Author's Note:

Sam chapter! Because how can anyone do a Game of Thrones fic without a Sam chapter? Dude killed a White Walker a few seasons before anyone else. He gave Gilly his mother's thimble for safekeeping. He stole Heartsbane from his awful father. He discovered where the Dragonglass is buried. And, most importantly, he healed (peeled? – oh my god, that was pretty intense) Jorah of greyscale. If that doesn't guarantee him MVP status, I'm not sure what does. #TeamSam

Real life obligations will prevent me from updating next week *sad face* but I'll be back soon, m'dears. Much love/thanks to all those reading, liking and commenting! :)

Sam

"Nightshade, willow, pennyroyal, dahlia root, milk of the poppy…," Sam muttered over the names as he moved from left to right along the narrow shelves of the apothecary's stores in Winterfell. The herbs were housed in glass bottles, some squat and some tall, filled with all varieties of leaves, grounds, powder and colored liquids.

Sam had a pen and ledger in his hands, as he so often did, this time to take full inventory of Winterfell's medicinal supplies. Sansa had collected much before winter set in and restocked where needed, but she had no maester available to give her a list of what would be in highest demand over a long, cold winter. She guessed well, but they would run out of most if not all by the end, in any case.

"…snakeroot, sage, mandrake, wormwood, tansy, shade of evening—" Sam blinked twice on that one, taking down the cobalt blue bottle and tipping the liquid slightly sideways. It shimmered a little when tilted.

There wasn't much of it left and the bottle was dusty enough that it wasn't one of Sansa's purchases. Old Maester Luwin wouldn't have imbibed such a dangerous drink, would he? Sam had read somewhere that it was favored by the Warlocks of Qarth, turning their lips blue and their minds hazy. He shrugged and replaced the bottle, making a note on his ledger. Research other uses for shade of evening…and took another step to his right.

"Watch out!" Came a little voice from almost directly beneath him. Sam lifted the ledger from under his nose to find Little Sam sprawled on his belly on the floor between the narrow shelves, raising both his little hands in warning.

Little Sam had a dozen or so tin knights and soldiers set up around him, together with wooden blocks, pine cones, sea stones and other odds and ends that the little four-year-old had collected from various places and which he usually kept in a box of "treasures." Today, he was using the treasures to build a small castle which his tin soldiers could defend…primarily from giants not watching their step.

Sam's foot had nearly knocked over one of Little Sam's towers, with two tin knights on the wooden block wall bracing for impact.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sam apologized to his son, side-stepping the minor catastrophe at the last minute. He took a better look at the tower and found his mother's thimble on top of one of Little Sam's towers, acting as a sensible turret.

Little Sam was now staring up at his father with his chin in his hands and a little look that plainly said, "move along."

"I'll just…shall I?" Sam added with a congenial, put upon air of formal court manners, folding his ledger half-closed while shuffling carefully around his son's building space to continue his inventory without destroying the little boy's creation. "Yes, pardon me, Lord Tarly."

With his chin still firmly cradled in his little hands, Little Sam grinned at the last comment and then continued his castle construction.

Sam had to step over Ghost as well, who was always nearby, and this time sprawled on the other side of Little Sam's castle lazily, his nose incorporated as part of the scene, as three tin soldiers had been placed with their tiny tin swords raised against the monster at their gates. A quick snort of breath from Ghost would flatten them easily enough, but the soldiers bravely persevered. And the white direwolf didn't seem to mind their presence, as he was dozing, half asleep.

"And there we go," Sam muttered to himself as he dodged the last of the possible missteps. He had reached the end of the row and leaned back, flipping the ledger open again, to write in the last entries, "…lily of the roadside, rose hips, ginseng, mushroom, isinglass, chamomile and ginger root."

"Ginger root," Little Sam parroted from the floor, as he pushed himself off the floor to walk around to the other side of his castle. He sat down again beside Ghost, squeezing between the wolf and the shelf, propping himself up against the massive direwolf's furry, white foreleg, as he reached across to better position his men against the onslaught that they might soon face…should the tricky direwolf make his inevitable move.

Ghost was now very used to being crawled over and mauled by Little Sam. The boy and the direwolf had been nearly inseparable since the night after the last battle, as Ghost now stayed close to Sam, and Little Sam liked no better company than his father. Which is why Gilly had left the toddler in Sam's care while he spent the early afternoon perusing and taking inventory of the remaining medical supplies in Maester Luwin's old quarters.

Once finished, Sam gingerly stepped back over his son and the wolf—"Yes, not to worry, momentary inconvenience, I promise"—returning to the front of the shelves, where the room opened into an oval-shaped work space, its door open to the stone hall just beyond.

Sam set his ledger down on a bench cluttered with herb dust and draught residue, half-empty bottles, mortars and pestles. He was still talking to himself, something about "but if we have a case of winter fever we'll go through the whole bottle in a week" while he wandered over to Maester Luwin's bookshelves on the opposite side of the room, searching for a volume that he remembered seeing when he first glanced at these shelves, months and months ago.

"Ah," he said when he found it, slipping the book from the shelf and flipping its old pages with care. The scrolling script on the cover read A Complete Study on Northern Remedies.

Sam was soon thoroughly engrossed in the book's pages, complete with pen and ink illustrations and Maester Luwin's notes in the margins, and missed the sad but inevitable defeat of Little Sam's tin soldiers.

Ghost yawned once and shifted his head on his forepaws, knocking both the soldiers and the pine cone gates down accidently. It was a complete massacre. Little Sam's cry of despair was tempered by his natural impulse to accept the inevitable. He took after his mother, Gilly, in this way and cut his losses with impressive patience for a four-year-old, closing his eyes somewhat melodramatically and lying back against the direwolf's furry side with a heavy, little sigh.

Sam also missed Tyrion entering the room, and the dwarf's amused glance toward Little Sam and the wolf. The little boy was ridiculously small compared to his animal companion, and when he sank against the wolf's ribs he was almost hidden by the white fur that surrounded him. He remained in a state of despair for only a moment, recovering quickly to begin rebuilding his castle gates, petting Ghost's head softly with one hand while piling up blocks and pine cones with the other.

The direwolf shifted his head slightly, cheek resting against Little Sam's bent knee, fully willing to accept the freely offered scratching.

"I had a dog when I was young too," Tyrion commented on the scene, without precursor, directing his words at the child, but pulling Sam out of his book abruptly in the process. Sam had finally learned his lesson about ignoring someone's words for the pages of a book—Gilly rarely let him forget it. Tyrion continued, "But he was about ten sizes smaller than yours."

The boy smiled a small smile, too quiet and shy around strangers to say anything back. Although, Tyrion wasn't really a stranger now. Winterfell was too small to keep any of them strangers for long. But still, Gilly taught her son caution above all else—caution, silence and self-reliance.

The smiling was something he'd learned from Sam.

"Ghost is…well, he's a beast really," Sam said, lowering A Complete Study of Northern Remedies, with his forefinger marking his page as a makeshift bookmark. He continued, as was his habit, as if they had been talking on the subject for some time, musing aloud, "Even for a direwolf, he's quite large. And to think he began as the runt of the litter—that's something isn't it? I suppose starting small doesn't mean you'll necessarily stay that way."

"Some of us don't grow at all, Maester Tarly," Tyrion replied dryly.

"Oh!" Sam suddenly realized how his comment fell on the Imp's ears and chattered on with a flood of quick apologies, ending with, "I meant no offense, Lord Tyrion."

"None taken," Tyrion assured him immediately, his tone losing most of its natural facetiousness. Samwell Tarly, in his bumbling, good-natured presence, tended to bring out the sincerity in everyone around him. Without his usual snark, Tyrion seemed at a loss for words.

"Was there something you needed, my lord?" Sam prodded, kindly. The boy and the wolf were watching the dwarf with mild interest as well.

"The Winterfell glass houses…," Tyrion began, perhaps to comment on their near non-existence. The main glass house had been heavily damaged by Viserion's attack on Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton's ill-fated tenancy of the castle before that. The Boltons were not the type to encourage cultivation and growth and the winter gardens were left to go fallow. Tyrion finished simply, "I've decided to take up gardening."

In the middle of winter? Sam waited for a clever comment but none came. Tyrion just nodded. He was serious.

"In the middle of winter," Sam repeated the words aloud, with sudden, wide-eyed excitement, wondering why he hadn't thought of repairing the glass houses himself. Sure, much of the glass in the main house had been destroyed but the smaller glass houses were still intact and they could salvage the surviving panes from the others and rebuild on a smaller scale. Winterfell was home to far less residents now than in its heyday and every little bit helped. Why, they could grow any number of herbs, vegetables, even flowers…Sam turned towards Maester Luwin's bookshelves once more, glancing over its contents with a librarian's eye for useful titles.

"Here we are," he said with a grin, as he slipped Winter Botany from the shelf to join A Complete Study of Northern Remedies in his arms, shrugging his big shoulders. "I always find if you start with a book, everything else seems to fall into place…"

While he rebuilt his garrison of tin soldiers, Little Sam nodded along with his father's immutable wisdom.