Only A Northern Song ~ Game of Thrones / Willas Tyrell ~

Chapter Ninety Eight: Come and See

Their embrace on the floor lasted until Lyarra - still in Sansa's arms - began to cry again, and as Eddmina took her daughter back the tent opened once more.

For once Eddmina paid it no mind as she backed off into the corner of the tent to comfort her daughter, and she barely noticed how Jon followed her until she felt his hand on her shoulder. She flinched, as she always did, and hated the look of sympathetic regret that crossed her brother's face when she managed to look up at him. She didn't shrug him off, however, and that gave her the perfect opportunity to feel just how cold his hands were, the chill seeping through her cloak. Yet again, it reminded her of Garlan, and she wondered just what she didn't know about her half-brother, just what information about himself he seemed reluctant to surrender.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for all of it," he told her lowly, squeezing her shoulder gently before he dropped his hold on her. "I was going to desert to join you both, after father..."

"He wouldn't have wanted you to desert," she shook her head affirmingly, and though he still looked regretful there was a tinge of relief as his face relaxed. "Did you at least get your dream of being a ranger before you ended up here? Did you get the adventure and the belonging you wanted?"

"It was a foolish dream, and there's a great deal about the Watch and the Wall that father and Uncle Benjen never told us," Jon said, his voice distant with memories. "I had brothers I loved, brothers that hated me, I met people I learnt to trust despite everything we had been taught telling me to hate them, but I served my vows until I was severed from them. I'll tell you everything another time, but you should know-"

"Bastard! Get your savages under control!" a shrill female voice demanded, and Eddmina watched as Jon grimaced, his eyes closing as his jaw tensed. "They are skinning animals right out in the open, what if my son should see? Or are you just as savage as them that you don't see an issue with that?"

The choice of words had her bristled and on edge so instantaneously that she didn't recall why the voice was so familiar, or allow herself to feel the horror of recognition. If she had hesitated it might have sunk in who she was whirling around to confront, but hesitation was impossible with her protective fury, and so she turned and was crossing the tent back to her sisters, approaching the newcomer with a fire she hadn't felt since she was last with her half-brother.

"There are no bastards here, you're speaking to the Prince of the North," she snarled, though when her gaze fell onto exactly who she was talking to she felt her fury for Jon waver from her own self-doubt - only slightly. "I won't tolerate any disrespect."

"Edda, Arya, this is-" Sansa cut in, taking a step closer to her elder sister to move between her and the female newcomer, clearly hoping to dispell the tension that was already brewing, but she fell quiet when she saw Eddmina shake her head.

"I know who this is," she snapped, hating herself for being so blunt with her sister, but she didn't even look at her in favour of keeping her eyes fixed on the woman in front of her. "Good day, aunt."

She didn't say it was good to see her, because it wasn't. It turned out that even as Queen with her brother's crown sitting on the table opposite her, as a mother with her daughter restless in her arms, as a grown woman with plenty of life experience and much more serious trauma acquired, merely looking at her mother's sister reminded her of being an eight-year-old child about to have her entire worldview altered. How strange it was that after everything she'd faced and endured, after all the world had put her through, all the evil people she had encountered, she was having to fight against feeling like a little girl again. She had looked Tywin Lannister in the eyes as she executed him, she had brutally murdered countless Freys without a single thought, she hadn't hesitated in killing Roose Bolton the moment he revealed his true colours, but facing up to her aunt made her want to wince and hide. She refused to do so, though, because Lyarra was still squirming and cooing in her arms, and she would hate herself even more if she passed on any sort of insecurities to her daugher, if she ever let anything show that might give Lyarra a reason to doubt or think less of herself.