Hollow Wolf (Ned Stark SI)

Human fatherhood is a social invention

Something resembling what this lady said in Mead M. Male and Female. A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Morrow. N. Y., 1949

There are things that you just don't expect, because you, such a moron, didn't foresee it because of selective blindness. Just as it was with Ned Stark, who perceived his life quite differently from me.  There are things that you can prevent, which I did when I stopped the interaction of the twins in the form which it was shown in the plot known to me.  And there are things that happen according to a pattern set in advance by some sick story, and whatever you do is fate, which should lead to the fulfillment of another fate. Bran, a juvenile fool he is, fell from the tower nonetheless. But this event should be approached with all care, to reveal, so to speak, everything that's been happening almost since the beginning of time, or rather, to be more specific, from the moment I went to bed in our no longer shared solar.  Then Kat came to me, deciding to share her doubts, information and discontent. Then I loudly sent her to bug off into the fog or whatever, along with her incredibly unexpected wish, empowered at that point by her screeching, to send Jonny away. My rational, talented and "dragons lurking in the quiet", that Jonny, the legitimate son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen.  Besides, almost without restraining my joy, I promised not to interfere if she suddenly wanted to ride with Bran and Rickon first to the Riverlands in order to pay respects to her relatives, and then to the purebred Andals in their nest, and may that sick bitch Lisa get hiccups by the Moon Door, honestly.  These double standards of Catelyn were infuriating me. Positively and loudly, she reminds me of how Brandon the Wild Jerk was. Well, Ned Stark did sign up for it, so his wife picks my brain matter with a spoon when she wants to reproach me for disobeying her stupid standards. As stupid as she is, if I may say so myself.  And therefore constantly she refers to the memory of the Wild Wolf, quite twisted for such a long time. But to try and ytolerate a quiet boy who has never desired anything but a healthy relationship? She immediately turns on a jealous woman of a sky-high level, as if I gave any reason! And Brandon was, by the way, the same alternatively gifted one who strangled himself in moments of humiliation by the Mad King. Whose wits, presumably, were passed to my junior son, but that's a completely different story... In general, Kat reminded me a little of Robert, only without fucking. She instead has the Light of Seven for brains, save Sansa from this scourge our native Weirwood! And this sister of hers! Lisa, dear to the purse and sometimes to the scrotum of Baelish.  Ugh.  That's the truth, there are people who spoil the names they wear! I had a good friend whose name was Lisa and who went to the fencing club with me as a child. After I cast away my spada and started running around with the reenactors, shooting arrows and waving a blunt two-handed weapon around, we talked so rarely that the friendship became a little less actual. Although it did not cease to exist despite everything.  So, that Lisa was the best friend in my whole stupid life, because the friendship was selfless and never ended with the eternal fear of all different-sex friends - falling in love and everything accompanying it. And now in this new wonderful world there is a woman with the same name, but with such a shitty personality that I even feel sorry for Jon Arryn.  Though it's more like a kind of male solidarity of married to Tully plays part. Not the real pity. This one I still have to find after I realized who I should be grateful to for a happy family life of Eddard Stark and for the pig on the throne, with whom I need to be friends even if my eyes bleed and my ears bleed. Though the boar has sensed the war and will probably put himself in order at least for a bit. That I will be impossibly happy about, because it's better to nobly and bravely die in a clash than how it was in canon. At least that's more useful. Robert, his entourage and some of my vassals who decided to join in, merrily shouting went away to see off the Lannister brothers. Those two were accompanied by my younger brother so they will inspect the Wall for the king. The King was to have his hunt on the way back, and I was to leave the next day to join my royal friend on his hunt. The friend still confirmed his friendliness and understanding of the conditions set for him. Though that southern nonsense of his in the style of "I'll put all heads on spikes" still tried to break through when he forgot who he was in front of, where and what he was threatening to do.  I have always been particularly gifted in talking my shit out of things. That I've been doing in order to throw part of the Walkers'problem on the shoulders of everyone who gets into grabbing distance.  With Robert, I was cutting it really close to the truth, purely for the sake of saving the world, and did not let him forget about my plans at those moments when he was not doing what - in his particularly brilliant opinion - a king should do. And that's to fuck everything that attracted him, has vagina and limbs, and also drink the best wine from my cellars.  The last factor interested me insofar as, since I haven't been drinking it since my spontaneously formed blacksmith shop in Wintertown solved the problem with a particularly affordable antiseptic, my uncle from the village will forever be in my memory as the source of most of the ideas related to the household. That is, if they're not familiar to previous Eddard Stark. In general, a moonshine machine made of shit and sticks is, of course, another achievement by the standards of ordinary self-inserted achievers, but in general I'm not throwing too much knowledge of this kind around. Also my monotonous and quite cultured urban life, and no quirks towards survival in the event of an apocalypse or nuclear war,  gave me no time to accumulate the knowledge that is so necessary in this miserable reality.  Actually, it was only thanks to some knowledge that I got out of the kindness of his heart from a talkative uncle that we began to harvest the simplest activated carbon from young birches and beeches, although it all started with my banal unwillingness to mix wine with water every time I wanted to drink.  I got the children hooked on a carbon filter, and the whole staff, and soon the whole town under the castle wall, because diarrhea and flatulence are a complete bull in any century and any universe. And with the northern diet of meat, variations of its offal and pea pudding - both of these medical conditions are always somewhere nearby. Well, in general, I remember our military ratios - there were filter pills. And their necessity, are heads above every other component of the ratio. For it is possible to find food, we are not in the central Sahara after all, but not to get poisoned - this is a completely different story... Because this boy, the innocent boy, even if it is difficult for me to call him my son, despite vague memories, as if read in a book, and not lived, is now lying on a wooden paving. His direwolf howls in alarm, someone of the servants  is already calling the maester. And I look down from the windows and with an inner shudder, I would like to know why, I feel Cersei's palm, small and rather frozen, judging by its temperature, slipping into mine and squeezing across, unexpectedly strong and even painful. Then I turned to the Queen and simply lost control of myself. A couple of moments later, when I was already sitting dumbfounded by the wall near the window and buried my suddenly clouded gaze somewhere ahead of me, she hugged me so that I rest my forehead against her jeweled and gilded wide belt under her chest. Those kinds look like some practical alternative to a corset. Her knees, wrapped in a couple of layers of a maroon dress, bump against my legs as she presses me even tighter by the back of my head, so that I feel pain from the patterns on her waist jewelry digging into my face. "We have to finish this." I hear my voice as if from the side, and she nods briefly - I feel movement above and hear her muffled response. "Yes, Lord Stark, this is too important a question for me to leave unresolved. But..." "I forbade him. Damn wolf blood," for some reason I thought that and decided to ramble out loud, I don't know why. "Damn Kat, forbids physical punishment. Little idiots always need their behavior corrected through light bodily harm, this is the unwritten law of this times, there is no time to drag your feet and you could end up like this, if not... And I'm idiot as well, with you damn southern women, everything is always goes up the arse..." "Are you done crying?" Her voice was now colder than the snow on the roof of the tower we were in, and was rapidly approaching minus fifty on the Celsius scale, like in the summer of Antarctica. "Thank you, my lady. I... I will wait for the next opportunity to talk, but it is unlikely that anything will change. And I guess I really don't think what I just said," I raised my head, freed from her embrace and looked her in the eyes. "About southern women. You've been very helpful right now, you know." "It was intuitive." She shrugged her shoulders and stood up, lightly brushing off her dress just below the knees. It was irrevocably ruined, but to any local, as accustomed to wealth as this woman, it would've made no difference for the most part. "Few people care about me in any way, Cersei. I have to go control the maester. Bran hasn't been taken away yet. If he broke his spine above the waist, it will be much more difficult and may end in paralysis. If the lower back is damaged, then I have good news for Kat. Our son may be able to walk again. Help me with the letters to the Old Town. If the Queen asks, they will answer faster. These... used for a couple of centuries without proper cleaning, chamber pots respond to me as if they are doing me a favor. I'm too dull to have scientific conversations, you see. I won't even ask Robert, he would rather offer to finish my boy off than save, I know him..." "Why do you think I don't support him in this?" "Imagine that this is your Tommen, and then ask yourself. The father is, of course, not the mother, but I love my children. After all, when the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but his pack survives."