AN: So these are teh scenes that happen at the same time with the last chapter - and a little bit after. I did not put them toghether (except for that scene between the Starks in the last chapter) because they would have made it much too long, but also because these scenes are part of a different storyline, and should be kept separate from Myrcella's until they cross again.

Ok, I hope you enjoy.

o

Side-Notes: Jon Snow and/or Sansa Stark

"When I was your age, my grandfather gought me a ruby bracelet. It was too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. If I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice."

Jonathan Safran Foer

He is all dressed in heavy black furs and with an equally inky mop of curls on his head… but even as worn as he looks, even with that dark beard covering half his face, Sansa cannot miss it: she knows him. He is still her brother; even though he has changed so much since she last saw him. She knows him from the heart. She has never forgotten his face, how could she – it was her father's face; and even if it had not been, she has always had her dreams to remind her of it.

But Jon Snow is not Eddard Stark. He is only Jon Snow, always himself. How she had missed him… Without even knowing him that well anymore, she had missed him.

She knows the secret now. A secret people have died to protect… one that her father took to the grave with him. Robb had told her as soon as he could, and it had been of such importance that he had taken her alone in the words, with Nymeria and Greywind patrolling around them, assuring no living thing with ears could heard them for miles. He had told her everything… and then Sansa had floored him by telling her that she already suspected parts of it. Told him of her dreams and other things she was capable of… and her brother had looked at her as if he had just found something precious, as if he'd never seen her before; half awed by it, half dreading it.

Sansa had looked into his eyes, and known what it was that had brought him to speechlessness.

"Did you think you were alone Robb? That none of us could do what you did?"

Because she knew of his wolf dreams, of how much he had mastered it now, accepted who he was with a bit of resignation to it. But why had he felt so lonely with that secret? Had Arya not told him that she too could see through Nymeria's eyes, that she dreamed of hunting and killing with her? Had he not understood Rickon's closeness with Shaggy for what it was?

He was not alone. He never had been; none of them were. Not even Sansa, though Lady had been long dead.

Sansa had taken her brother's hand then.

"We are all the same, all of us. We are the wolf's blood."

"We're wargs, Sansa." He'd said gravely and Sansa had felt like laughing. He said it as if it was such a bad thing. It was not.

"Yes, we are. We are what tales are made of. Is that not wonderful?"

And she truly thought so. It was wonderful. And in the Red Keep it had been something that belonged to her alone and nobody could take it away. It had been her secret, her weapon. One that she had honed carefully and alone, without anyone's guidance. It was a gift, Sansa had always seen it that way; one that she had used to save and to kill.

And she was reminded of it now as she looked at Jon Snow ride in the courtyard of Winterfell. Of a dream she had had years ago, of ice and flames and snow.

Arya had come out running and jumped in his arms with such strength that she had almost send them both toppling down. Sansa had followed her with a step as hurried as she could without outright running herself, and stayed a little behind as Jon and Arya embraced and spoke over one another, hasty and laughing and with small tears in both their eyes as they looked each other over.

She waited for him to look up and see her and when he did, she smiled at him with every ounce of her happiness.

His face froze.

"Hello Jon."

His shock lasted for a blink or two. Her name on his lips was almost like a question, as if he did not recognize her. He had looked at her strangely, looked at her face as if he was searching for something. Sansa knew what he was seeing. Her mother had looked at her that way as well, Robb too: as if they knew her and yet did not; as if she was herself, and yet not. Sansa had never thought she wore her feelings inside out for all to see, but there was something in her that her family saw and none other could - or rather, something they did not see. They searched for the girl they had once known in her face, in her eyes, and were surprised to see that most of that girl was gone. And those few hundred times they looked upon her face, they always searched for her and were surprised to find her missing.

Jon was looking for that girl too… and found a stranger in her stead. Sansa did not think he would mind much – after all the girl she had once been had not loved Jon Snow half so well as Sansa loved him now, if only from memories and the sake of their shared blood.

Sansa stepped close to him and, ignoring better sense, she hugged him same as Arya had, though not quite so enthusiastically. Jon stood frozen, she could feel the uncertainty off him as if it were heat.

"I have missed you brother." She spoke softly, without letting go of him.

And just as she said the words, his uncertainty hardened even more, before breaking completely and Sansa felt arms come around to hold her – with hesitation at first, and then, once she held him closer and did not let go as he perhaps feared she would, his embrace tightened and she was almost lifted off her feet.

It lasted a moment, but she held him close and thought of all those nights in the Red Keep, for months on end, when thoughts of him had been her only comfort. He had been, in a time of unending darkness, her last ray of home and hope. Her only reason to endure and keep living when all hope seemed lost.

Now he was here and they were together.

Sansa laughed with unexpected happiness as she pushed back and looked at him, in those eyes grey as steel and so familiar.

Jon's smile was tentative and he was still hesitant, but he did not treat her with coldness. He took his cue from her, she realized, and would accept her warm as he would have probably accepted it had she held a different demeanor. Besides, Sansa knew the reason for his hesitation: he did not recognize the half-sister he had known in this creature that stood before him now. She wanted to tell him to stop trying. The past was gone. Too many things had buried it. Now they were alive, they were together, and they were in Winterfell.

In the face of the magnitude of that, of something she had thought impossible for so long, everything else faded away.

oOo

Jon Snow would look at his brothers and sisters all the time without even blinking if he could. It still seemed almost unreal that he was even there, let alone with them again.

But it was not unreal. It was truth. After so many years, he was back with his first family again.

Arya was the same as she had ever been, only grown now, and as they ate together and Jon looked at her face, he found himself searching for their similarities yet again. He had always done that. He had Arya had had that special bond because they looked the same: they looked like Starks, with their black curls and long faces and eyes of grey steel. Arya was still herself, still as he remembered her, but not a child anymore: she was a young woman now and as Jon looked at her he wondered... had his mother, who all said Arya resembled so, looked like this? Had Lyanna Stark too had those same untameable curls about her snow-pale face, like Arya? Had she had the same sharp mouth, the same piercing eyes, made unsettling, surrounded as they were by black lashes and a proud brow?

He could not look at himself and imagine what his mother might have looked, even though he had apparently inherited all of her colouring, but he could look at Arya and see Lyanna... same as Ned Stark had.

Jon remembered how Ned Stark's eyes used to look at him with unbridled affection. It used to give him solace and make him angry at the same time. It was perhaps strange in the light of all he knew now, but Jon still thought of Ned Stark as his father: he was the only father Jon had ever known. But he wondered now, if it had been only Jon that Ned Stark saw (and loved) when he looked at the little boy Jon had once been, or his sister as well.

"Do I have something on my face?" Arya snaps and Jon blinks at her in surprise. His sister frowns at him. "You keep staring."

Jon smiles at her. "I have missed you."

Arya's frown softens and her eyes warm up in clear affection. She doesn't say anything, but then again she doesn't need to.

"And besides, you've grown quite beautiful. I don't think anyone will be calling you horse-face anytime soon."

There it was, that familiar scowl. "Shut up!" His sister hissed, even though not with quite as much feeling as Jon knew she was capable of. Jon chuckled and it was pure luck that the piece of bread Arya threw at him didn't end up on his forehead. Or perhaps not. Arya's aim was deadly accurate these days, he doubted luck had much to do with it.

His little sister had changed. There was more to her now, more shadows in his eyes that sharpened her gaze. Robb had told him some of it and he could imagine the rest himself. But in times of play like right then, she was the same as ever: she was the Arya he had known and had loved. He was the sister he had always cherished, even when he was not supposed to have sisters.

Sansa on the other hand… Sansa was another matter.

Jon admitted that he had not recognised her for herself at all the first moment he saw her in the courtyard. She was tall and elegant and stunningly beautiful, and only in the next couple of blinks had she become Sansa – the girl who used to call him half-brother. And the more time they spent together, the less did Jon her. She might as well have been a different person wearing his sisters face.

(…but though he had not known the young woman that greeted him so warmly, Ghost had, and he had run circles around her before allowing himself to be petted by Sansa and Arya both as if he were a pup and not a direwolf the size of a small horse. Jon had been astounded; Ghost had never been one for too much friendliness and he never allowed anyone to touch him, or arms would start coming off. And yet there he was, playing like a pup with his sisters and his littler mates as well, raising so much ruckus I the yard that they had had to set them loose in the godswood.)

Sansa was still the perfect lady, graceful and delicate and all things Jon supposed a lady should be… but her eyes were sharper now, her manner more free and she seemed more at ease with herself, more aware about the world… and she called him brother with a smile on her face, as if it was natural, as if she always had loved him the same. Jon didn't know what to make of it. He had almost frozen stiff when she first greeted him that day and had had no idea how to respond. She gave him no chance to ponder on it. Despite the reticence, she treated him with warmth and kindness and a freedom that Jon would have never expected from the Sansa who used to avoid his company wherever she could, following her mother's example.

He realized his idiocy that night in Robb's solar: he so readily noticed the change in Arya, but not in his other sister. Who knew what she had had to endure, what she had had to live through and how it had changed her. He did not know what had brought to such a different way of thinking and being.

She did astound him though, the moment they were left alone.

"Tell me Jon, is it true that Janos Slynt died at your hands?"

Jon had turned to look at her so quickly that his neck almost hurt from it. She had asked him softly, the same way she always spoke, but he had been so shocked: because he had not expected someone so... so... well, someone who looked and acted like such a perfect lady to be asking of executions, for one. But also because she had asked in the same manner she had enquired if he would like some more venison stew at dinner!

Perhaps it was a good thing that he did not have a name for her anymore. He doubted it would have been accurate.

"I... he was executed for treason against his brothers." Jon said then, after he had a moment to swallow his surprise.

Sansa gave him a small smile, one he had never seen on her face before. It was one sided and radiate a dark sort of satisfaction. There was something sharp about her whole countenance then, something unforgiving and hard.

"I'm glad." She said... and she looked it. "Did you hang him?"

Jon could not imagine why she wanted to know but he knew better than to ask that.

"No. I took his head myself. It was years ago."

That sharp smile on his sweet cousin's face – the cousin that insisted on calling him brother though she must know he was not, and never had been – made Jon frown a tiny bit. He saw her anew, and saw the changes in her as well, now that she was more open.

Jon looked at Robb for guidance, but his brother's face was grim and Arya's angry. In the end it was Sansa herself that explained.

"He betrayed father, you see. He was one among many, undoubtedly." And Sansa's so bright and pure face now darkened considerably. "But he was the one that by denying him assistance made father's arrest and execution that much faster. And when they brought father to Baelor's steps, it was Janos Slynt that threw him down, without shame, for his head to be taken."

Sansa's piercing eyes turned to him and in the firelight they seemed paler somehow, their clear blue made cold by a cold, patient hatred that made them glitter like stars.

"I have been wanting Janos Slynt dead for a long time, brother." she said by way of explanation.

Jon had not known all this when he had had to execute Janos Slynt. He had done what he had done because it was the law of the Black Brothers and it was his duty as their Lord Commander. And he had taken Janos Slynt's head instead of hanging him, because he was a child of the North and his only father had raised him to know that you had to look a man in the eye if you wanted to take his head, and that if you could not do that, perhaps the man did not deserve to die. Janos Slynt deserved to die.

He explained thit to Sansa as best as he could – it was not a difficult thing to explain but her eyes unnerved him. He knew that she listened attentively, as did Robb and Arya. Just as he knew that it changed nothing for her. Janos Slynt to her was a man that had to die, not for betraying the Night's Watch, his vows and his brothers, but for betraying Ned Stark. Jon was glad though, that he had not known at the time... because he knew he would probably have felt the same way as she did and that would have made it harder for him.

When he was done speaking, Sansa did something that surprised him even more though. She had come to sit by him, taken his hand – the scared one, where hot metal had singed when he had pulled Longclaw out of a burning wight's corpse and saved Old Bear's life.

A scar from a lifetime ago.

"How did you get this?" she had asked softly, even though when she had taken his hand Jon had gotten the distinct impression that she already knew the scar was there even though she couldn't possibly.

Jon told her. He told her many things of what he had seen and done, but always kept himself in the time before he was stabbed and left for dead. He felt weary of speaking of that time. He told them of the north beyond the wall instead. Of the wildlings and their ways, the strange animals and the wargs that commanded them.

He told them of himself and Ghost and the connection they shared as well. He knew he was safe as he did so: . Saw Arya nod and didn't need to see Robb's face to know that he too could do the same. They were not just wargs: they were one with their wolves, their souls recognised each other. They were a pack. And then he looked at Sansa and remembered that her one of their litter had been killed the moment it had gone south. Lady had been the first to die. Her bones had come back to Winterfell before Sansa ever made it to the Red Keep. Jon wondered, in that moment, if his sister felt the emptiness of a connection severed. He knew he did. When he and Ghost had been separated by the wall Jon had felt as if a part of himself had been left behind. The threat pulled at him and he felt the connection stretch and ache.

By the look in Sansa's face when their eyes met, she knew exactly what he was thinking. Her sad little smile told him all he needed to know.

"It's why they are so affectionate with me." Sans said and Jon immediately knew what she meant. "They seem to know I've been lonely without Lady."

And perhaps it was true. Their direwolves were not overly affectionate unless they were playing with each other, or with their humans. But with Sansa they were different. Nymeria resting right at Sansa's feet was proof of it. Ghost's particular affectionate behaviour with his sister was proof of it. Even Shaggy was better-behaved and playful around Sansa.

"I am like you as well… but different, I suppose." Sansa started, answering the unspoken question. From the look of immediate interest in Robb's face and the sharpening of Arya's attention, Jon knew that they had not heard this one before.

"So you are a warg." Arya stated, as if to confirm it. "But…"

"I never had dreams of seeing through Lady's eyes, no." Sansa said, drily almost… and Jon knew that come hell or high water, Sansa would never forgive Cersei Lannister for killing her direwolf. "But I had other kinds of dreams."

She looked into the flames, as if the answer was there. The dancing fire played across her pale skin and it made her hair look as they were flames too… or blood. There was such a set look on her face, it made her skin look as hard as porcelain and just as smooth.

"There was a time when all I wanted, all I could think of, was how to escape. The thought consumed me. At night I had dreams about flying high into the sky, seeing King's Landing getting smaller and smaller as I flew away, chasing the northern wind." Sansa closed her eyes as if she could see it even now. "They were beautiful dreams. I away woke up surprised that I didn't have wings on me, so real they felt… perhaps I started with birds because everyone used to call me little birds, or little dove or all such nonsense. I don't know."

"Perhaps it was because you wanted wings to fly away." Jon murmured… even though not for a moment could he believe those were normal dreams that Sansa had been having. Sansa gave him a smile, a true one this time, not one that could cut glass.

"Yes perhaps." She said softly. "There was a yellow canary I had in a cage in my room. I opened its door one day; I wanted it to be free, so at least one of us could have what we wanted… but it wouldn't get out. It just stayed there, in its cage, not even trying to fly away." And as she spoke her anger seemed to spark and take life. "It almost made me smash that cage from the top towers, bird be damned. I couldn't understand why it did not want to get out."

Jon did understand. He did not interrupt his sister though.

"I dreamt myself in a cage that night. I could see my room, and myself in my bed, sleeping fitfully. I saw the open door, and I flew out. Out and way, higher and higher until the air was so cold I felt my heart would stop. When I woke I knew these were not just dreams: the canary was gone."

"Can you do it with other animals?" Arya immediately asked.

"It's easier with birds. I can warg into even five or six or them at the same time but not for long."

Jon almost sputtered in surprise.

"Five or six?!"

Sansa smiled at him. "Yes." She said calmly. "Does that mean I'm good at it?"

Jon was almost speechless. Almost.

"Yes, I would think so. The best warg I have ever met could only control three animals at a time, and they all fought his influence."

His question was implicit. The way Sansa's smile widened, told him his answer.

"My birds don't fight me. I know how to pick them. I used to keep a small flock in the Red Keep. Nobody cared about birds. I raised them and they knew me."

Jon was shocked to say the least… not by the extent of his sister's ability, even though it was amazing, but by her comfort with it. The general opinion south of the wall, the opining he had been raised with (and Sansa even more so, because the stories only grew more frightening the further south one heard them, and Sansa had heard them from her septas and her mother) was that wargs were dark, dangerous creatures. Monsters to be feared. Shifters of skin and stealers of souls. It was perhaps why it had taken him such a long time to recognise the bond he had with Ghost, or rather, its nature. He knew Robb had had the same problem. They had both fought it in the beginning, not wanting feel as if they were half animals.

Jon had had the wildlings to teach him better, and Robb had learned to trust Greywind's intuition as much as he trusted himself during the war because it had saved his life when nothing or nobody else could have.

Who had Sansa had?

"You speak of it as if you're…" but Jon did not know how to continue.

Robb caught his meaning before Sansa did and answered him instead of their sister.

"She sees it as a gift, Jon." His brother said with a small smile. "Don't you?"

Sansa's eyes were serious. "It is a gift. It's rare and its precious and admit it or not, it has saved our lives. Your wolves protect you, don't they? They are you, you are them. You are one."

"We are not. We are however… complementary, if you will. And even that was hard to see at first." Robb admitted. "I didn't want to be a wolf. I am a man, not a beast." One look at his brother and he had known Jon had, at one point or another, felt the same.

Sansa only rolled her eyes at that.

"We are animals: we are the wolves of winter." She said, such steel in her voice that it took them all aback for a moment. None of them expected such strength of conviction, such loyalty to her northern heritage, from the sister that, out of them all, had been the most southern: both in breeding and inclination. But perhaps, if one thought of the last 5 years of her life, this was not so surprising. Maybe Sansa, surrounded as she had been by Lions, had had to hold on to the Stark within her most strongly than all of them to survive them. "There is a reason the direwolf is the sigil of house Stark. There was a reason you found those pups years ago and a reason we kept them. They were meant for us and I have never seen them as anything but a gift from the gods – and so is our ability to throught their eyes."

Robb smiled softly.

"You sound just like mother." He said.

Sans raised her chin at him. "That's because she is right."

Jon anxiety spiked. She was not aware at all of the risks of it, was she…

"It is a gift. But it's also very dangerous, Sansa. There's a difference between simple skinchangers and wargs." Jon pointed out. "You remember how Lady was so gentle and well behaved, how all our wolves have some of us in them – and the bond was so strong that this happened even before we started seeing through their eyes. By warging we take some on them in us as well. And if their influence is not fought, you can lose yourself to them."

Sansa was suspiciously still and quiet as she listened to him.

"Yes I know that." She said in a frail whisper… and Jon felt his heard skin one beat in every three. Robb had straightened on his seat and, while Arya looked at her sister with suspicion.

Sansa gulped before she answered, wringing her hands in her lap for a moment.

"I… when I found out what I could do… it was all I spent the day doing. I grew thin and sick, and could hardly tell what was real and what was not. All I wanted was to fly."

She shook her head, as if the memory was too much to bear and Jon was reminded of Haggon's words. That birds can be very tempting, but one forgets about the mundane things of line if one enters them too often, and gives themselves up to the flight.

"You don't seem so off your rocker to me." Arya said flatly, looking at her sister in an appraising manner, so frank that Sansa laughed. "Well, not more than usual, that is."

"I'm fine now. I got over it."

"How?" Jon asked immediately. He had heard it was impossible to go back once you started losing yourself to the animals you possessed.

Sansa's eyes flattened though, and her smile turned bitter as she looked from his face to Robb's… and suddenly Jon knew.

"They told me you were dead. That you and mother had been killed in Riverrun. I already thought Arya dead. Word of Rickon and Bran had come some weeks before that. All my family was gone. I felt hopeless then and was convinced I wanted to die… that is, until I remembered how to be angry."

Sansa's eyes hardened, her face froze as she remembered what desolation had felt. Jon knew exactly the feeling: had had had it too. The powerlessness had almost driven him mad and the grief had been like nothing he had ever known.

"It shocked me into my body I think. Into reality. I wanted to kill them all. I still do really…"

Sansa's words came out of her mouth as if she was speaking to herself, but then her sharpness returned and she was looking at Jon with a steady concentration that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"I dreamt about you when I fell asleep that night, Jon." Sansa said steadily. "I saw you, all dressed in black standing on top of the wall. It was dark and you were looking at the abyss. Those scars you have there-" Her fingers skimmed his cheek, the marks left by the eagle that had attacked him a lifetime ago. "They were fresher than they are now, red still. You were angry… and sad."

Jon gulped down his words, his feelings.

"I think I saw you through Ghost. It felt that way." Sansa added then, softly as if she was not sure of it herself.

Jon didn't even know where to begin.

"How is that possible?" that was the first question he thought to ask.

"I don't know. You were the only family I thought I had left. I fell asleep thinking about you. It felt as if I needed to see you more than I needed my next breath… so I suppose I got my wish…"

Jon felt something in him move and quicken at her words, but it still could not distract him from what he knew to be true: what she was speaking of was supposed to be impossible.

"I don't know how it happened." Sansa said then, preceding his questions, Robb's questions and even Arya's. She looked at them in the eye one after the other. "I don't know how or why, I cannot control it. Once I knew Robb and mother were still alive and Arya was said to have been taken by the Ramsey Snow, I tried warging into Nymeria. I thought… I thought if anyone could know, it would be her." But form the way Sansa spoke of it, Jon knew not to expect anything good.

"They told me I did not wake for two days, even though when I was in her, it felt not more than a few hours. I have not tried it since."

They were all left speechless, but not for long.

"Didn't you warg into the birds anymore?" Arya asked then, detracting them from the silence of shock that Sansa had left behind.

"Yes I did. I was more careful about it though." She added immediately, when two pair of reproofing eyes met hers. But then she started to smile and Jon was starting to know this smile: it resembled Arya's when she was about to make some mischief. Jon was stricken with the similarities between his sister in a way he never had been before. "I didn't want to dream anymore, I'd rather plan. I used the birds to spy on people. I got easier once I gave up on the whole flying away part. After that, it was a matter of using them as means to an end. Nothing more."

But Jon was not so convinced. "You did not get sick anymore?"

"No. But then again, perhaps that's because I did not want to run away anymore." Sansa admitted with a careless shrug. "I wanted revenge."

The way she spoke of it, the ease she had with the idea of it… Jon couldn't say that he was entirely surprise. The steel in Sansa's veins was visible to naked eye: if one paid attention, and Jon had been paying her al lot of attention that day, one could see that she was like a dagger wrapped in silk: the sharpness of her was just a breath away beneath the smoothness.

"You told me that you saw him." Arya said then, directing her words to Sansa, with only a cursory look to Jon. "That you saw him burn that night."

Jon looked from one sister to another. "You did?"

Sansa met his eyes and there was such tenderness there, such care. She smiled at him sweetly, even though her eyes started brimming with sadness and unshed tears.

"I did. I don't know why it's easier with Ghost. I suppose it's really not, but it doesn't hurt me either." She murmured... and her eyes go wide as she looks at him in both wonder and fear. "I saw them light your pyre Jon. I saw you burn, I thought you dead… I howled and howled but they would not let me out."

Jon's heart picked up. They had told him they had locked Ghost in one of the cages in the fringes of Castle Black – close to where they had ended up building his pyre, in the end. They had been afraid that Ghost would turn wild after Jon was gone.

Sansa held on to his hand so hard that her nails had left marks, reminding him of where he was.

"But when the fire died, you were there… and you were as alive as you are now."

Jon remembered all too well. He remembered standing in the middle of the fire, not knowing what was happening as his clothes burned and the head licked at him but did not char his flesh, even though his hair fizzled away and so did everything else but his flesh and bones… he had not known what fear was until that moment. Even as he thought he was about to die – as they stabbed him and left him for death. He had known fire and, in one, life and death as well.

Both his sisters and his brother were looking at him as though he held some secret, some unknown truth. He did not.

"I was not dead. I was wounded badly, but still alive. The Red Woman healed me with her magic… and with fire." Jon said simply. He said what she already knew, what he had said to Robb three years ago when they had met in the south: Robb after a battle, Jon after being turned away from his black brothers, who had been afraid of him at the time.

"But you did not burn. You were in the fire and you did not burn…"

Jon said nothing to that. When he went south and met his brother, there had been a man with him, one of the house Reed who told him things he had not spoken on in almost two decades. Things no one other had known but Howland Reed and Ned Stark. It had made sense to Jon then, why Ned Stark had always told him: 'you may not have my name, but you are my blood.' Jon now could almost smile at that; at how hard his father had tried not to lie to him, even if his whole life was in fact hidden and Jon had been the best kept secret in seven kingdoms. Ned Stark had always told him Jon had the wolf's blood in his veins and that was no lie... he had simply never mentioned what the other half was.

And there was only one thing that the fire did not burn as readily as it consumed everything else.

Even though Jon found it too strange.

"I did burn Sansa. I have burned myself with fire before." His hand was more than proof of it, even though it had been hot steel technically, and not fire that burned him. "It just..."

"Fire burned you, sure. It just didn't kill you." Arya fills in for him and he known enough of her to detect her irony. She sounded resentful as well. Angry almost. Jon knew the feeling: she had just gotten her brother back, only to know now that he had never been her brother at all, not even half of one.

"It could have been the Red Woman." Arya immediately supplies looking from one sibling to the other. "I know Red Priests can revive the dead, I have seen it myself. Beric Dondarrion was in the riverlands and his red priest brought him back from death six times. Six. Maybe it was the Red Woman's magic and it has nothing to do with your blood."

Jon had thought of it himself. But Melisandre denied with with absolute insistence.

"She told me she did nothing." Sansa said softly. "She told me that she prayed for her god to heal him, but Jon's wounds would not close. That she had prayed for him to come back to the world, but he would not move even when she offered her own blood in return for your life. She told me that they put him to the fire as he had been, covered with his own blood. And that it was his own magic that healed him: the strength in the blood of kings and the fire. She is convinced she had woken the dragon from stone and ice... like in the legends." Sansa's eyes were piercing, almost hypnotic.

But Jon found himself frowning as she spoke.

"Don't believe everything Melisandre says Sansa. She is not half so sure as how she sounds sometimes. Believe me, I have been in her company long enough to know."

"So is she wrong?" Arya jumped up. "She could be wrong, couldn't she? You look nothing like a Targaryen. You look like father, you always have."

"No. He looks like his mother." and Robb sounded as sure as he always did. The gravity in his voice was not something that could easily be dismissed. "Howland Reed told us himself. He is Lyanna's son, and Rheagar's. He was there, with father, when they found Lyanna... and Jon with her, a newborn."

Jon met his brother's eye and saw a twinkle there, of both sadness and amusement. A grim sort of resignation. Howland Reed had told them more than that. He had been with Ned Stark at the Tower of Joy... and by then King's Landing had already been sacked, and the Targaryen children had already been murdered along with their mother, so brutally that it was a crime nobody in the realm was likely to ever forget. Howland Reed had told them of a promise Ned Stark had made to his dying sister. Jon could not forget what he had felt as the strange man he had never met, spoke with such reverence of a mother Jon had never known. And yet he had felt tears in his eyes when he heard how Lyanna had held on to her son – to him - how frightened she had been for his life and how her last breath and her last thought had been for him, his safety and his happiness.

In his dreams his mother had always looked at him with kindness. There was no doubt now that those dreams had not been just fantasies of a child. His mother had loved him, and now he no longer doubted it. For those short weeks Lyanna had survived giving him to the world, she had loved him fiercely.

Jon had been so absorbed in his thoughts that Arya's next abrupt question startled him a little.

"So... You're a Targaryen now?" She asked, looking at him with those familiar eyes of grey that seemed in that moment so dark they were almost black.

"I'm a Snow, Arya." Jon responded, the bitterns of his early years over this, conspicuously missing from his tone now. "Still a bastard, no matter whose."

"You don't know that." Sansa immediately said, speaking for the first time in a while and sounding as if she had just come out of a dream. Her eyes were clear when she looked at him though, the mind behind them as sharp as ever. "Targaryens saw noting strange in taking two wives, and there was half the kingsguard at the Tower of Joy with Lyanna. Father told us some of the story: Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent and Lord Commander Gerold Hightower. And they had to have been there even before the battle of the Trident, because they were not in that battle, nor in King's Landing. Don't you see, Jon? Rheagar deprived himself of half his guard to protect you and your mother. All that could not have been just to protect a lover and her child."

Jon had heard tht theory before. It did not convince him much. "That's just speculation, Sansa."

But his newfound sister did not seem to be listening.

"By the time father got to you, the children of the Mad King had already left for Essos and your were the only surviving son of the crown prince… and heir to the Iron Throne."

There was twinge inside Jon whenever he heard those words spoken around him; he flinched from the idea as if one would from the touch to an open wound. But Sansa was looking at him as if the realization, the full connotations of the meaning behind his existence was finally hitting home.

Jon was quick to cut it before it was born. "I am a man of the Night's Watch. I have taken my vows twice, my place is at the Wall."

But Sansa shook her head, as if to deny him. "No, I was thinking... You see, I have been thinking more and more about father these days. And you remind me of him so much Jon." There was infinite tenderness in her eyes as she said that, and such a sweet smile on her face that it stunned him into silence. He could say nothing. "And it has been puzzling me, how he could have kept such a secret for such a long time. It must have weighted on him so heavily. But I think I know now why he did it, how he could never waver."

Jon did not miss a word even though she spoke softly.

"He saw the bodies of the Targaryen children. Tywin Lannister had them wrapped in red cloaks and laid them out for Robert to see, right in the throne room. Father was there as well. And every time... every time father would go in there, his eyes would fall to that same spot in front of the throne and there would be a strange look on his face. I wonder now, if there was some part of him that still expected to see those bodies there every time he walked into that room." Sansa's eyes had been vacant, turned inward as she remembered, but when her focus did return, it was like a swish of a blade that pinned Jon where he was. He did not dare breath too loudly.

"I suppose imagining you in one of those red cloaks has always been his reason for holding such a secret from everyone. Even from you. And later, the threat of another war..." And then her question came, and it was like a slap – so honest and blunt it was that Jon almost flinched. "Do you resent him Jon? For never telling you. For everything that it meant?"

Jon looked away with a sigh.

"I might have, once. I don't any more. I know where I belong now, I know my place and my purpose."

Sansa looked at him carefully, as if she was judging the truth in his words. Jon did not fret. He had spoken them from the bottom of his heart. His sister's smile after a moment told him that she understood.

"I'm glad, Jon." and her words almost sounded like thank you. But Sansa perhaps knew better than to thank him for something like that and Jon felt a rush of affection for her then. If he was to go on believing that they shared a father in heart, he could never accept being thanked for such a thing.

Arya got up quite suddenly and made for the door. She was angry. Jon however stopped her with one word. He said her name and her hand froze on the handle.

She did not turn as she spoke.

"You know, its great that you finally know who your mother is Jon. I am happy for you..." even though she sounded as anything but. "But I'm not gonna pretend I love the idea of losing another brother now that I just got you back. It's not fair, and I'm fucking angry and I'm not gonna pretend."

Jon got up and caught his sister by the shoulders, turning her to face him.

"You can't ever lose brothers once you make them, Arya. I think that is actually the one thing you can never lose, even when you want to." he held her shoulders more tightly and smiled down at her. She was so fierce and proud, his sister, and though she would rather scream than cry, he could see the beginnings of tears in her grey eyes. She would always have a compassionate soul, Jon knew that, even though she had been forced to grow stronger so fast. "You will always be my sister, and because of that, I will always be your brother. Right?"

She gave him a challenging stare, one that softened into hope as he looked at her without flinching from her strength and Arya finally found it in her to hug him.

Neither of them saw the look Sansa and Robb exchanged and that smile that was almost identical on their faces. It really was a wonder to be home again... and together. Sansa looked out of the window where the snow kept on falling. It was not a storm and it would most likely stop by tomorrow, just in time for the wedding. But still, Sansa got up, opened the pane and let the cold air fo the north envelop her in a chilly hugh. She opened her mouth hoping to taste the snowflakes, just as she used to when she was a child.

They tasted familiar. Of innocence and childhood... of Winterfell.

'Winter has come, father.' She thought as she opened her eyes and looked on the vast whiteness beyond. 'Finally, winter is here. Its a time for wolves.'

oOo

He doesn't even remember what they have ended up speaking of, so sudden is Sansa's interruption. It must have been stories, he muses later, or war, or something of the like that would have undoubtedly bored Sansa silly. It must have been, because decidedly silly was the remark she made, so abrupt and disconcerting that in his mind it erased all memory of what he'd been speaking beforehand.

"Jon, don't you ever brush your hair?"

Jon turned to his sister, sitting by his side in the two-place sofa, with eyebrows raised so high on his forehead that they were making a try for his hairline…

He had expected her to be joking, but it had been so sudden that he didn't find it in him to laugh… and once he remembered, once the ridiculousness of her exclamation sunk in and he began to chuckle, it died in his throat, because Arya was wearing a wicked grin and Robb was rolling his eyes.

"Why are you looking at me like I've suddenly gone mad, brother?" she asks, all so seriously, as if she has a mind to get an answer. As if her question was oh so ordinary. He knows not what to say, so he keeps his silence. But is even more surprised when her hand reaches up as if nothing is ever the matter with it, and brushes the ends of his unruly curls.

"No offence, but your head looks like a bird has gone and died on top of your head."

Arya snorts.

"Don't take it personally Jon, she's been saying that to me for years."

Easy for Sansa to comment on that, Jon thinks, when her wavy hair is so easier to tend to, smooth and shiny like liquid flame. Jon and Arya have more to contend with – sometimes he feels his hair as a complete mind of its own really… not that he's ever thought about it that way. The only reason why he ever cared about his hair is so that it wouldn't get in is eyes.

But then Sansa gets up with a serene smile on her face and Jon dismisses his sisters strange outburst. He tries to pick up his discussion with Robb wherever they ad left it, but the strange thing is… he does not remember where that was.

But then Sansa comes back, armed with a brush and when he feels it tugging on his scalp, he jumps.

"Sansa… what are you doing?"

Her eyes are so perfectly innocent though, despite his voice having gone an octave higher at her antics. Robb is hardly bothering to hide his chuckles.

"Brushing your hair of course." His sister says, amiable, sweet smile in place like armour against all doubt.

Jon can help but smile, even as wraps his hand around her wrist and pushes it away from his hair. "I'm not one of your dolls, sister." he says indulgently. And how he likes the way the word rolls on his tongue. it's almost an endearment. He had sisters again and it's wonderful to think of them that way and have them both there with him . He is so happy about it that he doesn't even fight so hard when Sansa brushes his hands with flutters of her long fingers, narrowing blue eyes at him with a smile - less sweet this time, more sure.

"I haven't played with dolls since I was three, Jon." she says, and its as if its meant to mean something to him.

"You best let her have her way. After all, when even Arya endures it..." Robb's words hang in the air, as if Arya's enduring this is some kind of unspoken bar or patience between all of them... and knowing Arya's impatience for pampering and hair brushing, careful dressing and perfuming, it really should be.

But then Jon remembers... its what Sansa used to do once, a long time ago, for Bran and Rickon and even Robb, but she's never done it for him. And now she wants to brush his hair, like she's a child again, even though so much time has passed and all has changed and they have never been so close in the first place. It feels like play should feel, though Jon cannot know. But he indulges his newfound sister with an eye-roll, because he loves who she is now as he loved her as best he could for who she was then.

The kind of smile she gave him when he pulled his hands away and surrendered made it worth it. It felt like a victory to make her smile that way, as if she was a child again. Gods she'd changed so much... if she wanted to brush his hair like he was some silly little girl, or even a doll, who was he to deny her? Who was he to deny her anything, much less this!

He sighs and leans back in resignation.

"Oh, stop pouting." Sansa said with the singsong voice of her two and ten years, thoughtless laughter afterwards confirms its a knowing jest.

"I don't pout." Jon said gravely. He was the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch for gods' sake! …perhaps he brooded sometimes, but he most certainly did not pout.

"Yes you do. And it looks adorable on you, doesn't it Arya?" Sansa continues, Making Robb bust out laughing.

Jon rolled his eyes and only sighs, utterly taken over.

"You should wave flowers in his pretty hair." Arya picks up, smiling wickedly. Jon fills his fist with a tiny pillow and throws it at her head, but she ducks with a laugh and makes a face at him.

oOo

A fortnight. Fourteen days in Winterfell and he was still stalling. He felt like a fool, but he could not make himself move. He stood in front of the gates of the crypts, still and silent in the hours of the morning and thought back to the dream that had haunted him for as long as he could remember. He had been thinking about going down there for days, and still didn't have the courage to walk those steps and go into that darkness that was no longer a dream. Winterfell was no rubble now, no ruin. There were no bones in the stables, there were plenty of people around; even now, as he stood there like a madman, staring at a wooden door as if it might eat him, he was surrounded by the bustle.

This was no dream, this was real.

He had always known that there was something down there, in those crypts that called to him. Had his mother's spirit been so disquieted that it had called to him, even after so long? Had she been angry that he'd never once gone to see her down there? Bring her winter roses, as his father always did. A crown of winter roses for his dead sister…

His mother…

He had spoken of her and asked of her, listened to others tell stories of her… and yet he had yet to go and pay his respects to her last resting place.

Coward!

Jon takes a deep breath and descends those steps, darkness enveloped him. He walks slowly down the halls. The Kings of winter stare at him from their stone thrones, their swords in their laps. It wasn't them he'd always dreaded. In his hand the flowers feel like iron: heavy and sharp. He had chosen on his own not to take a torch. He didn't need one to know the way, and the candle he has lit serves his purpose well enough. It was not darkness either, that he had always feared.

His heart starts to beat faster and faster and his hands sweat. The thorns of the roses bite at him. But instead of screaming for anything or anyone, instead of the darkness eating at him like in his dreams, he sees a small light that pierces the shadow.

This is not dream, he tells himself, he is being silly, as stupid as Arya always said he was. This is real and its happening… and in the dream there had been no light waiting for him at the end of his walk, only the darkness of what he had never known and always feared. But he knew now… he knew what he was looking for, what pulled him here. Who pulled him here. And that light piercing the dark was no vision, but a single candle.

When he saw her, he thought it was lady Stark… but then she turned and though the long red hair was the same, Sansa's face greeted him, tear streaked and frail with pain.

She smiled when she looked at him and wiped away the tears more gracefully than Arya ever would have but with that same edge of anger, as if they were treasonous for even being there in the first place.

"Hello Jon." she said simply. "I'll leave you."

his words came so fast that it was moments before his mind had caught up with them

"No, stay. Please."

he doesn't want to be alone in here. And maybe he really is as stupid as his fierce sisters tells him, but he really needs her to stay, because he found her here and that in his mind is no coincidence.

He doesn't want her to leave him alone with ghosts.

He looks at their father's tomb, at where his bones were. Over the lid there were a dozen white roses and a long, wickedly sharp dagger resting among them. There was a stain of red on its blade.

He looked at Sansa, saw it in her eyes. Flowers and daggers, and blood on steel.

I promise…

"He would not want you to be so consumed by vengeance, Sansa." Jon said carefully, speaking low so that he might not disturb the quiet of the resting dead.

But Sansa smiled sadly at him. "Oh, I would never promise that to father. To him I promised justice..." She looked away from him, staring straight ahead to Ned Stark's resting place. "Vengeance is a promise I make to myself."

Jon sighed, but did not insist. Instead he extended a hand and she took it without the smallest hesitation. She walked him, not too far, just a few steps away from lord Stark's resting place to where his sister's statue stood. Lyanna.

Jon looked at the statue for a long time. Time flowed like a river around him. He didn't noticed it passing. All he knew was the roses in his palm, thorns cutting his flesh, Sansa's hand warm in his other hand and his mother's face, those strong features cut in stone. A small smile on her lips, secretive, as if she knew something you did not.

What had she been like, he wondered? Would she be proud of him? Was she at peace, finally? He had dreamt of Winterfell's crypts often even after he came to know his parentage, and after that, the fear he'd felt of the unknown that called to him had changed. Jon did not scream in is dreams anymore.

He still woke up sweating though.

"They say that she was very beautiful." Sansa said in a whisper that echoed against the walls and his ears. He was grateful for the interruption.

Yes, Lyanna had been beautiful. Everyone said so. There were those who said that her beauty had torn apart a realm. Those that could forget that a father and a brother had died for her beauty. That she was the woman who brought a dynasty of kings to ruin.

Had she been selfish then? Jon wondered. Had she left willingly, or had she been kidnapped? Had she loved, or was he the child of rape?

Which was worse?

Questions tormented him like a bed of thorns.

"And father always said that she had been as wild and unruly as Arya. I think the reason Arya was is favourite as a girl was that she reminded him so much of her."

She speaks smiling. She is trying to soothe him, he realizes… and it softens his heart to know her capable of it. His thumb makes a small circle on the back of the hand he is holding like it's a lifeline in the dark. His sisters are so different and so is the love they give him. He adores them both for those differences.

"Remember how everyone always said that you looked so much like father. All people see when they look at you is Ned Stark's face. I think all father saw when he looked at you was the sister he had loved."

Jon does not tell her that he has thought the same thing often. Instead he squeezed her hand tighter. Her other warm palm came to cover his. She leaned on his arm, wrapped her hand around his elbow, her head against his shoulder. Half an embrace. Jon wished he could open his mouth and say something like thank you, but it wouldn't make sense.

"I could make a crown of those, if you like." she offers, softly. Gently.

Jon shakes his head. "It's alright." he finally says, and his voice sounds strange.

… he hadn't even felt the tears leaving him, hadn't noticed the wet descent down his cheeks.

He lays the roses at his mother's feet. His palm comes away dotted with tiny red punctures, but it doesn't stay that way for long. Sansa takes it and with a piece of cloth that he has no idea where she found, she brushes the blood away. He looks away from his mother's face to his sisters. She isn't looking at him. She is looking at his hand, carefully dabbing away prickles of blood he can't even feel. Her hands come up to his face then, dab the streaks his tears made as well, and he can't help the tired sigh, the slump of his shoulders. The sadness that gnaws at him feels unbearable, here among the ghosts of parents he never had. He's rarely felt his loneliness so keenly.

So it really is a blessing, a sign, truly, that the gods love him, when Sansa wraps her arms around his middle and pulls him into an embrace as strong as her arms are able to make it. For the briefest moment he seems not to recall what to do. It has been such a long time since anyone has held him, for the simple sake of holding him, of comfort. But though the action is almost forgotten, the feel of the emotion behind it shoots though everything else… and it warms him. So Jon lets his arm hold her back, and leans on her almost, hiding his face in her hair that smells of pine and freshness. And there in the arms of comfort, he can finally breathe without feeling death around him or the suffocation of the past. There are no questions pounding against his brain, of all the things he'd never know. There is only she who cares for him and still calls him brother, and the comfort she is willing to give him.