A/N: Hello again, my dears! It's MaryEvH, back online. First order of business - my thanks to Anne for updating in my stead last chapter, since I was spending update day in airports! She might just visit on FF from time to time; who knows. ;)

But back to business. We worked really hard on this chapter, and it's a little longer, so we hope you'll enjoy it!

When her eyes opened again, she wasn't sure how long she had been asleep. But there was an old man puttering about the room, moving from the writing desk to the cupboards and back. He was wearing black Maester's robes, and stood hunched, supporting himself on the back of a chair as he moved back and forth, his chain quietly rattling as he moved.

Margaery thought of announcing her current wakeful state, but then reconsidered. The Maester hadn't noticed her yet, and she needed some time to think.

She was Margaery Tyrell. She had married first Renly Baratheon, and then Joffrey Baratheon. They were both dead. She was accused of conspiring to kill one of them. Sterlan, Brandeth, and Darrin were all dead. They died to save her. A sob tore at her throat, but Margaery wouldn't let it.

She had nearly died. Now she was at Castle Black, with no idea what would happen to her here. Her sight went blurry, though she still stubbornly refused to let her tears fall.

She was Margaery Tyrell. She was strong, and she would get through this. She would bend this situation to her advantage, as she always did when adversity struck. She would survive.

Her throat ached from holding back her emotions, though through the pain that still laced the rest of her body, she hardly noticed. No one deserved to see her tears, so she swallowed it back and closed her eyes.

One drop managed to slip through before she got a hold of herself again.

When she opened her eyes again, the Maester had stopped and was facing her, his head cocked as if to listen to something. And maybe he was…as she took a closer look, now that there was light in the room, she could tell that there was something off about his gaze. He was staring at a point somewhere over her head. Was he…?

"Yes, my dear, I'm blind. But that's hardly our first concern here," he said, not unkindly. Margaery jumped. She hadn't made a sound, how had he known she was awake? "I may be blind, but that only makes my other senses sharper," he chuckled, as though he had read her mind.

"I'm sorry," she croaked.

He leaned heavily on the back of his chair. "No matter, child. How do you feel?"

She took a deep breath. Such a simple question, but the answer was so complicated that she hardly knew where to begin. "Just tired," she lied. What an inadequate thing to say.

But the Maester nodded. "And the pain?"

"Bearable." She wanted to keep her answers short, to the point. She couldn't risk saying too much, no matter how benign anyone's questions seemed. No one could find out who she was, in any way.

But before the Maester could say more, a bleary-eyed man stumbled in. "Sorry, Maester Aemon, I'm awake now!" he said in a rush.

The corner of the Maester's lips twitched in what could almost be called a smile. "So I hear," he responded.

Then the new man's eyes landed on Margaery. She noticed that he was slight and had jet black hair, which was cut close to his head. She had no idea who he was, though he looked at her with familiarity. "You're awake!"

"So I am," she replied as evenly as she could manage.

"Oh, sorry!" he said, stepping closer. "Of course you wouldn't remember, you were unconscious!" he said. Margaery raised her eyebrows. He was certainly a strange one. The man quickly turned red. "I'm one of the Rangers who found you," he explained. "My name's Pypar, but everyone here calls me Pyp."

She managed a smile, despite her exhaustion. She remembered Sam mentioning this Pyp before, and he seemed kind. "I'm Bethany," she said. "Bethany Flowers."

"I'll let you take up your watch now, Pyp," the Maester said in his coarse voice, placing one hand on the edge of Margaery's cot to stand as he made his way to his desk.

He grinned and sat down where Maester Aemon had been. Margaery briefly wished for a buffer, but she remembered Sam mentioning this man as someone the Lord Commander personally trusted to guard her. "Flowers, eh? So you're from the Reach, then. I'm from the Riverlands myself, but I've heard it's beautiful there."

She smiled. "It really is. And the harvest festivals are spectacular. But I must say that I've never made it to the Riverlands, what are they like?"

Pyp sighed. "If you're a highborn, life is easy. Especially if you're a Tully. But for the rest of us...we get by. We stay inside when the heavy rains come, but it makes the land even more green and beautiful."

She turned over to look at him. "What brought you to the Wall, Pyp?" He looked uncomfortable, and Margaery was suddenly reminded that most men at the Wall were there because they were criminals. But she just couldn't imagine Pyp doing anything of the kind.

"Uhm… I stole a wheel of cheese. My little sister hadn't eaten in three days, so…" he trailed off. "They gave me a choice - my right hand, or the Wall. So I came here."

Margaery smiled at him. "That was a very noble thing to do, taking care of your sister like that."

She almost thought she saw Pyp blushing. "Well, thank you." They sat in companionable silence for a moment, the only other sound in the room being Maester Aemon's wanderings. "So how did you end up this far North? Daughter of a noble in the Reach, and all that," he said, trailing off.

Margaery hesitated. She hated lying, pretending to be someone she was not, but she saw the logic in it. She had no choice now. "My half-brother and I were going to Bear Island, to trade in our father's name. But it seems the Boltons will not suffer anyone to pass without going through them."

Pyp shuddered when she mentioned the Boltons. "Aye, they're a nasty lot. Did you hear about what happened to the Starks at the Twins? Lord Bolton drove his sword through King Robb's heart. Now they're sitting in Winterfell, Wardens of the North." He sighed. "Jon had just been elected Lord Commander when it happened. He took the news hard. And he was having to deal with Ser Thorne being pissed for not being made Lord Commander." Suddenly Pyp started. "Oh, sorry for the language, m'lady!"

Margaery suppressed a smile, she'd heard far worse at Highgarden. "That's perfectly alright, Pyp. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Lord Commander Snow, to lose his family like that..."

"The entire Watch thought Thorne was being awful about it, except Janos Slynt," Pyp replied, rolling his eyes at the name. "And he's just as bad."

"Even so, dying at the hands of the Boltons...their reputation is known throughout Westeros, and I imagine it's not been exaggerated."

"I don't know how anyone could exaggerate the Boltons' reputation, truthfully," Pyp replied.

Margaery rolled back over, now flat on her back to look at the ceiling. The Boltons were horrible, but everything seemed so far away at the Wall. And Margaery far preferred to contemplate it as opposed to the Boltons. So she settled in under her blanket and decided to rest while she could. Perhaps Castle Black wasn't as bad as it seemed.

/*/

It had been three days since he left Castle Black, though it felt closer to three years, especially as he reviewed the raid in his head, over and over. Three days since he last saw civilization, and Jon desperately looked forward to sleeping in his own quarters again. That thought sparked a memory, though, and Jon remembered that the unknown girl would be sharing those quarters with him.

He quickly put it out of his mind, calling Grenn forward. "How close are we to the Wall?"

The ranger consulted his map. "About a day or so, I'd say," he replied. "Possibly closer."

Jon nodded. They were making even better progress than he expected. "Thank you. You can return to your place in the convoy," he said. "I need to think." He spurred his horse forward a little faster as Grenn rode further back. One more day to go - maybe less - and he was back where he belonged.

He started thinking back to the Wildlings further north as the convoy moved steadily towards home. It had been just over a month since he had abandoned Ygritte and Tormund south of the Wall. He knew what their orders were. What he didn't know was why they hadn't been carried out yet.

Perhaps Ser Alliser was right - maybe Mance's army had finally fallen into chaos. He remembered hearing the man's condescending words as a newly-minted Lord Commander - "You can't get 50 Wildlings together before they start killing each other." But Jon had seen Mance's army for himself; the Thenns, the Hornfoots, the Ice River Clans, the giants, the mammoths...he shuddered to think what would happen when they descended on the Wall.

He snapped his reins again, pushing them out of his mind as his horse sped up. Right now, he only needed to get home. The Wildlings would come when they did. Until then, they could only prepare. Pulling his thoughts away from such morbid places, he focussed instead on the landscape in front of him. When they got back, he'd have to brief Maester Aemon and Ser Alliser. And move the mystery girl out of the infirmary. As his thoughts drifted back to her, he wondered if she'd woken up yet, how her recovery was going. He would certainly be curious to talk to her when she was awake. He needed to find out how, by all the gods, a southern girl had wound up at Castle Black, clearly in a hurry to escape something.

Or someone. Only time will tell.

/*/

It took a while for Margaery to fully wake up. She had more or less adjusted to the feeling of being at the Wall, but it was still strange to wake up to the extreme cold and snow outside. As she drifted into waking on the fourth day at the Wall - including the two she'd been unconscious - something felt… off. There was more noise outside than she was used to, and she was straining to hear what the commotion was about when the door opened. She expected it to be Maester Aemon, but was pleasantly surprised to see Pyp and Sam both.

"Hello boys, come to keep me company?" she asked, mustering a smile. She'd never seen the two men together, though it was obvious from their conversations that they were friends. She wondered what the occasion was.

"Sort of," Pyp supplied cheerfully. Margaery was almost wary of the grin on his face.

With some alarm, she watched as he helped her sit up on her cot, while Sam gently grabbed her arm. "Would you gentlemen care to explain what exactly you're doing?" she asked, her voice wavering a little, despite her best efforts. She had come to trust the two men who'd guarded her these past few days, but now she was starkly reminded that she hardly knew them at all.

"Don't look so alarmed, Miss Bethany," Sam said, smiling gently. Pyp now took hold of her other arm. "We've been asked to move you to the Lord Commander's private quarters. You'll be under his personal protection. There are some wounded men coming back that need tending to, and they'll need the infirmary."

Margaery had to reorient herself for a moment as dizziness struck her. Sitting up was difficult. "The Lord Commander? I've never even met the man," she said as the two men lifted her up. For men of the Watch, they were surprisingly considerate of her condition, and careful in getting her to her feet. Still, she had to suppress a hiss of pain.

"Don't spend your energy worrying about the Lord Commander," Sam assured her. "He's one of the best men on the Wall. He was the first friend I made when I joined the Watch."

"He's a good man," Pyp agreed. "Could sometimes be a bit of a prat when we first got here, but I suppose we all go through that stage," he grinned at Sam. "I know I did."

Margaery nodded but didn't smile as she normally would have; she was in too much pain. Seven hells, how could it hurt so much? She barely remembered that last day of wandering through the wilderness, but she'd been able to stumble on her own power. How was it possible that after three days of bedrest, she could barely move by herself?

"We're here, Miss Bethany," Sam said softly. He carefully took a better hold of her while Pyp opened the door. The quarters weren't exactly lavish, but then, Margaery hadn't expected them to be. This was the Night's Watch, after all. They were still less austere than the infirmary, with a large desk in one corner, and a cot behind it. A large fireplace was carved into the opposite wall, and it even had a small window over it that looked down to the main courtyard. A cot stood by the fireplace, similar to the one she had been sleeping on in the infirmary. As gently as ever, Sam and Pyp lowered Margaery onto it, settling her down.

"You'd think I was made of glass," she joked, finally managing to smile through her pain.

Pyp blushed. "My mum always said that a lady should be treated with care and respect," he said kindly. "Is there anything else you need, Miss Bethany?"

She sighed. "Just sleep. Even though that's all I've been doing lately," she said, with only a pinch of resignation.

Sam nodded, a glint of sympathy in his expression. "You can call for the Maester or one of us if you need anything," he said.

Margaery smiled thankfully and lay down on the cot, sleep already pulling at her eyes. She was vaguely aware of the men leaving, one of them gently closing the door behind them. But by the time she turned around and snuggled closer into her blanket, her eyes closed and sleep claimed her again.

/*/

The first thing she noticed when she drifted into wakefulness was that she was comfortably warm for the first time since her arrival at the Wall. Then she noticed something sniffing at her face. She snapped her eyes open, and saw red ones staring back. A stout black nose - the source of the sniffing - was right next to her face. She yelped before she could stop herself, clinging to the wall behind her.

"Ghost, to me," an unfamiliar male voice commanded from the other side of the room. A bit to her surprise, the beast immediately obeyed, lumbering silently across the room.

Trying desperately to get her breathing under control, she looked up at the source of the voice. He had dark curly hair and was wrapped in a thick fur cloak, all black. His features seemed hard and brooding, but she sensed something else underneath. Something she couldn't quite pin down. Schooling her features, she sat up more properly, pulling up the blanket to drape around her shoulder. "I apologise, I didn't expect…" she trailed off, her eyes landing on the creature again. It was a wolf, but…it was far bigger than any wolf she had ever heard about.

"A direwolf?" the man supplied. A small, amused smile crossed his face as he reached down to pet the animal. "Don't worry; he likes you."

She looked back up at him, fighting to keep an incredulous look off her face. The direwolf liked her? "Well…I'm glad, I suppose."

For a moment, neither of them said anything, and Margaery was all too aware of the awkward tension in the room. "You must be the Lord Commander I've heard so much about," she offered, just to break the silence.

"That's right," the man said, sitting down on a cot opposite to her own. She was grateful for that; the height difference made her feel even smaller than she was. "My name is Jon Snow."

A/N: So they've finally met! :D Don't forget to leave a review and tell us what you think!