DISCLAIMER: Not mine :)

Ok, so here is the final chapter of The Cold Touch of the Void. It has only been a short story, but I am so glad that, after years of it sitting in my files, I decided to publish it. I hope you guys are glad I did too! It was very interesting to write a story that is not so much a story as an ending. I have a few more bits and pieces that may act as companions to this story, so if you're interested, keep an eye out. I really hope you enjoy the final chapter.

Over and Out xox

In the end, I could not slit your throat like some mindless butcher. You were not a bad dog, or an injured goat. You were my sister, once.

I cradled you in the snow, as you lay there bleeding, turning the pure, white snow a seductive yet strangely final red. I don't know why I was surprised to see your blood; you may not have been human, but the blood in your veins was the same as mine.

I wept then, I couldn't stop myself. As the snow fell lightly around us, nothing around us but sky and snow, I wept while you bled. But you smiled.

"I knew death would catch up to me at some point, brother," you said, grasping my hand. "He's been chasing me for 's why I am what I am. I owed him a debt." I could see your eyes turn hazy then, and I knew that you were slipping. "It's cold, Jon. So cold."

"I'm sorry," I heard myself cry, over and over. "I'm so sorry."

"Jon?" I felt your hand on my cheek. It was warmer than before, though now you were dying.

"I'm here," I whispered, pressing my forehead against yours.

"I missed you, big brother."

I knew you were gone when the sky cleared up.

The rain stopped, and became light snow, and the sky tuned soft blue again.

That, and the fact our brother came in carrying your body.

I remember falling to my knees, sobs wracking my entire body, unable to think, speak, breathe. You'd been dead for years, I think, but now... now you are truly gone.

Well, not entirely.

The night we buried your body, so tiny and innocent in death, the wolves came back. A whole pack, with Nymeria leading them... but it isn't Nymeria really, is it?

It's you.

Her eyes aren't black anymore, but a stormy grey, and in her I can see you. When I asked Bran about it, fearing that your death had driven me mad, he told me it was a strange sort of magic. That those who were such a part of the world leave an imprint in it, like footsteps in the snow.

You didn't stay long, or she didn't. It was as if you were forgiving us, staying just long enough to let us know that. You were gone by the morning, leaving nothing but tracks behind you. I hear you howling sometimes at night, when the moon is full.

It's been years now, and my children play in the crypts as we once did, telling tales about Aunt Arya, the wolf of Winterfell, the wild spirit who roams the North in the form of a giant dire wolf.

But sometimes, if I close my eyes and sit really still, I can still see you. See you running, laughing, playing in the halls of the place you once called home. Other times it is more difficult.

I know that Jon still suffers everyday for what he did. His hair is almost white now, his face as lined as my own, his eyes just as haunted, and I know that he'll never truly forgive himself. He visits your resting place most nights, just staring into the stone face that is somehow softer than I remember yours being in life. And slotted in the hand, is Needle.

When its really dark, and there are no stars in the sky, no moon to light the earth, I remember you. When a gust of icy wind makes my old bones rattle, I remember you. When I look in Jon's eyes... I remember you.

But all that you ever really left behind, however fleeting, are foot prints in the snow.