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Sansa dreams of marrying south, into the summer and sunshine her mother’s stories are full of, but those dreams are dashed on her thirteenth nameday by the arrival of the Lords Umber at Winterfell – all seven, Greatjon and Small, Crowfood and Whoresbane, and Lord Umber’s three younger sons, too – and by the announcement that she is to marry not south, but further north, to Last Hearth.

It is her very worst nightmares made reality.

Robb is the only one who truly sees through her courtesies – oh, she smiles for Lord Jon Umber the younger, dances with him and, when he steps on her toes one time too many, makes some pretty jape about needing strong boots that makes him blush under his tawny-brown beard, agrees when he tells her to call him Smalljon and calls him Lord Jon and my lord anyways, and once she has bid him goodnight and Robb has offered to escort her to her rooms, she curls into her brother’s arms and cries, because Robb is the only one who will not chide her for behaving poorly in this instance.

Jon Umber may be a good man, but he is not what Sansa wants in a husband, and she wonders how she is to cope with that.

Jeyne Poole tells Sansa how lucky she is, to have such a fine man to marry, and Sansa supposes that from Jeyne’s perspective the Smalljon is a fine man – he is massively tall, and broad through the shoulders and chest, with powerful arms and long legs, and he has a nice face, although Sansa would prefer he trim his beard, and he smiles readily and with the whole of his face.

She quite likes his eyes – he has kind eyes, dark and warm – but that is not enough, she thinks as she and Jeyne huddle in the gallery and watch Jon sparring with his brothers and Robb and Theon. He is huge compared to the other young men, so much so that even his own brothers seem tiny in comparison (although Torrhen, the next to him in age, is near as broad in the shoulders and looks comically disproportioned because he is almost the smallest of the four Umbers in height), and seems oddly conscious of it once he notices that Sansa and Jeyne are watching.

“He likes you,” Jeyne says, sounding as though she half thinks it the most romantic thing in the world. “He could hardly remember his steps when you were dancing last night, but he had no such trouble when he and I danced.”

“He was just nervous,” Sansa dismisses her, folding her arms and leaning on the railing even though she knows Septa would tell her that such a position was not ladylike. She does not much feel like being ladylike today, because being ladylike has not done her any good – she does not care that Jeyne likes the look of the Smalljon, because Jeyne likes the look of any man who smiles at her, even Theon, does not care that Father has pointed out that Robb is set to marry in the North, that Arya probably will too.

Sansa thinks that it would be… Well, it would be easier to bear this had she not had a taste of what has now been denied her, had she not seen all that she will now miss.

Of course, she had only seen the royal court in mourning for the King, the one Father was so close to, who fought a war for her lady aunt, but it had been enough – she had been so certain that Father would make a match for her in the south, so certain. He had certainly made enough noise to the Queen about Sansa being unavailable – well, he hadn’t really, but Sansa had overheard him speaking with Queen Cersei one afternoon when she’d run back from the gardens to fetch Mother’s book. They’d said something about Lord Stannis, the King’s brother who died not long after the King, and about Father’s loyalty, and then the Queen had suggested Sansa for a wife for the prince who was to be king…

The prince liked me, Sansa thinks bitterly, looking down on her betrothed. And had Father said yes, I might be Queen.

But then, she considers, watching as Jon swings gangly long-limbed Rogir, who is only Bran’s age, up onto his shoulders and runs about the practice yard as their brothers chase them, Robb and Theon laughing and leaning back against the fence, Prince Joffrey – King Joffrey – was cruel to his brother in a way Sansa still cannot comprehend. Prince Tommen is a sweet boy, also Bran’s age, with a round little face and always carrying a kitten (one had climbed out of his pocket and into his uncle’s lap during the funeral, and Sansa had only spared a thought to thank the gods that it was handsome Lord Renly and not stern Lord Stannis who had been sitting by Prince Tommen, because Lord Renly had slipped one arm around Tommen’s shoulders and petted the kitten’s head with his other hand to keep it quiet).

Sansa had been chasing Arya, trying to catch her up to bring her back for their baths only the night before they were due to leave, when she’d happened upon the princes. She’d assumed they were playing together, as Robb and Bran and Rickon often did, but then Prince Tommen had cried out in pain and-

Jon Umber tumbles to the ground under the weight of his three younger brothers, and Sansa bites her lip and wishes that Last Hearth were anywhere but further north.

“Your sister,” Jon says to Robb, who looks almost enough like Sansa to be her twin – he has the same eyes and hair, at least, if not the same snow-pale skin and forced smile. Jon’s fairly certain at this point that Robb Stark would be happier marrying him than Sansa Stark would. “She doesn’t like me much, does she?”

It pains him so much to say it, because he’s always considered himself fairly likeable, and he’s not met many women who’d disagree, but he must know, must know if Sansa truly is against the idea of wedding him – it wounds his pride to say it, but gods be good he has no interest in wedding a woman who doesn’t want any part of him, no matter how beautiful and sweet and beautiful she might be.

“She’s a bit… Sensitive,” Robb says, swinging his practice sword up to meet Jon’s, following the forms Jon knows well from his own training. “But she’ll come round – she’s always had dreams of going south, you see. She’ll come around, don’t worry.”

“She wishes to go south so your parents marry her to me?” Jon asks, astonished – while he’s been flattered since the moment Father told him of the match, he’d also been surprised. Everyone had expected Southron marriages for Lord Stark’s half-Southron children, had been surprised when it was announced that Robb would marry Alys Karstark (Rickard Karstark had been beside himself with glee at that, had lorded it over Maege Mormont and Wyman Manderly so blatantly that word of his idiocy had reached even Last Hearth). Frankly, when Father told Jon that he was to wed a Stark of Winterfell, Jon laughed and complimented Father on his fine jape.

But then Father frowned, and that was sign enough that it was no jape.

Jon knows that many a young man in the North will be jealous of him for his lovely bride – Theon Greyjoy not least among them, that much is clear from the way the Ironborn cur is glaring at him and staring moon-eyed up at Sansa and her little friend in the gallery above the yard – but Jon is beginning just now to wonder if this match is truly as advantageous as Father and the uncles insist.

“Might do her good,” Theon Greyjoy snorts, breaking Jon out of his thoughts and rolling his eyes and smirking, always smirking. “The cold up at Last Hearth might freeze some of that prissiness out of her.”

Jon ignores Theon and Robb’s argument about whether or not Sansa is prissy and turns instead to watch Bryn and Rogir fighting – Torrhen’s disappeared off to the stables, like he always does when they’re visiting anywhere – and starts thinking again.

He wishes his mother were here to take Sansa’s measure, but she died six years past, when Jon was only the same age as Sansa is now, just three-and-ten. He misses her more than he’d ever let on, because he knows Father misses her even more, but he is certain that his mother’d give him some insight beyond fine teats, decent strong hips, pretty face, lucky hair on his betrothed. Mother was a Norrey, strong and fierce and with a wicked sharp tongue, but she raised strong sons and kept a good, strong keep for Father, and she was a good Lady Umber.

Last Hearth is the final standpoint of the Seven Kingdoms, whatever the Watch might claim – the Watch are a law unto themselves, really, and Jon’s father has always warned him to be wary of the crows who come south for supplies, for prisoners, for whatever they think they need – and the Umbers are only as fierce as everyone claims them to be by necessity. The lady of Last Hearth must be as strong as her lord, if in a different way, and pretty Sansa flaming Stark with her Southron courtesies and practiced manners and soft hands is not what Jon ever thought of in a wife, no matter how beautiful her huge blue eyes might be.

Sansa stabs at her stitching, neither caring that her stitches are as crooked as Arya’s nor even really seeing them, because her mind is full of horrible visions of her future and she cannot think of anything else.

Will he force her to bear child after child until her body fails? When her bleeding came, Mother sent Septa Mordane away and spoke almost embarrassingly candidly about bleeding and bedding and birthing at great length, and about how Sansa is to care for her own health because maesters are not so knowledgeable about women’s bodies as they claim to be. Mother had warned her how dangerous it could be for a woman to get with child before her body was healed from carrying and birthing a babe, but would Sansa’s betrothed care about such things when he was her husband?

She considers his family – he has three younger brothers, but they are not all clustered close together like Mother said is dangerous. That might be a good sign, but Sansa cannot help but worry anyways – even if she is not forced to bear children close together, Smalljon and his brothers are all so big, and she does not have what Mother calls “mothering hips,” like Mother’s own. Sansa has always liked being slender, being slight, basking in Jeyne’s jealousy and that of other girls who visited, of girls and young ladies she met in the capital at the King’s funeral, but now all she can think of is having to birth sons with that big frame and-

She cries out in surprise more than pain when her needle slips and sticks into the base of her thumb, deep enough to hurt and to draw blood, and Septa Mordane clucks and reprimands her and scolds her, and Sansa almost screams – she is a woman grown now, Mother and Father have made that plenty clear in preparing to send her to the last outpost of civilisation, and she does not have to sit here and take a scolding from Septa bloody Mordane.

She blushes to swear even in her own mind, but that does not stop her from standing up and flinging aside her sewing and storming from the room, ignoring Septa Mordane’s calls for her to return and marching through the keep to her room, marching straight past Mother and Robb and even Bran, slamming the door shut behind her and lowering the bar to prevent anyone from disturbing her.

She hates them all, in this moment – Robb could fight for her, he is Father’s heir, Father listens to him, but he will not, because he too seems to think she should be happy about this match.

Sansa wonders if her family know her at all, thinks of Theon’s jape that Arya will be the one to go south now that Sansa’s been paired off, and buries her face in her pillow to muffle her screams (although she is not certain why she screams, but she thinks it is mostly anger).

“Hates me,” Jon confirms absently when Father asks how he’s getting along with Sansa. “She’s locked herself in her room and won’t come out, according to her brother, and Rogir says the one his age told him that she’s been screaming and thrashing the place. She’s about as happy about this match as Wyman Manderly was about the heir being promised to Alys Karstark.”

“Oh, she’ll come around,” Father says, clapping him on the shoulder with a smile that, under all that beard, is probably encouraging. “You’re a handsome lad, maidens like that.”

“This maiden apparently had the same Southron ambitions as her grandfather,” Jon huffs, folding his arms and sinking lower into his chair. “Look at her, Father – she’s not made for Last Hearth. Six moons at home’ll kill her!”

“She’s a Stark, son,” Father says firmly. “They’re hardy stock – and besides, it’s further from Riverrun to Winterfell than Winterfell to Last Heart, and Lady Stark made the change easy enough.”

“Lady Stark is a good lot more sensible than her daughter.”

“And you think she was so sensible at three-and-ten? Don’t be too hard on the lass, lad, she’s only just heard she’s promised to you, and if she does have her grandfather’s ambitions, well, the thought of heading further north’ll take a bit of getting used to, won’t it?”

“Sansa, open this door right this minute, or I will have it removed from its hinges.”

Sansa has half a mind to let Mother do just that, just to see if she will carry through with her threat, but instead clambers unsteadily to her feet – her lower legs are numb and fuzzy, her ankles feeling oddly bendy from being curled under her for so long – and moves the bar, opens the door, and stumbles back across the room to sit by her bed without greeting Mother.

“You are behaving appallingly,” Mother says sharply, closing the door behind her with a firm thud that Sansa knows well enough from chastisements every time she and Arya fought before now. “Septa Mordane-“

“Septa Mordane will remain here at Winterfell when I am sent away,” Sansa says, knowing how petulant she sounds and not caring. Arya is always petulant while Sansa is sweet, but Arya is not being sent to hell without a care for what she truly wants, what she needs – because Sansa is thoroughly convinced that she needs to go south, that she needs sunshine and music and laughter and all the other things she knows she will not find in Last Hearth. “It is best that I distance myself from everyone I am leaving behind.”

“Sansa Stark,” Mother snaps, and Sansa looks up, pouting and scowling and not caring at all, because Mother and Father gave her no warning at all that she was being consigned to this fate. Maybe they will write a song about me, she thinks bitterly, the daughter of Winterfell who faded away in the wastes of Last Hearth. “You are going to clean up this room, and then you are going to fix your appearance so that you are suitably presentable-“

“What does it matter how I look? I doubt they care a bit up in the wilds!”

“House Umber,” Mother says, voice tight and icy cold, and Sansa wonders if she has perhaps overstepped slightly, “is old and ancient, strong allies of House Stark and staunch guardians of the North – it is an honour to marry the man who will be their lord. You would do well to remember that.”

“I could have married the King,” she says, looking down into her lap to hide the tears that flood her eyes. “I heard Father talking to Queen Cersei, I heard him-“

“No,” Mother says firmly. “I could have married your uncle Brandon, but that was not to be. Lord Jon is a good man, Sansa, for all that he is not a knight or as pretty as you might like. I did not much fancy your father when we wed, but I love him fiercely now, as well you know. Love is not an instantaneous thing – it builds, child. Now you will clear your room, and fix your appearance, and then you will apologise to Septa Mordane before preparing for dinner. You have sulked quite enough, my girl.”

Septa Mordane accepts Sansa’s apology with a superior little smile that makes Sansa want to clench her fists and stamp her foot as Arya might, but instead she bows her head as though she actually feels some sort of contrition – instead, all she feels is that same twisting, resentful anger that bubbled over this afternoon, that drove her to throw her boot so hard at her dressing mirror that there’s now a crack that runs around the rim from the lower corner almost to the middle of the top.

Father comes to escort her for dinner once she has bathed and dressed and braided her hair – Jeyne thinks Lord Jon likes Sansa’s hair, thinks he was admiring it last night, so she purposefully twisted it back and up and away, hiding it from him, depriving him of whatever little pleasures she can.

“I have a gift for you,” Father says, and Sansa is almost reluctant to accept it because her last surprise from Father came in the form of Jon bloody Umber (she blushes at the thought, but swearing is oddly liberating, even if only in her head), so she thinks her suspicion is fair.

Father does not say a word about the crack in her mirror when he guides her to sit at her dressing table, but she knows that he is unhappy because of it by the way he purses his mouth and the way his brow creases just slightly.

He sets a wooden box, about the size of the palm of her hand, on the table before her.

“This belonged to your grandmother,” he says quietly. “She died when I was young and I do not remember her as well as I would like, but I do remember enough of her to know that she would have been very proud of all of you – she would have wanted you to have this.”

It is a necklace, narrow silver links and a heavy moonstone pendant that will sit right in the dip of Sansa’s collarbones.

“It will suit you, I think,” he says as he takes it from the box to set it around her neck. “Your mother has never worn any of your grandmother’s pieces because they do not suit her, but-“

“If they do not suit Mother, they should not suit me,” Sansa points out, slightly confused, but then Father smiles.

“You are of the North, sweetling,” he says gently, clasping the chain around her neck and pressing a kiss to her hair. “For all that you look like your Mother, you are two very different people.”

Sansa cannot help but think that the necklace weighs like an exquisite collar, that her duty to her family is the leash that will keep her bound here in the North until Lord Jon Umber the younger relieves her of it like the giant on his sigil, only to replace it with chains of his own.

Sansa pointedly makes conversation with everyone except Jon at dinner that night, and he grits his teeth and accepts the insult hidden by her courtesy to everyone else because Father would not want him to make a scene. She is only just three-and-ten, and if she wishes to behave as a child of seven or eight, well, that’s her business and Jon will not interfere, because he has done nothing wrong and if she wishes to blame him for her father’s choices, he’ll not stop her.

She’s a brat he decides, watching her laugh brightly at something Lord Robb says. A spoiled brat who’s not been properly taught to do what’s expected of her.

And she is, that becomes ever clearer over the next few days – the way she speaks to her sister, the petulant cast of her mouth whenever he greets her if they meet, the way she sulks whenever her mother speaks with her, it all adds up to brat in Jon’s mind, and when he hears her snapping meanly at the steward’s girl who he assumed was her friend over some tease or other, he adds bitch to his picture of Sansa flaming Stark.

Five nights into their stay at Winterfell, Father and Lord Stark begin sharing stories of war and other adventures in the south, and there’s such wistful longing on Sansa’s pretty face that Jon almost feels bad for her that she will not have a chance to enjoy the things she so obviously wants. Almost only, though, because her sister says something about wishing to stay in the North, like Sansa, and the most horrible bitterness twists Sansa’s mouth that Jon is reminded sharply of Barbrey Dustin, who snipes and snarls at everyone and who apparently hates her lot.

It never occurred to Jon that Sansa might actually hate him, for all that he told Father she does, and now that it has, he wishes it hadn’t – she might be a bratty little bitch, but while he’s not overly taken with her at the moment he had assumed that she would… Well, that she would grow out of that! But if she comes to hate him, she might well end up like Barbrey Dustin, and while Lady Dustin is a handsome woman she doesn’t have much else that would recommend her to Jon’s tastes, and the idea of being married to a woman of her sort is not a particularly pleasant one.

Right then, he thinks, watching her smile and giggle with her brothers across the table, a real smile that she never deigns to give to him, I’ll prove to her that I’m just as worthy of her perfect bloody hand as any of her precious knights and lordlings from the south.

The only thing is, Jon’s never had to court a woman before – while they wouldn’t just fall into his arms, it’s never taken more than a smile and a jape before they were willing, and he somehow doesn’t think that he needs Sansa to be willing (Lord Stark would have his head, betrothed or not, if he were ever to take advantage of Sansa’s willing).

He resolves to speak with Torrhen on the morrow – Torrhen enjoys chasing unattainable girls (or married serving women, the rogue), so surely he will have some sort of tricks Jon can use to prevent his wife-to-be from despising him as surely as she does now in the future.

He wonders if Torrhen knows how to convince a woman to wear her hair a particular way. Pleasant though the display of Sansa’s pale neck is, Jon would rather have the fall of her hair catching the light across the table from him.

When Sansa’s maid wakes her in the morning, she also leaves a little bundle of deep red wildflowers like the sort that grow deep in the godswood on her nightstand.

“What…?”

“From your Lord Jon, milady,” the girl says with a grin. “He said to tell you they reminded him of your hair.”

Sansa feels foolish for being annoyed that her plan to deprive him of her hair didn’t work as she hoped, but she is annoyed, and feeling so sours her mood even further.

“Please send my thanks to Lord Jon,” she forces herself to say, “both for the lovely flowers and the lovely compliment.”

She expects that to be the end of it – part of her can’t help but assume that the flowers are meant as an insult, somehow, although she cannot figure out how, to repay her for her own rudeness at dinner – but it is not. More flowers arrive before dinner, before bed, the next morning, three times a day for the next four days, different flowers with a different compliment each time, and she becomes more and more frustrated with each new delivery, trying to uncover the jape, the insult, the meaning, but even when she questions Jon bloody Umber directly, there is nothing more than a smile and a glint in his dark eyes to suggest that the gesture might be anything other than sincere.

In infuriates her, but if he is going to mock her by making a show of wooing her, she will retaliate in kind – and she does. She goes out of her way to ensure that her hair is shown to its best advantage, tying it up in rags at night to bring out the curl, combing it only with her good silver comb to make it shine, using the special oil Mother’s old maid had given her when they visited at Riverrun on the way home from King’s Landing to make it gleam and look twice as soft as it is. She wears it in a tumble of curls over her shoulder, tied in place with a ribbon the same blue as her eyes, or gathered with her silver clasp so it spills down her back and swishes as she moves.

And it is not just her hair that she uses to her advantage – she has Mari tie her stays just a little tighter, tugs the neck of her gown just a shade lower, makes certain to lean just so when she is sitting opposite Jon bloody Umber at table, presses closer than proper when he dances her around the hall, a challenge in his damnable dark eyes and the set of his jaw under his beard (which seems neater than it did when he arrived and ruined her life, but mayhaps she has just become used to his fuzzy tangle).

Jon isn’t certain that he’s made any headway with Sansa flaming Stark by the time he and his family are due to leave Winterfell, because she’s so impossible to puzzle out. She smiles and sighs and makes pretty noises to match her pretty face and her damnable hair, and all the while there’s a special curl to her pretty pink mouth that’s all contempt and all for him.

She didn’t take well to his courting – the flowers had been meant as a tease, at first, but she’d been so sour about them under her courtesies that Jon had decided to continue them, just to spite her, which had only prompted her to do all those things with her hair.

He is going to kill whichever of his brothers it is that let someone know that he likes Sansa’s bloody hair – but then, what man wouldn’t? For all Jon knows, she’s been using that mass of absurd red curls to charm any number of men since she flowered, for all he knows-

Well, no, he knows that even if that is the case, it would have gone no farther because Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell, even if she doesn’t act it in some ways, and she would not allow herself to be ruined.

That is how he knows Theon Greyjoy’s attentions are unwanted when he comes across the hostage cornering Sansa outside the great hall on his way back from the privy during their parting feast.

“My lady,” he says, frowning just slightly because, while he knows the rumours about his House, he also knows that they’re nonsense – the First Night was long since done away with, unless one of the uncles was partaking on the sly, and no Umber would force a woman (although Whoresbane might force a lad, but Jon prefers not to consider that) no matter what the likes of the Manderlys say – so he thinks he’s well justified in his anger because, no matter what his personal feelings towards Sansa at present, or hers towards him, he does have a certain duty regarding her safety and Theon Greyjoy is endangering that safety. “Are you well?”

There’s defiance in the tight set of her jaw, but then Greyjoy turns, fingers still biting visibly into Sansa’s arm just under her elbow, and the defiance disappears.

“Just making sure she’s ready for you, Umber,” Greyjoy sneers, and Jon grits his teeth, reaches over, and removes Greyjoy’s hand from Sansa’s skin.

“My lady has no need of your assistance in anything, Lord Theon,” he says firmly, straightening up to his full height and putting it to his advantage in looming over the shit that dared lay a hand on what is Jon’s. “You may be on your way.”

Greyjoy is drunk, but not drunk enough to think he might win any fight against a man Jon’s size, so he meanders back to the great hall, grumbling audibly the whole way.

Jon watches him leave, and then – only when he is certain that Greyjoy is gone, when the uncomfortable realisation that he is alone with Sansa dawns – turns to face Sansa.

“I do not need you,” she says sharply, rubbing her arm where Greyjoy was holding onto her. “I do not want you.”

He ignores her protests and rolls up her sleeve to see if Greyjoy did any harm – the skin is a little red, but that’s as much because she’s so pale that every touch marks her as because she’s hurt – and when he raises his eyes to hers, he finds not defiance or fear or anger or contempt there, but rather something that looks a damn sight like curiosity.

“I’m not a knight,” he says bluntly. “I never will be. I have no desire to become one, if you hope that you might convince me otherwise – and I’ve no interest in riding in tourneys or wearing fancy clothes, neither. I’m me and you’re you and we’re stuck with one another, so we may as well get used to the idea and stop mocking each other.”

He bows slightly before taking his leave, leaving her there against the wall and returning to his place at Father’s side without mentioning the little incident in the hallway to anyone.

He takes his leave of his betrothed in the morning as though nothing has happened, and though he may be imagining it, he does not think she is quite as sharp with him as she was before.

Moons turn, and Sansa has far too much time to think.

Mostly, of course, she thinks about Jon bloody Umber, about that last night when he’d jumped so ably to the defence of her honour from Theon, about the gentleness of his massive hands on her arm. She hasn’t told anyone about that, not even Mother, not even Jeyne, but she thinks about it constantly, thinks about him constantly.

He is to be her husband, then – she has given up on trying to escape that, because even when Ser Andrew Estermont came from Storm’s End by way of White Harbour with ill news from Lord Renly (Sansa does not know what that news was, knows that it was ill only because Father was in such a foul mood for days after Ser Andrew’s visit) and offers of marriages for Sansa and Arya and even for Bran, Father was firm in his decision to wed her to the Smalljon. There is no getting away from it, so Sansa has decided that she will resign herself to her fate and accept it a little more gracefully than she has until now.

Still. Saying that she will be graceful about it is much easier than actually being graceful about it, as Sansa discovers when Arya suddenly flowers and is suddenly the subject of a match.

A match in the Riverlands, in Mother’s home. In the south.

Jon has always liked Harry Karstark, for all that Harry’s brothers annoy him with how bloody-mindedly arrogant they can be, so he doesn’t much mind Harry’s questions and teasing about Sansa flaming Stark, really.

“Prettiest girl in the North aside from Wylla Manderly, Jon,” Harry grunts as their practice swords meet. “I’ll be damned if I can see why you’re so put out-“

“I’m not put out,” Jon growls in return, shifting his grip on his shield and tilting his neck to the left until it cracks. “But I’d rather she were less pretty and more personable than as pretty as she is and as prissy with it.”

Harry roars with laughter, and Jon can’t help but laugh with him – he’s glad Harry’s come to visit, if only for the relief from Torrhen’s tales of conquest and Rogir and Bryn’s constant bickering and the uncles’ damned japes about Sansa’s fine figure, which make Jon as indignantly angry as the sight of the Greyjoy hostage pinning Sansa by the wall had, which make Jon feel oddly guilty about the mornings he wakes up hard after dreams full of red hair.

Harry’s hopeless adoration of the younger Manderly sister is a source of entertainment all of its own, of course, and Jon can’t help but be jealous that Harry gets to be mad about a girl who is witty and clever and nice, even if the chances of them ever marrying are nil considering old fat Wyman’s ambition, when Jon has Sansa flaming Stark to worry about.

“I’m being serious, Harry,” he insists once they’ve stopped laughing. “She minces and simpers about the place and all the while everyone thinks she’s sweeter than those lemon cakes she’s so fond of, when really she can’t wait to find some excuse or other to disappear off to the south just because she thinks it’ll be as grand as all her stories and songs!”

“Figured that out all yourself, did you?”

“I listen,” Jon says, leaning the point of his sword into the ground. “Gods, Harry, she’s – how Lord Stark thought that girl was right for Lady of Last Hearth I’ll never know. More delicate than the bloody winter roses she’s so fond of, that one.”

“I hear you were fond of giving her flowers,” Harry says with a grin. “Not winter roses-“

“Flaming wildflowers I picked in the godswood, because she spent half her time in that little sept of theirs and I wanted a reaction – anything but flaming manners!”

Harry levels him with a look that’s far too smug for Jon’s taste, and then grins afresh.

“You like her,” he crows, and then he laughs again. “Gods be good, Jon, you wouldn’t care half so much if you didn’t! You like your little wolf bitch!”

A year and a half passes, and suddenly Sansa is to be wed within six moons, having spent a grand total of nine weeks in the company of her betrothed. The trip to Last Hearth had been disastrous-

“You want me,” he gasped against her mouth, his hands big and warm and careful and firm on her hip, cradling the back of her head, “You wouldn’t have come here with me if you hated me as much as you think you do, you know it as well as I do,” and his mouth tastes of hot cider

- but at least herself and Smalljon have reached an… An agreement, of sorts. She will be more civil, he will mock her less, and they might somehow manage not to despise one another entirely if they do that.

Still, Sansa cannot deny that she is jealous that Arya is still going south (although Cley Cerwyn has been making advances, and Arya has been receptive if only because he is Northern, so…) but even Sansa cannot possibly be jealous of the offers for Arya’s hand coming from the Twins, she supposes, and she returns to her sewing once Arya has flounced off at Mother’s side, her jaw already set in a way that has come to mean no.

“It shall not be long before you go to Last Hearth, Lady Sansa,” Septa Mordane says, sounding as satisfied as if she had arranged Sansa’s match with Jon bloody Umber herself.

“And you will have the pleasure of my sister’s company without mine to sour it,” Sansa says sweetly, smiling as wickedly as she knows how. “How lovely for you.”

“Now, Sansa-“

“Well, everyone is so eager to have me out of Winterfell that surely you must be looking forward to enjoying my sister’s company, that you must be looking forward to being rid of me-“

“That is quite enough, Sansa,” and Father is standing at the door, arms folded and jaw set sharply, and she feels ashamed. “I would have you walk with me, daughter.”

So she sets aside her sewing (Alys, Robb’s wife now and just starting to swell with child, looking more at home in Winterfell than Sansa ever has with her dark hair and dark eyes, smiles encouragingly as Sansa passes her) and takes Father’s arm and lets him lead her to the godswood (so different from the godswood at Last Hearth, where she will be married, unmade a Stark and remade an Umber) where he sits by the hot pool and motions for her to join him.

“I thought that you had accepted this betrothal,” Father says quietly, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking into the deep water. “Your mother and I thought-“

Sansa hardly hears a word he says, she’s so ashamed of her conduct – it is one thing to bemoan her future in the privacy of her own mind, but it is quite another to be so obviously unhappy that Father feels as though he has failed in his duty to her, somehow, because she hates few things more than upsetting Mother and Father – and she drops to her knees before him rather than sitting at his side.

“I’m sorry,” she pleads, “I did not mean it, Father, I swear it, I did not-“

He takes her face in his hands and looks at her – truly looks at her, and makes her feel very young in doing so – and then sighs.

“You are very like your aunt Lyanna,” he says, and smiles when she begins to protest. “Arya might have her look and her wildness, but you have her love of stories, her dreams of some grand life. Lyanna had misgivings about marrying Robert Baratheon, much as you do about marrying Jon Umber. Hers were not unfounded.”

The but yours are goes unsaid, but it shames Sansa all the same.

Preparations for Jon’s wedding are already underway, but he’s made a point of not involving himself – Harry’s been visiting for an age now, so at least Jon has company besides his sneering little shits of brothers, but Harry becomes unbearable when he notices the way Jon’s eyes flicker over east towards the godswood all of the time.

Because Harry is the only one who knows that Jon has kissed Sansa on that pretty prissy pink mouth of hers. Harry doesn’t know that Jon now knows what the firm curve of Sansa’s arse feels like through her skirts, or that he’s smelled the skin behind her ear or that he can’t sleep at night he wants her so much, or that none of the serving girls who look at him with inviting eyes rouse his interest in the slightest except that one tall girl with red hair (well, maybe Harry knows that, because he and Torrhen are sleeping their way through the staff and before Sansa, Jon might have been inclined to join their fun), but even she isn’t enough to really tempt him because her eyes are dark and her skin is ruddy and weathered, not pale and soft and freckled just slightly across the bridge of her nose…

Of course, it’s not the physical want that makes him melancholy – it’s the cold, hard manner of their agreement that leaves him worried, worried about what sort of life they’ll have together.

I will decide when we have children, she said, and while he supposes that’s only fair it also worries him a little – what if she decides she doesn’t want to bear his children? He could almost imagine it of her, just to spite him for not being the knight she wants. I will need leave to visit my mother at Winterfell often after we wed, and it’s near four weeks journey to Winterfell from home, and if Sansa is to visit “often,” well, Jon doesn’t think he’ll see her all that much.

He can’t decide if he minds or not. No matter how nice it had been to kiss her, he knows that it takes more than a good fuck to make a marriage work. He just can’t see that he and Sansa will ever have the easy companionship he remembers between Mother and Father, and he is surprised by the depth of his disappointment because of that.

I will try to be a good wife, she said, and Jon will try to be a good husband, but he doesn’t know if it’ll be enough. He doesn’t think she hates him anymore, but not hating is not the best of foundations for a marriage, surely?

As Sansa is fitted for her wedding dress, she forces herself not to think that it will be wasted on House Umber and Last Hearth as it would not be in the south, but instead on what she knows of her husband-to-be.

He is massive, apparently a ferocious warrior, as proven against the wildling bands that have managed to creep past the Wall in ever increasing numbers as winter has deepened, but capable of great gentleness despite his enormous strength. He has kind eyes, but a rough tongue and rougher manners, much of the time, although she knows he does make an effort to gentle himself for her-

Oh. Does he think she needs to be handled gently? Well, if she is being forced into staying in the North then she will prove that she is just as much a Stark as her brothers and Arya. She does not need to be handled gently, and she will tell Jon bloody Umber as much when next she sees him.

He laughs easily, although not with her. She must concede that that may, in part, be her own fault, because she spends as much time provoking him as he spends teasing her, so there is not much time for laughter. Still, he has a nice smile – open and friendly and bright, his teeth straight and white, for which she is thankful.

He’d smiled at her differently, that morning in the godswood at Last Hearth, after he’d kissed the breath from her lungs (she’d never been kissed like that before, had been shocked by his tongue in her mouth even though she’d quickly grown to like it). His smile had been hot and full of a promise she didn’t entirely understand, then.

He has very thick hair, and he has outright told her that he has no intention of trimming his beard, despite her very pointed hints that she would like that one concession from him. He cares little for his appearance, but he does like to be clean and always smells pleasantly of soap except when he is fresh from the training yard.

He likes dogs, and Lady quite likes him, but he has little time for any other animals aside from his horse, an enormous chestnut stallion that is precisely the right size for him, even though any other man sitting astride it would look like they were trying to ride a plough horse.

When they were at Last Hearth, Sansa dreamt as Lady and prowled the keep in the darkest part of the night, only to hear someone call out Sansa’s name as she passed Jon’s room.

He mocks her mercilessly, but never truly maliciously – it is more as if he wants her simply to react than to provoke some specific reaction, which pricks her temper so much that she always does react, because she resents being treated as a game for his amusement.

Since that night just after their betrothal, he has saved her from Theon’s advances twice and from other men’s three times, including once from his great-uncle. He is not a knight, no, but he is an honourable man, despite her initial misgivings.

She does not know if she will ever love him. She does not think so, at present – they are too different. She thinks that he will do his best to make her comfortable, though, and she supposes that is something.

The wedding is frighteningly close, and suddenly Father is ushering Jon into his solar and bringing out an old brass-bound chest and presenting Jon with the same cloak that he draped Mother in all those years again.

“We might not have a pretty sigil for your little wolf to sew into fancies and favours,” Father says sternly, because someone (Bryn, it was probably Bryn, he has the loosest tongue north of Dorne) made it known that Sansa was less than enthused about the prospect of marrying away from knights and tourneys and things, “but we’re strong as that ruddy giant, and you’re as good a lad as there is in Westeros, so don’t you let her convince you you’re not good enough for her because your name is Jon Umber and not whoever-it-is that sister of hers is to wed in the Riverlands.”

A match hasn’t been made for Sansa’s sister yet, but Jon doesn’t say anything – instead, he shakes out the cloak and holds it up, pleased that it looks as if it should be just the right length for Sansa. He won’t have her pouting and sulking over something as small as her cloak being too long on their wedding day, not when she’ll probably have a thousand other things to sulk about.

“You’re as equal as she’s like to find unless she married a Lannister or a Martell or a Tyrell,” Father says, dangerous pride sharp in his eyes. “And don’t you forget that.”

The ride to Last Hearth is more arduous than it was last time because the snows are thicker and deeper, but Sansa has resolved not to complain because it makes Father proud to see her being strong, like Mother.

She misses Robb on the journey, but of course he had to stay at Winterfell – Alys is due in the birthing bed any day, may already have birthed her and Robb’s babe, and Robb could hardly abandon his wife just to attend his sister’s wedding.

“You will be a fine lady, sweetling,” Mother says when they make camp for the last time before they are due to reach Last Hearth. “You will see, you will grow into your role.”

There are no women of House Umber still at Last Hearth, Sansa knows, no sept and no family and friends or anything familiar at all, and she is already lonely for Winterfell – but instead of showing that, she forces herself to smile, smiles harder when Mother touches her face, and does not allow herself to weep into her pillow when she and Arya curl close under the furs to sleep.

She stumbles slightly when she steps down from her saddle, and Jon lunges forward without thinking to catch her lest she fall – japes and teases and mockery ring out from all sides, and Jon knows he’ll pay for it even more later, between Torrhen and Harry and Dacey and Aly Mormont and Cley Cerwyn and the rest of them, but for the moment there are only wide blue eyes and parted lips looking up at him from under loosened fiery red braids.

“My lady,” he says, hoping his voice does not sound as strained as he is with the effort of pushing aside the sudden desire to kiss Sansa – that part of their marriage, he knows, will not be a problem, but he knows that that is easy for most anyways, so he does not much care about it at the moment – “welcome to Last Hearth.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she breathes, cheeks a pretty pink before she ducks her head. “I am glad to be here.”

He can feel how badly she’s shaking – the wrong sort of shake for it to be the cold – and knows her words to be a lie, but he offers her his arm and escorts her inside regardless.

“I will not allow any harm to come to you,” he says. “I know – I know my family have a reputation around weddings, around- around brides, but it is a lie, I swear it.”

She shakes a little less after that.

The morning of her wedding is blindingly sunny, the glare off the snow layered thick on the ground painful to behold, but Sansa is thankful – the sunshine will hopefully glare off her white dress, too, will distract from how nervous she is now that the day is finally here.

Mother styles Sansa’s hair herself – braided away from her face but loose down her back, the perfect complement to her white gown, showing her off as the maiden bride she is – and Father comes to hang his mother’s necklace around her neck, to drape her in Stark white with a grey direwolf snarling across her back.

She wishes she were as fierce as that wolf, as her brothers and Arya and Mother and Father. She wishes she were not afraid.

Jon ignores every single word old Maester Fredel says as he wraps Jon’s bloody hand with treated linens to prevent the split skin on his knuckles from festering.

“Lady Sansa won’t be pleased about this,” Torrhen teases as they make their way to the godswood.

“Bugger that,” Jon growls, scratching at his beard – despite all his insistences, he trimmed the damn thing the way Sansa had hinted she’d prefer for the wedding, and his face feels cold and bare with it so short – and striding forward, feeling completely overdressed and too groomed and just not at all himself, but he supposes Sansa might appreciate the effort. He hopes she will. “I was defending her honour.”

Brandon Tallhart had spoken more than just out of turn when he’d been mouthing about how much he was looking forward to the bedding – Jon might have borne that had Brandon not then turned around and japed about the likelihood of Sansa’s being a maiden being lessened by the Greyjoy cur being at Winterfell, but Brandon did and Jon thinks a broken nose is a small punishment for daring impugn a Stark of Winterfell’s honour.

“Aye, well, not as if it makes much difference either way,” Harry says with a shrug, clapping Jon on the back. “So long as she’s not carrying a squid, surely you won’t mind.”

Only the sting of Jon’s knuckles when his fist clenches stops him from breaking Harry’s jaw.

Jon’s eyes go wide when she walks into sight, but the first thing Sansa really notices is not how stunned he looks.

“You trimmed your beard,” she whispers when Father puts her hand in Jon’s. “You said you wouldn’t!”

“You said you wouldn’t leave your hair down,” he hisses back, turning her to face the heart tree so they may say their vows – and they do, although Sansa hardly hear a word that either of them says she’s so thrown by the fair colour of Jon’s beard now that it’s so short to his jaw, and suddenly Father is removing her maiden’s cloak and Jon is sweeping her marriage cloak around her shoulders, and she is Lady Sansa Umber now, a woman wed.

She slips her hand into Jon’s elbow and leans on him as he guides her from the godswood and back into the keep, to the great hall where their wedding feast will be laid on, and when they get there-

When they get there, he hands her down into her seat, and then pours a cup of iced honey milk for her.

“Drink it,” he says quietly. “To settle your stomach – you look as if you might vomit any moment.”

She sips it gratefully, but she cannot deny that she is surprised when he takes a cup of the same thing – and he frowns when he notices her staring.

“We are to lead the dancing,” he points out, “and I am not a good dancer when drunk.”

He is a better dancer now than she remembers, but still not a good dancer, even sober, and she shrieks in surprise when he hooks an arm around her waist and lifts her to stand on the toes of his boots as he spins her easily around the floor.

“Much better,” he laughs, and she cannot help but laugh with him, because it is a relief that this is easy when so much of the time they spend together is so difficult.

He is a good man, she tells herself, feeling a little guilty that even as recently as last week she was dreaming of sunshine and tourneys. I can make my family proud. I will make my family proud.

Jon wants to pummel all three of his brothers, all three Karstarks, both Tallharts and Cley Cerwyn as well as his uncles and every other man who gropes at Sansa like she’s horseflesh or a whore when the cry goes up for the bedding, but he has his own hands full keeping Dacey and Aly in particular away from his cock, and for all that they’re laughing and it’s a jape he’d really rather not have every woman in the North copping a feel of his cock and his balls-

He barely avoids catching Aly’s hand when he slams the door of his bedchamber, and he leans heavily against it with one hand while he sets the bar in place with the other before turning to face Sansa.

She’s brushing out her hair, and his cock jumps she’s so beautiful, sitting there naked on the edge of his bed. She also looks very small and very young, and not just because his bed is longer than most.

He can’t help but grin when he notices that she’s staring at him through her hair.

“Is the view to your liking, my lady?” he teases, running a hand through his own hair and grinning wider when she blushes. “I find my own view quite lovely.”

“Get it done with,” she says sharply, setting aside the brush and swinging her legs up onto the bed. “It has been a long day, and I would like to sleep.”

But her arms are wrapped tight around her legs, which she’s drawn up to her chest, and she’s biting her lip and looks… Afraid? But Sansa flaming Stark is afraid of nothing!

“Well?” she snaps, looking down at her toes where they’re curled into the furs. “What are you waiting for? There has to be blood-“

“No, there hasn’t,” Jon says mildly, pouring two cups of wine and handing one to her before sitting down beside her. “Not all women bleed when-“

“Please,” she whispers. “Just- make it quick?”

“Sansa, I have no intention of making it quick,” he says in surprise. “You won’t enjoy it at all that way, and while you may find me underwhelming in other regards, I can assure you that I am far better at this than any of your pretty Southron knights.”

She looks up at that, jaw hard and tight, but at least that odd fear seems to have passed.

“Prove it, then,” she challenges, “show me that I am not lacking for being forced to wed into this wasteland instead of to the south-“

And their wine is on the nightstand and she’s spread out underneath him, all that hair fanning around her, and she gasps when he kisses her and twists her fingers into his hair.

“We might get this bit right, at least,” he says against her neck, learning the shape of her jaw with the tip of his tongue. “You’ll not hate having me in your bed, even if you hate me and hate that your bed is at Last Hearth and not somewhere in the Crownlands.”

I don’t hate you she wants to say, but her breath is caught in her throat and all she can do is clutch at his hair with one hand and his massive shoulder with the other, because he’s right – they may be terrible at everything else together, but this at least seems to be working well enough.

Chapter Text

For such a huge man, Sansa has found her husband to have a remarkably delicate touch.

"Are you warm enough?" he asks quietly, unlacing her gown and easing it down her shoulders, leaning down to press a kiss to the back of her neck. "I can stoke the fire if you’re not."

She shivers at the touch of his lips, but she shakes her head.

"I’ll be warm soon enough," she says, glancing back over her shoulder as he pushes her gown at her hips, lets it fall to the floor. He’s already stripped down to his breeches, and she likes the play of the firelight on the brownish-blonde hair on his chest and arms as he guides her to her dressing table and sits her down so he can undo her hair.

"Aye," he agrees. "I suppose you will."

Words do not come easily between them, even now, after near a year of marriage - easier than before, yes, just as laughter is more common between them now, but still not easily, and Sansa wishes just a little that they were as easy together as Robb and Alys are.

Her hairpins ding into the little bronze dish on the dressing table when he drops them in, and when all of them are out he combs her hair with slow, even strokes, rubbing at her scalp where he knows it will be sore from the long day of her hair being pinned up high.

She stands without a word, takes his hand and lets him lead her to sit on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through his hair when he kneels at her feet and rolls her stockings down her legs - thick, practical woolen stockings, but tied high up her thighs with bright blue ribbons to match her eyes. His hands linger on the tops of her thighs, the backs of her knees, the insides of her ankles, and she can feel how flushed she is when he looks up at her, lit from behind and almost beautiful, really.

His mouth tastes like spiced cider when he leans up to kiss her, hands resting on the bed at her hips. She likes this, likes kissing him, likes the soft rub of the beard he keeps short (for her, because he knows she prefers it short), loves the sounds he makes just before he pushes her back down against the mattress.

His boots hit the floor - thud, thud - before he climbs up onto the bed with her properly, and then he kisses her harder, lifts her up into his arms and lays her down against the pillows. Now, he’s lit up from the side, the fire casting strange shadows on his skin, and he lets his eyes drift shut when she reaches up a curious hand to trace his jaw, down the side of his neck to the oddly delicate jut of his collarbone. There should be nothing delicate about him, this massive husband of hers, but there is, in surprising ways.

He brushes her hair back from her face then - he loves her hair, plays with it constantly unless she pins it up, and the brush of his knuckles against her temple makes her eyelids flutter.

He kisses her again, then, and she twists one hand into his hair to hold him close, while the other trails down his neck, over his shoulder, fingers digging into the hard muscle of his back when he explores her as she is him, when he cups her breast and lets his fingers drift over her nipple.

He murmurs something in the Old Tongue (she asked his brother, and Torrhen said it means beautiful, words learned from their mother) when he moves to kiss her neck, nuzzling under her chin and making her breath catch, the way it does only when they are abed together. It thrills her a little, because exposed though she is he is just as much, in the way he whispers those sweet words and the way he gasps her name into her hair (never my lady when they are together like this, always Sansa).

His hand slips under her shift, warm and firm and careful against her bare skin, and she arches up into his touch because it’s good, everything is good when they lie together, and that’s why she knows that it is right that she take the hand twisted into his hair and let it drift down his chest and his stomach to his breeches, unlacing one side and then the other of the placket. 

"Take them off," she breathes against his ear, and when he rolls off her to slide his breeches down his legs, she takes the opportunity to pull off her smallclothes before kneeling at his side and pulling her shift over her head.

He likes it when her hair falls down over her breasts, she knows, so she makes no move to push it back over her shoulders. She likes the way he looks at her too much, likes the heat in his eyes as they skim across her body.

She climbs astride him when he pulls her mouth back to his, because kissing him is wonderful but the heat of his skin against her own is something else altogether, especially when he sits up so she’s in his lap and she can press against him fully, the hair on his chest deliciously rough against her nipples, his hands huge and gentle when they cup her bottom and press her closer still.

She very much likes the feel of his fingers between her legs, likes it almost as much as she liked his mouth there, the few times he kissed her there, so when he touches her she rocks against his hand, lets him know how good it feels because if she tries to tell him with words, it will go wrong, she knows it will.

Lying with him is as easy as anything, just a slow, hot slide and the feel of his mouth trailing down her neck, teeth tugging softly on her nipple while he holds her up with his hands on her hips, while she strokes herself to release with one hand and knots the other back into his hair.

She finds her pleasure first - she often does, between the teasing of his mouth and the tight-stretch of him inside her and the movement of her own hand - and cries out just once, high and sharp and his name, and he tumbles her easily onto her back and moves hard and fast and finishes with a moan of her name into the hair behind her ear.

She follows him when he rolls off her this time, curling against his side with his heart thudding under her hand and his chest rising and falling under her hand.

They cannot find words for one another, but this, at least, seems to work.

He’s gone away to fight wildlings before - he is an Umber of Last Heart, after all, that is what they do - but this is different. This is terrifying. 

"Sansa," he says, kneeling at her feet and folding his hands in her lap. "I will return, you know that, don’t you?"

She looks over his shoulder into the fire, resting her own hands on the heavy swell of her belly, and shakes her head.

"If what they are saying is true," she whispers. "If the White Walkers… You may not return, my lord. It may be that none of you return."

He leans his brow against her belly and huffs out a sigh before winding his arms around her. He is so warm, so big and warm and firm and alive, and she does not want him to die. She does not want him to leave, and that feeling is so new that she does not know what to do with it. She blames it on the babe - she cannot control her feelings at all since he got her with child - but she cannot help but doubt that it truly is the child’s fault. 

"I will, though," he promises, not looking up at her, and she wishes she had words to express what it is she feels now. "I swear to you, I will come home, Sansa."

Her fingers brush through his hair, and she bites her lip to stop from weeping when he looks up at her.

"You’d better," she warns him, and then she lets him carry her to bed and hold her the whole night.

He leaves in the morning, kissing her hands and her belly before they leave their rooms, and her hands again before he mounts his horse and rides with the rest of the Northern host for Castle Black.

It is late in the night when the man arrive at Last Hearth - scouts arrived not long after noon, but there are many injured to be brought for care, and travel is slow with the deep winter snows.

Sansa is awake when they arrive, feeding the babe, and she has only just set her daughter back in her crib when Torrhen bursts into the nursery in search of her.

Jon is one of the injured, and he’s not well at all.

Jon wakes slowly, head throbbing almost as much as his side. He feels wretched - muzzy and tired and his mouth tasting like shit - but Father’s sitting by the bed, and when he looks to his other side Sansa’s curled around his arm, holding on tight, her little foot hooked around his knee.

"She’s been with you the whole time," Father says quietly. "Tended you herself when the fever peaked. Never thought I’d see that wife of yours cry, but she wept bitter when she thought we were to lose you."

"Oh," is all Jon can say, still looking down at Sansa. She’s so peaceful in her sleep, pouty mouth and eyelids that are just this side of lavender and pretty pink cheeks and her hair all mussed, and he reaches across his body to pet her hair down without thinking.

She jerks upright when he hisses in discomfort, looking confused for only a moment before she realises he’s awake.

"How do you feel?" she asks, touching his cheek, his mouth, the edge of the bandages wound around his torso.

"No pain," he says. "I just stretched too far."

And then she does something that frightens him as much as it flatters him - she lays down mostly on top of him and weeps into his neck, fisting one hand in his hair and holding tight.

"The babe!" he says in sudden realisation, tugging gently on her hair to get her to lift her head. "The babe, Sansa-"

"She’s well," Sansa assures him, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. "She’s beautiful, she’s - oh."

"Oh what?" Jon asks, confused. "Have you not named her yet?"

"I- yes, I have, Minisa, for my grandmother, I hope you don’t mind-"

"What’s wrong, then?" he asks, trying to sit up and crying out because gods, fucking gods, the pain is worse than he anticipated.

"Lay back," Sansa orders, pushing him by the shoulders and reaching across him for a little cup of what he thinks is poppy’s milk, when she makes him sip from it. "We may talk when you’re better."

Sansa is sitting in the chair at Jon’s bedside when he awakes the second time, Minisa in her arms - she’s a big child, not so large as her father, thank the gods, at least not according to the maester, with scruffy, tufty hair the colour of Jon’s but Sansa’s eyes.

"Is that…?" he asks, voice hoarse and thick from sleep, and Sansa nods. He will be disappointed, any man would be for his firstborn to be a girl, Sansa knows that she has failed him. "May I hold her?"

Sansa was not expecting that, but she nods, lays Minisa on her side of the bed and carefully helps Jon to sit up, eyes flickering between her husband and their daughter.

Minisa looks so tiny in Jon’s massive arms, but she gurgles up at him and he smiles, laughing when she takes his finger in her little fist.

"She’s beautiful," he breathes, shifting his hold on her to bring her closer to his face, so he can look at her better. "Why were you worried?"

"I thought… She is a daughter, my lord. Not a son."

“Our daughter,” Jon corrects, still looking down at Minisa with that amazement in his eyes. “We are hardly a greybeard and a crone that must count the days to worry about more children. She is perfect, Sansa, why- why are you crying?”

"I thought you would be disappointed," she admits, scrubbing the back of her hand over her cheeks and sniffling, feeling silly. "But then, I have a habit of misjudging you."

“Father told me you stayed with me,” Jon says, looking up at the ceiling.

It’s warm, here, in his and Sansa’s bed, her sitting up against the pillows with her sewing in her hands and the fire banked low and glowing hot in Sansa’s hair, warm and comfortable and good. He likes sharing a bed with Sansa beyond lying with her, likes the softness of her skin against his, the scent of her hair, the funny little kittenish mewls she makes when she wakes and stretches and blinks open her eyes.

Part of him wishes that Min’s crib was here, too, so he could listen to her snuffly breathing when the pain wakes him at night without getting out of bed and going to the nursery next to his and Sansa’s room, because he has yet to get out of bed in the middle of the night without waking Sansa.

“Of course I did,” Sansa says, shrugging and not looking away from her sewing. There’s a candle lit on her nightstand, edging her face in soft golden light and catching on the silvery threads in her embroidery. “I am your wife, and you had need of me.”

“Is that why you wept?” he asks quietly. “When I awoke? And before, when you thought I’d die?”

He can’t be certain in the shifting light, but he thinks she might be blushing. 

“There is no shame in it,” he says, wondering why it is words are always such clumsy, awkward things between them when they both find them so easy a thing with everyone else. “Had I returned, and found that you had- that birthing Min had-“

He’d been living in terror of her dying in childbed since the moment the maester had confirmed that she was indeed with child, imagining how difficult it would be for her to birth a child with his size considering her narrow hips. 

When he looks to her again, she’s set aside her sewing (a blanket for Min, stitched all with pretty little flowers) and is blowing out her candle, and suddenly he has a lap full of Sansa and the tumble of her lovely hair all around his face as she leans down to kiss him.

“I know very well there is no shame in it,” she says breathlessly when she sits back up to pull her nightgown over her head. “You are my husband,” she tells him sharply, taking his hands and pressing them to her skin. “You are my husband,” she says again, and there are tears in her voice and her eyes when she leans back down to kiss him again. “The father of my child, my husband, and you were brought home half-dead-“

He wraps his arms around her, pulls her down into him, and wonders if ever he will find words to tell her he loves her.

Chapter Text

He is with some of the elders from the town, sorting out a dispute over chickens, of all things, with Min sitting on his shoulders and singing one of her cheerful little songs about clouds and Lady and her mama's hair, when Sansa comes to find him.

He has rarely seen his wife so visibly anxious about anything, but she motions for him to complete his business before he goes to her - he does set Min on the ground, though, and she runs as fast as her fat little legs will carry her towards Sansa, babbling happily because, aside from Jon's father, Sansa is Min's favourite person in the whole world.

He finishes as quickly as he can (the fat man must pay the man with the bad teeth a stag for the two chickens he stole, and then he must report to Father for judgement for stealing), and Sansa is stroking Min's hair and biting her lip when he reaches her.

"My lady?"

"My father has written to me," she says, her voice thin and hoarse, and he cradles her face in his hand without thinking. "There is something wrong with my mother, Jon."

Jon knows what it is to lose a mother - his own has been dead for many years now, after all - and he hopes that Sansa does not have to find out for herself for a good long while yet. He knows, too, that there is little he can say to her. She is as close to her mother as he is to his father, and he cannot imagine how it will affect her should anything happen to Lady Stark.

Min whines until he picks her up, balancing her against his chest so she doesn't feel left out, and Sansa sighs and leans close to him, closer than she usually would in public. She's usually so proper that it takes him entirely by surprise, and he finds himself a little at a loss.

"Mayhaps we could visit Winterfell?" he suggests, wondering if such a thing is wise with Sansa already four moons gone with their second babe, but when she smiles up at him he can't even imagine taking back the offer.

Lady Stark has a fever, and the maester at Winterfell forbids Sansa from coming too close to her mother due to the babe - Min, having no such ban in her way, proceeds to spend her mornings sitting on Lady Stark's bed, singing and chattering to her grandmother until the maester comes to collect her.

Sansa swells so rapidly and so suddenly that it takes them both by surprise - Maester Luwin suggests that mayhaps she is carrying twins, and the thought terrifies Jon. Sansa never admitted it to him, but Sal, Sansa's maid, told him in confidence that birthing Min could have killed her, had old Carton not been so used to delivering big babes. Two babes with his size, though?

It took them near a moon's turn to reach Winterfell, the snows were so deep, and he can hardly ask Sansa to leave after less than a second moon, and the notion of travelling back while she could be in such danger, so far from a maester...

It is with that in mind that he approaches Lord Stark about remaining at Winterfell until the babe - or babes, gods - is born, sick with fear at the thought of losing her to the bloody bed.

Three weeks into their stay at Winterfell, Jon loses his wife.

Lady Stark is recovering well and, as everyone knew would happen, has taken to Min - she is such a lovely child that anything else would be impossible, after all - and so he never has to worry about his daughter. She spends her days with her grandmother and, because Lord and Lady Stark make time for one another every day, her grandfather, and could not be safer unless she was with Jon himself.

Sansa, though, he has completely lost the run of - one moment, she is with her sister, talking in hushed tones of Lady Arya's upcoming wedding to Cley Cerwyn. The next, she is with Alys or Robb and their boys, or she is with Lady Stark and Min, or with her younger brothers.

But today, he has looked everywhere that she has been these past weeks, even in their bedchamber, and she is nowhere to be found.

Eventually, it is bright-eyed Bran that points him towards the godswood, which surprises him - Sansa is devout, yes, but she rarely prays alone. She always at least keeps Lady with her, but Lady is presently serving as a toy for Min in Lady Stark's solar.

She is sitting on a broad, flat stone, her back to the bubbling hot springs and her face towards the heart tree. She is a pretty picture, red hair and pale skin against red sap and pale bark, but her cloak is deep brown and heavy, and her stomach is swollen and peeking out from the folds.

He sits beside her, and she smiles a little. Words have always been difficult for them with one another, but the godswood requires no words, only company.

"I missed home," she says after a long while, now leaning against his arm with her head on his shoulder, her hand tucked into his. "If I ignore the springs, then mayhaps..."

It warms him to think that she considers Last Hearth her home, so he lifts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer. She smells of lemoncakes and gives a sweet little sigh, and, not for the first time, he considers what words he would be best served to use to tell her how he feels.

Sansa's time comes early - four long weeks early, and Jon is frantic even when Lord Stark assures him that Maester Luwin is more than competent.

The babe is so big, he thinks, walking the halls with Sansa as her pains come and go and trying not to let her see how scared he is.

He thinks it again as he helps her out of her clothes and into bed - she teased him just last night about how fascinated he is by her body now, but there is no room for that here, as he shucks his boots and climbs up onto the bed to support her weight.

"Jon-"

"I was absent for Min's birth," he says softly, kissing her shoulder and helping her sit lower in the bed. The maester and midwives are frowning, but he does not care - Sansa is his wife, and birthing this child might kill her, and he will spend every moment he can with her just in case.

"I love you," he says quietly, just as a contraction passes and she sinks back against him. "Swear to me that you will not die, my lady."

She laughs tiredly and reaches back over her shoulder to touch his face, shaking her head.

"That decision is not mine to make, my lord," she says, but her shoulders square all the same, and she holds tight to his hands as the pains become more frequent and, with that increased frequency, harder to bear. She is crying, tears trickling down her cheeks because she does not have the strength to sob or even to weep, by the time the maester sighs in relief and tells her that it is time to push.

Jon wonders how it is that any man can claim to be brave when every woman willingly bears children, knowing that this awaits them before they can meet the child.

There are celebrations when word spreads that both mother and child have survived - Lord Stark orders the bells to be rung, and they are, from early in the morning 'til sunset, and Lady Stark smiles fondly and hefts the babe higher against her chest and says that she remembers the day that Sansa was born, that those same bells rang just as long.

Jon is only half aware of this, because while the babe - Jon, Sansa wants to call him, because the Lord of Last Hearth has been Jon Umber for nigh as long as there's been an Iron Throne - is as big as Min was when Jon first saw her, when she was near three moons old, loud and bright-eyed and bursting with health, Sansa bled and bled and bled and is a pale shadow of herself.

Jon sits by her bed, holding her hand, and waiting for her cheeks to pinken and her smile to return. It astonishes him how much he misses her, although he is not even mildly surprised that Min is inconsolable at being kept away from her mama. Even Lord Stark, who Min has taken to as completely as she ever did to Jon's father, cannot sooth her, and while Jon does his best he is constantly distracted by the knowledge that he may return to Last Hearth with a new son but without his wife.

Little Jon is near six moons old when Maester Luwin finally says that Sansa can travel, and they are the longest six moons of Jon's life. 

Min takes to sisterhood as easily as Sansa took to motherhood, and dotes as best she can on her brother despite barely speaking full sentences quite yet. Seeing them together - Little Jon lying on his back on the hearthrug and Min playing with his toes - is one of the few things that can bring a full smile to Sansa's face.

She has not smiled much since the maester told them that she would not be able to bear any more children.

Still, he thinks that mayhaps they can get past that - or at least, he thought that they could until they reached Last Hearth, until she took to only emerging from their rooms when Min asked her too, when she took to sleeping in a different bed.

He is not good with words, words do not come easily between them, but Sansa needs them now, he knows that, and so he writes them down because it seems to be easier than saying them aloud. He writes a letter, and he leaves it on her pillow, and then he spends the day with Min and Little Jon and his brothers.

She is waiting in his - their - bedchamber after he has settled Little Jon with his nurse and Min has had her story and her cuddle, curled under the covers on his side of the bed, her hair loose across the pillow.

She has worn her hair tightly braided and twisted up high on her head these past moons, and some ache in his chest eases to see it down.

"I am sorry," she whispers when he lies behind her and wraps an arm over her waist, and he can do nothing but pull her closer.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he says sternly. "You have given me two beautiful children, Sansa, and you have lived - you have done all I ever asked of you and more, sweetling."

She rolls over, looks up at him with tear-filled eyes, and then sighs and burrows against his chest.

"You have three brothers," she whispers, "I have three brothers and a sister, I should have been stronger-"

"None of my brothers or yours were as large as Little Jon, Sansa," he soothes, stroking her hair. "There is no blame here, and I will not have you upset over this - what can I do, Sansa? How can I help you?"

Words, he thinks as she begins to cry in earnest and eventually falls asleep against his chest, the deep sleep of true exhaustion, will never come easy between them, but he is glad he made the effort for once, instead of allowing things to go unsaid.