sixthiterationlogs | [closed] honesty is such a lonely word

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[closed] honesty is such a lonely word

WHO: Eddard Stark
WHERE: Jon's Cabin, #50
WHEN: April 20
OPEN TO: Jon Snow
WARNINGS: N/A (will update as needed)
STATUS: No

Ned had made a promise, all those months ago (had they been years? had it been a dream?) at the splitting of the King's Road. He and Jon on horseback, Ned to travel south to King's Landing (what a naive fool he'd been then), Jon to travel north to join his uncle at the Wall. He'd been nothing more than a boy then, though the weight of the world had already rested heavily on his shoulders, for all that Ned tried to do for him, for all he tried to shield him.

There were many times throughout his life that Jon had tried to ask after the woman who'd given birth to him. He called her 'mother,' though she'd never played a part in such a role throughout his life. Of course, Catelyn hadn't either, despite Ned's requests and insistence that Jon be treated as one of his own, regardless of his inability to carry the name of Stark. But each and every time Ned sensed the question curling up at the tip of Jon's tongue, there would be another, more urgent matter to discuss - or he'd placate the child with promises of tomorrow, of someday, of eventually.

After Ned had come through the waters of the fountain, gasping and believing he was placed in some sort of afterlife, he'd promised the boy - no, he was no longer a boy, but a man - a man with sorrow in his eyes and splinters in his heart - he'd promised him that he'd reveal the truth about his lineage, as he'd promised all those months ago at the splitting of the King's Road.

Now, in the living room of Jon's cabin, Ned could no longer run.

"Might I trouble you for some water?" Ned asks, knowing he will need it to keep his lips from parching like a Red Waste.

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"It is no trouble to offer you water, Father," Jon said, getting the cup and filling it for him. The novelty of having a way to have water indoors without pumping or drawing it from a well was novel to him even after so many moons but it was slowly becoming a part of his life, a part of this new world.

"You promised to speak to me about my mother," Jon prompted him. "I know it has to be painful, to speak of her, so I will let you tell it at your own pace."

"Many thanks," Ned replies as he takes the cup into his hands, allows some of the tepid liquid to bring life back to his tongue. He considers it for a moment, twirling the cup around against the table in his hand, as he wonders at where to begin.

He'd imagined this moment many times over throughout Jon's life. He'd wondered if the information would somehow slip when Ned least expected it, if it would come out in a spark of rage or sadness, if it would be scribbled on parchment and given to him after Ned had taken his final breath. Now that the moment's presented himself, all of those scenarios seem foolish.

With a heavy breath, he lifts his gaze to Jon's face with consideration.

"What do you remember of our family, Jon? My family line, specifically?"

"I know you had two brothers and a sister," Jon said, recalling what he'd been told as a younger boy. "Uncle Benjen was the youngest, Brandon was the oldest. Lyanna was in between. That's all I remember, though."

Jon wasn't certain how this played into the story but he would sit and listen and try not to interrupt.

"Yes," Ned confirms with a slight nod of his head. "You've got it right. Brandon was older than me by a year and first in line for becoming Lord of Winterfell. Lyanna was our only sister, three years my junior, and Benjen was the youngest of us all." He pauses, the visages of his siblings flashing through his mind one after the other, like ghosts come back to haunt him.

"If I repeat myself, please alert me so I may exclude what you already know," he says with a considering glance. "Lyanna had, of course, been betrothed to marry Robert, but she'd struck the interest of Rhaegar Targaryen at the tourney at Harrenhal. He'd given her a laurel of blue winter roses, rather than his own wife, Elia Martell." The moment all the smiles died. "The following year, Rhaegar captured and took her to unknown lands. We were unable to find her. You know the rest, yes? Of Robert's Rebellion against The Mad King?"

"Yes, Father," Jon said, recalling the story. "Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Lyanna and raped her. That was the whole reason that King Robert rebelled against the Mad King and why the Targaryens are no more. She'd died because of him."

The Targaryens had brought House Stark quite a lot of grief, actually. "Was my mother someone you'd met in the south, during the war?"

The recollection of memory is enough to make Ned exhale an upset sigh, hand coming up to rub at his hair-speckled chin. He gives Jon a brief nod at his accurate retelling of history, but then hesitates at his question. He taps his fingers on his lips as he thinks of how best to explain.

"No, she wasn't. I'd - I'd spoken of a woman named Wylla, and often said she'd been your mother." He lets silence fill in between them. "She wasn't. She'd been a woman I'd met from Dorne, but - she was not your mother, nor -" He clears his throat, shifting in his chair, leaning forward towards Jon. "I've raised you as my own, and I've never thought of you as anything but my son. D'you hear me, Jon? You are my son as much as Robb is, but - I had no hand in creating you." He pauses, allowing Jon time to wrap his mind around the revelation. "Do you understand?"

Jon frowned for a moment, trying to work that out. His lord father wasn't his father? He had the look of the Starks, though. Whose son was he? Some foundling? Some poor bastard with no name that Ned had taken for his own out of pity?

"I look like the Starks," Jon said, not understanding. "I have to be your son. I have the look of the Starks. Am I your brother's bastard?"

"I told you that were you of my blood, but - my blood is not only my own. It ran through Benjen, and Brandon, and -" Ned hesitates, keeping his gaze intent on Jon's face as he allows the final name to leave his lips with a particular emphasis. "Lyanna."

He reaches out, places his hand over Jon's.

"When me and Howland Reed had found her at the Tower of Joy, she'd already been flirting with death. I thought it'd been something Rhaegar had done, but - she'd had a baby - a baby she had me promise to keep, to raise, to take care of, and protect from Robert as it hadn't been his," he explained, each word carefully chosen and precise on his tongue. "It had been Rhaegar's." He paused again, giving Jon's hand a subtle squeeze. "She'd feared that, if Robert found out his lineage, he'd have the child killed. I knew her fear was well-founded, and so I agreed. I carried the babe in my arms out of the tower and brought him, her son, back to Winterfell.

That babe, that child was you, Jon."

Jon blinked for a moment, trying to process that. It was a heavy blow he'd been dealt. Not only was the man he'd known and loved as father for his entire life not his father, his true father was a rapist and kidnapper, someone who had been killed in the liberation of Westeros from the Targaryens.

"He raped her," Jon said softly. "He stole her and raped her, forced her into that tower and to bear his child. And that's where I come from, from a line of madmen and rapists."

Ned knew the gravity of the words he'd just shared. He can't imagine this could be easy for Jon, but - he also feels that the truth, no matter how heavy or difficult, is better than living in fantasy. It is better to know than not to, in Ned's mind.

"Now listen here," Ned begins, voice assuming a familiar sternness, one oft used by fathers and mothers alike. It isn't scolding or chiding or condescending, but it's firm. "I had no hand in creating you, that's true, but that makes you no less my son. D'you understand? It is not through blood alone that families are connected, forever tied to one another - just as your blood linkage to Rhaeagar makes you no more his than anyone else. We've no control over who creates us, their lineage, their past sins. But we can make conscious decisions in how we live our lives - whether we allow ourselves to be marred and drowned in sorrow and shadow, or weinstead decide to take up our own sword, create our own life, and forge our own path."

"I am the son of a prince," Jon said, weighing that thought in his mind, testing it, deciding whether or not he could bear it. He had felt uncomfortable with the yoke of King in the North but that had been before when he was the bastard of Ned Stark and some poor woman.

Now he was a royal bastard, son of the last Targaryen prince to walk Westeros. He had the blood of dragons and the First Men in his veins. It was a great legacy.

"They made me King in the North," Jon said softly. "But this...I could sit the Iron Throne, if I was ambitious."

Ned's eyes linger with careful observation; he knows the rapidity of men growing drunk with power, with privilege, with entitlement. He can see the familiar flicker in Jon's dark gaze, and instinctively, he straightens his back - sits more erect, demands more of a presence. Although Ned's own blood doesn't run through Jon's veins, he is still his father, for all intents and purposes. Ned is not one to let such a title be taken lightly.

He lets the silence settle among them for a few reflective moments.

"And are you?" he asks, tone even and cool, though if Jon were to listen carefully, he'd hear the trepidation underneath.

"No," Jon said. He had no desire to be a king at all and had only accepted because he wanted to do what was best for Winterfell. He had expected the lords of the North to rally behind Sansa, the trueborn daughter of House Stark, and had been shocked that they had made him king instead.

He shook his head and met his father's gaze. No matter whose blood he shared, he was still Ned Stark's son and he wanted to bring honor to that name and to his father's legacy. Being power hungry wouldn't do that.

"I have no desire to be a king, Father."

Ned visibly relaxes, both in stature and in the tension of his face that seems to evaporate all at once. His features soften almost immediately, and he reaches over at pat Jon's forearm lightly and affectionately.

"Understand that my apprehension is not due to any doubt casting shadows in my mind; you would be a very fair and just ruler, if you were to ever assume such a position," Ned explains slowly. "But those who allow the greed of desire of thrones and crowns and titles become so consumed by it that they turn to stone everything that makes them human. It is not a fate I would want for you, Jon. I have seen and dealt with it far too often in my life. You are meant for greater things."

"It is not something I ever wanted. It was thrust upon me and I feel like it is my duty to bear the mantle and do right by the lords of the North," Jon said. "But it isn't something I want for glory or power. It is a service to the people and the land of my home. It's nothing more than that."

They deserved a good king, a just king, and Jon wanted to be that for them if there was no one else to fill the role. It was his duty and in that, he was very like his lord father.

"Then you are a true and proper man of the North," Ned replies, all hint of trepidation and consternation instantly evaporated. His shoulders visibly relax as the rest of him follows suit, and he glances to the glass of water for a moment before flicking his gaze back towards Jon. "You would bring the title honor, and you would be beloved by all those under you. I haven't a doubt of it." He falls silent for a moment before adding, voice now steeled and warm simultaneously, "And I would be very proud of you, Jon."

Jon laughed a bit, trying to dispel his nerves. The only thing he ever wanted was to make Ned proud of him and it seemed that in this, at least, he had. Good. He wanted to be a son that brought honor to his father's name.

"I only want to bring honor to our family, Father. It's all I want for House Stark."

"I'd never once worried about your ability to do that, Jon, or whether or not you would," Ned says softly, easily able to see the casual air Jon is trying to feign. "You needn't waste so much time and energy fretting it."

He shifts back into his chair, tapping his finger on the wooden surface of the table for a moment.

"Is there anything you'd care to ask, while you have my attention/ Or have I exceedingly flooded your mind for now?"

"I just...why did you keep it a secret from your wife? She treated me so ill," Jon said, swallowing thickly. "And I never wanted to hate her, or anything, but she made it very difficult to care for her because she seemed to think I was some sort of blight on her marriage. If only she'd known the truth, perhaps my life wouldn't have been so difficult."

Would he have been treated the same as his trueborn brothers and sisters?

"I tried to change that," Ned replies. "Gods know I tried. But I'd made a promise to your mother, I swore it as she bled underneath my hands, that I would carry the secret with me. She feared .. she feared what might happen, if Robert had found out. And it was not an unfounded fear. If he knew your lineage, he would have rid the world of you by his own hands. They placed you in my arms, Jon, and I could not bear the thought of such a fate."

He'd always known how terribly Catelyn had treated Jon. He'd pleaded time and again for her to be kinder to him, but for as long as she thought Jon to be the reminder of her husband's infidelities, he knew it could never change.

"I'm sorry that you had to endure that. I only wanted to keep you safe."

"Lady Catelyn was loyal to you," Jon said. "And she was loyal to House Stark. It was only ever me that she was cruel to, never you, and I think if you had told her she would have protected the secret. I don't think she had loyalty to Robert so much as loyalty to you. She would have helped keep me safe too. I saw how she was with Robb and Sansa. She would have kept me safe if she'd known."

He had never been fond of his father's wife but he could see the good in her, too. She had been a very good mother to his brothers and sisters.

"But you are blinded, Jon, in your insistence that she could mother you as she had done the others. I haven't a doubt that she could have reared you as well as your siblings, that she would not have come to love and cherish you as I did. But to let her in on the true knowledge of your birth would be betraying the very promise I'd made your mother. Not a single person heard Lyanna's truth aside from me; she whispered it so closely, her lips brushed against my ear. I was the sole carrier of that secret - and though I trusted Catelyn with my life, with my children's lives and know she could never willingly betray me, I could not sever the pact I'd made with your mother. I could not risk the news from spreading, should someone have overheard us. Doing so would be asking me to dishonor my own blood." Ned exhales a heavy, weighted sigh. "I cannot change what has been done, nor can I rectify what wrongs I have made in my life. I am sorry, my boy, that you had to endure what you did and that I could not save you from it."

"It just could have made it easier for me," Jon said finally, letting the words hang between them for a moment before dropping it. When he was a small boy, too young to understand why Robb's mother couldn't be his mother the same as they shared a father and were brothers he had gone to Catelyn for comfort and had been swiftly rebuffed and put into his place as a bastard, an outcast and unwanted.

Wouldn't it have been better if he'd have been sent to the Citadel as a child to study as a Maester or to the Sept to become a Septon? Why let him grow up alongside his brothers and sisters and never have what they had? Why? Because of Lyanna?

"I never wanted to be Lord of Winterfell. I didn't want to be King in the North. They should have given it to Sansa."

"Yes, you are right; it would have been easier for you," Ned replies, without a hint of argument. Retrospect always made things clearer, and Ned sees now that perhaps it had been wrong - at least in Jon's case - to have kept the secret from everyone, even his own wife. He wonders how things might've been different, had he told, but he finds the simulation of such alternatives short-lived. There's no way to know for certain, neither is there a point in dwelling on them.

But he does feel remorseful in his heart, for having inadvertently made Jon's life harder than it needed to be, when all he wanted to do was do right by the boy and his mother.

"You know as well as I that, if Robb were unable to inherit the title of Lord, it would have to go to Bran and then Rickon instead," he says quietly. He realizes that neither of those names has come up in conversation, and he lifts a very wary gaze towards Jon's face. ".. Were Bran and Rickon - what came of them?"

"Murdered," Jon said, voice a little thick as he spoke the words. "Rickon was held by the Umbers for a while but they turned traitor to House Stark and delivered him to Ramsay Bolton after Sansa escaped. He murdered him in front of me. Bran, well, no one knows but it's assumed he's dead too. Arya is allegedly still alive somewhere. As far as I know, it's Sansa who is your heir now, no one else."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Sansa didn't bear the bastard a child. House Bolton is ended."

Ned slumps in his chair, fingers spreading across his brow as he attempts - however weakly - to understand. This is the fate that befell his children after his day at the Sept? Had they not suffered and endured enough? Were the Old Gods truly so cruel as to seemingly vanquish all that might be left of the Stark name?

"House Stark will fade," he finally says, though it's more self-reflection than a conversation directed towards Jon. "Your sisters, when they marry, will take on the name of their husbands. Even you, even you will not be able to carry on our name. Even if you weren't a Snow, you'd be considered Targaryen first before you'd ever be considered a Stark. There's no one to carry on our name."

"I am keeping Stark as my name," Jon insisted. "I was raised by House Stark. I may have the blood of the Dragon in my veins but it is the Direwolf that nursed me. It is the Direwolf that taught me how to fight, how to survive. I will not forsake the name that my father had."

Ned was still his lord father even if he hadn't truly fathered him. Jon would never call him anything else. He gave him a little smile.

"Sansa still uses Stark. She isn't a Lannister or a Bolton. She's a Stark."

There's surprise in Ned's eyes at Jon's admission, but straight beneath the surface of the fog of shock is a very obvious, very brilliant and overwhelming surge of pride. His gaze barely flinches, the emotion quickly falling beneath the veil of stoicism he so often wears, but he reaches out to place a hand on Jon's forearm. He squeezes it - lightly, but firmly.

"The Stark name is as every bit yours as it is your siblings, Jon. Don't ever forget that." He pauses, lifting his hand to pat Jon's arm a few times. "Our family is better for having you in it."

"I am better for having you as my father," Jon said. He wanted him to know that no matter how he'd come into this world, he would always, always consider Ned Stark to be his lord father and the Stark boys and girls to be his brothers and sisters.

They were his family, for better or worse.

"We could go back and forth all evening with words of praise for each other," Ned says with a quiet, breath of a laugh. "But you give me no greater honor than considering me to be your father, even now, even after knowing the truth. "If you have no other questions for me now, I will take my leave," he says, rising from his chair. "But should any arise in the coming days - whether soon or far into the future - I hope you know you may ask me whatever you wish. I will do my best to answer. I will not tell your siblings as it is not my secret to share; I will leave that to your discretion."

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[closed] honesty is such a lonely word

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this is the sweetest thread D: