Chapter 3 — "Farewell"
The morning came when he has leave for Vale.
Alaric had been awake before it. He hadn't slept well — hadn't slept much at all, if he was honest — and by the time the sky outside his window had shifted from black to the pale ash color of early winter dawn, he had already dressed, already packed what little he was taking, already sat on the edge of the cot for a long while doing nothing at all.
The room felt smaller than it had a fortnight ago.
He picked up his pack and left without looking back.
The yard was quiet when he came down, but not empty.
Ser Rodrik stood near the stables overseeing the preparations with his customary expression — which was to say, the expression of a man perpetually braced for something to go wrong. Two of Winterfell's household guards were already mounted, cloaks fastened against the cold, breath misting in the early air. A third man, older, with a weathered face and a grey beard cropped short, stood apart checking a pack horse's girth strap with the practiced ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.
That would be Harwin. Ned had told him the night before. A household man, ten years on the road between Winterfell and the Neck, reliable. He would lead the escort south and see Alaric safely as far as the Crossroads Inn, where a Vale outrider would take over the remainder of the journey east.
Alaric looked at the horses, at the grey morning, at the road that began just beyond the outer gate.
He had never been south of Winterfell.
He turned away from that thought and went to find his family.
Robb found him first, which was typical.
He came at a half-run across the inner yard, cloak half-fastened and hair still disordered from sleep, and he grabbed Alaric's arm without ceremony and pulled him into an embrace that was more collision than anything else.
Alaric stood stiff for a moment. Then he put an arm around his brother's shoulders and held on briefly.
"I would have come to your room," Robb said into his shoulder.
"I know. I didn't want to wake anyone."
Robb pulled back. His eyes were too bright in the way they got when he was feeling something he didn't intend to show. He looked older than fifteen for a moment. Then the grin came, as it always did with Robb — not forced, just present, like he kept it ready.
"Write," he said. "Don't be an idiot about it. Actually write."
"You write first."
"I'll write twice a week."
"Once a fortnight is enough, Robb."
"Twice a week," Robb repeated firmly, as if this were already settled.
Alaric almost smiled.
Bran had been brought down by his septa, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, young enough that he mostly understood Alaric is going away without fully grasping the weight of it. He hugged Alaric solemnly around the middle, said nothing, and then asked if the Vale had wolves.
"Mountains and goats ," Alaric told him.
Bran seemed to find this deeply unsatisfying.
Arya had no such reservations. She appeared from behind a stable post where she had clearly been hiding from her septa, grabbed both of Alaric's hands, and informed him gravely that he had to bring her something back from the mountains. Alaric told her he would see what he could do. She made him swear it on the old gods. He swore.
He would miss her, he thought. The fierce little thing.
Jon was waiting at the edge of the yard, alone, near the gate that led toward the godswood. He stood with his arms at his sides and his face arranged in that careful neutral way he had — the face he wore when he was trying not to feel something in front of people.
Alaric walked over to him.
"I'll be fine," He said at last. "The Vale is — I've heard it's good kingdom."
"You haven't heard anything about it."
Jon's mouth twitched.
"No. But it sounds like good Kingdom."
Alaric looked at him. Eleven years old, dark-haired and grey-eyed, trying so hard to hold himself together. He had always been the quieter of the two of them — the one who felt things deeply and said them rarely and carried the bastard name with a resignation that sometimes made Alaric want to put his fist through a wall on his behalf.
"Jon." He waited until Jon looked at him directly. "Hold your head up."
Jon said nothing.
"I mean it. You have as much right to be here as anyone in this castle. You hold your head up. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not Theon, not anyone."
Jon's jaw tightened slightly. "I know."
"You know and you don't do it. There's a difference." Alaric kept his voice even. "You have Lord Eddard Stark's blood in you. Start acting like it. It doesn't matter if the people like it or not They can't change the truth."
A long pause. The cold settled between them.
Then Jon nodded, once, with a steadiness that hadn't been there a moment before.
Alaric put a hand briefly on the back of his neck — the way Brandon might have, maybe, the way fathers did — and then let go.
"Write to me," Jon said quietly.
"Twice a month."
"More than that."
"I'm not Robb."
"More than that anyway."
Alaric looked at him for a moment longer. Then he turned and walked back toward the yard.
Ned was waiting at the outer gate.
A grey cloak over dark wool and the steady, unhurried presence that he always carried like a second skin. The two of them stood at the gate while the escort made final preparations behind them, and for a moment neither spoke.
Ned reached into his cloak and produced a leather purse, which he held out.
Alaric took it. It was heavier than he expected.
"For the road and the first months. Lord Edwyn will see to your keep, but a man should have something of his own in a new place." Ned paused. "Don't spend it foolishly."
"I won't."
"Don't gamble with it either."
Alaric glanced up at him. "Was that a problem you had in the Vale?"
Ned's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did. "Your father here. He was quite notorious here in the North about his habits."
That landed somewhere complicated.
Alaric looked down at the purse in his hands. He turned it once, then tucked it into his pack.
"My lord," he started.
"Uncle ," the man said, quietly but firmly. "You can call me that like you used to You always could."
Alaric was quiet for a moment.
He made himself look up. "Thank you for raising me."
Ned studied him. In the cold morning light he looked exactly what he was: a man who carried more than most and said less than he should and loved people without being able to tell them cleanly.
He gripped Alaric's shoulder once, firm and brief.
"Make us proud," he said.
Then he stepped back, and Harwin called the order, and the horses moved, and Alaric rode out through the gates of Winterfell without looking back.
He didn't trust himself to look back.
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