Archive of Our Own

It starts like this: 

Jon Snow goes to King’s Landing for statues.

He majors in sculpture at the Southern University of Arts and Architecture. By the time he graduates, four of his collections have been sold to the Essosi Historical Society and the Westerosi Cultural Association under the pseudonym Aemon.

But the Northern Red Party stages a coup against the majority Grey, and the world is colored in shades of black and blood. It is a senseless trigger, tugging at a sore tendon he didn’t even know he had. A bullet shot through his hands as another shot through Eddard Stark’s neck.

And then he loses touch with something. Somewhere along the way, what had driven him has left; maybe it is found in the wreckage of his home, or maybe in the absence of permanence. 

But the why doesn’t matter. 

All that weighs on his mind, a constant guilt that is thawed and refrozen over and over — is that it’s been four whole years since Jon has put the chisel to stone, and words to action. 

Tyrion has tried to help. As his agent, he’s in charge of both auctions and press. Essentially an intermediary, since Jon refuses to interact with any of the pretentious assholes who want to spend whatever amount of money just to show the other pretentious assholes they can afford it. 

Needless to say, Jon prefers separation.

“No one will remember you if you don’t get your ass in gear, Snow,” Tyrion had said, frowning. Jon stared at his hands, jaw clenched.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Tyrion demanded. 

He had stayed silent. 

Jon knew that he needed to start again. Knows that he needs to start again, even now.

But there is a part of him that worries that whatever he had years earlier — whatever had made Tyrion look at him and see potential — has been drained by years of overextension. That he has emptied himself of what makes his work unique; that he is no longer a someone so much a failed no one. 

Jon stares at blocks of marble that would already be half-way to breathing, and he cannot find it in himself to create meaning where there is none.

Tyrion had apparently been pushed to his breaking point, because when Jon returns to his apartment in King’s Landing arts from a local cafe, his agent shoves a one-way ticket back to the North at his chest with a firm command: “Don’t come back until you get over whatever the fuck this is. If you need a break, you’re getting one.”

Jon stares at him. “What?”

Tyrion points at the slip of paper in Jon’s hand. “It leaves at three.”

“Tyrion, what —”

“Go get yourself packed,” Tyrion interrupts, rolling his eyes. “I’m not your damn maid.”

“No, just my mother,” he mutters, and Jon packs his bags with the years-old clothes of the Northerner he used to be. 

And so: a train sits in a station, and Jon Snow waits on a platform. 

Jon adjusts the backpack on his shoulder. It’s stuffed with clothes, a single book, and one sullenly placed sketchbook. He used to carry it with him, a royal retinue of ideas sprouting on graph paper and blooming into work reflected on stone. Jon’s doubtlessly out of practice.

But he’s somewhat glad to be leaving, even if there’s a heavy layer of dread coating everything in blue and purple bruises. Jon was never truly meant for the Southern lifestyle. Instead, the touted ‘summer city’ chafes against his skin, an itch that always screams out his other-ness. The heat makes all the smells and food of the city meld together into a humid petri dish, and the constant fleetingness of its inhabitants has always left Jon with the feeling of being at a standstill while others pass him by.  

Ten or fifteen people are lined up in front of him. He’d gotten to Baelor’s Station early to avoid the notoriously reported wait, and the Sept bells had rung the turn of the hour when he’d arrived. 

The lines wind all along the station, snaking through columns and along scuffed marble floors. There must be seven or eight hundred people stuffed into the building for the Lightbringer. Refugees were slowly being lured back into the North by the Grey Ambassadors, but hundreds of thousands remain scattered across the world, too unwilling to abandon their newfound roots for an old promise. 

Tyrion had arranged for a car to take him from Winterfell to Eastwatch. His childhood home is just on the outskirts of the rundown town, but Jon hasn’t stepped foot in the North since coming down south at the tender age of eighteen. The temporary Parliament established a few months ago had opened the North’s borders for the first time in years. It’s a wonder that the Kingdoms and the North managed to get the Lightbringer up and running in such a short timespan, but the Northern economy needs their citizens back to recover. 

Somewhere behind him a baby starts to wail. Jon glances over his shoulder, looking at the infant squirming in its mother's arms. 

“Next,” the security guard calls, and Jon sighs as another person hurries past towards the high speed train. At this rate, they won’t leave the station until evening. 

He checks his phone. Readjusts the bag. Checks again. 

One new notification: 

TL: are you on the train yet?

Jon cracks his neck. Someone behind him makes a noise of disgust. 

Not yet , he types back with one hand. Another is let past security, and he takes a greedy step forward. 

TL: this’ll fuck with your schedule

He doesn’t bother to respond. His eye twitches.

The least Tyrion could do was pretend this was a vacation.

TL: tyrell keeps asking about commissions 

Jon glares at the phone. 

He starts to type, but three dots start to bounce above the keyboard. Someone coughs behind him and Jon looks up to see another person’s been let through. He forces himself to walk forward again. 

When he looks back down, one message is waiting for him.

TL: please tell me you at least have the blocks in eastwatch

JS: Yeah.

Jon pulls out the little booklet from the pocket of his bag. The grey passport gets caught on the edge of the fabric, but he manages to wrench it free. 

TL: good

TL: you need to get shit done 

There’s only five people left in front of him. Jon rolls his shoulders. Anxiety pools in his stomach, and his fingers thud on the cover of his passport. He looks back down at his phone to text Tyrion back. 

JS: Yeah, well. We’ll see. 

TL: I sincerely hope you know I don’t work for free

His jaw is tight. He forces himself to take a deep breath before responding. 

JS: I’m very well aware, thank you

There’s heated voices to his left. He keeps his head down. Steps forward again. 

TL: then maybe you should get your shit together before i’m in the fucking grave

The shouting draws his attention.

A man is holding his passport in a deathgrip thirty feet down from him, held in front of his body like a shield. The security guard has her hand on her gun, and blueshirts are running over from the security posts to assist. His voice echoes through the high ceilinged station, loud and desperate. Northern.

His phone pings. He ignores it. 

The guard says something to the man quietly, but she speaks too low to pick up. The others near the two start to straighten. The station seems to hold its breath as they watch with rapt attention. 

“It’s old,” the man insists, one arm holding a child behind him protectively. “I swear, just let me —”

The woman starts to shake her head, and the other blueshirts reach him. The man backs away from the on unsteady feet, the child clutching at his leg as he moves. 

“It isn’t current,” he says again, “please, my family is waiting for me —”

“Next.”

Jon keeps staring at the commotion. Someone prods his back. 

The man is handcuffed, and then there’s an explosion of movement as the child tries to scramble after him as he’s led away. 

“Next!”

A hand taps his shoulder. Jon whips his head to the exasperated guard. 

“Sorry,” he says, stepping forward. The passport is transferred over to the guard and Jon tries to ignore the quiet hum that’s slowly starting to resume from the interruption. 

The booklet is rubbed with a light alcohol wipe, and then a thin piece of copper is scraped along the cover. The young guard holds it up to a bright fluorescent light on top of their desk, and even though he has no reason to, Jon has the strongest urge to bolt and run. 

The passport is opened. Dark brown eyes meet his. 

“Name?”

He clears his throat. “Jon Snow.”

The guard glances down at the passport, and then types something onto the laptop. 

“Reason for initial travel?”

Jon hesitates. The man notices and raises an eyebrow. 

“School,” Jon settles on. He’s scrutinized for another second before the click of computer keys fills the space. 

“Residency status?”

“Citizen.”

“Occupation?”

Jon looks away. 

“Unemployed,” he says. It’s not technically a lie, he supposes. 

“How long will you be staying?”

“I don’t know,” Jon sighs. “However long I want.”

The guard narrows their eyes. Another note is made on the laptop. The man’s head swivels back towards Jon, intense. 

“When did you last leave the North?”

Jon frowns, pointedly glancing down at the silver passport, stamped and dated years prior. 

“Nine years ago, end of the eighth month,” he says. Shakes his head. “Is this a standard question?”

The guard hands the booklet back, eyes not leaving the screen. Jon takes it without looking away. Fingers fly across a dull keyboard and the man says, “New procedures. You’re free to go.”

He stands there for another second before the man looks up at him with annoyance, and Jon walks past the gates to the main station. 

TL: ticket’s in your inbox because i know you’d forget without me

He opens up his email and refreshes it until the newest pops up. 

Jon swipes back to messages. 

JS: You booked an entire booth???

TL: don’t act like you don’t know why

TL: you hate everyone

TL: i don’t want to hear you bitch and moan for the next month

JS: You do know you work for me, right?

TL: a decision i constantly question

He huffs and slides the phone into the pocket of his bag, right next to his passport. 

The train stretches into the distance on either side, a long line of solemn grey in a city of color. Jon feels small looking at it. Brittle.

It’s not homesickness, exactly. It’s something more than that. Where words fail and all that is left is a ghost of sentiment. There is no doubt that the North Jon is returning to is not the North he left.

Marble squeaks underneath his shoes. Aemon’s third exhibition — years ago now, despite Tyrion's best efforts — had sprawled along the halls of Baelor’s Sept. The statues have long been auctioned off; the only memories of stone shaped under reverent hands are the photographs displayed beneath crumpled news headlines. A legacy and a name with no face attached, slowly fading to obscurity. 

The eleventh passenger car is identical to the other twenty. Grey metallic paint and aluminum framed black tinted windows make up the majority of the passenger cars. Between the tenth and eleventh passenger cars is a long section of wide windows. Jon can just make out dining tables through the dark glass as he walks by.

He’s only paying half attention when he steps into the car. A few booths are already filled. Jon walks down the center aisle, watching the traditional Northern numerals for six. When he spots it, he slides in, setting his bag next to him and stretching his legs out. 

TL: the driver who’s taking you from the station to eastwatch has my number

TL: if they call and say you didn’t show i swear to the gold my father shits i will report you missing to the Kingdom’s embassy

Jon rolls his eyes.

JS: I’m touched you care.

TL: it was a threat

He snorts, and then pulls down the screen menu to put the phone on do-not-disturb. Across the aisle, the line is slowly diminishing. Impatience worms in his gut, and Jon shifts in his seat.

Jon locates the paperback in his bag with practiced ease. The cover is worn under his fingertips, made soft and flexible from years of careful use. In bright gold lettering across the top spells out The Hobbit , a sleeping dragon curling around a pile of treasure beneath it. 

Yellowed pages crinkle when he opens it. He traces over the printed text idly, faint impressions on the edge of the pages marking where he’s carried it, years upon years of thumbing through paper and escaping into a world with magic. Jon leans back against his seat, settling into the familiar comfort of a place built with words and words alone. 

Back when he’d secured a deal for his first collection, Tyrion had tried to buy him a mint 657 AC First Northern Edition; beautifully leather bound with gilt edges, marbled endpapers, and a golden dragon arched on the back corner. But Jon had looked at the book in the antique shop and felt nothing.

“What do you think?” he asked, curious.

“I don’t know,” Jon had said. “It’s… nice.”

“Nice?” Tyrion leaned closer against the glass separating them, trying to find a flaw that didn’t exist. “I thought you’d be more interested. It’s Northern, you know. There are only a few left in the Kingdoms.”

“It’s nice,” he said again, defensive. “And I know that, I just — I already have a copy. My copy.”

“Oh,” Tyrion had drawn out. The pitying understanding reflected in his face had made Jon want to turn on his heel and retreat. 

“It’s alright, Jon,” Tyrion said later as they waited for their orders in a nearby cafe, just north of the public harbor. Tourists roamed in large herds just outside the dim shop, and Jon stood leaning against the brick wall. 

“I know.”

And he did. Jon knew the importance of significance. Knew the power of simple things kept simple; complexity untethered and depth transient. Maybe he still does know it, somewhere buried deep. 

“I’m glad,” Tyrion had said with a kind smile. It was then a strange sort of companionship sprouted between them, watered by mutual success and similar natures. 

So he continued to carry it around with him. It’s a warm weight in his hands now, sitting on a train as he prepares himself to once again fall into the role of a refugee, headed home after years away.

Jon spares a glance out of the opposite window, a booth already settled with passengers the barrier between him and the station platform. The line is finally empty and security guards are locking the gates between them and the rest of King’s Landing. 

Jon groans when he checks his watch. It’s already half past three. Whoever’s waiting for him at the Wintertown station is going to be pissed.

But the North is too heavy to think about at that moment, and so he lets the thoughts of his impending homeland slip by and returns to where he left off in The Hobbit. Jon sinks into the pages of his old paperback as nostalgia settles on his chest, lulling and dulcet.

Someone moves into his peripheral a few minutes before the train is finally ready to depart. Jon’s pulled out of the world of ice and fire and looks up to kindly inform the intruder that no, this is his seat, and yes, they can go fuck right off. 

“Oh, hello —”

Jon swears his heart stutters. 

The most beautiful woman he has ever seen stands in the aisle. Her hair is dark ebony, pulled back in a Northern braid. A few loose strands frame an ethereal face, and her lips are plump and red as she speaks words he can’t hear. A lithe body is hidden by a long-sleeved blouse and navy blue slacks, and Jon slowly raises his gaze to meet her eyes — 

Fuck.

Her eyes are the color of summer skies, and he wants to drown in them.

The woman clears her throat and looks at him expectantly. Jon blinks, lowering the paperback to his lap. Her lips twitch.

“What?” he asks dumbly.

She flicks her gaze to the empty seat across from him. 

“I think that’s my seat.”

The sound of her voice catches him off guard. If an angel were to fall to the earth and sing, that's what Jon imagines they would sound like: ephemeral, each word presented as a lyric to a song sung for centuries, growing more and more hypnotizing every time it’s spoken.

She adjusts the canvas bag hanging off her shoulder. He’s jolted into action by the movement and tucks his legs in, stammering, “Shit, sorry.” 

Jon doesn’t even care that he has to sit with a total stranger for the five hour train ride.

She slides into the booth. Somehow she makes even that breathtaking. Shooting him an uneasy smile, she says, “It’s fine.”

The woman settles into the seat across from him, sliding her bag off her shoulder and dropping it on the ground at her feet. Jon struggles to tear himself away.

Gods. He’s an idiot.

Turning his attention back to his book, Jon attempts to continue reading. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her bow her head to dig through the cotton bag. Jon stares at the book, biting the inside of his cheek. 

Glances back up at her. 

Fucking hell. 

He puts the book back down with a sigh. It comes out louder than intended, and the woman looks at him. Jon flushes, turning his head to stare out the window. 

“Everything alright?” she asks. He meets her eyes.

Jon swallows hard.

“Need a break,” he says. Did his voice crack?

He knows it’s a pathetic excuse, but she just nods and fidgets in her seat. 

Jon rubs his chin, stubble stiff against his palm. He doesn’t know what to say — and isn’t that strange? Women had never posed such a dilemma. Maybe it's just her. 

(Is her hair as soft as it looks? 

He wants to run his hands through it.)

Outside, the train begins to leave Baelor’s Station. The steady hum in the background forces him back to reality. 

He clears his throat. “I’m Jon, by the way.”

The woman blinks. Breathes in sharply, and on the exhale: “Alayne.”

Alayne. He rolls the name over in his head, struck by the strange feeling of unfitting .

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure,” she echoes.

They fall into an awkward silence . The city passes by them in swirls of metal and marble, construction sites and temples slotting together, side by side.

There’s a nervous fluttering in his stomach that he can’t wave away as merely homecoming jitters. Jon can’t remember the last time he’d felt this way around a woman. With Dany at the end, it was all screaming and arguments and bitterness. All the others were short flings; too caught up in chipping away at his future than planning on settling down.

“Going all the way to Winterfell?” Alayne asks, tucking a freed lock of hair behind her ear. Jon swears it gleams red for a second. She reaches to the panel on the wall and pulls her table out. 

“Yeah,” he says. “You?”

Something flickers across her face. She shifts in her seat. “Yup. Born and raised.”

Jon nods. Alayne stares at him for a moment and he hurries, “Me too.”

She raises her eyebrows and Jon corrects himself. 

“In Eastwatch, I mean.” He licks his lips. “Not Winterfell.”

“Oh,” Alayne says. 

He tries not to hide behind his hands. 

“Are you happy to be going home?” she asks, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her table. Her braid slips over her shoulder, blue eyes vivid in the monotone blue-grey scheme of the train. Porcelain skin glows in the dull light. He’s almost convinced she’s a daydream.

“Well,” he starts, and then Jon falls silent. 

Is he happy to go home? 

It’s a sign that he is unable to do what he was once renowned for. That he no longer is able to carry emotion as weight in his hands or feel the shape of it form underneath his fingertips. 

And it’s been so long since he’s been in the North — the true North, with its snows and blizzards and folk songs. Seven hells, the last time he’d been in the North the Starks were still alive and in power, and the Bolton Reds were still deferential to their monarch.  

Jon doubts he belongs there anymore. Doubts he belongs anywhere, really.  

At least in King’s Landing, he could pretend in the neverending bustle of the city that he was doing something. Eastwatch is a quiet town. Close knit. People still remember Jon Snow, the boy who dreamed of something bigger. 

Going home is a surrender.

“No,” Jon says, a tightness lingering behind the words. “Not really.”

Bright eyes pierce through him. 

“Oh,” she draws out. Alayne looks down at her hands. 

“Are you?” he asks. “Excited to be home, I mean.”

She jerks as if struck, mouth parted in surprise. Almost defensive: “I — maybe.”

Alayne cradles her wrists gently, like she’s afraid they’ll break. Jon wants to hold them. 

“I don’t know.” She looks out the window. “I — I left a lot of things unfinished.”

Jon watches her. Something tugs in his chest.

“Anyway,” she says with a certain tone of fragile finality. She leans back, looking at him once again. “Sorry I interrupted you when I came in, again.”

“It’s fine,” Jon says. “You didn’t.”

Alayne tilts her head in silent challenge, the corners of her lips turned upwards. She looks too soft, Jon thinks, to be real. 

“What were you reading?”

He’s so focused on tracing the freckles across the bridge of her nose that he almost doesn’t catch the question.

“Uh —” Jon fumbles with the paperback still sitting in his lap, sliding out his own table and plopping it down in front of him. “The Hobbit.”

Recognition flickers across her face. Jon smiles. “You know it?” 

“Oh, not the novel. But my father read the trilogy to me when I was younger.” She brushes hair out of her face. Tugs the sleeve of her shirt again. “It’s not very well known in the Kingdoms.”

“It’s brilliant,” he says. “I carry it everywhere.”

Alayne smiles and the corner of her eyes crinkle. Jon wants to see her smile for the rest of his life. “I’ll have to check it out, then.” 

(It’s as if something blooms between them at that moment, an understanding of something offered and something taken. A spark cradled in their twin hands, bright and innocent, sheltered from the harsh winds of reality.)

The countryside rushes past them in one green blur. Farmhouses are streaks of red and white and grey, the cloudy light outside blending the colors together in broad swatches.

“I’ve always loved it outside the city,” Alayne says quietly. Jon keeps watching the racing pastures to stop him from embarrassing himself. 

“I can’t remember the last time I left King’s Landing,” he admits.

All of his memories are filled with towering museums and crowded exhibitions. An empty studio; clay long dried and gathering dust. Dreams, half carried out and abandoned on long tables. 

(If he had known she would be waiting for him, he would’ve left years ago.)

Jon glances over at that woman. She’s looking out her side of the window still, her elbow on the armrest with her face resting in her palm. He looks back out the window when her head starts to turn. 

“So,” she asks, “why King’s Landing?”

Jon wonders if the aversion to silence is borne from anxiety or fear. Is she afraid of thoughts rising to the surface in times emptied of sound?

He arches an eyebrow. “You first.”

A light exhale. The tiniest laugh, with a razor’s edge hidden in soft silk. His pulse thunders in the veins of his neck — rain patters against glass windows. 

When did it start to storm?

“Well,” she says, in the detached way he often finds himself slipping into. That ode of saying — Fine, thank you — when asked how his day is, or the empty smile he sends Tyrion when asked if he feels he is once again ready to attempt to be someone he might’ve grown out of; unable to reconcile the person who was affected and the person he finds himself in the present. 

Alayne lifts her shoulder half an inch. “Boyfriend, first. And then — after everything, all the fleeing and killing and —” 

Alayne catches her breath, looking out at the passing scenery as if it holds the answers. 

Maybe it does. Maybe Jon’s just too jaded to see them. 

“Then,” she continues, “I — I couldn’t go back.”

Jon keeps his eyes on hers, rests his chin on his fist. “Ah.”

Of course. She is — so very human. It only makes sense.

“Ah,” Alayne mimics with a forced smile. She tucks a piece of black hair behind her ear. What would she do if he did it for her? “And you?”

Jon breathes out slow, keeping his right hand pressed flat on the table. “College. Eastwatch didn’t have what I wanted. So I left.”

Alayne looks at him, cornflower blue eyes making him wish he knew more than just her first name.

“Leaving is hard,” she says, almost inaudible. 

Exhales. Lightning flashes in the distance.

An odd heaviness that presses down on him, and an odder guilt when he says, “Sometimes you have to.”

She looks away from him. He wonders if the words are as familiar to her as they are to him. 

There is a part of him that tugs at his soul, pulling him closer and closer to her. 

(She is a stranger, he reminds himself.

But she doesn’t feel like one.)

“So. What do you do?” 

He lies. That’s what he does, normally, when asked. Jon doesn’t want to be connected to the rawness and instability of the art he created. The truth of it.

But he feels lying will break this. Whatever this is.

“It’s been a bit.” He rolls his shoulder, listening for a crack. “But I used to — uh. I made things.”

“Oh,” she smiles. “I didn’t know there was an artist in the audience.”

He doesn’t correct her. Doesn’t want to examine why that is. 

Instead, he just grins. “The audience?”

“Oh, you know —” her hand waves in the air, “this. This thing.”

Jon laughs and looks away from her so she doesn’t blind him. “The train?”

“If you want to be technical,” Alayne complains. 

He shakes his head, a wide smile still on his face. 

It’s so easy to envision laughing with her in his little cottage outside of Eastwatch; her sitting beside him as he dips his hands into clay, talking over the making of something pure. Something true. Would she join him, if he asked? Would she dirty her hands, feel the dust settle on her skin? 

Would she revel in it?

“What about you?”

“What?” she asks. 

“What do you do?” 

She blinks. Opens her mouth; shuts it. “I’m… still figuring it out. I used to know, but — well.”

He nods. He knows the struggle of being lost. 

“I —” she starts. A long hesitation, before she says, almost like a secret: “I wanted to be a lawyer.” 

He sits for a while, taking her in. Wondering. 

“Wanted?” he asks finally. 

The air is charged. When Alayne speaks, it's numb. “I wouldn’t have been able to help anyone.”

“I think you would’ve,” he says. Pauses. “I think you still can.”

She gives a bitter laugh, sinking deep into the chair with the back of her hand pressed to her lips. 

“No,” she disagrees. “I can’t.”

Jon watches her carefully. 

He’s not worried. He’s not. It’s just — well. 

It feels like he’s been worried for her since before they met, no matter the dramatics of the thought.

“Well,” he says with a half-smile, “maybe you can be my lawyer.”

Her laugh rings sweet in his ears, shining between them as dew shimmers on young blossoms. The previous topic is forgotten, or maybe just set aside, and she counters: “Or maybe you can be my artist.”

(He would be her anything if she’d only ask.)

“And what would you have your artist do?” Jon asks. It comes out thankfully mild in contrast to the urgency in his chest — the promise to fulfill it hidden behind even words and tempered will. 

Alayne hums, lips pressed together to stop her smile. “What can my artist do?”

He looks at her, the string tied around his ribcage feeling like it's pulling splintering bone apart, revealing something bloody and raw and beating. 

“For you?” Jon asks, her eyes laying him bare to the world with its horrors and beauties. “Anything.”

She hesitates — a miniscule lean back, red lips parting and an emotion crosses her fair features; so close to longing he almost feels mirrored. “Anything?” 

He nods his head after a second, not looking away from the woman before him. 

When she moves, she wraps her arms around her midsection and turns towards the window. The light shows summer suns in her eyes, and Jon is reminded of salt water carving shapes from stone; a neverending abrasion of previous coarseness.

“I could draw you,” he says, unthinking, “if you want.”

She looks over at him in confusion, brows drawn together. “What?”

Jon smiles at her. It’s softer than he’d meant, but when roses bloom on her cheeks, he figures it’s worth it. “You asked what I could do. If you want, I could draw you.”

“I don’t think I’m much to draw, Jon,” she tells him, eyebrows raised. 

(She’s too blinding, too familiar, too fucking perfect to be real, and Jon is starting to think he’s either hallucinating or dead.)

“Well, I think you are.”

Pale hands raise to cup her cheeks, and Alayne leans forward to rest her elbows on her slide-out table. “You’d draw a random person on a train?”

“Random person?” Jon scoffs. “We’ve been talking for three hours. That’s at least coffee, if not dinner.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You seem to have thought a lot about this.”

“Oh, constantly,” he says easily. “I think this is the start of a very bad habit of yours, for the record.”

“What habit?”

“Distracting me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she teases (flirts? Oh, fuck it all to hell, Jon doesn’t know anything anymore) with a smile.

“Good,” he says, laughing, and then he leans down to pull his bag out from under his seat. 

He rifles through the random articles of clothing he’d shoved in while packing, pulling out the wooden case and old sketchbook. Along with the Hobbit, the graphing sketchbook and wood box followed him wherever he went. A visceral reminder of what he has filled to live up to, untouched from the last time he sculpted something from nothing. 

Even so, he handles the box with care. 

It had been a hot and sunny day as usual for King’s Landing. Jon had walked to the parking lot, degree in hand and cap somewhere laying on the ground in the Dragon Pit, to find Mormont standing by his car. His professor had always been kind to him, if stern. Mormont was probably the only person besides Tyrion who knew of his attachment to sculpture, chipping away until something comes from the debris. 

“Professor,” Jon had said, waving his degree in greeting. “Come to wish me luck?”

“Luck?” the man grunted. “You don’t need luck.”

Jon laughed, opening the door of his car to toss the rolled paper in. He pulled the robe up and over his head, balled it up, and threw it on top. “We’ll see.”

“You don't need luck,” Mormont repeated, and when Jon turned back around he was presented with a simple cardboard box and a blank envelope. 

“What’s this?” he asked slowly. 

“A job offer.” Mormont looked at him from under bushy eyebrows, weathered face soberingly serious. 

Jon took the envelope on top of the box and ripped it open. He unfolded the letter, eyes catching on the Mr. — and since when had Mormont referred to him as anything other than boy? — before scanning the rest of the letter.

Jon looked back up. “This is your job.”

Mormont grunted. The sun continued to blaze down on them, and Jon squinted past the brightness to stare at his teacher.

“I don’t understand,” he said. 

“I’m old,” Mormont said. “Too old to grade more pretentious little shits.”

The longer Jon looked at him, the more he saw the truth of it. The sun washed away the regalness of the man’s long face, shadowing the gorges and canyons in his face dark on tan, the slight shake in his hands. 

But he wasn’t ready to settle. Wasn’t ready to give up a dream of creating something remarkable with his own two hands, feeling something take shape without thought. 

“I can’t.”

Jon hadn’t been ready, and so when he quietly turned down the offer, Mormont only nodded and walked away, leaving only the box and letter behind. 

“A box?” 

Jon looks up from the cedarwood to meet crystal eyes. His lips quirk into something close enough to a smile, and he affirms, “A pencil box.”

Alayne’s eyes sparkle, and she leans forward. The shape of her mouth distracts him, but Jon forces his gaze back to hers. “Is my artist going to draw me, then?” 

“Do you want me to?”

She hums. “Only if I can read your book.”

A startled laugh erupts, and he finds himself grinning back at her. 

“Alright,” Jon says, nodding. He goes back to his bag, pulls out the novel, and then slides it across their joined tables. 

So the train races by, and the passenger across from him begins to read, and Jon begins to try to rekindle something lost. 

The pencil is as heavy as a hammer in his hand. Pages slowly turn in her hands, but he forces his eyes on the white paper of the graphing paper, graphite tip tapping the edge of his own empty page. 

Jon should be past this stupid hope that he will regain his ability, the passion for stone and clay and chisel in his hands.

He looks up at the woman across from him and his heart beats a little faster.

Runs a hand over smooth paper.

Looks again. 

She’s a work of art just by herself, isn’t she? 

The kindness in the crinkle of her eyes, the sophistication of her cheekbones. The bow of her lips, soft enough he wonders what they would feel like against his own. The freckles dotting across her nose like constellations in the night sky that lead him home. The curve of her spine as she curls up against the window and the elegant lines of her face. 

He’s struck then, a merciless bolt of thunder to his chest, with the sensation of reveling in her once upon a time, a million years ago. His pulse speeds against his throat, a feeling that can only be described as full and empty all at once blooming in his hands. 

Oh,  he thinks. 

Oh. 

From there, it is a slow process.

He relearns the importance of pressure, how to make the lines soft and how to make them striking. Relearns the flick of the wrist for loose strands at the side of her face, the winding pattern of a Northern braid. It is slow, but he learns.

He sketches like he would plan a sculpture, all clear lines and circles marking the depths and concaves. The exact angle of her nose down to the slight upturn at its end, the pout of her lips and the shadows of her collarbone. She is the most beautiful person he has ever seen — the most human he has ever seen — and Jon finds himself unable to stop drawing her. 

(Because if he cannot hold her, he will at the very least remember her.)

She looks up twenty minutes later, and Jon is so focused on sketching out the three-quarters perspective that he doesn’t notice until the book is placed down in front of her.

All he does for a long moment is stare at those hands: they look too delicate to be real. Does she realize how much she resembles art? How much she is it?

When he raises his gaze to her face, he slowly sets the pencil down. He feels stupid for being caught drawing her, even if she requested it. Feels like a teenager, unsure and awkward and unbearable. Jon tries to force his face to cool down, and slides the piece of graph paper across the table to await her judgement. 

Alayne stares down at the paper, fingertips hovering over the paper like she’s afraid to touch it. Her mouth drops open just slightly, plump and annoyingly distracting. 

Finally, she looks up at him, head shaking minutely. Light lashes flutter against high cheekbones.

“Jon,” she says, eyes wide and clear as ice, “this is — this is beautiful.” 

He shrugs. 

(Jon ignores the childish pride in his chest. Aemon never was willing to meet with those who would see and criticise his works, much less those who bought one of them. To be called his real name, by this woman, in this moment, is — it feels nearly monumental. 

It feels like a beginning.)

“I’m out of practice.” With that, Jon begins packing away the drafting pencils. There’s a dried piece of clay on one of them, and he flicks it off to the ground at their feet. She doesn’t notice. 

Did he hope she did?

“It’s wonderful.” 

He glances up at her and is instantly caught off guard. 

She is so honest. Emotions shine through her, and Jon thinks that if any person in the world would be able to glow it would be her. She’s just so — she is so, so familiar , so bright and so enigmatic that Jon wants to burn her into his retinas, ignore the pain just to see her every time he closes his eyes. 

“Keep it,” he says, the words sounding like a vow. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, uncertain. He wants to soothe the worry away. Iron the hardships away, and mend the torn pieces. 

Yes, he wants to plead, take a piece of me with you, if you won’t take all of me.

“I’m sure,” he says.

“Okay,” Alayne whispers, almost to herself. “Okay, then.”

And then her hand is holding his, soft and warm and goddamned electric against the hardened calluses on his palm. 

“Thank you.”

She releases his hand — was it lingering, or did he just imagine it? — and Jon remembers how to breathe again, even if the world seems dimmer once they part. 

“Of course,” Jon says, voice slightly strained. He feels like a schoolboy again, staring starry-eyed at her. 

Alayne leans back into her seat, turning so her legs are pulled up to her chest on the bench with the paper still held carefully between her hands. 

After a few long seconds — not long enough, he isn’t sure if he’ll ever get tired of looking at her — Jon manages to force himself to stare out the windows. The sky is rapidly darkening outside. He’s not sure how far from Winterfell they are, but he swears the Twins are somewhere behind them now. 

The two of them lapse into a period of comfortable, familiar silence. Even as he feels a peace he hasn’t felt in ages, adrenaline still fizzes in his hands. Jon’s not sure if it’s because he’s officially back home after years away, or if it’s the woman across from him. He’s not sure which would be worse, either. 

“How close do you think we are?” he asks after thirty or so minutes. The weight of the cloud cover seems to dampen his words, lowering the volume and cushioning everything in a heavy layer of significance. 

Alayne worries at her bottom lip, staring out of the window as he had moments prior. “An hour? Maybe two. I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”

Jon grunts in agreement. It’s been so long. Even the trees look strange to him. A stranger in his own country. 

“What do you think it will be like?” 

She’s wringing her hands in her lap, cloaked in barely concealed anxiety. Jon clears his throat, feeling his forehead crease as he struggles to form something coherent.  

“Strange, I imagine,” he settles. “No one wants the throne anymore.”

She stares down at her palms, a crease on her forehead. 

“My father used to tell me ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’” she murmurs.

“He sounds like a wise man.”

Blue eyes lift from pale hands to meet his gaze, searching him like he told a cruel joke. Jon keeps the earnesty of his words plain.

“He was.”

Was. So many of them — how many things have they lost to the past?

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. 

“It’s not your fault.”

“Still.”

Alayne shakes her head, looking away. 

“Are you close to your parents?” she asks. 

“Oh.” He blinks. “No.” 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t pry —” 

“No,” he assures, “it’s just that I haven’t really thought of them in awhile.”

Alayne nods, giving him time to gather himself.

“My dad wasn’t there when I grew up. It was just me and my mom.” Jon runs a hand through his curls, tugging on one to hasten the words. “She died a year or two ago.” 

“I’m sorry,” Alyane whispers. It feels like it should be too intimate. Like it should be reserved for lovers clutching each other close under the security of darkness, where secrets are shared and promises made. 

But it isn’t.

“It’s fine. We weren’t close.” He fiddles with the cover of the paperback, running the pads of his fingers over the embossed lettering. “But she was my mom, and she gave everything she had raising me.”

Why is he telling her this? Even Tyrion doesn’t know Lyanna passed.

“She sounds strong.”

Jon smiles faintly. “She was.”

“I wish I could’ve met her.”

Jon laughs. “She would’ve liked you.”

“Hm,” Alayne says, tilting her head with a dose of skepticism, just genuine enough to make Jon hurt for her. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do.” He stifles a yawn. The doubt on her face disappears into concerned amusement, and something warm and light continues to grow in his chest.

“You seem tired,” she says with a laugh. “Have I been wearing you out?”

“Never,” he tells her, voice a little too honest for his tastes. Hurriedly, Jon brushes off invisible dirt on his table. “But I might go to the dining car, get coffee or something.”

“Do you mind if I come with you? I should probably try to stay awake, too.”

“No,” he blurts out. 

They stare at each other. Alayne blinks at him, and Jon jerks back. 

With a blush that mortifies the living hell out of him, he clarifies, “I mean — no, I don’t mind, of course you can come, sorry —”

Her laugh cuts him off and Jon slams his mouth shut. 

Oh, gods, why does he keep making a fool out of himself, what the actual fuck is wrong with him — 

“It’s alright,” she soothes. Jon presses the back of his hands to his eyes to try to cover the color on his face.

“Are you okay?” Alayne asks, obviously trying not to laugh again. 

“No,” Jon groans. He buries his face deeper in his hands. 

“Let’s go get you coffee,” she decides, mirth still poorly hidden. “I think you need it.”

Jon takes a minute to recompose himself, and when he looks up Alayne already has her bag slung over her shoulder, looking at him with raised eyebrows and a big smile. Jon sighs, and motions for them to start over to the car. 

They slide out of the booth in perfect sync. The two of them stare at each other, standing still yet somehow both seeming to lean towards the other, waiting for one of them to break the silence standing between. 

“Coffee, then?” he asks, and for once he’s not the one caught scrambling. She flushes (adorably — goddamnit, Snow, keep it together) and Jon cracks a crooked grin. 

“Uh, yes,” she stammers, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. She meets his eyes, and Jon jerks his head to the door behind her. 

“After you,” Jon says with a crooked smile. 

He can’t remember the last time he’d smiled this much. He feels like that maybe is a sign, but he’s tired of reading into things. 

“Chivalry isn’t dead,” Alayne notes, tilting her head as she turns around to start towards the dining car.

“Oh, I’m no knight,” he says, amusement seeping into his words. “Sorry to disappoint, m’lady.” 

Alayne pulls the first door between the cars open, taking the moment to shoot him a wry look. “I prefer ‘your Grace’, actually.” 

Then she’s turning around to push open the second door, leaving him standing in the compartment halfway between train cars. 

Jon stares after her for a second, feeling like something important just happened. 

But he’s not very good with people — not to mention social cues — and she’s already at the cafe bar, so he shakes his head and walks into the dining car. 

“What’re you getting?” he asks when he slides up next to her. She glances over at him, and he’s once again caught off guard by her ethereal beauty. 

“Hm,” she says, narrowing her eyes at the paper menu in front of her. “Just a coffee, I think.”

Jon nods, shifting closer to get a better look at the menu. 

“I’ll have the same,” he says. When he looks up at her, the proximity strikes him like a shot to the head. 

Close up, he can see the cracks of gold dancing in her eyes, bright sunlight arching through clear skies. Jon feels like he’s flying — as if he has floated somewhere high, high above the earth and found himself in the arresting sight of heaven. His gaze flickers down to soft lips, parted in surprise at their closeness. Does she feel the ease of it too? Is it as natural for her as it is for him? 

If he could only lean forward, their lips would brush. Would she taste sweet, summer in the form of a lone woman on a train? Or would she be the first breath of spring, hopeful and true and serene?

“What would you like to order?”

Jon jerks back, raking a hand through a curl that has fallen in front of his face. 

“Uh,” he stutters, “yes — coffee. Please.”

“I’ll have the same,” Alayne adds, much smoother than his. 

The barista gives a short nod and turns to start the pour-overs. The car is filling up, so he glances over at Alayne and says, “Do you want to go grab us a seat? I’ll bring the drinks over.”

“Sure,” she says brightly, and she slides a five coppernote over the counter before moving away from him. The absence is conspicuously loud, and he berates himself for sending her away. Who knows how much longer they have? How much time might be wasted by parting, even if just for a minute?

He must be pathetic for missing her already. 

(Maybe he’s okay with that, actually. Jon’s not entirely sure. 

It has been a very confusing day.)

“Wait,” he tells the barista, staring at the pastries in the display case. He points at one of them, hardly thinking about it, and says, “One of those — all on my tab, please.”

“Sure.”

It takes two more minutes for the coffees to finish, and Jon slides his card over the counter to pay. He takes the coppernote and holds it between two fingers, balancing the two coffees and the heavy plate in the crook of his arm. 

Jon grabs a few creamers and packets of sugar before turning around, scanning the crowded car for Alayne. She’d chosen two seats on the counter along the wall, right up against wide windows. Her hair gleams a startling copper for a moment and Jon finds himself transfixed. 

But eventually he manages to make his legs work again, and he walks over to their stools. 

“Here,” Jon says, sliding the plate towards her, coppernote securely tucked half-way underneath. The coffee is placed on the counters. He dumps the packets of creamer and sugar unceremoniously next to them, and picks out two to put in his cup. 

Alyane gasps. “Lemon cake!”

He takes his seat next to her, tearing open one of the sugars and carefully pouring half of it in. He does not do it to avoid looking at her — he doesn’t. He doesn’t. 

Damn it all to hell. 

“How’d you know?” she asks, swiping up some of the powdered sugar off the plate with her finger and putting it in her mouth.

Fuck. Jon shifts in his seat, trying desperately to think of anything other than her sucking on fingers. He takes a sip of the coffee and winces when it burns his throat.

“I don’t know,” he says now that his little problem is not as much of a pressing issue.

He shrugs, partly to hide his own confusion and partly to save face. “I didn’t really think about it.”

Should he be worried about how much he feels he knows her? Should he be suspicious of the closeness — the intimacy, the trust — that has built itself in mere hours?

“My parents used to use lemon cakes as bribes,” she says, taking three packets of sugar. “They remain my ultimate weakness.”

“Bribes?” he asks, trying not to laugh. 

Alayne grins. “To pay attention.”

Then she tears open the three packets all at once, and dumps them into her cup. Jon stares. 

“Wow,” he says. He’s almost impressed.

She shrugs.  “I like sugar.”

“Really?” Jon laughs, still staring at the cup. “I never would’ve guessed.”

The time passes without either of them realizing it. Conversation flows like the rush of sweetwater from a dam, so easy to get lost in and so terrible in its potency. Sometime after he finishes his coffee, she offers him a piece of lemon cake, and then it’s an unspoken decision that they split the rest; one forkful for him and then one for her, the sugar resting on their lips like honeyed snow.

It feels like they’ve been together for years, not hours. A small part of him knows that he won’t find another person like her, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe he is meant to see this as divine intervention: proof that true happiness exists somewhere. That even if it’s just for a moment, there is always going to be this.

They finish the lemon cake between eager words. There’s so much he wants to tell her, so much he wants to know about her. He takes another sip of her too-sweet coffee at her urging, when Alayne falters.

She fiddles with the plate, tracing the ceramic before looking up at him. 

“This is going to sound so stupid,” she says, a flush already rising to her cheeks, “but — the two of us — doesn’t it feel like… ” 

Like we’ve parted before.

(Like I’ve loved you before.)

“Like we’ve met before?”

Alayne bites her lip. Hesitates. 

“I would’ve remembered you,” she says earnestly.

Jon swallows. Runs a hand through his hair, breathing out, “I could never have forgotten you.”

A tenuous thread between them, held between unsure hands and hopeful hearts. She holds his gaze with something akin to grief: as if she is already preparing to forget him again. The thought is so sudden — so utterly frightening — that he finds himself searching desperately for an answer to a question neither of them really know. 

“Another life, maybe,” he says. A wry smile twists his mouth. 

A soft laugh escapes from her throat; pulled out by chain and iron. Jon’s heart hurts.

“Maybe,” she cedes, but it’s as tragic as it is amused. 

“What?” he asks, half-teasing. “You don’t believe in past lives?”

“I’ve never really thought of it,” Alayne answers, one brow rising, and lips quirking. 

“I think I was a soldier,” Jon muses. She scoffs. “What?”

“You wouldn’t have been a soldier,” she argues. Her eyes drag along the width of his shoulders, down to the hands resting on the counter. “You would’ve been a commander. Or a general.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” he laughs. “Not cut for battle, hm?”

Jon sighs. “I’m wounded. Truly.”

“I’m sure you and your paint brushes would’ve wreaked havoc on the battlefield, Jon,” she says solemnly. 

He sticks out his tongue at her and she grins. 

“Alright. What about you, then?” Jon rests his chin on his hand, narrowing his eyes at her. “What were you?”

“I’m not sure.” She runs her hand over The Hobbit’s cover idly. “An opera singer, maybe.”

“An opera singer?”

Alayne smiles. It’s beautiful, and Jon’s heart stutters in his chest. “I used to love to sing. If things were different… I don’t know. Maybe I could’ve.”

She must see something on his face, because she tilts her head, eyes sparkling with mirth. “What?” 

Jon shakes his head. “I don’t think I have the words.”

“To say what?”

He holds his breath, the sudden knowledge that she seems to be doing the same hitting him with a flash of thunder outside the train. So he shrugs, and looks back down at his cup, bringing it to his lips as he stares out the wide windows. 

To say what? What is screaming to be let past his lips, clawing at his throat and sucking the air out of his lungs? 

Jon sets the cup back down on the counter and stares at the dark liquid. 

“I don’t know,” he says. 

He looks out the window in front of them, a slow affliction creeping down his spine. Lightbringer’s speed is halved from what it was. Wintertown is rolling past them, all buildings clinker brick and white plaster, flush to its neighbors. Winding, narrow streets surround the tracks, wire wrought balconies overlooking the alleys. 

But beyond the calm and steadiness of the city is something close to mourning, a stifling fury muted by time and vengeance: windows shattered in their frames, abandoned homes with doors blown off hinges, and red paint splashed on the doorways of half-way to crumbling buildings.

“It looks different,” Alayne whispers. 

“It does,” he agrees. 

They must be less than ten minutes away from the station. The reminder of being so close to home — about why he’s so close to home hits him, and it’s as if he’s been submerged in blackwater. His lungs fill with something biting, his stomach twisting into a knot at the thought of once again trying to breathe life back into a dead and dying career. 

His hand taps against his thigh, each thud a drum of dread. Jon takes a deep breath and leans back on his stool. He looks over at Alayne. “We should head back.”

The smile he’d grown wonderfully used to has vanished, a mask slipping in its place. Alayne smoothes her trousers down and nods. “I suppose we should.”

Jon sighs. He gathers their cups and her plate and slides out of the chair, heading over to the bin by the trash to methodically stack the dishes. Maybe if he stretches it out, they won’t have to separate. They can just stay in this moment, sitting side by side in a soft sort of love, easy and careless and fated.

But as always, time moves on without care of its victims, and when he turns, Alayne is already waiting for him.

“Ready?” he asks. 

She nods. There is still no smile. Jon follows her through the car, sliding the doors open and walking back down the aisle to the booth. 

The minutes between them sitting back down and arriving at the station are quiet. Alayne slides The Hobbit back over to him wordlessly, and he pockets it in his bag with a nod. 

Evening has settled over the North, and what little light reaches the train is soon covered by the large overhang of the station. 

“It was nice meeting you,” Alayne says once the train rolls to a stop. She begins to stand, adjusting her canvas bag. Jon takes a breath and follows her movements. 

It seems too formal, too simple a goodbye. But Jon follows her lead, repeating, “Nice to meet you.”

(Hadn’t she been the one echoing him? Have they switched so easily, so quickly slotted into the other’s place?)

“Will you —” she starts, but then she purses her lips, tugging on the same Northern braid that caught his eye at the start. “Will you walk with me? Off the train, I mean. To the station.”

“Yes,” he says, so quickly he almost cuts her off, “of course.”

Alayne looks at him. Slowly, she nods, biting her lower lip. It must be a habit, he thinks. 

“Good,” she says, and for what feels like the first time in forever, she smiles. 

The sun begins to shine again, out of her eyes and from her being. The realization is frightening in its surety; the certainty that it was, is, and will be true, for hours and years and centuries to come: Jon would do anything to see her smile.

“Good,” Jon says, and he smiles right back. 

Someone from another booth coughs behind them, and Jon glances back apologetically. 

“Ready?” he asks.

Alayne laughs. “No, but I don’t have much of a choice now.”

Then, she turns on her heel and starts to file out towards one of the many exit doors, and Jon hurries to follow her. 

Stepping off the train to the station feels like it should be monumental. Like it will be — oh, this is what home was — or — this is where I belong — or even — I know this. But it isn’t. It feels like he is just taking a step from a train to a platform, the only change being he stands about two feet shorter from where he just was. 

Jon doesn’t know why it disquiets him so much. 

(Maybe he thought he would be struck with inspiration as soon as he returned home. Maybe he expected to slip in between the spaces in this not-so-strange strange country, fitting into the role of born Northerner, accent falling from his mouth with the normalcy as it did years ago. 

It’s none of that.)

They wander a few feet into the crowd, ushered by rushing families and crying children. 

“Well,” Jon says, arching an eyebrow. “We’re home.”

Alayne doesn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes scan the crowd, and she clutches her bag close to her person, like she’s afraid someone will come and take it from her. 

Blue eyes meet his, and the world zeros down to her and her alone. 

Her face is unreadable, but Jon thinks he sees something warm in her eyes. Her shoulder half-lifts. 

“Home,” she says, weirdly sardonic. “Maybe.”

They stare at each other, face to face. Wisps of black brush against fair cheeks, the wind from the vents making them dance around her face. She’s beautiful. 

He runs a hand through his hair. Neither of them move. 

And then he notices a discernible lack of heft on his back, and just barely stops himself from kicking himself. 

“Fuck,” he curses, running a hand through his hair. “I left my bag on the train.”

She looks at the train and then back at him. Jon watches as she ducks her head and shifts her weight on her feet. 

“I have to go,” she says. Is it reluctant? He hopes it is, for how much those words hurt. “You should go get it before the train leaves.”

He shakes his head, not breaking eye contact. The crowd jostles them, and he guides her to the side to avoid getting run over.

“I’ll get it later,” Jon tells her. 

Alayne nods after a moment, relief washing over her features. Jon smiles. 

She glances up at him from behind thick lashes, running a hand down the canvas strap of her bag. Jon wants to carry it for her.  

(Gods, she’s going to leave. She’s going to leave, and Jon will be left without color again.)

“Thank you,” Alayne says, “for everything.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

She shakes her head. “You did, Jon. I don’t — it’s hard to explain, exactly. But thank you.”

He’s silent. 

“I don’t know why I feel like this,” he starts, “like I’ve known you forever.”

She’s so close to him, and when her hands grip the cotton of his t-shirt Jon thinks he’s hallucinating. 

His laugh is shaky, and when he bites the inside of his cheek he doesn’t relent until it starts to bleed. “I think I’m going insane.”

Jon’s heart is beating too fast in his chest, and all he can see is this woman in front of him. 

“This doesn’t happen to normal people.” Her hand is soft under his when he covers it with his own. He squeezes gently; she leans even closer. “It never feels like this — I never feel like this.”

“Maybe you don’t want to be a passenger anymore,” she says, so open he thinks he’s going to break for her. “And maybe I don’t, either.”

Gods.

“I want to kiss you,” Jon says lowly, “so fucking badly. But —”

Her eyelashes flutter at the last word. They’re red. It’s a stupid detail to focus on; but he thinks it matches. She is full of cracking contradictions and impeding impossibilities, and he wants to put her together again.

She takes a breath, leaning away to look at his face better. “But?”

“I don’t think I’d ever get you out of my head,” he admits. 

A sweet smile grows on her face, eyes crinkling at the corners. She sways closer as if to share a secret: as red and damning as the crimson that paints her lips. 

(So close he can see the gold sparking from her irises; so close he swears they breathe as one.)

Jon rests his forehead on hers, and she asks; “Is that so terrible?”

A pause.

He laughs. “Maybe.”

Her cheeks are flushed pink, and he raises a hand to cup her cheek, featherlight. Her teeth sink into the flesh of her bottom lip, and his heart stutters in his chest.

Licks his lips.

“But,” he murmurs, “I think it might be worth it.”

“Me too,” she whispers, breathless and breathtaking. 

It’s a soft thing: 

His eyes slip shut as her hands slide through his hair, nails dragging against his scalp. His hands curl around her waist, anchoring him.

Their lips are barely brushing. Jon’s heart has risen to his throat, thudding so hard he’s sure Alayne can hear it. Her breath is warm against his skin, dragging him further and further into oblivion.

But then his restraint cracks, and Jon — fucking finally, by the gods — leans in to truly kiss her.

Lemon and sugar still lingers on her lips from earlier. He lets himself sink into the moment; the noise of their surroundings fading into the background as if they’re underwater, and all he knows is the sensation of delicate hands buried in his curls, the heat of her body electric under his hands, and the press of her soft lips on his.

Gods, everything about her is sweet.

Kissing her is coming home, and Jon burns from it.

Need grips him and his hands flex on her waist. After a moment of indecision — or distraction, because fuck she’s a masterpiece — he pulls her closer to deepen the kiss. 

Their noses smash into each other, and Jon has to break the kiss to laugh breathlessly against the corner of her mouth. 

An amused huff and then her hands are tugging his hair, and when he leans back in he treasures the smile he can feel on her lips.

It’s slower this time. Less hesitant. 

Her hands fist in his hair as he wraps his arms around the small of her back, their bodies so tightly pressed together Jon can feel her heart beat in synchronicity with his own.

Kissing her is as natural as breathing, like they’ve been meant to do this their entire lives. Jon’s drunk on the way they collide: the way her body slots against his own, how their lips fit together like two pieces of a broken stone — shaped for each other from birth to death and back again.

He sucks gently on her bottom lip, savoring the pleased hum before breaking away for air. He rests his forehead on hers, their breath mingling between them. He drops his arms so his hands rest again on her waist.

Jon opens his eyes to see bright blue skies staring back at him.

“Oh,” she breathes. 

He laughs, quiet. Smiling, “Oh.”

The bell tolls behind them, signaling the turn of the hour.

Sorrow passes over her face, a mournful shadow. She pulls herself away from him, leaving his arms cold and empty. His hands drop to the side.

“I really have to go,” she whispers.

“Wait,” he says when she steps away. He curls his fingers into his fists to stop him from reaching out. “Just — wait.”

Alayne glances around the station, teeth sinking into her swollen bottom lip. She meets his eyes again, waiting for him to speak.

He runs a hand through his hair. Is he shaking?

“Let me grab my bag, alright? And then, if you want, I can — I’ll walk you to your gate.”

Her face softens. 

“Please,” he says. 

“Alright,” she concedes quietly. 

He grins. “Wait for me?” 

She doesn’t smile back. Blue crystals bore into him. Finally, she says, “Hurry.”

“I will,” Jon promises. 

And he turns from her, a vibrant melody in the pounding heartbeat that surrounds him. His feet propel him back towards their train car (theirs, theirs where they met and theirs where they begin and gods doesn’t theirs sound something out of a dream?), and he forces himself to slow down from the run he’d burst into. 

Jon weaves past gathering families and piles of luggage, skirting around a child with ice cream running down their hands. 

He reaches the door of the train, feet tapping impatiently for the others to clear, fingers twitching at his side. An old woman appears in the doorway and he offers a hand to help her down.

Once she’s out of the way, Jon leaps onto the train with a giddiness he never knew he was capable of. 

He darts down the aisle, legs pounding on the grey carpet. Skidding to a stop in front of their booth is an embarrassing affair — he almost falls face first on the ground, only managing to avoid it by the skin of his teeth and his hand catching the back of the booth. 

Jon straightens up, thanking all the gods that he’s currently the only one in the car. 

He slings the backpack over his shoulder and makes to run back to the angel waiting for him on a platform, but his foot kicks something lying on the ground. Jon glances down unthinking. 

He pauses.

And there, lying innocently underneath the table, is a half folded piece of graph paper. It must have fallen as they were leaving, spurred by anticipation for a life they’ve left far behind. 

Jon bends down to pick it up, smoothing it out on the table. Adjusts the bag on his shoulder, looks out the window. She’s not in view of their car, but it’s cursory nonetheless. 

Well. 

Jon can work with this. 

His bag is heavy and ungainly, but he swings it up beside the paper on the pullout table with ease. Jon digs with shaking hands, exhilaration racing through his joints, and finally pulls out a black ballpoint pen, scrawling his number. The back of the paper is intimidatingly clean, but his chicken scratch is still as terrible as it was in primary school. Jon groans, takes a steadying breath (he really shouldn’t be this nervous, he’s being ridiculous, but this feels like something) and clicks the back of the pen again. 

The numbers make themselves known in stark black ink, painstaking numerals. Jon scans over it once, and then goes back and double checks to make sure his phone number is correct. 

Once he’s satisfied, he sprints back through the car. A voice screaming fate fate this is fate in his head, his hands sweating as he runs through the train back at the main exit, heart in his throat and joy wild in his veins. 

He swings himself out of the train with one hand on the standing bar, regaining his balance as he tugs the backpack over his shoulders. Jon runs a hand through his hair — fuck, he must look like a mess — and looks for a woman with summer in her eyes and fire in her heart. 

The station is already dirty from the hundreds of passengers. A loud roar from the outside gates thunders down the concrete steps to the station, which is a grey conglomeration of granite and steel and glass, and crowded with things deemed too unimportant to bring back home. There’s a rising crescendo somewhere, violins singing and an orchestra swelling, and gods, the station feels like a gateway to another life all by itself, bright and color-struck and — 

And empty. 

The station is empty. 

Jon stares at the vacant station. 

(Empty — why is it empty? Why would she leave?

Why did he think she’d stay?)

His throat is tight. He swallows down the iron. 

“Right,” he says, numb with tired resignation. Jon inhales sharply, nodding to himself. Drags a hand through dark hair, something squeezing painfully in his chest. “Right.”

Like we’ve parted before.

He screws his eyes shut.

He thought — but why did she just leave?

Like I’ve lost you before.

(He thought they had something. And she is — she —)

The paper crumples in his fist, an unwieldy shape that digs into the soft flesh of his palm, cutting. Grounding.

Of course. 

Of course it would end like this. 

(He should’ve known better.)

Jon scratches his chin and refuses to open his eyes. The sight of the empty station is — wordless, in his soul. He thinks if he has to look at it again he won’t be able to stand, won’t be able to find the strength to leave. Bone deep exhaustion sets in, an ache in his limbs and muscles that pulls his heart down to his feet. 

“You alright there, lad?”

Jon opens his eyes to see a man ten feet off or so, a big bag slung across his shoulders. His hair is a scruffy chestnut with a matching beard, both starting to grey. 

Jon doesn’t usually talk to strangers. Ignores them, sometimes, or just meets their eyes until they drop the subject. 

But this man — this kind, honest man, with the look of the North and the sound of it, too — this man isn’t really a stranger. He can’t be. Concern starts to set deeper in the lines of the man’s face, and Jon realizes he’s been standing there silent for the last however many seconds. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice cracking. He clears his throat. It hurts. “Just, uh…” 

Jon falters for a moment, mouth open as he tries to find the words. He clamps down the urge to scream into the empty (so empty, gods why is it so empty why would she leave?) station, jaw so tight it might crack if he puts more force in it.  The paper makes a rustling sound in his hand from the force of his grip and the other flicks their gaze down at Jon’s hand. He has the irrational need to hide it. 

Understanding dawns the other’s face. Jon wants to tear himself apart.

“Met someone, eh?” the man asks, not unkindly, with his hands shoved into the pockets of a leather jacket. He keeps his distance from Jon in the way all Northerners have: true sympathy from steps away instead of the falseness of the South's cling.

Jon takes a short breath, already starting to walk towards the exit behind the other. His legs are stiff, like he’s not in full control of his body. 

“No,” Jon rebuffs, voice low. He passes by the man, a foot between them. He hears the other turn to watch him go, and Jon admits, “Just missed them.”

“Chin up,” the man calls from behind him. “They’ll come back if the gods will it.”

Jon’s lips twitch, and he’s flooded with bitterness. He stops on the chipped stairwell, halfway up to the country aboveground. Bows his head, grinding his teeth.

And then he continues up the stairs, steps thudding against the cold concrete. 

(Because it is like he loved her before, and it was so terrifyingly easy to love her again.)

Tyrion calls halfway into the three hour drive from Winterfell to Eastwatch. 

“You were supposed to call. You are so fucking lucky they wouldn’t let me report a grown man missing after six hours.”

“Huh,” he says. Tyrion sighs. Jon knows he’s pinching his nose on the other end of the line. 

“Just — did you get on the train?”

Jon breathes in; lets it out. “Yeah.”

“And you took it all the way to Winterfell?”

“Yes.”

A skeptical pause. “And you got in the car?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause, this time longer. “Why are you only giving one word answers?”

He leans back in the leather seat, watching evergreens pass by. 

“Long train ride,” Jon says. 

The phone’s silent.

“Shit,” Tyrion says, sighing into the receiver. “I forgot to book both seats.”

A half-smile. Raises his eyebrows, eyes still shut, nods; “Yeah.”

“Well, fuck.”

Jon rubs a hand over his mouth. 

“I’m sorry, Jon. I know you didn’t want to leave the city and that I… sprung this on you, but I thought if I could make it as smooth as possible you’d warm up to the idea.”

A self-deprecating laugh comes through. “It’s obviously not off to a great start.”

“No, no,” Jon says, looking out the passenger window. “It’s, uh. It was — fine.”

“...Oh.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“Oh,” Tyrion says. Jon ignores the puzzlement. He doesn’t have the energy to argue or explain or whatever else the fuck Tyrion wants from him. 

“Well, at least you’re on your way. How does it feel to be back North?”

It feels like a dream. 

This isn’t the home I left. 

I’d forgotten what snow felt like. 

There are too many non-answers. Too many ways to lie and too many ways to tell the truth. 

“Jon?” 

“It’s fine,” Jon says blankly. “I — I don’t know.”

“What?” 

“I forgot —” he starts, but his throat closes up and he has to teach himself how to breathe again. He scratches his beard with his free hand. “It’s strange to be back.”

A long stretch of silence. Then, slowly, “Alright.” 

Jon lets his head thud against the cold glass of the passenger window, shutting his eyes. 

“Well,” Tyrion starts, “you have time to refamiliarize yourself. To get into the right headspace, start making some progress.”

Jon shakes his head even though he knows Tyrion can’t see it. Almost a whisper as his breath fogs up the glass, he says, “I don’t think I can.”

There’s an irritated sigh, and then: “You have to at least try — your career is on the line, Jon, not to mention mine. ”

The trees outside are a deep grey-green, the cloud cover reflecting down on the cold land even in the twilight. “You don’t understand.”

(It feels like he is a column on the verge of collapse, a press of a hand away from cracking. 

It feels as if obsidian sand is slipping through his fingers, and he is forced to watch the grains of memory abandon him to the darkness: a sailor left at the whims of the wind, helpless to steer towards safer waters.

He is forever watching life pass him by. It is a cycle too painfully sweet to break, and too beautifully bitter to remain.)

“Then help me understand,” he hears Tyrion demand. “Tell me why you’re willing to throw everything away, Jon. You can’t just pretend to not care anymore — I know you do. Make me understand.”

“I’m tired,” he says, forehead pressed to freezing glass, “and I’m so fucking sick of pretending I’m not.”

Tyrion starts to say something, but Jon ends the call before he has the chance. 

He tosses the phone to the seat next to him, never looking away from the landscape at his side.

Soon, he’ll have to face everything. Everything that has haunted him, and everything that awaits him. 

But not yet.

So Jon watches the evergreens fly by; static.

He’s dropped off in front of the long driveway that leads back to his cottage. 

It still feels strange calling it his. So long it had been his mother’s, and now it is just that: his. 

The sun has set, and Jon turns on the flashlight on his phone so he doesn’t trip and break his neck. He’s sure after however many years have passed the path is barely drivable, and from the looks of it under the bright light of his phone, barely walkable. 

He trudges along the unpaved road for the half mile it stretches on for. The pines tower over him. They’re not unnerving, exactly, but not comforting. He expected things to click into place. 

It’s not that big a deal, he supposes. After a drink — or five, it feels like a five drink night — he should be able to ignore the creeping sense of not-home that comes with staying at a new place.

Well. Not new, maybe. 

Jon navigates himself over a rivulet cutting through the road. 

Numbness still stiffens his limbs, and he follows the path to the cottage in a dreamlike state. 

He comes back to find the cottage in front of him, the clearing lit by the dim light of the moon. 

The limestone plaster is covered in ivy and spackled with dirt on its stone foundations. Windows are miraculously intact, one shutter left open by a particularly stubborn vine. 

And the door that he and his mother painted — resplendent grey, proud and proclaiming — was still that. Grey. Untouched by the horrors that had happened in the past decade. 

Jon flexes his hand, a furrow appearing on his forehead. 

He walks towards the door. The keys are cool in his hand, and the hinges squeak in the quiet of the night like a scream. The lightswitch is old and flimy plastic, but when he flicks it the small house is illuminated in warm light. 

Tyrion must’ve sent someone to clean it. 

Jon doesn’t know how long he stands in the doorway, but when he enters, he makes a bee-line for his room. A not insignificant part of him hopes that if he sleeps long enough, he’ll wake up to find himself whole again. 

Jon doesn’t want to think about what he is now. 

And so Jon sleeps. 

He spends the next few days ignoring the calls that pester him, lying in his childhood bed with his face buried in his pillow. Food’d been stocked in the pantry, so there was no real reason to do anything but sleep. 

So Jon stuffs his face with pretzels and chips from under a thick comforter. Sunlight streams in through the two windows behind him, and sometime later when he opens sleep-crusted eyes, moonlight takes its place.

But then Jon decides that he really can’t go another second without a shower, and he drags himself out of bed in the late morning light and into the bathroom across the hallway. 

He spends longer than necessary, but who cares? He’s earned this, hasn’t he? 

Alright, three hours is probably excessive, but he hadn’t showered in four days and staying in there made him feel just slightly less like a piece of shit. 

He towels off, mind utterly blank, and when he goes back to his room, he wrestles with the jammed zipper of his bag. 

Of course it fucking explodes. Why wouldn’t it?

He only bothers to pick out his clothes from the bag, declining another call from Tyrion as he does. As he’s leaning down to pick up a t-shirt, something catches his eye under his bed. 

It’s the drawing. Of her. 

(As if he’s drawn anything in the past few years that isn’t her. As if he hadn’t seen it fall under the bed the minute everything fell out of his bag. As if his eyes didn’t follow it like he was possessed.

As if he’s surprised.)

But why the fuck should he be the one to be surprised?

The balled up paper stares accusingly at him. 

In a fit of spite, Jon snatches the paper from where it rolled under his bed. 

He won’t force himself to stare at it. Won’t force himself to remember the sudden light at the end of the tunnel, won’t force himself to ponder on what-could-have-beens and if-onlys. 

He won’t.

So Jon walks out of the room and marches down the hallway, gathering broken armor on the way and trying to shield himself from his own failure. 

The kitchen cabinets are still open from the last time he raided them, but at least the sink is empty. That’s one advantage of stuffing your face in bed, he guesses. Nothing to clean when you just eat shit out of the bag. 

He comes to a halt in front of a humble chipped door, stained a dark brown. There are still drops of darkened wood underneath the door, back from when Jon had insisted he do it himself. The splatters almost look like tears. 

The door swings open, and Jon stands still. 

(He’s always standing so, so still.)

The studio is as he had left it — Tyrion must have remembered his aversion to others being in the space. Dust coats every surface. The air is stale from being stagnant.  Placed carefully in the middle of the room are two giant blocks, white tarp sullied by years gone by.

Jon leans against the doorway, not able to look away from the covered stone. 

But he forces his feet to move, robotic steps jerking him towards the enormous black trash can. Dirt flies into his face when he lifts it and he sneezes, the sound echoing into the metal can and making him grimace. 

He grips the paper in his hands, unfolding it for one last time. 

Alayne. A stranger on a train. An apparition.

Jon shuts his eyes, breathing in the musty air and just managing not to cough. 

Useless. Useless, fucking waste of a trip — hundreds of miles traveled, hours wasted, and for what?

A picture?

Not even that, he scowls. A fucking sketch. 

And what the fuck is he supposed to do with a crumpled up piece of paper? This is all he has to show for his return home. There is no magic word, there is no sense of belonging. He’s still the same person. Still the same man clinging to a life jacket that’s slowly filling with saltwater. 

But for some reason, he doesn’t throw it in the bin. 

Instead, he finds his gaze drawn to the marble across from him. 

Abandoned. Unfinished. 

Puts a hand to his mouth, fingers pressing hard enough to leave white. 

(How soft her lips were, how sad her eyes. How bright — how utterly radiant. A star in a sea of navy.)

His cell rings. 

All Jon hears is his heart beating, a slow, steady pace. Deceptive. 

(How familiar.)

He brings the phone up to his ear, not taking his eyes off the block of raw-hewn marble. 

“Hey,” he says, “forget that last call.”

Jon steps forward. Dust swirls around him, spurred by his movement. The paper crinkles as he flexes his hand, tugging the tarp down with two fingers. 

Debris flies, an old-age halo around his head. Jon breathes out. 

“I think I have something.”