Just as a pointer, this story is basically an experiment.

The subject is having a character who actually, truly tries to get the fuck away from the plot. Most stories I see have the character get dragged into things way too easily, they barely even fight it. So, I want to see what happens when I make my character do practically anything to get away from the plot and get to safety before shit gets real.

So, I'm warning anyone hoping to see Karina burst into the middle of the plot kicking ass and taking names...well, I won't say that it can't happen, but it'll only happen if Karina gets herself cornered into doing it for some reason.

Chapter 3

"What are you doing?"

Blinking owlishly at the man who spoke to her, Karina pointed at her eye, then at him, then back at her, before making a neck-slicing motion. She then made a grabbing motion and nudged her thumbs briefly against her eyelids, her focus never straying from the man's face. "I see Craster has you well-trained then, little Olilvilagon." Tilting her head at the odd word, the man elaborated for her. "High Valyrian, it means dagger to stab, or near enough. In other words, a dagger-wielding assassin. Because that's what you are, isn't it? A knife in the dark to stab any man foolish enough to go against Craster's word. Or woman perhaps."

Shrugging carelessly, Karina kept her eye on the man, mentally tagging him as the most dangerous crow she'd seen. The others were dangerous too, any man with a sword was dangerous after all, but that man was on a different level. It was the way he held himself, always ready, that proved he was a cut above the others, who had already begun to relax in the loghouse.

Well, none of them were relaxed exactly, they were in enemy territory and in the home of someone who really didn't give two shits about them, but they weren't nearly as wary as this crow was. His hand never strayed far from his sword, and she didn't doubt that in the time it'd take her to bring out her daggers and leap at him, he'd already have his weapon out and ready to defend against her. He also quite obviously outweighed her significantly, so blocking an attack was completely impossible even if she wasn't both female and about four or five years old.

One thing she did take note of was the word he said, Olilvilagon. According to him, it was close enough to be used as 'assassin', which was pretty much what she was training to be. Her physique was well-suited to it, years of malnutrition and overworked musculature meant her body would never grow properly, so she could kiss goodbye the notion of maybe breaking the five-foot barrier in that life, but honestly it would help make people underestimate her. After all, aside from a rare few, nobody would look at a four-foot-two girl and assume she was dangerous.

Well, not until she stuck a dagger in their guts at least.

Keeping an eye on the crows who ventured outside of the loghouse was fairly boring work, even if Karina was used to just watching people.

It wasn't that none of them looked interesting, there were a few cute faces in there, or as cute as she could ever expect to see at the ass-end of the world, which meant only a few steps up from hideous, but nobody caused a problem. Maybe the old guy who ran the Night's Watch hadn't let discipline slip yet, or maybe because this wasn't a great ranging but just a regular one instead, but none of the men caused even a whiff of a problem while they were there.

And honestly, why it might be a bit exciting, she wasn't interested in seeing what Craster would do to her if she fucked up and missed one of the crows doing something forbidden. He might not be interested in her sexually, but he was still at heart a damn cruel man out to ensure his own survival, and if she jeopardized that somehow, well, she honestly didn't even want to think about it much.

Sighing, she spun one of her daggers end over end around her hand, occasionally stopping it to balance on one of her fingers or on her palm. The only thing she was happy about was that the crows definitely seemed to know that she was there to watch them, and their furtive glances brought her some small measure of amusement, that these men were all afraid of a four or five-year-old girl.

She occasionally saw the crow that she was wary of, and sometimes he spoke to her, just short conversations. He wasn't a pedophile at least, he never made any sort of even vague suggestions or insinuations in that way, he simply spoke to her. As she never spoke back nor really cared to stop him, he referred to her as Olilvilagon, but as a name instead of a title. And honestly, it seemed he was more talking for his own benefit than hers, talking about things that had happened down south, stuff that gave her a rough idea of the time she was in.

Robert's Rebellion had already passed, and it had been a year since the war had ended, which meant she was a few years older than Robb Stark. That meant she had about 20ish years until the White Walkers were a clear and present danger, maybe less if the events of season 1 were any indication. That meant she had, just to be safest, 15 years to get the fuck out of the north and onto Skagos, or failing that, across the Narrow Sea and onto Essos. It'd be way more dangerous, but she knew she wasn't some big bad main character with plot armour.

Hell, Eddard Stark was shaping up to be the main character of the show, and he got his head cut off in the first bloody season. Even characters who normally would have plot armour weren't safe in Westeros. If characters like Robb Stark and Shireen Baratheon could be killed off so easily, she stood no fucking chance. Maybe if she was stupider she'd have delusions of going to Westeros and ending up becoming the bride of some big and important character, of single-handedly changing the entire story and prancing around Westeros as some kind of warrior-queen, breaking the wheel and leading humanity against the coming darkness in some bullshit and selfless crusade.

Fortunately, she wasn't that stupid.

Another few years passed by, filled with the occasional task of watching crows, but most of the time she spent training, guarding Craster or very rarely hunting down runaways.

After Craster had made his examples, girls very rarely tried to run away from him. And thanks to her, those that ran never made it far. Honestly, she appreciated the tracking experience, following the girls by their footprints, by broken twigs and displaced bushes, having spent years learning how to track animals and simply applying it to the runaways. It wasn't that she didn't care, she did feel for their plight, it was just that she valued her own life far above theirs. If she failed to bring them back, Craster would at the very least hurt her as punishment, and at absolute worst would outright torture her and keep her alive as long as possible to inflict as much pain as he could.

Maybe she was valuable to him, but she knew that if it came down to it, Craster would use her as a substitute example for why the girls shouldn't fail him. Either she brought back the runaways and he made examples of them, or she failed and was made an example of herself. Nobody would say a single word or make a single motion in her favour considering her ostracisation, even her mother barely acknowledged her existence, and she returned that coldness in kind.

Sure, the woman had been the one to birth her, and when she was too young to not be unique, the woman had loved her, but when she displayed her uniqueness and Craster took a direct interest in her, the woman had stopped being her mother and became simply another of Craster's wives. Honestly, while she felt just a little bit saddened that her biological mother no longer acknowledged her, unlike a normal child who might have been affected, she was most definitely not a normal child, and it barely phased her.

She knew that the others all knew her as Craster's attack-hound, doing his bidding and listening out for any whispers of dissent, any hint of an escape attempt. And those times when she walked back into the compound dragging a knocked out and heavily bruised girl on a sled definitely cemented that she would not hesitate to beat the shit out of anybody who she had to. She had never had to resort to her knives at least, none of the other girls knew how to fight like she did, nor were they nearly as physically conditioned for fighting as she was. Occasionally they would get a hit or two in, but that would just piss her off and make her far less...'gentle' with her attacks.

Alongside that, she also began squirrelling away food when she could, just little bits here and there when she could, making sure to cycle-eat the food when she put new food in so it wouldn't go off. Her hope was that, eventually, she'd have enough to make it to the coast. From what she remembered, Craster's keep was about 300ish kilometres from the eastern coast. That meant that if she averaged three kilometres an hour and walked for twelve hours a day it would take her over a week to reach the coast, and that was the absolute most optimal result.

Chances were high she'd have to detour several times, and her feet, despite being used to walking, would absolutely cane from the walking. She could also end up twisting her ankle or tripping up and breaking something, as the True North was hazardous enough even staying in one place, which would slow her down significantly. Plus, there was also the cold to contend with, so she would have to find a safe place to build a fire and hide away each night.

The more she thought about it, the worse it seemed to even try to make the attempt. She would permanently ostracize Craster, he would probably rant about it the next time the Night's Watch visited, and they might try to capture her if they found her and bring her to him in order to curry favour with the man. Plus, considering the distance and the difficulty involved, she might not even make it to the coast, let alone find her way across the Bay of Seals and onto Skane, Skagos or one of the other islands.

She could make the choice to go the other direction, where there were a few options like trying to cross the Gorge by way of the Bridge of Skulls, or go further and try to find a place along the Gorge she could use to cross into Westeros. It'd put her on the wrong side, but if she had to head south instead of going to Skagos, that'd be fine by her. She wasn't even sure if Skagos would actually be safe, since she knew that the Night's King had taken down The Wall with a revived dragon, he could have flown wights and White Walkers over to eradicate Skane and Skagos, so maybe venturing as far south as possible would be better than staying in the north.

It really came down to a choice of whether she could handle the heat. She didn't want to head south just because she might run into somebody important and then set off a butterfly effect, she also was dreading the idea of going to hotter climates and quickly descending into the state of hating existence itself. In her old life, she had hated every moment she spent in hotter regions, and she doubted very much that it would be any different in her current life.

Essos was a possibility, but the threat of Dothraki, slavers, cultists and a myriad of other things kept her from wanting to go down that route. Maybe Braavos was an option though. As far as she recalled it was at the tip of Essos, as far north as she could get there. Ibben was also a possibility, but, admittedly, she was scared of going there, simply because she didn't know any of the lore about it, she just knew it existed as an island north of Essos. Were they slavers like those in Slaver's Bay, or were they more like the Summer Isles but cold instead of hot?

No, for heading east, Braavos was the safest option, she knew it was a free city where as long as she kept her head down and didn't attract attention, she'd be fine. Maybe once she escaped the north she could look more into locations she could work on fleeing to, but for now, she had to contend with that issue. Plus, she had to be really fucking careful that Craster never picked up on it with his weird greenseer-esque bullshit. If he ever suspected that she, probably the daughter he valued most, was planning to escape...Karina shivered and pushed that train of thought down.

She didn't even want to imagine what he'd do to her in revenge.

More years passed by, and she even got to experience a winter, where the outside temperature got so cold that only she was willing to even leave the loghouse.

For her, it was absolutely perfect, and she had mentally vowed that next time winter came, she would make her break for it. Sure, it was really cold, but she adored the cold and felt confident in her ability to handle it. She also gained plenty of experience building up her leg and feet strength, taking every opportunity to force herself onto brutal walks and jogs across any rough terrain she could find, building up her ability to travel for long periods.

What was less perfect was that Craster had begun to see her in a different light, one which made her more than a little uncomfortable. As she grew up, while she was still aggravatingly short and miserably far from even getting close to breaking the five-foot boundary, it changed how she looked, which was both good and bad. The greyscale on her face faded a little, the scales looking more like an odd scar pattern and less like lumps of bone-hard skin, while her body changed as well. Her training ensured that her developing body remained lean and toned, her chest never growing out much, something she was immensely grateful for, but the fact that Craster was interested in her now really put a dampener on growing up.

He'd began by simply touching her, a shoulder press here or a hair-rub there, which immediately had set her internal alarms off, since as she had contracted greyscale before, he was always leery of touching her. But, as time went on, he began to get more and more interested in her, making her sit on his leg as he rubbed her back and dipped his hand lower and lower, or forcing her to warm his bed for him while he grasped at her body.

While he hadn't progressed to anything further, it was obvious that with her growing body and the fact her greyscale had faded, he was becoming more emboldened. But the problem was that she wasn't ready to leave. If she left, she wouldn't have enough food to make it to either coast, as she had to be religiously careful not to get caught hoarding food. Stealing food was out of the question, it was kept in a locked room that she'd never had access to, only Craster was able to open it and he'd told her in no uncertain terms that if he caught her ever even looking at the room he would strip her down, tie her up outside, beat her for good measure then mutilate her worse than her greyscale ever had and leave her there until he was satisfied that she'd learned her lesson, a fate she was very keen to avoid.

That left her in the uncomfortable spot of needing more food to make the journey but being unable to gather it quickly. She already only got portions barely big enough to keep her alive and somewhat healthy thanks to the fact that the women who cooked hated her as much as the others and gave her as little as they could get away with without Craster noticing. That meant she very rarely got the chance to get food that she could store, especially since it had to last at least for long enough for her to actually store the damn stuff, a kind of food they basically never got.

So, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either she stayed, allowing Craster to continue his advances until such a time as she had enough stored food that she could actually leave and have a decent chance of escaping. But doing that meant she might end up doing more than just warming his bed, a fate she was rather hoping to avoid for obvious reasons. She would honestly be just the tiniest fractional bit more open to it if she had some way to brew moon-tea, it would give her that barrier of safety. It would still be hell to give up her body like that, but compared to running off half-cocked and dying out in the wild, it was the barely-lesser of two evils.

Her other choice was to leave as soon as she could, maybe attempting to break into the food room and stealing some. Craster was going to be pissed at her escaping anyway so having her escape and also stealing food honestly wouldn't be able to make things worse. The problem there was that she didn't doubt that if anybody caught her, they would relish seeing her, the 'golden girl', being punished by Craster for something. Every time she'd fucked something up, even for minor fuck-ups, she always had an eager audience for her punishments, even if it was just being smacked about.

If she was caught stealing and left naked, beaten black and blue, cut up in some way then left tied up outside in the cold she was honestly unsure if she'd even survive for an hour with how much the other girls loathed her very existence. Sure, they wouldn't directly do it, but she didn't put it past the hunting girls to bait a predator back to maul her while she was defenceless. Craster wouldn't be able to blame them if it ended up that an animal had found her and chewed her throat out.

But, if she didn't steal food and simply left with what she had, she ran the significant risk of running out. Hiking so far every single day would mean she would absolutely need a decent portion of food every day or she would simply collapse from lack of energy, especially over rough terrain. If she made it halfway and ran out, that meant 150 kilometres of trekking with no food. Maybe a person could achieve that with an ample supply of water and decent conditions, but she was in the True North, it was about as inhospitable as you could get.

Biting her lip to focus herself, she resolutely didn't shudder as she felt Craster tighten his grip on her slightly, pulling her closer to him. At the very fucking least, he hadn't reached the state where he began getting fat and out of shape, he still had the body of a fighter, with distinct abs and broad muscles on his arms. He wasn't even bald yet, he still had a decent head of dark hair that was just beginning to give way to whiteness.

Not that she wanted anything at all to do with the man in that regard, just the thought threatened to break her composure. But it really was a choice between two different versions of hell. There was the version where she stayed there, allowing Craster to continue until he inevitably satisfied his growing desire for her, or she tried to leave before she was ready and probably ended up a frozen corpse, fit only to be revived by the Night's King or one of his White Walkers to join his army as a wight.

Karina pressed her teeth together, another shift from Craster making her have to fight to resist her shuddering revulsion at feeling him pull her closer. No, she couldn't do it. Even if she ended up freezing to death and being raised as a wight, she could not and would not be able to live with herself if she allowed Craster to go that far. Maybe it was shortsighted and she should swallow down her own revulsion in favour of survival, but honestly, if survival meant being raped by Craster?

Survival was not worth it, not even to her.

A few nights later, Karina finally made her move.

Craster hadn't shown any indication that he knew she was planning to escape, which fitted with the fact that he didn't seem able to really read minds, it was more like a sort of danger-sense that was between him and the other girls, telling him whether they were a threat to him or not. As such, she was able to prepare in secret. And when she finally decided she was ready, she acted.

At night, the loghouse was asleep, with only a few of the girls being awake for whatever reason, none of whom noticed her slipping through the darkened room. Her first move was to breach the room that stored food, it was an absolute requirement for her making it to the coast. Using one of her daggers, she silently hewed away at the wood, spending maybe ten minutes quietly cutting and chipping to expose the lock and allow the door to swing open. Once inside, she moved quickly, taking the highest-density foods, the nuts, seeds, cereals, dried fruits and meats, anything she could stuff into her makeshift bag.

When it was full enough, she exited the loghouse, sneaking through the darkness silently and avoiding any of the girls who were awake. At one point one of the girls directly above her shifted, possibly smelling the faint smell of food from her bag, but she didn't awaken. As soon as she was outside she dipped sideways, making her way along the building and very quickly unearthing a second bag containing all of her things.

She put that bag inside the larger bag and pulled tight the string she'd attached to it, pulling the mouth of the bag shut. It wasn't well-made at all, but it was all she could manage since none of the other girls would help her, they'd probably rather sabotage the bag and ruin it. But even with her rudimentary ability to stitch, learned from stitching her own wounds shut before she had died, she was able to make an acceptable bag with two tough leather handles she'd affixed to act as shoulder straps.

Slinging the bag onto her back, she glanced at the loghouse and oriented herself facing west, then set off. Heading east was both a longer journey, and would leave her facing the open ocean. While she felt like she could make a crappy raft of some kind, she wouldn't even trust herself to make one able to get across a river without the raft failing, let alone open waters.

So while it wasn't the direction she wanted to go, she would have to try and find the Gorge, and from there either climb down it and back up the other side, or find the Bridge of Skulls and cross there. If she encountered any crows, her plan was to pretend to have been abandoned in the north by slavers because of her greyscale. Since she was able to read and write and attempt to communicate with eloquence, she was fairly confident in being able to convince them that at the very least she was clearly educated and not a normal wildling.

If she encountered wildlings, her best bet was to hide or run really. She estimated that she could take down a single wildling, maybe two if she caught one by surprise. But three or more and that was where she was far less confident. Her stature would help her in some regards, but hinder her in others. Her shorter legs meant she couldn't move as quickly, and shorter arms meant she couldn't reach as far as them, as well as the fact that she was using daggers, already a short weapon. In an actual fight, she was seriously disadvantaged, and it was made worse by the fact she wasn't a boy. At least if she was male she'd have testosterone helping her, but no, she was a girl, she had the ever-so-fucking-helpful estrogen, absolutely fucking useless to her in terms of making her better in a fight.

Clicking her tongue, she started to implement a few anti-tracking techniques she knew, namely walking in places where her footfalls wouldn't be visible like clumps of leaves, the wind shifting the leaves and making her footsteps invisible, deliberately walking backwards in the same direction to confuse anybody looking at her tracks, making short trails away from her actual route, but for the most part, she simply kept her speed at a fairly brutal 3km/h pace.

Even if Craster tried to send someone, or several someones, to bring her back, unless they could beat her speed, they wouldn't catch her, and they likely wouldn't even know she was gone until the morning. Since they had no horses or anything of the sort, they could only walk or run after her. Running would fuck with their endurance, and they'd burn out long before they reached her.

Tying a particularly leafy and large fallen branch to her wrist with one of her few and precious sinewy bindings which had previously been used to tie her sled together, she used that to brush the snow behind her, obscuring her footfalls and making tracking her even more difficult. It was a shame to have to dismantle it, but dragging a sled would leave even more obvious trails behind her, and she could use the bindings for other purposes.

She glanced behind herself, looking at the mildly disturbed snow that was already being covered up by the ever-present snowfall, nodded, then turned and continued walking.