Though the Greatjon had sent her to bed many hours ago, Sansa still lies awake when he quietly lets himself in to their chamber. He sheds his clothes and lifts the furs of their bed and slides in carefully next to her. Wordlessly, she moves closer to him and reaches a slender arm across his massive chest and rests her head on his shoulder.
"Did they have families of their own, my lord?" she whispers.
After a pause he replies: "No…and now they never will."
After a moment she begins to cry softly. Her husband holds her tighter.
….
There is much to be done in the castle. Sansa accompanies her husband to visit the parents of one dead man and the mother of another and to offer their sympathies and thanks for giving their sons for Last Hearth. Kitchen girls carry baskets of food and she knows that the Greatjon was tucked some silver stags in the baskets to help ease their lives for the long winter. They tearfully thank their lord and curtsey to their lady and invoke the memory of her father and the name of the King in the North.
"Please know that my lord father felt a great debt of gratitude for any man who fought and gave his life for the North; and King Robb will feel the same. You have the gratitude and sympathy of House Umber and House Stark," she tells them as she holds their hands to comfort them.
The Greatjon stops her with a hand on her shoulder as they take their leave and looks on her proudly despite his stern expression which Sansa knows is to cover his sadness.
"You comfort them better than I ever could, Sansa. You are light of my house," he leans closer, "and my life."
Sansa looks up with fondness at his great shaggy-maned face and kind eyes and feels her own eyes brim with tears.
"It pleases me to share your burdens, my lord; and to ease them if I can." I will come to love him; I know I will: he is so very kind beneath his fierceness. He is strong and gentle and brave…as my father wished for me.
She has visited the wounded men as well, and has gone with her husband to the Smalljon's chamber with the maester. He has a gash to his upper arm that has been cleaned and bound with linens, and cuts to his hand as well, and though he dismisses all concerns, the master bids him not train for a sennight so that the deeper cut should heal over and not bleed any more.
He has not spoken to her, and now he does not meet her eyes but he is easier with his father, she has noted, and something of their old camaraderie had been restored by the wildling attack. Sansa knows that fighting and killing are the duties of men and that their experiences are something she will never comprehend nor share with them, but despite the blood and death it brings, she is glad that they have this bond.
She surmises that because of the restrictions of his injury, he go to the north tower the next day and she is right. He is standing at a window with his back to the door, to her, and it is the same window where they stood together and he kissed her the first time.
We musn't, she had said then; but they had.
"My lady," he greets her quietly without turning around.
"Lord Jon," she says softly without approaching him. There was a time she would have run into his arms because she could not be close enough to him. Though she knows it is wrong, she does miss him and the love they shared: it seemed at one time that it was all she had lived for. "I hope that you are healing well…" She stops talking because she knows anything she has to say will come out wrong somehow.
"Do you know what I was thinking when I was strapping dead men to their saddles, my lady?" he asks now. "I was thinking: why could it not have been him?"
She knows who he means by him and Sansa catches her breath and is frightened but when he turns to finally look at her she sees his face is sad and not angry, as she had feared.
"My own father," he says before she can answer him, "who taught me to swing a sword and kill wildlings so as to protect myself and these lands and its people."
"Lord Jon, I know you love Last Hearth and your lands and people…and your father; and it hurts me terribly to know that I have come between you. I- I am so ashamed," she whispers hoarsely.
"I have betrayed my own father; I also should be ashamed." He looks at her for so long that she clutches her hands together helplessly. "The gods only know how much I hated myself at that moment, hated myself for loving you." He looks at her now with the same cold eyes she remembers from the yard.
"I am sorry-" she begins.
"I am not," he interrupts her. "I can hate myself but I cannot seem to be sorry that I have loved you, my lady, I- I know I should because it was never my intention, you see; but you were so unhappy that I wanted to help you, to be your friend…and for you to love Last Hearth as I do." He shakes his head now and then looks yearningly to her, a look she knows so well. "You are so beautiful and so gentle and you were so lost…and I did not…I still do not know how to be a friend to a lady, I confess; unless they are ale-drinking Mormont woman in breeches and mail…"
"I confess that I also do not know how to be simply a friend to a man, Lord Jon; perhaps if I did…I would have liked very much to have had a friend."
"I am sorry for what I have done to us, my lady," he tells her.
"Please," she pleads, "you must not fault yourself alone, for it was not all your doing: I came here on my own, not just once but many times…surely you cannot blame yourself for all that has happened. I – I must also live with what we have done."
He looks at her now and drops his eyes to her middle. He takes a deep breath.
"Is it mine…is the child mine?" he finally asks her.
She wonders if it is better to lie, and to at least let him live with a clear conscience and nothing to tie him to her; but she cannot lie because she has done that enough already.
"Lord Jon, I…I fear that I am not certain." She takes a great wavering breath now and speaks her heart plainly. "I wish that I knew but I do not but...if it were yours…what then could we do? Even if- even if it had been…if I were no longer married," she forces herself to say, "we could never be together. Surely you must know that," she asks of him now. "We could never be married, or live together: no one would accept it, certainly not your family or mine or King Robb. He would be like to marry me to another lord within time; and I would have no choice but to obey." She is anguished to tell him these things, as much for her own sake as for his, but she also knows them to be true. "We would have to run away, and leave Last Hearth, and the North: that is something I could never ask of you for I know how much you love Last Hearth, you love it more than me…much more than you could ever love me."
He blinks and looks on her fondly with sadness. "Do you know me so well, my lady?"
She nods solemnly now. "I know this."
He looks away and back to her. "We cannot undo this-" he begins uncertainly.
"No, Lord Jon: we cannot, but we can do this no longer…" she tells him softly. "Is that not what you wished to tell me now? Is that not why you waited for me to come to you this day?"
He shuts his eyes tightly and makes fists of his hands, but then he opens his eyes and Sansa sees they are as determined as they are despondent.
"I fear it is…my lady."
Sansa nods tearfully. Though this is what she wanted and it is what she knows is right, she finds that she is overwhelmed with emotion. She had loved him; she will probably always love him when she thinks of herself as a lonely, unhappy girl but she also does not want to be that girl anymore. She never wants to be that girl again.
"Please know that I shall always cherish you for your love-"
"Gods, do not say that, my lady," he interrupts hoarsely now, "How am I to live alongside you and my father when I know that you care for me, and the child…the child-"
"The child will be an Umber," she tells him feelingly, "and you will be within your rights to love it as your own family. But any child of my body will, by the laws of gods and men, be your father's, unless…" She almost cannot bring herself to say it. "Unless he has cause to doubt," she finishes.
The Smalljon nods and sniffles and nods again.
"On my life, my lady, he will never have cause to doubt. I could never bring myself to cause such harm to him, or to the child…or to you, my lady."
She looks at him and she smiles faintly for the first time though it is through tears of gratitude. "I do not doubt you, Lord Jon. I know that you would never want to harm us."
Sansa knows in her heart that he could never bring such shame and scorn on his family as their illicit union would doubtlessly cause, any more than she could bring herself to do so. The Greatjon would be humiliated into taking vengeance: no Northerner could let his reputation or his honor be so greatly damaged, and his vengeance would needs be a fearsome one but even then would still not be like to ever blot out the stain on House Umber or on House Stark.
"We have done ourselves great harm already, I fear; and great dishonor."
"We have," she acknowledges, "and so we must act to restore that honor as best we can. It is my intention to devote myself to my lord and to our family and to House Umber," she looks up at him carefully and sees him swallow his grief at her words.
"Mayhaps then…mayhaps it would be best if I were to leave for a time," he wonders aloud. "I could go to serve the King at Winterfell," he muses.
"I have no wish to drive you from your home, Lord Jon; will you permit me to make another suggestion, though I fear it is not my place?"
He looks at her curiously and so she presses on.
"You father wishes you to marry; and I urge you with all my heart to consider this; not for his sake, though it would please him, but for your own. My dear Lord Jon, you are a good man and you have so much love to give: any lady would be happy to share her life with you. And you should have children of your own, that you may love as your own. Please accept this suggestion as my sincere wish for your own happiness which I desire as much as my own if not more, for I feel at fault for taking away your happiness..." and the joy of your firstborn child, she thinks, "and for making you feel that you should needs leave Last Hearth."
He appears to think for a moment. "He will doubtless command me to wed the Lady Alys…" he supposes.
Sansa shakes her head. "He will not, Lord Jon; this he told me in confidence. He does not seek an alliance; only a lady he thinks worthy of you and of Last Hearth," she smiles gently and encouragingly at him now. "He- he also wishes for you to be happy."
They stand face-to –face and he reaches for her hand and holds it in his. "And will you be happy…my lady?"
I will not lie. "Yes, Lord Jon: I will be happy," she tells him truthfully.
"Then that is all can I ask of you now," he raises her hand to kiss it and gives her a long look. "I will always want your happiness."
Sansa feels her throat tighten and can barely answer. "Thank you, Lord Jon."
"Go now, my lady," he urges gently.
Sansa turns from him and he lets go of her hand and she is so overcome that she runs as she did the first time she fled from him in the tower. She runs as though her very life and honor depend on it, which she knows now to be true, even more than the first time. I have done the right thing, she tells herself as she rounds the steep steps, we have done right by each other and will do right from now on. We can make it right. She slows her steps now to catch her breath but her skirts still swirl around her and it is too late now, too late to stop her foot getting caught in her hem and too late to grasp a handhold in the stones and too late to cry for help or even to cry out as she pitches forward violently with all the momentum of her running escape and the rough, worn wooden boards at the base of the stairs rush up at a sickening speed to meet her headlong flight.