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It begins with dragons in the North.
Lord Eddard Stark has yet to become reaccustomed to his solar. The Boltons have made little mark on the space - the same furnishings hang on the walls, the desk still faces the window as it has since he was a boy. Even the stack of leather-bound books are as neatly ordered as he left them.
Nevertheless, Ned does not sit easy. Many years have passed, and he has fought too long and too hard for this chair to feel so comfortable so soon. After a month, the room has yet to revert to the quiet retreat it had once been - that sunlit, soft-furnished space it was when his children still toddled below his knees.
Indeed, his Lord’s study remains a council of war. The seige is over, but there is always the winter, let alone what trouble still rages in the south. Now is not the time to trust in the snow to save them till spring, and the wolves will not be caught unawares again.
Stewards come and go, Lords and Knights too - but at the end of a long, tiresome morning, only four remain to sift through the maps and papers littering the table. Cat stands with one hand on his shoulder and the other around a long roll of parchment - a list from the castle stores dangling from her fingers. Across from him, Robb pours over rough drawings of the castle’s defences - walls he’d played at as a boy now his responsibility to repair and man. Beside him sits Jon.
Yes, Jon. What to make of him.
Just a few months ago, it had been many moons since he’d last seen the young man before him. Even now, the thought makes Ned flinch. It was a departure fraught with many words, harshly spoken. Many burdens unshouldered. The truth, finally shared.
Fleeing King’s Landing to Whiteharbour and kept far from his lady in the Riverlands, Ned barely remembers being smuggled to Castle Black, half lost to the delirium of milk of the poppy - no doubt not only for his pain, but the knowledge that his saviours could not take his daughters too. Ned remembers little still of the Night’s Watch, where he played the invalid better than the ousted Lord - something of crumbling stone and creaking floors. That infernal raven crying day and night (corn! snow! corn!).
But somehow, in the shadow of plots and politics, the rising tide of civil war and that cursed raven’s cries, Ned found time, or perhaps time found him, to keep his parting promise to his bastard son. (snow! king! snow!)
The days that followed were little more than a fever dream; cries in the God’s wood, the hot sands of Dorne in the winter snow. Two names Ned Stark had not spoken so often in four and ten years.
(Never mind what it was that came next - a hand in the frost, blue eyes in the dark and a dead man set alight in the Lord Commander’s chambers).
But no matter what madness raved in the hours that followed, Ned had spoken too much. Though the watch claims to be beyond the lowly dealings of kings and men, all it took was watchers in the dark, whispers along the halls (king! king! king!).
This is where a promise could get you. A great Lord retreating to Castle Black was one thing, but another when his poorly placed words revealed his natural son to be no child of his at all. Now the Brotherhood to which Jon would have sworn his life could no longer be the home he craved.
So the bastard became the exile.
Salty tears in those grey, grey eyes - Ned had asked himself, as he watched a horse ride further and further away, if he was keeping a promise, or if it was finally broken.
And yet, seemingly a lifetime later, here he is. Jon sits barely a few feet away in the safety of Ned’s solar, back under the roof of his childhood home. So much has happened between then and now - between themselves and, it seems, every family walking the Seven Kingdoms. To have even one of Ned's pups back with him is a rare blessing in this endless, endless war.
If only Jon were not dressed in red.
It cuts deeper when he sits beside Robb- once rarely seen without the other. The eponymous “Boys” of Winterfell, reunited. Both are still dressed in their armour - a shared wisdom to be prepared, if only in leather and mail. But while Robb wears familiar furs of grey and blue, the wolf running proudly across his chest, Jon stands beside him like a blood dripped shadow. Black upon black upon ruby red, there is a heraldry Ned once believed he would never see fly this side of the Narrow Sea again - let alone in his own family home.
But Ned knows himself the fool. Nodding in his musings as his wife and son discuss plans for re-manning the wall at sundown, his mind wanders south. It is not in his right to snub the cloak Jon wears, not after what that banner, and its new bearer, have brought him. Where would they be without its word from afar - of the chaos in Dorne, the Reach and the Stormlands? How would they have known of the Red Keep’s distraction and the opportunity to strike? What would they have done without his counsel to Bear Island, to Whiteharbour and to Last Hearth - carrying word of Winterfell’s wolves among the North’s remaining sons and daughters?
How would House Stark stand without the gift of Dragonfire?
Jon leans over to Robb, pointing out some detail on the far right of his sketch. That has been his lot in the days after their victory - a trusted voice and ally as House Stark rebuilds. Jon knows this keep as well as any of them, and his alliances made with the great Northern houses are a vital piece in the puzzle.
But there is another alliance he represents, one maintained only by rare ravens written in some mereneese code. Jon flew North to aid more than the house that raised him, and Lord Stark has barely had time to consider exactly that should mean. Word of the victory travelled south some weeks ago, but they still wait for a reply. Dragonstone lies at the edges of the Crownlands, but Ned knows Jon is anxious for word from his-
The young man’s head snaps towards the window.
The Lord frowns, as does his lady wife, when both their hands clap down on their ears. A screech rattles Winterfell to its bones, familiar but deeper than the one that sometimes rushes through the Wolfswood, and Jon bolts to the window. From his chair, Ned sees the courtyard below doused in shadow and a great dark shape disappears over the eastern towers.
It is time.
The door flies open to reveal a boy of four and ten, perhaps one of Umber’s brood, with flushed cheeks and heavy breath.
“My Lord, come quick, there’s -“
But before Ned can answer, Jon is already halfway to the door, pulling his cloak over his shoulders and adjusting the belt on his hips.
“Where?” he asks the young lad, who only stutters.
“The main gate, across the hill it - it - it’s huge ,”
That’s all Jon needs to hear. Pulling on his gloves, he rushes through the corridor, murmuring thanks to the young page as he goes.
The Starks have no choice but to follow, though Cat catches Ned’s arm with a tightness in her jaw. After near twenty years of marriage, he can read her like a book. Even in such strange times, Ned knows his wife shall never delight in following her husband’s bastard.
But this is not the time to argue. Ned, followed by his lady and his son, chases after Jon's cloak as they rush down the tower stairs, the edges of red cloth fluttering just a few paces ahead. Brushing past stewards, servants and sers alike, Jon forges a path past the kitchens and into the courtyard.
The castle thunders around them - maids and kitchen boys running up the battlements and over to the gates. Horses shudder and fuss at their posts, and though the guards stand firm and true, Ned can see it in their eyes. This is no foe, but they’d be fools not to fear this visitor to their keep.
Pushing through the doors, Jon stops, turning to face Ned with grim determination. Behind him, Ned can feel that great, dark shadow, like a mountain, or grudge, but all the Lord can see is the spark in the young man’s eyes.
“It would be best if I speak to her first,” he declares, not quite a command - his intentions cloaked in practicality.
Ned has to agree. Yes, tradition states it’s the Lord of the castle that greets its guests. This keep was raised on such custom. However, there are greater, fiery things afoot. Such arrangements do not come naturally to the Warden of the North, but this should be the way of things from now on. That was the price they paid to have the grey direwolf stand guard over their ancestral home once more. The two men had not discussed it in so many words, but it is plain as day - when you accept the gift of dragonfire, their house words tell you what follows. Their blood. Their line. Their crown.
Robb and Cat flank Ned on his left and right - all three watching as Jon begins his march towards the twisting shadow - a single silvery shape resting between its wings. Jon’s cloak flaps in the winter chill, boots crunching underfoot as he makes his approach. Face hidden, Ned wishes he could know what he was thinking. All he can see is the painted sigil on his back, wreathed in black thread.
Ned feels a sea of bodies gather behind him, lordlings and scullery maids alike straining to get a glimpse. You’d think that the novelty may have faded by now - another great dark shape in the sky has not been an uncommon sight since they retook their home. But with this beast comes another, much more terrible spectacle.
With this beast comes a Queen - and now she must meet her Prince.
Jon had not asked, not once - there has been no kneeling, no titles, no demands of recognition. They have not even formally spoken of it - not acknowledged the ring on his finger, the sigil on his cloak, nor the raven scroll that Ned still keeps in his jerkin - a gift from the dragon queen, declared to all the Seven Kingdoms. A simple thing, really - signed with a few words, a seal and a name.
Jon’s name.
If he’s spoken of it to Robb - of his birth, his time in that distant city of Mereen, about his feelings on any of this, Ned would be the last to know. But now the castle is won - and in claiming the day, House Stark has chosen its final side. To choose here is to bend, and while the one who would sit the iron throne is a stranger in these lands, beside her will stand a man that, had you asked two summers past, no sane soul in the North would ever have guessed.
Jon does not run, but he walks with purpose, striding straight through the snow. One hand comes to absently brush his hair over his shoulder, and it falls long and dark over the furs at his neck.
Something twists, low and tight, in Ned’s heart.
He’d had curls as a child - wavy locks that bounced in loose spirals around his face as he charged after Robb through the summer snows. How often had he seen the boys go tearing across the courtyard with wooden swords to the sky, declaring themselves to be heroes of old - his bastard’s hair tangled in the wind? Ned had long felt those brown-black ringlets were a blessing from the old gods, and had thanked them quietly while the young brood of Winterfell played together like brothers.
On the road north, those first tufts of dark fluff had done well to soothe Ned’s worries, though Wylla’s idle chatter of other babes she’s nursed (and the ways their colourings had lightened or thinned as they grew) kept him awake more than one night’s turn.
Eyes he could explain, though that would prove another dishonour altogether - betrayal of a life never lived, a love truly felt. But when Ned rode to Dorne, Ashara’s child was already a whisper well travelled north and south alike. Should he have found violet in his nephew's face and not silver, it would have been a debt to House Dayne that Eddard Stark could never repay.
Yet Old Valyria had barely made a claim on the face of Lyanna’s little boy. Squirming as he was in his blankets with the tiniest hands Ned had ever seen, beneath the bright flush of birth it was plain to see the North staring back.
Like Benjen, Ned had thought, looking down at the bundle in his arms - though if he were honest his youngest brother was the only other babe the Lord could remember. A screaming devil, Ben was - he had fought every moment Ned tried to hold him, their exhausted mother running a hand through both boys hair. Even as a squalling babe, the youngest pup held all the well-worn traits of House Stark - features he would grow into as the years flew by. Dark hair, tan skin and eyes like steel - yes, both boys were the image of Ned’s father, Ned’s brother and Ned’s little sister. Those tufts only seemed to grow darker the longer they rode, and soon the little lad gurgled curiously, smiling wide and toothless with the face of home.
And yet, Ned had mused as Aemon the Dragonknight and King Daeron I battled valiantly in the mud beneath him, Lyanna’s little boy had hair that curled.
Where that had come from, seven only knows. Something from their Flint blood, perhaps? He thinks he once had an uncle with tight, oily coils held back under a soft leather cap. Yet none of the other Stark pups had a trace- not Ned nor Lyanna, Brandon nor Benjen. Arya, half a wilding as she is, has hair that prefers life in one monstrous knot. But even her tangles are as long and straight as Ned’s own, and the rest of his children’s waves are one of the many fiery gifts of House Tully.
So that leaves Jon. Jon, and his other family - half myth, half monstrosity - of which Ned knows so little.
He can’t say that curls are a mark of dragon blood - not one he’d ever taken notice of. Certainly, the Targaryens he knew wore hair like spun silver, fine and flat. Yet, despite their reputation, there are other families at work in his nephew’s line. Aeryns and Hightowers, Baratheons and Blackwoods. Now there his boy could find such a gift - some long forgotten grand sire rising through the years, the one remnant of their line peeking through a bastard’s crown.
Alas, not one of them will ever know.
Ned can’t remember when they finally tamed that bird’s nest - perhaps one of the ladies at Winterfell found some potion that could be spared to keep their charge’s hair in line, or maybe they simply fell away with age, as many things do. All he knows is that the day Ned left for King’s Landing, Jon’s hair had been smooth and tamed at last - white flecks of snow melting between each strand.
But now, in this moment, Ned can see the ghost of them falling down the young man’s back. He wears a simple, unbraided knot at the base of his skull, pulling back most of the locks from his face in the northern fashion. Yet where the remainder spills out down his woollen cloak, longer than Ned had ever seen on his bastard son, it twists into gentle spirals. Not as tight as they were ten and seven years ago, but still there - a slight kink in the ends of the strands like a pony’s mane. Not enough to be noticeable, but they’re all Ned can see as Jon becomes a barely blurred vision of red.
Red and Black.
His strides are long and sure, marching across the grasslands that guard the castle’s feet - leather boots printing in the first layers of snow. Despite the fierce chill, he does not even draw his cloak around him, and one hand rests carefully on the Valyrian blade at his hip.
Ahead of him the silver shadow begins her dismount, sliding down the wall of scales and teeth beneath her. The creature seems to dwarf the castle before it, if not quite in size, then as a rival fortress of black, solid stone. Veins of red travel across its skin like fresh drawn blood, but Ned can hardly believe any of these beasts could do such a meagre thing as bleed.
The crowd holds its breath, hands itching over pommels and eyes fixed on the beast as if it might dissolve into smoke - or for fear that it might not. Robb clears his throat, a shuddered breath betrayed by the winter air, and beside him Cat tenses her fists.
But Jon does not falter- in fact, his pace seems to quicken as the great beast catches him in its great yellow gaze.
Ned has little time to wonder at the sight as, with a screeching cry, a great gust of air almost knocks the Lord and the crowd behind him to their feet. Wings of green and gold soar overhead, a shadow falling over the open fields as it swoops down with its belly skimming the ground.
The once-Bastard of Winterfell approaches the Silver Queen.
She climbs gracefully from her seat, unpinning the hem of her skirts from the gold belt on her hip to ease her movements. By the time one embroidered boot touches the frosted grass Jon has come to a stop, barely bracing himself as four great clawed talons land behind him like a thunder clap. Icy fields seem to know summer once more, and Ned takes in the vision of Red and Black, of Green and Gold, that gilds the entrance to his ancestral home.
It’s clear that the former is the larger of the two - those vast, scaly wings are double the size of the more familiar emerald creature. But together they are a sight unlike anything seen beyond the Neck for a hundred years. A miracle of tooth and claw.
From this distance, Ned can see little of this dragon queen, though he can just make out an ermine collar tucked up to her throat against the chill. Long black skirts like coal against the snow, she adjusts something like a gourd, no, a horn , on her hip, and whatever treasure it’s crafted from shimmers in the low light. The two figures stand entwined by the tails of their immense steeds, the beasts greeting each other not unlike two mares in a stable - nodding their heads with low, throaty rumbles.
Jon bows. Low and formal, he inclines his head to the ground in deep respect. As he rises, she nods gently in return, her expression unreadable at this distance but revealed in the easy way she offers her arm. Jon eagerly takes it at the elbow, as if they were fellow knights well met on the field, and they hold each other like that for a few moments to trade short words.
Behind him, Cat takes a step closer to Ned, one hand resting on his upper arm. He glances back to see the tension in her jaw, blue eyes fixed on the two blurred figures. Yes, how Ned would also like to be privy to this exchange. But alas, what few words may slip between the wings of two great beasts are carried away by the wind.
Then Cat’s grip grows tighter. Across the field, the young queen releases their arms, and Jon retakes her gloved hand, lowering as if to bow again. Drawing closer, Ned almost thinks he might offer a courtesy last seen in Sansa’s songs - a chivalry the Lord cannot say he’s ever seen in the quiet, sombre young lad he raised. Could it be-?
But the smaller of the two steeds sweeps its tail across them - obscuring the view of the northern party to an intimacy, whatever the character, between a Prince and his Queen. Cat glances up at him again, and the figures emerge once more - straight and tall with Jon’s hands carefully behind his back.
The Queen approaches the second beast, the one Ned has been told many times the widowed Khaleesi named for a brother she never knew, and - with a hand on the great horn at her side - reaches with outstretched, delicate fingers. The beast ducks its head and greets her with a growl felt even across the grass - warm as a purr. She brings one hand over its muzzle like a child fondly pets a favoured pony, or a mother strokes a newborn’s brow - indulgent and fond.
Meanwhile, Jon turns behind him to the great, black terror that brought his Queen north. There is no gentle exchange, no quiet greeting - instead, he bows once more, this time just at the neck, as if greeting a noble southron lord. Ned tenses, but the creature accepts this courtesy - blinking slowly like one of the many kitchen cats that stalk the great hall in the night.
Beside him, Ned feels his lady wife straighten her gown, while his son adjusts his cloak tighter to his throat. The muttering crowd falls silent. Yes, Ned quite agrees.
It is time.
The two dragonriders emerge from between their mounts, the Queen’s fur trimmed skirts brushing the snowy ground. She does not take Jon’s offered arm, but walks close beside him towards the gates, her steps careful on the icy grass.
This is not the first time royalty has graced Winterfell with its presence, let alone the first time Dragons have shared its skies. But as Ned counts every step between here and there, he knows as well as those behind him that this is different. No more so when, after a few moments, both Prince and Queen come into clearer view.
The world shifts beneath Ned Stark’s feet.
He had little reason to look for Rhaegar Targaryen in Jon Snow’s face - the strength of his lie depended on this more than any careful words. How could he expect the world to believe the story he told if he looked for the truth himself? Like blinkers on a carriage horse, sometimes it’s best to be blind to such things - even if you sense what might be just beyond your sight.
But in truth, Ned knew little enough of the man to fathom even where to begin. The last dragon was a blur of black armour - a solemn melody half-hidden behind a gilded harp. The crown prince had no reason to speak with the Warden of the North’s second son, and in truth even Brandon could barely count on one hand the times he’d spoken with the Iron Throne’s heir.
So while he knew the same vague mantra about Valaryian blood and Dragonseed, Silver of Hair and Purple of Eye, Robert Baratheon’s greatest foe might as well wear a mummer’s mask for all Ned can remember his face.
Yet when the Lord of Winterfell meets the Dragon Queen’s gaze, it takes every bone in his body not to shudder.
At first glance, the two could not look more different. Jon is a son of the North in every sense, while the young woman beside him could have stepped from the pages of the history books Ned read as a boy. Dressed as she is in Westerosi fashions - not unlike the gowns worn by Cat’s Riverlands kin - there is something also of Essos in her look.
As she draws nearer, Ned realises it is in her hair; cut short to rest at her chin, it's laced with careful braids and tied off with small, silvery charms. No, not charms - bells. Yes, Jon had spoken of those. A custom of the horse lords, yet she wears them just as well as the rubied crown on her head - her name and deeds stretching here from east to west. From the Great Grass Sea to the Wolfswood of Winterfell.
All of this resolves into a youthful face, barely of age with the young man at her side. It is soft and comely, but those eyes speak a history centuries old and many miles trod. He would say like lilac, lavender maybe - but such words cannot capture the way they pierce him across the frozen ground.
The young Queen does not break his gaze, those bright-cut gems still catching Ned in their glint, but she turns to Jon as if to ask a question, her face caught in profile.
There. There it is - the shape of her brow, her nose even; a gentle ridge that curves softly as it meets her eyes. So slight, so subtle - but the resemblance … yes. Ned cannot mistake it. One of the lesser traits passed between the dragon lords - perhaps from her mother or father, but certainly, yes certainly, from her eldest and perhaps greatest brother.
Indeed, the ghost of Prince Rhaegar, whether she knows it or not, lives on when the Dragon Queen turns to the side. He expects there are not many left in the world who could tell her such things, yet Ned only knows because there is little in the world he cherishes more than the faces of his children. When creased, that brow could bear the cares of the age and yet it is so rarely softened - a picture usually framed by red leaves and white snow.
Now barely twenty feet away, there is something else in their posture, the set of their shoulders maybe, that Ned cannot ignore- though perhaps these things are from circumstance more than blood. This queen did not come to her crown without care, nor did a mummer’s bastard come to walk beside her without learning to step hard and true.
Together, is there any man in the Seven Kingdoms who could deny the kinship they share? Walking side by side, flanked by the silhouettes of the beasts of legend on their heels, it is hard to believe that, three years past, they hadn’t even known each other by name. While vague whispers of Aerys’ younger children sometimes rose in the east, Jon was little more than an idle source of gossip in the North, hidden behind the high walls of Winterfell. They were strangers, novelties in the lands they walked - now together they stride in perfect time.
They still exchange quiet words back and forth, a slight flicker of a smile on the young woman’s face, but instead of straining to listen as he is sure his wife and son do, Ned only has eyes for Jon. His boy - his sister’s boy.
Like Robb, Jon has grown into his coltish, skinny frame as most boys do. But unlike his son, who has grown tall and broad, Jon has stayed slender, walking with something almost like grace. He is a man now, he thinks, and not the man Ned had tried to raise. Not the bastard boy who could live safe and hidden behind frosted, ruby red trees.
No, now Lord Stark sees everything anew, from the set of Jon’s jaw to the grim line of his mouth. Even as a boy, he’d always been prone to quiet, sombre moods - wearing melancholy draped like a long dark cloak across his back. The burden of bastardom, many had said, and perhaps there is much truth to that.
But when not cursing him for his crimes, what was it that men still said of Prince Rhaegar? The Last Dragon was known to go walking by himself, through the ruins of Summerhall, the cliffs of Dragonstone. In Kings Landing, he’d huddled away among the measter’s scrolls, and they say at his harp he’d liked the sad songs best of all.
He’d sung one for them all at Harrenhal, Ned remembers, and that lilting, falling melody had haunted the party long into the evening. Even Lyanna had wept that night, the fierce lady she had been. Was that where it started? Was it that low, soft tune that lured his sister from the wolf’s den - those same, sad eyes that attracted her iron, wild will?
He’d never known Jon to be one for songs, but it’s there now he’s seen it - the ashes of a fire that could have lit all of Westeros ablaze.
Yes, fire . There is no malice in his face, no hatred or rage, but to call that young man without passion would be a fool’s folly. He had brought dragons north for more than the wolves of Winterfell - his true purpose lying with his lost white wolf beyond the wall, for the watch he never swore to, for the wildlings and the rising, endless dead. He had a temper too, though rarely shown to his father's face, or any of his family at all. As a boy, it usually found itself slammed against Jory’s practice dummy - sword meeting straw again and again and again.
Something burns in him now. Perhaps it has always been there - quenched in the cold, smothered by the frost. As the two draw but a few paces from his face, Ned wonders - what is the cost of drowning Dragonfire for so long?
It seems Ned, House Stark and perhaps all Seven Kingdoms are about to find out.
“Your Grace,” Jon begins, voice loud enough so even those behind stone walls may hear, “May I present Lord Eddard Stark, his wife Lady Catelyn Stark, and his son Robb Stark, of Winterfell,”
He straightens, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Ned has never been more grateful for the wolf that greets him at that pommel, carved red and white like the colours of their gods. But now, against its bearer’s jet black armour and the silver ring on his sword hand, those ruby eyes are no longer like sap, but blood. Fire and Blood.
“My Lord and Lady Stark, may I present Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, first of her name -,”
The titles roll with the tongue of the North, the same roundness to the words found in any castle or cottage beyond Wintertown. But there is heat behind them - a strength to his voice that denotes real pride. As he speaks, it is as if Jon truly believes every honour bestowed on the woman beside him, as if this is more than an alliance born of war and fear - more than an accident of blood.
“-Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Queen of Mereen, Breaker of Chains -,”
Behind him, the beasts let out a single, deafening cry.
“-and the Mother of Dragons,”
The next breath holds like the Long Night, an endless moment between the first flakes of snow. It’s Jon that Ned sees, of course, but he can hear Robb shift beside him - waiting for his father and his Lord to lead the pack.
Jon’s face is a mask, but his right hand stretches, just a little, on his hilt - the smallest habit from a wound long healed, but there it is, hidden beneath black leather gloves.
Ned bends the knee.
“Your Grace,” he declares for all of Winterfell, as one by one his wife, his son, his knights and his kitchen maids follow Ned's lead. There is only one man in all these lands who stays standing- his dues already paid. Jon looks down at them all by his Queen’s side - her trusted sword, her valued advisor. Her kin.
“Rise, Lord Stark,” the Queen replies evenly, voice soft as a summer breeze. Her face could be carved in marble for the way it remains still, hands clasped at her chest like one of the many portraits that still hang in the Red Keep.
“You must forgive us, your Grace,” Ned continues, years of royal courtesy slipped on with ease - though not quite the informality he’d have given to his last, true king. What would Robert think of him now, he wonders? Kneeling to the girl whose flame he tried so hard to snuff. You can’t get your hands on this one, he’d practically spat, and he was right. Now Ned's oldest friend lies buried beneath the very castle he’d once sacked, and Dragons walk Westeros once more.
More likely they were hidden under the snow. Snow, Ned!
“-we are not prepared for your arrival,” he continues, clearing his throat, but the Queen raises a hand.
“Do not trouble yourself, Lord Stark, it was my purpose not to raise your alarm,” she responds, “-we received word of your victory here in the North, and I felt it prudent to congratulate you and your people on reclaiming your ancestral home in person,”
She is the picture of royal sincerity, a smile on her face and in those strange, violet eyes. But the journey from the Crownlands to Winterfell is long even on Dragonback - too long for simple pleasantries and social calls. Did she truly need to see to believe that the direwolf would join her cause?
Perhaps the word of her brother’s son was not enough.
Is that it? Ned wonders, looking between the two dragon riders once more. Does she not trust him? Is that why she has come calling - to check her Prince’s loyalty in their country’s coldest lands? She had gifted him one of her children, though Jon has assured him many times that a Dragon’s will is its own. No one could force themselves or another upon its back without meeting a fiery death. But still - what a power she had placed, willing or not, in the hands of a Northman.
But there are other gifts she’d given. It is her sigil Jon wears on his belt, her cloak that keeps off the winter chill. Greatest of all, she gave him something even Ned could not allow himself to part from, no matter how many times he lay awake at night with the thought.
Daenerys Targaryen gave Jon Snow a name.
Besides, there is nothing in Jon’s stance that suggests unease, and Ned has seen these last few weeks that his bastard son learned much in the way of politics - if not in the great machinations of court, then in the meaning of words between men. There is more at work here than a royal progress, not with another so-called mummers-dragon on the Iron Throne and lions licking their wounds at Casterly Rock - the powers of the Spear and the Rose on either side.
How Ned wishes to have heard those words they shared, clasped between arms and perhaps pressed onto skin. It appears the Prince and the Queen should have much to discuss.
But before Ned can respond, it is his Lady Wife who speaks up.
“Your Grace, you are most welcome in our home,” she declares, inclining her head, “the hospitality of the North is at your service,”
Ned has long valued his wife’s sense of southern ways, and he knows bread and salt will soon be in their visitor’s hands - a reassurance of their loyalty. But the Queen meets her coolly.
“You have my thanks, Lady Stark,” she replies, upright and steady, “Prince Jon has spoken much of the ways and customs of his childhood home,”
Prince Jon. Titles can be but ink on a page, easily smudged, but here they ring as strong as steel. Pleasantries and deference, but the two women regard each other - if not with hostility, then with hackles raised. Looking between them, and then to Jon, Ned wonders what else his once-bastard son has told his Dragon Queen of his youth in the North.
But then the Queen smiles.
“My Lord and Lady, there is much history between our families,” she continues, “House Stark and House Targaryen have, in many ways, long been what has held the realm together,”
Oh, how the ages echo behind that sentence. From conqueror’s dreams to dancing dragons, Ned knows better than most how the Starks have been players in the Valaryian quest for power - whether they liked it or not. It took the threat to Wolfsblood itself to finally break the long-tested trust between them - a rift that Lord Stark doubts either side will forget, even with all that has passed.
“Indeed, your Grace,” Ned responds, “the history of our houses lives on in our names and our blood,”
The North Remembers. How often had he heard those words these last moons? Words for Boltons and Freys, whispered amongst those houses left behind when Ned went south and hung on the banners that marched to lay siege on his ancestral seat. What do those words mean now, when the once-rebel stands before his enemy’s daughter, when it was her kin that tore his family in two? The crypts still hold blackened, burnt bones beneath cold, dead stone - it was Ned who put them there himself. How does he truly know that won’t be the end of them all?
“Your Grace-,”
Heads turn as Jon steps forward, standing between Ned and his Queen.
“- this alliance stands on stones carved long ago, laid by men and women of our words and our kin,”
He turns to Ned, and by extension to Cat, to Robb, to every staring face peering over the walls of Winterfell.
“-but we are not our ancestors-,”
One hand on his sword, Jon’s voice is strong and steady - his words measured, as if he had been waiting all along for this very moment.
“- I know we both believe our common ground lies in the present, and not the past,”
His last breath rests on Ned, grey eyes meeting grey.
“-that our strength rests in the living, and not the dead,”
Queen Daenerys nods, regarding him with a small, warm smile of her own.
“I quite agree,” she replies, before turning back to Ned, “what say you, Lord Stark?”
What says he? What else can be said?
“Aye,” he replies, with a small seed of pride - like the first bloom waiting for spring, “- your Prince speaks true,”
Your Prince , he thinks as Jon looks at him, that soft crease between his brows revealing more than any words can say. Your Prince, yes - but he will always be my son.
With that, he gestures back towards the open gates.
“Perhaps your Grace would wish to talk further inside-,” he suggests.
The Queen nods with a smile, those little bells ringing gently in her silver hair.
“I would be honoured, Lord Stark,”
“Yes-,” follows Cat, one lady to another, “- I expect you are hungry after your journey,”
She gestures behind her.
“We have meat and ale, and I will have one of my maids draw you a bath once you are ready,”
The Queen smiles.
“My Lady, I would be most grateful,” she replies, still guarded but warmer - the ever gracious guest.
She looks back at Jon, whose shoulders have noticeably dropped.
“What of Drogon,” she asks, quiet and familiar, “-he has also travelled far, is there-?”
But Jon smiles, such a rare thing, and gestures behind him.
“His brother has found much winter game around the Wolf’s Wood, and I’m sure the North is big enough for the two of them to stretch their wings,”
Indeed, the dragons appear to sense their riders' retirement. The great green beast calls out, high and grating in the air, and together they launch into the sky. A warm gust of wind passes overhead as they disappear behind the castle, unsettling the snow on the slate roofs.
The Queen nods, satisfied. She turns back to Cat.
“Then I would welcome your fire, Lady Stark,”
She waits as the crowd parts to form a path and follows Ned’s lady wife into the keep, the two women exchanging quiet, measured pleasantries. The kind of talk that keeps a castle turning, the peace that noble ladies seem to master in their youth.
The men follow, Ned beside Jon, who walks beside Robb. In the corner of his eye, he catches his eldest son nudging Jon in the side, the two young men speaking their own language; born of training yards, kitchen raids and long, cold nights in shared beds as boys. Red cloth against blue wool, the two have never looked so different in all their years, but still Jon nods back with a little roll in his eyes for his closest brother.
Ned had hoped on that long road from Dorne that they would have this - a kind of trust he himself forged in the high heights of the Eyrie as a boy. Now it feels as though this is the glue still holding him together, even after so many years of secrets and strange guests at their door.
Robb takes a seat beside his mother, and the visiting Queen turns to him with royal grace as she removes her gloves. Some questions on the siege, Ned hears - about an army on the ground while fire threatened from the sky. Wolves in the wood and dragons in the air. The Prince tells me, she begins, and though Catelyn still sits straight as a poker, her son leans forward, careful but with an answer ready on his lips.
Questions of victory and justice - a family reclaiming its rightful home. An acknowledgement of enemies still lingering in the North, of a war still left to be won.
But also an outstretched hand.
Common ground, Jon had said. The living, not the dead.
Ned’s sister lies at peace in the castle crypts - Queen Daenerys’ brother sleeps soundly on the Trident’s bed. All that remains is their memory, fading every day as their bones become dust, breathing in the words and ways of those they left behind.
Yes, through them, the ones they love live on.
But, Ned thinks as Jon pauses in the doorway to kick the snow off his boots, standing stones bathed in soft yellow flame, so does their son.