Memory of a Ghost
The girl bore the Stark look, with her long face and mane of dark Stark hair. She looked like Jon might have done had he been born a girl; just like Lyanna when she was young.
“Has there been any sign of her waking?” Ned asked.
Luwin shook his head. “She is still under the influence of Milk of the Poppy, my lord. Not that I would wish her to wake yet. She would be in tremendous pain from the damage to her arm.”
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to her?”
“I can’t say for certain, but her arm has been broken in several places, and the bones of her hand are crushed. I can't say whether she will recover usage in it.”
“A hammer, do you think?” asked Ned. He'd seen similar injuries from Robert’s warhammer in the past.
“I wouldn't like to say.”
Ned stared at the girl. Robb and Theon were still insisting she had fallen through the mirror. Wherever she'd come from on the other side, she'd been attacked with a warhammer in the way Robert used to fight.
“Promise me, Ned.”
He’d promised.
Still he’d failed. He’d lost Jon, somehow, the only part of the rest of his family that he had left. He’d studied the mirror; Luwin had studied the mirror, and they'd both found it to be nothing but a mirror.
Still Jon was missing, and all the searches that Ned sent out to look for him came back empty.
“Do you not think that perhaps he might have run away?” Cat asked gently one evening.
“Why would he?”
“I can't say. But you know he's close with Robb, and together they might have been able to convince Theon to go along with this tale.”
It was a possibility Ned hadn't considered, but he could see why Cat had thought of it. “Would they lie about something like this?”
Later, when he took the question to Robb and Theon, he found his answer. It was right there in his son’s eyes as he asked whether any progress had been made on finding Jon.
“I know it must be hard to believe.” Robb knotted his hands together. He looked like he hadn't slept, there were dark rings under his eyes and exhaustion in his voice. “But Jon truly did fall through the mirror. I watched it happen. That girl fell out, and then Jon fell in.” He sniffled and wiped away tears. “I was too far away… We were teasing him… I couldn't help.”
Ned placed an arm around his shoulders. “It wasn't your fault, Robb.”
“He's my brother! I should have been there to help him!”
Ned found Robb with the girl a night later, watching her sleep.
“She looks like him,” he said.
“There are others in the North that bear the Stark look. She could be a Karstark.”
Ned had written the Karstarks. He hadn't had a reply yet.
He wondered whether perhaps this was because of Jon’s blood. He was a Stark of Winterfell, but his father had been of a different magical bloodline. Mayhaps that redacted with the mirror.
But he couldn't understand how or why.
In the morning, he asked Luwin to let the girl wake. There were too many questions that only she could answer.
“She will be in pain,” Luwin advised.
“She can sleep again after I have spoken with her.”
Reluctantly, Luwin agreed, and so they waited by her bedside as the girl awoke. She whined in pain as she came round, still woozy from Milk of the Poppy, and clutched her wounded arm to her with a wail.
“Father?” she whispered, glancing anxiously around the room.
“You must take it slowly. You have been wounded,” Luwin coaxed.
“Yes; King Robert…” Her head whipped around the room, her eyes wide. “Where are my babies?”
“We found only you. According to my son, you tell through our mirror,” Ned explained.
“The mirror… No; I was… King Robert…” She wailed, arching her back and folding in on herself. “Where is Robert? He was with me.”
“King Robert? I imagine he is still ruling in King’s Landing…”
“No! Robert my brother; Robert your son! He was protecting me!”
“Can you tell me what happened to you?” Ned asked.
“Father, I don't understand. Where is the King? Did he not capture Winterfell?”
“No,” Ned said slightly, but unease sat in his stomach. Robert was his best friend. There were few reasons he might seek to capture Winterfell. “Not here. What is your name?”
Her eyes shone with tears. “Do you not know me?”
“I am afraid not.”
“I'm Jonelle. I’m your daughter.” She looked at Luwin. “Is Father unwell? Why doesn't he recognize me?”
“I am sorry. But Lord Stark has no daughter called Jonelle,” repliedLuwin, clearly attempting to calm her.
“I'm a bastard, but I'm still his daughter!” she cried.
A bastard.
Called Jonelle.
And Jon fell through the mirror.
Ned leaned back in his chair. “My sons found you when you fell from a mirror in our castle. My bastard son, Jon, then fell back through to the other side.”
Jonelle gaped at him. “But that's impossible! Where is Lyarra? Where is Robert?”
“Jonelle, I need you to tell me what brought King Robert to capture Winterfell.”
Jonelle stared at him with wide eyes, so much like Lyanna. “You're truly unaware?”
“I'm afraid so.”
Jonelle attempted to wriggle her fingers and whined at the attempt. Too much like Lyanna. “I know you're not truly my father. I know who my parents are.” She stared at the furs of the bed. “And I found something.”