Hi everyone, here is a little one-chapter fic I have been working on. I saw a prompt a while back (I lost the prompt so can't remember where I got it from) and just thought it would be perfect for a modern Ned/Cat and Jon fanfic.
Jon is not Lyanna's son in this, and is adopted into Ned and Cat's family. I am not an expert in adoption/child removal via social services so I don't know if how I portray this is accurate, but hope it's good enough.
I did put a warning in the tags, but I will write another one here as I know that abuse is a harmful subject for some people. This fic features nothing graphic, it is referenced, however, and so I put the warnings in the tags. I also hope that my depiction of abuse is as realistic as it can be, and not patronising in any way, because it is such as serious topic. Also, I know I am just a stranger on the internet, but if anyone is suffering from abuse or anything else, I am always here to help in any way that I can.
Anyway, I hope you like my fic, it is just short and not solely centred on Jon, but it is a change from my LOTR/GOT fics that I am writing, and was a bit of a challenge.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They belong to GRRM.
Life was not easy for anyone. The world can be cruel, even to the best of people, and throughout the course of their marriage, Ned and Catelyn had to find that out the hard way.
From the outside, their life seemed perfect, and it was true, the two of them could not ask for a better life. Though they had been married for seven years, they loved each other as much now as they did on their wedding day. They both had high-paying jobs, Catelyn was a lecturer at the University of White Harbor, while Ned was the CEO of the family business, and they had three beautiful children, each of whom they loved and adored. But to get to where they were now, they had faced plenty of hardships, and the toughest of these hardships to overcome was their son, Jon. But to understand how Jon came into their lives, their life before their son must be told.
They married young, at just twenty years old, and both of their father's advised them to wait a couple of years, but neither of them considered their age to be an issue, and the first few months of their marriage passed by smoothly, with no major issues between them, or their family.
Four months after their wedding day, Catelyn discovered she was pregnant. Ned was overjoyed. In fact, overjoyed was an understatement, and the rest of his family were delighted to hear the news too. Hoster, though, still thought Catelyn was too young to have a baby, but he loved his daughter, and trusted in her instincts, and so he stuck by her and before long, he was excited at the prospect of becoming a grandfather.
Perhaps the most excited though, was Rickard. He was glad to see at least one of his children in a stable relationship. Brandon had been skipping from girl to girl from the moment he understood what sex was, and Lyanna was no better, alternating between Rhaegar Targaryen and Robert Baratheon. Rickard saw no issue in the way his children dated, just as long as they were safe, but he would be the first to admit that he desired a stable and loving relationship for all four of his children, though of course, at that moment, Benjen was still too young to be entertaining the thought of a relationship.
So, with their marriage going well, and a baby on the way, life was perfect for the couple. But things can change quickly.
On the 8th September that year, Rickard and Brandon, as the CEO and heir to the company, drove to King's Landing for a gathering with other businessmen in Westeros. As they were driving back to Winterfell, a car hit them from nowhere, making the car flip off the road. Rickard died instantly, but Brandon fought, too stubborn to pass at first, but he too eventually succumbed to his injuries five days later. Aerys Targaryen had been at the same gathering and had consumed three times the legal driving limit of alcohol, but he still decided to drive, ending the lives of the two Stark men.
Aerys was arrested and imprisoned for manslaughter, which caused permanent friction between Lyanna and Rhaegar. Distraught at the loss of her father and brother, Lyanna couldn't comprehend how Rhaegar could possibly stick up for his drink-driving father, whom she constantly referred to as a murdered, and whatever relationship they had ended there and then.
Benjen was still too young to live by himself, so he moved in with Ned and Cat. Benjen was just fifteen, a confusing and troubling age for most people, and he took their deaths extremely hard. He was an emotional young man, and let everybody know what he was feeling, something that was somewhat uncharacteristic of the Stark men, and he felt able to confide in Catelyn, something that her own husband was unable do to.
The deaths of Brandon and Rickard broke Ned completely, though he rarely showed it. Frictions arose in Ned and Cat's marriage for he locked himself away, not sharing what he was feeling. And any stress that he was feeling was multiplied, for he was now CEO of a company he never expected to inherit and had therefore never trained for.
Somehow, things managed to get worse. Ned received a call while he was in a meeting at work. A frantic Benjen was on the other end, telling him to rush to the hospital. When he arrived, he saw his little sister hooked up to the life support machine. He heard the doctors tell him that she had overdosed on powerful prescription drugs, but he didn't register what the doctors were saying, and less than four months after losing his father and brother, he lost his sister too.
Though life had been hard on them over the previous few months, things did begin to improve. A mere two weeks after Lyanna's death, Catelyn gave birth, the stress of having to help a grieving Ned and Benjen caused her to go into labour a month early, but both mother and son were fine, and the proud parents named him Robb.
The family of four began to heal, and Robb grew, adored by his parents and Uncle, and a little spoilt by them too. After two years, they welcomed a baby girl into the world, and named her Sansa.
A month after Sansa was born, and a few days after his eighteenth birthday, Benjen packed his bags, and left to join the forces. A hole was left in their lives, as they were used to having him around, and he brought joy to everyone, the children included, but it was what he wanted, and he went with their blessing, and with the wonders of modern technology, it was easy to keep in contact with him.
For two months, life continued without any issues. They were in constant contact with Benjen, who was settling in well with the army, and both Robb and Sansa were growing happily and healthily, but as was typical of their married life so far, as things were looking great for Ned and Catelyn, bad news was only around the corner.
After a few weeks of pain and constant fatigue, Catelyn finally gave in to Ned's constant nagging and booked a doctor's appointment, and it was immediately clear that after describing all the symptoms she was having, and after intensive interrogation by her doctor, that there was something seriously wrong. Less than a week after she went to this appointment, Catelyn was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer.
To say the diagnosis was a shock was putting things mildly, and after already losing his father and two of his siblings, Ned was absolutely terrified that he would lose his wife as well, leaving him alone to raise the two children.
But Catelyn was a fighter, and she underwent six months of intense chemotherapy, which was incredibly hard on everyone, not just Catelyn. She had to stop breastfeeding Sansa immediately, lest the chemicals from the chemotherapy damage her, and Sansa did not take well to the bottle. She was less than four months old, and not yet ready to be weaned, but they had no choice and her reluctance to drink from a bottle caused Ned and Catelyn much stress. And poor Robb, barely three years old, had no idea what was going on, only that his mother was very sick, but he still didn't understand why at times, she couldn't play with him anymore. There was also the confusion that any time one of the children had the smallest cough, or a sickness bug, they would have to stay at Hoster's until it passed, as infecting Catelyn with a now weakened immune system could cause much damage to her.
She did beat it, however, even when at times it looked as if she wouldn't. However, the effects of the chemotherapy were devastating, and she was left infertile.
They had two beautiful children, who they fell in love with more every day, but the pair of them had always wanted more, and so after a long discussion, they decided they would put their names down for adoption, wanting to give a child the opportunity to have a loving home.
And it did not take long to find a woman who was putting her child up for adoption and had chosen the two of them as the new parents for the baby. They had met her, and learned about her life, and were excited at knowing they would soon have another daughter. The woman seemed thrilled that although she did not want to keep her baby, there was a family waiting for her who would love her. But the adoption did not go through, as one month before giving birth, the woman changed her mind, deciding to keep her daughter.
And this is where Jon entered their lives. Although they wanted to adopt a new born baby, Ned and Catelyn had a friend who worked at the adoption agency, Elia, who thought that they would be ideal parents to Jon, a six-year-old boy in desperate need of a loving family. Elia introduced them to Jon during a meeting one day, and their first impressions of him was that he was a shy young boy as he shied away in the corner, talking to none except a few words to Elia. And after the meeting, she explained why.
Jon had been passed around foster homes from the moment he was born due to the substance abuse his mother had suffered from. Every time it seemed she had turned a corner and was ready to take care of her son, she would relapse and become addicted again, meaning Jon had to remain in foster care. For the first five years of his life, Jon was placed in twenty different foster homes. Some of his foster parents were lovely and doted on him, but others did not care for him, and were simply in the job for the money it presented. But either way, Jon had never been a part of a family and had been unsettled his whole life.
Just before his sixth birthday, his mother managed to finally sort herself out, and after months of rehabilitation, the authorities believed that she was now a suitable parent for her son. But within weeks of Jon being back with his mother, she met a man and he moved in with them, and she fell back downhill again.
His mother was back on the drugs, and she and her partner would regularly use illegal drugs, making them essentially forget about Jon's existence. And every morning, Jon would go to school smelling of the alcohol the two of them drunk on a nightly basis.
The two of them would beat him daily for no reason at all, and they would starve him if he did anything that they deemed to be bad, and in their eyes, bad was something as simple as accidentally spilling a little bit of food on the floor. Although the two of them were the biggest threat to Jon, they were not the only people who were a danger to Jon.
Their house became a site for dealing drugs, meaning all manner of people were round at the house at the same time Jon was there. To make sure that Jon did not leave his room when people came around his step-father locked his bedroom door, keeping him in there for the night. For five-year-old Jon, this often led to bedwetting, for he could not leave his room to go to the toilet, which of course led to a beating, and he would have to sleep on his soiled sheets for a few days as punishment.
It was just after his sixth-birthday when the ambulance was called to the house after one of the drug dealers had been stabbed after a drug deal went wrong. The police also arrived to investigate the scene and arrested all adults there on drug and weapons related charges, including Jon's mother and step-father. It was only later in the evening when the police did a full search of the house that they found Jon curled in a ball in his locked bedroom, crying.
At this point, the authorities deemed that Jon would always been in danger living with his mother, and the courts made the decision to permanently remove him. The adoption agency had been looking for parents for Jon for six months, but the parents were either not quite right to take care of a boy with the emotional issues that Jon had as a result of his upbringing, or the parents themselves did not believe they were fit to raise him. Elia, however, believed Ned and Catelyn to be perfect for him.
They met with Jon several times over the next month, and to see if they believed they had what it took to take care of him. Once a week, they were allowed to take him to the local park in order to spend some time alone with him and try to bond, and though he was very quiet, and clearly had scars from the past, they fell in love with him and signed the adoption papers.
Six months had passed since then, and to say it had been a difficult six months for all the family would be an understatement. They knew exactly what he had been through in the first six years of his life, something no one, especially not a child should ever suffer through, and adapting to a life with a loving, caring family was difficult for Jon.
He flinched at any loud noise. In fact, the noise did not have to be particularly loud. Just days after moving into the home, Sansa fell and scraped her knee, and Jon flinched at her cries, which were not very loud. He would almost tip-toe around the house, trying to make as little noise as he could. Ned and Catelyn were not bothered by their children making noise, for Robb could be heard from a mile away, but Jon preferred to draw as little attention to himself as he possibly could.
He very rarely spoke to either parent. On the first day of Jon living with them, they were cooking dinner in the kitchen, and noticed that Jon had left the living room where he was playing with Jon and Sansa to join them.
"Jon, are you alright?" Ned said, kneeling down to his height. Jon nodded and hesitated a moment before speaking up, his voice meek and quiet.
"What should I call you?" he asked. Ned looked to Catelyn, who also kneeled down to his height. She thought about taking his hand while speaking to him but remembered that he shied away from contact at the minute, and they would not force it upon him until he wanted to be shown physical affection from them.
"Well, we have adopted you, which means you are our son as much as Robb is. So, you could call us mum and dad. But if you don't want to, you can call us Ned and Cat," she said smiling, and he nodded before heading off back into the room. They both hoped he would call them mum and dad as they intended to welcome him as their child as much as their children of their own bodies were, but it would be for him to decide.
Since that interaction, though, he had hardly spoken a word to them. The only word he would ever really say around them was 'sorry' and he would say it for things he had no need to apologise for. Just over a week after he had moved in, he accidentally dropped a couple of peas on the floor, and he immediately flinched in his chair, repeating the word 'sorry', over and over. Wanting to comfort him, Cat put her hand on his shoulder, which only made him cower further, but she assured him that it was fine, and Ned cleaned it up. It took a few minutes for him to calm down, and when he did, he reluctantly pushed his plate away and looked expectedly at Ned and Catelyn.
"Are you not hungry, Jon?" Ned asked.
"I am," he replied, and then he realised something. "I can finish even though I was bad?"
"Oh, Jon," Catelyn said, blinking back tears at the poor boy's trauma, "you haven't been bad, sweetheart. And even if you were, of course you would be able to finish."
There had been many other incidents like this, but he was slowly beginning to improve, realising that what his birth mother deemed as bad behaviour was not what his adoptive parents deemed as bad behaviour. But Ned and Catelyn were careful around him, and they didn't want him to think they were anything like those he had previously lived with.
They did their best to try and make him feel at home immediately after moving in. He had his own room which they decorated with the things he wanted. They had let him point out the wallpaper and bed sheets he wanted and bought him several toys of his choosing. Every night, he and Robb would sit on either of their beds as one of the parents would read them a story, while the other read one to Sansa, and more often than not, the two boys would end up sleeping in the same room.
Jon had developed a great bond with Robb and spoke much more often to him than he did to his adopted parents, trusting his new brother far more. He also formed a good bond with the younger Sansa, who wanted to play princesses and tea parties, and Jon was a doting older brother to the younger girl. They were glad that Jon had struck an immediate bond with Robb and Sansa, but they also hoped that he would quickly form friendships with other children.
They had enrolled Jon in Robb's school straight away following his adoption, and the two of them were put in the same class, with the teacher allowing Jon to sit on Robb's table. Ned and Catelyn had both hoped that spending a few hours with Robb and other children his own age would help Jon settle in well. Every day, Catelyn would wait outside the school for Robb as she usually did, and now she waited for both boys. Each time school finished, Robb came running out as he always did, a beaming smile on his face and he would chatter excitedly about his day. But Jon would always lag behind, a neutral look on his face, and Catelyn could never tell if he enjoyed school or not. Every time she asked him if he had a good day at school, he would not his head, and that would be it.
They were concerned with Jon's reaction to school, and asked Robb one night if anyone was bullying Jon at school.
"No," Robb had said, "everyone at school loves Jon. Well, Theon was a bit mean to him at first, but I told him off and now they're friends."
"And does he have any friends aside from Theon?" Ned said, as they were also worried that he was lonely.
"Yes. His best friend is called Sam, and he is also really good friends with Edd and Dany." Robb then went on to list several more people who Jon was friends with, and it confused the two of them, for Jon never spoke of school.
They believed Robb, but sometimes children don't see everything, and they went into Jon's school to speak to his teacher, but she reiterated everything that Robb had said. She assured them that Jon was a loved member of the class, and that he was very intelligent and lively.
It became clear that as the parental figures in his life, it was just Ned and Catelyn he seemed to have the issue with, but after the horrific start to his life, they were willing to wait, even if it took years. They were, after all, very patient people.
Three months after Jon's adoption it was his first Christmas with them, and it was actually the most excited they had ever seen Jon. At school, they had all made Christmas lists to take home of the things they hoped they would receive and Jon's list was relatively short with him just asking for a bike he had seen in a catalogue, and a game that he wanted for the Playstation he and Robb shared.
Of course, Ned and Catelyn got him more than that, and he was in awe when he saw the pile of presents on Christmas morning with his name on.
"Are these all for me?" he asked.
"Yes, sweetheart. They are." There were presents from his uncle Benjen as well as presents from his grandfather Hoster. Not only had Jon been welcomed into the Stark family, but the Tullys had been delighted to receive a new family member, and Jon was adored by his grandfather, uncles and aunt Lysa.
After he had opened the presents from Santa, he walked over to Ned and Catelyn and gave them both a huge hug, the first hug they had ever received from him. He later confessed that his step-father had told him Santa was not real, but he was aware that Robb and Sansa still believed in him, so he promised them he would keep the secret from them.
Things began to change after Christmas. He was still distant, but he slowly started to open up a little more. He was speaking more often, appeared livelier around them, and with each day that passed, he became less afraid of them.
Jon had asked them if Sam could come around for dinner, and they were more than willing to have one of Jon's friends come around. Each of the children brought a friend from school, so Sam was also joined by Theon and Jeyne, and Ned and Cat observed Jon throughout the evening and noticed how at ease he was with Sam, who was a lovely child himself. They were so glad to see that Jon had made such a good friend, and Sam came around to the Stark's house for tea many times after that.
Nearly six months to the day that they had adopted Jon, something happened for the first time that really assured them that Jon felt like he was a part of the family.
Ned woke early in the morning to the sound of the bedroom door opening, and when he glanced at the alarm clock and saw that it was only six-thirty and a weekend, meaning the kids were not at school, he was reluctant to get up at that time. He pretended to be asleep, closing his eyes, but it didn't fool the six-year-old intruder who approached Ned's side of the bed.
"Dad, can I have breakfast?" Ned didn't open his eyes but replied sleepily.
"Robb, it's not yet seven o'clock. Go back to sleep for a bit."
"I'm not Robb."
At that, Ned's eyes shot open and sure enough, it was Jon stood before him.
"Jon?" he asked, shocked to see the boy in his bedroom. Though in the months since Christmas Jon seemed more relaxed around them, he was still nervous and had never entered their bedroom unless Robb had all but dragged him in.
"Can you get me breakfast, dad?"
And then it registered with him. For the first time since Jon had been welcomed into their home, he had called him dad. Ned's heart soared, and he immediately got up and made his son breakfast, and things had truly begun to change in the way Jon was around them.
A few days later, Catelyn waited in her usual spot to pick the boys up from school, and instead of walking behind Robb as he usually did, Jon beat Robb to her, flinging himself into her arms with a beaming grin on his face.
"Look what I did, mum," he said, and he showed her a picture he had drawn in class of her and Ned holding Jon's hand with his siblings either side of his parents, and above the picture he wrote 'me, my mum, my dad, Robb and Sansa'.
Her heart was warmed, and he finally felt he was a part of the family.
And so there it is. I currently have no plans to extend this, but who knows, in the future I may do. I hope to do a few more one chapter fics as well as my two longer ones that I am currently doing, so if anyone has any requests, feel free to send me a message and ask for one.
Hope you enjoyed this fic, and I will see you all on Sunday with a new upload of 'To Show His Quality'