this is a disclaimer.
AN: five-things ficlets; part of the watch!verse.
Start with Robb: wolf-khal of Winterfell who tries and tries and keeps on trying even when there's nothing left for him to try for.
1) He remembers being dead. He remembers, and it terrifies him.
2) One way to fight back against that memory: one defiance, final, total, ever-ongoing. He lives. He lives and loves and makes his own mark on the world, and when they seat him in the crypts with a direwolf at his feet and a sword across his knees, that mark will remain: in his daughter's life, in her children's, in the Kingdom he has carved for himself out of birthright and blood, in the histories of the Maesters and the stories of his people.
3) Only Jeyne. Only ever Jeyne. (He looked into the face of an enemy and saw there compassion; and though he shattered at her feet (in her arms), she never changed.)
4) He is not Doran Martell, to sit idly by while they cut his sister's husband down, to watch when they drag her from her room and dash her daughter's head against a wall, to plot and scheme and wait for vengeance for his nephew. If ever he had to: Daenerys would die and Aegon with her and the Princess of Dragonstone would take the Iron Throne in her children's names with all the power of the North behind her.
5) Once he thought he would be his father over again to the best of his ability. Now he is thankful he was not.
Jon: wolf-lord, dragon-prince, Rhaegar's child but Lyanna's son.
1) Part of him always believes that Rhaegar was mad: less violent but as perfectly insane as Aerys himself.
2) Part of him is always afraid that one day he too will prove no different. (They say the Prince of Summerhall never grows angry because he has icewater for blood. The truth is he never grows angry because he is afraid it's wildfire instead.)
3) Daenerys is his life. Robb is his King.
4) He dreams of snow and sunlight on ice and running the wolfswood under a hunter's moon, and thinks perhaps his mother dreamt the same in the months before his birth.
5) Always, always might-have-beens that shadow his footsteps. Lies told by one uncle and told to another; Maester Aemon might have healed Aegon's wounds the way he taught Jon to heal his.
Sansa: Blodeuwedd, the woman made from flowers forced into the shape of an owl; but Sansa's other shape is a wolf, and she does not resist it.
1) Anything but be that little bird: she-wolf, shadow-queen, poisoner, murderess, sellsword's whore, liar, politician. Anything but helplessness.
2) She does two things expertly, above all others. Change, and learn.
3) Arya, Robb, Jon all see past the first. Bran and Rickon never truly know more than the second. She is to them Catelyn come back; to the older ones, she is herself completely.
4) Aegon fits into her life like a missing puzzle-piece. Here I'll show you. I'll fit you. I'll match you step for step and turn for turn, one-two-three to the rhythm of your heartbeat.
5) Only sometimes, she calls their children Starks, and they'll look at her and smile.
Arya: assassin, schemer, sometimes-general, lost wolf-pup in the wilderness who found her way home; Robb's conscience as he is hers.
1) Wargs too much and goes too far, safe in the knowledge that Bran will always fetch her back.
2) Forgets, sometimes still, her name. Robb's Sister, Kitten's Aunt, Eddard's Daughter: these things bring her back.
3) Barely four-and-ten when she slew Ramsey Bolton in his bed and presided over the sack of the Dreadfort and the burning of the castle and Robb would not have given it to her if she'd not told him i was there and i couldn't reach you –
4) Won't marry Jojen because it would mean not being Arya Stark anymore. (That's how fragile her soul still is.)
5) Things shift between her and Jon: Robb understands her best as Sansa comes to know Jon, but somewhere underneath there's still Arya and Jon, romping in the godswood the way they did when they were children.
Brandon: the winged wolf, blind yet keen-eyed enough to see the spells he weaves into the Wall as threads of sunlight in the darkness of the Long Night
1) Tree-roots through the earth, life beneath his fingers shaping itself to his commands: that is the magic he carries within him. (The godsworn do not kill.)
2) Arya thinks he died, being given his legs back, being changed. Bran is afraid she's right. Mercy his gods know not: only life, life above all, life over death and light over darkness.
3) Only sometimes, if you please them, if you choose rightly, if you love hard enough for them to see, they give you what you asked for.
4) Winterfell he raised again by touch and memory: he stood at the heart of it and called out directions and his siblings orbit around him even now, Bran the peacemaker, the councillor, the Wise One: the North to whom all their compasses point.
5) Touching, he sees: layers upon layers past into present into future, spider webs of events that lead out of his knowledge. This war is ended forever. It is far from over. All this will come again. While the Kings of Winter sit their thrones, (we) Winterfell will remain.
Rickon: the pup-who-never-was-a-pup, watchful Border Lord, dashing Battle Prince who's seen too much too soon
1) His son will remember his face when he is a man. (In a way, that's all he wants for his children.)
2) Turning-point, luck-changed-that-moment, truth among the lies that led them back into the light (cold light, winter light, sun-on-snow light, wolf-light): the letter, and the words he read, and the meaning that followed a heartbeat later with Sansa's cup shattered on the floor. Robb lives.
3) Robb, who cried to see him; Robb, who died because he had; Robb, who wanted to give him back his childhood but couldn't, and so he gave him adulthood instead.
4) He tends to justice, not compassion, and to loves and hates as fierce and complete as his lord father's brother's, though he never knows it (they would have loved each other).
5) Winter's End the words he and his wife will bequeath to their children: the Tower Starks of Moat Cailin will grow with a hope as their motto.
Jeyne: southron maid turned Northmen's Queen, Winterfell's Lady (mother) with healing hands and springtime smile
1) Gentle-hearted gentle-handed, who grew a core of steel and ice to keep her daughter safe and found she couldn't put it aside even when she no longer needed it.
2) Ran away from one set of kinsmen to cleave completely to another: if there's a vestige-memory-shred of fear left in her for Grey Wind (or Robb, Robb as he is now, the lengths he will go to the whispers that will follow him to keep them safe), no one ever sees it.
3) Only Robb. Only ever Robb. When he was dead she dreamed him up most every night and heard his voice in her ear; thought he would haunt her for there was no iron longsword laid across his knees nor ever would be, and welcomed it. (He is given back to her, never a ghost at all, but that it was her own voice all along she never considers.)
4) She has no taste for travel; she walked too far while pregnant. Winterfell sits at the heart of the North, and the Queen is at the heart of Winterfell.
5) Robb builds her no septs. She worships quietly, at the heart tree, and thanks those gods who listen when their people speak.
