WE MIGHT FALL (J.SNOW 2)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HE WAS STOOD THERE, SMILING. His hair was longer than she could remember, as was his beard which needed trimming, and once again he seemed to have gained more muscle to his previously leaner form. Yet he was no longer clad in black. In fact, she would go as far as to say that he looked like his father in those clothes. 

But that could not be real. He could not be real. And he could not be standing there, right there, at Stillwater. He could not be stood there, with that smile, and those eyes, and that hair. He could not be alive. 

Her lungs felt the chains wrap around them for the first time since she had left the Wall last year, and her whole body fell into an unfamiliar chill that stalled her unsteady breath and made her eyes sting a bit. Though that could have, equally, been from the lack of blinking; because she feared that if she blinked she would learn that this was, indeed, a trick of her mind, and then he would be gone. And if that were the case, she wanted to savour this; she did not want to let him go. Not yet. 

"You are dead." She whispered, only then noticing the shocked expressions of her siblings, who remained in her peripheral vision. If this was the trick of the mind, it was happening to all of them. Which was insane, but not as insane as him being stood in front of her, smiling. 

"I was." He spoke. That northern accent seeping into the air like fresh honey - despite how hoarse it was, so rough and deep, it was forever the sweetest sound Cynthia had ever heard. More so now on account of this all being some sort of dream or fantasy. Because it could not be real. He could not be there. 

"You still are." Her heart was racing out of control, her breathing so shallow and hollow that it hurt in her chest to heave in the cold air. She had almost not noticed that winter had come. It had snowed the night before, and ice lined the floor now, glittering like glass. There was snow everywhere in the courtyard. Though she was not sure why she was thinking of snow when something as impossible as this was occurring right before her eyes. Perhaps because the snow was real, and she could find solace in that. Ned had always said winter is coming. It had certainly arrived now. "You can't - you aren't -" She did not know what, exactly, she was trying to stammer out, but whatever it was, he was getting the hint. 

"I am alive, Cyn." When he said her name, she flinched. It was involuntary, and she could not explain why she would have been startled by it, but her whole body jumped at that one syllable coming out of his mouth. "I do not know how, but I am." 

She had not noticed that her body was shaking, or that her eyes were starting to well up. She was so cold and so unsure of the world in that moment, everything she had known had suddenly disintegrated; the life she had built on the foundation that she would never see him again, had suddenly been demolished. She was not paying attention to anyone stood around her, nor was she even paying attention to herself. All she could think about was him. How he could be there. How he could be real. How he could be alive. 

"They said you were - that they -" Why could she not speak? Why had the ability to formulate sentences vanished upon his appearance? She wanted to scream, not talk; she wanted to punch him, not because she was angry, though for some reason she was, but because she was so confused and uncertain, that violence was the only way she could be sure he was real. But at the same time she wanted to run into his arms and cry, just bury herself in his warmth and stay there, because if she could be sure of anything it was that she had always felt safe around him, no matter what, and right now reassurance that he was, in fact, here and that he was, in fact, alive, was the only thing that could stop her from losing her mind. "I was told that you had died." She said it without fault. And suddenly their eyes met for the first time since she had seen him. It was as though she had been looking at him, and he had been looking at her, but they had not really been paying attention. Not until now. "That you were stabbed."