DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I do not own. All titles taken from "No One Else" from Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.

A/N: I'm a couple chapters ahead right now in terms of writing, so chapter four should be out next Thursday.

I don't love this chapter, but hopefully it's at least effective in moving us along. Let me know what you think!

Tyrion was the only one who noticed Sansa's tears as Arya, Bran, and all the rest rode out of Winterfell for White Harbor. He followed her to an alcove just off of the main hall and passed her his handkerchief. She smiled at him, then dried her eyes and walked purposefully into the room. Jonelle was already standing next to her throne. Tyrion took up the same post on the opposite side, which made her smile, something she didn't often do in this room. She had said he would be getting a throne- a less grand one, at her council's request, even though 'grand' was not the first word he would use to describe hers- soon, but he was content to simply stand there and learn

The weeks continued that way. Her schedule was heavy; it had to be as they continued to build a kingdom from the ground up, and he was honored that she would talk about it with him almost as much as she would with Jonelle.

It was certainly different than the life he'd been building for himself in King's Landing. They would spend quiet nights in her solar, reading, sometimes aloud to each other. He mostly read history tomes he would liberate from the library, despite Maester Wolkan's pleas he not do that, and she would read correspondence and proposals. They talked things over, about the Northern houses and customs and people, about the news they received from mutual acquaintances and the gossip Talya shared with them when she helped Sansa dress. Her council did not have a formal Master of Whispers, he'd learned, but Sansa said that between Ser Alran, Talya, Jonelle, and the castle steward Evin, she was able to pick up quite a lot.

They didn't talk about them, much, though. About their pasts, about their marriage. In some regards, it wasn't all that different from how the two of them had been back in King's Landing. But this time, there was kissing. A lot of kissing, which he was quite enjoying. He had taken to kissing her hand, and her forehead, but he rarely, if ever, kissed her lips unless she initiated it. As time wore on, he found she was doing it more and more. He'd introduced her to adding tongue; she'd admitted to as much with a furious blush rising up her pretty neck. One day he'd kissed her slowly down that neck before sucking hard enough to leave a bruise on her shoulder. He made sure it was easy for her to cover, but he couldn't quite resist. He had been quite proud of it, especially when Talya found it when helping his wife dress the next morning and the handmaiden blushed furiously.

Another day, he'd been sitting at the table in their bedchamber as she did her hair and lotions for bed. He was writing a letter to Bronn, recently returned to the capital and asking for Tyrion's advice on some tax he was considering. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the rustle of the quill against the parchment. He'd never appreciated silence like this before. Shae would talk while he worked, but with Sansa he could just be.

When she was finished, she walked over to the table and sat across from him, watching him. He glanced up at her without really moving his head, then looked back down at the paper.

"Yes, wife?" he said, mostly teasing. She certainly wanted something, but he wasn't going to assume.

"I thought you wanted to read to me tonight?"

"I do, but I have to send this out first thing tomorrow or Bronn will ride up here to slap my head." She rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything.

"Alright," she said with a more long suffering sigh than he thought she truly meant. He smirked to himself, hoping she wouldn't notice, as she stood.

She had to walk past him to get to her sewing basket, which he assumed she would go for since they were expecting a wedding invitation from Arya within the next fortnight. (Sansa said the next sennight, and they'd bet a gold dragon on it. He thought she was being much too romantic, but she insisted that while Arya was stubborn, she wasn't that stubborn, and she clearly cared for the young lord.)

He was thus unsurprised when she stepped forward, towards him, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, lingering longer than was strictly necessary. But before she could pull away, he turned his face so her lips were on his. His quill clattered against the table as he cupped her cheek. He was vaguely aware she was bent at an awkward angle, but he was still surprised enough to gasp when she fell down onto his lap. He saw her flush and make to stand, but he simply wrapped his arms firmly around her, holding her close.

It was a new sensation, kissing Sansa like this. Most of it had been on their bed, in the dark, sitting side by side, though he'd certainly thought about pulling her close like this in recent days as she'd grown more daring. He didn't want to pressure her; he knew enough about how the Bolton bastard had treated her to know that she needed both time and agency, which he was quite willing to give her, despite the way his cock twitched at her warm weight on top of him. God, if she spread her legs, he might be in trouble. She'd brushed against a morning erection of his once or twice without much fanfare, but this would be different.

They continued to kiss, and she slipped her tongue along his lip, hoping for access, which he gave with another sigh against her. She shifted again, and swung a leg over so she straddled him, just as he'd feared she might. This time the two of them fully stopped, breathing heavily and not looking at each other. At least this position had an effect on her, too.

"I should let you get back to your letter," she said. A piece of hair fell into her face and Tyrion reached up to push it back, admiring the way her lips had swollen and her breasts heaved as he did so. He'd done that, and it made his cock twitch again.

"You're welcome to distract me whenever you'd like," he replied earnestly. She raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't you start this?"

"Perhaps," he said, smirking, and she pushed herself off him with a roll of her eyes and continued on to grab her sewing basket. Once her back was to him, he glanced down at himself and closed his eyes, flicking through images to find the one that would make blood stop flowing to his cock before he embarrassed his wife any further.

The wedding invitation arrived almost exactly two weeks after Arya's confirmed arrival in the Stormlands, which meant that Sansa owed Tyrion a gold dragon. He really thought that she should've known better.

Once they had a letter from Jon which, according to Sansa, contained any sort of personal information for the first time since his banishment, they began to make travel plans. He announced he would be in Winterfell in two days' time, and everything else was just more on the land surveys he and his men had been doing.

Since it was winter, it was decided a ship would be a better bet than the Kingsroad, the same decision that Bran and Davos had made. They would ride on foot to White Harbor and sail to Tarth, where a captain more experienced with Shipbreaker Bay would sail them to Storm's End. It would make the most sense to leave as soon as Jon had arrived in case they were caught in any storms.

Sansa was in a council meeting, making arrangements for while she was gone, when he did. Arya had invited Jonelle, too, to both their surprise, so Sansa was leaving, somewhat begrudgingly, Lord Glover in charge. As Master of Laws, he had the next most obvious understanding to lead if anything were to happen. Lord Manderly would accompany them to White Harbour.

It was thus left to him to greet Jon, along with Evin. Jon greeted both of them cordially, and let Evin take his horse and saddle bag to the stables and his room, respectively. That left the two of them staring at each other in the yard.

"So it's true," Jon said, "I thought Arya was joking."

"Sansa didn't tell you herself?" Tyrion asked.

"She said that the two of you were still married, but I thought that meant legally. Arya kept going on about you two being rather... mushy, I think was the word she chose. I didn't expect to see you here."

They stared at each other for a few awkward seconds more before Tyrion cleared his throat.

"Sansa's in a council meeting. She'll be free shortly."

Jon nodded and set off into the keep, giving Tyrion little choice but to follow him. His goodbrother- goodcousin?- knew Winterfell much better than he did, after all.

They wound up in the library, somewhat surprisingly, and Tyrion lost Jon to the stacks. He took a moment to ask a servant to tell Sansa's guards where they were, then sat at the library's front table to catch his breath. Jon joined him a moment later with a thick book, which he sat down in front of Tyrion. The cover was bare, but it was clearly old and worn. He glanced at Jon in question, who nodded, so Tyrion opened it.

It was a family record, he realized, dating back several decades. The first pages were all for births, and he flipped through them reverently, stopping when he reached the current generation.

"How did this survive the fire?" he asked.

"We found it in the crypts, after the Long Night. I think Maester Luwin hid it there at some point after Theon took the keep. I recognized it instantly. When I was younger, I spent hours pouring over it, and so I made sure it got returned to the right spot in the stacks." He shrugged, like it was no big deal.

Jon's name, Tyrion noticed, was not recorded. It was clearly a bit of a deal.

"Most of the family's bastards aren't in it," he added, noticing Tyrion's skepticism.

"Well, you're not a bastard. How would you like to be recorded?" Tyrion said, reaching for one of the quills and inkwells scattered across the table. He dipped the quill, then held it over the page as he stared expectantly at Jon.

"Jon Aegon Snow," he finally said, and Tyrion nodded, carefully adding Jon Aegon Snow, to Rhaegar Targaryean and Lyanna Stark, b. 282 AC under the line that read Rickon Stark, to Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully, b. 292 AC .

"Why does no one else have the middle name?"

"It's not really a custom in the North. Why? Do you have one?"

"Damon, after one of my uncles on my mother's side." He set the quill and inkwell back towards the center of the table, so he wouldn't accidentally knock it over and spill any on the book. "Why show me this? Wouldn't you want to show Sansa? Does she even know it survived?"

"We haven't updated it in a while," Jon said with another shrug, which wasn't really an answer. He idly wondered if Jon was trying to intimidate him somehow, but he had a family legacy, too, even if his ancestors weren't Kings in the North.

Tyrion flipped through a collection of blank pages, saved for future Stark births, then found the marriages section. The last recorded marriage was Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn's. He tried to remember if Winterfell had been sacked before the Red Wedding. He was fairly confident it had been, but he didn't know by how much, so he didn't know if it was unexpected or not for Robb's name not to be there.

Ned Stark, however, had made the last filled page in the deaths section, confirming at least that.

"Jon!" Sansa called, startling him, and he turned and smiled at her. Jon rose from his side of the table to pull her into a hug. Tyrion noticed how tightly she held on, and wondered if she, too, noticed how hollow his face looked and the dullness of his eyes and was trying to give him as much love and warmth as she could.

"How are you?" she asked, pulling away and looking him up and down.

"Fine. And you?"

"Fine," she said, and Tyrion rolled his eyes. He wasn't sure that was a word he would use to describe either of them these days; Jon had clearly returned to brooding, and Sansa was overworking herself.

Jon was his usual cheerful self all through dinner, confirming his suspicions. If the less than subtle looks Sansa kept shooting him were any indication, she worried about it, too.

She finally asked him his thoughts on it when they were alone in their chambers. He didn't quite know how best to answer, because he knew the guilt that Jon lived with, and carried everywhere. They'd both killed the thing they loved most. It was something Sansa wouldn't understand, the shame of walking around with that on your chest, crushing you on your worst days. Perhaps selfishly, he didn't want to share that part of himself with her, to see her feelings for him change from fondness to disgust when she learned what he had done to Tysha and Shae. He knew she must have at the very least heard rumors about them.

"He is grieving, Sansa. He loved her quite a lot," he settled on, then quickly moved behind the screen to change, hoping that could be the end of the conversation.

"Should I speak with Bran about pardoning him?" Sansa called, and he stopped, peaking around the side of the screen to find his wife pacing across their chambers. When she spun around and saw him staring at her, she came to a stop, and raised an eyebrow at him. "Well?"

"You could, I suppose," he said, and that set her to pacing again, though the energy behind it seemed more frantic. He ducked back behind the screen to dress quickly.

"The Dothraki and the Unsullied are unlikely to return to Westeros. If we sheltered him at Winterfell, Bran could probably get away with saying something simple, like 'He remains in the North,' if they ever ask, and they would think he still served at Castle Black. Not that I expect letters from them; most of them barely spoke the Common Tongue, and I doubt any could write in it."

He emerged from behind the screen to find her stopped again and staring at him.

"He needs his family, Tyrion. My father used to always say that the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Jon should be here."

"What if the Northern lords call for him to replace you?" he asked, and she reeled back like he'd slapped her.

"They wouldn't; he's a queenslayer. They wouldn't trust him anymore. And he's not legitimized to them, technically, and he betrayed the North by bending the knee to her in the first place. They won't."

"Then what if they think he will take it for himself, the way he tried to seize the Iron Throne and became a queenslayer? They might not take kindly to you sheltering him at Winterfell."

She practically dropped into one of the chairs at the table.

"They wouldn't," she repeated. He sighed and sat down across from her, reaching for her hand.

"Sansa, you're smarter than this. You are blinded by your love for your family-"

"Yes, I am! My mother's words were 'Family, Duty, Honor,' Tyrion; I do not take my duty to mine lightly."

"I know that-"

"Being Queen isn't just about politics; it's about protecting my people, making sure they are safe, making sure mothers don't die in vain and women aren't raped and homes aren't burned. Jon serves the Night's Watch. You were there when Bran granted me authority over their deserters; he is one of my people."

"I was," he agreed, because she stared at him like it was his turn to say something.

"Why shouldn't I do everything I can for him? He was all I had for so long, and every time I write to him I get reports of grain and land surveys and encounters with wildings and bodies to burn. To be honest, I didn't know if he would agree to attend Arya's wedding, and the two of them have been close their entire lives. I won't let him die cold and alone and thinking we don't care for him anymore." Her eyes looked shiny, like she was about to cry, and Tyrion's heart broke at the sight. He ran his thumb across her hand in half-circles for a few moments, then took a deep breath.

"He doesn't think that. He wants to leave you clean of the blood on his hands. Why do you think I loved Daenerys?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Answer the question. I know you have ideas."

"She was powerful and cared for her people. I don't know. She was dedicated to her cause, almost single-mindedly so. She was loyal. Until it suited her, at least, but that's not what you're asking me."

"That is all true. She suffered great tragedy and for most of her life she was able to push past it, until she couldn't anymore. Such tragedy changes all of us. But when I met her, I'd hit my breaking point. I killed both my parents. I killed my lover, and my first wife. You had disappeared, abandoning me to face a trial for a crime I didn't commit. I was drinking away my days in Pentos and didn't think I could survive, but she had. It was the most alluring thing I'd seen. And she trusted me, at least for a while."

"What does that have to do with Jon?"

"When I met her, she had the love of Daario Naharis. A sellsword from Tyrosh, whom she left behind to rule Meereen in her stead, supposedly. She wanted to be untied to a man when she arrived in Westeros. At least that was how I saw it. I could not stand up to Daario Naharis to win her affections, but surely I could have when I was her Hand, before Jon came into her life. But I didn't. Why?"

"Because you are a dwarf and he was a sellsword?" Sansa guessed, and he shrugged.

"Part of it, sure, but I refused to lose her. Everything I love leaves me in the end, and it's almost always my fault. It even happened with her."

He thought of Tysha, thrown to the guards. He thought of Shae, lying in his father's bed. He thought of learning about Myrcella and Tommen. He thought of uncovering Jaime's body under the rubble of the Red Keep.

He thought of the black cell he sat in when Podrick informed him of Sansa's disappearance, and the bitter taste in his mouth. He hadn't loved her, yet, then, but he'd understood she was special to him, and she left him anyway.

"Tyrion," Sansa said, her voice no louder than a whisper, "You can't carry all that weight on your shoulders."

"Don't you? Don't you hate yourself for trusting Cersei, and Baelish, and Daenerys? Isn't that why you try to keep your family as close to you as you can?"

"I let Arya leave."

"No one lets your sister do anything." The corners of her lips twitched. "What your brother needs is time and space. He will come back to you when he's ready."

"Were you ready? To come back to me?" she asked.

"I didn't know until I woke up with you in my arms," he said, and he made sure to look at her so she could understand just how much he meant it. "Your heart is so good, Sansa. Write to Bran if you want, but you can't force Jon to do anything, either, and especially not now."

She pulled their intertwined hands up to her mouth and kissed his hand, then squeezed it tightly.