Chapter Text
The rain was funeral smoke gray. The summer had drenched Jon as he traveled, leached the color out of him through damp heat. Silhouetted against the cloudburst, he rode slowly on the old horse.
The old mare was all that could be spared, the dull and ashy thing well past any use in the field. It had been an ill omen then, and he should have stopped there. He should have stopped when the dye ran out of his coat, blurring the divide between gray coat, gray horse, and gray man. He should have stopped and waited until fall, when the forests paid homage to the girl he had not seen in many years.
Autumn had always been her season. It was romantic, as the world faded away to winter, showing that all life was transient, and beauty was fleeting and whatever else it is poets wrote about. (But even in the distant court, they knew fall brought winter and winter was cold and iron and hard).
But she had shone in the fall, radiant in her copper hair, echoing the deeper colors of the maples. (She was a winter warning, forest-haired and snow-faced). He had wanted to see her in the fall.
Instead, he trudged through the summer (he could not see her again in winter, when his mind grew hungry, longing for the hunt).
When his uncle died, Jon was not there. When the cousin he called brother died, Jon was not there. When Lady Stark died, and then Rickon, Jon was not there. When his little sister went missing and Bran disappeared, Jon was not there.
After their family had melted away like the summer snows, after Jon had been betrayed he found Sansa, the sister who was not his sister.
He had seen her in the moonlight on a winter’s night, and Jon did not recognize her. All he saw was the year staring back at him, winter skin, summer eyes, and autumn hair. It was not flame kissed or blood dyed, but auburn and ethereal. He had trouble remembering things from before, and women blurred together. Mothers and lovers and sisters and enemies and Jon knew she was one but not which because she was from that before. Her face was bare, out from behind the fans and screens ladies hid behind, but the shadows veiled her still and Jon wondered what this longing was.
But then Jon knew she was Sansa, the lady sister of his childhood, not Ygritte or the priestess or Lady Stark.
She smiled slightly, the perfect level of politeness for a distant relative. I did not know you had returned to court, cousin.
He frowned. I have only just arrived. And I will be gone soon. He had a duty to the realm.
Her face did not change, her immaculate smile still in place. I hope you will enjoy your time at our court.
Jon did not lie to himself that her comment had not hurt him. Ours, not yours, her perfect little smile mocked. Bad karma, another lady with hair like that had said.
It was foolish, he knew, but he avoided talking to the Lady Sansa. Jon had done many things wrong, and that was one of them (all because she looked like too many other women he had known).
The court was nest of vipers. Everyone seemed to lie with each breath they took. They did not care about the war but wrapped themselves up in the transience of beauty and self-effacing melancholies. Jon knew he was out of place here. He found himself missing the deep forests and the deeper snow, and a castle made of stone and strength that he had left behind a long time ago.
When Sansa fell from grace, Jon was there.
She had been used and tossed aside, and she was still trapped, and Jon vowed that he would protect her as he could not protect Robb, and Arya, and Bran, and Rickon. He promised silently that he would protect the last Stark.
And when he saw Sansa again, she smiled her polite smile and Jon understood that she had no one she could lean on, no brothers in arms to stand beside her. She was a wolf alone and if there was anything Jon understood, it was being alone.
He understood being unable to trust.
Sansa played the koto for him. She welcomed him into her rooms (later there were rumors of a shadow wolf with bat wings lurking around her quarters in the dead of night). He had felt even more out of place, among her kimonos and books, glancing down at the stack of love letters that lay half forgotten in the corner. Jon hoped they stayed that way.
Truthfully, Jon had very little experience with ladies of the nobility. They were distant willowy creatures, who sat behind screens brushing their endless hair.
Sansa’s hair brushed the floor when she walked, and she sometimes sang to herself while she wrote. They never went to the flower viewings, or to the banquets. Jon kept to himself and Sansa trailed whispers behind her whenever she did her official duties. Jon often sat at the window of her room, flexing his burned hand while Sansa thought. It was easy being with her.
They talked about the rice harvest, the imperial debt, the best spring wakas. Sansa’s dreamy expressions masked her wit. She was not stupid, only quiet. She worried after the young girls newly arrived at court. Constantly, she was coming up with unobtrusive ways to guide the young girls that the court devoured.
I was a foolish girl too, Jon. No one told me better. I had to learn on my own.
Jon was silent. He thought of Sam, who had needed kindness. Of all the boys and men who had been thrown away. Of the only father he had ever known, who had loved an outcast child and had died for his mercy.
Sansa knew the risks she took, sneaking in and patching cloths, arranging color combinations, and slipping perfumes. She was a prisoner here, unable to leave until granted imperial permission, but she was still kind.
Sometimes, Jon forgot the aching cold in his chest and remembered to laugh.
When Jon had to leave Sansa, he knew he loved her. There was a war to fight, and Jon was not a courtier but a soldier. It was the first time he had ever seen Sansa cry. She had begged him, and the temper Jon kept barely under the surface boiled up. He had a duty, and she knew it and she knew he had to go.
That was another thing Jon had done wrong.
The mountain road was long, longer than it had seemed in childhood.