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, things take a turn when it appears the Wildlings are mounting for an attack.

********Game/of/Thrones********
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The Wall Academy:
Elite Military Training Depot
(White Walkers, Wildlings, & Wights)

Chapter 24: —

Arya had been dreading what was to come next and that was why she tried to hold off. She convinced Jon that other things took president after he asked after her injuries and she was either too slow or too fast in her reply.

They managed to push Ygritte's lifeless body against the far side of the cave, near the entrance, leaving wide smears of dark blood on the rock from her three bloody wounds. It wasn't ideal to have her body there, haunting over them, but that was as far as they would get with their own injuries to worry about.

And then Arya had to face it—face herself. Though Jon's leg wound was rather bad, still infected, though the moss seemed to have helped, and a little feverish—hers were actually still bleeding, among other things.

They positioned themselves in front of the small pool, Jon sitting in front of her, but angled more towards her right side, either of their injured legs laid flat. He helped her strip out of her torn and dirty parka, and several of her shirts, leaving her in her sports bra.

The pain was near unbearable—she tasted copper in her mouth, clenching her teeth so hard, pained exclaims leaving her lips. Extracting her arm from her parka made her see spots, and Jon decided that it was better to just cut down the sleeves of her other thermal-wear (with the 'cleaned' spearhead knife that she had killed Ygritte with), rather than risk further injury to her already devastated shoulder and broken arm—not to mention the rather fresh dark blood that soaked the torn material at the same shoulder.

"Why didn't you speak up earlier?" He demanded quietly, worry hardening his voice.

"We had other, more pressing matters." She snapped back, her voice coloured with pain and annoyance.

He peeled away material with a sympathetic wince on his face as the material resisted. But that wasn't the only thing that appalled him, as he directed the bright beam of the flashlight on her limb. Her arm was covered in contusions, he could see the way that it lay off-angle, could even see where one end of the bone was pressed flushed against the underside of her skin—he saw the faded scar on her arm when she first broke it from her fall off the wall in Craster's Keep, and was glad that it hadn't punctured though the skin like that previous injury; it would have been just another thing that they couldn't deal with properly.

Her shoulder looked even worse, the look of it made him feel a bit sickened. It didn't even look like a proper shoulder. Her arm was disconnected from her torso, and the only thing that was keeping it there was her skin, and the extreme swelling that made it twice it original size. He had a hard time finding out what was blood, and what was bruising.

"I already know how bad it is, so could you stop looking at it like that?" She told him, pointedly not looking herself—if the pain was anything to go by, she really didn't want to make direct eye-contact with it.

"Right, right." He gave his head a little shake before looking at her injuries with a more controlled expression, his lips pursed tight amid his dark scruff. He knew that it was going to have to see to her shoulder first, setting it before either her arm or the gash on her shoulder.

"Let me cut this," he muttered, and unable to not touch her, reached forwards to her right shoulder that was bare but for the tight strap of her sports bra that looked to be doing more harm than good. She grimaced at his touch, be held still as he used the hollow of her collar bone to pull the material from her swollen and discoloured skin, and then slice through the band.

Pins and needles shoot through her shoulder, seeming to reawaken the pain as the relief of the tight strap appeared to have returned circulation to her disconnected limb. Jon shifted, grimacing at his own wound as he bent both legs under him and now faced her right side directly.

"This is going to truly hurt," Jon murmured, his own heart racing at just the thought of what he was going to do, not to mention the severe pain he was going to cause her by doing it.

It was swollen, he wasn't even sure that he'd be able to get it back into the socket, but he was gonna damn well try! It had been days since its dislocation, and the ride had been rough from what he knew and Arya had told him—if he didn't get it back in, he was afraid that while she wouldn't actually lose the limb, but when they got back to the Wall and it was put back in, her mobility could be cut permanently... and then she couldn't be a soldier anymore.

Arya's breathing was rough, even though he hadn't touch her yet. "Just do it!" she barked, and she stilled so suddenly, staring resolutely ahead, her eyes fixed on a point at the cave wall, her left hand was clenched on her thigh, so tightly that he was sure he could hear the bones grinding.

Jon braced himself at her side, his hands hovering an inch from either side of her swollen shoulder. He took a deep breath of his own, his own jaw set determinedly. He was going to have to bring pain before the healing could start. He could see the muscles jumping in her jaw as he placed his bare hands against the flesh, her breath hissing from between her teeth.

She had stayed conscious through so much, she was so strong and tough and stubborn as hell, and he just prayed that she was going to pass out. With strength, he suddenly twisted his hands. Arya's cry of pain was muffled and choked through her clenched teeth as her body jerked.

"Not yet!" he said, as he had suspected, she wasn't going to get lucky and have it go back on the first attempt, the swollen tissue was in the way. He twisted his hands sharply a second time, put more weight and strength behind the shove.

Her scream of pain was so loud in the closed off cave that it sent him flinching and his ears ringing as her bone was forced back into the inflamed socket. He grabbed hold of her as her head fell forward, her chin on her chest; and the rest of her body attempted to follow. The pain had finally, blessedly, gotten to her. He laid her back carefully onto the fur, and looked down at her dirty, brushed face, her unconscious expression lined with pain and exhaustion.

While she was out, he set about with cleaning her reopened shoulder gash. He relieved himself of one of his own thermal shirts, and set about tearing and cutting the thick material into strips. He wetted a peace in the cave's pool and cleaned the wound as best he could, before pressing a square of material against the wound in a makeshift pad. The wound needed stitching, but like many of their other injuries, it was going to have to do without. He needed to set her broken arm, which was a bit more difficult.

He needed something to brace the limb, but it wasn't like he could go out and collect branches. He had to deal with what they had in the cave, which obviously wasn't much. The only thing that he could think of, was to use the wood that made up the frame of the makeshift stretcher that he had used to drag her along and then her him in return. Even though they might need it later, he had no other choice.

He dragged himself over to it, and with the spearhead knife, cut away the worn canvas from one side of the frame. He took up the hatchet, and shoved aside his own exhaustion, and started hacking at the wood, chopping off two short lengths that he could use for Arya's arm.

His fingers barely touch her arm but Arya's flinch of pain is clear even in her unconscious state. As much as he didn't want to cause her more pain, he had no other choice. He took a hold of her wrist with one hand, and at her elbow with the other, and he pulled, shifting the bone back into proper alignment with its broken self. He ignored her whimper of pain and placed the two pieces of wood that he had chopped on either side of the broken limb laying on the cave floor, then wraps it tightly with strips of his thermal shirt. By the end of it, he only had a few pieces left.

He carefully raised her arm to under her chest, hopefully that would help decrease the strain on the limb until she woke up and he could make her a sling.

He finally shifted over to her left side and checked on the stab wound on her thigh through the torn material. He blanched at it through the glare of the flashlight—it looked worse than his own infected wound.

Arya had freed herself from the restraint by any means necessary, which in this case appeared to have been tearing the tearing the stitch out of her flesh. Jon felt sick, spotting the wire still knotted around her left wrist. He quickly cut it off. He wasn't sure he would have been able to do that, and felt guilt that he was glad he wasn't the one that had to make the choice.

He hadn't seen who had stitched the wound in that horrid manner, but he'd caught the cruel look on the Wildling Princess' face as Tormund had ordered him to drag Arya along as she walked away from him. When he'd left the tent in the camp, running, trying to find Arya and stop her, or Ygritte to hold the Stark off, but his stupid injured leg hindered him just enough to fuck everything up…

He couldn't help but think, that maybe if he had been quicker, he could have stopped Arya so that the fight between her and Ygritte never happened and then they could have made the move together; or maybe if he had even been a bit slower than Arya would have gotten the jump on Ygritte, instead of being mowed down with a broken arm, dislocated shoulder, and stab wound—and then things could have moved forward from there.

But neither of those happened, and he realised that it was just a wasted energy to think on the what-ifs, when he should be thinking about what they were going to do in the future from this point.

They couldn't stay in this cave forever, with Ygritte's corpse decomposing across from them, surviving on this blue moss that he still didn't completely trust. For all he knew, his better health was just an illusion to the toxin of the moss, outwardly, it would make him feel better, all the while, consuming more and more, internally, it was killing him—poisoning them. Arya was eating the stuff, almost as if it were popcorn. It worried him, but she didn't seem to be bothered about it like he was.

He cleaned the ragged wound on her thigh, he could not stitch it because he had nothing to do it with and the lips of the wound was too torn and mangled to even attempt it, had he had any. He packed the wound with moss (despite himself) (and Arya had told him that she'd done the same to his wound. He was feeling better, if only a bit, so maybe he was worrying himself over nothing) and then wrapped her would with the remaining material, save two.

He used one of the remaining to deal with her discoloured black and swollen broken trigger finger, binding it tight.

He checked his own wound, cleaning it and wrapping it up again—his wasn't a pretty picture either. He turned off the flashlight, leaving the cave to its natural, blue-tinged glow (now even dimmer as the moss was slowly pulled from the walls and consumed), before he carefully laid down next to Arya to try and get some rest while she was still out.

He turned his head to the side and looked over to the far wall where Ygritte's body now lay, cast in shadow, but he could see the pale moon of her face in the glow of the blue moss that clung too the wall close to her body.

Against himself, a piece of his heart had fallen in love with the Wildling. Her beauty, her skill, her strength and devotion to her people, the conviction in her heart that swam through every action she held. And ashamed, he might have actually entertained the idea of actually going with her for real.

He could never attack his fellow Night's Watch brothers, or the Seven Kingdoms. It wasn't about helping the Wildlings with their plan to attack the Wall, no. It was how she would sometimes describe it to him, her home.

To be out there, free from the strain and the stress of the Wall, to belong to a community, to be out there in the Neutral Zone, living off the land. It was just like when he remembered talking to Arya about the adventure of it all, of being a Wildling. But then it would all fall apart; there was no solidity to it—it was a daydream.

Because the truth was, he already had all that at the Wall. He liked the life that he was living, becoming a Crow, knowing Benjen and knowing Arya, loving the two Starks as the family they were to him, blood related or not, his feelings for them didn't change. He would choose them over anyone else, over Ygrite, over himself.

His heart hammered in his chest like drum as he had watched the two fight back at the Wildling Camp. It was like a biting hammer when he watched Ygritte over power Arya and pinned her to the ground, the skinning knife in her hand, ready to kill, only to maim instead.

The lick of fear that scorched through his entire body, his soul, was the likes of nothing he had ever felt before. That fear... he never wanted to feel it again. It was nothing compared to all the times the two of them, Arya and him had trained in the Beyond and had several close calls. This one, was just too damn close.

He had come to love Arya, she was like the sister he never had but always wanted, the family he had lost but had found again, he cared for her so deeply, it was ingrained into him. Every moment he knew her, his love for her grew deeper, his trust, faith, loyalty—everything inside of him. He couldn't lose her, he wouldn't know how to go on without her in his life anymore.

He looked from Ygritte and to his partner, his real partner, from the start. He had been so close to losing Arya again at the hands of Ygritte in this very cave... if he hadn't woken up when he did... So he just intended for that not to happen—he'd defy the Old Gods if he had to.

—

Even before Arya opened her eyes, she felt the bile in the back of her throat, and resisted the urge to gag and puke. Her body ached, new pain reawakened in the old pain that she had gotten used to. She groaned, low. She remembered Jon trying to put her shoulder back in the socket, and a reactive shudder to the memory and pain of it sent more throbs through her.

He was laying beside her, and on the other side of him, against the far wall, Ygritte. She sighed, but then gave a start and she craned her neck to look over Jon, ignoring the pain that it incited—Ygritte was in fact not there.

"Jon!" she cried, grabbing him with her awkwardly bound left hand.

"Wha—?" he started awake, seeing her panicked expressing, any lingering sleep vanish from his expression. "What? What's wrong?" He shoved himself upright.

"Ygritte," she gasped. "She's gone!" she struggled to sit up, but only managed it because Jon helped her do so. She didn't understand. The Wildling had been dead, she'd made sure of it, no one could survive a stab to the neck like that. Her heart was in her stomach and then it was in her throat, bouncing back between the two places, unable to make up its mind where it wanted to be.

She was still out there, she was still a threat!

Jon glanced over to where the Wildling had lain dead, where Arya had last seen her, and realized the reason for the panick and confusion. He tried to lay down next to Arya and get some rest himself, but being stuck in this cave between two different women which he loved both differently, one living, one not—he couldn't find such peace. Ygritte, just hardly six feet away from him, there but not any longer.

"Arya—" he tried to reassure the other Crow trainee, but he was stopped when Arya's torso jerked around to the left and she retched, sick.

Jon reached for her, her shoulders heaving with her gasping and erratic breaths. Jon grimaced as he glanced at the pile of sick and could still see bits of glowing blue moss amid the stomach acid, and the bit of water that filled her stomach; it held a gross aroma of earthy-sick.

He focused on her instead.

"Ygritte's not hear because of moved her from the cave!" he told her quickly.

She slowly raised her head and looked at him. It seemed like every last drop of blood had drained from her face, leaving her so pale, it was almost like there was a moon inside the cave. "I... I thought that... that she was..."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "I just couldn't stand it with her there any longer so while you were out, I managed to get her through the mouth of the cave. But that was as far I got before my leg couldn't take it anymore."

Arya took a deep and shuddering breath, her injuries' pain reawakened once more as she wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand, careful to avoid contact with her broken finger that Jon had set as best he could while she was out, along with all her other injuries as well.

Maybe it was now hitting her harder than she'd first believed. It wasn't Ygritte's death that distressed her so, but Ygritte's life. Arya'd always known it, that under all that hatred she had for the former Wildling princess, was fear. Fear of her stealing away Jon, of the control that she seemed to hold over him. Fear of her skill and cleverness.

And that fear that had ripped through her when she thought that Ygritte had somehow survived, had somehow come back from the dead, was one of the strongest she had felt through this cursed watch. It was a fear that sadly was not as unfamiliar as it used to be before all this mayhem started to happen.

"You could have said something," she told him.

"You were unconscious," he pointed out after a moment. She glared at him and he ignored it. "Let me fix this."

"Then tell me a bit faster next time at least."

She let him move her injured and splinted arm across her chest, her hand angled to her opposite shoulder, biting her cheek for the pain, and he secured it there in a makeshift sling—she wasn't going to admit how much better it actually felt when the pain had a minute to die down to its original setting.

"If there is ever such a time, I will."

"Smartass."

A brief smile tugged at the corner of his lip in response before it fell away.

Her exhaustion hit her like a physical wall, and she lowered herself back onto the fur, ignoring her own sick so very close by. There were worse things than vomit in the world. "We need to get out of here, soon." She muttered.

After a moment, Jon took his place next to her on the fur again with a loaded breath. "A few days," he agreed, "we need to rest for a bit at least if we plan on making it to the Beyond."

—

So they healed as best they could for the next three days in the cave that grew dimmer and dimmer as all they had to survive on was the glowing blue moss that had carpeted the walls (the only untouched source left was on the ceiling), and the stale water (which was empty by the time they were ready to leave) from the skin that Arya had taken from the Wildling she had killed so she and Jon could escape to the Frost Fangs. Time passed slowly, all their talk (when there was any) was speculation on the battle between the Wall and the Wildlings.

Arya felt a guilt laden sense of satisfaction at the fact that Jon was in the dark on this as much as she was. She knew it was childish and petty and a useless feeling, but she didn't think that she would ever get over that him, Benjen, and Qhorin didn't think that it was necessary to involve her in this operation that she had been clearly thrown into the middle of.

On the morning that they were finally going to leave the cave, Arya was both eager and nervous.

Her broken arm was still in the makeshift sling that Jon had made and tucked into the body of her parka. They used the material that made the bed of the stretcher into a bag of sorts, which Jon put their meagre supplies (the weapons that they didn't take for themselves) into and would carry himself. And she used a bit of wood for it as a walking stick to help her along, she was by far more injured than the Snow.

The instant they stepped out from the narrow entrance into the cave, blinking into the bright rising sun, and the brash howling winds and freezing air that stung their lungs—Arya wanted to stay at the cave for that reason alone—but knew it was just a passing thought. They had things to do, places to be.

Ygritte's body was where Jon had dragged it out of the cave and left it days earlier, albeit covered in hoarfrost and turned on her front. Neither Crow trainee said a word on the matter—the Wildling princess was now an old and haggard chapter in their lives.

They came down the short decline in the rocks and touched down into the packed, Neutral Zone tundra.

Their steps in the snow were as uneven as the other's, both with the same leg injured, both limping from said injury. They kept the Frost Fangs to their right, keeping it at a distance of fifty-feet.

Their progress was slow and they took many rest breaks, despite the fact that their fellow soldiers could be dying at this very moment, despite the fact that the Beyond could have been breached, and the Wall under was siege. If they were too exhausted and encountered a Wildling(s) and couldn't defend themselves properly (despite their injuries), what was the point of venturing from the cave anyways?

It was several hours later when they finally started to see the signs of the Wildlings camp. Now they did stick closer to the base of the mountains, because though it was afternoon, and the sun was overhead, this provided better cover than if they were to walk through the middle of the camp.

They didn't see a soul. In fact, the camp appeared to be abandoned. Fire pits burnt out and cold, tents collapsed and half buried in snow drifts, even some supply sleds' contents scattered. They altered their path alongside the Frost Fang's base and started to wind their way through the deserted Wildlings former command in preparation for the attack on the Wall.

It had been four nights that the pair had been cut off from the outside world, stuck in that cave while a war was waged. As they drew further southward and towards the Beyond, they found half-buried Wildling corpses with what appeared to be bullet holes.

Finally they could see the Fence in the distance and their hope heightened; they were halfway to the Wall. Arya followed behind Jon. In their current condition, if they kept at an even pace, they could make it back to the Wall within four days—weather and luck permitted.

She felt a shiver go through her, pain flaring in her shoulder suddenly that she had to stop, confused. Her eyes darted furtively around, trying to see what was amiss, what could have caused such an alertness inside of her. There was nothing that seemed off with the already placed eeriness of the abandoned camp—but she couldn't just ignore this sensation.

She opened her mouth, intending to call Jon to a stop (her halt going unnoticed by him, he was almost thirty-feet ahead of her already)—but something drove herself instinctively to the side in a dodge.

Her roll in the snow was halted by her own injuries and made her more vulnerable as she struggled to get back to her feet and face whatever it was that had made her react so. "Jon!" she cried.

"Arya!" he'd spun around at her cry and saw Arya on the ground struggling to right herself and an off-looking tall Wildling man advancing on her, but whose attention was suddenly drawn to himself.

"Get away from her!" he shouted, adrenaline shooting through his veins, veiling the pain in his leg and enabling him to charge at his opponent without its hindrance, his hatched raised.

The Wildling met him halfway in an almost eager, slanting gait, wicked-looking twin knives palmed in either of his fleece-gloved hands. Something didn't seem right about this Wildling, the way he moved, pieces of his attire, his weapons, and it wasn't until five feet before their point of contact that he realized that this wasn't a Wildling at all.

"Tanner!" he exclaimed and the pitless dark eyes a slash-like mouth crinkled with intent as he was recognized. Arya was startled into stillness; Tanner?!

She was forced to watch as Jon and Tanner collided.

Even if Jon had wanted to, he wouldn't have pulled back. Tanner was the enemy, a traitor. He wasn't going to spare that man's life if it cost him his own. He wouldn't forfeit Arya's in the process.

Tanner blocked the sharp, flattened head of his axe with both daggers. They locked, both straining against the other, eyes locked over the crossed blades.

Jon had never really come into personal contact with Tanner; he'd only heard the rumours through the grapevine, and of course, what Arya had told him. He'd certainly never fought against him. He didn't plan on dying, not after everything, least of all to scum like this man. He wasn't stupid, he knew what kind of man he was—the Skull King, the assassin. But none of these things would stop him from trying.

Jon wasn't sure if he could keep this constant pressure to keep Tanner at bay on for much longer. He was going to have to make a move before the other man did. Tanner must have read that thought in his eyes, because Jon was just able to shift his injured leg just enough that Tanner's boot strike clipped the inside of his thigh instead of the injury itself.

Jon grunted, but kept his stance. The three blades ground at each other as Tanner pushed harder against his two-handed grip on the hatchet, though Jon's weapon had the upper ground, it didn't seem to give him much of an advantage. Tanner pulled his blades up suddenly, unlocking the stalemate, getting Jon unprepared. His hatched struck down with all his strength built up behind it, suddenly released.

Jon had just a brief second to think that his hatched blade had caught Tanner in the thigh, but the man's expression didn't even twitch before a blur came at his face.

Tanner struck Jon straight across the face with his elbow, unobstructed, knocking the younger to the ground and senseless. The Blood Crow loomed over the trainee, a twist to his thin lip as he hawked on the defenceless body, flipping the dagger in his hand so that it faced skyward, and tucked the other away. He started to bend—

"NO!" Arya screamed at him. "Bastard!" She would not allow him to kill Jon! She just wouldn't.

He straightened up and looked over his shoulder at her, expressionless but for the quark at the corner of his lips; almost like he'd forgotten she was there. He turned his back to Jon, his face covered in blood from his broken nose, and started a slow walk towards her.

Arya managed to get onto her knees, and that was all, by the time that Tanner made the short distance to where he had left her. She grabbed the spearhead-knife in the holster on her snow pants, but with a boot on her chest, he shoved her roughly back into the snow. Arya bit back the pain, and couldn't do much as he planted a knee on her chest and stayed there—effectively pinning her.

She stared up at the shadowed, skull-like face of her mentor with dark eyes like black holes that threatened to suck her soul in to encage it forever in torment and humiliation.

"Well, cunt." Tanner murmured as he wrapped a bare hand around her already bruised throat, the point of his dagger pressed right under her eye. "A Stark-bitch, through and through I see." Arya made sure to keep completely still, despite the pain that hummed through her body, despite that flicker of fear that she would never show this man, her mentor. "You could of had it all, the freedom, the power—if you stuck with me. Now... all you'll get is a cruel death. You—and the bastard." He smirked.

"Get away from her!" Jon snarled at the man's back. Seeming to have regained his senses, he picked himself and his dropped weapon up, and was nearly upon his opponent. "We aren't finished yet."

A cruel smiled split Tanner's lips at the challenge (his hand tightening excitedly around her throat), and after all these years, this was the first time that Arya was sure she'd ever seen the man's teeth. She shivered involuntary at the sight. She wasn't sure what she expected (it wasn't like she really thought on it), but they were normal, relatively straight and white.

When he took the knife away, he made sure to knick the thin flesh under her eye, making the girl flinch minutely as a fresh and continuous trail of blood trailed leisurely down the side of her bruised face. "Don't go anywhere," he whispered, pushing up to his feet in what might have appeared like a smooth motion, but Arya had seen the well-hidden hitch. Tanner was injured (maybe from previous encounters; whether with the Night's Watch or Wildlings was uncertain—or it was most like from Jon's strike actually hitting the man in the thigh), and the act of concealment did not make it disappear, merely was an act of denial—something Arya had become an expert in since going the Wall and gaining her various ailments.

"Well, then. Come on, Snow—show me how much Qhorin failed you as a teacher, as man!" Tanner cooed, his voice low, but carrying like it always did, the wind not daring to try and snatch it away.

Jon's bloodied jaw clenched in response, and his hand briefly tightened on the hatchet's wooden handle. "Qhorin was a good man and you killed him!"

"That's right. Hardly put up a fight either. Just another old man playing a soldier, just like Lord Commander Stark. What a fool. Who is he kidding to think he can stop the Wildlings? Who are you kidding, kid, to think a dim bastard like you can best the Skull King?"

"Mark my words," Jon said with severity, "I am going to kill you."

"Halfhand wasn't a real man, and neither are you, Snow." Tanner gave Jon a shark grin, even more ugly than the one that Arya had given Ygritte shortly before she killed the other woman, and this time, was the one that started for the Crow trainee.

Jon was fuelled be anger, vengeance, and the need to survive—if not for himself, than his partner—parried the strike of Tanner's dagger. He jumped back as he saw the second dagger flash out of concealment. He was wishing that he had a second weapon as he try to deal with flashing daggers, forcing his left leg to take sudden weight, bend, and twist and push-off; or that he had the spearhead-knife rather than this hatchet that was harder to work with in close-combat—when he lost his grip on the hatchet as Tanner's dagger cut across that back of his hand.

The Lt.'s eyes flashed with glee, about to gut the Crow trainee when suddenly Tanner stumbled and cursed violently, looking over his shoulder.

Jon stared open-mouthed at the spearhead dagger that was sticking out of the furs at the back of Tanner's shoulder. He had been seconds from death—Arya must've thrown the dagger and saved his life.

"Don't just stand there!" Arya shrieked at Jon. Her voice jarred both men back into action.

"I'll kill you for that, bitch!" Tanner hissed back at her, ignoring Jon completely and heading back towards Arya with a visible fury. Without thinking, Jon tackled him to the snow—by the time that he would have reached his hatchet out of sight in the snow, it would have been too late.

Tanner went down, the spearhead dagger still in his shoulder, losing his own with the fall. He bucked angrily trying to get the younger man off his him, but Jon held fast, but Tanner managed to shake the man off a moment later, twisting around with striking fists—Jon amply retaliating.

Not thinking much herself, Arya dove into the two-man melee. It was a flurry of thrown-up snow, and dark striking limbs. Tanner's stolen furs near the same shade as Jon's battered and soiled parka. She wasn't sure if she was helping Jon, or hindering him—one thing for sure was that she was hurting herself. She was thrown from the fray before she could find out the answer. Pain blared in her injured shoulder and arm and she bit her tongue as she cried out, it was all she could do to fight the inconvenient darkness that wanted to swallow her.

She was helpless once more to do not but watch as Jon fought Tanner.

Arya had fought Tanner before, and had lost every single time, easily it appeared, and that was when it was just training, the man not even trying—this, here, now—was the real thing. One man would live and the other wouldn't. She prayed silently, pleading, begging the Old Gods to let Jon live, for him to somehow best Tanner and come out on top despite his injuries.

And then suddenly, they stopped. Two still and dark shapes on the ground. She couldn't tell which was Jon and which was Tanner. Her heart dropped into her stomach like a stone, a wordless cry leaving her lips. She didn't even remember struggling and stumbling over to them, just that she was there now.

She didn't even think what would happen if Jon was dead and Tanner was not, didn't even think of grabbing something to defend herself with if that was the case. She just had to get to Jon. He needed to be alive, he couldn't be dead. Not Jon. Not...

She reached out for the body on top, the sun low and dim in the sky. It didn't move. She felt little relief at realizing that it was Tanner. She shoved him off, tears in her eyes, with her good arm. He rolled over onto his back, his eyes hooded and dead, staring, a streak of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, she could see the hilt of his own dagger protruding from the folds of the fur at his torso.

Killed by his own weapon.

"Jon?" her voice broke as she looked down her friend and partner. She griped his shoulder tightly through his parka, tears dribbling from her eyes when he gave no response.

Sniffing roughly, she turned on the flashlight with its cracked lens and dull beam, and directed it at Jon, scouring him for the resulting injuries from his fight with Tanner. It took her a long moment to find and distinguish the spread of the fresh blood at his stomach among the old.

A sob broke from her throat as she quickly pressed her left hand against the tear in the material. "Jon!" she gasped in relief when her ministrations forced a breathless whimper from his throat. "I knew—!"

She had enough warning, and her body instinctively dropped backwards to dodge the blade, her arm coming up from Jon's wound—but her body just was too battered to comply properly. She yapped a cry of pain as Tanner's dagger sliced through her sleeve and along the length of her forearm in a curve. It continued downward and to the side, tearing through her parka and grazing the side of her ribs.

Tanner hung over Jon's limp body on his side, in her lap. He drew back the dagger for another stab, and this time there was no dodging it with him pinning her legs and her back in the snow—so she did the only thing she could do, the pain in her assaulted arm a lava numb at the moment, and reached for the dagger still planted firmly in Tanner's sternum.

She grabbed the hilt with numb digits and broken index, and instead of pulling the knife out she jerked it towards herself. The tip pressed against her parka, but the waning strength behind it suddenly vanished as a haunting sound left Tanner in a gurgling, crackling, spilling noise and then he was dead weight on both her and Jon as she felt the warmth of his heavy blood cover her and the weight of his insides in her lap.

She was numb and shaking and pain-ridden and sick, trembling and weak as she struggling it get Tanner's eviscerated corpse off of them.

She struggling to pull herself length-wise alongside Jon, crying exhaustively, positioning herself in a uncomfortable way that hurt like fuck and aggravated her other injuries, but resulting in both putting pressure on Jon's wound and the free-flowing cut the length of her forearm. Without seeing it, she was sure that it didn't hit anything important, but if the flow of the blood wasn't staunched, the blood loss would still kill her as much as his own would kill Jon.

She pressed her cheek against Jon shoulder—not able to tell if it was her that was shivering and shaking or if it was him as the cold creeped in, unable to tell if she could hear his wheezy breathing or if she was just imaging it.

She hadn't checked Tanner. She should have. It was stupid of her. It was going to cost her... Neither of them would be able to continue on, both were going to die right here in the Neutral Zone, so close to the Wall, so close and yet farther than ever before.

She wondered vaguely about Benjen... about Gendry... how the two were fairing... if they were even alive right now as her thoughts blacked out and she joined Jon in the oblivion.

-tbc-
********Game/of/Thrones********
Note:

Sorry for what surely feels like a infinite amount of lag with this chapter update, I felt it just as much as you, if not more. :)

As you can tell, because Arya is unconscious, most of this chapter is done on Jon, so you can get a look into his feeling and the information that he has. I had a hard time writing them out of the cave, and how I was going to play things once they were. I have a vague impression on how I want to end this trilogy, but its the writing that has to get me there that's being a bastard to pull outta my head.

The Key:

Stark Notes:

~ After allowing themselves a few days to recover after their encounter with Ygritte in the cave, and any amount of shit beforehand, Jon and Arya finally leave to cave and re-enter the 'real world' and see what fait has befallen the Wall from the Wildling attack—but not before a encounter with Arya's turn cloak mentor, Tanner—one that has grave consequences.

Thanks for Reading!

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