XIII.

                                    

                                          
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
[ her ]

                            

                                
                            
                              
                                  
                              
                              
                                
                                  
                                  
                                
                              
                             
                            
                            
                          
                          
THE MEMORY WAS CLEAR AS DAY. 
A beautiful morning in the middle of the long summer, the sun only just beginning to peek through the trees in the Godswood. Jon sat with his back against the trunk of one of the trees, still in sight of the weirwood tree, and Visenya, still Asena then, was laid on her back with her head in his lap. 
"You know, I heard that the smith's son is bedridden today," Jon told her, eyes looking pointedly down at her, "can hardly eat, let alone work."
"Is that so?" She hummed, avoiding his eyes. 
"Vis." 
His stern tone made her eyes flit up to his as she tried and did not succeed to hide her smirk. "Jon?" She replied, feigning innocence.
"Did you have anything to do with it?"
A sigh left her lips. "You heard the way he spoke of you." 
He's a bastard, the boy had sneered when they walked by the previous afternoon. Visenya had seethed at his words, but Jon had pulled her away before anything could be done. A filthy bastard. He doesn't even deserve to live in Winterfell! Go back to the gutter you were born in, bastard!
"Father will not have it," he told her, as if she did not already know. "You'll be punished. If he's angry enough, he will threaten betrothal."
"They don't get to speak of you that way. I do not care what Father does." Their eyes locked, and again that coy smile played on her lips. "How angry do you think he will be?"
"That depends on how badly you hurt the boy."
"I shall be betrothed on the morrow," she jested, the back of her hand on her forehead in faux distress, missing the way his face fell at the prospect. 
"You do not have to defend me against every smith's son that makes a remark on my birth," he told her, ever serious. "You will waste your entire life that way."
"You forget, Jon Snow," she said, taking the hand that he had laid at his side in hers and lacing their fingers together, "that you are mine, my dearest friend, and should any smith's boy, high lord, or king speak poorly of you, it is my duty to defend you."