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In the darkest, haziest hours of the night, Jon’s vision has a tendency to blur. Battle-worn, grief-weary, he stumbles into the lord’s chambers at Winterfell and sees Ygritte, hair a wild red mess around her shoulders, limbs infused with the slightest bit of defensive tension, pale fingers curled into fists.
It isn’t Ygritte, though. Jon blinks and it’s his little sister, his perfect little sister, lady-in-the-making, staring at the bed like it holds answers to questions no one has asked aloud.
“Sansa,” he says softly, her name dangling in the air, uncertain.
When she turns, the top of her dress shifts, slightly loose around her thin shoulders. Creeping out from its neckline is an ugly, spiky red line, veining outward like the branches of an old tree. At the sight of it, Jon’s hands clench into fists, matching those at her sides.
“He’s dead,” Sansa says. Her mouth is a flat line.
Jon looks at his sister (his perfect little sister), and then looks at the bed and wonders what happened to her there, what horrors were inflicted on her body.
“Yes,” he agrees. “He’s dead.”
The corners of her flat mouth twitch, ever so briefly, upward.
He cannot stop staring her, snatched out of his reveries time and time again by the sight of Ser Davos’ somber scowl or Tormund’s elbow jabbing hard against his ribs.
Where, Jon wonders, is my little sister?
He sees the Sansa Stark he knew in childhood all over this castle, sitting primly at dinner, holding her needlework out to Old Nan for inspection, squealing and rushing away from Arya and Bran’s muddy hands, preening and smiling sweetly up at their father when he placed a fond hand on her hair, emulating her lady mother and turning her nose up at Jon’s presence.
The girl who sits at his left is not that girl. There is a haunting seriousness around her eyes, something crisp and businesslike in her voice. She scratches Ghost behind his ears even when his fur is caked with mud.
Where (Jon wants to know) is the little sister of his memories?
Sansa’s mercilessness startles him over and over again.
She tells him that Petyr Baelish wants to marry her, mouth in the shape of a snarl (I will handle him, Jon. I don’t need your protection.), she tells him not to be too quick to trust the Northern lords who have sworn their swords to him (Everyone lies. Everyone.), she says that Robin Arryn is unstable on his best days and will need to be handled carefully to maintain the support of the Vale (We will find a way, no matter the cost.), and even when he catches her in the crypts crying over her baby brother, her sobs are dry, only in her throat and not in her eyes (He was always going to die.).
Even when they are alone, the remaining children of Winterfell, she looks at him in a way that unsettles him. He wants her to trust him with such ferocity that it aches.
“Sansa,” he says, soft and low, “I’d die before I’d let - ”
Her hand on his arm stops him, her fingers bare and chilled. “You cannot die again.”
As is often the case, Jon feels the words he must use caught up in his throat, tangled together. He wants to say, neither can you.
That, Jon realizes, is what has happened to his little sister, pretty and sweet (though not to him), destined for a good match, a good marriage, a lord to advise, ladies to sew with, babies to coo over, smiles to bestow.
She is dead.
Sansa walks in on him after he’s bathed, fabric of her grey dress swirling around her legs, a wolf loping across its collar.
She does not pardon herself or blush at the sight of her bastard brother in his smallclothes. She stares instead, her eyes moving slowly between each of the fatal wounds peppered over his chest and stomach.
“Oh,” she breathes, and Jon realizes, with some surprise, that her eyes are wet.
“They don’t bother me,” he tells her quickly, wanting to soothe her. “They don’t hurt.”
The door of the room drifts closed behind her. With trembling fingers she undoes the laces at the front of her dress, each movement slow and deliberate, until she carefully opens the dress to reveal her collarbone, the middle of her chest, and a strip of abdomen almost down to her navel.
Her body is battered. There are old, tired splotches of purple and blue, and on her left, just below and following the curve of the inside of her breast, is a long, wide scar, like someone intended to cut off her breast, or stab her through the heart, or, as the case is, taunt her cruelly with both possibilities, knife blade moving deeper and deeper into her skin.
“Yes,” Sansa whispers, “they do.”
He has slept very little since his return from the dead. He jerks awake each time he’s close to slumber, sweaty and breathless from the sensation of phantom swords.
He often paces the ramparts throughout the night. Ghost comes sometimes, while on other days he huffs and grumbles at Jon and curls up on the bed by himself, settling in for sleep.
Tonight Jon is without his direwolf, walking alone, his heart still pounding, its beats erratic. He looks down over Winterfell and sees other ghosts - Robb and Theon teasing one of Sansa’s friends, Arya stabbing the air with a wooden sword, Bran chasing after Rickon, letting the smaller boy outrun him. They are dead, or lost forever, or, like Theon, damaged beyond repair. They are gone.
He turns and is surprised, lurching back slightly. Sansa moves toward him apologetically, the wind whipping her hair about in a frenzy. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I’ve startled you.”
Jon places a hand on his heart which still, unnaturally, beats. “You should be asleep, my lady.”
One of her eyebrows quirks up. “As should you, my lord.”
Jon drops formalities, smiling oh-so-slightly. “Ghost has taken the entirety of the bed for himself.”
Sansa laughs then. It is short and breathy, but it is a laugh nonetheless, and Jon’s smile eases, grows. “What is it?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Your laugh. It’s a pretty sound.”
She moves closer to him and the wind pushes her hair against his face. “I’m not sure there are many pretty sounds left in this world.”
“You have one,” Jon insists, looking into her face. “I suppose you should guard it well.”
They can’t quite make eye contact, wind blowing their hair into their eyes. “You’re bleeding,” Sansa says, reaching out with tentative fingers to touch his lip. When she removes her hand, the tip of her index finger is bright red.
He sighs. “Must’ve bit it in my sleep.”
For a moment they stand there, the howls of the winter wind filling the silence, then Sansa slips her finger into her mouth, sucks off his blood, her cheeks, flushed unevenly from the chill, hollowing.
His blood surges, like all of him is encapsulated in the drop on Sansa’s tongue, like all of him can feel the warmth of her mouth. He kisses her with one hand firm against the back of her neck and the other grasping a handful of her dress. She tastes of metal, of sorrow, of soured sweetness.
Sansa pulls from him with a gasp, her eyes wide and dark. She steps away but she does not run.
Jon does not wonder, anymore, about his sister.
His sister is dead.