For the Watch."
"Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger's hilt, buried in his stomach, and wrenched it free. In the cold night air, the wound was smoking. "Ghost," he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold…"
As he died in the cold, he thought of his father, and his brother, and his sister, and the life he should have had.
He awoke, screaming. They held him down as they treated his wounds, the open sores born from the betrayal of his sworn brothers, and he cried out all the more.
He slept and dreamed of dark forests and snowy hills.
He starved in the cold as his brothers and sisters feasted before fires.
He dreamed of girls with hair kissed by fire, and the promises he had broken to uphold the oaths he had sworn.
He awoke, panting and screaming, as strangers stood before him, staring as he rambled about daggers in the dark and pink letters and red women.
He slept, and dreamed of brothers with snowflakes on their cheeks, and sisters with needles in their hands.
He dreamed of cold crypts and stone statues and of shivers as the cold winds blew through the halls and maids danced with their ghosts.
He awoke, staring in the dark at a man who wept for the promises he had broken to the mother Jon had never met.
He slept, and dreamed of dragons, and blue winter roses growing in a clink of ice.
He dreamed of a girl standing in the flames, as dragons danced beyond her.
He awoke, and he slept, and he dreamed.
The world was wrong.
Jon Snow was sat up-right on a plush, comfortable featherbed, wincing at the aches in his stomach and the pain flashing across his back. It was too hot, and he was sweating, and there was anxiety in his belly. From an open window, he could see a blue sky and a distant sea, and feel a pleasant breeze, although the smell of shit that occasionally came with it was far less pleasing to his nose.
Am I down south? How? Since when?
Jon's head was fuzzy, and the world was wrong, and nothing about where he found himself made sense. He had died. They had killed them – the men he led had killed him, and now he was here. Far from the Wall, and far from dead.
He was in a spacious, well-kept room, decorated with various tapestries of black and red. When he had first woke, for a moment, Jon thought of Winterfell, but the stonemasonry was too light, the doors too wide, and the ceilings too high. The room had Myrish carpets and luxurious tapestries, and a mahogany desk of fine quality, and a looking glass that bore the marks of use, and several books, and a trunk, and a fine quality sword resting against a far wall.
But No Longclaw. Where was Longclaw?
Next to the sword was a banner bearing the three-headed dragon sigil of the Targaryens: the family that had killed his grandfather, and his uncle, and his aunt. Maester Lewin had taught Jon the stories of the Dragon Kings, and so he knew the sight of the man before him was wrong, too. Jon's own Lord Father had ensured the end of men like him.
The man was a King; this much Jon knew merely from the crown on his head, though he had the bearing of a monarch to match. His crown was a simple thing, a slender gold circlet bearing no ornaments. It nestled in the man's hair, nothing like the antlered crown King Robert had worn at Winterfell.
The man was a Targaryen; Jon knew this too, because of his look. Long, silver-blond hair fell gracefully over a face that was surely very handsome once upon a time; the man's cheekbones were high, the nose straight, the features almost perfectly symmetrical, and the eyes were a deep purple that looked almost black. He had never seen a Targaryen bar one elderly blind maester, but he had read enough stories and heard enough tales to know the sight of one. They said that Targaryens were closer to gods than men, and they had the looks to prove it.
The Targaryens were no more, now, except for a maester of the Night's Watch, and a girl alone in the world, far across the Narrow Sea. The thought of Maester Aemon brought with it the thought of Sam, and then the Wall, and then his Black Brothers, and then daggers in the dark.
"For the Watch."
Shame filled him for his failures. There would be chaos on the Wall, with giants and wildlings and black brothers and King's men, and no-one to lead them. Chaos, at the worst possible time. Chaos, as the cold winds blew.
Chaos, as Jon's sister fled from the Boltons. His horror threatened to overwhelm him. His chest ached with the memory of the cuts. His mind burned with the betrayal of his brothers just as badly.
"Aemon…"
Jon blinked out of his reverie, even as the spectre of Arya's face continued to haunt his vision. He could not bear the thought of her fierce spirit broken, and it felt like there were ashes in his mouth. "Little sister…"
The Targaryen King had not taken his eyes off Jon's face. The world was wrong. Perhaps he was just deliriously drunk on milk of the poppy. It was as good an explanation as any.
"Aemon," The man moved closer to Jon. "Tell me what happened."
He looked up at this King, frowning. Mayhaps Jon was not dreaming at all, and this man was merely mad and thought Jon the Maester of the Night's Watch. Or perhaps he was not wrong to think it: There are ways to make one man look like another. He could see the Red Woman's face as clearly as the man before him. She had warned him of the betrayal, hadn't she?
Perhaps, in his death throes, Jon was the one that was mad.
"Aemon," The King insisted.
A memory came unbidden to his mind; two brothers playing at war within the safety of Winterfell, shouting and laughing and spinning and slashing. One boy bore the dark auburn hair of his mother: the other the long face and brown hair of their father. "I'm Prince Aemon the Dragonknight!" Jon had called.
His heart ached. Before the King had come north and his father south, before when the world was right, when Jon still had brothers and sisters and a home. Before Jon had left for the Wall, before Jon had betrayed his oaths and his honour.
What was the point of oaths though, he thought, if it meant having to watch your family suffer and die to keep them? Jon had done nothing as his father died. Jon had known nothing when his brother died. Jon could not choose nothing when it was his sister that needed him.
Three times the old man Aemon Targaryen had chosen honour over his family. Jon could not say the same.
"I'm not Aemon Targaryen." Jon muttered softly.
"Then who are you?" The King replied.
"Where am I?" Jon asked instead.
"Home," The King replied.
The King's eyes flickered down to Jon's throat. It was bandaged, and Jon did not need to know why. His Black Brother Wick Whittestick had sought to slash his throat. The man's eyes roamed further, to Jon's belly, which bore the work of Bowen Marsh. There were more wounds, more slashes, more cuts, across his chest and stomach. There was one too, Jon knew, between his shoulder blades.
Home was Winterfell. Home was never really his to have. Home was lost.
The man reached out, as if to touch Jon, but seemed to think better of it. "What is the last thing you remember?"
Falling to his knees, a dagger in his back, and nothing else but the cold.
And Ghost. Where was Ghost? It felt like a piece of him was missing.
"For the Watch."
"I died." Jon said.
"Nearly," The King corrected. He looked troubled. "Had you been found even ten minutes later, you would have. You live only because we were lucky enough to find you. The Gods were with us, it seems." He stood, and turned to the window, his hands behind his back. Jon's mind was addled, but even as he was, he saw how the King's hands clenched.
"You were found in the ruins by Ser Arthur," The Targaryen King continued. "Covered in blood, cut half a dozen times. Sometime tried to kill you, Aemon, and we don't know who, or why. Let me make sense of this. Tell me Aemon."
"Why do you keep calling me Aemon?"
The King turned again. Jon had never seen the man before, but he seemed strangely familiar. There was something about his face he recognised, for all that Jon had never seen one like it before. The King appeared to study Jon for a time, head slightly to one side, looking as puzzled as Jon felt.
"I named you Aemon."
"My name is Jon."
The King froze. When he spoke, he suddenly spoke harshly.
"Is this some jape?"
"Why would I jape?"
"It is not a funny one."
"I'm not japing."
The King's dark purple eyes studied Jon, his eyes roaming over his face as if he were a great mystery. Jon thought, deliriously, that he'd seen the same look on Samwell Tarly's fat but kindly face. They stayed like that, each staring at the other, until the King sighed deeply.
"Men who suffer grievous injuries can…change, they say. Men who take blows to the head can be one man one day and a different one the next. Perhaps that explains you. You seem so different." The King looked around the room, his eyes taking in the tapestries and settling on the Targaryen banner on the far wall with a curious expression that Jon couldn't decipher. "But the one thing that has not changed is who you are. I promise you; your name is not Jon."
The King's eyes focused on Jon again, purple on grey.
"I imagine you heard…well, something from someone who should know better. Perhaps I should remind them of their courtesies. You need know only this - You are Aemon Targaryen, as I named you."
Jon shook his head. "No, no, I'm…my father named me. He named me Jon."
The King's lips quirked into something sardonic at that. His eyes, however, had turned cold. "I assure you, I did not."
Jon stared at him. What?
"If you are not Aemon Targaryen," The King then asked, curiosity now laced in his iron tones. "Who do you think you are?"
There was an uneasiness in Jon that wasn't before, but he answered all the same, the only name he knew. The world was hazy, but the truth seemed crystal clear.
"I'm Jon Snow."
The King's eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was wroth. "That is not your name!" He closed the distance between them with great strides and looked down at Jon with a face like thunder, his tone as sharp as his cheekbones. "You are no Snow! You have never been a Snow!"
"I've always been a Snow, Your Grace."
The stranger's rage was replaced as quickly as it came. The King recoiled as if he were slapped, and suddenly a sadness seemed to consume him.
"Is that… what do you mean, always?"
"It's what I've always known," Jon said. "My Father put a baby in my mother during the war and then took me from her to raise amongst his trueborn children when it was over."
Jon closed his eyes as he moved in his bed, a flash of pain taking his breath. He was far from well.
When he opened his eyes, the King was gone.
Weeks had come and went since that half-remembered encounter with the King. Jon had recovered enough to be on his feet again, and his mind was clearer – but no less confused. He peered again at his visage. The face in the looking glass was his own. He still had the long face, and dark brown hair, and grey eyes – the face of his father, the one thing that tied Jon to House Stark more than any other. He still looked like a Stark.
Yet he wasn't the same. The marks that scarred his face from Orelll's eagle were gone. So were the burns on his hand, suffered when he had saved Lord Commander Mormant from the wight in Castle Black. For the first time since he was four and ten, his hand did not bother him. His palms were different, too – not as calloused as they should have been.
In the days since his chat with the Targaryen King, Jon's head had cleared enough for him to study and watch the world around him. He hadn't seen the King since, but others came to visit, from Maesters and page boys and other servants to knights who bore white cloaks that could only be Kingsguard. Once, there was even a boy who looked like the King in his chambers. He had been of an age with Jon, with silver hair and purple eyes, and he was slender like Jon, too. He had come into Jon's chambers only to say little, though, merely frowning at him the entire time.
They all thought Jon was Aemon Targaryen, a Prince of the Seven Kingdoms. The idea was mad. The world was mad. There was a voice in his head that laughed at him. This could only happen to you, Snow. It almost sounded like Robb.
They thought he was Aemon Targaryen, the second son of the King. The King, who Jon had learned was Rhaegar Targaryen. The very Rhaegar who had kidnapped Jon's aunt, who had raped her and caused her death. The very Rhaegar who had died at the Trident, fallen by the Warhammer of King Robert Baratheon, on the Ruby Ford – so named for the rubies that fell from Rhaegar's armour.
The very Rhaegar who had stood in this room. They had talked. Rhaegar had called himself Jon's father.
When he could, he struggled out of bed and paced as best he could manage. Had he lost his wits? Was he dreaming? Or had the world changed? Could the world change? Was it possible for events to change, like crossing out a line in a scroll and replacing it with an another? Could a man die and be brought back, if only you knew how to turn time like pages in a book?
Could Jon do that? He could save Robb, and Arya, and his father, and maybe even the fat King Robert. He could save his fallen Black Brothers, save them all, and all the free folk lost to the threat from the North. Couldn't he? Why not, if the Dragon Prince could die and live again?
Another idea unsettled him. Could you change a man's father, and still have him live, just as he was?
There was no explanation that satisfied him. Nothing made sense, and everything was confusing. If only he had Samwell Tarly. Jon had sent Sam away. A stupid decision, he knew now. Where was he? Surely not with Maester Aemon, in this strange new world that shouldn't be. Was he at the Wall? Could he survive the wall, without Jon there to help him?
And what of the Starks? Discomfort settled like a cloak on him. If this was a world where events no longer happened as they should, if he was here, with Rhaegar Targaryen, and not with his Lord Father and his brothers and sisters in Winterfell, then what were their lives? Did they live at all? If so, did they know Jon? Did they miss him, as he missed them?
The thought of Arya, lonely in Winterfell with no-one to truly understand her, or Robb, without a brother that was as much his other half, or Bran, or Rickon, or even Sansa, without Jon, without ever knowing Jon, hurt him in ways he didn't think possible. The bitter thought came unbidden, and he tried hard to quench the rage that came with it: No doubt Lady Catelyn would be happier in a world like this.
There was also Ghost, and his absence felt almost as painful as the wounds on his stomach. He did not know whether the direwolf lived, or where he was, or how he was. It felt like part of him was missing, and even the thought of him felt like a pain too strong to bear.
He looked again at his face in the looking glass, his mirrored reflection staring back at him. It wasn't the same, but it was his face all the same. It was Jon Snow who stared back at him. All Stark, so much like his father that his mother had seemingly left little of herself in his looks.
They said Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Lyanna. This time the voice did not sound like Robb. Raped, Jon Snow, raped. It almost sounded like Ygritte, and his heart hurt anew. What happens when men rape women, Jon Snow?
The implications nestled in his brain like parasites, and he wanted nothing more than to never think of them again. It was a ridiculous notion. His Lord Father was an honourable man. He would never lie.
Rhaegar Targaryen kidnaps his sister, and the honourable Eddard Stark brings home a bastard out of nowhere. Don't you find that strange, Jon? Sam's voice was kinder, but the thought was no less horrible.
His father, lie like that? Commit treason like that, against his King, against his best friend Robert Baratheon? It was a mad idea borne from a mad world. He looked again at his own face. The hair was brown, not silver. The eyes were grey, not purple. The face was the look of the First Men, not the blood of Old Valyria.
They killed Rhaegar's children. Butchered them. What would the honourable Ned Stark do, if he could spare a child that? Especially if it was of his own blood? What would you do, if it was Robb's son, or Arya's, or Bran's or Rickon's or even Sansa's?
The thought chilled him. His Lord Father would save the child, just as Jon had sought to save Mance Rayder's son from the Red Woman's flames, just as Jon would save any child of Robb's, the consequences be damned. And yet, the idea of it...
No. Jon was dreaming. He latched onto the thought like a starving man. It was all a dream. He would soon wake up in his bed in the Lord Commander's chamber. Or in a fairer world, in his bed at Winterfell. Perhaps it was all a dream, and Jon was in his room, back when the world was safe. The thought gave him joy. Robb would be in the courtyard somewhere, alive and happy and sparring, and Jon's Lord Father would be in his solar, and soon enough Arya or Bran or even little Rickon would come racing into his room to bid him to break his fast. Yes, he thought. The world could never have been so wrong as it had been.
He would wake up Lord Eddard Stark's natural son and the world would be right, whether he woke up at the Wall or in Winterfell. He was dreaming - on milk of the poppy or dreaming in death, but either way, he was dreaming. Or else, he was wearing a glamour that only others saw, some magic of the Red Woman, perhaps. Melisandre had made a man look like Mance Rayder and made Mance Rayder look like another. The same could have happened to Jon.
Yes, he thought. That had to be it. Or something like it. He looked again at himself.
I look like Lord Eddard Stark, he thought.
You look like Arya.
Arya looks like Father too, he thought.
Father always said Arya looked like Lyanna.
Siblings look alike, he thought.
Exactly.
Jon had many questions and few answers, and it was enough to drive a man mad.
More weeks passed, and Jon felt better with each day. Still, the King – Rhaegar Targaryen – avoided his chambers. Jon found himself glad for it. With the Maester's leave, Jon was free to leave his cell of luxury, and he cared little for the mystery of the resurrected Rhaegar. His wounds still plagued him, but they healed well enough, and they stopped asking him questions – who, why, how? The mystery of his wound seemed to leave those around him uncertain and afraid, but Jon cared only for one question – why was he here? He did not know. It came harder to explain with each passing day.
It had been with some surprise when Jon had first discovered he was in the Red Keep in King's Landing though, although there were few other places for Kings to be. Though smaller than Winterfell, it was no less impressive, with its seven huge drum-towers, underground tunnels and massive curtain walls. Within those walls, the Keep bustled with activity, with servants and nobles alike roaming the halls, the cobbled square, the inner yards and vaulted halls and granaries and kennels and stables. For all that Jon was no longer the boy he once was, it still proved difficult to contain his own excitement when he explored Maegor's Holdfast, the massive fortress where the Royal Family resided most of the time, for it was the source of so many tales in history that Jon had heard when he was a boy.
It became harder to believe he dreamed all this in his death throes.
Jon explored it all. The Great Yard, the underground tunnels, the godswood, the kitchens and the pig yard, the serpentine steps that tired all men of all standing, and even the Royal Sept, den of the Seven though it was. After years at the Wall, it was surreal to be at this site of legends, this pale red fortress on a hill, basking in the warmth that seemed a world away from the cold of the Wall.
Jon explored it all, and every step of the way, he was followed by a silent protector with a white cloak. He soon learned that there was little means of escaping his bodyguard Ser Arys, and in truth, Jon was not too displeased to never be alone; whether Stark or Snow, Northmen did not do well in the South, and Jon was intensely aware of his differences. The people he saw shot him strange looks, and whispered through their fingers in their groups, and eyed him as if he were something scandalous.
You can make a bastard a Prince, he thought, but the world still sees them as they are.
He now found himself within the Keep's library, perusing all the Histories he could. The library had versions of the texts like Winter's Kings, or the Legends and Lineages of the Starks of Winterfell, and The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, which was as massive as it was dreary, but even with the text a century old, the Starks it listed were the ones Jon remembered from his lessons with Maester Lewin. Everything seemed to have happened as Jon remembered, right up to the Rebellion his father fought in.
It was the next text that was new: Fire & Blood, Being a History of the Targaryen Kings of Westeros up to the Present Day, by an Archmaester Gyldayn.
This was the one that shocked him. His eyes roamed over the text a second time, his fingers stiff, his heart hammering, his eyes still wide:
The Battle of the Trident, so-called for it was fought on the northern bank of that river, was the decisive battle of the war. The Crown had forty thousand men, the larger number, while the rebels led by Robert Baratheon, known to history as the Robert the Raging Storm, was fewer but battle-hardened, after impressive victories at Gulltown, Summerhall and Stoney Sept. There, on the ford that has come to be known as the Stagfall Ford, Prince Rhaegar and Lord Robert did battle in single combat. As the battle raged before them, as the fates of the realm lay in the balance, the House of the Dragon won another day as its Prince survived, while the raging Robert did not. With their leader dying in the river with his love's name on his lips, the Rebel host divided, with some fleeing, some dipping their banners, and others turning cloak. Though many Rebels fought on, the day was for the Dragons…
…Rhaegar's first action was to call a War Council, to call for the unprecedented deposition of his own royal father, whose madness had set the board for the deadly game that nearly saw the Dragon's end. Rhaegar crossed the Blackwater with the support of the Lords of the Reach, Dorne, half the Riverlands and some of the Vale, as well as the fresh forces of House Lannister and its Great Lion Tywin, to claim the Iron Throne for the sake of the realm…
…what happened next is the stuff of song, for no man truly knows the real story – and so, it would be inappropriate to speculate. What we do know is the following: Lord Eddard Stark had disappeared from the Trident, even as the army of Northmen fled to Darry and took the castle. With his foster brother dead, it was thought he had fled up the King's Road to his own domain, but instead he appears to have gone south, with trusted companions, with sudden knowledge of his sister's whereabouts. He found her, dying but with child. He took that child and named him Jon and saw fit to take him North. He tried to flee but was found near Maidenpool. Outnumbered twenty to one, but with an army of Northmen nearby, he surrendered his sister's son to King Rhaegar rather than risk bloodshed that might cost them the babe's young life.
What King Rhaegar and Lord Eddard discussed, or agreed, can only be speculated, though tall tales of a new Pact of Ice and Fire seem far from the mark. What we do know is what is known to all in Westeros. Lord Eddard was allowed to leave, and leave he did to the Northern camps, where his Northern Lords proclaimed him as the ancient King of Winter, the King in the North. That same day, Lord Eddard proclaimed a break from the Iron Throne, and a royal decree – his sister's son was forever to be known as Jon Stark, a Prince of the North.
King Rhaegar's response was muted. Ignoring the calls for more war, he commanded peace and patience, and despite discontent in Dorne, he proclaimed that he had taken the Lady Lyanna to wife, in the way of the old Targaryen customs, and that his son by Lyanna Stark was to be named Aemon Targaryen, a trueborn son of the House of the Dragon…
… he proclaimed he had taken Lyanna to wife…and that his son by Lyanna Stark was to be Aemon Targaryen…
…his son by Lyanna Stark…
Madness, Jon thought. It was all madness. The world was wrong.
He had decided not to believe it. Any of it. It was all some ruse, a trick by the Gods, a test of his sanity. Whether old Gods or new Gods or red Gods, he knew it was the work of cruel Gods all the same. Everything around him was false. None of it was real, all of it a mummer's face, and Jon would have no part in any of it. From the library, he had gone straight to the godswood. There was no weirwood here, no tree with a carved face, and it felt strange and lonely to kneel there before the oak tree that was this garden's heart tree, where the Old Gods did not reign, but sit there he still did.
Jon yearned for the Wall. The gods test me, he thought. Or else, they punish me, for an oathbreaker.
He stayed out in the godswood until the sun set and the noise from the Keep grew faint, until he could be assured that most were in their beds. He did not have the energy to withstand the scrutiny of Southron nobles.
When even the dusk had surrendered to darkness in the dead of night, he rose, wincing at the stiffness in his knees, and let his legs wander. Before long, Jon was in the Great Hall; his legs had taken a mind of their own. He had seen it before, of course, had wandered the length and breadth of it, but only during the day, when it was thronged. Now it was empty, and he could not help himself. He had to look upon it again, in silence and in solitude.
They said the Red Keep's throne room could feast a thousand men, and Jon could readily believe it. It was cavernous, larger than any hall Jon had ever seen, with high narrow windows through which moonlight cast ominous shadows on the carpeted floor. Dragon skulls decorated the walls, from the biggest to the smallest, from Balerion the Black Dread to the last meagre dragon, dead during the reign of Aegon the Dragonbane. The largest dragon could dwarf keeps at Castle Black; the smallest wouldn't have fed Ghost for a day.
At the far end of the room, the Iron Throne loomed, and it was the ugliest thing Jon had ever seen. Monstrous and uneven, full of spikes and jagged edges, it was a sitting death-trap made from the melted and perversely twisted blades of the Conqueror's defeated foes. It sat on a platform, before iron steep steps, and for a second Jon imagined his father there, as he must have sat the Throne when he was Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon.
How many kings had sat the throne? How many hands? Jon's own ancestor, Cregan Stark, had been Hand of the King for a week, and may have sat there as surely as Jon had seen Rhaegar Targaryen or his red-headed Hand of the King sit the throne these past few weeks.
The Mad King had also sat that throne. King Scab, they called him, for the constant wounds the chair inflicted upon him. Aerys the Second, Rhaegar Targaryen's father.
If Rhaegar is your father, and Aerys his…
Rhaegar is not my father, he thought furiously. It was a betrayal to think it.
He felt his throat constrict as his eyes wandered upwards of their own accord, to the rafters and the wooden beams positioned there. Jon's grandfather, Rickard Stark, had been suspended from those rafters. He had been suspended, hung, and burned alive, on the Mad King's orders. Jon could see the face of his grandfather's statue, the Lordly face who even in stone looked so much like his son, and so much like Jon, and he had to close his eyes to contain the anger that roared to life in his chest.
Nearby, his Uncle Brandon had been strangled, by some torturous device of the Mad King's design, forced to watch as his father burned and screamed. Jon's eyes flitted around the room. Where had Brandon been? Where had he been forced to watch?
He imagined himself in Brandon's place, forced to watch Lord Eddard burn alive. Worse still, he thought of Robb, or Bran, or even little Rickon. What had his father thought, when he had first heard of his father's fate, of his brother's? Whenever Jon had heard the story, it had been from others, in solemn tones. His father had barely said a word about it; it had been a truth all knew and none ever spoke – that Ned Stark should never have been Lord, and the price for his rule was the murder of his family.
This was all Rhaegar's fault. The Mad King burned, but the Dragon Prince fanned the flames.
It had been his kidnapping of Lyanna that had started it all, hadn't it? Brandon had raced down to save his sister, to demand her freedom. The Mad King had called his actions treason, demanded Lord Stark come down to answer for it… Had Lyanna even been kidnapped? His father had always said that Lyanna had a touch of the wolf's blood. She had been wild, he said. Untamed. Rode a horse like she was half-horse herself. Jon had always pictured an older Arya. Even as small and as young and as little as she was, would Arya have let herself be kidnapped, like Lyanna was?
Did she not let herself be married to the Bolton? a voice whispered in his mind, and Jon winced at the thought. Perhaps so. Yet the man Jon met did not seem the type to kidnap and rape maidens, though Jon knew better than most that men were rarely what they seemed, for good and for ill.
The Rebellion was not born from the kidnapping. Jon knew that; it had been the Mad King's tyranny, and his murder of nobles, and his call for Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark's heads. The Mad King had been a tyrant the realm could no longer abide. And yet… Jon's eyes flickered upwards.
Did Lyanna Stark know the madness that came with her 'kidnapping'? Did she know her father burned and her brother tortured as she was taken? The mysteries of the dead were haunting him, in ways he couldn't fathom. He was suddenly chasing ghosts, with no reason to why or how.
He was a long way from the Wall, but he was lost now as he ever was.
"Are you well, Aemon?"
Jon jumped and turned, hand reaching for a blade that wasn't there.
A Kingsguard stood before him, but it wasn't Ser Arys, who had left without Jon's notice. The one in his place Jon had seen in passing, but never talked to, though the man had smiled at Jon more than once. He stood tall and strong and handsome, with violet eyes and dark hair and the gait of a warrior. The man's eyes were shrewd and seemed to pierce through Jon like Valyrian steel.
By his side, there was a greatsword. It was pale as milkglass. Jon had never seen a sword like it, and for good reason; there was only one. The stuff of legends, and many a boy's dream.
The sword was Dawn, and this was Ser Arthur Dayne.
"Not like you to be without words," The famous warrior smiled. He reached out and grabbed Jon on the shoulder. "Lost in your thoughts?"
He stared at the man, dumbstruck. This was the greatest warrior in the Seven Kingdoms. This was the man who slew the Smiling Knight. This was the man his own Father had defeated, in a battle Jon had only ever heard spoken of in whispers.
"Yes," He replied eventually. "I am lost, ser."
"A good thing I found you then," Ser Arthur said. "You should be in your bed. Though I suppose I prefer you here rather in your cups or some whore's bed in Fleabottom. What thoughts are you lost in?"
Jon stared, words failing him. The Kingsguard's smile faded.
"I am worried for you, Aemon. Ever since you were attacked, you have not been yourself."
That's just it, he thought. I haven't changed at all. It's the world that's changed.
"I am sorry I have not been around as much, recently," The Kingsguard explained apologetically. "There have been many demands of my time, and I thought…mayhaps…you would do better to be left alone. It is good to see you on your feet again."
Jon did not know what to say, so he said nothing. Ser Arthur's frown deepened. "Are you sure you don't remember anything?" Ser Arthur stepped away and scrutinised him again. "Anything at all?"
"I was stabbed," Jon replied drily at that.
"Yes, I learned that much. I was the one to find you. No memory of who, or why? They said nothing?"
For the Watch.
Jon shook his head.
"I am not the only one who worries for you. Your father..."
Jon did not wish to speak about his "father". Especially not here, where the ghosts of his family haunted the halls. He did not wish to play in this mummer's farce, did not want a part in any of it. He turned away.
"I know he's…" Ser Arthur sounded pained. "He is my King. He is also my friend. I know he is not always… but I promise you, he cares for you, as he cares for Rhaenys, and for Aegon. He frets for you, Aemon."
Jon did not reply. Instead, he looked back up at the rafters. The Sword of the Morning did too. They both looked up for what felt like minutes but could only have been mere moments.
"Anything particularly interesting up there?"
Jon felt his blood burn again. "That's where they hung my grandfather and had him burned."
Ser Arthur seemed to freeze beside him.
"I suppose the Mad King sat at that chair-" Jon pointed at the monstrosity of a throne before them – "-and gave the order. They say he was cackling like an old woman when he did it. And my Uncle Brandon, he was somewhere around here, wasn't he? Do you know where? Were you here when it happened?"
"I was not."
Ser Arthur's voice had turned soft. When Jon turned to look at him, he found the Kingsguard staring at him as if he had grown a second head, like he was Maelys the Monstrous, the last Blackfyre pretender.
Bitterness arose within him. "I suppose you were lucky. Lucky not to see the King you served kill his vassals. Easy to keep your oaths when you don't see what it means to keep them."
Did Jon's black brothers believe they were keeping their oaths?
"Some would say that," Ser Arthur said.
"But not you?"
"No."
"Your brothers with the white cloaks though, they were here, weren't they?" Jon could not control his own eyes. They roamed up to the rafters and stared there.
"They were," The Kingsguard affirmed.
"They did nothing."
"A Kingsguard does as his King bids."
"And your King bid you all to do nothing as a father burned and a son was strangled."
"Yes." Ser Arthur Dayne reached for his shoulder again, but Jon stepped back, his face setting into the look of the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Something like surprise flickered in the Kingsguard's violet eyes.
"What good are oaths if you have to do nothing but watch evil acts to keep them?"
Memories flashed before his mind's eye. He was ahorse, racing away from Castle Black, full of righteous fury. He was staring at the raven's scroll, seeing words about red weddings. He was reading the letter sealed with pink wax.
I want my bride back…I want my bride back…I want my bride back…
"It's easy to serve, when serving is easy." Ser Arthur turned to stare at the throne. "Easy to keep your oaths, when men are good. But the point of the oath is in the keeping of them, when things are not easy, when men are not good. I am Kingsguard. I swore a vow to defend the King. I swore a vow to obey the King. My role – our role - was not to judge the King."
"And if it was your father, your brother?" Jon asked. "You had a sister, didn't you? Ashara Dayne? Would you have stood by and done nothing then, if it were her the Mad King burned?"
For a second, Jon saw danger. Something flashed in Ser Arthur's eyes, and for a second, Jon was afraid. The moment passed, and the Kingsguard sighed. "When I swore my oath, I swore an oath to my King, and my King alone. All else – honour, love, morals – all fall before that oath."
"Even if it were your family they burned?"
"Even then. Although I am glad to have never had my oaths tested such as that."
"Love is the death of duty," Jon remembered. Just as it was for Jon, when he failed his third and final test. He died as he should have expected he always would; as the bastard of House Stark, an oath breaker, motherless and friendless, damned for his sins, an outsider to the Watch as he was to Winterfell. He had thought of Maester Aemon a lot in the past few weeks. What was honour, compared to a woman's love? What was duty against the memory of a brother's smile, or a sister's embrace?
"So it is."
Then I care not for duty, he thought.
Jon took another hard look at the rafters, and then turned without a word. As he walked through the giant oak and bronze doors, he felt Ser Arthur's eyes burning into his back.
Jon returned to the hall every night. Sometimes, it was for a moment, or for mere minutes, before he went to the yard to practise at his swordplay, when others could not see. Other times, he would go there in darkness and go back in daytime, with the Keep just coming to life. His days were a blur, but his nights were long.
He did not speak to Ser Arthur, but he saw him often after the night they met, for the man always seemed to be ten paces or so behind. Jon cared not at all for it, but he was no longer a green boy who chafed under the scrutiny of older and wiser men, and he had other priorities besides.
Jon did not wish to face the mystery of his heritage, and so he ignored it, as best he could. His father would not have lied to him about who he truly was, and though with every passing day it became less and less likely Jon's life after death was a dream born of delusion, he nevertheless held true to the idea it was all just madness. He was a bastard born of a fisherman's daughter, or some peasant woman, or someone else besides, and that was the truth of it.
Yet the mystery of why he was here, and what had happened to him, was even more perplexing. Jon had been dying. He knew it. No man could have survived the wounds he suffered. He had suffered a blade to the belly, to his chest, and between his shoulder blades. The wounds were smoking, and he felt and remembered the cold, and the all-consuming darkness that took him.
He remembered it. He remembered the Stranger's kiss.
Why was he here? Why was he alive? Perhaps this was what came after death; perhaps men lived life after life, in worlds which were slightly different, ever so slightly. Perhaps this was his lot, to live in a world where one man won a battle, and then a world where the other man did; a world where Jon was one man's son, and then another's.
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
"I mislike watching you think. It's unnatural."
Jon turned. A woman not much older than he was, dressed in resplendent silks of blue, was smirking at him from under dark eyelashes. She was beautiful – perhaps the most beautiful woman Jon had ever seen – and unmistakably Dornish, although they were strands of silver-gold in her otherwise dark hair. Behind her, a silent Kingsguard lurked, face impassive.
"How long have you been there?" He asked.
"Long enough," The woman said. She came closer to him, scrutinising him with a titled head and a curious expression. "You're making a habit of stalking the halls in the dark. It's good to see you walking again, I suppose."
"You suppose?" He responded. "Should you be out at night, my lady?
Her eyes widened and she laughed. "My lady?" There was something mocking in her tone. "Just how badly did they hit you on your head?"
Jon was missing something. He looked at her anew. Long dark hair, dark eyes, dark eyelashes, darker skin. A very pretty face. A small nose, a small mouth. Delicate, graceful. Her smirk didn't reach her eyes.
Jon didn't know her, but there was something familiar about her all the same. She looked nothing like either of Jon's sisters. She acted nothing like either of Jon's sisters. Yet, he saw something of both in her all the same.
"What's wrong with you? Aegon said you've been quiet, but this is most disturbing."
Jon said nothing. The woman's smirk faded. "Why do you look at me as if I were a stranger?
He could have lied, or pretended. He could have played word games. He could have done many different things, but he was tired, and the world was wrong, and what did anything matter? So instead he spoke truly. "Because you are."
"Aemon, are you playing a game? Is this some jape of yours?"
"Why would I jape?" He asked. Rhaegar had said something similar. Jon could not recall ever joking about himself.
"You know who you are."
"I do."
"But not me?" Her voice had a strange tone to it.
"I swear, by the old Gods and the new, I don't know who you are."
She moved closer, her lips were slightly parted, her eyes were wide. "You don't know who I am? Truly?"
"Should I?"
"Yes." With several graceful steps, she came even closer, until they were nose-to-nose. It was uncomfortable, but she didn't seem to care. Her eyes roamed over his face.
"I don't often know people I've never met before," Jon replied. "Do you?"
"Have you lost your wits?" She titled her head and looked at Jon with a curious look that was so eerily reminiscent of the King that suddenly all Jon saw was a Dornish Rhaegar Targaryen.
"I remember who I am," Jon corrected.
"Then who do you think you are?"
"Not who everyone here seems to think I am," He replied. What else was there to say? "You have me at a loss."
"Clearly." The woman's eyes raved over his face. "I…well, fuck. I didn't expect this. You really don't know who I am. You've actually lost your wits."
For a second, Jon thought he saw a sadness in her eyes, but it faded as soon as he thought it. "I've lost nothing," He said. "What did you expect?"
"Not you." The woman ran a hand down her face. "Not this. Gods. Well, I need to…fuck."
He hoped his cheeks hadn't reddened. "You need to fuck?"
"What? No…I…You must listen to me Aemon."
Jon became the Lord Commander and felt his face freeze into place. It seemed to unnerve her, and she stopped to stare at him again. When she spoke next, her voice was suddenly shaky.
"It doesn't remember if you can't remember me, if only you remember this: You can't trust anyone here. Do you understand? No-one."
"I don't."
"Good." She sighed. "Trust no-one. Stay with your Kingsguard. And stop roaming the halls at night. Do you understand?"
"I understand well enough. This place is a hive. But you ask me to heed your words when I don't know who you are. How am I to trust you?"
She did not speak. She was staring at him far longer than was polite, eyes taking in every aspect of his face, scrutinising him.
"Because I can get you out of here," she said finally. "I'm going to get you out of here. I'm going to get you back up North, but I need you alive long enough to make that happen. King's Landing is not safe for you. Not anymore."
Back up North. Hope burst in his chest, for the first time in a long time. North. Winterfell. Starks. Who is this woman? "But why? What's in it for you?"
"I suppose I'm doing it for my brother."
"I remind you of him?"
"In a way." She looked strangely at him. "You share his face."
Oh. She thought she was his sister. "You're…"
What had the girl's name been? Rhaegar's children had been butchered. Jon knew the story. The boy – he was called Aegon, wasn't he? And the girl – the girl had been called… "Rhaenys. You're Rhaenys Targaryen."
"Princess Rhaenys," She corrected softly. "And whether you remember me or not, it doesn't matter. You need to go North, and quickly."
"Jon!"
He turned in his bed, shivering. It was cold. Why was it cold? He had been warm.
He opened his eyes to find himself entombed under a duvet of snow, and the sky above was the colour of stone. A howling wind was cutting across his face like blades, piercing his cheeks with a cruel caress. The trees whistled a surrounding symphony, foreboding tones that chilled his blood.
He felt cold, and alone.
Above him, a beautiful monster lurked. Tall, and gaunt, with flesh the colour of milkglass, it peered down at Jon with icy eyes that burned. Jon shivered, and it laughed.
"Jon!"
Cold winds were blowing from the North. How could Jon have ever thought he could have saved anyone? Why had he tried? There was no escape, no means of safety, not from here, not from this…not from that.
The Other moved with a grace no man could match. In its armour, Jon saw his own face and the fear within.
"Jon!"
It looked up at a sound beyond them and bared its teeth in a silent growl.
"Jon!"
He did not want to die. He had never truly appreciated it before, had never truly understood, but having faced it once, he now knew just how much he did not want to die. To live, to breathe, to love, to lose, to fear and fret and fight and fuck; how miraculous it was, Jon thought, to live at all.
He did not want to die, and he was afraid.
"You will not have him today."
The Other snarled, and suddenly he was gone, fading like breath on glass.
Jon rose, stumbling, grasping at thin air. His eyes came across his saviour, and he froze, breath caught in his throat.
Robb?
No. The man before him was stocky like Robb. He was tall like Robb. He had blue eyes like Robb, and the thick red-brown hair like Robb. Yet he was not Robb.
The man smiled, and Jon knew immediately who he was, and his heart burst.
"Bran," He whispered. "How?"
"Hello Jon," Bran said softly.
"You're alive."
"I am."
You're walking!"
Bran only smiled. There was a caw, and a crow flew in the space between them. It had three eyes.
Jon filled the space between them with two long strides, and with his third he pulled his little brother close to him, holding as tightly as he could. He never wanted to let go.
The crow flew around them.
When they eventually parted, Jon took in the sight of Bran like a starving man in a desert. Where before there was ice in his veins, there was now fire in his heart, and his eyes were wet with tears. "How? You live. You walk. You're a man grown." Amidst the joy he felt a strange sense of loss. When had his brother become a man?
"You're dreaming, Jon." Bran's eyes followed the crow, which flew around and around, drawing a crown in the sky with its path. "You are still in your bed in King's Landing, and I am…well, I am not really here."
"But you are. And… you're alive? Alive, and walking, and a man grown?"
"I am alive." Bran's smile faded. "When we dream, we can walk through worlds. And times." He sat down in the snow, and for a second Jon saw a man on a weirwood throne.
He considered his brother's words. "I went to bed in a world that shouldn't be. Is this a dream in a dream?"
"When you died, do you remember what you called out for?"
When you died. Jon shivered. He remembered. He would never forget. "For Father. For Robb. For Arya."
And for Ghost.
"For your father, for your brother, for your sister," Bran corrected. "And someone listened. In a fashion."
"I don't understand."
"A thousand eyes and one."
"A thousand-"
"This is a world where the man who sired you won his battle. Where his two other children still live. All roads and river fork; time does too. If Robert could have won a battle, so too could Rhaegar. "
The man who sired you. His two other children.
The King. The boy who looked like him. The woman he met, with the dark eyes.
"No," Jon said. Bile rose up his throat.
Bran's eyes were soft. "Yes," he whispered. "I'm sorry Jon."
"I'm Jon Snow." It was half protest and half lament.
"You are."
"I'm your brother."
"Yes, and you always will be."
"Then how…?"
"I'm so sorry Jon," Bran reached out to him and clasped his hand. "I'm sorry, but these are steps you must take…but know, know that you were always one for us, and you always will be. You might not have our name, but you have our blood. Eddard Stark will forever be your father in all the ways that matter, and you are my brother, and Robb's, and Sansa's, and Arya's, and Rickon's. And you always will be."
Jon's shoulders were shaking. The world was wrong.
"Know that and know this: the way home is North. To us, to me, to Rickon, to Sansa and to Arya. We all live, and we all need you. So go North, Jon. Rhaenys Targaryen was right. You have to go North, and soon. Find the cave in the hillside. That's the way home."
"Bran, I-"
"The way home is North."
"You're all-?"
"And when you get back here, when you need to know how to open the way, remember what he said."
"Who? Bran…"
"And then we'll see each other again. I promise, Jon."
Jon felt oddly small. It felt like he was the younger brother. His skin felt clammy, and there was pain at his temples, and a gnawing unease in his heart. He was lost in a tempest, of rage and sadness and horror and denial and a thousand other feelings he couldn't name.
Who was he? Where was he? How, what, how, where, why? Who?
Bran lives, he thought. Focus on that. Bran and Rickon and Sansa and Arya, they live.
Bran smiled softly, and for a moment he was elsewhere, and it was warm, and in a bloody bed there was a girl that looked like Arya, and a man that looked like Jon. In the next, he was cold, and Bran was there, and then Jon turned in his bed, bleary eyes flickering open, to see a stranger by his bedside, whose hair blended in with the moonlight.
They stared at one another. Jon was lost. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the stranger was gone.