"…And then he smashed his head against the stone until there was nothing left." Allyria said, her face was stiff, her lilac eyes strong, but Doran noticed she was nervously playing with her hands under the table.
"So Clegane is dead." Oberyn said from where he stood to Doran's left and Allyria's right. He had been standing by their table when the Lady Dayne arrived. And as she recounted the story, he'd begun to pace about, a pacing which grew more and more frantic with every word. "And this lightning business, are you sure of it? Are you sure the lightning did not just strike Tywin's dog?"
That had been the most unbelievable part of the story, the detail that had made both Doran and Oberyn doubt the validity of the whole thing when it had first reached their ears, what pushed them to summon Allyria for a firsthand account.
"I still do not believe it, and I witnessed it with my own eyes." Alyria admitted. "But he did, the gods' justice was to smite him and… he refused."
"If the gods knew anything of justice, they would have struck down the monster fighting him twenty years ago." Oberyn said. "And we still sit under orange trees and twiddle our thumbs."
At that, Oberyn kicked the tree under who's shade they sat, an orange fell from is branches moments later and Doran caught it before it hit the ground.
"Thank you for answering our summons, Lady Dayne." Doran said, directing the girl's eyes back towards him as he put the orange on the table. "I wish you safe travels back to Starfall."
"Of course, my prince." She said, she rose to her feet, gripped the edge of her dress and bowed in a curtsey, then turned to his brother and repeated the same gesture. "Prince Oberyn."
With that, she turned and left them, Doran tapped his fingers against his arm rest and stared down at the water gardens where the children played. An image of his sister and Oberyn in the pools manifested in his mind. He imagined her fate a moment later, and a familiar molten rage swam in his chest, it had boiled in him for eighteen years, he had grown numb to it over that time, but he never tried to suppress it. Oberyn meanwhile continued to pace and mutter to himself.
"We waited too long." Oberyn said, he took the orange from the table, unsheathed a dagger from his belt and began to peel it. "And now the usurper's dogs kill each other."
"All the better," Doran said, "We cannot stand as one against six, and now the Mountain is dead, and not one child of Dorne fell for nothing."
"This is not vengeance, Doran." Oberyn said, putting a slice of orange in his mouth. "If we simply wanted them to die, we would wait for old age to claim them."
"Gregor Clegane did not die of old age," Doran said, looking up to meet his brother's eyes. "It sounds like he died in agony and pain."
"But not by our hand, not bymyhand." Oberyn said, stabbing his dagger into the table. "If he tripped down the stairs and broke his neck, you would not call that justice. How can Elia know peace, how canweknow peace, if we wait for her butchers and her children's butchers to keel over and die?"
"Tywin and Amory Lorch still live." Doran said. "She still cannot know peace, and neither can we, there is yet much vengeance to be had."
"And will we wait for dysentery to kill the Lord Lannister? Will we wait for Amory Lorch to ride off a cliff?" Oberyn said, there was an edge to his voice and fatal look in his eyes, it would have terrified most men, but he was his brother, and Doran only patiently sighed.
"We will strike when the time is ripe." Doran said. "The usurper grows fatter, his Hand grows older, his court is rotten to the core and his wife's family are snakes and thieves. And this duel, this trial by combat, Tywin Lannister has not been humiliated so since Castamere was destroyed; he lost two nephews and his mad dog, and the man who slew them was declared innocent in the eyes of gods and men. It has also planted the seeds of a rift between the usurper and his staunchest ally."
"You don't believe Stark will turn his back on the usurper over a bastard that he sent away." Oberyn said, he rolled his eyes, but Doran knew the sense in his words had reached his brother.
"If my sources are correct, Stark loves the boy greatly, as greatly as you love your daughters. The boy wished to go south of his volition, and Stark allowed it." Doran said, and his brother raised an eyebrow at the declaration, before he crossed his arms and began to wander.
"But when Viserys and Daenerys return, the children of the Mad King who killed his father and brother, the siblings of the prince who kidnapped and raped his sister, and he will not leave his oldest friend to face them alone." Oberyn said.
Damn Aerys and Rhaegar both to the Seven Hells.Doran thought, as he often did.
"Then we wait for autumn to come, the longer the summer, the harsher the winter and this summer has been especially long. The Lord of Winterfell cannot leave the North or quickly raise an army if an especially harsh winter is soon to befall us, the Dance of Dragons has taught us as much." Doran said, his brother had finally stopped pacing around and stood still. "Viserys grows older and wiser, and Daenerys is soon to reach her majority, Olenna Tyrell will not allow her family to be politically exiled from the throne for much longer and the Lannisters will not make room another great house. A storm is brewing Oberyn, we need not initiate anything, simply reserve our strength and wait."
There was a silence then, only the sounds of distant splashing and loud laughter reached them as the fire in his brother's eyes was slowly inhibited. Just as it was eighteen years ago when Oberyn had tried to raise an army and declare for an infantile Viserys, back when they would have been crushed under the usurper's hammer just as Rhaegar had been.
The longer we wait, the weaker they grow and the more likely our revenge is to succeed.The anger still burned in his brother's eyes, it always did, but now it no longer threatened to smother him.
"You're right, Doran, you always are." Oberyn said, sighing and lifting his hands from the table, before moving to sit opposite him. "But will you… will your condition give you enough time?"
Doran sighed, his brother was never a man to stutter or lose his words, save when it came to his family.
"The maester says I have many years yet." Doran said, he felt then a stab of pain in his legs at the mention. His face remained emotionless, he had learned to hide the flares well, but Oberyn always noticed them. Soon it subsided, leaving only the painful aching he was used to, his joints were so tender that even the light weight of the blanket he hid the gout with caused him pain. "I will live to see Tywin Lannister dead and disgraced; I will not allow myself to meet Elia and mother before then."
"You should still tell Arianne, or Quentyn." Oberyn said. "Prepare them, should the Stranger ever come."
"The Stranger will not, they cannot do what we do, Oberyn." Doran said.
"As you say." His brother said, though Doran could still sense the disapproval.
"In either case, about this Jon character, the son of a usurper's dog he might be, but he remains half-dornish and we owe him a debt for slaying Clegane." Doran said.
"He will still stand with the usurper when the time comes." Oberyn said. "And he might prove to be deadlier than Clegane ever was."
"I am not so sure, I doubt this experience has endeared him to the Lannisters or the usurper, and should his father remain north, he might wait out the storm. In either case, I would not regret sendingsomething, not when he has done onto Clegane as Clegane had done onto Elia's son." Doran said. "You know what warriors desire at that age more than I do, wine? Gold?"
"Women, steel, but if he is a landed knight, I imagine he has all of those in abundance, more than a boy his age would know what to do with." Oberyn said, then finally stood up and straightened his clothes. "I will think of something and take care of it. This… this is not how I imagined Clegane's death would finally feel like."
"It is Tywin Lannister's downfall that will be sweetest." Doran promised, "And we will both live to witness it."
"No, Robert!" Jon Arryn repeated again, and Renly began to message his forehead at the display.
His eldest brother gracing them with his presence in the Council Chambers was always an occasion, though, truth be told, Renly was still unsure whether he liked or disliked his visits.
Sometimes it is to announce feasts, once it was to handle a war but most of the time it is because some fanciful idea has taken root in his mind.Renly thought.And we are forced to entertain them regardless. Kingship must be nice.
"Write the letter, Jon, pen the order!" Robert demanded, and the rest of the councilors could only look on as the two strongest men in the realm continued to bicker like kitchen women.
Renly thought Stannis too mirthless, Varys too elusive and Baelish too sleazy, Barristan was too old and Pycelle too spineless, but in that moment, he could empathize with all of them.
"He will not accept." Arryn repeated, "He will spurn you once more."
"He would not refuse an order from his King!" Pycelle said with some false indignity. Renly would have rolled his eyes at the gesture, but he felt the same need the Maester did, to say something, anything after silently watching those two argue for so long.
"We do not know what Stark's bastard is capable of." Renly said, he stroked his beard and thought back to that rainy day the Mountain fell. "He is… far too dangerous for my liking, mayhaps it is best we leave him alone."
"The boy seemed to have a good head on his shoulders from the few words I shared with him." Barristan said, "He may be dangerous, but I don't believe him to be a bad man by my measure."
"My friends in the Vale also speak highly of the boy." Baelish added, "I think it would be a great match."
"No one asked you, coin counter. I don't need the likes of you vouching for Ned's son" Robert said, sneering at the man, though Baelish's smile remained as unreadable as ever even as he bowed his head in apology.There has never been a man more untrustworthy, where did Arryn find him?"It is a match between a Stark and a Baratheon, a Stark kissed by the storms and my first daughter no less, I will see them wed, Arryn!"
"You,wetook the Lannisters' side over his and forced him to take the black or fight the Mountain, I doubt he has forgotten the insult or forgiven it." Jon Arryn said. "I doubt he will obey any order we send him, and I do not wish to make an enemy of him should we have to punish him for disobeying the crown."
"And he remains a Snow, not a Stark." Stannis added, the permeant frown still residing on his face, as it always did.
"I will legitimize him if he agrees, dangle that over his head, get him to accept the match." Robert argued back.
"And what will the Tullys think of that?" Arryn responded with, raising his voice to match Robert's, though by his estimation, the Hand might lose this argument in the end.
Both his brothers had always been stubborn beyond all reason, and Renly did not know whose stubbornness he could tolerate more.
Robert has better humor, but Stannis' ideas are far less whimsical…He thought, his mind wandering as the argument continued around him.Stannis at least seems to have resisted this mania the bastard left behind him better than anyone else.
His elder brother had been as stunned the rest of them on that day. But the day after he had put the entire matter behind and resumed his business normally, managing the treasury, organizing their navy and working hand and hand with Arryn to manage the realm while Robert drank and whored.
Life is meant to be enjoyed, but… Robert takes it too far, and Stannis not at all.Renly thought, though he remembered his brother's visit to that boy who showed up at the Tower of the Hand and looked like their long-lost brother, Stannis had also asked Renly a suspicious number of questions about Edric Storm whom resided in Storm's End.What's this interest he's taken in Robert's bastards?
He was almost envious of how easily Stannis had resumed with his life, the only act he had taken was a vigorous questioning of the High Septon as to the matter of the lightning, a questioning the corrupt fat man was not prepared for.
Renly however, could not so easily escape the madness that the heathen bastard had left behind him. It had consumed all in the Red Keep, it was the only thing on anyone's lips, the only gossip anyone cared to discuss, be they noble or servant.
The nobles who had outings and dinners with the bastard had been ostracized in the days leading up to the trial, but afterwards they had been hounded. Knights who wished to tame lightning for themselves digging for anything the bastard might have said, maidens wishing to learn of his character, and minor lords who wished to make a good son out of him.
It is not only the minor nobles…Robert was king, and he was no better, he had spent every day since the trial obsessing over it, and he'd come up with a dozen schemes win the bastard back after almost dismembering and exiling him for Cersei's sake. In Renly's estimation his brother had not put this much thought into anything since the Rebellion.What Robert would not give for the bastard to be his son rather than Eddard's…
Though in that respect, he could not blame his brother, his nephew Joffrey seemed rotten to the core, like a small Cersei with a cock. He tried to imagine the boy in the Siege of Storm's End, hungry, always hungry, with no meal to look forward to than roasted rats, a smuggler making for a noble savior and the sight of onions a cause for celebration.And even then, Stannis took the man's fingers for smuggling, madness.
At least his good sister and her father were enraged beyond all reasonable measure, and that was something which would always bring a smile to Renly's face. The lions always turned their noses up far too high for his liking, one could believe they had Balerion at their beck and call with the way they postured. It was an illusion of strength and untouchability Tywin Lannister had dedicated his life to cultivating, and to see it so thoroughly shattered, by a bastard no less, brought him no end of pleasure.
We should take the opportunity to oust them.He thought absentmindedly, resting his head against his knuckles.Annul Robert's marriage with the bitch and be done with her and her entire family.
But it was a distant dream, Arryn would never go for it, and without Arryn he could not persuade Robert. Maybe he could conspire with Stannis, but once his brother found out who Renly wished to replace her with, he would be more likely to work against him than with him.
He would deny an alliance with the strongest, richest house in the realm out of spite.Renly giving his brother a look from he sat.Strength of will alone cannot rule a realm, Stannis. It cannot defeat the Lannisters.
And Loras, gods, Renly could not get him to discuss or recount anything other than that trial, to wonder or dream about anything other than lightning the bastard had wielded. His brother Garlan was no better, and the two had spent entirely too long discussing the way the bastard fought, more fascinated by the technical aspect of the fight than the lightning he caught. And they would endlessly argue which cousin of theirs they could charm the bastard with when he attended the tourney in Highgarden in a few months.
If they desire to bring him into their family, this match with Robert's bastard girl would not be in their favor…Renly thought, but he was entirely unsure how he wished to swing it.If the Tyrells and I are to oust the Lannisters together someday… it would do well to have him on our side.
"Would you not consider it dangerous Robert, to wed a man as… as renowned and dangerous as him to a now acknowledged and legitimized child of yours?" Renly asked.
"Ned's son would never go against mine." Robert said, he waved his hand at Renly then turned back towards Arryn.
"But," Renly said, drawing his attention back. "Our father and Aerys were great friends, family even, and we all know how that ended."
"Are you accusing him of conspiring treason?" Barristan asked.
"Nothing of the sort, I'm only saying you never know what tomorrow might bring and what ties and bloodlines might come back to bite us."
"Nonsense." Robert said, he rolled his eyes at the suggestion, but Arryn took Renly argument and continued.
"He speaks sense, Robert. It might not be him and Joffrey, but their children even." Arryn said. "You've planted the seeds of a great rebellion by acknowledging and legitimizing the girl, we would do well not to water it, let her marry some knight or lord of no renown or standing, and let their children never threaten the crown."
Robert crossed his arms at the words, and his frown let Renly know that their words had convinced him, and the matter was dropped for now.
I wonder what Tyrell cousin will catch his eye…Renly wondered, though he knew this would not be the last scheme Robert came up with involving the bastard.
Eddard Stark awoke in a cold sweat, with images and faces of the long dead dancing in his mind.
It had become a frequent occurrence since those letters from the capital arrived. First, they told of Jon's arrest, something he was preparing to personally travel south to handle. But then a second would arrive days later, this one telling of his Trial by Combat againstGregor Clegane.
He had wished to ride south immediately, no preparations necessary, but he knew he would never arrive in time. Given the time it took for a raven to arrive from the south the trial had already been concluded by the time this raven had reached the north.
He would have no cluehowit concluded however, and could only be lost in thought, lost in nightmares and terrors of two innocent bodies presented before the Iron Throne, of the way Robert laughed and jeered at the sight, of the hope in his sister's eye when the words of promise left his lips.
What was he even doing in the capital?Ned thought, an anger overtaking him, he had taken the boy as far away from Robert and the Lannisters as he could, only for him to wander back into their grasp.I should have never allowed him south, in the North I could have protected him from anything…
He told Cat and Luwin, but none of the children. They did not deserve to stew in dread as he did, when word of the result of the trial came, he would tell them, either of a trial won, or far more likely of a brother killed, just as word of Brandon's death had arrived to him.I cannot live to see the light in their eyes irreparably dimmed…
I cannot forgive Arryn or Robert if Jon falls.He thought, it was a difficult thing to consider, a rift between men he held most dear at some stage of his life, but he was resolute in it.If they allow him to die... No, I will have faith in them, they will strike a deal with him or stop the trial, else I will never speak with either again.
But in the end, they would do neither and Ned felt an anger at them he had not felt since his fight with Robert in the Thone Room, they had actually allowed the trial to go through, they had actually pitted Jon against a monster.
At least Jon had somehow won and lived, else his rage would have been all the greater, though even that seemed extraordinary by Ned's measure. The thought of the boy, even with his boundless talent triumphing over a monster like the Mountain seemed like a flight of fancy, but by Arryn's own ink it was what happened, and not only that, but the letter also told of the boy commanding lightning to smite the giant.
He would have thought the entire thing fabrication, were it not for Arryn's signature and seal, for his repeated acknowledgements of how unbelievable it was, and his continued assurances that he had witnessed it with his own eyes, how the boy was now being called Stormscourge throughout the realm.
Command lightning?He thought, he had reread the passage a hundred times and he still had no idea what that meant, what that could have possibly looked like.How does a man command lightning?
But even still, his nightmares would leave him, the nights he woke up in the cold sweats grasping for air. At some point in his life, in the months that followed leaving that accursed tower, it had felt like his entire purpose was to protect that babe from the Lannisters, from Armory Lorch and the Mountain.
He had then met his wife and his own children and found a greater purpose since, but the promise he gave for his sister's son remained. He would still lie, fight and bleed to protect him, but it seemed like the boy had grown capable of protecting himself, from the Lannisters and the Mountain and whomever else crossed his path.
When winter comes, he will be ready.He thought, and there was nothing more any Lord Stark could hope for his children.
Until one morning he awoke once more to the images of bloodstained roses and betrayed lilac eyes, Catelyn laid besides him, still soundly asleep. He tried to close his eyes once more, but to no avail, until he noticed the skies outside his windows brightening.
He sighed heavily, then kissed his sleeping wife on the forehead, before rising to his feet to get dressed. Some five minutes later the Lord of Winterfell would stride out of his rooms, ready to face the day.
He would have to wake up Robb soon, his son had a long ride out towards the lands tended by the Masters Roger and Huell, the two men had gotten into some dispute over their herds and Robb had offered to personally make the trip to resolve it.
He had also put his son in charge of the preparations for the caravan to White Harbor that would leave sometime next week. Robb had to finalize what guardsmen would be accompanying him, get a list of all the exotic medicinal herbs Luwin needed him to buy, an estimate of the monthly lumber yields from their forestrys and lumber mills so he could negotiate with the Bravosi captains, and a rough estimate on their granaries and a census of Wintertown from Poole so he could know what taxes to demand from Lord Manderly.
He's taken to the work so well.Ned thought, pride swelling in his chest.I could pass tomorrow, and Winterfell would be in good hands.
But his son had also reached his majority, and the letters and daughters were flying in at a pace he could barely handle. Ned did not wish to force any marriage onto his children as his father had done onto his siblings, but the time they could remain children and unwed was burning away quickly.
Let that be tomorrow's concern.He thought absentmindedly.Let some daughter of Karstark or Manderly or some such catch his eye so the matter might resolve itself.
It was just as he was walking along the courtyards of Winterfell towards the stables when he ran into Ser Rodrik. The knight escorted some gagged man in chains, the man-at-arms' smile entirely too wide for what he was doing.
"Who is this?" Ned asked.
"Your son has returned, my lord!" Rodrik said, the smile on his aged face now explained, the old knight had much pride in his pupil.
"Jon?" Ned asked, his heart jumping at the thought. "Where is he?"
"He handed me this man, said he'd tried to poison him on the ship North, then headed straight for the crypts." Ser Rodrik said, and Ned gave the man he escorted a dirty look.A Lannister catspaw.
"The crypts?" Ned asked, turning his gaze back to Rodrik. "Why?"
The knight only shrugged and Ned gave his farewells, glared at the man he escorted one more time, then headed towards the crypts. He walked towards them with urgency entirely unbefitting a lord, but he did not care, there was a worry, a nervous anticipation gnawing at his chest, and so he hurried his step. He pushed open the heavy iron gates of the crypts, took a torch from the wall and lit it against another, then went down the half-ruined stairs into the dank darkness where he would one day be buried.
He quickly found the other torch burning against the darkness, it stood before the statue of his sister, with his brother and father next to her. The man who carried it had always looked identical to him. Only, he had grown even bigger in the years since his departure had him, his shoulders were now broader and he stood now an inch or two above Ned, just as Brandon did once.
"Jon?" Ned asked, a rare smile crossing his lips at the sight of the boy. "What are you doing down here?"
"I know." The boy humorlessly said. Ned's face fell at the declaration and his heart sunk in his chest, he thought of denying it, of feigning cluelessness, but he did not, he only sighed and moved to stand next to his nephew.
"Who told you?" Ned asked.
"Wylla," Jon said, then turned back to face his mother. "The wet nurse from Starfall."
"I remember her." Ned said, remembering the bloodstained hand which put his sister's babe in his hands, the same babe who now stood beside him.
"So, it is true then?" Jon asked, "The woman was no liar?"
"It is the truth."
"I wish you told me."
"It is not a secret you can tell a child." Ned said, one could rely on a child's discretion as well as one could rely on a rusted blade. "But… perhaps I did grow complacent in denying it. When you grew older, before you left, I should have told you the truth."
"But you never told me anything though, nothing at all." Jon said, turning away from the statue to face him. "You could have denied the parentage but let me know that I had a mother who loved me, I did not deserve to face an ogre to learn that."
"Aye." Ned said, Catelyn had never accepted the boy, he had tried to fill the void she left… but while he could play the role of a father, the role of a mother he could not, and for Jon, no one else had. "I am sorry for it. The memories were painful but… I should have faced them, for your sake."
There was silence that hung between them, Ned expected to hear either anger or an acceptance of the apology, but nothing came. Only silence and ghosts.
"What will you do now?" Ned asked after a long pause. "Will you seek the Iron Throne?"
"I want to, more than anything. I would be lying if I said I didn't dream of sitting upon it." Jon admitted, and Ned turned to him in disbelief, the concerns of Master Roger's cattle seeming like a world away. "But I won't pursue it. I have seen battle, I have seen streets littered in bodies and men dying in their own filth, if thousands died for the sin of my birth, I won't have thousands more die for my ambition. Let Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys be the last ones to die, I do not wish for you or Robb or Arya to join them."
He turned to Jon, and even with the information of his true parents, even with the years spent apart, he still saw his son standing there. The one who always silently longed for Winterfell but would never hurt any of his children to gain it.
"Do you know what name your mother gave you?" Ned asked, his features softened as Jon turned to him with eager eyes.
"What?" Jon asked.
"Visenya." Ned said, and his nephew's look became curious. "I imagine she expected a girl. With Aegon and Rhaenys, you would have been named after the Conqueror and his sisters, but life is never like the stories. When the midwife told her you'd been born a boy, when she saw your gray eyes, only one name came to her lips, she… she named you Baelor."
"After the Blessed?" Jon asked, now looking completely lost.
"I doubt it, I reckon its after the Breakspear." Ned said. "When she was still a young girl, before I left for the Vale, there was no story that fascinated her more than the Trial of Duncan the Tall when she was a young girl, and no Targaryen she admired as much as Baelor. A great prince who fought and died so that a lowly hedgeknight might see justice, I expect she wished for you to grow into a similar man, I can now see that you have."
"Baelor." Jon said, testing the name on his lips. "Though I don't imagine the Breakspear's birth caused as much death."
"You did not kill any of them." Ned said. "Only a fool could blame you for the rebellion."
"If I was never born, they would still live."
"And yet, with your life, you've slain the monster who killed your infant brother and raped his mother, laid their souls to rest and put an end to his evil," Ned said honestly, remembering the two bodies wrapped in red. "Before that you saved that village in the Vale from mountain men, I don't know the details of that, but I was there before even that when you saved Arya and Bran and Rickon from the wildlings. You did not choose how you were born; you did not choose who lived or died, but everything that was your choice, everything youhavechosen… it has made the world a gentler place."
"I can only hope she would proud." Jon said, and he saw a smile cross the younger man's lips, one which lasted a sigh before it was gone. "Though, one day, I will make the world gentler still when I end Tywin Lannister's legacy."
"Tywin Lannister?" Ned asked in confusion,where did this come from?"I cannot pretend I have any affection for the man, truth be told I cannot pretend I have any respect for him either, but he is far too dangerous to pursue."
"And yet, he is the one who slaughtered my sister and brother to increase his own standing, and that, I cannot forgive." Jon said, "Aerys was a mad dog and the kingslayer's blade did not find him soon enough, my father… my father was a man grown and he fought and lost his own battles, but my brother, my sister? What sin did they commit? What cause did Tywin Lannister have to butcher them?"
The words of discouragement, words of dismissal and decrial race his tongue, and yet, Ned found that he could not speak any of them in good conscious. If someone, twenty years ago, had come and tried to deny him vengeance for Brandon and Lyanna and his father, he doubted any words could have swayed him, and he did not have the guilt of his parent's folly and the death that followed to contend with.
"How will you do it?" Ned asked. "Tywin Lannister for all his crimes, remains a Warden and a Lord Paramount, and he is grandfather to the next king."
"Lord Royce has offered me a castle in his lands, and a landed knight in the Vale can command a great deal of influence, Ser Templeton, the Ninestar, he has over a thousand swords under his banner." Jon said. "And the reign of Joffrey Baratheon will not be spoken of in the same breath as the Councilor's, when the time comes, the Lannisters will find themselves short on allies, and I will make sure the Vale will not rush to their aid."
"What do you mean?" Ned asked. "Joffrey has two of the seven kingdoms bound to him by blood, he grows up alongside Robert Arryn, Robb will never rise against him, and the Reach and Dorne cannot threaten him alone, what war will plague his reign?"
"The crown prince… I have only seen him a few times, but he does not engender peace." Jon said, "He ruthlessly bullies his siblings and indulges too greatly in cruelty, with a crown on his head I cannot imagine who he would harm and what consequences might follow. Robert Baratheon neglects him, drinking and whoring his way to an early grave, and it is his mother's family who molds him, he has all the malice of Tywin but does not feel the need to hide it. And Robert Arryn? I doubt he has ever spent so much as an hour with Joffery in all these years, the boy is sickly, still nursed by his by mother at nine years of age, any ties the Crown has with the Vale die with Jon Arryn."
Ned reeled back at Jon's words, completely blindstruck by their contents. He had not kept up with information from the South, but he had always imagined Robert and Arryn's sons to be just as Arryn had taught him and Robert to be, just as he taught Robb and Jon to be.
Robert did always have a love for drink and women…Ned thought,but surely Arryn would curb it.
And Catelyn's sister had gone many miscarriages, and Ned knew that could have lasting effects on a woman, but nursing at nine years of age?Surely Arryn would curb that as well…
But then again, he never imagined Arryn would force what he believed to be Ned's own son, bastard or no, to fight the Mountain to appease the Lannisters.
There was a reality where Jon exaggerated or fabricated details to better justify his plans, to himself and to Ned, but there was also a reality where his foster father had grown old and tired, old and tired enough to let the realm slip.
"Snow!" He heard then a voice echoing out against the dank crypt, and it snapped him from his reverie. Both he and Jon and turned to find Robb approaching them with his own torch. "Or do you preferStormscourgenow?"
Jon smiled as Ned had not seen him smile since he left them, he lightly punched his brother on the arm, then the two of them hugged, and Ned felt a faint joy blossom in his chest.
"I see the years have not sharpened your humor, Stark." Jon said.
"What happened to your arm?" Robb asked, moving his torch to brighten it. Ned's eyes widened at the sight. The tips of his fingers were blackened, and he had dark lines all across his hand.Did he actually touch lightning?Ned wondered,what in the hells happened in the Red Keep?
'This Stormscourge business as you said, a stupid name." Jon said, chuckling slightly and with that Ned could sympathize, the Quiet Wolf was not a name he ever greatly appreciated.
"Are you alright?" Ned asked.
"The healer I visited in King's Landing said it should have killed me, the Maester I saw in Gullstown when we stopped said I would never move it again and yet..." Jon said, he took a breath, then moved his arm upwards to illuminate his point, though he still struggled to make a fist or move his fingers. "I can only hope it heals fully."
"You should have Luwin see it, immediately." Robb said, though he still stared at his brother's arm. "And after that, we can give Arya the surprise of her life, unless there is something more to discuss with father?"
"Go on," Ned said, waving them away, they smiled and walked off, their words echoing across the walls until they disappeared, leaving Ned alone in the dark.
He thought of memories and ghosts past, and dreaded what might be on the horizon.
Notes:
I wanted to upload this with the rest but boy was it annoying to write in time
anyway thats it for now, story might go on break for a few weeks while college starts back up, ill be back tho, promise