Jon, for all that the babe looked so utterly foreign to anything he had ever known, could not help but agree. "He is," he managed, voice cracking midway through even that simple sentence. With some effort, he wrenched his gaze away from his newborn son and looked upon his wife instead. He took in her pallor, the exhausted cast of her face, and threw off his fear. Regardless of the example his own mother had set, Margaery would not end here. They had Maester Cressen, who would give his own life for hers. And Margaery was so strong, had so much to live for, and no guilt to live with.
Jon still did not know how to deal with his Lady Mother's death or the guilt that predicated it. He only knew that he would never allow his own wife to feel the way Lyanna Stark must have at the end of things. And thank the Gods, he seemed to have succeeded in at least that much. Margaery would survive. Jon had to believe that, or he did not know how he would find a way to put himself back together yet again. Right now, putting himself back together seemed the one thing he had done all his life, and he was so tired, so sick of it. His babe would know peace, one way or another. He swore it, by the Old Gods and the New. "He is," Jon said yet again, unable to grasp hold of other words, breath near painful where it caught in his throat. "As is his Lady Mother."
Without warning, Margaery reached up with her free hand, caught his jaw and held him tight, held their eyes together long enough for Jon to use her surety to steel himself. Gods, how could any one person possibly be this strong? How could he have even thought to live this long without her? "What do you want to call him?" she asked. "Do not tell me Eddard," she added, before he had the chance to speak. "I know what you owe him. I know how you love him. But this is not the future Warden of the North. Our bannermen might accept a Stark name for a girl child. Not for the heir."
Jon swallowed down a lump so hard the sound of it might very well have made its way to the other side of the castle. "Aemon," he said at long last. "I know no king has ever carried that name," he added quickly. "But all men who have have been honourable. When I was growing up, all I wanted was to be the Dragonknight. Those are the values I would instill within our boy." He sucked in a deep breath, straightened his own shoulders. "And the king would not have our heads for it like he would if we named him for my brother."
"Aemon," she repeated, speaking the name slowly as though she were tasting the syllables one by one. At long last she nodded, looking down at the babe with such tenderness in her eyes Jon could have wept to look upon her. "My little Dragonknight," she whispered, pressing her lips down onto the top of his downy silvery-blond head of wispy hair. The babe fussed within her arms for a moment before settling down contentedly, suckling happily at his mother's breast. A moment later, Jon grew all too aware of his own weariness. When Margaery held out her free arm, inviting him into the bed with them, Jon could not have denied her if he had wanted to. With something close to a gasp of desperation, he collapsed down onto her featherbed and let her draw him close and card her fingers through her hair.
And when he watched, from barely a foot away, how his son fed at her teat, he knew he had a family, in a way he had never even dared imagine before.