sixthiterationlogs | [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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"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."

[closed] honesty is such a lonely word

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this is the sweetest thread D: