Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire. This story follows more the chronology of the show, but different parts of the books are brought in as well. It's basically my idea of what could happen in Season 6. It will mainly follow the Starks and the North, but I may bring in other storylines as well. So far the main characters look like they will be Jon and Sansa, but it will follow any alternating viewpoint of many characters, like the books.

The first chapter picks up right after the end of the last scene of Season 5, with Jon Snow bleeding out alone in the snow.

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Edd

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The first thing Edd Tollet knew upon waking up was that it was still night, and therefore bloody cold.

The second was that Ghost, Jon Snow's white direwolf, was frantically tugging at and licking him, keening piteously.

A freezing wind was howling in from the open door. The other men around him lay snoring, buried under mountains of fur and wool blankets. Only one candle was lit, guttering worryingly next to the Arndel.

"Cor, can't a man get a decent night's sleep even when the world's about to end," he grumbled, digging the sleep out of his eyes and sitting up. He froze, gaze narrowing when the young boy, Olly, Jon's steward, came through the door. The kid's eyes were dark and his hands were still slightly bloody.

Ghost growled low in his throat, menacing and feral, and Edd was up out of his bed in a second, making for the door and throwing on boots and a heavy cloak as he went. He turned back only to grab his sword, and then he was hurtling down the rickety wooden stairs of the steward's tower and out into the freezing night air of the main courtyard. The wind tore through his thick sleeping clothes like they were made of paper, and froze the moisture in his eyes. He wiped his already running nose.

Across the courtyard were sputtering torches, a crude sign of which Edd could make out no words, and a dark shape lying still in the snow. Ghost, always quiet, was crouched over it and clearly trying to howl. Edd pushed himself faster, stumbling and tripping until he fell at the side of the Lord Commander.

Jon's eyes were blank and open; filled with horror and grief. Blood still seeped into the snow, black in the flickering yellow torchlight, and when Edd reached out a hand, he was still warm to the touch. A sign with a crude rendering of the word 'traitor' was hammered into the ground by his head.

Edd opened his mouth, but only a faint croack came out. He felt suddenly cold, as cold as when the Wights and their masters, the White Walkers, froze the very air at Hardhome. But this time there was no Jon beside him.

Jon was gone.

And then he turned his head and saw Olly standing on the steps of the steward's tower, saw the blood on his hands, and fury rose within him.

"Murder!" he screamed, "Murder!" His voice rent the still, dead air. "They have murdered the Lord Commander!"

Ghost found his voice, and for the first time Castle Black rang to the howls of a direwolf.

Men came pouring from the dark stone towers, holding bare steel in their hands and rubbing sleep from their eyes. Edd looked for the ones who were more awake and found what he was looking for on the faces of Bowen Marsh and Alliser Thorne, just as he suspected.

He hauled himself to his geet as his brothers came towards him, aware that his knees were covered in Jon's blood. His shaking hand pointed towards the First Ranger and the First Steward. "You fucking bastards," he snarled. "You fucking traitors. Oathbreakers!"

"Hold your tongue before your superiors, Steward Tollett," snapped Thorne.

The handsome, young prostitute, Satine, who had come in with the last batch of recruits, was crying silently. He bend down over Jon and gently closed his eyes.

The knight, Davos Seaworth, King Stannis Baratheon's man, pushed through the growing crowd of angry, restless, muttering black brothers. The man did not look well; his beard was matteted, dark circles were under his eyes, and his clothes had not been changed for several days. The Night's Watch all knew how he grieved for the Princess Shireen, but the gossiping and fearful whispers, placed her death not at the hands of the Boltons, but rather at those of the Red Woman, the fell Red Sorceress from the east, who had been given rooms in the Commander's own tower. That had set the black brothers towards whispering even more.

But in any event, no one had had the nerve or heart to tell Davos Seaworth about their suspicions; they had merely left him alone in his vain belief that Stannis Baratheon would one day marched along the King's Road towards Castle Black if he just waited long enough.

Davos Seaworth looked from the Lord Commander's body to the sign, to the half-clad men surrounding it. "Who was a part of this?!" he yelled, in his coarse, rude accent; a pirate, and no true knight at all, as Thorne kept reminding them all.

"You're a traitor and a coward, Thorne," Edd said now, coldly. He gripped his sword tightly, raised it to point squarely at the First Ranger. "And you'll get the justice of the North. I'll do it myself," he promised.

Thorne didn't say a word, merely gave him a contemptuous look, but the First Steward looked almost green with sudden fear.

"Let's be rational about this," Bowen Marsh said, placating. "We have no idea who did this, and no sure way of finding out. I assume no one else was here to witness, besides those who did the deed?"

The muttering all around them had not stopped, but rather grew in fury and intensity. "The Lord Commander's dead," ran the whispers. "Just like the Old Bear," still more whispered back.

Toad and Big Jon and Jace from the Fingers, Corath a ranger from the Shadow Tower who had followed Jon at Hardhome, and Hobb from the kitchens, pushed through and stood behind Edd, hands on their swords, and forming a loose semi-circle around the body of their former Commander.

"He deserved it," Olly piped up from behind Thorne. "He was a traitor." The boy's voice was filled with loathing, and Edd reflected sourly that no good deed goes unpunished. Jon should have sent the boy packing, not kept him with the Watch. The child was consumed by hatred.

"He allied with those northern barbarians, and he was planning to make a move against Roose Bolton in a couple of weeks. He was no Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. He broke every vow he ever swore. Our job is to defend the wall. That is our duty, our only duty. We were honor bound to take action." Thorne's voice was stern and utterly uncaring.

And he was making some valid points, curse the Seven Gods, and the Old Gods before them.

"What would you know of honor, Thorne?" growled Davos Seaworth.

"So, you admit your treason, First Ranger of the Night's Watch?" demanded Edd. His hand was going numb and his arm was sore, but he refused to lower the sword.

The men were all watching each other warily now, hand son their weapons and mistrust shining in their eyes. The muttering grew louder and the fighting would start soon, brother against brother, as they tore themselves apart looking for traitors.

One of the builders, Long Arn from King's Landing, broke away and attempted to run – to where Edd did not know. Nor did he care.

"Ghost," he said, and the direwolf moved, men diving aside to let him pass. He was upon Arn in a flash. The man didn't even have time to cry out before his throat was torn away.

Bowen Marsh's voice rose plaintively above the resulting din. "But we have no proof of who was involved."

"We will if we torture it out of the boy," yelled another voice, clearly indicating Olly. Edd thought it was old Dywen's.

"Ghost knows," Satine said, quietly.

"Ay, that's true, said Toad. "That's what Sam would say if he were here," he said approvingly, referencing their absent friend, Samwell Tarly, the big fat coward who had been the first man to kill an Other in a thousand years. Sam was on his way south though, to become a Maester in Old Town before returning to the Watch. Jon's death would destroy him, Edd knew. They had become as close as brothers.

Thorne sneered. "A wolf has no say in who's guilty or not. No trial would be decided on such evidence. You're talking nonsense, you little whore."

There was angry muttering from some of the men, and Satine turned faintly pink.

"You're in the North. Justice is decided differently here, Throne," grim Torhen from the Vale of Arryn snapped. "Or did you forget that, considering you've never been north of the Wall since your First Ranging."

"The beast should be put to death, now that the bastard's dead," Thorn continued, ignored Torhen. Several men nodded along with him, but most others watched the First Ranger with mistrust.

The sun was glinting on the horizon now, lightening the shadows in the courtyard. The torches around Jon's body were sputtering and going out, leaving the world in gray shadow. The air was no warmer though, and soon the men would begin to get frostbite. Edd's fingers were numb and red.

There was a restless, waiting silence, broken only by the strong wind from the North, as the men of the Night's Watch contemplated the white direwolf. Ghost had returned to Edd's side as though declaring his support for the beleaguered steward, and bared his blood teeth at the circle of watching men.

The sun broke through the clouds and over the walls of Castle Black. Jon Snow had set the Builders to repairing every inch of the southern walls over the past several months, even making them higher, like the walls of a proper castle, and their work was almost completed. The scars from the Battle against Thormund Giantsbane were almost gone – deep though they had been.

And now the Wildling chieftain was on their side. His men had killed Green and Pyp and forty-eight other brothers, and now they fought together.

Or so Jon said, but the Night's Watch obviously disagreed considering that they had murdured him.

'I always get stuck with the shit,' he thought, gloomily. 'Some people get to be peacefully dead, and I have to make a choice that'll get me knifed no matter what I choose.'

He looked down at Jon again. The Lord Commander didn't look peaceful though. He just looked…..dead.

'Probably just as much work and bad choices wherever he is now,' Edd thought, morosely, 'and they'll have invented a whole new category just for me by the time I die. Knowing my luck, instead of freezing, I'll be burning, and there'll be dragons everywhere.'

"Jon Snow and Ghost were linked," Satine spoke up again. He was loyal to Jon unto death it seemed. Death and beyond.

"Skinchanger," muttered an old ranger. "That's what they call people like him north of the wall."

"The Stark boy was a skinchanger," another man spoke up now. "His wolf was a part of him, and he was a part of it. That is not just a wolf."

"He was not a Stark, he was a bastard," Othell Yarwyck spoke up, the contempt clear in his voice. "He had no honor, he proved that by allying with the Wildings!"

"He damn well had more sense than you, Yarwyck!" shouted Davos Seaworth.

"He had Stark blood," shouted another man. Edd thought he came from the Umbar lands. Edd was not a northerner himself, but he knew how deep the loyalty to the Starks ran in the north. The vast majority of the Night's Watch men who came from the North had stood behind Jon Snow since the moment he had been elected Lord Commander. "There's strength in the Starks. And that wolf was his. You leave it alone."

"They called his brother the Young Wolf, those Norhtmen of his," shouted a voice Edd did not recognized from the back. "They say he rode to battle on his direwolf, and that the little lame lord, the brother, could run with his wolf before he was killed by Theon Greyjoy."

'Bran,' Edd thought. Jon had told him once that the Lannisters had pushed him from the walls of Winterfell. He wondered how much blood a family could spill before the gods were satisfied.

"Skinchangers are only old wives tales!"

"The Wildlings fight with them!"

"The Wildlings are godless heathens!"

"Spoken like an ignorant southerner!"

"The only thing north of the wall now is the Army of the Dead!" Edd shouted over all of them. Toad bellowed for silence. "We've seen it," Edd went on, "those of us who were at the Fist of the First Men and at Hardhome. We've seen it, but not all of us have been there." He fixed a baleful eye upon Thorn and Marsh and Othell Yarwyck. "You have not seen what's out there, you have not seen the true North, and you do not know what's coming for us all. And you killed the one man who had a chance in all Seven Hells of preparing us to face it." His voice rose until he was shouting.

"You stupid fuckers!" he roared. The men nearest him flinched.

"Seize them," he ordered, reaching out to grab Thorn himself. "Seize anyone Ghost points out and lock them in the cells. You!" he pointed at the young, brown-haired man who had spoken of the dead King in the North. "And Satine. Bring the Commander's body to Maester Aemon's old rooms. Send a messenger for Maester Torwick from East End. He's currently inspecting Queensguard, and can be here in several hours. The Commander's body needs to be prepared."

Starks were buried in the Earth beneath Winterfell, Edd knew, but Jon Snow had been a bastard and a brother of the Night's Watch. The Black Brothers burned their dead, like the Wildlings they had fought for thousands of years.

Edd pushed and shoved Alliser Thorne before him, down into the tunnels beneath Castle Black, and three him into a cell. The tall old knight cursed him, and spat at him. "You'll rue this day, Tollett!"

"I rue every day," Edd told him. "And every day I continue to see your traitor's face, I'll rue it even more."

Fighting broke out in the courtyard above him. Edd heard dim noises of shouts and screams, the clash of steel, and above that, the howls of Ghost. By the time he reached the courtyard, a dozen men lay dead and several others were wounded. Davos Seaworth limped towards him. "Several of the men tried to fight their way out," he explained, and Edd nodded. He wondered if he should have expected that, and if so, what he could have done to prevent it.

Toad was one of those who had been slain by his brothers.

Seaworth leaned closer to him. "You'll lose more men soon, if you don't take control."

"And how do you suggest I do that," Edd said, sarcastically. "Like as not we'll all get murdered in our beds tonight." But he raised his voice and started insulting all the men, cajoling, weedling, talking about their imminent death at the hands of the White Walkers, or the Wildlings, or the Boltons, or even each other, forcin Hobb back to his kitchens, assigned the new man, Gendry, to the forges after he had moved Jon's body, because the man said he had some skill with iron and steel. He harangued and yell at all the men until they helped him carry all the newly dead to lie in the barracks, which were empty.

And listen to him they did. Maybe it was because they were all tired and afraid, and he was loud. Maybe it was because he had been Jon's friend. Maybe it was because Ghost stalked by his side, refusing to leave him, and Davos Seaworth enforced his orders without question. But listen to him they did. The rangers even went north to collect wood from the Haunted Forest for the bonfires of the dead.

That night the Officer's table was empty, and Edd ate at his usual spot, with Gendry on one side and Davos Seaworth on the other. Of the Red Sorceress, there had been no sign for days, not since she had returned to the Wall prior to word of Stannis Baratheon's defeat at Winterfell.

Men had been trickling back to the Wall in ones and twos since then – soldiers and Free Swords in Stannis' army. They had no where else to go. The only king left was Tommen Baratheon, but House Lannister was thousands of leagues away, and not likely to pardon them. They were surrounded by hostile Bolton men to the South, the Greyjoys to the west, and unfriendly Northern lords everywhere else. The ships Stannis had borrowed from Braavos had long since departed. Stannis had meant to return home by way of the King's Road and King's Landing, as the sovereign of the Seven Kingdoms. And now no one would go home.

Near 500 had made it back to the Wall, almost all on foot. They seemed content for the moment to obey Davos' orders, but some of their few lords were looking mutinous, and Edd knew that Jon had planned to do something with them, and soon. And now, so must he.

Hobb gad made a plain meal today, out of respect for the dead, but it was still nourishing; beef stew with carrots and potatoes, thick slices of black rye bread, and fried fish, which caused his mouth to water.

Probably his last meal. 'Hobb's feeding us up for the slaughter,' he thought, but miraculously managed not to say it. Ghost had finally left him, and was keeping silent vigil by Jon's side. Edd eyed the division between the paltry remnants of the Night's Watch and the Baratheon soldiers with annoyance before turning to the young man besides him.

"Gendry, is it?"

Gendry abruptly stopped eating like a starving man, and Davos, on his other side, snorted.

Edd looked suspiciously between them for a moment. "Where are you from, Gendry?" He watched the stranger carefully.

"King's Landing, originally," the boy-man said, carefully. "I was part of the party that left the City just after the Hand – Lord Stark – Lord Eddard Stark, was beheaded."

"We heard that Yoren was dead," Edd said. Gendry explained how he had died, and most of the recruits with him. Then, he said, he'd hid in the Riverlands awhile before making his way North via White Harbor and House Manderly. "I heard that the Manderlys were friends of the Watch, and very loyal to the Starks, so I figured they would help."

"Heard from whom?" Edd asked, suspiciously.

Gendry shrugged. "People. Just people. I've no love for the Starks, but they always supported the Watch and….I've nowhere else to go."

Davos was studiously not looking at either of them, his salty, craggy face attempting nonchalance, and Edd knew he was missing something, but couldn't see what. "And you were trained in King's Landing?"

"Yes, by Master Mut, a famous armorer."

"No family?"

"Mother's dead. I never knew my father, but I heard he's dead too."

Seaworth looked like he was fighting back another snort. Edd decided he was really better off not knowing. "Well, you're in the forge since Noye is dead. It's not as grand as being a master armorer, but whatever you're running from won't be as bad as the White Walkers, so you'll feel positively safe here."

The only request Gendry made, was to never be in the presence of the Red Woman, he had as strong mislike of magic. Edd didn't tell him that magic was everywhere.

Gendry cleared his throat. "That beast, the direwolf?"

"Yes?" Edd said, warily..

"All the Starks had one?" The young man sounded wondering and slightly fearful.

Edd frowned. "Jon told me there were six, one for each of his brothers and sisters, and him. But that was a long time ago, now." He stood up from the bend and gave up on his attempt to soften his words, even for new recruits. The world was about to end, and he had no time for stupidity. "The world is full of magic, recruit. Best you get used to it or you won't be able to tell the good kind from the bad."

The strange thing, Edd thought the next day, was how many of them seemed to turn to him for leadership. He was nothing – merely a steward, merely one of Jon Snow's friends – one of the only ones still left at the Wall.

But whatever it was that made some men follow blindly while others refused to follow anyone at all, that spirit divided the Night's Watch still. They needed to be reminded of their purpose, and they needed more help.

"Thieves, murderers, beggars and whores," he muttered to himself, as he sorted through Jon's paperwork. "Ay, we've got ourselves a proper army here." Jon's handwriting was as neat and precise as the man had been, and Edd had no trouble reading it. He flipped through them, noting plans for manning several of the other castles by using the Wildlings under Night's Watch Commanders. There were contingency plans if Stannis won the North or if Roose Bolton did. There were records on how to rebuild parts of the Wall and rotation lists for clearing the Forest away at the base, as well as a draft of a letter requesting more men – the defeated and injured and those who were said to have committed treason – from each of the lords of the Realm, great and small. One paper even suggested using the people fleeing north from the Boltons and from the destruction of the Riverlands to repopulate the Gift – well away from Wildlings.

Edd noticed his name on one of the papers, as the top contender for head steward of the Castles – Long Barrow – under Commander Iron Emmett. Iron Emmett had gone with Jon and Edd to Hardhome, he was a good man, and he would have to be, because Jon had planned to put the two of them in charge of the Spearwives, the women who fought in Mance Raydar's army.

Edd didn't know whether to be gatified or annoyed by the fact that Jon thought – knew – he wouldn't attempt to take advantage of those women; that instead he'd treat them just like the men.

"All those women and I couldn't touch a single one," Edd grumbed, "that's just my luck. What's more, I probably wouldn't want to touch one; they'd cut my fingers off and pull my eyeballs out and make a stew with it. Which they'd make me eat. If only old Uncle Allard could see me now, that rotten bastard. Rising up in the ranks – well, I was at least. May an Other take the old bastard. And Alliser Thorne too."

At last he found what he was looking for and left the Lord Commander's tower. He strode across the empty courtyard, feeling eyes upon him. Looking up, he spied a flickering light in the run-down tower and spied the Red Priestess staring down at him. Even from here her gaze made him feel like ants were crawling all over him, and he hastily averted his eyes.

The day was cold and clear, with the smell of snow on the breeze. The smoke from the kitchens rose up, black and smelling of venison – in honor of the Lord Commander's funeral.

Jon Snow would be burned this afternoon, along with the other dead brothers, following the ancient traditions of the Watch.

But the morning was reserved for justice, or what little of it could be found in this rotten world, and Edd had realized as he'd stood over Jon's body, that no one was left to carry it out but him. He thought about sending a raven after Samwell Tarly, calling him back to the Wall, but Jon and Sam were right; the Watch needed a Master at Castle Black now that wise old Maester Aemon had died. They needed a Maester more than they needed Samwell Tarly.

Edd just didn't feel like he was cut out to be doing any deep thinking, and deep thinking, he feared, was needed at the moment.

Edd strode through the door to the eating hall, making sure to bang the door as he entered. The men – both Baratheon and Night's Watch – quieted at once. Hobb and old Dywen sat at the High Table like he had asked. Edd went a stood at the place between them; the place where Jon should be standing. Edd drew the Lord Commander's valyrian steel blade, Longclaw, and laid the gleaming, naked blade before him on the bare table.

He turned to the Baratheon men. Most looked beaten and defeated. Many were still wounded, or gaunt from the unfamiliar, treacherous march back to Castle Black when winter was coming, and the winds howled down from beyond the Walll.

"Baratheon men," he began, attempting to sound authoritative. "You have a choice before you, and one that must be made today. You are not the Night's Watch, and therefore we can no longer feed and harbor you at the Wall; Winter is Coming. If you choose to remain loyal to House Baratheon, or your own lords, you must depart on the morrow. But you will be crossing hostile Bolton lands, and after that the war-torn Riverlands. Your ships have all returned to Braavos; you cannot return by Sea. I wouldn't relish your chances of making it back to the Stormlands alive. Or you can take the black and fight with us."

Edd looked around and knew that the Baratheon men didn't like either option, as he and Dywen and Hobb and several other long-time watchmen had discussed several hours before.

"Or"-

Edd took a breath to give them a moment to process their choices. Davos Seaworth had been a part of their discussions as well, and it was he who had come up with the proposal they had all agreed was their best option.

"Well, times are changing, aren't they? The Seven Kingdoms are torn apart, dead men don't stay dead but rise up to kill us, and we fight with the Wildlings now – against something that wants to kill us all. If the Night's Watch can work with our sworn enemy for the good of the realm-" Edd continued, loudly, over the muttering and grumbling from the men in black. "-we can work with you. Pledge your allegiance to the Watch, to the North, and them this war is done – the real war – and if we're not all dead, you will be free to return to your homes in the south and across the Narrow Sea, or wherever you want to go, once more. But if you say yes, you will be under our commander.

"The Night's Watch are fighting to protect all men, and all realms. If we fail, you won't have any homes to go back to."

He sat down.

Edd knew that the Wall needed men, as many men as they could get – from wherever they could get them. Jon Snow had been right about that.

The men still seemed undecided so Edd spoke again. "Yes, I know, we were all born in the worn time and we've gotten stuck with the shit. Personally, I never expected it to be any other way. But if we don't want to be running around and killing people even when we're dead, then we need to fight; we need every man to fight. So it's in your own best interest to join us."

Some of the men took their chances going south, but the vast majority, including the Storm lords who were left, and even some of the Queen's Men, stayed and swore loyalty to the Watch. Edd and Dywen, Hobb and Alan of Rosby, Ulmar, Sweet Donel and Davos Seaworth, were chosen as executioners.

"We do this the way of the old gods and the North," Edd told them, and he beheaded Alliser Thorne himself, with Jon's sword, Longclaw. "It's better than you deserve," he told the man.

"I'll come back as a wight and kill you, Tollett," Thorne swore, and Edd felt no need to tell him that they'd be burning his body with the rest, and not leaving him for the crows as some of the men had suggested.

Olly was executed by Dywen. "A boy who plans a murder is no boy at all," the old forester said, "but a man who made his own choices and must now pay the price for them." Edd forced himself to look, to watch through everything. 'I've seen far worse,' he told himself.

They burned the traitors separately, and no words were said over them. Maester Torwick arrived with Thormund Giantsbane and Sigorn, the new Master of Thenn. Edd thought that it was a good thing they had already executed the traitors for the fury on Thormund's face at the sight of Jon's still body was terrible to behold, and the Night's Watch, for the first time, realized that the Wildling Chieftain had considered Jon a friend, that he had actually been loyal to their Lord Commander.

The flames had taken Toad and the others, by the time Maester Torwick spoke the words of Jon. "…..And now his watch is ended."

The Red Priestess, her face a gaunt, white mask lit by burning red eyes, watched distantly next to Davos Seaworth as the first flames roared up around Jon Snow's pyre. Ghost, the pure-white direwolf with eyes even redder than Melisandre's started howling.

And then there was a scream, a woman's scream, from the opening gate of Castle Black. A young woman, Edd saw, on a tired horse, next to a hunched, dirty man with his arm in a sling, and a cast around one leg.

The young woman was lovely and tall, with auburn hair, but her eyes were wild with fear and grief. She threw herself off her horse, and ran towards them. The direwolf loped towards her.

"Get away from him," she screamed at them. "What are you doing?! Get away from my brother!"

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The next chapter will be from Sansa's point of view. This story will also feature Brienne, Alys Karstark, Asha Greyjoy and the Kingsmoot, Wylla Manderly, the Mormonts, the rest of the Northern Army, and as many characters as I can add.