Fatherless child

He has been wandering in the castle for hours and hours and hours.

Then, suddenly, it is not wandering but running. He runs through the hallways, through the courtyards and now he is kneeling before the weirwood in the godswood's heart.

He cannot breathe. Or think. Or feel. He cannot cry anymore.

He wants to go and find Robb but – in the end – he does not move. Robb is just a child like him. And Robb is not alone. He and Sansa and Arya have their mother to console them. Jon has no one.

People tell him how sorry they are, they say their lord was a good man, a good father to Jon. They say a lot of other nice things about Lord Eddard, about what Jon has lost – he does know –, but they don't say anything that really matters, anything about what will come now. Who is Lord Eddard's bastard son without Lord Eddard? People don't speak about that.

And none of them wipe his tears away. None of them embrace Jon and hold him tightly, hold him whole when he believes pain will tear him apart. As Lady Stark does with Robb and the girls.

Dark clouds gather and summer snow is falling, sitting on his shoulders, in his hair.

He has neither courage nor power to rise to his feet and face his new life.

Not now. Not yet.


Author's note: Bran was born already, but he is about one year old.