Chapter Text
Sansa watches mom hang the phone up with a click that sounds loud in the quiet tension of the kitchen.
“That's the third one,” Sansa says to break the silence when mom doesn't say anything, when she just goes back to the casserole.
“We've talked about this,” mom sighs. She doesn't even look up, just starts layering more scalloped potatoes into the pan she'd started before the call came in. Sansa opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, there's the distant sound of the washing machine buzzing, and mom cuts in, “could you?”
She knows there's no use in trying to argue, so she gets off the stool and makes her way to the basement stairs and heads down.
“You know, you could get the laundry,” she tells Robb, who's lounging on the couch, idly watching The Price is Right, still in his pajamas. When Robb shrugs, she lets out a huff and starts to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. “Where's Arya?”
“Out playing hockey with Rickon,” he responds through a mouthful of food, and when she looks over, she sees the bag of Doritos on the coffee table in front of him. It's ten in the morning.
Once the dryer is full, she grabs the next basket and starts to load it into the washer, and she carefully says, “Grandma called again.”
Behind her, she hears Robb shift. “She still seeing ghosts?”
“Mom still doesn't believe her.”
“Don't tell me you do?”
“No, of course not. But I am worried about her, which mom doesn't seem to be. I just keep thinking about her, all alone in that big house...”
“I know,” Robb sighs, finally getting off the couch and coming over to help sort the laundry with her. They're in Bran and Rickon's baskets now, and Sansa's nose crinkles up at the smell wafting out of them. “I think if dad were here, she'd probably be more open to listening to Grandma, but...”
He doesn't have to continue, Sansa knows. Dad tries not to take business trips in the summer so that mom doesn't have to handle all five of them by herself, all day long, but this time he hadn't been able to get out of it. She knows mom's stressed, and Sansa's been trying to help out more than she already does, but even Rickon alone is a handful.
“What if I went?”
“You?” Robb turns to her with a frown
"Just to check it out. Make sure it's nothing.”
“There's no way you're going down to Riverrun by yourself,” Robb laughs and Sansa feels a pang of annoyance.
“What if someone's been breaking in? Like a burglar? Or what if it's some wild animal? We can't leave Grandma alone.”
“And what would you do against a burglar or a wild animal?”
Sansa shoots him a glare that he doesn't see because he's turned back to the laundry. She wants to remind him that women can do things. Women aren't helpless. It's the nineties, not the fifties.
(Except Sansa knows Robb wouldn't be saying any of this to Arya – because Arya isn't helpless. Sansa has never been the type of girl to stop shaving her legs or her underarms, to stop wearing a bra in protest. She never joined in to play sports when they were kids. Sansa wishes she could be more like that sometimes, but she's not. She likes pretty, soft things, and Robb thinks she's weak. She probably is.)
She turns back to the laundry, finishing the sorting and piling the next load into the washer, fighting the frustration at her own helplessness.
“We could all go.”
“What?”
When she looks at Robb, he's looking at her again, thoughtful. “You, me, Arya,” he says. “We could go check on Grandma, and it would give mom a bit of a break, you know? She wouldn't have to feed all five of us for a little. Less dishes, less laundry, less worrying.”
There's a relief that floods through her at the words, because she really is worried about Grandma – she's been all alone in that big mansion by the river for two years, ever since Grandpa died.
“Okay,” she smiles, closing the lid of the laundry. “Let's go.”
Deciding to go and actually going are two very different things, it turns out.
For one, they don't have a car.
Well, the family has two cars, actually - a luxury that Sansa often forgets is a luxury. Dad makes enough money that they can have two cars and send three kids to college while still living in their well-to-do neighborhood. But one of the cars is at the airport in long term parking where dad left it, and mom needs the other to run errands and take care of Bran and Rickon.
“We could take a train?” Sansa suggests as they sit in one of the booths of Luwin's Diner. Arya's busy working on a double fudge sundae, Robb's finishing up his fries, and Sansa takes another sip of her strawberry milkshake.
“I don't think a train goes anywhere near Grandma's house. We could get to Riverrun, but we'd still have to get from the station to her house.”
“Sans, doesn't your boyfriend have a car we could borrow? Isn't his dad a car salesman?” Robb asks.
Sansa feels her cheeks flush with heat, and she shakes her head. “Harry and I broke up at the end of the semester,” she answers, keeping her tone light like it doesn't bother her. Like she hadn't walked in on him naked, in bed, with a girl from his Literature class.
“Bummer,” Arya says, though Sansa knows it's because of the car thing and not actually Harry. The one time they'd met, Arya had not liked Harry. But then again, Arya's never liked any of Sansa's boyfriends, and she’s usually - annoyingly - right.
"We could rent a car," Sansa suggests.
"Don't you have to be twenty-five?" Arya asks, nose scrunching up. "And mom already hates the idea of us going, she's not going to rent for us."
"I don't know the rules," Sansa admits. They'd have to go to a rental place to ask, she guesses.
Robb's been silent for a while; he's staring out the window and Sansa turns to see what he's looking at. Across the street is a pizza shop and an auto body.
“I'll be right back,” Robb says, a slight frown on his face, a line between his brows. He gets up and leaves the diner, crossing the street towards the auto body. Mance's Auto, the sign reads.
“Where's he going?”
Arya leans over to watch Robb cross the street through the window. “Is that Jon's van?”
“Jon who?”
Arya sighs and points at a teal Volkswagen van that's parked in the alley between Mance's Auto and the pizza shop, so far back that Sansa hadn't even seen it at first. “Jon Snow.”
Memories slam back into Sansa's body, looking at that van. Of Robb and Jon and Theon driving off in it, mom's disapproving frown every time they did. Of that van parked on the street outside their house, the smell of pot drifting up from the basement whenever mom and dad weren't home. Of the one and only time she'd ever been inside it – Joffrey's letterman jacket lying in the back seat, abandoned, while Jon's leather one sat heavy and warm over her shoulders. Her eyes red and puffy, her nose still running. That endless silence as he drove her home.
She hasn't seen Jon in years.
“I didn't think they were friends anymore?” is all she manages to say, as Robb disappears inside the auto body.
“Beats me.” There's a pause, and Sansa can feel Arya's energy shift into something mischievous. “C'mon, let's go see.”
With that, Arya slides out of the booth and Sansa stares after her in shock. “Arya!” she whispers as loudly as she dares, but Arya is already halfway out the door and Sansa quickly grabs her purse to follow. As she gets out of the booth, she digs around and manages to find a few bills that she drops onto the table and hopes is enough. If not, Mr. Luwin knows they're good for it.
She follows Arya outside and across the street, but Arya doesn't go into the shop, she goes around the side alley, to the van. To Sansa's surprise, Robb and Jon are already there.
It really has been years since she last saw Jon, not since the summer after Robb's high school graduation. Jon looks different – his skinny frame has filled out, and he's always had long hair, but now it's tied back out of his face and he's grown a beard and his hands are covered in either grease or oil, she can't tell. There's a rag that hangs from one of the belt loops of his jeans, and Jon is busy using it to wipe his hands, though Sansa thinks the effort is wasted, since the rag seems to be just as covered in grease and oil as his hands are.
He and Robb look like they're arguing, but Jon's mouth snaps shut when he sees her and Arya at the opening of the alleyway between the auto body and the pizza shop. It's also then that Sansa notices a white dog leashed to a bit of fencing, with bowls of water and food near it.
“Hey Jon,” Arya greets, looking between him and Robb. “It's been a while.”
“Arya,” Jon nods at her and then his eyes slide over to Sansa. “Sansa.”
“Hi Jon.” She gives him a little wave, unsure what else to do. There's a weird tension in the alley, and she thinks they probably shouldn't have come over here.
“Does Jon have a car he can lend us?” Arya asks, and from the way Jon sighs, Sansa can tell this was the conversation he and Robb were already having.
“Jon says his boss wouldn't lend us a car,” Robb frowns. “And he won't let us borrow his van.”
“Robb,” Sansa hears herself say, and she almost winces at the scolding tone. She sounds a lot like their mother.
“What?” Robb asks with wide eyes. “We wouldn't need it for too long! And his mom doesn't live that far, he could walk to work no problem.”
“Do you still have that beanbag in the back?” Arya asks, moving towards the side of Jon's van. “I used to love that thing.”
Arya takes hold of the handle just as Jon opens his mouth in protest, but he's too late. Arya pulls open the door, but instead of a beanbag chair that Sansa doesn't remember ever seeing (though again, she'd only been in the van once, and she hadn't been paying much attention to the interior), there's a lumpy twin mattress stuffed into the back, rumpled sheets thrown haphazardly over it, trash bags of what looks like clothes on the seats in front of it.
Arya stares at it in confusion, until Jon moves forward and shuts the door, the slam of it echoing through the alleyway.
“Your mom kicked you out again?” Robb asks, voice low, and Sansa wishes desperately that she and Arya had never followed. She feels like she shouldn't be hearing this. “You know you can always crash-”
“It's fine.” Jon starts wiping at his hands again with the rag. It's useless. He's just making it worse. “If you need the van to help your grandma, you can take it.”
“Where will you live?” Robb asks with a scowl. Arya still looks a bit shocked at the revelation.
“I dunno, maybe I'll go apologize and see if mom will let me back in.”
“Was the fight your fault?”
Jon shrugs, and it only deepens Robb's frown.
“You could come with us?”
All three of them turn to look at her, and Sansa wonders where that even came from. The words simply flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying.
“That's a great idea!” Arya's confusion clears, replaced with excitement. “C'mon Jon, this road trip will be loads more fun if you're along and I'm not stuck with these two losers.”
Sansa watches Jon hesitate, looking between his van and Robb, then the back entrance to Mance's Auto. “I guess Mance has been on me to take some time off,” he hedges. “Ghost would have to come, too.”
“Perfect,” Arya grins.
Jon's van smells vaguely of pot and dog, but it's not as bad as Sansa thought it would be. Definitely not as bad as she was expecting a van that someone was living out of to smell like. With the windows rolled down, both smells disappear fairly quickly anyway.
They set off three days later, after finally convincing mom to let them go (even though they're all in college and legal adults, it was still a fight), and after Jon had gotten approval to take two weeks off work. When they finally set out, she notices that Jon has cleared out the van a bit – she has no idea where the mattress went, but it's gone and replaced by the beanbag that Arya loves so much.
Jon and Robb sit in the front seats and Sansa sits in the short middle row with Ghost at her feet while Arya sits in the back on that beanbag and messes around with the rest of Jon's stuff.
“You're going to break that,” Sansa whispers at her over the back of her seat as she watches Arya open a portable record player and start fiddling with it. Up front, Jon and Robb are talking in low voices, she thinks about Jon's mom, and so she tries not to listen in because it's none of her business.
Nothing about Jon is her business.
Hours later, they pull off the highway into a rest stop. Jon guides the van into a spot at the gas pumps and gets out and heads inside the station to pay. Robb and Arya immediately make for the diner located next to it, and Sansa supposes she could follow, but instead she clips on Ghost's leash and takes him out of the van so he can stretch his legs. As she walks him through the parking lot to the grassed median that separates the lot from the highway, stopping to let him sniff at every new thing he comes across, she watches Jon come back out and start pumping gas into the van.
After Ghost has done his business and she's cleaned it up and thrown the small plastic bag she'd grabbed from the van and used as a poop scoop into the outdoor bin, she walks back over to the van.
"I'm going to go in and wash my hands," she tells Jon, threading the leash through the door handle, though she doesn't think Ghost is in any danger of running off. He seems well behaved.
"Yeah, thanks," he says with a nod, and she guesses he means for dealing with Ghost. But Sansa grew up with a house full of dogs and so it's nothing to her to do it.
"Sorry we hijacked your van," she says, though she doesn't know why. She really should go in and wash her hands, but she finds herself stuck to the spot out of guilt. Her siblings can be a lot, and she has a feeling Jon felt backed into a corner to agree to this.
Jon only shrugs as he leans back against the van, watching the gas meter tick.
"Okay, well," she says, because he barely even acknowledged her, and she turns around and heads into the diner to use their bathroom. She has a feeling it will be cleaner than the gas station bathroom, if it even has one open to the public.
When she comes back out, hands clean, Robb and Arya are hovering at the counter, and through the window, she can see that Jon has moved his van into a parking space, and he's getting out and coming inside.
"They said they can pack food up for us to go," Robb says when Jon finally joins them. "Or we can eat here."
"Up to you," Jon shrugs.
"Let's eat here," Arya decides, and they head for a booth. Arya reaches it first, and Jon decides to sit next to her, which leaves Sansa and Robb on the opposite side. A waitress comes by to take their orders, which barely cuts the awkward silence they sit in.
It's strange. Jon had been in their lives for years, and while she was never close to him, Robb and Arya were. It's strange, this awkwardness between them now.
"So," Jon finally says, though Sansa never would have guessed it would be him breaking the silence. "Ghosts, huh?"
"Well, no," Robb says with a rueful smile. "Grandma's old, it's probably just the house creaking or mice or something."
"Maybe it is ghosts," Arya says, leaning forward and making her voice go spooky. It makes Jon smile and Robb roll his eyes, but it breaks the tension somewhat.
"All we know is that she's distressed," Sansa says, just as the waitress comes back with a tray of their drinks.
"She should move up with us," Robb says with a frown. "I don't know why she's still in that house all alone anyway."
"Because that's her home?" Arya shoots back, stabbing a straw into her glass of Coke. "You think she's just been sitting there staring at the wall all day since Grandpa died? She's got a life, you know. Women are allowed to exist without men taking care of them."
Robb rolls his eyes hard, and Sansa tries not to sigh. She knows Robb never means to sound like an ass, but he does tend to put his foot in his mouth. "I just meant she's getting older, and now she's seeing ghosts, I think I have a right to be concerned about her being all alone in that house."
"You're doing something about it now," Jon cuts in, before Arya can continue the argument. Sometimes it seems like Arya likes arguing just for the sake of it. Sansa would know, she's usually the one arguing with her.
She shoots Jon a grateful look for cutting off the fight before it escalated, though whether he sees it or not, she doesn't know.
Luckily, Arya and Robb decide to drop it, and the rest of lunch is spent discussing how they'd fight a ghost, even though everyone knows they aren't real.
They drive all through the night, Robb switching out as driver somewhere near the border between the North and the Riverlands. At some point, the hum of the motor becomes white noise, and Sansa dozes off curled up in the middle seat, Arya snoring from the beanbag in the back. Up front, Robb and Jon talk in low, rumbling voices.
Being in Riverrun brings with it a flood of memories from her childhood, when they used to visit more. Once Rickon was born, once he got old enough to start truly being a handful, traveling down to their grandparents' house became less frequent. But she remembers this - the humid, oppressive summer air, fed by the trio of rivers that gives the county its name. It's the sort of heat that makes you feel like you're swimming through the air, skin damp just from walking from the car to the front door.
Grandma Tully stands on the front porch like she doesn't even feel it, as Robb eases the van up the long, unpaved drive. Grandma's house is deep in the Riverrun countryside, where it feels like time has stopped.
"Oh, look at you," Grandma calls, hurrying down the creaking wood steps towards the drive to meet them. She gets to Robb first as he steps out of the driver's seat, while Arya and Sansa exit on the opposite side and walk around. "Have you gotten taller?" Grandma is asking Robb.
"What a big and strong boy," Arya mutters under her breath, and Sansa tries to elbow her, but ends up missing.
"And my girls," Grandma Tully gasps, turning from Robb. "You two are even more beautiful than the last time I saw you."
"Hi Grandma," Sansa says, leaning in for a hug and Grandma's customary kiss on her cheek.
Grandma kisses Arya's cheek, too, which Sansa knows Arya wouldn't allow from many people on this earth.
"Grandma, this is Jon," Robb introduces. Jon is standing back by the van, looking uncomfortably out of place.
"Of course," Grandma nods. "I remember you from all of Robbie's birthdays. Thank you for driving my grandchildren down."
"No problem, Mrs. Tully," Jon says with a nod, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
"And who is this handsome boy?" Grandma coos, bending down as best she can to let Ghost sniff her hand.
"That's Ghost, Jon's dog," Robb explains. Ghost gives a little wag of his tail, and Grandma takes that as permission to begin petting him.
"Ghost?" Grandma says. "Well, you'll fit right in here."
Sansa's eyes flick around to her siblings, meeting their knowing looks back.
"Now, are you kids hungry? I know it's a little late, but I can make you all breakfast."
"Sansa can make it," Robb offers.
Sansa often helps around the house. With four siblings, three of them being godless heathens and one being a lazy slob, it's always up to her to help mom out. Which is probably why Robb volunteered her to do it, but as they head inside, she can't help but feel a little bitter about it. Robb never helps in the kitchen. But Sansa can't say anything about it or Grandma will insist on cooking for them, and the whole point of them coming down was to take care of her.
"Are you sure you?" Grandma frowns, even as Robb leads her to the small dining table in the kitchen. It's round, the lacquered wood legs and chairs yellowed with age, and Sansa recognizes the lace-edged tablecloth that drapes over it from her childhood. "You're my guests."
"Don't worry," Sansa says with a fake smile plastered to her lips. "I can manage breakfast. You go sit."
"It has been a while since I've cooked for more than one person," Grandma admits. "But I did stock the kitchen for you kids."
She turns to the fridge, pausing to smile at the clutter of things stuck to it with magnets. Most are pictures - some of Grandpa and Grandma, some of mom, Uncle Eddie, and Aunt Lysa when they were younger, but most seem to be of Sansa and her siblings. There's only one picture of their cousin Robin, an official school photo where he looks pinched and uncomfortable. There are other things, too - a grocery list, some thank you cards, a small calendar with their arrival date circled. There are a few business cards, too, and she frowns at the one for Mockingbird Realty. Why would Grandma have a business card for a realtor?
"I can help," Jon says quietly, coming to stand next to Sansa in the kitchen, and she turns to look at him and forgets all about the business card.
Sansa raises a brow at him. "You know how to cook?"
Jon shrugs, but there's a small twitch to his lips. "My mom isn't exactly the cooking type, so I learned to survive. I can at least make a breakfast that's edible."
"Oh," is all Sansa can think to say. "Okay, you can help."
As Sansa begins cracking eggs into a bowl, Jon tears open a package of bacon and turns on two stovetop burners, one for each of them.
"You must be tired from driving all night," Sansa says, just to make conversation. She doesn't know why, except that awkward silences bother her.
"Robb drove part way," Jon shrugs off.
"Yeah, but you were up with him the whole time." She knows, because she'd occasionally be startled out of her own sleep by the honking of a horn or a particularly bad bump in the road, and she could hear them up front talking.
"Yeah, I was," Jon sighs, pulling strips of bacon out of the pack and laying them into the now-sizzling pan. Sansa starts whisking the eggs; scrambled isn't her favorite, but it's by far the easiest, and so that's what everyone is getting. "But I figure it'd be rude if I went and passed out on the floor."
That makes her smile. "Definitely rude. Wait until after breakfast, at least."
"At least," he nods solemnly.
"Oh, and here's a thought - you could wait until Grandma shows us our rooms and then pass out in a bed."
"A bed? Never considered that."
She almost makes a joke about the mattress he had stuffed into the back of his van, but it falters on her tongue when she remembers the other part of that. Your mom kicked you out again?
"Beds are usually better than floors," is what she finally says, which isn't as clever as she was hoping it would be.
Still, Jon keeps up the joke and gives a hum, as if she said something profound.
As they eat, Grandma asks them questions about their lives, even though Sansa writes to her every month. Robb and Arya don't write, unless mom harasses them into doing it for her birthday, but Sansa will fill Grandma in monthly on what her siblings are up to. But still, Grandma wants to hear it directly from them now that they're here.
Neither Robb nor Jon seem that tired throughout breakfast, but five minutes after Grandma shows them all their rooms, both of them are dead asleep.
"Unbelievable," Arya says, standing in the doorway to Robb's room and watching as their brother lays on his back, snoring up at the ceiling.
"I wonder what Jeyne sees in him," Sansa agrees over her sister's shoulder. Jeyne Westerling is Robb's college girlfriend, though it's starting to feel like it's going to go beyond college.
"Whatever," Arya sighs. "Are you gonna nap?"
"I slept in the car," Sansa answers, as they both back out of the doorway and Arya shuts it. Not that Robb would wake up to their talking, because he could sleep through the apocalypse, but still.
"Same."
"Maybe we should look around?" Sansa suggests. "See if there's anything that seems off?"
"What would we be looking for?"
Sansa purses her lips in thought. "You're right, we should probably ask Grandma for more specifics."
"You didn't do that already? I thought you talked to her."
"I did, to ask if it was okay that we came down, and that we were bringing Jon and a dog. I… I don't know, I didn't want to tell her it was only because of the ghost thing. I don't want her to think we don't want to see her."
Especially considering it's been about three years since they last came down for a visit that wasn't Grandpa's funeral. Between college and Bran and Rickon's sports and summer camps and the family business going through a growth spurt and dad being away more, there just hasn't been time for the whole family to visit. Only mom has made the trip, and Uncle Eddie brings Grandma up for holidays, but Sansa and her siblings haven't been down to Riverrun in what feels like forever.
"Good call," Arya grimaces, like she's also realizing just how long it's been. "We'll be subtle asking her about it."
"You know how to be subtle?"
Arya doesn't bother responding to that, and they head downstairs to the kitchen again, where Grandma is still cleaning up from breakfast.
"If you're here to offer help, the answer is still no," Grandma says, before either Sansa or Arya can say anything; she must have heard the creaking of the old wood floors, because she didn't even turn around to look at them.
"Robb and Jon are asleep," Arya says, dropping into one of the chairs at the small table. "We came down to hang out with you."
Sansa sits as well, and tries to figure out a way to bring up the haunting thing without seeming too obvious.
Grandma gives a hum, wiping her hands on the dishcloth that hangs from the oven handle. Then she turns and, with an indulgent smile, "while I'm always happy to see my grandchildren, I think we both know you aren't here just to visit."
"Man, we didn't even get a chance to be subtle," Arya deadpans, at the same time that Sansa says, "Of course we are!"
"You're very sweet," Grandma sighs. "But it sure is convenient timing that I start talking about ghosts, and all the sudden my three eldest grandchildren decide to take a trip down."
Sansa slumps back in her chair with a pout. "We did want to see you, too."
"I know," Grandma says, sitting at the table with them. "And don't worry, I'm not offended. You're young, you have your lives to live. School and friends and boys-"
At the word boys, Arya lets out a noise of disgust. After Harry, Sansa's just about ready to join her in that. Grandma just gives them another indulgent smile.
"Fine, you figured us out," Arya says, leaning forward. "So tell us what's been going on so we can stop it."
By the time Robb and Jon wake up, it's mid-afternoon. While Grandma has her tea and takes a nap, the rest of them go outside, onto the front porch. The wide porch swing rocks when Sansa sits on it, then jolts violently when Arya drops onto it next to her. Jon leans against the porch railing, Ghost settled at his feet, eyes squinted against the bright sun like he still hasn't fully woken up. Robb stands, feet apart, hands on his hips like he's really ready to take on a whole army of ghosts.
"She says it doesn't happen every night," Arya recounts for the boys. "But she'll see shadows moving and hear floorboards creaking at night, knocking sounds, whispers inside the walls. She says sometimes in the morning when she comes downstairs, things will be moved around. Once, she came down and found the stove burner on. Red hot."
"Could've burned the whole place down," Sansa adds, keeping her voice down just in case Grandma wakes from her nap.
"So we need to figure out what's going on," Arya finishes.
"We also need to consider that nothing is going on," Sansa says, even though she doesn't want to. Even though she knows it will cause a fight. She had tried to bring it up with Arya before the boys woke up, and it hadn't gone well.
"What do you mean?" Robb asks, and Sansa wishes he would just get it so she didn't have to say it out loud. Her eyes flick over to Jon, and he meets them. He knows, she thinks. Jon gets it.
"We have to consider that it's all in her head," Sansa says, as gently as she can. "It's like you said, Robb - she's getting older. Maybe it's dementia."
"She's not crazy," Arya snaps.
"I didn't say crazy," Sansa sighs. "But it's certainly not ghosts. Ghosts don't exist. And I don't know about, like, hearing voices in the walls, but forgetting things is definitely a symptom."
"Of course you want the easy answer," Arya sneers, and Sansa grits her teeth together so she doesn't immediately snap back. Normally she'd have a harder time with that, because no one gets on her nerves like her little sister, but she knows Arya is lashing out right now because the idea is scary. Sansa doesn't like it either, but that doesn't mean it might not be true.
"I don't want anything to be wrong with Grandma," she says, as civilly as she can. "I'm just saying it's a possibility."
"Okay," Robb cuts in. "Why don't we spend the next two weeks observing her and keeping an eye out for anything weird. We can do both. We treat both options like they're real. Okay?"
Sansa nods, and when Arya doesn't answer, Robb says again, "Okay?"
"Okay," Arya huffs. "Fine."
Silence falls over them, except for the creaking of the swing and the wind swaying the leaves of the giant oak that shades the front of the house and the chimes that hang from either end of the porch. The breeze off the river brings some relief from the oppressive heat, but makes her aware of the dampness that has settled over her body, even in the shade.
"So, what do we do first?" Jon asks, finally breaking the heavy silence.
"I don't know," Robb admits. "Maybe we can walk the perimeter?"
"The perimeter?" Arya snorts. "I think you've been watching too many army movies."
"That's the word for it," Robb argues. "The perimeter of the house. Maybe we find like a hole in the siding that animals can get in, and that's the noises she's hearing. Could be the reason things get moved, too."
"Yeah? What kind of squirrels do you know about that can turn on a stove?"
Robb grimaces. "Look, it doesn't seem like there's much else to do in the daylight, right? This stuff only happens at night? So all we can really do right now is look around. Maybe we find something that seems out of place."
"Fine," Arya says, standing abruptly from the swing. "Let's split up. Jon and I will take the right side, you two can take the left." Then she storms off, down the steps to the yard.
"I'll go with her," Robb says, though he doesn't look like he relishes the experience.
"I can-" Jon starts, but Robb shakes his head.
"You're right, Sans. We need to consider dementia. I'm gonna talk to her."
"Good luck," Sansa says with a roll of her eyes. "I've tried twice now. She won't listen."
"To you," Robb nods. "You two are always going at it, of course she's not going to listen to you. But she will to me."
Sansa's mouth drops open, and she stands from the swing and turns to face her brother. "You two fight all the time! How many times has she called you a misogynist since the summer started?"
To her annoyance, Robb only grins. "About thirty," he answers. "And we may bicker, but we don't fight. Not like you two. Don't worry, I've got this."
With her mouth still open in indignation, she watches her brother take the porch steps down two at a time, then jog to catch up with Arya. When she turns to look at Jon, he quickly averts his eyes, and hers narrow.
"Don't tell me you think Robb's right."
"I haven't seen you guys in years," he shrugs. "I don't have any opinion."
"Why haven't you been around?" she asks, deciding she wants to change the topic. She'd rather not think about how her fights with Arya are different than with any other sibling. More vicious and personal. That's not something she wants to face right now.
"I don't know," Jon shrugs again. "But we should get started. Ghost, stay here."
Looks like she's not the only one avoiding a topic.
They both head down the porch stairs and start walking around the house in the opposite direction than Arya and Robb went. Of course Arya took the side with the tree. There's almost no shade on the side that Sansa and Jon start walking.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for," she admits, eyes scanning the house's siding.
"Me neither. I guess like Robb said, a hole where animals could get in? Or signs of a nest?"
They don't talk again until they reach the back of the house, meeting Robb and Arya there.
"Nothing," Robb says.
"Same here," Jon answers.
"So what now?" Arya asks. It doesn't seem like Robb has calmed her down all that much, because she's still scowling.
"Let's check the property over," Robb suggests.
"For what?" Arya huffs, and Sansa can't help but silently agree with her. What in the world are they going to find on the acres of land that surround the Tully house?
"We won't know until we find it," Robb shrugs, in that infuriatingly casual way he has. He slings an arm around Arya's shoulder and turns her back the way they came, calling back, "we'll check this side."
Sansa has a feeling the whole checking the property suggestion is so that he's got more time to talk Arya down. Which means he needs more time than he thought he would. That idea pleases Sansa more than it probably should. Serves him right, thinking he's some sort of Arya-whisperer.
"Come on," Jon says, turning to look out at their side of the property. Sansa does the same; the land seems to go on forever, dotted with ancient trees, cut through by the stream that borders the property. That stream eventually meets up with the much bigger Red Fork.
Sansa trudges behind Jon, though her attention is more focused on Robb and Arya than it is her surroundings. She can't imagine they're going to find anything out here.
"How far does the property go?" Jon asks, just as they reach the first tree. The shade of it is a relief, and Sansa lays her hand on the rough bark, on the side where moss hasn't taken over.
"My great grandfather planted a bunch of peach trees along the edge of their property to mark it off," she answers. "You can't really see them now, but you will. They're pretty obvious because they're in a straight line and they're different from the oaks and sycamores. So the borders are the peach trees on either side, the stream at the back, and the road at the front. We weren't allowed to go past those boundaries when we were kids."
She watches Jon scan the surrounding land, brows raised. "Big property," he says.
"It's been in our family forever," she nods.
"I remember your mom used to make peach pie every summer," Jon says as they start to walk again. He isn't looking at her, he's still scanning the land around them, and Sansa decides she should be looking, too. Again, she has no idea for what, but she figures she's more likely to notice something that doesn't belong, since Jon has never been here before.
"Whenever we'd come down, we'd pick a bunch of peaches and she'd bring them back," Sansa nods. "The store bought ones were never as good."
"Those pies were good," Jon agrees. He should know, he basically lived at their house during the summers. For the first time since that meeting in the alley behind his work, she truly itches to ask what happened between him and Robb. They were best friends for so long, almost like brothers, but after they graduated high school, after that last summer, she never saw Jon again. She never really got to thank him.
"I never got to thank you," she says, eyes on the ground, grateful to have an excuse not to look at him.
"For what?"
For a moment, she cringes. That night is sharp and clear in her memory, but maybe Jon forgot.
"Oh, it was years ago," she says, making her voice casual and waving her hands like it doesn't matter. "Nevermind."
There's a moment, a pause that feels like it stretches on too long, before he says, "you didn't need to thank me."
She presses her lips together, hating the rush of feelings talking about that night brings up. It's been years and she's done such a good job pretending it never happened. "Still," she says. "Thank you."
When she was a little girl, she had imagined that she would only ever be in love once. Her first love would be her forever love. As she got older and learned about sex, she imagined she would only ever be with that first love. That forever love.
Instead, her first time was with Joffrey, at a party where their friends were right downstairs. He said all the right things - the sort of things she'd read in the books Jeyne would steal from her mother - and so she had agreed. Only, it hurt more than she expected, but Joffrey hadn't noticed, and she grit her teeth through it and told herself it was normal. It hurt for girls the first time, she always heard. It was normal.
After, they'd gone back downstairs to the party, and Joffrey had found his letterman jacket and slung it over her shoulders before high-fiving his friends and joking about needing to wash the sheets. He talked about her loudly - the things she did and the way she sounded and what her body looked like - as if she weren't even there. It was the most humiliated Sansa had ever felt in her whole life, and Joffrey didn't care at all. None of her real friends were there, only Joffrey's, and not a single one of them noticed when she started to cry, when she stumbled away from them.
But Jon did.
He'd been at the party, probably dragged there by one of his other friends, and the moment he looked at her, he knew something was wrong. He'd gotten her out of that house, settled his own leather jacket over her shoulders, and drove her home. She remembers blurting out the entire story to him, humiliation sitting so heavily in her stomach it felt like she couldn't breathe properly; a lifetime of dreams of true love and romance dashed in less than an hour.
"And I think I have you to thank for him leaving me alone for the rest of the year," she continues, finally glancing over to look at him.
Jon scratches at the back of his head. "I don't know what you mean."
She rolls her eyes, but feels her lips lift in a smile, anyway. "Right," she nods. "You and Robb totally didn't beat him up. He just magically got a black eye and avoided me until he graduated."
Joffrey was in the same year as Robb and Jon, and two weeks after that party, Joffrey had shown up to school with a nasty black eye and a swollen lip, and he never tried to bother her again. She hasn't seen him in… well, for as long as she hasn't seen Jon. After that night, she could barely look at Jon, too embarrassed. Too worried about what he thought of her. She'd avoided him for the rest of that school year and that summer, and then Robb went away to college and Jon disappeared from their lives.
"Theon was also there," Jon says. "I mean, hypothetically he was there, because I still don't know what you're talking about."
That makes her laugh, and some of the tightness in her chest eases. Her smile fades, though, when she thinks of something. "Did you tell them?"
"No. Robb came to us because it was obvious something happened but you wouldn't tell anyone what, and Joffrey was running his mouth at school. I mean, there were other people at that party, so maybe he found out from one of them, but I didn't say anything."
"Violence is never the answer," she says, because it's what a good person would say. Even though deep down, she thinks Joffrey deserved it.
"Of course," Jon nods. "No violence. Though, again, hypothetically speaking, it would have felt great making him cry."
"He cried?" she asks, perking up a bit.
"Like a sniveling rat," Jon says. "And after only one hit, too. Pathetic."
She gives a hum, trying to picture it. She wishes she could have seen it.
"Hypothetically, though," she says, the smile back on her face.
"For legal reasons."
She is sort of surprised Joffrey never tried to press charges - or, she's surprised Cersei never tried. Theon was definitely over eighteen at the time, and she's pretty sure Jon was, too. Robb only turned eighteen in the summer, so he wouldn't have gotten in as much trouble, as a minor. But maybe there was a reason Cersei didn't want to go involving the police. Maybe there were other girls that Joffrey hurt worse than her, that would have come out if the police started poking around. The idea makes her feel a little sick.
She reaches out, fingers wrapping around Jon's forearm, and he stops walking in surprise. "Seriously," she says. "Thank you. For all of it. And I'm sorry if I avoided you after."
"I didn't take it personally," he says, and she believes him.
"Good. I hope I wasn't the reason you stopped coming around."
Jon's arm pulls from her, and he turns and starts walking again. Good job, Sansa, she sighs internally. She brought up the one topic he clearly doesn't want to talk about. She just feels so curious about it, even though she knows it's none of her business.
He barely makes it five steps before there's a shout, and both of them whirl towards the sound. Sansa's heart leaps in her chest as she sees a man appear out from behind one of the sycamores, holding a rifle pointed straight at them.
"Whoa," Jon says, stepping in front of her, his hands raised.
"Trespassers get shot," the man says, his weathered face scrunched up in concentration, wisps of gray hair combed over his head. There's something familiar about him…
"We're not trespassing," Jon says carefully.
"Mr. Frey?" Sansa asks, stepping out from behind Jon. The man glowers at her, and she rolls her eyes. "It's me, Sansa Stark, Minisa's granddaughter? Catelyn's daughter. And this isn't your property."
It's definitely Mr. Frey. She hasn't seen him in years, but she remembers her grandmother's crotchety old neighbor. Part of her great-grandfather's reason for planting the peach trees was because the Freys were always disputing the property lines. He must have come up while they were talking, and they hadn't noticed him.
Mr. Frey harrumphs, but lowers his gun slightly. Next to her, Jon is still tensed, eyes still on the barrel of it.
"Saw two trespassers, came to set it right," Mr. Frey spits. Literally spits on the ground in front of him, and Sansa's nose crinkles in distaste.
"Well, we aren't trespassing," Sansa says. For a moment, Mr. Frey just stares at her, before he turns around and walks off, muttering to himself about insolent kids. Sansa rolls her eyes at his back - what would he know about kids? Despite having what seems like hundreds of them, everyone knows he was barely a father to any of them.
"Well, he was pleasant," Jon says, and it's like she can see the tension finally leave him once Mr. Frey is out of sight.
Sansa sighs. "Yeah, he's always been like that."
"I guess it's nice that your grandma has a neighbor looking out for her."
"Oh, no," Sansa shakes her head. "The Freys hate us. It's a whole thing, goes back generations, blah, blah, blah-" She waves her hands idly, to let him know that she doesn't take it too seriously.
"Oh," Jon says. "So what was he doing here, then? Are we that close to the property line?"
"Not really," Sansa admits. "Honestly, he was probably over here sniffing around for the buried treasure."
"I'm sorry," Jon turns to her, brows raised nearly to his hairline. "Buried treasure?"
"It's not real," Sansa giggles. She's pretty sure this is the most animated she's ever seen Jon, a mix between pure skepticism and childish delight, and she almost regrets taking the idea away from him. "It's just an old legend. Hundreds of years ago, some pirate captain was being hunted down by the Navy so he got in a smaller boat with his most valuable treasure and paddled up the Trident until he got here, where he buried it. But back in the seventies, my grandad bought a couple of metal detectors and he and his brother went around the property and found nothing."
"Maybe his most valuable treasure wasn't metal," Jon reasons. "Maybe it was diamonds or something."
"Well, a bunch of Tullys over the years have dug around and found nothing - and so have the Freys, which is a big contributing factor for the whole feud thing. But yeah, maybe." With those last words, she pats Jon on the shoulder, which makes him scowl.
"I was just pointing out the obvious."
"Do you want to look for it, too?" she asks, taking just a bit too much pleasure in teasing him. "I'm sure we have a shovel-"
"Okay," Jon says, turning abruptly from her. "Let's keep moving."
She follows behind him, grinning.
"Anything?" Robb asks as she and Jon climb the wooden stairs up to the porch. He and Arya are already there, sitting on the swing together.
By now, the loose strands of Sansa's hair that aren't clinging to her neck have curled and frizzed out, no matter how many times she tries to tame them back. "No," she answers. "Well, we ran into Mr. Frey. Did he always carry around a rifle, or is that a new thing?"
"No, he always had it," Robb grimaces. "I definitely remember that. How far did you guys go out?"
"Not that far, he was on our property. Said he saw us and thought we were trespassers, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was just walking around fuming about property lines."
"They had a county inspector come out when we were kids and verify that the property lines were right, because Frey wouldn't shut up about it," Arya explains for Jon, who leans against the railing in front of the porch swing. Sansa leans next to him, mirroring his pose.
"He still swears the official county records are wrong," Sansa adds, then looks over at Jon. "If you couldn't tell, one of Grandpa's favorite discussion topics was the feud. I'm pretty sure we heard these stories a thousand times."
"More than a thousand," Robb agrees.
"Should we tell someone?" Jon asks, brows furrowed as he looks between all three of them.
"Tell who?" Arya asks.
"I don't know. Your grandma? The police?"
"Police?" Sansa asks, taken aback a bit.
Jon looks around at them like they're all crazy. "There's a gun-wielding man with a grudge against your family sneaking around your grandmother's property?"
When he says it like that-
"When you say it like that," Robb says, before the words even have a chance to form on Sansa's tongue. "Yeah, that sounds bad. But like, this stuff has been going on forever. Everyone in Riverrun knows about it, I guess it's just sort of normal? He doesn't mean any real harm, he's just an old man clinging to old stories. I think the hatred is the only thing keeping him alive at this point. If he wants to stomp around getting mad at three hundred year old property records, I say let him."
"Still, maybe we keep an eye on it," Sansa says.
"We can ask if he's been bothering her more lately," Arya nods along.
Robb nods, and they head back inside.
That night, once Sansa is alone in her room, nerves hit her for the first time.
Don't be stupid, she tells herself, determinedly tugging at the little chain on the bedside table lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Ghosts aren't real.
She has slept in his house dozens of times. She used to share this exact room with Arya when all of them came down, but now because there's only four of them, they're each able to have their own guest room. The Tully house is big, but even it didn't have enough bedrooms to fit all the Starks in their own, especially because Uncle Eddie would usually visit at the same time. Sometimes Aunt Lysa would join, but that was rarer.
But now she's alone, in the dark, and her heart is racing as she quickly gets under the covers and pulls them up to her chin. She lays there for what feels like hours, listening to every minuscule sound; the cicadas and the settling of the house and the distant tinkling of wind chimes.
She wakes with no real memory of falling asleep, and one bleary glance at the window tells her it's just before dawn. She rolls over and falls back asleep.
When the sun finally rises, she wakes and heads downstairs, and she chooses to start making breakfast. Robb would probably volunteer her again anyway, if he were down here. Grandma is already up, and Sansa can see a half-drunk cup of coffee sitting before her.
"Can't sleep in anymore," Grandma explains as she stands from the table and starts helping Sansa with breakfast.
"Is that because of the… stuff that's happening?" Sansa asks.
"I haven't been able to sleep past seven in years," Grandma waves away.
By the time they're done making breakfast, Jon is downstairs, and Robb comes trudging in at the last minute. He's sent right back up to wake Arya.
All of them agree that nothing happened last night. Grandma shrugs it off.
Halfway through breakfast, Arya says, "you forgot to turn off the sink."
With a frown, Sansa looks over her shoulder and, sure enough, sees a fat drop of water drip from the faucet.
"Oh, that thing's been leaking for a while," Grandma sighs. "I keep meaning to call a plumber, but it's such a small thing, I don't want to bother anyone."
"It's not bothering them, it's their job," Arya points out, as Robb and Jon look at each other.
It seems like even after years apart, they're still able to understand what the other is thinking, because Jon sets his silverware down and Robb wipes at his mouth with a napkin before both of them stand.
"Where's Grandpa's toolbox?" Robb asks. "And is there anything else around the house that needs fixing?"
It takes a bit of cajoling for Grandma to finally give up the location of the toolbox, and to admit that yes, there are other things around the house that need a bit of care. As the boys head off to play handyman, Grandma smiles ruefully at her and Arya.
"If I could give you any advice," Grandma says, "it's learn how to do things on your own." Then, with a sigh, "I loved your grandfather, and he was a good man, but I relied on him for everything. When he died, I… well, I suppose I realized how little I knew of our finances, or how to do certain things around the house. And I know it would have been the same for him if I went first. He wouldn't have been able to cook for himself, I'm sure he had no idea where the cleaning supplies even were, and he would have been baffled by the laundry machine." There's a smile on her lips and a distant look in her eyes, fond and sad at the same time. "You never know what's going to happen, and you girls have so many possibilities these days. I can't tell you how proud I am that you're both in university."
Grandma didn't go to college, and neither did mom. Sansa was the first woman in their family to go, and Arya the year after. Mom isn't one for big displays of emotion, but Sansa still remembers the way she cried when they got their acceptance letters.
"I'm never getting married," Arya says.
"Not even to Gendry?" Sansa asks innocently, using her fork to spear one of the remaining halved strawberries on her plate and lifting it to her lips as Arya sends her a murderous glare.
"Who's Gendry?" Grandma asks, smile widening, that sadness disappearing from her eyes, replaced with something that looks suspiciously like mischief.
Sansa sits back in her chair, quite pleased with herself, as Arya tries to both explain and deflect at the same time.
She barely sees Robb and Jon that day. She and Grandma go out to the garden to weed, which Grandma can't really keep up with anymore on her own, while Arya goes off to join the boys in doing work around the house. She sees them at lunch, when they make sandwiches for everyone to grab before going off to work again, and then dinner. By dinner, they're smudged with dirt from unknown sources, though while Robb looks exhausted by the day of manual labor, Jon hardly seems phased. They all agree to call it an early night.
She feels a bit better about sleeping, because nothing happened last night. She settles in and reads for a bit before finally turning off the lamp and closing her eyes.
She jolts awake and sits up in bed. In the dark of the room, the pounding of her own heart is all she can hear.
Something woke her, but now there's only silence. Slowly, she lays back down and tells herself it was just a dream.
Just as she's starting to drift off again, she hears it.
Her entire body goes stiff, it feels like even her lungs freeze. There was a whisper. Her eyes are wide, but even adjusted to the dark, she can still barely see the shapes of the furniture in this unfamiliar room.
The whisper comes again, but she can't make out what it says and her brain tries desperately to come up with something that could explain it - something that isn't a human voice. It's just the wind (it doesn't sound like leaves rustling, and the big oak is on the opposite side of the house). It's the house settling (though that's more like a creaking, not a whisper). It's an animal (doesn't sound like any animal she's ever heard).
She braces herself, then reaches out and turns the light on and hauls the blanket aside and swings her legs out of bed. Nothing grabs her ankles when she sets her feet on the floor, because of course nothing does. Ghosts aren't real. Monsters under the bed don't exist.
She stands and moves into the center of the room, because the whisper sounded like it was coming from the other side of the room. From the door. With the light on, she feels a bit safer.
And then- Get out, the voice whispers, and she lets out a strangled noise when there's a creaking in the hall, like someone is standing just outside her door. You don't belong here.
She's completely frozen, a scream caught in her throat.
Get out, it repeats. You don't belong here.