Summary: It's what Ned suggested he do today—get out and get some fresh air—but Sansa's invitation to join her in the park with the boys is an unexpected one.

Notes: Golden Ships resulted in a little break in the updating schedule, but I should be back on track now. Thank you for your patience! I did post some A City stuff in the meantime, so if between updates you're looking for content or just want to fangirl with me, follow me at tumblr (username justadram).

Chapter Nine: Jon

When Sansa stood leaning against the door to his room in a blue sundress different from the one she'd had on at breakfast, her painted toes curling in the beige carpet, he must have taken too long to respond to her question, You want to come to Central Park with me and the boys? Because she finally added with a tilt to her head, I could use the help.

It's what Ned suggested he do today—get out and get some fresh air—and Sansa most definitely could use his help. Even taking Rickon alone somewhere was something of a challenge and adding Bran to the mix made it a juggling act. So between satisfying Ned and helping out Sansa, he shouldn't have hesitated, but it just wasn't a request he was expecting. Even as he pushes Bran's wheelchair down the sidewalk with Sansa at his side, her heels clacking on the concrete and Rickon's hand clutched in hers, he's still trying to remember when the last time Sansa was even in his room. And he's coming up totally empty.

He assumed that the knock on the door was Arya. She was the most likely culprit to turn up, looking for a movie or an album or with demands that he play some video game with her immediately. Sansa was a wholly unexpected visitor, which is why he didn't bother to flip on a table lamp or pull on a shirt, when he called to her to come in from his stretched out position on his bed.

It was supposed to be Arya, damn it, his little sister, who'd seen him at his worst already and wouldn't think anything of his being sprawled out atop an unmade bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. At least he isn't a slob, because he doubts Sansa's room has anything out of place and it would be just another reason for her to think less of him.

I'm sorry, did I wake you?

No, I'm up. He cursed under his breath, grabbing for his discarded t-shirt and tugging it over his head. Sorry.

Her face said that she didn't quite understand what he was sorry about and maybe he didn't either, but something about the whole scenario made him jumpy. Probably he should talk to his counselor about it if having Robb's sister turn up in his room is enough to set him on edge. It's just Sansa Stark for Christ's sake.

He ends up reminding himself of that several times on their walk to the park, as he stumbles for things to say to her. Thankfully, she does most of the work, filling the silences with chatter that's cheerful and pleasant and easy enough to fall into. There's even this game she comes up with for the boys about counting how many red cars they see along 5th Avenue, which is oddly calming, considering he's hyper vigilant about cars anyway ever since he came home from Afghanistan. He plays along in his head, catches a few cars that the boys miss, and feels a little less crazy. The red car game works better than the breathing exercises that only get the job done half the time, which are pretty shitty odds.

The park doesn't turn out too bad either. The East 72nd Street playground is the closest to their townhouse, but for years now they've made it a habit to make the trek the accessibility playground across from Mt. Sinai, so Bran doesn't just have to sit and watch all the other kids. Jon's been along on enough of these family trips to the park that he's familiar with the area and doesn't spend too much time examining it with a soldier's eye, assessing every blind corner around every tunnel for something sinister. He can just be a kid or at least act like one for a few minutes. He runs after Bran and Rickon, as they fly up and down the wheelchair ramps, making them whoop and holler like a pair of banshees. It feels pretty damn good being with his brothers, getting out in the sun, doing something other than getting stuck in his thoughts. Exercise is definitely good, he thinks, as he feels the blood pumping through his veins and his chest inflating with oxygen. Doing sit ups in his room maybe isn't cutting it. His counselor might be right that finding a physical outlet would be good for him.

But it's hot out—too hot for his black t-shirt and jeans—so it's a relief when he sees Sansa make her way over to a bench with her big sunglasses pushed back on her head, because it gives him an excuse to do the same. He tells the boys where they'll be sitting and goes over to her. When he sits beside her with one leg stuck out and brushes back the hair that flops into his line of sight, he's still breathing harder than normal.

"All worn out?" she asks with a little smirk.

"Hot."

"You might not want to wear jeans next time." Obviously. "Or would that ruin your cred, cool guy?"

"Right. Cool."

"Sun's strong today," she says and then startles slightly, grabbing for her purse.

She's digging in it for something, when she calls out to the boys, motioning them over. Rickon looks like he's going to ignore her, so Jon waves him in with a frown, despite the fact that he has no idea what it is Sansa intends on doing with the small white bottle with silver writing on it that she has pulled from her purse and uncapped.

"Come here," she beckons to Rickon first, who looks like he's about to dance right out of his skin in his eagerness to get back to the playground.

"I don't want it," he whines.

"You know the rules."

As she squeezes the stuff onto the tip of her finger, he realizes its SPF, although it doesn't look like the thick drugstore kind.

"Well, it looks like I don't," Jon says. "Do you always have that in your purse?"

It's such a mom thing that he can't help but smile. Do twenty year old girls really worry about stuff like this? Ygritte was as pale as Sansa and covered in freckles. She obviously didn't care.

"Yes," she says, smearing the liquid over the bridge of Rickon's little snub nose. "This Irish skin of ours doesn't like the sun. I should have put it on them before we left," she says, rubbing another blob into Rickon's outstretched forearm. "You didn't remind me," she says, squinting her eyes and pursing her lips at her youngest brother. She gives his arm a tug. "Trickster."

He receives all this attention and faux reproach with a toothy smile. Rickon's not usually so complacent, but Jon suspects he just wants to get this over with so he can run back out onto the playground.

"There you go," she says, finishing with Rickon and leaning forward to give Bran the same quick treatment.

Bran wrinkles his nose, as she attempts to dab it on his cheek. "It smells like a girl."

"Stop wriggling. I forgot your lotion at the house. This is what I've got."

Bran looks pretty miserable about the prospect, so Jon offers him the only consolation he can come up with. "Girls smell nice."

"I'm glad you think so. You're next," Sansa says with a quick wink over her shoulder at him.

The suggestion makes Bran laugh and stop squirming away from her hand in his chair long enough for her to finish. It's not as thorough a job as she did on Rickon, but she pulls a face at him and sends him on his way with a dismissive wave of her hands and then sets to work on herself, tipping a little more lotion into her hands.

"Don't worry," she assures him. "I won't slather you up." He can feel himself flushing, as he pictures Sansa doing exactly that. "Although, you know where to find it the next time you find yourself wanting to smell like a girl."

He coughs. "Thanks."

"Anytime. Just don't let me forget the cheap stuff the next time we take the boys out. This costs a small fortune."

Next time. That's the second time she's said that today, but this is the first time he's ever taken the boys anywhere alone with Sansa. Meanwhile, she's already planning a next time. Either she's trying to help out her mother or Osha and could use another hand herself or her asking him to join her means she thinks he's a bit pathetic and is looking for an excuse to include him in stuff. Yeah, it wouldn't be an unreasonable assessment. He is a little pathetic holed up in the basement, staring up at the ceiling in the dark—Christ, why couldn't it have been Arya?

Her hand swipes up over her forearm, and he looks away out over the playground, watching as Bran pushes himself through one of the wider tunnels, his screams echoing inside.

"We should rent a boat next time."

"A boat with those two monkeys?" he asks, pointing at their combined antics.

"Afraid to get wet?" she says, pausing in her application to nudge him in the side with her elbow.

"Of sinking like the Titanic, maybe."

"No, that would be bad, but you and I could go. They rent them at Loeb Boathouse. Have you ever done it?"

"No." It's kind of a couple's thing, he always assumed.

"Me either. We should try to do lots of new things before the summer is over. Make a list and just check them off as we go. It feels really good to check something off a list."

This is starting to feel like a campaign to get him out of the house. "Did your father talk to you about me?" It's a humiliating prospect.

She puts the cap back on her lotion, cocking a brow at him. "Daddy and I rarely have heart to hearts. Why, should he have?"

He fidgets, his fingers twitching against his jeans, feeling ridiculous.

"Forget it." There's no alteration to her face, but he can tell by the way she tears her eyes from his that she's misunderstood. "I had a talk with your dad this morning and…"

She fills in the silence, politely ignoring his explanation that is going nowhere. "Okay."

"I'll do it. I'm not promising I'll know how to row it though." And her skinny arms don't look like they'll be much help.

Her whole body language shifts, as she sits forward and hitches her shoulders up, a motion mirrored by the upward tick of her facial muscles.

"I don't have a clue either. Maybe we can waste an entire day, floating around like a pair of rubes."

Maybe she's right. Maybe he does need to just go out and do something, anything to try to fill up his hours as much as humanly possible, so he's not constantly, obsessively thinking and worrying and hating himself. It's working so far. He hasn't had one dark thought since Sansa ushered them through the doors of the house and down the steps.

"Sounds good."

It does. Especially if it makes him feel like he does right now.

"Careful, please," she yells, as Rickon executes a particularly daredevil leap off a ramp.

"What are you reading?" he asks, spying a book peeking out of her purse, as she drops the SPF bottle inside.

"Looking for Alaska."

"What's it about?"

"Uh, depressing teen stuff. I'm sort of working my way through his novels," she says, showing him the cover. "And they're all a little depressing so far. I'm just trying to read more. I kind of stopped for a while. You know, because I was just so busy." She rolls her eyes at herself. "Little Miss Social."

She's not exactly Miss Social anymore. He hasn't seen any of her friends at the house, and he doesn't think she's gone out since she went to the club with her friend Margaery and what's his name, Margaery's brother. She didn't come down for breakfast the next day even though she wasn't out that late. She got in pretty early, considering. He waited up to listen for the front door, which was easy enough, since it echoes right above his bed. Maybe her night out didn't go exactly as she'd hoped it would.

"I could recommend some books to you, unless you only want to read depressing teen stuff," he says, taking the book from her and flipping it over.

"What would you recommend? Depressing adult stuff?"

He gives her a sidelong look "Would that be so awful? You're not a teen anymore."

Sometimes he forgets. All of the Stark kids seem stuck at the age he left them and went off a soldier to war. But she definitely is not a teen anymore. More than the flip of the calendar separates her from her teen years. She's clearly matured in the past year. Loss has a way of doing that.

"I know that, but that doesn't mean I want to read your type of books."

"My type. What is my type?"

She crosses one leg over the other, letting her foot bounce. "More brooding, less cute boys?"

He hands her back the book. "Yeah, that pretty much sums them up."

He's read A Farewell to Arms twice since getting home and he hates it as much as he loves it. He read it in boarding school before he could even understand the bleakness of a man broken by war. It means something different to him now, but she's not wrong. Sometimes he reads it hoping the ending will be different and it will be a harbinger of things maybe turning out differently for him. Sansa might write the back cover: more brooding, less cute boys.

If pressed, however, he can probably come up with some depressing books that still have a cute boy or two. "The Great Gatsby."

"Saw the movie. Leo's cute."

He groans.

She bites her lip. "You're way too easy to tease. No, I read it in high school. Or the CliffsNotes maybe."

He clutches his chest. "Twist the knife."

"Our tastes are not exactly copasetic. Never have been."

That is mostly true. They certainly haven't ever been close and part of that has to do with how different they are, but maybe it also was just bad timing. She was younger, when he joined the Stark family, but not young enough that he could take care of her, stepping into the role of big brother effortlessly the way he did with the new baby. Sansa had been for some time Robb's only sibling, his little sister, and when he became Robb's friend, that pretty much eliminated any possibility that he and Sansa could share a friendship. Funny thing about guys: they don't generally like for you to pal around with their sisters.

"I don't know," he says leaning back into the bench and draping one arm over its back, watching Rickon scamper over a tunnel instead of through it. "When you went through that Little Mermaid phase, I think I watched her comb her hair with a fork at least one hundred times. It wasn't so bad."

She laughs, her head tipping back, exposing the curve of her pale neck. "What do mean phase? I still happen to think that's a really excellent movie. She's an inspirational heroine for us redheads."

Former redheads.

He's about to say an Oscar caliber performance, when he hears a gunshot. He's only half aware of the world around him, as he curls forward, tucking his head between his knees and pressing his hands over his ears, trying to stop the assault of sound and light that is triggered in his brain. It's relentless. Gritting his teeth, he tries to master it. It's a drain he's circling, fighting not to succumb to the pull. Jon? Jon? Jon? His name floats to him from far away like the whisper of the wind through the leaves. He tries counting back from ten, tries to lift his head to look at his surroundings and count kids, tries to focus on the smell of mulch and grass to remind himself that they're at a playground. It wasn't a gunshot. He's not back there. He rocks back and forth, like a damn nut job, but he can't help himself, because the counting isn't working.

At first he's barely aware of her hand on his arm, stilling his movements, but then he feels her rubbing his back, as she whispers his name. She's freaked out, he can tell by the tone of her voice, as she pushes back his hair and bends down low enough that he can feel her breath on his cheek. He knows he's sweating like a pig, but all he can do is breathe through his flared nostrils, trying to slow his heart rate. He can't warn her not to touch him, because he's a sweaty mess.

There's another voice, a little boy's, young enough to be still girlish, added to the chorus of disembodied sounds. It must be Rickon or Bran or both. Everything is still too foggy—a rush of blood through his veins and her touch and popping lights behind his eyelids—to be certain.

He only catches snippets. "All right…brother's fine…hot…go back… watching you."

She rubs slow circles on his back. He focuses on the soft pressure, biting the inside of his cheek to bring focus to the pain. He should have warned her. He shouldn't have agreed to come here with a world of triggers waiting to hurl him into an episode without telling her what she was potentially getting herself into. She's never seen one. They're terrifying to him and they have to be nearly as bad for the person watching.

"Jon, honey? You are okay, aren't you?"

He breathes out hard, forcing himself to sit upright. He squints into the sun, his chest rising and falling too fast, every muscle bunched tight. Grass, mulch, kids playing, fifteen of them, nope, sixteen with one in the tunnel, Sansa's hand on his shoulder, her thumb worrying the seam of his t-shirt, the smell of her floral shampoo, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. One. One. One. One.

Fuck.

When he opens his mouth to apologize, to assure her that he's not about to kill her or somebody else, which is what some people must think when they hear, Veteran, PTSD, all that comes out is a string of curses in an exhausted rush. It's filthy shit he'd normally never say in front of her or any other woman, and he scrubs his face when his mouth finally stops, trying to work back to who he is beneath this wreck of a person.

"What was that?" he asks.

"The noise? A car on 5th Avenue. Backfiring, I guess."

A car. A stupid, fucking car. "God, I'm a real head case."

"No, no you're totally fine, but you frightened me a little bit."

He swallows hard and makes himself look at her, her face pinched together, her eyes blinking, looking like she's on the verge of tears. "I wouldn't have hurt you."

"I know. I was frightened for you."

"I'm okay."

"Of course you are," she says firmly with a little nod. "It's over, right?"

All he can manage is a jerk of his head in response. Hopefully it's over. It feels like it is. He knows where he is. She's here. The boys are just a few feet away. None of them have been shot.

Her fingers brush the sweaty curls at the back of his neck, lifting them away, and he feels his shoulders settle by an inch.

"Arya said they were bad. I mean, that was an episode, right?"

"Yeah."

Not even a particularly bad one. He didn't lose his touch with reality entirely. But even these half assed episodes are enough to drain him. It feels as if there's a thundercloud developing between his eyes—a tension headache.

"I need a shower." And a dark room.

"Do you need to leave? We can go."

She stops touching him to reach for her purse, and his eyes track her hand's movement, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. Her hand was tethering him to this place, so he doesn't completely disappear. His counselor says he needs to find things that ground him by using his senses—bite a lemon, hold onto a cube of ice, concentrate on colors around him, eat a strong peppermint, listen to music, all stupid little mind tricks—when the fuzziness starts creeping in, which signals an oncoming episode. All those tricks made him feel nuts, but with her hand on him, he understood what the counselor means about letting other people help ground you.

"Give me a second. I can't get up just yet."

"It's okay. There's no rush. The boys are having fun," she says, waving at Rickon with a fake smile that drops as soon as he hops in the other direction with a stick in his hand like a vaguely threatening Easter Bunny. "We'll leave when we're all good and ready."

Her hand covers his. He's gripping his knee hard enough to bruise, but he eases up and lets her work her fingers between his.

"I thought maybe you didn't have them anymore."

Her voice is soothing and sympathetic without sounding quite like she pities him.

"They're not as bad as they were, but I have triggers. I should have warned you."

She shakes off his apology with a frustrated little humming noise. "Triggers. Like noises? Is it why you hang out in your room?"

He was worried only minutes ago about her seeing him in his room, looking like some depressive shut-in, and now a car backfiring has him shaking like a Chihuahua. Puts things in perspective on the scale of how much mortification he can stomach.

"The city can be a bit much."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

This is exactly what he doesn't want. People thinking they have to walk on eggshells around him, alter their lives to fit his craziness. He pinches the bridge of his nose. If the headache gets too bad, there's a chance he might puke. That would be a real cherry on top of the sundae.

"Don't be. It's part of getting better, exposing myself to it, dealing with it."

It just so happens that the exposure therapy can turn into a brutally embarrassing scenario like today has.

"Headache?" she asks, poking around in her purse kind of awkwardly with her left hand until she retrieves a little travel size bottle of Advil. "Can you take them dry?"

"I'm good at taking pills," he assures her flatly, as he lets go to work the childproof cap and tap two into his palm.

He tosses them back, swallows. It feels like they're stuck and he coughs twice.

"What else you got in there, Mary Poppins?" he asks, trying to make the muscles around his mouth smile.

She's got Advil and sunscreen and maybe she stores her gentle manner in there too. Practically perfect in every way.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she asks, grabbing his hand again and pulling it into her lap. "A girl's purse is top secret."

He stares at their clasped hands. Anyone walking by would think they were a couple. Sansa's naturally affectionate. She has a hug for everyone. She's always touching people, while she talks, while she listens. That's all this is, Sansa's usual way—directed at him in a way he's unaccustomed to—but if you didn't know that about her, you might get the wrong idea and think they were just another couple in the park. He's only been part of a couple once. Another redhead, what feels like a lifetime ago, and a really sad ending. Nothing like Disney's The Little Mermaid.

"What are they like? The episodes?"

He exhales, digging the toe of his sneaker into the packed dirt beneath their bench. "You sure you want to hear about it?"

He hates recounting them with his counselor. It's so clinical, when what he's going through feels anything but rational. But who else is there to talk to? Arya's just a kid and he can't add to Ned's burdens.

"I do, unless you don't want to talk about it."

He doesn't usually, but he thinks maybe Sansa understands more than she lets on, like her frothy sweetness is just the surface, waiting to be scratched.

"They're like I'm there again, reliving it."

She leans into him, her bare shoulder pressing into his. He stares down at the skirt of her dress beneath their hands, counting the red and white sailboats that sail across the blue of the cotton fabric. Something like the boat she probably isn't going to want to rent with him anymore after seeing how poorly an outing with him can turn out. It wasn't even his idea to row a boat around a little lake, but the thought that she won't offer again, makes him scrunch his eyes up tight, fighting off irrational disappointment.

"Sometimes at night I can't sleep thinking about how horrible it must have been for you and Robb, while I was screwing around at school."

He sniffs and rubs the back of his right hand under his nose. "Don't beat yourself up about that. That's where you belong—at school with your friends."

"Friends," she says with an exaggerated lilt to her voice. "Well, I'm not going back. I mean, I'm going to take a semester off."

He glances at her and sees the way she's biting the corner of her lip, like she's testing the reaction that statement elicits for the first time. She can't have told her parents yet. Catelyn's been rushing around, buying everyone their back to school supplies and he saw stuff for Sansa on the list clipped to the frig. That's probably a conversation he'd be dreading too if he was in Sansa's shoes, which happen to be pretty little red wooden heels that are totally not playground friendly.

"I need time." Her eyes scan the playground, her fingers shifting against his. "We all just need time."

He hopes there's some truth to that, although the old saying about time and wounds doesn't feel particularly accurate. As the months pass, his wounds feel less raw, but they still bother him like a crusted scab that he can't help but scratch, and he can't imagine it ever being any different. Not when these episodes break them open again and again.

"That seems reasonable—a little time off. Just don't spend it beating yourself up.

"You're going to tell me you don't?"

"Oh, I'm a pro at it." His throat tightens. "I got home and felt guilty that I was here and Robb was over there." He felt guilty that his friends and Ygritte were dead and he was in New York, eating Sansa's mom's home cooked meals, watching television in the damn air conditioning too. "Still do." He shrugs. "I should have been with him."

She rests her head on his shoulder. "I meant it, you know."

"What?"

"I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're with me, and we can remember him together."

His chest clenches.

She talks. She reminisces. She makes him laugh the way Robb used to, recounting things she remembers from when he and Robb would come home from boarding school, dragging back smelly laundry and purposefully forgetting their books. The I can conquer the world confidence that Robb had even in high school. His easy way with people, and how sometimes he still managed to make noteworthy mistakes. Particularly with girls.

The minutes stretch on, and when she asks again, softly, "You wanna go?" he realizes he doesn't, not quite yet.

At some point with her weight against him and her fingers toying with his, while they watched his brothers work on wearing themselves completely out under the afternoon sun and he listened to her talk happily about her brother, he stopped wishing he was in his room with the lights out, stopped thinking about rocking himself back and forth until he fell asleep. He'll sleep later. Right now they're supposed to be enjoying themselves at the park. He's tired and his head is throbbing, but they're all together and it's okay.

"You hungry?" She barely touched her breakfast. She's got to be. "Because ice cream sounds really good."

She sits upright and adjusts the sunglasses atop her head. "The boys are never going to turn down ice cream."

"Are you? My treat."

"Well, in that case," she says with a slow smile. "I'm going to have to get sprinkles."

It might be better than okay before the day's over, and that's all right. None of them should have to feel guilty about that.

Notes: New locations in this chapter. So, there's a peek at Jon's room and the playground in Central Park they go to on my tumblr, which can be found under the 'modern au' tag. I thought it went without saying, but there seems to have been some confusion, so I'll just add that I don't actually style these inspiration pictures. I was looking for a bedroom that looked like it could be in a basement, potentially have been a home theater once upon a time, and was masculine and had a couple elements of Jon's style. That doesn't mean his room wouldn't have any personal items in it. You just have to imagine those yourself. ;)