cp2

Chapter 2

A fire burned hot in its pit, Jon tending to it with a poker.

"Ouch," I hissed, wincing, though unwilling to move. "Be careful."

Sansa tutted at me, though she held a smile, her attention focused on my shoulder, the area where the arrow had cut. I was bare at the torso, not a stitch of clothing covering my chest, so that she could do her work. Her stitches were fantastic on cloth, but that did not mean she knew how to stitch skin well. "I am careful."

Thruthfully, she was being very good about this. Sansa was a deft hand all things needlework, and though it was not necessarily clean, she was doing well.

That did not mean I liked it, however.

"You don't need to do this," I muttered. My shoulder hurt, but it was a clear wound regardless. It would heal properly on its own time.

"She doesn't, it's true." Jon concurred. He eyed me shrewdly, though softly. "But our sister will do this regardless. She's already taken care of my leg." To show emphasis to this, he lifted his leg up, his trousers replaced with small shorts showcasing a line of thin thread running over his calve.

I snorted at him. "So, she's to finish the set, is it?" I was quick to regret my words when Sansa threaded another needle through my skin less gently than done prior. She glared at me lightly, and I sighed and felt it smarter to just shut up and suck it up. It would be over soon.

Sansa was in a good mood, all things considered. Though that was to be expected. Night had fallen, and with it the echo of death of followed. I heard it well, the sounds of Ramsey being eaten alive by his starving dogs. Sansa would set no other course for her former husband, and I had felt it a fitting punishment both in this life and the last.

Jon did not approve. But then, Jon did not understand. I had been prisoner to Ramsey Bolton for months. Sansa had been prisoner to him for almost a year, a prisoner he meant to rape children into. Our positions, while similar in their baser natures, were nowhere comparable in severity. Sansa could do whatever the hell she wanted with him.

Scissors snipped at the last stitch; my skin forced together at the shoulder. "You'll want to be smart with it for a couple of weeks, but it should heal quickly." Sansa said.

I rubbed at it and smiled. "Thank you."

"Any time."

Jon walked away from his brazier then, and we were all sat facing one another on a trio of stools. Ghost plodded towards us, the albino direwolf splaying its great bulk in the middling of our positions. I reached down to pet his flank. "It's been… years, since we last saw each other." Jon said.

"Not since everybody left Winterfell," I agreed, nodding shortly, emotions running throughout my body. I had supplanted the mind of a child, one with deep-seated disturbances. I'd only the chance of a short nap upon the retaking of Winterfell, and though memories settled easier after that, they were still jumbled. Regardless, Rickon held a clear resentment for his siblings, Sansa especially. At the same time he loved her dearer than any of his other siblings save for Bran, and that was only due to their travels together with the Reed siblings.

She held a similar relationship to Rickon when compared with what Jon was to Arya. Sansa always was kind to Rickon, helping him with his letters young and singing upon his request and cleaning him with a fond smile when he'd been roughing it too much in the dirt. When he had nightmares, she would offer him her bed and keep him calm through the dark. Catelyn Stark was Rickon's mother by day, and Sansa was a second by night. It was not impossible to assume that she was using her youngest brother as practice for any children she might have, but Sansa was also a kind and caring girl when young. It was more likely she was just doing what felt right.

Her leaving Winterfell hit him hard, harder even than his father leaving. And after everything that had happened with Bran and Osha and Shaggydog, it had seemingly become even more difficult to articulate.

Sansa sighed. "We never should have left."

"None of us should have." I said bitterly.

She brought me into another hug, and I embraced her once more. Jon was awkward, placing just a single arm over the pair of us. When we all separated, it was Jon that took the lead on our talks.

"Where have you been, Rickon?" He asked, his voice whispery. "We thought you dead."

"Theon said that he wasn't able to find you or Bran after you escaped, so he killed a pair of farm boys and told our people they were you two." Sansa said. "But… I've not heard hide or hair of you since then. Nobody has. That was over four years ago, Rickon. How are you here? What happened to Bran?"

I grunted, digging my hand through my hair, one eye closed. "Bran and I hid in the Winterfell Crypts when Theon burned those farm boys, with Osha and our wolves."

"Osha?" Jon asked.

"A spearwife Robb had captured before the war." I told him. "She offered her service to us over being killed, and she became our protector after mother went south."

I rolled my shoulders. "When Ramsey took Winterfell from Theon, Osha led me and Bran and Summer and Shaggydog and Hodor further north. It wasn't easy, and Bran made it even harder. Being crippled forced us to take a slow pace, and Bran had been having… visions. They'd been disturbing his sleep. For a while. Osha thought black things were taking him over. None of us really knew what was happening. But then we came across Meera and Jojen Reed."

"From Greywater Watch? In the Neck?" Sansa queried; her head tilted in thought. "They're Lord Howland Reed's children, I think."

I nodded. "The same. They were looking for us. Wanting to protect us. Jojen had been born with the greendreams and knew we had left Winterfell."

"There's no such thing." Sansa scoffed.

Jon shook his head at her, rejected her statement. "It's real. Rare, but real. I spoke to wargs from beyond the Wall, and they told tale of them."

"Jojen was nice, but also not. He wasn't interested in me. He only really cared about Bran, and Meera was nicer but she followed her brother's words. He called Bran a warg and skinchanger, and later called him a greenseer. A skinchanger is born in one and a thousand men," I quoted. "But a greenseer is born in one and a thousand skinchangers. He said Bran was important. Said he was the strongest warg in the world. Said he needed to be taught how to use his power."

"Jojen Reed taught Bran to warg?" Jon asked, his brow furrowed.

I shook my head, mouth flat. "No. Bran figured it out on his own. In a way. When he slept, he could warg. He liked to be in Summer's skin when we were moving, it let him run with us. He liked to take the minds of birds too and scout camping spots. But more than that, Bran could do something no other warg should be able to, Osha had told me. He could warg into Hodor; into a human."

"That's not possible." Jon denounced.

I understood his refusal. For a warg to take the body of a man tapped into the realm of the gods. But then, Jon had been resurrected from the dead. He'd already toed into that domain. "It's true. I saw it. You almost did, too. When those Wildlings had you surrounded at the Gift, when you rode back to the Wall. You killed a warg with an eagle and ran from a red-haired girl and Tormund."

Jon donned a wide-eyed stare. "You were there? Gods but-… no, that makes its own sense. I haven't thought on it in years, thought it just a trick of the mind. Pain makes the eyes see strange things. But those were the direwolves that helped me escape, weren't they?"

I nodded. Ghost plopped his head onto my boot and I scratched at his ear. "They were. Summer and Shaggy. We were all there, hiding in that mill. It was raining, and the thunder scared Hodor. He was yelling. Osha said he would give away our spot, that the wildlings wouldn't be kind to the Stark boys. So Bran warged Hodor quiet. Jojen said he couldn't teach Bran, because Bran was already better than Jojen was. He had to go beyond the Wall for training, meet with a man called the three eyed raven. And Bran believed him."

Sansa and Jon both made to speak, but I held a hand to stop them. I wanted to finish my story. "Osha didn't like that. She went south of the Wall for a reason. She wanted to take us to Castle Black, to meet with you. But Bran said that the wildlings were going to hit the Night's Watch soon, and it'd be safer to stay away. And- and he said he was going north of the Wall, but I couldn't come. He said it wasn't safe. He asked Osha to take me to Last Hearth, to the Umbers. He said they'd take care of me. That was the last time I saw Bran."

"And the Umbers betrayed you. Betrayed our family." Sansa growled.

"Not at first." I told her. The scene played out through my mind, the images in the courtyard of that great northern castle, where Rickon held a wooden sword and shield and fought against a boy a year his younger, laughing merrily. Shaggydog would roll around in the snow and hunt rabbits, and the castle butcher was fond of the wolf. "Smalljon Umber didn't like us being there, but he took us in anyway. The Umbers fed and sheltered me, and I thought Bran had the right of it. That I'd be safe. Smalljon even trained me with his son, Ned. He was named after our father.

"…Then we learned about the Red Wedding. None of us believed it really; we thought it was a ploy somehow. But when the Greatjon's bones were brought up by a courier, things changed. He was shorter with me, he refused me training from then on, and I wasn't allowed any more freedoms. There was always a guard following me around. Shaggy was kept in a kennel, fed through the bars. He didn't like that at all. I was forced to trade a sword and shield for books and quills; they wouldn't let me do much else. That went on for two years, only ending when the maester received a letter from Ramsey Bolton saying Roose Bolton had been poisoned."

"He knew it was a lie." I emphasized. "Roose wouldn't die to a womans weapon like poison, he would say. Smalljon Umber thought it was Ramsey that killed Roose. And he was happy about it. He didn't like Robb or the Starks anymore, but he hated Roose more. Roose Bolton caused the Red Wedding to happen, he told me, and even if Robb was dumb enough to marry a foreigner, Robb wasn't the one that got his father killed. He was going to be loyal to the person that killed Roose. That it was Ramsey that did the deed, his own son, was all the sweeter in his mind."

"Shaggydog was killed that day." I told them, unconscious tear welling in my eyes. Rickon had been especially close to his wolf, likening the beast to both a brother and a son. It tugged at my heart, just thinking about it. "His head was lopped off, and we trekked to Winterfell. Ramsey put me in a cell and killed Osha. And then you came."

"And we'll not leave you again." Sansa said, bringing me into another embrace. I nodded into her shoulder, wiping my eyes along the crook of her neck.

We talked of much during the rest of the night. Of Sansa's time in the south, the good and the bad and the worse. Of Jon's station at the Wall and his reconnaissance beyond it. We shared stories of the past, of simpler and kinder times, and we grimly thought on what our future may hold, uncertain though that may be. We had changed, that was clear to see. But we were still family, and if nothing else, we would handle the world together.

When tiredness came upon us, we did not separate. We huddled together along the thick furred carpet of a bear, Ghost giving us his flank to rest our heads.

Tomorrow would be for the masses, for the armies of the Vale and the North, for the wildings and the threat of the living dead.

Tonight would be for us