"They say the fighting is over..."
Sansa turns when the woman speaks to her. "I've heard," she responds softly, though she turns back to face her father's crumbling statue. At her feet, his head lays, as it had once laid on the dust covered platform in King's Landing. A chill races her spine.
"Come up, my lady," the woman continues, but Sansa shakes her head.
"Jon said he would come for me here," is all she can say. The woman bites her lip but finally gives in, nodding silently before she turns on her heel and disappears up the crumbling stone steps. Sansa stares hard at the broken statue of her father, recalling the words that Jon had promised her just hours before. I'll always come back to you. She touches her belly, where deep inside of her she grows a life he had vowed to come back and protect. It doesn't matter that the survivors have all returned to the outside, it doesn't matter that the bodies of the dead have already been recovered. Jon promised her he would come to her there in the crypts when the battle was over and so there she would wait for him.
He knows he's dying.
But still yet, he presses on. He made her a promise and he won't die without seeing her face just one more time. And so he forces his legs to keep going, every step like a new knife in his chest. The wound bleeds freely but he does nothing to try and staunch it's flow. There's no saving him, not this time around. Jon knows the battle has been won, but only by the miracle known as Arya Stark. Somehow, someway, she had crept into the godswood and when Theon had taken the blade to his heart, she jumped. And she won.
Jon stumbles his way down into the passage that leads to the crypts, stumbling over the broken rock, his legs giving way just as he steps onto the ground. His movements must have alerted her for Jon hears her voice and feels her arms come around him a moment before he hits the ground. "Jon! Jon, oh no, Jon!" She's crying as she clings to his bloody, beaten body, he can feel her tears as they drip onto his face. He opens his eyes and sees her beautiful face, pale and tear-stained as she leans over him, cradling him close to her chest. She's warm and soft, she's safe... She's safe.
"Sansa..." Her name upon his lips is the sweetest sound and Sansa can feel her heart shattering. "I... Love you..." His words are scarcely a whisper and she puts her hand against his chest wound, as if she might stop the blood flow. A moment later, his hand crosses hers and he squeezes. "Give him... Longclaw." She snaps up, shaking her head, her lips moving with words like don't say that, you promised me, Jon... But he raises up that same hand, pressing it against her lips, silencing her. "Give him Longclaw," he says again, knowing the child she carried in her belly would be a son and he only wished he might have gotten to see him grow to be a man. "Promise me."
She can't breathe or even speak and so she only can nod, tears coursing down her cheeks as Jon smiles. It's right then that the brightness in his eyes fades and his hand falls away. She knows he's gone the moment his lids fall closed over those Stark eyes and the sound that escapes her is unlike anything human.
And that is where she's found only a short while later, still yet clinging to his body.
[ x x x ]
"Jon, come here sweetheart. I have something for you."
The boy approaches, his curls wild as always, his solemn Stark eyes gazing up at her. He is a perfect copy of his father, more Stark than she certainly ever looked. If it weren't for his tall, willowy frame, no one would ever think him to be hers. "What is it, mother?" He asks, bobbing on his feet in excitement- he is typically a stoic child, quite like his namesake had been, though with an easygoing smile.
Sansa smiles as she turns to the table beside her, where Longclaw sits in its sheath. Her boy is six years old today and she knew it was high time he begun his new life as the heir to the North, as the future King. "It is a sword, a true sword." She watches as his smile widens, though there is surprise there, too. "But it is not just any sword, my sweet, it once belonged to your father." Little Jon knew his father well, though he had never met him. Sansa had made sure of that. "I promised him the day he died that I would give this to you. It is your nameday gift from him." She picks the sword up and first shows him the hilt, where the white wolf is carved into it, a reminder of the wolf that sleeps beneath her chair that very moment. "It is called Longclaw." Sansa explains as she places the sword into her boy's hands, watching him sag beneath the weight of it. "Someday you will wield it with ease, as your father did." She smiles, thinking of Jon then, her heart heavy and yet so very light. "Use this sword and protect those you love, protect the North from those who might do it harm." He nods, every inch his father, and she leans in to wrap her arms around him, the sword pressed between them.
Sansa breathes in her son's scent and hugs him a little tighter, knowing Jon would have been so very proud of their boy. Of their son. He was the Jon Stark her Jon had always wanted to be, his namesake that would grow into his own name the Young White Wolf, the future King in the North. And in that moment, they both could feel his presence, so strong it was as if he were there, smiling upon them.