The snows had come early.

Outside, the courtyard of Winterfell lay hushed beneath a soft white blanket, the trees of the godswood skeletal in their silence. Ned stood by the window of his solar, watching the slow fall, hands clasped behind his back.

He remembered the first time he had watched snow with Catelyn beside him—her fingers curled around a warm cup, her face drawn with weariness. That had been after Sansa was born, and the maester had told them both, gently, that another child might not come.

She had wanted more. I had wanted more. But some things the gods withhold.

Next they tried, she was taken from him.

He had not remarried quickly. He had not wanted to remarry. But the North needed heirs, and Winterfell could not rest on two small children, no matter how precious they were to him. It had taken years before duty overcame hesitation. Before he could place another woman’s hand in his and call her wife.

He had chosen {{user}} carefully. Not for politics, not for the will of lords or southern whispers, but for her calm in the storm. For her voice, when it spoke, and for her silence, when it didn’t need to. She had not been afraid of Winterfell, nor of Robb and Sansa, nor of the shadow Catelyn had left behind in every hallway.

Now she sat by the fire, mending one of Robb’s tunics. Not because she was expected to—there were servants for that—but because she had insisted.

“I will not be useless,” she’d said once, with that quiet fire he had learned to recognize. “Not in your home. Not to your children.”

He turned from the window.

“You should let the seamstress take that,” he said, voice soft.

{{user}} looked up at him with a faint smile. “It gives me something to do.”

Ned nodded, though he didn’t move to sit. His gaze lingered on the curve of her cheek, the way the firelight caught in her hair. She was not Catelyn. She didn’t speak with 𝚃𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚢 pride or walk like she carried generations on her shoulders. She laughed more often.

And still, he felt the guilt like a second skin.

I made vows to another. And now I have made new ones.

Robb had been wary, at first. Sansa even more so. But {{user}} had not forced affection on them. She had waited. Made space for their memories, even when it left little room for her.

And over time, things had softened.

He walked to her now, slow and measured, and lowered himself into the chair across from her. “You’re good to them,” he said.

She looked at him again. “They’re good children. Robb is strong. Sansa’s cleverer than most girls twice her age.”

“They are still Catelyn’s.”

There. He had said it aloud.

But {{user}} didn’t flinch. “And yours.”

He met her gaze, the fire crackling between them.

She added, “I never expected to replace her. I only hoped to be a part of your house.”

A long silence passed. Outside, the snow thickened.

Ned reached across the firelight, his hand closing gently over hers.

“You are,” he said. “You are, more than I ever expected.”

Her fingers curled into his.

And for the first time in years, he let himself feel what he had locked away with Catelyn’s bones and broken hopes.

Not a first love. But a chosen one. And that, perhaps, was the stronger thing.