I started this some time ago, and then I went through my funk and just sort of gave up on writing for a while. Don't worry, I already have a good chunk of the next chapter for She Rises written, and will finish that within the next few days. And How To Lose Your Dragon is still ongoing, I just need to really focus on finishing the half-written chapter. The Zone Where Black and White Clash is temporarily on hold for about two weeks, until I manage to get everything else up to date.
But I already have 9 prewritten chapters for this story, so I figured I'd go ahead and give it to you already.
I swore I wasn't going to ship Jon and Sansa. Apparently I don't know myself as well as I think I do. So here we go.
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"What do you mean, 'I don't get one'?"
Jon rolls his eyes as he puts away his saddle, scratching the tiny whimpering pup at his ankles behind the ears. Rickon sniggers from just inside the door of the tack room, holding his own direwolf puppy, looking at Jon with laughter in his eyes that suggests he thinks Jon will play along with the game he and his brother and sister play.
Sansa, newly turned thirteen, stands outside, looking as beautiful as ever, her long red hair twined into braids and her rose petal lips trembling. Her coltish limbs are covered in a blue dress, and his eyes catch on a cluster of faint freckles on her collarbone. Soft cyan eyes – the same color as her mother's, but with none of the sharp intelligence – fill with tears.
"There were only five of them, and Jon got the last one," Arya said with a shrug, holding two direwolf pups in her arms and watching her sister with gleeful grey eyes. "Sorry, Sansa."
Tears spill over onto Sansa's cheeks. "B-but Jon wouldn't do that!" she says, crossing her arms over her chest and looking utterly devastated in a way that only a disappointed teenage girl can manage. "He's not even a Stark. I am. He wouldn't take one for himself if all of us hadn't already gotten one!"
Jon stiffens, and sighs. He's not even a Stark. Sansa will always remind him of this.
He knows she does not mean to alienate him. She is never purposefully unkind to him, unless she is in a snit (and then, no one is safe). She does not have a cruel nature. But he and Sansa have never been at all close, and out of all the Stark children, she spends the most time with her mother. Sansa is not the smartest of girls, but she is intuitive enough to pick up on Lady Catelyn's distaste for Jon, and it has influenced her own relationship with her half-brother. Her insults towards him are never intentional, but they are insults nonetheless, and her lack of awareness drives a wedge between them that only gets wider as they age.
"Besides," she whines, tears streaming down her face, "how come you're carrying two?"
Bran's eyes glitter with mischief from where he stands beside Arya, holding his own male, which he's just named Summer, close to his chest. "That one is Robb's," he lies, gesturing to one of the pups that squirm in his sister's arms.
Sansa sobs, and finally Jon stalks through the door, sick of their games. Sometimes he wishes his pretty red-haired half-sister would smarten up, but at the same time, he can't condone his other siblings' treatment of her.
"Enough," he says, using both his hands to smack his scheming brother and sister on the backs of their heads. Then he grabs one of the pups from Arya's arms by the scruff of its neck and holds it out to Sansa. Her eyes widen, and she grabs the female puppy from his outstretched hand. Her lips part in awe as she cradles the tiny creature in her arms, looking down into its eyes, still blue with youth but soon to turn amber.
"She's yours," he says gently, ignoring Arya's whine from behind him. "Name her, train her, feed her. Treat her kindly, and firmly." He puts a hand on her elbow, and looks down into her eyes. "And next time your gut tells you something isn't true, believe it."
She nods hastily. "Thank you, Jon," she says quietly.
"You're welcome," he says briskly. "Now go settle her into your rooms and get ready for supper. You can't bring her to the great hall with you, and your lady mother won't be happy if you're late." She nods and instantly turns, clutching her new puppy to her chest and walking back across the square.
He turns, his own puppy stumbling around his ankles, and crosses his arms, frowning at his other younger siblings. "You three," he says sternly as Rickon walks sheepishly from the tack room, "are menaces."
"Not our fault Sansa's stupid," Arya says meanly, putting down her direwolf and crossing her arms in return.
"Sansa isn't stupid," he says harshly. His wild little sister has the good grace to wilt a bit under his stare. "She's gullible. And she's generally not unkind, which is more than I can say for the lot of you, at the moment."
The three of them shift their feet.
Jon cannot help the smile that jumps to his face, and he shakes his head in amusement. "Get going, all of you," he says. He shoos them off, and they all run, giggling, direwolf pups yipping and stumbling along at their heels.
He reaches down and scoops the pale puppy at his feet up into his arms. "What shall we name you, then?" The runt leans up and licks him on the nose, and Jon clears his throat. "Well, you're as pale as a ghost," he mumbles. He smiles softly. "Seems fitting, doesn't it?"
The wolf does not answer, just snuggles into the crook of Jon's arm. He sighs. It is nearly time for dinner, and even though Lady Catelyn won't care if he's late – in fact, she might prefer that he not show up at all – Father will surely notice.
Later, at dinner, Sansa catches his eye across the hall. He holds her gaze for a moment; then, strangely, she flushes, and looks hurriedly away.
He does not let himself think anything of it.
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"You're going to the Wall."
Jon turns. Sansa swallows, folding her hands together in front of her stomach. "Yes," he says, his eyes dark and soft with something she can't quite identify.
She nods. "That's…good," she says lamely. "It'll be a good fit for you." She does not say because you're a bastard, because that would be rude. But she can't help but feel guilty, because she knows he hears it anyway, and even though it isn't her problem – it has never been her problem – she can't help but feel, for the first time ever, that somehow it just is.
His nostrils flare, and he looks back to his horse, lifting the flap of his saddle to adjust the girth. She watches his bicep bulge when he yanks on the strap, sliding the buckle up to tighten it; she is just old enough to be aware of such things, and belatedly she realizes that her older half-brother is attractive. His mare shifts on her hooves, snorting softly.
"I'm going to King's Landing," she says, feeling awkward and, for some unexplained reason, angry. "To marry Joffrey. I'm going to be queen." She raises her chin with pride.
He sighs, and pats his horse on the rump. He looks at her, and his eyes are no longer soft, but hard and hot and unreadable. "I'm sure it will be everything you hope for," he says quietly. "I'm sure you'll have every bit of happiness that songs always promise to beautiful young ladies."
She is not the smartest girl – she knows that her gifts lay elsewhere – but she is savvy enough to know that he is mocking her, somehow. "Of course I will," she says hotly, her eyes narrowing to slits. "King's Landing is where I belong! I'm betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon. I'm going to be queen. Of course I'll be happy!"
She realizes too late that she sounds petulant, childish. She expects him to roll his eyes, grin, laugh at her. He does none of these things, because he is not Robb, or Bran, or Theon – he is Jon Snow, her bastard half-brother, and even at sixteen he is more honorable than anyone else she knows besides her father.
Therefore it makes her even angrier when he only smiles sadly at her and says, "Of course you will be, Sansa. Of course."
Then he tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and her breath catches as he leads his horse away. It almost occurs to her to cry, but she is distracted by the prince, who cuts an impressive figure prancing across the yard on his bay stallion.
She tamps down the voice in her head that points out that he is not as good a horseman as Jon is.
Only later, when she watches through the carriage window as her bastard brother's horse peels away from the convoy to ride north with Uncle Benjen and The Imp, is she shocked into crying. Because she suddenly realizes that she may never see him again – and if she does, it will be years from now.
She is not sure why it makes her so sad. She has never really counted Jon as a brother – at least, not as she does Robb and Bran and Rickon. Hastily, so that her mother and Arya and the queen and Myrcella do not ask too many questions, she stabs herself in the finger with her needle to give her tears an excuse to fall. Her mother chides her softly, and Sansa stares down at the bead of blood that wells on the pad of her finger.
It is the same color red as Ghost's eyes. Realizing this only makes her cry harder.
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Please review if you feel so inclined! The next chapter will be posted on Saturday or Sunday.