The Bloody Wolf (version 2)
Summary: Jon Snow has decided to leave Winterfell for good and make his own future. A world-building fic with an intelligent Jon.
1
On the outside, he discharged confidence, pure and unwavering like a daring prince, a chivalrous knight charging into enemy lines.
Inside though, he was terrified, his mind frozen by a glacial tendril of fear, rendering him an empty husk.
Jon stepped underneath the gates of Winterfell, the guards barely sparing him a glance. Dull eyes monotonously flickered past, finding nothing special, and they eased back into old, worn-down statues.
He had mastered the art of blending in, to be able to move anywhere without the need to sulk silently in the shadows. His head was slightly inclined, just low enough so his face would not be recognized, so he would be a lowly servant boy aware of his station. But, it was also not too low, so he wouldn't be identified as a miscreant up to no good. His shoulders were steady, and he walked almost in an excited skip, displaying the unlimited energy of youth.
He was not excited. He was scared shitless, panic-stricken.
The drawbridge was lowered and would be for an hour more before the night began creeping in. He trod cautiously on a planked floor of dark wood, dozens of feet wide and dozens long. It made him feel insignificant, like an ant. Murder holes were spaced on the ceiling; he felt he would be trampled at any moment by piercing arrows and heavy stones.
He approached the outer wall, battlements—grand and glorious—towered from above, made of tightly fused bricks, loyal and unyielding stone.
Though Winterfell was one of the most well-defended castles in Westeros, it did nothing—nor needed—to prohibit anyone from leaving, and he departed from the warm embrace of the shadows, the stronghold of majestic sprawling towers.
He trudged on the cold stone road.
His neck twitched, aching him to turn back, to get one last glance. Winterfell was a summation of his entire life. It was a paradox, representing so many conflicting feelings, the warm halls were comforting, but there, he also felt constant, frigid loneliness.
Only through strenuous self-control did he keep his eyes fixed on the journey ahead. If he allowed himself even a glimpse, he feared that he would turn craven, forgetting everything and returning to the safety of the castle.
Winter had long ended, and spring was already blossoming into summer, but all Jon could see was a dark, gloomy mist of uncertainty.
His mind brewed in turmoil and he continued marching idly. In steady but heavy steps, the constant crunch of gravel drove him forwards. He entered the currently sparsely populated Wintertown. It felt bleak and desolate and uncaring, with neat rows of stone houses that remained unmoving, judging his every decision.
A pair of guards approached, and for a fleeting moment, he thought—and even almost wished—that he was going to be apprehended: They would give him a suspicious look, widen their eyes in recognition, then he would be roughly escorted back into the castle and remain there for a dozen more years.
Jon skirted to the side, and they marched past him, heads held high as if only the gods deserved their attention. Their footsteps became a fading drum, and Jon was alone again.
A cold wind blew. Jon shivered despite his heavy clothing.
Not long after, when his head had cleared, leaving behind cold emptiness, there was no longer any trace of civilization in sight. The landscape was composed of low hills, with dense clumps of trees in the far distance. The sky was a dark gray. His eyes reflected it, showing a penetrating, murky storm.
He dropped his persona and let loose his wretched misery. Self-reflection was barely needed for him to fathom the situation he was in: he was a young boy entering the harsh terrain of the Seven Kingdoms with a semblance of a plan and the barest amount of supplies.
Death was imminent in every path: if he got lost, he would die of starvation. If not, he would still likely die of starvation, get mauled by a wild animal, be jumped upon by bandits, or injure himself in some other way… and any injury in the wilderness would be fatal.
He imagined himself fading away on the shivering ground of hardened dirt, leaving behind loose flesh clinging to fracturing bones, becoming a tunnel for wiggling worms.
Nevertheless, it was his only option—there was no other choice. His stubborn, relentless unwillingness to go back propelled him to move his feet in mechanical motions.
It was the year 289 AC, and the realm was in the midst of war again. His father had led the armies in culling the Greyjoy's Rebellion, leaving his Lady Wife with the full authority in Winterfell. From then on, his life was plunged from dreary melancholy to misery in the depth of her seven hells.
From the first day Lord Stark rode off to war, he was forbidden from having any sort of contact with his true-born siblings. She went as far as threatening to lash him for any transgressions. Though he doubted her word, he was not prepared to test it.
He didn't understand why. Did she think he was a bad influence? Did she think him a scheming monster, planning to usurp Robb's position? He wouldn't even dare consider that; the thought alone disgusted him. Besides, from an objective standpoint, wouldn't isolating him liken the creation of a hostile rift between his siblings, and it then festering like an angry wound?
He was afraid. He imagined his sister Sansa wholeheartedly following her mother's pretty advice, regarding him with a frosty demeanor and a dainty up-turned nose, sending him haughty words, as guarded as the walls of Winterfell.
Jon suspected that with time, his brother and closest companion, Robb, will also follow in his sister's footsteps, drifting further and further away until they're nothing but strangers, and he an interloper in their lives.
With his father away and nobody to turn to, he would spend his days hidden in a secret room he had discovered, purely by accident, when his hands felt a disguised trapdoor underneath a desk in a large, unused guestroom.
Inside, he found an empty space, with four firm walls, a dusty floor, and the ceiling the only exit, where indents in the wall allowed one to climb the short distance up. The trapdoor was as quiet as it was hidden; it swung—open and close—without a sound, seamlessly molding into the dark gray floors.
He ascertained, quite uneasily, that it was used to spy on guests. Judging by the size of the room above, it was reserved for visiting lords of the highest status. One can quickly notice the thickness of the walls and assume no presence of unwanted ears. What lord would lower themselves, both literally and figuratively, to the floor as part of an inspection routine?
He would sneak a tome—or two—out from the library, lug it down into his little room, and spend a dozen hours reading until all his candles sputtered out into a wisp of smoke. The floor was scattered with pale-yellow parchments, pages of notes and curious thoughts scratched across them.
His thirst for knowledge came about due to the dull monotony of life. He found words comforting, his haven, no matter if they were writ in fantastical storybooks or instructional manuals about herbs used for healing.
A few moons after his newfound passion, he found a needle in the haystack, or rather, gold in a mountain of cow dung. He was scouting an unmanaged corner of the library, gathering dust and crawling with an infestation of booklice. It was no wonder it was unmanaged, after all, as it was filled with tomes upon tomes on the characteristics and behavior of obscure insects dull in appearance and having no particular use. In short, those were the sort of materials that similarly disintegrating Maesters studied and authored at the Citadel.
Jon greeted them with apprehension: who needed a comprehensive understanding of the corkscrew ant's reproductive behavior at high altitudes? If Jon was a maester residing at Hightower, he would have rather thrown himself off than waste his time conducting studies like that.
It was that sickened curiosity that had inspired him to leaf through them.
True to their words, those bland covers contained pages filled to the brim of a lifetime's worth of minute observation on obscure biology. Randomly picking up another tome, Jon noticed it was uncharacteristically thicker than the rest. Dreading even worse sacrilege, Jon tentatively exposed a few pages and was greeted by something different… much, much different.
This paper was different. It was thicker, though also covered in dust, it was not rotting and on the verge of dissolving at a gentle touch. It was written in the guttural text of the old tongue, but Jon could read it well enough, having read a number of other ancient tomes.
Jon skimmed through the pages, finding countless memoirs by members of House Stark… in the Year 1552?
On the front steps of an incredible discovery now, Jon spent the rest of the afternoon frantically inspecting each and every volume in the decrepit shelves until he was coughing up dust, finding no less than thirty tomes worth their weight—no, a thousandfold, or perhaps a hundred thousand—in gold.
A servant passed by and gave him a suspicious look. Jon flinched. Luckily, she strode off after giving him one last questioning glance.
He decided then that it wasn't safe to leave them there. The consequence of them being stolen would be disastrous. Not only that, but a simple fire would erase a thousand years of history. He would keep it safe and wait until his Lord Father returned.
It took him three hours, in the hour of the wolf, in the pitch-black darkness, and the employment of a trolley to carry all three and zero into his hideout. He had to lay thick blankets onto the floor and carefully drop them down one by one, but eventually, all was complete.
And after more than two moons of ritualistic study, his notebook, or his clumsily bound stack of parchment, was as thick as two of those tomes, covering the most important and valuable information he found, intermingled with his own thoughts.
Countless excerpts, inserted by dozens to hundreds of different Kings of the North, described warfare, politics, logistics, agriculture, and even numbers and the sciences. He was shocked that the rulers of the North weren't as honorable as reputed; they were each to have different degrees of justness, cruelty, kindness, shrewdness, and intelligence, but what nearly all of them shared was consistent competence in creating a safe, undivided, and stable kingdom.
He had proud dreams of presenting it to his father when he returned from the war.
"Father, I have something to show you," he would declare.
Then the great and imposing Warden of the North would say, "Thank you, Jon, you have done a great service for the North."