Author's Note
I do not own A Soon of Ice and Fire.
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The Kingswood is vast, and Ned's children are at home in nature and have the wolves with them. By the amount of times the turnkeys ask him where his children are, Ned understands they have not been found. This is a good thing for the goldcloaks.
A man could go insane in the Black Cells, many have, and sometimes Ned hears voices as he drifts in the depths of his sleep and weakness, Robb's eerie cracking ice and Sansa's musical tones, Arya's wilder snarls and Bran's softer speech. Someone as mundane as the Lannisters could never harm his monstrous children, and Ned finds some peace in that.
"You'll understand," Bran whispers, and it's a sweet promise that crackles like old wood and the sound of birds.
"Wait," is all Sansa says.
The others are further, and Rickon is wild, but Ned can feel Arya's delight and Robb's elation.
Varys visits, brings him food and offers him the Black in exchange for the pleas of treason. The Spider of King's Landing is a fat man, and Ned understands his children's proclivity for biting only as he tears chunks of meat from that perfumed hand. Varys's screams bring the guards running, but all Ned feels is the hunger inside him and the taste of blood in his mouth.
It's only when all is dark once more that the horror sets in.
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Varys does not come again, though Joffrey Baratheon, as if he has rights to wear that name, does. Ned is hungry from seeing him and his guards, and all he can remember is Robb's little face stained red with blood and complaining that he just wanted to taste the rabbit.
Ned wants more than rabbit, and the irons groan and crack as he strains against them. If he had just the slightest more strength, he could sink his fangs into the young lion's neck–
Ned does not understand what's wrong with him.
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He is paraded on the steps before the Great Sept of Baelor. Gods not his judging something they have no right to judge. The crowd bays for blood, as though it were not Northmen that ended Tywin Lannister's butchery all those years ago. Ned does not see his monstrous children, and for that he is glad. They are strong, and these lands will bleed if they try to bar the pack from returning North.
Something prickles at the back of his mind, cold and familiar, burying deep inside him. He is still hungry, and even now the hunger bothers him more than anything. He needs meat. He wants the meat of the boy wearing a crown he has no right to.
"This man is accused of treason. Lord Stark, how do you plead?"
The people of King's Landing, who once welcomed him as a hero, who only a few weeks ago were vying for his favour, are screaming. They call him a traitor, declare him guilty of treason.
The skies darken above him.
"I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King." Ned bares his fangs. "I have committed no treason."
The boy King turns red. "This man plotted the murder of my Father!"
Winds whip across the courtyard. Ned wants to laugh at his accusation. If he'd wanted to murder Robert, he would have had Sansa pull his strings and send him toppling down a staircase, Robert had been drunk so often no one would have thought it anything but an accident. There would have been no questions.
"King Robert was thrown from his horse, surrounded by the eyes of witnesses!" Ned shouts, his voice booming against the wind. "Was I the horse, your Grace? Or did I perhaps train it, so that it might one day rear and throw your father? Do you believe I influenced the horse through some witchcraft foul and ordered it to throw King Robert?"
"Had you not stood against him, his death would never have occurred!"
Thunder split the sky, almost drowning out the boy King's last few words.
"Had King Robert not followed me ahorse after having drunk far too much wine, his death would never have occurred!"
"Lord Stark, are you blaming my father for your acts of treason that took his life?"
"I am blaming Robert for lacking any impulse control."
His children struggled with such things when they were young, but these days even the older four are better than that. They have some level of restraint, even if they chafe and growl against the restraints.
"I was dismissed from my position and enabled to leave the city when I so wished."
"And what of your children?" asks the King's mother, the former Queen, though it is against protocol for her to do so. "Many have seen their nature, the witchcraft they practise."
Jeers and boos and cries of sorcery come from the crowd.
"Our nature is beyond your understanding."
Ned cannot see his children, but he can feel them. They are nearby, somewhere out in the crowd. It is the nature of monsters to be monstrous, and yet his have come back after abandoning him.
"By what right do you judge us?"
The boy King holds his head high, and there is a wicked madness in his eyes. Sansa might have married this boy. No. Sansa would never have married this boy. Sansa belongs to the ice and the wild of the North.
"This man has refused to confess his crimes, even before the eyes of the Gods," says the High Septon.
"Yours are not my gods," Ned says. It will not help matters, but what comes now is already decided.
"The Gods are just but beloved Baelor taught us they can also be merciful. What is to be done with this traitor, Your Grace?"
The boy King's expression is steady.
And then it wavers.
Ned has seen that expression enough times to understand.
