Jon speaks the words of the Kingsguard kneeling in a sept of seven glass walls before seven southron gods that are not his own. Barristan Selmy touches his sword to either of Jon's shoulders and Jon swears to these strange gods to serve a king he hates, to forsake lands and titles and to never sire sons or know a woman's touch. When it is done, Selmy drapes a white cloak across his shoulders and bids him rise. "Rise as a knight of the Kingsguard," the old knight tells him, "rise as our brother."

Rickon. Bran. Robb. Those are my brothers. But that was a life ago in Winterfell, so Jon rises and clasps hands with Selmy and these new southron brothers of his: Jamie Lannister with his glittering eyes, scowling Meryn Trant, silent Arys Oakheart, cold eyed Preston Greenfield, bandy legged Boros Blount.

"Stand vigil until morning," Selmy tells him. "Watch the candles and think on your vows. In the morning we will have need of you at the crowning of good King Joffrey and Queen Sansa."


Once, Jon had meant to join the Night's Watch and have black brothers in place of white, but his lord father had only shaken his head when Jon told him. "Before Bran fell you might have gone to the Wall," Ned had answered. "But things are different now. When the winter wind blows the wolves must gather. And winter is coming."

Stark words, Jon had thought bitterly, but I am no Stark, or have you forgotten, father?

But there was no arguing with Lord Eddard Stark, and so Jon had bit his tongue and done as he was told. When his father journeyed south as Hand of the King he had followed, a bastard stowed in the baggage train.

"Show them how fierce we northerners are," Robb tells him as they clasp hands in the cold of the Winterfell courtyard, snow falling on the horses and riders and servants churning around them. He grins at Jon, just like when they were boys. "And give the girls at court a kiss for me."

Jon laughs, but there is a lump in his throat that he cannot seem to swallow. "Tell Bran…" He starts, but he does not know how to finish. He'd wanted to go the tower where Bran lay in a sleep from which he might never wake, but in the end the specter of lady Catelyn's cold gaze had kept him away. To every woman a bastard was a reminder of the faithlessness and lusts of men, but the bastard of her own husband was a special afront. All his life in a thousand small ways Lady Catelyn had made it plain he was no Stark: a cold look, a terse word, a flattening of lips in displeasure when he mussed Arya's hair, and he is too afraid that something in him will crack like old brittle ice if she tells him that a bastard like him has no place beside her son's sickbed. "If Bran wakes…"

"I'll tell him you said farewell," Robb finishes for him, and for a moment he seems already serious and solemn as the lord he will one day be, "when he wakes."

The door behind Robb swings open, and Sansa slips out. She's dressed in what Jon recognizes as her best dress, blue and grey wool fit to the slim of her waist and hips. "Have you seen Arya?" She asks Robb in an aggrieved tone. "The queen's already in the wheelhouse, and Arya's supposed to be riding with us."

"She's probably hiding from the queen." Jon wrinkles his nose. "I know I would."

Sansa glances at him as Robb chuckles, brow scrunching as though she's just remembered he exists. To Jon it seems she's always looking at him like that. Rickon and Bran and Arya are all too young to truly know what it is for him to be a bastard, but Sansa knows and like her lady mother never forgets. "Do you know where Arya is?" She tosses her hair, the red-bronze sheen of it flashing in the light, a quiver wobbling the edge of her voice. "She's going to ruin everything."

Jon sighs and whistles Ghost to him. It will be worse for Arya if she's late. "I'll help you look."

Ghost rises to his feet and pads behind Jon as he turns and sets off across the yard. A moment later Jon hears more than sees Sansa hurry to catch up to him. "I don't know why Arya has to be so difficult," she says with a huff. "The queen is very gracious to let us ride with her, and Joffrey said he will keep his horse near the wheelhouse as we ride."

Jon resists the urge to roll his eyes. "How brave of him to protect you from all the dangers of a king's procession."

"It isn't a matter of that." Sansa gives Jon a pitying look, the same she gives him when he steps on Jeyne's feet during lessons with Winterfell's master of dance. "It's courteous of him to offer to attend us at all, and a lord's courtesies show his true heart."

Jon scowls. Joffrey is a little shit, he'd told Arya days before, but he doubts Sansa will laugh the way Arya had if he says it now. Of all his half siblings Sansa is the one Jon's always understood the least with her love of dances and sewing and songs of knights and maidens. With Arya he could muss her hair or tease her and she would huff or laugh, but not Sansa. She is too like her lady mother with her red Tully hair and distant eyes. Sansa loves her songs of gallant knights and maidens fair, of brave deeds and beautiful ladies, and there are never bastards in songs.

They reach the stables, and Nymeria pads out to nose Ghost and Lady. Sansa's nose wrinkles at the sudden scent of horse and hay, and she lifts the hem of her skirts above the churned earth and mud. And where is your prince now, he thinks darkly, or is trudging through mud a job only for bastards? He motions for her to stay. "I'll fetch Arya," he tells as he strides into the stables, mud sucking at his boots.

Inside stable boys bustle about leading horses from their stalls and saddling them while Hullen, Winterfell's master of horse, stands with his arms crossed before him shouting directions. He catches sight of Jon and waves him to the back of the stable. "Your horse is saddled, Snow. And speak to your sister, gods know I've tried."

Jon nods his thanks and makes his way back to find Arya perched on a bale of hay. He grins at her. "Hiding, little sister?"

"No." Arya scowls. "I was trying to get Hullen to give me a horse. Father is going to make me ride in the wheelhouse with Sansa and the queen."

"A wheelhouse sounds warm." Jon rubs the nose of his horse and lifts the reins from where they're looped around a post. "I'd much prefer that to riding in the cold."

"Arya, come on." Sansa appears around the edge of the stall, nose still wrinkled, Lady padding beside her. "The queen is already waiting and we're late."

"I don't care. I want to ride with Jon."

"You don't have a horse, idiot." Sansa tugs Arya's sleeve. "Now come on."

Arya grumbles but jumps down from the bale of hay, and Jon leads his horse to follow Sansa. Once out in the yard again Sansa makes to walk off, but abruptly turns on her heel and gives Jon a swift courtesy. "Thank you for your aid, Jon."

Jon blinks, too surprised to answer, and by the time he opens his mouth Sansa has turned again and is dragging Arya across the yard. The sight of the two of them already beginning to bicker makes Jon grin, but in his chest there is a desperate ache as he pulls himself up into the saddle and looks about the Winterfell yard. How long will it be until he see it again, until they are all like this again? You knew this day would come eventually. Winterfell is the home of the Starks, and you have never been one. And so as he whistles Ghost to him and turns his horse to the gates of Winterfell Jon does not know what to think. Kingslanding is not the Wall, but neither is it Winterfell. Perhaps a bastard could make a name for himself there.


Weeks they are on the King's Road, a fat snake of riders with snapping pennants and servants leading wayns heavy with tents and food and wine trickling southward. Every forest or field it seems they must stop for King Robert to go hunting or hawking or whoring. Of his lord father Jon sees little. He is always with the king, a chain of gold interlocking hands hanging heavy from his neck.

Much of his time Jon spends with the other Winterfell men or Arya. He has little interest in Joffrey or any of the squires and upstart sworn swords he keeps about him. A little shit, he'd called the prince back in Winterfell, and the longer their days on the road grow the truer Jon learns it to be. Joffrey can be gallant, even generous, among others, but when no one is watching his gold face falls away and he mocks and laughs at servants and his lessers.

It only makes it all the more galling the way Sansa fawns over him, the way she hangs on his every word and jest. Always together they are, a shining prince and his beautiful maid. It is enough to make Jon and Arya shake their heads and pretend to retch when no one is looking. Which often no one is. In Winterfell he'd promised Arya he would teach her what he knew of how to use a sword, and Arya forces him to keep the promise. Jon and her slip away for an hour or two from the camp every day and he shows her how to hold and swing and cut. The only one who notices is Mycah, a butcher's boy who trails after them to watch some days.

For a week it lasts. They travel from Moat Cailin to the Trident, and on the day the sun dawns before the Inn of the Kneeling Man it all comes tumbling apart.


With Jory, the captain of his father's guard, Jon's been all day. He still has no idea why his father insisted he journey south with him, but so long as he is he's determined to learn more of how to be a man. Beside him Ghost's head shoots up and his lips pull back in a silent snarl. Jon follows his gaze to see Joffrey riding into camp with a bloody arm, Sansa ashen faced beside him.

A cry goes up from somewhere in the camp, and then chaos consumes it as men swarm around Joffrey and Sansa. Jon pushes his way through the crowd. Sansa's face is pale, the sleeve of her dress ripped, but her eyes latch onto him. "Jon?" She says faintly.

Jon shoves back the bannerman looming over Sansa and steps beside her. "What happened?" He asks, and finds himself surprised by the anger thrumming through him. Of course Sansa is his sister, but they have never been close, not like Arya and him. And yet something ugly twists in his chest as he asks, "did someone...?"

Sansa's mouth opens and closes like a gasping fish. "Arya…" She starts, and clutches Jon's arm. "You have to find-"

But what he has to find is lost as Joffrey starts shouting. And that's how the story comes out: of how the Stark girl had set her demon wolf on the young prince and maimed him before escaping. Sansa's fingers fall from Jon's arm as she turns to Joffrey, and forgotten again Jon slips back through the crowd to Jory's side. "We have to find Arya before the Lannister's do."

"Go to your lord father and tell him what's happened." Jory pushes Jon toward the king's tent. "Go. We'll saddle the horses."

As hard as it is in that moment not to simply jump on his horse and go tearing after Arya, Jon nods and does as he's bid, sprinting away to find Ned.


Later Jon prefers not to think on all that happened after that: of how he and Jory found Arya miles from camp, of how small she'd felt in his arms as he held her tight, of the anger that boiled up into his chest as she told them with her eyes downcast of what had happened. And of after that, of how her fingers had dug into his arms like a hawk's talons as they had to throw stones at Nymeria to make her stay away, of how how it felt like he was dragging a knife through his chest as he kneeled in front of Ghost and ran his fingers through his thick white fur a last time, looked in his red eyes and whispered for him to protect Nymeria and go north and find Robb and Bran and the rest of their pack, of how it was like cutting out a part of himself to ride away from where Ghost stood staring at him with his silent eyes as Nymeria slunk in the shadows behind him.

They brought Arya back to camp and she told her story: that Joffrey and Sansa had found her and the butcher's boy beside the river playing with sticks, that Joffrey threatened them and Nymeria defended them. A slow fury filled Jon as Joffrey lied and lied and lied again, and Sansa refused to say the truth of what had happened. Never had he thought her possible of this, and he is sorely tempted not to stop Arya when she launches herself at Sansa. But all his anger had turned to cold dread as Cersei demanded Nymeria's pelt, then Lady's, and Robert did nothing to stop her.

The man that passes the sentence swings the sword. It is the northern way, and because of it Jon refused to take Arya and the stunned and silent Sansa back to their tent with Jory when his father ordered him to. Instead he'd stayed beside Ned as Jory fetched Ice and stood still and watching until it was done. Father will know if you look away, he'd told Bran only months before when they'd watched sentence passed over the Night's Watch deserter, and Jon does not blink now. This is your fault. He knows it in that moment more truly than he's ever known anything in his life. You gave Arya Needle, you encouraged her to play with swords. You're the one who wasn't there to watch her. You killed Lady sure as if you swung the sword.

Later he'll learn of how the Hound ran down and slaughtered the butcher boy, but he is already gone searching for Arya by the time the Hound returns. He ducks through the door of a tent, but in place of Arya he finds Sansa with her knees hugged to her chest in a corner of the tent sobbing into her arm. He pauses, unsure what to do, all the anger he'd felt an hour before fled and cold and gone. "Sansa?" He asks tentatively.

Sansa looks up at her name, face splotched and red with tears, and before Jon can react she's running to him, throwing her arms around his chest and clutching him to her, sobbing into his shirt. Jon opens his mouth to speak, but his own eyes are burning and he does not have the words. Instead he raises his arms and awkwardly wraps them around her, holds her as sob after sob wracks her slender frame.

And then just as sudden as she'd thrown herself at him she is pulling away, pushing him aside and fleeing out into the camp, leaving Jon standing alone and confused in the doorway of the tent.

He eventually finds Arya hiding in a tree, comforts her best as he can. She blames Sansa and Cersei and Robert, but Jon knows the truth, knows that it should have been him instead of Ned that swung Ice. The man that passes the sentence swings the sword. It's why the next day Jon refuses to meet Sansa's red rimmed eyes when they stumble into each other at the door of the tent. She tries to catch his gaze and her lips part as if she's going to speak, but he mutters an apology and pushes past her before she can, anger and shame coiling in his gut.

Next Jon sees Sansa she is on her horse beside Joffrey, lovely as a sigh in her blue dress, and when she glances at him her eyes hold the same distant look they always have.

They never speak of what happened.


AN: Follow me on my tumblr at tacitwhisky if you want to see sneak peaks of new chapters before they're posted.