Jon is almost three when his Aunt Catelyn goes into labour with baby Arya. They all sit in the hospital's waiting room while his Aunt's screaming echoes through the walls. His cousin, Robb, is here, staring at the delivery room with something akin to horror. When his mother asks him and two year old Sansa to come home to rest, he stubbornly refuses. "Little sister," is all he says. His mother looks like she wants to argue but then she sighs and leaves with Sansa held in her arms.
Thirteen hours later, a different scream echoes through the walls. A baby. When Uncle Ned asks him and Robb if they'd like to see little Arya, they eagerly follow. There, in the arms of an exhausted Aunt Catelyn, is a screaming pink bundle. Jon is confused for a moment, before he realizes that the screaming is coming from inside the bundle. But as he looks at the red squalling baby, it opens its eyes, and all he sees is grey. Eyes like mine, he thinks, before he registers that the baby has stopped screaming. It, (she, he reminds himself) is looking up at him with curious eyes and what he thinks is a smile.
"You're my princess," he tells the baby, "Hey, Princess."
The baby gurgles and her tiny hands reach out to tug on his locks.
Jon is nine and he's playing hide and seek with his cousins when the news comes. Everything is a blur of sounds and colours and all he can think is, "They're dead, my parents are dead." Everyone is staring at him, waiting for him to cry, to do something, but all he does is stare at his Aunt and Uncle while his thoughts repeat themselves over and over again.
It was a car crash, they say, dead on impact. When it finally registers that he will never see his parents again, never see his mother smile at him with his father's arms around her waist, he thinks he is going to cry, Arya, his little Arya, slips her tiny hands into his and hugs him with all the strength her six year old body can muster. Jon doesn't think she knows what 'dead' is, but he doesn't want to explain it to her and see her cry too. Instead, he lets her hug him and holds onto her tight.
"Little sister," he murmurs into her hair, and he smiles a little when she doesn't let go of him.
Later, when he hears that he's to live with the Starks now, he's incredibly glad that his Aunt, Daenerys, lives in India. At least they aren't taking Arya from him too.
Jon is thirteen, and even though Robb is his age, it's Arya who claims the title of being his Best Friend. At ten years old, she is all elbows and knees. Aunt Catelyn and Sansa despair over her wildness, but Jon loves her all the more for it. And so does Rickon, apparently. Bran is gentle, and sweet, and gets along well with everyone. Rickon, the baby of the family, is the opposite. He is as loud and as wild as Arya. Arya pretends to be his horse, and she teaches him how to play soccer, and Jon thinks he ought to be jealous of Rickon for taking up so much of his Best Friend's time. But he smiles and when they ask him to join them, he does so with genuine laughter.
Jon is fifteen, and most of his friends from school are dating. When they ask him why he is not, he says that he is not interested. Still, when he sees his friend, Gendry, stare at Arya when he comes to visit him at home, he wants to bash his head in. Arya, at almost thirteen, is still as wild as she has ever been. When she comes into Jon's room after her soccer practice, and sees Gendry staring at her, she calls him stupid, and asks Jon to hide her from Sansa.
After Sansa's screeching has stopped, she thanks him with a hug and turns to leave. Before leaving, though, she gives Gendry an almost puzzled look, and he finds that he doesn't like it at all.
Jon is sixteen when he figures out that he has a crush on his thirteen, almost fourteen year old, cousin. Though, he muses to himself, crush is too weak a word. He freaks out so much that he avoids Arya for the next two weeks. He doesn't hide, he does not, but the sight of Arya with her mussed hair and wide grin makes him feel all tingly and he sprints whenever he sees her coming. It is a very hard thing to do, though, hiding from someone like Arya, when they live in the same house. That is why he is neither surprised, nor shocked when he finds himself in her room with a very pissed off teenager glaring at him.
"You've been avoiding me," she states, and her glare falters for a moment, and that is all it takes for him to feel guilty for hiding from her.
When he doesn't say anything, she pushes him onto her bed with a force hard enough to hurt.
"Did I do something?" she asks and it takes Jon incredible restrain to not spill everything. She is his best friend, though, and she catches his grimace.
"I did, didn't I? What was it?" Arya looks like she is about to cry, her grey eyes are clouding over, but that is wrong, he thinks. Arya never cries. Not even when she has a broken wrist from climbing the trees in their backyard. She is Arya, and she never cries.
But she is, Jon is dismayed to realize, and he feels awful for doing something that had made her eyes take on that wet sheen.
"It's nothing, I was just being stupid," he tells her.
Arya looks like she wants to ask something else, but then apparently thinks better of it, and flops onto the bed to lie beside him. She curls up against him, and he presses a kiss into her hair, and neither of them brings it up again.
When Jon is eighteen, and Arya almost fifteen, she has her first boyfriend. When Jon learns that it's Gendry, he wants to punch the bastard's pretty face, and Robb looks like he does too. She brings him over for dinner, and the two boys spend the entire time glaring at him. Robb, he isn't surprised, but what surprises everyone is when Rickon stabs Gendry in the fingers with a knife halfway through dinner. Arya glares at her little brother halfheartedly, and Sansa and Aunt Catelyn fuss over Gendry. Robb and Bran don't look bothered at all, and when Uncle Ned asks Rickon why he stabbed Gendry, all he says is,"Not my pack."
Everyone stares at him, but Jon notices Arya smiling at her little brother, and finds it quite strange.
(Two weeks later, Arya breaks up with Gendry and refuses to divulge the reason behind it. But he sees Rickon smirking at him, and he finds it all so very strange.)
Jon is nineteen, and he is living in Winterfell University's dormitories with Robb and Theon as his roommates. He misses Uncle Ned and Aunt Cat, and the way they would look upon all of them with pride. He misses Bran and Rickon and their antics. He even misses Sansa, who he never hung out with much. But more than anyone else, he misses Arya.
He has a girlfriend now, Ygritte. He tells Ygritte about Arya, and she looks kind of sad for a moment for some reason. Her smile flickers for a moment, before she is grinning again. She asks him to tell her about Arya, and he does. Even though he finds it strange, he talks about Arya, and she listens, and she smiles.
When he tells Arya about Ygritte, she calls him stupid and hangs up the phone. He doesn't call her back. I'm moving on, he tells himself. Except Ygritte with her brashness and loud mouth reminds him too much of Arya and he doesn't think he is moving on at all.
He is love with Arya Stark, he finally knows.
(Two months later, he breaks up with Ygritte, and when she does not even cry, but just looks at him with a knowing smirk on her face, he thinks maybe she's known it all this time too.)
Jon is twenty, and whenever he comes home for the holidays, he finds everything very strange. Uncle Ned and Aunt Catelyn smile knowingly at him all the time. Robb gives him amused smirks, Sansa smiles gently at him, and Bran and Rickon have taken to laugh at him for no apparent reason at seemingly random moments. Amidst all of this, Arya appears to be the only sane one. He does his best not to let things affect him too much, though. Now that he knows he is in love with her, he finds it very hard to act as he normally would around her. She is still too young, only seventeen, and he does not tell her what he desperately wishes he could.
Jon is twenty one, and he is home for Christmas, when he finds Arya standing outside in the snow. Her cheeks are red from the cold, and there are snowflakes in her hair, but she is laughing, and he thinks she's never been more beautiful.
He almost runs towards her, and in his haste, he trips on the wet ground. Arya turns back to look at him sprawled on the snow-covered ground, and offer him a hand. Instead of helping himself up, though, he pulls her down to the ground beside him, and they both burst out laughing.
When their laughter subsides, Jon looks beside him and finds Arya staring at him. She is still smiling, a wide grin stretched across her lips, and he decides to throw every caution to the wind, and crushes her lips beneath his. He feels her smile against his lips and when she leans back and says, "Took you long enough, stupid," he decides he has been stupid all along.
Then, a thought comes to his mind, one that makes him legitimately worried.
"Do you think Rickon will stab me too?" Jon asks her. He is in no hurry to be stabbed, after all.
But Arya just laughs and shakes her head, "No, egghead. He stabbed Gendry because he was not you. You're his pack, after all."
"Hey, Princess?" he asks her after another bout of laughter.
She nods for him to go on, even as she wrinkles her nose at the term.
"I love you," he tells her.
She looks at him blankly for a second, before saying, "Thank you."
Jon panics (what if I said it too soon? She's still so young) before he realizes she's laughing again.
"I love you too, stupid."
She is still laughing when he kisses her again.