Chapter Fifty-Nine: Jon

Winterfell

Jon

Jon always liked to think he was doing what was right. Whether it be letting the free folk through the Wall, abandoning the Watch to take Winterfell, or leaving the Eyrie to crumble – he always tried to do what was best. Sometimes that didn't happen. Sometimes he made mistakes and people died for it. Sometimes he made mistakes and entire castles died for it. Sometimes he made mistakes and he died for it.

Somehow, he didn't think this decision would have such high states. Had it been five years prior, perhaps, but now it was easy. Everything was.

Day after day was filled with rebuilding. The decisions left to be made now were nothing compared to the ones he had been forced to answer for during the war. They still weighed just as heavily, but they were easier. He didn't have to sacrifice men, leave castles to die, or abandon children on an island.

Now, it was a question of diplomacy. Did this king have meat to trade for? Did this king have salt? Did this queen have wool? Did this one have wine? What could she trade for it all? Logs? Service? Men?

It was simple work. Easy. He even had help – something he never truly had on the Wall. Dany was there, and Sansa, and even a few former servants, who'd learned the tricks of trade by watching their lords. He marked down the names of any who helped him. He remembered them. The North would hail them someday, he knew. The North remembers.

But they were not the decisions that haunted his days. No, that was one he held much closer to his heart. That was a name, a bloodline, a life he could not decide if he wanted or not.

Targaryen, Stark, Snow, or Sand. Names he found himself juggling each day like a fool before a king. And, of all those in his life, he had not told a soul. Not Sansa, nor Arya, nor even Bran, before he'd gone. Nor had he even said the words to Rhaegal, who must have known before any of them.

That was how he found himself in Sansa's chambers – the Queen's chambers – with his sisters by his side. Sansa was sat before a piece of Myrish glass, though Jon could not say where she had found it. Arya was sat on the bed, running a hand over a fat iron coin and staring at Jon, who himself still stood by the fire. Three siblings (two siblings and a cousin, he reminded himself), all having agreed to meet in this place come dusk, and none of them wanted to be the first to speak.

So, it fell to him. It always seemed to now. Just as it had at the funeral and during the war, and all the times before and after.

He sat beside Arya, shaking his head to clear the growing ache. Life was so much easier when they were children. When their only problems were whatever vague future awaited them far off on the horizon.

They had crossed the horizon line a long time ago, and it had cost them everything.

"Where'd you get the coin?" he asked her.

"Harrenhal," she said, before she shoved it deep into some hidden pocket. She found a belt buckle and began to fiddle with that instead.

Harrenhal. Seven hells.

The conversation lulled once more. It always seemed to now. Where once the words had come easier with her than anyone else, now each talk was more stilted than the last. They didn't know each other anymore. Both of them had secrets piled on secrets, and it infested every last inch of the life they had once known.

He'd been comfortable with her. Before. It hurt like all the seven hells that he wasn't now.

To make matters worse, to the great shock of the boy he thought he'd killed long ago, it was Sansa who eased the tension. She rose from her seat and made her way to the fire, warming her palms over the reaching flames. It sparked some and almost caught on her dress, and while Sansa flinched away, she was not alone. Arya, halfway across the room, pulled back against the wall and pretended she hadn't reacted at all.

Gods, they had their secrets.

"Rickon's statue is almost finished," Sansa said, when they had calmed. She spoke as if they were all three of them not intimately aware of its progress. "They'll be starting on Bran's soon."

Jon nodded. "And the glass gardens?"

Sansa nodded at her glass and smiled. "Myr sent samples. We've enough dragons to buy a few gardens' worth." She must have seen the look on his face. "Gold, not scaled."

"How many is a few?"

"Four."

Jon winced. "That's not enough for all of us. We should-"

He hadn't gotten through the sentence before Arya was drawing her sword. The valyrian steel shimmered in the light of the fire, and the red shading within the steel made the glare no better. So too did the grey steel, the ones that reflected only the foreign flakes of blue that still sat in her eyes. She didn't drop it on the bed – a good thing, else Sansa might spend the next fortnight arranging for new feathers to sew in – as he might have expected. Instead, she laid it across her knees, not even flinching as the blade nicked her through her breaches.

"Sell it," she said.

It seemed that he was not the only one who no longer knew his sister. Sansa looked just as stunned as he felt. "What?"

"Kingslayer," Arya said. "Sell it. It's worth a lot."

"We're not selling- Arya, that's the sword that-"

"I know. I don't want it." There was something hidden in her face, beneath the stale features that never seemed to shift. Anger. She'd never been angry when she was a girl. He'd seen her sad, happy, frustrated, and afraid, but never angry. None of them ever were. It made him even more uncomfortable than her hesitance did.

"We're not selling a valyrian steel sword," Sansa said, sternly. "Especially not that one. If we need to, we can sell the dagger. Not that."

"I don't-"

"Why?" Jon started.

But Sansa was too quick. She was never quick as a girl. "It's Ice," she said. That was all it took to quiet them both. "The Lannisters reforged it into two. My sworn shield had one. The other… it's father's."

Though she must have meant it to be a comfort, it served as anything but. If anything, Arya only looked more uncomfortable. She pushed it away, just slightly, and didn't protest when Jon took it before it could cut through her breaches any more than it already had.

"Besides, it's the sword that killed the Night King," Sansa said. "We would be mad to sell it."

"Then keep it…" Away.

Jon put a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you want it?"

Arya might have chewed on her lip, but she stopped herself too soon. "Did you want to be king?"

"No." His frown grew deeper.

"Just so." She shrugged. "How's the dragon?"

"The dragon?" Sansa sputtered. "We were talking about the sword, not-"

"Hungry," Jon answered over her. "He's hungry." He knew what Arya was doing – she'd never been particularly good at hiding her deflections – but he would make no move to stop her, and he wouldn't let Sansa either. Let her tend to these issues at her own pace. That was the very least he could do for her, after all they'd done.

Arya nodded and returned to toying with her buckle. "Nymeria, too." The leather struck her over the burns on her arm. She hardly flinched. "We shouldn't have burned the bodies."

"What?"

"Wolves need food," she said, simply. "And dragons. Dragons, too."

"We can't just…"

"They're already dead."

And, suddenly, all Jon could think of was the years they'd been apart. The years he'd spent on the Wall, beyond it, below it. The years he'd spent with Donal Noye, who'd had one arm and had never explained how he'd lost the other. The weeks he'd spent with the Thenn, who'd eaten the meat of beast and men alike. The moons he'd spent in Winterfell, wondering if perhaps the war could go wrong. If perhaps they could lose. And all the while, she'd been gone. Hidden away by assassins who stole faces. Could she have-

"We'll have trade soon," Sansa said, looking about as uncomfortable as Jon felt. She covered it better than he did, though. She merely had to turn away and add a log or two to the fire, and all traces of doubt vanished from her face. Jon had never learned to control his face. He'd never had to.

Arya seemed no happier to have heard Sansa's shaken comforts. "With who?"

"Tyrion will help." She smiled a bit. "He's a… friend."

"Aye," Jon said, "and the Reach will trade. And the Crownlands and Pentos."

"Trade," Sansa repeated, frowning. "We haven't much to trade with. The Boltons-" She same the name with due distaste. "-emptied the coffers, and the trees are too frozen to log. The wolfswood is empty, and we have no vassals to tax."

"We get a loan," Jon said.

"Who would give us a loan?"

"I dealt with the Iron Bank when I was Lord Commander," Jon said. He didn't miss Arya's sudden jerk. "They gave us enough to last the winter, even if the Night's Watch hardly had the resources to pay them back."

Arya's hand stilled on her buckle. She looked up, face pale and blank. "You didn't pay them?"

"The Wall fell," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "The Watch is gone. Never had-"

"How long?"

"What?"

"The deal."

He looked to Sansa. When she offered him no aid, he turned back to his little si- cousin. "Two summers before we'd have to start."

Finally, she relaxed. The belt buckle began to clack again, and she didn't say another word of it.

Jon did though. "Why the worry?"

She didn't look at him. "They don't like waiting."

This time, he didn't ask. The way she said it – with the cold brush of blue shining beneath her steel eyes, while the buckle clacked and clacked across her fingers – he found that he would rather never hear of it again.

"Excellent," Sansa said. "Something else to worry about. Between this, the dragon, and the food situation…"

"What about the dragon? Rhaegal is fine."

"He needs more food than any of us. I still don't know why we can't send him south for the winter. He could have stayed on Dragonstone, and-"

"No," Jon said.

Sansa slipped her eyes shut and sighed. "Why?"

"I won't send him away."

"Why not, exactly?"

"Because," Jon said.

She stared at him. He stared back. Arya might have stared too. He didn't know.

"It's a dragon," Sansa reminded him, as if he'd forgotten. "We can't be keeping a dragon around the keep. There are children here, and they need protection. A fire-breathing dragon doesn't belong in Winterfell."

"That fire-breathing dragon saved our lives," Jon told her.

"Are there other types of dragons?" Arya asked. Even her joke fell oddly flat. Hells, it was flat coming out. None of them were much in the mood for humor that day.

And, gods, though he knew it for the joke it failed to be, it still stung. It might have stun worse for the humor of it, for he knew better than anyone, "The ones without wings."

"What-" Sansa started, but she was quick to recover. "The Targaryens?"

"And the Blackfyres," he said with no undue bitterness. Daemon Blackfyre had been the man who had nearly unseated his own kin. The man who had driven Catelyn Stark to despise Jon from the moment she'd met him. The man who'd turned bastardy from a mere shame into a threat. Even had he not been born of Rhaegar's seed, he would have hated the Blackfyres all the same.

Are you pleased, father? He thought with no less bitterness. I jump to defend you and your name. Are you honored?

"Yes, and I'm sure there are many more. I'm also sure there are many other things to worry about than the Blackfyre Rebellions," she said, dryly. "There are some suggesting the Ironborn may attack soon."

"The Ironborn swore they wouldn't raid."

"Yes, and they've never lied. We can all take them on their word."

"And if they do, we have a dragon."

Sansa sighed. "And we're back to the dragon."

She made her way to her table and took hold of the bottle of wine she'd saved there. He'd given it to her the day she had returned to Winterfell. He hadn't thought she would save it this long. It was a bit disconcerting that she thought to drink it now.

"Anyone?" she asked, waving a glass.

"No," Jon said.

"Ale's better," Arya answered, pulling a face. She'd made that same face as a girl, the first time she'd tried some of her father's beer. Only, this time, there were the long blue bruises that made even the most innocent of gestures just the slightest bit eerie.

Sansa shrugged and poured her own glass. Once, she might have made a servant do it. But now, when it was only the three of them, it seemed she could make do. Gods, a decade ago, she would never have deigned to set foot in a room with them. Especially not while Arya had a knife strapped to her belt and while her sword sat in Jon's lap.

They'd all of them changed. Every time he realized it, it hurt just a bit more.

They were closer than they'd ever been, but more distant too. He didn't know Sansa any better than he knew Arya, and he didn't know Arya any better than he knew a chunk of brick in the wall. Oh, he'd seen that brick before, and he knew what it could do, but he didn't know it. He didn't know how long it had lain in the wall, nor how it had come to be there. He didn't know who'd made it, nor why, nor how. He only knew it for the brick it was, and he only knew it for the purpose it served.

There were too many secrets now. More than any man should ever keep from his kin.

The lone wolf dies, Arya had said on Dragonstone, before their lives had fallen even deeper to shit than they already had.

His mouth went dry. Dry as Sand.

"I need to tell you something," Jon said, after Sansa had already drained her second glass. "You can't tell anyone. You'll have to swear it. On Father, on Bran, Rickon, Robb, on the gods themselves."

The belt buckle finally stopped clacking. "What is it?"

"Swear it."

"'Swear it," Arya said. Her voice gave a bit, and she looked uneasily to the fire, but it was strong enough that he didn't doubt her for a moment. Even after all this time, he didn't have to. That, alone, made this easier than it ought to be.

He looked to his cousin then. "Sansa?"

She took a breath, sighed. Still, she said, clear as day, "I swear it."

That was good. Good and bad. He almost – almost, he thought, as if he didn't already do it with all his heart a thousand times over - wished Bran was there. He might have asked the bird to share the story. Seven hells, he might have asked Howland Reed to do it, if the man didn't discomfort him to no end. Meera Reed might have served, but she had ordered him to leave her be. She'd gone off into the woods after, and all she'd left him with was a memory, and no promise that he would ever see her again. The tree would grow, though. That, she'd promised. Bran was dead, but they had a tree.

Someday, he would look back on his life and he would wonder when it had all grown so mad. Someday. Today was not that day. Today, he looked his kin in the eyes, and it only got madder. Today, he said, "I'm not Ned Stark's son."

Not even a beat passed. "Neither am I his daughter," Sansa said. "Was that your secret? You disappointed Father? We all did."

He stepped back even further than he already had. His fingers coursed through his hair. He couldn't even recall asking them to move.

And, though it killed him to do it, he disagreed with her. Aloud. He told the story. Every last awful terrible mind-numbing word of it. What happened to his mother, his father. What Lord Stark and Howland Reed had done for him. What happened to his great grandfather, or however it was Maester Aemon related to him. Every little detail that burned the little bit of him that still struggled to hear it. The part that would forever be Stark and could not bear to take any other name. Stark and Snow. One or another. Any other was sacrilege. A betrayal of Lord Stark, of himself, and of everyone who had lived and died for him along the way.

And when every word had been left bare for the world to see, it was not his little sister who spoke to him. Arya, who was busy staring into the fire, as if the flames would leap out and catch her unaware. Arya, who had always gone to him for comfort and always returned the favor. Arya, who he would have expected to say something.

No, not her. It was his cousin. His red-haired cousin. Lady Catelyn's daughter who'd never bothered to look his way when they were children. The one who hadn't cared at all. It was Sansa who lost her courtliness, her very nature, and instead let her jaw fall. It was Sansa who said, "That can't be true."

And finally – finally – his little sister spoke. The little blue marks sparked in her eyes, foreign against the field of grey that sat beyond. "'s not lying."

Sansa whirled, red-faced and half-frightened, though Jon could not say why. "How do you know? Can you read his mind now? Do you have visions?" She said it mockingly, as if it wasn't likely enough when all was said and done. "Did you see it?"

It was hot in the room and growing warmer by the second. The fire was too high, he thought, as sweat beaded down his throat. Sansa shouldn't have added both of those logs at once. They'd caught too quickly. They were wasting precious wood. Worse than that, they were almost making him feel nervous, and that would surely be madness.

"'taught me to see," Arya said, her throat hoarse. It sounded almost pained, and Jon nearly flinched to hear it. "No lie."

"Well they taught you wrong! Father would never have-"

"Lord Stark either bore a bastard or saved his sister's. Which do you think is more likely?" Jon said through his teeth.

"Someone would have known. Someone would have noticed!"

From the bed came a clack-clack-clack, but he didn't have the strength to turn and look. "I had her hair, her eyes, her face," Jon said. "If I wasn't… that, Rhaegal would never have let me ride him."

"Well I'm glad of that!" Sansa said, throwing up her hands. "You're not a Stark, but at least the dragon likes you! Perfect!"

"He is a Stark," Arya said, softly.

"The dragon doesn't agree," Jon said, just as soft.

"Did Ghost?"

At the mere mention, the harsh howl of a direwolf filled the air, loud and proud and angry. Nymeria had not spent much time within the walls of Winterfell since they had arrived, but her presence was clear all the same. He had never been so happy to hear it, nor so disturbed. The wolves had always been linked to them, no matter how he had denied it, but this was eerie. A single word, and the wolf was there to answer. It wasn't right.

The old gods sent them, he thought. The gods of my mother.

"Ghost is gone," Jon said. His voice cracked, but he was surprised to find he hardly minded it at all.

"And Lady," Sansa said, suddenly firm. "Does that make me less a Stark?" She shook her head and let out a frustrated grumble. Nowhere near her typical courtliness, but he supposed that was how it ought to be when cousins were alone together. They could be themselves for once, instead of kings and queens and saviors. "None of this matters. You're Father's son. The same as Robb, Bran, and Rickon."

"Lord Reed was there," Jon said. "He would know best."

"Lord Reed can lie."

"Why would he?" Jon said.

Sansa's hand went to her chin, as she stared off into the flames. "He can weaken Winterfell. The North is in a delicate state. If he can push the scale just enough, he can topple us. As the last true Northern lord-"

"Sansa," Jon said. "Can you trust me? There's no conspiracy, no games. He told the truth. Bran agreed, and Rhaegal confirms it. I'm not his son."

She took a shaky breath. "Your friend Sam-"

Jon sighed. "Aye, what about him?"

"He had a son. The whole of the realm knew it wasn't his, but he called it his son all the same."

A shy smile creeped onto his face. "Little Sam."

"You are Ned Stark's son," Sansa said, firm. "This won't change that. It changes the political situation, of course, but not that. Do you intend to be king again?"

"No," Jon said.

It was Arya who spoke next. "Will you tell?"

"No," Jon said. Then, as an afterthought, "Only Dany knows. And you."

"Daenerys knows?" Sansa asked, sudden and alarmed.

"Aye. He told us both."

She frowned. And, though he might have expected a far more negative response, she was quick to surprise him. "Are you still-"

"Aye," he said, softly. "It started before I knew, and now…"

"The Starks have done it before," Sansa said.

"I know."

"Cousins, aunts, nephews."

"I know."

"Targaryens, especially, have been known…"

"Sansa," he said, desperately, "I know."

"She wants you?" Arya said, suddenly.

"Yes."

She smiled. A sad little smile made sadder by the blue bruises marring her lips. "Good."

And that was all. Though he had expected anger, fear, and a terrible sorrow like the one that had gripped him on Dragonstone, they showed him nothing of the sort. Sansa hugged him, Arya told him to keep her sword, and even Nymeria emerged after a time to bathe him with her kisses.

He hadn't felt so much like a Stark since he had ridden away from Winterfell, cloaked in black and prepared to ride to an eternal damnation, but proud to follow in his uncle's steps and prouder still to honor his father

He took the wine. By the end of the night, he was drunken and happy, and none the wiser.


A/N: We finally got the talk! Yay!

So I have news on the writer's end: I am currently writing the last chapter (no, we're not there yet. I write ahead). I've gotten 500 words done in a week and I can't bring myself to write more. Help.

Anyway, time for our last Dany chapter, as gets a letter and has to decide what she's doing for the rest of her life way before she's ready. Am I projecting, you ask? Yes.