m_findlow

Title: Safe passage
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Jon, Ygritte
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 34 - Signs and portents at fandomweekly
Summary: Jon seeks out the old gods to protect him
Disclaimer: I don't own them.

He slipped out from under the thick pile of furs, leaving Ygritte still sleeping. Somewhere nearby he could hear Tormund's booming voice and the laughter of those around him. Their gaiety was a precursor to what lay ahead of them tomorrow, the Wall looming large overhead near their camp. They must've been mad to think they could scale the thousand foot wall of ice. No sane man would dare attempt it. Dangerous enough in the best conditions, but if the sun came out, the Wall would weep, loosening their grip and sending sheets of ice tumbling from its face, taking them with it.

The snow crunched beneath his feet, but his view was unimpeded by the brightness of the full moon that cast its light across the snowy ground, making it glow. He wove his way through the tangle of trees until he came upon what he'd been searching for.

The weirwood stood tall, its pale trunk and branches thick and gnarled. It looked old, like it had stood here since the First Men. It was more ominous than any weirwood he remembered from Winterfell. They were more numerous north of the Wall, and more forbidding. The old gods lived here, their presence heavy in the air.

A sworn brother had once spoken of his home on Braavos where there were a thousand gods, and one with a thousand faces. 'All gods are one god,' he'd said.

He knelt before the great tree, its haunted face staring down on him.

He wasn't sure what he was praying for. Praying to survive tomorrow, praying to survive the Wildlings, praying he could find his way back to Castle Black, praying he could find a way to keep Ygritte by his side. Everything he wanted contradicted with the next. Aiding the Wildlings was a betrayal of his sworn brothers, yet keeping his oaths was a betrayal of the woman he'd fallen in love with.

'Thought you'd run,' came the voice from behind him. There stood Ygritte, clad in her furs, her own boots having made no sound at all as she'd followed him the entire way. He should've known she wasn't asleep.

'Only cowards run,' he replied.

'Cowards and Crows,' she said.

'I'm no Crow,' he lied.

Ygritte just shrugged. 'Why are you here?'

Because Quorin Halfhand told me I had to do whatever it takes, he felt like saying, but knowing that wasn't what she meant.

He pulled himself up off his knees to stand next to her, studying the tree.

'It's said that under a full moon the gods cast their light upon your soul and are able to judge your worth. Only by seeing you for all you are can they grant you good fortune if they deem you worthy.'

'You took it as a sign that your gods came to judge you?' she said, sounding every bit as skeptical as he expected her to.

'Perhaps.' He felt silly saying it out loud, but the gods had kept him alive this far.

She looked past him at the long face etched into the aged white wood by coppery sap, its features glinting red like fire in the moonlight. He could see her face was pinched, nose scrunched up in that little way that Jon liked when something displeased her. He wanted to kiss that nose, but it felt as if the gods were watching him. He'd already broken one set of vows made beneath their boughs. He dare not anger them by flaunting his faithless promises; the ones he'd tried to keep by breaking others. Bad enough that once he was done here he'd be returning to lie with her, breaking them all over again.

'Do the free folk have gods?' he asked.

She stiffened. 'Free folk don't need gods.'

'The First Men worshipped the old gods. You claim you're the children of the First Men.'

'The First Men weren't exiled beyond the Wall. What gods protect us?'

She stared at him hard, daring him to respond.

'We protect ourselves,' she answered for him.

He sighed. Not everything about Wildling ways made sense to him. In fact, very little of their ways made sense to him, but perhaps they'd been right to forsake the old gods. His father had devoted his life to them, and what had they done to protect him against the corruption of King's Landing? Instead, seven gods had found him guilty and taken his head. Yet despite the bitterness of life beyond the Wall, the Wildlings had survived. Perhaps the gods looked down upon them after all.

He ran his fingers down the hardened sap, tracing the edges of the face. He and Robb had played a game when they were boys, daring each other to poke the faces of the godswood in the eyes, but neither of them ever brave enough to go through with it. They'd tricked Bran into doing it once and he'd been terrified of the gods avenging him for weeks.

Ygritte found Jon's ways just as baffling has he did hers. They came from completely separate worlds, yet here they stood together, unwillingly to give an inch, yet unwilling to part from one another either. She wanted Jon to show her the world beyond the Wall, even if she thought most of it stupid and senseless. Castles, though, now that would be something to see.

'What makes you think these gods care about you?' Ygritte asked. 'Why waste your time praying to them?'

'Can't hurt, can it?' he replied. He took her hand and pressed her fingers against the stark white wood. She flinched at the touch.

'Scared of a tree?'

'I'm not scared of anything. You want me to pray to some God so that we don't fall off the Wall?'

Jon shrugged back. 'Well, at least if we die tomorrow, you'll die happy knowing you were right.'

She shoved him with both hands, toppling him backwards into the snow, before walking back to the camp.

'You know nothing, Jon Snow.'