CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀eighteen

eighteen. dawn

loc. the haunted forest, beyond the wall. 299AC

⠀⠀⠀ "Do you remember what happened?"

⠀⠀⠀Sam's voice was soft, as though she might shatter if somebody even spoke too boldly. Carsen remembered some, but not enough to fill the aching void that had wedged open in her mind, so she shook her head.

⠀⠀⠀Pyp and Grenn exchanged quick glances behind Sam's head. "You, er," Pyp started uncertainly. "Fell off your horse."

⠀⠀⠀Carsen could have guessed as much; her entire left side was aching with welts and bruises.

⠀⠀⠀"You threw up," Grenn added after Pyp failed to continue. Carsen shivered suddenly, brining a hand to her lips. That terrible fire, churning inside her...

⠀⠀⠀"You weren't breathing." All eyes turned to Jon, who had been silent until this point. "After you fell, everyone stopped. I ran over to you, but you weren't... I thought you weren't..." Jon shook his head briefly. "All of a sudden, you took this great gasp of air, like you'd never breathed before. We carried you to a pallet while they set up this tent, and that's where you've been for the last two days."

⠀⠀⠀Carsen's eyes grew wide. Two days?

⠀⠀⠀Pyp caught her shock. "Thorne wanted to move on. He's getting pricklier every day. Now everyone knows you're awake, he's already got them packing up the tents. They should be done soon. They're leaving this one 'till last, to let you get your strength back for a while."

⠀⠀⠀Carsen nodded; she hadn't thought she'd be moving so soon, and the thought of getting back on her horse made her feel ill, but she made to sit up anyway. However, Sam stopped her.

⠀⠀⠀"There's... one more thing," Sam said tentatively. Pyp and Grenn glanced at each other again, then looked down at the floor. Jon, however, wouldn't take his eyes off her. There was something blackly unreadable in his gaze that sent the hairs on her neck inching upward.

⠀⠀⠀"Maester Aemon said—said there was nothing wrong with you. You're in perfect health, except, you know, you're not," Sam said. He swallowed. "There's a rumour going around that you're, well, cursed."

⠀⠀⠀Well, that Carsen knew all too well. Plenty of these men had killed, had they not? She was betting none of them saw ghoulish visions of the lives they had taken. She flopped back on the pillow in despair.

⠀⠀⠀"We should let him rest," Grenn spoke after a second. Carsen heard the shuffling of feet, but her eyes were trained on the roof. "Jon? You coming?"

⠀⠀⠀"In a minute."

⠀⠀⠀A draft blew as the tent doors flapped and closed again.

⠀⠀⠀There was silence for several seconds, a thick, uncomfortable silence that made Carsen's skin crawl, until Jon spoke.

⠀⠀⠀"When I got to you, I thought you were dead," he said hoarsely. Carsen still didn't look at him—for some reason, thinking of his face hurt her, like looking at bright sunlight with naked eyes. "You weren't breathing. I know you weren't breathing, I checked. And—and I don't know what happened to you. I don't believe in curses or omens, not truly. They're stories the wet nurses tell babes to get them to quiet down. But something happened, and I was... afraid."

⠀⠀⠀She looked at him then, and found she was right. His face hurt her gaze. His eyes, softly lit with a warm wealth of vulnerability, the lines of his face receded, slunk back into the flesh so he looked like the boy he was. His hair gently tousled, curling round his ears like a dark tide of clouds.

⠀⠀⠀"I didn't want you to be dead," Jon choked out. It sounded like every word was an effort for him to say, and Carsen felt moved to the point of tears because Jon Snow was not the type to talk about his feelings, and here he was, ripping himself open and letting the dully glowing fragments of himself spill out for her to see.

⠀⠀⠀She sat up, slowly, willing the spinning in her head to reside. Jon looked as though he were hovering between helping her sit upright and knowing how much she would detest that; his compromise was grabbing her arm to steady her as she swayed, shutting her eyes briefly. His hand was bare, absent the black leather gloves he often wore for once, and his skin was warm like sunset on the naked skin of her arm. She shuddered.

        "You shouldn't sit," Jon mumbled, letting his hand drop, but Carsen caught it with her own and held it tight, like it were a lifeline. She felt the ridge of his knuckles, the curve of his fingers, the gentle rise of his veins beneath the skin, and most wonderfully of all she felt the solidity beneath it. Jon shifted, breath audibly hitching.

        The silence stretched unacknowledged as Carsen brought his hand to her face and pressed her skin against it, let her eyes drift shut and her breath ghost over his fingers. The moment was tender and full, of what she couldn't say, only that she wanted it to carry on for eternity. When she opened her eyes regretfully, his own were light and wide, the grey of rain and mist. Beautiful. The word came unbidden to her head, and she dropped his hand; it fell to the pallet like dead weight, and Jon blinked, and the moment was scattered.

⠀She could only watch, mute as ever, as he swallowed and dropped his gaze to the floor. "I should go," he muttered, and that was it, he was gone, and there was only the draught of cold air that wafted in to mark he had even been there. Carsen put her free hand over the one he'd held, feeling it shake underneath her grip, before letting the tears in her eyes spill.

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