AU where Ned dies during the Greyjoy Rebellion, and Cat and her children come to live with Robert in King's Landing.
1. Catelyn was heavily pregnant with Arya when word reached her of Ned’s death. It was debated whether it was better to have her give birth in the capital or the North, or whether it was worth the risk of travel. Eventually, it was decided that she would give birth in Winterfell, before travelling south, though it took some convincing of the grief-stricken Catelyn for her to leave the North at all, for how could Robb learn to rule a castle he was so far from?
2. She reached the castle with a babe in arms and two young children at her side (the bastard had been given to a a family in the Riverlands to be raised well and money given, but nothing more nothing less) and her eyes were red from crying and she was half a ghost from grief, but Robert embraced her like a sister upon arrival and immediately doted on the children, showing them far more attention than he ever showed his own, much to Cersei’s annoyance.
3. After a while, a few months, Robert found Catelyn sat alone after putting all the children to bed and Arya had had her last feeding. He pulled up a chair and offered her a drink; she refused, but he drank on regardless and as he drank his tongue got looser and tales poured forth eventually from both Catelyn and Robert. They talked until dawn about Ned, stories they both knew, funny ones, sad ones, ones which made their eyes roll. We loved him the most, Cat, he told her at the end of their long, long reminiscing and she had to agree
4. Robert really took to his namesake, Robb, and doted on him way more than Joffrey, and constantly compared him to Ned despite his colouring. He always called him Little Lord Stark, and this caused even more tension between him and the Queen.
5. Through the years of raising her children there, journeying to Winterfell for several months each year to train Robb, Robert and Catelyn continued to share stories about Ned and often talked about other things as well, really developing a strong brother/sister relationship, which annoyed both Cersei and Lysa. Robert became a proper and true Uncle to Ned’s kids, and always filled them with tales of how brilliant their Father was.
