Pale the Winter Days
Title: Pale the Winter Days
Rating: PG
Words: 329
Summary: A short fill for this prompt at the ASOIAF/Game of Thrones meme. Preseries; despite her preparations, Catelyn is overwhelmed by the harshness of her first northern winter.
The dull browns of autumn blanch grey, then white. The Stark words echo around Winterfell and the icy touch in the air begins to seep steadily into the castle stones. It will be months at the very least before Catelyn can shake off the tight, brittle movements of the frozen and walk fluidly again through the castle and yard, before she can sit with any degree of comfort more than a few feet from the warm reassurance of a fire. More likely it will be years. She is shocked to find a few fine greys in her mass of auburn hair, and then less shocked; she is fading like everything else in the faint winter light. How much older will she be, she thinks, if spring ever comes.
It snows, and doesn't stop. Soon even the fires she clings to, small and utterly insignificant in this great expanse of white, can no longer stop her from freezing. With his usual assiduity Ned makes sure she has the thickest of furs to drape ineffectually around herself, has hot wine brought when he finds her shivering in corners and staring at the pale impassive sky. He tries to stay close to her, but when they bring word of a deserter from the Wall Catelyn takes one look out of the window and tells him to go alone. He kisses her before he goes to gather his guards and bring the man up to the mound.
Catelyn goes up to the tower window to see them walk out, dark furs against the snow. They stop on the mound, spread formally into a circle. She looks on from a distance, as her husband raises his sword and carries out the sentence she knew would be passed. Ned's head is bowed, she thinks; she can't see his face but she knows the sombre expression it will be wearing. Catelyn shivers in the northern cold, and watches her husband's Stark duty bleeding into the snow.