Chapter Text
The road to the Wall is long and cold, but Jon feels none of it. After weeks of awaiting his fate locked away in a dark room being out in the open feels strange and unfamiliar, unsafe.
Back in the castle he found no rest, his fear kept him pacing the room, his nights were disturbed by terrors, by echoes of the city burning, by images of her face, always her face. The surprise, the betrayal, the disappointment. The realisation that it was over, that he had done the unforgivable and extinguished her flame.
He was sure they would kill him. Grey Worm would not rest until he had had his vengeance of that he was certain. When they told him who the new king was, this was no more reassuring. Bran was indifferent to him as an individual, he was no longer the boy Jon had grown up with. He would do whatever was right and good for the Six Kingdoms, and if it meant sacrificing one man to appease the masses, then he would do it. He barely slept, every little noise outside his room made him start. This would be it. Part of him wanted it to be over, and an even bigger part of him thought it was what he deserved. That didn’t make the waiting any easier. He was constantly so jittery with nerves that he thought his heart would give out at any moment.
When he was finally brought before the king he felt sick to his stomach. It was Tyrion who gave him the sentence, who explained that it was a compromise no one was quite happy about.
After that the nervousness gave way to numbness. He barely ate, barely spoke and didn’t register much of what was going on around him. Even as he hugged his siblings goodbye, held them close one last time, the better part of him had checked out.
Most of the journey just sort of happens to him. It’s as if he’s settled in under a thick layer of fresh snow, everything muffled and muted. The men he rides with soon give up trying to glean tidbits of information about his deeds from him. They stop trying to include him in conversations and soon Jon can retreat fully into his mind. He begins preferring sleep to being awake. The night terrors still haunt him occasionally, but for the most part he’s too exhausted to dream. Sleep feels like a deep, dark grave, comforting, peaceful. During the day he longs for it.
The men he’s with would be easy to overpower, they wouldn’t see it coming, he has been nothing but compliant so far. Then what? There is no plan where he would go next, most days he imagines simply lying down somewhere in the snow and letting the cold have him. His teeth would chatter, he would shiver terribly, but he wouldn’t get up. Eventually his body would give in to the cold, his eyes would drift shut and he would sleep, sleep into nothingness. He’d make sure no one found him in time, make sure no one found him for a long time. Maybe they’d discover his body in the spring, it wouldn’t matter to him.
If wherever he went the first time was truly all there was he wouldn’t know anything. His thoughts circle back to this fantasy over and over, and he starts longing to make it a reality so much it hurts in his chest. Other than that his mind tends to stray to his childhood in Winterfell. It’s strange, he thinks, how the past few years seem awfully fuzzy. It’s so hard to grasp anything that has happened after he and the Wildlings came South. He thinks of Ned, the only true father he ever had, thinks of fighting with Arya, playing with Rickon and Bran, long before the king ever set foot in Winterfell. He thinks of Catelyn and wonders if things would have been different had she known.
The journey passes as a blur, and it’s only towards the end that the anxiety begins setting in. He starts feeling more restless again, the closer they get to Castle Black. The nightmares return, this time of his friends from the Watch, and of those he loved like brothers but who turned on him. His stomach hurts and he feels sick. When the Castle is finally within sight he has a wild moment where he considers simply running. He grips the reins of his horse so hard his knuckles turn white, his heart beats fast in his throat and he starts sweating despite the cold. He doesn’t know if he can do this, doesn’t know if he can ride through those gates, doesn’t know if he can go back to his old room, get up everyday and go about his business. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. The gate swings open and there’s nothing to do but ride through it. He holds his breath. For a moment he thinks he’s simply going to fall off his horse. That’s when he locks eyes with him. It’s really him, fiery hair, ocean eyes, wild beard. He lets out the breath he was holding and dismounts. He feels foolish for running, but he can’t help it. When Tormund embraces him it knocks the air out of his lungs.
Everything is wildly different here. Instead of men clad in black there are Free Folk dressed in greys, men, women and children, and Jon can’t help but think that he has never seen the Castle so alive. He had expected it to be almost deserted, had prepared himself for a deafening silence, and it’s almost disorienting how busy it all is. Ghost is overjoyed to see him and shows no sign of being cross with Jon.
“You’re still here,” he says, when they’ve gone inside and settled down with some stew and ale. “Did those Southern fucks not feed you, Jon Snow?” Tormund asked, glaring menacingly at the two guards that had brought Jon to the Wall, causing them to shrink away. He then insisted on Jon having a meal then and there.
“Aye, we leave tomorrow morning,” Tormund replies, and Jon’s hand stills and puts the bread he’s holding back down. It feels like something is crumbling deep inside his chest. “Don’t give me that face, little crow, you’ll come with us, of course.”
Jon exhales sharply through his nostrils and shakes his head. “You know I can’t. I have to take the Black, take my vows.”
“So, take your vows and then come with us. What are you guarding that wall for? Wights? The Free Folk? Don’t be a fool, Jon Snow, if you want something to guard let it be those children out there,” he points to the door. “I’ve seen you use that sword,” he nods at Longclaw, “and you’re not terrible at hunting, we could use a man like you.” Jon dimly registers how this is the first time Tormund has called him a man instead of a boy. “Tell me, what’s keeping you here?”
In the end he’s right. There’s nothing that’s keeping Jon at Castle Black, and when it’s time for the Free Folk to go, Jon rides out of the gate with Tormund by his side. He wonders if it was pure luck that they haven’t left sooner, but he doesn’t ask, and Tormund never offers an explanation. They barely stop all day and only make camp in the afternoon, when the sun begins to set. The days are growing shorter and all Jon wants is to go to sleep, but there’s a fire to be built, food to be cooked, tents to be set up, and he doesn’t get a free moment until everyone is settled around the fire, eating and laughing. He wonders how much they know; how much Tormund knows. No one here is going to call him Queenslayer, that much is obvious, and Jon is glad for it, but he wishes they could understand the significance of what he did, the gravity. He wishes they would treat him the way he deserves to be treated, like a murderer, a kin slayer.
That night he finds himself standing aimlessly between the tents, until Tormund pulls him into one of them where Ghost is already waiting. That’s how they sleep, with the wolf nestled in between the two of them, giving them warmth. Before he drifts off, Tormund speaks of the North, the true North, and how it’s where Jon belongs, and how much he’s going to like being part of the Free Folk. It’s comforting and familiar, but it’s more than Jon deserves. He doesn’t deserve this kind, stupidly brave man caring about him. Every time he calls him by his full name, or addresses him as “little crow” Jon wants to cry.
He can’t sleep. He tries to lie still until he can’t stand it anymore and he sits up. He looks down on his sleeping friend curled up next to the direwolf and a shiver runs through him. He’s tired and cold, and he can’t sleep, and his mind keeps conjuring up images of the most terrible kind. He gets up. Outside he paces the camp for a long time. Most everyone has retired to their tents, and the small group that is still gathered by the fire pays him no mind. He paces until he thinks he’s tired enough to go to sleep and crawls back into the tent.
“Where’d you go?” Tormund rumbles sleepily.
“Had to piss,” Jon whispers and settles back in. Eventually he falls into a light sleep from which he wakes every couple of minutes.
In the early morning hours he gives up and resigns himself to staring at the fabric of the tent. It's colder now, because Ghost left some time ago while Jon slept. He tries to get comfortable again, shifting and turning until Tormund breaks the silence.
“You know, you’re a fool if you think I could ever hate you,” he says quietly into the dark.
Jon stills. “What?”
“You talk in your sleep,”
“Ah,” Jon says weakly.
“You’re too good, Jon Snow, too fucking good.”
Jon sits up, his stomach feels sick. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
Tormund sits up as well and faces him. “So, it’s true?”
“Aye.”
He nods. “Is it also true then that she burned a whole city to the ground, killing innocent people that had already surrendered?”
“Doesn’t change what I did. She was my queen.”
“It had to be done, or countless others would have suffered.”
“You don’t understand, she was my queen.”
“So you keep saying, but queen or not, she was drunk on too much power and…”
Jon shakes his head fervently “Tormund, she was my queen. She was…I believed in her. I believed that she was good. And just. I followed her South not because I owed her help, but because I wanted so much to make the world she envisioned a reality. Do you know what that’s like? To believe in someone so much it nearly kills you? To me she was the sun.”
Tormund nods. “Aye, you loved her fiercely. I know how you love, Jon, completely and madly. You were prepared to do anything for her, I know what that’s like. But you were also prepared to do the thing no one else would or could. You saw an unjust thing and you didn’t let yourself be blinded by love, but you did the hardest thing you could have done, because that’s who you are. You do the right thing, over and over, even if it kills you.”
Tears sting his eyes, he shakes his head. Tormund throws an arm around his shoulders and Jon shivers. He can’t help but turn his head a little so his face is buried in the other’s shoulder. He’s so, so tired and he doesn’t know how to feel. A part of him fully leans into Tormund’s words, accepts them hungrily and readily. At the same time a different, very convincing part of him is whispering mean little things about weakness and about lies.
“Promise that you’ll stay. Promise to stick with us for now, until the end of the winter.”
Jon swallows. Until the end of the winter? In the end it’s not something he can deny Tormund. He nods. “I promise.”