Work Text:
“He brought his bastard here,” said Catelyn again, shaking her head. “To live with us all, in the same place as Robb, his heir.”
“Some lords forget their sons, my lady, and foist them to other places, and do not care for them at all. It is not Jon’s fault that he was born,” Arya Snow said from the corner where she was polishing one of her swords, not her Valyrian steel sword, just one of the others, like a Bravosi’s water dancing blade.
“I do not like it,” she insisted.
“The boys will grow up as brothers,” Benjen said. “Jon will not usurp Robb or whatever it is you fear from him. He will have another role in life, which will have naught to do with being Lord of Winterfell.” He was thinking about the Wall. For himself, but also for Jon. The Wall was an honourable place, where bastards could rise high, and where he himself could find some kind of absolution, perhaps, instead of haunting these halls every day, and pretending as if he didn’t see his lost family around each and every corner.
He didn’t much mind bastards himself. He hadn’t thought his father Lord Rickard had fathered any Snows, but looking at Arya Snow, he wanted to check, confirm with his father’s ghost that his mother hadn’t been dishonoured at some point between Ned’s birth and Lyanna’s. If she wasn’t from their family, he would eat his boots, he thought.
If Jon had been a few months older, he might have wondered if there were some kind of coverup going on, that at the Tourney at Harrenhal, Brandon Stark had gone into some darkened room with Ashara Dayne, but it was physically impossible since Jon was already so small for his age.
Besides, the conniving streak that would have Ned passing off his brother’s bastard as his own so that he couldn’t be usurped as heir didn’t exist in his brother. And their new King Robert would have never allowed his friend to be deposed as Warden of the North, Lord of Winterfell, and so on, especially not for a baby.
But Ned fathering a child with a woman he wasn’t married to still surprised Benjen. It was just so odd, but he supposed that war made people act in ways they might not ever otherwise. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t appreciate that Catelyn was upset by such a thing. Not least the infidelity, which she seemed to have resigned herself to in a way Lyanna had been trying to do for Robert until- but having Jon in their house, and acknowledged as the Lord’s son.
But that didn’t mean she needed to be cruel about Jon. The poor boy was still swaddled in blankets, not even talking. It was an uncomfortable situation all round and Benjen was sitting right in the middle of it. With Arya Snow.
“Do you think,” he started haltingly, standing inside his father’s - brother’s - study, “About Arya Snow, that Father-”
“I do not know what to think about it,” Ned said, looking up from his papers. His eyes were lined and there were bags sitting beneath them like he hadn’t been sleeping properly. “Robert thought so.”
“Did your fr- the King try to seduce her?”
Ned did not dignify that with a response, “Have you met her wolf yet?”
“You mean the great bloody Direwolf in the Godswood which comes in at night to sleep in her bed, or she jumps out of her window to sleep alongside in the Godswood? I do not think I could have missed it.”
“Direwolves are our house’s symbol,” he said. “And one hasn’t been seen south of the wall in almost two hundred years.”
“You think she was sent by the gods?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he put his hands up. “She shows up one day, armed and willing to fight for me. Capable too. She has been taught to fight by many masters, I think. She can switch from one style as if it is nothing. Maybe the gods sent her here to be with us. Maybe she is a completely ordinary northerner who just happens to have some kind of bond with a direwolf,” his tone made it clear how likely he found that possibility.
“Lady Catelyn said she knew her, before she had Rob, she came to Riverrun and stayed with them until the direwolf appeared,” Benjen said suddenly, remembering everything his good-sister had said to him about the other girl.
“Aye,” he clasped his hands. “She mentioned that.”
“And she went by Mormont, not Snow, then.”
“She mentioned that too.”
Benjen went on, “Will the Mormonts not take offence? That a bastard masqueraded as one of their own?”
“Perhaps,” his jaw was clenched. “I could not tell you for certain until we see them.”
“Mayhap,” Benjen said. “It would be better to let the Mormonts think that Arya Snow was sent by the gods, so that they are honoured by the ruse rather than-”
“If I am to lead anyone to believe that I think Arya Snow was sent by the gods, it will be because I truly believe that.”
“Which you do,” he said.
Ned glared at him, no, not Ned. Lord Eddard Stark glared at him and he almost shrank back at that. But not quite.
He felt as if he ought to leave now. Escape before the damage was truly done. “I believe it,” he said. “Or I choose to believe it over father dishonouring our mother. It isn’t implausible.” As far as gods sending anyone was implausible. But it could happen.
And that direwolf…
Ned sighed, “I need to get back to these. I am unsure if the Boltons are paying their full taxes or not.”
“Of course.”
He closed the door behind him, and almost knocked over his good-sister in the corridor, “Lady Catelyn!” he said, starting to apologise, but she put her hand up.
“There was no harm done, Benjen. And we are family. Please call me Catelyn.”
“Of course,” he bowed his head, trying to remember his manners.
“Is he occupied?” she asked him, nodding at the door.
He hesitated, which she took as a yes, “Will you walk with me, Benjen?”
“Of course,” he offered her his arm, trying to summon back the person he had been as the Stark in Winterfell during the war.
Almost as soon as they were out of earshot of Ned’s study, she asked him, “Did you know Arya Snow before the war.”
“I did not,” he said, knowing full well what she meant by it. “None of us had ever heard of her before.”
“That’s not to be unexpected,” she was frowning.
“Well, she was sent by the gods,” he sounded more confident about that than he truly felt. He was sure it was the safer bet though. And he wasn’t sure that he was even completely lying about it. Whatever it was about her, she knew too much.
“You believe that?” she asked, eyebrows raised. He then immediately remembered that since his good sister followed the Seven, this was perhaps not the most persuasive of arguments.
“Aye,” he said. “I do. If you would excuse me, I need to be with the sword master soon.”
“Of course.”
“Again,” Arya said, her sword pointed at his neck, his sword somewhere off on the left of him. She lowered it. “That was better, but you need to clean up your footwork, and you need to practise more overhead moves. I think your strength fails you at certain points.”
She was right about that. He disliked lifting his sword for overhead blows and therefore they were the ones he practised the least which were therefore the ones he was worst at.
“Can we take a break,” he groaned. “It’s been hours.”
“It’s been one and a half at best,” it wasn’t as if they had a candle in here for measurements, but judging from the height of the sun in the sky, still weak, he feared that it truly only had been that.
“Still,” he said.
She sighed, “Fine. We can rest for ten minutes.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
He nodded, “Fifteen.”
There was snow on the ground, although the worst of the winter was gone now, and spring would be on its way sooner than later, so their cups were cold to the touch and hurt his teeth to drink from.
She sipped deliberately at her cup, “What is this… meeting that everyone is preparing for?”
“Ned wants to show Robb off to the Lords of the North,” he said. “The feast should be enjoyable anyway.”
She hummed, her eyes somewhere else.
“Have you been at many feasts before?” he ventured. He almost added my lady onto the end, but he was unsure of how Arya Snow felt about the title.
“Yes,” she said, a little quieter than she had been before. “Once.”
“Is that Arya Snow?” Rickard Karstark nodded at her from across the hall, where she sat, making conversation with the few lordlings who had dared approach her, despite the direwolf lying beside her at the end of the bench.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
“She does not appear… as she was described to me,” the man said carefully.
She was neatly dressed in a jerkin and breeches, with tidy embroidery where they ended, and he had seen her boots earlier, polished to a shine.
“Did you expect her to be covered in blood, yelling for Targaryen soldiers?” he smiled a little, and Lord Rickard looked more than a little guilty.
“Perhaps,” he acquiesced. “Is that truly a direwolf?”
Benjen watched Nymeria, taller than two men and wider than three, snap up a whole chicken when her mistress tossed it in her direction, to the delight, and mild horror, of the gathering crowd. “I could not think of anything else it might be. I do not think wolves come in that size.”
Lord Karstark laughed, “And she is a Snow? From whom?”
“She is not my sister, I believe,” he said. “Otherwise, I could not tell you.”
A young man came over trying to talk to her, but she seemed to shut him down, not unkindly, but absolutely firmly. “Interesting,” Karstark said. “He’s a second son, but as a bastard, she would do well for him.”
“As his mistress?” He faintly stopped himself from muttering not bloody likely.
“I meant as his wife, but perhaps he was only trying to persuade her into bed. I could not say.”
“I doubt Arya Snow is the marrying kind,” he offered.
“Marrying kind or not,” Karstark said. “For woman like that, it is stability. She would do well to find a nice young man with a bit of land. It would be a form of security.”
“I suppose,” he said, feeling his forehead wrinkle up. Ned already had permanent marks there, even when his face was clear. Benjen didn’t doubt he had a few of his own too. He hoped he would live long enough to gain more.
“Ned said we’re not allowed to ask about his mother,” he said, pulling his hood away from his face now that the blizzard had cleared. There were snowflakes on the fox fur border.
“No,” she said, holding the dark haired infant out, showing him the view from the tower. “Do you see that, Jon? All of that is the North. And we live here.” Her voice changed when she spoke to the baby, either of them actually but he saw her with Jon more than with Robb. Not like a nurse’s voice, or Old Nan’s, turning saccharine and high, but there was something far softer and a little sweet about it still.
“Do you know who it is?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is it you?”
She burst out laughing, although looking mildly ill, “Gods, no.”
“Is it Ashara Dayne?”
She sobered, “Would it help you sleep at night if it were?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I thought Brandon would have many, but Ned having any surprises me,” he said honestly.
“War brings out things in people that would never see the light otherwise,” she said quietly, and then: “Will you tell me about your sister?”
Thinking about Lyanna was painful, even now, months later. Arya had found her, or helped find her in Dorne, when she had been abandoned by Rhaegar and left to die surrounded by members of the Kingsgard. “She was funny,” he said. “She liked to play tricks on Brandon when we were younger. And she was… forthright,” he decided on the word. “When we were at that tourney, some Freys were beating on a crannogman, and she shouted at them for it.” And then beat them herself.
“Howland Reed?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, not needing to ask where she’d met the man nor when. Then he said something else, “She didn’t want to marry Robert Baratheon.”
She said, “I could not fault her for that.”
“No,” he said. “But perhaps you might fault her for leaving with Rhaegar of her own volition.”
Her eyebrows didn’t move like he had expected them to, nor did her mouth harden, nor eyes narrow. There was no physical reaction on her face whatsoever. It was at times like this that he felt like Arya Snow was not… quite a person. It supported the idea that she was sent by the gods. Or perhaps she was a child of the forest? Or descended from one? Her reactions were never what he thought they ought to be. They were too clean, too perfect. As if she had spent a long time practising that sort of thing.
“A young girl, not yet a woman grown charmed by a handsome and caring prince? I have heard of such a thing before, and that time too, the girl came to regret it,” she said, sounding so much more tired than however many years he supposed she must have lived.
“I should have stopped her,” he said. “I knew that she was writing to him, and him to her. I did not know what they were planning but I should have guessed,” he pressed a gloved hand to his face. “I should have known. I should have stopped them.”
Jon started crying and Arya bounced him until he stopped. “Perhaps,” she said. “But you did not. And the past is immovable now. You can only go forward.”
He was crying, he realised, although his hot tears were quickly cooling against the air.
“You cannot save your sister now,” she said, second cousin to gentle.
“If the gods only would send us back so that we could change what has happened and save our siblings,” he said, thinking not only of Lyanna, but Brandon too. And father.
For a second her cover broke and her eyes flashed. But he must have imagined it, or seen a piece of snow float past since a second later she appeared as if nothing had happened.
“Perhaps you should talk to your brother,” she said, and kissed the top of Jon’s head very lightly.
“What if he does not understand? What if I am cast out?”
“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives,” she said before walking back inside with Jon, leaving him there, wondering how in the Seven Hells she had known to say that.
“She’s gone riding,” Ned said to him when he asked after her when she was missing while the rest of the household broke their fast the next day. “She said she wanted to check on a few villages east of here.”
“Without guards?” Catelyn asked.
Her son started whining, clearly having picked up on her alarmed tone so his nurse removed him.
“With Nymeria,” Ned said. “I did not think you would be so concerned.”
This was a lot for Ned to admit but Benjen was starting to notice that he said more when he was with Catelyn and they were mostly alone. Benjen was superfluous at this point.
“Arya Snow is a young woman, completely alone, and under the care of this house,” she said. “I may not… appreciate her status but if she is hurt then it would reflect back onto the house.”
“I think Nymeria is more than able to take care of any threats if Arya herself struggles,” Benjen offered, putting his spoon down. “Please excuse me, I would like to visit my nephews.”
Catelyn’s face soured as he pluralised the noun, but he did not care. Jon had no mother to care for him, and his status was far more fragile next to his half-brother’s. He deserved something from them. He was only a babe.
The Northern lords left in shifts, but soon enough, Winterfell had gone from completely full to quiet and empty. Quieter and emptier than it had been during the war but maybe that had been because Benjen’s thoughts had been loud enough to fill the halls all by himself.
“Do you think you’ll take any fosterings?” he asked Lord Eddard as they stood at the gate as a household, watching Lord Manderly ride off with his son. “It would be a good way to bring the lords of the North together.”
“You think like father did,” he said. “I never thought you were one for the game of thrones.”
“Not for myself,” he said, still looking into the distance. There was a rider approaching. No, two riders. No, a rider, and a direwolf. “Where did she get that horse?”
“I gifted it to her when she returned here.”
“Returned?”
Ned seemed to think about it for a minute, “I should say she came here. She told me that she came from White Harbour.”
“Did Lord Manderly corroborate this?”
His jaw tightened. Ned never did like liars, “He said he had never heard of her before, but also that he did not keep track of all the bastards in White Harbour, given how many there are.”
“She gives a new story every time,” Benjen said. “She is a Mormont. She is a Snow from White Harbour. She is no one from nowhere.”
“Did she tell you that?” He could hear the sound of hooves and the battering punch of paws against frozen ground.
“It was implied. I thought so, at least.”
“She has a sister.”
“You believe that?”
“She told me on the day we found Lyanna,” he said, his voice like stone.
Benjen would have replied, would have asked something, anything about that day, except that she was riding up to them now, dismounting, and nodding at both of them. She wasn’t smiling. Not exactly. He had seen her laughing at feasts and doing all the things which he had exactly expected someone like her to be doing but here her face was completely blank, skin flushed from the cold weather, her hood pulled down.
“I trust you were successful,” Lord Eddard said.
“I was,” she said. “By your leave, my lord?”
“Of course,” he said. “Welcome back to Winterfell.”
“Do you follow the old gods, Arya?” Benjen asked when they were taking a break from fighting. She demolished three cups of water, sighing heavily. “I did. I don’t know what it means for me now. I travelled a lot when I was younger.”
“Were you in Braavos?”
“I was,” she said. “Sold cockles and clams by the canalside.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he groaned.
“No, I did,” she was smiling. It was a little wonky. One of her teeth was chipped, he noticed. He hadn’t seen it before, at the side of her mouth, just past her canines. “It taught me a lot.”
“Surely not.”
“Why would I lie? What would I have to gain?” she said.
“Glory,” he suggested.
“If I were to lie for the sake of glory I would tell you that I defeated a khal in battle and took his dothraki across the Great Grass Sea and founded a new city,” she smiled. “But you are at liberty to believe what you wish to.” She drew her practice sword again, “Up again, we need to work on your stamina, you are always out of breath far too quickly.”
“Can I see your sword again?”
“Which sword?” she got up, stretching her legs, leaning down on one side, and then on the other. “I have at least four.”
“Your Valyrian steel sword. Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” she said. “Beyond the wall. Besides, your brother, Lord Eddard has one, why don’t you ask to see that?”
“I did,” he admitted. “Before the war, my father would indulge me sometimes. Why did you go beyond the wall?”
Her face did not shift a single inch, “I did it for my family.”
He looked at the sword. He looked at the descriptions of known Valyrian steel swords from a tome he had had Maester Luwin find for him. He looked at the sword again.
“Arya?” he asked. “Lady Arya?”
“Yes?” she looked up. She was working on another crocheted blanket. Cat had mentioned that she had made one for Robb before he had been born.
“This is Dark Sister,” he said. “How did you get Dark Sister?”
Her expression did not change. She was not surprised to find out that the sword was Dark Sister, nor that he had come to this conclusion, although he supposed that leafing through a book with descriptions and drawings of famous swords from Westeros. He almost imagined that she had been expecting it, but she gave nothing away even now.
“We found a buried cache of weapons wrapped in leather, but this was the only one that survived.”
“Who are you?” he asked. And: “We?”
“I am Arya,” she said. “Snow, since I was born in the North and I have no family name and no place to be from otherwise. We, as in my siblings and I.”
“Ned said you had a sister,” he said. “Catelyn said you had a brother, you made that blanket for him, but you gave it to Robb instead.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m making this one for Jon,” she started counting stitches and sighed slightly as she realised that she had made a mistake, pulling the wool apart until she could undo it. “A matching set, I suppose.”
“Will you do it for the rest of Ned’s children?” he asked.
“If I am here,” she said.
“Do you have any intention of leaving?” he asked.
“Not unless I must.”
Ned looked grave when Benjen came to his study, summoned by a wide-eyed servant. “Roose Bolton is dead,” he said. “The whole of the Dreadfort is dead.”
Benjen sat down, “How? Wildlings?”
“If it’s Wildlings, we’ve seen no trace of them since,” he said. “And no reports of them before, and it’s quite far south for them to raid.”
“Indeed,” Benjen nodded. “But who else?”
“That is what troubles me,” Ned said. He had new grey hairs at his temples. Father had had those too, but he had had years and decades to gain them. He was watching his brother gain ten years in two, right before his own eyes. “There were no witnesses,” he said. “It was found and brought to me, and therefore the rest of the Seven Kingdoms by sundown, by a fur merchant from Last Hearth. No survivors. No witnesses.”
“The whole place?” Benjen said.
“Yes,” Ned said. “I will be riding out tomorrow to see it, will you-”
“I’ll be coming,” he said. “Robb can be the Stark in Winterfell. It’s good practice for him anyway.”
“Yes,” Ned said. “I will be asking Arya too.”
“How many men?”
He thought about it, “Ten? I will talk to Ser Rodrik.”
He slowed his horse until he was beside Arya at the back of the train, Nymeria bounding far ahead but still within sight, “She doesn’t stay with you.”
“She is not a lapdog,” she said. “How are you today, my lord?”
“I am ill at ease,” he said. “I do not like what has happened to the Boltons.”
“Are you worried it will happen to the Starks?” she asked.
He might have denied this to most people, but Arya Snow seemed to know anything before it ever happened, “I am, aye. Who would not be?”
“Indeed,” she said. “Who do you think did it?”
“Wildlings,” he said immediately. “Who else?”
“A rival house?” she suggested.
“That would implicate o- my house, and the Starks did not do it,” he said passionately. “But the Boltons are not friends with all the houses of the North.”
“Perhaps it was punishment then? From the Gods.”
He was not one to argue with one whom he thought herself was from the Gods, but the Old Gods of the North did not deal in the ways of the Seven of the Andals, “Do you know who did it, my lady?” he asked
“My lady?” she asked. “I am no lady. We have discussed this.”
“Who are you?” He tried to control his breath, not give away his feelings. She read them anyway.
“I cannot tell you now,” she said. “I hope you will find out one day.”
He was certain now, “Tell me what I should do.”
“I do not command men,” she said.
“Advise me, then,” when he looked ahead, his brother and guards were almost out of sight but not so far that they could not still catch up. “Lyanna is gone because of me. Brandon. Father. I do not know how to absolve myself.” Something surged up in him that he had been struggling to keep at bay for so long, drowning him, pulling him under. He gasped, and pulled his horse to a halt.
She stopped, and circled around so that she was facing him, “You might join the Night’s Watch,” she said, speaking as though this was already a confirmed fact. “There would be absolution there, although you have not done anything to need it.”
“I should have stopped Rhaegar,” he said. “I should have caught on sooner.”
She was too far to place a hand on his arm but her grey eyes bore into his, “Your sister made her own choices. Those went awry. I-”
“I will join the Night’s Watch,” he said. “When we return, I will tell Ned of my decision. He has a trueborn son now, and will have more soon enough. And I will see you again, Arya, if what you have promised me is true.”
“I hope it is,” she said softly. “If I could control fate I would assure you of it.”
He set his jaw, “That is enough for me. By your leave.”
He kicked his horse into a canter, then a gallop until he found the back of Ned’s train again, riding up towards the front to join his brother.
Arya joined the back.