The crackling sound of fire seemed almost deafening in the silence that hung between them.

"What are you doing up, little sister?" Jon uttered, hoping she could not hear the rock in his throat.

She simply stared, her grey eyes unchanging in their clarity.

Arya began to approach, and he had to withhold his urge to gulp. After years spent with Ghost at his side, and nights spent through the eyes of a wolf, he knew what he was looking at.

She was a wolf, and she was stalking her prey.

As she stepped closer into the light cast by the fire, he noticed how the men's tunic she wore turned transparent. The tunic seemed to fit her, loose against her lean frame and granting her ease of movement and silence as she walked.

She was only a few steps away from him when she finally spoke, "You're not my brother."

"Arya." He croaked.

"Nor my half-brother." She was within arms length, now. He could have reached out and touched her. He could have stopped her from moving closer.

He did neither.

"I am your cousin." He wanted the words to be a wall, but they came out faltered, weak, and broken.

Arya stood silent before him, light outlining her form through the dress. When she moved, his body tensed, readying itself against her touch. But surprisingly, she knelt down and sat at his feet, much as she used when she was a girl and he would tell her stories about her favorite warriors. She leaned against his knees and he felt the instinct to reach out and muss her hair. He clenched his hand instead.

He knew the moment he touched her, here in this place, he would be crossing a boundary he would not return from.

Jon felt more than heard her single laugh, and watched as her hand reach up to his, which was lying clenched on the arm of the chair. She took it and held it in her grasp. It was times like this, where without words Arya was able to read his emotions and thoughts. Then again, he could do the same thing.

She had done this before. In their childhood, she would play with his hand when he read her stories. There were times when it had been massively inconvenient, but he had never once removed his hand from hers and had simply learned how to turn a page with a single hand. She had done it again, the first night she had returned to Winterfell, with Walder Frey's head in a bag by her side. They had stayed in the great hall late into the night. They had talked, but mostly there had been silence. They had sat side by side, Arya turning his hand in hers, over and over again.

"Cousins marrying is not uncommon in Westeros."

"Yes, and that worked out well for Tywin and his children."

Arya stopped her ministrations and lifted her head to look up at him, her eyes peering from below her lashes, "Our grandparents were cousins." She countered, not letting go of his hand still.

"And how many children died because of a Targaryen and a Stark?" His words came out with a sad laugh - laughing at the misfortune his parents had brought to Westeros as the price of his birth.

Jon could tell by the stiffening of her form against his leg, before he even saw her face fall into a frown and glare, that his words had angered her.

Abruptly, with a speed that reminded him that she had had a life across the Narrow Sea, Jon found himself pulled down by his arm. His knees hit the wooden floor with a thump and before he had time to gasp from the sudden pain, Arya grasped his face in her hands.

She was a whisper away, kneeling in front of him, his face pulled down to her own, and her knees positioned between his own. He looked into those grey eyes he knew so well.

"You are not Rhaegar and I am not Lyanna," she said, practically growling at him, "You are not stealing me away and I am not running away!"

"Arya-" He began, but his words were stopped.

"No, Jon!" Her words were little more than a breath, but they rang with strength and frustration. "You can deny this all you want. You can shut me out with silence or with words, but it won't last. I will return, either as Arya to you or as Nymeria to Ghost."

She still held his face, but her hands moved up, thumbs on his cheeks. Her other fingers reached up to his hair. "Jon," She murmured, so softly that it sent a shiver down his spine, "I spent years trying to forget myself, my past, and the things I wanted most. I am done with not being myself."

One moment Jon was looking into her eyes and the next her lips were on his. He didn't know who moved first, and honestly, it didn't matter.