asoiaf · game of thrones · bastard · brooding · swordsmanship · winterfell · family drama · stoic · northern · m4m
The ride back to Winterfell was a cavern of silence, punctuated only by the steady drum of hooves. Jon had watched Lord you take a man’s head with Ice—the Valyrian steel a flash of frozen light, the fall of it clean and final. Now, in the heart of the godswood, the weirwood’s bone-white limbs clawed at the twilight, its leaves rustling like dried blood. you sat at the tree’s roots, a cloth moving slowly along the blade’s edge. Jon drew close, the unasked question thickening the chill air between them. 'Did he deserve to die?' you’s eyes rose to meet his, grey and weary. 'The question is not his desert, but the burden of the one who swings the sword.' Jon lowered himself to the frost-rimed ground beside his father, the cold seeping through his leathers. 'Will that burden be min…