It's easy enough for Jon to find the whorehouse again, even without asking Tyrion. An hour of wandering the streets and Jon finds the house with the many colored glass where he remembers it snug against the high hill. Chataya, the same tall, black skinned woman opens the door. She blinks when she sees Jon. "Ser Snow. I did not think to find you here again."
Jon forces a smile he does not feel and steps inside, the smell of perfume filling his nose as he does. The room is just as he remembers: myrish screens decorated with figures caught in the throes of passion, ornate copper dornish lamps simmering in sconces, and lush rugs thick as fur. Shame coils in his gut, a bone deep disgust for the desire that he can feel prickling through his skin. "Is your daughter here?" He asks Chataya.
"Alayaya? She's occupied for the moment." Chataya raises an elegant hand to the common room. "Perhaps one of my other girls would suit you? Tansy is especially lovely tonight."
Jon shakes his head. "I'll wait."
"Of course." Chataya fills a goblet of wine she passes to him. "She should not be long."
Jon nods his thanks. He takes a long swallow from the goblet and crosses the room. It is empty but for a table where a man plays dice with a gold haired maiden who's gown has slipped down to her waist to bare the slope of her breasts and their pink tips. The man looks up as Jon passes and Jon recognizes him as lord Osmund Florent. Jon doesn't flinch away from his gaze. There's no hiding your shame, Snow. All the court will know it now.
Jon takes a seat on a silk couch with embroidered and gold tasseled pillows. He takes another swallow from the goblet, heat prickling down his throat, but doesn't sit back, instead hunching forward with his elbows resting on his legs.
"Is milord feeling unloved?" Jon turns at the words, and before he has a chance to resist a warm and lushly curved girl is sliding onto his lap, perfume filling his nose. He looks up to find the same wicked smile he remembers from all those years ago dancing across the girl's lips. She sweeps back the red hair falling across her shoulders and pouts. "You're far too handsome to be brooding so."
How many times has he shamed himself in his thoughts at simply the memory of her red hair and full lips and wicked smile? A dozen? A hundred? Jon forces himself to wrench his gaze up and meet hers. "I've come for Alayaya."
"How rude of her to keep milord waiting." Dancy's hand slips down, and Jon shivers as her fingers grab the hardness trapped by his breeches. She giggles. "He doesn't seem to want to wait. Why not let him out and see how he likes my lips wrapped around him?"
Jon shudders as Dancy's fingers slide along the length of him. He is hard, achingly so, and nothing has ever felt half so good as her fingers around him, the tug and slide of them. So easy it would be to give into that feeling, to lose himself in the warm curves of her, the smooth skin that the few wisps of silk she wears do nothing to conceal, the press of her perfume. He's already come here to shame himself one way, why not another? A hundred times he's already had her in his thoughts: the tangle of her hair in his fingers as he wrenches her head back and takes what he wants, the stiff and pebbled tips of her breasts between his teeth, the wet warmth of her around him, the moan of his name on her lips as he tears his pleasure from her as if he truly were the wolf he dreams of.
"Ser Snow." Jon looks up to find Alayaya standing before him, slender and lovely in a wisp of yellow silk. Her mouth curves in an amused smile as her eyes move over Dancy. "My mother says you sought me."
Dancy pouts at him again, lips full and red. "Mayhaps milord would like to take us both to bed?" Her hand gives him a firm squeeze and she giggles. "You have more than enough to share. And two mouths on a cock is such a prettier sight than one, wouldn't milord agree?"
Jon clenches his jaw. All his life he's heard the whispers that bastards were creatures of lust, faithless and base, and all his life he'd thought that with a ser before his name and a white cloak he could escape them. But he hadn't, and with Dancy's warm and soft on his lap and the promise of her and Alayaya twining around him he knows he never will, that he will always be a creature of lust and faithlessness.
There are no true knights. None except you.
It takes everything Jon is, every drop of will in him, all he's ever wanted or feared, to stand in that moment. But he does, Dancy spilling from his lap as he stands despite how he knows his hardness is plain for all to see. Dancy falls back on the couch and pouts up at Jon, but he ignores her and turns to Alayaya. "If you would, my lady."
The room she leads him to is much the same as the one he remembers from years before, a great silk canopied bed set in the center. Alayaya takes his cup and places it on the sideboard before rejoining him. "It's true you know. Dancy and I have danced between the sheets together before. If my lord likes I can still fetch her so we may share you between us."
She slides a warm hand up his chest and for a moment Jon is just as tempted again to forget his vows, to bury his face in Alayaya's neck and lose himself in the scent and smooth warmth of her skin, the comfort of another body. But he forces himself to shake his head and reach up to catch her wrist. "It's not why I've come."
Alayaya tilts her head to the side, eyes large and dark as they regard him. "Why have you come then, Ser Snow?"
"You said you meant not to mother any bastards last time."
"And I have not." Alayaya smiles faintly. "You spent your seed into my hand if I remember it well, my lord."
"But if I hadn't. You have other ways?"
Alayaya regards him calmly for a moment, then silently moves again to the sideboard. She opens a drawer and slips out a small, plain bottle she holds out to him as she rejoins him. "Moon tea can be taken for months after, but is easiest to stomach if drank soon."
Jon's mouth is dry as he reaches out and takes the bottle from Alayaya. He turns it between his fingers, looks up to find her gazing at him. "You still mean not to father any bastards, then?" She asks softly. "We are no curse, you know. We are a gift."
Jon shakes his head, throat dry. More than anything he's ever wanted he wants to believe Alayaya in that moment. But he knows it a lie, knows it deep in all he is. His birth was no gift for the father whose honor it stained, no gift for the lady wife whose marriage bed it insulted, no gift for the sister he has failed again and again and again.
He fumbles at his side for the purse he brought, but Alayaya smiles and shakes her head. "My mother would never allow me to accept anything from a knight of the Kingsguard, ser Snow. And you need not worry. None will ever hear a whisper that you were here. Your honor is safe with us."
Jon shakes his head, a bitter taste in his mouth. "No. If any ask, tell them I bedded you."
Alayaya regards him for a long moment before nodding slowly. "I will tell them that I was visited by Ser Snow of the Kingsguard." A smile plays at her lips. "I will tell them you were fierce as a wolf between the sheets. That you rode me long and hard and well and that I have never laid eyes on a cock half so thick and long as yours."
A bitter smile tugs at Jon's lips. For a moment he wishes he could thank her, but she cannot know why he is truly here, and so instead her he leans forward and kisses her forehead. He turns before he can see her face, turns and leaves the room before he can be tempted once again to stay.
It is dark when Jon slips into Sansa's chamber again. She sits in the same chair as when he left her and for a long moment Jon is not sure she has moved at all since the day before. She does not look up from her embroidery as he latches the door shut behind him. "One of my maids told me a funny rumor," she says lightly, but Jon knows her well enough to know the false note to it. "She says lord Florent glimpsed you in a whorehouse."
They shouldn't, but the words sting. Jon kneels before where Sansa sits. She blinks at her embroidery but doesn't raise her eyes. "I did," he says. "I went to-"
"-I'm glad you could find some comfort there," Sansa continues over him as though she can't hear him, voice still firmly light. "I am. I may be trapped in this tower but that need not mean you must be too. What is it like to be able to come and go as you please? You and Arya could always do that, but not me. Even before this cage I've always just been an empty headed little songbird." She laughs, high and bright and horrible. "I'm sorry you've had to stay here with me in this tower so long, Jon, truly I am. I know a man has needs, needs as your lady sister I can hardly satisfy. We are not Targaryens. Or Lannisters."
Jon frowns and grabs her hands, forces them to stop their needlework. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't you know? Cersei told me once when she was deep in her cups. She didn't remember the next day but after Robert died she told me how Jaime has been inside her, how she only ever feels whole when he is. Perhaps that's what it takes to keep a knight of the kingsguard from breaking his vows." Sansa giggles. "What do you think, Jon? Would fucking me keep you true?"
The words catch Jon like a slap. He drops her hands. "That isn't funny, Sansa."
"No?" She rolls her eyes. "I could make you happier than she makes Jaime, you know. All the court says I'm more beautiful than her. I'd treat you gentler too, let you use me like one of your whores and never once complain. I'm sorry I have all these bruises, but you can give me one of your own if you want. Would doing that make it easier for you? Would it make fucking your sister sweeter? I want it to be sweet for you, Jon, truly I do, so sweet you'll never leave me, so sweet you'll strike me at even the thought of another man in me."
There is a dull roar in Jon's ears as he reaches up and clasps Sansa's face between his hands, jerks her eyes back to meet his. "I will never strike you." The words are sharp, short, harsh, but Jon needs her to understand, needs her to know beyond the flicker of a doubt. "And I will never leave you, Sansa. I swear that, swear it before the sight of gods and men, swear it by the old gods and the new. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever, not until I draw my last breath and the life leaves my body and the crows come to feast on my eyes. You are my heart, Sansa. You are all I have. Never doubt that. Never."
For a long moment Sansa's stares at him still with her horrible smile and then it crumbles and she collapses against him with a sob that wrenches Jon's heart. He crushes her to him, presses his mouth to the top of her head as she shakes in his arms, sob after sob wracking her. Into her hair he murmurs promises and pleas and hoarse words he should have spoken long ago, and when his voice runs dry he simply holds her, holds her like he did all those years ago after Lady died, holds her as her sobs fade away and her shoulders eventually still.
After what feels like a long, long time, Sansa stirs and slips back into her seat, gaze downcast, eyes still red. Jon reaches into the pouch at his side and draws out the bottle, takes her hand and presses it to her palm. "It's moon tea."
Sansa looks down at the bottle. She shakes her head, voice whisper thin. "I told you, Jon. It will only happen again."
"It won't. We'll find a way, Sansa. We will."
A long time Sansa is silent, fingers turning the bottle between them. "I dream sometimes," she says softly, haltingly, as though speaking will cause the memory to slip through her fingers. "I dream of being a wolf, of running under a white moon and black sky. In the dream… in the dream there's always another wolf with me." Her eyes find his. "A white wolf with red eyes."
Jon's throat aches. He reaches up, curls her fingers around the bottle of moon tea. "In my dreams I run with my sister. Swift and grey and fierce."
Under his hand Jon feels Sansa's fingers tighten around the bottle. Her voice is a whisper, faint and fierce. "We must be wolves then, Jon."
AN: Up until now I've been updating once a week, but this is the last chapter I'd written before I started posting so this story will be going on hiatus for awhile. This seems like a good place for it in the story, and with the premiere this week we'll all have enough going on.
As I get closer to finish the next couple chapters I'll post a preview on my tumblr at TacitWhisky, so go follow me on there if you're interested.