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Yesterday Red Rat first noticed it when they were standing in formation.  He was called Brown Worm that day, and, beneath his helmet, Red Rat saw—not a smile, for they never smile in formation—but a relaxation of the muscles around his teeth.  Brown Worm stared ahead blankly, the way they all do, but when Red Rat cleared his throat, Brown Worm did too.  Red Rat didn’t know how long they stood like that, waiting for the buyer to decide.  It didn’t really matter.  He and Brown Worm just cleared their throats at each other from time to time.

Today he is Grey Flea, and Brown Worm is now Black Rat, and in their quarters, they sit next to each other.  Black Rat tells him of the Naathi springtime, of his little sister who used to chase the butterflies.  Grey Flea can’t remember his own brother—older than him by ten years and slaughtered the day he was taken.  Instead he listens to the way that Black Rat’s voice grows so earnest when he speaks of home, the way the bump in his neck bobs as he swallows down sadness, the way his eyes flit to and from Grey Flea, as if afraid of his gaze.

Tomorrow he will be Blue Cur, and he will stand in the Plaza of Pride.  They will not stand next to each other, and when the Dragon Princess (they will whisper that it is a Dragon Queen, but no one will be sure) comes to buy, she will only take one of them.  Blue Cur knows already he will not think of him anymore.  Blue Cur will not even learn his name that day.  He will lose him to his past, as he has lost his brother, his dog, his name and it will hurt, but perhaps one day it will stop. 

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"You’ve always had fine penmanship." Pycelle knows that voice, and it raises goosebumps on the back of his neck. Too often has he heard this voice of late—a voice he’d hoped he’d left behind in the citadel years before, and which he would never hear again, before vows that were made to be broken had been taken. He does not look around, does not even pause in the curling of the ‘s’ that he is writing.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you," Qyburn says. For a moment, he wishes that it were true, that it would be like before. But he knows it can’t be, that that Qyburn is gone, and that Pycelle too.

"And what could you possibly have to say to me?" Pycelle dips his quill into the inkpot, then dabs the tip on the rim so that droplets of ink return to the pool. Then, he blots the pen on a rag twice before continuing with his letter.

"I was wondering," Qyburn says easily, and Pycelle sees his shadow falling over the paper and knows that he is now standing right behind him, "the…black cells. Could you tell me who has occupied them in the past, oh, ten years?"

"Why would you wish to know that?" Pycelle couldn’t help sounding curious, and he cursed himself for it.

"It is my business to know." Out of the corner of his eye, Pycelle sees Qyburn’s hand reach for the little pot of grey wax that Pycelle used to seal his letters.

"Don’t touch that!" he cried out instinctually.

Qyburn does not put it down. Instead, he tilts it slightly and lets the hot wax dribble down onto Pycelle’s bare wrist. Pycelle hisses in shock and memory.

"Perhaps," Qyburn says, letting the wax continue to dribble down over Pycelle’s skin, "I could…convince you to tell me…"

And nervous anticipation knots in Pycelle’s stomach as he nods once.

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On rainy days, she thinks of Sansa and wonders where she is. She doesn’t know why it only happens in the rain, but it does. Perhaps it’s the methodical splatter of drops on the stones of the Red Keep, or perhaps it’s just that rain makes her remember everything sad—Willas riding tall when Willas could ride tall, Loras’ sobbing over Renly when he didn’t think anyone could hear or see him. Maybe it’s just that on rainy days, she is bored with nothing but the same games she always plays, the same company she always keeps, but in loud and crowded rooms when she can usually be outdoors.

She dreads the oncoming winter for that—endless days indoors, without the sunshine and warmth. Just grey, and cold and smoky halls and everyone talking over one another so that you can’t hear the singers…

She wonders if Sansa did escape with Tyrion. She hopes not. She hopes Sansa is far away. Grandmother hinted she might be, but Grandmother had left so quickly that there was no way of knowing exactly what Grandmother knew and what Grandmother pretended to know. She hopes that Sansa is safe, wherever she is, and that she is at peace, and that she finds comfort in the rain.

And, for a moment, she sees Sansa through the glass, standing in the rain outside. Her auburn hair is wet and limp, her gown clinging to her maiden form, and her cheeks red from the wind, smiling at Margaery. Those lips had only ever smiled for Margaery—she’d noticed that much. They are a dusty rose, and full, and soft, and Margaery wants to reach through the window and pull that imaginary Sansa to her, and taste her tongue, her sweet smile…

A flash of lightning, and a squeak of shock from Megga, and Margaery turns away from the window. She is here, and she is queen, and she would never see Sansa again.

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He is in chains, her husband. Chains in the dungeons of the castle that had once been his. She is glad that she has spent so much time taking care of half-siblings—the smell of his shit in the bucket, while putrid, has little effect on her. His hair is lank, his beard overgrown, his skin pale. When he looks up at her, she sees misery in his blue eyes. ”What are you doing here?” he practically moans.

"I brought you some supper," she whispers, kneeling down next to him, doing her best to keep the bowl of stew from slopping as she does so. Were she not with child, it might be easier, but the bulge in her belly has wreaked havoc on her balance.

Edmure winces at her, and looks away. ”I—I’m not hungry.”

"Regardless, my love, you must eat," she says. She dips a spoon into the bowl and hands it to him. "You will grow weak."

He lets out a bitter laugh. ”As if sitting in this dungeon won’t do it.” But he accepts the spoon and begins eating. ”You shouldn’t be down here.”

"And why not? My Aunt Genna has given me free reign within the castle. I have as much right to—"

"I meant that I wouldn’t want you to see me like this."

She frowns. ”You would have me remember you as you were when I wed you?” He flinches. ”Edmure, I will visit you and make sure you are well. You are my husband.” She doesn’t know why he makes her repeat it. Perhaps he fears she doesn’t love him, or that it is all for show, that she is too much a Frey for him to trust anymore. It is a thought that makes her sad. ”I have already seen you at your worst. This is nothing.”

He smiles at her weakly, and she presses a kiss to his lips, determined that he know she speaks the truth.

When she pulls away, he is flushed. ”Now,” she commands, “Eat your stew.”

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Her kiss is fire, and he wonders if it’s something that they teach the acolytes when they learn how to serve their God. Your kiss shall be flame on the lips, saliva shall become steam, blood will burn a glorious burn, and heat unlike anything else shall fill the body of the kissed.

His heart thuds against his ribs when their lips meet, his skin ablaze beneath her touch, and taking her—despite vows to his wife, despite the honor of his house—is the only thing that will quench it.

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It’s altogether too easy, give the Stark girl the rose. A single red rose—redder than her hair, soft and delicate to make the girl pleased. And her father—well, surely her father will be pleased too. A rose for his daughter from the Knight of the Flowers, the most handsome and gallant of knights, who will best all who ride against him in the lists. Perhaps it will make Lord Stark smile, the rose in his daughter’s hands; or, perhaps, he will smile knowingly at Loras—knowingly because it is not little Sansa that Loras would leap into bed with given the chance.

She’s sitting in front of Renly. Let them all think that the rose is for Renly.

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Sometimes she sees Thoros staring at him like he can’t believe he’s real. There’s a soft wonder in his eyes, as if Beric is a vision of tranquility in the middle of the war.

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Selyse never stared at him the way she does—as though his doublet isn’t there, or as though his breeches have fallen away. Not even when they’d been younger, and the dreams of an heir had not yet been dashed. But Melisandre makes him feel bared before the world. It is a thought that disturbs him—no king should ever be bared. And yet the glow in her eyes warms him, and he finds some comfort in that.

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Her skin was so soft and so pale—so very pale. It was almost a pity to suck a bruise onto her neck, except that that little splotch of color was a flower pushing it’s way through the snow.

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It is when the wind begins to rise that Shireen realizes it was a bad idea—a very bad idea—to run away from the Nightfort.  She can’t see anything anymore, the winds are swirling, blowing snow all around her.  Flakes were catching in her eyelashes and her tears were freezing on her cheeks, but she couldn’t stay—couldn’t stay at all, it was haunted and there was something very, very wrong with Patchface.

I know, I know, oh oh oh! The wind seemed to scream in her face.  Shireen shuddered—or shivered.  She wasn’t quite sure, and pressed on.

She thought she was going east?  East to Castle Black and Jon Snow and Melisandre, who would keep her safe from the—

She heard a growl behind her and whirled.

She’d seen a direwolf before, of course.  Jon Snow had one—a big white beast named Ghost who couldn’t growl because he was mute.  But this one—this one was grey with yellow eyes and big white teeth.

"Stay back!" she heard someone shout over the wind.  "Don’t do anything sudden.  She just gets jumpy."

Shireen couldn’t move if she tried. She was going to be eaten—oh gods, oh god, she was going to be eaten.

A girl about her height appeared, stepping between her and the great wolf. “Go on,” the girl commanded.  ”I’ll be right behind you.”  The wolf’s ears flicked, and it moved off a ways.

"You shouldn’t be out here alone," the girl said.

"You are," pointed out Shireen.

"Yeah, but I’m used to it.  Where are you going, anyway?"

"Castle Black."  Shireen’s teeth were chattering together.

"Good.  Company’ll be good.  I’m headed there too.  I’m Nan, by the way."

She knew she should lie, but no name came to her head, so she said, “Shireen.”

The girl’s eyes—big, grey eyes, long like Jon Snow’s—flickered for a moment.  Then she nodded, and took a step towards the wolf.  After a moment, Shireen followed her.

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"I will take you around the world," he had said, "I will show you the Titan of Braavos, the masks of Asshai, the rainbow parrots of the Summer Isles." And he had. He had taken her to all of these places, and more, and in his company, she had been more than she had ever thought possible.

There had been a time when she had been nervous, scared, alone within her body and heart, and then he came, the sun rising like the dawn with a crooked smile and a confident laugh and a cocky sway to his thin hips. “I’ll show you the world, so long as you promise to come.”

And she had. Her father had been furious, of course. He had hoped to have her married to some northern lord who would care about her virtue, but virtue was meaningless when his eyes were on her, and his cock was pressed against her and his lips floated just above hers, a question waiting to be answered.

People knew of Oberyn Martell. Women and boys shared his bed for a day, an hour, a week. But Ellaria knew the dark corners of his soul, the pain, the hatred, the rage, that part of him that wanted to curl up in his mother’s bed with his sister and be a child again, happy, whole, free.

Once he had cried in his sleep, great sobbing tears, and she had held him while he did. He had dreamed, he told her when he woke, of the Mountain, looming over him, pushing him aside so he could get into a room, and he had known, as one does in dreams, that Elia was there and there was nothing he could do. Men knew, women knew, everyone in Dorne and the kingdoms beyond knew that he thirsted for the blood of the men who had destroyed his sister. Only Ellaria knew he still grieved for her.

And now—

"Promise not to leave me alone in this world." she had tried not to beg, tried not to let him see her fear, for he had to be afraid—he did not need her nervousness woven into his own. And for one gleaming moment, she had, they had, he had—

Oh, she wanted to leave, to fly away and shriek her sadness to the stars, for the man who had been her own sun, the brightness of her life, who had fathered her daughters and told her she was more beautiful than the moon while she was swollen with them, whose soul was hers no matter how many bodies they had each tasted—together or separately—was gone. And she could not even hold his face in her hands one more time, kiss his broken lips, for even his face had been taken from her. She wanted to rip her clothes, burn the dresses he had had made for her when they had come north, because if they reminded her of him, they reminded her of his blood, spattered on the ground, his head dashed, his brains—

No, she wanted to leave, now, quickly, return home to her girls—her girls and his.

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It was surreal. 

Jon has had strange dreams before.  There was that one of Robb wearing Lady Catelyn’s dresses and hitting him over the head with a quiver, the one where he and Arya had been eating grass like cows, the one where he’d dreamed that Bran was in the trees….

But nothing—nothing was more surreal than being trapped in Ghost’s body and watching himself walking around, looking surly.  He wished it were a dream, and that he’d wake up and everything would be normal again.  That’s what used to happen, when he would close his eyes and be in Ghost.  But it wasn’t working properly now, no matter how hard he tried.

He didn’t look like that when he frowned, did he?  That couldn’t be right.  And his posture surely was never so slumped.  That had to come from the knife wounds, or he’d fallen strangely, or something.

Everyone gave him a wide berth—the him that’s his body, not the him that’s Ghost.  They all seemed to like Ghost a lot.  Or at least, they tolerated him.  But the weird pale unspeaking version of him, covered in blood and with a vacant expression…

This was all just too strange.

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She holds Lady Brienne’s squire hostage—the young stumbletongue Podrick Payne.

Ned can see all too clearly that Podrick is terrified—that he will be killed, or perhaps that he won’t be. Ned isn’t sure. But Ned knows his terror. It matches Ned’s own fear that he will never see Starfall again, that winter will come and he will freeze to death in the cold snow, beneath the pitiless gaze of a woman who only kept him because he shared the name of her dead husband.

In the evenings, Ned goes over to Podrick and brings him stew. He tries to smile, tries to let the boy (boy, Ned thinks. How can he be a boy? He is of an age with me. If he is a boy, what am I?) know that in Ned—if in no one else—he has a quiet ally.

It takes Podrick several days—but in the end, he notices. And when he notices, Ned feels a little less alone.

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She had never been gladder of her darkened hair than when the woman raised the visor of her helm and asked, “I am looking for my sister—a maid of three and ten, with auburn hair and blue eyes, maybe in the company of a fool.”

"That sister of yours sounds remarkably like Sansa Stark," Lord Petyr said, a smirk twisting his lips. He tugged the lining of his cloak a little tighter against his neck, trying to keep the icy wind away from his neck. "Come, Alayne." He opened the door of the inn and made for her, but Alayne did not move.

"I assure you, if I were looking for Sansa Stark, I would speak it plainly," said the woman, but Sansa saw the lie clean on her face. But it was not the usual lie, one that thirsted for gold and title. But then again, perhaps such a look was carefully designed as well.

"Of course. So that she could flee the moment she heard her name," Lord Petyr replied dryly. He raised an eyebrow at Alayne, still holding open the door. "I do not think the innkeeper will be pleased at the cold I am letting in."

There was a sturdy honor to her, Sansa could see that much in her posture. She was tall too, nearly as tall as the Hound, and even had a scar on her face too. She was broad of shoulder as well, with a fine sword strapped to her hip. A very fine sword—Valyrian Steel with a Lannister Lion.

Ice, she thought, her heart beating quickly in her throat.

"Where did you come by your sword, my lady?" she asked.

The woman looked startled, and her eyes fell to Alayne.

"It was given to me that I might uphold an Oath," she replied carefully.

"How noble," said Lord Petyr.

"Which oath?" Sansa asked carefully, her eyes on the woman.

The woman didn’t respond, but Sansa saw a flicker in her pale blue eyes—something almost like recognition.

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Maybe it was because they all wore black, and furs, and everything was so disgustingly uniform that it began. Pyp wasn’t sure. Pyp wasn’t really sure of anything, except that when he closed his eyes at night, and tried to steady his mind and let sleep drift in, he thought of Grenn.

Not Grenn in his blacks, not Grenn sparring in the yards, not Grenn over dinner, laughing so hard that mead came out of his nose—Grenn undressing for bed, Grenn in a white undershirt so long that it fell nearly to his knees and covered his…

Pyp would blush so hard in the dark that even his ears went red. He would toss, and turn, and wish that his cock weren’t hardening and try thinking of anything to get that thought from his head—Ghost eating his dinner, the sight and scent of burning corpses, his mother shouting at him and hitting him over the head with a wooden spoon when he had knocked over her bottle of oil while he was practicing his lines.

During the daytime, it was easy to forget these nighttime imaginations. During the day, when he was running around and always moving from one task to the next, and only ever seeing Grenn over meals—it was easy. But sometimes, he wondered if Grenn knew that when Grenn walked away, Pyp’s eyes would land on his arse and imagine what the flesh underneath looked like.

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He heard Meera crying. She had cried every day they had been beneath the tree, but only whenever she thought Bran couldn’t hear. But of course Bran heard. Bran could hear everything.

Sometimes, when he woke up, he couldn’t remember where he was, or who he was, or why he was here of all places. It was always Meera’s tears that made him remember, tears heard through the ears of ravens because she kept them as far from his body as she could.

He didn’t tell her that he heard her tears. She wanted to keep them secret from him, from the world. And besides, she had said nothing to him when Robb had died. She had left him to his misery. Just because he knew more of everything than he had ever thought he would didn’t mean he could just intrude. Somehow, it felt different, different from visions of his father and all the rest. Meera’s private grief was something he should not know.

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He has learned enough from his sister and cousins to know that when confronted with beauty, one must look beneath it to find an even truer beauty. What that truer beauty is though…no one can quite tell him.

Myrcella is beautiful. That much is evident—her straight nose, her green eyes glowing like the leaves of trees out of her face, and those blonde curls he wants to reach out and touch. She is everything he ever imagined loving, and more, for she somehow is also nothing like what he imagined loving.

And, since they are to wed, Trystane sets himself to finding her true beauty, the thing that makes her brighten when she smiles—the calm awareness of who she is and why she is and what she wants. But he cannot find it. He doesn’t know what it is about Myrcella that makes her so bright, that makes him want never to be apart from her—what it is about her that warms his soul and fills him with dreams of children and peace, and lazy days spent in the gardens playing Cyvasse. and part of him wonders if it’s the fact that he doesn’t that makes her so beautiful.

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She remembers the first time she heard the words.

She remembers the first time she saw his motley garb next to the child’s mottled face.

She remembers hiding beneath a dock in the southernmost port, hoping they wouldn’t find her and take her back to Lot Seven.

She remembers hunger—harsh, incapacitating hunger where you almost forget you are human because surely there is no pain like this in the world, where your stomach curled in on itself and where you realize death would be more welcome than another day of pain.

She remembers blue eyes and burbling smiles.

She remembers a collar around her throat, pressing into her skin as if to constantly remind her that she is not quite being choked.

She remembers the flicker of torches in the belly of the slave ships when the air and water had both grown stale.

She remembers being tied hand and foot.

She remembers the first time she saw his face in her flames, eyes shining blue, jaw clenched and disapproving.

She remembers the smell of heretical flesh burning, almost like chicken, and hiding the horrified jolt that a once starved stomach might find flavor in such a thing.

She remembers the first bite of the cold.

She remembers that a good girl listens to her mother or she will end up in the Shadow without a way home.

She remembers the way the others disregarded her—that she was a woman, a slave, fervent that her flames were the true flames while theirs would only lead them astray.

She remembers Melony—a girl with the beginnings of her face.

She remembers that the night is dark and full of terrors.

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Jojen woke sweating, pale, and twitching.

He’d dreamed of many things that night—none of them connected and all of them green. He’d dreamed of wolves, of the tree to the north whose roots he would feed, of Meera singing, of the sun rising, so distant it seemed almost pale rather than bright.

"Jojen?" He heard Meera ask, and only then did he realize how shallow his breath was coming.

"I’m here," he replied. His throat was dry, and the words wanted to stick in his throat, but they didn’t.

"I have water for you," she said, handing him her skin. He took it, drinking, letting the slightly leathery flavor of the water fill his mouth. Meera was sitting next to him now, running her fingers through his hair.

"What did you dream?" she asked him. She was combing his hair with her fingers, and he realized as she worked her way through knots that he had sweat even on his scalp.

"I dreamed of darkness again, Meera."

She pressed a kiss to the top of his head, then smoothed his hair where she had kissed him.

"But I also dreamed of light," he added. "Pale. Distant. But it was there. I’d never seen light before."

He felt Meera’s lips smiling into his hair as she pressed another kiss to the top of his head. ”Good. That means we’re going in the right direction.”

She stood, and pulled him to his feet. ”And, I think, if we keep our pace up, we’ll reach Winterfell before nightfall.”

Winterfell. The name sounded foreboding to Jojen—like the darkness and the swirling snow, and screams, and blood that he had seen in his dreams. He wasn’t sure he was ready for Winterfell.

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"It’s unnatural—the things he does to her," one of the men said.  There were three of them at the next table, all drinking themselves slowly blind.

"I’ve heard he sets his dogs on her to fuck her bloody before he has a go.  But then again—he’s—"

"Don’t say it, Pate.  Don’t say it.  You’ve heard what he does to people who call him—"

"He’s a monster."

"Bad blood."

"A bastard."

Gendry stilled, his mug of ale halfway to his lips.  But they weren’t talking about him.  No one ever used quite that tone of voice when talking about him.  Besides, he was a knight now.  Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill, and no one would ask after the family name.

"Why doesn’t she escape, then?  Just run off—if she’s so miserable?" demanded one of the men—the one who had been quiet.

"How’s a girl of thirteen supposed to run off?"

"She could get help.  Surely one of the guards would take pity on the poor girl."

But the first man just laughed.  It was a bitter laugh—a harsh laugh.  ”She’s a Stark of Winterfell.  They’re worth more than all of Casterly Rock right now, aren’t they.”

"Hang on—she’s not thirteen.  That’s the one they married to the imp, who helped kill Joffrey.  Sansa.  She’s the younger one."

Gendry’s heart stopped.  She’d run off—run off in a fury and they hadn’t been able to find her at all.  He’d heard rumors the Hound had gotten her, and that he’d tried to bring her to her family.  He hadn’t taken her—no—he couldn’t have—and yet he…

"The younger one?" one of the men asked.  "Thought she was dead."

"Wasn’t, was she?  The Lannisters sent her North, didn’t they?  When they gave it to the Boltons.  So she could marry him—Lord Bolton’s bas-son."

Gendry thought he was going to be sick.  Arya was—she was—she couldn’t be married.  She couldn’t be.  For all she was just a child, she had more fight in her than he did, even if she was too smart for her own good.  She’d gotten him out of as much trouble as she’d gotten him into.  And she was being set upon by dogs and monsters and—

He downed the rest of his ale and called for another mug.  There was no justice in this world, no goodness, no hope—none at all.

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He dreamed of her, sometimes.

Not as she was when they had wed, with her hair like spun gold and a blush upon her cheeks—youthful beauty personified; nor as she had been when they had buried her beneath the earth, pale, small, still, without any sign that she had been ripped open, but so painfully not alive; but as she would be if she had lived, in gowns of the finest silk, her hair fading from gold to silver, her eyes and lips slowly becoming couched in wrinkles.

Such dreams hurt worse than the ones when he saw her face on the day of their wedding, or the nightmares where he held her lifeless, bloody body in his arms, because, for a moment, he thought they weren’t dreams, and that his Joanna had not died, could not have died, could not have left him. She would smile at him, wrinkles deepening, and murmur that she missed his hair, and he would take her hand, with liver spots to match his own, and kiss it, tasting the salt of her skin. And when he looked up, when his eyes sought her own, they would be gone, her hand gone from his, and he would wake in a cold sweat, completely and utterly alone.

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Walda had never truly expected to be selected.  She never was.  Her lord grandfather always suggested her alongside the one he truly wanted married, so that whichever lord or landed knight he was speaking to would be insulted at the very prospect of her, and choose the other—despite the promise of her weight in silver.

Walda hated that.  She hated her lord grandfather for it.  It took the joy of cakes after dinner and honey on bread at breakfast right out of her mouth, and she wondered if perhaps she should stop her eating and become thin like Amerei.  Whenever she thought like that, she would grab another cake and eat it, and feel a bitter sadness that only sugar could take away.

No, Walda had never expected to be chosen, but Lord Bolton had, with his pale eyes and thin face.  She knew he’d picked her for the silver, but he was kind when he took her hand before the septon and said his vows—even if they were to different gods than his own.  And when he cloaked her in his pink cloak, she realized that she liked the color of it far better than blue.  Pink was perfect, pink was strong and vibrant and after years of blue and grey, she decided she would wear pink and red as frequently as possible.

When they’d been put abed together that night, she found Ami’s words of loving—of how men were, and the joy one could take in their mouths and hands and cocks—quite lived up to her expectations, for Lord Bolton—Roose, her Roose—took her with quite an energy, her little noises of delight only seeming to inflame him further.  And Walda, quite suddenly, found herself very pleased that her lord grandfather promised her weight in silver for her hand in marriage.  For this—all of it, this man, his lands and title, his colors—this was worth far more than that.

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He can’t get near her—she’s too well guarded.  And he’s glad of that, at least, glad that there are men who would die before letting anyone near her posted outside her door day and night.  But surely she’d want to see him.  Surely she would.  Wouldn’t she?

She stays in her room, and he hears it whispered that she weeps in her sleep, that she calls out for Theon Turncloak, whom the King beheaded even as the traitor laughed and sang, “Never forget your name!”  Arya hadn’t spoken much of Theon Greyjoy when they’d been in the Riverlands, but Gendry could not hate him—not for any of the reasons everyone else seemed to.  He may have betrayed Winterfell, but he had also saved Arya—brought her out of torment, even if now she was too scared to see the light of day…

He does see her, in the end, from a distance.  When King Stannis brings her out in front of the Northmen, Ned Stark’s daughter—the one they will fight for, the one they will kill for and there’s something different about her.  Her hair is lighter—though maybe he was misremembering because he was too used to seeing her profoundly unwashed and everyone knew your hair was darker when it was profoundly unwashed. She’s taller too, but she’d older.  A woman now, not a child. 

She walks past him, past them all, when the King is finished with her, docile as a rabbit, looking down at her hands in their doeskin gloves.  ”Arya,” he hisses, knowing that if she sees him, she might smile, and if he can make her smile—

Her eyes are the wrong color, her face is the wrong shape, and the terror in her expression is enough to break his heart.  Because she’s not Arya—definitely not Arya, and if anything, that makes him see far more clearly the extent of what was done to her.  And if he could, he would try to make this girl—whoever she was—smile because she looked so thoroughly miserable and if they were all going to die…why go into it miserable?

The moment is gone though, and she is gone, and Gendry is left alone with his thoughts as the King shouts words of inspiration at them.  But whatever the King says—it could never make his heart beat faster than it does now, it could not fill him with more hope and desire to live than the knowledge that Arya Stark is still out there, somewhere, and alive he prays.

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Every day, Roslin knits.

When she was very little, one of her mothers (she can’t remember which one at this point) told her that ladies do not knit—that is something for the smallfolk.  Ladies embroider.  But Roslin always liked knitting, liked seeing something grow out of her fingers, liked finding her handiwork truly useful and not merely ornate adornment. 

Her sister Tyta always used to slip her wool when no one was looking.  (Know one cared what Tyta did.  She was too old to be married.)  And Roslin would hide it somewhere in the room she shared with Arwyn and save it until she would not be disturbed.  (Arwyn would tell on her if she did not hide the yarn.  Arwyn always told on her.)

There is something soothing to it, something mindless and hypnotic to the click of needles, to the way her fingers know what kind of stitch comes next just from feeling what stitch came before.

It became a talisman on dark days, when her brothers would argue and her father would belittle and she would be married off—not to the Stark King—but to his noble Lord Uncle.  And when she learned that her father was trading his honor with her cunt, she wept, and knit.

She knows that winter is coming.  (Winter is Coming, he had smiled, when he had kissed her cheek and told her that she was to wed Robb Stark; he had not said Family, Duty, Honor when she learned she was to wed Edmure Tully instead.)  She knows that the child in her belly will only know cold for a very long time—though whether the cold will reach her babe at the Twins or at Casterly Rock she will not know for several months yet. 

She doesn’t like to let herself think of it.  She does not like to think that she was the death of her good-sister and nephew, and that she may yet be the death of her husband—that her son may only know a Frey’s honor and that her daughter may only know a Frey’s suffering.

So she sits, and knits, and when her aunt Genna visits with her in the solar of Riverrun, she does not find smiles, or even conversation.  She finds the methodical click of knitting needles.

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Winter is coming.  She can taste it in the sea breeze.  When winter comes, the saltiness becomes more pronounced.  She can’t really explain it.  But of course, she’s never had to.  And she doubts very much that she’d try.

It seems to her that she was made to be left behind.

Her mother died birthing her, her father soon thereafter when pirates from the Stepstones tried to make their way over to Oldtown, and she had been left in the care of her elder siblings—all fully grown.  She was much younger than they had been, and she had heard it whispered that she had not been planned, that she was not supposed to have existed at all.  And yet, she was the only one remaining, and the whispers of these siblings followed her and made her wonder what would have happened if they had not faded into the past.

Allyn, her eldest brother, had died when he had been thrown by a horse several years after Robert’s Rebellion on a day colder than any she had ever lived through before.  He had never known his son, the little boy named Edric, whom his wife had born three months after his death.  The boy had been named to remember the honorable man who brought the Sword of House Dayne home after slaying her second brother, Arthur, who was, it seemed, never mentioned without the epithet “the Sword of the Morning.”   She could remember neither brother clearly.  Arthur had never been home so long as she had been alive, though people thought of him first when they thought of Starfall, not his little sister.  She had only truly ever heard his name, and never his voice.  And Allyn…Allyn had been dead so long that even though she knew he used to read to her each night before bed, she could not remember his face—only the warm feeling of his arms around her.

There had been a sister too, whom she barely knew as more than a sad pair of violet eyes, and a scream as she threw herself to the rocks below the Palestone Sword on the very day that the Maesters of Oldtown sent the White Raven which heralded the return of the cold.  She had spent most of that winter in tears, wondering why her sister had left her, wondering what had broken Ashara so thoroughly that she ended her own life.  Ashara had been the greatest beauty in the land, it was said, and Allyria knew she would never be half so pretty as Ashara, for men still spoke of Ashara; they never noticed her.

She had tried not to think of such things.  It was sad to remember the dead, and hard when you could not always remember why you should care.  She tried to focus on her nephew, only a few years younger than her, who shone as bright as the stars on their sigil.  But, perhaps because he was young, or perhaps because he had never known Allyn, Ned—as she had called Edric—was even more drawn to the memories of those long gone than she was.

All he ever wanted was stories of his father’s valor, of Ser Arthur’s battles, of Ashara’s dancing and Allyria never knew what to tell him.  What could she tell him?  She didn’t know any more than he did—not truly, but to say so would be to upset the boy.  When he had been little, he had insisted that one day, he would carry the pale great-sword and he would be, too, the Sword of the Morning.  He had been maybe five when he had announced this at dinner, and Maester Callyn had taken the sword from where it hung in the great hall and stood it on its tip beside him.  Dawn had stood taller than Ned, and the room had been filled with laughter—to Ned’s chagrin.  Allyria had leapt to her feet to give the humiliated little boy a hug, and insist that one day, he would be able to carry it with two fingers, he would be so big and so strong.

But Ned too left her in the end.  When her uncle, her father’s youngest brother and the castellan of Starfall, arranged her betrothal to Lord Beric Dondarrion, he sent Ned off to squire for him.  And when Ned had gone, she had wondered what adventures he would have.  His letters had always been disappointingly dull—except when he spoke of Lord Beric.  Lord Beric, he said, was a paragon of goodness, and would treat her perfectly and well.  Allyria wondered if she would love him quickly when they were wed, and felt only a twinge of sadness that she could not ask Ned about him in person.

Her uncle had died of a heart attack and Ned and Lord Beric had disappeared shortly after their visit to King’s Landing, an initially short visit away from Blackhaven that they had extended when Eddard Stark had sent them to hunt Gregor Clegane.

She assumes that Lord Beric is dead.  She has heard many tales that say he is—and as many that say he is not.  But those tales are the ones that always seem more wistful.  She had never met Lord Beric.  She wondered if he died regretting her.

She cannot bring herself to think more of Ned as she stares out at the sea.  Images of his corpse, floating in one Fork or another of the Trident are more than she can bear.  He who was her son, her brother, her nephew, her friend, her world—she could not bear it if he too left her behind, if his body lies unburied somewhere to the north, until the snow freezes it solid so that it is not found until spring.

Winter is coming.  And when it goes again, she will probably still be the only one left.

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Devan does not like the shore of Dragonstone. It is rocky. If you take off your boots, you risk stepping on sharp pebbles that send a stinging sensation up your leg; if you don’t then you get pebbles in your boots and that hurts even worse.

When they are done with their lessons, he and Shireen go down to the shore together sometimes. She lifts her skirt up to her knees and steps into the water. She asks him not to tell her mother—it is unladylike—unprincesslike he supposes—and will make her mother cross. Devan promises, even if he doesn’t understand why Queen Selyse would get cross. His mother does the same as Shireen at home on Cape Wrath, he says.

But his mother’s ankles are fatter than Shireen’s. Her legs are chunkier. Shireen’s legs are positively skinny and pale compared to his mother’s but he supposes that when she is older, her legs will look more normal. Dale told him that when he is older, he will have hair on his chest and stomach, so he imagines that girls go through some sort of change as they grow into women, but Devan doesn’t have an older sister to ask about it.

Once he thought of telling Shireen he thought of her as the sister he never had, but that wasn’t quite true. You don’t notice how your sister’a legs are skinny and pale, or how her eyes look like the sky over the sea. You think of sisters the way you think of brothers. That’s what everyone says, anyway.

So he doesn’t say anything. He just promises not to tell Queen Selyse how Shireen got salt water on her hem.

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Once she dreamed that it was her maiden’s blood on the cloak he had left her—that he had take her kiss and more and she’d sent him on his way with a song. She knew that was not the way of it, of course. She would never be so foolish as to give her maidenhead to any but her husband. But still…it was a fine dream.

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She looked like Egg in his dreams.

No.

Looked like was wrong.  (She looked like Daella in his dreams.)  She carried herself like Egg did.  Carried herself the way that one does when one is forgotten, when one is not expected to succeed.

(He imagined that Jon Snow carried himself that way.  Or rather, he imagined that if Rodwell Stark had acted as though he had been overlooked all his life, he would be the embodiment of Jon Snow.)

Her name became a prayer—though he had long before stopped praying.  It dripped from his tongue and brought sunlight to his eyes.  The golden stoned room where he and his brothers had played in the summers when Summerhall still stood.  The light of a candle in his cell at the Citadel.  Egg’s light fuzz when he and Dunk had visited, and when he had taken a knife and shaved it gently away. 

His brother had always prattled about this and that, about bravery and cowardice, about the things that matter when one is young.  When he first took the throne, he would write to him often, asking advice, or simply mentioning whatever came to his mind—his sons, Jenny, fear of falling, fear of madness, joy in grandchildren.

You are the truest friend I have, he had written, for you know me how I wish others could.

Those had been the last words that Egg had written, before Summerhall had taken him.  He had wept himself blind when he read the note.  Dark wings, dark words had never been truer, for no words could be darker than those which had taken Egg away.

It was all he had after that—darkness.  Darkness and cold, until Jon Snow sent him away, and there had been a different kind of dark, a different kind of cold.  Samwell told him of the sea, and he saw the port of Oldtown.  Samwell told him of the cog they sailed in, and he remembered the barges his father had taken him on as a child—up and down the Blackwater when they had been in good standing with the king. 

Samwell told him of Daenerys, and dragons.

And Aemon prayed again—for youth, for wisdom, for Egg, for his queen. 

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“I understand that we may have no choice, but must we really be so quick to leap in bed with the Lannisters?”

“Throw Margaery in bed, you mean.”

“There’s a bed, and one of us is getting in it.  Besides, most of our bannermen have gone over to Stannis, father.  It might be—”

“We are not bending the knee to Stannis, Garlan.  And if you continue to suggest it he may not be the only kinslayer in the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Loras, really.  Be calm.”

“Don’t tell me to be calm.  Don’t you dare.  Not when—”

“I think that you needn’t worry about Stannis, Loras.  Truly not.  Do you think he would deny the Florents their claim to Highgarden should he take his throne?  Even if our knees bent that way, it might not protect us.”

“And what of Robb Stark?”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“Listen, between us and the Starks, we could crush the Westerlands in about three weeks.  And then it wouldn’t matter what—”

“If we join forces with the Starks, Stannis will end up on the Iron Throne and I would sooner die valiantly in battle fighting for the Lannisters than see him win.”

“At the same time, if we join forces with Robb Stark, there’s a strong chance he’d put us on the Iron Throne.  Stannis will think he’s stolen half the kingdom, and he’ll want a secure border to his south.  We could—”

“No. No. And no.  Did I raise you to be a fool, Mace?  Even if Stark put us on the Iron Throne, how do you propose we hold it?  The Westermen will be back, and do you think the Martells would have it?  And the Storm Lords?  Without the aid of the North we’d have no way to keep it, but we’d have no control over them whatsoever.  No, leave that problem to the Lannisters.”

Willas watched them all carefully.  Loras’ face pinkened with anger any time Stannis Baratheon’s name was mentioned; Margaery’s hair was coming loose from its nets, so vehemently was she arguing; Garlan’s beard was coming out in tufts from when he grabbed at it; and his father looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to sit or stand, so full was he of confused energy from the passionate arguments of his wife and three younger children.  Willas’ mother leaned back on the daybed, holding a glass of wine near her ear and looking thoroughly tired of this conversation, which had wound itself in circles for hours now.  Alone of the company, Willas watched.  Well, not quite alone.  His grandmother was sitting, elbows resting on the table, watching her progeny like a cat might watch an overlarge mouse waddling back towards its hidey-hole.

The facts were these: when Petyr Baelish had arrived in Highgarden a week before, with promises a royal wedding and many other honorable rewards, father’s eyes had lit up with excitement, as much as Willas had ever seen.  His little girl, twice a queen.  His grandchildren sitting the Iron Throne.  It was hardly something to sneer at, given that House Tyrell had been less than any other great house in Westeros for so long.  He could taste glory and power as easily as he could taste the plums sitting on his table, and that very evening he had been boasting to his bannermen—those that had not gone to Stannis, that is—that all would be well, and that Renly’s fall would not bring them down.

In many ways, it was perfect, and Willas let himself think for the first time in many years that this was a situation that required no fixing, that Willas might sit back and enjoy the simple pleasure that came from watching the right things happening. 

But nothing was ever easy in Willas’ life.  He’d learned that the hard way with a fallen horse on his leg.   Willas had to work to make sure that things occurred without hiccups, and Margaery’s second betrothal in a year was no different.  For grandmother had heard the rumors that Joffrey was a beast, and with a whisper to mother, the argument had begun.

Loras was for Joffrey; Garlan was unconvinced; Margaery wanted a crown; and father would have his way.  But none of them, not a one, seemed to be wholly pleased with the situation. For even if father was granted a seat on the council (and Willas knew that he would be.  How could he not, when he was giving them all the strength of Highgarden?), he would not be the Hand of the King. Willas estimated he’d be made Master of Laws, and that Lord Paxter would become Master of Ships.  But Mace Tyrell would not hold the power of the Seven Kingdoms.  That honor would remain, as it always had, even in Lord Arryn’s days, with Tywin Lannister. 

And so father had asked for more, more that Baelish had assured him would be possible.  And Loras would be granted a White Cloak.  It was fitting.  He was the knight, after all, shining and golden—the pride of Highgarden, popular and handsome and able to win over those who had adored Renly for the simple fact of his fierce loyalty to the dead King who had always been so beloved among the commons.  Surely, that would be enough to convince grandmother and mother that it was a good idea—Margaery a queen, father on the council, Loras a knight of the Kingsguard.

It hadn’t been, though.  Not at all, and so they’d sent Lord Mace Tyrell back to Baelish with hints about what should happen to Brightwater Keep when Stannis was routed, and he’d made noises about how Garlan had nothing to inherit.  Baelish had stroked his pointed beard, and said something to the effect that Joffrey rewarded those loyal to him, and so all three of Willas’ siblings, despite any hesitation they might have, hungered for the rewards—even if Garlan was not sure Brightwater Keep was enough to merit throwing Margaery in bed with Joffrey Baratheon.

All three had something, and Willas still had nothing.  He supposed his father could not very well have asked that he be given Brightwater Keep—not when he was the heir to Highgarden.  But then, Willas hadn’t been his father’s favorite since the day his horse fell.  No, his father valued beauty and gallantry and bravery—all present in his youngest children, while Willas stood broken and alone, unwed even now, though he was heir to the second greatest fortune in the land. 

It still rankled, that Garlan had been wed before him.  He’d been tempted, in the months leading up to their ride to New Barrel, to write Oberyn and see if his marrying Arianne Martell might be at all possible.  She was unwed as well, and perhaps if he became her consort, father’s relations with Dorne might improve.  He might also have the gallant heir he’d always wanted, and so nearly had, to sweeten the deal, as Garlan would probably assume Willas’ role if he became Arianne Martell’s consort. 

It had been a half-baked plan, and one he had never acted on, because even if it had been tempting, even if he felt humiliated in his brother’s ecstasy, it did not make sense, not truly.  He was hale, and hearty, after all.  And once he married, and once Highgarden passed to him, he would be the greatest lord the Reach had had in centuries, for the simple fact that, as grandmother put it, he used that pile of cheese between his ears, and didn’t let it molder away.

If Margaery was beauty, Garlan was gallantry, and Loras was bravery, Willas was something else entirely.  He was the tactician.  He was the thinker.  And he would not choose a course of action that would not lead to success, nor would he allow any of them to do so.  And if that meant that sometimes they didn’t see the road he set them on…well, there were worse things.  Besides, grandmother always knew what he was doing.  He’d learned it from her, after all, and she wouldn’t let him lead them astray.  Not that he would do that.  He was good at it by now.  Very good at it.  He’d been good at it when he was younger too.  For goodness’ sake, neither Loras nor father had worked out that it was Willas who’d decided that Renly would be a good lord for Loras to…squire for.  Not that everything was on that large a scale.  Sometimes, it was as simple as convincing Margaery that Spot was not actually the cutest of his hounds’ pups, and thus she should probably take Rose, since Rose was much smaller and sweeter.  He was still pleased about that.  He let his hand rest on Spot’s head, which was lying as ever on his lame knee.

“The war is hardly won,” repeated mother for what seemed like the thousandth time.  She looked exhausted, more so than he’d seen her of late, and she hadn’t slept well since Margaery had married Renly, no matter what had been said to assuage her fears.  “And I do not wish Margaery wed to a beast unless we can be sure, absolutely sure, that she shan’t be harmed.  The rumors floating around about what he has done to Sansa Stark…”

“With Loras in the Kingsguard, he wouldn’t dare.”  Father’s mustache seemed to buffet about on his face.  You could always tell how easy it would be to convince father of something based on how mobile his mustache was.  If it was still, then he might hear reason.  If it was a wave of brown hair, you had to resort to other means, you had to let him think he’d come up with it first.

“Don’t be so sure,” snapped grandmother.  “Not one of them stopped the Mad King from misusing his wife.  Not a one.  And if Joffrey is half so dangerous…”

“I wouldn’t be as spineless as any of them,” growled Loras.  And there was Loras, impetuous as ever.  To the point of stupidity, really.  But it was sweet, he supposed, that his love for Renly made him so angry that it filled his being even now.  Willas wondered briefly if he would ever be in love like that.

“Are you calling Ser Arthur Dayne spineless?” Garlan sounded as though he was close to laughter.  Garlan never took anything seriously, especially when Loras was angry.  Garlan, who had been raised to be loyal was as easily dispatched as some of Willas’ pups, and with a good deal less concentration.  Willas remembered the days when he used to be able to throw Garlan to the ground in the practice yards.  How they’d laughed, how they’d smiled, and how they’d planned for the days when Willas would be Lord of Highgarden, and Garlan would be the one he sent to rein in unruly bannermen.  He supposed this was similar, wasn’t it?  And even if it weren’t, Garlan wouldn’t mind.  He was too much like father in that respect—too convinced that the ideas that came to him did so without any outside influence, without someone else planting the seed that would make the thought grow strong.

Loras whirled around.  “If we throw in with Stark, and we lose, what do you think that Joffrey will do to Margaery then?  Spineless?  Don’t you dare call me spineless, Garlan.  Don’t you—”

“Yes, yes,” Grandmother cut Loras off.  “Calm down, Loras.  You must be calm.”  If only he could be like grandmother.  He tried.  And the thought, of all of them, he was the most like her, the most observant, the most clever.   Though, of course, Margaery was young yet.  If she took to grandmother as well…House Tyrell could do much worse than that. “We aren’t going to betray your love of Renly by throwing in with Stannis, so keep a cool head and remember that we are family. What are our words?”

“Growing Strong,” mumbled Loras.

“Precisely.”

“So we must grow,” Willas said.

There are few things in life so amusing as watching everyone’s head turn in unison to face you.  He had been so quiet the whole evening that he half-wondered if they hadn’t quite forgotten about him.  They did, after all, always seem to forget him.  It was for the best that way.  It made him more effective.

“We must,” he continued, “not let ourselves do something that will cause us to lose what ground we’ve gained.  And joining forces with Robb Stark is just that.  He can’t very well begrudge us going to Joffrey.  But Joffrey will begrudge us joining Robb Stark.  And I don’t much fancy father’s head joining Ned Stark’s on the walls of the Red Keep.” 

“Which is exactly why…” and father burst off into another tirade about why Margaery marrying Joffrey and sending all of Highgarden’s swords north would be a good idea.

“I wonder,” Willas murmured, leaning across the table and selecting a plum, “What will happen to Sansa Stark when Joffrey puts her aside.”

He handed the plum to his grandmother, who had raised her head when he spoke.  She took the plum and bit into it, juices dribbling down her chin.  But Willas knew he’d done it.  Willas knew what it looked like when Olenna Tyrell hid her pleasure behind a plum.

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Night has fallen before he thinks to ask— “My helm.  What of my helm?”

Elder Brother call me elder brother — elder brother? — we are all brothers on the quiet isle — the fuck do i want more brothers for? glances up at him, his eyes flickering in the firelight.  ”I did not think to bring it.”

"Did not think to br—" he laughs, because of course not.  Two dragons it had cost him, and he had not thought to bring it.  if you’re called dog why do you not have a dog’s helm? — what would i use a dog’s head helm for? — i don’t know but my father has antlers on his helm.  

"I had rather more pressing things to attend to when I found you.  It was a mercy," you don’t deserve the gift of mercy “that I found you when I did.  Elsewise, you’d be dead.”

"And you think it was a mercy saving me then?" he asks.  

Elder Brother looks at him.  His eyes are brown.  Not many people he’s been near lately have had brown eyes—grey like Alinore’s, green like the fire on the river, blue like the sky above—but there they are, brown and soft like his first dog.  Sandor looks away, down at his hands.

"Life is a gift—and not one to be given or taken lightly," says Elder Brother simply.  "You are not a man of faith, I take it?"

He doesn’t know what faith is.  He doesn’t know if he ever has.  Faith, belief, trust—they require something good to inspire them, and he doesn’t know if there’s any good left in the world, or if there’s ever been any good in it at all.

"No."  He grunts.  "No, I’m not."  i’m not like him though — you look like him. — no i don’t. — well, not the melty half.  but the normal bit, you’ve got his coloring and his nose and — shut your mouth or i’ll break your teeth.

Elder Brother smiles.  ”Well, perhaps you might be one day.  A little rest, and some hard work to keep you occupied while you think on it.”

"Think on what?"

"Your sins."

He laughs, and says without thinking, “I think on them morning, noon, and night, brother.”

"And?"

"And what?"

"What are your thoughts?"

gentle mother font of mercy, save our sons from war we pray Her hair had looked brown in the dark but he knew that was just the green from the river and the black of the night — mercy! ser, mercy!  from that redheaded boy whose “ser” had filled him with enough rage to cut him in two even if he hadn’t been set out to do it in the first place — you don’t deserve the gift of mercy.  

"My own."

"I see." do you see them sandor? — see what? — the knights!  father has brought the knights with him from casterly rock do you see? — move and let me look. — but then i won’t be able to see?  you’re bigger than i am. — it’ll only be for a second. — but i want to see — here get on my back.  "Well, when you have healed, you will have a new helm.  Or an old one, if there’s one that’s washed up on shore that will fit your head, though such a helm would not look like a dog’s head."

They’ll think I’m dead when they find it, he thinks, or if they’ve got a bleeding brain in their head they’ll pretend they killed me and get that bloody reward.  They’ll all think I’m dead and laugh over it because they don’t give a bleeding shit.  

"It’ll be fine.  Damn thing was showy anyway."

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He makes that steel sing.

High, short, squeaks as he hits it, hot sparks flying. Gevin says it sounds like a woman if you do it right. Gendry doesn’t know what that means. He just hits it hard, and flattens the steel, smooths the steel, beating the blade until the end is so sharp you can’t tell if it cuts you right away.

He has been at Master Mott’s for years now. He started when he was a scrap of a boy, and his mother couldn’t feed him, so off he went, because he had promising shoulders and she had promised his father was tall and strong and he took to him. Gendry didn’t know if he believed that, but he certainly didn’t take to his mother with her thin frame and yellow hair. Master Mott’s believed her, and that had been enough. Or maybe He had just wanted another boy for the forge and Gendry was lucky for the first time in his life.

He had started with keeping the fires hot, bringing logs in so the older journeymen didn’t have to stop their work, the never ending clang of iron on steel as they hammered at breast plates, at gorgets, at helms. Running to and from the wood shed, faster than the other boys because he was already longer of leg, and besides what would he do if he didn’t take to his father as his mother had promised? He needed to be the best, or at least, better than everyone else. So he ran fast, not caring if he got splinters in his hands or wood chips down the front of his tunic. He had to be the best, because he needed to be better than his father would have been if his father had been given to Master Mott to feed and clothe and work.

He filled buckets of water and didn’t spill a drop between the well at the end of the street of steel and the forge. He sat before the flames with bellows and pumped them until the coals glowed so hot they were white and streams of sweat covered his face. And, when the day was done, he helped Mistress Mott serve dinner because he hoped it would get him a better portion of food. He was a growing boy, his mother had said as she had pleaded with Master Mott. A growing boy who needed food to eat.

And he did grow. He grew taller than Master Mott, and Gevin, and Rollam. He grew taller and his shoulders went out and out and the muscles in his arm bulged because now, he hits the hammer. Now, he makes the breast plates and the gorgets and the swords for knights who have enough gold to buy quality. Now, he knows the difference between cheap and fine steel by looking at it, heating it, hitting it with his hammer. Now he knows how to balance a sword, how to test a grip, how to sharpen it so you wouldn’t know it’d cut you until you were bleeding.

He is better than the rest now, better than the ones who had been there for years, better than the other boys could hope to be, maybe almost as good as Master Mott. And when Master Mott checks his work, there is a fond smile in his eyes, a subtle pride, the same pride that Gendry hid when he shows him the bull’s head helm, pride at something he had made, had crafted.

He would never let that helmet go—never. It is his, the first thing he has made that is truly beautiful, with steel so smooth it is almost soft to the touch.

Master Mott lets him go though. Master Mott sells him off to the Night’s Watch, before his term is up, tells him he is going north, and there would be no buts about it.

And on his last day, he makes the steel sing—makes it sing like a woman in heat, like Gevin says. Sing like a woman in heat, a woman who wants you, because at least when he makes the steel sing, it sounds like he is wanted.

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Everyone goes in the end. Everyone just leaves, and that’s the way of it. Or, they throw him away, like he’s little more than shit in a bucket to be dumped in the streets of Flea Bottom.

She’ll leave him too. She says she won’t, of course. She says they are friends, and that her brother will treat him well, and nothing will change. But he doesn’t believe her. Or rather, he can’t believe that. Can’t believe that her brother would let her stay friends with a bastard blacksmith—that her brother would let him serve as a soldier rather than in a forge, when good smiths are so hard to come by. So she’ll leave him. She won’t be far, but she will leave him, abandon him, discard him, like his mother, like Master Mott, like his father.

So he’ll leave her first. Not because he wants to—she’s his friend, and he can’t remember the last time he had a friend who made him smile, made him laugh, made him feel like he wasn’t on his own in the world. He’ll leave her because leaving her means he can break his own heart for a change, rather than letting someone else trample all over it, and he’s never been able to do that before. Besides, staying with the Brotherhood…he can be a knight—a true knight. He can be everything he ever wanted to be, spending all those hours in the forge, making fine swords he’d never see again. He can rise a bit. And maybe, one day…it’s not so odd for a knight to be friends with a lady, is it?

She leaves him in the end—leaves him first, even, running off into the night and disappearing. And when he and the rest go out in search of her, they find no trace but the hoof prints of a horse and Gendry’s heart sinks down into his throat because it’s not just that she left first, it was that she was taken, and he didn’t even get the chance to explain, get the chance to say goodbye.

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Thoros had once said that it is the light that makes us realize the just how dark the night is.  If left to their own devices, men would adjust, men would allow themselves to survive in the dark, letting their eyes drink more in, becoming slowly numb to that which would lead them astray.  Ned wasn’t sure he believed him.  But, then again, Ned wasn’t sure what he believed anymore.  Everything was different now, everything had changed, and as winter fell, and wolves prowled the Riverlands, all Ned wished to do was to go home, to see his aunt, to pretend that all of this had never happened as he let the Dornish sun beat down upon his face.

Instead, the nights grew longer, the skies grew darker, and snow swirled around their encampments, and Ned began to wonder to what extent worshiping fire made more sense than worshiping the seven aspects.  It was so cold—so very cold, and he felt as though his fingers would freeze off before too long, though he tucked them into his armpits to keep them warm.

Cold and dark—that was what Thoros had preached against before he and Anguy and the rest had split away.  

Lady Sansa was like a candle in the night, so bright that it took his breath away when he saw her. She was cold, and shivering, and pale, and her hair was cropped short, making it almost look as though her hair was on fire, but she was there, as alive and whole as her mother was not.  Not truly.  She lived, but…had Beric truly lived after he’d died?  Was he truly Beric?  Ned didn’t like to think of that.  

She was jumpy—nervous when he had first approached her.  It had had to have been him that did—he was of highest birth, and he could say, “My lady doesn’t remember me, I’m sure, but I remember you.  You were at the Tourney of the Hand.  Ser Loras Tyrell gave you a red rose.”  The Hand was dead, and Ser Loras was dead and that boy he had been, struck by her beauty was gone—as gone as the girl who had blushed profusely at the red rose in her hand.  

She did not remember him.  He did not expect her to.  He had half a mind to tell her he had met her sister, but feared that that would only cause pain, for none of them knew what had happened to Arya.  For all he knew, she could be dead now, and he would not be responsible for the pain of false hope.  

Instead, he was as kind as he could be, giving her the purple cloak that he’d had made when he and Lord Beric had ridden north for King’s Landing in the first place.  A heavier cloak than he’d thought he had needed, in truth, but Lord Beric said he would be cold, for it was even further north than the Stormlands, and summer was crawling to an end.  He was grateful for that, and he was sure that Lady Sansa was grateful of the added layer of silk and felt.  

He shivered.  It was freezing.  But he had a fire before him, and he had Lady Sansa to remind him that you could fight on—you could press on and not let yourself sink into darkness.

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These brothers, at least, didn’t want him dead. They didn’t like what he’d done—he could see that much in their eyes, but they didn’t glare at him like fucking Kettleblack did when he reminded him that just because he wore that bloody…bloody cloak…she’d probably burned it. He would have, if he’d been her. Knife to her throat.

That’s what his brothers should hate in him. That knife to her throat, her voice in wavering in her throat when she sang. Her eyes had been more green than blue—or maybe he’d imagined that. Maybe it was too dark to see her bloody eye color. They should hate him for that. What kind of man puts a knife to the throat of a girl and makes her sing? He’d meant to ask nicely. He’d meant to take her away from there. He’d meant to…

Every day they sang that bloody song too, his brothers. Every day they sang it in their prayer, but their voices were different. Their voices were low and echoey in the stone walls of the chapel. Gentle mother, font of mercy, their voices rising as one, a whole chorus, moving in unison, louder and richer than she’d sung when she’d had his knife to her throat but gods—don’t blaspheme, Brother Sandor—they made it sound holy somehow and she’d made it sound a benediction.

He’d never been a holy man, fuck knows. Never. He’d killed and fucked and drank and all those other things you weren’t supposed to do. He’d seen hell too, and it hadn’t scared him enough to send him godly. But as he dug the graves, he found his shovel pounding into the earth at a steady tempo. Gentle mother, font of you don’t deserve the gift of mercy. Didn’t deserve it, but had gotten it, somehow. From both of them, even if they hadn’t meant to give it—hadn’t wanted to.  And what to do about that?

What to do about that?

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The morning mists on Dragonstone are thinner than she would have thought when she’d first seen the island. Something volcanic by the sea—rightfully it should be letting off a fog so thick that sailors might think the island cursed if they approached it as the sun rose—with rocks so sharp they would dash a passing vessel that didn’t know they were there.

It’s a chilly place, in truth, with salt air that bites at her skin and curls her hair. A chilly surface with a warm heart, for the deeper into the castle you go, the warmer it gets. She finds it good, a proper metaphor, one she can use to teach this Lord and his wife and daughter.

They are good to her. She would not say welcoming, but she would not say cold. They give her a place to sleep, and food to eat, and while she explores the castle, she feels his eyes on her and wonders if he is curious about her faith or about her.

It’s a misty morning when she learns—when he finds her looking north over the lapping waves. She calls him king, and he takes her hand and kisses it and in that moment, she knows the war is won.

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He’s a small boy—smaller than Allard had been at that age, and smaller than Steffon would be. He’s thin too, and his face is long and looks far too haggard to belong to one so young. There is a great beast standing beside him, easily five times the boy’s height and it turns Davos’ stomach to think how many times the boy could fit inside the wolf if it turned wild and ate him. How fast would he grab any of his sons—even the oldest of them may the seven bless their souls—away from it. But the boy seems hardly frightened. If anything, he clutches at the matted black fur of the wolf’s leg as of it were his father.

"This is him, then?" he asks Wex, though he doesn’t truly need to ask, and the ironborn nods.

"Who are you?" asks the boy, and Davos sees his fingers tighten in the wolf’s fur.

"My name is Davos Seaworth, my lord, and I am hand to the one true king of the seven kingdoms Stannis Baratheon."

The boy turns to look at the woman, the one with the spear who Davos does not doubt could kill him very easily, and Davos follows his gaze. She makes no motion, and he turns back to Davos.

"I am Rickon Stark of Winterfell."

"I am glad you are alive and well," Davos replies. "We had heard worse of you."

Rickon doesn’t say a word, but he chews on his lip the way Dale used to when he didn’t know what it was that he wanted to say next, and Davos waited.

"King Stannis would see you and your brother returned to your seat," he says gently.

"Does he have Bran?" Rickon’s little blue eyes light up with delight.

"No," Davos says. "He does not. But he hopes to soon."

"Hopes to," the woman cuts in. "And what does that mean?"

"The King would see the rightful lord returned to Winterfell when he takes it from the Boltons’ hands."

Rickon’s head turns back and forth between him and the woman, his hands still entwined in shaggy fur.

The woman squares her shoulders and inclines her head ever so slightly. “And why should I believe you, or this King Stannis.” He sees her then more clearly than before. He sees a fierce woman, it was true, but hardly a heartless one. Harsh, perhaps, but loving, the way a mother bear is of her cubs, the way a mother wolf…the way any mother is with children. but it is more than that, too, not just a mother’s love. There is some fear there too, of the darkness, the way that Dean used to be afraid, or of the unknown, which had made Maric so nervous about taking the steering wheel.for the first time. A stubbornness too, that Devan had picked up from Princess Shireen.

"Once, I had seven sons," Davos says slowly. "I don’t anymore, though three still remain me. The youngest of them is near enough Lord Rickon’s age to stop my heart. There are men who seek only to destroy, to wreck and ruin—"

"Like Reek," says Rickon.

"Like Reek," agrees Davos without any idea of who Reek actually is. "And those men are the kind that King Stannis would see brought to justice. Your father," he turns back to Rickon, "Was a good man, and King Stannis respected him, and would see no harm come to his blood. As for me, no child should be ripped from home."

The woman doesn’t say anything, but she nods almost imperceptibly and Davos feels relief flood through him.

*

"Did you know my father?" Rickon asks. They are sitting before a fire, listening to the crash of the waves. Davos hopes the seas will calm before morning. He does not like the idea of crossing in stormy waters like this.

"I did not," Davos says. He rips off a piece of the stale bread he brought with him and.warms it by the fire, hoping the damp air will make it a little less dry.

"Oh. I just thought you might have. You are old like he was, and your King knows him."

Davos smiles. “King Stannis did know him, yes. But I never had the honor.”

Rickon frowns and turns his own hard bread over in his fingers. “Did you really have seven sons?”

"I did," Davos says, and he rings their names out almost like a prayer. "Dale, Allard, Matthos, and Maric all died in the Battle of the Blackwater. Stannis and Steffon are with their mother on Cape Wrath.  And Devan is a companion to Princess Shireen at Castle Black—"

"That’s where Jon is!" says Rickon excitedly.

"Indeed," Davos smiles. "Lord Snow is there."

"Will we see him?" he looks hopefully over at Davos, his eyes bright and he is the same size that Steffon was when Davos last saw him—him and Marya and Little Stannis alike in their keep.

"If we can, I will see to it you see your brother again," says Davos.

"Both of them," Rickon says eagerly. "Jon and Bran. Both of them. And Arya and Sansa too, please. I want them in Winterfell as well."

"I will do what I can," Davos says gently. Best not crush the boy’s hope, not when he looks so happy. The gods don’t protect all children the way they should, Davos thinks sadly. So I will do what I can in their stead.

*

When he wakes up the next morning, Rickon has burrowed himself into Davos’ side and is growling in his sleep. Davos rests a hand on the boy’s head and smiles to himself. Allard had always been a restless sleeper too.

He hears a snapping nearby and sits up as best he can while letting the boy remain tucked against him.  He sees Osha, her spear leveled at four strangers, all of whom have swords out.

They hiss at one another in a language Davos can’t understand and a moment later, five more of them come out, dragging something in ropes and he sees the direwolf, snarling, ropes wrapped tight around its maw so it cannot bite.  

One of the men gestures at Osha to lower her spear and she does so, her eyes narrowed and more full of digust and hatred than they ever had been at Davos.  The men grab her arms, and one of them speaks at Davos and, though he has no idea what the man is saying, Davos gets the gist and pulls himself to his feet.  Only then does Rickon wake and when he does, there is no confusion in his eyes only anger—the sort of anger that should not exist in one so young.  

Their hands are tied, and they are pushed aboard a ship far bigger than the schooner that had taken Davos and Wex and the rest to Skagos to begin with.  

*

Davos has spent enough time on ships in his life to recognize a slaver when he sees one.  Though the hull is empty, he sees the chains, the buckets, and he just knows.  And here  I thought things couldn’t get worse than being beheaded in White Harbor,he thinks.  He holds Rickon tight to him, when the boy isn’t curled up next to Osha.  Their wrists have been untied, but Shaggydog is still bound, and furious, growling low in his throat whenever anyone but Rickon gets near him.

Or at least—that’s what Davos thinks.  One night, he dreams of Marya, shivering in the cold and searching for Dale and he jerks awake before he has to tell her that Dale burned on the Blackwater.  When he opens his eyes, he sees a ship’s boy crouched on the ground in front of the direwolf, whispering to him.

"He’ll bite your nose off if  you’re not careful," Davos whispers, and the boy jerks around and turns out not to be a boy at all, but a girl, with a long face and dark hair and a wary expression.

"I’ve a way with animals," says the girl.

"You speak the common?" Davos asks.  "They didn’t seem to," he gestures up above.

"I speak it," she says slowly, and he wishes it weren’t dark and he could see her face.  

"Who are you?" she asks, but before she can answer, Rickon has jerked awake and is pelting towards her, wrapping his arms around her knees and crying out "Arya! Arya!" and the girl crouches down and pulls him into her arms, and Davos sees her outline trembling as she squeezes him as tightly, tightly, tightly as she can.

*

If there’s one thing that Davos learned raising seven sons, it is that one cannot ever underestimate the capacity children have to get what they want.  And perhaps Arya Stark, twelve, is not quite a child anymore, but she not quite a woman grown either.  

How precisely she sinks the slave ship he doesn’t know.  How precisely she convinces the wildlings gathered at Hardhome to look south and not east, he can’t really believe.  But she does it, and, he can’t help but feel a little proud of her, as proud as he ever was of his own sons, when she climbs up onto her horse and rides at the head of a party of thousands, marching south, south to safety, she tells Rickon.  South to home.

She’s a brave girl, Arya Stark.  He can see that in her face.  She’s near enough the same age as Princess Shireen, but she wears hardship like a second skin, the same way her little brother does, and at night, when Rickon curls up between him and Osha, Arya on his other side, huddling close to him for warmth.

*

He sees both of them smile for the first time since he’s met them and it fills him with the sort of joy that swells his heart just to watch as Arya scoops up her little brother and sprints full out towards the man in black, the one who has the same long face as her, the same grey eyes.  

"So that’s the little sister," says a familiar voice.  

"You’re not with the king?" Davos asks her without turning.

"He left me here," says the Lady Melisandre.

He can tell she’s watching too, watching the way that Lord Snow has lifted both his sister and his brother up, squeezing them as tightly as he can.  

"He would be dead were it not for the flames," she says, and Davos frowns.  

"Dead?"

"His brothers would have him dead, but R’hllor saw fit to return the fire of life to his body."  Davos looks at her for the first time, and she’s watching him closely, staring down her nose.  "This place is hardly the haven of safety they seek.  The Long Night comes, Lord Davos.  And when it does, we had best pray the Lord stokes the fires of his chosen."

Davos shivers and looks back at the three of them.  Lord Snow has put his siblings down and is rubbing his hand through Arya’s hair, a grin on his face.  He looks less a man of the Night’s Watch and more a boy—a boy no older than Matthos had been.

"Let them worry on that tomorrow.  Let them have their peace now."  He thinks of Rickon, angrier than many men he’s met, and Arya whose fierce determination and sheer bravery had saved the lives of thousands.  "They’re stronger than you know. Let them know one day of happiness."

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She likes it best watching him sleep, watching the way his muscles relax and kingship falls away and his face becomes a boy’s again. She supposes she shouldn’t think of him as a boy—he is a man, now, older even than Jon and Robb and Gendry, even. But when he sleeps he does not look a man, not the way her father had.

She wonders what she looks like when she sleeps. Does she look a girl? Or a woman? Aegon has called her his little wildcat before—does she look like a wildcat when she sleeps? She’s always thought she’d look more a direwolf, but she’s never told him that. He doesn’t know who she is—not yet, anyway.

When she sleeps, she dreams of the woods, of the wolves running through the snow and their song filling the night skies. She feels a growl growing in her throat, and sings for her brothers and sisters, the smaller ones, older and younger, who know that she is their queen. Does the girl growl in her sleep when the wolf growls? Is the girl a queen when she runs with the wolves and sleeps alongside a boy who is king?

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It’s the first time that she’s ever had a dream like this.  Usually her dreams are full of green fire, or Ser Ilyn, bring me his head, or the father of the she-child with his knife against her throat.  There are other dreams too—dreams of her step-mother’s screams as she falls, dreams of her father’s hands, gentle as he cups her face and says, “You did this, sweet Alayne, but how could you have known?”

This is a different dream.  This is a sweet dream, a Winterfell dream.  She wanders through the godswood, the trees bare of leaves, skeletal and stark against the brilliant blue of the sky.  And when she sees the white weirwood tree with its bleeding face, its so familiar, that for a moment, her breath stops.  And then the lips of the tree begin to move, and she realizes it’s not a face—it’s Bran.

Bran—her brother Bran—not dead because he’s staring at her with the face of the gods.

"Winter has come," Bran whispers to her, his voice like the wind, his eyes wide and seeing everything.  She wonders if he can see the red of her hair—red like the sap dripping from his eyes, red like father’s blood on the steps of the Sept of Baelor—red, beneath the dark brown dye.  "Stay calm, and be brave."

She runs to the tree, and wraps her arms around it, her arms around Bran as if her little brother can feel her through the wood, through the dreams. 

And when she jolts awake, she feels calm, she feels brave, and though her bedchamber is still dark for the winter sun always rises late, she knows that dawn will come.

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she is no one.  not even No One, capitalized, with some sense of someoneness enough to merit the notations given to a name.  she is no one, she is nothing, and she must remember that sometimes.  

it is hard to remember that she is no one.  sometimes she thinks she is No One or maybe even Cat of the Canals or Salty or Arya of House Stark.  and when she chews her lip she remembers that no one does not do that, anyone could, perhaps, but no one does not, for that is a habit that belongs to a little girl who had once wandered through the world looking for her mother.

she dreams of the rivers sometimes.  it begins to snow there, and she howls at the moon and when she howls at the moon she is not no one she is the Night Wolf, and the Night Wolf pads through the roads and ways that once Arya of House Stark was taken down, when she was a mouse and before she learned that she was no one.

no one helps prepare dinner.  how odd a thought.  dinner is made by no one, it just appears, the way that dinner has never once just appeared.  dinner is always made by someone, even when she was Arya of House Stark and she supped at her father’s table.  back then, dinner was made by Megga and Short Tom who was not Fat Tom, though it was easy for others not to notice who made dinner. but someone always made dinner.

in the house of black and white, no one makes dinner.  no one helps cut spices and season fish and melt butter.  no one sets the table.  no one rings the bell to bring the acolytes to the kitchen for their meal.  

no one wonders if this is what it was like for jaqen when he was not jaqen but when he was no one.  no one wonders if that no one helped at all.  no one wonders what names that no one had to forget in order to become no one in order to become jaqen.  no one wonders if she is a different no one than he is, or if, in their no-one-ness they are the same now, if they are maybe even pack.

Arya Stark was always looking for her pack, no one thinks.  no one has no pack.  no one is a lone wolf.  then no one pinches herself.  no one does not think in terms of wolves.  that is a habit of Arya of House Stark.

so shedoes her best not to think of jaqen.  jaqen is a memory of Arya of House Stark, just as is the girl who liked lemon cakes and the boy who climbed over everything and the one who mussed her hair and called her little sister.  jaqen is not even a real person.  he is a dead man, and no one wore his face for a time, but he is not someone, he is not even No One.  

all the same, it is hard not to think of him when no one seasons the dinner and there is a smell of ginger and cloves in the air.

Chapter Text

Jaqen had once made her remember what it was to be brave, remember that she was a direwolf and not a mouse.

But that man was not Jaqen, he was no one, or, at least, not someone that Arya knew. He was not Jaqen, no more than she was Mercedene, though he wore Jaqen’s red and white hair and she had shaved her own head to wear Mercy’s wigs. It was not Jaqen who had given her the coin, no more than it was Mercy who had killed Raff the Sweetling, no more than it was Mercy who awaited the Kindly Man’s questioning.

He brought me here, she thought. That no one, the one who gave me the coin, and told me that all I had to do was find a sailor of Braavos and tell him valar morghulis.

Valar morghulis. Valar dohaeris. Always one and then the other, always both, always together.

He had given her a place to go, and in return she’d had to give everything she had left.  He’d saved her life when she might have died, but what sort of a life was it—valar morghulis and give everything you are away, become no one and Arya of House Stark dies with her family—before her time.

It hurt.  

It hurt, because Jaqen was her friend—had he really wanted her to strip every piece of herself away until she was truly no one, just like him?  Or was it someone else who had wanted that, and had Jaqen only wanted what was best for her?  Had he truly seen her as Arya of House Stark at all, or had he only noticed the ease with which she’d shifted between Arry and Nan and Weasel? 

She’d remembered she was a wolf on her own this time—just from the sight of Raff the Sweetling.  She was Arya, not Cat of the Canals, or Blind Beth, or Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.  She was Arya, but in being Arya, did those others die?  

Did Jaqen die when he changed his face? she wondered.  Or did part of him live on in that new man?  She thought of all the people Cat had met, all that Beth had learned, of ships carrying people across the sea, of Mercy and the importance of knowing her role in things.  Were they all dead too, or did they live on in Arya of House Stark?  She had certainly lived on in them.

She thought of Brusco and his girls, of the whores at the Happy Port who had always smiled when Cat had brought her cockles in, of Izembaro’s troupe and their constant cries of “Mercy!” and she was suddenly sad.  I’d want them to remember them well, she thinks, chewing her lip.  They were friends.

The door opens and the Kindly Man comes out, looking more somber than ever she had seen him, and Arya squares her shoulders.  If she wanted Cat, and Beth, and Mercy to be remembered as they were, she would remember Jaqen as he was, and Jaqen had made her brave.  

She was a direwolf—and she could take whatever it was that they threw at her.

"Valar morghulis," said the Kindly Man.

"Valar dohaeris," said Arya Stark.

Chapter Text

The boy named Ned is gone now. She’s glad of that. She doesn’t want a boy named Ned around, Ned Dayne, Ned for Ned, Dayne like Ashara who was never to be mentioned again. The boy named Ned is gone now, but his memory lingers on like the memory of empty bones in a casket.

When she removes her hood, they stare at her neck, at the scars on her face. She doesn’t feel them though. They gape like open mouths, screaming in pain, but she does not hear them. She does not notice them. She only notices when she tries to speak, when she must hold her throat closed to make a noise at all.

But she doesn’t speak often. She doesn’t speak, but she remembers—remembers all too clearly.

Harwin stands to her right most days, out of guilt she can only assume. How many times had she watched him run at quintains with Robb in the yard of Winterfell, back when it was still summer, back when her boy had laughed and smiled and muttered in frustration when Harwin’s lance had landed truer than his? Her boy would be as tall as Harwin now. Tall and brave and dead, his heart stopped by steel. Harwin does not speak of Robb, or of Winterfell. He hardly speaks at all, except to tell the men to be quiet, for the Lady speaks. But she doesn’t speak often, so Harwin remains silent.

She made Tom of Sevenstreams stop singing near her. She’d had a girl once who’d loved dearly to sing, and a boy who had been killed by a song and now cannot stomach a melody at all. And though they’d said that his cloak was of lemons, they stopped calling him “Lemoncloak” for “Lemoncloak” sounded too much like “lemon cake” and the sweetness of lemon cakes made her teeth hurt for gritting them.

And then there is the boy—the one who looks like Robert Baratheon, and who had come to find her, to say that he’d been a friend of her daughter. He is a bastard too, like the boy Jon Snow, and, like the boy Jon Snow, a friend to Arya.

Arya whom they had held. Arya whom they had lost.

The boy stays away as well, for the most part, with his sad eyes. She does not want his pity. She wants none of their pity.

They’re all shades of them—the children she lost. She’d wept when Lord Beric had given her life again—for this is not a life she wants, empty without them, painful without them. She’s heard men say all her life that motherhood might make a woman mad. She had denied it once, but now she does not, for she thinks of them, her precious babes, Robb boistrous in her arms, and Arya too, Bran and Sansa gentle and quiet, and Rickon loudest of them all. She remembers Ned, Ned, Ned, not my hair, Ned loves my hair, and the warmth of him at her back while they watched their children playing, and there are none of them left but her, none of them not even the baby.

Just her. Just her and these shades of her children that haunt her step and infest this band of brothers.

And she’s not their brother, she can tell that much. Their Silent Sister, mayhaps, but she was once a sister, and never before had sisterhood felt this way. They obey her. Not as a lady, but as a mother. They do not climb when she tells them not to. Her special boy had fallen even though he had climbed before he could walk and was as much a squirrel as a boy. Unlike Bran, they listen to her when she tells them—do not climb. They hang the nooses from horseback instead.

Once she’d been a Stark and a Tully. Once she’d been Lady Catelyn, beautiful and charming and full of life. But Lady Catelyn is dead and her body lives on. Lady Stoneheart some call her, a Mother Merciless, leading a motherhood without banners.

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It’s the second time in his life he’s been dying. Or maybe the third. The one that should be the second time doesn’t count, because he didn’t want to die then. Fuck he had wanted to live and find that fucking Greyjoy fucker and rip his balls off. 

This is the second time he has wanted to die. The second time the world has been hot too hot with fever inside and the smell of something wrong with him on the out. The wound smells different. The pus smells like blood and the blood smells sour and he only really smells it when the wind rustled through the trees around him and carries it up to his nose. It’s the second time he has lied there, waiting and wishing that he could just do it himself—just off himself like the fucking coward that he is, that he could just go to the window and climb up onto the chest beneath it and jump down into the bailey until his back snapped like the Stark boy’s had but the Stark boy hadn’t died so he probably would have lived through the fall too and then what would happen if Gregor came he wouldn’t be able to run and he could only run if he lived, could only fight if he lived, but fighting hadn’t done any good and you can’t fight fire while it’s melting your skin off your face.

He’s getting them mixed up. The first time and the second. Getting them mixed up.  Losing his mind and getting them mixed up. They don’t even bloody look the same, don’t even look act talk the same.

Gentle mother, she had sung as if the mother had ever been a gift of mercy. You don’t deserve. Doesn’t deserve. Doesn’t deserve a quick death. If he had he’d have died when he was seven. He should have. He thinks about that more than he should. Should have died when he was seven. No one likes him, no one wants him around. Seven hells he barely wants himself around. 

You’ll be glad of me when when what when I can’t stop Joff from beating you and can’t keep them from marrying you to the bloody imp? You’ll be glad of me when I take you to your mother just in time for her to die? Can’t he do anything bloody right?

Can’t even die properly with a sword in hand. Dies before Gregor, killed by a bad wound. Don’t deserve the gift of mercy.  Don’t deserve the gift of quietly bleeding our under a tree by the Trident, only listening to the not quite quiet of the only fucking peaceful corner of the fucking riverlands. 

He wants quiet. Wants quiet and dark and cool and fuck he shouldn’t want his mother but he does even if he can’t remember her face, and when he does it starts to melt off like his and that’s not his mother the fire isn’t his mother his mother is a font of mercy, save your sons from war we fuck her voice was thinking and quivering. Thin and scared and quivering and maybe that had been all right because he was scared too scared because she looked like his mother his mother had had big blue eyes too.

Save our sons, save our sons from war but every second with Gregor had been a war. And he had lost it, hadn’t he? Lost the war before he’s even really had the chance to fight it.

Should have just jumped when he was seven. Should dig out his fucking dagger and cut his leg open but his arms are too heavy and he has always been a coward. Maybe wild dogs would find his body. He has always liked dogs. Dogs don’t mind the way he looks, don’t look away from you because you weren’t supposed to survive your brother. They can eat his fucking entrails and that’ll be a good bleeding use for them, a good fucking use and she can’t be here, she can’t be here, and yet he keeps hearing that fucking gentle mother font of mercy, hummed and wordless and bouncing off the trees not bouncing around his head. She can’t be here, but he sees her on the other side if the river.

She’s gone bald and has brown eyes and isn’t her at all she’s an old man, old and sad and surprised to see him dying there. He wishes he’d just go and let him get on with it.

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He feels it all at once—the hands on his arms gripping him so tightly that even if he’d tried to rip away, he wouldn’t be able, the jolt of shock that works its way up his spine, the tinny taste of fear in his mouth, his hair coming loose as they tug his bull’s head helm from his head.

"What’ve we got here?" The man’s voice is nasal, and leery as the hands on his arms whirl Gendry around and there’s a sword at his throat.  "What’s your name, boy?"

"I’m no one," Gendry says before he realizes how stupid that is to say.  He sees stars and he’s on the ground, hot, stinging pain flashing from his cheek across his face and then there’s a boot in his stomach and he cries out.

"Doesn’t bloody matter what his name is?  Ser doesn’t care.  I like this helm. I’d chase down those bloody brothers like an angry bull."

"Don’t be a buggering fool, Clem.  Bulls charge at red, not at whatever fucking color they wear.  Get this one inside."

Stupid, Gendry thinks, and it’s in Arya’s voice.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  

It’s pitch-black in the storehouse, and Gendry’s glad of that because his eyes are stinging and he feels like even the faintest flicker of light will make his head throb.  They didn’t need to hit him in the face like that.  He wasn’t going to cause any trouble.  He never needed to cause trouble—trouble always found him.

He hadn’t asked to be sent to the bloody Night’s Watch, he hadn’t done anything to make the king come after him, and he certainly wasn’t going to do anything now, and he was sure it wouldn’t make a difference in the end.  In the end, he’d probably end up dead just because that was the sort of luck he had.

Stupid, he thinks to himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He hopes that she got out all right—her and Hot Pie and Lommy and Weasel.  All of them.  He hopes they have the good sense to run as far and as fast as they can.  The way that everyone always does.  At least this time, they weren’t running from him, even if he was the one getting left behind.  It’s all right, though.  It’s all right, he tells himself as he runs his hand along his cheek and winces because it hurts and he knows he shouldn’t touch it but he’d always been the type to press his bruises.  It’s all right this time because they weren’t throwing him away like his mum, or like Master Mott.  They’re doing what they need to do to survive.

And he almost laughs because Arya’s the only one of them who has any sense and without him she’ll be hard pressed to keep the other two from doing something stupid.  They should have gone off on their own ages ago.  Maybe then he wouldn’t have gone and gotten himself caught like somestupid idiot. 

He frowns. He doesn’t like thinking of them without him. Not because he is scared of what’ll come next—though gods, bleeding hells—but they are off without him. It’s foolish, hour knows. It’s not like they are having a great lark of a time without him, laughing and singing and dancing. They’ll be hungry and nervous and scared and all sorts of other things but they’ll be doing it without him. Everyone always does things without him, when he’d been a boy, when he’d been at Mott’s and now…what was it about him that was so unwantable? He wasn’t mean, or stupid. A little gruff sometimes, but so was everyone else and just when he’d started to feel like he belonged he’d gone and gotten himself ripped away from it all again.

Maybe he is doomed to be alone. Not like it’ll be anything new, of course. He’s always been alone. But for a little while at least he’d hoped…

He wonders what’ll happen to him now.

Maybe they’ll beat him again, or maybe they’ll kill him, or maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll learn that he’s a smith and too valuable to hurt.  Or maybe they’ll send him back to King’s Landing to the goldcloaks.  He almost wouldn’t mind that—dying in King’s Landing.  Better than dying in the middle of nowhere all on his own.  At least he knows the city, knows—

The door to the storehouse opens again and in the darkness he sees the outlines of two people being thrust inside—two small people, one fat, one skinny.

"Gendry?" 

It’s strange that he feels it all at once—his heart swelling and his stomach sinking and his throat constricting all at once.  

"Arry?" he calls quietly, his voice raspier than it should be.  

She feels her way towards him in the dark and a moment later she’s got her arms around him.  She’s shaking.

"They killed Lommy," he hears Hot Pie say, and feels Hot Pie reach over and pat him on the shoulder.  "And Weasel ran off."

"We were trying to rescue you," Arya says.  She’s let go of him now.  She’s still shaking.  "We were going to save you.  What did you go and get yourself captured for, you stupid?"

Gendry just sits there numbly and he can’t even think of what to say.  But Arya doesn’t expect a reply. She just sits down on the ground next to him and tucks her knees up under her chin and wraps her arms around her legs and stares off into nowhere and he knows that she’s just as numb as him.

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You should have saved him. He prayed to you all the time.


Her voice echoes through the trees, echoes through rings of white and red and sap and resin and water and bone until it almost doesn’t sound like her anymore. But it is her. It is. Maybe her voice is distorted by grief, or maybe it’s that she is older than when he has last seen her. I’m older too, he thinks.I’m older. I’m too old. I’m not old enough. He doesn’t remember how old he is. The trees will remember, but Bran can’t tell anymore.


You should have saved him. He prayed to you all the time.


When had she said that? Was that when he was in the cave, or was it when he’d still been at Winterfell? He can’t tell. It gets hard to shift between memories sometimes. So many memories of thousands of years, thousands of long-faced angry grey-eyed girls who shout at him for one reason or another, for one more thing he couldn’t have changes even if he had been alive while they prayed. But this one sticks out because this one is Arya.


You should have saved him. He prayed to you all the time.


He didn’t pray to me—what could I have done? Bran thinks, and he wants to cry because even if he could have done something, he couldn’t have seen the steps of the Great Sept. He had no eyes there. He couldn’t have just done anything to save his father. But what was the point of being a greenseer if he can’t save his family?

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she begins as a little bird, small and blue or maybe yellow or maybe brown he can’t tell. she’s iridescent. changing color constantly as she changes song. one second she’s green and declares that she only loves joffrey, then she’s yellow and she’s loyal to the king, then she’s red and her mother is a traitor, then she’s orange and her brother’s got a wolf’s head. a boy with the head of a wolf or a wolf with the head of a boy and they’re chanting chanting chanting about the king in the north and the little sister’s knocked out and thrown across stranger’s neck as he rides as far and fast as he can to get away from the fucking fire because they’re burning everything, the tents, the weapons, the river, the men, the here comes the king in the north the king in the north, here comes the king’s’s pointing his crossbow at her, pointing it at her and she’s crying and changing from blue to yellow to white with fear as tears stream down her cheeks but none of her little songs are working he can’t hear them or if he can he doesn’t care. the king doesn’t like songs. he never has. he’d always tell them to stop singing when they tried to put him to bed with a lullaby. he doesn’t like her songs now, and adds his own harmony to them, the ripping of a boddice and the shriek of fear and a gasp when she’d seen him there drunk. he’d expected her to flee. she never did though. not from him. no matter what he said or did, she didn’t flee. she even looked him in the face sometimes, and her songs stopped being songs but became questions, words, spoken, to him, to no one else, but she wasn’t singing now, he wanted a song, wanted a song not the twittering of birds he wants a bloody song but she’s far away he hopes she shat on the imp’s head as she fled her cage. he wonders where her new cage is, or maybe she is one of these little birds sitting in the tree over head, twittering and shitting away as he lies here dying. they’re enough colors to be her, blue, and brown, and red, and white. and the song’s not quite so different. not quite so—

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Devan was thirteen when he became the eldest. 

He wasn’t supposed to be the eldest.  He was supposed to be somewhere in the middle, somewhere far behind Dale, and Allard, and Matthos, and Maric.  He was supposed to be near enough to nothing.  He’d liked that.  There was nothing to be ashamed of in that, and it felt safer, somehow, like any mistake he made mattered less, that the only responsibility he’d had was to be a friend to Shireen, and to make her smile when Patchface could not, to be a brother to she who had never had brothers.

Devan knew what brothers were like.  He had good brothers, too.  Good men, his mother had always said, who remembered what it was to be poor, to have nothing, and who rose through the ashes of a burned and broken King’s Landing to be the sons of a knight.  Devan had only ever been the son of a knight, but he heard Dale and Allard talking of when they had been hungry, when they had been frightened, when father hadn’t come home for ages and ages and through them he remembered what wasn’t in his own memory.

He was never meant to be a lord.  A knight, well, that was to be expected, the very best that the fourth son of a landed knight could hope to attain.  But his father was now the Hand of the King and he, Devan, was his heir, the heir to the Rainwood and squire to King Stannis.  And to think that in another life, he was meant to be a smuggler’s boy, a sailor if he was lucky, or worse if he wasn’t.  But now he learned reading and writing with the king’s own daughter.  And men told him he should be glad of his good fortune.

Edric Storm had called that luck, that he would then inherit his father’s keep one day, and Edric would never inherit anything for he was baseborn.  But Devan didn’t call that luck. 

Devan didn’t want to be Lord of the Rainwood if it meant he’d never hear Matthos’ laugh again. 

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“Come on!” Arya whines at him.  He’s taking forever, and it’s not like they’ve got that much time.  She knows that her father doesn’t like it when she goes away from the king’s column for too long and the longer she’s off, the more likely it will be that Jory will come after her and then she’ll get into trouble.

“I’m coming!” Mycah shouts back.  His voice cracks, the way that Jon’s did last year and it makes him sound scared.  He mutters a curse under his breath—Mycah’s always cursing—but Arya doesn’t laugh.  Jon hadn’t liked it when Theon Greyjoy had laughed at his breaking voice, even though none of them had laughed when Theon’s voice had broken a few years before that.  But Mycah always looks nervous when his voice breaks around Arya, as if expecting her to laugh the way the butcher does.  

“Well, come faster,” Arya calls.  Her hands are on her hips the way that her mother’s sometimes are when she caught Bran at climbing.  She chews her lip for a moment and takes them off her hips again.  However mother wanted Bran to stop climbing, she was sure that she wouldn’t have wanted him to stop climbing the way he did.  She hopes he’ll wake up soon.  She asks her father every day if there are riders with news of Bran, but there’s never anything.  

“I don’t want to fall in,” Mycah says.  He’s reached her finally, but he’s standing on a mushy part of the…is this an island? Does it count as an island if it’s surrounded by mud?  If it’s not, what is it called?  Arya’s never seen an island before—she’s only ever been in Winterfell—but she’s never heard what you call the bits of land that aren’t soggy in a marsh.  She looks down at her own feet.  

Mud is splattered all over her boots and she’s sure that Sansa will roll her eyes when she sees them. And it’s true—she can easily wipe the mud off the leather, but that won’t help the mud that’s caked along the hem of her skirts.  She makes a face and sighs and prepares herself for the stern words that Septa Mordane will have for her tonight, even if they are hours off.  

“Well,” she says, “I don’t think there’s avoiding the mud.”

“Probably not,” Mycah agrees.  “But still. I don’t fancy being caked in it. Bryer will be angry with me.” Bryer’s always angry with him. Bryer seems like an angry butcher. Arya’s glad that she can get Mycah away from Bryer for a few hours.  

She nods and turns to look out over the swamp.  It’s so…well it’s unlike anything she’s ever seen before.  She’s played along the rivers in the wolfswood before, and she’s gone swimming in the godswood of Winterfell, but the water there never…glubs the way the water of the swamp does.  It’s thick with floating dirt and seems to move slower than water should.  Even the plants are different…browner somehow in their green.  And wetter.  Much wetter than plants should be.  

Arya grabs hold of some reeds and uses them to pull herself along the edge of the water until she’s reached the next little island.  Mycah follows her.

“I can’t believe people even live here,” he says.  “Can you imagine living here?  In the muck? All day?”

“Pigs live in the muck all day.  They seem to enjoy it,” Arya said.

“Yeah, but they’re pigs, not humans.”

“So long as they’re happy.”

In truth she can’t imagine living here.  She can’t really imagine living anywhere that’s not Winterfell.  Even in her mind, King’s Landing—when they get there—will just be Winterfell, only warmer and maybe a little redder.  She knows, of course, that the Red Keep won’t be like Winterfell, but all the same…

“People live everywhere. That’s what Maester Luwin says. They live in mountains, and deserts, and even the lands beyond the Wall.  Why wouldn’t they live in a swamp?”

“I don’t know,” Mycah says quickly.  “I just can’t imagine living somewhere where you couldn’t live in a proper house.”

“Who says they don’t have proper houses here?” Arya demanded.

“Everyone!” Mycah yelps, his voice cracking again.  “Everyone says they live in weird mudholes here in the Neck.  And even the castle’s strange and floats about and no one knows where it is.”

“That’s stupid,” Arya says. “I’m sure they live in houses.  And besides, the lord of the Neck is one of my father’s lords bannermen.  Are you saying that my father couldn’t find him if he wanted to?”

“Of course not, m’lady,” Mycah mutters, “Just that…” He goes very still and grabs her wrist, his eyes on something over her shoulder.   “Stay still.”

“What is it?” Arya asks, not moving.

“There’s a lizard lion.”

“A lizard lion!” her head snaps around and she sees it—big and green and scaly and staring at them. Unfortunately, when she moves, Mycah flails and he falls into the mud.

“Help!” he panics, “Help!  Help I can’t swim!”

“Don’t flail like that!” Arya shouts at him.  “You’ll make it worse.  Stay still. I’m coming.”

And she jumps into the mud, wading towards him.  The water’s not even that deep, but Mycah still hasn’t managed to get to his feet, and she remembers Jon helping her learn to swim and telling her that the important bit’s not flailing around and tiring yourself.  “Any idiot can drown in half an inch of water,” he had told her, “if they don’t know how to keep their face out of it.”  She grabs Mycah by the shoulders and tugs him towards the island. She looks around as she does.  The lizard lion is still watching them, but he seems amused.  Can lizard lions look amused?  Sometimes Nymeria looks amused when Arya’s trying to brush mud out of her fur, but lizard lions are different than direwolves.  It does seem like it’s taking pity on them though, because it’s swimming away.

“Stop panicking,” she tells him, “it’s going away and I’ll get you out.”  And she does.  Not without a lot of effort, and she’s fairly certain she’s ripped her dress on top of getting it all muddy, but she doesn’t care at all.  She and Mycah are sitting on the island now, panting and laughing and covered completely in muck, but smiling and happy and alive and not eaten by a lizard lion.

“Thanks,” Mycah says after a few minutes, when he’s stopped gasping for air.  “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

“You wouldn’t be, stupid,” she responds, elbowing him.  “You’d just be a lot wetter and probably have swallowed more mud.”

Mycah laughs.  “Yeah, well…” he looks around then groans.  “Bryer’s going to be awful about it,” he picks his tunic away with two fingers.  “And I bet your father will have me hanged.”

“No he won’t.  I won’t let him,” Arya says fiercely.  

“He’s the King’s Hand. I bet he can do what he likes,” Mycah retorts.

Arya chews her lip and grimaces because there had been mud on her lip that’s now in her mouth.  Her father’s never been cruel, though.  Never. He’s always listened to her, and let her explain everything.  And besides, it’s not like she’s never been covered in mud before now.  She definitely has been and he hasn’t minded. Though she’s never had mud in her hair before…He is the King’s Hand now, and spends all his time with King Robert. He hasn’t seemed different, but maybe things are different the way that Sansa always says they are, even if none of that should matter.  He’s still her father first, isn’t he?

She picks at her dress too and it makes a wet squishy sound under her fingers, water oozing from the fabric.  

That’s when she sees them. Bright purple flowers along the edge of the island—purple like she’s never seen before, deep and rich and lovely, with weird green spots on their petals. She smiles and reaches down and picks one.  Then another, and another and before long her hands are full of purple flowers.

Mycah groans.  “Do you have to be such a girl?  They’re just flowers.”

“They’re not just flowers, stupid.  They’re for my father.”  Her father will love them.  He’s always loved flowers, and he’s always loved anything that Arya brings back to him, and he’s always seemed so gloomy lately.  She’s sure they’ll put a smile on his face.

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it is the third night in a row that his little wife’s eyes are red and puffy when she joins him in their solar for breakfast.  her face is painted, and he can see no blotching on her cheeks, but the black around her eyes cannot quite cover the red, and there’s no paint in the world to pale the pink that the tears left in the whites of her eyes.  

three nights.  three nights of dreaming, of nightmares of her father, of her mother and brother, three nights where he can do nothing.

what could i possibly do? he wonders.  i cannot reawaken the dead.  briefly, he amused himself with the thought of his father’s and joffrey’s faces if ned stark’s severed head were to appear and berate them for all that they had done to sansa.  but would he berate me as well?  the smile slides from his face.

she picks at her food, and barely talks at all, and by the time that their meal has ended, she is cool, and distant.  and why should she not be? what has house lannister done that has not brought her the deepest misery? it was not me, but why should that matter? 

he had tried to be kind to her.  always kind.  he knew all too well what joffrey could be.  jaime was the only one who was ever kind to me.  even if he…

he remembers jaime’s face after tysha, the nervousness in his green eyes whenever he looked at tyrion, as if afraid that tyrion would hate him.  “i could never hate you, brother,” he had said, though there were times when he’d cried himself to sleep where he almost didn’t believe it.  jaime had done his best to make tyrion forget, distracting him with new books, and fine clothes, and sneaking him cakes over breakfast even though he knew that their lord father and aunt genna would be furious over sweets at breakfast.

tyrion smiles, feeling the scar where his nose had once been stretch across his face.

the next morning, when sansa emerges from her chambers, her eyes rimmed with red, she stops short, staring at the breakfast table.  there are three lemon cakes sitting at the center of the plate, and her eyes flicker from them to him.

“good morning, sansa,” he says to her, raising a glass of juice to his lips.  

“good morning,” she replies.  slowly, she walks to the table, and sits down across from him.

slowly, her hands shaking, she slices herself some lemon cake, and places it on her plate.  she takes her fork in her hand and raises a bite-sized chunk of lemon cake to her lips.  the hint of a smile crosses her face as she chews.

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He first notices it while he’s pissing.  That Arry’s a little…off.

Arry’s always averts his eyes the same way, every time someone’s taking a piss.  It’s like he’s rolling his eyes, but they get stuck halfway through and determinedly not at you while you’re pissing.

Gendry’s never seen a boy act like that–not about pissing.  

He’s already sure that Arry’s not what he seems.  He’s not stupid.  He’s got that very nice little sword that he keeps with him all the time–the one that got him in trouble with Hot Pie and Lommy Greenhands before they’d even got ten miles out of the city.  And he talks…well, Gendry can’t place where he talks like he’s from.  He knows he’s heard that accent before, and that it’s definitely not from King’s Landing.  

Yes, there’s definitely something off about Arry.  

So Gendry watches him–watches him and realizes that if Arry always looks away from him while he’s pissing, he never sees Arry pissing.  

Maybe he’s tiny, Gendry thinks with an internal snort.  He’s been lucky–he’s never been small, but Arry’s just a boy, and Gendry’s a man grown.  Surely that’s not something to be embarrassed about.  His’ll grow.

Unless it won’t.

And Gendry’s eyes almost pop out of his head, because Arry always goes off to piss in the woods, sneaking away when no one is noticing, looking around him as if scared someone’ll follow him.  And why would he be scared of someone following him unless…unless…

He can’t be.  But at the same time, he has to be.  It’s the only thing that makes sense–that Arry’s a girl.

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She dreams of her father. Not her father–her father. Sansa’s father, not Alayne’s.

He is smiling at her, and sitting beneath a tree. It is summer, or spring perhaps–not that Sansa truly remembers spring. The sky is clear, the winds rustle through the leaves and masks the twittering of birds with a sound like the washing of waves.

It is the first time she has dreamed of him in a long while. She has dreamed of his…of where…with blood gushing and the sound of her own screaming ringing like a whistle in her head. But not her father sitting beneath a tree, Ice at his side not slicing through bone and sinew, smiling at her and holding out her hand. “Come sit with me, little bird.”

And how could Sansa say no? Not when her father asked it of her. So she sits at his side, and shifts the sword away, as far away as it will go, hoping he will not notice. If he notices she has moved the sword, then the spell will surely break, the sky will go dark, the birds will scream as he did and his head will depart his shoulders and spray her with blood.

She looks at him. There is something different about him now. His face is not so long, perhaps, or his voice is rougher, or his nose is larger. She cannot quite tell. She reaches out a trembling hand and takes his hand in hers. He squeezes it and covers it in his own hand, calloused but warm.

“I have missed you,” she blurts out. “Oh, father, I have missed you.” She looks up at him, his grey eyes sad.

“And I have missed you too, little bird,” he said. Had her father ever called her that? She cannot remember. She knows that the Hound had–a little bird winging her way down the serpentine steps, a little bird in a golden cage, singing a song not half-so-prettily as a bird from the Summer Isles. But her father? She cannot remember. He might have. Mightn’t he?

“I wish it had never happened.” There are tears in her voice now, try as she might to suppress them. “Joffrey was a monster, father, you were right to want to send me home. And Cersei was cruel.” Things are better now, of course. She fears no beatings, no cruel words or japes at her expense. She is clever as Alayne. Clever and bright and shining as she had once shine so long ago. But sitting here with her father…

She squeezes tears back into her eyes. She will not let them fall. She will not cry for father–not while he is here. Later, when she wakes, and he is gone again. But she will not open her eyes yet, not until the wave if misery is past.

“I tried to keep you safe,” he says, his voice rougher even than before, thick with his own sadness. “I wanted you safe, Sansa.”

She feels him squeeze her hand and she lifts her head and presses a closed-eyed kiss to his cheek. Surely her father'a skin was softer than this, wasn’t it? Surely it did not feel like leather beneath her lips?

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Stannis knows the taste of the sea.

He knows it well–the flavor of salt spray on his tongue when the wind kicked it up into the air, into his face as he stood and watched the ships in Shipbreaker’s bay. He knows the taste of brine filling his mouth when he’s thrown into the sea during a storm, knows the way it never truly leaves your mouth, not until you’ve absorbed it with bread or wine or something strong in flavor.

Stannis knows the taste of the sea, and Asha Greyjoy tastes of the sea, spread before him, her slit dripping beneath his tongue. She tastes of the sea, and sounds like it too, her moans like the wind echoing through the halls of Dragonstone, her body arching like a wave as his tongue circles around the nub just above the slit, as his fingers delve into her and curl the way she’d told him to curl them.

She’s a storm on the sea, and when she cries out his name, and begs him for more, she rocks into him and away from him all at once as a ship might.

An ignorant captain would be thrown overboard, but he’s no ignorant captain–not Stannis Baratheon. He had been a master of ships, and now he’s a king, and it won’t be Asha Greyjoy who throws him overboard. He is the master of the sea, not her.

He licks her nearly dry, and when she lies there, melting into his bed, she is the calm after the storm as well, peaceful, breathing slowly, with the faint scent of salt in the air.

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“What does that mean?” Gilly asks him.  He’s reading one of his books again, and she wonders how it is that he doesn’t sneeze all the time.  She sneezes whenever he opens them.  They are so covered in dust.

“What?”

“Contagious.”

Sam blinks at her.  Then he smiles.  “It means that if Dalla’s boy is sick, his sickness won’t pass to your boy.”  

“Contagious?”

“Contagious.”

“There’s a word for that.”

“There’s a word for most everything, really.  Sometimes more than one.  Sometimes more than you need.”  He smiles up at her.  “Is Dalla’s son feeling any better?”

It wasn’t Dalla’s boy that was ailing, but Gilly doesn’t say that to Sam.  She hasn’t told anyone.  Bad enough that everyone thinks that her boy’s an abomination.  

“A little.”

“It’s good to know your son will be safe though,” Sam says, smiling.  “Though it says here it’s not fatal in babies.  If he were a bit older…”

Gilly forces a smile.  “My boy’s just lucky I guess.  A compress and honey?”

“Should make Dalla’s son feel better nice and soon.”  

Gilly nods and turns goes away.  When she’s out of the dusty library, she breaks into a run, wondering how she’ll convince Hobb to give her honey for her abomination.

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She looks like her mother.  Her hair’s darker, yes, but the bone structure’s too similar not to be striking.  And the eyes.  They have the same clear blue eyes.  

Walda remembers Lady Catelyn.  She hadn’t spoken with her much–everything at Roslin’s wedding had happened so fast, and Roose had sat between them at the long table so they’d barely spoken.  She’d seemed dignified in her grief, and Walda could understand how that alone would have infuriated her grandfather.  He didn’t want dignified grief, he wanted defiance, and the Starks weren’t defiant until  the end.  “Tails between their legs,” he’d said, with disgust.

And Sansa looks like her–down to the grief.  She is uncomfortable here, and Walda can understand that, at least.  Walda had been uncomfortable when she’d first arrived as well, especially with Ramsay breathing down her neck.  She is glad that she is going to give Roose a son.  His bastard can keep Winterfell and its ghosts, her son would have the Dreadfort.

She’s not yet seen the Dreadfort.  Only it’s products.  Ramsay, of course, who is both stupid and cruel, Myranda, also stupid, also cruel, and his man Reek who had once been Theon Turncloak, too tortured to be truly called alive.  

She can understand why Lady Sansa would say that it was the people who were strange.  Ramsay was a far cry from Robb Stark, that was to be sure.

She’d watched them parade his wolf’s head corpse from the window near Roslin’s bedchamber, the singers playing loudly so Lord Edmure couldn’t hear what was going on outside.  She wondered if Roose had hired singers for the wedding.  Lord Baelish had said that Lady Sansa loved songs.  She should have singers at her wedding, at least, especially if it would distract her from what was about to happen.

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It is dark when they leave–pitch black, though once the sky would have been bright at this time.  Sansa remembers mornings of her youth, when days were longer than nights, and warm, and filled with love and her father’s voice–her true father.  Lord Eddard Stark.  Not…not…

She shudders, and wraps her cloak a little more tightly around her.  They ride off into the night, into the snow, into starvation, but if they get far enough…Podrick has promised that they’ll be safe–that she’ll be safe.  Sansa doesn’t know what safety is anymore, but there’s an earnestness to Podrick that she believes.  

She hears the howling of wolves in the distance, and it makes her heart beat faster.  I am not a falcon, not a bird, she thinks, I am a wolf.  I am as strong as Lady–as brave.

She wishes Lady were with her now.  She wonders how big her direwolf would have been, had Joffrey and Cersei not insisted that she be killed in Nymeria’s stead.  When she was little, she’d learned that direwolves could grow to be the size of horses.  I wish you were here, she thinks.  

The sun rises after what feels like several hours, and the howling doesn’t cease, it gets louder and louder as they push on through the snow.  “Nearly there, my lady,” Podrick whispers.  

“How will you know when we’re there?” she asks.  But he doesn’t answer.  He’s never been one for many words, Podrick Payne.  They ride on, and Sansa looks up at the sky.  It is grey today.  Once, people had told her her eyes looked like the sky on a summer’s day, but she’s not seen blue skies in months.  The clouds are heavy and grey, like iron, like her father’s eyes, and Jon Snow’s, and Arya’s.

Her horse stops and makes a noise of complaint, beginning to back away.  “Easy there,” Podrick says, leaning over in his saddle and grabbing the reins from her hands.  He holds onto the horse tightly, and Sansa strokes the beast’s neck.  “We’re close,” he says.  “My Lady will be here soon. I mean Ser will be.  My Lady’s a Ser…” his voice trails away.

They are ringed by wolves, and Sansa sits up a little straighter in her saddle, her heart pounding in her throat.  These ones aren’t so big–regular wolves.  But they are eyeing her horse, eying her as if she’s dinner, and her house may have taken the direwolf as their sigil, but that doesn’t mean that she could command them not to eat her.  To have come all this way, she thinks sadly.  

But they all turn tail suddenly, and sit down, waiting, and a moment later, a cloaked figure comes into the clearing.  Whoever it is is small–shorter than Sansa, and he is resting his hand on the hilt of a sword.  Sansa can’t see his face–there’s a hood obscuring it. 

“They won’t hurt you, Sansa,” says a voice.  It’s not a man’s voice at all–but a girl’s.  Sansa blinks down at the figure.  The girl is close now.  “They just keep men away when we don’t want them here.”  There’s something familiar in her voice.  Why is her voice familiar?  Sansa hasn’t known girls this age in years.

She removes her hood, and Sansa gasps in shock.  She feels her body heaving, her breath hot coming out of her, cold coming in, but she none of that matters, because she knows this face–knows it well.  “Arya?  You’re alive?”

She practically falls from her horse as she climbs down, and a moment later her sister is in her arms–her sister, alive, and whole, and there, in the woods, with a pack of wolves.  Arya’s arms are tight around her as well, and they are both trembling.  “I’m alive,” Arya’s muttering into Sansa’s neck.  “I’m alive, and so are you.” 

When they break apart, there are tears on Sansa’s face.  She rubs them away roughly, before turning to look at her sister again.  “I thought you were dead,” she says.  “We all did.”

Arya shakes her head.  “Not dead,” is all she can say.  Her eyes are sparkling.

Sansa wipes away more tears.  “I don’t suppose Bran and Rickon are secretly alive as well?”

And a smile crosses Arya’s face–a grin that doesn’t look horsey at all.  It’s beautiful.

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It’s not until after she’s left the fat black brother that Arya thinks that she should have asked after Jon.  He might’ve known.  Might have known Jon.  He might even have been his friend.

But Cat of the Canals doesn’t know a Jon Snow.  She doesn’t own a sword he once gave her called Needle.  Cat of the Canals doesn’t have any brothers at all.

She takes a deep breath, the salty air stinging her tongue.  

She doesn’t know Jon Snow.  Wouldn’t know to ask after him.  So why does the breeze of the canal ruffling through her hair feel like his fingers?  Why does she hear him laugh and call her little sister?

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“now remember–”

“i know, grandmother.”

“king robert’s–”

“you’ve told me a hundred times.”  margaery didn’t need to hear again how she was to do her best to remind king robert of lyanna stark.  she didn’t need to hear again that he was a drunken old lecher, and that she wasn’t to let him take her to bed by any means–not until he’d set aside queen cersei and wed her.  she knew all of this.  she did not need to hear it again.

she was seven and ten, now.  highgarden’s finest rose, she’d heard the men call her.  it sent a shiver of excitement through her when she thought of it.  she knew she was beautiful.  they were all beautiful–her and loras and garlan and willas.  all lovely roses of highgarden.  but she was the finest rose.  she liked that well.

it was autumn now.  men japed that winter was finally coming, after the long summer, and that lord stark had brought it down with him from the north, as had his son and heir when he’d come to visit.  robb stark had ridden south less than a month before to visit with his father and discuss the winter rationing.

he was a fine young man himself.  but she knew she should not notice that.  she was for king robert, though of course she could not say that.  all the same, it was hard not to notice a young man with russet curls and blue eyes that shone like the mander on a summer’s day.  she knew she should not want to talk to him, but she did.

besides–what harm could come of it, her befriending the son of the king’s hand.  surely being in favor with house stark would only rise her in the king’s esteem.

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he is cold at night as their ship sails north.  he doesn’t admit it, but she can tell.  his cloak is too thin.  he may be the lord’s chosen, but he does not have the lord’s warmth flowing through his veins.  

he hardly talks, her king.  he stares out at the sea, his eyes bluer than the iron cloud skies.  they are like brilliant crystals, clear, and full of purpose as he watches the sea, looks for a coastline, or a sign of the Wall looming large off the bow.

he is cold at night, and hardly talks, but when he comes to her bed, he finds warmth.  she warms him, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll whisper words to her that are lost to the creaking of the ship.  

he is cold, her king, but she is warm enough for both of them.

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The wind whips at her face and not for the first time, and beats the skin there raw.  Her lips are chapped, and her eyelashes are practically frozen together.  But for all her discomfort, she is not unhappy.  I am going home, she thinks fiercely.  Home.

Harry’s knights surround her, though she is grateful he is not nearby.  There are thousands of them, all pouring towards Moat Cailin, all ready to ride for her, for Lord Eddard’s Daughter, the one who would be like a granddaughter to Jon Arryn, and would have been his daughter too, had Sweetrobin lived.  Do not think of it, she thinks to herself.  Don’t.  And she pushes Sweetrobin, pale and still from her mind once again, and focuses on the cold.

It is bitterly cold.  And she is glad of her fur-lined cloak, though she wishes that the fur were a little thicker so that she could bury her face into it.  For now, try as she might, she can’t quite cover any skin past her chin.

“If you’re cold, my lady,” says a rider, removing the fur lining from the edge of his own cloak and passing it to her.

“That’s very gallant, but you’ll catch cold,” she says.

“I’ve got a beard to keep me warm,” he says, offering a smile.  There’s something in his voice.  A slight drawl that she’s not heard before, or perhaps, not heard recently.  He’s still holding the lining, and she accepts it, wrapping it around her neck.

“Thank you, ser,” she says to him. She doesn’t see a shield, or even a sigil.  She doesn’t know what house he serves.  

He bows in his saddle.  He’s blonde, the way Harry is, and blue eyed, the way Harry is, but there’s something gaunt to his face, or maybe his eyes.  It’s like whatever light she sees in those blue…blue or purple, perhaps.  She can’t tell in the grey light.  The light of his eyes seems to shine from somewhere sad, dark.

“What is your name, ser?” she asks.

“Ned, my lady.”  She hears herself gasp, but if he notices, he doesn’t comment upon it.

“And whom do you serve, Ser Ned?” she asks.

His eyes dart sideways, and she sees uneasiness on his face.  She’s caught him in some guise, and she clutches the reins of her horse even more tightly, just in case.  They are surrounded–no ill can befall her.

“I…I serve myself, my lady,” he says quietly.  There is definitely a drawl to his voice, almost like Prince Oberyn’s…

“Where do you come from?” she asks.

“Starfall,” he says, and nudges his horse even closer to her, and his face is suddenly urgent.  “My lady, I am Lord Edric Dayne of Starfall.”

“Are you?” she asks.  He might well be lying.  She’s never met a Dayne before, though she has heard of Ser Arthur, the Sword of the Morning, whom her father slew in single combat.  But she does not even know what Ser Arthur looked like, and could not have told whether Edric…Ned bore his resemblance.  Besides, she was a Stark of Winterfell, for all that she did not have Ned Stark’s look.

“You won’t remember me,” he says, and she sees a flush rising along the top of his golden beard.  “But I…I saw you once.  Many years ago.  In King’s Landing.  Ser Loras Tyrell gave you a red rose after winning a joust.”

Her eyes widen.  Even Ser Loras hadn’t remembered that, but Edric Dayne did.

“And why were you there?” she asks.  

“I was serving as squire to Lord Beric Dondarrion.”  

And suddenly, vividly, Sansa remembers a day at court during which her father sent Lord Beric into the riverlands.  He’d had a squire, a boy of near Sansa’s age, with blonde hair.  

“Have you been in the riverlands this whole time?” she asks.  “Did you join our numbers when we reached the Trident?”  He inclined his head.  “Why?”

He doesn’t respond immediately.  Instead he looks over Sansa’s shoulder.  She sees an archer lock eyes with him, then look away.  Sansa’s hands on the reins of her horse tighten.

“Lady Sansa.”  Ned Dayne is very close to her now, and his voice even more serious than it had been before.  “I cannot explain it all now.  I will, I promise.  I’ll simply ask that you stay close to me.  It may seem safe now, but it’s not.  I swore an oath to your father to help keep King Robert’s peace.  I intend to do so.”

“King Robert is dead,” Sansa says.

“Not all that’s dead stays dead,” he says.  “And if someone dies, does that mean everything it he stood for dies with him?”

Sansa thought of her father–her true father, Lord Eddard Stark.  He’d been an honorable man, and a good one.  Honorable men are so easy to manipulate, Alayne.  Trust no one.

But she can’t help but trust him.  She knows she shouldn’t, Lord Petyr would be wroth with her if he knew.  But he remembers that red rose.

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when sansa leaves the godswood and walks right into podrick, her heart stops for a moment.  no, she thinks, panicked.  he’s lord tyrion’s squire.  he’ll tell.  he’ll tell.

“beg pardon my lady,” he says, a hand extending to catch her arm and keep her from falling.  “i didn’t expect to see you here.”  he shuffles his feet and looks down at them.  sansa follows his gaze.  he’s quite tall.  he’s got long legs too.  

“i was praying,” she says, parroting out the same lie she tells them all.  please, she thinks, let ser dontos hear us talking.  let him wait before he leaves.

“of course,” he says, “they’re your gods.  your lord fath–gods.  your lord gods.  your old gods.”  his face is practically purple by the time he’s done speaking.

“yes,” she says gently.  “what are you doing here, podrick?”

“it’s a good place to be alone,” he mumbles. “no one talks to you in the godswood.”

“true enough,” she says quietly.  “well…i’ll keep your secret, if you keep mine.”

he looks up at her and smiles hopefully.  he’s a sweet boy, she thinks.  so unlike ser ilyn…

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Shireen wakes before sunlight every morning here.  She didn’t used to.  When she was on Dragonstone, or in King’s Landing, she’d wake with the sun, but as the days grow shorter, the sun rises later, and later.

Her skin is dry–the parts that aren’t stone, anyway, and she rubs ointment into it in the dark, before wrapping herself in her cloak and slipping outside into the dark.

Her mother always tells her that the night is dark, and full of terrors, but Shireen Baratheon is unafraid.  Not here.  Not at the Wall.  

She knows the men here talk of dead things coming alive again, but that doesn’t scare her, for some reason.  It feels like something out of a story. 

No.  Not a story.  Out of legend.  

Maester Cressen used to say that legends came from the forgotten parts of history, mulled over and ruminated upon so that they didn’t feel like they should be real, but there was always some element of truth to them.  Florian might have loved his Jonquil; he might not have been a fool.  Symeon Star Eyes may have been blind, but the stars in his eyes were more like to be the brilliant blue of his pupils than sapphires.  The Night’s King may have loved a woman, but surely she was no corpse queen.

Shireen smiles to herself and went to the practice yard.  Snow is falling lightly, and it’s like stars falling from the skies to kiss her face.  It’s beautiful here.  Even if the wildlings do look at her strangely for her greyscale scars.  

“You’re awake early, Princess.”  

She looks over her shoulder.  The Lord Commander stands tall over her.  Shireen blushed.  He is handsome, with his long face and dark hair.  And not so much older than her.  He is older than Edric and Devan–they were boys.  He is a man grown.  

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says at last, suddenly glad of how cold it is.  Maybe he wouldn’t see her blushing.

“You should be inside,” he tells her, not ungently.  

“For the night is dark, and full of terrors?” Shireen suggests, and he frowns slightly.

“It’s cold at night, and your cloak is thin,” he says simply, and Shireen feels her heart swell.  

Jon Snow cared if she was cold, and there were stars falling from the sky.  She was living in a place of legend, and Shireen Baratheon couldn’t be happier.

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He sees their eyes.  Countless eyes, of countless gods, bleeding at him.  He bleeds with them.  He does not like the bleeding, does not like the feel of the blood-sap on his face.

He sees a man now.  He is tall, and pale, and his hair is light and he is smiling with Jon’s smile.  

“You have honor, my lady,” he whispers, and Bran sees her–a girl just Robb’s age, with hair like Arya’s and a face like Arya’s and a scowl like Arya’s.

“Is doing what’s right honorable?  It shouldn’t be.  It should be doing what’s right.  What should honor have to do with that?”  

The man looks taken aback.  He never knew Arya.  He’d not be taken aback if he’d known Arya.  But she’s not Arya.  She’s older.  Too old.

“You must have been afraid–that you would lose your tilt and you would be shamed.”

Can a man still be brave if he’s frightened?

“So cowardice is an excuse not to do the right thing?”

“That’s why you have honor, my lady.”

She wrinkles her nose at him.  “I think that’s stupid.”

He laughs, but he doesn’t sound as though he finds it funny.  “Are you not afraid of me?  I’m your prince.  I could tell the world your secret.”  He’s looming over her now, much taller, his face in shadow.  Bran doesn’t like that his face is in shadow.  Bran doesn’t like that he can’t see his eyes.  Only his lips curling upward in a smile like Jon’s.

“You won’t.  It’s not the right thing to do.” 

But her voice is like Arya’s, and he can hear the hidden fear there through his leaves.

That’s the only time a man can be brave.

The leaves rustle in the wind, or maybe that’s the laughter of the man, or the breath of the girl.

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He opens his eyes and he is in the south–far more south than ever he had been before.  He knows he is south, for there are no pine trees nearby–only barren branches of leaves that fell during autumn, leaving only the skeletal branches in their wake .

This is not my home, he thinks sadly.  He had hoped for Winterfell, a glimpse of father.  He had not expected the south.

He has fewer eyes in the south.  The First of Men cut down the eyes.  My blood.  My bones.  My eyes.  Fewer eyes, but still some.  Some, now.

It’s not his home, this land of rivers, but once, he’d had a mother who laughed here with her sister and brother.  He has seen glimpses of her, young and nervous through the godswood’s eyes.  But that was in his home–not in hers.  His home of wide moors and summer snows, not hers of rivers.

This is her home, not mine, he thinks when he sees her.  He should not.  She is dead.  Dead like Robb, and at peace at last.  Perhaps this is a dream.  Can Greenseers even dream?

She stands hooded, but he would know his mother anywhere–know her by her posture.  (”Stand up straight, Bran.  You will damage your back.”)  She stares at him, stares at him and he thinks he sees pale flesh, even if he doesn’t see her face.  I’m here, mother.  I’m alive.  I’m here.

But she does not hear him.  She thinks it’s the wind, like Theon.  It’s not my voice she hears, it’s never my voice they hear.  No matter how hard I try.

It’s not her voice he hears either when she does speak–a rasp so unlike his mother’s gentle laughter.  “String them up.”

He hears shouts, cries, the sound of rope creaking in the wind, but he cannot see it.  His eyes are on his mother, who is turning away from him, and descending the hill.  He watches her cloak billow around her, watches her press through gathered men, completely alone.

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He’s only ever waited for two things in his life, and one of them wasn’t worth waiting for.

He’s waited for his opportunity to kill Gregor, and that time passed him by not once but twice. He’d felt empty the first time he’d heard it—heard that Gregor’d been beheaded and poisoned. Elder Brother told him, and if he’d not been sworn to silence until he’d finished his graves, then he’d have told him that Gregor deserved much worse than poison and an axe to the neck. (“We do not seek vengeance, Brother Sandor. It only brings pain. Seek rather acceptance and forgiveness.” He’d accepted a long time ago, but he wouldn’t forgive—not that.)

The other was a dream. A dream of a little bird who sang her songs and dreamed of true knights, but somehow knew what a true knight was—better than the other bleeding fools in that red castle. He’d dreamed of her smiling at him, singing for him gladly, willingly, not with a blade to her throat.
In his dream she always understood that. Always understood that he’d been…not quite himself. Or too much himself. She always saw that he was afraid, that he hadn’t meant to but hadn’t been able to stop himself either. In his dream, she always knew that he was more than just the beast everyone saw.
That was a dream worth waiting for. More than killing Gregor. That was the dream he waited for now, as his shovel drove into the earth. Acceptance and forgiveness.

Maybe she’d accept him, and forgive him.

And if she did, maybe he could himself.

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I’m a stupid little girl who never learns, she thought.

She’d trusted Joffrey, and Cersei, and they’d given her her father’s head.

She’d trusted Margaery and Megga, and Elinor, and they’d none of them spoken to her after she’d been wed to Tyrion.  The Tyrells had made her a mule for their poison.

Lord Petyr had made her a mule for his poison—for Joffrey, for Robert…She’d trusted him.  Her father had trusted him, and what had become of him?  And was Sansa doomed to the same?

She’d trusted Myranda, and she’d been thrown over for Harry.  

There’d been no one she’d ever trusted who hadn’t betrayed her in some fashion—no one save the Hound, and he was dead.  That was what she’d heard—that the Hound was dead.  The Elder Brother had told her as much.

Mayhaps I should never trust anyone—except my own blood.  But Robb was dead.  Her parents were dead.  Bran and Rickon and Arya were dead, and even Jon Snow had been stabbed at the Wall.  And as for her husband, well…he may be dead as well.  No one knew where he was.  She hoped he wasn’t dead.  He’d been kind to her.

She sits quietly in the corner of the inn, watching as Mya argues with the innkeep.  He has her look—dark hair and blue eyes.  They could be siblings.  But he doesn’t seem to care about that.  He is insisting upon payment, or else they can find somewhere else to stay the night.  

Mya’s trustworthy, Sansa thinks.  Mya had helped her.  Mya was with her. Mya had been her friend—a true friend.  She’s King Robert’s bastard.  She was born to be my friend, Alayne had once thought.  

Mya’s glaring at the innkeep.  She’s tall.  So is he.  It’s the height, Sansa thinks mildly, that really does it.  Perhaps he’s King Robert’s bastard too.  King Robert had fought near here, after all.  He’d defeated Prince Rhaegar by the Trident.  And, after all, even her father had had a bastard born during the war.  

Someone slides into the bench across from her, and Sansa starts, reaching automatically into her sleeve for the knife Mya had given her before they’d left.  She’d never had to use it, didn’t know how to, didn’t think she wanted to.

“Little bird,” rasps a voice from a dream, and Sansa feels her eyes widen.  “Alone at an inn.”

“I’m not alone,” she whispers to him.

“More’s the better.  There’s men after you.  You need to get out of here.”

His face is in shadow beneath his hood, but it’s definitely him—definitely him.  Her heart swells.  She knows she should be afraid, but maybe some of Alayne’s bastard bravery has rubbed off on her, or maybe she remembers a kiss and a promise to bring her home, to keep her safe.

“Do you trust me?” he asks her so quietly she almost can’t hear him over the sounds of people talking.

“Yes,” she breathes, and he nods.

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Alayne stares at the hot coals in her hearth, long after Myranda’s faint snores fill the bedchamber they shared.  

“We’ll be like sisters.  Have you ever had a sister, Alayne?” 

“No.”

“Well, I’ll be like your sister.  Your older sister.  Would you like that?”  Margaery had been like Sansa Stark’s older sister, and Margaery hadn’t spoken to her once she’d been wed to Tyrion Lannister. He was kinder than Harry had been.  And more clever.  Harry was positively boring sometimes.  So predictable.  Perhaps her father was right that she’d be bored silly married to Willas Tyrell. 

Unable to sleep, Alayne climbs from her bed, careful not to disturb Myranda.  She crosses to the hearth and sits down in front of it.  

She stares at the hot coals.  They are glowing red and orange, the color her hair had once been.  She’d had such pretty hair.  Her mother had always loved to brush it by the firelight at home in Winterfell.  

The river was afire, but the fire was green, not red.  Green not red, green like life, but green bringing death.  The city stank of fear, even if Lord Tyrion’s chain and flames kept Stannis away from them.  Sansa had wanted Stannis to win.  Green like life, green like treason.

They pop and sizzle, and she’s grown accustomed to the smell of it.  They burn different woods here than they did elsewhere.  Aspen, which grows well in high mountains.  Not fir from the woods at home.  They fill the room with a different smoke.  Alayne knows the smell.  She’s known it all her life.  They burned it in Gulltown too, sometimes.  

But not in cookfires.  The cookfires had been kept away from the girls in the motherhouse, Alayne had decided.  No open flames, no burning flesh spitted and turning and roasting, now sound of dogs barking or Lady at her side to nibble pieces of meat from her finger.  Just the smell of aspen burning.  No cooked flesh here.  

His face was black and red on one side, and she could see bone in his jaw. “This is what your true knights do,” he had said, jabbing his finger at his face.  “Look at me.”  And she had.  Had his face cooked like the flesh at home? 

Alayne is more reckless than Sansa ever was.  More curious as well.  She stares at the hot coals for a moment and extends a hand to reach out for them, hovering just above the flames.  It’s hot.  Too hot.  It hurts and she’s not even touching it.  She pulls her hand away, and wonders what it would be like to have been held there while she screamed.

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when they were little, they played monsters and maidens.  she insisted on sometimes being the monster, and he had to be the maiden, though he refused to be a maiden since he was a boy.  so instead, he was just a boy, a sweet, innocent, goodhearted boy, and he’d pretend to be terrified of her when she roared at him.

she wasn’t nearly so terrifying as all that.  it was almost funny how she tried to be scary.  no one could be as frightening as gregor.

they never let gregor play with him.

sometimes, he thinks of her, but mostly he doesn’t.  he doesn’t like remembering her neck snapped too far when they’d found her at the foot of the stairs, and how he’d cried for days because she was the only one who didn’t think his scars looked monstrous at all.  she’d patted his good cheek and told him that he could never be a monster, and when she did, he almost believed her.

when he’s drunk, well and truly drunk, he thinks he hears her roaring and tries not to cry.  he feels the ghosts of her fingers on his good cheek, and a whisper in his ear that he couldn’t be a monster, he’s still not a monster, no matter how hard he tries.

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he looks at her with anger. she is not unused to this. men will often look at her in anger. it is their way–especially when they fight the truth of her lord of light.

he is a handsome man, in his way, ser davos. handsome, though anger does color his face when he looks at her. no–not anger. something else. something akin to hate. it is not hate, she thinks. men like davos do not hate. they think they hate, but truly they yearn to understand, and are drawn like moths to the flame of what it is they cannot comprehend.

like a moth to the flame. would that that moth would understand that the light came from her lord, not from her. but she does not think that ser davos understands that. he thinks that she is the flame, and in truth…he is captivated by it. captivated by her.

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it’s sometimes the only cool he gets–stripping off his tunic and his trousers to go to sleep.  after hours spent in the forge, sweat beading and dripping, beading and dripping, it’s a relief to feel the cool air of the stuffy room on his skin.  his muscles scream in exhaustion by the time he lies down and he is more than ready for sleep.

so when he feels her pinching him, he knows he just may kill her.  

he knows it’s her.  who else would it be?  who else would pinch to wake him up?  but when he opens his eyes, he sees her face and it’s long and serious and half in shadow, and he knows that she has her reasons.  she always has her reasons.

“please,” she whispers, and that’s it.  he sighs internally and pulls himself from his blankets and goes to find his clothes.  because whatever has arya stark waking him in the middle of the night has to be important.  she always has her reasons, and they are always good ones.

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mother sends her away. she sends her to riverrun, and edmure tully, to tie the riverlands to them again.  mother says that the time of targaryen marrying targaryen is done, and that it should have ended long before.  and aegon doesn’t realize his heart is breaking until he bids his sister farewell one misty morning as she rides north to the riverlands.  

“you won’t forget me?” she whispers as she holds him.  she is taller than he is in her heeled shoes.  her hair is refusing to stay in its net, curls springing loose because of the mist.

“never,” he breathes.  his voice catches in his throat and he hates it for doing that.  “and you?”

“oh brother,” she says seriously, and her eyes are bright with tears, “i shall always love you best of anyone in this world.”  

it’s probably not what she meant, he tells himself as she rides away.  but the words, he knows, will be a talisman for the rest of his days, to warm him now that the sun shines a little less brightly.

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this is madness, she thinks, but she does not care.  she cannot let herself care.  because to care would be to think better of her actions, and if she did that, then she wouldn’t go.

she prays–prays–that loras will not come after her right away.  she suspects he will.  garlan certainly will, but garlan won’t know what direction she went in.  loras will though.  loras knows all, sees too much.  garlan might have missed it.

her breath catches in her throat as she slips from her chamber.  the night is black, and chilly.  robb tells her it will be colder in the north than anything she’s ever known, but that he will keep her warm.  she likes that–the idea of him keeping her warm.  better robb than robert and his drunken groping.  better robb and his shining eyes and his lips so full, so red.  this is madness.

he’s waiting for her at the postern gate–him and his friend, theon greyjoy.  and she kisses him, sinking into him, her heart in her throat as his arms wrap around her.

“there isn’t time for that now,” greyjoy hisses.  “we must get out of here as soon as we can.”

robb breaks away and shoots theon a look before turning back to her.  “margaery,” he whispers, and how she thrills hearing her name on his lips.  he helps her onto his horse, then swings up behind her, warm at her back.  and, with a kick, they are off.  with a kick, she is free and he–he is hers.

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He’d been here when he was younger, and he’d told her of it.  

It is not quite a lie, and that is how she explains it to Maddy and Gretchel, who are surprised that Alayne knows more of the Eyrie than most who have never been but have heard tell of the castle.  Her father had been here several times in his youth, when he came to consult with Lord Arryn—when Lord Arryn wasn’t in King’s Landing, of course—and to visit with Lady Arryn, whom he had met in his youth at Riverrun.

It halts the questions—at least the ones they ask her and not each other.  For it is true, her father had been to the Eyrie when he was younger.

She imagines him walking through the halls of the Eyrie, alone with his thoughts.  He had always been a thoughtful man, her father, even when everything around him was a ruckus.  She liked to imagine him looking out over the mountains, looking north towards his home, longing to go back and wondering if he was missed there. 

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As he walks away from her, he wonders what will happen to the face that once belonged to Jaqen H’ghar.  Sometimes, when he dons a new one, there are…well, they aren’t memories.  If they were memories, they’d be clearer.  But rather impressions of those who’d mattered once—not in the first soul’s lifetime, but in the brief moments when it had masked another.  He’s felt twangs of longing for lovers who aren’t his and aren’t the face’s, for friends, for the odd cat who’d taken a fondness.  

No one wonders as he walks away from Arya Stark if the next one to wear Jaqen H’ghar’s face will have the fleeting impression of a scrap of a girl and kindness that had to make room for a cutthroat cunning.  Will the next Jaqen H’ghar remember her at all?  Or will it only ever be no one?

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They forgot one part of it.  The part where they burned her body.  Would that they had.  If they had, she wouldn’t be here now.  They remembered the water, but not the fire, and for a dead Tully, there must always be both.

They threw her into the river.  No boat, no flaming arrow.  Just a slit throat and no clothing, her body manhandled.  She was dead after all.  They threw her into the river.  Let the river do its work.  Let it decay her flesh away, wash her pain out to sea like Rhaegar’s rubies, what did it matter—to the water all men are meat and death is just a moment of passing tides.

They forgot the fire, though.  They thought that her meat would rot and fall away from her bones all on its own.  They did not think of fire.  They had burned enough already in the festival tents outside the castle walls.  They did not think they needed fire, for fire is one more level of destruction, an unnecessary amount for the woman whose life they’d ripped from her before she’d even been killed.  They forgot the fire, so when the fire came, they did not expect her to live again.  But she did.

Water deteriorates and fire destroys and the Mother knows no mercy, for if she did, it would have been both at once.

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fear had gripped her chest in a way she thought that finally, the tears might flow

they were all staring at her, with eyes much harder than she remembered them being when she was at her father’s–herfather’s–table as a girl.  i will not let them best me, she thinks fiercely, i am as strong as my lady mother, i will be brave as a lady in a song, i am a stark of winterfell, no matter if they call me lady lannister. “my lords,” she says and her voice is clear and carries through the hall, “i understand you have been keeping my brother safe,” and she walks, her back straight, her hands balled into fists and her nails digging into her palms, determined.  when she reaches them, she finds that their faces are not so hard as she’d thought initially–merely wary, merely tired.  that, sansa thinks, i can work with.

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the cat looked at the girl chasing him, and was reminded of a time when he was loved

but he doesn’t think on it long. he can’t think on it long. he’s seen her catch the rest of the cats in the castle and he determined long ago that he would never suffer such an indignity. so he runs and slips between legs and every now and then, when he looks over his shoulder, balerion pretends that it’s a different little girl chasing him, smaller and smelling of home.

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the snow was tainted red and black all over and she was in the middle of it.

once she might have cared.  snow was ned, after all, and nights curled up in their bed in winterfell, telling stories to bran or combing sansa’s hair.  but she doesn’t have any of that anymore.  she only has blood and despair and bitterness.  winter has come at last, but her family, duty, honor long ago flew away like ash in the wind.

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He could never forget her smile.

No, not Arya’s.  Her smile had warmed him through death and back again, and even if he’d forgotten how to smile (had he ever known?) he could never forget hers.  He saw her eyes go wide when she saw him, her mouth open in delight. She cried out his name and pelted towards him and Jon felt muscles in his face he’d forgotten he’d had move again.  She could always make Jon smile, after all.

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The boy had his father's face, and that hurt more than it should have.

He had hoped to see a trace of her in him, her dancing violet eyes and her dark hair.  But the boy was blond, and sturdy and looked like the father who was far outshone by his younger siblings.  Barristan tried not to be disappointed, and knew he could not hold his looks against the boy.  But all the same…he wished that little Lord Edric looked a little more like Lady Ashara.

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She grew thinner every day, so he started to eat smaller portions.

“Don’t you dare,” Arya glowered at him when she noticed that he was giving her more than what she deemed her fair share.

“Dare do what?” Jon asked, keeping his face as neutral as possible.

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “All crows are liars,” she muttered under her breath, using the same intonation that Old Nan once had when telling stories.  Jon laughed, and reached out and rubbed her hair, and did not fail to notice that she wolfed down the extra food he’d given her.

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He woke up screaming.

screaming because everything burned–everything.  his skin, his throat, his eyes his heart, pounding in his chest, all burning because the blood that was pumping through his body was hot like fire even though his flesh had been frozen…

he opens his eyes and sees colors now.  colors–not greys and whites and blacks.  it’s the colors that make him realize that it’s jon’s body that breathes, and not ghost’s.

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she doesn’t know how it’s come to this.  she truly doesn’t. 

they’d been happy once, hadn’t they?  hadn’t they?

he wasn’t jaime.  he was more than jaime, or so she’d thought.  but now…

all he does is sit in his room.  he ignores her.  he doesn’t even seek to put a son in her as once he’d said he would.  he has his aegon already, he doesn’t need another son.  only daughters.  

it is a thought that chills her in truth.  is she only a womb to him?  she’d thought he would see her as more–lord tywin’s daughter through and through.  he is not aerys’ son–not in the way that she is tywin’s daughter. he is not mad like his father.  and yet he doesn’t seem to see her, doesn’t seem to know her.  

not for the first time, she wonders what would have happened if robert had not been slain at the trident, if he had been the king she’d married.  surely robert would have loved her and not ignored her the way that rhaegar does.  surely…

her stomach swells. rhaegar thinks it’s his daughter, but it’s jaime’s son.  and when he’s born, well… well, she’s a lioness.  and even dragons fall from the skies sometimes.

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she awakens in the dark and in the cold and looks about her.  she is alone.  

there is an arrow in her breast.  she pulls it loose.  it does not hurt; she does not bleed.

she looks around her, but sees nothing.  she hears nothing.  she knows nothing.  you know nothing, jon snow.  it puts a smile on her lips, to think those words. it’s a lie: she does know something.  she knows that she is dead, and he is not.

“you’re her, then?” 

ygritte whirls about and sees a woman with a long face and dark hair, covered in dried and cracked blood.  no, not a woman.  a girl.  younger than her, a girl who is only jon’s age.  they could be twins, they look so alike.

“who’s her, then?” ygritte shoots back, and the girl smiles sadly.  

“jon’s love.”

“are you his sister?” she asks sharply.  he’d mentioned a sister.  a little sister he’d loved dearly.  but his little sister was much younger than this girl.  and this girl looks long dead.  his heart will break if his little sister is dead, ygritte thinks.  is his heart broken now, for me?

“no,” the girl says simply, and she takes ygritte’s hand.  “i’m his mother.”

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“you’re beautiful.”

she’s not sure she heard it.  it feels like the sort of thing that she might have imagined hearing, because she wants him to say it, or wants someone to say it, wants to believe it herself.  you’re beautiful was never something anyone said of ugly little arya horseface, only ever sansa.  

she looks at him, and if he said it, if he truly said it, she can’t tell.  his face is smooth, and his violet eyes are determined and it might just be the moonlight making her think stupid things.

he’s really handsome in the moonlight, his hair pale and reflecting the moonlight, his features sharp in the dark.  he’s like a star gleaming.  and i’m a wolf, she thinks.  she remembers a girl who’d made fun of westerosi obsessions with siggles.  but if anyone is as true as his sigil, it’s ned.

“you’re beautiful too,” she whispers and his eyes flicker for just a moment, glittering in the dark.  and she can see now he had said it, can see now that he had meant it too.

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it’s all she can think about, that night as she curls up under her blankets and tries to sleep.  she had thought she’d think of the tourney, of the pageantry and the knights and how it had been more vibrant than anything she’d imagined.  she’d thought she’d watch the tilts over and over again before her eyes closed and imagine how the knights who’d rode must have some lady that they rode to honor.

but she thinks instead of a boy, as small as bran, with his head in a fire, crying out while his brother–bigger than robb–holds him there.

i must not think of it, she thought, i must not.  he swore he’d kill me if i told.  he didn’t mean to tell me.  i should not think of it.

but her mind does not listen, not right now.  instead, she sees it, over and over again, adding color to it until it’s more real to her than the tourney she’d been at only hours before.

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“can you see your home from here?” she asks him, looking south.  jon has been looking north, where they’ve just come from, hardly daring to believe that they’d truly climbed it.  

he looks, though.  it’s neater to the south.  less rugged, though still wild.  he sees roads.  “no,” he says, “winterfell is too far to the south.  we couldn’t see it from here.”

“i should have liked to catch a glimpse,” she says, “to see where you come from.”

you’ll see soon enough, jon thinks sadly.  instead, he looks north again.  “can you see your home from here?” he asks her, and she looks at him sharply, then gives him a shy smile.

“no, but you can see the mountains it hides behind.”  and she points, and jon imagines for just a moment what it would be like to go there with her.

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Catelyn awakens to the sound of rain and it is the rain that tells her where she is more than the memories of the days before.  Riverrun, she thinks, rain on water, like when I was a girl.

It is comforting until she remembers.  She is home, and her father is dying.  She is home and her son is at war and Ned is dead and Bran has been crippled and Sansa is held hostage and Arya…

She sits up, and goes to the window.  The rain is heavy, and she can see the hoops the drops make on the surface of the river.  Autumn rain.  

When she’d been little, how she’d loved autumnal rain.  It was heavier than spring rain, and lasted longer than summer rain, and her mother would despair of her running about the lichyard and getting soaked to her skin, when she’d still had a mother to despair of her, and hadn’t had to be the lady of the house.  It didn’t rain much in Winterfell.  Mists, yes, and sprinklings, naturally, but it snowed more than anything else–even in summer.  

She wonders what would happen if she went down there now, and just stood there beneath the rain, looking up at the heavens, trying to catch droplets of water in her mouth.  Would the guards let me?  Or would they think I’d finally gone mad?  As if they did not already think her mad for setting the Kingslayer loose.

Give me my girls back, she thinks viciously at the imp.  You promised you would.  Give them to me.  Sansa, and Arya…

As if from far away, she hears the sounds of girlish laughter, of the squelching of footsteps through the mud, and Lysa calling for her.  In some dusty, distant corner of her mind, she remembers getting mud all over her shoes and boots, and the disapproving clucks of her Septa when she’d come inside.  A fish doesn’t get muddy, Lady Catelyn, she remains clean.  Always.  

I had forgotten that, Catelyn thinks.  She looks down in the lichyard.  She cannot see herself, or Lysa.  She cannot imagine Sansa, who always hated getting mud or dirt on the hems of her dresses.  But for a moment, she hears a different sort of laughter, and for half a heartbeat, she imagines she sees Arya, charging through the mud, enjoying the feeling of water on her face.

Would that she were.  Would that she were here with me, and safe, and not…

Catelyn presses her hand to her throat.

The rain continues to patter at the window, just loud enough to hide the sound of her own tears.

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trees don’t live. her smaller cousins tell her that. but for some reason she isn’t sure they’re right. the ones with bleeding eyes…they watch her. it does not frighten her. she is a direwolf and she is not afraid of trees. but something about it…it’s not right, but it’s not wrong either. it’s like pack, without being pack. how can a tree be pack?

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“drink that, fast.  it’ll keep you warm,” lem advises him when the serving girl brings out the beer.  gendry resists the urge to shiver.  it’s colder now than it has been in as long as he can remember, and his cloak is a thin one.

he takes a sip of the beer.  it’s good enough, he supposes, and would have left his thirst sated, but he taste of it reminds him of a night in a brothel and a girl who had said she’d known what a brothel was, but hadn’t–not truly.  

he takes another sip.  the beer is bitter now.  he puts the mug on the table.

“you don’t want it?” lem asks him, raising an eyebrow.

“not to my taste,” he says, and lem shrugs and grabs the mug from him.

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Catelyn awakens to the sound of rain and it is the rain that tells her where she is more than the memories of the days before.  Riverrun, she thinks, rain on water, like when I was a girl.

It is comforting until she remembers.  She is home, and her father is dying.  She is home and her son is at war and Ned is dead and Bran has been crippled and Sansa is held hostage and Arya…

She sits up, and goes to the window.  The rain is heavy, and she can see the hoops the drops make on the surface of the river.  Autumn rain.  

When she’d been little, how she’d loved autumnal rain.  It was heavier than spring rain, and lasted longer than summer rain, and her mother would despair of her running about the lichyard and getting soaked to her skin, when she’d still had a mother to despair of her, and hadn’t had to be the lady of the house.  It didn’t rain much in Winterfell.  Mists, yes, and sprinklings, naturally, but it snowed more than anything else–even in summer.  

She wonders what would happen if she went down there now, and just stood there beneath the rain, looking up at the heavens, trying to catch droplets of water in her mouth.  Would the guards let me?  Or would they think I’d finally gone mad?  As if they did not already think her mad for setting the Kingslayer loose.

Give me my girls back, she thinks viciously at the imp.  You promised you would.  Give them to me.  Sansa, and Arya…

As if from far away, she hears the sounds of girlish laughter, of the squelching of footsteps through the mud, and Lysa calling for her.  In some dusty, distant corner of her mind, she remembers getting mud all over her shoes and boots, and the disapproving clucks of her Septa when she’d come inside.  A fish doesn’t get muddy, Lady Catelyn, she remains clean.  Always.  

I had forgotten that, Catelyn thinks.  She looks down in the lichyard.  She cannot see herself, or Lysa.  She cannot imagine Sansa, who always hated getting mud or dirt on the hems of her dresses.  But for a moment, she hears a different sort of laughter, and for half a heartbeat, she imagines she sees Arya, charging through the mud, enjoying the feeling of water on her face.

Would that she were.  Would that she were here with me, and safe, and not…

Catelyn presses her hand to her throat.

The rain continues to patter at the window, just loud enough to hide the sound of her own tears.

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He looks nothing like Marya.  He takes to his father, with his red hair and bright blue eyes, but Ravella sees her sister in his lips.  She would say it was in his smile, but he doesn’t smile anymore.

“My Lady Aunt,” he says when he sees her, taking to his knee.  You ran to me once and I swept you in my arms, she thinks as she looks at him, battered and scarred and sullen.  You called me Aunt Ravella, and when you were younger just Aunt because you could not pronounce the two ls in my name.

“Beric,” she says and holds out her arms for him.  He enters them stiffly, and he pats her back before stepping out of her arms again.  “I am glad to see your face.”

He looks at her oddly.  “It is much changed,” he said.  “I am much changed.”

“War does that to a man,” she says, brushing her hands against her skirts.  “That makes you no less my flesh and blood.  Come inside.”

“The Lannisters will cause you trouble for our connection,” he says as he follows her into the keep.

“What trouble could they cause?  I’ve not seen you since you were a boy in your mother’s arms.”  He gives her that look again.  She sees him scrutinizing her face, as if searching for something there.  

“You looked like my mother,” he says distantly, as though he were remembering something from very far away.

“Of course I did,” Ravella nearly laughs.  Though she was many years older than me.  And we both looked like our mother.  “I miss her terribly.  As must you, I’m sure.”

“More than you know,” he says, and his voice is throaty now.  He blinks his one good eye and looks around the room, and she sees a shadow cross his face that makes her skin prickle.  My nephew, she thinks sadly.  He’d had Marya’s smile, too.

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“they…live?”

surely she’s misheard.  she must have.  theon greyjoy had killed them, and robb–her robb, he’d wept, his eyes shining bright with tears, suddenly just a boy and not a king.

“how can this be?” her mother’s voice punches through the shocked silence.  like the dagger through robb’s heart.  she’d dreamed of it.  she’d heard lord bolton had stabbed him right in his chest.  at least he had died quickly.  she swallows and looks at the rider.  

there is dirt on his cloak, and it is damp.  the weather has been horrid these last few days, as if the skies cannot decide if it wanted to snow or rain.  and now the rains weep o’er their halls…  and her uncle lord of castamere.  “that is the news from the north, my lady,” the rider repeats.  “simply that rickon stark lives.  he has a direwolf at his side, as the young wolf did.”

“and what of bran?” jeyne asks.  robb had wept for bran.  i told him he’d be safe, he’d said, sobbing into her neck as he’d clung to her.  i gave him my word.  the rider shakes his head.

“he is not with little…” the man fumbles.  what is his title?  to robb’s queen, is he a prince?  if winterfell is held by the boltons, is he even a lord?  “bran stark is not with his brother, but it may be that the two parted ways for safety.  all we know for true is that rickon stark lives.”

can you hear that, robb?  your brothers are alive.  she closed her eyes, imagined his face cracking into a disbelieving smile.  he never smiled like that while she’d known him.  he’d worn his crown heavily on his young head.  

“well,” her mother says, straightening.  “it is good to know that the boys did not know such treachery at greyjoy’s hands…” she sounds unsure of herself.  unsure what to say.  jeyne knows her mother is watching her out of the corner of her eye.  

“where is he now?” jeyne asks.

“reports differ, my lady,” the rider says.  “i’ve heard that he is in white harbor at lord manderly’s table.  other reports say he is at the wall in baratheon hands.  others still say that he is in winterfell.  i do not know.”

jeyne nods, and turns away from the rider.  her mother will think it grief, and perhaps it is, but her heart is pounding in her chest.  they live, robb–your brothers.

my brothers.

robb is still her husband, though he is gone now.  and rickon–he has no one left to call family apart from bran.  it is unlikely that lady sansa will be found, for if she is, surely queen cersei will have her head.

and mine as well, jeyne thinks.  once it might have terrified her, but not today, not when she knows that what they’d done to robb’s head was far worse than anything they could do to her.  today she walks through the halls of the crags–halls she’d once walked with robb and for the first time since he’d died she knows what she will do, and where she will go.  the crown forbade that she wed for another two years lest someone think it’s robb’s babe in her belly.  two years of freedom still, she thinks.  give me strength my love.  

she is going to find rollam, and a horse, and rickon stark.

Chapter Text

It is that twilight moment between sleeping and waking, when dreams are not dreams, and so are more dreamlike than any dream could be.

He knows that he is not awake.  He knows that he is not asleep.  His thoughts are too blue to be real, and yellow as well.  His dreams of late are black and blood.   But this is not a dream, and for a moment, he is not Reek.  For a moment, the world is a gauze around him, not real, but just how he wants it, or maybe how he once wanted it.

Robb is alive, and his eyes are the same blue as the rest of the dream.  He smiles, and throws an arm around Theon Greyjoy’s shoulder.  “We’ll be brothers for true, soon,” he says, and his voice crackles like ice and memory.  Theon smiles and his teeth are whole so why does it hurt?  Because it is not a dream, not for true, he reminds himself.  He is Reek, and his teeth are broken.  Robb’s smile falters.  

“Theon?” he asks.  

“Reek.”

“Theon?  What happened to your teeth?”

“Nothing,” he says and he raises a hand to his mouth to hide his lips.  It is a foolish idea, for Robb grabs his hand and stares at it.  “Your fingers?” he asks.  “You did not lose these at my side, did you?”

Reek shakes his head and shuffles his feet.  Shuffling his feet does not hurt when he is not asleep and not awake because he is lying down.  His eyes are closed and he hears the sound of the dogs down the way from him.  But in his head, they are direwolves.

Six great beasts.  Bigger than when he and Robb and Jon Snow and Bran had found them in the summer snows.  Huge hulking things that could tear Ramsay’s girls apart.  Robb whistles and Grey Wind comes loping towards him.  “Come on, then?” He sounds less sure now.

Reek shuffles after him.  Perhaps he should not go, for if Lord Ramsay finds him missing, surely he’ll be punished.  But he is safe in his not dreams, isn’t he?  He covers his lips again in case he speaks and breaks the haze.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

They enter the godswood together, Lord Eddard’s white bleeding tree at the center of it.  It’s just him and Robb—none of the others are there.  The direwolves had stayed in the kennels apart form Grey Wind.  When they reach the tree, they wait.  Robb glances at him, and he glances back.  Robb avoids his eyes.  He knows, Reek thinks.  He knows that I betrayed him.   Why doesn’t he kill me, then?  Kill Theon Turncloak.  Instead, Robb looks over his shoulder, then steps away from Theon.  

Lord Eddard is walking towards them, and in his dream he is headless, a cloak with a gaping black hole showing where he should have gone.  Theon Greyjoy was raised at his table, so Reek recognizes Lord Eddard’s torso.  Blood is dribbling down his front, under his cloak, and Theon cannot look at it.  Instead, his gaze falls on the girl on Lord Eddard’s arm.  

Sansa Stark has grown a woman’s body, her hips and breasts curved beneath a white satin and lace gown.  Her face, ever heart-shaped, is lovelier than ever, and seems to glow gold through the haze of Reek’s not dreaming, and her hair hangs in loose curls down her back.  

Lord Eddard pauses when he reaches the heart tree and Sansa releases his arm.  She looks past Reek to Robb, and Reek turns to look at Robb again, but he is gone.  He only sees Grey Wind’s head. 

When he turns back to Sansa, he finds that she is the only other person in the clearing.  The headless Lord Eddard has vanished.  “No,” Reek says.

Sansa frowns.  “Do I displease, you Theon.”

But it is all wrong.  Lord Eddard is supposed to be here to see him marry Sansa.  He is supposed to put his hand on Theon’s shoulder and tell him he’d always wanted him for a son.  But Theon’s gone now, and so is Lord Eddard, but even if he weren’t he wouldn’t want Reek for his Sansa.

“No.  Not Theon,” he says, not looking at her.

“Not Theon?” Sansa asks.  He hears the rustle of her skirts, the sound of a dog whining and he squeezes his eyes shut so that he doesn’t hear Kyra at all.  Only Sansa.  She is here with him in his head, looking at him with clear blue eyes though he cannot see them for his own eyes are closed.  She is touching his cheek, though he cannot feel it.  He can only feel the pain in his teeth as he clenches them shut.  Reek, reek, it rhymes with freak.

“Not Theon,” he repeats and he dares to open his eyes, but whatever it was he’d been about to say dies on his lips.  She is glowing still.  Glowing and beautiful, and her eyes are gentle and unafraid.  She reaches up and presses her fingers to his lips.  Theon Greyjoy would have kissed them.  Reek lurches away.

“Oh, Theon,” she whispers.  “You’re still Theon, aren’t you.  Somewhere in there.”

“No,” he says again.  “Lord Ramsay—”

“Cannot have you on your wedding day, Theon.  Only I can.”  

If it had been Theon’s dream, she would have been naked.  How many dreams like that had Theon Greyjoy had?  Aging a girl up in his mind so that she was old enough to be his?  But it’s not Theon’s dream.  It can’t be Theon’s dream, because she is still dressed in her white gown and her face still glows, and she wraps her arms around him but he cannot feel it.  She holds him close, but she is far away, and he’s not Theon Greyjoy, he’s Reek.  Reek, reek, it rhymes with weak.

“He cannot take me from you, Theon,” Sansa says, her words unmuffled though her face is buried in his neck and her hair falls prettily against his rags.

“He can,” Reek whispers.

“He can’t,” Sansa insists.  “I’m yours, and yours alone.”  She looks up at him, and she is so close now, she’s blinding him.  “Your wife.  And you’re my husband.  Be my husband, Theon.   Be my husband.  Be my husband.  Be mine.  Be mine.  Be mine.”  Her voice becomes breathier, gasping, moaning, and if it were Theon’s dream he’d be inside her, but it’s Reek’s dream, so she’s sobbing, clinging to him.  “Please,” she begs, “I don’t want Joffrey, I don’t.  I don’t.  Theon, save me.  Theon.  Theon.”

Reek, he reminds himself, I am Reek, not Theon.  He’ll hear her.  He’ll know.  He’ll skin another finger off me, because I dreamed Sansa Stark called me Theon.  But she’s still sobbing into his shoulder now.  Still sobbing a name of a man who’s dead now.  He has to tell her, surely she can see it, though? Surely she can see that he’s not Theon still?  Reek, reek, it rhymes with speak.

“Sansa,” he says.  “Don’t cry, Sansa.  Don’t cry or he’ll hear you.”  

“Don’t cry or he’ll hear me?”

Hear what, Reek?  It’s Lord Ramsay’s voice, Lord Ramsay’s here, now.  But if he were here, the dogs would be barking—happy as ever to see him, and Kyra’s still silent.  

“Don’t cry,” he pleads again, pressing his hand to his lips so he doesn’t say it aloud, not for true.  “Don’t cry.  I’m here.  I’m here with you.”  A lie.  Gently meant, to comfort her, but suddenly he feels more alone than he has since he was last awake.  Suddenly he is so painfully aware that she is not there—not truly, that this is all in his mind, that he’s here, dreaming and dreading, and Sansa is holding him but not for true, and Lord Eddard gave her to him, but not for true, and Robb forgave him, but not for true.  He doesn’t know where he is, or who he is, but his words do comfort her, at least.  She stops crying.

“Yes,” she breathes, but he doesn’t feel her breath tickling his cheek.  “Yes, you’re here with me, Theon.” 

He doesn’t feel her lips.  He only feels the sting an ache of his broken teeth.

Chapter Text

He hisses. Better than whining. Better than bleeding crying. He’s been crying a lot lately. The Elder Brother…Sandor hates that that’s what they call him. Elder Brother. Makes him think of fucking Gregor every single time.

“It looks better today,” Elder Brother says. 

“Still hurts,” Sandor grumbles.

“It may well for the rest of your life,” Elder Brother says. He’s been saying that a lot–rest of his life. What bleeding life is that?  He says as much, and the man’s eyes flicker.

Elder Brother sits down on the plain wooden stool next to his bedside and Sandor watches him closely. He waits. Usually Elder Brother will ask him how he feels, what pains him, but not today.

“You live, Sandor Clegane,” he says simply.  

“Aye,” he grunts.  The man’s gaze unnerves him, slightly.  He doesn’t think anyone’s ever looked at him quiet like that–without fear, without disgust, without nervousness.  His eyes are blue, and he’s seen that expression before coming from blue eyes as well.  Pity.

“You live, and if the gods are good, you will regain your strength.  You may limp, and you may well never fight again for that limp, but you will live.”

He’s building up to say something.  Sandor can tell.  He feels his stomach knot in nervousness.  He wishes the Elder Brother wouldn’t look at him with pity.  "Get on with it, then.“

He doesn’t smile.  Yesterday, he might have smiled.  While Sandor wept like a bleeding baby, he might have smiled.  He does not smile now.

"Very well,” he says, and his voice is clipped.  He crosses his legs and rests an elbow on his knees, looking at Sandor and the pity’s gone.  All gone.  Disgust again, Sandor thinks, but no.  Not quite.  He doesn’t know what it is.  “I will get on with it.

“You are a sinner, Sandor Clegane.”

Sandor stares at him for a moment, then laughs.  “I should have seen that one coming.  Here with all you holy folk.”  He laughs, but somewhere in the laugh it stops being funny.  He sees the Elder Brother’s eyes harden slightly.  Not hard in form of cruelty.  Hard as in stern.  Hard like the Father, Sandor thinks for a moment.  It’s been a good long time since he’s thought of the prayers he learned as a boy.  Gentle Mother, font of mercy…

“You are a sinner, Sandor Clegane,” The Elder Brother repeats, still stern.  “You have killed innocent folk.  This boy–Mycah–”

“I know who I’ve bloody killed,” Sandor growled.  More faces than he can count.  Batttle’s like that.  How many had he hacked to bits, his heart in his throat while the river burned?  And that butcher’s boy with the red hair…

“I know you know,” says the Elder Brother.  “You’ve been given your life–a second chance you have yet to prove you deserve.”  

“A far cry different from all men are the children of the gods,” Sandor hears himself say.  Those had been the Elder Brother’s words too, spoken through a haze on a day with a bright sky while Sandor had shuddered at the pain.  It’s what had helped him sleep when the pain had hurt so much he’d thought he’d had his face in the fire again.  

“A Father knows his son, and protects him.  It is in his nature.  But will he forgive his son’s sins?”

“My father didn’t live long enough to know my sins,” Sandor growled.

“Would he be proud of you, Sandor?” the Elder Brother asks.

Sandor glares at him.  “Leave my father out of this.”

“I think not, then.”

The words sting worse than the festering wound.  He barely remembers his father’s face.  He’d had tired eyes–blank eyes.  Grey like that Stark bitch’s.  

“Doesn’t matter.  He’s dead, isn’t he?” Sandor snaps.

“Indeed,” the Elder Brother says.  “He’s dead, the butcher’s boy’s dead–”

“Will you stop bringing up the bleeding butcher’s boy?  You’re like the Stark bitch.  ‘You killed my friend, Mycah.’”

“The Stark girl had the right of it, and I think you know that as well,” the Elder Brother says.  “She hasn’t forgiven you for his death.  Nor have you forgiven yourself.”

“What do you mean?” Sandor asks quickly.

“Why does it anger you when I remind you that you killed him?” the Elder Brother asks.

His words hang in the air and Sandor feels a chill unrelated to his physical ills creep up his spine.

“What can I do?  He’s dead.  That’s it.  That’s the end.”

“Hardly.  You wear his death as you wear those scars, I think.  Always there, always paining you because you have yet to atone.”

“Ah there it is,” Sandor almost laughs.  “Pay my penance, is it?  How many ‘Holy Father’s’ must I say to bring the boy back to life?”  Gentle mother, font of mercy.  Sometimes he damns that little bird having sung that song.

“There is a difference between penance and atonement, Sandor Clegane,” the Elder Brother sighs, and Sandor frowns.  “For some sins, the former will suffice, but for other sins–and other souls–the latter is required.

“I’ll not ask you to pay for what you’ve done.  But your actions are a transgression against the gods–and, I think against yourself.”

He gets to his feet.  

“What, that’s it?” Sandor demands.  “No more than some mumbo jumbo about what my soul needs?”

The Elder Brother smiles.  “You’re a clever man, Sandor Clegane.  Too clever for your own good, I think.  You always have an answer for everything, and think you know what’s best.  Well, I’ll give you time to think on my words.  And something to do while you think.”

“Something to do?  Read my Seven Pointed Star until I beg the Father’s forgiveness?”

“Hardly.  You need to regain your strength.  I think that digging some graves for the poor souls that was up on our shore will suffice.”

Chapter Text

sansa makes herself as ugly as she could.  she shaves her hair–she knows they are looking for a girl her age with auburn hair and since she has no more of the dye that her aunt had given her… she hadn’t meant to do it.  not truly.  it had been a moment like when she’d tried to drag her mattress into the fire after she’d first bled.  panic, and fear, and something like daring.  she’d never been daring before.  arya was the daring one, never me.  

but she hacks off her hair with a dull knife, then shaves it down to the scalp.  she puts dirt on her face and finds some linens to bind her chest as flat as it would go, then finds bulky sweaters and jerkins that would hide her form. if she had more courage, more daring, she’d have bruised her own face with a bottle, or cut open her cheek, but she could not bring herself.  not so daring as that… 

i almost look a boy, she thinks, looking at herself in the mirror.  almost…

she looks a gawking boy.  the way podrick payne had–her lord husband’s squire.  

better a gawking boy, though…better a boy than…

she shudders, and puts more dirt on her face.  

she hears the alarm sounded, but forces herself not to run, though her heart is pounding in her chest–pounding harder than when she’d thought sandor would kill her, when he’d kissed her.  terror pumped through her.  she’d been frightened after joffrey had died, but she’d felt oddly calm then.  not now.  it was different now.  would that my skin were steel now, she thinks as she forces herself to walk calmly.  if i run, they’ll know something is amiss.  so she straightens her shoulders and tries to carry herself the way that sandor did.  all muscle, all strength, not the sort of man you’d want to fight.  

the lies fall from her lips easily when she’s stopped.  “where are you going, boy?” 

“to gulltown.  for my sister’s wedding.  she’s marrying some braavosi banker who’s sailed across the winter sea for her and will take her back with him.”

the roads are snowy, and she forces herself through them.  i’m a stark, i’m born for snow, she reminds herself when she sinks into one snow drift.  if i were in winterfell the snows would be twice this height.  she pretends that she’s going to winterfell instead.

she stops in some wayside inns, offering her services as a stable hand for a roof overhead since she has no coin.  the innkeeps uniformly mock her her weakness.  she can’t even shovel horse slop properly.  her arms hurt.  blisters pop out of her palms.  she’s frightened they’ll find out she’s a girl and then bad things will come of it, but she’s more worried that some whisper of a boy with a fuzz of auburn hair will whisper its way back to the bloody gate.  so she never stays in one place very long, as tempting as it may be.  a little talking bird, singing the songs they taught me, she thinks.  little talking birds don’t stay in one place, do they?  she doesn’t know.  she’s never been to the summer isles.  perhaps she’ll go.  but no.  no… no she must get north.  north to the wall, and the last brother that remains her.  surely jon will keep her safe.  his vows won’t prevent him keeping her safe.  he’s lord commander, now.  lord of the whole watch, and if he’d learned from their father, he’d learned to protect those in need…

she reaches gulltown with muscles that no maiden should have and calluses on her palms.  she shaves her head as she approaches the city again, and doesn’t need to worry about bruising her face to make it less recognizable.  her cheeks are hollow and there are dark circles under her eyes.  she didn’t recognize herself.  how would anyone else recognize her?  

she goes along the docks, offering a pair of arms to row, or to cook, or to swab, but no captain seems interested in taking the boy called allan who wants to make his way north to the wall and take his vows to be a black brother.  “what would you want to go there?  whole bloody bunch of turncloaks,” one captain laughs at her.

“what do you mean?”

“killed their bleeding lord commander, didn’t they?  ned stark’s son.”

and sansa’s heart breaks.  now there truly is no one left but me.  and perhaps the black brothers are not so brave as once she’d thought.  them, and knights, and all the songs are lies.  there are no true knights, no brave souls who protect the realms.  just wicked men.

she returns to the inn, and grabs a fork to clear out the stable.  there are two new horses in there, and she stops dead in her tracks as she hears a voice she’d not thought to hear again.

“you’ll keep ser’s–my lady’s–horse warm.”

“what do you take me for, boy?  this is a stable.  we don’t freeze horses in here if we can help it.”

“you’d not be the first innkeep to do it.”  she’d never heard podrick sound so stern.  perhaps she’d dreamed it.  he doesn’t serve a lady, he serves house lannister, sansa thought.  it would have been nice to see him again.  he may have helped her–out of loyalty to tyrion.  unless he had had to distance himself from his lord after joffrey’s death…and tyrion’s disappearance.  and her own.  it all seemed so long ago.  she looked at the calluses on her hands.

“well, i don’t know what innkeeps you’ve met, but you’re in gulltown, boy.  we treat horses well here, even if they’re the horses of queer ladies who pretend to be knights and their blundering would-be squires.  allan!” coleman calls to her, and she comes.  “clear out stalls for these two, and make sure they’re as warm as the queen in king’s landing.”

“yes,” she says gruffly as coleman marches away.  she turns to the squire and it is podrick.  it is him.  taller now than he’d been before, with light brown eyes and the dusting of a beard.  she holds out a hand for the reins and he gives them to her.  he doesn’t recognize me.

that gives her hope.  it also makes her sad.  

“thank you, allan,” podrick says.

“’f course,” she says and as she’s turning away, pod says, “allan?”

she tilts her head and looks at him and his eyes go wide.  quick as a snake, his hand darts out and grabs her wrist.  “my lady,” he hisses.  she tries to jerk her arm away, but his grip is stronger than she’d have thought.

“i don’t know what you mean,” she says, panicking.  

“are you safe?” he asks her.  

she doesn’t reply and he steps closer to her, his face only inches from hers, and for one wild moment, she thinks he is going to kiss her.  but he doesn’t.  he only speaks, quietly.  “we’ve been looking for you.  me, and my lady.  she served your mother.  and ser jaime sent her after you to keep you safe.  are you safe?”

“ser jaime?” sansa asks, confused.  why would the kingslayer send someone after her to keep her safe?  surely he’d have sent someone to kill her on behalf of joffrey and cersei.

“yes my lady,” he says.  “she’ll explain it better than i will.  come on,” he tugs on her arm.

“but the horses,” sansa hears herself say.

she and pod put the horses away, and part of her is screaming that she should run, flee, but it’s podrick.  podrick wouldn’t hurt her.  podrick couldn’t hurt a fly.  he asked me if i was safe, she thinks.  

and, oddly, for the first time since she’d left winterfell, she truly felt it.

Chapter Text

in the house of black and white, the novices wear a habit of both colors, but arya of house stark…she has never been one to follow the rules.

he finds her as she’s leaving, and she doesn’t know it’s him.  how can she.  she doesn’t recognize this face.  she doesn’t recognize this man.  but he recognizes her.  she’s shed the black and is wearing a simple white tunic over skinny legs, belted at her waist–a woman’s waist now–with the sword she’d brought out of king’s landing at her side.

“get out of the way,” she hisses at him in braavosi that is far more fluid than the common tongue of westeros she’d once heard him speak.

“where are you going?” he asks her.  “novices do not leave without permission.”

“well, i’m not a novice.  novices wear black and white,” she says.  “i gave my prayer to him of many faces and he heard it.  now i’ll be going.”

“and what prayer is that?” he asks.  dunsen, polliver, raff the sweetling… he remembers other names as well.  queen cersei, king joffrey, ser gregor, ser ilyn, the hound…

she gives him a strange smile.  “home,” she says.

“home?  and how does a girl plan on getting home?”

she shrugs as she steps past him.  there’s no gondola to take her across the canal, and she observes the water, cocking her head and considering.  she doesn’t reply, and he takes a step towards her, reaching for her arm, or the belt and–quick as a cat, she leaps into the canal, diving smoothly beneath the water.

she swims across the canal then pulls herself up onto the walkway on the other side.  in the moonlight, the white habit clings to her shoulders, her hips, and he sees dark spots on her chest where her nipples poke out, chilled.

winter is coming, she’d best get used to the chill.  somewhere, in the back of his mind, he remembers that one of the colors of house stark is white.

Chapter Text

“what is it like?” 

it is the silver queen’s little friend, the naathi scribe named missandei, and nan bobs her head respectfully and pauses in her scrubbing. 

“what is what like?” she asks.

“westeros,” missandei asks, and arya looks out across the water for a moment.

“why are you asking me?” she asks.  “surely some of the queen’s knights and lords have told you.”

“yes,” missandei says simply and she crouches down next to nan and traces her finger along the rim of the bucket.  “but you ask a wise master of astapor what astapor is like and he will tell you one thing.  ask a little naathi slave girl and she will tell you something else.”

nan chews her lip, remembers a slap, stops.  but he is gone, the kindly man, so she chews her lip again.  arya of house stark, she thinks, i’m not half so low as nan.

“nan?” missandei asks, and arya puts her rag in the bucket.

“i left westeros because of the war,” arya lies.  it’s not a full lie, but it feels wrong, and she frowns.  the rest will be truths.  “war and peace…they’re not the same.  peace there’s laughter, and brothers to love you, and needlework, and festivals, and…and…” she tries to remember it–winterfell where she’d been arya underfoot and had played with the castle’s children.  “if you’ve a good lord, you’re safe.  you’re happy.  you’re fed.  you know that justice will be served.”  ser gregor, queen cersei…  “but it’s been war, so it’s not like that.  and winter’s come.”

“and you’re going home,” missandei says.  “is it cold in winter?”

“yes,” arya says instantly, then pauses.  “i think.  it was the long summer when i was younger.”

missandei watches her closely.  “cold, and war-torn, and you are excited to go back?” 

arya thinks of jon.  she thinks of dreams of bran, and rumors of rickon and sansa.  the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.  and her pack is scattered.  not for long, though.  

“yes,” she says, and missandei’s eyes flicker.  arya cocks her head.  the scribe has a smooth face, and her eyes are hard to read.  “wouldn’t you like to go home?  back to naath?”

missandei shakes her head.  “no one is left for me there.  my brothers are here.  my queen is here.”

arya tries to imagine not seeing winterfell again, and it hurts her heart too much.  maybe if it were gone, though, she thinks, maybe if it had been razed to the ground…i’d not want to see the hill it stood on bare.  

“i’m sorry,” arya says, offering missandei a small smile.  “you’d…you’d be welcome at my home.  if you could stand to go so far north.”

missandei blinked quickly, and her eyes were bright.  “that is kind of you,” she says.  “you are kind, nan.”

Chapter Text

Oberyn wins, and though that means the gods have declared Tyrion and Sansa innocent of their kingslaying, that doesn’t mean that Cersei believes it.  "Or my father.“

"If you were wise, brother, you’d leave King’s Landing with your wife,” Jaime tells him.  "Take her to the Rock.“

But Tyrion does not wish to return to the Rock.  Cersei will send a knife for me there.  And he can’t be sure that his safety would be guaranteed in his father’s home.  

The solution presents itself without his even truly knowing how.  Besides, his father intended to have Cersei sent to the Rock as well, or to some other lord’s bed to end the rumors of her and Jaime now that Jaime was returned.

"Well, I thank you for the window of opportunity, Lord Tyrion,” Oberyn said to him one day after a session of the court.  Tyrion had gone, mostly out of habit.  He no longer sat the small council, and his father certainly seemed to see no further use for him at present.  

“The pleasure was mine, I can assure you,” he says.  "I like having my head fully attached to my shoulders.“

"I shall miss you, though I think not this den of lions.”

“You’re leaving?”

“For a time.  My brother has made noises of coming north in my stead and I would confer with him on the matter.”

“Would that I could sail with you.  I’ve always longed to see Dorne.”

Tyrion had not expected Prince Oberyn to cock his head and for the thoughtful expression to cross his face, but it did.  

Out of King’s Landing was out of King’s Landing, but Sansa couldn’t help but wish they were going north, not south.  She was the heir to Wintefell, as Bran and Rickon were dead, and ever since Robb… But there was unrest in the North, and it seemed that the Queen did not trust her lord husband to have his own seat at present, so they had sent the Boltons to secure the North in the name of the crown and only when peace was secured would they go North.  At least that was what Tyrion had told her as she prepared what silks she had to sail south with her to Dorne.

The ship and sea made her belly feel ill, but there was something exciting about being out on the open water, and the sunlight…every day was warmer, and the sun grew stronger, and Sansa would tilt her face up to it, and close her eyes and pretend that she was a child again and the heat was from the hot springs in the godswood.  

And no Joffrey.  No Joffrey, and the gods had declared her innocent for the gods knew the truth of the matter.  She’d had nothing to do with Joffrey’s death.  The queen had not believed her, but it had been the truth.  I wanted him dead, but that didn’t mean I’d…she had not pushed him into the moat, after all.  She may be a stupid little girl, but she’d known that Joffrey’s death meant her own unless she was far away from him.

But he is dead now, and Sansa is sailing south, not north, and even her husband seems happier in the sunshine.  

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“I want to fight, too!” Rickon said, his hands on his hips, his blue eyes full of fire. Why can’t I?“

“You’re too young,” Sansa said gently, holding out a hand to him.

“I’m not a baby,” Rickon insisted.

“No, but you are a child.”

“I’m not that much younger than Arya, and she is fighting.”

Sansa bit back a sigh. If she could stop Arya fighting she would, but Arya had never listened to her. “Arya has Nymeria,” Sansa said.

“And I have Shaggy. He is just as fierce as Nymeria. He will keep me safe.”

“Arya has the pack as well.”

“So?” Rickon said, his determination failing him. Nymeria did not like it when Shaggy ran with her pack. They were friendly enough away from the smaller wolves, but some of her pack seemed more interested in this new wolf than they should be. If the pack split, Sansa doubted that would be a bad thing, but now was not the time. And she could see that Rickon saw that.

“Then I won’t run with the pack. I’ll go somewhere else. Shaggy will keep me safe. He always has.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Grey Wind hadn’t kept Robb safe, in the end.

“He will,” Rickon said hotly. “He will, you’ll see. You wouldn’t know because you don’t have a wolf.”

He seemed to know immediately that he had crossed a line. Sansa dropped her gaze to her hands. They were bigger than they had been as a girl, braiding ribbons around Lady’s neck while she sang under her breath. They were the same hands, though.

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” Rickon said. He sounded miserable. “I didn’t mean it.”

Sansa looked back at him and smiled. She knew how to smile when she was sad. “It’s all right,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like her own, it sounded thick with tears she had not wept in years since Lady had died. “It’s true. I don’t have a wolf anymore.”

That made Rickon look even sadder. “That doesn’t mean anything, though,” he said quickly. “I know they call you Lady Lannister, but it doesn’t mean anything. You’re a Stark.”

“I am,” Sansa said firmly. That she knew. She was a Stark of Winterfell, as much a daughter of Lady Catelyn and Lord Eddard as Rickon and Arya.

Rickon bit his lip. “We could share Shaggy,” he said carefully. “If you like. It’d be different with you. You are my sister.” He sounded hopeful, if nervous.

Sansa looked at Shaggy. He was great and hulking, his fur was dark. He was calm now, but she had seen him lash out violently, and only Rickon could call him off. She doubted he would listen to her. Besides… she closed her eyes. She remembered soft fur between her fingers and a tongue licking her face, and not feeling alone, even when she was asleep. She would never have that with Shaggydog, she knew. Not what he and Rickon had, or what Arya and Nymeria, who moved and fought as one, had.

“Lady died,” she said sadly. “But she is still my Lady. Shaggy is not mine, nor should be be.” It hurt. She wished she had a wolf, but this wasn’t how it would happen. Perhaps when all was done, there would be a pup for her somewhere…

Rickon nodded slowly, then looked around. He looked as though he still wanted to go and fight, but he took a step towards Sansa and sat down with her, and she took his hand in hers.

Chapter Text

“What do you see?” the kindly man asks.

“A face,” she replies.

“Do you know the face?”  

“No.”

“A lie.”

“I don’t know this face.”

“Whose face is it?”

“A girl.”  She has a long face.  Horseface, they used to call her, and there were times when she’d press at her chin hoping it wouldn’t be so long and she’d be pretty like Sansa.  

“Who are you?”

“No one.”

“A lie.”

She doesn’t move.  Her smile is her servant, and the muscles in her face don’t move, not at all.  Her shoulders don’t shrug, she doesn’t chew her lips.  She stares at the face.  It looks so young.  So tired.  There are dark circles under her closed eyes.  When they open, they’ll be grey, like father’s, like Jon’s.  She doesn’t move. Not yet.

“Do you know why I am showing you this face?” the kindly man asks.

“No,” she says.  A lie.  

“It is not your face anymore,” he says.  “It is the face of a girl who came to our temple, who tried to be humbler than anyone, who wanted nothing more than to learn our secrets.  Do you know what happened to her?”

“No,” she says.  A lie.

“She learned some secrets, but did not give herself to us.  She promised herself to him of many faces, but it was a lie.”

She waits.

“So Him of Many Faces has taken her face.  She will never have it back.  She’ll wear a different face for all of her days.  The Many-Faced God must have his due.

“Who are you?”

She takes a deep breath.  Her lips tremble, her eyes drop, and she breathes.  One, two, three.

Don’t.  Tell.  Sansa.

Septa Mordane had told her she’d had the hands of a blacksmith.  Those soft little things?  She’d never been good at needlework—only needlework with her own special needle.  With her needle, she’s as good as anyone can be, and when she lunges, he cries out and topples over, clutching his leg, but they’re down in the dark and no one can hear him scream.  She kicks him, hard in the stomach, and he starts coughing, rolling away from her.  She doesn’t miss a beat.

Arya snatches the face off the wall, the face her father had called pretty and holds it in her hands.  She pockets it, and hurries away, the kindly man still coughing behind her.  “I’m Arya of House Stark,” she says in a voice not quite her own.  It will be when she’s on the ship, when she’s gone far away from here.  “And the Many-Faced God won’t have his due.”

She closes the door behind her, and the kindly man’s shouts are muffled now.  She walks slowly up the stairs, remembering a girl who’d crossed a courtyard full of red-cloaked Lannisters.  She walks evenly, purposefully, past the altars and the dying and the dead, walks to a door that is white and black.  She pushes it open and steps out into the night.  

She sees a star shining bright overhead.  North, she smiles.  And she pulls the face from her pocket and the little lemon potion.  She drinks, and changes her face, and touches her chin.  It’s long, and beautiful, and hers.

She smiles, sheds her cowl and throws it into the river, and hurries off into the night.

Chapter Text

Lyanna is taller than Arya is.  Lyanna’s tall—very tall.  “Of course I am.  My father’s a bear.”

“Not an actual bear, stupid.”

“How would you know?”

“That’s not possible.”

“And people say that what you and Nymeria do is not possible.”

Arya rolls her eyes.  “That’s different.  That’s magical.  There’s nothing magical about your mother and—” she pauses.  She knows she has to phrase it delicately.  If they were back on Bear Island, that would be one thing.  No one cares if you’re ladylike on Bear Island, but they do in Winterfell, especially if you’re named Stark.  

Lyanna roars with laughter and throws an arm over Arya’s shoulder.  “If my mum fucked a bear, you mean?”

Across the room, Sansa stiffens and looks at the pair of them.  She’s got the same look in her eyes that Lady Catelyn has sometimes, whenever she disapproves.  But Lyanna Mormont doesn’t care and Arya looks between her friend and her sister and shrugs.  Sansa sighs and turns back to her sewing.

Arya glances out the window.

Lyanna laughs.

“We’d know if they were close.  Do you think anyone in this castle would be still?”

“No,” Arya says quickly.  “Everyone’d be rushing about.”  She wishes they were.  She wishes she weren’t in this stupid room with stupid needlework.  She wishes she were running about the keep, doing something useful the way she and Lyanna had done on Bear Island in Lady Maege’s hall.   The king is coming to Winterfell, surely there’s some way she can be useful.  But Robb hadn’t thought of anything for her to do, and Meera had her hands full with the twins, and Bran was at his lessons, and Rickon was still in Riverrun and had already met the King’s tour.  She shifts in her seat.

You’re a lady of sixteen now, not a girl, Arya Stark, she can practically hear Septa Mordane say.  Ladies don’t fidget.

Yes Septa.  Septa Mordane was three years dead, yet Arya still hears her words ringing in her head.   She picks up her needlework.  Don’t tell Sansa! She remembers Jon saying before he’d ridden North to the Wall and he’d handed her her needle.  Needle’s barely more than a child’s toy, too small for her hand now.  The calluses from her spear and sword on Bear Island are already fading.  Blacksmith’s hands.  

She hears a horn and her head snaps to the window again.  Sansa gets to her feet and sweeps across the room, her skirts billowing.  

“There!” Arya says, excitedly.

On the line of the horizon is a black banner with a red, three-headed dragon.

The king inclines his head to her father from horseback before he descends.  Ned Stark doesn’t rise from his kneeling.  Arya’s sure it pains him.  He still remembers his sister, and to make matters worse, a horse had fallen on his leg when she’d been a girl and now his leg is bad.  He always does his duty, Arya thinks proudly.  

She wants to glare at the King.   He raped my aunt, she thinks fiercely.  Everyone says that she looks like her Aunt Lyanna, but if that’s true, the King certainly pays her no mind.  He gestures for her father to rise and speaks in a light, musical voice.

“Thank you, Lord Stark, for hosting us in your halls.  I had never seen Winterfell.  And she is glorious.”

“Your Grace,” her father says stiffly.  The king greets her mother, then her brother and Robb’s twins, and he makes his way down the line of them.  He praises Sansa’s beauty, tells her that she will make Lord Hardyng very happy—Sansa blushes prettily.  But when he reaches Arya he barely says anything at all.  “Sweet lady,” is all, and then he’s shaking Bran’s hand.  

Arya looks around the courtyard.  Sansa is looking at the arriving knights, and Arya hears her breathe sharply as she sees the red and white of Hardyng.  That will be Ser Harrold, Arya thinks, and when he sweeps his helm off, he’s got blonde hair and the expression of someone who knows he’s handsome.  

His eyes find Sansa’s quickly, and Sansa stands a little taller next to Arya.  Sansa and Lyanna, both tall, Arya thinks.  She’s not exactly short.  She’s taller than her mother, but Sansa has half-a-head on her at least.  Maybe I’ll still grow, Lady Maege says sometimes children grow twice.  

“Where is Aegon, Ser Harry?” the King asks.

“Chasing butterflies, your grace,” Ser Harry says dryly, before he greets her father and Robb.

The king does not look pleased, and Arya bites back a smirk.  She wonders what that means—chasing butterflies.

“No sign of the prince?” her mother asks as her father enters the room, leaning heavily on his cane.  Her hands are full of Sansa’s hair, twisting it into knots and braids to make her look as pretty as possible for her betrothed.  Arya lies on her parents’ bed, she’s next.  Her hair’s still in it’s long simple braid.  

“No,” her father says, sitting down next to Arya.  He pats her on the knee.  “The king is worried.  Apparently the prince shirked his kingsguard.”

“What?” Sansa asks quickly.

“Ser Jonothor Darry returned to the castle an hour past.  He was the one that went riding with the prince.  Apparently the boy disappeared.  He tends to, but still…”  As if some spirit had heard him, some wolf howls out on the moors.  Not a direwolf—a real wolf.  Arya closes her eyes, and a moment later, she’s in Nymeria, running through the Wolfswood.  She smells blood.  Deer’s blood, rabbit blood, fresh meat and—

Arya gets to her feet.  

“Arya—” her mother calls.  “Your hair.”

“I’ll do it later,” Arya calls over her shoulder and hurries down the stairs of the keep and out into the yard.  The castle is bustling, and Arya needs a horse.

It’s twilight on the moors.  Twilight lasts forever in summer, and Arya’s eyes grow used to the darkness quickly.  She sees a million stars overhead and as her horse clears the winter town, she sees Nymeria out come out of the woods.  She kicks Mist and the horse speeds up.  Mist is used to Nymeria.  

They run together quickly.  It’s dangerous at night, but Nymeria’s eyes are better than Mist’s and she takes the lead, and her scent will keep them out of trouble.  Arya’s heart pounds in her throat, and she slips into Nymeria’s skin for just a moment.  There it is again.  Horse blood.

Growing nearer.  

A wolf howls in the darkness.

She hears coughing.  Then a cry.  “No.  No no.  No.  Please.  Find some other poor idiot to eat, will you?”

“Nymeria,” Arya calls.

“Who’s there?” the voice asks sharply.  A man’s voice.  He sounds like Robb, she thinks.  No.  Not Robb.  His voice is less deep than Robb’s.  More like Jon’s, but she hasn’t seen Jon in ages.

“I’m Arya of House Stark,” Arya says.  

“Oh thank the gods,” the man says, relieved.  “My horse fell and now I can’t get up.”

“She landed on you?” Arya asks sharply, remembering her father and his ruined leg.  She jumps down from Mist’s back and pushes Nymeria away from the horse.

“On my leg.  I almost got off as she fell,” the man says sadly.  His accent is southron.  No, he doesn’t sound like Jon.  He sounds like the King.  Arya crouches down by the horse.  It’s leg is broken, clean through the flesh.  “I don’t think he’ll live,” Arya says quietly.

The prince moans.  “I was stupid.  I shouldn’t have gone off.”

“Probably not,” Arya says, but she’d have done the same, she’s sure.  “But no use making yourself feel bad about it.”

“Got my due punishment.  She was a gift from my cousin, too,” the prince says.  “A Dornish sand steed.  Bred for speed.  Windstorm, she’s called.”

“Have you got a knife or a sword.  I’d as soon put her out of her misery.”

The prince hands her one, and Arya looks down at the horse.  She hushes it’s pained neighs, and one quick slit and it’s done.  Then she enters Nymeria, and the wolf drags the horse’s corpse away.

“Gods,” the prince says, and he faints.

Arya binds his ankle—it’s miraculously only his ankle that seems broken—as she’d learned from Alysane, then pokes him awake again.

“Where am I?”

“Several miles from Winterfell,” she tells him.

“Who are you?”  

“Arya Stark,” she says again.  He blinks twice.

“Oh,” he says, and she sees his cheeks grow dark in the moonlight.  “Right.”

“Take my hand and keep your weight off that foot.”

She helps him onto Mist’s back, and calls Nymeria again.  She doesn’t know how far Nymeria dragged Windstorm’s corpse, but there’s blood dripping from the wolf’s maw.

“She’s the same litter as Shaggydog, yes?” the prince asks her.  He’s seated behind her, his hands clasped around her waist.

“You met Shaggy?” Arya asks.

The prince snorts.  “He scared my father’s horse half to death, and he threw my father off.  Lady Lyanna’s revenge, the men called it.”  

Good, Arya thinks.  “I’m glad your father was unharmed.”

“Nymeria, you said her name was?”

“Yes.”

“My cousin’s named Nymeria.”

“I thought your cousin’s name was Arianne.”

“My other cousin.  My uncle Oberyn’s second daughter.”

“Oh,” Arya says.  “She nice?”

“That’s a word for it,” the prince laughs, but doesn’t elaborate.

“You laugh a lot for someone who fainted for pain in his foot.”

“Pain is a state of mind.  That’s what the master of arms used to say.”

Arya snorts, and hears the words, “Men wouldn’t know pain if it bit them on the arse.  That’s what Lady Maege says.”

Aegon laughs again.  “Who’s Lady Maege?”

“Lady Maege Mormont of Bear Isle.”

“And what would a woman know of pain?”

“I never fainted when I broke my leg,” Arya shrugs.  “And Lady Maege’s been wounded in war and says that birthing children’s worse than that.”

“A fair enough point, I suppose,” Aegon says, but he sounds like he’s humoring her.  If he hadn’t broken his leg, Arya would have pinched him for that.  Instead, she kicks Mist faster, Nymeria running at their side.

As they approach winter town, they slow, and there are men on horses with torches.  

“Prince Aegon!” calls one of them.

“I’m well, Uncle Lewyn.  Chagrinned, but well.”

“Thank the gods.”

“He broke is foot is what he’s not telling you,” Arya calls.  “Someone ride back in and fetch Maester Luwin.  She sees one rider turn back towards the castle and ride off at speed.

“Well?” snorts the knight who greets them.

“Worse for wear.  Windstorm…she’s dead, uncle.”  He sounds perfectly morose over it.

The knight grunts, and turns to Arya.  “Thank you, my lady.”

“Yes, thank you,” Aegon says.  

“Of course,” Arya says.  “What else was I going to do.  Let the wolves get you?”

Aegon is seated between Ser Harry and Ser Jon Connington, laughing as he talks animatedly.  Sansa sits at Ser Harry’s other side, smiling prettily and Arya does her best not to feel annoyed that there’s not enough room for her at the high table.  She sits with Bran, and with the twins, and tells them stories instead, but sometimes, she catches herself looking up at Aegon, and thinks she sees him looking back at her.  

When the dancing begins, Sansa and Harry are the first on the floor and Aegon sits in his seat, and drinks wine, and talks with Ser Jon.

Arya gets to her feet and dances with some of her father’s men.  She likes dancing.  She dances and dances, and once or twice she even partners with Lyanna and they both giggle away knowing that the men are watching, perplexed that they are rendered unnecessary.  Arya dances until she’s out of breath and her braid—still her simple braid as she’d not had time to do her hair after changing from her sweaty dress—has come loose, and she steps to the side to find a mug of beer and to tighten the braid again.

“Lady Arya,” Prince Aegon says behind her and she jumps.  She’d not heard him come up.  He’s leaning heavily on a cane—one of her father’s.  

“I didn’t say a proper thank you,” he says quietly.  “I’d rather thought I’d get eaten by a wolf, and when Nymeria showed up, I thought my time on this world had ended.  You were brave and kind to come find me.”

“Kind,” Arya corrects.  “It’s not bravery.”

“Gallant, then.  My white knight.”

“Does that make you my maiden fair?” Arya teases, and he flushes.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says quickly.

“Of course not,” Arya shrugs, still smiling.  

“My lady,” he says, then pauses.  He’s standing very close to her and his eyes are sincere and dark in the candlelight for one wild moment, Arya thinks he’s going to kiss her.  He doesn’t though.  He takes her hand and raises it to his lips.  “My gallant lady.”

“My fair prince,” Arya says.

“I’ll agree to that, at least.”  He sighs.  “Would that I had a good foot.  I’d ask you to dance.  Though mayhaps you’ve tired of it.”

“Mayhaps,” Arya concedes, raising her beer to her lips.  “But I’d sit with you, if you’d like.”

“I would,” Prince Aegon says.  “I would very much.”

Chapter Text

“Cat?”  She hears him calling.  Calling calling calling for her.  His voice is hazy through the woods.

“Ned?” Her voice catches in her throat and it comes out more a gasp than anything.  He can’t be here.  Not now.  And yet she hears him.  She hears him echoing off the wood of a thousand tree trunks.

A crow caws.

Leaves crunch under her feet.

It is autumn.  The last autumn she and Ned had spent together had been warmer than this.  She’d only been a girl then, and learning to lose herself in love again.  

She keeps walking.

“Ned,” she croaks out.  “Ned, I heard you.  Where are you?”  

Maybe it’s just a whisper on the wind.  Maybe it is the sound of a laughing wolf, a ghoulish prank.  

The wind tears at her cloak.  She clutches it to her and she rounds a bend that will take her to the river.  

“Ned?” she asks the wind, but there’s no reply.  It whips around her, tugging at her cloak, her hair, the lit in her throat and her voice–her voice goes cold.

Chapter Text

“come away with me”

that’s what she’d said to him the first time they’d met.  not that she’d known what “away” was, or where they’d go.  but there was something about him–something unsatiated, and she knew that the longer that they stayed put, the more agitated he would be.

“come away with me”

she’d whispered to him on nights when he’d stared out into the darkness, when his soul was bleak and when he thought of elia.  the longer he stayed there, the less he’d smile, and the whole point was that she was taking him away from it.  he was all show and smiles, the red viper of dorne, but to her he was a damsel in distress, and she was taking him away from all of it.

“come away with me”

across the seas they sailed–to lys, to the summer isles, to oldtown and lannisport.  they sailed and when they sailed, they were happy and he was calm.  calm, but never forgetting.  she knew he couldn’t forget.  she knew it was in his skin, as much a part of him as his own voice.  but she could calm him, and when they moved, he wouldn’t dwell so much.

“come away with me.”

“where?”

“my brother has been invited to king’s landing and a seat on the small council.  he’s bade me go in his stead.  will you come away with me?”

no, she wants to tell him.  it destroyed your sister and it’s nearly destroyed you.  but maybe if she goes with him, he’ll make it out of there alive.

so she goes away with him.

Chapter Text

there are men that come in and out of the inn, some in red cloaks, some in other cloaks of different colors as well.  hot pie doesn’t pay them any mind.  or at least, he tries not to.

“it’s none of your business who comes in and out.  bake, boy.”  and he tries to do that.

he half-hopes he’ll see the young wolf.  with his luck, he might.  he’s already met one stark.  what if he’s the one that tells the young wolf his little sister’s alive, and that she escaped harrenhal and everything?

he presses dough together.

arya had told him it was really good–the bun he’d made her.  he’ll make a better one–a prettier one (it wasn’t pretty, that one) to give her when he sees her again.  because he knows he will.  he’ll see her again.  or mayhaps her brother.  if it is the young wolf–he’ll give him a direwolf loaf and he’ll know that he speaks true.  and if it’s arya…maybe she’ll smile again the way she did when she was riding away.

Chapter Text

it is a coin–a little iron coin.  does she know what it means?

it is death and life.  new death and new life every time.  you live, you die, you live again.  does she know?

she’s a clever girl.  a small thing, and fierce to survive already.  does she know she’ll die if she takes it.  or does she think it’s a gift from a friend.

i kill you, arya stark, just as surely as you would have killed me.

clever girl.

stupid girl.

Chapter Text

“You girl–she speaks Westerosi.”

Alazza steps forward, and bows her head calmly.  

“And what will your girl tell me?  She’s Braavosi.  She’ll just tell me the same nonsense you tell her to tell me.”

“Alazza does not lie on our behalf.  She is not in our employ,” Mergano Lasor tells the man.  He has blonde hair and blue eyes and is looking closely at Alazza.  

“Then what is she doing here?” the man asks at the same time that the man at his side–a man in the blacks of a brother of the Night’s Watch, says, “all this is folly.  Your king is dead, and the Lord Commander as well.  What good does it–”

“My king gave me orders to seat his daughter on his throne,” the knight says hotly.  “It’s not my fault that Jon Snow got himself stabbed by his own bleeding men.”

Alazza’s face is smooth as alabaster.  Her smile is her servant, and has been for a while now.  She has made faces in the mirror, seen what happens when she twitches only so slightly.  It’s not my fault that Jon Snow got himself stabbed by his own bleeding men.

The words ring in her ears, ring like bells, great tolling bells that had rung to bring them all to Baelor’s great sept.  Not my fault that Jon Snow…Jon Snow…They ring in her ears like drums and steel and rain pouring down on her head and the flat of an axe that came out of nowhere stabbed by his own bleeding men.

Jon Snow…Her brother.  Her last brother.  If stupid Ternesio Terys had just taken her to the Wall, maybe none of this would have happened–maybe she could have saved him.  Saved one of them at last.

“Alazza?” Mergano Lasor asks, looking uncomfortable.  Everyone is staring at her.  Her face is smooth as alabaster, and her smile is her servant but her eyes….Somewhere beneath Alazza’s face, Arya Stark has Jon’s eyes, and those eyes are crying.

Chapter Text

he cries all of the first day.  he rubs his nose on his sleeve, and buries his face in the direwolf’s fur whenever they pause.  

they pause frequently.  he’s still young and cannot walk for miles and miles a day the way that osha had walked when she’d come south.  she’d carry him on her back for some of it, except that her pack is there.  perhaps the boy should ride that wolf of his.

she looks at shaggydog.  he’s a hulking creature.  she’s seen him attack fully grown men before, all sharp teeth and bitter bite.  but when it’s just the three of them walking north, he’s not so bad as all that.  and if the boy has wolf dreams like his brother…

“come on, little man,” she tells him when it’s time to move again.  “let’s go.”

“i don’t want to go,” rickon mumbles.  “i want to go home.”

“i know you do,” she whispers and straightens his cloak, which has gotten twisted.  “and you will go home one day.  of that i’m sure.  i don’t know much, but i know that starks always end up back in winterfell.” when they live.  she doesn’t say that part, though.  the boy doesn’t need to hear the stories of starks who fought the free folk and lost their lives.  

“do you promise?” rickon asks her.

“on my life.  when it’s safe, little man.”

rickon sniffles and reaches up a hand.  osha takes it in hers.  it’s so small, and soft.  he’s so young, she thinks.  he’d not even begun training in the yards with the older boys.  

“when i go back, will bran be there?  and arya?  and sansa?” he asks as they walk through the woods.  he sounds hopeful, and osha breathes in relief.  hope is better than despair.  

his hope comes and goes.  some days he is like any other child, excited to see new things, wide-eyed at the world.  other days he is still angry, still sad.  “winterfell will never be safe,” he declares.

“don’t say that, little man.  your brother still lives.  he’ll be back, and when he is–then he’ll make it safe again.”

“no he won’t,” rickon says sadly.  “he won’t.”

“how do you know that?” she asks.  bran had had dreams that came true, perhaps it was true with rickon as well.

“i just do,” he says.

at night, sometimes he lies still as a log, curled up next to her.  other nights he thrashes and growls like a dog.  the nights that he thrashes are the days when he wakes up sad and angry.  the nights when he’s still, he stays close to shaggydog.

“sometimes i dream i’m shaggy,” he whispers to osha one night before he goes to bed.  “sometimes i dream that i’m inside him, and he’s me, and we’re running together.”

“you’d not be the first to have such dreams,” osha says.

“do you have wolf dreams?” rickon asks.

“no,” she says.  “though i knew some that did with other animals.  a warg’s rarer than a skinchanger.”

rickon chews his lip.  “i don’t want to change my skin,” he says.

“you don’t,” she says.  “you stay you.”

“what about shaggy?”

osha sighs.  she’s no skinchanger.  she doesn’t know the truth of how it works.  but rickon’s barely more than a babe, and someone should tell him.  but what should she say?  “shaggy is shaggy,” she says.  “sometimes you’ll just be able to control him with more than words is all.”

rickon looks at his wolf.  “i can already do that, though,” he says, and the wolf yawns.  

“from inside his mind?” osha asks sharply.

rickon squints.  “not quite….but i could.  i think.  i definitely could.” he sounds more like a child now than he has in a while, trying to convince her.  “i was…i wasn’t frightened,” he says quickly, straightening.  

“of course not, little man.”

“i wasn’t afraid that he’d take over me and i wouldn’t exist anymore.”

“now why would you think that?”

rickon chews his lip again.  “i don’t matter.”  there are tears in his eyes suddenly, and osha pulls him into her arms.

“you do matter,” she whispers.  “you matter very much.”

“then why does everyone leave me?” the boy sobs.

“i’m not leaving you,” she says.  “nor is shaggy.”

he grows taller as they make their way north.  osha fashions him a good walking stick out of a branch that fell from too much snow.  she even sharpens the tip of it–to better grab the earth, she tells rickon, but they both know it’s to stab if someone gets too close.  the world is wilder the further north they get, and she promised to keep him safe.

sometimes he rides on shaggy’s back, sometimes he walks.  his legs grow stronger, and longer.  he’s growing–nearly five now, he promises her, though she’s not sure that’s true.  they haven’t been traveling so long as that.

they reach the water and rickon’s eyes grow wide.  “that’s the sea?” he asks her.

“aye,” she says.  

“it’s so wide,” he says.

“they call it the narrow sea,” she says.  “at least…in that direction,” she points towards the rising sun.

“what’s in that direction?” rickon asks, pointing north.

skaggs, osha thinks.  “more of your brother’s bannermen.”

“robb has bannermen across the sea?” rickon asks.

“yes, though they mustn’t know who you are, and you mustn’t tell them.”

“i know,” rickon says.  they’ve kept it secret enough up till now.  “who are they?” he asks again.  “is it bear island up there?”

“no,” osha says.  “skagos.”  

rickon frowns.  “i’ve never heard of skagos,” he says. 

probably for the better, osha thinks.  what skaggs she’s met have not been the most loyal to their stark lords, but then again, she’s only ever met skaggs who’ve left skagos.  might be they’re different on the island the way thenn’s are in their vale.

“well, soon enough you’ll see it with your own eyes,” she says.

“and i’ll be safe there?” rickon asks.

osha pats him on the head.  his hair is getting long.

“so long as you’re with me and shaggy, you’ll be safe anywhere you go.”

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you’re not her.  you’re not.  your face is different, and you’re older.  your eyes are harder, your voice is changed, you hurt more than you did before.

you’re not her, not the one i loved.  you were never like me before, and you’re not like me now, not enough.  not enough like me.

you’re not her.  you can’t be.  she is dead, yet here you stand, a ghost of a past i’ll never see again.  it shouldn’t hurt so much to see your face–it’s all i wanted for so long.  but not like this, never like this.

i wanted to hold your hand in the rain.  i wanted to hold you in my arms, to miss the ones who are gone.  i didn’t want you to be gone as well, i refused to believe it.  in my heart you were alive, before you weren’t.  i wanted to keep you safe, i wanted everything to be right again, i wanted us, but that was not something i could have.

i remember you when the days were long and night barely fell.  i remember you before the howling of wolves and the snow swirling in the air.  i remember the smile on your face.

you’re not what i remember.  and that’s more than i can bear.

Chapter Text

“i wish it truly did bring the dawn.”

it was a stupid thing to say, but arya didn’t regret it.

ned had dawn in his lap, and a whetstone in hand, running it along the edge of the blade. 

“what’s that?” he asked, before smiling, the words having caught up to him.  “what’s this i hear?  the night wolf is tired of the night?”  arya gave him a look, which only made his smile widen.  his gaze went gentler, and he added, “i know that’s not what you meant.”

arya heaved a sigh, and looked out of the window.  it was black outside, except for the light from the torches.  when she’d been a girl, it had only been dark for a few hours at night, and dawn and dusk lasted forever.  she remembered waiting for darkness, curled up in her bed next to sansa.  she’d always wanted to stay up for it, but had never managed.

“it’s lighter in summer up here than it is down in dorne,” she said. 

“pity it’s darker in winter,” ned said.  he twisted dawn in his lap and began to whet the other edge.  “don’t worry.  we’ll win, and dawn will come.”

“i’m not worried,” arya said, doing her best to keep a twinge of annoyance out of her voice.  “i’m not afraid.“  the only time a man can be brave is when he’s afraid, bran had whispered to her.  father told me that.  she missed her father’s face, her mother’s eyes, jon rubbing her hair and calling her little sister, rickon’s breathless laughter, robb’s smile, sansa’s songs.  i miss the summer.  it felt like a betrayal to think it here in winterfell, in the halls of winter is coming.  “i miss the light,” she said.  i miss peace.

Chapter Text

He arrives a little before nightfall.  Not, of course, that that means anything.  It is late–far later than he wanted it to be, and in high summer, the sun sets long after the hour that children are supposed to be abed.  (He remembers nights asleep in his bed alone, Brandon gone, Ned gone, Lya down the hallway.  He remembers being afraid of the dark.  He remembers being glad that the sun wouldn’t set until after he was asleep.)

Winter is coming.  The words ring in his heart as he dismounts his horse.  To the north,winter is coming means something entirely different.  To the north, it means wildlings raiding in hunger, it means wind so cold you forget you are alive, it means darkness that lets up only for a few hours each day.  Winter is coming in Winterfell…

Winter is coming, his father said before riding south, I’ll bring them back, Ben.  I’ll bring them all back.

These halls should be home, he thinks as he hands his black cloak to a servant.  (He doesn’t recognize her face.  She’s barely a spit of a girl, in truth.  But she looks happy enough to be here, and clean.  Does Lya’s boy like girls.  Does he chase them the way Brandon did, or is he somber like Ned?  Or is he like Benjen, too young when everything happened and never given allowed to distract himself with a kiss or a smile?)  These halls should be home, but he’s as much a ghost moving through them as the memories of Lyanna and father.  Everything is too…small.  He is taller now than he was when he left.  And though it is louder than he recalls, he can’t hear Lyanna talking more loudly than everyone in the room, insisting on being heard.  Instead, all he hears is Robert’s booming laughter–the same as it had been when he’d been small and he’d first met the man who would be king, though he had not known it then.

Robert will hear me, he thinks.  He must.  He will.  He loved Lyanna.

It feels wrong, to use his sister’s name to gain the king’s ear.  It feels wrong to be here in these halls when she is not here.  Forgive me, Lyanna.  I shouldn’t have lied for you.  I should have told Brandon, or Ned, or father.  He’d only been a boy.  A boy whose brothers had been distant, gone as they were to foster.  It had just been him and Lyanna, and she’d bade him not to tell, so he hadn’t…

He shakes himself.  The Lord Commander had sent him to sup with the king, to beg the king for recruits, for supplies, for winter was coming, and the watch was poor.  You’ll have sway with Robert, far more than I would, Lord Mormont had said. 

You’ll have sway with Robert, Lyanna had said to Ned, A few more years is all I ask.  Surely you could convince him to give me that at least?

Benjen clenches his fist.  He should have known that it would be like the last time he visited Winterfell.  He should have known.  She is this place to me, he thinks, clenching his fist. 

And that’s why it doesn’t feel like home.  It can’t be home without her.

Chapter Text

when he’s tired, everything bleeds into everything else.  visions and revisions, faces that are long, hard grey eyes, snow and endless snow fading into spring and flowers, fading into darkness.  you must learn to control it, lord rivers tells him.  you must rule the visions.  you must not let them rule you.  it was like what jojen used to tell him about his wolf dreams, about running with summer.  it had been so long since he’d worn the wolf’s skin.  he wanted to, just to remember, to remember that it was easy, that it could be easy.

power is never easy, bran.  nor should it be. 

is that lord rivers’ voice?  or is it another voice?  the trees’ voice.  it had taken him a long while to realize it wasn’t always lord rivers who spoke to him when he lost himself in the past, in the present, in the glimpses of the future.  i see sunlight, he thinks for just a moment.  i see darkness.

“ary” the word bounces through his ears–a vision’s voice.  not the gods, not lord rivers.  it echoes, the way it does in the cave.  “aryaryaryaryaryary” arya, his heart leaps.  he has not seen his sister since he caught a glimpse of her shouting at him in harrenhal.  no not him, the gods.  but i was there.  he waits for the “aryaryaryary” to stop its echo and waits to see…“arianne.”

his heart sinks. 

she is not his sister.  she is older, and softer than ever arya was.  there’s a steeliness there, though, that’s familiar, and he breathes–such as thoughts can breathe–and focuses.  you must rule the visions.  you must not let them rule you. 

he does not know where he is now, but she is not northern, whoever this arianne is. dornish? he wonders.  he’s seen dornishmen in his visions before, but it’s dark and he can barely make out her expression. 

“you could have died,” she says, her hands on her hips.

“i caught two fish,” says another girl.  she is younger, and taller.

“you could have died,” arianne says, and her voice echoes off the cave walls again. “died, died, died, died, died…”

she was fishing.  whoever the other girl was fishing…there’s water in that cave, the way there is water in this one.  and the girl’s like meera, he decides.  why was arianne worried?  meera wasn’t going to die, there was nothing in the waters that would hurt her, and she wouldn’t fall…

bran’s falling again, falling and yelling, and when his eyes open, they open to darkness and he’s calling out, though whether it’s for meera, or arianne, or his sister arya, he’s not sure.

Chapter Text

when he’d been a boy, he’d trained at swords with the master at arms of his father’s keep.  “grip like this,” tobin fields had told him, correcting his hand on the grip of the sword.  “i know it’s heavy, but that’s to make you stronger.  if you’re going to be big like gregor, you should be strong like him too.”

sandor had corrected his grip, though he knew his muscles would hurt him in the morning, and he had kept swinging, kept training.  tobin was not a big man, but he was quick, and he’d laughed every time sandor had his his shield and he’d been laughing when he’d fallen into the sea at the battle of pyke.  had he laughed water into his lungs?  or had he tried to swim to shore before he’d drowned?

there’d been a rhythm to learning swordcraft, to the crack of dulled wood, then dulled steel against tobin’s shield, and there’s a rhythm to digging too.

just as fast as your heart will let you now, tobin had told him.  as many as it takes to clear your soul, the elder brother had said.

so he digs.  and digs.  and digs. 

no one corrects his grip on the shovel, and new blisters coat his palms.  his leg hurtslike the lord of the seven hells is biting into him there, and he cannot walk quickly anymore.  gregor would squash me like a bug now, sandor thinks.  the muscles in his arms that he’d been growing since he’d first started training with tobin are fading now that he doesn’t wear armor every day, and, worse, he’s slow.  mayhaps that’s better.

you don’t deserve the gift of mercy.  she’d said that before riding away on her little white horse.  white like all the princes in the bloody songs.  weren’t princes supposed to rescue, not supposed to leave you to die out of spite?  she saved me, though.  didn’t know she was bloody doing it, but she did.  if she’d gone and stuck me with that little blade of hers…

he digs, and digs, and digs.

it doesn’t matter what arya stark thinks of him now.  it’s better she thinks him dead.  better they all think him dead.  not like his life’s worth much anyway.

it might have been, he thinks bitterly as he digs, and digs, and digs.  if she’d just bloody come with me.  she’d be safe and she’d never have married the imp.

but his horse isn’t white like a prince in the bloody songs she’d loved so well.  his is black, and blasphemously named now.  driftwood.  he shakes his head.  it doesn’t suit stranger, no more than penance suits him.  so he digs.  penance and atonement are not the same, the elder brother had told him.  you must feel it in your soul, and others will know that the gods have forgiven you and they will forgive you too.  penance is what you do to pacify others.  atonement is what you do to pacify yourself.

so he digs, and digs, and digs.  his hands hurt, his leg hurts, his muscles are tired and he is weaker than he was before.  his head roils as he does it, arya stark’s anger, sansa stark’s fear, gregor’s apathy, gregor’s disgust…

you look like him, except your face is all melted, so he’s handsomer.  and a knight.  why won’t you let them knight you?  joff had asked.  i can’t wait to be a knight, and do great things.  even if you’re not a knight, you do great things.  you might as well let them knight you.  i could do it when i’ve my spurs, if you like.

that butchers boy had screamed when he’d run, and his blood had sprayed everywhere. 

what did it matter if everyone forgave him, if the gods forgave him when he had yet to forgive himself?

Chapter Text

They are rehearsing with swords made of wood, and the clacking sound fills the theater.

“Mercy, your needlework’s all crooked again,” Daena says, and Mercy looks down. They are. They always had been. “You can look at boys later.”

“I wasn’t looking at boys,” Mercy says. It is only half a lie. She’d been looking at the broom handles that Mario had been using because they were still waiting for the carpenter to finish the last sword. His hair is dark, and he is short, and he is as old as a red haired boy who had once dueled with a broom handle.

Mycah. His name is one Mercy shouldn’t know, but she does. She would bite her lip in chastisement, but only Arya Stark did that.

Mercy looked down at her crooked stitches. She had not forgotten Mycah–would not. Maybe he was a secret she’d keep too, like the night wolf.

Chapter Text

“i thought you were dead–i’d heard…” what had she heard?  she’d heard that her mother still lived as well, though sansa knew that wasn’t true.  she’d heard that lord manderly claimed to have rickon and was angling himself to claim power in rickon’s name–a painful lie.  her baby brother was dead after all.

but if the hound could live…

he stands before her in a simple habit of brown roughspun.  he looks thinner, more tired.  but that’s not what’s the most different about him.

“forgive me for disappointing you, my lady,” he says simply.  

it’s gone.  the anger is gone.  there’s no drink in him, and no anger and no…no pain.  sansa raises a hand to her throat, feels it quivering, feels her pulse beneath her skin.  i’m still alive too, she thinks.  and the gods gentled his rage.

if he lives and is at peace, what else might be possible?

Chapter Text

“where is she then?” his voice is hollow as he looks between theon and jeyne.  of all the treacheries he’s come to expect from theon greyjoy, this is the worst.  this is not arya.  this is not my little sister.  

“i don’t know,” theon says quickly, ducking his head, not looking at jon.  he tries to smile but it looks like a wince with all his broken teeth.  "no one knows.  she’s dead most like.“

“she’s not,” jon says quietly, and theon takes a step back, as if frightened jon will throttle him.  i could, he thinks angrily.  this isn’t arya, this isn’t… he looks at jeyne.  she is frightened of him and he takes a deep breath.  she shouldn’t fear me, he reminds himself.  i am not ramsay.  

and you are not arya.  he looks away, his hand coming to rest in ghost’s fur.  he closes his eyes and for half a heartbeat, he is with the wolf, and he has a fierce sister to the south, running through snow with a pack at her heels.  please be with her, jon begs the wolf sister.  please be with her, and keep her safe.

Chapter Text

“I’d not thought to love you so much,” he says as he turns away from her.  Roose likes to sleep on his side, and he doesn’t like being cuddled up against, so Walda stays very still.  There is moonlight streaming in through their curtains, and it leaves a trail of moonlight on Roose’s pale back.  The constellation of freckles there seem that much darker.

“You can’t just say that,” she grumbles, shifting.  She likes to sleep on her back.  On their ride North to Winterfell, she’d tried switching sides of the bed so that Roose would look at her while he falls asleep, but he always faces away.

He doesn’t reply, so she reaches a hand out and pokes him in the back.  "I said, you can’t just say that.“

I’d not thought to love you so much.  She’s no fool, and knows full well that he married her for her weight in silver.  He’s not a stupid man, and knows that his rule will be costly, and he needs all the money he can get.  

Walda’s no romantic.  You can’t be a romantic in the Twins, not with all the other Walders running about.  She’d not expected him to love her–she’d have counted herself lucky if he’d not been a lout.  And he’s not.  But love?

He still hasn’t bloody replied.  "Well, I’d not thought to love you so much, either,” she says, and he lifts his head from the pillow slightly, as if in amazement.  But he doesn’t turn to look at her, and she rolls her eyes and decides she’s better off sleeping.

Chapter Text

when karhold is ours.

not when karhold is mine.  

when karhold is ours.

perhaps it is a trick of language.  her husband doesn’t have many words of the common tongue, though he learns more by the day.  perhaps it is a false translation.  he doesn’t, after all, grasp the difference between castle and keep, or that some lords are greater lords than others.  "magnar means magnar,“ he had said confused.  "should be different word.”

“there are lords, and kings, and knights,” alys had said patiently.  "but some lords are greater than others.“

“magnar means magnar,” he had repeated again.  alys had sighed, and leaned back against the pillows.  he would learn.  he would understand one day.  one day.

when karhold is ours.

she doesn’t like to think about it, not if it means harrion dies.  harrion is the rightful lord, and her claim hangs by a thread and it is not a claim she wants.  she’s lost her father, and two brothers already, she doesn’t want harrion gone as well.

but still…he’d said ours.  not mine.  

she doesn’t know enough about thenns.  she should learn, she decides.  should learn.  magnar means magnar, but she wonders if a woman can be a magnar as well, or if a magnar shares his title with his wife…

Chapter Text

They’d said he was more beast than man when he had been in the West.  It was one of the first things Jeyne had heard of him, in fact.  The Young Wolf, who drank blood and feasted on the flesh of men alongside the monstrous familiar that rode at his side. 

But Robb hadn’t been more beast than man.  He’d been barely more than a boy, and her barely more than a girl, and she’d loved him.  She’d truly loved him. 

She hears rumors that he’s more beast than man now, that he’s alive and leads a host of men west.  She hears hat his crown is gone, and that he is wild for he wears the head of his direwolf, that whatever magic had brought him back had sealed Grey Wind to his neck where the Freys had sewn him.  The thought makes Jeyne’s heart stop.  Grey Wind had been wild towards the end–he’d known no fear of man, for he’d killed too many of them in battle.  Grey Wind had frightened her, and so Robb had sent him away, even if his mother hadn’t liked it.

Grey Wind was right, Jeyne thinks in her bitterest moments.  He was right not to trust them. 

Robb’s host has come west.  She doesn’t know why, it doesn’t make sense.  Robb had been going north, he’d been going to Winterfell, and would send for her when he’d reclaimed his kingdom.  Why is he coming back here?

Jeyne sneaks out of the castle at night.  Robb’s men have circled the Crag and it’s all to familiar, but Jeyne…she’s frightened of Grey Wind, but what if there’s Robb in there too?  Besides–is she to sit meekly?  If Robb lives, she is still his queen, not some prisoner to be wed again whenever the Lannisters would have her.  She makes her way through the dark, holding her cloak tight about her, and approaches the camp directly.  Let them take me prisoner, she thinks wildly. I don’t care.  

But they don’t.  “Your grace.”  A man she does not recognize bows to her. 

“Where is he?” she demands, wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so breathy. 

The man looks at another guard, hesitating. 

“Your grace, it…it may be best that you…”

“Where is he?”

“He’s fearsome to look upon.”

Jeyne gives the man what she hopes is a withering glare.  He certainly bows his head and extends a hand.  “This way, your grace.”

The camp is sparse–much more barren than when first she’d ridden with Robb’s host.  How many are still at the Twins?  She dreads the answer to that question. 

“You’ll want to be careful,” the guard tells her.  “He…the wolf…” he gulps.  “There is much rage in him.”

“He was slain, as were his men and his mother,” Jeyne replies.  Now her voice sounds more confident than she feels.  Gods, but she sounds almost like Catelyn Stark, so assured.  No…not Lady Stark.  She sounds like a queen.

“Aye, it’s true,” the guard says.  “But…well, it’s… if he frightens you, your grace, you must remember we will keep you safe.”

“He his my husband.  I do not need protection from him.”  She looks at the stars overhead and prays that it is true.  He’d hardly be the first beast to wear a crown, she thinks, remembering her father’s stories of King Aerys.  But Robb is not Aerys Targaryen, Robb is sweet, and loving, and good. 

“Your Grace, the Queen has come to see you,” the man announces outside a tent, and he pulls aside the flap.  He gives her a concerned look which she forces herself to ignore, and Jeyne steps into the tent.

The man had been right: it is gruesome to behold.  Robb’s body is undoubtedly Robb’s body, but from his high-necked doublet sprouts Grey Wind’s head, not Robb’s.  He growls at her, growls like a beast.  Can’t he speak?  

“Robb,” she says, and her voice is oddly still, even as her hands tremble.  I must not be afraid, she thinks, I must not.  I am a Stark by marriage, like Lady Catelyn.  The direwolf is mine as much as his.  The direwolf is mine because its his.  Because it’s him.

He keeps growling at her, as if to demand who she is, why she is, why anyone would disturb him.  She looks into his tawny eyes, so unlike the blue she had loved, and takes a step towards him.  He doesn’t snap at her as Grey Wind had once snapped at her uncle, and his shoulders hunch, and he looks away.  Shame?  That I should see him this way.

“Robb,” she says again, and she reaches out a hand to take one of his.  He starts at her touch, and looks at her, and she doesn’t think she sees rage in his eyes.  She doesn’t know.  Does he still feel the way a man does?  Is Robb in there?  Or only Grey Wind?

It doesn’t matter.  She can’t let it.  She reaches up a hand, and it is shaking.  He’ll bite it off, she thinks for half a heartbeat before she presses it to his snout, stroking the fur that grows along his nose, stroking his cheek.  He closes his eyes, and stands very still.  So very still.

If he frightens you, your grace, you must remember we will keep you safe.

But she isn’t frightened.  Not anymore. 

“Robb,” she says for a third time, and this time her voice is truly strong.  “Robb, you came back to me.”

His eyes snap open, and she doesn’t understand what she sees there.  I’ll learn, she thinks as very awkwardly, almost gingerly, he draws her into his arms, and nuzzles her with his snout. 

Chapter Text

Graphic by aryaregina

Nymeria is big–bigger than Arya is, bigger than the pup she’d fallen so fast in love with.  Her yellow eyes are full of anger, full of hate, and Arya looks deep into them.

Do you hate me?  For the rocks?  She’s almost frightened of the answer to that question–far more than she’s frightened of the size of her direwolf, so much bigger than Arya had dreamed she could be.  They were meant to make you hate me, meant to make you run, because you would not go.  You wouldn’t leave me.

Did they work to well?  

She chews her lips and looks into the wolf’s eyes.  I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth, she’d once sworn to the gods.  But looking at Nymeria, she sees she’s not–not truly.  She’s not big, and shaggy and her breath is not so hot and her eyes aren’t so full of hate.

I do hate, she thinks defiantly at the wolf.  I hate them–Cersei, and Joffrey, and Ser Ilyn, and Ser Gregor… but not you.  I couldn’t hate you.

If you must hate, Arya, hate those who truly do us harm, her father seems to whisper in her ear.  They’re in the north, those who would do her harm, the ones who burned Winterfell and killed her father and Robb.

Nymeria sniffs, and Arya reaches out a hand, as though the wolf’s a dog.  Nymeria’s eyes flicker, and her head cocks for just a moment as she looks at Arya.

I’m not a direwolf, Arya thinks to her wolf–her wolf, her wolf, a little ball of fluff Robb had deposited into her arms–but I’ve got the wolf blood.  My father told me so, and you know it’s true.

You’ve got a wildness in you child.

She squares her shoulders and takes a step forward, then another one.  Nymeria doesn’t growl, and her eyes are hard, and Arya–Arya’s hard too.  

She presses her hand into the wolf’s fur, just behind her ears, and presses her forehead between Nymeria’s eyes.  Nymeria doesn’t growl, she doesn’t move at all, and when Arya pulls away, she sees that her wolf’s eyes are clouded.  

Arya wraps her arms around Nymeria’s neck and hugs her close for just a moment, the way she’d done when they’d both been so much smaller, then she looks back over her shoulder. 

The others are standing there.  Gendry’s mouth is hanging open, his hand is tight on his spear as if ready to throw it if Nymeria moved to hurt her.  She won’t hurt me, Arya thinks triumphantly.  I am the night wolf, and so is she.  

She steps to Nymeria’s side and the wolf shifts, not letting Arya out of her sight.  Then Arya wraps her hands in Nymeria’s fur and hoists herself up so she is riding the wolf’s back as though she is a horse.

Warmer though–warmer than any horse Arya’s ever ridden.  And no horse had ever felt quite so much a part of her…

I can be strong, and she knows that it’s true, not because she promised the gods, or because her father told her she could be, but because she can feel Nymeria’s heart beating under her as she begins to walk forward, not even needing Arya’s bidding.

Chapter Text

“do i have to go, mother?”

“yes, doran.”

“but they’re babies.”  he knows as soon as the words are out of his mouth that he has said the wrong thing, and he flinches, waiting for his mother’s reprobation.

but loreza martell does not hiss at him, or shout.  she looks at him evenly.

“exactly,” she says.  “they are so very young, and so are you.  enjoy it if you can, doran.  one day, you’ll be old, and you’ll wonder that they could ever be so small.”

the mountain’s head is the size that oberyn had been when his mother had first presented his youngest brother to him, wide-eyed with a thick thatch of dark hair on the top of his head.  it is huge–larger than any man has a right to be, and doran cannot stop staring at it.

“i’ll make tywin lannister squirm, you’ll see.  he’ll pay for what he did to elia.”

“careful, oberyn.  you must be careful. if everything we’ve planned–”

“i’m not a child.”

“i didn’t mean to imply you were, just that mother always said–”

“mother is long dead, as is elia.  that lion’s den is not the same as the one mother knew.  i’ll be careful, but i won’t let the chance for justice pass me by.”

he’d been just a baby, with eyes full of wonder.  oberyn always had eyes full of wonder, and he’d been smaller than mors and olyvar, just the size of a mountain’s head.

“will you come play with us, doran?”

“no.  i’m reading.  go away.”

“but the water’s so nice!”

“later.”

“come on!” and he splashes water from the gardens at doran.

“you got it all wet!” doran shouts.  

“you shouldn’t bring things to the water gardens that shouldn’t get wet,” elia laughs, wrapping her arms around oberyn.  she always does that, always hugs people.  she hugs mother, and oberyn, and doran too sometimes.  her arms are thin, and her embrace isn’t strong, but it’s always there, quick and supportive, and her thin little smile that shone so genuinely on her face.  “come play with us.  please?”

“will you play, father? i’ve been practicing with myrcella.”

trystane has her lips, her thin smile that manages to light up his face.  arianne has her eyes, shining deep and clever in a face that looks more and more like mother every day.  quentyn her caution, and he hopes it serves him better on his journey than it served elia in king’s landing.  

trystane is holding a cyvasse set, and doran inclines his head and his youngest sits across from him and sets up the game on the table.  doran watches him.

oberyn was the youngest too, and clever like trystane…but he sees little of oberyn in his son.  perhaps it’s for the best.  trystane had been small when he’d been born too.

“you must come and visit.”

“i will, i swear.”

“as soon as you are able.”

“i couldn’t be far from you for long, elia.  besides–i would meet your husband.  i should have met him before mother agreed to this match.  i am her heir.”

“do you worry for me, brother?”

she’s thin–too thin, in his view.  she doesn’t eat enough, and is frequently ill, taking compresses with her into her room, drawing curtains against the sun.  perhaps the north will do her well.  the sun will be less hot there, and perhaps she’ll blossom like the red flowers she used to weave through her hair when she wasn’t splashing around in fountains as a girl.  “i always worry for you, elia,” he says dutifully, taking her hand in his.

“you mustn’t.  i have the sun’s fire in my veins.  nothing will bring me down.”

she beams at him, and how can he not believe her.

“i’ll be sorry to see you go.”

“but you’ll see me again soon, you promise?”

“promise me you’ll look after them–elia and oberyn.”

“they’re old enough to look after themselves, mother.”

“are you denying your dying mother her last wish?”

“no, of course not.”  doran presses a kiss to her forehead.  

“prince of dorne,” she sighs, cupping his cheek with a trembling hand.  “a fine one, you’ll make.  keep them safe.  they shine so brightly.”

“what is our heart’s desire?” she asks him with narrowed eyes, narrowed like elia’s.

he swallows.  she looks like them all–like mother, and elia, with oberyn’s determination shining through every pore of her skin.

i want none of them to have died, he thinks, but that is a foolish thought, a boy’s dream, and he is old now.  i failed you, mother.

“prince of dorne.  a fine one, you’ll make.”

“vengeance.”

“i’ll be careful, but i won’t let the chance for justice pass me by.”

“justice.”

“i have the sun’s fire in my veins.”

he presses the signet into his daughter’s palm.  “fire and blood.”

Chapter Text

He remembers the smell of smoke and blood in his nose, burned flesh that won’t quite go away, all too familiar.  He remembers green that should be red, and heat, and the taste of sour strongwine that he’d drunk because he’d bugger himself if he had t o face fire.

He remembers her voice quavering, he remembers how fuzzy his gaze had been, and how he’d taken a knife to her throat.  He remembers sing little bird, sing for your life, and how steady his hand had been–steady though he’d not stopped trembling in hours.

He remembers the exact way she’d sounded as she’d sung, remembered how the green light coming in from the window made a halo around her head, and he wondered if she was a little bird at all.  She was singing a song someone had taught her, a song that meant she was a good girl, but he’d never heard the words quite like that before. Keep our sons from war we pray…

He remembers wanting her, and her barely more than a child–but more than that, he wanted her to want him.  He wanted her to want to come with him, he wanted to keep her safe, even if he’d have been worse at it than he wanted because it was her.  Better her than her bleeding bitch of a sister.  

He remembers her–all his sins remembered in her face, her voice, the color of her eyes.  He remembers her, not like this, not with a mockingbird holding her cloak together, nor with a direwolf.  It hadn’t been winter then, she’d worn silks, not furs, and ones that were too small for her, smaller every day as she grew.  He’d not thought to ever see her again, and not like this, not like this.  

“You kissed me.  You don’t remember?”

No he doesn’t remember that.  He doesn’t remember that at all.  

Chapter Text

the woods are full of ghosts tonight.  ghosts, and ash from their nightfires.  you are one of them.  ghosts and ash and a hole in your throat and a hole where your heart used to be.

your heart used to leap into your throat.  at the sight of him.  when you were a girl, and when there was sun in the sky and there was excitement to be had.  when you saw bran climbing, or heard robb’s laughter.  perhaps your heart leapt out of your throat when they cut it open, if it didn’t suffer the knife the moment that robb’s had.

they talk of how cold it is, pulling autumn cloaks around their shoulders.   your fingers turn blue one night, and you ball your hands into fists and pull them up your sleeves the way arya used to when she was chilly.  winter has come, but they’re all gone, your starks.  you are the only winter warning remaining that house.  

the north is cold and has no mercy.

ned had told you that, when you’d been a frightened girl with his babe in your arms.  winter was never this cold in the riverlands, not as you knew it in your girlhood.  you’ve never seen snow here before.  it reminds you of him.  he died, and death came south.  

you came back, but he did not.

Chapter Text

“He is not allowed to die.”  

“Understood,” Pylos says.

“I mean it, maester,” growls the knight, grabbing hold of Pylos’ chain.  “None of your Baratheon loyalties now.”

“The chain you hold keeps me in service of the castle, not its lord.  You needn’t worry about my loyalties,” Pylos says as mildly as he can manage.  The metal is digging into his neck.  

He tends to Loras Tyrell.  The oil has melted his skin, and some of it bubbles up, full of pus.  Pylos has tended worse.

Loras Tyrell does not speak.  Once he’d been a handsome boy, everyone knows that.  The Knight of the Flowers was famed for his beauty, but Pylos had been standing too far back to get a good look at him when he’d challenged Roland Storm to his combat.  Storm was dead now, but he’d gotten what he wanted, Pylos supposes, and Loras groans as Pylos changes the bandages on his body three times a day and sends them to be cleaned.  There are other soldiers that require his care, but he finds himself in Stannis’ room more frequently than any of the others, sitting by Tyrell’s bedside and taking his hand when he groans in time with the thunder. 

Chapter Text

on the third day, bran understands.

after the shock of it–that father would lie, that jon wasn’t his son–has worn off, and bran has begun to accept it, it still aches, and he understands why.

there’s a world of difference, bran thinks, between he is not father’s son and he is not my brother, and bran has already lost one older brother he can’t bear losing the other too.

he’s still jon, though, he tells himself.  he’s still jon.  that hasn’t changed, it can’t change, it won’t change, and he’ll love jon forever.  bran’s nearly a man grown, but jon’s already one, and if bran’s the oldest man in his family, it is his job to protect them–protect rickon, and arya, and sansa if she’s still alive as well.  but he’s so far north, and he’s still only a broken boy, and it weighed a little less when he had an older brother.

he’s my cousin, bran thinks.  he only has one cousin, his mother’s nephew in the vale.  and now he has another, and this one’s no stranger.  this one’s jon.

Chapter Text

It sounds like thunder, whatever it is.  Thunder in the distance, thunder on the horizon, thunder and storm and dark and danger.  It’s not thunder, though.  Thunder comes in summer, when the heat is high and the sky over the moors is bright and marred with tall dark clouds.  Arya remembers them clearly.  She remembers running in the rain-mud with Bran.

It sounds like thunder, but it’s not, and the wolves shift next to her.  Nymeria sniffs the air, and Arya reaches up to rest one hand on her wolf’s neck, the other resting on Needle’s hilt at her side.  The metal is cold, and the wolf is warm, and the sky is not bright and marred with tall dark clouds.  It is night, and it’s been weeks since she’s seen a glimpse of brightness that doesn’t come from a torch.  Sometimes the wind blows the snow overhead and it looks like stars, but Arya hasn’t seen stars in weeks either.  Perhaps there are clouds, and I just can’t see. 

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.  Her nose is not so strong as the wolf’s, but she can still smell smoke, or rotting flesh.  But she doesn’t smell anything at all and it sends a prickle up her spine.  Something is wrong.  Something is very wrong, and Arya’s hand tightens in Nymeria’s fur because she knows, knows that the storm is coming for true now.

Chapter Text

ser jorah had always spoken of the starks derisively, and her brother had called them “the usurper’s dogs.”  dany had never thought twice about it–not until she saw the direwolf for the first time.

a direwolf is not a dog, and though she is the mother of dragons, her breath catches in her throat.  you are the blood of the dragon and you will not be afraid.  and yet this beast seems far more likely than drogon to eat her silver out from under her.  gods be good, it’s the size of her silver, with red eyes and a long pink tongue, hot breath like puffs of smoke in the frigid winter air.

she kicks her silver forward through the snow, approaching the great white wolf.  it watches her, and dany does not break eye contact from it.  she remembers hearing words about wolves and strengths and alphas.  she has dragons that look to her as a mother, she will not fear the wolf.

“ghost!” she hears someone calling through the wood, and the wolf’s head turns.  “to me!”  without giving dany a second glance, the wolf disappears between the trees, fading into snow, and dany pulls on her silver’s reins, halting.

“your grace!” she hears ser jorah call, and knows he would have her return to the line but she does not.  she will not.  she is a dragon and a dragon would not fear the return of the wolf.

Chapter Text

i. 

there’s a way the cold tastes.  it stings your mouth, your lips.

you breathe differently in the cold–more shallow, like you’re running.  the air that fills you chills you and gives you life all at once and it hurts.  it hurts the way life hurts.  she learned that years before.

the wind sounds different.  there’s no gentle rustling of leaves.  the wind seems to move faster.  or maybe that’s the cold hitting you harder than it did when it was warm.

things are different in winter, and if you don’t know how to run with the wolves, you fall behind.

ii.

arya doesn’t fall behind.  she has two legs, not four, and her body seems less designed to charge through snowbanks than the pack, but she doesn’t fall behind.  the pack doesn’t let her.

they don’t eat her either.  one tried, and nymeria snarled and wrestled him to the ground until he was whining and wimpering and the rest of the pack knew.  

she may be small, and weaker than a wolf, but she was pack.  she was to be protected. 

they kept her warm when she slept, a pile of wolves all around her, and arya, for the first time in years, knows that she is safe.

iii.

they run through the snow, they hunt, they sing, they fight, but they do not know men.

they think they do.  they know how to fight men, they know how to kill men, but men, arya knows, aren’t the enemy.  

they can be.  lannister crimson still makes her throat go dry.  but they aren’t the true enemy, not the enemy she dreams about, the way she hear’s bran’s voice from mouths carved in white bark.  

that enemy–that true enemy–sees no difference in the flesh it possesses.

iv.

nymeria would have her believe she has always known it, that she was born knowing it.

arya’s not so sure, but she doesn’t think about that too much.  instead she thinks about efficiency.  which wolves are the fastest, which have the easiest tempers, which are the strongest, which are the biggest, which have the loudest songs, which the quietest, which are the gentlest, which can stand alongside men, which won’t respond to dog barks or a spooked horse.  she learns it all and knows how to group them.  

this packet–the scouts.  that packet–the envoys.  the warriors and caretakers, the spies and the hunters.  arya divides them all.

she’ll tell the men she meets that it’s nymeria that does it–that nymeria, her direwolf–speaks on her behalf.  the men will nod, impressed by the warg blood she shares with their dead king.  they won’t notice that arya doesn’t smile at wolves.  wolves see bared teeth as a threat.  they won’t notice how she tilts her head, offering her neck, a sign of peace.  they won’t see how she has learned gestures as she once learned braavosi that lets her command them herself.

v.

war and winter make you hungry, and arya stark has always been hungry for more than just food.  she howls along with her pack, and the cold air claws at her lungs.  she runs at their sides and her legs grow stronger, longer, as she grows.  she bleeds her first blood beneath the full moon, and if the men notice they say nothing for no one save she has ever commanded a pack of wolves as a king commands an army.  

this winter has come, and this winter is war, and every death haunts harder than any ghost arya remembers in her dreams.  but in winter, her father had taught her, you protect one another, you keep each other warm, you share each other’s strengths.  fear and icy winds cut deeper than swords, but a sword can’t destroy an army and at her back there is an army of men and wolves who are fighting for their lives.  

the men call her princess, they kneel before her, the stark they serve in battle, but winter and war are times for beasts, and the beasts have made arya their queen.

Chapter Text

she wakes in the dark, and that’s almost worse than waking by day.  by day she can see the room–all of it.  by night her memory must fill the gaps left by darkness and whenever she touches her memory she feels the razor.  the wind outside the castle walls sound too much like the jeers of the crowds.

i’ll have them all, she thinks.  each and every one of them.  her uncle thinks she won’t, he thinks that she’s docile now.  she can see it in his eyes when he sees her and the cap she uses to cover her bare head.  i’ll have him too.  he is not her father, not even close–she’s tywin lannister’s true heir.  kevan could do nothing without her father’s hand to guide him.

except it.  kevan had done this to her.  but father did it first, to his father’s whore.  cersei shudders and pulls he blanket around her more tightly.  she wants her hair back.  it will grow–too slowly, but it will.  and when it does…

the wind blows open her window and she frowns.  still wrapped in her blankets, she rises from the bed and goes to close it.  she reaches for the latch and releases it quickly in surprise.  the metal is cold.  she looks out the window.

it’s snowing.  

the last time she’d seen snow had been in winterfell.  she smiles, thinking of winterfell destroyed and burned.  she closes the window, pulls the blanket around her like a cloak and decides to light a fire in the hearth.

Chapter Text

i want my best friend back.  sansa is closed to weeping, as close as she can be.  i want my father, and brothers, and i want none of this to be the way that it is.

jeyne is jumpy and the tip of her nose and some of her toes have come off with frostbite.  she doesn’t smile, or laugh, and half the north is calling her a traitor for pretending to be arya.

“will they kill me?” jeyne asks her one night.  they are curled together beneath blankets as once sansa had dreamed when they were girls–better to share a bed with jeyne than with arya, who kicked in her sleep and often didn’t get all the dirt out of her hair so it got all over the bedding.

“no,” sansa says, but she’s not sure if it’s true.  it’s a kindly meant lie, she thinks desperately, wanting so very much to believe that it’s true.  i must not lie, not anymore, she thinks, but this isn’t a lie, it’s a comfort.  perhaps she can comfort jeyne, and with time, things will be better and they’ll be able to giggle and gossip together as they had as girls…

except sansa’s not that little girl anymore.  and jeyne certainly is not.  nothing is as it was, or as it should be.  she reaches for jeyne’s hand beneath the blankets, and squeezes it.  “you’re safe now.  i promise.  i won’t let them hurt you–i won’t let them…” 

she’d not let her own fears fill her voice–the frustration she felt whenever someone called her lady lannister, or the mutterings that she had spent too much time in petyr baelish’s care to remember that ned was her father.  cruel whispers designed to harm her, and unknowing how hard they hit her heart.  i’ll protect jeyne, though, she thinks fiercely.  i’ll do what i should have done in king’s landing.  if i had, if i hadn’t told the queen, then maybe none of this would have happened.

tears filled sansa’s eyes, and with her free hand she rubbed them fiercely away. tears were for little girls, and she’d never use them as a weapon like cersei had told her once.  she had her wits, and her blood and no one was going to harm jeyne more than they had.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Pod stiffens, unsure if he’s supposed to have heard.  She could be asleep.  People talk in their sleep, after all.  He’d heard her moan in her nightmares sometime.

But her eyes are opening and glittering in the firelight, and she’s looking right at him.

“My lady,” he mumbles, unsure what else to say.  “My sword is yours.”  There, that sounds good and proper.  She is his lady, after all.  Lady Brienne’s sworn her sword, and even if she hadn’t, Lady Sansa is Lord Tyrion’s wife.  But is Pod still Lord Tyrion’s squire?  

“I know,” Sansa says.  “And I still don’t know what I did to deserve it.  I didn’t think that there were such things as true knights, but Lady Brienne is…and when you have your spurs, you will be as well.”

Pod’s eyes prickle, but it is because of the smoke, isn’t it?  His throat’s dry, and he finds himself at a loss for words.  That’s hardly new–he’s always at a loss for words.  “Thank you, my lady,” is all he can manage, and Lady Sansa closes her eyes, and he thinks he sees her lips curve in the ghost of a smile.

Chapter Text

“Don’t pick at your face, Jeyne.”  It was a mantra that her mother had begun the moment Jeyne’s first pimple had sprouted just under her lip when she was twelve.  “You don’t want it to scar.”

Jeyne had resisted the temptation many times.  There was something satisfying about pressing her skin until it expelled the pus that had inflated it.  But she was a good girl, and did as her mother said, and she knew all too well that a girl with pimple scars would hardly make for a desirable wife, and House Westerling was old, but not wealthy or powerful.  My beauty, she remembered thinking, looking at herself in the mirror.  I must  be beautiful.

She wasn’t beautiful.  Pretty, yes, but beautiful…beautiful was for women who took men’s breath away and Jeyne was not fool enough to think she was one of those.  So she’d best not pick at her skin and ruin the pretty.

Robb had loved her.  He’d kissed her lips, he’d kissed her nose, he’d kissed her forehead, he’d kissed that spot where she’d had her first pimple.  And Robb was dead, and gone, and her mother had told her not to mourn him, not to love him, for she was still pretty enough to marry someone else who would give her sons as Robb never had been able.  Why does it matter if I’m pretty, Jeyne thought.  Robb didn’t love me for my beauty.  She was a queen, she was a widow–why was beauty all that mattered?

Robb would have understood that.  Her mother never could.  I must be what I want, she told herself one night while she couldn’t fall asleep, but she didn’t know what that was.  It was what Robb would have wanted, but more importantly it was what she wanted.  She wished to be what she wanted, even if it made her mother angry.  Perhaps that’s what widowhood does to you, she thought, too tired to feel sad.  It means you belong to no one but yourself.  Not even your mother.  So you must do what you want for what else is left you?

She ran her hand over the scab on her forehead.  It would be healed soon, her mother had noted earlier over dinner.  Healed soon and with it memories of the rebel, of rebellion.  

Jeyne dug her nails gently under the edge of the scab and pulled it away, thrilling in the wet feel of her own blood as it began to roll over her skin.

Chapter Text

That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. 

they all grow silent in the end.  

men still make noise, even when you cut their tongues out.  they will cry and moan and wail wordlessly.  

and then, they will die.

You heard its call, and felt its power. 

is this what it feels like to be a god?  he stares at his own reflection in the steel. his face is thinner.  his lips are blue.  his eyes are aflame.  he sees the world.  he knows the world.  knows it better than any man has ever dreamed.  it is small while he flies high.

It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. 

magic magic everything is magic.  the water the air the fire the earth all magic and him most of all.  how clearly he sees it with every sip of the blue he takes.

they needed dragons to fly, the valyrians.  

they thought flying was power.  

flying is nothing, not compared to what he can be.  to what he will be.  to what he is.

The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. 

the sea was smoking when he passed it.  they say it’s cursed.  let them say it’s cursed.  let them say he’s cursed.  he does not need to be there, does not need to go there.  

the warlocks with their shade can’t speak.  the men with their oars can’t speak. no one will know.  

he does not need to waste his time on failed power.  

he must keep his smiling eye on the horizon, on the dawn.  

With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.

Chapter Text

you meet in a garden.  it is springtime, and it surprises nearly everyon how short winter was after such a long summer.  she has come to court to find a husband.  you have come to court to see your father.

you have missed your father.  he is well, as are the girls and bran, though it takes very little time for you to determine that he misses home.  he misses home tremendously.  “would that we could exchange places and you serve as robert’s hand while i serve as lord of winterfell again,” he japes over wine.  you laugh.  you laugh because your heart beats faster.

you do not wish to be hand.  it seems an unbearable job.  but you met her in a garden and you don’t think that you’ll see her anywhere near so far north as winterfell.  staying in king’s landing while she searches for a husband is wildly appealing, though you know you ought not to tarry in this city.

you know she has come to tempt the king.  you know that you should wed one of your father’s bannermen, since your mother is of the south.  lord karstark has a daughter your age, and lord reed, and lord manderley has his granddaughters.   you’ve met them all, and endured their father’s suggestions.  but none of them have the same smile as she does, light and sweet and thoughtful and warm.  

they call her the little rose of highgarden.  you wonder if her lips taste like roses. 

Chapter Text

arya saw them through the window and sat up a little straighter in her chair.  she cast a glance around the room.  septa mordane was bending over jeyne poole and murmuring something about her needlework.

“septa,” arya said, trying to make her voice sound as small as possible.  “my stomach is hurting.  may i…” sansa always let the sentence trail away rather than say she needed to find a chamber pot, and the septa always let her go.  

septa mordane didn’t even look at her, but waved her hand, and arya put her embroidery hoop down on her chair and hurried from the room, breaking out into a run the moment she was in the hallway.

she reached the lichyard at the same time that bran was dismounting from his pony.  there was something in his arms.

“how was it?” arya asked him as she approached but stopped short.  the thing in his arm was a pup of some sort, with soft fur and great yellow eyes and–“is that a wolf?”

“we found them!” bran said breathlessly.  “their mother was dead, and there were six of them.  enough for each of us.”

for each of us?  arya’s eyes went wide and she looked around.  

“shouldn’t you be in your lessons, little sister?” jon asked as he approached.  he had two wolves in his arms–a white one with red eyes who was gnawing at the leather laces of jon’s vest and a silver one that was looking around eagerly.  

“is that one mine?” arya asked excitedly, holding out her hands.  

jon grinned at her.  “of course she is.”  he tiped the wolf pup into her arms and…

the pup was warm and her paws scrabbled against arya’s arms for just a moment.  “i’ve got you,” arya whispered to her.  her fur was so soft and arya could feel her little heart racing against her hands as she held her to her chest.

“mine’s called ghost,” jon said grinning.  “looks like one, doesn’t he?”

“what’s yours called?” arya asked bran.

“not sure yet,” bran said, frowning.  

“mine’s named grey wind,” robb said.  he’d come over too and held three pups in his arms.  “here, take this one, will you?” he handed jon a black one with dark green eyes whose colored contrasted sharply with the color of jon’s own pup.  “that’ll probably be rickon’s.  sansa will want the gentle one.”

“rickon’s a baby.  he should have a gentle one,” arya said.

“rickon will be frightened of them no matter what.  he’s only three,” bran said.  he looked between the wolves in jon’s and robb’s arms.  “i think he’ll like the black one more.  once he’s used to it.  he likes running around and this one will need to run i think.”  arya chewed her lip.  it was a good point.  

she let out a yelp that turned into a giggle.  the wolf–her wolf–was sniffing at her neck with a cool nose and a moment later she was licking arya the way the hounds sometimes did when she played with them.  she likes me! arya thought excitedly. she likes me!  and so quickly too.  

“pick wisely,” theon said as he came over.  “names are powerful things and you wouldn’t want to pick the wrong one.”

arya’s mind was spinning hard.  ghost, grey wind… both of them seemed like unearthly names.  but there was something so wonderfully earthly about the wolf which was still nuzzling her neck.  she wished bran had picked a name.  then she’d have a better idea.

the problem was the only names she could think of were names.  family names, stark names, and it felt wrong, somehow, to name a wolf after someone in her family.  she’d name her after some hero in the songs, but most of the girls in songs were there for the men to love, and her wolf wasn’t there for men to love.  

“no name for the baby hell bitch?” theon asked.  jon elbowed him and arya glared.  “what–that’s what she’ll be.  wolves make fearsome bitches, everyone knows that. and that’s a direwolf.  a queen bitch.”

that made arya smile.  she looked at the pup in her arms again and as she turned her head the pup turned hers as well and began licking arya’s face.  she giggled again.  “nymeria,” she said happily.  “a queen of wolves.”

Chapter Text

“will you play with me?  stick swords?  for practice?”  

she hadn’t known what sort of a question it was.  maybe it was because she was a girl, or because she was highborn, or because she was younger than him and any combination of those things could mean she wouldn’t understand the question.  

“what do you want to practice stick swords for?  you’re a girl.” 

she’d glared at him.  she’d glared, and he’d begged pardon.  her father was now the hand of the king–she could bring down a world of trouble if she wanted to.

“my brother gave me a sword.  i need to learn how to use it, don’t i?”

he hadn’t seen the sword.  she wasn’t wearing it.  all the soldiers and guards and knights all wore swords, but arya stark didn’t have one.  she might be hiding it.  girls weren’t supposed to have swords, after all.  

“why are you asking me, then?  i don’t know how to use a sword.”

because he didn’t.  he was just a butcher’s boy.  a meat cleaver–sure.  and all sorts of knives.  but a knife wasn’t a sword, and gods only knew a cleaver wasn’t one either.  

she’d cocked her head, an odd look on her face.

“because you’re my friend.”

so simple.  so matter-of-fact.  

mycah felt his heart swell.  in that moment, he forgot she was a lady and he was a butcher’s boy.  he forgot she was a girl and not supposed to have a sword.  he forgot that she was only a little girl and he was nearly a man grown.  he forgot that he’d been nervous about leaving winterfell, about leaving home, about not knowing anyone in the south, or how southron folk did things.  he forgot all of it because he had made a friend.

“all right.  let’s go.”

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they do not fall asleep immediately.  it feels too early in the night, and alys feels far too awake and her husband–well he is watching her.

she had always thought that men were uncaring after bedding.  she’d heard what seemed like every one of her brothers and cousins and uncles talking about how the best part of bedding a woman is the deep sleep that comes after–as peaceful as a babe.  she’s always wondered at this.  her understanding of babes is that they don’t sleep peacefully at all.

but sigorn watches her.  he wraps her in furs to make sure she is not cold, and the more that he watches her, the more she wants to know.

“why do you watch me?”

“wife,” he shrugs.

she doesn’t know what to make of that.  let him be scared of me.  “what do you mean by that?”

“you are wife.  bountiful.”

“bountiful.”

“bountiful.  like the star.”  he points at the sigil that they’d created for him.

“beautiful?” she asks.

he blinks, then mutters something under his breath in thenn.

“what are thenn weddings like?” she asks him.  

“trees.  old gods,” he says.  “not fire woman.”

“it would have been the same in karhold,” she replies.  “we keep the old gods as well.”

there had been no bedding ceremony at castle black, no brothers and cousins pulling the clothes from her body and throwing her into bed with this stranger.  he thinks i’m beautiful.  she finds she doesn’t care.

he says something again in thenn.  “how do you say husband in thenn?”

he says a word and she tries to repeat it.  he smiles and shakes his head.  “my common better than your thenn.”

“i could learn,” she says, half teasing.  “you learned common.”

“had to learn common.  i know common.  you don’t need thenn.”

“and why don’t i need to speak thenn?”

“kneeler,” he says simply.  he stretches his arms over his head and she can see the muscles of his chest shift with the motion.  “kneeler not thenn.”

“my sons will be thenns.”

there’s a sad look in his eyes now.  “maybe.  if we live the winter.”

“then we must,” alys says simply.

“it won’t be easy,” he tells her.

“i know that,” she retorts.  she’s not stupid.  but she can see from his face that he’s not speaking to her as her brothers had done, as though she were.  no, his words were more for himself.  he’s frightened, she realizes.  of winter, of this.  of me?

she sits up and the furs fall away from her and his eyes drop to her chest.  she finds, curiously, that she doesn’t feel embarrassed by it.  she might have, except she’s seen his fear.  she knows he’s as much a frightened boy as he is a man, and she finds that oddly heartening.

“there’s strength in us kneelers,” she tells him.  “we’ve survived this long.  whatever’s coming can’t destroy us so easily.”

he smiles at her, nods, approving.  

“bountiful wife.”

“beautiful,” she says.  “i think you mean beautiful.  bounty means able to produce.”

“bountiful.  bountiful bravery.  not said in common?”

alys stills.  “no.  not said in common.  and not of women.”

that makes him laugh.  “that’s stupid.  women more bountiful than men sometimes.”

yes.  we are, she thinks.  she sits up a little straighter and shifts so that she’s sitting on her knees now.  his eyes flit down to her groin for she knows that the dark hair above her sex is now poking up above the furs.  

“kneeling isn’t weakness,” she tells him.  “you’ve wed a kneeler–so you’re a kneeler.  i’ve wed a thenn, so i’m a thenn.  karhold is ours and we’ll make it what we must to survive.  yes?”

“yes,” he agrees and he’s smiling again.  he sits up and reaches a hand to brush her face.

“bountiful wife.  beautiful wife.”

she kisses him then,  and his hand strokes her cheek gently.  

bountiful bravery. she has an idea.  she’s never done it before–has only overheard people talking of it for it’s not appropriate for a lady. i don’t know how, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“my brothers,” she says slowly, “used to jape about kneeling.”

“what joke?” sigorn asks her, but she has already shed the furs–warm enough for this–and has bent down to kiss his stomach, and kiss her way down the trail of hair from his belly button to his cock.  he’d been half-hard already–there’s something oddly pleasing in knowing that the sight of her breasts might have done this to him–and he hardens quickly when she takes him fully in her mouth.  she traces her tongue along his member, circling it over the tip in what she could only imagine must feel good from the way he’s breathing, then pauses and rubs a hand gently up and down his length.

“granted,” she says, “i’m not kneeling on the ground properly.  but we can try that another time i suppose.”

she takes him in her mouth again.  the flavor him is tangy on her tongue and she wonders how much of that is the flavor of her own maidenhead from when he’d bedded her only an hour or so before.  she feels his hands on her back running upwards towards her head, towards her hair, then back down towards her arse.  then she feels him sit up and a moment later he’s got his hands on each side of her hips and he’s lifting her up.  she pauses in her sucking while she does, looking at him, letting him guide her hips and legs so that she’s kneeling on either side of his face now.  he pulls her hips down and a moment later she feels his tongue on her sex and–

it feels strange.  good, she thinks.  if she didn’t know what she was doing, nor does he, and she’s unsure if she should go back to licking his cock or if she should pay attention and tell him what she likes.  

the thought has barely left her mind when he tells her, “if you like something, tell me.”  he sounds nervous, and she looks at him from between their bodies and smiles.  

“same for you,” she replies and she pumps his cock once with her hand.

“perfect,” he tells her, and he kisses her cunt again.  he is gentle with it, which she is glad of.  it is still slightly sore from the sting of him earlier that night.  he doesn’t stick his tongue up into her as she thought for a moment he might, but rather circles along the outside of it.  every time he reaches the top of her slit she feels warm. 

“there,” she tells him when he reaches it again.

“here?” he licks.

“yes,” she tells him.

and he stays there, and she hums because it does feel good, she thinks.  it feels very good.  and the only thing she can think to do right now is bend her head back over his cock and swirl her tongue over the top of it.  her breath hitches when he matches the motion on his end.

curious to see if he will mirror her every motion, she sucks harder, licks faster, even cups the balls at the base of his manhood.  she hears him–feels him–make a sound of pleasure against her cunt and he begins to rock his hips against her face–not too hard, but it makes her smile as she swirls her tongue around the tip of him again, letting her drool drip down his shaft so that her hand catches it as she pumps.

his mouth leaves her slit and she feels him kissing her thigh, feels a slight bite of his teeth and then his seed spills into her mouth, hot, and salty.  unsure of what else to do with it, she swallows.

he takes several breaths, kissing the spot on her thigh he’d just bitten, then his tongue returns to the spot she’d told him she liked.  he licks harder now, his tongue flattening against her sex in between moments of pointed circling of the spot.  just as he’d begun rocking his hips towards her face, so too does she into his tongue, wanting to feel it more deeply than she already does.  she had left his cock in her mouth after he’d finished, and as it softens she lets it slide out from between her lips.  as if taking that as a sign, sigorn pulls her hips closer to his mouth, and she leans forward on her arms, kissing his lower abdomen, as she feels a pressure rising in her heart and stomach, something that should scare her for she’s not felt it before, but he calls her bountiful in bravery and she’s determined to be brave.

the muscles in her stomach, in her legs, in her cunt begin to convulse and her heart is pumping quite as fast as when she’d fled karhold.  but she’s not afraid this time.  this time she’s alive, exhilerated, and nothing exists beyond her and her new husband and she’s not afraid of anything, least of all this.

as that feeling of triumph fades, she lets herself fall sideways onto the bed.  she takes a deep breath and prepares to move herself to lie properly next to him, but he’s already grabbing the furs and throwing them over her.  he takes the two pillows on the bed and places one under her head then lies down at her side and pulls her to his chest.

Chapter Text

the gates of winterfell are made with fresh wood and fresh iron bolts.  they had to be replaced after the uprising that king beron…was it beron?  faces all bleed together, all long, all serious, when it’s not the icy gaze and sharp blue eyes of the night king.  the gates of winterfell are made with fresh wood and fresh iron bolts.  he can usually place when he is by the shape of winterfell–what color the stones are, how many towers have been built, which of the branches of the great stone tree are young, and which are old.  everything is old when he looks at it now, even the burned tower that he’d fallen from.  so then it can’t be the reign of king beron.  some other time, then.  what other winter had he seen where they’d replaced the gates?

his eyes flutter between open and closed and he sees the swirling white winds, and a cloud so thick and dark that the only explanation is magic.  he sees them marching, shambling south.  a great cold host on his tail.  “we’re here,” he hears from far off.  a quiet set of words, so unlike the terrified shrieks of “hold the door!  hold the door!”

he blinks and guilt wracks him again.  he hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.  they’d died for him and he hadn’t been able to say–

he stares into the oncoming cold.  better that, he thinks.  better to know what is coming so he can warn them.  dark wings dark words and he is the wings now.

the world swims around him.  the gates open.  they aren’t corpses he sees now, they’re people.  but even as he looks at them, curious faces and shrewd eyes, he sees the flesh of cheeks rotting and an iciness to their gaze that can only mean death.  death will come to winterfell.  he’s seen it.  he knows it.  he must warn them, must–

he can hear the wind around him, but he is not cold.  he can feel the weight of the oncoming darkness and stares at it, for he cannot fear the darkness.  he must not fear the darkness.  sansa had once told him had told him that the demons of the dark couldn’t touch him if he hid beneath his blanket. 

he thinks he sees her there for a moment.  it can only be her, she’s got the same eyes he has, the same eyes their mother had, and her hair hanging long and loose so unlike the braids she’d so loved confecting when they’d been children.  hair long and auburn and eyes full of tears as her lips tremble with unfallen tears.

“hello sansa,” he says.  he’s not supposed to speak to the visions–the three eyed raven had told him so.  but father had heard him once as a whisper on the wind and sansa–

she rushes towards him, throwing her arms around him and squeezing him so tightly.  the heat of her body overpowers the visions of marching icy death and for half a moment he can’t see any of them at all, he can just feel her heart and quivering lungs as she cries into his neck.

later, they are in the godswood.  he’s been here so many times in the past few years, but he’s never truly been here.

she is sitting with her knees tucked against her chest.  bran’s useless legs are just there.  it is snowing and she has stopped crying now.  the joy that had filled her tearful eyes is still there, but the tears have been replaced by an awkward shyness, a childlike nervousness.  her features are sharp, and crisp, and clear, and there is snow falling in her hair.

it is pretty, he thinks.  most of his visions of snow falling in hair are the hair of the dead and the snow isn’t delicate flakes it’s a blizzard.  for a moment, he thinks he sees the night king, but it’s a memory–a true memory.  not a vision.  sansa’s face is too clear for his mind to fade around.  it’s like she’d burned it away.

“i’ve missed you,” she tells him at last.  “i thought you were dead.  you and rickon…” her voice trails away sadly.  bran hears the twang of the arrow string, he sees his little brother fall.  i promised i’d keep you safe.

his heart feels like ice.  rickon, and jojen, and hodor.  hodor most of all.  

he looks up at sansa, so there and alive.  i’m supposed to keep everyone safe.  “i wish jon were here,” she adds wistfully.

“yes,” bran agrees.  safer to think of jon than the others.  jon, alive and fighting.  jon his brother, even if he wasn’t his brother, not truly.  he wants to tell her, he wants to hold her, he wants to cry the way she did when she’d first seen him.  he remembers robb the lord unable to cry in front of anyone except bran.  it seemed so long ago.  “yes i’d like to see him.”

perhaps some of it had seeped into his voice, some hint of father’s lie, because sansa’s expression changes.  “you’re father’s last living son.  his last trueborn son.  you’re the lord of winterfell, his rightful heir.”

bran swallows.  her face is so clear.  clear the way father’s had been in those visions he’d almost drowned in.  how he’d wanted to stay there forever.  everything seemed easier in those visions, and he could walk too.  except then everything had shattered and hodor… “i don’t know if i can be lord of winterfell,” he says.  he remembers father saying that a lord’s duty was to protect his people.  everyone who had ever served him had died, save meera.  even summer.  

he wishes that summers bones were here, buried next to lady’s.  sansa’s had her wolf die.   she knows what it is to feel lost like this.

“of course you can be,” sansa says firmly.  “just because your legs–”

“it’s not that,” he says, his throat dry.  “i–i can’t be lord of anything.” he sounds like a frightened boy.  but he makes himself keep speaking.  father said the only time you could be brave was when you were afraid, and bran had to be brave for everyone or else they’d all be doomed.  “i’m the three-eyed raven now.”

“i don’t know what that means.” sansa says, cocking her head.  she’s never heard the term and she doesn’t ask, not truly.  she’s bidding him to tell her.  she’d never seen the bird in her dreams.

how could he explain?  it’s difficult.  but she’s there, and her eyes are eager and she’s so happy to see him, she doesn’t know what he’s done, what he’s caused.  she’d hate me if she knew.  sansa always liked songs about heroes–he’d always liked the scary dark ones.  and he’d become a scary dark one, was living it now.

she knows the truth of what jon’s seen, bran thinks.  she’s not a little girl any more.  she’s faced hard truths–harder truths than she deserves.  

bran swallows.  “i know things,” he says.  “i know–i know everything.  i can see it all–the past, the present, things far, things near…” and just like that he’s in the ice again, walking among the dead, among the giants, among the corpse horses and the bodies made of rotted flesh.  ahead of him he sees the man, a man who’s lived for thousands of years, a man who was a man until he wasn’t.  i saw that too.  i saw, it was because of us that they made them.  maester luwin said the children of the forest were an old fairy story but i met them.  i met them. 

they’d died for him too in the cave.

“bran?” there she is again, her red hair glowing through the cold, her blue eyes cutting through the darkness.  she’s worried about him.  he focuses on her eyes.  he pulls himself out of the vision.

“magic,” he says at last.  “like what we have with the wolves, but deeper, older, stronger.”

“what we have with the wolves?” sansa asks quietly.   lady died, but sansa lived.  summer’s dead, but bran still lives.  sansa lived without her wolf.  i must too.  it doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it does make it more bearable somehow.

“i could wear summer’s skin,” he tells her.  “close my eyes and run in his body.  hunt, eat, everything.  ravens too, and other things.  i think jon can with ghost.”

sansa looks away, out over the godswood to where they’d buried lady’s bones.  “i never dreamed i was lady,” she sighs. “sometimes i dreamed she was protecting me though.”  she smiles at bran hopefully.

it isn’t the same thing.  sansa may never know.  but bran isn’t going to say anything like that.  he can’t bring himself to crush that smile in any way, not when it’s the one thing keeping him in his body and not out among the icy dead.  she lost her wolf, he thinks, but she’s still here.  she’s still fighting.  

“i went north,” he continues.  “to learn how to control it better.  i learned from the three-eyed raven.”

“i thought you said you were the three-eyed raven?” she cuts in quickly.

“i am,” bran says, “he died.  so i am now.”  another person who died because of me.  he takes a deep breath.  

“you were his heir?”

i was robb’s heir, bran thinks.  was he still?  could he be?  sansa seems to think so.  once he’d thought he knew winterfell better than anyone just from scaling its walls.  now i know it better from living in it again and again and again circling round the lichyard aunt lyanna when she was younger than he is now and her begging father to keep jon safe as she bled and died like everyone who ever got near him.

“i suppose,” he says.  “i don’t know who else could have been.”  he looks at sansa.  she doesn’t look like she fully understands–though not because she can’t.  because he hasn’t explained it well.  he doesn’t know if he can explain it well.  jojen had understood what a greenseer was.  and jojen’s dead too.  everyone was dead, it seemed.

everyone except sansa, who is sitting here.

every time he thinks of her, reminds himself that he is here–truly here and not just envisioning it–he feels a little bit braver.  he’s home, and she’s home with him.  and the demons of the dark can’t touch him because he’s with sansa.

he leans forward, falling onto his elbows and pulling himself across the snowy ground towards her.  she helps pull him up into her arms and holds him again, and he clings to her and even though she doesn’t know the half of it, not yet. he may never know how to tell her about some of it, it doesn’t matter.  he holds onto her, and so long as he does, he knows he’ll have the strength to truly hold the end of the world at bay.

Chapter Text

brienne is good.  she’s very good, and she learns quickly.  it’s that, more than anything else, that makes arya glad that she was training with her and not the master at arms.  the master at arms was a good man, and had his hands more than full teaching children and girls who’d never held a bow in their lives how to shoot.  arya could have swept the floor with him.

but not brienne.  brienne’s big, but she’s quick too.  that’s what makes her so powerful.  and it’s not long at all before she’s started to read arya’s little tricks.

arya’s good–she’s trained hard for years now.  the feel of needle in her hand is right.  she refuses to use a broadsword when sparring brienne; she trains with it separately, but with brienne she is testing herself, testing them both. needle is a part of her in a way the way other steel never truly will be.  jon gave me needle.  needle, which had gotten her through anything.  she wishes he were here.  if i’d come straight here instead of going to the twins…but she hadn’t known…

the flat of brienne’s sword smacks her side and she lets out a cry.

“you’re distracted,” brienne barks.  arya crouches and lets out a growl and this time, when brienne swings, she dodges easily.  no distractions, she reminds herself.  she wasn’t allowed distractions–not ever.  it’s why she was good, it’s how she’d survived.  never letting herself give in though gods only knew how the world had tried to make her.  she steps aside as brienne swipes and snakes needle through the woman’s outstretched arm.  brienne pulls away, and arya presses forward.  quick as a cat.

oysters clams and cockles! she’d been a girl named cat once–cat for her mother.  her mother had once watched her chasing bran through the yard and–

“you’re distracted,” brienne repeats, knocking needle from her hand.  the steel spins across the courtyard and brienne’s sword swings for her chest, halting just short of it.  “you’re not usually distracted.”

she’s not.  it’s true.  she looks around the courtyard and her eyes fall on needle.  i’m home, she thinks.  home, except home’s not quite right.  sansa’s the lady of winterfell, and bran doesn’t smile anymore, and jon’s not here.  and robb, and rickon, and mother and father… somewhere deep down inside her, that old hole in her heart aches.  it’s strange being here without them.

in all the years she’d dreamed of coming home, the years of empty bellies and lies and fear–gods, so much fear–she’d not really imagined what it would be like to be home.  and not like this.  

she bends down and picks up needle.  the sword is the size of a toy in her hand, and much smaller than brienne’s valyrian steel blade.  she closes her eyes for a moment and remembers for just a moment the way it was, when father had been alive, when jon had been here…

she opens her eyes and turns back to brienne, sinking back to a guard stance.  she’ll fight for that.  fight for how it was, fight for how she remembers it, because if she can do that, then it’s not over, not truly.  winterfell beats in her heart so long as she lives.

Chapter Text

calm as still water.  brienne is nearly twice her size, but arya knows she shan’t be hurt.  brienne would sooner die than let any ill befall lady catelyn’s daughters, and brienne’s good enough to keep herself from hurting arya even if she beats her.  it helps keep her calm.  not like the waif, where her heart was hammering in her throat and her belly ached and she wondered if she would die, how she wasn’t already dead.

quiet as a shadow, she twists and brienne’s cut misses her, and she slides forward.  needle’s steel strikes oathkeeper and she hears her breath ripping out of her throat.  the air is cold, but she is warm.  her body is limber, and she moves easily.  quick as a snake. 

round and round and round they circle one another.  a water dancer sees with all her senses.  

the yard is full of people.  many of them are watching–some from the balcony overhead, others as they bustle pass.  some of the girls that the master at arms is training to use a bow are watching furtively, wondering–arya is sure–if they could maybe learn to dance the way that she and brienne are dancing.  the men are watching with interest, and arya, for show, taps brienne’s calf with needle as she sidesteps another swipe.  she hears the rustling of whispers, and some good-natured laughter, and when she steps around brienne again, she catches sight of gendry and podrick.

they’re watching with interest, she can tell that much as brienne lunges for her, and not sharing a word between them–just watching the two of them fight.  she wonders if gendry’s heart is in his throat.  she wonders if he remembers stealing steel for them before they’d fled harrenhal.  he’d been bigger than she, but she had been better with a sword.  or at least she thought so.

she’s sure she is now.  gendry may be bigger, and stronger, but she’s quicker and her quicker is enough to keep brienne of tarth on her toes.  she swings needle around in her hands, showing off.

it was a silly choice.  brienne cuts in, faster than a person her size should be able to, and needle goes flying from her hand, and arya finds oathkeeper’s tip at her throat.  there’s a smattering of applause, and arya feels a smile cross her lips.  brienne’s good, that’s why they train together.  it would be pointless if arya won every time, and she’d been showing off.  showing off is not for the long night, she chides herself pointedly as she crosses the yard and bends down to pick up the little sword that jon had had made for her so long ago.

“well faught,” brienne tells her.  “but too much twirling right there.  but you don’t need me to tell you that.”

arya sheathes needle and grins at her.  “no, i think i noticed that one.”  she shoots a glance over to gendry and podrick.  pod’s got one hand resting in his belt and gendry has his arms crossed over his chest.  the two of them are watching her and brienne still.

“i think they want a go with you,” she points out, nodding towards pod.  “i steal your time.  he’s your squire.”

“i train him plenty,” brienne shrugs.  “and i don’t think that’s what they’re both after.”

“you think they don’t want to be as good as you?  gendry’s all but begged for your help with a sword.”  he’d been knighted, but the lightning lord hadn’t had much time to train him before he’d died and the other men weren’t quite as handy with a sword as gendry would have liked.  

“well, they do, but that’s not why they’re watching,” brienne says and there’s a flush on her cheeks.

“what does that mean?” arya demands.

“my lady–” brienne begins but she sees the steel in arya’s gaze.  “you didn’t see them–”

“of course i saw them.  i know they were watching–”

“when you bent over just now.”

her words hang in the air, a little too loudly for arya to have mistaken them but quiet enough that she thinks, hopes, prays no one heard her.

when i bent over… seven hells.

she looks over at them again, and feels heat flushing up her face.  she isn’t the pretty one–that’s always been sansa.  but if both gendry and pod had been watching her, had…what, made faces? blushed? when she’d bent over without a care in the world except retrieving needle…

neither of them is watching her now.  a water dancer sees with all her senses.  they’re both very determinedly not looking at her, in fact.  she turns quickly back to brienne, but brienne’s already crossing the yard, heading towards one of the little girls who’d picked up a wooden practice sword while waiting for the target to clear and it to be her turn to shoot.

she shakes herself.  this is all stupid.  she doesn’t have time for stupid boys and whatever stupid thoughts they might be having.  but as she marches past them and into the keep, she can’t help but wonder–can’t help but hope?–that they’re watching her as she retreats into the darkness.

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she runs.  she runs as fast as she can, runs runs runs because what else can she do?  she’s frightened and that’s what’s kept her alive so far.  running.  running a lot.  her legs hurt.  they’re short.

gendry’s legs were long.  she tries not to think of gendry.  he’ll probably die like ma and da.  and if gendry dies…

don’t cry don’t be a baby.  she has to be brave like arry is.  arry who is kind and brave and didn’t let them leave her behind.  will they kill arry too?  when they kill gendry, like they killed ma and da?

she keeps running.  her breath hurts too much to cry.  her heart is thump thump thumping in her chest and she can’t breathe anymore so she stops running and crawls into a bush to hide in case they come after her.

the woods are quiet.  she doesn’t know how far she ran, just that she did run.  they won’t be mad at her for running, would they?  she was frightened.  she didn’t want–the smell of blood, the shine of steel–she cries like the baby that she is, then stuffs her fist in her mouth because she’s truly on her own now and if she’s on her own and someone hears her crying, they may come and kill her and she doesn’t want to die.

but maybe she’ll die anyway.  she doesn’t know where she is.  that’s scary too.

she misses ma.  she misses arry, who was always nice to her.  she misses her bed, and the blanket that grandmama made for her, and laughing as da gave her peas to eat at dinner, but always popped them into her mouth like it was a game.  she missed feeling safe.  she missed knowing that things were all right.  because nothing’s all right–nothing will ever be all right.

a branch snaps behind her, and she hears a growl.

she squeaks like a little mouse, like a weasel, and closes her eyes.  she doesn’t want to know what it is that’s growling at her, what it is that’s about to eat her.  she feels the bush shake around her, and feels hot breath on her face, sniffing at her.  she lets out another sob it’s so close and–

she feels a tongue on her cheek, licking away her tears.  it doesn’t stop licking her, and when she opens her eyes again, surprised, she sees a wolf.  it has to be a wolf, it’s too big to be a dog, but she’s never seen a wolf.  her father always said wolves were dangerous, but this wolf seems nice, with big brown eyes.  it’s much bigger than she is, and it keeps licking her, and wagging its tail.

da said that dogs always remember your scent.  this wolf was like her uncle’s dog who always had known her from afar.  but she’d never met a wolf before.

the wolf sits down and keeps sniffing at her, nuzzling her neck, then her arm, and finally the palm of her left hand.  it lets out a whine that sounds almost sad as she licks every bit her hand–the hand that arry had always held while they’d been walking.  

she doesn’t know how she knows, but from the wolf’s whining, she’s sure that the wolf knew arry.  “i miss arry too,” she hears herself saying.  she never spoke to arry, or hot pie, or gendry.  she never said a word because.

but the wolf looks up at her with deep sad eyes and whines again, and she leans forward and wraps her arms around its neck.  arry kept her safe–maybe the wolf that liked arry too would as well.

Chapter Text

jon stares at the red eyes of the weirwood tree, his hand resting in ghost’s fur.  it isn’t snowing, and there is still some light in the sky, though not much.  

his–his uncle used to pray here.  he’d played with his–his cousins here.  swords with robb, and hide and seek with the younger ones.  bran had always been so good at hiding because up he’d go into the branches and everyone knew he wasn’t supposed to climb and would look up there anyway but he’d still manage to find the one branch none of them would look.  

his fingers tighten in ghost’s fur.  he’d found this direwolf–found him in the snow.  the sigil of his house, he’d told lord stark.  the runt of the litter, and oddly colored, and mute but his all the same because even if he wasn’t a stark, he was ned stark’s son.

except he wasn’t.  isn’t.  never had been.  

he stares at the bleeding eyes of the weirwood tree.  bran says that he can see the past through the weirwood.  had his uncle ever prayed here? ever whispered the nature of his truth to the trees where he dared not mention it to his children, his lady wife, who’d not called jon by his name so angry was she that he was there.  

she needn’t have been.  i wasn’t his.

he feels a boy again, and part of him wants to turn his face into his direwolf’s fur and weep.  what did he know of rhaegar targaryen? only what he’d heard growing up in winterfell, that he had raped and abducted lady lyanna, that he had forsaken his dornish wife and that–

i had a brother and a sister, jon thinks.  it shouldn’t hurt him the way it does.  aegon and rhaenys had been their names–dead before he was born.  dead, and brutalized he’d heard.  he did not know what they’d looked like, but in his mind’s eyes his brother has robb’s face and his sister’s face is long and frightened and looks like arya.  dead before she knew who i was.  dead for what?  for having a father named rhaegar targaryen?

that was why lord stark had lied.  of course it was.  to protect him from robert, to send him north to the wall to keep peace for the realm.  that’s what fathers were supposed to do–protect their children.  that was what lord stark had tried to do in king’s landing before joffrey had taken his head.  and what had rhaegar done to his children?  had he assumed they’d be safe?  that robert would be defeated?  my existence threw them into danger.  lady catelyn knew the dangers of a bastard.  that’s part of why she hated me so.  had my father no sense?

bran had told him he was the true heir to the iron throne, that his true name was targaryen, and that he was by blood a king and not just by declaration.  

they’d laid the bodies of aegon and rhaenys at robert’s feet.  he’d heard the girl had been stabbed half a hundred times and she was only three.  he remembered arya at that age and his blood boils.  aegon’s head had been smashed by the mountain–everyone knew that.  robb’s had been taken at the twins, and grey wind’s sewn onto his corpse.  aegon could have been robb to me–trueborn where i was his bastard brother.  if he’d been a prince i’d have loved him as much as i loved robb, though he was to be lord of winterfell and i never could be.

the true heir to the iron throne.  he spits.  he doesn’t want that chair–daenerys can have it–should have it.  she’s proven she deserves it how many times.  he doesn’t want the seat of a father who’d destroy his children–and what for?  that jon might exist?  that’s no birthright.

jon wants only what he’s earned.

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lord edric stumbles as he crosses the yard and sansa doesn’t hesitate as she steps forward, reaching for his arm.  

“my lady,” he sputters.  there is blood on his lips, and he half sinks to his knees.  

“my lord.” sansa looks about.  men are hurrying towards him, but she pulls his arm up so that it is wrapped about her shoulders.  he is cold.  “my lord, what happened.”

“i am not as good a swordsman as i thought,” he said.  he is trying to smile.  he is trying to jape, sansa thought.  that frightened her.  she could feel the warmth of him leaning against her as she helped him towards the keep. 

“this is no time to jape,” she said.  “you’re bleeding at your lips.”

her voice was so calm, even as her heart was throbbing in her chest.  

“isn’t that the best time to jape?” lord edric asked her.   he let out a sigh as they passed into the warmth of the keep.  “when i may die?  i refuse to be frightened of death.  i laugh in the face of it.”

“you’re not going to die,” sansa told him.  “the maester will tend you.”  she helped him towards the hall, where so many men were stretched out, wounded, sick, dying.  

she settled him onto a pallet, and peeled back the wool and leather he was wearing.  the wound was bad.  “i’ll find the maester,” she said getting to her feet and to her surprise, lord edric grabbed her wrist, holding her there.

“i can jape in the face of death,” he said, “but if i must die, don’t let me die alone.”

“you’re not going to die.”

“promise me.”

“i’ll fetch the maester.  and i’ll stay.”

his grip relaxed on her skin, and he nodded, closing his eyes.  he is so young.  we are so young.  she wanted to cry, but instead she rose to her feet in search of wolkan.  she tried not to think of the gaping red of the wound, the smell of it.  

instead she focused on how warm her wrist still felt from where he’d grabbed it.

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gentle mother font of mercy, save our sons from war we pray.

they sing it with a different melody than she did.  their voices are lower and the tune is more stepwise.  it is lazier, richer, the sound of it bouncing from the stone.  it is sturdier.

and yet somehow it’s lifeless.  

he’s sure the elder brother won’t think that.  he’s sure the elder brother will say that it is the sound of life itself, steady like stone, steady like the tide.  

(some shameful part of himself will agree.  some shameful part of him will say that frightened song by knifepoint is not life.)

(and yet she sung the life right into him.)

he looks at the statue of the mother when they sing.  he sees nothing of his own mother there.  he sees nothing of her either.  she’s not in the maiden either, the maiden is older, her hair is curlier, and her smile is too simpering.  the statue of the crone is too old and too hunched.

but the statue of the stranger clasps her hands in front of her the way that sansa did when she was nervous.  it chills his blood for a moment, until he remembers that he’s not frightened of the stranger, not frightened of death.  he’d named his horse stranger, after all.  the stranger had been his friend when everyone else had forsaken him.

the stranger is the unknown.  

where is she?  the queen’s men are looking for her.  they say she killed joffrey.  does she hate him?  curse him for what he did that night?  does she think of him?

gentle mother, font of mercy.

stranger, old friend.  can i ever know?

Chapter Text

From each tree, dangled a body, neck stretched far too long.  The faces of the dead were bloated and blackened, all of them swayed lightly in the wind like banners.  There were some differences between them.  Their clothes were varying degrees of ragged, their hair was different lengths, but all their faces looked the same in death.  She could not have told one from the other.

Death lives there, Jeyne Heddle had told her in the inn before she’d set out.  

Death doesn’t live, Arya had replied.  Jeyne had given her a significant look.

Stranger things have happened, the girl replied carefully.  

She’d mounted a horse that had gone unclaimed in the inn’s stable for a long while, and had ridden in the direction that Jeyne had said Gendry had gone off in.  She didn’t know what she wanted to find.  Gendry had been stupid then and was likely still stupid now, and was unlikely to…

A girlhood wish.  She wasn’t much older now, but she had lived a thousand lives in the house of black and white.  She’d survived a thousand deaths.  She wasn’t the same girl who’d dreamed of being Wenda the White Fawn, and that wasn’t even what she wanted now.  Although she wasn’t even sure she’d wanted it then.  This is stupid.

The branches creaked beneath the dead weight of the hanged.  Where she could make out a sigil on their breasts, she saw the twin towers of Frey.  Good.  They’d killed her mother, had killed her brother.  It wasn’t him of Many Faces that had done it–it was Walder Frey.  The north remembers, and your blood isn’t surviving the winter.  

Hers hadn’t survived the autumn.  Father, and mother, and Robb, and Bran, and Rickon, and Jon.  She’d wished a knife had taken her in the heart the way it had taken Jon when she’d heard what had happened in the Happy Port.  And no one knew what had become of Sansa.  

I could go and look for her.  She could be some lost princess like in the songs, in need of rescuing.  Sansa would like that, would like that Arya was thinking of her like that.  Even if she’d wrinkle her nose at the state of my clothes.

Although if she was on the run from the Lannisters, then perhaps she’d given up some of her airs.  Surely losing everyone would have softened her heart, too?  None of it mattered now that Joffrey was dead, and Robb.  Even Sansa would be able to see that.  It would be good to see her again.  Even if it’s just the two of us, the pack survives.  Father always said that.  

But first, Arya was going to find Gendry.  To make sure that he wasn’t part of her pack.  She knew where to go to find Gendry; no one knew where to go to find Sansa.

It was already getting dark, and the hanged men were casting long shadows around her, like fingers extending across the snow, trying to strangle her. 

I’m a direwolf, she thought.  Ghosts can’t kill me.   

Somewhere in the woods there was Nymeria too.  In her dreams, she’d dreamed her with her pack, and Arya had pleaded that she come back.  I was trying to save you, she tried to tell the wolf.  I wanted to save everyone.  But the wolf hadn’t come–not yet.  Arya would keep trying.  Nymeria had survived.  She had survived, and Arya had survived and the gods wouldn’t have done that to them if they weren’t meant to be together, would not have let Arya dream of her to ease the nightmares of everything else.  

“I’d stop were I you,” came a lazy voice and Arya saw a glint in the semi-darkness.  The tip of an arrow pointed at her.  

“Friend or foe?” Arya asked calmly.  Needle was at her hip, but she did not reach for it, not yet.  Not unless she wanted an arrow through the throat.  

“You tell me that,” the voice replied.  “Friend or Frey?”

“Haven’t killed them all yet?” she asks.

“Lord Walder had many get,” the voice said.  “We’ll find them all in the end.”

“I’m too horsefaced to be look that much a weasel,” Arya replied.  “Come take a closer look, friend.”

And he stepped out of the trees, and once she had run to him crying.  

Harwin looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

“Arya Underfoot?” he whispered, and he lowered his bow.  

Arya dismounted.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Jeyne Heddle said I could find Gendry this way,” she said.  

He hesitated.  “Aye, you can,” he replied edgily.  “But mayhaps it’s best not to.”

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “And why is that?” she asked.  

“There are horrors a girl should never have to know.”

Perhaps it was because he’d called her a girl, or perhaps it was because somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, but Arya shook her head.  “I’ve known every horror there is.  I’m not afraid of it.”

She pushed past him, leading her horse up the hill on foot.  She heard him let out a sigh and follow.

“How many?” she asked him as they passed more swinging Freys.  

“Not all of them,” he sighs.  “The man had more get than a rabbit in springtime.  But she’ll have her due.”

Arya looked at him.  “She?”

And Harwin looked away.  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said quietly.  “But child, remember–she’s not who she was when you see her.  She isn’t how she’d want you to remember of her.”

Arya’s foot faltered midstep, but only for a moment.  Rise and eat and run with us.

There was a fire up ahead.  It flickered in the gathering darkness, and she could tell from afar that there were several men standing beside it.  Several of them turned when they heard her approaching.  “She’s with me,” Harwin called.

She saw Lem Lemoncloak though his cloak was black in the darkness.  She saw others she didn’t recognize, and some she did, though all their faces looked haggard and hungry.  Likely Luke had lost an eye and Beardless Dick had a nasty scar that crossed his face and made him look oddly like the Hound.

“Where’s Gendry?” she asked them.  She didn’t see him standing by the fire.

“Not here, is he?” replied Lem.

“Where did he go?”

“He went north,” Lem said.  “Went with the Tarth woman.  Told her he’d bring her daughter back from the Boltons.  ”

“Sansa?” Arya asked and Lem laughed.

“Sansa?  No one knows where she is.  No, the younger one.  Arya.  She married Bolton’s son, didn’t she?”

Arya stepped towards the firelight.  “No, she didn’t,” she said quietly.

“Lord of Light,” whispered Likely Luke, and Arya watched them all exchange glances.  The ones she knew leaned over and whispered that’s her.  Arya Stark, to the ones she didn’t know and by the old gods and the new, she wished Gendry were there.  Of course he wasn’t.  She shouldn’t be surprised by this.  She never did end up where she wanted to go.  Jon had been wrong–all roads didn’t lead to the same castle.

“Who is our guest?” came a voice.

Arya had never felt a hope so dark before because she recognized that voice.  Beneath the rasping and croaking, there was a richness that she had known since the very day she was born, a roundedness, a firmness that not even death could take away.  

“Mother,” she said quietly and she rounded the fire.

Her mother stood in shadows.  She wore a hood that obscured her face but Arya could see the slashes at her throat, could see that her once auburn hair was white, reflecting the moonlight overhead.  She could not see her eyes.

Her mother did not respond for a long while, and Arya knew that if she could see her eyes, she would see them flicking up and down, measuring the proportions of her face, trying to determine if her eyes were the same shade of grey as Ned’s had been, as Arya’s had been.

“I tried to get back to you,” she said, her voice breaking.  “To you and Robb.  I was so close.”

“The Boltons have you,” her mother said quietly.

“I don’t know who the Boltons have,” Arya said.  “But it’s not me.  I promise.  You always used to get annoyed at how muddy my skirts would get, and Sansa and Jeyne used to call me horseface.”  

And her mother raised a hand, gripping Arya’s chin tightly.  “You have his face,” she said quietly.  “You were the only one who had his face.  It was long and wolflike.  You looked like Lyanna.”

“Sansa looked like you.  And Bran and Rickon had your coloring as well.  And Robb.  It was just me and Jon that looked like father.”

And her mother’s grip tightened and then relaxed.  “I had a wolf named Nymeria,” Arya continued.  “She was just a pup, and I named her after the witch queen from the songs.  Rickon named his Shaggydog and Bran…I don’t know what Bran named his because he fell and he hadn’t named him yet.”

Please, mother.  Please remember me.  

Nymeria pulled your body from the river.  You were dead, but you are alive now.

Can you bring back a man without a head?  But you’re alive.  You’re alive.

She blinked back tears and slowly her mother’s hand dropped to her side once again.  “Arya Underfoot,” Arya continued.  “That’s what Harwin and Fat Tom and the rest used to call me because I was always in the way, running about.  I could never keep still.”

And her mother’s hand dropped to her side and grabs Arya’s wrist, vicelike and led her away from the fire, into the darkness of the forest around them.  

“How did you live?” her mother croaked.  “How did you escape Cersei Lannister?”

“Syrio helped me,” she said.  “Father found someone to teach me to…” her voice trailed away.  But no, she didn’t have to show her mother Mikken’s mark on Needle.  Her mother had always disliked Jon Snow and might not thank him yet for the sword he’d given his little sister.  She would when she learned that Needle had kept Arya alive but…but not yet.  Not when she seemed to believe her.  “When the Kingsguard came to get me, he protected me and I ran.  I escaped into the city.  One of the Black Brothers–Yoren–he was going to bring me north, but the goldcloaks killed him, and then I was on my own with Gendry and Hot Pie.”

“Gendry said you were taken by the Hound.”

“I was,” she said.  “He tried to take me to the Twins.  To you and Robb.  But we arrived right when…when…” she swallowed.  “And he took me away again.  He wouldn’t let me save you.”

And her mother let out a bitter, croaking laugh.  “There was no saving me, Arya.  What could you have done?”

“I could have done something,” Arya said forlornly.  She had never been able to shake the sense that that was the truth of it.  That if she’d run into that castle, if only she’d tried, Robb and her mother would have survived.  “I’ve killed,” she said quietly.  “I know how to kill.  I’ve killed loads of people to stay alive.”  And plenty more not to.  But she did not wish to think about those who wore black and white.  She didn’t want the threat and fear of them to follow her.  

“But not even you could kill all of Frey’s offspring when they surrounded us.  Not even you could have killed Roose Bolton when you’d come to a party, when you’d had their bread and salt.  But we will,” she spoke so emphatically that her hood slipped down from her head and Arya saw her face, saw scars like tears on her cheeks, the gaping hole at her throat.  

Arya had seen death before, and death made everyone look the same.

But death made her mother look different. 

“We will destroy them,” the woman who had once been Lady Catelyn said.  “We will salt their fields, we will kill their children as they killed mine, and let the snows take their corpses.  For Robb.”

This woman sitting here frightened her.  There was something feral and cruel about her.  Something that new no reason, no justice–only vengeance.  

They killed Robb.  They deserve it.

Their children didn’t, though.  No more than Tommen killed father.

Distantly, she remembered Elmar Frey at Harrenhal.  He’d been stupid, and annoying, but she doubted he’d had anything to do with killing Robb.

Her mother’s eyes were too blank to be approving.  Indeed, she showed no joy at all that Arya had lived at all.  There’s nothing left to her but hate.

Maybe she’d just been left alone with it for too long.  She wouldn’t have been the first.  Arya knew it too well.  Maybe she would soften if Arya stayed.  Maybe she would–not be the mother Arya had known, Arya remembered, but maybe she would be something softer than this.  Something less broken than this.  And maybe Arya would be too.  Maybe after all this they’d find something to rebuild, something they could share and love together.

Needle hung heavily at her hip.  

“For Robb,” Arya whispered.  Her voice sounded odd, just as strangled as her mother’s.  It sounded childlike, afraid.  Her mother nodded.  She did not take Arya into her arms.  She did not smile, she did not sigh and turn the conversations to talk of lighter matters.  No–she lifted her face to stare up at the moon, her mottled flesh glowing horribly and Arya wanted to weep because this couldn’t be her mother.  It couldn’t be–and yet it was.