When his little sister comes back to him, he hardly recognizes her. Of course, he rationalizes to himself, the last time he had seen her was what seems like a lifetime ago. He had said goodbye to her before the Wall, before everything. This woman, the one who barges into the Targaryen camp and demands to be taken to Lord Snow, holds little resemblance to the little girl who had rained kisses on him years ago.
But he knows it is her, even when his half-brother, Aegon, is staring at him, he knows she is the little girl he had lost years ago. He will recognize those eyes anywhere. He runs towards her and crushes her lithe body to her chest. There are tears in his eyes, he thinks, but he cares very little of them. Arya is here and in his arms, and that's all he cares about.
"Arya," he whispers, so soft that he himself barely hears it.
Arya is tall now, head reaching up to his shoulders, and her hair is matted with dirt and blood. Her eyes are dull, almost empty, but a little spark of awe registers in them as she looks up at him.
"I found you," she breathes, and the air between them fogs with mist.
"You did, little sister," Jon mutters against her neck.
She pulls back a little and frown mars her pretty face. He's always known that she'd grow up to be beautiful, but her beauty has a sense of the wilderness in it. She is wild and beautiful. Seeing her after years, it almost takes his breath away. If Lyanna Stark, his mother, was anything like Arya, he understands why men would go to war for her.
"- I heard you were dead," Arya was saying but he looked around them to realize that the men were staring at them, staring at her.
He lets go of her and takes her hands in his instead, "Come inside the tent. I have much to tell you."
Arya smiles, it doesn't reach her eyes, not completely, but there's something soft in them as she looks at him, "And I have much to tell you."
She doesn't speak much, but she never strays too far from him. After more than half a decade of not seeing her, he knows he's doing much the same thing. She tells him of her journey, of what happened to her after Lord Stark was executed. He knows that she is not telling him everything, and he finds that he doesn't mind. Arya's entitled to her own secrets, after all, although he suspects her secrets are as much for her sake as his own.
It's been two days since she's come back, and she sleeps very little, but when she does, it is in his tent. She sleeps in the crook of his arm, wild hair a tangle around them both, and he cannot find it within himself to push her away. She has been offered her own tent the first night, with a handmaiden of her own, but she vehemently shoots it down the moment it comes up.
"I'm not a lady," she tells them, him and Aegon, "And I won't leave Jon." Although Aegon looks like he wants to protest, after a look from Jon, he grudgingly quiets down.
He knows that men will talk, but he finds that he cares little of what they think. Arya has come back home, and he knows he will deny her nothing. He is all that she has left, and he cannot (and will not) deny her comfort and familiarity in the name of propriety. He finds that he does not event want to. Despite Aegon, despite his newfound Targaryen ancestry, she is all that he has left too.
"Why now? After all this time, why have you come back now?" He asks her that night, after Aegon has retired to his own tent for the night.
She looks up from the dagger she is examining and the intensity of her gaze staggers him a little, and very quietly, she speaks, "Heard from a group of men that your Black brothers betrayed you, almost killed you, and I couldn't fool myself anymore. I am Arya Stark of Winterfell, a daughter of the North. It was time I remembered that."
She looks away from him, her gaze far away, going somewhere he couldn't follow, and her lips twisted in a bitter smile. He leaves her in their tent; he can't bear the sight of sadness on her face.
Lord Jon Connington despairs of her resemblance to Lyanna Stark, and he does not hide it well. In fact, he does not even try to hide it.
"History must not repeat itself," he tells both him and Aegon.
Jon knows that he should correct him, tell him that he and Arya are not like that. He knows that he should say that Arya is his little sister. Except, he left Arya the little sister for the Wall, and the woman that has found her way back to him is so much more to him.
Absence does make the heart grow fonder, he thinks with a twist of his lips.
So, instead, he says, "We are not Rhaegar and Lyanna. We will make better choices."
And they are not. They are Jon Targaryen and Arya Stark, and he knows that whatever happens between them, they will make better choices.
Love is the death of duty, he remembers old Aemon saying when he first joined the Wall. He knows the truth of those words; he chose to abandon his duty as the Lord Commander and almost died for his love for Arya. But he also knows that he had a duty to Arya, and he put it over his duty to his Black brothers.
He wishes that he could see old Aemon now.
"Love is a duty, old man," he would tell him wryly. He wonders how the maester would reply to that.