Chapter Text
Sansa smoked exactly three cigarettes when she was in college, all on the same night.
It happened the fall semester of her second year.
Still in the early days of their relationship, Joffrey had invited her to his family’s apparently infamous Halloween party, a high society affair that took place at the Baratheons’ cliffside mansion overlooking Blackwater Bay. Costumes were required, and attendees went all out in an effort to impress Joffrey’s beautifully intimidating and intimidatingly beautiful mother, Cersei Baratheon.
The idea of it delighted Sansa to no end, despite the added pressure she might have felt when Cersei told her that she expected Sansa and Joffrey in a couple’s costume that would stand out. Sansa got the notion that this was a test, but she took on the challenge, absolutely certain she could pass.
According to Sansa’s friend Margaery Tyrell, any number of local celebrities, politicians, and influencers would be in attendance. The coveted invitation signified you were someone in the upper strata of King’s Landing society.
“My whole family will be there, of course,” Margaery had said with her usual smirk and thinly veiled sense of superiority.
Joff wanted to be James Bond, an idea offered without much care as to which female character Sansa would cast herself as. She understood, of course, that all he wanted was to look good (and in a tux, the fucker definitely did), but there was no imagination in it. All the famous Bond girl outfits were bikinis. This would be a debut of sorts for Sansa, among his family and among people who mattered in King’s Landing. She had a feeling that in this crowd, a “sexy” spin on a costume wouldn’t just be dismissed as cliched. It would seem desperate. A bikini wouldn’t do at all.
Romantic, creative, unexpected—that’s what she was aiming for, and she eventually managed to sell him on the idea of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Instead of the usual looks people took from that movie, though (different sorts of cliches), Sansa found them perfect matching trench coats and a stuffed orange tabby cat to carry around as a prop: Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak in the final scene of the movie.
With his sandy blonde hair and wearing a thin black tie and tweed jacket, Sansa thought Joffrey looked even better than the young George Peppard at his very finest. Fully committing to the look, Sansa put in temporary dye in her hair and even bought a pack of cigarettes so she could walk around with one in between her fingers, just like Holly had in that last fateful cab ride.
The effort paid off in ways Sansa couldn’t have anticipated.
A gentle rain has just started as they arrived at the mansion and stepped into the receiving line behind Margaery, her brother Lloras, and his boyfriend, who happened to be Joffrey’s Uncle Renly. The two men had come as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in such perfectly tailored period garb Sansa wondered if the suits were bespoke. Margaery had opted for a bunny costume that was a clear reference to Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, and in Sansa’s opinion, she pulled it off with aplomb. However, the once over Cersei gave Margaery suggested to Sansa that her own instinct to opt for the frumpiest Breakfast at Tiffany’s look had been correct. Mere seconds after greeting Margaery, Cersei took Sansa’s hand and said, loud enough for everyone around them to hear, “Authenticity over showiness is always a surprise from girls like you. I like it.” Sansa was too pleased with having impressed her to consider for too long what “girls like you” might have meant.
Renly laughed and jokingly offered Sansa a light, saying her costume wasn’t complete, wasn’t really authentic—drawing out Cersei’s word like a taunt to both women—if she wasn’t really smoking.
Sansa stared at the small flame he’d lit inches from her face for a short moment, wondering if he expected her to demure—or expected her to choke on the smoke. Instead, she leaned over the lighter, cigarette between her lips and puffed several times until it was lit. She blew the smoke just over Renly’s head, and his eyes widened, taken aback in surprise.
“Holy shit, Joffrey, you found yourself a real one for once.”
Joffrey rolled his eyes but, nevertheless, put his arm around Sansa and with a sneer in his uncle’s direction, led her inside.
That was the first cigarette.
Later, when the din of the party was at its peak, Sansa asked Joffrey if they could get some air. They ended up on a gorgeous terrace that ended in a balcony with a breathtaking view of the city in one direction and the bay on the other. The light rain was now only an even lighter mist, giving the lanterns that been set up all around the mansion grounds a beautiful, hazy glow.
Margaery, who had found herself a tall, handsome Thor to chat up, waved from where they, along with Renly and Lloras, were leaning against the artfully carved stone wall that Sansa wasn’t sure looked high enough to keep someone from falling onto the rocks and water below.
“Ah, young love,” Renly said into the lip of his martini glass as Sansa and Joffrey approached. Sansa wondered at his sarcasm, but no sooner had Renly finished off what was left of his drink that he added, “But you’ve lost your best prop, Holly. Here!” He took out a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his Inverness cape (it was gorgeous and Sansa was dying to ask him about it) and held it out to her. Sansa hesitated, but as she glanced around, everyone’s eyes were on her. She reminded herself that tonight, she was playing a part. She took the light and didn’t miss a beat when Renly extended the flame of his lighter out to her again.
Margaery started to talk about a nightclub she and Thor were planning on escaping to when Renly called out to a photographer standing a few feet away. “Hey, picture boy, come save this moment for my future grandnieces and nephews.”
Sansa immediately threw the cigarette off the balcony in a momentary panic about being photographed smoking and then immediately realized what she’d done and, embarrassed, looked down as if she could somehow will it back up. Joffrey grabbed her shoulder and turned her back toward him. His intention had been to get her to look at the camera, which she did for several shots of the two of them and of the whole group, but in the photo that would appear on the society pages of the local newspaper that Sunday, they were looking at each other. Their rain-kissed hair, their flushed cheeks, the top of the stuffed cat peaking out from Sansa’s trench—all of it made a perfect picture.
Sansa didn’t know yet how she felt about Joffrey at that point, but she knew when she saw the photo that she would marry him—a feeling that came over her not like a wish so much as a premonition. Separately, Joffrey had the same reaction to it. He would tell her as much, even referencing Renly’s joke about showing it to their future children, when he proposed to her at that same party two years later. All eyes were on them as Joffrey, dressed as Prince Philip this time, kneeled in the middle of the ballroom and rendered Sansa’s barefoot Briar Rose so speechless he had to prompt her to say yes. The photographers had been told ahead of time and took another photo that would hang in the King’s Landing home his parents would furnish for them.
Thus, bookended by two orchestrated, picture-perfect moments, her romantic notions swept her up in a powerful undertow from which it would take her years to emerge. When she finally did, what Sansa saw in the pictures wasn’t two people in love. It was two kids playing dress up. She had wanted to believe in the romance, but romance took two people. Joffrey hadn’t loved Sansa. She’d come to learn that he was too much of a narcissist to be capable of loving anyone. What he had loved about her was that she was good at making him shine, a thing his mother congratulated her for that first Halloween night but would later come to resent. Not because Cersei minded him shining, but because she didn’t like that someone else could do it better than she could.
That was the second cigarette.
But before all the drama it set in motion in the days and months and years that followed, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjack said goodnight. The Baratheons’ driver took Sansa back to her dormitory at nearing 4 in the morning. She was too high on the night’s success to care that Joffrey hadn’t offered to ride with her. When she got home, she didn’t bother cleaning up the mess she had made while getting ready, but she smiled when she saw the pack of cigarettes she had bought on her bathroom counter.
Jon Snow’s brand.
Sansa hadn’t intended on actually smoking any when she had picked them up, hadn’t really stopped to give her choice to buy these in particular—to bother with holding a real cigarette at all—much thought.
Looking at the soft pack now, in her slowly creeping exhaustion, Sansa’s mind and other places in her filled with a fondness that seemed to be prompted only by the memory of Jon Snow.
Still wearing the costume she had worn to the party, she went into the small, shared kitchenette, where she knew her suite mates kept a set of matches for the aromatherapy candles they sometimes lit when they were studying despite the rules against it. Then, she went back down to the building’s front steps and lit her third cigarette of the night.
She smoked this one down to the filter.
There were two young trees on either side of the steps, likely planted that summer. Those made her smile, too.
There was a smell in the air of cut grass. In the warmth of the capital, it grew year-round.
She looked out beyond the steps onto the quad and its manicured greenery.
It was still dark, but the landscapes around her would be awake with the dawning sun within the hour.
He wouldn’t like it here, she thought, but he’d appreciate the care that went into keeping the grounds beautiful.
Sansa didn’t think of Jon often but when she did, it took over her like a full sensory experience. Drag after drag of the cigarette, it was like he was there with her, surrounding her, pointing out every piece of nature she hadn’t noticed before.
Thinking of him reminded her that she missed home, her family. She missed the seasons, the way fall and winter wrapped their arms around you for a time and then set you free again. Just like he had done.
Jon Snow.
If only.
She wasn’t sure where he was in that moment and didn’t linger in that hollow of not knowing.
She had told herself on their last visit to Godswood Park that to want Jon beyond that night was to want a different life, to be a different version of herself, one that didn’t mind the grass that ended up in her hair when he’d go down on her out in the open where all the stars could see, that didn’t mind his frayed edges or her own.
Being with him had been as good as a thing could be, but like the closure of the park that had facilitated their trysts, it had been temporary by necessity.
Neither one was the adult they would be yet back then so they allowed their attraction to each other play out as if it wouldn’t affect the adults they would become.
She still wasn’t sure who she was a year and a half later, but that night had unmistakably put her on a path toward something, and that excited her. It was like she had merged onto speeding traffic and couldn’t slow down if she wanted to. She didn’t think she wanted to. Wasn’t this the very reason she had come south? To be in the position she was suddenly in?
She hoped that Jon was, in that moment, exactly where he wanted to be too.
With one more deep breath, Sansa threw what was left of the pack into a trash bin on her way back inside.
“Did you quit smoking?”
“What?”
“I just haven’t seen you do it in a while.”
From where Sansa was nestled between his legs, leaning against his warm, firm chest as they sat looking up at the summer sky, Sansa felt Jon shift. She sat up and turned to face him.
“So?” She prodded.
Jon rubbed his face with his hand, and she could tell he was trying to hide a smile.
“What is it?” She asked.
“I’m not . . . it’s just a dumb habit that comes and goes. Sometimes I stop out of necessity, like during hockey season.”
Sansa felt her cheeks warm. “You haven’t been on a hockey team in two years.”
“Know my comings and goings so well, do you?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “You and Robb were on the same high school team.”
“I’ll have you know, I play in an adult rec league now.” His face was serious, but she could still see the mirth behind his eyes. “Has beens and wannabes, mostly, but you’d be surprised how seriously some of those guys take it.”
“You think you’re a has been or wannabe?”
“I think both apply, unfortunately.” After a beat, he asked, “which one would you call me?”
“I wasn’t asking for you to choose one. I don’t think you’re either.”
Jon tilted his head to the side. “What am I then?”
“A work in progress,” she said. “Obviously. But we’re getting off the point.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why haven’t you been smoking lately?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
Sansa smiled. “I want you to say it.”
“You.”
Her smile turned into a grin, but only for a second. Maybe she was reading too much into it. Jon was nothing if not unfailingly polite.
“You can smoke if you want to.”
Jon lifted on shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
“I don’t want you to think I smell gross.”
“I don’t.”
“I don’t crave it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Sansa regarded him for a long moment. “Can I try?”
“What?”
“Just once.”
He laughed. “I haven’t corrupted you enough?”
“Please. Wine coolers are not corrupting.”
“You were also a virgin at the start of this summer and apparently had never had alcohol before,” he said with that low, rough voice that gave her goose bumps, that was the very reason she’d known when they’d started doing this exactly how it was going to go. Because just like she’d been curious about how alcohol in her system would feel, Jon’s words that first night immediately made her wonder how all the things she could do with him would feel.
It would be ungentlemanly of me.
It was good and awkward and fun, that first time and all the times after that. He hadn’t made her feel self-conscious or like she was giving too much of herself. They both knew she’d be gone come fall, and she didn’t regret it, wouldn’t regret it not then and not later.
“Not never. Just not enough to get drunk.”
“Your father would still kill me if he knew what we were doing,” Jon added, “and then find a way to resurrect me so he could do it again.”
“My dad loves you as much as he loves his own kids. If this was a question daughters routinely asked their fathers about—‘Dad, who should I have sex with for the first time’—you would probably be at the top of his list.”
Jon laughed, and Sansa could see the tips of his ears turning red in embarrassment, maybe an unspoken admission that he wished for that to be true. It endeared Sansa, just like so many things about Jon did. He wanted Ned’s approval, not to be with Sansa (she knew he didn’t want her, not like that, at least not beyond what they’d given themselves permission to have), but because Ned’s opinion mattered so much to Jon.
“Well, whether that’s true or not, he wouldn’t want you to die of lung cancer, and neither do I.”
“But you’re OK if you do?”
Jon half-shrugged again, but Sansa could see in his eyes that she was going to get her way.
He shifted forward slightly, coming into her space and dropping a light kiss on the side of her mouth, then shifted again and did the same on the other side. When he leaned back again, his soft pack and a plastic gas station lighter were in his hand, having pulled both out of his back pocket when he’d leaned in to kiss her.
“Smooth,” she said smiling.
He took two cigs out, put them both in his mouth to light them and then handed one to her.
“Very smooth!”
“I saw it in an old movie once.”
Sansa looked at the cigarette between her index and middle finger like it was a distasteful vegetable she was being forced to eat.
“Don’t inhale,” Jon said, in between drags. “Not the first time.”
Finally, she put her lips to it, taking a long puff, and breathed in without thinking, which resulted in a coughing fit that lasted several minutes.
“I told you not to inhale,” he said, smiling.
“Don’t laugh at me!”
“Is your curiosity satisfied?”
Sansa answered by taking another drag, more slowly this time, knowing what to expect. Once she’d gotten the hang of it, she turned herself back in Jon’s arms and she sighed as he felt him pull her into him.
In the quiet, she thought about how her family would react if they ever saw her and Jon like this. She knew Jon assumed the reaction would be disapproval and maybe it would be, but her siblings certainly wouldn’t think he was corrupting her. If anything, for them, it would be the other way around.
Since she returned home, Sansa’s favorite place to go has been the Winterfell Botanic Gardens.
When she was young, her mother loved taking the entire family in the spring and summer, when everything was in full bloom and most resembled the lush Riverlands of Catelyn’s youth. Thus, it was a genuine surprise to adult Sansa to learn that the gardens are actually open year-round. They have expanded, too.
In the last year, a new attraction had opened. On the edge of the campus, itself on the northern edge of the city, an acre or so of land that had previously lain fallow has been re-landscaped into a kind of hedge maze, not quite as intricate as traditional ones and with shrubbery that is only a couple of feet tall. Its intent is to provide a series of circuitous paths for visitors to walk mindlessly for long stretches, without ever having to think about where they are going and without feeling like they have a puzzle to solve. It is possible to lose yourself walking through it, but only figuratively speaking, since you can always look up and see exactly where you are.
In fact, the refrain “Not all who wander are lost” is carved into slats of gray stone that point visitors through the most direct route to the other side of the maze, where a flight of wood stairs built into a grassy hill leads to a large pergola at the top. There, a visitor can see the full maze from above and appreciate the intricacy of the design. If one looks the other direction, the mountains of the far north are visible in the distance. Climbing winter roses have been coaxed through the pergola’s lattices. Because it is still a rather new addition, the vines haven’t reached the top of the structure yet. Sansa imagines what it will look like when the roses have taken over it as intended.
The first time she has this thought, she considers what it means: that she is looking forward to something. That her future may be bright after all.
Those first days back after the divorce, eager to be alone, Sansa would leave the house on an invented errand and then find somewhere to kill an hour or two. The first time she went to the Botanic Gardens on such an outing and found the maze, she didn’t get home until dinner time. She went back the next day. And the next. And many of the days that followed. At first, Sansa just needed to get out from under her mother’s overprotective hovering and out of her own head. She didn’t want to talk about her divorce, but she couldn’t not think about it either. The wounds were too fresh.
But those reasons, like the self-recriminations, eventually fell away.
She keeps coming now, once or twice a week, for the mere fact that it is a beautiful place. She’s working again and normal life has begun to occupy her again, but time walking the maze doesn’t ever feel like time wasted. It reminds of her of how pretty things used to make her happy as a girl, inspired her, made her hopeful that life and living couldn’t be anything but joyous when such beauty existed in the world. There’s a part of her that wonders whether it is naive to feel any of that again, given what she has gone through, but she would rather live in that beautiful but fragile world than any other.
She is looking forward to seeing the pergola when it is covered in winter roses in full bloom—a vision that affirms her decision to never leave Winterfell again. It will take time, years, but she can be patient. She is willing to wait for good things.
Sansa is not surprised that her family wants to celebrate her 30th birthday.
Sansa is surprised that they plan an outing to the Winterfell Botanic Gardens without telling her until the day of.
She has been divorced for more than a year now, and the fact of it is no longer something she thinks about regularly. She has a job, a place of her own that, while still sparsely decorated, is wholly hers. This milestone looks a lot different from what she thought it would when she was younger, and she senses her family wants her not to dwell on those differences. She would tell them that she doesn’t mind them, that she likes this life more than the one she fled in King’s Landing, but she secretly loves that they all want to make a fuss over her.
“Bran suggested it,” Arya says when Sansa questions her about it on the way there. “He says you go all the time.”
She feels an odd urge to contradict this very true statement, but instead chooses to be endeared by her observant brother’s insightful suggestion. It’s funny how things that used to annoy you suddenly become the things you love most about the people you love when seen through the lens of experience and perspective. Siblings who used to groan at having to sit through Sansa’s frilly, pink-infused, lemon-flavored-everything birthday parties going out of their way for her because they want to make her feel loved? Yes, please.
“Besides, we have in,” Arya adds with a shrug.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s free for us—well, free for Jon. He’s the one who actually made the reservation.”
Sansa feels a sudden wave of nervous energy come over her.
“Reservation?” She squeaks out.
“You have to reserve it for private parties.”
Here comes another wave.
After Christmas something shifted between them, and on an impulse she still couldn’t quite explain, she asked him if he wanted to get together for New Year’s. They didn’t—at least, not just the two of them, like she wanted. Arya and Gendry hosted a party for more people than Sansa could count and so that’s where they ended up, along with everyone else. They spent most of their time at the party together talking and when midnight came, well, Jon leaned in, turned his head and gave her a New Year’s kiss on her cheek. The relief that Sansa felt in the moment made her almost want to cry.
She had wanted it. A real kiss. A Jon Snow kiss like the ones that she remembers. But the wanting terrified her. She wasn’t ready. She knew that, and the fact that he seemed to know it too made her appreciate him even more, the considerate gentleman behind a stern exterior.
He knows her.
Still.
So there was no kissing then. And there isn’t kissing now.
There has been texting. Also occasionally going for coffee. Also usually sitting next to each other when her parents invite everyone over for dinner on Sundays.
She’s not quite sure how she feels about any of it. She questions sometimes whether what she feels about Jon is just nostalgia or just wanting to just be with someone. She got things wrong so spectacularly before, she isn’t sure what her own instincts are telling her now.
Besides, the first guy she gets involved with after her divorce isn’t going to be the guy, right? She remembers someone saying that once.
Therefore, the first guy can’t be Jon. She can’t slot him in the role that is doomed to fail. Timing was her enemy once when it came to him—she won’t let it happen again. But she can’t picture herself dating anyone else. And certainly she cannot entertain the idea of him with anyone else.
So they text, and talk, and hang out. Maybe that will turn out to be enough, being his friend.
He’s friends with all of her siblings, sees them all regularly too. He loves the Starks and they all love him back. Sansa gets it. Of course, she does. He’s wonderful. He’s always been wonderful. Her family all knows.
(But do they know.)
“He reserved the Winterfell Botanic Gardens for my birthday?” She asks.
Arya rolls her eyes “You can’t reserve the entire gardens. I just meant the gazebo thing by the maze. You can rent it for like weddings and stuff. Apparently, it makes a ton of money, keeps the whole thing afloat. That’s why they built it.”
“Well, I hope you all split the cost with him,” Sansa says. “I appreciate the thought. I really do, but there wasn’t a need to pay for a venue for my birthday. Turning 30 is not that big a deal.”
“I’m glad you’re not having an existential crisis about it like Robb did, but it is a big deal, and we didn’t pay. It was free. I told you, Jon has an in.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s his thing,” Arya says, pulling into the parking lot.
“His thing?”
Arya doesn’t answer until she’s out of the car, and halfway to the ticketing booth.
“Arya!” Sansa calls out.
Arya tells the attendant that they are here for “the Stark event,” and he waves them in.
It’s late in the afternoon. The gardens will close in an hour, so far as Sansa knows. She wonders how this “in” Jon has will work.
Sansa an Arya are walking against most of the foot traffic, which is headed out. “Arya, can you please tell me what you are talking about?"
“The maze and gazebo thing.”
“It’s a pergola.”
Arya laughs. “Whatever! Who cares! Point is it was his project so he gets it for free. His whole firm does.”
Sansa stops short. A few feet ahead Arya notices. “Come on! Everyone else is already here.”
The sisters make their way through the grounds, which barely register to Sansa who feels like her skin is tingling.
It was his project.
Sansa remembers everything. Every conversation about what Jon wanted to do with his life but thought was too outlandish a dream for the likes of him. She may have left Winterfell for a time, but she knows he made it. It’s been more than ten years since that summer, but she remembers and she knows. She knows he finished his degree and his master’s, knows he worked in White Harbor for a time until he could find a job at home. And now she knows something else. She knows this beautiful place she loves is his.
She and Arya speed walk through the maze. She looks up to the gazebo as they do and she sees her whole family. She sees Jon. He’s talking to Robb and Jayne, who has the baby in a sling.
Lights have been strung up everywhere and when Sansa reaches the top of the stairs, she can see a table with charcuterie and wine has been set up under the pergola.
She hugs everyone multiple times until her eyes start to sting. She is happier than she thought she could be a year ago. She saves Jon’s hug—hugs—for last.
“I can’t believe you did all this,” she whispers.
“What, the party? I can’t take credit. It was all Jeyne and your mom.”
“No, I mean . . . ” she gestures out to the maze below.
He blushes—at least she thinks he does. The beard she wants to feel her lips against is a decent cover. “I just made a phone call.”
“I’m not talking about tonight. I’m talking about . . . I’m not sure I know what exactly.” She laughs at herself. “I don’t actually know how landscape architecture works. “Arya called this your project? You really did all this?”
He looks down again and smiles, still slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t. Not all of it. Certainly not alone. Technically, my boss is the landscape architect of record. It’s his name on the plaque in the administrative building. I was just the project manager.”
Sansa smiles. “I reject your ‘just.’” Then she throws her arms around him again. “I knew you could get here,” she whispers into his ear.
She won’t kiss him on this night. The thought is still a little scary. But it is less scary tonight than it was yesterday. It will be less scary tomorrow. She can wait.
At the end of the night, he kisses her on the forehead, instead of the cheek. So she knows he will wait too. Jon is good, and she will be patient for herself. For him.