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The wall. Cold, isolated. A willing punishment. And now, it would be your lover’s new home for—ever. Heartbroken wasn’t an adequate enough word to describe how you felt, you’d have found more solace in his death. At least if he was dead you could bind your heart to his tombstone and swear your love to his death-stricken corpse.
But this? This was worse. He was willingly leaving you. Abandoning you for a life of remoteness and misery, at least that’s how you saw the Wall as he preached at how of nobility and honour. He was earning a claim to his father’s greatness, you supposed. At least he was leaving for a life of duty, surrounded by men and snow and hardship. You could take consolation in that he would hold no other like he held you, kiss no one else’s lips like he did yours, make no one else see stars like he did to you.
Yet, taking comfort in that meant facing the reality harsh as the cold of the North- you would never get to see him again. Place a gentle hand on his cheek and relish in the way he leant into your touch, his brave, strong, confident front melting between your fingers. You’d never see his sweet smile, upon returning from a hunt. Never brush a tear from his cheek. Never taste his lips against yours. Never rake your fingers through his curls as he lay his head against your chest, listening to the rhythm of your head and how it sped up as he leant into you.
“Don’t cry, love.”
He held you gently like he always did, after he’d spent a night watching you come undone beneath him.
“I’m not gone yet.”
“But you will be.”
You snap, hoping perhaps anger would persuade him from leaving you. Unlikely, seeing as every other method of persuasion had failed worse than kitten pulling a plough.
“Please don’t- let’s just pretend.”
“Pretend what? That you’re not leaving me, not forfeiting a life with me for some stupid noble duty!”
”What I’m doing it’s, for the best it’s-“
“Worth losing me, leaving me here to live a life alone.”
“You’ll find another-!”
“I don’t want another!”
He sighs, and although you’ve won, you feel like you’re drowning in a pool of guilt. Softly, a hand comes to rest on your cheek, thumb stroking your cheekbone comfortingly. If you weren’t so betrayed, you’d revel in the touch.
“Let us not argue.”
He took on that gentle voice that could’ve convinced you to go to war, his eyes hiding any pain you hoped he’d feel. And you surrender, for just one more time.
“Let me be a man, who’s in love, for just one more night. Please, love.”
With reluctance, you nod, letting him pull you into his embrace- one last time. You try to stop the tears brimming your eyes from falling, a privilege any sane person would’ve never given him; but you were in love, and love wouldn’t let you be petty, and have one of his final images of you be a weeping mess in his arms. You couldn’t let him feel penitent for taking a choice he felt necessary. No matter how much you wanted to. Images of bawling into his arms, screaming, throwing things, crying, blaming him, blaming yourself all flash across your mind, but you just couldn’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have loved him as much as you did. And you did love him so.
Whispered goodbyes in the early dawn, before the birds had begun their song, long before Winterfell awoke. You had readied yourself for work as he dressed for his long journey. You laced up his tunic like you had so many times before, teased him for his incessant need to perfect his hair.
A joke about how his vanity wouldn’t be accepted at the Wall turned the air stale. Cold. Sour, even. No matter how many affections the two of you muttered, the memory was forever tainted by the daunting future of separation. No amount of love could fix what he was doing, what he was breaking.
A mirror can be fixed but you can always see the cracks. And you’ll still draw blood when you touch the exposed edges.
Your love would now forever be jagged and damaged, half-stolen by the bastard-boy whose sister you served. Your heart would always be his, no matter what vows you uttered under the eyes of the gods; those Gods, old and new, would know the truth. The hardest part was when he was about to slip from your chambers.
Standing at the door, you kissed him with all the might you could bear, not bothering to come up for air until the two of you risked fainting. An ‘I love you’ escaped from both of your lips, and while the last syllable still lingered in the air, he was gone.
You stood aside your Lady Sansa, as she bid goodbye her half-brother.
She was not too upset or jarred, a blessing to you, not having to comfort her like you had times before, this time when you would have been just as devastated, or more so, than she. The first time you were ever thankful for pre-teen angst. And the last.
This was the last day for a lot of things, you realise as his horse trots off into the distance. Freezing and shivering, you stand there, long after the Stark family had gone, until his horse was out of sight. And then some. Your last glimpse of him.
You regretted not falling to your knees and begging him not to leave in front of all who were there, causing a scene. Perhaps his Uncle, Benjen, would have changed his mind on letting him join the Night’s Watch if he saw the devotion the two of you shared. Hindsight- the drug of the lonely.
He hadn’t even turned back to look at you. Staying strong for you, you hoped. Prayed. Maybe he was hiding the tears streaking his cheeks that matched yours. Maybe he was clutching a gift you had once given him, many moons ago, before the prospect of him leaving had ever crossed either of your minds. You hoped that was true, and not that he simply did not care enough to bother.
Weeks, months passed. No letters, no news of him. Nothing. You’d felt like half of a whole since he’d left, incomplete. Like your soul had been unseamed, and he’d taken it with him, leaving you with the thread. You’d given up on hoping for his return a week after he’d left, when you’d overheard Lord Stark informing his son that the party headed for the wall would be halfway there by now. Past the point of no return.
Even if he had tried to return, on his own? He would be dead by now. The flesh you’d once lovingly caressed, buried in ice, frozen for an eternity, or perhaps he had been torn apart by wild beasts, his blood staining the ground around him. Maybe only his pearly-white bones were left. No, you had to hope he’d made it to the Wall, because what hope would you cling onto that he’d return to Winterfell, abandoning his post for his lover.
Only to find them not there.
A double edged sword. If he stayed in Winterfell and tried to contact you, you’d never know, and if he managed to make it back there alive, he wouldn’t find you- seeing as currently you sat aside the young Lady Sansa, in a carriage, on the way to King’s Landing. Lady Sansa and her sister, Lady Arya, bickered and bickered, but unlike a usual day where you’d playfully chastise the two, teasing them for their behaviour, you just let it wash over you. The North was far behind you. And so was he. Any hope of his embrace was gone.
The only embrace you’d ever feel was the heat of the Capital, perhaps that of sisterly love from your Lady Sansa as she grew older.
Never his. Never Jon’s.
You wondered if he ever told his new brothers of the Night’s Watch about his love from Winterfell, told stories of romantic evenings, crafted your likeness with pretty words as he so often liked to. Or had he kept you to himself, a secret he’d dream of every night in the cold and the dark while the wolves howled in the distance and the wind whistled through the cracks of Castle Black. Whatever he had done didn’t matter anymore.
He was gone now, and that was all there was to it.