reticent nature probably made him an easier fit with a woman whose temper was precisely the opposite. At any rate, it was easier than having to live with her himself.

"It was good of you to give her a room," he added. "I think having her with us would have put Father in a difficult position."

[tooktheblack]

"You have a very crowded house," Jon said, giving Robb a knowing look. "Two girls, father and you? That's quite a full house for anyone, even a family like ours that wants to keep close."

He fell quiet for a moment before speaking again. "I want to get to know her. Strange as it is, she is my mother and I've got a chance here that I wouldn't ever have anywhere else. The gods have favored me to give me a chance to know her as a person and not just as a bit of history."

[king_in_the_north]

Robb had opened his mouth, but his ready retort stuck fast in his throat as he faltered. For a moment, he thought he must have misheard — Jon was so casual about it, and in Robb's experience, Jon's parentage had never been something he'd been casual about.

At length, Robb's brow pinched and his mouth worked, a dozen thoughts colliding in his head and none of them particularly helpful.

"...what?" he managed at last.

[tooktheblack]

"It's...it's a chance to know her," Jon said, faltering over the words now. He'd said it easily enough before because he'd had a chance to wrap his mind around it but now, questioned, he fell back onto old habits.

"I haven't ever had a mother. I've got one now, sort of, and I want to know her. I still can't think of her as my mother the way you might think of a mother - she's younger than me - but I want to at least know who she is."

[king_in_the_north]

"She's your mother?" Robb blurted, all astonishment and growing indignation. The way Jon so easily spoke about it — Who else knew this, and why hadn't he been told?

"Who's your father?" he demanded, knowing one thing for certain: The idea of his father and aunt behaving like Targaryens was preposterous.

[tooktheblack]

"Aye, she's my mother. I didn't realize I hadn't told you. We tell each other so much, I just thought surely I had," Jon said, frowning a bit when he realized he'd revealed something so intimate without much preamble. He hadn't ever been very good at the deeply emotional.

"Allegedly, my father is Rhaegar Targaryen. So far as I'm concerned, I'm still your brother."

[king_in_the_north]

Robb blinked, his head rearing back. "...you didn't realize you hadn't told me," he echoed, and then faltered again, all astonishment as he cast a glance about them. "It was that important to let me know, then."

The oversight was a punch to gut, added to now by the revelation that Jon was apparently a Targaryen — And of course he was, Lyanna going on all with her furious, infantile declarations of eternal devotion to her beloved Rhaegar.

Robb wanted to be ill.

He turned away, shaking his head and unable to look at Jon for the moment.

"How long have you known?"

[tooktheblack]

"I've still only been talking to Father about it to try and wrap my head around it," Jon said. He hated to see Robb upset, though, because no matter what blood might say, Robb was his brother.

"Obviously Lyanna knows, I'm her son. But I've only spoken at length about it to Father because I wanted to know why he hadn't told me, why he hadn't told your mother so she wouldn't be cruel to me. I've known for weeks now. I wanted to have a chance to wrap my own mind around it. I still consider myself a Stark bastard. I'm still your brother. No matter what."

[king_in_the_north]

The jab at his mother stung, but Robb was too acutely aware of the more painful truth of what Jon was saying. Never once had Jon spoken against Lady Catelyn, but Robb had long suspected that the simmering undercurrent between them had occasionally spilled over into cruelty.

Dropping his head, Robb squeezed the bridge of his nose as if he might assuage the sudden onslaught of information clattering in his head as easily as a typical headache.

"Did he give you an answer?" he asked, and swallowed roughly. "Why he hadn't told you?"

Being circumspect Robb could understand, but certainly there had to be a point when his father had seen that Jon was well enough qualified to hold his own secrets. It might have altered his entire life, it might have—

Robb sucked in an abrupt gulp of air, realizing that Jon might have been with him rather than at the Wall. Would it have made a difference? Would they both be dead now, or would Jon's steady temperament have prevailed over his own and kept everyone living?

[tooktheblack]

"He wanted to keep me safe above everything else. That's why he never told your mother," Jon said, swallowing thickly. "I think she was a good woman and she could have been trusted with that secret but he wanted to keep all of us safe from Robert Baratheon. He didn't want...he didn't want it to come out, even by accident."

Jon paused for a moment. "Before he went south and I went to the Wall, he told me that the next time we met, he'd tell me. He told me that he thought me old enough finally. I wish that he'd gotten the chance."

[king_in_the_north]

Not telling his mother, Robb could understand. She had been the best woman Robb had ever known, but she hadn't had his father's immovable steadiness. She could be fierce and even impetuous on occasion. But Jon...

"That makes no sense," Robb blurted, turning back to Jon, his face pinched. "He was going to tell you after you'd gone to the Wall and taken your vows? After you had no choice but to stay there? Did he think you a complete simpleton to not trust you wouldn't endanger your own life with this?"

[tooktheblack]

"Robert Baratheon was still alive," Jon said, not sure what he would have done in the same situation. "He was at Winterfell for all that time and Father was going South with him. What would he have done, if he knew that the man he'd chosen as Hand of the King had been lying to him all those years and had been harboring one of the last Targaryens under his roof? What would the Lannisters have done? Even if he'd been as safe as he could be, there's always people who listen."

[king_in_the_north]

"Who would you have told?" Robb shot back, lifting his hands in an impatient, beseeching gesture. "If you were old enough to go to the gods-damned Wall, Jon, you were old enough to understand how dangerous a secret it was. You might have—"

He cut himself off, shaking his head. "Your entire life might have gone differently, don't you see? Can you honestly say you'd have joined the Night's Watch if you'd known? Robert Baratheon wasn't going to live forever."

[tooktheblack]

"And what? I might have been a lord? I might have sat the Iron Throne myself? I never wanted that life, Robb," Jon said. He didn't want to be angry with his brother but it was difficult not to get caught up in Robb's emotions. Jon tried to keep a cool head; Robb had a right to be upset about something like this, didn't he?

"They made me king because I won Winterfell back, not because I wanted to be King in the North. If you ask me, they ought to have just crowned Sansa queen and be done with it but nobody asked me, they just did it. They crowned me. I didn't say no because I did what needed to be done. I wanted to go to the Wall. I saw Benjen and I always thought he was a hero, being First Ranger. I can't say I wouldn't have gone to the Wall again if things were different. I don't know. I don't know what I would have done but I don't think I would have been happy to be a lord. I know myself."

[king_in_the_north]

"I know that, Jon, but you might have stayed with me!" Robb blurted, surprised a little at both the admission and his own veracity about it. "You might've... I don't know, felt less out of place or... I don't know. You might've felt differently about it and you might've stayed. I never told you not to go because I knew it was important to you, you had your mind made up about it, your head all full of stories, but that doesn't mean I wanted you to go. If it wasn't for this place, I'd've never bloody seen you again."

He pulled in a deep breath and shook his head. "It never even occurred to me that you'd want to sit any throne. I know that isn't what you ever wanted. But your life still might've been different just for knowing."

[tooktheblack]

"Possibly," Jon said, shrugging helplessly. He didn't want to fight with Robb and while this wasn't a fight necessarily, he was angry about things that couldn't be changed. Jon wasn't certain he wouldn't have made the same decisions knowing - or, in another life, if he wouldn't have made the same decisions as Ned Stark.

"But our lives are what they are now, Robb. We can't...we can only move forward. Besides. I don't want to think of you as just my cousin. You're my brother."

[king_in_the_north]

"No, of course not—" Robb quickly replied with a shake of his head, reaching to give Jon's shoulder a squeeze. "Of course you're my brother, you'll always be my brother." Even had they known about Jon's parentage earlier, they couldn't help but be brothers, raised as they were.

"Are you all right?" he finally thought to ask, swallowing back the shame at having reacted so violently without thinking of Jon's feelings first. One thing was for certain: He'd have to watch what he said about Aunt Lyanna now, however much they seemed doom to clash.

[tooktheblack]

"I'll be all right," Jon promised. "I've got you and Sansa and Father." He had Lyanna too, whatever role she'd end up taking in his life, but that was more complicated than the siblings and father he'd grown up with.

"I'll...I've got my family. I thought I didn't have any family when I went to the Wall. Now I do."