A/N: I have yet to watch all of Game of Thrones and quite honestly had no intention of writing a story for it until I finished what has so far aired... however, in an effort to get my good friend TwilightBrightStar writing again I told her I would write whatever prompt she wanted (which is not something I do often... generally I write what I want to write and am not so good at fulfilling requests) as long she wrote something as well. So this piece was born. And I kept my word. Go me.
Disclaimer: Game of Thrones is not mine and will never be mine. No copyright infringement is intended.
Prompt: Jon is young and hiding for some reason... maybe he thinks he's in trouble and Catelyn finds him. Maybe it's the one time she acts like he's not horrible.
Even Now It Remains Unabated
There are times, few and far between, when Catelyn Stark allows herself, deep in the privacy of her own mind, to admit how terribly she has treated Jon Snow.
The child, all of five years old, doesn't know why she hates him and (though she hates herself for it perhaps even more than she hates him) it makes her despise him all the more.
She can manage to forget her husband's infidelity when she is surrounded by their three beautiful children, by Robb and Sansa and the newborn Arya. Her love for them knows no bounds. She can forget it even when she looks into Ned's eyes, at his smiling face, when she hears his laughter. Jon Snow, however, is the living embodiment of her husband's broken promises and even the merest glance at him never ceases to remind her of that betrayal.
And though she knows it condemns her, she hates him for it.
So when Robb comes to her, pulling on her skirts and looking worried, on a day she hasn't seen Jon at all, hasn't even given him a thought and says Jon is sick, that Jon needs her, it sours her mood instantly. Jon thinks he will be in trouble because he might get Robb and Sansa and the baby sick, Robb says. And so he's hiding.
"He won't be in trouble, right Mama?" Robb asks, looking at her with big, trusting eyes. "It's not his fault he's sick. He can't help it. Right?"
Catelyn hesitates, torn between her love of her darling eldest child and the swell of resentment and dislike that even a mention of the child that is not hers brings. Robb, at only a year older than the bastard, still retains his child's belief that his mother is good and pure and of course loves all the people that he loves. He doesn't yet understand her feelings.
(Some day he will, Catelyn knows, but even her fear that her children will turn on her for her unfair treatment of the boy they call brother isn't enough to make her love Jon Snow.)
"Mama?" Robb asks, his gaze innocent and questioning.
"Of course, darling," Catelyn tells him, smiling into his perfect little face. "Of course he can't help it if he's sick. I'll find him. Be a good boy and mind your sisters for me while I look for him."
Robb beams at her then, his belief and faith in her rewarded so far as he knows, and Catelyn is aware it won't always be so easy to pacify him.
Still she keeps her word and she searches for the bastard.
An hour passes before she finds him and she's irritated and impatient when she does.
The child is curled up, fast asleep in an empty stall in the stable, mostly covered by hay and Catelyn had apparently missed him on her first circuit through the place. Catelyn feels her face twist as she looks at him and she is distantly relieved that she had the foresight to send Robb with the girls instead of allowing him to accompany her. Most of her attention is on the boy though and she opens her mouth to snap at him, to tell him to get up and stop being so foolish and selfish, when he whimpers in his sleep.
Suddenly Catelyn remembers Jon's babyhood, the fever he had taken then, and the words fall short in her mouth. She had promised to love him then and she finds herself wondering if this new sickness is the gods way of reminding her of that promise.
This child that she hates is not often sick, hasn't in fact been sick since that time in his infancy.
Unwillingly Catelyn remembers and she bites her tongue. The boy's dark hair is damp and sweaty, sticking to his head. His cheeks are flushed and though Catelyn wants to summon her usual anger it is, just in this moment, all too easy to look at him and see the baby he had been.
She summons Hodor to carry the boy to his bed.
Catelyn lingers in Jon's room, watching as the child tosses and turns. She doesn't doubt that he will live this time, the way she doubted the last time, and so she doesn't bother to send up any prayers for him. Doesn't bother to make promises she knows now she won't be able to keep.
Those first promises still haunt her. She knows better now than to add to them.
She will never love Jon Snow. Will never be able to treat him like one of hers.
Catelyn knows this makes her a bad person. She knows that no decent person could hate an innocent child.
And Jon Snow is innocent.
Hesitantly, almost against her will, Catelyn reaches out a hand and cards it through Jon's sweat soaked hair and in his sleep the boy turns toward her touch.
Quickly she jerks her hand away, the old resentment mixed with a distant sort of regret swelling up in her belly.
It changes nothing.
One day, she knows, there will be a reckoning for the promises she made that she didn't, couldn't, keep.
She turns on her heel and leaves.
-End.
A/N: In my efforts to keep Catelyn Stark in character I think this story may have turned out a little more angsty than the prompt implies but... TwilightBrightStar... I hope you enjoyed it, my friend.