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When she sees him for the first time in over five years, she is surprised at how hard it hits her.
He is different, now, just as she is. His skin is scarred where it had been smooth before, hair pulled back to emphasize sharp cheekbones and a square jaw where before his face had sported the roundness of youth. His beard and mustache are full, replacing the sweet boyish facial hair she remembers from when she'd last seen him. His eyes are hard and bitter and haunted, a stark contrast to the wounded puppy gaze that had once accompanied his ever-present sulk. His shoulders are broad, his body hard with muscle, and he moves with a quiet confidence that he hadn't possessed before.
She expects him to be hesitant. She expects him to be awkward, distant, unsure. But he stares at her as if she is his entire world, and when she runs into his arms he catches her without a second thought and holds her close. And finally she feels safe—finally she feels as if she is home. Winterfell is not home, anymore; the circle of Jon's arms is home.
His voice, when he speaks, is the only thing about him that has remained the same. It is quiet, deep, gravelly, his accent just as strong as it has always been. It is a soothing balm against her frayed nerves, and she feels an unfamiliar calm steal over her and goes boneless in his hold.
She eats first, along with Podrick and Brienne. They sit in the Lord Commander's antechamber. Jon bustles around in the bedroom, pouring hot water for a bath. Then when they are finished, they leave her alone in the bedroom, Jon giving her one last look before he closes the door to give her privacy.
She is grateful Brienne does not insist on staying in the room with her. She doesn't want anyone to see her like this. It has been eight days since Ramsay last laid his filthy hands on her (they had ridden through most nights all the way to Castle Black, rarely stopping for anything for fear of being caught up to), but the evidence of his abuse is still plain to see on her body. He had never allowed her bruises to heal before giving her new ones, so they go deep, layered across her body, punctuated by the little half-healed incisions that litter her skin. The flesh of her back is still healing from where he'd whipped her, the skin around the lash marks tight and delicate and liable to split back open if she moves too carelessly. He'd whipped her feet, too, and they have healed even slower, because she has been riding and standing and walking for days, never stopping to take her boots and stockings off. They are swollen and bloody and bruised, and when she steps into the water she has to bite her lip to keep herself from crying out in misery.
She cannot keep the tears from falling when her bottom hits the water, though she manages to stay silent. Both of her nether passages are sore beyond reckoning, and she pulls her knees up to her chest and presses her cheek to her legs as flashes of memory invade her mind. She sobs, squeezing her eyes shut as she struggles to push the feeling of Ramsay shoving himself inside her to the back of her mind.
Looking down at the cuts on her body, she wonders how badly they will scar. I will never be beautiful again, she thinks to herself.
It is a relief. Beautiful women make for more obvious targets to men who like to hurt people.
She washes her hair as best she can, feeling the grime from her journey lifting from her person to float in the water around her. She only wishes the grime of her marriage would wash away with it.
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"I want you to help me," she says, "but I'll do it myself if I have to."
Jon does not answer right away—his jaw tightens as his brain tries to wrap around this new side of Sansa that has just presented itself to him.
His nostrils flare. "Let me think about it, and talk to some people." He sighs. "Perhaps we can figure something out." He is not confident.
She nods, eyes flashing in poorly hidden disappointment. He notices a fine sheen of perspiration on her brow, and frowns. He brings a hand up to her forehead. She burns.
"Sansa, you've got a fever," he says worriedly. He sits her back down on the stool she'd vacated.
She shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "It's nothing," she says. He almost believes her.
He narrows his eyes. "It's not nothing. What's going on?"
"It's just an infection," she says, her lip trembling. "It's not a big deal."
"Have you seen a maester for it?" he asks, his eyes tracing her form, noticing the way she hunches in on herself, as if fending off blows.
And that is when it occurs to him.
He remembers a woman at Winterfell—the candle maker's wife. She had always walked around like this: defeated, dejected, afraid. It had been common knowledge that her husband was a drunk. A mean drunk.
"Sansa," he says gently. He kneels down by her legs, and grabs one of the hands in her lap with his own. "What's going on?"
She does not meet his eyes. "It's fine, Jon, just a scratch—"
"Let me see, then."
She shakes her head stubbornly.
"Sansa," he says, his tone becoming stern and impatient. The firelight casts shadows on her face—she looks tired. "Not treating an infection can be dangerous. Let me see."
She swallows, and then her eyes fall to the floor. She bends at the waist, and he shifts backwards to give her room, suddenly uncomfortable with the proximity of her face to his. He doesn't know why it bothers him—and he does not care to think about it.
She begins to tug off her boot, and his hands jump up to help of their own volition. When her fingers pick at her stocking, she pauses, and finally meets his eyes. What he sees there breaks his heart.
"Please," she says, her voice thick. "Please don't ask questions."
He narrows his eyes, confused. And then she pulls off her sock, and he closes his eyes and leans forward to hold his face in his hand.
He wants to ask her what happened. He wants to rage, scream, punch something. Her foot is swollen, purple, the sole covered in half-healed lash marks. There is one that wraps around her heel and ankle, and the edges have darkened alarmingly.
He wants to question, but he doesn't, because she's asked him not to. Instead he lifts his head from his hand and looks up at her, heartbroken.
"Are there any others?" he croaks out.
She swallows, and nods. He stands, and absently runs a hand over her hair. "Stay here. I'm going to fetch a maester."
"No!" she blurts out, snatching his hand with her own. He looks at her in shock, and she drops it hastily. She releases a shaky breath. "No," she repeats, gentler this time. "I don't want anyone to see. Jon, I don't want anyone to see—"
Her voice breaks, and her hands slide around the backs of his knees as she lays her forehead on his stomach. She is trembling, and he is at a loss for what to do. He is not used to playing the role of comforter. So he puts a hand on the back of her head, cards his fingers through her unbound hair in a way that might not be entirely appropriate for their relationship.
They are not close. They have never been close. But they are all that's left, and she is leaning on him, depending upon him, and he cannot bring himself to pull away—figuratively or literally. She has reached out to him, and he realizes that she has no one else, besides Brienne; and Brienne of Tarth is probably worse at comforting others than Jon is.
"If you're…" He clears his throat, tampering down his rage. He feels helpless. "If you're hurt, you need to be treated," he says softly. "Infections kill people, Sansa."
She nods against his abdomen. "I just don't want anyone to see," she murmurs, her voice muffled against the leather of his jerkin. She pulls her head back and looks up at him. "I don't want you to see." She swallows, and her eyes are pleading, fearful. "But I trust you. Promise you won't tell anyone?"
He exhales heavily through his nostrils. "I promise." He combs his fingers down through her hair, the silky strands damp and cool and impossibly soft against his callused palm. "I'm going to go get the medical kit," he says, pulling back from her. "I'll be discrete."
When he comes back, she has left the antechamber for the bedroom, and she sits on the padded bench in front of his bed. He makes sure both the outer and the inner doors are locked and bolted. Both of her boots and stockings are off, now, and the cloak that had been around her shoulders lays discarded on a chair in the corner. He pulls the chair up to face her, and sits in it, opening the maester's case and pulling out supplies. Wine to sterilize, salve to heal, bandages to protect. He pulls out what he needs, setting them next to the bowl of warm water on the floor.
Her hands fiddle with the laces at her collar, and he notices how they tremble. He reaches forward and envelops them in his own, running his thumbs across the smooth skin of the backs of her hands. She meets his eyes; her cerulean stare is full of shame, and he wishes desperately that he could wipe it away.
"Trust me, Sansa," he says quietly.
"I do, Jon," she says evenly. She squeezes his fingers. "I do."
She shifts, and he lets go of her hands. She begins to tug at the laces of her dress. He clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have Brienne—"
"No," she says, her head snapping up to look at him, her hands pausing in their ministrations. "I…I can't, Jon. I don't want anyone to know—" She swallows, and casts her eyes to the ground, her fingers once again pulling at the ties of her clothing. "I don't want anyone to know what he did to me. I don't want people to look at me differently. Like—like I'm damaged." She widens the neckline of her dress, and he sees the first bruise.
Then she stands, and turns her back to him. She pulls her hair over one shoulder, and he takes the hint and reaches up to pluck at the laces on the back of her dress. His hands shake with rage as the milk-white skin of her back is revealed to him, the once smooth flesh marred with long gashes. Some are more healed than others: some little more than scars, some scabby and dark, some raw and moist and pink.
Her dress flutters to the floor. His eyes slide down her back and over her buttocks to land on her shapely calves. He distances himself emotionally; she is his sister. Even if she is only his half-sister—to feel desire for her would bring him shame deeper than he can imagine.
Best not let himself go there.
She shivers, and he strides over to the fire, stoking the coals and adding another piece of wood. When he turns back towards her, she is facing him, her eyes cast down to the floor as she wrings her hands together in front of her bare stomach. He does not allow himself to focus on her body, on the fullness of her breasts or the gentle swell of her hips—instead his eyes jump from bruise to bruise, cut to cut.
"Sit," he commands softly. "Did you wash with soap during your bath earlier?" he asked, his voice harsher than he means it to be.
She nods. "You don't have to do this, you know," she says. Her voice is thick with shame. "I can reach most of them by myself."
He pauses. "I'll take care of your back and feet, at least," he says, his voice softer. "Then you can do the rest."
She nods in acquiescence. She still will not meet his eyes. His nostrils flare.
"Look at me," he orders gently. Reluctantly, her face tilts up and her gaze travels from his boots to his eyes. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, do you understand?" he says, trying in vain to control the seething rage in his tone.
She sits down as he has commanded, and he moves towards her, crouching down to fish the cloth out of the bowl of water. He wrings it out, imagining that it is Ramsay Bolton's neck instead. "You're the most beautiful woman in Westeros," he mutters angrily. "All the evil men in the world won't change that."
He thinks he sees the shadow of a smile twitch at the corners of her lips, but her eyes remain solemn and haunted.
He puts a gentle pressure on her knee, and she twists on the bench so that he can sit next to her and attend to her back. He uses the warm cloth to wipe away any sweat and puss and blood that has gathered since her bath earlier, and then soaks a separate cloth in the wine and presses it as gently as he can to one of the wicked slashes across her shoulder blades.
Her body jerks violently, and she groans softly, leaning forward and digging her fingernails into her palms.
"I'm sorry," he says tenderly. "I know it hurts."
"I'll be okay," she responds softly.
"Yes," he says with a certain nod. "You will. You're stronger than you know."
They are silent after that—no amount of idle chatter will make this less awkward and painful that it already is. Awkward because brothers don't generally see their sisters undressed, and painful because he knows how much it hurts to have wounds treated—almost as much as getting the wounds to begin with.
When he is done with her back, he takes care of her feet. He fans the ointment until it dries enough to bandage, and as he wraps fabric around her whipped feet she dabs at the rest of her body with the alcohol-soaked cloth. He notices a nasty bite mark beneath her left breast, and he stands abruptly, spearing his fingers into his hair and turning away from her.
"Jon?" Her voice is soft, quiet, hesitant.
"I'm going to kill him," he blurts out. "Slowly." His voice is rough with emotion that he cannot control. Ever since Melisandre had brought him back, he's had a harder time reigning in his impulses; there is something wild within him now, something dark—something that had attached itself to his soul as he'd laid dead on a table, his consciousness floating around in a great black abyss.
"I'm going to carve him up little by little," he continues, staring into the fire. "Piece by piece. I'll make it take hours—days."
He hears the rustling of fabric behind him, and then he turns as she limps towards him, creamy, bruised skin covered once more in dark blue fabric. "I'm not sure you have that kind of torture in you, Jon Snow," she says quietly. "You're too good for that." She pauses, and he looks into her eyes. "You always were the best of us."
He shakes his head. "I'm not good," he denies easily, thinking of the evil spark of desire he harbors for her. "I've done terrible things." He turns toward her fully, and brings his hands up to frame her face. "He hurt you," he whispers, feeling his tear ducts ache with unshed tears. "He hurt you, and I was here, completely useless." His nostrils flare. "I should have been there."
She leans forward and her arms wrap around his waist, her hands clasping together over his spine. She rests her head against the junction of his neck and shoulder. She smells like his soap—pine and rain and lye—and like the astringent sweetness of wine. His arms encircle her shoulders, conscious of her hurt back, and he presses his nose to her hair, breathing her in.
When he looks back on it later, he is able to pinpoint this moment as the time when everything starts to change between them.
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Thanks for reading! Love you guys!
Giraffe :)