Chapter Text
Jon was tired; so very tired. Death takes a toll on a man. It takes a toll on places too, Jon thought as he stood in the courtyard of Winterfell and looked at the castle, burned and scarred and broken, like he was.
His mind went briefly to Ygritte. He tried to imagine what she would feel if she lived long enough to see the castle. Her eyes would have widened to see Winterfell perhaps, even in its ruined state. I loved a maid as red as autumn, he’d heard Dareon sing once, with sunset in her hair. Did he love Ygritte? He may have, but his memories of her were so blurred, he could only remember flashes of what they had. And all those memories did was left him with a lot of confusion.
He wondered what she would have said if he brought her here. Ygritte would have probably made a jape of it. Laugh at him for being raised in such a place and calling it home.
Home.
Winterfell was his home once. When the people he knew roamed the halls, his siblings, his father, the cooks, the stable boys, the men at arms, the guards, even Lady Catelyn. When he was a child he would have given anything to call Winterfell his. Now it felt less like a home and more like a tomb. Even with his wilding comrades around and Maester Sam, it wasn’t home, not anymore.
He had left the Greyjoy siblings in the dungeons at Castle Black without listening to whatever the turncloak was so desperate to say to him, and the queen, the princess and Jeyne Poole had stayed behind with Stannis’s men and the wildling princess guarding them until Stannis Baratheon returned. Lady Melisandre didn’t stay with them as he had hoped. She followed him back to Winterfell.
The red woman lurked about the halls in her long, red robes and flowing silks, watching him with fervour in her eyes. It unnerved him. He wished he could send her away, but he wasn’t so ungrateful to do such a thing. She resurrected him. He was cold and dead and then born again through fire; and though he never asked her to, never wished anyone would, he was grateful for it at the time.
For there was one thing on his mind after his rebirth through fire, his sister. Arya Underfoot. He was killed because he desired to save his sister. Love may truly be the death of duty, but he didn’t regret his choice. He only regretted that he died before he could save her. He let her down when she most needed it. Jon didn’t want to make that mistake again.
But it was Jeyne Poole that they brought to him when he awoke, along with Asha and Theon Greyjoy; Jeyne was beaten and scarred and pitiful, not Arya. He had never before felt a rage that intense. He subdued it as much as he could so as not the scare the girl. Furious he may have been, he was no Bolton or Lannister. When his anger got away from him, he didn’t take it out on the nearest object. He let some of the spearwives clean her up and found a place for her in Castle Black until he could return to Winterfell.
Somehow Winterfell was still his goal. He had felt as though he wouldn’t be able to rest until it was no longer in Bolton hands. He had to bait the Bolton bastard out of Winterfell. And despite her deceit, Jeyne was the person to help him. She had no wish to go back to Winterfell, the place held more nightmares for her than anything, but she gave him her face.
He rallied the North in Arya’s name, the Cerwyns, the Mormonts, the Glovers, the Reeds, even some of the free folk, they all fought for her and they all fought for no one.
When the truth was revealed, most of his father’s bannermen, after blustering and shouting at him for his deceit, agreed that he should hold the seat of House Stark until Ned Stark’s little girl came home. It was a hopeless wish. They all knew that Arya Stark had to be dead, he knew it too.
He could still feel the ghost of the kisses she placed on his face after he had given her Needle. Sisters are precious things. His father was right when he said that.
Jon felt as mislaid as he did, all those years ago, the first time he realised that he was had no place in the world. The Night’s Watch was his place for a time, but for him Castle Black now held the taint of betrayal. He could not stay there, and yet he could not deny his duty to protect the seven kingdoms from the Others, so he stayed at Winterfell. A Stark bastard was better than a Bolton bastard, some men had proclaimed but he knew that they looked at him with distrust. Bastard and liar that he was, he was also a dead man who walked the earth. People took caution to not look him in the eye, so they wouldn’t see the emptiness there. And the coldness. He wondered if the unending cold was because of the fierce winter winds or perchance because death leaves a man a corpse. Alive but still dead, still cold, and still rotting.
The light, the purpose was gone from him after he killed the Bastard. Failure had tasted like poison in his mouth. The only thing that brought him any comfort was Ghost. When he was betrayed, Jon slipped into his direwolf when he felt his life slowly slipping away from him. Jon was more wolf than man now. He had spent so much time in his direwolf before the red woman resurrected him, their bond had become so much more. Ghost never left Jon’s side, not making a sound but baring his teeth at anyone who came near him. His direwolf could sense his need to be alone with his failure.
When he had awoken in the flames, his bones were stiff and his body was in unimaginable pain and he growled. The red woman knelt before him and called him Azor Ahai reborn, the prince that was promised. Her followers were as convinced as she was that he would be the one to end the long winter.
He was less than sure. Whatever righteous path she saw for him, he could not see it for himself. He would not suffer the world to as cruel a fate as being swallowed whole by an army of Others. For the night is dark and full of terrors. He would do as he must. But he was sure she was wrong.
She and Sam were the only ones who knew of his true parentage, and the crannogman of course, and she seemed to think that this was proof that he was the one that was promised. The man who was born from ice and from fire. A prince.
Howland Reed may have informed him of his princely father after he helped him retake Winterfell, and of his mother too – his mother. He was a dragon raised as a wolf and reborn in the heart a wolf, but a bastard still. Bastards weren’t princes.
The crannogman had told Jon so much of Lyanna Stark; it felt as if he knew her. His mother was beautiful, and good-hearted, and highborn as he had always hoped, but he would never know her, and the man who raised him would never be his father. His father – Rhaegar Targaryen was by all rights a raper and a kidnapper. There was nothing worth admiring in someone like that. The truth was a heavy burden to bear. He had so many burdens of late.
The heaviest one on his shoulder was the thoughts of the women who were a part of his life. Their lives ended in tragedy, every woman who had ever loved him. It seemed as if being a woman and loving him was a cursed combination. Jon almost understood Lady Catelyn of House Stark’s hatred for him, not that it saved her from such a fate. She was killed too.
Jon thoughts returned to Arya. It had always felt like half of his heart belonged to her and it worked the other way too. It felt as if he’d lost her all over again. The wolf inside him made him growl.
Jon’s thoughts kept returning to the three women who shaped his life in so many ways; Ygritte, kissed by fire, Lyanna Stark, the northern beauty and Arya Stark, the little wolf.
He thought, for a moment, of the similarities between his mother, his sister, and his lover. They were, all three of them, wild, and wilful, and lovely. They had all loved him and they had all died too young. He killed his mother to be born. Ygritte, was killed trying to win what she thought was her freedom. And Arya, he almost believed she was alive once. He had wanted her with him no matter the cost, and now –
Arya was the only one of the three that he could say he loved without feelings of conflict, without any feelings of doubt or resentment or shame, his wild, stubborn little sister.
She’s not my sister though, he thought. She never was. And she, along with so many people I loved, had perished.
He had felt the sharp loss all over again. It hurt him to just to think of her. Ghost sat at his heels and licked his hand. The direwolf surely felt how despaired Jon was.
He remembered when the day he left Winterfell. Arya giving him happy kisses to express her delight. His heart used to burst with joy every time Arya rained sweet kisses down on him. Her skinny arms wrapped around him, her cool eyes filled with mirth and her soft lips pressing against him, reminding him that he was loved; that she would always love him.
He would never feel that again.
That was what had been missing, he realised with some dismay. This is why Winterfell didn’t feel like home anymore. It was because he wasn’t home. Not yet. Not truly. And if home was wherever Arya was, he’d never be able to go home again.