[ fic ] ever-living ghosts of what once was ; jon/sansa, a song of ice and fire
Written for the prompt "we are constantly uprooted, making us tiresome and fearful..." by midnightblack07, happy holidays!
ever-living ghosts of what once was » a song of ice and fire. jon/sansa. pg. 822 words.
They meet again in Winterfell. warnings: vague spoilers for book events, incest of some form, whatever you think of jon's parentage. I don't own these characters.
She has traveled all the way from the North to the South, but she has only ever known one home.
It is Winterfell that she imagines when she feels most lonely - imagines every detail so as to etch them all into her memory with the closest possible semblance of permanence. The red leaves of the godswood, how the snow fell in huge gusts and blanketed the grounds, the crackling of the fire in her chamber at night when she curled up under warm furs.
And her little sister, Arya, with her silly recklessness; and her little brother, Bran, who was always climbing before he fell; and her older brother, Robb, who always had a special grin for her; and her baby brother, Rickon, whose hair smelled so nice when she held him in her lap and hugged him close - and then there was her bastard brother too, Jon, who went North for the wall.
She envies him sometimes, not that he is a man of the night’s watch, for that would be a foolish envy, but that he is close to home in the North, and she is trapped in King’s Landing where she has to watch her every word, and it doesn’t feel like home at all.
He has brothers at the wall, but Jon remembers when he had sisters.
He misses Arya sometimes, his fierce little sister, and he wonders if she ever practiced using her Needle, if she ever learned more than stick ‘em with the pointy end. He thinks of Sansa too, with her bright hair and her bright eyes, Sansa who looked so much like her lady mother but was kinder to him.
Dark wings bring dark news to the wall, and Jon hears of what befell his father, and the remnants of his family, shattered and scattered apart.
But one raven brings better news, and then Jon is sent to Winterfell. A representative of the Night’s Watch, that is his role, only that-but still, his heart beats inconsistent, stutters and trips over itself inside his chest.
He left his family years ago; he has new brothers now, new family now, he knows this at his core and he has heard it a thousand times over, as all those ravens brought ill tidings of his old family.
He has new brothers in his new life, but once he had a sister and it is to her that he rides.
She feels like a ghost in these familiar halls, runs her fingers over every surface, absentmindedly assuring herself that all of it, any of it, is real.
The cold air bites her skin, and she pulls her cloak around herself tighter, but smiles as she does. She will not even miss the heat of the South, because she will miss nothing of the South. She feels as if the idea alone might cause her to be sick.
She has crossed a thousand leagues again but she still can't escape any of it.
There are other ghosts here too - she hears voices at night that she refuses to believe are wind; she closes her eyes and sees a crowd of people yelling and her father’s blood staining the ground; she curls into herself and shakes and wishes she could have left her fears and grief behind her in the South. She digs her nails into her sheets, cries into her pillow
During the day, it is easier, but only slightly. “My lady,” everyone calls her when she wanders the grounds, and the title rings deeper than ever before, because she is the only lady here now, the only Stark left at all.
But a raven comes from the Night’s Watch, and she holds her breath as it is read to her, almost makes herself dizzy, because Jon is almost a Stark, and even if he is not, he is family and for so long she has only known what that is like in memory and ghosts.
There is much work that will need to be done to reconstruct his old home, but as Jon passes through the gates, his eyes flit away from the hints of destruction around him to the girl standing across the yard.
She looks exactly as she did before from a distance, and it is only as he approaches her that the striking dissimilarities become evident: the hard edges of her bones, the dull of her blue eyes, the pinch of her mouth, the hollows of her cheeks.
As he dismounts, she begins to walk over to him, and her mouth twitches, her cheeks are sucked in, her footsteps so careful and precise - the way she carries herself alone is older. There is nothing childlike left about her.
“Jon,” she says, and even her voice is controlled, precariously polite.
“Lady Stark.” He dips his head, tries not to reflect on how odd the title feels on his tongue.
And then something in her posture breaks, she takes a step and stumbles into him, arms thrown around his neck and an incoherent noise that he thinks might be a sob burst from her lips.
There is a slow second before he clasps his arms around her tightly, pulls her to him and shudders when he breathes her in. He wonders how it is that Sansa is all he has left of his old family - but he has another family, his brothers at the wall.
All that remains to Sansa are himself and the stones beneath their feet.
They talk over dinner in her room, haltingly, uncertain, and Sansa bites and wets her lips, asks about the wall and the other men and how cold it is.
He does not ask her about life in King’s Landing or how warm it was, and she is thankful for that.
And when Jon stands to leave, to retire to the rooms that have been prepared for him, she stands too, quickly, and tells him “Wait.” Her fingers curl into the skirt of her dress, and she inhales and hopes her cheeks are not too flushed.
“Might you-” she starts, breaks off to worry her lip again with her teeth, still unsure how to behave around this man who was once her bastard brother, who is family to her even though she forgets how to relax around family, how to feel safe at all.
“Will you stay,” she corrects quickly, lets the words run together, and tries to meet his eyes. “Please.” Her gaze flickers over to her bed, and her throat is painfully tight. “I don’t like the night,” she admits. She won’t say she is scared, can’t bring herself to be that much a child again, even with Jon.
She cannot see his thoughts, and a long moment passes before he nods. “Yes,” he is starting to say when she smiles, and exhales her relief, “Oh, thank you, Jon.”
And when she closes her eyes that night, she can feel her brother stirring beside her, feels a hand gentle on her shoulder, tentative, and a kiss soft on her hair.
And there are no ghosts whispering in her ear.