Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

1.

Youth // Mirror

you were clearly meant for more than a life lost in the war // you break on the pavement, I could swim in these eyes, 'cause you're no good until you cry

Ever since Sansa was born, there hadn't been a single occasion in which Catelyn had looked at her, gazed at those familiar and beautiful traits, and felt something that wasn't pure joy.

Her young, beautiful daughter.

With her red hair, slightly lighter than Catelyn's, just like Catelyn's father's before her, his mother's before him, with her eyes as clear as the blue sky one could rarely see in the North behind those ever-present clouds, with her bell-like laughter, as composed and perfect as she was, her voice sweet when she asked something full of wonder and curiosity, when she ran to sit on her father's knee- the few occasions where she let herself act not like a Lady, but like the child she was- to tell him about the last thing she'd read on her book, of the last brave knight Old Nan had sung stories of, what she'd seen on her walks with her siblings, with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole.

Catelyn couldn't lie and say that there wasn't a child she was closer to.

Robb was her first son.
He was Catelyn's mirror image, with his red curls and blue eyes, the first child she'd given birth to, alone and waiting for a husband she barely knew to return from a deadly civil war, the first thing she'd learned to love in Winterfell, and Winterfell's heir.
Most of all, Robb was her son, but the weight of the duties on his shoulder had led him to look at his father with different eyes than the ones he looked at her with.

Not in the way Sansa, her first daughter, looked at Catelyn- like she was everything she would have liked to become one day, like Catelyn was the image of the perfect Lady she would one day become.

She'd seen how Ned and Catelyn's marriage worked, and she'd started to hope for something similar- not one born out of love, but one where love had been able to grow, stronger than any childish infatuation.
 She'd seen her mother pray in the sept Ned had got built just for her, and went to pray with her the Seven Gods, asking for a chance to meet and marry a man as kind as her father.
 She'd seen the delicate braids in her mother's hair, that lovely (according to Ned) union of Northern style and Southern style, there to warn that Catelyn was a Stark as much as she was a Tully, and had taught herself how to braid her own hair like that, surprising everyone the first time she showed up at supper looking more like her mother than ever.
 She'd seen Catelyn, and there wasn't a day since she'd learned how to walk when she hadn't followed her mother, learning from her and aspiring to be her.

Catelyn knew Sansa would be much better than her, because in her wasn't just the perfected and fancy diplomacy of the South, but also the rigid sense of duty of the North, its harmony, its strength.
Her daughter was the daughter of the Quiet Wolf and of Catelyn Tully, and like her parents she wouldn't be prey of the world.

Catelyn, prisoner in a castle that, she had started to fear, she would never call home again, often thought about Sansa.

Sansa and everything she loved about her.

She often thought about Ned, laying in the bed that had once been theirs, and cried in the loneliness of a room that had never been so empty of his quiet love, and so full of her pain.

Ever since she was brought back to Winterfell, Catelyn hadn’t spent a night out of that bed.
 The guards outside the door made sure that she stayed in the room, that she slept on that bed, not on the floor, not on the chair in front of the fire, but on the bed where she had slept next to her husband for fourteen years, where countless times they had been together, where they had conceived their five perfect children, where they had argued and fought countless times and where they had made new compromises with each other each time, creating a harmony that had allowed their children to grow up surrounded by love.

She thought about Sansa, Ned, and Robb.

Then about Bran, Arya, and Rickon, thought about them and everything she knew about them.

At times she spoke with herself, repeating innocent things like "Rickon loved leaves, and loved to collect the most beautiful ones and show them to every soldier in Winterfell", then she remembered how those grown men treated the act of receiving one of his leaves like an honor, after the child explained just why they had been given that one leaf in particular.

She thought about Arya, the daughter she was never able to understand how she should have, to whom she never showed love in the right way, who perhaps had died believing that her mother did not love her with all the strength she had in her body.
About all the times she had scolded her, tried to turn her into something she wasn’t, scared that she would end up like dozens of girls before her, broken by the weight of their shattered hopes and dreams of freedom.
Every time Catelyn told herself that finding a way to make Arya live as she wanted was impossible.

She thought of Bran, the son Catelyn had abandoned, who had died after seeing every chance of becoming a knight drift inexorably away from his deformed body. Who she hadn't see become the young Lord of Winterfell, that she hadn't saved from a boy she had loved in her own way.

She even thought about him, about Theon, sometimes.
 The young boy who had come to them in chains, and had lived with them for many years, becoming one of Robb's closest friend, trying to ignore the invisible steel chaining him to Winterfell, and Ned's sad gaze every time the Warden of the North foud himself hoping to never receive a raven telling him of another Greyjoy rebellion. Not only for the pain Robb would've felt, but for his own.

She thought of Robb, most of all, despite everything.

Robb was her first child, and the only one she saw die.

She'd received a raven for Rickon and Bran. Lord Bolton had later been kind enough to confirm their death.
Arya was a Lannister prisoner, or she'd escaped, or died in an attempt to, or died on the road to Winterfell.
Sansa was a prisoner in the capital, and Catelyn couldn't even get herself to think about what she must have suffered in the Red Keep.

But Robb?
Catelyn had seen Roose Bolton's knife sink into the chest of her son. She'd seen her son, moments before dying, crawling and dragging himself to the bloody corpse of his young wife, to the child, dead in her womb, had heard the low pained grunts falling from his mouth. She'd screamed until her own throat burned.

To scream for her son's death had been strangely similar to screaming as he got out of her, ready to be born, not caring for his mother's pain but impossible to blame for it. The same screams that had been punched out of her chest, giving birth to her first son, had echoed in the Frey's halls, as a blade cut off her hair and a careless hand threw her long red braid in the pool of her son's blood, not caring for her agony.

Catelyn was only sure of one thing- Robb was dead, his wife was dead, his son was dead, and she was alive.

For all she knew, all of her children were dead- but Robb, Catelyn had seen fall on the ground with her own eyes. The first one she'd birthed, the first one she'd seen die.
(She hoped him to be the last.)

Every time she closed her eyes, laying in the bed where Robb had been conceived, she couldn't do anything but see the shattered soul behind his eyes.

In those moments, thinking of Sansa only made her hurt more.

In those moments, every thing she could think of hurt her more.

In their sick way, the Boltons had ruined everything.

The walls they'd conquered, the room where they kept her prisoner, the faces of her children, the voice of her husband.
The little dire wolves they'd raised as their own (Greywind's head sewn to the neck of her son, hot blood still spilling from the veins and exposed meat of what had been a proud beast).

Catelyn had been happy in the North, with a man she'd never expected to love so much, with children who'd made a good woman out of her, with a castle she ruled over as much as her husband, and many people who loved and respected her- who had learned to do so because she'd deserved it.

Because of Roose Bolton, of Tywin and Cersei Lannister, of all the gods she'd betrayed years before, sitting at the bedside of an innocent she'd wished death upon, when she saw her daughter's face again, she didn't feel an ounce of joy, in gazing over blue eyes filled with tears and fear.

The only thing she felt was dread.

———

There wasn't a bruise, a scratch, a drop of blood on the face of her Sansa.

Sansa was crying, her big eyes filled with tears, and she was staring at Catelyn like one looks at a ghost, not at a mother. Catelyn, in her head, cursed everything she knew- wasn't it enough what she had paid? Seeing her daughter there, right in front of her, so different and so similar to the gild who'd left Winterfell dreaming of marrying a prince, who'd found herself strangled by the infamy and cruelty of the city- what more did the gods want, now that they were taking away the last bit of sanity Catelyn had left?
How much was she still supposed to pay, for that single broken promise?

Catelyn had been raised to believe in the Seven Gods, and she'd prayed the Seven- the Stranger most of all for the death of Jon Snow, asking them to free her home from his shadow, feeling like she could never find peace with him in the corner of every room, casting darkness on every joy of House Stark.
When she'd prayed for him to live, she'd also begged the Old Gods. She hadn't ventured into the godswood, under the heart tree, because she'd never done it before, and she didn't have the strength to.

She'd only been able to keep her eyes firm on the sweaty brow of Jon Snow, on his full cheeks, his round face, his skinny chest that went from raising frantically to falling still multiple times, and hear his low pained sounds, and pray the Old Gods to save him.

But she hadn't paid for the gift the Gods offered her, a chance to redeem herself- she never stopped seeing Jon Snow as the threat that she didn't know if he was. And then she paid.

She'd paid, and still she paid.

She had refused to let herself think about Jon Snow, in those long months.
She'd thought of Ned, Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and little Rickon, Theon. Then Master Luwin, every lord she had known in fourteen years spent in the North, every servant, every knight, every merchant whose stall she remembered. Her sister, her brother, her uncle and late father.
But never Jon Snow.

Jon Snow, with his northern traits and sad eyes, who joined the Night's Watch to run away from her- she never tricked herself into thinking anything different- trying to find honor in a place where he wouldn't be eyed with the distrust Catelyn had never been able to not feel in his presence, not even knowing the true nature of the Night's Watch.
 Perhaps to prove that he had never wanted Winterfell, with the most extreme of gestures- giving up the little power he had as bastard son of the Lord of one of the most important houses of Westeros.

Catelyn, when she could take her attention away from the blood she still felt sticking to her hands and face, remembered one of the last conversations she had with Robb.

Left alone with her, he'd showed her a letter- not yet ready to sent, just a draft, but written by the King in the North himself, he made her read the words that freed Jon Snow from every vow made to the Night's Watch, and made him only heir to Robb Stark, first King in the North since Torrhen the Kneeler's times- that made him a Stark, legitimizing him and recognizing him as part of their house.

Robb had looked at her with somber eyes.
"I know why father never legitimized him, and I respect his decision. But Jon is my brother, the only brother I have left, as much as you are my mother and the only parent I have left. I cannot and will not ignore the blood flowing in his veins in favor of your pride" he'd said.
Then he'd added "I think father paid enough for his dishonor and betrayal, and that Jon shouldn't be the one carrying the weight of it anymore".

Catelyn had nodded and accepted it with as much grace and dignity as she could, and Robb had smiled grateful, looking for a brief moment like the child who used to play catch with Jon Snow, the bastard of Ned Stark that Catelyn hated so much.

That letter had never been sent. No one, other than Catelyn, knew about its content.
The bastard was at Castle Black, perhaps. Perhaps he was alive, perhaps dead, Catelyn didn't even know which side of the Wall he was in.

If by chance, the Boltons would be killed, and Catelyn and Jon remained the last ones of their family, Catelyn would support him. As the only living son of the man she still loved more than herself, she would declare him legitimate as Queen Mother and made the Northern houses listen. She didn't make any vows, because she had never been good at keeping her promises to the gods.

Her goodwill wasn't enough, it had never been enough, because now a ghost opened that cursed door, and her daughter was crying, staring at Catelyn, and Catelyn didn't know whether to take her head in her hands or try her luck against the guards at the door.

The girl, Sansa, her daughter, opened her mouth, a weak "Mother" leaving her lips, red because of the cold.

Winterfell had never been so cold, when the Starks had been Wardens of the North- and not metaphorically. Catelyn was not speaking of love and affection, although their lack made the North even worse in her eyes than she had imagined as a young girl, bewitched by Brandon Stark but frightened by the idea of such a sad land.

Her skin was as white as the one of a corpse, and the bags under her eyes looked like black bruises, and the tears that had started to trail down her hollow cheeks only made her look even more like a broken doll, ruined and thrown away. Her high cheekbones, the almost regal traits of her face, the traditionally and carefully braided hair on her head, the lovely dress tight around a skinny body, almost made her unbearable to look at.

Catelyn looked at her silently, sitting still on the bed.

It was only then that a boy with hair light enough to seem snow came in to follow her, his head low, and lifted it up enough to show dark eyes that Catelyn knew, a closed face that she remembered only arrogant and smiling- that she remembered smiling at Robb, telling him he’d be back soon with the help he needed. A boy who never came back. Who had killed her two sons. 
Who now looked at her quickly with huge, frightened eyes, just to look away again, his shoulders hunched like he was barely holding back a primal instinct to hide.

He was Theon, and the girl was Sansa- what reason had Catelyn to see Theon, if she'd truly gone crazy?

"Mother" Sansa repeated, and Catelyn turned her head to look at her, and she saw her swallow, choke down a sob "We have to go now, or he will kill us all."

"Who will kill us, Sansa?" she asked, her voice tired and rough. She hadn't used it in a long time.
For four years, she hadn't spoken to her daughter. For four years she hadn't seen her. For four years her family hadn't been together.

Sansa.

"Ramsay Bolton."

The bastard, who wasn't a Snow anymore. Catelyn got up, and wasn't surprised to find that she still could walk.
She was as healthy as a horse, after all.

They forced her to eat, to drink, to wash herself, to stay clean and beautiful.
Seeing her, no one would have thought her a prisoner.
Except for her hair, that every fortnight were cut to the shoulder, so that she couldn't do more than a little braid at the nape of her neck.

She got up.

Sansa, her daughter, Sansa, she took Catelyn by her arm, and pulled.

Catelyn left the room for the first time in two years. 

The corridors were familiar. This was her home. Catelyn breathed in, and Sansa pulled harder, and Catelyn ran with them.

They ran, and when Sansa and Theon each took one of her hands and jumped off the walls with her, when they landed in the snow and she rolled to try not to break her legs, when she felt a rock protruding against her back, when she barely got up in a straight position and found Sansa already looking at her, she told herself she'd paid enough for her sins.
And that someone must have prayed for her salvation.
She prayed that whoever that person was, they would not break their oath as she had broken hers.

She thought of Jon Snow, for a second, and ran to her daughter.

———

She didn't answer Sansa's questions.

"Bran and Rickon ran away" was the only thing Theon told her.

Catelyn looked at him, walked towards him, took his face into her hands, forcing his eyes to meet hers.

She didn't grab at it with strength, she didn't press her fingers in to hurt him, but she did it as she'd done the few times her husband's ward had needed some of the motherly affection he'd never had in his short life, as she did with Robb when he tried to act like nothing happened and pain wasn't eating him alive.

She wondered how much time had Theon been with the Bolton- as long as her, more, less?

"Your father didn't try to save you from the Boltons" was the only thing she said at first.
The look on his face was broken. A vulnerability Catelyn had never seen on someone's face, not even in those of the most tormented old soul, in the eyes of the most unhappy woman and the most miserable man.
"My son" she forced herself to say those two words "Would have tried."

It was the truth.

All Westeros would have expected from Robb a childish attempt to save his two sisters, sisters who had become important prisoners of war, strategic pawns in the game of thrones, while no one would have expected the King of the North to be willing to save the heir of his enemy, the ward of Ned Stark who'd betrayed him, at the risk of his own life. Robb, 16 years old and without a father and with a crown on his head, would have done it.

The fragments of Theon Greyjoy's face were finally shattered, and his eyes became wet.
They were soon filled with tears, they became vacant, and probably Catelyn’s face became blurry. She moved her thumb over his cheek gently, and a sob came out of his lips.
Catelyn let him go, and he again lowered his head.

They started walking again. They'd been walking for maybe a mile. Her feet hurt, but they had to get as far away as possible.
When they began to hear the barking of dogs, and the voices of Ramsay Bolton’s soldiers, they could only run.

Catelyn ran, but the trees around her had started to move. She kept running anyway. At one point she almost fell, staggering and with her head spinning, and Sansa grabbed her hand, starting to run again.
When she fell and lost consciousness, the last thing he heard was the scream of his daughter, and the sound of swords colliding. 

Then, something touched her face, wiped away the snow and the dirt on it gently, lifted her up to sit, made her rest her head on something hard but less uncomfortable than the ground, and when Catelyn opened her eyes there was Brienne of Tarth, that now brought water to her lips, which Catelyn drank without a second thought.

"Brienne" she managed to say, as the world finally stopped moving. She just looked at Brienne, her gentle face, and she knew she was leaning against her bent knee. The woman was so tall that even like that she could twist her torso and look at Catelyn's face.

"My Lady" she said, her voice shacking "I- I'm so glad to see you live, my lady. I'm at your service, always."

"Brienne" she repeated "Help me to get up."

She obeyed, and Catelyn was standing again.
Littered on the ground around her were Ramsay Bolton's soldiers, now corpses on the snow. They must have got to them, and Brienne killed them. What was Brienne doing in the woods near Winterfell? How long had she been there? Was she waiting for a chance to save her?
But no one knew Catelyn was alive.
Brienne was there for Sansa.

Why was Sansa there?

"Ser Jaime couldn’t keep his oath to release your daughters in exchange for freedom," Brienne told her before she could ask any questions. She raised her head to look at her properly, and Brienne was almost one with the snow around them, with eyelashes so light to be invisible and white skin "He armed me, gave me a sword and an armor, and sent me to help Sansa, your daughter, as I could. My deepest apologies, my lady, for not being able to do more."

"Sansa" Catelyn was able to say. She could not maintain the lady-like demeanor she had worn as an armor for years, most of all alongside the King of the North, to prove to the world that she was a lady worthy of leading her people however she could as much as a woman and mother.

"There, my lady. With Theon Greyjoy, who at your first word will be executed, and Podrick Payne, my squire. We’ll leave for Castle Black as soon as we can."

"Castle Black? Why?

"Jon's there" came Sansa's voice. Her daughter moved at Catelyn's side. She must have rested for some moments, because despite her dirty and tired look, she was walking straight. Her legs trembled. A mother noticed those things. Like her eyes, still wide, still waiting for a new threat. "Aunt Lysa is dead. Littlefinger killed her, not before marrying her, so now he has power over the Vale and its Lords. Bran and Rickon ran away from Winterfell, with Osha and Hodor, and we don't know where they could be. Lady Brienne saw Arya on the road, but she ran away. Jon is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch; he's the only one who can and would help us."

Catelyn didn't burst out laughing, because she wasn't mad enough to laugh in a situation such as theirs yet. It was a good sign, this she could say.

Jon Snow, the only hope for Catelyn and Sansa Stark, the only two Starks who had treated Jon as what he was, a bastard.
The only ones who hadn't proudly called him brother and son, who hadn't welcomed him into their family with open arms, who had taken care to always remind everyone that the bastard was not truly part of the family.

An almost extinct family, and Jon Snow was Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

A cruel voice inside Catelyn began to scream.
Where was Jon Snow while Robb waged war against the South, and suffered in solitude, rejecting most of the time the support of Theon and Catelyn herself as if doing so would be an admission of guilt and shame?
Where was he when Robb was killed, his body torn apart and dishonored, carried around the region like a war trophy? Where was Jon Snow while the wife of Robb, his beloved brother, was stabbed, while his nephew was killed before he could be born?

Catelyn knew where he'd been.
Robb had showed it to her, the letter where Jon Snow had begged Robb to free him from his vow so that he could leave the Night's Watch to join him to help as he could, but Robb had refused.
"For years he wanted to become a brother of the Night's Watch. I won't be so selfish enough to take him away from them, just because he has a sense of duty as strong as father's."

But Jon Snow, a seventeen years old boy, had become Lord Commander?

Robb had become King of the North at only fifteen, partly thanks to his name, but the Night’s Watch were rewarded for their merit, and Jon Snow did not have the surname Stark to elevate him. What had he done to deserve such a place in the Watch?

"How many horses do we have?" she asked instead, and Brienne showed her the four horses tied to a near tree. Two were hers, the others they'd taken from Bolton's dead men.
"I shall travel with you, Lady Brienne. I have never been good at riding, and such a long journey can't be made on foot."

She saw Theon shake his head.
When he spoke, his voice was weak.
"If Jon sees me coming, thinking that I... all he knows is that I killed Bran and Rickon. He will kill me himself the moment I get through the gates."

"Then you will tell him that they're alive. That you're not behind their death, and that they escaped you. Me and Sansa will speak in your favor, of course."

"I betrayed Robb. He will never forgive me."

"We will not let anyone hurt you" said Brienne, and it sounded forced. The grimace on her face wasn't hidden at all. She meant it, but just because Sansa and Catelyn wanted him to live.

"Please, Theon" Sansa begged him, and Catelyn wondered when had they learned to live in each other's presence: Theon had always thought of her as a childish brat, and Sansa had always called him an "arrogant ungrateful boy".

Theon listened to her, at last.

More than one night after that day, when they were closer than ever to Castle Black, where the bastard of Winterfell and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch was supposed to be and would help them, Sansa started to talk and didn't stop for a long time. She did so without taking any pause, without leaving anything behind, from the day her father had been beheaded in front of her to the one where she'd opened a sealed door to find her dead mother in her parents' old bedroom

Of the sept where she'd married Tyrion Lannister, who hadn't touched her and who had helped how he could in a city where everyone wanted him dead, of the light of the fires around the heart tree under which Ramsay Bolton had taken her as his bride, a man who had tortured her like a child playing with the severed tail of a lizard.

Brienne looked one second away from jumping on her feet and running to cut Ramsay Bolton's throat as he slept, and her squire looked ready to follow her, after vomiting what little food he'd eaten behind a bush.

Theon knew everything.
 He wasn't surprised, but he hadn't been truly there during the tale. He'd lost himself in the fire, his eyes still wide and hair lighter than ever. He'd started to rub his hand over the stump of his severed little finger, then over his shoulder, then on his legs, like he couldn't rest and stay still for a moment. Like he had a sponge in his hands, and were trying to clean himself. Catelyn could try and guess from what.

Her chest hurt.

She almost started to cry, when she realized she could still felt such emotions.

Stronger people than her had gone crazy. But maybe people stronger than her didn’t have the thought of a family like hers to keep them afloat. The pain, the hurt, they helped, she'd discovered. They could help. 
It was better than nothing, and better than fear.

She watched her daughter all the time, her shaking hands, and swore that, if she ever saw Petyr Baelish again, she would kill him. She didn’t say a word, because the words wouldn’t get out of her mouth, no matter how much she wanted to make Sansa this promise.

Sansa wasn't broken, Ramsay hadn't had the time to break her, with Stannis outside his doors. But he'd tried to, and almost managed to. And her daughter had been bent, again and again, under the weight of his (of their) hits, while her mother was imprisoned in her wedding room.

How could she blame Jon Snow, when she'd been even more pathetic than she thought him to be?

They arrived at Castle Black the next morning. They were not attacked again.

Catelyn had never been to Castle Black, but she found it particularly battered. Someone had fought there, and not long ago.

Jon Snow had fought someone and won.

Before they could get in, a dire wolf met them, and Catelyn felt, for the first time since she'd left Winterfell, her eyes getting wet, tears falling down her face.
Grey Wind would have grown up to be big beast, if only they hadn't mutilated him along with its master.

Ghost, Jon Snow's dire wolf, was as big as a horse, and pointed its red eyes on them.
It followed them with its gaze, and when they got in, it did so with them.

Catelyn tightened her arms around Lady Brienne, who stayed firm and solid as a rock.

Ghost recognized them. It knew them.

Behind the gates, the brothers of the Nigh'ts Watch, covered from head to toe with black clothes and black furs, shoulders covered with cloaks as dark as the night sky, standing together with people who protected themselves from the cold with lighter furs of little animals such as squirrels and rabbits, with distrusting eyes and long hair and visibly no brothers of the watchers.
They looked like brutes, like savages.

Catelyn had grown up beside savages, had been taught by savages, had eaten with savages, had seen her family get hit and hurt by savages, had suffered in the hands of savages, and she'd been deplorable enough to be called a savage.

And then, here he was.

Sansa found him in a second, Catelyn seeing him after her.

And the boy, the man who was walking down the wooden stairs with a slowness caused only by the unfiltered, desperate shock on his face, was Jon Snow.

Catelyn had despised, hated Jon Snow for a number of reasons.

He was the living proof that her husband, her honorable husband, who no one had expected to break a vow, hadn't deemed Catelyn enough to keep his vow to her.
Catelyn had seen him keep promises made to despicable men, men way more despicable than she was, but he'd come home holding a bastard in his arms.

He was a threat for her son, her Robb: Catelyn suspected Jon Snow to be older than Robb, no matter how long and how much had Ned insisted that he was younger by a month. As a proof he'd reminded her how Jon was way smaller than Robb, but Catelyn had heard him whisper to his nursemaid that the child was born prematurely, and that he needed a more attentive care in those first weeks.
 He could have grown to desire power in the future: the nature of bastards was known, born from lies and betrayal and sin, and never able to truly escape from it. He could have started to see the family that had graciously took him in as an enemy, drowned in the self-pity and ungratefulness.

But most of all, none, of the sons Catelyn had given to Ned, looked as much as Starks as Jon did.

Jon, who was even more of a northerner than his father, with his dark hair and grey eyes.

Now that Catelyn could see him, his black curls tied behind his head, the few days old stubble on his cheeks and chin, the quiet emotions on his face, it wasn't just Ned, moving in front of her, with the hard traits of the Warden of the North, but Brandon Stark, dead too soon, and Lyanna Stark, whose rapture had thrown Westeros into a civil war, and Rickard Stark, a man who never understood what was best for his children.

She saw the North, and saw the palpable tiredness that used to leave Ned's brows furrowed even during the most joyous occasions, that had weighted behind Robb's eyes and tormented him for two years of war.
She saw scars new and deep, and a sort of childish hope in his eyes as he got closer to Sansa.

Her daughter threw herself on him, and he held her to his chest like he couldn't believe what was happening.

She had never seen Jon Snow and Sansa hug, but that wasn't a simple hug.

It was a reassurance, that someone else was still alive, that they weren't alone, that house Stark hadn't been completely burnt by the fire of the South, and Jon Snow embraced and gave this reassurance with all of himself.

She couldn't see Sansa, but she clearly saw Jon Snow.

Jon Snow closed his eyes as if trying to stop tears from spilling, but he didn't succeed. They silently trailed down nonetheless, and one of them followed the light path carved by the scar that had almost blinded him from one eye.
She saw him mutter something, and Sansa must have answered, because then he raised his head, and looked at the horses and them four with wet eyes.

He moved his eyes on Catelyn, and Catelyn was left shaken by the emotion that suddenly flowered in them.

She didn’t think she’d ever see again those gray eyes, that she loved so much on another man's face, looking at her with such great emotions, but there Jon Snow was, a bastard she’d hated her whole life, looking at her like he’d been praying for years for her to be alive.

Catelyn got off her horse, she wasn't the only one, and Jon Snow let go of Sansa enough to take her face between his hands covered with gloves. He left a kiss on her forehead, as Catelyn had seen him do with Arya those rare times when she had allowed herself to be held, granting the honor only to her favorite person.
 He turned to the man who'd followed him outside.
"Have rooms prepared for all of them. Baths, too, and hot food. My room, too. Change the sheets for Lady Stark."

More than one man moved to follow his orders, silent and quick, and Jon Snow stared first at Sansa, then at Catelyn, and Catelyn realized he was happy.

That perhaps it was the first time she'd seen the boy so happy.

"Are you hurt? If-"

And then he saw Theon, and all the joy on his face froze, and disappeared with a violence that made Catelyn shiver.
And in a second, his sword was out of its scabbard, ready in his hand, shining under the light, made of Valyrian steel and ready to strike down Theon.
He spoke, and any warmth had disappeared from his face.
"I executed four men for treason, Theon Greyjoy, because they betrayed me, and their bodies have just stopped being warm. Tell me what I shouldn't do the same with the man who betrayed the King in the North and killed his brothers."

He didn't say "my King", he didn't say "my brothers", but the woman was able to understand why many times, laughing, Maester Luwin had told Ned that the boy had an impressive temper.
 An abstract concept for Catelyn, since the bastard looked at her with nothing but badly hidden fear of what she could have done, if she'd gotten tired of letting him spend time with his siblings.

She had never forgotten the time before Theon’s arrival, the months Ned had spent fighting another of Robert's wars and during which Catelyn had made sure the bastard understood his place, since Ned had never had the courage to do so, made blind by his love for him.
But the bastard had understood, and it had never happened again to see the boy brag too much for a victory over Robb, or insist to sit next to Robb at the table, or try to approach her in useless attempts at reconciliation.
She'd done it because the mere existence of the boy put her sons at risk.

And now her sons were dead. Or, well, Bran and Rickon had disappeared, Robb was dead and his bones lost, and Jon the only heir to her first son and husband.

Jon Snow had just looked at her like he was happy to see her breathe, like he hadn't spent his childhood secretly resenting her and his existence under Catelyn's careful and hostile eyes.

Jon Snow had sworn to serve no king, but Robb was his brother, and his king.
Bran and Rickon were his brothers.

 How many times had Rickon ran from their table, during festivities and the few occasions when Catelyn managed to convince Ned to make the boy sit elsewhere, shouting that he wanted to see Jon and not them, and jumped on his back like a dog excited to see his master after months of absence?
 How many times had Bran sat on Jon's lap and begged him to tell another story or sing a new song, saying that no one could do it as well as him?
 How many times had Jon Snow carried Rickon on his shoulder and went on with his days, studying, training and walking around like a small boy wasn't clinging to his shoulders and watching the world with his chin on his hair?
 How many times had Jon Snow sung to Bran about far away knights and ancient monsters, or narrated of some hero forgotten by the history books with enough heat to make the kid wince every time something surprising happened to their imaginary hero?

Catelyn would never be his mother.
Jon would never be a Stark.
But he'd always been, and would always be, a brother to her children.

Catelyn spoke.
"He paid for his crimes, with captivity and torture. And his only crime is betraying the world gave to Robb Stark, our King, as Bran and Rickon are still alive."

She started to hear the first whispers.
She wanted to scream to the world that Robb was not just a king, but her son, but she couldn't.

Jon Snow was looking at her, now. And the young tired man had disappeared.
The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch replied.
"House Stark wishes to pardon him?"

He looked at Catelyn, then at Sansa, and they both nodded.

"He saved me. Us." confirmed Sansa.

Jon nodded too, and then pointed to the door he'd gotten out before their arrival.

"You are not dressed for such low temperatures, and winter is coming. Come in. I will get you something to eat."

They all got in, but Catelyn saw Jon Snow stop Theon just before he could follow Sansa.
He said something, his voice low, and Theon shook his head, still lowered, but with a new strength to his shoulders.

The room was so warm that she almost went into shock. The fire was burning fierce and the space was little.
There was a desk, with tens of parchments littered on it, some of them clean some of them already used, and all one could need to write a letter, two heavy books and an account book open just in front of the chair. Next to it a candle, thick and just started, that burned below a thin basin of metal filled with black melted wax.
All the letters Benjen used to send were sealed with black wax. No banner, no seal, nothing but the color black, that distinguished the Night's Watch.

Catelyn noticed quickly the bed at the right corner of the room.

After them entered a young man, still older than Jon, who was quick to strip the bed of the sheets and cover it with new, much better looking ones. He added an extra fur, and came out without saying a word after looking at them with wide eyes for a few seconds.

Jon Snow took his place in little time.

"I ask your forgiveness for the little space, but this is the most easily heated room in the Castle. The Tower where the Lord Commander's quarters were supposed to be burned four years ago, or I would have tried to get you more comfortable... accommodations."
She saw him take off the glove covering his left hand, but left his right hand covered. He rubbed it slowly.
"I don't think I ever met you. My name's Jon Snow."

"Brienne of Tarth, my Lord" she bowed her head slightly "Sworn shield to Lady Stark and Lady Sansa."
"Podrick Payne, her squire."

He smiled, and his smile was warm.
"I have to thank you both, for what you've done for them both. Everything you need, don't hesitate to ask. House Stark and the North owe you."

"We simply did out duty, my Lord. We will leave you, so you may speak. Lady Stark, Lady Sansa" she bowed and left, Podrick following her closely with a tired grimace on his round face.

And they were left alone.
Theon, who wasn't shacking anymore. Sansa, who was now looking at Jon with widened eyes. Catelyn who felt ready to collapse on the first bed she could find. Jon, who didn’t seem to find the right words to say only he knew what.

Two more men came in, bringing steaming pots for them.

"They are preparing baths for you all. Meanwhile, eat, you’ll be tired," Jon kindly said, and led Sansa gently to sit on the bed, then turned to Catelyn, "I’ll give you this room, Lady Stark."

Before she could protest Sansa accepted in her place.
"Thank you, Jon."

She didn't say anything else, and Catelyn thought that they truly were ridiculous.

Jon invited Catelyn to sit on the chair behind the wooden desk , and she sat without breathing a word.
Seeing herself like this five years earlier, in the hands of the Winterfell bastard, she would have been disgusted by herself, but Catelyn found little room for pride in her heart. She was hungry, and she was tired. Impossibly tired.

A tiredness that had never left her since the day where the Lords of the North had risen their swords to the sky and called Robb King, sealing his fate.

Theon sat next to Sansa, on the bed, and again it was Jon telling him to do so.

"I will leave you to rest, then" and he tried to get to the door, but Sansa jumped on her feet. The soup in her pot moved and almost fell on her dress, already ruined by the long journey from Winterfell to Castle Black.

"No!" even Sansa looked surprised by her shout. She repeated, lowering her voice "No. Stay."

She didn't need to beg, she didn't beg, but Jon crumbled at her first request all the same. Robb would have done so too. Ned too. Everything for Sansa, their little girl, the young princess of House Stark.

With confidence Snow took off his other glove, using his two hands, the smooth one and the one with the palm covered in what looked like an old and scarred burn, to get his dark heavy cloak off his stiff shoulders.
He stayed in his black tunic, and with a tired sound he let the cloak fall next to Theon, on the thin pillow. He sat in front of Catelyn, on the other side of the desk, and seemed to melt for a second.

"You ran away from the traitors" he said after many moments of silence "Bolton. Roose Bolton."

"Ramsay Bolton" Sansa corrected him "The legitimized bastard of Roose Bolton. My husband."

Snow became even paler than before, somehow, and his hand closed around nothing where it rested on his thigh, unconsciously.
"Who forced you to marry the son of the man who killed your brother?"

"Littlefinger."

"Anyone followed you 'ere?"

"Brienne took care of it."

He nodded again.

Jon Snow had never been someone who just talked.
Catelyn didn't know what his first word had been, but she knew that it had took him a while to say it, to the point that Maester Luwin had feared him to be a mute, or a retard.
But no, Jon Snow was simply quiet.
Quietly he'd walked through the walls of Winterfell. He'd left them just as quietly , and quietly he'd become the most powerful brother of the Night's Watch. Quietly, now, he was looking at them, not wanting to ask too many questions, but with his mind working to connect the few dots he had.

Instead, he turned to look at her.

The fire cast shadows on his face, young and tired and worried, and Jon Snow had never looked at her with such an open expression. With no masks to hide weaknesses that she could use to beat him in a game she played alone, because at this point they knew each other's weaknesses way too well.
" I heard Robb got married. I don't whom with, or if they were happy, or if he just did the honorable thing."

She found the voice to answer, to say more than one word, for the first time in days.
"Talisa. She was a healer. They loved each other. She was with child, when they..."

In less than a second, the eyes of Jon Snow were once again filled with tears. But this time, they weren't quiet tears, that married too well with the boy's delicate and strong traits, who had been so often been called "pretty" as a taunt, but the tears of a child.
If Robb had been for Jon Snow a brother in everything but mother and name, that child would have been his nephew, that woman his sister.

He still didn't make a sound, and he nodded. The tears didn't stop.

Sansa was eating, and didn't look conscious or aware of what was happening around her, not anymore. The pot in her hands started to tremble, and Jon moved just in time to stop the steaming soup from falling on her lap. His hands were victims of the heat instead, the same one that now made Catelyn's tongue pulse and burn, but he didn't even grimace.

He wiped his reddening hand on his thick pants, kneeling in front of Sansa, after letting the pot fall on the ground, his boots covered by what had been spilled, Theon's eyes staring at him, wide and still.

"Sansa" he called her slowly, and she looked at him with the same eyes as Theon "You're at Castle Black. I'm Jon Snow, your half-brother" he didn't took her hands, but waited for her to took the one he was offering "We aren't that far from Winterfell and the Boltons, but they won't come here. They are not this stupid. And if they do, I'll offer you Ramsay's head on a spike. You're safe. Theon is here, your mother is here. You'll rest, you just have to eat first."

It took them a while to see her calm, and fully awake again.

Jon stayed in front of her, kneeling.

"Your hand" Sansa managed to utter.

"I can't really feel heat and cold anymore" he smiled, and then didn't hold back a wince "Long story."

"We are eating. You are not" Catelyn noticed aloud, and he looked surprised. He still didn't seem to believe that they were really there.
Catelyn in particular.
But her death had been confirmed, contrary to Sansa- she was a walking corpse in his eyes.

"Let me get something else for Sansa to eat."
He came back quickly.
He sat again, and Sansa looked at him full of expectations. She still had the strength to be so interested in something. Inside her mind, Catelyn thanked every god she knew, from the Seven to the Olds to the Drowned.

"I imagine you remember the stories Old Nan used to tell, about the White Walkers" he started, and Sansa nodded confused "Those weren't tales, Sansa. The Others. I saw them, I fought them."
One could hear a pin drop, and Catelyn found herself unable to not look at Jon Snow.
"One of them got in Lord Commander Mormont's quarters, almost killed him. I took a burning piece of coal from the fire and threw it at him, burned the whole tower with that thing in it. Before the fire, I put my sword in his belly maybe three times, and it didn't stop him. They're real, and they're hundreds of thousands."

He gazed into Sansa's light eyes.

"I went behind the Wall, and I met the Free Folk, and when I understood that by leaving them there I would've been just giving more soldiers to the Others' army, I let them in. More than five thousands of 'em, but just as many died in a single attack. In a few seconds. How can we fight against Death, if we kill each other?"

"There's something else" Sansa's words were similar to chocking sounds.

Jon Snow lowered his eyes.

With fast hands he unbuttoned his tunic, then the black shirt underneath it, and before one of them could ask why, their eyes were able to see the wounds on his chest.
They were stab wounds. Many stabs. More than one on his belly, one on his hearth. They looked like open wounds, still red and swollen, but there wasn't a single drop of blood on his milky skin.

"Not all of my brothers liked my choice. A red priestess... did something, and made me come back to life. I can't feel many things."

His voice was distant, and he was quick to cover his chest again, fastening the tunic and fixing his clothes, and suddenly it was like they hadn't just seen mortal wounds on the body of a breathing body.

Catelyn had never seen wounds like those on someone who was still breathing.
Two of the stabs on his stomach would be enough to kill a seasoned warrior, because ones abilities with a sword didn't matter if you end up with two gaping holes on your belly, but on Jon's there were six.

The higher one was just under his left pectoral, the lowest one was almost hidden by his breeches. The blades had sunk deep in him, because the edges of the wounds were curved, like the traitors had had difficulties getting the knives out of him for how deep they had pushed, creating an almost perfect half circle over his heart.
That one in particular, it had cut meat and muscles and bones like a knife does with butter, and deep enough that one could see the red signs of where the handle had applied pressure on the bruised skin.

The blades had cut with enough viciousness that Jon Snow had died.

"You knew it would happen," Catelyn interrupted the silence, her eyes fixed on the leather that covered the last stab wound to Jon Snow’s body. His death would have been quick, with six stab wounds, but they had wanted to hit him again, one last time, straight to the earth. "But you still let the wildlings in."

He looked at her with honest eyes, but there was no anger in them. He'd probably been told the same thing tens of times. How many times had they told him not to risk his life for them? And how many times had he ignored those warnings? "Of the five thousands I brought here, three thousands are women, children and old people. I was to let them die, just because they weren’t born on the right side of the Wall?"

He shook his head slowly, looking at the lit candle as enchanted by it.
"I lived with them, when I was sent to infiltrate their camp. They pray the Old Gods, they speak the Old Tongue, they still call me Southern Crow, they don't really understand what a bastard is or all the political games the South loves, but when they thought I wanted to be free from the Watch's vows they welcomed me with open arms. For so long we've been fighting each other, and most of them aren't happier than us, at the idea of being here. But unlike us, they understood when the moment to bury their pride and choose survival had come."

"You should have thought of your own survival" Sansa spat faintly.

"How could I have lived, knowing them all dead? No, Sansa, I did the right thing. I died, and my watch is ended, but they are alive."

Catelyn felt boiling anger rise up her throat, that familiar anger that she hadn't felt in a long, long time.
It had been hard to feel anger, once she'd spent her first weeks, months there, once Roose Bolton had found her too boring for him, once the anger became useless. Once all her anger became tiring, exhausting just to feel, even though it kept afloat the memories of her family.

"But you aren't dead. You're alive, Jon Snow, unlike many others."

He was.

Ned and Robb were dead.
Ned was dead, because he'd found out the truth and did the right thing, and had been executed by a sadistic mad king.
Robb was dead, because he'd trusted the wrong people. He'd made mistakes, and he'd made mistakes with a crown on his head that always left his head aching and with his heart moved by the barging love only a sixteen years old boy could ever feel

Jon Snow had died to do the right thing, but he was still alive.
He'd trusted the wrong people, but he was still alive.
Jon Snow was alive. Why was he alive, while two of the people Catelyn loved the most were dead?

Jon Snow stood up.

Whatever feeling had softened his traits before, as he looked at Sansa like one looks at a precious jewel found after a long hunt, as he told them about what he knew was the biggest threat their kingdom had ever faced, as he promised Sansa the head of one Ramsay Bolton, wasn't there anymore.
As if someone had touched his cheek with a sponge, and it had absorbed the happiness that ruled over the despair and tiredness of his own death.

Catelyn had spoken, with the same voice she'd used so many times with a child with long black curls and hopeful grey eyes, to strip away from his eyes every trace of hope and replace it with badly-hidden fear, which had then turned into a hate that had confirmed Catelyn's suspicion- that the bastard would one day turn on them, to destroy them.

Now Jon Snow spoke, with the same coldness, the same ice, the same hate.

"If I could give the second chance I had to my father or to my brother, I would. If I could give it to Bran, so that he could walk again, I would. You've always been right, Lady Stark, it should have been me. Sadly, neither you nor me can do anything about it. I will call you when your baths are ready."

He closed the door behind himself, without making a sound, and when Catelyn violently burst into tears, gripping the roots of her short hair with her trembling fingers, Sansa did nothing but watch her, deep in the silence interrupted only by her sobs.

———

Jon Snow's fingers tightened around the letter, gripping and almost tearing the parchment, and Sansa managed to rip it away from his hands in a moment of distraction.

"-You will watch as my soldiers take turns raping your sister. You will watch as my dogs devour your beloved stepmother. Then I will spoon your eyes from their sockets and let my dogs do the rest. Come and see. Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North."
She raised her head.
"Lord of Winterfell. He killed his father."

Her hands wouldn't stay still. They hadn't stopped shacking, not even during sleep, regardless of how close she was to the fire. Only the death of Ramsay Bolton could give her peace, Catelyn knew.

She turned to Snow "We have to take Winterfell back."

"And I will help you in any way I can, but I have no army to offer."

"The wildlings you saved-"

"I won't ask them to fight a war that does not concern them."

"You think that Ram- that he cares enough to spare three thousands women and children? Do you believe that you will survive, if Bolton stay Warden of the North? You're Ned Stark oldest son, you're the biggest threat to him."

He gave up on eating, and forcefully let the spoon fall in his pot.
"I'm not a Stark."

"Not by name, but you still are-"

"It never mattered, who my father was" he snapped, face contorted by anger, in what ended up sounding more like a growl than human words. Ghost, sat at his feet, started to fuss, sensing that something wasn't right.

Sansa tried again carefully "If you die, if the wildlings die, who will fight the Others? You died to save them, and he will kill and flay them all, and all you did will be useless."

She had pushed too much, perhaps, by implying that his death would end up being unnecessary.

He shook his head "They won't follow me. I'm not their king, and they won't kneel for any southern conqueror."

"You are no southern conqueror, but the man who saved them" jumped in Edd, the newly elected Lord Commander "It won't hurt to try asking."

"How many soldiers did you say he has?" he changed topic, but let that sunk in, however bitterly.

"From what I hear... around six thousands."

She'd just admitted what Jon Snow already knew and feared.
"Two thousand wildlings will not be enough to fight off such an army, regardless of their strength. Even if they will agree to fight for us, we will need more men."

"We will ask the Lords of the North. If you will ask in our father's name, there's a chance they won't say no."

Jon Snow stayed still, in silence. Few seconds passed, frustration grew apparent on her daughter's face, but Jon Snow turned to look at Catelyn, his grey eyes fixed on her.
Catelyn thought of gaping red wounds.
"No. I can't be the key of this. Few will follow me, but when they will find out that Lady Stark of Winterfell is still alive, and that the Bolton kept her prisoner for years- and that she is still loyal to House Stark? We will have more support by letting them know about her."

He went on, after a brief pause "Lady Stark, you may have southern origins, but the Lords respected you as Lady of Winterfell, and most of them forged alliance with Bolton because the alternative would be death for their family. They still have loyalty. If you show them that you're still strong" he looked at Sansa "That you are taking your home back, one way or another, many will follow you."

Catelyn considered him, not giving particular attention to Sansa's words, to Edd's answer, to Jon Snow's questions.

Once again, she'd prayed the gods for Jon Snow to die.

Not the night before, lying in the boy’s bed, warm and comfortable and safe, unable to sleep or close her eyes for more than a few hours, not even that morning, spent in the company of Sansa and Brienne, while Jon Snow discussed something with the wildlings and his men, who wouldn't stop turning to him to receive their commands, including the new Lord Commander Edd.

Crying in Jon Snow’s room, after he had proven to her that he hadn’t forgotten, she had begged the gods to take back Jon Snow, once and for all, and give her back her boy.
Her Robb, strong and young and beautiful and innocent Robb, who had seen all of his innocence swept away by the burden of his duty. Her Robb.
Dead, not even buried.
Oh, all the things she was ready to give, to switch places between her Robb and Jon Snow.

She knew that her eyes were still red from the night before, but with mechanical movements she'd tidied herself up that morning. She would never present herself to Jon Snow, who had beaten her in her own game, displaced and broken by her loss.

After eating Jon Snow left Castle Black, along with one of the wildlings, to talk with all the others.

He returned in the evening, and sat heavily in front of Theon.

After little time the same wildling who had gone with him to talk with the chieftains behind the Wall followed him, together with a man who had seen many winters, and looked ready to see many more.
"Davos Seaworth, my Lady" he introduced himself.
"The Hand of Stannis Baratheon."
"That I was."
He didn't explain himself further.

Both him and the wildling joined them to eat, one on each of Jon Snow's sides.

"The clans will fight."

He just said, then he started eating.
The brute next to him waited to finish: he devoured the little meat and onions in his plate with an inhuman speed, and then began to look at Sansa, Theon and Catelyn one by one, unnervingly.

"Your family?" he asked Snow, eyes stuck on Sansa.
Like his beard, the man's hair was red, a messy and tangled mane with few grey hairs in it. The thin lines at the side of his eyes spoke of a happy life, and the deep ones on his forehead of a hard one.
He looked both a boy and an old man, somehow.
Jon nodded, and the man smiled. A wide, honest thing that showed off all his teeth.
"Ah! I thought them all dead. Good for you, little crow. Where were they, all this time?"

No one answered.
He nodded all the same, like he'd just received all the information he needed to understand them.

"I know about those stories they tell you as kids. You know, us wildlings, as you like to call us, we steal the person we want to marry. Make our intentions clear, lose our hands or our heads if we stupid enough to do it with someone who hates us. We is not as complicated as you Southerners, with unhappy marriages and meaningless traditions."

Was it a warning? Had Jon told him something about them? Did he wanted to somehow fix their perspective of him?

No one said anything else, but he looked all the same at Sansa, as if trying to read into her soul.

Silence reigned. Catelyn was tired of silence.

Sansa broke it, hearing her silent prayer.
"I'm Sansa Stark."
Usually, Sansa did not have to present herself: she had to announce her name, her title, but only in a ceremonial way, because nobody talked to her without knowing who she was.
This man didn’t know who they were.
He knew them as Jon’s family.

"This is Theon Greyjoy. She is Catelyn Stark. Lady of Winterfell"

"Tormund Giantsbane, chieftain of the Ice River clan."

They continued to eat.
Tormund, this was his name, exchanged a few words in a low voice with Jon Snow, and looked at him for a long time, and then gave the other a slap so hard on the shoulder that his forehead was almost slammed against the table.
Snow managed to stop in time, and the look he gave Tormund was not full of bother, and it was clear that he was used to it.

It didn't surprise her. Jon Snow had always looked comfortable, seated with the soldiers and servants of the house, laughing with no restraint, eating and drinking without a care in the world.

A few years before Catelyn would have been much more troubled by the idea of eating in the company of a wildling: in the South the wildlings were a problem of the North, a distant problem that they did not consider different from Flea Bottom.
Catelyn, with almost 38 years on his shoulders, told herself that the man who had found a strange way to condemn Ramsay Bolton and say that wildlings like him were actually better than them all was the least of their problems.

Jon Snow had confirmed it, that they were on their side.

But they weren't enough.

The minor Lords of the North weren't enough. Would not be enough.

"Petyr Baelish" she announced instead, and all eyes were on her. She only had eyes for Jon Snow "We will have his army. The one he stole from my sister."

He was tired, this was more than obvious. He hadn't slept that night.
Could he feel exhaustion? Could he sleep? Or couldn't he feel it, just like with warmth and cold?

Perhaps it was something physical, or perhaps there was something wrong with his brain.
His skin became icy cold, the ice that could burn more than fire, but he didn't feel nothing, and he risked his life unable to answer to the emergency signals his body sent to his brain. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps he just couldn't sleep.

Catelyn cruelly hoped that he couldn't sleep because of some after effect of the second life he'd obtained without any right to have it.

She asked the gods for their forgiveness after thinking it. The Old Gods, and all the seven faces of her god.

"The Vale has no reason to side with us."

"I don't want him to know. That I am still alive" said Catelyn "When I will kill him, I want to see the surprise in his eyes."

No one bat an eye at what everyone knew was a promise, and Snow answered with a solemn nod.

"I could... convince him to do it" Sansa stepped in "To give us his army. But we can't be in debt to a man like him. Not all of us, at least."

Her half-brother didn't understand.
"What does it mean, not all of us?"

"If- I know what he wants. He wanted my mother, and now that he thinks her dead he wants me."

Catelyn felt more than a little nauseated. She'd always known of the love Petyr felt for her, regardless of the fact that she never reciprocated it. She had never been able to. Because even when she didn’t really know what he was, it was as if her mind and body wanted to protect her from him: as if they wanted her to know, that Petyr would always want power before anything else.
 He wanted Catelyn, he wanted Sansa, but he wanted the two as one wants a golden belt- a precious ornament to observe, and that would make him feel even more pride of himself as he sat on the throne.

She was a married woman, and her husband had loved her- truly loved her.
She knew that what Petyr felt for her was the worst kind of love a man could feel for a woman.

"I can talk to him. He- he wrote me. He knows where we are, because he knew that Jon was the only person we could go to. But he doesn't know about you, mother. If I see him, and I understand what he means to do- we can have his army."

"We will have to keep Lady Catelyn a secret" Ser Davos’s accent was so heavy that some of his words ended up being almost difficult to understand "And we will lose allies in the North."

"Let's hope that the bastard of Winterfell will be enough for some of them" Jon Snow commented softly, but there was not an ounce of lightness in his eyes, and when he spoke again he was as serious as death itself "I don't like the idea of you meeting Petyr Baelish alone, Sansa. He is not a man we can trust, and I'm not willing to sacrifice you for a castle. Or anything at all. It doesn't matter how much you may care for it."

Sansa was speechless, her eyes big. He had caught her off guard, with that statement that declared her more important than the ancestral castle of House Stark.
But it didn’t last long.
"I’m putting myself at risk, Jon, and it is my choice. You are not sacrificing me."

It was like she'd hit him hard in the head.

Tormund eyed Sansa with what (dangerously) seemed respect.
"You never tell me you had such a smart sister, little crow."

No, Catelyn laughed bitterly, Jon couldn't know that. Sansa was the only Stark by birth who had never fully trusted Jon, who maintained high the wall which separated him from the rest of them, who stayed by Catelyn's side through all those years.
He had never even seen the two hug, before two days ago.

Jon had never been a overly affectionate child, especially with Catelyn's children, but he'd loved them all.
Seeing Sansa for the first time, gripping his father's breeches with his tiny hands, and forbidden to touch her, he'd spent hours looking at her, almost enchanted by her round face and the high sounds that escaped her mouth even during sleep.
Growing up, Sansa had had two older brothers who never wanted to part from her- but Jon even more than Robb, sadly, because if Robb was interested in his sister Jon was ecstatic at the mere sight of her.
Then Sansa had grown up, and understood why Jon's hugs were different than Robb's.

(Catelyn hadn't been able to make Arya understand it.
Arya's first word had been Jon. The first person she'd smiled to was Jon. Jon, the only person Arya thought able to understand her, the only person she went to when she needed help, more than her own father. Arya was probably dead, and her favorite brother stayed Jon Snow, her father's bastard.)

But something had changed, in Sansa.

Something had also changed in Catelyn, but Ned used to say that it is more than difficult to teach new tricks to an old wolf, and even if Catelyn wasn't a wolf, she was a Stark.

Jon was getting to truly know his sister, in those snatched moments.

"Brienne will go with you," Catelyn declared.

 Sansa agreed to it.

When Catelyn saw her staying behind, to talk to Jon Snow, a vulnerable expression on her beautiful face, she didn't delude herself, denying the obvious.
She went out in the cold, in her ears the sound of her low laughter, his soft chuckle, and in her mind the image of Jon Snow raising his head to kiss her forehead with the same affection her father had kissed the forehead of the same young girl with so many times .

———

When she entered Winterfell's walls again, leaving behind her shoulders a mountain of corpses, repeating to herself that their death had been necessary, trying not to think of Jon Snow's possible reaction, always the honorable son of his dutiful father and- as a bastard- anything but honorable, at the knowledge that Sansa and Catelyn had sacrificed hundreds of men for their plan, she did so to find her daughter, standing as straight as a heart tree, eyes fixed on the two dark stains on the ground.

They were all around them, in a big crooked circle.

One of them got up, the other stayed sprawled on the ground.

They were a few pieces of armor, covered by blood, and dirt, and dust, and more blood. It was dark hair, curled, miraculously still tied by a string. It was a face covered in just as much dirt and blood as his clothes.
It was Jon Snow, who now looked at Sansa.
One couldn't say whose was the blood, if his blood or the blood of the enemies he had had to cut down to get there.

On the ground, Ramsay Bolton.
He hadn't fought with his army, he hadn't died outside the gates of Winterfell for his House, and the river of blood that came down his face was spilled by the fists of Jon Snow, who first tightened his hands and then relaxed his fingers, again and again, and heavy drops of blood trickled from them, as if he had to refrain from finishing the work he had begun.
For a moment, Catelyn thought he'd punched Ramsay Bolton's skull  in. Then a gurgling sound, and a choked, wet breath.

Jon Snow was still standing, and just as he'd promised, he was offering Sansa her husband, so that she could dispose of him how she wished to.

The Knights of the Vale entered after them, and Catelyn clearly saw Petyr Baelish on a horse, watching from afar Sansa, unaware of Catelyn’s eyes on him, hidden to observe.

Petyr Baelish had never been to Winterfell before, and he would never know it well as Catelyn, who had raised there a whole family, with the man Petyr had betrayed.

Jon Snow looked away from Sansa, moved his eyes to Littlefinger, and Catelyn saw the latter’s shoulders become stiffer- and it would have been stupid, for his part, to not feel threatened by that figure that seemed escaped by a horror story told to children- or out of a grave, at least.

Jon Snow watched as Sansa ordered two soldiers with a extraordinarily steady voice to take Ramsay Bolton in an empty cell, and dragged himself to the group formed by wildling and soldiers from the Bear Island, and was grabbed by Tormund Giantsbane just before he could crumble on the ground.
The giant made sure to steady him, and then moved his forehead against the one of Jon Snow, in a clearly familiar gesture, that made them breathe the same air for a long second, and then he helped him to sit on a cart near them.

As the last Bolton's men were killed or captured, and the banners of the flayed men were taken down and ripped to shreds, someone arranged for the Starks' gray dire wolf to cover the walls of Winterfell, and the scream of victory that rang for Winterfell made her feel something too strong to be held back.

She didn't cry this time.

Catelyn had already cried enough, even though she felt like no amount of tears would be enough to shed for her husband and her first bon son, for the innocent naivety they had stolen from all her children, for the ruin which had almost destroyed their family in less than four years.

Jon Snow, once again, was alive.

If Jon Snow had died in that battle, to give back to the Starks Winterfell, if they had searched among the corpses and found him buried among them, killed by the hooves of the horses that had almost torn him to shreds, if Catelyn had laid her eyes on the corpse of her husband's bastard, would she have found justice in his still eyes and pale skin?

(Under a certain light, she'd noticed, Jon Snow was as white and pale as a dead man.)

Would she had found peace, in his death?

Would she have felt as the gods had finally re-established an old balance? Would she have stopped feeling like everything Jon Snow had wasn't his by right, but her son's?

Catelyn retired in the crypt, where generation after generation of Stark rested.

She collapsed before Ned's statue, thinking of his stern face, just as severe as the Lord of Winterfell had been, and at the same time as quiet and peaceful as Eddard Stark, son and brother and husband and father of six.
The crypt was silent, but like the silence that lived between her and Ned, it was a silence full of words, heavy in the best sense of the word.
It was a silence that had a meaning.

If Jon Snow had died, would she have had her son back?
Would she have seen her beloved son’s smile again, if Jon Snow had fallen in battle?
If she had buried Jon Snow in a mass grave, along with all the other bodies, wildlings' and northmen's, as his last name dictated, would she have hugged her husband again?

She raised her head to look at her husband’s sculpted eyes.
There were no eyes, because Ramsay Bolton had removed the head from Ned Stark's statue and threw it at the feet of Jon Snow, the greatest provocation he could think of.
(If Catelyn hadn't escaped, it would have been hers.)

They would be grey, like the rest of the statue.
It was positioned next to the one of Lyanna Stark, the last Stark to die before Ned. Catelyn looked at the empty space next to Ned, realizing that they would have to order the construction of Robb's statue, regardless of the fact that they had his bones or not- who cared for tradition, when her son deserved to be remembered.
She didn't even notice the first tears trailing down her cheeks.

Bran was the one who'd ordered the construction of his father's memorial.

Who would order the one of Robb's?

She knew the answer, in her heart, and she didn't want to accept it, because accepting Jon Snow meant accepting her son's death.

If Jon Snow became Robb's heir, it meant that Robb was truly dead.

That a heir was needed, because the North was tired of kneeling to southern kings and lords who knew nothing of the North, who demanded tributes and respect and honor when they could not give nothing as valuable, who spat on them and considered them as nothing but savages.
A South that thought itself stronger than than the largest region of Westeros, almost ss big as all the others put together.

And who better than Jon Snow, who had lead the attack against the Bolton knowing that he would have probably died, but convinced that their only choice was to seek justice? Who had done so without knowing of the Vale’s support?

The North, Ned had always said, loved the North, and loved the values of the North, and reduced in that state, with blood and dirt to make him almost unrecognizable, Jon Snow was the North personified, bringing justice to a traitor and respect to his family with all the strength in his body.

Jon Snow would take Robb's place.

Catelyn looked at the space next to Ned, that was just waiting to be filled with the face of Robb Stark, first son of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, heir to Winterfell, King in the North, King of Winter.

If Jon Snow had died in battle, if he had died as Catelyn had hoped he would so many times, if the gods had accepted those thoughts- that she now recognized were not as traitorous as she used to tell herself to justify her sins, that infiltrated her prayers and led her to beg for the death of that child of sin, Jon Snow would not be Robb’s heir.
He would not have ordered the construction of his statue, and he would not have prayed under the heart tree for his soul.

Someone else would have.

And Robb would have been dead.

Butchered a few months before becoming a father, young and ready to take on his responsibilities as a father as he had taken on those of King.
A few steps from his mother’s arms, his hands on his wife’s torn belly, the young woman he loved 'til his last breath.

She begged Ned for forgiveness.

She had never told Ned about what had happened, that night where she'd watched over Jon Snow's little, twitching body. She never had the chance, or the bravery, to do it.

She apologized, again and again.

———

She found Jon Snow and Sansa alone in Ned's solar.

Many times the children had went in his solar: no matter how private the space of the Lord of Winterfell was supposed to be, the Lord in question had never been too opposed to the idea of receiving the sudden visits of his children, always finding time for them.

Jon and Robb used to go there every day, before the rebellion of the Iron Islands.
At a precise hour of the day, while their father was copying important letters before sending them, while he was checking the account books before giving them to Catelyn so she could see to the expenses of Winterfell, when his Lord’s duties were simple enough to be seen to with his two sons sitting each on a different knee.

Jon and Sansa had never gone there together, except maybe when she was just a little girl walking behind her older brothers with legs not quite used to moving like that.

Now they were there, in that room so familiar and so empty without Ned, ruined by the Boltons' mistreatment and the ghosts of their presence, and Jon was not angry. He was looking at Sansa as if she had broken his heart.

"-they do nothing? How many of them died just because you didn’t find it necessary to tell me that-" he paused at the sight of Catelyn, for a second on his face appeared the same frightened, closed, and almost defiant expression he responded to every drop of her hatred with, and immediately it was replaced by pure defeat.

He had cleaned himself from the dirt of the battle, but the cut on his cheekbone was irritated, his hair let down on his shoulders in a half tangled mess, the bags under his eyes dark as bruises. Maybe they were bruises

He looked at them both.

"I don't expect to be a brother to you, or to be your son. I never did" he spat out- not with anger, but with an almost feral exhaustion. "But I can't stand here and let your resentment, your distrust- kill innocents. You may not think of them as more than animals, but the 'wildlings' saved you. Without them we would be dead. We would be hanging on these walls, and not before that bastard could flay us and use our skin to feed his hounds."

"Littlefinger thinks that Sansa should rule over Winterfell, this way he will have a chance to fully control her as indebted to him, and with her the North. Another kingdom, together with the one he stole from my sister" Catelyn said, tense "Since we made the knights of the Vale come later, and they saved you all, he will think that Sansa wants his help to reign over the North, and he won't suspect our true intentions."

"You're telling me that the thousands of deaths were part of your plan- and you didn't think about letting me know about this damned plan of yours? I was the one who led the attack from the front line and- don't you think that, had I know about the Vale, I would have thought of another strategy?"

"It was necessary-"

"Coming maybe two minutes earlier would have saved tens of innocents, innocents who were fighting for us- for you, despite not having to. But you never cared. All of this, because you don't care and you never trusted me to understand" he recoiled at his own words, and stared at Sansa in disbelief "I thought we- understood each other, at Castle Black. I thought we- I-" he fell into silence, It was as heavy as the armor he'd refused to wear.
"If you would have told me what you were going to do, I would have kept it a secret. I understand sacrifice in war. It would have been just me, Tormund and Davos knowing, and we would have fought for Winterfell anyway."

Maybe Catelyn always knew. Maybe she denied it to herself, not to admit how much honor there would be in the bastard’s lies.

"Two minutes, and hundreds would now be celebrating with the rest. Two words, and I would have thought of a different plan- I would have extended the assault, I would have counted the presence of forty-five thousand soldiers, I would have..."

His shoulders sagged, all tension lost. Sansa looked at him, her eyes shiny and jaw tightened.
He looked at her one last time.
"The South suits you more than I ever though."

He turned his back and walked out, not sparing Catelyn a look, but she followed him.

This had never happened before, that Catelyn would see his back drifting away and not feel happiness in their growing distance.

He tugged at his arm, forcing him to turn around and look her in the eyes.
"Do you believe that Littlefinger has not realized that right now, the biggest threat to Sansa's claim to Winterfell is you?"

The derisive sound that came out of his mouth hit her like a punch.
"Threat? I got myself killed by my own sworn brothers, and one of them was a boy younger than Bran. Do you really believe that I will be a threat to Littlefinger in his power-seeking mission?"

"You are" she replied coldly.

"No, I ain't. But you always saw some sort of danger in me, didn't you, even in the most innocent things" he stiffened "A smile that was too big, directed to my Lord father? It was obvious that I was trying to cast disgrace on-"

"I had to-"

"-my brother Robb" his voice ate at her chest "Who I loved with all my heart even before I could understand what love was. D'you think I want to steal the title that is Bran and Rickon's, now that Robb is dead and buried?"

(Her son hadn't been buried.)

"We are not here to talk about the past" her chest felt as heavy and pained as her head, which pulsed and hurt like someone had truly hit her "We are here because you need to finally understand what you are. A threat. Understand it, boy."

He shook his head, and had he truly been a boy he would've laughed. He took her in, incredulous.
"You can't put aside your hate for me, not even now?"

"You are Robb's heir. If they will elect a new King, and it will happen, you will be-"

"I don't care about being king" he shouted, and his voice bounced off the walls made of stone, echoing in the empty space "How can you be so- blind? You think I did all of this to get their approval, to steal what isn't mine by right, to conquer the North? Can't you, just for a second, trust that your husband and son were not wrong about me?"

He breathed heavily, at the end, and made to turn around.

She grabbed his arm, again. He refused to look at her.
"What you want does not matter."

He pulled himself away from her hand with a firm tug, and Catelyn went back to her daughter.

———

Catelyn only stepped out of the darkness when the hymns to the new King in the North subsided, and she did so to raise new cries.
Her name whispered, their sounds startled, dismayed, then murmured and shouted exclamations.

She stood before all the Lords, Jon Snow and Sansa behind her, and spoke plainly.

"Before his death" the voices lowered, and silence came. It welcomed her. Petyr looked at her with widened eyes, his mouth open in a breathless call. "My son Robb Stark, before his death, wrote his will. He was young, incredibly young, but he knew the risks and danger of his position, of war against the south. He was never able to write it fully. But in it, I swear it on the Seven Gods I worship and the Old Gods he prayed, he named Jon Snow his legitimate heir, leaving to him the mantle of King in the North, were he to die prematurely. Your wishes are clear, so are his. Jon Snow is King in the North."

She needn't to say anything else.

When she sat down next to Sansa, after looking at Petyr and promising him with one glance his imminent sentence, as Lady of Winterfell, she did so at the table of the new King of the North, who looked at her with the eyes of a child.

This time Catelyn refused to perjure, and begged the gods to forgive her.

——————

Chapter Text

2.

Fireworks // The Moon Will Sing

and when I find that a knife's sticking out of my side I'll pull it out without questioning why // I could have been anyone, anyone else before you made the choice for me

Catelyn had never been to Dragonstone, in her not so long but surely interesting life.

She knew the stories, of course, because regardless of who sat on the Iron Throne the history of House Targaryen was so important that to not teaching it was simply preposterous- at least for the noble families.
The commoners knew it as stories told to children before bed. But her children had learned about Aegon the Conqueror's deeds and the Dance of the Dragons the same way, regardless of their status.
They heard it from the lips of servants and nannies between one meal and another, before they could close their eyes at night, only to dream of riding dragons and conquering the realms of men with fire and blood.

Catelyn knew it more for this same reason than for her childhood history lessons. From them she remembered only the dates, and names, and the rigid and necessary information that had been given her by her septa and the Maester of the Tullys, but from the stories of her children she had learned about the legends.

About the myths, about the most magical side of the great House Targaryen, their secrets that were not really secrets but silent truths.

Dragonstone was said to being made of stones that came straight from hell, and Robb used to describe to Rickon and Bran the appearance of a castle he had never seen, with the theatricality of an actor.

He would move his hands, mimicking the opened jaws of a dragon, and laugh at the surprised gasps of his little brothers- and of Arya, hidden with them, trying to escape from Septa Mordane.
Catelyn would listen to them, leaning on the door frame, tired from a long day, and would jump in to finish one of Robb's sentences, making him jump a little and making one of the three children scream- or all three when she was lucky enough- and making Arya ran away, thinking Catelyn there to reprimand her.

Then she would laugh with Robb, and Rickon would clap his hands, Bran would pout, angry with himself for his not-so-knightly reaction.

Now, instead, seeing the cutting stones of Dragonstone's walls, she could say that it was as imposing and terrifying as Robb used to describe it. Old Nan must have described it to him first, because even though there were no severed heads hanging from the outer walls, the castle was just as he'd said.

First of all the color black, the darkest shade of black she'd ever seen, that colored the rocks it was made of, and that made it look like a giant shadow from afar.

It was a castle, and also a fortress, it was the real home, the real symbol of House Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen had summoned the King in the North on Dragonstone, asking (requesting, more than asking) an audience with him in the ancestral castle of her House, and here Catelyn was, on a little boat together with Ser Davos Seaworth and Jon Snow, not even half a league from the shores, and the three soldiers with them jumped off the boat, the water at their hips.
They pushed the boat as much as they could until it touched only sand, so that Catelyn could get out without drenching her dress.
Then, they laid a wooden board, so that her thin leather shoes wouldn't sink in the sand.

When they reached the shore, together with Jon Snow and Ser Davos, she saw the second boat out of the corner of her eye, but before it could truly get to them, Ghost jumped out of it and ran towards them.

He pushed at Davos and Jon's backs, getting between them, touching their shoulders with his large nose.

Now, with five winters behind him, Ghost could lick Jon's face without having to raise himself on his hind legs.

Tyrion Lannister, who was waiting patiently, had his eyebrows raised so high that they almost touched his hairline.

"Jon Snow. The bastard of Winterfell."

Jon smiled at him, warm and genuine.
"Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf of Casterly Rock."

"Your friend is no longer a pup, but it looks as capable of eating me alive as it used to. Lady Stark" he bowed his head "I was more than pleased to hear of your survival. And you are..."

"Davor Seaworth."

"The Onion Knight. How did the Hand of Stannis Baratheon end up serving the King in the North, if I may ask?"

"A lucky opportunity, my Lord."

"I understand."
She doubted he did.

Tyrion Lannister was still small, and looked at them with the same unnerving, attentive eyes, pupils of different dimensions and irises of different colors, but he now had a scar running through his face, from under his eye to the opposite cheek, and he'd stopped shaving his bear, the lower half of his face covered by it.
He'd always looked taller than he was to Catelyn, regardless of his height, because he presented himself with a mask of arrogance and boldness that rarely weren't justified by a real ability, but now he didn't look small not even compared to Ghost- who eyed the man, red eyes filled with curiosity.

The woman at his side, the dark skin of her face framed by black and voluminous curls and her body covered by a pair of white breeches and a tunic, took a step forward.

"Our Queen welcomes you all to Dragonstone, and hopes that your travel was quiet and free of hindrances. You may leave your every weapon here, and we will take you to the throne room."

Jon exchanged a look with Davos, but didn't fight- he gave Long Claw to the Dothraki warrior who had stepped forward to take it, and the two short daggers he'd strapped to his hips. Davos did the same, and Catelyn failed to mention the dagger tied to her calf.

When Tyrion pointed with a theatrical gesture at the beginning of the road to take, Ghost made with them the first step- of two hundreds and forty one.

Missandei, so had Tyrion Lannister called her, looked at the dire wolf with cold eyes.
"You mean to bring it with you in presence of the Queen."

"I let you take my weapons, my Lady, but I can't... negotiate completely unarmed. Ghost is here to protect me, and he won't attack anyone who doesn't wish me ill. I wouldn't ask anything different from the Queen, were we in Winterfell."

The smile she gave him was just as cold, and Jon didn't answer with one.

"The Lady of Winterfell is here" Tyrion started to say "But I remember that a Stark must always be in Winterfell."

"My daughter Sansa is more than capable of handling my duties while I am away, Lord Tyrion."

"Ah, Sansa. I hope she will forgive me for the… horrible situation she ended up in, and for my role in her suffering. And I have no doubt in her competence, she has always been smarter than she lets on."

Catelyn pursed her lips in a thin line.

"She started to let it on" Jon cut it short, as enthusiastic as Catelyn to talk about Sansa with her first husband- a good husband, given the circumstances of their arranged marriage, and a good friend to Jon- so he had called the dwarf, but still her first husband.

Ghost was walking on her side, a weight that regularly brushed against Catelyn with his ears and body, as if trying to not make her forget about his presence and protection.
 Jon Snow had tried to leave him behind to guard Sansa, but Sansa had made him reason.

Ghost was a dire wolf, and the symbol of the North and House Stark was a dire wolf. They were creatures out of legends, way more sacred to the North than whatever dragon the Queen rode, and Catelyn had seen Ghost tear in half a man who'd tried to attack Jon from behind like he was a toy for him to chew.
If they couldn't have any weapon, they would have Ghost to protect them- against three dragons and two armies, but he was way better than nothing.

Ghost was the only dire wolf she hadn't known as a pup. Jon Snow had left Winterfell for the Watch soon after they took the wolves in, and the time Catelyn had spent with Nymeria and Lady surely she hadn't spent with the bastard's albino, who everyone said would die in a week.
For what they knew, he was the only one who'd survived. Ironic.

In that moment, a roar loud enough to make her ears hurt and ring hit Catelyn's every sense. Every sense, because the air trembles, a vague smell of iron spread in the air, and she almost believed for a moment that her ears were bleeding.

A similar sound, now even louder, and the air moved, pushed by the strength of the wings of the three dragons that now were flying low above them, and Catelyn felt Jon Snow put an arm around her shoulder and push her on the ground, next to Ser Davos.
Ghost stayed still in front of them, his ears raised and eyes fixed on the three creatures.

When they got up, the dragons far from them but still big enough to make her hands shake, Jon's hand stayed on her shoulder, the other between Ghost's ears, like he was trying to reassure himself they were still there. Maybe he told Davos something, but Catelyn didn't hear him, both terrified and stunned by the sight of the beasts.

He ignored Tyrion Lannister’s words, their smug apologies, their (willingly) ill-concealed grins. They had pride in making them react so scared and surprised.

Catelyn knew that Jon Snow hated fire, because he remembered the skin of his hand almost melting once, because fire was too connected to the Others in his mind to truly be an ally, and because he could no longer feel its heat like he once did.
He was right with his distrust.

A Targaryen had returned to Westeros, and she'd done it with three dragons.

They didn't exchange more pleasantries, luckily. They must have understood that no one was interested in doing any kind of small talk, so they were taken straight to the throne room, as promised.

The walls of the castle were covered with statues of dragons, gargoyles and hundreds of other animals, mythical and not, all showing sharp teeth or looking with evil eyes who walked in their presence, and they welcomed the guests of the Targaryens with the distrust for which the dragonriders were famous.
If the members of a family were able to marry only among themselves for fear of soiling the pure blood of their house, it was not surprising that they welcomed their guests like this.

They were not offered either bread nor salt, and Catelyn thanked the gods for Ghost's presence, whose steps were impossible to hear, no matter the fact that with every step he took all his not indifferent weight hit the ground, his pawns large shifting without moving the air.
Ghost honored his name, staying a ghost always and forever, and from the moment he entered the room his eyes didn't leave the throne and the woman sitting on it.

She came to the world only months before Jon and Robb, from what she'd heard, and was in the flower of youth. She was sitting on the throne like she belonged there, and in a way she looked too big for it.
She was unmistakably a Targaryen, with her braided fair hair and violet eyes.

Missandei went to stand at her side, Tyrion on the other one, and the guards protecting here were the Unsullied, an army of slaves she freed, so she'd heard, but that still served her loyally.
Catelyn wouldn't trust any rumor, not without some proof behind it. She'd learned from her mistakes.

"Her Majesty Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains."

Silence ruled, for a long second.

They had not let Jon announce his title first as guest, but Davos was not feeling the same indignation as Catelyn, and he stepped into the silence, ad fluid as water.

"Jon Snow, King in the North, and Catelyn Tully Stark, Lady of Winterfell."

"We thank you for coming so far. You too, my lord. I hope the journey was not too tiring."
Tyrion Lannister had written a letter full of hidden threats, with his decidedly not short and very discreet list of the overwhelming forces of his Queen.
"I’m sure you understand why I invited you to Dragonstone."

"We do, your grace" Jon Snow answered promptly.

"And?"

"We are not here to kneel to you, or surrender the North to your forces."

She was expecting it, at least partially, because she only looked mildly irritated- and surprised.
"Oh. You plan to do otherwise? Then I can't help but ask myself why you are here, my Lords, my Lady?"

When she turned to look at Ser Davos, he thanked her with a small bow of his head- a commoner gesture, more than a lord's one "For a more than valid reason. But if you will let me, I have to remind you that Jon Snow is no Lord, but a King."

"Of course" she smiled, with no warmth or sincerity, the political smile that Catelyn would have used to address the Lords loyal to her husband in the early years in the North, not understanding how with every false smile she distanced herself even more from a group of people who valued things like honor and honesty more than their own family, at times.
"I remember, and correct me if I am mistaken, that the last man who called himself King in the North was Torrhen Stark, who swore perpetual loyalty to my forefather, Aegon the Conqueror. A vow made to last forever. The North renounced its independence hundreds of years ago."

"The last King" Jon Snow spoke firmly. Ghost stared at the Queen. She saw him looking at her with eyes that had made tremble better men, and she moved her eyes to Jon with the sufficiency of a hunter that ignores a squirrel fallen from a tree "that the North remembers, was Robb Stark, first of his name, Warden of the North. His lords choose him as their king, and they refused the South's control, and plays of power. I succeeded him, as his heir, with the blessing of every northern noble family."

Catelyn went on after him "Whatever unconditional faith House Stark owes to the Targaryens, it ceased existing the moment your father, King Aerys Targaryen, burned alive the father of my late husband, as his brother watched and strangled himself to death."

The madness of the dragon had killed the heir of Winterfell, regardless of the fact that the king had given Brandon the possibility to simply watch as his father burned, and give up on the Lord of Winterfell and his only daughter.
The new Lord had had his vengeance, but the North remembers, as Brandon had once told Catelyn before his death, and as Ned had said tens of times.
The North remembers.

Just as frost makes no distinctions in making everyone pay, by imparting the divine justice of the Old Gods, the North did the same.

"I ask to not be judged by my father's crimes, a cruel and mad man who ruined the life of countless innocent people, but by who I am, by what I did" for the first time she sounded genuine, the sorrow in her voice true and deep. But, Catelyn thought bitterly, it was not so hard to feel pity for the dead, who could not hurt you.

"And this we mean to do" Jon reassured her, his shoulders squared, covered by a simple back tunic and the fur of his cloak. He'd refused the crown, sailing to Dragonstone with only the cloak Sansa had sewn for him, so similar to the one Ned used to wear that Catelyn had felt tears prickle her eyes, heart burning because of a hateful feeling that she was trying to bury deep down, grain after grain.

Catelyn remembered that Jon Snow, always well-dressed, was used to wearing Robb's old clothes, who was naturally taller and stockier than him, and rougher, simpler fabrics, not fit for a trueborn son. She used to find a sort of revenge in seeing him next to Robb: it was easy to notice the difference of ranks between them, as easy as breathing- and it made her breathe more easily too.

He went on "But as we will not judge you for your father's crimes, you will not think of us as obliged to respect a vow made by Torrhen Stark generations ago. A vow made by someone who knew that kneeling was the only way to save his people from fire and blood. And someone, who I don't share my name with."

Jon Snow refused to take the name Stark.

Catelyn had observed him, when he believed that no one was paying attention to him, after he learned of Robb’s words, and knew that it was not his new title that shook him that way.
Yet, despite the palpable emotion she had seen in his face, the tears that had not fallen but still filled his eyes, the hand that had covered his face to hide it from the Lords who were still arguing, he had not accepted his legitimization.

He kept Snow as his name.

A name that, to someone who did not know him, said nothing, except that his mother had been from the North and his father was some Lord from anywhere.
A name that was worth nothing, that would continue to bring him shame.

The Targaryen Queen was truly irritated by now, even though Jon's words had been nothing but respectful, who was everything but political but knew how to talk in a extraordinary way.

"And you came here, why? You give your loyalty to Cersei Lannister, wife of the usurper?"
It was a challenge, and she didn't try to hide it, a icy smile on her red lips.

Jon Snow didn't fall in her trap. He saw it, and jumped in it without hesitation.
"Loyalty to the woman whose family almost destroyed mine and tens of our allies? You shame us just by suggesting it, my queen."

"Then-"

Jon interrupted her, and the queen's closest guard tensed up "We are here because we do not mean for the Seven Kingdoms to include the North, and because there is an even greater threat, that matters more than every throne and play for power, that no one of us can defeat alone."

Tyrion Lannister looked at him stunned "You ask for our help, having declared your will to rebel against your rightful queen?"

"The North knows one king, and his name is Stark " Catelyn did not let anyone else get in the way of her speaking "Jon Snow is a Stark in everything but name, so it's the will of the North. If the Queen intends to have it at all costs, she will get only corpses and ashes, because we will not be conquered easily- or kneel to another foreign invader."

"We don't want to take a part in this game of thrones. The Iron Throne is yours to fight for and obtain. But the Others are a threat greater and more important than any whim for power. Winter has come, and the Long Night will soon follow it, if we do nothing to prevent it."

This time, more than surprise there was a sort of mocking disbelief.
"The Others? Monsters out of children's tales?"

"Many brothers of the Night's Watch could swear to the old gods and the new to have seen them with their own eyes, and I'm one of 'em. Many of them even fought them. Again, I'm one of them. I ask for a chance to explain myself to you, your grace, because if we don't stop fighting like children for a shiny toy, we will all end up dead."

Catelyn married a man who lost his head because of his honor and honesty.
Many times (almost with no exceptions) being near Jon Snow was painful, because the boy was just as honest.
At the same time, he was too similar to Robb, who had learned from his father's death that honesty and honor, when one fights a war, are not always the best thing to have.

He managed between one option and the other with the same agility and quietness that Ghost had, invisible spectator of the world.
Now that everyone everyone could see him, nothing had changed.
She wondered if there were others who could see him as clearly as her.

(There were others.
How many Lords had looked at him lost in the past during one of their councils, remembering his father, remembering his half-brother? Countless.
How many times had Sansa looked at his laughing face, at his smile, the few times one could see him so free and authentic, and found herself with her eyes wet from unshed tears?
How many times had Catelyn turned in her new bed, far from the room where she used to sleep with her husband and that was now Sansa's, as Jon's heir and future Lady of Winterfell, and the face of Jon Snow had become blurry just to became the one of two dead men?)

With Daenerys Targaryen, it was clear that he'd chosen honesty and honor.
Catelyn wondered if there was any other option, with death looming on them.

A dangerous glint light up in the eyes of Daeneyrs Targaryen, who finally stopped wearing her mask of ice and cordiality, and let herself be seen as the daughter of fire, as the dragon that she was.
"And how could you help me? What reason do I have, to not march on Winterfell with my armies, and conquer the North just as my ancestor did? What reason do I have, to not fly with my children on you, and let fire set ablaze your beloved kingdom?"

"I trust you won't. You could have already taken all Westeros, if you truly wanted to take it with fire and death. But you didn't, because you don't want to rule us with fear and blood, as your ancestors did."
He paused.
"And because if you don't help us, if you don't accept our help, the Others will exterminate us, and they will descend South, and they will exterminate you, and they will descend more. They will destroy Cersei Lannister's armies, and they will go South. They will even reach Dorne, one way or another, and they won't stop there."

"You come to my castle, Jon Snow, declare that you do not recognize me as your queen, insult me by calling me a child for wanting the throne that belongs to me by birth, and demand my help- to defeat an enemy whose existence we cannot even confirm."

Catelyn had yet to celebrate her fortieth nameday, and she realized that the game of thrones was nothing more than a child’s game.
Children who chased each other and trampled on everything they encountered, only interested in getting to the finish line first. Who ignored or forced themselves to ignore the screams of the lives they ended, justifying their every action, until they went mad, drunk with their own power.

Who sat on the Iron Throne was important, but like they'd seen, the King or Queen was not the most powerful person of the realm.

If Daenerys Targaryen was ready to raze the kingdoms to the ground to be queen, she would not have an end different than her father's- betrayed by his son and his servants, killed by the same man who had sworn to protect him.

Daenerys Targaryen rose from her throne.

She was petite, and close to a taller man than Jon she would've appeared almost ridiculously little, but she moved with the confidence of the most strong and valiant knight of the seven kingdoms.

"I came here. After years spent running away from assassins sent by the same king that your father put on the Iron Throne, after being sold like a mare to my first husband, after being defiled and violated by men no bigger than ants, and after fighting causes that gained me nothing but pain and loss. I came here, with two armies and three dragons. I believed in myself, in Daenerys Stormborn, to get where I am now. The ones serving me, they're here because they believed in me. I don't believe in you, Jon Snow. And I don't believe in your wetnurses' tales, that you expect me to set apart a war for. The war that I'm destined to win."

She did the mistakes of getting too close.

Ghost showed his teeth, eyes blazing red,and had no need to growl, because the words that Jon Snow said were enough.

"And I don't believe in you, Queen Daenerys."

A glacial silence flooded the room like a disease, but Catelyn didn't blame Jon Snow for it.
The truth hurt, but it was the necessary thing. The winner of the Game of Thrones wanted to sit on a throne of lies, and Jon Snow wasn’t there for that. Catelyn wasn’t there for that. The North wasn’t there for that.

Davos had the spine to talk.

"It is hard, to believe a story like this, not only because it sounds impossible, but because if Jon Snow is telling the truth, not many of us will survive the war coming. But like you are destined to win this war, it was his destiny to become King, and to fight against the Others. As you were the one who moved the Dothraki across the sea for the first time, he was the one who made allies with the Free Folk behind the Walls. He took a knife to the heart for this, but he didn't regret his choices, because it was the right thing to do, to save them and to save his own."

No one, apart from Jon's sworn brothers and the wildlings knew what happened with the red witch and the Lord of Light.
No one could know it, Catelyn herself had told Snow. They couldn't risk a rumor like this to spread- that could raise hymns of discontent against Jon, brought back to life by the priestess of a god in which they did not believe.

"The ones who made him king know it, and he became king not because of his birthright. He had no birthright, he's a bastard, born from sin and lies or so they say, but this doesn't matter to the North. They need- we need someone who's ready to die to make the right thing, someone who died-"

Jon shot him a glare that made his words die in his mouth.
Davos hide his guilt quickly. Daenerys Targaryen glanced slowly at Tyrion, who looked just as unaware.

"He fought those things, and the menace is more real than your thrones. If we don't put apart your war, on it will sit your skeletons" concluded Davos, brisk and coincided as only he could be, so far from the false courtesies of the royal courts, just like Jon.

If they had expected anything other than pure honesty, they had been disappointed. Tyrion Lannister had warned them.

"If the threat is so great that whoever sits on the throne does not matter, bend the knee" he almost implored them, and Catelyn realized that in his eyes, hidden behind the thousand walls erected, there was fear.
Afraid for who, of whom? 
For himself, for the risks he would run if he failed as hand of the Queen? For them, for the death they would meet if they didn't kneel at the feet of what was a foreigner conqueror, despite her name?

"We've known each other a long time, Lord Tyrion" her eyes didn't leave him "You know that neither I, nor our king, are mad, or liars. We wouldn't have come to your castle, miles from our home, just to spit lies, knowing what fate we would meet. But perhaps, that will be out fate no matter our intentions or the truth in our words. Tell me, Breaker of Chains, in what way are we different from the slaves you freed, if you give us death as the only alternative to absolute obedience?"

The offense she had just made to Daenerys Targaryen would never be forgiven, she knew.

But Catelyn hadn't survived all that she had lived through because she had been calm, or kind, or frightened.

Even desperate over her son’s corpse, she had resisted Roose Bolton’s grip on her, she had escaped him a second, she had brushed her son’s motionless face one last time with her scarred hands. Even forced to lie still by his body, she had found the strength to push him and breathe freely even for just a second. Even segregated and tortured in the silence of her home, she had managed to continue to love it, even if its sight could still hurt.

She had survived because she never forgot. Never.

The North remembers, the North doesn't forget, she'd told herself, only consolation in the silence. And neither did she.

Daenerys Targaryen didn't hide, or calm the dragon in her eyes. But she didn't let it go free.
"Your late husband was the only one, so I am told, who fought the Usurper when he ordered my death, by calling me a child innocent of the crimes of her family. I will not forget it. You will be accompanied to your rooms, you must be tired from the long journey."

Again, false courtesy, and Jon didn't hesitate to ask "Are we prisoners in Dragonstone?"

The silence he received was a fitting response.

Escorted by two Unsullied, her hand dipped in the warm and soft fur of Ghost, she could only think of the fear in the eyes of Tyrion Lannister, who once she had seen stand tall and not frightened at the sight of his death sentence.

———

Seeing Theon's face again ended up being a strange relief.
 It was different from the one of the boy she'd seen grow for nearly ten years, next to her children.
 It was different from the one of the broken young man who had left Castle Black on a horse, a sister's name on his tongue.

He was dressed differently. Like the trueborn iron man that he was. At the side of other iron men and a woman with a cutting noise, dark hair and gray-blue eyes, just like Theon's.
She must have been Yara, his sister, who didn't hesitate to move at his side when she saw Jon and Catelyn, waiting for them on the shores.

His shoulders were not quite as hunched.

When he raised his eyes and saw them looking at him, he seemed to retreat in himself.

Catelyn didn't hesitate either, and stepped forward. She raised her eyebrows when Yara Greyjoy moved one hand to the hilt of the sword at her hip, but Theon moved towards Catelyn, and when she tugged him at her chest he didn't resist her hold.
Even tough it didn't last long, Catelyn put a hand behind his head, squeezing with a firm grip around his neck and when he retracted, she left her hand carded through the light hair at his nape.

His shoulders weren't as straight as they've been once, but the spark of fear in his eyes was no more.
Probably fear of the Stark asking for some kind of payment, now that they'd taken back their ancestral castle, but the boy had paid enough for ten lifetimes of sin. Catelyn hadn't forgiven him out of tiredness, fear, or madness. She remembered clearly those days spent together, while they were traveling to Castle Black, and she didn't regret any of her choices.

She remembered her daughter trembling. For the cold of the air, or something else.
She remembered Theon next to her, trembling even more violently.
She remembered how, sitting next to each other, trying to protect themselves from the cold, their tremors mixed, until they almost became undetectable.

Jon squeezed his forearm, pulling him in a half hug they'd never exchanged before.

It was quick, but still warm, and when he pulled off Theon looked like someone had hit him in the head, from how he looked at Jon with widened eyes.

"Jon, Lady Catelyn" were the only words he said.

He remained silent as Lady Catelyn turned to Yara Greyjoy. Her hand was still warm and slightly wet, from the warmth of his skin and the water in the hair of what had been her son in all but name.

Jon Snow had been a threat, for a long time, and she had kept a distance from his eyes no matter how close he was to Robb, while Theon was a boy far away from home that she hadn't been able to ignore, despite Ned and Catelyn's attempts not to get attached.
And Catelyn had been the only mother the boy had ever had and known.

Jon and Theon? There had never been never any good blood between them.

Catelyn had ignored all the insults that the boy had sent the bastard's way, because they usually concerned his status, and his appearance. Two things Catelyn hated more than Theon did.
But now Jon Snow had buried the axe, forgetting about their past disagreements, or so it seemed. And not only with him, thought Catelyn, at Jon Snow's side, after having spent weeks with him on the road to Dragonstone, at his request.
Nothing was impossible, at this point.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, your grace" Catelyn didn't smile, forgotten was the warm thing she'd managed to plaster on her face for Theon. She could only smile to Sansa, those days.

If what Theon had written in his letters was true, Yara Greyjoy was Queen of the Iron Islands.

"My brother's jailer. Can't say the same."

"A pity. I heard about your father's passing. You have my deepest sympathy. If I'd had the chance, I would have sent a letter. Not that he ever had the grace to answer my letters, in the past, but we easily forgive the dead ones."

Her voice was pure ice, and Yara Greyjoy seemed confused at first, then she turned to look at Theon, then considered Catelyn slowly.
She finally looked away, walked towards the stairs, and began to climb them alongside Missandei.

That morning, when they heard of the arrival of Yara Greyjoy, they hadn't hesitated to rush to the harbor, but Theon naturally followed his sister, and when Jon and Davos began to climb up behind the others she let them go alone.

She stayed there for a few minutes, thinking about the sea that they had taken Theon away from, and that had taken Theon back as soon as it could, not caring about the consequences.

So was the Gods' will.

Who knew what Ned would have thought, seeing her now, busy thanking one of his Old Gods. She smiled to herself, and to her husband, wherever he was.

———

"Are you this eager to die a second time?"

Jon glanced at her with barely hidden annoyance "If you'd died, Lady Stark, you wouldn't be eager to do it a second time."

"You're just slow, then."

He closed his eyes as if in prayer, asking the gods to give him strength, and didn't open them when he answered through gritted teeth "No, Lady Stark, I just have to do my duty".

Catelyn thought about reminding him that dying wasn't exactly his duty, but she felt that would be the final straw, and Jon Snow would definitely lose his patience.

"I have to say, Lady Catelyn is right" Davos looked almost displeased.

Catelyn knew exactly why it was that the man never particularly liked her- as always, Jon Snow had something to do with the issue, but the days when Catelyn blamed him as the cause of all her problems were over.
Her pains had been (and still were) caused by vipers and lions, not by a boy.
Davos still did not forgive her the sin of having thought it in the first place- not that Catelyn had asked for anyone's forgiveness.

"I understand why it's necessary, Jon" he always called him Jon in private, in his voice an already familiar warmth "But the risks are too high, especially for you. If she needs some kind of proof, at least let someone else find it for you."

"I'm not important for our cause enough to make strong, valiant men die in my stead" he dismissed their words like it was a matter of no importance "Even if I die, I already designed an heir, and Sansa will be a good queen."

Because Jon Snow, after becoming king, had declared Sansa Stark would succeed him, if he were to die suddenly, instead of his still missing brothers Rickon and Bran Stark, as she was older and more experienced in politics.
And, he'd added privately, he had no intention of marrying and having children, so Sansa's line would rule Winterfell- if she weren't to marry, then Bran's, or Arya's, and then Rickon's, and so on.
(Whenever they were.)
Only when he explained this, Catelyn saw that single conviction that had kept her going after her broken promise, shatter on the ground like a crock-pot thrown off a tower.

"Sansa may be capable of watching over Winterfell, but she is not ready to be the queen of a whole kingdom" Catelyn tried to reason, lips thin and brow furrowed "And she does not have the experience necessary to guide the North against an army of dead walking men."

Jon Snow was, supposedly, the man for the job. So they had decided.
Why and how, she did not know. What she did know, was that Jon Snow hadn't been ready to become King either, but she didn't care for him as much as she cared for Sansa.

"We need you there, when they'll attack."

"If they attack and we don't have any dragon or dragonglass, all we've done will be- useless, and my presence's gonna matter nothing." He almost softened. "I will try not to get killed."

After a short silence Davos nodded, apparently satisfied, but Catelyn wasn't.
She breathed heavily, and they both turned to look at her.
"You can't run in the arms of the Stranger just to convince a queen who wants to conquer our land, your land and your kingdom, that a real threat is real. She would think of us as desperate, and too in need of her help."

Jon Snow sat down on the chair, closer to letting himself fall on it, in front of Catelyn.

They were in the room where the Unsullied 'd led them after that first disastrous encounter with the Mother of Dragons.
It was Jon who'd called Catelyn and Davos there, to tell them what he intended to do: take a few trusted, strong men, head north of the Wall, and capture a wight, and bring it before Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister, to convince them to call for a momentary truce, and that by joining their three forces they would all survive.

What the North offered, more than an any army or fighting force, were information, and the fact that, were the North left alone without their support, the dead army would add all to their lines everyone who lived between the Wall and Kingslanding- making the future ruler lose more than two kingdoms at once.

It wasn't much, but at the same time it was everything.

"Winter is here. Death is looming on us all, and we're not ready to face it. We are desperate, and they know it- and they would be too, if they were to think of anything but that stupid throne" his voice was bitter, and such venom wasn't strange to hear from his mouth.
She'd heard the boy talk like this many times, as a child, as a man, and that situation must frustrate him, noble and superior to these earthly desires as he was.

Catelyn wondered what he would do, if they were to give him a chance to sit on the Iron Throne, if he would still act this way, maintaining his modesty and believes. Or if he would take part in these childish games, as he'd called them in a moment of anger.

"The threat is great, your grace" Catelyn spoke slowly "But who sits on the Iron Throne matters, and will influence the future the future of Westeros- out future."

"You think I don't know?" he leaned in, his elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the ground "I do. A mad enough person sitting on that damned chair, and we would end up needing another Kingslayer. Or Queenslayer. This is why…" he looked at them, but quickly returned his eyes to the stones under his feet.

His eyes were again surrounded by reddened skin, and the dark circles seemed to have dug two pits above his cheekbones.
He hadn’t slept that night either.

Catelyn remembered the day she took Jon Snow and his son Robb aside, to warn them that they were putting an end to their little habit of sleeping in each other’s bed, because rumors were spreading in the castle, and they would not be forever followed by laughter and adoration towards two children who loved each other so much.
They would soon become derogatory, and not because they would suspect Robb, who was Winterfell's heir, of such a great, disgusting sin, but Jon, the bastard. And she had no hopes for him.

It had been a really southern fear, but Maester Luwin had helped her, talking himself to the boys when they didn't listen to her.

They'd stopped, eventually.
(If they hadn't, Catelyn didn't know- but the knew it had happened with different half-brothers and sisters.)

He stayed quiet.

"Why…?"

"Once the Others are defeated, if I will survive" it was as clear as the sky that he didn't think he would "I intend to abdicate. In Sansa's favor."

Could Catelyn call herself surprised?
Before she reacted, she thought.
She clenched her fists reflexively, and sank her fingernails against the soft skin of the palms of her hands, her heartbeat accelerating with her breath.

"Abdicate?" Davos repeated, barely believing it.

"I think it’s the right thing to do-"

"You mean to abandon the crown the moment things will become complicated?" she wasn't surprised by the thundering noise of her voice, that made Davos raise his bushy eyebrows. Jon Snow was already looking at her, she found "Leaving the throne your lords gave you, that my son gave you, entrusted you with, once you will be forced to face the politics that such a position entails?"

"I don't wear a crown" he answered coolly "And if you think having to do with the Others is less important, or less threatening than spending hours discussing useless matters with southern Lords who haven't fought for a thing they own- but that will demand respect from me all the same, then I pray for Sansa, that will have you as her closest advisor, and for all Winterfell."

He seemed then to realize what he'd just said, but it wasn't guilt, the feeling that made him stiffen. It looked more like shame, that made him close his eyes and cover them with a tired hand.
He breathed out, his chest falling, emptying his lung from air, and Davos eyed him worriedly.

"Everyone, from Sansa to little Lyanna Mormont, says that I'm a good king, when I know it's not true. Not completely. I was a good Lord Commander, because with the watch I didn't need to worry about Lords and kings and queens, but only the dangers behind the Wall. Yes, I had to deal with a few of them, but I was free- I had no bounds, to the North, to my family. I was only a shield that guarded the realms of men."
  The words of his vow were familiar, falling from his lips with ease.
"Even with them, I managed to get myself killed. What do you all think will happen, if I stay king of the whole North?" he shook his head "Aye, I'm a good king now, I'm the kind of king they need, but when peace will come and we will need allies, do you think that I will have the same approval- I, who you know won't marry for convenience, who will never be as dishonest as some of them?"

And his eyes were closed again, getting ready to say the next words.
"My father wasn't cut out for ruling, he himself never stopped saying, despite how good he was to his Lords, and he died for this. I won't have a different destiny than his- I already didn't once. But Sansa? She's ten times the king I could ever be."

Catelyn opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find the right words.

It wasn’t the first time they’d argued, her and Jon Snow.

She had accepted him as her king, as Robb's heir, as someone who had survived- which at times seemed to be a greater sin than his birth, but this didn't mean that she would bite her tongue with him.
Jon Snow never did.
He didn't look for her favor, not anymore, he hadn't held back for respect or fear, and had answered to fire with fire, and Catelyn had talked more with Jon Snow in the last month than in the fourteen years he'd seen the boy grow.

"And then?"

Jon Snow, with an answer always ready, quick to remind everyone of his great honor, looked at her without saying anything, lost at the only idea of an after.

Catelyn felt no mercy for him.

"The North is independent, Snow. Maybe your father could only thrive in a situation such as this."

He looked at her, somber eyes, and didn’t even deign to answer her.

But the letter came when Jon Snow was far, days after his departure.

When it did, Catelyn wasn’t alone. She was in the company of Missandei, the queen’s young advisor, who had decided to share her silence on one of the large balconies overlooking the sea around Dragonstone.

The raven, that she'd immediately recognized as being from Winterfell, landed in front of her, on the still cold from the night stone, and Missandei glanced at her with distrust.
Not as much distrust as she'd showed the day of Catelyn's arrival, but weeks had passed, and the fire was almost extinct.

"It comes from Winterfell" she said, opening it firmly "The one who wrote it is my daughter. I will let you read it after I do, if you're so worried of our treacherous plots against you."

Missandei had the guts to look less worried, and Catelyn read the words written in an handwriting she recognized in an instant.
Septa Mordane had taught Sansa how to write, and Catelyn had followed the process almost with bated breath. As a grown woman, writing was for her the most obvious thing in the world, but seeing the way a little girl learned was exciting of all things.
With her Sansa, even the most obvious things became exciting.

When she gave the letter to Missandei, she did so with wet eyes.

She read it, and raised her head quickly.
Her dark eyes shone even under the weak sun of that sad morning, with the sky covered by grey clouds.

"They're alive?… you thought them lost, my Lady?"

"No. I never stopped hoping. But even hope becomes a heavy weight to bear, after six years."

Missandei smiled, then, getting rid for the first time of the veil of mistrust and maturity that had kept her away from all of them, and if she had not been quite stunned by the news that her three children, her three youngest, the three children she hoped would be alive but she couldn’t know if they were safe, her three children, had returned to Winterfell, she would have been stunned by how much Missandei reminded her of Sansa, with that small and sincere smile.

"I can't begin to imagine your relief, my Lady. I'm glad, and happy for your family" she said, genuinely happy for them.

Missandei gave her back the letter, and after a moment of hesitation took one of her hands with hers, holding it gently, making Catelyn realize that the feeling on her cheeks was not a sudden rain, but warm tears.
She reciprocated the hold, not wondering what had led the queen’s adviser to console the same woman who, a few days before, had called her queen a hypocrite, albeit indirectly.

(Catelyn held herself back, at the sight of Jorah Mormont, from reminding the queen why her husband had sent the man on the run, and how he'd made no exceptions, not even for the heir of one of the Houses most loyal to him.)

Bran had come home, with the young daughter of the Reeds, who had stayed with them waiting for her father's arrival. All the Lords were meeting at Winterfell with their soldiers, taking with them supplies and getting ready to survive the Winter that had now come, and Howland Reed was the Stark's most trusted vassal- Ned's most trusted vassal.
It was no surprise that he'd answered Jon Snow's call.
Bran was safe, and healthy, and unharmed.

Then came a dire wolf, whom Sansa had recognized as Shaggy Dog, who growled at everyone until he saw Sansa, then ran away and returned with Rickon riding on his back.

Rickon, who for years lived in the vast uninhabited areas between one little town and the other, hiding from everything and everyone, first with Osha, the wildling woman who had saved him and Bran from Theon and the Boltons, then alone when Ramsay's soldiers captured and killed her, thinking she was just another savage.
Who'd spent the last two years alone with Shaggy Dog, as close to him as a brother or sister.

And Arya.

Sansa hadn't written much about Arya. Just that she was home.

Catelyn was crying for her sons, but Arya?

Arya was the daughter she truly failed.

She was the daughter she had never acted right with, not how she deserved, the daughter that made it impossible for Catelyn to sleep at night, her angry eyes attached behind her eyelids, always there when she closed her eyes, always everywhere, no matter what she was doing or where she was.
She saw her in Jon Snow's furrowed brow, in his crude smile, in his dark hair and light eyes, in his long face, in the way he turned up his nose disgusted when he thought no one was watching him.

Arya was the daughter she didn't know how would react, at sight of her. Sansa had told her, that Catelyn was alive. Everyone knew. What had Arya felt, when she found out?

Was she as happy to know Catelyn was alive as Catelyn was, at the knowledge that Arya was safe in Winterfell?

Even Jon Snow had been happy to know Catelun wasn't dead. She would never forgive herself if the happiness of a boy she hated ended up being greater than that of the child she had given birth to.

They were fine.

They were alive.

They were in Winterfell, at home, they were safe.

Catelyn was left alone when Missandei took her leave, and when she almost collapsed on the ground she did it with, as her companions, only the solitude of the rocks and the wind, which always blew strong over the sea.

She was surrounded by water, far from home, far from the freezing North that she'd learned to love with time, and for the first time since her son's death she felt warmed up by a fire that burned eternal in the cold of her husband's land, now her land too, the land of her children.
And that no wind had ever extinguished, no matter how strong or dangerous.

Weeks after that one letter, Jon Snow came back to her.

Eight moons had gone by since the day they'd left for Dragonstone, and two since Jon Snow had ventured behind the Wall with the bravery and the resolute face of a true brother of the Night's Watch, when Danerys Targaryen returned to Dragonstone with only two dragons, Jon Snow's decimated company, a wight in chains, and Jon Snow bleeding to death and barely conscious, half-sat on the green dragon and miraculously balanced on it.

Catelyn’s first reaction was to turn to the Queen of Dragons with such fury that she feared for a second that the young woman would finally order the dragon behind her to set Catelyn on fire.

"Why- why would you ever make him go through such a journey in the state he's in? Winterfell was a few hours from the Wall, and- you brought him here instead?"

The woman’s voice, as she passed her and rushed behind her servants, sounded almost uncertain. Perhaps the blood that stained the grass around them, dripping from Jon Snow’s trembling body, had made her realize what she had risked.
"Our negotiations are not yet over. Only then will you return-"

"If he dies there will be no negotiation, girl" burst out Catelyn.

The girl turned around, her hair whipping in the hair, and got close enough that Catelyn felt her breath hit her.
 "You may fight against my claim as much as you want, my lady, but you will treat me with respect I deserve" she stepped back immediately, but there was no regret in her eyes "Your king, as you say, risked his life. Is still in danger. Your place is at his side, despite him not being your son."

Catelyn was left almost paralyzed as she watched her leave, and before she could do anything, her feet took her to the room where the queen’s Maester was leaning over Jon Snow. She let herself fall in a chair, passing by Daenerys Targaryen and ignoring her, beside the bed, like a puppet whose strings were cut, and barely heard what the Maester was saying.

The boy's skin was too pale. The blade of an Unsullied cut swiftly the furs covering him, through the leather and the cloth, and revealed to the air his chest, skinny and covered in dark, painful bruises.

Something had left deep cuts on his face, and Catelyn realized in horror that a bear's pawn had done that, carving his face and miraculously not making him lose the same eye that had already survived once a beast's attack.
Something had hit his right collarbone, and what Catelyn saw was a white piece of bone, piercing through the skin and surrounded by black bruises and fresh blood.

The blood had trickled down his chest, rippling on his scars, changing directions on the raised one over his heart, but it was too late to cover it. The queen had seen it, and if she hadn't the Maester had.

"He will survive. His body is dangerously close to freezing, but he hasn't lost enough blood to be in the Lord's hand. But he will need to rest, at least a month, or he will not heal properly. That will bring many problems to his door."

A month. Another month on that perched castle, far from who was waiting for her, for them, far from her children.
After two months spent waiting for Jon Snow's return, Jon Snow had returned. His mission had been a success, but it had almost costed him his life.

A month.

She waited with trepidation for that familiar hatred to bloom up her throat, to fill her mouth with a bitter taste, but nothing came. She waited for the anger, resentment, hatred for that troubled, sweaty, pale face, but nothing came.

She waited for it, almost desperate, but felt nothing.

She looked at the bruises and the skin revealed by the wet cloth the Maester was now cleaning his wounds with, and there was no anger lighting her up, no resentment making her turn her nose, no hate distracting her from the fact that the boy had almost died.

She didn't curse Jon Snow for condemning her to spend another month away from home. She didn't curse him for his decision to go behind the Wall again, she didn't curse him for putting them all in that precarious situation.

For the first time in her life, in the nineteen years she'd known Jon Snow, at the sight of his pain she did not curse him.

The only thing choking her was shame.

———

On Dragonstone there weren't real servants she could ask for help, but hundreds, thousands of soldiers. Regardless of it, Catelyn wouldn't have asked someone to pick out bundles of grass and branches for her.
But she asked them to give her a knife, and she was granted permission to have it if someone, an Unsullied, was there to watch over her.

She didn’t care.

If the eunuch wanted to watch her weave tree bark and then go and tell it to his queen, he had the right to do so.

The gods had not forgiven her for doing so in the presence of others once already, when she had woven the prayer wheel for Robb’s safety in a sea of soldiers, after he had broken his oath to the Freys.
It was a ritual to do far from the eyes of the world, but Robb had died because of the Lannisters' infamy, not because Catelyn had failed to find privacy during a war.

So she walked out.
There weren't forests near them, not ones she could reach easily or without getting lost, but there were tall trees at the sides of the trails and paths outside the castle, and clearings where grass grew green and high.
With the knife, slowly she started to peel away the bark of the oldest trees. She peeled away long lines of it, sap and resin poured rich on her hands, careful not to cut herself and mix it with blood, as Old Nan had taught her.

The wrinkly hands of the woman guided hers.
It was a ritual to do away from the world's eyes, and Catelyn had sinned by watching her, but Bran was alive, so it perhaps was a stupid rule.
Gods, was she hearing herself?

Then she took the longest blades of grass, ripping them from the healthy dirt, and secured two hands of soil in a cloth.

With another piece of it she tied to her arm bark, wood and grass, and returned to the room where Jon Snow was sleeping. A day had passed, since hsi return.

Ghost was a warm and safe presence, at her side, laying on the stone ground, on top of one of the thick carpets.

She had discussed with Davos about their next moves, had discussed with the queen about what to do, had barely looked at who she had brought along, and she hadn't even had to think about it- she found herself at his bedside, the silent figure of the Unsullied at the entrance, to pass the knife vertically over the still wet bark, to get rid of the liquid.
She couldn’t dry it, or it would become difficult to bend it as she needed to, so she could just squeeze it out of the remaining juices and start working.

She started to intertwine the structure.

She would soon celebrate her fortieth name day, and this was the fourth wheel she'd ever made for someone. One for Bran, one for Robb, two for Jon Snow.

The work of a mother, Old Nan had called it, braiding the blades of grass with quick fingers for once not shaking, everything that a mother can do when her children have to face death.

Catelyn had hated the idea of being so powerless, but that she was, and a woman had to adapt in order to not crumble under the weight of injustice.

She prepared the structure with the branches she'd collected.
They were thick, strong, and she cut them in half, to have two just as long but way more flexible.
She wouldn't be able to make a perfect circle, of course.

It was a six-spoke wheel, unlike the one Old Nan built, with five spokes: just like the first time, she would make six small dolls, excluding the Stranger from the seven faces of her gods, because she wanted to ward him off from Jon Snow's lying body.

The seven faces of her god, Catelyn had once begged them to kill him, then to make him survive the night. Then again she'd committed the same sin, and she still had to pray to be forgiven and fix it all.

One wheel, six sections. Three branches, bent in half, tied together by the fine, light string that she had woven and by the will of the gods that now she prayed to, old and new.

The rays, branches with no leaves, were wrapped by the same leaves Catelyn had removed, and the sap was like wax. She worked in absolute quiet, a silence so deep that she could hear clearly the breath escaping from his open lips.

The six dolls, their shape simple and rudimentary, would protect him.

She tied the head of the Father to its body, asking for his justice in judging Jon Snow's soul, if she weren't to succeed.

She covered with cloth the face of the Mother, praying for her to understand the pain of a woman that loses her son, and to spare her from feeling it yet again.

She pressed a finger wet with sap to the one of the Warrior to draw his eyes, to give Jon Snow the strength to battle death and win as a survivor.

Someone entered in the room, and sent the Unsullied away.

It was Jorah Mormont, who got closer to the bed without saying a word, and he sat on the empty chair after dragging it closer to them.

Catelyn pursed her lips, begging the Maiden to give her favor to a boy yet to be married who laid at her feet, and wrapping more string around her thin legs, covering the dark of the wood and soil.

"I didn't think of you as a woman devoted of the Old Gods, my Lady."

The voice of Jorah Mormont stayed low, like Ned used to talk every time he spoke inside of the godswood of Winterfell, respectful and no higher than a whisper.

Catelyn put the Smith down, on the bed, inches from Jon's hands, whose body would fix itself like a smith tempers a blade ready for war.

"His blood is the North" she said, her voice just as small "His gods are the ones from the North."

The Crone caressed her head, and put a lantern in the hand of Jon Snow to guide him towards the light. Catelyn tied her firmly to the wheel.

It was dark outside.

"How is he?" the man asked.

Catelyn stood up, and tied the wheel over the boy's head.
She sat down again, joining her hands in prayer.

"He will survive."
Jorah Mormont stayed there not for long. She didn't even spare him a glance.
"I wish to pray. Give the soldier his knife, and leave me."

He did as she asked, and she prayed.

Everyone of them.

Lastly she prayed to the Stranger, and she asked him not to visit Jon Snow's room and bedside. She asked him to let Jon live to fight, to see his brothers, to see his sisters, to go home once again.
She begged him to not come so early for him, to not take this boy who was getting ready to survive his first real winter, who was learning how to be a good king, who she still had to understand and know completely.

I couldn't redeem myself, she thought, let him live, long enough for him to see me redeemed.

Jon Snow survived the night.

The morning after, he opened his eyes.

Catelyn spent the night at his side. She slept little, lulled by the sound of the waves crashing on the stones outside the windows, and she woke up with her neck burning, and her back aflame from the pain.
He opened one of those expressive eyes, a little color was back on his cheeks, and he blinked quickly.

He closed it again, but soon got used to the little light.
It was the first light of dawn, and the air was cold. Jon Snow had no clothes to cover his bandaged chest, only furs that Catelyn had brought from their ship. Catelyn herself had one around her shoulders.

When he turned his head and saw her, he did not react immediately.

He looked around slowly, and with the corner of his eye he caught sight of the wheel, and he tilted his head back to see it better. He must have had a rather poor eyesight, since his left eye was covered with a white cloth and tight bandages, but he understood what was the same.

Only then he tensed at her sight, but forced himself to relax, moving the feather pillows his head was lying on. His head had been surrounded by them ever since his return from the Wall.

"The last time you made of those for me" he said, voice rough. It broke at the end, but he didn't stop, despite its weak like never before sound "I survived. I have you to thank, I guess."

"You were just a child" Catelyn managed to say, voice as heavy as a mountain stone. With that she meant that she was full of shame, for having wished death upon such a small and weak child, but Jon Snow didn't know it.
He misunderstood her words, but not so much.

"You gave me so much hope. When I looked for you, after I-" he coughed, and that single cough was like a sword slicing through his chest. Catelyn brought a cup of water to his lips, and he drank it all with her help, her hand keeping his head steady, behind his neck, on his dirty hair.
"Robb told me. He was so happy. 'e thought we'd finally found peace" his accent was even stronger than usual. He smiled, and grimaced when he pulled of of the stitches under his eye "He gave me some hope. That you would accept me as your son. But when I found you, wanting to thank you for what you'd done, you rejected me again. With eyes as cold as Winterell's walls."

He was looking at her and there was no anger.

Jon Snow had been angry with her, Catelyn always knew.
The bastard had always considered her hatred without reason, as if his mere presence had not been able to, somehow, ruin for her even the most beautiful day.

The anger, the hatred, the resentment, were not born because Catelyn was a thief who had taken the place of his mother, but because Catelyn had hated him, believing him a thief who wanted the place of his son.

Once he became a king, he'd chosen to stop trying to be civil when she wasn't.
She felt her head grow heavy, at the thought that the boy had finally lost hope to gain her favor after more than fourteen years of waiting and hoping.

"You always looked at me with so much hate, and just because you weren't my mother."

Looking at him, Catelyn felt no hatred, only shame.

Swallowing with difficulty, she tried to find something to say. A clever phrase, a sensible excuse, some way to free her from this sudden guilt, but she found only a well full of regrets.

He looked nothing like his brother Robb or his sister Arya. Lying on the bed with his forehead soaked with sweat, eyes devoid of resentment but only bitter acceptance, he did not look like Brandon, nor the young Lyanna she knew only through a statue, nor her Ned.

He was the same child that she had rejected and from whom she had hidden without knowing it, knowing in her heart that she was as cruel as the ones she despised.

She breathed quietly.

"I prayed for the Seven to kill you" she said almost dull, staring into his eyes, hands joined on her lap. He didn't react. He wasn't surprised.
"In the sept Ned built for me, so that I could pray my gods, I prayed for his son's death."

"Your gods don't know how to do their job, then. Even when I died I didn't stay dead for long."
It wasn't a jest, but a biting observation, a fact, said with no regards or worries for her, or himself.
Like Catelyn couldn't still see in front of her the memory of a boy who admitted to feel more like a walking corpse than a human.

"I prayed them to take you away from my sight, to erase you from my life, to free Ned from the weight of taking care of you, all for his stupid honor, to free Robb from the duty of sharing a childhood with you."
She'd done so, and Ned and Robb never knew it. The only person she'd ever told was young, innocent, beautiful Talisa.
"After Maester Luwin told us that you wouldn't have survived the night, I found my husband crying at your bedside, holding your hands. I'd never seen him cry before, not even when he found the strength to talk about his sister, his brother, or his father. And he couldn't stop crying. A grown man, a war hero, reduced to a summer child with a wet face."

Catelyn smiled, a little sad thing.
"We had to force Robb in his rooms, because he wouldn't give up on the idea of staying close to you. He couldn't, or you wouldn't have been the only one lying sick on a bed. Jory himself was closed in there with him, since Robb tried to climb the walls to reach you."

"You never accepted their love for me."

"I did" she corrected him "I accepted it back then, when I built a prayer wheel for you and watched over you as you cried and struggled to sleep, too weak even for some milk of the poppy to calm the pain that kept you awake. And I prayed the gods, new and old, to forgive me, and save you."

"Then I was wrong. Your gods know what they're doing."

Catelyn laughed, a wet and short laugh, but still she laughed.

It was her first time laughing in front of Jon Snow.

"I never learned from my mistakes" and that admission was maybe the loudest thing that had ever fallen from her mouth:
More than every shout or broken curse.
Not louder that the scream her son's death had tugged from her chest, but incredibly close.

Jon Snow averted his eyes.

"Old wolves rarely learn new tricks" he said slowly, and Catelyn nodded.

"I'm a Tully, not a Stark."

"Are you?"

She was. She was proud of being a Tully. And in a few years, the years she'd spent as Catelyn Stark would be more than the ones spent as Catelyn Tully.

Rather than answering, she continued "When we let Robb see you, he didn't leave your bed for days."

Jon smiled somber.
"I remember."

Her heart hurt.

"And I found a new reason to hate you."
His smile disappeared, just as quickly.
"Because I vowed I'd love you if you were to survive, but I wasn't able to. You cannot imagine what it meant for me, to see that my childish resentment was stronger than my faith and honor. But it matters not. The god collected their debt with blood and time."

The waves were louder than before. Perhaps a storm was coming.
Winter was coming for them all.

Jon Snow's voice was another wave in the uproar of the sea.
 "And you can't imagine what it meant for me, to grow under your watchful gaze, knowing that you were ready to make sure I would pay at the first small mistake. Do you know what it meant for me, when you made sure that Robb would spend less time with me, when you whispered in your daughter's ear that I was just a bastard, when you closed an eye at the cruelty I had to face? You speak of your husband's pain, of your son's, of your pain, but never mine."

He shook his head, or at least tried to, instead he couldn't stop a hiss of pain from escaping his mouth, and he raised one hand to his wounded eye, over the bandages. He was smart enough not to touch it.

"I won't pity myself. Another father would have abandoned me, another lady would have poisoned me, and your hate and disdain were nothing, compared to what some of the unfortunate ones I have encountered in these years had to go through. But don’t talk to me about your torment, Catelyn Stark. You suffered more than you deserve, but never by my hand."

Catelyn nodded. He spoke the truth, and she couldn't deny it to herself.

She'd always know it. But it was so easy, so comfortable, so quick to hate the child from the North who just wanted to be part of her family, rather than hating the man she had to marry as she still mourned his dead brother whom she loved, who she knew she had to learn to love if she wanted some sort of happiness.
It had been so easy. Now, reaping the seeds of the hatred she had sown, it no longer seemed so easy.

Because Jon Snow hadn't disappeared North, behind the Wall, like Benjen Stark, visiting Winterfell every six moons and becoming a ghost for their family, but he'd survived- a crime Catelyn couldn't blame him for.

How could she not?
(How could she?)

She pursed her lips.
"Don't renounce the throne."
She got up, and walked towards the door.

He called her before she could get a feet out.
"Lady Catelyn."

For a wild moment, she almost expected him to tell her that she should die, as she had done years before, at Bran’s bedside, hating that the deformed boy on the bed was Bran and not Jon Snow.
It was also the only time she ever called him Jon. Not bastard, not boy, not Snow, not Your Grace, but Jon.

The look in his eyes was inscrutable
"Don't torture yourself for not having kept that vow. If we suffered so much, it's wasn't because of it."
It wasn't enough to free her from the guilt. Perhaps she would die with the weight of it on her chest.
But his words made it easier to breathe, if only for a moment.

———

Chapter Text

3.

Brutus // Star

may the gods strike me down if I forsake you, frater meus // you know I'd always been alone 'til you taught me to live for somebody

Catelyn remembered clearly the first time she'd seen Winterfell.

She'd been fresh from celebrating her twentieth name-day, and her sister had told her she'd been luckier than most.
Some girls were shipped away from home when they were way younger, and many lady would have turned their nose at seeing her marry so late, hadn't it been for the war.
Catelyn had been grateful to jump on the carriage for this same reason, in her arms the still unfamiliar weight of her son.

No one could have called Robb a silent child, and he'd gurgled all morning.

Septa Mordane had tried taking him from her chest, but Catelyn had resisted her strained words. The idea of going so far away from home terrified her, and her child was her only hope- with him in her arms, she thought, the North would have mayhap welcomed her with more warmth.

Robb's weight was a relief, when she entered Winterfell's gates, and got out of the carriage to come before her husband.

That first time, she found Winterfell to be even more terrifying that she'd thought, with its large, dark rooms, walls covered in candles made of thick, massive, cold stone, and the first comfort she had found was Robb, her son.

The second one had been the sept that Eddard, her husband, had seen built just for her. She could see the cold looks Winterfell's occupants threw at her, the ones from the soldiers and the servants, but never Eddard's, who gave her a place to pray in and never resented her for needing it.

She's started to think of Eddard, now Ned, as a comfort when he came to her, and told her that he had no intentions of sending their children away to foster, not before their fifteenth name day.

He'd justified his decision with his wish to not have his children grow up as he had, peacefully but far from his father and siblings.
He hadn't said anything else, but Catelyn had understood him all the same.

Ned was expressive this way, and it only took Catelyn a few years to become completely able to read him: his father, his brother and his sister had all died before he could truly get to know them, after years spent away from home, and he didn't want to die and leave behind a child who didn't know him.

And the fact that he wanted Robb to know him, that he wanted to truly know Robb, had started to melt her cold heart.

She'd accepted that she wouldn't be Lady of Winterfell at the side of Brandon Stark, and she'd learned to live with this knowledge. She let herself see Winterfell's most beautiful sides, and appreciate the people that down south were no more than the savages behind the Wall, and appreciate the man who'd always lived in his brother's shadow.

But as the Lord of Winterfell, Eddard Stark had been discovered.

Everything had been discovered for her to see.
The raw adoration in his eyes the first time he'd held Robb, the gentle consideration he'd maintained when they laid together for the first time since their marriage, the unbreakable line of his shoulders as he sat at the table of his subjects and spoke.
Everything, even his one and only sin, that dark-haired child as quiet as his father.

After almost twenty years, Catelyn entered Winterfell again, at the side of that same sin.

Sansa was waiting for them alone, or at least in the company of the Lords of the North, with Yohn Royce by her side, and the look she gave to Daenerys Targaryen was no less cold than that of the people who had watched the woman arrive on horseback, her dragons flying in the sky.
She wasn't alone, but she stood strong like a heart tree.

Catelyn felt a blow to the heart, and clenched the reins of the horse with strength. Gloves protected her fingers from the cold, but she was still permeated by the cold of the North when Sansa welcomed them without her siblings at her side.

She hadn't imagines that letter, she hadn't imagined the largest smile she'd ever seen on Jon Snow's face when she'd showed him the letter, she hadn't imagines the quiet comfort Missandei offered her, she hadn't imagines the raven and her daughter's words.

They were alive, but they weren't there.

She still kept her composure.

They came down from their horse, walking towards Sansa, who Catelyn held to herself with force, smiling at her daughter’s low chuckle.
She left a kiss on her forehead and backed away.
Jon did the same, a hand on Sansa’s cheek as he studied her, as if to look for some hidden wound, but Sansa slapped it away with a genuinely happy smile.

She didn't have to lower herself in order to pet Ghost, who pushed his large nose against her shoulder.

Her daughter had got even taller, extraordinarily so, and she was now definitely taller than both her mother and brother.

She towered over Daenerys Targaryen, who Jon introduced with carefulness, and Sansa bowed her head to the queen, to then bow ever more deeply to Jon.
Catelyn's daughter had always been the image of the perfect lady, and she was now giving Daenerys Targaryen the same regard she would've offered to any other foreign king.

The Targaryen Queen blinked in surprise and shook Sansa’s hand, thanking her for the hospitality and giving her genuine praise of Winterfell, but Catelyn could not stop looking around.

Sansa noticed it, and smiled as she had not smiled in years.

"Your Grace, you may excuse us all, but I see myself forced to leave you in the hands of Lord Royce, a trusted and reliable man, who will show you all to your rooms, where you may rest after this long journey. I will show you around the castle myself, of course, but as you mayhap know my siblings have come home, and they are anxious to see my mother and Jon after such a long time spent apart."

Perhaps Catelyn had never seen such sincere emotions on Daenerys’s face, who nodded with what seemed to be nostalgia- and encouragement. She accepted Lord Royce’s guiding arm, and Sansa was quick to take Catelyn by the arm. Jon followed her without a word.

"Where are they, Sansa?"

"Under the heart tree. We wanted to give you some intimacy."

"I believed it had all been a dream, for a moment" she emptied her lungs from all the polluted air, poisoned by fear, and she felt ten times lighter.

The corners of Sansa's smile lifted again, a somber smile, but she lighted up immediately. There was a strange excitement in her, that she had hidden deep inside her even before her first day in King's Landing, when fresh from her tenth name day she'd chosen that a lady doesn't laugh like an animal pr get jittery like a little brat.

She must have understood how untrue it was, and what wrong she was doing to the world, hiding the beauty of her happiness, for she smiled showing her teeth, not the courteous smile that she had learned to show years before, and almost jumped as she dragged her mother behind, and Jon looked at her amused.

Behind that amusement was the same fear that Catelyn still felt gripping her heart.

When they entered the godswood, among the trees, Catelyn could not think of the dozens of times she had done the same, following Ned and feeling as if she was a stranger- she didn't feel a stranger in her own home, when she inevitably began to run, and she did not feel weighed down by the memories of the only man she had ever truly loved.

(Not Brandon, with his charming ways that had made her heart beat out of her chest, but Ned, who had made her feel as if she was gracing the grounds of a distant paradise just with one of his rare smiles.)

She ran until she reached the weirwood, where Ned sat under to clean his sword every time his duty forced him to kill a human being, but Ned wasn't there. Of course he wasn't, Ned had been dead for more than six years, but three figures where at his place.

Before she could approach, a dire wolf did so. He was a little bigger than Ghost, and he came so close that Catelyn felt his hot breath hit her face, shifting a lock of hair that had fallen on her forehead. Her whisper, a choked "Shaggy Dog", came out of her lips without permission, and only he heard it, because he raised his long ears in the air. One of these had a whole piece of fur and flesh missing.

He hit her forehead with his wet, large nose, and Catelyn inhaled sharply.

He left her to get closer to Jon, and stopped in front of Ghost, but Catelyn had only eyes for the child who had advanced- the boy, her mind corrected her, who looked at her with big widened eyes.

Covered in light furs and with long, tangled air, his son looked like a savage. She didn't find the strength to say it to him.
She studied his face, before her eyes were inevitably drawn to the girl standing behind Rickon, dark air cut to the shoulders, and then to the wooden chair with built-in wheels and the boy sitting on it, reddish hair and a serene expression on his face, and she looked at all of them.

Seeing her children again after six years, she found herself not knowing what to do.

And raw horror filled her heart.

A realization hit her harder than any blow given to her by Roose Bolton and his men, and tore the air from her chest like a punch. She'd expected to see her children, to run to hug them, to cry with them, and- but she didn't know what to do.

Her mind was empty, and Catelyn stayed still, her heart beating out of her rib cage and the only thing she could hear. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees, the leaves and dirt crushed by Sansa and Jon's feet, the loud breath falling from the dire wolves' noses, she couldn't hear anything. She frantically moved her eyes from Bran to Arya to Rickon, the blood flowing noisily in her ears, following the rhythm of her heart.

Arya looked at her impassive. There was nothing on her face. Not joy, nor sadness, nor anger, not- nothing at all. Her grey eyes that had so often looked at her with resentment where now not different from the stones that made Winterfell's walls, and Catelyn thought she could sacrifice everything she had to see that resentment again.

She knew how to act when facing resentment. She knew how to act, how to ask for forgiveness and explain her point of view, she knew how to negotiate, she knew- she could face it with her head held high, as she'd always done.

She didn't know that to do.

She suddenly wanted to scream and run to hug Bran, to take his face in her hands- her child, her boy, her beautiful boy, who was as peaceful as the corpse of an old man who breathed his last breath in the night. She wouldn't be able to scream even if shew wanted to.

She couldn't do what she wanted to do, she couldn't choose, she didn't know.

Rickon was the closest, and Catelyn couldn't breathe anymore, because he was so close, she could see how much he'd changed, how the small six year-old boy had celebrated six more name-days without his father and mother, far from the love she'd sworn she would give to him with no regards after the time she'd held him in her arms.
He was too close, he was too far away, because she couldn't have touched him with her arms outstretched.

Always a 'bit out of her reach.

They'd never been more far.

Nothing separated them, if not years of separation.

What did she have to do?

What could she do?

What-

A light weight rested on her elbow, around her arm. A large hand, long, bony fingers around her tightly. That pushed her forward with not much subtlety.
A voice near her ears, on her right, sounded as clear as a bell, finally something louder than her choked, fast breath.
"After six years you stand still?"

And before she could realize what was happening, what had just happened, before Jon Snow could say or do anything else or stop pushing her towards her son with a kindness she didn't expect, Rickon jumped on her with the strength of a horse.

But Catelyn didn't retreat, because her arms tightened around Rickon as to never leave him again.

He could now lay his head on her shoulders, by craning his neck forward, and that he did, and Catelyn held him so tightly to her chest that her arms started aching.
She moved her head to kiss his, the pile of red curls tangled and long, and kept her lips pressed to his forehead, to silence the hiccups that left her lips without her wanting to.

He was her child, the one she was now holding, her youngest boy, the last addition to their family, and the only of their children Ned had named himself.

For all the others he had insisted for Catelyn to be the one who did it, saying that if the woman did all the hard work she had then the right to choose what name to give him. And that he couldn't possibly do a better job than her.
When she presented young Brandon to his father, he had taken him in his arms with a wet smile, and the emotion on his face had been so great that Catelyn had decided, delirious of fatigue but still quite conscious, that Ned would get to name the next one.

The next one had been Arya, while Ned was fighting Robert's wars, and so Rickon had been favored. As also the last one of their children.

Not the last time Catelyn was pregnant.

He knew of the poisons that the Bolton's Master had served him those rare times, to make sure she did not get pregnant with the great Lord’s bastard- not for kindness, but because the man certainly did not want to have the trouble of having her pregnant in his castle conquered with deception.

Rickon was the last one of their children, the last child she'd had from Ned, the child they'd left in Winterfell to die, who hadn't died, who was now hugging her with the same disregard of everything of a child.

Catelyn cried more on his head.

She moved away from him enough to take his face in her hands, to look into his eyes, the same as hers, and then to embrace him again, just to feel him against her, to remind herself that he was there, that she was there, that they were there together and that they were both alive.

Catelyn did not live only for her children.

She was a grown woman, she had a family, had a castle that she ruled alongside her husband, had her husband, had his court and had the Lord’s loyalty. She had many little things that made her live in peace and happy for so many years. She was a person, with feelings, dreams, hopes, desires.

But everything had been taken away from her, or so she had believed for two years, locked up and treated like a little bird in a cage. And though her children never were the only important thing in the world, not with her duty, they had been the most important thing, and everything else was rotten without them.

(Family, Duty, Honor. She'd learned the words as a child. She'd never truly, truly understood them before.)

Catelyn had tried to live without knowing them safe, and she'd hated her life.

But now they were there. Arya with her arms around Jon, so close that they seemed to be one being, as if they had merged together. She heard snow cracking near them, and letting go of Rickon she collapsed on her knees, raising her arms to encircle the neck of her Bran.

She put his forehead against his, breathing, swallowing with difficulty.

She opened her eyes to look in the light ones of her son, and Rickon lowered himself on the ground next to her, and took one of her hands. Catelyn used the other to touch Bran's cheek, with a delicacy that reminded her of the last time they'd seen each other, when she'd said goodbye for the last time.

She heard Arya and Jon say something to each other, she heard her snicker and Jon's laugh, soft in a way that made her shiver, and she looked at her boys.

They had not even exchanged a word. There were no words that Catelyn could think of, that could express what she was feeling.

Perhaps, if she had studied and learned other languages besides the Common one, she might have been able to- but she doubted it.

She stood up on shaky legs, and stood before Arya with her lips trembling.

The daughter who Sansa had believed to be born out of the ground, rather than her mother, the daughter who had looked at Ned as everything she would want to be, the daughter who, seeing her short hair half-tied behind her head and the sword at her side and the strict lines of her face, had managed to become just like him.

The only thing she could say, before feeling her throat sealed by emotion she couldn't comprehend and withheld tears, was "You are your father’s ghost".

She did not pull Arya to her chest with speed and strength. She approached her, step by step, until the only thing left to do was to embrace her. Keep her not as one holds a baby, as she'd held Rickon and Bran, because Arya had never truly been her little angel, her little princess.

Sansa had.

Arya was the thorn in her side that she would've sacrificed everything for.

She wanted to apologize to her again and again, and she would, she knew it, but she was too distracted by the feeling of weakness that struck her knees when she heard Arya answer to her tears with just as much emotion.

Because Arya was holding an arm around her shoulders, one around her waist, and she was pressing her face against her shoulder, and the strength in her arms was unknown, the hard muscles under the skin of her back were unknown, her strangled voice whispering "Mom" just as unknown, but it didn’t matter.

Bran’s empty gaze didn’t matter, Arya’s cold expression didn’t matter, the wild spark in Rickon’s eyes didn’t matter, the distance between them didn’t matter, because Catelyn would have filled it up one way or another.

Because she would never have her children back as she remembered them, but it would be foolish to believe otherwise.
Catelyn was many things, but foolish was not one of them.

———

"It was Benjen" Jon Snow's voice was loud, in the sudden silence he'd created "I'm sure of it. Those were his clothes, shredded as they were. And he had that pin father gave him, the one he kept on his chest, under his cloak. I tried to take it, but he- it almost bit my hand off."

It was no secret that Benjen Stark had loved Jon Snow as his, no matter how much of a busy and distant man he was.

He met Jon Snow after swearing allegiance to the Night's Watch, otherwise Catelyn was sure that he would've put aside the pain that had made him choose to give up his whole life to guard a Wall, to raise the bastard as his own. Perhaps he would have taken the responsibility to save Catelyn from the pain of knowing her husband’s betrayal (and from the concerns of inheritance- the bastard of a younger brother would never end up in the line of succession)- the gods knew that Jon, as he grew up, was the exact copy of his uncle. Everyone would have believed it.

"I'm sorry, Jon" Arya spoke slowly, her legs crossed and hands outstretched to catch more of the fire's warmth.

"I never even said goodbye. I was just an immature boy who wanted to follow him, who thought he was a man and threw tantrums like a child" he scoffed, but there was no trace of fun in his face.

Catelyn took a lock of Rickon’s hair and focused on it. The brush worked the knots slowly, and Rickon almost jumped when Catelyn lost her temper and pulled with a little more strength.

"And he became of the Night King’s little soldiers. At least I managed to kill him."

She took more water, and poured it on Rickon's hair, and ran her fingers in them. Perhaps a lifetime wouldn't have been enough to put them back, or so it would have seemed to any other woman. But Catelyn had spent the first nine years of Arya’s life trying to fix the bird nests she could create on her head, and had learned a lot from that experience.

"He would have hated to stay that way" Arya nodded, but it sounded empty.

The only one of them to have truly known Benjen was Jon.

Not that the man didn't love his nephews and nieces. He'd welcomed all the children with affection, taking time to rest in front of the fire and tell them what he had seen beyond the Wall to scare or amuse them.
It seemed right that now, in front of the same fire, Snow would inform them of his death.

She now had confirmation that all of Ned’s siblings were dead. Whether Benjen died before or after Ned, it was a secret, but the important thing was that they both died believing the other safe.

Their relationship had never been perfect.
Ned had left Winterfell, fostered by Jon Arrys, when Benjen was no more than a child, and the memories he'd had of his brother, when Ned came back from King's Landing with a bastard boy in his arms, were few and all connected to what had taken his father, brother and sister away from him.

(Not that their father had ever loved Benjen as much as he'd loved Brandon or Lyanna, from what she knew.)

And then Benjen had joined the Watch, and for Ned it had been almost like losing another brother.

They had fought badly about it once, and the fight ended with Ben spitting in his brother’s face that the only dead brother Ned had was Brandon, even though Ned pretended nothing happened.

There had been a grudge between them, which was then forgotten because they were the last two left and there was value in that too.
And Jon had helped, because Ben loved him.
In a different way, with an intensity that had sometimes scared her, but at her worries Ned had replied that Jon deserved the love of another adult in his life.

Bran stayed quiet.

Rickon almost growled when Catelyn managed to de-tangle the largest knot she'd ever seen.

She was sitting on the pavement, a metal basin filled with water at her feet and Bran's head suspended on it. He'd laid down, and he'd elevated himself with pillows under his back and neck so to give space to Catelyn to fix the disaster on his head.
He'd made clear that he didn't want blades near his hair, or his neck, but it mattered not.

They were nice curls, now that Catelyn had managed to fix them. Unlike the straight hair of Ned and Catelyn, more like those of Brandon and Rickard Stark.
Sansa laughed at the grimace that Catelyn made when she pulled out a small piece of wood from her son’s head.

Then she turned to look at Arya.

"I met Gendry. He seems like a nice guy."

"Gendry?" wondered aloud Snow, his brows furrowed "You know him, Arya?"

"We met when I ran way from King's Landing" she dismissed him, refusing to look away from the fire.

Snow looked at her without saying a word for a long second, and sheer horror wrung his face into an expression that made Sansa laugh.
"Gendry?" he asked incredulously again, as if Arya had just turned into a lion lizard before him. He looked at Sansa, Bran smiling as someone who was about to enjoy a fantastic little theatre, Rickon giggled from under Catelyn’s hands, and then Snow even looked at Catelyn, perhaps expecting her to save him from the dream (nightmare) he was living.

He looked at Arya again.

"Gendry" he repeated more forcefully, and she struck him with her gaze "I thought you swore before the gods that you would never marry. No, I remember it very well. I was there too. You swore to me that you would never look at a man like Sansa d-"

"Who said anything about marriage?"

"And, come on, Gendry?"

"What’s wrong with Gendry?" asked Arya, her cheeks red and not because of the heat of the fire.

"What's wrong with Gendry- Arya, don't-"

For the first time in her life Catelyn saw Jon Snow turn redder than the Lannister banner, and stammer like a little boy. Whatever he was thinking was terrifying him. Catelyn understood, and she couldn’t hold back a small smile.

"And you looked so friendly when you came back," Arya challenged him, and Snow seemed to slowly recover.

He nodded slowly, suddenly serious.
"We are both bastards, and our fathers were brothers in everything but blood. We spoke, beyond the Wall."

"The bastard of Robert Baratheon?" asked Sansa in surprise. Then she snickered like a little kid, satisfied with whatever she was thinking of "better than a blacksmith. We will just have to legitimize him, and he and Arya can get married."

"He’s too old" said Rickon out of nowhere.

Catelyn blinked.

"How old is this boy?"

"He's just eight and ten" Arya rolled her eyes.

Perhaps her daughter couldn't realize that whatever she said would be used against her mercilessly.

"Ah, so you thought of it" Snow inquired suspiciously.

"No!" tried Arya again, and this time she crossed her arms like a little girl. She was only five and ten, she was a little girl.

Snow shook his head, and Sansa laughed to herself, stitching up the last piece of the cloak she was embroidering.
The cloak she'd made for Jon Snow was just like the one Ned had worn for so many years, it was a true masterpiece, and now she was finishing Rickon's one.

During their stay on Dragonstone she'd worked hard to make one for all of them, and she'd showed them all proud of herself, like a little girl who flaunts her first embroidery around.
They painted a remarkable figure, all standing together, with the Stark crest large with no mercy for the ones who had no interest in knowing who they were.

But Rickon had said that hers was too long and heavy, and that Sansa had gotten a little too enthusiastic with the crest, so here was Sansa, fixing it for him with no complaints.

(If Arya had, let's say, asked Sansa to give her a castle where she could celebrate her name days, Catelyn suspected that Sansa would try to built it all on her own- acting like it was nothing important, because those long years hadn't changed the fact that, between Arya and Sansa, conflict was ever-present.)

Her daughter had changed, this Catelyn could see as clearly as the sun.

When she'd opened that door and saved Catelyn, she had been different from the Sansa she remembered, but no.
Sansa had changed almost dramatically in those months Catelyn and Jon Snow had spent on Dragonstone, so much that, looking at her, Catelyn felt like she'd missed years and not months of her daughter's life, since her first day on the road to reach the Dragon Queen.

Even just the way she walked, how she answered to every question and demand, how she'd talked to the Lords of the North in those three days they'd been back in Winterfell all together, waiting for the Others to come, how- she did everything.
It seemed that the sprout planted at King’s Landing and choked by Ramsay Bolton had managed to bloom and pass over the ground.

It was strange, to realize that his daughter had become a woman while she was not there.

She forced herself to ignore the bitter taste that filled her mouth. She could do nothing to change the past, but she could think about the present.

About present Sansa, who was showing Rickon the finished cloak with a proud and hopeful smile on her face.

Rickon raised his head and by mistake Catelyn pulled at his hair with sudden strength, and a choked noise came out from his lips.
It was more like the sound of an animal than a human being, and the almost offended look he gave her was that of a frightened deer, rather than a child, and he pulled her hands off him by piercing the fabric covering her arms with his nails.

Of course he didn't tear it, but Catelyn clearly felt the pressure.

Silence fell in the room, all silent except the crackling of the fire and the wood that slowly burned in the fireplace.

Catelyn waited for Rickon to let go of her arm, and slowly moved her hands towards his head. She didn't start to use them or the brush at her feet to try to make sense of the curls on his head, but she just carded her hands through his hair like she'd done to all of her children in their first years, before they stopped wanting it- all except for Sansa, who even as a young lady had sat down to put her head on Catelyn's knees, to exchange quiet words in a world that felt only theirs, until she fell asleep.

Rickon relaxed slowly, and almost melted against her. Some of his hair ended up in the basin, but he gave them no second thought, and neither did Catelyn.
"Forgive me, darling" she whispered, and Rickon shrugged- or something similar, laying as he was.

The silence didn't last long, interrupted first by Ghost, who got up suddenly from where he was lying next to Arya in front of the fire, and started to almost run around the room like a haunted soul. Shaggy Dog copied him: no matter that he was bigger than the albino, he always followed him like a puppy.
Jon Snow opened the door to let them out, scoffing at Sansa's glare.
"They vow to be loyal to us and they let two innocent dire wolves scare them?"

Two innocent dire wolves as big as young horses, this he hadn't mentioned.

Only after a few minutes Catelyn started again to work through the knots on Rickon's head, thinking that like she was accepting the present Sansa, she would do the same with Rickon, who sometimes acted more like an animal than a boy, who still spoke like a eight years old boy, who went around riding a dire wolf, who didn't seem to trust anyone who wasn't part of his family.

This meant, Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Jon.

(His first time meeting Daenerys Targaryne had been… it was enough to say that Rickon had looked at her with eyes filled with curiosity, at the polite smile on the dragon queen's mouth, and had walked away like he was dismissing a maid- leaving Shaggy Dog to sniff at her feet like an overexcited puppy. She hadn't been offended somehow.)

"Will you marry Gendry, if they legitimize him?" Rickon asked casually, and Arya grunted with so little delicacy that Catelyn, had she been ten years younger, would have been horrified.

"I won't marry anyone."

"An affair then?"

At this, Catelyn was horrified.

"You know" Jon Snow started, as courteous as a proper Lord "They made me King in the North while you were away, this means that I could exile you if you say anything like this again. Or Gendry, if he does the wrong thing."

"You're no tyrant" Arya roller her eyes again, smiling and laying down with her face pressed against her little brother's calf.

"I could be one. If Gendry offended me in such a way."

He wouldn't, Catelyn knew it.

"I'm not a child anymore, Jon. You can't tell me what to do."

"I can tell Gendry what to do. As long as I'm his king."

"I’ve never heard you call yourself king so easily" Catelyn noticed almost distractedly.

Snow scoffed lowly. He was particularly expressive that evening, and it hadn’t been an immediate transformation.
It had happened slowly, until the heat had finished melting the boy like a piece of ice, and he had laughed, joked, spread his lips in such wide smiles that Catelyn had almost been frightened.

"Forgive me Lady Stark, but have you heard what they've been saying around here?"

"Don't let me stop you from protecting her honor" she internally cheered, finally loosening the thicker knot she had ever seen, and wet her hands with water to run her fingers through Rickon’s hair without, finally, encountering any obstacles.

Rickon looked at her with childish surprise, and Catelyn looked up to see that Arya and Sansa were not in a different condition.
The hands in Rickon's hair stopped suddenly, and Catelyn stiffened- but she relaxed her shoulders, refusing to face what had just happened.
Jon Snow kept mumbling at Gendry's expense in a low voice, even as he stood to rekindle the slowly weakening fire in the fireplace.

They stayed silent for a few moments, until Rickon emerged from his thoughts and jumped to sit down. Catelyn blinked in surprise when the water hit her, but Rickon didn’t seem to care.

"Tell us a story, Jon!"

Jon, who was sitting down again, looked at Rickon startled, but Catelyn wondered why.

Even before Jon Snow fought against the Others, before he became Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, was named King in the North and went behind the Wall, Rickon and Bran had sat with their forehead against his knees, against Robb's, asking for new stories every night.
Because Jon and Robb never held back any scary detail.

Ned always tried to not say everything, since Bran had once had nightmares for a whole week for a particularly accurate description of the latest beheading Robb had watched.

Jon Snow had always, always been weak for Catelyn's children.
"Of course" he accepted easily.

Rickon tried to jump on him, but Catelyn held him back.
"Fool" she reprimanded him gently, and wiped a dry cloth over his head "Get dry, or you’ll soak your brother's clothes more than you've soaked my own."

No one, as Rickon jumped to sit at Jon’s feet, as Bran advised him to tell them about Mance Rayder and his people, as Jon Snow began to speak, had the cruelty to point out to Catelyn how he had just called Jon Rickon’s brother.

None.

But for the rest of the evening, Jon Snow’s eyes struggled to meet hers.

———

Catelyn sat next to Arya, on the ground, with her back against the wall behind her and bending her knees. She was a Lady, the Lady of Winterfell, so she was careful and fixed the end of her gown to not let anyone see things they weren't supposed to.

It was a beautiful gown. The color was dark, not dark and neither grey, with simple white embroideries on the neckline and on the wrists- It was one of her old dresses, one of the few that hadn't been burned with the rest, and even though she still hadn't put on enough weight to make it fit perfectly, she was almost there.

Eating, she'd found out, wasn't as pleasurable as it once had been.

In a place like Winterfell a dish of warm food shared with family was mayhap the most appreciated moment of the day, all together around their table, drinking spoons of warm broth, or scalding milk just taken from the fire, tearing off bites from boiled or roasted meat as if they were animals, eating freshly baked cakes with cold fruit on top, a strong contrast that always blessed the mouth.

Catelyn couldn't do it anymore, not as authentically, and eating was now no more than a physiological need that kept her alive and running.

At first, she'd believed that with her children at her side she would finally be able to again, but nothing had changed, because that feeling of nausea was not generated by the absence of her children, but by the existence and survival of men she wanted to see dead, and no matter that they were all dead now the nausea remained, undisturbed.

And Catelyn still ate, under the watchful eyes of Sansa who hadn't appreciated to see her come back from Dragonstone with less meat on her bones than before, just enough to keep on living. At times, Catelyn forced herself to eat those extra bites just to see her calm down and smile slightly.

Arya was as thin as Catelyn was, nothing but thick and lean muscle on her bones.

She had noticed it, that just (almost) like Catelyn, she ate the food she needed to and then draper her arm over the chair’s back, watching them in silence as they cleaned their plates and chatted.

Unlike Catelyn, Arya didn't force herself to eat more for Sansa’s sake.

Catelyn had seen her sitting alone on the bastion, eyes fixed upon the dark sky.

She copied her position, but the stars were impossible to see. There were too many lighted torches around them, and the lights of the sky were invisible to them, even though they both knew that they were above them.

It was a calm enough night, if one ignored the loom of death about to kill them like moths too close to a fire.

Catelyn didn’t know what to say to Arya.

She didn’t know many things, but Arya would always be the biggest unknown in her life.

"Your sword," she asked, voice low as if not to disturb the silence, the calm before the storm "You used it."

Arya did not look at her but rather continued to look up, the black above them about to swallow them whole.

"Yes" she said so casually, and the words came out of her mouth with an easiness that made Catelyn shiver "I used it to kill the sons of Walder Frey. I became a cook in his halls, and I served the old man their remains. I cut his head off, and sewn one of theirs on his neck. I poisoned whoever was a part of their family."

Catelyn breathed, and the small puff of air out of her mouth condensed, becoming white fog in her eyes. Her gown was warm, and the fur covered cloak Sansa had sewn for her kept her safe from the cold. Arya, next to her, with her pants and leather tunic and the one-shoulder cloak, looked almost naked.

Catelyn remembered Walder Frey, and she remembered his children, and she remembered his soldiers.

And Catelyn tried.

She tried to feel pity for those among them who had done nothing wrong. She tried to convince herself that blood was never the right answer to blood, she tried to be horrified. She tried to find the words to rebuke her daughter, to feel disgust, to look at her with scared eyes. She did, truly.

"Thank you" she merely said, looking for stars that she was sure were above her.

She tried not to think of the smell of blood, the slimy smile on Walder Frey’s face, the noise that the knife had made when it moved at the base of her head, cutting off the long braid that gathered her hair in a clear gesture.
She tried not to see in the dark sky the pool of blood around the body of her son, the dagger to his heart gone so deep that the tip came out of his back, she tried to think of the stars and the sky, but at their place she only found iron on her tongue that made her nauseous, the noises of blades meeting blades uselessly, the bile that had risen up her throat when she'd seen her son’s head cut off from his neck with a blunt blade.

It hadn't been a quick work, and the sounds of meat being sliced and bones being broken was fire in her ears even after four years.

She tried to feel sadness at the thought of a whole family being wiped out, and the only thing she could see was Grey Wind's head being sewn to his son’s neck by a maid who trembled and cried in despair at what she was being forced to do.

"I’m sorry you had to use it" she added.

She would never be sorry for the fate of the Freys.

"I'm not" said Arya, but a wall didn't rise high in the air between them.
After a few seconds she added "It was Jon who gave it to me. The day I left for King’s Landing and he for the Wall."

She was not even remotely surprised.

And this she said.

Arya hummed and turned to look at Catelyn for the first time that night. Catelyn did the same, meeting her grey eyes.

"You waited for the end of the world to stop hating him?"

Catelyn didn't need to answer.

They stayed quiet, together, shoulder to shoulder.

Catelyn felt her stomach tighten.
"Never in my life I've been able to stop you, But I have to try, at least" she laughed shortly, but a laugh made wet by non-shed tears.

They were looking at the sky again.
"I will survive" she said shortly.
Catelyn nodded, knowing that Arya wouldn't keep that promise, probably.

She rose, and walked away, forcing herself not to fall.

She almost ran into Sandor Clegane, who was walking in the opposite direction, but moved at last. She raised her head to look briefly at that hard and ruined face, but passed him without stopping.

Her feet led her to Ned's solar.

She wanted to rest there.

In a few hours she should have to go to the crypts, which had been secured: Jon Snow had ordered the graves opened and the bones disassembled for safety, and then he had more firmly walled up the remains of the Stark ancestors.
He did it with a contrite look on his face, but it had to be done.
After overseeing the operation he had hidden in the godswood until sunset, when Tormund returned to Winterfell bringing news of the fall of the Wall and the arrival of the Others.

Catelyn would go with Sansa and Rickon to the crypts, and she had not resisted, unlike Sansa who hated the idea of hiding underground.

But the crypts wouldn't protect them, if the soldiers were too slow in killing the Night King.

Trying not to think that Bran was their bait, and that Theon would be the last line of defense and the last obstacle for the Others, and that Arya would fight with the soldiers and men along with little Lyanna Mormont who Catelyn would have liked to take with her in the 'safe' crypts, Catelyn opened the door of her husband's solar, to find Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly engaged in a conversation that seemed important.

Jon Snow wasn't sitting on Ned's chair, behind the tall wooden table, but on the one in front of it, one that usually hosts would occupy, and Samwell was standing in front of the fire.

They both turned to look at her, and Tarly became red in the face.

"My lady" if he had been sitting, he would have jumped up like a spring, but since he was already standing he just stiffened like a log.

He exchanged a glance with Jon Snow, who struck him with tired eyes.

Catelyn must not have had a very friendly expression on her face, for Tarly became even more nervous and moved away from the fireplace towards the door which Catelyn still held open.

She tried to tell him that he should not leave for her, but he shook his head.

"No, my lady, thank you. I’m sure you- will have much to talk about."

Perhaps Tarly thought Catelyn was there to talk to Jon Snow, but a glance at the King was enough to make her realize that it was not the case.

Tarly left, and closed the door behind him.

The closed door muted the sounds from the outside, and with no hesitation Catelyn went to sit on Ned's chair.
She'd done it before, of course, but she hadn't in years.

It was a chair like many other, because her husband had never believed he had some special right to comfort. It had made him a good lord and a good man.

On the right arm, the wood had been chipped by something, and Catelyn knew by what. It had been Robb, as a child, as he played with his father’s dagger while he was away and accidentally stuck it in the wood.
He almost cut off his hand in the meantime, so Ned hadn’t cared much about the chair.

He had not set it aside, of course, and after perhaps fifteen years Catelyn traced her fingers over it distractedly.

Jon Snow was looking at her, and it was like he was seeing her for the first time.

His grey eyes were open, almost widened, as he studied every detail of Catelyn's face, of her gown, to then start again, and Catelyn wondered if he knew that he was doing it.
He looked like someone ready to go to war, with Longclaw at his hip and his hair tied, and like someone who was already battling against himself, with his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words, and his lips even trembling at times.

In the end, he lowered his eyes, but Catelyn was tired of silence.

Silence suffocated her.

"Whatever you need to tell me, Jon, I dare say now it's time to do it."

Rather than looking at her baffled, Jon took his head in his hands, shoulders curved as if he was about to break down. He bit his lower lip with so much strength that red stained his teeth.

When he stood up and started walking up and down the room, fists tightening and relaxing again and again, as if he was forcing himself not to punch something, Catelyn understood that something was deeply wrong.

He didn't even turn to look at her, as he spoke.
"Howland Reed looked for me. To talk. About my mother."

Catelyn felt like someone had struck her with a brick on the side of the head.
And she understood why Jon was so nervous.

From what she knew, Jon Snow didn't know who his mother was.

Ned had always been more than reserved on the matter, refusing to tell her who she was and even scaring her, to the point that Catelyn had never tried to ask again after the first time.
Catelyn, who at the time knew Ned only as the younger brother of the man she had been supposed to marry, had feared that he would even attack her, was she to be so impudent again. Before knowing him, and understanding that no matter how much anger resided in Ned, he would never hurt her, or their children.

But once, when the boy was only one and ten, she'd asked Ned if at least the boy knew of her identity, if he knew his mother's name, and Ned had clenched his jaw until bones became white below stretched skin, answering with a dry "He doesn't".

Ned had left for King’s Landing, and Jon Snow for Castle Black, ready to join a brotherhood and die with it, and he had never told Jon about his mother.

Jon Snow’s mother.

An enigma that had consumed her.

Perhaps if Ned had lied and said he was the son of a whore, the result of a night of loneliness and sadness and grief for the losses he had suffered, Catelyn would have accepted that woman’s existence more easily.
But this unknown entity, which Ned protected with such vigor and commitment?

For the Catelyn who at nine and ten worked hard to affirm her position in Winterfell, the woman who'd given Ned a son with dark hair and grey eyes was a curse.

And now, with Jon Snow who was as old as she'd been at the time, her ghost followed them, never leaving them just be.

Now, now that Catelyn had started to free herself from the guilt that had weighted on her since that night when she'd begged for the death of a child and lied to her gods, and that she'd found a way to redeem and forgive herself, now, the ghost became tangible.

Almost like they wanted to see her fail.

She didn't say anything, and Jon stopped in his track.
Like that, standing in a room that suddenly looked to small for just two people, arms at his side, eyes big, Jon Snow looked like a child.

"I killed her. When I- when she birthed me."

She cursed herself for the surprise that left her mouth agape.
Of all the possibilities she had imagined, when her mind wandered in corners that it should have left uninhabited, for some reason she always imagined the mysterious woman as a living woman, still breathing. Being haunted by a true ghost seemed impossible.

"Apparently he was there. She was six and ten, and not yet ready to give birth."

But no.

This woman, this girl, she corrected herself, was dead.

And Ned had been left with a bastard in his arms, and her heart felt pain for him, for the first time.

"You did not kill her" she said cautiously "To die in childbirth is a risk every woman has to take. It is our duty."

"It wasn't hers" he spat out, but not mean, there was no anger for Catelyn.
It was the voice, the face, the eyes of someone who'd just seen every one of his convictions destroyed by the teeth and claws of a beast impossible to kill.

Catelyn, sitting in the chair of his husband, finally let herself be angry at him.

"Mayhap" she easily accepted "But it is never the child's fault. Birth is a delicate procedure, one made hard and difficult by the gods. Had I been killed, birthing one of my children, would you have considered her or him guilty of my death?"

"But none of them are-"

None of them were bastards.

Catelyn shook her head.
"It matters not. A child… is a child. Regardless of-" she hesitated, words heavy on her tongue "-the child's parents."

"No, no, no" he shook his head "You don't understand, you don't-"

"It matters not, Jon."

"Don't-"

"Jon" she called his name, sharpness tinting her voice, and immediately his eyes snapped on her "Childbirth is universal. Regardless of a woman’s status, wealth and strength, there is always a great risk to be taken. You did not kill your mother."

Every word she said was loud and clear, as she tried to get into his head what she meant, and Ned must have been laughing at her.
Here she was, comforting her husband’s bastard son, reassuring him that it wasn’t his fault that his mysterious mother had died.
But in that moment, she knew, she wasn't comforting her husband's bastard, but the older brother of her children. The boy, the man who had taken Catelyn's hate and ignored it, favoring the love he felt for her children, the man who guided them with a carefulness worthy of the title he deserved and had inherited, the boy who looked at her destroyed by the truth he'd learned.

Catelyn wasn't happy to know his mother dead. Pure relief filled her heart, when she realized it, that her vindictive and sometimes immature nature wasn't as strong as it had been, that it didn't cloud her judgments as often as it had, that the didn't make as many mistakes as she used to.

"But there's more" she acknowledged, because Jon Snow still looked at her as if searching in her ways to understand a world he couldn't seem to comprehend anymore.

He shook his head "She- she didn't- he-"
He was talking about Ned.
He paused, again, and suddenly got closer to her, with a strength and agility that almost surprised, in a movement so wrong that she almost recoiled in her seat.

"I won't be King for long. I won't be King, because- because I'm not what you think I am, and because I will die, probably, before tomorrow morning."
He didn't seem particularly saddened by the knowledge.
"If I survive- I will tell you everything, but now… Sansa" it didn't surprise Catelyn to hear her name "I know that she will be a good queen. She'll remarry, she will have heirs, if she doesn't there's still Arya, there's Rickon, Bran. Respect the order, they may be women but we know" there was a weight on that we, that made her spine straighten even more. Like he was entrusting her something more important than she thought "That they'll be capable. And if you're the last one standing, Lady stark, the crown is the Starks'."

"Tell me that you never wanted it, your throne, Jon Snow" she interrupted him "Tell me, and I will do as you say."

"You once told me that what I want matters nothing."

"Tell me."

He looked at her, hands around the edges of the table, looking ready to snap it in half. He wouldn't, because the wood was older than their years added together.
"I've wanted it, in the past. A part of me will always want it."

"Then have the courage to have it."

"The only thing" his voice trembled "That I've ever truly wanted, was to be a part of your family. But no titles or thrones could give me what I want."

"Jon" that was the fourth time she said his name that night.

The first time she'd done it at all, he had hoped for something other than her hatred, and found nothing else.

Now it was as if Catelyn were drunk on it, as if she could not stop herself, now that she had allowed herself to look at that face, so like Ned's, Brandon's, Arya's, so like the one of the child she had hated, and so different at the same time, and see something she might have loved. That, one way or another, she would end up loving as her own. Because Jon Snow, in one way or another, had become hers.

Jon didn't sit down, and he stayed in front of her, head bent, a step from falling apart at the seams.
Catelyn knew that, the moment he would have to draw his sword, he would do it with no weakness.

"I’m no longer a boy" he said in a low voice, "I don’t try to- force myself to hate Robb anymore, just because he would have inherited Winterfell, even though I was better than him in so many things. Because all I wanted, was for my... father not to be ashamed of me. That you would stop seeing me as a threat, that Robb would forget that we were not really brothers. Because he knew it too. The conditions of my birth did not leave him be either."

Catelyn stayed still.

"But Sansa, Arya, Bran- Rickon" he implored, eyes like liquid silver, almost glowing in the low lights "They have to remember. You have to remind them. That they have to survive, because they are my, our future, and even though I will never be their real brother, I've never loved anyone as I love them."

To argue, Catelyn understood, would be futile.

And then- her, discussing with Jon the legitimacy of his relationship with his half-siblings?

So she simply nodded.

She breathed in heavily.

"Who’s your mother, Jon?"

He closed his eyes, and said "I will tell you, I swear. When it’s all over, to all of you."

With this promise he left Ned’s solar, and Catelyn stood alone, watching the fire. The sky was dark, but dawn was near.

She started to walk towards the crypts.

———

Catelyn had seen many corpses in her life.

It didn’t matter that she was a proper Lady, when that was the third war she survived- the fourth, if she counted what had been called the Battle of the Bastards, and Catelyn had to count it. She had never seen so many corpses together, packed in a sickly circle drawn by the mad mind of Ramsay Bolton, as on that day.

The skeleton that fell to the ground before her still had slices of dry muscles attached to the bones by weak tendons, and no longer smelled of rotting flesh.

She didn’t even think about the fact that it once had been a person, so great was the relief to see all those creatures collapsing on the ground like puppets whose strands were cut off.

It didn’t matter, they were all dead.

And they were alive.

Sansa, her girl, from whom she'd been separated, came from behind a walled tomb, that had shook but had fallen silent with the dead army, followed by Tyrion Lannister.

Rickon's hand, tight against hers, she didn't let it go.

Walking among the bodies, among the destroyed statues of their ancestors, walking towards the stone stairwell that would led them out of that dark, wet place, she prayed her gods to let her see her children again.

Jon's face was between theirs, and she wasn't left surprised.

———

The book was heavy and almost too large in her hands.

Jon Snow had flipped through its pages, with a delicacy made necessary by the frailty of them, and when he'd found the one he needed he'd turned the tome on the table, so that they could read it.
Arya had lifted it closer to her eyes to better read the faded words, and her eyebrows had raised. She was confused. Sansa hadn't reacted differently.

Catelyn had raised it, just like her daughter, and had read with not little difficulty. The ink was old, and to get to read what Jon Snow had pointed with a finger she found herself forced to read the bowl movements of an unknown Maester.

"... an annulment for Prince Rhaegar... marriage to Elia Martell" she frowned "married to Lyanna Stark in Dorne."
Her voice slowly faded.
She raised her head, and Jon Snow wasn’t looking at her.
"How did you find out?"

"Sam found it. When he left the Citadel he brought this with him, because… I don't know why. He thought this important, probably, since Lyanna Stark is part of our family, and she wanted us to know."

"What, that the Targaryen Prince not only kidnapped and raped her, but also forced her to marry him?"
Sansa asked, her voice hardened, but Jon shook his head.

"No. Rhaegar and Lyanna loved each other. At least, she love him more than she loved Robert Baratheon, who she was promised to. He didn't kidnap her, she ran away with him."

Nobody said anything. Nobody could say anything. The idea alone seemed surreal.

"How can you know?"

"Howland Reed told me. Only he and your husband knew, and even Ned didn’t know until after the war."

That’s what they'd talked about.
When Sansa whispered "A civil war for nothing..." Catelyn shook her head.
"The seeds of war were already there. King Aerys got worse with every crow that came, and the seven kingdoms had begun to stir. Your aunt’s escape was only the fuse that set the flames, not the oil that fueled it."

"Why does it matter?" Arya was looking at Jon with a strange expression on her face.

And Catelyn couldn't blame her, since the man looked ready to faint, or throw up.

When he opened his mouth, he looked ready to say something of of exorbitant importance, but the few words that left it were "I'm their son".

Probably, Catelyn tried to rationalize, he had prepared a nice speech, that was supposed to make them understand how such a thing was possible, that would gradually lead them to the truth, but instead he said those three words almost without wanting to.

Nothing clearer, nothing more sincere.

And what a fine speech, he must have prepared, if the regret in his eyes was to mean something.

No one jumped to their feet, no one screamed, no one gasped, they all stood motionless like statues, letting their minds absorb what Jon Snow had just said.
Catelyn did the same.

She heard those words.
So, he is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, she thought.
So, the woman who died giving birth to him was Lyanna Stark, she thought.
Ned knew it, she thought.
She thought a million different things.

The few memories she had of Lyanna Stark, rare moments when Ned had allowed himself to remember her and share his love for her with Cat, passed before her eyes, the voice of her husband a happy background.
Benjen Stark, who looked at Jon Snow and said "he looks like Lyanna more than Arya", eyes far and dark, immersed in memories and thinking about what he had just said, a shadow always present in his eyes.
She also thought of Ben, yes. She even thought of Brandon. She thought of a million things.

And lastly, she thought. Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. And it hit her like a hammer to the head.

"What?" Sansa asked, breathlessly.

"I'm- their son. Your cousin" he turned to look at Catelyn "Your nephew."
Regardless of the fact that she was sitting, she felt ready to fall, light-headed.
"Bran saw it. Lyanna died of childbirth and my… Ned and Howland Reed were there. He promised her to protect me from… from everyone. And he let everyone think I was his bastard. Robert Baratheon would have seen me dead, like my half-siblings. He hid me for fourteen years, and he died keeping his promise and what happened a secret."

Catelyn couldn't say if he looked like Lyanna Stark.

Of her she'd only seen a statue, and once Ned had told her, his voice echoing in the dark crypts regardless of its low volume, that Lyanna and that statue were two entirely different things.

Lyanna had been a storm caged in a small and strong body, a beast hidden under the looks of a beautiful young woman, a Lady who used to train with her little brother to use the sword, who stopped only when she saw it ripped away from her hands by a father and a Lord who'd had enough.
Lyanna had hated the idea of marriage, just like Arya, and Ned hadn't been able to see in time that his sworn brother was not the man she wanted to marry at all.
Lyanna had lied and fought, as fierce as few could be, full of fervor, she'd never run away from a fight, more similar to Brandon than anyone else.

That statue, caged in the dark crypts of Winterfell, was still. Still, frozen, beautiful. A delicate smile on her face, a smile that, Ned had added, she'd never had.
Lyanna Stark used to smile like a wolf does.

Jon Snow wasn't like this. Jon Snow was his father's son.

He was controlled, quiet, trusting in the truth and value of his honor and duty, ready to make the difficult choice for the survival of the people he cared for.
Brandon hadn't been like this, Lyanna neither, but Ned had been this.
A kind soul, who hated conflict, and hate, but who was ready to give his life to protect his loved ones, and his honor.

This, was Jon Snow.
Someone who was never supposed to become King, but who had despite everything and who'd done his duty.

Eddard Stark's son.
Someone who was never supposed to become Lord, but who had despite everything and who'd done his duty.

"You're his legitimate heir" said then Arya.

"Of the Targaryen Prince" went on Rickon, surprise drawn on his face.

"You're the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne."

Sansa was looking at him like she couldn't believe what Jon had suddenly become in front of her.

Jon Snow, sitting before them, in front of the fire of Ned Stark’s solar, didn't look like the heir to the Iron Thrones, nor the lost prince that he was, nor the great King in the North who had fought against the Night King and emerged victorious, on his neck the marks of where the creature had choked him with his cold hand without mercy, full of hatred.

He looked like Jon Snow, the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, dead and resurrected a month before, who had sacrificed his mere seven and ten years of life to make the right thing, the right choice, who spoke of what had happened with a heavy heart and a few hours of sleep, unable to feel the warming heat of the fire, lost in a darkness no living man should know.

She wondered if Jon Snow, more than two years after that day when he'd died, was now able to feel cold, warmth, hunger, thirst, tiredness, instead of living them like it was another body, the one who was truly feeling them.
She wondered if he'd found his humanity again. Suddenly, that mattered more than his parents' identity.

Jon nodded quietly, and Sansa inhaled sharply.

Arya turned to Catelyn.
"And you didn't know?"

She didn't find the strength to feel offended.

"Do you think I would have hated him so, had I known he was the son of Lyanna Stark?" she asked instead, exhausted.

No one knew how to answer to that, because that was a question they could easily answer to.
But at the same time, Catelyn had never been as open and aware of her feelings for Jon. Never she'd admitted to hating him before, no matter how everyone knew she did.

That she had.

Because Catelyn didn't hate Jon Snow.

She'd hated him, feared what he could become. She'd found him disgusting, she'd felt loathing at his mere sight, knowing that he was alive and her son was dead. She'd got to know him, and now, she didn't hate him.

Looking at him, she only felt sadness. At times joy, because he was both a memory from the past and a promise for the future, just like Sansa. Guilt, regret, for what they could have had- but that they could never have.
Anger, naturally.
She was training herself to let go of that resentment the same way they trained dogs in Winterfell for the hunts that even Ned joined.

And she was doing it well.

Now she looked at Jon, and she could see the person he was, and not the enemy she'd created to feel safer.

And now, as he spoke of lost mothers and royal blood, she knew that none of her actions could be justified.

Because a Lady would understand, perhaps, the fear of bastards, the prejudices with which she had been raised and that were taught to her. She still remembered the voice of her septa explaining that bastards were born from sin and lies, and that they promised nothing but sin and lies.

But Jon Snow was not even that, a bastard, a threat to the legitimate children of His Lord Father.

He was heir to the Iron Throne. He was the son of Lyanna Stark.
He was Ned's nephew.
(He was his son.)

And Catelyn felt the weight of her mistakes, that at times made her feel like her lungs couldn't work anymore, fall down on her like a mountain.

Because now, her sin was not only that she unjustly hated a child. That she prayed for him to die.
No. Her sin was to have hated the son of Lyanna Stark, young, unfortunate Lyanna Stark, dead at six and ten because alone and unprepared.

But the original sin, was that, and she confronted it yet another time.

Hatred and resentment, as she once said, for a motherless, blameless child.

"He let me join the Night’s Watch, and promised to tell me everything once I sworn my vows. Tell me about my... mother" he swallowed "He wanted that, even if word spread, having renounced any title with my oath, King Robert couldn't kill me."

Robert would have killed him.
He would have seen him dead, slaughtered like little Aegon and little Rhaenys, their bodies butchered by the cruelty of a man who now, Catelyn could no longer force herself to appreciate for her husband’s sake.

Her husband, who committed high treason by hiding the Targaryen heir under Robert’s nose. Who he had never really forgiven for the infanticide committed not by his order but approved by him.

Catelyn had always wondered how he could speak of him with even a little fondness, after what she had told about the young children of Elia Martell. About Elia Martell herself.

Now she knew.

All a deception, a huge lie, to protect his sister’s son.

Her stomach was tight, and she felt sour bile rising up her throat.

"I never learned from my mistakes" Catelyn had told Jon, not even four moons before.

And now?

Arya sat up, and walked closer to her brother.

"You're no cousin of mine" her voice left no space for contradictions "You're my brother, because I grew up with you at my side. You told me stories to make me fall asleep at night, you helped me to climb a tree for the first time, in the godswood. You gifted me with my first sword, and you were the only one who could see me as more than a lady, a wife and a mother."

She stood in front of him, and he raised his eyes to properly look at her. His face had become a sad thing, tensed in a pained expression.

"You're my brother as much as Bran, and Rickon, and- Robb, you're my brother, Jon. The two of us, against the world. Us. Regardless of your father, were he Ned Stark or Rhaegar Targaryen. And… regardless of the throne you will choose to sit on."

The anger on Jon’s face was sudden, strong, and familiar. He joined the sadness that never seemed to leave him but which had become ten times heavier-

"Throne? Heir? Do you even hear- I don’t care about the Iron Throne. I don’t want it, as I never wanted-"

"Do not lie" Catelyn rebuked him, incredibly out of place, and Jon was not discouraged by it.

"I won't even stay here" he said, because he wasn't done saying unexpected things that night "And you keep on-"

"You intend to leave?"

"It doesn't matter now."

Sansa jumped to her feet "It matters, Jon. All of this matters- the fact that you're a Targaryen, that you're the legitimate heir- not Daenerys, the third-born and the daughter of a mad king, but you, the son of his first-born son."

Jon Snow looked at her, pale, his scars redder and darker than usual- and Catelyn realized that he looked the same as when he had died, and was brought back to life. That time that had lasted some months, during which Jon had been more corpse than man.

"I’m not a Targaryen" weakly came out of his lips, and Catelyn squeezed her eyes, taking advantage of the fact that no one was looking at her to raise a hand to cover her forehead. She breathed deeply into her palm, trying to calm her heart, but it would not cooperate.
She forced herself to breathe in and out at a precise rhythm. She had learned to do it, when the heart was racing and breath became short despite her being sat down.

"You're right. You're my husband's son" announced Catelyn, her voice shaken. She knew that she was as pale as him.

"I- I'm not."

And then Catelyn slammed a hand on the wooden table, and raised her voice.

"You are. I see my husband in all of you- in my daughters, in my sons. I saw him in Robb. I saw him in Theon" her eyes became wet. No one interrupted her.
"But when I look at you, there are times when I can only see him. It matters not, how different you may be. You're similar in every way that matters. And I will not let you forget how much your father loved you. That for him you were a son, that-" her voice trembled "he would have legitimized you, had I not fought against it, hadn't Robert been ready to butcher you as he did your half-siblings."

Jon looked at his hands, so tight against each others that the bones of his knuckles were white.

Catelyn, when she allowed herself to speak to the boy with honesty and bluntness, setting aside the hatred and resentment she had once felt and refusing to let them guide her, had some power over him.

This, she had discovered.

It was as if her words were blows that would strike him, not hurting him, but with enough force to absorb away the urge to scream and fight from him- or to fill him with it, at the same time.

It hadn't always been so.

But time had passed.

And her words, what she thought, meant something to Jon.

"I've always wanted to be a Stark. I've never been one, despite how much you loved me. My consolation was knowing that… my father loved me. But at times I hated him, and believed he didn't love me as much as I deserved. When he sent me to the Wall, without telling me about its true nature, making me sweat a vow that lasted my whole life. When he called me son, but never gave me his name" his breath came out choked "And now- he committed treason for me. They would have killed him, had they found out about who I was. He risked, he lied, he stained his honor, for me. And I've been ungrateful-"

"You've always been a Stark, Jon" Sansa tried.

He looked at her with a sort of fond acceptance- accepting that she would never understand.

Catelyn understood, what Sansa was thinking.
For her, Jon was a Stark. He was her brother. She loved him as his brother. She would have made him a Stark, with the power and his approval. If he hadn't seen that offer as a way to keep him content when he still thought of them as displeased for his role in the North.

For her, Jon wasn't supposed to doubt his place in her family. For her, everything was obvious.

For Jon, nothing was.

"Was I ever?"

"You’re in my first memory" Rickon spoke out of nowhere, sitting on the cold floor, his back resting on Bran’s paralyzed legs, his head on the older one's right knee "Together with Robb. I don’t remember much about him. But I do remember you, probably because I saw you again since you left. I remember you. You were always there. Why shouldn’t you be part of my family?"

Catelyn’s throat tightened. Her baby, her little Rickon.

"If you’re a Targaryen, fine. But you’re a Stark first, aren't ya? You’ve got a dire wolf, you have father’s looks, you’ve been in the True North. You are the King in the North. You have honor, you do your duty, you have no dragons, and fire burns you. The Targaryens of the stories you told me were strong warriors, but none of them are as strong as you."

Rickon wasn't a child, not anymore, not completely, but he was enough of a child to still have that innocent honesty from which no one could escape, that no one could dismiss, that made every word ring true.

And maybe Jon needed just this- the honest words of his little brother. Of the child he'd held with stars in his eyes, who he had lifted by his hands, encouraging him to take his first steps and learn new movements, a new balance on his short legs, the child who'd needed three years to learn how to properly say his name without ignoring its first letter.

Looking at Jon, with all the explosive anger boiling in her veins, Catelyn saw nothing but the child that her husband had recognized as his, and raised as his.

"Daenerys knows" Arya asked. The look on her face impossible to read.

"Aye, I told her. Before the battle. She didn’t react well, but only because she thinks I want her throne. She has fought for it too hard and too long to see it taken away by a forgotten nephew, and she knows that I would gain more support just because I am a man."
It was an injustice to her, but even if Jon had been a woman he would have more right to the throne than Daenerys.
"I thought she would've liked to know that she’s not the last Targaryen left, but ours isn't a family free from the games of politic."

"Not everyone can be like us."
Rickon shrugged , and Catelyn smiled at Jon, knowing that perhaps for the first time it was true.

All of them were one family, free from the plots that destroyed the Targaryens, the discord that divided the Lannisters, and the cruelty and greed of the Freys that brought them to extinction.

They trusted few people, but they trusted no one as much as they trusted each other- the war hadn't made them paranoid, but closer than ever.

Grief and joy after so much time spent apart had united them.

Catelyn would have liked to not have had to pay for it with Ned, Robb and Theon.

"Jon" Sansa’s voice was barely louder than a whisper "What did you mean by 'I won’t stay here'?"

The smile on Jon’s face slowly faded.

He looked at Sansa, his eyes filled with affection and sadness.
"I won't stay here, playing King. I might have done it once, but not now. I could be able to, perhaps, but the thing is- I don’t want to, Sansa. My mission was to defeat the Others. Now, I have no reason to remain King."

"They wanted you. Will you thus dishonor the houses loyal to you, ignoring their will?"

"They wanted me, yes, but there was a war, and someone like me was needed, while I needed the title of king to make me listen."

"Robb wanted you king."

Catelyn saw him tremble, but he didn't fall, not even under Sansa’s accusing words.

"Aye. But... I’m tired, Sansa. I’ve spoken to Tormund. He told me that I could always go with him, with them, to the True North, and- I never really breathed as when I was with them."

Arya said nothing. Catelyn had no doubt that she would support her brother in any way possible.

Sansa said nothing, but she looked at Jon as if he had betrayed her in the worst way. Catelyn, feeling as tired as ever, could not blame Jon, and the hope in his voice.

"If that’s what you want."

It was clear that the matter was not closed.

"I will not go immediately. I'll stay, to help you as I can, and only when I know that-"

"Jon. I understand."

She didn't, not really, Catelyn could read it on her face.

But they would leave it be, for now.

Because they'd won.

They didn't know what to do with Daenerys Targaryen, who'd helped them but to whom they couldn't kneel.

"So, the mother of dragons?"

"I will talk to her, before… I'd like for us to be at least not against each other. I have to try if I can" he added seeing Arya's dubious look.

"With you ruling over the North she will mayhap be more inclined to grant us independence."

Catelyn knew that to be false.

"Traditionally, Targaryens marry each other to keep the blood of Valyria pure. If Jon stayed, chances are that Daenerys would seek an alliance of this sort. And her name would remain on the throne, not the one of the man she will marry."

Jon looked at Bran with wide eyes.

"Did you see it? Do you know what will happen?"

Bran didn't shrug, but did something scarily similar, and Jon seemed terrified.

"The queen is not that ugly" Rickon began to play with Bran’s pants.

"She's my aunt."

"Targaryens marry their siblings."

"But I'm not a Targaryen, I'm a-" he cut himself off mid-sentence, eyes sharpening on his brother, and Arya started snickering. The grin on her face was the most immature thing Catelyn had ever seen.

"See? The worst you could do, as a Stark, is marry your cousin."
Slowly, the grin on her face disappeared.
Both Arya and Jon turned to Bran, who felt enough pity to shake his head. Their breath of relief definitely relaxed the solemn air in that room.

"You found out that you're our cousin and your first worry is that you could now marry one of us?" Sansa sounded tired, a man covering her eyes, and Rickon laughed.

"He could marry even you-"

Catelyn let them continue, interrupting and speaking on each other, creating a background chaos of noises that was familiar to her ears.

What they had just overcome was a hopeless battle. They had won, somehow, and were still alive, and here they were together. They were not alone, but united, still together.

It didn’t seem real to her.

They were alive.

Jon Snow... was Jon Snow, after all.

She didn't hate him, and hadn't for a long time.

And now, as she watched him talk with her daughters, her sons, as they laughed carefree trying not to think about what was waiting for them outside the door... Was the affection she felt sincere?

Or was it simply a product of the guilt that had consumed her and still consumed her? Was it born from the knowledge that he wasn’t really a bastard?

He was no longer a bastard, but perhaps for Catelyn he would always be.

A bastard boy who tried not to be seen as he spied on his father from the corner of the room where he had been sent to dine with the servants, while exchanging complicit smiles with his brother, as he watched his family face the issue of his birth with a lightness that he couldn't afford.

Ned had done it, Robb had done it, Arya even, all of them had deluded themselves, perceiving Jon as a bastard, but a better bastard than the others, more important, different, and based on what? Their love for him?
What power would their love have in the face of a war?

Catelyn had always and only seen him as a bastard.

Even now that she knew... that she knew.

She was beginning to doubt that Jon wanted to be seen in another way, now that he had found peace with the world he had to live in.

But not everyone had been as lucky as him, hadn't they?

Arya laughed, smiled and joked, but she didn’t let go of her grip on Needle, and she hadn’t for even a brief second.
Arya wouldn't rest, not before cutting the throat of Cersei Lannister, slitting it like a goat's.

Sansa pretended to wrinkle her nose as she would have done in the past, but there was a line on her forehead that would not go away soon. The weight of the crown already weighed on her shoulders, and it would never go away, and Sansa still didn't know that she would hold it with the grace of powerful ancient queens.

Rickon closed his eyes and buried his hands in Shaggy Dog's fur, but still flinched if someone walked out of their door, still at times he seemed to forget how to speak and ended up puffing and giving up to tap a finger on Shaggy Dog's forehead, exchanging friendly looks with him, that in another universe he would have exchanged with them.

Bran? Bran was gone. The baby that Catelyn was ready to burn the world to the ground for, was gone. He was not dead, perhaps he was still there, buried under miles of mud and dust- perhaps he had become dust, blown away where Catelyn would never reach. There was no Bran left, who could find peace.

Jon had done it, and now he was wobbling on the fine line that was his life, over the abyss of the world in which they lived, desperately trying to stay in balance, searching for that balance that he had once managed to find.

Catelyn... didn't know where he was.

Perhaps she was also wobbling on that line.

She wasn't walking stable on it.

But Catelyn felt old. She was not, not yet, but she had lived and endured, and she had been wrong and she had been right, and she still had a family.
She had a stable centre, however shaken it had been in recent years.
She could be a stable center for others, as she had been for her son, and for her husband before him, she thought, watching her children groping through the dark.

They would find balance, together with peace.
And freedom, with it, would come.

———

Jon was waiting for her.

At least, it looked like this.

Catelyn walked slowly towards him, and she got closer and closer, step after step, until he was facing the boy. The man, she reminded herself, who matched her gaze with inscrutable eyes.

The fur on Catelyn's shoulders was heavy, and it kept her warm. Snowflakes had stopped falling from the sky two days before. Winter had started, but the death of the Night King had calmed the white-cold winds from North of the Wall and the storms that, a few days before, had looked ready to bury them all alive.

It was cold, but that wasn't Catelyn's first winter in Winterfell.

Sansa was telling something to Arya, as she sat on her horse, and to the man with her, the Hound, Sandor Clegane, a man Catelyn didn't know what to think about. She left them to talk, and Jon was watching her.

"The True North calls you, but not as much as I'd thought."

Jon moved his eyes to stare at the walls of Winterfell, then to the carriage where the Dragon Queen was supposed to travel for the first two weeks, before continuing atop one of her dragons.

"It calls me, aye, but my honor does too. I suppose."
He sounded almost, almost, amused.

He was not the only man from the North who had decided to join Daenerys Targaryen. She had invited anyone who wanted to follow her, and she had not been disappointed. Perhaps she had not even realized the influence of gratitude, and the weight of a debt.

By going south with her, Jon would settle a debt and confirm his offer of friendship to the future ruler of Westeros. At least, that’s what he wanted to call his last attempt at having some kind of connection with the only relative he had left from his father’s family.

The first step had been to decide to keep secret his true identity. Outside of Ned’s solar, where Catelyn and her children had found out about it, no one knew but Daenerys herself and Samwell.

Catelyn didn’t think it would do much good to let it be known.

"She won’t learn to love you just for this" her voice was as imperious as ever.

"I’m not sure. I hope so, maybe. But perhaps I'll be able to change something. I will. Try, that is."

He was lying, because he believed the plan he had thought of capable of winning him the favor of the mother of dragons. He thought he could succeed.
Either he was a fool, or Catelyn didn't have enough faith in him.
She let herself believe in him.

"Don’t let Arya die" she said instead. Those were heavy words, and Jon nodded with equal determination.

"Never. I don’t think she needs me to protect her anymore, though."

He'd been protecting her from the moment they separated, almost seven years before, in Winterfell, when he had entrusted her with Needle.
He always protected her, because he was her brother, and Arya, even if she didn’t need or want it, would always have his protection.
They pretended not to know.

Catelyn examined his face with sharp eyes.

He was tired, but not like before.
This would be, probably, his last battle, but it was different from the last one he had to fight. Here they fought not dead walking men who couldn't be called men anymore, but men of flesh and blood, and a queen whom they hated with all their heart, and an army as alive as them.

It was not his first time, but Catelyn hoped it would be the last.

Ghost slipped between them, and Jon passed a heavy hand on his head, and on the severed but healed ear.

"With him at your side you won't have to fear anything" he smiled, but the hint of honesty in his words made Catelyn's heart twist.

She raised her hand, and hesitated for a long second.

Finally, ignoring the cold winter air that made it impossible for her to not shiver, she raised it to Jon's face, and gently touched his cheek with it.

He almost recoiled, and his body moved under her palms, eyes wide like never before, but he didn't. He didn't, he stayed still, then, searched for something on Catelyn's own face. He lowered his gaze, to the arm covered by the sleeves of her gown and the pale wrist he could see, and he looked at her again. Maybe he found what he was searching for.

Whatever he was waiting for, it didn't come.

"Come back."
 She said nothing else, and there was no need to.

Even as Catelyn turned to walk toward the porch, to find shelter from the biting cold, the warmth of Ghost at her side, Jon Snow’s eyes did not move from her back.

(For the first time in his life, he had tasted the love of a mother.

He marched south, always feeling that Catelyn Stark’s cold fingers were still on his face. )