Jon's POV
My fist knocks against the wooden door of the room Ellie and Sansa share. Since I don't entirely trust the former criminals who are now my brothers, I cannot stop myself from checking on the girls constantly. I intend to break fast with them this morning, but the plan is put on hold when Sansa answers the door to reveal she is alone.
"Good morning," she greets, still seeming very tired.
"Morning," I return. She lets me in the room and I quickly close the door to keep the chill away.
There is still a fire burning on its last logs, but both beds are made up and Ellie is nowhere to be seen. As Sansa returns to her bed so she can finish lacing her boots, an uneasy feeling fills my stomach. Where could she have gone to so early?
"Where is Ellie?" I ask as nerves get the better of me.
"I thought she was with you," Sansa answers dismissively. "She wasn't here when I woke up."
"I haven't seen her," I say and my sister's entire form changes.
Her eyes move from her shoes to mine in alarm while her fingers go still above the laces. Then, her gaze quickly shifts to the corner on Ellie's side of the room and the tenseness in her shoulders relaxes immediately. I glance to see what comforted her so easily, but all I find is a small chest.
"She won't go far without that," Sansa murmurs before returning to her shoes.
Moving closer to the chest, I see that it is completely unfamiliar. It doesn't ease my concern for Ellie like it does for Sansa because I haven't the slightest idea what could be inside that is so important.
"What is it?" I question, my confusion clear. I turn back to my sister when she doesn't answer and see her body has gone stiff again. "Sansa?"
She finishes with her boots before giving me her full attention. Her blue eyes fill with sadness, but her expression has become stone.
"It's his remains," she tells me. "Ellie wouldn't let him be buried in King's Landing. He's a Stark, he should be with all the other Starks."
A wave of sadness overcomes me as my gaze returns to the chest. Sansa told me about that day, how everyone in the Red Keep could hear Ellie's screams, how they seemed to echo off the stone walls long after she stopped. My sister had been in her marriage chambers with Tyrion and the two ran as fast as they could to find out what was wrong. Sansa said she thought the image of Bran broken and unconscious was horrible, that was only surpassed by seeing our father's head on a spike, but then she saw the baby.
I was glad when she spared me the description of our nephew after he died, but she chose to describe Ellie instead. Sansa shared the sight of her on the ground, cradling the blue-lipped babe, sobbing and begging every god she could think of to give him back. It was devastating, Sansa told me, like she really believed Ned could come back if she prayed hard enough.
After finding Ellie in the stables and hearing her take responsibility for her son's death, I saw that devastation in her once bright eyes.
"I thought the plan was just to come here, not go to Winterfell," I say. "Why would you not go there first?"
"That was Ellie's plan for me," Sansa explains. "She wanted to take me to you to make sure I'm safe, then she's going to take little Ned home."
"I don't understand," I admit. "Roose Bolton has control of Winterfell now. How does she plan on just walking through the gates?"
If Stannis told me about Lord Bolton, then I know he told Ellie and she's no fool. She can't possibly plan on just walking in and walking out without anyone noticing. She killed Joffrey, even if they're accusing Tyrion for her crime, I have no doubt they're still searching for her.
"I don't think she cares."
"She can't just not care," I argue. "If she goes to Winterfell, they will catch her and she won't be able to come back."
"She doesn't want to come back, Jon."
"So, Ellie just wants to be a prisoner then? Or sent back to the Capitol?"
"Ellie doesn't want to be anything," Sansa says tiredly.
My younger sister meets my heated gaze with resignation in her eyes. A chill runs down my spine as I try to understand the deeper meaning behind her words, but none of the answers I find are acceptable.
"What does that mean?" I demand.
"She told me she was already gone and she won't listen to anything I say," she tells me. "She's not the same Ellie that she used to be, Jon. I think we've already lost her."
Anger floods me suddenly at Sansa's suggestion. She is right in a sense, Ellie has changed as have the rest of us, but she isn't gone. I was willing to lose her to my brother because she was happy and I could hold onto that when it hurt the most, but I won't lose her like this. When I thought she died with Robb, the pain was suffocating and blinding, and I won't return to that.
"No, I don't believe that," I tell Sansa firmly, but she shakes her head sadly.
"Jon, you haven't been with her for very long. It's like she's already a ghost."
"We haven't lost her!" I snap.
The tone shocks Sansa because I have never used it on her before, but something seems to occur to her and silences any further argument. Frustrated, I storm out of the room to search for the center of our conversation, but outside the warmth of the bed chambers, reality sinks its icy claws into my covered skin.
Losing Ellie is a very real possibility.
That thought lends a sense of urgency to my search and I rush around the castle grounds trying to find her. After opening every door I pass and checking the stables and dining hall, my nerves intensify, and I can feel the cold sweat beading on the back of my neck. I finally find an answer while I'm scanning the courtyard and Edd comes to see what is wrong.
"Have you seen Ellie?" I demand, gripping his shoulder tightly.
"Aye," Edd answers, glancing at my hand in confusion. "She asked if she could go up to the top of the Wall. I told her to take the lift."
I release his shoulder without a word and quickly move towards the lift. It moves aggravatingly slow, creaking from old age the whole way. When it finally reaches the top, the brothers on watch are standing by the fire and nod in acknowledgment to me. I move past them, knowing Ellie will have sought solitary, but the farther I go without seeing her, the faster I move.
Until I finally find her.
"Ellie, stop!" I shout.
One foot dangles over the edge and I lunge towards her, wrapping my arm around the front of her waist just as her other foot slips off the ice. For a brief and terrifying second, Ellie hangs above the 700 feet drop before I'm able to throw us backwards onto the freezing ground of the Wall.
Draped on my lap, Ellie is still for a long moment, as if she believes she's falling. My heart thuds in my ears with the same level of fear I felt during the battle. My grasp on her remains tight, refusing to allow her to even get close to the edge again, but she isn't struggling against me.
Finally, she turns her face to mine as she is shaken from the daze. The glossy look in her stormy blue eyes dries up as reality returns to her. I'm left watching as every ounce of pain she has ever felt returns to her, blow after blow, and the tears wet her eyes once more. She shudders beneath the weight, crumbles with agony, until she finally cracks under the pressure.
"Make it stop, Jon," she suddenly pleads, her voice blown away with the wind. "Make it stop."
Ellie's voice breaks as a sob interrupts like a vicious thunder clap.
"Make what stop, Ellie?" I question urgently, willing to do anything to never let her beautiful face contort in such a miserable way.
"The pain," she cries in that scratchy, desperate way. "Make it stop hurting. I just want it to end."
It has been so long since I've seen her, a lifetime has passed between us. On two different sides of the world, we fought wars we never could have anticipated. I signed up for mine, but Ellie was dragged into hers. And like the person I have always loved, she faced it with strength and courage, she did everything she was expected to, but it destroyed her. Now a lost war, she is practically the sole survivor and forced to carry the entire aftermath on her own.
The Ellie I left was sad, maybe nervous and anxious, but she was still full of life. Just as she had been the first moment I met her. Now, she has a tiny thread left inside of her. One frayed piece keeping her here, but weighed down by the past.
And she just wants a way to sever it completely.
…
Eliana's POV
It could have all been over.
That's all I can think about as Jon picks me up from the ice and guides me to the lift. Those words are the only ones that resonate as the entrapment creaks angrily until we're on level ground. He takes me all the way to the room Sansa and I have been given and we find it empty aside from the glowing fire. He pushes me to sit on my bed before pulling my cloak tighter around my shoulders. Then he moves to the fireplace to add more wood.
"Why didn't you answer my letters?" I ask in a voice hoarse from the crying. "I wrote so many."
"I only got one, Ellie, and I did write back," he says. "I told you I was going north of the Wall. I never got anything else."
The confusion barely slips past the frozen state of my heart. "That's strange," I mutter. "I thought you just never wanted to speak to me again."
"Why would I want that?" Jon questions as he moves back towards me, but I only shrug. "I've wanted to speak to you since the moment I left."
"What have you wanted to say?"
Jon sits beside me, shaking his head with the smallest of smiles gracing his lips, "Everything."
He begins to describe his life since leaving Winterfell and arriving at Castle Black. He tells me of the advice my Uncle Tyrion gave him, the friendships he's made with his brothers, the enemies he's had. He talks about running away in the night to join Robb's army and how his friends brought him back because his duty was to the Night's Watch. He says how disappointed he was when he didn't make ranger, but ended up being the Lord Commander's steward. He only stops when he reaches the time when they journeyed further north.
"What happened over there?" I press.
Jon's voice, rough as it is, has a soothing affect on me. He unravels my coiled muscles and jumbled nerves while somehow breaking through the numbness surrounding my cold soul. It's not that it fixes anything, but it offers a temporary escape from all the horrid thoughts plaguing my mind. If I focus on his voice, the familiarity of it, the warmth, the safety, I'm able to breathe freely. It's like when I was a child in King's Landing watching the many tournaments my father demanded and seeing two knights or lords whom I liked going against each other. I would close my eyes when their lances were just about to hit each other just so I wouldn't see one of them fall.
When I closed my eyes, it blinded me to the scene, but I could still hear everything going on around me. It was a brief comfort, a moment when everything else was in the background, but eventually I would open my eyes to see the winner and the loser. With Jon's voice filling the small room, I'm able to push everything, no matter how loud it screams at me, to the background. And I fear how much more it will hurt if he stops talking.
"I went with the rangers who had already been out there, I wanted to find Benjen, and then we came across a small group of Wildlings. We killed them, but then I caught one who was a woman," he explains. I notice the slight change in his voice, probably from listening so closely, when he mentions the woman. "I couldn't kill her."
"She meant something to you?" I guess.
A crease forms in between Jon's brows and I realize his frown is more telling than his words would be. A strange feeling comes over me, something I'm not entirely familiar with, something much different than the pain digging claws into my chest.
"She got away, I went after her, but lost the others. In the end, the Free Folk took me. Another ranger was taken as well, he made me kill him so I could infiltrate their camp, learn their plans."
"You had to be one of them?"
"Aye," Jon murmurs. "They're good people, most of them at least. They're not that different from us."
"This woman, does she have a name?" I ask cautiously.
Jon looks up to meet my gaze, but his eyes seem careful in a way I haven't seen. "Ygritte."
"And you," I'm forced to stop to swallow the lump in my throat because I know exactly why he couldn't kill her just from the way he says her name. "You love her?"
He doesn't answer, but the tenseness left in the air from my question is enough. I suddenly realize what the strange feeling is that's twisted my heart in a new direction. Jealousy. Jon's life in Winterfell comes into a new light as it occurs to me that this is what he felt. But I've never even met this woman, never seen them together, while Jon was related to the other man in my life, he was forced to watch us get married.
I would've left home too if the situation was reversed. Even a taste of jealousy is more than I can take.
"Is she in the cells with the others?" I nearly choke on the question. How selfish am I that I can't even talk about her?
"No," Jon replies this time. "She's dead."
All the bitter feelings of the immature part of me fall away as I recognize the hardened and broken look in his dark eyes. I know without asking that he saw her die, maybe he even tried to hold her as I did with Robb. Maybe Ygritte's blood stained his skin and her final words haunt his every waking moment. And maybe he's thought of a thousand different lives that they could have shared and been happy, safe, and alive if he had only changed one thing.
I know all too well and it kills me to know that Jon is suffering from that kind of pain. There are no words, no way to fix it, no way to stop the pain. I begged him to take it away, but he can't, and he has enough of his own to deal with anyway.
I miss the safety of our broken tower where we hid from everything together, but since we can't go back, I'll settle for this little room in Castle Black. I lay my head against his shoulder like I used to and pull my left glove off so it faces the chilly air. Jon doesn't move as I pull his right glove off, but he does when I place my hand in his. As the warmth left on our skin quickly dissipates, his fingers entwine with mine.
We stay like this for a long time. I just wish it was long enough for both of us to feel better.
Hello!
So...please don't be mad at me lol. I know it's been a while, but I swear I didn't forget about this story! I've just had horrible writer's block.
I'll be honest, I'm not proud of this chapter. I've been really stuck for a long time so I finally just decided to publish what I had and then ask what you guys think. I have the basic the idea of where the story is supposed to go, but I've made a lot of changes since my original plan so now I'm not entirely sure how I want to get there, if that makes sense.
I have a shaky idea, but before I actually go with it I wanted to see if you had any suggestions? Please review or PM me if you do, I would seriously love to hear them and would really appreciate it.
I apologize for the delay in this chapter and for how short and uneventful it was. Please review and let me know you think anyway!
Thank you so much for reading, favoriting, and following. And special thanks to my lovely reviewers.
-V :)