#and when speaking to Jon its just a distant disembodied voice

[asylvermoment]

As Soon Go Kindle Fire with Snow

"As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words."

"I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire, But qualify the fire's extreme rage, Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason."

Chapter 1: The Godswood

SANSA

It was the first time Sansa had returned to Winterfell since the Bolton bastard had wed her. It was the first time she had the space to think, to dwell, to truly grieve for everything she had lost... it was the first time she could be utterly alone with her thoughts and her meager prayers.

The weirwood tree in the Godswood welcomed her presence. Its aged branches shook with a tender delight as she walked across the hallowed, muddy earth to get to the edge of the pool. Her long, deep blue gown traipsed behind her, the hems rustling up fallen leaves and crafting a crinkle in her wake.

Sansa had always felt uneasy in this place, a place her father considered to be so sacred. She knew that her mother and father used to steal away here, by the shade of the great tree, to speak of those matters that were too sensitive to air around their children in the echoing halls of Winterfell.

If she listened, truly listened, Sansa could discern fragmented echoes of her father's voice. They lingered upon the edge of the wind, carried through the waving branches of the tree with those crimson leaves. Leaves stained with memory and blood.

Sansa shook her head and chided herself for her imagination. Even after all these years, after all the terrors she faced among her captors, her imagination provided a window for her to cope with the injustices... to dream, perchance, that she had been uncommonly unlucky in her affections and that there were good men and women out there. Like my family.

But her family's tragic story had echoed throughout the realm and all the war-worn men of the Kingsroad had bowed to her out of the courtesy of honoring their memories... her father, her mother, Robb, even Jon... Jon, the half-brother she had treated like a dirty leather shoe for so many years. News of his death had reached her through whisperings on the road. That night had been dark and cold, empty of all emotion save the string of grief she felt tethered to. She dare not think about her younger siblings and their fates or her strength would properly abandon her and she would not be able to collect enough of it again in time for travel.

The antiquated face of the tree brought the memories back to her. She sank to her knees in front of the great visage and buried her auburn hair in her hands. Strands of her hair fell around her fingers as she silently sobbed there in the shadowy wood, praying to whatever forsaken gods would listen to her in her once-charmed home.

What a fool she had been, ever desiring - as petulant children do - to leave her home in the first place. Her reward for her obstinacy had been sorrow and pain, true pain as she had never experienced it before. The dull ache of longing for the apparitions of her family never subsided and was beginning to hollow her out from the inside, like a carved gourd.

Sansa heard the faintest sound lingering behind her in the wood and her eyes froze, cerulean orbs trained on the stump of ground in front of her.

Slowly, she began to turn, her gloved hands grasping at snow as a precautionary measure in case she needed to run.

What she saw startled and awed her.

Ghost, the great lumbering white wolf with eyes like rubies, stood partially camouflaged against the falling snow. He sat on his hindquarters and stared directly at Sansa, as if awaiting her permission to come any closer.

Unbidden, Sansa's eyes welled with tears and she rushed over to the direwolf. It did not back away or dart, but waited for Sansa to approach and then closed its bright eyes.

"I thought I lost you all." The heir to Winterfell fell upon the wolf and buried her face in its shaggy, frost-tipped fur. Her eyes stung with relief and her hands wrapped lovingly around the great wolf's warm neck.

"No, my lady, we thought we lost you." The man's voice was gentle and soft, as if he was in disbelief of what he was seeing. Sansa looked about for the source of the disembodied voice and spotted a great hulk of a man standing at the edge of the clearing, his brow wrinkled and his chins wobbling as he spoke.

"I'm glad Ghost found you and that I found him." The man adorned in the black garb of the Night's Watch spoke again. "He's a tough sort to keep up with, that one. I'm a bit slower than he is and these lands are unfamiliar to me. My name is Samwell..." He discerned Sansa's confused expression and hastily stammered, "Tarly. Samwell Tarly."

"I served as a Brother of the Night's Watch with Jon."

Chapter 2: And Now Their Watch Has Ended

SAM

Once, early on and long ago, when Jon and Sam had first shared a frigid night on watch duty atop the Wall, Jon had revealed moments of his family life to Sam. The night air rushed in around them and their coats proved paltry companions. As they gathered around the dying fire, Jon held that distant look in his eyes and Sam wondered where his companion's thoughts had fled to.

"What are you thinking of, J-J-Jon?" Sam shivered and adjusted his cloak. The gesture did little to physically alleviate the cold, but he was hoping Jon would initiate a conversation to distract him and ease the heartless nip of the winds.

Jon's eyes flickered in the firelight and he glanced sidelong at Sam, measuring his intentions.

The fire seemed to grow brighter and brighter as Jon paused and Sam couldn't help but stare into the dancing flames as well.

Jon spoke, "I was thinking about them. My family."

The words seemed tepid as they dropped from his lips or perhaps it was the cold dulling their senses to oblivion.

"What a-a-about them?" Sam shakily inquired.

Sam watched Jon furrow his brow as if he was wrestling with a great specter in his mind. "I have been remembering my childhood recently, coming up here." Jon paused and the wind howled, almost snuffing the fire with it.

"I had a good childhood, a blessed childhood... despite being despised by my step-mother. She never told me outright how she felt about me, but..." His eyes cast over the dark expanse of the Wall. "I knew. As soon as she looked at me, I felt her anger and despair. It destroyed me to know that I was the child she reviled, but it hurt me even more than her distaste for me fell to my sister, Sansa."

"My brothers all accepted me right away; they played with me, included me, made me one of the clan... even Arya, with her wild spirit, taught me how to fall in love with the simplest things." It was one of the first times Sam ever saw Jon Snow smile and he did not interrupt the reminiscence for fear of Jon's usual grim expression returning too soon.

"But Sansa," his smiled dampened upon his cheeks. "Sansa never forgot to remind me where my place was, whether we were supping or jesting or playing at swords. She always kept me in line with her eyes. I loved those eyes, Sam-- she held the winter waters in her eyes, both cold and deep. But, she scorned me and silently taught me the lesson of remembrance... I was a bastard son and always would be. No means of pretending otherwise would ever change that."

Jon turned back to the outcrop of Wall he was guarding and grew silent once more, the dark shadows etching in as the coals from the fire heaved their last gasps. Sam thought for a moment and then spoke.

"Sometimes, the people who love us the most show it in the most unlikely ways. Your sister Sansa was protecting you from unwanted hurts, Jon, I promise you that."

Jon blinked at the bleak landscape but said nothing, taking in Sam's words. Then, with no more chatter, the two packed up their things and headed down the elevator to the slumbering keep of Castle Black.

***

Sam recalled his memory now as he gazed upon fair Lady Sansa of Winterfell. Jon's description of her did her no justice at all. She was one of the most stunning women Sam had ever set eyes on in his lifetime. Even out in the snow, she glided lithely. She was tall, graceful and very womanly-- curved in just the right ways in just the right places. Her high cheekbones swam with a soft, rosy pallor and her vivid blue eyes complemented the mane of thick, auburn hair that spilled out from under the deeper blue of her cloak.

They strode over to the charred keep that was Winterfell in total silence, the only sound being Ghost's soft padding among the snow. Sansa walked with an even pace and her chin level to the ground, her ivory hands clasped together in front of the cobalt fabric of her thick dress.

Sam struggled with the silence. He was bursting to tell the lady his news... news that must reach her ears quickly as he had already sent his ravens south three nights past. They entered the courtyard at Winterfell and Sam could no longer contain himself.

"My Lady," he called out and Sansa turned over her right shoulder, Ghost padding to a stop at her side.

"You need not call me by a title, Lord Sam," she replied courteously. Her porcelain features were kind but etched with a weariness that presented itself in the spaces at the corner of her eyes.

"By truth, my-- Miss Sansa, I was never a lord." He chuckled a bit at the thought and then grimaced at remembering Thorne and the others having called him Lord Piggy. It meant nothing anymore, their empty jests. Most of them were Others beyond the Wall... resurrected for a grim purpose, one that the realm itself should fear to name. "Please call me Sam, if it please you."

Sansa waited quietly for his rambling to end. He plucked up his courage and began to tell her of what he learned.

"Jon Snow is alive, Lady Sansa. He is a stone's throw from death taking him again but I assure you, as I am speaking with you here, he lives."

Sansa's eyes widened and she abandoned all pretense and pleasantry, demanding, "Jon is alive? Tell me where he is, Sam. I must see him!"

Ghost's ears prickled at Lady Sansa's mention of Jon and his dark red eyes probed Sam for the truth. Their pair of eyes, Sansa's and Ghost's, seared into Sam, forms of tempered steel waiting to be tested.

"I-I-I found him at Castle Black..." he grimly recalled. "A Women clad in robes of red knelt over his body, muttering softly, and the snow... the snow was stained with much blood. His blood."

He gulped. "I watched as she placed one hand over his eyes and the other over his chest. I couldn't hear what she uttered but a fire erupted from her palm and she forced the flames onto or into Jon, burning him... I screamed out and begged her to stop but she ignored my calls! She kept repeating the words in a twisted rhythm and the fire licked at Jon's wounds. Then, all was still and she bent down to whisper in his ear and kiss his brow before stealing off into the cold night."

"I rushed over to him, to Jon. He looked peaceful there, laying in the blood-soaked snow. His clothes were still ripped where... where men had stabbed him, but when I examined the entry wounds, the flesh had healed almost perfectly. Neat scars danced across his abdomen but nothing festered and nothing was open. I was reeling, wondering what in the name of the old gods and the new that woman had done to him, when Jon gasped for breath and seized at my collar with his gloved hands.

He pulled me down to the ground and pinned me, searching with one of his hands for a blade. He was terrified, Lady Sansa. Terrified like I have never seen him before, and his chest heaved for breath. My head hit the ground and he held his elbow to my throat. It was then he recognized who I was and I noticed that he didn't look like the Jon Snow I had known, my former brother of the Night's Watch."

"I don't understand, Sam," Sansa said abruptly. "How was my brother different?"

"His eyes were a deep shade of violet... as if Old Valyria itself glowered at me through him."

Chapter 3: Queen’s Landing

DAENERYS

She awoke from a dream that seemed half reverie, half nightmare. Images of a sweltering fire seared her thoughts-- for once, the fire consumed her with a ravishing hunger and she screamed. She screamed as Mirri Maz Dur once had sworn she wouldn't as she stood staked to Drogo's funeral pyre. The tendrils of flame fought for dominance over Dany's limbs and she cried out, her tears burning as they fell down her cheeks.

Is this what it's supposed to feel like, the fire? Dany thought as she restlessly pounded her sheets, half-conscious of the dim world growing brighter around her. The fire was beaten back by a blue and white frost and the touch of a hand. Dany stopped writhing in the sheets and began to breathe normally once again. The frigid touch soothed the pain and numbed the clamor of the fires.

She rose from her bed with a start and realized where she was-- in King's Landing, days after her successful siege. Since her arrival, these dreams had plagued her. She had believed they were tied to the King's bedchamber so on her second night in the grand palace, she had taken up residence in a more comfortable room facing Blackwater Bay. Though her sight of the waters soothed her during her waking hours, her nights were fraught with the same disturbing images.

 If I look back, I am lost.

The words came back to her in her moment of doubt. She wiped away the sweat from her brow and traipsed over to the balcony, her sheer night gown trailing behind her along the marble floor. Continue forward, she murmured to herself and braced herself on the balcony's ridge, the sweet smell of salt helping her regain her composure and clarity. The scent of the sea assuaged her fears and something resolute and final resumed its place within her.

"I don't want to be his queen. I want to go home..." a young voice echoed in her head. She greeted it with reserve but let the memory play out. "So do I, sweet sister. I want both of us to go home but they took it from us. So tell me, how do we go home?"

Hearing Viserys's words in her mind gave Dany pause as she surveyed the dewy morning in King's Landing. Her brother, the Beggar King, would never be able to see how far his sweet sister had come, how she had reclaimed the birthright that he thought was his to take. She was the true dragon, the true conqueror.

Now it was time to make this place her own.

Dany got dressed in a fine green silk dress. Since coming to King's Landing, she preferred getting dressed without the help of her handmaidens. Too many attempts on her life had occurred already, and she couldn't bear to think on having reached the pinnacle of her goal only to be slain in close quarters by someone she thought she could trust. It was cautionary, she told herself. Yet, the back of her mind tugged at her, saying the thought was nothing but madness.

She glanced at herself in the mirror, the silvery sheen of her hair hitting the morning light at the right angle to amplify its shine. Dany adjusted the shoulder straps on her dress and straightened her posture, her lips slightly pursed. The siege of King's Landing and the preparation before had taken its toll on her physique. She gazed at her limbs, which were much more wiry than she remembered. Her hands were callused from riding Drogon roughshod off and on for a fortnight. Her cheeks were rosy but her cheekbones were more pronounced, as if the wind had carved them out of marble and cloud. The dress sat a little loosely at her hips and when she turned, she felt airy - almost less substantial.

 If this is the price I pay for victory in war, so be it.

Dany had been so lost in thought that she hadn't heard a knock at the door. "My grace," a timid voice piped from the hall.

"Enter," Dany commanded, turning away from the mirror to greet her visitor.

"Yes, my Grace." The young boy appeared from the shadows clutching a piece of parchment, sealed with a sigil she didn't recognize. It was at moments like these she wished Jorah was still in her employ, providing her with tender counsel. She took the scroll from the young boy, who backed away and bowed, keeping his eyes low as he gave her some distance. She thought the custom strange.

"Do you fear me, boy?" Dany wondered aloud.

Her reply was a small shake of the boy's straw colored hair, an almost indiscernible nod.

She walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. The boy's light green eyes finally wandered up to meet the amethyst of her own. "There is nothing to fear," she intoned to the child.

He stopped shaking but did not look convinced. "Your G-grace," he stammered politely, "you must read the message as soon as you're able."

"Thank you," Dany said and opened the sealed parchment, unrolling it to its full length.

The Wall has been overrun, it read. The scrawl across the page was stylish but the letters were crooked at such a slant as if the inscriptions yearned to escape the page and enter her ears. The scribe must have written the message hurriedly.

He is alive, Your Grace, Daenerys Stormborn. Your kin lives and I am keeping him safe. At your haste, come to Winterfell in the North. This conflict has far from ended and we require whatever help the Capitol can muster.

Servant of the Realm and Brother of the Night's Watch,

Samwell Tarly