✧ The Pack Survives ╱ Cyrene Stark - Blog Posts

the moment cassana placed her head upon dacey's shoulder, her reaction was instinctual, one hand coming up to gently smooth across cassana's cheek, as though to check that she was all right without using words to do so, before letting her hand drop to her side again. it was unreserved in it's warmth in a way that was rare for daey for all but the youngest of her siblings.

there was no such warmth for cyrene. dacey did not miss the way cyrene's smile froze at the sight of her, and she responded by doing what she always did - by drawing back, away from what it was that was making her feel as though she did not belong here, in this place, where countless generations of starks had walked before. their reunion had been a tense one, and it seemed to have lingered.

and yet, she tried not to make it evident upon her face, tried not to spoil the peace the rest of them seemed to feel upon this reunion. cassana still stood by her side, and she allowed herself to draw strength from her presence, as she often did without the other knowing it. it was enough to paint a smile on her face, swallow down that knot of anxiety, and respond to what adam was saying, reminding herself that moment like these, when they got to be together like this, were a rare gift for them all.

"it does," she replied softly to adam, surprising even herself with the fact she were the first to speak. "i don't think i can recall the last time so many of us were here at once. it is usually quieter in the godswood, now life has taken us in our own directions." but for a moment, she could hear the shades of their childhood around them, laughter that had begun to echo long ago, and she felt a strange longing in her chest for it now. "but i have missed it. and i am glad the old gods saw fit to bring us together here again." even with those missing. even with those lost.

@owenstark

The King wanted to hunt and some times he wanted to go alone. On this day he traveled with his wolf. The great beast walking along side him as they made their way back. His horse carried a great stag on it's back and rabbits on the saddle. It would be a good meal, when the King wanted to eat well he would go out and get his own meat and have it roasted in butters and with vegetables and he would eat until he could not. Food and beer. It kept his mind at ease.

The sound of voices caught this attention. He dragged his fingers over his beard and took wrapped an arrow around his finger and lined it up as he walked closer. Calm washed over him as the voices were suddenly familiar and strange to him. Cyrene sounded different to his ears but he knew he all same. Adam was Adam, if his voice changed Owen would think another wore his face. And of course, Dacey, she carried a weight he always put on her shoulders. "Smoke get off her." Owen called out, putting the arrow away as Smoke ran up to Cyrene and put muddy paws on her front.

"And what do we have here?" A smiled graced his features briefly. "Starks in the Godswood. Have I stumbled upon the secret club house or has the old Gods brought us here?" Owen remember his secret cave with Alys and Jon, and it pained him to think of them so he pushed it away. "It's been too long since we've been a pack. We just need Cass." Those who were home at least. Life pulled them apart and together. Even as he tried, Owen did not feel like a brother. He felt like a King and he did not know how to turn it off.

@cassvstark

dacey's gaze lingered on wylla, her niece's small face full of curiosity and unspoke questions dacey was half-hoping she would not ask. the ache in her chest was an unfamiliar feeling, equal parts yearning and hesitation. cyrene's words were gentle, in contrast to what had felt like a reprimand before, but gentle words had done little to ease the knot of insecurity tightening within her. braved than she seems. braver than she'll let you believe. green eyes drifted over cyrene for a moment, trying to deduce if the words were supposed to be comfort, challenge, or mockery, and unsure she would find a definite answer to that.

it was almost second nature, the way her hands clasped before her, so much so that she did not realise she was using her nail to scratch at the rough skin around her other thumb, the outward manifestation of her lingering doubts. the voice in the back of her head was telling her that wylla would not like her, that she did not know how to bridge the gap between aunt and stranger, and it would be an embarrassment to try. the thought had been gnawing at dacey since she'd first heard of cyrene's arrival, and now faced with the girl herself, she felt utterly unprepared for any of this.

cyrene's patience was, too, something dacey hadn't prepared for. it were further proof that the woman who returned was not the girl she remembered. cyrene wasn't pushing, wasn't teasing, wasn't testing dacey's limits. there was no sharp edge that she had anticipated.

finally, dacey crouched to meet wylla's gaze at her own level, skirts gathering in the snow that covered the walls. her movements were slow, as though afraid to scare her off, but the small, hesitant smile on her face remained, her voice soft when she spoke. "it is nice to meet you after all these years, wylla." she wondered if her northern accent sounded strange to a child accustomed to the riverlands, who would have only heard such tones from her mother on a regular basis.

her eyes flicked back to cyrene briefly, as though looking for approval, or permission, and when she turned her attention back to wylla, she released her hand from her own grip and extended it, palm up, leaving it in the space between herself and wylla for the little girl to decide what to do with. "i think you must be a wonderful explorer," her voice was a little firmer now, as though she were trying to find something to latch on to. "it is not everyone who can find their way out to the walls. it's so high." a pause, and dacey swallowed.

"i've spent some time exploring winterfell myself. learning it's secrets." her voice lowered, as though she was sharing one of those hidden secrets now. "if you'd like, i can show you all my favourite places. the ones nobody else knows of."

Cyrene watched Dacey with a careful eye, noting the quiet that had always defined her younger sister. It was the same quiet that had once driven Cyrene to provoke her, to tease and cajole in the hopes of coaxing something louder from the girl who seemed to carry the weight of the world in her stillness. She had always wanted Dacey to roar, to be the wolf Cyrene believed she could be, rather than the shadow of one.

But time had worn that impulse down. Dacey’s silence wasn’t weakness; it was something harder to define, something solid and unyielding. It was courage, though Dacey would never claim it.

Cyrene glanced down at Wylla, her small hand still clinging to her mother’s fingers. She felt the weight of her daughter’s curiosity as Wylla’s wide eyes flickered to her aunt. And still, Dacey said nothing.

“She’s braver than she seems,” Cyrene said softly, her words meant for both her daughter and her sister. The irony of it struck her. She had spent so long wishing Dacey would break her silence, only to now realize how much strength it carried.

She crouched, steadying Wylla as the girl peered up at her aunt with quiet fascination. “This is your Aunt Dacey,” Cyrene said, a smile tugging faintly at her lips. "She’s braver than she’ll let you believe, I'm afraid.”

Her gaze flicked to Dacey then, searching, hoping. She didn’t tease this time. Didn’t push. Cyrene had learned to leave some silences unbroken.

dacey said nothing in response. always prone to overthinking, thin-skinned over a heavy heart, it was hard not to take cyrene's words and add them to the weight in her chest. everything her sister had said, dacey had taken as an insult against her, and that only made her withdraw into her shell. for months now, she had done her best to hold things together as much as she could, trying to fill multiple roles vacated by their absent kin. with cyrene here, things had shifted, and she no longer knew what her place was. it was yet another adjustment, and she had never done well in uncertainty.

silently, she followed cyrene away from the memories that had enveloped her, up upon the walls where her sister's daughter would be found. still, she hovered silently, inexplicably shy. it was ridiculous. she was the adult, wylla nothing but a small child, but she was a child dacey did not know. it was different with owen and adam's children. she had known them since they were born, but to wylla, she was a stranger.

eventually, she managed a small smile, though there was still a seriousness to her expression, there was warmth, too. "hello, wylla."

Sometimes being alive is all you have.

Cyrene's expression grew into something icy. Stony and hard. "I know." And that was all she would say for now, all she would lay bare of her soul in the frigid air, in front of someone her heart knew but her mind no longer did. She knew. It had been her existence for nearly six years now, even if her children had made it more tolerable. Had taken her from surviving to living for an entirely different purpose.

She was thankful, then, that Dacey readily took to her change of topic. Her head tipped and tilted, a vague gesture to the direction Cyrene had approached her sister from. "Come."

Wylla had been taken to walkway overlooking Winterfell's courtyard by one of Cyrene's ladies, a slight and uncomfortable looking one, bundled in furs to shield against the cold. Cyrene excused her with a quiet word, and the Lady was gone in a flash, likely to seek the warmth that had been leeched from her skin. Cyrene reached for her daughter to pick her up. "Say hello to your auntie, sweetling." As it always did, her voice turned soft and warm, almost uncharacteristically so. She supposed it was, in this place. It was not, with her children.

even as children, the similarities between dacey and cyrene had ended with their last name. the sister dacey remembered had burnt bright and fierce, her voice always ringing loud and certain where dacey's shook. if cyrene had been a flame, dacey was the shadow cast behind it. she had never truly minded that, content to bask in the warmth her sister offered her, but all fire had the ability to scorch, and dacey could not help but shield herself from it now, for fear of being burnt.

and she understood what cyrene meant by her comment, the difference between living and surviving. in truth, dacey could not remember a time when her existence hadn't centred around the latter, when the focus of her days hadn't been about making it through rather than living as best she could, and that was what painted the expression of hurt across her face before she could hide it. was that what cyrene thought of her now? that she were good as dead?

"sometimes being alive is all you have." came the defence, quiet and weak, as though dacey hoped she would not hear it.

a blink, and the hurt in her face gave way, first to confusion at the rapid change of tone, then understanding at what cyrene was trying to do. she nodded her head. "i would like to." there had never been a chance to meet cyrene's children before, but at least with wylla, she could now make up for lost time. "where is she?"

I am alive. That is more than many.

The words hit Cyrene like a backhanded slap. Alive. More than many. Jon was no longer alive, the third to their little unruly trio. Now, here they stood. Not that far apart, but it might as well have been realms. Cyrene still in the Riverlands with Dacey all the way up in the North. Cyrene had tried. And it had not been enough.

Some deeply buried part of her wanted to allow the heat to rise into her cheeks. Wanted to raise her voice, wanted to yell. Not necessarily at Dacey, but at something, someone looking down at them and building walls and circumstances to tear them apart.

Cyrene bit her tongue. She had grown used to this by now. Copper in her mouth, her temper caught in her throat. "Alive means little these days. Merely being alive is almost as good as dead." Cyrene would know this only too well. She felt alive walking the halls of the Crossing. But she didn't feel like she was living.

"Would you like to meet my daughter?" A change of topic would be good. Yet another chance for Dacey to turn away from Cyrene, but she would not take this olive branch back. "Wylla is rather eager to meet her extended family." It was a weak reasoning, but true nonetheless.

something reared its head in dacey then, something both unfamiliar and uncomfortable that settled in her gut. defiance. she had always been more lapdog than direwolf, more likely to show her belly than her teeth, and that was still true now, even as indignant as she felt at cyrene's words. she bit back what was on the tip of her own tongue - that cyrene had not been there, had not witnessed the lowest of dacey's lows, and yet here she stood now, acting as though she could read dacey's mind.

the reverse was just as true. cyrene had once been the person closest to dacey, and now she was a stranger who wore the face of a sister. the woman who returned to winterfell was not the same as the one who had left.

she kept hands beneath her furs, though her cheeks were pink, the cold wind and dacey's self-consciousness painting colour into her face. you are not well. why was it that she took such umbrage to the words? was it because she had spent so much time, worked so hard, to convince everyone otherwise? or was it perhaps because the first person to notice the façade she hid behind was someone who had not set eyes upon her face in many long years?

"i am alive," she said, eventually. "that is more than many." it was more than jon, the unspoken ghost that curled around them. since his death, dacey had grown accustomed to his absence - but now cyrene was here, she needed to reconcile with it all over again. "the cold doesn't effect me much, anymore. only on the worst of days."

Dacey practically ripped her hand out of Cyrene's hold, and it felt like an old wound ripped open once more. Scabbed over, healed and forgotten. And now, it was as thought the stitches had vanished during the healing process, something fresh, something malformed left behind.

I am well.

You do not need to worry about me, Cyrene.

I am well. You do not need to worry.

She worried. Dacey had to know she did. Cyrene could imagine the reasoning behind her words. Spelled out in Cyrene's letters to Dacey, to Cassana, to Jon, to Adam and even to Owen. Distance had grown her into a worrier. Distance had left her without control over her choices, her care of those she held closest in her heart. Every single one of her siblings had denied her request of being provided safety. And now they were all left to pick up the pieces.

Bits and pieces within Cyrene still knew her sister well. Too well, perhaps. They were both changed women now, hardened by time. But Cyrene knew who Dacey was at her core. Beyond the care Dacey had for other people. Her sister's fingers had been rough in her grip. Proof of incidents Cyrene had only heard about from afar. "You are not fine," she whispered. "You are not well." Dacey held herself together admirably, but it broke Cyrene's heart when she watched anyone else like this, anyone other than herself. "I will worry, whether you tell me or not." Her voice was low, urgent. She did not try to reach out to Dacey again, did not step closer again. But her eyes. Green-brown hues pleading for her sister to let her in like she had in the past. "You know the chill does not bother me. You know I care more about what it does to you."

there was no retort from dacey's lips - merely a hum of agreement. she had always remained, two feet on the ground, whilst cyrene and jon scaled winterfell's walls. in many ways, that had not changed. she remained fixed in one spot, watching her siblings climb higher and higher until she could not see them anymore.

and it was always cyrene that she could count on to look down, look back, to wave at her from above and make dacey feel included still, until the day came when cyrene was gone. time and distance stretched between them, even as cyrene, for the first time in many, many years, took dacey's hand.

cyrene's question almost made dacey laugh. it was not a happy laugh, a scoff that she could be anything but well, but one of desperation, because for months now, it had felt like dacey was falling apart at the seams. the northern court had rearranged itself into something she barely recognised, defined by those missing from it, and she had taken it upon herself to try and bridge the chasms they left behind. she was not well.

and yet, her answer was a contradiction to that, to the dark circles under her eyes and red-raw fingers currently gripped in her sister's hand. "i am well," dacey responded, her voice surprisingly firm, full of conviction she did not feel. "you do not need to worry about me, cyrene." and there it was, the reason for the lie - dacey would not burden her family with what was hers to shoulder.

"i'm just tired and cold," she managed a smile then, and she tugged her hand back to tuck beneath her furs, the contact suddenly too much. "i stayed up too late and woke too early. i always do when the frosts start coming in." she paused. cyrene's past few years were spent in the riverlands, far to the south. "are you managing all right with the cold?"

"No snow would be enough to have you escape unscathed," Cyrene responded amused. Dacey had been a sickly child. Only one year older, Cyrene had been right there alongside her to watch her grow and survive. Sickness in the cold so rarely persevered but Dacey - she had been stronger than she gave herself credit for. Cyrene had seen strength in her slight sister and so, together with their brother Jon, she'd pulled her along into whirlwind adventures, despite Dacey's protests that called to caution.

Once upon a time, Cyrene had been a restless being, always moving, always running. Standing still had never been an option. Had it been with Jon or Dacey or Owen or Brandon - her heart and blood had been the same colour as her hair.

Her younger self would've been ashamed of her now. Stagnant and steadfast. She was ruthless now, mercilessly fighting for her children and her close ones, yes, but she no longer dared consequence to catch up to her. There was too much at stake now.

Cyrene stepped closer, suddenly and quickly, reaching out to grab her sister's cold hands. Tightly, though she made sure that the rings on her fingers, plentiful and equally as cold, did not bite into Dacey's skin.

"Sister," she spoke, voice dropping to a whisper. Reverent and urgent. "Are you well?" Are you safe? It went without saying. Dacey, as well as all her other siblings had denied her request to seek safety with her in the Riverlands. For a little while, there had been peace in the North. This time, when tensions were rising, Cyrene would not stay away.

dacey's palm was flat against the stone, long, thin fingers red from the cold and where the skin had been picked and peeled around the beds of her nails. the starks were of the old gods; they believed that their nameless deities watched them through the trees, spoke to them through the whisper of the winds and rustle of the leaves and rush of the streams, but in the stones lay the history of man, of the ancestors whose blood persisted in their veins.

these walls had stood for thousands of years, raised by brandon the builder, seen the celebrations when the barrow kings and red kings and marsh kings had fallen to the kings of winter. they had seen the andals beaten back to the south and the wildlings back to the north, had seen the king who knelt and the end of the kings of the north, and had seen them rise once more from the dragon's ashes. they had seen starks born and die and born and die, over and over, and would go on doing so for as long as the sun continued to rise and set.

in between those moments, the ones preserved in the pages of history books, the walls had seen other things, the day to day living that had been lost to time. it was there that dacey's mind turned now, to a girl and a girl and a boy and the three wolves that shadowed them, long enough ago to become memory, not yet long enough to be lost.

"you fell from there, once," her voice was gentle and fond, her breath escaping her lips in small puffs that lingered in the air in a misty cloud. "and you landed on my snowman." it had been one of the first snows of the year. the snow was fresh, soft and powdery, which had been cyrene's good fortune. it had not yet compacted and turned to ice, and so, she had popped out of the pile that had once been dacey's work of art without a scratch.

she withdrew her hand from the wall, brushing it daintily against her furs to rid it of any dirt. "i wasn't going to climb it." it was a reversal from how things had been when cyrene had left for the riverlands, a wild and wilful girl who had balked at nothing, so much so that dacey had wondered if her sister had been born without fear. then, it had been dacey who had called words of caution. that cyrene would be halfway up the wall by now, responding to dacey's warnings with nothing but a laugh.

but things changed. the world changed, and they changed with it. in cyrene, the change was more pronounced than dacey could have ever imagined. but then, the years had not been kind to their kin. distance had not saved cyrene from grief and heartache. dacey did not know how to be with this new sister, who wore the face of the old. not yet.

"there isn't enough snow at the moment. to catch me if i fell."

who: @daceystvrk where: at winterfell when cyrene arrives home for the first time in years

There were notches in the outer walls. Always had been, always would be. Cyrene found at least some comfort that things in Winterfell would never change. The people who lived within the walls would. Death haunted the halls, but the years did as well. She'd already seen many who had survived the wars that lay in the past, but they had not come out of it unchanged.

Neither had she.

"Don't climb that," she spoke, voice pragmatic and clipped, "That cannot end well."