wait if we’re showing love for your WIPs!!! i wanna tell you how much i love white knuckles!! i always go back to reread. the bits with jory are so 🥺🥺🥺 to me and i feel like you captured jon and ned so well. im obsessed with how you portray the start of their dynamic and the grief that exists between them. its such a creative and interesting concept too!! rlly nothing ive come across in fics since i first read it!!
White knuckles is one of those fics where I got carried away by getting a lot of comments on it. Like more comments than I had ever really gotten on a fic before, and I was like "yeah ok I have some more ideas for it" only to then realize that I didn't know how to finish the story. I had an idea at one point, but I've since realized it's sort of stupid and wouldn't be realistic. I've always regretted not keeping it a one shot. I don't hate the other chapters, don't get me wrong, but for most of my writing career that was the only incomplete fic I had and it always bothered me. (Clearly this year I decided to say fuck it and now I have a bunch of WIPs, but alas)
I also feel like I was trying to force the jonsa too much because that's what I thought people wanted, when the story is very much a Jon-centric story with lots of messy family dynamics and jonsa as a little side piece of it, and I really should have stuck to that
I am glad you like it, though, and I do always hold out hope that I'll get inspired to write more. This is another fic where I've had something half written for years and it's just been sitting around. Probably since 2022.
You know what, I'm continuing the 2025 vibe of fuck it. I'll post what I have here, because there's a very good chance I will never ever finish this to post for real. If anyone wants to read the story first, here it is.
Here you go, anon:
.
Riding with the men of Winterfell is freeing in a way Jon has never known.
It is a different freedom than hunting in the woods alone, or sneaking off to Ygritte's against his mother's will. It is even different from the campgrounds at the tourney – he had kept himself apart there, new and confused and angry.
He rides far behind the Starks, as no one knows his secret yet (if they ever will), and so the men treat him as one of their own. He received endless jokes and teasing, for he has only just joined them and he is younger than most, but it is good-natured and it makes him feel as though he belongs. It is nothing like the teasing he would receive in his small village when he would say something or do something that the townsfolk found strange.
(And he realizes now that they found him strange because he is strange. Looking back, he understands that mother and Arthur taught him things that no commoner would ever need to know. They taught him history and numbers; he could read better than anyone else in the village. He knew the names of the houses, their sigils, their rankings and importance. He wonders at the fine line mother walked - of teaching him enough, of teaching him too much.)
He hunts with the men, though he can tell Lord Stark wishes him not to. But none of the men know that he is a secret royal bastard and so there is no reason why he should not go. The men want to see him shoot, they know he placed in the archery competition, and Jon tries not to let this swell his pride too much.
At night he lays awake under the stars, the snores of the men around him not enough to drown out the thoughts in his head.
As they draw closer and closer to home, he begins to feel dread pool in his stomach. The men are all loyal to Lord Stark, have nothing but good things to say of him. He is a fair and just Lord, not like those sothroners, they tell Jon. The Starks were Kings once, and Jon cannot help but think there is no way he has the blood of Kings running through his veins. Not through his mother and not through his father, either. This is a mistake. They will get to his cabin in the woods and Lord Stark will take one look at mother and say no, that is a different Lyanna, we were mistaken.
….
Jon is not avoiding his cousins, not on purpose. But Lord Stark is clearly keeping him separated and Jon does not try to seek them out.
It is Ghost, ultimately, who does.
Jon has gone into the woods, away from where they have set camp for the night. Though he likes Lord Stark's men and enjoys their company, he is not used to having so many people around all the time and finds he needs moments to himself. He sits on a rock in a clearing and cleans and sharpens his sword - the plain iron of it, the worn leather grip is comforting. He tries not to think about the sword he left behind, glinting gold and studded with rubies and lies.
He senses Ghost before he sees him.
Ghost is silent, always, though Jon had never questioned how strange it was until now, until he watched hardened warriors jump at Ghost's sudden appearance alongside the hunting group. His silence, his white fur, his blood red eyes; Jon knows the men are wary of Ghost. He is big even for a wolfhound and Jon can hear the men whisper that he is a demon in dog form (though they have never seen Ghost flop onto his back and beg for pets from a girl with copper hair. If they had, they would know he is no demon.)
When Ghost finally enters the clearing, he is not alone and Jon nearly drops his whetstone at the sight of Sansa and Arya following behind.
“Oh, Jon,” Sansa says, as though she is not really surprised to find him.
Jon cannot think of a single thing to say except, “your father would not want you wandering about by yourselves.”
“Well, we are not by ourselves,” she says primly. “We have Ghost. And now you.”
Jon scowls as she stands at the edge of the clearing, hands clasped in front of her and eyes wide in innocence as Arya snickers behind her. She is willfully ignoring the truth, that her father would not want her alone in the woods with a near stranger and his demon dog.
“Can I see your sword?” Arya asks, stepping closer and eyeing his sword as though she wishes to wield it herself.
“Ask your father,” Jon replies, which earns him a huff and a scowl, like he knew it would.
He goes back to sharpening his sword, as he does not know how to handle either girl. Do they know who he is yet? Lord Stark said he would not keep it a secret, but it seems as though they still do not know.
“Father says you are leaving us once we reach the Neck,” Sansa says, still with her hands clasped in front of her.
“Aye, I'm to go back home,” he nods, and tries not to think too hard about the way her mouth tips into a frown.
“You should come to Winterfell,” Arya says, hands gripping one end of a large stick, the other end in Ghost's mouth as they both tug against each other. “Ghost even looks like our sigil.”
“I thought your sigil was a grey wolf,” Jon says, ignoring the clenching of his heart. Watching Arya play with Ghost, the idea that he might be welcomed in his mother's home…
“Yes, Ghost would be reversed,” Sansa corrects her sister.
“A bastard's colors,” Arya agrees, and it makes something in Jon's stomach go sour. There is silence after that, before Arya clears her throat and says, “sorry.”
“It's alright,” he says. He knows what he is. He has always known, and it has never truly bothered him, as many in the village were the same. But it is different for nobles, he knows. For them, bastards are a shame. Something to be hidden away.
He stands from the rock and sheathes his sword. “You should get back, there will be talk if you're found out here with me.”
“Let them talk,” Arya scoffs, a scowl on her face, but when he looks at Sansa, he can see that his words have struck something. In his village, no one cared that he and Ygritte lay together without being wed, not truly. It was something to gossip over, but nothing so scandalous. No one cared when they went out into the woods alone together. But it is different for nobles, he needs to remember this.
(And he thinks about his mother then, of Lord Stark's story. She had run away with the Prince while betrothed to another man. What would people have said of her, if they knew?)
…
Too soon they are at the crossroads. The King's Road continues north, but Jon's cabin lies in a forest west of Greywater Watch. Tomorrow, he will truly begin his journey home.
Lord Stark is taking a small group of men with him to visit Lord Reed, he tells the rest of the party. Everyone else is to continue on to Winterfell, though this brings protests from Arya and Sansa.
“I want to see the crannogmen!” Arya places her fists on her hips, feet set apart and mouth turned down in a frown.
(The more time he spends with her, the more Jon can see his own mother in her and it makes him ache. For home, for a family he never knew.)
Jon watches as Lord Stark sighs and runs a hand over his face. Sansa is less forceful in her protests, but she protests all the same.
“I'm going to speak with my daughters privately,” Lord Stark says, voice solemn and low, and he directs a look at Jory that the man seems to understand.
Jon disappears back into the camp as Lord Stark takes his daughters a bit into the forest, with Jory standing guard. Apprehension curls in his stomach, for he knows what Lord Stark is going to tell them.
…
They are gone for a while, and when they return, both Sansa and Arya's eyes find him amongst the men. Sansa's eyes are red-rimmed, as though she has been crying, though for what, Jon does not know. Perhaps she is upset that she is related to a bastard, that there is such a stain on her family name. Arya looks confused and angry, and Jon wishes to disappear into the forest. He had hoped that in them knowing, he would find the family he has been denied all these years. He should have known better.
He keeps his head down and does not look at them again.
He wishes he had never left his cabin. The outside world is no place for a bastard.
i drank pilfered coffee with finn on her break then went to an estate sale at a big house up a steep hill, looking for furniture on my pick list, but i didn't find anything. i was meant to go to a couple more, but i wound up at the holbrook arbor for a quiet hour instead. it was still tended like they were holding services there, even though the camp meeting was over three months ago
i went over to fallie's to take care of the tuxies. i brought stuff to fix my dinner, took a nap on the couch with holler, then cooked and ate while two-fry and i kept company in the kitchen
you can hear the pack of crows that live on this street. they know i put old cat food out on the flagstone for them, and i am erratic enough that they come check frequently. i've started to whistle a couple of bars of the chorus to i'll fly away when i head out the feeding door, and it seems like they're starting to talk back
