Chapter Text
Ned woke with a jolt, the breath catching in his throat like a noose. His hand went instinctively to his neck. The skin was unbroken, his beard coarse beneath his fingers, his pulse strong beneath the heel of his palm.
He should have been dead. He had felt the sword. Heard squeaky and childish Joffrey’s voice barking the command. Ice had fallen and his world had ended.
Except… it hadn’t?
The chill in the room was real. The furs pulled over his body were those of Winterfell. He knew the scent of the room, the smoke and pine, the oil rubbed into his armor resting in the corner. There was no mistaking it. He was home.
“What is this?” he whispered, the sound foreign to his own ears.
He turned his head. The other side of the bed was not empty. The red hair that reminded him of fire lay spilled across the pillow like spilt wine, her lashes fluttering as if in some uncertain dream.
Catelyn .
A flood of relief surged through him. She was truly there beside him. The heat of her body chased the cold from his skin.
Baelor’s Sept had been a grave. And Sansa. Gods. Sansa . He clenched his jaw to hold back the surge of pain that memory brought, but it was too late.
Faces rushed back, and names, and cries of betrayal.
The chaos of the throne room. The butchering of his household guard. Littlefinger’s treachery. Sansa’s screams and pleas for his life. Arya disappearing into the crowd. Ice in Payne’s hands.
He could taste the moment of death like copper on his tongue and remember the last thoughts that had battered at his heart, his children, his wife, the North left vulnerable to lions in Baratheon garb.
Yet here he was… here they both were.
His leg didn’t ache. He remembered the stab wound from the red-cloaked guard in the streets of silk, remembered having to drag himself from that cell in the Red Keep half-lamed. But now? He rolled his ankle and felt nothing but strength.
He sat up, and beside him Catelyn began to stir.
~~~
She did not wake with a start. But when her eyes opened, the ceiling above greeted her with cruel familiarity. No.
No, that wasn’t possible.
Her last memory had been her screaming, hands wet with blood not her own, and then her own throat splitting open. She had died. She had felt the air rush from her throat and her body dropping into the cold stone floor of the Twins. The Rains of Castamere playing through it all.
But now she was here. In her bed. In Winterfell.
Alive .
She dared not move. Her heart thundered in her chest. She turned her head slowly, hoping to see what she knew could not be.
But he was there.
Her husband. Her Ned. His hair was mussed, his mouth half open in an inelegant groan that struck her so hard it almost made her sob.
She stared, unwilling to believe it. Then she reached. Her fingers brushed his cheek. Warmth met her skin.
He was real.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she swallowed them. She moved closer and placed a trembling kiss on his mouth, just to see if he would vanish. When he didn’t, when he deepened the kiss and shifted closer to her, she released the breath she had been holding.
“Ned,” she whispered, her voice catching. She touched his hair again.
“Cat.”
Her name came as a gasp, as if saying it aloud would affirm what his eyes could not.
Catelyn was already nodding, though tears spilled freely down both their cheeks now. “Yes. Yes, it’s me. Ned…” she broke off, her voice thick with emotion, “I thought… I thought you…”
“I was,” he said plainly. “I remember it. Baelor’s Sept. The crowd. Venom in that boy’s words.” He sat up, shaking. “He had him use my sword.”
She closed her eyes and covered her mouth. “I watched Robb die.”
His head snapped toward her, his breath sucked between his teeth. “Robb?”
She nodded, gripping the furs as if they might anchor her. “At the Twins. The Freys. The Boltons. They betrayed him. Killed him. And Talisa.”
“Talisa?”
Catelyn nodded, “His wife. They stabbed her in her belly. Killing her… and their babe.”
Eddard swore under his breath. It was rare for him, but nothing about this moment was ordinary.
“Then I died,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I felt the blade open my throat.”
He looked around again. “Yet we are here. In this bed. In Winterfell.”
“We are young,” she said, wonder in her voice. “As we were before you left for King’s Landing. Before Bran fell. Before the war. Before all of it.”
“Then we are not dead,” Eddard said slowly, though uncertainty remained in his voice.
“I think we are,” she said. “This feels like a gift. The gods gave us peace.”
He shook his head. “Then where is Brandon? Where is my Father? Or either of our mothers? Or Lyanna?” He searched the corners of the room again. “If this truly is the afterlife, would they not be here?”
She said nothing. The question wounded her more than she liked to admit.
“Perhaps this is penance,” she said at last. “Or a chance to do it again. But it cannot be a dream. I touched you. You touched me. This is too real.”
He turned back toward her and took her hand in his. “I don’t know what to believe. I only know that we are here. Together.”
She nodded and pressed her forehead to his chest. His arms encircled her, and for a moment, the weight of years lifted.
“But the children,” she whispered. “If this is real…if they are here…”
“Then we find them,” he said, without hesitation. “We protect them. We will not leave Winterfell again.”
Outside, a muffled shout reached them.
Eddard stiffened.
“What was that?”
Another voice rose, angry and panicked.
The two of them moved to the window. In the courtyard below, they could see movement. Torches, servants hurrying, stablehands arguing. A page nearly tripped as he ran past Maester Luwin, who looked just as flustered as they remembered.
The air was thick with disarray.
Catelyn leaned closer. “Something’s happened.”
“Something is happening,” Eddard corrected.
She looked at him, brow furrowed. “You don’t think…?”
“I think we’re not the only ones,” he said slowly. “If this is the afterlife, it’s a crowded one.”