"So how was your first day at work? I can't tell since you've picked up my nasty habit of hiding behind a stone face," Ned joked. It felt bizarre asking Jon about work. Just yesterday he was only a wee boy, three feet tall and demanding to be carried.
They won't be young forever. Ned never thought about it growing up. He had buried himself in books and music and French and art and everything else the late Lord Stark thought would be appropriate for a member of the peerage that Ned never had the time to notice how fast he had shed his youth.
But now, after having his own kids and failing spectacularly at being a different father from his own - it wasn't funny, looking back at all the times he had said that he'd be a father who was actually there for them and then looking at how much he wasn't involved in their lives growing up, but the sad state of it made him laugh - he was acutely aware of how fleeting youth was.
Jon had grown up faster than the rest. And Ned couldn't protect him forever.
"So where are we going?" he asked with a soft sigh and a smile.