Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Final installment to this Season 8 AU. Hope you enjoyed the ride.
Wool and Tallow
Chapter Three: Be Brave With Me
"Jon swipes a gentle thumb along the inside of her wrist, smoothing along the place his mouth had been, eyes never leaving the motion. 'Because if I'm to have you, Sansa, it will be for life.'" - Jon and Sansa, Season 8 AU. After the Battle of Winterfell, the mending begins in earnest.
She gives no indication that his spurning of her affections has wounded her. In their meetings with the lords, she is all grace and etiquette and fine-tuned manners. A tender smile here, a touch to the wrist there. Nothing inappropriate, but also nothing telling. She is his sister again, or his cousin – he can't be sure which anymore – and they go on as King in the North and Lady of Winterfell as though his bed isn't burning with her absence even now.
As though he doesn't hold his pillow to his nose and inhale her waning scent each morning. As though he hasn't already named her Queen in the dark corners of his heart. As though he doesn't trail her woolen skirts through the halls, eclipsed in shadows too familiar to be anything but shameful.
"Was there anything else, Your Grace?" Sansa asks, turning to find him already staring at her.
She shifts slightly in her chair, glancing at the lords seated before them out of the corner of her eye. Her mouth thins into a fine line.
"No," he bites out, throat flexing with his control.
But her eyes are cool, and her hand is too far for him to hold, and when she stands, he can do nothing but watch her leave the hall, stiff and brittle and winter-laced once more.
Sansa takes to the godswood with Bran whenever she can. In the presence of his milk-white eyes, she can escape for a few moments, breathe deep the calming cold.
Bit by bit, the North rebuilds. And Cersei stays adamantly South. Their sovereignty has not yet been threatened, and all Sansa can ask for is an endless winter. A harrowing drought of summer to keep the Southron monsters at bay. Let them wither in the winds. Let them beat their hearts with frostbitten fists. Let them perish in their sun-built keeps and their blood-drenched thrones when winter comes harking at their door.
For she will stay with the North.
Ghost creeps along the edge of her vision, nosing the snow, padding around the banks of the clearing, never following her in. She sighs, feels the ache settle on her bones. He senses her ire and heartache around Jon and does not broach her boundaries. It makes the sob sudden and unexpected in her throat.
"You don't want to be here," Bran says abruptly, eyes no longer milk-white, face no longer tipped toward the wind.
Sansa blinks at his words, hands bunching in her lap when she turns to him. "What?"
Bran looks at her for a moment, and she can't be sure what he sees. What he's seen.
And you were so beautiful – in your white wedding dress.
Her skin is suddenly prickling, her collar too tight, her furs too warm.
He is her brother, she reminds herself. Her brother. And she is tired of losing brothers.
"You don't want to be here, Sansa. Not really," he repeats, voice like something she's never heard before, not like Bran, not like pack. It's a raven's voice – a resonant calls of words more past than present, more wind than woe, more other than his. "You simply want to be not there. With him."
Sansa's throat tightens, her words laying slaughtered behind her clenched teeth.
Bran is looking past her toward a grey-shadowed Winterfell.
She will not turn.
(He is her brother, always will be – as much as the one whose throat she severed with her dragonglass dagger.)
"Bran," she whispers, closing her eyes to steady the tears at her lids.
"I will not be your excuse. I cannot be."
Her eyes snap open, and there – amidst the snow and the red shade and the thin film of wetness lining her eyes, she catches sight of familiar eyes – that gaze so like their mother's, so clear and unbending and willful.
Some part of him, some part of her, still lingering in the aftermath. Still clawing back through the dark.
She dips her head down, ashamed, lost, wounded.
(She still aches for Jon in the night, but she will not visit his bed, not now, not like this.)
And Bran. Lovely, lonely, somber Bran.
What he's seen. Who he's been. Who he is no longer.
Sansa gulps back the bile, rising to her feet. She looks down at Bran – at the Three-Eyed-Raven – and pulls her shoulders back, nodding her farewell.
She doesn't know exactly when they lost him, but she doesn't think it matters, in the end.
Sansa turns to leave the godswood.
(She is just so tired of losing brothers.)
Ghost picks his head up at her slow trudge through the snow, padding restlessly at the frost-laden ground, still hovering around the edges of the clearing.
Her chest constricts at the distance between them. "Here, boy," she entreats, hand waving him over.
He comes dutifully, nuzzling against her thigh, red eyes slipping closed with a contented huff.
She buries a gloved hand in his fur.
She will stay with the North, yes, because it will always stay with her –
Not like her brothers.
"You're not ready yet, Little Crow," Tormund says, a furrow to his brow, hands hanging limp at his side where he grips his sparring sword.
Jon tightens his fingers around the hilt of his own sparring sword. "I'm more than ready."
Tormund huffs his exasperation, flicking his sword in a half-hearted swing toward Jon.
He parries it easily, anger lining his features. "Come on."
Tormund frowns, shifting his stance. Another swing, another parry, and just a swift flick of the wildling's wrist, a quick slap of his blunted sword along Jon's thigh – his scarred thigh – and Jon buckles at the knees, stumbling back out of reach.
Tormund settles back into a relaxed stance, lowering his sword. "You're not ready," he repeats, more regret than anything.
But all Jon can see is red. A red dawn. Red hair along his pillow. The red inviting warmth of Sansa's mouth. Sansa's mouth – that cutting, dangerous thing. And it lights his bones, fills him with vehemence. "Come on," he urges, voice rising, hands curling tight around his sword as he steps toward Tormund once more.
The larger man shakes his head in warning. "Stubborn cunt."
But Jon has never taken well to warnings.
He swings at Tormund, arms trembling with the force of the parry. A half-step forward. Another swing. The sharp clack of swords reverberating in the empty courtyard. "Come on," he hisses, righteous and furious and lost. So lost he can't recall her scent anymore. Can't feel her warmth in the barren furs of his bed. Can't recognize the cold cut of blue she sends his way when he calls her name – softly, tenderly, with an ache of loss he doesn't think he deserves to voice.
"Come on!" he bellows, roar echoing in the courtyard.
Tormund knocks his sword away, the force of it whipping Jon into a sharp pivot, the angle causing a lance of pain to shoot up his thigh and force him to his knees with a blunted cry, his brow already sweat-lined. He drops his hands to the stone, holding himself up on all fours, bracing his weight, panting, waiting, burning.
And then Tormund is crouching at his side, hands hanging limply over his knees, sparring sword forgotten. The older man sighs, rubs a hand down his face and along his beard. "You can't rush these things, Little Crow."
Jon slams a fist into the ground beneath him, never minding the split of skin along his knuckles, the sharp crack of bone along the stone. "Fuck," he murmurs, eyes clenched tightly, his head dipping down until his forehead is braced against the stone. "Fuck!"
"Jon," Tormund urges, hands still resting unsure over his knees, lips pursed into a tight frown.
Jon doesn't notice the blood seeping between his knuckles.
In another world, another time, she might have mended it.
But she has done what mending she could, and he has done nothing but rend the seams.
He lets it bleed. Scars have never been unfamiliar, after all.
"Sansa doesn't sing anymore."
Jon stops his spoon halfway to his mouth, eyeing Arya beside him.
She lifts her chin, raising an expectant brow.
Jon sets his spoon down into his bowl of stew, sighing as he leans back into his chair. He pinches the bridge of his nose, unable to look at her.
The thing is, he remembers what Sansa's song used to sound like. It was summer-warm, always.
"I don't like it," Arya says so softly he almost misses it.
Jon blinks his eyes open to look at her, his hand falling to his lap, but she's staring down at her own bowl now, hands resting uselessly along the table beside it.
Arya's throat flexes in the quiet following her words, eyes fixed to her bowl. He wonders, suddenly, what faces she's worn, what skins she's donned.
(How he can see her so clearly now – now when simply 'a girl' is everything she is not.)
Jon knows her well enough to recognize longing. He likes to pretend he doesn't see it when she shares glances with Gendry across the forge or the Hall of Lords or the fucking dinner table even, but here's the truth:
He knows how longing looks in her Stark grey eyes because he's seen it in the mirror too often not to, and maybe that's the kind of truth he should have noticed long ago.
Except truth has never gotten their family anything but severed heads and lonely beds.
(The truth is he's afraid – but that's too easy and too hard all at once and he doesn't know how to form the words in the first place.)
"Hey," Jon whispers, a hand moving to brace along the back of her neck, rubbing comfortingly.
He pretends not to feel the way her shoulders stiffen in response.
"I don't like it," she says again, brows furrowing, voice quaking, and suddenly he's reminded how very young she is. His little sister.
Arya pushes from the table, standing stiffly.
Jon blinks up at her, his hand falling away.
She turns dark, uncertain eyes on him. "Do something about it," she tells him hoarsely, and then she's stalking from the room, a hand at her eyes, face a blank visage once more, and he thinks he would give anything to have her wail at him, scream at him, anything.
Jon braces his face in his hands and sighs with his whole body.
The truth is he's afraid.
The truth is –
"I don't know how to stop making the wrong choices."
Sansa whips around at his voice, eyes widening when she realizes she never heard him enter her chambers in the first place. "Jon, you can't just – "
"And I'm sorry," he tells her, stepping further into the room. "I'm so, so sorry, and I don't… I don't know how we got to this point and I don't know how to get us back and I don't… I can't…" He stops, gulps back the words, shakes his head in a kind of desperation so keen and so desolate that it bleeds into the air around them, whispering into even the shadows, rattling the dust in the corners of her room so that they are each flooded with it, tainted with it, lungs alight with it.
Sansa opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes.
He steps closer, eyes pleading, face a dark reminder of everything they've lost (so like her father, so good and forthright and foolish). She sucks a breath through her teeth at his proximity, a trembling palm rising into the air to stop his advance.
He stills three paces from her, hands bunching into fists at his sides, uncertain. Curling and uncurling, flexing with that sharp desperation.
"Why are you here, Jon?" she asks quietly, evenly.
He takes a moment to look at her, just to look at her, and she hates that she loves him still, even now – even now when she still wears the bruises around her heart, ribs still aching from the weight.
Jon purses his lips, hesitant, and he is suddenly so brittle in her eyes, so worn and old, and gods what has this world done to them? What have they done to themselves?
"I brought Daenerys into our home. Into our home, Sansa."
She blinks at his words, unsure why he means to start the conversation here of all places.
"A place you were supposed to feel safe, and I let another threat walk right through the gates."
Sansa swallows tightly, folding her hands behind her back in some small measure of comfort. "You did it for the war – we've been over this. I… I've looked past that."
Jon shakes his head. "And if she had survived? If she had demanded I make good on our deal and ride South with her?"
"She didn't."
"If she did," he demands, heaving a single exasperated breath, eyes forceful even beneath the wet sheen now lining them.
"She didn't. And it's pointless to argue the fact."
"I gave away what wasn't mine to give." He's still shaking his head, still trying to reign in his breathing.
"You treated with allies for their aid."
"I bent the knee."
"You saved us."
"I slept with her!" he shouts, the breath raking from him with the explosion, mouth clamping shut when the words hit air.
Sansa's hands stiffen reflexively behind her back, her throat tightening, eyes blinking furiously lest the tears form in earnest. She holds the breath in her lungs, keeps it tight to her chest as she watches him in silence, unable to do more.
(His hands at Daenerys' thighs and her mouth at his throat and that damn silver hair gracing his furs and she – she can't – )
Sansa tastes bile at the back of her throat, her muted sob trapped behind her clenched teeth, her skin flushing with the bitter betrayal, the ripe revulsion.
Jon's eyes hold hers for only a moment longer, before they're falling to the floor, his mouth opening and closing, the regret stark and bitter on his tongue. "I slept with her, Sansa," he croaks out. "Fucked my way into her favor, traded my affections for armies, bartered myself like some… some – " He stops, closes his eyes to the thoughts, shoulders slumping with the weight of it. "And I lied to you about it," he finally manages, gaze barely lifting to hers.
The abhorrence on his features startles Sansa. A blaring, visceral reminder.
"Did you bend the knee to save the North, or because you love her?"
"And then she died for it," he murmurs, brows furrowed. "My own aunt. Family – fucked up as it is, and what I did was… it was dirty and ugly and I… I feel like I should feel more guilty about it all, about how it all ended up, and I do but – but not like I should. Not when I look at you – alive, gods, fucking alive – and here, with me, and with Arya and Bran and our home – this home that used to mean everything and I've just… Sansa, the things I've done – "
"You did what you had to do. For us."
"Stop defending it!"
"Jon," she urges, barely keeping the quake from her voice, hands slipping from behind her as she steps forward before she can stop herself.
And they're back to this waning space between them, back to breathing each other's air, and she can trace the curve of his furrowed brow at this distance and catch the flicker of candlelight in his drifting eyes and feel the heat of his breath on her cheeks and – and this is where it ends.
"Look at me," she demands.
He does, because he could never not look at her.
(Even when she wasn't his to look at – maybe especially then.)
"Whatever you think you've done, whatever you think you've had to do – forget it."
"Sansa – "
"I said forget it," she says icily, shoulders straightening. "I'm done wallowing in the past. I'm done climbing into your bed to ward off the nightmares. I'm done punishing myself. I'm done living for ghosts." She lifts her chin, the familiar salt tinge of tears dotting the edges of her eyes, but she blinks it back steadily. "I can't do it anymore, Jon. And I… I don't know how you still can."
"Sansa, please," he mutters, reaching for her, hands cupping her cheeks, stepping into her. She stumbles back at the motion, pushing his touch away, until she turns to the door, meaning to flee, and when her hand curls around the door handle his palm slams into the wood to keep it closed.
She stands there, breathing heavily, eyes locked on his hand against the door, feeling his hot breath at the back of her neck, his presence so looming and thrilling at her back that she practically feels him pressed up against her.
"Jon," she breathes warningly.
His other hand slips tentatively around her waist, fingers firm and yet somehow unsure, anchoring at the curve of her hip as he tugs her back toward him gently. She releases an unexpected sigh at the pressure of his chest along her back, and then she's biting her lip, shaking her head, pulling back from him.
But he doesn't let her go, fingers digging into the fabric of her dress, his heavy sigh breaking against the space between her shoulder blades when he presses his forehead to the nape of her neck. "Sansa," he breathes against her skin, a rumble rising through his chest.
She licks her lips, wraps her fingers tighter along the door handle. "Why are you here, Jon?" she asks again, but it's more a whimper than anything, more a shuddering breath that breaks from her.
He closes his eyes, breathes her in, his fingers flexing along her hip. "I've made so many mistakes, Sansa, so many wrong choices."
"And is that what I am? Just another 'wrong choice'?"
His growl breaks against the collar of her dress, his fingers curling into the wood where they're braced along the door. "No, that's not – you could never be – "
"I'm tired, Jon. I'm so… so tired." She slumps against the door, eyes squeezing shut.
"I was wrong to bring Daenerys to the North. I was wrong to leave for Dragonstone in the first place. I was…" He gulps, tries again. "I was wrong to leave you in the crypts."
The sound that leaves her is somewhere between a croak and a sob at the dark remembrance of that night.
He shifts his face so that it's braced alongside hers, his breath at her ear, his beard scratching along her neck. "I was wrong all those years ago, to think there could be peace between the Watch and the wildlings. I was wrong to think I could take Winterfell from Ramsay myself. I was wrong not to heed your advice. I was wrong to keep you in the dark. I was wrong to not refuse the crown, to not name you the rightful Queen the moment we had our home back and I was wrong for so, so much more."
She gasps when she feels the wet press of his lips at her throat, eyes snapping open, his hand winding around her waist to wrap around her stomach, pulling her more firmly against him.
"And with all these… all these wrong choices…" he pants against her neck, breath hot and wet along her skin, his chest rising and falling unsteadily at her back. "I thought maybe it was also wrong to let you to my bed. Wrong to… to feel the way I do."
The whimper breaks from her before she can catch it, her fingers flying to his arm wrapped around her waist.
Something like a moan, pained and delicate, thrums along his throat when he pushes into her, pressing her back against the door, one hand still braced against the wood, the other anchoring her to him.
"Jon," she whispers, and she doesn't know what it means anymore – his name, this feeling, this brutal tangle of emotion between them.
But then she remembers the arc of his back in the moonlight gracing his chambers, the way he hadn't looked at her, the absence of his touch searing as winter when he turned her from his bed.
His lips move against her throat languidly, his tongue peeking out to taste her – hesitant and trembling.
The silence that followed her all the way back to her lonesome, barren chambers when he'd told her to leave. The way he hadn't tried to stop her.
"No," she pants in a single, harsh breath.
Jon stills against her, silent as the grave.
(Sansa doesn't think she has the strength in her to stitch this one closed.)
"I wanted you, Jon. More than anything I've ever wanted in this world, I wanted you."
She can feel his sharp intake of breath far more than she hears it. His fingers uncurl around her hip, hanging loosely onto the folds of her dress.
"But you didn't want me back." It breaks her to say it, but she steadies herself, grips at her collar, reigns in the frantic thundering of her heart – that faltering, staggered thing.
"Sansa, no, that's not – "
She whips around to face him, only slightly shaken at his mouth so close to hers, his heat still sinking into her with his proximity. She fumbles for the door handle behind her, pulling it open as she steps forward to accommodate the motion, Jon stumbling back at her closeness.
"Please leave," she tells him, voice a tight thread of unease, ready to snap, ready to split right down those terribly thinning seams.
"Sansa." His face falls, his hands retreating from her, returning to his sides in limp resignation.
"If you have any affection for me still," she begins, eyes closing once more, tongue pressing to the roof of her mouth for some semblance of control, "then you will leave."
He stands there before her for long moments, simply staring at her, and then his gaze falls to the floor, and then to the open door at her back, catching the way her hand trembles along the edge, fingers curled tight against the wood.
But he doesn't say a word. Doesn't do anything but walk from the room like she'd asked him to.
And this scene is too familiar in all the wrong ways.
Sansa stands breathing unsteadily in the empty space of her room, hand slowly pushing the door shut behind her.
She'd asked him to leave.
And he did.
But Sansa thinks maybe she's getting too used to shutting doors.
Sometimes Jon watches Bran watching Meera. Sometimes he watches Arya watching Gendry.
Sansa crosses the courtyard and Jon looks up from his conversation with Tormund and Ser Davos.
(Sometimes he wonders who's watching him watch her.)
But Starks have always been bitterly stubborn. Even when it hurts.
Sansa has grown familiar with this scene – Arya sitting across her desk in her solar, cleaning her Valyrian dagger, keeping quiet company while Sansa updates Winterfell's ledgers. But Arya is especially sour this evening, swiping the oiled cloth along her blade with a quiet vehemence that doesn't escape Sansa's notice.
She sighs and sets her quill down along the parchment, linking her fingers together atop the desk. "What is it?"
Arya stills her cloth, raising a brow at her sister.
Sansa cocks her head and raises an identical brow.
Arya narrows her eyes, huffing her annoyance and going back to her work. "I don't know what you mean."
"You know exactly what I mean."
She stills again, eyes flicking to the far wall.
Sansa takes the moment to watch her sister, to mark the way she still purses her lips in that familiar tell of frustration, how her brow still quivers just slightly above her dark eyes, how she cocks her head in such an achingly familiar way – how she would know her face anywhere, behind any mask or skin – how she is still her little sister.
How she has missed her these long years, even when she didn't want to.
"Arya."
(Even when she dreamed of her.)
Arya shoots a guarded glance at Sansa, fingers tightening over the blade in her hand. "He told me I was beautiful."
Sansa's mouth parts as though to speak but she finds only air lighting her tongue. She furrows her brows in confusion.
Arya looks down, eyes fixed to the papers lining Sansa's desk, her face pinched tight. "Gendry. He told me I was beautiful."
Sansa stares at her sister for long moments, long enough to make Arya shift in her seat, attention returning to her work, shoulders pulled back sharply.
"It's stupid. This whole thing's stupid. And he's… just stupid," she mutters, eyes focused, dark, blinking furiously.
"It's not," Sansa finds herself saying suddenly, her chest constricting at the look her sister sends her – cagey and uncertain and filled with quiet hope. Sansa leans forward and brushes a loose strand of hair behind Arya's ear, eyes never leaving hers. "It's not. And you are. Beautiful, that is."
Arya purses her lips, throat flexing beneath words she never brings to air, the sheen of wetness over her eyes suddenly apparent.
Her sister. Her little sister. Her darling, bold, brilliant sister.
Arya opens her mouth, closes it, stares unblinkingly at Sansa, face pinching into a mask of doubt. "I'm scared," she whispers, almost too soft for Sansa to hear. But then she clears her throat, doesn't wipe at the wetness truly gathering at the corners of her eyes now. She stares Sansa down, something quiet and frail flooding into her features.
"I'm scared, Sansa."
All at once, Sansa realizes that she is, too. Scared beyond belief, beyond measure, beyond restraint.
So filled to the brim with terror that she tastes it on her tongue – bitter and sharp and like copper too familiar to name.
(Like blood she has never learned to swallow.)
She remembers Theon's embrace the night before the battle for Winterfell, and she remembers her mother's smile at one end of that long, beaten King's Road, and she remembers the way Jon's arms had fit so surely and so securely around her that day she rode through the gates of Castle Black and never looked back.
And she remembers how she had lost them each.
Yes, Sansa is scared, far more scared than she can ever voice but then here – sitting here before her – with a face full of trepidation and hands gripping tightly to her blade for some kind of familiar security – here before her, like she'd never imagined she'd ever be again – sits her sister.
She wants to hug her suddenly, desperately, without reservation.
Instead, she leans forward to wrap a hand over Arya's clenched one.
"So am I," she admits, the words hitting air like a gasp.
Arya dips her head, eyes wet, lip sucked firmly between her teeth.
Sansa will not have it.
She lifts her chin with her other hand. "Arya."
Her sister meets her gaze reluctantly, a tremulous breath escaping her lips.
Sansa sets her demanding gaze on her. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
Arya blinks at her, mouth opening, and then closing, her mind reeling behind wide, dark eyes.
Sansa will take her to lay winter roses at the foot of their father's ruined stone statue when this is over, when their ghosts have finally laid to rest. She will take her sister by the hand and lead her through the shadows, through the cold stone and ashes of their blood lining the walk. And she will let her cry into her arms, if that is what she wants, when she is ready. When they are both ready. When the dawn is no longer a blood-drenched promise.
Arya squares her shoulders, the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes suddenly forgotten. "That is the only time a man can be brave," she quotes back, their father's words thrumming and alive between them.
She squeezes her sister's hand beneath hers, doesn't break her gaze.
Oh yes, how she has missed her. But she thinks she may never have to again.
She finds him in the godswood, and it hits her like a gasp of air amidst drowning – how so like their father (her father) he looks. His back is turned slightly to her, head tilted up to watch the wayward sway of the branches in the bitterly cold breeze, the profile of his face a vague glimpse of familiarity in the haze of falling snow.
She's seen her father like this, she knows. Alone in the godswood, eyes fixed to the weirwood, bundled in furs her mother sowed for him herself, and she thinks maybe that means something – that Jon still wears her furs, that she has cloaked him, here beneath the heart tree like her lady mother did her lord father.
She thinks it has to mean something. Because she's too far gone for it not to anymore.
He sighs at the soft crunch of snow signaling her approach, eyes drifting toward the ground. She doesn't see the way he bunches his hands into fists beneath the cover of his cloak.
"Winter hasn't left us yet," he says (and she wildly wonders if he's speaking in abstracts now, and it's so jarringly not him, because he's never been one for words, much less poignancy, and it startles her into stillness just a few paces from him). He glances at her over his shoulder. "The wind still bites." He shuffles his furs around his shoulders in meaning. "You should return to the castle."
And gods, sometimes she could strangle him.
Sansa frowns, stealing a single, charged breath through the frigid air before she moves to stand in front of him, purposely signaling her refusal to retreat. She stares him down.
He sighs softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sansa…"
"Are we not allowed to be happy?"
Her words still him, his hand hovering over his face a moment before he finally lowers it, eyes drifting up to meet hers.
It seems so simple suddenly.
And yes, how like her father he's always been. That somberness, that unnerving steadiness to his gaze, that foolhardy way he could never hold his tongue – not for fear or for subservience or even for love. And how like her father he'd always wanted to be. How duty-bound and honorable and just he'd always strived to be – even when it killed him.
(Even when it brought a white-haired queen into their home, her presence as chilling as the dead, and just as damning.)
Even when it took him from her – with his bed lying half-cold beneath the weight of her absence.
Licking her lips as she steadies herself, Sansa steps closer.
Jon watches her warily, unable (or unwilling) to move, his body a rigid line of unease, cognizant of her every move.
(And it seems so simple suddenly.)
She sighs, her face openly bearing her longing when she meets his gaze. "Are we not allowed to be happy? After everything – after… everything." The breath rakes from her with a vehemence she hadn't expected.
Jon's throat flexes with his silence, eyes unmoving from hers.
She looks down at his closed fists, watches the flakes of snow settling into his skin, the rush of Winter still blaring and bright between them. She reaches for his hand, curls her fingers along his knuckles and tries to anchor him there beneath her desperate clutch.
He sucks in a breath, trembling – absolutely trembling beneath her touch.
She wants to hold him then, to hold him and hold him and hold him. To brace him against her chest and feel their heartbeats meld, to wait in thunderous apprehension until they beat in unison, to press her lips to his brow and feel his hands smoothing up her back and the catch of breath he'd release against her throat and the soft tangle of his curls at her fingertips and the easy, reassuring weight of his warmth pressed to her.
To hold him – to truly hold him – and to never let go.
She closes her eyes, waiting for his answer, whatever it may be.
Snow continues to fall. The leaves rustle in the branches above their heads. And Jon keeps his silence long enough that Sansa begins to feel the sob bubbling up her throat, unbidden.
And then his fist shifts in her hold, his palm unfurling, his calloused fingers fumbling for hers.
Sansa opens her eyes to his.
"I was happy, Sansa." He catches his breath, licks his lips as he flicks his gaze down to their joined hands. "Because nothing has ever made me as happy as having you."
She sucks the breath through her teeth, stepping closer unconsciously, the heady anticipation lighting her bones.
"But we both know it's not as simple as that."
Her brows furrow, fingers loosening around his hand, as though they may pull away entirely.
And then he's wrapping both hands around hers, bringing her small fist up to his mouth and planting a kiss to the inside of her wrist, his warm, staggered breath filling her palm, his lips chapped and rough against her pulse point.
She stills at the sheer fervor of it, at the tender ardor of his lips to her skin, his eyes hooded as he keeps his gaze low.
"Why…" She stops, the breath stalling in her chest at the heat of his touch, watching as he slowly pulls his lips from her wrist. "Why can't it be that simple?" she croaks out – desperate and vulnerable and demanding all at once.
Jon swipes a gentle thumb along the inside of her wrist, smoothing along the place his mouth had been, eyes never leaving the motion. "Because if I'm to have you, Sansa, it will be for life."
Her heart falters at the words, catching between her ribs.
Jon flicks his gaze up to hers, dark and exposed. "Do you understand what that means, Sansa? Do you understand – " He fumbles, clears his throat, continues. "Do you understand why I hesitated? Why I… why I'm still hesitating? Because I'd rather have you for a sister than not at all and I don't know what I'd do if I ruined that, too. And I'm so, so scared, Sansa. I don't think I've ever been this scared in my life and I don't know how to fix that."
Sansa stares at him, blinking wildly beneath his gaze, mouth parting.
Such a stupid, foolish boy.
The tears hit her eyes sooner that she expects.
Jon's brows scrunch together at the sight, one hand lifting to her cheek to scrub away a tear with the pad of his thumb. "Sansa."
"Then be brave with me, Jon," she says, pulling her hand free of his to cup his face, leaning into him with an intensity and a need that overtakes her.
His hands curl around her wrists, holding her to him, his face pinched tight with uncertainty, the faint tremor of fear still blooming beneath his skin and she can't stop herself suddenly. She can't leash the flare of exhilaration, can't keep her chest steady beneath her raging breath, can't do anything at all but –
Kiss him.
And she does. With mouth and hands and heart. She kisses him.
He sucks in a breath at the motion, eyes closing, stumbling slightly in the snow with her fervency, his hands slipping from her wrists to sink into her hair, tangling in the copper strands as he opens to her, presses his mouth so terribly hard against hers that she thinks they may break beneath the strain, might just fracture right there in the godswood, littering the snow with the broken shards of their yearning, the cut of their hunger.
When they break away, panting, she rests her forehead to his, flexes her fingers along his jaw, revels in the scratch of his beard along her palms, the warm puff of his breath filling her mouth. "If you will be brave with me," she begins, the quake of her voice threatening to splinter her words entirely, "Then I will be brave with you."
One of his arms slips around her waist as he yanks her to him, burying his face in her shoulder, his other hand tightening in her hair. She doesn't hear the sob that leaves him so much as she feels it, a ragged, body-wracking exhale that rattles all the way down to her bones, her fingers gripping at his furs to keep herself steady.
And so, she holds him.
As he holds her.
As their bravery seeps into their marrow and begins to take root.
"The Northern lords will not be as opposed as you think."
Jon looks up at Bran's words, catches the way the fire from the hearth flickers soft shadows across his face, Arya shifts in her seat across from them, her oiled cloth stilled over Needle.
"What do you mean?" Jon's brows scrunch together.
Arya listens nonchalantly, continuing her cleaning of her blade.
"When you seek Sansa's hand."
Jon nearly splutters, a short coughing sound catching in his throat when he rubs a hand over his mouth and flicks his gaze to Arya.
She's still again, eyes narrowed between her brothers.
Jon looks back to Bran and shakes his head. "Bran, that's not… we haven't – "
"But you will."
Jon closes his mouth abruptly.
Arya sighs across from them, shaking her head as she sheaths Needle. "I can't believe you two are talking about this."
Jon groans, regretting instantly that he ever asked them to his chambers after dinner, that he ever thought they could be the family they once were (even when he'd rather have the family they are now – Sansa included).
Arya stands swiftly.
"Arya, sit down, will you?"
She turns her wary eyes to Jon. "You're our brother."
"I'm not though." The words catch in his throat, heavy and jagged, a crude stone travelling from maw to gut – sinking low in his stomach. "I'm not."
Arya narrows her eyes at him, nostrils flaring. "You are."
"He's the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, heir to the Ir – "
"I know all of that, Bran, I know," she snaps. "But he's…" She looks back to Jon. "You're…"
He doesn't do anything but watch her, waiting, hoping. His hands slide over his knees in keen disquiet.
Sighing, Arya's shoulders slump as she tears her gaze away, fixing to a point across the room, to the muted grey stone that used to be a cage to him in his younger years. In his lost years.
Oh, but to be a Stark in Winterfell –
Sansa has been the closest thing to realizing that dream of his. Because to be hers –
He thinks maybe that's what being a Stark means in the end. More than blood. More than titles. More than duty.
"You are to me."
She makes him a Stark with every demanding gaze and every unflinching word and every heated touch.
She makes him a Stark because she loves him as a Snow and if he's learned anything from the North, it's that nothing matters more than choice.
And Sansa chose him.
It isn't, perhaps, the way he'd always imagined becoming a Stark, but it is, for certain, the only way he'd ever accept now.
"I don't understand it," Arya says softly, hesitantly, eyes still fixed to the wall. "I don't… understand, but – " She stops, shifts her gaze back to Jon's. "But I'll try – for you. For you both."
Jon releases the breath he'd been holding tight to his chest since the moment she stood.
Arya looks to the ground a moment, fingers curling around her belt in some small measure of surety. "Because she's the bravest person I know and I think I owe her that much." She shakes her head, fingers tightening over her belt, and then she's turning from them, huffing her frustration. "This is so strange. This is so… gods, but our brother."
"Arya."
Her name on his lips stops her with her hand on the door, her back resolutely to him.
Jon rises from his seat, unsure, standing halfway between the hearth and his sister at the door, Bran still sitting silently behind him, eyes lingering on the fire in the hearth rather than the scene before him. "I know this isn't… how you wanted things to happen but – "
"Will you be kind?"
Her question throws him, startles him to stillness, his breath catching in his chest.
Arya presses a fist to the wood of the door, eyes fixed to the motion. "Will you be kind to her?" she repeats, voice eerily steady.
Jon swallows back the trepidation, nodding. "Yes." The answer is easier than he thinks.
"Will you be faithful?"
He squares his shoulders. "Yes."
She sighs, her fist unfurling before sliding down the door to rest along the handle. "Will you be constant?"
"Yes."
She looks at him over her shoulder, her face earnest and temperate all at once, her eyes a familiar grey (you may not have my name, but you have my blood). She takes a breath, holds it but a moment, and then lets it taste air, nodding just the once, a short, adamant tilt of her head. "Good. She deserves that, at the very least."
Jon watches her, mouth parted, a mute nod his only answer.
Arya glances over to Bran, and then back to Jon, sighing with the weight of something Jon is hesitant to name. "Then there's nothing else I want," she explains to him, before pulling the door free and walking from the room.
Jon slumps back into his chair.
Bran shrugs the furs from his shoulders and lets them bunch in his lap, his eyes taking in the fire still snapping before them. "She's always been a touch dramatic. They have that in common," he says lightly, as though in commiseration, but there is no lilt to his voice, no indication of anything nostalgic.
Jon snaps his gaze to his younger cousin. "You – " He stops, catches the chuckle as it lines his throat, wiping a hand down his mouth and shaking his head.
Bran glances at him out of the corner of his eye.
Jon settles his face into his hands, letting the laugh overtake him then.
If he only looks, he would see Bran's smile in the firelight, tame and mild as a Northern summer.
Jon winds his arm around Sansa's waist, tugging her into the tight curve of his body as they lay atop his furs, her mouth parting at the sigh he levels at her lips.
His hand smooths slow circles into the small of her back as he watches her, eyes flicking over the curve of her jaw and the slant of her eyes and the wisps of her copper hair.
Sansa lifts her hand to brace along the fading scar lining his brow, tracing the edges with tenderness. "It's almost gone now," she whispers into the night.
Jon hums lowly beneath her touch, closing his eyes beneath her hand.
"As though it had never been," she says softly, her hand retreating, sliding down along his jaw, past his throat, and splaying against his chest.
Except it will always be. These scars. These marks of war. These remnants of a long-fought night and a deadly-still dawn. These reminders of why they ever started this tangle of limbs beneath the damning moonlight.
Jon's eyes flutter open to watch her.
When he catches the faint tremor of her smile tugging at her lips, her hand curling into his tunic, her eyes shifting low, he doesn't think he'll ever stop wanting her, needing her, finding solace from the scars in her welcoming arms.
This balm, her salve, the way her breath pools at the base of his throat, is anchor enough.
She pushes a thigh between his legs tentatively, eyes never meeting his, and his hand stops its motion at her back, fisting in the material of her shift, his responding groan breaking against her mouth.
He can feel the rise of her chest against his at the sound, her breath hitching, tongue flicking out to wet her lips.
"Sansa," he moans, his hips rolling instinctively into hers, his hand braced against her back where he presses her into him.
"Kiss me," she says, and this time it isn't a demand. It's more a fact than anything. More an inevitable truth.
It is easy to be brave now, when he's pressed this closely to her, when her sighs light something in him that never truly leaves, when she looks him in the eye and doesn't blink.
Afraid. And brave all the same.
When he presses his lips to hers he can't collar the moan that breaks from him, or the way his hand slides over her hip greedily, or the way he pushes her back against the furs and drapes her with his weight, his heat, his eager body curling tight against hers.
He fumbles for her hand, winding his fingers through hers, stitching their palms together with a keening need, an intensity just shy of feverish.
Her woolen dress lays abandoned on the floor 'til morning, the tallow of his room's candles burning low, and sometime in the night, when their courage flares bright and long and languid, he whispers his affections into her skin like a promising dawn, silencing their ghosts with a forgotten twilight.