[for Jon]

[onceaqueen]

(dated his first morning back at home)

Rickon was so glad to see his father home again that he refused to sleep anywhere but in his parents' bed, right between them. While Susan slept better having Jon home again (it seemed so long--as everyone knows when you're used to sleeping with someone you love, it's very hard to fall asleep when you're

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[handandahalf]

By now Jon was used to waking up in pain. His leg was healing, but slowly, and the medication Dr. Keller had been giving him for the pain always wore off by morning. He sat up slowly, realizing Susan was not in the bed beside him, listening to see if he could hear where she was in the house

[onceaqueen]

Susan felt the weight of Jon's stare almost the moment she came in the door, and she tried to smile a little. "I didn't mean to wake you," she said, sitting down gently on the edge of the bed so she would neither wake Rickon nor jostle Jon. "Did you sleep well?"

It was a silly question; she was sure he hadn't slept any better than she had, if not worse. But it was either ask it or tell him the news, and now that she had put it off so long she was now at the point where she wasn't sure how to go about telling him at all.

[handandahalf]

"You didn't," he assured her, shifting slightly and hissing at the flare of pain in his thigh. He pressed the heel of his hand into his good leg, focusing on that pressure instead of the pain, and took deep breaths until it passed and he could raise his head with a slight smile. "And I slept, which is the important thing."

He reached out, brushing his knuckles across her cheek, sweeping a lock of hair out of the way. "You're not feeling well," he said mildly.

[onceaqueen]

"No, I'm not," she admitted, hesitant, but knowing now was the time to tell him. She'd had to wait and wait, and now she felt a little foolish, but this was good news, she reminded herself--it shouldn't be this hard. Perhaps it was because they had spent so much time apart since his accident; she wasn't sure, but she was finding their conversation, such as it was, almost awkward.

"But it'll pass soon enough. I haven't got anything catching--it's mother's stomach," she said, using Sansa's phrase for it. "I'm pregnant." She held her breath, waiting for his reaction.