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Visiting hours start at 8 AM, and, like clockwork, Jon is there. The guards recognize his half-brother as easily as Robb does; never once has Jon missed a weekend, not even when half the state was blanketed in several feet of snow. Allenwood is nearly a three-hour drive from Jon's place outside Philly, but he's never late; it's something he got from their father. They can't hug; there's no physical contact allowed, but Jon still smiles as if they're meeting at Fairmount Park to play football instead of at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex. In two years, Jon hasn't missed a visit; he's the only one.
The moment his sentence was handed down – life plus 30 years, good as a death sentence – Robb told Jeyne he didn't want her bringing the children up to the prison to see him like this. His lawyer repeatedly explained his appeals were unlikely to be successful, and the feds had been trying to take down the Stark family for years; the RICO charges sealed his fate, and Robb didn't want Jeyne to suffer for his mistakes. He signed the divorce papers during his second year here, but she sent pictures of little Ned and Alys at least once a month. Sometimes he asks Jon about her; Robb knows Jon looks after his family, helping Jeyne keep up the house, even coaching Ned's Little League team last year. But they don't talk about Jeyne's new husband, the man his kids will know as their father; they don't talk about how he's never even seen Alys, never held her in his arms and kissed her head.
Today they just bullshit. They talk about the Phillies and the people they know who've gotten married or arrested, and Robb busts Jon's balls about still being single. It isn't until visiting hours are nearly over that Robb asks the question he's been avoiding for the past few months.
“How are they?”
Jon sighs in that way of his, the one that makes him sound 20 years older than Robb instead of six months. The older they get, the more Jon looks like their father, and it unsettles Robb some to see Ned Stark in his half-brother's face.
“Rickon got picked up for fighting again; he broke a kid's nose and his cheekbone. The judge gave him three months and DCF is getting involved. Your mother...She hasn't quite been right since what happened to Father.”
Robb nods. Even before the Red Wedding, Catelyn Stark was barely maintaining her sanity after seeing Ned gunned down in front of her. His arrest and the scattering of the family had pushed her over the edge, leaving Catelyn wandering all but a zombie, going through motions of life without any real intent. “You offer to take him?”
“I'm talking to his social worker, but they want to put him in a residential placement until he can control his anger.”
Robb smirks. “His sentence would be longer than mine.”
Jon manages a smile. “Probably. Bran is doing really good. He aced his summer classes, and he thinks he's going to be able to graduate in three years instead of four.”
“Is he – I mean, his legs - “
“He's still going to physical therapy, but it's like the doctors said after it happened; the bullet severed his spinal cord and they can't fix that.”
The last time Robb saw Bran, he was still in the bed at the rehab facility the hospital recommended. Their father was dead, his advisers were dead, and Robb was so busy trying to salvage the Stark family business, his little brother, caught in the crossfire that terrible day, had fallen by the wayside. Robb thought he'd have time; it was just one of his many sins.
“And the girls?”
An even darker shadow falls over Jon's face. “I think Sansa is in California. She sends Rickon postcards, and the last one had a San Francisco postmark. Arya...Everyone hears about her but no one sees her; it's like she's a ghost. A few weeks ago, Dacey said she saw her in Fishtown, but she wasn't even sure if it was her.” A pained look flits across Jon's face. “She's wanted for questioning in some attacks on some of the Lannister dealers.”
“Is it serious?”
“Serious enough.” Jon drops his voice, rubbing at his face to obscure his mouth so the surveillance cameras cannot see his lips. “She hasn't left DNA; she tags the buildings with a wolf. The Lannisters have put out a contract.”
Robb steeples his hands before his face, making sure his mouth is also hidden. “How much?”
“She killed Willem Lannister two nights ago. Tywin is offering $100,000 and double that if they bring her to him alive.”
Robb feels impotent fury brewing in his chest. He should be out there; he should be the one making sure Arya is safe, killing Lannisters, helping his mother, knocking some sense into Rickon, raising his children and loving his wife. It is not as if he is an innocent man trapped behind bars; Robb can easily admit that he is a criminal. But the RICO charge, Mace Tyrell standing on the steps of the courthouse and talking about how it was a triumph of justice to put him away while taking bribes from Tywin Lannister, it is almost too much to take.
And all he can do is take it because what other choice is there?
When the guards announce visiting hours are over, Robb watches as Jon rises, his visitor's badge glinting in the florescent light. There are strands of silver in Jon's inky hair now, and Robb wonders when they got old. He still remembers when they were little, chasing each other up and down the beach outside their family's vacation house on the shore, Sansa building sandcastles while Arya and Bran wrestled, Rickon toddling alongside their mother. It seems like another life.
It was another life.
“I'll see you next week, Robb.”
As the guards escort him back to his cell, Robb realizes Jon is the only person who still calls him by his name. To everyone else, he is just another inmate; maybe another prisoner will call him “Stark” if they want his attention. Being Robb ceased to be an option the moment federal agents burst into Edmure's wedding, arresting him and nearly all of his friends under RICO. The only reason he agreed to the deal which sentenced him to life was to spare his mother jail time, and he wishes he could kill every Lannister for that.
The door to his cell slams closed, and Robb lies back on his cot, staring up at the ceiling, the collage of pictures of his children staring at him from the cement walls.
Sansa hates the West Coast. Everything seems to move so slow here, nothing like at home where it is keep moving or get knocked out of the way. When she was little, when her mother would talk about growing up in California, she thought it sounded magical. Philadelphia was many things, but magical was not on that list; Philly was dirty and busy, either covered in snow or sticky with humidity. Her junior year, when she started looking at colleges, she begged her father to let her go to California, but he said it was too dangerous. Sansa hadn't understood his business then, not really; she didn't know there were people who wanted to hurt the Starks, people who would murder without a second thought. Her mother tried to convince him it would be safe if she went to San Francisco; after all, the Tullys were in the same business as her father, and they could protect her. Ned wouldn't budge and so she went to Bryn Mawr instead. The night her father was killed and Bran was shot, she was supposed to meet them at The Crossroads for dinner but was too busy pouting to do so; Sansa isn't certain she'll ever forgive herself for that.
There isn't much left of the Tully family now. Uncle Edmure still has another year left on his sentence in the same case that got Robb life; Grandfather Hoster died just after her father. With her mother incapacitated, it left only Aunt Lysa to run the Riverlands Corporation, the shell company which provided funds for the true Tully business. Sansa never saw much of Lysa growing up; she had married an old man, some friend of her father's, and they lived in Seattle most of her life. It was only after his death Aunt Lysa and her son returned to San Francisco. When Sansa decided to come west, she knew she would have to keep it quiet; Jon would just try to talk her out of it, tell her to stay away from all of the mess of their family business, and Robb's calls were all recorded. No, Sansa did what she had to do: she withdrew money from her trust and simply left, paying only in cash.
Her great uncle met her at the airport. Brynden Tully was the sort of man who looked like a gangster; it made his enthusiastic hugs and ruffling of her hair all the more amusing. She knows his nickname is the Blackfish, and, as they drive towards Lysa's home north of the city, she asks why.
“Because I'm a man who cleans up messes.”
It's disconcerting to know the man who still gives her fifty-cent pieces and tells her not to spend it all in one place is a professional killer. And yet there is also something comforting about it. Sansa has never even fired a gun before; she will need someone like the Blackfish at her side.
The years haven't been kind to Aunt Lysa. She looks older than Sansa's mother and has thickened at the waist. When she tells Sansa she looks just like her mother, Sansa understands this is not so much a compliment as it is an accusation.
“I'm not getting involved.”
Sansa grips the arms of her chair tightly. “What do you mean you're not getting involved? The Lannisters didn't just attack the Starks. Edmure - “
“Edmure was young and impulsive, and he wasn't careful,” Lysa interrupts, casting a glance towards her son slouching in his seat. Sansa thinks Robert is Rickon's age, but he looks smaller, weaker. “And I'm not going to risk all of our lives for vengeance.”
“It is more than vengeance. They killed my father, crippled my brother, ruined the lives of your people as much as mine - “
“Except they're not yours,” Lysa points out, taking a heavy swallow from her wine glass. “Robb is in prison, and he didn't name you as his successor. The Stark holdings all went to the Boltons, including Winterfell and all its profits; all of the Tully holdings on the East Coast went to the Freys. We've barely been able to keep Riverlands afloat, and we're doing so making less than half of what we used to. I am not going to risk that for nothing.”
She wants to scream, wants to flip over the grand table; they used to have one just like it in the house on Lincoln Drive before the feds raided everything. Sansa cannot even think of the small apartment her mother and Rickon share now without wanting to cry. “We're your family, Aunt Lysa, not nothing.”
“Robert is my family and my sole concern.” Lysa huffs. “You probably shouldn't even be here now. Who knows who's watching?”
“Lysa,” the Blackfish begins but Sansa is already on her feet, hurrying from the house as fast as her feet can carry her. The sun nearly blinds her as she rushes down the steps, and she digs her sunglasses from her purse, hiding behind the round black rims. By the time Brynden reaches her, she is leaning against the side of his locked car, staring out at the glistening bay.
“There is another option,” Brynden ventures.
“What option? The Tyrells are aligned with the Lannisters; the Boltons and Freys betrayed us. The Greyjoys can't be trusted and would kill us all, and Stannis Baratheon will only help us if we go to work for him. Everything my father worked for...”
“Have you ever heard of the Martells?”
Sansa shakes her head. “Who are they?”
The Blackfish pulls his cell phone from the inner pocket of his coat and extends it towards her. “Call the airport, book two tickets to Miami.”
Something like hope unfurling in your stomach, Sansa takes the phone.
Someone is licking her face.
Arya grunts, swiping at the offending party, but it only makes the dog think she is playing. She groans, “Nymeria!” as the dog jumps over her, landing hard on the mattress and pushing at her with the flat of his head. Arya rubs sleep from her eyes, staring at the white and brown pitbull she found as a puppy in an abandoned building in West Kensington; its torn ear and scarred nose were as familiar to Arya as her own face, and she sits up, scratching Nymeria's head and submitting for more licks. She can smell bacon cooking in the next room and smiles. Kicking off the sleeping bag which serves as her blanket, Arya climbs off the bare mattress resting on the floor, padding towards the small kitchen in her threadbare undershirt and underwear she grabs from her duffel in the corner.
Gendry stands before the ancient stove in his boxers, his thick black hair sticking up in every direction. She pads up behind him, brushing a kiss against the curve of his shoulder blade; holding the spatula in one hand, he hooks one arm around her, pulling her into a half hug. He is always warm, solid; Arya closes her eyes, let herself savor it for only a moment before swiping a piece of bacon from a paper plate. Tearing the bacon in half, tossing half of it down to Nymeria who catches it with ease, she walks over to the three-legged table propped against the wall to see if any of their roommates left today's newspaper. None of them are readers, but Anguy made some noise about looking for a job and he stole a paper from time to time.
Today one is scattered across the banged up wood. She knows the food stained comics must have been read by Hot Pie, the crumpled sports pages by Lem who probably lost his shirt betting again; Tom hadn't been home for a few days, and Arya knew when he reappeared, it would likely be with a couple of bucks from playing on the sidewalk on South Street and another woman looking for him for late child support payments. Rent is due in a week; Gendry picked up a few extra shifts at the factory, Hot Pie was working doubles at the bakery, and Harwin wasn't saying where he was getting cash but Arya's slim jim was missing from her bag. It isn't like she cares; that's the thing about living with what Tom whimsically refers to as the Brotherhood Without Banners. No one asks questions, no one judges; they have your back if you need it and they don't care where you come from.
They don't know who she really is. When Hot Pie found her and Nymeria, she was crashing in an alley, relying half on Nymeria and half on the knife she kept on her at all times to keep from getting robbed or raped. He saw her digging through the top of the trash and brought her some of the stale donuts before offering her a place to crash. The guys in the house never tried to fuck with her; she folded into the routine like she had always been there. Sometime after Hot Pie brought her home and let her sleep in the walk-in pantry on a sleeping bag, the thing with Gendry started. He was quiet like her, strong but seemingly unaware of it; Nymeria took to him right away, and, unlike the others, he never tried to convince her to hook up with him when they were drinking. She liked Gendry; she might even love him if she'd let herself.
Gendry did not know she was Arya Stark, the daughter of murdered mobster Ned Stark, the sister of Robb Stark, dubbed “the Young Wolf” by the very paper she was now reading. He had never met the girl who attended the most expensive private school in the city, who lettered in field hockey and lacrosse, who received her acceptance letter to the University of Maryland, complete with lacrosse scholarship, the same day Joffrey Baratheon ordered her father murdered by Ilyn Payne. Gendry would never know the girl who wore her hair in a long ponytail, who took riding lessons before school, who had $2 million dollars in a trust account that she could access at any time so long as she showed her ID to the bank manager.
But she tossed her driver's license into the river the same day she butchered her hair and dyed it black, the day the courts sentenced Robb to life. She added a dozen piercings and a handful of tattoos, and, under the oversized, mismatched clothes, she looked nothing like Arya Stark. Gendry loved Arry Snow, loved her choppy hair, the ring in her lip, the barbells through her nipples, the wolf prowling across her ribs; that was the girl he fucked until she screamed, the girl he made breakfast for on his days off, the girl he curled around on the flat mattress and murmured sweet things to when he was half-asleep. Sometimes Arya even thought she was that girl.
And then she'd open the paper and find a picture of the Lannisters in the metro section, golden haired and smiling beneath a headline announcing their latest contribution to some hospital. This time it was to the opening of the Joanna Lannister Maternity Wing; Tywin stood off to the side while Cersei and Jaime each held one side of the oversized scissors. Arya remembered when her father helped build the burn unit at CHOP; he wouldn't let his picture be in the paper because he said charity was not done for recognition.
She wonders if the hospital knows the ward will be built with drug money, with money made by exploiting women, with money soaked in her father's blood. She wonders if they'd even care.
“You want to see a movie?” Gendry asks as he sets a chipped plate piled high with scrambled eggs and bacon before her.
“Sure.” She pushes the paper away. “You pick.”
“Do you work tonight?”
He thinks she stock shelves in a convenience store off Broad Street a few nights a week. Arya doesn't want to consider what would happen if he knew the truth, if he ever found her sneaking into the downstairs bath covered in the blood of Lannister men.
“Yeah.”
Gendry nods, tossing some bacon down to Nymeria. “You've been working a lot lately.”
She drops her eyes to her plate, pulls the corner of her lip not adorned with a ring between her teeth. “A lot of work to get done.”
He likes to watch people run the track. When he first started doing it, Jon said he was just torturing himself; before the .38 caliber bullet tore through his spinal cord, making him paraplegic in an instant, he ran cross-country, even qualifying for states his junior year. For months after the shooting, his dreams were full of nothing but running, flying around the track and outpacing everyone. Now it is as close as he can get to the activity which once gave him such joy. Jon offered once to run around the track pushing him in his chair, but Bran couldn't accept; it felt too much like pity, and if there is one thing Bran Stark has had enough of in his short life, it's pity.
Despite the physical therapy he's attended every week since the shooting, his legs are withered things, his feet always pointing towards each other. Sometimes, as the therapist is working them to keep from atrophy at bay, Bran can only stare at the pale limbs he cannot feel at all and finds he is starting to have trouble remembering what it was like before the injury. That is what the therapists always call it: “the injury.” It always strikes him as strangely amusing; the way everyone phrases it, it is as if he simply tripped one day and lost his legs. They never mention the gnarled tissue on his back, the multiple surgeries, the bullet fragments still lodged in his body; they certainly don't mention that, while the best spinal surgeons in the area operated on his back, his father's brains were being scrubbed from the sidewalk outside the restaurant they had gone to in order to celebrate Arya's college acceptance.
No one ever mentions his father anymore. Even when he visits his mother, she doesn't say his name or Robb's either. Of course, Bran cannot call on Catelyn much; she lives in an old building that isn't wheelchair accessible, and she doesn't get out much anymore. Jon and Jeyne both check in on her, but neither tell him the truth like Rickon does; his mother isn't well, hasn't been well since the Red Wedding, and no one knows how to make her better. At Easter, Jeyne invited them all to her house, but Catelyn seemed confused by the presence of Jeyne's new husband and Rickon cut out when little Ned called Patrek “daddy.” He isn't sure where Sansa was, and no one has seen Arya since Robb was sentenced; Bran knows she's still alive, but he isn't sure how he knows it. When he was still in rehab, his head covered in a layer of stubble after having to have been shaved to relieve pressure on his brain, Robb would run his hand over it and call him Professor X. He wishes he was psychic; he is so very tired of never knowing how anything is going to end.
“You're the only person I know who watches other people exercise.”
Bran smiles as Meera Reed climbs the steps to join him in the largely empty bleachers, dropping her messenger bag with a thud before sinking down beside his chair. Her hair is streaked with green today, and it reminds him of the tall grass which grows around the Reeds' farm. In the few years he has known Meera, she has always appeared as if by magic, folding into his life as if she had always been there. Her father was one of his father's friends, and, after his death, Meera started visiting him in rehab with her brother Jojen. She is one of the few people Bran can call a true friend and, more importantly, one of the few people who knows the truth about him and his family.
“Well I was going to breakdance, but I wanted to wait for you.”
She smirks before flipping open her bag, removing a file folder banded closed. Dropping it into his lap, she warns, “You should be nicer to people doing you favors.”
“I'm always nice,” he retorts, fumbling a bit with the band. The dexterity in his hands has never fully returned, and it seldom bothers him as much as it does in front of Meera. If she notices, she never says a word, and he loves her even more for it.
He is not much good with finance; his trust is managed by Luwin, who gives him whatever money he asks for when he needs it. Bran can't make heads or tails of his investments or spreadsheets, but Meera is a whiz at it all.
“What am I looking at?”
Meera smiles. “The quarterly accounting of Three-Eyed Crow Investments.”
Bran laughs at the name; the Three-Eyed Crow is easily the dodgiest pub near his apartment, run by an extremely questionable man who called himself Bloodraven. “Seriously?”
“What? You needed a name for your company. Can you think of a better one?” She waves her hands dismissively. “Besides, the name doesn't matter. What matters is you officially have your own untraceable corporation, which means now we can get down to business.” Meera looks at him speculatively. “You're sure you want to do this?”
Bran smiles before looking up from the folder, watching as people on the far side of the track effortlessly cleared hurdles. In that moment, he is so buoyant with happiness, he is certain he could do the same.
“Positive.”
Rickon likes hitting people. There is something satisfying about feeling his fist crash into someone else's body, showing them exactly how strong he is, how he is someone to be feared. If there is one thing Rickon will never allow himself to become again, it is a victim, and he does not care how many come for him, how many attack, he will beat them.
Of course, that's what landed him in solitary. They don't call it solitary here; it's only a juvenile facility and you can't do that yet. No, they call this “suicide watch,” which is ridiculous because anyone with half of a brain knows it's far more likely Rickon will kill someone else long before he'd do it to himself. Nonetheless, he sits in the bare cell with only one of the blankets that cannot be tied to hang himself going insane with boredom. Rickon is not the sort of guy made to sit still; if he isn't moving, he starts to lose it, and he hates feeling trapped. He wonders if this is how Robb feels at Allenwood, how it would feel to be like this for the rest of his life; he wonders if Robb ever thought about ending it all.
Rickon worries about his mother doing it. She's so sad all the time, some days she cannot even get out of bed. Other times she talks about the past as if it is still happening; the day he broke that kid's face, she spent the morning talking about Sansa and Ned dancing at her Sweet 16 party. His mother may not always know what it is going on in the world, but she remembers; Rickon is afraid she remembers too much.
He doesn't remember much from the day at the Crossroads. When the first shot rang out, Jory Cassel threw him to the ground, falling atop him; Jory took a bullet in his shoulder for his efforts, and he died at the hospital. Rickon couldn't see anything pinned beneath Jory, but he could hear his mother and Jeyne screaming for help, Jon demanding people give him things to help stop bleeding. The ambulances came quickly, and, when they pulled Jory off, the police took him and Arya inside the restaurant for questioning. Sam, Jon's partner, took them home and stayed with them until Jon and Robb came and told them what happened. It was all a blur until Sansa came, pale and tear streaked, and Rickon thinks he soaked Sansa's shirt when he cried against her shoulder. Not even a year later, Robb was gone too along with Uncle Edmure and the rest of the men Rickon grew up around, and nothing got better ever again.
Jon keeps warning him that if he continues to do shit like this, he's going to end up in jail. “Almost an adult,” Jon repeats, and Rickon doesn't think it would be so different from what he has now. He isn't smart like Sansa or good like Bran; they never seem to be angry, to hate. Rickon thinks that's why Arya went away; Arya was tired of pretending she didn't want to kill the Lannisters.
The police didn't care about his father's murder. Ned Stark was just another gangster to them, and if one bad guy wanted to kill another, why should they care? He doesn't understand how Jon can get up every morning and serve beside the people who didn't give a fuck about their dad, who didn't even try to catch the guy who did it. All Rickon wants to do is fuck people up, to absolutely destroy every Bolton, Frey, and Lannister he comes across. Breaking Little Walder's face was the closest thing to justice Rickon had right now, and he didn't care how many mini stints in juvie it cost him.
When the door to this cell opens, he is expecting one of the fat, balding guards; instead there is a woman with the guard. Her dark hair is a bit wild, and she wears a necklace that reminds Rickon of a bike chain. He figures she's the psychologist or social worker or whoever it is that declares he's not crazy and can rejoin the other delinquents in exercise.
“Hello, Rickon. My name is Osha. I'm here to help.”
He doesn't say anything; he doesn't care.
The guard closes the door, and Osha surprises him by sitting on the floor across from him. He waits for her to begin to ask the regular questions – is he sorry for what he did, has he ever been abused, does he understand why what he did is wrong – but instead she volunteers, “I met your father once.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “I knew your uncle Benjen. When he came to visit, I happened to be there. He was a kind man.”
Rickon folds his arms across his chest. “Yeah.”
“I also know Ygritte.”
The name startles Rickon. He hasn't heard Ygritte's name since she called off her engagement to Jon right after he applied to the police academy; Jon never told him the specifics, but Rickon remembered overhearing that Ygritte was somehow related to his father's business.
“Ygritte?”
“Ygritte and I are family.” Osha meets his gaze. “Do you understand what I mean when I say family?”
Rickon nods.
“I meant what I said: I'm here to help.”
“Help what?”
Opening her portfolio, uncapping her pen, she says, “Help you do whatever it is you'd like to do. Do you know what you want to do with your life, Rickon?”
He swallows hard. “Yeah, I know what I want to do.”
“Good.” Osha smiles. “Then let's get you out of here.”
Rickon doesn't trust her; he doesn't trust anyone but his siblings. But if this strange woman will get him back on the streets, back to where he can get to the Lannisters, he'll say whatever she wants him to say.