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Sansa’s unannounced appearance in his chambers hours after a supper she neglected to preside over is surprising. Indeed, a visit from his wife is unusual no matter the circumstances. It is their practice for Jon to come to her chambers at night and her solar during the day, and they are nothing if not creatures of habit. Ritual gives reliable shape to their relationship, making Sansa feel safe and Jon sure of his place.
When it comes to his wife, anything outside of the norm gives him pause, for fear that they will slide back into polite distrust and unspoken dissatisfaction. That old rush of unease creeps along his flesh, as she stands hands clasped before her with her back to his chamber door, the candlelight casting a light that makes her hair dance like flames. She is lovely—the loveliest woman in all of the North, surely—and while she is the one closest to him in this world, here and now she seems out of place in her tempting, foreign beauty.
He should stand, but he feels as fixed to his chair as a deeply rooted weirwood tree.
“Are you well? Is all well?” he asks, before shutting the heavy tome before him with a thud.
They are household accounts, something she usually sees to without assistance, but she has not been herself. Not for weeks. Listless and pale, missing meals and excusing herself from her duties, when she can, the lady of Winterfell has spent more time in her chambers than not. It was not a week ago that Jon asked the maester to see to his lady wife, so as to make certain she was well.
“May we talk?”
It does not escape him that she didn’t answer his question.
“Of course,” he says, finally finding his feet.
She moves across the room with her usual grace, and it isn’t until she stands before him that he realizes he should have already offered her his seat—the only one here, since no one else takes their rest in his chamber—a courtesy to make her feel welcome. He turns, ready to belatedly make the offer, when her fingertips brush his untucked tunic.
These are Sansa’s sort of gentle intimacies, and of late, they make his heart race as surely as anything of a bolder bent, for they sometimes precede a tenderness that has the ability to crack him wide open. Those moments, those are what he has come to understand as love.
“I’m with child,” she says without preamble.
Her gaze flits from his even as his chest swells with an emotion so unfamiliar as to defy naming.
He will be a father. Sansa is with child. His child. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands and his mouth goes dry. The room itself suddenly feels half its normal size.
She must feel it too or something like it, for her hands tremble until she notices him looking and tucks them away behind herself.
“Sansa…”
It is what they have planned for in a mostly unspoken way—the original purpose of their union—and yet, the revelation shocks him. After many moons together, the possibility of conceiving faded from his consciousness. And still he went to her, finding comfort more than duty there and learning to stay, facing the awkwardness of enjoying the embrace of a wife who was once his sister until it did not weigh so heavy.
“I couldn’t very well keep it from you, when I can’t hold anything down. So, yes, I am well, but… not quite so well as I would like. Mother was never sick her whole pregnancy from what I recall.”
She looks up at him through her lashes, no pleasure lighting her oval face. Both as a result of her nature and the expectations placed upon her in childhood, of all his siblings, she was perhaps the most made for domestic happiness. Her manner, her words, however, they are not of a wife pleased. His gut twists.
He would draw her in to his chest, rake his fingers through her hair, and kiss her, but it doesn’t feel as if she would welcome his touch anymore than she seems to welcome this babe.
“You wished to keep it from me?”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “The thought did cross my mind, but for what purpose, I couldn’t say. Everyone will be able to tell soon enough. And you’ll want to send word to King’s Landing, I suspect.”
He assured her once of his intentions, regarding any children they might have. He vowed that whatever Daenerys might wish, their children would remain in Winterfell with their mother, and that he would not take flight for King’s Landing as soon as an heir to the throne was secured. They were not temporary. She was not a brood mare. Not to him.
Since they were wed, he has kept his promises. This is one vow he will have no difficulty keeping, for it is his desire as well. This babe will know only Winterfell as its home.
Her tongue darts out over her lower lip, as her hands fall at her side, looking more defeated than she ought. “The queen will be pleased.”
Jon doesn’t care whether she will or not. There is only one person’s happiness with which he is concerned.
“How soon?” He swallows thickly and lifts a hand to grasp her waist, still narrow as a girl’s. “How soon until you show?”
Her skirts sway over the rushes, and though it is no more than a hairsbreadth, she moves towards him. “Two moons? Three?”
Sansa remembers everything, carefully stowing away information like the most meticulous of record keeping maesters. She must remember his vow made to her on bended knee to keep their children here. She must recall his declaration that this is where he wanted to be, by her side. Experience has made Sansa a student of people, a cataloger of evidence, unlikely to forget anything, let alone something vital.
It has left her in need of reassurances as well, as a balm to her unseen wounds.
Jon could stand to be assured of something too—that she does not despise him, that when she lies beside him at night, hair damp at the temples and breath ragged, she feels the same surety tucked at his side as he does. But he’ll never get it if she does not feel safe.
“Then we’ll wait that long or longer, as long as we can to send word. There’s no rush.”
Her stare is a weighty thing, a visual appraisal of his real meaning. He can bear it.
He lets himself glance at her middle. There is nothing to see. Still he would touch her.
“If we wait, someone else could get word to her. She might be angry that you didn’t speed word to her.”
The wool of her gown rasps underneath the rub of his thumb. “I’ve born her wroth before.”
She gives no smile at his failed levity and he sighs. “I’m glad of it, Sansa. More glad than I can say.”
They’re not a poet’s words, but they’re true.
His fingers press, rocking her forward until her skirts spread over his feet and her hands flatten against his chest. Lifting his brows in silent question, he waits to release her if need be.
“Are you, Jon? Glad for us?”
“Aye. I am.” With no thought to the kingdoms or thrones and heirs.
She rests her head on his shoulder and his heart climbs into his throat. Raising a hand to cup the back of her head, he draws his nose along the side of her brow. She smells of juniper, of home. He would have her in his bed, but he doesn’t know how such things work with women, who are with child. Perhaps it makes no difference, for Sansa must know and her fingers pull at his tunic, creasing the linen with urgency, making his voice rough with need. “Let it be just for us for as long as we dare.”
She lifts her head. Her answer—her declaration to him, the one he truly needs—is a kiss.