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Ten thousand marching boots beat a tattoo against the earth, carving a path through snow, to Winterfell, to home. Mounted high on war-hardened horses sat remnants of her past and whispers of her future. Jon rides by, solemn as a king. He is weathered by long years and cold winters on the Wall, but his face brings back memories of warm fires, afternoons under the sun-dappled branches of the weirwood, stolen laughter at the far end of a banquet hall. She almost calls out to him, his name is on her lips, but her eyes shift to the silver-haired woman riding beside him. They don't touch or speak, but she can feel the tenuous strings between them, bonds forged in fire and ice.
There are others with them, faces she doesn't recognize, and some faces she does. Tyrion Lannister rattles by in a carriage, Lord Varys across from him. Both faces are lined with long years and the heavy burdens of more than one kingdom. They speak to each other with the levity of old friends, weather-worn and tired.
A scowl steals over her face, unbidden, at the sight of The Hound astride a large destrier, a horse as monstrous as he. She had thought him almost certainly dead, but she supposes she shouldn't be surprised to discover that he is made of sterner stuff. The last time she had seen him, he'd been lying on the ground, blood leaking from wounds uncounted and untended. She had left him to die amongst the gray rocks of the valley of the Vale, begging for wine or death or both.
Behind him, another man rides into view, and Arya's breath catches in her throat. All the sudden, she's a thousand miles away with the Brotherhood, and begging him to come here, to Winterfell. She can see him, standing over Dondarrion's armor, sweat rolling off him from the heat of a makeshift forge. His arms are crossed, his blue eyes distant, ashamed, proud. "These men are brothers. They're a family," he says to her in the dark reaches of her mind. "I've never had a family."
"I can be your family," she tells him now, quietly, as he follows the current to her ancestral home, but he's already gone.
Later, as she walks away from the smithy, her heart hums a soft song. 'You look good', he had said to her, and he had smiled and teased her, warmth in the ice-blue of his eyes, a smile on his lips. She had smiled back, and it had been easy, so easy, to pretend that a thousand years ago, he'd said yes; Yes, I'll come with you. Yes, I'll be your family, too.
Author's Note: Well, that's it. Read and review, thanks for your time!