Ned's Six

"Are you alive?"

That was the first thing that Eddard Stark had ever said to the mysterious woman he had found lost in the woods, freezing to death when he had gone out on a lonely ride one early morning.

To his dying day Lord Stark could never say what compelled him to simply dress himself at first light, head to the stables, saddle a horse and ride on out into the wolfswood without a word to anyone.

But about an hour's ride into the forest he had found her, a figure in a whorish red dress, stumbling in the snow, clearly lost and in danger of dying.

He had called out to her, for some reason asking if she was alive and berated himself for it, but it did attract her attention, so intent on her plight she hadn't heard the galloping of his horse.

She turned around and Ned felt his heart skip a beat, she was beautiful, stunningly eerily beautiful with short cut Targaryen blond hair, her lips painted red with expensive looking makeup, her skin seemed luminous and soft even as it froze, and her figure in that scandalous dress was like an hourglass, giving off a strange mixture of innocence and sexuality that Ned found strangely alluring.

Ned got off the horse and walked to her, offering her his cloak, she took it gratefully, speaking to him in a language that he didn't understand, but he knew she was grateful.

He got her up on the horse and brought her back to Winterfell, thankful that it was still early enough that not many were awake to see their liege-lord riding back with a mysterious woman wrapped in his cloak clinging to him.

Ned had called on Maester Luwin to translate, but he knew not the language she spoke. However through a series of gestures the girl was able to convey that her name was Caprica and that she had no memory of how she had wound up in the wolfswoods.

Despite the misgivings of his wife, Ned gave her a place in his household, instructing Luwin to teach her the Common tongue to employ her as a servant.

Caprica learned to speak and read the Common tongue with stunning swiftness, even while working as a servant for the house. Lady Stark's worries about her being a disruption were disproven since the beautiful woman never seemed to actively entice men to her.

Granted many did try, a few more forcefully than others, and there were a number of strange accidents, broken arms and legs but the men who got them refused to speak of how it happened.

Caprica just smiled when asked of that, but she did speak of her last memories, memories of being in a beautiful home far away with a man that she loved, warning him of an attack before there was an awful noise outside and a flash of fire and wind striking the building, bringing it crashing down upon them.

A few months went by, the castle returned to its normal routines as it adjusted to the new servant, the servant who had a habit of talking to people, giving them ideas, ideas that proved to be improvements on what they were doing.

Maester Luwin was delighted with her suggestions on cataloging the contents of the Starks library, another suggestion to Mikken had him developing a new means of making steel, and another suggestion resulted in a local brewer improving the quality of the alcohol he made.

And yet despite this she had very little knowledge of womanly things, like sewing or spinning, causing Ned to wonder at the puzzle that she was.

He pondered this even as he and his sons had found an abandoned litter of six direwolves in the wolfswoods, and when the King and the Royal Court came to visit him.

Ned's ponderings were cut short by his son Bran having fallen from the First Tower and being in a coma, then the assassin came and tried to kill him and succeeded in cutting Catelyn badly, but his throat was torn out by the Direwolf.

He stayed at Cat's side as she died in her bed from her bleeding and the infection that had set into the wound, and knew that he had to find the truth of all this.

He became Hand of the King and brought his daughters and a small household with him to King's Landing, leaving Robb in charge of Winterfell.

That household included Caprica, who now in simple dresses seemed to enter his thoughts more and more often.

While she slipped into the background to others, even as he worked at dealing with the sheer level of mess that Robert had made of the Kingdoms, Ned found reason to have her in his presence. She whispered things to him, things she had heard and seen, revealing the depths of corruption that existed in this city.

Caprica filled a void in him, her blue eyes and soft skin and seductive yet naïve smile arouse him more than he had ever felt and so one night while going over figures in Littlefinger's books she had entered his chambers with some food.

Something about that night had him more energetic than usual, perhaps it was restlessness, perhaps a desire to feel alive when he felt so dead, or perhaps it was simply fate.

The pair found themselves kissing, caressing, undressing, and learning of each other's flesh. It was the first of many nights that Ned would have her, and Caprica would have him.

After that first night Caprica became a more obvious presence in Ned's life, he gave her more expensive clothes (with her favoring red fabrics), money, and a few jewels, she was openly at his side when he met men on business in what Caprica called 'his office'. Neither one not caring that she was becoming knowing as 'Ned's Red Woman' or 'Ned's Red Whore'.

Even as he investigated Jon Arryn's mysterious death, Bran's crippling, Catelyn's murder, and how it all seemed to tie back to the Lannisters, Caprica was there, revealing the secrets of King's Landing.

She claimed to have seen the Kingslayer and his sister, the King's own wife, having relations with each other in a chamber, and that she was not the first servant to see them like this.

She claimed that Varys was scheming with a man from Pentos to cause the Starks and Lannisters to go to war in ten years' time to wreck the realm and restore the Targaryens to the throne.

She claimed that Pycelle had become a Lannister toady and was helping Tywin Lannister put the crown further and further into his own debt out of a desire to return to power.

She claimed that Petyr Baelish was cheating the crown out of millions in dragons and funneling the money through his various businesses in King's Landing and Gulltown, making him rich at the realms expense.

She claimed these things and gave him proof, irrefutable proof that Ned presented to Robert as the results of his own hard work.

It was Caprica who helped him plan the 'Day of Dupes' in which Robert brought everyone to court with the only armed men present being Ned's loyal retainers dressed as Goldcloaks and arrested them all, making sure to have sent out copies of the proof of all this and announcement of the arrests across the Seven Kingdoms.

Joffrey Waters, and Tommen Waters were sent to the Wall, Myrcella Waters was sent to the Silent Sisters, Jaime Lannister and Cersei Lannister (stripped of all their titles) were publicly executed.

Varys managed to escape the Black Cells and was believed to be fleeing to the east; Petyr Baelish was given over to the Iron Bank as punishment for his fraud, Robert promising to assist them in recouping their losses from Baelish's fraud, mostly through confiscating Baelish's assets.

Though even Caprica conceded it would be many years before the Iron Bank got it's due...

If Tywin hadn't given into his rage and attempted to rebel against the Iron Throne, a seemingly foolish action that saw the near, full might of the Seven Kingdoms against him.

The Ironborn launched devastating raids against the Westerlands in exchange for the return of Theon Greyjoy, the Reach, the North, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, Dorne, and the Crownlands rose against Tywin.

The Vale joined them after Lysa Tully tried to have the Valelords rise against the Iron Throne as well and was driven from power; she went insane in her comfortable imprisonment, the Regency of her son falling to House Royce which roused the Vale in defense of Robert I.

In exchange for support Robert married Lady Margaery Tyrell, while Sansa Stark betrothed Harrold Hardyng, the heir to the Vale.

Tywin's Rebellion was a brief, bloody affair in which even his own vassals quickly abandoned him in favor of the Iron Throne, Tywin killed himself by jumping off of the top of the Rock once the city of Lannisport fell under siege, his son and heir Tyrion Lannister quickly surrendered and kept the Rock in exchange for giving up a vast amount of gold to the crown, several hostages, and his father's broken body for Robert to have hacked up and the pieces distributed across Westeros as a warning to future rebels.

It was there in the soldiers camps, among the tents of the great lords of Westeros that Lord Eddard Stark of the North stood with Caprica at his side, a figure of simultaneous scorn and respect, innocence and lust, beauty and strength, love and hate.

Looking at Lannisport as the men began to pack up and ready to leave that she told him something that would change both their lives.

"Ned, I'm pregnant."