CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀twenty five

twenty-five. rest without fire

loc. skirling pass, beyond the wall. 299AC

⠀⠀⠀HER NAME WAS  Ygritte, and she talked a lot.

⠀⠀⠀She had a rough voice—a blunt Northern drawl with the sandpaper twist of the wildling tongue - fast and wild and foul. Jon had her wrists bound in rope but there was nothing to swathe her voice. She talked until, when she fell silent, something from the day seemed to be missing.

⠀⠀⠀Ygritte was tall and stockily built, but thin under her thick clothes, as her slender neck gave away. She was pretty in a rough, wild sort of way. Her eyes were green like moss, her hair red as an inferno left behind by lightning, her white skin dotted with freckles.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen walked beside Jon, but they exchanged no words—something had changed between them, something cold had lodged its way into the void Carsen had created between them. Jon held the match to melt the cold, but he wouldn't. Not yet. 

⠀⠀⠀"We'll stop here," was what he eventually broke the silence with. Carsen glanced around. They were very exposed, and she felt vulnerability creep like a fungus over her skin. "It's too dark to go any further tonight."

⠀⠀⠀"Here?" The wildlings's pale brows furrowed. "There's no shelter here."

⠀⠀⠀"There's no shelter anywhere," Jon bit back.

⠀⠀⠀"We should make for one of those cliffs over there, there should be a few caves to shelter in for the night." The words left Carsen's mouth before she could rein them in. Grey and green eyes alike turned to stare at her. The grey ones swam with disbelief and annoyance, whilst the green were alight with amusement and mischief.

⠀⠀⠀"It's too dark to go any further tonight," Jon repeated coldly, turning from Carsen to undo the ropes binding Ygritte, save for the ones around her wrists and ankles.

⠀⠀⠀"And who put you in charge?" Carsen bit out.

⠀⠀⠀"You chose to follow me," Jon said stiffly. She couldn't see his face hidden behind Ygritte's body.

⠀⠀⠀"Good thing, too, you wouldn't have even caught her if it weren't for me!"

⠀⠀⠀"And how'd you work that one out?" Jon emerged from behind Ygritte and stormed up to face Carsen. She tilted her head up to look at him, his steel gaze swimming with anger.

⠀⠀⠀"Maybe the part where I kicked out her legs from under her and held her down while you tied her up," Carsen snapped back. It was one of the only times ice had been in her voice when talking to Jon, and yet there it was, white and glittering as the snow around them as it shivered between her words.

⠀⠀⠀"See," Ygritte called with a smirk on her face. "Your girlfriend thinks I'm right."

⠀⠀⠀Carsen frowned, stepping away from Jon. "I didn't say I thought you were right," she spat. "And I'm not his bloody girlfriend."

⠀⠀⠀"Does he know that?" Ygritte grinned. When Carsen scoffed and looked away, she said, "We should build a fire."

⠀⠀⠀"No fire," Jon said flatly, walking away from Carsen. She stared at his retreating back; the tips of his ears were burning red.

⠀⠀⠀"But a fire would—"

⠀⠀⠀"No fire."

⠀⠀⠀Jon swept Ygritte's legs out from under her and laid her on the rocky ground, before turning and pushing past them both. Carsen sat down against a rock, closing her eyes against the greying sky.

⠀⠀⠀"We'll stay warmer if we stay close," she heard Ygritte call out to Jon. Carsen tried to push the wildling's voice from her ears and concentrated on falling into slumber. She heard Jon's footfalls pause, then shuffle back over to where Ygritte lay, clearly deciding she was right. She heard his weight slump softly into the snow and the movement of her pelt outskins and his black cloak rubbing together, and something soured in her chest at the idea of them laying close enough together to touch.

⠀⠀⠀"Oi, crow girl. I said we'd stay warmer if we lay together."

⠀⠀⠀Carsen's eyes flicked open. Her gaze snapped to Ygritte, who was looking directly at Carsen, her green eyes shimmering against her skin, cracked lips stretched in an amused grin. Behind her, Jon blinked and lay down flat, obscuring himself from view.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen thought it over briefly. She knew laying together would end up with them all being warmer, and yet there was a glimmer in Ygritte's moss-hued eyes she was uncertain of. It made her nervous, but she wasn't totally sure if it was in a good way or a bad. Jon had made himself helpfully invisible. With a groan, Carsen pushed herself up and walked over to the pair, laying down next to Ygritte and turning away from her smug face.

⠀⠀⠀Her back was to the wildling's front. They were scarce touching, and yet already Carsen was feeling weak trickles of warmth flood her veins and skin. She closed her eyes, but felt her entire body go rigid as one of Ygritte's bony hands ghosted over the back of Carsen's head.

⠀⠀⠀"Why is your hair all short?" asked the wildling curiously, her hands brushing with almost a gentleness over Carsen's shorn locks. It was growing back now, she knew - it ended just above her jaw, and the ends looked thicker and curlier than the wisps they had been before. It filled Carsen with an odd feeling, a warm feeling. Her hair had been the first thing to go when she stopped being Ceria Sargen.

⠀⠀⠀"Since you have to be a man to join the Night's Watch, I figured I might as well look like once," Carsen replied tersely.

⠀⠀⠀"You 'acked off all your hair so you could join the crows?" Ygritte giggled. "Why?"

⠀⠀⠀Carsen shrugged. "I was running. Running away."

⠀⠀⠀She yelped as Ygritte suddenly twisted her fingers in Carsen's hair. "Never run away. Grab your enemies by the ear and open their throat." Carsen was suddenly, horribly reminded that she had done just that. Her blade against Rogon's throat. She could still picture how it felt, to drag the steel along tender, quivering flesh, to feel the hot blood flow down over her hands, seeping through her skin and tainting her ichor soul.

"Leave her," Jon said somewhere behind her, and Carsen felt Ygritte's hand slide off her head, felt a warm rush of breath as the wildling laughed to herself.

⠀⠀⠀That night, she dreamt fitfully.

⠀⠀⠀She dreamt of snowstorms and white wolves with curling serpents and faceless men with open, bleeding throats.

⠀⠀⠀And in the middle of it all was a patch of earth, dry and burning, kissed by fire.

⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀