Clara froze as Robb turned to her, his voice as thick as it was that day.
"What?" Her heart pounding now, she must have misheard him.
"Not once... Because I knew... I knew you were dead. I saw it... with my own eyes as you fell into the sea."
The siblings both shook their head, one for his shame the other for her disbelief. He never looked for her. That hurt, she hated to admit it but it did. She beat the beach for weeks, with and without Eleanor's men. She would sit on the shore, watching the water hoping he'd wash ashore. Why didn't he look for her? She watched as tears worked into his eyes.
"I never prayed for you... Not once. Because if there are gods out there, if they exist at all... I absolutely hate the fuckers." He said and Clara felt her own tears. "Robb...." She said, as his tears fell then. She wanted to move to him, hold on to him but she couldn't move, she'd been here, just where he was, where nothing seemed real.
"I hate them Clara... cause they took you away from me." He said and she closed her mouth. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but he wasn't. She wasn't Clara Snow, not anymore, at least not entirely. They did take her, and they took him from her too.
"They took you, and mother, and father! They took Bran and Rickon, they took Sansa, they took Arya, they took Jon!...." He then turned, for all his rage, and took it out of her furniture. Her writing desk, upturned, her inkwell slipped onto the floor, seeping into the carpet. She didn't flinch, she wasn't afraid. Not really scared her anymore. She looked over at the desk, remembering there was something in the contents. In the bottom drawer was parchment, she'd dipped her quail pen into the inkwell that was her heart and scrawled it upon the pages. She wouldn't show him, not now, he was much too raw, maybe not ever. She never expected him to read them, but she wrote to him, nearly every day, in memory.
"I'm sorry Clara..."
He said and she looked back at him, his storm calmed for the time being.
"I don't know what I have left... I don't know who I am anymore..." He said and she walked up to him, taking his face in either hands and lowered his forehead to her lips.
She dropped her hands and looked at him. " When I was small, I was so sick, all the time." She said, her lips dry from emotion. "I was never able to leave my chambers. my bed even. Breathing hurt." She said, she could still feel the pain in her chest. "My earliest memory was a red haired boy, sneaking into my chamber, when he thought I was asleep, he wasn't allowed to see me, his mother didn't like me much, and thought my illness was catching, but he came anyway." She said, and her smile was sad as the memory played in his mind as clear as hers.
"I remember thinking his hair looked like the sunset that I could see outside of my window." She chuckled then, through her tears.
"He would in come for a moments at a time, and I would pretend to be asleep. He would sneak over to me, and place his finger under my nose to see if I still drew breath and then leave." She said and looked at him.
"To this day, I do not know why he knew to do that but he'd always come in, so much so that one night, I decided, I wouldn't pretend anymore. I would see him. Speak to him." She said,
"I asked him who he was, and he told me...." She said and smiled up at him, reaching up and touching his face, her thumb brushing his fiery beard. Her amber eyes finding his icy blue ones, both glossed with tears.
"So I'll tell you now, what he told me...You are my brother." She told him. "Do you hear me, You are my brother, Robb, Flint, no matter your name....Our brother told me that," She said, still unable to speak Jon's name. She took his head into her hands again, "Snow or Stark, Robb or Flint, You are my brother, and I am your sister, that's all that matters, That is who you are, and I am what you have." She told him. "Even if you don't come into my chambers, whilst I sleep to see if I yet breath...but you might...you always did"