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WHO: Jon Snow
WHERE: Along the road; Margaery's home
WHEN: 9 September
OPEN TO: All - feel free to find him along the road in the village or at the inn dropping off the game he's killed.
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open

Jon had spent the last several weeks with a certain routine: he awoke early and took to the woods when the animals were still grazing and hunted what he could. He never shot the first animal he saw because, in theory, if there were enough to be eating, he would see another and be able to take it instead. If he never saw another, it would be a good thing he hadn't taken the first. That had been one of the many lessons he'd learned from his lord father and he'd carried it with him to the Wall and now to this place.

Afterward, he would check his snares to see if anything small had wandered into the traps. He'd gotten lucky with rabbits, of late, and while the pelts were small, he still skinned them and saved them in hopes that there was something they could make from them. He knew that winter would come to this place eventually and none of the clothing that their captors had given them had seemed especially warm to Jon. There was no fur on any of them; how would they keep warm during the winter with no fur to line their collars or wrists?

After the work of the day was done, he would take his kills to the inn to be cooked and would spend much of the rest of the day surveying his own home for repairs. There had been a leaky roof that he'd had to patch with little in the way of supplies and Jon hoped that the ground wouldn't quake again and cause actual damage to the building itself. He had no tools to fix it and, truthfully, these homes were nothing like anything he'd seen in Westeros. He knew how to thatch a castle roof, yes, but these homes had something else entirely.

Come mid afternoon, he found himself wanting to check on the Lady Margaery. She had her own house some distance along the road away from his own and if she needed repairs, he imagined she'd be less suited to complete them than he was. It was with that purpose in mind that he headed out along the road, head bent, to see if there was something he might do for her.

It was an offer made of kindness, he told himself. Nothing more and nothing less.

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Peggy thinks of her brother as he speaks of his father. She thinks that everyone has a hero figure of sorts, someone whom they look up to because they can teach them how to be better. "I'm sorry that he's not here with you," she says. "I've someone like that myself, but no longer."

"Did you still have your lord father at home?" she asks, using his terms to make him feel more comfortable.

Jon shook his head. "No, my lady. He died a few years ago. I was lucky to have him as long as I did, yes, but I haven't seen him in several years."

So much of House Stark was dead and gone now and it was ironic that he was the one to carry the banner. Him, Jon Snow, the bastard son of Eddard Stark, was the one to carry the name on into the next age.

It was a heavy burden. It was a burden he should never have had to carry.

"That must be terribly hard," Peggy says, thinking of the heartbreaking grief she still feels when she thinks of losing Michael. True, it had helped to set her on the path that she's on in order to do best by him, but at the same time, there never really is a balm to losing someone. "Would you like to tell me about him?" she offers.

"I know sometimes, people like to talk about those they lost. And sometimes, it's the hardest thing in the world."

"I am not one to speak much about those I have lost," Jon admitted. Speaking to someone about losing his father was painfully intimate, how could he go on to talk about Ygritte? About Arya and Bran and Rickon? About Robb? Jon still dealt with the fact that in this place, his brother lived, when in Westeros Robb was dead and gone, lost somewhere at the Twins.

"I keep my pain inside, I press it close to my heart until it's difficult to breathe and it pains me with every breath. It is strange to share it with someone, to speak of it."

She understands, is the trouble. For so long, Peggy has kept her own pain and grief close to the chest so as not to burden those around her, but now she finds herself worrying how much of that is possibly healthy. Then again, she's the first to shuck the notion of needing therapy.

"Well, we don't need to speak of it," Peggy insists. "Why don't you tell me something inconsequential?" she suggests. "For me, there's a lovely little diner in New York City that boasts the best apple pie I've ever had."

The words weren't ones that he recognized but he recognized the sentiment. Jon tried to think of something good, something happy that he could talk about without bringing up painful memories. It took him a moment but he settled on a memory of Winterfell.

"When I was young, at Winterfell, we used to go swimming in the pools in the Godswood. Winterfell's cold even in summer, you see, but the pools there are hot. They come up from the ground that way, heated, and the snow never lays long on the ground there. I used to swim there with my brothers and sisters."

Hot springs sound lovely beyond measure, something that she never really took time to enjoy even when they were available. Time, though, had been something of a scarcity to her. There had never been enough and she had always been forced to prioritize the war effort above her own personal enjoyment.

Even her vacation time, all those weeks and weeks, had been used to investigate a case on her own time. She's not sure she does know how to power off. "And how many brothers and sisters do you have?" she asks politely.

"I had five," Jon explained. "An older brother, Robb, who's here in the village and then two younger sisters and two more younger brothers. One of my sisters, Sansa, I saw her just before I came here. The other, we think she's alive but we don't know. The other two are dead."

Robb, too, had died but he didn't want to mention that to Peggy when Robb was alive here in the village; it was confusing for Jon, who had died and come back again and he hardly wanted to confuse someone he hardly knew.

"I'm very lucky to have Robb here."

She knows something of dead brothers, though she doesn't say as much. Her life is still behind closed doors and there are some moments, even, when Peggy feels as if she hasn't quite processed Michael's death yet, that it doesn't entirely feel real.

"I'm sure he's happy to say the same of you," she says calmly. "Your other sister. What happened to split you up?" she asks. "That you no longer know what's become of her?"

"She went south with my lord father but she fled the city, disappeared. No one has seen her for quite some time," Jon explained.

"Before she left Winterfell, I had a sword made for her. I heard she had lessons with it - I only hope she had enough to keep herself safe no matter where she wound up."

"Perhaps she's still okay," Peggy says, encouraging as she can be even though she comes from a time of war and her cynicism (or realism, really) has made her somewhat more realistic. "It sounds like you came from a rather harsh world, but that it made its people stronger."

She's not sure if that's a consolation, really, but at least there is something.

"It's a very harsh world," Jon agreed. "But I like to think that it tempers a man, makes him stronger. There's no one stronger than my sister Arya. If anyone could survive out there alone, she could."

Jon had faith in that. Besides, Sansa had word that she lived through Lady Brienne. There was a chance that Arya was still alive out there, even if it was somewhere far away from Winterfell.

The more she talks to Jon, the more Peggy begins to understand how crucially important family is to him. "I only had the one brother," she shares, feeling like Jon has told her so much about his life that she owes something in turn. "Michael. Only, he died when I was nineteen, in the war," she says, folding her hands before her. "I would give anything to imagine he's somewhere out there, surviving."

"This place can bring the dead to us," Jon said. It wasn't something he'd talked about at length, really, but Robb had been dead before coming here. There was always a chance that her brother could come here to this place.

"My brother is here and he has been dead for years. Your brother could come too."

"Yes, I have heard that," Peggy says cautiously, because she's not sure she's ready to get into the depths of her own personal matters when it comes to James Barnes, mainly because she doesn't feel like she has a close enough connection to be the one to talk about it. "There's a woman here who's said as much. Margaery?" Peggy provides.

"She seems to believe she was dead before she arrived here."

"Yes, she hails from Westeros as well," Jon said. He knew Lady Margaery very well, as a matter of fact, so he wondered if it was only the ones he knew that managed to come here from beyond the grave. Was that only something that those from the Seven Kingdoms could do?

"At least there is hope that he could come here someday and you could be with him once again. I would hope for that to happen for you."

Jon's confusion about her accent begins to make more sense to her, now. After all, she's met and conversed with Margaery quite a bit and she understands how he could have mistaken her for someone from their land. "If that's the case, then perhaps let's each for another's sibling to turn up," she says, wanting to be positive for the both of them. "Perhaps we might be lucky, yes?"

She's not used to that and she has the feeling it won't be so simple, but it's a lovely thing to presume it might be.

"Luck is something I don't normally put a lot of stock in but I will try to hope that your brother comes here healthy and happy," Jon said. It had happened for him in the form of Robb, after all, so there was hope that her brother would come to this place as well.

"It would be good to have family here. It is a difficult place to survive. Having friends and family can always help."

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