Hollow Wolf (Ned Stark SI)

[Ratmor]

Waking up in the body of Eddard Stark, you could only want to go back to sleep and never wake up again. I was only about thirty years old, and here I am, preparing for the long Winter and delving into the affairs of Lord Winterfell. The Wall is empty, the future is extremely rosy, and even my wife turned out to be, to put it mildly, weird. And it is difficult to influence older children and a tiny bit late, but I'll still try to save them and get rid of the nonsense in their heads. But the king and queen are going to arrive soon, and I'd really like to decide how to deal with them.

This is a translation of my old fanfiction, so bear with me and correct my mistakes if you notice something.
NOT TELLING THE SHIPS
It would be a surprise.

I'd really like it if you comment, it's an on-going, I need incentive.

 

[Ratmor]

Love passes, friendship disintegrates. And only blood ties are unbreakable forever.​

In general, as you know, the leaders in wolf packs are the most cunning and intelligent representatives of the wolf pack, and it could be both male and female. This is, as some channel once claimed on a zombie-box, the essence of wolves in their very true form. And why couldn't it work that way for people, especially when they consider a huge winter wolf as their coat of arms?

Maybe it was like that once upon a time, you never know. But now the Starks are famous for their directness and following a certain honor, although their tales and legends have, rather, the cruelty and authority of this House.

Perhaps the problem is that honor and stupidity sometimes stand side by side, especially when there are no brains for something unrelated to military affairs. And it is quite possible, if we talk specifically about me, the fact is that I should never have gotten into this medieval nonsense so close to the body. The name of this body is - oh, yes, a stupid dad pun - and speaking of huge winter wolves, Eddard Stark. It is difficult to imagine the situation even closer to bullshit.

My pack is now standing in a row right in front of the open gates of my family castle, and I threw a large two-handed sword made of Valyrian steel on my shoulder, with a very reckless movement. It was familiar from re-enactments in which I participated in my reality, sometimes based on the already mentioned medieval nonsense.

The blade width was of a small palm.This sword is called quite poetically - the Ice. I brought it into a state a little more suitable for unarmored fight by adding a leather winding at the guard.

The blacksmith, one of those three craftsmen in Valyrian steel - I brought him in with the help of the lord of the former Wolf's Den, the Manderly - and the castle smith of Winterfell, who now also began to understand this material a little, they created a miracle together with their apprentices.

This huge claymore was significantly reforged. We agreed to leave the weight within four kilograms, I think, breaking armor, but not breaking my spine. The blade still lost a couple of finger phalanges of original width, but an additional small guard was added, separating the wrapped and not sharpened part of the blade, the widest in the entire sword, from the part that was supposed to chop heads and crush armor.

I proudly but privately called the addition wolf fangs, by analogy with the boar fangs from my reality, and the straight guard with the motto of the house on it was ruthlessly remade into a much more practical one — with two forged rings on both sides of the blade for improved grip. The grinning faces of direwolves were skillfully minted in these rings — it was still necessary to make it clear that the sword was still the same Stark Ice, and not a free interpretation of it without any identification marks. The rings were almost a prerequisite for me to use such a huge sword in a fight, because they were also an additional protection of the palms.

Also, the long sword hilt, almost as long as an elbow, served as a good lever in leaving large dents on armor made of not the worst steel — tested on an equipped mannequin. Well, also, the sword would certainly come in handy to create a good shake-up for anyone who meets with such an instrument of death in battle.

While I was lamenting to myself about spending money — both Eddard Stark and I have quite a common avarice, horsemen with familiar deer and lion standards rode into the gate. Then, Arya ran up to me with a smile and gave me a bouquet of wild golden roses tied with a scarlet ribbon, which I specially ordered through Lord Wyman Manderly's people, as well as many other things I needed directly to improve the conditions of both my life and the existence of other residents of the castle.

Eddard, before my arrival in his skull, lived as many others before him — after all, the North remembers, and this is its main drawback when it comes to changes. Starting with the simplest — after all, it would seem that the entire inner castle could be a huge greenhouse, but there are actually no big greenhouses here. There are flowers in pots for beauty in the wife's rooms — a reminder of the warm Riverrun, and there are no other greenhouses, but the winter garden, which has become slightly shabby over the long summer. This little garden covers only the kitchen expenses of the castle residents for vegetables and some fruits, but there is no special export or variety. Such a loss of potential!

My uncle in that world was engaged in the cultivation of oyster mushrooms, cucumbers and champignons and lived-never-grieved with a pretty good income, which means he had quite a good harvest for a modest private entepreneur. Therefore, I decided not to get political much, but to increase wealth and prepare for the Winter in the first place, spitting and forgetting for the time being the need to go to the King's Landing in the future.

Since I got here a decent amount of time ago and even managed to celebrate my thirtieth birthday — I still count the days to somehow keep the memory of the past world in order - I have already managed a lot in preparation for the long winter ahead. It was always warm in Winterfell because of the pipes that sent heat from underground sources throughout the castle, and that's why, having at least some ingenuity and a vital desire to test the ability of this castle to become somewhat more autonomous in case of the end of food supplies, I began to equip the basements inside and build one, you could say, summer-like greenhouse to pamper myself with things like those roses.

I liked gardening, you see.

With winter, they will surely wither, like any fertile fields south of Winterfell. Mushrooms needed slightly different conditions — coolness and hydroponics, but I wasn't ready to share the production technology with everyone just yet because of my innate hamster, now multiplied by two.

So, greenhouses.

Thus Arya brought me a bouquet that had just been picked, golden roses had already bloomed there, though yesterday the buds were still closed. They're waiting for the southern guests, weren't they, huh? For me, the color of roses and the very desire to give them to Her was rather a slightly sarcastic reference to "yellow is the color of parting", because I was going to give the bouquet to the most unloved Lannister for her ego, Queen Cersei, and I'd be glad to see this woman only, figuratively speaking, in a crypt and with a sword in hands. That is, in a coffin and white slippers by Westeros.

And I honestly ordered them thinking about the queen, who's just about to appear in the gate with the children, apparently, as it was according to the book canon, following Robert and his entourage. Because in this reality there was that stupid cart-a-la-house, about which Theon Greyjoy reported to me with a laugh in his eyes. I assigned him to my scouts for the practice of commanding small detachments.

This little bugger just loves when nasty things happen to people, and I gave him a good opportunity to seek such nasty things on a regular basis. A little more experience — and I will let him out on his own, since I have almost everything ready for this. Meanwhile, the strangers have already spread out in front of me, leaving horse shit and dirt on the good old pavements made of log slices knocked down with each other — there is a forest nearby, and even while I cherish my inner toad, just like Ned, preparing the treasury for Winter, but winter snow porridge and general medieval shit does not suit my sensitivities.

Robert got off his horse with loud noises, and I smiled broadly, probably leaving my eyes cold, and gave Ice to Greyjoy. The kid was standing right behind my shoulder. Then I gave the flowers to Sansa so as not to crush the bouquet on the king's belly. I opened my arms, still smiling, and hugged a smelly stocky, albeit strong, stranger.

The man towered over me by about half a head and was much stronger in width and thickness. That last thing - I was incredibly happy about.

This wine-skin-man doused me with fumes and perfumes, to which I barely held Lord Stark's ordinary icy muzzle and continued the greeting more formally. While we were grovelling or whatever that was, I was thinking of life and waiting for the queen to appear with the children. Then I took the flowers from my daughter, at which everyone of the king's retinue looked strangely, as if unaware of their purpose. Mine, of course, have already got used to the frostbitten in the head Paramount Lord, but this does not mean that they have shared the thoughts that are probably present in their heads with the Southerners.

My thoughts were sad.

Firstly, the Song of Ice and Fire is interesting only to read or watch, but not to participate. Moreover, for a person with a fairly peaceful professional training. A lawyer in Russia is more of a diploma than a real vocation, and my modest business went more successful than many others who started at the same time, precisely because of the law school behind me. Those were not bad for the thirty years I turned recently, here in Westeros. But those were unlikely to help here, in a world that is much more cruel in its manifestations, and where the power of laws is a relative concept, and the law of the locals would be called custom-based and extremely chaotic.

Secondly, although this world is not hospitable on principle, but it would be possible to live quite calmly, after all everyone dies. Of course, if it weren't for the presence of five plus one offsprings, who were set up to be problems by the previous owner of the body. And if it weren't for this freaking mother hen poking her nose into all my affairs, Catelyn, with whom I woke up in the bed when I got here. And then got woozy from her morning prayer that "his seed would take root in me" or something like that. Kat was only a little embarrassed by my odd look. But I was hurt by her behavior afterward, when I started to perceive my situation a little more adequately, ceasing to experience it only inside my mind as something impossible-because-that's-totally-impossible. It suddenly seemed to me that it was too easy to get found out right away for any intelligent person, which I thought I am, as arrogant as that was.

Well, any intelligent person in such a situation should just shut up and assess the situation for a while, deal with the new memories that appeared out of nowhere, replacing those memories of mine that led here, to this reality.

I was assessing everything that happened to Edward from some kind of bird's height, or something. He was a terrible hypocrite, he was afraid to really get his hands dirty, although he did not disdain the work of the executioner, and did not allow someone to do such a nasty thing for him. That's honor, ugh, sure. He was somehow nothing special, this Eddard - not too ambitious - ambitions are brought up in children, they do not form on their own; at the same time, he was not too stupid, but still sometimes it seemed that he lived in some kind of world adjacent to this reality, where people are divided into honest and dishonest, and not the way this division of people was formed while I viewed his memories, into players and pieces.

Take the memories of the Civil War, the Uprising of the Usurper in some narrow circles, to which Ned himself did not belong, of course, but had all, so to speak, the makings for. Jon Snow is Rhaegar's son with Lyanna would install me in those circles for sure, if I wanted.

Robert and Ned under the wing of John Arryn?

While Arryns and Tully losing influence due to the strengthening of royal power and at the same time the rising of the Lannisters, Tyrells and Martells above the rest of the High Houses. King Targaryen was going crazy with paranoia, but at the same time there is a reasonable and most likely future king - Prince Rhaegar, to whom Arryn won't ever be needed as the fucking Hand, because he was of his own mind?

Bravo, Lord of the Vale and Guardian of the East, great game of Thrones!

Who informed Brandon Stark, the older brother of my body, that Lyanna was kidnapped?

Eddard knew that, but I didn't.

Baelish, fuck him, Petyr, was a direct vassal of Arryn at that moment. And to Petyr the death of a man who should marry his beloved would be like sweet jam. Which was exactly why the eldest of the Stark children of that generation was traveling to Riverrun at the time of the "abduction", and not to King's Landing.

And one more fact in the piggy bank of my guesses - under whom did Bailish achieve so much and not quite legal?

Under the fucking Hand Arryn!

Why was the alliance with the Starks so badly needed, their misinformation about the abduction and all of it in general?

That's because Robert Baratheon and his brothers were almost nothing and nobody at that time for the whole of Westeros - a couple of vassal houses ready to fight for them, plus - excellent in quality, but small in quantity reinforcements from Dornish Marches, whose lords have been vassals of the house of Baratheon since the times when they were Durrandons. It's not even funny - you could win one battle, but not the whole war for the Iron Throne. And when the first house that confronts you in the war is a house from your own region, the Grandison house, by the way, it means something's wrong here.

And something really didn't feel right.

The house founded allegedly by the half-brother of Aegon the Conqueror himself - and this is an obvious fiction in order to justify Robert's ancestral rights to the Targaryen throne for the common people - claims the throne, using a beautiful maiden from the house of guardians of the North, the Starks, as a reason for rebellion.

Of course, everything was more prosaic in fact - the aunt of the Mad King was the mother of Steffon Baratheon, which gave the Baratheon brothers the right to the throne, the minimal one, so to speak. But it still gave it, especially for those who still needed Targaryen blood to acknowledge the Iron Throne rule over the Seven Kingdoms.

At the same time, honest and misinformed Starks, who would hardly agree to betray the crown to which both they and their ancestors swore, are used as the driving slap in the face for the North. And the North could give all Southerners, each southern region individually and in various combinations, quite a light from a soldering iron, as my uncle used to say, the one who grew all sorts of things in his garden. And Ned Stark is Baratheon's best friend and the ward of the Lord of the Vale.

The only thing, by the way, that I haven't figured out yet is which of the lords of the North helped Tully and Arryn in their plot against the Targaryens. Such a rapid transfer of information from Harrenhal to the North - and my brother - as I have already learned when looked through the library of Maester Winterfell and, thank the Old Gods, it has a systematic filing of documents for that period - received a report while still in the North.

And then all the older and unrelated to Arryn and his ambitions, Starks died at the hands of the King. And horrifically he was somewhat in his rights to execute them for treason, albeit too imaginative. He executed the people who wanted to kill his son who'd quite officially married Lyanna - I don't know if Aerys knew about it or didn't. Still, Elia Martell was left in the Red Castle by him as a hostage, and not as the wife of the prince and the mother of little Targaryens, which seems to imply his awareness that if suddenly Elia gotten to her relatives or at least contacted them, informing them of the real state of affairs, then Dorn would've exploded like a green alchemical compound known to all Game of Thrones fans.

It should be noted at the same time that the Dornish would not have abandoned their own in trouble, even if they had to be with the Tyrells on the same side, would have supported the Crown, although no less strong houses gathered on the other side. The Starks and their bannermen, the Arryns and the lords of the Vale, the Tully and their vassals? This was power. But the Starks wouldn't be there if... If what exactly? I just feel - there is a considerable discrepancy lurking. And this is not conspiracy. As the same uncle used to say - "My cucumber smells trouble." It's funny, it was, but it's a truth and what a truth that is!

By the way, who and when said that Ned Stark loved Catelyn at all? He was a faithful and good husband, regularly delivered sperm to her uterus and flexed her vaginal muscles, but nothing else.

No, Eddard didn't love Catelyn the way I understood the word "love".

There was no romance, beautiful words and actions. There was a marriage out of necessity, and the younger brother came to replace the older brother. At least that's why I couldn't stand John Arryn in advance, because
it was his decision to keep the engagement.

Yes, I understand - it's such a time here that other contracts besides marriage are somewhat a lottery, and marriage is also not the most relish in terms of mutual assistance and support. But this does not change my personal attitude, which came with me from another reality and the twenty-first century of our era.

Catelyn, by the way, for some reason was not a virgin on their first night, and I do not know why she never thought that her husband keeps a bastard in the castle for this very reason - this one could have thought of it, because she constantly says shit out of spite, turning it so and so to get her way.

From the very beginning, without even noticing it, as if, when she reminded to Eddard in the best traditions of Tully about family, duty and honor, she always said something resembling "your older brother would." And it washed away all the crumbs of understanding that I could give her now, kinda being her husband. To be honest, I don't really care about virginity even, because I'm not from here - anything happens. She's just not whom I chose and that's it.​

I was thinking too hard it seems. The Queen has already passed through the gate - by the way, no, it's not some small gate, it's just their carriage the size of a double-decker bus, except that it's not coloured much.

I met her gaze.

It seems that the royal couple decided not to give up trying to break Lord Stark's icy muzzle, figuratively speaking, of course.

I've never touched that damn Catelyn in all my time here in Winterfell, I've never even thought about turning the memories that already existed in my brain into reality. Although no, I'm lying, I thought of sex - but up to that point, Kat managed to get me very annoyed.

Eddard, for example, could not stand the completely happy and relatively pleased with life of the oathbreaker Jaime Lannister and his whole family, he seemed to chew a lemon every time the figure of the illustrous knight and his equally illustrous sister crept into his thoughts. For me, it was mostly gray.

Of course, Eddard did give a damn about Catelyn. A bit more than I gave a damn about the Lannister White Cloak. It honestly seemed that for him she was mostly the mother of his children, who should be somewhat listened to, but not a full-fledged person with her stupid flaws and wrongness. And it seems to me right now, when I look the queen in the eyes, that there after all no man who would not want to fuck Cersei Lannister, because such a bold look, sassy on the inside, but framed by emerald ice, and the smooth movements of a graceful laid-back cat is extremely sexy.

I handed the queen a bouquet of golden roses and loudly, again giving out a wide smile, said, still looking into her eyes.

"You Southerners seem to have brought the south to us! Roses bloomed for the first time in my greenhouse this morning! I give them to you as a sign of my admiration and homage, my queen!"

She was a little dumbfounded - this surprise flashed in her eyes - accepted the bouquet and allowed to kiss her ring, for which I had to kneel right on the wooden flooring. I liked this Cersei so far. She was lively and beautiful, there was intelligence in her eyes, albeit with bitchy sparkles, and I knew that she loved her children no less than Catelyn, only the latter's mind showed in flashes, and she did not approve of my innovations, which my practical part did not like. Yes, it was with her criticism of my innovations that she finally made me sick of her antics, yes!

Although Eddard Stark was radically different from me in this - Catelyn's opinion on many issues suited him quite well. And he saw the bitchy essence of Cersei from the first and it seems the only thorough look at the wedding of his friend, but he was never attracted by the constant achievement, the search for keys to support, love and soul, which you constantly do when you start dating a girl like this, not to mention start a family life.

I have met a similar one in my life - we broke up when I did not help either by word or deed in the most difficult moments of her life, when her father died and her mother fell ill. I was in another country, we were already seriously thinking about the possibility of marriage by that time, but I didn't rush to her as soon as I found out about what had happened, no.

It seemed to me "it's okay, we're adults," and then I was, let me remember, twenty-five years old, if not less.

This adult expressed sympathy only a week after the funeral and for some reason believed that if he doesn't bother the person experiencing a terrible loss, then perhaps everything would somehow work itself out. I was a moron, quite. Although there's nothing you can do, and I generally remembered it for another reason.

It all boils down to what is that dear Queen Cersei needs in the relationship? Cersei needed at least someone charismatically equal to her and at the same time a tough person who could calm her angry outbursts and ask for opinions on important issues, and not the drunkard into whom dear King Robert became, who does not value either family or the honor of his wife. And Gods forbid me to consider myself the right man for Cersei Lannister! It's like field hockey - something perversive, it seems.

Although she's quite... salivating, yes, I found the word.

But back to the question of getting his hands dirty by Eddard Stark.

Quite recently, there was the very day when Lord Eddard Stark in the book and in the movie, in the name of King Robert Baratheon and so on and so forth, executed a deserter from the Watch. The guy should have been sentenced to death by law, but I'm not Eddard Stark.

That's why the kid is now clean, washed and desperately drunk waiting for an audience with the powers of this world for a detailed and thorough retelling of everything he told me about the horror that happened to their patrol beyond the Wall. The truthfulness will have to be confirmed by my younger brother - and even if he does not believe it himself yet, I have already given such an order under the guise of the fact that we need to restore the Watch, but there is no money, and they will be if we convince the Southerners so that they finally shit themselves in their gardens, fields and warm castles.

Well, I also left the direwolves to the kids almost without objections. By the way, I have long evaluated Theon's behavior and still made sure that I correctly decided to send him to adventure somewhere else, not in Winterfell, and I will fulfill these plans in the near future.

From every such memory, where I had to execute and kill, at first I was drawn to vomit on all three sides, but I understood that this was a reality in which I'd have to somehow sit my ass in warmer place, and this despite the fact that the Starks are the kings of Winter, the kings of the North, and it's kind of inconvenient for me to escape to Essos just like that. By the way, not at all my reasons are the reasons are of an honest and good person, no - those would be something like "you can't do this to the Stark family."

No, I was driven by other motives. Winter is really close, and we don't have any dragons under control and are not expecting to. Of course, no adequate person from my world who watched the series will send them over the Wall, but to give a whooping on this side, with enough strategic planing, the dragons would be quite enough. And as you know, when the snow falls and white winds blow, a lone wolf dies, but the pack survives - a saying that all Starks have known at all times, and therefore survived.

And now I'm the fucking leader of this pack. No matter how funny it may be, especially in light of the fact that I'd be quite the questionable leader, these people are doomed without me. Maybe not even to death, this is normal here. Many of them will probably die regardless of my actions, or even with my direct help. For example, Jamie's face asks for a brick, oddly enough - he really annoys with his ostentatious perfection. It's about people in principle. I do not know what kind of magic-shmagic everything should end, but the invasion of the living dead is just around the corner. It is only beyond the Wall north of my castle.​

 

[Ratmor]

Then a friendship, now a duty.
Brother wolf, God be with you!
Our friendship is now dying:
I'm not gift but debt for you.


Marina Tsvetaeva "The Wolf"​

After getting out of the carriage that was boring to the Seven Hells, Cersei Lannister picked up her skirts and stepped onto the pavement, unusual in the eyes of a southern lady and exuding the aroma of freshly sawn wood. The younger children, Myrcella and Tommen, had already jumped out ahead of her, but the Queen needed to remain sedate and regal, although she really wanted to go to her chambers as quickly as possible and relax in hot water. A ceremonial and festive feast awaited them - before Cersei could finally relax. While the husband is fucking some whores somewhere else, yes. Even the house of his best friend is unlikely to change Robert's habits, especially since everything will be inclined to this - a sea of wine will be spilled, game of different sizes will be fried, and soon Robert will gather to hunt - to show valor.

"Lest he drop dead there..." Cersei sighed faintly to her thoughts and caught Eddard Stark's gaze, at first viciously contrasting with his wide, welcoming smile - she noticed this literally a second before her opinion of her husband's friend changed to a more realistic side.

From her attention, Ned's gaze not only warmed, but rather lit up with the familiar vulgar spark with which her own husband looked at all women. The Queen chuckled to herself and reminded herself that no matter how honest a man is according to other men, they hardly take into account whores and bastards.

And Ned definitely had one bastard.

And Cersei would bet her own hair that he keeps him in the castle only because he is the son of a noble lady, and not some whore or peasant woman. After all, Robert and Eddard were brought up by the same person and at the same time - it can't be that Jon Arryn, known for his unsuccessful attempts to have a child until he married Lisa Tully and after the birth of a sickly heir, also did not stop trying, of course, not only with his own wife, could he have raised them in different ways?
Cersei grinned and began to move forward, sedately approaching the Starks standing at the head of the crowd, intending to stand in line with her own husband and eldest son. The boy had also hurried to dismount and approach Robert, obeying the wave of his hand with fat fingers with massive rings - the only things that Cersei liked about Robert. Not fingers, of course, but rings. The Queen was generally quite greedy for luxury and jewelry. That's why she looked around with interest, studying the interior of the courtyard, before she again encountered the gaze of the Guardian of the North, having already come closer to the welcoming crowd.

The castle they entered was going through the not so peaceful time right now - it was being rebuilt, which was clear from the appearance even outside the main Citadel, but at the same time it was decorated with bright coats of arms of the houses present at the future feast. Those were hanging on the walls of the courtyard for the arrival of guests. There were the Golden Lions of the Lannisters, and her husband's Crowned Stag, and the hangman of the Trants was next to the Selmy's cobs of wheat- these were the vassals of the ruling house present in the retinue. Cersei glanced over the coats of arms of the Northern houses. The eye didn't particularly cling to any of those - except the skinned man, it seems. The Bolton house caused a somewhat squeamish feeling.

She was not interested in further looking at the walls of the castle, because she had already understood everything she needed for herself.

They prepared for the arrival carefully and decorated their house, showing respect to the guests. So, they had known about the upcoming arrival and feasts for a long time - Cersei doubted that such decent-sized canvases with full coats of arms and mottoes were kept by the Starks somewhere in the basements. And Stark was clearly helpful, even servile, when compared with the usual northern thick-headedness known as much as the Seven Gods. It could only mean one thing - he needed something from Robert.

The most hilarious thing about all the thoughts that visited the Queen's head at that moment was that she was only partially right, and did not even suspect how much her life would change from the moment Ned was honored to voice his request.

She returned her gaze to Eddard, who was standing in front of her husband. Robert was patting him on the shoulder after a very fervent greeting. So she met his gaze again, already knowing that it was through this very look that she could show him whatever she wanted. A pinch of boldness and superiority, seasoned with a little bit of desire - he will realize his worthlessness, realize that he will never be able to touch what he desired at least for those few moments for which their eyes met.

The old friend of her husband continued to look into her eyes without squirming away - it began to strain, because at the same time he was smiling broadly and, most importantly, naturally, thereby forcing her to look at her action in a new way.

The Queen found more and more differences with the Eddard, whom she vaguely remembered from his last visit to the capital, after the Greyjoy uprising. An unkempt beard and an exhausted stern face, not embittered, but extremely out of place in the whole drunken holiday - Cersei did not remember that day in detail, because everything was covered by a terrible night with a drunk Robert, but even those small memories allowed her to conclude that Ned Stark had changed a lot over the years.

And not to say that for the worse. The narrow face was clean-shaven on the chin and under the nose, but Eddard had left sideburns, barely noticeably graying, but cut much shorter than her father's - Tywin also wore such a beard. The young Stark in those memories of hers wore shoulder-length hair, as Robert himself still wears it, but now Eddard had a much neater and shorter haircut. Stark's appearance was of little importance to her, but now he attracted her attention.

Lord Stark, as it turned out, was trying to achieve this, because a second later he stepped up to Cersei and handed her a bouquet of yellow roses, it is not clear how he found himself in the middle of this almost winter weather still fresh and pleasantly smelling. The smell of roses mixed with the smell of wooden logs and frosty air. Despite herself, she smiled in response to Stark's phrase about admiration and homage. Robert, on the other hand, laughed loudly as usual and slapped his friend on the shoulder. Eddard, who had already finished pleasantries with her husband, got down on one knee and touched her ring with his lips. At that moment Robert was already hugging Catelyn.

Cersei exhaled the frosty air along with the scent of flowers and smiled again. Much colder.

The queen graciously accepted the courtship from the vassal. Yes, that's right.

Jaime finally stood up next to her and pointed at the flowers with a grin with only his eyebrows. She grinned back at him, acknowledging with warmth in her chest that her brother sometimes understands her without words. The twins did not have time to say even couple of words to each other, as the King finished greeting Stark's brood and gave an order in a tone that did not imply refusal.


"Ned! Take me to the crypt! I want to honor her memory!"

Cersei opened her mouth to voice her objections, but Jaime took her elbow warningly and nodded at the scowling Warden of the North.

"My king..."

Stark's tone was much less warm than before. You could feel the pieces of crushed ice in this tone, they were heard somewhere between Eddard's hoarse low voice and the silence that hung over the crowd when everyone listened with bated breath to the objections.

"It's nice that you remember about my sister, of course, but there is one matter of primary importance that we need to solve."

"And what is this matter?" Robert narrowed his eyes with bags under them and moved a little threateningly to his friend who dared to contradict his orders. "Does this matter allow you to ignore the order of your King?"

"This is the matter, in case the King refuses to help," Eddard paused and looked with his instantly frozen gray eyes first at the King, then glanced briefly at his retinue and returned to contemplation of Robert. "This matter, if you refuse to help, Robert, will give me a legitimate opportunity to challenge your authority in the territory of the Northern Kingdom. No, this is not a betrayal!"

Ned shut up Robert with just a gesture of his palm, whose bloodshot face and mouth open for a thunderous shout suddenly terribly enraged Cersei. And for the umpteenth time in the last month she longingly remembered her brother's warm embrace and how he would love her when this boar finally left for the hunt he adored. But the hunt seems to be postponed, and probably Eddard's protest will result in a quarrel if everything remains exactly in the tension in which it is now. When the children of Stark himself look at their father in fright, Catelyn, nee Tully, gasps for air like a fish, and Cersei's own firstborn looks wide-eyed at the man who opposed himself to his father, as if he hadn't done something offensive, but as if it's a feat. Joffrey even had a satisfied grin on his face, as if he expected something to happen.

"After all, Robert, are you a Defender of the Realm or not? I broke the law because of this very case and sacrificed the honor of House Stark when I left the deserter from the Watch alive. He has the necessary information, he is a witness to terrible things. You understand perfectly well what must happen for me to give up my honor. Winter is coming. The long summer will be replaced by the long night. The one that the legends tell about. The one that will mow down half of the population of the Seven Kingdoms. The Others and the Wights were seen beyond the Wall. And this is not the first case."

Jaime clamped Cersei's elbow too hard - it made her cry out, but the sound of it was stiffled.

She would've endured this little pain, of course she would. If not for how serious Stark was when he said this, and how suddenly her heart was squeezed by a premonition of something evil.

***

Cersei Lannister was definitely embittered by everything that was happening and would like to take a good soak in warm water and drink a little more wine than she'd already managed, that's right, but natural curiosity, love of intrigue and a desire to understand the situation in more detail won out. It already stank of primal fear and forced her to believe the Lord of the Northern Lands, forced her to accept Ned's offer on this rather odd descent into the Crypt of Winterfell, together with Eddard and Robert himself. The latter all the time they walked to the grave of Lyanna Stark, frowned in silence, grunting and jingling the jewelry on his belly.

He was on the verge of saying something, but there were problems with the wording, or with Cersei's presence - it seemed to be the question for discussion that she would not approve of and probably started arguing. From this it was clear that Robert had no desire to quarrel over the grave of Ned's sister, and it seemed to the queen that this was exactly what Eddard was counting on when he invited her with a note through some nameless and very quickly vanished boy.

Cersei was no doubt wondering why she was invited without the king's approval - after all, Robert almost had a quarrel when he realized that his wife's going with them. Stark's gray eyes - in which, it turned out, some wicked mockery was maturing - glanced briefly at Cersei's face in those shameful moments when Robert, with a crimson muzzle, tried to say something incoherent about the presence of the queen on this, if may say so, joyride.

She caught his gaze, and something in his indifferent eyes seemed to tremble from her obvious malignant fatigue. Perhaps it was just a glimmer of a torch, but his actions said the opposite - he simply and briefly asked if there was any difference at all, because he invited the queen to go with them only because he assumed that it was self-implied.

Cersei was interested, yes, but most of all she was intrigued by Eddard's desire to show his favor to her, and not to her husband.

No northerner had ever looked like the sycophants of the court of King's Landing, but now he behaved like a man who had started some combination in the style of the Southern Lands. And Cersei would not have been confused at all if she didn't know the exact opposite about the North and the Starks - they were not inclined to this kind of intrigue. And so far the woman wasn't entirely clear about Eddard's motives, and what's already said was more than unsettling, so he did not want to believe it. That's why the queen chose to simply wait.

She was used to intrigues, she always looked down on schemers of any nobility, because she knew one simple thing that her father had taught her with all his actions, and so did her life full of contradictory events and unsatisfied dreams.

Whoever has the power sets the rules.

Cersei Lannister put up with Robert because the Arryn falcon was always hovering behind him and the Stark direwolf was baring its fangs, and there were two brothers who could also throw the Lannisters off the pedestal - not that it seemed possible while Robert was alive, because he was something of an obstacle while he counted her children as his own and he didn't drag the bastards into the castle.

And while Cersei felt that she and her beloved children were relatively safe, she endured, because Jaime protected them from direct physical threats, and the old father would always find a cure for political ones. But today Stark was gradually showing her husband who really is the master of the North and on whom the loyalty of these wild lands to the Iron Throne depends. The balance of power has changed, and Cersei allowed herself to think that Stark just wants to up his price by talking about the threat from behind the Wall, after all the Starks always keep their word, don't they? He would not betray Robert for the sake of greater power, no matter how much she wanted it, and it was his odd behavior for Stark that made her even think about such a possibility, and not any other suspicions. And the old dead Arryn, as well as his crazy wife with a half-wit sickly child, were definitely no longer a threat.



Cersei Lannister was frequently wrong in her conclusions, but this time the woman was relatively right, not because the conclusions were correct, no. If Ned Stark had known about her assumptions, he would have just shrugged his shoulders and agreed that he was not going to betray the King, nor listen to Catelyn Tully, who of course would soon receive a milestone letter for the entire plot of the confrontation between the Lannisters and the Starks. The Queen could hardly have guessed that the main threat from Eddard Stark in relation to Cersei was only one - he disliked Jaime Lannister very much.

Cersei wrapped herself in furs, trying to figure out Stark's game, who was clearly reluctantly leading them towards the resting place of Lyanna Stark. An oppressive silence hung between the two friends who were one step ahead, and Cersei was half angry about the whole situation, which included the lack of time to rest after the trip, and half intrigued by the trick of the Warden of the North.

"Why is my wife needed here?"

Robert decided to clarify, finally speaking to Eddard, who stubbornly maintained silence, slowly walked along the rows of Stark statues, as if enjoying the awkwardness felt among the only living people in this crypt.

"I thought that the Queen would be interested to learn about the conspiracy that has radically changed the lives of each of us. And it seemed to me most appropriate to hold this conversation where you wouldn't dare to stab me for what I say, my friend."

While the Warden of the North was saying this, in a measured and monotonous manner, they continued to move towards the grave of Lyanna Stark, because by the end of this little speech, Eddard was facing the statue of his dead sister and saying the last words without looking at Robert. There was something to see, Cersei thought, when she looked at Robert, bloated with anger and reddening, and realized that Stark was clearly playing with fire, but was not going to stop.

And what did he mean by that?

"Ned! What the hell?! I came to your wilderness to get you out of here to the capital, to make you my right hand instead of Jon! What the hell, Ned?! What are you doing? I'm doing you the honor!"

"We've already talked about the engagement, and I'm telling you, it's too early to discuss such things. I don't like it. And that's part of what I want to explain to you. Be patient, Robert."

Cersei caught the tension in Stark's voice, for the first time in the entire conversation, and leaned forward, wanting to ask her questions as well, but was stopped by Stark himself, who began to speak. He still had his back turned to them as if studying the face of his sister's statue.

"Robert, I hope you don't still live in blissful ignorance and already know that your ascension to the throne was arranged by my wife's father and Lord Arryn? And I hope, my Queen, that you can guess that the story of how my sister was stolen and stripped of her honor by Targaryen is the inside-out truth that turned the wolves against the dragons."

"What?! What are you talking about, Ned?!"

Robert growled and reached out to grab Edward's shoulder to turn him around.

"No, let him continue," Cersei was amazed at the amount of pain and venom that filled Stark's voice, and was determined to hear the truth that he wanted to tell them. "I want to hear it."

"Nobody asked you!" Baratheon snapped and pulled Eddard towards him. "Ned!"

Eddard turned around, obeying the king, and looked up at the royal couple.

"Lianna had no intention of marrying you, Robert. We thought she'd put up with it. But wolf's blood is not water. I'd be calmer than the older brother and sister, otherwise how would I ever agreed to replace Brandon just because Jon Arryn said so."

"What... What?!..."

Robert couldn't find the words, but he couldn't help but express his indignation. Cersei stared intently into Stark's eyes and tried to guess what he was leading to, but still did not say a word, although at first she wanted to quarrel with her husband right there.

"Lyanna and Rhaegar were young romantic idiots, both fell madly in love and were generally worth each other. One was composing ballads, the other was mocking the knights during the tournament because of Howland Reed. At that time, I could not take my eyes off Ashara Dayne myself, so I can roughly understand what she felt when she realized that she could not be with the one she loved. And there was nothing stopping her from taking what she wanted. Wolves usually do that, Robert. I'm the odd one, I was brought up in the same castle with you, so obviously it had some effect on me..."

Cersei barely refrained from laughing out of nowhere - it wasn't the time or the place, but it was clear that Eddard was trying to joke even in such a situation. Robert clearly did not understand the joke, but decided not to pay attention, because he saw a much more pressing issue.

"Ned, what are you saying? How are you... Why you?..."

"Because you're living in the past that didn't exist, Robert," Eddard said wearily and put his hand on the king's forearm. "He didn't kidnap her. She just let herself take what she wanted, as Brandon did with Lady Barbry Dustin in his youth, curse his bullshit, because she hates me now - ugh, these women... And how you did it when only a blind and deaf man who lived in a mute family did not know about your affairs, Robert! Lianna knew and it was then that she spoke to our father for the first time, but when did fathers listen to children in matters of engagement, am I right, my queen?"

"Why do you say that, Lord Stark?" Cersei wasn't ready for Eddard to abruptly switch the attention to her. "Why are you talking about the past, which has long passed and which cannot be changed?"

"It just caught up with us, my lady," Eddard shrugged. "Someone definitely killed Jon Arryn. And if it wasn't one of the three of us, congratulations, Robert. You've got some quality conspiracy under your ass."

"Why do you think the three of us have a motive?" Cersei decided to clarify. "And... once again, the conspiracy?"

"My lady, it's simple."

Stark turned to the statue and stretched out his hand to absentmindedly stroke the stone direwolf, depicted in not the most life-size. Robert, in those moments, was trying to take in the information and gasping for air, but he couldn't squeeze anything out of himself. And Eddard continued.

"I asked you just a few minutes ago, Robert, if you still live in blissful ignorance. As I see, you do. That's why your motive disappears, so I and the Queen remain. With the queen, everything is simple - the same motive. Revenge and power. Well, I just didn't do it, although obviously I could, if I was ever worried about politics in the South, and not about the wights and walkers in the North. So in the event that none of the three of us ordered the murder of the Hand, we have a player who either wants all the power for himself, or wants to take all the power specifically from you two. Now let's think about what to do. And then we'll go feast - they're baking a boar right now, and skewered red fish... I think all this serious talk made me hungry. By the way, Robert, I had a couple of plans that need to be considered in the near future. This is important for the Wall and the North as a whole, but it can also be useful for the economy of King's Landing."​

 

[Ratmor]

How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view:
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
Sonnet 148 by William Shakespeare​

​

The wife of the Warden of the North.

It always meant a lot to her. Family, duty and honor were the foundation of upbringing in the House Tully, and she always knew that she would be promised to the High Lord and would be happy to bear his children.

The engagement to the heir of Winterfell was expected, because their fathers were friends, Catelyn was glad to finally had her future laid out to her. Poor Petyr, Lisa's beloved friend and Lisa's young love, always hoped to bind himself to her House even more tightly, more than the bonds of a fosterling.

His morbid pride and stupidity committed in relation to her betrothed decided a lot for Petyr, because it was after that that he lost almost all his reputation in the eyes of her father and was forced to look for another defender for his small house. Which was successfully done during Robert's coup that started at the time.

But Catelyn, neither in the past nor to this day, could not fully rejoice for the successful outcome in the life of her childhood friend when her betrothed was lying in the crypt. And the love for him, which had already begun to flare up from the first moments of their interactions, had to be directed to the middle son of the House Stark. A noble man who, it seemed, would not have betrayed her in word or deed, but had a bastard who was older than her firstborn and was almost a complete copy of Eddard - dark brown hair and gray eyes. Except that the facial features were softer and the hair curled differently.

Brandon was jolly, tall and strong, it was easy to fall in love with him. "The Wild Wolf" was what his friends and enemies called him. Eddard is called the Quiet.

They definitely didn't love each other when they shared a bed and conceived Robb. Catelyn knew this and saw it, but they both understood that family and house are much more important than feelings. After all, in her youth, all the older women always said, sharing their wisdom at needlework or after staying in the Sept by the castle, that love comes with time and humility.

For Catelyn, it came.

She and Ned were united by children, household, duty and bed. But very little after the birth of Rickon, as red-haired as the rest of her children, except for Arya of course, he changed. Her husband started talking about reforms, rebuilding the castle and the long Summer, which forshadows the long Winter.

It was as if he had decided that his duty to her had been fulfilled and the only thing he might need from her was to inquire about the health of the youngest of the Starks.

The rest of the children were gradually getting out of her control. By the Seven, he even allowed Arya and Sansa to practice with weapons and ride horses with him! And most importantly, even Sansa, her sweet gentle Sansa, decided to try. Notably it happened, after Ned, right in front of the children, made a comment intended specifically for Catelyn. He looked at her with usual coldness, staring into her eyes with obviously feigned ignorance, and saying that there is no unnecessary knowledge in life, and "if someone does not agree, then let them stay a spiteful log they are."

While she was trying to find words, her husband's face suddenly scrunched in some faint semblance of a guilty frown, as if he simply let these words slip out of his mouth and did not expect it of himself. He then sighed wearily and turned his gaze to the children frozen at the dinner table, watching the parents' quarrel so closely for almost the first time in a decade.

The eldest son then almost choked on his food, and Greyjoy tried to suppress a grin. The girls and Bran didn't understand much and were rather perplexed, having stopped messing with food.

John also looked up at Ned in bewilderment, as if he was not at all interested in what was happening and was thinking about something completely different. Then Ned smiled awkwardly at him, barely twitching the edges of his lips.

Cat would never have caught this if she hadn't been staring at her husband, trying to come up with anything that would help her win this argument.

He was encouraging his bastard when he should have been thinking about how he was talking to his wife! As if the well-being of this dirty stain on the reputation of House Stark meant more to him than the well-being of family and duty! A spiteful log, how dared he!

This man had never before stooped to such underhanded insults, and most likely Catelyn herself invented that it was an insult, and not a stupid choice of words. But for some reason in her heart, previously calm, especially when there was no bastard in sight, and surrounded by warmth of the family circle, the pulling pain settled. It appeared every time she looked into her husband's ever cold eyes, sometimes shimmering with mockery if they had to argue about some child-rearing reasons.

If the topics of their skirmishes concerned something else, then it seemed to her that her husband seemed to have awakened from a dream in which he had been since their wedding. It seemed like he was using all the knowledge he had to improve and remake everything he saw around him.

In those moments when he fiercely scolded the castle blacksmith for some mistakes in processing, whatever it was, or carpenters, workers and masons who had added in number because of the construction that had begun, Ned's face became as lively and bright as she remembered young Brandon. But after a few moments of her watching him, whenever it was, Ned would put on his lord mask again and look at her with a familiar gaze that contained ice and frost.

Similar to those occasional glimpses, Eddard perked up when he realized that the king was coming to them. Kat was finally able to understand, as it seemed to her then, how such an honest man as Stark could have an affair and, moreover, a bastard. It seemed to her then that she had solved this riddle - he changed when he explained his ideas and directed their fulfillment, and when it came to his childhood friend, King Robert.

Catelyn could probably understand such feelings, because every time Liz mentioned Petyr in letters, a warm feeling settled in the heart of the wife of the Lord Paramount of the North, reminding of home and those days when the three of them could sit for days with books by the river or chat in the library for so long that the Maester personally came to oust them.

The day of the King's arrival changed a lot.

Catelyn realized how poorly she knew her husband, despite how simply she fell in love with him and how simply she imagined to herself that he fell in love with her in return.

He didn't look like that at the pretty maids, with whom, as she knew perfectly well from the rumors of the servants, the young Greyjoy copulated, nor at her when it was time to go to bed and he familiarly entered her, painfull and deep. She had long wanted to feel his seed in her again, to prevent this lack of love corroding their family, to finally figure out what was amiss!

That day, Catelyn realized that she had never known Eddard or his love, no matter what she thought before.

Because for the first time she saw in him that strange and barely familiar fire that sparkled in his icy gray eyes. His eyes followed the movements of the Queen and lingered on her hair or face when her husband thought that no one was looking at him.

His face honestly did not express anything that could cast a shadow of dishonor on their family. But that wasn't what struck her.

The Queen did not notice these looks, the ones that Catelyn herself could only dream of. The Queen periodically glanced at her husband, and a toothless smile slipped over her plump lips, for some reason not at all royal, rather soft and permissive. Besides, that smile unfailingly gave Catelyn a special displeasure, manifested in a slight tingle of jealousy that she usually felt when looking at the bastard.

For some reason, Catelyn did not empathize with Cersei Lannister at all when the King got drunk and started pestering the maids, who were pleased with such attention. But it felt wrong to some extent, not to empathize, because hers were simple glances, and Kat could even assume that she was inventing something that was not there.

If it wasn't for the fact that Eddard deliberately met the Queen's eyes, first glancing at his wife's face and blinking dismissively at her unspoken question when their gazes crossed. A couple of moments after the two women, who were sitting side by side, directly opposite Ned and the already empty king's chair, noticed the behavior of His Highness and barely managed to keep a calm expression on their faces so as not to drop their own honor, Ned looked at them.

Kat glanced sideways at the Queen to see from her expression exactly what the Warden of the North and her lawful husband meant by that look. He must have said something with his lips, because the queen's face seemed to light up and she barely held back a laugh. And then she leaned up to Catelyn's ear, brushing her golden curl against the fabric of the dress on the other woman's shoulder, and spoke.

"Your husband has a very entertaining sense of humor, dear Catelyn."

Cersei didn't need her answer - the wife of the Warden of the North suddenly realized. Her tone was patronizing and somewhat surprised. Catelyn didn't want to believe it, but the third component of the Queen's sentiment when she talked about the Warden of the North was undoubtedly delight.

Kat did not doubt her love for her husband and family. But never before had this love brought her so many doubts about Eddard.

 

[Ratmor]

Human fatherhood is a social invention



Something resembling what this lady said in

Mead M. Male and Female. A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Morrow. N. Y., 1949​

​

There are things that you just don't expect, because you, such a moron, didn't foresee it because of selective blindness. Just as it was with Ned Stark, who perceived his life quite differently from me.

There are things that you can prevent, which I did when I stopped the interaction of the twins in the form which it was shown in the plot known to me.

And there are things that happen according to a pattern set in advance by some sick story, and whatever you do is fate, which should lead to the fulfillment of another fate.

Bran, a juvenile fool he is, fell from the tower nonetheless.

But this event should be approached with all care, to reveal, so to speak, everything that's been happening almost since the beginning of time, or rather, to be more specific, from the moment I went to bed in our no longer shared solar.

Then Kat came to me, deciding to share her doubts, information and discontent. Then I loudly sent her to bug off into the fog or whatever, along with her incredibly unexpected wish, empowered at that point by her screeching, to send Jonny away. My rational, talented and "dragons lurking in the quiet", that Jonny, the legitimate son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen.

Besides, almost without restraining my joy, I promised not to interfere if she suddenly wanted to ride with Bran and Rickon first to the Riverlands in order to pay respects to her relatives, and then to the purebred Andals in their nest, and may that sick bitch Lisa get hiccups by the Moon Door, honestly.

These double standards of Catelyn were infuriating me. Positively and loudly, she reminds me of how Brandon the Wild Jerk was. Well, Ned Stark did sign up for it, so his wife picks my brain matter with a spoon when she wants to reproach me for disobeying her stupid standards. As stupid as she is, if I may say so myself.

And therefore constantly she refers to the memory of the Wild Wolf, quite twisted for such a long time. But to try and ytolerate a quiet boy who has never desired anything but a healthy relationship? She immediately turns on a jealous woman of a sky-high level, as if I gave any reason! And Brandon was, by the way, the same alternatively gifted one who strangled himself in moments of humiliation by the Mad King. Whose wits, presumably, were passed to my junior son, but that's a completely different story...

In general, Kat reminded me a little of Robert, only without fucking. She instead has the Light of Seven for brains, save Sansa from this scourge our native Weirwood! And this sister of hers! Lisa, dear to the purse and sometimes to the scrotum of Baelish.

Ugh.

That's the truth, there are people who spoil the names they wear! I had a good friend whose name was Lisa and who went to the fencing club with me as a child. After I cast away my spada and started running around with the reenactors, shooting arrows and waving a blunt two-handed weapon around, we talked so rarely that the friendship became a little less actual. Although it did not cease to exist despite everything.

So, that Lisa was the best friend in my whole stupid life, because the friendship was selfless and never ended with the eternal fear of all different-sex friends - falling in love and everything accompanying it. And now in this new wonderful world there is a woman with the same name, but with such a shitty personality that I even feel sorry for Jon Arryn.

Though it's more like a kind of male solidarity of married to Tully plays part. Not the real pity. This one I still have to find after I realized who I should be grateful to for a happy family life of Eddard Stark and for the pig on the throne, with whom I need to be friends even if my eyes bleed and my ears bleed. Though the boar has sensed the war and will probably put himself in order at least for a bit. That I will be impossibly happy about, because it's better to nobly and bravely die in a clash than how it was in canon. At least that's more useful.

Robert, his entourage and some of my vassals who decided to join in, merrily shouting went away to see off the Lannister brothers. Those two were accompanied by my younger brother so they will inspect the Wall for the king. The King was to have his hunt on the way back, and I was to leave the next day to join my royal friend on his hunt. The friend still confirmed his friendliness and understanding of the conditions set for him. Though that southern nonsense of his in the style of "I'll put all heads on spikes" still tried to break through when he forgot who he was in front of, where and what he was threatening to do.

I have always been particularly gifted in talking my shit out of things. That I've been doing in order to throw part of the Walkers'problem on the shoulders of everyone who gets into grabbing distance.

With Robert, I was cutting it really close to the truth, purely for the sake of saving the world, and did not let him forget about my plans at those moments when he was not doing what - in his particularly brilliant opinion - a king should do. And that's to fuck everything that attracted him, has vagina and limbs, and also drink the best wine from my cellars.

The last factor interested me insofar as, since I haven't been drinking it since my spontaneously formed blacksmith shop in Wintertown solved the problem with a particularly affordable antiseptic, my uncle from the village will forever be in my memory as the source of most of the ideas related to the household. That is, if they're not familiar to previous Eddard Stark.

In general, a moonshine machine made of shit and sticks is, of course, another achievement by the standards of ordinary self-inserted achievers, but in general I'm not throwing too much knowledge of this kind around. Also my monotonous and quite cultured urban life, and no quirks towards survival in the event of an apocalypse or nuclear war, gave me no time to accumulate the knowledge that is so necessary in this miserable reality.

Actually, it was only thanks to some knowledge that I got out of the kindness of his heart from a talkative uncle that we began to harvest the simplest activated carbon from young birches and beeches, although it all started with my banal unwillingness to mix wine with water every time I wanted to drink.

I got the children hooked on a carbon filter, and the whole staff, and soon the whole town under the castle wall, because diarrhea and flatulence are a complete bull in any century and any universe. And with the northern diet of meat, variations of its offal and pea pudding - both of these medical conditions are always somewhere nearby. Well, in general, I remember our military ratios - there were filter pills. And their necessity, are heads above every other component of the ratio. For it is possible to find food, we are not in the central Sahara after all, but not to get poisoned - this is a completely different story...

Because this boy, the innocent boy, even if it is difficult for me to call him my son, despite vague memories, as if read in a book, and not lived, is now lying on a wooden paving. His direwolf howls in alarm, someone of the servants is already calling the maester. And I look down from the windows and with an inner shudder, I would like to know why, I feel Cersei's palm, small and rather frozen, judging by its temperature, slipping into mine and squeezing across, unexpectedly strong and even painful.

Then I turned to the Queen and simply lost control of myself.

A couple of moments later, when I was already sitting dumbfounded by the wall near the window and buried my suddenly clouded gaze somewhere ahead of me, she hugged me so that I rest my forehead against her jeweled and gilded wide belt under her chest. Those kinds look like some practical alternative to a corset. Her knees, wrapped in a couple of layers of a maroon dress, bump against my legs as she presses me even tighter by the back of my head, so that I feel pain from the patterns on her waist jewelry digging into my face.

"We have to finish this."

I hear my voice as if from the side, and she nods briefly - I feel movement above and hear her muffled response.

"Yes, Lord Stark, this is too important a question for me to leave unresolved. But..."

"I forbade him. Damn wolf blood," for some reason I thought that and decided to ramble out loud, I don't know why. "Damn Kat, forbids physical punishment. Little idiots always need their behavior corrected through light bodily harm, this is the unwritten law of this times, there is no time to drag your feet and you could end up like this, if not... And I'm idiot as well, with you damn southern women, everything is always goes up the arse..."

"Are you done crying?"

Her voice was now colder than the snow on the roof of the tower we were in, and was rapidly approaching minus fifty on the Celsius scale, like in the summer of Antarctica.

"Thank you, my lady. I... I will wait for the next opportunity to talk, but it is unlikely that anything will change. And I guess I really don't think what I just said," I raised my head, freed from her embrace and looked her in the eyes. "About southern women. You've been very helpful right now, you know."

"It was intuitive."

She shrugged her shoulders and stood up, lightly brushing off her dress just below the knees. It was irrevocably ruined, but to any local, as accustomed to wealth as this woman, it would've made no difference for the most part.

"Few people care about me in any way, Cersei. I have to go control the maester. Bran hasn't been taken away yet. If he broke his spine above the waist, it will be much more difficult and may end in paralysis. If the lower back is damaged, then I have good news for Kat. Our son may be able to walk again. Help me with the letters to the Old Town. If the Queen asks, they will answer faster. These... used for a couple of centuries without proper cleaning, chamber pots respond to me as if they are doing me a favor. I'm too dull to have scientific conversations, you see. I won't even ask Robert, he would rather offer to finish my boy off than save, I know him..."

"Why do you think I don't support him in this?"

"Imagine that this is your Tommen, and then ask yourself. The father is, of course, not the mother, but I love my children. After all, when the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but his pack survives."

 

[Ratmor]

Anxiety will take away your peace today, but it is unlikely to solve problems tomorrow. Worry less, think more. Always think, but don't be afraid to act. My children should be aware of the dangers of inaction.​

Cersei slowly emptied the cup of warm, fragrant wine in an attempt to distract herself from her unusual concern about Jaime - they rarely parted for long, they were rarely separated by such a long distance. Her beloved brother along with her not-too-beloved brother went to see a local landmark, the old ice wall, which, according to the old legends, was protection from the very walkers that Ned Stark was talking about. And no one even ridiculed him for it. And there was a reason - the Lord was obviously too enthusiastic about grumkins and snarks...

It was the scariest thing to think otherwise.

That's why the anxiety about her brother's absence was odd - after all, he only went to assess the deplorable state of the Wall on the order of the King, as a member of the Royal Guard.

If not for the plans of the Warden of the North, which he decided to implement at the most inopportune moment for this, everything would've been much better. Brother and sister would've met, drunk wine and made love. These were empty thoughts now, and she knew who to blame for that.

Jaime had not expressed the slightest wish to go with Tyrion to the Wall until the moment he was given the order. The Wall is a place for murderers, thieves, rapists and unwanted children, but not for the King's Guard, as Cersei herself hastened to remind Robert when it came to Jaime.

Eddard Stark took away from her the opportunity to stay in the presence of her brother, convincing Robert that only a trusted person of the King is able to assess the degree of desolation of the Wall, through which, according to evidently crazy eyewitnesses, the wights and walkers will soon climb.

Of course, Stark prepared in advance, sent his brother-watchman to all the fortresses along with a detachment of scouts and troops of his own vassals. All information about the fortresses of the Wall was already ready, it just needed to be picked up. And someone had to make sure that the Commander of the Watch described the problems accurately. After all, only the king's confidence and relatively accurate data, as Eddard himself said, would be able to help in the subsequent actions of the Iron Throne in this regard.

The abandoned castles of the Wall will be handed over to the representatives of all the most noble houses of Westeros for restoration. Only on these terms does Eddard agree to "watch Robert's back," as he put it, when Robert, Cersei and the Warden of the North were returning from the Stark crypt.

That's why it's needed to get information about the state of the Wall in order to provide it to the southern lords as some sort of guide to action. And this was also a quote from Eddard's utterly convincing speech on the way out of the crypt.

Then there was the feast, the announcement of the restoration of the Wall by the forces of all the Seven Kingdoms, and the assurance of the loyalty and respect of the Warden of the North to Robert Baratheon.

Cersei put down her goblet and reread her letter to her father, which she intended to send before Tyrion and Jaime returned. He truly needed to know about Stark's odd plot, about the alleged cause of Arryn's death... Which wasn't arranged by her, although it was incredibly profitable for her. As it was beneficial to her father.

And that's why Tyrion, with his multicolored eyes pumped out from anxiety and surprise and his breath of a drunkard that she had to endure all their hasty conversation, told her that he simply did not have time to compose a letter himself if he wanted to go to the Wall as quickly as possible.

He handed her a hastily sketched sheet with topics that needed to be touched upon in the letter, and was off in the morning after the feast. Such a combination of efforts was extremely rare for Tyrion and Cersei, but both understood that their father should receive a warning about the oddities in Stark's behavior as soon as possible.

None of Tywin Lannister's children wanted to feel his displeasure.

Cersei blew off the golden sand off the parchment. She had previously sprinkled it on the ink. Then she rolled the message into a tube. She was about to get up and go to the raven cages brought with the royal family's cortege, but there was a knock on her door.

"Your Grace!"

"It's open!" Cersei replied and put the letter on the tabletop, so that she could get up and meet those who decided to bother her.

The door was opened by a White Cloak, whose face was for some reason puzzled when he met the Queen's stare, but then the extent of his surprise became clear, because the most unexpected person of all that could have entered her chambers was in the doorway.

"Your Grace," Sansa Stark curtsied, then looked at the Queen with the cold eyes of her father. "My father sent me with a message to you, Your Grace."

Cersei held out her hand, expecting it to be, like the last time, a brief note.

"Your Grace, my father wanted to tell you," the red-haired girl continued to speak, seemingly not noticing the Queen's outstretched hand, "that he would like to see you in the part of the castle being rebuilt. At the time of the arrival of guests from the capital, all repair work there has been stopped. That's why father believes that your meeting will be protected there from any unwanted ears."

"He could have sent a servant with a note," the queen said in a matter-of-fact tone, not even waiting for an answer from the eldest of Stark's daughters.

"Father likes to give us quests," the girl shrugged and smiled slyly. "Your Grace, Father has given me permission to ask you a question. May I?"

"Girl, this is impudence," Cersei said, not without a stingy smile in response. "Ask away."

"Do you like lemon cakes?"

"I won't say that this is my favorite sweet... I can eat it, nothing more."

The girl slightly frowned, but it did not escape Cersei's gaze, which is why she decided to clarify.

"Why do you ask, young lady?"

"Father said he would allow them to be served three times a day if the Queen liked them as well. I'm the only one in the family besides Jon who loves them. And Jon won't ask my father for such a small thing, but I would like to treat him one last time."

"One last time? Jon is your father's bastard, isn't he? Such a shame..."

"Yes, but everyone knows that he is our cousin! I just want to leave good memories of his last days in Winterfell. And lemon cakes will help that a lot," the girl blushed and added. "He is the bastard of our father's elder brother, Your Grace. I am not ashamed to mingle with him, no matter what our mother says. He is our family. And I wanted to ask you to play along, Your Grace, if you don't mind."

Cersei laughed and lifted the face of the completely embarrassed daughter of Ned Stark by the chin. Sansa Stark blushed even more and awkwardly squeezed out the answering chuckle.

"My girl, as a gratitude for your message, I will tell Eddard about your lemon cakes when I see him today. This does not present any complication for me. By the way, when exactly I'll be seeing him today?"

"Father asked me to tell you that he'll be waiting for you in the tower after luncheon. Thank you, Your Grace! Can I go now?"

Cersei, with a smile and a move of her palm, got rid of the girl, who was obviously stupid and impressionable. So she closed the door behind her, not hiding her joy about the lemon cakes.

Cersei Lannister unfolded the letter to her father and decided to add a couple of lines.

No one in the South ever suspected that Eddard Stark was raising not his bastard.

The Queen paused for a moment before folding her letter again.

"That means, he did not cheat on his wife," Cersei whispered to herself and waved away her own thoughts a moment later. "It doesn't matter."

"Your Grace!" one of her handmaids was at the door after knocking. "The repast is expected in an hour."

Cersei beckoned the girl with an imperious gesture, she understood everything instantly, ready to serve.

The queen began to undress, glancing towards the warm bath that had been waiting for her for half an hour and therefore, indeed, was warm. She touched her breasts - the nipples were unpleasantly hardened by the sudden change in temperature.

The handmaid carefully gathered the Queen's hair under a hairpin and then picked up her garment off the stone floor.

Cersei sank into the bath and reached for the scented soap. There was nothing more pleasant than a ready bathroom at any time of day or night.

Still, she was beginning to like the North at the moment much more than when their procession had just crossed the Neck.

"And the letter could wait until the afternoon..." the queen muttered to herself and soaped her shoulders with pleasure, and a moment later she leant back on the side of the tub and closed her eyes.

The warm bathroom and hot wine were the cure for any complex thoughts. And that was exactly the kind of remedy Cersei Lannister needed, when unreasonable anxiety and odd - especially for such, as it turned out, proper Stark - looks full of lustful admiration led her into a twitchy state. Though something made Cersei smile.

"And yet such a naive girl, Sansa Stark. It may come in handy."

***

Eddard Stark was sitting on his spread-out fur cloak, laid-back and crossing his legs, hiding under the window so that his profile could not be seen in the tower window. He could sit in the depths on the same furs and not worry that someone might see him, but this could prevent his persistent reading of some parchment.

"My wife's sister, Lisa Arryn, writes about the most unpleasant things," Eddard said into the air, turning his head slightly as soon as he realized that the Queen was already close enough to be able to hear him. "And my wife believes her."

"I didn't think to hear such flexible wording for a northerner, my lord," Cersei froze in the doorway and let out a high feminine laugh, not typical of her in her usual state, to which Eddard lifted his chin and looked at her in bewilderment, although he didn't know Cersei in her usual state. "That was a compliment, Lord Stark."

After that the Queen's voice was controllably seductive - a little lower than usual. This woman knew that men are greedy for everything they think is obtainable. Quite an example of this is Robert Baratheon, who did not miss a single skirt. She wasn't going to seduce the Warden of the North, but it was worth having certain approaches to this man. Because he, along with the royal family, is heading to King's Landing to become the Hand. And if he's giving her such an opportunity all on his own, then it would be foolish not to take advantage of it.

"Is he beating you?" Edward suddenly asked, looking up at her sullenly. "I see that he looks at you without love. And your eldest son sometimes looks at his father as if he wants to strangle him with his own hands. Even I have become attached to my wife, as much as she is not my type. What is the problem?"

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, my lord."

Cersei's voice faltered, and she was about to back away, but vital, she felt it in her gut, news from the Valley, where Jon Arryn's wife quickly hid immediately after his death, could be useful in her upcoming letter to the Lord-father.

"Well, how about this. I'll tell you about what Lisa Arryn writes. And you will tell me about what could've been waiting for my sister in marriage to our dashing king."

Cersei looked at Stark as if he had spoken in the language of Old Valyria instead of the Common Tongue. Lannister couldn't understand his motives. And Eddard was in no hurry to continue - he silently pointed the surprised queen to a place on the furs beside him and handed her the parchment.

" What is it? That's complete nonsense?!" the queen exclaimed, grabbing and quickly running through the sheet with her eyes.

Ned Stark just winced and quickly touched his lips, barely shaking his head. So the Queen prudently fell silent.

"Stop yelling at me all the time, Your Grace. Silence is the best thing I've ever heard."

"I don't like silence," the Queen muttered and sat down next to him. "What could be worse than complete silence?"

"I'm not talking about this kind of silence," Lord Stark frowned. "That silence also has its own sound, and it's not that very pleasant. I'm talking about enjoying the absence of loud human speech near my ears."

"I'll keep your silence, then."

"I'll see to it. uh-huh."

"It's not nonsense, is it?" she thought a bit and muttered.

"It's a cipher. Only my wife and Lisa Arryn know about it, as I understood from my wife's explanations. And it says bluntly that it was you Lannisters who killed Jon Arryn. And I would have believed her if it wasn't for what you and Robert and I talked about in the crypt. You do understand, my queen, that I will cover for you and curtail the investigation if it was you, after all?"

"I didn't poison the Hand," Cersei said firmly, and immediately realized how stupidly she had fallen for a lie that actually didn't happen, but Eddard seemed to take her slip as confirmation of some of his thoughts.

"So you think he was poisoned, too? You may exhale, uh-huh."

Cersei did not notice how she held her breath under Stark's gaze, but immediately bared her teeth at her weakness and hissed.

"Does it give you some sort of pleasure?"

"Sure," Edward shrugged, then rolled up the parchment and put it in a leather pouch hanging from his belt. "A very low number of people can afford to make the Queen speechless with impunity."

"Why do you think that's with impunity?" Cersei replied in an indifferent tone and measured her husband's vassal with a disparaging look. "I could..."

"I noticed your bitchy nature at first glance, my queen," now Eddard grinned. "Imagine, someone sees through your games, Your Grace. And yes, I know for sure that you didn't poison the Hand, but someone from Lisa Arryn's entourage or Lisa herself is sure that if I go to King's Landing, I will find confirmation that you are involved. I'm supposed to find your motive, Cersei Lannister. Will I find it, Cersei, answer me honestly?"

"I don't simply think he was poisoned," Cersei said.

She decided to lift the veil of lies and also share information. This information could be valuable of course only for such a person who is going to join the Small Council only in the future, who still doesn't understand the slightest bit about the Capital politics, a person like Eddard Stark.

"Maester Pycelle has friendly relations with my father, so he told me about his suspicions. Equally, it could be both intestinal colic and the effect of poison.

"Colic... I keep a diary with everything I eat. If I am poisoned, my children will always know what with and how exactly. I recommend it, by the way. Keep a diary, I mean. Encrypt it however you want, but it will be a very interesting source of data about our lives for posterity. Selected moments may even be published as a book."

"Why are you even thinking about this kind of thing, Eddard Stark," Cersei breathed out and nervously straightened her maroon skirts, getting comfortable next to him. "So Lisa Arryn has successfully made it to the Vale and she's plotting out of there..."

"What's your motive, Cersei? Why would you need Arryn's death?"

"I didn't kill him!" the queen snapped again and, barely managing to calm her breathing, continued. "You told me about your wife's sister letter. What for?"

"Because you didn't kill. And we need to understand who is trying to start a war between the Grand Houses of Westeros. Ask your father, Cersei, if he wants a war with the Starks on the threshold of winter. And I'll tell you in advance - no one wants to fight the North on its terms. We know when winter is coming. Winter is coming with us."

"Is that a threat?" Cersei said hoarsely, not taking her cat-like green eyes off Stark's narrowed gaze. "If so, then Lannisters always...""

"Not the only ones who pay their debts," Stark interrupted, but then he closed his eyes and exhaled. "But Winter is coming, I feel it in every breath of the Weirwood Godswood... In every howl of the direwolves of my pack... I feel it, Cersei. The magic is coming back. The White Walkers have awakened. I don't want to figure out what the royal court is like in this chaos. Therefore, I will support those who sit on the Throne. And I absolutely don't care who it will be if my idea with the restoration of the Wall will work out under their rule. Therefore, whoever wants to overthrow Robert, whoever gets to him through the Arryns, this someone is an enemy of House Lannister, House Baratheon, and House Stark. And as you know, dear Queen, the enemy of my enemy..."

"Our friend."

"That's right," Stark stretched out his hands to the fur cape that had slipped off Cersei's shoulders and pulled the edges a little higher. "'Tis breezy here," he explained. "And now you're going to tell me what Robert Baratheon did to you that was so hideous. So that any accusations in your direction from your foes are broken on my "so what" as often as possible. Anything you can tell me."

"Yes, he beat me. In front of servants. In front of the members of the Small Council. In front of Joffrey. In... I don't want to sleep with him, Eddard. He remembers your sister as if she's still alive, as if..."

"As if you have to live up to her dreams just because you were unlucky enough to become a spouse. As if it's okay to constantly chide about something you can never give because you're not him."

"Your wife..."

"Was in love with Brandon the Wild Wolf at first sight. Always compares me to him. Still compares me to him. I hate this helplessness. I can't imagine what it's like for you as a woman... At least it's impossible to take me by force," Eddard grinned at the stupid joke, but when he looked into Cersei's face, he turned pale abruptly and somehow seemed more dangerous. "You're not playing right now, are you? Not pretending. Don't... He is my... He's my friend. He wouldn't."

"I'm his wife," Cersei didn't shed a tear when her throat was seized by a lump of old memories, but Eddard managed to notice the suppressed emotions and therefore reacted this way. "This is expected."

"And that's most vile," Eddard's broad palm landed on Cersei's knee and clasped it. "I'm sorry."

She slapped his cheek without thinking. A second after Eddard's silent acceptance of the slap, they heard a stifled sigh and strange rustling sounds, as if a mouse ran or a bird flapped its wings.

For a moment, Eddard's eyes lit up with an unpleasant and painful realization, and he jumped on the spot, almost fell out of the window opening, and Cersei followed dumbfounded, squeezing between Eddard's shoulders and the walls of the window opening. It was covered with ivy and slippery, disgusting moss, on which she accidentally caught her nails."

"He saw us," Cersei said, stunned. "He saw us and this slap frightened him, and I... he..."

"This is Bran."

Cersei finally noticed through a strange stupor a desperately yapping direwolf, he was rushing towards the training ground. She slowly repeated out loud what she finally recognised.

"This is your son."

Author's note: The next chapter is Sansa's, but I need some time to get it done. I think you'd be surprised. I'd be happy to know what you think of this work. Thank you for reading.

 

[Ratmor]

IDK why my program keeps changing the names, but I am really sorry for typos! Going to change hundred percent.

Also, there's like no beta read for it. It totally needs it.

 

[Ratmor]

If you have one child, you are the father. If there are two, you are the referee.

Quote from the depths of the author's subconscious, surely someone smart said that before​

The door to the Queen's chambers slammed behind her, and the royal guard, she didn't know the name of, measured her with an odd stare.

This stare made her want to draw a dagger.

"Ser," Sansa bowed slightly, still flushed and confused, but that didn't stop her from trying to switch to something other than the odd emotions caused by the Queen's demeanor. "May I learn your name, ser?"

"Meryn Trant, Lady Sansa," the knight's voice was low and not unpleasant. "Why do you ask, Lady Sansa?"

"My brother really wished to train with a member of the king's guard, but yet did not find the time or the words to ask one. Could you..."

"Sure, Lady Sansa."

The man broke into a polite smile, but Sansa stayed a bit uncomfortable, although perhaps she was still under impression of what happened in Queen Cersei chambers.

"I look forward to it."

"Any time you like, Ser Meryn. Brother Robb with Jon and Theon will be waiting for you when you say so."

This was also her father's task. He explained that Robb had been wondering for a long time how he could prove himself against one of the White Cloaks. Therefore, at every opportunity, each of the older Stark children should have provided Robb and the other guys with the opportunity to train with someone from the guard.

That is why when Sansa realized that one of the guards was standing at the door to the Queen's chambers, as it should be, she decided to kill two birds with one stone, as her father likes to say.

Sansa looked into Ser Meryn Trant's face, sending the knight a timid smile, mentally clutching the hilt of her dagger. It was not with her now, as well as the direwolf that usually stayed close and left a feeling of back being covered. Even if Lady behaved almost as quietly as John's Ghost, she was no less dangerous.

Sansa turned around and went to report back to her father. She immediately wiped undue emotions from her face, but still felt the blood rushing to her cheeks and ears.

Her wolf was now with the rest of the pack in the Godswood, and Arya was quite possibly running with the wolves. Arya was allowed. She was still too young and too hot-tempered to receive such tasks from her father.

Her last task, as emotionally odd as the conversation with the Queen, was to make Domeric Bolton feel at home. He got into some kind of trouble when her father decided to go to the Boltons and look at the obsidian pits at the foot of the Dreadfort. Those, at her father's request, Roose Bolton began to exploit.

At that time neither she, nor her father, nor the other Starks had any idea that there was a threat from beyond the Wall. And this threat was not in the pathetic frostbitten wildlings, but in the risen from the dead and awakened White Walkers. But when the only place where obsidian comes from is distant Asshai, even Sansa could understand the benefits of such pits in the North.

Neither Domeric nor Eddard wanted to tell more than was necessary about what exactly happened to the boy. Dad said it was the Bolton House business, and it wasn't for the Starks to get into such things - it might be considered an insult. The father said that he had already done everything he could as their suzerain, but he was not going to get personal, as well as telling details that only the Bolton had the right to tell.

She had to approach her quest creatively, as her father likes to say. She gifted Domeric her harp with direwolves on it's pillar part, because one day she saw his wistful look cast in the direction of Jeyne Poole. The girl was learning to play the harp at that point and humming something to herself. Under other circumstances, Jeyne never got any longing looks from Domeric, so it was obvious.

In addition to this, Sansa thought of writing a collection of songs herself, compiling it from all the mentions in the Winterfell library, and from all the stories of the servants about their favorite songs and singers. It took more than one week, but it was no longer about Domeric, but about the enthusiasm of both Sansa, Maester Luwin and Old Nan, whom the young Stark did not hesitate to involve in her research.

She decorated this book appropriately, in the colors of the Bolton house. Though she felt squeamish once her imagination went to sewing the book cover not with pigskin, but human skin, as in Old Nan's tales. The father, by the way, delighted at the very idea of this collection. He almost seemed like little Bran when he was told that a sweet cake for his birthday would be with the lemon filling. It was that birthday when Dad said that Sansa infested everyone she could with her love for lemon cakes.

And the second songbook, rewritten, supplemented by her father and decorated in the gray-white colors of the Starks, was sent to the Reach, to the Citadel of Maesters in Oldtown. There was not a book quite like that on her father's memory. Apparently, because noone actually bothered, as her father said, and he was being awkwardly truthful about it. But Sansa was still very pleased to learn that she'd done something that had not been done before her, that her work was truly appreciated and encouraged.

Then she realized that she likes not only to simply sing and embroider. She liked to create. To approach her quests creatively.

She had the task before last. It was before Domeric, who now, after almost two years in Winterfell, responded to Domix, got himself a Myrish crossbow and made friends with Theon Greyjoy more than with anyone else.

The task was to make sure that Arya at least tried to strive in the rest of her exercises, and not just in training her shooting, swordfighting and horseriding. It was then Sansa first realized what it was like to approach things creatively.

Her father explained to her that because Arya is younger and does something worse than her older sister, she could simply stop trying. And then neither Sansa would get better, nor Arya, and the relationship would be spoiled. Then her father asked her, more like begged and not ordered, to tell him about those occasions when Sansa is praised as reproach to Arya.

Sansa counted, even wrote it down. And it became somewhat difficult for her to speak coherently and loudly when she realized how often Arya hears that she is worse. But she is just younger, that's what Dad said!

And then she took the list to her father.

At the time she realized several indisputable things. First, there are limits to Father's composure. The second is that despite the statements of Septa that all her notes are childish exaggeration and outright untruth, Father will be on Sansa's side.

It was then that she realized for the first time that her father didn't care about the Seven Gods, the Sept, and as he said at the time, most of the Southern prejudices.

And that is why now she was supposed to fully calm down, go report to her father, and tell him about the odd feelings that the Queen's actions caused in her. And after that she will change her skirts into pants, put on a quilted gambeson and do all the same things that Arya likes to do, even though Sansa is not so good at it. Not like embroidery, reading books and singing.

She will be with Arya.

Training their shooting, swordfighting and horseriding.

***

Sansa was close enough to the doors to her father's solar to notice the odd absence of at least one guard on duty.

Sansa's heart skipped a beat - the girl chose to stop for a short contemplation. It ended with Sansa deciding to strain all her stealth skills she had after playing hide-and-seek with her brothers and sister. She leaned to the doorpost so that she could hear what was happening inside.

The door wasn't completely closed. Whoever entered the room before Sansa was not too worried that they would be overheard.

Well, maybe they were just unreasonably carefree.

"What you're suggesting stinks of dishonor, Lord Stark," Sansa heard Domix's voice, and her heart skipped a beat again.

"He's just a man who likes little girls. So we could have his guts cut open. So we could take his place, and no one's conscience will be hurt," someone's unfamiliar, much sharper voice began to argue with Domix.

The voice's feature was a severe nasal congestion or maybe a broken septum. Sansa could only guess, while she was behind the door.

"My conscience does not allow me to use poison," Domeric replied in a distinctly irritated voice. "About your conscience, especially when it comes to replacing someone in his rightful place, we know everything perfectly well."

Sansa calmed down once again, as she recalled that she did not like Domeric as much as at the very beginning of their acquaintance. She'd never liked his Bolton appearance, especially his eyes - he shared them both with his father, Roose Bolton, and with his bastard brother. The one who trains hard under the only anointed northern knight at the Stark court, Rodrik Cassel. Sansa tried to memorize the name of his bastard brother at some point. But since the boy didn't live in the castle, spent his nights and dined somewhere in the Wintertown, and rarely showed his face, the things she remembered about him were his eyes, the same as all other Boltons, and the presence of a clingy mutt by his side.

She always liked Domeric's voice, velvety and completely controlled. This voice brought memories of the pleasure received by all the inhabitants of Winterfell when young Bolton decided to sing. Sansa at first thought that she was in love with the son of her father's vassal, assumed that she would have to disappoint her mother and marry not a southern lord, but a northern one in the future. Not what Mother wanter, for sure.

That tender feeling especially intensified when Sansa was working on her gift to Domeric, she just imagined how he would use her songbook and praise her for her efforts every time his eyes fell on the lines made by her own hand.

When Father decided to find out what his daughter was so enthusiastically engaged in, he did not yet know all her ideas about the gift. Then she emotionally burst into tears out of nowhere and rambled out something, she couldn't even remember what. Her father listened her out and told her not to tell Mother, else she'd take everything too seriously.

Dad explained her that Domeric had become her first crush, and there was nothing to do with it, except try to make friends and endure. If after "making friends", whatever possible between the little girl and the almost grown-up boy, she'd still have a wish to get his attention, then this should be told, again, to her father. Dad then clarified that it's better to have the cold head on your shoulders while having the hot heart in your chest. With the heart, Dad said, the Starks always had everything in order, but with the cold head, faults were there for centuries. And as soon as the Stark lost his head, then he lost it in the literal sense of the word. And Mom would've started acting rashly, Mom's just had that personality, he said. Dad mentioned then, sure he loves and respects Mom, but this does not negate some of her not most helpful sides. Dad said that Mom would try to influence both Sansa, fearing the worst - the bastards, and the boy. And the boy wouldn't be lucky she fell in love with him.

Sansa nodded, agreed and accidentally did the opposite.

Mom squeezed out of her a confession that the gift for Domeric in this form was her own initiative. Her Mother stormed and raged, ruined a bunch of pages already ready for filing the songbook. It happened by accident - because of her slamming the table. She spilled ink all over and brought Sansa to tears.

Sansa promised some pontless stuff that Mother demanded, and in the end she still did it her own way.

Her father swung by the next day, telling her right at the doorway that her mother told him everything, and he'd like to hear Sansa's version of events. The girl did not cry again, although she really wanted to, because of the overwhelming aching emotions that simply swooped her heart when she realized that her father was on her side again. That he came not to scold her, but to sort it out.

Then Sansa silently pointed at the stack of damaged parchment and continued to copy from the draft again.

A minute later, her father offered his help.

Sansa just smiled and replied that she wanted to do it on her own.



"Stop teasing Ramsay, Domeric. He's already apologized, like, twenty times," her father's voice sounded tired.

That's why Sansa nodded to herself and decided to knock, even though the door was not locked.

"It must be Sansa," her father said.

And Sansa realized that she'd heard them so well because the end of the conversation was happening right by the door. The doors swung open, and the girl smiled, looking into Dad's eyes. He squinted worriedly and asked.

"Is everything allright?"

"I've given a message to both the Queen and her guard. It was Meryn Trant. He agreed to train with Robb."

"Sansa did good."

Theon said, widely grinnning at her. It turns out, he was also in the solar, just uncharacteristically silent.

Well, maybe Sansa just came by when he'd already managed to shut up.

"Out."

Despite the terse and seemingly strict order, there were sparks of amusement in Father's eyes, and the guys didn't have any frustration on their faces. Here they were, Theon and Domeric, not the most solemn in most situations. Well, this Ramsay, who was staring at the floor and scratching his short greasy hair, seemed vaguely familiar.

Sansa couldn't really pinpoint why.

They hurried to leave her father's workplace. As soon as the door was thoroughly slammed shut, the footsteps and the quiet hubbub created by the opinionated and temperamental guys ceased to be audible, Sansa took a couple of steps towards Dad and squeezed his lower back with all her might.

"Everything went like knife through butter, and you seem like you patted the hedgehog, or something," stated Father over her head in an utterly even voice. That made Sansa burst out laughing and raise her face to meet her father's gaze.

"Do you remember when I liked Domeric?"

"Unforgettable. Why ask?"

Dad frowned, but didn't tense up - Sansa would have noticed, because she was hugging him.

"I felt something similar when the Queen touched my chin. The same embarrassment, the same reaction to her voice. The pulse, the heart just stopped. What is it, Dad?"

"It will pass, dear, it will pass," her father caressed the top of her head and removed a lock of hair off her forehead.

His actions made Sansa smile crookedly and pushed her forehead into his palm. Then he continued.

"It did pass, your crush on Domeric, didn't it?"

"Well, yes, it helps that we're so different that it's not even funny," Sansa shrugged. "But he still sings beautifully, his voice is just..."

The girl couldn't find the words, therefore switched to a more important problem.

"But she's a woman, isn't she? And I'm a woman... I've heard about it from the septa, Dad, I've heard that it's a sin."

"Not for the Old Gods," her father shrugged. "But life is such that you simply have to take a wife... Or rather, take a husband, Sansa, stop giggling! I'm going to die at some point in the future, and this life works in such a way that women need certain protection to thrive. In the event of my death, your brothers will have to become your protectors, and as long as your brothers are alive, neither you nor your sister should think hardly about marriage. If a terrible thing happens, and all the men of our kin are gone, you will become the eldest. So, you'll simply have to ensure loyalty this way. It's not too pleasing to anticipate, but..."

"So don't anticipate!" Sansa exclaimed with tears in her eyes, having endured her father's sololoquy enough to understand how complicated everything is in the adult life that she, Robb, John, Arya, Bran and Rickon are about to enter. "You're not going to die. I don't want you to!"

"Sometimes not wanting is not enough."

Her father began to tousle her hair again, and Sansa freed one of her hands to wipe away tears.

"Sometimes you have to sacrifice something, Sansa. But I promise you, if you honestly fall in love and realize that this is the one, I will support you, whoever it is. True, the person will have to pass some sort of loyalty test, but these are the details. We don't want there to be something like the union of your dearest Aunt Lysa and Baelish, do we?"

"Dad, what are you talking about?" Sansa asked worriedly. "Should I even know about this? Aunt Lysa was married to the Lord of the Vale, wasn't she?"

"I'm not going to ask you to promise not to tell anyone, Sansa. But be careful with this information when we go to the capital and never show that you know it."

The girl nodded and scrunched her face, while her father continued to quietly convey his thoughts to her.

"I have a strong suspicion that little Arryn is Lysa and Baelish's bastard. Jon Arryn had trouble conceiving anyone throughout his life, Sansa. You are already quite a grown-up girl, there will be monthlies soon, as your mother informed me recently. So I'm not softening this information for you. You shouldn't be unprepared for what awaits us in the capital of the Seven Kingdoms. I suspect your aunt, my wife's sister, of murdering the Hand of the King. That's why I repeat, I will support any love of yours, if it is not a slug like Baelish, who uses a woman above his status for his own selfish purposes, plays on her weaknesses and even, quite likely, incited her to murder the man who made him rise in station. Don't get any ideas, Baelish is smart and probably even pleasant in appearance, I can't say, because any affection ends where the slippery nature of his personality begins. He will stab his dagger in the back, poison an ally, and there are plenty of such people, Sansa. Simply some are more successful than others."

"You once told me, Dad, that people don't change," the girl took a deep breath and exhaled. "So he's always been like this? How do I determine that that person may want to use me?"

"People change when they are still capable of it. At your age, a little older, a little younger... Or when they were broken by something or someone, and then it does not depend on age. Take Ramsay, for example. The bastard of the Bolton House. The boy was raised by his mother, who survived the rape by Lord Bolton at her own wedding and gave birth to a son from a rapist. He saw no other way out of the poverty and contempt in which he lived, except to poison his legitimate brother."

"He wanted to poison Domeric?!"

Sansa shook her head and finally detached herself from her father, stepping back and frowning at him, unknowingly repeating this stern look of her father everyone feared.

"He lives here and hasn't been executed? How is this even possible?!"

"Then I'd have to execute Lord Bolton as well, because the whole chain of events was launched by his demand for the first night and the murder of the miller who decided to marry without the Lord's permission. This right is prohibited by the laws of the Seven Kingdoms. So the execution would be legal, but it would cause an uprising of the Dustins and Ryswells, strong regions of the North. And quite possibly, it would have been necessary to kill Domeric, who had nothing to do with it at all. I decided that it was possible and necessary to try to rehabilitate Ramsay. I promised him something, and he agreed. After all, everyone has pride and ambition - remember this, Sansa - even the most meager human being. And Ramsay, I'm afraid, is by no means meager."

"I understand, Father, but why didn't you execute Ramsay? It was possible, after all..."

"Listen carefully, Sansa. I will not repeat this on other occasion or confirm that I ever said such a thing. After all, there is little honor in such approach. But take note of this. It is necessary to act honorably only when it promises inevitable advantages. To act honorably when it's not benificial at all would be suicide, sometimes even literal. Never act honorably if you're not sure that it will be a plus. Always deduce the consequences. But never forget about human conscience. Conscience and honor, Sansa, are two different things."

They were silent for a while, looking into each other's eyes, until Sansa nodded in response to her father's expectant gaze.

"And now, daughter, please tell me in detail what you told the Queen, and what you told her White Cloak. Think of it as memory training. We got fifteen minutes."

"Very well, Father. It all started when I disturbed that Guard at the door to the Queen's chambers and answered his expected questions. I said that I would only give the message to the Queen personally, and to nobody but her..."​

 

[Ratmor]

Author's note: This is the expression that means the same as the carrot and the stick, but I decided to translate it literally. Because of reasons.

If you think this has a happy ending you haven't been paying attention​

"Lady Dustin!"

Ramsay stopped next to the widow of Barrowton and met the gaze of her dark gray eyes.

Her expression changed from a rather friendly one, with a barely noticeable smile and little wrinckles by the corners of her eyes, to a strict, faded even, not expressing feelings.

Actually, Ramsay had never spoken to this woman before. So he determined that it was her by two simple signs.

Domeric was going to find her before the feast, because she is his aunt and loves him very much. And this means that if Domeric is seen animatedly talking to a woman who is not his age, then it's obviously Lady Barbrey Dustin.

She's a tall woman, taller than Lady Catelyn, with a widow's bun on her head and graying hair. Basically, it could hardly be anyone else, because at the court of Eddard Stark only the lazy or the blind did not know about these features of Lady Barbrey. And any of the major lords did know her as well. Everyone who ever did a courtesy visit while riding through Barrowton or going up the river from Saltspear bay.

Lady Barbry did not like Southerners very much. That's why her stay in Winterfell was rare, but remembered by everyone present for a long time. Lady Caitlin's spoiled mood provided a hassle to all the servants, squires and more so bastards. At least, that's how Ramsay remembered Jon describing the situation.

"What do you want, bas..." the woman began to twist her lips.

"Hello, brother!"

They said it at the same time, but even though Lady Barbrey caught herself, Ramsey involuntarily twitched because of conflicting emotions, too vivid to cope with them without any reaction. It took quite a bit of effort this time to calm himself down, but Domeric noticed and held out his hand to his brother.

Ramsey shook it, almost like grabbing a lifeline, but nearly immediately pulled away, because Lady Dustin was carefully studying their interaction. Her gaze, eloquently resting on the clasped hands of the two brothers, and her face with pursed lips and raised eyebrows expressed obvious discontent.

"Domeric, I have something to tell Lady Barbrey, and I do not know if she feels... comfortable..."

"Did he do it after all?" Ramsay's brother interrupted. "I didn't believe it was even possible!"

"Yes," Ramsay nodded and folded his hands behind his back. "Lord Eddard has finally reached a relative completion to this business, and all the remains from the far South have already arrived at Highgarden."

"What are you talking about?"

Lady Barbrey blinked frequently and even took a step back. That was probably because she was rumored to be a smart woman, though superstitious. Likely, she already guessed.

"I'm telling you this," Snow continued, "because our lord trusted me and Greyjoy to deliver the cargo...erm..."

Ramsay felt his ears turning red and looked at his brother with panic.

"Only I didn't tell you that, please, brother! Greyjoy doesn't know yet that he's involved."

"Oh! It's about that secret of Lord Stark and Lord Manderly, isn't it?" Domeric was amused. "Sansa is quite helpful whenever she wishes it, that's for sure! Just imagine how the three of us would feel when everything is revealed, m-m-m!"

Ramsay frowned and started to open his mouth to shut his brother up. Obviously, he had too much wine during his morning mealtime. Judging by the loosened tongue, there was clearly less food than wine, however, as usual.

"Hey! Listen."

Lady Dustin held out her palm in front of her, thereby stopping the very likely revival of the dispute between Ramsay, who had been leading an extremely sober lifestyle for some time, and Domix, who was a favorite guest at every drinking party. He had skills in playing musical instruments and singing, so he could continue to entertain people even being shitfaced and laying on the tabletop.

"I'm listening, Lady Dustin," Ramsey replied in a well-trained voice.

In his mind he was already counting the days until the departure from this sewer of lords and ladies who were at the peak of this cockery in front of each other.

"Start again, bastard. What about this secret, go into more detail, don't be shy. If I understood everything correctly, then our High Lord needs something from the Dustins, and I don't like it... Stop wincing, Domeric, dear, I do not share this newfound worship of our Quiet Wolf. Your father isn't thrilled either, if you well remember."

"Lord Bolton knows perfectly well," Ramsay did not let Domeric laugh it off, forcing Lady Barbry to fix her dark eyes on the bastard she despised so much, "that the future of the North lies in following the Lord of Winterfell, Lady Dustin. And Lord Eddard," Ramsay emphasized the name, specifically showing his ability - and honor - to call the Paramount Lord by his first name, "understands this very well. Therefore, he gave both me and the Greyjoy the opportunity to see some of the Westeros, at the same time correcting a mistake that prevented and still, it seems to me, does not allow you, Lady Dustin, to be completely loyal to our Lord."

"What do you dare to accuse me of, boy!" Lady Barbry hissed, her fingers curled in fruitless rage, and Domeric almost lost his jaw because of his brother's brazeness. "I'll have you flogged!"

"You just wanted to lead the Guardsman on duty to betray the liege, Lady Dustin. You know what this patch on my gambeson means, don't you? It cannot be said that there is anything dangerous for my Lord in your knowledge that Lord Stark is preparing a gift for his fosterling with the help of Lord Manderly, not at all. But even the thought, Lady Dustin, made me remember that I'm actually the officer on duty. Of course, Lady Dustin, you could try to order me flogged, but if you're not going to do it yourself..."

Pouring out his displeasure at the stunned noblewoman, Ramsay allowed himself a vile smile. He knew firsthand about this quality, because in his little room there was a small, half-palm-sized silver mirror, ordered by Lord Stark from Oldtown. It arrived at the gardeners' territory from who knew where from Essos. A keepsake for the bonus payment, as the Lord put it while granting it, yes.

"If I'm not doing it myself, then what, insolent boy?"

Lady Dustin almost growled the last couple of words, but Ramsay suddenly heard a note of contentment and even acceptance in her tone. This blend gave a vague feeling of respect born in the noblewoman, which would be odd if it was someone more southern than Lady Barbrey.

"There are no people wishing suicide here, Auntie," Domeric rubbed his temples. "And you're too dear to me to let Ramsay hold a grudge. This mind has too good an imagination."

"He won't dare touch..."

"Of course not, Auntie. He's his father's son, after all. Not an idiot."

Domeric smiled too ingratiatingly at his aunt, stopped Ramsay by the elbow, because he had already turned to leave, and sighed wearily.

"Apologize to Lady Barbrey. It was completely unnecessary, brother."

Ramsey shrugged and obeyed.

Serving the Lord of Winterfell has not only changed Ramsay's eating and hygiene habits, no.

Now Ramsay had a goal that did not lead to the death of the heir to Dreadfort, who wanted a brother so he went to get acquainted with his father's bastard, knowing nothing about him and suspecting nothing.

The brother then spoke of Lord Eddard collecting bastards in Wintertown, which saved him. Poison for a moron was not going anywhere, as well as the blood ties to the rapist from the Dreadfort. That's what Ramsay thought when he begged for a spare horse from Domeric and that same day set off west through the Lonely Hills.

Reek was still alive then.

Lord Eddard listened to Ramsay Snow's story in person, interrogated Reek and, as a result of this interrogation, set the execution. Told Ramsay what he could've done to his father, but didn't wish to shed that much blood. He forced Ramsay to confess to Domeric and tell him about their father's crime. And confess to planning poisoning.

Ramsay then thought that this was his deferred punishment, and already regretted that he had come. Comprehension of who exactly was sitting in front of him and sizing him up impassively did not allow Ramsay to make the mistake he briefly thought about. To grab the dagger on his belt.

Immediately after the whip came the gingerbread.

This expression, about the whip and gingerbread, Ramsay learned later, when of all the bastards who arrived as well, he became the best in everything they were taught, if it did not concern behavior, of course. Rage called for an outlet.

It is now the bastard of House Bolton remembered that time nostalgically.

It was much easier then than it is now, when Rodrik Cassel is trying to prepare him for what Jon Snow would've been better at. This idiot was obsessed with the Night's Watch and its rebirth, especially after what Lord Stark promised... Renovation, whatever that means.

Though it is Ramsay who will be able to successfully understand the political games in such a shaggy Skagos ass, which is King's Landing, as Lord Stark correctly noted when he told Ramsay Snow about his plan for the most successful bastard of that - certainly cursed by the gods - school. The same Jon Snow, for example, was not quite suitable for any politics - the boy could not think outside the laid-down rules somewhere other than the fight.

There have already been bastards in the King's Guard, so with this one, Ramsay won't be the first, that's right.

There weren't any Northeners, ever.​