Jon

When he returns to his own chambers that evening, Jon considers penning a raven to his old friend, Samwell Tarly-Grand Maester in King's Landing.

Tell me, friend. Is he still Bran? Or something dark?

He thinks better of it, knowing that Sansa was right; Sam couldn't give him those answers even if he wanted to. Perhaps he could grant someone entrance to the Citadel, but Jon had promised never to step foot back in Westeros, and he doubted the Archmaesters would consent to a criminal in their hallowed libraries. Pardon, or no.

Jon thinks back to the words Ser Brienne had spoken to him inside his tent beyond the wall.

"However, as the rightful heir...you cannot live in Westeros. If you accept your pardon, you can never return South."

In that moment he hadn't questioned this command, assuming that Bran had been obligated to keep Jon in the North for his own safety. In truth, any Unsullied visiting Westeros with a temper for rancor might see him about and choose to gut him for his crimes against their fallen queen.

Jon saw those words differently, now. They were colored by doubt and suspicion. Would Bran really have sent him to the wall all those years ago? Would he have demanded he never return South?

Would Bran even be wearing the crown at all?

Jon deliberates for some time, sitting on the edge of a bed piled high with furs. He'd nearly forgotten what it was like to sleep off the ground before returning to Winterfell. Even in his tent in the free folk village, Jon's bed had been nothing but a simple cot made of animal skins stretched over wood.

He'd almost welcomed the numbing chill that seeped into his skin; it had felt like penance.

Jon's mind turns, and thinking of that moment in his tent with Brienne reminds him of something else the lady-knight had said.

"You may take a wife and bare children.A Northern wife."

A Northern wife, he thinks.

Marriage wasn't something Jon could remember ever yearning for; even as a boy in Winterfell, he'd known that bastards didn't have many prospects, and the Night's Watch strictly forbade it. Marriage and children were luxuries, and Jon had never been given the right to even hope for them.

But Sansa

Jon had to wonder why the Queen in the North hadn't secured herself a match in all these years. She was beautiful and powerful, a fiery beacon against the backdrop of the grey landscapes of the North. He imagined many a lord had asked for her hand.

Jon well knew that Sansa had suffered in her previous marriage arrangements. Still but a child during her political unions to Tyrion Lannister and the monster Ramsay Bolton, Sansa had met womanhood without much reason to desire a husband.

Recalling the haunted, hollow look he saw in Sansa's eyes when she'd sat across from him in his chambers at Castle Black makes Jon's stomach twist. She'd scrubbed the dirt from her face, and her freshly-washed hair fell like copper waves as it dried by the fire. His fur cloak rested on her shoulders, and she seemed so small beneath it.

For a time they sat in silence, the ghosts of the things they still carried on their shoulders hanging between them.

How could Jon tell Sansa that he'd held a wildling girl kissed by fire in his arms as she died, that he'd closed many eyes forever? How could he tell her that he'd seen the dead walking the earth, their corpses reanimated by ice and terror?

He couldn't remember how it had begun, but eventually they poured into each other the things weighing them down. Sansa had seen the executioner put her father's head on a pike, and afterward she'd endured the abuse of Joffrey Baratheon and his mother Cersei in King's Landing for years. Then Petyr Baelish had taken her to The Eyrie, and she'd been married to Ramsay Bolton in the godswood of Winterfell.

"Ramsay...he's a monster, Jon. He tortures people for sport. He takes off their skin and watches their blood melt the snow. And he's in Winterfell, our home."

"Did he hurt you, Sansa?" Jon had asked coarsely.

She'd looked at him full in the face, her eyes laden with grief.

"Yes."

Of course she doesn't want a marriage, Jon thinks, now laying in the bed of furs in his chambers.

She likely never wants a man to touch her again.

Shadows are dancing on the ceiling from the flickering candle at his bedside, and he remembers the kiss he'd pressed against Sansa's temple just hours earlier. She'd closed her eyes as he leaned in, her lashes a dark fan against her ivory skin.

Jon sits up and blows out the candle, shuttering the room into darkness.

.

Jon awakes several hours later, his chest heaving and lungs burning. It was death again, slipping into his bed at night like an old friend.

So soon? He thinks, remembering the last time death trespassed on his sleep, while laying on the ground in the Land of Always Winter just a few months ago.

Jon sits up, scrubbing a hand over his face. He glances out the window; it's still dark outside, but rest isn't likely to happen again this night. Ghost lays at the foot of his bed, breathing deeply.

When Jon steps out of the bed, Ghost's head pops up, his ears high and his eyes questioning.

"Stay, boy." Jon says, rubbing between the direwolf's ears. "At least one of us should sleep tonight."

Shortly after, Jon leaves his chambers dressed in his gambeson and fur cloak. The Great Keep is quiet, and the halls are sparsely lit. When he steps outside, the chill of the Northern Spring air smarts against his cheek.

In the decade since the Battle of Winterfell, the castle and its many edifices were rebuilt and returned to its former glory. Jon sill remembers the way the barricades of fire just outside the battlements painted the sky crimson as the dead spilled over the walls like sand in an hourglass.

At the entrance to the crypts, Jon is surprised to find the heavy ironwood door open enough to allow someone through. He takes a torch from the wall and heads down the winding stairs, the light from the flame casting lambent shadows against the brick.

When Jon reaches the bottom of the stairwell he sees that the crypt's torches are already lit along the walls. He finds the statue of Lyanna Stark, her stone eyes appearing to move with the dancing of the flames.

Behind him, Jon hears a bow's string creak as it becomes taught. "Good thing I didn't intend to kill you, Jon Snow."

Jon gives a small smirk as he turns around, immediately recognizing the lilt of the voice at his back.

Her hair is dark, and pulled into a loose half bun. Her face is scarcely illuminated by the torchlight, but Jon recognizes her amber eyes just as easily as he does his own.

She releases her arrow, and it fixes into the ground by Jon's boot, the sound lazily reverberating through the crypt as if fettered with stone.

Jon laughs, breaking out into a grin and moving toward the woman for an embrace.

"Welcome home, Arya."

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A/N: I'm a little behind on my writing due to a family emergency at the end of last week. Please be patient with me!

Thanks again!