Chapter Text
Jon had long given up hope of understanding his strange dreams. He didn’t dare speak of them, either. How was he supposed to? Dreams of running through a dark forest, with paws instead of boots - dreams of faraway places Jon did not recognize, but that he knew in his heart were beyond the wall, glimpses of frozen and bright white snow and ice. Images of men dressed in all black, solemn and unforgiving. Caves with the light of flames flickering against the rock walls, the feeling of furs against his back. Flickers of fiery red hair in the corners of his vision while he walked through pure snow.
He was sure if he spoke of these dreams to anyone, even to those he trusted, Septa Mordane and Lady Stark would have him carted off for insanity. To some faraway isle, surrounded by zealots, digging graves and repenting for his sins in the eyes of the Seven. No, he would let the questions and doubts of his own mind rot away at his bones before he admitted to having such dreams. To anyone.
Today had been the first time he had experienced one of these dreams awake, though.
He had been in the yard of Winterfell, nearly empty though the sun had already risen over the hills, waiting for Bran to finish his morning lesson with Maester Luwin. The boy had begged Jon at supper the day before to teach him how to use a bow - and he wanted Jon, not Ser Rodrik or Theon, to teach him. The sentiment and trust meant a lot to him, so he made sure that he would be in the yard with a spare bow for the boy the second he got out of his early lessons.
He had been practicing while he waited, lazily shooting arrows at the targets a few dozen yards away, trying to draw his mind away from the dream he’d had the night before, small, blurry glimpses of a fire-lit cave and the feeling of someone running their hands along his arms as if to warm him up. Fleeting visions of a rocky cliff face, bordered by tangled and ancient trees overlooking a cold and violent sea. The tinkering laughter of children. A feeling of peace.
The bow hadn’t been a weapon Ser Rodrik had focused on much in his lessons, but Jon had always enjoyed the feeling of a bow in his hands much more than that of a sword, and he was good at it. He had picked the skill up quickly, quicker than most, and the itch to keep at it had seemingly possessed him in the dark of the night mere months ago. He hit the center of the target more often than not, and although he wouldn’t admit it out loud, it was nice to excel at a weapon his half-brother Robb sucked at.
He had just knocked another arrow when his vision had clouded over and his hands grew cold, much like they did in his dreams. His heart raced, a thick sense of panic coursing through his blood, and his skin pricked with gooseflesh. His surroundings were blurry like he had opened his eyes underwater, but he could just make out the snow-covered landscape that sprawled out before him on a rocky overlook. Seven hells, he could feel the rocks beneath his boots, jagged and slippery. The blood red leaves of a weirwood tree flickered in and out of his sight. A whisper came from his shoulder, the timbre of the man’s voice familiar - though he always spoke in a language Jon did not speak, yet somehow understood. We are one when together, the man said. The words somehow sounded important, like something he should remember, but Jon never did when he awoke from the visions. He always forgot.
The same man spoke to Jon often. Sometimes it was nothing, simple jokes or insults, or it was bits and pieces of serious conversations Jon did not have the knowledge to understand - not yet, anyway. And he was there now, speaking quietly.
Just whispers, but strong and warm - so warm that Jon had barely felt the snow beneath his feet when the man had spoken. He was in his own body this time, not the wolf’s, staring out over a frozen landscape of trees and snow-covered rocks, and he thought if he got up on his toes just enough, he might have been able to see the Wall. But how did he know he could see it? He had never been here before.
The man had been warm at his shoulders, towering and imposing over Jon’s small frame, his boots shuffling in the knee-deep snow - but strangely, Jon had felt comforted by the intimidating presence. He always did. The man had whispered those words to him, so quietly, peacefully, somehow, in that strange, aggressive tongue. A large hand landed on the small of his back, gripping at the dark furs there - and then his fingers had accidentally released the arrow, sending it into the middle of the target with a loud thunk and flinching him back into his own body in the yards of Winterfell.
He always felt shameful when he woke - he felt shameful when that deep, aching feeling in his chest grew worse as the days passed when he awoke in his room in Winterfell. It was shameful to admit to himself that he enjoyed these dreams. He enjoyed the feeling of warm companionship he shared with the man who spoke to him - though he’d never seen his face. He longed for the feeling of a warm fire in the middle of a clearing, the sound of a sword glinting across a whetstone not so far away - the stars so bright Jon felt as if they would burn out if he looked long enough. He ached for the sound of laughter in an unfamiliar Great Hall, surrounded by men in black cloaks who joked and prodded at one another like brothers.
There were other figures, sometimes, smaller than Jon - always flickering in and out of his vision. The sounds of gentle laughter and the smell of burning pine always seemed to follow when he saw them.
He did not know what the dreams were. A voice in his head, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Lady Stark, whispered harshly to him that they were bad omens, another sin to add to his other bastardly titles. But how could bad omens feel so comforting? How could something so bad feel more like home than the castle under his feet ever had? But another voice said that the dreams were just that - simple dreams.
Jon wasn’t sure if either voice was entirely correct. Could dreams even be called dreams if he was having them while conscious? That seemed like something else entirely, a topic he did not want to think too hard on lest Lady Catelyn’s voice snarl insults in his ear. All he knew was that he spent more of his waking moments reliving those dreams than he was willing to admit - and now he was having them while he was awake. Wonderful, he thought.
His mind reeled as that faraway, icy place faded further and further out of his reach the more his eyes focused on the dark rings of the target. The feeling in his hands returned, though he still felt cold. How could you feel cold from a dream? The last whisperings of the man’s voice finally faded with a few gusts of summer wind and Jon was once again standing in the yard of Winterfell, alone.
Or, at least, he thought he had been alone. A voice from over his shoulder nearly startled him into dropping the bow into the mud.
“Nice shot,”
He spun to face the newcomer, his fingers tight along the shaft of the bow - because Ser Rodrik would surely kill him if he returned it covered in dirt and grime - and was faced with the sight of his half-brother, though not the one Jon had been waiting for, cloaked and with a letter in his hand.
Robb gave him a small smile, reaching up to push the hair back from his eyes as if he couldn’t see the yard properly. It always seemed to be messy, perfectly tousled in a way Jon could never replicate with his own. He was sure Lady Catelyn would chase him down with the shears soon enough.
Jon gave him a nod, his feet shifting beneath him as if he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. What had he looked like during the vision, he wondered. Was his face glazed over stupidly? Did he have drool running down his face? Jon felt his cheeks heat up with embarrassment. He had hit the target, but that could have just been sheer luck.
“Good morning,” he told him.
Robb nodded in greeting and Jon watched as his gloves clenched onto the rough material of the scroll, wrinkling the paper slightly. Robb had been sending out a lot of letters lately, Jon had noticed. So had their Lord Father. The silence between them grew stiff, the distance between them cold, even in the northern summer breeze.
He had grown distant with Jon after his sixteenth name-day, without warning and so abruptly that Jon likened it to having a rug ripped out from underneath his feet. His older brother, who had once been attached to Jon at the hip, suddenly seemed to prefer the company of Stark soldiers or Theon Greyjoy. Their interactions, though still friendly, were quick and to the point. Robb no longer sought Jon's gaze but rather attempted to avoid it. It had gotten to the point that Ser Rodrik had asked Jon if something had happened between the two, to which Jon had no answer.
Gone were the days when Robb would follow after Jon while he performed errands for Ser Rodrik, joking about this or that. He couldn’t remember the last time they had sparred or practiced together - something Robb used to constantly pester the smaller boy about. He had taken up sparring with one of the Umber sons instead, who was fostering at Winterfell until he came of age.
Perhaps it was the stress of his oncoming Lordship or the impending feeling of an arranged marriage. Perhaps Lady Catelyn’s venom towards Jon had finally pierced Robb’s thick hide and he was pulling away from him in shame, Jon did not know. All he knew was that the distance had stung. Robb had been his closest friend, his true brother in every sense, besides their blood. The boy had been the one person Jon felt as if he could have gone to for anything, whether it be a laugh or a deep conversation; and watching Robb and Theon Greyjoy grow closer pushed Jon to feel as though he had been left behind.
Perhaps that was why Jon felt so drawn to the bow; the pure circumstance of no longer having his usual sparring partner - or friend, he supposed - though he was sure Ser Rodrik would have surely welcomed him to spar with one of the soldiers, Jon always felt as if the Stark men toyed with him while they practiced, the onlookers whispering jokes and insults about his bastardry that Jon had no interest in hearing. The bow was also a very solitary weapon, and Jon had learned to enjoy the peacefulness of the quiet that came along with it.
His dreams had gotten worse soon after Robb’s absence. Shadows of people he did not know and the cold of the North - the true North, now haunted him in his waking moments. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Jon had itched to go North, to the Wall, to escape the harsh sting of Robb's abandonment.
After a few more moments of tense silence and a few bouts of awkward eye contact, Jon turned back to his targets, fully planning on knocking another arrow and allowing the boy to continue with his tasks; obviously, he had a letter to deliver to the Maester. Robb seemed to have no such plan though because Jon could hear him shifting on his feet behind him. He could imagine the boy’s mouth opening and closing, searching for words like a fish out of water, something that seemed to have become his new habit when faced with Jon.
Jon fiddled with the strings on the bow, feigning concentration and hoping that Robb would give up quickly - it wasn’t that Jon didn’t want to talk to Robb, he longed for their relationship to return to the easy, warm brotherhood it had been months prior, it just hurt. The boy’s distance had hurt more than Jon thought possible and he couldn’t help but feel betrayed. He had no right to be, he knew. Robb was the future Warden of the North and he had duties and expectations to uphold. Jon could not expect the companionship, that which was rare between a bastard and a trueborn son, to continue for long after their childhood had ended. He had always expected it, deep down. Robb would begin to take on some of his father’s responsibilities and he would have to withdraw from Jon for appearance’s sake - though in that situation Jon always thought that the boy would have still been his friend, his brother, behind closed doors. Jon must have just assumed wrong.
Jon had grown comfortable in Robb’s easy acceptance of him, and he could not help but feel bitter when Rob waltzed past him daily, seemingly unaffected by their distance. It caused an awful, painful lump to form in Jon's throat at the very thought.
He could hear Robb shifting on his feet, the mud squelching beneath his boots as he stood, quiet and unmoving. By the Gods, just speak already.
Robb did no such thing and Jon sighed in quiet frustration, picking at the frayed ends of the bowstring with new fervor. He had a lot to do today after Bran’s practice, which wouldn’t run too long, as he was only going to show the boy the basics. But the castle had been in a flurry of chaos for nearly a fortnight now, preparing for King Robert’s arrival.
A letter had arrived from King's Landing two moons ago, announcing that Jon Arryn was dead. Once his steward, the news rattled Ned Stark, though he did well not to show it. Another letter arrived soon after, addressed to Lord Stark, written by the King himself. Jon heard the rumors of what it had said - that King Robert Baratheon claimed he hadn't seen the North - technically the largest part of his kingdom, since the war, and he wished to do so before the next winter had time to set in. Jon wasn’t so sure those were his only intentions, as the death of Jon Arryn meant the seat of the Hand of the King was vacant. Ned Stark was one of the king's oldest and closest allies, it only made sense that would be the reason for the king's sudden travel plans after the death of his Hand.
There had been rumors, of course, of recent uprisings in King's Landing and riots in Storm's End. Whole cities starving and wasting away under King Robert's care. The old yet tenacious Jon Arryn not enough to stop the withering of a once vibrant kingdom. Vicious rumors of turmoil within the royal courts; alliances and friendships shattered due to the great weight of the realm. Jon did not put much stock in these stories, theatrically told by traveling drunkards and underpaid soldiers with chips on their shoulders as they made their way through Wintertown. The rumors had spread, though, seemingly throughout the underbelly of the North, of a useless king and his path of destruction - how Robert Baratheon's clumsy tongue and carelessness were close to igniting a war between kingdoms. It had ignited whispers of Northern independence, causing an unsettling and reluctant feeling to spread as the castle prepared for the king's arrival.
The hustle and bustle was nice, though Jon found most of it unnecessary. Would the king care about the cobwebs in a few of the chandeliers? Ser Rodrik had Jon shining guard armor and cleaning the stables until his fingers bled and all of his clothes smelled of horse, but the work had taken Jon’s mind off of his dreams and Robb’s sudden withdrawal and he was grateful for it. If the letter that had arrived at dawn this morning was correct, the King and his party would arrive sometime within a fortnight or two.
“They caught a deserter last night, from the Night’s Watch,” came suddenly, harsh and choppy, as if Robb had chewed up the words and spit them out before he could swallow them back down again.
Jon looked over his shoulder at that, looking at Robb in disbelief. Deserters never made it so far South, they usually never even made it past the Queenscrown before someone reported them. Because of this, the beheading of deserters usually fell to the Commander of the Night’s Watch for this reason, rarely his father. Jon could barely even remember the last time Ned Stark had to execute someone of the Night’s Watch himself.
Robb nodded in accordance, gesturing towards the stables, “They’re going to behead him, father wants us all at the stables now.”
Before Jon had even turned back to face Robb fully, his brother had spun on his heels and was moving towards the armory. The burning questions he had about the deserter died in his throat as he watched the boy disappear through the doors without a word.
The yard had begun to fill up with soldiers while he had been preoccupied with Robb, the sound of practice swords bouncing off one another echoed back and forth between the stones of the castle. Jon could see a few of the kitchen maids hauling a few sacks of potatoes onto a cart out of the corner of his eye, hastily preparing what Jon assumed would be a feast in honor of the king’s arrival.
A flurry of brown hair and pale skin shot towards him from one of the entrances to the castle, and Jon barely had enough time to grasp onto the edge of Bran’s cloak to keep the boy from tumbling straight into the mud.
“Careful!” Jon shouted.
The boy let out a muffled shout, dangling from Jon’s hand by the edge of his cloak, his cheeks flushed a bright pink. Jon set his feet back on the ground, steadying his shoulders before gently pushing the boy back a few steps.
He rolled his eyes, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips, “I’m not explaining to your lady mother why you broke a bone under my watch.”
“I’m not going to break a bone,” the boy huffed, wiping what seemed like imaginary dirt off of his cloak, “you caught me, didn’t you?”
Jon nearly quipped back but caught sight of the dark look in the boy’s eyes and the stiff way he held his shoulders, almost as if he was attempting to make himself smaller than he already was. He furrowed his brow, stepping closer to the boy to put a hand on his shoulder. Bran met his gaze, his brown eyes glazed over with a worry Jon had never seen in the young boy before.
He had been so excited for his lessons before breaking his fast this morning, nearly jumping up and down with anticipation - what had changed in the two hours since Jon had seen him last?
“Bran, what’s wrong?”
The boy let out a quiet sigh, his eyes following a pair of soldiers as they fought, the men barely able to keep their footing in the layer of mud. Jon gripped his shoulder, bringing him back.
“Father pulled me from my lesson, he said I was to come with everyone.”
Jon’s eyebrows rose, “To the -?”
Bran nodded, his eyes focused on the toe of Jon’s boots. Jon thought that he looked as young as Rickon then, disappearing into the bulkiness of his cloak. He was suddenly reminded of the boy’s age - a child of eight. A summer child who had yet to experience a true winter. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the boy who seemed so calm and so sure of himself was merely a babe. He always held himself with such confidence, such surety of his place in the world, that sometimes Jon envied it.
Bran had latched onto Jon as soon as Robb had pulled away, seemingly taking the opportunity of their distance to situate himself as Jon’s shadow. When before, Robb would have shuffled Bran off to his mother or the children’s septa. The boy followed after him while Jon completed his daily tasks - when he didn’t have lessons, that is. He sat with him at meals, telling Jon about the books he had recently read or his plans when he finally became a knight. The distraction was welcomed. It meant Jon didn’t have the time to look down the table at Robb laughing at something Theon had said or pay any more attention to Catelyn Stark’s heavy glare. The woman didn’t seem to care for the fact that one of her youngest sons had attached himself to the hip of her husband’s bastard.
But Bran was merely eight and Jon shivered at the thought of the boy watching a living, breathing man’s head roll across the grass. Jon had been eleven when his father had started bringing him along to executions. He'd had nightmares of the man's severed head, rotting and full of bugs, for weeks afterward, unwilling to ask Maester Luwin for milk of the poppy to help him sleep - lest Robb and Theon find out about it and pester him for being such a babe.
But Jon didn’t have the power to help Bran at that moment - though he very well could find Lady Stark and bring up the issue with her, he was sure the woman would rip the Lord a new one when she found out she hadn’t been consulted, but no matter how much he wanted to protect Bran, he wasn’t about to cause unnecessary trouble. He bent down to the boy’s level, which wasn’t much, since Jon wasn’t that tall himself, and placed his gloved hands on the sides of the boy's neck, much like he had seen Lady Catelyn do when comforting her younger children. The boy’s shoulders relaxed a bit, though his face still looked troubled.
“Well, you know that I will be there with you the whole time, right?” He said and the boy nodded, his eyes firmly fixed on Jon’s boots. He looked as if he was about to cry.
Jon told the boy to wait there while he returned their bows, making quick work of racking them. He’d get the arrows out of the target later. Once he made it back out into the yard, Bran still standing where he left him, he motioned for the smaller boy to follow him towards the stables. Jon didn’t want to risk being the one responsible for both him and Bran being late and holding up the party.
They walked silently together for a long while after that, the only sound was their boots and the bustle of the castle around them. They had nearly made it to the door of the stables when Bran stopped in his tracks and spoke. He spoke quietly at his shoulder, his voice was almost far away - cold, even.
“I had a strange dream last night,” he said.
Jon turned to acknowledge the boy, feeling a thin layer of sweat form on the back of his neck. He walked the few steps back to Bran, trying to control his expression to some form of bored concern - he pushed the thoughts of that icy outlook and the man’s quiet, deep voice far back into the back of his head.
Jon took a breath, “What did you dream about?”
Bran seemingly thought over his words, opening and closing his mouth a few times before settling on something simple, and Jon suddenly felt filled with dread at his words.
“I think it was you,” he sighed, his face scrunching in what appeared to be confusion - perhaps at his own dream. Bran had never brought up his dreams to Jon before.
Jon recovered quickly, though curious, taking a deep breath before continuing, “You think it was me?”
Bran shrugged, "You looked older," he continued, “there were people with you, in a forest. You all had weird clothes on.”
Jon nodded stiffly, trying to control his expression so as not to scare Bran, but his heart raced. It was just a coincidence, right? It had to be a coincidence. The boy waited for Jon to speak and when he didn’t, continued recounting his dream.
Bran seemingly choked, rushing his words and closing his mouth with a finality, “I couldn’t understand any of you - like you were all mumbling, that’s all I remember.”
Bran fell silent, seemingly done. Jon wasn’t sure how to respond. Bran shivered in a cold only he seemed to feel, Jon felt warm enough - though his stomach felt as if it was filled with rocks.
“I have weird dreams all the time too, I wouldn’t worry about it,” he concluded, urging Bran towards the door of the stables, where he could see Robb and Theon looking at them both strangely. Bran looked as if he wanted to say more, but chose to stay quiet. Jon’s hand felt heavy on the boy’s shoulder.
“Can we practice after this is over?” Bran asked, and his voice was small.
“Of course.” He had promised, after all.
As they made their way up to their father and Ser Rodrik, Jon thought he could still feel the heavy weight of that strange man’s hand upon his back.
Jon had held onto Bran during the execution, his father and Robb’s questioning glances be damned. The boy was too young, and as the man sobbed something about monsters beyond the wall and begged Ned Stark to send word to his family, Bran shivered under Jon’s arm.
He bent down to the boy’s ear, whispering so that Robb and Theon wouldn’t hear them a few paces away.
“Don’t look away, father will know if you do.”
The boy nodded and gulped.
With a quick swish of a sword and the startling caws of a flock of wild ravens overhead, the man’s head rolled to a stop a few feet in front of their lord father.
Jon looked away as he wiped the man’s blood off of Ice.