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He had known it would only be a matter of time.
His betrothal to Robb had shaken all Seven Kingdoms; had spread to every nook and cranny. The Stone Men in Old Valyria probably knew of it.
And if they knew, then Catelyn Stark most certainly did.
And so that seemed true as she shut the door to his chambers, neither asking for permission to enter nor seeming to care for the impropriety of it.
He stayed silent, watching her through the mirror as he fastened his cloak. As a boy he'd never met her gaze, too terrified, too knowing of its consequences.
Now, as future King Consort, he met it fiercely and willingly.
"I have always hated you," she began, her voice rough and low. Age and all her losses had not been kind to her.
"I know." The hunting dogs had known. The serves and the Knights and the horses and the peasants and beggars as far as Kings Landing and the Wall knew. She'd probably have told the Walkers if only they'd stood still enough to listen.
"I have prayed for you to die. From the moment you were a wailing babe in Ned's arms."
He let his gaze repeat his words. All of this and anything else she had to say, he knew. He still held the memory of being perhaps seven or eight, of having fallen off his bolting horse when tagging along on a hare hunt.
He'd lived, broken ribs and arm aside, and Catelyn…
Lady Catelyn had looked at him, a weeping boy hazy on milk of the poppy, and had told him quite earnestly she wished the fall had killed him. It had been just one of many times over the years, a single droplet in a river of hatred and grief.
"Once, at ten-and-three," she began, crossing to his table and pouring herself a wine. "My son. My Robb. Told me he wished I wasn't his mother."
Laughing bitterly, she drank the cup in a single swallow and poured another.
"I'd suggested, as I was prone to, sending you away to foster. Highgarden, this time…"
Highgarden. He's been there, now. It was a beautiful place, lush and colourful and peaceful. The air clean and sweet. Even during the war, it had stood untouched, a paradise. As a boy he might’ve actually flourished to go.
If he could ever get over leaving Robb behind.
"And Robb… He'd heard. He came storming into the hall, already so fierce and proud. And he told me that I was evil. That no mother of his would ever hate Jon Snow. That if I loved him, as I claimed, I would stop hurting him by trying to send you away."
This was news to Jon. Robb had never been shy about not enduring his mother's hatred, but this? To go so far as to curse and decry her for it?
Catelyn looked at him now, her gaze far away. "I'd always known I was wicked for it. Taking out my pain on a child. I almost cursed you to death as an infant, and I knew then, as I know now."
Her frail fingers tapped restlessly on the glass. "And here you stand. His bride."
The word was poison on her tongue, foul and rotted fruit spat out and reviled, but there was something vulnerable behind it too.
Jon Snow, for all he was pretty, was no woman.
Robb Stark would sire no heirs. Give Lady Catelyn no grey-eyed babes to cow over. The Stark lineage was dead. Robb had been it's last hope, and he had chosen love over duty.
“He's always loved you.” Inhaling shakily, she sumped another glass. “I used to tell myself I didn't know why. Pretend I couldn't understand. But….”
When he looked at him, he saw perhaps for the first time, an iota of raw approval in her gaze.
“You've always treated him better than anyone. Loved him back as fiercely without asking for even a crumb in return. I still hate you for all my years of misery. I fault you for a great many things. But I cannot fault you for loving my son.”
They were words Jon Snow might’ve once weeped to hear but now, as he looked at her through his looking glass, he felt only pity. In the glow of his fireplace she looked almost like a wraith.
War was kind to none. Lions lay dead and shorn of their glorious manes, proud stags sat atop thrones with mangled horns and wolves licked their wounds in the snow, leaving a trail of red behind.
War had turned Catelyn’s red hair to ash and marred her face with deep wrinkles like scars. She’d lost so much weight the seamstresses took to padding her dresses with folded cloth and no amount of rouge or powders could bring color back to her pallid skin. Whatever beauty Ned Stark had once loved was long lost.
It was just one more thing to add to the list of her losses indeed. Jon knew she was likening Robb marrying him to losing him to death. That Robb’s name would etch itself next to Ned’s, Rickon’s, Sansa’s. In her mind’s eye his statue already stood solemn in the crypt below them.
“It is the last solace I shall find in this life that Robb will have you by his side,” she muttered grimly, sinking into his reading chair. “It is every mother’s wish to know their child has someone who would fall upon a sword for them. Who’s loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever I may think of you, I know those things are true.”
“They are,” he answered. Neither of them needed him to confirm it, but he felt he had to. “Robb is everything to me. Not even the Gods are before him in my eyes, my oaths, or my heart.”
She was silent in answer, only staring into his fireplace and sipping wine like the trickle of a well pump. He let her. So long ago he’d let his anger wither and die. In her last years she was no more than a ghost, haunting Winterfell and wailing in the wee hours when she thought her sons asleep and not to hear her.
“The Northern Gods are fickle and cruel,” she muttered, quiet enough it might well have been to herself. “My husband, my children… I loved them so fiercely and they are dead. And the bastard boy I hated with all my being is rising in their place. King Consort.”
She had always proclaimed herself an outsider. Jon wondered privately if perhaps it was true; if the Gods had foreseen her hatred, foreseen the loss of her blood, had seen the Gods she worshipped in her heart, and bade her unwelcome on their lands.
She was bitter again by the time he’d fixed his cloak about him. Direwolf pelt, black as ink in honor of the brotherhood he’d forsaken for Robb’s love. In honor of his Northern features which had saved him the fate of the Targaryens. In honor of the great, black dragons, last of their kind like the Starks, and his.
Robb had gone North of the wall with Tormund almost a half-year hunting it. Tormund had clapped Jon about the shoulder so hard he’d stumbled over when they’d returned.
I like you Starks, he’d jeered. And so does the True North.
Jon had gifted Robb a crown forged of Dragonscale and weirwood and wolf bone, with glittering cuts of obsidian and ruby and streaks of silver. A true crown for a true king. Margaery Tyrell might sit the Iron Throne but Robb Stark ruled the North, a domain twice the size of all Six other Kingdoms combined. And at his side, Jon. King Beyond the Wall, for all he’d tried to reject the title.
She set her wine down heavily. “I am leaving. I will stay for the ceremony and no longer. I have never belonged this far North and I’ll be damned if I die here.”
That she would attend the ceremony was surprising enough, but Jon knew it was only for Robb’s sake. Robb had likely begged her, wet-eyed and all her beloved son.
He brushed a thumb over the fur of his cloak. “He has made suitable arrangements?” he inquired politely, and she turned a begrudging gaze on him.
“He does not know. I’ll tell him as the carriage rolls out of the gates. He’s a mother’s son, that boy, but I’ll not have him change my mind on this. He can see me again on my deathbed.”
Jon pondered quietly. The ancestral Tully home had survived the war well but it was neglected. Only a small Northern host resided there to maintain its security.
“I will send a host of thirty to you in time. Horses and livestock too.”
Her face twisted and he could almost smell the bitter venom she was prepared to spew. He held up a hand and spoke before it could spill. “Robb would send as many and more. The grounds will need tilling and farming. You’ll need handmaids to warm your chamber and launder your clothes. Butchers to fill your plate.”
He took an inhale. “And when you die, it will be far easier to fill an organised home. This is diplomatic, not charity. I am saving your son the headache of it in the future.”
Her laugh was sudden, bright and sharp. “Jon Snow. You do know something after all.” She rose and took the wine jug with her. By the door, she paused. “I have stopped praying for you to die,” she admitted, her gaze hollow when she looked at him. “The Gods always refused to listen anyway.”
It did not sting as it once had. Jon had died. His body bore the scars of it sternum to navel. Catelyn Stark was right; the Gods would not grant her this wish.
He must’ve stood long, staring at his fireplace and thinking of the years gone by because strong arms wrapped around his midst and a cold nose brushed against the shell of his ear.
“Second thoughts?” Robb murmured sweetly in his ear and Jon smiled, lacing their fingers together over his stomach.
“Never.”