Catelyn was inconsolable, nearly comatose when she wasn't in Bran's rooms. If she wasn't in Bran's rooms, with Rickon, then she was flitting between the girls' rooms, and then finishing her circuit to Robb's. She never went near Jon's, so Ned made sure to spend time there, just holding his hand.
Jon was pale, unconscious, and if it weren't for the deep, even breaths he took, Ned would have thought him dead - like Lyanna.
Ned trembled at the thought. Catelyn was inconsolable? Ned was barely holding it together himself, managing it only for the sake of the servants who still relied on him, although most of them were listening to Rodrik and Luwin, who went beyond their duties while their Lord and Lady frantically tried to fix what happened to their children.
It happened to Robb first. He had been in the yard, listening to Rodrik demonstrate a new technique for him and Jon and Theon - Ned's hostage - when the ten-year-old's face had paled a milky white and he pitched forward onto his face, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Jon and Theon had been shocked, but Rodrik moved into action, scooping the boy up and racing him to Luwin immediately.
But then Rickon, who had been put down for a nap, refused to wake up as Winterfell began to clamour - then Sansa fell sideways, slumped in her seat during her sewing lessons with Septa Mordane; Arya was seconds before her but Mordane's eyes had been on Sansa, praising her stitches when she tilted. Bran had fallen from his perch – climbing again, the Gods help him – and now had some bruising along his chin when he fell.
Amidst the chaos, it took Jory Cassel to find Jon, slumped unconscious against the wall outside of Luwin's solar.
Six children. All unconscious.
Jeyne Poole was whisked to Wintertown, and any of the other servants under sixteen were sent away - Theon included despite his loud protests that he was nearly sixteen and should stay. Ned would not risk him, or Jeyne, or Edwyn, or any of the other children in Winterfell if there was an ill-humour infecting them.
But Luwin could find nothing wrong with any of the children, only that it affected the Stark children, nearly all at once. He tried anything he could think of, and then began writing the Citadel in Oldtown for help, but that had been last week, and they had not yet received a reply.
Three turns of the week. Nearly a moon. And there had been no change.
The children were wasting away in front of him, Rickon the worst although maids were working around the clock to wet cloths in milk or use honey to coat their lips. Luwin suggested massaging their unused limbs, and Ned, Catelyn, and others were quick to volunteer to help the children. Winterfell was rallying behind their Lord and Lady.
So, when Luwin presented a raven from the Night's Watch that his brother was already on his way to Winterfell, Ned felt his frustration nearly boil over. He had a desperate need to shout Not now, Ben!
But Ned still met his brother when his horse and party were spotted, standing stiff in the courtyard. He was pale-faced, and his mouth had pulled down into a near-permanent scowl that lengthened his dour face further. There were bruises under his eyes, indicating sleepless nights, and there was a faint tremble to his hands. He had lost weight - unable to stomach food with his anxiety and worry over the children - and it showed.
Benjen was the first through the gate, sitting tall on his horse, a smudge of black against a dot of white as his face peered out from the hood of his furred cloak. Behind him were several others: Ned recognized Alliser Thorne, a Targaryen loyalist who led the City Watch during Aerys' reign - and someone Ned knew Benjen hated, so the fact that the man was with him was beyond strange... even more so than he was not a Ranger or meant to leave Castle Black as its Master of Arms.
There were two tall men following Benjen and Thorne, both with curly hair although one had black hair and the other a dark auburn that looked brown; their horses were leading a cart with a young man sitting back in it. Following the cart were three other horses, with two women and one teenage boy.
It was the strangest procession Ned had ever seen and he turned to Benjen to address his confusion when his eyes drifted back to the two men behind the Night's Watch brothers and his heart dropped somewhere near his feet. The tall, curly black-haired man had turned his head, facing Ned. His eyes were dark, a strange blue-grey, but it was his face that arrested Ned. He was pulled back, to another time and place, when a solemn-faced man trotted his horse past his wife to the Stark box with a crown of winter roses in his hands. It can't be...
And when the procession filed in, and the two young women began to dismount, Ned's eyes flickered toward them, sticking on the long, dark hair of the younger as she vaulted from the horse with ease.
Ned exhaled loudly, his knees shaking as he tried to remain upright. His eyes cut back to the tall man, and then to Benjen as he pleaded, "Ben - Gods... Ben - is that - is it--"
Ben was at his side then, gripping his brother's arm tightly when he muttered, "Steady on, Ned. Steady. And no - that's not... it's not Lya."
Ned's eyes dragged themselves from his brother to the girl again, forcing himself to actually look at her: the colour was all his sister, but the face shape wasn't, the coldness in her eyes wasn't, and the still way she held herself was different to the flighty, angry young woman Lyanna had been.
"Who?" whispered Ned, eyes taking in the rest of the party. The shine of the red hair of the eldest woman, looking ridiculously like his wife; the auburn-haired man looking back at him with the Tully colours but the bitter expression on his face was one Ned saw in the polished glass; the downturn of the scowl on the youngest was all Brandon when he had been alive...
"It can't be," breathed Ned, turning to Benjen. His heart was still trying to catch up, pounding furiously in his chest.
"It is, Ned, it is," he replied quietly. "I don't truly know how, but it is."
Ned turned back to the group, to the one man who looked the most like a Stark and saw how Thorne hovered closest to him, saw the melancholy as the man looked around Winterfell - in sadness, in nostalgia, in pain - that was all his father.
Benjen's hands slipped from holding Ned up as the Lord of Winterfell stepped out of his brother's help, closer to the five standing before him. The young man in the cart hauled himself to the edge, looking at him with a bland glaze to his eyes. But it was before the Stark-looking man that Ned stopped, seeing Rhaegar in his features.
"Jon?"
Rhaegar's eyes turned to him, but it was his sister's face, Lyanna's mouth, that turned up into a
parody of a smile when the young man replied, "Hello, Uncle."
Ned's solar was cramped. He sat behind his desk, staring out and cataloguing the differences in his children's faces even as Benjen huddled at one side of the door while the six Stark children arranged themselves. Thorne had been sent away – this was a family matter – no matter how much he protested. He left, though, when Jon drew him aside and spoke to him in low whispers.
Ned's heart clenched when his eyes lingered on his sister's son. There were lines on Jon's face – his forehead, by his eyes and mouth – and the faintest hints of grey already at his temples. The man was bearded and grown, with scars and blood on his hands and looked eerily like Lyanna. Anyone who had known his sister would see it in an instant.
Bran needed help getting into his solar, up the stairs, but Walder had picked him up easily, despite the pained look on Bran's face. But Ned didn't have it in him to reprimand the giant man if he jostled or hurt his son in transit.
And Gods! The crown on Robb's brow – he knew that crown. He knew what it meant.
"How?" he rasped, hands clenched tight against the edges of his chair, despite the way his eyes greedily drank the vision in.
All eyes turned to Bran, who startled. He crossed his arms. "Must I say it again?" "Yes," drawled Arya, crossing her arms.
Bran sighed. "We appeared from the future, at a weirwood tree north of the wall. For some of us, it was the year 305."
Ned blinked and reeled back in shock. But he heard what Bran said: some of us; meaning that those, like Robb, who was significantly younger compared to Sansa and Jon, were from a different time. Ned was not stupid – the changes in their appearances aside, how Arya was holding herself, Rickon looking just like Brandon when Ned had seen him at Lyanna's nameday feast when their father announced her betrothal to Robert...
"We've been..." Jon trailed off, struggling to find the words. "The time we came from does not exist anymore. We exist here now."
"Perhaps, with our existence here, we can create a new timeline so that the events of what we experienced do not happen," mused Bran out loud, leaning back in his chair as he began to think. "What once was, can be made anew..."
"But..." Ned stopped himself from biting his lower lip. "Your... uh... younger selves? Younger yous? Still exist."
"They do?" gaped Robb.
Ned's face shuttered. "But they've... they've come down with a sickness. It happened all at once, sending them into unconsciousness. They stir from it, periodically, but only at night and for a few hours at a time. They're—" he choked back a sob. "They're wasting away."
He did not see as the Stark siblings all shared guilty looks, but Benjen saw and called them out on it. "What? What is it?"
"Erm," began Jon, shuffling in his spot, "That might be our fault." Ned's head jerked up.
"If they're only waking up at night, for a few hours, well, that's when we're falling asleep, isn't it?" continued Jon, scratching at his beard.
Benjen grimaced. "We can't just have them live when you're asleep. That's not good for either set of you."
Sansa eyed Bran, who caught the look. "What?" he asked, defensively. His shoulders crept up to his ears.
"Between you and Arya, you know the most magic," began Sansa. "What?" interjected Ned, looking between the two, but he was ignored.
"Do you think you can do something?" finished Sansa. "Surely Bloodraven taught you more than just greensight."
"What?" burst out Ned again, and again, he was thoroughly ignored.
"I only know death magic." Arya shrugged. "Can't help."
All eyes turned to Bran, leaving Ned behind his desk, sputtering.
"It doesn't work like that!" stuttered Bran, eyes darting between his siblings with a vaguely alarmed look on his face.
Jon scowled. "Aye? Well, try, Bran."
Sending his cousin a dirty look, Bran settled mulishly in his chair, crossing his arms. "Fine, but
we're starting with you, Jon."
Jon's childhood bedchambers were much smaller than he remembered, given how crowded they were with his younger self on the bed, Ned sitting at his hip, Benjen hovering by his brother's shoulder, with Bran in a chair near their father. At the foot of the bed, the rest of the Starks crowded uncomfortably together: Jon was pressed shoulder to shoulder with Sansa and Robb, and Arya and Rickon bookended them, lining the back wall from one end of the room to the other.
It was very cramped, and Arya made her opinion on it clear. "Can you hurry it up, Bran? Gods." Her nose wrinkled up. "Rickon, you stink."
Rickon silently bared his teeth at Arya in a parody of a wolf's snarl, but Arya looked bored at the gesture, picking at the dirt underneath her nails.
Bran shot Arya a dirty look, and then turned his attention back to the Jon on the bed, a frown on his face. "You know I've never done this before—"
"I still don't know what you're doing," grumbled Robb. "That makes two of us," muttered Benjen.
"—but essentially I'm going to try to peer into his mind and wake him," finished Bran, ignoring everyone. "It would be easier by a weirwood—"
"And also easier for Bloodraven to get ahold of you," argued Jon with a heavy scowl on his face. "I don't think so."
Bran matched the scowl and blatantly ignored his siblings as he reached a cold hand out to rest on young Jon's forehead. He took a deep breath.
Watching him from Jon's hip, Ned inhaled sharply when Bran's eyes went white, rolling back in his head yet sitting perfectly upright. "What is..."
"He's in," said Arya, peering at her younger brother carefully, barely holding back a tsk. "He's not greenseeing, though. He's warging."
"Warging?" repeated Ned, alarmed. His eyes bounced between Bran, Jon on the bed, and the others. "Surely—"
Then Jon, on the bed, took a deep, heaving breath in, eyes wide as his back arched off the bed. Both Ned and Benjen leaned over the boy, exclaiming, "Jon!" as Ned helped him sit up, and then crushed him to his chest.
And at the same time, between Sansa and Robb, Jon crumpled to the floor, his head cracking hard against the stone. Robb and Sansa shared a brief, concerned look, but then Robb drawled, "Oops. I
haven't yet regained my strength and reaction time, clearly. Poor Jon."
"Uh," began Rickon, looking between the two Jons, "Was that supposed to happen?"
Bran, his eyes returning to their original brown, blinked a few times. He sagged in his chair, wearily looking around the room, only for his eyes to land on the unconscious form of his cousin. "What happened to Jon?"
"What?" sputtered Benjen, turning to see what Bran meant. "Oh, for the gods' sake..."
"I reckon you need to work on this a bit more," said Arya with a tiny smirk. "This didn't quite work out how we wanted."
"Fine," muttered Bran. "Let's try this again."
"F-Father?" weakly whispered the Jon on the bed. "What's going on?"
Ned drew back on the slightest to reply, "I'd like to know that, too."
"I'm just tweaking a few things," answered Bran, in a slightly absent voice. "I think I know what I'm looking for now."
"Tweaking a few things!" repeated Benjen, mouth open. "In my nephew's brain?"
"You're really making it sound much worse than it is." Bran rolled his eyes and reached a hand
forward again.
Benjen caught it. "I think not—!" "Ben!"
"Uncle Benjen, really—"
Trust Sansa to lay on the thick disapproval, but with Arya cackling in the background and Robb just looking confused, Bran threw his hands up in frustration. "Well, if you don't want me to do anything to this Jon, move the older idiot here."
"Bran," and there was Ned's disapproval, but having gone nearly seven years without hearing his father's voice and admonishments – as the voice in his head that skewed his morals sounded far more like Brynden Rivers' – there was little weight.
Rickon and Robb hauled the unconscious Jon toward Bran, sitting him upright so that his dark head lolled back onto Bran's knees. There was a giant bump on the back of his head, but it wasn't bleeding. Jon would have a hell of a headache when he woke up though. He reached forward and place a hand on either side of Jon's temples and furrowed his brow.
"Bran, wait – what are you doing—" Ned's voice was cut off as Bran reached for something tangible but unseen, finding the thread that connected him, his siblings, to Jon, as well as Benjen and Ned and the strange double-layered thread that reverberated back to the Jon in the cradle of Ned's arms.
It was a dual echo, like light bouncing off mirrors when Bran found the string between both Jons. Despite being unable to see his family, he was aware enough to frown. He drew back from the connection of Jon's mind and looked at those he had travelled through time with. "I can block the connection between ourselves, between us and our past selves."
"Fantastic." Robb's shoulders dropped in relief.
"There is a catch, though."
An uneasy glint appeared in Sansa's eyes. "What is it?"
"If I block the connection, I sever all connections on their end," explained Bran. "There's too much... um... bounce back... from us. I'd be cutting our younger selves off from any meaningful connections in the future."
Ned and Benjen looked confused – the younger Jon was just plain lost – but it was Arya who understood it first, having experienced the most magic. Her lips were pressed into a thin line when she said, "They won't warg."
Robb sucked in a beath.
She continued, "They won't have any connections with their wolves."
Behind them, Benjen muttered to Ned, "What wolves?"
"Honestly, Benjen, I haven't the foggiest about anything that's happening right now," replied an exasperated Ned.
The Stark siblings looked uneasily at one another. All knew what the connection to their direwolves meant, and out of them, Sansa, Rickon, and Bran probably knew best how it felt to have that connection sever before their time travelling. The younger versions may feel the loss, like a phantom limb – or they might not. There was no way to tell.
"Do it."
All eyes swung to Robb. He swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing, but he looked kingly as he stood straighter and repeated, "Do it," in a solid voice. "They'll die if we don't."
Bran nodded, turning back to his unconscious cousin. He found the connection, that thread, even easier the third time he went into Jon's mind and, after a quick check, snapped the cord that was sending echoes back between the two versions of the same person and then built a wall, shiny and slick and like the one separating the North and the lands Beyond as insurance.
The younger Jon in Ned's arms shuddered as he felt like something cold was poured over his brain and then trickled down his spine. The Jon half-sitting on the floor groaned, rolling his head forward and then hissing. "Did someone hit me?"
Benjen gave a breathless, shocked laugh. "They're both awake! Ned, they're both awake!" Ned, teary-eyed, clutched Jon closer and looked at his children. He opened his mouth to thank
them, but the words wouldn't emerge.
With a tiny sigh, Bran reached out and patted his father's knee. "We know, Father. We know."
It took some work to encourage Catelyn to take a bath so that she left the children alone, but somehow between Ned, Luwin, and Septa Mordane, they managed it. Bran snuck into the children's rooms and severed their connections to their elder counterparts, and then quickly whisked himself away to the next until all the Stark children were weakly sipping at broth under the careful eyes of their servants.
They heard Catelyn's shriek of surprise and loud wails of relief from Ned's solar, where the man asked them to remain with Benjen while he checked on his children.
It was several hours later when Ned finally returned, beyond tired. He crept into his solar, gently shutting the door behind him. With a deep breath, he turned and faced the room's occupants.
Sansa and Rickon were furthest from the fire and somehow had unearthed an old cyvasse board. Arya hovered over Rickon's shoulder, offering aggressive moves that had Sansa smirking. Jon was the closest to the fire, in a chair with Bran opposite him. Robb stood by the thick mullioned windows, hands behind his back as he peered out over the wolfswood.
Benjen, looking lost, stepped toward Ned and muttered, "Be... be careful with them, Ned."
Ned nodded, absently, and Benjen left, shutting the door behind him. At the noise, the Stark children all turned as one to look at him.
No one spoke for a long, long moment.
Then, Jon stood, catching Robb's eyes. The two boys – who were once the closest of them all – grimaced at one another and had an entire conversation without words. Then, Robb dipped his head in acknowledgement, and Jon turned back to Ned, a serious expression on his face.
"Uncle..." he began, and Ned tensed. "I think we need to have a conversation about my mother and what happened at the Tower of Joy. Don't you?"
Ned closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as a rush of emotion hit him. Then, he blinked them open, cleared his throat, and moved as purposefully as he could to his chair behind his desk. When he sat, he placed his hands on the desk in front of him and said the words that, for this Jon, were long overdue.
TBC...