JON
Jon woke up sweating and his heart was racing. He was in his bed in Winterfell, safe and sound. He was not in King´s Landing as Daenerys was commanding Drogon to burn down the city. Almost every night he dreamed of it. The people screaming as the city collapsed around them and the roaring of Drogon as he set the innocent people on fire.
He turned on his side and saw the little dragons lying beside him on the bed. They would not be used to burn down cities, Jon vowed to himself. They would never be used to create such horrors.
His dragons were looking at him with concerned eyes. Jon could already feel their worries through his bond with them. He hadn't managed to create such a bond with Rhaegal when he had been around the green dragon in his last life.
That brought another thought to him. He needed to find them new names. He couldn't keep the old ones that the mad queen had given them. That wouldn't do. He wasn't that fond of his Targaryen uncle or his father, and he wouldn't be naming one of his dragons after his aunt´s dead husband.
He didn't know how long he was lying on his side, admiring his small baby dragons, when he started to feel through their bond that they were starting to get hungry. Jon sat up and walk to his desk. There was still a lot of meat leftover form the night before. Perhaps he shouldn't be surprised. They had been hatched last night and they probably didn't need a lot of food yet. But soon they would.
He helped them to the floor, he really didn't want them to eat while on his bed. He had been planning to make them do some training for their food, but they just reacted to his thoughts. If Jon wanted them to be still, they obeyed. That simplified things.
When he was done feeding them, he made sure that they understood that they had to be quiet and that if they heard anyone approach the door, they had to hide under the bed, behind the chest that held Blackfyre.
When he felt confident that they would listen to what he had told them to do, which was almost immediately, he headed down to the great hall to break his fast. On his way there, he remembered the training the day before. Jon had never in his life wanted to miss breakfast so much.
He didn't feel like dealing with the angry looks from Lady Stark, or anyone else for that matter. But he knew that it couldn't be avoided forever, and it was better to deal with it now than later. And Jon was many things, but a coward was not one of them. Hells he had stabbed the Dragon queen to death with her dragon just outside.
Now he had the same dragon in his room as a hatchling. But was it the same dragon? Yes, it was but this one hadn't burned down a city, and hopefully never would. He couldn't lay any blame on the dragon. He had been doing as he was ordered by his rider. No, Jon would be laying the blame on the person who had done the ordering. Jon resolved to find new names for them, he didn't want any reminders that these dragons had once been hatched by Daenerys Targaryen. He wanted them to have a clean slate in this life.
But what could he name them? Maybe after the famous Targaryen dragons? No, definitely not. He didn't want to be repeating the past, and he wanted them to have new names, not names that other dragons had carried before them. They would be like him, there were no other Targaryen´s with the name Jon, and his dragons wouldn't have the names of the other Targaryen dragons.
Jon arrived at the great hall, with his head full of potential names for the dragons, so he didn't notice the foul look Lady Stark was giving him or the nasty scowl Theon was sending him. Jon sat himself down beside Arya and in front of Robb. He was so immersed in his thoughts of dragon names that he didn't notice that everyone had fallen silent.
"So…are you going to tell us were you learned that move?" Robb was giving him an eager look as he said those words. It was then he noticed that he was the center of attention. He hated it when people gave him so much attention. No one gave a bastard any attention except when they had done something wrong in his experience. But if he was to become the King of the Seven Kingdoms, he had to get used to it. Oh, how he dreaded when he had to become King.
Even people on other tables were looking at him. Apparently, all the men at arms had heard of Jon´s sudden increase of talent and now they were curious. But what was worse was Ser Rodrick who made no move to hide his interest in this conversation.
Jon really didn't want to have this conversation. All he wanted to do was go to the library and see if he could find some ideas for names for his dragons.
Jon shrugged his shoulders. "I sometimes watch the guards train." Yes, this could work, answer without answering or giving anything away. His cousin screwed up his young face, Jon remembered when Robb had done this a lot, until his mother made him stop. The future Warden of the North couldn't be making faces at people.
"You learned that just by watching other people?" Robb sounded like he didn't believe him. But Jon just shrugged his shoulders again and continued eating.
"Sometimes when you are in your lordly lessons, I practice my sword arm by myself in the godswood." Thank the gods that Robb seemed to buy this, Robb had always loved and trusted Jon. Even though Jon hated himself for abusing that trust now, it was better than the alternative. But he seemed to be the only one that bought that, though no one said anything.
"And speaking of the lordly lessons that Robb attends." Jon looked over to his uncle that was now watching them like a hawk. "Jon, I want you to start attending them alongside Robb." This caused Jon´s eyebrows to disappear into the roots of his curly hair. He looked at his cousin Robb, who looked overjoyed at having Jon with him at his lessons.
But lady Stark was not happy with her husband. Her face had turned so red that for a moment, Jon thought that the woman would explode. "Ned, you cannot do this. You cannot allow the bastard to attend lessons with your trueborn son." She hissed at her husband. She was just loud enough for the children to hear, but the people on the other tables didn't hear a thing.
The Lord of Winterfell gave her a cold look. "There are a lot of abandoned castles here in the north that badly need lords, I intend to give one to Jon, when he comes of age and for that he is going to need to attend the lessons. It would be a waste of maester Luwin´s time to have to teach them separately." With every word the man spoke, his wife turned redder and redder, if that was possible.
"You intend to give the bastard a castle? And a lordship?" Her voice sounded shrill. "And what about Bran? Your trueborn son? What is he going to get?"
"Enough, Catelyn. Bran is only four-years old and he is too young to attend lessons. And in six-years Jon is going to be a man grown and he is going to need a place for himself."
"OH, and what castle and lordship do you intend to give him? Moat Cailin? Queenscrown?" Those two castles and lordships were the most famous and largest abandoned castles in the North.
"I have not decided yet, but those two are a real possibility for Jon. Now children go about your duties. And Jon, I want you to come to my solar after dinner." Jon nodded and hurried out of the great hall, with Robb trailing after him.
"VOW, can you believe that. You and I are going to attend the same lessons. I can´t wait, it is going to be so much fun." Robb had started to attend the lordly lessons two years ago. Jon could still remember the sting he felt when he learned that he would not be attending with him.
"I thought you hated your lessons with maester Luwin?" Robb nodded with eagerness that only a young child could have.
"Yes, they are really boring. They are all numbers, high Valyrian and politics and things like that. But now you are going to suffer with me." He finished with a laugh.
They headed to the practice yard together to wait for Ser Rodrick. They didn't have to wait for long, because the portly knight came strolling up to them with Theon in tow. Theon had a sullen look on his face and the look quickly turned to anger as he spotted Jon.
Jon decided to ignore the older boy and just get on with his training. Ser Rodrick came up to Jon and handed him a wooded sword. "Now you and your brother Robb are two of the most talented young swordsmen I have ever trained." This caused Robb to puff out his chest in pride and Theon to grow more sullen. But Jon kept his features schooled in the normal mask that didn't give much away. "But yesterday, seeing you fight made me think that maybe you would be best served by fighting someone a little more seasoned."
The knight gestured to a young man, who was probably in his late teens or early twenties. The young man walked over with a smile on his face, and there was a lot of confidence in his step. Jon knew this young man, this was Will, he had been a boy when he came to Winterfell from White Harbor to become a guard for Lord Stark. He was one of the most promising sword arms in the guard of Winterfell.
"Now your father, has given me permission to test you Jon. We want to find out exactly how good you are with a sword. And if you are good enough, we want you to train with the older boys." Now this was interesting. It would be a good idea to have a more serious training than with Robb and Theon. He didn't want to grow slow or weak, he was used to fight for his life. Jon wanted to become the best swordsman he could be, and maybe this could help him to become better.
Jon gave the older man a small smile and nodded his consent. But there was one thing that he should ask the aging knight. "Ser Rodrick, could I have a bastard sword?"
Everybody that knew him looked at him in surprise. The old Jon that they knew, would never have asked for a bastard sword instead of a longsword. Mostly because of the name. But Jon had found that he much preferred the bastard swords over the longswords. Ser Rodrick stared at him and nodded.
Jon took the bastardized version of the wooden sword and tested the balance, not great but passible he thought to himself.
When Jon and the man, Will took up stances in the middle of the training yard, Jon noticed the excited look on Robb and the nasty grin on Theon. The Ironborn thought that Jon wouldn't be able to beat Will. Not that Jon could blame him, Jon wouldn't bet on himself if he was in Theon´s shoes.
Ser Rodrick gave the signal to start. Will lunged at Jon, probably wanting to get this over with quickly, and get to more important things. But Jon was ready for him. He side-stepped him and again the man lunged for him but this time the young guard swung his sword at Jon, which Jon easily parried. The young man started very quickly to grow angry at not being able to catch Jon of guard. It must be embarrassing to not be able to win immediately against a ten-year old.
But little did the young guardsman know, that Jon was going very easy on him. This was one of the best swordsmen in Winterfell? Jon thought him slow and his strikes were not heavy on his sword.
Will had gown very angry by now, he came rushing at Jon with a yell. But Jon was faster, he grabbed the young man´s sword arm and twisted it, forcing him to let his sword go. Then Jon kicked the back of his knees and let him fall by letting his arm go. Will was laying on his stomach in the dirt, disarmed by a ten-year old.
Jon walked over to the fallen sword and picked it up. Then he waited for the man to get off the ground. Will stood slowly up, out of the dirt. He was grunting in pain and clutching his sword arm to his chest.
"Are you alright Will?" The old knight asked.
"I think the bastard broke my arm." That statement was met with silence. Until Ser Rodrick made his way over to the man and looked over his arm. "Go on and get the maester to look at it, it is a little bruised already and a little swollen. But I warn you now Will, Jon is Lord Stark´s son. So, baseborn or not, you are to show him respect." His voice was gruff and a little angry.
Will looked at Jon angerly and grunted as he walked away. Ser Rodrick looked at Jon. "A bastard sword eh?"
EDDARD
Eddard Stark, the lord of Winterfell and the warden of the North, sighed tiredly. His lady wife was pacing in front of him in anger and demanding an explanation for his abominable behavior. She was demanding that he pull Jon from Robb´s lessons. It was an insult to her that the bastard was in the same lessons that her trueborn son was in.
Ned loved his wife with all his heart. But in this life and the last one, there were times when he wanted to send her to her room like an errant child. He restrained himself. He wasn't one of those men that treated the women in his life like cattle. Yes, he had betrothed Sansa to that little shit Joffrey, but both Sansa and Catelyn had begged him to do it.
Sansa had wanted a golden prince, but she had been a child who didn't know what she wanted yet. This time she wouldn't be sold to anyone, she would marry a good man who was worthy of her. A man who would treat her with respect. Sansa hadn't wanted that man when he had spoken about breaking her engagement, but as he said before, she had been a child.
But his wife, Catelyn Stark had no such defense. She was a woman grown who had taken Tyrion Lannister prisoner, when she knew full well in what kind of situation he was in at the capitol. She had been the one to preach caution when dealing with the Lannister´s, yet she had done this. He knew full well that he shouldn't judge her for mistakes that she hadn't made yet, but he would be damned if he let her make any of these mistakes again.
His redheaded wife was stalking about his solar and hissing insults at Jon, and he finally lost his temper. It wasn't easy to make his lose his temper but enough was enough. "CATELYN ENOUGH." His wife stopped and stared at him in bewilderment. She had never before been the subject of the brunt of his anger. But there was a first time for everything.
"Catelyn, I love you, but you will never talk this way about Jon again. Do you understand me?" Cat just stared at him for a little while.
"Have you not shamed me enough, my lord? Must you continue to treat the bastard as Robb´s equal? And now you want to give him a lordship that by rights should be Bran´s?"
"Enough, Catelyn. I have made my decision and my decision is final." Ned was not proud that he raised his voice at his wife. While he admired her dedication to their children, she shouldn't take her anger at her husband out on Jon. Jon had done nothing to her or anyone else, yet she continued to take all her anger at the world on Jon.
Catelyn bristled in anger at his words. He was very happy that there was a knock on his door to stop his wife from saying anything else. Ser Rodrick and maester Luwin walked into his solar. Catelyn gave him a last furious look before she swept out of the office.
For a moment he felt that he was being unfair to his wife. But then he remembered in the past life, when Jon had been going to the Wall and he had been trying to say goodbye to Bran. Ned had walked in on Catelyn letting her anger and sorrow out on Jon, and Ned felt his resolve strengthen. He couldn't let his wife take her anger out on Jon. She would definitely regret it when the truth would come out.
There wasn't any if´s or maybe´s anymore about the truth about Jon coming out. The truth was coming out, in a few years Ned and Jon would have to reclaim Jon´s birthright. He should have felt more guilt over betraying Robert, his oldest friend and a man who was more a brother to him that Brandon had ever been, but Robert would have killed Jon. That was something that Ned could never allow. Robert had also made an abominable king, he had plunged the Kingdoms into dept that that counted more than six million gold dragons, and that was just to the Lannister´s. How much did the Iron Throne owe the Iron bank?
The two men sat themselves down in front of him and brought him out of his musings. Ned gestured for Ser Rodrick to start with his report.
"Jon did well in the training today." The knight, who had also trained Ned for a time as a child, said with pride in his tone. "He beat Will, very easily in the yard. But I think that the young Will is not going to get to forget that a ten-year old beat him into the dirt today."
Luwin chuckled softly. "Yes, he was quite angry when he came to me, he kept saying that Jon had broken his arm." Ned felt his throat constrict. Did Jon break a man´s arm and the two were chuckling over it? Had the world gone mad?
The maester of Winterfell noticed the look on Ned´s face. "Oh, don't worry my lord. Young Will was just fine, a little bruised, but unbroken he remains." Ned felt the relief wash over his very being.
"So, can we put Jon with the older men in training?" The lord of Winterfell asked. Ned needed Jon to get all the training he could get. Soon Jon would be the King of the Seven Kingdoms and if Jon was being serious about the Others returning, then he would need all the training in the world. He would have put Robb in the more advanced training with him, but he didn't think that Robb could keep up with them yet. But Ned asked Ser Rodrick to make sure that Robb took his training seriously. The old knight had just laughed at that, apparently Robb was very serious about his sword training.
When Ser Rodrick had finished his report on Jon, Ned gestured for the maester to give his report on Jon´s first lesson with Robb in the managing of a lordship.
"Ah, Jon is very promising young student. If I didn't know better then, I would have thought that he had been a lord before." Ned wasn't surprised at that. Jon had been the Lord Commander of the Night´s Watch in his old life, and a lot of the Lord Commander´s duties were very similar to many of the duties of a Lord.
"There is another reason for why I asked you two here today." This got the attention of the two men. "I want to ask you two on how you feel about having Sansa in your lessons with the boys."
The men were now flabbergasted. The Lord of Winterfell was asking them to train his daughter like they would train a lord of Winterfell. While some of the lords trained their daughters like boys, like the ones on bear island, they were very few who did that.
The men looked at one another and then back to Ned. "You want us to train Lady Sansa in all the lordly duties?" The maester asked with trepidation.
Ned nodded at them. "Yes, and Arya when she is old enough, I want both my son´s and daughter´s to have all the tools they can possibly have to defend themselves and the North." That statement was met with silence. Then they both nodded their consent. Sansa and Arya would be trained with their brother´s. Arya would be ecstatic about learning to handle weaponry. Sansa on the other hand would be scandalized.
And Ned hadn't even begun to worry about what Catelyn would say.
JON
Jon was sure that he had made an enemy of young Will today. The other guards had heard of his defeat by the hand of a ten-year old, and they hadn't let him forget it and they probably never would.
After training Jon had left for his room, he had managed to go to the kitchens and gotten a little more meat for his dragons. He felt a lot better after being with them, even if it was only for a little while. But soon he had to leave for his lessons with maester Luwin.
While he like the lessons with maester Luwin, they were very tiring. Robb had hung on Jon´s every word when the maester asked Jon a question. Robb was in awe of Jon because of his sudden increase of talent in the sword, but Theon was worse than ever. Jon had almost forgotten how unbearable he could be before the Bastard of Bolton had gotten his hands on him. Theon took every opportunity to be snide and call him a bastard. While it didn't bother Jon as much as it did before, it was still annoying.
Dinner had also been hard. He had to endure Lady Stark´s withering glares. It was like he had murdered someone dear to her and she was trying to kill him with her eyes. For the first time since he had come back into his old body, he missed being beyond the Wall. At least no one tried to murder him with a stare. No, the Freefolk just tried to murder people out right.
It wasn't soon enough when his uncle called him to his solar. Jon gladly fled the great hall. Even though it was hard, he was very glad that he was back. After his lessons with the maester, Jon had played with Robb, Sansa, Arya and Bran. Jon knew that this was the last year that Sansa would play with them. Soon she would stop, she would try to be more of a lady, and ladies didn't play with children and bastards, she had said in his last life when she was asked.
Jon knocked on his uncle´s solar door, he didn't have to wait to be called in. Thankfully his uncle was alone, and Jon was greeted with one of Eddard Stark´s rare smiles.
"How was your first day in your lessons?" This brought a smile to Jon´s face. Jon always liked how much his uncle cared.
"It went well, I suppose. I asked maester Luwin at the end of the lesson for any book I might read so I can catch up on those two years I didn't attend lessons." That caused his uncle to give him beaming smile.
"Good, the more you study now the better prepared you will be when the time comes. But I also wanted to know something." Ned had turned serious.
"I need to know about the Bolton´s and the others that sided with the Lannister´s." That was a hard subject for Jon to talk about, the Bolton´s had done such horrible things to take over the North. The thought of what the Frey´s and the Bolton´s had done to Robb still haunted him. He had heard of what they had done to his body, even at the wall. They had murdered him at a wedding and then they had mutilated his body and put Greywind´s head instead of his own on his shoulders and paraded him around for everyone to see. And Sansa had been raped and tortured by Ramsay Snow for weeks, even months.
Jon had never hated anyone like Ramsay Snow before in his life. He could still remember how he had lost his temper at the battle of the bastards, when he had almost beat the monster to death. Jon shook his head out of his thoughts as his uncle continued.
"We cannot have them at our backs when the time comes, but we cannot punish them for a crime that they have not committed yet."
Jon nodded, that was reasonable, but there was something that his uncle didn't know. "Uncle, when Sansa and I retook Winterfell, she told me somethings. Apparently, the Bolton´s haven't stopped flaying people even after it was outlawed here in the North. She told me how Ramsay gloated to her that he and his father had never stopped after you made it illegal. They have hidden rooms in the Dreadfort they use for torture."
His uncle had gone pale at that news. He had always been wary of Roose Bolton, believing him to be cold, calculating and ruthless. But to hear that he was still flaying people for his own amusement was something unthinkable. Jon himself had been shocked when Sansa had told him that.
"We can´t just go and accuse a Lord of breaking the law without any proof." Ned got up and started to pace the room.
"I agree, we need evidence of their crimes. And I think that I know how." His uncle stopped abruptly and looked at him. Jon had spent some time with the smallfolk after he and Sansa had taken Winterfell back. He knew that some of the survivors of Wintertown had been refuges from the Bolton lands that had arrived twenty years before the sack of Winterfell. They had been the few to survive because they knew how to survive the Bolton´s and their savagery. And Jon also knew that they craved revenge and would not only testify, they would most likely be willing to go to the Bolton lands and try to help Stark men apprehend the Bastard of Bolton.
When Jon relayed this information to his uncle, Ned turned thought full and sat down. "Yes, that could work. And if they manage to capture Ramsay Snow in the act then that could be what we need. Roose Bolton is of still responsible for his son as he is not yet of age. It could also give us an excuse to search the Dreadfort."
Jon left his uncle to put some finishing touches on their plan to bring the Bolton´s to justice, Jon just hoped it would work.
