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[tooktheblack]

The door to Westeros was unassuming and like every other door in the hotel but Jon found that he always knew where it was and how to get it to open so it wasn't a broom closet and it was a way back home. He had been tempted a few times but had never ventured more than a few steps, just satisfying himself with the crunch of his boots against fresh-fallen snow. Today, though, he meant to go further.

Ghost was restless with having been cooped up in the hotel for weeks and while neither of them had liked the heat of the island, there had at least been the jungle to explore and hunt. The places the hotel led were stranger still and none of them that he had found so far had the kind of place he felt comfortable letting Ghost roam in, except one: Westeros. The North had always been his home and after Winterfell, the Wall and Castle Black had become as much a home as a bastard boy would ever have. It was dangerous to go back there considering his own men had tried to kill him but he thought he might journey to one of the other castles, one long abandoned due to simply not having enough men to garrison it.

Rimegate and Sable Hall were far enough away from the manned castles to be safe enough and would provide shelter should the snows grow too deep. Jon wasn't in fear of that. He was well-acquainted with how to survive in the North and knew how best to keep himself safe and warm should a storm come up. It was here that he felt more comfortable than anywhere else - be that the hotel, the island or somewhere in between. It was here that his purpose lay.

"Come, Ghost. Let's go home for a little while and see if anything has changed."

[Find Jon at the open door that leads back to Westeros, which is very snowy and cold at the moment.]

Comments

[tooktheblack]

"Most of my life," Jon agreed. He was much more comfortable out here in the woods than inside the hotel but he also knew the hotel held other advantages; nobody in the hotel knew who he was or felt the need to bury a knife in his back because he was lord commander. The hotel was safe, in the way the island was safe, but the hotel did not have his brothers or nephew.

While he wished there was a way back to the island he thought that door would be closed to him for forever now. There would be no going back to that world now and there was nothing to do but press on.

"I held my first sword at seven. I drew my first bow when I wasn't much older than that."

[genetic_deadend]

Leah wasn't sure it was the same thing but then again, Jon was probably the most honest person she'd ever met. "All right, well, I'm just saying, if this deprives me of my sex life I'm kicking your ass," she quipped, trying to make a joke out of it. "I guess I'm ready if you are...I mean, I'd rather not strip down in the hallway. The clothes don't shift with me and I'd rather not rip these shorts. They're comfortable."

[shes_biochem]

Simmons sometimes wonders if she could have been a similar prodigy if she had been weapons-oriented, but her only interest lay in designing them. "There's someone I work with who seems as though she's done the same. I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite as talented with a sword as she is," Simmons raves. "Though I obviously can't compare the two of you objectively without a platform of set areas to assess," she says, drawing his coat tighter around her as they walked. "Perhaps I'll do something like that," she muses distractedly.

[tooktheblack]

"Test how I am with a sword?" Jon said, wondering if that would be worth the time spent. He had never been terribly academic about anything, though he knew there were others who might have an interest in such things.

"You could, if you wanted. I don't know how interesting it would be."

[tooktheblack]

"After you, my lady," Jon murmured, motioning at the open door. "I will be happy to carry you clothes until such time as you may need them again."

It was a bit sarcastic, yes, but Leah always brought that out in him and he liked giving in to that biting edge of his wit; he spent too much time being serious by far.

[shes_biochem]

"Well, I could judge your movements based on the optimal range of motion using the principles of physics to improve lethality, speed, and..." She pauses, smiling ruefully. "Or maybe we should just focus on exploring and I will try not to work today," she says, because that does seem like the better idea, right now.

[tooktheblack]

"Up until a year or so ago, I devoted every waking moment to my duty."

After having been on the island some months, Jon had finally realized there was joy to be found in seeking one's own pleasures and desires and not pushing them down in service of a higher authority.

[shes_biochem]

Simmons stops for a moment, processing the words and making a deduction. By the time she actually is sure of it, she has to pick up the pace and nearly run after him. "What happened a year ago?" she asks curiously. "If you don't mind talking about it?"

[tooktheblack]

"I realized I was trapped in a situation I could not change," Jon said, quirking up a little smile.

"I also fell in love. Both of these things contributed to the fact that I sought out pleasure and joy in something other than my duty for once in my life. I came here from an island that...trapped its residents and did not allow them to leave. This is the first time I have returned home in two years or so."

[shes_biochem]

Simmons rubs at her palm, which is a nervous tic that someone is going to notice one day. She really needs to work on not being so obvious. "Falling in love can be a wonderful thing," she opines, following him and offering a smile of her own. "It's only a shame you couldn't have the best of both worlds."

[tooktheblack]

"No, that was not meant to be. I have a duty here that I neglected," Jon said, lips turning up in a half smile.

"And I betrayed my vows. While I can visit here, I do not think I will ever come back or seek out a life here. I am much happier with Leah back in the hotel even if I do miss the snow."

[shes_biochem]

Simmons had taken her own oath, but she knows that if Fitz were in trouble, she would probably stuff the oath because it didn't matter when the people you loved were in danger. True, she hadn't exactly told him that, but she likes to think she will one day. "Leah?" Simmons pokes. "Who's Leah?"

[tooktheblack]

"My love. She came here with me from the island. That is one door that I have not been able to find again."

Jon did not understand that, considering this hotel had doors to every other place he could imagine, but any attempts to find his way back to the island and to his brothers and nephew had been fraught with frustration. He could not find the door he sought, no matter how much he wanted to.

[shes_biochem]

Simmons wouldn't mind an island. After all, it would be nice to have a little getaway, but she honestly doesn't think she'd want to go there unless she had Fitz at her side. "Well, at least she's here with you," Simmons opines, teeth chattering as she tries to acclimate to the cold. "Is it always like this here?"

[genetic_deadend]

"You're such an ass," Leah grinned, walking through the door and into the crunch of snow. "Oh, okay, cold," she hissed. The island had gotten her really used to the warmth, apparently. She glanced around quickly to make sure it was just the two of them--well, the three of them, counting Ghost--and started to hop out of her shorts and strip off her tank top so she could shift. "You really hung out in this all the time?"

[tooktheblack]

"Yes. Summer never comes to the Wall, though sometimes it gets warm enough that a little of the ice will melt," Jon explained.

"Winter will last for years. We do not know when it will end."

[tooktheblack]

"It was my home," Jon said sincerely. "So, yes. I prefer the cold." He had missed the snow and ice of the Wall, even if the two years he spent on the island had been a nice respite from freezing his nose off.

"There are ways to keep warm in the North, Leah. Many ways."

[shes_biochem]

"Years?" Simmons replies, her mouth open. "And here I thought a long winter in London was something to get in a snit about," she jokes dryly, though her smile twitches as she knows it's not her best material. "How can that be climatalogically possible? Winter shouldn't last that long. Unless you're from a different planet," she says. "Maybe you're an alien!"

[genetic_deadend]

"You hittin' me up for sex, Galahad?" Leah quipped, even as she tossed her shirt and shorts at him.

And, because she felt pretty stupid just standing naked in the snow, she was quick to shift. It was was an odd feeling, since she'd been on the island for over a year, but at the same time it felt annoyingly natural. Like coming home.

Leah snorted and shook out her fur, digging her paws into the snow to get a feel for the terrain before she padded over to Jon and whined softly, bumping against him with the top of her head.

[tooktheblack]

"It has been this way ever since I have been alive," Jon explained. "The maesters say that it hadn't always been that way, that the seasons may have something to do with the Doom of Valyria but that happened a world away from Westeros. I am not sure how it would affect things even still."

He kept his steps in a narrow path. "Step in my footprints, there will be less snow that way. I was born in winter, I am used to it."

[tooktheblack]

"Not right this moment," Jon said, laughing a little. The laugh died in his throat as he watched her shift from woman to wolf, dark hair and coppery skin changing into the soft gray fur of her wolf form.

"You're beautiful," he murmured, scratching his fingers just behind her ears the way Ghost often liked to be petted. "And I feel I am at a disadvantage with two born hunters by my side. I will sound impossibly loud in this forest with my clumsy human feet."

[shes_biochem]

Simmons has basically decided in her head that he's an alien and nothing is going to distract her from this thought. She follows behind him, but she does pop down to scrape a bit of soil into a little bit of folded up paper to be analyzed later in a private lab. She wants to know as much as she can about this odd world, no matter how she has to do it.

"Well, I was born in London," she jokes, "so if you give me a grey sky, I'm genetically programmed to cope with it with tea."

[tooktheblack]

"It would not be a bad way to cope. The nights grow cold," Jon said, smirking slightly. "And a hot drink makes it pass easier. We drink mulled wine on the wall to keep our blood from freezing."

There had been many nights where he thought that he would, in spite of heavy furs and built up fires but even Castle Black was luxury compared to being beyond the Wall.

[shes_biochem]

"Maybe if we ever meet up again, I can bring you to the bunker to even the playing field," she says, whispering excitedly (whispering because she thinks she might have to because otherwise, something out there in the winter might hear her). "They have mulled wine and cider," she lists, straightening up and trotting after him akin to a puppy.

[tooktheblack]

"The bunker? Where is this?"

Jon had heard of many other strange places during his time on the island and prided himself on a little familiarity with all that once seemed so strange to him. No longer did he frown in confusion at phones or computers and places like California and England and Australia all made sense to him in some ways.