EDDARA STARK
She sat on a bench by one of the long tables in the Great Crannog-Greywater Watch's equivalent to a solar and a Great Hall combined in one. Around her on the wooden walls hung the banners of the great houses of the Neck in full display.
"You are not going," declared Eddara to her son Brandon, her youngest child who sat before her.
"I have to. I must leave tomorrow!" implored Bran, his green eyes wide with concern.
She insisted as she took her youngest into her embrace and held him tight, "You do not have to, there's no obligation."
"I've seen it myself. I have seen the journey I take," answered Brandon while he tilted his head up to meet her eyes.
"He saved Jojen's life…" added Howland, stepping out from the fringes of the room to add his say.
Jojen... she recalled fretting for hours when he'd slipped and fell into the grey waters which Greywater Watch was build o'ertop of. Meera had managed to pull Jojen to shore, but he had been unable to revive him. For a long moment she had thought him dead. And then Jojen had awoken with a start-his eyes shifting from Stark grey to his father's green ever after and saying that a three-eyed crow had given him a second life. Mentioning Jojen did not help matters any, if anything, it was complicating things.
"You are not going, and that is it!" determined Eddara stubbornly before she rose and marched out of room and out of the Great Crannog of Greywater Watch. She clutched at her cloak to keep the mists off her as she crossed one of the many wooden bridges which connected the ring of crannogs together to form Greywater Watch. She did not know where she was going, only that she needed to be alone for the moment—a sensation relatively easy to achieve in the murky swamps and lukewarm mists of the Neck—even here in Greywater Watch. After crossing several platforms, crannogs, and bridges, Eddara eventually came to the Old North Tower, which lay in half ruin and covered in vines and moss from disuse. It was the northernmost part of Greywater Watch, and where she often found herself coming to when she felt troubled or needed some time to herself. As she climbed the ruined tower she heard the sound of something dropping into the swampy waters below. Someone was already here. Part of Eddara wanted to turn around and find somewhere else but another part was curious to see who else had taken refuge in the tower. So she climbed its winding half-eroded steps until she came to the top. The roof had long since caved in along with half the outer wall, but what remained was a window in which she saw her son, Jon, sitting in, looking out towards the North and occasionally throwing a small stone out into the distant swamps. He either hadn't noticed her, or didn't care that she had joined him as he continued looking off lonely and forlorn—beyond Bran, he was her little wolf pup among the crannogs—well he wasn't so much a pup anymore, he was nearly a man grown now. He was dressed much like a crannogman in lizard-lion leathers and thinly spun wool, and they didn't suit him. Thinking of Jon allowed her to put aside her conversation with Bran, and her worries for Jojen.
"Are you going to throw the tower back into the bogs pebble by pebble then?" asked Eddara with an attempt to be good natured. She wasn't very good at it, she hadn't Brandon's charm, Benjen's wit, or Lyanna's easygoing nature. When she tried to be good natured, what she said came out awkwardly and rather complexly so that she felt she was tripping over her words like she would tree roots in a marsh. This though, she hoped silently to herself, was one of her better attempts.
"If it teaches me patience, then aye," replied Jon bitterly. Eddara felt a sting in the reply. She had promised him that she would tell him the name of his father one day when he was ready—and that until then he would have to be patient. The truth was, Eddara didn't want to revisit that chapter of her life—it was far far too painful to remember.
A song ice and fire…
No. She couldn't think of that! The mere thought of him touching her body like he had repulsed her. She couldn't do it—she couldn't even admit it, not even to herself. So she remained silent to her son's brazen attempt at provoking her into letting the truth be known.
The truth cannot be known, it can never be known.
"Am I that much an embarrassment to you?" asked Jon. He was continuing to provoke her, but the way he said it, with such self-loathing—that she couldn't allow. So Eddara crossed the tower and forced her eldest child to look at her straight in the face as she grabbed his shoulders.
Their grey eyes met and she fiercely stated, "Never for one minute believe you're an embarrassment to me or anything else. You have never once brought me shame—nor do I ever regret having you. You are my son. Mine alone."
She wanted to say more, but held her tongue as the thoughts plagued her mind.
You are not my shame… I am my own shame. I was too weak to prevent it from happening…
"It takes more than just a mother to have a child," he retorted bitterly.
That she couldn't deny, not really, but she'd let the Others take her before she admitted that he had sired Jon. Her eldest she thanked the gods had nothing of his father in him, of that Eddara was certain—he was all Stark, as if he had burst forth from her without a father. She had pretended that that was the case for many years of his childhood and he had been happy to know it then. But then Meera grew followed soon after by Jojen, and finally Bran—all a mixture of Howland and her—well, except for Jojen, he was his father in miniature with those green eyes now. When Jon looked at them, the illusion that Jon had needed no father had begun to founder. Howland had tried to be his father in all things, and he'd done more than any man would have done in allowing Eddara to raise him alongside their own children, but once Jon had figured out that Howland wasn't his father in the way he was to Meera or Jojen, well, Jon had stopped giving him a chance to be anything else but his stepfather.
Jon seemed to adopt a pleading tone, he had used more as a child. It made him appear younger than his years as he supplicated "It's only a name mother. That's all I want…"
"It isn't just a name, after you know the name a whole flurry of questions will trouble you. Some of which I know you do not want to know the answer to."
"Why won't you let me find out for myself if I want to know the answers or not?"
She sighed, "Because you're better off not knowing…"
"How can you say that?" he rebounded.
She responded, "I have to live with it, and if I can barely handle it, then let me bare the knowledge so you can be free of it and make your own life."
Jon was silent for a moment before answering with a rather shocked tone, "So I am an embarrassment."
Eddara whipped around and nearly shouted, "You are not!"
He met her volume as he replied, "Then tell me! Tell me about Rhaegar!"
Eddara froze at the sound of his name. The name of the man who after failing to woo her had taken her and started a war… She stared at her eldest son. Almost the instant it came out of his mouth, Jon appeared as though he regretted saying anything, but then he gathered himself and added, "H—howland told me. But I—I wanted to hear it from you. I need to hear it from you, mother."
She felt like crying, but no tears came to her eyes. Her son rose and took her hands and held them tight as she simply stared at him. Suddenly she couldn't help but notice how lithe he was and graceful in his movements. He had been lithe and graceful as well, she recalled thinking at Harrenhal.
No… he's still my wolf pup. Not a dragon in a wolf's skin…
"Please mother…please!" he implored in a tone which unlocked a memory she had tried to keep hidden from herself for so long, but now could not help but burst forth.
Please Dara… please!
She felt hands run over her body, caressing her roughly as she felt a sharp pain betwixt her legs. Gone were the cool mists and she once again felt the dry heat of Dorne about her. The tower about her seemed to change hue to the reddish color of stone found commonly in the Red Mountains. It was all too similar!
She had to leave the tower. Without a word she pulled her hands free of her son's and rushed down the crumbling steps, disturbing a flock of crows that had taken perch in the tower since her ascent, sending them scattering into the mists of Greywater Watch. Upon reaching the bottom of the tower she rushed out to the wooden bridge to the next crannog—where she, Howland and the children took rest in, and rushed to her bed—at long last receiving the privacy she had long desired. She thought of everything in her life—she had always done as her father told her to do, to step back and let her brothers or some other men handle things for her. She'd withdrawn from life and let others lead her where she may because it was her duty as a woman to obey. But then Rhaegar had crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty—she had not asked for it, the attendants of Harrenhal were stunned—Brandon had wanted to challenge the Prince on her honor. Eddara had wished to say something, but she recalled her father's words and remained silent. Of the two Stark sisters, Lyanna was the pretty one, but she had married Robert in Eddara's place when Robert objected to marrying the "Ice Bitch" to quote the term he'd coined as a child for her and her over attentiveness to honor and his sometimes lack of it. She had tried to make amends with the Princess, even seeking out her quarters to make her apologies in person—only to find them jealously guarded by Lady Ashara, who had been quick to use her tongue to call her everything approaching whore but the very word itself. Eddara had given up and returned to suffering in silence.
If she had been a man, then she might have had a voice, or at least been expected and able to speak her part. Instead as a lady she'd done as she was expected and held her tongue and endured.
When the prince later came wooing, she'd attempted to remind him of his duty to his wife and children, but that had been all for naught. All her life she had done as she had been told, held her tongue, been as much of a lady as the world would allow her. Yet despite all this, or mayhaps because of all this, things had gone all wrong. What would have happened if she had been more like Lya and taken what she wanted? What would have happened if she had spoken her mind instead of staying silent? What would happen now if she stopped hiding and spoke the truth?
This radical thought sprang forth in her mind as she suddenly imagined a very different life. Not one where she hid herself, her shame, and her bastard son away in the swamps, but instead traveled North and saw Winterfell. A life where she'd be accepted home as a full-fledged daughter not some embarrassment that'd brought the realm to war, and cost many men their lives. She could even see taking the children with her. She was brought out of her imaginings by a soft footstep against the gravel of the crannog's floor. She looked up to see Howland… good sweet honorable Howland standing by the door to their portion of the crannog. Half of her wanted to run up and embrace him while the other half wanted to yell and scream as she recalled Jon's confession in the old north tower. She settled for an accusation.
"You promised," she said simply.
He looked at her sadly before answering, "I've promised many things."
"Why?" she asked directly.
Howland sighed before saying, "Because he said that Jon must know so he can lead Bran to him."
"Are all my children then to leave me?" she asked bitterly.
"No… we will have Meera and Jojen here."
"While we trust Jon and Bran to some three eyed crow," she rancorously finished.
"I am sending some men to guard them," he said.
She retorted "Men who know little beyond the Neck…"
A moment passed before he asked, "What do you want me to say, Eddara?"
"That they should stay with us!"
Silence stretched between the two long before Howland said, "I'll go myself, then."
"And leave me to run the Neck? Jyanna Peat alone would challenge me as being too Northern."
He asked what he had before, but far differently than it had been asked the first time, "What do you want, then?"
Outside her crannog, Eddara heard a crow squawk, followed by a distant howl of a wolf, and suddenly she knew.
"I'll go."
"What?!" exclaimed Howland, now crossing to her.
Eddara rose, "I will take my sons and head North with them. If this three eyed crow wants them, then he will have to deal with me first!"
Howland looked as if he wanted to argue, but he didn't. Instead he simply took her hand and gently kissed it—his brown beard tickling her slightly, but she did not let that distract her. In response she met her husband's lips with her own and they shared a passionate kiss full of regret, bliss, and need. She did not head out that night, instead, she and Howland said goodbye to one another.
In the early morning, just before dawn, Eddara rose to dress herself and packed what little she needed for the journey by foot. Hopefully when they reached Winterfell they could take a few horses for the rest of the journey—wherever it was to lead them. Bran, much to her surprise was already packed, as was Jon, and waiting by the bridge that connected the series of isolated crannogs and islands of Greywater Watch to the gate on the mainland.
"You're coming with us?" asked a surprised Jon, stunned the moment he'd seen her clearly through the mists.
"I told you she would," insisted Bran with a little nudge to Jon as if he had been foolish to doubt him.
She met her eldest son's eye and then admitted, "Aye… and… I have some things to speak with you about concerning your father."
And so began her long journey north, one which only became more difficult as she grew with her last child.
STARK FAMILY TREE
Rickard STARK, Lord of the North and Winterfell (dies of old age shortly after the marriage of Sansa and Aegon)
m. Lyarra STARK
-Brandon STARK, Heir to the North and Winterfell
-m. Catelyn TULLY
-Sansa STARK
-m. Aegon TARGARYEN (the Rebellion went a little differently than OTL, to say the least)
-Arya STARK
-Eddard STARK (OTL Robb)
-Rickon STARK
-s.r. Ashara DAYNE
-Asteria SAND
-s.r. Barbrey DUSTIN
-Rickard DUSTIN (Willam doesn't know or pretends not to)
-s.r. Various Women
-Many Snow children scattered across the North, and a few Rivers and Waters that he's unaware of... too numerous to list
-Eddara STARK, Lady of the Neck and Greywater Watch
-m. Howland REED
-Meera REED
-Jojen REED
-Brandon REED (OTL Brandon - his greenseer powers are apparent though from birth ITTL)
-r. Rhaegar TARGARYEN
-Jon SNOW
-Lyanna STARK, Lady of the Stormlands and Storm's End (happy marriage due to butterflies, Eddara was originally betrothed but Lyanna found her elder sister's disapproval of Robert to lead her like Robert and likewise Robert found Lyanna's pretty face better than Eddara's plain one)
-m. Robert BARATHEON
-Brandon BARATHEON
-m. Rhaenys TARGARYEN (again, a far far different ending to the rebellion)
-Orys BARATHEON
-Cassana BARATHEON
-Benjen STARK, Lord of the Wolfswood and the Wolf's Keep
-m. Alys Waynwood the Younger
-Lyarra STARK
-bet. Jasper Arryn (OTL Robert Arryn)