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“Uuncle Benjen?”
It had been years since his uncle had been lost beyond the wall. He hadn’t even hoped they’d meet again. Maybe his cold addled mind had dreamt him up. Dreamt the dark grey eyes and long face so much like his own.
“Come. We don’t have much time,” the once missing Stark said as he half carried his body to the shadow of a horse. “Head east. I’ll hold them off.” A quick boost and he was saddled.
“Ccome with me,” he pled willing his uncle to not leave him. His body was failing him, the furious fire that he’d had not long ago had been snuffed out leaving only an exhaustion he’d only felt once before. “Uncle, please.”
The uncertainty plain upon the man’s face before resignation overtook it. Benjen saddled himself and they rode hard towards the east. Jon looked back to see the dead slowing their pace, a silent call to stay themselves by their master most likely. He would breathe easy for a moment, allowing his body to give in to the slight warmth of the horses mane.
Jon startled at the pause in motion, making out the crop of trees they’d fallen upon. His uncle dismounted, his sword in hand as he scouted the area for signs of the dead. Giving the all clear, he helped Jon off the saddle and laid him against a felled tree.
“There isn’t much time. We’re just upon the wall though, beyond the edge of the forest straight ahead.” He nodded his head in the direction. “Not even a half days ride and you’ll find your people at Eastwatch.”
He had felt this cold once before and he knew what it would lead to. Time wasn’t on his side. He looked at Benjen as he sat beside him, wondering what time had taken from him. He was his uncle, but he was also something else. His face was mottled with deep scars and his furs were torn to shreds, and his eyes…
“There’s something I must tell you,” his uncle stated as he settled the dark orbs upon him with a look of, pity? No.
“Ned did his best to be a father to you,” he started. Jon hadn’t considered his father in a while. Hadn’t spoken with anyone who knew the man since he left Sansa at Winterfell moons before. He and Daenerys had gotten a bit closer sharing little details of their lives but he didn’t want to chance losing the fragile peace they’d developed.
“I hope you’ll forgive him,” the older man turned to Jon and placed his hand on his shoulder, “and I hope you’ll forgive me. I don’t know if the burden of keeping this secret is greater than the burden of not knowing it but…I guess you’ll decide for yourself.”
Jon held his breath, not wanting to disturb the moment. He knew what Benjen was to share, the knowledge that he wanted since he was old enough to want anything. “After the war, Ned came back to Winterfell with a babe and the loss of his good honor. Everyone knows that. Gods why no one ever questioned it.” Benjen ran his hand over his face, huffing out a breath. Jon noticed even more how broken the man was. His pallor a ghostly white, cheeks sunken in. He looked older than his age.
“I loved my family. Brandon, Lyanna, Ned. We were so close when we were young. Much like you all were. We’d run amuck, get in so much mischief. We’d take turns on who’d get their desserts taken away for the month, who would have to rake up the horse shit from the barn, who couldn’t go down to the winter town. Our parents knew who’d done it, but they were content to let us take up for one another. They’d let us find out for ourselves what it meant to be family, what it meant to be siblings in truth. That kind of loyalty can’t be broken. And you know same as I, it doesn’t just go away when you join the watch.
“So when he finally told me the truth of it, that it was safer for you to be his base born son than the legitimate child of Rhaegar and Lyanna, I didn’t like it but I understood.”
“You were born a king, Jon. Robert’s pride would not only have you killed, you would have been made an example to all who would threaten his reign, babe or no. The life you were given was shit, but gods be good you lived.”
He had stopped breathing at some point during the revelation and tears had taken to the creases on his cheeks. He felt many things all at once, but a hollowness in his chest is what he noticed most. He tried to stand but found his legs were lame. He tried to speak but had no words.
Benjen held him then, like he was just a boy. He couldn’t even recall if he had ever been embraced in such a way and he clung to him with what little energy he had, crumpling into a fit of tears. He wasn’t crying for himself, not really, for none of it really mattered anymore. But he cried for the child he had been who would have been content with just her name.
He didn’t know how long it’d been before his breathing evened. His uncle pulled back and judged what strength Jon had left. “After all this,” he said as he gestured around them, “if there is an after, promise me you’ll make a life of your own? A happy one where us ghosts and our damned decisions wont haunt you. Think my nephew could do that?”
Jon couldn’t trust himself to speak yet, but nodded slowly. “Let’s get you back on that horse.”
Just as they managed to make it to the edge of the forest, Benjen dismounted and pressed the horse forward.
“Uncle,” Jon called.
“Live, Jon,” he heard as the horse galloped away. “Live.”