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The first time it happens, Rickon stupidly gives the office his mother's number.
He'd punched a Frey boy in the face at lunch and blackened his eye.
The disappointed looks he gets from father when he and mother swoop into his school's admin office make him scowl with shame, the seemingly endless scolding he gets from mother and Sansa at home makes something dark and bitter churn in his belly.
After Arya gets home from 'yoga' -all the Stark boys know she's actually at judo practice- Rickon expects more scolding and disappointed looks, he doesn't quite know what to do when she asks why he punched the Frey kid, she's the first one to ask.
The fierce hug he receives when he tells Arya the boy was taking the piss out of Bran's wheelchair startles him at first, but then he's hugging back and she's telling him how proud she is of him for defending their brother.
She calls him 'little wolf' and tells him of their shared wolf blood.
The nasty feeling in his stomach goes away.
The fifth time it happens, he gets a three day suspension.
Mother yells at him for an hour and Father looks at him with yet more disappointment in his face, Sansa tuts and sighs inbetween texting her boyfriend and even Bran looks ashamed for him.
Arya is the one who shouts back at their mother and sneaks him out after dinner to get ice creams at the little shop a few blocks away, she doesn't look at him with shame or disappointment, she does however stop at a pharmacy for a first aid kit to wrap his bloodied, swollen knuckles.
She tells him to be careful next time and gives him another of her hugs, it's the most at home he's felt in weeks.
When he leaves school the following Monday, she's waiting for him with two pairs of boxing gloves slung over her shoulder and a grin, she takes him to a dilapidated gym in OldTown and introduces him about to men twice her size with pride.
He takes to kick boxing like a duck to water.
The kick-boxing proves to be an excellent outlet for him, his grades improve and he doesn't get in as much trouble, it isn't until he's almost twelve things go to hell.
He's in his first year of secondary school when his Father is shot dead, in the following weeks, he gets more detentions for fighting -and more than one suspension- than he ever has before. All Mother does is cry, Sansa and Bran and Robb aren't much better.
Arya puts herself down as his emergency contact after a week, even though it takes her away from her A-level classes.
There are more angry words exchanged in the Stark Household in a month than there has been in over twenty years of occupancy. It's around this time that Arya takes him to the gun range and teaches him how to shoot, it becomes their special place.
Two weeks later, Arya's arrested for shoving Joffrey Baratheon out of a second story window when she's sees him punch Sansa in the face. As they drag her away, the entire family watches in shock, but she searches their family until she meets his eyes. She promises to always come back for him.
After, Rickon near flees for the gun range, his groupings are all over the place and he goes through more rounds than he can count, each bullet fired is accompanied by a prayer for Arya not to go away and leave him.
After all, the last person he loved who left, ended up with a bullet between his eyes.
It turns out that one of Arya's gym buddies is actually a hotshot young lawyer, and he manages to get her off with a suspended sentence and a fine.
He's the only one from their family to attend her trial, and he nearly sobs in relief when she yanks him into an impossibly tight hug; the weeks between her arrest and the trial are some of the loneliest he can remember.
Eighteen months later, Arya gets accepted into the Essosi Institute of Higher Learning to study dead languages, Rickon can almost feel his heart shatter. His wolf sister will be going to a completely different country, she'll be an entire ocean away from him, she's leaving, he'll be alone again.
That night he bursts into her room, screaming and cursing, damning her to hell and back, his words burning and meant to make her feel even a fraction of his pain.
Arya sits and takes it.
Once he's screamed himself hoarse, he collapses in the doorway and bawls so hard he can hardly breathe, strangled apologies and pleas escaping between hacking sobs, he's
because he's fourteen and much too old for such stupidity and a big part of him is still so angry because she's leaving, but a bigger part wants to stay there forever, just the two of them, the wolf siblings against the world.
Arya's always been a lighter sleeper than anyone else in the house, so when she feels his tentative shifting, she wakes, fully alert in seconds. She relaxes when she realises it's just a fidgety little wolf trying to escape and pulls him closer, giving him her wolfish grin as she twists just enough to reach into her bedside table to pull out an official looking envelope sealed with a wax crest he doesn't recognise.
Rickon blinks owlishly when the letter is pushed into his hands and he sees his name and address scrawled in acid green chicken scratch handwriting, and looks questioningly at his sister who gives an impatient huff and opens it for him. Inside is a sheet of thick heavy paper with a school insignia at the top, further reading tells him it's an acceptance letter to Skagos Secondary School and it's for him.
He's infinitely more confused, Arya knows he doesn't like school, but her explanation reassures him that she hasn't been abducted by some sort of pod person; apparently the school is just a few miles away from the Essosi Institute, so he can go to Essos with her and between the money she's saved from working odd summer jobs and after school tutoring and her trust fund, she's managed to buy a little two bedroom flat half way between the two schools, the pictures on her phone look amazing.
This time he's the one who crushes Arya in a hug, he should have known she wouldn't abandon pack, but his joy is short lived when he remembers that Mother will never agree to it, when he voices this thought, Arya's storm cloud grey eyes darken to tempered steel and she tells him she'll sort it.
The fight that ensues between Catelyn Stark and her youngest daughter goes down as the worst one in living memory, both women screaming bitter, hate fuelled words at each other for what feels like years until Arya pulls out the final weapon in her arsenal and tells their mother that she's been a better parent to Rickon than Catelyn has in years, her mother has nothing to reply with as she watches her daughter stalk out.
The Stark matriarch's sobs echo long into the night and there's a distinct scent of gin in the kitchen the next morning and breakfast is awkward and uncomfortable, with Robb and Sansa throwing disappointed and disgusted looks at Arya, Bran just observes with eyes too wise for a sixteen year old.
Rickon looks at the table of near strangers, for all that they are his flesh and blood, he knows next to nothing about three of them, and they most likely know even less about him and thinks Arya was right; she probably has been a better parent than the mother who cared more about her charity work and society functions than she did her two 'wild' children, and the father whose work engulfed him in a never ending stream of meetings and conference calls and paperwork. He doesn't voice these thoughts out loud, but they're written clear across his face.
It takes weeks of arguing and bargaining and promises, but eventually Catelyn relents.
The last week of August is spent packing and booking flights and double checking lists and scrawled emergency contacts until finally, everything is finalised, and all that's left is to take Arya and Rickon to the airport. It's a true family affair at the leaving gate, Arya and Rickon with their carry on's; most of the luggage being sent ahead. There's tears and hugging and general affection dolled out like there hasn't been since they were all children. When the intercom announces their flights for boarding, the two wild Stark siblings bid their remaining family goodbye and head towards their departure gates, waving and grinning at the ones left behind, even though their eyes might be just a little misty.
They're settled in their seats when Rickon asks a question that's been bothering him since that first confrontation about them moving all those months ago;
“Arya, what would you have done if she'd said no?”
Her answer is immediate; “I would've declined and stayed with you until you were old enough to leave by yourself. Or stolen you away in the night, I hadn't quite decided...”
She's so matter of fact about it, like putting her life on hold for two years was no big deal, he leans across the isle to hug her and the grin they share could light Winterfell for a year it's so bright.
After all, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
No matter how small it might be.