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Year 298 AC/7 ABY
Winterfell, The North
"Close your eyes," Luke said, voice pitched low enough that Sansa had to strain to hear. "Feel the world around you," Luke said, his voice carrying that particular resonance that made the air itself seem to listen. "The Force connects everything, the earth beneath you, the leaves above, even the spaces between heartbeats."
Arya shifted on her own patch of ground, leather creaking. Through slitted lids, Sansa caught her sister's fingers twitching toward where Needle would rest, always restless when asked to be still.
The Force hummed between them…though prickled would be a better description seeing their habit of bickering, even in the force.
"Feel the currents beneath words," Luke instructed, his voice carrying the patient cadence of a hundred lessons taught. "Truth has weight. Lies flutter like—"
The Force wailed.
Luke's hand shot to his temple as Jon's rage slammed into him, feeling the crimson wave of betrayal and anguish so raw it him struggle to stay upright. Sansa's eyes snapped open, pupils dilating as she caught the edge of it.
"Master Luke?"
But he was already moving and through their Force bond, he felt Jon's presence like a wound in the Force—burning, bleeding, transforming. And beneath it, Ned's emotions: a grey shroud of guilt so heavy it threatened to drag them both under.
"Stay here," Luke commanded, not slowing. "Mediate on my words."
The godswood entrance loomed ahead with two bewildered guards. Luke rounded the carved archway and nearly collided with Lord Stark, who slumped against the outer wall like a man who'd taken a mortal blow. His face looked as if he had just woken from carbonite-freezing, and his hands shook like autumn leaves.
"Lord Stark." Luke crouched beside him, one hand on the man's shoulder. Through the contact, waves of anguish crashed over him. Regret. Fear. And underneath it all, a father's desperate love twisted into knots. "What happened?"
Ned's grey eyes focused slowly, as if returning from some distant battlefield. "I told him." The words scraped out raw. "About his mother."
Luke's jaw tightened. He'd urged this conversation, knowing the truth would surface eventually. But the timing... "His reaction?"
"Fire." Ned's voice cracked on the word. "He summoned fire from nothing, Luke. The leaves burned, the grass... and for a moment his eyes..." A shudder ran through the Lord of Winterfell. "They turned a molten gold. Like a wolf's in a deep winter night. And the way Jon looked at me...is this what it means to be a Jedi?"
Dread flooded in Luke's veins. Yellow eyes—the mark of dark side corruption, of anger given form and substance.
"That's not what it means to be a Jedi." Luke's voice carried the weight of lessons learned in blood and failure. "What you saw—Jon's fire, his eyes—that's raw emotion given form. The Force responding to pain."
Ned's hands still trembled against the stone. "You speak as if this is normal."
"Not normal. Natural." Luke crouched lower, feeling the cold seep through his knees where they pressed against Winterfell's ancient stones. The godswood's burnt smell still clung to the air, a reminder that Luke had an apprentice to now fear for. "The Force doesn't distinguish between joy and rage, it simply amplifies what's already there."
"And the yellow eyes?" Ned's voice barely rose above a whisper.
Luke's chest tightened. No easy answer for that. "A warning. When we channel the Force through anger, through hate, it... marks us. Changes us. But one moment doesn't define a lifetime." He thought of his father's redemption, bought with a final act of love. "I've seen men return from far darker places than where Jon stands now."
He'd seen it in his father, in the Emperor, in every Sith who'd surrendered to rage. But in Jon? So young, so unprepared for this burden?
Eddard finally looked up, and Luke saw a father's grief etched in every line. "How do I reach him? What words could possibly comfort my boy?"
"Words?" Luke shook his head. "Lord Stark, your nephew just discovered his entire identity is built on necessary lies. Words are a fools gambit right now." He stood, already reaching out through the Force to track Jon's blazing presence.
Eddard's hand stilled on the godswood gate. Something shifted in his posture, his shoulders drawing back, chin lifting with the careful precision of a man who'd just glimpsed a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"You knew." Not a question. The words dropped between them like stones into still water.
"Suspected." Luke met those grey eyes without flinching. "The Force shows patterns. A boy who is never called son by the father who loves him. A father whose grief runs deeper than shame… the way you flinch whenever someone mentions your sister." Luke let each observation hang in the cold air. "You confirmed what the Force had already whispered."
Ned's jaw worked silently. His fingers flexed against the gate's iron bars, knuckles white. "Suspected."
Ned's laugh scraped raw in his throat. "Only here for a few moons and you already unraveled my greatest secret that I've kept hidden for fifteen years." He turned away, pressing his forehead against the cold stone wall. "Did he suspect? Before tonight, did he—"
"No." Luke stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Lord Stark, I've kept many secrets. This one was yours to reveal."
"Or hide forever." The words came muffled against stone. "Perhaps that would have been kinder because now…" Ned pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I've lost him, haven't I? My sister's son, and I've driven him to..."
"No." Luke's voice carried the certainty of hard-won experience. "Anger is human. Even manifestation through the Force, it happens. What matters is what comes next."
He reached out through the Force, following the familiar signature of Jon's presence. There—moving through the castle like a storm barely contained, leaving ripples of distress in his wake. Servants pressing against walls, guards stepping aside without knowing why. The boy blazed in the Force like a torch, all that careful control shattered.
But not lost. Not yet.
"I'll find him," Luke promised, rising. "Give him time to process, then approach him with an open mind."
"Time?" Ned's laugh held no humor. "How much time does one need to accept their entire life was built on lies?"
Luke thought of his own moment of revelation, of Vader's mechanical breathing, the truth falling like a hammer blow. "More than you'd think. Less than you'd hope."
He left Lord Stark there, knowing the man needed his own time to wrestle with choices made in love and fear. The Force pulled Luke through Winterfell's ancient halls, Ghost and Amidala leading him down worn stone steps that descended into darkness. The crypts. Of course.
Luke paused at the entrance, extending his senses. Jon's presence pulsed below as a wound in the Force, raw and bleeding emotion. But stable. The initial wildfire of rage had banked to something colder, more dangerous. Calculation replacing chaos.
Just a few words, Luke reminded himself, no more than that. The boy—no, the young man—needed space to breathe, to think, to choose who he would become in light of this revelation. Too soon, and Luke would be another adult forcing decisions. Too late, and the dark side would sink its hooks deep.
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Jon's footsteps echoed through the crypts like hammer blows on cold iron, each one driving deeper the truth he couldn't escape. The stone stairs descended into darkness, and he welcomed it. The darkness couldn't judge, couldn't lie, couldn't pretend he was something he wasn't.
Daemon.
Namedafter two men who left the world scarred, a villain in Targaryen history, and the other, the sin that haunts every bastard.
Daemon. Daemon Snow. Daemon Sand…
The name was a thorn pricking at his conscience. All those years of being Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell, and now... what? The bastard of a dead prince who'd started a war for lust?
His torch flickered against ancient stone, casting dancing shadows across the faces of dead Starks. They watched him pass with granite eyes, both hostile and welcoming. Brandon, Rickard, generations of lords who'd never hidden behind lies. The cold seeped through his cloak, but it felt distant compared to the ice in his chest.
There. At the end of the row.
Lyanna Stark's statue stood smaller than the lords around her, as if even in death she remained the wild girl who'd ridden like the wind. Jon approached slowly, his breath misting in the crypt's chill. The sculptor had captured something in her face—a fierceness, a sadness. Cold, unfeeling stone eyes that somehow mirrored his pain.
"Mother." The word scraped raw from his throat. He'd never said it aloud before, not to anyone real. Only to phantoms in his dreams where a highborn lady forced to give up her bastard, a common woman who'd died birthing him, a whore who'd warmed Lord Stark's bed one night.
All my dreams, and the truth is worse.
Ghost pressed his head against Jon's thigh, the direwolf's warmth seeping through leather and wool. The albino's red eyes caught the dying torchlight, reflecting it back like drops of blood. His rough tongue rasped once across Jon's knuckles where they'd clenched white against his knees.
His legs gave out. Jon sank to his knees before her tomb, the torch clattering from nerveless fingers. It rolled away, flames guttering but not dying, casting her face in shifting light and shadow.
"I used to imagine you," he whispered to the stone. "Sometimes you were beautiful, sometimes plain. Sometimes you loved me enough to die for me. Sometimes you hated what you'd made." His voice cracked. "But you were always mine. My mother."
The stone gave no answer. Lyanna Stark had kept her secrets to the grave.
"And now I find you were a Stark all along. That I knelt in the godswood beside my cousins, not my brothers and sisters. That every time Lady Stark looked at me with those cold eyes, she was right—I didn't belong. Not the way I thought."
Soft footfalls echoed from the stairs. Two sets of paws padded through the darkness as Amidala's grounded presence washed over him. Jon didn't turn. He couldn't look away from her face.
The footsteps stopped beside him. Master Luke said nothing, just stood there while Amidala's white form settled next to Ghost. The direwolves touched noses briefly, a greeting between pack, then turned their attention to Jon. He felt Ghost's concern through their bond, a wordless question.
I don't know, Jon thought back. I don't know anything anymore.
They stood in silence, man and boy, before the tomb of Lyanna Stark. The torch flickered between them, painting their shadows large on the crypt walls. Jon's throat worked, but no words came. What was there to say? That he'd spent his life dreaming of a mother who'd loved him, only to find she'd died bearing the seed of the man who'd destroyed everything?
"I had all these dreams." The words finally spilled out, bitter as northern wind. "The worst, I thought the worst would be if she was some common whore Fa—Lord Stark had forgotten. Some tavern wench who'd meant nothing." He laughed, and it echoed off stone like breaking glass. "But this? This is worse than anything I imagined."
Luke remained silent. Patient. Like the stones around them.
Jon pushed himself to his feet, turning to face the man who'd taught him to touch powers he didn't understand. "My mother was Lyanna Stark. My father was Rhaegar Targaryen. The dragon prince who started a war. Who abandoned his wife and children." The words choked off. "And Uncle Ned lied. Every day of my life, he lied."
"Rhaegar Targaryen's son." The words almost refusing to leave his mouth. "Born of... what? Rape? Love? Does it matter? She died either way. Died birthing the Dragon's bastard while her brother—" His voice broke entirely.
"I'm sorry." Luke's voice carried weight Jon had never heard before. "For the loss of your mother. Your father. For the life of lies you've had to live."
Jon scoffed, anger flaring hot in his chest. "Sorry? You're sorry? How could you be sorry if you don't understand." He stopped, seeing something in Luke's eyes. Pain. Old and deep as winter. "What is it Master?"
A sad smile touched Luke's lips. "I understand you more than you might think. Your story... it's not so different from mine."
"How could that possibly be?" The words came out harsher than Jon intended, but he didn't take them back. His whole life had just shattered—how could he understand?
Luke moved to sit on the dirty stone floor leaning on the walll, gesturing for Jon to join him. After a moment's hesitation, Jon did. The cold seeped through his breeches immediately, but he welcomed the discomfort. It felt real.
"I was raised by my uncle and aunt," Luke began, his voice quiet in the tomb's hush. "Moisture farmers on in the desert. They loved me," Luke said quietly, his thumb tracing absent patterns on Amidala's white fur. "Owen and Beru Lars. My uncle would grumble about the equipment breaking down, about me daydreaming instead of working. But he'd ruffle my hair when he thought I wasn't looking. Taught me to fix things with my hands, not just the Force."
His voice caught, just slightly. Jon watched the older man's throat work.
"My aunt would save blue milk for special occasions. Made these... these terrible dustcakes that were hard as rocks, but she'd beam when I ate them anyway." Luke's smile was a fragile thing. "She'd patch my tunics when I tore them racing through Beggar's Canyon. Worried herself sick every time I disappeared into the Wastes."
The direwolf shifted, pressing her massive head against Luke's shoulder. He leaned into the comfort.
"They died protecting me. The Empire came looking, and they..." His fingers stilled in the white fur. "I found them outside our homestead. Burned. The smell of—" He stopped, jaw tight. "I can still smell it sometimes. Charred moisture farming equipment mixed with... with..."
Jon's anger cracked, something else bleeding through. He knew that particular silence. The things you couldn't say.
"They weren't my blood," Luke continued, voice rough. "But they raised me. Fed me. Loved me. And they died because of my father."
Jon found himself leaning forward despite his anger. "Who was he really?"
"His name was Anakin Skywalker. He'd been..." Luke searched for words. "He was a Jedi Knight, but in your terms, he'd been like a Kingsguard, expect he served a council and not one man. Young, brilliant, powerful in the Force."
"Then why did he—"
"Because he fell." Luke's voice dropped lower. "My father has a great fear of loss after the death of his mother that drove him to grasp for control," Luke said, his voice low. "How love twisted into possession. The very strength that made him exceptional also made him vulnerable to corruption."
Jon watched Luke clench his fist, knuckles whitening.
"He couldn't bear the thought of losing her, my mother. Started having visions of her death." Luke's jaw worked, muscle jumping beneath scarred skin. "So he made bargains. Traded pieces of himself for promises of power, for the ability to save her. Each compromise seemed small, justified. Until..."
"Until he became the very thing that killed her," Jon finished, the words came tumbling out without thought.
Luke's head snapped up, eyes sharp. "Yes. His fear manifested her death. His desperate need to control fate ensured it would come to pass." A bitter laugh escaped him. "The Force has a cruel sense of irony and he became a…changed man."
The crypt air seemed to thicken, pressing against Jon's chest. He could taste the dampness on his tongue, feel the cold seeping through his gloves where his hands pressed against stone.
Jon's chest tightened. "Changed how?"
"The dark side of the Force consumed him. He took a new name—Darth Vader. He hunted down his former brothers. Killed children in their temple. Destroyed entire civilizations." Luke's eyes found Jon's, and in them Jon saw an echo of his own pain. "The hero of the Republic became its greatest monster."
The crypt seemed to grow colder. Jon's breath misted between them as he struggled to process this. "And they hid you."
"My master, Obi-Wan, took me to my uncle. Told them just enough to keep me safe. Let me grow up believing I was the orphaned son of a nobody, because the truth..." Luke shook his head. "The truth would have meant death. The Emperor would have hunted me down, or worse—turned me into what my father had become."
"But you learned eventually."
"I did. And like you, I burned with it. The betrayal. The lies. The rage at everyone who'd hidden it from me." Luke's hand found Jon's shoulder, warm through the wool. "I understand that fire, Jon. I understand wanting to make them all pay for their deceptions."
Jon jerked away. "It's not the same. Your uncle wasn't—Lord Stark raised me as a bastard! Let his wife hate me, let everyone think—" The words tumbled over each other. "Do you know what it's like? To grow up wondering why your father won't speak of your mother? To see the shame in his eyes every time someone calls you bastard?"
"No," Luke said simply. "I don't. Your pain is your own. But I know what it's like to discover everything you believed about yourself was built on lies meant to protect you. I know the darkness that calls when that happens."
Jon's hands clenched into fists. He could still feel it—that surge of power when he'd faced Lord Stark. Uncle Ned. The fire that had danced at his fingertips, born of pure rage.
"Today, in the godswood," Luke continued, "you touched the dark side. Fed it with your anger. I won't lie to you, Jon—it felt good, didn't it? That power? That certainty?"
"Yes." The admission burned, but Jon couldn't deny it. "For a moment, everything made sense. I could make them understand. Make them pay for—"
"For loving you enough to lie for you?"
The words hit like a physical blow. Jon surged to his feet, Ghost rising with him. "He let me live a life of lies!"
"He let you live." Luke remained seated, calm in the face of Jon's rage. "Think, Jon. What would Robert Baratheon have done if he'd known Rhaegar Targaryen had a son? What would he have done to the boy whose father supposedly kidnapped and raped Lyanna Stark?"
The fight drained out of Jon as quickly as it had come. He knew. Everyone knew what Robert did to the Targaryen children. The broken bodies presented to the throne. Babes, murdered in their beds.
"He protected you the only way he could," Luke said softly. "Claimed you as his own shame rather than let you die for your father's sins. It cost him his honor, his wife's trust, but he did it anyway. Because he loved his sister. Because he loved you."
Jon sank back onto the floor, suddenly exhausted. The torch had burned low, casting longer shadows. In the darkness, Lyanna's statue seemed to watch them with knowing eyes.
"The dark side promises simple answers," Luke said after a long moment. "It says: they hurt you, so hurt them back. They lied, so make them suffer for it. It feeds on our pain, our fear, our anger, and gives us power in return. But that power hollows you out. Makes you into something you're not."
"Like your father."
"Like my father. Like the Emperor. Like every Sith who ever lived." Luke's voice carried the weight of hard-won wisdom. "They all started somewhere. A moment of pain. A choice to embrace anger instead of understanding. A step into darkness that seemed justified at the time."
Jon thought of that moment in the godswood. The fire at his fingertips. The way Uncle Ned had looked at him not with shame or disappointment, but with fear. Fear of what Jon might become.
"I felt it calling," he admitted quietly. "When he told me, when I understood... it whispered that I could make things right. That I had the power to—"
"To burn it all down." Luke nodded. "I know. I've heard those whispers too."
They sat in silence for a time, the crypts pressing close around them. Ghost padded over to rest his great head on Jon's knee so Jon buried his fingers in the thick fur, drawing comfort from the familiar presence.
"What do I do now?" The question came out small, lost. "I don't know who I am anymore. Jon Snow was a lie. Daemon Targaryen is just a name. I'm... nothing."
"You're not nothing." Luke's voice held firm certainty. "You're a young man who just learned a hard truth. You're someone with a gift—a connection to the Force that could help save this realm from the darkness coming. You're still the same person who gave his sister a sword, who promised his little brother he'd come back, the one to rush out to defend the innocents."
"But—"
"Names don't define us, Jon. Our choices do." Luke stood, offering his hand. "Right now, you have a choice. Let this anger consume you, follow it into darkness. Or learn to release it. Transform it into something better."
Jon stared at the offered hand. Part of him wanted to refuse, to stay here in the dark with his mother's statue and his rage. But Ghost nudged his leg, a gentle reminder that he wasn't alone. Had never been alone, even when he'd thought himself a motherless bastard.
He took Luke's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet.
"How?" he asked simply.
Luke guided him to sit again, this time cross-legged on the cold stone floor. "Close your eyes. Breathe. Feel your anger but don't fight it, don't feed it. Just observe it."
Jon did as instructed, though his jaw clenched with the effort. The rage sat in his chest like a hot coal, burning.
"Now," Luke's voice came soft as snowfall, "imagine that anger as fire. See it clearly. Then... let it go. Release it into the Force. Not in destruction, but in understanding. Your uncle lied to protect you. Your mother died loving you enough to make him promise. Your father... was a man who made choices, good and bad. They're gone. But you remain."
It was harder than any sword form, any physical training. The anger wanted to stay, to fester, to grow. But slowly, breath by breath, Jon let it flow out of him. Not forgotten—never forgotten—but transformed. The fire cooled to embers, then to ash, then to nothing.
When he opened his eyes, the crypt seemed less dark. Lyanna's statue watched with the same stone eyes, but now he saw the girl she'd been. Young. Afraid. Dying far from home with only her brother to hear her last words.
"Better?" Luke asked.
"Different." Jon rose, legs stiff from the cold stone. "I still don't know who I am."
"Then you're ahead of most people. They think they know and never question it." Luke retrieved the guttering torch, its light barely enough to guide them back. "Get some rest. We leave for Oldtown at dawn, and the journey's more perilous now."
"Why more perilous?"
"Because your enemies have multiplied. So that means my enemies have multiplied as well."
The anger had drained from Jon like water through cupped hands, leaving behind a hollow clarity. In its wake, fragments of Luke's words echoed through his mind—strange words that had slipped past him in the heat of revelation.
"Master," Jon said, his voice rough from the crypt's chill. "What's an Empire?"
The older man's stride faltered for half a heartbeat. Ghost's ears pricked forward, sensing the shift in tension.
"And blue milk?" Jon pressed, the questions tumbling out now that the fog of rage had lifted. "You spoke of entire civilizations destroyed. Of an Emperor." He stopped walking, forcing Luke to turn back. "Those aren't tales from anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms. Not from Essos either, if the maps speak true."
Luke's weathered face went carefully neutral—the same expression Robb wore when caught raiding the kitchens.
"You're observant," Luke said finally. "Even in your anger."
"I taught myself to listen." The bitterness crept back, but Jon pushed it down. "Where are you from?"
Amidala circled back to Luke's side, her massive head level with his chest. His teacher's gloved hand found her fur, fingers working through the thick white coat as he considered his answer.
"That's..." Luke exhaled slowly, breath misting in the cold air. "It's not a simple answer, Jon."
"Try me."
"I will. I promise." Luke's blue eyes held that same earnest intensity they'd carried in the crypt. "Your family deserves to know. But it needs to be... gradual. Careful."
Jon's hand tightened. "More secrets?"
"Not secrets. Just..." Luke's mouth quirked in a tired smile. "You've had enough world-shattering revelations for one day, don't you think? Learning your entire life is built on lies, that you're the heir to a dynasty that conquered the continent?" He shook his head. "Let's save the rest for when you're not contemplating burning down kingdoms."
Despite himself, Jon felt his lips twitch. "Fair enough."
They resumed walking, boots echoing on stone. Ghost padded ahead, occasionally glancing back as if checking they still followed.
"Though I am curious," Jon ventured as they turned toward the guest quarters, "what exactly is blue milk?"
Luke's laugh was genuine, warming the cold corridor. "Something I miss terribly. Along with decent caf and—" He caught himself, shaking his head. "See? Already saying too much."
"Caf?"
"Perhaps on the road to Oldtown." Luke paused at his chamber door. "Get some rest. Dawn comes early, and we've a long journey ahead."
Jon nodded, but didn't move. "Master?"
"Yes?"
"Whatever strange land you hail from, whatever impossible things you've seen..." Jon met his gaze steadily. "Thank you. For telling me the truth."
Luke's expression softened. "Truth is rarely kind. But it's necessary." Luke's smile turned cryptic. "Rest well, Jon. Or should I say, Daemon?"
"Jon," he said firmly. "Just Jon."
"Very well."
The door closed with a soft thud, leaving Jon alone in the corridor with Ghost. The direwolf pressed against his leg, a warm weight in the castle's chill as Jon looked back once at the crypt entrance. Somewhere below, his mother kept her stone vigil. Lyanna Stark, who'd died to give him life.
"I'll make it mean something," he whispered to the darkness. "I promise."
"Come on, boy," Jon murmured, heading for his own chambers. "Let's see what dreams await a bastard prince."
Behind them, winter wind howled through the stones of Winterfell, carrying whispers of the storm to come.