FIC: Trouble Finding North (Stannis/Jon)

[linndechir]

Title: Trouble Finding North
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Pairings/Characters: Stannis/Jon
Rating: PG
Words: 2998
Warnings: vague spoilers for ASOS/ADWD
Summary: It was easy to feel like he was doing the right thing when he helped Stannis win the war, but once they've taken King's Landing, Jon doubts that he truly belongs on Stannis' Kingsguard.
Author's note: Written for outboxed in the latest round of got_exchange. The prompt was: Stannis/Jon, I've given you all and now I am nothing.




It's not the sky I'm asking for
I'm just having trouble finding north
I've gone as far as I can go
Trying to find something that feels like home
                  The Civil Wars – Finding North




The White Tower had a certain simple beauty the rest of the city lacked. Its outside walls had long turned darker from the wind and the rain, but on the inside it was still as white as the snow before it had started to melt, the furniture simple, though still far more luxurious than what Jon had got used to at the Wall. The Lord Commander's room, which took up the entire top floor of the tower, was even quite spacious and comfortable.

Jon still couldn't think of it as his room, even a week after they had taken King's Landing. Stannis had only given him an irritated glance when Jon had expressed his surprise about being assigned to his new quarters, when he was officially nothing more than a knight in the king's service.

Nothing more than a pardoned deserter, really.

The sun hadn't risen yet, although the sky had already started to brighten a little, turning from pitch black into a dull grey. It had been raining since the day before the assault on King's Landing and not stopped since. Winter hadn't lasted all that long this far in the South, the snow had soon turned into constant rain. Jon had half expected to slip on the mud and break his neck during the battle before a single enemy soldier could even get to him.

He adjusted the last straps on his armour, the same old armour he'd worn at the Wall and beyond, when he'd still called himself a brother of the Night's Watch. He had added a few new parts to it on the way South, new bracers and a better helmet, but most of it was still simple dark steel, nothing like the ornate white Kingsguard armours Jon remembered from King Robert's visit to Winterfell. There had been no time for that, just like the king hadn't bothered with any official appointments.

But on his bed lay a new cloak, long and heavy and as white as Ghost's fur. It had been sent to the White Tower the evening before, when Jon had already been sleeping. He doubted that the king had bothered to have it made in the few days since they had taken the city, so someone must have found it in the Keep. It looked new, though, unworn. Jon idly wondered which Kingsguard knight had it made, only to die before he ever got a chance to wear it. He'd been eyeing the cloak since he had got out of bed, glared at it over his meagre breakfast like he could will it to disappear into thin air. Of course the damn cloak had stayed right where it was.

He still couldn't bring himself to put it on when a harsh knock on the door interrupted the early morning silence. Ghost's ears pricked up, but he looked relaxed, apparently not bothered by whoever was on the other side of the door.

“Come in?”

Jon raised his eyebrows when the king stepped in, looking irritated as usual – and possibly even more so for having to knock on a door when he probably had more important places to be than here. Jon couldn't remember Stannis coming to see him rather than just summoning him since they had left the Wall months ago.

“Your Grace.” He bowed. If Jon didn't look like a proper Kingsguard, Stannis looked nothing like a proper king. Like Jon, he still wore his armour, battered and beaten as it was after more battles than any man should fight in a lifetime, let alone in one year. The throne might have been won, but the city was still in chaos, too many lords and knights were still trying to figure out how they would fit into Stannis Baratheon's Westeros and whether they shouldn't make one last attempt to get rid of him. The war was over, but there was no peace yet.

“Ser Jon.” Stannis' eyes only met Jon's briefly before they strayed to the white cloak. Ghost let the king pass as he walked over to the bed and ran his fingers over the fabric, thoughtfulness replacing the annoyance on his face.

“I take it you had this sent to me?” Jon asked.

Stannis didn't dignify the question with an answer.

“I'm not a proper knight of the Kingsguard, Your Grace. There has been no official decree to dismiss the remaining members of the old Kingsguard nor to name me to your new one, no ceremony -”

Stannis interrupted him with an impatient gesture.

“I've stopped counting the times you've saved my life, and I already made you my Kingsguard when I took you off that damn Wall you were planning to rot on. Ceremonies are nothing but a show for the people, they can wait.”

“And cloaks can't?”

Stannis glanced up, sharp blue eyes narrowing, but after months by his side Jon recognised the look as one of grudging respect.

“They can, just like white armours and golden crowns. But I'm tired of being asked why a simple knight counsels me in all matters, and I'm equally tired of useless young knights trying to ingratiate themselves with me for a white cloak like they'd woo a maiden for a favour.”

Jon bit back a smile at that image, but his mirth didn't last long when the king picked up the cloak and stepped closer.

“My armour is dirty,” Jon protested weakly, but he turned around obediently when the king tapped him on the shoulder.

“Show me one thing in this city that isn't.”

Jon closed his eyes as the king draped the cloak around his shoulders and fastened it, and he didn't open them again until Stannis' hands had left his body, although he barely even felt them through the armour. He did, however, feel the king's breath on the back of his neck. He hadn't shared Stannis' bed since they had left the Wall – there had been something grounding about fighting living men again, about marching South to win the throne. It had become once more a war with an actual goal rather than an endless battle in the snow that promised certain death. There had been that one night before the battle for King's Landing, when Stannis' hand had curled into Jon's hair almost desperately, his eyes wide and downright fearful, like he couldn't believe he was so close to all he had fought for. Jon had wanted Stannis to kiss him in that moment almost as much as he wanted him to win this war, but instead Stannis had pulled back as if he had burnt himself and stormed out of the tent.

Jon turned around slowly, staying so close that his nose almost brushed against Stannis' chin, and Stannis didn't step away. The king's eyes were never really tender, but Jon liked to think that they seemed less harsh when they were meeting his.

“You know I don't deserve this. Any of it.”

“This again?” Stannis asked. His jaw clenched. “You made your choice months ago when you left the Wall with me. Are you going to prattle at me about how much you regret it for the rest of your life?”

Jon's shoulders hunched, the armour seemed heavier than it should so early in the morning. It hadn't felt like much of a choice when Stannis had ordered him to kneel on top of the Wall, sword touching his shoulders before Jon was even quite aware of what was happening. It hadn't felt like much of a choice when Stannis had said that he needed Jon to come South with him, and with any other man Jon would have suspected that it was flattery to get what he wanted, but Stannis didn't flatter and he didn't lie and he didn't beg. At the time it had even seemed noble, supporting the king who had defeated the Others against the traitors and cowards that had murdered father and Robb and plunged the realm into chaos and open war.

It was harder to see it that way now that the war was won, without battles to distract him from that sneering voice in his head that insisted that he had broken his vows, abandoned his brothers, dishonoured himself more than he ever had before in his life.

“I have to live with the choices I've made,” Jon said, staring at the unadorned clasp that held the king's golden cloak. “But that doesn't make them honourable. I denied you the first time you offered me something I wanted, but I gave in the second time. These cloaks weren't made for deserters.”

“Considering who the members of the previous Kingsguard were, I'd say this one was made for far worse men,” the king replied dryly, and Jon wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not. “If you were cowardly and weak and whatever else it is you see when you look at yourself, I would not want you with me. I offered Winterfell to Ned Stark's bastard, but the Kingsguard to Jon Snow.”

“Then you have a higher opinion of Jon Snow than you should have. I swore an oath –”

“Oh, to hell with you Starks and your oaths,” the king snapped. “You're as obsessed with your honour as a Lannister is with his gold. The hard thing isn't doing your duty, men like you and me are good enough at that. The hard thing is knowing what your duty is.”

Jon glared up at him. The king hadn't backed off, his body still so close that Jon could almost feel Stannis' anger seeping through his skin.

“I'd say my duty was to follow my oath,” Jon said. “Would you have me break the oaths I swore to you as easily as I broke the one I swore to the Night's Watch?”

“You swore to protect the realm. Which is exactly what I want you to keep doing.”

“You're usually far more attached to the letter of the law, rather than interpreting it so … generously.”

The muscles in Stannis' jaw were twitching mere inches away from Jon's eyes, and the part of Jon that had been so willing to forget his oath to follow Stannis wanted nothing more than to run his fingers over the king's cheek. Not that it would have helped much. Whatever else they had come to share, it hadn't made them argue any less.

“The law serves a purpose. Leaving a man like you to rot at the Wall when it is not needed anymore doesn't.” Stannis ground his teeth, like he had trouble forcing the next words out of his mouth. “I was wrong to offer you Winterfell and with it all the things you had already renounced, lands, titles, a wife. And I offered you Winterfell for the wrong reasons.”

“You did,” Jon agreed with the faintest hint of a smile. “But I accepted the Kingsguard for the wrong reasons. I wanted to come with you.”

Stannis sneered at that, and for once it was not only his refusal to believe that anyone could truly wish to be by his side. He grabbed Jon's shoulder to shove him towards the large window, stood behind him as he forced Jon to look outside.

“You seem to think I offered you a great reward when I knighted you, and that you showed weakness when you left the cold Wall for the grandeur of King's Landing.” His voice was filled with scorn. “Is that what you see here, a great capital?”

If Jon was quite honest, King's Landing had been a disappointment. The great city of Aegon the Conqueror, the capital of these Seven Kingdoms that had torn themselves apart for it, was squalid and dirty, what beauty it might have had ruined after the winter, the siege and the war, its grand gates ripped open when the king had taken the city. And Jon hadn't even been surprised by that anymore – King Robert had been a fat drunk instead of a great warrior, the Night's Watch had been a sad heap of rapers and thieves rather than a brotherhood of noble knights, so of course King's Landing was a filthy pit of snakes rather than a place of beauty and peace.

“This” - Stannis grabbed a fistful of white cloth - “is not a reward, Jon. I know you would have been happier on that ice wall of yours, up in the North, closer to Winterfell and what remains of your family.”

Jon looked down. It always made him feel sickeningly young when Stannis simply called him 'Jon', without the title he had given him nor the one Jon had carried before. The king wasn't wrong – Jon knew he wouldn't have accepted the king's offer for purely selfish reasons, and yet he still felt like he had betrayed both himself and his brothers when he had gone South. And hadn't his father always said that the Starks belonged in the North, that their place wasn't among the Southerners with their games and schemes?

He turned around to face the king again. Stannis had been more meticulous about shaving since they had taken King's Landing, so the short beard he had grown during the war was gone, but there was still a harshness to him that didn't fit into the magnificent halls of the Red Keep. For all that he had been born even further in the South than they were now, Stannis looked more out of place here than he ever had in the North.

Stannis' fingers grabbed his chin, digging roughly into Jon's skin to make him raise his head again.

“All that guilt you feel over what you did and what you failed to do -” His voice faltered, a haunted look in his eyes, and Jon thought of all the things that seemed to be eating at Stannis. How he still woke up in a cold sweat whispering his younger brother's name, how he sometimes talked about the guilt of having to choose between his king and his brother when Robert rebelled, how he seemed to flinch a little every time he touched the throne that had cost him so much and would still cost him the rest of his life.

“Yes?” Jon prompted when Stannis didn't continue. “What do you do about it?”

“Nothing,” Stannis said simply. “You do your duty.”

Jon snorted, shook his head in disbelief, but when Stannis moved to pull back his hand, Jon wrapped his fingers around the king's wrist.

“Was that supposed to make me feel better?” It was almost funny, really, how terrible Stannis was at cheering anyone up.

“No.” Stannis frowned. “But I trust a few months in King's Landing will convince you that you didn't come here for any selfish reasons. You have my word that you'll hate it at least as much as the Wall.”

The king did smile when he said that, that small twitch in the corner of his mouth that was so easy to miss. Jon chuckled softly, allowed himself to lean in a bit closer. Whatever Stannis might say, though, at least King's Landing would be far less lonely than the Wall had been for the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

“Did you just come here to lighten my mood with such promises, Your Grace?” Jon hadn't meant for his words to sound as inviting as they did, he'd truly wanted to ask why Stannis had come to see him, but he couldn't bring himself to regret it when Stannis swallowed, his gaze lingering for a moment too long on Jon's lips.

Stannis' hand had let go of his cloak before and moved to clasp Jon's shoulder, but now it slid to the back of Jon's neck. There was barely any pressure behind that touch, but not much was needed to bring them close enough for their noses to brush, and Jon cocked his head to the side so his lips could meet Stannis'.

It was a brief kiss, dry and nothing like the desperate kisses they had shared at the Wall, but there was a reassuring simplicity in it, that one thing at least would stay familiar. Jon sighed softly when their lips parted and Stannis stepped away from him, as if he had suddenly remembered where they were – in the White Tower in King's Landing, right in front of a window, rather than in a dark room at Castle Black.

“I thought we weren't going to do that again,” Jon said, trying his best to hide his smile. Maybe Stannis wasn't so terrible after all at cheering him up.

“Yes.” The king swallowed again, and Jon thought he'd leave it at that when he turned to walk to the door. Ghost jumped up from where he'd been lying on the floor, stepped to Stannis' side and pushed his head up against the king's hand. Stannis halted, although Jon wasn't sure if it was the direwolf or his own thoughts that stopped him from leaving just yet. His strong fingers curled into Ghost's fur, and Jon knew it was probably just the memory of past nights, but he could feel the same touch on his own hair.

For what seemed like a minute Stannis merely stood there, his broad back turned to Jon, a quiet figure in black and gold with a white direwolf pressed to his side. Then he turned his head just enough to glance back in Jon's direction, not quite meeting his eyes as his firm grip on Ghost's fur turned more gentle.

“But we've said that before, haven't we.”

He left the room without waiting for a reply, his hand still resting on Ghost's back. Jon only hesitated for a second before he followed him.