When Caitie stirred and opened her eyes, she was met with nothing but pure darkness.
Her head was, thankfully, clear of pain whilst she took in her surroundings as best she could, trying to get a sense of the time, but her eyes were still heavy from sleep and the aftermath of drink. She didn't remember much after telling Jon about her excursion to Mole's Town, but she must have fallen asleep not long after it. The cold, stone floor pressed against her hip, so she knew she must be laying on the ground, and her head was propped up on a lumpy sack of—grain, maybe? She couldn't be sure.
A few feet away, she could hear the sound of snores.
As the sleep fog slowly faded, Caitie finally realized where she had fallen asleep, and panic set in; she didn't know how long they had been there. It could have been first light or mid-day or even worse.
Jon was supposed to be leading the party north. If he was late...
Immediately after having this thought, Caitie bolted up and leaned over to shake his arm. "Jon. Wake up."
"Mm," he grunted, waving her off.
"Jon!"
"What?" he muttered.
"We fell asleep, and I don't know what time it is. Wake up!"
Now he listened. His eyes were open in a flash. He sat up, looking around the darkened room, and asked, "What time is it?"
"I already said I don't know. But we've got to get out of here before—"
Footsteps cut off the rest of her sentence. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the worried look on Jon's face mirroring her own. Technically, there was no rule about being out of bed at night, but with Thorne in charge—and with his vendetta against Jon—they ought to have been more careful.
The door handle turned. Candlelight flooded the pantry.
"There you are!" Sam sighed in relief.
Caitie and Jon threw their hands up to shield their eyes. Even though it was just a candle, her eyes screamed in protest, as though she were staring directly into the sun. "For fuck's sake, Sam, would you put that thing away?"
Sam ignored them. "You both need to get up. It's almost first light."
The words sparked Jon into action. He jumped to his feet. "We're late." He held out a hand, which Caitie took, still squinting. He pulled her to her feet alongside him and dragged her out the door.
"Wait!" Caitie exclaimed, halting. "Jon, stop! We have to get our things!"
He swore loud enough to wake the whole castle, but thankfully, Sam was right behind them, and, like always, he had the solution to their problems ready. "Forget something?" he asked with a brow arched. In his hands were their traveling packs, full to bursting with everything they'd need for the journey. Their weapons were at his belt.
"How did you—"
"I went by both your quarters," Sam said as he handed Jon his sword and Caitie her daggers.
She took them from him gratefully—though she wished once again she still had her old ones—and hooked them to her belt. When she finished, she looked back up at Sam, and was half-impressed, half-resentful, to see that he looked absolutely fine. There was no trace of his inebriation from the night before. "You had an entire bottle to yourself last night. How the hell do you hold your liquor so well?"
Sam had no answer beyond a shrug. He glanced between the two of them. "Promise me you'll come back—both of you."
Jon's features softened. Sam always could get him to show his affectionate side. "We'll try."
"We'll see you soon," Caitie said, softening as well. "I promise." With that, she threw her arms around him and squeezed tightly. It took everything she had to pull away and follow Jon.
They raced through the castle, too preoccupied with getting to the courtyard to keep their footsteps light and quiet. After what felt like years, they skidded to a stop outside the gate to the Haunted Forest. Relief flooded through Caitie that the only two who'd arrived were Grenn and Edd.
"We're here," she said breathlessly. "We're here."
"What the hell happened to you two?" asked Edd.
"Ale," she and Jon chorused.
Grenn glowered at this, but Caitie kept all her attention focused on Edd, who sighed, "Yeah, that'll do it."
"I can't believe I let you convince me to drink the night before we went to leave," Jon said, rounding on her.
Caitie scoffed, much too tired to control her temper at the accusation. "Excuse me, did I hold my dagger to your throat and threaten to kill you if you didn't?"
"That's not the point. We should never have had ale to begin with."
"Don't be a child. You didn't have to have any."
"A child?" He repeated incredulously. "You—"
"Oi!" Edd interrupted.
They both blinked.
"Sorry," Caitie mumbled.
Jon took a deep breath and composed himself. "Right," he said, using the same assured, commanding voice as he'd done yesterday. "The others will be here soon. When they do, we're to leave immediately. Hopefully—" he threw Caitie a pointed look, "no one will be too tired to go on until after dark."
"Prick," she muttered.
"I heard that."
"You were meant to."
"Caitie…" he warned through gritted teeth.
She only rolled her eyes. As Jon went back to droning on about their very important mission, Caitie yawned, though she tried to muffle the sound with her hand.
"So. How many cups?" a voice whispered from beside her. She glanced over and felt her stomach drop. The voice belonged to Grenn, standing half a foot away. She hadn't even noticed him come up next to her.
"Three—maybe four," she answered, trying not to yawn again. "It's nothing compared to what Sam had—and he's fine! Didn't affect him at all. It's just not fair."
Grenn gave her a chuckle. But then, as if remembering she was at odds with him, he went quiet and looked around the courtyard—presumably for an escape. Thankfully, before the awkwardness could smother them both, Bedwyck, Dywen, Locke, and the two others with names she hadn't bothered to learn joined them. While Jon gave another speech to the newcomers, Caitie let her mind wander—to something completely, definitively unrelated to Grenn—and before she knew what was happening, the speech was over and the brothers moved out. Caitie didn't hesitate; she bounded past Jon, who had struck up a conversation with Locke as they mounted their horses. After she mounted her own horse, she urged him out the gate as fast as she could and grinned at the sight of the north.
It didn't look any different from the last time she'd been out there. The air was sharp and cold, but it smelled fresh. A thick layer of snow covered the trees. The interior of the Haunted Forest looked dark, but Caitie knew that sunlight peeked through during the day, making patches of snow sparkle.
The north was dangerous, but it was also beautiful. And even after everything that she'd experienced out there, she still loved it.
"Caitie, is it?" a voice from behind asked. The spell fell away. Her stomach clenched, and she dug her nails into her palms as Locke's horse pulled up next to hers.
He had the same insincere charm as before—that same vaguely predatory gleam in his eye. She wanted to run, or hide, or stab him—or all three, if it had been physically possible. But she managed to school her features into something like pleasant indifference. "That's my name. Locke, right?"
"Aye," he answered. "We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I wanted to introduce myself—make a better impression."
Oh, she was so sure.
"It's all right. Good to meet you, Locke." There wasn't even the hint of unease in her voice, and Caitie had to be impressed with her ability to lie so fluently. Then again, she'd had practice.
His horse came to a halt, and he held out his hand. And though she wanted to recoil more than anything in the world, she forced herself to clasp it in her own and smile blandly.
Mercifully, he pulled away a second later. "You're friends with Snow, aren't you?" he asked, sounding merely curious, but it still set Caitie on edge. She didn't like that he'd taken such an interest in Jon.
"You could say that."
"Know him well?"
Caitie shrugged noncommittally.
When he realized that she wouldn't be forthcoming, Locke switched topics. "So, what do you think we'll find?"
"At Craster's Keep?" she said. "Other than a bunch of angry mutineers, it'll probably just be Craster's daughters."
"Nothing else we need to worry about?"
She paused as an idea came to her. "Well," she said slowly, "there is Jon's direwolf, Ghost. If you see him, let us know. He's almost my height, with red eyes and white fur. He'll probably try to eat you whole, though, so I wouldn't get too close."
Locke's face paled a bit.
Caitie couldn't help feeling a bit of smug satisfaction that she had been the one to cause it. "Oh, don't worry. I'm sure he wouldn't," she added, laughing. "It's not as if you would try to hurt Jon or one of his men. Direwolves are very protective of their pack, you know."
It was his turn to force out a laugh. "Well, having a direwolf on our side would make things easier, wouldn't it?"
Caitie nodded, keeping a pleasant smile on her face even as she wanted nothing more to get as far away from Locke as humanly possible. Just as she was trying to think of a way out of the conversation, she saw Edd a few feet away from them, and threw him a desperate look, hoping he'd understand.
Fortunately, he picked up on her unease immediately, and within an instant, had brought his horse up next to theirs. "I need to talk to you about Tanner," he said to her, leaving no room for argument in his tone. "Now."
"Okay." She tried to sound cheerful. "See you, Locke."
Once they had led their horses a good twenty feet from Locke, Caitie felt like she could breathe again. But as Edd led them further and further away, towards Grenn, that feeling dissipated, replaced with dread. She couldn't ask Edd to stop without telling him what had happened, so she had to swallow her feelings and brace herself for the embarrassment, the anger, and—as much as she tried to quash it—the heartache.
"Something's off about him," Edd muttered as soon as he was sure only Grenn could overhear them.
Caitie nodded, endlessly grateful to have someone who believed her. "Thank you! I've been saying so for weeks, but you're the only other person to notice it. Jon and Sam tell me I'm mad whenever I bring it up."
"Well, you are mad. But not about this."
She smacked his arm. "I am not mad, you ass."
Edd snorted.
Eyeing Locke once again to see him cozying up to Jon, she said, "He's interested in Jon—have you noticed that, too?"
"Aye."
Caitie scrunched up her face, thinking hard about what was giving her so much pause. It was there, but it was... hazy. "Locke is the name of a house; I know that much. He said he was from the Stormlands, but that just doesn't sit right with me." She stopped and huffed, frustrated at the lack of information. "Oh, I don't know. I learned the houses of Westeros, but—"
"Every single one?" Grenn asked abruptly.
Caitie blinked; she hadn't realized he was listening. "All the Northern ones, yes. And all the major southern ones, too. It's expected—to make a match," she explained, rolling her eyes. "Fat lot of good it did. I've forgotten most of it. Besides the Great Houses and my families', I probably remember one per kingdom—well, and the largest Northern ones."
"So you think Locke's highborn?" asked Grenn.
"Not all members of a house are highborn," Edd said. "I wasn't."
Caitie frowned as a fuzzy image of Norwood's great hall forced its way to the forefront of her mind: her, her brothers and father, their maester, and... "You know, I could have sworn a Locke came through Norwood, once."
Grenn cocked his head to the side. "So, he's Northern? Like you and Jon?"
"Maybe."
"Why wouldn't he tell us that?"
"I'll let you know when I figure it out."
Grenn gave a little half-smile. "Thoughtful of you."
And Caitie, though she hated herself for it, couldn't resist smiling back at him. "Well, I try."
Caitie didn't seek Jon out until they made camp for the night. She tied her horse's reins to a nearby tree, got some lumpy stew that tasted terrible even by Night's Watch standards from Dywen, and finally found Jon sitting all by himself against a tree—brooding, like usual.
"Are you still mad at me?" she asked by way of greeting, breaking him out of his thoughts.
"I wasn't mad," he said. "Annoyed, maybe—but not mad."
"But you're always annoyed at something. This was more... potent."
Jon glared at her, but it just made Caitie laugh, because how many times had he given her that look by now? Thousands, probably. "Well," she said, sighing dramatically, "you have my deepest apologies for forcing you to drink ale with me late into the night. I am a vile temptress, and you bear no responsibility for your intoxication. Happy now?"
"Very," Jon replied, his glare turning into a wry smile as she sat down next to him. "Is it strange that I missed this place?"
Caitie stared up at him in surprise, but then she shook her head. "Not at all. I have, too."
It was Jon's turn to look surprised. "I'd have thought you'd never want to see it again."
"Are you joking? I love it out here." She breathed in the cold air of the haunted forest, rich with the smell of pine and moss and snow. "There's something so compelling about this place. Maybe it's the mystery of it," she added, thinking of the Fist of the First Men and the dragonglass daggers; thinking of all the secrets and history lost to time that had never been found. "I mean, don't you ever wonder what's out here? If it weren't for all the danger—the Wildlings and White Walkers and whatever else—we could explore. No one has ever been able to map the Lands of Always Winter—not that it sounds like a particularly pleasant place."
Jon snorted.
"But maybe," she continued, taking a reluctant bite of her stew, "if the Walkers ceased to exist, it would become the Lands of… Sometimes Winter—and we could chart it."
She swallowed the mouthful of stew and glanced up, only to see Jon looking at her like she'd gone mad.
"Anyway," she continued hastily, feeling a little more than self-conscious, "it's not only that. Back home, wherever we go—we're always defined by what we are, not who we are. But out here... Our names, our titles, our families, our sex—none of it matters."
Jon's expression changed to one of relief. "I feel it, too," he admitted. "Out here, I'm not Jon Snow. I'm not the Bastard of Winterfell or a brother of the Night's Watch or even Free Folk. I'm just… Jon."
"Exactly," she said. "I don't know what it is, I just feel free, here—awake. Like I'm..."
"Just Caitie?"
She smiled. "Just Caitie."
"Maybe it's our Northern blood," he said at length. "We're fit for the cold."
Caitie laughed. "Well, I wouldn't go that far. I always wanted to go to Dorne, you know."
Jon raised an eyebrow and said flatly, "Dorne."
Suddenly excited, she nodded. "A year or so before I left, my father was trying to force Owen to marry a Dornish girl—a Jordayne, I think. I don't really remember. Anyway, some envoy came to Norwood for the negotiations, and he told me that it never snows in Dorne, even in winter. It's always sunny—and it's warm. So the dresses are all made of silk or gossamer, and they come in bright colors, like pinks and yellows and bright blues—I always loved how I looked in blue—and—what?" she asked, stopping abruptly when she saw Jon staring at her again; and this time, she didn't know what he was thinking.
"Nothing," he said. "It's just funny—I always thought you'd get along well with Arya, but I'm starting to think you'd do well with Sansa, too. She loved pretty dresses. I don't think I ever saw her without her sewing needles."
Caitie pursed her lips. She had only seen Sansa once, and the most she really remembered about the encounter was wishing she were half as beautiful as the oldest Stark girl. They were close to the same age—a little over a year apart—but Sansa hadn't said a word to Caitie when she'd dined with the Starks at Winterfell. And knowing how she had treated Jon his whole life, it made a lot of sense now why she wouldn't. "Didn't you say she only ever referred to you as her half-brother?"
"She was just a child. It wasn't her fault."
"I'm sure," Caitie replied, but she remained skeptical.
"I didn't make much of an effort with her," Jon said. "I would always stand off to the side brooding while the other children played."
"Now, that, I believe. You're the King of the Brooders, after all."
Beyond a half-hearted, weary look, Jon ignored her. "She was kind to Bran and Rickon, though."
At the mention of Jon's two youngest brothers, the atmosphere grew cold and somber.
"Speaking of which…" Caitie said tentatively. "I know you're hoping to find Bran at Craster's."
Jon nodded. "I'm going to find him and bring him home."
She eyed him. "Didn't Sam say he insisted he had to go north?"
"He's just a boy—he doesn't know what he's talking about."
"He's a little over a year younger than I was when I came to Castle Black."
"You're not a cripple."
"As far as I've heard, his injuries didn't impair his ability to think." Jon glared, prompting her to sigh. "If he chose to come out here, it has to be for a good reason."
"Good reason!" Jon shouted incredulously. Everyone else in their camp turned to look at them from the fire, a few yards away. "He's my brother," he said more quietly than before, bending down close to her. It was oddly intimidating, but she refused to look away from him. "What do you expect me to do?"
Caitie almost relented, then. She almost told Jon that he should force Bran to come back to the castle with him—whatever it took to keep him safe. But she also knew it would be the wrong answer. "Let him go," she said with a sad sigh. "I know how hard that is—Gods, you know I do. But he's old enough to make his own choice. You have to trust him to make the right one for himself."
When Jon didn't look convinced, Caitie put her hand on his shoulder and said, softly now, "When Owen and Cerys sent me to the Wall—that's what they did. They trusted me to make the right choices—to use the lessons I'd learned from them to keep myself safe. And it meant everything."
In fact, it was what she loved best about her brothers. They had always wanted her to be able to defend herself. It was why they'd taught her to fight; why they'd taught her so much about the world. They never wanted her to be out of control of her life or need to depend on them for protection.
"The best gift they ever gave me was trusting me," she said, "because it meant I could trust myself."
"Caitie, I can't," he said, and she could hear the lament in his voice, however hard he tried to control it. "He's my brother—I can't leave him behind."
She smiled sadly, and softly answered, "I know." She had known what his answer would be from the start. "And I'm on your side—I always will be, no matter what stupid thing you do." She winked and nudged his shoulder with her own. "If we find him, I'll help you get him back to the Wall. Just think about what I said, okay?"
Jon didn't say anything for a second. Then he laughed. "When did you get so wise?"
She laughed, too. "Somewhere between my second and third cup of ale last night."
Jon opened his mouth to reply, but then he looked over her shoulder to the fire and tilted his head. "Grenn's staring at us."
Caitie froze in place, her eyes darting to Grenn for the briefest of moments as she twiddled her thumbs nervously. "Oh."
Jon raised an eyebrow at her, half-mischievous, half-nervous. "Caitie?"
She bit her lip, trying to come up with something to tell him besides the truth. But it was no use. Caitie wanted to tell someone about it before it drove her mad. And who better than the man she trusted most in the world?
"We, um... kissed," she said. "And he—well, I don't really want to talk about it."
When she looked back at him, Jon had a glint in his eye, much like the one Ghost would get when he was about to attack. "What did he do to you?" he growled.
Caitie rolled her eyes. "He didn't do anything. That was the problem."
"Oh."
"Not that it's important," she said, crossing her arms and raising her chin. "I don't really care—there are more important things to worry about."
His expression changed to wry amusement. "I don't doubt it." But from the way he was looking at her, he obviously did.
Caitie huffed and pushed herself up from the forest floor. "I'm going to get some sleep. Do try to wipe the smirk off your face before morning. If it's not gone, I'll have to kill you."
"What happened to always being on my side?"
"Jon?" she said sweetly. "Please take Longclaw and shove it up your ass."
"Well, since you asked so nicely." But then he smiled softly and added, "Goodnight, Caitie."
She softened, too, squeezing his shoulder, hoping he knew how sorry she felt about... everything. "Goodnight, Jon."
Caitie stood on a snow-covered hill overlooking the Haunted Forest. The night was cloudless; the entire hillside bathed in the soft glow of moonlight. To say it was beautiful would be an understatement. There was a soft breeze, too—strange, beyond the Wall. It should have been biting, but it was… pleasant; warm, almost.
After a little while—she couldn't tell how long it'd been—she heard footsteps behind her and sighed. Caitie had come here because she wanted solitude, but she should have known it wouldn't last. The footsteps must be Jon's; he must be coming to tell her they were ready to move out. Or maybe—hopefully—it was Grenn.
But when Caitie turned to see the person who had come to find her, she was lucky she didn't faint.
He was tall and lean, with dark hair, dark eyes, a long, pointed nose like hers, and the same look of exasperated amusement he got whenever she had said something she thought was hilarious but was really probably inappropriate. He was one of the few people she knew she would never see again. And yet, he stared at her with a gaze so heartrendingly familiar that it brought tears to her eyes.
It was Owen.
It took her a moment to realize that his lips were moving. He was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't make it out. His voice was muffled, as if he were trying to speak through a mouthful of food—and it set her on edge, because it was something Owen would never do.
Then he gestured to a point behind her. Slowly, she turned around, waiting in anticipation. She knew, in her bones, who it would be.
Cerys.
It was like seeing a male version of herself because that's what Cerys had been. He had the same oval face, the same dark wavy hair, and almond-shaped, pale blue eyes. He had the same dimples when he smiled, and the same freckles splattered across the nose. He didn't have a beard—he had never been able to grow a beard.
This... this couldn't be real. She had to be dreaming. Owen and Cerys were dead. They were dead and gone and rotting with the rest of the Northern army. The Boltons and their southern allies had seen to that.
Yet, here they were.
She tried to speak to them, to run, but she couldn't talk or move. She couldn't do anything but look back and forth between the two of them.
Until the expressions on her brothers' faces changed from happiness to fear.
She whipped her head around again, and her heart seemed to stop beating and start racing at the same time.
Karl Tanner.
Oh, this was bad—worse than bad, because when she looked down, she was wearing a dress; the dress she had worn to the brothel, covered in blood. Which meant he knew the truth, and from the look on his face, he was excited by it.
She looked to her big brothers for help, but Owen and Cerys were stuck, unmoving. And so was she—without any daggers, without a sword, or even a bow and arrow—although that last one probably wouldn't help her much. She could shoot as well as she could embroider, which was to say, not at all.
Tanner shot over to her as fast as lightning, grabbed her arm like her father used to do, and swung her around. She thrashed against him and screamed—she could do that, at least—but she felt like she was moving through soup. She couldn't make an impact.
Her daggers appeared in her hands a second later. From the feel, she could tell they were her childhood daggers—the ones she had stupidly named Dark and Sister because she was too terrible at naming things to be more creative.
Caitie managed to turn around, but before she could stab Tanner, he backed away, staring in horror at something. She saw him turn on his heel and flee into the dark forest, so she looked back to Owen and Cerys, who were now standing side by side—but they weren't Owen and Cerys anymore.
Or, they were, but they weren't the Owen and Cerys she knew.
Bright blue, crystalline eyes and a sickly grey pallor clued her into the horror before her. They were wights. Because they were dead, she realized. And that's what happened to the dead.
The tears in her eyes spilled over and poured down her cheeks. It was pathetic, she knew, but she didn't care. It was bad enough they were dead, but to be a wight… they should have been allowed to be at peace, to rest. They deserved that much.
She realized that's why her daggers had appeared. So she could kill the wights. So she could kill her brothers.
But she wouldn't. She'd let them kill her first. And then, as if the dream could sense her decision, Caitie felt warmth beside her and looked down.
No—not him.
All she could see was the top of his head, but then he looked up at her and smiled, the way he always used to after she agreed to read to him. And that was when Caitie realized: she had to choose between saving her baby brother and killing her elder ones.
The wight versions of her brothers advanced as Arthur clung to her leg and stared up at her—his expression fearful, now, and yet expectant.
"Stop," she sobbed to the wights. "Please stop—come back."
They didn't respond. They just kept advancing, closer and closer, and she couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe.
"Hello, there."
Caitie looked to the side to see Locke.
"Need some help?"
Unwilling to wait for her answer, Locke reached back for his sword and shield, the second of which had an eerily familiar sigil of a red man splayed out to make a large X painted on it. Caitie screwed up her face, attempting to place the familiar sigil, but try as she might, she couldn't remember how she knew it.
But then Locke started towards her brothers with that cold, near-sadistic grin he'd worn the first day she'd seen him, and it wiped all thoughts of the red man from her mind. She didn't want to look, but she couldn't close her eyes. All she could do was watch, with horror mounting in every step Locke took. In one sweeping movement, he removed wight-Owen's head from his body. Caitie cried out as she watched it roll away, down the hillside, and out of sight. Then he turned his gaze towards Cerys, smiling with pleasure as he cut him clean in half.
Arthur was clinging to her leg, crying, screaming that she had let their brothers die. There was a pounding in her head as she watched Locke turn back their way with the same grin, and then…
She was being pulled both upwards and downwards all at the same time, into darkness.
I'm sort of at the point where I don't give a fuck if I edit already-posted chapters into oblivion. FFN is a mess, so why shouldn't I get to be one, too?