memorial [for Edmund and Robb]

[onceaqueen]

The rains had come and not yet gone, and Susan was beginning to despair that they ever would. She had been waiting for the rain to stop so that she could make a trip out to the memorial wall, where she'd asked Edmund to arrange for several names to be added: Jon, Sansa, Caspian, Eddara, Cornelius, and Jeyne. But the rains went on and on, and Susan

Comments

[_kinginthenorth]

Somewhere along the route, Robb and Grey Wind had simply fallen into step beside her. Robb's grey wool cloak is pulled around him, the hood down over his eyes, and Grey Wind's fur is sodden and plastered to his body. It makes him look feral and hungry, though his eyes haven't changed.

[onceaqueen]

Susan was glad Robb had come along, and as he walked beside her she shifted her umbrella to cover both of them. "It's just a little further, up ahead," she told him.

[_kinginthenorth]

"It's all right," Robb says. "You keep dry. If you can," he adds, because there's very little left that is dry with the rain the way it has been.

[onceaqueen]

"I don't mind," she replied. Perhaps it was an excuse to walk a little closer to one of the few of her family members that remained, or perhaps it was the part of her that liked to take care of people, or perhaps it was both.

[giftless]

When Susan had asked him to see about adding names to the Memorial, he had tried his best not to react too strongly. It was the right thing to do after all, to remember the people that they cared about and that had gone. But he knew his own name was on that stone, knew how strange it felt to see it and wondered if it wasn't giving up a little.

Everyone knew those people had gone. Why set it in stone?

But he had agreed to it easily, gone about the process without delay and they had been added before the rains started pouring down like mad. Edmund didn't know why he had picked that day to go visit it. Maybe he had heard Susan mention that she was going and the idea had buried itself into his subconscious until it came out at the proper time. Whatever the reason, Ed stood there staring at the thing when Susan arrived. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of boots squishing through the mud, wet footfalls and gave her a wan smile.

[onceaqueen]

Susan couldn't quite look at it just yet, so she looked at Edmund instead. She hadn't expected him to be there, but somehow wasn't surprised.

"Thank you," she said. "For taking care of this."

[giftless]

"Of course," he said, voice buried a little by the heavy-duty raincoat he had wrenched from the clothes box. It nearly qualified as a parka, long and warm and heavy, but it did the job of keeping Edmund dry nicely for all that he seemed to get lost in it and Charlie teased him for it. After all, when you're sad, being wet and sad is tantamount to being miserable.

"Probably should have done it sooner," he admitted, because what you should do and what you want to do are rarely the same.

[onceaqueen]

Susan shook her head a little. "The important thing is that it's done."

She stood there in the rain with Edmund for a moment, clutching her umbrella, and finally willed up the courage to go and do what she had come out to do in the first place. She stepped closer to the wall and looked at the names most recently carved into the rock.

Jeyne Stark
Jon Snow
Sansa Stark
Eddara Stark
Cornelius Stark
Caspian

"I suppose it's fitting that Jon's name be on a wall," she said, and there wasn't quite enough rain to drown out the bitterness that touched her voice. "Though it's rock, not ice and snow."