a/n: Set in muted modern world of North Winter High School, where gender equality is just coming into fruition, where The Starks live in a humble home in the City of Winterfell in the Country of Westeros, and the Wall is a military training depot/academy. And Jon is not related to the Starks... or is he?
Includes: nudity and sexual reference.
The Ages are listed as the following:
Robb - 18
Sansa - 16
Arya - 15
Bran - 13
Rickon - 10
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Jon - 17
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Fic Summary: Arya was sick of standing on the sidelines, so when females were finally allowed, she didn't miss her chance to join The Wall Military Academy. She never expected it to be easy, in fact, she relished the challenge. Excelling in her first-year class unit, she's moved up with the third-year recruits and partnered with a boy named Jon who reminds her of home. But being the best-of-the-best doesn't always mean you'll be liked.
********Game/of/Thrones********
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The Wall Academy:
Elite Military Training Depot
Chapter Six: —
First-year recruit training had felt like a complete joke to Arya. It wasn't the repetitive nature of the drills and marches, it was the fact that she knew—knew that they had been taking it easy on the girls. Rodrik and Jory were like nice and understanding and encouraging angels, compared to Thorne who was like the anti-Old Gods.
Thorne thought that they were all more worthless than the dirt under his boots, the recruits under his charge were the dog shit on his boots that he scraped off on the side of the sidewalk. He was a complete asshole, sadistic at times even. Sometimes it scared Arya, the way that he looked at her or Jon sometimes. But that was why she liked being under Thorne's charge. He gave no favour, they were all the same in his eyes. He treated them all like shit. That was what Arya wanted, to be treated just like one of the boys.
There was a monthly Physical Test, one that was similar to the APA course at the city Stadiums that got boys noticed for the Wall in the first place. At least it was monthly for the first- and second-years, it was weekly for the third- and forth-years. The first-/second-year PT was different than this, but a little upgraded version of the APA course, not the beast the third- and four-years had to run.
Benjen had dumped her in the piranha pool half the week through, so Arya had only three days to adjust to the sudden demanding, unpredictable third-year training schedule.
20 mile runs. 15 mile marches. Close combat classes. Schooling in the Wall. Weapon assembly and disassembly—blind folded and under a minute or it was fifty push ups and thirty crunches. Marksmanship at the shooting range. Random inspections. Explosive lessons. And somewhere in there they were supposed to find time to eat, shower, laundry, and sleep.
This was worse than Hell Week. Sometimes, she thought the only reason that she was surviving, was because she had Jon for a partner.
The APA course and first-/second-year course was like a preschool jungle gym compared to what the third-/fourth-year Wall Physical test was:
Twenty tires at the start. A 40-foot pit that had randomly scattered podiums the length of it that had to be jumped to with a surface area of 8x8 inch 5 feet apart; at the bottom of the pit was slimy water, if you fell in, you had to swim to the edge and pull yourself out by a knotted rope and do it over again. 20 foot high wall, climbed by rope. Once you reach to top of the wall, you're to leap to 5 horizontal beams 5 feet apart. From the beams is the rope swing. Then the belly crawl in a shallow pit of mud and rotting animal parts, 30 centimetres above you is real barbed wire. A 30 foot balance beam that wasn't level. Then a 5 mile run. All this had to be done under the time limit of 40 minutes.
Just like the first week of a new recruits life at the Wall was called Hell Week, this PT test was commonly called Hell's Lane.
The only thing was, that Thorne made them run in partners—meaning that she was going to be tied to Jon with a rope length of exactly five feet, but only after they had first run the course singly.
"How is this even possible?" Arya gasped, waiting next to Jon for their turn. Both cadets were already sweaty, grimy, and muddy, the scent of rotten meat lingering on them. "It's a death wish." Just as she said that, a pair of recruits, Pyp and Grenn, tumbled off the podiums and into the slimy water beneath.
Jon winced at their cries and curses. "It is possible."
"You've done it before?" That was a stupid question, of course he had, Thorne wouldn't have kept him around other wise.
A sadness flashed through his eyes. "Yeah. His name was Samwell. He was a big guy, soft. It didn't end well."
"Did he die?" Arya wondered, unable to help the curiosity.
"No, he just broke his leg. He works in the Wall library now, taking care of all the history books with Mr. Aemon, he's the civilian that keeps track of all the Wall's going-ons."
"Oh."
"Stark! Snow! Move your asses, you're up!" Thorne hollered at them.
Arya took a nervous breath as the pair walked over to Thorne, that was the easy part.
"Don't worry." Jon murmured to her so Thorne could hear, "You've already gone through Hell's Lane once, you know what to expect. It might seem harder because we're attached, but their isn't a time limit going double, we just have to finish the course."
Jon was right, she had just run the course. At least she had that up her sleeve. But she didn't just want to just finish. "We are going to rock at this, Jon." She told him intensely. "And Thorne can shove it up his ass!"
The corner of Jon's lips twitched into a smirk but hid it away as Thorne sent him a glare. "Rock it." He muttered, and the pair bumped fists and got ready.
"Move your worthless asses!" He barked.
And the two started off. The tires were first, and that was the easiest part. Life was made simple by the rope being tied around their waists, instead of say, their ankles. After watching other pairs go first, they had strategised, and had come to the conclusion that their size difference didn't matter as long as the kept pace with each other. Those tires were the end of easy going, next was the podium leap; a 40 foot long pit with scattered podiums 8x8 inches wide, 5 feet apart. This was where their size differences favoured them, unlike two boys like Pyp and Grenn both almost 6 feet on 8x8 inch surface, they were a lean 6 foot boy, and slim 5 foot girl.
Arya stopped at the very edge of the pit, her toes over the edge, and Jon leapt to the first podium, his rights foot landing first on the square and then his left. The rope pulled taunt, but Jon stayed his place on the podium and Arya stayed her place at the edge of the pit. Jon turned on the podium, facing her now, his booted feet hugging the very edges, giving her as much room as he might. She took a breath and pushed off from the ground, her short legs stretched. Her left foot touched down exact center of Jon's feet, but she kept going forward, crashing into him.
"Whoa!" he exclaimed, going backwards. His arms wrapped around her, and he bend forward, bending her back, trying to counter-act the momentum.
After a second they realized that they weren't wet and breathed in relief. Still clinging to each other, they shuffled around and then Jon was leaping onto the next podium, Arya following after him. And so it went for six more podiums. Arya learned not to bowl into his chest with her face, and they remained relatively steady through the podium pit, but it was a relief when they finally hit sold ground. They climbed the wall next to each other, and when they reached the top, they jumped to the beams that were as far apart as the podiums, the same width as the wall, they made fast work of that, making up for time lost on the podiums. The rope swing was trickier. They only had five feet of rope between them so they couldn't go single-file, they'd have to go together like the beam jump.
"Ready?" Jon asked.
Arya nodded and they jumped for the rope hanging a short distance away. They grabbed it at the same time, holding it tight as they swung. They let it swing back once more and when it was at its closest to the second rope, they jumped again. This time, it didn't go so well. Jon reached the rope first, and it jerked from her reach before she could grab hold.
"Jon!" She cried out, her eyes wide as she reached out, falling as Jon started to swing away. This was going to hurt, she knew that it was going to hurt, she hoped it wouldn't hurt as much as she though it was going to.
"Arya!" Jon reached out for her. Their finger tips touched and then locked. Arya jerked to a halt, and Jon grunted at the weight and rope burn on his palm, his fingers straining to hold the girl's weight.
Arya quickly grabbed the end of the rope and then let go of Jon's hand, pulling herself back up that rope. "Thanks," she gasped, looking at him gratefully.
"No problem," he smiled. "Let's finish this."
They got the rope swinging again, and they didn't have the same problem for the last three ropes. They both gagged as they got onto the ground and pulled through the darkness under the thick barbed wire draped with animal guts. The stench was horrid, the mud beneath them sucking at them. But that wasn't the only thing they were crawling through; sometimes, especially the first time and sometimes the second, third, even the fourth times through, cadets couldn't take the smell of rotting flesh buzzing with flies and crawling with maggots and other bugs, a puked—which made it worse.
Jon had been through the course several times and was used to it, even as it got worse each time; and Arya was not going to show any weakness by puking, even as she gagged and retched on the suffocating, stagnant air, that had her a little dizzy by the time that they made it out the other side covered in mud, puke, and blood. Jon was out first, and he grabbed Arya's arm to help her up.
"Ugh!" She spat who-knew-what from her mouth on their way to the balance beam. She went first, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, probably adding to instead of taking away. Unlike the one in the APA course, and the first-year PT course, this balance beam wasn't in a straight line and wasn't level. It went up, it went down, it went left and right. Sometimes it was a shallow incline, sometimes in was a sharp decline. It was the sharp declines that were the trickiest, making you move so fast the you almost tripped over your own feet or slip, making the rope got taunt, jerking your partner hard. But Arya had always been good at balancing and Jon was pretty good himself. They had the ground running, not stopping in the 5 mile run for an instant. She was fast unto herself, but he had the longer legs. He finished a second before she did, but they fell to their knees at the same time, exhausted and out of breath.
It was almost two hours before their whole unit was finished, but Thorne wouldn't let them be idle. So after cutting them free of each other, he had them doing jumping jacks until the others all finished. It was cruel and Arya's legs were shaking, and cramping, she just wanted to fall to the ground and lay there, to not move anymore. Gods, what half of them were doing couldn't even be called a jumping jack, but making a seizure instead. But then finally, the Old Gods looking over them, the unit finally finished the PT course.
"Wash the stink from yourselves and then stuff you faces, you have thirty minutes!" Thorne shouted at them all.
They all moved off, exhausted and hungry, groaning. As much as they wanted to lay and sleep, Thorne wouldn't let them so they shambled from the New Gift to the bathhouse in Brandon's Gift as fast as they might.
Because all the girls had been grouped together in their own unit, their showers had been an all female affair, modest to the eyes. But Arya didn't' t have that privacy or luxury anymore. The showers was a tiled, open area with around fifty shower heads without any partitions. There was no time for true modesty at the Wall or in the military anyways, girls or boy, it was a dirty business without any privacy—if that was what you cherished, then get the hell out!
Arya had no patients for modesty even before she had joined the Wall. Her family had seen her naked many times over the years. They were born naked, she didn't see the problem. And apparently the Wall didn't either. She showered with the boys now.
The first time they were in the bathhouse and she stripped down in front of them all, Jon had turned instantly red in the face, turning from her so fast that he probably got whiplash. The other boys did to, at first. Embarrassed to be naked in front of her, it was different when it was just guys. But she left the locker room and went into the showers with a roll of her eyes. Boys could be such princesses sometimes.
She wasn't embarrassed with what she had. Back before, it always annoyed her that Sansa had a more curvy and appealing body-type, with wide hips and bigger breasts. But Arya had since realized that if she had Sansa's boobs, her body would become completely disproportionate and she might not be the great athlete she was today with her own pert assets.
Slowly, the other boys started to trickle in like nervous dear. She ignored them, even as she could feel their gazes boring into her body. Chett leered at her openly, but some of the boys like Pyp and Grenn only shot her some shy glances, but Jon didn't once look towards her, even as they showered next to each other, even as she couldn't stop herself from sending a few glances his way despite herself—The Old Gods had been generous indeed.
And now, as the spray hit her, mud and guts washing down the drain, she still got open looks, sometimes she got a glance at half erect cocks. Pigs, the lot of them, but not Jon, never Jon.
-tbc-
********Game/of/Thrones********
Note:
Again, I'm not sure if the time limit is right for the PT course, but it's there.
The Key:
Physical Test or PT = The Wall has a physical test course that the first- and second-years must go through at the end of each month that is similar to the APA course at the Stadiums. The third- and fourth-years must go through a tougher, more advanced course at the end of each week (called Hell's Lane).
-Twenty tires at the start. A 40-foot pit that had randomly scattered podiums the length of it that had to be jumped to with a surface area of 8x8 inch; at the bottom of the pit was slimy water, if you fell in, you had to swim to the edge and pull yourself out by a knotted rope. 20 foot high wall, climbed by rope. Once you reach to top of the wall, you're to leap to 5 horizontal beams 5 feet apart. From the beams is the rope swing. Then the belly crawl in a shallow pit of mud and rotting animal parts, 30 centimetres above you is real barbed wire. A 30 foot balance beam. Then a 5 mile run. All this has to be done under the time limit of 40 minutes.
Thanks for Reading!
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