Spring is upon them already, Sansa reflects with yet another rueful look outside her window, and there's no one out there to see it.
It's not that she can't go out for a walk in the gardens – that much is safe, all the Maesters had reassured them all – but no farther. Any densely populated place is a problem and she, as their queen, is more protected than most. It's frustrating, almost, but she respects her advisors enough to do her best not to worsen the situation.
"I implore you to look at it in another light, Your Grace," one of her vassals had said when she had expressed her desire to do the sort of mingling with the rest of the northerners that she's so used to, "You might lift up their spirits, but at what cost? Winterfell can act as a refuge if we keep its residents healthy."
She hadn't been able to argue with that. A strange illness had descended onto Westeros some weeks prior and while her childhood memories provide a precedent for the occasional highly contagious fever, the idea of it weighs in on her heart much more now that she's the one responsible for the North's people. How had her parents been able to bear it? Surely it had happened in their lifetime, too, and yet they had made it all seem so easy. Her own subjects seem calm enough, so she must have it, too, and Sansa idly wonders what it is. Had there been something—
"The daffodils are already in bloom."
The voice startles her enough for her to spin around on her heel, smile blooming over her face accordingly as she sees Jon approach. "And how would you know that from inside the castle?"
"I know that from the Godswood, where I was all by myself because no one would dare to bother the King in the North." He extends a messy pile of flowers in her general direction, dew and snow still clinging to them, and Sansa takes them gratefully, closing her eyes and taking in their scent. It's the smell of earth and change and living things and when she catches his gaze again, Jon looks about as dazed with the sensation as she feels. "Or the Queen in the North, as it so happens."
"If we're both there, that means that no one else will be allowed in," Sansa shrugs helplessly. It's already a rather foreign idea, having to follow someone else's rules, but the Maesters know best, and they had laid out their ideas of what life must look like for the time being quite clearly as soon as the disease had reached the North. "Our subjects need to feel close to the gods, now more than ever."
"So do you."
There's little she can say to that. As always, her brother – her King – is ready to compromise with other people's comfort for her sake, and there's no word that she knows for the way it makes her feel. "I'm sorry, Jon. I would have waited and called you home later if only I had known." Her laughter, when it comes, is more cynical than she'd like it to be. "I thought it would be safe. I spoke too soon. You would have been safer beyond the Wall."
Smile still not faltering, Jon hooks an arm around her waist; draws her near, his fleeting kiss a reassurance as much as it is an undeserved gratitude. "There is nowhere else I would rather be. This is home, Sansa. We'll always be safe here."
She thinks of her parents again – thinks of security and the unshakeable confidence that it would be all right and their insistence to always stay by each other's side as their lives had been shaken this way and that – and thinks, finally, that she knows the answer to her self-imposed riddle. Home is where the heart is, she had always heard people say, and her heart is here, beating in perfect sync with another.
Yes, Sansa thinks as she nods and returns his kiss, gentle and tentative as the flowers still pressed between them, this must be it. This must be home.