Chapter Text
Jon
The yard felt wrong without Bran’s laughter in it.
Over a month had passed since his fall. By the time they’d found his little body on the stones the next morning, it had already gone cold. Summer had only sat beside him, silent and watchful, as if guarding something no one else could see.
Snow lay in grey slush along the edges of the cobbles, churned by hooves and boots. Horse-breath smoked in the chill air; Stark banners stirred on the walls. Men were mounted and waiting, saddles creaking, iron jingling as they shifted their weight.
The king had gone an hour before, the bright tumble of the royal party already a smudge on the kingsroad. They’d crawl along at the pace of Queen Lysa’s wheelhouse. Lord Eddard Stark and a hundred Northmen would catch them easily before nightfall.
Jon stood back, half in shadow beneath the gallery, and watched his father say goodbye.
Ned and Catelyn were a knot of scent and duty at the centre of it all—his father’s steady Beta calm braided through Catelyn’s raw Omega grief, their bond-scent wrapping warm and close around them and their trueborn children. Even from here Jon could feel it, like standing near a hearth he wasn’t meant to sit beside. The pack-bond washed over Robb, Arya, Bran’s empty place, Rickon… and curved, neatly, around him.
Catelyn’s eyes were swollen from weeping, mouth drawn tight, back unbent. She let Ned kiss her brow and murmured something low; he heard only “guard the children.” Her gaze brushed over Jon once, cool and skimming, making no place for him, and went back to her husband.
Robb came next, already carrying Winterfell on his shoulders. Mail and leather, sword at his hip, Alpha-scent held tight and careful the way it had been since he presented. Ned spoke to him—Jon caught “Stark in Winterfell now, men will look to you, remember who you are”—and the pack-bond between them flared warm and sure, a solid pulse in the air. Robb’s throat worked as he answered. For a heartbeat the boy showed through the Lord, and Jon looked away before it could crack him open.
Arya stood stiff and furious when her turn came, jaw set, eyes bright. Jon didn’t need every word to know the shape of it: mind your lady mother, no more climbing, the king and his few friends. Arya’s lips twisted in a way that almost certainly meant “stupid,” and Ned huffed a small laugh and kissed her brow anyway. The bond-scent between them tugged like a stubborn, fraying thread—and held. Arya had once been meant to ride south with him, but after Bran’s death Catelyn would not let another child out of her sight. Jon had heard the low arguments through stone and door, had seen the grey look on her face when she finally yielded on Sansa. It had nearly broken her to let the girl go to the Vale, even after two years warded under Lady Rowena.
Rickon only wailed and clung to Ned’s leg until Old Nan peeled him off and carried him away, his distress souring the air sharp and thin. The pack-bond curled tight around the littlest Stark, trying to soothe what words could not.
Sansa was not there to say goodbye. She’d ridden out with the queen’s party the day before—Queen Lysa’s wheelhouse, Joffrey and Tommen and their retinue, Tully and Arryn banners snapping bright. Sansa had been a neat Stark-grey in their midst, proper and poised as a girl promised for years to Jasper Arryn. Jon had watched from the wall walk and wondered if she would ever truly come home, or if the Eyrie and Lady Rowena and Jasper would swallow her whole.
Lord Stark drew a breath and turned to his brother.
Benjen Stark was a leaner, harder mirror of him, black cloak dusted with snow. He smelled of cold and horse and the long, empty miles beyond the Wall, a scent Jon had always liked.
“Watch yourself beyond the Wall,” Ned said. “I’d not have a raven tell me the First Ranger died to some wildling with more luck than sense.”
Benjen snorted. “And I’d not hear you let southern vipers bite you,” he answered. “I’ll take wildlings over courtiers.”
They embraced—quick, fierce, rare. Jon couldn’t remember seeing it before. In that brief press of brother to brother, Ned murmured something too low for Jon to catch; Benjen’s gaze flicked once over Ned’s shoulder toward him, then back.
“Aye,” Benjen said simply. “You have my word.”
Jon saw Ned’s shoulders ease, just a little, as if some small stone had been lifted.
Then there was no one left between them.
“Jon,” his father said.
Jon stepped forward, boots ringing on stone, hands at his sides, spine straight. A bastard didn’t slouch; it invited kicks.
“My lord,” he answered, because that was safer than Father and hurt less than nothing at all.
Ned’s gaze searched his face, as if looking for some trace of the child Jon used to be and not finding it.
“You spoke your wish clearly,” he said at last. “There’s still time to change your mind. To wait, at least, until you’re past your presenting years. You needn’t take the black because grief sits heavy on this yard.”
They’d had this argument two nights before in Ned’s solar, Bran’s death a weight between them. Jon wasn’t about to drag them through it again.
“I’m close enough,” he said. “And it wouldn’t change anything. I asked it with a clear head. I ask it still. There’s no place for me here, my lord. At the Wall I can earn a place. A name of my own.” He swallowed. “The Night’s Watch is an honorable calling.”
“It is,” Ned said softly. “And harder than you know.” For a moment his hand lifted, as if to touch Jon’s cheek. It fell instead to his shoulder, heavy and brief. “So be it. You’ll ride with Benjen and Yoren. Remember the man you were raised to be. Do not shame the North.”
“I’ll do my duty,” Jon said, because it was all he could think to promise.
Ned’s fingers tightened once on his shoulder. “I know you will,” he said hoarsely. “Seven keep you.”
Before Jon could find any answer, Lord Stark turned and swung into his saddle. He did not look back at his bastard again.
Catelyn did.
As the horses clattered toward the open gate, she stood a little apart, cloak drawn tight. Her eyes followed her husband until he passed beneath the arch, then moved, at last, to Jon.
There was no kindness in them. No open hatred either. Just a cool, exhausted distance, as if he were another stone in a castle she was tired of carrying.
“Lady Catelyn,” Jon said, bowing his head.
“Jon Snow,” she replied, each word crisp with frost.
“Watch over Robb,” he said. “And Arya. And Rickon.”
Her mouth thinned. “That is my task,” she said. “Not yours.”
She turned away before he could answer, skirts whispering over damp stone, and followed the last of the Stark guards toward the inner keep.
The gate swallowed Ned and his riders. The yard emptied by degrees: grooms leading horses away, onlookers drifting back to their duties, the clatter and shout of ordinary life creeping back in around the raw hole Bran had left.
When Jon was sure no one important was staring, he let himself look up.
Arya and Rickon were on the battlements, two small figures against the sky. Rickon bounced and waved with both arms. Arya lifted one hand, sharp and sure.
Jon raised his own. He held it until his shoulder burned and they were only blurs.
“Jon.”
He dropped his arm and turned.
Robb stood a few paces away, hair damp from the cold, color high in his cheeks. Grey Wind lurked at his side, hackles half-raised as if resenting all this talk of partings. Robb’s Alpha-scent—pine and cold steel and the faint spice of Catelyn’s Omega grief—threaded through Ned’s steadier Beta calm, the whole of it wrapped in a familiar pack-scent that had never once shut Jon out. Whatever Lady Catelyn felt, Robb’s bond had always reached for him too.
“You could still stay,” Robb said without preamble. “Say the word and I’ll keep you. Mother’ll rage, but she’ll rage anyway. I’m Lord of Winterfell now. I can—”
“You can’t make her stomach a bastard under her roof,” Jon cut in, sharper than he meant. “Not now. Not with Bran… gone.”
Robb flinched, as if the word were a blow.
“I don’t give a damn what she can stomach,” he said. “You’re my brother.”
“Half-brother,” Jon said automatically. Someone always seemed to need the correction voiced.
Robb’s jaw tightened. “You’re my brother,” he said again, low and stubborn. “I don’t do halves.”
Jon looked away. The yard blurred again at the edges. The pack-scent between them tugged warm and insistent, as if some part of Robb’s Alpha nature refused to let him drift too far.
“If I stay,” Jon said quietly, “I’ll be one more crack in something that’s already breaking. The queen doesn’t want me here. The court whispers about my mother. Lady Catelyn… you saw her face.”
“I’ve seen it my whole life,” Robb said.
“And I’ve felt it,” Jon replied. “I can bear it. But I won’t make you, or Arya, or Rickon choose between us when the queen’s men start breathing words like ‘honor’ and ‘shame’ down your neck. Up there…” He nodded northward, toward where the Wall lay unseen beyond hills and forests and snow. “Up there none of that matters. Bastard or lord, Beta or Alpha, firstborn or fifth… all the same cloak.”
“It’s a hard life,” Robb said.
“So’s this one,” Jon answered.
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“Write to me,” Robb said finally, voice rough. “About the Watch. About the Wall. About everything. If you don’t, I’ll ride up there and drag you back myself.”
Jon let out a sound that was almost a laugh. “You can try,” he said. “The Old Bear will throw you off the bridge.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Robb said.
They stepped in at the same moment and held on as if they were boys again hiding from a storm behind the Great Keep. Grey Wind snorted and shoved his head between them, jealous of the embrace; Jon buried his fingers in the thick fur behind the wolf’s ear and tried not to breathe in the scent of home too deeply.
Arya came pelting down from the battlements not long after, hair wild, cheeks flushed. She skidded to a stop in front of him, nearly colliding with Grey Wind.
“You’re really going,” she said accusingly.
“Yes,” Jon said.
“It’s stupid,” she announced. “The Wall’s cold. And full of crows. And old men who’ll yell at you.”
“You’ll like them,” Robb muttered. “They’re half grump, half trouble.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jon said.
Arya’s mouth wobbled and set again.
“You still have it?” he asked softly.
Her hand went at once to her hip, fingers closing over the hidden hilt.
“Of course,” she said. “Needle goes where I go.”
“Good,” Jon said. “You keep it sharp. Stick them with the pointy end.”
“That’s a stupid way to give advice,” she said. “You sound like an idiot.”
“I am.” He reached out and tapped her brow with two fingers. “Be smarter than me. Listen to Father’s lessons. To Robb’s. Don’t let the septa talk you out of your sword arm.”
“As if she could,” Arya said.
He bent and kissed her brow. She stood still for it, surprisingly, then threw her arms around his neck in a quick, fierce hug that smelled of smoke and leather and wolf.
“Come back,” she muttered into his shoulder. “Or I’ll come steal you.”
“I’ll watch the road,” he promised.
Rickon barreled into his legs next, somehow escaped again from Old Nan. Jon scooped him up and swung him high. The boy’s face was blotched with tears and snot.
“You can’t go,” Rickon howled. “You can’t.”
“I’ll come back,” Jon lied. “I’ll bring you a story from the top of the Wall.”
Rickon hiccupped. “Promise?”
“On my honor,” Jon said.
“On your sword?” Rickon demanded.
“Yes,” Jon said, hand instinctively going to the pommel of his new blade. “On that too.”
He set the boy down and watched Old Nan herd him away, her mutterings about “crows and fools” trailing behind them.
By the time Jon gathered his cloak and small pack and strode out through the gate, the royal tracks on the road had already begun to ice over.
The party waiting there was a strange one: Benjen on his rangy black; the black-cloaked Yoren of the Watch with his wagon full of recruits; a handful of Winterfell men-at-arms; and a knot of Lannisters with crimson cloaks bright as blood against the snow.
The dwarf sat his shaggy little horse with the ease of long practice, pale hair blowing in the wind, eyes sharp over his collar.
“Ah, there’s our last crow-hatchling,” Tyrion Lannister drawled. “We were debating whether you’d changed your mind and decided to go south instead.”
“I’m going north,” Jon said. “Your pardon, my lord.”
“Pity,” Tyrion said. “The South could use more sensible heads. But then, that’s why you’re not going.”
He turned away before Jon could think of a reply, calling something bawdy to Yoren that made the old crow bark a laugh.
Jon swung into the saddle Uncle Benjen had chosen for him—a plain brown gelding, sure-footed and stubborn as stone. Ghost flowed along at his stirrup, silent and white.
They set out at a walk, hooves clopping in uneven rhythm on the hard road. Winterfell’s gate shrank behind them. No one waved now; everyone who mattered had already said what they could.
They’d gone perhaps a mile when Jon heard the jingle of harness and the easy, unhurried clop of a destrier coming up beside him.
“Jon Snow,” Ser Jaime Lannister said.
Jon stiffened before he could stop himself. The Kingsguard knight rode a tall grey courser as if he’d been born in the saddle, white cloak tucked back, lion helm hanging from his pommel. Even through the northern cloud, the light caught glints in his hair.
“My lord,” Jon said cautiously.
Jaime huffed. “If I must suffer ‘ser’ and ‘lord’ every other breath, you’ll call me Ser Jaime at least,” he said. “We’re not at court. No need to choke on titles out here.”
Jon said nothing. He’d spent too long watching men like this one from the edges of rooms to forget how much they noticed.
He was uncomfortably aware that Jaime had watched him often in the yard during the king’s visit—had called him out for a bout one morning, laughing and lazy, then gone sharp as a drawn blade the moment Jon raised his sword. He’d corrected Jon’s grip, his stance, his footwork, with a patience Jon hadn’t expected and a focus that had left him feeling… seen.
He hadn’t forgotten it.
“You’ve made an odd choice,” Jaime said now, conversational, as if they were talking of horseflesh. “Most bastards I’ve known grab at every scrap of gold and glory they can reach. You, on the other hand, are racing toward a frozen wall of stone where glory goes to die.”
“I asked to go,” Jon said. “No one drove me.”
“That may be the oddest thing about it,” Jaime mused. “I thought Starks were fond enough of being miserable in their own keeps. No need to seek new misery out.”
“The Wall protects the realm,” Jon said stiffly. “It’s an honor to defend it.”
Jaime’s mouth quirked. “You sound like a septon’s book. Have you even seen the sea, Jon Snow?”
“No,” Jon said.
“The cities of the south? King’s Landing? Oldtown? Even bloody Lannisport?”
“No.”
“And you chose,” Jaime went on, “with all that waiting, to chain yourself to ice and celibacy at fourteen.”
“I’m nearly fifteen,” Jon muttered. “And nobody wants a bastard in their hall. I’d rather swear to stone and snow than spend my life as half a guest in other men’s houses.”
“Mm.” Jaime’s gaze lingered on his face a moment. “I’ve seen boys run to the Watch to escape the headsman, or their father’s wrath, or some girl’s kin with sharp knives and little sense of humor. I’ve seen men sent as punishment. You’re the first who looks like he’s going to meet a lover.”
It startled a huff of breath out of Jon. “I’m hardly likely to find that at the Wall, Ser Jaime.”
“You never know,” Jaime said dryly. “You might make some crow’s heart flutter.”
He spoke lightly, but his eyes—green and clear—kept flicking to Jon in that same unsettling way as in the yard. Not indecent, not leering. Just… measuring. As if he’d caught an odd scent he couldn’t place and was circling it warily.
Jon knew what he smelled like: Winterfell stone, old leather, woodsmoke. Beta-flat, nothing to catch an Alpha’s nose. There was nothing about him to warrant that keen attention, save perhaps the way he held a sword.
“You think I’m making a child’s mistake,” he said, more defensive than he meant.
“I think you’re young,” Jaime replied. “And stubborn. Which I can hardly hold against you. I’ve made a lifetime’s worth of foolish choices and I’m still here.”
He shifted in the saddle, gaze sliding ahead to where Benjen and Tyrion rode side by side, their conversation rising and falling like the wind.
“My sister is on Dragonstone,” he said abruptly. “Stannis keeps her there. I haven’t set eyes on her in five years.” His jaw tightened a fraction. “You’d think time would dull it, wanting to see her. It doesn’t. It just… learns new tricks.”
Jon glanced at him sidelong. He’d seen Jaime’s expression go shuttered whenever Queen Lysa mentioned Stannis and his lady wife. He’d heard servants whisper of a lioness locked away on a bleak island with a Baratheon who neither drank nor smiled.
“I’m sorry,” Jon said, and meant it.
Jaime waved a hand, batting the sympathy away. “Point is,” he said, “leaving doesn’t really get easier. Duty just gives you something to point your eyes at instead of the places they’d rather be.”
Jon frowned down at his reins. “Then why say yes?” he asked. “To your king. To your vows. To any of it.”
Jaime’s laugh was short and without much humor. “Because someone had to,” he said. “Because when gods and men are handing out tasks, they seldom ask what you’d like.” His gaze sharpened. “You, though—you volunteered. Remember that, when you’re cold and tired and some old knight is shouting at you for dropping your sword in the snow. This was your choice. Don’t let anyone take that from you.”
The thought settled somewhere in Jon’s chest and sat there, strange and heavy.
Ahead, the wagon of recruits jolted over a rut. One of the chained men spat toward the roadside; another watched Jon with hollow eyes.
“My future brothers,” Jon said under his breath.
“A lovely lot,” Jaime replied. “I’d sleep with your wolf close if I were you.”
Jon’s hand fell automatically to Ghost’s head. The direwolf brushed against his stirrup, red eyes fixed on the road.
“I’ll manage,” Jon said. “I can fight.”
“I’ve seen,” Jaime said. “You’ve a good hand. Quick feet. Keep your shoulders looser.” His gaze swept him again, appraising. “A few years at court and your name would put fear into half the knights in the realm.”
“I’m not going to court,” Jon said. “I’m going to the Wall.”
“For now,” Jaime murmured. Something passed across his face—thoughts turning inward, perhaps. “The world has a way of dragging men off the paths they swear they’ll walk all their lives. Ask your father.”
Jon shifted in the saddle, suddenly uneasy without knowing why.
“I’m no Stark,” he said. “Not really.”
Jaime’s lip curled, not quite a smile. “Aren’t you?” he asked quietly. “You stand like one.”
Jon looked away down the long ribbon of road, where sky met trees.
Winterfell was out of sight now. The Wall was still far beyond the curve of the world. Between them lay miles of stone and ice and choices he hadn’t yet made.
He could feel Ser Jaime still looking at him.
Not the quick, sliding glance most men gave a bastard, but a measuring stare that kept returning—road, Jon, road again—as if the knight were turning him over in his mind.
Once, their eyes met. Jon braced for mockery and found none. Just that same sharp focus Jaime had worn in the yard while correcting his guard.
It set Jon’s skin prickling. He told himself Ser Jaime was probably still wondering why anyone would choose the Wall.
Soon enough, Jon would be in black and Ser Jaime would be far to the south. Whatever interest the Kingslayer had taken in a Stark bastard would be a brief, strange memory.
Jaime nudged his courser on to rejoin the Lannister guards.
Jon watched him go for a heartbeat, then fixed his gaze north, on the unseen Wall, and rode on.