Ned actually planned Jon Snows future.
Jon Frost...
Your Grace, I..."
"Damn you Ned, don't you call me that. All else I don't care but you should not call me that, we are like brothers. Better even."
The Lord of the North smiled at his Kings words and began anew.
"Robert, I want to ask you for a favor. I want you to legitimize my bastard."
"You've got a legal boy, right and a girl too.?"
"Two girls, Catelyn had sent a Raven that she just had given birth to a second daughter."
"But you still want me to legalize your bastard, what's his name again, want me to legalize him as Stark?"
Eddard Stark looked away from his former fosterbrother and now King. He didn't answer immediately but instead his eyes went over the many corpses of Ironborn that were piled on top of each other and in flames. The men from all of the different Westeros Kingdoms that have lost their lives here on these treacherous islands against the Reavers, they all would be brought home and buried in their homelands. The Ironborn who had died though, for those King Robert had ordered that they were to be burned and only their ashes would be given to their Drowned God.
Eddard looked away from the many pyres and his eyes found his King again.
"No Robert, not as a Stark. I want to reawake an old and extinct House of the North. I would ask you to legitimize him as Lord Jon of House Frost."
"Ahh yes, that's right. You had named him after Jon. Frost then it is. I just want to know why Ned, any reason for that?"
"The Ironborn will not forget this and too many are still alive of them and too many of them are still plundering in other lands. When all of them come back and those that are young now will have grown up to men, then we will have to fight anew. I will find a place for the House Frost, somewhere on my Western Shores and my blood will then watch to protect these lands there."
Lord Stark was actually a bit proud of himself for coming up so quick with such a believable half-truth explanation. This would be told everywhere from now on and hopefully people would believe it the same as they did with the things that he told about his nephew.
Robert was looking at him with a slightly startled expression.
"Do you really think that these damn reaving rapers would be up soon for another walloping?"
And Eddard Stark looked to his friend and nodded solemnly.
Robert Baratheon, King of Westeros, looked over to the pyres and his eyes narrowed slightly. He watched as the captured Ironborns, men and women and children, were shoved together by his own fighters, as the Ironborn scum was forced to watch their kin being burned to ashes. He saw, even though they were far away, how thin and grim their lips were pressed together and how their eyes glittered in the flames that burn their deads.
He looked over to the many freed people, the saltwives and forced laborers, the stolen people that would be coming with the Mainlanders. He had no idea how they would manage to have their lives back and be returned to their former lands but he was fully trusting his former fosterfather and now Hand to work that out for him.
The King then looked back to his best friend and his narrowed blue eyes met the grey ones of the Warden of the North.
"Seems like a good idea Ned. House Frost then. Jon Frost. And make up his House words something good, maybe about watching or fighting against enemys or killing them, something like that. Should sound intimidating, so that the Iron shits piss in their breeches when your boy is grown up and screams them.
And Eddard Stark smiled at his Kings words.
The Warden of the North had anticipated that his wife would not like his idea, he had just thought about his heirs reaction.
When Eddard Stark had come back to Winterfell, after he had given the Ironborn hostage Theon Greyjoy to the loyal Umbers, and then with the Documents from his King about Jon Snow, Catelyn had treated him for many weeks as if he was a great foe, as if he betrayed her by giving Jon a legal name and a future.
Finally, after nearly three months of bitter silence between him and his wife, they talked once more and Catelyn forgave him.
After she got pregnant again, she even seemed to finally like his idea. She still behaved not much different to Jon though.
The bigger opposition, the one that Ned Stark had not even thought about, was Robb. His not even seven years old son had screamed his opposition to his father's idea, loud and clear and for endless two weeks. The boy had screamed that he didn't want to loose his brother and that they belonged together and that Jon belonged to Winterfell and by his brothers side.
Lord Stark had felt helpless during these weeks. He had become used to weeks of bitter silence by his wife during their already seven years of marriage but to be opposed in such a dramatic way by his normally so joyful son, that had really shocked him.
In the end, it had been Jon himself, his little nephew, his official little bastard, that managed to stop the rants and screams of his lifelong companion.
Little Jon who had told his brother how he enjoyed the thought that one day he would stand by his brother's, his Lord's side as a bannerman. That he was honored to be called in the future with the name of an old House, how honored he was that this old extinct House would be reawakend for him.
And Robb decided then that he would like that too.
The population of Winterfell breathed easier after that, especially Lord Stark himself. Robb's Voice had been amazingly loud when he had screamed.
Years later, he often chuckled when he remembered the weeks of Robb's terror, as the guards had called it later on. His heir had reminded him then so much of his long gone older brother that Eddard had started nearly then to call him so.
Instead the boy that was born many months later had received that name.
During the years that went by, the Lord of Winterfell had often met with the Lord Ryswell and other Lords of his Western shores and by the time when Rickon was born, a third of the Keep that was restored for Jon was already finished.
It was the old Keep of the extinct House Fisher or rather the ruins of it, in the long and Southern showing arm of the Sea Dragon Point peninsula. Since the last Members of the House Fisher had married thousands of years ago into the Flints and the Flints themselves had sold these parts of the shores in equal parts to the Ryders and the Stark many years later , Ned hadn't ever thought about the name Fisher for Jon. The Last of House Frost had been married thousands of years ago into House Stark though and since it was so bound into the Stark family, that was the logical name for his nephew in his mind.
The Ryders had later made way and married into the younger House Ryswell and that had complicated some parts of Eddard Starks plans a bit. He actually had to buy some parts of the lands that he had planned for the old new House Frost and damn old Rodrik Ryswell had never really forgiven the Starks that Brandon hadn't married Barbrey.
In the end though, it was Robb who managed with his twelve years what Lord Eddard had not managed in the last six hard years of trying to get the Ryswells to agree.
The Heir of Winterfell had accompanied his father and bastard brother on their yearly ride to Jon's always developing Keep and then to the yearly visit to the Lord of the Rills for the negotiations about the thirteen thousand acres that Lord Eddard wanted to buy from the Ryswells to be included into Jon's lands.
The Ryswells just never agreed to any of the conditions that they had asked for a year earlier and always changed their minds during the last six years.
This time though, this time they didn't.
Robb had come with his father and his brother and Robb liked the granddaughter of Rodrik Ryswell and told his father and Lord Rodrik so.
In less then a week, Jon Frost received his thirteen thousand acres to make the lands of his House complete, House Stark and House Ryswell had agreed to forget the old stories of Barbrey and Brandon and Robb was betrothed to Runa Ryswell, only daughter of Roger, the heir and oldest son of Lord Rodrik.
The young Lady, just three days older than her fiance, rode with her future new family to Winterfell and was quite a surprise for Lady Catelyn. A not really welcomed surprise after the Lady Stark found out that this idea came from Robb himself to finally secure the lands for his beloved brother.
But even that turned out to be a good idea, even for Lady Stark herself. She grew to like her future gooddaughter and Lord Stark himself had finally the pleasure to have one of his most quarrelsome Lords behaving way better than ever before.
Jon Frost had at first felt guilty about the betrothal but after many weeks he finally believed his beloved brother when Robb told him that he really liked his fiancee.
Since all problems with the Ryswells had finally ended, the Keep for Jon Frost was not that far away anymore from being finished. On the lands had already lived a couple of dozen fishermen families and peasant families before the lands would be known as belonging to House Frost but now, with the Keep rebuilt and a little Harbor slowly developing, more people came from other parts of the North to settle around the Keep of House Frost.
Mostly they were third sons and women with bastards and other people that needed a reason to leave the regions of their birth.
It did not matter for Jon Frost though. They were his people and he would care for them, that he vowed to his father when he was officially named as Lord of the Northern half of the Stony Shore and was called for the first time Lord Jon Frost.
On the way back from an execution, for the last time before Jon would leave for his own lands, the group around Eddard Stark found a Direwolf bitch giving birth to her pups. She was badly hurt but still alive and though the grown men were careful and worried about their younger companions, Jon Frost and Robb and Bran Stark helped the shewolf and she survived not only the birth but also her wounds.
A few weeks later, Lord Eddard received the news that his fosterfather had died and new trouble began.
Sigil of House Frost (Blue Ice Crystal on black ground)