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Chapter Text

Sansa

The gates of Castle Black opening to let her, Brienne and Podrick in felt like a coming of some sort. It felt like a chill that touched her from the inside out, a precipitous moment in which she considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she had finally reached destination. Whatever she had been searching for-- revenge, home, family, the past, the songs-- was in her reach. At least, she fancied the hope for a second or two.

In those small moments, her inner system began acting up: her heart covered by only an inadequate amount of roughspun cloth palpitated, her pale cold cheeks warmed, and her hands tightened reflexively on the rein of the saddle. There was a minute tensing of all her muscles as she looked through the entrance, at strangers in black and white standing there watching her as her horse rode in. Yet she had no eyes for these scruffy man and their gaping. She should feel alone and scared-- she had heard the stories about the Night’s Watch like any other-- but her head floated above. She was searching for someone, with anticipation and hope blooming in her chest for what felt like the first time. It was all that concerned her. It was all that mattered now.

Yet those few precious seconds of expecting favorable outcome passed and that familiar friend of hers-- dread-- collared her in. She kept her head up, her hold on the rein slack, and barely kept from swiveling her head here and there-- around the whole damn place for that one face she didn’t know she desired to see as much as she did.

When Petyr Baelish had told her she would be going to Winterfell-- when Brienne of Tarth had promised to take her to Castle Black to meet her half-brother-- it never occurred to her that her heart desired it so much. She could barely control her anxiety, the way it trembled within her stomach and made her sick with nausea.

Snowflakes fell, men in black and white watched from the side and she dismounted the white horse while keeping every emotion of hers under wrap.

If Jon wasn’t here, she wouldn’t waver in the slightest. She would take it like she had taken the news of Robb and her mother and Bran and Rickon-- with rage burning in her veins and an icy smile on her face as she held back sobs that rose up at the back of her throat. Except she’d do better this time. She would lie like it didn’t hurt. Like it didn’t hurt so damn much.

She had found nothing familiar or heartwarming to hold onto in Winterfell. Only more pain. She hadn’t expected it to be what she saw in her dreams-- of her memories-- when it was all of them together. After all, she had known Roose Bolton ruled over the castle and their mark was all overs the walls of Winterfell. She had known how Theon and his band of ironborn reavers had burned it all down.

Still, the state of it-- the sight and smell of it-- the moment Ramsay pushed her face-first into the mattress and ripped her wedding dress down to pieces-- Theon’s twitching face, his skittish gaze, the fear in his slouched shoulders that spoke volumes about what horrifying things happened to him in her home-- it had ruined her wonderment, her hopes, her dreams of its great stature and its many towers and halls and the Godswood.

The Castle she saw in her dreams-- that she cooked up in her mind from her far too distant memories-- had been ruined. It had provided no comfort to her.

And here she was, with her hands on the saddle, standing in Castle Black with all the hopes she could not have.

Not again.

She had seen too much. She had been disappointed too far often.

She looked around in a cursory fashion, at all the people watching her in disbelief or surprise or whatever it was. She noted the wildings. The men from the Night’s Watch-- the ones who recognized her. Yet she did not care. When her eye happened to fall on a balcony as she turned her head, she stopped at the sight of a familiar face staring back at her with grey eyes frozen in disbelief.

She recognized him right away, even if he had been just a boy when she had last seen him and she hadn’t thought to look at him long enough to memorize his features when he was a boy living with her. She hadn’t thought him important enough. He was a bastard, after all.

Yet now as she stared at him, something twisted in her stomach at seeing his black curls tied behind him, at the close-set brows raised almost crookedly, the mass between his brows and his hair furrowed, and his pale face drawn down like he hadn’t seen happy things in a while either. The facial hair, the armor he wore, the broad shoulders and the taller height registered at her with a small ‘I wonder how grown up I look to him’ thought yet it was all so insignificant at the moment.

He was here.

Jon Snow, her half-brother, was here, alive and well, looking at her like he was seeing a ghost. Their eyes stayed locked as he went down the stairs-- their gazes never leaving, never wavering for one single second-- because this connection, this familiarity was what they had both craved for so long. She knew it. She knew it from the way he looked at her.

The coldness, the hurt, the emptiness was all they had for such a long while that it had felt like they were both bleeding inside. Every single letter and every single word that came from the north or the riverlands or in Jon’s case, from King’s Landing about who they had lost was a shearing wound that bled and bled and bled until it felt like nothing would be left. That loss and the search that came with it-- for the family-- for them all to stay together, it was his as well as hers.

No matter how much she had dismissed him in that castle they both knew as home and gods, she wished she hadn’t been so blind to see the good that she had in Winterfell-- that Jon Snow was good, truly so good -- before she’d thrown it away to chase a cruel prince who had been nothing like the songs.

No matter how she tried to ignore Jon’s existence as a Stark before, he had always been there somewhere. Either sparring with Robb or helping Bran train or playing around with Arya. He had been part of it and he knew how she felt and he was her brother no matter how much she denied him because he had loved Winterfell, her father, her brothers and sister and maybe, even her mother just as much as she did. He felt that loss like no-one would. He was part of it. He had always been part of it and she had been too slow to realize it.

Once Jon was down the stairs, he moved towards her with a gait that was steady yet ever slowly becoming faster. His shocked face came closer and closer as she waited with held breath.

He was what she had been searching for. She realized with a gulp of cold air. Her heart beat faster in her chest. He was the center-- the anchor she hadn’t known she had needed-- in a world filled with calamity and unpredictably cruel people and senseless killings.

He stopped a feet from her and they looked at each other. She hadn’t bothered to look at Jon Snow for long back then-- he was an embarrassment, a taint on the Stark name, hated by her mother though Catelyn Stark never actually said it-- but now she memorized every inch of his face with hungry eyes. He had a scar running down his left brow. She wondered how he had been hurt. How many battles had he fought while she tried to lie and curtsy out of difficult situations in the Red Keep and the Vale? How many wounds had he suffered while she lay in bed at night missing her family deeply and regretting all her actions, all her stupid songs and silly games and southron dresses and polite courtesies?

Nobody would know how she felt looking at him as Jon would.

Nobody.

How sweet was it to look upon his face and see something more. Something like home.

She had found him.

She had found him. She repeated in her head, joy racing up her veins and catching up to her limbs.

She moved then. They both moved, actually. It was a blur who moved first but she believed it was her. She rushed up toward him, closing the distance between them until she had her arms gathered around him. Her feet flew off the ground in her urgency as he braced himself for her weight and held her up in his arms with a quiet strength that felt so reassuring.

She held onto him tight, his cheek against her cheek, his chest against hers. She ached to pull him closer. He was all she had. Bran and Rickon and even Arya were alive, she had found that out now but he was the one she found. He was her anchor and she could not let him go.

He was all she had.

He was Jon. He was her brother.

He held her to him firmly, raising her up high, one hand tightened on her back. The spread of his four fingers on the small of her back felt like an actual anchor-- digging into her cloak-- holding her just as hard as she was holding him.

In his strong arms, she felt safe. She felt like nothing could tear them down. She nuzzled his cheek, feeling the open wound inside her finally stop bleeding. She released a sigh of relief. There was something about this that took her pain away. Something about this that just felt right.

She wished she could melt into his arms and never have to let go. She wished he would always hold her.

They did let go of each other though. It had felt impossible to, but once Jon pulled away and murmured that she should get inside, away from the cold and eat something, she had realized she did crave for heat and food. Those instincts were right there at the back of her mind, ignored in favor of bigger cravings.

Cravings of home and family and love and trust and…

The inside of Castle Black was surprisingly warm enough. Jon showed her to the washing room, gave her a good thick wool cloak to wear and told her the soup would be there for her when she came back out.

In the washing room, behind closed doors, she put away the cloth that had wiped away all the dirt and grime from her face. Smoothing back her hair, she looked into the slightly dusty reflection across from her, seeing her fierce cornflower blue eyes stare back.

She blinked.

What had happened out there-- it couldn’t be helped, she had been caught off-guard-- but she had to stay strong. She couldn’t show weakness anymore. Not even to Jon. She wasn’t allowed to fall into the arms of a brother, no matter how strong he seemed and in fact, Jon looked more worn down than she felt.

He was her solace, but she wouldn’t let herself be fooled into relying on him. She had done that with father, with Joffrey, with Robb, with Petyr and with Theon. She had latched onto them, thinking they could lead her out of her problems.

Sometimes, it worked. Sometimes, it led to deaths of her loved ones.

She couldn’t put the burden on Jon though she wished she could. It would be so easy to leave it all to someone else, but she wanted to take back her home with her own hands, her own strength.

She needed revenge on those monster like she needed breath in her lungs.

The North Remembers.

It burned within her-- her rage at all they had done to her and her family and to her home . Every last one of them: the Lannisters, the Freys, and the Boltons. They had desecrated her land with murder and treachery. They had killed her father, her mother and her big brother without mercy, all in cold blood. What they had done to her family’s dead bodies-- she could not even tolerate to think of.

Her eyes glimmered sharp and icy in the mirror.

They would all pay.

The North Remembers.

She brought the clay mug filled with hot soup to her lips, soothed by the warmth of the fire crackling in front of her, by the peaceful quiet around her, by the gaze next to her that regarded her quietly.

She turned to see Jon staring at her, his sad eyes so intense the way they looked at her. He gave a fleeting upward twist of his lips at catching her attention, the furrows on his forehead relaxing. He couldn’t fake it for more than a second though and his face reverted back to that sad look again. She turned away, looking down at her lap with a small smile.

He told her about what happened to him. How they stabbed him in the back over and over and over, in the name of the Watch. How they killed him, because he had dared to bring Wildings to Castle Black. How they loathed him because he had dared to challenge a tradition that would extinguish into nothing if the White Walkers came from beyond the Wall.

Not if. She reminded herself. When. Winter is Coming.

It is coming. They just didn’t pay it heed enough because they never bothered about the Wall or what was happening on the other side of it. Who cared about Walkers or the Long Night when they only came out of the mouths of Wet Nurses like Old Nan? Sansa hadn’t cared. She had been too busy trying to seem like the high ladies of King’s Landing, when she had the northern blood in her.

She and Jon shared their nostalgia of the days before. Of Old Nan’s kidney pies. Of Arya’s antics. Bran’s habit of climbing the walls. All of it seemed like it was yesterday and yet forever ago. Jon even gave a big smile at the reminder. It felt good to see him smile even a little bit.

If only she could look at him for all time, it wouldn’t be so bad, but she had resolved herself to be strong. To not fall so weak into the arms of another man and forget her troubles, her responsibilities, her goals.

She was the next in line after Robb as the elder sibling. She was responsible for the safety of Bran, Rickon and Arya though the old gods know where they were at the moment and while she considered Jon a Stark now, she couldn’t expect him to help her and be with her and protect her when she had been so awful to him.

He had never been given the last name Stark. Though her brothers and sister loved Jon, he had been isolated, rejected from her house. She remembered all too well. How could she expect him to do anything for her when she had been so horrible to him?

Yet some part of her expected it all the same.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about what an ass I was to you,” she told him, staring into the fire as remorse filled up her chest. In her peripheral vision, she saw him bowing over low. She turned and watched as his expression turned more pensive, something about it so dismal that it caused a pang in her chest. “I wish I could change everything.”

If only she had the power.

“We were children,” He mumbled in a dismissive fashion, always on the higher ground, always more generous than he should be. He was still frowning though. Still looking so damn sad. She couldn’t take that look on his face anymore, wanted to alleviate it if she could.

She raised her brows, smiling as she said in a casual, cheeky voice:

“I was awful, just admit it.”

He chuckled, his toothy grin wide and lovely as he looked back into the fire hearth and she knew it was a real smile because his skin pulled taut around his eyes, the fire putting a glow around his profile.

She had caught him by surprise.

She looked at him, pleased that she could make him laugh if she tried.

“You were occasionally awful,” He admitted with amusement, looking back at her with a soft look. He made a self-deprecating remark about his sulking around in the corner as an afterthought but she only needed his forgiveness so she asked for it bluntly, insistently until another wide smile bloomed on his face.

“Alright,” His gaze swiveled to hers, the fire reflecting in his grey eyes, affection for her enveloping his whole face. “I forgive you.” He said honestly.

She chuckled, looking down at her lap, some weight on her chest lifting. A giddy feeling was bubbling up within her and she tried to squash it all down.

Somehow, no matter how much she told herself to be strong, to stand for herself, she couldn’t help but want Jon’s closeness, his smile, his affections. She was weak for it. She hadn’t had a moment like this with Jon before, maybe that’s why her whole soul demanded more of it.

More of his smiles, more of his regard for her in that soft, fond way of his.

Or maybe, she just craved affection from anyone in her family.

She glanced at him, licking her lips and extended her hand to silently demand for the ale in his hand. Maybe, she was curious about what the fuss was all about with the ale and wine and all those drinks men seemed to love so much. She remembered Tyrion drinking a lot of wine on their wedding day and then sleeping in the sofa across from their bed. Did it help at all?

Did it help to forget the pain?

But maybe, she just wanted to see the look Jon was giving her now. Like he was befuddled but amused all the same by her demand. He gave her the ale with challenge twinkling in his eyes.

Or maybe, he was just waiting to see how she would react to the awful taste of it.

She coughed, swallowing a little of it but mostly, just trying to feel through the burn in her throat. She blinked. Gods, the taste. Why in the Seven Hells was Jon drinking this?

Meanwhile, Jon was laughing at her expense. She glared at him, seeing the fully wide smile encompassing his face and forgetting her ire entirely. She gave him back the ale and he made a comment about how Castle Black’s ale was always awful.

She coughed once more before giving Jon a long look, turning somber as she remembered the question that was silently killing her. Maybe, she had just needed the liquid courage to bring up the subject she had too much invested in. She didn’t know if the ale helped or not for how little she swallowed it, but the smile on Jon’s face goaded her on.

“Where will you go?” She asked as if she was just curious for curiosity’s sake.

In fact, she needed Jon. She knew she could survive without him. She had done so before and would continue to do so using all the tools she had at her disposal, but taking back Winterfell from the Boltons? That was something she feared she could only do with Jon at her side.

“Where will we go?” He answered sincerely. No questions or doubts about it. “If I don’t watch over you, father’s ghost will come back and murder me.”

Loyal Jon. Kind Jon. Brave Jon. The kind-of man Joffrey should have been and never was. The kind-of hero they sang songs of. It wasn’t complicated to him to stay with Sansa and watch over her. As long as they were together, who cared about Winterfell or any of the other places? They could just run away together.

He didn’t deserve Sansa leading their conversation right to the heart of her agenda. Didn’t deserve the measured devising that went on in her head while he thought his honor-bound, loyal thoughts.

“There’s only one place we can go,” She said, looking at him pointedly. “Home.”

He didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve her demands for fighting but because of what he said, she felt emboldened to ask him and when she went on to persuade him, the only thing she could think about was the righteous anger that fueled within her the more she thought on it.

She listened to him list out all the things that had him feeling lost-- that had him so despondent and hopeless and she felt a lump in her throat at “I hanged a boy, younger than Bran” as she held back her wince. She understood.

She felt a pang knowing what she knew about what he went through, but she had been beaten black and blue, humiliated, and raped too many times for the rage to not simmer within her. She wanted all their heads and she wanted what she’d wanted since her father was announced a traitor and tossed into a jail.

She wanted her family safe and that would not happen until they defeated their enemies one-by-one. The Lannisters were weak after Tywin Lannister’s murder and would not be bothering them just yet, she knew for sure seeing as the Faith had them occupied. But the Boltons and The Freys had done worse and they deserved a grisly death for it.

“I want you to help me,” she said coolly, her gaze calm and fierce as she stepped toward him. “But I’ll do it myself if I have to.” She swore, her voice steady with resolve.

He eyed her like he was seeing her for the first time or as if she had burned into existence just now. It was a look of admiration and of consternation.

She felt tall under that gaze. Like she could take on anyone.

She raised her head up high and he shook his head, turning away from her.

Chapter Text

Jon

Sansa forked a portion of duck meat from her bowl and looked at it with detached interest, likely hiding a grimace. Edd apologized for the food, but she dismissed it graciously enough.

“There are more important things to worry about,” she said, her blue eyes somber and her lips twisting down briefly. Jon glanced away, biting into stale bread and swallowing it down without meeting her eye. He wished he could ignore her imploring eyes for all time, but he knew that was impossible.

She had changed since-- Sansa. Not just the change in her body or height, accommodating as they were to her growing age, but more in the eyes than anything else. Maybe, her hair’s color had become brighter-- more coppery than soft, downy auburn hair that he remembered before he left Winterfell. They were long now too, hanging down her back like kindling fire. But it was her eyes that had really changed. The way they saw things. The way they held his gaze.

She used to be a certain way-- the Sansa he remembered. Always with a certain enchantment about her eyes. The way she often tried to talk like the southern high lords. A bit delicate around the edges. Always a little too concerned with needle-work and looking good and bothering Arya. Always giggling and gossipping with her friend out in her chambers or some hallway inside the walls of Winterfell.

While Bran, Arya, and Rickon were frequent visitors of the sparring area, she rarely made to sit there and observe. When she did though, she was always talking about this knight or that song or some beautiful story about a tourney and winning a favor from a comely young prince.

There was a certain innocence about her-- an image that he had kept inside of him when he thought of her. To think of her without it had been unthinkable, but there she was-- with her eyes that had seen too much. Blue eyes that had gone steely from the suffering she didn’t dare speak of.

They were stormy eyes-- strong in their resolve, cynical in the way they watched others, and fierce when they remembered pain of the past.

Jon believed that if he were to look into those eyes of hers for too long, he might not be able to say ‘no’. So he kept his gaze occupied and thought about what he would do once he was out of Castle Black and how he could convince her to run away with him somewhere far away from the politics of Westeros.

Her wounds were still too raw, he knew, while his had taken some time to scab over. And after what happened with The Watch, all he ever felt now was empty.

Maybe, he could convince her.
It was wishful thinking, one that had been impossible to begin with once he read Ramsay Snow’s threatening letter that was evidently attempting to goad him into fighting.

And it was working.

He twitched at the crude, artless challenge. At the threat against his wilding friends. At the threat against Rickon, who he couldn’t-- wouldn’t believe Ramsay had in his hold.

Then, it threatened his sister-- his half-sister-- that made some dead part inside him rise, desiring strongly to throttle the bastard. Made him stop reading aloud and curl his fists. His stomach churned at the heinous details.

As Sansa snatched the letter away from him to read further ahead-- he looked at her. He expected some anxiety but her face was cold. Except for a little pause where she exchanged a glance with Jon, she didn’t hesitate or fumble over the words.

As if the threats to rape her weren’t new. As if they were hardly things she cared for anymore. As if they were perhaps things that had been whispered-- threatened-- sweetly into her ear in all the filthy ways that were unbearable to even be thunk on, many times, and in frequent sequences.

He found that his throat was blocked on a ball of ice. His fists clenched on the table. 

Why did he think that somehow being in King’s Landing protected her from those things?

The answer was that some deep part of him had deliberately kept a lid on those thoughts. He had his vows to the Night’s Watch-- he had to follow missions and think about the White Walkers on the other side of the Wall. He had been busy enough and they’d told him-- Benjen Stark and Maester Aemon and Jeor Mormont and Bowen Marsh -- that the Watch was his family now. He had to believe in that. He had to keep looking at Pyp, Grenn, Edd, and Sam as the only brothers he had and think not of the home he’d left behind.

It made him angry that he’d even tried to believe that. The Watch had betrayed him. Sam had left. Grenn and Pyp had died fighting wildings. Even without the back-stabbing, The Watch could never have replaced Winterfell.
Even broken down and burnt out, when Sansa had said that they should go back to Winterfell, the breath seemed to have gone out of him.

Oh, how he wished. How he fervently wished and here Ramsay ‘Bolton’ was-- inviting him to take it back-- to make that wish a reality somehow.

The thought made him turn to Tormund and ask him how many men he had. It was foolish to entertain it, he realized when Tormund answered. Compared to five thousand, it was very low.
It seemed so hopeless and he felt so lost, so unprepared and so exhausted from fighting all the time and losing everyone he cared about.

Sansa wasn’t hopeless, though. She was fresh into this fight.

“Northern families are loyal, they’ll fight for you if you ask.” she proposed, insistent and overly optimistic for someone who had attained her shade of cynicism.

Jon found her too bright to look at in this dim, dull room. She didn’t realize the cost-- the blood-- every time a battle occurred. He could fight as much as anyone but for what? The White Walkers would invade the North soon with their thousands and thousands of wights. How could they defend Winterfell against them? Not to mention that this wasn’t the fight he had brought all those wildings in for. It wasn’t their fight.

But Rickon… if Ramsay actually had him, then...

And Sansa.

He looked at her.

He couldn’t let Ramsay do this to her. She was eager and ready and alive in the moment-- prepared to risk her life so she could take back Winterfell. What would happen if Ramsay got her in his clutches again? He'd tear her apart, even worse than before.

Jon couldn’t leave her to fight by herself and he knew she was stubborn enough to do it by herself if he denied her. Nor could he leave those wildings who had put their faith in him. Wildings who came here for refugee at his insistence and would be killed by the Bastard of Dreadfort because of him.

His head was a mess of thoughts, volleying back and forth between all kinds of options and scenarios and finding the deep dark abyss of death awaiting them all in the end. Even sweet, brave Sansa. He saw skeletons where her solid blue eyes were.

When Sansa grabbed his hand, he squeezed hers back reflexively. It was like an anchor. A slight touch of softness and warmth and firm connection. It was filled with invitation. He could no longer evade those brave eyes where he had glimpsed bones and holes and maggots. When he looked back into her eyes, the grasp of reality fled his mind and only she remained.

The only light in an otherwise dark world. The thought seemed to go through his otherwise preoccupied mind. A foolish thought for sure. 

“A monster has taken our home,” she said, her voice coming out vehement and loud, emphasizing ‘our home’ with relish, with a pointedness that hurt something bad in the place where his heart beat. “Our brother. We have to go back and get them both back.”

How could Jon deny her when she looked at him like that?

Even if every part of Jon screamed: “No, not another fight. I won't survive this one. I don't even think I want to.” Sansa’s grip on his hand and her imploring gaze stirred him, woke up a dormant part of him he hadn't even known existed.

Jon nodded and when relief snatched flutters out of her eyes as she untangled her hand from him, he knew he couldn't take it back.

He didn't want to.