a/n: A sequel to "NORTH WINTER HIGH SCHOOL: THE WALL (MILITARY) ACADEMY" and "NWHS:tW(M)A-INTERLUDE". Set in the same world and takes place two-years after the previous fic.

The Ages are listed as the following:
Robb - 22
Sansa - 20
Arya - 19
Bran - 17
Rickon - 14
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Jon - 21
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Gendry - 21
Ygritte - 22
Tanner - 28
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Fic: Summary: Arya has been training as a Crow under Lt. Karl "The Skull King" Tanner's hard thumb for the past two-years. While out on a routine watch with her ex-partner Jon Snow at the Fence in the Beyond, all the little experiments on her Uncle Benjen's behalf start to come into context.

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The Wall Academy:
Elite Military Training Depot
(White Walkers, Wildlings, & Wights)

Chapter 9: —

They always kept their rifles cleaned, loaded and close at hand, they never truly realized how handy that was until now. They both faced the locked door to the balcony, the fire pit between them and the door, their rifles level. Arya liked the Remington M700, with its 6-round internal magazine and bolt action, while Jon favoured his the more sophisticated Colt LE901 Carbine semiautomatic rifle with its .308 Winchester bullets.

"What was that?" Jon whispered.

"I don't know," she admitted nervously, just as quiet. "Check the monitors."

Arya covered the door as Jon turned to the laden table behind them filled with screens. The cameras were still working, but who knew how much use that would be in this storm.

"Nothing. All I can see is snow!" he growled in frustration.

Her eyes still trained on the door, she commented. "Do you mean the weather or technical term?"

He didn't take it for a joke because he knew that it wasn't. "I can't tell."

"I supposed it doesn't matter if the results the same."

He checked the crank phone just in case, but it was as Shadow Tower Base said, communications would drop in this storm. He returned to her side. "What do you want to do?"

"We have to check it, of course." She narrowed her eyes in thought for a brief moment as they heard nothing more from the balcony—that could be either a good or a bad thing—she just wasn't sure which it was yet. All she could think about was the Wights she saw at the Fence. "We'll do it like a breach." She said finally. "I'll go first with the short-range gun and you cover me with the rifle."

Jon nodded his agreement and covered the door.

She put her arm and head through the strap on the rifle, hanging it from her back and went over to the metal container that they had stowed by the cots and retrieved a Glock 17 semiautomatic. She checked the clip (17 bullets) and loaded the weapon, the safety off, pulling the slid. She handed another to him and he did the same, tucking it again in the strap of his snow pants at his right thigh for easy access.

She did herself up right, as did Jon; pulling their hoods up, goggles on, scarf's up, and made sure to just wear their fleece gloves for better gun handling.

"We'll do it double-sided. I'll go through the door, and you come up from the roof."

"I'm on it." He nodded and started for the far wall where the foot- and hand-holds were located in the wall that led up to the roof access, shouldering the strap of his rifle.

"Be careful up there, okay? It could be nothing or it could be something." She told him.

"I planned on it from the start." He gave her a small smile through the scarf as he started up to the trapdoor that led to the slightly peaked roof to compensate for all the falling snow. "Give me 30-Watchers-on-the-Wall." He called down.

Cold air and snow forced its way into the watchroom as Jon opened up the trapdoor outward and a shower of snow fell onto his hooded head. She watched as he pulled himself onto the roof, the door closing with a bang and rattle.

She went over to the door, and to the side, facing it, her Glock held in both hands, directed at the door, but lowered, and counted as she thought. The door opened outward, which presented a problem in itself; she was going to have to be quick, but the wind was going to be a bitch and fight them.

She remembered back to her first-year infantry lessons on Craster's Keep, and though she was technically exiting, the same basic rules applied. Carefully, she slowly, undid the bolts and locks as Jon's time limit was nearing its end. There was a hidden access point from the roof to get down to the balcony, and that was where Jon was headed, he should be there in a moment if nothing was amiss—if whatever made that noise on the balcony had stayed on the balcony.

Go. She commanded herself, turning the knob of the door with a quick jerk, shoving it open with force behind her shoulder, the Glock steady in both her hands. Adrenaline raced through her, her heart hammering beneath her zipped parka, silent in the wind that instantly invaded her space as she stepped out onto the balcony. Her eyes took in everything as she panned the space of the balcony in under ten-seconds, the door battering against the back wall from the wind.

The balcony was clear, but she double-checked just in case she missed something. There was no Wight waiting for her, just the telescope on its side, tangled in the tarp that they had put over it to both protect it from the storm, and also anchor it, but the winds seemed to have been stronger than they anticipated as the freak storm drove on around them.

She tucked her Glock into the strap on her snow pants, designed for just that, and bent over to pick the device up. She lifted the tarp and looked through it to see if it was still functioning, it unconsciously pointing in the same direction that she was sure she had spotted the White Walkers/Wights or whatever they were, but could see nothing this time around through the thick falling snow as she waited for Jon.

Night was upon them, and the snow and hail banded together, thick as thieves. The security lights, though still working, hardly worked in these conditions, they didn't cut through the snow like was wanted, but they managed to light the roofed balcony that had accumulated a bed of snow and hail that was at least a foot deep and counting.

She secured the telescope again, thinking that they might as well just bring it inside because it was sure to happen again, and she didn't think that they had a replacement for the thing, as worry started to harden like a iron ball at the pit of her stomach—Jon should have made it down to the balcony by now.

Something must've happened.

She found the hidden holds in the wall on the left side, frozen with ice, and started to carefully climb upward. She hoped that he hadn't slipped and fallen or been blown from the edge by buffeting winds—his scream stolen by the wind—despite the flat planes under the snow on the roof that were laid out for just such an occasion. She could have called out, but that would eliminate the element of surprise if this was something more than just a slip.

The wind was much fiercer up here, at the top-most part of the tower, its 50-feet. The wind easily invaded her scarf as she rose nothing but her amber-goggled eyes. She couldn't see much for the slanting roof, the piled snow (the wind picking up the fine top layer and whipping it at her face) and the corner of the solar panels. She couldn't see Jon or anything else that might have been on the other side of the slope, so she had no choice but to pull herself all the way up and investigate herself.

She got her boots under her and carefully stood to her full height of 5'0", centering her gravity so that the winds didn't actually carry her off the side of the roof—they'd certainly take her but they wouldn't keep her, letting her drop to (what would surely be) her death 50-feet down. She pulled her Glock from its strap, and carefully found the narrow flat strip beneath the snow. The only reason that she knew where it was (despite having only been up to the roof once before when she had come with Tanner) was because in their lessons back at the Wall, all cadets must learn the layout of the watchtowers for just such an occasion.

Standing strong against the wind she slowly started to maker her way around, starting on the east-side. Even if Jon had been there, the wind would have wiped any memory of his boot steps away in a matter of seconds.

The roof was the size of any of the other rooms in the Watchtower. She finally reached the south-side of the roof, where the trapdoor that led inside to the watchroom was located, and found no sight of Jon.

"Jon!" she screamed over the wind and through her scarf. "Jon!"

She could see impressions made in the thick slow that was partially protected from the wind on the side of the slopping roof, but that was it. Jon was gone, missing. She stepped over the trapdoor, a hole-in-the-bucket hope that she would find him on the west-side, but her foot hit a hidden patch of ice under the snow and her leg came straight out form under her.

She let out a yelp of surprise, her Glock falling into the thick snow on the slop of the roof as she went sideways over the side.

She didn't know what it was that she was holding onto, but it was the only thing that had stopped her decent over the side, most of her upper body hung over the side. She took a shuddering breath and opened her eyes, and found herself looking straight in the widened, amber-tinted brown eyes of Jon as he hung from the edge of the roof by the tips of his fingers (as he was buffeted by wind and snow, and pelted with hail).

"Hang on!" she shouted to him needlessly, not even sure if the wind stole it away before it even reached his ears.

She scrambled back into the roof, quickly stabilized herself and peeked over the edge again. Snow-filled wind whipped in curls at her face, trying force its way unwanted into her lungs. Jon was still hanging there, his fingers finding the lip of the roof, his boots kicking at the wall to find some kind of purchase to take the strain of all his weight from his arms. His Glock was gone, probably buried in the snow below, and the strap of his rifle was a burden at his shoulder. He must've been hanging there since the second he stepped out from that trap door, while she was still inside, counting Watchers-on-the-Wall, and then taking her sweet time on the balcony looking through the telescope at nothing but blowing snow—and all the while Jon had been hanging-on for his very life.

She knew that she had to pull him up, but he was heavier than her and he'd just pull her over the edge with him. If he hadn't been Wall-trained, he would have been dead already; all the punishment that Thorne and Qhorin put him through wasn't for nothing. She needed to anchor herself somehow, but all there was the same ice that he and she had slipped on. There wasn't time enough to go back through the trapdoor and get some rope and them tie it off to something—it needed to be something that she could do right now!

She gasped as it suddenly came to her, nearly choking behind the scarf as the wind took advantage. "One more second!" she told Jon, and sat back up, disappearing from his view. The trapdoor was right there next to her and she flipped the door open again, but instead of disappearing inside, she just stuck the lower-half of her body, from the hips down into the opening. The door was right at the edge of the roof so that she would be able to easily reach Jon, have the leverage, and the anchor so he wouldn't drag her over. Her upper torso came over the edge, and with her small hands, she reached into the tight opening of his parka sleeves and grasped his wrists tight with her fleece-gloved hands.

Jon nodded to her, "Now!" she thought she heard, and pulled with her strength as he tried to gain purchase on the wall and his arms tensed as he strained to pull himself up. Arya's body was curled around what would be the inside-roof and the outside-roof, the edge of the trapdoor cutting painfully into her ribs, but she ignored it as they finally seemed to be making some ground. She remember the time when she pulled him from the water, right after he most literally threw her out of it.

As Jon started back up, she slowly started to go down the hole. First his arms, then his shoulders, and his torso and she finally released his wrists, dropping almost ten-feet the rest of the way into the watchroom on nimble feet. She looked up and watched as Jon came a moment later, climbing down that holds and touched down on slightly shaky legs (the trapdoor closed to the outside again). She took his arm and led him over to the cot and he sat down heavily. She took his carbine rifle and leaned it against the foot of the cot, stock to the floor and with shaking hands he took off his headgear.

Arya pushed her hood back, goggles and scarf crowding her throat as she looked down at him with concern, her Remington still strapped to her back, her Glock lost on the roof. It was freezing in the room, the wind had invaded and the fire was almost dead—it would've been dark if it were for the couple oil lamps that were lit by the monitors.

"Are you okay, Jon?" she asked.

He swallowed heavily and leaned back against the wall that the cot was pushed up against and nodded. "Yeah—yeah, I'm okay."

"I was so scared when I couldn't find you," she whispered.

"Yeah, well, I was pretty scared there for a minute myself." He chuckled, but there was no humour in it (not that there was anything to laugh about). "If you hadn't slipped yourself, you might never have found me—scared me half-to-death, though, I really thought for a second there that you were coming over, too."

"I honestly don't know how I didn't," she admitted. "I grabbed onto something, I just don't know what it was."

"Well, whatever it is, I'm glad that you did." He gave a small shiver that might have crossed-over into a shudder.

"I told you to be careful up there," she admonished him softly, finally turning from him and starting for the door that was still open and banging against the wall for the wind. She looked over at him as she got to the threshold. "You're never going up there ever again, do you understand me?"

"You don't have to tell me twice," he reassured her, rubbing at his wrists; he was sure to have bruises with the grip she had him in.

She reached out and grabbed the inside handle and pulled against the wind, confused when the door stopped half-way. She pulled harder and it fought her, pulling back—and that was when she noticed that there was a third hand in the mix, curled around the edge of the door. Adrenaline took hold of her heart. Its hand was bare, its fingers grey-blue, its nails jagged and blackened.

She quickly manage to swing her rifle around to the fore, still surprised that it hadn't gone off when she had slipped, and aimed it at the door—at the body that was hidden behind it. It was still cocked and locked and her finger found the trigger easily enough. The shot rang loud in the small room and Jon jumped to his feet, his carbine in his hands where he grabbed it from the end of the cot, renewed adrenaline going through him.

"Arya?!" he demanded, his barrel directed at the door but saw nothing that represented a target.

Her shoulders were steady and she didn't move an inch, watching and waiting, wondering if she had hit the target that she couldn't see, if it was still capable of countering.

"Cover me," she told him, her voice low in the wailing wind that took the open door again, slamming it back against the wall and from her voice, but making a different noise than before.

Jon nodded, his LE901 still directed at the door as he took a spot a few feet behind her and to the side to get a better view of the door and not actually shoot her in the back if he had to fire. His arms had been shaky after his adventure hanging of the side of the roof for what felt like forever as his body told him, but was probably no more than 5-minutes, but his own adrenaline supply steadied him.

Arya wished she had her Glock right about now, but it was still on the roof, so she had to deal with her Remington. She edged her way out the door and into the balcony, the storm still raging. The rest of the balcony was clear, and she slowly edged her way part way around the door and to whatever lay behind it

She was still, all Jon could make out was the back of her arm and elbow in a position he knew with the rifle stock at her shoulder as she aimed down.

Arya had never killed a person before, she'd never even used a gun to kill an animal; Tanner liked to make her use knives, to get her in close. To see their eyes, breathe their breath, feel their blood. She looked down at what appeared to be a Wildling man clad in fur cloak, covered in crystallised frost. She tentatively jabbed at the downed body with the toe of her boot and got no response, she did it once more, harder this time with the same result. He seemed to be dead. She could see the dark hole in the furs where she had shot him in the chest.

She thought back to the description of the White Walkers; over 6 ft., pale skin, white hair and unnatural blue eyes that appeared to glow. She could see the tangled matt of brown long hair that came from under the hood, so he wasn't a White Walker... but for all she knew, these past thousands of year, the White Walkers could have breed with the scattered Wildlings from the camps that lived on the boarder of the Land of Always Winter. She still didn't know what Wights looked like, just that they had similar eerie blue eyes that seemed to glow.

She was about to give Jon the all-clear when its eyes snapped open in its grey-blue looking face and they were the glowing blue eyes that she had seen twice since in the Beyond. She didn't make a sound as her heart leapt into her throat and her forefinger took action. Her second shot rang just as loud as the first before in vanished into the wind.

"Arya!?" Jon shouted.

"I'm fine!" she called back to him, but didn't move from where she stood over the body.

"Arya," he said again, his voice softer this time as he came to her, clearing the balcony before he stood beside her behind the door and looked down at the body of what appeared to be a Wildling—and was just in time to watch as the blue glow faded from the body's eyes and the irises turn a dull brown. "Oh, my Gods!"

"Do you believe me now?" she muttered, her rifle still ready in her arms and pointed at the body; she had thought that it was dead before... maybe the knew hole in its head did the job?

Jon looked from the body to his partner; her breath was even, her aim still steady and directed at the body that he was sure was dead this time, and the monotonous glaze in her narrowed grey eyes. "Arya..."

She didn't feel that sickness in the pit of her stomach like she used to think she would when she thought about if she ever had to kill another person. She wondered if it was because of Tanner's training, or if she was just one of those people who could take a life without much thought or feeling.

She gave her head a little shake and looked over at Jon who was giving her a worried look, and flashed him a small smile. "We should put it in the prisoner hold and call it in when the storm finally passes. There could be more out here, so we should go inside, lock-up and stay alert."

"How did he even get up here?" Jon wondered as they shouldered their weapons and grabbed a-hold of a limb each and started to drag the corpse around the door and into the watchroom (finally closing and locking-up the door).

"I don't know," she grunted as the came to pause at the trapdoor on the floor that lead to the storage room, and pushed the body through the hole. It fell the 12-feet down like a sac of potatoes, but didn't have quite the same sound as it landed on the floor. "Everything was clear on the balcony when I checked it before; the thing that made all that noise was just the telescope being knocked over in the wind."

They climbed down into the room and started to drag the body once more through the darkened stacks of their dwindled supplies to the hidden trapdoor in the floor that would them to the body's final destination.

The drop was 2-feet shorter this time, but the result was the same. Jon lit a oil lamp and Arya got the keys to the single cell in the fortified safe-room and unlocked the several mechanisms as Jon dragged the Wildling the last bit of the way and shoved it into the cell before she locked it back up again.

They stepped back and looked at the crumpled body on the floor for a long moment in the flickering shadows of the lamp. The snow and frost that clung to it was already melting rapidly in the warmth of the inner tower and formed a shallow puddle around it. Same with the flakes stuck to their curls and toques.

"It must've happened while we were out on the roof," he said finally. "Otherwise we would have heard something."

She nodded. "I think you're right, but I didn't see anyway for it to have gotten almost 50-feet to the balcony."

"You might have interrupted him when you went to close the door."

"So it hid behind the door, discarding its way up back over the edge in hopes that I wouldn't see it, but I spotted it around the door and put an end to that pretty quick." She agreed.

"Why do you keep calling him 'it'?" Jon couldn't stop himself from asking, once he noticed, he couldn't stop.

She gave him an incredulous look. "Didn't you see its eyes?!" she demanded.

"Yes, you're right." He agreed. "But I hardly even know what I saw."

She flung her hand out towards the body. "That wasn't normal, and you know it! You finally saw it, so you'd better stop acting like this fucked up shit isn't happening. I saw more than one of them at the Fence—so either they're following its lead and coming for us, or they're going to head south and for the Wall. Either way, we have to stop them!"

He took a deep, a slightly shaky breath as he looked hard at the dead body that now occupied their cell. He'd always been able to put Arya's stories off to just that, stories. It was easy because he hadn't seen it then, but he had seen it now—the Glowing Blue Eyes that she had always told him about. He had seen them, glimpsed as they faded from the man's dead eyes and his irises reverted back to normal (was what he suspected had happened), and there was no denying it any longer. All that Benjen had told him, about the Wildlings, and about Ygritte… all of it.

"Yes. There's sure to be more coming, and we need to be ready to defend this tower, defend the Wall!" he gave his shorter, but fierce companion a firm nod.

"Good," she clapped him on the shoulder. "Welcome to my truly fucked up world, Jon; it's going to be a blast."

He didn't seem to share her sentiment.

-tbc-
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Note:

I hope this peaked y'all's interest a bit; some 'domestic' drama, some action, and suspense... hehe.

I was hard pressed for time to finish this chapter last night so that I could post it today. I've been coming to the Library twice a week for the past month so that I can get on the internet and post, and its really fucked with my perception of time, plus Christmas holidays didn't help matters even if it's been two weeks past. Hope you like the chapter, hope to hear all your thoughts! :)

The Key:

Watchtower(2) = The watchtower is powered by a wind turbine located on top of the roof as well as a set of (black) solar panels. They are placed at the right angle to catch the sun at its longest point in the sky directly above. They store the energy of the sun as well take a minimal heat that melts any snow that might pile up on them. The roof also has narrow, flat planes on it to easier travel the snowy recesses.

Stark Notes:

~ This was the first time that Arya had killed anything other than an animal, and with a gun as well.

~ Was this man really a Wilding, or was it something else, something that Arya always seems to encounter—Glowing Blue Eyes.

~ Jon is finally ready to face the truth of things, after a unreasonable amount of doubts despite the truth being told to him and shown to him.

Thanks for Reading!

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