Catelyn Stark was a confused and upset woman. Both of which were due to the actions of her husband's increasingly baffling baseborn child Jon Snow. After his still unexplained actions in the Sept, his honestly frightening display of mystical self-healing and his subsequent conversation with her lord husband (that Eddard still refused to discuss with her), Jon Snow had announced the night of his awakening that he would be leaving Winterfell for an unknown amount of time.
This announcement had been met with dismayed confusion from all of her children. She had known that Arya and Robb would not take it well, having become the closest to him growing up in spite of her personal wishes. But it had been a surprise to her when Bran and Rickon had joined Arya and Robb's pleas for Jon stay. Or failing that, to explain why he was leaving. And while Sansa had not audibly spoken, Catelyn had been further shocked to see that her eldest daughter was exhibiting visible discomfort with the idea of her older half-sibling leaving Winterfell.
When asked why, the bastard Stark would only ever repeat one answer. That he was seeking answers he couldn't find in Winterfell. He refused to elaborate on what answers he was seeking, what questions he was trying to solve, why he wouldn't find them in Winterfell or how he knew either of those three things to begin with. But in any case, he had been resolute in his conviction that he had to do this.
After the boys had retired for the night, Catelyn noticed the next day that while they carefully didn't mention the Snow's departure date after, they seemed to have accepted what evidence he had presented behind closed doors well enough that they were not inclined to openly try changing his mind. Sansa had not protested or spoken to the boy about the matter that Cat knew of. But she had recently seemed to be given to lapses of silent contemplation more often than Catelyn had known her to be before.
Yet the one who had taken it the worst by far had been Arya.
Catelyn had always known in her mind that her wild daughter and her husband's bastard were thicker than thieves. But she had never realized the extent until she had, entirely by accident, overheard them arguing in one of the corridors of Winterfell. Not playfully bantering, lightly teasing or fondly name-calling as she had seen them do before. This was genuinely hurt and angry feelings being aired between them.
She didn't know how long they had been having this discussion. But when she had been turning the corner she had heard Arya's voice. It had been angry in a way she could scarcely remember hearing in her youngest girl. In response, she'd instinctively moved back so she was around the corner from the noise; invisible to them if they may look to see if they had watchers.
"Why can't you trust me with this?!" She heard echoing down at the corridor intersection.
"It's not a question of trust." The bastard's voice had answered, sounding truly regretful even muffled by distance. "It's a question of safety."
"How am I going to be unsafe knowing what's happened to you? Just explain that to me!" She heard Arya exclaim.
"I cannot tell you! Why do you ask this of me?!" She heard the boy snap. "I cannot tell you Arya! By the gods, do you think I haven't wanted to! That I enjoy having to leave the only family I've ever known?! But I do not have a choice in this!"
She was about to turn the corner to break the two up when she heard Arya's answer.
"I ask this of you because it feels like I'm losing my brother!" She was surprised that underneath the righteously fierce anger, there was a distinct waver in Arya's voice. It sounded to Catelyn's ear as though she was trying to remain angry so as to not allow herself to feel sadness. "First you get knocked out for weeks after doing some weird magical thing that you still refuse to tell me! I'm not allowed to see you, but I see Maester Luwin come and go with bloody bandages all the time. Then Sansa of all people is brought in to help mother care for you. After trying to help once, she comes out convinced that you're being tormented by a demon! A demon Jon! She never tells me what she saw to convince her of that, leaving me to assume the worst!"
There was a pause during which neither of them spoke. Before long Arya resumed her venting.
"Then I finally sneak past them all so I can stay with you. You wake up; tell me to leave so you can talk to father! You never tell me what you talked about. Then, that night you announce that oh by the way: you're going to be leaving Winterfell for an unknown amount of time to go gods only know where to answer questions you refuse to tell us because the answers you don't know aren't going to be in Winterfell! Everyone can see something's happened to you! But instead of getting help from any of us, from the family that would do anything for you, you refuse to explain anything that's going on! You act as though you've got something to hide and you…" Her daughter didn't go on, the waver now more pronounced in her voice.
"I act as though I'm hiding something because I am hiding something Arya." He answered. The tone of resignation was strong in his voice. "I don't hide it by choice. I hide it by necessity. I discussed the matter with Lord Stark, and he agreed that until I…did what I had to do, I shouldn't tell anyone if I can avoid it."
"So if you can't tell me, why can't you take me with you?" She asked quietly, the sounds from down the hall making it seem as though she had shuffled closer to him.
Catelyn couldn't breathe for a moment. Jon Snow was a bastard boy of fourteen. He was still a bit young for her to think he could make a life for himself outside the confines of Winterfell, mature for his age as she could grudgingly admit he was. But Arya…She knew conviction and willfulness when she heard it. And her chilled heart could tell that the small ten year old girl truly meant to go with Jon Snow if he would but say the word.
Unable to bear the silence, Catelyn peeked around the corner to see what was happening. She saw the bastard had drawn Arya into a hug, his arms solid around her shoulders. His expression plainly told of the conflict he felt inside at her offer.
"Because you belong here." He whispered into her hair. Even as she tried to move away from his apparent rejection of her offer to stay with him, he held onto her. "Because I need to know you're safe. If I could take you with me, I would in a heartbeat." Cat felt herself move forward on instinct as if to stop him from doing so.
"But I can't promise I could keep you from harm if I took you on this mad journey." He finished. His face told Cat of how sour the words tasted in his mouth.
He moved his half-sister back so she was at arm's length. She deliberately wouldn't look at him, her eyes cast toward the ground. He continued, his body language telling how he felt he needed to get this out before his courage deserted him.
'Courage in the face of a ten year old girl's sadness.' The thought crossed Catelyn's mind. She found she could empathize with him. It was never easy to hurt family, even if the hurt was unintentional. Her sister Lysa's teary face upon seeing newborn Robb flashed for a brief moment in her memory.
"And until then, Winter Is Coming. We both need to do what we can to help prepare for the storm." He let out a forced chuckle. "Besides, without one of us here, who would keep Robb and Bran in line?" He asked rhetorically.
Arya hiccupped a tiny laugh that sounded hollow to Catelyn's ears.
"You're really going to go, aren't you?" She asked, as if she had refused to admit it to herself until that moment.
"Not by choice. But yes, I really am." He said, drawing her against him again as her arms lifted to hug him back. They stood there a while.
"I don't want you to leave." Arya whispered.
"I don't want to leave." Jon agreed wholeheartedly.
Feeling she was intruding on a moment that was meant to be private, Cat had left. Her thoughts had been jumbled and unsure for some time afterward. She had taken out her frustration on Eddard in private that night for refusing to speak to her about what it was the boy had told him in his sick room. She had tried to get him to say anything about what he and Jon Snow had said to each other to prompt his bastard to leave.
"Ned, this is insanity! He speaks to you after waking once and you allow him to cross the Narrow Sea?! By the Mother, the boy burned down the Sept! He won't admit to how or why he did it to anyone else!" Catelyn raged in their bedchamber, pacing like a trapped animal. She knew raising her voice at Eddard was not likely to convince him of anything. But on rare occasions when she felt so overwhelmed like this, she fancied shaking him on just the off chance that the rattling would bring him around to her point of view and maybe tell her something that would actually settle her mind instead of amount to a nice version of: "I've made my decision and you shall simply have to live with it."
She had grown to love her husband dearly, but his stubborn stillnesses could be so maddening.
At the moment Ned was seated on the edge of their shared bed, forearms resting on his thighs and hands clasping each other as he watched her move back and forth, not uttering a single word or making a sound as he simply waited for her to finish what she had to say. His grey eyes tracked her every agitated step, taking it all in but giving nothing away.
She leaned against the stones nearby the door to their chamber's balcony, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
"I apologize for my ill temper my lord." She said softly, the highborn protocols she had grown with coming to the forefront and calming her somewhat. "I find myself frustrated and at loose ends regarding this situation. I don't understand why Jon Snow is leaving or why you are allowing it in the face of what has happened here."
"I know Cat." Ned answered, at last standing as he moved toward her. He stopped three steps away. Close enough to let her know he wasn't angry with her. Far enough to tell her he wouldn't cross that last threshold to touch her unless she willed him too.
Catelyn thought of Brandon sometimes in moments like these. Most who had known them both could only think of how different the two brothers were. How loud Brandon Stark was in the face of Eddard's silences. How aggressive he was in comparison to his little brother's level head. How tempestuous he was in contrast to Ned's calm. But what no one really seemed to really remember about the most compared Starks was that they could both say so much with their gestures when they spoke no words at all.
It had been that realization that had allowed her to begin to love him for who he was, that link between himself and his family that showed who he really was behind the stony silence and the implacable face.
She turned to him, crossing that last distance between them.
"Why can you not tell me what is happening Ned?" She asked him softly, hands alighting on the back of his neck as her arms rested upon the slope that connected his neck to his shoulders.
His hands remained at his side as his grey eyes darkened for a moment. His eyes darted briefly to the right, debating what he could tell her. He decided on what he had been saying already.
"It is not my place to tell you this Cat. It is Jon's and Jon's alone. When he is ready, he'll return and he will explain himself in full. He has promised me." He said, tone firm and unyielding like the Wall his brother Benjen had taken the black to protect.
Catelyn Stark closed her eyes as her forehead came to rest against her husband's. She was once again frustrated, exasperated and admiring of her husband's stubborn honor and belief in the honor of others. She supposed she had no choice in this anymore than she had when he'd come home with a guilty look on his face and a newborn Stark babe in his arms.
It was funny in a way she supposed. For so long she had wanted Jon Snow gone from Winterfell.
And now, the day of Jon Snow's departure had come. Yet it came without the feeling of a weight lifting off her chest that she had always imagined, without a resolution that she had so desperately sought for the aberration that was his inclusion in this life they had.
He had been given a good horse, some weeks' worth of supplies, a bow with new quiver of arrows as well as a short sword and dagger set that had come fresh from Mikkan's forge. He had bidden each of her children as well as herself and her lord husband goodbye at the gate. The children with a hug and a brief exchange of whispers. While her lord husband had gotten a firm handshake and she a formal bow. Soon enough he was mounted and off.
They had watched as he made his way out of the gate. They had watched as he went further and further down the road. And as soon as he was out of sight from where they stood, Arya had raced toward the wall alongside Bran, no doubt to climb the parapets and perhaps catch one last glimpse of him while Rickon had stayed firmly in her arms and her eldest children Sansa and Robb had followed her and Eddard back to Winterfell.
Only a few days had passed since that morning and already the castle seemed…different…without the bastard boy around. Maybe it was because he had left when things were so uncertain and in such upheaval. Or perhaps that was simply due to her constantly seeing the people whom his departure had affected the most day in and day out. Whatever it was, it certainly did not grant her the peace of mind she had imagined she would find now that he was gone for the foreseeable future.
So now here she was: lying in bed while her husband slept beside her, wondering if perhaps she should've joined her voice to Rickon, Bran, Robb and Arya's in requesting he stay.
As Cat turned on her side and attempted once more to close her eyes in an effort to beckon the coming of dreams, she supposed all that was left to let time tell.