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Catelyn was half glad when the door creaked open. She couldn’t sleep anyway, no matter how hard she tried, and so it was almost a relief to be able to give up when she heard steps coming towards her bed and felt a hand shaking her arm. “Cat? Are you asleep?”
She rolled over and looked at her younger sister. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” she said, because she knew that she was supposed to say that, even though she really didn’t mind Lysa being there.
“I know,” Lysa said, “but I couldn’t sleep.” She bit her lip and fiddled with the end of her braid. “Could I come in with you?”
“All right,” Catelyn agreed. She shifted over in the bed, and Lysa climbed up beside her, squeezing into the space.
Lysa was quiet for a bit, and Catelyn almost thought that she had fallen asleep—Lysa was only eight, after all, and maybe it could be that simple for her. After a few minutes, though, Lysa shook her arm again. “Cat?”
“What is it?”
“Why…why did he do that?” Lysa’s voice was shaky.
Catelyn was confused. “Why did who do what, Lysa?”
“Why did Father shoot at the boat?” Lysa asked. “So it caught fire and sank? Why would he…why would he do that to Mother?” She was sniffling hard now.
“Lysa,” Catelyn said, reaching out to hug her sister, “Lysa, that’s not a bad thing. That’s just what we do. We’re Tullys, and we go back to the river, remember? Remember we talked about that in lessons?”
“I don’t care!” Lysa said. “I don’t care…it’s bad to go under the water for too long, that’s what they always tell us…and if Mother goes under the water for too long she won’t be able to come back…”
It was so hard, so hard to even think about it, and even harder to say it to Lysa. Lysa had been told what dead meant, but she obviously didn’t truly understand, and Catelyn hated having to be the one to make her. “Lysa, she can’t…she can’t come back anyway.” And Lysa’s face crumbled completely; she made a sobbing noise and pressed her face into Catelyn’s shoulder.
“But…that…isn’t…fair!” Muffled as Lysa’s voice was, Catelyn understood the words well enough, and she didn’t know what to say. She should say something like what her septa had told her, something about how everything was the will of the gods and how their mother would always watch over them now. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe what her septa had said. It was just that it didn’t really make her feel any better. It didn’t make it hurt any less when she thought about how her mother was gone. Sometimes she even felt angry—at the babe, at the maester, at she didn’t know who—and what her septa had said didn’t make her feel any less guilty about that either. And when she thought about what else her septa had told her, about the way that she had placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “You must be a brave girl now, Lady Catelyn, and look after your brother and sister,” she felt tired and scared and sure that she couldn’t do it all by herself. Her mother had always been the one who looked after all of them. Now, all of a sudden, Catelyn was supposed to be the one. And even though it was her job to say something comforting to Lysa now, she couldn’t think of anything that would work, because a big part of her thought that Lysa was right.
“I know it’s not fair,” she found herself saying. Lysa was crying harder now and clinging to her neck, and she still had no idea what to say.
“I want her to come back,” Lysa sobbed.
“Me too.” She started to cry herself then, clinging to Lysa in return, wishing that she was able to do what she was supposed to do and say something to make Lysa feel better. But now that she had started to cry she felt like it was the only thing she could do.
Lysa seemed startled by her crying; she took her face out of the crook of Catelyn’s neck and looked at her. “Are you crying?” she asked, and Catelyn nodded, feeling too choked up to speak. “But…but you’re always brave.”
“I’m trying to be,” Catelyn said, “but…but I just…I just miss her so much too…” She didn’t say anything more then, and neither did Lysa; they just both cried and held on to each other. It still hurt more than anything in the world, but at least this was easier than trying to be brave, trying to look after Lysa and Edmure, trying not to be angry and scared about the way that her mother had been taken away from her.
Lysa’s sobs quieted after a while, and she looked up at Catelyn. “I can stay with you all night, can’t I?” she asked. “I don’t…I don’t like being all by myself.”
“Of course,” Catelyn said, squeezing Lysa’s hand. “I don’t like being by myself either,” she confessed after a minute. Lying in her bed alone at night, she had nothing to do but think about all of it; no matter how hard she tried, she could never think of anything else. With Lysa here, at least she had someone else who was missing their mother as much as she was.
Lysa sniffled again and pressed closer to her, and Catelyn wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She still felt as though she needed to say something to Lysa—something right, something that would comfort Lysa, something that would mean that she was doing what she was supposed to and looking after her sister. What could she say that would help Lysa? Was there anything that could help with something like this?
“You don’t have to be by yourself,” she said at last. “I’m right here, Lysa. We’ve got each other.”
“Promise?” Lysa whispered.
“I promise,” Catelyn whispered back.
It still hurt more than anything in the world. But it was a tiny, tiny bit better with Lysa here next to her. And she could only hope that it was better for Lysa too.
Sansa started up when she heard the noise. Even as she reminded herself that she was safe now, she couldn’t help her heart beating faster. “Who’s there?” she asked, trying to keep her voice strong, feeling it falter.
“It’s just me, stupid.”
It was only Arya, then; Sansa began to make out her sister’s form as her eyes adjusted to the dark and as Arya came closer. “Oh,” she said, feeling foolish for her fear, reaching to light the candle on the table beside her bed.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Arya looked contrite as she perched on the end of Sansa’s bed. “I was just…I couldn’t sleep and I knew that you…that you sometimes stay awake late. So I came to see if you were. But I didn’t mean to wake you up or anything. I’m sorry.”
“No,” Sansa said. “No, it’s all right, I wasn’t sleeping. Trying to, but…but I couldn’t sleep either anyway. You don’t have to apologize.” She looked at Arya, who was biting her lip and looking, at least for a moment, not very much older than she had the last time they’d lived at Winterfell. “You can stay if you like,” she added.
Arya nodded. “All right,” she said. She was quiet again, and Sansa tried to think of something to say to her. She wished that they had something established, some way of being together. They hadn’t been close when they were younger; they had never stayed up into the night, whispering and laughing and sharing confidences when they were supposed to be sleeping. If they had done that, everything would have been easier now. They could have fallen back into that, and it would have been so nice—it would have been one thing, at least, that was the same. Instead, it felt, most of the time, like they were still trying to figure out who they were to each other. She had changed a great deal, of course, and she could tell that Arya had too, and it wasn’t as though she missed their squabbling, but it was just another thing to add to the constant list of reminders that their life at Winterfell now was nothing like it had been before. And Sansa worried that she might never stop expecting it to be—that she might never stop half-expecting that, now that they were back in this familiar place, her father and mother and brothers would come back too one day. She might never stop being caught between the desire to remember everything about them and the ache of remembering that they were gone.
The silence was becoming almost oppressive when Arya suddenly spoke. “Do you ever sometimes think—or forget, do you ever forget—that they’re…that they’re not…” She broke off then, and Sansa felt a shock of surprise that they seemed to have at least this something in common, that Arya seemed to know what she had been thinking.
“That they’re not coming back?” she asked, and when Arya gave a jerky nod, she said, “Yes.”
“That’s why I couldn’t sleep,” Arya said. “I kept thinking about Mother and Father…and sometimes when I do get to sleep I forget when I wake up…” She turned her face away.
“I know,” Sansa said quickly. “I mean, I know what it’s like. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it too.” That wasn’t the only reason, of course; there were other things that had happened and things that she had seen that sometimes made sleep feel impossible. There were nights when she didn’t even try but instead stayed up into the small hours, pouring over accounts or lists of supplies or plans for rebuilding, thinking about upcoming meetings with bannermen or about the details of alliances. She told herself that she was doing it all for Winterfell. She wondered now, more than ever, if there were other reasons that Arya couldn’t sleep either. She still hadn’t felt comfortable asking Arya much, any more than she’d felt comfortable telling much.
Arya let out a breath and slid up the bed to sit closer to Sansa. “I thought it might just be me,” she said.
Sansa shook her head. “No.”
Arya twisted the furs of the bed between her fingers. “I hate it,” she burst out. “I thought someday it would get better, but it never does and…do you think it will ever be easy?”
Sansa wished for both of their sakes that she could say yes, but she wasn’t about to lie to Arya. She tried to think of a better way to say it than just giving her sister a flat no and then decided that her extended silence was worse. “No, I don’t.”
“I don’t really, either,” Arya said, nodding slowly. She was silent for another minute and then added, very quietly, “And sometimes I think…they would hate me, anyway.”
Her words surprised Sansa. “Hate you? Mother and Father?” Arya nodded again, not looking at her. “No, they wouldn’t, Arya.”
Arya looked up then, almost glaring at her. “You don’t know everything, Sansa. There are a lot of things you don’t know.”
“That’s true,” Sansa agreed, “but I know they wouldn’t hate you. They loved us, Arya. Always.”
“Not if they knew…”
“Arya,” Sansa said. “Arya, you’re not the only one who’s…who’s done things you’d rather not have done.” She had wondered often enough herself what their parents would think of her now, but it wasn’t the time to say that. “Everyone’s had to, Arya. But that doesn’t mean that Mother and Father wouldn’t love you.”
“You’re only saying that because you don’t know what I…”
“I don’t know,” said Sansa, “but it doesn’t matter to me, Arya. We’re still sisters, whatever’s happened. And if that’s how I feel, I’m sure that’s how Mother and Father would feel.” She laid a hand on Arya’s shoulder. “They could never hate you.”
Arya’s face was trembling when she looked at Sansa. “They could never hate you either,” she said, and there was a choke in her voice, and then she had flung her arms around Sansa and was sniffling into her shoulder, and Sansa patted her back, wondering how Arya had known that she had some of the same worries and fears. “It just makes me feel so…”
“Me too,” Sansa said, unsure what exactly her sister was referring to but understanding how she felt all the same.
When Arya’s sniffling had stopped, she pulled away from Sansa. She seemed to be trying to act as though she hadn’t been crying. Sansa felt that she should go along with the pretense, but at the same time she didn’t want to just leave things here. They’d been back at Winterfell for months now, but they’d never talked like this before. Painful as thinking of everything that had happened could be, there had been relief in their conversation too: in knowing a bit more about her sister, in admitting to how much she grieved.
“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” she said at last. “Maybe we can…we can talk about them. If you like.”
And Arya nodded, after a bit, and leaned against her again.