WE MIGHT FALL (J.SNOW 2)

CHAPTER TEN

SAM'S SMILE BLOSSOMED again beneath his sparse facial hair, and within seconds he was hurtling up the creaking and crooked stairs towards the wooden building in which Cynthia presumed Jon was. It was hard to comprehend that in a matter of seconds Cynthia could be reunited with the man she so dearly missed, and so incomprehensibly loved. 

"Brilliant." Samwell kept muttering to himself, waddling up the icy steps until the three of them reached the top. "He is in a hearing, but we can wait out here. It'll only take a minute."

"A hearing?" Cynthia exclaimed, stunned at the thought but then not so surprised after a second of coherent thinking. If he had disappeared beyond the Wall, cavorted with Wildlings as people had said, then he had broken several oaths, which was punishable by death. "Samwell, is he going to be hanged?"

"Hopefully not," Samwell replied with a cheery smile, peering through the smeared windowpanes to the left of the door, hoping to get a look in on his friend.

"Hopefully?" Cynthia repeated, her heart feeling as though it might crack like ice in any second. She had not come all of this way to watch the love of her life be hanged. That was not an option.

"You can see him," Samwell waved a gloved hand at them. "Come here." Cynthia did, without hesitation. If he was going to die, she'd at least like to see him for more than a second before they placed a noose around his neck. 

And there he was; as Cynthia pressed her porcelain face to the cool glass, she could see his ebony hair in seconds, unkempt as ever and longer than she could remember. He always did hate having it cut. He was clad in all black, as any man would be at the Wall, and seemed to be a lot bulkier since the last time Cynthia had seen him. All of the fighting and training must have given him some extra muscle. She couldn't see his face, but she could just about hear his voice through the thin window. 

"Ay I talk like a Wildling." He said, his voice raising in volume, making it easier for those outside to hear him. His voice was the same as she remembered, though he had changed in minuscule ways, his voice was just as it had always been. "I ate with the Wildlings. I climbed the Wall with the Wildings. I -" He paused, and though she could not see his face, and the look of embarrassment and consideration he no doubt wore, Cynthia could tell what he was about to say. And though she did not wish to hear it, she did not pull away from the class before he said it. "I lay with a Wildling girl." 

"Cyn, I -" Livia placed, what was meant as, a reassuring hand on Cynthia's shoulder, but she shrugged it off. 

"Shush." She flapped a hand back at her, and tried to listen to what was being said inside. 

"You admit to breaking your vows then?" Said a voice that Cynthia did not know, nor did she really expect to. 

"I do." Jon replied, making the weight in Cynthia's stomach increase and sink further into a pit that had not disappeared since she left Winterfell. 

"The law is the law. The boy must die." Said the same, unfamiliar voice, only adding to the knotting and growing pain in Cynthia's abdomen. She couldn't lose him, not like this. Not yet. She'd watched what Livia had gone through after Robb, she didn't want that to be her. Because she would be lost without Jon, despite the last 2 years without him. And no doubt she would be just as much of a wreck if he were to die now.

"If we beheaded every ranger who lay with a girl, the Wall would be manned by headless men." The voice of an elderly man spoke up a second later, one which spoke in defence of Jon. 

"There is a difference between sneaking off to the Moles Town brothel and sleeping with the enemy." Spoke a third voice, another which was unrecognisable to Cynthia. 

"While we sit here, debating which rules I broke, Mance Rayder marches on the Wall with an army of 100,000." Jon stated, his voice calm and smooth as ever. Cynthia wanted to be in there with him, holding his hand, talking to him. But something about him seemed different, seemed as though he didn't need her support. Didn't need her. 

They were still talking when Cynthia turned around to her sister, the pain in her stomach just sitting there, dwelling. 

"If it were you," She couldn't breath, the chains were back around her lungs and the cold air was making her ribs feel like they might shatter into glass fragments at any moment. "If it were Robb." Livia was looking back at her with a sad smile. "Would it matter?" 

"Everything matters." Livia sighed, her hand enclosing around Cynthia's in an attempt to be comforting. 

Everything did matter. And everything had changed. Jon was different, she didn't even need to speak to him to see it. Robb was dead and Jon - perhaps Jon wasn't meant for the Wall. Only 2 years and he had broken his vows already. They had all matured since leaving Winterfell, the world had become so much more real since they left those walls, that little world encapsulated in the love of Lord Stark. And since losing Robb it was as though everything mattered more. Everything mattered. 

"I can't do it." Cynthia said it so quietly that she was worried that she didn't even hear the words come out of her mouth, let alone the others. "I can't." Everything matters. And Everything had changed, for everyone. With Robb and Livia, their stars were aligned from the beginning. Sometimes, Cynthia wondered if her and Jon's stars had forever been crossed, because nothing ever worked for them. 

He was a bastard, that mattered. He was a member of the Night's Watch, that mattered. And he had slept with a Wildling girl, that mattered. It should not have, but everything mattered. Every tiny detail. And everything had changed. 

"I can't."