The wolf dreams start soon after. It is always the same dream: running swift beneath the moonlit sky, loping over hill and forest and grove with his grey sister, of pulling down deer between silent pines or nosing hares from their warrens, of the copper tang of blood and crunch of bones beneath his jaws. Sometimes Jon wakes with the taste still in his mouse and it takes him a long moment to remember that he is a man and not a beast, a knight bound by vows and not a wolf free to run beneath the night sky.
It is always bitter.
Quickly Jon regrets having confronted Barristan. Perhaps fearing he will do something rash Barristan no longer assigns him to guard Sansa during her days and nights. At court and feasts he places Jon farthest from Joffrey of all his Kingsguard brothers. It becomes impossible for Jon to see Sansa each day, but still he tries, gives up sparring in the yard or drinking with Tyrion to find Sansa in her solar.
Gossip and whispers swirl through the Red Keep, servants murmuring in Jon's wake when he walks the halls, their eyes flitting to him and then away. Jon can do no more than grit his teeth and meet their gazes flatly. He knows what the whispers call him without having to hear them: coward, false knight, bastard. After all what true brother would let his sister suffer that way, what true knight? What good is a knight who cannot keep his vows? Simple, the answer had always seemed to Jon. Not easy, but simple. For so many years since coming south Jon had dreamed of being knighted, of proving his worth, of carving out a name for himself that was more than Snow. But now…
His white brothers Jon no longer speaks to unless he must. The way they refuse to meet his eye when he stands beside them proves they know of Sansa's bruises, and the way they stand silent behind Joffrey proves they do not care. Yes and no and speak with Barristan Jon forces through his gritted teeth when he must but otherwise stands silent and furious beside them. Only Jaime acts as though nothing has happened, still as smiling and friendly with Jon as though they'd never spoken that day at the steps of the white tower, jesting and laughing even as Jon remains silent with his jaw clenched. Only the knowledge that Jaime is the most skilled swordsman of the seven kingdoms keeps Jon from drawing his sword. He will be no good to Sansa dead, he tries to tell himself.
But he is not sure what good he is to her living either. Each time he returns new bruises have bloomed across her shoulders and arms like mottled flowers. And though Jon's fury grows no less white-hot each time he glimpses them, he forces himself to bury his anger deep inside him, in a sunken place where all his shame and bitterness from a childhood of lady Catelyn's cool gazes still lurks. His anger is not what Sansa needs no matter how helpless it makes Jon not be able to curse or spit or rage. And so each time he returns to her chambers he simply kneels and slips from her hands the warmed rags she uses to ease the swelling, presses them gently to the mottled and raised skin, each hiss of her breath as he does the stab of a blade into his chest.
She never looks at him, face tight and gaunt as she stares at the walls of her chamber or down at the ground. She shakes sometimes, her whole body trembling like a leaf, and in those moments Jon has never felt more useless. All he can do is tell her of his day, of the little he knows of the happenings at court and Kingslanding. Sometimes it is on the tip of his tongue to tell her of the wolf dreams, but he never does. They are only dreams, and telling her will remind her of Lady, of all she no longer has because of him.
Instead he tells her of he and Robb as children, of having to save Arya from whatever latest trouble she'd gotten herself into, of climbing with Bran or wrestling with Rickon. Sometimes the stories draw a smile from Sansa, though just as many time she listens with her gaze on the floor and Jon does not know if she can hear him, if the words mean anything to her.
"You have so many stories of them," she tells him one day, listless eyes rising to find his. "Is this to be our story, Jon? Yours and mine?"
Jon shakes his head. He forces his voice light despite the ache in chest. "No, our story is the time Arya dared you to spend the night in the crypts and then when you didn't come out she made me go find you."
"Gods, I'd forgotten that." The hint of a smile flits across Sansa's lips. "I'd brought only one candle with me, hadn't I? And it had given out by the time you came. I've never been a place so dark as those crypts."
"Neither had I." Jon finds himself smiling. "I remember thinking I'd never be brave enough to stay the night there myself."
Sansa cocks her head to the side, a smile playing across her lips. "You thought I was brave?"
"Not always." Jon looks down, shame welling in his throat. "I'm sorry for that. I never understood your love of dances and songs and courtesies, I thought them-"
"Foolish?" Jon looks up to find her smile twisted bitter. "I know, Jon. I so wanted to believe the songs, the ones of knights and maidens. I thought Joffrey was a prince from one of them, but he isn't. He's the monster the knight goes to slay. Not that there are knights. Not truly." Her eyes have drifted away as she spoke, but now they snap back to Jon. "None except you."
Jon laughs, a harsh, hollow bark. "Don't say that. I'm no true knight. If I was-"
"You are." Sansa reaches down to where he still holds the rag and threads their fingers together. "Even back then in the crypts, Jon. When you came for me you were a knight. I'm sorry I didn't see that then. I thought a knight had to be like they are in songs, with shining armor and snapping pennants. And I'm sorry if I never thought of you as my true brother, sorry if I treated you unkindly or like you were lesser just because you were a bastard."
"I didn't make it easy." Jon smiles, but his throat is dry and aching, and he squeezes her fingers tight. "I judged you just as harshly for just as little. I thought bravery was skill with a sword or lance or even just getting into trouble like Arya. But I was wrong. You are brave, Sansa. Both now and in the crypts."
Weeks turn to months, and new bruises bloom over Sansa's pale skin. They are less frequent but no less ugly, purple-blue veined in sickly yellow, and Joffrey begins to take less care in where he raises them. Jaw, eye, temple: each he graces with a bruise, and for each Sansa is forced to withdraw to her chamber for weeks to let them heal before appearing in court again. Quieter and quieter she is each time Jon comes to her, eyes sunken, cheeks gaunt, and Jon does not know how to draw her out.
And then one morning Sansa will not speak at all, lips closed in a thin line. An hour Jon stays tending her bruises, and only as he turns to leave does she speak, voice a thin whisper. "I haven't had my moonblood for months."
Jon freezes with his hand outstretched for the door. Carefully, he turns and kneels in front of Sansa, tilts her chin up from the floor and searches her face. "You're sure?"
In place of nodding or answering Sansa tucks a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, a tremor shivering though her hand as she does. Only then does she look up, meets his eyes, her own glassy and horribly calm. "I am."
Jon falls back on his heels. His mouth is dry and tongue too large for his mouth. You should've known. In a way it is strange it has taken so long. Even as bruises bloomed across Sansa's skin it wasn't as if Joffrey had stopped coming to her. A slow anger fills Jon, replaces the dry of his mouth with a bitter taste, but he lets none of it show on his face, turns his eyes dark and unreadable. She does not need your anger. "What will you do?" He asks.
"What can I do?" Sansa give a bitter little laugh. "I don't want it, Jon. Isn't that monstrous of me? But I don't. I don't care it's mine, it makes me sick to think of anything of him growing in me."
"There are ways to stifle it. I could go find…"
"You are a knight of the kingsguard, and my brother besides. Even without your white cloak all the court would whisper if you left the Red Keep to find a medicine woman, Jon. Your white brothers would know. Varys would know. And what would it matter? Joffrey is the king, and the king must have an heir. It will only happen again."
"Not if you could not bear him sons." A sudden hope sparks in Jon and he leans forward, takes her hands in his. "If you could not bear him children he would be forced to set you aside. I know it isn't what you wanted, Sansa, isn't what you dreamed of, but you'd be free of him, you'd-"
But Sansa is shaking her head even as the words are still on his lips. "I'm the daughter of a great house, Jon. Joffrey may be king, but do you think Tywin would ever allow him to insult all the north like that? Marriage is a pretty cage they build around us ladies, but a cage nonetheless." She shivers and pulls her hands from his. "And Joffrey would never let me go. He's told me before when he's… inside... he's told me he'd kill me before he ever lets another man touch me, before he ever lets me be parted from him. He told me if I ever fled he'd have Ilyn Payne take my head."
Jon clenches his jaw. "Send a raven to our father then. He will come. He'll raise all the north for you."
"And see all the realm bleed?" She looks down at her hands. "I'm one woman, Jon. Joffrey is a poor king, but war will make a thousand widows and orphans and it would be one great house against six. The north would lose, and I would still be queen."
Jon stands and rips his gaze from her. His anger is not what Sansa needs, can feel it rising sure as an ocean surge, all the helplessness and anger from the past months like poison in the blood set aflame, and if he stays any longer it will spill from him. It is weak, cowardly, but Jon turns on his heel and crosses her chamber in a single stride, tears open the door and leaves Sansa alone in her chamber.
AN: As always you can read a preview of the next chapter on my tumblr TacitWhisky. The part about Jon and Sansa in the crypts is a reference to We Can Brave the Dark (on AO3) by Snacky. It's one of my favorite fics and you should all go and give it some love.