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Though less urgent, the buzz of activity around Winterfell is not so different now from the one felt during the war. It can be observed in the busy hands shoveling rocks and laying mortar, the glass garden vibrant again with life and sustenance, Samwell Tarly eagerly setting out to refill the library with books and maps and records started anew.
It’s a work in progress, only one of many. If she directs her gaze skyward to the broken tower, the lone structure that may boast of owing its appearance to no recent alteration, the sight of the crows that nest there is no different from her recollection’s. Let her feet guide her to the godswood and the heart tree within, and time yields any claim to significance amid such enduring scenery. Some memory or another wills its way to her consciousness occasionally, not every one so very old. There’s a sweet ache to every comparison her mind draws with the present, a feeling of familiarity for all the contrast it calls to attention, and a sense of perspective not wholly unwelcome — still more is required to begin to shed the years spent south of the Neck, no matter that it’s been nearly half as long that she’s been settled anew in this longed for castle of her childhood.
Some of what she brought home with her serve her and her people well at least, since the cries for Lady Stark that may be heard as Sansa walks the grounds are addressed to her now. Of all her girlish aspirations and wishes, this is not one she ever thought to consider. “It’s not for me to do it justice,” Bran said upon their reunion when she suggested he take on the mantle that was his by right, and which she shall never again consider giving up, wearing the same look on his face that hinted at some secret knowledge as when she pushed back a damp curl from his forehead moons later, and he whispered that he would be watching her.
Sansa hasn’t been alone in coming to her title unexpectedly. “You are Robb’s heir. The people have chosen you twice over now,” she reminded her king in a moment of doubt. Doubt she doesn’t share, for however often they disagree her faith in Jon is unwavering.
A brother no longer today but her stalwart companion since she came to him cloaked in grey and shivering, a starved exhausted gelding dying beneath her saddle.
It won’t be her choice if he leaves again. It wasn’t hers the first time she saw him off, and she doesn’t care to experience his absence anew, yet the prospect seems inevitable. Bearable too, she knows, for all that she might hate it. Their trials have been great, individual and shared alike. An unexplained illness taking hold of Bran the same moment the last corpse fell to the ground and did not rise back was only the freshest wound, their brother’s slow passing succeeding Arya’s quicker fate on the battlefield by days. In comparison a separation born of distance is a little thing, but the comforts Jon’s presence provide are not — this she has learned too well not to treasure.
Winterfell is her seat of power, he’s proclaimed many times in private and public. They’ve been sharing it so far, but how could it be a surprise should the need arise for the King in the North to rule from his own castle. There are so many left without a lord or lady in the wake of the wars, and all in better shape than the ancestral Stark stronghold where, after being set aflame by the bastard of Bolton and severely damaged during the Long Night, repairs have been underway for years now. Places where Jon could raise a family. He loves Winterfell. He wants to stay here as much as I do, is what she tells herself, but she knows the decision is out of her hands, and maybe even out of his. They are both creatures of duty, and one they share is begetting heirs.
Jon has never discussed marriage offers with her unless to complain at their steady flow, and as far as she knows nor has he ever considered any. War and survival were grudgingly accepted as explanations for the king’s disinterest once, but those bigger concerns no longer stand today as snows melt and rivers thaw, and it’s the future that everyone turns their eyes to with so much loss thread through the past. Once Sansa dreamed herself a wife above anything else, but her own vision of spring mostly includes Jon nowadays (and peace, always, as best they can afford), putting the two ideas at odds with one another. Despite his silence Jon might harbor a similar dream, or he should for he has more than earned any happiness.
But Sansa cannot imagine any woman, let alone queen, happy to play second fiddle to a bannerman anywhere she resides, nor Jon imposing the presence of a wife and children in Lady Stark’s home for he would see it that way.
How long then until a betrothal is made, and this dreaded scenario becomes a reality Sansa must bear alone when it is Jon who helps her weather storms these days? For now they attend meetings together, see to the people together, dine together, and on good days laugh together, but the pesky thought never strays far that their time together is reaching an end.
Jon’s thoughts have been closer to hers than she could have suspected, however, for he holds her back by the hand one afternoon as she makes to follow the steward out the door after they went through the ledgers, reviewing their finances now the first regular shipment from the Vale arrived since the new trade agreement with her Arryn cousin was settled on.
Their unique position as she is the lady of this household but Jon the king, one who lives under her roof, means they’ve been shouldering many responsibilities together and alone when it comes to ensuring Winterfell runs well, though this is likely one that ought to fall on her entirely. Numbers have never been where Sansa excels, and while she trusts the steward to do his job well, Petyr is on her mind too so that she feels better keeping close track of their coffers as they grow and empty. Jon has been so very helpful there, saving her time as she works at making sense of the pages before her and determine how best to spend their gold. He’s done this before as Lord Commander, he reminds her. Yes, he’s capable and a great support. He will make a fine husband to some woman Sansa will try not to hate for taking him away.
And this woman, it seems, has a name at last.
The twisted lines between Jon’s brows when she turns to face him fully betray some nervousness. Any other time she would seek to allay his fears with a word or a smile, but a pit is opening where her stomach should be, wider when Jon starts talking, confirming the matter at hand. Self-preservation kicks in, a mask of impassiveness slipping into place over her features; it’s harder to keep her composure as he goes on and his actual words start sinking in.
Jon is far from talkative unless his occasional drink-induced babbling counts. This is not one such instance, but his voice progressively takes on an impulsive edge, his eyes never looking away from hers as he speaks of giving great thought to marriage, of wanting to broach the subject with her many times before, considering how best to do it because her response matters so to him, and that maybe he ought to keep his mouth shut if it turns out all he manages is to make things awkward between them but he can’t… This is a conversation she’s been dreading and tried steeling herself for, but what Jon ends up saying doesn’t align with anything she anticipated.
“Rule by my side. What have we been doing but ruling the North together from the start? It works, doesn’t it? And we’ve proven I need your counsel. I want your counsel and to give you mine.” His mouth quirks. “I want the arguments and the quiet moments and everything else. Sansa, I want to spend my life with you.”
Sansa looks back at him, brows knit in confusion and mouth slightly open. “What are you saying?” Her mind is playing tricks on her or she misheard him. Why else would he speak like that? Oh gods. Her heart starts racing. Yet when she studies Jon’s face, searching for an explanation closer to the truth than her own wishful thinking, all she finds is fierce honesty.
“Be my wife. Marry me, Sansa. I don’t care about ruling if I can’t do it with you, and I don’t want a family unless I have one with you.” His tone urgent at first grows softer when he adds, “I love you. You’re all I want.”
“Jon…” She can scarcely hear her own voice, the agitation inside her chest overwhelming everything. “Are you in earnest?”
“Yes. I loved you even when I shouldn’t have. It’s the rare silver lining I’ve found in the truth of my parentage… that I might love you openly.”
Those creases that lined his face and disappeared in his eagerness are back. Standing before her he looks bold and serious, self-assured and fearful both. His words to her were laced with familiar hope, though she never gave voice to hers the way he just did. He’s carried all these feelings close to his chest, but he needn’t have worried and neither had she. Jon keeps setting her free somehow. Her eyes burn suddenly, and she tries to blink away the moisture before tears can form. She never doubted Jon’s love, but what he speaks of is something else entirely.
“I thought…” Her throat feels tight and uncooperative. He’s still holding her hand, rubbing his thumb over her skin in a comforting rhythmical motion. Sansa swallows and tries again. “I thought I was alone in this. I thought it’s my title all anyone could ever want from me. Winterfell.”
A smile flutters across Jon’s face, one he tries to smother by pressing his lips close together before letting out a breathy no.
She can hardly believe this moment is real, or what she is about to admit. “When you came back with Daenerys, I didn’t know why it bothered me so much, and when I figured it out” — there’s no stopping her tears now — “I thought, well, it’s ill-fated anyway. You were my brother and you were with her or so I thought. Even when it became obvious I was mistaken… it seemed a twisted joke or like some dark punishment from the gods to feel the way I felt.” Their relation to each other should have been the first and last deterrent to her feelings for him, even now when their blood ties changed nothing to the eighteen years they lived as brother and sister.
“I couldn’t love her the way she loved me. I tried for a while.” Jon’s face twists into a frown before he confesses, voice pained, “That was cruel of me.” Sansa watches patiently while he searches for his next words. “I wanted to do right by you, to do right by Father. I thought if only I could love someone else… But I never did. It was always you.”
Sansa longed to hear such words on many lonely nights, for Jon to unburden his heart to her the way she could barely admit to herself even wanting. There are even more bodies between them now than there were then, she reflects, the dragon queen’s among them. Jon has mourned her, no better or worse than he mourned their siblings or countless friends, simply full of sadness, grieving for the loss of his kin, a woman who fought alongside him, ultimately sacrificing her fate in favor of everyone else’s. Today the future is not as bleak as it once looked, though their past remains unaltered. Nonetheless it lingers, some days more strongly felt than others, taking the shape of a glimmering touchstone or a crashing wave. A candle flickering with the breeze, casting its many shades. Each of us wears a shadow. But just now it is spring again. The losses they have known ever since that snowy day in Winterfell when they all parted all those years ago will be theirs to carry forever. They’re the same losses which have brought her and Jon closer now, and make Sansa’s bones sing with the knowledge that it is precious to live and love and be loved.
“Lyanna Stark gave birth to you, everyone knows it now. Cousins may wed.”
“They may.”
“Ask me again, Jon.”
“Sansa.” She can feel her name in the air between them, carried over by an exhale, while his thumb brushes her tear-stained cheek, his other hand sliding across her back, inching her body closer to his. “Will you marry me?”
“I will.”