The click of the solar door was a soft, final sound. It was the sound of a box being closed, of a book being shut. Jon stood alone in the hallway, the torchlight casting his small shadow long and distorted on the cold grey stones. He did not feel sad. He did not feel angry. The weeping he had done as a smaller boy, huddled behind the forge for warmth, was a distant memory. The rage he had felt when his father had left, a hot, tight knot in his chest, had long since cooled to a numb, empty ache.
Now, he felt only a strange, quiet calm. A clarity.
For as long as he could remember, his life had been a riddle he could not solve. He was a Stark, but not a Stark. He was a brother, but not a brother. He was a boy who lived in a great castle but was welcome in none of its rooms. He was a shame. A stain. He had tried so hard to be good, to be quiet, to be second best, but it was never enough. The stain was always there .
But now, the Lady of Winterfell had finally given him the answer. She had told him how to fix it. How to give his father a gift. How to finally, truly be good.
He turned and began to walk. His feet, clad in soft leather boots, made no sound on the stone flags. He walked not with the aimless shuffle of a sad child, but with a new, somber purpose. He was on an errand .
He passed the entrance to the Great Hall, dark and cavernous in the night. The long tables were scrubbed clean, sleeping in the thin shafts of moonlight that pierced the high windows. He remembered the noise and warmth of the feasts, the smell of roasted meat and mulled wine, and the sound of his father's bannermen laughing. He always sat at the far end of the benches, as far from the high table as he could get. Even the warmth had felt distant. He passed an alcove where a household guard was meant to stand, but the man was asleep at his post, his low, rumbling snore a peaceful sound in the deep quiet. The castle was alive, but it was a life he was no longer part of. He was a ghost, walking to his own grave.
His path took him past the kitchens. The memory was sharp, a fresh wound. The gnawing hunger in his belly had been constant for months. He had smelled the meat pies—Robb's favorite—and for a moment, the hunger had been stronger than the fear. He had taken one. He had been caught. He remembered being dragged to Lady Catelyn's solar, the warmth of the fire a stark contrast to the ice in her eyes. He remembered her kneeling before him, her voice a cold poison. "That hunger is in your blood, Snow. A grasping, wanting thing... Do not forget what you are. You are a shadow. And shadows do not steal the light" . He had not felt guilty for taking the pie. He had felt a deep, chilling shame for being hungry at all.
He even remembered Robb. His brother. The thought came without anger, just a dull, hollow ache. He remembered the training yard, the satisfying thwack of a wooden sword, and the one place he had felt... good. He was faster than Robb, and Ser Arthur had told him his footwork was a "gift."
That good feeling lasted until the day it ended. He remembered the incident clearly. Lady Catelyn had been watching from the balcony, her face a cold mask . He had disarmed Robb, a clean, quick move. Robb, ever the good brother, had just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, but she had not.
Later, she had summoned him. Not to her solar, but to the armory, a cold, windowless room smelling of oil and steel. He had stood there, small and nervous, while she paced.
"You were good today," she said, her voice a silken knife in the quiet. "Too good."
She had stopped pacing and knelt before him, her blue eyes as hard and bright as ice chips. "My son is the heir," she whispered, her voice a cold poison meant only for him. "He must be the best. He will be the best. You will not take that from him, too. Do you understand me, Snow? You will not be the one to make him look weak."
He had just stared, confused and frightened by her fury. He hadn't meant to win. He had just... played. He opened his mouth to say so, but she cut him off, her patience snapping.
"Do you know what you are?" she hissed, her face closer now, her mask of composure completely gone, replaced by a raw, venomous rage. "You are his shame. You are a stain. You are the living proof that my honorable husband is a liar. He told me himself your mother was nothing but a northern whore. He said it was a mercy she died birthing you, so she never had to see the face of her monstrous sin!"
The words had hit him like a physical blow. Whore. Sin. Shame.
"You will not make my son look weak," she repeated, her voice dropping back to that terrifying, lethal whisper. "You will not take his honor, just as your whore mother took my husband's. You will let him win. Always."
He had understood. That was the day the hope had died. From that day on, his lunge was always a fraction of an inch too wide. His parry was always a step too slow. He had let Robb win. And in the end, Robb had stopped seeking him out for spars, bored by the easy victories. She had taken his brother from him, one quiet, brutal cut at a time.
His lessons had changed, too. The library had once been his sanctuary, a quiet place of warmth and wonder where Maester Luwin would let him trace the maps of far-off lands. But that was after. After that day, he could still feel the Septa's words, even before she arrived.
He remembered her second, quieter lesson. He had been in the library, hunched over the book of Dragon Kings, finding a rare moment of peace. Her voice shattered it. "Stealing knowledge now, Snow?" . The servants had scattered. She had leaned in, and her whisper delivered a new, colder poison. The story that he was a "camp follower's" son, that she "serviced many men," and that "my honorable husband might not even be your father" .
If the first insult in the armory had made him feel shameful, this one made him feel unreal. It shook the one foundation he had left: his father. The thought that his father's love was just "pity"—that this whole life was a lie based on a stranger's kindness—was a wound deeper and more terrifying than the first. It was the moment he truly became a ghost.
His lessons with Maester Luwin had been cut short soon after, replaced by long, dreary hours in the new sept she had built, an alien place of cold stone and strange-smelling incense. The Septa, a thin woman with eyes as sharp as needles, would make him recite passages from The Seven-Pointed Star. "The bastard is born of lust and lies," she would read, her voice droning in the empty room, her eyes fixed on him. "He is a sin made flesh, a living reminder of his father's shame. Only through a life of perfect, selfless penance can he hope to cleanse the stain of his birth". He had tried to find that penance. He had scrubbed floors, mucked stalls, and practiced his letters until his fingers cramped, but the Septa always found a flaw, a smudge, or a missed spot. The stain was too deep.
He had fallen ill after that, a fever that had left him shivering in the cold, dark room in the tower she had given him. He remembered waking one night, the shivering so bad his teeth chattered, to see three tall shadows filling the doorway. Ser Arthur, Ser Gerold, and Ser Oswell. They had come back from their patrol. He remembered Ser Arthur's hand, calloused but gentle, on his brow. The knight's voice had been a low, furious rumble. "This is not right," he had said, not to Jon, but to the others . Then he had looked down at Jon, his expression softening. "You will not be in this cold place for much longer, little wolf. We will see to it. You will be warm. I promise" .
It was the last kind promise anyone had ever made to him. He had been moved to the maester's warm chambers the next day. But the three knights were gone. When he was well enough to walk, he had asked Maester Luwin where they were. The maester's face had been a mask of sorrow. "They are in the ice cells, Jon. They were imprisoned for... for insubordination to the Lady Catelyn".
The final piece of the riddle had clicked into place. He was not just a stain. He was a curse. Kindness to him was a crime. Protecting him was treason. Farlen, Hullen, the stablehand, and now the three greatest knights in the realm—all of them had been punished for him. The guilt was a heavy, suffocating blanket. He had learned his final lesson: to be Jon Snow was to be a poison, and the only way to stop hurting people was to not exist at all.
After he recovered from the fever, Maester Luwin had argued to keep him in the warm rooms, but Lady Catelyn had insisted he return to his own chambers. The "guest chambers" in the west tower. The wind howled through the ill-fitting stones of the walls, a lonely, mournful sound that never stopped. There was no fireplace, and the walls were not heated like those in the main keep . He slept in all his clothes, under a single, scratchy blanket, and still, he was always, always cold. The cold had seeped into his bones, a permanent chill that matched the ache in his chest. It was a cold that even the forge couldn't seem to thaw anymore.
His path was clear now. He walked with a steady, unhurried pace across the courtyard, his small shadow flitting ahead of him. He went to the one place that had always been quiet enough to hold his sorrow .
He pushed open the ancient ironwood gate of the Godswood.
The air inside was different, still and silent and heavy with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. He walked to the Heart Tree, its pale trunk glowing like a ghost in the darkness, the red leaves like a thousand weeping eyes. He felt their gaze on him, the gaze of the Old Gods, his father's gods. He did not feel judged. He felt... seen . For the first time, he did not feel the need to hide, to make himself small. He was a stain, yes, but here, in the heart of the North, he was a stain that was about to be washed away. He was a poison, about to be drawn from the wound.
He came to the clearing of the Heart Tree, a pale ghost in the darkness. He did not pray. He did not weep. He was here to give a gift.
He found the rope and the small, sharp skinning knife he kept in a secret hollow at the base of the tree. He shimmied up the low, thick branch of the Heart Tree, his movements methodical. He sat there for a long moment, the tools in his hands, looking at the carved face in the tree. He thought of his father, returning a hero tomorrow, finally free of his shame. He thought of Ser Arthur, free from the ice cells because the boy he had tried to protect was gone. He thought of Maester Luwin, who would no longer have to lie to his lady to show a bastard kindness. He even thought of Robb, who would now be the only son, the undisputed best, as it was meant to be.
It was the best gift he could give them. The only gift he had.
A small, genuine smile touched his lips, a feeling so alien he had almost forgotten it. It was the feeling of a task well done. The feeling of an end. The feeling of release .
He placed the tip of the cold steel against his chest, just over his heart. It wouldn't go all the way through, he knew. He was too small, his tunic too thick. But it was the attempt that mattered. The proof .
He looped the rough rope over his head, the knot biting into the skin beneath his ear.
He looked up at the pale face of the weirwood, at its weeping red eyes, and took one last, deep breath of the cold, clean air of the North.
And then, he let go.