Just a possible trigger warning for mention of a difficult and painful loss of virginity and of a medieval man's rights to his wife.
Her husband falls asleep almost immediately and within a short time begins to snore. He will sometimes snore until daybreak but Sansa is long accustomed to it now and usually sleeps soundly regardless. But before…
She remembers how poorly she slept when she first came to Last Hearth. After her wedding night, Sansa had been given her own chamber and at night she suffered nightmares as bad as any she had suffered in Kings Landing. She was alone again and far from her family only this time they had sent her away; she had not wanted to leave as she had when she first left Winterfell with her father and Arya. Though she knows that her brother, King Robb, owes a great debt to the Greatjon, she thought that her family did not want her, that they had sent her to the Last Hearth because she had betrayed her father to Queen Cersei and because she had written the letter she had been told to write, calling her father a traitor and asking them to swear fealty to Joffrey. They could not forgive her for having wanted to marry Joffrey, any more than she could forgive herself; and so she was sent to live far away with big rough men who frightened her. The Greatjon and his uncles and even his sons were not only hugely big and strong, but loud and rough of speech and sometimes of manners. They drank ale and pounded tables when they argued and even when they sang, and they fought fiercely with their big two-handed greatswords and laughed at their bloody cuts and bruises.
And no matter how kind and gentle he had tried to be when he had first bedded her, all Sansa could remember of that night was her new husband's enormous size, his hairy naked body and musky smell and his grunts and hot breath on her. He had spoken reassuringly to her but she had still shut her eyes and whimpered when he had grasped his large manhood with one hand and slowly eased it into her tense and trembling body, terrified that he might tear her apart. She had bled copiously, startling him; and he had called for the old mountain healing woman that had once been his older children's nurse to tend her. He had stood by awkwardly and patted her head to comfort her as the old woman wiped away her maiden's blood and assured him that she was only a young girl, and she would heal. Sansa had apologized for crying; she knew she should have been braver and borne it as befit a lady; but he had shook his head and insisted that she have her own chamber until she was older and ready to share his bed again. So she had slept alone and woken shaking from nightmares of beatings by cruel knights in white cloaks or attacks by garlic-stinking commons or of being mounted in turns and torn apart by loudly laughing Umber men, all in a strange bed in a strange place in the middle of the dark of night in the furthest reaches of the North.
Later she had shed quiet tears in the same bed when she felt her belly beneath her too-tight bedgown as it swelled every day with his child. But he had been pleased to be told that she was with child, and had surprised her with the first of many gifts. The best wine was brought up from the cellar to settle her tummy and bolts of fine wool were purchased for new gowns to fit her expanding middle. He had his daughters find her a maid befitting the lady of the castle, and then sent all the way to Winterfell for her mother to attend the birth of their first child. The Greatjon had howled with delight when he was told that he had another son, and kissed her head and their son's head and told her that she was a fine Lady Umber and that he could not be prouder or more happy. When she returned to his bed, he smiled and held out his hand and treated her gently and carefully and it did not hurt so much and in time it did not hurt at all but he continued to be careful with her, she knows. She knows because she knows a different man now: gentler in some ways, rough and passionate in others.
Sansa learned that her husband's loudness was simply a part of his great size: his voice was as big as the rest of him. He would shout and curse and wave his arms and stomp his feet, but she had never seem him strike anyone, not even a servant or stable boy, no matter how much they angered him. Even the soldiers with whom he trained, he would laugh after beating them and then slap them on their backs and thank them for good sport. He could drink horn after horn of ale but the few times that she had seen him truly drunk at feasts or after battles with wildlings, he had slept fully clothed on a table in the Great Hall rather than share their bed. His laughter was as great and outsized as the rest of him, and he frequently turned it on himself. And if he was kind and careful with her, he was even more so with their children. He loved to throw their son in the air and catch him and chase him around the yard and tickle him when he caught him, making him squeal and giggle; but he would also pick him up unhesitatingly if he fell down or cried and spoke gently and held him in his big arms until he laughed again. He would coo and smile at their baby girl and cradle her until she fell asleep clutching her small fists into his furs. Sansa came to understand that she was safe with him and so she could close her eyes at night without dreading that her nightmares of cruel treatment and of living in constant fear would return to haunt her.
This long night however, sleep eludes her for she cannot close her eyes without seeing the Smalljon look on her as though he does not know her. He looked resentful, and cold; his words, with their thinly veiled meaning, were bitter. She wonders if he is angry simply because she had not told him of her condition right away; or if it is because he thinks the child may be his or because he thinks it is his father's. She does not know which would be worse to him. But surely, Sansa reasons, he must know that she lies with his father: she has already borne him a son and a daughter, and she is his wife. Sansa knows her duty to her husband and she does not resent him for it, and is in fact grateful that he does not treat her unkindly. Were she to refuse him, he would be within his rights to force himself on her, or to beat her into submission. Her husband has never once harmed her, but she has never given him cause. At least that he knows.
Joffrey had punished her for less: Joffrey who had her stripped and beaten before his entire court for being the sister of a traitor when Robb won his victories in battle. She had feared nothing so much as having to share his bed; she knew that he would not have been kind or gentle. He had called her stupid, and even threatened to take her head if she had given him a stupid child. He had looked on her coldly as well.
She goes the next day to the north tower, and the next; but he is not there, nor is he in the solar in the evenings when she sits with her husband and his uncles. She sews for her children and sings for her husband and feels her heart die that she has lost her lover's love as surely as she has lost her family's. She tells herself to stop visiting the north tower, but she cannot. After six long days he is there. He sits at his writing desk with his feet on the table and a flagon at hand and a pewter cup in his grasp. He looks her over from head to toe with cold disdain.
"My lady," he jeers, and Sansa sees that he is drunk. "How kind of you to visit the north tower. How may I be of service to you?"
Sansa is frightened. She has not been alone with a drunken man since the fall of Kings Landing. But she loves him; and she thought he loved her.
"I- I am so very sorry Lord Jon…I had wished to tell you of my- my condition when you returned but-"
"But you did not." He sets down his cup and rises to walk towards her unsteadily. "You let me fuck you like a love-sick green boy…" he belches and Sansa winces at his crude words. "… though you carry my father's child." He comes closer and leans over her and breathes heavily in her face; she can smell the wine.
"Please…" she pleads softly. She does not want him to be like this, not with her.
He grabs her arm and twists it as he pulls her to him. "Please...what, my lady: pleasure you?" he snorts derisively. "Like my father does? Tell me…do you smile for him when you spread your legs? Do you tell him that you love to have him inside you?"
Sansa is stunned and hurt: how can he say such things when he knows she is his? She loves him, body and soul; how can he think that she takes pleasure in having to give herself to another man, even though that man is her husband? It is her husband she has betrayed, not him.
"Oh," she breathes and shakes her head imploringly. "How can you think…I love you," she sobs passionately. "You have my heart…as well as my- my body: how is that not enough?"
In all the songs, the lover would plead for a look, a kiss, a pledge; and they were satisfied, grateful even. She had given him all of herself. Why was he angry?
"I am his wife and I cannot…" she sucks in her breath to say it: "I am his property…and it is my duty, Lord Jon: you know this. You know I have no choice…for if I did, I would be yours and only yours."
He looks upon her, bleary-eyed and angry and yearning, and releases her at the same time as he raises one of his powerful arms. She shrinks away from him for she truly believes that he may strike her; but instead he wipes his nose on his sleeve and belches again.
"So," he begins heavily, "I see that this is all my fault…fool Karstarks…I have left you for too long and you have done your duty and he has got you with child. Curse him," he mutters harshly through clenched teeth, "curse him and curse myself and curse you, my lady, for coming to this tower and letting me love you so much…" he hiccups now "…so much that I should be jealous of my own father…that I should wish him- " He leaves his words unfinished but Sansa grasps his meaning. She also realizes that it had not occurred to him yet that the child could be his, but instead he is bitter that it is his father's.
"You must not think that way," she tells him. "It is not his fault; even I do not resent-"
"Go!" He lashes out angrily, and then sniffles. "Go now," he repeats miserably, "before I say terrible things to hurt you. I have no wish to hurt you, I- " He shuts his eyes tightly and seems to be gathering himself. "I love you, my lady, I do. I love you and our tower…but it is not just us here anymore," he looks to her belly though she does not show yet, not when she is dressed, "please give me leave to grieve that as best…or as worst I can." He turns and lists to one side as he walks back to his desk and picks up the pewter cup of wine with a swipe of one of his great hands.
She has been standing with her hands pressed to her mouth and has scarcely breathed since he raised his voice to her. She sees his hurt and wishes to stay and comfort him, and be comforted by him. Their love is tarnished and it is not a song anymore but real life and they must both accept that. But she turns slowly instead and walks to the doorway of their tower room.
"My lady," he calls dully now.
She turns her head to look back at him sadly though she keeps one hand on the latch of the heavy door she had been about to close behind her.
"You will return to me, won't you?" He is trying to speak kindly but Sansa hears that he is as desperately forlorn as she feels.
She drops her eyes, and drops her head, and she nods. She will come back to him; she had never thought that she wouldn't.