[OPEN] Be my mirror, my sword and shield

[northerndragon]

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:

Comments

[northerndragon]

"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."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

"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.

[northerndragon]

"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."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

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."

[northerndragon]

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."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

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."

[northerndragon]

The look he gives her is a little pleading.

"The things I hoped for were things that it would have been foolish to hope for if I really was a bastard. But children are foolish, it isn't -- it's nothing that shames them."

The rest of what she says... well, he hasn't threatened not to recognize her. It's only that it's all very new, and that he's old enough that being mothered, especially by a young girl, makes him feel a little embarrassed.

"I thought she was, I wanted her to be, someone like you."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

She breaks into a bright smile, emotion written over her expression. While she was highborn and had been wed when she gave birth, it didn't erase her faults. She had been selfish, short sighted, and stubborn. That might not be a trait that anyone would want in a mother, especially if their actions resulted in so much chaos.

But it mattered a great deal to hear him say this. It might be embarrassing to be mothered by someone younger than him, younger than his sisters, but it didn't matter to her. She intended to follow what was natural. Her maternal instincts were strong, raised after months of preparing for his birth. It would find ways to express itself.

"I would have been a danger to you, if I lived. At least in death, I could be close to you. If I lived...Robert would have claimed me. I wouldn't have been able to see you or raise you."

[northerndragon]

The line of his mouth goes a little sour.

"Maybe Robert would have died. Maybe they wouldn't have been so quick to make him king if he wasn't married to Tywin Lannister's daughter. I don't know if you all knew then what the Lannisters are like."

But the song had been known even then.

"There's little use in what might have been, there's only the way things are now."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

She doesn't argue with him, but the look on her face makes it clear that she doesn't think that's true. Tywin might not be as notorious as he later became, but he wasn't trusted and was thought to be the real source behind the throne. His ambition was well known.

And it was simply speculation at this point, as much as how she would have raised Jon had Rhaegar lived. Her son wouldn't have been groomed for the throne or become a king. But he likely still would have lead the way with this war that was coming.

"I'm young, sweetling, but I'm not so young that I don't know how to be a mother. My age doesn't matter anymore. It will always be the same, but as long as I am here, I can at least offer you what I couldn't before."

[northerndragon]

He looks at her for a long moment, almost expressionless, but a sad smile breaks across it all.

"I know. But in the same way -- I'm older than you now. I was older than you when I joined the Watch, and I was a green boy then. Do you know how to be the mother of a son in his twenty-fourth year, his twenty-fifth? I'm not a little child. I can't -- be a little child for you."

There is a small part of him that wants to, and his words don't fully hide that part. Yet he's also aware that, for reasons related to their ages alone, there are things that he can teach her about the world, things she must never have had the chance to learn, although she seems wise for her years. It shouldn't be this way, yet it's better than never having met her at all.

The rest of it -- Aegon Targaryen, the would-be king, the Iron Throne that isn't his and that he doesn't much want, only he does want to see Cersei toppled from it as swiftly and finally as possible -- he can hardly stand to think about it any more than he has to. He can also hardly push his mind to seize on something else. It means everything, and it means nothing. These last few days have not been good days.

"But we'll do what we can. We'll talk about what we can. You'll let me find you the finest cloak I can -- can't have my mother going around looking like a beggar. You'll have your sword, and we'll go have a drink. I'll introduce you to people as my mother. They'll think it strange to see me with such a pretty young girl, otherwise."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

"I don't expect you to be a child, Ae- Jon." It wasn't a name she preferred for him, but she wouldn't use his true name until he gave her permission. It might not be to his taste, even if it suited him well. "You speak as though I have any experience in being a mother. I only just birthed you when Ned arrived. What mothering could I have done beyond give you to my brother to look after you?"

She might not be skilled at it at all. Her heart was swollen with emotion, aching with a need to give him something. A love, that hadn't been expressed since her husband had been killed. She didn't need a child, she simply needed her son, no matter if he was an adult or not. She could love him the same as she had her brothers, only deeper and truer, if that was possible.

"I know you don't need me to care for you, but just as you wish to look after me, I wish to do the same for you. You are not too old to have someone be concerned for you well being." She certainly would go out of her way to embarrass him. "Do not think of me as a child either. I am not a child but a woman wed and with a son, even if he is older than me."

She wouldn't be treated as his sister or ward. She was his mother and would remain that way.

"You are not ashamed to tell others I am your mother?"

[northerndragon]

"Aegon" isn't to his taste, and he's grateful that she corrects herself. But the reason it isn't to his taste isn't out of any real antipathy: until learning what he's learned, he would have thought that he was probably more positively inclined towards the Targaryens than most. He feels an overwhelming pull towards Daenerys, one which has become more of a problem than it ever was, and Aemon -- he owes his life to Aemon, several times over, Aemon who had looked out for him without ever knowing of their blood ties.

Still, he'd never spent hours and days as a boy truly wishing he could be a Targaryen. Who would wish for that? Most were dead and the two sad survivors lived in impoverished exile in Essos. He had wished to be a Stark. He had wished, greatly, to be his father's trueborn son. And he would have thought that he was more than a little bit past that, but in some ways it seems like a cruel jest: he can be his father's trueborn son, or he can be a Stark, but he cannot be both.

In the end, the reason the name isn't to his taste is that it's not his name. He's been Jon for his whole life. It's true that there was a brief time when he'd thought that he would hear it less and less, and had been resigned to it -- the days when most people addressed him as "Lord Commander," when he'd begun to feel nearly friendless. But that time is past, and he's King Jon now, and even the king part is strange to him, with "The King" already beginning to seem more like his name to his people than "Jon" in the weeks after they raised him.

To be Aegon Targaryen feels like it's to be someone else completely, and he doesn't yet know who that is. He's not sure there's a way to learn it in Hadriel; outside of Hadriel, it may not matter, because they may all forget every minute and word of this.

I would be sad to forget her.

"I know, and it isn't -- that I think you're a child. It's that no woman with a newborn babe in her arms expects the newborn babe to be a man grown a week later. She expects a babe, then a child, then a man: it's the way of things."

After a pause, he adds, carefully, "I was ashamed to be a bastard, but it was nothing I could change, so I tried to learn not to be.

"Now I'm not a bastard, I'm a trueborn prince... why would I be ashamed of you?" His father might be another story; the fact that he'd left his wife for Lyanna doesn't sit well, and Jon wishes desperately that they could talk again, knowing what he knows now. "We didn't have each other when I was three, or ten -- I'm sorry for that. But we have each other now, and I don't see the use in shame. Not about this."