Sorry for this extremely late update. These few months have been very busy.
Suddenly Arya remembered the crypts at Winterfell. […] She'd been just a little girl the first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd been no bigger than Rickon was now. […]
Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. "There are worse things than spiders and rats," he whispered. "This is where the dead walk." That was when they heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya's hand.
When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. "You stupid," she told him, "you scared the baby," but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too.
/A Game of Thrones/
VII. Old stories
"If a battle comes, my son will take you along, and your oath can be fulfilled. You have my word. But now, I need you here, because if something happens to me, there must remain a witness who knows what we saw in that tent, you and I."
Brienne of Tarth bowed her head, with reluctant acceptance and stepped aside, so Catelyn could get on her horse.
Jon Snow and Robb stepped out of the castle together, with Grey Wind in their heel. They talked in a low voice, surely about what would wait them for on the road to the Wall and at the Wall.
The raven flew to Castle Black yesterday morning to inform them of their arrival, though the journey would take more than two weeks, even under the most fortunate conditions. And with the winter looming over them, they could hardly have those conditions.
It had been snowing since sunrise in tiny but more and more rapid flakes. Catelyn studied the sky, it was plain grey as far as she could see, not showing any sign of an approaching storm.
Robb gave fifty soldiers as entourage, and now all of them were sitting in their saddle.
Catelyn watched how her son said farewell to Jon. The two of them had already done that inside the castle, so while Robb didn't come to her now, Catelyn still felt his gaze on herself, all along, while their troop walked out the gates of Winterfell.
Grey Wind followed them through the courtyard. Catelyn's horse was used to him, but some of the others became nervous near the direwolf and tried to stay away from him. The truth to be told, Catelyn wouldn't have minded if a direwolf accompanied them to the Wall and stood by their side when they had to come face to face with Stannis and the red witch. Not this direwolf, of course, his place was here with Robb.
But there wasn't another one. Ghost – as Jon said – had disappeared beyond the Wall. Nymeria was tramping somewhere in the Riverlands, if she was still alive. And Summer and Shaggydog… they died, together with her little sons.
When they reached the Kingsroad, some miles from Winterfell, Jon reined up his horse, by the stone which signed the Wall northward and Castle Cerwyn to the south – though the writing became unreadable during the decades.
Lady Catelyn drove her horse to him.
"What is it, Sn– Jon?"
Her voice didn't sound as impatient as Jon came to expect from her. And there were many, many days before them, days they would have to spend together. For that, instead of saying 'Nothing, my lady' and moving on, Jon told her the truth:
"I've just remembered the time I went to the Wall the first time. We had left Winterfell with the royal party and our ways separated here. I bid farewell to my fa– Lord Eddard here. I talked to him last here.
He would have had every right to call Eddard Stark his father. But she overcame herself and didn't offend him using his bastard name, so Jon decided he would be considerate as well.
"I knew long years would be gone until I could see him again. But I never imagined, not even in my nightmares, that it was… was our last conversation."
It seemed that Lady Catelyn wouldn't reply to that, yet she spoke up:
"I felt like I lost him forever, both times we said farewell. First in Winterfell, when he left me behind, even though I was the one insisting that he should go with Robert. Then in the south, in King's Landing, when I left him there. I did feel it, but I didn't want to believe it neither then, nor after, when it turned out I was right."
Last time Lady Stark spoke that way in his presence, Jon tried to offer her some words of comfort. But it didn't end well. And Lady Stark made it clear that Jon's opinion was irrelevant in the matters of her conscience.
He didn't risk it this time.
Robb found his sister on the castle wall. Arya stared at the distance where their men rode through the hills, further she could see. They had left quite some time ago, the snow already covering their tracks. However, Arya didn't show any intention to abandon her lookout post.
She seemed sulky, or rather devastated. And entirely lost in her thoughts. She didn't even notice him until Robb touched her shoulder. Arya winced, then she began to shiver as if suddenly she remembered how cold it was up there.
"I wanted to talk to him," she said. "To Jon."
"You will talk, when he returns."
Arya sighed and shook her head. "Not like that… Not now. I wanted to tell him something since he arrived at Winterfell. But I was afraid if he came to became aware of it, he would want to leave… Then he left, anyway," she added in a sour voice. "Earlier, when I didn't believe we would meet again, I was thinking about writing to him if I ended up at a place where I could."
"Is it so important?"
"It would be to Jon. I know who his mother is."
Impossible. Arya didn't eavesdrop that night in Greywater Watch. Because if she had, she would have known that Robb knew it too. Their mother didn't share it with her either. She didn't even tell Jon, after all. Besides, she wouldn't have entrusted Arya with such a secret.
Above all of that, Robb had no reason to doubt Howland Reed's word. And he said that no one, save for himself, knew the whole truth. So, what Arya thought of had to be something else. Perhaps that hearsay about Ashara Dayne, the same that took wing in Winterfell once. Or another rumor that was spread in the south and never reached Winterfell.
"Who?"
Arya looked at him as if she pondered whether she could reveal that secret to him.
Robb smiled. "I can command you to tell me."
She grimaced. "You don't have to. Now that I've begun, you can hear the whole thing."
"How generous of you."
"Ladies are generous," Arya replied with decorum, then she frowned. "When the Lighting Lord's men caught Gendry, Hot Pie and me, I met Harwin."
Robb remembered that. When Arya mentioned his name for the first time, he was glad that someone from his father's company was still alive, because he had left King's Landing before King Robert's death. It was less joyful news that Harwin became an outlaw. Even if Harwin himself believed that on Beric Dondarrion's side he was serving an honorable purpose.
"I had to reveal myself, and after that everyone knew I was Arya Stark. They wanted to bring me to you to Riverrun, but then…" Arya shook her head and returned to a previous point of her story. "Lord Beric had a squire. Edric Dayne from Starfall. He asked me about Jon and he said they were milk brothers, because when he was little, Jon's mother nursed him."
Wylla. She spoke about Wylla.
"Her name is Wylla. And she still lives in Dorne. Or… when Ned left Starfall, she lived there."
Robb remembered the last night he spent in Greywater Watch.
"There is a woman in Dorne," Lord Reed told him. "She was Lady Lyanna's maid and she helped her give birth. But what came after, she was as powerless against as the guards or Ned and I."
Storm was raving that night above the swamp. The rumbling sky was slashed by lightings. Moaning, trees were swaying in the wind.
The departure of the troop was planned for dawn, so the morning after they could reach the Moat. Robb was interested in the tomorrow more than in the long gone past, but upon hearing that, he jerked his head up.
"So she knows the story you shared with us."
"Most of it but not everything. Your aunt preferred to keep it to herself what was hidden in her mind and in her heart. And Wylla, though served her, was loyal to the Targaryens, only to them. Before we went to Starfall, she took an oath, a much more severe oath than Ned and I had taken, that she would hold the secret. But not for me or for your father…"
"For Jon."
"For Jon," Lord Reed nodded.
"I heard about Wylla," Robb admitted to Arya. "But Edric Dayne was wrong, she is not Jon's birth mother."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
Arya seemed disappointed. "Oh, well… It's good then that I didn't tell him about her." But she must have sensed that Robb was confident in the matter for a reason, because she asked: "Do you know who is it?"
"I do."
"So Jon knows, too?"
"I hope he will, when he returns."
"Would you tell me?"
Robb smiled at her. Arya huffed, irritably.
"Jon will tell you." He turned to climb the stairs, but he took only one step. He waited whether Arya joined him.
Arya glanced at the hills veiled by the winter gloom, then she followed him.
"Would you tell me about your battles?" she asked while they left the castle wall.
"If you tell me something without concealing anything," Robb replied with a sudden idea.
It wasn't hard to agree to it. After all, Arya wanted to hear war stories, not what happened out on the battlefields. Their mother, certainly, would have disapproved of telling those kinds of things, because they weren't fit for a little girl's ears. But they couldn't have known – none of them – what Arya went through. And Robb didn't want to miss out on the chance to find out, at least a part of it.
He didn't urge his sister or tried to persuade her. He allowed her to think his offer over.
As they reached the courtyard, Arya made her decision.
"What was it like? The Whispering Wood? Was that your first battle, wasn't it? The first real one?" she sputtered with one breath, almost feverishly.
Robb frowned. "I have already told about it when Jon arrived."
"But not everything!" Arya protested. "Tell me what you couldn't tell us by the table."
"After I tell, can I choose what I would like to hear about?"
The fresh snow didn't crackle under her steps anymore. Robb stopped as well and watched as his sister was fighting with herself, until, after some time, she came to a decision.
"I must say yes, I guess."
"You must, or there is no deal."
Moments passed again – mutely and grievously –, then Arya spoke up: "Fine."
"Good."
And Robb told her everything. Those things too that otherwise he wouldn't have spoken about, but Arya asked him to. Not only he described the battles in great detail, he also told her what it was like to be there, to do what he did, to live through the fight and to carry this knowledge with him. Because those were the answers Arya was interested in the most.
"In King's Landing…" he started. Arya's shoulders strained. "How could you slip through the Lannisters' fingers? And what happened between that and your encounter with Yoren?"
"Those are two questions," she argued, feebly.
"But the same story." Robb didn't give her an inch. "You had countless questions, anyway. And I replied to all of them."
Arya couldn't deny that. She took a deep breath and she began to speak: "I was with Syrio when the soldiers came. Ser Meryn from the Kingsguard and five from the Lannisters' red coats. They said they wanted to bring me to father, but I knew it was a lie and Syrio knew, too. He didn't let them capture me. He stood up to them, though he didn't have anything but a wooden sword we had practiced with. He ordered me to run. So I ran."
Then she told him how she reached the Hand's Tower, how she found the dying Hullen and about the moment when she understood that everything was over and her only chance was escaping from the castle. She told him about the broken chest – she had packed her stuff into it last night – in which she found Needle. And finally, she told him about the stableboy who wanted to give her over to the Queen.
She subsided into silence then.
"No secrets," Robb reminded her of their deal.
"I remembered nothing from what I had learnt about using swords. Nothing, just the first lesson. But the first was enough."
"What was the first lesson?"
"Stick them with the pointy end," Arya said and she continued, but she wasn't willing to look into Robb's eyes anymore. "I realized I couldn't go on horse, because I would be stopped at the gate. But I knew there was another way. I passed along on it once, by accident. I just had to find it again."
She stole candles from the sept and she was roaming the castle for more than an hour until she came across the small window that led her to the buried dragonskulls in the cellar. She confessed how scared she was. She did know what was taken from her, she did know the horror she left behind, yet, she was afraid of the darkness in the dept of the Red Keep.
"And I thought of you." Arya still stared at her knees, but Robb saw that she smiled for a moment.
"Me?"
"There are worse things than spiders and rats."
Obviously, she quoted him, though Robb had no idea when he said something like that. Arya realized that he didn't know, so she explained it.
"You took us down to the crypts. Bran, Sansa and me. And Jon pretended that he was the ghost of an old King of Winter."
He remembered now. The jest and the punishment they got because of it. It happened a long time ago. He and Jon were about Arya's age or younger.
"I went down to the dragonskulls, then out of the castle through the wastewater canal." Arya's merriness disappeared with that. Her voice was toneless and her words became lower and lower while she spoke about starvation, the endless dread from the golden coats who crowded the streets. She told him how many times she was chased by the miserables of Flea Bottom and how she hunted for pigeons and where she found a place to sleep. She told him when the bells began to toll and she heard that the Hand was brought to the Great Sept, she hurried there, as well. She climbed up to the statue of Baelor. "I wanted to save father. I know I couldn't have done it. I know I wouldn't have reached him in time. I knew then and there too. But I had to try… Then Yoren caught me and I became Arry. Arry the silly boy."
Silence fell between them. Outside, wuthering wind blew – Robb didn't notice before, he paid attention only to his sister – and it was darker by now, though it wasn't a real storm yet.
Arya kept quiet. It seemed she never wanted to speak again. Robb felt like he heard enough, for now, but he had to ask a last question:
"He was the only one? The stableboy? The only one whom…?" He did know the answer. At least, he was almost sure he did."
Imperceptibly, Arya jerked her head.
"Are you angry with me?" she whispered.
"I am glad that you found your way back to us."
"And the King in the North? Is he angry with me? Will he judge me?"
Robb leaned to her and took her hand. At first, Arya didn't seem to allow it, but then she held on to his hand so hard that it hurt.
"No, of course not," he said seriously.
Evenings, and daytime whenever they stopped to rest, Catelyn spent most of her time with Jon because decency required that, and also because she could not let his companions sense any enmity between them.
The boy knew that too – or he simply understood her intention. They talked to each other, a few words each day, always courteously and warily. Catelyn was cool, Jon was tense, though far less than before he had travelled to the Wall with Benjen. Catelyn thought that this, in fact, was appropriate, considering that members of the Night Watch had to face greater threats – even without ancient tales – than her. Besides, Jon wasn't a child anymore.
Regarding her… Catelyn tried to overcome her dislike towards him. She tried to convince herself not to be cross with the boy because of imaginary deeds of the Bastard of Winterfell. And she couldn't be cross with him because of decisions Ned or Robb made. She tried to accept that she had been wrong. She tried to see him in a different light, just like Ned and Robb and Arya did.
She was never willing to do that for Jon Snow, but she had to do it for Jon Stark. For the sake of all of them.
They encamped the seventh time when she decided to speak to him about the Knight of The Laughing Tree.
Jon noticed her restlessness, but he didn't understand the reason behind it. It was like she was waiting for something – or preparing for something.
However, she didn't say a word. They ate in quiet – as usually, after all, they had already discussed everything they had to. At least, Jon thought so. He just wanted to wish her 'good night', when suddenly Lady Stark began to speak about Greywater Watch and Howland Reed. It seemed that this evening was that 'someday' she had mentioned in the crypts of Winterfell more than a week ago.
And he sat there, listening to her, because he promised he would do so. It was almost like she was telling him a tale as Old Nan had done years ago. Jon found it rather uncomfortable, despite the fact that it was his family's story; and more than that, a part of the Seven Kingdoms' history. But he didn't understand why this was so important – according to Lady Stark – that he had to be aware of it, too.
Upon hearing about Lady Lyanna's justice, he thought that if he and his siblings had been in that kind of situation, Arya would have done the same as their aunt – and then that his sister could not resist boasting about her victory. Maybe not even if she made the King mad at her for it.
Well… the old Arya would have acted that way. The new one… The new one was more unsure, but at the same time, more determined as well. That thought saddened him.
She finished the tale with the encounter of Lady Lyanna and Prince Rhaegar. What came after that was really history, and people knew it well all over Westeros.
"Bran would have liked this story," Jon noted. But perhaps it was a mistake to say that. He shouldn't have brought up his little brother.
Lady Stark paled, but finally she replied shortly: "I believe so, too."
Jon stood up. "Well, I… Thank you for sharing this story with me." There was something odd in her expression which made him hesitating. "Because it is over, isn't it?"
She looked away, and nodded. "Yes, it's over."
Author's note:
A few words about Catelyn's hesitance:
She wants to tell Jon the truth, but she knows from her own experience that it's hard to tell and hard to hear this story. She is also afraid that Jon will be upset (she was, after all), and they need a clear mind when they meet Stannis and Melisandre.
