Arisen

Jaehaerys XI

The moment he stepped into the guest quarters, his mask fell. For years he had been keeping up a guard on himself, to make it look like nothing got to him. A piece of advice he had gotten from Tyrion all those years before when Robert Baratheon had ridden through the gates at Winterfell. To the taunting of being a bastard, to his nonchalant comment about offending him. It was words he was glad to have gotten even if at the time he had taken great insult to them and was furious that a Lannister had the gall to say they were similar to one another when they were nothing alike.

Never forget you're a bastard, for the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour, and it can never hurt you.

Except, he wasn't a bastard, he never was one. His feelings towards Eddard were mixed to put it lightly. Whilst he was always going to love the man, it stung deeply he lied to his face for six and ten years. Had he ever planned on telling him? He'd promised to do so when he had left with Benjen for Castle Black, but he hadn't lived a further year after this which then led to the War of the Five Kings. And one of those King's was now in the same building as him, one everyone believed to have been butchered. Whilst he did look very different to how he remembered- Jon knew the second he looked into those bright blue eyes who it was. Matted and overgrown hair aside, his features were very noticeable.

Before he knew it, he had grabbed a glass on the table and threw it at the wall, watching it shatter into dozens of pieces on the ground before sitting down on the bed, palms of his hands pressing against his eye sockets as if he were trying to force himself to forget a horrific nightmare. For how many days had he cried in solitude when he found out what had supposedly happened? How many times had he been ridiculed for acting too much like him? How many times had he heard comments comparing him to the other? Over the last few months, all of this had finally stopped, although that could be because what had happened was still ringing in everyone's minds.

And it had been a lie all along. Another lie regarding his family added to the numerous there already were. That Eddard was an oath breaker, that his father had kidnapped and raped his mother before ordering her death, that he wasn't a Snow but a Targaryen, that Theon hadn't killed Bran and Rickon like he had said. His eyes immediately closing as he remembered the frightened look on the younger's face as he galloped towards him. Jon had always been gifted atop a horse, but he had never ridden one like that before, like he were one with the wind. To the way his eyes widened when the arrow came into contact with his back before piercing out his front...

It was only now he realised that he was crying. Something he hadn't done since he'd had that big fight with Dany in Winterfell over him telling his siblings. But before then? The only time he knew with certainty was when Ygritte was shot down right in front of him and he caught her as she spoke her final words. Dazzling blue eyes and hair kissed by fire, a woman he loved fiercely, and one taken too soon. Whilst he loved his wife dearly, a part of him was always going to love the feisty redhead, and Dany understand that more than anyone. The back of his hand reaching up to press against his lips as he desperately tried to stop but it was to no avail, said body part coming back soaked with hot salty tears only a minute later.

His mind was whirring at hundreds of miles a second currently, not knowing what to say, think, or feel. How does one process that someone everyone believed was dead was actually alive the entire time and was simply in a cell for years? What was Walder Frey doing lying about having him killed? And why in all the hells combined had he desecrated a body and put it in Robb's clothing and sewn Grey Wind's head onto it?! Desecrating someone deceased was a horrid thing, and to think it had happened to someone to give the illusion of a murder was even more sickening. Another nameless corpse, one who might've had a family, and the poor man's family were never going to get closure on what had happened to him.