After a sleepless night, Ned retrieved Jon from his room and they started off on a silent journey toward the crypts. Dawn still lurked beneath the twilight, stalking it like prey as it crept below the tree line, waiting. The darkness only heightened the uneasy feeling Jon had as he followed his father. It wasn't a terribly long walk from the great keep, but the silence made it seem longer. Not a single thing stirred in the early morning, save for him and his father. Jon shivered.
Outside the ironwood door, Jon held a torch out as Ned placed steel to the top before striking it with a flint stone. Jon watched closely as the fire engulfed it, hypnotized by the dancing flames. Ned took the torch from the boy and gestured for Jon to lead the way as Ned pulled the heavy door shut behind them. As he descended the narrow stairwell a second time, he expelled nearly all the air from his lungs with a heavy sigh.
At the bottom of the steps, Jon could see the imprint he had left with Daenerys the night before, as well as traces of dried candlewax. He tried to kick dust over the evidence before Ned could see. But his father never looked down.
Guiding Jon down the corridor, Ned stopped in front of the likeness of a cloaked woman. Her hand was outstretched, the other grasped to her shoulder. To Jon, she looked like the embodiment of elegance. So much so, that she felt out of place amongst the usual frightening effigies that inhabited the crypts.
Ned handed the torch back to Jon, as he grabbed one of the nearby candles to borrow its flame. With it, he lit the rest of the many candles adorning the shrine. Jon could tell Ned did this often, both from how quickly he managed to light each candle, as well as how many candles had been little more than stumps. Melted wax hung from her altar like a frozen waterfall.
"Do you know who this is, Jon?" Ned finally broke the awkward silence.
"Your sister," Jon guessed.
Ned looked down at the boy as if awaiting a better answer.
"Lyanna Stark," Jon clarified, half-afraid to speak her name aloud. His father had always kept a tight seal on the memory of his sister, glaring into silence anyone who dared broach the subject. Jon wasn't even sure he had gotten the name right, it had been so long since he'd last heard it. It must've been sometime even before Daenerys had first arrived at Winterfell.
"Lyanna," Ned whispered, more so to her likeness, than to Jon. He turned back to the boy, "Tell me what you know about how she died."
Jon felt his face flush. Everyone at Winterfell knew how much Lyanna's death had haunted Ned. This was one odd punishment, indeed. Jon knew better than to keep his father waiting, however. Besides, he wanted to get out of the damned crypts as quickly as possible, his skin was crawling.
"She was taken against her will. She was raped," Jon frowned as he said the word. "And then murdered. You found her in a pool of her own blood, but you were too late."
The pain of the memory was clear on Ned's face. "Do you know by whom she was taken?"
Jon had tried to avoid saying the name. It felt like a betrayal to Daenerys, somehow.
"R-Rhaegar," he finally stuttered after a moment, "Targaryen."
Ned sighed, he looked at a loss for words.
"She's not like him," Jon quarreled, taking a wild guess as to what Ned's lesson today had really been about. Why had Ned insisted she be raised at Winterfell if he would just reduce her to a monster, like her brother?
Ned didn't bother to stifle his chuckle, "She is. She is exactly like him," he said, smiling. Something in the way he said it, without so much as a trace of sarcasm, made Jon even angrier.
"Right," Ned said, as he looked down to see Jon fuming. "That was exactly the version of events that the kingdoms would come to know. The safety of my entire family rested on it. Yours, most of all. It still does."
Jon's anger relented, but he still braced himself, unsure where any of this was headed.
"But I can't have you believing that rubbish any longer. You need to know the truth. So you can decide."
Jon's stomach dropped. He didn't feel clever enough to decipher whatever it was Ned was hinting at. "What do you mean?"
"Rhaegar didn't kidnap Lyanna. He loved her. And she loved him."
Jon ran his fingertips over his forehead in confusion, almost as if massaging the new information into his mind. "Then how did she die?"
As his father turned from Lyanna to him, Jon felt daunted by the sudden and intense eye contact.
"Please understand that I had no idea what Rhaegar's intentions were with my sister. Everyone had thought she had been kidnapped, even though that just didn't seem like the prince I knew. Not that I knew him well. When I heard he had stolen her away to Dorne, my men and I set off on something of a rescue mission. Rhaegar had already lost his life on the Trident by the time we heard where he had been keeping her."
Jon listened intently, feeling as though he was the only other person alive who would know the truth.
"When we came upon several members of the Kingsguard defending a tower, I knew she had to be inside. Rhaegar's most loyal man sat outside, Arthur Dayne," Ned paused as Ashara's eyes flashed in his mind, "the best sword in all seven kingdoms. I knew we were done for. After taking down most of my men, he had disarmed me. I knew Dawn would be the last thing I'd ever see, as it came rushing in. Just as I had accepted my fate, Arthur had collapsed to the ground. Behind him stood Howland Reed, a bloody dagger clasped in his hand. He saved my life."
Unsure what to make of it, Jon pondered the scenario. He had grown up thinking Ned had triumphed against the Sword of the Morning. Either way, he felt thankful that his father came away from the ordeal unharmed, though the mission must've been a lost cause. After all, here they were, standing in front of Lyanna.
"I heard a cry from inside the tower. Lyanna's. I ran up the steps as fast as I could manage. The room she was in was red, covered with blood. The sight of it crushed me. I ran to her side and grabbed her hand. She thought I had been a dream," Ned's voice cracked as he struggled with the memory.
"She didn't have long. I told her she was brave as I held her hand in mind. We were both covered in her blood. As if witnessing my only sister losing her grasp on life hadn't been bad enough, with her dying breath she made me promise her..."
Looking back to Lyanna, Jon was unable to imagine how it must feel to lose someone so close. He thought of the fear he felt as Bran fell from the broken tower, and he simply couldn't fathom it. In that moment, he knew Ned was the bravest man he'd ever known.
"What did you promise?"
"To care for her baby child. Lyanna died after giving birth to a son. She named him Aegon Targaryen."
Jon winced, afraid he had finally found the thread that promised to unravel everything he thought he understood as reality. He waited for Ned to clarify, but in his heart, he already knew the answer.
"I brought the boy back to Winterfell in my arms. Aegon wouldn't do. Lyanna was right, Robert would kill him if he knew. So I did the only thing I could, I claimed him as my own and gave him a northern bastard's name. Jon Snow."
Jon's gaze had never dropped from Lyanna's as Ned spelled it out for him plainly. Jon scowled hard, tears welling in his eyes faster than he could blink them away. His life all but flashed before his eyes, a new perspective shaping the context of every situation he'd ever been in. It made both no sense, and all the sense in the world.
Ned gave the boy a moment of silence to work it out. Jon's mind flitted between Lyanna, Ned, Catelyn, Rhaegar, Daenerys. The thing Jon had wanted most in life was to meet his mother. And here she was, finally before him. Lyanna. She had been with him, here at Winterfell, all his life. Ned. The man who had risked his life and the lives of his entire family, all for Jon's sake. Jon continued staring at his mother, his vision blurred by the onslaught of tears. His entire face was soaked. Catelyn. She hated the boy all his life. Ned compromised his honor and reputation, though he had never been unfaithful to her. Rhaegar. The only image of the man Jon had in his mind was that of a monster. Daenerys. His best friend, his first love. Rhaegar was her brother. And she, his aunt.
At the revelation, he closed his eyes, letting his final tears fall from his lashes as he struggled to get ahold of himself. He wiped his face dry with the back of his hand.
"I'm a Targaryen," he whispered with a mixture of sadness and disgust. He had spent his whole life wishing he hadn't been a bastard. This twist of fate was a cruel irony he wanted no part of. It turned out he did have a last name to give Daenerys. The same one she already had.
"And you are a Stark. You might not have my name, but you have my blood."
Jon finally looked back to Ned. The boy looked utterly crushed under the weight of the truth.
"And here you thought I'd scold you about your girl, eh?" Ned smirked again, "I told you, it wouldn't be me punishing you. Now you get to decide whether you would punish yourself."
"But she's..." Jon gulped, "my aunt."
"Have you ever asked yourself why I fought for her to stay with us, all those years ago?"
"You couldn't have possibly known that we'd - That she'd -"
"No. That I didn't know. But she's your family. There was no better place for her than to be here with you. It is as true now as it was then."
Jon's face scrunched as if he'd bit into something sour. "Ugh," he groaned.
"Just think it through before you make any rash decisions. There are few men across the seven kingdoms who can marry for love rather than duty. Your father tried to do just that. It was the death of him," Jon winced as Ned said the word in reference to another man entirely. He didn't like being someone else's son. "After much consideration since we last spoke, I can honestly think of no safer match for the girl than to wed a bastard. Assuming you stick with Snow."
"Of course I'm sticking with Snow. I'd be killed. What kind of a name is Aegon?"
"A king's name," Ned said flatly before turning to his nephew, "We'd best be getting back."
"If you don't mind, I'd like to stay a while."
With a nod, Ned left toward the narrow stairwell as Jon knelt below Lyanna. He folded his arms tightly around his knees, rocking himself gently as he sat in the presence of his mother for the first time.