An: anyone who knows me knows I like to start slow and gauge interest levels. The same will remain here. Hope you enjoy the chapter. Also, Cregan will be aged up in this fic as well as jace. There will be a larger difference of age between them.
128Ac the north white harbor
Cregan Stark pov
7 namesdays it's been since I've seen my brother. After he helped me take power back from my uncle in winterfell he left without even a face to face goodbye. Only a note. Such was his way. My brother had always been different. He saw things differently than men twice his age. It often made me feel inadequate next to him. He had true charisma.
But he was aloof to an infuriating degree. The moniker, "the wild" described him perfectly. My father had always known my brothers wolfs blood was thicker than others, which is why they clashed so much.
Harald never liked being told what to do. And my father had always been the alpha of the stark pack.
So when his pup started bearing fangs at him the clash was inevitable.
I remember that day. My brother had hardly been 3 and 10 while I was 4 and ten. Only moons before my fathers death
My brother had once again left in the middle of the night and returned weeks later with a few new scars and tales from his time away from home.
My father had furious. Claiming the south already saw us as savage but stunts like this onlh further strengthened these ideals. My brothers response profoundly impacted the rest of my life moving forward. He spoke mostly in the old tongue. Another point of contention between him and my father.
""I care not a jot about those southern pansy's with their finery and wines and tourneys. Galavanting around like show horses. Let them believe we're savages. It only further twists the knife in their shame and embarrassment. For that same group of savages were the last kings to fall to the dragons. Not only that, however, we also kicked their asses up and down the neck for thousands of years, burying their ancestors amid the swamps to be food for lizard lions.""
Those words had not only lit a fire of pride in me, but in every other northern son in the great hall to welcome back the wild son of stark.
It always confused me how easily he could avoid detection from the hounds and hunters my father had sent the first few times harald had disappeared. But after a while my father relegated himself to scolding my brother when he returned.
However, a challenge like the one he issued broke the relationship between my father and brother. My father banished him from the north. Claiming he was done being disrespected in his own home.
Contrary to what many may believe a 3 and 10 year old boy would feel after being thrown from his home such as fear and anxiety, harald looked at my father like he always looked at him, like he was lesser. I never knew where such contentious issues arose. Only that it'd always been this way.
He stared at my father and announced to the hall, ""any non heirs who wish to join me may. Let us make our own way. I promise you, when next the lords of the north see you they'll hardly recognize their sons.""
That was the last day I saw my brother until my father died. After attending his funeral he himself took the head of my uncle. Claiming it was his job and he didn't believe the line of "cursed is the kinslayer," when said kin was an ambitious piece of horse shit.
After my uncle bennard and his son Brandon were beheaded, my brother strung their body's up in the godswood in the heart tree.
He said, "such starks don't deserve to rest in our crypts. That is for true direwolves. They are mere coyotes." That word, coyotes, he always used it when describing the wolves south of the neck. They were far smaller than the direwolves who ran rampant through our home.
Now, after a 7 year absence i and Walter manderly are standing waiting for my brothers ship to dock.
The ship alone was enough for me to gape.
It was larger than any other vessels I've laid eyes on. Turning to see my expression mirrored in lord manderlys eyes makes me feel a little better.
Beside me, my companion dusk nudges me. Clearly feeling my anticipation of meeting my best friend again.
Though we're different in so many ways, we're also so alike.
My brothers ideas for a strong north were revolutionary, if a little ambitious.
He was always preaching finding useful wilding clans to enhance the already strong firstmen blood. He always called them free folk. Claimed the north side of the wall was even more important than the southern side.
He had never told me why he wanted those north of the wall to come south. He was as tight lipped about that as he was about my father after his death.
My thoughts are broken when I see the unmistakable glowing grey eyes of my brother on the face of a man that looked so much like him but so different as well.
We locked eyes and smiled. Beside him stood two very distinct figures.
One was of norvossi lineage. I could tell that by his skin color alone, a beautiful ebony.
On the other side was a man who couldn't have been more different than the norvossi. He had firey red hair and skin as pale as snow.
As my brother began walking to the gang plank, I couldn't imagine what changes he'd bring to the continent with his return.