Chapter Text
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Joanna is a precocious child.
Ned returns with the babe in his arms, barely six months old and she’s already crawling whenever he sets her down on solid ground.
Next to little Robb, a few scant weeks younger than her, she seems a giant; standing before her first year is gone, walking, too.
She speaks not at all for a long time and then in entire sentences, declaring, first of all, “I’m Jon.”
She thumps her little chest with her fist and keeps repeating the same words over and over until her wetnurse has stopped trying to explain to her that that is a boy’s name.
“I’m Jon.”
Ned looks into her eyes, so close to her mother’s (thank the gods for that), so serious and sure and simply nods. “I know, dear heart.”
Jon beams.
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Two days after the feast to welcome King Robert, Ned looks up from breakfast with his family and blinks. “Where is Jon?”
His children all shift and shuffle.
He waits them out, knows they will talk if he just keeps silent. His children are a mob unto themselves, but they are too young yet to withstand a father’s disapproval.
(All except Jon, who has too much of her mother in her, by far.)
Bran breaks first. “Mother made her go away!”
Yes, Ned was afraid of that. He hasn’t seen his eldest since the feast, when usually she orbits the family on end. She sits in on lessons, herds the younger ones, wrangles Arya; ever present, if unobtrusive. She is quiet, is Jon, but she is always there and Ned is ashamed it took so long to notice her absence.
He blames Robert’s demands on his time.
It doesn’t help.
“She threatened to take away Ghost if Jon got underfoot at all during the visit,” Arya adds, arms crossed, mulish expression on her face.
And Catelyn obviously also forbade his other children from bothering him with it.
He sighs.
He hoped that Jon being a girl, being older than Robb, would make his Lady Wife more agreeable to keeping the bastard around. She’s no threat to Robb and clearly, her age implies that Ned did not betray their marriage but - but.
He fears his wife’s pride is stronger than facts, at times. Still, he did not expect her to do this.
He rubs at his forehead. “I will speak with your mother, children. Meanwhile, why don’t you fetch your sister. We can eat together in the mornings, at least.”
Their royal visitors rarely leave their chambers before noon.
Robb nods gratefully and bids Bran and Arya, both of whom are already standing, to go find Jon.
They return some time later, without her. “She’s not in her room,” Arya grumbles, worriedly.
“Or the kitchens,” Bran adds.
“Or the stables.”
“And Nan says she hasn’t seen Ghost since the feast.”
It’s harmless. Jon probably slunk away somewhere to lick her wounds, to be by herself, alway prone to sullen silences and lonely walks.
But - Ned knows, somehow, that that’s not true. He looks at the faces of (all but one of) his children and finds the beginnings of worry settling into their young faces and he knows -
Not again, by the gods, I beg you, not again.
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From her first days on, Jon wakes screaming in the middle of the night. At first, it is easy to miss, a babe’s wail for food, for love, for warmth.
The crying rapidly (too rapidly) turns into choked-off screams and then just little, bitten-off sounds. By the age of two, his precious heart, his little girl, screams herself awake, then freezes where she lies, and carefully, slowly, breathes until the tension fades from her frame, the panic from her eyes.
He asks, a hundred times, what she dreams of that scares her so.
All she ever does is shake her head.
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“I cannot follow you South, my Lord.”
“Robert, Ned, how many times do I have to tell you!”
Ned grinds his teeth. “Robert. I cannot follow you until I know my daughter is safe.”
Robert waves a hand, heavy with rings. “She’s a young lass. Probably gone for a romp in the hay with some village lad, forgot the time. She’ll be home soon.”
Ned swallows hard. “She has not and she is not. There has been no trace of her since the feast, Robert. None. I fear someone took her.”
It is a risk, to speak those words, to invoke those memories. They might send Robert into rage or melancholia. But Ned sees no other way. He will not leave Winterfell until he knows Jon is safe.
He lost his sister to a man who did her wrong, lost her to lies and stupid, childish love in the night and when he found her again, their family was in ruins, their lands were bloodied and she lay dying. All he has left of her is her daughter and he will be thrice cursed by the Old Gods and the New if he lets the same fate befall Jon as it did her mother.
If someone took her -
He will not follow Robert South. And if he needs to break an oath to do so, then he will. Jon will be safe.
He promised Lyanna.
That oath came first.
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Jon knows too much.
It is hard to spot, at times, but Ned watches her with a hawk’s gaze, always, because he knows his lady wife will not, knows the title of bastard will make certain men take liberties, knows how easily Lyanna was taken in the end. A few words, just pretty words, and she was gone.
So he watches.
And he notices.
He notices that Jon, from her earliest days tottering around with Robb, never gets lost in Winterfell. He notices that she knows the names of all his bannermen before they are introduced. He notices that she throws furtive, secret looks at his books, sometimes, as if she can read the titles even though her lessons have barely started.
He notices that, at times, she catches people by the arm, the hip, the sleeve, catches them and whispers, urgent and low in their ears. He notices them pale and nod, or curse and spit.
He notices them leave with a new care, a new caution in their steps.
And he notices Jon noticing him, watching him back, her little head tilted to one side, with eyes far too old for her face.
He goes to the godswood, often, and kneels there, praying that whatever his daughter is, wherever she may hail from, she will be safe.
It’s not enough.
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He almost doesn’t go.
When the Raven comes from the Wall, he almost doesn’t go.
Jon is still gone, Sansa has taken to moving in a pack of girls, afraid that whatever fate has befallen her sister, might meet her, too.
Robb and Theon are feral wolves, stalking the halls and Wintertown, preying on any scrap of information and finding nothing but ghosts.
Bran and Rickon are sad and scared, Arya is a terror.
Only his wife seems unbothered and Ned is not sure he can forgive her for that. But then, she has kept her chamberdoor locked ever since he told her they were not going South.
“Because of the bastard?”
“Because of my daughter.”
So he almost doesn’t go.
Almost. In the end, the urgency of the message and Master Luiwen’s quiet counsel are what moves him. “It has been a year, my Lord, and we know nothing. Winterfell has no knowledge of Joanna and the Nightwatch may turn to none but you, in these troubled days.”
Troubled days, yes.
Robert is dead, the South shredding itself over his legacy.
The Neck has been closed for months, and despite his wife’s demands, Ned refuses to take part in the war. Robert has no living heirs, or so his spies tell him, thus any oath he made is void with his old friend’s death. And Ned well remembers what happened the last time the Starks went South for revenge.
They may name him coward, may name him craven, but he will not have part in a civil war.
Not again.
So he goes North.
And he takes his heir with him.
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“Will you tell me about my mother?” she asks once, quietly, resignedly, like she already knows he won’t.
“When you’re older, dear heart.”
She smiles her crooked Jon-smile and shakes her head. “You know I will love you, whatever the answer is, right?”
Then she stands, brushing down her dress demurely, and leaves before he can find his voice.
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Jon is alive.
Jon is alive and healthy, swaddled in furs and huddling against a man twice her size and age, standing with the Wildlings like she belongs and Ned wants to kill them all.
He wants to draw Ice and slaughter them to a man, for taking his precious child, his firstborn, his secret, his guilt and joy from him. For touching her. For - for -
She reads him as she always has, steps away from the bear of a man holding her and moves past the one introduced as Mance Raider. The King Beyond the Wall.
The minstrel who sang at Robert’s feast.
If he is the one who took her -
“Father,” she calls, drawing attention to herself. Her eyes are still dark, her cheeks round. She looks - healthy, but that can’t be, looks happy. She smiles.
“Father, I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong. Now, please, listen to us. We have come with grave news and if you do not listen to us, then the North will die in its entirety.”
He opens his mouth, to shout, to cry, to curse, he does not know, but she steps into him, steps as close as she can and leans on tiptoes, reaching to grasp his neck and pull him down.
To reach his ear and whisper, winter-soft, “Trust me, Uncle.”
His heart stops.
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