Ch. 4 Broken Family Pt1
Robb, Jon, and Benjen were all close to each other like they were real brothers, it was hard to separate them even with Catelyn trying to get in the way. At first, it seemed like Jon nor Benjen cared about what she had about them, just letting the words fly over their heads for the past couple of years. However, Catelyn always tried to find a way to cause a rift in their relationship. She learned from her first mistake and never let her other kids interact with the so-called bastards. Sowing seeds of discord whenever she spoke.
Ned was busy with being Lord of the North and didn't have time to stay in Winterfell forever. So he was blind to see the verbal abuse she put the twins through, and when he did he never thought it would go any farther than that. He knew his wife was just angry and only vented her anger on them. He knew it wasn't right but he couldn't do anything about it and hoped it would stop sooner or later. But he made a mistake thinking things would stay between words.
Coming up on their tenth name day Ned wanted his kids to learn the way of swords and other weapons that they might be interested in from Ser Jory the weapons master. Teaching the boys throughout the years, Ser Jory thought he was teaching natural-born warriors. Benjen's fighting style was animalistic. He was wild, hard-hitting, and would give up an arm or a leg to get the killing blow. He always fought like his life was on the line. His weapon of choice is a greatsword that he wielded as a regular sword. At the age of 15, he was already pushing 6ft tall but had and lanky build that somehow wielded great strength. Jon's fight style would be considered the opposite of his twin. He had a very simplistic flow to his moves never doing too much or too little, it felt like he was dancing. He fought like he had years of experience on the battlefield. His choice of weapon is dual-wielding longswords. Jon was a bit smaller than his brother, pushing around 5'9 but fit with muscle that showed his strength. Robb's fighting style was a mix of both Jon and Benjen. He had the same build as Jon and used a regular longsword. Between the boys Benjen and Jon, were evenly matched while Robb was just under them winning every two out of five sparring matches against them. Ser Jory knew that when they're older very few people would be able to match them on the field. And today was one of many spars that they had against each other. It was Robb vs Benjen. As swords clash it was easy to tell that Ben had the upper hand, his power between blows was hard to overcome with his fight style if you didn't have the same strength.
"Come on Robb. How are you supposed to get the respect of the other northern lords if you can't fight for an hour without resting? War waits for no man." Ben said while putting more pressure on him.
" Hahaha, if I was fighting any ordinary person I've would of beat them already. You're just a freak of nature just like your brother." Robb panting nearing his limit.
Ben dodges a swipe of his sword and closes the distance to kick Robb in the chest. Disarming him as he fell backward a couple of feet. Ben puts his sword next to his neck making him yield the fight. Watching the spar the surroundings soldiers were in shock at the combat prowess that the three boys showed knowing they couldn't hold a candle to them, even though they were twice the age of them.
The only person who wasn't happy about the way the spar ended was Catelyn. She rushed over and slapped Ben in the face surprising everyone around. " How could you do this to your future lord? Are you trying to kill him? You're nothing but a stain on this family's honor, you demon bastard."
Everyone around was confused by what was happening, but then the unexpected happens. Ben raises his sword to her neck. "Who do you think you are? You are nothing but a southern bitch, cancer to the North, your plague. Next time you lay your hands on me, it will be your last. I promise you I will make you suffer, I will drag you to a bandit camp, and cut off all your limbs so you can't run. I will pull out the outlandish tongue of yours and leave you to be a plaything for the bandits. No one will ever find you, I promise you that!" Benjen with his sword on Catelyns face, drawing blood from her cheek.
Everyone was stuck in shock at the situation and wondered how things got this far in the first place. It was just supposed to be a friendly spar between children. Between Robb and Benjen. Hearing the commotion outside Ne walks outside to see Benjen walking out of a crowd, while he sees his wife on the floor in a puddle of piss with blood on her cheek.
"What happened here?! What's going on?!" Ned yelled confused. Ser Jory runs over to tell them that the boys were just having a regular spar before the lady of the house intervened and that things went downhill after that. Ned was perplexed about what happened and never thought Catelyn would raise a hand against the boys.
"Guards what are you doing, get the bastard I want his head. How dare he act like this." Catelyn screamed trying to get some form of respect back after the embarrassing situation. Huffing and puffing she waited for them to move but none did, waiting waiting for Lord Stark to give the orders.
"You will do no such thing, take my wife to the measter and get her checked out. After, escort her to her chambers, and don't let her out." Ned ordered
Ned left to try and find Benjen to get a better understanding of what happened. He had noticed that during the past year, he was withdrawing farther and farther away from the family. Distancing himself from everyone but Robb and Jon. Ned didn't understand what went wrong, one day everything was good and the next he noticed the aura around Benjen was dark. It felt like he was staring into the eyes of a beast, and the fits of rage and anger that randomly exploded didn't help.
He didn't want Benjen to be stuck in the phase, especially after bandits started turning themselves in saying that they would rather take the Black or end up in prison than face The Beast of Winter as they called it. When Ned questioned them about what the beast looked like, they told him it was twice the height of a man, with yellow eyes that stared into their souls, and pitch-blank midnight fur with specks of silver in it. Its claws and fangs easily tore through the armor and steel sword, it seemed like none of the wounds afflicted to it managed to slow it down in the slightest. It was a demon they said, but the most surprising part was that it talked through low growls saying that if the ones that escaped didn't turn themselves in, it would hurt them down. Ned immediately knew who it was, it was Benjen, but he couldn't understand why he was doing it. After half an hour of searching for Ben, Ned found him in the family crypts right in front of the state of Lyanna Stark.