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She hadn’t been able to breastfeed Brandon. In the hospital bed, with her newborn baby son in her arms, she fed him a bottle of formula that a nurse had prepared and the doctor had explained. Catelyn sat on one side of the bed and Ned sat on the other. Arya was in the room, too, and she propped herself on the foot of the bed. They were all listening closely to every word the doctor said. There were multiple medical reasons as to why women were unable to produce breast milk, none of which pertained to Sansa.
“But there is another reason that I think makes the most sense.” The doctor paused. He had been her OB/GYN since she ran from Ramsay and came back home; since she told her parents she was pregnant and they got both her and the baby to a doctor straight away. He wasn’t an idiot. He had seen the brutal scars and fading abuse all over her body. He may not have known everything, but he knew enough to draw a conclusion. “Extreme trauma and stress during a pregnancy can harbor a woman’s body’s ability to produce milk,” the doctor informed them all, his eyes set on Sansa.
It was completely the wrong reaction to that news. Of course, Sansa would love for someone to tell her how she should react to hearing something like that.
She started to laugh.
Of course. Of course. Her baby was here and just a couple of hours in this world, Brandon was already absolutely perfect. But Ramsay was here, still, too. He wouldn’t leave her alone. He was still surrounding her. He would never leave her alone. He hadn’t come to get her – yet – but her body still jumped at every loud noise, and she slept with a nightlight in her bedroom because she still couldn’t handle being in the dark. And he was here in the hospital room with her (never theirs) baby in her arms, feeding from a bottle because Ramsay had ensured that she wouldn’t be able to feed Brandon in the natural way that new mothers should have been able to feed their babies. She had found the strength to run away, but Ramsay was still taking things from her.
She laughed and felt tears in her eyes. She looked down to Brandon in her arms suckling on the bottle. No one else in the room – her parents or Arya or the doctor – seemed particularly alarmed over Sansa’s reaction and her laughter to that news. That made Sansa want to cry, too.
…
Ned Stark had a rocking armchair in the family room that he had had since his first apartment in college. The grey fabric was worn and there were faded stains from past eaten random foods, but it was one of the most comfortable chairs in the world and it became Brandon’s feeding chair when Sansa was downstairs, and it was time for his bottle. She rocked the chair gently as he ate and she watched whatever her siblings, if they were around, were watching on the television.
“This-” Arya said from her spot, lounging on the sofa and waving a finger at the television. Sansa had put on an episode of Hubba Bubba Hotel, which baby Brandon seemed to love, and Arya had come home from her part-time job, joining them. “-is a major continuity issue. Mick is horribly allergic to apples. He broke out into hives in that one episode, and everyone learned about the danger of food allergies.”
“This is from the first season,” Sansa smiled. “Mick’s allergy happens in the second season.”
“Oh.” Arya paused, watching the four hippos as they bake apple pies for a bake sale the hotel is hosting. “Good. I thought we were about to witness the death of a cartoon hippo.”
Sansa laughed. She lowered her eyes from watching the cartoon about four hippos who ran a hotel in the jungle to watch Brandon for a moment as he suckled away. His eyes were getting heavier. He was starting to reach that “milk drunk” stage, but he kept feeding so Sansa didn’t pull the bottle away. When he was done, he would let her know.
She heard the front door open from down the hallway and a minute later, Jon Snow stepped into the family room. Sansa glanced up at him for just a split moment before she looked back down to Brandon. She was tempted to stand up and finish Brandon’s feeding in another room – preferably upstairs in her bedroom behind a closed door where the risk of her eyes meeting Jon’s was nonexistent – but Brandon was too comfortable and moving him in the middle of a feeding was absolutely ridiculous. It was just Jon Snow. She could handle Jon Snow, and she would do it as she always did. She would just pretend that he wasn’t there at all.
(Even though her body was slightly tense and very aware of his existence in the same room. She was always painfully aware whenever Jon was near and to make it even worse, Jon seemed to have no idea when she was.)
“What’s up?” Arya asked.
“Robb here yet?” Jon asked.
He stepped into the family room, his eyes going to the television to see the familiar hippo cartoon on the screen. Hubba Bubba Hotel seemed to be on the television a lot at the Stark home since months-old baby Brandon seemed to smile every time he heard the voices of the hippos or that damn catchy theme song that got stuck in all of their heads. Rickon grumbled that Brandon was lucky his Uncle Rickon loved him because he caught himself humming that damn theme song when he was playing video games with his friends more than once.
“No, it’s just us right now. Sit,” Arya ordered.
Sansa slowly lifted her head, but she didn’t look towards the couch where Jon joined Arya. Instead, she stared at the cartoon with intense concentration. Right now, one tapir was trying to distract all four hippos with a dance number so another tapir could swipe a pie behind their backs.
“My God, he’s not even being quiet about it!” Arya shouted as if she was watching one of her rugby matches. “Turn around, Chloe! He’s stealing right behind you!”
“I didn’t know tapirs could be such jerks,” Jon commented.
“I just love that this cartoon for children included tapirs. They’re a forgotten animal, if you ask me,” Arya said. “Chloe, seriously!”
“I don’t really think about tapirs,” Jon mused.
“You should,” Arya quipped back with finality.
Sansa smiled faintly to herself as she looked back down to Brandon. This all seemed so normal. Feeding her baby while she, her sister and Jon watched Hubba Bubba Hotel. Except, there were slight changes in her imagination with the same scenario. She and Jon were together, and Arya had come to their house to spend time with them. She, Jon, and Brandon were a little family because Brandon was Jon’s baby, too, and her pregnancy would have been healthy and normal, and she would be able to breastfeed their son because of it.
Purely fictional, of course. Sansa knew that something like that would never happen. She and Jon were so far removed from another, she couldn’t remember the last time she and Jon had exchanged words. (Lie. She knew it was at the small baby shower her mother threw for her before Brandon’s birth and Jon had gifted her a pirate ship bath toy.)
Brandon’s suckling slowed down and he began to move his head back from the bottle’s nipple. Sansa slipped it out from his lips and smiled at him. “Good boy,” she whispered sweetly to him and pressed her lips to his head in a loving kiss.
She reached for the spit rag she always kept near so she could burp him, but it wasn’t draped on her shoulder. She sat up slightly, thinking it had fallen behind her back, but it wasn’t there. She looked on either side of the chair. Not there either. She began to pull herself up from the chair, shifting Brandon in her arms while holding the near empty bottle with one hand. From here, she could see the basket of spit rags on the dining room table.
“I’ll get it,” Jon said suddenly, standing up from the couch, somehow knowing what she needed.
“Oh, that’s-” she began to tell him that he didn’t have to. She was perfectly capable of getting a spit rag herself for her own, but Jon was too fast.
She stood up, but Jon was already returning from the table. She felt her body still as Jon took the rag and carefully draped it over her shoulder. He was so close, she could smell him. Plain soap and breath mints. That meant he had been smoking before he came here. He smelled good. Clean. Familiar. And her chest ached. She was looking into his eyes, but the pain blooming over her was too much and she quickly looked away again.
“There you go,” Jon’s voice was soft and sounded slightly gravely. He cleared his throat and took a step back from her, leaving her immediate personal space.
“Thank you, Jon,” Sansa remembered to say in a matching soft voice.
She stepped back as well, away from him, desperate to smell anything other than plain soap. She turned and set the bottle on the coffee table. Remaining standing, she faced the television to begin to burp Brandon and pretend to concentrate completely on the cartoon. The tapirs had been caught and were now learning their lesson about how they shouldn’t steal pies that didn’t belong to them. Arya was muttering about “pure tapir slander” and Jon had returned to sit on the couch.
Sansa felt her heart rapidly beating and she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering. Her imagination was taking over again. If she and Jon were parents to Brandon, she would feed him and then Jon would take over burping duties, and they would always split and share the duties like that every time. She would be the one to hurry to the table to get him a spit rag and put it on his shoulder and Jon would smile at her. “Thank you, love,” he would say and Sansa would kiss him on the lips and Brandon on the head and she would just be so happy.
…