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Sam didn’t mean to be a disappointment. For years he tried to appease his father, he tried to learn to wield a sword and a bow. He tried to learn to like hitting people and killing things but try as he might nothing felt as right to Sam as reading a book, or making beautiful music.
Dickon’s birth was like a breath of fresh air, there was no denying that Sam loved his sisters, they understood him better than almost anyone. Sisters however, could not inherit the Tarly’s ancestral sword and all the lands and titles that went along with it the way a brother could. Sam spent the next few years of his life being all but ignored by Randyll Tarly. No one asked him about battle strategies, or came at him with swords, or any other weapons for that matter, no one expected anything from him, and it was the most freeing feeling Sam had ever felt
The time Sam’s father devoted to raising Dickon to be the perfect son were in fact, the best years of Sam’s life. Sam learned he much preferred soft silks to the scratchy padding he’d been made to wear during sword practice. He discovered he had a talent for sewing; he’d always been much better at making things than he was at destroying them. And though it was meant as an insult, Sam found that hearing the guards whisper about how “That Samwell would have made a better daughter than a son,” was heart warming.
It came as a shock to Sam when Randyll came bursting into Melessa’s bedchambers. Sam had been reading to his mother while she sat by the window working on her sewing, it was the same way they’d spent most of their afternoons of late. Randyll had bellowed about Sam’s name day, about how he was about to become a man and he had damn well start acting like it. Melessa had held her eldest close and whispered that it would probably be best if Sam stopped spending his afternoons with her and his books. Perhaps if he’d been a man he’d have bit back the tears, but Sam did not feel like a man.
There was a gleam in Randyll’s eyes when he next spoke with his son. Sam knew of course that Dickon could not inherit while he was still alive, and a shiver went down his spine when his father told him he had a solution.
Sam felt no loss at the thought of holding no lands, or titles, or fathering no children (he was sure he’d have made a better mother anyhow.) Sam really wasn’t looking forward to being forced into swordplay again, and he would miss sewing with his sisters. However the thing truly plaguing Samwell Tarly was the whole idea of taking the black and becoming a man of the night’s watch, because how could he be expected to do any of that if he wasn’t exactly a man?
He wasn’t sure exactly what he was expecting from the night’s watch, but it certainly wasn’t Jon Snow. No one had ever stood up for Sam before, he’d never known what it was like to have someone on his side. When he told Jon as much, the younger boy just shrugged and muttered something about how they were brothers now, and what kind of person were you if you didn’t stand up for your family? Sam wonders what it would have been like to grow up at Winterfell.
Jon it turns out is big on family and Sam takes comfort in hearing Jon’s stories about the Starks. Robb, who was Jon’s very best friend in the world, kind Sansa with her sewing and songs (Sam thinks he likes her best) and of course Arya, Jon gets a wistful look whenever he talks about his youngest sister. One night when they’re on duty together Jon tells Sam that he feels compelled to look after him, the way he never had to look after Arya. Sam confesses that he thinks he’d make a great sister, Jon laughs at that, kindly, with his eyes full of fondness and tells Sam he’s always sort of thought of him as a sister.
Sam still isn’t entirely sure he’s cut out to be part of the night’s watch but when he’s sitting with Jon up at the top of the world he thinks it might just be where he belongs anyway.