A Note from the Authoress: Sincerest apologies, but I had a very difficult time reconciling what occurred in the show with what I have planned. There's so many dead that won't be now, and I always told myself that I would balance the lives in this piece. I plan on killing people, but I hadn't planned on nearly wiping out a family. I'm still not sure I like where this is headed, but it is headed. Additionally, I'm doing something with Arya that I hadn't intended. I read back through the rest of the chapters I've written and realized that I had left quite a wide door open concerning Arya and Drogo that I would like to explore a bit further. I know its not canon, so no one crucify me, but there is an air of fantasy to GoT, and I feel this fits in well. This chapter is a great deal of filler and setting stages. Not a whole lot happens. Next chapter should be one hell of a ride though.
Chapter Twelve: Feathered Heart
Jon had been riding for days since the Twins burned, and still the thick smell of smoke and charred flesh lingered. There were dead men and women on his conscience, and they wouldn't leave no matter how many times he told himself that it had been Danaerys that had set fire to the Frey Towers.
Those were his father's bannermen. Those were soldiers in his brother's army. Yet Walder Frey had always bothered him, and Jon found no sympathy in his heart for the dead man. His daughters on the other hand, had his sympathy long before they'd been killed. There were people in the world that he would rather have never known existed, but that wasn't how life went. He had to get used to it.
"Jon," Pyp's quiet voice pulled him from his morbidity.
"Hm?" He asked the man, who walked beside his horse. Going was slow with the Dothraki. They hunted and explored the terrain more than they advanced. The smell of carrion men was on the air, and soon, someone would have to ride ahead to Robb's army. That someone should be him, he knew.
"Did you hear me, Jon?" Pyp asked, and the bastard realized that he must have drifted again.
"Sorry," Jon muttered, tucking the reins of his courser into one hand and dismounting cleanly. It was harder to ignore a man that stood on your footing. Fears were the things of nothingness; perhaps his head was too close to the clouds.
"This is taking too long, Jon," Pyp repeated himself, a sliver of annoyance and anxiety in his voice. Jon had to give Pyp that, of course. The man was right. If the Dothraki hoard wasn't slowing them, it was Jorah and Arya, demanding that the pale haired Queen try her hand at some new weapon or stance. Where Arya learned half of the things she taught Danaerys was beyond Jon's memory. Occasionally he wondered if it was beyond hers.
"Jon!" Pyp gave his shoulder a hard shove.
"I know," he finally agreed. "I'll go bring news, let the armies know what to expect," Jon said on a sigh. He was low to be parted from his siblings-half siblings, he had to remind himself-so soon after finding them. There would be no Lord Snow this far south, he knew. As much as he hated Ser Allister's nickname, a part of him wanted it back. At least at the Wall, he was Jon, steward of the Old Bear and perhaps even someday Commander himself. Down here, in the heat and the war, he was just Snow. And afterall, what did snow do in the south?
"I could go, or Grenn," Pyp offered, but even he knew that it would have to be Jon. Anyone else wouldn't get the immediate audience with Lord Stark-King in the North, Jon had to remind himself-and the news was best delivered from a familiar face.
"No, I'll go, just keep Sam-"
"Safe as houses," Pyp said firmly. They were brothers, Jon knew. Brothers. He didn't have to remind himself of anything else.
"Tell Arya that-"
"You'll do that your own self," Pyp said firmly, a smirk on his lips. Jon smiled back at him. It had been worth a try after all.
"Well, can't blame me for trying," he murmured before climbing back atop the courser. Arya wasn't difficult to find, but he took his time, picking his way through the Dothraki riders toward the head of the column, where their Khaleesi and his half-sister rode.
She was growing, that much was sure. Jon let his mind wander to the wide eyed girl that had nearly put him to death with a thin blade and a hug. She was taller, her eyes more guarded, with a strength to her back that had always been there but never so honed. And yet, as he rode up beside her, and she smiled at him like sunlight, her face was clean, her hair brushed, and-Lady Catelyn would at least be please of this-she'd stopped slouching.
Lady Catelyn. He'd almost let himself forget that she'd be with Robb. Perhaps he should take Arya with him, or baby Rickon. Catelyn wouldn't order his death on site if one of her children was atop the horse with him. He sighed. Arya wouldn't leave Danaerys or the greyling she rode, and Rickon didn't know how to properly sit without falling from the beast.
No, there would be no human shields to hide behind. He was Jon Snow, and he would melt in the fierce heat of the South, of that he was sure. "Jon?"
Arya waved a hand in front of his face, and he laughed. He was getting good at falling out of reality. "I'm going to ride ahead, and take news of this hoard to your brother," Jon said firmly, pushing through the disappointment on the girl's face.
"Why?" Arya asked with that impish stubbornness that seemed to have only grown. "Let someone else do it." She slumped petulantly in the saddle, and Jon was reminded that she was only twelve...or was she thirteen...or eleven yet? He shook his head at that.
"Because your brother's men will not back down from the Dothraki. Will the Dothraki back down from them?" He asked, and as if it was that simple, Arya shook her head. She straightened in the saddle.
"Fine then, but you'd better come back," she said sternly, and Jon laughed at her.
"Don't crowd the armies," he said in way of response. "I'll come back once Robb knows what's coming and has time to send word to his men." Arya nodded fiercely and kicked her heels into the grey, spurring it onward toward the silver that Danaerys rode at the head of the hoard. Jon sighed as he watched her go before spurring his own courser on, past the Mother of Dragons and further down the path. His thick, heavy furs stifled him, but he was recognizable in them.
Black. A Black Brother, down from the Wall, very much alone, and very much not on his post. The thought stuck in the back of his mind not for the first time. He pushed it away as the courser pushed forward. It would still be a days hard ride to the outskirts of Robb's army, and possibly a day further to the King in the North himself.
He steeled himself against the heat. He was not a direwolf dead in the road with a stag's antler beneath his jaw. He was a Black Brother, and there would be no stag-king that would kill him, no direwolf that would ignore him, and no fish that would frighten him. Ghost gave a great growl behind the large courser, and Jon nodded in agreement. It wouldn't be long now...
-RP: Game of Thrones: Pawn Takes Knight-
Sansa hated the outdoors. She hated the way that her hair clung to her head with grease and the way that her nails were broken and black and the way that her dress was torn and muddied, but most of all, she hated the way that everyone else seemed to just soldier on.
Even Tyrion, with his twisted legs, only complained out of habit, not the true agony that she felt was upon her. She was a wolf, why wouldn't the world see that? Wolves didn't struggle for their dinners or look a complete mess in their own skin.
She glared down at her reflection in an eddy in the water. A pretty bird in a pretty cage, she was not. The ripples made her face grotesque, and she rejoiced in it before thrusting both of her hands into the cool water. Even this far south, the waters were growing cold. As quickly as she could, she scrubbed her arms clear to her shoulders, face and legs as far as was seemly with Forel standing behind her.
She shivered miserably as she tried to will the water from her skin, and Syrio harumphed behind her. "A girl will die if she does not learn-"
"Oh, leave me alone!" Sansa snapped at him. She was tired of hearing all of the ways she'd have to change if she was to live. The Braavosi First Sword slipped silently away from the stream, letting her sit alone in her misery. It wasn't long before the sound of footfalls annoyed her again.
"I said, leave me alone!" She shouted, picking up a rock at her feet and flinging it with all of her might at the intruder.
"Oy" Bronn's voice was annoyed, but not overly so, as he shouted at her. She glared at the sellsword as he settled down across from her on his own rock, legs drawn up to his chest, knees splayed in the way that men splayed themselves, too cocky and confident. He was clean, she noticed, not in the freshly scrubbed way that she was, but in the way that the rest of them were: as if the forest simply rolled off of them.
"S'matter then?" He asked after a long silence, in which she just glared at him.
"Everything's the matter," she said, voice hard and solid in the way that she told herself it would always be. Wolves did not simper. "I should be better at this," she said. A chill chased her spine and she sniffed against the cold.
"Better at what? Washing yourself?" He asked, a touch of a lewd smile on his lips, as if he was struggling with himself.
"Better at being out here," she said sternly, ignoring the way that he guffawed at her.
"Why? Because you're of the North?" He asked, voice light and mocking. "You're less North than me, girl, and I assure you, I wasn't born in the snow."
"I am from the North. My sigil is the Direwolf, and my father was Eddard Stark of Winterfell!" She cried, voice wavering before she reigned it back under control. "This should be easy for me."
"Was it easy, the first time you stood straight, with your shoulders square like a lady?" He asked her, and she shook her head. "Or the first time you put together a piece of pretty to wear?"
"Of course not-"
"Then why do you think this should be easy?" He asked, cutting off her childish ranting.
"It was easy for Arya!" Sansa shouted at him, despair and self loathing welling in her stomach. There had been things in her life that she'd felt guilty for, things that hadn't seemed like such great flaws in her character until this moment, sitting by a river, shivering through the cold that truly wasn't cold.
"Your sister," Bronn said after a moment, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Some of us are better at things than others. Some of us are blessed," he gave her a wry smile. "I'm better at surviving than Forel, but he's worked at it harder. He's better at killing, but I can guarantee I've had more practice."
"That doesn't mean anything," Sansa said after a pause. "You're both good at everything." Bronn chuckled at her.
"And doesn't Forel know it?" He asked before climbing to his feet. "You can sulk, here, shivering, or you can work at it." He held a hand out for her to take. She narrowed pale eyes at it as another chill ran up her spine, considering for a long while. Finally, she took the offered hand and pulled herself to her feet. Maybe, she told herself, maybe it was time to do something that didn't come naturally.
She let herself be lead back toward the rest of them. To Tyrion, with his twisted legs and scarred face that hid such a beautiful mind she'd never seen. To Shae with her outward beauty and confidence that just seemed to swell from inside her. To Syrio, who stood apart from the rest, as if he knew something that refused to let him be anything less than he was. And Bronn, who walked past them all, with that kicked dog swagger that made him decidedly himself.
She stood there, with her back straight and her hair a mess, her clothes caked with mud and her lips set firmly in an indecisive line. They all had their strengths, she realized in that moment, but as all things-and all she'd seen until that realization-they had their places that were wanting.
Syrio was over confident, a sin that had nearly taken his life. Bronn was as loyal as a coin toss and as lewd as Tyrion, which spoke volumes for the both of them, and with as many times as Shae had heard Tyrion loved her, still her own insecurities and feelings of self worthlessness made her doubt. Sansa liked those four people better. The little dove fit with those four much better than their stronger counterparts.
Perhaps, if there was a strength to their weakness, there was one to hers as well. She forced her lips into a smile and straightened her back. A woman did not let childishness touch her. How many times had her mother told her that when Arya rebelled against her? What difference was there, really, in Arya's childishness and Joffrey's? A great deal, she knew, but both were to be handled in the same way.
Sansa Stark was a woman. She was a pretty thing, but she would be more. Steeling herself against the ache in her feet and the knowledge that she would fail far more than she succeeded, she let herself be led North, into the cold and the snow and the hardness.
She let herself be lead home.
-RP: Game of Thrones: Pawn Takes Knight-
Jaime wasn't sure exactly what time it was or the day or the year really. All he was certain of was that he'd been unbound, given leisure to go where he willed, and where he willed was to the bathhouses of King's Landing.
Brienne would find her own way, he was sure. She was free of him. She'd delivered him south to his family, and he'd see that the Stark girls found their own way home. Catelyn deserved as much, he supposed, after letting him go.
But first, he would sink so deeply into a bath that whatever had infested his heart in his time away from the Landing would simply float away. His soft spot for the she-knight would harden again. The whispered words of his own son's insanity would cease to mean as much to him. His own father's teachings would somehow make sense. Or, so it would have been, had he actually made it to the bathhouse, he told himself.
As it was, the Gold Cloaks had found him halfway down the cobblestone road, and insisted he report to the Small Council. He sighed into the fresh Southron air, still sweet with roses and jasmine flowers. Too sweet, perhaps.
The gilding on the cloaks in front of him was suddenly wasteful. The way that the stone floor shone down the long hall to the Small Counsel Chamber was unnecessary. The posturing of his own father, Varys and Littlefinger was laughable as they sat around the small wooden table, brushed to shine when the light hit it. Then there was his own sweet sister, with her hair like spun silk and her dresses more fine than anything he'd ever seen.
Jaime stood in the doorway, the light behind him blinding the occupants that turned toward him. His sister didn't even turn toward him, instead, she stiffened in her chair, one hand raising in pause.
"Whatever it is, can wait. Don't you-" She turned in her seat, her brows drawn together, and if Jaime didn't see the condescension there on her face, he'd have thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"I see my spies weren't mistaken," Littlefinger said, a smirk on his lips. Jaime glared hard at him. "Welcome home, Sir Jaime."
"Jaime?" Cersei said his name like a prayer, and he couldn't help but feel how easy it would be to just collapse to his knees there, in the halo of her warmth. Too warm, really though, after being so long with the men of the North.
As it was, he steeled himself, shook off the fatigue that he felt so deep in his bones that it had become him, and stepped out of the blinding sunlight to shut the door. "Sister," he heard himself murmur, before he was acknowledging his father, Varys and Littlefinger. "Where is Joffry?" He asked, and acknowledged an answer that he didn't truly hear. "And my brother?"
The table fell silent, Varys looked away, not meeting his gaze, and Littlefinger watched him too closely. Cersei's lips pursed in a self satisfied way that sickened him. It was his father, speaking for the first time, that answered his question.
"We don't know where Tyrion has gone," Tywin's voice and firm and hard as always, his word law. "It seems I am fated to lose a child just as I find one. No matter, he'll turn up when he's done whoring." It was a dismissal, one that was well recognized by all parties.
"You don't know where he's gone and you assume he's whoring," Jaime said softly. It was the way of his family, afterall. They ignored things to the point of stupidity. "And was I simply off whoring?" His voice rose, and before he'd known it, he was shouting at his father. Spittle flying from his own lips to spatter along his father's shoulder. The man had yet to rise-all of them had yet to rise-and he stared stoically up at Jaime.
"You're tired," his sister's soft voice spoke from his shoulder, and he nearly jumped at the gentleness in her hands as she pulled on his elbow and guided him from the room. He was being put to bed like a child, he knew, but hell if he didn't simply want to bathe and sleep. Ignoring the fact that he wanted a firmer hand in his, a stronger voice and a bigger build beside him, he let himself to led to a room with sweet water and perfumes.
He sank down to his chest in the water. If he'd had been let to the bathhouses, he could have sank to his chin like he'd done as a child. As an adult, as Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the King's Guard, Lion of Lannister, and by the Old Gods and the New, Kingslayer, Jaime wasn't afforded such childishness.
No, Ser Jaime Lannister sat in hip deep water and scrubbed at his flesh until it ached, but he didn't dally. He didn't splash or sigh or wilt, even as his sister watched him wash away the grit and the blood. He wished that the changes in himself would wash away so easily.
"I've missed you," Cersei finally said as he stepped from the marbled tub. He froze there, half in and half out of the water, all of him wet and on display, and for the first time in his life, he felt exposed. He was a lion, and yet, here he was, the prey. A delicate hand played along the small of his back up his spine to his neck, drawing his head down and toward her lips. Lips he had gone to so willingly so many times.
He kissed her because it was expected and it was familiar. She tasted much the same as she always had, kissed with the same self assured pressure. He parted much sooner than she'd have liked, and far too late for his own heart. "I've missed you, sister," he said, drawing a drying towel around him.
If he'd had just been allowed to sink into the bathhouses, he was sure, he'd have done as he should have. He'd have embraced his father. He'd have won over the hearts of the Small Council, and he'd have bedded his sister right there, in the bathwater.
If only, if only, he thought. He could picture it, just there, her with her golden hair hanging wet from sweat and water, but try as he might, he couldn't keep her in his mind's eye. It was a dangerous game he played, wishing the fantasy would go one way while thankful it went another. Her long hair was too easy to dismiss as frivolous. Her slightness too similar to weakness.
He tucked the towel more firmly around his hips and vaguely wondered where Brienne had been taken after they'd parted company.
-RP: Game of Thrones: Pawn Takes Knight-
It had been less than a day since she'd last seen Jon, and no matter how hard she tried to tell herself that he'd only ridden ahead to their brother, Arya couldn't help but fear that she'd never see him again.
The nightmares didn't help. She shook herself and smiled at one of the Dothraki as he shouted something at her only to disappear into the wooded patch. They'd been at a stand still for an hour, too close to the tail end of Robb's army to draw any closer without starting a battle that didn't need to be fought.
Or, so the dreams told her.
Last night had been more of the same. Dark eyes and blue tattoos, the man that Danaerys Targaryen fell in love with stood in front of her, tall and menacing, a wall of muscle and testosterone.
It had been three nights since she'd seen him last. He was an impossible site to forget. Now though, instead of holding a new weapon or motioning for her to stand a certain way, he was turned away from her, looking out over a sodden field. Men lay there, splayed open for carrion crows to pick at their delicate entrails.
Amongst them, Stark banners lay, spattered with blood. Tattoos and bare skin told her who the other dead were. She found herself there, among the dead, sitting with tears running down her face and a pale head of blonde hair in her lap.
It had been so long since she'd seen herself in a reflection that she hardly recognized the young woman as herself, but when she'd woke, she'd looked into the shine of Grenn's breastplate. Surely enough, he hair was near to her shoulders now, her face growing and looking more and more like her father's by the day.
She carefully let herself slip from the grey beast that she'd nearly become one with and let her feet carry her forward, to where he had stood in the dream. She placed her own feet there, where she was sure she could see his footsteps, and stared out over the field. He had come to her there, with Danaery's dead in her arms, and he had whispered only one word. No.
With one syllable he had forbade it, and she had woke with the burning urge to obey. So, when they had crested a hill that looked down over the wide valley in front of them, she had put a hand on Danaerys's shoulder and begged the woman to hear reason. The Mother of Dragons had agreed easily.
There was no use to spilling blood that hadn't needed spilling.
Which lead Arya to the very real question of what to do should that very blood no longer be frivolous. What if her brother refused an alliance? The Mother of Dragons would not step aside. Danaerys Stormborne hadn't crossed ghost grasses and tides to be sent away without question.
And hadn't Danaerys gripped her hand and called her sister? Hadn't Arya looked to the woman time and time again for the right thing?
How to brush her hair. The right time to be silent and the right time to be loud. When to show your strength and when to play on what people assumed was your weakness. Washing her face.
She shook herself as she stared out at a scene that Khal Drogo had forbade. It was there, in her mind's eye, and she'd be damned if it happened. For now, she would sit and wait. Jon hadn't let her down before.
She couldn't help but place her faith in him. He'd been her brother long before she'd known that he wasn't her family in the sense that she'd always thought. The Dothraki didn't have a word for bastard. She smiled as two of the younger men wrestled on the ground, blades forbidden by the Khaleesi.
"You're far away," a voice called from behind her, and she turned toward it. Danaerys stood there, her long hair brushed to perfection even in the hardships of the wild. She wouldn't last in the North though, Arya knew. Dany was a sweet thing. A sweet summer child, as Nan would have said. She was used to the luxuries of the world, but she'd been forced to see the hard side of the same coin. It didn't matter though, Arya mused, as she would be Queen in the South and her brother would be King in the North.
"Not so far," Arya replied, staring out just the few hundred paces away that haunted her nights.
"But far enough," Danaerys answered. "He'll return. He knows these lands, just as you do." Arya turned at that and considered the woman for a moment.
"I don't know these lands," she admitted finally. "These are my mother's lands. The riverlands. I am of the North. So is Jon." She didn't speak on the fact that Jon was of the Wall now, of a place where he was never to leave. If war had done one thing for her family, she supposed, it was tear them apart only to piece them back together.
"Still, these are your lands," Danaerys said. The blonde had come to stand next to her, to look out over the green grasses not yet destroyed by the chill of a winter that was so close it could no longer be said it was coming. Winter was here, the south just didn't know it yet. "You fit here."
"I don't fit anywhere," Arya said, wrath sudden and bubbling in her stomach. "I am not a lady like Sansa. I am not a Queen or a warrior. I am not a knight or a septa." She murmured the last word with disdain. "I am Arya Stark."
"And Arya Stark, what would you do with your life?" Danaerys asked, the wind blowing through her leather skirts.
"I don't know," Arya countered.
"Then how do you expect to belong anywhere?" Danaerys asked gently, a smile on her face. "It doesn't matter, because as long as I breath, blood of my blood, you will belong with me." Arya smiled gratefully at the statement. "And with your family. I haven't forgotten your absence when you prefer to ride with Bran or Jon."
Arya smiled at that. Riding with Bran in the cart was interesting. Hodor was a great man, strong and able to carry them both for long hours without tiring. However, even he'd been grateful when they'd used leather to bind the cart behind a horse and let the beast take over Hodor's burden for a few hours. In the end though, Bran always ended back up with Hodor. The Giant and his Knight. Arya had often thought that perhaps Bran did more thinking than one person ought, and it was clear Hodor couldn't think even if he'd tried. They matched well, the cripple and the simpleton.
Cripple.
Arya hadn't really thought of her brother as a cripple until the first time the Dothraki realized the boy couldn't walk. A man was not a man if he could not ride, and how could he ride if he could not mount his horse? Arya had heard in letters that there had been a special saddle made for her brother, but the Dothraki had been right. How could he ride if he couldn't sit himself in the saddle?
She shook off the question and turned away from the blood that wasn't really there. Times were too dark to think on things that hadn't really happened. The sun was setting, and she'd need to be sleeping soon so the tattoo'd man could come to her in her sleep. She learned more in the moments between wakefulness than she ever had with her eyes open.