🍂 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]

"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."