Chapter 3: My Children’s Father Is Simply the Worst (II)
"-. 265 – 272 AC .-"
Rickard Stark was twenty when he realized that aloof, stony silence had become his way of life. It defined all he did. All he knew. All it could. Even those things he went out of his way to avoid. Like his firstborn child, who he handed off to that one knight that had led his guard that time Maester Walys prevailed upon him to go South for the Harvest Festival.
For the most part, Rodrik Cassel's reports blurred together. The child is eating fine. The boy is crawling. The boy is walking. Little lord's started talking. The young lord's quite the sorehead. Young Wolf is growing wild there. My Lord, the little Wild Wolf almost snuck into the Heartsglade right under my nose! I will humbly accept any punishment!
"He is never allowed in there, am I understood?"
"Yes, My Lord."
Rickard generally controlled his impulse to take the man up on his punishment offer, but sometimes the knight came really close to overstepping and Rickard just couldn't help himself.
"My Lord, your son appears to have fully regained his words."
"That's good. Now if there's nothing else?"
"In case you happened to respond this way, the Young Lord instructed me to ask if there's nothing you might have to say."
"…What did you just say?" For one bizarre moment, Lord Rickard Stark was actually lost for words. "Do grown knights now make a habit of indulging the words out of a stripling's mouth?"
"Only the trustworthy ones and I trust and believe in your son, My Lord." The man was respectful and deferential and earnest enough to put children to bed. "Don't you?"
One form or another, something like this happened every sennight. Each time, the outrage over being questioned by his sworn man so audaciously waged a swift and terrible war with pride over having a son capable of winning loyalty like this.
The former generally won. He had no right to take pride in Brandon at all. "…Three days of training the worst chaff for your insolence."
"Very well My Lord."
"You're dismissed."
"As you say, My Lord."
Unlike Cassel, his wife was not so easy to ignore. Or dismiss. Nor was she willing to leave it at him never intruding on her related personal business. Like, say, the way he didn't order her to give up the ship on Brandon like he did.
"How long will this keep going on, husband? He's recovered his words and his strength and can walk on his own again and even run, despite the portents of doom the Maester gave. Not a day goes by without him asking after you. Why are you treating him as if he's wronged you? If not for his sake, then what about mine? What about Ned's? What even about yours? How long do you mean to treat your firstborn son as if he were a bastard? Do you not realise where this has started to send tongues wagging?"
"Do you think I don't know all this, woman?" When he barely had any appetite most days? When, every time he sat down for a meal, he wondered if his firtsborn would ever be fit to attend even something as base as a family meal?
He knew well what the servants would say. What smallfolk would say. What they did. What a jovial boy. What a bright little lord. What life in the young lord. A shame what happened to him. Such a shame that brainstorm that got him. A real shame what all the headaches that strike him. Shame. Shame.
Shame, shame, shame, shame. The shame of House Stark that had to be kept out of sight lest his weakness and headaches and moodswings take him for all to see.
And what of Lyarra? Would she be doomed to bear him through everything forever? Would she let herself go in her despair? Would she remain Brandon's dependent wetnurse while he was tied to her apron strings for the rest of his life? What of himself? Could he doom his son to this half-life? Could he live with himself? And what of Eddard? Did he deserve the neglect of not just his father but his mother? Did he deserve the other hardships that would result from this? Did he deserve the kinstrife when… when…
And so aloof, stony silence became Rickard Stark's way of life and stayed that way for years to come. And as it did, Lyarra swung between cold and haughty and grief-stricken and standoffish every other moonturn. Never forgiving him. Seldom on the same page as him. And perpetually unsatisfied even as she nagged and pulled and tugged and cajoled him back to bed every evening.
"By the seven hells, woman, what all will it take for you to let me have some peace?"
"By all the seven hells neither of us believe in, husband, nothing is what! I don't care how much of your duties you've forsworn. I still plan to see all of mine through and then some. I expect the man I married to rise to the occasion!"
Lyanna was a child born of succor, not passion, and Benjen turned out far too bright and cheerful for the spawn of hatemaking warred on New Year's night.
Especially with everything else that happened when he was born in the ninth month of that same year. When Rickard emerged from his newest son's first swaddling, it was to find out that Brandon had been found in the Godswood. Drooling at the mouth. Insensate. In front of the Heart Tree.
For one dark, dreadful moment, Rickard Stark genuinely considered cutting down that wretched tree and damn the consequences.
He didn't. He settled for Cassel's head instead.
"Speak your last words," he demanded despite not wanting to hear anything the man had to say.
"I trust and believe in your son, My Lord," the man said, calling up their strange, on and off exchange as the guards forced him down upon the chopping block. "Don't you?"
"In the name of Aerys of the House Targaryen, second of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, I, Rickard of the House Stark, sentence you to die."
Long ago, when his father took Rickard to see his first execution when he was ten years old, they had a talk about what it meant to swing the sword. Lord Edwyle Stark said that it was important. That their ways were the old ways. That if you stare a man in the eye and can't bring down the sword, then maybe the man doesn't deserve to die after all.
There and then, in view of the rest of the guard and his lord and the man's own brother, under the gaze of even the Heart Tree – in front of which Rickard Stark had had the chopping block dragged out of spite – Rodrik Cassel had eyes just like that.
Lord Rickard Stark swung the sword anyway.
Maybe blood sacrifice would finally glut whatever appetite the fickle Gods couldn't wait to sate for another lifetime.
The next day, it turned out that Brandon had used his newest sibling's birth as a diversion to give Rodrik the slip and scamper off. Cassel then spent the whole day asking after and looking literally everywhere for him, including the Godswood and Heart Tree clearing at three different times. All the while, the boy was wandering up and down the woods picking mind-twisting mushrooms. They'd found a pile of them just outside the glade's tree line!
Rodrik Cassel didn't deserve to die and Rickard Stark didn't deserve House Cassel's loyalty. But the man had failed his duty and didn't speak up in his own defence even once. It was as close to a literal admission of guilt as it could get. Even with his brother there. He just defended Brandon. And now it was done. Rickard had executed a loyal man and there was no more that could be done.
He washed his hands entirely of Brandon then. Every last one of his decisions involving him just seemed to be the wrong one. Everyone would probably be better off if he just stepped away entirely. Especially Brandon himself. Summoning his wife, he told her she had free reign over the boy's affairs thenceforth. And that he wanted to hear nothing more on it from that moment onward.
"What do you mean 'it'? He's your son."
She knew that was not what he meant, but he was too soul-weary to argue with her and his word was law.
And so it was.
Three days later, though, when he was out inspecting the guards training in the yard, Lyarra emerged from the keep and was 'dragged' by Brandon – he'd grown so much – right up to where Martyn Cassel stood as if about to request an audience, a rolled-up scroll in hand. Then his firstborn son promptly and officially apologised. He even made it seem like a duty he, his father, had prescribed. Without actually saying or implying it.
Rickard summoned Martyn to his solar after his rounds were done. What else was he going to do, make himself out to have less honor than an addled child? He then offered his own apology. Paid the weregild afforded to a landed knight. Cassel did about as good job of imitating a cold rock as he did. Then told him he had been set to leave his service. He'd been on the fence only due to how Rodrik had taken responsibility. Spared the rest of their house from censure and obviously meant for them to go on as close to normal as possible once he was gone. But Martyn had been on the verge of forswearing House Stark despite all that, until Brandon tipped him back.
Then Martyn really floored him. "I would take up my brother's duties."
"… I cannot grant that," Rickard managed to sound normal despite a suddenly tight throat. "Even if I were certain of your intentions, I cannot abide the risk that my son will suffer the consequences of my mistake through you, whichever way it might be."
Martyn looked surprised. At his admission of guilt or whatever else, he wasn't sure. But then closed his face back down and nodded. "As you say, My Lord."
"You may go."
He went.
Except it didn't take more than a week for Brandon to strike up an acquaintance with Martyn Cassel. And no more than a moon to decide he could be trusted to be his sworn sword after all. Something Lyarra took great satisfaction in granting without even consulting the Lord of Winterfell, seeing as Rickard had so generously decreed that she had full, ultimate authority on all decisions involving the Heir of the North until further notice.
He didn't deserve House Cassel's loyalty, but maybe Brandon did.
Even so, Rickard was ready to return to what had been his normal. It even worked for a time. Up until Benjen's fourth name day. Specifically, the feast.
Then Brandon Stark walked through the doors, made his way to the head table, plopped down between Lyarra and Ned – "Mother, Father, siblings mine" – and promptly began to fill his plate with two grown men's worth of foodstuffs.
The boy gave no indication that this was the first official appearance of his whole life. He didn't seem to notice or care that he was suddenly the only human being talking in the entire hall. Lyarra gave no indication that this was anything out of the ordinary either. What she did do was act as if this had been happening all their life. As if she wasn't the only one who could have ordered Martyn to step back from his posting and join the lower table for the rest of the evening.
What Brandon did do was pretend Eddard and Lyanna weren't gawking between him and the hall. He also produced a stack of uncommonly fresh white paper, and passed it along Lyarra to Rickard when it seemed like no one else was going to move or speak up.
There had to be a hundred different sheets affixed on a thin spring. And the first two-some dozen of them were filled with numbers, lines and calculations.
"Preliminary cost versus benefits analysis and sample product all in one," Brandon said as if reporting on a project Rickard had assigned at some point in the past. "Current estimate after total shift to in-house production is roughly eight in ten parts cut from administration expenses. Also, one hundredth reduction to all house expenses overall. That's without counting all the logistical and trade-related expenses that will be free to shift somewhere else. When you have the time, I'd like to go over the finer numbers."
"… We will speak after dinner."
Brandon nodded, and that was that.
What was he going to do, say no?
It took all Rickard had to pretend he knew what he was talking about when fielding the many questions that ensued from everywhere afterwards. He excused himself from the feast as soon as courtesy allowed.
"You'll still sing to us, right?" Benjen asked Brandon as they both rose.
"He sings for us most every night," Eddard volunteered out of nowhere, eyes clouded with all the accusation he wouldn't show on his face.
"He also comes up with the best games and doll figures!" Lyanna obliviously gushed around her chicken leg. "But his songs are the best! They're all new and exciting and he can scream the same sound literally forever."
Brandon could sing?
"Oh, you think I'm good enough to do it here, is that it?" The older boy poked Ned in the forehead. "I'll sing you all to sleep later, not here. Stage fright is a powerful thing." Except his tone really said I don't need to prove anything.
Though maybe Rickard was imagining it. He'd certainly been imagining a lot of things that were nowhere close to reality, it seemed.
Much could be said about the meeting between them, and how thoroughly Rickard botched it just on sheer habit of being short and curt with everything that called up his self-loathing.
'You could hug me every once in a while.'
More could be said about that play time Brandon called in his 'debt' for, a moon later. More still about how much was thrown in his face through that strange game of Brandon's own devising. One that bested cyvasse in practically everything but age.
Without Rickard even knowing it, his firstborn son had caught up to where he should have been and then soared on ahead. But instead of resenting or hating or shunning his siblings out of spite and bitterness, he'd gone and given them everything Rickard wouldn't give him. Even cut years off the time it took them to learn their letters and numbers and house sigils and throwing dice. Gambling! At their age! Inconceivable!
The scandal!
And the nerve of him to think his son would still be such a simpleton as to blame anyone but Rickard himself for everything wrong in his life.
Perhaps it was all he deserved, Rickard thought, that Brandon himself would be the one to teach him this one lesson. The lesson he should have learned before all the others, big and small.
The world does not turn on the will of one man.
Turns out it could change by it, though. In fact, it could even change by the will of one boy, as Rickard found out at the end of that very year. Though not without copious forewarning. Most of which he stayed blind to. Deliberately. Like the craven fool he'd long since acknowledged that he was in the dark.
"A New Year's fair?"
"Already prepared and paid for from your son's investments. All it needs is your seal of approval for the venue and guard detail."
The North was just tightening its belt for the first stage of rationing and they expected people to come out and party? They thought they'd spare the food? That they would leave their homes? On one of the shortest days of the year? In the middle of winter?
Wait, Brandon had investments!?
If he hadn't already known why he always learned last about these things, the look on his wife's face certainly would have reminded him.
He dismissed her with the promise to consider the offer.
The expense sheet was actually a stack of papers held together with what people had taken to calling a 'paperclip.' It was a fairly long list written up in that new, double-entry form that Lyarra had practically forced upon the household staff on pain of taking all her stress out on them. Since Lyanna was just starting to show at the time, not even the castellan dared complain. Rickard allowed it on the belief that it would prove a failed enterprise and his wife would relent within a moon at best. Instead, the new system proved accurate, efficient and capable of preventing so many accounting 'errors' that he mandated its use to the entirety of Winterfell, from where it soon spread to all of Wintertown.
The man didn't recognize the hand. But he didn't need to guess either. He didn't expect it to be such terrible chicken scrawl. But it conjured up some of his best and worst memories all the same.
'I don't know what this thing is between us.'
Rickard Stark read and re-read the papers. Expenses that covered the usual, the not so usual, and enough timber to raise a longhouse. Plus an entire page of things – items, goods and activities – whose names he'd never even heard of.
'You're not even a bad father.'
Rickard Stark returned the papers that same evening, sealed and signed.
'By Winter's end, you won't stomach the thought of shunning or pawning me off ever again.'
Rickard Stark had no right to take pride in Brandon, but he was a fool who lacked conviction and took pride in him all the same.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Karmic_Acumen
Karmic_Acumen Webnovel is surprisingly sparse on formatting options. The original version made plenty use of italics for emphasising words and rendering inner thoughts and such. Oh well. You can find this story on Fanfiction.net, Ao3, Spacebattles and Alternatehistory as well, if you want all the nouance.
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