Sansa avoids Jon all day, keeping to her solar and having her meals brought to her there. Something must have passed between his wife and his friend, for Sam avoids him too. It's a rather pointed gesture after Jon has been away for so long. There is important business to attend to. Some of it pressing enough that Sam attempted to bring it to his attention the previous night, when there wasn't enough light in the yard to read the figures writ in ink on the page.
With the two people closest to him keeping away, solitude is the order of the day long before Jon goes to the godswood. He reaches the weirwood tree in advance of the weak winter sun slipping below the horizon, but by the time his feet retrace his prints in the snow, it has grown dark. Enough time has passed in painful self reflection that he hates himself as much as he hates the Kingslayer, but he still wants Jaime Lannister gone. It's what he intends on suggesting to his wife, for the good of their marriage as much as his peace of mind, when he sees the up and down bob of her unbound, coppery hair peeking through a break in the ancient grove of trees.
Her face is composed, no sign of displeasure at the sight of him etched on her fine features. But she can hardly be happy with him.
As she comes into earshot, he holds out his arm to her. "May I accompany you to the godswood?"
Sometimes Sansa visits her mother's sept. Sometimes he finds her kneeling before the roots of her father's faith. Jon has never asked to what gods she turns for guidance. In truth, he knows precious little about her. Taking the time to learn her better might have spared them both this pain.
"I only ventured out to find you," she says, slowing to a stop before him and tucking a wayward curl behind her ear.
The shell of her ear is pink with the cold, and he swallows, wondering how the chill of her earlobe would feel between his lips. All his plans for his surprise return, how he would pet and caress with as much tenderness as she deserved, are pent up inside of him, turning him into something he was not before he left her. It is inconvenient timing at best.
"You shouldn't have in this cold. I would have come to you."
She doesn't reach for his proffered arm and he lets it drop back to his side.
"I didn't want the servants to hear us and have there be more talk. Don't trouble yourself. I'm warm enough in your furs."
She's wearing the same too long fur Jon noticed last night, when his blood sung hot in his veins. She wears it now closed at her neck with a Tully brooch, a silver fish with delicate scales and sapphire eyes. The blackness of the bear fur is a shock tucked up around the pale skin of her graceful neck. He can't imagine how or why she came to lay hands on it. The long winter was hard on every corner of the kingdom and with another winter quick on its heels, things have been difficult, especially in the North, but she is not so ill provided for that she need go without basic wants.
"If your furs are not sufficient to keep you warm, my lady, I shall have new ones made for you."
"It isn't that. I like that they're yours," she says, gesturing back towards the castle in invitation for him to follow her home.
Jon turns halfway back towards the godswood, a curse heavy on the back of his tongue.
"Jon?" she prompts, when he makes no move to follow. "Unless you mind me wearing it?"
It's his name again, twice in as many days, and he hopes it means there is enough there between them to salvage. If there is, he must begin with apologies.
"No, I don't mind."
It never occurred to him that she might want to wear something of his. The very thought stirs him in spite of the bite of the cold, and he adjusts his own fur to hide the evidence of his need for her before leaning forward to catch up. Once he does, he walks half a step behind, checking his stride so as not to outpace her. It also happens to make it easier to speak without having to look her full in the face.
"I should have never spoken to you in that manner last night," he says. "It was wrong."
"It frightened me," she says lightly, though if she is willing to admit that, he knows there is real depth to the statement. "Don't do it again."
"I won't. I swear it." Last night, he didn't get as far as his bedchamber before vowing that his behavior was not ever to be repeated. If they must keep apart for her happiness, then they must keep apart, but he will never frighten her again. Jon fidgets with the cuffs of his gloves and then brushes off his doublet with unnecessary brusqueness. "If it contributed to gossip, I am sorry for that too."
"It isn't the first time. There is always gossip. Our marriage is a daily source of tittle tattle for our servants and the smallfolk."
If that is true, he is unaware of it. Perhaps more has cause to reach the lady of Winterfell's ears than her lord and prince's. But if Sansa is pained by what others whisper behind cupped hands, taking the Kingslayer to bed was ill-advised.
Any time Jon thinks of that gold hand pressed against her skin—skin he has scarcely seen with the candles blown out and her shift pulled up to her hips—he wants to slice open the man's belly and watch his innards spill out. It gives his words a low sort of vehemence he wishes didn't bleed through, when he makes his wishes plain. "I want Jaime Lannister gone."
If the Lannister man was Jon's to command, he would be gone already. But he is not. Jon always has respected his wife's right to control her household, and her personal guard is just that—hers.
"Please don't ask that of me."
His huff of irritation mists before his face. Perhaps she begs for Jaime because she loves him, but other than Jaime's fine bearing and superior courtesies, the things Sansa liked as a girl, it is a match that makes little sense to Jon. When he agreed to let Jaime come here—after Tyrion's impassioned plea spared Jaime from being roasted like a goat—he didn't understand why Sansa wanted a Lannister, any Lannister close by.
"Their family would have seen all of us dead, Sansa. They finished half the job."
She spins. The furs she took from him drag, throwing snow up on his breeches, when her delicate feet plant themselves beside him. "Do you think I need a history lesson? You didn't happen to watch any of them die."
"Which is why I will never understand."
"No? Ser Jaime came to save me, when no one else thought to bother. And he didn't want my title."
Jon did. Jon wanted to be lord of Winterfell, same as every other lordling. He'd wanted it from the time he came to understand everything was to be Robb's and he was naught but his father's bastard.
The Kingslayer may not have wanted Winterfell, when he found Sansa in the Vale, but he hardly has been without selfish design since. "He wanted something."
Sansa rolls her eyes. The expression startles Jon nearly as much as seeing her lit by torches with the tall figure of Jaime Lannister at her side. It's a sharp reminder of how she once was as tart as she was sweet. He hasn't seen such evident scorn from her since they were children and she and Jeyne would tease Arya for having hair like a bird's nest and embroidery just as narled.
"We keep each other company and that is all. Jaime Lannister is in love with his dead sister." Her brows arch at sister, her tone as sharp as the edge of Longclaw. "Whatever you might think him capable of, you might have considered the character of your wife. I did what I had to in order to survive, but I am not wicked. You are not the only honorable one."
It's a reproof as sharp as a slap. "Sansa," he says, reaching for the kid glove hands she holds close to herself, but she presses them firmly to her middle and he doesn't have the nerve to prize them from her body.
"Those Ser Jaime would have killed for are gone. He can do none of us any further harm. I've never asked you to thank him for saving me, but I won't turn him out."
Ought he to have thanked the man? Winterfell would have been Jon's after the Wall fell if Jaime hadn't whisked Sansa away ahead of Daenerys' dragons. Jon wanted Winterfell, but not under those circumstances. There would be no family remaining to him if Jaime Lannister did not seek Sansa out on the eve of Daenerys' conquest. No wife dear enough to Jon that he cut short a ranging expedition far too soon in order to hurry back to her and fold her into his chest.
She rocks on her heels, looking down at the tips of her highly shined boots punched through the bright snow. "Shall we go back to how things were? Since you have my promise that no man visits my bed?"
The flush on her cheeks is pretty, but he regrets it, for he should have never given cause to put it there. No man visits her bed. Not even her lord husband. What madness made him believe otherwise?
Jon knew he offended with his rough treatment of her, but he gave far worse offense suspecting Sansa of betraying him. He is the sole vow breaker here. Shame hollows him out. He stares back at her bright blue eyes, lashes wet with unspent tears. Mortification thickens his tongue and he hesitates. Giving up on an answer, she begins to pick her way towards the castle once more, her feet lifting high enough to be free of the snow with each step.
"Is that what you want?" he calls out to her.
"I don't know." He tilts his head to hear her better. She is hard to make out with her back to him and a distance between them ten lengths wide. "I think we both have been disappointed in our marriage."
What he can glimpse of her skin is luminous under the moonlight and he wants to go to her and kiss her lips, her cheeks, her neck the way he never has, but he holds himself back.
"I'm sorry to have disappointed you, my lady."
She casts a look over her shoulder as inscrutable to him as the True Tongue. "As am I, my lord."