"Please... No more..." The goldcloak's voice cracked. Snot and tears ran down his face, mixing with the blood running across his cheeks. "Just... kill... me."
The rope he had used on the woman was now tied around his hands and legs, forcing his half-naked body upright in the wobbly chair.
"I want to kill you too," Jon sighed as he ripped out the blade from the man's thigh, making him scream and thrash in agony. "But what can I do when you are so determined to protect your masters by refusing to give me the answers I want? I do admire your spirit and loyalty, though."
"I-I don't want to protect anyone." He sobbed out in frustration. "I-I told you everything I know... Please, I am not lying..."
"But what you told me doesn't make much sense, does it?" Jon picked up a scrap of the man's clothing from the floor and began methodically cleaning the dagger, deciding to let him breathe for a few seconds. "Just because I defeated him in the lists, Ser Meryn Trant, a mighty Kingsguard, decided he wanted me killed." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Do you not hear how foolish that is? It's not as if he's a prodigy who's never been defeated before."
"B-But that's what he told me," he cried out in despair, his voice broken with pain and the indignation of someone being wronged.
The man had tried threatening and coercing the boy at first, invoking the name of the commander of the city watch, and how he was related to Lannisters. But the moment the boy began cutting off his fingers, he had realised that mercy was never coming. He wasn't leaving this place alive.
So, having been a coward his whole life, a little bit of pain was enough for him to start spilling his guts about everything he knew— truthfully.
But his answers didn't satisfy him...
"Then maybe he lied." Jon shrugged while throwing away the rag to reveal a gleaming Valyrian steel dagger. "You'll just have to think harder about what the true intent could have been... Who was the hand behind your master? Go back through your memories. Perhaps you'll remember a detail you missed."
"I can't..." The man's eyes squeezed shut. "I don't remember... anything."
Jon sighed. "It seems you're still not trying hard enough. Well, we still have three fingers left, so that should help."
He rolled his shoulder.
"And if that's not enough, there are still your ears, nose, and eyes." The calmness with which the boy counted his organs chilled the goldcloak. "So perhaps, by the end, you'll start remembering things. But make sure you do it before we reach your tongue, though, or it will be too unfortunate if you knew the answer but couldn't speak."
Jon snickered at his own joke.
"No, please, no, no, I beg you." The man strained against the ropes as Jon stepped closer. "Please, have merc—ARHHH!"
Jon pressed the dagger against the man's finger and then began sawing... slowly.
The goldcloak squirmed against the ropes, making the blade jerk and bite deeper.
Halfway through, Jon removed the dagger and began twisting the dangling finger left and right, rotating it again and again until it finally tore off clean.
"Should have thought of it when you decided to throw the innocent in between your two friends to assault her." Jon cleaned the knife as he stood up and shifted to the other hand.
"Even the gods wouldn't forgive a beast like you." The dagger settled on a new finger. "So really, you are just taking a head start on your punishment..."
"NO! No more—ARGH!!"
Again and again, he screamed, each cry growing weaker until only a hoarse rasp remained.
"Think, my friend, think." Jon's hand didn't waver for a single moment as he continued without any expression.
When he had left Winterfell, Jon had barely been older than twelve, and over his long journey the next few years he had been to hundreds of different towns and cities; from the brutal snow-capped villages of True North to the nomad tribes in Essos, he had seen everything.
And along the way, he had come across all sorts of inhuman atrocities.
He had witnessed wildlings starving in the snow, willing to slit a child's throat for a day's meal.
Ironborn laughing as they dragged women from burning huts while their children screamed for their mothers.
Pirates joking amongst themselves as they sacked innocent villages and then divided the surviving families as spoils.
Petty nobles hanging entire families over a perceived insult, or simply because they found it amusing.
He had killed them all later, of course.
But what was lost could never come back.
And at first, he would wonder how a man could look into the eyes of a terrified woman, or hear a child begging for his father to be spared, and still carry on without hesitation.
He had stopped asking that question a long time ago.
Different men. Different lands. Different reasons.
The cruelty was always the same.
Whatever naivety he had carried from his old world had been stripped away somewhere along that bloody road, layer by layer, until there was almost nothing left of it.
So now, as the man before him squirmed beneath his hands in torment, Jon felt no disgust. No hesitation.
After all, he had seen much worse.
"Think, friend, think, and you can save yourself..."
His whisper carried over the screams as his dagger went for the left ear.
"ARHH!!"
The goldcloak's back slammed against the chair. His head thrashed from side to side, but the movement only seemed to make the pain worse. When the ear was finally torn free, his body sagged for a moment, almost in relief.
Then Jon stepped forward again.
"Think back, remember, and the pain will all go away..."
The dagger moved towards the right eye.
"NO, no—AHH!!"
His head jerked away, but the dagger still found its mark.
The scream that followed lasted only for a few moments before it dissolved into choking, broken sounds as his entire body convulsed against the chair.
His heels hammered against the floor as he struggled to escape the pain, but there was nowhere for him to run.
"Remember, and you can rid yourself of—"
Jon's dagger began heading towards the other eye.
But at the last moment, the man shook his head violently and screamed, "I r-remember! I remember now!"
"Truly?" Jon blinked in surprise.
"I saw them... during the tourney. They were talking about you... and Margaery."
He swallowed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Yes, I remember now. He said... he said you were bothering her. Called you a sinister bastard... said you were beguiling the innocent rose with your cunning."
The man winced, his missing ear ringing with a constant, loud, piercing noise.
"Said the Tyrells were too afraid of the Northerners to do anything about it." He sucked in a shaky breath. "Said it was a waste... that the beautiful rose of Highgarden would be tainted by a lowly bastard like you."
Jon's eyes narrowed.
"Who said those words?"
"Baelish."
The answer came instantly.
"It was Baelish."
The man grasped at the name as if it was the only thing between him and death. "They were sitting in the stands. I was below their platform, taking shelter from the sun. They must not have seen me. Ser Meryn was there too, guarding them. Baelish said all those things to him. I swear it. So it had to be him who ordered it."
Jon stared at him.
"Let me guess... It was a prince he was speaking to."
"Yes, Prince Joffrey."
"Fuck!"
Jon cursed as he turned away with a grimace.
From the instant he had heard Baelish's name, Jon had realised where this was going, and sure enough, that brat was the easiest mark available for that snake to manipulate.
Jon had focused his spies on the letters Baelish sent, the people he met in his brothel and at his home.
He should have known that the bastard didn't only have his money and his network of spies; his silver tongue was equally deadly, especially when paired with a spoiled brat.
He had been so focused on Tywin, Olenna, Cersei, Martells, the so-called big players, that he had completely overlooked that malicious little beast strutting around with his nose in the air.
After all, what could a 12-year-old impulsive brat do to him, even if he had the authority of the prince?
'Did I really make the same mistake that everyone else did in the books?'
Jon rubbed his forehead with a helpless expression.
How could he, even after knowing that the bastard was responsible for so much of the mayhem in the original book, look down on him and not pay him any attention?
'Shit! Am I following in the footsteps of Ned from the books?'
A constipated expression appeared on his face as the thought passed through his head.
Eddard and Catelyn had spent the better part of the first book searching for the culprit behind Bran's attempted assassination, turning the city upside down, accusing everyone and their mother, never thinking for a second that the one behind it could have been an impulsive brat whose mother never taught him that actions had consequences.
'Ah! This is fucking embarrassing...'
This was the first time he had felt so stupid in this second life, and he did not like the feeling one bit.
Perhaps, subconsciously, he had been averse to looking at the brat as if he were any kind of threat, because those he considered a threat were eventually going to end up dead...
And killing a twelve-year-old boy—basically a child—no matter what kind of monster he was supposed to become in the future, would make any sane person hesitate.
After all, he was still relatively normal and hadn't taken any lives, as far as Jon knew...
And while he wasn't Batman with a no-kill rule, he also knew that once he crossed that line, there was no coming back.
'But now...'
The first shot had already been fired by the brat, so he was no longer innocent.
Which meant...
'No mercy.' He nodded with a determined expression before turning around.
"Tell me everything you remember about that conversation..."
...