Author's Notes: For an asoiaf kink meme prompt: "Stannis is the one who informs Jon of Robb's murder. The conversation and the aftermath."
Jon Snow is young, no older than twenty, and despite his sullen look there is still something of the boy in him. Stannis wonders if he ever looked the same. It is no matter, he supposes.
"So," says Snow, awkward because what else can he possibly be? "Here you are."
"Here I am," Stannis echoes.
The boy chews on his lip. "Lord Stannis–"
"Your Grace."
Snow frowns. The Night's Watch plays to no part in the wars of men seems to ripple through the frozen air, but not many men are playing their part in the Night's Watch's bloody wars and Jon Snow will take all the help he can get. He doesn't have to be happy about it.
The boy sighs. "Your Grace," he says, resigned. "I must admit, I didn't expect to see you here."
"Your Lord Commander sent for help. I provided it." Jon Snow is Lord Commander now, but Stannis knows Snow isn't used to it yet so he doesn't have to be either.
"You did." He chews his lip again, like he's keeping something back, and it annoys Stannis. It annoys him enough it makes him snap.
"For goodness' sake man, spit it out."
"I thought my brother would reach us first," Jon murmurs, looking down like he's ashamed of it, and Stannis stops. Of course. Jon Snow is Ned Stark's bastard, and hence, Robb Stark's brother. The usurper Robb Stark. Stannis doesn't know how he could have possibly forgotten that.
"Well that seems unlikely now," he says, and suddenly realises that was cruel. He expects to see Jon Snow flinch in pain, but instead the boy just looks confused.
"Why?"
Stannis blinks, taking a few seconds to comprehend the implications of that reply. "...You don't know."
"Know what?"
He frowns. "Your brother's dead."
No point hesitating, no point hiding it in gentle words, no point trying to soften the blow. Nothing Stannis says will hurt more than the simple facts of the matter. He has no time to waste trying to protect Jon Snow from the inevitable pain. A few more seconds for the boy to understand, and Jon Snow's young face collapses in on itself, crumpling under the weight. "Oh," he chokes out, unable to say anything more.
He's going to cry, Stannis thinks, uncomfortable. He supposes that is the normal thing to do when you hear your brother is dead. He does not let himself flinch, even when Snow looks away to hide his face.
"Do you know how it happened?"
Blood. Leeches. Magic. "Treachery," he says. "The Freys invited him under their roof, let him eat their bread and salt, then slaughtered him and his army at dinner."
"The Lannisters' bidding, no doubt." Jon Snow's hand balls into a fist beneath the table.
"No doubt." And mine also. He never met Robb Stark, and cursing the boy was easy. Stannis can't say he feels guilty about it – the boy was a usurper, a traitor, just like the other two. Just like Renly. Stannis has never been one to forgive treason. And yet, something about how the boy died makes him feel sick. Guest right is the most sacred thing in Westeros, to the Old Golds and the New, though he has not yet asked the Lady Melisandre how the one true God feels about it. It is the sort of thing even oathbreakers and kingslayers and kinslayers take seriously.
They say the Freys sewed Robb Stark's wolf's head onto his body. It's the sort of cruel mockery Stannis wouldn't wish on anyone.
"I almost left for him," Jon Snow whispers, like he can't keep it back. Stannis frowns. Why would you tell me this? "When I heard he had gone to war. I felt like I belonged by his side."
"After you had taken your vows?"
A nod. "He was my brother," Snow says, like that explains everything.
Something swirls deep in Stannis's gut. He could swear he smells fruit right now, up here in the frozen north where nothing grows but the weirwoods and the ice that covers them, but he shakes the thought away. It's just that he hasn't eaten since the morning. "A noble impulse, I suppose. Not one all men share." He does not smell the fruit again, berries and apples and peaches; he does not think of a young boy, laughing and teasing him with brilliant blue eyes. "And yet you remained with the Watch."
"I did."
Stannis does not ask if he regrets it.
"You have your father's honour, Jon Snow," he says, the resentment he once felt toward the man, Robert's one true brother, nothing but a faded echo after so many years. Everyone says Jon Snow is the splitting image of his father, the same way Renly was the splitting image of Robert, but while Stannis doesn't remember the young Ned Stark well he can't imagine he was ever quite so... pretty. He must have gotten his looks from his mother. Well, he supposes any woman who lured the honourable Ned Stark from his marriage bed must have been an exceptional beauty, whatever that means. There is something delicate about Jon Snow, something girlish, but it no-one should mistake that for weakness.
Everyone says Robb Stark looked nothing like his father. He was all Tully in looks, high cheekbones, red hair and deep blue eyes. Like his mother. Stannis never met Stark but he did meet his mother, negotiating with Renly on the battlefield. He remembers her words. If you were sons of mine I would smack your heads together lock you in a bedchamber until you remembered you were brothers. He supposes it was not her fault that her son was a traitor, who sent her to make deals with yet another traitor. Robb Stark might have been no true king but he was still the rightful Warden of the North, the head of House Stark, and Catelyn Tully's son. It would not have been honourable for her to be disloyal to him. Her eyes were as blue as his own, and he remembers he saw something of himself in her. Something hard as iron.
The Freys slit her throat and threw her in the river. The thought makes him flinch. She did not deserve that.
Jon Snow is not looking at him. He isn't looking at anything, just staring into the distance and thinking about ties long forsaken. Stannis's skin itches painfully. They have more important things to worry about, but he can hardly tell the boy to just stop grieving. Grief will have its way, no matter what you tell it.
He never met Robb Stark. Cursing him was easy.
Cursing Renly wasn't easy.
"If you'd been by his side, you would only have died with him," Stannis says.
"Perhaps." Jon Snow doesn't sound like he's opposed to the idea.
Suddenly it's all too much for Stannis, and he decides to retreat. "I'll leave you to your duties, Lord Commander." Frankly he's only leaving Jon Snow so the boy can cry in private. But perhaps that is his duty.
Stannis steps outside and the icy wind hits him immediately, makes his eyes water. When he closes them he sees the red sunset of stormy summer's night, and smells peaches rotting in the dying light.