Sansa

The sharp tang of blood is on her tongue and in her nose; Sansa opens her eyes the next morning to see a thin layer of white over everything. Everything, save for Jon as he bends over a dark figure in front of him. A knife glints in his hand and it slides through something wet and red.

She sits up abruptly. "Wh-what is that?" she asks bleary-eyed, still trying to determine if she is truly awake or blundering through another nightmare. Her head is pounding and her stomach feels sour. She never could abide the coppery stench, no matter how many battles or dead men she'd encountered over the years.

"Have you ever tasted blood, Sansa?" Ramsay had whispered, his back turned away from her and his gaze towards the window.

She remembered that she could see the moon through the glass, and she could hear the limbs of the tree creaking against it, but she couldn't feel anything but numb. She'd remained silent, refusing to give him any sort of response. He'd drink her fear as a thirsty man at a well.

He had turned then and smiled with his teeth bared, like a serpent readying itself to strike. "Oh not the blood of a slaughtered beast. I find that entirely too gamey," he'd laughed quietly, moving towards her slowly. He'd been different from Joffrey, in that way. Where one had been loud and brash, seeking to frighten with dramatic overtures and gestures, the other had much more subtle ways of instilling fear. Ramsay had rarely raised his voice, but there was always an undercurrent of malicious threat lurking beneath every word. The memory of it was something Sansa hadn't been able to shove down far enough for her to entirely repress.

"It's a doe."

Jon's gruff, but warm voice pours over her languidly, returning her to the present. He's looking at her now, his brows pulled down in concern.

"Am I bothering you?" he asks, pausing his work to consider her reaction. "I managed to fell her early this morning. I thought I'd start saving the furs for shelter or warmth once the snows really begin. If the free folk taught me anything, it's how to survive in harsh climates."

There's blood on his hands, Sansa thinks. Suddenly he's in front of her, standing over her, and she's drowning, spinning, the edges of her vision tinged with red.

"Sansa?" she hears him say, but she's standing on the dock of King's Landing and he's floating away again. It'll be different this time, she resolves, looking down at the murky waters. I'll jump in, I'll swim after him.

Except when she looks closer, it isn't water lapping against the dock, but a river of crows screaming with their oily black feathers and beady eyes a slithering mass of darkness.

When Sansa awakens again, it's to the sound of Jon's voice. She tries to open her eyes, but they hurt. Everything hurts.

"Drink this," he urges her gently, and she can feel something pressed against her lips. "It's fever tea," he explains as she sips cautiously. It tastes terrible, like what she'd imagine a mouthful of dirt would.

"I'm sorry if it tastes horrible," Jon says, likely noticing her grimace. "I'm not quite as good as the medicine woman in the free folk village."

"Yarrow?" she croaks feebly, remembering the herbal remedies Old Nan would give her when she'd scrape her knees and elbows as a child.

"Yes. Yarrow and elderberry. I couldn't find any peppermint, or it might have tasted somewhat less like a dirty boot."

Sansa pries open an eye and gives Jon a small smile. She manages to open the other eye as well, and finally notices her surroundings. A small, flickering fire provides just enough light for her to see the crumbling bricks and mouldy furnishings. Jon is beside her on a wooden stool, while she lays on a cot presumably made of broken glass and lumps of mud if she judges by the way her body aches.

Jon's expression is barely readable in the darkness.

"It's the Last Hearth," he says, answering her unspoken question. "...or what's left of it, anyhow."

Sansa sighs, and closes her eyes again. "I thought as much. The small council and I had planned to return this abandoned pile of rocks to its former glory, but we hadn't quite made it that far."

She pauses a moment, still not quite in full strength. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why we're here? And why the last thing I remember is waking up in Wolfswood to you gutting a deer?"

"A sickness," Jon returns quietly. "You fell ill three days ago…"

"Three days?" Sansa is incredulous. She'd had her fair share of agues and flu as a child, but it had been years since.

"You were delirious with fever and I couldn't get you to wake snows came upon us suddenly, and I feared exposing you to the elements. I had to abandon one of the mounts and ride the other to near exhaustion to get us here before nightfall. Your fever finally broke this morning."

Jon is sombre, his voice low and heavy.

"Have you rested at all?" Sansa asks, knowing the foolish man had likely fretted over her like an old nursemaid the last few days. He turns, and the fire casts a glow over his face. He looks haggard, but not unwell. She cannot imagine how he'd managed to cover days of riding in the space of one.

For me, she thinks.

She scoots herself to the edge of the cot, and she doesn't have to speak a word. He lays down next to her, his skin pressing against hers. He smells like earth, and warmth, and home. The way an apple freshly plucked tastes like summer. The way the chill of a winter wind whispers against her skin like the caress of moonlight.

When Sansa dreams, it's not of crows or death, or things falling apart.

She dreams of lemon cakes and laughter.

A/N: Yes, it's been a long time. I'm sorry! But I am ready to write again. This last year had been...well. Yeah.

Please review!