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On the word of two men whose honor could not be denied—Bran Stark and Howland Reed—it is not long before the North becomes privy to their former liege lord’s greatest secret:
Eddard Stark had fathered no bastard; indeed, Jon Snow is no bastard at all, but the legitimized son of the affair that had nearly set the Seven Kingdoms aflame. Rhaegar Targaryen may have absconded with Lyanna Stark in a fit of passion all those years ago, but he had wasted no time in securing their son’s legitimacy and claim to the Iron Throne. Even if anyone dared question young Bran’s visions, Reed has the documentation to prove it.
There is no doubt, but the answer to his life’s most guarded, precious secret does not offer Jon Snow any relief as he once thought it might. His mind is a tumultuous storm that he cannot contain, and one he doesn’t have the time to contend with when so many outside forces threaten them. If he were able, Jon would have shoved this information to the back of his mind to deal with later—when the war was done and they were safe. His claim to the Iron Throne and all of Westeros means nothing to him. He hadn’t even wanted to be crowned King in the North—the North belongs to Sansa, no matter what their bannerman would declare otherwise—so what would six other kingdoms give to him when he has no want of the one he has now?
There would be no need for these political machinations… if it hadn’t been for Daenerys.
Jon had been close—so close—to securing an agreement with her so that she might aid in the war against the White Walkers. Her army of Unsullied and Dothraki alike is a formidable force, and in any case they need all the men they can get if they are to survive the winter—men, and dragons. Despite Daenerys’ (rather unreasonable, Jon thinks) protectiveness over her monstrous children, as she calls them, she had nearly come around to an alliance with Jon’s cause.
And then, Jon’s claim to the throne—her throne—is revealed: Stronger, inarguable, incontestable, and the North had already rallied behind him as their king. As such, Daenerys had been on high alert already, but when Bran’s words are confirmed by Reed’s papers, she sics Drogon on Jon with one furious “DRACARYS!”
But Daenerys is not the last dragon, and she is not the only one who cannot be burnt.
Jon emerges from Drogon’s flames, eyes wild with indignation and perhaps a hint of fright, but otherwise unscathed.
He rages at her, and she at him. Their shouts ring off the walls of Winterfell. She calls him a threat, a usurper, a traitor to her and their family name. He calls her mad, and demands to know what good a bloody chair will do her when the White Walkers are upon them.
“I don’t want to rule the Seven Kingdoms!” Jon all but bellows. “Take them for all I care! But I won’t stand by quietly just so you can be comfortable in your claim! I’ll fight the Walkers, with or without you, and I’ll fight you afterwards if I have to!”
Daenerys’ eyes flash, but she does not deny the war she has begun between them.
The uneasy alliance they had built is broken, irreparably shattered, but they must clamber over the rubble if the realm is to see another summer. But for all her fresh paranoia, Daenerys has seen the army of the undead for herself; they are coming, and she must meet them when they do. Anything else can wait. It must.
But no amount of counsel from her Hand can convince Daenerys to extend her trust to the Starks and their Northern seat again—not without considerable effort on their end. And so negotiations begin.
Jon tries to keep his anger in check throughout. He scowls at the table that separates him from his aunt, Tyrion Lannister, and their personal guard. Ser Davos is sat to his right, Sansa to his left, and Bran at the head of the table to oversee. He, like Jon, has no desire for the Northern crown, but Winterfell is his by right, and so his presence puts the Starks’ bannermen at ease.
Jon is restless throughout the meeting. He says little more than the occasional grunt, leaving the more even-tempered Bran and Davos to work out the details. More than once he closes his eyes in an attempt to compose himself, his breath coming slow and measured through his nose, and Sansa lays her hand over his, which he has curled into a fist atop his thigh. She does not look at him, but squeezes gently, and a rush of calm overcomes him at her touch. He unclenches his fist and turns his hand, palm-up, to interlace his fingers with hers.
He thinks, not for the first time, that he loves her. And his heart settles, because now he can.
Daenerys can have her Iron Throne. She can have her army and her dragons and the love of the people. Jon doesn’t need it. Sansa takes his hand, and he thinks that he will never want for anything again as long as he lives.
Bran, however, does not yield to the Dragon Queen’s propositions so easily.
“The North will retain its independence,” he tells her firmly when she demands that they swear fealty to her once the war is done. “They won’t bend the knee so freely again. If they hear wind of such a threat, one of them will undoubtedly kill you in your sleep.”
“And you would allow this?”
“I haven’t the power to stop it.”
Daenerys very nearly snarls, “You are their lord.”
“I am a crippled boy with the right name,” Bran says, his words as cool as Daenerys’ are heated. “I’m in no position to wrestle a dagger out of a stronger man’s hands.”
“You are asking me to relinquish the largest of the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Yes,” Bran says simply. “We will back your claim to the throne if it still stands, but we will not bow to outsiders again. The last time the Targaryens had power over the Starks, your brother stole my aunt away and started a war between us. However willing she may have been to go, you won’t convince the Northern houses of that, not when your father burned my grandfather and uncle alive. This offer is the best I can give to you.”
There is a tic in Daenerys’ jaw, but Tyrion mutters something to her and she nods, however reluctantly.
“Fine,” she says in clipped tones. She turns from one Stark to the other, and Jon is forced to meet her eye. Whatever she wants now, it’s clearly something for which she’ll require his agreement more than Bran’s. “Then there’s only one final matter to settle.”
About bloody time. The sky outside the window had darkened from steely grey to inky indigo some hours past, and the light of the moon shines bright into the chamber they haven’t left for half a day. A waste, Jon thinks, his irritation flaring again. A fucking waste of time that we can’t afford to lose, but her ugly throne matters more to her than the people who would put her there.
Now Daenerys turns to Tyrion, inviting him to continue. He clears his throat and shifts in his seat; the man’s unease piques Jon’s own. He had known Tyrion to be a confident, collected man, so anything that might be giving him pause surely won’t be good for the rest of them, either.
Under the table, Jon’s grip on Sansa’s hand tightens.
“Despite appearances,” Tyrion begins with the distinct air that he’d rather not be speaking at all, “Daenerys would very much like an accord to be struck. The sooner we can come to an agreement, the sooner we can move on to the more… prevalent… problem. Her trust has been shaken—understandably so, she would have me add—”
Jon turns his grimace onto the woman in question. “Is this necessary?”
Annoyed by Jon’s impatience, Daenerys interrupts her Hand’s introduction: “We propose a marriage alliance, so that I have no reason to distrust the Starks again. We will bind our causes in a union, as noble families have done for centuries. And, thankfully, such a possibility has been made all the easier, as Tyrion and Lady Sansa have proven a friendly enough match in years past.”
Silence falls upon the room. A resounding silence that rings in Jon’s ears. A taut silence that makes him see red.
Sansa’s fingers twitch in his hold.
“Tyrion… and Sansa,” Bran echoes dully, effectively breaking the quiet, but his words are drowned out by Jon’s sudden, indignant shout.
“Why?”
“Tyrion is loyal to me, and to you. I won’t have him choosing between us,” Daenerys explains, as if it’s the most reasonable thing in the world when, really, it’s the most infuriatingly unreasonable thing Jon’s ever been forced to listen to. “He will remain my Hand, and become Sansa’s husband once more.”
Sansa’s hand falls from his when Jon gets to his feet in a rush of fury. His palms are braced on the table as he leans forward, close enough that Daenerys cannot mistake his refusal.
“Over my dead body,” he growls. He’s never felt like more or less of a man than he does in this moment: here, now, balancing on the precipice between his past and a future that might not exist if they never get out of this bloody room. A future he doesn’t want if it means Sansa must repeat her past, a life he would gladly leave if it’s meant to be one without her.
Daenerys meets his unyielding gaze with her own unwavering one, her hands folded primly atop the papers in front of her. “That can be arranged.”
“Enough,” Bran interjects before Jon can throttle his aunt and end this madness for good. “Sit down, Jon, we’re not finished—”
“I am.” Jon pushes back from the table, his chair toppling to the ground behind him. “I’m finished. We’re done with this.”
“Jon…” Sansa’s voice is quiet. It’s the first time she’s spoken, the first time her face has fallen from that stoic, stony expression she wears so that no one can use her feelings against her. Her brow relaxes, her shoulders fall, almost imperceptibly, but Jon sees. He sees everything about her, always.
She’s going to agree, Jon thinks in a panic that he can’t hide. He looks from Sansa to a speechless Tyrion and back again, shaking his head. “No, Sansa. You’re not marrying him. You’re not marrying anyone.”
Not unless you want to. Not unless it’s me.
“That’s not your decision to make,” Daenerys snaps.
Jon is fit to burst. “Then why am I here? What am I doing here, Daenerys, if I haven’t got a say in anything?” he demands. It doesn’t matter, none of this matters. “You’ll take what you want whether I give it to you or not! It’s what Targaryens do.”
Her eyes flash the way they had when she’d tried to burn him and he’d called her mad for it. Her teeth are bared in a scowl and she says, “You forget, nephew, that you’re just as much a Targaryen as I am.”
“Then kill me now,” Jon says as he storms from the room. He aches at the broken glimmer in Sansa’s eyes as they follow him out. “Gut out my heart, Daenerys, feed it to your dragons, and damn your brother’s ghost to hell.”
My father’s ghost, an unbidden voice deep within reminds him, and Jon slams the chamber door behind him.
The heart tree looms over him, ghostly white against the dark but ever-encroaching dawn. Its red leaves shudder in the snapping winter breeze, and its eyes—just as red as its canopy, and boring into Jon’s own as though it knows the innermost secrets of his regretfully beating heart.
No man can lie in the face of a weirwood, Ned Stark had told him once. But Jon has no interest in lies. Not anymore.
In truth—and he supposes that here in the godswood, there is nothing else for it but truth—Jon had never cared what his relation to Sansa was, not even when he still believed her to be his half-sister. Thinking about her the way that he does had never felt anything other than right. Meant-to-be. Perhaps if they had met again under different circumstances, if he had not just been raised from a death brought about by his brothers’ mutiny, perhaps then his honor would have stopped him from looking at her the way a lover, not a brother, does.
But what does honor matter, really? he asks the heart tree in front of him. He’d wondered this himself so many times since his resurrection and still he has no real answer. His own honor had turned the men of the Night’s Watch against him. His own honor had killed him. So why, now, should it stop him from loving her?
It hadn’t. Jon had loved her almost from the start. But he had done so quietly, keeping the words and his feelings and the way he wants to touch her, all to himself—not because he is ashamed, but for fear of how Sansa might react when confronted with yet another man who wants something from her.
Hadn’t she been through enough?
He had promised to protect her. So how could he go to her now and confess how he longs to love her?
The light crunch of snow underfoot pulls Jon from his torturous thoughts—of her smile and the way that it might taste—and he turns his eyes from the heart tree’s to meet hers. Sansa acknowledges his gaze with the slightest twitch of her lips, but says nothing when Jon would say everything, if only he could muster the courage.
Don’t marry him.
We don’t need Daenerys’ army that badly. I’ll find another way. Any other way.
Don’t marry him.
Anything else—Daenerys might take anything else from me. But not you.
Don’t marry him.
Marry me.
His words are not enough, and so he cannot bring himself to say them. Instead, he and Sansa stand, side-by-side, beneath the great weirwood at the heart of the godswood. Jon had broken his vows long ago and Sansa had stopped praying when the Lannisters took her father’s head, and yet here they stand, right where they’d started.
Where they will go from here is another matter entirely, Jon thinks. But he looks into the heart tree’s eyes and he vows that wherever it is, they’ll go there together. Damn anyone who tries to force his hand otherwise.
They stand in silence, their arms brushing through their cloaks, but the quiet cannot go on forever.
Sansa takes a breath, the sweetness of it cutting into the ice in the pre-dawn air, and begins, “Lord Tyrion is a kind man—”
But Jon is having none of it.
“And where would you go with him?” he wants to know. “To Casterly Rock? No.” He shakes his head as vigorously as he had hours ago, when this maddening, painful, cut-his-heart-out plot had been suggested in the first place. “No, Sansa, you don’t belong there. Not in the South. Not again.”
The North has not been especially kind to her, either, Jon knows. But it’s where she belongs. He knows that, too, and so does she.
And yet, still she argues. She’s always arguing with him, always making him see sense where he’s failed to find it. She had been right every time before—Jon hadn’t believed her then, he hadn’t seen any other way, but in the end she had come through when he couldn’t, no matter how he had wanted to, no matter how he had tried. He had fallen, time and again, and she had saved him.
Now, though… He needs her to be wrong. No matter the cost. He needs there to be another way.
But Sansa is as relentless as he, and she’s more right than he’s ever been.
“If Daenerys wants a marriage alliance, I don’t see what choice we have. I don’t want to, Jon,” she confesses, forcing him to turn towards her, and he catches the brightness of her eyes in the dim light around them, “but this is more important than what I want. What I want—” her voice cracks, but she soldiers on, as she always has. “What I want doesn’t matter. It can’t. Not now. And even if it made a difference, I’ll never get it, will I? I’ve left those dreams behind.”
Her shoulders are straight, but her eyes downcast when she tells him, “No one will ever marry me for love.”
I would, Jon thinks, and it only takes a heartbeat for him to realize that he’s said the words aloud.
Sansa’s eyes are wide, her pretty, chapped lips parted in a soft gasp that’s lost on the wind. But his words remain, hanging between them, begging for recognition, for acceptance. They had been on the tip of his tongue for so long, and here they stand, in the middle of the godswood, where no man can lie in the face of a weirwood tree.
“Jon, I—” Sansa’s mouth presses in a hard yet trembling line, and there is nothing more that she can say.
But Jon has held it all in for too long; the words are clamoring for release. He can’t stop what he’s already begun. So he slips his hands into hers and pulls her close, where he’s sure she’s meant to be.
“Marry me, Sansa,” he murmurs, breath warm in its caress upon her lips. His gaze flickers across every shadow of her face, committing it to memory so the thought of her might warm him when he’s forced to leave her for the war. “Not him, not Tyrion. Not again. Not anyone else. Marry me.”
Something like a whimper escapes her, her fingers grasping his hands as though his hold on her is the only thing tethering her to the ground beneath them. “We can’t—”
“We can,” Jon insists. “If Daenerys wants a marriage alliance, she can’t refuse us. We would bind our families together, Stark and—and Targaryen…”
His voice fades on the name—his name, his lineage, the truth of who he is, revealed at last… He falters, but Sansa holds him here in the godswood, and she tells him all that he’s ever needed to hear.
“You’re a Stark, Jon,” she says. Her thumbs canvass the backs of his hands and now it’s she who tugs him closer, into the warmth of her body and the beat of her heart that he so badly wants to win, to claim, to love so ardently that all of her scars fade in the wake of the way he would cherish her. “You’ve always been a Stark.”
Their eyes lock, blue on grey in a winter medley of the lightening sky above them, and Jon loves her like the world is ending.
And, perhaps, it could. So why should he waste the time the gods have granted them?
“I want you, Sansa,” he tells her, voice fluttering but emphatic, gaze dipping to her lips. He pulls her forward one last inch, so that she trods on his toes and he can taste her breath. “Be my wife. Let me love you. And I—I promise, Sansa, when all of this is over, I’ll come home to you.”
She nods, one of her hands leaving his to curl into his hair. The sun breaks over the horizon and dusts her eyes in the golden dawn, and her voice breaks again, this time in the loveliest sob Jon’s ever heard when she says, “Yes.”
He closes the last of the space between them when he takes her mouth, and he loves her out loud—here, without shame but with the honor she restored within him upon his new life. He cups her face in callused, wanting hands, and he vows that no matter where he must go, he will take her with him: In his heart, in his mind, in this ache and adoration he hadn’t ever expected before she had come to him.
His heart jumps when it feels the beat of hers through the cloaks she had sewn with the delicate, nimble hands that touch him now. No matter where he must go, he will come back to her when it’s all through.
He loves her, and he tells her so between their lips—here, on the break of dawn, the brink of war, and at the base of the heart tree.
When the war is done, Jon returns to Winterfell. To his wife, and the family that is left to them. He holds them fiercely and promises that he’s back now, forever, for good.
He takes his wife by the waist and pours devotion between her lips, brushes her tears dry and swears that he’ll never leave her side again.
The Northmen raise their swords and chant his name, and there is not a soul left alive who would call him Targaryen. Sansa had dubbed him Stark, and Jon carries the name as dutifully as any who had come before him. But, in the end, his name does not matter. He is only Jon—Bran’s brother, Arya’s best friend, and Sansa’s husband, and his heart is full of them.
When the war is done, Jon returns to Winterfell. To his home, to the family waiting for him therein, and they rebuild together.