You are not brave. No, not particularly. When you were younger, your mother would whisper in your ear that you were as brave as a fearsome knight on a horse. But you have never been on a horse and you are not a knight and you are not fearsome at all.

So when the girl- the lady- presses her lips to yours, you do the craven thing and push her off your body while her skin burns as hot as an open flame and she moves like sin. You push her off, even though you're breathing is as ragged as your threadbare tunic and your cock is hard, yearning for her touch. You force your lips to say the words, "No."

She looks mad. She always looks mad, with messy chopped up hair in tangles, dirt streaked across her face and insanity in her grey eyes, lips a thin line, wearing breeches a size too big for her.

When she tries to return her chapped lips to your mouth, you stand up and walk away. She calls your name in a soft breathy voice but you refuse to let her seduce you. You think you are being very brave indeed when you don't turn back to look at her- for what? Your sacrifice?

You can't stop thinking about the taste of her tongue.

;

You wanted to fuck her into the dirt in frenzied desperation and run your tongue over her breasts, down her jutting hipbones. You wanted to find the wetness between her legs and suck and taste what she was like. You wanted her long fingers to grip your cock and guide your length into her.

She would moan, maybe, and you would come to the little noises she made with you moving inside.

;

She doesn't look you in the eye for weeks after that and you pretend that you don't care. When other men glance her way, your calloused hands turn to fists. When she meets their eye back, your teeth threaten to shatter as you clench your jaws together.

You catch her wrist, her skinny pale wrist that you can easily break if you only tightened your grip a bit more- or so you think, but you know her bones are a lot stronger than you think they are. You tell her, "Stop that. You're only inviting trouble by fluttering your lashes and acting weak before these men."

And she laughs that wonderful sound, like flowers springing from her lungs and blossoming out of her slender little throat, and she pulls her hand away to tell you, "If you touch me again, I'll carve your heart out and the last thing you see before you die is the smile on my face and my teeth biting into the red muscle of your flesh."

You watch her abandon you once more, and it hurts more than her teeth did biting at your collarbone. You would laugh. Yeah, it would be heroic to laugh, wouldn't it? To let the sound echo through the woods so she can hear exactly how much you don't care. So maybe you should do it. But of course, you can't laugh because you know she's telling the truth.

Anyway, you are not brave. You are what you accused her: weak.

;

Her trembling body was a temple that you hesitated at the threshold of and she invited you inside in a warm hazy glow but you shut the doors and you ran as fast as your legs would carry you and laid your head on a weirwood tree and cried.

You were not being brave when you fled her precipice.

;

Her brother is not Tully but he looks more like her than any of the other wolves. Her brother is both a brave man and a bastard, much like you. A brave bastard. If you had known such a thing existed, you wouldn't have shied away from courage like you do now.

You are bound to him, by a simple oath- not the oath of the Night's Watch, not yet, just one of loyalty. The men who arrive with you, rapists and thieves, unwanted sons and lesser knights, are still in training and it's too early for any of them to take the vow. So you do not take it either.

At first, he doesn't talk to you. His eyes glance right over you as if you were invisible, just like hers did. You think if they don't look at you soon you will vanish into thin air. But they do, eventually. Well, she still doesn't. He does.

In the smithy, the only place that's not freezing on the whole of the Wall, he finds you banging at a scrap piece of armor and sweat pouring down your body and he says, "Are you angry with the metal or yourself?"

You bow down to him and force yourself to chuckle, as if you are amused, as if you don't already know the answer. Haha. The Lord Commander japes. The bastard boy is delighted. A game. "What brings you here?" you ask because you don't know what else to do and you don't know what to say.

"What do you think of Arya?" he asks and leans against the stone walls, calm, collected.

You force yourself to look away from his dark eyes and mumble, "She's very nice."

"No, she's not," Snow disagrees immediately, studying you like he already knows your secrets and everything you've done with her on the Kingsroad. Like he can see you are not brave. "Arya is many things, but she is not nice." The man does not appear to hold any respect for that word.

"She's a good liar," you blurt out instead. A stupid thing to say. No one wants to hear that their sister is a liar. You should have said she is quick or smart; he would appreciate that surely. But you told him that his sister's greatest quality is being something she is not. You want to lay yourself down on the forge and smash yourself into pieces. When you look up, Snow has a smile on his lips.

"I want you to be her guard," he tells you. He must see the surprise on your face because he continues, "All the other men capable of fighting have either gone to other castles on the Wall or they are forming into scouting parties. A smith is useless on such an expedition and we barely have enough metal for you to do anything here. I leave for Castle Eastwatch with half of this lot sometime this week and cannot bring her with me. The men here… I would not ask any of them to look after her, save Yoren- and he has better things to do. Monsters are not the only danger to a lady at the Wall. You are the only man I trust for the job. The only man she trusts."

"Did you ask her?" you cannot stop your mouth from asking the question and you're not sure if you regret it once you do.

He tilts his head to the side and says, "Do I need to?"

You shake your head quickly. "I'll do it."

His smile is gone by the time he leaves. You return to your hammer.

;

You are expected to be outside her chambers every night. The Lord Commander gives you extra furs and a sword with a wicked sharp blade that gleams by the dim flickering of the lanterns. He leans close to you and whispers, "Do not hesitate to kill these men for my sister. You understand?"

"Of course, m'lord," you promise him. You would kill them even if he did not tell you to.

That first night you stand out in the blistering cold, shifting feet and breathing into your hands, she opens the door and stares at you impassively. You stare back at her, trying to silently apologize. You're already shit with words and it doesn't look like your expressions do any better a job, because eventually she slams the door in your face.

But because she has always been braver than you, she opens it again and offers you a mug of spicy hot ale. "Did Jon ask you to be here?" she asks, watching you sip.

The liquid burns its way down your pipe and into your belly, haven midst the snow and wind, and you lap at it eagerly under her watchful gaze. "Yes," you manage to say between mouthfuls.

She sighs. "I told him you were a good man and a good fighter. I never thought he'd appoint you my babysitter."

"You need protection here."

A grin lights up her face, all sharp teeth and jagged edges, and it sets the hair on the back of your neck prickling, your blood on fire. "You think I can't protect myself?"

"I'm sure you can protect yourself," you snap at a loss for patience because this stubborn girl does not understand how much you care for her, "but you can't protect yourself from five armed men coming to take your maidenhood."

She looks mad again. Mad, but beautiful.

Not beautiful like you've always been taught in King's Landing- not like the golden queen your mother pointed out with curves spilling through her gown and rouge on her cheeks, nor beautiful like the Maid's statue in the Sept with her demure long curls and wide eyes. Beautiful like you never want admit, heartache and wilderness all wrapped around a barbed wire that you don't mind pricking your skin on because you like the taste of rust and blood when you put your thumb in your mouth. You want her to slap you, to dive her fist into your gut, to kick your shins- anything just for her to reach out and touch you.

But she only closes the door in your face once more, leaving you with half a flagon of cold ale and desire coursing through your veins.

If you had your wits about you or even the smallest modicum of honor, you'd go straight to her brother's chambers and beg to be relieved of duty.

But you're a coward and you know it.

;

You dream about her sometimes, and it's always you kneeling between her legs, your tongue flat against her cunt inhaling her peculiar scent of bark and steel, your fingers climbing up her ribs like a ladder. You've never dreamed of standing guard outside her door while she is inside, practicing her swordplay, sleeping, eating, touching herself with your name on her lips.

;

The Lord Commander gathers his men and sets off for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Before he leaves, he draws you close and tells you, "If anything happens to Arya when I'm gone, I'll have you buried inside the Wall naked."

You would swallow but your mouth has forgotten how to spit and your throat has closed up. You manage an affirmative squeak and Snow has the grace not to look affronted when he rides away.

;

With him gone, his sister grows wings. She practices with the men in the dining hall, knocking one man after another to his back on the hard ground. A skinny rail of a peasant, tripping over his own feet as he backs away from her blows. A big man come to escape his debt with well-made boots who charges at her and falls flat on his face when she smoothly side-steps him. Men of all shapes and colors and sizes, all hitting the ground unceremoniously while she goes on and on and on.

Starks. More brawn than intelligence.

You watch her muscles move like water, twist like falling snow, her grunts mixing with the men she fights, all sinew and anger. You have no idea how she's gotten so good in such short time. She must have had practice back in King's Landing or Winterfell. You wish you had enough daring to fight her yourself, but she would have you down on the ground before you could even blink.

She does not falter until she fights a disgraced knight. His wooden sword hits her shoulder with enough force so she goes down, spitting "Yield" like a threat. You want to step in and punch the ex-knight but for once, you use your good sense and bite your own tongue instead.

You wonder if the men are going easy on her knowing she's Snow's little sister. But later, the men grumble and lick their wounds. They're scared of her. You hear a rumor that she can speak to direwolves and they give her strength. Someone even says the words fucking warg and you're torn between knocking his teeth out and wanting to laugh out loud. You can feel pride stirring in your belly at your little she-wolf's ferocity. Then you remember she is not yours and grumble in unison with the other men.

Her door is closed when you go up for guard duty.

;

When your eyes open the next morning and you see her door is wide open, a current of panic runs through you until you realize she is in the courtyard with the other men, laughing and shouting encouragement to them as they fight. The air is calm for once, a surprise for the winter season this far north, and it seems the Night's Watch is taking full advantage of the lull in the constant blizzard by practicing outside.

She catches your eye when you come down for breakfast and winks at you.

You almost drop your watery soup.

;

Later, with the men all gone inside, you watch quietly from a window as she holds out her tongue to catch snowflakes. You remember what that tongue felt like in your mouth, how it tasted. Your cock begins to stiffen in your breeches and you curse at yourself, turning away from the window.

;

Night falls quickly. You know there are only a few hours of daylight these days. You head up to the abandoned wing where only one room is occupied- hers. You notice something on the ground. A glass bottle. It stinks like strong liquor, nothing like the wine you sometimes had in King's Landing. Its flavor is bitter and she had to have stolen it from the kitchens. But you know it is the closest thing to a truce she can offer and it keeps you warm each time you take swig.

You don't know how much time has passed when the door opens and her face peers at you through a slat. "Did you drink?" she asks.

You upend the bottle to show her there's nothing inside.

"Me, too," she giggles, and you frown. You've never seen her giggle before. But then again, you've never seen her drunk before. She grabs your hand and pulls you inside her chambers and your limbs are too loose to resist, your mind too dizzy.

Her lips crash into yours and she pulls at the hem of your tunic, swaying on the spot- not that you notice anything over her heady touch. "Oh, Arya," you murmur with your nose buried in her hair, letting yourself fall back onto the bed. Like that first night, she climbs over your body and grinds down so you can see the shadows on her face when she moves her hips.

She is warm and wet and you don't argue when she slides herself onto you, only groan and buck up to meet each of her thrusts. She fucks you into oblivion and you know it's only the alcohol that has made you bold enough to touch her again.

You lose yourself under the silken folds of her body. She breathes your name when she comes and collapses on your chest in a sticky mess.

"Why did you give me the bottle?" you ask, catching your breath.

"Because you never would be in here if I hadn't. Because it would make us both do the things we would not do without being enamored by its influence."

Perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps the Starks aren't all brawn. "I'm brave enough to touch you now," you say.

And she smiles suddenly and answers, "And here I thought I was being brave by keeping my distance. That touching you was finally giving in."

Either way, you're never letting her go again.