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It's different when they're little, when Alysane is alive. She strings the house with lights, so that in every dark corner there are little twinkling bulbs, and for weeks Alys feels like she's living in fairyland. The year Alys is five, Alysane challenges her children to make their home out of gingerbread. At 17, Harry is much too old for such childish activities, but when he sees Alys and Eddie covered in frosting and cinnamon, he can't help but step in, holding the pieces steady as they attached them. Even Torr joined in, loudly insisting that he didn't actually want to play with cookies and frosting it's just that they had no idea what they were doing, the library was not underneath the master bedroom it was underneath his room, and the front door really ought to be made out of chocolate and here let me, until all four of them were sprinkled with sugar and dotted with frosting and breathless with laughter.
That was the last good christmas. Years later, Alys will look back and wonder if her mother knew, then, how much they would need good memories.
--
The christmas Alys is eight, the first one after Alysane passes, is the coldest she can remember. Harry's gone, no one will say where, and Torr locks himself in the library, preparing for exams, he says. Eddie finds Alys curled under their father's desk in his study, thumb in her mouth, knees at her chest. Peeking his head under the desk, he waves, and Alys turns away, so Eddie leaves. When he returns half an hour later, he's got a handful of candy canes and a mug of hot chocolate which they share, twirling the candy canes in the chocolate and licking them off. They fall asleep there tangled limbs under the mahogany canopy, and wake up with stiff necks and sore backs and sticky fingers, but it doesn't matter. Something changes that night. Alys knows then that Eddie won't leave her, as much as her eight year old mind can understand that. That though mommy's gone, and daddy won't look at her and Torr locks himself away and Harry's disappeared, Eddie at least is there with her.
--
Alys is eleven the first Christmas Harry comes back. Gone is the lanky teenager who would swing her around his neck when she begged, her fingers tugging at his shirtsleeves. He has been replaced by a man, thick with lean muscle and rippled in thin white scars, battle wounds from scrapes and falls and fights. He doesn't talk much, just nods his head, his smile cutting weary lines through his face.
Alys hears them a few nights later, arguing. She's gone up to dad's study to meet Eddie, but Harry and Rickard are inside instead. Placing the hot chocolate on the floor, Alys presses her ear to the door. She can hear "watch" and "Karhold" and "family" and "responsibility," but she flees as she hears footsteps, ducking behind a bannister, watching Harry stalk out angrily with narrowed eyes. He doesn't even notices as he kicks over the hot chocolate, the dark brown liquid staining the taupe carpet.
Harry tells them a few days later, he's joining the Night's Watch, trading in his broken family for a new one in shock green vests and riot gear. Torr frowns into his schoolbooks, and Alys can tell he wants better for Harry, wants more for him. Eddie shrugs, but Alys can see the hurt in his eyes. As for herself, Alys wraps her arms around his neck, breathing in his familiar Harry scent, and makes him promise to come home for Christmas.
Later, when they've relocated to the attic, pulling the trap-door stairs up behind them, Eddie finds a box of Harry's things and starts punching it, over and over and over again. Not knowing what to do, Alys sticks two candy canes in her mouth and mumbles "I'm a walrus!" The ridiculousness of the sight is enough to break the spell, and they collapse into dizzy laughter. Sprawling out on top of him, Alys buries her face into Eddie's chest, and whispers "You have to promise, too, promise you'll always be home for Christmas." Promise you won't leave.
He nods, and the sound of their breathing rocks them both to sleep.
--
It lasts three years, but the winter she's fourteen, somehow Torr and Harry are both gone. Torr's too busy with school, and Harry's got some sort of Watch emergency, so Alys and Eddie camp out in Rickard's study again, nicking scotch from his liquor cabinet and devolving into a lazy whiskey-soaked stupor. They lie on the floor, staring at the knots in his wooded ceiling, trying to decide how old the trees were when they died.
"I heard some trees live forever," Alys whispers, threading her hand through Eddie's. "Really big ones in America, so big you can drive a car through them. They just keep growing and growing big and fat and tall."
"We should go see them," he mumbles into her hair, nudging her softly with his shoulder. "Just take off, go to America or Egypt or Thailand. I know the code to dad's safe, we could take our passports and some money and just leave and never come back."
Shaking her head no, Alys frowns. "We can't do that. We can't leave dad alone. And anyway, it's Christmas."
--
She's 16 when Eddie joins the marines, but he manages to come back that year, his hair shorn short, his shoulders rigid with the weight of his uniform. She follows him back to his room, perched nervously on the end of his bed as he unpacks, throwing his clothing haphazardly into drawers, that, at least, hasn't changed. It's not until he pulls off his uniform, lying back on his bed in his boxers and a plain white t-shirt that Alys feels like she can breathe again. Curling up next to him on his tiny twin bed, he wraps his arm around her and squeezes her shoulder softly.
Torr is back this year too, shiny diploma in hand, ready to put all those years of thinking too hard to good use. Rickard's roped him into consulting for Karhold Coal and the Stark Group in addition to his new job, and they spend most of the holiday discussing fuel prices and labor laws while Alys follows Eddie around like a shadow, hanging on his every word. He doesn't say much, a few things about training, about his fellow recruits, but mostly he just hides from Rickard's wrath, from the whispers of "he left oxford for what?," from Torr's disapproving eyes and Uncle Arnolf's greedy stare.
Christmas is over far too soon, and the house is quiet once more. Alys counts the days until she can go back to school and wonders if marking them with tally's on the wall would be too overdramatic.
She does.
Rickard never notices.
--
The next winter is the hardest. Eddie's abroad and can't go on leave, and Harry's busy, and Torr's in London on business and Alys rattles around the house like a bird in a cage, knocking into walls and maintaining a pretty steady drunk. Christmas dinner is a dull affair, overcooked turkey and mealy ham. She's in the library, browsing through Rickard's first editions when Cregan corners her, the stale scent of wine and vodka mixing on his breath. The bookcase cuts lines into her back as he breathes on her neck, murmuring about how beautifully she's grown up, how much she looks like Alysane, how tempting she is, wandering around in Eddie's old oxford shirts and leggings. His fingers grope at her chest and she knees him hard in the groin, then grabs a poker from the fireplace, thrusting it into the fire as he hunches over.
Holding the cherry-red tip with as much strength as she can muster, Alys glares at him, her eyes dark with anger and fear. "Get the fuck away from me," she growls, "and stay away or I will cut your fucking balls off."
That's the last Christmas she spends at home.
--
The year Eddie dies, they find themselves at home again. No one calls, no plans, but by the time Alys has talked herself out of the car and into the house, she can see that there's a fire roaring in the living room, that Torr has spread his work all over the dining room table, that Harry has begun hauling wood into the house, tracking mud all over the floor, and she sighs, grabbing the hoover from the hall closet, tracking his footsteps from the door to the kitchen where he leans against the cupboard, cocoa in hand. Torr is hunched over the hob, trying to turn it on to make a cup of his own, and Alys nudges him lightly with her hip, flipping it on for him.
A comfortable quiet fills the room, and for a minute it feels like home.