Eddard
The news arrived in the Vale all at once.
News of Lyanna's disappearance near Harrenhal arrived by one raven, and by another was the news of Lord Rickard and Brandon Starks deaths. Ethan Glover had sent the news to Eddard, while the Kings Hand had sent another letter to Jon Arryn demanding Robert Baratheon and Eddard's heads.
Ned had read his own letters in his room in the Eyrie, his breath and pulse quickening with each word as he reread them over and over.
Lyanna is missing, Rhaegar and his men had been in the area at the time. Brandon had assumed the prince had run off with her.
It wasn't an impossible assumption. The tourney at Harrenhal had left Brandon with a bitter view towards the crown prince, and it had left them all nervous over why he would crown Lyanna over his own wife. His wife who was at Dragonstone with their recently born son.
What business would the prince have in the Riverlands when he should be with his sickly wife and newborn son.
And it was Brandon, Brandon with the wolf's blood. He'd nearly challenged Rhaegar at the tourney after what happened, so Ned couldn't see any other route his elder brother would take but to journey to King Landing and challenge the prince.
Your brother and father are dead. Along with Brandon's whole party, save Alys and I. I am unsure what will happen with us or why we weren't burnt with the rest.
Ethan Glover's words hung on Ned heavier than the previous letter. He read them over and over, his father and brother were dead. How could that happen?
His father had been in Winterfell only a couple months back. And Brandon… Brandon was to be married soon. Ned hadn't been planning to attend the wedding, he was staying in the Eyrie longer still with Robert and Jon. But his sisters had departed only a month ago to head towards Riverrun for the wedding. Brandon had been staying in the Riverlands since Harrenhal, to know his future wife better before they wed.
But now they would never be wed.
Because Brandon was dead
"You're the Lord of Winterfell now." Robert tells him when he hears the news, his voice, usually loud and full of boisterous energy, was a quiet somber thing.
He was staring hard at the first letter, the one that had told them of Lyanna's disappearance. When he'd read it his face had tightened into a harsh one, and his hands were tight upon the paper to the point of almost tearing it. Robert had taken the incident at Harrenhal as an insult. Though he'd at first laughed it off he turned far more somber as he watched both the prince and Lyanna. This was a far harsher insult towards him than that had been, and Robert had always been a man far louder in his thoughts than Ned.
Jon Arryn found the two then, sat in the garden of the Eyrie, with his own letter in hand. This one with the seal of Owen Merryweather, hand to Aerys Targaryen.
"He's demanded your heads." He states, a simple statement, "he expects me to deliver them to prove my loyalties." He hands the letter to Ned, letting him read the contents himself. "My heir has died as well," Ned nods, Elbert Arryn had been traveling with Brandon when they would've gone south.
"What will you do?" Ned questions. "He can't be allowed to demand our heads when we've only just heard of this all."
"He should not have been allowed to kill any those he'd killed." Robert barks in objection, "your brother and his party, your father, nor us." When he looked at Robert, Ned saw the resolution within his eyes. A burning fury that held its roots deep in his friend. "Rhaegar did the wrong, not your brother or his men. Yet there is no mention of Rhaegars actions or what the King plans to do about them in this letter."
"I will not send him your heads," Jon states.
"It'll be an act of defiance," Ned states, looking once more at the letter from Lord Merryweather. "We'll be acting against the crown."
"The crown has abused its powers over us," Robert stood, pacing the length of the garden, stopping before the weeping woman statue that stands in the middle. "First with the offenses Rhaegar has given you Starks and I, at Harrenhal and now, stealing your sister. My betrothed."
Ned watches his friend closely, once a stranger who had became a brother over all these years in the Vale together. It hadn't been hard to tell how infatuated Robert had become with Lyanna. Ned himself has been looking towards the day Robert would be truly be his brother.
Robert meets his eyes and continues, "now with the deaths of your father and brother, the deaths of many lord's sons for no reason. Demanding our heads for no reason?"
"The actions he has taken in these moments only strengthen the rumors that have spread of a possible madness that has taken King Aerys." Robert looks between Ned and Jon, "if he can kill any lord he likes, if his son can steal any girl he likes, how are any of us safe under his rule?"
And so it began.
Jon sent his ravens out to the Lords of the Vale, calling his banners to the Eyrie while Ned and Robert prepared themselves to travel to their own homes and call their own banners.
As they waited for the knights of the Vale to answer the call to arms, Ned sat looking at the letters once more with Jon. "Both of my sisters are held."
"They are," Jon confirms, his eyes softening towards the man who had become a son. "Alys is safe enough for now, Owen Merryweather has stated his intentions to have her held as hostage, perhaps to even marry her to the boy Viserys as a way to keep your brother at peace."
"But how safe are we in that assurance," Ned looks to the elder man, "if the king is truly mad he could turn upon my sister the moment he hears of our rebellion."
Jon has no answer for that. But they both know it mattered not what the answer was, if the king is indeed mad Alys would be no safer with Ned dead and Benjen a loyal lord to Aerys than she would be with them in rebellion against the crown.
Jaime
Jaime found the Stark girl particularly boring to guard.
She kept to herself, though it was still uncertain whether she'd have free range of the Keep anyways, and she hardly spoke to anyone but the handmaid Merryweather had assigned to her. Truth be told Jaime hardly even saw the girl. He never entered her rooms as there was never any need to. He was only assigned to stand outside her door and make sure she didn't try to run off. So the few times he did spot her was when the handmaid entered or left the room and he caught a glance through the door.
It was likely better he didn't find her particularly interesting, better that he didn't spend his shifts guarding her room talking with her. It was well and truly decided amongst those who had been in Kings Landing long enough that the Stark girl was doomed, they all knew the truth of the king by now and thus knew it most likely they would be watching her burn in the Great Hall eventually and they'll all be much better off to not have gotten to know the poor girl destined for ash.
That was why no one called upon her or visited her rooms. No one had told the lords and ladies of the court that they had to shun her, it was just the easiest course of action and thus the one most taken.
Jaime shifted against the wall, he was particularly bored today. No letters had come from Tyrion or Cersei in the last few weeks. Likely due to the rising noise of discontent after the deaths of Stark men, and the still missing prince with his own Stark girl. Not to mention that Jaime had overheard some lord or lady speaking about some whispers of rebellion in the Vale. Not long after had he heard from Ser Barristan as they were trading posts that Jon Arryn had refused the kings letter and was raising his banners.
It seemed all too likely to fail. The knights of the Vale were a mighty force, but they reigned best in their own mountainous domain. Jon Arryn himself was an older, more seasoned warrior, he'd likely prove a good leader of his forces and a formidable foe. But Robert Baratheon was less known of, though Jaime recalls him being a boisterous drunk at the feast at Harrenhal. Then there was Ned Stark, now Lord of Winterfell and having just lost four members of his house. He'd be playing a dangerous game if he raises his banners, with Alys Stark in the grips of the king and Lyanna Stark missing with the Prince.
Then again, what else can he do? His head was demanded, and however honorable the Starks and Northmen are known to be self-preservation tends to win out in that race. So the only true option would be to fight back.
Though, that does not make the rebellion any less doomed or stupid.
Jaime begins to wonder what his father thinks of all this, will he ride east to the Vale to crush the upstarts to show faith to the king? Or is he still sitting in his bitterness over Jaime's joining the Kingsguard?
He isn't given much time to consider when the door beside him creaks open gently. The Stark girl pokes her head out, glancing around before her eyes land upon him. The darkness of them is slightly disquieting compared to the paleness of her skin, mixed with the slight darkness beneath her grey eyes she is given a sort of haunted look that is both intriguing and unnerving to Jaime, though he maintains himself as he looks at her with a brow raised in question for what it is she is thinking to do.
She presses her lips together a few moments as though she is considering just silently slinking back into her room, leaving whatever she was about to do or ask a distant thought. But instead she seems too steady herself and step more fully out of her room, her chin lifted just the smallest bit. "I was wondering if I could go to the Godswood." Her voice is a gentle, singsong thing. Quiet and collected.
Jaime considers, he still isn't actually certain whether she is given free roam of the castle. Merryweather hasn't decreed one way or the other. Besides, it would be cruel of them to deny her prayers and gods. Deciding, he shrugs. "Very well, " and motions for her to follow him through the Red Keep to the Godswood as he's certain she hasn't a clue where to go.
Jaime has never had much use for the Godswood of the Red Keep, not one for praying in general but especially to the old gods who most in the south looked at as lesser than the Seven. But the Godswood still held an eerie sort of spirit as they walked amongst the spattering of elm, alder, and black cottonwood trees along the trail that would lead them to the heart. Or perhaps it was this girl of the old faith that brought the eeriness to the place.
Jaime had never actually wandered this far into the Godswood, Aerys certainly didn't spend much of his time in this holy space and thus what point would Jaime have to venture here if he wasn't guarding someone who wished to see it.
As such he'd never actually seen the great oak tree that stood at the heart of this acre of land, its thick trunk and stretching limbs covered in vines and smokeberrys, the ground surrounding the tree holding carefully tended dragon's breath flowers that seem to currently be in bloom. It was an enchanting sight to be sure, Jaime thought, befitting of its holy purpose with the gods. But as he looked over at the quiet Stark girl he found an odd look of disappointment cross over her face before she shook it away and went to kneel before the tree.
"Not as big as the heart trees in the North?" he says, he isn't sure why he says anything. He has no need to say anything. He should just pick a spot where he can keep his eye on her and think of something else, perhaps Cersei and whether she ever ventured into the Godswood when she and father lived here. But no, he speaks and she looks up at him seemingly as puzzled as him for it.
"It's bigger than the one I saw at Riverrun, the one at Harrenhal didn't spread out as much, but was about the same size," she speaks the words carefully, as though she's struggling to recall them. She then looks back at the tree, and studies it for long enough that Jaime starts to think that was all she had to say and she'd simply gone back to praying.
But then she speaks again, a soft melancholy sound to her voice "the heart tree at Winterfell is a bit smaller than this I think," she purses her lips before standing and stepping back to look at more of the tree itself. "But perhaps I'm shrinking it in my head, I haven't been back in Winterfell since before the tourney at Harrenhal." She glances at him then, "why do you ask?"
Cersei had always told him northerners were cold folk, in body, soul, and heart. And as Alys Starks dark eyes studied him the best word to describe it was cold. But they weren't harsh. It was a soft cold, like a loose powdery snow.
So he answers. "You looked quite disappointed with our humble southern Godswood is all." He gives a shrug of his shoulders and glances at the tree again, it was quite a large tree in truth.
"I was," she blushes, a pink redness flooding her cheeks as though that were going to offend him. "But only because I had expected weirwood not oak. I suppose I shouldn't have, I know most of the weirwoods in the south have been cut down." She fiddles a bit with the edge of her sleeves, she has yet to adopt the southern fashion completely and wears much more modest and simple clothes than most ladies at court.
"Will your Gods ignore you even more without an old tree to pray at?" He states, again without thought. It's only after that he realizes how harsh his words might sound, when she looks at him with hurt in her dark eyes and a gentle sigh escaping her lips.
She turns away from him, returning to kneel before the tree. Before she closes her eyes and clasps her hands to pray she says. "They may not be able to help me this far south, but perhaps they can still hear my prayers for my family."
Alys Stark frequents the Godswood often after that first encounter.
Jaime eventually learns that it's because he and Selmy were the only ones to agree to accompany her there. Though that doesn't quite mean that he's spoken any further with her than that first conversation by the heart tree. No, he still holds himself against that action.
As do others, occasionally they would pass some lord or lady as they made their way through the keep or the Godswood. Whomever they passed would glance away from the two of them and if they were currently in conversation it would halt until they'd passed. It did actually start to make Jaime feel sorry for the Stark girl, who seemed particularly isolated as news of Jon Arryn's defiance by raising his banners spread throughout the keep. Alys had heard of it from her handmaid he believes, as that was the one person who didn't, or simply couldn't, shy away from speaking with her. Though she eventually asks Jaime if what she heard was true.
"Do you not trust your handmaid?" He jests as they pass through the first arches of the elder trees.
"I do, at least in that sense," she sighs an almost annoyed breath and looks at Jaime again, "but I still would like to know what's happening, all that's happening. I fear that Aleah doesn't tell me the whole truth." He watches as she leans over to pick a handful of berries they pass by; she plops one into her mouth before adding, "She means well, she fears that if I know too much I'll get in some kind of trouble."
Jaime gives a shrug, "nothing else has occurred, the news of Arryn calling his banners came from Marq Grafton or some Vale lord like that."
He leaves their conversation at that, choosing silence over speaking as they continue through the wooded paths.
It's not hard to notice the effect her isolation has upon the girl. Clear disappointment passes over her haunting grey eyes whenever he gives short answers to any of her attempts at conversation. She'll have to give that up soon, he hopes. For her own sanity she needs to realize that there are no true friends in Kingslanding, especially for a hostage girl doomed for the flame.
She does start to withdraw into herself, she stops attempting conversation with him after another week of failed attempts. Instead only speaking with him if she has a question or requires something.
She also doesn't visit the Godswood again for some time.
The day Alys returns to the Godswood is a rare overcast day, wind howling around the towers of the keep and sending the leaves of the Godswood swirling in an almost enchanting way when they walk along the path. Jaime looks worriedly towards the sky; he hopes it doesn't rain. He would rather it didn't, the Red Keep didn't need something more to sour the mood of the court.
Though it does grant them the courtesy of not passing by anyone on their way through the keep, most having chosen to stay in for the day. To mull over the worrisome news from the Vale, Jaime imagines.
Word came the night before of a battle at Gulltown, the town held by Marq Grafton who had previously proclaimed his loyalty to Aerys and was now dead upon his own land. If Jaime had heard correctly it was the Stormlord Robert Baratheon who'd taken the credit for slaying the man. Regardless, Jon Arryn had ridden with his men down from the Eyrie and taken Gulltown easily enough.
Many lords and ladies of the court are now worrying that this means a true rebellion is brewing. Though plenty still say it won't last long, likely a bit of ruffled feathers of those Vale Knights and the bitter Stormlord Robert. They'll be dealt with swiftly enough and peace will return.
At least as peaceful a kingdom whose king burns those he believes traitorous can ever be.
He imagines this is why Alys asked to go to the Godswood today, her handmaid had likely informed her of the news and she wished to pray for her brothers' safety and health after that battle. Or whatever it is she prays for. He wonders absently as they walk if the handmaid had informed Alys of the fact that in all the news heard of the battle, Ned Stark was never mentioned to have been there.
She is particularly somber, so perhaps she had heard that much. It could mean anything, though he doesn't imagine it means he is dead. If Jon Arryn had taken the loss of one of the two boys he refused to turn over it would have been one of the key topics talked about. Especially considering the kings' current hostage.
To Jaime's surprise she doesn't ask of the battle as they walk like he had figured she would, to double check what her handmaid had told her at the least. But she is silent as they move along the path, her hands folded delicately in front of her and her eyes looking only along the path. Jaime can't help but sneak a few looks at her as they walk, the expectation that she'll speak putting him on an edge that he can't describe entirely. He awaits the sound of her voice, but she holds it away from him, leaving him annoyed that he's waiting for her words when usually he wishes she didn't put him in the rude position of ignoring her.
By the time they reach the heart tree Jaime is near bristling with the anticipation of her words that he nearly speaks himself. Though for once he stops himself from acting on impulse, and takes his silent position as she kneels before the tree in silent prayer.
Jaime has just gotten through his anticipation of her voice when she finally does speak. He was fiddling with a leaf that had stuck itself to his armor, thinking of a time when Cersei and him were children that they collected all the leaves that had fallen in the Godswood of Casterly Rock into a large pile and played in it until her Septa had come scolding her for acting so unladylike with tangled golden hair ornamented with red leafs.
Her voice actually startles him, he glances up immediately, the leaf he'd been studying dropping from his hand and blowing away in the still swirling wind. "What?" he asks, having missed the words her voice had made.
"Do you ever pray?" She asks again, her voice softer than the wind, she's standing now. Red and brown and green leaves stuck to her dress where she'd been knelt upon them.
It was a curious question to ask a knight, let alone a knight of the Kingsguard. They were considered 'holy' by default, they swore their oaths before the gods as well as man. But Jaime himself had never considered himself particularly religious before. "Not as much as the septs would like me to," he jests, "when I was younger we'd had a Septa who was particularly strict upon us praying before we slept, and even some times before we ate." His father had tired of that Septa particularly quickly and replaced her with a still holy, but significantly less holy, one.
"I pray more now than I ever did before I think," she looks back towards the tree, and a particularly strong gust of wind sends her hair out in what some might call a particularly mesmerizing way. Jaime does notice its enchantment, but he also notices the bits of leaf that have woven their way into the dark brown strands, making it almost look like its own branchy dark tree. "I prayed before, in Winterfell and such. But never so frequently. Though I always did like sitting by the weirwood, I would spend hours beneath with my feet in the pool of water before it. My mother always told me I'd freeze them off if I kept them in there too long."
"Well it seems your feet are still intact," he says, "though I suppose I have no reference for the state of your toes. I hear those fall off first in the cold."
She smiles at that, a soft glowing sort of smile. Still sad, he notes, though he has begun to notice that she always holds a sort of somber look to her. Funnily enough some had said the same about the Prince, that he has a look that is laced with doom and melancholy. Though Jaime believes he was born that way while he can easily imagine a much lighter and happier look permanently left upon Alys's face.
He sighs, "we should return." He glances momentarily towards the sky, "rain always makes my hair look more of straw than Lannister gold." He jests, earning another small smile that he curses himself for earning and enjoying.
She's doomed, he reminds himself as they walk and she tries to continue a conversation.
But now he manages to hold himself to short words and eventual silence.
She is as doomed as her father and brother were, he keeps reminding himself as they walk into the keep. As the smile he'd earned disappears and is replaced with a sad look of familiar disappointment. The smile is lost even more as they pass by a chattering group of ladies, all her age, and all who stop their chattering when they spot them. Only to resume once past and around a corner, the sound of laughter echoing amongst the start of the rainfall.
It creates a tense and despaired air around the Stark girl. Her eyes downcast and her mouth set in a thin line. She pulls at her sleeves and as they near the room she's near torn the edges to pieces.
He opens the door for her and watches her enter the empty room. She moves towards the bed slowly and he is about to shut the door and return to his post when she speaks again, filling his ears with her voice. "Jaime." She states, and he is brought to the thought that he can't recall her saying his name before. "Would you stay in here, perhaps talk with me some more? The days are boring and long, and I would appreciate the company." Her voice is hesitant, nerves shaking her voice and making her quieter than usual.
Damn, Jaime curses. He sighs and looks to her, "I'm afraid I'm here only to guard you. Not to converse and eat cakes."
He's surprised to see a flash of anger cross her face, her jaw tightening and her already dark eyes seemingly darkening. "I wouldn't be asking you to converse and eat cakes if anyone spoke to me. They act as though I carry a plague." She balls her fists and stares resolutely at him, her grey eyes bearing into his green. "You barely talk to me, Barristan slightly more but its only courtesies." She starts towards him and he starts to wonder if she plans to strike at him, "the only person who deigns to hold a conversation with me is Aleah, and she has no choice in that matter." She's only a step in front of him now, her head now tilted up to look at him directly. "I'm tired of it, this silence."
She doesn't move to hit him, though he isn't sure that she ever would. No, instead it appears as though she might cry instead.
But she holds her tears, by sheer will alone it seems. "I'm a hostage, I know that. But why must I be spurned like this? I'm trapped in this windowless room unless I'm lucky enough to have a guard willing to take me to the Godswood. And that's the only place I'm allowed. A Godswood for gods that might not even be able to hear me."
Jaime wonders what he could say.
Nothing, I can say nothing because there is nothing to say. I can't change what her life and situation is.
"Ser Jaime, please talk to me." She states the words forcefully and her eyes once again make him think of cold. But now it was a frozen lake, hard and solid but deadly if you step in the wrong spot.
"There is nothing to say," he tells her, perhaps she needs honesty. Someone to tell her how this truly is for her, what her fate has in store. He recalls faintly when she'd asked him what Aerys planned for her, how he'd told he hadn't a clue. Perhaps that had been the wrong choice, perhaps she would be better off knowing that her fate was that of her brother and father.
"Just tell me why, why you or anyone else won't speak to me." She is pleading, and the ice beginning to splinter and crack, "why those we pass on our way to the Godswood go quiet and look away, am I so cursed and tragic to treat with?"
"Yes," he says finally, with a dejected sigh. He wished this was over, he wanted to return to the other side of the door, to his silent guard and his thoughts of Cersei and Tyrion and Casterly Rock. But instead he continues, "yes you are quite tragic and cursed. Doomed is perhaps the better word. No one speaks with you because they fear they'll like you, that they'll feel more sympathy for you once they get to know you." She takes a step back as he continues. His voice harsh and honest. "They don't want the trouble of having to mourn you when the King decides he needs someone to burn, and look there's the Stark girl she's a good enough choice. I imagine she'll scream like her father, or perhaps show some struggle and fight like her brother." She stumbles back at that, as though he'd physically shoved her away. "So, can you truly blame us all for protecting ourselves from someone so doomed? Because you've just arrived here, but we've seen this all before. Your father and his men weren't the first to burn in that hall and I doubt they will be the last. So accept that you're alone here. You are not going to find any friends here in Kings Landing."
She has stumbled back into the poster at the foot of her bed, her hand gripping it and the other tight against her chest. She looks at him with more hurt than he'd imagined, the frozen lake cracked and weeping. Then she hardens herself, tears still trailing down her cheeks, but she stares him down, her eyes frighteningly dark. "Get out." The words are quiet. "Get. Out." Louder and sharper. He hasn't moved when she grabs something near her, a book he thinks and throws it. "Get out. Get out of here. Get OUT!" she's shouting the words, the book missing him and falling into the hall through the still open door.
As he looks at her he feels a wave of remorse hit him. He'd been too harsh. He looks at her as she tosses the pillows from her bed to try and push him out. She's cracking still, tears falling, and sobs starting to overtake her words.
"As you wish." He finally adds before retreating to the hall and shutting the door behind him.
He stands very still for a few moments. Listening he expects to perhaps hear more things hit the door. But it's deathly quiet for a moment before the sound of cries are loud enough for him to hear. He nearly returns to her room, a part of him pulling to comfort her. But he pushes it far away. It would do her no good, it was harsh but it was true what he said.
But perhaps that doesn't mean he had to say it.
Benjen
Ned arrived only a week after news of Gulltown had reached Winterfell. Looking as exhausted and grief-stricken as Benjen felt. The two brothers hugged each other tightly the moment Ned dropped down from his horse. The last several weeks had been one bad thing after another for Benjen. Starting with the letter telling of Lyanna's disappearance that Alys had sent to him while riding south with Brandon. Benjen had thought his elder brother an idiot for riding south so recklessly, with Alys in tow nonetheless. But Brandon had always been a man of action before thought.
Then the letter telling of their deaths, it hadn't said a thing about Alys and that had left Benjen a mess. Lyanna was an unknown, still missing with Rhaegar, and then Alys had become just as unknown. Maester Walys had nearly taken over the day to day running of Winterfell, though if Benjen was honest with himself Walys had already been running it after his father headed south for Riverrun.
"There must be a Stark in Winterfell," he'd told him when Benjen had begged to accompany him for the wedding. He'd wanted to see his sisters, and to see Brandon when he was tamed by the fish girl. But his father wouldn't have it, and thus Benjen was left with letters that would come and deliver him grief after grief.
"Any news of Alys?" Benjen asks as the pair of them walk through the Great Hall, "I haven't heard a thing of her since before the news of father and Brandon came."
Ned nods, a solemn look to his face. "Hostage in Kings Landing. Alive, as far as we know for now. Though the King is said to be mad, and if I've heard correctly Jon and Robert have already won a small battle at Gulltown." Maester Walys meets them as they head towards their fathers solar.
Ned's now, Benjen thinks suddenly as they enter the space, how odd.
"We must send out the ravens, call the banners. Tell them all to meet at Moat Cailin within the month." Walys nods along as Ned speaks. They settle before the desk in the solar, Maester Walys pulls out an old large map of Westeros and Ned glances at it. "I want to march south as soon as we can, the more time we waste…"
The more likely Alys or Lyanna end up dead. "Lyanna?" Benjen hadn't heard anything of Lyanna since her disappearance.
"No news there," Ned's jaw clenches and Benjen can see the worry etched into his his brothers face. He looked older than he had only a year ago, though according to Nan so does Benjen since the news started coming in. "Though Wyman Manderly told me that Prince Rhaegar hasn't been spotted since her disappearance either, despite the fact that his father has likely called him back to Kings Landing."
"The Manderly's are here already?" Benjen had spotted their banners within the group that Ned rode with.
"Yes," Ned lets out a breath and looks harder upon the map as though something is missing from it. He's searching for Lyanna on the old thing. Benjen wonders where his sister has run, she's always been a free spirit, and like Brandon quicker to action than thought. "Wyman sent his forces ahead to Moat Cailin when we departed from White Harbor, though he's also having ships prepared in case they are needed."
"So it's war we're going to…" Benjen feels a nervous itch inside his chest.
War, he's not even yet 16 and war has come upon them. And not just any war, a rebellion against the crown.
"Aye," Ned turns away from the map and glances around the room. Benjen can see the grief hit his eyes, he's just realized it's his. This space that was fathers, that was meant for Brandon. Now it's his.
Lord Stark.
"Okay," Benjen nods, straightening himself and looking towards his brother. "We'll get them back Ned."
Ned is silent at that. He'd always been one of the quietest of them, the most prone to melancholy. Now he seemed to fall into that coldness more than ever before.
"When do we leave?" Benjen prods as he shifts upon his feet. He's been sat here in Winterfell for months, subject to letters and inaction. Now, perhaps finally, he could do something about it.
"I plan to depart the day after next," He looks back at Benjen, dark eyes hard as stone, unease etched into his lips. "You'll be staying here Ben, nothing's changed in that regard, there has to be a Stark in Winterfell."
"No," Benjen shakes his head in immediate protest. He moves towards his brother, "I won't stay here twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear if I've lost another family member. I want to go south with you, to get Lyanna, to get Alys." He sharpens himself, his spine straightening and his gaze meeting Neds. They aren't so far in age, only four years between them. "I'm going south with you; I'm fighting beside you."
"You will not. You'll stay here and keep watch of Winterfell and the North." Ned states, his voice stretching thin as he stares Benjen down. "I won't have you fight me on this Benjen, this is how it must be."
"You stay then," Benjen snaps, his patience reaching it's final threads. "Be the Lord of Winterfell and the Stark in the North and I'll ride south."
"Benjen," Ned's voice is desperate and exhausted, and Benjen wonders faintly how long he's been awake. "Please don't fight with me, I need you here. To be the Stark in Winterfell, and… and so I know that at least one of my siblings is still safe." His eyes have softened, and Benjen is reminded of Alys, the two had the same dark eyes. "So please, please just do as I say. I promise you I will send news the moment I have it of either of our sisters."
Benjen stares his brother down, and notices the cracks in the stoney façade. The space beneath his eyes are dark, his jaw seemingly stuck clenched, and he stands leant slightly against the windowsill.
Did he ride straight from White Harbor? To get here from the Vale so quick he must have barely slept.
Benjen let out a sigh, biding his patience to hold, and nodded with defeat. "Go sleep brother, Walys and I can manage the ravens and Winterfell till you're rested." When Ned starts to object Benjen stops him with his own cold stare. "No. Sleep. Eat. Rest. Take a damned bath cause you stink. You'll not be rescuing our sisters if you can't keep your own eyes open."