Lyanna Stark is with child. That's how the smallfolk put it, as word travel from hamlet to hamlet all across Westeros, and how lords and ladies come to think of it as well. Lyanna Stark is pregnant, when she is hidden away. Pregnant with the King's child.
Ned can do nothing to hide it. Not from the memory of people, not from the masters and scribes, not from the new King. He fancies for a moment of naming it his own bastard, of raising it in Winterfell as a member of his family, and in another world that might have come to pass. In this one Robert has already sent word, demanding the child accounted for when Lyanna is found, and Ned has heard what befell the other daughter and son of Rhaegar.
Lyanna's body is still cooling on the bed, the fever only put out by the embrace of the Stranger. She will not be able to shield her child. Not when it has eyes the turning from thin blue to lilac and hair all too bright, spun from silver and moonlight and men older than time. Robert will only see its father, and he will snuff out the little flame with nary a breath to consider, ending the Targaryen line with a small orphan boy who should have been his own. Ned's nephew never even knowing the feel of snow on his skin.
The boy cries out suddenly, louder than Ned believe such a tiny body should be able to, and the wet nurse shushes him as she pushes his face to her breast. She is staring at Ned even as she helps the boy find her nipple. Wary and fearful, because in Dorne Ned is not known to be fair and honorable; no, he is known as the closest friend and follower of a usurper and child killer. She fears what he would do to the boy, should she look away, and so Ned looks away himself, out the window where there is nothing but sand and sky.
Ned is not sure if the boy is bastard or true born. If he is a Snow or a Sand or a Targaryen. It matters little, in the end, but Ned finds the thought less damning than others he must think. He could be a Snow, given that his mother was a Stark and he never got to know his father, but he is born of Dorne and Dorne names her bastards Sand. If he isn't a bastard, if Lyanna and Rhaegar had wed before they passed, then as a true born he rightfully is a Targaryen, but Ned can't imagine letting the boy carry that name in this world.
Lyanna had named him Jon. Had held the boy in her arms for a moon, had loved a dragon twice and given him a northern name. Ned thinks that should mean something.
"How many have seen him?" Ned asks the wet nurse.
There is a certain kind of bravery, born in small folk with something to protect from those of higher stations, from lords like Ned, and the wet nurse's face is schooled to ice. She does not startle when Ned addresses her, nor does she cower. She's still wary and fearful; ready to bite his head off before she'd ever allow him to harm the boy in her arms, ready to accept the consequences.
Ned respects that.
"None that still live," she says.
That makes it easier. Whatever it is that Ned chooses to do – and there is there the beginning of a plan taking root in his head, however much it pains him – having no witnesses unaccounted for is fortunate. As it stands, people might guess what the child should look like but they won't know. They won't know that Lyanna had a boy and they won't know that he looks more like his father than his other two children ever did.
"Good," Ned says.
The wet nurse narrows her eyes and brings her hand to cover the boy's head, shifting slightly so her body's facing the door and not Ned. He understands.
"I am no danger to the boy," he says gravely. "He's my nephew. The last I have of my sister. I'd rather take my own life than harm him."
Her facial muscles remains tense, trusting his words about as much as he'd expect; not at all. A little mistrust is good, though, so Ned can't say he's disappointed. It means he can trust her to do what she must to keep the boy safe, even when it would do her no favors. It means he can trust her enough to let her live.
Rolling his shoulders, Ned holds her eyes. "It is good because hunting down witnesses takes time and we must leave swiftly. Robert must not know what becomes of him." The words taste like ash in his mouth, a truth he doesn't want to face but must. "He would have him dead."
He turns to the window, letting her think on what he said for a moment while he himself considers the logistics of leaving this place. They will bring Lyanna's bones with them, of course, to be buried in the crypt in Winterfell and honored among her family. They need supplies for the boy as well, and a carriage of some sort to hide him and the wet nurse in as they ride. People talk and gossip moves faster than men. Ned cannot let anyone know he brings more from Dorne than dead bodies and a broken heart.
"Hand me my nephew and gather what you need to travel north," Ned tells the wet nurse when the boy moves his mouth off the nipple. "I do not know what a child needs, and stopping on the road is unwise."
She regards him coolly for a few long moments and Ned does his best not to react before she nods decisively. Not bothering to right her clothes, she walks across the room and deposits his nephew in Ned's arms, shifting his hold with her hands to give proper support to neck and head. None too gentle with Ned but careful enough with the child. Ned's never been this close to a babe before, can't remember even laying his eyes upon one, so the help is definitely warranted, if perhaps not the glare that accompanies it.
"Make sure not to drop his head, my Lord," she tells him, tacking on his title with a long pause in between. On purpose, he thinks.
Ned nods in assent and the woman leaves the room.
He can hear his men outside, gathering the bodies and tending to their wounds, quieter than they've been during all their travels. War takes more than just lives, and while the war might now be over, the wounds are still open and bleeding and they will stay that way for years. There are graves that needs to be dug, funeral pyres that needs to be lit and heirs that needs to take up the mantle from their fathers. People will starve and people die and if there isn't another uprising within the decade, Ned will be surprised.
But those worries are for later, when he's home and has his advisors close. Now, all he needs to focus on is the child is his arms, this pudgy fleshed and silver haired little person that his sister gave her life for, his nephew, Jon.
"Hello, Jon," Ned says, testing the name in his mouth. It's different, to call a babe by that name that he calls the man who raised him. "My name is Ned. I'm your uncle."
Jon does not reply, of course, but he squirms and yawns and opens his eyes. Ned likes to think that there is recognition in them, that he can tell Ned is kin and cares for him.
Ned also imagines that he can see Lyanna in her boy, the shape of his nose and how the ears are a little large for the head they're sitting on. The colouring is all Rhaegar, down to his very skin that is darker than Ned's even though New has spent months outside chasing his sister's memory and the boy has never even tasted sunlight.
He'll probably not burn and flake under the sun, Ned realizes with an afterthought. How fortunate.
Jon reaches up with his chubby hand and twists his fingers in Ned's dirty hair and laughs, a bubbling gurgling sort of sound that makes the corners of Ned's mouth lift. It's automatic to smile at children, Ned thinks. As long as they're fed and held they're happy.
He bends his head and places his lips softly on Jon's forehead, taking care not to scratch his fragile skin with his own rough beard. Jon twists and reaches for him and Ned draws back with a laugh. Best not to dirty his nephew too much, he thinks, or the wet nurse will have words with him.
"Know that you are loved, Jon," Ned promises. Because he already does and Lyanna still smiles, caught in a memory and in a dream. "Always and forever."
So at one point I thought I was gonna continue this - like, Jon was going to be raised at the wall and Aemon and Jeor would like be his overprotective dads and he'd still get ghost and shit would happen and then plot would make him marry someone (probably Margaery or Willa cause they cute) - but like, who am I kidding that's never gonna happen this has been in my folder forever and i never work on it. So here u are and here it is.
/the one shot gal