Author's Note: I heart Gilly and Sam. That is all. Xo

Gilly

"Come to bed, Sam," Gilly had poked her head into the library at Winterfell, where Sam was busy scribbling away under flickering candles that had burned themselves nearly to stubs in the earliest hours of morning. Sam hadn't noticed the time. He didn't notice when the night became morning. He didn't hear the howling winds or feel the bitter chill in the room. He hadn't noticed much of anything, honestly, too intent on recording it all. Everything that happened the day before. And in the days before that. The armies, the snows, the dragons, the Night King, Daenerys Stormborn, Jon. All of it. He had to get it down while it was still fresh in his mind.

At Gilly's words, Ghost's eyes opened and the white direwolf glanced up at the wildling woman. He was lying on the floor, curled up near Sam's feet. He had been there for some time, since he padded his way into the library hours ago, after giving up on a vain search throughout the many rooms of the Keep, searching for his master. But his master was not here. Jon was not here. Ghost kept his furry chin on his forepaws, while watching Gilly intently. She said, with some exasperation, "Sam? Did you hear me?"

"Yes, yes," the big man muttered, not lifting his eyes from the ink and parchment. The nib of the pen scratched, scratched, scratched over his furious recordings. When he finished the page, he set it aside to dry and grabbed another. "I have to finish this first."

"It'll keep until tomorrow," Gilly argued, leaning her head against the door. "We're all worn out. Everyone went to bed hours ago."

"Not everyone," Sam answered, sparing one quick glance at Ghost, whose forlorn eyes met Sam's in mutual agreement. They had made a silent pact, the man and the wolf. Neither would be sleeping this night.

"Alright, everyone but wild animals then," she corrected, with her usual brand of dry observation. She released her hold on the iron doorknob and walked over to his cluttered desk. She was dressed in a nightgown but had wrapped herself in a heavy wool shawl. More than anyone else in the northern castle, Gilly was accustomed to cold, stormy nights. But even she shivered at the sound of the fierce storm still raging outside. The candles flickered on every draft that swept through the library.

Her hands lingered on a row of dusty volumes lining the sagging shelf behind Sam. She let her fingers run over the old bindings, raised text and frayed edges. Of all the strange, new wonders she'd seen below the Wall, fine castles and silk clothes, great feasts and steel armor, stone roads and warm weather—she didn't care for any of it.

Except books. Gilly loved books. And words. And the fact that a few slashes on paper could suddenly take her mind halfway around the world or far into the past. There was more magic in reading than these southern lords and ladies realized. Most of the southerners, she amended in her head, thinking of little Shireen Baratheon, the sweet princess with the scarred face who first taught Gilly the shape and sound of the black slashes on these pages. Letters and words. S for snake and serpent and sadness. S for Sam.

And Sam too. He knew the value of words. Gilly could easily remember the vivid joy written all over his face when he rejoined her and Little Sam after that first hour in the Citadel at Oldtown, after exploring the great library of the maesters. He described, with such wonder, the towers upon towers of books and scrolls and parchments that filled every nook and cranny of the place. Books had told Sam how to kill White Walkers and where to find underground stores of dragonglass and how to cure the same disease that had scarred Princess Shireen's face and turned Gilly's sisters into mad women.

A book had told them the truth about Jon Snow.

Her hand fell from the shelves, fingers lingering over one more random binding as she drew her hand back. She wandered to Sam's writing desk, where she picked up the parchment that sat drying. She read the words Sam had forced onto the paper: Aegon Targaryen, also known as Jon Snow, was among the dead.

Gilly frowned. The statement was too lifeless, too exact and missing…something.

"Sam…," she began timidly.

Not exactly angry but certainly frustrated, Sam put down his pen and took a deep breath. He kept his voice level, as always, but she heard the strain behind his words, "Gilly, I have to do this. I have to write it down, do you understand? If we survive this winter, this story will need to be preserved…so that it can't happen again."

"I know, but do you have to do it all tonight?" she asked gently, worried about him. She took her same wandering hand and brought it down to Sam's bent head, brushing it through his brown hair tenderly. His features softened at the caress, her soft touch breaking down the barrier he had built around himself—in the cold, familiar safety of records and recitations of names, numbers and dates.

He brought the ink-stained fingers of his left hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose as his eyes began to sting. He closed them briefly, while the candles flickered in another heavy draft. Gilly moved closer to him, her elbow resting on his shoulder and her hand still lingering in his hair. He raised his arm around her waist and brought her closer still, in a silent side-embrace that she was only too willing to give.

He shook his head slowly, to himself, not to her. He only roused himself again with steely effort, forcing another sharp inhale of breath, although his lungs weren't quite up for it. He kept Gilly close while he finished, taking up the pen once more. Reaching for the parchment still clutched in her other hand, he placed it back on the writing desk in front of him and then crossed out and scribbled an addition above the very line that had caught her eye in the first place.

In terrible silence, Sam handed the page back to Gilly and waited, watching her expression as her gaze flickered over the simple words he'd written, just black slashes on a white page:

Jon Snow, my brother, is dead.

Gilly set the parchment aside and brought her other hand around to the side of Sam's grief-stricken face, where she wiped away all the tears she found there.