Chapter Text
I have read two stories recently that really inspired me and reminded me of the memories of writing fanfiction. And I am chasing that feeling again.
Maester Wolf by ctc100 and The Rising Son by DerkAndFullOfErrors.
These two stories are absolute master pieces and got my blood pumping after years! YEARS!
So please note, if you are expecting your typical Jon Snow here. Think again.
Prologue
Winterfell was never silent.
Even at dawn, when the sun had not yet climbed over the broken teeth of the mountains and the snow lay smooth and untouched, the castle breathed. Wind slid through stone corridors like a patient ghost. Ravens stirred in the rookery. Somewhere deep below, water moved through channels carved centuries ago, steady and cold.
Jon Snow stood in the yard and listened.
He was small for his age - seven, though he did not think of it that way - and wrapped in a heavy cloak that smelled faintly of wool and smoke. The cloak was too large for him. Most things were. He had learned early not to complain about such things. Complaining did not make them fit.
The yard was empty except for him and the practice dummies lined in patient rows. The men would come later. The clank of steel, the barked commands, the laughter that always followed. Jon liked watching them train, but today he stood apart, boots sinking slightly into packed snow, hands tucked into his sleeves.
Today was a leaving day.
He did not know why that mattered so much. He had known for weeks that he was going south. The Citadel. Oldtown. Words that sounded large and distant and warm. Maester Luwin had spoken of them often, his voice calm and careful, as if describing something fragile.
‘You have a mind that wants to know how things work,’ the maester had said. ‘That is rare. Rarer still in one so young.’
Jon had nodded then, because nodding was safer than asking questions. He asked questions later, when he was alone.
Now, in the yard, he wondered how the snow knew to fall the same way every year. How Winterfell’s walls had been built so thick that even the cold seemed to hesitate before entering. He wondered who had first decided where the gates should stand, and why.
He wondered why leaving felt like standing at the edge of something invisible.
Footsteps crunched behind him.
Jon did not turn at once. He had learned that people often expected him to move quickly, to make room, to step aside. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he waited.
“Cold morning, Son.” said his father.
Lord Eddard Stark did not raise his voice. He never did. The words carried anyway.
Jon turned then. Ned Stark stood a few paces away, wrapped in dark wool and fur, his breath pale in the air. His face looked carved from the same stone as the walls behind him - lined, steady, unreadable. If he felt anything about this morning, he did not show it.
“Yes, Father,” Jon said.
Ned nodded once. “You rose early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
That was true, though Jon was not sure why. His dreams had been full of doors - some open, some locked, some leading nowhere at all.
They stood together in the cold. Jon noticed things because noticing was what he did. He noticed that his father’s gloves were worn thin at the fingers. That there was a faint smudge of ink on his cuff, likely from reading late the night before. That the snow around Ned’s boots was more disturbed than his own, as if Ned had already walked the yard once before coming to find him.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Ned said after a time.
Jon blinked. “I’m not.”
Ned studied him, grey eyes sharp but not unkind. “No?”
Jon thought about it. About the Citadel. About leaving Winterfell. About never quite knowing where he belonged and deciding, at some point, that it was easier not to worry about it.
“I think,” Jon said carefully, “that being afraid won’t change anything.”
Something passed through Ned’s expression then - too quick to name. Pride, perhaps. Or sadness. Or both.
“That’s true,” Ned said. “But it’s all right to feel it anyway.”
Jon nodded again, though he did not answer. He was still learning how feelings worked. They came and went like weather, and he was never sure which ones mattered.
A bell rang faintly from within the castle. Somewhere, servants were already moving. Horses would be saddled soon. The southbound party to White Harbor would not be large.
Ned turned toward the keep. “Come. Maester Luwin will want to see you before you go.”
Jon followed, matching his father’s stride as best he could. The stones beneath their feet were cold even through his boots. He had walked these halls all his life, but today they felt different, as if he were seeing them from the outside already.
Inside, Winterfell smelled of smoke, bread, and old stone. A pair of guards nodded as they passed. One smiled at Jon. He smiled back automatically, though he did not know why the man was smiling.
Maester Luwin waited in his chambers, robes neat, chain heavy around his neck. He looked as he always did - kind, thoughtful, quietly intent. A small fire crackled behind him.
“Jon,” Luwin said. “Come closer.”
Jon obeyed. The maester knelt slightly to meet his eyes, which always made Jon uncomfortable. He did not like being looked at too closely.
“You’ve packed your things?” Luwin asked.
“Yes.”
“Books?”
“Yes.”
“Warm clothes?”
“Yes.”
Luwin smiled. “Good. You learn quickly.”
Jon glanced at the chain around the maester’s neck. It caught the firelight, each link a different colour, a different story. He had asked about it once - what each metal meant, what knowledge it represented. Luwin had answered patiently, as he always did.
Jon wondered what it would feel like to wear such a thing. The thought came, lingered, and then passed without emotion.
“Oldtown will be different,” Luwin said. “Larger. Louder. Warmer. You’ll meet many boys older than you. Smarter than you, some of them.”
Jon did not react. He had learned that being told one might not be the best was not an insult.
“And many who are not,” Luwin continued. “What matters is this: you must remember why you are there.”
“To learn,” Jon said.
Luwin nodded. “To understand. Not just what is written, but why it was written. And who benefits from it.”
Ned’s gaze sharpened slightly at that, but he said nothing.
“You have a rare hunger,” Luwin went on. “Not for praise. Not for power. For how things fit together. Do not let anyone convince you that curiosity is a weakness.”
Jon absorbed that quietly, storing it away like he stored everything else.
A servant knocked, then entered. “My lord. The horses are ready.”
Ned placed a hand on Jon’s shoulder. It was a steady weight, familiar and grounding.
“It’s time.”
They walked to the gate together. The air outside had warmed slightly, though the snow still clung to everything. A small party waited—two guards, a man from the Citadel, and the wagon that would take Jon south.
The wagon looked enormous.
Jon stopped a few steps away. He looked up at the walls of Winterfell, at the towers rising into the pale sky. He had never thought of them as something he could lose. They had simply always been there.
Ned knelt then, fully, ignoring the cold stone beneath his knee. He placed his hands on Jon’s shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“You are going to learn,” he said. “You are going to see more of the world than most men ever will. And one day, you will decide what to do with that knowledge.”
Jon nodded.
“You owe no one anything,” Ned continued. “Not for your name. Not for your birth. Not for what others expect of you.”
Jon hesitated. “Not even you?”
Ned’s mouth tightened briefly. Then he shook his head. “Not even me.”
That answer settled something Jon hadn’t known was unsettled.
Ned stood. “Write when you can.”
“I will.”
“And Jon?”
“Yes, Father?”
Ned rested a hand on his head, briefly, awkwardly. “Grow.”
Jon climbed into the wagon without looking back.
As the gates of Winterfell began to open, the cold air rushed in, sharp and clean. Jon wrapped his cloak tighter around himself and watched the world move forward.
He did not know what he would become.
But for the first time, he felt that becoming something was allowed.
The wagon lurched as it began to move.
Jon felt it more than he saw it - the subtle shift beneath his feet, the faint creak of wood, the change in the air as Winterfell’s great gates opened wider. Cold wind rushed in, carrying the sharp scent of snow and iron and something older that Jon had never been able to name.
He gripped the edge of the wagon and leaned forward, watching the familiar shapes of the yard slide past.
That was when he heard his name.
“Jon!”
The voice was breathless and loud and entirely unrestrained.
He turned.
Robb Stark came barrelling across the yard, boots slipping slightly on the snow, his hair wild from sleep or wind or both. He was grinning, wide and unthinking, his cheeks flushed red from the cold. He skidded to a stop just short of the wagon, hands braced on his knees as he caught his breath.
“You didn’t wait,” Robb said accusingly, straightening. “I told you to wait.”
Jon blinked. “You were asleep.”
“I wasn’t,” Robb said immediately, then hesitated. “I mean - I was, but only a little.”
Jon nodded. That sounded right.
Robb stepped closer, peering up into the wagon as if trying to see all of Jon at once, as though Jon might disappear if he didn’t look hard enough.
“So,” Robb said. “You’re really going.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
Jon considered. “A long time.”
Robb frowned. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the best one I have.”
Robb scowled at that, clearly dissatisfied, then seemed to remember something important. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small wooden carving - a wolf, roughly shaped, its legs uneven.
“I made this,” Robb said proudly. “Well - mostly. The legs kept breaking, but I fixed them.”
Jon took it carefully, turning it over in his hands. The wood was warm from Robb’s pocket. The wolf’s head was too big for its body, and one ear was smaller than the other.
“It’s good,” Jon said.
Robb beamed. “You can keep it. So, you don’t forget.”
“I won’t forget,” Jon said, though he tucked the carving into his cloak all the same.
Robb shifted his weight, suddenly less certain. “You’ll write?”
“Yes.”
“And when you come back,” Robb continued, warming to the idea, “you’ll be a maester. Or something like that. You’ll know everything. You can tell me things before Maester Luwin does.”
Jon almost smiled.
“I don’t think I’ll know everything.”
Robb shrugged. “You already know more than anyone.”
That wasn’t true, but Robb believed it, and that seemed to be enough.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The cold pressed in around them. The guards waited politely, pretending not to watch.
Robb looked up suddenly, eyes bright. “When I’m lord of Winterfell,” he said, “you can stay. You won’t have to go anywhere.”
Jon did not answer right away. He looked at Robb’s face - open, confident, certain of a future that fit neatly together.
“That’s kind of you,” Jon said finally.
Robb nodded, satisfied, and stepped back. “Don’t be late coming home,” he added, as if Jon were simply going on a long walk.
Jon climbed back fully into the wagon. As it began to roll again, Robb raised a hand and waved, already half-turned toward something else that had caught his attention.
Jon watched him until he disappeared behind a stone pillar.
He felt something then - not sharp, not painful. Just a quiet understanding that Robb lived in the now, while Jon had always lived slightly ahead of himself, looking at where paths might lead.
He did not think either of them was wrong.
The wagon slowed near the outer gate.
Catelyn Stark stood there, her cloak drawn tightly around her, auburn hair neatly arranged despite the wind. She did not step forward as Jon approached. She did not smile.
She stood beside Ned, hands folded, her posture perfect.
Jon straightened instinctively.
“Lady Stark,” he said.
Her eyes flicked to him - cold, assessing. They always had been. Jon had learned, without ever being told, that there were places in Winterfell where he fit, and places where he did not. Lady Stark had never been unkind in ways that could be named. She had simply been distant, and distance could cut just as deeply.
“So,” she said. “You are leaving.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She studied him then, really studied him, as though seeing him for the first time without the weight of daily presence. He looked smaller here, she thought. Younger. Wrapped in a cloak that did not quite belong to him.
A child.
Something flickered behind her eyes - quick, unwelcome. Guilt, perhaps. Or discomfort. The sense that some things, once set in motion, could not be undone.
“You will be well cared for,” she said, more statement than reassurance.
“Yes.”
Ned glanced at her but said nothing.
For a moment, Catelyn’s gaze softened - just a fraction. Jon saw it and was surprised. It reminded him of the look she wore when Robb scraped his knee, or when Sansa cried too loudly in the night.
Then it was gone.
“This is for the best,” she said, as if convincing herself as much as anyone else. “The Citadel will give you purpose.”
Jon nodded. Purpose sounded important.
She stepped back, hands tightening slightly in her sleeves. In her mind, the thought settled where it had always settled: He is a reminder. And reminders are easier to bear when they are far away.
The wagon began to move again.
Jon sat quietly as Winterfell receded behind him - the walls, the towers, the people who had shaped his world without ever fully claiming him. He did not cry. He did not wave.
He held the wooden wolf in his hand and watched the road stretch southward, white and unbroken.
He did not know what waited for him.
But he felt, deep down, that leaving was not an ending.
It was the beginning of becoming.
Line-break
The wagon rattled over the frozen road, the axles groaning as if complaining about the weight of its passenger. Jon sat quietly, knees pulled close to his chest, the carved wolf tucked carefully in his sleeve. Outside, the snow stretched endlessly, glittering faintly in the weak light of dawn. The forests thinned, revealing fields that Winterfell would never plant, and rivers that ran faster and clearer than the sluggish ones through the castle grounds.
He pressed his forehead against the cold wood of the wagon and watched the landscape slip past. The trees moved like slow, deliberate dancers, and he thought about their roots - how they dug deep and anchored the land. He wondered if men could be like that too: rooted enough to survive storms, yet reaching for the sky.
Jon’s mind wandered, as it always did. He thought of the maester’s words, of Ned’s calm hands on his shoulders, of Robb’s innocent certainty, of Lady Stark’s sharp eyes softening for a moment. There were so many things to notice in the world, so many patterns to find.
He wondered about the people they would meet in the south. Would they be like Winterfell? Would they be kinder, harsher, smarter? Or would they simply be different? Difference fascinated him more than any comfort, and already he felt the itch of questions pressing at the edges of his mind on the journey to White Harbor.
The wagon jolted suddenly as the horses shifted their weight on a patch of ice, and Jon instinctively tightened his grip on the wolf. A small thought rose unbidden: I must learn to hold onto things without crushing them.
He remembered Luwin’s gentle voice: “You have a rare hunger… not for praise, not for power, for how things fit together.” He had not fully understood it at the time, but he thought he might be beginning to. Hunger was not empty. It had direction. And it could carry him somewhere.
Jon’s eyes scanned the horizon, taking in the mountains far to the north, the ridges of snow and stone that seemed to bend toward each other in a silent archway. He thought of Winterfell’s walls, of the dungeons below, the kitchens, the kitchens, the libraries, the quiet corners where Maester Luwin had taught him to trace the curves of letters with his eyes rather than his hands.
He thought about knowledge as a shape, something you could hold in your mind like a puzzle, turning it over, seeing how the pieces fit - or did not. And then he thought about why knowledge mattered if no one used it. It would be wasted. That realization made him sharper, alert to the possibility of utility in every lesson, in every scrap of observation.
A crow cawed in the distance, black against the white, and Jon noticed its wings. They moved with precision, each stroke deliberate, not wasted. He wondered if humans ever learned that from birds, or if they only watched the sky without understanding. The thought lingered, sharp in the quiet.
The wagon passed a small farm, smoke curling from the chimney. Children ran through the snow, laughing, throwing themselves into drifts that almost swallowed them. Jon’s eyes followed them, but he did not smile. He did not frown either. He noted the way they moved, the way their laughter echoed off the frozen ground, how quickly the snow clung to their hair and gloves. These were details, not judgments.
The road curved, leading toward a thicker forest. The horses snorted and tugged at their reins, and Jon straightened, feeling a small thrill in the rhythm of motion. He imagined walking these paths on his own, not as a passenger, but as someone who decided the route. That day would come, and he thought it would not frighten him.
He thought of Robb again. The boy had been loud, impatient, quick to leap without looking. Jon considered the difference between them. Robb felt everything immediately, acted before thought could intervene, and carried the weight of his position without questioning it. Jon, in contrast, measured, observed, imagined. He did not feel lesser for it. He only felt… different.
Catelyn Stark’s eyes flashed in his mind—cold, measured, distant, yet not without flickers of something softer. He did not understand the complexity of those flickers, nor did he need to. People acted according to their own rules. Some were gentle in private, harsh in public. Some were rigid, some pliant. All were interesting if he watched carefully.
The sun climbed higher, thin and pale, and the wind bit at his cheeks. Jon shivered and pulled the cloak tighter. He was aware of every detail—the movement of the horses’ hooves, the creak of the wagon wheels, the crunch of snow under wheels and hooves, the taste of cold in his mouth. Each thing was a piece of the world, and he catalogued them silently.
He thought, briefly, of home, of Winterfell’s familiar cold stone, the smell of firewood, the sound of the crypts below. That part of him ached faintly, though he would not have named it longing. He had no desire to go back - not yet. But he carried the knowledge that he belonged to a place, and that place had formed him enough to launch him forward.
Jon closed his eyes for a moment, letting the rhythm of motion carry him, the cold air wakes him. He thought of the wolf carving in his sleeve and how its crooked legs and oversized head reminded him that even things that seemed flawed could endure. He liked that.
Ahead, the forest grew denser. Shadows thickened between the trees, and the road narrowed. Jon leaned slightly forward, hands gripping the edge of the wagon, eyes scanning. He was not afraid. Not yet.
He was leaving behind the only life he had known, but he was stepping into the world with more than he realized: curiosity, attention, and a quiet readiness to notice everything.
And perhaps, somewhere in that readiness, lay the first trace of who he would become.
Prologue End