Sansa Stark had always tried to follow the tenants of the Seven. Most specifically the Maiden and the Mother in regards to being compassionate. Septa Mordane's teachings from the Seven-Pointed Star had always made it sound as though being pious and pure in spirit would allow the seven to shower blessings upon those who followed them and beseeched fervently enough.
To that end she was courteous to all the servants in Winterfell when she encountered them and always sought to be mindful of the feelings of the few girls close to her own age she had made friends with. Most of the time it was easy to be kind and empathetic. But the seven had never accounted for living with people who did not understand you.
Her trueborn brothers Robb, Bran and now Rickon were typical young men who cared more for dreams of battlefield glory than fantasies of a peaceful domestic life. Not exactly unexpected in truth. Theon Greyjoy was a highborn ward whose smile and wit could be charming but whose frequenting of the brothel in Wintertown and somewhat boastful nature were the marks of a cad even if Sansa tried not to say as much given that to her understanding Theon was Robb's best friend at Winterfell. A bit more worrisome truth be told but still not insurmountable. The problem of course was her bastard brother: Jon.
Her mother and her Septa had differing opinions as to how to treat Jon Snow, but they were clear that he was a baseborn bastard and whether he was deserving of it or not the seven viewed him as a living breathing sin against their principles of fidelity and love. When Sansa had been made aware that Jon was her father's son with a woman who was not her mother, she'd wondered more than once why her lord father had bothered bringing him back. It didn't seem that he would fit into Winterfell. And over time she had thought that observation proven correct. Jon was much like their father in many ways: prone to silence and melancholy rather than laughter and smiles like she, Robb and her mother. As a result, even when he may not have been so he still seemed sullen to her ears and eyes. A dark spot upon an otherwise bright, sunny picture.
Which was why, when Arya was born with the same dark hair and grey eyes, Sansa had thoughtlessly asked her mother if that meant she was a bastard like Jon. She'd made the mistake of thinking that since Arya had presented none of their mother's traits that it meant her father had had her with Jon's mother. It was the only time her mother had physically struck Sansa even after all this time.
But despite her sister being trueborn, she couldn't help but feel that perhaps it would've been easier for everyone if she was indeed a bastard like Jon. Than at least it could be understandable how she could find such easy kinship with him that she did not find with herself or Robb. She tried to understand Arya as she grew up: truly she did. But she was just so different.
Whereas Sansa could listen contentedly to any number of the stories of love and chivalry transcending all obstacles with all things coming to a happy end, Arya would scoff before rolling her eyes. But the worst of it wasn't so much that Arya didn't like the stories Sansa did. It wasn't even that she would turn to Jon Snow for stories of bloody battles and ancient warriors instead. It was that even as their lady mother had tried more than once to get Arya to show some interest in something remotely proper for a girl growing to be a lady she never took the hint and instead embraced the interests of her brothers fully rather than even make a token effort at being proper.
Sansa had received no help from any corner when Arya's rambunctious nature had made Sansa suffer through a joke or a prank that almost inevitably led to her things being dirtied or vandalized. But yet whenever Arya was so willful, she hardly ever had anyone outside of mother be willing to discipline her. Her lord father would for the most part let out a slight chuckle and tell Sansa that Arya was showing signs of the "wolf blood." Whenever she complained to Robb about it, he might be inclined to try and tell Arya off while visibly suppressing a grin. Which was still a league above Jon Snow who was more often than not an active participant and collaborator in Arya's mischief. It was as if only she, mother and Septa Mordane were sane enough to express the appropriate level of frustration with Arya's refusal to grow up.
But that had changed when Arya had fallen ill.
Her sister had at first presented only with a fever and an upset stomach. But that had progressed toward vomiting, hallucinations and pain everywhere on her body. Sansa hadn't seen the true extent of Arya's illness since when she had first presented she had been isolated so as to observe whether her sickness was contagious or not. It wasn't but by that time there was no way that mother and father were going to let her back into the room she normally shared with Arya.
She'd prayed for her sister's safety and health every night. She didn't know medicine but she had her faith. For despite all her issues with Arya Sansa had never wanted something like this to happen to her. And it seemed her prayers had been answered by the least likely source: Jon Snow. He'd done something inside the burning sept that had brought her sister back to full strength. Though it had apparently come at the price of his own strength and potentially his life.
Sansa didn't know what he had done but she knew it wasn't fair to ask him to give his life for doing the right thing. The people who helped others and made them well again didn't deserve pain and suffering in exchange for their service. His unconsciousness state and the uncertainty of his fate spurred Sansa to ask her mother if she could help look after him. Two members of her immediate family falling so ill in such rapid succession had delivered her an epiphany: that if she was to be a good lady of her own household in future she had to practice looking after her family when they weren't at their best. To tend them at their bedside when the clinical touch of a maester wasn't enough so that they might know their wife/mother was looking after them with her own two hands. Her mother had agreed to let her help with some basic care of Jon Snow.
So of course it had gone disastrously wrong.
She didn't know how or why, but in the course of washing her half-brother his eyes had been gouged out completely. She'd screamed when it happened but had been unable to tear her gaze away. The bleeding empty sockets that seemed to stare into the depths of her soul, the soft moaning like a wounded animal that had issued from Jon Snow's lips. It had been too much. Her mother had quickly interceded and sent her to fetch Maester Luwin. It was only once she had brought him to the bedside that her mother gently took her away and helped her wash some of her bastard sibling's blood that had partially stained her still trembling hands.
From there her sleep had been haunted by nightmares. Of creatures reaching from the shadows to gouge her own eyes out. Sometimes she thought she could feel phantom fingers scrambling across her face as though to find purchase on her before painfully stealing her sight from her. For Arya's sake, she'd tried to keep her night terrors and what had occurred in Jon's sickroom secret. To say her sister had been partial to Jon Snow before the fire in the sept was an understatement. Only the seven knew what she might do if she learned of his deteriorating condition.
But she had never expected Jon Snow to reappear outside the sickroom, especially not with eyes intact and body hale as ever. Sansa had been too shocked to say anything to him. She knew what she had seen. There was no possible mistaking of such a thing. And yet there he was. Stark grey eyes alert and serious as he looked at them all to announce that he would be leaving Winterfell in order to make his way across the Narrow Sea for an unknown amount of time. Sansa had been discomfited by the notion. And not simply because Arya and the others would miss him, much to her own surprise. But because she herself was uncomfortable with the idea of him being gone so soon after such a traumatic experience and potentially never returning.
It seemed she didn't know what to think of her bastard sibling anymore.
After he'd departed through the gate without looking back once, she'd done some soul searching in the silence of her room shared with Arya: when she could be sure to be alone with her thoughts as the moonlight occasionally filtered through overcast clouds and the occasional sigh of the wind outside seemed to sympathize with her conflicted notions.
Jon Snow was a bastard first and foremost. It was in his name: an indelible part of his identity. He would never be accepted in the eyes of gods or men. But for the first time in quite a while Sansa had to wonder to herself if that was fair. It seemed all her family had been affected by his departure whether she had expected them to be or not. Robb and Arya she had thought as much. But Bran and Rickon had not been expected considering they were even younger than Arya. Her mother's occasional glances at Jon Snow's place at the table in Winterfell's hall when they dined was even less expected. Sansa also found herself missing Jon on occasion. She'd barely interacted with him it was true. But he'd never gone out of his way to torment her as Arya had. He'd even tried playing peacemaker between the two on occasion. (Even though he had done it with a visible bias toward Arya's side the few times it had happened.)
It seemed that most all of her family, herself included however tangentially, enjoyed his company to one extent or another. And in any other circumstance (for example his being another family's trueborn) they might have sought to keep him around Winterfell because he was reliable and honest. Qualities that would be looked for in a potential loyal bannerman. But because he was their father's bastard, he was deemed unwelcome in the world of gods and men. After some more days and months passed she was forced to revise the second half of that statement. The Old Gods may not have looked favorably on bastards any more than the Seven did, but none of the servants around Winterfell that Sansa had heard speak at all about Jon Snow had anything particularly disparaging to say about him. Other than the fact that he was a bastard of course.
And when she thought further about it, just as many of the stories she so enjoyed involved noble bastards finding a place of honor as reward for loyalty toward their liege lords or trueborn superiors as there were stories of black-hearted rogues who decided to show the world the truth of their bastard surname. It all depended upon the nature of the bastard himself. And Sansa had to admit mentally that Jon might be one of the better bastards it was possible for the Stark family to have.
The fact that none of this had occurred to her before he left was something of a sore point for her: it made her feel as though she hadn't tried hard enough to be compassionate or understanding as the mother and the maiden asked. Well the smith always said that the best place to begin plying a trade was from the home. So perhaps that was her answer.
Sansa began by trying to be nicer to the person who was perhaps closest to Jon. The source of her greatest aggravation in Winterfell that was Arya. It was in small ways at first. Letting her take the deserts first. Allowing her some precious more time of extra sleep in the morning before she tried to wake her so that mother would see that she was up. Then she tried to do slightly more. Chiding Jayne Poole if she was teasing her in excess. Asking Septa Mordane questions about the subjects she taught so that Arya wouldn't have to do it herself. And when Arya had fallen into a depression following a particularly vivid nightmare involving Jon dying, she'd tried to give her sisterly advice on what had worked to calm her own mind after her night terrors. Arya had seemed to come back to herself after a while. Though how was Sansa to know that it would be so close to Jon Snow returning to Winterfell?
It had seemed a day like any other. Though in retrospect Sansa should've guessed that something was happening when Arya had rushed out of the sewing lesson with the Septa at the first sign of a slight commotion at Winterfell's gate. Sansa had tried to stop her, but her little sister had only grown swifter since her healing in the wake of the Sept's burning. It had never occurred to Sansa that it might be to greet their bastard sibling for returning to Winterfell. When she saw him again, she at first had thought him a wildling that had been captured by one of the patrols of her father's men.
His hair was scraggly and unkempt. What parts of his skin were visible were dirt encrusted while his clothes looked liable to fall off at any moment. He was unshaven and unwashed. In short, everything about his appearance suggested that he was one who had lived in the wilds and off the land as close as it was possible for one to do without becoming a complete animal. In addition to which was a change in demeanor that Sansa could only describe as wary. Like a wild cat that wasn't ready to be coaxed into accepting a scrap of food from a well-meaning hand.
And yet his manner suggested that he had not reverted to savagery whilst away. He was taciturn but polite as ever when he had greeted her. He had even addressed her properly: as Lady Sansa. She supposed it was only natural considering he had only referred to her as sister when she was very young and called her Sansa at both her own and her mother's insistence when she started growing. Though she couldn't deny it did cause a slight pang to see him maintain a proper distance from her that he did not seem to worry about with Arya, Robb, Bran or Rickon.
Over the next few days, she couldn't help but notice that his return had wrought some strange changes in the dynamics and day to day business of the Stark family. For one thing, Arya's lessons with Septa Mordane were often shorter than usual. When Sansa had asked about it, her mother and Arya would only say that she was taking lessons from Maester Luwin. Very unorthodox in itself, but perhaps she was studying medicine so that she might become a Silent Sister instead of try to tame herself in order to marry a proper husband. For another, the living symbol of their family had come back to Winterfell with Jon. And apparently she had come bearing pups.
Sansa had in truth only ever met the pups. She first became aware of them when Jon had come out of the wolfwood back to Winterfell with Arya. Instead of returning alone, both of them were leading a small pack of six wolf pups out on enthusiastic if somewhat stubby legs. Sansa couldn't believe her eyes when she'd come to the great hall for dinner to find that the wolves were pouncing on each other and weaving in and out of the legs of the family as though this were all a great game to them.
"What are these? Where did they come from?" She asked Robb, who was closest to her and engaged in an impromptu tug of war over a leather riding glove with a wolf pup whose mouth was clamped firmly to the fingers it could fit in its mouth and was seemingly pulling with all its might, head shaking back and forth as it tried to dislodge Robb's steady grip on the glove.
Robb looked up at her with shining eyes, expression overjoyed in a way she couldn't recall seeing since the first time their lord father had given him permission to learn riding.
"Direwolves." He said. "Real direwolves Sansa."
Sansa was temporarily shocked into speechlessness when he continued.
"Apparently, Jon met their mother on his way back to Winterfell and got her to trust him. She's out in the wolfwood now. It's why he's been out there so often: checking on her and looking after her." Robb informed her.
"Why are the pups here now then?" She asked, crouching as well as she could in her dress to look the smaller grey wolf still tugging at Robb's glove.
"Apparently the pups wanted to see where Jon went. They can walk on their own and decided to come with him." Robb said.
As they both crouched on the ground, Sansa felt something brush against her leg through her skirts. She looked over to her right to see a grey and black furred pup gently pushing its body against her dress. When it sensed her looking, it sat on its haunches and gazed at her with hopeful yellow eyes.
"Hello there." She softly greeted the pup, her hand gently petting her atop the head. The pup leaned a bit more into Sansa's hand but didn't come closer quite yet. Sansa couldn't help but feel her heart melt a little inside at the affection the little wolf was showing her even though she was a strange human it had never seen before. Sansa also couldn't help but note that it was also the most well-behaved of the others. The rest of the litter save this one by her side and the one playing with Robb had all congregated around Jon, Arya, Bran and Rickon near the table.
That was when she had met the direwolf litter of six. Her lord father had thought it strange that the amount of pups matched the number of his children at Winterfell though Jon and Maester Luwin had remarked that it was surely a sign. She and all the others had begged him for permission to take in the direwolves. Jon and her father had exchanged a brief glance it seemed before her father had told them that they would be their responsibility. That if anything were to happen to them, they would be the ones to care for them. And if they were to die, they were to bury them themselves.
The grey and black pup elected to follow her. Jon had told her that she was one of only two girls in the litter. His lips had quirked in a small smile when his eyes briefly leapt back and forth between Sansa and the pup: seeing how close they were standing already.
"She is yours to name Lady Sansa." He said as the albino that seemed to have taken to her bastard brother wandered away from him back to the rest of its pack.
"I thank you for your generosity Jon." She said. A look of surprise seemed to cross Jon's face before it was quickly replaced by a closed mouth but genuine smile. Sansa didn't want to ponder the fact that it had apparently surprised him that she thanked him and so looked down at the young direwolf by her side.
She was so well behaved already. Whilst the others were chewing on things but mostly attempting to goad the Stark children into playing with them, the one by her side was prim and proper as a well-trained hunting dog. She crouched by her as she contemplated this.
"I think I shall name you Lady." She said to the wolf, whose yellow eyes looked at her inquisitively.
"Would you like that?" She asked gently, smiling even as she knew the wolf likely couldn't understand what she was saying. In response to her query the newly christened Lady bumped Sansa's hand with her head as if approving of her choice and politely asking if she would pet her in order to seal the deal so to speak.
Needless to say, Sansa loved Lady to bits from then on.
Though she had never gotten along with Jon previous to his leaving, she thought that his increased skill and more mature attitude toward his own bastardhood was a good position to try and nudge him into becoming a loyal bannerman for the Stark family. But then word began to filter back of even odder behavior. (Aside from Jon spending far too much time alone or exclusively in the company of her sister that is.) Of Jon cavorting with whores. Of Jon no longer keeping to the Old Gods that the Stark family had kept to for generations or even the New Gods that watched over most of Westeros: but a strange and foreign fire god. Sansa wished that Jon wouldn't be trying to make her efforts at helping him so difficult. If he had simply remained as he had been before leaving, this would be so much simpler to do. Sure it might take some cajoling for any trueborn daughter of a noble family to look beyond his surname, but it would be a good way for Jon to be shown that his loyalty and devotion to the Starks was to be commended right?
But now wasn't the time to dwell on change, only to nip it in the bud before it became something that couldn't be glossed over. So she spoke with Robb. She asked him to talk with Jon about his strange new behavior, to see if he could perhaps talk Jon into acting with his future in mind. She could only pray that Jon would see reason in this matter. Otherwise, how else would he ever be able to escape the shadow of his own Snow name?
A/N: A little glimpse into how things look to someone who isn't in the know. Many thanks to LottieDot and TrillionSchiffer for the idea of looking at things from Sansa's perspective earlier than intitially planned. :) I feel it works really well with the coming character arcs though I'm not sure the ending is as strong as it could be. Greatest thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to review, favorite and alert this story. I hope you all continue to do so: most especially review. Who knows? Your review could help trigger a brainwave that helps the story evolve in an unexpected way. :D