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It should be the happiest day of Sansa Stark’s life.
Winterfell has its hard fought freedom. She stands at the front of a room full of lords, all of them chanting for her. The Queen in the North! The Queen in the North!
And yet, even as a piece of Sansa’s heart soars with pride, another piece of it still feels broken. She’s come so far, done so much, to be back with her family, and yet the closest thing she had to family now are the reminders she wears on her coronation cloak.
Stark men never fare well in the South, yet that’s where Bran is now. Sansa had encouraged Brienne to serve her brother instead, and though the lady knight wasn’t her family by blood, sending her away to protect Bran felt like losing another family member all the same.
Arya was gods only knew where. Sansa knew that she couldn’t contain her, couldn’t keep her in one place, but she’d hoped… she’d thought they’d at least have a bit more time. She’d thought her sister would at least be here to see this moment, to share in the North finally finding peace again. Instead, when she looks around the room, there is no hint of Arya’s grey eyes in the crowd, and she doesn't even have a promise that her sister will return someday to bring her comfort.
And Jon… Sometimes, Sansa thinks that Jon’s absence is the worst of all. Funny, since the boy she’d refused to treat as a brother growing up had turned out to have never been a brother at all, and still somehow has wormed his way into her heart the most.
Jon had been her salvation. When she’d been at her lowest, when she’d been at her most lost, Jon had been the one she’d found, the one who’d helped her remember how to feel hope again. Without Jon, they would never have taken back their home at all. Without Jon, they’d never have been able to save the world from the army of the dead.
Without Jon, perhaps a slieu of bad things wouldn’t have happened, either, but it was hard to think on that when all Sansa could think on was that he was so close , just North at the wall, and yet he still felt so far away.
She’d sent him a raven, of course, when she’d found out when her coronation would be. She’d thought that maybe… Well, the North was no longer part of Westeros. Sansa had hoped that Jon would accept her invitation to be here for this momentous occasion, but instead, the only people flooding through the gates of Winterfell to be here were the lords and ladies of the North. Men and women here to bow to their new queen, but no family, no people she actually loved in sight.
Sansa wanted to draw her cloak tighter around herself, to hold closer the people that could not be here with her today, but instead she stands strong, looking out on the faces that belong to the voices ushering in her era as Queen in the North, flashing them the best smile she can manage.
There is a sea of people — brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, grey eyes…
And then, in the back of the room, Sansa spots them. Crinkling at the edges, filled with pride, gazing at her as if she were the greatest sight he’d ever beheld.
Jon’s eyes .
Sansa knows her courtesies; she doesn’t let her feelings show at all when she spots Jon in the crowd. It helps that a part of her thinks she’s imagined it; that she’s wished so much for his presence that she’s seeing him where he isn’t, imagining him where he can’t possibly be.
But when the ceremony is finished, and Sansa’s duties are done, she retreats to her solar, and there he is, in the familiar chair he sat in so many evenings, in the cloak she’d made for him, the one that bore the sigil of house Stark.
You’re a Stark to me , she’d told him before. And again, when Arya had assured him that he was still their brother — Sansa hadn’t quite been able to manage those words, for reasons she’d cared not to dwell on at the time and still tried mostly to avoid now . He mattered too much to be anything other than family, though; family were those nearest and dearest to her, those she chose, those who made her life brighter.
And even with his smile weary and tired, and his eyes still filled with the grief of all the loss he’d seen, Sansa certainly felt brighter now . The door fell closed behind her as she rushed towards him, and Jon stood from his chair, meeting her halfway as Sansa flung her arms around him and held him close to her.
“Sansa,” he breathed, his face buried in her hair, the rumble of his voice tickling her neck.
“Jon,” she gasped, refusing to let go, refusing to step back. She’d wondered if she’d ever even see him again, and now he was here, on a day when she’d been feeling somehow so alone even in the middle of a crowd. Warm and right and real , and her arms still clutched to his back as she asked breathlessly, “What are you doing here?”
She wonders for a moment if he’s even truly here for her. Sansa knows that it is easy for her, to love him unconditionally, despite all they have been through, but when they’d last parted… She’d felt less sure that his love for her ran that deep. She’d asked for his forgiveness, and part of what had eaten her alive these last moons was how unsure she was that he’d granted it.
Maybe he’s here because the men at the wall need something from Winterfell, or perhaps he just wants to ask about Arya, or…
Sansa’s doubts are quickly washed away when Jon pulls back, beaming proudly at her, the closest thing to a real smile she has seen from him since the night they’d defeated the Night King.
“I wouldn’t have missed your moment for the world.”
Once their embrace finally ends, Jon and Sansa settle in their chairs by the fire, cups of wine poured for them to drink as they talk, and though Sansa knows her heart has ached while he’s been away, they fall back into comfortable rapport, like no time has passed at all.
Jon offers little information about life at the wall, but Sansa can tell that even with Ghost and Tormund, it’s as lonely for him as Winterfell often feels for her. She can’t imagine there’s much to occupy his mind, with peace settling over them for the first time in what feels like forever.
Sansa, on the other hand, answers his questions readily about all she’s done to rebuild Winterfell and establish the North as a kingdom of its own. She’s been busy, and she loves it; it keeps her mind off of how much she wishes she weren’t so alone .
Sansa feels so at ease with Jon there that she can pretend, for a time, that he won’t be leaving eventually. But as the light of the fire dwindles and the night draws to a close, she knows that she’ll have to ask how long he is staying, and that she’ll have to prepare herself for when he inevitably leaves again and her momentary happiness vanishes into the horizon with him.
It’s when he’s asking her what her first official act as Queen will be that it hits her. Jon is banished from Westeros , but the North is its own entity now. Sansa reaches across the small distance between them, and clasps Jon’s hand in hers. By habit, she ignores the way that her heart skips a beat from such a simple touch.
“You may be considered an enemy in the South, but King Bran’s rules are not the North’s rules, not any longer,” Sansa tells him softly, and she sees his Adam’s apple bob at her words. “Here in the North, you’re now officially pardoned. If you want to, Jon… you can come home.”
There is a stunned silence that hangs between them when Sansa says it. She’d assumed, perhaps foolishly, that Jon would automatically accept her offer; that he’d craved being around her as much as she’d craved being around him, and that coming back to Winterfell would feel as right to him as it had felt to her.
But Jon is Jon . Sansa knows him better than that, and his gaze drops down to his lap, turmoil etched into his features. She wonders if it’s because of her. Maybe she’s not enough. She’s not Arya , she’s not the one that he’s always loved the most, she’s just Sansa, and maybe he doesn’t forgive her…
“Sansa,” he finally says, breaking the silence, his voice sounding pained. “Sansa, there’s nothing in the world that I want more than to be here with you, but… Winterfell’s not my home. I don’t belong here, I never have,” he croaks, and Sansa wants to object immediately. She’s too stunned, though, that he can still feel that way after all of this time; after he’s been their king and their savior. He may not be Ned Stark’s son, but he’s Lyanna’s , and…
“I deserve the punishment I’ve been given. If it weren’t for me, Daenerys…” The name sticks in his throat, and Sansa finally finds the strength to interject then. He thinks it’s his fault; she knows Jon, she knows he blames himself for things he cannot possibly have controlled. If it weren’t for his parentage, Daenerys might not have felt so threatened that she burned an entire city. If it weren’t for Jon asking for her assistance, she might never have had the power to get as far as she had at all.
Sansa can feel Jon’s thoughts as if they are her own, but they simply aren’t true , and she rises from her seat, staring down at Jon with a look that dares him to belittle himself any further.
“You are not responsible for what she did. She would have found a way, with or without you. If it weren’t for you, no one in Winterfell would be alive. If it weren’t for you, the seven kingdoms would be ruled by fear and fire . You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, Jon, and yes, you’ve made mistakes, we all have… But you’re still here . In the end, you were exactly what I told you you needed to be — smarter than father, smarter than Robb. You’re still alive… Please don’t waste it hating yourself for something you couldn’t control.”
Jon rises, trying to be on her level, and she can tell he wants to object. Instead, though, he swallows again and finally dares to meet her eyes. He’s at war with himself, wanting to believe her, wanting to believe that there was nothing he could have done to save his aunt. And yet…
“It’s not that easy, Sansa,” he objects, and Sansa folds her arms over her chest. He’s just as noble as ever, just as willing to sacrifice himself as he’s always been.
“Fine,” she snaps, more annoyed than she has any right to be. She can’t imagine the hell that Jon has been through; she wouldn’t want to even if she could. Sansa just wishes she could make it better, and the fact that she’s helpless to do so leaves her frustrated. Why is it she can help all the people of Winterfell, but she can’t ever seem to make things better for those she cares about the most?
“I suppose I’ll just have to believe it enough for both of us, then.” Sansa tries to soften her expression, because Jon has cowed under her glare. Lowering her voice, she makes one last desperate plea. “I just wish you’d try to see yourself the way I see you, because what I see is the best man there is.”
This time, the silence that settles over them is one Sansa is more used to. It’s charged with a kind of tension that used to scare Sansa — one that still scares her now, but not the same way it did when she’d thought him her brother and not her cousin.
Now, the soft way he looks at her, the way it makes her flush, the way it makes her want to reach out for him… It’s not inappropriate, by Westerosi standards. Sansa doesn’t have to feel the shame of knowing that her pull towards him is wrong, and or unnatural. Now, the way Sansa loves him as more than a brother only scares her because he feels like the only family she has left, and she doesn’t want those complicated, twisted feelings that have grown for him over the years to chase him away again.
And yet… There’s something in the way the firelight dances off of Jon’s face, his parted lips and his hopeful eyes. It’s something that Sansa has felt simmering under the surface before, but tonight feels different somehow, and it’s as if a dam has broken.
Without thinking, Sansa takes a hesitant step closer to him, and Jon does not back away. His feet draw him closer too, and their hands find themselves clasped together again. The distance between them is almost non-existent, and Sansa is not the timid girl she’d been after her captivity with the Boltons. She’s not even the carefully treading girl who had ruled in Jon’s stead, trying to find a delicate balance to make the Northern lords happy and stay loyal to the man she’d grown to love.
Now, Sansa Stark is a queen, and queens are born to take charge. Queens must make hard decisions, and without realizing, Sansa makes this one.
She tilts her head down, and presses her lips to Jon’s.
Sansa has been kissed before, but never like this. She’s always felt scared, uncomfortable, awkward, but with Jon…
It feels as if all the pieces are ticking into place. Like she’s safe, and loved, and home .
Sansa feels like the little girl she used to be, the beautiful princess in one of her songs, the one who has found true love and is never going to let it go.
And then, it’s as if Jon realizes what they are doing, and he steps back abruptly, a terrified look in his eyes.
“I should not have… We cannot…” Jon begins, and Sansa is too trained in hiding her emotions to let her face fall when he can see it.
Jon finally finds his words, saying, “I forgot myself, your Grace. I should… I must bid you goodnight.”
His exit is so hasty that Sansa does not even have time to object, and the moment is gone, so quickly that it’s almost as if it had never happened at all.
Sansa spends a sleepless night in her own rooms. She thinks often that she should go and find Jon, to apologize, to do something , but in the end, she decides it’s no use. Even if he hasn’t already fled back to the wall without so much as a proper goodbye, she doesn’t know what she’d say to him.
How does she tell him that she’s grown to feel something for him that she never should have? How does she admit that this feeling has been growing inside of her since even before they knew the truth of things?
And how does one apologize for something that they are not at all sorry for? Love is something Sansa wondered if she was even capable of, after all the horrors she has witnessed. Love is something that Sansa thought was futile, and dangerous, but those few moments in Jon’s arms, she couldn’t have felt more the opposite.
Maybe if Jon is gone, she can look back on that kiss and think that she’d been loved, too. Maybe it’s better to forever wonder if he’d fled because he’d been scared to hurt her, or he’d been scared of feeling the same, than it is to know .
It’s that thought that finally lets Sansa drift off to sleep, if only for a little while.
The next morning, Sansa makes her usual rounds of Winterfell.
She should feel different now. After the coronation, after the kiss, but really, this day is much like any other day before. Sansa is trained in keeping her composure, now, and if thoughts of the day before linger in her mind, she must push them away and take care of her people.
She is successful, too, at not letting herself feel anything. There is so much under the surface, so much heartache waiting to happen when she finds that Jon must be gone, and that she must have ruined the safety and comfort they’d been able to find in each other during the darkest of times.
And then, she sees the shape of him in the distance, on the battlements, looking out into the distance, and Sansa’s composure is shattered. She excuses herself from her advisors, and makes her way to him as quickly as her feet can carry her, as if he’ll vanish into the snowy expanse if she wastes even a single second.
“Your Grace,” Jon greets her stiffly, and Sansa is still too relieved that he’s here at all to let it bother her. It would, though, under other circumstances; he’d seen Jon stiffly call Daenerys ‘my queen’ too many times to appease her, and the last thing she wants is for him to keep her at that kind of arm’s length.
“Jon,” Sansa says, keeping her voice even. She does not know if she should address what passed between them or not; maybe he would rather pretend it had never happened at all. Maybe it’s safer if Sansa lets him.
Sansa has enough safety in other areas of her life now, though. Maybe, in this one area, she needs to try and take a chance.
“I’m surprised to see you’re still here,” she admits, testing the waters. Jon doesn’t meet her eyes, but he doesn’t move further away from her, either.
“I’m surprised you still wish to speak to me, after…” he begins, and Sansa wishes he would continue. Why should he seem remorseful, when she’s the one who had initiated the kiss that seems to have both of them now in knots?
“After what?” Sansa presses gently, turning her body away from the battlement and towards Jon. She gives him an imploring look, one she knows he can see out of the corner of his eye, and Jon sighs, turning towards her, careful not to get any closer to her as he moves.
“You could not have meant your actions, Sansa. There was wine, and emotions were high, and…” Jon hesitates, searching for a better way to explain what had passed between them the night before. In his hesitation, though, Sansa realizes her hope that he had felt it too was not unfounded. It’s not loathing for her that he’s struggling with, it’s loathing for himself. Loathing for wanting a girl he’d spent his life thinking was his sister, for being an exile who wants a queen, for all sorts of things that she can almost hear him thinking, never mind the fact that none of them are remotely important.
“Of course I could have meant it. I’ve meant it for far longer than I should have,” Sansa whispers, and she watches the way Jon startles at her words. “It was not the wine, Jon, or the desperation for you to stay here. It was just you, and the way that being around you makes me feel.”
Perhaps the battlements are not the place for this. Perhaps there should never be a time for this, and it’s a feeling she should have kept to herself until the day that she died. But Sansa has felt enough pain in her life; it is time for her to be happy, and she can feel happiness there, waiting for her, if only she continues to be brave and reaches out and grabs it.
Sansa takes a tentative step towards him, placing a kiss to his lips again, where all those in the courtyard of Winterfell can see. This one is more chaste, over before it’s even began, easy enough to miss if one wasn’t paying attention.
Jon looks at her, awestruck, as she finishes her thought. “I love you, Jon. You don’t belong beyond the wall; you belong here, with me.”
It’s the most scared she’s been since the war was won; it would break her heart, to be wrong. To watch him leave again, after she has put her heart on the line like this. She braces herself for it, for him to tell her that he doesn’t feel the same, or that he does but it’s not enough to counter how much he seems to hate himself.
Instead, though, Sansa’s risk-taking is rewarded as Jon reaches for her hands again and squeezes them. “Aye,” Jon agrees, his voice thick with emotion. “We’re not meant to be lone wolves, we’re meant to stay together. It’s time for me to come home.”
In the end, it turns out Sansa’s coronation is only the second most important ceremony of her life. A few moons later, after Jon has settled back into life at Winterfell and the Northern lords have come to accept him again, the two of them are wed in the godswood, pledging their lives to one another in the sight of the old gods, Sansa officially giving Jon the Stark name that always should have been his.
Bran and Arya still aren’t there, but a letter has come from King’s Landing, and Bran’s words assure her that Arya is safe, and will be home someday soon. Their family may not be here with them, but Jon and Sansa are a new sort of family now, and Sansa blushes as she thinks of all the ways that the family they’re creating can now grow.
It has been a long, strange road that has gotten them here, but as they crawl into what is now their bed that night, and Sansa whispers “Jon Stark ” to him as she caresses his cheek, she thinks to herself that she would not want their story to have turned out any other way.