Author's Note: Completely the fault of DKNC (find her on AO3, her stories are brilliant), who gave me unacceptable Robb and Ice and Ned feels at 6am the other morning, which resulted in this.
Ice had finally been brought home and Jon gazed at it hesitantly. Tyrion Lannister had hunted down and collected Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper, and hired the most skilled blacksmith he could find to reforge the greatsword. He had told Jon what he had planned as they made their way back from the Lands of Always Winter, half flying and half walking with the dying dragons.
"I want to make recompense," Tyrion had said. "My family wronged yours greatly and this was just one of the offences."
Jon had been supportive of the idea, remembering how his father would clean Ice under the heart tree at Winterfell after every time he had need to use it.
But that been before he was made Lord of Winterfell. Before he realised that no more Starks lived. That neither Sansa nor Arya would be there to become Lady of Winterfell and birth sons strong enough to wield the ancestral greatsword. Or daughters, he thought with a smile as he remembered the brave Brienne of Tarth, who had towered over him and who could have carried Ice into battle with ease. He did not like to think that she had fought with a remnant of Ice. That monstrosity of a sword she had held was nothing like the Ice of his memory.
Or the sword that he gazed at now.
The hilt was the only thing that gave it away as something new. The leather not nearly worn enough and the silver and steel too shiny.
However, it was not this small change that stopped Jon from picking it up and testing the balance, it was the realisation that he had never touched Ice before. Not even to hand it to his father. It had been a line he had not crossed as a boy at Winterfell. He had known that if he were to touch Ice then it would be viewed by Lady Stark with suspicion. As if he truly did plan on trying to wrestle the lordship away from her sons.
That was not lost on him now as he stood in his brothers' shoes, the Lord of Winterfell, something he had never looked for.
He drew a deep breath, aware of the eyes that watched, and picked Ice up. As he handled the large sword, he remembered sadly that Robb had never had this opportunity. Ice was meant to be his but had never been held by him.
This was to have been Robb's, he thought. All of it. Ice, Winterfell, the title of Lord Stark. It was never meant for me.
