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The sun had scarcely begun to rise, and already the pounding of small feet and soft laughter could be heard throughout Winterfell. Already, the fresh snowfall showed the traces the two sets of footprints, and the door to the armory had been left ajar when the boys who had made the footprints had snuck inside. Ser Rodrick would be furious, but what kind of knights didn’t have swords? Anyway, they had only taken the little wooden ones that they had just begun to use in training. Mornings like this were worth the little rebellion, as even the two oldest sons of Lord Eddard Stark could tell.
Jon liked being up before daybreak best because it was only him and Robb, with nobody to scoff at their mess or worse, call him “bastard”. Besides, it was one of the very few times he could spend with his brother without the dominating presence of his father’s ward, Theon Greyjoy. Theon was older than himself and Robb, already tall and fit, with a loud, demanding personality and a penchant for being extremely charming…to those he deemed worthy of being charmed. Needless to say, while the lord’s firstborn and heir might fit that characterization, the skinny, quiet bastard did not. And even when Theon was in a particularly amicable mood, Jon still tended to go unnoticed by the Stark’s ward and Robb when they were together. Jon would sometimes seek out the company of tiny Arya, who seemed to be just about the only person in the castle unaffected by his status, but she was still so young, and Septa Mordane and Lady Catelyn already would try their hardest to keep her from his influence. In the end, he usually returned to trail awkwardly behind Robb and Theon, silent and lonely. But right now, free of all other company, things felt just right.
In the stillness of the early morning, Robb chased Jon through the corridors, treading lightly when they passed the servant’s quarters so as not to wake anyone who would alert their lord and lady of the children’s ruckus. But as the brothers reached the abandoned tower, they began to raise their voices in elation. Little knights, they were, claiming the names of their idols as they ensued their jousting. In their youth, their form was still inconsistent and their hair stuck to their foreheads with sweat, but in Jon’s mind, he was just as agile and skilled as Daeron Targaryen himself.
Through the sounds of their wooden swords colliding, the sound of someone stirring caused Jon to freeze abruptly, dark grey eyes widening, then watering when Robb’s oblivious swing hit him unguarded. Recognizing the look on his younger brother’s face, Robb too lowered his stick apologetically and whispered, “Maester Luwin!” Lady Catelyn had suspected the reason her firstborn had almost drifted off to sleep during the most recent feast and would periodically instruct the maester to patrol the corridors for her boy, and to provide witness to the fault of the bastard boy. So the boys lowered their swords and tiptoed in the opposite direction of the sound, picking up speed with distance as they exited the castle.
The boys‘ quick breaths formed little clouds of fog in the air as they raced towards the godswood. The sun had more or less risen now, but Jon still had Robb by his side, so he shouted behind him his next identity: “I’m the Young Dragon!”
“But I wanted to be the Young Dragon! You’re just a bastard, so I get to be him!” Robb scowled.
And Jon felt the color rising in his face as he swung back blindly, reflexively. And although the wooden sword intercepted only the slightly snowy air, he heard an unpleasant thud as his brother, in attempt to avoid it, slipped on an icy patch along the path. And Jon heard Robb’s wail of pain as the auburn-haired boy’s wrist twisted after bearing the brunt of his weight. So Jon Snow stopped in his tracks and knelt besides him.
They weren’t little knights anymore, only little boys, Jon thought, watching Robb’s small body shake with hiccuping sobs as he rolled onto his side and clutched his wrist. He looks so little like that, Jon thought, and in reality, Jon was even slightly shorter and significantly slighter. So the one small child lay curled into a ball, weeping in pain, and the even smaller one awkwardly reached out to comfort him.
“J-Jon, I t-think it’s b-b-broken!” Robb managed to get out, turning his head so that his brother could see just how much the bright blue of his eyes stood out against their red, watery rims. And seeing his brother so hurt made Jon hurt too because Robb was also Jon’s best friend. Sansa was already cruel and distant with the bastard, and as much as he adored Arya with all of his heart, but she was still so little, but Robb was always there. Jon’s heart sank with guilt for having caused him pain.
“I’m so sorry Robb! It’s my fault!” Jon whispered, not trusting his voice to be steady.
“I-it’s okay, Jon. N-not your f-f-fault I slipped,” Robb choked, and Jon felt compelled to reach out to him for that. That was, until somebody else stepped into view.
It hadn’t been the maester they had heard rising. Lady Catelyn Stark stood before them, and Jon shrunk back from her withering stare. Jon felt his face go pale with shame and, although he was afraid to admit it to himself, fear.
Because he had incurred the wrath of a protective Lady Catelyn before, and even at barely seven years old, Jon knew she had no love for him. Lady Catelyn had three children and had recently been told by the maester that she was expected a fourth, and Jon was not one of them, though her husband Ned’s son. And she made it impossible for him to forget that.
“Robb!” She exclaimed, her voice sounding almost like a shriek to Jon’s ears. Robb looked up at his mother with wide eyes.
Catelyn, upon seeing her son acknowledge her presence, directed her attention to the scrawny thing beside him that was hiding from her from behind a mop of dark hair. Jon knew this was coming, but that didn’t make it feel any better. His shoulders shifted forward and he lowered his head, bracing.
“You!” Lady Stark spat. “What have you done to my son? You’ve hurt him!” Even Robb had fallen mostly silent, looking fearfully on the scene before him. He had seen it all before, and it clearly discomforted him, but, Robb was more than likely to withdraw himself from the situation while his mother paid no mind. To him, Catelyn was a loving mother, and he had her look, just as Jon had their father’s, so Jon could quite actually see the strength of their mother-son bond. A bond Jon would never have, and a bond Lady Catelyn Stark had no interest in affording to him.
“We were practicing our swordplay, my lady, and one of my hits went awry, and when Robb tried to escape it he slipped on ice. I never meant for him to be hurt, my lady,” Jon spoke in a small voice, soft and as polite as he could make it.
“Your recklessness resulted in my son, heir to Winterfell after my husband, his father, to injure himself! How careless of you! Why would you do such a thing?” Maybe there was still some her elegance and grace left in her voice or gestures, but all that Jon could see was the hatred. Hatred she felt not at all as a result of Jon and Robb’s playing leading to an accident, but hatred simply for his being Jon Snow, bastard of Winterfell, and son of her beloved and honorable husband Eddard, born of another woman. Jon was just starting to see this was the reason: bastards needed to grow up quickly, much more so than ordinary children. Subtleties like this didn’t escape his notice anymore.
“I never meant to my lady,” Jon insisted.
“Speak no lies to me, bastard! Why would you allow your sword to go awry against my son?”
Jon swallowed nervously. “My lady, he called me a bastard and told me I could not be the Young Dragon.”
“You wound my boy because he spoke truths to you? You insolent child, I don’t understand why Ned had to take you under his care, because if he’d had any good sense he would not impose your harmful presence on my family!” He knew that she had a good point. He really did. And he knew that he would be a man grown soon and must be strong, but Jon could feel a familiar heat behind his eyes and the trembling of his lower lip. He tried his best to fight it.
“M-my lady, I am so sorry. Robb, I never wanted to hurt you, and I’m sorry,” he said shakily. But that did nothing to minimize the loathing in the woman’s features.
“Spare your false apologies. Get away from us. You are not wanted here, and until my husband returns from visiting his bannermen tomorrow evening, you will stay out of my sight and away from my children, and you will not eat from our table, Snow. You have already caused enough damage.” A look of disgust passed through Catelyn Stark’s face as tears began to fall from the big grey eyes that gazed up at her, still kneeling beside Robb. Little sobs, which he futilely tried to restrain, racked Jon’s small body.
Embarrassed and ashamed, Jon ran into the godswood itself, secluding himself in a copse of firs that had stopped much of the most recent snowfall from reaching the dirt below. So little Jon Snow grasped his knees and pulled them into his chest, lowered his unruly head, and wept.
Just another day as the bastard of Winterfell, he thought to himself. Just another day in my life.