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The lives of those who bear the Brand, from the last drop of blood, to the last moment of their agonizing demise, will feed life to the new daughter of death.
Jon remembers for a moment, what Sansa had said; “Look away.”
He wonders sometimes if he really should have had.
Sansa has a habit of running off and away. It’s why Jon comes up with the brilliant idea of using a leash and dragging her along the way.
Rickon wonders if the girl could still bring herself to trust them after this. She has tried to chew off the rope, tries to bite it and pull it off and each time, it’s him who has to tie the damn thing back tighter than before.
He sighs and kicks a leaf. They’ve been walking for hours with no stops. He’d thought about asking for a break but can’t bring himself to bother in the end. Jon seems far too agitated to engage. And as much as Rickon would love to lean against the hard stem of one of the shading trees and enjoy a little chat, he knows that there’s really no point. Jon doesn’t talk much and Sansa is a different story altogether. Besides, he’s angry at her too. What’s the point she’s trying to make, looking back at him whenever Jon pulls the rope a little too hard? It’s not like Rickon could convince Jon to listen to him and in the rare occurrence, that Jon Snow actually does listen to what Rickon says, he’s not going to tell him to cut the rope off. As much as Sansa hates it, which he’s sure is a lot, it’s safer for her.
Cicadas chime around them and the patches of sunlight mark the path they take. They’ve been in the Reach for a few weeks now, travelling at their quick pace and Rickon still hasn’t gotten used to the humid weather. It wears him down slowly and differently than Dorne. He half believes that Jon can’t feel it but when the elder man stops and leans against one of the trees, out of breath and pressing his free hand against his forehead, Rickon knows that he’s terribly wrong.
“We should take a break.”
Jon heaves a heavy sigh and turns around. His eyes briefly glance at Sansa between them, who’s already sitting on her toes, playing with the few rocks and throwing them away. You wouldn’t be able to tell anything is wrong before noticing her parched lips. Rickon steps forward and helps her drink from his pouch.
She’s not shy with him, thankfully, lets him help her but at times, all she does is stare at him with the same eyes as his, as if asking him why and in those moments, he feels the pain of losing a sister that he never knew.
He shakes his head. “You need to sleep before the night, Jon.” He says as Sansa stops drinking and pushes him away.
The man nods and the three of them step a little deeper into the forest to rest under one of the enormous trees. Jon leans against it and takes off LongClaw from his back. Rickon passes the food and drinks to him and eats a little of his fill before tending to Sansa.
She’s angry at them, he knows, rightfully so as he takes off the binding on her wrists and sees the bruises formed on her wrist. “Sorry,” He mutters, “Did I make it too tight?”
Sansa doesn’t say anything but she’s looking at a ray of sunlight, awing at the beam and later, she tries to eat it. “I’ve got food here! Don’t eat that.” He laughs.
After she’s done, Rickon ties up her wrists with a cotton cloth and tells her to keep her hands up. “Like this, see” he gestures, “It will hurt less.” And Sansa follows until she laughs and plays with the fallen leaves on the ground, giving some to him as a gesture of peace, he supposes. Rickon sighs and ties the rope around her ankle and turns towards Jon who's already sleeping. He reads a book then, an old one but once that turns boring, he hums instead.
Sansa stops playing with the sand and stares at him more intently the clearer he says the words.
I saw a maid once upon a dream
She bathed in sunlight and in a glittering sea
She wasn’t a maid but a rose instead
Red as an autumn sunset
“Where did you hear that?” Rickon stops and stares at Jon, who grips LongClaw so tightly that his knuckles turn white.
“Sansa used to sing it to me,” He says softly.
“You remember that?”
“Just a little.”
Sansa throws a rock at Jon who catches it and throws it away. The girl looks like she’s going to start crying at any moment. “I’m singing again okay?” he tells her even though Rickon knows that she doesn’t understand. To Jon, he says “Go to sleep. It’ll be a long night.”
He sings again. A bit louder than before, and pretends as if he can’t see Jon struggling to hold back tears from the corner of his eyes.
He dreams of her in his arms.
He dreams of her leaning against a white wolf, running her fingers through his furs, and singing. She smiles at him when finds him staring.
‘I sacrifice.’ Daenerys voice rings.
His hand finds her throat, and Jon, he squeezes until he’s left breathless too. He would have used both hands if he had them but one hand works too. Purple eyes stare at him, his father’s eyes, begging for mercy. This is my mercy, he thinks. Daenerys never saw anything but the throne. Where’s your throne now? He asks.
When she lays dead beneath him, he laughs so loudly that his ears ring. “Look away, Jon.” Sansa had said.
A black dragon as dark as the moon was during the eclipse licks his cheeks. Its fangs stretch out to grin at him, blood drips from the corners of his mouth. “Good job,” it sneers and Jon looks. Beneath him is a pile of red hair and blue eyes.
The world shakes and he screams.
“Jon!”
He blinks with one eye at Rickon, who rushes away from him and grips Sansa by her shoulders. She’s lying on the ground clenching her chest. From where he is, he can see the blood from the brand staining her clothes, feel his own.
Pain washes over him. He remembers his dream. He remembers the eclipse.
“Look away,” Sansa had begged.
He rams LongClaw on the ground and heaps himself off of it with its support. Rickon gathers Sansa in his arms with an ease that can come only with a routine and moves behind him.
From the ground, they rise.
Eyes with fire in them, bones dark and grey with no meat except the left behind melting flesh. Sometimes, they don’t even have legs but scaled wings and cracked skin.
Sansa screams behind him and he wants to do that too. The brand comes alive in the presences of these demons, it bleeds and twists and eats the ones who bear them. Marks them as preys. As sacrifices.
They grip his leg, wherever they touch, they draw blood.
Jon heaves LongClaw from the ground and swings it around. Bodies of them pile up, the muck they leave behind on his skin burns so Jon covers himself with his metal hand when one of the demons he cuts, sprays the black liquid everywhere.
It’s routine, He knows, yet today he dreamed and tonight is different.
Has LongClaw always been this heavy?
One of them slashes his back, he stumbles, “Jon!” Rickon exclaims. How long till sunrise? He wants to sleep. When was the last time he slept? With her, he thinks, red hair spread on his chest and bright smiles and warm kisses. Sansa was a good kisser.
Would he have been happier if he’d left to Dragonstone? A chance to kill Daenerys? Should he have taken it, Jon wonders? He had stood on that crossroad not too long ago. Two paths clear towards him with Arya’s letter burning in his hand.
Winterfell exists, It had said, I know where it is.
And he had left everything behind for it. Brought Sansa out in the open with the way she was for a chance that she could be safe, truly safe. Was that a mistake?
A mistake, Mistake, mistake, the voice from his dreams says, she is lost. Leaving her alive is a mistake.
He feels its teeth digging in his shoulders. “Jon!” Rickon screams, that boy. It was his fault. If he’d never sang that stupid song.
When he lifts LongClaw, it rises into the air with no reluctance. “Fight it, Jon!” Fight it? Isn’t that what he has been doing? Fighting it? Everything and everyone. Without an eye, without an arm. The BlackSwordsman, they called him, the murderer and the devil. The one who left behind burned villages of bodies and a river full of blood.
It was your queen, he thinks of Robb and Pyp, of even Dario and Grayworm, they were my friends. I sacrifice, Daenerys had said, as the egg-shaped stone twisted to form a face and it screamed in her hand, blood dripping from eyes, and nose and mouth. He remembers how the world had changed, the sun hidden away behind a black sheet. He remembers how they had surrounded them. She killed them all for the throne. She killed them all to become something more than human. Less than it.
“Get back!” he barks when he catches Rickon jumping in the fray with his sword drawn. That stupid boy! Another of them slashes him, he grips it by the neck and rips it apart. There’re so many of them. Good.
“Jon! Sansa!”
He turns to her and sees her surrounded. Blood pumps in his veins and Jon’s legs strain as he runs towards her. When had he moved so far from her? I’ll protect you, I promise.
Stop trying to protect me.
She’s on the ground and covered in blood. She isn’t crying, isn’t saying a word. Sansa just stares.
His chin trembles. Why? Why him? Why was she free of it when he had to remember it all in every little detail? Why wasn’t he allowed to forget? Why? She should be angry at him, grateful to him, be something. But Sansa only has blank stares to give and he wants more. He wants someone who knows, knows. But even more than that, he just wants her. Her touch, her kiss, her voice, herself. Jon wants to bury himself in her, heal himself with her comfort and heal her with his. Something so little, even that would be enough.
“Say something.” He says but there’s nothing as always. Her blank mask morphs into fear and he hates her just as much as Daenerys then.
He grips her shoulders and pushes her to the ground. “Say something! Why are you free and I’m not! Why aren’t you here? Why!” Sansa hits him with both hands, the blow is so weak that he feels nothing. Something twists inside of him, and he reaches out and squeezes her throat with his hands. Weak, he thinks and remembers the red hair girl winning aid and men they needed with nothing but her words.
It was a mistake that she lived.
It was a mistake that he lived.
They should have died with the others. Not come out the way they did.
The boy tries to push him off of her. Jon backhands him with his metal hand, the loud thud it makes sounds so much louder than the grasps of breath Sansa struggles to take.
Sansa.
A wolf with grey fur and yellow eyes bites him.
Jon feels its fangs far more than that of the black dragon whispering in its ears.
Kill her! Kill her!
“STOP IT”
The pressure rushes out of him like steam. He gasps for breaths, his forehead pressed against the ground. Sunlight hits his face. Dawn at last
Besides him, Sansa is still.
No, please.
Jon lifts her up in his arms, shakes her as gently as he can. pleasepleasepleaseplease. She gasps for breath, chokes and coughs, her neck is covered in purple imprints of his fingers. His hands shake.
Her hands stretch out and she scratches his face like a cat or a wolf before rushing away from his hold. Jon lets her go.
Her hair is a tangled mess, her face coated with blood and her eyes..
“Get away from her!” Rickon launches himself between them. Shame makes Jon look away from them both.
“I’m..,” Back? Alright? Sorry? “Why did you leave her? You’re here to protect her when I can’t.”
Rickon lifts his sword, “Protect her when you can’t? Or to protect her from you?”
“Both,” he sneers, “it doesn’t matter.”
Half the boy ‘s face is swollen. As he calms, Sansa throws rocks at him from behind. Jon lets them hit. “I had to help you. The biggest one, it had latched itself on to you.”
The black dragon in his dreams.
Proximity to those things gives way to the two carnal instincts of men; fear and rage. If Jon tried, could he convince himself that what he did today was because he was possessed? He looks at his hands, and swallows, he couldn’t even remember where Jon Snow ended and the monster began.
Rickon lets the sword drop, and for once he looks like his age. “She’ll never trust you again.”
Jon clenches his fingers into a fist, “It doesn’t matter,” He repeats, “the only thing that matters is getting to Riverrun as fast as possible.” If Winterfell exists, if Arya had found a way to it, at least he and Sansa would be free for the nights from those things but yet, the further north they move, the longer the nights will become. How much further will he go the next time?
Bile rises to his throat and he presses his hands to his face. They’ll tend to their wounds today and when the sun sets tomorrow, it will be the same. The pressure not to die will grow more, and so will the weariness in his bones. Would he have chosen something else, had he known how hard the journey would be? The cost of hope? Gentle hands take hold of his, and Rickon squeezes softly, “The BlackKnight said that the king of Winterfell is the only hope for Sansa. You have to remember that. That we might,” he pauses, “we might get her back. Wouldn’t that make everything worth it?”
The cost of hope, he thinks, and glances at her.
The weariness in his bones, the hatred, the resentment, the love, the love, the love the want for forgiveness for his failures and perhaps even a decent night of sleep for the two of them and if not for him, then if only she could be safe. That has to be enough. That should be enough.
He squeezes back, “Yes, it will.”
That is enough.