Jon
Jon asks Sansa to repeat herself, certain he's misheard her request while distracted by the thought of himself 'prostate at her feet', as she'd so eloquently phrased it. She's standing in front of the hearth, illuminated by the outline of flickering fire. Her hair falls in rust-colored waves around her shoulders, and Jon hates himself for noticing the way her lips are parted slightly.
Time has been a gracious companion to Sansa. When he'd first seen her gazing out the window that morning, she'd been draped in the fine and byzantine silks that befitted a queen, the crown of wolves sitting atop hair swept up in a complicated knot. She was formidable and striking, but when she spoke he could hear an edge of weariness in her voice.
Now she appears to be something otherworldly, lit up like an ember glowing in the darkness.
"I want you to be my Hand." she says again, this time louder and with more self-assurance.
"I'm not sure I understand your meaning, Sansa." he says. "It would hardly be fitting, considering."
"Considering what, Jon? That you were once the King in the North? That you sacrificed ten years of your life beyond the wall for the good of the realm?" she says, exasperated.
Jon shakes his head, and sits in the nearest armchair. "You don't understand."
"I do understand. You have Stark blood. The North is your home. You should be ruling Westeros-"
"Sansa, you speak treason." Jon says, bewildered.
"I'm the Queen in the North." she retorts, straightening her back. "I speak nothing but the truth."
Sansa's gaze is white-hot, and Jon meets it with equal aplomb. He'd forgotten how it had always seemed that they closer they got to one-another, the quicker their arguments were to ignite. She was the flint to his flame.
Or perhaps the other way around, Jon thinks with a fleeting look to her hair.
Sansa notices the brief glimpse and steps back, feeling the tingle of sudden self-awareness. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and finds her voice again.
"Jon, I need you. I've been without a Hand for quite some time. Someone, something took Meera's life, right here in Winterfell. I fear it won't end with her."
Sansa moves across the room, to an ornate box sitting on a low table. She opens it and takes out something small.
"I know what I ask is a burden. You've done your part for the North, for all of Westeros. I wouldn't ask this of you if there were another way."
I wish there had been another way. Can you forgive me? Jon remembers.
Moments later, Sansa has taken his hands in her own and is pressing something cold and circular into his palm. She is so close that he can feel her warmth sliding over him like waves breaking on the shore.
"Please. Take this. Sleep tonight and come to me tomorrow. I'll explain everything then." Her eyes are pleading.
"Sansa-" he begins, but she's touching him again, and her face is flushed.
"It's him," she whispers. "The one who murdered Meera. The Three Eyed Raven."
Later in his own chambers, Jon looks at the object Sansa has given him. He can still feel the places their skin met, burning as if touched by a flame. It was a silver pin, two wolves linked together with a hand inside, pointing downward.
He slides it onto the lapel of his gambeson, and suddenly Sansa isn't alone in Winterfell anymore.
Jon returns to Sansa the next morning. The Northmen guarding her doors nod as he nears; if they take notice of the pin declaring his new position, it doesn't show on their faces.
He knocks softly, and Sansa opens the door. Her response to his lapel adornment is altogether different from the men outside. While she doesn't voice her thanks, she takes his hand again and gives a small smile.
Behind her, Jon sees piles of books and manuscripts scattered all about the room; on tables, on chairs, on the floor, and the bed. Some are laying open haphazardly, some are stacked precariously and on the verge of tipping over.
"What is this?" Jon asks, somewhat incredulously.
"Well Jon," Sansa sniffs as she releases his hand. "These are books. I know you've spent quite a long time beyond the wall, but I didn't expect you to forget about reading…"
Jon rolls his eyes, and Sansa laughs quietly as she starts clearing space on an armchair. While she works, he notices that she has pulled her hair into a loose plait, and she's wearing a dark, fitted leather gown with few decorations apart from an onyx colored fur cloak.
He feels something disconcertingly uncomfortable when he becomes aware of how closely their appearances mirror each other, like two sides of a coin.
Sansa gestures for Jon to sit when she's done, and sets a heavy red book in his lap. The corners are fraying and there's something he suspects to be a dead spider smashed onto the cover. He eyes it warily. Sansa scoots another armchair directly in front of Jon's and sits down.
"Last night I had Maester Wolkan bring me everything in his library that might speak of the Three Eyed Raven. In this book it says that the weirwood trees are all connected by this magical link and-" she looks up at Jon who is still inspecting the spider like it may spring to life at any moment.
"Jon, you aren't listening!" Sansa huffs, pushing her chair away.
"I am! But Sansa, this is a book of lore. We can't start a rebellion against your own brother based on something you read in one of Old Nan's story books."
"I'm not a fool, Jon Snow. I know how this sounds, but you have to listen to me."
Sansa leaves her chair and goes back to the same box she'd taken his pin from the night before. When she returns, she has a scroll in her hand.
"Meera Reed served me well as Hand of the Queen. She was a wise advisor, and never guided me down the wrong path. She was a true friend to me, never wavering from what she believed to be right for the people of the North. But before her time at Winterfell, she served another."
Sansa sits back down in her chair, eyes gazing past Jon, but seeing something that came to pass long ago.
"Meera took Bran beyond the wall, to the cave beneath a weirwood tree where the Three Eyed Raven had lived for many years. She said he looked like something unnatural and frightening, the roots of the tree growing through his very flesh."
Sansa looks haunted as she speaks, but continues. "The Three Eyed Raven taught Bran how to see the things that had already happened. He saw Hodor as a boy at Winterfell. He saw father at the Tower of Joy, the day you were born. Underneath that tree, he learned how to see everything that was, and things that could be."
Jon's eyes wrinkle in confusion, thinking of the curious remark Bran had made when they reunited at Winterfell.
"Look at you," Jon had said, breaking from their embrace. "You're a man."
"Almost."
"Bran learned something else, too." Sansa says, capturing Jon's attention again. "He learned how to put his mind inside of other things and see through its eyes. Animals and people. Meera called it warging."
"One of the wildling men had the ability to warg." Jon says gruffly. "His eyes would go white and his body slack, but his mind would be flying with the eagle overhead."
Sansa nods her head. "Meera said Bran was inside himself that way for a long time. Bran turned inward, and the Three Eyed Raven perished at the hands of the dead. Meera wasn't sure if Bran would ever find his way back out. When he finally opened his eyes again...Bran wasn't Bran anymore."
Jon sags against his chair, thinking of little Brandon Stark, his once half-brother.
Bran the Broken.
Bran, the Three Eyed Raven.
Bran, the King of Westeros.
He'd had many names, much like Jon himself.
Which one was true?
Maybe none, Jon considers, if Sansa's story is to be believed. Maybe he and Bran were more similar than he'd realized; many names, but no one at all.
Except that wasn't true anymore, was it? Sansa had given Jon a new name as Hand of the Queen. He looks at her, still holding the scroll in her hand that she'd taken from the box.
"What about that?" Jon asks, his voice hushed.
"Meera returned to Winterfell searching for Bran one last time. It was just before I was crowned. She stayed, and I named her my Hand. Meera didn't speak of the things she'd seen in the cave under the weirwood until just a few months ago. The next morning, I found her in her bed- eyes shut forever. This was in her hand."
Sansa looks at Jon sadly, and gives him the scroll. He unrolls it carefully.
I've been watching you, Meera Reed.
With a thousand eyes, and one.
00000000000000000000000000000000
A/N: I know some have disagreed with Jon being Queen's Hand, but Jon is the only Stark left besides Sansa in Winterfell. He is just as much a Stark has any of Ned's children are.
As far as tradition goes, it is known that the Old Kings did not have Hands, but Sansa is very much aware of the mistakes of her brother, father, and forefathers, and she learned how to rule from living in both Winterfell and King's Landing. I see her making her own way in the North, not necessarily always following the ways of the Old Kings.
As always, your support means everything to me!
