this is a disclaimer.
AN: more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of my watch began, which is a timeline for this AU. (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold.)
the witch of winterfell – (99 months aRW)
She got used to the cold eventually.
It sank into her bones and bred there, radiating outward once more to freeze her blood all over again. She adjusted her perceptions to accommodate it and controlled herself the way she had been taught. It was not just her face that was her tool, but her whole body, every muscle, every sinew, every square inch of skin. She twisted her tools around the ice in her veins and accepted it as part of her and when she wakes it will be part of her and there to stay.
But for now she eyes it, slightly distrustful, and then flees to her sister to prowl the woods and run the hills under a hunter's moon. She lifts her voice in song the way she did in the warmlands and her pack answers her: not as big as it was, perhaps, but closer, stronger. Sun-brother summer-brother pale-brother black-brother. Her children she could not find, but that was right, for they did not hunt yet. They guarded, and waited their time.
They spread out, slinking through the snow on noiseless feet, and surrounded the Place she lies in, helpless and yet not, for she is wrapping the cold into her bones, making it her own, and They will not defeat her.
Something is rasping, rough and wet, across her face. Double-vision of a human face and a wolf-one; the girl in the bed has grey eyes and a face full of edges, lovely but cold.
The girl in the bed has a name; she struggles back to it, wolf-tongue licking her face and smoothing all the layers of falsehood away until there is naught left here but Arya.
Her sun-brother puts his hand behind her head and lifts it gently.
"Here. Drink."
Arya slurps the water greedily and finds his name stamped on his battered face, in blue eyes that have seen too much death and let go of too many beliefs.
Robb.
"Bran?" she croaks.
"In the next room. Sam is with him."
"Jon? The pup?"
"Safe. Jon wasn't hurt. The pup's still at the Shadow Tower with the Mormont girl. Aegon held the Wall while we were gone."
"Were you?"
Puzzlement.
"Hurt," she qualifies.
"Oh. No. Well, only cracked ribs."
She snorts, smiles, lets her eyes close. "Knew you'd come for us," she says.
Whiskered kiss to her forehead. "Always."
When Arya wakes again the dragon-queen sits by her bedside. It takes far longer to find her name than it did her pack-mates'.
"Daenerys," says the dragon-queen. "Jojen said you'd been running with Nymeria for so long, it might take you a while to remember."
Ah, Jojen. Understands her too bloody well.
"Dany," says Arya, stupidly proud she could summon the nickname. "Everyone –"
"Is perfectly well."
"Thank you."
"Thank you, Lady Arya. You saved my life, and I've not had the chance to say it yet."
That was true. She remembers Needle in her hand, the pop of the wight's eyes being stabbed out, the way it stumbled and flailed. She remembers Dany being dragged away by her bloodriders, and the battle raging on.
She will not remember where she found herself when it ended.
"I wanted to give you these," says Dany quietly. "As a thanks."
Arya pushes herself upright and takes the gift. It's two knives, grey-scabbarded, beautiful, with wolfshead pommels like Jon's Longclaw, and the one they put on Oathkeeper after Robb had the smiths remove Lannister's rubies from the hilt. Brienne gave it back into his keeping that first day at Greywater Watch, and to honour her service to Rickon and Sansa and their lady mother he never changed its name.
The knives are thin-bladed, near as long as Needle itself, and wrought of dragonsteel.
She looks up at Dany.
"You know I found the secret of it in Valyria," she says, smiling faintly. "And Needle is of little use against – our Enemy."
It's sadly true. Bran's knives are dragonglass but Arya has never seen him use them against any living creature. Arya grips the hilts and feels them fit perfectly into her hands and smiles.
"These," she says, "are gorgeous, Dany."
Dany touches her knee and grins back.