Chapter Text
All is true of what the commonfolk around many continents say about the neverending winter in the North.
Ochako just silently wished it wasn´t as she felt the familiar sting of the freezing Northern air nestling into her lungs like daggers piercing her from the inside.
She trudged through the blinding snow that was up to half of her calves, the crunching sounds it produced underneath her fur-lined boots sounding more and more like snapping necks than like mere frozen water.
Her horse whinnied next to her, her thick hood muffling the displeased sound of the mare. She glanced at it, the whistling wind watering her eyes right as the animal swung its jet-black head to the side.
Like it was blaming her for bringing it along for the morning hunt.
Wasn´t her fault it was her turn to bring back fresh meat.
„I know, I know. How dare I make you work, Sobek? Next time we´ll stay back and sew cloaks together.“ Ochako spoke back to it, gloved hand patting the thick, tightly strapped blankets shielding the animal´s back.
Sobek huffed, a plume of steam curling from its dark nostrils as if it truly understood her sarcasm and didn´t find it funny in the least. It reminded Ochako of still-burning coals in the harth waiting for her back home.
Beside her, Hitoshi moved with that peculiar quiet of his, easily recognizable purple hair under his garments flitting through the white haze. He had always been like that — watchful, all his movements deliberate.
Where Ochako couldn´t help but stomp and curse the cold, Hitoshi slipped through the winter like it was stitched to him.
“I can hear your teeth chattering from here, Stark,” Hitoshi muttered, his voice flat but carrying the faintest curl of amusement.
He had a bow slung across his back, the arrows rattling softly with his even stride, his own horse on the other side of him but choosing to be much quieter than her own four-legged companion.
Ochako scowled, pulling her thick fur cloak tighter around herself, her family sigil, a small piece of iron woven into the clothing, clicking from the movement.
On her hip, her heavy sword tapped the outside of her thigh as she kept up with her partner´s stride.
“Well, I´m surprised I don´t hear yours. My toes feel like they’re gonna fall off.”
“They won’t,” he said simply, scanning the tree line expanding in the distance. His sharp eyes glinted under the gray morning light. “Not unless you stop moving.”
Her hand gripped the hilt of her hunting knife inside the pouch underneath her breast, the ridges of the handle that felt like tree vines rough and familiar. “You sound like my mother.”
Hitoshi glanced at her then, his lips twitching into something resembling a smirk, if it was even physically possible for him to move his mouth in this cold. “I’ve been called worse.”
It was a joke, but not much of one. Hitoshi wasn’t really one of them. He was a ward, sent to Winterfell years ago from some minor northern house after his family made the wrong enemies.
He never talked about it, not even when they both finally turned six-and-ten, and Ochako never asked. She only knew he arrived a quiet, sullen boy who refused to flinch even when the older Stark boys mocked him.
Somehow, she had liked him immediately.
They were only children then. Now, they were... well, whatever this was.
Now, at eight-and-ten, she didn´t bother rehatching the past. Or perhaps just didn´t have the time with the harshest season knocking just around the corner.
“Why’d you even come?” she asked, shifting her grip on the knife, her voice dragging. “You hate hunting.”
“I hate people more,” he replied without hesitation. “Thought I’d get some quiet. Didn’t think you’d talk so much.”
Ochako snorted, her breath fogging in the air, some smoke particles immediately freezing. “What can I say? The wolves have been ignoring me.”
The faintest chuckle escaped him, and Ochako grinned despite her frozen skin hurting from the stretch.
Hitoshi rarely laughed. It felt like a victory every time she managed it.
Ahead, the woods thinned slightly, revealing the outline of a familiar frozen stream.
Hitoshi held up a hand, and Ochako stopped, instinctively quieting her breath like she´d been taught long ago.
He crouched low, practically melting into the snow as he pointied toward a break in the covered ground near the water’s edge. Tracks.
“Deer,” he murmured. “A big one.”
Ochako’s stomach growled at the thought of venison, warm blood. “Think we can take it?”
“Think you’re noisy,” he replied, not unkindly. A beat, „Yeah.“
They moved together, slowly and deliberately, as they had since they were children sneaking out of the castle to play in the woods they now begrudgingly only hunted in.
Ochako had always admired his calm, the way he seemed to belong to the goddess of peace herself.
She, on the other hand, was like the snowstorms frequently passing by Winterfell´s walls: clumsy, loud, without much direction. Too much bite to her, and none to him.
Yet, she would have been lying if she said he was not her dearest childhood confidant.
When they reached the trees, Ochako hastily gripped her horse´s reigns and tied them around the nearest trunk.
“Do you think it true?” she whispered after a moment, trying to calm her breathing from the previous quickness of their pace as she waited for Hito to do the same with his mare.
˝What they speak of beyond the Wall? What my brother writes about?˝
Hitoshi didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on the horizon again, on the potential food still waiting just over the frozen dam.
˝What? The Free Folk, or the shadows they claim to see rising from the ice?“
He snorted softly, the sound coming out congested, picking out and pulling an arrow from his quiver slowly.
„Doesn’t matter what I think. Men will believe what they need to in these parts to keep them going. Even if it’s fire-breathing monsters wrapped up in a thousand year old prophecy.“
Ochako thought about the stories The Night´s Watch so often liked to spread.
About how the cold seemed to creep deeper into their homes each year, winters turning harsher and stealing more lives than they could save. About the whispers of things beyond the Wall.
Things that do not breathe, eat or die.
Their men though, of flesh and empty bellies, dying just fine while the Targaryens fight for the throne amongst their own kin, and their dragons, bigger than the fleets of The Ironborn, feasting on more lambs than their castle has seen in its existance. Far to the south, burning their way across the realm.
Folk here did not even believe in the existance of dragons; it was mere tales to entertain sickly children and fatigued elders. Tales better left unsaid to the agitated working bunch of the castle.
„You’re a pessimist, you know that?” she said after a moment.
„Somebody has to question the truth of your fantasies.“ he countered immediately, and her shoulders sagged at their familiar banter.
They continued their trek deeper into the woods, steps now barely audible as the low, crisp branches swallowed them with ease.
Ochako, just a few steps behind her companion, flicked her gaze from Hitoshi´s back to the spot where the stag had been spotted earlier.
It was still there, grazing, its dark coat sticking out like a sore thumb in the white brightness surrounding it. She could just make out the shape of it, and the flicker of its antlers moving as it shifted, unaware of their presence.
When Hitoshi deemed them close enough, he stopped so abruptly that Ochako´s distracted figure collided with his back, stumbling with a soft hiss of pain as her frozen nose pulsated, the blood in her face returning to her cheeks for a beat.
„Shh, stay low.“ Hito said distractedly, bow already pulled taught in his hands.
Just as she was about to snap back at him to watch his step, his words shut her up and the adrenaline in her blood rose, instinctively increasing her heart rate.
She thought for a second that Hitoshi could hear it beat underneath the many layers she wore and almost immediately chastised herself for the sappy assumption.
„We do it on my count. Aim for the heart.“
She nodded, finally feeling the weight of her own bow just as she pulled it off her back.
One wrong move, and it would be gone, vanishing into the thick trees before they could even react.
They needed all the provisions they could get for this winter.
She strung her bow, moving her arms like the familiar instrument was a fifth limb she could equip, placing the arrow to her face and letting the end press against her jaw, the string digging into her frozen skin enough to leave a satisfying mark she could scratch later.
“On three.”
Ochako swallowed. She couldn´t help herself, the thrill of the chase surging through her.
She nodded again, mostly to herself, eyes trained on the stag, pupils dilating.
“One,” Hitoshi began, lowering his stance, bow still perfectly drawn, hands unwavering.
“Two,” Ochako whispered back to him, stopping her breathing completely.
A weird habit she picked up when she started hunting on her own, without the presence of an elder complaining about her shaky form.
“Three.”
In an instant, they both loosed their arrows in almost perfect sync. The arrows cut through the air, their feather fletchings whistling as they flew straight towards their target.
The stag’s head jerked up, but it was too late. Hitoshi’s arrow found its mark in the animal’s neck, and Ochako’s struck its chest just behind the shoulder. The stag staggered, a sharp cry escaping its lips before it crumpled to the ground in a thud softened by the snow.
Victory! Ochako bounced up with joy, bumping her fist in the air.
Well, hunting for survival cannot really be called a victory, but she was taught to take what she gets. No complaints.
Hitoshi was already moving towards the animal, ready to confirm the clean kill. When he got to the animal, steaming blood soaking into the snow around its lifeless body, he looked back at Ochako and firmly nodded underneath his hood.
Instant death, good. The knifing was best avoided when the time was scarce.
Even with the distance, she could see Hito´s red nose, probably stinging from the sharp air just like hers was, and smiled as she watched him pull their arrows out of the animal´s flesh with two jerky tugs.
It would be a good winter for her people, she silently promised.
A good winter indeed.