It's terrible, the waiting.

Arya mentions it to Sansa one night, when they are both standing staring out over the side of the castle wall, both of them squinting through all the snow to find what might be hiding behind it.  Sansa just laughed.

"Yes," She said, and there was something alien in her movements, in the toss of her head and the way that her fingers were curled around the windowsill.  Sansa had taken to wearing men's clothing around the castle when she wasn't holding meetings.  The better to fight in, she had said.  Arya thinks that is an apology for that night with the poison.  "Waiting always is the worst part," It's her quoting voice.  Sometimes she pulls out the lessons she had learned up at King's Landing, and her voice is always the same, a warped version of the little girl who used to know every word to every last lovely song.  This one, Arya knew, was one that she learned from Cersei.  Arya hopes that the two get to meet, if only for Sansa to tell her how much she had learned from her, right before Arya gets to cross another name off her list.  "Especially for the women."

Not, of course, that they hadn't been busy.  There was the last remaining harvest to pile up in their stores and take stock of, fruit to preserve, meat to smoke.  Horses to examine and decide whether to butcher or bring within the gates (the crypts had been turned into a stable, and Sansa looks like she wants to cry every time she walks by, but Arya knows better.  The dead are dead, and need nothing of the living.), firewood to bring in from the woods outside the walls, floors to scrub and fires to build and weapons to forge, battle lines to draw up, letters to write, always letters, all of them to lords and ladies and measters of the south, warning them of what's to come.

Arya's not confident that any of them are listening.

"Arya!" The paper that she was writing on gets ripped out from underneath her hands, and the quill makes a black streak through her words.  Sansa glares down at her.  "You can't say that!"

"I wasn't going to send it," She shoots back, crossing her arms and glaring right back.   Arya had been sitting here for so long that her hand was starting to cramp, and every time she picked up the pace to catch up to the pile of letters that Sansa had been sending, Sansa snaps at her to slow down because no one will be able to read her writing.  Across the table, the measter just glares, and she feels an undeniable pang when she remembers that it isn't Measter Lewin.  "I was just having a bit of fun."

"Just wasting parchment, you mean?"  It feels like before, when the two of them were always at each other's throats, snapping at the slightest provocation.  Arya is amazed that they can still be able to squabble like they do, but with the coming war, their tempers are stretched thinner than ever.  Only Bran seems to be calm, but his absence of emotion tends to be another source of worry rather than soothing.  She is ready to be on her feet, thinks of slamming a dagger between Sansa's fingers just to scare her, but then Sansa's face softens.  "Just do the seals," She says, her hands fluttering over at the pile of loose parchment that had been gathering on one of the tables, and Arya knows it as close to a compromise as they will be able to get.  "Gods knows that you're terrible at diplomacy, anyways."

That's why we have you, Arya thinks, but doesn't say it.  Truly, the North would have been lost without Sansa, no matter what the men like to say about Jon.  She was the one that won them Winterfell, she was the one that held the men together when they were most likely to abandon them, and now she was the one shoring the defenses for the only fight that mattered.

"I don't know why we're bothering," is what she actually says, dripping a bit of wax onto the first letter and biting back a snarl when she sees that it is addressed to Cersei.  Her last warning, apparently.  "They're not going to listen.  It sounds like a fairy tale.  Though maybe," When they were little, long ago, Arya used to babble constantly, every thought that came into her head.  She would talk through dinner, and through needlework, and when they were supposed to be falling asleep, and Sansa would be forced to listen.  Sometimes, she was even interested in what her little sister had to say.  She isn't interested now.  "They'll make it far enough south and finds it's too warm for them and just melt, like a snow man."

Arya had never made a snowman before.  Sansa had, and Arya was always lying in wait to knock it down.  She had always found the process of making something tediously boring, and the seconds of destruction it took to knock them over much more fun.  It seems like a rather large thing to miss, now that she thinks about it.

"It doesn't matter," Sansa said, and rubs at a mark at her neck, another phantom wound that Joffrey or Cersei or Ramsay or her aunt had left behind.  It makes Arya want to punch something.  "They'll learn soon enough."

On one of the last days before the war, Arya goes down to see father.

She hasn't been there before.  Hadn't ever liked going down there as a child, either- it was too dark, and too cold, and even then Arya didn't see the point of it, going down and visiting bones.  She had never bought into the things that father said about honoring their past and their souls being able to tell whenever their graves were being visited, so when she did go down, it was normally to hide from Sansa or to stare at the faces of one of her great-great-great grandfathers, one of the ones that made the stories. 

Arya's not sure that she really believes, the thing about their ghosts being able to listen if you speak to the stones, but she thinks that she owes it to father to try, just in case.

She had lit a candle, and in the darkness it throws shadows all over the walls, making her think that someone is behind her every time the wind whips into the doorway.  Arya stares at the place where her father's likeness should be and wonders if she would feel differently if the statue was there.  Probably not.   Sansa can keep what comforts she wants, but Arya knows the truth- this is no holy place.  She had learned the lesson long ago that bodies are only bodies and bones are only bones, with no souls rattling around in their skulls. 

"I thought I might find you down here."  The voice startles her, but Arya doesn't jump.  Her hand reaches for Needle at her side, but other than that she is pulled taut, every muscle in her body poised like a trap ready to spring.  "Would you mind coming to me?  My chair, you know."

Bran.

He had sought her out, and found her, and didn't bother to wonder if she might like to be alone to pay her respects, though maybe he knew that she didn't really believe in the things their father taught them about the dead and what comes after.  Bran knows everything, now- everything that had ever happened or will happen, everything that Sansa had gone through, all the things that Arya had done.  She wonders, with a sickening swoop that sends her cheeks flaming, if he knows about those nights at the top of the wall with Gendry, if he had been spying on her the night they shared the tent.  Because he does spy on her.  He had made that clear from the very first day.

"You didn't have to come down here."  Her voice is too loud, but she makes no effort to lower it.  Bran doesn't even look at her, just keeps staring back into the crypts.  "Would you like to visit?"  She already knew that he wouldn't.  She remembered Bran as being someone who was a little soft, a little weak, a little too attached.  A little boy who had not yet grown into a man.  This Bran is something different.  He seems to care about them still, out of some sense of loyalty, but he also doesn't really seem to know any deeper feelings about anything, not fear or anger or happiness.  "I can carry you."

"No."  His voice was clipped, and he makes an effort to soften it.  "No, thank you.  I was just looking at Lyanna."

Bran had become obsessed with Lyanna, ever since he and Sam Tarly had found the truth about who Jon was.  Who his father was. 

"Well."  She really was going to try and do this "paying her respects" thing right, if only so she could think that the dead was giving her some sort of permission to go off and be some sort of soldier.  Like Nymeria, but in the snow.  And against dead people.  And with dragons, so maybe not like Nymeria at all.  "If you don't want anything, else,"  She makes a vague gesture back towards where she had came from.

"No, I did.  I wanted to tell you," His brow furrows, like he either can't quite remember or can't figure out how to shape the words.  Arya has noticed that he has trouble with that sometimes, figuring out how to speak like she and Sansa do.  She appreciates the effort, but whenever he tries it becomes more obvious how much of the old Bran is missing.  Though maybe everyone thinks that about her, too.  "I wanted to tell you that no one blames you for the things you had done.  But you need to stop now."

The words hit her like a punch to the stomach.  She had known, from a muttered conversation with Sansa, that he knew everything she went through.  That he had watched it, and she doesn't understand why.  It had never occurred to Arya that he had been looking through her past, too.

"Those men were bad men.  And those people that died for you, they died because they were good people.  Stupid people, sometimes, lost people, but good." His words send her spiraling back to the Hound, left alone in the cold without a cloak, watching her disappear into the snow, and she feels a fresh wave of remorse that she hadn't made him get on the horse, too.  Clearly, they had had enough time for a slower ride.  "But you need to stop, now."

"I'm not going to stop fighting."  It felt like she had been slapped, she was that knocked off balance.  Out of everyone that she thought might demand her to give up her sword, she never thought it would be her brother.  "If that's what you're asking, you're more stupid than you look."

He tilts his head, like she didn't make sense to him.  Maybe it was the anger that confused him.  He certainly hadn't seen anything wrong with the things he said to Sansa.

"Not the fighting.  We need fighters now more than ever.  But the killing," He adds, and Arya closes her eyes, feels herself sucked back into her dreams again.  "That needs to stop.  Let go of your names, Arya.  Let go of your names and maybe you'll find peace."

Arya doesn't answer, just barks out a laugh and then walks around him, leaving Bran to wheel his way out of the crypts on his own.

They get a raven.

There's a note, tied to it's leg, and it's a miracle that it made it through the snow. It means Jon is close to them. 

It means the white walkers are close to them.

They are coming, is what it says, in Davos's scratchy handwriting.  Sansa's hands shake as she reads the message to them, and beside her, Tyrion makes a motion like he wants to grab her hand but thinks better of it at the last second.  Seven save us, they are coming.

"Gods," someone says, and across from her, Tyrion is swearing, an impressive string of curse words that would have made Catelyn wash his mouth out with soap.  Words that he normally wouldn't say in front of a pair of ladies, no matter how drunk he might have been.  "What do we do now?"

"Now?"  Sansa throws the letter back onto the table and stands up, skirts swirling.  She's in formal dress today, with that necklace of Aunt Lysa's that she always wears.  Sansa had confessed that she likes it because she thinks that it could be used as a weapon, if it came to that.  Arya had laughed and told her that she could get her much better weapons than that.  "We open the gates."

There's a startled laugh from someone behind them.  One of the soldiers, undoubtedly, someone who still has it in their head that women can't rule.  Arya finds it amazing how many times men can be proven wrong and still stick to their assumptions.

"We open the gates," She repeats herself, and it's clear from her tone that she had heard the laugh and didn't take kindly to it.  "And we send out riders.  Volunteers only, who know the risks, who are willing to search out those who seek shelter.  To the villages, and the farmers, and anyone else they may come across, friend or foe.  Find anyone that is out there, anyone who will be willing to come, and tell them to bring all the food that they can carry."

"My lady," One of the knights of the vale stepped forward.  "Do we have room for that?  For all the?"

He doesn't finish his sentence, but Arya can guess the rest.  All the farmers.  All the peasants and the poor. 

Sansa glares at him, and even though her hands are still shaking at her sides, she looks so very brave.  "We'll make room."

This time, Tyrion doesn't hesitate before grabbing her hand, and Sansa smiles down at him, dazzlingly, blindingly, brilliantly.  And why not?  It's the end of the world, after all.