Two things.

Firstly, the poll hath spoken, and I do say unto thee...the story will go the original direction! I was actually kinda expecting people to go for the looper option more but hey, that's exactly why I made the poll, to see what you lot wanted so I could write that! And secondly...I have forgotten what I wanted to say...oh, right, I totally forgot that Karina only has one working eye. Yeah, that was funny to remember, and just shows how long it's been since I wrote for this story.

Also sorry that this is literally coming out 8 hours late! I left the announcement chapter up, so when it came time to upload I was super confused because I thought I messed up and uploaded an extra chapter somewhere by accident since I couldn't find the chapter I was meant to upload today (I upload to Pat reon, then on the next Mon/Thurs that chapter goes up on Fanfiction). So yeah, oopsie!

Chapter 6

Blinking awake, Karina realised with a muted shock that she had actually woken up.

Her chest still hurt pretty badly, the same with her arm, but that pain was good, it was something to focus on. Though, she couldn't do that for long, she needed to know her situation. The stone above her was lit with a yellowish light, so when she included the crackling sounds she could hear, that meant she was in a cave and there was a fire. Karina lifted her head a little, her eye quickly focusing on the face of a man, the same one who had caught her in a trap before. "Awake already? Guess it really does make you tougher living up in the True North."

Karina shifted, then used her hands to lever herself up. Or at least, she tried to. As she placed weight on her right hand a nasty spike of pain shot up her arm, making her fall right back down to being flat. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, you wouldn't want to start bleeding again, you're anemic enough as it is." Frowning, Karina pushed with her legs and adjusted herself so she could at least see the man whilst still laying down.

Her arm still throbbed with pain, and so she moved it to try and make herself more comfortable, frowning as she felt something...weird. "I'm going to pre-emptively tell you that I did what I had to do to give you a better chance of survival." Glancing at the man, he mimed a cutting motion. "Gangrene." That was all he said, letting her process his words in silence. Gangrene, dying flesh. That meant her arm had taken so much damage that the blood supply to her hand and possibly further had been cut off, and so, to give her a better chance of survival, he...sliced.

Instead of trying to move again, she focused on the cover she was using, realising with some muted amusement that it was a wolf pelt. "Yeah, that's right." Glancing at the man, he gestured to the side, her eye following to see the bones of the wolf she had killed, which had been skinned and the meat all harvested. "That wolf's meat and pelt kept you alive y'know, I didn't have enough food on me to keep you alive and you'd never have made it anywhere in your condition. So, I guess in a way it saved your life, but it also put you in that situation to begin with." Shrugging lightly, Karina laid back down, still eyeing the man cautiously.

Something about him tickled at her brain, he must have been a character at some point, but who she had absolutely no idea. As far as she was aware, the Greyjoy Rebellion was either about to start or had just ended, so this man was an enigma to her, because she couldn't remember anyone who fit his character. Well, it was definitely someone, he was too familiar for her to not already know him as a character, but who exactly it was she didn't know.

It was endlessly annoying not being able to ask for his name, and even if she had something to write on, there was no guarantee that English was the written word. "Well, since I have saved your life and showed mercy to you, maybe you could answer a few more yes or no questions?" Blinking, Karina shrugged, looking towards the man. "When you crossed the Bridge of Skulls, was there anybody around, or any evidence someone had been there recently, tracks or snapped twigs?" Karina thought back, going over what she'd seen carefully before shaking her head.

He didn't ask another question for a while, and she had almost fallen asleep when he spoke again. "Have you heard any rumors of a man gathering free folk to him?" Raising an eyebrow, Karina shook her head. That meant whoever he was, he knew about Mance Rayder. The only person she knew of in the Night's Watch that fit his physical description and was high enough rank to know about a man like that was Benjen Stark...maybe he actually was Benjen Stark? He had the right hair colour, beard and his facial features were...sort-of right?

Benjen Stark wasn't one of those characters she had been thinking about, and it had been literal years, so his features were not quite as clear in her mind as she would have hoped. After some time tossing the thought about in her mind, Karina caught his attention by lifting her hand. Before he could think maybe she needed help, she pointed at the wolf carcass, then at him.

At first, he was confused by what she was trying to say, but after a moment he seemed to get it. "Haha, have you heard of the Starks, the Defenders of the North? I'm not surprised if you had, many a Stark has led armies north to battle the Kings Beyond The Wall, so I suppose to the free folk, we'd seem like perfect bedtime story monsters." Karina grinned, and a moment later he sighed and shook his head. "And look at me, giving away information for free like that. Yes, I am a Stark. Does that worry you?"

She immediately rolled her eye and let her head fall back to the bundle beneath her, looking up at the ceiling once again. So, he was a Stark, which practically guaranteed that he was Benjen, because he was the only one who would be in the Night's Watch at that time, Jon was far, far too young for that, he would be like 8 years old at the time after all. "So, I do wonder why you came south. What might you be running from?"

Using her left arm to support herself a little, Karina forced herself to sit up, meeting his eyes dead-on for a moment as she tried to figure out how to communicate to him what she had run from. After a moment, she gestured at her chest, more specifically her breasts, then make a fist motion, tightly gripping her hand together, then gestured down at roughly where her privates were under the pelt. "So, someone who controlled you, and wanted you for your body-" He said as she gestured, stopping when she gestured between her legs. "Right. As good a reason as any to want to flee the north."

Smirking, Karina looked around herself, then grasped the pelt and shimmied up to lean against the cave wall beside her, not removing her right arm from beneath the pelt, since she didn't want to look at it, it would make it too real and she couldn't handle that quite yet. "So, what was your plan, just head south, avoiding people as much as possible, then live in a forest or something?" Humming, Karina used her left hand to give a so-so gesture, then gestured up, left, right and down. "Compass directions?" Nodding, she then gestured to the right. "So west?" Shaking her head, she gestured the other way, rolling her eye as he chuckled.

"So, east...Skagos?" Shaking her head, she gestured left several times, then mimed walking before then waves, pointing east once again. "Essos?" She then pointed north, then east, then more waves. "...Ibben?" Nodding, she let her arm drop into her lap, smiling at him. "How would you know about Ibben?" She shrugged, miming speaking, then cradling her hand to the side of her head and rocking herself. "Stories?" Karina nodded quickly, her hand coming down to move the wolf pelt a little.

Once she was comfortable, Karina caught the man's attention, not quite sure whether he actually was Benjen or not. She then mimed buttoning a shirt, gesturing at her chest. "Oh, yes I had to remove your top clothes, the wolf had absolutely shredded the front of what you were wearing. I would say sorry, but I'm sure you're mature enough to understand why I did it, and it wasn't to peek at the chest of an underdeveloped girl."

Folding her arms over, Karina caught the first glimpse of her...arm, and her eye became affixed upon the bound end with laser focus. It literally just...stopped, about halfway down her forearm, it was just...gone. What the fuck was she meant to do now? She was already fucked over by only having one eye and a face marked with greyscale scars, and now she was missing her arm as well. She wouldn't be able to easily survive on her own, she wouldn't be able to use a bow and arrow or anything of that nature, so hunting would be hard, and building somewhere safe? Even more impossible.

"Hey." Her eye snapped up at the sudden noise, looking towards the man who had done it to her. "Look, I get it, you lost an arm. But at least you didn't lose your life. So, I don't want you giving up the chance you're given. Hell, if the other scars you carry are any indication, it takes more than some shitty luck to get you to lie down and give up." He then frowned, touching the fingertips of his hands together. "How about this...you come with me to Castle Black?" Blinking, Karina tilted her head to the side, making him narrow his eyes.

She gestured at herself, then with her one hand mimed stabbing and clawing motions, then at herself again. "As you guessed, I'm a Stark, our words carry great weight. Even if I am a sworn brother of the Night's Watch, my words should be enough to give you protection." Karina snorted, then mimed pulling at her chest and then again gestured at her lower half. "I...yeah, I guess that's true. The Night's Watch isn't what it used to be, most of the men would jump at the chance to take a woman, so give them a mute, one-eyed and one-armed defenceless girl and they'd probably try it, damn the consequences."

Dropping her hand into her lap, Karina then lifted her head and mimed stabbing again, then pretended to sheath an invisible dagger before drawing it again, miming that a few times. "Oh, your daggers are just here. I didn't want you to wake up delirious and try to hurt yourself or me." He picked up one of her daggers from beside himself, placing it back down again. It wasn't like she would actually attack him, not after he'd literally kept her alive and made a hard decision for her in order to save her life, but he didn't know that.

For all he knew, she was just waiting for an opportunity to murder a crow.

After about a day of resting and being occasionally peppered with questions, Karina made her decision, which was that staying at Castle Black would not be in her best interest.

The main issue was that she was a girl and the Night's Watch was full of rapists, murderers and generally the scum of the Seven Kingdoms. That didn't mean she wasn't going to go there in order to heal and try to see if she could get any kind of support from Benjen, who had actually told her his name after he realised she didn't actually know, not that it mattered. What she wanted was to get an opportunity to travel south with some form of protection, hopefully to Winterfell.

It went literally exactly against her intentions, getting mixed up with main characters, but if his brother vouched for her in any way, perhaps Eddard Stark would at least hear her out if she went to him with plans and information for things that the world hadn't seen yet. Since she only had one working hand, protecting herself would be hard. As such, she wanted to make a matchlock pistol, or more accurately several of them, since she couldn't exactly reload easily either. Doing that meant finding a skilled carpenter and blacksmith, as well as the raw resources for actually producing such a thing.

In return, she would need to have something to provide, so the knowledge of how to make glass would likely suffice, since as far as she knew, Lys was the only place on Planetos that produced glass. Winterfell had the Glass Gardens, greenhouses that were heated by hot springs and used to produce food during the winter, so Eddard knew the immense value of glass, and would likely be wiling to fulfil her comparatively tiny request in return for being able to build more glass gardens.

Plus, at the same time, it would place her in a unique and vaguely well-protected position. Nobody would place much attention upon her, but at the same time, she would be ostensibly under Eddard's protection, not that he knew of the game of thrones and how dangerous it would be to be involved even so distantly, nor that he was protecting her just by allowing her to stay in Winterfell.

Of course, that required any of her plans to succeed, and she doubted they would. She had to live at Castle Black for a period, then travel south to Winterfell after her injuries had been given a while to heal, then get an audience with Eddard Stark and convince him just with writing and gestures that she wanted to trade some resources and connections for the knowledge of how to create glass, then hope he didn't just toss her out.

For all she knew, Eddard already knew how to make glass, and her bargaining chip would be useless. She wouldn't be able to offer...well, anything really. She knew herself well, and she was not suited for doing anything regarding being a servant or caretaker, which were the only roles she could even take in his home itself, not that he'd likely trust a fucking wildling to be bear his family. For all she knew he would send her north and force her beyond the wall or possibly kill her for whatever reason, though that was one of the least likely outcomes, Eddard was far too honourable for that kind of action.

Penicillin, plumbing and physics would all be great, except she didn't know enough about any of them, she had only scraped by in school, and had been more focused on not getting shot to shit later in her life, so had no time to brush up on how penicillin was made or how plumbing worked. Then again, Tyrion said he handled the plumbing in Casterly Rock for a while and did a good job of it, so that meant plumbing already existed, or maybe it just meant he organised the logistics of emptying latrines efficiently?

Whatever the case was, those ideas would be out of her reach simply because she didn't know the methods behind them. Perhaps teaching Eddard about basic hygiene and disease prevention would make him grateful, but the issue again was making him trust her words. She was, in his eyes, uneducated at best, utterly backwards at worse, so he'd likely not actually take in a single word she wrote to him.

Maybe it really would be better to just find her way to Skagos and just hide out there instead of trying anything fancier.

A bit short...I blame Factorio!