THE FULL AND LONELY HART | JON SNOW & ROBB STARK X OC [ASOIAF/GOT]

1 | maelle i, northern hospitality

— CHAPTER ONE —
northern hospitality
[ 6656 words ]

Maelle was one-and-ten when she last visited Winterfell. She remembered little of the detail that rose before her now, retaining only scraps of memory — the heavy, oppressive grey of the castle, with its high stone ceilings and dim, cramped chambers; the scent of metal and pine that pursued you from the encircling Winter Town, the persistent chill in her bones, even as she draped herself in furs before the fire.

She remembered, too, the Starks themselves. Cast eternally in her mind as an unruly bunch were the children. There was the oldest, Robb, a mischievous boy wrangling with propriety and his impish instincts. Then there was his half-brother Jon, who, like her, straddled a strange middle ground that wasn't quite the periphery. Though at an age which tended to breed wildness, Sansa was gentle and subdued. She had taught her neat little embroidery tricks, and discreetly printed her faux-initials — a curved little MS, Maelle Stark — into the collar of one of Maelle's boat-necked southern dresses. 'So we'll be with you when you go back home to the south,' Sansa would whisper. Robb taught her to throw a good punch, and she taught morose Jon that there was at least some honour in being a bastard, if you knew where to look.

They'd stayed for a week, her and her father and her uncle Robert. Though her father was all business, she and her uncle gorged themselves on northern hospitality, which was strikingly different from that of the south. Exotic fruits and long, hot days were replaced by fires and furs and snowball fights. It felt like what home was meant to be. And then, of course, the two of them departed and left her there a year. How sorry she was to go, when the year was up! And how often afterwards she dreamed of the dreary north, with its gloomy look and black forests and crackling hearths.

Now, trotting behind her father across snow-licked plains, fear clutched her. What if it was not at all like she remembered? What if the warmth had been sapped out of it — what if it had hollowed out, given into its cobwebs and frost, crystallised into some hard rock? Most things in the Seven Kingdoms had changed since she was a child, young and too susceptible to wonder. It seemed growing up was a continuous process of shattering her most beloved memories and perceptions. It wouldn't be so surprising if the northern gloom had consumed Winterfell. And what of the Stark children she had befriended? Robb and his cheek and daring; Sansa and her sweetness, her girlishness? She had watched her cousin Joffrey's childhood sweetness curdle over into something firm and sour. She could not face having to watch the Stark children all maimed like that too.

Be practical, she chided herself, as her father liked to remind her. Though she was still his little girl in many ways, in others he encouraged her to be firm. Practical thinking kept the world from lashing out on you, kept her spirit from being broken. Her uncle Renly would say it was all a nonsense excuse for her father's own poor humour. Privately she might have agreed; he was very rarely playful like her two uncles could be. But she had learned by now not to resent it so much. Especially now, when his words were the only thing keeping her breathing steady as the wind grew colder and harsher against her cheeks.