Chapter Text
After over a decade, it is habit more than anything else. Her eyes just start to follow Jon in the bright morning sun and the low candlelight and everywhere in between.
She’s searching for a glint of violet in his eyes, a gleam of silver to his hair. The only pure Targaryen she has ever met was the Dragon Queen. So, she looks for that shape of the jaw and that curve of the cheek bones.
But all she ever sees is a Stark. Dark hair and gray eyes and a long face. A man who looks so like his Lord Uncle he was taken for a son for his entire life. It probably should not bring her the comfort it does.
She imagines it was the same when Father had looked at him, only the comfort had more to do with Jon’s continued safety and protection, and not relief that House Stark would continue to survive and thrive through him.
She glances down to the newborn in her arms, and thinks she will be like all the rest, not a drop of Dragonlord to be found. Already her hair is nearly as red as a weirwood’s leaves. Her eyes are a Tully blue. The other girls’ had darkened to a Stark gray in a matter of weeks, but the boys had kept their mother’s color.
The boys who are being shepherded in by their father, now. Robb, eager to meet a sibling younger them himself, goes to jump on the bed with her. But Ned’s been an older brother three times over, and makes to stop him, though his seven year old frame isn’t quite enough to adequately hold onto a squirmy toddler. Jon grabs the younger one from behind and lifts him up.
“You have to be careful with Mother and the new babe.” He says gently. And Sansa can’t actually remember her father telling her Robb something similar when she was being presented, obviously, but she likes to think he did.
Jon sets Robb gently on the bed. Sansa adjusts her babe so he can see her. She blinks those too big eyes at her big brother.
“Mama,” He says, clearly aiming for and missing a whisper, “eyes like yours,” He pauses and glances at his brother, who is looking over at the babe too. “And Ned’s.”
“And Your’s.” Sansa says, leaning over to kiss the tip of his nose.
“You have your Grandmother’s Tully eyes.” Jon says, and Sansa is always astonished by how he does not sound bitter at all. Sansa loved her mother. Sansa knows her mother had loved her fiercely. She knows why Catelyn reacted to Jon the way she did. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t horrible. Jon never lets that on to the children, “And they are lovely.”
He gives both Robb and Ned quick kisses on their foreheads. Ned’s just old enough to scrunch his nose up at it.
“What’s her name?” Ned asks, much more careful to crawl on the bed, mindful of his oldest brother status.
Sansa smiles at him, and then over his dark curls at Jon.
They had been discussing names for several moons. And in fact, up until the maester had declared a girl, they still had not known if they’d call a new son Rickon or Rickard.
But a moon ago Sansa had suggested naming the baby after Jon’s aunt. On their sixth try, a Targaryen name seemed right to her.
Jon had frowned a bit at her suggestion.
And Sansa understood. Jon’s feeling about his Targaryen blood is at best complicated. There is a reason he leaves his aunt on the Iron Throne that is by all right and law his, while he rules the North (and the Riverlands and the Vale) from Winterfell. A reason not one of the five other children bare Dragon names. A reason the King of Winter is called Jon Stark and not Jaehaerys Targaryen by everyone from his wife to the smallest of smallfolk.
Jon grew up looking like a Stark prince of old, grew up in Winterfell. Grew up with his very beloved Stark cousins as his siblings, and idolizes his foster father still. He doesn’t have dragon dreams like his sire’s family, he shifts into the large direwolf that Sansa knows is running around the woods right now, corralling the pups. He hates the south almost as much as she does.
To have such a reminder of something he still struggles with daily will be hard. To say nothing of the relationship he and the eastern Queen had once shared. A relationship Sansa only knows of in pieces, but knows to have been passionate and fiery right until the painful end.
Sansa too has reservations, Daenerys is such a large name for such a little things. Particularly one who’s Valyrian blood is so well hidden beneath the blood of Andals and the First Men. She doubts Robb will even be about to pronounce it properly. He had failed at both Baratheon and Targaryen just a few days prior.
But Jon had agreed to the name for a daughter a fortnight ago. And it mostly sat well with Sansa.
Still, perhaps she should introduce their new sister as Dany.
But all such thoughts are delayed by a banging on the door followed by a shrill cry.
“You will wait for me, Princess.” Only a wildling woman can make the title princess sound quite so dismissive.
There is a young girl’s shirk, and then Sansa’s third daughter runs in, followed by her Reed and Baratheon cousins, and the poor nanny.
Dara runs right up the bed, on the other side from her brothers and father, with Summer stopping just a step behind her. Aggie pauses to at least try a young child’s version of a curtsy to the Queen and King for at least a moment. Because somehow, out of Catelyn Stark’s six granddaughters, Arya’s daughter has the most ladylike manners.
“Mama, Gilly said it’s a girl.” Dara says without preamble, leaning a knee on the bed, but not being able to throw her entire self on it because mother and newborn sister were in the way
The woman herself sighs as she rights herself from her own curtsy and walks up to her charge.
“I’m sorry, your grace,” she says, pulling Dara away just a little. “All three of them were very excited to see the new princess.”
“The fact that you able to keep them away for this long is an accomplishment in and of itself,” Jon assures her. Which is true. As is that fact that not one of them have smudges of dirt on their faces and that they are wearing dresses, and not the hodgepodge of rags Gilly always puts them in when they spend hours in the training yard, while the Snow boys walk them through the basics of sword fighting and the master at arms watched warily. She knows that must have been what they were doing, because nothing else would have kept them away. Sansa needs to figure out Gilly's secret. How she was able to convince them to wash up before they visited.
“It is a girl,” Sansa tells Dara, and shifting her again so that all three girls could get a better look, “You finally get a little sister.” A precious gift, Sansa knew all too well.
“Her eyes are like your’s,” Aggie whispers to Summer. Aggie’s Baratheon blue eyes are deeper than the River blue of her cousins and a reminder that the the last year has been an extended exercise in the little southern lady trying to make herself fit in with her northern family. But now, it seems to be settling out, Dara is just a year younger and Summer a year older, and despite the differences of Summer’s crannogmen sensibilities, Dara’s four year old wolf’s blood, and Aggie’s newness to the north, they got along far better than Arya and Sansa had until they were nearly grown.
It is very nice to have her here. Not far off at Storms End. To meet her new cousin, laugh with her uncle, and try to sword fight in the same yard where her mother once did the same.
“What’s her name?” Dara repeats her brother’s question, and Sansa smiles at her. Dany and Dara go well together.
“Catelyn.” Says Jon.
Sansa’s “What?” is drowned out by four children assuring the King and Queen of Winter that they know family history enough to recognize their grandmother.
“It is nice to meet you, Little Cat.” Says Summer, as bright as her name.
“Kitten?” asks Robb.
“No, Robb. She’s Cat-lin, not kitten.” Aggie corrects, like she’d tried to get him to say her house name before.
“Little Cat.” Robb says, pointing at his sister, “Kitten.”
“You’re right” Jon says, a grin growing on his face. “A little cat is a kitten. I suppose our little Cat is Kitten, too. “
“Hi, Kitten,” Robb says, reaching out a hand to touch her soft head. Words and gestures soon repeated by his siblings and cousins. The babe is effectively christened Kitten. Sansa just stares between her husband and the children before she is cut off by her own yawn.
Jon notices that, at least.
“Dara, Ned,” And both of their attention snapped to the father they are a little in awe of, “Why don’t you go and find the twins? They did not get to hear her name before they left. I’m sure they want to know before the court presentation later.” He turns to his nieces “And Summer, you and Aggie can go find your father and brother, maybe your mother, too. They’ll want to come and see the Queen and our new princess.”
Kisses and well wishes are shared for mother and babe, and then all of the children run off, save Robb, who is passed to Gilly to be returned to the nursery.
“And please send in the nursemaid,” He adds to Gilly’s back.
“No,” Sansa calls right away, “Not yet.”
And they get Gilly’s “Yes, your grace.” as the door closed behind her.
Jon looks at Sansa, “are you not tired?”
“I can rest with…” she pauses, look down at her new daughter. “Kitten, apparently.”
Jon must be laughing at the look on her face. “Do you not like it? I rather enjoy the idea of calling her that.”
Sansa isn’t sure, so she changes the subject. “Its more…Catelyn wasn’t the name we agreed to.”
Jon frowns. A common enough site, but normally harder to pin down right after one of his children is born. With Robb, it had taken four full moons for his underlying broodiness to return, “Isn’t it? You suggested it.”
Now she frowns. Of course she hadn’t, she knows Jon’s scars from her mother run deep. Had dismissed the idea when the twins were born of naming each one after a grandmother. Had resigned herself to having no Catelyn. Had been more than content with a Ned and a Robb.
“You said you’d wish I would consider non-Stark family names.”
She had, she remembers that. But she had said that when suggesting they name a girl child after his aunt, not after her mother. Not after his…
Oh. His beloved uncle’s wife. The mother of all his dear cousins.
His Lady Aunt, Catelyn Stark.
Then she sees why he liked Kitten so much. The perfect pet name. A way to honor her grandmother without him having to call her after the Aunt who represented so much of his childhood strife.
“Of course.” She says. And Princess Catelyn of House Stark and House Targaryen gets her name. Because it seems Jon has made his peace. Because they’ve already told the children and surely it will be around the castle in a hour. Because Robb can pronounce it. Because Sansa likes it more than Daenerys on a purely aesthetic level. Because Sansa would rather name her red headed daughter after her mother. Wants this with a deep sort of ache in her chest. “Kitten is the perfect name.”