Chapter Text
Jon watches the two guards escort (march?) a smaller, brown-clad figure between them towards the Great Hall. It's been six years but even at this distance it can only be Arya. The thin glint of Needle on her belt catches his eye - as does the light reflecting off the helmets and swords of the men striding alongside her.
Jon is moving before he realises what he's doing, padding quickly yet stealthily after them. His hand comes to rest on his sword hilt and he stills it to keep the noise from carrying.
Seeing the trio enter the Great Hall through the main doors, Jon quickens his pace and makes for the smaller door on the north side of the building. He slips in just as Arya and her escort emerge into the Hall proper, the clanking of the guards more than covering any sound his lighter tread makes.
The armored backs of the men lining the walls prevent him from seeing anything, so he steals to a shuttered window arch and hoists himself up into it. Whilst the fire and candles up the far end of the hall are bright enough, his corner of the Hall is cloaked in a thick shadow which swallows him up without a trace.
From this vantage point he can see over the helmets and tabards, to where Sansa sits at the table. His eyes slide right and he sees the maester standing at the edge of the table with his hands clasped. But between the chained man and his sister is....a man who looks to be the echo of the boy who once climbed the walls of Winterfell.
It's Bran. It is Bran. Despite having read the raven whilst at Dragonstone, Jon couldn't quite believe that either of his younger siblings were actually still alive, to say nothing of being home at Winterfell once again. His heart aches at the involuntary thought of the ones who are never coming home again - Father, Lady Catelyn, Robb and Rickon, all torn from life far too soon in this horrible game the gods have seen fit to play with the Starks.
He's so caught up in his memories that it is a moment before he notices that Bran is staring straight at him with the oddest look in his eye. Jon nearly jumps down and announces his presence, but something in Bran's gaze holds him in place. It's the oddest feeling...that Bran is analyzing him, peering into his innermost heart and measuring what he finds.
It's the feeling Jon had when he locked eyes with the Night King at Hardhome - a feeling of some vast, alien being focussing its attention on Jon - and the certainty that he does not want to have its full attention on him.
But...it's still Bran. Bran who wanted to grow up to be a knight when they were younger, Bran who was so feverish and looked so small after his fall.
The guards have brought Arya to the middle of the hall and stop. This is all wrong. Sansa and Arya are having some kind of staring competition. Neither of their faces betrays any hint of what they're thinking - and they are both so still they look more like the statues in the crypt than his flesh and blood sisters.
Jon can see Sansa give the slightest of nods and the two men turn and join their comrades along the wall. He absently notes Lord Royce on one side, his mouth set in a hard line and hand close to his sword belt. Arya turns to look at the guards standing impassively behind her, turning far enough to see the men by the door close and bar it. She looks back the other way at the wall of stern faces staring at her....and then looks towards the one man who isn't wearing armor.
Fucking Littlefinger.
Jon clenches his teeth at the sight of the man who sold Sansa to the Boltons and then rode in with the Knights of the Vale to rescue them. Never mind that it wasn't fast enough to save Rickon...never mind that it wasn't soon enough to prevent Jon from being a fool and charging right into the hands of the Bolton bastard. Littlefinger has declared for House Stark and brought the might of the Vale to their side. And he hasn't let anyone forget it either. Especially not Sansa, in whose presence Littlefinger always seems to be these days. Always with that sardonic half-smile and the lecherous eyes that track her wherever she goes.
Jon momentarily regrets not punching that smug face when he had the chance before he left for Dragonstone. A hard shove in the crypts doesn't quite have the same release as a fist to the face...or a sword to the neck.
He comes out of his fantasy just in time to see Arya turn her head from Littlefinger and look back to Sansa. He's too far away but he's sure there's a smirk on that face, a smirk...directed at Arya?
The hair stands up on the back of his neck and he grips Longclaw tightly with his hand. He can tell this is going to be bad.
Arya speaks and her low voice somehow fills the entire hall.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
The flatness of her tone stuns him. Where is the feisty girl who demanded to fight him and Robb, who ran away from Septa Mordane more times than he could count? Where's the girl whose eyes shone as he gifted her Needle and reminded her to stick them with the pointy end?
This new Arya, this taller, leaner girl who stands like a wolf in a field of sheep, is something new. At the back of his mind he thinks to himself that of course she's changed, they've all changed - coming back from the dead was a pretty bloody big change - but that thought is drowned out by the sense of lethal poise that he's getting from this stranger with Arya's face.
"It's not what I want. It's what honour demands."
Sansa sounds tired, yet there's more than a hint of iron in her tone. He can see that she looks more worn than when he left, yet her back is straight and her head held high as her eyes bore into her sister. Jon can almost see the ice forming between these two and it's puzzling him. They left Winterfell with no love lost between them and that was before the horrible events of the Kingsroad and Kings Landing. Still, the raven that Sansa sent to him at Dragonstone was full of her joy at Arya being home again, even mentioning a shared moment together in the crypts. Where has it gone so wrong?
"And what does honour demand?" asks Arya in that soft, flat tone again.
Jon suddenly realises that, aside from her mouth moving, Arya is absolutely still. The nervous energy and barely-contained motion that so typified her during their childhood is gone, replaced by.....a wolf, waiting out its prey he thinks.
Sansa is talking again, her eyes glittering in the reflected firelight and her hands resting in her lap.
"That I defend my family from those who would harm us. That I defend the North from those who would betray us."
Arya blatantly looks at Littlefinger at the word 'betray' and this time there is no hiding his smirk. His eyes flick down as he smiles, his entire body shouting that he is reaping yet another reward from his machinations. Jon grinds his teeth so loud that he half-expects the closest guards to turn at the sound.
"Alright then," Arya says casually, "get on with it."
No one outwardly reacts at the way she bites off the last syllable but there's a tiny shuffle as the men at arms all change their posture slightly. No one goes for a weapon or anything obvious like that, but Jon can't help but notice that they're all exactly that much more ready to draw swords.
Sansa is speaking again. "You stand accused of murder. You stand accused of treason. How do you answer these charges?"
Jon can't believe his ears. Murder? Treason? Arya has only been back a few weeks! What the fuck is this? The one thing that has kept him going since he came back is Sansa and the prospect of getting back their home. But these two strangers with their words of ice and their eyes of glass are here now and suddenly the castle is not the place of safety that he knew it to be, but instead something darker and far more dangerous.
He is standing up in his alcove, hand clenching on the hilt of his sword and knees bent to jump down, storm up to the table and shake both of the girls to bring them to their senses. There is no time to be doing this sort of shit, not with the Night King coming down with his army of dead. He just got his sisters back and it looks like he might lose one or both of them before he even spoke to them together!
He knew they had a rivalry (sometimes a hatred) all throughout childhood but he never considered what the consequences of two women who have been tutored in the harsh ways of the world coming together. The explosion looks to be a short way off but when it gets here, it's going to be lethal.
As Jon flexes his knees and prepares to jump, he glances up at the table again and finds that Bran is yet again staring at him. This time there is an almost imperceptible shake of the head and Brans eyes seem to focus again on Jon.
He can hear a whisper in his ear. Bran's voice, almost inaudible but heavy with meaning and command. "Wait." Jon can't quite believe this is Bran talking to him, though it doesn't matter. The weighty gaze is upon him again and he can't move, can barely breathe.
In fact the feeling is so strong that he nearly misses the next two words Sansa utters, her cold gaze shifting to the side.
"....Lord Baelish?"