prompt: I just really need to have you here right now.
miles away
.
Her phone rang in the dead of night. Ygritte's eyes shot open at the shrill sound, her eyes blinded by the white light that glowed in the darkness of her room. There was a moan and a mumbled turn it off, and in her sleepy haze, she clumsily dropped it on the ground.
She cursed the bunk bed – and that she had to sleep on top – and considered staying buried under the warm sheets. But the only two people who ever called her were Tormund and Jon, and both of them knew it was the middle of the night here, so they'd never call for no good reason. The thought alone chilled her bones, and when she crawled out from underneath the blanket, she almost didn't feel the cold of the room.
The phone was still ringing and buzzing when Ygritte's feet hit the cold stone floor. With trembling fingers, she picked it up. Her stomach flipped when she read Jon's name on the blindingly white display, and without a second thought, she slipped through the door and into the empty hallway.
What's wrong? She asked straight away, not even having fully closed the door behind her. In the hallway, nothing but a flickering green lamp illuminated the darkness, and the floor was damp and even colder than inside her room. Far off, probably on the floor above them, there was shouting, and not for the first time, Ygritte wondered why she had thought this would be a good idea.
Ygritte? Jon's voice sounded strangely muffled. The phone connection in this hell hole was terrible, but Ygritte had known Jon long enough to recognize each tremble and shift in his voice. Something was wrong, and he was thousands of miles away.
Who else would it be? She pinned the phone between her cheek and shoulder, wrapping her arms around her chest. It was Jon's sweater she was wearing, much too large for her, and after seven months, his scent was slowly fading, nothing to distract her from the smell of dampness and decay that seeped from every crevice of this place. What's the matter?
Can you come home? The last word hit Ygritte harder than the obvious tears Jon tried to swallow. She had never really called any place home all her life. I need you. I just really need to have you here right now. There it was, a sob, his voice breaking, and for a few seconds that stretched on in the darkness like years, Ygritte felt absolutely petrified.
Jon, she whispered. She could almost see him, the red of his eyes and the emptiness in them. I'm a thousand miles away. I'm stuck here until March, you know that. They had joked about it a hundred times, almost every day when he called and distracted her from the misery of this place for just ten minutes. In those precious minutes, when Ygritte stole away from the other volunteers, locked herself away in a dirty toilet stall, they made plans. How he would get on the next plane and come rescue her. It didn't really matter any more how shattered he had been when she had announced her decision to leave him for a year. With the distance between them, nothing truly mattered any more.
Ygritte felt her legs begin to tremble from the cold, and she cursed herself for not at least grabbing a coat on the way out. The window down the hall was broken, glass shattered from an attack last week, and she could still hear the screams and feel the warmth of someone else's blood on her hands. It became harder and harder to wipe away the memory when Jon choked trembling words into her ear.
When he finished, Ygritte had slumped down onto the icy ground, back pressed against the rough stone wall, legs tucked into her chest, not caring for the dampness that crept beneath her clothes and bit her skin. Tears were gathering in her own eyes, the wetness burning in the cold and harsh wind blowing in through the broken window.
Robb was gone. Robb was dead.
On the other end of the line, Jon was begging her to come home, to come back to him, because it was silly and stupid to break up in the first place just because she decided to travel halfway across the world, and how they never really broke up anyway because he called her every day since then and it never changed, this thing they have always had. That he loved her all the same. I need you. Please.
The memory of sticky, warm blood on her hands haunted her all the more, and Ygritte wiped away a warm tear. I can't, Jon. I can't leave now.
What she could not say was I want to.