Written for Day 3 of Jon x Sansa Fanfiction's 15 Days of Valentine's challenge.
Father Samwell Tarly was having a difficult day.
He'd been told by Professor Targaryen on his first day at seminary that a priest's work would never end or lack for challenges, and that had certainly proven true. As with every other parish he had served during his relatively short tenure in the clergy, Wintertown had its share of illness, poverty, and various other forms of human misery. On some days, he would visit half a dozen homes of people who were bedridden or depressed or otherwise in need of advice and prayer, and after that just as many rooms at the county hospital. On almost as many, he would fall asleep at the dinner table without so much as having taken off his collar for the evening.
But Wintertown, more than any other parish he had served, had also given him unexpected joys. His parishioners had initially been more suspicious of and less friendly toward him than had those to whom he had ministered in his two prior postings, but once he had won their trust, they had welcomed him warmly. The library at the parsonage put the collections at his prior parsonages to shame. And to his unexpected delight, Wintertown's congregation was teeming with young families. The parents were not so stubborn or set on having things done just as their prior pastor had as were some of the older parishioners Sam had encountered, and the children, to his great surprise, almost all took to him from the start – especially, for some reason, little rascals like Rickon Stark, who much to his older sister's horror had first greeted Father Sam while by tackling him into the mud and roaring ferociously because, he said, he was trying to greet the new priest like a propert northern direwolf.
No, Wintertown was by far Father Sam's favorite parish so far, and most days there gave him more than enough joy, or at least assurance that he had entered the right profession. Today, however, was not one of those days. It was the day of the week that he always had set aside to listen to the confessions of any parishioner willing to give them. This was not always a bad thing, for Wintertown was small, and sometimes the young priest would spend an hour or more reading one of the many volumes in his library while waiting for his next visitor. Today, though, he had a head cold and had awakened later than usual, and then only to the jangling of his telephone. Old Mrs. Mordane's husband was dying, and so Father Sam had no chance to so much as brush his teeth before he threw on his clothes and headed out the door. While at the hospital, he had encountered the Mormont family, whose youngest daughter, Lyanna, had just fallen from a tree and been brought into the emergency room badly injured. Naturally, Father Sam had stopped to pray with them. He was running over an hour late for his confessions by the time he left the hospital, but then his faithful old Ford Model B had finally given out a mile from the church, and he had had to huff and puff all the way there in the rain. When he finally arrived, it seemed that almost half the town had turned up for confession.
Father Sam spent the next several hours huddled miserably but faithfully in the confessional booth. By the time Miss Sansa Stark, none other than the previously horrified older sister of young Rickon, arrived to make her confession, he was hungry and thirsty, and irritated to boot. His irritation was increased, strangely enough, by the fact that he knew her confession would be boring, for Miss Stark was not much of a sinner. She taught the second grade at Wintertown's sole school, and students and parents alike loved her, for she was gentle and kind and always had a smile even for her most mischievous students. She had raised her three younger siblings singlehandedly after the deaths of their parents and elder brother in a terrible automobile accident, and by all accounts she did a wonderful job, Rickon's shenanigans notwithstanding. She even baked cookies for catechism class. And yet Miss Stark felt herself a rather sinful person, for every week without fail for the past year and a half, she had confessed that she struggled with lustful thoughts toward Dr. Jon Snow, the other half of Father Sam's biggest dilemma – and also Father Sam's only remaining parishioner still waiting to have his confession heard.
Father Sam had long suspected that most of the young ladies of Wintertown, had they been as sensitive as Miss Stark, would have confessed that they too had lustful thoughts toward the handsome young pediatrician. His black curls, piercing brown eyes, and brooding demeanor gave him the aura of a hero straight out of one of the historical novels that were all the rage among young ladies these days. However, he had never encouraged any of the young ladies in their affections; in fact, he had seemed more or less oblivious to their intentions. The only young lady of whom he had ever taken any real notice was Miss Stark. Father Sam was more keenly aware of this even than the most sharp-eyed of his parishioners, although it was obvious to more than half the congregation at this point, even if nobody spoke of it openly. It would not take a sharp pair of eyes, after all, to see the way Dr. Snow shifted that brooding gaze toward Miss Stark while singing a hymn, or to notice the way that gaze softened whenever he did so. Nor did it take too much intelligence to see the pink tint that spread across Miss Stark's porcelain face when Dr. Snow helped her into his automobile, which he used to transport the four Starks to and from church every Sunday, or when he let Rickon climb all over him and cover his nice clothes in dirt for the hundredth time and tell an abashed Miss Stark that really, it was no trouble at all. And anyone who could see out of one eye could also see the smile that lit up Dr. Snow's face every week when he helped Father Sam prepare for catechism class and saw Miss Stark walk into the room with her cookies.
Even if Father Sam had seen none of this, he heard plain evidence of it. For one thing, two of Miss Stark's three siblings, Miss Arya Stark and Master Brandon Stark, were old enough for the confessional booth themselves, and more than once each of them had confessed to wanting to smack their older sister over the head for being not only oblivious to Dr. Snow's affections, but also idiotic enough to believe she did not deserve such a fine man. Furthermore, every week like clockwork Dr. Snow entered the confessional booth and admitted to having lustful thoughts for Miss Stark. Father Sam would shake his head behind the curtain, for Dr. Snow was always quick to say he would take such thoughts to his grave rather than bother Miss Stark with unwanted attentions, even if those attentions were to take the honorable form of a request for courtship, or even a marriage proposal. In fact, when Father Sam would mildly mention that the kindnesses the young doctor bestowed on Miss Stark were evidence of care and generosity, not depravity, and even suggest that Dr. Snow might find his conscience relieved if he were to ask Miss Stark for a chance to show just how honorable his intentions were, Dr. Snow would only shake his head in that brooding way of his and remark about how much better Miss Stark deserved.
It was at those moments that Father Sam experienced some of his least priestly inclinations, for he wished then to smack some sense into the other man, or at least give him a fine scolding. On occasion, he had had the most wicked temptation to open his mouth when one of them was in the confessional and reveal the other's exact feelings. But that, of course, would be a violation of one of his most sacred duties, which was to keep his parishioners' confessions in the strictest confidence. Not even a judge or man of the law, even during the investigation of a crime, could be required to force Father Sam to speak of what Dr. Snow, Miss Stark, or indeed anybody else told him once seated in that consecrated booth.
This matter, however, was not a criminal one nor even a case of a mortal sin, and Father Sam had begun to wonder of late whether it would also be a sin to deny two people like Dr. Snow and Miss Stark their chance at finding happiness and love, which, after all, were two of God's greatest gifts to the human race. So when Miss Stark entered his confessional on that wet and miserable night and Father Sam heard the sound of tears creeping into her voice, his irritation fell away in a heartbeat, and in between the sniffles, he felt an idea begin to form at the back of his mind. By the time he had finished hearing Dr. Snow's weekly bout of sighing and self-loathing, it had become a plan.
A few weeks later, Miss Stark brought her usual batch of chocolate chip cookies to catechism class. Father Sam announced to his young students that this week they would be studying the subject of love. As Miss Stark and Dr. Snow, whom Father Sam had politely requested assist her, quietly set out the cookies at the back of the classroom, he asked his students to discuss instances of people around them showing love to each other. Young Rickon Stark immediately raised his hand, and Father Sam was only too happy to call on him.
Rickon rose to his feet and stood next to his desk. "My sister Sansa loves my brother and sister and me," he said, "because she cooks dinner for us and talks me and Arya out of fighting and takes us to see Dr. Snow when we get sick." Oblivious to the blush rising in his sister's cheeks, he continued. "And she loves Dr. Snow because she lets him read the books she borrows from the library and helps him smile when she brings us in to see him." Ignoring the identical flush that had swept across Dr. Snow's face, he said, "And Dr. Snow loves her. He opens doors for her, like a gentleman does, and says nobody is as intelli-intellectual and kind and pretty as she is. He offers to drive her home from school when the weather's bad. And he smiles at her when she's not looking. And I think he ought to marry her."
He sat back down, and Father Sam had to hand it to the boy for not grinning like a Cheshire cat at his sister and the doctor, who had each flushed a bright shade of scarlet. After perhaps five seconds, which seemed to stretch on for five years, Dr. Snow turned not just his eyes, but his whole head toward Miss Stark. Not one moment later, she mirrored his action. She quickly looked down at the floor, but a few seconds later Dr. Snow whispered something unintelligible, and Miss Stark looked shyly back up at him. He said something else, and she nodded and followed him out of the room.
Father Sam beamed at Rickon Stark and took out his Bible to begin the rest of the class. It opened to the spot he had bookmarked the previous night, and his eyes fell on the beginning of Psalm 8:2: "Out of the mouths of babes…".
One year later, Father Sam looked at that passage again and smiled. It was one of the Scripture verses they had chosen for him to read at their wedding.