Author Notes: This chapter was first published in July 2024. It was edited in March 2025.
I first decided to write this fic as a way to get back into writing, and to manage my improvement after experiencing Long Covid for years. I continue to write, but as I improve, I'm going to go back and update and tidy up chapters - so if you've read this fic before, and spot any changes, that's why. I won't be changing any plot plots.
Thanks for reading. :)
JON I
"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 and the dark, Jon thought of his father, and his brother, and his sister, and the life he should have had.
He awoke, screaming before staring strangers, rambling of daggers in the dark and pink letters and red women. 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, under the snows, as his brothers and sisters feasted before fires between walls.
He glimpsed girls with hair kissed by fire, and the promises he had broken to uphold the oaths he had sworn.
He slept, and lost himself in visions of brothers with snowflakes on their cheeks, and sisters with needles in their hands.
He walked through cold crypts, and braved the sceptical states of stone statues, shivering as the cold winds blew through the halls and maids danced with their ghosts, and a man wept for the promises he had broken to the mother Jon had never met.
He dreamed of dragons, and blue winter roses growing in a clink of ice, and a girl crowned by flames, while dragons dancing to the beat of war drums.
He awoke, and he slept, and he dreamed.
The world was wrong.
Jon Snow 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 his back was wet with sweat, and fear pooled in the pit of his belly like a snake, and his head was fuzzy, and the world was wrong.
When he closed his eyes, he saw only the daggers in the dark.
Over and over and over again.
For the Watch.
When he opened them, there was a spacious, well-kept room, decorated with various tapestries of black and red, and through an open window he spied a bright blue sky, and felt a pleasant breeze that tickled his skin…though the smell of shit that wafted with it was far less pleasing to his nose.
He was somewhere in the South. Somehow. It was impossible, or should have been, because Jon had been at the Wall, in the far North. The world was wrong, and nothing about where he found himself made sense, because Jon had died at the Wall, in the far North. He had felt it. He remembered it. They had killed him. The men he led - had tried to lead - had killed him, and now he was here.
Far from the Wall, and far from dead.
At first, he thought himself at Winterfell. Perhaps that was even the way of things, to return home when you died. Who knew? Only the dead. And now him too. He half-expected to see his father, waiting, and after him, Robb, just as he remembered them, strong and stern, soft smiles and snowflakes in their hair.
Jon could have made his peace, with that, but the stonemasonry was too light, the doors too wide, and the ceilings too high. Instead, the room had Myrish carpets and rich tapestries showcasing battles and feasts and tourneys, and a mahogany desk of fine quality, and a looking glass that bore the marks of use, and several slightly battered books, and a trunk, and a fine steel sword resting against a far wall.
But no Longclaw.
Next to the sword was a banner bearing the three-headed dragon sigil of the Targaryens, red on black: the family that had killed his grandfather, and his uncle, and his aunt. Maester Luwin 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 stranger was a King: this much Jon knew merely from the crown atop his head, though he had the bearing of a monarch to match. The King's crown was a simple thing, a slender gold circlet bearing no ornaments, and it nestled in the man's hair, nothing like the antlered crown King Robert had worn at Winterfell.
The stranger 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 indigo that bordered on black. Jon 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 that 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 thoughts of Sam, and then the Wall, and then his Black Brothers, and then daggers in the dark, and he shivered again.
"For the Watch."
Dagger in his belly, dagger in his back. Smoking wounds. Ghost. The cold. The blackness. Shame was filling 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…"
The spectre of Arya's face lingered. He could not bear the thought of her fierce spirt broken, and there were ashes in his mouth. "Little sister…"
The Targaryen King was staring. "Aemon." He moved closer to Jon, and rose his hand as if to grasp his shoulder, only to freeze, hand still in the air, as if uncertain, as if as lost as Jon felt. "Tell me now, tell me true," The King said, after a moment. "What happened?"
I died.
Did he? Mayhaps Jon survived, and he was drunk, dreaming on the milk of the poppy. Or perhaps Jon was not dreaming at all, and the stranger was mad, thinking Jon the Maester of the Night's Watch. He might not be 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?
Maybe, in his death throes, Jon was the mad one.
"Aemon," The King insisted.
A memory came unbidden, quick and painful. 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 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 he had left for the Wall, and betrayed his oaths and his honour.
What were the point of oaths, 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.
"Then who are you?" The King replied.
"Where am I?" Jon asked instead.
"Home," The King insisted.
Home was Winterfell. Home was lost.
Home was never really his to have.
The Targaryen's eyes flickered down to Jon's bandaged throat. His Black Brother Wick Whittestick had sought to slash him there. The man's eyes roamed further, to Jon's belly, this time the work of Bowen Marsh. There were more wounds, more slashes, more cuts, across his chest and stomach – and one too, Jon knew, between his shoulder blades.
The man reached out again but then seemed to think better of it once more. "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? He felt splintered. 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, turning to the window, his hands behind his back. They were clenched so tight Jon could see the veins.
"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 do not know who, or why. Let me make sense of this. Tell me Aemon."
"Why do you keep calling me Aemon?" Jon asked.
The King turned again. He was a stranger, and yet, for all that he was, for all that Jon had never seen any like it, there was something in his face Jon recognised. Something in his eyes, something strangely familiar.
The King appeared to study Jon for a time, head slightly to one side, looking as puzzled as Jon felt. "I named you Aemon," He said eventually.
No. Even as he was, Jon knew that to be a lie. "My name is Jon," He said.
It was the wrong thing to say, and the King's tones suddenly turned harsh. "Is this some jape?"
"Why would I jape?"
"It is not a funny one," warned the King.
"I'm not japing."
The King studied Jon as if he were a great mystery. For a moment, Jon thought of Samwell Tarly's fat but kindly face, and his heart ached anew. He'd seen that same look on Sam, too.
They stayed like this, each staring at the other, until the King sighed deeply.
"Men who suffer grievous injuries can…change, they say. The maesters say those who take great 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 Targaryen looked around the room, his eyes taking in the tapestries and settling on his family's 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."
He focused on Jon again, eyes to eyes, dark indigo to dark grey, eyes so dark they looked almost black. "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, moved to speak. "No, no," He denied. He had few precious truths, but this was one. "I'm…my father named me. He named me Jon."
The King's lips quirked into something sardonic, but his eyes turned cold. "I assure you, I did not."
What?
"If you are not Aemon Targaryen," The King then asked, curiosity now laced in his iron tones. "Who do you think you are?"
Something was wrong. He felt suddenly uneasy, even more so than before, but even still, he answered all the same, the only name he knew. The world was hazy, but the truth was clear.
"I'm Jon Snow," He said.
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," Jon said.
The stranger's rage faded as quickly as it came. The King recoiled, as if slapped, and suddenly a sadness seemed to consume him.
"Is that… what do you mean, always?" He asked.
"It's what I've always known," Jon explained. "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 away.
When he opened them, the King had gone.
Weeks came and went since that half-remembered encounter with the Targaryen King, and Jon had recovered enough to be on his feet again. His mind was clearer, now, though no less confused.
He peered again at his visage in the looking glass. The face within was still his own – still long, still with dark brown hair and dark grey eyes – still the face of his father, the one thing tying Jon to House Stark more than any other.
Yet he wasn't the same. The marks that scarred his face from Orelll's eagle were gone. So too were the burns on his hand, the ones suffered when he saved Lord Commander Mormont from the wight in Castle Black. For the first time since that night when he was four and ten, there was no ache or stiffness in his hand. His palms were different, too – not as calloused as they should have been, but smoother, and more tanned. These were not hands that braved the cold.
In the days since his chat with the Targaryen, Jon's mind had cleared enough for him to watch this strange new world around him. There had been no sighting of the Targaryen King since, but
others did come to visit, from Maesters and page boys and servants to knights who bore white cloaks that could only ever 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. That one had come into Jon's chambers only to say and do little but frown at him the entire time.
He soon found out why. The world wasn't just strange, or new, wrong. It was mad. Here, everyone 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 all thought he was Aemon Targaryen, the second son of the King…Rhaegar Targaryen. The very Rhaegar who kidnapped and raped Jon's aunt; the very Rhaegar who died at the Trident, felled by the Warhammer of King Robert Baratheon, on the Ruby Ford, so named for the rubies that fell from the Dragon Prince's armour. Jon had heard a thousand songs of that day. Jon's own Lord Father had fought on that day. Jon knew how that day ended.
The very Rhaegar who had been in his room. They had talked. Rhaegar had called himself Jon's father.
When he could, Jon 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 turn pages? 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 pleasing answer. Little made sense, and it all caused headaches. If only, Jon thought, he had Samwell Tarly. He sent Sam away. A stupid decision, he knew now. Only fools sent their friends away. Where was he now? 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? 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 muss her hair, 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 the wolf's absence felt almost as painful as any of his open wounds. Jon didn't know whether the direwolf lived, or where he was, or how he was. A part of him missing, and it felt like being ripped asunder.
He looked again at his face in the looking glass. It stared back, not the same, but his face all the same. Jon Snow. All Stark, so much like his father that mis mother had left little of herself in his looks.
They said Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Lyanna. This time the voice wasn't Robb's. Raped, Jon Snow, raped. Ygritte laughed at him, and Jon's heart hurt anew. What happens when men rape women, Jon Snow?
No. He knew what that meant. Madness. A terrible thought. A ridiculous notion, treason to his soul, and he never wanted to think it again. 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 no less hurtful.
His father, lie like that? Commit treason like that, against his King, against his best friend Robert Baratheon? No. A mad idea, 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, no matter the costs. And yet, the idea of it...
No. Jon was dreaming. He latched to 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. That 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, but it'd soon wear off. 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 insisted.
Father always said Arya looked like Lyanna.
Siblings look alike, he declared.
Exactly.
Jon had many questions and few answers, and it was enough to drive a man mad.
More weeks passed, and Jon felt stronger every day. Still, the King – Rhaegar Targaryen – avoided his chambers. Jon was glad for it. With the Maester's leave, he was free to forsake his cell of luxury, and he decided to care little for the mystery of the resurrected Rhaegar.
His wounds were healing, even if they still plagued him from time to time, and even the strangers of this world stopped asking him questions – who attacked him, why, how? – though the lack of any answers did seem to leave them uncertain, and unafraid.
Jon only cared for one question. Why was he here?
Especially here. In the Red Keep, in King's Landing, in the South. Though smaller than Winterfell, the Targaryen's castle 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. Then there was Maegor's Holdfast, the massive fortress where the Royal Family slept – and where Jon did too. How many stories of these halls had Jon heard as a boy? Here he was, now, walking them.
It was becoming harder to believe this was all a dream in his death throes.
So 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. These were sights Jon never thought he'd see, and so, he stared upon them all.
Every step of the way, he was also followed by a silent protector with a white cloak. It soon became clear there were little ways or means of escaping his bodyguard Ser Arys, and in truth, Jon was not too displeased to never know solitude. Whether Stark or Snow, Northmen did not do well in the South, and Jon felt his own difference keenly. Wherever he went, people shot him strange looks, and whispered through their fingers in their groups, and eyed him as if he were an interloper, as if they knew, as if the whole world knew he shouldn't be here at all.
There were other reasons never to be alone, too. Solitude meant daggers in the dark.
Jon 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 Luwin. 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 fixated on the text a second time, his fingers stiff, his heart hammering:
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, Jon had gone fled 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 most were in their beds, so he could avoid the scrutiny of Southron nobles and their scathing stares. 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 Jon could not help himself.
There was a part of him that needed to see it again, in silence and in solitude, no matter the scars.
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 he 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, while 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 looked upon. 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.
Jon 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. Suspended, hung, and burned alive, on the Mad King's orders. Even now, Jon could recall his grandfather's statue, and 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?
Jon 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 own father's fate, and of his brother's? Had he wept, as Jon had? Had he raged? Did he almost break, as Jon almost did?
Whenever Jon heard the tale, it was always from others, and always in solemn tones. Eddard Stark had never spoken of it. There had been one truth all knew, and none ever dared speak, one that lived in the walls of Winterfell and hung off the trees of the Wolfswood – Ned Stark should 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?
Jon winced at the thought. Perhaps so. Yet the man Jon met did not seem the type to kidnap and rape maidens, though he 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 was being burned and her brother tortured as she was taken?
The mysteries of the dead were suddenly haunting him, in ways he couldn't fathom. Death had changed him. He was now chasing ghosts, without knowing why or how.
"Are you well, Aemon?"
Jon jumped and turned, hand reaching for a blade that wasn't there.
A Kingsguard stood before him. Not Ser Arys, he was surprised to see, but another – a man Jon had only ever seen in passing, a knight who had smiled at him more than once these past few weeks. The man stood tall and strong and handsome, with violet eyes and dark hair and the confident gait of a warrior. His gaze was shrewd. It 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 legend smiled. He reached out and grabbed Jon on the shoulder. "Lost in your thoughts?"
Jon stared, 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. His smiles were easy. "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?"
Words failed Jon, and the Kingsguard's smile faded.
"I am worried for you, Aemon," He murmured. "Ever since you were attacked, you have not been yourself."
That's just it, Jon 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 continued, tone turning apologetic. "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, releasing his shoulder to better scrutinise 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..."
He did not wish to speak about his "father". Especially not here, where the ghosts of his family haunted the halls. Life felt like a mummer's farce, and he wanted no 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 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?"
His blood burned 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 turned soft, and when Jon turned again, he found the Kingsguard watching him, worried, as if Jon had grown a second head, as if he were suddenly Maelys the Monstrous, the last Blackfyre pretender.
"I suppose you were lucky," said Jon bitterly. "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 his 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 couldn't control his own eyes. His gaze shot back up to the rafters and stayed there.
"They were," The Kingsguard affirmed.
"They did nothing."
They watched.
"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 him. Jon Snow was ahorse, racing away from Castle Black, full of righteous fury. Jon Snow was staring at the raven's scroll, seeing words about red weddings. Jon Snow 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, he 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 Snow, 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.
Maester Aemon had been on his mind a lot, these 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," said Ser Arthur.
Then I care not for duty, Jon thought.
He took another hard look at the rafters, and then left without a word, 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 practising in the yard at his swordplay, when others could not see him. Other days, he would spend his whole nights in darkness, eyes on the rafters, replaying scenes he'd never seen. His days were a blur, but his nights were long.
Ser Arthur didn't speak to him much after their last meeting, but Jon began to see him more often – usually ten paces or so behind. Jon cared little for that, but there were other, more pressing issues than who guarded him.
Though not the question of his heritage. That was a mystery Jon did not wish to face. So he ignored it, as best he could. His Lord father would not have lied to him about who he was. If he knew not that, Jon Snow knew nothing at all. Even if every passing day made it less and less likely his life after death was a delusion, it was still all madness. It had to be. Jon 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, stole his sleep and his days. The last he knew, Jon was dying in the snow. He knew that. He knew too that no man could have survived the wounds he suffered: a blade to the belly, to the chest, between his shoulder blades. Smoking wounds. The cold, and the dark.
He remembered it. He remembered the Stranger's kiss.
Yet here he was, alive. Was this what came after death, he wondered? Perhaps men just lived life after life, in slightly different worlds. 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," The woman said. "It's unnatural."
He didn't go for his blade this time. Unlike Ser Arthur, she was of an age with Jon, and dressed in resplendent silks of blue, far richer than any Jon had seen in years. She smirked at him from under dark eyelashes, and 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, another 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 studied 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 played word games. There were many different he could have done, but Jon was tired, and the world was wrong, and what did anything matter? So instead he spoke truly. "Because you are."
Now there was a frown. "Aemon, are you playing a game? Is this some jape of yours?"
"Why would I jape?" He asked. Rhaegar had said something similar.
"You know who you are."
"I do," Jon said.
"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." What else was there to say? "You have me at a loss."
"Clearly." She stepped back, biting her lip. "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 there was sadness in those dark eyes, but it faded as soon as he spotted 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."
His cheeks grew warm. "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," said Jon. King's Landing was a hive. "But can how I heed your words when I don't know who you are? How am I to trust you, if I can't trust anyone?"
She did not speak, 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?
Jon opened his eyes to find himself entombed under a duvet of snow. 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.
Jon 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. Jon had never truly appreciated it before, had never truly understood, but having faced it once, now he 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 it 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!"
His brother only smiled. There was a caw, and a crow flew in the space between them. It had three eyes.
Jon filled that 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 there was also 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. There were wetness on his cheek, and not from the snow.
"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. Was he 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.
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, the tracks of tears still on his cheeks, 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.