JON III

He stood in Winterfell alone. All around him in the courtyard, snow hung about the ruined castle now a shell of what it had once been. Everything was deathly silent, so that he only heard himself breathe and the snow fall. Unable to believe what he saw, began to explore what was left of the castle. The only thing that remained unchanged, oddly enough was the Broken Tower. The roof to the Great Hall had caved in, the Great Keep had been reduced to rubble, and the Throne of Winter was covered in snow; but the Broken Tower remained as he remembered it. Just then he heard the cawing of a crow and looked up to see a sight he never expected to see staring back at him: a three-eyed crow.

The bird stared at him for a moment before taking flight soaring about the courtyard before landing at the destroyed rubble that had been the entrance to the crypts. It cawed once more and then flew down into the crypt. Jon felt compelled to follow, and so he stumbled down the snow covered stairs into the crypts. Once inside he oddly felt warm, and he turned around to see that the snow covered steps had disappeared. He turned around again and jumped in surprise to see the three-eyed crow staring at him directly in his face from the perch of a statue Jon now stood in front of. He recognized the statue, it was that of his Aunt Lyanna, but unlike the statue he remembered, this had become painted so that it almost looked alive, and a wreath of winter roses now sat atop it. Just then the statue grabbed his shoulders tightly, the cold painted stone chilling him to the bone. And suddenly Jon heard the statue speak,its mouth cracking open with a horrible sound of splitting stone. And through it all he heard it say in a woman's voice "Promise me, Ned." And that was when Jon awoke.

When Jon awoke he was alone. But then most of his life he'd been alone in his room, so this wasn't so necessarily unexpected. It still would have been nice to have woken up and had someone in the room with him, but that might have been expecting too much.

His head ached like none other, and he felt sore and bruised all over, but beyond this he felt rather fine for having been thrown from a horse. He was starved, that was one thing he was sure of. With some trouble he dressed himself and left his room. As he walked across the dusk-lit courtyard to the kitchens, Jon recalled why he and Robb had gone into the Wolfswood in the first place, and he ruefully thought Theon was probably already halfway to Pyke by this point. There'd be no catching him now. He'd failed Bran and Rickon, and that is why he was forgotten and alone—because of his failures.

When he came into the kitchen he found it busy with activity of cleaning up after the evening meal. No one took notice of his entrance immediately, and he did his best to fade into the background as he slipped into the pantry. Once inside he found a bushel of apples, one of which he picked up and shone before taking a bite. It wasn't much, but while he felt like eating, everything else seemed to turn his stomach to look at it. So the apple satiated his hunger for now. Jon slipped out of the pantry as easily as he had slid in. He finished the apple and tossed the core as high as he could over the inner wall. He heard it splash as it landed in the moat.

Where was everyone? He had yet to see any of his siblings or his father for that matter, and that worried him. Had something happened to them while he had slept? Had they abandoned the castled because of Theon's escape? It was then he heard an odd noise come from the kennel, the sound of a wolf. What was a wolf doing in Winterfell? He hazily recalled being attacked by such a beast in the forest. Had it made its way into the castle? Jon immediately went to the kennels to discover the truth. As he came near he heard the wolf howl again-it's lonely cry ringing out over the night. After entering the kennel door he passed rows of pens with many whimpering dogs, some barking at his approach or in response to the wolf's cry. The wolf's howl came from a pen at the end of the kennel, in the far corner from its entrance. And there he found squatting and panting was the wolf. Jon was taken aback by its size and believed it upon sight to be the beast that had attacked him. But what was it doing here?

It howled for a third time, and Jon watched as a small thin sac covered object dropped from the wolf and to the floor, where immediately the wolf took to licking and nipping at until the sac itself was eaten by the mother, leaving behind a small blind white creature which whimpered and moved its tiny arms and legs without purpose. The wolf was whelping a litter. The wolf then collapsed to its side, still continuing to pant and nuzzled the newborn pup to its side where it searched for a teat and found one to suckle.

This process repeated a second time, this time producing a grey pup, before someone else came to see the cause of the commotion. It was then that Jon saw his father enter the kennel, looking haggard and weary. His froze when he saw Jon, and then a relieved smile crept upon his face. Jon was scooped up into what was possibly the warmest embrace of his life from his father, followed soon after by his siblings. And even if it was just for a moment, Jon did not feel as alone.