Hardhome part 1
"You were at the Fist of the First Men. If we abandon them, you know what they become. We can learn to live with the wildlings, or we can add them to the army of the dead. Whatever they are now, they're better than that.
"
Jon Snow.
Edaline asked the king what he was planning to do.
It seemed replenishing his never ending hordes was too vague an answer for the likes of her.
He told selective truth, well, he did not lie by omitting some details she did not know to ask about.
His plans were his alone after all he reasoned, and way before she appeared in his unlife like a stubborn storm he couldn't get enough of.
But he told her this part - he wanted to keep the free folk from leaving.
"Why does the fate of the living concern you anyways my love?"
"If they all cross with your brother, how will my kind continue?
Our numbers are small and need to get larger for the long winter ahead"
"Do you bring the long winter or do you come closer with the long winter?" she asked.
He pointedly did not answer that.
But she oddly accepted that lack of answer as she accepted him as he was, like the cold or the tide.
Something that happened. She asked questions about specific details sure - but he sensed it rarely occurred to her to ask him for motivation for his action no more than she would ask the icy wind why it blew.
Once she asked why he was the lord of the winter and the dead.
"I just am.." it never puzzled anyone before, the long nights and icy cold and dying seemed to go together.
"But they don't make sense together - they are not even related" she wondered loudly.
"How so my love" he asked
She absently stroked a frozen black branch next to them.
"Because things of winter, like trees under ice are not dead, things under ice are still alive"- it's not at all the..." she said quietly.
At that moment he would have moved mountains for her if she asked.
So when she asked when do I get to see my brother - naturally he dismissively told her.
"Any time- I you can see him arrive at the village from that hill"
"No… when do I get to SEE my brother, talk to him in person, tell him I am alive and well and put his mind at ease for I have no doubt he still blames himself since I left - I know him"
He blanched at that.
"What? I never said you are allowed to actually go down to the humans and talk to him"
"ALLOWED?! ALLOWED?!" She was up in front of him- face covered in red splotches of fury.
"I have to be allowed to do something?! I am not one of your mindless wights, not one of your turned White Walkers, I am not even bound to you by any stupid Westerosi laws! No one 'gave me away' to you! Here I am a free woman!"
She was the angriest he ever seen her…
"I came here because I wanted to, I stay here, because I want to, and I will come and go as I please!"
She screamed the last part so loud the dead horses a few feet away actually spooked and left the clearing.
He will kill her now he decided. Like he wanted to when they first met!
The wind was howling furiously around and encircling them in a snow funnel and a fence of sharp icicles.
Edaline couldn't stand straight under all that wind and fell on her knees.
No one spoke to him this way.
He was ready to take out his sword to strike her he really was!
He looked at her, she was the most unsubmissive picture of someone kneeling one could imagine.
It actually had to take considerable effort to look this defiant while in that pose.
She was still yelling some no doubt creative things in his directions into the howling wind, he wasn't paying attention.
"ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME!"
My fearless queen clearly has a death wish.
But he felt regret again his temper got best of him.
If he was dig deeper into himself he would admit his fear of losing her to a burst of his own fury.
The storm suddenly stopped.
He kneeled down next to her in the snow.
"Edaline, it may not be safe for you to go there, he may not let you go back..".
He hated to admit that this was the real reason he didn't want her going
"My brother is one of the most decent kind people in the world" she grunted, still angry
"He would never tell me where to go and where to stay as long as I was happy - unlike some men"
When she walked into the settlement she was actually happy for her muddy bloodstained tattered look.
She would have stood out like a sore thumb in her clean(ish) Westeros clothes lack of any need for a warm outer layer.
This was she looked just like a free woman who might of had a rough day.
She was making her way through the tents to where she was told the Crow was arriving.
She liked how unceremonious those people were, back home, there would be rows and rows of armed guard to attend such an event. Only privy to highborn Lords
Here it seemed all were welcome.
No one even blinked twice that she was a female heading to such a meeting.
She was really born on the wrong side of the wall.
She was already in the tent then a bold giant with human bones around his neck roughly grabbed her.
"Snow bunny! My my, here I thought you were nothing but pretty dead flesh and here you are, alive and so well fed".
He put his hand over her mouth and tapped her on the head with something heavy.
Her stupid cut began bleeding again, but much harder. Making everything seem fuzzy and red, but knew the man, he was one of the others sitting around the fire the
night Yarro and his men caught her.
He was ….Lord of Bones? That was a funny name
Then she passed out.
When she woke up she thought she was having a vision, or a dream.
A red bearded giant was beating Lord of Bones to death with his own scepter - the same one she thought he must have knocked her out with.
Something about kings? It was so hard to make her ears eyes and mind focus.
And in the corner there was an actual giant, which quickly made her refile the red hair man as a "larger than average person"
In the center - among all the wildlings and madness and she spied a black cloak, black curly hair and yelled out as loud as she could.
"Jon Snow! Jon! It's Edaline" she felt like they were kids again and she was calling out for him during a friendly match with their brothers to wish him luck (or to tell him she hoped he lost miserably if she was mad).
But as disoriented as she was it made her giggle and reality fade out a bit.
Next there was just dark, and then she felt Jon's hands pulling her off the floor.
"Eda, oh my god Edaline! Tormund, someone - help me, I think she is bleeding out from her head."
She was not, silly Jon,
"You know nothing Jon Snow" she giggled at him and watched his eyes widen in horror than she faded out again.
She felt Jon's hands being replaced by softer female hands.
One of the women was putting pressure on the gushing cut and stroking her hair.
"Karsi, this is Jon Snow's wee little sister who disappeared some time ago in the Cave of Echoes.
The dead marched through there - he thought she was gone, but this filth"
and he kicked the dead body of the Lord of Bones, "
must have escaped with her in tow and kept her prisoner all this time!"
Karsi, a woman who had seen a lot - looked at the girl sympathetically - her clothes was shredded, her pretty young body covered in bites scratches and bruises of various stages of healing.
She knew exactly what men like him would do to a small helpless girl and she shivered.
Jon had some of the men he trusted get Edaline on the boat - and continued on his way, he had work to do, he will absorb the shock of her alive later.
From what she heard based on hearsay - as she was completely out at this point - all hell broke loose after that.
The Night King knew something was wrong the moment who could no longer feel his connection to Edaline.
Her bright beacon that beckoned him with its icy blue steady flame even from beyond the wall suddenly went silent.
So abrupt was this loss of her essence that he came to a dead stop and so did his hoard of the dead.
He knew she reached Jon Snow at least, but that is where things just went black.
He felt around for a pretty soft corpse with black curls - but no female corpses recently appeared in the camp.
Where was she? Something had to be wrong - should wouldn't just disappear unless her mind was beyond reaching.
He though of all the things he would do to anyone who touched a single hair on her head.
He altered his orders to his leads - they acknowledged his orders without a question a nod and moved into new positions
Then he coldly redirected every single dead body towards the open gate of Hardhome