He rides south with a small entourage. He would move faster alone, but a king would not travel or arrive alone, and he must be a king - not Jon Snow - when he meets this Targaryen conqueror and her three dragons. He has heard many things about her - one thing he has heard is that she is a widow. She does not actively seek a husband, but surely she will make a political marriage of some kind before her youth fades. He has heard also that she is very beautiful. He had never thought he would marry - he had always intended to be a sworn brother of the Night's Watch; he does not want to marry a dragon queen. But he may have to. Before this is all said and done, or after. Can he prevail on her intelligence, her empathy? If nothing else, he must at least take back more dragonglass.
He does not even want to make this trip, as much as he had to argue for it, with his bannermen and brothers and wildlings and advisors. With Sansa.
Sometimes he has to whisper to the sky, to whoever might be listening, to the old gods or the new: how much more will they ask of him? How much more from his past must he lose, how much more from his future must he sacrifice? How many more decisions of life and death, of armies and nations, of races and creeds, will be placed on his shoulders? He remembered when Benjen didn't return from north of the Wall. How long ago that was, how much that hurt. It was only the beginning. Now loss walked with him like his shadow did. When the sun shone, that's when the loss was at its most potent.
Just when he thought he had nothing more to lose, Sansa came riding through the gates of Castle Black. Bright as the sun of the long summer in which they had both grown up. Her heart was weary and calloused, her eyes opened in on a soul that was cracked and threatened to collapse under the weight of grief and fear and hate, but though mangled, held strong. Like his. But the love he felt when he saw her - that was the sunshine. And now the shadow lurked, stalked him once again. It reminded him, he still had something left to lose. He was severed from the others he loved who still roamed. Out there in the world, Sam and Arya, possibly even Bran. So little left of the beauty this world had held for him, but what remained was all the more precious. Sansa - she was within the reach of his finger tips. The cord that had been cut when he joined the Night's Watch and she went south had been re-tied - no, the chain had been reforged, under an intense purifying heat, a crucible. It was something new. Something very strong. It rattled, it didn't always fit quite right, but it was unbreakable.
They stop to rest the horses. The inns along the road are closed; no one is traveling this far north in Winter. They break in for shelter from the precipitation and intense winds, and Jon wraps his cloak around him and settles into a chair by a window. There's nothing to see out there but white. Not even a vast whiteness - visibility doesn't extend more than a few yards. He has disciplined his mind not to dwell on what-ifs, on fantasies. But his thoughts drift back along the road, back to Winterfell. It's where he would be. He can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else. No wars, no winter. His siblings beside him and a roaring fire toasting their cheeks. Old Nan telling a story and steeping tea. And Father, perhaps at his desk.
That was no longer possible. But what he could have, what was still possible - tracing that road back, winding along it through the barren, frozen landscape to the vestiges of the great castle that had been the seat of his family for centuries - was Sansa. They could build a fire, have tea, drive out Baelish and the rest of them, and pass a peaceful evening together. Why hadn't he done that before he had left? How does he find himself riding away from her? In a world of people he had lost, she was the only one that he had found. How can he leave her?
He falls asleep, to thoughts of Sansa: her crimson hair against the background of the falling snow; the determined set of her brow when she disagrees with him; her nose turning red in the cold; the rustle of her skirts as she walked beside him. Thoughts turn into dreams. Memories. Her smile when she picked up Lady for the first time. Their hug when they saw each other again after so many years, so tight. Her little smile that even touched her eyes when she told him that she had faith in him.
He wakes up and feels the ghost of her absence, the lack of her a gnawing hole inside of him. He had always loved Sansa, his sister, his ladylike half-sister with the red hair of her mother who despised him, and the same chin with which to look down him. He loves her more now. It's a palpable thing, that love, that change in loving. Perhaps it is that they have put their prejudices behind them. Perhaps it is the soft way she looks at him now, especially when they are alone. Perhaps it's something else, the way the world has roughed them up and thrown them back together, and they run their fingers over the cuts and bruises and recognize something in each other.
If she were here right now, he would hold her hand.
It takes all of his willpower to continue south. The North will be safe in Sansa's hands: he will return to it - and to her - as soon as he can.