Chapter Text
Jon’s Room, Winterfell, The North, 291AC
Stars sparkle across the great black canvas of the Northern sky. Their iridescent lights dance across the snow covered ground, twirling and shining over the white stage. Snow softly drifts to the ground, carried by an icy, unforgiving wind. Unaffected by the harsh weather, Jon Snow fumbles towards the ancient crypts of Winterfell, his eyes staring forward, pupils hazy and unfocused, and his unsteady feet sliding on the frozen stone path. He shivers as a chill dashes up his back. The wind wraps around him, ruffles his hair and pushes him forward, as if urging him closer to his destination. The scrape of his boots on the stone path is the only sound, but he looks over his shoulder anyway, unused to the silence. He pauses for a moment and considers turning around and going to the Godswood instead, but he knows that not even the gods can hide him from what is to come. He sighs silently, going through the motion but consciously not making a sound, and continues towards his destination.
Torches now cast a warm glow across the alcove and Jon’s eyes flash a pale lavender briefly when he looks at them. The crackle of the burning wood is almost deafening in the silence. Jon stops and stands just in front of the heavy wooden doors guarded by twin stone direwolves. He waits in front of the beasts, eyeing them cautiously. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, his mouth suddenly too dry. Soon, he knows, they will come for him. They will find him wherever he is, he knows. He has no choice but to face them.
Seconds or hours later, the surrounding shadows begin to stretch across the ground, gnarled fingers reaching for him across the growing darkness, and the torches die with a nearly voiceless sizzle and the pungent smell of freshly burned ash. The wolves begin to breathe, to move; where once there was stone patterning, there was now true fur, one russet and the other a nearly endless black. The wolves, almost as large as horses, shift their stances, claws and teeth growing. They shake themselves and turn their ice blue eyes towards the intruder. They stalk towards him now, teeth bared in silent growls. As they begin to circle closer, Jon shrinks down into himself with his hands moving over his head. He trembles. As the wolves circle closer, tears stream silently down his face. He is shaking now, panicking. His breath is catching in his throat and he’s forcing himself to not make even the slightest sound, for fear of angering the beasts. He is an outsider here and must prove something to them, though he doesn’t know what exactly; the wolves know this and will surely kill him if he fails to impress them.
Still, he refuses to make a sound, scared of startling the great beasts. They come closer and closer, and he can feel the cold radiating off of them, leeching all heat from his body. Unused to ever truly feeling the cold, he shivers violently.
He startles awake, still in his own bed in Winterfell’s great castle, not outside near the ancient crypt. He rubs his eyes harshly, trying to erase the dream from his thoughts. Vibrant colors flare on his eyelids from the pressure, but no amount of rubbing will wipe the dream away forever. He knows that in a few days, or weeks, the dream will return. It always does. He doesn’t remember when he began having this dream, but he knows, as sure as his name is Jon Snow, that this dream will plague him forever. He shivers; the bone deep cold from his dream has followed him to the waking world. This cold, Jon muses, is the only chill that has ever truly affected him. Perhaps this is a sign of his Stark blood, for he is unaffected by the snows of Winterfell and the North.
He takes a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart and strains his ears to determine if the rest of the castle is yet awake. He hears the soft steps of the servants preparing for the day, so he rises from his bed and stretches lightly, like Uncle Arthur showed him weeks ago when he truly began his sword training. It is much earlier than he usually wakes, and he knows that Uncle Arthur will question him about it if given the chance, but Jon will risk it because he cannot go back to sleep. He will not. So he dresses in his black training leathers, a gift from Father but colored per Uncle Art’s insistence, and splashes some water on his face to chase the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes.
He clutches the water basin, droplets streaming down his face, and stares hard at himself in the looking glass. He avoids looking at his own eyes and instead stares at the light bruises around them, a sure sign of his poor sleep. Today, Jon thinks, today I will prove myself to Uncle Arthur and he will be so impressed that he will make me his squire.
And hopefully I will be too tired to dream this night, he thinks darkly.