Hi! This is a modern day au that will eventually be Jon x Sansa, basically just more fluff and harmless teenage/young adult angst, no character death or anything like that. However, a few pointers to give you a better chance at following and enjoying the story:

- There is reference to and a scene at the beginning where unwanted advances are made towards Sansa, I'll try not to make it too explicit, but if that's a trigger, then here's the warning that there is non-consensual touching concerning Sansa and our mystery character (shouldn't be too mysterious) and it is mentioned throughout the story.

- There will be no action or detailed, intricate plots, just us waiting for Sansa and Jon to get together and watching every one's lives unfold, crash and get built up again. Promise some laughs and aww's.

- Unlike most modern day fics on here, I've used the British schooling system, which I'll explain for non-Brits now as best I can:

- From ages 3-11 we stay in Primary School and leave at the end of Year Six

- From 11-16 we attend Secondary/High School, and leave either soon before we turn 17 or just after we turn 16, and sit our GCSE exams in 8/10 subjects of our choosing where the highest grade is A* and then leave at the end of Year Eleven.

- Then from ages 16-18 we go to college (for more vocational courses like mechanics, hair and beauty, plumbing etc or to re-sit exams) or to sixth form, where all my characters go, for a more academic route, and study for our A-Levels (Advanced Levels) in subjects such as Accounting, Maths, Biology etc.

- Then after sixth form, off to University where you collect your degrees, which I assume is similar to other educational systems.

- In the UK we class our students a bit differently. So say someone is born in 1999, after August 31st, they'll be in the same year/grade as someone born in 2000 before August 31st, as our school year typically starts on September 1st.

- This is getting really long now, sorry, but I just want to get this all out of the way.

- Most of my characters are in Uni, and I'm still in High School, so obviously my depiction of University life will be quite inaccurate, wildly inaccurate even, and I will place school breaks where they probably don't happen, and focus more on social life rather than what is taught in classes. Sorry if this bothers anyone.

- And lastly, Jon's life as a medical student will be made much more relaxed in this fic than it actually is, as I need him to have more free time than medical students really get. Do not read this and think life at University and more specifically studying medicine is this easy.


Friday 10th May 2013

"Well done, Miss Stark," he crooned, his eyes twinkling unnervingly. "We can all learn a thing or two from our lovely Sansa Stark."

Sansa blushed at the praise, ducking her head to avoid her classmates envious glares. Political Science was a tough course filled with ambitious go-getters as it was, having the professor constantly and sometimes unfairly favour her above every one else made Sansa no friends in this particular class and once rumour got around, anywhere. It was all right though, it was her first year and Robb had assured her things would get better. And she had made a few acquaintances in her psychology classes, which was her main degree anyways, political science was just something to keep her mind sharp. Still, Uni had proved to be very different to sixth form. Extremely different to high school. In both, Sansa had shone; she aced all her classes, was well-behaved and well-liked and always had a secure and loving friendship group. One that she made during the very first weeks at each establishments. It was always Fridays, when she had no psychology lectures or seminars, that she missed Margaery most. At sixth-form in the Vale, the two had been inseparable from the very first moment they met, and stayed that way the full two years, celebrating both their seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays wildly together. They were meant to do the same for their twenty-first. The idea didn't seem too likely, what with Margaery now doing her Business Studies Degree all the way in Lannisport, while Sansa had cowardly decided to remain in the Vale. She could never afford to go to Lannisport anyways, she'd tell herself in moments of doubt, not without dipping really deeply into her inheritance that she didn't get for another two years. Unless she got a full scholarship. Which was also unlikely, as Tywin Lannister, current Head of the School and the most influential person on the Board of Governors—the man who made Lannisport great again, Sansa echoed without even realising—hardly ever gave out partial scholarships, never mind a full one. So Sansa opted to stay comfortably in the Vale, thinking she'd have all familiar faces around her.

Ironically, most of her old friends had gone to Dorne or Highgarden for University, longing for some sun and tanned men and more miles between them and their overbearing, Westerosi parents.

"Class dismissed," his voice rang throughout the room and was met with several chairs scraping backwards.

Like all the other students, Sansa hurriedly made to leave, idly wondering whether she'd already bought salmon for dinner or if she'd planned to buy it now, on her way home. Then cursed herself for forgetting she had a shift at the local hiking goods store and should've chosen much more sensible shoes to work in rather than the red heels Margaery had bought for her that she'd worn to feel closer to her best friend.

"Stay behind, if you will please Miss Stark?" Her professor asked. "I'd like to go over some extra work with you."

"Of course," she replied, but groaned quietly, knowing that the mere thought of her being pushed ahead by the professor would ruin all chances of ever making friends.

He didn't look at her until the last person had been gone for fifteen minutes and Sansa was now very tired and irritable. Her phone had vibrated four times already and she was really eager to phone the person, who she knew was Margaery, back.

"Sir?" She said somewhat awkwardly. The title had taken a while for her to get used to using for this particular man.

He glided towards her with ease, standing over her by the desk. "Miss Stark. May I call you Sansa?"

She rolled her eyes. "You've known me for years now, I think we're on a first name basis."

He laughed and the sound prickled her skin. "You look lovely today, Sansa. Red certainly is your colour."

It certainly wasn't. Red suited her well enough, but she really flourished in either blue or black. Still, she accepted the compliment gracefully. "Thank you."

"Such smooth skin. Pity weather in the Vale never allows you more chance to show it off," slowly, he ran his fingers up her arm, fingering with the material of her red button up shirt.

Uncomfortably, she shifted away. They had known each other a while, yes, but this wasn't an appropriate way for him to behave, despite them being kind-of friends. "You said you had extra work for me, sir?"

"Please Sansa," he drawled. "Call me Petyr."

She remembered her mother telling her to call him Uncle Petyr, as that was the respectful way for a child to address their elder. "Petyr," she said. "Where's the extra work?"

He didn't answer, and when Sansa was about to move away fully, flee the classroom then call her mother, he lunged at her, pressing his lips to her neck. She protested, attempting to push him away, her heart beating rapidly. "There's no extra work, Sansa. You know that."

His tongue nipped at her skin, making it crawl. "Get off me, now," she tried to sound intimidating but it came out more pleading.

"For nearly a year you've been all alone here in the Vale. All your friends gone, your aunt and uncle away, your parents in the North," his voice scratched her skin, and she frantically tried calming herself down, chanting that Petry wouldn't hurt her, he was her uncle for Pete's sake, her mother's best friend. "We have a connection. All the students see it, it's why they don't like you."

Faintly, the realisation that he'd purposefully isolated her from the rest of the students, dawned. Her mind was racing far too quickly for her to also realise this meant he'd planned to seduce her. To rape her.

"Get off me now," she warned, her voice meek and empty.

He didn't listen, only planted dry kisses up the length of her throat. She didn't physically fight back. She forgot herself. Who she was. Her name, even, as Petyr reached her coated red lips and shoved his tongue between her teeth. Later, she would curse herself for not biting it. His hands roamed her form, and it scared her to think she was just allowing it to happen. His touch was not violent so she prayed he would stop at kisses and touches. His hands cupped her face and she sighed in relief when his lips left hers.

"You do want this, Sansa, don't you?"

She stared into his eyes, seeing her flushed, frightened face reflected in them. It sparked her back to life. Abruptly, she kneed him in the groin. He bent over quickly, hitting his head on her desk. She leaped away from him and ran. The halls were deserted, save for the odd teacher. Good. She fell to her knees by an old oak tree, hidden in the woods. The stories her father told her off Heart Trees when she was a child spun in her head. Anything to take her mind off him.

Hours later, still deep in the woods, her red shoes muddied and broken, she found she still couldn't shake the ordeal from her thoughts. The paralysing fear she'd felt when his arms wrapped around her waist, how strong he was, how hard it would've been for her to fight him off. She hated herself for being so weak. She'd just stood there as he progressively violated and disrespected both her and her parents. If he hadn't have stopped, she might've let it get further. She might've—No. Sansa refused to think on what might've happened. She focused on what had and how she would fix it. They'd only kissed. Well, he'd kissed her. She just had to pretend it hadn't happened. Go home, wash—thoroughly—watch a film and forget about it. Forget that he'd obviously been planning to do things with her for months. Forget that she'd been around this man her entire life. Forget all of it. And wash.

That night, she scrubbed her skin raw.

~xx~

The next week, nothing had changed. She still had no close friends, wore drab brown clothes, and was picked on by Petyr. He never touched her again. Probably guessing that it would end his career if he were to. But he still favoured her in class, sang her praises obnoxiously loud and let his eyes linger far too long. Sansa saw no escape. She couldn't go home, to all the questions, to her parents who'd only let her come so far for school because Lysa and Jon lived in the area. She'd be back in Winterfell, attending Uni somewhere in the Neck, feeling twelve years old. She couldn't go to Margaery as the girl wasn't here anymore. Even her Uncle Jon whom she had grown to trust was away for some sort of couple's counselling with her aunt. So for three weeks, Sansa went through life barely even there, feeling like she couldn't confide in anyone as it wasn't so serious. It wasn't as if he'd raped her or anything. They'd both been fully clothed. Yet she couldn't stay, as seeing him every day made her stomach clench tightly. Sitting in his classes made her anxious and sweaty and at her flat she had no distractions, only an empty room where she contemplated her life so much so that it became nothing.

When Margaery showed up at her last class on Friday, demanding to know why Sansa had seemingly dropped from the face of the Earth, she couldn't help but break down in tears. Petyr, seeing the commotion, rushed out to help. His finger made the lightest touch on Sansa's back. She recoiled from it and sobbed harder and Margaery guessed exactly what had happened.

~xx~

"He raped you," Margaery stated lowly.

"No he didn't."

"What did he do that's made you like this, then?" She demanded. "You haven't spoken to anyone in weeks, Sans, and Myranda's told me you've been missing assignments and getting B's on tests. B's."

"I want to leave," Sansa said. "I can't stay here anymore."

"Because of him? If he touched you, he's in the wrong, Sansa! You can't blame yourself, he's old enough to be your bloody dad!"

"He never touched me," Sansa said. "He . . . Flirted with me."

Margaery was severely unconvinced. "Flirted?"

"He kissed me," she admitted bashfully. "And held me."

Not wanting to push her friend too far, Margaery pulled Sansa into a hug. "Was that all?"

"He—he," her lip quivered. "He told me we had a connection," she burbled, tears streaming down her face. "And he picked on me in class so the other kids hated me! And he was the one who suggested a couple's retreat for my aunt!"

Once she started, she couldn't stop, and the words came tumbling out. Everything Petyr had secretly or directly done to her to ensure she was vulnerable enough to fall for him. Seething, Margaery listened to it all, blaming herself for jetting off and leaving Sansa all by herself to deal with the creep. By the end of the night, Sansa was a wet heap, cuddled into her friend's side. "You can't tell anyone, Marg."

"He can get fired," Margaery argued. "Maybe not prosecuted, but he can get fired and and shunned by every decent person he knows," she urged.

"I said no," Sansa snapped. "Tell nobody. Not my parents, not Robb, not Loras, not even Jon fucking Snow," she raged. "I want to forget it."

"Fine," she sighed. "If you're really sure."

"I'm really sure. It's over now, I just want to leave."

That night, Sansa left the Vale for the Tyrell ancestral home in Highgarden, leaving only a letter for her Uncle Jon.

~xx~

Nearly two months had passed and Sansa was over the worst. Margaery had stayed with her for three days before returning back to her dorms in Lannisport. The three weeks alone in sunny Highgarden had depressed Sansa more than she could've ever imagined. People all around her were laughing and soaking up the sun while she moped in her atrociously large guest room and pondered over all the worst case scenarios of what could have happened with Petyr and her leaving the Vale. Her parents hadn't asked too many questions, only expressed concern and encouraged her to come home if she felt lonely. Bran offered her a bed in his shared flat with his friends Meera and Jojen, but she'd politely refused. Being alone, for some reason, was what she wanted. And in the long run, it helped immensely. She didn't feel the same as she had before Petyr or even the same as she had before starting University, but she felt much better, and could now laugh with people without trying, she smiled brightly and naturally, and wore any colour she felt like. Only red shoes would cause her to shiver and sometimes cry. She'd even become desensitised to his name, by saying it over and over and becoming friends with a boy who let her call him Petyr but was as opposite to the original man as possible. At least she'd learnt something from her psychology classes. It got much better when Margaery finished for the year and returned to Sansa. They toured nearly the entire Reach and went to a music festival in Dorne where Sansa socialised and felt like herself again.

"I like seeing you happy," Margaery said one day early in August. "I thought you'd always be sad."

Sansa shrugged. "Nothing even happened."

"Don't do that," her friend said sternly. "Don't underplay it. Sure, it could've been much much worse, but he still did things to you he shouldn't have. He emotionally manipulated you and purposefully made your life in the Vale horrible."

"Yeah but—"

"That would fuck with anyone's head. And he was supposed to be a family friend," Margaery's lips curled in disgust. "If only you'd let me tell Loras, he'd pummel the life—"

"Which is exactly," Sansa said lightly. "Why I don't want to tell Loras. Or anyone."

"I know. Let it die and all that."

"Precisely. I'm studying psychology, Marg, you should really listen to me on these things."

Margaery laughed and threw a cushion at her. "Seriously though, you're almost you again."

"Thanks." Sansa could feel it in herself too, feel herself becoming happy again. Not completely healed though, and that angered her beyond measure.

"I think you'd be happier with me at Lannisport."

"I can't go to Lannisport," Sansa sighed. "I've already told you this."

"Why do you do that? You're as smart as anyone in that place, it's more about hard work and dilligence than being a genius."

"I can't be that far away from home," she said.

"You're further away now. And it's not like you can go back there."

"I can go to King's Landing. Or Storm's End with Robb—"

"Or the Riverlands with Arya, I know," Margaery said. "But they don't know what's gone on. I do. I understand. Not fully, but it's better than nothing. And in Lannisport you'll be able to start fresh, no risk of him popping up or hearing anything about him. It's all about work at Lannisport, at the only guest professors we get are Tywin's kids or sometimes Stannis Baratheon," she enthused.

"I don't know," Sansa did know though. She'd happily go to Lannisport with Margaery but she'd already missed the deadline by pussyfooting around the situation and told her friend as much.

A smile cut Margaery's face in half. "But you haven't!" She screamed gleefully, brandishing a gold-tinted piece of paper. "I sent an application off for you weeks ago, but I didn't want to tell you until I knew you wanted to come."

"Wait. What?"

"You got in!" Margaery yelled, jumping to her feet. "A partial scholarship!"

Sansa couldn't help herself. "I got a scholarship!" She screamed. "To Lannisport!"

"We're going to Lannisport together!"

That night, Sansa phoned her mother, and they chatted for hours, like old times.


It gets happier and Jon comes in the next chapter, I didn't want to focus too much on the Petyr situation as it's sad and hard to write, but I didn't want to just gloss over it. Now Sansa's had some healing time, she's ready for school, even if there are a few lingering issues.