Work Text:
snow - stone - stark
crooked crowns
it is our actions, not our words, that define us
Jon is on his feet before the words finish falling from Davos’ lips.
“Your Grace–” Davos rises as well, “You shouldn’t be hasty–”
“You would advise me to leave her to the rest of Westeros? To paw at her, to rip and tear her to shreds? Cersei Lannister will be amassing a force as we speak, or soon will be when the news reaches her. I cannot, I will not stay in the North and leave my sister to that fate! Sansa is a Stark, she deserves more than that.”
Jon’s chest heaves as he gasps for breath, his anger has taken him by surprise. It has been a long time since he thought of Sansa, since he said her name.
Winterfell belongs to my sister, Sansa.
They’re the words that he spat at Stannis, what feels like a lifetime ago, before they took back Winterfell and drove the Bolton’s out. He said them before Stannis died, in that same war, leaving a host without a King to follow.
And Jon was forced to take up the mantle anyway, reluctantly and begrudgingly, true, but there had been no other choice.
“And if the information is bad?” Davos hesitantly asks, “If they’re trying to draw you out of the safety in the North?”
The rest of Davos’ words go unspoken.
You’ve been here before. And now you have a crown you never asked for as well as a Kingdom of people hungering for vengeance over the corpses of your siblings. Can you risk being wrong again?
When they’d broken through Winterfell’s defenses, and the castle had fallen, it had not taken long for the truth to be drawn out by those looking for mercy. They didn’t find any. But they gave Jon the answers he needed.
Arya Stark hadn’t been in Winterfell, she never had been, it was a farce.
The Boltons had thought themselves clever, dressing up Jeyne Poole as a false Stark and wedding her to Theon Greyjoy, the only surviving person who could have any credibility in identifying her as such.
Greyjoy and Jeyne were long gone by the time Jon arrived, and he hasn’t heard from them, but while he wouldn’t mind knocking Theon’s teeth out, he hopes for Jeyne’s sake that they are somewhere safe. If anything Jon has heard about the Bolton’s is remotely close to true then she deserves a place where danger won’t follow.
Davos’ eyes watch Jon carefully, he can feel them appraising him.
They haven’t known each other long, they have trusted each other for less, but in the past six months that Jon has held the North since Stannis died, he has grown to enjoy the man’s company. He is one of the only people who know the truth of Jon’s death, of his resurrection, and his gaze has never wavered, he always looks straight at him.
“It doesn’t matter to you, does it?”
Jon raises an eyebrow.
“If the information is bad. It doesn’t matter, the possibility is irrelevant because all that matters is the hope that it isn’t, that the information is good and that Sansa lives. You won’t leave her there if there is any other way, even if you lose your crown in the endeavour.”
They stare at each other for a long time after that, and Davos eventually excuses himself from the room. Jon sits in his chair, still as stone, while the sun fades in his window and the room begins to darken.
He’s still not a Stark, as badly as he wants to be, he is nothing better than a pretender, the same as the boy king Joffrey Baratheon, murdered at his own wedding. He’s only ever been a bastard, only ever been Jon Snow. And when he took this throne it was under the assumption that there was nobody else left.
Now, there just might be.
Robb is gone, slaughtered by his own Northern allies the Boltons, when he should have been protected under guest right and the honour of men who swore to protect him. His Lady mother too, as much disdain as Jon may have for her, was taken cruelly and unjustly in the face of that heinous betrayal.
His other brothers, the littlest ones, Bran and Rickon, who had once been wild and reckless, were gone even before Robb met his untimely end. Theon Turncloak had seen to that. The stories of their burnt bodies cling to the North still, whispers on the wind. Jon cannot escape them.
And his sisters, Jon’s sun and moon sisters, who in all of Westeros could tell it true?
Arya hasn’t been seen or heard from since their father’s execution, hide nor hair of her beyond the false rumours perpetuated by the Boltons. If the gods are kind then Jon hopes she died swiftly, without pain, and knowing that her family loved her.
But Sansa, she is the loose end, the frayed thread of a winter cloak. She had lived through their father’s death and the rest of their siblings’ deaths too. Everyone knows she disappeared during Joffrey’s wedding, slipped away while their pretender king choked to death. And if Cersei Lannisters promises were true, then he had to assume she had no idea where Sansa had escaped to in the mayhem. Cersei’s fury was enough to make most of the Kingdoms believe that Sansa had a direct hand in Joffrey’s death. But that doesn’t matter to Jon, all that matters is if she is alive.
Could she be in the Eyrie? Could Davos’ information be true?
The last Stark, the lost Princess of the North, the final trueborn heir of Ned and Catelyn, locked away in the Eyrie with Petyr Baelish? Was it really that simple?
Jon glances at the window, snow is starting to fall now, heavily. He sighs and goes to stand by the glass. Davos is right.
It doesn’t matter if the information is false, it doesn’t matter if it’s a trap.
If Sansa lives, he will go to her, he will free her from her captors and bring her home to the North. He will kneel at her coronation and give up his crown for her, he will see a true Stark on the throne and he will stand by her side, the loyal bastard brother, a sworn knight to protect her.
He was never fashioned for this false crown.
Alayne withers in her gilded cage.
But for the first time in months Sansa emerges from the confines.
Petyr had brought her and a few handmaidens here as a last ditch effort, a final defense. Sansa knows it will not last.
The Eyrie was said to be impregnable, but even the strongest will can crumble under the right pressure, and the ancient fortress is falling.
She doesn’t even know where Mya ended up or even Myranda. All her friends are gone and the handmaidens that were left to her do not know her well, they cower in truth under the gaze of their Lord’s daughter.
The lone window in the room doesn’t give a clear view of the fighting. Snow falls sometimes, winter knocks at their door. The sea is far below, it looks dark and sinister, choppy and churning in its depths. Sansa has already thought that throwing herself out into the abyss would be preferable to what awaits her now.
Cersei will never give her such mercies.
If only she weren’t such a coward. If only she could give up every last shred of hope. Nobody is coming for her, nobody is mounting a daring rescue. The war outside must be Lannister forces, driven by Cersei’s psychotic fixation on her and the need of vengeance for a crime Sansa never committed.
The fighting grows louder below and Sansa keeps glancing at the window. She notices one of the maids staring at her hair. In the last week, with all that has unravelled before them, she has not managed to keep up her strict dye regime, she knows the red shines through beneath the black. She wonders if the maids have heard the rumours, even here in the safety of their castle where Petyr’s word is law.
The veneer of Alayne Stone is peeling off of her in pieces.
The facade would never fool Cersei anyway.
And who else could it be? Petyr had not told her, but she knew from him that there were rumours of her birth swirling all around the seven kingdoms. He had also told her they were nothing to worry about, that he was dealing with it.
There was only one person who would be truly interested in her whereabouts, one person who would do something with the information.
There is another deafening bang and Sansa realizes that the fighting has breached the final landing, boots thunder up to the door. Her time is up.
Sansa dashes across the room and throws the window wide. Her handmaidens are screaming as the door starts banging. Sansa steps on to the ledge of the window, only pausing for a moment when she looks down at her feet and the long drop below her.
The door flies open and she freezes, her head turning towards the noise on instinct while her hand still grips the side of the window for support.
For one moment all the noise stops. Men flood the room.
“Sansa! Don’t!”
The shock of the use of her real name, the warmth of the voice speaking, and finally the recognition as her eyes land on him are enough to stop her plunge into the murky water far below. Her mouth falls open and she takes one foot off the window ledge, moving as if she were in a dream.
It is Jon who moves towards her, hesitantly and then all at once.
And then she is in his arms, he lifts her right off her feet and pulls her far away from the window. She grips his neck so tightly she fears she is hurting him. She muffles her cries in his shoulder and the sobs wrack her body freely now, finding some sick relief in his embrace.
He hushes in her ear, “It’s okay, you’re safe now. I’m here. We’re going to take you home.”
She can only cry harder as Jon’s hands lock around her waist, holding him tighter to her. The rest of the room fades away as they hold one another.
How many times did she dream of this? How many times did she envision Robb storming the capital and bursting into her rooms to free her from her torment?
Jon is here, whole and alive, and nothing else matters.
She had not let herself hope, not allowed the thought to gain purchase in her mind. Even as she recalled one of the Lords mentioning Jon’s kingship in the North, even as she knew that news of her survival might reach his ear, surely he would not have risked it all for a sister who might not even be alive, surely not for her, least important of the Starks, the wolf without teeth.
But she doesn’t have to be a Stone, not anymore. Jon is here now and they are together, he won’t let them be parted. Together they can remember what it is to be Starks, what it means to belong to a pack.
She finds her voice, muffled and wet in Jon’s neck.
“Thank you.”
Moons pass before they stand under the Godswood tree for Sansa’s coronation.
Sansa is perhaps never more beautiful than that night, perhaps never more ethereal than when they lay a crown of gilded winter roses on her head in the moonlight bathing the Godswood in its pearlescent light.
Jon is perhaps never happier than that night, perhaps never more at ease than to see his sister safe and happy and crowned at Winterfell, as she should be.
(Even if they had fought incessantly all the way back from the Eyrie, even if Sansa had insisted he keep his Kingship, and resisted his every counterargument with a tilt of her head. Even if the compromise they had settled on displeased them both. For that evening they were neither Stone nor Snow, but two Starks finally finding their way home, looking up at the moon and waiting for the familiar howl of a wolf in the far-off distance.)
They will rule together, as is their agreement. Neither relinquishing power to the other, a brother and sister partnership, a King and Queen united by blood, not marriage. Not unheard of, but still peculiar.
(Until, a long time from now, there comes a day when a boy they once called brother returns from the trees and tells them the truth. A truth which unburdens their hearts that grew heavy with the guilt of the feelings that had grown between them, the feelings which they had failed to resist against.
And then, they will be a King and Queen in truth, united in blood and in marriage and in love. And they will fight their battles side by side, slaying dragons and facing down lions back to back, as it was always intended to be.)
But for now, they are still two people, too scared of the fragility of the peace they have so recently found, to risk fracturing it. And it is enough for them to stand in the snow underneath a heart tree, with their people, and to dream of a future that they can build together.