Brandon was suppose to marry her. That's why he had come to Riverrun, that's why she let him pull her into an empty bedchamber. They were suppose to marry each other in a week, it wouldn't have made a difference, and his hard, sweet lips had felt warm and wonderful on her mouth. He was to be her husband anyway, surely the Mother would forgive her for giving him her maidenhead a little early?

Catelyn placed a hand on her growing belly, the unmistakable sign of her condition, as her father glared at her. She was suppose to be the responsible one, his right hand until Edmure came of age, and she would have known better than to give herself up to any man before marriage, even her betrothed.

Brandon wasn't going to marry her, nor any woman. The morning after their sinful dance, he got the news that his little sister had vanished, gone off with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, and by evening he and his companions were on their way to King's Landing to make the dragon prince answer for what he had done. "We'll be wed when I return," he had promised her. Now Brandon was dead, his father Rickard and all his friends and their fathers as well, burned like kindling by the madness of King Aerys.

The thought almost made her retch, though she'd been doing that often anyway. She was 3 moon-turns along with Brandon's child. His only child.

"I spent..." Hoster whispered, then paused. Catelyn almost wished he would scream at her; his anger was easier to bear than his disappointment. "I have spent many years cultivating alliances for the betterment of our family. All that effort, undone by the folly of my daughters."

Catelyn's voice wobbled, "If I lived to be a hundred years old, I couldn't never apologize enough for what I did."

He raised a hand signaling her to stop, his face as red as his hair, "You will speak only when spoken to!"

Catelyn shrunk back. She could not presume that she would receive the gentleness and trust she had always known, not when she had broken that trust and dishonored her family so terribly.

"Perhaps, if Ned Stark had been here when we got the news about Lord Rickard and Brandon, I might have married you to him on the spot," Hoster mused, "You'd need not tell him what happened between you and his brother, it wouldn't have mattered much who sired the child; I doubt you'd even know yourself."

The thought made Catelyn's insides twist uncomfortably.

He continued, "But that isn't the case, is it? The news of your pregnancy is too far spread to deny and when the Stark and Arryn men arrive tonight, it will surely spread further. You seem to want to ask me something. Speak then."

"Is there a way... do you know of any way to... to rid myself of this child? Is it too late?" Her mouth became as dry as the Dornish sands. Could she sacrifice this child, the only child her beloved Brandon would ever have, to save what remained of her pride?

Her father slumped in his seat and covered his face with his hands; and only know does Catelyn see the grey hairs against the red. Rebellious children bring their parents to an early grave, her septa used to say.

"There is, but I'll not have you do it." Hoster replied, sounding hoarse. "Lysa had done the same and I... I forced it on her. It nearly kill me to see her in so much pain, and then to know she hated me so. I cannot do that again. Don't ask me to do that to you, Cat."

Catelyn felt as though all the air had fled from her lungs. "Lysa? Our Lysa? She would never..." Oh dear gods, Lysa had been terribly ill last year and for some odd reason, their father wouldn't let Catelyn nurse her back to health. "Oh. With whom... did you know who the father was?"

"I practically raised him," Hoster growled. "It was Littlefinger. I didn't send him away because of you, I send him away because of her."

"Why would he fight a duel in my name and then lie with my sister. Was it revenge?"

"I know not what drove him, nor I do wish to know. It's done, child, and now you are my concern."

"What I am to do about Lord Eddard?"

"Pray that he believes you when you tell him the child is Brandon's."

Her father did not allow her to greet their guests or sit in the great hall during the welcoming feast - fearing an insult to the new Lord Stark if he should made to face the woman carrying his late brother's bastard - but she would not be able to hide forever. Lord Eddard asked for an audience with her on the third day of his stay and they met for the first time in her father's solar under Hoster Tully's anxious gaze.

After the usual pleasantries, Eddard asked, "May I feel it?"

Catelyn wasn't sure what he was asking, but she nodded in affirmation.

Eddard reached out his hand and placed it gently, though firmly, on her pregnant belly. His blank, cool expression shifted to something soft and warm, and for a moment Catelyn thought he might begin to weep. But he composed himself quickly and quietly thanked her.

They took their seats.

Hoster began, "I fear there is no hope for an easy peace at this stage. The king is deaf to reason, the crown prince is nowhere to be found, and too much blood has already been shed. If my lord sees fit, House Tully will bind itself to the rebel cause with the understanding that certain conditions be met."

Eddard's grey eyes flashed, "You seek to barter for favor while the realm is in chaos? While your own allies are not yet laid to rest and my sister is in danger?"

His blunt words made Catelyn flinch. She had known the northmen were plainspoken, but not to this degree.

Hoster kept calm, "I seek to ensure the well-being of my family in what ways I can, just as you do Lord Stark. I have spoken to Lord Arryn and he thinks it prudent to wed my younger daughter, Lady Lysa."

"She's a child, younger than my Lyanna," Eddard stiffened, "and Lord Jon is older than you."

"Lysa is nearly a woman grown and it is the best match either of them can make, given the circumstances," Hoster replied, unbothered. "I apologize for the fact that my elder daughter is no longer fit to fulfill the marriage contract I laid out with your father and older brother, gods rest their souls, but I need assurance of a continued friendship with House Stark."

"Then I'll marry her," Eddard stated impatiently.

The two Tullys stared at him for a moment, dumbstruck that he would be so willing to take a soiled woman. Hoster recovered faster than Catelyn, seizing on Eddard's clear desperation to stitch together an alliance and march south with Tully swords before the Mad King took his head. "Your plan is a good one, Lord Stark. You and Lady Catelyn shall wed alongside Lord Arryn and Lady Lysa."

The wedding she had been dreaming of since she was twelve never happened. She was not Brandon's bride, but his brother's, and the maiden cloak she had worked so diligently to make beautiful was an unfunny jape with her belly poking out of it. Brandon will never see her wear it. There was still no word on Lady Lyanna or any sign of a peace on the horizon. Concern about the war loomed over everyone's heads like grey clouds heralding a coming storm.

Catelyn and Lysa walked down the aisle together. None of the northmen present met her eyes, save Lord Eddard. In the corner of her eye, she saw Lysa trembling; with fear or with anger, Catelyn couldn't tell. The brides and bridegrooms said their vows in the sept and ate a lavish, though quiet, meal afterwards.

Catelyn spent a great deal of time looking at her husband and resisting the urge to cradle her belly. Lord Eddard was not as tall as his brother was, nor as handsome, nor as well-spoken. Her life would have been so much better if Brandon had been to one to put the direwolf cloak on her shoulders. They were unkind, unfair thoughts, especially from such a dishonorable woman as herself, but they keep coming all throughout the night.

The bedding ceremony went by in a blur, though she remembered the feeling of being stared at and the sound of crude japes. She was thrown into a room alone with Lord Eddard, both of them naked. It was awkward in a way it never had been with Brandon. She folded her arms over her midsection, wishing she could hide from him.

"I suppose now we do our duty." Lord Eddard approached her.

"I can't." Catelyn cried. Seeing the stunned look on his face, she scrambled for an explanation but none came to mind. She just couldn't bare the thought of him touching her as she grew heavy with his brother's bastard child. Or rather, she couldn't bare the shame. "I just can't." Her body felt bloated and she succumbed to the irresistible urge to weep. It didn't matter what she wanted. If he wish to do so, Lord Eddard could throw her onto the bed and take her anyway.

Instead he put on his robe. Catelyn half expected him to throw her from the room exposing her shame, but instead he covered her as well and cleaned away her tears with a handkerchief. "My lady..." He was at a loss for words, but the softness in his eyes showed his meaning well enough. For the first time, Catelyn's heart warmed for him.

Lord Stark and Lord Arryn gathered their strength at Riverrun for a fortnight. From Lysa's pale face and stiff demeanor each morning, Catelyn could also see that Lord Arryn was making sure to leave behind an heir before he marched into battle. It filled her with such disquiet, she began taking her breakfast in her chambers to avoid her sister's red-rimmed eyes. Part of it was also guilt; for all she wallowed in shame over her position, she knew Lysa was not much better off, but she didn't have to words to comfort her sister.

Whenever Eddard wasn't planning battle strategy with the other men, he would walk with her in the godswood in an awkward attempt to get to know her. She didn't think she loved him, but she felt something for him that she hoped could blossom into a comfortable companionship. Already, he showed her more consideration and respect that she believed he owed her. They talked about their childhoods, their likes and dislikes, and the differences between their homes.

They didn't talk about Brandon.

The last day before the combined Stark, Tully, and Arryn hosts planned to go to war, he said to her, "Should I not return... before the child is born, my lady, you have my leave to name it as you see fit."

"If it comes to that, gods forbid, rest assured I will chose a worthy name for the child," Catelyn replied with a small smile.

Ned, as her husband had told her to call him, wrote to her as frequently as his circumstances allowed, asking after her health and bringing news from the war-front. He spoke highly of his friend Robert Baratheon and expressed a desire to see her again. Hoster Tully wished for them to meet again so Winterfell would not slip into Benjen Stark's hands should his goodson fall in battle.

In the meantime, Catelyn's pregnancy continued. Edmure watched in wonder as her belly swelled while Lysa looked on with envy in her tear-filled eyes. For all Jon Arryn's efforts, Lysa's moonblood come as it always did.

"It's not fair." She lamented one day while they are doing needlework. "You and I are guilty of the same sin, so why is it that you were allowed to keep your child and I wasn't?"

Part of her wanted to tell Lysa of their father's guilt, but Catelyn didn't think Lysa would believe her. Besides, that was probably something Lord Tully would have to share with his younger daughter himself, when he felt the time was right. "You have your reputation. As far as anyone else knows, I'm the soiled daughter, not you."

"I'd rather have a babe." Lysa complained.

"And you will someday," Catelyn replied, her patience already wearing thin, "a trueborn son of House Arynn. Until then people will comfort you for the shame of having a slut for a sister. How fortunate for you, getting everything you want. "

Lysa looked wounded, "You're the one who got everything she wanted and everyone liked you better than me."

"Well now our positions are reversed, are they not?" Catelyn shut her mouth from fear she will say something cruel. Lysa has always been sensitive and she was being uncharitable. "It'll all be alright in the end, just wait a bit longer." She wasn't sure if she is speaking to Lysa or herself.

Her son came into the world screaming and red-faced, while Catelyn herself was so disorientated and exhausted from the birth she had to fight the urge to pass out before even holding her child. With his auburn hair and bright blue eyes, he resembled her entirely and not his father at all. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. She cradled the babe close as he nursed, almost forgetting that he is illegitimate, that she will have to leave him behind when her husband returned from war. Almost.

Hopefully her father would not feel too upset about having to raise the child in Riverrun and it might do Edmure good to have a small child to look after like a big brother. Edmure had fascinated with his nephew at first, but quickly grew bored when he learned that babes were not fit to play with, that they did little else but feed, sleep, and cry.

Months passed and Ned's letters became fewer and further between. A million different stories float around the Riverlands; about how Robert Baratheon vanquished Prince Rhaegar and spilled his lifeblood into the Trident; how Jaime Lannister soiled his white cloak by murdering the king; poor Princess Elia and her butchered babes. Though she knew she was safe behind Riverrun's walls, a good distance from the thick of the fighting, Catelyn couldn't shake off the worry that something would go horribly wrong and someone would hurt her son. Her love for him grew with each passing day and the though of being parted from him grew evermore unbearable.

'If I must,' she thought to herself, 'I will beg Ned to accept my child in Winterfell, at least until he is old enough to squire for Father or Uncle Brynden'.

In the end, the begging was not necessary. A raven arrived from King's Landing with a letter from Ned telling her that he was bringing Lyanna's bones to Winterfell and would be waiting for her to arrive with her babe. Catelyn kissed the letter and thanked the Mother Above for giving her such a kind husband.

Then felt horrible for not realizing the first time she read it that Lyanna, the poor sweet wild girl, was dead. Poor Ned, to lose his father and now two siblings one after another. She hoped, despite the shame they brought with them, she and her son could be a balm to the man who had treated her so well since they met.

Catelyn bid farewell to her family, to Riverrun. Her father had been reluctant to let her leave with her son, even with Ned's written consent, but Catelyn convinced him that she couldn't risk disobeying her husband when he made it clear he expected the child in Winterfell upon his arrival. With the babe wrapped up safely in her arms, she rode a liter to Winterfell with an escort of twenty armed men, servants, and the maester who had helped her during her son's birth, a little grey man named Luwin. The going was long and strenuous, but Catelyn reached Winterfell at last, a grey crown on a hill in the center of the North.

Her reception was as cold as the wind messing up her hair. Hard, scornful, judging glares met her at the gates. A sudden icy fear seized Catelyn. They will never accept me, she silently lamented, a foreign woman who dishonored their lord by bringing her bastard to be raised alongside their trueborn children. Did the northmen love him more or less because he was Brandon's son? Did they even believe he was Brandon's?

'I should not have brought him,' Catelyn worried, 'I should have left him with my father, where he would have been loved by more than just his mother.'

A gangly boy no older than sixteen ran up to her as she entered the Great Keep. "It is an honor to meet you, Lady Catelyn," he said with an open, innocent smile, "My name is Benjen Stark, I'm your goodbrother. It's wonderful to have you here."

Catelyn could almost kiss him, he was so sweet. "It's wonderful to meet you as well Benjen."

He peers at the bundle in her arms, "That's him, my nephew?"

"Yes, his name is Robb. Robb Snow. Would you like to hold him?"

Benjen was awkward holding the babe, but Catelyn showed him how to do it right. Footsteps interrupt the lesson.

"Lady Catelyn," Ned appeared in the hallway, looking both excited and nervous. It almost made her want to laugh. "I came as soon as I heard you were here."

He looked at Benjen holding Robb and smiled. "Have you already chosen a name for the child?"

"If it pleases you, my lord, I named him Robb Snow."

"A good name," Ned replied. "May I?"

Catelyn nodded and Benjen handed him the babe. Before Catelyn could show him the correct way to hold a babe, she noticed that her husband already knew, as if he had held a child recently. A large smile broke out across his face, the most intense and genuine look of happiness she had even seen from him. Catelyn's hopes rose.

He placed Robb back into her arms and said, "Let me show you to the nursery." His smile was replaced by apprehension. Catelyn couldn't guess why.

The nursery was close to the rooms Ned gave her as Lady of Winterfell so she would be near her son at all times. As they stepped inside, a short, dark woman covered herself with a cloth, rose from a chair and bowed her head to show respect to her betters. "M'lord, m'lady." She murmured respectfully. A babe whimpered in her arms, trying to turn its head to see what had interrupted its feeding.

"Catelyn, this is my son, Jon Snow."

The boys loved each other in an instant, her bastard and her husband's. The moment Wylla and Catelyn placed them in the cradle together, the bond became evident. Though they were cousins, Catelyn could already see that they would be more like brothers as they grew up. She watched the giggling children reach out to each other in the cradle, trying to ignore the stuttering of her heart whenever she looked at Jon Snow. He was all Stark, dark haired and grey-eyed with Ned's face.

Neither child would truly be accepted, but Jon, not Robb, would be loved by the North. Jon was undoubtedly of Stark blood.

Ned took her hand and led her from the nursery. It took several moments for her to look him straight in the face.

She should have known. Of course, he wouldn't have forgiven her for what she did. He could never abandon his brother's son, but he wouldn't accept her as a true wife. Catelyn wasn't naive enough to think he wouldn't seek comfort in the arms of another woman during the months spent dodging the Stranger, but why else would he bring his bastard son to raise in Winterfell unless he meant to shame her? Unless he wanted to punish her for not coming to his bed a willing maid? Did he what everyone to know for certain that he only married her for her father's swords? That he would have wanted nothing to do with her if his and his family's lives hadn't been on the line?

"My lady, I apologize for my actions," he said. "I have dishonored you, myself, and my vows in the sight of gods and men. For that I am more sorry than I can say."

He wouldn't have apologized if he didn't truly mean it, but Catelyn wondered if he knew what Jon Snow's presence in Winterfell meant for her. She was prepared to bear the shame of Robb's illegitimacy all her life, but she didn't need the whole Seven Kingdoms knowing her husband crawled into another woman's bed while she was pregnant.

What if no one believed any of her future children were trueborn, on account of Robb? What if the northmen found her trueborn sons lacking? They would not rally to the boy who claimed to be Brandon's son. They would turn to their lord's son. Her mind filled with frightful images of a grown Jon Snow seated on the throne of Winterfell and the faceless, bloody bodies of auburn haired children strewn at his feet.

"Are you truly?" Catelyn dared to asked, plainly struggling not to cry. "Why did you bring him here? Why did you let me bring Robb here? Everyone already hates me for having borne a bastard and you've given them leave to scorn me openly."

Ned explained. "When I found Lyanna, she already had one foot in the grave. As I held her, she died, and I realized that Benjen was the only family left to me. I believed - hoped - the gods sent Robb and Jon to soften the pain of losing my father, brother and sister. Bastardborn or not, they are of my blood. They are Starks, only not by name, and they belong in Winterfell as much as any of our trueborn children. My intention was not to add to your shame, but to keep my family together."

Catelyn's face flushed. She never considered that Ned wanted the children simply because they were of his blood. Men did not often care enough about their bastards to raise them personally. The only such man she knew of was Prince Oberyn Martell, with his brood of bastard girls. But this was not Dorne, and even for a Dornishmen Oberyn Martell was rather outrageous. Catelyn's heart climbed into her throat. He didn't need Jon Snow to be his family, not when she could give him another son, not when she was ready to fill his halls with treuborn children.

"I understand that Jon's presence causes you pain, regrettable as that may be," Ned continued, "but I could not leave him behind or in the care of others, no more than you could do to Robb."

Catelyn felt as if he'd slapped her. She knew it would be foolish to ask Ned to send his own bastard away, while letting her keep hers in his home, but she couldn't help but feel angry at him for making the comparison. Was this some sort of ploy or test?

"Do you wish that I return Robb to Riverrun?" she asked tentatively. "If I give up my bastard, will you send yours away?"

"I won't have either boy parted from me," Ned stated firmly. "And I am not so cruel that I would a tear a child from his mother's breast."

She searched her lord's grey eyes, but she didn't know what she looking for. The truth? A lie? A confession?

"What of Jon Snow's mother? Was she more willing to send her son away?" Catelyn demanded.

"I will say nothing of Jon's mother," Eddard stated in a tone that left no room for argument.

Catelyn bristled, because Ned had always been so honest and generous. "Did I not bare my shame to you in Riverrun? Why can you not do the same?" She felt almost petulant as she asked the question, but Catelyn was nearly in tears and she just wanted her life to make sense again. "Tell me, please."

"She is, she... Jon has no mother, not anymore," Eddard said at last, his voice teeming with anger and hurt. "She is gone forever and will not bother you, if that is your concern."

His weary, heartbroken face filled Catelyn with guilt. 'He loved her,' she realized. 'But he had to marry me. Now she's dead and all he has left of her is their son.'

"It's been a long day for all of us," Ned said after a moment of silence. "We should rest for now."

She knew he was right - Catelyn felt exhausted enough to sleep for a year - but she also knew she would not sleep easily in this unfamiliar castle with two bastards between her and the stranger she had married.

AN: I started re-writing 'Weary Mother' just as a way to flex my writing my skills while I worked on 'The Golden Swan' and didn't originally plan to publish it, but it took on a life of it's own. So I'm changing and expanding the story. 'The Golden Swan' is still my top priority at the moment, so do not expect regular updates to this story until that one is finished. Thanks for reading!