Chapter Text
With a heavy exhale through his nose, Jon makes himself move, now dodging the still bodies that lie everywhere as he tries to get to the Godswood.
Theon must have done it, he thinks, but what about Bran? Was Theon in time? Was Bran saved with the living?
He pushes his legs on, the rubble and the lying wights in heaps and the bodies of their dead making getting anywhere harder. The home he’s known is in ruins all around him; he watched so much of it fall and all he can hope is a Stark didn’t fall with it.
He finds himself coming to a halt the second he gets inside the Godswood as he sees the pile of wights on each side, a clear path between them and Jon knows without a doubt it was to allow the Night King through. They aisled him, to witness him bring the end to all things, the end of Bran. But they must have witnessed the Night King’s end instead, he thinks as he looks over them all. A body catches his eye, one out of line and alone and as he reaches it, he realises it’s Theon. Dead, the spear that killed him still lodged in his body.
Crouching down, he scans over Theon, his hand hovering above the Ironborn’s armour. He feels gratitude for the man he’d known through his life. He died protecting Bran. Did they take each other out, he wonders.
It’s silent, quieter than it has been all night, quieter than even the Godswood always is and it pounds in his head, heavy and deafening without any of the answers he needs. This isn’t over for him yet. He stands again, moving carefully as he tries to see through the haze of smoke and snow, the remains of fire and ice that’s enveloped all of Winterfell.
The lone still figure he sees is small enough to be Bran in his chair, small enough that surely it can only be Bran in his chair. With new energy, knowing Bran sitting in his chair doesn’t mean he’s alive, Jon hikes his legs and quickly moves again. The silhouette of the heart tree becomes visible through the smoke as he gets closer, and he realises it isn’t a lone figure after all – and it isn’t Bran. He can make out the square angles of Bran’s chair in the second figure he now sees, behind the first. Immediately he questions who stands at a similar height and he remembers Tyrion. The Lannister who can’t leave well enough alone and who always gets involved, believing in his ability to bring something different to the table.
Did he do this? It’s not possible, is it?
Jon knows there’s some kind of bond between Bran between Tyrion, a familiarity they formed a long time ago. Maybe Bran told him something he didn’t tell everyone else, some other part Tyrion had to play.
The lines of wights that fell when the Night King did finally end and he starts to see both Ironborn and the dead that the Ironborn must have taken down. They’re littered everywhere, circling the heart tree, in contrast to entrance. Again, he feels something for Theon, seeing how many wights they stopped getting to Bran, and how many of them died stopping those wights.
Bran and who he assumes to be Tyrion become aware of him, Tyrion turning as he nears them. As the figure shifts, Jon sees the clear line of a sword at the hip. A small, skinny thing he only knows is a sword and not a stick because he knows it so well, it’s something buried in the deepest parts of him that’s spread through him, representing so much of who he is, who he’s been, what he loves. With it, he remembers the other person who is that small besides Tyrion Lannister. But that figure has no association with the rest of what’s around them, with bodies and war and death. She can’t, he’s never allowed that mix in his mind because he doesn’t want her anywhere near any of it.
She can’t be here, she can’t.
She should be in the crypt, safe.
Fight, determination, need that he didn’t realise he had left throws him the last feet of distance between them until he’s close enough that he sees it really is her.
Arya.
He stumbles to a stop once again, staring at her. She looks back at him with wide, confused eyes and he notices the blood on her temple that’s dripped down her face. Her hair is a mess, blood and dirt and whatever else covering her. It’s his little sister, he truly realises as he lets out a shuddering breath and gulps in another.
She doesn’t move, only stands and looks at him, her shoulders rising with her own breath. He feels stuck too. All the drive he had becoming fear as he looks back at her. With difficulty, he manages to make himself look behind her to Bran to see he is alive, he’s safe, and Jon doesn’t know how much Bran feels now, how much he can show, but there is nothing about his brother that looks surprised by Arya’s presence, or her state that shows she’s been fighting.
Turning back to her, he wonders if she just got here first. If she ran here from the crypt as soon as it was over – she was always fast. But just another quick look over her attire shows that’s not what’s happened, no matter how much he wants to believe it, no matter how much he wants to make it true. Jon knows what people look like after battle, and this is it. And then there’s the dagger still in her hand.
When he brings his eyes on her face again, she’s no longer looking at him, her eyes turned downward and her head bowed as she stands there.
The vulnerability she shows finally breaks him, encouraging him to close the final gap because he can’t see her like that and do nothing, he can’t stand there and see her like that, especially not because of him, ashamed in front of him, hiding from him.
He puts both hands on her shoulders, grounding himself to her as much as he can. He squeezes, pressing his fingers against her leather, making sure she is okay and she is there. Then leaning over some to match their height, slowly he goes up, a hand on her neck like he’s always done, connecting with them, and his other touches lightly above the cut on her head. The way she only closes her eyes and doesn’t flinch worries him the most and somehow it’s the thing that makes him truly realise that she did this, she killed the Night King, she ended the long night, and Jon has no idea how.