Author's Note: Originally this was intended to be a stand-alone one-shot, but I still had so many swirling ideas. It only made sense, to me, to have this part be from Catelyn's point of view, although it was more difficult as she's by far the more complex, subtle, and nuanced character. Plus, she is of course my favorite so I wanted to get her right! Hopefully everyone will enjoy!

Disclaimer: All characters, settings, and themes are the property of George R.R. Martin. This work is recreational and no profit is being made. The beginning lyrics are from 'While We Have the Sun' by Mirah.

Lady Winter

Part 2: Catelyn

Let's take the time to walk together while we have the sun
You never know when temperamental weather's going to come

One.

They dance from one pool of sunshine to the next, the light peering through the lazy branches of the tall oaken trees that hang overhead like a canopy, one that smells of fresh, growing things, and it is easy to believe that they will be young and happy forever.

Catelyn keeps her hand wound through her sister's, pulling her along, and Lysa holds her skirts with her free hand and follows. She is used to her sister being a step behind, she is used to being the one to lead, the bold one, the brave one; Lysa learned how to walk by pulling herself up on Catelyn's skirts so it is as natural as being, for them.

Their joy is short-lived, that day – they traipse through the brushes unmindful of the burrs on their dresses and sing a bawdy song played at feast the night before, and they sing loudly enough that their septa hears and gasps her horror at such highborn ladies spewing such filth and they must be punished.

Catelyn is first and she does not weep when their septa hits her with the crop on the back of her legs, though she knows her thighs will be black and blue the next morning. She is the eldest; she must be the example, her father and her uncle and her septa tell her, and Catelyn recites their family words to herself as she is hit, family duty honor reminding herself of her duty to be strong for her sister. She bites the inside of her cheek and is silent but remorseful as befitting a Tully girl, lowering her eyes.

Lysa weeps enough for the two of them, anyway, covering her face as Catelyn receives her punishment and then wailing when it is her turn and the septa delivers three sharp blows to Lysa's legs as well. Three for Lysa, four for Catelyn who should have know better, and Lysa collapses into a heap, her skirts around her, when it is done, her face pressed to her knees in her pain and shame.

She is still young, Catelyn thinks, and she has time to learn duty.

Dry-eyed, Catelyn kneels next to her sister, gently drawing her towards her so that Lysa falls against Catelyn's lap instead, her arms around her sister's waist and Catelyn winds her fingers through the auburn hair that matches her own. Her sister is small, still, her arms with the chubbiness of first youth and her hair softer than the feathers in her pillow.

"It's all right," she soothes with a gentle voice that she remembers her mother using, what little she remembers of her mother before she grew ill and visits grew infrequent. "Don't cry. You must be a lady."

"She is horrid," Lysa sobs, and her fists clutch at Catelyn's skirts as they had since the day she came into the world, always grasping for purchase.

"We won't let her bother us," Catelyn says firmly, her fingers smoothing the tangles in Lysa's hair. "We shall…make up our own language, and then she won't know what we say and she won't punish us."

Lysa lifts her head at that and her eyes are bright on Catelyn's face, wide and innocent and full of hope, and excitement at the prospect of shared secrets. She is young, and easy to tears but easy to comfort, as well, and she seeks a soothing balm for her hurts. "Just for us?" she demands, and her hand is still clinging to Catelyn's dress.

"Just for us," she promises, and it's right, she thinks. They are sisters, they are born of the same rivers, and they should have secrets and they should share, and Lysa's smile is bright as sunshine again, her upset forgotten and healed, and Catelyn feels a swell of pride. I can help, she thinks, and she holds her sister close. I can help her and she will learn.

Two.

They come one day, with their banners of white and grey, and Catelyn watches their approach from her bedroom window with Lysa at her side, their skirts pressed together as Lysa sits on the sill and rumples her dress and Catelyn stands tall and straight and ready.

A credit to our house, her father had said and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Family duty honor, you must be a credit to our house, and so Catelyn stands tall and Catelyn stands steady.

"Will they speak to me, too?" Lysa had asked with her hands clasped behind her back so demurely as her maid had coiled Catelyn's hair, braids and twists and loops and a ribbon of Tully blue to set off her eyes, her maid said.

"Mayhaps, my lady, Lord Stark has three sons. Perhaps your lord father will seek one of the younger for you."

Lysa had frowned at that, and though Catelyn sat silently, her eyes went accusingly to her, your fault. "A younger son, that would mean I'd be lady of a northern holdfast, yes? And Cat would be Lady of Winterfell?"

"Aye, Winterfell rules in the North," her maid replied cheerfully, and she did not notice the flash in Lysa's eyes, but Catelyn had, though it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined the storm in her sister's bright eyes.

"Father will look for a higher match for you than a second son," she says now in either case, as they see the Stark banners on the horizon, and she knows she does not imagine the tug in the corner of Lysa's mouth, a satisfied smile, and her fingers curl into Catelyn's palm as the grey and white grow closer until they are upon them.

She stands in the hall and feels Lord Rickard's cool grey eyes scrutinizing her, the way her father would examine new horses for the stables, and it is much of the same, she knows. Her septa has prepared her, he will wonder if she is fertile, if she is strong enough to stand the unbearable cold of a northern winter, if she can sew and dance and sing and run a household, if she will be a proper wife for the future Lord of Winterfell. Catelyn is quiet as is expected of her but tries with her posture and tilt of her chin and eyes and smile, tries to say yes, yes I am enough, yes I am strong.

Lord Stark nods and her father's hand is squeezing her shoulder fondly, familiarly, reassuringly, she has done well and he is proud.

Outside her sister runs and laughs with Petyr, pulling him through the godswood as Catelyn would pull her in days she is told she must leave behind, and inside Catelyn stands and does her duty and does her best to look demure and presentable, and to be a credit to her house.

Lysa comes to dinner with dirt on her dress and Petyr has a tear in his pant leg, and even little Edmure has a flush to his cheeks; they are children and Catelyn feels a pang of longing as she sits at the high table with her lovely dress and elaborate hair. She so longs to be a proper grown lady, like their mother was, like their father tells her she must be, but is it difficult when old men sit on either side of her and talk of things she does not yet understand. She must be the lady of Riverrun, her father tells her, but she envies the earth on their fingers and between their toes, envies their laughter and the sun on their skin.

They are young still, and free, and she sees days spent laughing and running slipping away from her, and does not know if she should reach out and grasp for them desperately or let them slide on.

She had asked her septa why her intended-to-be would not be accompanying his father to Riverrun, and her septa had laughed at her. It is not the way of the world, she says and she touches Catelyn's hair, and says he will come next time.

Next time, she had realized, sullenly, next time if she passes muster, for Lord Rickard would not consent to a betrothal before seeing the Tully girl, and it does not matter to anyone what Catelyn thinks of Brandon Stark, anyway.

Lysa flounces into her room later that evening, her arms crossed over her chest and this dress, at least, is clean and so the envy is abated. "She was wrong, no one spoke to me, the entire time, not one of those northerners. I was invisible."

Catelyn unlaces her dress and rubs her fair skin where the boning has left angry raw marks; her maid had pulled the ribbons so tightly that morning to better show off a narrow waist and the swell of hips. She thinks of Lysa and Petyr and Edmure with laughter in their voices and the wind in their hair, she thinks of cool gazes that look only for fault and for reasons why not, and she thinks that maybe there is a joy in being invisible.

Lysa falls to the bed with a frown and a furrow in her brow, and Catelyn stands, and tries to be a credit to her house.

Three.

She feels the ache in her legs, the give, when she finally moves to sit on her bed, and she smoothes her skirts over her knees and though she is clean and dry she imagines them splattered with blood, with redness and dampness running between her fingers. A bath, she thinks, she winces, and she stands to call for her maid, a bath will help, will cleanse blood and thought and guilt and leave her fresh and new.

Her ears are still ringing from the crash of swords and this is not play, this is not a game in the godswood, why is this happening and she covers her ears as she sinks down into the water's warm embrace, as though she can block it out, as she had not downstairs, family duty honor, she had watched it all.

The waters soothe her, as they always do, though a bath does not hold the same soothing pull of resting on the bank with her feet in the rivers outside, but she is able to close her eyes for a moment, close her eyes against Petyr's pleading gaze on her, desperate, and what had he expected, what had he thought would happen?

She sees it behind her closed eyelids as she tries to forget, the flash of the sword, the twist of her stomach as she thought Brandon forgot, he forgot his promise, and there had been so much blood, blood on the stair and on the blade and in the water and on her hands and in her mouth and no, she is just biting her cheek so that she is quiet and still.

Her door slams open and Catelyn's breath hitches in surprise and she grasps for her robe with fingers that tremble still; but it is Lysa, only Lysa, and she is grateful for that, she thinks, until she sees that Lysa's eyes are red and raw, her palms curled into tight fists at her sides, and her lips tremble with words yet unspoken.

"Why did you let them?" she demands, and her voice is thin and high as a reed, a plucked lute string, and Catelyn feels a flush of anger in her cheeks. She had hoped for kindness, for understanding, for at the very least the simple comfort of her sister's presence, she had not thought of angry words and blame, I have enough blame for us both, sister.

"Let them?" she echoes. "I let them do nothing!" And her anger bubbles in her chest, her fingers clenching now at the rim of the tub, none of them had listened to her, she had told Petyr he was being foolish, that he would prove nothing and win nothing and he was doomed to lose anyway, she had begged Brandon, pleaded for him to ignore Petyr's demand, cajoled her father to intervene, for her uncle to give council, and her wishes and pleas and demands had fallen on deaf ears none of them listen, none of them.

She asks her septa why her betrothed to be does not come, she touches her hair, that is not the way, Catelyn, it does not matter what you think, Catelyn.

Lysa does not have this churning, Catelyn knows, this desire to move mountains and to move men's hearts and thoughts with her words, Lysa turns her face to the sky and lets herself be led, by their father, by their brother, by Petyr, and takes it in with wide-eyed wonder while Catelyn longs for something more, for something real and something her own. But the world powers on, her pleading falls on deaf ears, it is as though she has never spoken at all.

Lysa's mouth trembles but her eyes have gone damp and soft and she approaches her sister, finally reaching after a long silent moment for her hand. "I tried to make him stop," she says rawly, mournfully, and Catelyn is not sure what she means for Lysa had stood silent and shocked with eyes wide in horror as they fixed on Petyr Baelish standing there with a sword in hand. As though a battle could win Catelyn's hand, could win her heart, as though they were simply prizes for a tourney and never belonged to Catelyn, herself, at all. "I did…I thought…"

But what Lysa thinks, Catelyn never knows, and after little enough time their father sends Petyr Baelish away. He mutters at the table, about ingratitude and wretchedness, and Lysa's fingers shake as she sips from her goblet, and then Catelyn does not see Lysa for a matter of days, either. She returns with shadows under her eyes and nail marks on her palms, but shakes her head at Catelyn's touch on her shoulder.

Catelyn is silent; after all, it does not matter what she thinks.

Four.

Catelyn is the brave one, they say of her, Lysa is sweet and shy as a budding flower and Catelyn is brave, and she is strong, and if ever she wishes to weep, she instead bites the inside of her cheek to ribbons, be brave.

They practice the ceremony in the sept the day before the wedding, when the last rays of sunlight are scrambling for purchase, as they used to do in their youth. But it is real now and Catelyn can feel Lysa's pulse thud in her throat as she mimes fastening the bridal cloak about her sister, and she squeezes her shoulder tightly, be brave.

"Are you not afraid?" Lysa asks her, her voice hushed as her face is bathed all the colors of the stained glass windows, and her palm is hot and damp in Catelyn's, as though the woolen cloak of Arryn is already settled on her shoulders in the sticky summer heat, already boiling her blood in a fevered madness.

"No," Catelyn answers after a beat, because they say she is the brave one and she must do her duty and be as they say. And truly, she is not afraid. Eddard Stark's eyes are cool and solemn, not dancing and wild like his brother's, but they are not cruel, they do not hint at a wish to do her unkindness, and she does not fear him.

It is the shadow of war, on her heart, she thinks, of marriages forged for steel and sword. It is the gloom of looming womanhood and the threat of widowhood. It cuts softer than terror, it is a pull in her chest, a flutter of longing for days with her feet dangling in the river, of the mud thick between her toes and the breeze warm on her face, of flowers in her hair and grass on her dress, and she goes to kneel before the Maid for the last time and wishes to be young forever.

Lysa watches her from afar, the dying light casting strange shadows on her face, making her seem wrong, distorted, and Catelyn tries to blink away the foreboding. "Come into the light," she calls, and Lysa kneels hesitantly, reluctantly at her side, and keeps her eyes on her lap while Catelyn closes her eyes.

"The North is so cold," Lysa says, and it echoes off the stone walls, and her voice sounds like a warning, a threat, a promise. "You'll hate it, you'll die the first winter."

"No, I won't," she keeps her eyes closed and her voice is steady and her heart is sure. "I will be its lady."

Her husband to be (Ned, he said to call him Ned though there was no warmth, only courtesy, in his voice when he did so) is so young to be so serious and somber, and he is so different from the man she had thought to marry that she must carefully rearrange her future in her mind's eye, must make space for what is left, but it has always been the North, it has always been Winterfell that she was meant for. I am a southern girl but I am destined for winter.

The days have been marred with tragedy and there is a promise of more ahead, and she opens her eyes and stands to move to the Warrior now, and prays that this Ned Stark does not meet his brother's fate. She does not know him but she could be a good wife to him, she thinks, she has been raised for no differently, and perhaps that is for the best. She could be a good wife, and perhaps one day she would grow to love him, and perhaps he would even love her back, someday, in a future she can almost but not quite see.

"What are you praying for?" Lysa calls softly from her spot by the Crone, wisdom, fortitude. Catelyn wonders if Lysa prays for these gifts, or if perhaps she is seeing the face of her own husband in the lines weathered into the marble, for their father said good, he said honorable, he said strong, but Lysa whispers in Catelyn's ear old, dust. She wonders if Lysa spares a prayer for Jon Arryn, leading a rebellion because he would not send his wards' heads to his king, or if she prays for an escape, instead, if good and honorable are no more than sour promises to her.

Catelyn opens her eyes, lowers her clasped hands, gazes upon the sword of the Warrior. "For peace," she answers honestly, "and for something more than swords."

Five.

They do not know her here, this court where she was last Catelyn Tully of Riverrun, and they give puzzled glances at her dark northern-cut gowns, at her unbound hair loose about her shoulders. Here her sister wears rose pink, butter yellow, the soft colors of the newly come summer with her rich auburn hair in complex braids wound about the crown of her head, and if the Tully sisters looked as mirrors on the day of their weddings, there is no mistaking them any longer.

Lysa drips in emeralds and sapphires cold and bright as her eyes; she has always had a taste for sparkling baubles and now she has no want of them. She is second lady of the court here, honored only behind the queen, and Catelyn can see the pride in the tilt of her chin and the wave of her hand.

Pride but no joy, she thinks as Lysa offers her a cool cheek to kiss upon her arrival to King's Landing and stares at her with eyes like chips of ice off the Wall, as if Catelyn does not quite belong, though it had been Lysa's words to draw Catelyn south. The rebellion is put down and summer is here, she writes, and your company would give me solace as we wait for the return of our husbands, sister.

She had hesitated to leave her babes, Robb growing so tall already and Sansa weaned and walking before she can believe it, and her hopes high for another now that the fighting is done. But the people of Winterfell love them as their own children, and the journey will be brief with the victorious army marching for the capitol, the Iron fleet smashed. Lysa's ravens are fresh on her mind, triumph as she writes of her pregnancy and the ink splotched in the next as she writes of her loss, and Catelyn could not refuse her sister's plea.

But her presence at court seems to offer Lysa little comfort, and there is a cool note to her voice that is foreign to Catelyn when her sister introduces her to the lords and ladies of the south. "My sister, Lady Catelyn," she says, as though Catelyn has no title or home of her own, as though she is at court on her sister's mercy now that she has risen so high in the world, and perhaps that is what Lysa thinks, or perhaps that is what Lysa wishes. The lords and ladies bow their heads to the wife of the Hand and Lysa glimmers, she gleams at the honors they bestow upon her, but she does so like the rivers frozen over in Riverrun, like a cold dead thing.

It is a veneer, pretty and false, across the court of King Robert, across Queen Cersei's lovely visage, across her sister's eyes of Tully blue. And Catelyn had once thought she would never long for the wild North, but she does, for it is raw and real and the hot springs in Winterfell fill the castle with life and warmth and her children's laughter fills it with love. She closes her eyes and she sees the gleam of Robb's blue eyes as he receives his first wooden sword, his hands far too small, she thinks, to wield any weapon; she sees Sansa grasping at her skirts with a chubby baby fist the way that Lysa had once done, pulling herself to her feet with her mouth set and her skin whiter and more pure than a winter snowflake; she sees Ned, his eyes soft in a way she did not know they could be, would be, that day in the sept, his fingers in her hair to draw a lock over her shoulder with a tender touch.

Catelyn longs for home and for something real.

Lysa was born for this, the songs and stories she had loved with stars in her eyes, the glamour and the finery, the milk bathes and gentle smiles that mask false eyes, the flattery they pile upon her in hopes of winning favor with her lord husband, Hand of the King. But Catelyn sees the cracks, sometimes, in Lysa's reflected face in the gilded mirror, the twitch at the corner of her mouth, a grimace, a frown as she adjusts a costly necklace around her neck.

It is a sway, a give, but when Catelyn asks, tentatively, after Lysa's health, her sister meets her gaze in the mirror with eyes a thousand leagues away, a wide chasm between them that Catelyn cannot begin to think how to bridge. She is the Eyrie, Catelyn thinks, she is the Eyrie high on a mountain locked behind stone walls, beautiful to behold but impenetrable.

She kneels next to her sister's chair, reaches for her hand, and Lysa does not pull away though her fingers are cool in Catelyn's, not warm and tight as they were the day before their weddings. "I had thought to bring you comfort, sister," she says, and she cannot keep the sorrow from her voice, she is the elder, she should be able to heal her sister's hurts, as she once did in their childhood, Lysa's head in her knee and her hands on her skirt.

She remembers Lysa's eyes, so sweet, so shyly glancing up, so full of hope and dreams and laughter and song, and could it really be those eyes, the eyes of her sweet little sister, that stare at her so coldly, now, with such distaste and bitterness? "How could you bring me comfort, Catelyn?" Lysa asks, her voice no higher than a whisper, her words not accusing but simply flat, simply this is how the world is. "How could you possibly understand?"

Catelyn has no answer, then. Perhaps she never had the answer.

Lysa pulls her hand back; she pulls away and away.

Six.

He is only a year old, but Catelyn can tell that this babe, her sister's only living child, will not live a long and healthy life, and something inside her breaks a bit at the thought as Lysa holds him fiercely in her old bedroom of Riverrun, holds him to her as if she could forever.

Little Robert Arryn sits on his mother's lap, his head resting on her breast, his eyes large and startled in his pale and thin face. He is quiet and still, regarding Catelyn with wary eyes, and he looks no bigger at a year of age than Bran was the day Maester Luwin laid him in her arms for the first time.

"Isn't he beautiful?" Lysa fairly sings, and it is the first time Catelyn can remember hearing her sister happy in far too many years, perhaps since the days of their youth, the years of misery wiped clean off her face and her blue eyes vibrant, the sister Catelyn remembers from her youth, laughing and jesting in words that belonged to them alone. "Isn't he the most beautiful boy in the world?"

"He is beautiful," Catelyn echoes and she whispers a silent prayer to the Mother above. Let him grow stronger, let him live and let him grow, let him have half a dozen brothers and sisters each stronger than the last. Let the light in Lysa's face this day last for all her days, with her days of sorrow and blood and loss behind her.

She touches a curl on little Robert's head, gently smoothing it back, and Lysa watches her with distrustful eyes that could make Catelyn laugh. I have four of my own and tended Edmure much the same, she could say, if she were not reminded that all her sister's labors and all these years had only brought forth this one fragile child, heir of all the Vale, heir of all Lysa's hopes and dreams, and so Catelyn respectfully withdraws her hand and Lysa's face clears.

Her hands are gentle, so gentle, when she places Robert in his cradle, and Catelyn watches with fascination. It is a new Lysa, the mother, and there is a softness to her that Catelyn thought long gone in the sharpness of womanhood and courtly ways. She is the woman Catelyn had thought she would be, had hoped she would be, when she stood at Catelyn's side in the sept with eyes full of sorrow but with still a small gleam of hope. It will be better when the babes come, she had whispered to Catelyn, her eyes full of questions and wariness, and Catelyn had kissed her cheek and nodded. Yes, it will be better then.

Lysa moves to the window and the summer sunlight lights upon her face, reflected off the rivers of their childhood, and it makes her eyes so very blue and illuminates the faint lines starting in the corners of her eyes, at the edge of her mouth. She is not a child anymore, in this room that was always hers, and neither is Catelyn, and a smile spreads across her face in this moment of peace. See how far we've come, she wants to say to her sister. All the war is finally over and all is finally well.

"Perhaps Jon will die, now that he has a son," she says, and she watches the rivers, and there is such a callous coldness, such an indifference to her voice that Catelyn catches her breath and takes a step back in surprise, staring at her in shocked silence.

"Lysa," she says when she finds her voice, staring at her sister's profile by the window, with who are you, who have you become thudding a refrain in her head, "that is a wicked thing to say."

Lysa had knelt next to Catelyn in the Riverrun sept ten years past and prayed dutifully for victory for their lord husbands; Catelyn had knelt alone four years past and prayed desperately for Ned to come home to her whole, and Lysa's prayer now, in a peaceful glow of summer sunshine, tastes like ash, like things ill done. Jon Arryn is old and not the man her sister hoped for in marriage but she knows him to be kind and honorable, choosing to give battle for what is right when others would have chosen a far less dangerous path, and her words sound like a dark curse.

Lysa's eyes are almost wild, the sunlight splattered across her face like the graze of a fire when she turns her face, her hands gripping the sill. Catelyn remembers seeing the grey and white banners approach, seeing the litter bearing Petyr roll away, seeing the glint of swords raised in rebellion against a mad king, all from that window with her sister's palm in her own, and today she keeps her distance.

She flexes her fingers and feels the emptiness, the spaces between them.

"I am young," Lysa reminds her fiercely. "Young, and I have a son and I can have more sons. He will have the Eyrie, and I could have my choice of husbands, handsome and wealthy and they would adore me." Her eyes are far away, she is the heroine of her fairy tale, surrounded by suitors who would beg for her favor, and Catelyn sees the fantasy on her foolish face, oh Lysa. On still nights she still hears the clash of Brandon's sword against Petyr's, and warring suitors are no fairytale, battle is real and messy and no one wins, in the end.

She feels it then, the divide, a wider chasm than it had been in King's Landing, the split of north and south, of castle and court, of love and sour resentment, an ache to the bone worse than the most frigid winter wind upon her cheek. When has she grown so cold? Catelyn wonders.

She is the lady of Winterfell, the lady of the North, but it is her sister who is carved of ice.

The Final Discordance.

She stands in front of her sister, dressed in a gown of grey trimmed with white fur and a trout clasp on her travel cloak, all Stark and all Tully, and Lysa wears all white, innocent as a maid. I know what I am, Catelyn's clothing says, and Lysa's says nothing at all, she is a blank slate, she is loyal unto herself. She stands in front of her, and Catelyn knows she shall never meet her sister again.

Perhaps they shall come together again, Arryn and Stark, but she sees the last bits of Lysa Tully of Riverrun, her sweet little sister, eroding away like a storm worn stone, and she knows not the woman who will remain if they should cross paths again. She is lost, behind those pale blue eyes that flash with anger and sorrow and malice and wild joys, all in the span of a heartbeat. She is being poisoned, poisoned from the inside out, and Catelyn wants to curl up and weep for the loss of her, so much slower and more painful than a life silently extinguished as their mother's was.

"Let me take your boy with me," she offers suddenly, a pang in her heart for the poor sick creature, stifling under her sister's fear and choking in her protection. "To Winterfell. The air is fresh, and he'll have my Bran and Rickon to play with. The company of other boys will do him good."

Lysa raises her eyes, and the change is so sudden, so monstrous that Catelyn barely has time to blink before Lysa is upon her, her hand snatching her wrist, nails biting in so that Catelyn winces and tries to draw back, but Lysa's grip is like an iron vice; it is as though she is holding on for dear life.

"You would like that, wouldn't you, Cat?" she spits, and there is such viciousness in her eyes that Catelyn draws back a step. "To steal my baby, steal my child, you take everything." And Catelyn wants to demand what she has taken, what she has done to her sister that is so terrible as to warrant such bitter spite, but Lysa presses on and presses down, pushing Catelyn backwards. She stumbles, she is taller and older but Lysa is heavier, her sorrow and loss and madness made into a cloak of flesh to try and shelter her.

"I will kill you," Lysa vows, but at the very least her voice trembles when she does so, perhaps there is a shred of regret for the threat. "Sister or no, if you try and take my child I will throw you from the Moon Door." And she presses again, and Catelyn steps back, and fear grips her heart in a vice as she searches for a sign of her sister in those Tully blue eyes, and finds none. She could, Catelyn realizes, and her heart flutters like a wild caged bird in her chest, she could throw her from this mountain and that is the danger of the Eyrie, no mess, no explanation, she would just snuff out of being as if she never were in the first place.

"Lysa," she starts, "I am your family," and her voice cracks a bit, and she hates it, because Catelyn is the brave one, they say, but of all the dangers and evils lurking in the shadows (winter is coming) she had not thought to look to her sister for them, she had not thought to see it in the face that once mirrored her own.

Lysa blinks, and she releases Catelyn, suddenly, like an angry wave that breaks on a shore, but her eyes still seethe, they still accuse. "You are no family of mine," she declares, her voice thick and her eyes filling with tears, and Catelyn blinks, shouldn't she be the one crying? But no, it is always Lysa, always Lysa who is in need of comfort and always Catelyn who keeps her eyes dry and forges on. "And you and your companions shall leave my home now, Lady Stark."

She watches her sister walk away, to lock herself in a castle in the sky while Catelyn meets the wages of war again, and she knows, then, she knows that they shall never meet again.

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