ASOIAF : Creed

The silence was the first thing he noticed. It was not the peaceful quiet of a sleeping castle, but a profound and unnerving emptiness, an absence that rang louder than any noise. Winterfell had never been a quiet place; it was a living, breathing castle, its stone corridors usually filled with the sounds of life—the clang of the forge, the shouts of children in the yard, the low murmur of servants at their work.

But in the days following Jon's departure, that life had been muted. The silence echoed in the empty space at the dinner table, in the corner of the training yard where Jon had spent countless hours, in the very air of the keep. The silence had a sound of its own now—a low, hollow hum of absence.

Eddard sat in his solar, a stack of untouched ledgers before him. He had tried to lose himself in his duties, in the familiar, grounding work of a lord, but his mind would not be still. It kept replaying the last conversation, the final, terrible moments in this very room. He saw Jon's face, not the boy he had raised, but a young man with the sorrowful eye, his face a mask of bitter understanding that offered no comfort, only judgment.

He had won. He had kept his promise to Lyanna. He had protected the boy, forcing him onto a path that would lead him far from Robert's wrath and the viper pit of southern politics. He had saved him. But it felt like a damnation. It felt as though he had taken a piece of his own soul and cast it into the frozen wastes of the North.

He saw the effects of his choice everywhere, a constant, twisting reminder of the price he had paid. Catelyn was a different woman. The hard, tense lines around her eyes had softened. She smiled more, a genuine, unburdened smile he had not seen in years. Just last night, she had come to him by the fire, placing a gentle hand on his arm. "The castle feels more peaceful now," she had said, her voice soft. "Robb will flourish without… that boy at his back, a constant question in the eyes of our bannermen." Her presence, meant to be a comfort, felt like a betrayal. She celebrated a temporary peace, not knowing he had paid for it with a permanent exile. She did not see the wound it had left in him, a gaping, festering thing he had to hide from her and everyone else.

Robb was a storm cloud of sullen fury. He spent his days in the training yard, his swings against the practice dummies no longer skilled, but brutal, full of a rage that had no other outlet. He had come to him the night Jon had left, his young face tight with an accusation his father could not answer.

"Why did you let him go?" Robb had said, his voice low and shaking. "Just to visit the Wall? He's been so distant. It felt like a goodbye, father. Not a journey. What did you say to him?"

"It was his choice, Robb," Eddard had replied, the lie tasting like ash.

"Was it?" Robb had shot back, his eyes full of a hurt that mirrored Eddard's own. "Or did we finally make him believe he had no other place to go? I saw the way mother looked at him. We pushed him away, and you let him go."

There was no answer to that, not one that wouldn't shatter their world.

Arya was the most openly wounded. She had barricaded herself in her room, refusing to come down for meals. When Eddard had gone to her, he had found her sitting by the window, her face pale and tear-streaked. She had looked at him with Lyanna's eyes, full of a wild, defiant grief.

"He's not coming back, is he?" she had accused, her small voice trembling with a wisdom beyond her years. "He said he was just visiting Uncle Benjen, but he said goodbye like he meant it forever. Why would he do that if he was coming back?"

He had tried to comfort her, but his words were hollow. In her grief, he saw the ghost of his sister mourning the loss of her own son. The irony was a blade in his heart.

He finally pushed himself away from his desk, the solar feeling like a cage. He walked the cold stone corridors, his footsteps echoing in the new, heavy silence. He found himself in the Godswood, the air still and frigid, the ancient weirwood weeping its silent, bloody tears.

He stood before the heart tree and closed his eyes. Promise me, Ned. For fourteen years, that had been his mantra, the promise he had built his life around. A promise to a dying sister to protect her child. But now, a new set of words echoed in his mind, just as binding, just as final.

You were always my father. Always.

Jon's last words. They were not a comfort. They were a judgment. A final, terrible absolution that was its own kind of promise. A promise Eddard now had to keep. He had to be the father who had sent his son into exile. He had to live with the knowledge that he had broken the boy's heart to keep it beating. He had to carry the weight of Jon's love and his resentment in silence, for the rest of his days.

He remembered a day years ago—Jon only eight, red-faced and breathless from chasing Arya through the snowdrifts, with Robb right behind and Sansa shrieking as they flung snowballs at her hair. For that brief afternoon, they were only children. No bastards, no banners, no whispers in the halls. Just laughter and breathless joy echoing off the stone walls of Winterfell.

Now, one was gone.

A surge of hot, helpless anger rose in him. He was not angry at Jon, or Catelyn, or even Robert. He was angry at the gods, at the cruel, indifferent fate that had taken his sister and left him with a secret that had forced him to wound everyone he loved.

He was angry at Rhaegar for his selfish love, at Lyanna for her wild heart, at Robert for his blind hatred. But most of all, he was angry at himself, for being the honorable fool who had tried to hold a collapsing world together with a single, impossible lie. He had tried to do what was right. And for his efforts, he was a liar to his wife, a stranger to his son, and a betrayer to the boy he had raised as his own.

He looked up at the weeping face of the weirwood, its ancient eyes seeming to hold all the sorrow of the world. He had kept his promise to Lyanna. He would keep his new, silent promise to Jon. He would be the warden who stood watch over an empty place in his home, a quiet testament to the son he had loved enough to destroy. He would bear the weight of his choices. It was the only honor he had left.

He would not weep. He would not confess. But in the solitude of the godswood, he would return each day to stand his silent, lonely watch, remembering the boy who had called him father.

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[A/N] – One of the trickiest chapters to write. Hope you enjoyed reading it. Do drop your reviews in the comments!