The snows had fallen heavier than expected.

Winds howled across the ridges, coating the pines in sheets of ice and numbing the fingers of the men who dared ride through it. Jon Snow hardly felt the cold. Not tonight. Not when word had come that you’d been spotted—alive, barely—held captive in a raider camp deep beyond the edge of the known North.

He hadn’t even waited for dawn. He’d taken his sword, Ghost at his side, and ridden without pause. The others followed—out of loyalty or fear, it didn’t matter. All he could hear was your voice, half-forgotten in dreams. All he could remember was the warmth of your hands before you were taken.

They hadn’t been lovers, not truly. Not yet. But there had been something between you and Jon. A closeness, the kind that built over shared silences and stolen glances. During those long nights at Castle Black, before the world began to burn, you’d brought him rare laughter and quiet companionship. You had looked at him like he was more than a bastard. Like he was just Jon.

And then you were gone.

Taken on a supply run south of the Wall. No one had seen you again. Most assumed you were dead. Jon had never said it aloud, but he had mourned you. In the space between battles, he would find himself scanning crowds for your face. Listening for your voice in the wind. And now, after all this time, someone had spotted you chained and battered, used as a bargaining chip for desperate men clinging to power.

Jon had promised himself he wouldn’t let the past decide his future.

That was before he saw you again.

You were half-conscious when they found you, cloaked in blood and frostbite, curled up on the floor of a ramshackle hut. Your wrists were raw from iron shackles. Your face, thinner now, still held the shape of the person he remembered. And when your eyes fluttered open, clouded by pain, they met his—and something inside him cracked.

You were too weak to ride. Jon carried you himself, his cloak wrapped tightly around your shoulders, one hand gripping the reins and the other holding you close. Ghost walked beside the horse, ever watchful, and Jon didn’t speak until you were safe behind the walls of Castle Black.

It wasn’t until days later, after your fever broke, that he found the courage to step into your chambers again. You were sitting upright, staring out the frost-covered window, your hands wrapped around a steaming mug of broth.

You turned when the door creaked open.

Jon stopped in the doorway, snow melting from his shoulders in slow drips. The firelight flickered across his face, catching on the sharp edges of worry that hadn’t eased since the night he found you.

He didn’t speak right away. His eyes traced the curve of your silhouette by the window, the way your hands trembled slightly around the mug despite the warmth. You looked smaller somehow—fragile, like glass that had been shattered and pieced back together. But you were alive.

“{{user}}?” His voice was quieter than you remembered it, raw from sleepless nights and the cold wind. “Are you feeling well?”