Chapter Text
ONE
-
NED
WINTER, 319 AC
He found himself seeking the quiet more often than he ever did before.
Grief was a heavy snow upon the roof of his soul, weighing him down, making it hard to breathe. To sit still too long made him feel like he might die, so he stood, walked, paced until he could fall asleep without thinking about Rickon, about Cat, about his sister. When he awoke, he paced again, walked and walked until it was time to break his fast with the family.
The sky spoke of snow, the wind bone-chilling as it slipped through the gates of Winterfell. It chased him all the way to the stables, close at his heel like a hunting hound, nipping and vicious. The stables were a bit warmer, the air heavy with hay and dung and horse. There was a forgotten overcoat hanging on a hook, barn kittens asleep in the pockets and torn lining. Their mothers watched him with half-lidded eyes in the rafters, tracked his quiet steps down the halls. He hadn’t been in here this early in the day, when the horses were still waiting to go to pasture and the stable boys were still in their beds, so he wasn’t expecting the angry shriek from inside a stall halfway down the hall. He stumbled back a bit at the furious sound, the antsy footsteps within the stall heavy and frantic.
“Hush,” He shushed the beast, easily twice the size of the other horses, wide-eyed and tense as it danced back and forth, “It’s alright now, boy.”
It was a massive beast, twice the size of every other present, and there was a wild look in its eye that makes Ned wonder if it even had a master. Who could calm a creature so angry? He tried to soothe it again, shushing and humming, but it would accept none of it. It snapped at him like a feral dog, steam billowing from its nostrils into the cold air and teeth striking at the empty air where his hand had been extended.
The wild eyes met some point behind Ned and the dancing stopped, stilled. Ned thought to reach out again, to use this moment of calm to soothe, but before he could lift his arm, a voice rang out.
“Careful there, he bites.”
Ned turned on his heel, hand dropping to the hilt of the sword on his side. Kit stood there behind him, silent-footed and draped in a dark blue cloak with a hood. In the shadows, he’d barely be able to see her. Her wolf was at her side, black as night, its eyes two glittering stars in the darkness. They watched him with suspicion.
“Is he yours?” He asked as she drew closer, passing him by to reach out to the horse. It didn’t go happily into her hand, but it didn’t take her fingers either. She ran a hand over its night-black neck, her head barely reaching the top of the hulking beast’s leg.
“In a way. I don’t think he’d allow anyone to own him. Stranger’s too stubborn for that.”
Catelyn would hate that name for its blasphemy, he thought, even though thinking of Catelyn hurt. She was still angry to the point that his letters went unanswered. Angry enough that he wondered if she’d ever happily come north of the Neck again or if he’d be cursed to go south, to meet her in some strange retelling of their wedding.
“He just lets me near him because he’s lonely.” The girl said, filled the silence and then let it fall heavy around them again. The horse, Stranger , Death, did not snap at her fingers, did not seek bloodshed from a maid of three and ten. It sought her attention, pretended not to preen beneath her kind petting. Lonely, he could see it then, lonely and angry and afraid like a man home from battle and no longer recognizing the world as it was before.
When Ned shifted his weight, the horse glared at him, resting its heavy snout on the girl’s head. She giggled, sounding like bells, and there was no fear to be found.
“See,” she said, a joking lift to her voice as she caught her fingers in the tangle of raven-black mane, “Harmless as a lamb.”
There was a snort then, behind him. He began to wonder if he was losing his ability to notice an enemy approach. Or maybe his body just knew the steps of his children in a way that he couldn’t even explain.
Arya slipped past him, mirrored her daughter in every movement, ran a hand over the horse’s huffing snout.
“I saw him bite a man’s ear off, once. Did I tell you that?”
“You did.” Kit rubbed her face into the horse’s neck like it was some beloved dog or complacent cow.
Her wolf, Storm, watched with star-glimmering eyes. Arya’s voice dropped down into something like remembering.
“He tried to kick or bite me more than once, but then he stopped. He knew about you somehow, I should have known you’d make him a lamb then and there.”
Ned felt almost invisible, blended in with the walls and the horses as Arya spoke in those quiet tones to her daughter. He had blinked and woke up to a world where his girl of eleven was suddenly a mother, a hand to a queen, a sword on her belt and a three-headed wolf pin on her doublet.
The horse nipped at Arya’s shoulder, far more gently than Ned could have anticipated.
“I didn’t bring you anything, you spoiled oaf.”
Stranger snorted, steam billowing, and then he nipped at her again, more insistent. She rolled her eyes, stepping out of the stall as she spoke
“Take him out to pasture,” she said to her daughter, “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
She met her father’s eyes when she turned, Kit’s wolf trotting between them to return to its mistress as she led the angry beast out to the yard.
“Shall we?” He offered his arm, thinking for a moment she might decline and hoping she wouldn’t.
Her little arm looped in his, warm against the wind, and they walked back to the keep together.
. . .
The wolves came home .
The words were written in an almost gruesomely-red paint upon the stone wall. Beneath it, banners hung, torn and half-burned. Bolton, Frey, Baelish, Stout, Glover, Targaryen. It was a sobering sight, but the other wall was worse in a way, declaring The North Remembers and draped in the banners of the houses that they lost. Even southerners have made their way onto this wall, the hounds of House Clegane hanging prominent amongst Karstark and Umber as if they’d been neighbors all their lives.
There were blue-coated hounds that match the banner too, trailing after his daughter, the Queen , bounding like puppies despite the grey-white fur that danced on their ears and snouts. A wolf too, Ghost’s son, according to Kit. The girl had taken to trailing after Ned, watching him with those grey Stark eyes. Her pup too, dark as night, the everpresent shadow of his shadow. Sansa and Jon’s children have wolves too, red and black and white and grey, with sturdy collars that have a looping handhold.
“They’re sturdy beasts,” Kit had told him, “Should anything happen, they’ll carry the little ones away on their backs. They know the way.”
The way she said it, so casually, as commonplace as the narrow sword on her hip at the tender age of three-and-ten, sat heavy in his chest. Lady Joanna, the Master at Arms’ daughter, appeared at the tail end of her words, a brindle-coated hound pup trailing after her with a hambone drooled upon and hanging from its jaws, tall and willowy and golden. She looped her arm in Kit’s, their pups tussling over the bone on the floor, a flurry of snapping jaws and snarling teeth.
There was a sword on her hip too, he noticed, the grip wrapped in a length of Tully-blue fabric that matched the ribbon around her dog’s neck. There were so many names to remember that it almost physically pained him, dogs and children and new bannermen who weren’t even born before he blinked awake in this new world.
Joanna brought them to the yard, her arm still looped through Kit’s, heads bowed together to whisper and laugh. Her dog, the brindle-coated one with brown eyes, watches him, sniffed at him as if he could tell that Ned was never supposed to be here. Not in the pup’s lifetime. And yet, he was, and he wondered if he’d ever feel like he belonged again.
Oh Cat, he thought to himself, watching Jon and Tormund spar in the yard, Why did you have to do it? You could have stayed. We wouldn’t be alone and apart from each other.
His chest ached, feet caught between the call of the North and the song of his weary heart that dragged him south, south, south, until there was riverwater at his feet and his wife in his arms.
Sansa appeared behind him like a ghost in the yard, whisper-quiet, her presence alerted by Lyanna who abandoned watching the fight to gasp Mother! And fold herself into her arms.
Her pale hair shined in the light against her mother’s dawn-grey dress, Sansa’s hand rhythmically stroking through it and ridding it of tangles with her fingertips.
It was these moments that pulled him to try and see all the layers to her, to the girl who pleaded for his life and was now a Queen, a wife, a mother, unmoved and sturdy as an oak. Cold as ice, he thought the bannermen weren’t wrong to call her the Queen of Winter, the Ice Queen, the Frozen Lady, and then one of her children would slip past the defense, sinking into the warmth she afforded no one else but her babes and her husband. Those icy eyes, once so innocent and bright, warm now to the touch of her snow-haired girl. It was undeniable, even to Cat, to see the girl borne from Sansa’s body and know her birthright lay with dragons even as their banner hung with the broken and defeated. She almost hadn’t believed him about Jon, about Rhaegar, and then she saw the girl, scarf up around her hair slipping away with a playful tug from Joanna’s father, Tormund, to reveal the paleness of it in the morning sun. Purple-eyed too, more so than her other siblings whose eyes shone violet in the sun instead of the cool blue-grey of winter and river.
Sansa caught him watching, eyes darting to meet him, to lower to the girl, to rejoin watching the fight, and when he looked back Lyanna was speaking softly to her mother, holding one of her hands, and there was a sternness to the Queen then.
Kit was at her side then, some unspoken order between them, holding Lyanna's hand and walking quietly up into the keep where he saw Arya standing at the railing. The sight makes his chest ache for Rickon, cruelly not returned with them, and Bran, so very far south, so very different according to Jon. Gone was the boy who climbed and fell and nearly died, now there was a raven who saw too much and lived almost too little despite being King.
A handful of pups ran past him then, trailing after their little masters, already as tall as Ned’s waist, and he wondered if he’d ever get used to the sheer amount of dogs around. His children had had their wolves, yes, but now Sansa has her three hounds and a wolf, and Jon has Ghost still. There’s the five wolves trailing after Sansa and Jon’s children, a sixth soon to join them for the half-year babe in the nursery. Arya had no wolf, but her daughter had Storm and the Master of Arms’ four children have hulking hounds with light coats, blonde and brindle and red. In a castle overflowing with loyal hounds, he couldn’t help but notice the grief and envy in Robb’s blue eyes that came from Grey Wind’s absence.
There was a harsh bark of laughter on the training ground that dragged him back, that turned his head from his daughters and granddaughters, made him laugh too to see the hulking Tormund pushing Jon’s face into the mud. Jon retaliated with a handful of the sludge to Tormund’s hair, matting it down into a mess of twig and dirt and red.
He thought he might have heard Sansa laugh just a little behind him, but when he looked, her face was just as impassive as ever.
Oh Cat, he thought again, what happened to us?
His eyes burned a bit as he tried to watch the fight, tried to not look at his daughter again.
But even more, Cat, he could have wept, what happened to them?