Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Battle for Winterfell AU. Please forgive me for any failings, military strategy is not my forte, but I'm changing it up a bit here. Jon stays on the ground with his troops. The Dothraki aren't decimated in a useless charge. Bran actually tries to warg into Viserion. They build more than one fucking trench.
There is Major Character Death and Graphic Depictions of Violence ahead. This is a tragedy. I'm giving you fair warning now.
To Exhale
He looks at her one last time and – and oh – she would walk with him in that godswood, she would cloak him night after night, she would swear her affection into his skin and drink his moans.
She would hold him to her beneath a wolf's moon and make him a Stark – make him hers.
(Except he already is – and this, perhaps, is the cruelest truth of all.) - Jon and Sansa. To love, to lose.
To love is to breathe in, to inhale.
She looks around the grey stone walls of a torch-lit Winterfell as she stands amidst the courtyard. She looks at Bran, those fathomless eyes unblinking in the snow as Theon wheels him to the godswood. She looks at Arya, fitting her dragonglass arrows into the quiver along her back, a ready smirk on her lips.
She looks at Jon.
(To love is to breathe in, to inhale.)
Sansa lets it fill her lungs, anchors the air tight, keeps it bundled in her chest.
Jon finally looks to her from across the courtyard.
It is a Long Night stretched out before them.
Her breath stays lodged in her throat –
Choking on the inhale.
"So, what do you say, Bran? Is there a victory in our future?" Jon asks it on a tremulous chuckle, a wild hope, a desperate distraction from the way his hands sweat inside his gloves and how the wind bites just a bit too harshly along his cheeks and the way his brother (his brother – damn what blood says) is looking at him with hollow eyes.
And then Bran smiles, barely-there and quiet as snow.
Jon stares down at him unblinkingly, his stomach twisting. Bran's never warged with something dead before, but perhaps there is just enough magic left in this world to try. The weirwood towers above them, red leaves glinting like blood in the darkness.
"Sometimes I see a little girl with red hair."
Jon sucks in a sharp breath, face falling.
Bran tilts his head, as though in contemplation. "She has your eyes."
And then it is Sansa, and only Sansa, and always Sansa, and Jon thinks he might not be able to hold it back if he lets it overtake him. So he grips at Longclaw's hilt, bites his tongue, doesn't acknowledge the wetness at the corners of his eyes.
Bran's face is blank again, his eyes drifting over to the heart tree – a face of mourning, if Jon lets himself think too long about it. "But most times I just see nothing at all," Bran says softly, an imperceptible ring of sorrow to the words.
The noise that catches in Jon's throat is half-sob, half-growl. He closes his eyes, breathes deep, uncurls his fingers from around his sword hilt. When he opens his eyes, Jon turns to Theon standing just past Bran's chair. "Protect him." It's all he can say. All he'll allow himself to say.
(Not for us or for Sansa or please.)
Theon nods, one hand already fitted to his bow. "Like a brother," he affirms.
Jon clenches his jaw, remembers Theon's cocky laugh when he'd bested him the first time at archery, and the way he'd teased him whenever Jon refused the brothel, and the way he snuck him a pitcher of ale that one night when they got pissed out their gourds and Lady Catelyn found them the next morning passed out in the training yard.
He remembers Theon Greyjoy. And he remembers Theon Stark.
"Like a brother," Jon says, his voice low and catching. And then he's leaning down and pressing a kiss to Bran's forehead, holding it there, eyes squeezed shut, and the night could take him, right there, it could swallow him whole.
But it will not have his brothers.
Jon stalks purposely from the godswood, the last image in his mind a tiny girl with copper hair and wolf eyes – maybe they'll be Tully blue, maybe Stark grey. He knows her face regardless – he sees it in his dreams, after all.
Jon swallows back the lump in his throat, wet eyes stinging against the cold.
This night may swallow him whole.
But it will not have his pack.
"I'll come for you," Arya tells her, her glass-gilded staff tight in her grip.
Sansa peers past her sister's shoulder to the Unsullied marching up the stairs to the battlements, the fog of winter settling in heavier all around them. The dead approach, even now.
"No, you won't," Sansa says mildly, her eyes shifting back to her sister's, a quiet, barely-there upturn to her lips. "But it's a lovely lie."
Arya reaches for her arm, her gloved fingers wrapping around Sansa's elbow as she steps into her, peering up with dark, Stark eyes – a shadow on her face Sansa does not recognize, nor thinks she ever will. "Sansa," and it is as much a plea as it is a denial.
She cups her little sister's face in her hands, the tears sudden and bright and stinging against her lashes. "Show them what it means to be a Northerner. Show them what it means to be a Stark."
Arya swallows thickly, her eyes shifting back and forth between Sansa's, and then she's nodding, her face still in her sister's hold, and Sansa leans forward and wraps her arms around her, Arya's face pressing into her chest, the hand not holding her staff gripping at Sansa's back, and the kiss she places on the crown of her head is both trembling and true.
"Winter is here," she breathes against her sister's hair, and Arya sighs into her embrace. "But so are the wolves."
"I'll come for you," Arya repeats, her fingers digging into her cloak, her breath a rattle against her chest. "No matter what you say, I'll come for you."
Sansa holds a hand to the back of her head, breathes her in, and when the time comes to let her go –
She lets her go.
"Sansa gets out alive, do you understand?" Jon commands Brienne, his eyes fervent, the torchlight casting slants of shadow that flicker threateningly over his features.
Brienne only holds her chin higher, her gaze never wavering from Jon's. She nods mutely, her hand already fastened to Oathkeeper's hilt. "I will shield her back, and keep her council, and give my life for hers, if need be."
Jon heaves a heavy sigh, his face a fallen ruin when he recognizes the words. "The need may be," he answers hollowly, his shoulders slumping slightly. "Tonight," he finishes.
"I keep my oaths," Brienne replies solemnly, titling her head in a final, farewell nod, before she turns from him to join her regiment.
Jon feels something sink inside him – heavy and worn like a drowned stone, falling straight through the current, deep-sought.
The screams are instant. The light is less so.
Sansa takes in the shadowy collision of the first charge from her position along the battlements, her guard of Stark men at her back. Her chest aches, her terror a tight knot in her belly, her thumb worrying a hole through the glove covering her other palm.
Jon is beside her suddenly, Ghost at his heels. "Sansa."
She turns to him, and everything falls away.
Outside their walls, the Dothraki wails are as piercing as Daenerys' ream of dragonfire from the storm-grey sky.
"Get to the crypts."
"I won't."
He huffs a single, impatient breath, his brow angling sharply down. "Sansa, this isn't – "
"I won't," she says again, shoulders stiffening, her hand reaching for the dragonglass at her belt, curling around the uneven hilt beneath the cover of her cloak.
Jon eyes her steadily, and then he's shaking his head, his gaze looking out past the wall. He sighs, and it takes all of him. "Ghost will stay," he says lowly as he begins to stalk away.
Sansa glances out past the ramparts, the battle waging below in fire and shadow, in heartbeats and carrion. "No, you need him. You need Ghost out there."
Jon stills just a few feet from her. "I need him here. With you." He doesn't grant her his gaze when he glances over his shoulder, his eyes instead on the grey stone at her side, the Winterfell around her.
She will not argue, not now. Not here, at the end. So she nods mutely and curls a hand in the scruff along Ghost's neck, his fur a warmth and comfort she hadn't thought possible.
Jon leaves her then.
She watches, words dying on her tongue.
(Breathe in – hold it tight to your chest.)
Sometime between Ghost's howl and the thunderous beat of dragon wings against the stone ramparts, Sansa realizes her hand has stayed fastened to the dragonglass dagger at her hip.
Jon looks around the courtyard at the open gates, ready to flood the field and reinforce the first wave of their forces already fighting the dead. He looks at the Hornwoods and the Mormonts and the Cerwyns. The Flints and the Karstarks and the Manderlys. The Tallharts, the Dustins, the Dormunds. The Whitehills, the Glenmores, the Forrestors. The staunch and the proud and the Northern.
Jon glances down the line. First left, then right.
Rhaegal screeches in the dark clouds above.
But it's his brothers, his northmen –
(the heavy lull of their breathing, and the curl of their gloved fists over dragonglass, and the shuffle of their anxious feet in the snow – blaring even over the hoarse screams and clash of battle just past the gates)
Jon knows what it means to fight for home.
(Tully eyes and hair like flame and a mouth that cuts as fine and true as steel)
"For the North!" he yells, Longclaw raised, his chest heaving, eyes wide, the storm bearing down.
For more than the North, he promises – silent, steady, true.
The first trench lights magnificently, the Northern forces drawing back behind the flames, the Dothraki and wildling archers riddling the dead with dragonglass arrows from atop the battlements. Sansa watches alongside them, Ghost pawing at the snow nervously.
She settles a hand at his nape, and he releases a long whine, glancing up at her. "I know," she murmurs, eyes never leaving the dead, never leaving the carnage. "I know."
Because she would be out there with him, if she could.
She would be out there with him, blade in hand, heart at her throat, back to his, if only she could.
But she can't – and she's the first to acknowledge what a hindrance she'd be.
She can only be this. She can only be the Lady of Winterfell.
And when she looks out across the line of soldiers manning the wall, her thunderous shouts of "Nock" and "Draw" and "Loose" echoing through the snow-strewn night, she knows this is where she must be.
Still, she lets Ghost howl. She lets him howl for them both.
Jon cuts them down. One at a time. Sometimes two. Another and then another, until his blade is black-slick and copper-lined. Until the dead squelch beneath his boots like rotted, frostbitten grapes. Until he is panting and ragged and war-torn. Until the men at his back are roaring their rage, their desperation, and he tastes it in the air.
How he's just so tired. So utterly, incomprehensibly tired.
The dead Viserion releases a chilling screech, barreling into Drogon in the sky above, their wings a beating shadow against Winterfell's stones, and without warning, Rhaegal crashes into the northeastern wall, blowing rock and mortar and blood-tinged snow through the air, harrowing the men with a rain of debris.
But that unearthly wail, that dragon scream –
His skin lights with the terror.
"Bran," he breathes beneath the blood. And then he's sprinting for the fallen wall.
"No," Sansa whispers, the snow-blurred sky alight with dragon fire.
The dead push past the first trench, the Unsullied signaling the retreat, and she has lost sight of Jon long ago.
The second trench lights against the darkness. Rhaegal blows straight through the wall, tumbling into the courtyard amidst flame and rubble. The screech of ice and death and far worse fills the air. Up in the clouds above, the two remaining dragons tear at each other. She glances over and sees the white walkers flooding in through the gaping hole that Rhaegal left.
"Bran," she chokes out, hands bundling in her skirts as she races down the length of the battlements.
"My lady!"
"Hold the line, Ser Davos!" she calls back, never slowing her run, her Stark guard at her heels, Ghost already bounding ahead.
Beneath their walls, the dead are falling, and they are rising.
He makes it to the overrun training yard when Davos calls to him from above. Jon's eyes snap up, instantly searching for copper hair amidst the chaos of the battlements, and finding none.
"The godswood!" Davos shouts down in answer – never needing to hear the question.
Jon sucks in a sharp breath, breaking through the horde and dashing into a nearby hall. A clutch of air in his lungs, his legs already aching as he sprints, shadow and dragon fire glinting off the Winterfell stone in equal measure, his sword slicing through a dead man's open chest cavity, his foot kicking back a jawless, mindless corpse, his grunt of frustration echoing through the halls as he cuts another down, and then another, stumbling back, barreling into someone, his sword raised instantly, eyes locking on grey –
On Stark grey.
And it takes only a moment for him to recognize Arya's piercing, wide gaze in the shadow of Winterfell's halls before he's swinging down on the wight at her back, and she's plunging the blade end of her staff into the dead at his shoulder.
They stand there, panting, blood seeping over Arya's right eye, and he reaches for her. She shakes it off, licks her lips, glances down the hallway where he came. The dead are already echoing their presence.
"Bran?" she asks him, chest rising and falling with her labored breaths.
He clamps his jaw shut.
"Sansa?" And this time her voice quakes, her eyes blinking back the wetness.
He has no answer for her.
Arya swallows, twirling the staff in her hand into a low-ready position. "Go," she tells him, and then she's dashing past him, back into the fray.
Jon thinks of home, of snow-touched weirwoods and Arya's laugh. He thinks of Robb's taunts in the training yard and Bran's daring climbs atop the rooftops. He thinks of how Rickon used to steal Sansa's lemon cakes. He thinks of how she used to let him.
He thinks of many things, mostly winter-worn and flame-haired.
He thinks of many things.
And then – when he grips Longclaw to his chest and dashes through the blood splashed hall – he thinks of nothing at all.
'Go,' she had told him.
And he does.
He goes until his lungs give out.
She finds Bran in the godswood still, eyes white, barely breathing, his mouth twitching in something less than words but more than an exhale , the Ironborn fighting off wights and walkers and suddenly Sansa is… Sansa is –
"Oh gods."
Ghost bounds past her, hurtling into the wight running at her, and she fumbles in her cloak, finds the dragonglass dagger, and everything falls to pieces around her.
Somewhere above, Bran is warging into the dead Viserion, its screeches lighting the air as blindingly as its blue fire, Drogon's accompanying roars a thunderous rush in their scream-filled wood. Men die at her left. They die at her right.
Sansa staggers toward Bran, just a few feet away, still unmoving and white-gazed. Just a few feet, and then he's there. He's right there. Her hand reaches out, her other fist clenched over her dragonglass, and a sweep of snow-feathered wind overtakes her – she lurches back, blinks against the biting wind, her eyes meeting blue, and her breath stalls in her chest, the white walker suddenly there and immediate and there and she falls back just as he swings at her, her elbow jarring against the ground painfully, her hip hitting the snow hard, and then Ghost has his jaws around the walker's arm, his snarl sharp as he tears at it, and she watches with wide eyes as the walker drags his ice blade up and slices Ghost at the stomach, up and over his hind. Ghost yelps and releases his grip, stumbling back, falling against the snow, pushing up with his failing legs, and when the walker brings his arms up with his blade, ready to strike Ghost with that killing blow, Sansa's bellow of rage lights her lungs and roars out of her as she scrambles to her knees, thrusting her dragonglass blade up and into its sternum, her grunt of pain locking her elbows, before she heaves, pushing deeper, and the walker stills, mouth open in a soundless cry and the dry cracking of ice fills her ears and it shatters before her, nicking her cheek with the cut of its cold and she falls back, panting, arms aching, clawing at the ground as she pushes herself back amidst the snow, one hand reaching for Ghost.
He's pushing up from the snow, legs trembling, blood coating his white fur from his chest to his hip and Sansa's tearful cry tumbles out of her chapped lips. "Oh Ghost, Ghost please," and then she's crying, and she's fumbling in the snow for her dagger and the wind hasn't stopped and neither have the screams and then her hand lights along her dagger, hobbling to a stand just as she hears the snarl of a wight bearing down on her. And then it's Theon at her shoulder, his blade slicing the corpse's head clean off, another wight crashing into him and he falls back against Bran's chair, the pair of them toppling into the snow at Sansa's feet.
"Theon!" Her gasp tears from her, the carnage of the wood loud in her ears. And then her eyes flick to Bran. "Oh gods, he's – Bran, he's –" Her words lay slaughtered in her throat, her hands bunching in her unmoving brother's cloak, trying to drag him from the toppled chair.
"Get him out of here!" Theon yells, parrying a swing, pushing the wight off.
"He's not waking up!" She pulls again, heaves with all her weight through the sludge, tripping on her own snow-logged cloak, and she gasps when she slams into the ground, her vision going white for a terrifyingly long second. A pair of boots enter her vision and she snaps her gaze up, sharp blue eyes wide and terror-tinged.
"Sansa, get up," Theon urges, panting, reaching for her, his hair matted in blood, his left arm bent at an unnatural angle, and she can't control the sob that leaves her.
"Theon." Her chest tightens, her breath rushing from her in a single, swift exhale.
The glint of ice is sudden, barely-there.
When she looks back, she wonders how she saw it at all.
But she sees it. She sees the ice-blade come down on Theon from behind, splitting him from gullet to gut, his blood spraying out over her face, her eyes blinking back against the onslaught, mouth parted, cry muted.
He drops to his knees, the white walker blue and ice-touched and unmoved behind him.
Theon splits at the cut, falling to pieces at her feet.
Her scream rends the air.
When he was younger, Jon used to watch her in the morning light. From his window overlooking the courtyard, he could see Sansa walking to the sept at the crack of dawn, her silk gowns fluttering in the wind, her hair like spilled wine.
Go to your prayers, summer child, he used to think. They won't be answered.
They never have. And Jon isn't simple enough to think they will be now.
But even still… even still he clutches at his chest, gloves slick with blood along Longclaw's hilt, the acrid scent of burning flesh stinging his lungs as he runs.
Even still he lets it fill him, that dangerous want, that memory of waiting at the window for the chance that she'd turn, morning light catching her face like a promise.
It's a useless wish, the wrong kind of wish – for that wine-spilled hair spread along his furs, that silk gown at the foot of his bed, her mouth – her wet and parted mouth (never before parted for him, not like that, at least) – pressed against the hollow of his throat.
When he was younger, things used to be simpler. He never saw the dead rising, he never had to placate a dragon queen, he never panted his desperation through the bloodied halls of his home.
He never used to love his sister-cousin – not the way he does now.
No, their prayers have never been answered before.
He sees no reason that should change now.
A snap of frigid air, her hand clenched in Ghost's bloodied fur, her other bunched in Bran's cloak, and then Brienne's thunderous shout breaks against the night fog, Oathkeeper swinging into Sansa's cone of vision – whispering dangerously close to her cheek – as it shatters the ice blade into dozens of pieces, a single shard whistling through the air to bury deep in Sansa's thigh.
Her howl of pain is not unlike a wolf's. She barely has the presence of mind to notice Brienne towering over her huddled form, fighting off the white walker. The wights rush through the Ironborn line, and then Ghost bites down on her shoulder and she cries out again, wincing beneath the clench of his teeth through her wool dress as he drags her back in the snow, stumbling in his own blood. The tears are instant and hot on her lids as she grips at her bleeding thigh, flurries of snow blinding her vision. She sees the dark, still form of Bran still laid out several feet away.
"Ghost, no, it's Bran. It's Bran, please, I have to – I have to help him, please – "
Ghost whines at her shoulder, faltering in the sludge of gore and snow beneath his trembling paws even as he keeps dragging her and she chokes on the cry of pain in her throat. The dark shade of the weirwood overtakes them suddenly and she looks up at the blood red leaves, a glint of moonlight shifting through the branches.
All at once, it is simple.
The terror fills her, the biting cold warmed by the blood in the air.
The dawn was never meant for her.
Sansa struggles in the snow, pushing Ghost away at her shoulder, a wet gasp breaking from her chapped and bloody lips when he releases her. She scrambles to her feet, a hand held against the wound at her thigh, limping over to Bran.
Bodies drop around her and distantly she thinks she hears Brienne shouting her name.
No, the dawn was never meant for her, but she's a Stark. She'll always be a Stark.
And Starks have never shied away from Winter.
Not even their own.
Jon breaks into the clearing and stills, eyes wide as they take in the carnage. His throat constricts when he catches sight of Theon bloodying the ground, but he can't linger on it, swallows it back, tastes the bitterness, eyes sweeping the wood. He catches sight of Sansa's Northern guard clashing with the wights and walkers alongside the remaining Ironborn, and then a vicious roar catches his ears and he sees Brienne stabbing Oathkeeper through a white walker, the shards of ice breaking over her flagging form, and just past her, there, a bundle of bloodied furs and snow-caught, copper hair – there – Sansa and Ghost are dragging an unconscious, white-eyed Bran back along the snow, toward the courtyard entrance.
Everything fails him at once. His heart, his senses, his instincts.
He liked her songs the best, though he'd never told her.
(He wants to tell her now – tell her how her soft laugh fills his own chest, how her fine-boned fingers make him tremble, how he lies awake at night cursing this desire of his, this need –
He wants to tell her how she can stagger him with but a look – especially the frantic, blood-flecked one she wears now.)
Yes, everything stops. And then it crashes alive again, and he's bolting to her, lungs aching, head pounding.
"Jon!" she cries, half-wailing, half-panting.
He drops down beside her, Longclaw falling to the snow, his hands gripping at her arms. "What in seven hells are you doing here?" He shakes her – he shakes her, he's so furious, so panicked. "Why aren't you in the crypts?" He can't help the way he yells it. Won't help it.
"Bran, he's – he's not waking up." Her eyes are wide and salt-sheened, her face splashed with a fine arc of blood. "Jon, he's not waking up."
Viserion still wails above them – unearthly screeches ricocheting through the clouds. Around them, the battle still wages.
"I don't know how long he can hold it," Sansa sobs.
Ghost huffs beside them, and Jon looks at the direwolf, chest clenching at the bloodied sight of him. But Ghost is looking up, red eyes trained on the clouds through the heavy shade of the weirwood.
And suddenly, Jon understands.
The wind is fire-lit, copper-stained.
(To love is…)
He takes a moment, just a beat – enough to breathe in, to inhale, to hold that pull against his ribs and let it flood his lungs.
"Sansa, we have to go."
She blinks up at him, mouth parting, but nothing comes.
"Can you run?"
She must see something in his eyes, because she nods mutely, instantly, her hand gripping at her bloodied thigh.
"Brienne!' he shouts, twisting round in the snow, pulling Sansa up by an elbow, bracing her weight against him when she staggers at the sudden surge.
Another wight falls to the knight before she whips her head around, catching Jon's gaze amidst the falling snow.
"Your lady has need of you."
Sansa limps through the grey halls with Brienne's arm around her waist, her cloak long-forgotten in the godswood, wisps of hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, Theon's blood caking along her cheeks, her own bloody shoulder marring her knight's chest guard – what isn't already black and filthy with rot.
Jon's just behind her with Bran slung across his back as he runs after them, their brother still unconscious. Ghost pads unsteadily ahead of them, leading the way with the two remaining members of Sansa's guard, a single torch lighting their path.
The stones around them echo with screams in every direction.
A regiment of Vale knights crosses the corridor in front of them, a shout of incomprehensible Dothraki following, archers running up the stairs behind them to the eastern ramparts, and then a blur of black cloaks rushes past.
"Sam!"
They swirl to a stop, Sansa gripping at Brienne's belt to keep herself upright.
One of the blurs stumbles to a halt at Jon's shout, and before Sansa's inking black vision, the outline of a familiar face takes shape.
"Jon!" And then a quick grasp of arms, Jon adjusting the weight of Bran over his back.
Sam's face crumbles instantly from relief into dread, eyeing the unconscious Stark. "What…"
"Where's Davos?" Jon asks impatiently, huffing beneath his fatigue.
Sam seems to gather himself, nodding, eyes back to Jon's. "He's ordered the retreat back behind the third trench."
Jon swallows thickly, a minute nod of acknowledgement passing him, and Sansa swears he glances at her beneath his dark brow.
"Here." He slides Bran from across his back, adjusting him in Sam's grip, who takes him without hesitation. "I need you to get them out. I'll signal Davos for the final retreat." He stops, swallows, doesn't look at her. "I'll hold the gate until you make it out."
"Jon," she admonishes, breathless, pushing from Brienne.
He ignores her, looks up at their loyal knight. "I'm holding you to your oath, Ser Brienne."
"Jon." Sansa's pleading now, grasping at his arms, fingers curling in the leather of his sleeves. Her voice breaks.
Jon closes his eyes a moment, opens them, doesn't look at her.
"I won't fail you, my lord – my king." And then Brienne nods, eyes glistening, mouth a thin line.
Sansa shakes him, wincing at the ache in her shoulder. "Jon, look at me!"
He swallows thickly, eyes locked to Brienne's, body rigid. "She's yours to protect now."
"I'm not!" Sansa screams, a fist landing on his chest. "I'm not, Jon, I'm not! I'm not anyone's but yours – please. Please. Just look at me, just – "
And then he's kissing her, and it isn't apologetic, it isn't even soft. It's rough and wet and with teeth clacking against each other, his hands gripping at her hair, his breath flooding her mouth and he tastes her sudden sob – her regret as stark as winter on his tongue.
As stark as his own –
(And maybe 'stark' should mean something in this moment but it doesn't – it doesn't mean anything.)
That regret.
That sudden, biting knowledge that somewhere along the way they'd lost their chance – well and truly lost it, beyond any hope.
Beyond a needful last kiss. Beyond her hands grappling for his tunic and his chest heaving against hers and the modest, knowing way the others turn their gazes for a moment.
For just this single, blinding moment.
He breaks from her, mouth still panting against hers, and then she's laughing – tear-lined and delirious, her hands shaking as they wind up his chest and into his hair, tangling in the ash and snow lighting his curls.
She thinks this will kill her – maybe not today, not this moment. But sometime in the future when she least expects it – she will linger on this moment and fracture away, crack beneath the weight of irreparable grief, think of his kiss and his desperate pants and his hands framing her face like she's some precious thing, and she will break.
"You have to go," he breathes against her mouth, sliding his cheek against hers and nuzzling softly, the break in his voice lost in her hair.
"I can't." She hiccups through her cries, her fingertips lighting along his cheeks, feeling his tremulous sigh at her ear. "Not without you." She's panting and desperate and shaken. So shaken.
His hands tighten in her hair, the breath rattling from him.
"Still wish we'd gone someplace warm instead?" she asks on a dark exhale, her delirious, rueful laugh clattering painfully through her chest as she shakes against him.
She feels the barest hint of his smile at her ear, and she thinks this might be peace. In some small, immeasurable way – some impermanent way.
"You are my someplace warm," he says, and she crumbles against him, chest heaving. The raw cry that leaves her reverberates through the hall – a hollow, tear-laced keen.
But then he's pushing from her, bracing her back against Brienne. His hands linger over her shoulders for one long distressful moment, and then he pulls stiffly from her.
"Jon," she pleads once more, unable to say anything else.
Because please, gods, no. No. Not him. Not after everything.
He looks at her one last time and – and oh – she would walk with him in that godswood, she would cloak him night after night, she would swear her affection into his skin and drink his moans.
She would hold him to her beneath a wolf's moon and make him a Stark – make him hers.
(Except he already is – and this, perhaps, is the cruelest truth of all.)
He walks away, back into the shadow-filled corridor, back into the night, back into the screams.
Something anchors between them like a drought – a winter-worn famine.
"Jon, no!" She tries to run after him, but Brienne's arms lock around her form, and her knee buckles beneath the pain of her gashed thigh, caught in her knight's hold.
"Jon!" she screams, wails, belts into the night, scratching at her captor's hold and it's so tight – this hand at her throat, this clutch at her heart – it's so blinding and so staggering and she thinks she might collapse in on herself, right here, right here in the halls where she's meant to feel safe, right here in her home, right here beside the ruined pieces of her heart and she reaches out, struggles against Brienne's grip, hand grasping, mouth opening, panting, screaming, begging –
"Jon!"
Something strikes her at the base of her skull, thwarting the wail in her throat, breath catching, vision inking slowly black as she stills her struggle. She blinks her suddenly groggy eyes at the shadow that flits before her, catches her sister's heavy grey gaze staring back from a blood-drenched face, one cheek swelling up with a brutal, purple bruise.
"Arya," she whispers, slipping into the darkness. Brienne's grip loosens as she slumps forward into her sister's open arms.
Sansa's eyes slip shut.
She'd come for her.
She had.
(Even when she wished she hadn't.)
Jon likes to think it matters, in the end.
All of it. Or at least, some of it.
Another thunderous heave against the gate, his feet braced readily on the other side – waiting.
He's been to the other side before. He's seen the red dawn.
(A little girl with Sansa's hair and his eyes. A little girl. A daughter.)
Jon has seen it in his dreams too long to not see it now – in the end, in whatever darkness awaits.
The gate breaks open. The dead swarm through.
Jon takes a breath, holds it firm against his ribs –
To love is to breathe in, to inhale.
Sansa lets it fill her lungs, anchors the air tight, keeps it bundled in her chest.
"Jon, he…" Arya's voice falters. She licks her lips, shakes her head, looks ahead as her horse trots beside Sansa's dilapidated cart, Brienne and Podrick tugging her along.
Bran lays beside her under the furs, his breathing low and uneven. She strokes Ghost's head in her lap, eyes locked on the smoke-lined horizon where Winterfell used to stand, growing ever smaller in the distance.
It's a grey dawn, a dawn she hadn't meant to see.
No dragon wings beat overhead. No banners fly amidst their meager flood of fleeing civilians. No sun makes it through the dark, snow-laden clouds, even as dawn creeps over the North.
"He isn't coming," Sansa says softly, hardly expecting any kind of answer.
Arya keeps her eyes fixed to the path – fixed to the South.
Ghost whines lowly into her skirts, tongue flicking out to lick at the gash along her thigh, the ice shard since melted into her flesh, tainting her skin with a permanent freeze, an everlasting cold.
Sansa soothes Ghost back to stillness, calmly, without trembling.
She looks back across the horizon.
She looks back at a lost Winterfell.
She looks back at her last, her only, her greatest regret.
To love is to breathe in, to inhale. Sansa takes a deep, stinging gulp, and then swiftly –
(to lose is to exhale)
– she breathes it out.