Several things happen in quick succession in the (by now, failed) effort at getting to the ripest apples possible – Jon loses his balance on the tree he'd climbed, the branch under him creaks threateningly, he tries to shift out of the way to avoid damaging it further, falls to the ground and, through the blinding pain that follows, hears someone call for him.

It's odd; he hadn't fallen backwards, thankfully, and it's his leg and elbow that had taken his weight as he'd crashed into the hard stone pathway below, but he's certain that he must have hit his head at some point, because it's Sansa looking down at him, clearly concerned, only she's dressed as some sort of moon goddess and none of the words coming out of her mouth seem to register at all.

"What?" He manages at last, blinking several times to chase the vision away, but she's still there – a silvery veil over her fiery hair, a dress made of the same sparkling fabric, and growing worry in her eyes.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine."He gratefully accepts her offered hand and gets to his feet, taking another look at her before bending down to gather his hard-earned apples. "I'm sorry for, uh." A vague gesture in her general direction seems to cut it. "Interrupting your— dress fitting."

Sansa follows his gaze, as if having forgotten about her attire. "It's not— it's just a costume. For the feast, remember?"

Despite himself, Jon groans. The feast. Of course. He had already forgotten who exactly had given Lady Stark the idea, but his Lord Father had agreed and the organisation had been put into motion – they had all been supposed to pick something else to be for a night; a masquerade of a kind, though evidently there isn't much effort being put towards concealing one's identity.

"It's beautiful," he offers instead of an admission that he'd done nothing at all so far. The fact that he is expected there at all had been a surprise and he has his father to thank for that, he supposes, but he hardly feels welcome all the same. The way Sansa flushes, pleased with the praise, is more pleasant than the idea of the gathering itself. "Did you make it?"

"Yes." She fiddles with the cape attached to her silver dress and he notices how it shifts under the sun, gentle and ephemeral like snowfall. It'll be quite a sight in candlelight, he suspects, and quietly admires the craftsmanship. They're almost of age, but then again, Sansa hadn't started sewing at twelve – she had been doing it for as long as she'd been able to hold a needle. "I thought I could pick something less obvious."

He takes the plunge. "The Moon?"

"No," Sansa laughs, raising a hand when he tosses an apple in her general direction, taking it as an invitation to gather her skirts and sit at the cleanest spot she can find. They had rarely been particularly talkative around each other and he's not sure what's changed now, other than the fact that he's genuinely interested in what she has to say. "It's the Night's Queen."

Jon catches on immediately. The name sounds unfamiliar and he doesn't know the story, and yet, "One of Old Nan's tales, is it?"

She raises an eyebrow in response. "I would have expected her to tell you and Robb that one first. Yes." She shifts uncomfortably, giving him a pleading look. "You mustn't tell Mother. No one can talk about him; it's been a secret for decades."

Despite himself, he laughs. "I don't tell Lady Stark an awful lot to begin with. You're safe."

So she tells him. It's a riveting legend, and it draws him in in a way similar ones rarely do, the tragedy of the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch some unspeakably long time ago, his mysterious queen and their subsequent downfall more morbid than the stories that he knows his sister tends to enjoy and, by the time she's done, the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. "That's a good choice. It suits you."

Sansa scowls back at him, the spell unravelling as quickly as it had come about. "Are you telling me I look dead?"

"No!" Where had that come from? "I'm saying you have eyes like blue stars!"

"Oh." There's that flushing again, followed by a loaded silence, but Sansa doesn't let it linger too long – she's a lady, after all, and uncomfortable pauses aren't allowed in courtly life. Instead, she somehow manages to bring the topic to something he wants to ask with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm for someone who had not given the feast a second thought until this precise moment. The story had enchanted him more than he'd want to admit, and the faceless, ancient figure of the watcher on the Wall, terrible fate or not, had caught him by surprise. "I— I think I overestimated the amount of fabric I would need for this dress. By quite a lot, too. If you want, I could make—"

"Yes," he interrupts her, because unlike her, he's not bound by the customs that tend to plague the highborn and he wants to answer before she's ready to actually ask him. "Yes, I'd love to."

The affirmation earns him a hesitant smile. "I'm thinking of having a wooden crown made for the occasion, too."

Jon grimaces, already picturing the consequences of such an idea. "I don't think Lady Stark will like that very much."

"It's all right," Sansa shrugs. "She doesn't know the story, I think."

That's not the issue at hand, as they both know – it's the idea of her mother seeing him in a crown – but if his sister is so intent on ignoring that for the time being by playing stupid, then he's happy to do the same.

"Then I'll take the crown as well."

~.~

Ned is on the verge of thinking of perhaps starting to look for his two missing children by the time Catelyn decides to take matters into her own hands.

They're not truly missing, of course. Last anyone had heard – as he had been reliably informed by Robb, who had been turning himself into a swamp monster of some kind, if the generous helping of raw eggs Theon had been spreading over his head had been an indication – Jon and Sansa had been in her chambers and she'd been helping him prepare. Further questions had resulted in Sansa ordering the older boys to get out, as per usual, and that had been the end of that.

All of it, however, had happened before the feast had started. Now, they're already halfway through the first course and his children are still nowhere to be seen, but he knows that they couldn't possibly be outside, so it's all right, really. Benjen, who had taken the time to visit for the occasion, had thought the same, and Ned hears him curse under his breath just as his wife gets to her feet, his eyes trained on the entrance to the hall.

"This would be them, I think. Cat! They're here!"

Ned raises from his seat with more urgency than he had felt when he hadn't been aware of their whereabouts, making his way between the tables and benches to get to them. Sansa seems to be in the middle of an animated explanation and Jon is nodding along with all the wisdom his age allows him, but there are more important things to note than that – namely, the veil trailing long behind his daughter, held together by a small tiara, and the crude, spiked crown atop Jon's own head. His clothes are made of the same shimmering silver that Sansa's gown is, though he's wrapped in furs too thick for the current weather, too, held together by a direwolf made to look just old enough to match the story they are – rather painfully obviously – trying to recreate.

There are plenty of things Ned finds himself tolerating for the sake of his children, but now, he can feel a headache coming on rather suddenly and he clenches his eyes shut, as if they would disappear again by the time he opens them.

Unfortunately, they do not.

"What do you think you're wearing?"

"I read about it in a book!" Sansa defends herself immediately, but Ned can hardly focus on her explanations, attention redirected to the white powder artfully positioned over her and Jon's faces, making them look just nightmarish enough to give him hives even when they're both here, talking to him.

This is an old, forgotten – for the better – tale, forcibly torn out from the collective memory of the North, so, "I doubt you could find a book like that in our library, Sansa."

"It doesn't matter." If she's bothered about being caught in a lie, it doesn't show, but then again, it never does, with her. "It was my idea."

"No, it was mine." Jon squares his shoulders and looks up at him, determined. "I told her the story and she made our clothes."

"It's very noble of you to admit that. Which begs the same question: where did you read it, then?"

Silence, just as he'd expected. It doesn't particularly matter who had got to the tale of their ancient ancestor first; Ned knows where it had come from either way and doesn't have the heart to do a thing about it, so he might as well stop tormenting them.

"You will both go to your seats and be very, very quiet for the rest of the night and no one will answer any questions, all right?" He gets two vigorous nods in return. It's a good thing that they so rarely get along, he thinks fleetingly, or they would tear down the world. Night's King. Among all the children, only the two of them could be enchanted enough by a story this chilling to turn it into a costume. "I don't want to hear any protests; you knew you were doing something wrong, or you would have told someone – anyone – what you were planning."

Sansa is, naturally, the first one to speak. "Grand Maester Orwyle once said in his diaries that a nation ashamed of its past would do well to remember not to be proud of its glorious deeds either."

"Well, it's a good thing that Grand Maester Orwyle isn't here with, so your uncle Benjen can spend the night glaring at the two of you instead." Jon looks particularly crestfallen at that, but really, it's a trouble of their own making. "Come along, the food is growing cold."

Even when he turns his back to them, Ned can feel the shared mutiny taking place somewhere outside of his line of sight and quietly stores that particular observation away for another day. They would make a formidable alliance if pushed and he's glad that this is only a matter of some charade they had found interesting, even if he would still like to see them out of the charade in question as soon as possible – for all their faults, he thinks, they're not ghostly women and dead kings; they're both gloriously alive.