The cold was the first betrayal. A damp, gnawing thing that had nothing to do with orbital distance or a planet’s axial tilt and everything to do with stone and misery. Jon pulled the thick pelt tighter around his shoulders, the coarse fur scratching at his neck. On Makeb, the cold was a clean, crystalline killer. On Hoth, a force of nature so absolute it had its own stark beauty. Here, it just smelled of wet dogs and despair.
He stood in the shadow of the Great Keep’s gatehouse, watching the courtyard boil with frantic motion. Men in Stark livery hurried with last-minute tasks, their movements clumsy, inefficient. A squad, he thought, would have had this entire perimeter secured and sanitized in a standard hour. These people had been at it all morning.
His left hand, tucked into the opposite sleeve for warmth, began to tremble. A faint, insistent vibration from the knuckles to the wrist. A souvenir from a Sith Inquisitor’s lightning on Corellia. It only ever happened when he was idle, a phantom echo of a pain he’d long since mastered. He clenched his fist, stilling the tremor with a will forged in far worse fires than this.
“You.”
The voice was sharp, brittle as a shard of ice. He didn’t need to turn. Lady Catelyn Stark stood a few paces away, her face a mask of polite hostility. He’d been back three weeks, and she had yet to speak a full sentence to him that wasn’t a command disguised as a question.
“My lady.” He gave a slight inclination of his head, a gesture he’d learned was expected. It felt alien. His body wanted to snap to a parade rest, chin up, eyes forward, ready for inspection.
Her eyes, the color of a winter sky before a blizzard, found him and held for three measured heartbeats. There was no warmth in them. Only appraisal. She was scanning for threats, he realized. And he was one of them. She didn't say what she was thinking. She never did. She simply turned her attention to her son.
“Robb, get your brothers. The King is less than a mile away.”
Robb, his face flushed with excitement, clapped Jon on the shoulder. The gesture was meant to be familiar, brotherly. It felt like a stranger’s touch. “Did you hear? The King!” He grinned, a wide, open expression Jon couldn’t remember how to replicate. “Come on, line up with us.”
“I’ll stand with the household,” Jon said, his voice flat. It was easier in the back. Observation was a more comfortable position than participation.
Robb’s smile faltered for a second. “Still not used to being home, eh? Don’t worry. You’ll be ordering us about like your old commando squad in no time.”
Jon didn’t answer. He watched his half-brother stride off, his gait full of the easy confidence of a boy who had never known a world larger than this cold, damp corner of it. A boy who had never seen a friend’s body flash-incinerated by a blaster bolt, or heard the sound a man makes when a vibroblade slides between his ribs.
He took a horn of ale from a passing servant. He hated the stuff. It was thick, sour, and weak, a pathetic imitation of the Corellian ale his squad leader, Jax, used to smuggle onto the transport. Jax used to say real ale should be able to strip paint. This Northern swill couldn’t strip the sleep from a man’s eyes. Still, he drank it. It was wet, and it was something to do with his hands.
Then the horns blew from the battlements, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the stone under his feet. The great gates swung open.
Jon’s gaze swept the procession automatically. A hundred men-at-arms, a dozen knights. The lead rider was a beast of a man, his face blotchy and red, spilling out of his fine clothes. King Robert. Jon’s tactical assessment was immediate and unflattering: Bloated. Slow. A liability. The man beside him, however… Jon’s eyes narrowed. Golden hair, golden armor, a smirk that promised nothing good. Ser Jaime Lannister. He moved with a liquid grace that belied the heavy plate. *That* was the threat. Natural, predatory confidence. The kind you couldn’t train into a man.
The royal family dismounted. The greetings were a flurry of motion and sound. Lord Stark—his *father*—knelt, and the King pulled him into a rough embrace. Jon watched his father’s face. There was relief, yes. But beneath it, a deep, weary tension. A man greeting a storm he knew he couldn’t turn away.
Ned’s eyes found him then, over the King’s shoulder. A flash of something complex—pride, pain, confusion. The same look he’d worn the day Jon had walked back into Winterfell, clad in strange, dark leathers and carrying a pack full of secrets. He’d answered what questions he could. “Slavers took me.” “A Republic patrol freed me.” “I served in their army.” Every answer was a wall, not a bridge. Every truth he offered was a carefully edited version of a dozen worse ones. Ned had asked who his mother was, once, in the quiet of the solar. Jon had just looked at him. That was one mission briefing he hadn't received.
The King finally noticed him. “And who’s this?” Robert Baratheon’s voice was a bellow that smelled of wine and entitlement.
Ned placed a hand on his shoulder. “My son, Jon Snow.”
The King grunted, giving him a dismissive once-over. The royal gaze lingered for a moment on the faint, silvery scar that cut through Jon’s right eyebrow, a gift from a Zygerrian’s energy whip. “Good, strong lad,” Robert declared, before turning away to find a wench or more wine.
The flurry of greetings and reunions continued, a chaotic dance he had no steps for. Sansa was radiant, Arya was a smudge of dirt and defiance, Bran was a climbing monkey in a doublet. He saw them, cataloged them, but felt a universe of glass between them and him. They were his blood. The databanks said so. His heart said nothing.
He couldn't stand it. The noise, the false cheer, the weight of a thousand unspoken questions. He needed silence. He needed space. On his own initiative, without a word to anyone, Jon slipped away from the throng, his dark tunic blending with the ancient shadows of the castle. He left the warmth of the welcome feast behind, seeking the one place that promised quiet.
The Godswood of Winterfell was a pocket of another world. Silent. Cold. Ancient. The air was heavy with the scent of earth and leaf mold. He walked past the rustling sentinels of ironwood and oak until he came to the heart of the wood. The weirwood.
It stood as he remembered from the fragmented memories of his childhood. A bone-white trunk, a waterfall of blood-red leaves. And a face. The carved eyes wept crimson sap, staring out with an emptiness that felt less like absence and more like… waiting.
He sat on a moss-covered root opposite the tree, the chill of it seeping through his breeches. Here, the noise of the courtyard was a distant murmur. Here, there were no expectations. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, the plume of it white in the frigid air. The tremor in his left hand returned. This time, he let it.
From an inner pocket of his tunic, he pulled a small, flat object. It was smooth, dark gray, and made of a metal that had no name in this world. A standard-issue military commlink, battle-scarred and dented at one corner. The power cell was rated for a decade of standby. It had been three weeks.
He cupped it in his palms, shielding the motion from any watching eyes, though he knew he was alone. His thumb pressed the activation stud. Nothing. No familiar chirp. No faint glow from the frequency monitor. He pressed it again, harder. Still dead. The cold, or the strangely dense atmosphere of this planet, or maybe some other, older force, was interfering with it. Blocking it.
A voice echoed in his memory, sharp and clear as the day it was spoken. *“Rule Five, rook. Your comm is your life. Your squad is your soul. You lose one, you better pray you don't lose the other.”*
He stared at the blank, unresponsive device in his hand. The silence of the Godswood pressed in. It was a different silence now. It wasn't peaceful anymore. It was absolute. He was cut off. He had lost his life, and his soul was half a galaxy away. He looked up at the weeping eyes of the weirwood, and for the first time since returning to the planet of his birth, Jon Snow felt a cold that had nothing to do with the weather. It was the cold of being utterly, completely alone.