A.N.: First off, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has read or left feedback on my other GoT stories, which have been received so well by the fandom.

Second of all, this is a sequel to Stranger, posted in this new page to alter character tags. It's not absolutely necessary to read Stranger to understand this, though some things will be a bit confusing if you haven't read it.

Third, wow, these chapters keep ending up a lot longer than I expect them to. This first one would have been 18 ½ pages and I don't know if really long chapters deter readers, so I've split it up into three chapters. This first one is short. The next two are longer.

I'll be continuing this story through the end of the series (with some changes to the plot) and then there will be another part of the story that happens after that, so I hope most of you are still with me. This story, as it turns out, is just getting started and I have so many plans for it moving forward.

Summary: The group arrives at the Wall.

As the troop came over the final hill of their approach, Arya was stunned as she looked up and out across expanse of the Wall for the first time, ice built up hundreds of feet into the sky and stretching as far west as she could see that she felt so unbelievably small standing in its shadow. How, she wondered, had the Watch ever managed to build such a thing? The magnitude of its height alone was breathtaking, skirting the clouds themselves, and she knew it stretched across the entire north, from the Bay of Seals all the way west where the land emptied into the Bay of Ice. She clearly wasn't the only one so affected by the sight of it because the rest of the troop had drawn to a halt as well.

The crunch of boots in snow alerted her to his approach and then Jon stood beside her, looking out at the Wall with a familiarity none of the others possessed and which she couldn't fathom even with the knowledge that he had lived there for years—because how could anyone ever get used to such a thing no matter how much they saw it?

"I imagine I looked something like that the first time I saw it too," he said and the amusement in his voice made Arya think she must look more amazed than she realized.

"I've heard the stories," she mused, thinking back to all the times their father had spoken about their Uncle Benjen up on top of his Wall of ice so high that you couldn't see the top through the clouds, "but…"

"Nothing really prepares you," Jon agreed to her unfinished thought.

And it was true. Arya highly doubted there was anything she could have been told beforehand to truly ready her for the reality that was the largest construct known to man. It was breathtaking and humbling and so much more than she had expected.

It also begged one very important question.

"You really think he can get past that?" she asked, staring up to the top, reportedly more than seven hundred feet high.

She would be lying if she said the thought of that, of this dead army finding its way south despite the existence of this colossal barrier, didn't cause her genuine worry. As she'd told Gendry a week earlier, only a fool wouldn't be afraid. She was no fool. The answer to her own question, she already knew deep in her bones, but hearing it aloud was altogether different than knowing it deep down.

"I do."

And that was it. The dead would come and they both knew it. They could probably find some way to scale it. As Jon had told her, the Night's Watch was terribly understaffed and, if the army of the dead was as large as her brother proclaimed, they wouldn't be able to hold them back indefinitely. Barring that option, the Night King and his army could simply wait for winter to freeze the waters at the coast far enough out that they could bypass the Wall entirely. They couldn't die of starvation, so they could wait for as long as they needed to. If the warnings were to be believed, this winter would be long and harsh.

Sooner or later, the army of the dead would be coming for them. All they could do was try to gather and arm as many combatants as they could before that happened.

Arya wasn't yet ready to truly appreciate why it was this thought of their impending doom which had her glancing back, searching out one of the few faces familiar to her in this company. She spotted Gendry in short order, standing with Ser Davos several paces behind as they, along with all the others, stared up at the Wall in much the same fashion she had been just a moment before. And as she looked at him, she felt a very potent fear creep into her bones, stealing her breath away for the thought that, very soon, he and her dear brother could be just two more people she'd lost. She had to wrestle the air back into her lungs and turned her eyes squarely away from the smith and back to the Wall before them to center herself once again.

She knew then that she would need to be honest with Gendry, truly honest, before she lost her chance. She'd tried to express to him several times that he was important to her, but she knew there was so very much she still needed to tell him, a lot she needed to come clean about, before either of them faced their potential end.

Of course, first she would need to actually be able to speak with him, which had proven difficult thus far. He'd been keeping his distance ever since they'd met up with Jon. At first, she'd been grateful, thinking the smith had been doing so to give them space to reconnect after the siblings' many years apart, but she had since begun to wonder how much of it actually had to do with his adherence to the ridiculous beliefs of station that were rife within the kingdoms. Arya, of course, didn't care who had borne him or under what circumstances, but it had always been clear to her that he didn't share her apathy towards the 'way things were supposed to be'. But, Eastwatch was enclosed and she was sure she'd get the chance to speak with him properly before they set out north.

Then they would just have to catch a wight, make it back to Eastwatch alive, and prepare for what was sure to be a bloody and devastating battle once the dead marched south.

Arya felt Jon's arm go around her shoulders then and was pulled from these distant thoughts to find him smiling at her, though she noted a ghost of worry for the future hidden deep in his eyes as well. She didn't want to drag them up to the surface, to add to the burden of that weight on his shoulders, so she smiled back.

"Come on," her brother said as he started them towards the Wall once again, and Arya heard the troop follow along behind them a moment later. "I'll show you around."

"I was under the impression you spent your time a good deal west of here." This jest was just a distraction, really, but humor slipped easily into Arya's words anyway because she'd really missed him, her dear brother, and it was good to talk of things other than the dead.

She reminded herself that they hadn't come this far, been through so much, just to die on some fool's errand for a queen who couldn't be bothered to give up her footholds in the mainland for the only war that truly mattered.

When Jon chuckled in response to her calling him out on his lack of familiarity with this particular castle on the Wall, his breath puffing out in little white clouds, Arya couldn't help but laugh as well and she snaked her arm around his back, feeling a bit lighter for his smile. He gave her a good-natured shake for her cheek and kept them moving.

"Come on."