Eddard ("Ned") Stark, MBE (winterishere) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-05-16 04:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | eddard stark, jon snow |
(( I'm sorry this is terribly overdue XD ))
Who: Jon Snow & Ned Stark
What: Catching up over a drink
When: Backdated to Friday night (11 May)
Where: Santa Ana
Rating: PG-13
Status: Incomplete
Not too long ago Ned wouldn't even dream about asking his boys out for a pint. They were impressionable, strapping young men who probably didn't want to be seen anywhere near a pub with their father. He'd be lying to himself if he thought that they didn't drink at all - he wasn't even sixteen when Robert first took him out to a pub and got them both absolutely pissed. It was a different place and a different time but all boys grew up the same.
Jon took him up on the offer though and Ned wasn't usually one to turn down a drink. He left a rather vague message for Cat - she was used to receiving them so she knew the range of poorly disguised euphemisms for a Ned Stark vs. pub incident and she didn't ask much about it - and went to Jon's place straight after work.
He was happy for Jon but he knew that he'd promised to tell Jon more about his mother the next time they met. And now they were meeting. He felt safer about telling Jon more now that that borderline-psychotic Martel woman was dead. But still he couldn't help but feel uneasy. A secret he thought he would have to take with him to the grave - it was difficult to take on but now, faced with the possibility of relieving himself of the burden, it was impossible to even talk about.
What was he supposed to tell Jon? 'I'm not your father'? 'I lied to you for over twenty years'? 'It was all for your own good'? He'd be lucky to survive the night. Any way he looked at it, he would lose Jon, and though he's let go of the young man now to go off to live his own adult life, Ned would lose him completely if he revealed everything. He was too protective - too selfish - over his family to be able to bring himself to do that.
It was a tentative knock on Jon's door, and when it opened Ned didn't need to force a smile - it came to him as a chuckle and an insatiable urge to wrap his arms around the young man and tell him that everything was going to be fine now.
"Ready to go, young man?" he asked with a nod.