"Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home."
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Sansa wakes to a hand covering her mouth, blinded by the always-on fluorescent lights. Whoever was there needn't have bothered. It had been a long time since something had truly scared her. She wouldn't scream. She hadn't screamed when her "boyfriend" had brought her to the roof and presented her with her father's zombified head, affixed to a pyke, rotting in the summer heat. She hadn't screamed when his mother had told her she'd never leave this building, that even though she was dumb as dirt her womb would be key in rebuilding the human race. She hadn't screamed when Tyrion (maybe the nice Lannister, but still a Lannister) told her that Joffrey's men had raided her family's camp and taken everything — taken everything except prisoners, that is.
They didn't get to see her suffer. She would bear it all with dignity. She would not look away.
But when her vision comes into focus, it's not Joffrey or one of his guards. Nor is it Sandor Clegane, who had promised to take her away somewhere safe, a promise made when he was covered in blood and with moonshine on his breath.
It takes a moment for it all to click. It's been years since Sansa has seen her half-brother, and he doesn't belong here. He should be dead, like Robb and her mother, and probably Arya, and Bran and Rickon too, wherever they were.
"You need to be quiet. We don't have much time," Jon says, releasing his grip on her mouth. "Where's Arya?"
Gone.
Sansa should have gone with her. Arya had it all timed out. The two of them were gonna walk right out the back door during a change in the guard. But Sansa had been stupid. " This is the safest place for us!" she'd told Arya at the last moment. "If you believe that, you really are an idiot." Arya had left angry, grabbing the gun she'd stolen for Sansa and grinding her teeth.
Sansa had all but signed Arya's death warrant. Nobody could survive out there alone.
"She escaped," Sansa whispers. Which is true, but far from the whole truth. In here, that's the only kind of truth Sansa knows.
Jon's face falls. There it is. Jon never would have came for just her. Not the spoiled rotten, haughty Sansa, who'd never been anything but distant to him. It was Arya who he loved, who he'd risked everything for. Sansa wouldn't be surprised if he turned around and left her here with the Lannisters.
But the moment passes and Jon nods. "We'll find her," he says. Sansa nods in agreement, even though she'd long since given her sister up for dead. It's the right thing to do.
Jon hands her a gun. Just like Arya had months ago. This time Sansa takes it.
It's been a long time since she felt the weight of a gun in her hand. She's been safe here, tucked away behind Lannister guards since Atlanta fell. Her father had tried to teach her when she was younger. Took her and Arya to the gun range with the boys one Saturday afternoon. Arya had taken to it like a fish in water. But the noise hurt Sansa's ears, so she'd never gone back. You really are an idiot.
Jon must sense her hesitation, because he pulls his eyebrows together in concern. "You know how to fire a gun, right?"
Sansa nods, because technically she does but mainly because she doesn't want to look any more pathetic than she already does, in her scrubs and slippers. "Point and pull the trigger."
Jon grins, which she didn't expect. Not when they could be walking right into their deaths. He takes the gun back from her, and laughs as he looks down at it, shaking his head. "You gotta take off the safety."
"I knew that!"
Sansa hears how defensive she sounds, but there's nothing she can do except adjust her posture and stand taller. Jon hands back the gun, that dumb look still on his face. As though it didn't matter if they made it out of this. Hell, maybe she shouldn't go with him. It's been almost three years since she'd seen him now. The world had ended. It had changed everyone, and it's not like they'd ever really clicked as people. For all she knew he had a death wish.
"Just try not to point it at me," he says, his eyes suddenly serious and looking right into hers. She's not sure what he was hoping to find there, or if he'd had any luck. But she finds what she needed. There are small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that weren't there before, but that somehow feel familiar. She trusts him. He'll keep her safe. "Stay behind me, and stay quiet, and we should be fine."
Sansa nods and she follows him out the door. The hospital is eerily quiet, and she figures out why when they turn a corner and she sees Meryn Trant's dead body slumped over against the white wall in a puddle of his own blood. The sight of the man who had never hesitated to make her life miserable lifeless and defeated makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. This was real. She was in it now, whether she liked it or not.
Sansa nearly throws up but she swallows down acid as they make their way through the door to the back stairs. There's another dead body, this one stabbed in the back of the neck.
Jon had done a stint in the military before everything had gone to shit. And he was alive. No doubt he'd done his fair share of killing. He must be used to it by now. Besides, it's not like they were good men. The world was better off without them. She was glad they were dead, but it was surreal to imagine Jon having killed them. In the rare occasions she'd reminisced about her half-brother, she'd remembered him giving Arya a piggyback or building that treefort with Robb.
Jon looks back at her. "You good?"
She nods. It didn't matter if she wasn't, she had to be. So she was.
They turn a corner, and make it out of the stairwell and onto the main level. One of Joffrey's officers is patrolling, his back to them. She truly doesn't mean to do it, but her gun is already up and her heart has never beaten so fast. It's nothing more than instinct when she pulls the trigger. It's louder than she thought it would be, enough to make her jump. It's Mandon Moore, she sees when he falls to the ground. Sansa closes her eyes, her hands shaking at her sides, willing it all away.
"Fuck, " Jon says under his breath. She can't remember ever hearing him curse before, but the last time she'd seen him he hadn't been able to grow a beard, either.
Officer Moore is screaming for help, and with the sound of the gunshot it's only a matter of time before they were caught. But Sansa is frozen on the spot. There's another gunshot and when Sansa opens her eyes, there's a bullet hole between Officer Moore's eyes.
Jon grabs her hand and pulls her with him, "We have to go. Now ."
It's been a long time since Sansa has run. She's never been particularly good at it. The only sport she ever fancied was cheerleading, and even that she'd done because it seemed like the thing to do. She hated to get sweaty. She runs now, faster than she ever has, out the door, past the front gates, from the walkers and then from machine gun fire. Only when they get to Jon's car does she finally feel how sore her muscles are. In the humid summer air, her hair is damp and sticks to the back of her neck. She's grinning anyway. Grinning, and panting and free at last .
"Is that…?" Sansa asks when she looks up at the window into the backseat and sees a large, white Siberian husky panting happily. Jon nods as he opens the door and hops into the driver's seat. Sansa forsakes riding shotgun to get in the back with Ghost. It's bittersweet. Her own dog had been killed by the Lannisters as bait for the walkers back in the first weeks. Sansa wraps her arms around Ghost. He tries to worm out of her arms to lick her face, and she's laughing like she hasn't since this all began. Like she hadn't just killed a man, like she was still capable of being happy.
Jon doesn't say anything. He puts the key in the ignition and they drive off into the sunset. Half an hour later, when they're almost out of Atlanta, and she's contentedly running her hands through Ghost's fur, Jon smiles at her in the rearview mirror. She smiles back.
Jon should keep his eyes fixed on the road, but he can't help looking at his little sister in his rearview mirror. She's asleep with her face pressed against the window, Ghost is resting his head in her lap. It's been too long since he's seen her at all — with college and his stint in the army and their father moving to Atlanta to advise Robert Baratheon — but he can't remember ever seeing her like this. She is tired, right down to her bones, he can see it in the dark circles under her eyes and how lifeless she had looked when he showed up in her room. He knows the feeling, and he wants her to rest while she can, so he tries his best to drive slowly around the dead bodies in the street.
It is a miracle to get just one of his sisters alive, but he's still disappointed Arya didn't stay put. He loves Sansa, he loves all of his siblings. But she'd never warmed to him. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do with her, never has. It wasn't her fault. They didn't exactly have a normal upbringing.
Jon didn't even know who his dad was, let alone that he had five younger siblings, until his mom died and the lawyer had dug out the name. Ned had stepped up immediately, as soon as he found out Jon existed. He hadn't even asked for a DNA test. Jon had been thirteen and all of a sudden he had a new family. Robb was eleven, and the two of them had bonded over skateboards and Boy Scouts. Arya clung to him, the way outcasts always do when they find a kindred spirit. Bran and Rickon didn't remember life without him there, so it was normal for them to have another big brother kicking around.
Sansa was a different case entirely. She'd always been polite and distant. Before he went off to college, her biggest interest had been beauty pageants. He really had nothing to contribute to that, and he found that Toddlers and Tiaras stuff kind of creepy. In his senior year, when she'd been a freshman, she'd joined the cheerleading team, and he was on the football team. So that was sort of something. But even that wasn't so smooth. He'd given her a ride to a game and a pair of giggling girls came up to them in the parking lot. She'd made a point to introduce him as her half- brother.
His stepmother treated him differently than his siblings, but he expected that. He wasn't her kid, after all. But while the rest of the Stark siblings embraced him wholeheartedly, as if he'd always been there, Sansa never seemed to think much about Jon one way or another.
So when they get to the safe house, and Sansa looks at him as though he is her personal saviour, it feels different.
Sansa and Ghost follow him into the abandoned house. When he locks the door behind them, he hears her sigh in relief.
"You hungry?" he asks. Sansa nods her head eagerly so he leads her to the kitchen and presents her with his meager stash. "Help yourself."
Sansa nods and takes in the options before settling on dry cheerios. She sits on the couch and shoves them into her mouth, nothing like the dainty eater he remembered.
"They feed you in there?" he asks, mostly joking.
It takes Sansa a minute to meet his eye. "Not really."
Jon hadn't been expecting that. "By all reports the Lannisters are well-provisioned."
"They are. It's just that they don't give you much beyond what it takes to survive unless you… do things for them… and after what they did to Daddy…"
"What sort of things?"
Sansa looks at him with questioning eyes, as if she's asking if she really has to say it. Jon can't help but feel guilty. He doesn't know what to do about any of it. He barely knows how to interact with women on a good day, and how to comfort your little sister after rescuing her from creeps during the zombie apocalypse was beyond him.
"Well you don't need to worry about that. What's mine is yours. You're welcome to any of it. No strings."
She gives him that look again, nothing short of awe. It's been a long time since somebody has looked at him so softly. "Thank you. For everything."
In the first days, he teaches her how to use a knife to kill a walker, and how to use it to skin a rabbit. When he first picked her up in Atlanta she was wearing pink nail polish. Now there's always dirt under her nails. Her aim with a gun only improves so much. He wouldn't feel comfortable leaving her alone. There was no way in hell he was going to let his last living family member out of his sight.
"You don't know what we're doing, do you?" Sansa asks, looking at him with such sad eyes he can't help but feel like he is the singular biggest disappointment of all time. Sansa's always had that effect on him, but this time it wasn't just her being a brat. He's only surprised it took her this long to figure out he didn't have much in the way of a plan.
He's kept the fact that they don't actually have anywhere to go a secret the past two months while they looked for traces of Arya. But the trail had gone cold and there is no use pretending he had some big plan. He had told her the nuts and bolts of it all, how his last group had left him for dead, how he'd never been able to find Robb but heard about the Lannister held hospital and eventually from an escapee that his sisters were there.
"Not really."
"I thought we were going somewhere."
"We are going somewhere. Away from the Lannisters."
Sansa sighs long and hard. When they'd first met she'd been good at holding a smile, not letting anything faze her. But the longer it was just the two of them in the woods the more of herself she let him see. It wasn't just that, either. She was a completely different person than the one he remembered. One who seemed to be able to survive just about anything.
"When Arya left she told me she was going home," Sansa says after a moment of frustrated silence. This isn't new, she'd told Jon as much the first night. When he doesn't respond she continues, "We're not gonna find her in the backwoods. You know that. And if Arya's alive… well, maybe she got back home. That's where she would go. That's where we have to go."
"Sansa… even if we did manage to get to Savannah, how do we know the place isn't overrun?"
"We don't. But at least it's a plan!"
A plan that wouldn't work. Jon ran his fingers through his hair. She's right, it is where Arya would go. It's where Arya would assume he'd be. Arya would try to find him if she could, he knew it. He closes his eyes and considers it. What if she did manage it, but he wasn't there? What if she needed his help somewhere along the way? They could die either way, after all. Maybe he was just being a coward.
"Alright," he says as he opens his eyes, nodding his head slowly.
Sansa smiles, and she practically throws herself into his arms to hug him. He smiles too, wrapping his arms around her and running his hands through her hair.
It's been months since they decided they were headed home, but they'd barely seemed to move. The car had stopped running after its engine was filled with zombified human remains, and they'd spent weeks lost in the forest. Summer was almost over, not that Jon even knew what month it was. He knew that the colour of the leaves now matched Sansa's hair. Curling up with Ghost had managed to keep them warm enough at night, but they needed to find somewhere to hole up that was more secure than the rusty van he'd hotwired.
"If it's bad in Savannah, maybe we could find a nice sailboat to live on or something."
"What do you know about sailing?" Sansa asks with a laugh, as if the whole thing was preposterous. As if he hadn't lived with the Starks for years, in the mansion that backed onto the ocean.
"Well I was in the navy for a few years, and Greyjoy taught me a thing or two."
"I didn't realize they taught you how to sail in the navy. I thought you were on, like, aircraft carriers or something?" Sansa crinkles up her forehead, and he realizes, not for the first time, that his sister is genuinely interested in finding out more about him. He's not much of a talker, but she's managed to get a lot out of him. More than anyone else in a very long time.
"We learned a bit of everything."
"Impressive. You know, you're really good at this."
"Good at what?"
"Surviving."
"So are you. You're still standing."
"Well that's something, I guess."
She looks the part now, like some sort of backwoods huntress. They are both dirty, their clothes ripped. Sansa's wearing a utility belt with a gun and a hatchet, and she has a knife in her hand in case they come across any walkers. She looks good, she always manages to pull everything off, but on her it looks like a costume. Artfully applied dirt, like for the movies or something. Hollywood Dirty.
They finally make it off the forested road and into a little town that seems eerily quiet. That was rarely a good sign, not that it was good to run into too many walkers… but they'd had a some close calls at the few towns with encampments they'd managed to run into. At the last one, some dirtbag had taken a shine to Sansa. Jon had nearly choked him to death. It was better off just the two of them. People were more dangerous than the walkers.
"Do you wanna check the convenience store or the houses first?" Sansa asks.
"Houses. I could use a nap, I don't know about — "
Sansa cuts him off by nodding eagerly. "A bed would be nice. So would not worrying about being eaten for a little bit."
So they head off to the lane with houses facing the lake. Except for the handful of walkers in the laneway, it looks almost untouched. They're far off course, by a lake about a hundred miles in the wrong direction, but this neck of the woods didn't have as many hoards as the highways leading home. It was less populated than than the area around Atlanta, and the lake itself served as a natural barrier.
They get out of the car. The sound of the diesel engine drew the walkers over and Jon walks ahead of Sansa and beheads the three walkers that cross their path. Sansa was becoming proficient enough with a hatchet, but time had only made his need to protect her stronger. He hears a whack and turns. Sansa's hatchet is stuck in a fourth walker's chest. Jon moves behind her and stabs it in the back of the neck with his knife.
"It's a nice neighbourhood," Jon says as he pulls Sansa's hatchet from the walker and wipes it clean on his jeans. Not that it was any near as nice as the neighbourhood the Starks had lived in. But Sansa murmurs her agreements, so she must know what he means. That it was almost like before.
"Cottages, I think."
"So probably not very well stocked. People don't leave food at their cottage." Jon sighs. Not that anything was well stocked anymore. Almost everything had been raided by now. They only had limited supplies left, and winter was coming. They needed to find a vehicle and get back on track if they were going to make it home.
"Well, we can try . At the very least we could have a nap. And after that, I'm going to find some shampoo and wash my hair in the lake. Nobody told me the worst thing about the end times would be greasy hair. I feel disgusting."
Sansa pulls the elastic band out of her hair and itches her scalp, grimacing at him.
"You don't look disgusting," he offers.
She scrunches up her nose and pulls a face. "Thanks for the reassurance, but pretty soon I'm going to have a mirror and you're not going to be able to lie to me about how pretty I look anymore." She takes a step closer to him and runs her hands through his hair. Her fingers catch on knots and she smirks. "You could use some shampoo too. And maybe some leave-in conditioner for the road. If you don't untangle it soon it's going to turn into dreadlocks." Jon rolls his eyes, but he doesn't stop her as she wraps a tendril of his hair around her finger. "You look like a caveman."
"Maybe I should cut it off."
Sansa finally pulls her hand away. "Why would you do that?"
"Impractical."
"Pffftttt…"
"And apparently I look like a caveman."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing."
Jon lifts an eyebrow, and he wants to question her, but he suddenly realizes how very close she's standing. He swallows. It wasn't safe to stay on the doorstep chatting all day. He turns away from her and opens the door.
They sweep the house and, as expected, find no walkers. Vacation homes were a blessing. The cottage may be small, but their crashpad didn't reek of decaying human remains for once. Jon looks in the kitchen cabinets and finds a half dozen cans, a carton of hot chocolate mix and a box of granola bars. The fridge is full of beer and Powerade.
In the bedside table, Jon finds a half-used box of condoms. He stuffs them into his backpack. Not that he needs them now, but maybe he'd find a girl. When they got to Savannah or something. And a baby right now was out of the question. Better stock up while he had the chance.
"Jon!" Sansa calls from the bathroom, where she'd been trying to locate shampoo and conditioner. He gets out his knife. Noise drew the walkers, but he doesn't have it in him to remind her of that and wipe the silly grin off her face.
She opens the mirrored cabinet and looks at him expectantly. The bathroom cabinet is stocked, for sure. There were probably ten different hair products there. Mousses and gels and soothing sprays. Not things most people bring to the cottage, but he supposed even the high maintenance liked the beach.
"You're going to look so pretty."
"No, Jon. We're going to look so pretty," she corrects him.
"Well let me get some sleep before you start my makeover, at least."
"Alright, alright," Sansa says, suppressing a smile.
Sansa tries her best, but she's far too wired to sleep with their big find, even though the soft bed with sheets was awfully tempting. She had to see what else the house had hidden away. This was the first good thing to happen to them in weeks. Deodorant, soap, towels, a first-aid kit… well, pretty soon they'd be feeling human again. She spends ten minutes in the mirror brushing her teeth with the spare toothbrush she finds, glad the previous owners bought in bulk.
She decides on pink lemonade-scented shampoo and conditioner, and mint soap. She's grown used to the way she smells with limited showers, but the way dirt and sweat feels when it's caked on has never come to feel natural. She misses personal hygiene almost as much as she misses her family. She throws a fluffy pink towel over her shoulder, grabs the shampoo and heads to the lake.
It's almost too perfect. Fall may be coming, but it's only an hour or two past noon and the sun is warm on her skin. She walks out to the edge of the dock and takes off her shoes.
She's always preferred the ocean to lakes, the smell of saltwater reminded her of home, their big old house that backed onto the sea. The sea was summers spent at the beach perfecting her tan, playing fetch with her siblings and their wild pack of dogs, sitting around a campfire while Jon and Robb told ghost stories and Theon snuck up behind them to scare them. Every Fourth of July they would have a big barbecue and watch the fireworks from the beach. She wonders now if anyone would ever celebrate Fourth of July again. That was all over now.
This isn't home, but when she closes her eyes she hears the sound of gentle waves crashing to the sandy shore and it's almost as good.
She strips naked and leaves her clothes and knife on the dock with her towel. She dips a toe into the water and it's cold, but she jumps all the way in anyway. She feels cleaner immediately. She takes her time with it. She shampoos her hair four times. She slathers a handful of conditioner onto the dry ends of her hair and lets it sit for awhile before she washes it out.
She is so completely at ease she doesn't notice Jon approach.
"What are you doing?" he asks. His voice is low so as not to carry but the anger in it still manages to send a chill through her.
"I couldn't sleep so I just — "
"You can't just run off! I thought something happened to you!"
She's never seen him look so angry. His jaw is set and his gray eyes look almost black beneath his furrowed brow. He has his knife out, and his other hand rests on his gun in its holster.
"Well nothing did," she finally says. She squares her shoulders and tries her best to look tough or defiant or at the very least capable of looking after herself.
Perhaps she manages to pull it off, because his face softens. "Fair enough."
Their conversation fades out and the quiet feels almost unbearable. After spending months on the run together in companionable silence, she thought she had grown used to his brooding nature, but the way he looks at her makes the hair on the back of her arms stand up.
"Are you gonna come in or what?" she finally asks, breaking the silence.
His face splits into a loopy grin, one she could never remember him having when they were younger. It looks good on him. Her muscles can't help but relax when he gives a little shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose I could use a bath." Jon pulls off his T-shirt. "Wash the caveman off."
They'd slept in the same room for months now, but she'd always turned her back when he changed. She didn't avert her eyes now. She sees him for the first time, a big scar down his chest, dark hair there too, and… abs. He pulls off his shorts and then looks up at her. She pulls her gaze away from his muscled chest to look into his eyes.
Jon didn't sleep well without Sansa next to him. In the van, they would fold down the backseat and curl up with Ghost. But this house had more than one bed, and it would be weird to ask his little sister to sleep with him. He reaches for her in his sleep and wakes when she's not there. He tries his best to fall back asleep, but even though he's exhausted he feels like something is wrong. He just lays there for awhile, willing himself to stay in bed, telling himself it was paranoid to go check on her. He manages about five minutes before pulling his shirt back on.
When he can't find her, he hates himself for not trusting his gut and looking for her sooner. He's not sure how much time he has left, but he knows for sure it's enough time for her to have been killed. He can feel his heart beating in his throat after he checks the house and she's not there. If he lost her, what was the point of any of this? He stalks around the perimeter of the house and loses hope in just about everything when he doesn't find her.
Then he hears a splash from the lake and he sees her treading water, clearly enjoying herself at her relaxing beach day.
He marches down the dock fully intending to knock some sense into her. But he's not very good at staying mad at her, not when she looks so damned happy, and so he jumps into the lake after her in nothing but his boxers. The water is fucking cold but her smile is warm. More than that, it's relaxed. It puts him at ease.
"You were right. You did need a bath. Your hair is three shades lighter," he teases her.
She tilts her head to the side in confusion, "what?"
"Must've been really dirty."
He didn't realize it was possible to feel goofy after everything that had happened to him. But he's smiling ear to ear when Sansa gasps. She swims closer to him and pushes him back by the chest. He's laughing at the offended look on her face until his eyes flicker down and he sees the tips of her breasts under the water. Suddenly the lake doesn't feel cold at all.
"You don't look your best either, you know," she says, pressing her lips together and exhaling out her nose.
He stares into her eyes, trying his best not to let them wander down. They shouldn't want to wander down. He was her brother for fuck's sake. Was he really this hard up for womanly comfort? Maybe he needed to put those condoms to use sooner rather than later.
He's probably looking at her too intensely and overcompensating because she softens with a little shrug, and looks away.
"I, uh… I better wash up, then."
Sansa looks back at him with a little smile. "There's an electric razor in the bathroom, you know. With batteries still in it. It works."
He brings his hand to his face and runs it through his beard. He didn't even know he could grow a beard this thick until he'd lost his ability to trim it. Fifteen year old Jon, the one who'd ended up with a pathetic patchy moustache during Movember, would have been proud. "You don't like the mountain man aesthetic, Sans?"
"I don't even remember what you look like. Besides, even if it's okay now… if you just keep letting it grow you're going to look like Dumbledore. Or one of those Duck Dynasty guys."
Jon cringes. He probably shouldn't care what Sansa thinks of his appearance, but there's no way he wants her to see him as one of those racist fucks from Duck Dynasty. Hopefully they were the first to go. "I'll get rid of it."
"Just a trim is fine!"
"Do you wanna do it?"
She pauses to consider, and Jon is struck once again by how unbelievably pretty his sister is. With her long red hair wet and floating around her in the water, she looks just like the Little Mermaid. Unbidden, the image of her in a clam shell bikini comes to mind and it takes everything in him to will it away. He tries his best to think about his dead relatives, or watching Pyp's face being eaten by a zombie, or Alliser Thorne's triumphant face when he'd abandoned him in the woods without a knife, or anything but the mermaid porno playing in his mind.
"No… not unless you've washed it. With Shampoo. I don't want to touch that… no offence, I'm just very clean now and I'm sure your beard is still full of zombie guts. And bugs."
Jon swims back to the dock, more because he needs to look away from her than he wants the shampoo, but it provides a good excuse. He works it through his hair and beard facing the dock, taking his time. When he finally does dunk his head under water to rinse it out, he feels like he's gotten a grip on himself.
But when he emerges from the water, Sansa is next to him, clutching the dock with one hand and extending the bottle of conditioner towards him with the other. He's not expecting it and he sees everything and he's never felt like a bigger pervert in his entire life. Not even when his stepmother caught him watching porn and jerking off back when he was 14 did he feel so ashamed of himself.
"It'll help get the knots out," she says and he takes it.
He feels her eyes on him as he conditions his hair and he wonders if he's burning red and she can see his shame. He can't bring himself to meet her eyes so he stares at the decaying wood of the dock like it's the most interesting thing he's ever seen.
"We better get back inside," he says when he finally looks back into her eyes. "We're alone for now, but you never know what — or who — else could be around."
She nods. There is a look on her face he can't comprehend. Sometimes Sansa's face reminded him of a Rorschach test. Everyone could get something different looking at her face, and they'd probably all be wrong. Those ink blots didn't mean anything, did they?
When Jon climbs back onto the dock, Sansa can't help but notice the scars on his back. He looks strong despite them, with thick muscles and strong legs. His wet skin glistens in the sunlight as she sees what happened for the first time.
She's curious about the scars. She'd never asked exactly what happened when he'd been unceremoniously booted out of his unit. Jon didn't like to talk about that sort of thing, and she didn't need a blow by blow account of how exactly they'd tried to kill him. She never pushed because she didn't like to think about anyone doing that to him. She couldn't imagine why anyone would do that to Jon, who was so good and kind and brave.
But now that she sees them, she wants to trace his scars with her finger. She wants to hear every horrible thing they did to them. She wants to kiss it all better.
He keeps his back turned as she wraps a towel around herself.
When he turns back around she realizes that it was probably weird for her to have invited him to go skinny dipping with her in the first place. She shouldn't notice that his hair is more curly than usual when wet, and droplets of water fall from his hair to his chest. And it shouldn't make her belly tighten.
He was her brother. How had that slipped her mind? At least he had kept his boxers on. It would have been weird if she'd accidentally seen his dick... right?
It had just been so long since she had seen soap. It had led to temporary insanity. But now that she was clean she had no excuses, so she stares at her feet even though she wanted to inspect the scar on his abdomen.
Jon grabs his t-shirt off the dock and is about to put it back on, but she shakes her head. "Don't be gross. You just got clean. You can't put dirty clothes back on!"
"All the clothes we have are pretty disgusting," he says.
"There's clothes in the closet of the master bedroom. They won't fit that great… but they'll do till we can wash ours."
He nods in agreement. He picks up all of their dirty clothes and weapons and they head back towards the cottage.
"You can get changed first. I'm gonna shave while I'm still already wet," he says, apparently not wanting her to do it anymore. That was probably for the best.
Sansa goes into the bedroom and shuts the door. The bed is still unmade, and Jon's backpack is still on the floor. He does most of the heavy lifting on the trip, because she can't handle carrying much while also defending himself, whereas Jon seems to be able to handle just about everything life threw at them, so most of her things were in his bag.
She opens the front pocket to get out her semi-clean extra bra. If semi-clean was what you could call it, she'd washed it in a cloudy ravine with dish soap a few days before.
She roots through the bag to look for it. But before she finds it, she spots a box of condoms. An open and half-used box of condoms, she finds out when she picks it up. Weird. How long could he had even had them? How had he managed to use them when she was always right there?
The few times they'd run into other people he didn't seem that interested in any of the girls. He rarely left her alone for long, he seemed far more interested in keeping his family safe than he did in getting laid. But now that she'd seen him mostly naked, she supposed he was pretty hot, objectively speaking. Maybe it was easy for him to get girls in bed for a quickie. It was the end of the world, after all.
Maybe he'd had three different girls, a different one for each condom. Maybe she was just an idiot, completely unaware of Jon's promiscuity, even when it was all happening right under her nose. Hell, for all she knew Jon had a secret sex addiction!
It was so stupid. They had other things to focus on. Surviving, finding food, shelter. He shouldn't be wasting his time fucking around and she shouldn't be wasting hers thinking about it.
She stuffs it back where she found it, under the bag of oatmeal so Jon wouldn't know she'd seen it. She gives up on wearing a bra. She doesn't want to know what else Jon has hidden in there. Who knew what secrets he was keeping from her if he could manage to have a healthy sex life without her finding out.
Just thinking about Jon having sex was really gross. If only she'd never seen the condoms, she wouldn't have to picture other girls running their hands through his hair or running their hands up against his muscled chest. Ew. At least the weird feeling in the lake was gone. The thought of him having sex made her want to hurl.
There wasn't anything in the closet that fit her. The lady of the house had been at least four dress sizes bigger than her, but she finds a blue polyester dress that falls to her knees. It's loose and pretty shapeless, she'd never be caught dead looking like this back in the real world. But it was the best she could do.
She jumps at a knock at the door. She makes sure his backpack is how she found it before opening the door. With his beard trimmed Jon looks… more than pretty hot. Not just end of the world hot. It's not like she'd ever thought he was ugly, but she'd somehow been blind to just how pretty he was. But now that his well formed features weren't hidden under such a thick layer of hair you couldn't miss them. No wonder he was having so much sex.
Jon rubs his hand against his jaw. "What do you think? There was only one blade, so I couldn't get a clean shave."
"It's fine," Sansa says with a shrug. "You couldn't be hired to be an extra on Duck Dynasty anymore, so that's good."
Jon gives her an awkward look, but shrugs it off. He looks down at her dress. "That's a pretty good find. I hope there's something that fits me." He moves past her into the room and she walks to the living room and sits down on the couch.
Maybe the problem was just that there weren't enough eligible guys around. Every man they'd came across was dirty and smelled disgusting and most of them were huge assholes to boot. Sure, Jon had been covered in blood and sweat and dirt most of the time but he was probably the best person she'd ever met in her entire life. He might even be the last good man left on earth.
So finding out just how hot her brother was probably having a much different effect on her than it usually would. She was just sexually frustrated. Who knows, maybe Jon would look at her the same way if he wasn't off having a good time with his box of condoms whenever her back was turned.
Adam and Eve had been brother and sister, right? Not that she even believed in God anymore. But half the world believed that a brother and sister had started the human race — Jon emerges from the bedroom in a tight white T-shirt and her eyes widen when she realizes what had just been going through her mind.
She wasn't mad at him for distracting himself from keeping them safe. No, he hadn't let her down yet. She was jealous of the girls who'd been with him.
"You want some canned peaches or something?" He asks her as he walks to the kitchen.
She shakes her head, looking into her lap. She doesn't care if he has condoms, she just wants him to use them with her. She didn't want anybody else to have him. He was hers. All hers.
"Sansa?" Jon calls, shaking her from her thoughts. She looks up at him. "I was thinking. Maybe we should stick around here for a little while. I know it's a long way home to Savannah and we should get moving, but it seems pretty safe here. There's not many walkers so we'd have time to build some walls. And I'm sure we can find a boat. If there's danger, we have an easy way out. I want to find Arya, if she's still out there. But the way the highways looked… I don't know if we could make it there. Not just the two of us against those herds of walkers. We won't be any good to her dead."
She's so out of it that it takes a minute for the words to fully sink in. He wants to stay here, just the two of them. It scares her just how appealing that thought is. Building walls around this place, creating a fortress and not letting anyone else in.
It had been her who insisted on going to Savannah in the first place, her who had wanted to see home again, who still had a tiny sliver of hope that Arya was alive. But that had just been guilt for letting Arya go off alone. For always being such a self-involved brat and never doing her job and protecting her little sister. She just wanted Arya to be alive.
But that hope didn't have the power to change anything. Jon was right. They didn't have to die. It wasn't just her depraved, greedy heart wanting to keep him all to herself. It was survival.
"Yeah, you're probably right," she says.
Jon smiles at her, but his eyes look sad. She knows he's given up on home too, that he's faced facts. Maybe it had always just been for her sake.
And then she knows. She didn't just desire him. It is so much worse than that. She is in love with him.
Jon and Sansa sit on the couch and eat granola bars and canned peaches for dinner. She's happy, she has a sweet tooth and it's been awhile since they had any chocolate bars. She seems distant tonight, but it's probably just giving up the pipe dream of going home. He didn't want to give up either, but things feel settled now. They have a plan, a plan that may not fall apart before they even hit the ground.
They could finally catch their breath, maybe even get their shit together. He'd known they had to stop as soon as he thought Sansa was dead this afternoon, but he realized what they had to do while shaving. When it sunk in that it could've been real, even if it wasn't. And they had options now.
They find a checkers board and play until the sun sets. He manages to win two of three rounds even though he's distracted by how red her hair looks in the fading light. When it's dark, they head to bed.
In the hallway outside his door, Jon grabs Sansa's arm to stop her from leaving. She turns back and looks into his eyes.
"Stay with me," he says, "I don't sleep well when you're not there. I worry."
Sansa parts her lips and slowly nods. "Alright."
They get into bed. Usually Ghost is between them in the van, but now that they have room to spread out he lies in the doorway. It's just them. It feels as natural. They have established sides of the bed. The sound of her breathing put him at ease. It shouldn't be this simple. What had it been, five months? How had things shifted so quickly?
Sansa reaches over and takes his hand in hers. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Do you remember when I almost died? There was eight of them, and I can only take one on a good day. I gave up. I was already dead."
"But you lived."
He can feel Sansa nod even though he can't see her.
"Yeah. I lived. But you — you almost died too. It was stupid."
"It wasn't stupid." He squeezes her hand.
"Jon… what are we?"
He furrows his brow, "what do you mean?"
She sighs, as though she doesn't know how to ask it. "What are we to each other?"
"Family," he says first. He pauses and closes his eyes. "Brother and sister. Half-brother and sister, I guess."
"We are and…" Sansa pulls her hand away and rests it on his cheek. "And we're not."
He knows exactly what she means. It's been there for awhile now. He keeps trying to will it away, but he's not sure he's be able to anymore. Not after this afternoon in the lake, not after the way her hand feels against his face. On impulse, he reaches over and grabs her hip. He pulls her to closer to him.
She wastes no time in leaning over and kissing him. It's been forever since he's kissed a woman, and he's never been this hungry for it. He has to tell himself to cool it, to soften his mouth and be gentle with his tongue. He lets her take the lead. She doesn't kiss like he imagined. It's rougher. She presses herself against him and he grows hard. She moans into his mouth and it takes everything he has not to roll over and take her. It's too early, way too fast.
He'd never admit how long he's wanted this, not even to himself. Going to Atlanta was a Hail Mary pass — he was going to get there, or die trying. He had nothing left to live for. His sisters. Arya was the person he loved most in the entire world, or she had been, once. There wasn't anything outside these walls that mattered now.
He feels so clean after the lake. He has no right to, not when he's struggling to control himself as his sister's tongue slides against his. Not when he slides his hand up under his dress and between her legs. He rubs his thumb against her clit and she sighs against his chest. She doesn't stop kissing him, not even when she comes. Nothing has ever tasted as good as the low moan when she does.
It's as far as they can take it. It's like a suspended moment in time that doesn't count. This isn't real life. But he still has to protect her, even from himself. He has his principles. He would do right by her.
They don't speak. He doesn't move, he won't push her. She lowers her hands to his chest and plays with a tuft of chest hair. She pulls away and he can see her eyes shining in the moonlight. She rubs her cold feet against his and he shivers. She just looks at him for awhile, and he looks back.
"Do you have a condom?" She finally asks.
As it happened, he did.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought. You can find more of my fic at theonbaejoys on tumblr.