All our silence could not excuse (гет)

"All our silence could not excuse/Disappoint or further prove/Anything other than what we already know." - MS MR, 'All the Things Lost'.
“Who did you promise?” she asks him, tearful with alarm and terror.
He gives an odd sort of little half smile, then rasps, “Lyanna. I always kept my promises. She would have been so angry with me… otherwise. I had to help her. It was the only way.”
“What was the only way?” Catelyn feels cold sweat dripping down her back, feels slightly feverish herself. “What do you mean, Ned? Did Lyanna ask you to do something?”
“Keep him away… from Robert,” he whispers. “To protect him.”
(Mortally wounded during the Greyjoy Rebellion, a delirious Ned makes a deathbed confession to Catelyn, leaving her to pick up the pieces of both her life and Jon Snow's.)