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malora-hightower · 5 months

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The Starks + Thinking About Each Other

Part I: Ned

There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a long, stern face. The stonemasons had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life all swords had failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his children. Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule. Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart.

AGoT, Eddard I

He could still hear her at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that, he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief.

AGoT, Eddard I

“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.

AGoT, Eddard II

Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing here and why he had come. [. . .] He belonged in Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with Bran.

AGoT, Eddard II

Bran’s wolf had saved the boy’s life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa’s, and for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done?

AGoT, Eddard IV

Yet even as he said the words, he remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert’s talk of sending hired knives after the Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar’s infant son . . . and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry’s audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.

AGoT, Eddard IV

Ned did not need Littlefinger to tell him that. He was thinking back to the day Arya had been found . . .. He was thinking of the boy Mycah, of Jon Arryn’s sudden death, of Bran’s fall . . ..

AGoT, Eddard IV

“No,” Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. “Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king’s council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother’s Faith and become the High Septon.” But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms.

AGoT, Eddard V

He yearned for the comfort of Catelyn’s arms, for the sounds of Robb and Jon crossing swords in the practice yard, for the cool days and cold nights of the north.

AGoT, Eddard VI

“You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert,” Ned told him. “You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee.” He took out the dagger and studied it. Littlefinger’s blade, won by Tyrion Lannister in a tourney wager, sent to slay Bran in his sleep. Why? Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? Why would anyone want Bran dead?

AGoT, Eddard VII

The dagger, Bran’s fall, all of it was linked somehow to the murder of Jon Arryn, he could feel it in his gut . . ..

AGoT, Eddard VII

It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night.

AGoT, Eddard VIII

Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would not have thought Robert could command the murder of women and children either. Catelyn had tried to warn him. You knew the man, she had said. The king is a stranger to you.

AGoT, Eddard VIII

“Robert will never keep to one bed,” Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm’s End. “I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale.” Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. “Love is sweet, dearest Ned, nut it cannot change a man’s nature.”

AGoT, Eddard IX

Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow’s face in front of him, so like a younger version of his own. If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts?

AGoT, Eddard IX

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood. [. . .] “As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

AGoT, Eddard X

It was queer how sometimes a child’s innocent eyes can see the things that grown men are blind to. Someday, when Sansa was grown, he would have to tell her how she had made it all come clear for him. He’s not the least bit like that old drunken king, she had declared, angry and unknowing, and the simple truth of it had twisted inside him, cold as death.

AGoT, Eddard XII

And yet, he knew he could not keep silent. He had a duty to Robert, to the realm, to the shade of Jon Arryn . . . and to Bran, who surely must have stumbled on some part of the truth. Why else would they have tried to slay him?

AGoT, Eddard XII

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon’s life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

AGoT, Eddard XII

Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil. “The night of our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister’s name. He was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna.” Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep.

AGoT, Eddard XII

He was walking thought the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna beside him. “Promise me, Ned,” Lyanna’s whispered statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept blood.

AGoT, Eddard XIII

“Serve the boar at my funeral feast,” Robert rasped. “Apple in its mouth, skin seared crisp. Eat the bastard. Don’t care if you choke on him. Promise me, Ned.” “I promise.” Promise me, Ned, Lyanna’s voice echoed.

AGoT, Eddard XIII

The thought of Winterfell brought a wan smile to his face. He wanted to hear Bran’s laughter once more, to go hawking with Robb, to watch Rickon at play. He wanted to drift off to a dreamless sleep in his own bed with his arms wrapped tight around his lady, Catelyn.

AGoT, Eddard XIII

When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.

AGoT, Eddard XV

He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark. [. . .] Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached her, and the lords of river and mountain and Vale would join her. The memory came creeping upon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of the false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. [. . .] He remembered Brandon’s laughter . . .. [. . .] Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost. Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark. Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses.

AGoT, Eddard XV

“. . . And now your son marches down the Neck with a northern host at his back.” “Robb is only a boy,” Ned said, aghast.

AGoT, Eddard XV

“Pity.” The eunuch stood. “And your daughter’s life, my lord? How previous is that?” A chill pierced Ned’s heart. “My daughter . . .”

AGoT, Eddard XV

#ned stark #part II will be catelyn #I'm sure I missed some and a couple of these may not fall under 'thinking about'#valyrianscrolls #asoiaf #thenorthsource #bookhousestark #eddard stark #house stark #txt #starksthinkingofeachother

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asoiafcanonjonsnow · 11 months

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