I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
His eyes ached, from the candlelight and the late hour and his own dragging tiredness. Jon had gone straight to his solar from the stable yard, dismissing his squire on the way, and was still grimy under his clothes with dust and sweat and the dampness left by melted snow that was even now still leeching down from the sky. T'was uncouth, unfit for a prince to be in such a state, and damned uncomfortable, but the near-eve of war was no time for a man to discover a penchant for fussiness.
Besides, t'was little matter the state of his body, had he but the numbers fresh in his head when he'd spread out the maps and looked again.
He'd knocked the worst of the muddy snow from his boots, and toweled his hair dry enough that he wouldn't drip across the maps, and like that, had bent to his work. That had been hours ago. There was a tray somewhere between then and now—untouched; he'd been too busy to eat—and a handful of runners with parchment squares, messages for his eyes only and folded tight, but mostly the decline into this late ugly hour had been the grit of his teeth and the spread of the maps, weighted down by tokens and ink pots and stones.
Planning a war was more difficult than planning a siege or a single battle. Jon scattered one last palmful of fine sand across wet ink, his own spidery handwriting crossing and recrossing the pages, and sat back to rub his knuckles across his eyes.
There was never a moment of the day where his own tight-packed fear, the nagging world of preparations, was overwhelmed by aught else. His mind was busy on the maps, or seeing that all the men knew and did their duties, or to sending the ravens that flew out so endlessly to call the other houses to arms, those small few that'd listen.
A king could rest when he liked, but a regent shouldn't see to himself less his king ordered him to. And Bran, so far and faint even as he called some nights through a raven's throat, wouldn't dare to turn his older brother from this.
The price of Jon's princehood had been too high. He'd spend the rest of his life paying it back to those other Starks, those Starks by birth, if he lived past the war at all. Then, he would let himself rest. Until that day, save for the first hour after the nightbell and the two he took in the yard every morning—those things keeping him barely sane—there was this.
But Jon was just a man, and he felt his own tiredness catch and drag at him, threatening to pull him under cold and heavy waves where he could no more think than a drowning man could think.
Enough, he thought and shoved his chair away, rising. The day's work was done, the plans amended to include four thousand men from the Riverlands, all the men Lord Mallister could muster and all of them now camping in Castle Cerwyn's bare fields.
Tomorrow there would be more men, and more numbers, and the return of Lady Mormont and Lord Glover, and gods hoped they brought better news of Dreadfort's current state. But tonight every thought came through him like through a veil, and every step fell like pacing in bare feet across scattered shards of dragonglass.
T'was an hour before the night bell, or a little less. T'was a chance that the sitting lord of Highgarden had taken time from his busy schedule of being sieged to write back, or that whatever lord that held Skagos had returned the last raven rather than eating it, or that there was another stiff-polite letter from the Eyrie, Baelish's words in Sansa's careful hand.
Jon had ordered that he be not disturbed; outside the door, a pack of pages huddled into each other for warmth, the heavy hoods of their cloaks up and their shoulders all crammed together. There wasn't enough wood to fire the hearths in the hallways and it was bitter cold all across the keep for it.
His irritation spiked. A dozen of them, at least, not a one of them older than Bran, and all of them exhausted; dark half-moons gathered under each pair of eyes. He'd told Lord Flint that keeping the children up so late in the cold was cruel. There was no rule that whoever held the castle set his household's schedule. "All of you to bed," Jon ordered before their thin child's voices could start with the piping chorus of, My lord! My lord!
They at least had been convinced not to call him Your Grace. "Tomorrow," Jon snapped as they all scrambled to stand at attention. At the flinches they gave, he gentled his voice to say, "Can all of you remember your messages until tomorrow?"
The tallest of the lot, with another boy—much smaller—huddled under the fanned out edge of his cloak like a pup to its mother's side, said, "Yes, my lord!" with a fist laid in salute across his chest.
The hour was late. To start some new business now was to forsake the hour after the bell. "Give them to be me then," Jon ordered. His eyes ached, though he kept his hands at his sides this time. "No," he said, not ungently when another boy made to speak. "Tomorrow, and until then, all of you are to go to bed."
He waited where he was, his shoulders hunching against the cold, until they'd all shuffled off and turned the corner. They were going down to the hall, where everyone not ranked well enough to warrant a room—and the firewood to heat it—was packed in with furs and blankets and pallets. Jon's own path was the same, and he didn't want the lot of them stumbling and tripping after him the entire time.
The panes of leaded glass, far at the end of the corridor, had long been broken, and only recently when the cold made his hands shake too much to write, had they been covered over with rough-cut boards. Wind pushed the snow to snaking past the cracks left until it was leaking onto the floor in crystalline white spills. The candles set in their narrow creches, one at each end of the hall, threatened to gutter with every moaning thrust of the wind.
Same as he'd put out the fire to save the wood, Jon pinched the wicks to stop them burning and navigated the short flight of stairs in the familiar dark.
He might have depended on borrowing Ghost's eyes to keep from stumbling or tripping, but the wolf had left the gates early in the wet grey morning six days past, turning towards the south and whatever snow-starved prey he might find there. Jon went slowly instead, pretending that it was only the dark that made each footstep a drag far harder than it should have been and not the ache of his own snow-starved body.
He was weary in a way no sleep could solve, and he had no hope for consolation. With every late hour, with every day that passed, he was growing more and more certain there would be no rest, not until they chiseled a space for him in the rock of the crypts.
If Jon yet still had some secret hope for this day to lay long ahead, for his hair to be grey and his face worn, for a second space to be patiently carved beside his and left waiting a few years more, it was his business alone.
There was no rest to be had. He wasn't a surprise that Ser Florent and Lord Stout were arguing just outside the door to the hall, nor that they both shut up at once and turned appealingly towards him. They were huddled close as his pages had been, despite the sour looks they gave each other. Winter made strange bedfellows, and t'was Jon's job to keep them together, yet not so close that they cut each others' throats.
There was no way to describe Jon's relief, to learn that Bran was alive. Like a breath, mayhaps, after a long time underwater and pained for air. Too, he'd felt it for Rickon and Sansa, to hear that they were safe and hidden away. But mostly Bran's safety had overwhelmed him, had bid him grab at the back of the carved stone seat and sink down slowly onto it.
Jon's joy and relief that his little brother was still alive—that Theon Greyjoy had failed to slaughter him, that Bran was safe wherever he was beyond the Wall—was for love of him alone.
Jon's private fervent hope that Bran returned to Winterfell soon, in his own body and not the croaky sullen raven that Lord Commander Mormont had left alive, was that Jon need be Regent now but he wouldn't be king forever.
"Can this not wait?" he asked. His voice was rusty from disuse. There were more torches here, and the warm air that crept into the corridor from the hall, packed full as it was of fireplaces and living bodies.
Warm air, almost hot air, across his face as a serving woman passed them by and went into the hall. He turned to the draft on instinct. Jon could even forgive the reek of unwashed bodies that came with it.
"I'm sorry, my lord, but it cannot," Ser Florent said, always grave. He gave a short sharp bow, which sent Lord Stout bristling. "Queen Selyse—"
"Lady Selyse," Lord Stout interrupted.
"Her Grace Queen Selyse seeks to speak with you," Florent went on, affronted. He jostled his arm before Lord Stout's, a boarhound before a boulder, and lifted his chin to say, "At your earliest convenience, my lord."
If Jon could place shy Shireen Baratheon upon the throne as easily as a man might take an apple from a tree, and strike down her opposition at the very same moment, in a clean easy blow, he might just do it. Not just for the reinforcements it promised them, but for want to be rid of her mother.
Jon'd had no mother of his own, but Selyse Baratheon's stalwart and insistent manner toward her daughter's birthright, despite Stannis' untimely death, showed the sort of loyalty and tiger-fierce love that he thought a mother should have. And though there was nothing girlish about her, that proud clenched jaw and refusal to bow away reminded him of a girl he'd once known. But that didn't mean he wished to spend any more of his waking hours soothing her and detailing what efforts they were making to the south.
Ravens came from Highgarden that Daenerys Targaryen had landed in Westeros and marched from Dorne with three dragons—three miracles—that Jon sorely needed. He wouldn't insult her by presenting another challenge to the throne she wanted to reclaim, nor would he risk sending Shireen to another hungry fire when she'd just barely escaped Melidandre's red flames.
"Tell Queen Selyse I'll speak to her on the morrow," he ordered, and flipped the hood of his own cloak above his head, before braving the door to the yard.
He hoped the cold and the dark would dissuade them from following. Winterfell's gates were kept open now at night with men ready at the chains ready to lower them at the first cry. Access to those soldiers and lords camping outside the sturdy walls couldn't be denied, and torches and braziers burned in smoking shades across the yard in paltry effort to appease the guard-numbers needed to man the castle in the night.
Jon turned by long habit towards the Godswood, then forced himself to turn towards the Maester's Tower instead. It wasn't time yet, he told himself, and Jon knew his own weaknesses maybe even better than his strengths.
If he gave in and went to the Godswood now, breaking at last that control that kept him at his duties, he'd sink down to pray before the heart tree and not rise again until the old gods had answered his choking calls.
The wagon promised a diversion if the rookery did not. He had a castellan, who could come deal with the wain just now rolling under the gates and the men—bright in House Locke's white and purple—crowing and calling from their horses beside it. But a man need know his keep, and in winter he need know exactly the numbers it took to feed everyone in it.
Lord Stout was still stuck to his heels, like a frozen bit of horseshit, and Ser Florent with the grim mien of a man unwilling to turn and face his mistress. "Lord Ryswell also needs your attention, Your Grace" Lord Stout pressed. "He claimed the matter is most urgent."
"Then he might have come himself," Jon snapped. The title riled him; his dark look sent Lord Stout quailing back a step. Jon was regent alone, not king; Robb's will hadn't accounted that Bran and Rickon yet lived and Jon could no more stand in the way of his trueborn siblings than he could take up Longclaw and hack off his own hand.
Never mind that he'd joined them when he hadn't done aught to deserve it. Jon had what he'd always wanted, and it was a bitter cup indeed.
"Perhaps, my lord," Ser Florent said, "the Queen is more meritous of your attention? She will be most wroth to have her order ignored—"
The wain and its outriders were indeed being directed to the kitchen yard, Jon was pleased to see. One of the men had pulled the cover off the back, protection from the falling snow, and the sacks and barrels it revealed were piled high. Beans, and peas, and onions; perhaps even dried meat. Another week's guarantee that Winterfell wouldn't starve.
"My lord—"
"Your Grace—"
And now come straggling through the gate, a half-starved horse and a child clinging to its broad, wasted neck, both of them wracked with shivers in the cold.
It hurt his heart, as it did every time, to see northern refugees as they wandered into Winterfell in stumbling little groups, or on their own. It hurt his heart and made clear to Jon why it was so important that Winterfell remain standing, its lanterns lit and its gates raised, that there still be servants to make space for more pallets in the hall, and the thick bowls of soup to be handed out to those coming in cold and desperate and hungry.
It made clear why he couldn't rest, just yet, not when there was so much left to do.
This winter was grim, and the looming war promised to make it grimmer yet, but Winterfell was still standing, there was a Stark inside it again, and though the child came now wasted and freezing, he'd be warmed and fed soon enough.
Jon's body ached and the cold made the aching worse; tension crowded tight in his back and arms, and soreness colonized in his legs. Ser Florent and Lord Stout were arguing with each other again, hissing vicious whispers. Jon ducked his head against the drifting snowy wind, turning towards the Maester's Tower, and made his way across the yard.
He need pass the child to get there, and he heard as he drew closer the guard who'd grabbed at the drooping reins saying patiently, "You can't see the king, lad. He don't see petitioners, he's too busy. If there's news to be passed, of your parents or your lord, Lord Flint can see you."
The child, who'd come through the gate looking as if he might fall from his horse at any moment, mustered the strength now to straighten and demand in a thin, affronted voice, "King? What king? Robb Stark's the only King in the North, and he's dead!"
His voice held a hint of despair, of blooming hysteria. Some mountain clan? Jon thought. But no, the boy had come from the south gate, the kingsroad gate. He hadn't thought there were people left south of Winterfell that hadn't heard of its retaking, and Jon's place within it. There were men camped all the way to Castle Cerwyn. Surely one of them had told the child—
"Aye," the guard was saying, gently. "And now Good King Robb's brother has the crown. But it should matter little to you, then he's a good man like his father. Aye, we're under Starks again. You're safe, lad. Come down from there now. You look done in."
The child swayed a little, silent, the horse shifting unhappily under him. Jon didn't like to disturb them; he stilled his steps and waited, shifting himself to keep the cold from leeching too badly into his boots.
"We'll see to your horse," the guard coaxed, trading the reins to his other hand, trying to come around to the side, that he could help the child down. "The chatelaine will give you a bowl of brown, and some place warm to sleep. You're safe now, alright? Alright, here—"
The wind died down, just enough for Jon to hear clearly the next words, without the powder-soft muffle and strange snatch of sound through hard-falling snow.
"His brother," the child said, a soft pained choke, a voice as thin and brittle as spring-time ice. "Bran, oh gods," and it was almost a sob. "Bran Stark is dead, too. Theon Turncloak killed him."
It struck Jon, where he stood. It struck him hard as a hammer blow across his face, and he reeled back a step with it. He knew that voice. He knew that voice. He knew it laughing and scared and wroth and sweet and—
From very far away, from half a step behind him, "Your Grace," Lord Stout began again as Ser Florent pressed, "My lord," and Jon left them to fight over titles he didn't want, titles he didn't care about.
The boy—the girl—was still a-horse, her body a shadow as thin as a whip in the torchlight. The guard was saying, coaxing and kind, "Prince Bran still lives, boy. Those Starks are hard to kill—" and the girl cried over him, a raw cry from a raw throat, "Who holds this castle? Who holds it! The name!"
I do, and the words refused to leave him. Cold wind snaked down Jon's throat instead; it came back up fire. Feeling as if he were in a dream, he croaked out, "Arya."
It left him loud, burning. The girl turned, and Jon saw for only the barest moment, a single heartbeat's time, the long pale face and the familiar pale eyes and the dark hair clinging close to her head, dusted almost white by the falling snow.
A spirit, she looked like. A dream. A night creature, Jon thought, come to haunt him and caw about his sins.
And then she moved, and she was a girl again. Warm, but for the snow. Breathing in little pants that shook her whole body. She jerked back as if struck, crying out the thin wounded sound a rabbit made as it died arrow-struck. And then she fainted.
If asked ten minutes before, Jon would have said himself incapable of running, so exhausted and pained as he was. Now he was across the yard as if the wind itself blew him. It was a century's time before he caught her; it was a heartbeat before he was folding her limp body into the shelter of his arms. He caught her up so carefully and turned her slide from her saddle to a slow, cradled draw against his chest.
Arya. Gods, and it was her, skinnier than he had ever seen, filthy—there was something smeared all across her furs—mud until the scent hit him, even through the snow and the frozen air. Blood, and she was caked in it like she'd found a puddle of the stuff, laid down, and rolled.
She was so light in his arms, like a dream. Like the furs were all that weighed her. He had another second's worth of dizzy panic—he was dreaming, she was a ghost he could no more hold than he could hold sunlight—and then she started shivering.
Never in her life had Arya fainted before. "Maester," Jon said in a croak. The dream dissolved, milk of poppy mixed into wine. T'was the world so suddenly untrue. There was nothing real but this, this girl in his arms; men were shouting and he heard it from a great distance, footsteps racing sharp and crunching across the snow. Her horse shied, the guard saying, "Your Highness?" in deep alarm as he tried to calm it.
Jon wheeled about. Lord Florent was older, greying, slow, but he took off like a green boy at a year's end race when Jon roared out, "Bring me the maester! Now!"
Arya was still limp weight, but for the shivers. Lord Stout was snatching his own cloak off, throwing it over Arya. Jon forbored the touch, ten seconds to tuck it better around her trembling body, and took her away to the shelter of the keep.
There by the doors to the hall, where t'was the warmest. Someone slammed the doors themselves closed on the shouting starting within. Lord Flint was at Jon's elbow, herding him further inside, saying, "Gods be good to us. Is that truly her? There's a fire in the receiving room—someone take her escorts to the kitchen and see they're warmed and fed. You, Bowen, see to it! Theomar, bring my wife!"
Arya made a small motion. She needed a fire, something hot Jon could pour down her throat, a bath. "She had no escorts," Lord Stout was saying. "She just came through the gate—"
A screech, wood dragged on stone. "Sit down, Your Highness," Lord Flint directed and Jon sank down carefully, tucking his girl up so her cheek rested on his shoulder, turning so the fire fell across her face. Arya, and gods, it was her for true.
Bran had said she was alive. Bran had said she wasn't in Nymeria, that croaking raven's voice tumbling out handfuls of confusing words. But they'd had no news, he'd had no assurances. "Where have you been," Jon pressed to the top of her head and wiped away the snow melting in her cropped short hair.
Every breath she took was precious, a little sigh. He wanted to crush her to his chest and didn't dare for fear of injury. Someone was shouting just outside the door, Flint and Stout crowded too close, the wind beating at the walls and the fire crackling furious, and Jon wanted, badly, for it all to go away.
Her fingers moved against his, where he'd caught both her hands in his own hand, to better warm her. Waking, soon, and he needed quiet for her. He needed peace.
"The maester's coming," Lord Florent said as he came through the doors, slamming them shut on the crowd gathered outside. How many of Father's household was left? Women mostly, a handful of children now grown. There hadn't been a single one who didn't hold Arya dear when she was a girl—they'd want to look at her, touch her hand, marvel.
They couldn't see her now. Lord Flint was speaking, baths and ravens, an announcement. Her fingers moved again, her cheek pressed a fraction closer. "Shut up," Jon ordered, a growl, and everyone fell silent.
He didn't dare move her till the maester had seen to her. Cautiously, he tucked a hand under the heavy furs across her chest; his fingers came away wet with sweat but nothing else. "Oh little sister," Jon said, a pained whisper, and pressed his face to her filthy hair to better breathe the scent of it in.
He felt more than saw Lord Flint as he came closer and knelt down beside them. When Jon looked up, before he could snap out anything, Lord Flint said very softly, "I can take her, Your Highness. Aye, or my wife. She's only gone to get Lady Jeyne."
Arya shifted against him. Was she waking? Did she hear? She'd come home to him. He'd let there be no doubt in her that he meant to keep her now. Jon said jealously, "I can see to her."
He'd been a fool to order so frequently, so fervently and so often, that no distractions bother him while he worked. Jon had meant it to keep the fool lords and panicked soldiers away; now Lord Flint said nervously, "But what of your work, Your Highness?"
What of his work? Jon couldn't even remember what he'd meant to do before he'd caught Arya's tumbling body in his arms. "Have a bath brought to my quarters," he ordered. They could spare the wood to heat it. "And a tray—not the brown. Something else."
"Yes, Your Highness," Lord Flint said and fell back, startled, as Arya shifted, turned further into Jon's chest.
Her body was still. She rasped air, in and out. And then, warbling and on the edge of tears, she whispered, "Jon?"
Begged, almost. As if she didn't believe it. As if she thought some other man would hold her so carefully, would say to her gravely, "No, I'm sorry. He isn't here."
He loved her so much. He'd never wanted more than this. "I'm here," Jon said, squeezing her hands. And then so tenderly that it burned his throat, "Little sister, I'm right here."
He hadn't expected her to jerk in his arms, then try and throw herself to the floor. Jon followed her down, trying to keep her still. "Arya," and she thrashed against him, "Arya, don't—"
She wasn't trying to get away from him, like his first panicked thought. Her hand was tight in the front of his doublet, even as she squirmed and reared back. "Arya, you'll hurt yourself worse," Jon said, trying to soothe her with his voice, his hands. She was coated in blood, and it was blood, reeking now that she was warmer.
"You'll hurt yourself," he barked, fearful as she fisted both hands in his shirt and shoved him away. "Arya, please, be still."
He was reaching for her again already, cupped her elbows to keep her from keeling over. They were kneeling now, staring at each other. The world slowed and dropped away again. Jon might be dreaming, with how bad he wanted it, to stay in this second for a long forever.
Not even the flickering firelight could make her a stranger. Not even the years apart could make her a stranger. Starved and filthy and grown at last into her long Stark face, this girl was still his sister and so lovely, so loved, that it hurt him to look upon her.
So long as he lived, he would never want to look away.
Her own eyes were greedy on his face. It had been so long, so much had passed—
Did she still see the boy who used to haul her to bed when she was tired, who sheltered her from her own tears, who had carried her in his heart every day, every day—
"Jon," Arya said, a low hoarse rasp. One of her hands was fisted right above his heart. "Jon," and her face was twisting closer and closer to tears. She let out a hiccuping breath, and said, voice cracking, "Jon, I don't want to be dreaming anymore."
Like it broke a dam, shattered some wall within her, she burst into frenzied tears.
He heard in all the sobbing, I will die if this is more dreaming. Slowly, so slowly, he shifted closer until he could cup her cheek. A thousand words cluttered his mouth, his throat. Reassurances. Promises. Her face was hot and wet and terrible with pain.
None of that meant anything—words were wind. T'wasn't a language either of them could speak right now. With excruciating care, he folded her back into the shelter of his arms and helped her tuck her face to his neck. He helped her hide there, safe against him.
The people in the room, strangers and he felt how keenly Arya didn't want them there, shifting uncomfortably against him, pawing clumsily closer. "The maester is coming," Jon said and rubbed her back, trying to help soothe her through those deep racking sobs. T'was like touching rocks through a bedroll; gods but she was so skinny now.
He wanted to calm her. He wanted to help her. If she was hurt and his touch had hurt her worse, he would break the world itself in half. "As soon as he looks you over, we can—"
"No!" and it was a wail.
Arya had always been stubborn, had been unknowable to everyone but him in her wild heart. He should have protested, knew that his duty to her was to see her well, but she clawed at him like a frightened cat, scrambling, and he could only croon out something low and tuneless, trying to soothe.
"I don't want a maester—" Arya wept at him, clutching him tighter and shoving her face hard against him. But under that, like a language so long unheard, she told him in cry and touch and cringe, I don't want a stranger.
The urge to fold her away, to disappear her into his body itself, was so very strong. He wanted to give her whatever she wanted. "You're bloody," and he pressed his mouth to the side of her head, ducked to say just for her into her ear, "Tell me you're not hurt—"
"I'm n-not," she bawled back.
"—and mean it," he pressed. She was brittle under his hands; he spread his fingers wide, to better hold and keep her together. "You're covered in blood, little sister. Tell me it's not yours."
She shook her head, a short hard motion. T'was better, truly, that he needn't chase and kill whoever'd done it, but his throat clenched tight all the same. Once Arya had wept to draw blood, just scratching with a ragged nail when she fought with Sansa; now she was covered in it. "Alright," he said, "Alright," and drew her closer, shifting that he might lift her and stand without overbalancing himself.
A world away, far from them as the Wall was from Winterfell, there was a short polite knock at the room's door. Someone went to open it—one of those reviled strangers—and Jon heard Arya say in a very small voice, gulping as she tried to stop her tears, "I can walk."
"Aye," he agreed, to spare her pride, even as his hands closed tighter on her. "But," and it was mostly truth, and she had to hear it in his voice, the fear he starved off, "I don't think I can let go of you right now."
He waited to see if she would object again. Jon couldn't deny her anything; if she wanted to walk, then she would walk and he'd follow half a step behind, careful not to let her fall again. But Arya only snaked an arm about his neck, to better balance herself, and went limp.
Not fainted again. She tensed a little as Lady Flint came about his elbow and curtsied deeply to them both. "Your Highness," the lady said in a hushed voice, like a mother afraid to wake a sleeping child, "your room has been arranged as you requested and I've had Her Highness's things taken up."
He had a castellan for just this thing. T'was a relief, to know he wouldn't have to turn the Flints aside and pick someone else. He had no time for things like that, now there was Arya to see to, to look after. He rubbed a hand down her back, slow, so she knew she was safe still.
Lady Flint's eyes caught on Arya, and her face went softer still. So thin, she mouthed at Jon with a mother's worry. She added aloud, "I've also had broth sent up with her tray, to fortify her. She truly shouldn't be put to bed until she's had a bath."
Outrage and gratitude warred. He didn't need someone to tell him how to take care of Arya; he knew how. He'd always known how. But Lady Flint meant no harm. He said, "Aye," and let her husband, still looking faintly stunned, open the door to the back stair.
Their old rooms had burned. No where in Winterfell felt untouched. He'd tried to strike the traitors from it before she came home, but ghosts were harder to kill. They lingered. He didn't want her to see this Winterfell yet, a ghost come to eat up their childhood, a ghost of their family and their home. "Don't look," Jon said, and Arya nodded again and clung closer, her nose dug into his chest, as trusting of him now as she'd been as a babe.
He'd carried her in his arms then, too. Had felt the same wild emotions, almost skirting anguish, at how light she was against him, how deeply he felt the need to protect her, to keep her safe.
The maid was just pouring in the last bucket of water, steam already filling the room and chasing out the worst of the cold, as he carried Arya inside. The girl gave a big-eyed look to him, curtsied, and shut the door behind her smartly as she left.
That, more than anything, was the balm he wanted. To be alone with Arya, cloistered in somewhere warm. There was a stool by the bath, and he eased Arya to her feet, took her elbow as she swayed.
This was worse than a spill from her horse, or a harsh word from her lady mother. T'was worse than her fear over Bran's fall, even. It felt impossible to know where to patch her first, which hurts needed his attention now and which could wait.
"Are you hungry?" he tried. "Thirsty?"
She sat down, all the while peering up at him. He'd always been taller than her, but Jon felt almost like a stranger now, looming over her. He knelt down that they might be eye to eye, and was rewarded with the promise of a smile, just the smallest motion of her mouth, a ghost of that once familiar look she'd always worn just for him.
He wanted that smile for true. But Arya couldn't be rushed to anything, and he didn't dare try when she seemed so fragile to him, so breakable in the way she stared and stared.
If she was hungry for him most of all, as starved as he was for her, he'd feed her.
Her hands lay in her lap. He reached for them, needing to touch her, needing the reassurance, and pressed them between his own. Now that she was here, now they were alone, he couldn't think of a single thing to say. But they hadn't needed words before; he tried to be gentle as he peeled off her gloves—so thin as to be useless—and rubbed her fingers, sore-looking and pinking with warmth after the cold.
She kept staring at him, a stunned dazed look as he chafed warmth back into her hands. "Arya," he said, just to say it, to let it lie tender in his mouth and know that she heard. T'was enough to spur her; finally she tugged away and trembling, laid her palm to his cheek.
If the look she wore had alarmed him before, this look of building horror was worse. He tried to assure her, with his hands and his eyes. There was nothing she could tell him, nothing she could say, that—
In a small croak, she confessed as if it were wrenched from her, "They told me you were dead," and her eyes filled with tears again.
For a second, he didn't understand. T'was just words from her, just noise and told to him nearly calmly. And then it struck him, it pierced him. She hadn't. She hadn't believed it, and he was begging to himself.
There was a world of horror and old pain yet in her face. Oh, gods. His mouth went painfully dry; his mouth worked uselessly. Oh, and their gods were cruel.
"The Black Bastard on the Wall, killed by his own men," she murmured, the words so careworn in her mouth, as if she'd said it to herself a thousand times before.
Arya had used to mumble little songs to herself, remembered phrases and rhymes she learned from the kitchen women's children. Had she said that to herself the same way? Hurt herself with it every time?
Jon had thought— had feared Arya was lost to him. But never once had someone come out and said it, never once had he been without even the smallest scrap of hope. Not when the Bolton bastard had written. Not when Commander Mormont had passed the raven scroll across the table. No, not even then.
"I'm not," he said. "I'm not," and felt her hand start to shake wildly. He put his hand to her fingers, pressed it into his skin. It wasn't enough, not for such news. For such a half-true rumor. Not for such a lie.
She wasn't crying again, just staring with big teary eyes. Jon said wildly, "Here, feel," and coaxed her into wrapping her cold little hand half about his neck.
His heart was beating so madly, so forcefully, that surely she could feel it. "I didn't think," Arya said a little wildly herself. "I didn't— I should have—" and her face screwed up in tears.
A blow and he bent with the speed of it. I didn't think you lived.
Jon hadn't learned how to simply sit there and ignore her crying when he was a boy—was always fetching her from her cradle or drawing her away to sit in his lap—and whatever trick her mother and their father had learned to turn away from her, it didn't come over him now. He reached for her, dragged her close, the legs of the stool shrieking on the floor as she threw her arms about his neck and clung to him so tightly it made him hiss in pain.
He wanted it to hurt. Gods but he was glad of it. It wasn't real if it didn't hurt.
If she was but half as fragile, if the bones of her face were only half so sharp, he might have held her back with equal force. As it was, her little bird-bone body in his arms, he only held her tight enough that she could feel it.
He put his arms about her like an iron band, like laying a bar across the door that led to a world that t'was anything but this. Go away, Jon said with that touch, to anything that wasn't them.
Arya cried now like she resented it, choked down sobs lingering painful in her chest. It pained him, it broke him, how she kept mumbling, "Shouldn't have— Shouldn't—"
"Don't," he begged. "Gods, Arya don't—" and he hardly knew what he was asking, for her to stop crying or for her to cry for true, instead of those painful barks of half-birthed grief.
She sobbed out, "You were gone! They said you were gone!"
Every second, and she broke his heart anew. To think it, to even think it—
The days on the Wall after the raven came, that Father had died, and not even a word of her— Had Jon not thought it himself for lack of belief, or because the grief of it would have knocked him over where he stood?
She'd heard it, and believed it, and still thrown her body up on a horse to come home.
He was helpless in the face of her grief. "I'm here," he swore, fisting his hand in against her back, clutching her as close as he could without simply melting the two of them together. He wanted to press so hard they fused, steel to steel like in Mikken's forge, like he'd watched her skinny little Needle be made from endlessly folded sheets. "I'm here," he said, nearly begging.
Believe me, believe me, he pleaded. You're so deep inside me that nothing could pry us apart.
She shuddered, shoved closer, crawled almost back into his lap. Arya was trying to stop cry now; more resentful little noises. She gulped down air and told him, a miserable moan, "They killed me too. When they hurt you, they killed me too."
It had. It had killed them both, and Jon had risen and all the while Arya had been alone, still carrying it with her. She'd died with him, the same traitorous blows.
Had he not always felt the same? She took even the smallest wound, and he flinched from it. She trembled with cold and he felt it to his bones. "I know," he said, meaningless, and coaxed her hand to his throat again. His eyes filled, dripped.
Let the pain strike them both, but give them this, too. A bandage across the wound, a touch to heal them both. "I know," he said. "I know, I know. Shhh. But it doesn't hurt anymore. Shhh. Let it stop hurting you, too."
Fresh wails, the childish cries she'd given as a girl, knowing the noise would bring someone running to comfort her. Let them drain that ugly wound she carried, festering in her chest instead of the knife-marks that were hers by right. She gasped out little cries for him, and he was there now and comforted her. Gave himself over to comforting her.
He didn't know how long they sat there, knotted together. He rocked her, hushed her, and heard the night bell clang so distantly it might've been sound drifting down from the moon. He was weeping too, silent cries, pressed his face to the top of her head. Her hair was wet with snow; she pressed against him so tightly there wasn't a way for her not to feel his own shuddering breaths.
Slow, their mourning slowed. The hot miserable knot in his chest, a misery he'd carried with him riding from Winterfell that first time, carried in every long day since, eased as Arya mumbled, rubbed her cheek against him, gasped out, at last, the tell-tale hitching breath, how he'd always known before that her tears were done.
Exhausted, the both of them. He'd been so tired before, and the shock of having her again, the sudden madness of it, slipped from him. Holding her life this was so familiar. Absurdly, he hid a yawn, pressed to the side of her head. Arya was no heavy weight to bear, t'was easy to shift her better in his arms, to hear her murmured pleasure at being kept so close, and the sudden force his old obligations—returned to him at long last—struck him hard as a blow in the practice yard.
He didn't need to be told how to take care of Arya. To sit here for an age, until the Winter thawed and Spring rose up, or until the world fell all to ice and died that way, would satisfy him. To hold her for another hour would satisfy him. She was breathing smooth and regular against his chest now, cried out.
But holding her wouldn't make her any cleaner, or see her fed, or bring her closer to sleeping in a real bed, as the way that she moved so listlessly told him she needed be. He crooned to her, pet her, and tried to loose her arms from about his neck.
Stubborn, his girl, and endlessly sweet. She didn't want to let him go; he had to ease her away and set her back upon the stool. "Don't leave me—" she burst as he knew she would, snotty and panicked, and he caught her grasping hand in his own.
"How often have you eaten?" he asked, folding his fingers over hers. "When did you eat last?"
Her look was all mystification. "You don't even know?" he begged and finally she shook her head. "Stay here, I'm not going far.
He fetched her the broth, a thick wooden cup of it, and warm to the touch. Lady Flint was a worthy chatelaine; he hoped Arya liked her, that she might keep the job.
Arya took the cup from him, looked at it as if she'd never seen broth before, as if he hadn't spent a whole afternoon spooning it into her mouth when she'd caught fever the year she turned six. She'd been so stubborn then, wailing for him incessantly, and he'd climbed in bed beside her to stop her howling.
Never mind the sickness had passed between them like Maester Luwin had chided that it would. They were so close, and so often was she eating from his plate, that he would have caught it anyway.
"Drink it," he told her, "please." When she still paused, he wiped her cheeks with his sleeve. Her whole face was wet; he wiped at his own next and felt the same wetness.
She looked at him warily and he settled back on his heels, waiting there. Arya had always wanted him with her when she was ill or very tired or upset. It made his heart thrill, how she reached out a hand now and laid it upon his jaw, a touch more chaining than a collar. "Don't go," she scolded, half-beg and half-order.
"Drink your broth," he said back and she huffed, scrunching up her red nose.
She drank a little of the broth, an uneasy sip. But t'was hot, and she was hungry; she looked hungry all across her face. Arya closed her eyes and drank more quickly enough.
And then she sighed and lowered the cup, and Jon knew it, knew it down to her bones, that she'd been so hungry once that simply eating had made her ill. He didn't fuss as she turned her attention to him, just let her.
T'was no trouble, to feed her in little bits. T'was no trouble to keep her pleased as she did what he asked. He knew how to look after her. He'd heard her lady mother once complain that Arya was difficult, and it made Jon's dislike for her grow. Nothing about Arya had been a challenge to him.
Arya was still touching him, looking with those wide greedy eyes.
"I didn't know you were king now," she said and her fingers wandered from his jaw to the top of his head, the plain brass circlet he wore shoved back into his hair. She touched it, then took her hand away. She returned her fingers to his jaw and there was a look in her eyes that he didn't like, a new look. Some unhappiness that bloomed there.
Jon couldn't pretend to ignorance. He felt it, too. The weight of his secret heart, the knowing Arya shared in her face. In some part of himself, Jon had always wanted this. The name. Winterfell. To get it now, in such a way, should have soured even the stupidest greenest dreams he'd had as a boy.
Could she see that it didn't? That it pleased him to lay their home before her again like a nameday gift? That some part of it still felt good? If she did, Jon thought, let her see too the guilt he had for wanting it, heavy and black as tar.
"I'm not king," Jon assured her, so glad that this at least was true, and he reached up. The crown always sat crooked on his head, slipping down as he rode, making lords stop to bow and speak to him when all he wanted was to cross the yard in peace. He cast the damn thing aside, listening to it roll across the rush mats and clang, discarded, against one leg of his bed. "Robb's will legitimized me and named me his heir," he told her, "but I don't want it. That's Bran's right."
Her eyes were wide, a little wondering. "Legitimized? Jon Stark," she said as if to test the feel of it in her mouth. And then, even more slowly, "That man, the guard— he said that Bran was still alive. Is he here too?"
"No," Jon sighed out. "He's gone beyond the Wall for something important. But he'll come home soon enough. Did he say—"
He could give her Winterfell, and it made him feel a king. Giving her this—he might have been more than that. He cupped her face, stroked his thumb across her cheek. "Arya," he said, eager and so tender it hurt, "you should know, t'was just Robb who's lost to us. Sansa is safe in the Vale, and Rickon's in Skagos. I cannot say exactly where," he admitted, "but safe, wherever he is."
If hearing his new name made wonder cross her face, this threatened joy enough to swallow them both alive. She said, almost disbelieving, "Alive? All of them?"
She reached for him, took his free hand. Her grip was painfully tight.
If she cried again, might be tears of delight. Might be he'd get his smile after all. "Jojen and Meera Reed saved Bran and Rickon's lives. They're guarding him now. And do you remember Lord Baelish?"
A shadow crossed her face, but not even the greasy little man could dim her brightness long. She nodded. "He took Sansa from the Lannisters," Jon went on. "She says he's determined to keep her safe."
Arya shut her eyes before the tears beading on her lashes could fall. "I cannot believe it," she told him. "Truly. Gods, Jon, truly?"
"I said the same," he assured her. Pleasure transformed her face; his smile was coming along well. He'd save telling her how he learned it for later. He'd let her feed Mormont's raven a handful of corn and see her startle and crow out wild laughter as Bran spoke from within it.
But for now, he said, "You'll grow used to it. And until you do, let me believe it enough for the both of us."
She opened her eyes at that and gave him a look warmer than any fire. "Aye," she said a little shyly. "Will you tell me if I ask? Again, I mean."
"Always," and he dared to press in close and kiss her cheek.
She put a hand to the spot where his mouth had fallen. Then, thoughtfully, the same somber kind of thoughtfulness with which she'd approached maths and lessons from their father, she asked, "And Rickon still has Shaggydog with him?"
He hadn't been sure. If Arya was so far that Bran couldn't find her then Nymeria was certainly nowhere near. His heart leapt into his throat. "Aye," Jon said. "Aye, they're together. Are you, did you ever get these—"
"I've been having—" she said at the same time, and they said, together, "—wolf dreams."
The look on her face was like the sun rising to warm his face. As sweet and good as anything he'd ever known. "I missed that," Jon confessed. She'd always known his mind so well, and he'd known hers. At the Wall sometimes, when he spoke he'd kept expecting that little piping echo.
In Winterfell, it laid across him like a brand, scorching those tender bits of him charcoal black. Every reminder was a killing blow, that he was home and she was still gone and his voice was just a single grim sound, whether he asked or ordered or stated or japed.
Arya bit her lip, then whispered so achingly tender, "Me too."
If he did nothing but look at her for the rest of his life, he might die happy. This girl, this sweet impossible girl. He wanted all of her to stay like this, so close they could share breath. He wanted everything about her, always.
Gods, even the pain. He wasn't surprised when she ducked her eyes and said tremblingly, "I dreamed about Bran's wolf, too. And once, Ghost. But I didn't believe them. I couldn't. Nothing seemed real anymore and I was so afraid—"
To be right. To be wrong. "The cold wasn't the most dangerous," she said mournfully. "But I thought they were all dead. Them, and you too. I thought— I thought I was the last."
And what was a wolf, without a pack? Useless, struck lame and surrendered to slow starvation. His throat was tight with threatening tears. Arya had always hated to be alone; she'd collected boon companions like other girls had collected dolls. And from her friends she took the same comfort as other girls took from their toys; Arya had always been different from the rest. Better. She'd reached for a warm hand over a soft cloth one every time.
She couldn't ache without him feeling it; for her to think herself alone was another blow to them both. "No," and he tucked her in close, bent his body around her. He could feel the shape of her body under her furs; spread his hand wide across the small of her back.
"No," he told her. "You're not alone. Arya, I'd never leave you alone."
"Almost, you did," she murmured, choked and wretched, and Jon knew it would be a wound a long time healing. But he'd be there, to tend to it now. He thumbed a tear off her cheek and pressed his brow to hers. The girl, this impossible girl, and she was more brilliant than the sun to him.
"I know," he murmured back. "I know, I'm sorry."
It didn't seem enough, so paltry were the words. He'd keep her in his bed, to heal her from this. For years, for the rest of his life. Any time she woke from nightmares of it, she could reach for him and feel his warmth, and he could tuck her close until she slept again.
Small, like a secret, she told him, "I wasn't going to come and see."
He made a noise, coaxing. Her eyes were on his, too close to see each other properly, not nearly close enough. Arya said in a halting, clumsy way, "Here. Winterfell. I thought the Boltons held it still. But I saw the banners from the road and I just thought—not even the Boltons would dare. The direwolf is ours."
His impossible girl. Such a small thing, and he might have lost her. Such a small thing, if the night lanterns had guttered for lack of oil—oil that Jon hadn't wanted to grudge them. If the snow had come down harder, or the wind stung her eyes until she daren't look up.
The world was so full of harm. He felt anguished with it, a seed tucked down and twinned next to his brimming happiness.
Anguish, and sorrow, and confusion. "I'm glad you saw them," he said back. "But Arya, where were you going, if not here?"
She pulled away, ducked her head down. Unease crept up his spine with cold fingers. There was nothing north of Winterfell. She didn't know the Karstarks well enough to go there, or the Umbers. He doubted she remembered the feast their father had held for her fourth nameday, where she'd demanded with all the haughtiness of a young child that if the Greatjon hadn't brought her a gift, he need swear his sword to her instead. One too many stories of some Targaryen princess, and the man had been endlessly charmed by it. The Greatjon had done it, afterwards had thrown her in the air until she was screaming with glee.
She had laughed just as loud despite being earth-bound again, when the Greatjon had given in to her demands that the rest of them be given a turn, Robb and Sansa and Jon, even, though Lady Catelyn hadn't looked impressed. But that girl, resplendent in her dirty frock and all wild giggling smiles, was so far away now. She lived in his memories alone. safe and protected and untouchable.
He didn't love that girl any less; he didn't love the girl before him any more. He tried to catch her eye and she refused him, chewing at her lip again.
No, for this Arya now, uneasy from betrayal and battered by the world, there would be nothing north of here. "Arya," he pressed, choking down his concern, "if you weren't coming here, where were you going?"
After a long fragile moment, she whispered, "The Wall."
He stopped. Swallowed down the words he wanted, swallowed back down, But you thought I was dead. Her hands were tight on his, her eyes still turned away. He loved her so much that it wounded him just to think on it. He loved her so much that it had killed him. And she had never loved him any less; her first word had been his name and she said it now like she did then, like it was the world in a single sound.
"Jon," an exhausted aching confession and he had to close his eyes a long moment before he could push the rest away.
She was tired; she was worn thin as an old sheet. He cupped her face again and stroked her cheek with his thumb, and she turned into it, slow and unsure. They didn't have to think about it, not now. They could put aside; mayhaps someday they'd stand in hot summer sun and think back to it and laugh, the way a man grown would laugh at the night terrors of his childhood.
"You're here now," he said to her. "You're here. The rest of it doesn't matter."
Her eyes were grievous, wounded. They fluttered shut as he leaned in close, and she sighed a little as he brushed kisses across the pale purple skin of her eyelids. When he pulled away, it was only to say, gently, "Drink your broth before it goes cold."
She drank, and then held the cup between her hands as she used to do when she was a girl. "I should have known," she said at last, and so tiredly. "I should have thought it—that the others lived too."
I should have been stronger, she said just for him with her eyes, and the downward curl of her mouth.
Whatever guilt she held for herself, Jon had none. There was only a deep abiding joy, a slow spread of wonder. Arya had been so small when she was lost, when she'd gone from a lord's daughter—precious and safe and loved—to an orphan in a world with nothing but death and war. She'd scraped and clawed and fought and run and hid and lied, and here she was for it all. Here she was alive for it.
Her shame felt so foolish to him, but she held it so close, was so wounded by it, that he didn't dare tell her so.
Jon didn't care if despair had driven her those last, most precious steps. She'd taken them, was what mattered. And when she'd fallen at the end he'd been there to catch her, as if the gods themselves had arranged it, an apology for the rest. Like how they'd all gone as a wild pack—and despite the scoldings—harassed honey from those rare and wild beehives in the Wolfswood. She'd despaired, she'd come home back to his arm. T'was sweetness after the sting.
What more strength could you ask than that? He said it back to her, careful in how he took her cup and set it aside, how he kept his eyes on her face and refused to look away, or let her turn her own eyes from him again.
She'd been so strong, and he was proud of her for it, a fierce pride that bubbled up out of him like water from a fountain spout. She'd been so strong, and he saw it in her face, how it was fading in her now like frost trapped in her furs had melted away as he'd carried her inside. Her hands were trembling as he took them in his own, turned them over, and kissed her filthy palms.
It went out of her like a candle snuffed at his fingertips. The last of the despair, and it couldn't stand in the face of him. She was home now, and the drastic clawed grip of herself, the determination and stubborn she'd snatched from her child's heart and honed to a sword, it all relaxed in a single shuddering sigh.
She'd used the last of her strength to come home. But that was alright, Jon thought. He had strength enough for the both of them. He shifted back, feeling the tired grind of his knees, and laid hands on her ankle long enough to coax her foot to rest on his thigh.
The buckles of her boots were bent and misshapen, the boots themselves absurdly large. She'd been running; she'd had no coin. No doubt they were taken from someone, some corpse, Jon thought. He could remember a time when Arya was shod in kid slippers, when she raced barefoot across the soft ground of the godswood, when she'd never had to plunder a battlefield to keep herself dressed and warm.
She was staring at him, chewing at her lip, but ducked her head when he looked back. Crimson across her cheeks, and her mouth was trembling. It made him so tired to see it, that little curl of doubt that he'd understand. Jon pulled the first boot off, took her foot in his hand, and said, "Don't. Don't— what use could a dead man get from them?"
She'd stuffed straw in the toes to keep the boots from sliding. It stuck in shivery little wisps to her stockings. She used to come home covered in straw and bits of hay after playing in the stables. Her foot was so small in his hands; she made a little pained noise as he touched the arch of it.
T'was too easy, Jon knew, to lose your toes to frostbite. To lose your foot, your entire leg. All the cold was hungry and a man was an easy thing to eat. Had she seen whatever killed the man, before she'd taken his boots? The war had been trying to eat her too. He leant forward, pressed his brow to her knee, and shuddered.
They were both so close to crying again. There was an ocean of tears between them. To have her wince away from him, for anything, was not something he could allow. "Don't be ashamed," Jon demanded. "Not ever. Don't ever be ashamed if it brought you back to me."
It felt like benediction, like forgiveness, like a blessing, how she touched her hand to his hair and asked hoarsely, "Have you ever— Did you have to—"
"Aye," Jon assured her. He'd climbed out of the mouth of the world too, to come back here. "Aye, and worse. We didn't like it, Arya. That's the difference. We didn't like it, but we had to stay alive."
He worked off her other boot, and cast it aside with the first. Filthy like the rest of her, but she'd had a good eye. They were salvagable if cleaned. All the rest of her clothes were for the fire or else the midden heap. He'd find new things for her to wear, things that fit her, as much softness and warmth he could give her in the middle of a winter promising to stretch far too long.
Arya was struggling with the ties of her heavy furs now, fingers scraping uselessly at the knot and her eyes went once, twice past his face and fastened greedy on the steaming tub. Jon could too well remember being filthy; he tugged her hands away, saying gently, "Let me. Shh, let me."
He wasn't half-frozen or mostly-starved. Even his tiredness was sliding away. He undid the rough knots carefully, and when he looked up and saw her looking at him again, with the same wet-eyed wanting she'd given the bath, he said, "Do you remember when you were small, I used to take you swimming? That stream in the Wolfswood, by the oak so tall that we used to jape how it had been there longer than Winterfell."
"T'was a river," Arya said. When he started to ease the furs off her shoulders, she sat docile and let him. He knew how to take care of Arya; she trusted him to do it still.
"T'was a stream," Jon assured her. "And only a river in your memory, for you were so small."
She bit her lip, then nodded. There was dirt smudged just there across her cheek. He let go the hooks of her jerkin to lick his thumb and brush it away.
Some was dirt. Most of it was bruise. It was too easy to imagine the fat hand that had made it, or the swift clout from a staff, a broom. She was still blinking up at him, turning her cheek to his fingers, to his caress, like a plant towards the sun.
He hushed himself instead of raging. Rage would only frighten her, and to see her flinch from him for a loud noise or a harsh word meant to ruin the stillness he was making between them now. "I had to do your buttons," Jon whispered instead.
"You always did them wrong," Arya whispered back. "That's how Mother caught us, remember? She was so wroth, and you said—"
"—aren't Tully-fish supposed to swim?" They said it together. The memory caught at him, Lady Catelyn's outraged face, Jon's own grim determination—she'd taught Arya to swim, how to keep her head above the water and paddle about like a hound, but Arya had been too impatient, too frightened, too wild to take more instruction than that.
T'was Jon who'd taught Arya grace in the water, splashing palmfuls over her brows and cheeks till her crying at the wet touch changed to giggles, Jon telling her so patiently that he wouldn't dunk her till she was ready, that she was safe so long as she kicked her feet a little and clung tight about his neck.
"I thought she'd strike me," Jon confessed. He touched his thumb to the bruise again, and asked, petal-soft and sweet, "Who's been striking you, little sister?"
She breathed out, shivery little sound, and damp. Jon caught the tear that rolled down her cheek, rubbing her thigh with his other hand, waiting. Sometimes Arya had to be coaxed, but mostly she needed this—someone to wait, to listen patiently, as she fumbled the problem apart herself.
Her eyes were mournful. At last, she said, "A Frey. He tried to pull me off my horse and I— With Needle—"
She looked at him, then away, frightened little glances. Jon swallowed down his fear—she was with him now, and safe; Daenerys might well raze the Twins when she came through them, or Winter might consume the castle alive—and said, "You came through the Twins, then."
Anyone might have said t'was childish, babyish, the way she twisted her hand in his shirt and clutched it tight. The new touch, the new hold was already familiar to him and he stroked across her knuckles gently. But Arya hadn't clung even half so much as a child, not even with Jon. "I had to," she said miserably. "There was no other way. And I looked, I did! But to take a boat past the Sisters took so long, and I wanted to be home."
Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Jon kissed it away, touched his temple to hers, assured her softly, "T'was dangerous, that's all I meant. The Freys have no love for the Starks. They, did you hear? Robb, and your lady mother—"
"I heard," Arya said back. Her mouth twisted further, like she was holding in a wail. And then she was using the hand in his shirt to push him away. Not far, only a little, and Jon felt the distance pierce his heart as sharp as a pin even as she said, almost desperately, "I want to wash. Please, I want—"
He'd give her anything she wanted, anything. If she needed distance, he'd give her that/ if she needed time, he would make some just for her. He sat back on his heels, made quick work of her jerkin's hooks, and helped her fight it off her shoulders.
She had to stand to peel off the thick fur leggings she wore over her breeches. Jon kept a hand at her waist, balancing her as she swayed, helping shove them down. When she was done, standing there only in her breeches and stockings and blouse, he first gave thought that she might not want to keep him with her while she bathed.
If the anguished need to watch over her was as familiar and worn as his own hands, this thrill of concern was new. Arya had been a skinny little stick, last he saw her. She wasn't so old as to be a woman now but undressed from her thick winterwear, she could no more pretend to be a child than Jon himself.
The jut of her hips was skin over hard bone where he palmed her side there, and her shirt clung close with thin sweat from the fire. Starving had stolen all the fat on her, but she'd kept the muscle hiding under the linen, sleek and sinewy as a cat's. Her only softness was a growing woman's softness; she didn't wear a breastband and her shirt clung there just the same as her stomach, her back, all of it transparent from the damp. She had grown, his little sister, and as she stood there and shivered and picked at the rough skin of her knuckles, Jon drew away a little.
The maid hadn't hung a sheet. It should be nothing, to help Arya from the rest of her clothes and dunk her in the bathwater. They'd swam together as children, bathed together even when they were very young, them two and their siblings plunked into the same stone bathing pools hidden in Winterfell's depths, squalling and squawking and splashing each other as the maids waded in with their skirts tied up and brushes in their hands.
Jon didn't think it was possible to feel shy around Arya. Mayhaps, he thought, he felt shy because she didn't feel shy herself. She made no move to cover herself and only hesitated at his own hesitation.
He'd sent the maids away and the thought of strangers near them made him bristle. "Jeyne Poole," Jon said slowly, watching Arya's fingers still, "is here. Somewhere. The rest of the household, Father's people, they're—"
He swallowed. Arya had made friends among them all as a child and he half expected fresh tears, but her face was confused a little, a little sad. Not devastated. Expected sadness, Jon thought. She'd known. She knew what happened to smallfolk during a lord's war.
"Anyways," he said, and cleared his throat. Her hip was hot. He pushed up the hem to touch it for true, to feel the heat of her without anything in the way. She was softer than her hands here, silk over bone. The calluses of his own hand caught as he pet the sharp arch warily as he might a cat. "I can have her brought," he offered. "She could attend to you."
He didn't dare look up. The awkwardness of it, the foreignness that t'was awkward at all, dug claws into his chest. But he would if she said yes. He wanted to give her what she wanted.
"You said," Arya said very slowly, and he could hear how she struggled not to sound upset, "that you weren't busy. That you could, you would look after me."
She might have threatened tears, that skinny stick of a girl Jon had done his best to spoil so absolutely. But now she only sounded injured by it, exhausted. He rested his face to her side, wrapped his arm about her belly. He couldn't bear to be away from her; he was so glad he'd made it plain. Jon said finally, "I only thought. You might wish for a woman to attend you, that's all."
Now she sounded sulky, familiar, her hand a greedy grab at his hair. "What would I do with a woman?" Arya asked, so bewildered that Jon couldn't help but feel charmed. "Why would I want Jeyne Poole? You're here."
He loved her so much it burned in him, his little sister, his sweet sister, and how stupid she thought Jon, that he'd ever considered she'd pick Jeyne over him for anything. She tugged at his hair again, a sharp sting across his scalp, then soothed it clumsily, like she was petting a dog.
"Aye," he said. "Aye, I'm here." And every moment of it seemed as if a dream, ice threatening to melt in his palm, punishment for daring to reach out and touch it. Dreamwine had given him nights such as this and to wake in the morning was to wake weeping. Jon thought he could no more leave Arya behind in this room than he could leave his sword arm behind.
She shifted and said, prodding, "I want to wash. Everything itches, now I'm warm."
And then, cautiously, like trying on old clothes, familiarly worn but so long ago cast aside, a childhood cloak made too big, yet one you weren't sure still fit you, she ordered haltingly, "Take my socks off. It aches too much to bend."
It was a stumbling awkwardness. He only turned his head and blindly kissed her belly, trying to say in their old familiar language, That's how you are with me. That's right, just like that.
He wanted back her greediness for his attention, for his laughter. Arya must have wanted it back, too. She gave his hair another tug and said, whining this time and more sure of herself, "Come on, Jon."
He laughed. He couldn't help it, a hoarse rasp in his throat as he eased her fingers from his hair, eased back from her. She was looking down at him, more nervous than her words made her seem, and her lip swollen and raw looking; she said, "Don't leave me. I don't want you to leave me again."
Jon couldn't regret his choice to go to the Wall. He'd thought it best, he had, and he'd been needed there in the end. But to have walked away from them, from Winterfell, from Robb, from Arya, had been a mistake.
He told her with his eyes, with his hands. Arya's knuckles were split, scarred and rough and cold-reddened, picked to almost to the point of bleeding. A salve after she bathed, he thought and brushed a feather-light kiss across them. "I won't," he murmured, choked with it. "Not ever again. I won't."
No words had ever been more sacred. Jon had torn through the last oaths he'd made before a heart tree. He'd trod across them with panicked lack of care. But now with only Arya there to witness, with the weeping bleeding face of the weirwood present only in his mind, as he thought of that ancient tree at the center of Winterfell where Jon had first been taught to pray and of the girl who so often waited for him there, he swore, "I won't leave you behind. I swear."
Arya let out a little noise, almost pleasure, almost pain. "Good," she said. Her eyes were very wet, glossy, the same as his. "Good," she said, a little shudder, clutching at his hand. "Because I came all this way, and I'm so tired, and I wanted you, I did, and it isn't my fault it took so long, no one would take me to the Wall no matter how many times I tried, and you were so far away, and—"
"And—"
And you left me, the trembling curl of her mouth said, the tearful wail she'd kept inside the whole time they'd said goodbye.
He waited, rubbing his thumb across her own calloused palm, for her to say it out loud. Jon's back was hunched, braced for the blow. A whiplash would hardly hurt him more. But a man who'd abandoned his most important post need be punished.
Even now, Arya didn't want to hurt him. Her face was all tender mercy. She sighed out, with heavy longing, "And I want my bath now, please."
There was no one else he loved more in the world. Jon would never love someone so much as this; Arya took up all the room in his heart and he was glad of it. "You need it," he told her, just as cautious as her own teasing had been.
When she gave him a watery smile, the smile he had wanted, at last, he went on, fording the gap between them step by step on ice that might be brittle or might be solid enough to hold. "What did you do, sniff them all and take the worst smelling boots? A fine way to make sure no one tries to steal them from you." Taking her foot in his hand, feeling her brace against his shoulder, he yanked her stocking off with a grunt. "Did you take his socks, too?"
"Aye, well, you smell like horse!" Arya cried back, choked now with the edge of laughter instead of tears.
Her ankle was bruised, a long snaking shadow that disappeared into her breeches. "And you're the one with those big baths downstairs, my lord of Winterfell," she huffed. "And I'm the one that couldn't wash for fear of freezing!"
She did reek, horse and girl and old blood, though most of it had crusted her furs. Her blouse was helplessly stained, big brown splotches and long grey lines of sweat across her back and chest and under her arms. She was untying the knot at her neck as she chided him, too impatient to wait.
New fear, old fear truly, struck him. Arya wrapped up in winter clothes looked a boy, if she was on horseback. But the beauty of her childhood, the wild glory of her eyes and hair and mouth, had blossomed with added years.
Close enough to fight with sword, t'was clear she was a woman. And close enough to swordfight was close enough to grab. She didn't limp as she walked, or flinch to have a man so close.
It overwhelmed his thoughts. He couldn't cast that curling insidious fear away.
There was a trick to keeping your hands steady—long even breaths and the hard will, the need. He couldn't risk making her afraid, and she would be even without knowing it if she saw his own fear. Jon untied the laces of her breeches, riding leathers near-stuck to her legs, and eased them down her hips.
Any shyness left him; she only clutched his shoulder, saying, "Be careful!" as he revealed a long ugly scrape down one leg, like skin dragged across rough stone.
Any bleeding it had done was long before; it hadn't healed but nothing was wetly red. Jon hissed through his teeth, eased her breeches free of her ankles, and traced the edge of the bruise that turned, as it rose, to roughened red skin and scabs.
It quit long before it reached the dark tie of her smallclothes, but that didn't ease him any. Close enough to fight was close enough to grab, and anyone still left at the Twins had no honor.
"The Freys?" he demanded, feeling rage gather hot in his throat. He was too tired to ease himself again, not even when she startled, eyes wide and uncertain on his face. He regretted it, but he could no more stop it than he could still the hand that flatted across her thigh, just above the wound.
Arya shifted, set her blouse to drop, and rested her fingertips on the edge of her smallclothes. She said in a very small voice, almost embarrassed, "Icy rocks. I slid down them."
And then, in a voice even more embarrassed, but padded with little flicking glances at his face, wanting something from him, she mumbled, "I sewed the breeches back together. Did you, you didn't even notice."
Arya had once wept as if her heart was breaking, curled into Jon's side, that her stitches were shit and would never improve, and Jon had found new wrath inside himself for holy women. He raised his brows. She said, almost an unintelligible mutter, "You could look. If you like, I mean."
He loved her so much it threatened to overtake him, like a wave breaking far above his head. Jon drew her breeches back to his hand, found the leg that matched her bruised side, and felt along the seam. The leather edges were sewed carefully back together in neat workman's stitches.
She'd always gone to Jon first to crow out her triumph, but saying well done, as he had when they were children seemed paltry now. He knew how to take care of her; he knew how to give her what she wanted. He touched her hip, caught the tie for her smallclothes under his thumb, and said, "I thought to keep you with me for the war council. But now, mayhaps I'll put you in with the other women. You'll be a great help to them; they complain endlessly that some lords or others tearing their shirts and messing their furs."
"I don't want to go sew with all the ladies!" she cried, all hot offense. In her eyes a new blaze was growing, a merry mischievous light.
"No?" Jon teased. "Not even now you've turned into as great a lady as the rest of them?"
She tried to kick him; he pulled the knot at her hip free, turning away and standing, swallowing down his grin at her outraged cry. No nerves for either of them, this way. He'd always been able to soothe her, to meet her wildness as no one else could; his own fear melted in the wake of her steady assurance.
"Come here then," Jon said, not daring to look. He held his hand out and felt her rest her fingertips in his, a touch as soft as snow falling on the cheek as she stepped into the tub.
Steam licked around her legs. She said, "It's hot!" in tones of pained delight. Arya had no shyness, no fear to keep her body from him. Another woman would have covered her teats with a nervous arm; she didn't care that his eyes were on her, the ladder of her ribs pushing out under her skin, the fragile stretch of her collarbone, her small breasts gone flushed with heat as she sank down in the water.
Part Two: May 14