i.
In his dreams, idle and sleeping, he is never a bastard, no. He may never be the storied Lord of Winterfell, returned home from war and conquest to feasts and accolades, or then to wife and child. He may never succeed Robb, should he die without issue, nor Bran, and nor might he ever be lord of a small holdfast—though that would not be home, be Winterfell. But in his dreams he is white-browed Daeron (Better still to never conquer, as Maester Luwin would say, than to gain and lose a kingdom in a summer), all clad in gold and black, marching an army through the goat-paths of the Boneway. And sometimes he's marching his army to Winterfell's rescue – to Robb's rescue. Jon Stark, my brother, Robb says always amidst a Northern field starred with blood, and clasps him, and there, at least, he is home.
ii.
Jon must not think of it when he wakes, he knows, lest the guilt consume him, but it is an urge that his mind cannot seem to help in sleep, though he wishes no harm to them— to conjure ghosts of them dead, worms twined about their yellowing bones whilst he, somehow, lives, somehow does not die. But Robb does die, always, afar a mud-sodden field, brave in battle against an army vast-legioned as the stars, and when his mouldered bones are brought to rest beneath an effigy too still to be like him, too grim to be Robb, it's always he who welcomes Jon to the crypts. Stark, my brother, my heir, Robb whispers, a bit sadly, and says no more with lips for ever quiet, with grey granite eyes unblinking and unseeing.
Bran passes long before his time. A sickness comes for him in his tenth year and lingers in the wasting of his reed-thin body, in the break of his reed-thin bones, until death is a fever and a mercy. It's a fever that takes little Rickon, sweet-eyed laughing Rickon, not a year old now, and quickly. So Rickon, too, comes to rest in the great and still procession of the dead, his baby fat a caul of worms, and no laughter comes to dull the moss-stopped ears of silent kings. Sansa goes in childbed, her son with her, wrinkled and red like a blood-fed grub laid cold on her bloodless breast. Arya is ever last to die— young like Lyanna and spirited away, brought back he never knows why or how as a hollow thing grown feral. It's her death just after – her horseface sloughing down to skull – that startles him near to waking, sets a tremble in his heart.
Even they know, such effigies in dreams as they are, and when the Lord of Winterfell descends to the crypt in which he laid them, he finds no warmth in the flame-flecked granite of their eyes.
iii.
I am the blood of Winterfell, he needs must tell himself. I am the blood of Winterfell, like Robb whom I would seek. The blood of Winterfell never balks at duty, though that duty be here.
Winterfell. Home. Home, in the distance, looms great-towered and black against the darkening sky, and though but a vision, Jon swears he can hear the caws of an immense murder of crows encircling the dusk-capped towers, sheltering in nooks of years-worn stone. Winterfell had never been so empty, so cold, all wheeling of crow and mouldering of stone. A deep yearning for home seizes him, for Bran and Arya and Robb and Rickon, and even Sansa who only called him 'half-brother', for his father, cruelly murdered. But his brothers three are here – are Sam and Grenn and Pyp, now – not Robb and Bran and Rickon.
It is kinder, he thinks, to dream of them as they had been, or could be—Robb, brave in battle and blood-crowned, with him ever at his side; Arya, little nest-haired Arya, wielding Needle in darkness, letting him muss her hair, letting him teach her how best to spar; Bran, flight-footed and whole, climbing down to the kitchens to sneak lemon cakes for Sansa; his father, whetstone at his feet, polishing Ice before the gods, no thrall to kings.
But it is an aching, Jon knows, for what had been, for what now could never be.
iv.
He feasts her in the Great Hall, somehow uninhabited but for the roosting birds in ruined corners, somehow his. Quite how he has inherited it and why it looks a ruin he never knows, never questions, and the only things he asks are to her, if she likes Winterfell, and how she finds the honey shows her the glass gardens, the winter roses blue as the very one that Bael asked plucked, and rows of poppies abud like flames. It is not long before the talk of plucking compels her to pluck him just as she likes, before his lips find hers and taste the lingerance of wine yet sour upon them, and his hands slip under her tunic to caress skin newly plum-soft and pliant beneath his palms.
He loves her, too, beneath the heart tree, before the old gods, ruby-eyed and quiet. After, when his fingers graze her down her seed-slick thighs, and up to her hair aglow beneath the riping moon, she sighs into him, and her breath pools warm against his neck. He fears briefly that this must have been how his father dishonoured his mother – whoever she had been – but he finds he cares much less when Ygritte curls still against him as the rib-white arch of the moon, when every bit of home, of him and them, is warm.
v.
The crypts grow darker, colder, as he descends to the heart of the earth, deep as to the roots of rivers.
Down, down, down. King. King. King, a raven caws. Yet no kings lie here but for the Kings of Winter, glaring down upon him from their rust-entrencheoned thrones. Fat spiders breed in the crevasses of their lips, and they point, with cold and crumbling fingers, down an infinity of stairs, down an infinity of passages twisting ever on in the dead, too, twist ever on, pale and writhing from their tombs as he passes. King, king, king.
He hurriespast Stark dead, grinning with their horsemouths of bone, past Father and Robb and Bran and Theon, still and silent. The dim light of his torch casts shadows into the hollows of their flesh, where long the crows had pecked them. Your place is not here, bastard, Theonseethes. Not yet, says Bran, his three spidery eyes peat-black and glistening with grave-dew. Not now, brother. Not here. Deeper. I have seen.
There deeper, in the oldest level of the crypt, collapsing beneath the weight of the earth, a woman great with child sits awaiting him; Longclaw glows hot and red in her lap as from a forge, and her fingers trace the pommel, blistering at the touch. Only life can pay for death, and only death, she whispers, can pay for life.
Arya? he chokes, reaches for her. Her skin peels like an ember at his touch, wave-white as the skull beneath. No, no, Lyanna, he recognises from her effigy, but when he blinks she is Ygritte, her hair no longer bright as a splay of weirwood leaves in the shadows of the tomb. You know nothing, Jon Snow, she whispers, and her mouth fills with grave-dust, and her eyes with the carcases of worms.
Will probably be editing this as I'm not pleased with it, but comment away. I love feedback. And yes, I am aware that some of these 'words' are not true words in English at all, but they sound correctly literary, so there's that. Les erreurs sont un peu ma faute !
Next wee instalment will be posted shortly x