Velaryon: A Game of Thrones Fan Fiction

Healing - Rhaena

 [Coincides with the ending of the Season 4 episode 'The Watchers on the Wall' and also 'The Children'.]

   Through the thick bandages, she can still see the blood seeping through and feel the throbbing pain within her palms. It will be weeks before she can even attempt to handle her sword again. Until then, it shall rest idly by her side within it's leather scabbard. She can't even bear the thought. She's useless now. Those who thought so before because she is a woman have good reason to believe so now. She picks at a piece of ice frozen on the step she sits on. Should Mance Rayder send the rest of his men, Rhaena will truly be forced to hide. The feeling is unbearable. Her brothers carry the bodies of their fallen to a pile being made in the courtyard. Already it grows. She can see nearly a dozen bodies stacked together in a meaty heap, cold and stiff, waiting to be burned in a pyre. The funeral will be held in the evening, if they haven't been attacked by then.

     She couldn't find Jon after the battle. She had hoped he would escort her to Maester Aemon, but he didn't. Rhaena wandered around the castle, disobeying the maester's orders to get some rest. Men were still very much awake as they were beginning to drag the bodies away. Blood stained snow still covered the ground, as did many many wildling bodies. All looked nearly identical in armor but not in face. She glanced to the place where she fought with Ygritte. The wildling woman still laid in the same position she died in, haunting Rhaena with an almost ghostly presence. She loomed over her and she could still hear her screams of war in her mind.

     Rain tore her eyes away. Many of her brothers' bodies laid cold in the snow and dirt. She longed to help those clearing the bodies but knew she couldn't. Touching the wooden railing in front of her as lightly as she could still stung horribly. She ended up sitting here, on the stairs before the lift, chipping away at a useless block of ice with her nails. She remembers her old maester on Driftmark telling her that sleep was the best healing. Though, she couldn't sleep. It must be why her hands feel as raw as they did when the icy sword sliced them open.

     Thinking nothing at first at the approaching footsteps as nothing more than a brother hobbling to his bed, she didn't look up. Rain just continued to chip, liking the numbness the cold sent to her fingers. It took her mind off the pain. They stopped, however, right next to her. Finally, she glances up to see Jon and Sam. She scrambles to her feet to stand with them.

     "You should get some rest. I'm sure Maester Aemon told you to." Jon tells her, a very small, sad smile of his face, the smile that says he's happy to see her but cannot express it further.

     "I wanted to find you," Rain says as quietly as she can. "But I never did. I just found myself here, eventually." She doesn't return his smile, taking instead to looking at him sadly. "Where were you?" His eyes shifting quickly to the body behind her tells her everything. Her eyes and heart drop.

     "Mourning the dead." Is his explanation. It only hurts more. "I knew some of these men and women. Even though I was infiltrating them, I respected them."

     "The one we captured, too?" He nods when she asks. The fiery haired and bearded man that some of the brothers cornered before she left still fought wildly. She knew nothing of him, but she had to admire his commitment to the battle even after he had lost. "I respect him, too."

     "His name is Tormund Giantsbane. He was like Mance's right hand man." He begins to descend the stairs, confusing both Rain and Sam. The two follow him as he walks to the gate embedded in the Wall like he has a new objective.

     "Where are you going?" Rain asks.

     "To see Mance."

     It shocks both of them at the same time. "What?!" Sam and Rhaena both exclaim. "You can't do that!" Sam continues, hurrying to catch up with Jon. Jon stops and turns to them both. "No one gave you any orders. You can't just leave!"