it was a long, long and cold year | robb/ygritte | 1467 words | part one of three
The bells ringing round always makes her heart stop, just for a moment. There is something eerie about it; the bells of London clanging through the empty city, driven on by their timers, with hardly anyone to listen. She still hasn't got used to it, the streets being so totally deserted, with only the occasional walker ambling by, an easy kill. Ygritte sees hoards every once in a while, out on looting missions, but for the most part, all she sees are the four faces of her companions, grown so familiar to her now that they're all imprinted on the back of her lids when she closes her eyes against the watery sun.
She counts, or tries to; the din of it all clatters around in her head, making it hard to concentrate on one specific chime, one specific cathedral. One, two, three, four. She throws the pack of tinned vegetables over her shoulder, checks that her crossbow is set, finger on the trigger. The walkers don't like the noise, it draws them out from wherever they hide in the weak daylight. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Ygritte moves quickly, quietly, her feet avoiding the ice on the cobbles as thin sleet beings to fall. Her fingers pull her lumpy knit cap further over her ears against the cold.
Even in the weather, especially in the weather, the way back to the townhouse is as familiar as the back of her hand, or all the colors in Jeyne's eyes when the light hits them. This broken city has become her hunting ground; she knows it just as well as she knew the green hills around Inverness as a girl, and the peaks of Iona. She navigates the empty streets and alleys, deft as a cat, feet muffled by the piles of snow, and she reminds herself to thank Sansa again for the wool socks, and Theon for patching the holes in her boots.
She rushes as she turns the corner into the alley beside the house, doesn't pay attention, and the butt of the rifle comes out of nowhere; before she knows it she's smacking her head on the asphalt and sputtering on her own blood. Her crossbow skitters across the ice, out of reach, and she pulls the knife from her coat sleeve, blinking blood and sleet from her eyes.
"I didn't know it was you," he says, staring down at her, curls plastered to his forehead, the wood on his rifle streaked with red. His eyes are confused, his voice hollow, as if he doesn't quite know what's happening. She spits his name out with a mouthful of blood.
"Robb."
He doesn't offer his hand to help her up, and she tosses the knife away as she shoves herself off the ice; he blinks at her through the falling sleet, as if he's not quite sure she really exists. He hardly moves as she hurtles herself towards him, throwing elbows until his lip is bleeding just as much as hers, spattered bright against his pale, hollow cheeks. He stumbles back, falls, coughs and chokes and blinks. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and blood wells back to the surface.
"You could have killed me, fuck." Her teeth hurt as she clenches them, but she can't stop.
"I will kill you." His hand reaches up for her calf and lingers there, just for a moment, tender as a caress. She can feel the chill of his fingers through the layers of her clothes before he drags her down, the both of them struggling against each other in the snow and the ice and the frozen mud.
Ygritte slaps at him; Robb's bloody, frozen hands go to her neck, thumb against the hollow of her throat, fingers tangling in her hair, like frozen fire. She has a little neck, and his hands are so large; it wouldn't be hard to break it, just a twist of his wrist. For her part, she kicks her legs against him, and can't quite tell if his touch is threatening or gentle. From above, blood drips down his chin and splatters where her pulse thrums. She rears up, takes his cut lip between her teeth, and bites, bites until her mouth tastes like a penny, bites until he pulls away and sinks his teeth into her neck and starts pulling at her clothing, fingers cold and clumsy.
She can't think of what she's doing, it must have something to do with the fact that he smacked her with a god damned rifle, but she pulls open the buttons on his coat and shoves her hands up under his jumper, fingertips roving over his skin as he palms at her breast through her coat. There's blood on his mouth and his cheeks and his teeth, his blood and hers, streaking pink as the sleet falls, and he doesn't smile as he bends his head to her neck again again and sucks at her pulse. Her fingernails dig into his back, ragged; she can feel his ribs, count them with the tips of her fingers, and tries to think when he grew so thin. Between them, a hand (his? Or hers? She can't be sure, she feels like she's melting, like he's melting, like he's oozed into her, whispering against her ear from the inside.) fumbles to pull her jeans down over her narrow hips. She shudders, sighs as his tongue laps at the blood smeared against the skin of her neck, rocks her hips up and locks her knees around his waist; he groans. No, no, she should say, no, but she thinks of how once she killed him, and once he lived inside her and ate up her will, gnawing holes in the lining of her stomach until she wept acid inside herself. She hates him, she knows, hates him and knows him and he knows her, because they've been the same, imprints upon each other, ghosts and frozen blood and she presses her mouth to his to keep from screaming as he shoves himself inside her, and thinks that it feels less real than when he sewed himself inside her, when he was dead. She swallows his blood and draws him against her, rakes her nails over his scalp and cries, with guilt and longing and hatred. "I hate you too," he whispers inside her head, and she knows it's inside her head, because his mouth is on hers, tongue licking at hers. He shivers in the cold, soaked through to the skin with sleet and rain and snow, and she breaks away from his lips to bite at his throat where his Adam's apple moves beneath the skin as he thrusts into her, angry, his bony hips bruising her thighs. He used to be strong, she thinks. Before you killed me, Ygritte. She sobs, once, horrid and ragged and wraps her arms around his waist as he shouts out something unintelligible, something that echos off the walls of the alleys. He stills, buries his face in her neck, twines his fingers in her hair. His breath is heavy and hot against her skin, though everywhere else a thin layer of ice is forming. She can feel the tears and the blood and the rain start to freeze on her eyelashes.
There is a stone shoving itself into the small of her back; she shifts, and he jerks himself up, out of her, hastily righting his clothes. His teeth are red with blood as he gives her a small half smile, thumbing her bare hip bone before slipping his fingers through her belt loops and pulling the waistband of her jeans back over her hips.
"Don't get any ideas. I hate you." Her voice is harsh, clotted with tears, her mouth thick with blood. He shakes his head, and reaches for his rifle. She lifts herself up, rests her back against the stone wall, pulling her hat low over her forehead, rubbing at her eyes with her bloodstained fingertips. He scoops up a handful of snow and rubs his face free clean. She can see the shiver run down his spine, and knows that the crescents from her fingernails are still there, sunk into his skin.
"Robb?"
"I killed you once," she says. "I wanted you gone and then you were dead. And your ghost lived in me and ate me from the inside out."
He grins, steps towards her, rifle slung over his back. "Oh, Ygritte." He wipes at the blood on her cheeks with the soft sleeve of his jumper, his voice low and tender. She's not quite sure if it's coming from is mouth, or the place where he lives inside her head. "Now I'm going to eat you from the outside in."