#roothlesssnow

   The party had gotten too lively, too warm and far too boring. Renly had escaped    outside at the first chance she had with a bottle of chilled wine in between her    slender fingers. Safer to escape now, rather than waiting for Robert to inevitably    embarrass himself. In the cool night air, she sighed before taking a long swig    from the bottle. She caught a head of dark curls from the corner of her eyes and    startled.

Once, there was a boy who would’ve agreed -- but that boy was long gone, left cut open and bleeding on the banks of Riverrun. The irony that the Stark before him bore some resemblance to the same Stark that ended the ward of Riverrun was not lost on him. “Is that experience you speak from or was it your father who imparted such words?" 

It took countless days, the dark haired woman lost count of how long it took her to leave from the small village that she was hiding within after Ned’s death shocked and put Lyanna Stark on edge. The only reason she was leaving now was because she had heard of how Robb and Catelyn had been betrayed by their own bannerman, slaughtered at a wedding of all places. She always knew that Bolton’s could never be trusted and this only proved that they could never be trusted, just like the Fray’s.

Wrapping her furs around her tighter, her eyes scaled up to the impressive structure in front of her. The Wall, her brother had manned it alongside the other brothers of the Night’s Watch ever since she came back from that dreaded tower. She used to joke that one day she would see The Wall for herself, but she never thought it would be under these circumstances.

roothlesssnow

Whenever she closed her eyes she could see Winterfell burning, she could see the smoke rising from the walls which had become her home, in which she had raised her children and loved Ned. Ned who was as lost to her now as the castle. Robb continued with his war, determined to free Sansa in the capital, but Catelyn could not go to him. She could not take her youngest boys and Arya to the heart of a war, back to danger. They had no choice to go North. To the Wall. Where Ned's brother and Ned's bastard waited; they could not turn them away, they could not. Was not the Watch's duty to protect? 

Yet, she had arrived to find Benjen long since lost and thought as dead as his brother, and so it was only to Jon Snow she had been able to turn. A moment of humility for most, but Catelyn did not care. She would gladly make her apologies on her knees and embrace Jon like a son if it would see her children safe. Though she prayed it would not be necessary. 

The commanders had been unable, in good conscience, to send she and her children away, and the presence of Hodor, carrying Bran, was a frightening sight to those who did not know him; it had worked in their favour. And now it was before Jon Snow that she sat, in a dark, dim, cold room, lit by a few flickering lanterns. Castle Black was a dismal place. 

"Winterfell is now no more than ash and scorched stone," She pronounced solemnly as a beginning to the discussion. "Ser Roderick Cassel and Maester Luwin are both dead"