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The place where she waits has no wind.
No godswood. No snow. No sound of hooves or steel or laughter. Not ever her name, anymore. Only a stillness that had long ago stopped feeling like peace.
The girl does not remember arriving. Perhaps she had always been here, but that can’t be right, can it? She died, she must have, and then she was here.
So when the air shifts, she notices.
It’s the smallest thing. A ripple, like breath across a pond. She turns, frowning, because nothing changes here. Nothing comes.
He’s simply there.
A boy - no, not a boy. A man grown, tall and dark of hair and look. A Brother of the Night’s Watch, by his garb. He stands as if dropped from a great height, unsteady on his feet, his breath coming sharp and fast.
Alive.
She stares.
He looks like -
Her heart, which has not beaten in years, seems to lurch.
The fever, the blood, and her brother's face above her, breaking in a way she had never seen before.
Promise me, Ned.
“Ned?” Lyanna manages (Lyanna, yes, that was her name, wasn’t it?), though it could not be. Too young. Wrong.
The man’s grey eyes found her. Familiar eyes. Stark eyes.
He blinks, confusion knitting his brow. “Arya?”
Arya? Her grandmother of the mountain clans? She had died before Lyanna was even born.
Lyanna shakes her head apologetically. She looks into his face again - not Ned. Not Brandon. Not Benjen or their father, either.
Someone else.
She steps towards him before she realises she’s moving. He does not pull away, only watches her warily.
Up close, she sees the details. The shape of his mouth - hers. The line of his jaw - his father’s. A scar from forehead to his cheek, dark on his skin.
Her hand lifts to his face.
Warm.
He’s warm. Warm as he had been at her breast in the brief moment she had been strong enough to hold him. No name, no future. A promise to be kept.
Lyanna sucks in a breath that should not be possible.
“My baby,” she whispers, love and grief heavy in her chest. “Oh, my poor boy…”
His confusion deepens, but he still does not step back. “I don’t—who—”
She cups his face in both hands, afraid he’ll vanish from her hold again.
Small and red and squalling, is how she saw him last. And now -
“What are you doing here?” Lyanna says. “It’s not your time.”
Something flickers in his eyes then. Pain. Darkness.
“I was -” He falters. “There was… cold. And -”
Death, Lyanna knows.
Death has brushed him. Claimed him, perhaps, for the briefest moment.
Not yet, she wants to say to this place. Not mine to keep. Not yours to take.
She presses her forehead to his, wanting to weep.
“Go back,” she tells him. “You hear me? You go back.”
“I don’t know how,” he said, and for the first time there is fear in his voice. A boy‘s fear.
Her boy’s. Her baby boy, who has grown older and taller than she ever would be.
“You do,” she insists softly. “You must.”
For an instant, she thinks she hears a heartbeat in her ears - faint, stubborn.
“Live,” Lyanna breathes. “That was the promise.”
The world - or whatever this place is - seems to pull at him then, like a tide reversing. His formwavers, edges blurring.
“Who—?” he tries, reaching for her, desperate now.
Lyanna smiles, and it hurts in a way she had forgotten things could.
“You know who I am.”
And then he’s gone.