Disclaimer: Westeros and its world belongs to George R R Martin; I'm just using it as a whetstone while I create my own.

The warning: Anyone who has read my other drabble knows what's coming, but for those as of yet unfamiliar there will be single quote speecharks, and it's not going to change unless you pay me! Everything else you will have to read to see for yourself, though I am, as you know from the summary, starting from the beginning which means I have just committed myself to quite a vast project.

I need to draw another cover, but anyone whose skill with a pencil exceeds mine, and is gripped by a sudden generous desire to draw me a crown of winter roses, should PM me, and you may find your work on the cover. Obviously I will credit you for your talent!

Enjoy... (Or hate and inexplicably read anyway)

Jon

A grey dire-wolf fluttered atop the fist, rippling before a clear, crisp, cloudless sky. The edges of the flag were encrusted with frost, thicker than Jon had ever seen it reach in half a decade of riding here.

He'd seen almost a score of men die here on the stump at the centre of the square, from the first, blue-eyed brigand, through to this man, a deserter from the Night's Watch, or even a wildling as he had heard the serving girls whispering about. He was the fourth such man this year that they had ridden to see meet with justice, and he would be the last before the King arrived. The whole of the North was whispering about Robert riding North. A King had not come so far North in generations.

'A stag says this one begs,' Theon murmured beside him, brushing dark hair from his eyes.

The words were meant for Robb, the heir, not for him.

'He's not afraid,' his brother replied. 'I'll take your silver this time, Greyjoy.'

Jon stared at the man between his father's guardsmen on his knees in the snow. Dazed, empty eyes as brown as the hair he shared with his father and his sister, hollow cheeks, and cracked, lips blue from the cold. Despite his obvious chill the man did not shiver, nor did he falter from the grim, grey gaze of Jon's father as he asked his questions.

At last Jon's father straightened up from his half-crouch, signalling to the guardsmen who thrust the unresisting man over the gnarled, stained ironwood stump.

'In the name of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals, and the Rhoynar, and the First Man, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the of Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I sentence you to death for desertion, and the dereliction of your duty.'

The deserter never moved, nothing flickered in his face even as the Greatsword rose high above his head.

'Are there any words you would say before you leave the sight of Gods and men?' Their father asked.

'The cold's been in me,' the man warned, distant, and detached.

'Don't look away,' Jon warned Bran, the other brother alongside him, 'father will be disappointed if you do.'

His father's sword, Ice, passed from each Lord of Winterfell to the next, came down in a single, smooth sweep.

Nothing holds an edge like Valyrian steel.

Scarlet sprayed across the snow in a steaming spatter, and beside him Bran flinched but resolutely kept staring on as the deserter's head rolled across the ground to rest next to Theon who laughed and kicked it thoughtlessly away. Their father's ward found everything funny.

'He died bravely,' Robb said, extending a hand in Theon's direction. The Greyjoy's smile disappeared as terrible silver stag exchanged palms. 'You should have taken the wager, Jon.' The silver stag gleamed in Robb's hand for a moment until he tucked it away, but his blue eyes remained as solemn as their father's who stood on top of the fist holding the spell-forged greatsword while Jory Cassel, the captain of his guard, poured water along the length of the smoke-dark blade to clean it.

'He was already dead of fear,' Jon said bluntly, tearing his gaze away from Ice. 'His eyes were empty.'

'I think he was brave, and died well,' Robb disagreed, 'but either way he definitely didn't beg.'

'Did I do well?' Bran asked quietly, leaning down to whisper when Jon helped him onto his pony.

'Father will be proud,' Jon said.

'He flinched,' Theon disagreed, 'none of us did when we came.' Bran's face fell immediately, and Jon glared at Theon. 'It's the truth,' the fostered Greyjoy defended.

'Bran's a year younger than we were,' Robb reminded him.

'I wouldn't have flinched then either,' Theon shrugged, 'but perhaps a kraken is simply less squeamish than wolves.'

'Men in the snow don't fear squid, Greyjoy,' Robb grinned, twisting in his saddle. 'The bridge again?'

'The bridge,' Jon agreed, spurring his horse onwards, hooves scattering snow. Behind him Robb laughed and gave chase, the sound of their horses drowning out Theon's cursing at being last as they plunged down the steep side of the gully.

'Gods,' Robb swore, reigning in sharply to jump down into the snow. 'Jon!'

Sighing, for Greyjoy, the worst rider of the three, would surely now win, Jon reigned his own garron in, and urged it to the edge of the road after Robb.

The late summer snows had been heavy, and Robb was thigh deep before he had taken more than a handful of paces from the road, so Jon gave him a helpful shove sending him spluttering into the cold. Theon laughed, rejoining them as Robb picked himself from the ground, brushing ice from his cold, red face.

'Seven Hells,' Theon leapt from his garron into the snow, 'it's a monster.'

Jon followed the Greyjoy's gaze until he saw what he had believed to be a rock. Grey fur, turned black by ice, half buried by the snow, and eyes that shone pale blue when the weak morning sun shone on the film of ice that covered them.

'It's a wolf,' Robb marvelled.

'Stay back,' Jon warned. Even the largest wolf Jon had seen, the skull in the keep at Karhold, wasn't a third of the size of this one.

'That's one wolf even a kraken wouldn't care to tangle with,' Theon joked. 'What a freak!'

'It's a direwolf,' Jon reckoned. There wasn't much else it could be, no normal wolf would ever grow so large, and though no direwolf had been seen south of the Wall in a hundred years or more Jon knew what he saw.

'Was a direwolf,' Robb corrected, holding up a handful of crimson snow. 'It's dead.'

Something shifted beneath its neck and Theon jumped back several feet, hand flashing to the hilt of his longsword. 'Dead things don't move, Stark,' he laughed, fingers tight on the hilt of his blade.

Robb bent over, then straightened up, arms full of squirming, mewling fur.

'A pup,' Theon looked uncharacteristically sombre, 'without its mother it will suffer and die.'

Jon curled his toes into the snow in discomfort.

'There are more,' Robb said, as the rest of the party came wading through the snow to join them.

'Give it here, Stark,' Theon suggested, 'better it dies quick and clean than starves.'

'Best get it over with,' Hullen, their master of horse, agreed.

'No,' Robb grimaced, shielding the pup from Theon. 'Can we keep them, father?'

'Bad idea,' Jory muttered, 'it's sign this is, and not a good one.'

'It's only a wolf,' his father said, but he looked troubled, and strode through the snow to stand at Robb's side. 'What killed it?'

'There was something under the jaw,' Robb said tentatively, 'but I didn't touch it.'

His father knelt to grope along the underside of the beast's neck, then yanked half a foot of twisted, shattered antler out from underneath. The direwolf's jaws spilled open, revealing jagged, yellow teeth.

Jory exchanged a troubled glance with father, whose eyes came to rest on Jon, frowning deeply.

Four other shapes wriggled in the blood-stained snow, crawling from the corpse of their mother.

'A whole litter,' Jory said, hand on his dagger. 'I'm surprised she managed to whelp with that in her neck.'

'Maybe she didn't,' Harwin, Hullen's son, said grimly. 'There are stories.'

His father tossed the shard of antler away, cleaning his gloves in a clear patch of snow. 'Theon is right,' he decided. 'Better a quick death.'

'No,' Bran said, almost pleading, 'we can take care of them.'

The youngest Stark stepped down from his pony to scoop up the nearest pup; it buried his head in his brother's soft leathers whining gently and searching for milk.

'How?' Theon asked, brandishing his blade. 'Do you intend to nurse the pup yourself?' He stepped through the snow to Bran. 'Give him to me, Bran, it's better this way.'

'Put up your sword, Greyjoy,' Robb ordered, sounding for all the world like father.

'There are five, three male, two female,' Jon announced, sharing a look with Robb. His brother clearly had no intention of giving up the pup that whimpered and nuzzled at his chest if he could help it.

'So?' Hullen asked.

'You have five children, Lord Stark, three sons, and two daughters,' Jon continued, 'and the direwolf is the sigil of House Stark. Jory is right, it is a sign, the Gods meant your children to have these pups.'

Robb flinched from his unusual formality, and the men shifted uncomfortably, exchanging glances. Theon snorted, shaking his head.

'These are not dogs,' his father said sternly, 'they will not follow like hounds, or beg for treats. A direwolf will rip a man's throat out as easily as hound will a hare's.'

'We'll train them well, father,' Robb promised.

'The Gods help you if you do not,' their father said solemnly, 'for I won't have you wasting others' time with them. They are your responsibility.'

'Thank you, father,' Bran gushed in the silence that fell after his acquiescence, tucking the pup he held into his leathers, safe and warm for the ride back home.

Their father was staring sadly at Jon, who returned his gaze unflinchingly.

I am no Stark.

He'd learnt that lesson a long time ago.

'They may die anyway,' father warned, 'no matter what you do, or how much you love them.'

'We won't let them,' Robb declared.

'Keep them, then,' their father answered mildly. 'Jory, Harwin, gather the others, it's time we returned home.'

Something red gleamed away to the South while the others remounted, staring desperately from the snow, and Jon, seized by sudden surety, dismounted to wade across.

'An albino,' Theon remarked, when Jon plucked the sixth pup from the cold. It was the only one whose eyes had opened, but they were scarlet as the stain on the snow at the square, and its fur was pale. 'If any of them die, it will be this one.'

Their father's ward, for once, sounded almost regretful.

'It must have crawled away,' Robb said thoughtfully.

'Or he was driven away,' their father said sadly, eyeing the unusual colouring with some apprehension.

'This one is mine,' Jon decided, throwing an angry look at Theon, who was still holding his bare blade suggestively. The pup's eyes gleamed like rubies from behind his black leathers, peering out curiously at the world around.

'It looks like the face of the Weirwood,' Bran commented softly, pulling his pony alongside Jon.

The Heart Tree of Winterfell sat at the centre of its godswood. Three full acres of stubborn, stern trees, with grey-green needles, and thick-barked trunks as old as the realm, spread from underneath the thousand, crimson leaves of the Weirwood and its cold, dark pool. The tree was older than Winterfell from what Jon knew, the face too. The mournful eyes, long face, and grim mouth had been cut into the bone-white wood by the Children of the Forest before the First Men had walked the snow-covered hills and taken the nameless gods for themselves.

'I suppose he does a little,' Jon agreed. The pup's eyes were the same scarlet as the sap of the Heart Tree, and he was a creature of the North, just as the old gods, and his brothers were, but there the resemblance ended. The direwolf, like Jon, was slimmer than his brothers, lean and slender where they already showed signs of becoming stocky, and hinting at grace and speed, rather than great strength.

'That was a noble thing you did,' his father told him, dropping back from the head of the column a solemn frown upon the face that Jon shared so much off with him.

'They didn't need to die,' Jon said calmly. 'It wasn't right.'

His father studied him, face grave. 'You may look like me,' he smiled, grey eyes softening, 'but there is much of your mother in you. She always did what she thought was right, even before duty.'

Jon didn't bother asking. He'd stopped trying a long time ago. If his father ever told him it would be when he was ready, and no amount of begging or digging on Jon's part would ever bring the moment closer. Until that moment he had only rumours, whispers, the comparison of cracked paint and the fragmented descriptions of foreigners, to his own face.

'We'll be back at Winterfell soon,' his father said quietly, 'and the King is coming. It has been mentioned to me that seating you among your siblings may not be wise. Robert has many children who do not share the same mother, and seeing you may give him ideas to bring them to court, and expose them to the wrath of the Lannister woman he has made queen.'

'I do not understand,' Jon said, 'I am to be set aside to avoid offending some southern lady?'

'My lady wife is not fond of you, Jon,' his father sighed, 'Cat is a kind, loving woman, and she tolerates you, because I ask her to. You may not be a Stark, but you are my son. Cersei Lannister is neither kind nor loving, she will not tolerate Robert's innocent children, she will torment them. For their sake we must do this.'

'For their sake,' Jon repeated. It tasted bitter, more bitter than when had omitted himself, for that, at least, had been his own doing, and though he had estranged himself, he had not pushed so much distance between himself and his siblings.

'I'm sorry, Jon.'

'I understand, father,' Jon said evenly.

This will only get worse while I remain in Winterfell.

Lady Stark tolerated him barely. She hated to see so much as his shadow, did her best to separate from his siblings, and tried to push him from his family as best she could. It was not fair. It had not been Jon who betrayed, nor had it been him who tempted his father away from his wife, and his honour, but it was Jon that paid the price.

'Why is the King coming, father?' He asked.

'Jon Arryn, whom I named you for, has died,' his father told him sadly, 'he wishes for a new Hand.'

'Will you go?'

'I do not want to,' he admitted, 'I do not belong in the south, but it is my duty to my king, and my friend.'

South.

He had once considered going south, years ago, when he had first heard her name whispered. Jon had almost run, almost fled from his father and his family to find her, but the summer snows had been deep, and Starfall was far away, too far for a ten year old to ever reach.

Ashara Dayne.

Jon had never had the courage to say her name to his father; there was not a single man or woman in the North that did, but it had been a good thing he had not run. He did not belong in the south either. If Ashara Dayne was his mother, then there was nothing for him there but a name on a grave, and the hatred of her family, for they would have no love for the honourless child of the man who had slain their Sword of the Morning.

'I cannot take you South,' his father told him, breaking the silence, mistaking Jon's silent thought for contemplation.

'I know.'

There is no place for me in either the North or the South.

No realm of lords held a place for a bastard. To be born from dishonour was to be condemned to live in its shadow. There were princes, knights, lords and ladies in both father's and Sansa's stories, but Jon knew of no bastards that ever came to anything. In all the songs and stories they appeared in they were the villains, not the heroes.

'You'll find a place,' his father promised him. 'You have a family.'

'Lady Stark will not tolerate me when you have gone south,' Jon replied simply, and that, that his father could not refute.

AN: You all know how this goes, I haven't pulled that thread yet, so no real divergence, pretty much just the same old foreshadowing and prologue. I might rewrite and add to this chapter a little as well, since I'm posting this before it's completely finished so anyone who read the postscript of my other story and is interested can find it before they forget. Please read and review, thanks to anyone and everyone who does!