Jon Snow was at times called the Ghost of the North, a mocking jest for a boy that did not speak those in the south thought. For the great shame of Eddard Stark spoke but rarely, and when he did, those close to him spoke of the weight of his words, as if each syllable was a great stone, a weight that was fashioned from the roots of frozen peaks. In the north, they spoke of the one who walked without fear in the depths of winter, who left no sign of his passing or warning of his coming. To the smallfolk, he simply was.
To his blood, he was in many ways their father writ small, with something of the very north itself bound to his bones. His family loved him for the most part, and the Lady Stark relented in the worst of her fear for Jon had sworn an oath that he would not take the lordship of the North from his brothers. "The North and the Starks are one and the same, and I am no Stark." Truth rang in his words, as the castle walls seemed to whisper, the ghosts of past ages reaching out and proclaiming that yea, this was true.
This statement confused and sparked fear in Eddard, even as it was soon returned beneath his mask. It confused his brothers and sisters for a short time (for kinship is deeper and stranger than blood alone) before with childhoods approach to truth accepted that it changed nothing at all. The people were aware something had been said or done, even as far to the north, a twisted raven-wyrm laughed and wept blood under the roots of a tree whose roots stretched into the past, and whose branches grasped greedily at times yet to come.
Years later, when he accompanied his uncle Benjen to the wall, to the weeping of his kin who thought him to take the black, he merely nodded and hugged them. When they reached the wall, he kept riding, as they shouted at him and yet... every black brother that swore the oaths could not stop him as he moved silently to the gates and passed beyond... but not beyond sight. No, even as the rangers gathered, as fear and panic were gripping them, a storm came in from the north and in that storm was a cold dead voice.
The men of the watch could not tell you what that voice said, for none living could understand it, or endure it overlong, as it sapped from them all that made them living, impressing on them the singular fate of mortals. And yet a voice rose up, a voice that thundered and echoed and built on itself, mixing into the first strain of speech. From the interplay of both tongues came a music, of life and death, of great cycles and strange dance like movements, all the absurdities that made up life and death and the passages between them.
At once, it made the rasping and cold speech softer and grand, a lamenting refrain that seemed to span the ages, a tale and song of such beauty that it drove the watching brothers who remained to their knees, weeping as each understood. Some, screaming and unable to bear it, tore at themselves, or threw themselves from the wall. Others, screaming tried to attack their brothers, before they fell. And yet, those rare souls who were wise enough, strong enough in soul and mind if not quite in body, raised their hands to the sky and laughed.
And from the very top of the wall, unseeing eyes looked on the stars and began a dance, each foot fall sending forth sparks of flame, each gesture of his arms gusts of wind as he laughed and moved in strange patterns and angles, before with gapping mouths and eyes, all witnessed his dance take him into the sky itself, where he danced on the very air and moved sideways, skin burning as he moved and wings beating downwards, as Ameon Targaryen died as a man, and a dragons voice tasted the cold air of the north for the first time in centuries.
North of the wall, the debate that was song still raged, twisting and melding between the two. If mortals could see it more clearly, they would see that Jon Snow was calm, understanding and reaching out to the Other, the face of darkness, regret and fear, whose mask was formed from hate and despair. And yet, some would say they were evenly matched, neither song able to drown the other, neither able to claim the mastery of the other.
Yet, it was the thought of the cold, of the dark, to outlast the one who sang of life with its razor thorn lashes, with its subtle venoms and fragile and easily broken beauties. Life, heat and joy would fade, leaving all in the cold and empty void of death. It may take time, but that was a concern for the living and troubled the Other not at all. Soon, the mortal would require rest, food or water. Its flesh would give out and betray it, and the blade would be added to the song, to silence that defiant ember eternally beneath the snow.
So, it should not come as a surprise, that when it heard the dragons roar, that it saw the trap and the offer to late, as it looked on the wheel and glimpsed beyond itself and the cold mists it wore as a cloak. For there was no real beginning, there was no real end, as time twisted in on itself and in the Other's place was a young man, eyes wide and fearful, ice as his blade and armor, fear in his eyes, even as he died, was caught between and shattered later. "Tell me," his song screamed, harsh blizzard notes scrapping against the soul as grasping cold fingers clutched at Jon's forearms, "is there hope at all?"
For what is unspoken, but felt, even as it seems a mask shifts and the Other laughs, and the storm breaks. By the time the brothers of the nights watch come to see what occurred, there is merely an old cairn, a tree growing from the head like a marker.
When next Jon Snow is seen, it is in Kings Landing, as Eddard Stark is brought before Joffrey. When the would be tyrant screeches to know who he is to barge in, his father's blood freezes at the reply. "In another life, I was Ysmir, Dragon of the North. In this one, Jon Snow." The voice was the rumbling of a thunderstorm, and the throne room and all inside of it quaked and shook, their bodies battered by its power, even as he advanced, the cold driving the breath from lungs not used to the chills of a northern winter.
Taking the blonde runt from the throne, hand wrapped around the child-kings throat, the eyes are colder than ice, harder than steel, as his voice continues. "In both, my breath is the long winter." And so he spoke and so he breathed, a blizzard erupting inside of the bastion of southern kings. As the snow cleared, none of the northerners remained. Merely a frozen corpse of a lion pretending to be a stag... and a thousand swords broken apart and separated.
With a cry, the Mockingbird and Spider both leapt to the fragments, for the swords... only to have them shatter, breaking apart in their hands as they were touched.