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It’s an old dream that Sansa is trapped in. Memories of Joffrey and his Kingsguard float by dangerously, making way for the Hound, standing in her chambers bathed in blood. “I’ll have that song from you,” he snarls, scarred face contorting into a garish smile.
Firelight dances in his eyes, and she falls forward in time until she is being thrust out over the moon door by Aunt Lysa, thin fingers wrapped around her arm like vines, nails of thorns digging in until they prick blood from her skin.
The last image in her mind is the worst; pale eyes like milkglass stare into her soul, and in the distance, she hears the barking of Ramsay’s hounds, chasing, chasing her until they–
She wakes with a start, lungs greedily sucking air in heaving gasps that reveal the fear she has been so careful to hide in the daylight.
The chambers where she sleeps are dark, and the fire in the hearth has long since fallen to embers. In the dim light they give off, shadows dance and pull across the stone walls. Her eyes catch a great, hulking shadow in the corner of the room, but unlike the others this one is familiar to her now. She watches as Ghost pulls himself up and lets out a yawn, briefly baring teeth that could rip a man apart if he so wished.
He is as large as a buck now, perhaps larger, but he moves with grace as he slinks towards her and presses his head lightly against her shoulder with a soft grumble. Her lips curl into a small smile despite herself, and she lets her fingers disappear in the thick shag of his fur, scratching him behind the ear. He lets out a worried whine, burying his muzzle harder into her still frail body as though to comfort her.
A fortnight has passed since first arriving at Castle Black, escorted by Lady Brienne after her escape from Winterfell with Theon. She remembers thinking the entire time that any moment Ramsay would find her–some part of her still thinks that, she knows.
Sansa shudders involuntarily, and forces bile back down her throat.
I am safe now, she thinks, pulling her knees up to her chest for some semblance of solace. He is a thousand leagues away, and Jon has sworn to protect me.
Jon has risked everything for her in truth. He has sworn to leave the Night’s Watch and take back Winterfell from Ramsay Bolton, for her, and for the Stark name. He has given her his chambers and has instructed Ghost to follow her everywhere to keep watch over her–she can think of no other reason why Ghost would be so attentive of her.
Jon has asked for nothing in return, has made no demands and asked no questions that she does not wish to answer. He has been kind and gentle with her in a way that she had forgotten anyone could be, so much so that she still can scarcely fathom his actions.
It is especially jarring when she looks around Castle Black, to the men that surround him and the way they watch him. He hasn’t told her what has happened here, but she knows enough to know that something is not right.
He is no longer Lord Commander, and Lord Commanders serve until death.
The one time she had brought it up, his face had grown hard and the dark under his eyes had seemed to expand, threatening to swallow up his wary eyes.
She has not asked since.
The black brothers give her a wide berth, and Jon thrice as wide. Some of the wildlings that reside here look at him as though he is a god, and others a demon, but to her he is just Jon.
Perhaps he is bit more broody than before, and certainly older. He is taller than she remembers, and more stocky too–years of training at the Wall have honed him into a warrior. He looks so much like Father now that sometimes it hurts to look at him and remember everything they have lost.
At that, she cannot contain the tears that pour forth. They are painful tears for mother and father, for Bran and Rickon, for Robb and Arya. They are tears for Jeyne and Septa Mordane and Old Nan, for Winterfell and everything they have lost. But they are tears of relief too, because after years of sorrow she is no longer alone.
“I’m so glad I have found you and Jon,” she whispers softly to Ghost, who lets out a final, conciliatory whine, his brows seeming to furrow as she pets his soft fur.
--
“What would you have me do? Stand vigil outside her door when you cannot?” Jon asks, with an air of incredulity. He may not be the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch anymore, but there are a thousand and one other things that he must do.
There is a war coming that he does not know how to prepare for, there is Tormund and his thousands of wildings that are wreaking havoc on the last of the food stores, and the Watch still has not decided on a new Lord Commander. Then there is the matter of Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton, and Stannis Baratheon who he has not heard from since before–
“That would be a good start, my lord,” Lady Brienne replies.
“I am no one’s lord,” Jon bites back, “not anymore.”
“Lord or not, she doesn’t trust the men outside her door, and I cannot say I blame her.” Brienne looks at the shabby men in black training in the courtyard behind them, and her lips purse as they watch the men fail to parry even the simplest sword thrusts.
“Tormund and Edd are good and honourable men, I trust them with my life,” Jon replies, the irony of his words only known to himself.
“Be that as it may, my lord, but Sansa doesn’t trust them. You wouldn’t either if you knew half of what she’s been through.” Brienne’s words are cut with a civil sort of acidity that strikes him as twice as unnerving as anything else he could imagine.
“How can I know when she won’t tell me anything?”
“You might find more opportunity to speak if you spent more time with her,” she replies coolly, and somehow that only drives him closer to anger, because he can see the truth in her words, and he can see how it must seem as though he is avoiding Sansa.
Perhaps I am, he thinks darkly, remembering the feel of her in his arms when she first hugged him, and how for the first time it had made him feel truly alive again.
“It would not be proper,” Jon tries to argue feebly.
“If you were half as concerned for my lady’s health as you were with propriety, I would not have needed to have this conversation with you,” Brienne retorts.
He takes a calming breath and looks up into Brienne’s brilliantly blue eyes, filled with a stark, open kind of loyalty he hasn’t known in years. He finds that under her gaze all his objections dissolve like snow before a flame, and he swallow thickly and nods.
She returns his nod curtly before resting her hand on the pommel of her Valyrian steel sword and walking away.
For a time, he watches the men in the courtyard continue to train. They are led by Dolorous Edd, who flashes him a brief grin that Jon hollowly returns. In the distance, Lady Melisandre stands atop a rampart and watches him, before turning away in the direction of the Wall.
His hand instinctively palms the old wound that sits over his heart, still half-healed after all these moons. It aches in the strangest way in the echo of Lady Brienne’s words, and the thought of Sansa lying alone in her chambers guarded by Ghost and not by himself, when he had promised her that very thing.
--
Sansa is walking down a corridor so dark she must take each step tentatively, must keep her hand against the wall, fingers trailing across cold stone. The deeper down she goes, the warmer the walls become, radiating a familiar sort of heat.
She realizes with a start that she is in the crypts of Winterfell, and in front of her is Father’s statue.
Ramsay appears from the shadows, carrying a torch far in front of him and stopping in front of the statue. With a leather-clad hand he points to the statue, and men shuffle from behind him with iron sledges and mallets, beginning to tear her father down.
“No!” Sansa screams, “No, stop it! That’s all I have left of him, don’t take that away too!”
She awakes in a cold sweat, Ghost whining and scratching at the chamber door. Embarrassment washes over her as she realizes that she must have screamed out loud, that her dream has crossed over into reality in such a painful way.
As Ghost continues to scratch and whine, she hears a tentative knock at the chamber door, and the sound of an awkward cough.
“Sansa?” Jon’s voice carries through the heavy ironwood and her cheeks begin to redden. It is one thing for Lady Brienne to hear her cry and shriek like a child, but quite another for Jon, who has already troubled himself over her far too much. “Is everything alright?”
Before she can answer, Ghost lets out another pitiful whine, and scratches even harder at the door, which begins to shake in its hinges.
“Fine,” she replies softly so Jon can’t hear, “you can leave me too.”
She pulls herself from the bed and wraps a thin robe around her nightrail before unlatching and opening her door. To her surprise, Ghost does not bound from the chamber, but rather curls himself around Jon, almost as though bidding him inside.
The door falls shut behind him and he is left standing there, watching her observe him. The darkness of the room makes his eyes look dark and fathomless, and she wonders once more what has happened to him here, why it hides inside him like a ghost, and why he cannot speak of it.
“I’m–“ Sansa begins, but she finds that in the lateness of the hour lying comes much harder, and she cannot tell him that she is alright. “It was just a bad dream. I must have scared Ghost.”
Jon frowns, and takes another step forward into the room. He glances over to Ghost, who is curled up by the hearth, seemingly asleep and content once more. “I think you’ll find that there is little that scares him.”
He crosses the room then and sets himself to task stoking the embers in the hearth back to flame, stacking logs up high. It is a job for a steward in truth, but he does it as though it is not strange for the former Lord Commander to kneel before her hearth, scuffing the leather that covers his knees.
Her mind mulls the words over carefully as he works. “What did you both see, when you were on the other side of the Wall?” She says finally, when she can no longer take the silence in the room.
“Things much more terrifying than your scream, my lady, I assure you,” Jon replies, turning back to her with a small, tentative smile upon his face. Curls have escaped from the tie that holds his hair back and they hang across his forehead almost into his eyes. He blows them away casually as he stands.
“Sansa,” she corrects, “please.”
“Sansa,” he concedes slowly.
Gently, she settles into the large settee beside the fire, beckoning for Jon to take the armchair near her. “Tell me what you saw, tell me everything that is coming for us.”
This time when Jon looks up to her, his face is grave. “Are you sure you wish to know?”
“There is nothing out there that I could fear more than man himself,” Sansa says, pulling all the strength she has within to stop her voice from wavering, hoping that somehow he can understand that she has seen evil too.
Jon sinks into a deep armchair, eyes fixed on the fledgling flames in the hearth.
“Yes, I suppose that is true.”
--
The first night that Jon stays within Sansa’s chambers, they talk until the sun rises. He starts slowly at first, telling her of Qhorin Halfhand and Lord Mormont, of the journey beyond the Wall to find Uncle Benjen and to learn where the wildlings were going.
In turn, she tells him of Joffrey, of Lady, and father’s head upon a spike, and for a moment he wishes Joffrey were alive still so he could kill the little shit himself.
By the time the sun has begun to peek up over the horizon, he finds that he has told her more than he even told Maester Aemon, that words seem to tumble out from him in her presence. He wishes that there were more happy words of which to speak, but it seems that neither of them has many to give, and there is a strange sort of connection to be found in the anger and hurt that they both share.
Bright rays of red and pink glint through the glass of the windows and catch against Sansa’s thick auburn hair, and he finds himself thinking that she has grown into the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
He must force himself to look away and gazes out the window instead.
“I’ve kept you too long,” she says eventually, biting her lip with a terrible sort of vulnerability he’d never known in her in Winterfell.
He wants to hold her tight and protect her from everything that could ever hurt her, make sure there is only happiness to come for her, for all her days–but he knows that that is a dream for spring and there is still much sorrow left to come.
“I’m afraid I don’t sleep much these days. You’ve kept me from nothing but pacing alone in my room, and I am thankful for the company.”
“If you’d ever wish for company again, I should like to hear how you came back through the Wall,” she demurs.
“I didn’t,” Jon says with a curious swell of pride. “I climbed over it.”
A delighted gasp escapes her mouth, and his sluggish heart seems to speed up at the sound. “Truly? That is a story I should love to hear.”
He watches her face carefully, looking for any hint that is not welcome, still half surprised she has not chased him from her chambers yet. “Perhaps I could come back tonight and tell it to you then?”
Sansa’s face breaks into a wide smile, reminding him of when she had taught Lady to cross her paws, and had danced through the halls with that sort of joy that only a child can have.
It is a bittersweet memory, like so many of them now.
“I would like that very much,” she says softly, and his heart skips a beat.
--
It becomes a habit; each night she unlatches her chamber door, and each night Jon enters just as bashfully as before. Some nights he brings terrible sour wine, and others bitter ale for them to share as they sit around the hearth speaking of everything that has happened–everything except what has passed between him and his black brothers. She knows that is a topic he is not ready to share.
Still, she does not find sleep when he leaves, but at least for those brief hours she is not alone, and something small inside of her begins to burn brighter with each night that passes. She tries to ignore the voice that tells her it is hope; hope is a dangerous thing for people like them.
Jon watches her so attentively as she speaks, as she tells him of the escape from Winterfell, of Theon saving her life, and then Lady Brienne. She knows that she should be thankful to simply be alive, but some other part of her resents it in some way, hates that she could not save herself.
“I wanted to be brave, but I’m not brave, not like you. I could never have escaped on my own,” she confides in him when her story is finished, unable to meet his eyes.
He pulls her hand into his, and his thumb tickles the inside of her wrist as he does, sending a pleasant jolt of warmth through her. “You survived,” he says, before quickly releasing her hand from his, suddenly aware of the familiarity of the action. “I think that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is to survive.”
“Do you truly think that?”
His face grows darker, and she knows that he is thinking of whatever it is he cannot yet tell her. “I know it. We’ll take back Winterfell, for you, for the memory of father. And Ramsay–“ Jon pauses for a minute, jaw working beneath the thick scrub of beard, hands clenched to fists in his lap. “Ramsay will know justice; I vow this to you.”
They both fall to silence at his words, and sit staring at the fire for a time, though Sansa’s mind continues to spin and wind and weave through everything they’d spoken of.
“That first night,” she half-whispers, Jon looking up at her quickly at the sudden break in quiet. “That first night when you entered my chambers, when I had had a nightmare–I dreamt that Ramsay tore down all the statues in the crypts,” Sansa says carefully. “I dreamt that when we returned, there was nothing left.”
Jon stands from his chair and falls to his knees before her, his hands ghosting over her legs as he does. She can feel his gentle touch through the thin sheer of her robe and nightrail.
“He couldn’t even if he tried. We are stronger than any steel or iron; the Starks will endure.”
At that, tears begin to well up in her eyes. She wants to raise him up into herself, to feel that warmth and belonging that she has come to know in his presence, to bury herself in his arms and listen to sound of his steady breath.
“I have nothing to give you, nothing to offer in thanks,” she replies instead, unable to meet his eyes for fear he will see how much his words and his touch have affected her. “You’ve saved my life.”
“Without you, I’m not sure what I would have done next. I–“ he begins, but then he pauses and stands, a look of discomfort on his face as he tries to distance himself from her. “You’ve given me purpose again, when it had all been taken away. I am thankful that you are here.”
Ghost lets out a whine from the corner of the room, as though imploring them to be quiet so he can finally sleep, and they let themselves fall into a quiet lull once more. They sit in silence, hands pulled around mugs of strong ale, watching the fire rage on.
In time, she can feel her eyelids slowly grow heavy, and she must fight to stifle a yawn. It creeps out anyway, and Jon turns to her with concern on his face.
“Why don’t you go to sleep? I can leave.”
“No,” she replies abruptly, her cheeks flaming as she does. “I mean to say, please don’t. I couldn’t sleep if you left.”
Jon’s eyebrows raise in amusement for a brief moment while her cheeks burn only hotter. “Shall I sit here then while you sleep?” His voice is tinged with a jesting tone, and that only makes her even more tongue-tied.
“I–all I know is I cannot sleep when you’re not here.” She curses herself inwardly, for she seems unable to stop embarrassing herself in her sleep-addled state.
“Then it is settled,” Jon replies, standing up. “I will sleep here on your settee.”
A thousand years ago when she was a different girl, she would have recoiled at the impropriety of such a notion; now it only fills her with relief to know that Jon will be close by.
She moves to pull a couple furs from the bed to the settee, but before she can throw the furs down, Ghost has taken her spot upon it, and has instantly returned back to slumber. It scarcely seems possible that he could be comfortable atop it; his paws hang off the edges, and his head is curled tight to his chest. She feels her jaw set with embarrassment and annoyance, while Jon for his part, seems to only chuckle.
“Tell him to move.”
“You’ll find he scarcely listens to me when he’s awake, much less when asleep,” he replies. “It’s alright, I can stay here in this chair.”
“No, I cannot allow you to sit there while I sleep in comfort.”
“What would you have of me then? Shall I sleep on the floor?” His tone is still amused, but she can tell that it is slowly shifting to something darker.
“No, no please don’t, I couldn’t bear it,” she says quickly to save the situation. Fear that Jon dislikes her-still thinks that she sees him as less than her creeping in at the edges. The truth of how she sees him couldn’t be further from that, but that is something she cannot tell him.
Her eyes track to the bed, and really it is so large–large enough that they could both sleep upon it and not touch. Her mouth dries at the thought, yet that same spark of before also winds through her, at the idea of his body so close that there could be no question as to her safety.
She swallows hard, watching his dark eyes fixed upon her. “It’s plenty large enough to share,” she reasons out loud this time.
“Sansa–” he starts, before she cuts him off.
“I could sleep below the furs, and you above them. There’s hardly anything improper about that, and no one would ever know.” It’s the last reason that she gives that sends a thrill through her, the idea of a secret–of something that can be theirs, and theirs alone.
Eventually, Jon acquiesces to the situation and stiffly lays down upon the furs beside her. Half of her is surprised that he has given in so easily, and the other half surprised it took so much convincing. It is long past the hour of the wolf, and his eyelids look as heavy as her own.
She finds herself too embarrassed to take off her robe and slips into the bed, robe and nightrail and all. He merely kicks off his boots and lies there in his leathers, uncomfortable as they must be.
“Good night, Jon,” she whispers into the darkness that surrounds them in the dim chamber.
“Good night, Sansa.”
She lets her head rest against the pillow, and quickly falls into that state between wakefulness and sleep, limbs heavy under the thick furs. His words ring softly on repeat in her mind, and everything feels soft and warm. For the first time since she was a child, she finally feels safe once more.
She focuses on Jon’s steady breathing, and something in it is so reassuring that it becomes even more difficult to stay awake. She finds herself thinking that there will be no going back, now that she knows how this feels.
In her half-awake state, she hears Jon roll onto his side. She wants him to feel as she does too, wants him closer, imagines his arm slipped around her protectively, and his body notched tight against hers. She imagines them defeating Ramsay and taking back Winterfell, of them rebuilding it together.
In a whisper so quiet it could almost be the wind, Jon begins to speak, though she can’t be certain if it’s real or simply a dream. It must be a dream though, for she hears him say that he died, and he’s certain now that he came back for her.
--