Chapter Text
It is unseasonably warm, which Sansa decides suits her fine. A traditionalist to the core, she prefers a white Christmas under normal circumstances, but life hasn’t been normal for a while.
Also, the word wasn’t what she thought it was. What she mistook for “normal” was actually the feeling of being safe.
That was before college down south, before an engagement her senior year, before a black-tie wedding at 23 at the King’s Landing Natural History Museum for five hundred guests she didn’t know. She barely knew herself. Once that understanding came, piecemeal, in waves that slowly revealed that the love she thought she had committed her life to was an illusion, Sansa learned who she was: a fighter, a Northerner. She left, dragged Joffrey (and his vindictive mother) kicking and screaming through their divorce proceedings and moved home.
Years of mistakes she forgives herself for now because, just like snow on the ground this time of year, safety is easily taken for granted. How was she to fathom how its absence would feel?
Standing here now, in the quiet peace of the house she grew up in, looking out into woods that seemed dark and forbidding to her younger self, seeing only solace and comfort in them now, Sansa can’t believe it’s been less than a year. Nine months, long enough to have given birth to something. In her case, the new life is hers. King’s Landing and being Mrs. Joffrey Baratheon seem like memories from decades ago. She’s glad for that feeling. Relief. Happiness, even.
However she feels, though, it was only just long enough ago that it’s still fresh on everyone else’s minds. She senses the tense awkwardness of those around her tonight, her family’s annual Christmas Day gathering, a marathon of an affair that brings out just about everyone she knows. Most of them are tiptoeing around her like they think she’s a live bomb. Others are overcompensating and trying to include her in every banal conversation like she can’t be left alone or she’ll break down. There’s talk about the balmy weather, the Direwolves’ chances at the championship, the state of local traffic since that new gaudy shopping center opened in Winter Town. None of it about things that matter: like the fact that her newborn nephew is the best Stark yet, that her sister’s “He’s NOT my boyfriend!” is here for the first time. Bran won a fellowship for grad school, and Rickon may yet make it to college thanks to hockey—apparently, he's even better than Robb was back in the day.
They all have good news, the details of lives she missed out on for too long. She’s eager to hear all of it, but it’s like they think she can’t handle other people’s happiness. Arya, in particular. In the handful of minutes she’s managed to pry conversation out of the clearly overwhelmed (but clearly smitten) Gendry, Sansa has come to see that he’s perfect for her sister and hopes he’s around a while. But Arya is doing her damndest to avoid Sansa, avoid talking to her, being in the same room with her, making eye contact, as if Sansa can’t handle seeing someone else coupled off. She’s divorced, not heartless. Sansa is over the moon for her, and if her sister could sit still for five minutes, she’d gush to her proper. Instead, Sansa has to deal with the usually feisty Arya’s wide-eyed, misguided guilt and her assumptions that Sansa’s still some kind of shrinking violet despite everything she’s gone through.
So Sansa’s glad for the mild weather, for the escape the back patio provides. She reckons nobody can see her out here on the other side of the pool shed. Her mother or Jeyne would have come chase her down a while ago if they knew where she was.
She’s fine. She’s good. Maybe that wasn’t true nine months ago, but it is now. She just wishes everyone would stop treating her with kid gloves, would stop thinking she’s still the naive girl who left, would see that she’s stronger than she looks.
Her wine glass is empty, and she’s wondering whether she can get a refill unnoticed when she hears it. The soft latch of the back door. She sighs and rolls her eyes assuming her time hiding out is over. She hears steps coming in her direction and she opens her mouth, expecting someone to turn the corner and catch her hiding. Instead, though, the steps stop just short of where she is and she sees a cloud of smoke.
She can’t help but smile. It’s Jon Snow, and it would seem he’s not looking for her. Like her, he’s looking for solitude.
“I know lung cancer is lethal,” she says, “but honestly, I’d be more worried about my mom if she sees you.”
Finally, he steps around the corner of the shed, glances back as if to check if anyone can see him and then ducks around to where she is. He looks at her for a long moment then extends his hand out.
Sansa takes the offering with a smile, takes a drag, exhales in a long, satisfying blow.
“I’ll be safe if I’m caught with her favorite child.”
“Or in worse trouble for corrupting me.”
That makes him laugh. “If she only knew.”
If only.
A phrase she has long associated with the man in front of her. Sansa thinks of high school, the picture perfect girl she was back then—except for the nights when she’d sneak to the park with Jon to share kisses that tasted like smoke and cheap wine coolers. Sansa never did anything she wasn’t supposed to—except for Jon Snow. It was only the one summer, before she left, and nobody knew, not Robb, not Arya, not her friends. He was just hers. A kind of magic so momentary she wondered whether it had all been in her head after it was over. It happened all of a sudden, bright and beautiful, and then she was gone and that was that. A stopover in mild, sheltered rebellion before her real life started.
“So what brings you out here?” He asks, taking the cigarette back.
“Just needed a breather.”
“Nothing like the first holidays after divorce, huh?”
Right, she thinks. He’s been through this. What was her name? Ygritte. Sansa had hated her. Inexplicably—or maybe not inexplicably. Just irrationally. But it had ended fast and ugly, according to Robb. They had eloped. Sansa remembered that much, wondered about the romance of that kind of spontaneity. A sharp contrast to her two year engagement.
“Any tips?” She asks, taking the last of the butt from him and pushing it against the side of the shed before dropping it behind a nearby shrub.
“Honestly, this is the easy part.”
Sansa’s eyes widen. “Really?”
He nods. “Mostly, just smiling while people give you advice and performing gratitude because you know it’s because they care about you even though they have no idea what they’re talking about. The hard part is when they see that you’re well and truly past it and start trying to set you up with everyone they know who’s single.”
“Oh, God! I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Jon laughs. “What do you think drove me to smoking again? It’s a good thing baby Ned came along because I was going to murder Jeyne and Robb if they didn’t let up. It got to the point I couldn’t trust an invitation to dinner at their house was just that. Now they’re too preoccupied and sleep deprived to worry about my love life—or lack thereof.”
“Well, it is bad for you.”
He sighs. “I know.”
“Have you done it, though?” She asks quietly.
“What?”
“Dating.”
Jon thinks for a moment. “Kind of, a handful of times, but nothing’s ever come of it. Not because I’m still not over my shitty, ill-advised marriage.” He pauses and looks away. Sansa tries to follow his eyes like she can pull the thought out of them. Eventually, he continues. “I think I’m pickier now, which sounds weird. I know myself better, so I guess I don’t want to compromise, which sounds even worse, and that’s probably what ended things with Ygritte in the first place—we were young and stupid and realized too late we wanted different things and didn’t want to change. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not built for it.”
“You’re holding out for something good.”
He looks at her then and Sansa feels like she’s remembering something but she’s not sure what.
Soon after she started at King’s Landing University, she told her roommate—perhaps a foolish thing to have done—that she missed how in Winterfell, walking down the street, people would look you in the eye and nod or smile, and here, nobody did that. It made her feel invisible. The girl laughed, and Sansa couldn’t help but laugh too, at herself for the silly idea that feeling seen was a thing she should care about. But it was a real feeling that never went away. Perhaps that was why she mistook Joffrey’s attention at the start, made it into something it wasn’t.
The way Jon is looking at her—the way he always looked at her. It’s not just being seen. It’s being alive.
“And you?” He finally says.
“Me?”
“Are you good—I mean, really? From one divorcee to another?”
Sansa laughs. “I’m good. Really good, actually. I just need everyone else to get over it—odd since they all hated him.”
“It’s a tough thing to go through,” he says with a shrug. “Even if drop-kicking that asswipe was the best thing for you, it’s OK not to be OK, sometimes.”
Sansa grins. “I’m only letting you get away with that greeting card nonsense because you are speaking from experience.”
He smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle up, and she feels . . . a little bit of everything.
Sansa remembers something else. Robb telling her why Jon got married, when she heard the news and asked how it could have happened so quickly.
He’d die to admit it, of course, but he’s a romantic just like you.
There’s a noise behind them. Someone else has opened the back door, and the dogs have gotten out. And here comes Rickon and Arya chasing after Shaggydog and Nymeria, who run out to the woods too fast to be caught.
Sansa takes the opportunity to grab a distracted Arya into a hug.
Arya stiffens immediately. “Uh—what’s happening?”
Sansa pulls away, holds her by the shoulder with one hand, her empty wine glass dangles from her fingers in the other. “I’m so happy for you, you idiot. Let me be happy for you.”
Arya rolls her eyes. “He’s not really my boyfriend.”
Sansa laughs and pulls her into a hug again, and this time Arya returns the embrace.
“OK, maybe he is,” Arya says in a mumble. “But don’t tell anyone.”
Rickon, taller than both of them, bear hugs them both and says, “We’ve gone soft, the lot of us.”
Jon laughs. “You’re Starks. You were always soft.”
Sansa grabs his by arm as they turn to go inside, leaving the dogs to their freedom outside. “You most of all.”
“I’m not a Stark.”
“I’m still right. And you might as well be.”
He smiles the crinkly-eyed smile again.
Feeling happy and brave and hopeful, she leans into him and whispers, “What are you doing for New Year’s?”