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As the warmth seeps into her limbs, the sense of what's around her grows. This is a room where things began and ended. He says 'outsiders,' and she sees blond hair, tastes blood on her tongue for the briefest moment. The hall is stained through with the history of itself, but she's learned enough of current events to orient herself.

Then Jon is asking a question, and it's Davos that looms largest over her answer.

"Very bad advice, and worse timing," is at least an honest answer, though she realizes the moment she says it that it is still a little cheekier than it ought to be when she's trying to keep her head off a chopping block. "I was told she'd bring me to you."

Again, more ominous than she intends, but the warmth is slow and her brain isn't completely on board with cooperation.

"I'm supposed to help you," she says, then turns to look at Davos, big eyed and serious, "not kill him, so you can stop looking at me like that."

Jon's laugh is not as bitter as it could be, though the twinge of salt that colors his perception of the priestess and the things she supposedly stood for peeks out from beneath the veil of mirth all the same. He has a lot of mixed feelings about Melisandre, and none of them are ones her feels particularly obligated to give voice to. Those traitorous men he hanged in Castle Black's gallows had killed him and the Red Priestess brought him back to life. He was dead for days, and there had been absolutely nothing but darkness awaiting him on the other side. Jon hasn't dealt with that yet or why the Lord of Light supposedly allowed him to return to this world or the supposed role he was supposed to play in that prophecy the witch was always going on about—

Quite frankly, Jon didn't have time to process any of that. He was alive and the dead were coming. That's all that matters. He can deal with his own questioning faith and crisis of mortality once he's made sure the newly reclaimed North isn't going to fall to the White Walkers.

Naturally, he does think of him, the Night King, when she mentions that she's here to help him. Why wouldn't he? The way that bloody undead madman looked at him on the shores of Hardhome haunts him, scares him. It has him fearing for his people and the whole of Westeros.

"Then what are you here for?"

Restoring peace to the North? Can't be, he and Sansa have already seen to that. His kingship of all things is the glue holding all the Northern Houses together.

It's brief swell, when Jon laughs, of something deep and acrid. Ash mixed with melted snow, the tang of fear at the back of her throat that isn't entirely her own. She's already knee deep in things she knows she needs to grasp, but can't quite latch on to, and this is the first time she's even gotten close to what it is they'd wanted her to do.

Which -- What are you here for?

Truth or lie? Both will sound crazy. River doesn't know enough of this place to lie effectively about why she's here, considering everything she's already given away about her vague connection to Melisandre. And the truth?

"To help you," she repeats. Then, after a quick testing glance at Davos, "To help you become King of more than the North."

She feels small, suddenly. Insurmountably. It isn't the first time since she's been here. Not even the first before then: she was always the little mouse, the little sister, only now she feels minuscule. As if she's teetering on the edge of some great howling chasm, held in place by a hundred wispy threads attached to nothing. A crown, maybe, or the distant hope of home.

River doesn't mention that part. It seems rude to offer help and then admit you were kidnapped and blackmailed into doing it.

If only photography were a thing in this version of the world (or a world, as is more likely the case), for the utterly baffled look on Ser Davos's face is likely comical. As is the confusion plastered across Jon's.

"To become..." Jon throws a hand up, waving it dismissively and taking a step back as if putting a few more inches of distance between him and the visitor will somehow make her words make sense. Or vanish. "No, no. Not only do I have no interest in the Iron Throne, I have no right to it. I'm a bastard, and even if I wasn't, the Starks lack any rightful claims. Northmen want the North. We have the North. I am King in the North, nothing more."

He doesn't understand, because he doesn't know. His whole life as been a lie, a deliberate shield cast over the truth of his existence that drove a good, honest man to lie to a wife who felt betrayed and a country that viewed him as a war hero for Robert Baratheon's cause.

This is a dilemma she wasn't prepared for. Helping him, yes. She could see what that would mean- listening, and telling, using what she could do to sway battles or make alliances. Persuasion hadn't been part of the deal, it hadn't even been mentioned. River hadn't even thought to ask if the man she was looking for would want what she was setting out to do for him. Neither had the men that sent her. The assumption had to be that every man wanted the throne, wanted power and glory.

Jon just wants the North.

River just wants to go home.

And ne'er the twain shall meet.

She's fidgeting now, fingers twisting around each other as if she's gone cold again. For a moment, she closes her eyes and lets herself feel for the puzzle pieces she needs. Jon goes on the throne. He fits there, belongs there, like a gear clicking into place. He's not a bastard, he has a claim to it, but that might not change his mind. Someone else could go there, too, it's not immutable, not definite, but possible. When she opens her eyes again she looks between them for a solution, hands still wrung around each other.

Loyalty. Rightness. Some indefinable good. Some coda resolving on a major chord.

Her voice is quiet, hopeful, when she offers, "Maybe that means you'd be better at it than anyone else, and that's why they want you there." The hope is gone when she finishes, like striking a sour note a half-step from where it ought to be. "But I'll help you be King here, if that's the only King you'll be. I don't have anywhere else to go."

Jon doesn't really want the North — not for himself, anyway. A lordship, nevermind a bloody crown, was never part of his destiny. Just wasn't in a lowborn bastard's future. He wants the North for the North. To keep someone with Stark blood in Winterfell until he can convince Sansa to rule or put one of her children on the proverbial throne in his place. He has absolutely no idea that his blood claim is far more than what it seems.

That he has a solid right to more than ever dreamed.

"Why are you so adamant about helping?" Jon asks, and he's no doubt a fool for giving a stranger a measure of trust. But that's simply the sort of man he is. "You don't know me, as eager as you are to crown me. And I don't know you. Yet you insist. Why is that?"

"You remind me of my brother."

She says it without thinking, cutting closer to truth than any fiction she might have come up with on the spot. Instead of a stab of panic at the potential of being found out, there's only the dull throb of a headache she didn't know she'd had beginning to fade and the ever-present pang of homesickness that's taken up permanent residence somewhere deep inside her gut. It can't all be truth or lie, and River doesn't exactly want to lie. She just doesn't want to get thrown back out in the cold, or worse.

"He's a good man, and I think you are, too. I want to help you because..." The words falter and stop as she thinks of why, pieces the words together carefully in her mind before pushing them back up to the surface of the audible world. "Because from what I've seen, a good man in this land will need all the help he can get."

River glances back at Davos, unsure of his perception, then adds, "And I don't want to have to go back out into the snow alone."

Brother.

Jon thinks of his own brothers — Robb and Rickon, who were dead, the latter having been shot in the heart with an arrow by Ramsay Bolton before his very eyes. It still sickened him to think of Sansa's harsh, yet true words, and how clear they rang in his head when he raced on his horse towards his little brother. He was already dead, Sansa had said. Sansa knew that Ramsay wouldn't allow Rickon to live, that the youngest Stark was already a lost cause that could not be saved. And yet Jon tried, even as he knew his brother's life was lost, he tried.

He tried and Rickon still died. He tried a lot and people still lost their lives as a result. He could try and try, and people would still die. (The former Lord Commander, Ygritte, King Stannis...)

There was still hope for Bran, though. No one had seen him, but he chose to take no reports of death as a sign that life was indeed possible. There was too much gloom in the air already. No need to indulge it further by adding another dead brother to the list.

"I don't think there are many good men left," Jon ventures. "The least I can be is that."

Davos looks ready to say something in response to that, but Jon holds up a hand and speaks before his Hand can. "You won't. I invite you to stay here in Winterfell as an advisor to the throne of the North."

They don't start immediately.

First, they see to the task of getting her settled. A room, food, the things a guest receives in hospitality. Walking through Winterfell, River notes the looks she gets. Men that think she is another Melisandre, less or more fearsome, some who think she's a wildling, some who are too occupied with their own interests and fears to care about the freezing girl from the gate. It feels like hundreds of shadows following her, specters of women she isn't and assumptions born of a world she doesn't belong in.

It isn't until after dinner that she's able to speak with Jon again, without Davos' ever-watchful eyes.

"I haven't been entirely honest with you." There's too much here for her to start this, whatever this is (a mission or a duty or a way home), on unsure footing. "I'd like to change that."

The first step to dispelling shadows is light, and it's too far to dawn to wait for what little sun this world will give them.

Jon is firm in his decision to keep River around and sternly reprimands anyone who dares to treat her unkindly. He is quick to remind them of his own (supposed) origins, pointing out that if a bastard can sit on the throne of the North, then an outsider can sit with him in the Great Hall. The knowledge she possessed was invaluable, her perspective unique. With winter here and only a wall of ice separating the northern lands from the untamed wilderness that the White Walkers thrived in, they could use any help they could get.

And that included River.

She was a peculiar woman that the young king didn't know quite what to make of. She wasn't mystifying in any of the ways that Melisandre had been, and he sensed no ill-will from her or intent to do harm. Jon was big on trusting his gut; it rarely led him astray. His gut instinct towards River was that she was here to help, just as she said she was. As far as he was concerned, she was a friend to the North. A valued ally and trusted confidant.

When she speaks, he lists to one side, leaning on his elbow so that he can hear her better. So that when he lowers his own voice, it's ensured that only she will be able to here him.

"What do you mean?"

A shiver creeps up his spine. Melisandre hadn't been entirely honest with him— Had he made a mistake again? Was his gut wrong?

She can feel the shiver, almost lets it carry through her before thinking to brace herself against it.

"Don't do that," she says, a light chastisement. Don't think it's bad, and don't worry, except she knows he should be. Has every right to be, with the threads leading off him to the things that have happened to him, to those he loves. River intends for it to sound like levity, but it lands in sullenness instead.

She doesn't lean in, doesn't even really look at Jon as he moves closer. There's too much there to take in and speak to at the same time.

"It's not--," wait, no, there's already frustration. The grasping for the right words when the air is full of a language that forms so differently from what she's used to. "When they took me, told me to come and help you, they called me a warg. I don't think it's right, that's just the only word they had for it, but," and here is the scariest part, the vision of a pyre in the back of her mind that she knows isn't just a grim reminder of the past in this world, "I can know things."

And that's it. She feels it hang there between them, because that's all she can do. There's no magic, no gift, no resurrection. Only knowing, and that may not be enough.

Wargs aren't just something Jon's heard of, but something he's encountered as well. He remembers Orell, the Free Folk's warg, and how he was able to disappear into the minds of other creatures in other to gain a greater sense of the landscape; so that he could hear and see the things that others may not want him to without anyone so much as noticing. Jon struck him down personally when he rebelled against his captors, though he was never quite certain if he killed the man or just the body he used to inhabit.

He's also living proof that magic and intangible things like greensight and the ability to warg your way into another creature's mind exists. He was dead. He was struck down and stabbed through the heart and died. If not for Melisandre's magic, he wouldn't be sitting next to her. And while yes, it was true that the Red Priestess had misused her powers in the sacrifice of an innocent girl, something in his gut told him that cruel act had come from a good place.

Backwards as that sounded. He couldn't quite explain why he felt that way, just that he did. It's why he banished her instead of having her beheaded like others had wanted him to do. He owed her his life and he didn't fully believe she was out for blood — anyone's blood.

Just as he didn't believe River was out for blood, either. Least of all his.

"What sort of things?" Jon keeps his voice low, not wanting to be overheard.

There are still pyres, somewhere, but they feel further from her. The sensation of unbelievablilty lingers, and with it the rush of information ebbs and flows. River doesn't look at Jon, but instead out at the rest of the people here in Winterfell that still haven't found another place in the castle to rest their heads and feet yet.

"Lies, and true things. Sometimes, it's things that happened."

She turns her head, now, to look him in the eyes. He is a brother, whatever else he is beneath that, and there are words that hang in the air sometimes when Arya is in the room. Something her own brother would never say, not in seriousness, but it makes her miss him that much more.

"When you left here, you gave your sister a blade," she says, her eyes going unfocused for a moment as she lets herself think. "You told her to stick it with the pointy end."

His eyes widen slightly, but he's aware enough to reign in his expression the moment he realizes he's making it. There are eyes upon him, and not all of those pairs agree with his place on the throne. He's a bastard, the first one to reign in hundreds upon hundreds of years — especially without a royal degree revoking his bastard name.

Stannis had once offered to make him a Stark, to sign the documents necessary to make him Ned Stark's rightful son and not one born out of wedlock. It had been a tempting offer, but Jon refused. He'd been too loyal to the Night's Watch then, and for what? A stab in the back?

"I did, and I said that. Can you see what she called it?"

"Needle," she says, automatic. As if this is a quiz and that's the right answer (she always did manage to have the right answer), and maybe it is. A test, small and simple.

River focuses again slowly, and considers whether or not to tell him the other truth. There aren't many ways to take 'You aren't Ned Stark's son' that aren't terrible, especially not in this climate. The disapproval is quiet, but the way it hangs in the air is no less thunderous than the winter storms on the horizon.

After a moment, she glances out at the rest of the occupants of Winterfell still milling about. Between them all are countless lies and secrets, things untold but understood. It's easy for her to get lost in the fog of it.

Or in something else.

"You should know you're a Stark. Whatever else they say, that's something that's always true."

Needle.

That's all Jon needs, one simple word to cement his faith in this woman's truthfulness. That was a conversation that took place between Arya and himself with no one else around, and even if his sister had shared the name with others, how could this woman have possibly come to learn it by any other means? It was far too unlikely, even with the way happenstance seemed to make the most improbable of people cross paths.

He blinks, brow furrowing in open confusion when she makes her next statement.

"Well, yes," he begins, uncertain with his footing. "I know that."

Jon has Stark blood, but he isn't Catelyn's son. So he isn't legitimate. But if he didn't have Stark blood flowing through his veins, the Lords that supported him would have never allowed him to become King in the North.

And just like that, she feels the trust settle in at her back like a heavy cloak, like armor. All of which are necessary now, no matter how it is she came to be here or what it is she knows.

Part of her wants to nudge at this, to push through with the point and have it over and done with already. It's the same instinct that has her lift a hand as if to put over his arm in reassurance, but she thinks better of it (he is a King, and there are a hundred eyes here she does not know) and sets it back in her lap. This secret is bigger than she is, and there will be a time and a place for it soon enough.

"Good," she says as if she was only reminding him of it, and River feels awkward again. A conversation on truth just circles back to a lie, a glaring if conscientious omission.

"What else do you want to know?"

"My brother and sister," he says immediately, thinking of others instead of himself. He could have asked about his future or the uncertainty of his past — for he still doesn't know who his mother is or if she's even still alive — but the desire to know of Arya and Bran's fate pricks at him more. "Can you tell me about what happened to them and where they are."

Not if they're dead. No, Jon can't take more death. It was bad enough that he had to watch Rickon be struck down by Ramsay's arrow. Sansa had told him going into that battle that the youngest Stark was a lost cause, that he would be dead by Ramsay's hand one way or the other, but Jon had refused to believe it. And the memory of it still woke him up at night when his unconscious mind decided to reflect upon it.

They're alive. They're out there — somewhere. He just knows it.

For a moment, it's like she's with Simon again. Different but familiar, and she shifts all at once from awkwardness to something sadder. Somewhere, very far away, he's probably looking for her, and there isn't anyone who would be able to tell him where she is. The least she can do now is tell Jon, but it's not an answer that can come as easy as the name of a blade.

River looks down at her hands, fingers still cold as ever, and tries to think around the immediacy of here and now.

She sits back, eyes still on her hands while her fingers twitch against each other as she works through it in her head, grasping at any connection that can be found. Still, not much comes until she looks up and sees Ghost sitting at his master's knee, looking at her, and she knows with sudden clarity his own sister has gone wild.

"They'll come back. Both of them." River turns toward him again, a little disappointed in herself. "It's harder--farther than I can find. I know what I told you before because you're here, because it happened here. And I know they'll be back here, but everything else..."

That isn't much of a reassurance, and she knows it. "I'm sorry I don't have more than that."

Jon was never fully allowed to be part of the family; even if Ned Stark went out of his way to raise him like a lordling, the truth of the matter was that he would never hold a title or preside over anything. And yet, he was still a good brother in spite of it. Robb and he were constant companions in their youth, and he doted on his sisters and younger brothers — even when Catelyn tried her best to put a stop to it, even when Sansa fell in step with her mother's wishes that he not be regarded as a part of the bloodline she had helped to secure.

(Things were different now. He and Sansa were different now, and no power in the Seven Kingdoms could tear him away from his sister.)

It's those brotherly instincts that have his gloved hand reaching out across the bench, shielded from sight by the long, elaborate banners that hung from the edge of the table. His hand covers his in a gesture of comfort for something unsaid, something he isn't going to inquire after. Whatever it is, it isn't his business, but he can still be sorry for it all the same.

Silently.

"They're alive," he breathes gleefully, the relief heavy on his tongue as a warm, happy smile spreads across his features. (Gods, when was the last time he smiled?) "No, don't apologize." His hand squeezes hers. "That is more than I ever hoped to know."

His hand surprises her, all warm leather and comfort. River isn't quite sure she's earned it until she sees him smile. Jon has lost more siblings than she's ever had, more parents, more friends...

When she smiles back, it's small but genuine, and her other hand moves to rest on top of his. A hidden reciprocation, from a sibling that is lost to a brother that finds.

"If I find anything else, I'll tell you. I promise."

But in spite of the large family, he's also been ostracized for most of his life. The very table that they're perched at was off limits to him until he took back Winterfell from the Boltons. A bastard does not sit or dine with those of noble birth and true, pure blood. Jon earned his kingship, earned his right to sit at this table, and the love and respect of a sister who once hated him.

That's not to say that Jon wasn't raised with love, for his father and (some of his) siblings made sure that he knew he was loved and appreciated. But it's still possible to be loved and cared for and still feel like you're alone in the world.

Perhaps that's why the solitude of the Wall felt like home to him for so long. A home he was suited for and belonged to.

And now look at him. He's the fucking King.

One of them, anyway.

"I appreciate it," he whispers back. "Truly, I do. The North is indebted to you."

There is so much here, this bitter blend of isolation and home, that River has a harder time pulling herself back inside her skin. Jon's hand on hers helps to ground things, the sensation of connection (this is real, this is a real place, this is not a frozen dream), but even that is screaming contrasts. Hands in hands, hands on weapons. Used to make and uphold promises by any means necessary. Fragility and brutality held equally inside twenty-seven bones, popping out of aching joints.

She tilts her head forward and wishes her hair wasn't pinned back, as if hiding behind a tangled curtain of it would help somehow.

"I've only been here a day," whispered and teasing, even a little strained in tone, but true. She hasn't even told him the most important things about himself, how can she have already earned a debt?

"You'd be surprised what one is able to accomplish in the span of a single day," he says.

Jon may not have had the sort of upbringing his siblings have, for he was never destined to hold an office or title of any kind (rising up to Lord Commander of the Night's Watch was a feat all its own, and now he's King), but he knows his histories. Kingdoms rose and fell in a day, people were born and died, alliances were forged while others crumbled...

There was not nearly enough credit given to the amount of time held in a single day.

Days are arbitrary. The measure of a single solar cycle, the tick of seconds and minutes and hours finely measured into something considered appropriate and immovable has always been fickle in her mind. There were always too many planets, too many suns, for her to believe in a solid standard of it. If she were home, she would argue the point just to be contrary. Rattle on about quantifiable time, black holes, perception --

But this is one planet, one sun, where only the slow ebb and flow of seasons is arbitrary and completely unmeasured by conventional means. In her own context, what he says is more poetic than River thinks he intended.

So she doesn't argue, just smiles, small and self-conscious.

"I suppose," because she can't help but be contrary anyway, at least a little bit. "Did you want to know anything else? Maybe if you're in enough debt, I can ask your for a boat later."

A joke, sibling-esque teasing, because why not? Though absolutely not a joke she would speak aloud if Davos were within earshot.

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

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i'm falling asleep, hopefully this make sense

it does!

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