The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

5.09

G—

Your words bring me both joy and fear, for I have wished greatly to see you again, but under such circumstances, it is a dark feeling. Your visions, as strange and hard as they might be to bear, have been a great gift in this instance, as the safety of my sister rests in your hands. I do not have the ability to save her, and I did not expect you to have seen this coming, so I plead earnestly with you to do all that you can to help her. Get her away from that place and to safety, even if it is not the Wall.

Now that I've written that, I plead with you to not come to the Wall. Go to Essos, get away from the North. I've brought the Free Folk from Hardhome, and now I fear my brothers far more than I fear those who lived north of the Wall. More than half hate me, and near half would like to see my dead. If you were to arrive here, I fear they'd hurt you and Sansa both if only to injure me. I plead with you: stay away until I can ease the tensions of my brothers. They should calm with time, but today is a dangerous day.

Stannis should be attacking Winterfell any day now, and that might be the imperative time to steal Sansa away. But, please be safe in your endeavors—even with a direwolf around, men are dangerous to women, especially Roose Bolton.

Your visions could allow you to muck with Ghost from afar—a talent I would not put past you, for you are a strange woman indeed.

I'd prefer you to a coat any day, but stay away for your own safety. My care for you runs deep in the cold tundra up north.

Yours,

J

Gabrielle's breath halts at that last word, at the premise, but the prerogative of her duty to Sansa runs deep and she quickly writes her return message to the man she'd see forever with. Her heart beats heavily in her chest and her skin crawls through her coat and dress in that feeling of foreshadowed tragedy: something's going to happen to Jon.

And how does one decide between saving Sansa and saving Jon, the people who matter most to her heart? The organ flinches in the realization of her dilemma, and heaves with a wish to just go back and keep Sansa safe at that wedding. She wishes she could go back to the day they left Winterfell and scream at all of them--herself included--to stay there, to never leave such a haven again.

But in the end, there is no time for a decision as she sends Valyrion off with her message and continues her ride north...to Winterfell. She does not know for certain if Jon is in danger, but Sansa certainly is, so she shall ride there first.

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Jon Snow watches with forlorn feeling as Sam departs Castle Black in a wagon that will lead south to Old Towne. And with the leaving of Sam, Jon only has Edd for support, feeling a deep and threatening shiver rack his body, helped in part by the glare Alliser Thorne imposes upon him, from afar but felt all the same.

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Stannis collapses to the ground at the foot of a massive oak tree, grimacing at the newfound injury upon his form as his leg bends and then straightens in acceptance of his fate. And though he cannot know the fate--given he might bleed out or he may be captured by the Boltons--Stannis is accepting of them all in retribution of his guilt. He deserves to feel every horror man can impose, and maybe then he'll feel the pain Shireen experienced.

But what he does not expect is to find a woman upon a horse riding towards him, dismounting slowly and staring at him as if he's a figure of her imagination. In his last moment, or he supposes, he remarks with what little humour he has, "Bolton has women fighting for him."