Chapter Text
The night Catelyn Stark gave birth for the second time she thought, for sure, she was dying. This time without a doubt she was dying. Her firstborn, Robb hadn't been easy either, but how could this pain last so long? Pain in her bones and cold in her skin... too cold a night to properly breathe.
The sweat of her efforts only made it worse and she could not stop shivering and panting for painful breaths of frigid air. The weather had been getting worse through the past week. Summer snows came more and more often and the room, usually warm between the heated walls of Winterfell, felt like it would start to frost at any moment.
They were all near the fire and surrounded by furs, and the Measter and the attendants didn’t seem to mind the weather. Perhaps she was just too tired.
“One last push my lady” she heard the voice of Maester Luwin suddenly beside her.
She pushed so hard she passed out. She couldn’t have been out for more than a minute. Or so she hopped but Ned was standing there when she opened her eyes again after all morning and afternoon in labor her baby was finally bundled in soft blankets and warm in Ned's arms, but quiet... Had it been the silence that woke her up? Her Lord Husband was a grim terrifying sight with his face tight and his shoulders slumped. She shivered.
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Eddard Stark had been waiting outside with a worried, guarded expression. Eyebrows furrowed and arms crossed as he stood guard outside his own chambers. His sons were there too but sleep had taken them both. Someone had come to take them to bed hours ago but they’d returned and hidden beneath a long chair nearby, whispering as if their father could not see them clear as day, they'd fallen asleep on the floor.
Eddard let them. They too, were waiting for their new sibling. He could wake them when Maester Luwin opened the doors, hopefully soon. It had been too long and every minute he worried more. One late night would do them no harm, he thought and wrapped them with his cape. Fur covered them and they moved closer to each other like cubs.
When Maester Luwin finally opened the door his expression told lord Stark his worries were not unfounded. He entered the room and without delay, one of the mids assisting with the birth put a baby in his arms.
“She is too weak, my lord, we thought she was… she is breathing but won't last the night.” Maester Luwin informed him, and he could see he was right. His daughter looked pale and dead, nothing like her brother had been, a rosy bundle whimpering softly in his cradle, or any other newborn he had seen before.
Tears gathered in his eyes, and the air was suddenly too thick to properly breathe.
“Ned” his wife called and he froze his tears before they fell, she would need him now. He took the baby to the bed and put her in Catelyn’s outstretched arms, maester Luwin was saying the same words to her, she won't last the night. He could not bear to hear more, sadness was a numbing cold in his ears, in his mind.
He looked at Catelyn, sweat on her face, ragged hair and so exhausted… The tired happiness that should be on her face, making her look exultant and beautiful like the first time with Robb, nowhere to be seen.
He looked then at his newborn, so still, so quiet, and kissed his daughter's forehead. It was cold to the touch like a corpse... but she scrunched her little mouth, the first movement he'd seen her make, then it opened and a strong wailing started.
The baby cried and suddenly the night was full of voices, inhuman ones. The howling was terrible and loud, impossibly near, so near it was as if wolves were inside the castle. At the strong noise one of the maids, went pale and gasped walking herself into a corner as far from Catelyn and the baby as she could.
Maester Luwin, always calm, put himself together after a first startled sound and went to take the take the child from her mothers arms, a second assesment was needed, but he looked around while walking as if the walls could tell him the reason for this strange phenomenon.
“Ned the wolves, why are they here, Ned? make them go away” A chill ran visibly through his wife, afraid for her baby and delirius with exertion.
“It's all right, Cat, they are outside.” And it was a beautiful sound the choir that steered his daughter much-needed cry.
As suddenly as it began the howling stopped and there was only a baby crying. Catelyn was exhausted and shocked, she tried to feed her daughter with help of Maester Lewin but his daughter was marvelously loud and didn't appear to be willing to feed, still there was colour in her cheeks. Maester Luwin took her again and her wailing decreased a little, he was trying to take her pulse one more time.
“It seems my lord that your daughter is stronger than it appeared, her heart is steady. She may yet survive.”
Eddard had always loved the sound of the howling pack. It was calling home gathering the family he thought as his children's little heads appeared at the door looking for their new sister.
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Her daughters were as different as they could get, Catelyn thought. Sansa the proper lady always polite and quick to please and with all her own Tully countenance. Nadja was polite too, but she didn't care to please and she was not exactly a proper lady.
Not that Catelyn was lax in her education, not at all. As the oldest Stark girl she needed to be educated in all the arts of a true highborn for when she’d marry, and she was. Just like Sansa, she knew all the proper words and greetings and bows, they knew how to administer a household, and at least a bit of poetry, music, and dancing.
But she didn't speak platitudes as often as Sansa, did not dance as often as Sansa, and her lessons were much less interesting to her than the books in healing of Maester Luwin, she would do embroidery for five minutes before seeking the library, and she would spend hours in those dark gloomy halls, her sister pleads for company unlikely to sway her away from the old pages.
Her main problem, however, was a mind too inquisitive that would often ask improper questions and speak too freely. Fortunately, the one thing that Nadja had inherited from Catelyn —if perhaps the only one for her looks were completely Stark— was the sense of practicality. She knew it was easier to get time at the library after finishing her duties than be banned from entering if the Septa caught her skipping.
Catelyn wasn't too worried about her, she was not willful or irresponsible only a bit odd for a lady but in the north that may still find a good home. Her real concern was her Arya, so unruly and wild and unwilling to put on a facade for the benefit of anyone. Too honest with herself and all the others.
But as she sees Arya run away from Bran after hitting the mark instead of him at her brother's training, mocking him in front of everyone, proving herself as good a marksman as her brother and Nadja and the oldest two, all laughing together, she thinks that these two daughters are northern girls in and out, Direwolves of Winterfell and her southern manners maybe would never suit them as they do Sansa.
She hopes a good northern lord would be accepting of their wild and odd sides. And if not… well they were the daughters of Lord Eddard Stark Warden of the North. Marriage would not save the man who mistreated his daughters.
But Catelyn hopes for a happy life for her children. She knows about the Bear Island of the Mormonts, where women are warriors. And although one day she may have tought about it as scandalous and uncivilized, looking at Arya she is glad now that her child was born a Stark. In these strange lands, they all may scold her for her mischief, but no one will mistreat her for being just what she is, Arya Underfoot, the little She-Wolf of Winterfell.
She is glad, but will not tell that to Arya, she knows she will never win this battle with her daughter, and truly, she does not wish to. But Catelyn still will try to put into her head all the good manners she can manage.
She glances beneath, at Nadja talking with Jon Snow, happy and enthusiastic about something. She can't help how her face hardens at the sight, and as if alerted by some unatural sing, Nadja is taking him away from her gaze. She was always her siblings', since that first night when the wolves answered to her crying and Nadja would not feed or stop crying until her brothers were carrying her in their little arms. Catelyn always had the irrational fear that one day the pack would take her baby away.
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