Jon Snow considered himself a decent intelligent man. He was well aware that he didn't have Sansa's sharp cleverness, Davos's wise mind or Sam's knowledgeable brain, but still, he was a capable man in war and life. And yet, his little sister Arya was a mystery he couldn't seem to solve.
He used to read her so well, so easily. Arya was Jon's favorite sibling and his best friend growing up, as much Theon used to tease him about it. From the moment she learned to walk she was following him around Winterfell, much to the chagrin of Lady Stark. The day of Arya's fourth name day, she refused to sit at the feast her parents organised in her honour until Jon was allowed to sit at the big table with them. Robb once told him that when Sansa explained to her why Jon was a Snow and not a Stark, she had runned to the Lord's and Lady's chambers and screamed so loud that she was hoarse for two days, even though she never mentioned anything about it to him.
It wasn't only the fact that she was the only person at Winterfell who didn't treat him as Ned Stark's bastard what made him care so much about her. It was her wild and open nature, a little girl that since the moment she learned to talk wasn't afraid to speak her mind, even when her own mother told her it was wrong. A little girl in a tiny body with a giant heart. She was the north, he used to think, all wolf.
Now when he looked at her, he could still see the north -but not for the same reasons than years ago. Now, she was burning ice. The passionate words had transformed into sharp-to-the-point statements that did not leave room for argument. The act now and think later that she used to live by changed into careful observation and deliberate acts. Even the way she walked into rooms was different: before, she would thrust into a room and no one would have missed Arya. Now, even when he was looking for her in a place when he knew she was, most of the time Jon couldn't find her until she decided to speak up.
The only things that didn't seem to change was Arya's refusal to act and dress like a proper highborn lady, and her enthusiasm for training and fighting. Tough now, she was the one teaching instead of learning.
Jon had never seen anything like it. Arya's fighting was like dancing, like water running down a river, always moving, never in the same place twice. The first time she mentioned that she was going to train the common folk for the battle with Brianne of Tarth, Jon smiled and said "Did you follow her until she said she'll teach you?". Arya just smiled, but Jon didn't miss the quick nervous look that Sansa threw between them. Later that day, Sansa found him in the courtyard and said "Make sure you make it to the training tomorrow, Jon. You need to see it". She refused to elaborate, so Jon assumed that she was worried about the kind of people their little sister was going to be training with. He would have never imagined what she actually meant, because not even in his darkest nightmares Jon would have expected his little tiny sister to know how to fight like that. Old northmen fighters, the free folk, and even the Dothoraky would stop to watch her. He saw some of them pushing their young ones towards the training field, whispering them to pay attention.
Jon knew, without a doubt, that Arya could take him in a fight.
It wasn't until the Unsullied started to avoid Arya, to the point of some of them literally stopping flat in their feet before turning around to walk in the other direction when they saw her, that Jon started to seriously wonder where and how Arya learned to fight. He also noticed that every time Arya was in the war council at the same time as Daenerys, Grey Worm would stay as close to the Dragon Queen as he was possible. Jon wondered when Daenerys was going to notice, and if he should try to force the answers out of the soldier, but in the end he decided to take care of it later. It wasn't as if they hadn't enough problems to worry about.
Still, there were moments when Jon could see the little girl Arya once was, and glimpses of the young woman she would have become in another life.
The evening of the day Jon returned to Winterfell, after the small feast in the honour of Daenerys, all four of the remaining Ned Stark's children huddled together in Sansa's room. There was so much to say, and yet, none of them seem to know how to start. So they made a silent agreement to not talk that night about everything they had been through since the last time they were all together, after all, it was a happy enough day. Instead, they sat and drank ale and laughed about the way that Tormount looked at Brianne, and about the way the Mormont men would run around doing anything to stay in the good graces of their little Lady. That night, Arya laughed with bright, honest eyes after Sansa pointed out that their mother would have been horrified to see the state of Bran's hair and Bran, for the first time since Jon arrived, showed any kind of emotion in the form of a frown and said "Stay away of my head, Sansa".
A few days later, Jon had walked into the forge with Davos to check the progress in the dragon glass weapons. He wasn't expecting the amount of weapons they had managed to finish in such short amount of time, and he surely wasn't expecting to find Arya sitting legs crossed in top of a work table, untouched bowl of soup in her hands, with Gendry next to her, reluctantly chewing a piece of bread. "You can't help anybody if you work yourself to death" she was saying, wearing the annoyed expression that he often saw in her while training particularly ungifted men. Jon could see Gendry muttering something, but the forge was loud and they were far enough away that Jon couldn't hear it. Arya rolled her eyes, and smacked him in the back of the head. The way she did it was so Arya that it made Jon freeze for a second, almost seeing the little girl she once was sitting at that table. But then Davos shifted next to him and the moment passed, and Arya noticed them standing there. Her mask was back on an instant, but neither Jon or Davos could have missed the way that she stood up and walked slightly in front of Gendry, as she could hide him from sight. The message was loud and clear, and much as Jon's brotherly instincts told him to do something, anything, he rationally knew that Gendry was a good lad and that Arya was capable of defending herself.
The dead were getting closer everyday, and every man, woman and child was working since sunrise to make sure they were as ready as they could be. Which meant that Arya and Brianne of Tarth spent most of the day in what was now their field, beating the hell of every poor bastard that came across them. They both seemed to particularly enjoy sweeping the floor with the face of Jamie Lannister, which wasn't a surprise. What was surprising was the fact that the Lannister didn't complain at all, instead he would get up, make a joke and get back at it. The Hound was also around every time Jon passed by, barking at young people that if they "keep fighting like that, you'll be dead in five minutes". Jon had deduced that Arya and The Hound had met before, but none of them seemed inclined to tell the tale. They would bicker and curse each other with words that would make a wilding blush, but there never was real heat behind the words. Again, whenever Jon saw her with him, she looked a little bit more like the Arya he remembered.
So, Jon knew that Arya was still there, buried underneath layers and layers of ice and stone. Even though those moments that gave him hope were few and short, and that Arya always tried to build higher walls around her everytime she acted like anything but heartless. The cracks in her walls were there, and he hoped that one day, she would feel safe enough to be herself again.