As he sat atop the wall, gaze drawn to the snowflakes streaking steadily towards the ground, a pang of longing pierced him sharper than any sword. His long arms were draped around his knees, and his chin was set on his kneecaps, long hair billowing in the howling wind. He didn't feel the cold any longer; his time in the Nights Watch and his life in Winterfell had toughened up his body. His entire toros ached from where it had met the sharp edges of many blades, and he though he longed to scratch and fiddle with the wounds, he managed to refrain from doing so. It would not serve anyones best interest with him being incapacitated.
Every time he came up here, be it morning or night, he was captivated by the beauty of the land that the Free Folk had. Whilst he had been with Ygritte, he had felt the longing she spoke of in his bones. The desperate need to be along the hardly touched land, mingling with races he had never encountered before. As much as Jon hated to admit it, he had thoroughly enjoyed his time spent alongside of Mance; and especially so with her.
Ygritte had been a perk to being out there. The tension that festered between them once they first met was undeniable; she had been unlike any woman he had ever met before. She was brash; rude; fiery and arrogant—and he had loved her. Now he felt her death so vividly that it scared him. He yearned for her, their time beyond the Wall, and how close they had been. Once upon a time, they could have been happy.
His gaze was drawn to the spot where he had burned her. Her pyre still stuck out sharply in his mind, and he remembered thinking of how she was truly one with the land now. She had been a Wildling to her bones; there had been no way she would have been able to domesticate her.
She would have always been like a cat; feral and unruly, never able to settle. He was like a dog; fiercely loyal, determined to stick by their owner, never being one to stray. Fire and ice; opposites to their very cores. But he had loved her to his very core, and there would never be any way he could deny that.
