Chapter Text
The girl has hair redder than the sleek convertibles parked outside, set into the sort of nice glossy curls that screams money and patience, ‘cause you got to work them at least an hour every morning to get it right, just like the magazine covers. The girl has red hair, but she got red lips too, painted sharp and precise and it won’t leave a stain when she brings a beer bottle to her mouth.
She’s wearing low pumps that match the bow of her dress, cotton candy pink, and her skirt is white and wide and stopping just at the height of her kneecaps, whispering as she shifts on the barstool, legs politely crossed at the ankle.
A man across the room sees the way a heart-shaped pendant falls at the edge of her neckline, how soot-dark eyelashes brush the rise of her cheekbones when she blinks. He stands, grins, drink in hand.
There’s a figure in black sliding right next to her in the space of a breath, then, all slicked back hair and leather, a gloved hand coming to rest on the small of her back before the man can make his move.
“I didn’t―” the man starts, but Jon Snow is staring at him with eyes that are too dark and too hard and too old for his face, free hand already hovering at his hip, over the gleaming metal of the gun tucked at his waistband.
“You better go, sir,” Jon Snow says, low, and the girl with the red hair touches her fingers to his wrist, and if you squint your eyes just so, it’s not as easy to tell who’s protecting who. “She’s my sister.”
This is what they whisper in the streets: someone touched her once when she didn’t want to be touched, left her skin bruised for all the world to see, and Jon Snow brought the Boltons’ rings and bars and warehouses crashing down in flames, drowned ‘em all in blood till there was nothing but dead bodies rotting on the asphalt left.
But that, that’s a story for another time.
Right now, “she’s my sister,” Jon Snow says, throws the words like bullets, and Sansa’s mouth curves at the corner, her hand falling over his.
Jon Snow, war hero before twenty, head of the bad parts of town before twenty-five; stuff like that, it’s what legends are made of, and Jon Snow can’t go anywhere without being recognized, not anymore, not now that this place lives and breathes his (first) name like it’s a prayer, like it’s a curse, like the stories you read on the Sunday paper.
Jon Snow has always been a bastard first and a son second, a soldier first and a boy second, a brother to men who didn’t share the same blood as him but now, now―
He’s got his revolver hidden under his coat and a dagger strapped to his ankle, because how can he not?
(The thing nobody knows: Sansa keeps a pistol in her dainty purse as well, a socialite’s handgun, pretty and pearl-handled and just the right size to fit, unnoticed, up the sleeves of her furs. She’s only used it once, but she won’t tell anyone but Jon about it, and she doesn’t like to think about it much lest it become too real a weight to properly ignore when she’s got to.)
Men hold their shoulders straight and duck their heads when Jon Snow walks into the room, any room, because Jon Snow used to be nothing but now he’s everything. The city’s edges and shadows have stretched and twisted to accommodate him, streetlights flickering over the empire no one ever expected would fall into his hands.
And Jon, he went to war alright, but no one’s really sure he ever came back.
Guess that’s what makes him good at the business, someone says over a game of pool, voice drowned out in cigar smoke, the kid ain’t never gonna stop fighting.
Once, Jon got stabbed so close to the heart everyone thought he was dead.
Once, Jon got stabbed so close to the heart that he should be dead, but he isn’t, he’s here, and he has the scar across his chest to prove it and he’s even learned to joke about it. In that tired way of his.
Says, it’s my good luck charm, how ‘bout that.
Sansa traces her fingers over it, sometimes, feels raised skin and even heartbeat, thinks that this is her brother, right here, this blood beating under a cold knife wound, this is Jon.
This is Jon.
In another life he might’ve been the good guy, fighting to save the world, his family, his soul ―anything. Dying for a cause greater than yourself, it’s got a hell lot of a poetic ring to it. And it sounds so damn pure, so good, so honorable, so everything he always dreamt of being and so everything he’s not.
In another life, she might’ve been the princess, holding onto her love and her sweetness and her innocence, because having a heart big enough to make the world into something pretty, it sounds far too nice to be true, a thing straight out of the movies.
But this is the life they’ve got here, side by side in a black car out on the open road, Sansa’s bright wedges on the dashboard, Jon’s fedora dipped low and slanting.
Jon’s got one hand on the steering wheel, the other slung out the window, a cigarette smoking thinly as it dangles between bruised knuckles. Sansa purses her lips, “this is bad for you, you know.”
There are so many things in their lives that are bad for them, and Sansa, well, she’s content enough not thinking about any of it now.
Jon’s laughter is a cough of smoke. “Father always said it ruins your teeth, gives you wrinkles.” His grip on the wheel is steady, so steady, like he wants to prove to himself he can do this, he can keep it all running smooth. “Maybe it’s true, maybe it’ll fuck my face up, make me look older.”
And Sansa thinks ―oh.
It’s the middle of winter, the snow falling like whitewash over the town’s grey canvas, and some people whisper, some people wonder ―are Jon and Sansa…?
All sorts of fucked up things happen around here, anyway, and no one thinks they’d really be surprised, but they keep their suspicions low and muttered behind their hands, because―
―because, someone called Sansa Stark a whore when she wore a black skirt slit up to here, and Jon twisted the man’s arm behind his back and held a knife to his throat, face set into grim lines as he growled, “take this as a warning.”
But Jon and Sansa go dancing together that Friday night, and everyone stares while pretending not to stare. Song after song his hands are on her waist, feather-light and so very bare without those leather gloves on; always high enough that it wouldn’t ever be considered inappropriate, low enough that his fingers have to curve across the silk fabric of her dress, a little too snug around her hips.
They’re a whirlwind under the artificial golden lights, limned in gems and smoke, Sansa’s curls like a waterfall of blood enveloping them both as they spin. He smiles at her and she smiles at him and everyone agrees they’re a vision, sharp dark suit molding into silver sequins. Their wholeness, it’s in that way they’re both breathing each other’s air, in that way they’re both a little dead behind the eyes.
“I love this song,” she says, mouths the words against his neck when he leans close to spin her around. Her dress sways gently with it, and he can’t quite hide the shudder that ripples down his spine.
He pulls just a little away, their dance falling back into propriety again as the music slows, “it’s a good song.”
There’s something hoarse in his voice, something catching and faltering and she can’t help it; she sighs, feels her heart break in every place that’s still left tender, holds his gaze. “It’s about love,” she tells him like they’re sharing a secret, but really, has there ever been a melody written that was not about love?
This is how it happened, the first time he said it, whispered love you with that weary roughness that makes her ache all over ―he’d also said, got a new shipment coming tonight, liquor and rifles, down by the docks, gotta be careful, the Lannisters might try a raid, you never know―
You never know, and Sansa closes her eyes and lets the singer’s voice fill her up, like fraying velvet, feels every place where Jon’s fingers are softly pressed up against her waist.
“I know that,” Jon says, and it’s barely more than an exhaled breath, “I know it’s a love song.”
The catch: there’s no one in all of town who hasn’t asked after his mother, who doesn’t remember Ned Stark tearing his gaze away and keeping his secrets locked tight behind his teeth, because Ned Stark wore pin-striped suits and carried two guns but he was a good man too, as good as anyone around here can remain, kept his kids away from drugs and brothels and never killed anyone who didn’t deserve to be shot dead.
The catch: there’s no one in all of town who’s stopped whispering about his aunt, ‘cause that’s not the kind of story you forget, it’s not the kind of thing you won’t discuss over a game of cards, late in the night, high or drunk.
(The Targaryens built this place from the ground up, ruled it all across, from the railway stations to the docks, from the Governor’s house to the red light streets, from south to north ―and then Lyanna Stark disappeared, and Rheagar Targaryen died out on the sidewalk from a dozen stab wounds, and the Targaryens were no more when Ned Stark went home with a baby tucked away in his trench coat, and, and―)
The catch: Jon never got the family name, he got sent away to the army as soon as he learned how to use a pistol, and the world up there was so white and so cold that after he returned everyone called him Snow. His brothers and his sisters were good people, everyone says so, beautiful-faced children who went to private schools and wore expensive cashmere sweaters and didn’t have to keep daggers under their belts, because Ned Stark tried to steer ‘em away from this world, Ned Stark kept his kids clean.
But Jon is Jon Snow as soon as he blows right back into town, and he’s done legwork for Mance Rayder and he’s been in three raids and run from the cops and he’s cut a man’s head off and stolen diamonds and he’s bought and sold and dipped his hands in blood up to the elbow, and they all agree, yes, this is the one, this is the man born for this life.
And Sansa, she knows better.
She knows, because that same tiredness that’s gripping Jon by the throat is curled up inside her too, rattling against her ribcage, seeping into the marrow, that kind of tiredness that never quite goes away.
He’s good at this, her brother, he is ―he sits at the head of the table and surveys his turf with a level, cold stare, but his hands are always itching under his gloves, always ready to reach for a gun, and if he sometimes glances her way when he’s not sure the decision he’s made is right, well, Sansa sees it, Sansa is there.
“Listen to me,” she tells him, after, behind closed doors, “listen to me.”
And he does.
Sometimes, he does.