Chapter Text
The cicadas never ceased their humming. It grated on Sansa’s ears as it echoed through her mother’s house. The only thing louder was the emptiness. Her brothers were nothing more than wisps of smoke above the funeral plain, and the one who still lived had buried himself in studies of the esoteric. Arya was traveling. There were letters, Sansa’s only outside contact, but they came infrequently and stained with the dust of the road. Letters were always a poor substitute for a sister, at any rate.
The only servant Sansa permitted was Old Nan, who spent her time muttering and cooking. The only clothes Sansa wore were the iron-grey of mourning. The only pastime she pursued was dreaming, going through adolescent diaries and childish poems.
It was the emptiness that both soothed and cut. She had retreated from public life more than a year ago, but it took less than half that for the letters from former friends and lovers to trickle to a stop.
How romantic, they cried. A religious retreat to the hinterlands. They had written countless wakas to her, praising the purity of nature she was surely experiencing. They had amused her, along with the gossip they felt obligated to include. Margaery’s were always the most interesting, filled with intimate details of her life as imperial consort. Once, Sansa would have envied her, but now she felt only relief that her one-time friend had received the position instead of her.
But they came to a stop, and Sansa did not miss the constant reminder of her former life.
Her responses were few, but always carefully thought out. She played the part of a lady disillusioned with worldly affairs, preoccupied with salvation and copying countless sutras.
She did not pray anymore
It’s the only place I can go where people don’t talk to me
Sansa had not always been prone to melancholy, but service in the imperial court had taught her very little in the way of happiness. Religion had become her shield.
But it was just that, a shield. Her devotion to seeking salvation from the Amida Buddha had always been tempered by her father’s worship of the gods of the sea and mountain.
So, in her mother’s house, Sansa did not copy sutras. Instead, she poured over her diaries.
It was a morbid habit, Old Nan claimed. Sansa should not spend her days reflecting on her past like a shriveled up old woman.
Sansa ignored her.
The diaries themselves evoked memories of Sansa’s unyielding naiveté. She had been a beautiful girl, fresh-faced and sweet. Her auburn hair had been just a finger length longer than her height and her tall stature allowed her to wear amounts of robes that would have engulfed a shorter woman. That girl was the height of desirability, long-limbed with luxuriously thick hair and pale, clear skin. She had inherited her father’s eye for color and pattern, and her coloring allowed her to pull off daring combinations.
One entry detailed an occasion where Sansa had arrayed herself in in reds and yellows, her inner robes the palest yellow and her mantle a deep scarlet, with burnt oranges in between. Some courtier had written a poem declaring her the soul of fall.
Sansa had been delighted to be so connected to the most fashionable season.
There were countless little instances like this. She smiled at some of them, remembering the joy a compliment on her fan or a well-received poem brought.
Her fingers rested on an entry. Her heart sped up as she read it.
It was her first encounter with her cousin at court.
There had been a light snowfall that night, and Sansa had ventured out to view the reflection of the moonlight on pristine snow. Her heavy padded robes in lavender and dusky rose pulled around her, Sansa had left her fan behind. The moon was half-full, and Sansa hummed to herself, dreaming of the poem she would compose.
He saw must have seen her first, for when she started at the sight of a dark figure, he was already gazing back at her.
Sansa had never been close to her cousin. She was younger than him, and they had never had much in common. Then there were her mother’s frowns, her disapproval of association with an inheritor of such bad karma.
The crown prince had fallen in love with a thoroughly unsuitable lady. She was a provincial, meant to marry another soon, but he pursued her anyway. He took her as second wife, much to the grief of his put-upon consort. The court, who loved the crown prince’s consort, scorned her. She was locked in corridors and her robes were smeared with dog excrement. She was miserable and longed for home, a distant, northern region. Her husband neglected her, sinking into one of his characteristic melancholies that made the court attendants sigh. Her father died, and then her eldest brother. She died in childbirth, far from her home and family, alone and unwanted. Her son was disregarded, sent away to the backward residence of his mother’s family.
Bad karma, Sansa’s mother had always said when she warned her daughters away from him. Misfortune spreads.
Sansa had never had much interest in Jon. He was moody, but not in the sensitive way of her much-vaunted literary heroes. He was kind but had little interest in the fashionable color combinations she put together for her dolls as soon as she learned their names. She played the thirteen-stringed koto, he read Father’s law books. She was the perfect lady, tucked up in her rooms reading, and he was always off tromping with Robb. There was no ill will between them. There was nothing between them at all.
But under the half moon, his grey eyes glowed with something she could not read. She wished for her fan. Jon was a close relative. He had seen her face countless times. Somehow, though, this was far more intimate. She felt exposed, her face bare before this almost-stranger. She wanted to retreat behind the blinds and put the formalities of men and women between them.
Under a plum tree, its gnarled age exposed in its winter nakedness, the wind blew snow into his hair. His hair bled into the inky night, his dark clothes consumed by shadows. For a moment, Sansa saw the world suspended, Jon frozen in the winter night.
She did not remember what they spoke of, only that single moment.
Even now, in the heat of summer, her bones were chilled with the memory.
They rarely interacted at court. He was thoroughly unfashionable and hovered around the edges of impropriety. She was in bloom then, wooed by numerous men.
Then Crown Prince Joffrey had approached her and then discarded her, and her world crumbled. The gossips turned on Sansa with a viciousness she had always thought herself impervious to.
Sansa had a series of unfortunate love affairs. There had been the pitiful courtship of Sir Dontos, the awkward engagement to Lord Tyrion, which led her into the clutches of the Minister of the Treasury Bureau, Lord Baelish. That business with Lord Baelish had been strange, and in the end, he practically pushed her into the arms of Harry Hardyng.
Unmarried women had affairs as a matter of course, and men were expected to entertain as many lovers as they could, but Sansa’s scandals piled up with the disasters that seemed to engulf her. The imperial family had already been decimated by a series of fires that swept through the palace. The throne had gone to a distant cousin (Jon had been passed over by the regent, Tywin Lannister, who maneuvered his daughter’s husband onto the throne). Then the Crown Prince died at his own wedding, and someone suggested the Lady Sansa spread bad luck to men associated with her, and her reputation was in tatters.
But there was Jon to comfort her. He slipped into her room at night, always silently waiting for her permission to slide the screens aside.
She would recite stories, and she had a vivid memory of their hands meeting as he helped her move her koto.
He was silent more often than not, but his eyes were always watching. Beneath his perennially black clothes and perceived ignorance of things like incense and dance, Jon continually astounded Sansa with his wry observations of the court.
Jon saw everything, but rarely spoke of what he knew. Sansa understood the court now, but unlike Jon who disdained it, she felt moved to help. There were always young girls who fell into the machinations of others, and though Sansa was loath to tar them with the same brush as herself in the eyes of others, she did her best assist behind the scenes. Small things, like sneaking in to set out a girl’s robes in a flattering combination or tucking scented sachets into her clothes. Nothing drastic, and nothing too noticeable.
Sansa retreated into herself, longing for home (is this how Aunt Lyanna felt?). Jon smelled of pine and snow, and she found herself longing to wrap herself around his scent.
When he left for a post in far flung lands, Sansa had wept. She reproached him for leaving her alone. He reproached her. He had to do his duty.
Jon did his duty and Sansa was left with tear-soaked sleeves.
There was a new emperor, and a new empress, and Sansa found herself alone again. Her father died, and then her brother, and then her mother, and then another brother. Now Sansa was always shrouded in grey, and servants scuttled away from her. Bad karma, bad luck.
Arya had saved Sansa. Her little sister had swept into court and pulled favors Sansa did not question how she had. She was released from her imperial service, something that had been denied time and time again.
Jon had never come to see her.
They had never been lovers, Sansa told herself (had she ever given him a chance?). He had seen her as his lonely cousin, put upon by the court. She had not wanted to sleep with anyone ever again after all that business, but she dreamed of him.
She privately thought that is the real reason she happily followed Arya to their childhood home. There were no memories of Jon for her here.
Why could she not stop thinking of him? In the depth of summer, during the long rains, all she could dream about was the way snow glinted on his dark curls.
She shed her layers and lay outside, her hair veiling her body.
Sansa was bad karma. No wonder Jon did not want to meet with her again.
And then above her, was Jon. He peered down at her, his eyes looking into her. The gaze they shared was so intimate, far more exposing than anything she had ever done with the men who called themselves her lover.
I meant to see you in the fall, he told her. I wanted to see you in your season.
Sansa laughed. I thought you didn’t want to see me at all. You never came back
You were angry at me. I thought… I thought you were done with me.
No. I was never angry with you. Only with myself.
Jon touched her hair, tentatively, waiting for permission. Sansa smiled and pulled him inside.
Come autumn, then winter, and then spring, Sansa would never be done with Jon.