Chapter Text
Ned inhales a long, bracing breath, horror spreading through his body. Gods’ grace, there’s another one. Maester Luwin and Old Nan are bickering over the treatment options, giving him some time to deal with this complication. Nan claims he needs spirits and some rest, that the man is obviously of the Far North, and needs none of the Southerner nonsense. Luwin is countering with very reasonable arguments about frostbite and the blue tint to the man’s unnaturally pale skin.
“A wildling couldn’t have made it to Winterfell, much less the Godswood,” says Cat. “Even if he scaled the wall or sailed across the Bay of Seals, he wouldn’t have made it south of the Gift before being seen. Moreover, he has the look—”
He does. Ned doesn’t know everything there is to know about wildlings, but he doubts they had such obviously Valyrian features.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d call him a Child of the Forest,” he says, disoriented far past the point of minding his tongue. “Are we certain he is not a boy? He’s practically Robb’s size.”
“A boy,” scoffs Nan. “Speak sense, child. Look at those muscles, look at those scars and callouses. I’ll be happy to show you his coc—”
“Mercy.” He backs away, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “I believe you. He is just—Even the Myroshi are taller.” As the stories say, Northmen are the tallest, growing shorter the further South one goes. Willings, or folk of the Far North, as Nan insist they be called, dwarf even Karstarks.
Cat nods, running the same calculations. Silver-haired, pale-skinned. Slender, disturbingly beautiful—
“He could be—”
“Bite your tongue,” snaps Nan. “Some things can’t be unsaid. He is a wildling. A runt, looking for a better fate, guided by the Old Gods to our lands.”
Sheltering a Targaryen would be more than their lives are worth, but the boy need not be from that specific—workably extinct—bloodline to be a problem. That said, Ned found him in the lake next to the heart tree. He might not be the sharpest, nor the most pious man around but he can recognise Gods’ hand when it leads him by the nose.
“A wildling,” he says, meeting Cat’s eyes. Making unilateral decisions that affect Cat or, Gods forbid, the children, is treacherous business. She is a devoted mother, and a dutiful wife, and she has a very clear understanding of where her responsibilities begin and end. She will shelter this man because that is what Ned, her Lord has decided. The second she judges that the weight of her duty to her children outweighs her duty to her husband, she will bind the wildling hand and foot and throw him to the pigs.
“A wildling,” she nods, sending him an arch look. “Gods’ willing, he wakes.”
Ned inclines his head, taking the rebuke as his due. The best thing the boy can do for his peace of mind is to die quietly in the night. Ned will have obeyed the request of the Old Gods, he wouldn’t need to worry about another Targaryen Robert would kill him over, and Cat won’t need to take drastic measures to protect her family.
Gods, and he thought his life was complicated already. Starks and Targaryens aren’t meant to mix, for all that Starks can’t seem to stop obsessing over their chosen dragon. Brandon and Ashara, Lya and Rhaegar, Benjen and Arthur—And, more recently, Robb and Jon. Ned—Well. Baratheons have a better claim to Valyrian ancestry than most Volantine noble houses. Targaryen ancestry, more specifically. Ned’s dragon might be a particularly self-hating one, but he wouldn’t have him any other way.
***
In a wonderful show of their heritage, the children are beside themselves with curiosity for this mysterious stranger. Between Robb, Arya and Sansa, the man is never alone. Where Robb goes, Jon goes too, which does nothing to help Ned’s old heart. Thank the Old Gods and the New, he chants at a worrying frequency, that Jon took after Lya and not his father. It’s hard enough to calm in the face of his two illicit Targaryens within touching distance of each other.
Cat hates it. She despises it. The fact Ned declared the stranger to be welcome in her home was bad enough, but his having access to her children was a giant step too far. It’s—not ideal. With one thing and another, Cat’s reputation in the North started bad and got worse. She arrived at Winterfell when the anti-South sentiment was at its highest, only to find Ned had brought a son back from the war. The battles fought about Jon didn’t much improve her standing—for all that Lady Umbar would have thrown her husband’s bastard in the deepest well she knew, and did her best to send her husband along for good measure—nor did her insistence to keep the Faith of the Seven. Cat responded to it all with a grim determination to prove her worth with her actions and adopted Northern austerity and moral implacability that could shame a Greenseer. It was working, he’s pretty sure, until the stranger was dropped into their lives and made a mess of things. Now, the whispers say that Lady Stark is scorning omens from the Old Gods and is rejecting a Northerner who claimed sanctuary in the Godswood. It’s not true, of course, but they don’t need to be, to put her back up even further than it had been.
If Ned were smarter, or even just passingly intelligent, he’d have figured out a way to bring up this matter in a delicate way. Since he never understood the first thing about his wife, he keeps his mouth shut and tries his hand at damage control. He tells his bannermen in private that Cat let a stranger into her home against her better judgment because it was the Northern way. That she knows the laws of the land backwards and forwards, and doesn’t have a single concrete mark against her in the matter of respecting their culture. It helps a little, quite possibly. Not enough to offset the damage already done, much less the mess Septa Mordane is making. Lady Bolton, always ready to point out the failures of House Stark, summons her son Domeric to escort her back to Dreadfort. Where Lady Bolton nee Ryswell goes, ten would follow, and so things spin further out of control.
“A month, Rodrik,” he says, having escaped to the barracks for some peace. “Even less—three weeks, and North is already in chaos!”
“Oh, come now,” says Rodrik. “It is not as bad as all that. Things will calm down soon enough. These things always work themselves out.”
“Yes, thank you for that wise insight,” he says. “How could one man—He hasn’t even spoken a word, and already he has engineered a political knot I have no clue how to address, much less solve. I can’t even keep my sons away from his bed, and they’re seven!”
“Children are curious little buggers,” Rodrik replies with an air of a man who took his position and will not budge easily, no matter how little he likes it. “As for the rest—Well, you can’t fault them, can you, m’lord? The Septa has been open about how little she thinks of the Old Gods. Lady Stark is—”
Lady Stark hasn’t stopped treating Winterfell like a battleground since she stepped foot in it. This outbreak of hostility is not the first time she faced backlash—the time Sansa was born comes to mind—and she responds like she always has. She retreats into the role of Lady Stark, mother, lady, wife, and grows colder by the day. By the hour.
“Gods willing, the stranger wakes soon,” he says after a long, morose pause. “And we can set this to rest.”
Rodrik sends him a look tinged with pity. “The Septa is a problem, m’lord. The stranger is not at fault, and I don’t believe you think him to be one.”
Yes, well, he can do something about the dratted man. He can’t do much about the rest of it. Cat is spoiling for a fight, half the ladies of the North fled to Dreadfort where they’re spinning poisonous tales even now. House Stark has too many skeletons in her closet to afford any attention-grabbing scandals, and yet Cat is going to extract her pound of flesh come what may. And then there’s Hoster Tully, who thinks Ned is a bit of grime stuck to the back of his shoe and can’t wait for an opportunity to upbraid him as publicly as possible.
“I suggest you send a raven to Castle Black, m’lord. Your brother can always cheer you up.”
Ned doesn’t laugh, but it takes some doing. Benjen? Benjen hates Cat for how miserable she is making Jon. Despises her with a fervour only reserved for their Father and Robert. Benjen loved Lya like he loved no-one else. Maybe Arthur Dayne, which certainly doesn’t uncomplicated his feelings any—
Never mind. Never mind all that.
“I think I need to spend some time with my children. Maybe that will clear my head some.”
“M’lord! Lord Stark! Maester Luwin sent me—”
Gods’ grace. It’s happening.
He takes in a long, bracing breath. “Wish me luck, old friend.”
“You need no luck, m’lord. Just follow your heart.”
Ah, yes; Stark following their hearts never once led to ash and ruin.
***
Many things about the stranger suddenly become urgent once he has stirred from sleep. Beauty is the first, most shocking thing because it’s not beauty as they know it. Rhaegar was beautiful. Seeing Queen Rhaella for the first time was a memorable experience for all. The first thing that Ned feels when he sees the stranger awake, alert and focused on him is fear.
The source of the fear is difficult to nail down. It’s not the eerie symmetry or the fantastical colouring; his red eyes, in isolation, aren’t any more beautiful than Ashara’s purple or Rhaella’s violet. Each trait and feature, in truth, can be understood and internalised individually: the dramatic cheekbones, clean brows, and wild shock of silver hair. Even the angry red tattoos slashed down his cheeks aren’t threatening in themselves, and neither is the androgynous way they click together to form a face that could make a beautiful woman or a handsome man, depending on one’s point of view.
He also speaks only the Old Tongue.
It’s spite, he thinks, a little hysterically. It’s a challenge or a lesson. The Gods are piling things up to see what the silly mortals will do.
“He says his name is Tobirama,” supplies Old Nan, the corner of her lips kicking up into a sharp smile. She is enjoying this. “He doesn’t remember what happened, to have left him in the godswood.”
Convenient, thinks Ned, battling for calm. Also, a lie. He meets the red eyes and acknowledges the indecipherable look with his resigned one. Can he call him out? Likely not, not with the rumours being at their peak. Ned is bound to treat this man with utmost courtesy until he either leaves or they discover he is a raider from the Far North, and even that might not be enough. Not after Cat and her wretched Septa went and made him a martyr, a victim of all the lies and prejudices Northerners face from the South.
“I greet you,” he says, Old Tongue clumsy in his mouth, “to my fire. I am Eddard, of House Stark—” What’s the word for warden? “Protector of the North.” Good enough. “My wife, Catelyn.”
“—met,” says the man. Tobirama, of all names. “—long—here?”
He needs to brush up on his Old Tongue and fast. There aren’t many who speak it, but Lord Stark should be among their number.
“What language does he speak,” asks Cat. Ned doesn’t cringe, nor does he acknowledge the grim looks guards exchange behind them. Gods. She could at least try? She is tense, he scolds himself. Moreover, she is at home, talking with her husband. If she can’t ask questions of him, who is she supposed to ask?
“Old Tongue, the language of the First Men.” The language spoken in the North, which you should know because you’re Lady Stark—Stop. Stop it.
“I see.”
“He needs to rest,” jumps in Maester Luwin. Ned can’t quite resist sending the man a grateful look. “Men who wake from long sleep need to rest as much as possible and replenish their strength.”
“Of course,” he says, nodding at their silent audience. Goodness, but he is beautiful. “If you could—Some of us speak a little, but—”
“I’ll teach him,” cackles Old Nan. “If he’s half as clever as he is pretty, he will be speaking Common in a week.”
“Very well,” he says before anyone else says something he will have to respond to. “Maester Lewin, report your findings when it is convenient. We will leave you to take care of your patient.”
***