Fic: No Time For Wolves (A Song of Ice and Fire) [04/08]
Title: No Time For Wolves
Author: girlupnorth
Rating: strong PG-13
Pairings: Jon/Sansa; Petyr/Sansa; Jon/Daenerys
Disclaimer: A song of ice and fire belongs to George RR Martin, and I am not making any profit off this story.
Length: 2,197 words (~19,000 total)
Spoilers: Including A Feast for Crows
Summary: In which Bran comes to visit.
Warnings: incest, adultery, angst, dubious morality, Littlefinger
Notes: This is for miss_magrat, who wanted me to write Jon/Sansa. Many thanks to novin_ha for beta reading.
Previous :: Table of Contents :: Next
04. Jon
It is Ghost who first notices Bran, or, more precisely, Summer, upon their arrival in King’s Landing. He raises his white head and sniffs the air, and then gets up from under a rosebush, and trots towards the two figures that Jon initially dismissed as servants and that are approaching down a garden lane. Only upon Ghost’s reaction does he notice another shape in the distance, a brown direwolf, running through the grass together with the newcomers.
“Bran,” says Sansa, and, smiling, rises from the garden seat.
As Bran comes between them and greets them, Jon realizes that what he considered a trick of light and exhaustion the last time they met is actually a fact: there is a slight green gleam to Bran’s skin and to the whites of his eyes; Jon can also make out several strands of green in his cousin’s otherwise reddish hair.
It is still difficult for Jon to remember that Bran is not really his brother. Sansa he has managed to accept as a cousin; she never was much of a sister to him in the first place. With Bran, matters are very different, and Jon regrets losing the bond they shared when they thought themselves brothers, for it seems that Bran is now much more cautious in contacts with him.
Sansa’s joy at Bran’s arrival surprises Jon, who cannot recall her ever showing the others what she feels. She is always calm, composed and very proper, and even though Jon believes that Sansa does enjoy their conversations, he has never seen her break in smiles and ask questions as freely as she does now.
Summer, having already recognized and welcomed Ghost in their own, direwolfish manner, comes now to greet Jon by touching his hand with his nose. He is more reluctant with Sansa, but eventually allows her to pet him.
“It is so good to see you again,” says Sansa, as they are making their way towards the castle, the direwolves running in front of them. “But you still haven’t told us the reason for your coming.”
“I thought I would like to finally come and see at least one of the dragons,” says Bran, leaning heavily on one of his walking sticks. “And since I did not want to have to meet everyone at the court, I waited until King’s Landing would be empty.”
Jon does not ask Bran how he knew when King’s Landing would become empty; not after Bran has suggested to him once that all the important messages are carried by the wind, and one just has to know how to listen to them. It might have been a metaphor; then again, on each of their short meetings towards the end of the war, Bran seemed to possess a startling knowledge of matters that he could not have been told about.
“We may go to the dragon pit at once, if you are not tired,” says Jon, and Bran nods, for a moment looking once again like the enthusiastic little boy that Jon remembers from Winterfell.
The air inside the dragon pit is stuffy, and Sansa excuses herself from going in. Jon bids Ghost stay with her by the wall before the gate, so as not to irritate the dragon, and Bran makes Summer sit beside his brother.
There are but a few people inside the pit. Quite a number of the dragon-tenders went to Casterly Rock to watch over the unruly Viserion, and Daenerys took the rest of them to the East with her and Drogon. Rhaegal, small and almost gentle compared to her brothers, requires only a few caretakers, but she is fastidious when it comes to them. Jon, however, is of Targaryen blood, and the dragon seems to like him.
Upon noticing Jon come in, Rhaegal flies down from a stone shelf, and breathes smoke into his face by way of greeting. Then she carefully regards Bran.
“This is Rhaegal,” says Jon. Bran and the dragon look each other in the eyes, until Rhaegal finally allows Bran to touch her head.
“I wish I could spend several months here, just watching her,” says Bran after a moment. “She is very beautiful.”
This time Jon does not even feel surprised by Bran’s applying the right sex to the dragon. They are aware of Rhaegal’s being female since she laid an egg some two years ago. To Daenerys’ disappointment, it never hatched, and it seems that prophecies of there being more dragons to come in their age are not going to come true.
When they dine together, Sansa, Bran, and Jon, the conversation circles not around dragons, but Winterfell of the present day, and around the journeys through the land that both Sansa and Bran have recently taken. With ease and fervour that surprise Jon in her, Sansa recounts to them a few adventures that happened to her on her way.
“You will be setting out again soon, won’t you?” asks Bran when she is finished, but Sansa shakes her head.
“Oh, not yet,” she says. “My lord husband writes me that it will be a while before the Grassy Vale castle is fit for me to live in.”
Jon feels obliged to apologise, as it was him who gave the castle to Sansa and her lord husband, but she only smiles.
“It is not your fault that the Tyrrell army took their time to plunder the strongholds of the area,” she says. “We are ever grateful for your gift - it’s a beautiful place, I am given to understand.”
“I would very much like to visit you there one day,” says Bran lightly, and then his tone grows more serious. “But tell me, Sansa, how are the matters between you and your lord husband? Is everything alright?”
Jon feels more than a little uneasy, and from a very slight change in Sansa’s smile, he can tell that she does not like this turn in conversation either. Nonetheless, her voice sounds as calm and gentle as ever when she says, “Why, Bran, everything is as well as it can be. How could you possibly doubt it? Forgive us, my lord,” she tells Jon, and he hastens to tell her that it is alright.
Soon the mood is restored, and Bran is telling them about his plans for the time when he passes Winterfell on to Rickon, once the youngest Stark reaches his manhood. The idea of Bran willingly letting go of Winterfell bothers Jon a little, but he has to admit that with Bran’s not being able to sire an heir, it may be the best way to proceed. And he says he doesn’t feel home at Winterfell anymore, Jon reflects. Just like Sansa. It is interesting to see them agree on this account, since they have grown so very different, both from one another - Sansa, a flawless lady, and Bran - almost a wildling - and from what he could have expected them to become back in Winterfell. Sansa is no more of a petty girl now than Bran is that barely tamed boy who scared his elders with climbing up the walls.
Bran spends only three days in King’s Landing, and most of this time he passes in the dragon pit.
In a moment alone, Jon tries to inquire Bran about his concerns for Sansa’s well-being in her marriage, but his cousin’s reply is evasive at best.
“Sansa has the right of it,” he says. “I shouldn’t have brought that subject up in your company.
“I am of the family,” says Jon, but Bran shakes his head.
“Forgive me, Jon, but you are not,” he says. “You are not a Stark.”
I’ve never really been one, and it never bothered you, thinks Jon, and he cannot help but feel annoyed. “Going by the way you look, neither are you,” he tells Bran dryly.
Bran laughs. “Going by the way we look, only Arya is a Stark,” he says. “And family or not, Sansa does not like having her private matters discussed in public. Still, I cannot help but wonder-” He stops himself, and says again, “But she would be angry. I shouldn’t bring it up at all.”
When they say their goodbyes, Sansa does not show any signs of anger; she only appears sad to see her brother leave already.
“Tell Meera Reed I would like to meet her again very much,” she tells Bran; he told them that he is going to visit Greenwater Watch on his way to Winterfell.
“You will have to travel north to see her,” replies Bran, already seated in his especially prepared saddle on the horseback. “Meera is not likely to come to the court.”
“You may take the Reeds with you the next time you go south,” says Sansa, and Bran smiles.
“Take good care of yourself and your little ones, sister,” he says, and Sansa replies him with a peculiar little smile.
As Sansa watches Bran ride away up from the wall, Jon tries hard to remember whether she put her lord husband on his way in a similar manner. If Bran felt compelled to ask about her marriage, it must be an utter failure, Jon realizes, and the thought makes him angry. She does not deserve to suffer, with her beauty and kindness.
Once Bran is out of sight, Sansa turns away from the wall, and notices Jon’s stare.
“Is something wrong, my lord?” she asks, descending the stairs. Her question catches Jon off-guard.
“Not at all,” he says. “I’ve only been wondering-” he searches for a safe subject matter, and leaps for the one closest at hand. “I had no idea you knew the Reeds, my lady.”
“I have spent some time in Greenwater Watch when the war was ending,” explains Sansa, a little surprised. “The Reeds were wonderful hosts to me.”
“I see. I didn’t know about it,” says Jon. “Are you very busy with the household duties, my lady?” he asks to keep the conversation going.
“Not very busy, no. In fact, I have very little to do these days,” she says, and Jon again realizes how lonely she must be, with nobody left in the castle, and invites her to have this day’s supper with him.
The invitation soon extends to the next days. It seems that the dinner with Bran has broken the ice between them; Sansa has lost most of her reserve, and the way she talks to Jon now is quite free and animated, her reactions to his comments and the stories that she tells him are natural and vivid.
Still, the things she tells him of herself are impersonal, unimportant. Unless Jon brings up the subject, she does not mention their childhood at Winterfell or her being at the court before the war, and even when asked, she only skims over the subject of herself during the war.
“There is nothing to talk about, Jon,” she says eventually, and offers him an apologetic smile. “I did not fight, did not lead armies. Mostly I travelled between the castles and strongholds, and took care only that nobody recognized me.”
Jon does not quite know how to reply to this.
It surprises him now to have ever thought Sansa stupid. She may not understand politics or war - indeed, the subjects seem to bore her a little, and she only displays any interest in them by asking about his work - but conversations with her are nonetheless a pleasure, even more so because of how natural they are. The other ladies of the court have always seemed to Jon to be only waiting to entice him, to make him pay them compliments; Sansa remains perfectly friendly throughout their suppers.
The problem that begins to bother Jon, a little at first, and then very deeply so, is that he does not think of Sansa as only a friend anymore. It bothers him that he is now able to tell her genuinely happy or amused smiles apart from those appearing on her lips out of courtesy only; that he knows how she will glance down, for a split moment, before allowing herself to tell him a story from her past after Winterfell; that he knows how her voice changes and grows warmer when she talks about her children. In every conversation, he waits for that particular little smile of hers, which he cannot yet quite explain away, and at its every appearance, he wants to kiss it off Sansa’s lips.
It is most improper, he tells himself on going to sleep every night, to even be aware of the curves of Sansa’s body, the soft arch of her neck. Most improper, especially with both of them married, however unhappy Sansa’s marriage could be.
Even still, merely watching Sansa during the supper makes him unable to sleep peacefully at night. Within a few days the thought that she is too much of a lady, too well brought-up to ever allow him to as much as touch her stops being a consolation for his troubled conscience.
I have already broken one oath too much, he tells himself, pushing his nails into his hands until they hurt, and tries to busy himself with his work.
Author: girlupnorth
Rating: strong PG-13
Pairings: Jon/Sansa; Petyr/Sansa; Jon/Daenerys
Disclaimer: A song of ice and fire belongs to George RR Martin, and I am not making any profit off this story.
Length: 2,197 words (~19,000 total)
Spoilers: Including A Feast for Crows
Summary: In which Bran comes to visit.
Warnings: incest, adultery, angst, dubious morality, Littlefinger
Notes: This is for miss_magrat, who wanted me to write Jon/Sansa. Many thanks to novin_ha for beta reading.
Previous :: Table of Contents :: Next
04. Jon
It is Ghost who first notices Bran, or, more precisely, Summer, upon their arrival in King’s Landing. He raises his white head and sniffs the air, and then gets up from under a rosebush, and trots towards the two figures that Jon initially dismissed as servants and that are approaching down a garden lane. Only upon Ghost’s reaction does he notice another shape in the distance, a brown direwolf, running through the grass together with the newcomers.
“Bran,” says Sansa, and, smiling, rises from the garden seat.
As Bran comes between them and greets them, Jon realizes that what he considered a trick of light and exhaustion the last time they met is actually a fact: there is a slight green gleam to Bran’s skin and to the whites of his eyes; Jon can also make out several strands of green in his cousin’s otherwise reddish hair.
It is still difficult for Jon to remember that Bran is not really his brother. Sansa he has managed to accept as a cousin; she never was much of a sister to him in the first place. With Bran, matters are very different, and Jon regrets losing the bond they shared when they thought themselves brothers, for it seems that Bran is now much more cautious in contacts with him.
Sansa’s joy at Bran’s arrival surprises Jon, who cannot recall her ever showing the others what she feels. She is always calm, composed and very proper, and even though Jon believes that Sansa does enjoy their conversations, he has never seen her break in smiles and ask questions as freely as she does now.
Summer, having already recognized and welcomed Ghost in their own, direwolfish manner, comes now to greet Jon by touching his hand with his nose. He is more reluctant with Sansa, but eventually allows her to pet him.
“It is so good to see you again,” says Sansa, as they are making their way towards the castle, the direwolves running in front of them. “But you still haven’t told us the reason for your coming.”
“I thought I would like to finally come and see at least one of the dragons,” says Bran, leaning heavily on one of his walking sticks. “And since I did not want to have to meet everyone at the court, I waited until King’s Landing would be empty.”
Jon does not ask Bran how he knew when King’s Landing would become empty; not after Bran has suggested to him once that all the important messages are carried by the wind, and one just has to know how to listen to them. It might have been a metaphor; then again, on each of their short meetings towards the end of the war, Bran seemed to possess a startling knowledge of matters that he could not have been told about.
“We may go to the dragon pit at once, if you are not tired,” says Jon, and Bran nods, for a moment looking once again like the enthusiastic little boy that Jon remembers from Winterfell.
The air inside the dragon pit is stuffy, and Sansa excuses herself from going in. Jon bids Ghost stay with her by the wall before the gate, so as not to irritate the dragon, and Bran makes Summer sit beside his brother.
There are but a few people inside the pit. Quite a number of the dragon-tenders went to Casterly Rock to watch over the unruly Viserion, and Daenerys took the rest of them to the East with her and Drogon. Rhaegal, small and almost gentle compared to her brothers, requires only a few caretakers, but she is fastidious when it comes to them. Jon, however, is of Targaryen blood, and the dragon seems to like him.
Upon noticing Jon come in, Rhaegal flies down from a stone shelf, and breathes smoke into his face by way of greeting. Then she carefully regards Bran.
“This is Rhaegal,” says Jon. Bran and the dragon look each other in the eyes, until Rhaegal finally allows Bran to touch her head.
“I wish I could spend several months here, just watching her,” says Bran after a moment. “She is very beautiful.”
This time Jon does not even feel surprised by Bran’s applying the right sex to the dragon. They are aware of Rhaegal’s being female since she laid an egg some two years ago. To Daenerys’ disappointment, it never hatched, and it seems that prophecies of there being more dragons to come in their age are not going to come true.
When they dine together, Sansa, Bran, and Jon, the conversation circles not around dragons, but Winterfell of the present day, and around the journeys through the land that both Sansa and Bran have recently taken. With ease and fervour that surprise Jon in her, Sansa recounts to them a few adventures that happened to her on her way.
“You will be setting out again soon, won’t you?” asks Bran when she is finished, but Sansa shakes her head.
“Oh, not yet,” she says. “My lord husband writes me that it will be a while before the Grassy Vale castle is fit for me to live in.”
Jon feels obliged to apologise, as it was him who gave the castle to Sansa and her lord husband, but she only smiles.
“It is not your fault that the Tyrrell army took their time to plunder the strongholds of the area,” she says. “We are ever grateful for your gift - it’s a beautiful place, I am given to understand.”
“I would very much like to visit you there one day,” says Bran lightly, and then his tone grows more serious. “But tell me, Sansa, how are the matters between you and your lord husband? Is everything alright?”
Jon feels more than a little uneasy, and from a very slight change in Sansa’s smile, he can tell that she does not like this turn in conversation either. Nonetheless, her voice sounds as calm and gentle as ever when she says, “Why, Bran, everything is as well as it can be. How could you possibly doubt it? Forgive us, my lord,” she tells Jon, and he hastens to tell her that it is alright.
Soon the mood is restored, and Bran is telling them about his plans for the time when he passes Winterfell on to Rickon, once the youngest Stark reaches his manhood. The idea of Bran willingly letting go of Winterfell bothers Jon a little, but he has to admit that with Bran’s not being able to sire an heir, it may be the best way to proceed. And he says he doesn’t feel home at Winterfell anymore, Jon reflects. Just like Sansa. It is interesting to see them agree on this account, since they have grown so very different, both from one another - Sansa, a flawless lady, and Bran - almost a wildling - and from what he could have expected them to become back in Winterfell. Sansa is no more of a petty girl now than Bran is that barely tamed boy who scared his elders with climbing up the walls.
Bran spends only three days in King’s Landing, and most of this time he passes in the dragon pit.
In a moment alone, Jon tries to inquire Bran about his concerns for Sansa’s well-being in her marriage, but his cousin’s reply is evasive at best.
“Sansa has the right of it,” he says. “I shouldn’t have brought that subject up in your company.
“I am of the family,” says Jon, but Bran shakes his head.
“Forgive me, Jon, but you are not,” he says. “You are not a Stark.”
I’ve never really been one, and it never bothered you, thinks Jon, and he cannot help but feel annoyed. “Going by the way you look, neither are you,” he tells Bran dryly.
Bran laughs. “Going by the way we look, only Arya is a Stark,” he says. “And family or not, Sansa does not like having her private matters discussed in public. Still, I cannot help but wonder-” He stops himself, and says again, “But she would be angry. I shouldn’t bring it up at all.”
When they say their goodbyes, Sansa does not show any signs of anger; she only appears sad to see her brother leave already.
“Tell Meera Reed I would like to meet her again very much,” she tells Bran; he told them that he is going to visit Greenwater Watch on his way to Winterfell.
“You will have to travel north to see her,” replies Bran, already seated in his especially prepared saddle on the horseback. “Meera is not likely to come to the court.”
“You may take the Reeds with you the next time you go south,” says Sansa, and Bran smiles.
“Take good care of yourself and your little ones, sister,” he says, and Sansa replies him with a peculiar little smile.
As Sansa watches Bran ride away up from the wall, Jon tries hard to remember whether she put her lord husband on his way in a similar manner. If Bran felt compelled to ask about her marriage, it must be an utter failure, Jon realizes, and the thought makes him angry. She does not deserve to suffer, with her beauty and kindness.
Once Bran is out of sight, Sansa turns away from the wall, and notices Jon’s stare.
“Is something wrong, my lord?” she asks, descending the stairs. Her question catches Jon off-guard.
“Not at all,” he says. “I’ve only been wondering-” he searches for a safe subject matter, and leaps for the one closest at hand. “I had no idea you knew the Reeds, my lady.”
“I have spent some time in Greenwater Watch when the war was ending,” explains Sansa, a little surprised. “The Reeds were wonderful hosts to me.”
“I see. I didn’t know about it,” says Jon. “Are you very busy with the household duties, my lady?” he asks to keep the conversation going.
“Not very busy, no. In fact, I have very little to do these days,” she says, and Jon again realizes how lonely she must be, with nobody left in the castle, and invites her to have this day’s supper with him.
The invitation soon extends to the next days. It seems that the dinner with Bran has broken the ice between them; Sansa has lost most of her reserve, and the way she talks to Jon now is quite free and animated, her reactions to his comments and the stories that she tells him are natural and vivid.
Still, the things she tells him of herself are impersonal, unimportant. Unless Jon brings up the subject, she does not mention their childhood at Winterfell or her being at the court before the war, and even when asked, she only skims over the subject of herself during the war.
“There is nothing to talk about, Jon,” she says eventually, and offers him an apologetic smile. “I did not fight, did not lead armies. Mostly I travelled between the castles and strongholds, and took care only that nobody recognized me.”
Jon does not quite know how to reply to this.
It surprises him now to have ever thought Sansa stupid. She may not understand politics or war - indeed, the subjects seem to bore her a little, and she only displays any interest in them by asking about his work - but conversations with her are nonetheless a pleasure, even more so because of how natural they are. The other ladies of the court have always seemed to Jon to be only waiting to entice him, to make him pay them compliments; Sansa remains perfectly friendly throughout their suppers.
The problem that begins to bother Jon, a little at first, and then very deeply so, is that he does not think of Sansa as only a friend anymore. It bothers him that he is now able to tell her genuinely happy or amused smiles apart from those appearing on her lips out of courtesy only; that he knows how she will glance down, for a split moment, before allowing herself to tell him a story from her past after Winterfell; that he knows how her voice changes and grows warmer when she talks about her children. In every conversation, he waits for that particular little smile of hers, which he cannot yet quite explain away, and at its every appearance, he wants to kiss it off Sansa’s lips.
It is most improper, he tells himself on going to sleep every night, to even be aware of the curves of Sansa’s body, the soft arch of her neck. Most improper, especially with both of them married, however unhappy Sansa’s marriage could be.
Even still, merely watching Sansa during the supper makes him unable to sleep peacefully at night. Within a few days the thought that she is too much of a lady, too well brought-up to ever allow him to as much as touch her stops being a consolation for his troubled conscience.
I have already broken one oath too much, he tells himself, pushing his nails into his hands until they hurt, and tries to busy himself with his work.