🍂 autumn fades

[tooktheblack]

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

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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 am more wolf than dragon," Jon said. This he said emphatically, knowing it to be true, because it was the wolf that taught him to be loyal and the wolf that taught him to survive. He inherited none of that from the dragon.

His dark hair and eyes, his long face - those were of the wolf, too, and none of the Targaryen who fathered him. So far as Jon was concerned, Lyanna was his mother, yes, but he was Stark through and through.

[learned_to_die]

"There wouldn't be a fool in all of Westeros who'd say differently," Ned agrees with an emphatic nod. The fact of his wolf lineage is how Ned was so easily able to sell the myth of having had an affair so early in his marriage. Had he returned with a child with silver hair or violet eyes or skin as pale as cream, he'd never had been able to convince the others that he'd been Jon's father. "You were meant to be a Northerner."

[tooktheblack]

Jon laughed a bit. "I was always meant to be a northerner, both by looks and by actions. I rarely smile, Father, and they say that is a northern trait."

He gave his father a long look, trying to assess him as an outsider. "How did a northern man end up with a southern wife anyway?"

[learned_to_die]

"I am afraid you learnt such a thing from me," Ned replies, allowing aforementioned rarity of a smile to flash through, followed by a rumbling burst of laughter. Lord Eddard Stark, a man with cold eyes to reflect the coldness of his heart. Words said only by those who knew him least.

"You'd not been told the story of my family? Your uncle and grandfather?" Ned asks, brows lifted with surprise.

[tooktheblack]

"I know some of it," Jon admitted. "Though I didn't pay much attention to the parts that involved Lady Catelyn. I was more focused on the part where the Mad King had your brother and father executed."

That had been particularly important and had colored his opinion of Targaryens deeply - it seemed that it would take a lot of other evidence to undo that particular bit of history.

"But I don't know anything about your wife."

[learned_to_die]

Ned nods solemnly, still obviously deeply affected by the events, regardless of how long ago they had taken place. He remembers encountering Jamie Lannister in the Throne Room at King's Landing, how he'd had the audacity to bring up the deaths of Brandon and his Father, pointing out the very locations in which they'd been killed.

With a passing tenseness in his jaw, Ned exhales a bit of a sigh.

"Lady Catelyn had been betrothed to my elder brother, Brandon, when she was twelve. An arrangement between my father and hers. When your uncle was on his way back to Riverrun, he'd heard about our sister's disappearance. He immediately altered his path and rode south to King's Landing instead, where he was executed with my father - as you already know. Following his death, Lord Tully arranged for she and I to wed instead." He offers a wry smile. It's obvious to all who know Lady and Lord Stark that their love for each other saw no bounds, but he'd certainly had his doubts on all the days leading to the wedding. "That is how a northern man finds a southron wife."

[tooktheblack]

"Through duty," Jon said after a few moments, letting the words wash over him. Still, they had seemed to love one another very much and in spite of his own misgivings about Catelyn, he couldn't deny that she'd been a good mother to his siblings and a good wife to his father.

"I used to wish I was Robb, that she would love me and that I would find someone to love the way you had. I can see now that I was never meant to have that life. I was meant for something else, for forging my own way in the world."

[learned_to_die]

"Aye, through duty, at first. Don't misunderstand me; I'd not trade the life I had with her for anything," Ned says, a creeping fond sadness in his voice. "But it took many years before we were able to be as we were when you knew us." Indeed, they'd been nothing more than strangers the night of their wedding. He'd met her before, of course, but had always known her as his brother's betrothed. He'd seen her through the lens of a future sister-in-law, bound together through family, but never anything more. It took some time for him to switch the light in which he viewed her, from sister-in-law to wife.

"We cannot all walk down the same paths as those around us. We'd wear the earth beneath our feet until we fell through to the other side, if that were the case." He considers Jon for a few moments. "But there isn't a reason for you not to find yourself a wife, if that's the sort of life you wish to have."

[tooktheblack]

"I don't know that it is. I just...there are more opportunities open to me now," Jon admitted. "There are things I can pursue that aren't barred to me because I was born a bastard."

This place didn't care about his birth. It only cared that one worked hard and provided what was necessary for survival. That was something Jon could do with ease.

[learned_to_die]

"In truth, it shouldn't have mattered before, either," Ned admits, sorrow painting his words and tone. "It shouldn't've mattered as much as it did. But I'm glad you've been able to establish yourself a life here, Jon. Truly. I hope you're able to remember that I only wanted the best for you, even if it wasn't always what you'd received."

[tooktheblack]

"I will remember that, Father," Jon said, giving him a soft smile. "I know you only wanted the best for me. I...I know you had to make difficult choices to keep me safe. I don't want you to carry that guilt."