Caralyn had never been a violent girl growing up.
She'd had two elder siblings: Caeron and Cale. Her father was a simple farmer who had her brother to help him fertilize and cultivate the land while she and her older sister had learned how to run and look after the household from their mother. But she'd wanted to do more with life. Wanted to get out into the wider world and discover what waited for her. She didn't think it would really be possible to happen if she was to stay in their little hamlet and continue toiling the field and being expected to pop out children for some boy in this or the next village like her sister.
Especially since she wasn't particularly attracted to boys or men.
She'd been aware that she didn't find the male form attractive as she did the female ever since she could remember understanding what it meant to desire someone and her thoughts were further cemented when her mother explained to her the differences between men and women.
(Of course her mother had been a few years behind her sister in that respect, but she wasn't about to tell her that: especially not when she might have to reveal she stared a little too long at the curves of the other women around the village.)
She had tentatively asked one of the Begging Brothers who stopped by months before her fourteenth nameday to preach the word of the Seven in their little corner of the North what the Seven preached about those who weren't interested in the other sex, but their own.
His response had not been encouraging.
In that time, it had crystalized in her head that she needed to get out of her village at least. She may not be accepted wherever she ended up, but it was surely better than the disappointment and the shame her parents would be forced through by the rest of her village.
Much as it hurt to see her brother and father's cold expression as she left and how her mother tearfully hugged her while her sister maintained a carefully blank expression when she walked away from home with only a few clothes on her back and a few weeks of supplies to find some out of the way inn or farmstead down south that might be more accepting of her for who she was.
She wasn't too hopeful, but she wanted to think there was somewhere she could go. And just as she was reaching the end of Lord Bolton's land, she had stopped at an inn on the Kingsroad. It was there that she met Bette and lost her heart.
The older woman had a figure that was easy on the eyes and an easier smile that lit up her face. Caralyn hadn't been able to help the heat that had bloomed in her cheeks where the older, more buxom brunette had asked if she was able to afford a bed for the night. She was forced to admit that she could not: that she had been hoping to make her way further south and make her supplies last a little longer.
Bette had smiled and nodded, a twinkle in her beautiful brown eyes as if she understood what it was Caralyn was trying to do.
"Well, much as you probably had boys trippin' over their own feet trying to get at your skirts sweetie, I do need something a bit more real than a pretty smile and a few sweet words to put in me apron if I'm gonna keep runnin' this place." She had joked, her wide smile allowing a small one of her own to grow on Caralyn's face as she found herself relaxing in the more experienced woman's company.
"Tell ya what?" Bette had said to her after a few moments of comfortable silence while the background din had settled comfortably. She had leaned down toward Caralyn, the younger woman unable to help her gaze riveting on the innkeeper's bountiful cleavage while her heart pounded in her ears.
With a great effort, she quickly pulled her eyes up to look into Bette's while she talked, cursing her blushing cheeks that might yet give her away.
"I could use some help running this place. And you seem a hard working young thing. If you stick around and help me out with a few things that need to be done here and there, I wouldn't mind keeping you." She suggested. Caralyn swallowed, unable to help the images that galloped across her mind's eye in that instant.
"I," she started, tongue idly darting out to moisten her chapped, slightly reddened lips. The wind had been particularly strong that day she remembered.
"I would very much like that." She accepted, her heart and her stomach giving a pleasant lurch as Bette's smile grew even wider before she hugged the young Caralyn to her. With her head alongside Caralyn's own and her chest pressed into the almost fifteen year old's, Bette said in her ear: "You won't regret this sweetie, I swear!"
And so Caralyn had joined the Blue House of Green Ale.
Bette had taught Caralyn all she could about running the place over the years she stayed. How to account for repeat customers. How to maintain a warm atmosphere despite limited funds. How to be prepared for certain kinds of patterns their patrons tended toward. How to care for the animals both their own and their customer's. And a myriad other sorts of details that seemed minor but helped things run as smoothly as they might.
Caralyn felt almost like she had found home again.
But she had felt guilty for a time, keeping her attraction to Bette a secret as best she could. She had decided one night to confess to the kind woman who had offered her a place without judgment or reservation. It had been difficult, placing so much trust in this kind, compassionate woman who had felt like a second family to her. She hadn't realized how difficult it would be until she tried and the words kept refusing to leave her throat, instead forming a lump she had more and more trouble speaking around.
At Bette's concerned question of: "Caralyn? What's the matter sweetie?" the younger woman's emotional dam burst and she had collapsed against her mentor that she had fallen from simple crush to so far in love with over the span of two years. She had cried and confessed to all that she had kept bottled deep inside her ever since that day she had left her village to make her way somewhere else in the world. Looking back on it, she knew she had begun to babble partway through, just saying some of the things that came to her mind and repeating other things while hiccupping because she couldn't seem to draw enough breath.
Bette had a simple but effective way of ending her crying. She kissed her forehead and then she had kissed Caralyn's cheek. So close to her mouth in fact that the younger woman could've sworn she felt her lips tingle from the bare inches that had separated her and Bette's.
"I saw." Bette quietly answered her. "I knew the first I met you that you looked at me the way I've seen many men look at me. But I'm like you sweetie: strutting cocks have never done for my tastes."
This time her lips met Caralyn's as the young woman's eyes widened almost comically. She was afraid to close her eyelids and enjoy the kiss simply because she was convinced that if she did, she would wake up and this would all be a dream again.
This was no dream.
From that moment on there had been no more tenseness between herself and Bette, no more secret longing, no more furtive glances that she would pray wouldn't earn her a look of disgust or embarrassment.
They had been happy together another two years after that even if they did have to keep quiet about it in front of the patrons of the Green Ale. She sometimes found herself daydreaming, thinking that one day she and Bette would find someone to take over for them when they got too old to continue running the place and pass it on. It wasn't quite the same as a family farmhold, but it was theirs.
But of course her happiness wasn't to last.
They had trooped in, mud splattering their worn leather armor and rusted swords clanking noisily like the clunking of a metal rod upon a wooden drum. Their noise and presence had set her teeth on edge, the lot of them. But she and Bette could tell that these men would be trouble if either of them tried to refuse service and so Caralyn kept her head bowed so they wouldn't see her worried brows while Bette continued to serve them with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
The ugliest one had a stench that seemed to paralyze the air around him. He kept staring at her beloved with lecherous eyes, his fat lips occasionally getting moistened by a slightly blackened tongue as he seemed to contemplate devouring her. He'd been asked by a ratty looking young man about her age with dirty blue eyes whether he wanted to take her. Caralyn's eyes widened as the foul smelling one answered yes without hesitation. Before she could do more than move her head to the side, she had taken a hit to the back of it and lost herself in the dark of unconsciousness.
When she awoke it was with a groan and a throbbing head. She could smell the place before she saw it, the stench almost as bad as the hideous man who had looked at Bette with such gluttonous eyes. As she looked around worriedly, Bette quickly moved over to her, taking her in her arms.
"Thank heavens Caralyn!" She whispered fiercely to her, holding her tight even as Caralyn's arms automatically came up to hug her back.
"Bette, what's happening? Where are we?" She whispered back as her lover pulled away from her. The woman's momentarily relieved expression dimmed as she answered.
Apparently they were being kept prisoner by a company of men led by Roose Bolton's heir Ramsay Bolton. But Bette had heard a few men slip up and call him Snow while they were guarding her. Caralyn was floored. Their lord, the man who was meant to protect them and care for them, had allowed his bastard this kind of freedom with them? Only a day had passed before Bette had been taken. The one known to be Ramsay's right hand man Reek had taken her beloved out of the pen. When they came back later without her, Caralyn was distraught. She wanted to know what they had done to her.
She regretted it upon Ramsay's joyful retelling to her of Bette's last moments and the secret they had kept from so many for so long. As he casually outed her most closely kept secret in front of the others of the pen, she didn't resist her impulse to call him what he was: black hearted bastard.
He proved her correct when he stabbed the somewhat older man next to her in the leg before withdrawing the blade as viciously as he had stuck it in. His mouth may have continued to smile, but his glittering blue eyes promised madness and rage that she had never experienced before as he explained to her that he didn't much care for her insinuations against the true born heir of Bolton and that if she continued with them, he would continue to vet his frustrations on her fellow captives since she was to be hunted upon the morrow anyway.
But as the night was settling and she had nothing else to contemplate but her forthcoming death and the joining of her lover in a pointless sadistic game by an animal like Ramsay, the camp started to become engulfed in flames. In the panic, the smallfolk who had initially given up hope took the opportunity to stampede the confused and somewhat frightened guards and bolted in all directions. Not Caralyn though. She wanted to stay. Whether to ensure Ramsay's death or her own she could't have said in her half maddened grief.
Out of the fire came a black haired boy. Younger than her by a few years certainly, but if he wasn't a man of sixteen or seventeen, she'd eat the tattered remains of her vest. As he came to the pen, Ramsay attacked him. Caralyn saw that though the boy had managed to drive away most of the other guards, he was not expecting an attack by the bastard like this. As she picked an abandoned spear off the ground, she was proven wrong.
The boy had leapt directly into the burning tent behind him, seemingly untroubled by the heat, and thrown his axe so hard that it had buried itself halfway in Ramsay's right shoulder: somehow driving through leather and chainmail alike. Caralyn didn't resist. She drove the spear as hard as she could into the back of the leg of the man who had killed Bette and then treated her death as a bit of sport.
The boy stuck his dagger in the bastard's left shoulder, disabling both arms before grabbing his head. He looked at Caralyn with eyes a brighter shade of grey than the ashes that had settled in his blood streaked clothing and hair. He asked her if she was alright. All she could do was nod in response as he focused himself on Ramsay. And before her disbelieving gaze managed to enflame his body with a spoken condemnation that rang with power she could feel echoing in her very bones.
As the ashes of her beloved's murderer faded into the ground and the fires continued to burn in the tents, he had quickly taken her by the arm and softly told her that they should get outside the camp now. She followed wordlessly, having been rendered temporarily mute by all the shocks her world had taken over the course of the day.
As the fires died down and they remained outside the ruins of what had been a prison and a hunting camp, her rescuer had not said a word. His grey eyes reflected the obscured moonlight almost eerily, the smell of smoke and death lingering in her nostrils as she continued clutching the spear that had brought Ramsay Snow to his knees.
A crack echoed in the air. He spun around, his eyes on a slight man with darker hair that seemed petrified of his attention. The grey eyed boy simply said: "Go. Never return here."
The man obliged, his bare feet barely touching the ground as he sprinted into the night. A sigh came from Ramsay's killer before he spoke to her.
"Come. We both have need of their supplies." The calm tone of his voice was a sharp contrast to the ash and dried blood that adorned his armor and part of his face. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
He offered her a hand to pull her up. "My name is Jon Snow." She couldn't help but flinch at his surname, the same surname Bette's killer bore. "I know I cannot offer you what you have lost. But I hope that I can help you find a new home." He offered, undeterred by her visible trepidation.
His outstretched hand presented a choice for her: did she dare to trust him? Did she have more to gain or to lose by her choice to do so? Such questions raced through her head but were discarded in favor of a few simple facts.
First, he had killed Ramsay and a good number of his men from what she could tell. Second, he was offering to help her in the face of what had happened. And third, she was too damn tired to think so much about everything that had come to happen to her in this half-frozen place her parents had always told her was a hard but just land.
She took his hand, spear still clutched reflexively as she rose to her feet. She still had not spoken: only nodding in her acceptance of his statement. He didn't seem to take offense at her choice of silence. They had looted the bodies side by side. Some whole and able to be stripped of furs and coins. Others had been burnt to a crisp. They had come across only one or two that were still living, she had driven the spear she carried into them savagely as if they too had personally murdered Bette. The young man who called himself Jon looked on as she did so. Questions and sadness in his eyes, but no judgment. She was glad of that. She wouldn't have been able to resist lashing out at him if he had dared judge her after all that she had already lost.
By their end of their salvaging, they had managed to scrounge up one hundred and twenty two coppers: the equivalent of two silver stags with a star and a half groat of pennies on top. Jon suggested they should leave this place, allow the carrions to feast on the rest. Caralyn only nodded in agreement. It was several days later when at last she spoke to him.
"Name's Caralyn." She rasped, her throat somewhat sore from disuse as he quietly offered her one of the roasted birds he had hunted down earlier in the day. She felt he deserved that much for allowing her use of the sleeping bag and never once asking any sexual favor of her. He seemed content instead to softly tell her about himself and ask simple questions that would only require a nod or shake of the head.
She knew that he was a bastard son of the ruling house in the North. He was a Stark by blood if not by name. That he had grown up in Winterfell alongside the lord's trueborn heirs. That he was traveling now as a way of finding answers to questions he had recently discovered. She had wanted to ask what the questions were, but was still too caught up in remembering Bette to find the energy to ask.
He inclined his head in a gesture of respect.
"I wish we could've met under better circumstances lady Caralyn." He said softly.
She snorted bitterly.
"I'm no lady." She answered him. "Just some stupid farmgirl dumb enough to think that I could find happiness by leaving home."
He was silent for a moment as the fire crackled merrily between them. As she looked up, she saw only the penetrating gaze of his grey eyes that begged to understand.
"Who did he take from you?" He asked, his words drawing a lump to her throat as she thought again of her Bette's easy smile from happier times.
"Bette." She whispered. "She was…" she wasn't sure what to say. In the end she settled for the truth.
"She was everything to me." She finished.
His grey eyes flickered to the flames in contemplation. Just as she took another bite she heard him again.
"You loved her." He stated.
Her head jolted up, her sense of loss prickling her. If he was daring to condemn her for loving Bette…
But still there was no judgment in his gaze. Only the firelight and the wish to understand. Caralyn couldn't look at him long without being reminded of how relieved she had been to discover Bette reciprocated her feelings. How much it had meant to know she wasn't alone, that she wasn't a monster or a freak or an abomination for being who she was.
"I should like to hear about her." He offered as she felt his eyes on her turned away face. "If you should like to speak of her memory."
Caralyn's throat jumped a bit. She didn't know where to begin or if this was to be some cruel trick. She didn't know how but she knew only that it could be. It hurt to think of her beloved being dead but she couldn't help and ruminate on her memories of her even now.
She closed her eyes as tears began to fall unbidden again. She wished more than ever that Bette was here with her warm arms to embrace her. But all she had was this fire and this strange young man. How would she even begin?
Yet without her thinking, she began to speak. She talked of meeting Bette as she made her way south to the Neck. Of finding companionship with her and falling into running the Inn with her. She spoke of jokes made, of arguments resolved. Of small routines that had been as simple and natural as awakening in the morning to feed the chickens and pigs to prepare them for the guests but now seemed like priceless treasures.
And through it all he had listened.
That was not the first night he had asked her of her life before Ramsay. As she talked of herself, she began to ask a few questions of him. She learned of his siblings. Of his care for his family, even the step-mother who had hated his very existence. How he had discovered the need to find answers to questions of personal faith he had recently realized he had. As they made their way further south, he was more and more comfortable practicing his combat in front of her. One night, she asked him to teach her.
He had turned his head to look at her as he wiped some sweat from his brow, dark hair falling a bit into his grey eyes as he studied her for a moment.
"Are you sure?" He asked her.
"Yes." She said in return, positive that he would teach her as he would've his tomboyish little sister Arya that lit up his face whenever he mentioned her.
His eyes gazed at her unblinkingly a moment longer before he nodded once in acquiescence. He warned he wasn't sure how good a teacher he would be, but he was willing to give it an honest try if she was.
The first thing he had taught her: advantages and disadvantages. How they were how many fights on a one to one basis would be decided. She had her gender, her size and her unfamiliarity with combat working against her as disadvantages. But on another hand, she also had surprise, dedication and unfamiliarity with combat working for her as advantages.
She asked him incredulously how not knowing how to fight was both an advantage and a disadvantage. His explanation had been simple enough.
"It means you need experience to be able to truly fight well when you need to. But it also means you have no wrong habits to unlearn because you haven't learned any of the habits yet."
He had primarily taught her some simple blocks and dagger work first. Unless she was going to dedicate herself as a solider, what she needed was something she could use against most fighters who were not professionally trained. And in that case, her biggest advantage was surprise. If she was going to enter a fight, she was going to have to enter it with the mindset that it would end in death or worse for her if she didn't. They would think that because she was a women and a slight one at that, that they could intimidate her into doing what they wanted. Which would often be accomplished by using their body as some kind of leverage either by grabbing her or by getting very close to her; far inside her personal area of comfort.
So she needed to be able to block simple grabs to catch them off balance and then be able to stick them with the blade when they weren't expecting it. Jon had drilled her again and again on drawing her dagger from a sheath. Then he would get her to practice doing so when he made a move toward her with his hand. The first times he was able to grab her wrist before she even touched the handle hidden just between her belt and her vest. By the time they were reaching White Harbor after weeks had passed, she was able to consistently draw and bring the dagger to bear when Jon made a move to grab her.
And in all that time, he had never made any romantic overtures toward her: respecting her love of Bette and her general love of the female form. But even in spite of that, Caralyn was privately amazed when they were getting close to the harbor and she discovered that when she thought about making her way south, she could feel some sadness about leaving Jon Snow's company. That she thought of him as a friend, the first one she could truthfully call such after becoming Bette's partner.
And as they were camping one night a few days away from the Manderly controlled port, he asked her where she was going to go.
"I don't know." She answered truthfully, having long since grown comfortable enough to speak with Jon honestly and mirthfully. "Any chance those flames of yours can tell me where to go?" She joked, having also grown used to the idea that her friend worshiped an odd fire god she had never heard of before coming into his company.
There was some hesitation in his expression. Her eyebrows raised in question.
"Jon?" She asked.
"There…may be a way." He offered quietly. "But I cannot promise what answer you would receive."
They were silent but for the crackling of the fire before them and the shifting of the trees nearby.
"Are you…offering me a…a glimpse of the future?" She whispered incredulously.
Jon shook his head. "Not as I understand it. I…" He ran his hand through his dark hair. It had been long enough to reach his shoulders a few days ago, but he had recently cut it so that it just reached past the base of his skull. A bit of a hack job, but considering he still had mostly scruff instead of beard, it fit well with his young man entering into adulthood image.
"I can't really explain it. I honestly don't know what you'll see." He finished lamely, shrugging his shoulders a bit helplessly.
"Will it hurt?" She asked.
"No." He answered immediately. "It just requires you to trust me."
After how they had met and the weeks they'd spent together, that was an easily answered question.
"Show me." She asked him, her brown eyes locked on him even as she nodded agreement with herself.
He came around to her side of the fire. He was face to face with her.
"Alright, what I need you to do is have your hand reach for the fire." He said, grey eyes expressing trepidation and gratefulness at her show of trust in him. She obeyed, right hand coming up so that the palm was feeling the heat rolling off the crackling flames.
"Now I need you to close your eyes." He continued, bringing his left hand to her face after a glance at the fire with a question in his gaze. She did so even as she felt his warm fingers alight on her eyelids, gentle as a feathers touch.
"Concentrate on the feel of the heat against your hand and the sound of the burning you can make out." Came his whispered voice, almost blending with the sound of the logs minutely splintering as the heat consumed them. Her hand was feeling a bit hotter, her eyes showing her random flashes of light in the darkness of her own closed lids. But she listened and she felt, her mind concentrating as best she could.
As she continued concentrating, she didn't notice when he drew his hand away from her eyes and held her right wrist so that her hand could be stilled in front of the fire. "Now, slowly open your eyes." His smoke filled voice spoke, the ashes in the air almost on the tip of her tongue as her nose inhaled the scent of the burning wood and the slowly heating dirt surrounding the pit they had dug for the fire. "Look only into the heart of the flame. When you can feel the fire, hear the fire, see the fire: then it shall show you things."
But his voice was already fading into the background as her eyes took in an amazing scene. It was a city on the waterfront: that much she could tell from the golden waves cresting toward the red buildings. The port city was larger than she could've imagined though. And inside the hills, she witnessed three hills rise. Upon one hill was a great crater with a softly glowing lump of metal in the center. Upon another was another fire that was steadily growing in strength. And upon the third was a blade stuck within the hill that seemed to sway with invisible winds while a crown balanced upon the hilt at the top of the handle and the pommel seemed to change shape with every movement of the sword. As she watched, her eyes were automatically drawn to the heads of many who crowded about the three symbols. She looked instinctively to the fire and saw there was a space right in front of it. A dangerous but warm place to be. As she came down to the ground from her view up on the air, she sharply came back to her senses and realized that Jon's left hand had somehow shifted to holding the back of her head whilst his right hand overlaid itself atop the back of her right that was now a reddened palm from continuous exposure to the flames.
"What-What was that?!" She asked him urgently as she brought her hand down from the fire to let it cool.
"What was what?" He asked her. "What did you see?" His grey eyes seemed genuinely curious.
"But, but didn't you-" She asked, gesturing to the fire and then to him.
"I saw nothing." He said as his head shook a denial. "Nothing but you going still as you opened your eyes for a few moments and then gasping." He cocked his head slightly to the left as he asked again. "What did you see?"
She described her vision to him and asked what he thought it meant.
He shrugged before saying: "Well, it either means you've chosen to believe or you've chosen a destination."
Her green eyes demanded an explanation before her voice did. He obliged her.
"The only city on a waterfront with three hills like that is King's Landing." He said to her. "The three hills are dominated by the Red Keep where the royal family lives, the Sept of Baelor and the Dragon Pits."
The connection to her vision was obvious.
"Oh." Was what she had to say to his interpretation.
"Or it could simply be that you've chosen to follow R'hllor and it's telling you to follow that instinct." Jon continued.
"How?" She asked.
"It could be saying that when you find the harbor you're looking for, you'll find yourself choosing the faith I've told you about over the trust in your rulers and the trust in the faith that has left you adrift." He continued. "But it isn't my vision." He said with a quick smile of reassurance. "I could be wrong about it entirely. Only you can know what it means to you."
As they went to sleep that night, Caralyn's mind buzzed with potential meanings. Once they were in White Harbor, Jon gave her the silver stags plus the pennies from their looting that they had kept all this time. "Seems only fair for the way you helped me out." Was all he had to say when she protested his giving her the money.
"You need to find your way Lady Caralyn." He gently insisted. "And to do that, you need the money far more than I do."
As he explained this when they came to the parting of the ways, she impulsively embraced him. It was something she had never done while they traveled through the North. When she pulled back, he was visibly blushing even as his arms had held her too.
"You're a good man Jon Snow." She said, eyes bright with happiness for one of the first times since Bette's death. "I hope we meet again in better days."
"As do I." He agreed even as he bowed a bit in a gesture of respect. "Farewell." He said before turning to go back to the entrance of White Harbor.
As she made her way toward the dock, she made up her mind. Jon Snow had taught her how to defend herself and he had trusted her to make something of herself. And if she was going to find a safe port with at least some presence of the faith that had made such a good person as he, well where better to begin?
"Where to?" The gruff porter asked when she approached his desk.
"King's Landing." Caralyn answered confidently. Yes. Where better to begin indeed?