hadriel_logs | [OPEN] Be my mirror, my sword and shield

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[OPEN] Be my mirror, my sword and shield

Who: OPEN. Jon Snow and… maybe your character?
What: Open direwolf meet and greets, horse exercise, hanging out at the Speakeasy, planting trees, and attempting to start to come to terms with some extremely difficult truths about his identity: the man he thought was his father, and idolized, was not; his parents accidentally started a war with their elopement; that throne people have been fighting over for seven seasons should have been his all along. [This is written in prose, but any format is fine.]
Where: All around Hadriel.
When: Late October/first half of November, up to the upcoming memory share event. Fourth Wall is technically over, but since this log is partly intended to deal with the fallout of those events, fourth wallers are still welcome for threads set before the end of October, or threads set after that if they have apped and been accepted.
Warnings: Jon is a good guy, but interactions with him always carry a general Game of Thrones warning, mostly for violence (medieval warfare and justice) and adult themes (heavy sexual content, various incestuous relationships that are varying levels of scandalous and central to the plot, etc). Anything set during or after Fourth Wall has an additional disclaimer for the fact that he's learned about his actual parentage during this event… which means, sorry dudes, but he's just figured out that the girl he's fallen hard for is his aunt. The show has not addressed the potential problems with this one way or another yet... but while the books suggest that marrying your aunt or uncle is juuust within acceptable limits in their culture, it seems important to acknowledge that it's obviously way outside of acceptable limits in ours.

This log is intended to deal with the fallout of that revelation, so it's definitely going to come up in some of these prompts -- not least because his claim to the throne is better than hers if he chooses to pursue it. Still, you can leave me an ooc note about your comfort levels, avoid the prompts where he's visibly upset, set stuff a little before Fourth Wall or after the first week of November (where he's likely to be less upset about all of it), etc.

Prompts in the comments! Here's a visual reference for Ghost, by the way:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It is a lot to take in and this wasn't the way that it should be digested. She tugged at the reins, rearing the horse back until they stopped. For a moment, she sat in silence, watching as the waves slammed against the coast. This was the world that Robert left behind. Her brother was murdered, as were his children and their home was seized by a house notorious for torturing their prisoners.

It left her sick. She slid off the side of the horse, breathing in the harsh sea air. It could almost take her back to White Harbor. There was no snow in the hair, no wisps of ice tangled in her hair from the water sprinkles and cold wind. She frowned, trying to sort it out in her head. She had given him so much information, but it seemed that it was repaid to her now, telling her of a future she couldn't imagine.

"But you were named King?"

He follows her down from the horse more slowly, not really surprised that this is what made her stop in her tracks. Once he's on the ground, he takes the horse's reins, pats the side of its neck. It doesn't want to halt so quickly; it steps here and there, as horses do.

"Aye, but not then. They married Sansa to Bolton's son. He was -- his cruelty was -- well, he was cruel to her, kept her locked in a room, beat her. She escaped from him and came to me at Castle Black, and Ramsay Bolton killed his father so that the North would be his."

Thank the gods that she had never met any of the Boltons, save for passing interactions at feasts and festivities. But would she have even seen the evil in them? She didn't trust Tywin, but she didn't contemplate what the man was truly capable of. She knew the song of his House, she knew the legends, but the true horror was beyond her comprehension.

As it should be for anyone with a good heart. Though...wasn't that what brought her family to where it was? What was the answer in the end? Play the game and go to such depths or keep your integrity? It was something she hoped her son would never have to answer, but seemed forced to.

"And then? You raised an army?"

He nods.

"Our brother Rickon, the youngest. He was a lad of twelve, and Bolton had him, and -- there really wasn't anywhere else we could go. Couldn't stay at Castle Black, and couldn't leave him to Bolton. The Wildlings were willing to fight for me, right enough, but the Northern lords were harder to convince.

"We had the Mormonts, and the Mazins and Hornwoods, and in the end, Sansa was able to call on the help of the Vale Knights, because -- her aunt Lysa had been married to Lord Arryn. The young lord is her cousin.

"And Ramsay Bolton is dead. We found once we got past the gates" (how do you get past the gates of Winterfell?) "that they'd done a good part of the work of rebuilding what had been burned. But no winter roses just now. The glass garden had been all smashed."

He shrugs, pats the horse again. "When the lords all came to council to swear fealty to the Starks again, they named me king."

There were such an influx of emotions. Her frustration and anger for what her family suffered, the pain of knowing her family home had been decimated and barely left standing, and annoyance at the irony of all of this. "The North lords would not join you against the Lannisters and Boltons, but they rose up against King Aerys?"

One family had ruled for generations, the other had broken guest right and usurped a position that was never truly theirs. They had seen that children had their heads dashed out, women tortured and humiliated. Yet they managed to keep the loyalty of those that had served under her family since the North was united.

"The North had to be regained by the Vale?" Somehow that seemed the worst insult. "You cannot trust them, sweetling." The sad reality. If House Bolton could revolt, if all of Westeros could revolt, anyone could. "You are king now. Remember that Tywin Lannister began as Aerys' servant, his friend. Don't harbor a beast close to your breast."

He sighs: not in resignation, but patiently, as a man who's being told something that he already knows.

"The Northern lords lost men, all of them, even heads of houses, at the wedding where my brother Robb was killed. He had promised to marry a Frey girl and then married a foreign girl. I never met her, I don't know much about her. But she was killed with him. As many of the North's fighting men as they could kill at the Twins, they did. And when Sansa and I came to them, we didn't have much, no real proof that we had any chance of victory. She had been married to a Lannister and a Bolton and betrothed to Cersei's son before that, and I'm a bastard."

He pauses there to give her a look: as far as anyone in the North knew, he was.

"I wanted them to risk going against Bolton, I pleaded our case, but Lord Manderly's sons were killed at The Twins. Lord Glover had received no help from Robb when Deepwood Motte was taken by the Ironborn. I know what they are, but I know more than that. We can't fight amongst ourselves when the Army of the Dead is coming."

Edited 2018-11-15 08:04 (UTC)

"A bastard." She nodded, once again cursing at Ned for continuing this lie despite the protection it offered. It was smart, he fulfilled his promise, but it still broke her heart and infuriated that her son was forced to believe he was beneath trueborn lords of the North. "When you tried to gather support, why did you not go to House Reed?" Someone could have at least told him the truth that would have aided them. With Ned gone, he would be the last to know.

"These were the same men that joined Ned after your grandfather and uncle were killed. They lost sons and fathers and so much else during that Rebellion, but they were brow beat by the Lannisters?" Cravens! Fairweather cravens. "It was the dragons they knelt to, but somehow a lion is enough to make them piss themselves?"

She grabbed a rock, tossing it towards the waves with all her might.

"Lord Manderly lost sons? What of what you lost? What of what I lost? I might be a woman and far beneath him in years, but I still have fight in me to beat every last Lannister bloody!" Again with the dead. If Rhaegar were here, he'd pierce through her anger and remind her of the greater picture. Jon was right to do what he needed, deep down she understood that. But it wasn't enough to subside her anger. "The Others take them, all of them. They supported Robert's claim, they broke their oath with House Stark!"

"The Reeds were too far from us, with winter coming. We needed to hit before the worst of the snows. Stannis tried to take Winterfell some months before we did." He hesitates: what happened to Stannis is a little more complicated than this, and more disheartening, but not all that relevant to the topic at hand. "He lost partly because he wasn't prepared for the snows that came. His troops weren't prepared; they were freezing and starving."

But apart from that, he lets her release her fury -- which is impressive. Mostly, he watches, looking a little dubious.

"The Others will take them, if we don't band together," he finally says, as calm as he can manage. What else can he say? All his explanations of how things have changed have only enraged her. "I've seen them. I've killed them, and I've watched them kill, and whatever you remember of the stories..." He presses the corners of his mouth together. "It's worse than that. It's a thousand times worse. Houses, thrones, they don't matter. Not now.

"I wish you could have been there, when I was a boy. I wish I could have had a mother, I wish I could have felt --" Like something other than a bastard. "But they're no threat to you now." There's apology in that, because he's grateful the Night King will never hurt her, never touch her.

"Howland is the only one who knows now." He was so close to learning the truth of his life. All it needed was a small deviation, a journey to the Neck and he might have heard who he was. Those Northern lords would know he wasn't a bastard and was more than worthy to claim Winterfell, far more than a Baratheon! But the gods had a way of mocking her, stealing every opportunity for her son to find some way back to her. So close, but always separated by a wall.

The last of her anger began to fade and she sank to the ground. Her knees were soon damp from the wet sand, water and earth mixing against her skin. The two worlds she had known colliding in such a strange mix. The deserts of Dorne and the cold of the North, all of it wrapped into this strange place where there was no hope, only a future that she could not affect or experience.

She said before he sounded like Rhaegar and now was no different. He held the greater picture in mind, not the simple hurts and frustrations that consumed her currently. How had it been for Ned? Seeing a boy more and more like the fallen prince while the only traces of Lyanna were looks?

"They're a threat to you, my love." She managed finally, staring ahead at the horizon. "Do you think it really matters if they can touch me or not?"

He drops the horse's reins when she falls to her knees, walks over to her, and after she asks her question, he places his hand gently on her shoulder.

"To you? No. But to me." A long exhalation. "I've been fighting them for so long."

Daenerys may fall to them. Sansa may fall, and patient kindly Wolkan, and little Lyanna Mormont, and Edd and Tormund Giantsbane and every other face he's ever considered familiar. But the faces lost to him, Ned Stark and Robb and Rickon and Bran, maybe Arya, certainly Ygritte, now Lyanna too: death is nothing but a great pool of blackness, or not even that. But it holds them safe from the Others.

He lifts his hand from her shoulder and holds it out to her.

"Come on, get up."

She doesn't ignore his hand and accepts the offer back to her feet. As soon as she's standing, she turns and pulls her son in for a hug. Her eyes shutting as though it were enough to banish the monsters and external threats that would fill his life. Her dreams for his future and been idealistic and naive. This was the truth of it all, a war that his father predicted but they had not prepared him for.

All of it was on his shoulders.

"You are fighting your father's war." She said in a long exhale, feeling far older than sixteen. It was almost as though she had lived for centuries, the weight and pressure of the passing generations burying her deeper and deeper into melancholy. "And we did nothing to protect you from it."

Only to ensure that he fought it alone.

In the long hug, he holds her just as tightly. And as it happens, she might as well not be sixteen -- she's like any mother. It's like what it must have felt like when Robb's mother hugged him.

"It's my war. It's everyone's war. He'd be nigh on fifty now, if he had lived. We'd be in a better position to fight it, but I wouldn't have been to the Wall, I wouldn't know. Maybe Uncle Benjen would have known, maybe he would have convinced Father -- Lord Stark, maybe Prince Rhaegar would have believed it all. But with things as they are --"

The embrace breaks apart, a little.

"I don't know what you could have done. It's a twist of fate here, a little mistake there, something that means everything." He laughs, suddenly, a little mirthless bark, as a thought strikes him about the prince he might have been. "When Cersei's son Joffrey was at Winterfell, I wasn't allowed to train in the yard with the other boys. I was so -- I thought they were saying I wasn't good enough, and it was --"

Bastards can't be allowed to wound princes.

He eases into her hug, giving her some hope that something tender might be achieved between them. There was still a divide, brought on by her youth and a long standing lie. He needed time and she understood that, but in this sort of moment, it gave her something. He was a child that she barely got to hold, barely was able to show love to before she had to pass him to another. She was desperate to have some of that time back, something to make up for the greatest loss in her life.

"I don't know how your father knew of it. There was something he read, something that gave him insight. It might have been dragon dreams for all I was told. The things we spoke of were not that war but the other one." Which made her unequipped to help him. "It may have happened for a reason, but--" she broke off. She had already said she didn't like that he had been sent to the Wall. There was no point in repeating it.

He was right. Every little thing lead them towards that point. It was fate, unbreakable and inevitable. Though that didn't make it any easier. Without her mistakes, her son might never have been born, but did that ease the knowledge that she was responsible for her family's near demise? How could that be compared to the world, yet they had been her world.

Thankfully, he took her mind from the topic by telling her a small bit of irony. "You would have knocked that boy in the dirt." She grinned, cupping his cheek with her cold hand. Her eyes became sad, realizing how true to life that moment might have been. Robert's son beaten by Rhaegar's, the way it should have been at the Trident. "Robert had his fair share of bastards, as did your Uncle Brandon. It would have been no insult at all for you to be with those boys. Whatever Catelyn Tully thought, I imagine Ned wanted you away from Robert for other reasons."

"You never saw such a little shit. It would have been a pleasure to knock him into the dirt, even before --"

He sighs, and his face grows, suddenly, much sadder. "He's the one who killed your brother. I wanted to kill him. After we left Winterfell, I never saw or heard from Robb again, but if he was marching south, he wanted to kill him too. I don't doubt that Sansa wanted to kill him, and if Arya lived, her hand would have been at her sword.

"But none of them did it. He was poisoned at his wedding to Margaery Tyrell." He pauses. "No better than he deserved."

"Little wonder. He came from a Lannister and a Baratheon." Raised under Robert's influence, the boy was likely as posturing and egotistical as his father. It was a horror to consider what Cersei Lannister must have endured, and while she would forever be monstrous in Lyanna's eyes, there was an element of pity. Save for one twist of fate, that could have been her end, her children and her life.

"We don't always get to see the justice we feel we deserve." What became of Robert? Of Aerys? Neither man was given a death that would allow a sense of justice. It was the way of things. Vengeance was beautiful to consider, but it only left someone hollow and it was so rarely attained.

Tyrell. How the world changed. They had been loyal to the Targaryens during the Rebellion but it seemed that they went the way of the tide.

That wasn't he only interesting twist. "Your sister carried a sword?"

He laughs again, still a small mirthless thing, full of contempt for the people they're speaking of, a contempt he thought the fight against the Night King had drained away from him, at least in some part.

"No. Joffrey came from Cersei and her brother. Robert had no trueborn heirs. That's why they killed your brother: he knew."

After a pause, he adds, "Aye, Arya had a sword. I don't know whether or not she carried it, but I hope she has it now; I hope it's protected her.

"When I gave it to her, it was to be kept hidden away. It was the last time I saw her, and a little sword, a bravo's blade."

It almost too absurd to consider. She leaned back further to meet her son's eyes, incredulous and stupefied. She had never seen Jaime Lannister before, but had glimpsed Cersei once or twice. There was talk that they were both beautiful creatures, highly sought after in marriage. How far did their relationship extend and could their beauty prove their true corruption?

"Better that Rhaegar was spared that woman." That was at least a story she knew all too well. Tywin's ambitions pushed beyond simply ruling for Aerys but continued into the next generation. Thank the gods Rhaegar never wed her, otherwise the war might have been far worse. "Jaime Lannister...your father trusted him and treated him well. But in the end, he was as feckless as his father."

Jon was certainly more tolerant of women with wild streaks than most men. "I always wanted a sword of my own, but your grandfather would have hated the idea of it. He never knew I learned to fight from Ned or practiced with Benjen."

He gives his head a heavy, rueful shake.

"Would that the rest of us could be." He'd mentioned to her in their first meeting that Cersei was on the Iron Throne, he's sure of it, but that sort of conversation, and then her going to find his father, his father by blood -- it's understandable if she doesn't remember everything he said in passing.

When she says she wanted a sword, the look he gives her in return is serious, thoughtful.

"-- There's an armory here. The swords aren't much to look at -- not up to Winterfell standards, or even Castle Black's. They're certainly not Valyrian steel. But they're usable, and those who can use them need to do it. We may be under attack soon."

"So I hear." Margaery Tyrell had made mention of both the armory and the future attacks. Given that monsters tended to appear whenever anyone entered this world, she would need to practice and return to the shape she had been in once. Her pregnancy weight had still not fallen away.

"I had meant to visit the armory and see what they had. The Tyrell girl had some sort of curved sword, but I would rather have something lighter and straight. Better to have something I am familiar with than relearn a balance and weight." But she needed coin first, she imagined.

"If we are moved to the colder regions, I will need a cloak as well. I'm still dressed for Dorne."

"I'll ask Sansa to make you a cloak. Or Margaery, but Sansa will want to do it. She made one for me, not long after she came to Castle Black -- it's a good cloak." It's not the one he's been wearing about, but there's not much difference between them. And he doesn't mention the favor that he might have to do in return, to get the cloth for the thing. It doesn't matter much. "There are blankets in the shops, too, shiny and warmer than they look... and sometimes things like cloaks and shirts and dresses there, but not as you'd remember them. Sometimes they have too many arms."

He halts on that weird pronouncement before continuing.

"The swords Sansa and Margaery carry were made by the elf-lords, a style from their lands. I don't know where they got the metal -- maybe from reforging swords that were already here."

"She doesn't need to make me one." She was hardly a woman that needed much fuss, yet it seemed that her son was determined to look after her. It was oddly disconcerting, as she was the one who should look after him. But he was more familiar with this world than she was. Before whatever came, she should at least accept his knowledge and help.

"Elf...lords?" Margaery had said something about a friend helping her, but little else about who they were. "Never mind. I am certain I will find something I can use at the armory. It's not great matter."

And there was at least no stigma attached to a woman wielding a sword.

"She'll want to. And I want you to have a nice cloak. I want you to be warm, and comfortable."

He is, indeed, determined to look after her. It's still hard to wrap his mind around the idea that she's his mother, and at moments, he still doubts it. Maybe she had a child, maybe it had died and his father had said nothing, because he'd already had Jon in tow in some way and didn't want a swap to be suspected.

But wouldn't word of such a child have gotten out? He can't imagine that the Silent Sisters are really so silent as that, or that they would have been able to contain word of a dead child so completely. It makes more sense to Jon, much more, that Eddard Stark would have presented his sister's child as his own son to protect the babe than that he would have hidden the death of a nephew, and the former sounds easier to pull off than the latter.

"-- Spent my life wanting to meet you," he mutters, not meeting her eye. "You want to call me by the name you gave me; I want you to be warm."

Edited 2018-11-17 03:37 (UTC)

There were so many loose factors in keeping her secret, not simply the belief others might have regarding Ned's chastity but also the women who attended in her the Tower. None of the maids had said anything, it seemed. There didn't even seem to be a hint of a rumor, as Jon was never questioned and his incredulity seemed to indicate it never crossed his mind.

For her, she had no doubt this boy was her son, the one she had given to Ned. Even as he considered and thought of these matters, there was a wrinkle in his brow, the same that had been there when Ned first saw her child. That deep, thoughtful look that her child had been born with. He was the spitting image of Rhaegar, perhaps not in coloring, but in stature and bearing.

She smiled through watery eyes, reaching out to touch his cheek again. He reminded her so much of Rhaegar that it made her chest hurt. No matter what he became or the mistakes he became, he was everything she had hoped for.

"I would rather call you my son." She murmured to him. "You have no idea how important you were to me, are to me."

He thinks of Gilly, and of Lady Stark and the way she'd tried to be sure that her own children were always placed ahead of him in the family. Unkind to a boy like him, true, but not impossible to understand in a mother. And he glances up at her in a diffident way, meeting her eyes and then slipping away to look at the ground again, his lips pressed together, his brow wrinkled.

"I know what mothers are like; I just didn't have one. I had a warm bed and good food to eat and Luwin and Ser Rodrik to give me lessons, but -- " The rest seems so childish. He has very little need of comfort now, not anymore, not from a mother. Yet it's still true that when it had mattered, he had longed for it, thought of the songs she might have sung to him and what it would have been like to be hugged after skinning a knee. And he'd thought that he'd put all that behind him. "But not a mother."

A beat, and he adds, "You can call me your son. You already did."

She had lost her mother at a young age, but it wasn't the same. She had been raised with memories and stories of who Lyarra Stark was. Jon might have had comforts, but there was no sign and no hint about the woman that had given birth to him. He had been left to feel that he had been abandoned, serving as nothing more than a stain on Ned's honor.

"You weren't cold or starving, but it doesn't mean you had everything you needed." There were some things that Ned couldn't give him and, it seemed, Catelyn Tully hadn't offered Jon very much in the way of affection. "You're grown, but it doesn't remove that loneliness." He might not need her as he would have when he was young, but it doesn't mean that she wouldn't still give him that love. It didn't matter his age, he was her child.

"What is it you hoped for in a mother?" Did she match up to his image. "I always will call you my son. Whether you recognize me as your mother or not."

[OPEN] Be my mirror, my sword and shield

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