It was snowing.
Not the cruel, hard snow like those common in the heart of winter, but the soft, slow trickle he'd known since his birth.
Knelt before the heart tree, watching as the gentle flakes drifted to the ground, Jon inhaled a cool breath as thoughts whirled through his mind. "I don't know where to begin," he breathed, closing his eyes to the world. "All my life, I've strived to do what is right; strived to honor my father, and in doing so, to honor his wife," he admitted, taking in another shaky breath. "But I'm not sure if I can continue like this. I know that my existence is a sin in her eyes – a blight on my father's honor – but that doesn't make me less of a man." He seethed, feeling the spittle leave his mouth as unshed tears well in his eyes, burning against the cold.
"Do I not breathe? Does my heart not beat in my chest?" he asked, receiving silence in return. "If you cut me, do I not bleed?"
Folding in upon himself, he pressed his forehead to the cold roots, letting his tears flow freely. "Is a bastard all I'm meant to be?"
He received no answer.
In times like these – when Lady Stark has done or said something particularly cruel, or when one of his siblings reminds him of his station – he'd always fled to the godswood, to draw strength from the gods of his father. It was in these times, before the twisted, carved face of the heart tree, that he confessed his darkest desires – his deepest fear.
A harsh chorus of snarls drew his attention from his reflections.
Raising his head, he glanced to his side where he'd left Ghost – the direwolf pup he'd claimed from the litter he and his brothers had recently found – to find the snow-white pup resting his paws on the belly of a grey pup of a size with himself, standing quietly as his sibling growled, nipping at the air between them.
Nervously, he rose to his feet, taking in the dense godswood around him. Turning his back to the pair of frolicking direwolves in time to spot Arya sprinting toward him.
Shifting to the side, planting his foot at the edge of the inky black pool beneath the heart tree, he caught her in his arm as she passed, lifting her from the ground. "What are you doing?" He laughed, slowly placing her on the ground as she struggled in his grip.
As her feet touched the moist earth, she swiftly backed away, smiling from ear to ear. "I almost got you." Was her reply.
He hadn't known they were playing a game, though he doubted that mattered to her. "I meant, 'why aren't you with the septa,'" he clarified, "taking your lessons and learning the womanly arts?"
"I finished." She lied, stepping closer as the look of mischief upon her face slowly turned to confusion. "Were you crying?" She asked, slowly lifting a hand to his face.
Turning his back to her, he wiped the stains from his face, cursing himself silently. "No." He lied, turning back to face his little sister. "It's the wind. It got in my eyes."
He could tell she wasn't convinced, even before she looked around them at the calm, windless godswood. "Oh." Was all she said.
For a long moment, the two of them stood in silence with only the sound of their direwolves tussling nearby to keep them company. Finally, when the silence became too much, she spoke.
"So," She began, drawing the word out for several seconds. "What are you doing here?"
"Well," he returns, running a hand through his hair. "I came to be alone; collect my thoughts."
Watching as her face fell, he cursed himself again. Taking a step forward, he ran his hand through her hair, finishing the job that Arya had started, ruining the work of some poor chamber maid. "Though the importance of solitude is often overstated." He whispered.
Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, he led her deeper into the godswood, finding a small clearing in the dense woods. Taking a pair of fallen branches from the ground, he tossed the smaller of them to Arya, watching her fumble for a moment before catching it with both hands. "Good catch, little sister."
True to form, Arya closed her eyes and stuck her tongue out.
Taking this as an opportunity to strike, Jon smacked her hand with his staff. Not hard enough to bruise, but certainly hard enough to hurt.
"Ow!" Arya dropped her weapon, shaking her left hand wildly as she glared daggers at him. "I wasn't ready!"
"And now you're dead." Was his reply. "First rule: never take your eyes from your enemy."
"But you're not my enemy!"
"Yet you are dead all the same" He said, kicking her staff closer to her feet. "Take your weapon, Arya." He said – not unkindly - waiting for her to pick it up. "When you asked me to teach you the sword, I told you: we're not playing, we're not dancing. I'm teaching you to survive."
Taking her stance, she nodded for him to continue.
For the next hour, the pair slashed and thrust and parried and dodged, working themselves to a lather. When he finally called for an end, pressing the point of his blade to Arya's throat, the girl was too exhausted to argue, choosing instead to nod her head in acceptance.
As he extended a hand to her, lifting her from the ground, Jon surveyed the damage. Her breeches – or rather, the breeches she'd stolen from Bran – had been stained varying hues of brown and green, owing to her near-constant contact with the ground. The jerkin and tunic – also Bran's – weren't as badly soiled, but it was still noticeable.
Taking the staff from her, he mussed her hair with a smile. "You did well."
She snorted. "I didn't knock you down once."
"I'm bigger. And I've been doing this longer." He said, returning her snort as he guided her back the way they'd come. "But you kept good form. Next time, we'll focus on your footwork."
"I didn't even hit you!" She shouted, shaking off his arm, facing him as she continued to walk backwards.
Glancing toward the entrance of the godswood, affirming that no one was coming, he placed a finger to his lips: an unmistakable gesture for silence. "If your lady mother sees you like this – hears that I've been training you – she'll skin me alive!" He hissed.
Smiling broadly, Arya leaned into him, shoving him playfully with her shoulder. "She'll never know." Stopping abruptly, Jon looked up and down, scrutinizing her soiled clothing and dirty hair. "I'll change before she sees me!"
Coming to the heart tree, he knelt near its roots and extended a hand to his direwolf. "Ghost, to me."
The pup looked to him – blood red meeting solid steel – and released Nymeria, padding along the damp floor of the godswood to stand before him. "With any luck," he said, rubbing the space between the wolf's ears, "you might land a proper hit one day."
As he rose from the ground, turning to look at his sister, time seemed to slow. His feet were tangled together, owing to the way he'd risen from the ground and turned in one motion. She was nearly on him, her hands raised to press against his chest, carrying the weight of her whole body leaping forward. On instinct and as he'd been trained his whole life, he dropped his right shoulder, preparing to dodge her.
Had any of these thing happened differently, he might've avoided his fate. But true to luck, Arya's hand landed firmly against his right shoulder, his legs tangled upon themselves and he plummeted into the inky black pool.
It took him a moment to understand what had just happened. In that moment, his body simply fell to through the gloom, allowing it to envelop him.
By the time he realized what was happening, the cool tendrils of the pool had robbed him of the strength he would need to swim to the surface. Sinking further by the second, his body began to feel the ebb and flow of the water around him, pushing and pulling him under as a silver glow lit the way.
He couldn't say how long it took to hit the floor, but that it was longer than a minute.
Oddly enough, the moment that his back connected with the ground, the ties that bound his limbs suddenly fell away, allowing him the use of his arms and legs once more.
His first instinct was to rush toward the surface with all haste. He'd gone so far as to press his feet to the floor, pushing up the dirt that rested upon it before realizing that the source of the silvery light was near, little more than a few feet away.
Steeling himself, he waded through the depths, slowly drawing closer to the patch of light in the gloom.
As he grew closer, mind racing more swiftly with each step, he thought back to his earliest memories of the godswood – and by extension, the pool. He'd walked the woods a thousand times, staring into these waters for hours – if not days – over the span of his life. In all that time, he'd never seen so much as a glimmer.
Coming to stand above the glowing mass, he knelt to pick it from the ground, bringing with it a good measure of mud and muck.
Brushing away the grime and dirt, the pulsing light dimmed, revealing what appeared to be a simple band of silver, marred with deep scratches.
Jon brought the ring closer to his face, scrutinizing the strange markings on the band. With a strange sense of familiarity, he realized that the etchings were letters; each one written in a specific order to form some sort of code, or word.
Intrigued, he runs a finger along the etching of the band, staring in awe as trails of light seem to follow his finger. Dumbfounded, he feels a grin spreading across his face, even as the waters begin to churn around his feet.
Then, suddenly and without warning, he's made painfully aware of the fact that he's been wading through the depths as the air is wrenched from his open lips.
As anxiety sets in, he clutches the ring to his chest on instinct, pushing off the ground with as much force as he can muster in a mad effort to reach the surface. The ascent does not take nearly as long, despite the use of a single arm, and he quickly breaks the surface.
Wiping the water from his eyes, he hears the men moving through the godswood before he sees them. "My Lord!" A man – maybe Lew – shouted to his right. "Here!"
On instinct, he swam toward the sound, opening his eyes to follow the light of what he assumed was a torch.
When he reached the shore, several strong hands grabbed the back of his jerkin, pulling him to the soft, wet grass.
For a long moment, he merely lie in the grass, ignoring the various hands grabbing and molesting his person as he slowly regained his composure. In this time a thousand questions ran through his mind.
From the darkness surrounding them, he knew that it was night – or perhaps morning. Either way, this meant he'd been in the water for hours, not minutes, like he'd originally thought. If that were the case, how did I keep my breath?
There was also the matter of the ring. He'd never seen anything – neither sun, nor moon, nor fire – glow with such intensity.
"Jon!" A strong voice called, setting the feet of the men surrounding him to shuffling. "Make room! Move! Out of the way!" His father commanded, his voice shaky.
Rolling onto his belly, Jon hopped into a crouch and rising to his feet, just in time for his lord father to draw him into a tight hug. He'd clearly not learned from Arya, as they were less than a foot from the pool he'd escaped from.
Pulling away, Lord Stark moved his hands to either side of his head; thumbs resting upon his cheeks, brushing the water from his face, while his forefingers held the back of his ears. Jon was going nowhere.
"How?" He questioned, his eyes shifting between Jon and the deep, dark waters behind him. "I don't understand."
For a moment, Jon watched his lord father as he stood there with his mouth agape, clearly baffled by the events of the day.
Uncomfortable with the scrutiny being given to him, especially given the ring growing steadily warmer in his hand, Jon made a show of shivering in the cool night air. "Whatever we do," he whispered weakly, "can we do it inside?"
Flinching slightly, Lord Eddard let go of his face, nodding in acquiescence. "Of course." He sighed, guiding Jon forward as the crowd dispersed, leading him toward the Great Keep.
They moved through the corridors swiftly, bypassing servants and grooms and guards as they reached a junction between their living quarters, stopping abruptly.
Turning Jon's shoulder, guiding him to look into his eyes. "Go. Get out of those wet clothes." He breathed. "When you're done, I'll be waiting for you in my solar."
Nodding his understanding, he continued to his bedchamber, doing his best to keep from breaking into a sprint.
Before long, he arrived at his room, shoving the door open as he entered and slamming it shut behind him. A single second might have passed before he began to peel away his damp clothing, leaving them in a pile beside his bed as he moved to replace them with fresh garments from his wardrobe.
Dressed and dry, he moved to the door, pulling it open to find Wayn standing without.
The guardsman said nothing as he guided him through the castle, leading him to his father's solar. When they arrived, he took up a place beside the door as Cayn announced his presence, ushering him in.
Inside, Lord Stark sat behind his desk, staring in the direction of the door as Jon walked in. Aside from his father, Lady Stark sat beside the fire, along with a guilty looking Arya.
In that moment, he wondered how much she'd told them.
"Sit." His father said, more harshly than he'd said anything to him in all his years. She'd told them everything.
Following his father's orders, he sat in one of the chairs opposite him – the one further from Lady Stark.
"Before I tell you what I've learned, I want to give you the opportunity to explain yourself." He said sternly.
The room fell to silence. Jon resolved to say nothing he didn't have to, instead waiting for lordly father to give his account.
It didn't take long for his father to grow weary of the prolonged silence. "From what your sister has told me, you were in the godswood when she found you. She startled you, and you fell into the pool beneath the heart tree."
Jon nodded.
"Oddly enough," He continued, raising a brow in Arya's direction, "when she found me, her clothes – well, not her clothes, but Bran's or perhaps some of Robb's old things – were quite disheveled and dirty." He accused. "Like she'd been playing in mud."
Father stopped, offering Jon another chance to confess. He didn't. "That is more than passing strange." He replied. "I was there to pray, then I fell in."
It bothered him to lie to his father, but it would've bothered him more to see Arya punished for their misdeeds.
Sighing heavily, their father brought a hand to his forehead, massaging his temples. "Fine." He whispered, half-chuckling, half-sighing the word. "What of the water? You were down there for hours. Try as we might, we couldn't reach the bottom. How are you still alive?"
For a moment, Jon tried to recall the experience: the hours which seemed like minutes, the breathlessness, and the ring. Finally, he decided on honesty. "I have no Idea." He said. "What seemed like hours to you, passed in the blink of an eye to me." He recounted, making no mention of breathing beneath water, or glowing rings. Life as a bastard was difficult enough, without being named as a sorcerer.
For several minutes the room was silent, save for the crackling of the logs in the hearth. Finally, after realizing he'd accomplish nothing by questioning Jon, Lord stark relented. "If anything changes, you'll come to me." It wasn't a question, but a command.
Jon nodded.
"You may go."
Jon nodded to his father, glancing to the hearth, where Arya sat with her mother, watching his retreat. He winked at her, drawing a smile to her face before averting his gaze, certain that Lady Stark would be watching.
The journey to his bedroom was uneventful.
Once inside, he closed the door, bolting it shut as he fell to the ground, searching his damp clothing for the ring he'd slipped into his jerkin.
Pulling it free, Jon sat at the edge of his bed, admiring the thing that had nearly cost him his life. It was truly beautiful; brilliant silver, etched with runes similar those he'd seen throughout the North; the runes of the First Men.
Flexing his left hand, he slides the ring onto the finger closest to his little forefinger.