[for Robb] 2nd August

[tooktheblack]

After coming to this...clinic and being tended by a strange sort of maester, Jon was ready to go. Still, he'd been instructed to stay for observation, whatever that meant, and while his wounds didn't pain him as much as he thought they should, he erred on the side of caution. He had never done well while idle. At Castle Black, there was no time

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[_kinginthenorth]

When Edmund had told Robb about the new arrival of Jon Snow, neither of them had really been sure what to say or how to say it. Robb had thanked him, and ignored the way his heart was pounding and the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and finished the thing he was in the middle of doing at precisely that moment. Then he left Reynald with Delirium and no explanation, called Grey Wind to him, and all but ran for the compound.

And now he is standing in the doorway, steeling himself, as Grey Wind greets his silent brother with a firm, sharp, bark.

"You look tired, Snow." It isn't the greeting he means, or the one he wants, but it comes out anyway.

[tooktheblack]

Jon couldn't help but smile a little in spite of himself, the corners of his mouth tipping up no matter what he did to tamp it down. Robb, alive and well and standing a few feet in front of him...it really did have to be a dream.

"You look like a Southron lord, Stark," Jon teased back, though it wasn't really true. It was like that day in the yard before he went north, snow falling and everything still right and good.

[_kinginthenorth]

"You will too, given time," Robb counters. This Jon looks older than the one he'd left--not as old, in some ways, as the one who disappeared, but in others.... "How hurt are you?" he asks, closing the distance, reaching the side of the bed in a few strides.

[tooktheblack]

"It's not so bad, not after they mended me," Jon said, poking lightly at one of the bandages. He winced, but just a little, and he suspected the wounds would heal clean. It wasn't a guarantee he could have made back at Castle Black.

"A knife in the belly will always land you in bed for a day or two, even if I'm the world's worst at being tended."

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb sits gingerly down on the edge. "It could be worse, from how you look. I doubt you're worse at lying still than me."

[tooktheblack]

"Fair enough," Jon said, laughing and holding his side to keep it from pulling at the wounds. "Who told you I was here? I had some people meet me when I first showed but it's a bit hazy."

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb nods. "News travels fast. Faster than ravens, at any rate. A man called Charlie saw you at first, and told Edmund, who--told me," he finishes, cutting himself off before an attempt to exlain the family dynamics at play. "At which point I'm afraid I came racing off here with little thought for anything else. Tell me when you've come from?"

[tooktheblack]

"Ramsay Bolton's got Arya," Jon said quickly, the concerns he'd had on the Wall coming back now that he was reasonably safe and Robb was here. "He means to marry her and take Winterfell. I was going to stop it."

The Watch took no part, true, but he couldn't stand idly by when it was Arya and his father's seat at stake.

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb's mouth goes firm and thin. "The sooner someone kills Ramsay Bolton, the better for everyone," he says. "And if it's the real Arya he wants to marry, that may happen sooner than he thinks. But I doubt it." He sighs, feeling the troubles of Westeros yanking him back again, no matter how he tries to forget them. "Tell me. You'd become Lord Commander of the Watch, that's the last I know."

[tooktheblack]

"Stannis came to the Wall and brought reinforcements when the Wildlings rode against us," Jon explained, his mind thousands and thousands of leagues away once again. "He...he's staying. He's trying to get the Northern lords to back his claim to the Iron Throne and help him oust Bolton from the Dreadfort."

And for the Watch's help, he'd offered Jon a name he was never meant to have. Could he tell Robb that?

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb knows some of this--Davos Seaworth had told him of some of Stannis' plans--but now he adds it all into the patchwork he's made of the war in Westeros after his own death. "That might do it," he admits. "Take back Winterfell, fight off the Wildlings, and get rid of the Lannisters--it would be more than most who want that bloody throne are willing to do."

[tooktheblack]

"He won't survive. His whole campaign's based on some queer religion and this priestess," Jon explained, wondering if Melisandre could have seen this in her fires. "He's too stubborn for the mountain clans to take kindly to him, I think. He's no Stark of Winterfell, and I think that's what they need."

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb rubs at his forehead wearily. "Of course, but the trick is finding one. If you're still too stubborn to take it, I hope you've sent out a Ranger or three to track down Bran and Rickon. But there's naught either of us can do about it from here, I'm afraid."

[tooktheblack]

"You knew Stannis offered me legitimacy?" Jon asked, unsure if he should tell but since Robb already knew, he guessed there was no harm in it.

"It's not meant for me to be on that seat, Robb. Your lady mother...I might not have been very fond of her, but I respected her. I'm no Stark. As for Bran and Rickon, we were told they were killed by Theon Greyjoy when he sacked Winterfell."

[_kinginthenorth]

"He did?" Robb clearly hadn't known, from the way his eyebrows raise. "And of course you didn't take it, not while you had an oath to the Wall. I know you." The look on his face is almost wistful as he shakes his head. "I didn't know Stannis had offered--I know I'd already done and declared it. The raven didn't reach you, as I'm led to understand things, but it was signed in the presence of the Northern lords. You're the heir to Winterfell." And no, Catelyn Stark had not liked it, but there were fights Robb avoided with her, and those he was willing to have.

He rests a hand on Jon's arm. "That was all before," he admits. "I thought them all dead--Bran, Rickon, Arya--and Sansa had just been wed to the Imp. There are things we've all missed, and though I find myself unable to keep quiet, I have no wish to overtax you with them when you've only recently arrived."

[tooktheblack]

The idea that Bran, Rickon, Arya and Sansa might all be alive and well was something that Jon had never let himself dare to dream. He wasn't supposed to have these feelings about his family any longer, he was supposed to belong to the Watch and yet...

What a fine Lord Commander he made if his mind was constantly back at Winterfell when there were other, more pressing matters to attend to within the Watch itself.

"The only way I would be lord of Winterfell was if there was no other Stark alive in all of Westeros and across the Narrow Sea. It's not my place, Robb. My place...it's on the Wall, whether we like it or not."