nysalogs | [love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah]

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[love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah]

Who: Eddard Stark (

song_of_ice)
What: Jon deals with leftover Stark guilt, Ned and Jon have A Talk about some of the things that've transpired since Ned's death.
When: Mid-January
Where: The Stark House, Olympia
Warning(s): Usual Stark sadness and all.

Stannis had revealed some of the tragedy that befell his family, but in truth, for as hard as Ned attempted to listen and absorb what he could, he found his mind, spirit, and heart battered and broken down with every word out of Stannis' mouth. At some point, he must've stopped listening, unable to hear any more of the pain, sorrow, and death that his family endured following that fateful afternoon at the Sept of Baelor which, now, seems like an eternity prior.

A lifetime ago, literally and metaphorically.

But since Jon had first stumbled upon Ned in the stasis chamber, Ned has known something to be .. off about his son (he's yet to reveal the true nature of their relationship, and though he feels as though Jon has a right to know, especially now, he finds the words like sludge, lodged in his throat and unwilling to move). He'd not approached him in the chambers, not addressed him as Father. He felt .. stiff, and cold, as though they'd not spent years of their lives together, as though Ned had not done all he could to make Jon feel as though he were not a Snow, but a Stark, even if only in deed and not in name. The lack of .. joy in Jon's face, the shadow that instead lingered, wounded Ned far deeper than he'd ever admit, and it's been as though they've been dancing around each other, fearful of what truths might finally be revealed if they spend too much time in the same room together.

It's a dance that can only go on for so long, and Ned's reached a point of feeling exhausted and irritated with it. No more, he thinks. It's time to speak, confront, and deal with this as men. And truly, Jon is a man grown now, no longer the young boy he'd last seen on the King's Road. His face is weathered by the things he's lived through, from all that Ned could not have protected him.

He raps his knuckles on the door to Jon's room, easing his face close to it to speak.

"Jon? Might I come in?"

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He hadn't asked his father about his mother. While the desire to know was still there, it was buried beneath so much else. He had learned to accept his identity and find peace with it. Death and rebirth had changed so much of his outlook and the man that he had become. He didn't feel that same anger anymore at being a bastard. The word no longer hurt him and couldn't be used as a weapon. He had always been a reluctant leader, but when he was named king, it was when "Snow" no longer became a stain.

But even those feelings were pushed away all too often by guilt, remorse and exhaustion. There were a number of things he had done in his life that he regretted, but it was never so sharp as when he looked at his father. His mistakes were raised to the surface, along with the thought of disappointing him and having to see that shame in his father's expression. He had always wanted to be worthy of Ned, to have it be said that Ned Stark fathered four sons, not three. Yet he was an oathbreaker and been responsible for so much death. It had kept him at a distance, unable to give voice to all the things he wanted to say to Lord Stark.

He had been waiting for the day that everything would collapse and they would be forced to face these truths. While he had braced himself for it, when it actually came, he found himself not ready.

He had only recently woken, the afternoon usually when he would rise from bed. Working late into the night for the Royal Guard meant that he was on a different schedule from the rest. He hadn't had any food yet, instead remaining in his room, sharpening Longclaw with Ghost on his bed. When his father knocked on the door, Jon nearly jumped in surprise.

He was quick to recover himself, "Aye, come in." He stood and pulled out a chair for his father. It was better than him sitting on the edge of the bed that Ghost largely dominated. "Are you well?"

Once he's gotten permission to do so, he opens up the door and slips inside, quietly closing it behind him. It's been a sort of joy, having Ghost around .. a constant reminder of the strength and presence of his once-great house, of when his children had been protected, of when life had seemed so much simpler. He can remember finding them in the woods, the corpse of their mother, the antler in her throat. It should've served as a warning. He should've listened to the rumble in his gut and the shadow in his mind, but he hadn't. How could he have known what lie in store for the Starks?

He leans forward to give Ghost a friendly scratch behind the ear before taking a seat in the chair Jon had pulled out for him.

"Aye, I'm well," he answers as he settles in, giving a quick glance about the room, before looking to Jon again. "You? How fares the Royal Guard?"

Ghost wasn't reserved in the same way Jon was. When Ned gave him attention, Ghost looked up at him with warm eyes as his tail whapped against the wall. Jon watched his direwolf for a moment, remembering when he had found him in the snow banks. He was smaller than the rest, a runt driven off by his siblings, just as much of an outsider as Jon. Now he was larger and stronger, but harder still, he was one of the last living of his litter. Thankfully, Lady had been returned to Sansa, giving Ghost a companion again.

Jon's room was bare and spartan, just as it once was in Winterfell. There was little he wanted or needed. There were small knickknacks around, one o the more prominent was a carved dragon lovingly placed on the nightstand beside his bed, waiting for a woman that might never wake.

"Quiet." Which wasn't guaranteed for much longer. "I expect it will change if Wyver and Olympia decide to go to war. When that happens, I don't know yet what I'll do." But he doesn't believe that is why Ned came to visit, they were dancing around a number of topics, staying with what was safer. "The coin is good. Soon I hope we can find some place larger."

"Is such a fate likely? Admittedly, I've still been trying to catch myself up to the tumultuous history between the two. Everyone seems to be in agreement over the fact that there's little fondness between them, regardless of where one might call home." Home. Not exactly the word Ned would use for a place like this, but what other choice did he have? What was the alternative? Back into the pods, neither living nor dead? There's a quiet voice at the back of his mind that reminds him that this is the closest to home he'll ever get again, even if the house is far emptier and those pods far fuller than he'd prefer.

"Aye." He hesitates for a moment. In their past lives, Ned would've kept much of his goings on quiet or, at the most, would've shared it with his wife. But, seeing as things have changed and Jon has been the primary provider for the family since his arrival, it puts he and Ned on more equal footing than they were before. So with a bit of an internal push, he adds, "I've recently been taken on at the -" he pauses a moment, trying to remember the name, "The Simwe Institute. Afraid there's not much use for a once-Lord-and-Hand-of-the-King here. Seems I'm to live the life of a Maester, or something close to it." The topics to research were mostly out of Ned's scope, given his limited knowledge on so much of this world's technology, but he'd offered his assistance wherever needed. In due time, it was suggested, he'd find his own topics of interest to pursue.

"It isn't right, for you to carry the burden on your own." He glances around at the room again, a bit differently this time. "Are there larger steads to be had here?"

"Men look for any reason to go to war and it seems that the hostilities between Wyver and Olympia are proof of it. No one has told me how all of this started, but it seems they don't want it to end until some sort of vengeance is exacted." It was interesting to see and compare to the situation they once faced in Westeros. One House always seemed to have a reason to end another, destruction and war was an endless cycle, leaving them all perplexed at where it began. Was it when the Lannisters killed his father? Or was it when Robert killed Rhaegar on the Trident? Who knew anymore? "We should ready ourselves for the inevitability." Because it was an inevitability at this point.

Even in providing for the family, it was difficult for Jon to feel like an equal to his father. No matter if he was once named king and later made warden, no matter how many armies he lead or men he killed, he would always feel like a boy and a bastard next to his father. The smear on his honor and the shadow of his legacy. "I can't imagine you as a maester." Despite himself, he smiles and chuckles beneath his breath. "Did Claire suggest it?" That was where she worked, wasn't it?

"I want to." He didn't know how to put it to words, but he felt useful looking after the family. After Ned's death and after Sansa joined him at the Wall, protecting his last remaining family had been a natural course. He didn't want to abandon it so easily. "There are. They cost more and I will likely need more standing, but I would like us to have something larger."

How foolish. Why can't men ever learn? When will they put down their swords for the greater good and for lasting peace? Of course, Ned had run head-first into war before under Robert's banner and name. He'd risked everything for him, helped him win the Seven Kingdoms and the throne to oversee them. But now, as an older man and a man with children at that, it all seems so .. folly. All of that power is so fleeting, so impermanent. It seems foolish to crave it so badly when it'll all slip away in due time.

"Aye." Ned can agree to that. Even if it all seemed foolish, it was better to be prepared for what might come than to live in ignorance and pretend as though they could remain unaffected.

He allows a smile to break free across his face, however faintly.

"No, if you'd believe it. I'd been walking about and came upon the place, decided to check it out for myself. I'm as surprised as you are that they'd agreed to take me on." He offers a terse nod. He isn't going to argue the semantics of provider. Not now, anyway. It's something to be discussed further down the line, once Ned's gotten himself a bit more established. "Standing as in favor? From whomever's in charge?"

It isn't a war he wants to be a part of, but duty often outweighed desire. Now that his family had chosen Olympia, he had an obligation to make certain that they were kept safe, that their home was protected. They had lost everything before, forced to scatter to the winds and struggle to reclaim what was theirs. It had a cost, of course. Everything always had a cost, family, home and peace.

"This is at least a war we can prepare for. I don't know what the Natha expect us to do against a storm." It had kept him from fully sleeping as he tried to think of strategies and plans, but this was a different sort of force than the Boltons or the Freefolk. It seemed almost as impossible as the Dead.

"What will you do? Be a healer like Claire is?" A part of him had wondered if his father would join him in the Royal Guard, but it wasn't very much of a surprise that he had his fill of swords and battle. "Aye and within the city itself. It takes time. I don't have family reputation to rely on, only myself. It's like being in the Night's Watch again."

"How does one fight an enemy who can only be seen in its destruction and aftermath?" It was a rhetorical question, Ned knowing full well that it more than likely had no answer. He'd been skilled with a sword and shield, though he'd often failed to mention his ability or shrug off any attempts from others to bring it up. But he wasn't - and isn't - stupid. He knows he'd have died on the battlefield a thousand times over he hadn't been capable. But swords and shields seemed no good in this. One can't go furiously swinging about, trying to slice through the wind. At least, not without looking a fool or completely taken over by madness.

"I'm not sure. Doing such would be quite a contrast from the life I led before Olympia." He flicks his gaze to Jon with an amused sparkle. "Are you surprised I'd not joined the Royal Guard? I almost did, truth be told, seeing as it's what is most familiar and comfortable." He shakes his head, a silent explanation of why he hadn't joined up in the end. He's seen far too much death in his life; he needn't see more now.

"When you are feeling up to it, will you recount your time with the Night's Watch for me?" The question is quiet, guarded. Its softness has the task of offering an out, should Jon rather not share those details. "You were but a boy when I'd seen you last."

It wasn't the first threat he had to face that was just as indefinable and impossible to combat. Information was missing and only the aftermath to attest to what the Dead were capable of. A growing storm that picked up in intensity and grew beyond possible reckoning. If it wasn't for another storm, they could have seized the lands of the living. Equally disastrous and indestructible.

"You want a different life here than what you knew." He could understand that and had almost done it himself. But there was little he was good at, save for swinging a sword and fighting in battles he didn't want to. "Is it ever really comfortable to live by the blade?" He didn't mean to be so glum, but of late, all he had to consider for the future was a war that had not yet begun.

He was quiet for a moment, hesitant. "It wasn't what I expected. The Night's Watch wasn't anything like the stories." That had been the first thing he realized when he first arrived at the Wall. "Do you remember the man who abandoned the Night's Watch? The one who spoke about the dead?"

Ned's only reply to Jon's conclusion is a slight, barely noticeable nod of confirmation. He'd laid his sword to rest many years before Robert had asked him to be Hand, and he'd grown comfortable and content with the thought of his days spent wandering the Godswood, speaking to the hardworking men and women who looked to him for guidance and assistance, and then eventually passing on the title of Lord of Winterfell to Robb. It was all he could've wanted, and it all felt like fog now in his memory.

"Aye, for some, for a time," Ned answers thoughtfully. "But those who live by no other creed than that of a blade are often better as vanquished foes than allies, for they'll never respond or listen to anything but bloodshed." He'd met his fair share of them on the battlefield; they'd been the hardest to defeat and the most terrifying of everything.

"The deserter," Ned comments with a joyless laugh. It seems like someone else's memory. "Of course."

Gods but it seemed so long ago now. He had been with Bran, just before the King came to Winterfell and he left for the Wall. They were young then, far different people and far less weighted down by the horrors of the world and loss of those they loved. He had warned his brother not to look away. Had that prepared him for what Theon would do in Winterfell or everything he would see beyond the Wall?

It didn't matter. There was an aspect of that future that Jon didn't expect his father to believe. He had dismissed it then, they all had. But seeing it first hand, how large and impossible that force was changed that sense of safety.

"When I was at the Wall, I saw what he spoke of." He could only hope that his father believed him. It was one thing to show the Night's Watch, to experience it together, but telling southroners had shown him how little he would be trusted. It was a fantasy to them, stories told by nurses. At least Ned knew him better than most and knew him not to be a liar. "He spoke true about the dead, father."

It's a startling, heart-stopping sort of revelation, and one that Ned takes some time to process. Although many years have passed between his last memory of seeing Jon and the conversation they share now, Ned knows Jon's heart. He knows the honor he'd been raised with, the way of the North and the Starks of Winterfell, even if he'd not had the chance to have the name himself. He knows, then, that there'd be no reason for Jon to lie to him - and, even if there was, he'd not dare do so.

His eyes flicker with something indiscernible - perhaps it's something like fear, or dread, or disbelief, or bargaining, all rolled together in one flash of darkness that moves like a cloud across the sun. His lips tighten as the muscles surrounding tense and shift. He feels a strange tremble in his fingertips, which he presses against his bent knees to steady them.

How could it be? How could the stories and legends he'd heard through his life, always followed by comforts and reassurances of them having been dead for thousands of years, be true? Had Old Nan been telling the truth all along? They'd all thought her mad, conjuring stories for the thrill of entertainment. He can't stomach the idea that she'd been, in her madness, more of a prophet than a fool.

Not only that, there is an odd bubbling of .. overdue guilt, for having taken the man's life despite his claims of White Walkers. Ned didn't think he was lying, per se, but he'd thought him as mad as Old Nan - and, as he'd said to Bran, a madman sees what he sees. Ned likes to believe he'd not desert the Night's Watch, even in the face of the dead come to life, but could he truly be so sure?

"How?" is all he manages to ask, searching Jon's face. "How?"

He shook his head, unable to say how all of this came about, only certain in the knowledge that it had. They had become such a large part of his existence, that he couldn't remember how it felt to not be worried about them or the war that would follow. Even still, he was uncertain what to do with himself or how to live his life. He never thought beyond that fight and the possible end that was facing them. It had been the center of his world and without it, he felt adrift.

But he understood the guilt that appeared in his father's eyes and offered some bit of comfort. "Even if you had believed him, he abandoned the Watch." As had Jon, but the circumstances were different. His watch had ended, he had died. But even with that technical loophole, it didn't ease the feeling of hypocrisy in him. But how was he to go back and serve as Lord Commander again? How could he face that position or the place that had lead to his death? It made him sick to think about.

The dead were a safer topic and one that at least didn't raise many moral questions for him. For as frightening and impossible as they were, they were at least very cut and dry. "The first time I saw one, it was in Lord Commander Mormont's rooms. It attacked us and I tried to cut it into pieces, but it kept moving. It was only after I burned it that it stopped."

He clenched and unclenched his hand subconsciously, the tightness still there in his fingers, scars left over from the flames. "There were thousands of them at Hardhome. I saw the Night King there. I saw him raise the men and women who had fallen and turn them into soldiers for his army. Scores of thousands of them and they were marching towards the Wall."

How astute Jon is, Ned thinks. He offers a small but appreciative nod in his direction at mention of the deserter. How could he have known all he was thinking, all he was remembering, with no more than a glance? It is still sometimes difficult for Ned to remember that the man before him is the boy he'd last seen on the King's Road, that it's been many years since the most Jon had to worry about was shooting an arrow at the center of a target or how to properly hold and wield a sword during practice. He's weathered and sorrowful. He's inherited all of the darkness the Starks seem to carry, and Ned cannot help but feel responsible for it.

"Did the White Walker claim him?" He had been a good man, Mormont. Ned had respected him greatly, though the younger Mormont left much to be desired.

"The Wall has kept the Walkers out for thousands of years; surely it was still fortified, in addition to being patrolled by the Night's Watch."

"No," he said softly, turning away as a distant look came to his eyes. "I wasn't there when he died. We were beyond the Wall and I was separated from the rest of the men. I was captured by the Free Folk along with Halfhand." But that was another story, one that he wasn't going to get into yet. It was the beginning of his guilt, when he first began breaking oaths and moving away from his father's rigid code of honor.

"Jeor Mormont was with the rest of the men from the Night's Watch at Craster's Keep. There was a mutiny. The men killed Craster first and when the Lord Commander tried to stop them, he was stabbed in the back." It was sickening, killed by his own men. It wasn't a heroic way to die and Jeor Mormont deserved better.

"He was avenged. I lead a group of men beyond the Wall to where the mutineers were at Craster's Keep. We killed them and avenged his death." Not that it was much of a comfort.

Jon shook his head. "I don't know if it would have been enough. We barely have any men in the Night's Watch, less now than before after the Free Folk attacked. The dead were over 5,000."

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[love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah]

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LORD I'M AN IDIOT i had it open in a tab but never hit send

Hush, you're not an idiot

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