Time stopped.
The wind slowed, the voices quieted, and all the while, Caitie stood, staring blankly at the sight in front of her. Jon faced away from her, only his profile visible as he spoke in low tones, deep in conversation with Edd, Tormund, and Hobb. She couldn't see his full expression, only intimations of it, but she knew, without a doubt, that it was really, truly, him. It was in the way he carried himself, in the way she could feel his presence near her, and in the way that presence always seemed to pull her towards him.
Of the four men, Edd noticed her first.
He looked up. And he grinned.
The rest of them followed his gaze, but she hardly noticed Hobb or Tormund. Her vision had tunneled, focused squarely on Jon. When he met her gaze, uncertainty flashed across his features, as though he didn't quite know what to expect from her. Caitie knew she should say something—anything at all—but for the first time in her life, she couldn't find her voice. She couldn't really think properly at all other than that Jon was here; here and staring back at her with eyes full of life.
Her legs moved of their own accord. She walked towards him without thinking, as if in a trance. Closer and closer she came, half-expecting him to dissolve into nothing with each step, until at last she came to a stop, less than a foot away.
They froze, unblinking; nobody said a word.
Jon looked almost exactly the same as the day she'd left for Queenscrown, with only two differences: the length of his hair, which was now at least an inch shorter thanks to Melisandre's ritual—and his eyes. Of course, they were still the same color, and they still had a look to them that was utterly Jon. But the certainty that had always been there, even when at his lowest point—the fire—was gone.
"Caitie?" he rasped, and the sound of his voice broke the spell over her. With a sob, she flung herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck and breathing in his scent—a familiar mix of earth and metal—reminding herself that he was alive.
Jon stiffened momentarily, but then he fell into her embrace, arms encircling her waist and holding her close to him, nose buried in her hair. And in that moment, she didn't care that the entirety of Castle Black was watching—nor did she care how this might look to them.
She wasn't quite sure how long she and Jon stayed in that position, but eventually someone—Edd, maybe—cleared his throat, and Caitie finally pulled back to get a better look at Jon. "Hello," she said, because she had no idea what else to say.
Jon gave her a smile. "Hello."
At the sound of his voice, Caitie nearly dissolved into tears. She had thought she would never get to hear it again. "You're here."
"I'm here."
She half-laughed, half-sobbed, likely sounding mad as she soaked in his warmth, trying to rid herself of the memory of his deathly cold skin from the night before. "I can't believe..." she trailed off, shaking her head as she tried to wrap her mind around it all. Melisandre's ritual had worked. The implications of what that meant were slightly terrifying, but Caitie didn't care right then. How could she care about ancient magics and horrible gods when Jon was here?
Hells, it was fucking mad, but she didn't care.
"Hate to break this up early," Edd said, "but there's still the matter of the fuckers in our dungeons."
Caitie felt more than saw Jon's body tense up at the mention of the men who'd killed him, as his arms were still around her waist, though he seemed not to notice. If it hadn't been for that, it would have been difficult to tell what Jon was thinking, as his face remained completely impassive.
But Caitie knew. "Edd," she said, "not now."
"But—"
"Not. Now."
He bristled at the tone she'd taken with him until his eyes moved to Jon and his entire demeanor softened. "For fuck's sake, fine," he sighed. "We can talk about it later."
She blew out a breath at the concession. There was much they needed to talk about, Caitie knew—she, herself, had so many questions she wanted to ask Jon, so many things she wanted to say. But she couldn't, here. And truthfully, they didn't really matter.
The only thing which mattered was that Jon had found his way home.
"Does it hurt?" she asked hours later, when they finally had a moment to escape from the crowd. The two of them sat across from each other, a torch the only thing between them, providing light in the small pantry. It cast shadows on the hollows of Jon's face, making him look even more exhausted than he had before. Ghost lay by his side, fast asleep. He hadn't left his master's side once all day.
Until now, she and Jon had only sat in companionable silence, sipping their ales, with Caitie eyeing him every once in a while, trying to parse out his emotional state. He had done remarkably well all afternoon: greeting his friends and brothers, smiling when they told him they were glad to have him back, even if it didn't quite reach his eyes. But Caitie had known him too long and too well. He had not returned without new scars, both physical and emotional, and even though she should have expected it, she couldn't help but worry.
It was she who had put him in this situation, after all.
"No," Jon replied, and her fears eased a little. "I can feel them, but they don't hurt."
"I'm sorry."
He furrowed his brows. "For what?"
"For everything. For not staying when you asked—"
"You couldn't have stopped it."
"I could have tried."
"You would have been killed, too."
Caitie sighed, because she knew, like Tormund had known, that Jon was right. Even she, trained and seasoned as she was, could not have hoped to take on nearly fifty men all on her own. And now, with Jon alive, she was glad she hadn't, in fact, been killed. But trying to stop what had happened was not the only reason she wished she'd been there.
"You died alone," she whispered. When she realized she had said that out loud, she winced.
Jon, at the very least, didn't seem upset by her comment. He reached across and took her hand, and the gesture made her realize just how much she had missed that—holding his hand. "You're here with me, now."
She sighed, placated by both his words and his touch. "I should have at least been there after you woke up. I can't believe no one came and got me."
"I told them not to. Davos said you'd been up for almost two days straight."
To that, Caitie scoffed, feeling a spark of annoyance—because Melisandre and Davos had been there, but she hadn't, and even though it was childish, she liked to think she was more important to him than them. "Seven fucking Hells, Jon, you just came back from the dead—you were more important than a little rest."
"I was?"
She shot him the flattest look she could muster.
He laughed, raising his hands in surrender. "All right, all right, the next time I die and come back, I promise to wake you first."
"Thank you; that's very considerate."
Jon smiled at her, but his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly. "What happened, I mean."
She half expected him to tell her to leave it alone. Instead, his shoulders slumped. "I was dead, Caitie. My own men killed me—" his voice cracked. "Olly shoved a knife into my heart. And now I'm back, and I don't know why. Melisandre says I'm the prince that was promised, but…"
"The prince that was promised?" Caitie asked. And as she spoke them, the words sent a shiver down her spine.
"It's a prophecy of hers," Jon said. "I don't know the details, I don't want to, but... she thinks I'm him. And I can't—I can't—" He slumped, and the facade of normalcy crumbled, the tears he'd tried to hold back falling freely. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to quell them. "I can't."
She was up and over to his side in an instant, enveloping him in what she hoped was a comforting rather than suffocating hug. "I have no idea how you must be feeling right now," she said, "but I'm here. I know it's not much—"
"It is."
She had no idea how to respond to that, so she merely held him a little tighter. "What do you need?"
"I don't know." His face crumpled as he finally let all the emotions he'd bottled up show. He sobbed into her shoulder, breathing ragged and painful to listen to as he clutched her arm like a lifeline; it reminded her of when he'd allowed her to do the same after Janos Slynt's death. Knowing his feelings a little too well, Caitie wondered how he'd held himself together for so long—and she knew how much trust he placed in her now for him to show her such a raw, vulnerable moment.
"I need to execute them," he whispered eventually, when the tears had all dried up. Caitie caught his meaning; she opened her mouth to reply—to tell him she would support his decision—but Jon continued before she could. "I won't behead them."
That it was for her sake went unspoken, and she appreciated it more than he knew. "I'll be there, no matter what," she said. "But it can wait until tomorrow. They're not going anywhere—"
"Caitie." Jon's voice broke. "Olly, too."
She met his gaze. "I know." Of course she knew—she had known from the start, for it was Olly who had lured Jon to the courtyard and Olly who had dealt the killing blow. He wasn't the child he'd been—perhaps he hadn't been for longer than any of them had suspected. Olly was a man; he'd made a man's choice and he would face a man's consequences for it.
And looking at Jon now, she couldn't help thinking that Olly deserved it, along with the rest of them. She didn't even know it was possible for her to hate the men who'd murdered Jon more than she already did. But they had broken him; ripped him apart with each thrust of their blade. He was in pain because of them.
"What a fucking mess," she sighed, rubbing her temples with her fingers. Her sigh quickly turned into a yawn.
"You should sleep."
Though Jon was probably right—Caitie had slept for maybe four hours in the span of three days—the idea of sleeping now set her stomach fluttering with fear.
"I'll be here when you wake," he said, as though he could read her mind. "I promise."
She wanted to smile at that, but if she did, she knew she might yawn again, and then she would have to concede defeat. "I don't want to leave you like this."
"I'll be all right." Caitie wasn't entirely sure she believed him. Again, Jon seemed to have read her mind. "Sleep," he said, "for me."
"I... okay," she said with a defeated sigh. "But wake me if you need me. And fuck responsibilities right now—if Edd tells me you've overworked yourself in any way, I'll…" She frowned, trying to think of a strong enough phrase, but much too tired to come up with anything good.
Jon chuckled at her expression. "I promise not to do anything stupid." The corners of his lips quirked up. "Not for a while, at least."
She suppressed a smile of her own. "Oh, all right, then. If you insist," she sighed, pushing herself up from the floor and standing.
As she turned the door handle, Jon called out to her again. "Caitie?"
She spun back around and looked at him, just in time to see a flicker of an expression she couldn't define on his face. He paused, mouth slightly parted. Caitie tilted her head to the side. "Yes?"
Whatever musings Jon had gotten lost in, her voice broke them. She could see his cloudy expression clear a little, though it still looked tortured. Caitie frowned; she'd never seen Jon need to work up the courage to speak. Still, she waited patiently, and it wasn't long before his lips moved again.
"I missed you."
She swallowed, confused as to why the floor suddenly felt unstable. Still, she whispered, with an unbidden smile on her face, "I missed you, too."
Despite the exhaustion of the last three days, sleep eluded Caitie. Her frustration only grew as she tossed and turned; she wanted to sleep—needed it, after so long awake—and it should have come more easily to her without the stress and hurt of loss, not less. But an hour passed, and then two, and still her mind refused to shut off. She lay there, bundled in a blanket of unwanted thoughts and feelings that wouldn't go away—guilt, being first and foremost.
It was a feeling Caitie had gotten used to long ago, but this was different. Usually, she at least knew why her guilt had flared, and she could reason with it, or at least understand it. But now… all she knew was that Grenn's face kept popping into her thoughts, and then Jon's, and then she was drowning. And she just didn't know why.
Oh, fuck this. If she wasn't going to fall asleep, then she wasn't going to waste time just laying in bed smothered by emotions—not when she could be doing things. She needed to go over all the missives that she'd told Jon not to look at, and after that she needed… damn it, she didn't know what she needed.
She needed to get out of this room.
With his permission, Caitie had decided to curl up in Jon's old office in the Tower of the Lord Commander. It was much bigger, much quieter, and much further away from the rest of the castle. The bed was a nice touch—softer than hers, so it took her a moment to work up the energy to stand. As she did, her thoughts strayed to the dungeons below, where Thorne rotted—along with Olly and the other officers. And she wondered if maybe that was what she needed—closure. Considering that the mutineers' executions would be tomorrow, she might not get another chance.
Her mind made up, she grabbed Owen and Cerys off the dusty nightstand and headed out of her quarters, shoulders tensing with each step towards the dungeons. As she traversed the corridors, Caitie could see that Castle Black had returned to a state of normalcy—for the most part. Although the remaining brothers went about their duties as though the last few days had never happened, things still felt off—surreal, almost. With half the Night's Watch imprisoned, the castle's population was scant, despite the Free Folk making up for the lost numbers, and then some. It was just so strange to see grey furs instead of black leathers, and a part of Caitie—a very small part—hated that it had come to this. Despite what everyone thought, the last thing she would have wanted was for the Night's Watch to tear itself to pieces.
The surreality only increased as she walked down the stone steps into the dungeons. The last time she had come to this place, Free Folk had occupied its cells. Now, like a twisted reflection of the castle above, black took the place of grey, and those in the cells gawked at her rather than avoided her. The conspiracy to murder the lord commander had been large, but it wasn't until now that the full implications of it set in. She'd fought with these men, ate with them, taken her duties with them. Some had been kinder to her than others, but she had known them all, and there were only a select few whom she truly disliked.
Caitie passed by Brant and Derek's cell without a second glance, as well as One-eyed Joe's. She didn't address any of the other mutineers she passed either, because truthfully, there were too many, and she didn't want to waste all evening talking to them all. She didn't stop walking until she found the largest of the cells—the one which held the ringleaders: Thorne, Yarwyck, Marsh, and… Olly.
Each of them slumped against a different wall—and from what Caitie could tell, three were asleep. But Ser Alliser was awake, leaning against the cell bars. She had never seen him so unkempt; his grey curls and his face caked in dust and dirt, and though his ice-blue eyes still had a calculating, cruel gleam to them, in the dark of the dungeons, they seemed duller. He looked up as she approached, and his face lit with loathing.
Before, when he was the senior officer and she was nothing more than an unwelcome guest at Castle Black, he would have taunted her. But now their roles were reversed: he was trapped in a dirty cell, and she held all the power. So he stayed quiet.
Caitie came to a halt a foot away from the bars of his cell. For a beat, they simply looked at one at another, assessing the situation—assessing each other. "I never understood it, you know," she finally said, "why you hated Jon so much."
Thorne scoffed at her, but otherwise said nothing.
"I understood why you hated me, of course—at least after the battle. But Jon—really, I never did. He was the best Night's Watch recruit in years; he was everything this place needed—especially considering how few men were left." She waited, frowning when she received no response, and then continued. "Don't get me wrong, I know he was a bit on the insufferable side at first, but he gave everything to the Watch and his brothers—and you hated him for it from the very start." Thorne still refused to give her an answer, and the part of her which burned with the need to understand him calculated her next words to elicit a reaction. "It's ridiculous, really. You made it your mission to spite him, even when it got your own men killed—"
Fire flared in his eyes. "Why are you here?" he bit out.
Caitie suppressed a smug smile and crossed her arms over her chest. "I already told you—but fine, I'll say it plainly. I came to ask you why."
"Why what?"
"I just told you, you idiot: why did you hate him so much? What did he ever do to you?"
Thorne growled. "You've no idea who I was, do you?"
She furrowed her brows. "A knight for some house called Thorne, I'd assume."
"A knight," he repeated mockingly, as if she were a simpleton. "I was Ser Alliser of House Thorne, bound in service to House Targaryen."
Oh, of course he'd been a knight for House Targaryen. Just another thing that Caitie had them for which to thank. At this rate, the Targaryens would need to produce fifty Maester Aemons just to make up for all they had done.
But Thorne seemed to have lost the ability to keep his mouth shut, and Caitie listened as he continued. "I gave everything to my country, to my king—until that bastard's father took our city and called me a traitor."
"As far as I'm aware, House Lannister was responsible for the fates of the Targaryen loyalists in King's Landing—not House Stark. So why don't you go take it up with them?"
"If those traitors had never rebelled—"
"And if Rhaegar Targaryen had never kidnapped Lyanna Stark, there would have been no rebellion at all," Caitie snapped, refusing to listen to anyone defend what the Targaryens had done to her people. Really, she was being generous not to go further, considering all the things the Mad King had done.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the others in the cell stir. She ignored them, attention locked on Ser Alliser, who glared at her with such intensity, he may well have been trying to kill her with only his eyes. She pulled back from the bars of the cell, reigning in her temper. "But that happened years ago. Are you really so bitter you were willing to antagonize a good recruit just because of something his father did before he was even born?"
Thorne's expression grew colder, and Caitie cocked her head to the side. There was utter hatred in it, but it wasn't just the look of hatred he'd given her since finding out she was a girl; no, there was also something more simmering beneath the surface. She didn't know what it could be, until she gave it a moment's thought, remembering all the times she'd interacted with him before the battle of Castle Black. Thorne, of course, had disliked her long before he'd known her identity, if not as much as he'd hated Jon. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, but upon thinking back, she realized that he'd hated Lord Commander Mormont, too, and Jon's uncle, if her limited memories were correct. Up until the mutiny, he'd been cold to Olly and even Othell Yarwyck.
And what did all of them have in common?
"This isn't just about the Starks, is it?" she asked, as it all clicked into place. "This is about the North." Knowing he had been a Targaryen loyalist with a bitter hatred for the rebels—that made sense of a lot, now that she thought about it. Ser Alliser had wound up at the Night's Watch because of the Northern rebellion, only to have more Northmen as his superiors—Mormont, Benjen, Jon, even Olly—all of whom chose to join, and all of whom excelled.
"Did you ever really care about the Watch?" she asked. "Or was it all just a part of your personal vendetta?"
"The Watch is my life!"
"Then you're an idiot." There was no malice in her voice. It wasn't an accusation, for she didn't need to accuse him; it was simply a fact. "You were so blinded by hate—of Northmen, of Free Folk—you were willing to destroy the world."
And you're a fucking traitor!" The cry burst forth and echoed off the walls of the cell, and Caitie blinked. It was not Ser Alliser who had cried out at her; it was Olly.
The others in the cell were wide awake now, eyes darting between the three of them, unsure whether or not they should say something.
Caitie turned away from Thorne to look at the boy who had once been her friend. His dark hair blended with the shadows; his pale, child-like face contorted with rage. He looked like a ghost. And though Caitie had been so furious with him when she'd found out, had even wanted to hate him, now she just felt a deep ache of shame, because she had failed him. For Olly had been swallowed up by hate until he'd drowned in it, and instead of pulling him out, she had just let it happen. He was a boy, and he was going to die; Caitie might have been able to stop it if she had just seen.
It occurred to her, briefly, that she could intervene now and let him go. Theoretically, she could lead him away under the cover of darkness and through the side gate which she had used to sneak into Mole's Town so long ago, with the stipulation that he leave the Gift forever. But she knew it was an impossible idea, and not just because it would mean betraying Jon. Olly had proven the lengths to which he would go to sate his need for revenge, and she couldn't trust that he wouldn't attack the Free Folk settlement, all to kill children even younger than him.
No matter what, he would die. At least this way, he couldn't hurt anyone else before he did.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I wish… I wish I could have helped you."
Olly spat at the floor, right in front of her feet. "Fuck your sorries. And fuck your Wildlings."
She had to look away from him before she dissolved into tears, and seeking a distraction, she noticed Othell Yarwyck staring at her. To her surprise, there was despair on his face—regret, even. Or maybe it was just fear of the end.
A fear Caitie knew all too well.
There was the slight tug of sympathy for him in such a sorry state, but she couldn't bring herself to muster the feelings completely. Whatever his regrets, Yarwyck had taken Jon away from her. He would have taken Johnna and Willa, too, if he could, as well as Gilly and Little Sam. She couldn't forgive that, and she certainly couldn't sympathize.
A scoff came from Ser Alliser, and Yarwyck may well have dissolved into nothing. "You've come here to taunt us—but you lost. My life might be forfeit, but your bastard is dead. I won."
Caitie blinked once, then twice, as it dawned on her that they hadn't heard. It made sense, she supposed—who would care to keep them in the loop?
Though she tried to stop it, her lips curved up into a smirk. "Ah. I see the news hasn't reached the dungeons yet."
"What're you talking about?" asked Bowen Marsh. He sat up from the wall he had been leaning against and shuffled towards the bars to see her more clearly.
Caitie acted as though he wasn't there; too busy staring down at Thorne, taking a twisted sort of pleasure at the look of fear in his eyes. "You should've been more thorough in your mutiny," she said. "He's alive."
"Th-that's not possible," said Olly.
She shrugged. "You'll see for yourself tomorrow."
"But I killed him!"
"Yes, you did. But you didn't kill Lady Melisandre."
Silence stretched on as the full implication of her words set in. The men in the cells stared at her, horrified, their faces paling to the color of ash.
"She's lying," Marsh said, though his voice had gone unnaturally high.
"She wouldn't lie about this," Thorne snapped. His nostrils flared. "You let that red witch bring back a wight—"
"Don't you dare lecture me about wights—I've seen more of them than the four of you put together," Caitie snapped. She took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. "Forget it. I just needed to see your faces when I asked you why. But I've gotten what I wanted, so I think I'll go."
She spun on her heel, paced towards the stairs, but Thorne's voice called out to her before she reached the first step. "He destroyed the Night's Watch."
Caitie froze, looking back over her shoulder, and when she met his eyes, she knew that Ser Alliser truly believed it—believed he had done the right thing. It wasn't revenge or hatred or even greed that had led him to murder Jon; it was his sense of morality, however warped or cruel. And even though it didn't change anything—not his fate nor her hatred for him—a part of her wanted to make him understand, so he would go to his death knowing that he had become an Oathbreaker for no good reason. "The Night's Watch was already destroyed. The moment the White Walkers woke from their sleep, we were living on borrowed time. Jon was trying to save the world, but if you can't see that…" Her eyes flicked over the bars of the cell and back to him, and she realized she was wasting her time trying to convince him. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore."
Thorne sneered. "You think you're better than me, but I was a knight of a noble house. Who are you? Just a whore the traitor fucks when he's bored."
Her face hardened to stone at the taunt. There was no point in correcting him; he would always believe the worst of both Jon and her, so telling him that Jon had always honored his vows seemed a waste of breath.
Instead, she drew herself up to her full height, hands clasped together in the formal way her septa had taught her as a child, and lifted her chin, closest to the highborn lady she'd been in years. "I am a descendant of the First Men, a hero of the Night's Watch, and a lady of the North," she said. And as she did, she realized that she had wanted to tell him this every day since he had belittled her during her trial. Now she could, for these were dead men walking, and soon enough, they would never speak another word again. "And you… you, Ser Alliser Thorne, will never hurt anyone I love ever again."
The responses I got for that last chapter exceeded my expectations—I'm so glad I infuriated so many of you! I tried to get back to everyone who reviewed via PM, but there were a few guests—so to them, let me just say: thank you, and I'm sorry... but not really ;) and I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations.
But anyway, one more chapter after this and then we'll be meeting my second-favorite Stark sibling. I'm very, very excited.