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So now we have come to a great battlefield, the warmth of the fire,
the fire still burning,
the heat escaping like a broken promise.
The Dislocated Room, Richard Siken
He said once you should think about joining Benjen on the Wall, and you hit him so hard he was spitting blood when he got back up.
“There’s no shame to it,” he said, maddeningly kind as he wiped at his mouth with his sleeve, red spots on grey cloth like and you snarled like the wolf on your father’s crest, your hands in fists and your heart on fire. “I couldn’t care less about shame,” and he should know this, he should, who keeps you at his side and calls you ‘brother’ in spite of names and his mother’s eyes, “if you think I’m leaving you then think again.”
He smiles, and it makes you want to hit him some more. “Too bad. You’d look good in black.” It’s an apology, of a sort, and so you let a smile of your own slip in return. “It was always more your color, Stark,” you tell him, with a punch to the shoulder to appease the urge to hurt that still hasn’t quite settled, and when Jon shoves back, a sly look and a challenge on his face, you’re quietly grateful for this closeness of bodies, flesh warm beneath the leather and furs and more understanding than words, as ever.
-
He has the Stark look and none of the Tully, where the northern sun casts glints of copper and rust over your hair, marking you as the outsider you have been since birth. Lady Stark smiles for Jon in a way she never ever will for you, but sometimes she can almost forgets who you are. Sitting at the end of the table, Theon’s smile an arrow at your side, the girls’ voices like ravens set loose under this great olden hall, Rickon’s toddler’s smile at you fleeting and bright, you could be another ward, some bannerman’s visiting son—just a face, just a Robb.
The fire makes a noise. The clink of plates against the table, a noise. The blood rushing at your ears, also, noise. You want to say something but you can’t, you want to make a noise but you can’t. There’s a lot of things stumbling over one another in your chest, dark-eyed and fanged. Look at me, you want to say, See me, but you don’t. You are Ned Stark’s son; winter runs inside your veins, and winter is silent.
It is a bitter thing, honor. But you swallow it down, and it sinks like all the rest. If you listen closely enough you can hear it hitting the bottom. Then—
Jon’s hand, opened. To bridge, to beckon? The great tapestries of the hall look upon you two eldest sons, grinning their stylized wolves’ snarls, whispering their dead men’s names. Your head is ringing.
“Robb,” Jon says. “Brother.”
Is it really so simple? In your chest the breath rising like a beast clawed, rattling like hail over windows at dusk. You want to pull him in and push him against the table, the wall, feel his breath against your skin and check again, to make sure he’s not something more.
Stark.
Snow.
You take his hand, skin against leather, warm against cold. It makes noise, like the rasp of a sword returning to the scabbard after the spilling of blood.
-
You do it anyway. It’s dark out and you’re fumbling in the stables, his hand over your mouth and your palm pressing over his lips, a circle closed in all the ways that matter. Tripping over a post, kicking an empty stall open, his knee between your legs, his hand tugging at your belt, the other moving from your mouth to fist in your hair, his skin under your teeth and the words you’re both swallowing, his mouth open his eyes wide and you think yes you think come on and you say “Jon,” you say it over and over again, carve into the night and the soft rustle of drowsing horses standing not far away, drowning in the smell of it, sweat and hay and something animal and wild, and you shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be putting your teeth where his shoulder meets the neck, it’s dirty, it’s wrong and you don’t care because Jon is trembling over you, his hair matted over his eyes and his fingers gentle on your skin, and he whispers broken nothings, shattered and undone and this is why, this is everything and—
-
“What was my mother’s name? Can you tell me that, at least?”
He looks away. His horse shakes its head, pawing at the hard ground. You can see his eyes, moving to follow the slow crawl of Robert Baratheon’s progress. He clears his throat, and when he finally looks at you he looks a little tired, a little sad. Not here, he says. Not now.
“I’m not asking for much. Just a name. Or are you that ashamed?” It’s a low blow, you know this, but you need to say it, get the words and that horrible longing out.
“No,” your father says. “It is not shame.” His head bowed, the sky heavy as memories around his neck. “But I want to do this properly. When I come back—when we next see each other, then we will find the time, and I will tell you, alright?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I am sorry,” he says, and what hurts most is that he means it. You’re in his arms in a way you haven’t been since you were only a boy and you think you can hear his heart beating steadfast through the furs. “No matter what anyone says, no matter what happens, remember you are my blood.”
You pull away, your throat dry and your eyes stinging. “I’m more than that,” you say. “I’m your son.”
And he looks at you, solemn and quiet, and he says “Yes.”
-
There’s a strange emptiness to the castle now that makes the hair rise on the back of your neck when you linger in any room too long. No more having to step aside to avoid being barrelled into by Arya, no more finding Sansa leaning out of windows with her face turned to the sun. Bran lies abed, and Rickon is the only one you find, wandering the corridors with his wolf at his side. The great hall is no longer home to the slow cadence of your father’s laughter, and the spaces at the high table seem wider now that it’s only Jon sitting at its head. You sit at his right and Theon at his left and you trade barbs over his shoulder, but you’re both keeping an eye on him.
“He looks like was born to this,” Theon says one night as you both watch Jon talking to the head of the guard, and you nod. There’s no resentment inside of you, only the deep knowledge that things are as they should be. Your brother is a Stark. In your father’s absence he is lord of Winterfell, and he is learning now how to direct the hands of men.
Sly eyes and a laughing mouth, Theon watching you watching Jon, the distracted curl of your fingers in search of something solid to land on, the pulse of blood at your neck under your jaw, the way your brother smiles when you catch his eye. You want to say Back off, Greyjoy. He’s mine. but you don’t. There’s enough heart in Jon for everyone.
In the night he comes to your bed, pressing his mouth against yours, and alright, this is why you said nothing. The darkness makes you honest and you think this is all you need, this is what matters. He comes to you and so he is yours; the knowledge is suffocating, exhilarating, terrifying. You kiss him, and think one day you’ll drown this way, lungs heavy and weighted down by something thicker than air.
In the dark you can say you’re almost looking forward to it.
-
Jon says “Call the banners” and Theon smiles. You look to your brother and there’s the fear (good) and there’s the anger and oh, there—the ice, building up until it seems the Wall itself is waiting inside of him, tall and poised and ever-melting, ever-freezing.
You want to warn him about the fault lines, but before you find the words the Greatjon is cradling his mangled hand while Grey Wind stalks back to your side, his jaws bloody and the snarl you’ve been keeping under your skin rumbling inside his throat. Oh, you think, wild-eyed and fevered; Here is the avalanche, and you are laughing with all of them.
-
Grey Wind belongs to Jon in name, but in practice he is yours. He’s the Stark, but he called you brother, said that a lord oughtn’t walk around with a beast at his heels. You think partly it was because his mother disapproved, and partly because he didn’t want you left out, that bloody stupid idiot.
It is only now, months and months later, that you realize what should have been obvious from the start: the wolf is yours and you are Jon’s. Where he goes the two of you follow. You’re smiling into his shoulder where he can’t see, and then you bite so he’ll remember you were here with him tonight.
-
“Someone ought to stay with Bran,” Jon says, and looks at you. You want to agree, really, you do, but Winterfell isn’t where the danger is. You tell him that, and his mouth twists. “Have you already forgotten the man who tried to kill him?”
“Summer’s with him all the time, and he’s awake now. No Lannister man is going to get to him again.”
“Be as that may—“ he starts, and his shoulder is under your hand before you can think about it.
“No. You are not going to war without me, Stark, am I clear?”
“As crystal,” he smiles, and Theon further away waves at you. “Are the both of you done repeating old arguments yet?”
“It’s none of your business, Theon,” you call back, but you’re almost smiling.
-
You find him in the woods after they’ve released the Lannister scout, his mouth a grim line. “If we lose we are all dead,” he says. “Father. The girls. Us. Are we really ready for this?”
You lean against him, shoulder bumping against shoulder. Would that you could feel skin—but no, this is not the time. Jon is ice; there are waters running under the surface, just waiting to burst out. All you need to do is help them find the way out. That he trusts you enough to let you see the places where his Wall is not so high—it is enough, more than enough.
“You’re the commander, Jon. You tell me.”
His arm loping over your shoulder, his head come to rest against yours. Brother, it spells out, and your heart burns.
“I wish Father were here,” he says.
“He’s not.”
“Robb, I’m not sure I can—“ he sounds tired, so tired. Almost a boy, the one he hides under his glacier’s face during the war councils, and uncertain. It doesn’t belong here, so you grab him by the back of the neck and press, grounding and punishing and caring all at once, because this is the two of you and things are never (always) simple.
“You can. You’re doing fine and you. Don’t. Have. A. Choice. Stop brooding. You do too much of that already. You’re a Stark of Winterfell and you will do what is right, and what is necessary.” He’s looking at you like he doesn’t recognize you, and if you were a dog you’d be bristling. “They’re my sisters and my father too,” you say, heated.
His hand in your hair, tight. “I know,” he says, like a whisper, like a confession. “I know.”
-
Jaime Lannister is dirty and bruised and smiling a wolf’s smile, despite or because of the way everyone looks at him like they’re just waiting to see if he’d bleed gold on top of crimson if someone were to chop his head off. You’d do it yourself, if only because he’s the reason Jon hasn’t so much as sketched a smile since the battle. Haunted eyes and empty hands, it’s not a good look on him and you hate it, you want it gone and maybe you’ll chase it off yourself later, when you can steal him away from his responsibilities and remind him he has a body, he is real, play on nerves until he is thinking of nothing but contact and friction and you.
There’s a lion in chains he won’t let you kill and he’s smiling at you like he knows what you’re thinking, so you hit him and mar that perfect golden face some more. He spits blood out, looks back at Jon—still standing tall on the hill and watching them take him away—then at you again.
“Are they all really that oblivious?” he asks, laughing, and if you don’t give an answer it’s because you don’t know what he’s talking about. Not because you’re afraid sometimes of what that answer should be.
-
“He’s dead,” you say, and your voice rings hollow. Across the clearing from you Jon stares at nothing at all, his lips parted and breathing hard and his shoulders bowed, like there’s a weight on his back that just got infinitely heavier and he wasn’t made for this, he wasn’t. You want to go to him but you can’t, you don’t know what you’d be doing with your hands, your body, your skin. There’s something inside of you that’s howling and pushing against the barrier of your flesh, this physical thing that bleeds and came from a man now dead whose name you do not even bear.
I don’t even know my mother’s name, you think, and something breaks and suddenly you’re laughing, hysterical peals of laughter that shake your whole body, makes it quiver and tremble and brings you to your knees, tears on your face and your breath coming ragged and broken like the skin of your palms where the swords and the winter and the cold hard ground have left their mark. You’re laughing and you’re crying and you are lost for a moment inside yourself, dead leaves crackling under your feet and knees and the sky too blue above, Jon’s hand careful and cautious on you, and you’re quaking you’re shivering you can’t do anything, and he manoeuvres himself until he’s sitting with you pressed against his chest and you’re breathing into one another, close but for once not doing anything, doing nothing but soaking in this grief you had not expected, never imagined. Your brother’s eyes are dry but his hands are shaking against your cheek and he’s breathing the long slow breaths he takes when he needs to center himself, and you think wildly, desperately you’re crying for the both of you, because he’s ice but you’re fire and you can afford this, this expense of desperation and feelings, because you are Robb Snow where he is now Lord Stark.
“Robb,” he whispers, and you hold onto him, and that night for the first time you call him “Your Grace,” as he stands in black and silver and white in a world bleached of colors, the ice wrapping itself deeper inside his heart, his eyes.
-
“A king needs a Hand,” Theon says.
“Are you volunteering, or—?”
He’s laughing before you can glare at him. “Of course not. You’ve got someone much closer to home for that.”
And Jon’s looking at you but you’re still eyeing Theon, the look on his face as he glances from one of you to the other, a beggar at a feast he is allowed to see and smell and touch but not eat.
“Brother. Will you?” Jon asks, and you’re smiling at him, all teeth and fire and the animal inside of you always straining towards a leash, say “Of course” and really mean Always.
-
The kingdoms were united through the strength of dragons, scorched earth and cremated bodies; Luwin once taught you this, and you’re remembering this now. What does it take to break them apart?
You’re marching off to war and the king has no need for a Hand when he has only just reclaimed his kingdom, but Jon gives you that title nonetheless, makes it official before everyone, the one time he will not be his father’s son—for there are men among the assembled who are deserving of that honor, of those responsibilities. This is the time for Jon to recall he has Tully blood to him, and those words hold family above all; you are his and he is yours, and may the whole world know.
The North bends the knee, as it once did to the dragons. Jon’s eyes are cold and bright when he says—But I am no dragon, and you want to tell him he is a Stark; the cold and the snow have marked his bones deeper than years of fealty ever could, but you don’t, you hold the words close and you don’t let go.
There’s a crown of iron and silver he never wears and vengeance calling you south on the winds of winter and you’re kissing him, hot and hungry, and you tell him If there is to be a dragon in your kingdom then let it be me.