Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or AGOT or ASOIAF or the italicized lines in paragraph 10/11 or nothin' yada yada yada. I don't know if I'm gon' get any response for the last chapter 'cuz this is like three hours after I wrote that chapter (and I might write another tonight if I can't sleep) so yeah. Half of me always feels bad, but the other half is cocky is fuck, so Imma assume some were good n some were bad. Thanks either way. This'll be a short chapter, not much to be said for this one. Will write a longer one after it.

Black Sheep, White Wolf

Chapter 2: Baptized In Scorn and Snow

-2 Years After the Battle At the Tower of Joy-

Catelyn Stark didn't simply dislike Jon Snow, the bastard boy. She didn't loathe him. She hated, no, despised Jon Snow. The two year old babe. With his raven black curls and gray Stark eyes. He looked so much like Ned. Her husband. The father of her child. Her little Robb, who looked so unlike his father. But, her little Robb was better and she knew it. He was a true Stark, not some some illegitimate whelp, and he was so much healthier too. To be fair, part of that would be because Catelyn had informed the servants that they were to skip out on his meals when his father wasn't around, under threat of being thrown from the ramparts. She normally wouldn't have made such threats against the people who worked her castle, but special circumstances do require special measures, for if the Gods would not take Snow as she had asked, then she would be their instrument and do it for them. And afterwards, she wouldn't let them bury him, no, she would watch as they tossed him in a ditch, and she'd watch as they burnt every single last little black curl to dust! The same curls that belonged to the whore who gave birth to him, whoever she may have been.

These thoughts were interrupted by a bustling in the hallway, with shouting accompanying it. Robb in front of her sat completely undisturbed, playing with his toy knight, but Ned who had entered the room a minute or two prior seemed curious as to what was happening. When he got up to head to the door, Catelyn accompanied him, telling the handmaiden in the corner who had been changing the linens to stay with her son and watch him. She got to the door right when her husband broke standards for a lord, of the North especially, when he went sprinting down the hall and up the stairs before she could even ask what was happening. So, she went back inside the room and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, contemplating and worrying over anything and everything it could be.

Perhaps it's wildlings, savage raiders come to rape, murder, and pillage. Maybe, it was some Northern lord and his party come to visit his liege lord, the raven they sent previously being lost and dying. Maybe, it was a messenger from the king. It could have been anything, and Catelyn did not fancy waiting to hear, so she got up and exited the room into the hall, stopping a servant girl as she passed.

"What is happening here?" Catelyn demanded of the young girl. The maiden turned white and looked to the ground, beginning to mumble and murmur. "What was that?"

"It's the young one, m'lady. The bastard," the girl said, kicking the ground with her foot, still refusing to meet the lady's eyes.

"What about the bastard?" Catelyn asked, hoping to coax some form of a respectable answer out of the girl.

"The maester just rushed him to his room m'lady. He's gotten the pox." The girl stated. Catelyn was absolutely stunned. This was it. This was what she's been praying for. Every night and every morning, every time she laid eyes on the baby, she's asked for this exact thing. Jon Snow was going to die. So many emotions and images filled Catelyn's head. Confusion, curiosity, a pox marked baby face, tear filled gray eyes, a burning, black-haired baby's body. So small, so fragile. "Am I free to leave m'lady? Because I've got..."

"Yes yes go," Catelyn interrupted her. What was the matter with her? This is all she had ever wanted. She wanted Jon Snow dead and gone. And here the opportunity. Jon Snow was stricken with the pox, and was going to die, and she didn't feel happy. She thought that at the very least she would get a smile out of it. The son of her husband and some whore was in the process of being struck down by the gods for having the gall to be born a bastard, he had gotten the pox from who knows where, and was probably laying in a bed, his belabored little breaths echoing out as Ned and Maester Luwin watched on, waiting out in apprehension for his last breath, before that little pale chest would cease to move and cold, lifeless, gray Stark eyes would stare up at nothing, never seeing anything again, until the eyes are closed permanently and the tiny, infantile body is disposed of forever. This what she had been asking for, and she didn't feel happy. She decided to go check on the trio of Luwin, Ned, and Jon. Perhaps she needed to see it herself in order to believe it and enjoy it.

As Catelyn glided down the hallways, she realized that the closer she got to the bastards room, the quieter it got. It was eerily silent, and there wasn't a soul around. The laughter that she had hated so much, the sound of that bastard having fun, was gone, completely, and the hallway wasn't the same without it. In a moment of stupidity, Catelyn thought that perhaps she missed the sound of it, before she reprimanded herself. Of course she didn't like that obnoxious laughter when it came from the bastard. It was impossible for her to feel otherwise. When she reached the room itself, there was nobody around still, save for the woman who serves as wet nurse for Snow. The woman had the nerve to give Catelyn a glare, as if to say she had no place here. Catelyn ignored her and entered the room anyway.

As soon as she entered she saw Ned on his knees next to Snow's bed, with his head in his hands, and Maester Luwin on the other side of the bed looking down at what must have been Snow. As she stepped forward to get a look at the child who she had condemned, Eddard looked up at her and gave her a look similar to the one the woman outside had, only to a much more controlled extent. How awful must she have truly been in order to make her husband, the kind, just, and honorable Eddard Stark, look at her as if she had just spat in his face? Soon after that thought, she noticed the tears in his eyes, and what looked like trails of them on his cheeks, and she realized, that with her actions, her selfish, stupid reasoning and pleas, she had caused so much pain to this man who she had come to love dearly. How sad would her own son be when he learned that his only little friend was gone? By the gods, she was the worst woman ever. A murderer. She would condemn this innocent child to a horrible death, just because she was jealous of his mother, a woman he didn't even know. And in that moment, she knew what had to be done. So she left to get what was required.

-Linebreak-

It was night, and Eddard had gone off to the Godswood in order to pray for Jon's life, his salvation. Catelyn snuck into Jon's room and stood in the doorway, just staring at the bed in which the infant lay now. Maester Luwin had said that if Jon had made it through the night, then he'd be safe. But it'd be a long night. So, Catelyn came prepared. With that in mind she moved the only chair in the room next to his bed and got her first look at the sick child. He was so pale and pitiful. His chest moved like a man was pressing down on it and it required all of his effort and will just to move it. His breaths were so ragged, and so little, it brought tears to Catelyn's eyes. She sat down in the chair, next to Jon's little wooden crib bed and proceeded to create her prayer wheel. As she worked, she prayed. Let the boy live. Let him live, and I'll love him. I'll be a mother to him. I'll beg my husband to give him a true name. To call him Stark, and be done with it. To make him one of us. And so she worked, and she prayed.

-Linebreak-

Cold, Northern morning light shone through the only window and the room, and Catelyn Stark awoke with a startle when she a ray of warmth from it actually hit her. She sat up straight and stretched her back and neck, stiff and uncomfortable from the night sleeping in a chair next to the bed, watching little Jon. Jon! She thought and scrambled up to look over the edge of the crib, stopping just short of being able to actually see him. What if he had died? What if she had killed this beautiful, innocent baby? Then, she inched her way forward, and looked in, to find two wide, moving, gray Stark eyes. And when they found her, the smile a little below those eyes opened wide, along with his hands as they reached for Catelyn. She stood there, with her hand over her mouth, and a sob of relief escaped her throat as tears of joy came to her eyes. She grabbed Jon up out of his crib, holding him close, hugging him as if it was the only thing that mattered.

"Ma, ma," Jon spoke in his garbled infantile version of the common tongue. Catelyn pulled her head back and looked him in the eyes as she sat down with him in her lap.

"Yes, little wolf. I am your mother," Catelyn breathed out, followed closely by another smile from Jon, then some laughter and clapping. Catelyn laughed as well, and hugged him tight to her once more. When she pulled away, he was fast asleep, and she lay him in her arms, rocking him and eventually, just cradling him. Eventually, she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to find Ned staring down at her, confusion clear as day written in his eyes.

"He's alive," Ned stated, somewhere between a question and a statement. Catelyn stuck her head back down, looking at Jon's sleeping face once more.

"Of course he's alive. He's a Stark."