Just a quick reminder: the characters that I use for my GOT stories are the ones that are portrayed on the show. I've never read the books. That's why I list mine under the Game of Thrones category, rather than ASOIAF. So try to remember that while reading. In the show we don't get the same details as we do in the book, so my knowledge of the characters is limited to what I see on screen, and how I interpret it.
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Born the bastard of Winterfell…now the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.
Sansa shivers, her hands trembling as she struggles to focus on her needlework. Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Jon is alive—and not just alive, but at the Wall, less than two weeks away on horseback. And not just alive and at the Wall—but in a position of power. In a position where he could help her, keep her safe, protect her; at least as much as anyone can protect anyone, these days. He is in charge at Castle Black, which has a gate, and walls, and is so far north and so cold that no one would want to seek her out there.
Jon. Gods, what she would give to see Jon again. She hasn't thought about him in some time—had just assumed he was dead, like the rest of her family, and therefore had shoved him from her mind as thoroughly as she'd been able. She thinks of the last time she saw him, cantering away from her on the back of his horse as his cloak billowed behind him.
She wonders how he is. She wonders what the last five years have been like for him, wonders how he has managed to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch even though he is just a bastard.
Just a bastard? she thinks. More than that, now. So much more.
He has always been more than that, if she's being honest. He has always been the best of them, the most honest, the most honorable, the most moral. He is more worthy of the name Stark than she is, now. He always has been.
She pricks her thumb with the needle and hisses. The dress she is mending—torn by Ramsay only the night before—falls from her lap and flutters to the floor. She glances down at it, and then looks at her hurt thumb. She watches numbly as a thin rivulet of blood slides down her palm to her bruised wrist before it separates from her skin and drips onto her bare foot.
She stares at it. She watches silently as it begins to dry, adding another bright color to the already mottled skin of her foot. She is always bright, now—her bruises and cuts add a multitude of colors to the ginger of her hair and the moonlight of her skin and the coolness of her eyes and the pinkness of her cheeks. Now she is not only orange and white and blue and peach, but also purple and green and yellow and red.
So many beautiful colors, Ramsay would say. I do love colors.
She used to love color, too. Now she longs for black and white; longs for the starkness of Castle Black, all ice and snow and stone and wood, and longs for Jon, all ivory skin and inky eyes and curly hair the color of a raven's wings.
I will find him, she vows silently, reaching down to pick her dress back up. I will escape, somehow, and I will make my way north to be by his side. She swallows, and her hands go back to her sewing. I will not fail. I cannot fail.
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"They killed me, Edd—my own brothers! You want me to stay here after that?"
The horn sounds, and it only makes him angrier—who could possibly be at the gates, anyway? Who would ever seek to come here, to Castle Black, where men assassinate their own Lord Commanders? It is nothing but ice, snow, and bitter betrayal.
He strides impatiently to the door, and Edd follows—always follows. He hesitates, wanting Edd to go first, because he isn't Lord Commander anymore, doesn't want to be Lord Commander anymore; but his friend does not pass him to open the door, and Jon has never been a patient man. Death hasn't changed that.
When he throws open the door and strides out onto the top of the stairs to look down into the square, the first thing he sees is a flash of red.
His first thought is of Tormund—but Tormund is standing off to the right, near the forge. His second thought is of Ygritte—but Ygritte is dead. His third thought is of Sansa, but his half-sister is even less likely to be here than Ygritte is; because the last he'd heard, she had disappeared from King's Landing. She is rumored to be married to the young Lord Bolton, at Winterfell, but Jon suspects she is either wasting away in a cell beneath the Red Keep—or merely a pile of bones at the bottom of Blackwater Bay. He has very purposefully not allowed himself to think of the stunning girl he'd once called sister; just as he has not allowed himself to think of any of the members of his family since he'd let Sam and Grenn and Pyp talk him out of going to his brother all those years ago. He had left his old family behind and had gained a new one, and he had not permitted himself any nostalgia; he hadn't had time for nostalgia. He still doesn't have time for nostalgia.
He looks down at the woman with the red braid—tall, slim, draped in a filthy brown frock and an equally drab cloak that beautiful, elegant Sansa wouldn't be caught dead in. Still, there is something familiar about her. Foolish hope flares to life in his chest; he tamps it back down. Hope has no place in his life anymore. And then she turns towards him, and he steps back, his hands falling from the railing in shock.
He only looks at her. It is all he can manage, at the moment. Despite how she has physically changed, there is no denying it is Sansa. Even from across the yard, he knows the lines of her face, the tilt of her eyes, the texture of her hair.
He turns, and begins to descend the stairs. He prays he does not fall, because he can't look anywhere but at her; his eyes are glued to her form. She turns towards him, her arms unfolding, her stance unsure. He wonders if she has the same fear he has: that it is a trick, a lie, that this isn't real.
When he nears her, he sees her more clearly. Dark shadows linger beneath her eyes. Her skin is pale, sallow, smudged with dirt. Her body is that of a woman now, her limbs no longer thin and coltish, but she does not stand as proudly as she once did—she hunches, her shoulders rounded and her head low as if someone is currently beating her across the back of the neck with a stick. Her lips are pale and chapped, and her eyes…
Her eyes are what have changed the most. They are the same color, but the similarities end there. They are full of pain, of bitterness, of fear, and of a horrible, sickening knowing that Jon suspects is reflected in his own stare. It is the kind of knowing that one acquires with experience—the kind of knowing that one obtains when one learns the hardest lessons that life has to offer.
When he looks into those haunted eyes, he feels his heart shudder and crack.
They stand for a moment, staring at each other. Her mouth is parted, her gaze wide and terrified and yet hopeful. She looks at him as if he is all she has ever wanted, and he swallows.
Then her face crumples, and her breath hitches, and before he can speak she is running to him, and he opens his arms to catch her as she launches herself into his body in a way that the Sansa from his childhood would have called 'undignified.'
Her breath comes out short and fast against his ear as he holds her to him, feeling, for the first time in a long time, that something in the world is right. She is nearly as tall as he is, now, but he can tell by the way her body trembles against him that she is far too weak. Even through all her layers, he can feel her hipbones and her ribs press against him, and when his hand clutches at her back, he can feel the ridges of her spine through her dress.
He closes his eyes and rocks her from side to side, holding her off of her toes as her arms squeeze his neck with fading strength. Finally her hold weakens, and he lets her slide down his body to stand on the ground once more.
When he pulls back to look at her face, she start to shake. "Jon," she says breathlessly, tears streaming down her face as her nails dig into his neck. "J-hon—"
"I'm here," he says. The space behind his eyes aches. Her voice is cracked, broken, the voice of a woman who has been ruined. He strokes her hair, and she leans forward to rest her head against his shoulder, her breath coming in shuddering pants. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
He is conscious of the dozens of men who stand in the courtyard, watching them with curious eyes. He sighs. "Come on," he says quietly. "Let's get you inside."
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Next chapter will be up in 2 days. Thanks for reading!
xoxo
Giraffe :)