#jon looks so frightened
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⚠️TFE FANS! WE NEED TO DISCUSS THIS!⚠️
*Transformers: EarthSpark S1C Spoilers ahead!*
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This scene is just so AHHHHHH!
Bee swiftly catches Jon after Thrash yeets him off himself to fight off a crazy G.H.O.S.T. agent.
Bee then gently sets Jon down and gives him a little pat pat. As if to say, "There, there, human." 🤣 Jon looks so frightened. He probably thought he was gonna hit the ground hard or die. But nope, Bee catches him in time. I'm sorry, but I just find this scene so adorable. 🥺
Bee then cautiously steps over Jon. 🥺 It's even more adorable when you remember that Jon said earlier in the episode (Stowed Away, Stowaways) that he always knew that Bee was good and that he wants Bee to join his team. I don't know, this scene just does things to me. I just found it kind of wholesome. 🥺
It's the little things~
#earthspark spoilers#tf earthspark spoilers#transformers earthspark spoilers#i absolutely can't!#this is just too great!#jon looks so frightened#poor guy#bee gave him a little pat pat 🥺#he thought he was going to die#but nope bee catches him#I'm sorry but this scene is doing things to me#it's just too cute!#tfe#tfe jon schloder#jon schloder#agent jon schloder#it's the little things#it's so wholesome! 🥺#transformers#transformers earthspark#tf earthspark#tfe bumblebee#tf earthspark bumblebee
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One trend I've noticed a lot lately in the speculation of Tyrion meeting Daenerys is how he'll influence her. The argument often is that Tyrion will encourage her more "fire and blood" destructive tendencies when they get to Westeros. However, this view is often one-sided as it's always about how Tyrion will influence Daenerys but never about how Daenerys will influence Tyrion.
"Daenerys, I am thrice your age," Ser Jorah said. "I have seen how false men are. Very few are worthy of trust, and Daario Naharis is not one of them. Even his beard wears false colors."
That angered her. "Whilst you have an honest beard, is that what you are telling me? You are the only man I should ever trust?"
He stiffened. "I did not say that."
"You say it every day. Pyat Pree's a liar, Xaro's a schemer, Belwas a braggart, Arstan an assassin . . . do you think I'm still some virgin girl, that I cannot hear the words behind the words?"
"Your Grace—"
She bulled over him. "You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you—but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better."
-ASOS, Daenerys IV
Daenerys is not the sheltered child Aegon was who Tyrion could easily manipulate as shown when she called out Jorah for trying to isolate her from other men. Even Tyrion admitted to Aegon, having never met Daenerys that "she is strong" and "fierce." Daenerys was more worldly at 14 than Aegon is at 16. Even as a small, frightened girl at age 13 in the beginning of the series, she had more street smarts than her adult brother Viserys and has shown to be a prodigy in the series. Tyrion would not be able to manipulate her easily, especially since would initially be wary of him for being a Lannister.
Tyrion at the end of the day would be serving as her subordinate, him being largely dependent on her. Tyrion largely is the way he is because of the toxic family he grew up in. The Lannister vision has no idea of a Good Society, it's just pure self-aggrandizement by any means necessary. As the adage goes, rot always starts at the head. The monarchs Tyrion served as Hand, Joffrey and Cersei, were both cruel, incompetent tyrants with senses of entitlement that outweighed their actual abilities. They also had no concept of the duties of a monarch to their subjects, and instead just abused their power over others, including sexually. The one who actually ran the show for the Lannister regime, Tywin, was a cold, abusive Machiavellian who brutalized the smallfolk and his children, seeing them as pawns in his schemes. Tyrion could be cunning and brutal, because it was both encouraged and necessary for the winner-take-all, dog-eat-dog world of the Lannister court. It was an environment designed to bring out the darker side of his nature.
However, since the beginning we saw hints of the lighter side of his nature such as when he gave emotional support to Jon and designed a special saddle for Bran. He even helped Catelyn when they were attacked by the mountain clans even though she kidnapped him. In A Clash of Kings, we see hints of Tyrion wanting to be something other than the cold Machiavellian like his father when he stands up for Sansa when Joffrey beats her, and he has Morec killed and Slynt sent to the Wall for killing Barra, wanting to "do justice." In A Dance with Dragons, he risks his life to protect Aegon and even in his lowest he looks out for Penny even though she is a complete stranger to him.
Daenerys is a foil to Cersei, whose ruling philosophy is expressed in the statement "Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" Daenerys tries to live up to the image of an ideal monarch who protects the weak. She liberates the oppressed from slavery and tries to protect them, even performing acts like tending to those afflicted with the bloody flux herself, marrying someone she doesn't want and putting her plan of going to Westeros on hold to achieve peace. Working as Hand to Queen Daenerys, Tyrion may find himself in a change of pace in a different environment where for once his more positive tendencies are encouraged with his fondness for "cripples, bastards and broken things."
In short, in cutting himself off from his toxic family, Tyrion may actually find a new beginning in service to Daenerys. He's the Machiavellian polymath and court politician she needs, and she's the competent, idealistic monarch he needs.
#asoiaf#a song of ice and fire#queen daenerys#daenerys targaryen#daenerys stormborn#tyrion lannister#house lannister#house targaryen#meereen#queen cersei#cersei
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what my 65yo father has to say about antis:
let me preface this by saying, i literally wish i had what just happened on video to go viral on TikTok. i was shook by this conversation down to my bones; and if you could see my father - a loud old Italian man with dramatic hand gestures - say what he had to say, i think this shit would blow up. but as i was obviously not filming him while we were eating, i will have to relay to you the story with my words.
so i'm sitting eating dinner at the coffee table with my father while watching TV, as Americans often do instead of eating at the dinner table, and since the news was on he started telling me this story that had been recently mentioned on TV once again from maybe ten years ago (it was in 2014, you can read about it here) where these two 12-year-old girls killed one of their friends as a sacrifice to the Slender Man. yeah, real thing. fucked up.
and so my father told me about how they interviewed one of the killer's mothers, and when questioned about where her daughter's motive could've come from, she said something along the lines of: you know, when i was a kid, i was into Stephen King and horror - and so when my kid was into that kind of stuff, i didn’t think it was a big deal.
so, of course, my response was "yeah, being into that stuff isn’t a big deal at all - it's normal - but being a sociopath and murdering someone is not normal; it's fucked up. but there's nothing wrong with being into horror stories - they're just stories meant to entertain - it doesn't make you a murderer to enjoy Halloween - but it would if you put on a Michael Myers mask and went out and stabbed people." and, of course, like any sane person, my father agreed with me.
then, continuing this line of conversation, i started talking about the concept of how "fiction isn’t reality," and how a frightening amount of people don't understand that; and i literally started telling him about antis - people on the internet who attack and harass others over "problematic" or "inappropriate" fictional interests.
i used well-known pop culture examples like: if you're into Game of Thrones and like Jaime and Cersei together or wanted Jon and Daenerys to end up together (i didn't think he would process the term "shipping," but clearly by the end of this conversation i think i was wrong), that people (antis) will say things like "you should die," and that you "support inc*st in real life," and that "you're disgusting."
i also used the examples of "toxic relationships" in pop culture, like the Joker and Harley Quinn, or Kylo Ren and Rey, and how if you’re into those kinds of fictional relationships that people (antis) will say that you "support toxic relationships," and that you are "glorifying abuse," and that it all "must be what you really want and believe is right or good."
and my fucking 65-year-old father literally goes: "I don’t understand. It’s a TV show. Don't they know it’s fake?"
queue my jaw dropping to the fucking ground because i'm like. YES. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT PRO-SHIPPERS ARE TRYING TO SAY AND THESE PEOPLE DON'T GET IT.
he was flabbergasted, my pals. the shock in his eyes was incredible to behold.
and, oh boy, that isn't even the best part, guys.
my father then says, "Don’t tell me it’s like that with anime too?"
and i said, "it's worse with anime."
and i fucking swear to you - no joke, on my life and baby Jesus' cradle - again my 65-year-old father looks at me and says, “It’s a fucken cartoon."
... ... ...
... i can't ...
i can't end this post better than that.
#anti anti#anti harassment#proship#proshipper#proshipping#pro ship#pro fiction#pro shipper#pro shipping#profic#comship#proship safe#comship safe#proship positivity#anti censorship#ship discourse#fiction is not reality#fiction is fiction#ship and let ship
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Thanks for always being so kind with my asks. You don't have to make it now if you don't have the time but I had this funny idea of an art of Jon and Tyrion meeting again and commenting on each others facial scars. Maybe Ghost is also there to parallel their first meeting.
"I believe I've frightened your wolf. My apologies."
I would love a scene in Winterfell, maybe in the glass gardens. With a strong parallelism with their first meeting. The two will discuss identity and role in society again, in light of the changes and revelations of recent years.
Jon looks like this because I'm a fan of the theory that resurrecting will have this kind of effect on him.
#asoiaf#asoiaf fanart#tyrion lannister#jon snow#ghost#winterfell#resurrected jon#house lannister#house stark#yours suggestion was more funny but it came out like this#twow speculations
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Me, U & Jealousy - Chapter 1
Chapter One
“We’ll have Kayla give you the run around with how everything should be set up and she’ll help you get things going. Congratulations on your first day, good luck.” Eddie, a backstage producer had told me before walking off.
I was just hired on as an interviewer for WWE and I couldn’t really say I was that excited. Although this is a big opportunity for me, there was a couple people from my past who were here that I wish I could’ve left in the past.
But when my best friend, Jada, told me about the opportunity, I couldn’t let it slip through my fingers.
“I know it may seem scary but once you get acquainted with everyone, it’ll be easier for you.” Kayla starts as she takes over the tour. “Everyone here is very nice, so don’t be intimidated so easily.”
I let out a laugh, shaking my head at her. “Kayla I don’t think there’s a person here who can intimidate me. I don’t frighten easy.” It was true though. No matter how big, tall or muscular someone could be, it didn’t phase me at all. Not even a little bit.
Kayla laughed right back, “Okay, Good. I know most people come in and they’re so afraid to mess up because they work for such a big company; but I think you have enough confidence to do a great job.”
“Thank you Kayla, that really means a lot coming from you.”
“No problem girl. We’ll go around and introduce you to everyone backstage so that you can-“
“I know that ain’t who I think it is!” A voice called out from afar, and I had to keep myself from rolling my eyes. So much for keeping them in the past.
Kayla and I turned around to watched the entire bloodline walk up to us. Unfortunately I grew up with these fools, our parents were close and they always had us hanging out together. The Uso brothers and Roman were older so they didn’t hang out with me as much as their little brother did.
“We heard you was coming, but we thought Ma was just talking just to talk. Damn, look at lil Sorai.” Jonathon teased as he pulled me into a hug.
I gave him the hug in return but kept it short, pulling away from him. “I’m not lil Sorai, I’m grown now Jon.”
Joshua threw his arm around my neck to pull me into a hug as well. “She think cause she gain a lil weight she grown.” Josh laughed and I rolled my eyes.
“I’m a grown women, thank you.” I stated, pulling back from that hug as well. “I pay big girl bills now just like the rest of em.”
“Don’t think just cause you ‘grown’ you think you can walk around doing whatever. Joe on a mission to keep that whole locker room away from you.” Josh stated, throwing quotations around the word ‘grown’ as if it meant nothing to him.
And in reality, it probably didn’t. Seeing these boys did nothing but push those big brother instincts that they had over me back in high school.
They would run everyone away from me if they could. No boy stood a chance against these boys, and I wasn’t about to let them repeat my high school life all over again.
“Guys, Its been a couple of year. Don’t you think it’s time to drop this big brother act already? I mean We’re all grown now.”
It was Joe who spoke up this time. “Grown? You think she look grown Josh?”
“Nah not even a little bit, what about you Uce?” Josh asked, turning to his twin.
“Still look like the same lil Sorai from the playground. Ain’t that right Solo?” Jon asked his little brother.
Solo stared at me with the most intense look in his eyes before answering his brother. “Yeah, same lil Sorai from the playground.” He agreed, a small smirk on his face.
Solo fucking Sikoa. Damn I couldn’t stand him. Ever since we were kids, he would always teased me about every little thing and made sure to irritate my last nerve just to get a laugh. But it wouldn’t be like that this time around, I’m gonna make sure of that.
“I see you still can’t stand up for yourself Sefa. Guess some things never change.”
“It’s Solo.” He tried to correct but I shrugged him off turning to Kayla who looked amused from the whole interaction.
“Kayla, these fools are my wanna be brothers who tried to scare everyone away from me back in high school.” I stated, giving her the history of how I knew them.
“We don’t try to do nothing. We’ve successfully ran every lame away from lil Sorai because she don’t got time for heart break.” Jon bragged which caused me to roll my eyes.
“It’s a little too late for that. Listen as much as I would love to play catch up, Me and Kayla got things to do and I won’t be caught slacking on my first day. “ I turned around and started walking in the opposite direction of the group of boys to follow Kayla to wherever she had to take me.
“Aye Kayla, when y’all finish up bring her to our locker room so she can know where its at. That way we can play catch up!” Jonathan called out. Kayla let out a shout of agreement with a playful smirk on her face as we continued down the hall.
“So,” Kayla started as soon as we were out of earshot. “Wanna tell me the history behind that?” She asked teasingly.
Oh Lord.
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Let me know watchu guys think so far. Gimme some love though😭🫶🏾 like, comment and repost
#empressdede#empresswriting#wwe#black reader#solo sikoa x black reader#solo sikoa x oc#solo sikoa#sefa fatu#sefa fatu x black reader#sefa fatu x oc#MEYOUANDJEALOUSY
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Did a 20 minute drabble sprint with my speedy gentlemen buds and came out with this!
Prompt: “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”
I chose to do some Landoscar fluff :)
Under the cut!
It starts out quiet.
Like Lando isn’t even sure anything is even different. It’s casual. It’s normal.
But something has shifted in the way Oscar Piastri looks at him. And Lando doesn't know how to deal with it other than internal flailing and alarms screeching in his head.
“Here,” Oscar offers with a small nod, handing Lando his forgotten water bottle he had left abandoned in the hospitality an hour earlier.
Lando takes it from Oscar’s outstretched hand and feels their fingers brush just the tiniest bit from the pass. Lando shivers. He hopes it was internal shivering that is imperceptible to others, imperceptible to Oscar.
“Thanks.” Lando says mutely. And then Oscar does the damndest thing.
He winks at him.
Lando melts into a puddle. What is wrong with him?
—
Lando really should have the couch of his driver’s room facing the door and not facing away from the door. It was a tragic mistake in strategy on his part.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when he feels warm breath ghost over the back of his neck and a soft thud against the back of the couch.
He drops his phone. The traitorous device snaps into his chest and bounces onto the floor.
“Hey.” Oscar breathes down the back of his neck.
Lando makes a slightly mangled noise in response and scrambles to the floor to look for his phone. Nevermind it being a traitorous device, it’s now his savior to get Oscar’s breath away from his neck before he does something stupid like turn around and pull his face to Lando’s.
Lando finally grabs his phone and looks up at Oscar, who is now leaning over the top of the couch and tilting his head in a way Lando would die before he admits he finds cute. He’s smiling and waiting for Lando to get himself together.
It strikes Lando then. Oscar’s always waiting for him. Never pushy. Never impatient. Just. Waiting. Like he’s got all the time in the world for him.
He clears his throat. “Is it a habit of yours to frighten men in their own driver’s rooms?”
Oscar laughs, quiet and jerky, like he’s trying to bend over the front of the couch. He shakes his head. “Nah, just thought you’d appreciate these.”
At that, Oscar reveals a bag of stroopwafels he had been hiding behind the couch.
Lando gasps and climbs back up the couch to Oscar’s space.
“You dog. You did not get me stroopwafels.” Lando says in disbelief, trying to paw them out of Oscar’s grasp.
He hands them over with no issue, and Lando notices Oscar’s fingers linger just the slightest bit over Lando’s.
“Hopefully they make up for scaring the living daylights out of you?”
Lando nods his head hastily and starts tearing the package open before someone can come take them from him. Before Jon can take them from him.
“How did you get these past security?” Lando says with awe while offering Oscar a warm stroopwafel.
Oscar takes it and pops a corner of it into his mouth.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”
And Lando feels like the air has been sucked out of the room at the absolute sincerity in Oscar’s tone.
And then Lando finally looks up at Oscar, really looks at him. And he finds something unwavering in his eyes.
“Oh.” Lando gets out quietly.
“Yeah.” Oscar agrees, nodding his head a bit and then scratching the back of his neck.
“Would you get me chicken nuggets too?”
A laugh punches out of Oscar at that. And Lando appreciates the warmth that spreads through his chest at seeing Oscar like this. There’s something there. Lando just has to figure out what it is.
What Lando would find out later, is that Oscar already knew what it was. He would just wait a while longer for Lando to catch on.
—
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The Wildling and the Lady
Based on this request: Hey! Hope i’m not too late. How about one where the reader is a Tully and she escapes the Red Wedding. She ends up travelling for a bit, she ends up at the Wall looking for Jon as they were friendly and she meets Tormund who is taken by her (maybe he likes her Tully red hair or her survival or something) and he’s surprised she’s a Lady
Here you are, lovelies! *Familiar characters are NOT mine!*
Warnings: Fluff, brief mentions of the Red Wedding (no details)
Pairings/Characters: Tormund Giantsbane x fem!Tully reader, Jon Snow, Samwell Tarly
A sigh escaped your lips as the cold began seeping into your bones once more. You'd lost track of how long you'd been traveling and you were certain you looked a fright. When you'd first fled from The Twins after what had happened with your aunt and cousin, you had no idea where to go. You'd simply wanted to get away. You'd used the only bit of gold you'd had to buy a bow. After that, you kept moving. As you traveled further and further North, the air grew colder and game grew sparser. You were near freezing and starving, but you weren't going to stop.
Even through it all though, you couldn't fight the relief that coursed through you when you saw the Wall. Yes, you were a woman, but you had family there and maybe he could help you. You didn't despise Jon the way your aunt had. In fact, you were on pretty friendly terms with him. You only hoped he could help you now. If only for a little while.
The gated opened and Jon ran to you with a soft smile. As soon as you slid off your horse, you wrapped your arms around him. "I thought you'd died with Robb." You shook your head. "No. I was able to escape. No one paid much attention to me. I tried to convince Robb to leave, but you knew your brother." Jon nodded sadly.
"I know I shouldn't be here, but I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere safe anyway." Jon gave you a soft smile before gesturing to someone behind him. Two men approached you and Jon. The first was dark-haired and was a bit bigger round the middle than his companions. He looked like he would give the best hugs, honestly. But it was the second that really caught your eye. Tall, red of hair, with blue eyes that told you he was capable of mischief you never dreamed of. He looked positively wild and it intrigued you.
You greeted them both with a smile. Then you turned back to Jon. "Where is your companion?" he asked you. You felt the tall one's eyes on you as you replied, "Since when have I ever needed a companion? Besides I have no one left. I made my way here by myself." Jon rolled his eyes, but smiled anyway. "Of course you did. You can stay in my chambers with Ghost until we can find somewhere suitable. I know you can take care of yourself, but I'd rather know you are safe." You nodded. You knew it was pointless to argue.
"Jon?" the dark-haired man asked. "Oh, right. Sam, Tormund, this is Lady Y/N of House Tully. Lady Catelyn's niece." You scoffed a little. "Y/N is fine. I don't care much for my title." You let your gaze fall on the red-haired man once more only to find him staring at you so intensely, it made you shiver.
You could feel his eyes on you as Jon led you inside. "Is that man a Wildling?" you asked Jon once you were inside. Jon smirked a bit and nodded. "Yes. Tormund Giantsbane. As fierce and loyal as they come, and also as wild. He's one of the Free Folk and proud of it. Looks frightening but means well." You didn't bother telling him that "frightened" was not what you felt when Tormund looked at you. Not in the slightest.
Tormund's POV
The next morning, Tormund rose early and made his way out into the cold courtyard of Castle Black. The first thing he noticed was the sound of someone training. Confused as he was usually the only one awake this time of morning, the Wildling made his way over. The next thing he noticed was Ghost sitting just outside the sparring ring. He thought it must be Jon up then.
To his surprise, when Tormund's gaze finally landed on the other person up so early, it wasn't Jon. It was you. You were moving with such speed and grace, Tormund couldn't help but be impressed. You certainly didn't act like any lady he'd ever met before.
"Are you going to stand there staring? Or are you going to join me?" your voice asked, pulling Tormund from his thoughts. You had stopped moving and were watching him with a raised brow. "These practice dummies offer no challenge, but surely you could," you challenged as a smirk spread across your lips. Tormund chuckled. "Ya sure ya want to be doing that?" You shrugged a bit which only caused Tormund's own smile to grow. "Alright then. Have yer way." Without giving you a chance to retort, Tormund lunged.
The two of you became intertwined in a dance of clashing steel. Back and forth you went, moving so quickly you were almost a blur. Tormund had to admit he'd met his match in you and he was loving every moment of it. Still, you weren't nearly as experienced as Tormund was so you found yourself on your backside. You beamed up at him as you struggled to catch your breath.
"Thank you," you said simply once you could breathe again. Tormund offered a hand to help you up. You took it, but didn't expect him to use quite as much strength to pull up which was obvious at your gasp as your chest met his. To Tormund's delight, you didn't look uneasy or embarrassed. Instead you let out a little chuckle before saying, "I wouldn't mind if you joined me again tomorrow."
"As the lady wishes." His tone was teasing and you seemed to know it. You rolled your eyes before backing away. "I look forward to it." You walked away while Tormund's eyes followed your form. "I like," he muttered to himself. If anyone looked at him in that moment, they would have seen the Wildling practically staring at you with hearts in his eyes.
(a/n: I hope you like it!)
Forever Tags: @fizzyxcustard @brewsthespirit-blog @line-viper @etherealpotter @frozenhuntress67 @cd1242 @smalltownbigheart @gruffle1 @supernatural4life2022
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To our beloved,
You did not take our confession well, we did not anticipate this. We are your best friends and you have claimed you loved us a million times, I admit Jon had been impulsive in the moment and it can be quite frightening but you should know that Jon and I would never hurt you, and you should be able to admit running out, abandoning your friends was also a mistake. And you shall be more receptive to our affections.
Your rejection of Jon's kiss has left him in heartache, imagine your Jon in tears after you hurt him, pushing him away like he was nothing, what is wrong with you? What is the point in all this strife? Why run from us? It's fruitless, no one has a love as true as ours, we've done extreme things but all is fair in the name of love.
I know the photos and videos and everything else are strange but as long as you behave no one else will see them. As your soulmates Jon and I just want what's best for you and you weren't making the right choices, we know you grieved them, though they weren't worth a single tear, they were filth, their claim to love was pitiful, it was tainted and they were trying to rip you away from us.
I'm writing this letter as a warning, we know where you are hiding and it will be easier for everyone if you just came home. You have until Friday before Jon and I come. If you do choose to make this more difficult than it needs to be you will be greeted with a punishment, you will not just spit in our faces, not after everything we've done.
We look forward to seeing you.
Yours, Damian and jon
P.S - please come home angel, Damian going mad and I just really miss you. I'm sorry I held you in place with the kiss when I felt you pull away I just really want you. Me and Damian have been planning everything for so long sometimes I forgot you didn't know but I promise when you come home I won't do it again but I think you should give dami a little kiss you've really stressed him out. I can't wait for us to be together again. I love you so much and so does dami he's just a little frustrated.
#yandere damian wayne x reader#damian wayne x reader#damian wayne#yandere damian wayne#yandere damian x you#robin#robin x reader#yandere robin x reader#yandere robin#yandere jon kent#jon kent#yandere jon kent x reader#yandere concept#yandere batfamily#yandere dc#my writing
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Right when I felt the moment stop (r. stark)
Right when I felt the moment stop r. stark imagine
Pt. 2 of Oh, all I used to do was pray
Pairings - Robb Stark x female!Reader
Summary - Robb Stark and the rest of his family bear the consequences of their actions toward you.
Word Count - 1,899 words
Warnings - Angst, violence, mention of infidelity, mention of an animal attack
Songs I listened to while writing: mad woman, Right Where You Left Me (Taylor Swift) Washing Machine Heart (Mitski)
Jon was in the courtyard when he caught sight of Arya and Rickon rushing in on horseback. He had been trying to avoid Robb after their confrontation so he avoided going over to his younger siblings as Robb and Catelyn were trying to figure out what happened. Instead, Jon watched from the side.
"Rickon, Arya, what happened? Are you alright?" Catelyn's voice is comforting, but the look in her eyes screams one word: What happened?
Arya whispers, still in shock, “Rickon and I were in the Wolfswood. We were surprised by Ramsay Bolton and his men. They were talking about using us for ransom or hurting us to get back at Robb. Then Y/n showed up. She used a rock to distract the guards holding me and Rickon. Y/n told us to take her horse and ride back to Winterfell.”
Jon walked up to the group after he heard the commotion. He spoke urgently as he heard your name but did not see you after scanning the courtyard. “Y/n? Where is she now?”
The look of dread on Arya and Rickon’s faces is enough to confirm the worst.
Catelyn holds back her instincts and tries to remain calm so as not to frighten her children. She takes deep breaths and looks at her eldest son. “Robb, this is very bad. You need to do something.”
Jon speaks up quickly, cutting off Robb’s response. There isn’t time for him to be respectful, even if his brother could take his head as the king. “I’m taking men and I am going to search the Wolfswood for her. This is Ramsay. We may already be too late. He thrives off the pain of others.” Jon immediately goes to round up some men and head off.
Robb stares after Jon. He can’t believe what he has just heard. You would risk your life for Robb’s siblings after how they all treated you?
Jon and the men with him come upon the clearing that Ramsay and his men were obviously just at. Although, it may just be Ramsay now. There were several bodies strewn, bloodied with scratches and bite marks. By the luck of the gods, your body is not among those fallen but it means you are most likely alone with Ramsay. The rescue party continues on by following tracks left in the snow. Farther into the forest, there is a fallen bear with arrows embedded in it. This is obviously the animal that killed Ramsay’s men.
A shrill scream sends Jon and the men running toward the sound. They end up at the bank of a frozen river. Ramsay has you trapped against him, a dagger held to your throat. The fear and panic were quite clear in your eyes, even from all the way across the river.
“Hello, bastard. I see you’re still at the beck and call of your brother. It’s unfortunate that he won’t be here to see as I slit his wife’s throat, although from what I hear, he would probably thank me for doing so. Be sure to describe in detail the events that happened. I would hate for him to be left wondering. Shame the other two runts escaped. I’ll be sure to make your good sister’s death painful for the loss she caused me.” Ramsay sneered as he pulled you tighter against him.
As Ramsay was distracted by his taunting of Jon, your good brother subtly directed one of the men to move to his side of Ramsay. The soldier pulled back his bow and sent an arrow flying right into Ramsay’s side. This caused Ramsay to let go of you, unfortunately slicing your collarbone as he fell. The impact of his body against the river ice created fissures in the frozen water. Jon went to step onto the ice in order to get you to safety.
“Wait! Don’t—“ Your words were cut off when the pressure created a crack so large that the ice beneath you broke and sent you into the cold river. You frantically tried to get back onto the ice but could not maintain a grip on the slippery surface. You fell back into the water and the current swept you underneath the ice. Jon immediately sprung into action and sprinted onto the ice, jumping over broken slabs while still trying to be as light as he could. By sheer luck, Jon was able to reach an area in front of your path and break through the ice. He hauled you to safety and rushed back to the group. They were smart enough to have a cloak ready to wrap you in and bundled you onto a horse. Everyone set off to Winterfell.
When Jon made it back through the gates of Winterfell, he ignored the questions from everyone. His only focus was on getting you to a maester. Once you were being tended to, Jon turned to his family. They had followed him to your chambers and were waiting to hear what had happened to you.
When Jon spoke, his voice was deeply serious. “The men and I found y/n being held by Ramsay on the river. His men had been attacked and killed by a bear. Only he and she escaped the animal. We were able to kill Ramsay. He sliced her collarbone as she fell. The wound isn’t deep enough to kill her but she fell into the river when the ice broke. I tried to get to her as quick as I could. She was breathing as I brought her back but she was pale. So pale. Her lips were blue. I don’t know what will happen to her now.”
Robb nods his head as Jon explains, he has to know. ”Do you think she'll make it?" He knows this is a question only the Maester can answer, but he wants to hear it for himself. And right now, he wants nothing more than to hear good news.
Jon glares at Robb and spits out, “We wouldn’t have to worry about that if she hadn’t left Winterfell because of you.”
Robb's face pales, and his expression turns to anger. He hadn't expected Jon to lash out at him, and his mouth opens and closes as he tries to respond. He looks down at the ground and away from his brother, clearly ashamed. Robb knows that Jon is right but he doesn’t yet want to admit that out loud.
You woke up a week later. The maester had healed you to the best of his abilities but you were still quite weak. When you awoke, you were confused as to where you were and what had happened to you. You were even more confused when you saw Robb sitting beside the bed you were lying in.
“My lord husband. I…I” You say as you try to push yourself up.
Robb looks down at you, his face full of mixed emotions. He is grateful that you are alive, but he knows the damage the attack from Ramsay has done to you. You look... unwell. He puts his hand on yours and his expression is soft. “Y/n, don't try to get up. The maester has tended to you as best he can, but you need to rest in order to heal. You nearly died, and you need to let yourself recover. Is there anything you need? A... any water?”
You pull your hand away from Robb’s and recoil slightly as you bring your hand close to your chest. Your eyes don’t leave Robb, watching him warily and expecting him to blame you for the events that happened. “No. I’m fine, your grace.”
Robb sees your hand slide away and he pulls his own hand back with a disappointed expression on his face. He stares at his lap, upset at himself that he couldn't do more to help you, and hurt by the fact that she doesn't want anything from him. What else could he do? His eyes drift to the door, and he gives a quick nod to the guard outside. The guard nods back and leaves the room, closing the door behind him and leaving you and your husband alone in the room.
You speak up in order to make this interaction less awkward. “Are Arya and Rickon alright? Did they get back to Winterfell safely?”
Robb's face drops when you ask this. He nods and forces himself to smile. Don't show her your pain. "They are alright. Don't worry about them, y/n.” He forces himself to smile again, but his voice is shaking. After a moment, he closes his eyes and takes a breath. When he opens them again, he looks at you more steadily. "But now, I must worry about you.”
You brush aside Robb’s concern. The thought of your husband suddenly caring for you after mostly ignoring you for the past six months makes you wary and uncomfortable. The fact that he is only now showing concern after you almost died makes you angry. “You do not need to, your grace. There are many more important things for you to be doing. The maester has everything under control.”
Robb is shocked. For a moment, this makes him angry, that his own good intentions didn't mean anything to you. After a deep breath, Robb speaks again, “Y/n, that was an unkind thing to say. I'm trying to make you feel better, and you just..." Robb bites his lip and looks down at the bed. He is at a loss for words. He looks back up at you and asks again. “Y/n is there anything I could get you? Anything…" Robb is practically begging you at this point.
Your face hardens for a brief second before it slips into an expressionless mask, “You’re right. You are my lord husband. I should not have spoken out of turn. I merely worry that you have many tasks already. It is a wife’s job to care for her husband but it is not the husband’s job to care for his wife.”
Robb's face has a mixture of irritation and shock etched upon it. it. He can't tell if you are making fun of him or not, but either one is enough to make him boil over with anger. “How can you say such a thing? I am not some cold lord who has a wife only as a showpiece. I am not like him." He spat out in disgust. “Y/n, what is this? Do you want to be alone? I’m trying to be a better husband here.”
You begin to sob and the maester interrupts you and Robb out of concern for your health. The old maester speaks as he ushers Robb out of the tower, “My lord. You need to let the lady rest. She can’t be put under such emotional distress. Please leave and come back once your wife has recovered a bit more.”
Robb feels his expression falter as he sees the tears running down your cheeks, and he turns his gaze to the floor. He feels a sharp pierce of shame in his chest as he realizes what he has put you through, and he nods to the maester.
"I... I understand." He says, looking at the older man and then back to you before turning to leave. He leaves the room slowly, quietly, and with a heavy heart.
Next Part
#robb stark fanfic#robb stark imagine#robb stark#robb stark x reader#got x reader#got imagine#king of the north
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it bothers us because you have delusions that martell princess who was raped but nobody except her family was bothered by it cause she was so irrelevant suddenly should matter more than Jon Targaryen's parents who according to canon 'he loved her she loved him' and their love brought about the birth of the prince who was promised
suck on it irrelevant ugly woman stans and you have the gall to compare princess viserra to her when viserra was million more beautiful than the dornish scum and her ill spawn could ever be
Jon WHO? LMAO. I wasn't going to post this - my moots & followers don’t deserve to read this shit - but it made me laugh more than the others
Rhaegar chose Lyanna, I agree.... but it was to die. Do you think he wouldn't have taken here somewhere safer and with more people to ensure > her < safety during childbirth if he wanted to? Please.
He could've let Elia die in a third pregnancy and be free from her and marriage duties. The thing is that the moment he found out it might happen he went "no❤️".
Also, I'd be embarrassed to use the show as source. Especially if my pRoMisEd pRiNcE's end was that one.
'Ugly woman' and that's her:
"The crowning of the Stark girl, who was by all reports a wild and boyish young thing with none of the Princess Elia’s delicate beauty."
I can't believe you're so obsessed to the point of seeing posts I don't tag😭. Go use that time to read the books, they're fun.
On a more serious note [tw: rape]:
You are disgusting. Do you know how hard someone has to try to be worse than some ASOIAF men?
‘In Casterly Rock, it was common knowledge that Gregor Clegane had killed Elia and her babe. They said he had raped the princess with her son’s blood and brains still on his hands.’
That’s what you are mocking. I don’t care that she’s a fictional character, what you and your rabble say about her is truly sickening, it’s heartbreaking that you get to vote.
Someone who’s not from her family and cares a lot about what happened is Ned. I’m sorry if his own sister’s death didn’t influence his non-Jon decisions but Elia’s did.
Thus, one of the reasons he gives Cersei the chance to escape is his memory of Elia and her children's bodies presented to Robert and his reaction, you can’t even deny how much it affected him.
‘Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage [...]’
A few other quotes:
‘Tyrion watched the faces of the Lords Tyrell, Redwyne, and Rowan, wondering if any of the three would be bold enough to say, “But Lord Tywin, wasn’t it you who presented the bodies to Robert, all wrapped up in Lannister cloaks?” None of them did, but it was there on their faces all the same. Redwyne does not give a fig, he thought, but Rowan looks fit to gag.’
"Cersei is frightened of you, my lord … but she has other enemies she fears even more. [...] In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess Elia and her babes.
‘Some nights, Ser Barristan wondered if he had not done that duty too well [...] m. Princess Elia and the children. Aegon just a babe, Rhaenys with her kitten. Dead, everyone, yet he still lived, who had sworn to protect them.’
‘The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children [...]’
I know you can’t relate but Elia was loved. It wouldn’t matter if ‘only her family’ cared, what happened to her was brutal and nothing changes it. You people just come off as rude, uneducated and ignorant.
Fun fact: the name 'Elia' is mentioned 75 times throughout the series, 'Lyanna' 53 and 'Rhaegar', thanks to Dany, 258
#i'm sorry but i'm going to tag because jon targaryen is GOLD#at this point it's probably just a closeted elia stan trying to make us laugh i swear#elia martell#tw: rape
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Heart of the Great Wolf
21 - A Bastard or The White Wolf
Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader, Robb Stark x F!Baratheon!Reader (Past)
Length: 21.2k
Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, slight canon divergence, bloody and gory imagery, mention of animal death, child death, references to rape, descriptions of warfare, canon divergence
Notes: I know, okay? I had to be the one to write it, I know about the preposterous length. I'm sorry. Previous Chapter Here, Series Masterlist Here
You had never told your father about that day, even though for a long time it stuck out in your mind the more used to it you became. Always in the back of your head, but not only the violence that you had seen, it was the words with it. The first time was the one that frightened most, that was what you were told before and it seemed it was true, because the thing that never got easier was the answer that followed after it was all over.
You could look back through your stays in Winterfell but so often it landed back at a moment right at the start, even though everything else were the ones that impacted your life's course.
During your first stay in Winterfell, you had started to adjust within the month. It wasn’t being away from your father and mother which was the most difficult part to you, it was simply the difference in the day to day that was so odd. The Starks noticed it right away, that you were not used to being apart of a household that wasn’t so stern and rigid.
When you had woken up from your trio of days asleep and fever ridden, you didn’t remember right away that you had even arrived. Taking a few minutes to recall the fuzzy memory of being shown the castle and partially remembering meeting Lord and Lady Stark, before you vaguely recalled feeling terribly unwell by supper. Luwin had been checking up on you while Catelyn sent the boys away thinking that it might be better to ease you into things with a mother figure at your side.
She was wrong it turned out. You were almost uncomfortable and put off by how kind and gentle she was with you. Explaining in a soothing tone that you had been rather sick when you arrived and you had slept through most of it, the entire time you had been painfully quiet and stiff when she would try to run a hand over you comfortingly.
Only when you were up and about, you still were like that, but with everyone.
Would listen and stand by Lord Stark during the day but you really didn’t say much. Meals were when it stood out the most. Robb and Jon were ten at the time, and were as loud and rambunctious with each other at supper as they were outside in the training yard. They would try and include you all the time to talk and joke at the table, but you would look over hesitantly at the curious faces of Ned and Catelyn before giving the boys a shy smile and little else. It took a fortnight for everyone to understand that perhaps you had grown up in a bit more of a difficult family then they assumed. Then everyone had their own tactics at how to make you comfortable.
Catelyn’s was the most simple and emotionally effective. Easing you into the dynamics of a mother figure, knowing you were rather young in a far away place surrounded by strangers. It took some time for you to get used to her being around, prompting you with questions to open up, easing you into things like admitting that you think your mother loves you but she stopped spending time with you after she lost your first brother. Then she lost your second brother and father sent you away. You had thought it was you who did something wrong and this was a punishment.
Asking you as she stood behind you untangling the knots in your hair, “Does it feel like a punishment? Being here?” You shook your head no, before apologizing for moving at all and sitting more rigid then before.
Your voice was quiet, but that never really went away. “Not anymore. I like it here. There’s always people around and something to do, and I don’t have any friends on Dragonstone.”
For a while, she was the one who felt like your mother. And when you went back home, you had trouble getting used to your own again. Selyse was quiet as well, she loved you but was never very affectionate and neither was your father. Things between you both never really got any better after that. Then one day Catelyn started to pull away as well. Not knowing what prompted it yourself, but you were twelve and visiting Winterfell again, it was well past midnight, so your nameday had just passed.
You and Jon had snuck out when everyone was asleep. It had been his idea. All but sneaking into your room right before you fell asleep, tossing a cloak of his at you and dragging you out of bed. A short ride on horseback to a lake nearby, he was fourteen already and sometimes had to take the reins himself to bring out your more adventurous side. Saying he never got to spend time alone with his best friend anymore. And when you teased him, “So is that my gift, Snow? Being allowed to call you my best friend? I am so greatly honoured-” He hadn’t thought twice about hoisting you up and tossing you in the lake, him following soon after.
The next day, Catelyn was a little different. A little colder to Jon then normal, and a bit stern towards keeping you focused on your tasks. Not a clue that Catelyn had spotted you both coming back. Her putting a bit more of a wall up when she recognized the evidence of him having a crush. Clear as day to her when finally seeing how physically affectionate Jon was with you, when he thought you two were alone.
It wasn’t your fault, you were the only girl both eldest boys spent most of their time around in such a consistent manner, and Robb had mentioned to his mother that he told no one he liked you until confessing in that very moment. Ned had told Catelyn to leave them all be, saying that if Robb wanted to pursue something he would do it respectfully at his own pace. While keeping from her himself, that Jon's crush wasn't new, that Jon had been the one with feelings for you since he first damn well laid eyes on you, so stopping that crush was a solid impossibility.
You were younger then the boys as well. They were both over fourteen and you had only just turned twelve. It wouldn’t be for another two years until you bled for the first time, and another two years after that before you had a single romantic interaction in your life.
Yet still, none of those stood out in impact of your time in Winterfell.
The strange part though, was how it wasn’t Jon or Robb either. Of course as a child, you had no way of ever predicting the life which would spin itself around you all in painful manners of blood.
They had become some of the biggest aspects of your life, both boys deeply curious to get to know the Southern girl who had collapsed ill on her first day in their home. Robb boisterous and eager to lead a new friend into showing you the way Northerners did things. Jon was more quiet and preferred to be the one to help ease you into the more difficult parts of being in such a new place all alone.
Early on there was no distinction between the two. As close with one as the other. Robb would often find ways to get you both into trouble, and Jon would be the one to pull you into the shadows to keep from being caught in the first place. It had been strange for them when you left. Only eight you had no understanding of if this was a place you’d be allowed to go back too, and while they would be left with each other they knew you were going home to a more difficult family and no one to remind you to have fun once in a while.
Not that he told anyone, and of course Jon had naturally treasured every second with his brother, but he liked that you were both a kind of outcast. This wasn’t your home, and Catelyn wished it weren’t Jons but together you enjoyed the quiet and didn’t have to care about those things. Winterfell was a lot more lonely for him when you left, and when they learned the day you were coming back, Jon, almost twelve by then, could have cried. Only realizing in that moment did he think he would never see you again.
A common thread in Jon’s life with you it seemed.
But still, friendships, and love, and marriage. Blood, loss, death and a strange renew of life you still could recall one day so clearly you could hear him speaking to you.
A month your first stay in was when you encountered a deserter from the Night’s Watch. Despite Catelyn’s deep protests, Ned had told Ser Rodrick to get you ready to join them. “Lord Stannis did not send her here to be coddled, Cat. She won’t be this young forever. If it scares her, then she needs to learn to face those fears.”
You had been very quiet on the ride out. Ned had been accompanied by Ser Rodrick, Jory, and two others you hadn’t known the names of as you rode, following in the back beside Robb and Jon. Both whom had been through this before, in fact it was their third time.
Robb was a little less comforting, but he also knew that one day he would have to take over as Lord, and wanted to ensure he was as calm as his father was, taking most of his energy to keep himself collected. Jon watched you a little bit closer. You looked smaller then ever amongst them all in such a large clearing of land. It stuck out to Ned as well, bright eyes and stood shorter then even his boys.
But you came close. Didn’t shy away in the back by the horses, instead up close and still silent. Robb was off to the side, adjacent to his father as the guards brought the man forth. Your eyes narrowed as he rambled. Covered in grime and dirt he looked like what they described as wildlings but draped in black leathers. You couldn’t even remember what he had said, looking so intensely at the wooden platform he was knelt over and the dark stain under it from times before.
Pulling out Ice, a great sword of Valyrian steel and pointing the blade into the ground, Lord Stark leaned over it’s hilt and spoke quietly his sentence of death. Stepping up right beside you as he did so, Jon was close enough you could feel his warmth. Voice very quiet as he asked, “Is this your first time seeing something like this?”
You could only nod, looking at the bloody wood and the great size of Ice. He had leaned in more, voice quieter even to ensure it was only for you. “The first is the scariest, but it’s important you watch.”
He stood right by you as Lord Stark brought the sword down and in one seamless slice did the man’s head come off. Dropping to the ground as the blood behind in the place it once sat dripped profusely down. In the instant it severed, you didn't close your eyes, but you did flinch, not realizing you instantly grabbed Jon’s hand as your stomach dropped at the sight. Jon held it back right away.
Quietly muttering your name with comfort he told you, “It’s alright, you did good for your first time.”
Looking down you only then realized you had grabbed his hand and wide eyed dropped it taking a step back with a mumbling apology. Your own father had always told you it was important you stand on your own with those sorts of things, and you were embarrassed at likely annoying the black haired boy with your childishness.
As Lord Stark approached, Jon took his leave to join Robb by the horses. The man kneeling down to your level with a deep rumble in his voice that held none of the coldness lessons from your father always had. “Do you understand why I did it?”
He was taken in that moment by your wide eyes and small voice. Not yet knowing two daughters was in his future he felt both the pull of teaching you duty, and comforting a little girl. “He broke the law.”
Nodding, he leaned a bit more in. “He did, but the question was not why did he have to die, but why I must do it?” You shook your head an honest no.
It was those next few exchanges that stuck so heavily with you. Something you thought about for that entire ride back, all through your supper and there still as you later drifted off to sleep. “Many King’s and Lord’s have men who do this for them. But we see things differently here. We hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eye’s and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man doesn’t deserve to die.”
Biting your lip, you nodded but clearly something else was in your thoughts. He stayed knelt there waiting for you to feel ready to ask it. “Will I have to do it one day?”
Lord Stark ran a hand over your head, and gently down your hair. “I can’t say for sure if you will. You’re Lord Stannis’s only child which means if you have no brothers, his duties will fall onto you some day. And you will be the one having to make the hard decisions.”
He watched your eyes drift to the men cleaning up what remained of the blood and body before finding his eyes again. Clearly you were a small, sheltered girl hidden away on a grim island with what Ned knew for a fact was a not very affectionate father. Truth be told, if he could have simply kept you in Winterfell with his sons, he would have. “Is it supposed to feel so scary?”
The bit of fear was in your eyes, but you held it out of your person well. “Taking a life should never be done with pleasure. But even in fear you must never look away. A leader who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”
You never told your father about that day, you didn’t want him to be angry and it worried you that meant you would never go back to the North again. But as you stood there that day so many years from that memory, it was something you hadn’t forgotten. That you couldn’t just look away because it scared you, even when you saw the fires and heard the chanting in your mind.
It had arrived in the early hours of morning with a short scribbled letter. “Bring me my bride, bastard. Bring me her and I will give you back your brother with his head still attached. Keep the whore from me any longer, you will watch my hounds fuck her bloody and feed you to them.” The one that sat in front of you though sent you back into the flames, and the chanting. The horror of a night and an image that made you so ill you dared never think of it.
But as in that box, sat the rotting, thick blooded head of a black direwolf you couldn’t stop yourself from seeing that true horror. You knew such a fate couldn’t happen again. Ramsay would put you through a torture getting his hands on you, but you couldn’t see another Stark strung up and mutilated, parts of his own wolf shoved onto what they cut off and parade it around like a spectacle. Not again.
It had come in the early hours of the morning, a chest of sorts that reeked so heavily it made the Glover’s suspicious in it’s contents. Now it sat open on the table for everyone around it to look at in their own horror. Or in Jon’s case, a rage blazing behind his eyes as they debated around him what coarse of action to take, interrupting the current train of arguing doubt with a frustrated, “What am I supposed to do then?”
Debate had begun on if it was a trap, if walking into it was wise, and if he was telling the truth. Back and forth about the kind of person Ramsay was, how much he would stick to his word when the truth was it was impossible to tell. He was erratic, and his thirst for cruelty meant he had no bounds to keep his person within. Little else would ever drive him but the ravings of a monster that even after everything you could not predict.
Galbert Glover tried with confidence, but it was not bought by any. “We gather more men, we rally the Houses you’ve reached out to and overwhelm their own.”
Running through your mind, there were only so many that you could get to before pushing the time too far. Jon on his own, agreed. “How long will that take? You think the Bolton’s are going to wait for us to be ready? If Ramsay knows where we are, their armies will too.”
“Where’d he even find him? You both standing there telling us he’s alive but where would he even have found the boy when no one else knew where he was?” None had been able to figure that out initially, at least with the resources available but if they had sent men out before to hunt the boys down once then they likely did it again when no word was spoken of the matter.
Robett Glover looked to his brother with a knowing glance before turning to you. “Not many of the Houses under them are there willingly and they don’t have enough men on their own to escape them, but there is one that would have reason to side against you.”
Your eyes slipped shut, bracing your palms on the table with a deep sigh knowing the answer was far easier to sniff out then one may figure. The last time any had seen Bran, he had said that Rickon was being taken east to hide and there were two houses to the east that would have had the ability to search for the boy. And between them, there was only one that had proven they had the audacity.
“Kill me and be cursed.”
He was right in the end. Robb’s end was a horror and now you continued to feel the ripples of how unstable the Karstark’s had become near the end of the war. Your voice was quiet as you glanced back up to the open chest. “Well, we executed his father. So it seems to be he’s decided to take it out on the only Stark they could get their hands on.”
Jon and Theon both remained in the dark, having no proximity to the events you were discussing. Galbert Glover shook his head. “Bunch of oathbreakers, they are.”
Closer to you, Maege Mormont tried seeking your attention but it was trained on the blood in front of you all. “If he’s fool enough to think this is vengeance for his father, someone should remind the boy how old those Lannisters were.”
The rain was so heavy that day, the sky grim and cloudy as so few stood in that clearing as Robb executed Rickard Karstark. The undeniable rage in his eyes only after it was done, holding off so heavily from showing those feelings to stay composed in front of his men. He understood the weight of the choice you both had made, and yet it seemed the Karstark’s still didn’t.
“It’s not about Rickon. It’s about me.” Jon’s eyes trained up to you in a sharp glare that you worked very hard to not look at. “He can’t blame Robb now that he’s gone, but I’m alive which means the Harald Karstark can take it out on me. And he knows sending me back there is vengeance enough.”
It was on the tip of your tongue, but you knew it would cause an argument. You knew too well in fact that Jon would not stand there and let you say it, not make that choice but there was nothing else that was fair. “Why would Roose Bolton allow any of this? He’s smarter then to send out this kind of threat.”
Theon had a point, he was far smarter then this. Smart enough neither his King or Queen suspected his treachery until it was deep in your stomach. But there was one more thing in that chest that you hadn’t brought up. The one thing that you didn’t want to look at more then the direwolf’s head and it was the same thing that gave you that sensation in your stomach.
A dagger had been stabbed in the edge of the chest, keeping the note visible in place. It sat in front of Jon currently, being the one to unthinkingly pull it out to read the letter for himself when you both had arrived in the hall. You wanted to throw up thinking about it, but you couldn’t stop looking at it and unlike many times before out slipped words you couldn’t prevent.
“Theon’s right. Roose is far smarter then to do any of this, but he only let it happen because he wasn’t there to stop Ramsay from sending this one.” The group following your eyes to not the note but the knife with blood dried. Most had thought it was the wolf’s blood on it. Technically, that was true, but it also was yours.
Jon standing a little straighter as he looked to you. A warning that you refused to look at in his eyes and your name slipping sternly from his mouth. “This isn’t about-”
“Except that it is. They don’t have Tywin Lannister lording over their rule. They wanted me to marry Ramsay knowing that if I gave him an heir, then they have something to back their claim. But without that...” You looked at everyone but him, you didn’t want him to so easily recognize the conclusions you were already drawing yourself towards. “Then Roose’s son with Walda Frey would inherit the North..and if I recall he didn’t exactly take too well to the news of her carrying a boy did he?”
Theon dropped his head, “No. He didn’t. As a matter of fact I think he just might have been angry over it.” The look you both shared was dreadfully morose.
Galbert Glover nodded. “Roose Bolton doesn’t give a damn about anyone that gets in his way. You were a valuable hostage and without you then he doesn’t care about finding a new wife for the boy. Wouldn’t put it past him to take away that legitimacy the second he found out about that letter he sent your way.” Gesturing across the table to Jon.
His own hands were clenched hard enough you could see the strains in his knuckles. “If it’s only him, and he gets you back, then he thinks he has the North.” You watched with a still expression, made of stone and trying not to show anything. “He has to have Rickon then. Knows there is no chance I’d hand you over until I could see my brother with my own eyes.”
Maege was strict in her tone, a scolding that was not often heard on her. “We aren’t handing her over period.” Jon met her eyes, offended that she thought he for a second had considered the idea as she caught on quick. “I meant no disrespect, but this isn’t a negotiation, it’s a fight. Just because nothing’s been done about it yet, doesn’t make you any less the King’s heir. And even if you take it, she’s no less the Queen we chose.”
Biting your tongue hard as your eyes slipped closed before reopening. You shook your head slightly with a low tone of warning in your throat. “Maege-”
Quick though, she turned to you with a point and a set wild in her eyes. “No, shut up.” Were it anyone else, they may not have gotten away with that. “Trading one hostage for another didn’t do us any damn good last time, and we aren’t willingly doing it now.”
“She’s right.” You didn’t look at him, you didn’t want to hear about whatever this was going to turn into, and knowing full well Jon was about to keep you all but sewn to his side to prevent you from leaving on your own to do this. “I’m not offering you up to him. If I’m willing to fight for you, I’m willing to fight him for my brother too. But if we do this, we have to do it now.”
Robett tired to protest, “They have horses, weapons, everything we don’t have but numbers. We march on Winterfell now and we’re asking to lose.”
A rise in his voice, flaring a temper you knew Jon was struggling to contain. “We don’t have time. I can’t spend the next few weeks gathering more then when Ramsay has my brother. What about when he sends us something else next time, and it’s whatever he’s chopped off of Rickon? Am I still supposed to wait it out and hope we have enough?”
Voice so clear in your ear, warm but roughed with a strain of frustration as you lived it once more.
“Father rots in a dungeon, how long before they take his head?”
Your own voice finally echoing the words floating in your mind. “Jon’s right. We need to meet with Ramsay, and we need to do it now.” Finding Jon’s eyes they softened a tad towards you. “We never made it to your father when we had the chance, and we had far more time then we do here. The longer we take, the more likely he’ll kill Rickon out of anger.”
Something needed to be said between you, but there was nothing that you would do here. Neither arguing with the other in front of people, and you both hated the possibility one was coming the second you two were alone. But for now, Jon looked at you with a quiet certainty before turning to the others. “We leave as soon as we can. Ramsay doesn’t have the numbers and that’s going to have to be enough for us. I’ll speak to Tormund, make sure the free folk understand what we're walking into.”
Both Glovers and Maege nodded, not questioning that they took orders from Jon in the same way that they had once done Robb. You could almost see the traces of a title on their tongues that Jon had not yet accepted.
Jon called your name as soon as you turned to leave with the rest. Pausing mid step and turning to look back at him, reading the demand you come over to him in his eyes. Glancing at Theon with a flicker of your eyes to the door, he got the message. Leave and shut it behind you.
Standing in the middle of the room hoping he would just say it, and not make you come over to him to hear it. Only Jon could play this game of waiting even longer then you could. Perhaps over a minute passed when you relented, turning to better look at him only to find his eyes trained on the direwolf’s head. Footsteps echoing in the empty room as you approached, closer to his side then you were before.
“If I’m fighting for him, I’m fighting for you too.” His hand tracing the edges of the chest before swallowing harshly and slamming it shut. Unable to stand the sight any longer, no doubt imagining a horror as you were. What if it was the other wolf’s head he sent next. Trying to say his name, he interrupted you as his face twisted in frustration.“Let’s say I give you up, trade you to Ramsay for Rickon, do you really think he’s going to hold up his end and not kill him and the rest of us anyways?”
Arms crossing in front of your chest you shrugged. “Isn’t it worth the risk.”
You wished he had more of an outburst. Slam his fist into the table, yell at you, get angry. Anything but the quiet and almost heartbroken look he gave you instead. “I’m not letting you kill yourself by sending you back to the man who made you want to do it in the first place. You’re not going anywhere.”
“We could end this war right now, boy.”
That’s what he had said. Standing bloody and tied up in front of you and Robb, looking him in the eye saying that it could be that easy. But Robb was smart enough to know that wasn’t the case, smart enough to know that beating Jaime Lannister in a final one on one wouldn’t stop the rest of the Lannisters from coming after them anyways.
“It would save a lot of our own men’s lives. We need numbers for more the just this, only here we have a chance to trade thousands for one.” Jon pushed off the table, turning away from you as he ran a hand over his mouth. Pacing mindlessly to the opposite end of the room as you stepped only a few feet closer. “Maybe this is what’s right.”
Turning to you, his eyes were glaring and his brows narrowed in anger. “And how would you know that?” Face only twisting a little downward at this words he continued to pace. “To you what’s right is always throwing yourself down first to make it easier for everyone else. When all it’s done is make you feel worthless. You mean something to other people.”
Moving to lean against the table, you crossed your arms fixing to a point on the floor that didn’t hold anything that mattered. Hearing him come around the other side of the table, ending up closer to your left. “Not more then your own family.”
You could feel him before you saw him come into the side of your vision, always giving off such a warm heat that you could melt within. Jon’s own arms crossed as he looked to nothing as you did. “Rickon’s my little brother, and I’m going to go get him. The same way I tried to go get you when I found out you were alive. You’ve been just as important to me since the day you stepped foot in Winterfell.”
It was a rainy night when Robb told you that story. One that had been withheld from you for so long to not make you uncomfortable. “Robb said you were the one who looked after me, when I was sick.”
Jon nodded, both of your hearts heavy but maybe that would be a feeling that never went away after losing him. “I did. Watching you for three days because your fever was so bad I was scared you’d die the minute I looked away, and I’m just as scared now. Scared if I leave you alone for too long, you’ll wind up dead again or leaving because you think loving you is a burden.”
Only able to see part of him from the side as you glanced, you sighed deeply without any ability to refute it. “I wasn’t trying to make you choose between us.”
So badly Jon wanted to reach out, run a hand along your hair and down your spine but touching you when you were this dispondant was too risky to do. Not knowing if you’d flinch away from it. But his eyes had slid up to watch you trying not to watch back. “I know.”
The quiet was almost something like comfortable for a moment before you pushed off the table. “We should get to work, if we leave at dawn maybe it’ll take us a few days. If it doesn’t start snowing again at least.”
Jon called your name one more time, pausing you in your steps but instead of waiting for what he wanted to say, you felt him come up behind you. Not quite pressed against your back, but close enough your senses felt overwhelmed by him. His hands ever so slowly reaching around, running gently along your waist until one hand reached where he knew the scar was, and felt a slight tremble in you. Leaning down to place a gentle kiss on your neck you exhaled with a shake.
Didn’t push more into you or let his hands grow with greed. Only making you feel weak in your stance as he so lightly pressed his lips up a path from your neck so he could rasp in your ear. “One of us needs to tell him before we leave.” Perhaps it seemed, a little greed slipped through, the hand tracing your scar moving with a more firm hold on your hip as he stood an inch closer. Making your eyes close at the feeling. “I can-”
You shook your head, dizzy from how close he still was to you. “It should come from me. I sided against him before, meaning I know what to expect in telling him I’m doing it again.”
Jon’s brows narrowed, unhappy at the prospect but he had Stannis had come to an agreement over you, one that he had yet to really explain himself on. But your safety was paramount, even against your own father. Though if he were being honest, it was less of an agreement and more of a thinly veiled threat. Not something to be proud of, but he refused to give any a chance to hurt you again. “Come find me when you’re done. Okay?”
He didn’t move his hands or step away when you nodded, sighing lightly you breathed out, “I will.” And only then did he let you go. The more you two let whatever this was grow, the more you both were realizing it was a little...a lot more intense then the love you shared in innocent times. Something that clouded you when you were close to him like a buzz from too much wine, that only burned hot in your veins for him.
But you had to shake it off. Afterall, it was a burning Stag that you were about to face and he would take far less kindly to things then Jon did hearing it for himself. The halls of Deepwood Motte echoed in your ears as you made your way through them, knowing that where you’d find your father would be away in his own camp, making plans for his own army that you knew wouldn’t include you. But he had to accept this. Had to accept he was striving towards a goal he could not reach.
The North wouldn’t have him, because the North had a King. And now the one they were waiting for certainly wasn’t going to come from an outsider. No one cared about them until it was strategically advantageous for them, and that was the problem. They chose Robb because he was one of them, he cared, and it was their livelihoods he fought for. And all of those traits were shining brightly in Jon no matter what he tried to dispute.
Deep in your mind, you knew there was still something left in your father that could make him a good King, but you needed him to grasp what he had scolded you for. He was going to have to accept a broken Kingdom, because the fight the North was in, was for each other, and for survival against threats beyond the Wall. They wouldn’t return willingly to the Seven Kingdoms, not when the cold in the air was only going to get worse.
Not when the North was going to be the first line up against what was coming. They couldn’t afford to kneel to fights that had nothing to do with them anymore. Fighting for Stannis Baratheon meant later fighting for whatever cause he pledged them too on his own. That willingness died the second Greatjon Umber pulled his sword out, and pointed it at Robb with a passionate deceleration.
“There sits the only King I mean to bend my knee to.”
But as you stepped outside, looking to the people all around it was hard to deny that even those who would not look to Jon as their King, he was still the leader they believed in.
“And how do you know know if he is telling the truth? Wouldn’t be hard to lie, the boy has done it before.” Your palm ran up to your forehead pressing harshly against it in frustration. Stannis calling your name to look at him, you let it drop down to your side once more turning back to look a him. “All I’m asking is how can you be sure.”
Your eyes painting over as you once more saw the bloody horror inside the chest with no doubt about whose it belonged to. “It was Rickon’s direwolf, Theon and Jon both knew what he looked like there is no mistaking it. Unless he caught a miracle and found the head of another black direwolf to send as a mocking.”
Your father watched you carefully, noting the agitation in your posture. Leaning back in his seat a small bit, he looked once more like there was no hope in your ask. There was hardly ever any, normally sending you off with a dismissal no matter what it was towards. “I don’t imagine he is going to give you up that easily, you’re heading to Winterfell for a battle.”
Neither confirming nor denying, you only positioned your hands at your hips one knee bending slightly trying to find the right string of words to place after one another. “First light of dawn, the men and the free folk all know to be ready. We push hard enough, we may be able to make it there in three days time.”
Straight to the point your father, “Neither of you have come asking for my help.” Your eyes only narrowing the very slightest of bits, at least fully aware at your father would catch it out of everyone. A remaining trait between you. The only ones who could still read the other like a book. “The wildlings came here to fight the same fight I was, what reasons would they have for not following now?”
Truth was that, he was just not a man they would believe in. You wanted to, truly you did. Those many years ago in King’s Landing as you and Ned Stark looked to each other as the only ones fighting for the right claim to the Iron Throne. But those days were long gone, and too much had happened to push it all back to that now. It was impossible.
“The only way you are willing to find allies is if they respect your rule. Your claim. Trying to do the right thing, but you’ve shown them no reason to believe in you.” Pausing, you let the air in your lungs tighten as it approached your mouth. “Jon doesn’t want them to kneel for him, they don’t need to, to have a leader they can rally around.”
Father and daughter both keeping your eyes as still as possible, letting him connect those dots all on his own. He reached it likely already, but he was a man who needed to stew on things before blurting out the first in his mind. “And why would anyone kneel for him?” The condescension of someone who figured it out but would make you say it.
That habit was a lot more endearing on Robb then it currently was on your father.
Head tilting to your feet, eyes closing as long as it took to inhale before you matched your father right in the eye. “All of the Northern high lords signed off on Robb’s will before...” Your heart still plummeted, that knife sitting on the table mocking you for how you could still see it’s final act. “It outlined his decrees of inheritance, including his line of succession. Who would take over after him.”
“The Northerners have yet to claim anyone as their King, only your the Queen that remains to them. You don’t see fit to take that role of leader for yourself?” It itched in the back of your mind, that he was testing you. Shireen was gone, meaning you were his last living child. Renly was gone and had no children of his own, and the only remaining Baratheon’s would be those surviving somewhere in these lands forced to call themselves a bastard.
Stannis was trying to gauge if you had any willingness to take the Iron Throne after him.
If you took the North, you might be open to taking the rest of them he likely figured. Only you shook your head. “No. Robb trusted me, we were at war and we worked together. But he was King. He was their leader. I am not the Queen who gets to rule on her own, after her King’s death.”
Robb spend no time ensuring you were supported and listened too, but his word was final no matter what and you wouldn’t have spent so much time on his will if it were to only survive through you. You inheriting the North was only a possibility if your son had lived. And even then, you would still be here, because someone would have to be King until little Ned was of age.
You weren’t Cersei. You were not going to just place your sons on into a Kingship no matter how old they were. That was a making of disaster. No matter what those around you may claim, children deserved to stay children. Tommen sat on the Iron Throne now but it was Cersei in charge. Gods, Tommen was what? Eight when you last saw him in Kings Landing?
You could hardly picture what he and Myrcella both would look like now. Myrcella would be verging on womanhood in some time. By her next name day she would be fifteen, Tommen thirteen. At those ages you were still carefree enough to run around the wolfswood with the Starks, stay up until you and Robb were caught trying to sneak wine out of the kitchens. Even if your son had lived, you wanted him to experience those things, live a childhood they deserved.
Stannis watched you lost in thought, were he a better father he would have found some way to assure you, comfort you through these struggles. But he wasn’t. From everything he had heard both from Winterfell and the months in Kings Landing, the man who acted more as a father to you then anyone was Ned Stark. “Who then?”
Inhaling a breath you just smacked your palms in defeat against your thighs as you dropped them from your hips. Looking at your father with a plain honesty. “Robb named Jon as his heir. To be King in the North after him.”
He may have seen it coming, but hearing the truth of it was another matter you suspected. His silence and cold stare hadn’t changed much at all but you could see the cogs turning behind his face. “And how many of these Houses know that he’s left the Night’s Watch for this cause?”
Running in your mind the list and picking out the few that was written off as to not cause disruption in the more loyal ranks to the Boltons. “Most. Save for House Karstark and a few smaller houses. Chopping Rickard Karstark’s head off seems to still be a sore spot for them, reaching out seemed like a risky idea but most others have gotten our calls. None will be able to get to Winterfell before we do, but we can’t risk Rickon’s life in hope’s of waiting for those brave enough to come.”
The silence in the tent was thick, a stifling air that could choke if either of you breathed it in. Once more you stood across from your father, at the side of a King that was not him and saying they will still not kneel anyone but their own King. None had called Jon King yet, but everyone was starting to feel it. The more in command he took, the more everyone saw their leader.
“You understand what this means right?”
Nodding, your face twisted into a harshness. “I do.” Looking to meet his eyes, you found no fear of what he would do this time. Nor did you think if he wanted to, did he have the courage now that he was forced to look you in the eye as he would do so. “I swore my life to the last King in the North, and I didn’t sign in agreement on the next only to betray him for the father I was ready to fight against.”
Looking down, his voice was a bit more rough and strained. “I’m not asking you to betray him. I’m asking if you understand this means I cannot fight with you. I don’t need another leader to follow or to run off alongside. I needed an ally in the North. If he is a King, he’s not an ally.”
“No, in your eyes he’s an adversary.”
As they flew back up to you, whatever was built between you two in the short time you had seen each other again was burning out right before your eyes. If he truly wanted to fight for the threat that matters, then this wouldn’t be so hard for him to accept. But he still was the same man as before. Still the man who stood across from you and Robb saying that he will destroy you.
Opening his mouth to speak, you shook your head. “I don’t have time for this. I left a Stark behind once and he lost his head for it. I’m not doing the same thing again for Rickon. With or without you, we leave at first light.”
Coming out into the cloudy sky, you sighed to yourself. Feeling a dizziness wash over you while you stood there. Once more letting your hand press firmly against your forehead as the pain increased as the racing agitation in your heart.
You had begged Renly not to declare himself King, told him to not break apart this family more then it already was becoming. Perhaps it was meaningless ask. House Baratheon already doomed to split apart and fight against one another in one manner or another. He told you to pick a side, to think about what family you were trying to keep together.
But the only family you had that felt like it, was Shireen. Now, only three of you were left, and everything between you all was without any love. The only family that remained to you were the ones fighting for each other. Not against.
Sitting by the free folk in a tense quiet, did he approach. The one person on the other side you knew without a doubt you were going to miss. Sitting beside you, both watching the camp in quiet as you both contemplated what to say. You gave him a break, starting first time time around. “I’m sorry to see you go, Ser Davos. It’s been a long time since I got to spend any time with you.”
His voice was a bit lighter then yours, not weighed down by onslaughts of problems one after the other that never ended. Just a few personal ones he kept close to his chest. “Easy for you to forget, but I’ve known you since you were a girl. Watched you go from a shy thing too afraid to make friends to a Queen in the North. You’ve done well for yourself.”
Leaning forward, your arms resting against your knees as your hands stayed clasped together. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
Positioning himself enough to still be within your vision, staying with his eyes outward to the same sights you were. “Hardly ever does. I tried to murder the red woman, got thrown in a dungeon by your father and next thing I knew he had renamed me Hand of the King. Success for people like us rarely comes at a pretty price.”
You hadn’t said anything, and you suspected he didn’t want to talk about it as much as you didn’t yours, but leaving him with nothing felt wrong. Not picking up that it was the same words as your father, only the emotion behind it was held back with an obvious weight that hurt more then you could pretend it didn’t. “I’m sorry about Matthos.”
Inhaling deeply beside you, there was a glad feeling that it was shared, but also one that knew how hard it would be to say anything further on it. “And I’m sorry about yours.”
Swallowing harsh, your eyes stung wishing they would let them fall. “It’s not anywhere near the same as your loss, but thank you. I take it my father told you?”
“He did. Wasn’t too happy about being kept in the dark, but I also think somewhere deep down he knew something like this was inevitable.” Nodding, your hands clasped together tightened around what it was holding, willing yourself to do it already. Give it up to someone who would keep it safe as he continued beside you. “Your mother isn’t pleased.”
“She rarely is.” Now that got a bit of a huffing laugh from Davos. Pulling only a tiny smirk from you in return. “She thought she lost me, then her husband, Shireen...but she always had a purpose beside him. Was loyal to him, and she should keep that. Give her something proper to hold onto.”
He was looking at you, but you not brave enough to look back. “And what about you? What belief now is keeping you going?”
Maybe you knew, maybe you didn’t but the answer felt strange to admit all the same. So you shrugged in response. “Only the gods know that now.” Fiddling with the bag you finally leaned back, turning partially to him. “I have something for you, before we leave.”
Gently, you opened your hands and moved them over to him. Taking him a good minute to open the small pouch to see, slowly as he knew what was in there, but having to be sure. Saying your name in protest you shook your head. “No, I want you to take her. She was like a daughter to you, and I know you’ll keep her safe.”
Holding it in his hand, he turned it around to look it all over as if it would show you anymore of her then the small bits. “Why not take her with you? She always wanted to go with you to visit Winterfell, after all.”
You shook your head, hoping to not hear the toxic words in your ear. “We’re walking into a battle with no idea if we can win it or not. If I die out there then she’s just lost to the ground. If Ramsay gets me back...I refuse to let any part of her be around him. Ever.” Finding his eyes proper, and as much ran through his in pain as yours tried to hide, but your voice broke all the same. “Take care of her for me.”
Moving to stand up abruptly, Davos followed suit calling your name. Looking back, you both found no ire for standing on different sides of this mess. Finding the other in a hug, he held you close as you found the sound of a father’s care in his voice. “You and Jon go reclaim your home, and I’ll bring her there to visit myself.”
Nodding you held tighter for a moment. Tired of leaving and losing things left to care about.
The closer you got to Winterfell the more everyone could tell there was something deeply wrong in the air. You had grown to be dead silent during the day, and the normally endearing brashness of the free folk only served to further worsen your head. The cold hardly feeling like it touched you anymore and only found itself further freezing soon as it reached your heart. Clouds were mostly grim, and even though in some places the snow wasn’t any more prominent then a sprinkling on the ground you found it’s once beauty to return to darkness.
It was that first snow storm that blew in not long after arriving in Winterfell. It was that which you would find yourself staring out into, the small pockets of quiet you were trusted to be by yourself with only to know it was because the only other option was death in the drastic drop below. The fear from the rush of how high up the one you and Theon had to make was minuscule in the grand image.
Only a few horses were within your ranks. Not nearly what would match Ramsay’s men. He had not the numbers, but the weapons and the strength. You only had so many, less then a hundred up against the many hundreds if not close to thousands in his. No doubt having taken the time to rip away your chances of finding enough on your own.
The free folk were fierce, and Jon was a great commander but you were walking into a bloodbath and you all knew it. The kind of bloodbath you desperately wished Jon would let you prevent. Maybe he would keep his word, if all he cared about was getting back what he lost, maybe you would be enough and Rickon could live without doubts.
But Jon still kept you close to his side in the journey. Refusing to allow you alone, and certainly not alone with a horse. You’d ride off the second you did and Jon knew it. If he wasn’t there it was Ghost, and if Ghost wasn’t there it was the large imposing form of Tormund who would no doubt just toss you back with no effort.
Let him take you, let him do whatever he wants and maybe this didn’t have to end the way it was going to. Whatever your odds were, you didn’t look at them with promise. Numbers didn’t mean anything, you knew that too well. For three years you had the least amount of numbers rallied behind Robb and he lead them to every victory. Ramsay wasn’t a commander, but he had the strength, and he certainly had the brutality.
The night before you would arrive at Winterfell was awful. You wanted to throw up, maybe scream while the entire time you saw the same in Theon. The nightmare of what you had escaped and now both of you were running right back up to the front door.
“Can I even trust you tomorrow to be on your own horse?” From watching the small fire where you sat away from many, Ghost only a few feet from your feet most of the evening, Jon seemed to have snuck up on you as your mind was too far away. Turning your upper body back and upwards to see him approaching you narrowed your eyes in confusion. Taking no time to sit down next to you as he elaborated. “When we meet with him. Can I trust you with your own horse that you won’t run, or am I putting you on the back of mine where I know you will stay put?”
You looked over at him with a sigh. “I think we both know the answer to that question.”
Exhaling deeply, Jon looked you over before learning to rest his head in his hands. A sinking in his posture as he contemplated the approach. Raising his head enough, he too only watched the flickering of flames in the mumbling quiet of the camp. “I shouldn’t be making you go, after everything he’s done to you, it feels cruel to ask you to come with me. But he needs to see you, see you by my side and not as if you’re some toy we’re fighting over.”
The sting behind your eyes hurt, the prospect of what on earth he was going to say tomorrow perhaps was what frightened you the most. What horror’s would he find to mock with, to taunt, to belittle and shove you back into the ground. What he was going to say about you to Jon?
You nodded, hands clasped in front of you as your head hung in the space between them with a shaking exhale. Your name slipping gently from his mouth, “How well are you going to take it, if I ask you not to fight.”
Your face twisting in a frustration, covering your face entirely in your palms. Trying to maintain a composure of how little you wanted to be here but how important it was that you not abandon him again. “Jon-”
Calling back with your name in the same dismissive tone, “Look at me.” Tearing your head up, you rolled your eyes over to meet his. Jon’s expression full of a love you couldn’t handle right now, and knowing in yours was fear and doubt. “I’m not trying to dismiss you, but if you’re out there how do I know you won’t do anything rash?”
“Like surrender to Ramsay?”
You held a half smirk, he didn’t. “Like surrendering to Ramsay.” Yourself trying to argue that you could still do that from the sidelines but the flashing of something dark in his eyes didn’t go away. “I have one chance tomorrow at settling this peacefully, and if it doesn’t I want you to promise me you won’t give yourself up just to end it.”
A dripping of sorrow was in yours that also sought to plead for him to understand you once last time, only the intensity that pushed the grey into something so dark it was as protective as it was possessive in a way. Looking at the other, none else existing in that camp you both could only hear the dancing of the flames. “I promise.”
No lies found in your eyes, Jon deflated a bit. Braving to run a hand gently over your hair that led to holding tenderly at you jaw. “I won’t ask you to stay out it, but when this turns into a battle I won’t have you out in front.” You opened your mouth and he only pulled you a little closer to his face, “No this isn’t up for debate. You want to be out there, I won’t stop you but you’re not going into the worst of it. I- I’m not going to be able to handle that.”
Your mouth parted slightly as your lungs sunk in your chest. Closing again as you mustered enough of the turmoil inside you to gently reach up, grasping at the wrist attached to the gloved hand at the side of your face. Both inhaling deeply at the feeling as you pushed past the material to run your thumb across his pulse, like you’d done with multiple Starks before it seemed. A reminder of life. Even after death, his ran strong.
“Why do you drive me so crazy?” Jon’s other hand moving to hold the other side, resting your forehead against his as he spoke, before sitting back up, and turning you by the waist to sit more back against his chest. Facing you both out to the fire once more, his hands resting at your waist now and the side of his head pressed into yours. “Feels sometimes as if living without you wasn’t real. Like we were never apart, how easy it was to fall back into it.”
Resting a little bit back, one of his hands slid across your stomach to pull you more upright against him comfortably. “We’ve never had to fall into it. Not really. It always existed between us, only we weren’t old enough to understand for a while.” His hand squeezed your waist more, but said nothing as you both looked just to the fires and ignored the distance that others may look over with. Ghost’s eyes peeled and sharp, as if to tell those to leave you both alone.
His voice was a low rasp in your ear that almost sent a shiver up your spine. “Speak for yourself. I’ve always known you’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted. And I’m not about to give you up to someone who hurt you the way he did.”
Heart pausing in a beat, you felt almost a jolt of something pass through your head at the sudden voices and feelings inside. But this time, you could feel and hear it was only Jon behind you, making that your mind’s focus to settle down. “I don’t know what he’s going to say to you tomorrow. He’ll want a reaction, he already knows me, and now he’s going to try and find the right ways to poke at you in just the worst spot.”
Jon hummed, the sound vibrating through your ears and shivering now down your arms this time. “I’ve handled being degraded all my life, I don’t care if he tries to rile me up. Only that it doesn’t hurt you to hear it.” He was watching you more from where he sat behind you, just tall enough that he could watch the troubled clench in your jaw but enough to your level that he could nudge your head with his, leaving a kiss in your hair.
“He’s said a lot of things. Most of it so bad I couldn’t even begin to know where to start..or if I even could.” His heart raced behind the leather armour, knowing the things Theon had told him and how sick it made him feel. A long quiet sat there, only the warmth of him behind and the fire in front keeping you steady. “You’re not allowed to die by the way.” Jon humming in question, “If I’m not allowed to surrender myself to Ramsay, you’re not allowed to die fighting him.”
The hand around your stomach slid across to grasp at your hand, encasing the far smaller one in his as he ran his thumb over your palm. Sighing out dramatically behind, “You come back to me a Queen and now you’re the one barking all the orders.” You breathed out a laugh, and in Jon a deeper one fell much more freely. Pulling your hand up to press a kiss to it before settling it back down on you. “And it’s cute that you think I’m going to listen.”
Turning ever so slightly to try and catch a glimpse of him, “You’re not King yet, Snow. Technically you are still supposed take orders from me.”
Your lungs shook as he pressed another kiss to your hair at the side of your head this time. “Naming you a Stark didn’t make you any stronger. You can try and order me around all you like, but I’m the one here whose strong enough to toss you over my shoulder.” Smiling in a blissful warmth you almost laughed.
“That’s probably true.” You thought of no reasonable explanation as to why you said it, but you did. And as soon as you put it out there you felt the heavens drop down and shine something on you that Jon hadn’t felt in too long. Or ever. “You’re father knew about us.”
Stilling like a stone statue in a second, you could feel the wide eyes behind you with the same that you had that day. Not letting it turn into something warped you continued, “I don’t know for how long, but he knew about us. Said that it didn’t feel good, watching as Robb got one final thing that had always been yours alone. Wondering how different things could have been if he made you a Stark in name, that then there wouldn’t have been anything keeping you from me.”
Jon was silent behind you, nowhere to hide from this one only sat in the others arms for as long as the dark remained above the skies. Choosing the path less full of heavy agony of many ways, Jon rested his head against you almost trying to hide away in your neck. “Would’ve been able to kiss you in public at least.”
Raising an eyebrow, you snapped back, “You don’t even do that now, Snow.”
A full laugh came from him that time, pulling from your neck as it rung in your ears at how little you were graced with the sound. Pulling you a bit more into his chest, his other arm leaving your waist to drape around your stomach, the one still holding your hand dragging up higher on your ribs. “It’s for your own good.” Asking how, he never let that smile leave but his voice was deep in your ear on purpose. “I’m not kissing you until I have you alone in a bed, because once I do you’re not leaving that bed for at least a week.”
That shiver across your whole body he definitely had to have felt. Breathing stuttering as you sighed out in a tensity that he could only have known from those intimate moments together these past weeks. A tiny indicator of amusement in your tone, trying to play it off. “What, are you going to chain me to it?”
Heart spinning in your chest as Jon so confidently whispered, “If you let me.” That one got more of a breathy laugh out of you and grin from him. “No? We’ll work up to it.” Kissing the side of your head once more as if in the private moment here, he was unable to keep away from you.
Neither of you said much more for a long time, you felt no need to. The peaceful quiet with Jon was always something you could count on bringing comfort. Just being near the other was good enough some times. In moments like this it felt like no time or changes have passed, only to feel in your heart that something deeply was different and there was no hiding the desire anymore. Or, Jon simply had found little care anymore in pretending as if it were otherwise.
“Do you ever wish we could go back to that night?” Your eyebrows raised in question, “Our last night together under the Weirwood.”
Truthfully, you hadn’t thought of that night in a long time. You didn’t want to. It was a night you thought was the last time you would truly see each other, and certainly didn’t feel good to think back on it in the worst of days. Biting your lip before shaking your head, you were quiet, almost a whisper just for him. “I don’t think so.” Jon asking why, you took a deep breathe and tried to lean your head back a little more against his in a sort of nuzzle. “Because that was a Jon who didn’t think he was worth enough, one who didn’t think he deserved anything good. Despite everything, the you I found again isn’t like that anymore. You’ve found purpose, you’ve found confidence. These people all look to you as their leader because of it. Going back means I want the Jon then. I loved you then too, but I’m proud of who you’ve become. I wouldn’t want you to lose that.”
You didn’t expect him to reply, and it was likely the most you had said in one go in a number of days now. Once more not a painful quiet, one that you could bask in forever. You wouldn’t want to go back to that night, that was true, but it did remind you of how easy it was to feel so close to him in complete silence. Like being around each other was enough to know what the other was feeling.
Speaking quietly into your ear, there was that hint of doubt, a dash of insecurity that was so much more prevalent in your years before. “You’ve always thought too highly of me.”
Shaking your head firmly, your free hand reached up to grasp his already covering your first hand near your ribs. “No, I haven’t. I’ve always known who you are, who you could be. You deserved the world back when everyone looked at you as nothing more then a bastard. But these people, the Northerners around us wouldn’t have rallied to your side if that was still all you were. You’ve always been so much more then that.”
You could hear him swallowing harshly, throwing down whatever emotions were spilling from them back to their depths. Waiting a good minute before finding the courage to speak again. “When did he tell you? My father, when did he tell you he knew about us?”
The smirk on your face was in no way able to be stopped. What a panic that man sent you into in the worst place possible. “About five minutes before he walked me out to marry Robb.” The stillness that erupted in his body had a burst of a giggle fly out. Catching Jon’s attention who rolled his eyes in a playful spark. “Almost sent me into an early grave.”
Huffing behind you, even through the pain there was something playful in such memories of Ned Stark, this man known for his stern Northern rule who also had a propensity of finding total amusement in his children’s embarrassment. “We have a way with words.” And those words in Jon’s mind always worth it to see that very laugh on your lips just like now. So rare anymore to see or hear it.
Leaning back finally, you rested against him more comfortably. “He would be proud of you, you know? Your father. He would be incredibly proud of the man you’ve become.”
“And I need you to know, I’m proud of you too- no shut up you don’t get a say in how I feel.” Knocking down your instant protests of that with such a genuine casualness that you couldn’t help but just laugh. It had been a long time since either you or Jon could just sit together, joke and laugh and feel like two normal lovers. But tomorrow you meet with Ramsay and the fear in your heart was great. But you knew, that even in fear you must not look away.
Maybe you hoped, you had at least one father in Ned Stark who might be genuinely proud of you.
The sight of Winterfell once more filled with dread instead of the once lifting feeling of relief. A place you once could only feel home, and yet all you could see looking at it anymore was a pitiful reminder of how far you’d fallen to. Snow having clear enough that there was a clearing of grey scattered around the clearing to the South.
Much like the last time, your group had arrived first. To his word the night before, Jon kept you on the back of his own horse. You had wished you were trustworthy enough to have your own, but you understood his misgivings over it. Jon knew too well that you would rather send yourself back into a hell instead of a fight. Ensure Rickon’s return for yours. But he didn’t trust you, and so you were kept with him.
Trying to keep it to minimal, you knew Jon was doing his best to present his side as the route to a more peaceful outcome rather then having so many men stand behind. On what horses you had, men of the Mormonts and Glovers followed as did a number of free folk. To your right sat Tormund as well, curious to your deathly silence and almost barley moving. Knowing the very second there was view of them something in your blood would freeze up and threaten to drown you then and there.
Not even the breeze of wind graced you, just a cold that stung through your skin. When they appeared, they seemed to be confident enough not to bring as many men. Perhaps ten at most from what you could see and sure enough, the person of Roose Bolton nowhere to be found within them. Just riding in the middle, a smug smirk from Ramsay himself as he approached.
Eyes looking between you both, as you felt Jon stiffen in front of you. His own gaze sharp and grey bleeding into a darker almost black colour at the sight.
Only men of the Boltons accompanied him, no other houses which may have pledged to his side joined the parlay and you couldn’t help but wonder why. Of course, as they stopped a few meters away from your own group, Ramsay’s pale blues found yours with a sickening pleasure you had known all to well.
Your lungs barley finding any movement within them, having too many times recalled what such a look would normally follow. It was that same look on his face now that he had that first night he came down to the dungeon of the Dreadfort all alone to begin a new nightmare.
Jon spent no energy on courtesies. No civility or neutral greeting as had been the day such a meeting occurred on the opposite end of your father. No, he had not the care to play Ramsay’s games.
Ramsay however always played. A tone of sincerity that was as fake as the air was cold as he looked past Jon to you. “My dear bride, you wound me. Running away only to return to me on the back of a another man’s horse? What would the people think of such behaviour?” His smugness turning to Jon himself, “Come bastard, you’ve brought my bride all this way, now give her to me where she belongs.”
Jon clutched the reigns on his horse a bit tighter in his fist, keeping a stoned expression trained on him without giving much away. “I’ve shown you her, now you show me my brother.”
Tsking at him, Ramsay never once gave up the ruse. It took much to break that joy of cruelty to something more angry and vicious. “Now, it doesn’t work that way does it? You don’t get to see little Rickon until I have her by my side again. This can be easy, bastard. Give me what belongs to me and I give back what belongs to you.”
Jon’s voice was rough, a louder tone to ensure all heard but tinted in a husk of anger. “She’s not your prisoner, and she’s certainly not your bride.”
Raising his eyebrows in a fake impress, your heart dropped realizing the things about to come out of his mouth as his eyes shined with a horrifying glee again looking to you. “My lovely bride, you wouldn’t have happened to play around with other men while you were gone were you? Running from where I’ve given you a home in a nice warm bed right into his, I’m hurt.” You couldn’t tell if you hated how he was trying to rile Jon up through you, or how in a sick way, he wasn’t really wrong.
“She isn’t a toy for you to throw around, and this isn’t your home, Ramsay. It’s mine.” A bit of a fallen expression painted over the man, possessive like the one in front of you but not in a way that was full of a care or love. Just a childish anger of wanting things to belong to him and no one else.
Finding his eyes once more, Ramsay found it in him to give a second’s patience for diplomacy. “It hasn’t been your home for some time, bastard. But I may forgive you for that if you just give me what I want. Hand me my bride, kneel before me, surrender your army, and proclaim me as Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. You should be thanking me, I executed the man who murdered your brother, gave justice to how many times he stabbed a knife into my bride’s stomach there. Him and that fat wife of his won’t trouble us any longer.”
Glad for the gloves on your hands so you couldn’t dig your nails deep into your palms, trying to keep calm when all you felt was ill. Jon was equally as tense in his posture, you had been right. Murdered Roose Bolton and that way with you nothing would stand in his way of ruling the North alone.
He found once more, no amusement in Jon’s own response. Finding him to be difficult to manipulate with his words. “We both know why I’m not going to do that.”
“Come, bastard. You don’t have the horses, you don’t have the strength, and the only men at your side are a bunch of savages with no discipline. There’s no need for a battle, get off your horse, return my bride to me and kneel. I will even bring your brother to you myself, alive of course. I’m a man of mercy.”
So this was why he knew to keep you behind him. Your muscles all screaming at you to get off and just go to him, let this be over. If you did it willingly perhaps he wouldn’t even need to submit to him at all, your willingness would be enough. But Jon wouldn’t let you give yourself over, and you knew a strained feeling inside your heart was as close to gratefulness as you could get.
“You’re right. There’s no need for a battle. Thousands of men don’t need to die. Only one of us.” In a real trick of the gods, you suddenly realized too much what Jon was feeling before. Your heart raced almost too fast leaving you lightheaded. Your hands reaching barley forward so he could feel the slight pressure of your fingertips at his back. “Let’s end this the old way. You against me.”
Almost indescribably, did he lean back just the slightest. Even as Ramsay chuckled, you could sense Jon telling you to stay calm, let him handle it. Pale blue eyes narrowing slightly in a curiosity to him. “I keep hearing stories about you, bastard. The way the people in the North talk about you, you’re the greatest swordsman who ever walked. Maybe you are that good, maybe not. I don’t know if I’d beat you, but I know my army will.”
Voice not wavering for a second, strong as he sat tall atop his horse, Jon didn’t miss a beat. “Will your men want to fight for you when they hear you wouldn’t fight for them?”
A blaze in his eyes send a prickling shiver down your spine, one that you had seen in your more daring of moments. Before he had learned ways to shut you up. Scoffing with what you knew wasn’t a true security in his leadership he played himself off too casually.
“You’re good. Very good. I can see why my bride ran all the way to you. Needs a strong man with enough sense to knock her around. Not just anyone can handle a cunt like hers. Tell me, does she bleed and fight against you as she does with me?” You couldn’t see Jon’s eyes, but you would be willing to wager they were as black as could be if the strain in his shoulders were to go off of. “Do you fuck her like a wolf, bastard? She certainly takes it like one.”
Everyone on your side of the field was horribly uncomfortable. In a way, it sickeningly reminded you of that morning at the Twins. Having to stand in front of Walder Frey and let him look you over like a slab of meat and parade his disgusting interests in front of his family, your army, and Robb himself knowing that saying anything in your defence as he wanted was a mistake.
Jon felt the same, and your insides twisted at what he could possibly be imagining. “I offered you and your men a way out. But I’m not handing her over just for you to torture her more. I know the North as well as you do. Do you really think they will stay at your side after finding out what you’ve done? That they’ll still fight for you, if you murder Rickon?”
Whatever confidence Ramsay was boasting, didn’t seem as confident in the glare he gave Jon in return. More of an anger that was rarely wound up by another in his monster of a mind. “Have it your way. Come morning, we will find out. I hope your men are ready, I haven’t fed my hounds in seven days. They are dying to meet you. Of course, not before I keep you alive just long enough to watch me and my bride consummate our lovely marriage properly. You know as well as I do she's nice and broken in. But I am a generous man, so I'll even let you watch as my hounds give her all a turn before I kill you.”
Never to leave his guard down, Jon had everyone stay in their place as Ramsay so confidently turned to leave. Almost out of sight before you too, made your leave. Once the morning comes, you knew this same field would be drenched in blood, but you had to be ready this time. You’ve been in battle before, only never with such a risk of being on the losing side.
“If he was smart, he’d stay inside the walls of Winterfell and try to wait us out. But he won’t.” Nightfall had fallen upon your army, only a fair few of you still up and rerunning the plans again and again until it was ingrained in everyone’s minds. Charging into a bloodbath, too many scenarios played through your minds and every one had to be planned out no matter how minute.
Lord Glover looking at Jon with the kind of trust you’d seen in the man before, only directed towards another he’d eventually call King. “You don’t think he’d force us into a siege?”
Shaking his head no, voice low but no hesitation. “Most of his men are houses forced to fight for him. If he can make an example out of us, then he knows they won’t turn on him out of fear. He wants it to be a slaughter.”
Your eyes were narrowed, looking over everything laid out to the group almost without blinking, running along the edges where they could come from. Tormund leaning over more looking to Jon with a knowing. “It’s his horses that’s a problem. I know what mounted horses can do to an army. You and Stannis cut through us like piss through snow.”
Your eyes flickered up briefly, before turning back down. Tactic’s running through you head trying to find a solution that even sounded good before speaking up. Your head already hurt, trying to come back into this kind of world after being so drastically torn from it made it feel so much like your first battles all over again. Relying on the skill of others to push you into an idea that could even work.
The conversation around you continued as you leaned over the table silently, “They won’t be able to hit us from the sides.” Jon called your name causing your head to snap up with a bit more intensity in your eyes then perhaps you realized. “Are you with us?”
Gaze drifting to the side, you couldn’t help but recall those days in Riverrun. How full proof the plan was until one thing had taken it all apart, and ended it just before your father had breached the gates of King’s Landing. “They’ll charge at us trying to push us back, but maybe we need to do the same.” Only catching Jon’s eye you spoke with a hesitant pause hoping you made as much sense as the images in your mind. “How long would it take to breach the gate?”
A glint in his eye caught yours, something of an understanding as he answered, “If we have a proper clearing, maybe minutes.” He put the pieces together faster then you did, leaning back up as he looked to the others. “He’ll send his horses into a slaughter because he thinks it will push us back.” His voice trailing off with a lightness, looking at you with a plan the others hadn’t seen yet.
Nodding slowly, you looked to the outlaid plans once more. Finding a voice for the first time in a long time that awoken the memories of what used to be in Maege and Glover. “They’ll attempt to block our path closer, but if we can break that line we can push them right up to the gates. And if we get into the gates?”
“Then it’s over.” Maege finished for you, a proud look on her face. “I knew you were still in there somewhere.” You didn’t quite share the confidence. None of the battles Robb had one had been rushed into knowing a victory, handling every time with as much planning for failure as their was success.
Every time you would get to cocky about your own plans, was the same instances the Stark’s would all knock you into the dirt in the training yard. And Ramsay was confident. He has the advantage of Winterfell, and he has the horses but it also means he thinks there’s nothing for your men to stand up with. Jon had at some point come closer to your side, his tone rumbling in your chest from the proximity. “Ensure all the men out there knows my instructions are clear. I can’t have surprises from them tomorrow.”
Hardly having noticed Theon watching you closely, you also missed the glance between the two of them the former nodding towards you. It was almost an odd dynamic, between the four of you as teenagers it was usually split evenly of Theon and Robb, and Jon and yourself as the pairs. It was a bit odd for Jon, having missed war bringing you two together, and the trauma that bonded it for good
In ways, Theon knew you as well as Jon did. He hadn’t gone into detail so much about what Ramsay had done in specifics, but it was enough to paint the picture to Jon that day in Castle Black. It also was clear, Theon’s quiet was one thing but the fear in his own eyes trying to describe the things you had been through was another.
It wasn’t until you had told him that night in Deepwood Motte, did he learn that Theon would be dragged into the room to watch what Ramsay would do. And judging by how many marks were left on you that first night he truly came back, clearly there was so much worse happening. And it felt strange, knowing that it was Theon who knew it all best, not Jon. Theon had been the one to protect you, get you out of there and instead of returning to his family he betrayed Robb for? He stayed, knowing if Jon were vengeful enough he may have merely acted out Robb’s own execution order for him.
When you came to Winterfell shortly after you turned fourteen, Theon had already been there for about two years. Long enough to lose that initial fear of what may happen to him, and feel more at ease around him and Robb as friends of sorts. Then you showed up, and Jon could still recall how much red was painted over his eyes as he heard Theon remarking about “showing you what a man looks like.”
Robb had been as close to hitting him as Jon had. The two of you were always combative though, always bantering and joking. Many days he and Robb would have their own tasks when it was usually you and Theon whose jobs typically aligned with the other. If he used to feel jealous of what he saw as Robb getting their father’s true attention, it was Theon he was jealous of spending so much time with you day to day.
Standing there, seeing Theon’s eyes trained concerned as you tried desperately to only focus on what was right in front of you instead of the fear to come. It was that same feeling of jealousy in his gut, like no matter what he did Jon would never know you the way others did. Then again, he also wasn’t sure you knew yourself better then others did anymore.
Both men nodded at the other, at the very least, Theon had found himself working to trust your well being with him more freely. Theon could talk you down, but Jon was there to prevent it in the first place now. Most took their leave, save for Tormund.
Raising an eyebrow to him, the larger man asked with a doubtful amusement “Did you really think that cunt would fight you man to man?”
“We could end this war right now, boy. Save thousands of lives. You fight for the Starks, I fight for the Lannisters.”
The same offer, only given by the other side of the fight. Except Jaime was already a prisoner, and the battle already won. Jon next to you though, spoke deep as he glanced from Tormund to yourself. Eyes dark with far too much brewing behind them. “No. But I wanted to make him angry. I want him coming at us full tilt, no tricks waiting for us over the hill.” Turning to glance at you, he looked back to Tormund in finality. “We should all get some sleep.”
Both men nodding to the other, once a threatening dynamic built on lies turned into someone the other had found a deep trust in. “Make sure she does too,” Gesturing towards you, “Need you both sharp tomorrow.”
You hardly noticed it was only Jon left. A true battle oncoming, and sending good men into an undeniable slaughter. You could have been in the war tent garrisoned in Moat Cailin over four years ago and you might not have realized, the anxiety racing just the same.
Only brought back to the world when warmth enveloped your back and two arms came to stretch beside yours, keeping you caged between the table and Jon. A barley there hint of relaxing coming over you at the feeling, but little would make it go away. His voice was low, resting close to your ear almost humming in tone. “We’ve gone over everything as much as we can, nothing left to do but wait.”
Tilting your head barley to one side, but didn’t make any moves to look away. “I can hardly remember when I used to go into these things with any confidence.” Sighing behind you, Jon moved his hands to your hips, adjusting you a bit closer, standing a bit straighter against the wooden surface so he could more comfortably keep you close. “How the hell was I going to do any of this on my own?”
Hands holding your hips a bit tighter, voice lowering more to a rasp that could’ve made you shiver more then the cold air around you. “You were never going to do this on your own. The moment I realized you were alive, I knew ever letting you go was a mistake.” One hand running smoothly from hip to across your stomach and pulling you more back into him, your eyes fluttering shut at the sudden feeling.
Slowly, you let your hands reach up from the table and rest gently along the arm running around your front. “That day on the Kingsroad, I remember this..strange feeling. As if the second I turned from you something in me started screaming. Trying to tell me something was wrong. At the time, I thought that was just what heartbreak was supposed to feel like.” He nodded against the back of your head, prompting you to continue. “But then it kept coming back. Almost as if it were some sign that I was making the wrong choice, or was walking into a trap. I never felt something like that until we finally left, and it hasn’t been back since..since I’ve been back.”
Shivering in his arms as the hand across your stomach begun to stretch and trace along where your scar sat hidden under your layers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. All three of you.” Neither of you spoke about it, about what you had lost from that scar other then your life. You had no way of knowing what to even say to him about it, or anyone. You didn’t want too, but you still felt a sting building up quickly behind your eyes.
Trying to shake your head, shake the water from them too, “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to you fast enough to protect you.” Jon trying telling you it wasn’t your job, but you pushed past him. “No, Jon. It is. If you’re supposed to protect me, then I’m here to protect you. That’s what this is. You don’t get to do all the work by yourself.”
Another sigh, this one with enough strength that it was both exhausted yet purposely dramatic. “Did you drive Robb this mad with how stubborn you are?”
Shrugging lightly, you leaned back into him finally. “Sometimes.”
His hand traced along that small area a little firmer, as if wishing he could feel it from over it all. Insecurity once more seeped so lightly into his voice, asking in a whisper, “Can I ask? About him?” Pressing harder into that scar for a second to indicate which he meant.
Your head felt light, for a moment it wasn’t his hand there, it was that warmth pooling of blood that left your body shivering and pale. It wasn’t judgment in your tone, but for a moment you worried it came out as such. “You’ve never asked about him before..why?”
Stilling for a moment before exhaling deeply, the nerves not quite leaving him this time. “I was jealous. Most of my life I never thought too far ahead, life like mine didn’t have much to look forward to. We couldn’t even be together anywhere but completely alone, I knew marrying you was never going to happen. Then I saw you like that in my dream one day, and all I could think about was how jealous I was that it wasn’t mine.”
Biting your tongue, trying to keep the inevitable emotions at bay desperately. But he continued. “Then you and Robb died, and I felt like a horrible person for it. Spent all that time wishing it was mine, and then you lost both of them. After that I don’t think I even knew what to ask.”
You had thought it was Robb’s in that dream, and maybe it was, or maybe it was Jon’s you didn’t really know. That dream of a baby boy was so far away in another life that it was too foreign to remember properly. Yet, you found a smile. Something deep in there was the softness you shared with Robb over it. The only times you two had any happiness before it was all ripped away. “We had names picked out.”
Jon turned a bit to look over your shoulder, a hint of a smile on your face that you never had anymore when talking about Robb. His thumb now gently running across your stomach, not at all realizing it was just the same manner that Robb himself used to do when you were pregnant. “What were they?”
Looking to nothing for a moment, you found the same words you told Robb coming back. “Both you and Robb were named after your father’s closest companions. Jon Arryn named his son after Robert, but neither of them did the same for him. We left for war trying to save him, it seemed only fitting. We had at least two others planned as well. If our first boy was named after Ned, then any girl we had would’ve been Lyanna. And-” You paused, and for a moment Jon couldn’t quite tell why you almost seemed amusingly hesitant.
Squeezing your hip he prompted, “What?”
Holding a smirk back, you shrugged. “We uh...were fairly certain however that Catelyn was not going to appreciate what we thought of for our second son...”
If anything got a sigh along with an eye roll out of Jon, it was that. Letting his forehead rest against the back of your head, grumbling, “Seven hells...what was wrong with you two..” A small laugh burst from you, prompting Jon to tear himself from you and turn you around. Backing you against the table once more, his arms now reaching to encase you between them as well. A playful glint in his own eye, “Well, when we get to our second boy we’re sure as hell not naming him Jon.”
A flush ran through your skin, and a flustered smile you wished wasn’t running so obviously across your lips. The sheer ease in his eyes and grin on his face as he said it almost made your head spin. Trying to play yourself off as just coy and joking, “Well what did you have in mind then?”
Once more there was no hesitation or doubt. Just the somewhat, actually very intimidating aura of a man who knows exactly what he wants. Running a hand gently along your hair, “Robb would appreciate having one of your boys named after him a lot more then I would after me. It doesn’t have to be our second if you’re not ready. If I recall, I promised you eight.”
Your eyes widened, mouth parting in incredulity his audacity. A higher pitched protest trying not to laugh out of your mouth, “Excuse me, I clearly remember saying we should stop at three, but you made me agree on five, where's this eight coming from?”
Jon leaned forward, his breathe brushing across your skin as he ran the hand down to stroke gently at your jaw, before pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I’m older now. I want more.”
There wasn’t much sleep to be found that night. Not by your, not by many. A battle was one thing, but tomorrow was going to be more rough then the ones you remembered. What little you did, for the first time in a long time, you were so vividly haunted by that very thing. That very horror you couldn’t keep from. Only this time, you couldn’t even tell which Stark it was strung up like a puppet, a blend of direwolves morphing in front of you so jaggedly staked onto where their heads were.
Whatever Northerners were fighting on Ramsay’s side, you hoped they too recalled the inconceivable cruelty of what House Bolton helped create as the end of their own King. Maybe Jon was right, maybe you were wrong to think giving yourself up was an option. It would’ve have saved Robb from that fate, but maybe you just needed to force yourself into those fears. Get out in the mud and do what needs to be done. No one protected Robb from such an end, but you could protect the two brothers that were right in front of you.
But perhaps, two was too great of a number to be allowed to come true.
You knew what would happen as soon as you rode up. Most of your forces on foot, only a handful on what horses you had, most in lines of archers lined across the fields from one end to the other along where you dug out. Cutting off their ability to circle around you, as your archers stood tallest to pick off any oncoming men seeking to circle your forces. None of the Bolton army was seen as Jon rode up in the middle of his army to the front.
Standing atop it were only a few figures, one of which was Ramsay and the other to yours and Jons horror was Rickon. He was alive, but as soon as you saw the distance between, and the bow in Ramsay’s hand you looked to the men poised to flank to the free folk’s right. Eyes looking to Theon’s as you knew exactly what was about to happen.
All of you were deathly silent. Ramsay leaning to Rickon in a falseness that you knew the boy wouldn’t be able to tell. He was older then you last saw, almost eleven now and yet he looked far older then a boy his age had any purpose looking. Your place enough behind Jon, you knew he could hear you in the painful quiet that was surrounding everyone.
“He’s going to make him run...”
You didn’t elaborate, and the worst was that Jon knew too well exactly what you meant. This wasn’t an act of war, this was pure cruelty. You had spared a child’s life before, you had stood beside him as Robb executed his own men for murdering children even as hostages. This wasn’t an act of a commander, and it was why Ramsay couldn’t have Roose Bolton around to stop him.
If he was sure he was going to win this battle, he still had one last game to taunt with and you felt utterly sick. This was why Jon refused to let you even attempt your own surrender, he had enough foresight to know it wouldn’t be as simple as that and he was right. Only it was against the wrong person in your eyes.
As soon as Rickon ran, Jon took off. Riding towards his brother as all of you were forced to wait in a wide eyed horror. Arrows didn’t barrage Jon, no it was a far sicker game. Ramsay stood from his safe high top, and shot arrows down around Rickon desperately running to Jon. The first time they had seen each other in over four years and you knew Jon could see nothing else but how far he had to go to get his brother.
Only, Ramsay was toying with them both. It was almost enough to make you look away. So close to their brother, both almost managed to even grab the other’s hand. Only as soon as they barley could feel the other, a final arrow shot right into the boy, and hurled him face down to the ground.
Heart stopping, the sickening dizziness. Rickon laid there, and didn’t move and for a moment Jon could only look down at what he only just couldn’t reach.
And yet, that weight, that darkness, everything that had bore down on you for over a year. The blood and bright blue eyes of that night, the fire and chanting turned to torment and a nightmare only death was your wish from. It all didn’t quite ring clearly.
Something stirred in the sheer seconds you had to act. An instinct that had been buried so deep the last time it was awake, it was Robb’s side you were fighting at. And at his side, you knew what needed to be done, and so did you now. You knew better, because you knew exactly what Jon was about to do.
As soon as Jon beckoned his horse to ride straight forward, you found a voice. Quiet for so much of your life, and yet somewhere deep you found enough of that desperate Baratheon fury that would cause Robert to shout like no other man. “Prepare to charge,”
Jon rode more, and the arrows shot at him with more vigour then the toying of his brother. In an instant enough hit his horse, sending it stumbling down and Jon slamming to the ground with it. And it was then, there was no turning back.
He stood there alone as Ramsay commanded this men to charge, a terrifying onslaught of mounted horsemen all riding towards one lone man with but a sword at his side. “Men, go, protect your commander- now,”
The free folk were as terrifying from this view as it was for the men coming. A ferocious people, sided along good men you had known and fought with before. Your own on the horses you had at their backs following enough to cover.
The roaring from both sides only forced your lungs out harder in commanding their draws, each side knowing their strategy and yours trained on those in front of Jon himself.
There was no way to describe it. What kind of blood was shed in the middle of that chaos. Your own archers the only thing that was poised to keep the Bolton armies from circling around Jon’s forces but the carnage below was something new. Mounted horses, brutal fighting from both free folk and the men with a flayed men itched into their insignia, it built up before your eyes.
Desperate yourself to remember everything you’d been taught and yet nothing could prepare anyone for this. None. In a true twisted fashion, you were sure this was his plan. Bolton men in the brunt of the action, as Jon’s men had to navigate a chaos around them and the arrows barraging them from their own sides with sigils you indeed recognized. Ones that you had sent pleas to, and ones whose arrows were as focused on you as you were focused on your own men.
In the ensuing chaos, both sides of your own on horse back had to push forward, push the line of men towards the chaos because there was no other option. They wanted to keep you as far from the castle as they could and there was only losing if you were pushed back enough.
But what built, was horror. Two sides guarding the line all poised at either side of what they created and in the middle was a wall of dead. Piles trampling over the other and adding to the weight that you could barley see in. One that you could barley see Jon in, and in an instant you found a voice that almost shocked the man you called to as it did you. But you yelled over the chaos and he heard you. “Tormund-”
It was indescribable in those moments. So much around him that he could feel his lungs crushing under the pressure of it all and soaking his vision. If this was what hell felt like then Jon would lose himself inside of it. Barley managing to push back what was on top of him until enough was there to reach up to grab onto what he knew was dead. His own and their own but he had to drag himself from it.
Something, someone seemed to have the stance to yank him back to earth, and as soon as his feet touched solid ground and he felt the air once more through the blood and grime that soaked all who found trapped within it’s depths. He hardly felt anything but a shaking ferocity that threatened to tear him apart. It wasn’t until he was yanked by the arm, forced to look at Tormund urging him to stay in control. To not lose it.
Senses from a highest peak that radiated something he couldn’t describe as the man forced Jon to keep eye contact did he realize how far down did he need to be pulled back. Coming to earth did he realize that something was off, or maybe it was that it wasn’t so deafeningly loud.
The wall of the dead in the middle, on two sides were a mixture of Boltons, Umbers, and Karstarks all holding their own line, some men, Jon even recognized himself. Many, he knew had once fought by his brothers side and it only made him angrier.
Watched their King betrayed by the Boltons, and now watched as the same house murdered Ned Stark’s last trueborn son and all posed in a challenge. Begging his forces to charge them first and get picked off by them and the arrows behind them.
Only, Jon recognized the men flanking to the Bolton’s left and right as well. Houses that he and you had called to. Houses that now, weren’t watching the men their arrows were trained on. No way of knowing the silence between a fair few that spoke volumes.
The Northerners were sure that the other houses forced to fight would surrender when the tides turned, but it wasn’t quite that. Your eyes and Theon’s had found leaders in the horseback archers parallel to your own. And a wave washed through, looks you had shared with these men in plans of battle before. Hornwood’s, Manderly’s, Blackwood’s, Dustin’s, all men you knew and you realized it wasn’t surrender they chose.
Fight as you had no other option, and once a choice was to be made they made the one that you barley had a plan for. But it was there, it had to be. You didn’t spend three years at Robb’s side, not to know exactly the kind of men who followed him. Jon’s forces on foot slightly ahead of you, and the opposite arches aimed over just enough to hit them. Your own flanking each side, turning enough to see Theon recognizing as you saw. So it was the very last plan in the book you were to cook up, was it?
Jon stood soaked in blood, men all at his sides ready to cut through them as tensions arose and as the archers poised at them were commanded to start moving. He could hear you, from what he could tell almost just behind him by a good number of feet as you held the back lines harshly.
As children, Jon and Robb often found themselves climbing the highest towers, and shouting to each other from increasingly far distances. Their father had told them that the greatest of commanders could only do so much if no one on the battlefield could hear them. That a good commander knew how to yell, a lesson he knew he and Robb both had learned with success.
But then he heard you, and he got it. He knew why you refused to let him stick you off to the sides. He wanted to fight for you, but you would for him. And no matter how much having you there scared him, you’d keep going as long as it took to ensure he kept going. And your yell, had to be that of a commander right now. One that he had previously only heard stories of from his father, that Baratheon’s were the one house who had a true set of lungs when they wanted too.
“Nock,”
The faint sounds of men and horses shifting behind them as he stared down the ones holding the line from them, teeth gritting and heaving for as much air as he could.
“Draw,”
A yell he had never heard on you, but there was a confidence he only caught at the last second. That the men in front of them, were only ones that had denied their cause and pledged to the Boltons. Only those and the Bolton’s themselves. None else. The Northerns at their backs however, looked as if they were actually listening for orders from the voice yelling behind him, watching you with a nod as if- oh honestly Jon could’ve turned around and kissed you right then and there.
“Loose,” Your arrows all fired, and the second they reached the men blocking the path, did the archers behind the Boltons turn. And arrows flew in vast numbers into the remaining men all posed to charge.
Another set of arrows and Jon found his own voice to match. “With me, men. Break their line,”
Taken off guard, Jon and his own men found their strength once more, and found the shock and confusion of the Bolton’s being picked off by their own sides broke through. He couldn’t quite see ahead of him enough, but he also knew to trust your eyes to watch those from the leader who hadn’t touched a single second of battle, save for an innocent boy running for his life.
The Northerners turning to the side of their own, men who now fought at Jon’s side recognizing the leader they didn’t just need, the one they wanted. One that was as fierce as the brother before him.
In the turning of the tides, Ramsay stood almost baffled by what was happening. Realized that the only men fighting for him for the ones being picked off by the bastard. So he did what cowards do when faced with forces that could outdo them. He ran. Commanded his men and what was left to turn back.
Realizing what happened, you made a risky judgment call. One he would be likely mad at you for later but now was important. Because you weren’t leading these men. The free folk, the Northerners all turning to fight for Jon’s side as one.
In a stroke of, not quite luck, but trust in someone who once fought beside you, you commanded your own horse forward and it was Theon picking any off before you could reach him. Coming to his side as there were more of you then there were of them, Jon looked up to where you came towards him.
Barley a glance was needed and it was all spoken already. Ramsay didn’t have the men for a siege anymore, and they all knew it. Hauling himself up in front of you, grabbing the reigns for himself. Telling his men to follow, telling them “We’re going home,”
Ramsay wasn’t ready. He wasn’t the one to lead such vicious battles and he despised that his men knew it. He thought he had them. He thought he could do it that he only had a scrap of wildings to help. Only to have the irritating audacity of Harald Karstark the night before, telling him that if it was a wildling army led by Jon Snow, then they might be fucked. That he would know this place better then any of them could wish.
His own bloody men turned on him, Houses that had sworn to his side. Albeit through threat of force but his side none the less. He thought he had the bastard, and then..he didn’t. And now he knew there was only a matter of time before they broke those gates down and the instant they did he would only have seconds to find a plan.
“Archers to the walls.” Only they didn’t. Wide eyed and rageful he yelled louder, “Archers-”
His own men by his side telling him, “Our army’s gone, we can’t hold off a siege.” At least there was the satisfaction of knocking the mouth breather on his ass for that. But the men that remained, ones that weren’t soldiers of his own house? Oh it was bad. It was bad, because they stood down. They stood down, and the gates open.
There would be no siege because there weren't enough men willing anymore to die for Ramsay Bolton’s malicious temper. They had a King, a King his father murdered, and outside those gates was the King that without ever calling himself one, had led his men through a bloodbath as fiercely as their last.
As those gates opened, on either side taking sure control of the perimeter of the yard were a mix of free folk and Northerns together finally. But as Jon descended on the home he had once thought couldn’t ever be his again, all he saw was red.
A monstrous, pathetic man who preyed only on those too weak to fight back. All Jon could see was the vile thing that waited until Jon had just reached Rickon, before shooting the boy dead. All he could see was how horrifically scared he had seen Ramsay leave you and the fear in your eyes for too long tormented by him. He didn’t get here in time to kill Roose Bolton for Robb, but Ramsay was here when Rickon wasn't, and Jon felt an intensity in his blood like none other.
You followed not long after, you and the men beaten, covered in grime, blood mixes of yours and others as Jon was drenched, soaked in the massacre which tried to crush him in. And Ramsay, stood there almost entirely clean with a bow in his arms. Looking between Jon and you with the same condescension in his voice he always had. “You suggested one on one combat, didn’t you? I’ve reconsidered, fighting for my whore of a bride sounds like a wonderful idea.”
Men all standing back, as Jon walked forward with not an ounce of fear or doubt in his eyes. You could still see Jaime Lannister, tired up, bloody and beaten taunting Robb “ Swords, lances, teeth, nails choose your weapons. And let’s end this hear and now. ” But Robb was smart enough to know a trap when he saw one.
Ramsay wasn’t.
Step by step Jon threw his shield up, taking arrow after arrow all barley moving him back a single inch. All of you stood heaving from the fight to get to this point, as you watched Jon approach Ramsay without a care in the world over his attacks. The second he got close, Jon thrusted it forward by a blunt edge, smacking Ramsay in the head and sending him knocked to the ground.
And that didn’t stop until there was barley anything left to recognize outside the blood. It could only be described once more, as brutal. An anger and violence that was so destructively pulled to the surface that none stepped in to stop. Maybe you should have, but you found no strength left in you to do so.
You fought back against Ramsay too many times and he overpowered you with ease. But Jon was the one who overpowered him, and you couldn’t convince yourself it was wrong to stop. Luckily for you, however, Jon had more strength then physical.
Ramsay broken and bloody on the ground when he stopped. Jon’s voice a hissing rasp full of vitriol as he knelt over him. “I should kill you right here, let you die humiliated in front of your own men.” Tossing what was left of his hold on him to the ground, Jon stood up. Looking down to the man with exactly what you knew you had seen in him. “But I won’t. That’s not the kind of leader these people deserve, and it’s not the kind of man I am. For now, you can rot in the dungeons with the rest of your men.”
Taken back to Whispering Wood, some taking away what was left of the men on the other side, while the rest stood around you in cheers. But it wasn’t quite over. It was why you told him, why he needed to know before he got here. You were Robb’s Queen, they fought beside you. But you weren’t their leader, you never were. Only one here was the only person it could be.
Only this time, the man they would call to saw it coming. And he knew better then most, the cheers around him couldn’t last. You didn’t come all this way together just to fight this battle. Jon’s voice was loud as he stood in the middle of his people. “Men, you’ve fought with honour. Stood beside the free folk and fought together, my father used to say we find out true friends on the battlefield. And you’ve proven that today, but one victory does not make us conquerors.”
Multiple men stepped forward, Northern Lords who you had seen in this position before, had seen this look on their faces, but this time, as you stepped forward as well they knew that you still truly believed it too.
“Winter has come, and I promise you. There is a bigger enemy coming for us. One that won’t wait out the cold. They will bring the storm with them. Bury and burn the dead, and celebrate while you can, but this war is far from over.”
It was Lord Dustin who stepped forward first. “We all received a call from a Southerner calling himself King, but we refused. Some of us forced into allegiance with the men who murdered our King and our Queen, and yet by the gods grace she’s standing here in front of us because she understands better then we all did.”
Jon met your eyes, and you just once, begged the gods to let him accept what he deserves. Just once.
Another loud, impassioned voice that spoke over many with conviction. Only Maege had a bit more grace then that was of the Greatjon who spoke the declaration years before. “Bear Island knows no King but the King in the North, whose name is Stark. Robb Stark was the King we chose, but he didn’t need to make this one a Stark to follow after him. He named Jon Snow as King after him because Ned Stark’s blood runs through his veins all the same.”
More stepped forward, men who answered the call and those who didn’t all as Jon stood at the centre of all. The Manderly’s next, and you knew too well they realized at the last second what the true choice was, their eyes had found yours in those vital seconds before Jon broke the line, and turned to join. “Lady Mormont speaks true. Your brother came to us, chose you to succeed him, and it wasn’t until I realized I was on the wrong side of the battlefield did I remember that.”
Lord Blackwood stepped next. “My son died fighting for Robb Stark, the Young Wolf, and never once have I regretted standing beside him. And I won’t regret should I die in battle beside the brother he trusted, the brother he called King.”
Fighting against until the very last surrender as they opened the gates finally, it was indeed Smalljon Umber who had the courage to step forward just as he was the one who ordered the gates to be opened. “My father’s rotting in a Frey dungeon because he fought by Robb Stark’s side, and I dishonoured him, my King, and my house by pledging my men to the ones that killed him. A man can only admit when he’s wrong, and ask for forgiveness, if not mercy.”
Jon’s voice wasn’t as powerful as before, and he caught you in his eye, closer then before. Rough and scratched like the toll was long taken on it. “You sided with us in the moments it mattered most. There’s nothing to forgive.”
With as much admiration as he had that day years ago, Lord Glover was as confident now as he was then, this time your name in his words. “We’ve heard rumours, about your death, about his.” Gesturing to Jon, still as quiet and still as ever, like he was the stag about to be spooked for once. “And if the gods brought you back, maybe they wanted you to bring him back too. Without either of you, we wouldn’t have a Queen, or a King. House Glover has stood behind House Stark for thousands of years, and I will stand behind Jon Snow.”
Silence was met, as you approached him. Bloody and beaten beyond belief and yet you held no doubt in your eyes, or a nervous hesitation as you had shared with Robb before. Now was different, and you could only see a man that was exactly what you wished he himself had seen earlier.
Your voice nowhere near as loud as any of theirs, but you trusted these men to hear you. Even if your voice was only loud enough for Jon as you found his grey ones you missed for too long.
“Robb chose you because you deserved everything he had. He didn’t want to force you to become a Stark just to lead, because Stark or Snow, you’re his brother. He didn’t want you to be the King he was, he trusted the King you would be on your own.” A hint of a smile on your face as Jon’s gaze was trained intensely into yours as if needing to lighten the thick air between you in front of so many people. “Though being a Snow..I suppose would make you the White Wolf instead of the Young Wolf.”
Had Jon’s heart not been about to break through his chest and armour and sink him into the ground, he may have found it in himself to laugh. But as he looked to you, and then up to the men, he knew there was only one choice. The Free Folk wouldn’t kneel to him, but Jon didn’t want them too. They followed him as a leader, but it was the North that was his home who needed him as their King. And who would he be if he refused the call when Robb hadn’t, he thought.
Soaking in blood from a horror bloodbath he led them all to victory in, the Northerners around Jon graced him with the title he never thought he would’ve deserved. “The King in the North,” And as more joined, drawing their swords to swear, he looked to his people with an acceptance in his eyes.
It was different this time though, you didn’t make any pledge of loyalty because truly Jon had no gods forsaken reason to hear one from you. You both came back from death in ways not a soul other would understand, and that was enough.
He did though, in front of men, in a home, in a place he never would have dared only four years ago, find enough in himself to let go of that long insecurity. The last time it happened, you both were in Winterfell together, thought was the last time. Leaving the other may have been a mistake, it may not have been, but you were in front of him all the same.
That cold night of the feast he was kicked out of, both of you had looked around to ensure you were alone first. But this time, Jon let himself just not care, and in however long the men chose to chant and cheer, Jon pulled all the air out of you as he grabbed you, pulling you to him.
Almost spinning you in his arms as you both clung to the other in a tight yet tender embrace, as all the “King in the North” faded until only your breaths could be heard by the other.
For this very moment, it would have to do.
Splashing harsh against the rocky shores, the fleet all gathered around to see the immaculate castle that stood before them, stone dragons carved into their towers and the volcanic cliffs around it acted as an overpowering shadow. An image of fear to many, but they had only just arrived. They couldn’t leave now.
Some were familiar to the land, others weren’t at all but they all stepped ashore, and with little fight as could be given, the island was theirs. It wouldn’t last for long, not as a permanent home, but it was the closest thing to what was his blood family as one man could get for now.
Some called him Young Griff, but as he stepped onto the shores of Dragonstone, he knew he had to become what he was trained to be his whole life. Eventually all the Seven Kingdoms would know him by what he came here to be. Here to claim his rightful place on the Iron Throne, as would have belonged to his father befor
But Young Griff wasn’t here to be his father. Rhaegar died a prince, but Young Griff was his only living son. The rightful heir. He was here to be King.
For his true name was said to be Aegon Targaryean
#jon snow x reader#robb stark x reader#jon snow#robb stark#game of thrones#asoiaf#a song of ice and fire#jon snow x you#robb stark x you#jon snow imagine#robb stark imagine
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Beauty and the Beast
Tokens of Life (give me) 9k WIP by @ihaveastorminme
Jon thought of his mother's family often. But he never heard a whisper from them. Not once.
Until the day the northern wind howled through the ancestral halls of the dragon Queens, bringing with it snow and wolves’ cries at its tail. Five hundred different deities in that hall, and nobody whispered when she walked in, tall and forbidding, the skirts of her dress swirling about her like mist and snow glittering unmelted in her flame hair.
She looked at him... and everything changed.
No Rose Without a Thorn 24k
Ten years ago, the Others were defeated, the Starks took back the North, the Targaryens reclaimed the Iron Throne, and the Old Gods transformed Sansa Stark into a dread and dangerous beast. Now, winter is coming, the beast remains, and the family would really like Sansa to be a full time human again.
The Beast, the Beauty, and the Bastard 3k
It is a reworking of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, but with a bit of a twist. Hope you enjoy!
Certain As the Sun 22k, incomplete
Sansa is bright, beautiful, and out of place in her little town. After her father is captured in a forgotten castle, she moves to take his place with the cursed prince.
Gifset by @dcbicki and Gifset by @yenstarkofrivia
Rapunzel
From Tower to Tower 10k incomplete
Locked away in a tower for eighteen years by a witch claiming to be her Mother, long-haired Sansa seeks freedom and a chance to regain her crown as Princess of the kingdom. But the tower is high as she has no means to get down, aside from her incredibly long hair, and no guarantee of safety in the outside world she has been warned about. One night, when the witch is out, and a thief who climbs the tower seeking refuge happens upon her, she stuns herself by taking a chance and asking him to help her escape. Assuring him that she will have all charges against him dropped when he returns her to her rightful parents, she embarks on a series of first discoveries with her new bandit friend Jon.
I'll not be climbin' up, I'll only be calling good morning 13k @violetcoloredglasses
Princess Sansa, the rightful queen, has been trapped in a tower by her usurping step-mother for nigh on three years now. Between the benevolent interference of a local woods-witch, the seemingly random appearance of a dashing young man on a horse, and a magical book that Sansa uses to turn a man into a crow, she may have found a way to change her stars.
flower shaped heart 25k, incomplete @missfaber
Alayne Stone has lived her whole life in her hidden tower, forbidden by Mother to leave. But she yearns for an adventure like the ones in the songs, so when a man named Jon Snow crashes into her tower and into her life, she seizes the chance. They travel to King's Landing where the floating lanterns shine each year on her nameday. The new world is exciting and frightening, but Jon Snow is there to guide her every step. He is not nearly as terrible as Mother said men are, though the rest of the world might be. Danger, betrayals, and lies form the steps of their journey as Alayne uncovers terrible secrets.
corresponding moodboard
Let Down Your Red Hair .6k
A Jonsa Rapunzel story told in verse. With her father beheaded and her brother marching against the king, the last thing Sansa expects is for her hair to never stop growing. She is soon locked away in the tallest tower of the Red Keep, withdrawn from court as the War of the Five Kings rages on. Elsewhere, rumors of her magical hair have spread to the Wildlings, who see her fiery strands as their last hope against the coming winter.
Tangled edit by @kitten1618x, Tangled edit by @queen-sans-in-the-north, Tangled edit by @sardoniyx
Tangled gifset by @dcbicki
Sleeping Beauty
La Belle au bois dormant 4k
When The North celebrates the birth of Lady Sansa, all the realm is invited to celebrate with them. Each Lady of a Great House bestows a gift upon the little lady, including Cersei Lannister, whose presence at the celebration is both unexpected and unnerving.
Once upon a Dream 1k by @azulaahai
Sansa is under a curse - fallen into a magical sleep, she, according to the prophecy, can only be awoken by a kiss from a dragon. Arya rides south to ask for help from the dragon king Aegon, but the king’s grumpy half brother Jon might prove to be an obstacle.
Visions are Seldom All They Seem 14k
Sansa Stark is sure her life is a great song. She's a beautiful princess. She's been cursed. And the only way it will be broken is to sleep for a hundred years and be awoken by true love's kiss, given by a king's son.
She's more then happy to prick her finger if it means getting her happily ever after with a handsome prince all the sooner.
But a hundred years is a long time.
To be fair to Sansa, Jon did not realize how long it would be either.
Sleeping Beauty Gifset
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
you are my sun, my moon (and all of my stars) 133k
When the white wolf came, the Lord of Winterfell had no choice but to give him his eldest daughter. Eddard Stark had grown up on legends of wolves, on the stories of bargains made by the First Men, on the knowledge of the price that he and his family might one day be forced to pay. His father had explained the reason their house had taken a wolf as its heraldry and “Winter is Coming” as its motto, a reminder of a promise to honor, a recognition of a debt owed that would need, one day, to be paid. Ned had breathed a sigh of relief when his sister’s twentieth winter arrived and the beast had not. And he had watched the dawn sky for the first signs of the snow that would mark that his daughter, too, might also be spared, might escape the fate that had been handed down by their ancestors. But no man could be so lucky.
Sansa, too, had been born with the North in her blood, had been raised on the stories of white wolves, had lived her life with the knowledge that one might come for her.
this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty 22k by @dialux
“I fell,” Sansa says softly. “I flew.”
[When a strange, hooded man appears out of nowhere, demanding a woman in return for keeping the Others and dead out of Westeros, Sansa goes with him.
It’s the best and worst decision of her life.]
PRE CANON - WESTERN - REGENCY - LITTLE WOMEN - HOLIDAY - SEASON 6
#jonsa#jonsa fic#fairytale au#there will be a part 2#there are a lot of fairytale fics 😅#beauty and the beast au#rapunzel au#tangled au#sleeping beauty au#east of the sun and west of the moon au#dot fic list
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Randomly struck me how Arya's first trip down to the Winterfell crypts seems to parallel Jon's recurrent crypt dreams on one particular motif - a dead king rising.
Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and Lyanna, to show them their own tombs. Sansa kept looking at the stubby little candle, anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. “There are worse things than spiders and rats,” he whispered. “This is where the dead walk.” That was when they heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya’s hand.
When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb’s leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. “You stupid,” she told him, “you scared the baby,” but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too.
Arya IV, AGOT
Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark he’d heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitch-dark, his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his deep sense of terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the Wall and walked, restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the east. It was only a dream. I am a brother of the Night’s Watch now, not a frightened boy.
Jon VIII, ASOS
In Jon's dream, he's a witness to the Stark kings rising to confront him. But in Arya's POV, Jon is the dead rising from a tomb to confront them.
It's just funny because a common theme in Jon's crypt dreams is how he doesn't belong. He voices the rejection to himself - he's not a Stark, he has no place.
Jon shook his head. “No one. The castle is always empty.” He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. “Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It’s black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don’t want to. I’m afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it’s not them I’m afraid of. I scream that I’m not a Stark, that this isn’t my place, but it’s no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream.” He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. “That’s when I always wake.” His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf’s shaggy white fur. “Do you dream of Horn Hill?” Jon asked.
Jon IV, AGOT
He dreamt he was back in Winterfell, limping past the stone kings on their thrones. Their grey granite eyes turned to follow him as he passed, and their grey granite fingers tightened on the hilts of the rusted swords upon their laps. You are no Stark, he could hear them mutter, in heavy granite voices. There is no place for you here. Go away. He walked deeper into the darkness. “Father?” he called. “Bran? Rickon?” No one answered. A chill wind was blowing on his neck. “Uncle?” he called. “Uncle Benjen? Father? Please, Father, help me.” Up above he heard drums. They are feasting in the Great Hall, but I am not welcome there. I am no Stark, and this is not my place. His crutch slipped and he fell to his knees. The crypts were growing darker. A light has gone out somewhere. “Ygritte?” he whispered. “Forgive me. Please.” But it was only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark …
Jon VIII, ASOS
Yet Arya's POV shows that Jon does have a place. Not only that, but he becomes a resident of the crypts as a ghost. There's the implication too that he spends more time in there than all his siblings as he waits for them to arrive. Then when they do, he rises out of his own tomb like the dead Kings of Winter rise out of theirs in his dreams.
Bran's POV also says that only Starks belong in the crypts.
After that, oddly, Rickon decided he liked the Walders. They never played lord of the crossing again, but they played other games—monsters and maidens, rats and cats, come-into-my-castle, all sorts of things. With Rickon by their side, the Walders plundered the kitchens for pies and honeycombs, raced round the walls, tossed bones to the pups in the kennels, and trained with wooden swords under Ser Rodrik’s sharp eye. Rickon even showed them the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father’s tomb. “You had no right!” Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. “That was our place, a Stark place!” But Rickon never cared.
Bran I, ACOK
It seems that Snow or Targaryen, bastard or trueborn, it doesn't actually matter. At the end of the day, Jon will always be one of them: a Stark son, and a true King of Winter.
#hehehe back on the king of winter propaganda#we cheered!!#agenda posting#asoiaf#jon snow#valyrianscrolls#arya stark#bran stark
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Catelyn being sweet and loving towards Ned while taking out her resentment on Jon is a classic case of displacement, an unconscious defense mechanism where the mind shifts aggressive impulses to a less threatening target to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening:
It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again.
Whoever Jon's mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away. It was the one thing she could never forgive him. She had come to love her husband with all her heart, but she had never found it in her to love Jon. She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned's sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse. (AGOT Catelyn II)
For Catelyn, Jon is a constant reminder of her disfranchisement in the patriarchal feudal system, her powerlessness, her insignificance. Her husband cheated on her and unilateraly decided his affair baby would live with them, and there’s nothing Catelyn could do. When she tried to bring it up, Ned frightened and forbid her from asking about it. She has to “persuade” him to send Jon away because she has no power or authority of her own. She thinks Ned loved Jon’s mother fiercely, with the implication that he loved her more than he loves Catelyn. She might have overlooked it a dozen times for Ned’s sake, as long as it was out of sight. But it was never out of sight.
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Chapter 10 - In the cold light of day, many things are bound to change.
The drinks had addled his mind, but not as much as the scent of you, the feel of you, the taste of you has. He wishes to taste you again, and again, to hear you scream his name, to feel your teeth bite down on him, marking him as your own.
You drew blood, his ferocious lioness, broke the skin of his arm, marked him well. He hopes it stays, if not he will have to bring you to climax again and again until it does.
Jon curls his arm around you, basking in the warmth of your skin, in the way you draw nonsensical shapes on his chest. Your hands are so soft, your nails perfect, there has never been dirt or blood under them, and no callouses cover your palms. Those very palms which he brings to his lips, kissing them reverently. The sun shines down on you, the call of the morning birds floating in through your open window.
“Now, will you tell me who got you drunk?” You ask, smiling at him with the radiance of the sun.
“Both had a hand in it, though I must admit the presence of Joffrey did not help matters.”
You sit up, the smile slipping from your face, a storm cloud pulled over the sun. “You must leave, now, now Jon, back to your post.” You slide from the bed and gather his tunic and your stockings, throwing the flimsy fabric under the bed and his tunic to him, then you rummage around for a night shift, quickly slipping behind a folding screen and changing.
He pulls his tunic on, just in time for the knock at the door, your aunt’s voice calling through the door.
“Dear y/n, are you awake?” Her voice is sickly sweet, and it makes his head ache.
You grab a robe and wrap it around your night shift, throwing yourself into a chair by the fire, pretending you had been reading.
Jon opens the door, giving the Dowager Queen a bow, ignoring the way the world spins as he lifts his head once more.
“Aunt Cersei, is there something I can help you with?” You ask, looking up at her with an undeniable air of innocence.
She scans the room, her eyes narrowing at Jon. “Leave us.”
Jon bristles, but at your nod leaves, taking his post up at the door, looking around before ear pressing his ear to the crack in the wood.
“Is it not odd that he spends so much time in your chambers?” He hears your aunt ask.
“I do not think so, Uncle Jamie spends much time with you in your chambers, and that is not odd.” You say, your voice light, your tone cheery.
“We are siblings y/n, of course it is not.” Cersei’s words have ice threaded within, and Jon bites back a laugh. You always know just what card to play.
“People will talk y/n, you must stamp out this childish affection you have for him, it will scare away potential suitors.” She scolds, her heels clicking as she moves about the room.
“If it scares them away then they are clearly easily frightened, I do not wish to marry a coward.”
“Do not confuse jealousy with cowardice, sweet girl.”
“I am not.”
“Do not think me a fool, I know it is enjoyable to take a guard to bed, but you are unmarried still, you cannot take such risks.”
He lurches away from your door, leaning against the wall, his head spinning. When was the last time he had drank so much? Surely it has been years, and the occasional glass of wine he has with you was clearly not enough to keep up his tolerance.
It is hot in the hall, his skin feels feverish, and he pushes up the sleeves of his tunic, before realizing how it exposes the bite mark on his arm. He strokes his fingertips over the skin, smiling to himself. Then the guilt comes, barreling towards him like a battering ram. What has he done? Stripped you nearly bare, feasted upon you, and marked you like a savage. What was he thinking? Shame comes next, overtaking the heat lingering from the alcohol, coloring his skin, and worsening the pounding in his head.
He needs to apologize. As soon as Cersei has left your chambers, he will do so. Will ask that you forgive him, that you pretend it has never happened, he was so close, too close, dangerously close to taking more than a simple taste. If you had asked him to bed you? He does not think his strength of will would have held. Perhaps if he was sober. But then he never would have done as he had without the courage gifted to him by an overindulgence of spirits.
He stands behind you as all gathered watch Margaery and Joffrey join hands, smiling and laughing at the players. You pick at your food, your hair curled gracefully, your wrists, fingers, neck, and ears adorned with jewels, a show of wealth, of power by your father.
“Do try to eat, My Lady, or you will not have the stamina for dancing.” He urges softly. It is not dancing he fears you will not have the stamina for, but placating Joffrey. It is his wedding; all must bow and grovel before him.
You do as he asks, averting your eyes when the dancers make a mockery of your father, of his injury during the Battle of Blackwater.
Margaery’s laughter rings high and clear at something Joffrey says, and a dislike for the woman grows in his chest. He knows she is playing a part, but could she play it in a way that does not worsen your pain?
Gifts are brought out, swords, books, gold, jewelry, spices, all tossed aside by Joffrey who demands more and more. It is not until the gifts have run out, and the music begins again, does Joffrey call for you.
You approach the head table, curtsying and congratulating him on his wedding.
“Cousin, I noticed I did not receive a gift from you.” Joffrey says, toying with a wine glass in his hand.
You put on a secretive smile, your mask slipping into place. “Ah, yes well, I gave it to your Lady Wife directly, it is for after the wedding.”
He laughs, beckoning you further forward, his arms outstretched. “A loyal subject you are cousin, your generosity is noted.”
You return his embrace easily, placing a kiss on his cheek. “Your happiness is my own, My King.”
“I shall have to return your generosity. I know my mother spoke to you about lining up some new suitors for you, after the wedding celebrations have finished, I will send out a notice to all our bannermen.”
You blink in surprise but keep a radiant smile on your face. “I thank you, but please do not rush your festivities for me.”
Jon can see the ease in your form when Margaery embraces you as well, holding you a moment longer than needed before pulling back with a bright smile. “You honor us, dear cousin.”
“I hope she strangles him with my gift.” You grumble, once you are far enough away from the head table, smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles in your gown.
“Her arms are far too small, perhaps her brother will do it for her.” Jon jests, pride swelling in his chest at your small smile.
He watches as you dance, catching your eye mid-twirl, your fingertips barely brushing against your partner’s. You look so beautiful, and he is impatient, bouncing slightly on his heels, knowing that he has claimed your next dance. The song ends and Jon wastes no time, nodding at your previous partner and taking your hand in his, falling in step with you as the music swells, a new song beginning.
“You did not tell me your aunt spoke of new suitors.” He says, his fingers splayed on your midback, hidden among the throng of dancers no one will see.
“I did not because it will not come about, she will forget, or my father will dissuade her.” You say, leaving his arms for a moment to spin out, your skirts flaring around your ankles like waves, the fabric a muted red, the embroidery golden, but duller. It is more bronze, catching the sunlight in a way that reminds him of Grey Wind’s eyes.
You spin back into him, and his hands ghost over your hips before returning to their proper place. “Let us pray he succeeds.”
You smile, a true smile, he knows you love dancing, that it lightens your heart. “If he does not, then many houses will lose their sons? Your blade will taste blood once more?”
He cannot help but smile back, leaning into your game as he lifts you in time with the others. Your weight is nothing, a mere feather to him, and for a moment you look like a goddess suspended in the air. “Yes, I suspect you will find me far more bloodthirsty than before if I must stand by and watch little lordlings fall all over themselves to impress you.”
You giggle, and brush your fingers over his forearm, where the imprint of your teeth still remains, much to his delight. “I think I am perfectly capable of enduring a bout of blood thirst from you.”
He goes to retort, to teasingly call you a little mix, his personal temptress, his beloved and beautiful tormentor, when a giant pie is wheeled out before Joffrey and Margaery.
You stop, along with most of the other dancers, to watch as Joffrey cuts into the pie, doves scatter into the air and servants whisk plates of pie around. A plate is set before your place at the table, from the spot Joffrey had cut into, and you pick it up, but decline another other on Jon’s behalf.
“Perhaps I wished for a slice of pie, My Lady?” He teases, his voice low, mindful of those around you.
“You will not like it; the latticing is flavored with almond oil.” You take a bite, then wrinkle your nose. “Gods, that is awful, and I like almonds.”
His heart lurches in his chest. You remember he does not like almonds. He had said it only once, during his first year in your service, and yet you remembered.
“Now you see why I avoid them.”
You put your plate down and took a sip of your wine to wash out the taste.
Then Margaery screams, the sound shattering the merry ambiance, startling the wine glass from your hand. Joffrey is choking, his face turning red then purple, his hands at his throat as Margaery screams again. Jon faintly hears Lady Olenna Tyrell’s call for aid, then Joffrey falls, crashes into the table, his face and fine doublet covered in pie. The kingsguard rush forward, the maester as well, lifting the boy-king as Cersei’s eyes sweep around the room. Accusations are flying around the room until finally someone is able to escort the Dowager Queen away.
You sit frozen, your eyes locked on Joffrey, your gown splattered with wine, a flash of gold, Tommen, Jon notes, darts past, unnoticed by you.
“Ser Jon, escort my daughter back to her chambers.” Tyrion orders, his hand on Ser Jamie’s forearm, the far taller man leaning on his brother and the table for support.
Ser Loras has gathered Margaery up in his arms, guiding his sister away from her deceased husband. The guests, still frightened and confused, arguing amongst themselves as the kingsguard try and fail to calm them.
“Tommen, where is Tommen?” Ser Jamie asks, his eyes wide, wild with fright as he vaults over the table.
That startles you into action, and you follow him, screaming your cousin’s name.
Jon moves to follow as well, but Tyrion’s hand on his calf stops him. “Jamie will protect her, if need be, the wheel has already begun to turn.”
His heart is in his throat, hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes constantly moving, scanning the Great Hall.
Finally, you reappear, Ser Jamie at your side, Tommen in his arms, the boy’s face red and wet with tears. You coo over him, his smaller hand in yours as you walk back to the side table, keeping Joffrey’s body out of Tommen’s sight.
Tommen is eight namedays old, but he looks younger held in his father’s arms.
“We should retire to the Queen’s solar; our family must stand together if we are to survive this tragedy.” Ser Jamie says grimly, his jaw set, his eyes a dark shade of emerald like yours are filled to the brim with unspoken emotion.
“Well said, Brother, the pride must stand together.” Tyrion says, giving Tommen a small smile.
Jon falls behind you and your family, hand on the pommel of his sword. Was this part of the plan? He cannot imagine Lord Tyrion would poison his own nephew, no matter how horrid the boy-king was.
The Dowager Queen’s wailing could be heard through the door, and Ser Jamie passes Tommen off to you, the boy now on his feet sniffling, and holding onto your skirts.
“Allow me a moment.” Ser Jamie says softly, easing the door open and slipping inside.
You smooth down Tommen’s hair. “It is alright.”
Tommen nods solemnly, far too solemnly for a child so young. “Now it is.”
You bite your lip and look up towards the ceiling, tears collecting on your lashes.
Jon longs to reach out, to comfort you, but he cannot, not here, not now.
The door to the Dowager Queen’s solar cracks open, and one by one the Lannisters head inside. Jon moves to join you, but Ser Jamie stops him, taking a step further into the hall and closing the door behind him.
“Jon, if I might speak frankly with you?” Ser Jamie looks down at his boots, his eyes red.
“Aye.” A pit forms in his stomach.
“I am sorry.”
“For what, Ser Jamie?”
The eldest Lannister purses his lips, a habit of yours as well, one Jon has never known where it came from, but now he does. “I have not done right by you; I have encouraged you to make the wrong choices.”
If a woman is your heart’s desire, then it matters not if she is married, if you are, if you have vows or codes preventing you. A man must always seize his heart’s desire lest he dies never having known, never having even tried.
Ser Jamie’s words to him those many nights ago as they shared drinks and stories had emboldened him, given him the strength to go to your chambers and act.
“Honor, duty, it will keep your head attached to your neck, and it will keep your heart in your chest where it belongs.” He places his hand on Jon’s shoulder. “I like you Jon, you are a good man, an even better swordsman, but she is my niece…”
“I would never dishonor her.” Jon says, and it is true, he would not, he had slipped, overly indulged himself, but soon Tyrion would announce your betrothal, and his actions would not seem dishonorable, not even in his memories.
Ser Jamie’s grip on his shoulder tightens, and he looks Jon in the eyes, a desperation in them. “I know you will try not to, but y/n is a Lannister, she is more my sister her aunt, than her mother. They are persuasive, stubborn, and beautiful, many men have fallen at their feet, many more will. Ensure you are not one of them, not again.”
“You know?” Jon asks, before he can stop the foolish words from escaping.
“I all but sent you to her that night, I wanted…” He looks away, and Jon is struck by the shame, the agony he sees in the older man’s expression. “I wanted her to know what it is like to be loved. My sister will marry her off to a wealthy house, it is what she thinks best for y/n and there can be no promise of love in her marital bed, but with you? I can see you love her Jon, and I fear she returns your affections, so I hoped that perhaps one night would be enough to sustain her in her years to come. I did not think of the consequences.”
“I did not take her maidenhood.”
Shock ripples across Ser Jamie’s face.
“I will not chance leaving her with a bastard, I will not tarnish her name.”
Ser Jamie’s head drops, a sigh of relief audibly flowing through him. “You are a good man, Jon Snow. Better than I.”
“My Lady speaks of you fondly; she does not think you a bad man.” Jon says, and it is true, you adore your uncle, even if what he has done with your aunt disgusts you.
Ser Jamie smiles sadly and squeezes Jon’s shoulder before he lets go. “My sweet niece, beautiful and perfect, everything like her mother in looks, but in her ability to forgive me? That is all, Tyrion, I do not deserve the grace they give me.”
“Then it rests upon your shoulder to act in a way that makes you deserving of it, does it not?”
Ser Jamie laughs, the sound hollow, stained with grief, worn down by time. “I suppose it does.”
Jon inclines his head towards the door. “Shall we?”
“I must ask you to wait out here, this is a family matter.” Ser Jamie says, his voice soft, almost apologetic.
“I understand.”
“Worry not, I am sure y/n will bite my head off for separating the two of you.” Ser Jamie then gives him a smile and pulls open the door, disappearing inside.
TL: @mostclevermiss, @solacestyles, @2valentines, @sharknutz, @idohknow, @bdudette, @pluraldoggo
#meg's writing#jon snow imagine#jon snow x y/n#jon snow x reader#jon snow x you#lannister!reader#jon snow
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just a little somethin'
i really keep going back to targ!jon x sansa so maybe someday ill really delve into it.
The rain falls harshly against the windows, the summer storm raging louder than anything she’s ever heard in all of her life.
She sits in the window seat of her solar, head leaning against the cold glass, watching the gray storm clouds roll by, the flash of the lightning lighting up her face. When the thunder booms, she jumps despite the anticipation of it, the sound raising goosebumps along her skin. She’s never experienced a storm such as this one and it fascinates her, yet it frightens her all the same.
They’ve been in Dragonstone all of a month now, she and her husband, sent here by his father- it was his place as heir to the throne, after all. And so, they had packed up a small court of their own, ladies and handmaidens, knights and squires, servants and guards, all to come to this gloomy place, the seat of House Targaryen. Though, she must say, she’s settled in quite well despite the culture shock- to go from Winterfell to King’s Landing and now to Dragonstone in such a short amount of time has left her almost no time to adjust, but she enjoys it, this new life of hers.
“Here you are.”
She turns, a smile curving on her lips, so lost in her own thoughts she’d not even heard the door open. “I’ve been looking for you,” Jon says as he pushes away from the doorframe he leans on, coming to stand at the center of her room. “Watching the storm, are you?” He asks, taking in the sight of her there, legs tucked up beneath her, red hair falling unbound down her back, looking less like a future queen and more like a normal young woman.
“I’ve never seen something like it before,” she replies, casting a last glance out the window before she rises up, crossing the room to stand just before him. He wears black, as he so often does, but she can’t help but to smile at the sight of the direwolf pinned to his chest- he wears her favor even in the everyday. She raises up a hand, fingertips tenderly touching the cool metal, head tilting. “It is impressive.” Jon’s hand catches hers, drawing her hand close enough to his lips so he might press a soft kiss against her palm; the gesture makes her heart skip a beat.
“Aye, it is.” He replies, though he doesn’t quite mean the storm outside. Understanding, she blushes to the roots of her red hair, blue eyes shimmering, her hand falling into place against his chest, palm to his heart, the beat of it like a whisper against her skin. It was still so new, this feeling between the two of them, but he finds he’s lost without her- his nights sleepless, his days meaningless if she’s not there beside him. This arranged marriage, something he once loathed, something he once dreaded, he now finds he is thankful for in a way he never thought he could be. Now that he has her, he can’t believe he ever went without, that she’s not been a part of his life all this time.
This feeling…
It was, he knows, all he’s ever wanted to have.
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