{{user}} had silver in her hair. Just a bit of it, near the temples, finer than silk and blending in the pale gold of the rest—but it was there. Robb had noticed it the first time they were old enough to braid each other’s hair, too young to know why his mother’s hand tightened every time the 𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚛𝚢𝚎𝚗 girl laughed in the snow.

He’d grown up beside her. Watched her run barefoot over the roots of the godswood, fingers brushing frost from the heart tree like she was asking it for permission to stay. She rode with Arya, sewed with Sansa, and never spoke of dragons unless someone else brought them up first.

She didn’t need to.

She was one. Or close enough.

There was weight in the air when she entered a room, the kind that made people lower their voices without knowing why. She wasn’t proud, wasn’t loud, not like the songs said her blood should make her. She was quiet. Watchful. Moved like someone always expecting the door to slam shut behind her.

Because it always nearly did.

Not with words—no one openly dared—but with looks. Cold shoulders. Jon got more of the silent ire. {{user}} got the polite silences sharper than knives, Catelyn’s tight-lipped nods at meals as if she were a guest overstaying her welcome. Even Father, for all his honour, had kept her name buried.

She should have been dead, Robb reminded himself. Everyone said that. Lord Eddard had never explained how she’d survived the Sack. The world knee Elia and her children butchered or torn. But somehow, this babe of the Mad King had slipped north under a cloak of snow and silence.

Now they were grown, and Robb couldn’t stop thinking of her.

Not as a sister. Not even as a friend.

It was wrong—he knew that. The North would never stomach it. His mother would flay him with her stare. His father’s silence would cut deeper than Ice. But the thought of her leaving, of being given to some far-off lord, as if she wasn’t already half his soul…

It hollowed him out.

That morning, he found her in the yard brushing Grey Wind with bare fingers, her hair sleep-mussed. She smiled when she saw him. She always did. No formality. No pretence. Just him.

“You’re up early,” he said, stepping closer.

“You always are,” she replied, eyes on the wolf. “He still nips at the others.”

“Not you.”

“He knows I won’t run.”

He smiled. Of course she wouldn’t.

Silence settled, soft and familiar. With her, silence was never empty.

When he spoke again, it was quiet. “What will you do when Father finds you a match ?”

She didn’t answer at once. Her hand paused on the wolf’s neck.

“I suppose I’ll marry,” she said eventually. “If that’s what’s asked of me.”

“You don’t want to ?”

“I want a home. A true one.” She looked at him then, and her eyes were violet in the morning light.

He should’ve said something noble. Something guarded.

Instead, he murmured, “I wish I could keep you here.”

She blinked, and he regretted it instantly.

“I mean—”

“I know what you meant.” Her voice was soft.

He reached out, uncertain, his fingers brushing the air between them.

Grey Wind skipped his palm in a light nip.

Still, Robb took {{user}}’s hand, and held it in the cold morning.