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Wait a year.

That is what Uncle Ned told him.

What will change in a year? Jon had spat back, angry and petulant. A year would not make him trueborn. A year would not change his fate.

And yet, less than a year would bring Uncle Ned's execution in King's Landing. A year would bring war.

Wait a year, then if you still wish to go, you can join the Watch.

The Watch was his fate, Jon had thought.

Then the war.

Then Robb was named King in the North, and Jon has not left his side since.

“Robb, I-”

There's a squeal, and Jon looks up from the crumpled letter to see his cousin's surprised face, and a girl jumping up from the bed and pulling her skirts down.

“Seven hells,” Robb groans, as Jon looks up towards the ceiling, the girl scurrying past him where he still stands in the doorway. “Have you heard of knocking?”

“I did knock,” Jon argues, waiting a few moments before he looks back down, so that Robb is sure to be properly clothed again. “I thought I heard you say-”

Jon's face heats, and he quickly stops trying to remember what Robb had said. Clearly it was not 'enter'.

“What is it?” Robb sighs, and Jon risks a glance at his cousin, thanking the old gods and the new that Robb is dressed and now sitting on the edge of his bed.

“You should be careful,” Jon moves further into the room after checking that the hall is empty, closing the door behind him.

“You've interrupted to tell me to be careful?”

“No, there was a raven – Bran and Rickon made it to White Harbor and are under the protection of Wyman Manderly. They're gathering what forces they can to oust the Ironborn...”

Jon trails off as Robb's face falls. It isn't just his face, though, his entire body seems to sag inward.

When they were children, Jon had envied Robb. Trueborn, the heir to Winterfell. One day, he would marry a highborn lady and have a slew of children, while Jon... Jon would go to the Wall. But now, Robb is King, and Jon cannot envy that. It might be easy to, if Jon did not see how the crown weighs upon his cousin's head. Theon's betrayal has only deepened the shadows beneath Robb's eyes.

Jon moves towards the bed and hands him the letter.

“That is good news,” Robb nods, taking it absently, eyes still distant. Thinking of Theon, Jon would guess. Or perhaps Ned.

But not Arya or Sansa, his mind whispers traitorously. Jon quickly pushes that bitter thought down.

“Robb,” Jon says. “You need to be careful here.”

The Crag is no safe haven for them. They have captured the castle, yes, but Robb was wounded and the Westerlings were loyal to the Lannisters mere weeks ago. Robb taking control of their lands will not change that so quickly.

“I am careful.”

“Are you?” Jon scoffs, which makes Robb frown. “Need I remind you that you are betrothed?”

Robb flushes a deep red and cannot meet his eyes. “She was offering comfort, after the news of Winterfell...”

“Comfort?” Jon cuts in, his pulse thrumming with anger and, though he does not want to acknowledge it, embarrassment. “She is a lord's daughter, Robb. She isn't some whore in a Wintertown brothel. What if you got her with child? Would you disgrace her, or break your oath to the Freys?”

Jon had never been able to let himself join Robb and Theon in their excursions to the brothels, the fear of getting a bastard on one of the women was too great. He had only gone once, and though it has been years, though Theon has turned traitor, Jon can still hear his taunts. Can't get it up, Snow? Don't know where to stick it? Even now, the humiliation lingers.

“Gods,” Robb rubs at his face with one hand, “I left my mother in Riverrun, and yet here you are, nagging at me the same.”

“I do not think Lady Catelyn would like that comparison,” Jon says dryly.

Lady Catelyn had not been unkind to him growing up, but she was never the mother Jon wished her to be. Not to him, at least. As he got older, Jon understood that his existence had pained her - Brandon Stark had been her betrothed, and yet he had gone south and fathered a bastard.

Jon knows that Lady Catelyn loves – loved, he reminds himself, a sharp pain twisting at his gut – Uncle Ned, but she had not always. Jon remembers hearing gossip in Winterfell, that the Lady Catelyn had initially been disappointed in her new husband - that she was hurt over Brandon's betrayal, and hurt that his bastard son would be raised alongside her own. As the years passed, she had softened, but she would never be his mother, and he had accepted that long ago.

Jon remembers a moment, though – back in Riverrun, with Robb refusing to exchange Jaime Lannister for Arya and Sansa. Jon remembers his fury at the decision, though he had held his tongue in front of the council. He remembers meeting Lady Catelyn's eye across the table, saw his own rage reflected in her.

All his life, Jon had looked up to Robb, until that moment.

“Stay away from Jeyne Westerling,” Jon warns. “No good will come of it.”

“I should have betrothed you to one of them,” Robb sighs, fixing his doublet in the mirror for the thousandth time.

Jon glances up from where he is lacing his own. “Don't think offering up a bastard would have done much good. Stop whining, she's pretty and seems sweet. It could be worse.”

Roslin Frey is a small thing, a bit timid, but agreeable enough. Robb is lucky she takes after her mother, and not Walder.

“If you weren't a bastard, this would be your wedding, not mine,” Robb grumbles. Then he pauses, and turns from the mirror. “I could fix that.”

“What?”

“I'm a king,” Robb says, brows drawing together in thought. “I could legitimize you.”

There is a moment where Jon cannot breathe. It is everything he has always wanted.

“What would your bannermen think?” he forces himself to say.

Robb frowns, turning back to the mirror and adjusting the neckline of his doublet again.

Robb is wed, and Arya is returned to them.

She arrives in Riverrun with a man named Sandor Clegane. Jon remembers him from when Robert Baratheon visited Winterfell – a great beast of a man, standing behind Joffrey. Arya's hair is shorn short and jagged, she is dressed in boy's clothing, and Jon can see a difference in her. Arya has always been a wild thing, but there is something new behind her eyes.

It takes weeks before she admits that she had killed two people – a stableboy in King's Landing, and a guard at Harrenhal. Gone is the girl who used to speak of swordfighting with excitement lighting her face, and Jon mourns for that girl. He wishes he could have saved her from knowing what it is like to take a life.

She is both different and yet the same, and she is not pleased to find out she has been betrothed to a Frey, and Jon fears she will try to run away. He knows Robb and Lady Catelyn fear the same, for guards are put on Arya at all hours of the day.

The only positive is that she will not have to wed until after the war, and Jon supposes that is only if they win. Still, Elmar seems a nice enough lad, though Arya only wrinkles her nose when he tells her this.

Word arrives that Sansa has been married to the Imp.

As Robb is given the news, Jon watches Lady Stark's face, sees the horror there, hidden behind her cool mask. She has finally been allowed back in the council after letting Jamie Lannister free. It was all for naught, for Arya is already home, and Sansa…

Jon has not thought too much on Sansa, all being told. He worries for her, of course, but they had never been as close as he had been with his other cousins. For some reason, it always felt particularly dangerous to get close to her, and so he never had. He does not think on her very often for the same reason. It is a dangerous road to go down, for reasons he does not want to think about.

He does remember thinking of her when he and his men had found an inn to rest at after a battle, and a serving girl had winked at him and introduced herself, and he had remembered Sansa's earlier instructions to always compliment a girl's name.

He had gone upstairs with the serving girl, whose name he cannot even remember now, though he had complimented it. Still thrumming with adrenaline after their win, drunk on the cheap ale his men kept plying him with in celebration, he had fumbled through his first time laying with a woman. He does not think he did particularly well, and he is thankful that his memory of it is so hazy. The one thing he does remember with perfect clarity is pulling out and spilling his seed across her belly. And he remembers the shame afterwards, back in his own room.

Strangely, he had thought of Sansa then, too, while laying drunk and dizzy and shameful in his bed. He thought of all her stories of grand romances, the way her eyes would light up when she spoke of true love and honorable knights. He remembers thinking she would be disappointed in him.

Now she is married to the Imp.

Tyrion had been kind to him. Or, if not kind, honest about his bastard status, in a way the Starks were not.

Perhaps that is why he feels such rage at the news.

Jon knows, on some level, that Tyrion likely had as little say in the matter as Sansa, yet still Jon cannot help his anger at the Imp, the sense of betrayal.

And Sansa.

Jon closes his eyes and grits his teeth and tries not to think of how terrified she must have been. His pretty cousin with her head full of songs, now wed to a drunk who will never be faithful to her, the uncle of the king that took her father’s head. Held as a hostage in her own marriage.

He tries not to think of it.

In light of Sansa's marriage, with both Bran and Rickon thought dead to the outside world while in hiding, and Arya constantly threatening to run from her own betrothal, Robb legitimizes Jon and names him heir.

In one fell swoop, he goes from a bastard to the heir to the Northern throne, and it does not feel true. The soldiers he leads have come to respect him, but now other lords and ladies defer to him, a lowering of their heads that feels wrong.

It is everything he has always wanted, and yet he cannot help but pray that Roslin will soon get with child.

It is discovered that Ramsay Bolton is holding Winterfell, and Roose Bolton is asked to answer for this treason.

Roose is given one chance and is sent north to Winterfell, and he returns with his son, along with Theon Greyjoy. 

The Theon they see before them is not the Theon that left them for Pyke. He is a broken man, castrated and tortured. A pitiful creature that trembles and shakes at Robb’s feet.

Ramsay Bolton is beheaded, and while he was gone, secret missives from the Lannisters were found amongst Roose Bolton’s belongings. He swears he had no intention of going through with any treason, but after a trial, Roose is stripped of his title and banished to the Wall.

Robb should behead Theon, as well, but he does not. 

There is a part of Jon that is relieved. Not for Theon's sake, but for the brief glimpse of the Robb he used to know. This relief wars with the bitterness he feels that Theon is given grace, when Robb would not trade for Arya and Sansa. Jon knows the circumstances are different, but it still sits sour inside him.

Theon is given to his sister Asha, who swears peace and fealty to the North.

Jon is camped near the Saltpans when the news arrives that Joffrey Baratheon is dead.

Though this does not end the war, his men celebrate, and Jon does not begrudge them this. It was Joffrey who ordered the death of Uncle Ned, and Jon feels as though he should be relieved, or as joyous as the rest of his men. Yet this will not bring Uncle Ned back. It will not end the war, and more lives will be lost.

Jon sits with his men and drinks, though he remains silent as they celebrate. The messenger who brought them the news – a Riverlands boy barely older than Arya – is plied with drink after drink, and he recounts the story for the thousandth time to the drunk men who insist on hearing it again. It is late into the night when he changes his story. No, not changes it. He adds to it, a rumor he heard.

“They say it was the Stark girl,” the boy says, leaning forward conspiratorially, as though he is sharing a great secret, though the whole room is listening. “I heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leathery wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window.”

The men laugh uproariously, and Jon cannot help when his own lips lift into a smile.

He tries to imagine his gentle cousin casting a spell, but the idea is so ridiculous, he cannot picture it. Sansa is too sweet, he thinks, the smile sliding off his face. Uncle Ned should never have taken her to that lion's den in the first place.

It is only later, after he retires to bed and is staring up at the canvas of his tent, that he remembers back to Winterfell, to the screaming fights she and Arya used to get into, and he thinks – well, maybe she did. It has been so long since he last saw her that he has forgotten she is not all sweetness and light. No, he has seen her angry, he has seen her fight. There is a wolf hiding beneath those soft manners.

Maybe she did cast a spell to kill the king.

Good, he thinks, letting his eyes close as he drifts off to sleep.

The war rages on.

“Commander!”

Jon turns to see one of his men jogging towards him. “Dorren, what is it?”

“There's a man here,” Dorren frowns. “Says he needs to speak with Catelyn Stark.”

Jon raises a brow. “Did you tell him we're in the Saltpans and Lady Catelyn is nowhere near here?”

“I did. He still insists. Asked for safe passage through our territory and a guard to escort him to Riverrun.”

Jon lets out a snort of disbelief.

Dorren hesitates before continuing. “He said he had news of her daughter.”

Jon's stomach goes sour. Had Arya finally managed to run away? Or does the man mean Sansa?

Word from the Southron capital comes rarely. The last reliable news that Jon heard, Tyrion Lannister was on trial for the murder of Joffrey Baratheon, and no one seems to know what that means for Sansa. There are whispers, though, that Tywin Lannister is dead, Tyrion and Sansa missing, but those are rumors, unconfirmed.

“Where is this man?”

Jon is led towards the center of camp, to a man standing straight-backed, looking down his nose at the camp around him. His clothing is fine, though clearly a bit worn from travel. Next to him is a shorter, slim figure, a hood covering her hair and most of her face.

“This is Lord Petyr Baelish and his daughter, Alayne Stone.”

Stone, Jon thinks. A bastard, like him. Although – no. No, he isn't a bastard anymore. He must remember that.

Dorren continues, “this is Commander-”

“Jon.”

The word is lightly spoken, almost in disbelief, from beneath the hood that hides the girl’s face. The man, Baelish, flicks his eyes to her with a frown.

Jon also frowns. There is something familiar to the voice, though he has never heard the name Alayne Stone. It takes a moment for him to realize that the accent is Northern. Not as harsh as his or Robb’s or even Arya’s. It sounds like Sansa’s, her words more practiced and polished than the rest of them, always trying to replicate her mother’s accent.

“I apologize, Lady Alayne,” he begins, because if he should remember her, he does not. He never finishes the sentence, because in that moment, her hands lift to the hood and she draws it back.

Her hair is a strange, dull brown, but it does not dim her beauty.

It also does not fool him for a moment.

“Sansa,” he breathes, taking a halting step towards her. It may be that movement, or even her name from his lips that makes her rush forward, and she throws herself into his arms.

That night, he sits in his tent with her, with Ghost curled up at her side. Earlier, he had given his wolf a command - do not leave her. She has not said so, but from the way her hand never moves from where it is buried in Ghost’s thick fur, he thinks she appreciates it.

“I heard about Lady,” he had said, when she and Ghost were first reunited, when she hugged his wolf like she had hugged him, clinging to the beast like she knew it would never harm her.

Sansa had only nodded, told him a brief story of what had happened on the journey to King’s Landing. It was strange, hearing the tale from her, when he had only heard it from Arya before.

They’re so different, Sansa and Arya, and yet both of their stories had been tinged with anger, with guilt. Sansa had been better at hiding her anger, Arya her guilt, but they were still there, buried deep underneath it all.

Now, they sit in his tent and he watches her pick at her food. She is so thin, and that dull brown hair is still jarring. She said Baelish had picked up the dye for her from one of his brothels, so that her most distinctive feature would be hidden.

Jon does not like Lord Baelish, from the little he has seen of the man. He does not like the way he looks at Sansa, and yet Jon has no real reason to turn him away from their camp, or deny his request to go to Riverrun. He has promised to bring the Vale to their side, which Jon knows they need. Even with all their wins against the Southron army, they are still losing the war - though lately, the tide has been turning, those rumors that Tywin Lannister is dead are seeming more and more likely.

“I’m sure you are used to better,” Jon grimaces as Sansa takes the smallest bite from her plate.

“Oh,” she says, “no, it is fine.”

“You need to eat,” he tells her. He wonders how rough the journey has been from King’s Landing. She only gives a listless nod, and so he says, “if you don’t, Ghost will worry.”

That gets her to smile, the first one he’s seen since she’s been back, and it makes his heart stutter in his chest. It works, and she begins to eat with more determination.

Jon knows it is likely treason to abandon his post, but he cannot allow Sansa to travel to Riverrun without him.

He trusts his men with his life, but it turns out, he does not trust them with Sansa’s, and he trusts Lord Baelish even less. He tells himself that they are merely holding territory, that the Saltpans are under no threat of attack at this time, but he knows he should not leave.

He still does, anyway.

On the road, she tells him bits and pieces of her time in King’s Landing, and Jon’s anger burns hot inside him. At night, he lays awake and tries not to fill in the gaps in her stories, tries not to wonder what she’s leaving out.

“I thought of you,” she tells him one night, as they sit around the campfire. “When Baelish told me I was to play his bastard daughter. I thought of you.”

It stings, as mention of his bastard status always does, though he knows she does not mean it unkindly. It is what he is. A fact.

Or, it was.

“I heard you were legitimized,” she whispers, hugging her knees to her chest. “The news came right before…”

Before Joffrey died, purple-faced and clutching at his throat. Before Tyrion was put on trial. Before Baelish took Sansa and fled the city.

“Aye,” he says, because he does not know what else to say. He does not know how she feels about it - him usurping her position in line.

Whatever she is thinking, she does not say it.

“Where did you get this?” she asks. They have stopped at an inn, and she had slept in a bed for the first time since fleeing King’s Landing. Jon himself had stood guard outside her door all night.

Jon is about to ask what she means when her fingers lift to his brow and follow the path of the scar that just barely misses his eye.

“I don’t remember,” he admits. “Some battle or another.”

They all blend together, the bodies and the blood and the screams of dying men.

But her fingers are soft against his skin, and he cannot help the way his eyes close. It is the first softness he has felt in a very long time.

A confession comes the night before they reach Riverrun.

“I kept imagining Robb showing up,” she tells him. They are in his tent again, with only Ghost as a chaperone. He has a guard standing outside the tent, and yet he knows it is improper to be alone with her, even though they are kin. “When Joffrey would have them beat me,” she says, making Jon’s stomach turn, as it had the first time she told him this, “I would imagine the throne room doors bursting open, and Grey Wind would leap in and kill Ser Boros. I would imagine Robb following with his army, come to claim me back. But he never did.”

She looks at him then, dead on, and ugliness twists at his gut. He wonders if she’s figured it out - that Robb had considered her a lost cause. That he would not trade Jaime Lannister for her. That he legitimized Jon to push her lower in the succession.

For all the songs and stories that fill her head, Sansa is no fool.

“I should have,” Jon says. “I should have come for you.”

She regards him with a carefully blank expression that he knows she learned in King’s Landing, for he has never seen it before.

“I heard stories about you,” she says. “A Northern barbarian with his monstrous red-eyed beast, wrecking havoc on the battlefield. The White Wolf. They were terrified of you, like you were an Other out of Old Nan’s tales.”

Jon shifts uncomfortably, unsure how to feel about this. He isn’t some mythical legend, he’s just Jon Snow. Or, Jon Stark now, he supposes.

“I am not stupid, Jon,” she says softly, and he should not revel in the way his name sounds on her tongue. “I know you were needed here. I know that coming for me would have been a fool’s errand. It was only a childish fantasy.”

Jon grits his teeth. He knows she is right, she knows she is right, and yet it does not ease the guilt that burns in his throat.

She only cries when she is in her mother’s arms.

When they arrive, Robb steps forward first, but halts when Sansa only curtsies to him with a serene, “your grace.” He must tell her to stand, and when he hugs her, her arms hang limp at her side.

It is only when Lady Catelyn gathers her up that Sansa breaks, that she begins to tremble near violently, and Lady Catelyn quickly escorts her from the yard, away from onlookers.

Lord Baelish does not seem happy to be so completely ignored.

Robb looks stricken.

Lord Baelish collects his praises and his thanks, preening with the attention. He vows to convince Lady Arryn to join their cause, and sets out with a delegation, much to Jon’s relief. He did not like the way Baelish looked at Sansa or Catelyn, and after hearing the whispers about the man’s duel with Jon’s father all those yars ago, Jon likes it even less.

He understands, now, why Baelish had been so disdainful on their journey to Riverrun. Jon is the son of the man he lost a finger to. The man he lost his love to, before Brandon Stark was murdered by the Mad King.

For the first time in a very long time, Jon is plagued by dreams of his father, strangling himself to death as he struggled to save his own father. He is plagued by dreams of his unknown mother. He dreams of Uncle Ned promising to tell him her true identity later, the next time they saw each other. The only things Jon knows of her is that she was beautiful, and that she is dead, but so is Uncle Ned now, and Jon will never know the truth.

Sansa and Arya do not seem to know what to do with each other.

Jon had watched them reunite, had watched the way they both clutched at each other, the apologies that had tumbled from their mouths.

They do not fight anymore, not the way they used to. They are different people now, both of them.

Robb does not take his head for leaving his post in the Saltpans, for which Jon is thankful. Not that he truly believed Robb would, though there was the smallest part of him that thought - he might. He did not trade for Arya and Sansa.

Sansa and Arya are not the only ones changed. Sometimes, he looks at Robb and does not recognize him, with that crown of bronze and iron upon his head.

They are discussing Dorne, a possible ally. The Martells hold no love for the Lannisters, and there are rumors that they themselves wish to break off from the Crown.

The council is arguing amongst themselves. Jon sits quiet, as do Robb and Lady Catelyn, and one other man. Howland Reed, who had shown up in Riverrun quite unexpectedly. 

Jon finds the man staring at him.

When the meeting is ended, Lord Reed stays back after the others have left. It is only then that he turns to them and says, “why do we not use Jon?”

“Jon?” Robb asks, shooting a look at him. Jon can only shrug.

Lord Reed looks between them, his brows furrowed slightly, before he says, “Ned never told you?”

In that moment, Jon’s heart begins to race. “Told me what?”

“Who your mother was, boy.”

“You know who Jon’s mother is?” Robb asks, at the same time as Jon says, “he said he would tell me the next time he saw me.”

Lord Reed looks at him pityingly.

Brandon Stark had wolf blood in him, they say; wild and hungry.

“He loved women,” Lord Reed says, “and women loved him. He met Ashara Dayne at the tourney of Harrenhal. Convinced her to dance with his younger brother, who was too shy to ask on his own. There were rumors that she and Ned fell in love that day, but those rumors got the wrong Stark. She and Brandon began an affair after that.”

Lord Reed reaches out a hand and lays it on Jon’s shoulder. “I do believe he wanted to marry her, truly. But he was already betrothed…”

Jon cannot look at Lady Catelyn.

“I do not know if he ever knew she was with child, for it happened so soon before he was killed. After the death of her child’s father, and the death of her beloved brother, they say Lady Ashara threw herself out the window in grief. Ned was in Starfall returning Arthur’s sword, and he took the babe so that the Lady Allyria would not have to suffer more scandal. That is why he kept it a secret, so that he did not darken Lady Ashara’s memory.”

Jon sits numbly. In the distance, he can hear a wolf howling.

Jon leaves the council room first. He is halfway down the hall when a voice stops him.

“I did not know.”

He turns to see Lady Catelyn standing there. He wishes it were anyone else.

“Aye.”

She sighs, walking to where Jon stands stiffly, all his muscles tensed for whatever she has to say. 

“Ned was always so strange when Lady Ashara was brought up,” she says. “I wondered if those rumors were true, that he had loved her and had an affair with her. I must say, I am relieved they are not. Is that horrible of me?”

Jon does not know what to say. He had not been expecting that.

Then, to his surprise, she lays a hand on his shoulder, just like Lord Reed had. “Ned should have told you,” she says. “I love him with all my heart, but he could be honorable to a fault. I am sure he made Lady Allyria some sort of promise, but he should have told you.”

To Jon’s horror, he feels a hot stinging behind his eyes, and so all he can do is give a jerky nod and leave the hall as quickly as he can.

That night, he cries like a child, curled up in his bed.

Elmar Frey is killed in battle, and Jon wonders what will happen to Arya now. Elmar was a good lad, Jon had not been lying to her, but many of the Freys are not. Robb does not have an answer for him when he asks what they will do.

They will worry about it after the war.

Robb elects a High Septon out of Riverrun, who declares Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion Lannister null and void, for it had been unconsummated, and now Tyrion has disappeared, presumed dead.

In order to confirm this, though, the High Septon must examine Sansa’s maidenhead. It is then, as Robb agrees to this charade in front of the council, that Jon meets Lady Catelyn’s eyes again, can see his own anger reflected in them.

The Septon goes into a room with Sansa and Catelyn, with Lady Mormont and Lord Mallister as witnesses, while a host waits outside for the verdict.

It seems like it takes forever, as Jon paces outside the door and Robb stands ramrod straight next to it, but finally that door opens, and the Septon exits and declares that Lady Sansa is indeed a maid, and therefore no longer a Lannister in name.

All Jon can focus on, though, is the paleness of Sansa’s face, the way her arms cross over her stomach, her eyes vacant and glassy. He imagines the old Septon laying her down and spreading her legs and poking around with his stubby fingers, and the blood starts to pound in Jon’s ears.

He moves so that his body is blocking Sansa from view of the rest of the crowd, and he does not miss the grateful look Lady Catelyn sends him, or the way Arya appears at her sister’s side. Where she came from, Jon does not know, but he is glad for it when she slips her hand into Sansa’s.

The Vale joins their cause, and it is the death knell for the war.

Tywin Lannister is dead. The North, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, and the Vale are united under King Robb. There are rumblings in Dorne of a rebellion. A boy king sits the Iron Throne. They say he has more interest in his cats than he does a war room. Jon cannot blame him.

A raven arrives from King’s Landing requesting a peace summit, and the relief Jon feels is heady, dizzying. The war has ravaged the land, the smallfolk have been suffering, all for the whims of their overlords.

His rage at Uncle Ned’s death had not held in the face of the smallfolk he saw slaughtered in their villages, but by then, it was too late to turn back.

Peace is what is best for everyone, and he is so very tired of war.

Jon is to go with Robb for the peace talks at Harrenhal. 

Mere days before they are to set out from Riverrun, Jon is laying abed, trying to sleep, when he hears something at his door.

He is up and gripping the pommel of his sword when it opens, and he relaxes when he realizes it is only Sansa. She slips inside, a robe pulled tight around her, and for a moment, they only stare at each other in the dark.

“Sansa?” he asks, then clears his throat when he hears the roughness in it.

She crosses quickly to his bedside, and he sets his sword down. The mattress dips under her weight as she sits, and Jon’s heart begins to thrum.

Her hair is back to its auburn shade, tied into a loose braid that drapes over her shoulder, and her robe does not hide the fact that she is only wearing a shift under it.

“I wish you did not have to go,” she whispers, and Jon does not understand why she snuck out of her room in the middle of the night to tell him this. She could easily have said it in the morning.

“It will only be for a little. Then, when a truce has been signed, we will be back. Then we will go home, to Winterfell.”

Sansa does not say anything to this, but her hand reaches out and settles on Jon’s knee. Even through the blanket, he can feel the heat of it, and he is suddenly reminded that he is only wearing a sleep shirt.

“Sansa-” he says again, the word coming out choked as her hand slides higher on his thigh, her eyes lowered, lashes fanned against the pale of her cheek. To his horror, he feels his cock twitch.

“I will miss you,” she whispers.

He grabs her wrist, trying to keep his fingers loose so that he does not hurt her, though every muscle in his body is held tight. “Aye, I’ll miss you, too,” he says, pulling her hand away before his body betrays him and she sees him hardening beneath the covers.

Instead of allowing her hand to be taken away, she twists around and climbs more fully onto the bed, onto her knees, and he backs up as far as he can from her. She crawls forward until she is practically in his lap, her arms curling around his neck as she plants a fumbling, awkward kiss to his lips.

His blood begins to rage beneath his skin, and his hands immediately go to her waist, wanting to pull her closer - wanting to hold her against him while he rolls them over until she is under him. She is so soft and so warm rubbing up against him.

Then her arms are gone from around his neck and she is pulling at the ties to her robe, shrugging it off her shoulders until she is left only in her shift from the waist up. It is thin enough than he can see the outline of her breasts, and all sense leaves him.

Her lips find his again, searching and unpracticed, and it is only when her hand brushes over the fabric covering his cock that he pulls back with a groan. As he does, he sees something that causes ice to course down his spine - it is Sansa’s face. Instead of the rapture that he feels, she looks determined. It pulls him back to reality, and he is not proud of the way he pushes her off and jumps out of bed.

“What are you doing?” he asks, as she rights herself, looking indignant at the way he toppled her over.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she huffs, but she pulls her robe back up to cover herself. There is frustration on her face, before it is replaced with that serene emptiness he’d grown to hate on the road.

“This is madness, Sansa,” he pants. She does not look nearly as wrecked as he feels right now. He is hot, his blood still pounding, but beyond a slight flush to her cheeks, she looks as calm as ever, and it stings.

“How is it madness?” she asks - no, demands.

Jon stares at her, completely baffled by the question. Sansa has always been the most proper, the one who followed every rule. Surely she knows.

“You’re a lady,” he points out, stupidly. “And a maid-”

“Yes,” she hisses, her face twisting for a moment with something he cannot read. “As everyone loves to remind me.” Her expression smooths out again, and it looks as though she forces her body to relax. Her fingers trail, achingly slow, up the edges of her robe and she pulls it open again, exposing her shift, the tie in the center. If she pulled on it, her shift would open, too. “Do you not want me?” she asks, her voice dipped into something sultry and low as she looks up at him through her lashes.

A pulse of desire rips through him, but he forces himself to take another step back. “Sansa-”

She frowns. “I have seen the way you look at me,” she accuses. “Like all the others. You want me.” Her gaze drops to the tenting in his sleep shirt, and her voice softens again. “You can have me, Jon.”

He does want her, perhaps more than he has ever wanted anything. More than the Stark name, more than legitimacy. 

But no matter what Robb says, he will always be a bastard, and he has learned how to deny himself.

“We cannot,” he says, daring to walk back to the bedside, and he reaches out and pulls her robe up, closes the edges tight around her.

That desperation is back in her eyes, and she reaches once again for him, but he catches her wrist before she can wrap her fingers around his straining cock. The glare she sends him pierces straight into his heart.

“Fine,” she spits, yanking her wrist from his grip and climbing off his bed, and she slips out the door as quickly as she came. He is left reeling, hard as steel, with an ache in his chest that he does not understand. 

It is only then, as he bars the door and goes back to bed, wraps his own calloused hand around his cock, that he cannot deny it anymore - all those times when they were younger, when he kept his distance. Every time he did not allow himself to think of her because it felt too dangerous.

He has wanted her, since before he even knew what that meant.

His hand is rough, and he tries to imagine hers instead, small and delicate and smooth; sinks into the dark, jealous fantasies he had as a boy - of his father being alive, of not being a bastard, of being Lord of Winterfell and allowed to wed his pretty cousin.

In those fantasies, though, she would look at him like she loved him - but as he comes, biting back a groan, all he can picture is that blank expression on her face.

The next day, she avoids him, staring past him in the great hall as they break their fast, then disappearing.

He finds her mid-day, and by that point, he has moved past confused and guilt-ridden to annoyed, and he takes her by the elbow and leads her into a more secluded space in the yard, where preparations are already being made for the journey to Harrenhal. 

“You’re avoiding me,” he accuses, wishing he did not sound as hurt as he does. She does not answer, only stares mulishly at his shoulder and not his face. “I do not understand,” he says, lowering his voice even further so that no one can overhear. “I could have ruined you-”

“That was the point,” she snaps, finally pulling her arm from his grip and turning a glare on him.

He reels back. “Sansa-”

“What do you think will happen when you go south?” she hisses, keeping her voice as low as his. “When Robb signs his treaties? He will sell me off.”

Jon opens his mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. All he can do is swallow roughly, his throat suddenly too dry. She sees it all, an angry sort of satisfaction in her eyes.

“Will it be to the Tyrells?” she asks, voice pitching higher, and he hears the distress there. It rips him open. “Or one of the other houses that watched and laughed as I was stripped and beaten?”

Robb wouldn’t, Jon wants to say, but the words never make it past his lips, because… because he thinks Robb might.

“You would have me dishonor you, then?” Jon asks. “Robb might force us to wed.”

“Yes, Jon,” she says, with a look, as though he should have already figured this out.

“But-” His heart is pounding, he does not understand. “You would still be forced to wed?”

The look she gives him is something caught between exasperation and pity. “Yes,” she says. “But it would be someone I chose. I would get to stay in the North-” Her voice wavers, then, and he almost reaches out for her, but stops himself. He is sure people in the courtyard have already seen them whispering to each other, the last thing he needs is to touch her.

She looks up at him, and says, “you would never hurt me.”

That is what does it, what makes his resolve break, and he nods. “Alright,” he says. Clears his throat and tries again. “Alright. We’ll go to Robb.”

Her breath catches and she sways, as if relief has made her weak-kneed, and he knows he cannot refuse her.

“You did what?” Robb asks, his tone low and dangerous, hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

Jon stands in front of him, with Sansa half behind, peeking around his shoulder at where Robb and Lady Catelyn stand. Jon cannot look at Lady Catelyn. He will lose his nerve.

“I compromised Sansa,” Jon repeats. “I took her maidenhead. There is a chance she is with child.”

Robb stares at him as if he has grown a second head, then says, “you’re lying.”

Jon frowns. That was not the reaction he had expected.

“No, he is not,” Sansa says, as she grips onto Jon's arm.

Robb’s face twists, looking between them. “So, if I had you examined again,” he grits out, “you would no longer be a maid?”

Jon can feel her shrink back, her hands tightening on his arm. “No need for that,” Jon hears himself say, but his words are low, nearly a snarl. “You’ve already humiliated her once.”

Robb’s face goes red. “So you take my sister’s maidenhead and question me.” Robb bares his teeth, like Jon has seen Grey Wind do. “I should take your head in return.”

Robb would never. Except Jon is not so sure anymore. From the way Sansa’s fingertips dig into the meat of his arm, he thinks she is not sure, either.

“That is the punishment for a traitor,” Robb says, hand tightening on the pommel of his sword. “How do I know you did not force yourself on her? How-”

“It was my idea!” Sansa cries. “Gods, Robb, you used to call him your brother.” Her voice wavers, but she continues on. “It was all my idea. I tried to make him do it, but he refused.”

“So you were lying,” Robb says, as though he is not surprised, and Jon wonders if the threat of death was only a ruse. “Why?”

“Because she fears being sold off to a Southron family again,” Jon says, and it makes Robb flinch. It seems that Sansa might not have been so wrong to think Robb would use her in the treaty.

“I want to stay in the North,” she whispers. “Please, Robb. Please do not send me away again. Father said he would find me a husband that was brave and gentle and strong. Jon will never hurt me.”

Robb’s eyes close, a hand coming up to run over his face. Then he turns to his mother and says, “you’ve been quiet. What have you to say to all this?”

Lady Catelyn looks at all of them in turn. “It is not the best political match. We could say the union is for Jon’s connection with Dorne, to strengthen ties with them, though that is not the strongest alliance we could make, and we do not even know if the Daynes would acknowledge that tie.”

“That is all you have to say?” Robb sputters, his eyes wide, just as shocked as Jon feels. He had expected more of a protest, something about his bastard status, perhaps.

“That is all I have to say,” Lady Catelyn confirms.

Robb is not happy with him, but in the end, he agrees to the match.

“We will use the Starfall connection as an excuse,” he says. “But in order to appease the Northern lords that have already been hinting at Sansa’s hand, we must sell this as true love.”

And so a tale is told - that Sansa and Jon had fallen in love years ago, unable to be together due to his bastard status, then torn apart by the Lannisters, who forced Ned’s hand with a betrothal. True love reunited after she bravely fled King’s Landing.

None of it is true, but the rumors spread and grow like wildfire, until one day, as they are riding south to the peace talks at Harrenhal, Jon hears a bard singing a new song, one about the most beautiful maid in Westeros, falling for a lowly bastard boy, who is then raised up for his bravery and heroics in the war.

He nearly spits out his drink the first time he hears it.

They meet with Kevan Lannister and Mace Tyrell on behalf of the boy king Tommen.

By the time the treaties are signed and sealed, Jon is itching to get back to Riverrun, though he forces himself to remember that Sansa is not as enthused with the betrothal as he would like. Jon is a means to an end for her, and though that should strike at his ego, he cannot bring himself to care. He is happy to be whatever she needs.

He is in love with her, he realizes.

They return to Riverrun and announce peace.

Then, it is the tedious process of pulling their men back and rebuilding, which takes longer than Jon had hoped. He had promised Sansa that they would return to Winterfell, but they cannot yet. Wyman Manderly is currently overseeing the repairs needed, and Robb must make sure things in the Riverlands are taken care of, too. 

One of the stipulations of peace was that the Lannisters and the South as a whole recognize the annulment of Tyrion and Sansa’s marriage, which they had agreed to without any hesitation.

And so Robb decides that if they are to be wed, they should do it in Riverrun, in front of a Septon, just to be sure.

“You’re alright with this?” Jon asks her the night before.

She turns to him with that blankly serene expression, and only says, “of course.”

The next bard who sings The Wolf’s Maid might get run through with Jon’s sword.

Robb thinks it is funny every time they hear it, but from the dark way Robb laughs at it, Jon can tell he still is not quite forgiven, though the peace negotiations had been more favorable than they were expecting, and none of the Northern lords seem to be taking the betrothal too poorly. Most are tired of war and ready to get back to their homes.

The song is a foolish thing, and somehow within the span of a few months, it has become even more ridiculous. Now, as the song tells it, the most beautiful Northern maid fell in love with a wolf, and he turned into a man because of her love, before the evil Lannisters stole her away.

Absolutely ridiculous, but if Jon were being honest with himself, that is not the reason he does not want to hear it. Every time the bards sing of the maid’s undying love for the wolf, an ache blooms in his chest. 

Sansa does not love him.

“I should like to do this again when we are back home,” Sansa whispers to him at their wedding feast. It is a raucous affair, celebrating not just their union, but the end of the war. He can barely hear her over the music and the din of voices. “In front of the heart tree.”

“I did not think you kept the old gods,” Jon says, though he is not opposed to the idea.

Sansa’s eyes drop to her plate, she picks up her fork and moves some of the uneaten roast boar around. “When I was in King’s Landing, I found myself praying to them more often than the Seven,” she admits.

“Alright. In Winterfell, we’ll do this again.”

They are interrupted by the cries and calls of the men for the bedding ceremony. Jon can see the way Sansa’s face pales.

“Robb,” he starts, turning to his cousin, but Sansa places a hand on his arm.

“We agreed to this,” she reminds him. They had - something to help placate any lords who might be displeased.

But that was before he saw the terror on Sansa’s face.

“I’m sure-”

“We agreed,” she repeats, her hand tightening on his arm in warning, and Jon’s mouth snaps shut, his teeth grinding.

“Uncle Edmure and Uncle Brynden will be with her,” Robb assures. Jon can see his hand white-knuckled around the stem of his wine cup. “They will keep her safe.”

And so Jon watches as Sansa is swept away, and he is grateful his sword is not at his hip, for he thinks he might be tempted to unsheathe it.

He has very little time to dwell on it, because suddenly he is being pulled out of his chair and led through the halls by a throng of women - many of them, of course, Freys - and they tear at his clothes, giggling and screeching with delight.

By the time he reaches the bedchamber and shuts himself inside, he is down to his breeches and smallclothes - and his breeches have been unlaced and torn, and are hanging precariously from his hips.

Sansa sits at a dressing table, brushing out her long auburn hair, and her eyes widen when she takes in the state of him. She looks more put together, some of her clothes folded onto a chair where she had clearly undressed further on her own, and it does not look as though she has been crying. Jon will have to thank Edmure and the Blackfish in the morning.

“It seems the ladies were quite eager,” Sansa observes, though Jon cannot read her tone.

“Aye,” is all Jon can manage. He is very aware of how undressed he is, especially compared to Sansa.

She gives him a half-hearted smile through the mirror, before her eyes lower. “I suppose I have stolen you from them. Trapped you in this marriage.”

Jon’s heart lurches, and he swallows thickly. “You have trapped me in nothing,” he says, and her eyes raise back to him through the mirror. “If you remember, I went quite willingly into this marriage.”

As she pointed out, he wants her. She must know that he was willing - eager, even - for this union. Guilt and humiliation sit heavy in his stomach. All she wanted was a life she chose, and now she must put up with him for the rest of it. And he? He is eager for it. He wonders if she knows how eager. He wonders if she pities him for it.

“We need not do anything tonight,” he forces himself to say, though his body protests, already half hard just at the sight of her. 

That makes her turn from the dressing table with a frown. “Would you have this marriage annulled?” she asks, setting the brush down and standing up. In the flickering firelight, he can see the outline of her body through the shift, the curves of her. It makes him dizzy with want.

“No,” he says. “Unless that is what you want.”

He will do whatever she wants. He cannot refuse her.

“Then I wish to consummate this marriage,” she says, walking over to him and standing in front of him, head held high. The only thing that gives away her nerves is the slight tremble of her hands that she tries to hide by clasping them together behind her back.

Jon is still gripping his breeches with one hand to keep them up, but his other lifts to brush his fingers along her chin. She sucks in a shallow breath as she closes her eyes and parts her lips and waits.

He wonders if The Wolf’s Maid is true, if there really is a beast inside him, because in this moment, he feels monstrous. Sansa does not want him, not truly, she only chose him out of desperation, and yet he knows he will not stop himself. Already he has not, already he has allowed the wedding to happen.

He kisses her, then, trying with all his might to make it soft, to make it the sort of kiss she would want. He wishes he had more experience in the matter, but though he has technically lain with a woman before, he remembers very little of it.

Sansa’s hands unclasp and come to rest on his shoulders, and she pushes up on her toes and kisses him back, which he thinks is a good sign. When she gives a soft little sigh into his mouth, he lets out a groan and loops his other arm around her waist.

What he had not remembered is that that hand was holding up his breeches. They fall to his feet, and he nearly trips over them as she begins to walk back towards the bed, pulling him with her.

He is already hard, his cock straining against his smallclothes, and he pulls back from the kiss and reaches for the tie to her shift. He waits until she gives a small nod before he begins unlacing it, and it falls to the floor just as his breeches had, leaving her bare except for her smallclothes and stockings.

“Gods, you’re beautiful,” he breathes, before he can help himself. The apples of her cheeks are flushed, but she does not try to cover herself. He pulls her to him, wants to feel her pressed up against him, and one hand smooths up her spine and-

He frowns. Pulls back and turns her around, though when she realizes what he is doing, she tries to fight.

It is too late, though - he sees the scarring along her back. Thin little marks, where the blades she was struck with must have landed wrong. His heady desire is undercut with fury, his vision going dark around the edges. He knew, she told him, and yet seeing it for himself…

“They are dead,” she whispers, and now she is covering herself, her arms crossed over her chest.

Joffrey is dead, yes, but Jon does not know about the others - Boros Blount and Meryn Trant. The man who brought Arya back, the Hound, had fled Riverrun after Sansa was returned, and they only learned after he was gone that he had nearly assaulted her during the Battle of Blackwater. All of them are still out there, somewhere, and Jon could hunt them down-

“Jon?”

He blinks back into focus, can see the uncertainty and fear in her face, and he wonders if his rage has scared her. “I’ll never let anyone touch you,” he vows. “No one will ever hurt you again.”

She looks at him, and then her arms lower and she says, “I know.”

He kisses her again, before bending down and wrapping his arms around her to hoist her up, and he walks her the rest of the way to the bed and sets her on it. She lays back as he rids himself of his smallclothes and climbs on after her. Her eyes are quite determinedly not looking at his cock.

Settling himself next to her, he kisses her again and lets his hand slide between her thighs. Her center is warm, but when he slips his fingers beneath her smallclothes, she is not very wet.

Jon is practically a green boy, but he has spent enough time in war camps to have heard that when women are wet between their legs, it is more pleasant for them. He also knows that this is not necessary for a man to enjoy it, but the idea of hurting her is unbearable. 

She must know that. She must know that he loves her, that he would do anything to make her happy. It is why she chose him, after all.

He does not quite know what he is doing, but he cannot harm her, and so he does the only thing he can think of - he kisses his way down her body, reveling in the softness of her skin, until he is at the apex of her thighs. Then he pulls her smallclothes off and parts her legs and settles between them.

“Jon, what are you-” she starts, but her words are cut off by a sharp gasp as he licks at her cunt to help get her wet.

Soon enough, he begins to notice that when he does certain things, her hips will buck, or her heels will dig into his back, or she will let out noises that drive him wild, and he focuses on those things. The little nub above her entrance, in particular, she seems to enjoy. When he sucks it into his mouth, her hands latch onto his hair and grip so tight he thinks she might pull it out.

He ignores his painfully hard cock, tries not to rock into the mattress beneath him, lest he spill too early.

At one point, he brings a hand up to test if she is ready, and he gently slides a finger inside her. To his delight, she is wetter than he could have hoped, and not all from his mouth. He wonders if he could make her peak like this, but he fears if he goes on any longer, he might spill like the green boy he is, and she will be upset with him for not getting to the consummation.

He kisses his way back up her body, to where she is panting and flushed, and when her eyes flutter open, she asks, “what was that? ”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “But it is better if you are wet.”

She blinks a few times, breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling as she gulps in air. “Oh,” she says, “my mother gave me an oil for that.”

“Oh.” He feels stupid now, and he follows her gaze to the table beside the bed, where a bottle of oil he had not noticed rests. “Right.” He reaches out for it, because he figures he cannot be too careful. The oil is cool, and he bites back a hiss as he spreads it over himself, though it warms quickly. When he is done, he wipes his hand awkwardly on the side of the mattress.

Then he lowers himself back between her legs and captures her lips in a kiss. With one hand, he lines himself up, and thrusts in.

When she tenses up and cries out, he realizes his mistake.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, as pleasure courses down his spine. He nearly comes on the spot at the feel of her, tight and slick and hot around him. “Sansa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbles, unable to concentrate on the words because all of his focus is on not thrusting into her again, not simply taking what he wants like the animal he is. All of his willpower, a lifetime of denial.

“It’s alright,” she finally says, and when he dares to look at her, there are tears caught on her eyelashes.

They breathe together as her body adjusts, and he presses kisses to her mouth, her cheek, the hinge of her jaw, whispering apologies as he goes. Only when her legs wrap around his waist does he begin to move again, slowly and carefully. He does not think she takes the pleasure in it that he does, but any guilt he feels is quickly swept away, lost in the rushing swell that begins at the base of his spine.

He does not last very long, spilling inside her and collapsing on top of her. He rolls off as quickly as he can, feeling more wrecked than any battle has ever left him, though he’s sure that is not actually true. He cannot remember any battles, not with the way she has wiped his mind blissfully clear.

Here, in her bed, for the moment, the atrocities of war do not exist.

“So that was good?” she asks, and he blinks out of his daze at the teasing lilt of her voice. When he looks at her, she is trying to bite back a smile.

“Aye,” he agrees, too tired to try and salvage his dignity.

She rolls over and buries her face into his neck, her breasts pressed flat against his side. “I am glad it was you,” she whispers.

“Even though I hurt you?” he asks, swallowing around the lump of guilt in his throat. He had promised that no one would hurt her, then broken that promise mere minutes later.

“It was not so bad,” she argues. “I was mostly surprised.”

With her curled up against his side, he decides that he is happy, and hopes she is the same. He will treat her as best he can, be the best husband he can. He will protect her with his life.

He will love her so deeply that perhaps he will not notice that she does not love him back.

“So Sansa gets to pick her husband, but I do not?” Arya fumes.

“I already promised you to a Frey,” Robb sighs, his forehead in his hand, elbow propped up on the arm of his chair.

“That Frey is dead,” Arya argues. “It’s not fair.”

“She is right,” Sansa agrees, her eyes never leaving her embroidery, and Robb lets out a groan and leans back in his chair.

“Gods, how did father ever deal with the two of you?”

Jon does not point out that they were usually arguing back when Uncle Ned was alive. He thinks that was likely easier than dealing with the sisters as a united front.

“Fine. I’ll handle things with Walder,” Robb grumbles. “Lucky for you, there were hints in those letters we found in Roose Bolton’s things that indicate he may have approached the Freys with his treason. I can use that.”

“Good,” Arya nods, and the matter seems to be settled.

Sansa does not bar him from her bed after the consummation of their marriage, but still he tries his best not to touch her. On the third night, she rolls over and asks, “did I not please you?”

“What?” Jon chokes. 

She sighs. “If you are afraid of hurting me again, do not be. Mother says the first time is the worst, and that is over. You will be better next time.”

Jon is not so sure. “I want it to be good for you,” he admits. “Like it is for me.”

To his surprise, her face flushes red. “You could try that thing again,” she suggests, her voice so low and timid, he almost does not recognize it. Sansa may be soft spoken, but he would hardly call her timid.

“The thing?” he asks, but then it dawns on him. “With my mouth?”

She nods, and Jon feels something triumphant bloom in his chest. She had enjoyed that.

He will make her enjoy it again.

With enthusiasm, he slides off the bed, onto his knees, and pulls her towards him until her bottom is barely on the mattress, and she lets out an undignified squeak as he throws her legs over his shoulders. This position will work better, he thinks.

Not that he has been thinking of this.

He will never admit that the reason Donnel Locke was able to best him in the training yard this morning was because he was thinking of the way his new wife tasted, and if he could ever taste it again.

He buries his face between her thighs, uses his teeth and lips and tongue, listens to her moans and sighs, the way she grips and tugs at his hair, the way her hips roll against him.

She peaks on his tongue with his name on her lips.

They travel back to Winterfell.

Things are different than Jon remembers, the scars from the Ironborn and Ramsay’s men unable to be fully removed. It will take time for it to heal.

The most jarring part is the people who are gone. Men and women that Jon grew up with, dead or missing. The first night they are back, Sansa curls up into a ball in their bed and Jon tries his best to hold her, because he does not know what else to do.

With Roose Bolton at the Wall and his sons both dead, House Bolton is extinguished.

“It’s about time,” Maege Mormont snorts. “They’ve been nothing but a thorn in the Stark’s side since the days of the first men.”

“The question is,” Robb says, looking around at the assembled council, “what do we do with the lands?”

There is an outburst of voices, but it is Maege’s that booms over the others. “It seems clear to me,” the she-bear says, looking around the room, her eyes landing on Jon. “We have an empty castle, and a lord in need of one.”

The eyes of the entire council turn on him, and Jon’s heart leaps into his throat.

Jon visits the Dreadfort. His new home.

The fortress is an ugly thing, and all Jon can think when he first glimpses it on the horizon is that Sansa will hate it. She wanted to stay in the North, but surely this cannot be what she truly wants. Sansa is made for better things, for beauty and softness.

Inside, it is even worse. The great hall is dark, and torches are held in the grasp of what Jon thinks are actual human hands, the bones wired together. He is shown torture chambers, kennels filled with ravenous hounds, walls covered in flayed human skins.

No, he will not bring Sansa here.

Jon turns to Dorren, and says, “we have work to do.”

He returns to Winterfell while the Dreadfort undergoes renovations.

“We’ll rename it, too,” he decides. He already has Robb’s approval for that. “Not sure what, though.”

“It is yours to name whatever you want,” Sansa hums as they lay in bed.

He is getting better at pleasing her, and not just with his mouth; he thinks she has come to enjoy their coupling, as well. She is very good at giving direction, and he has found a spot inside her that if he angles just right, makes her lose all sense.

“I suppose.”

It is still difficult to wrap his head around that he is a lord, with lands and a title and a lady wife. He still feels like a lowly bastard boy, and some day, Robb will find him in bed with Sansa and ask what he thinks he is doing and finally take his head for treason.

“The castle of the White Wolf,” Sansa grins, propping her chin on her hand, which rests on his chest. She knows it makes him uncomfortable when people refer to him as that, and she likes to tease him with it as often as she can.

“None of that,” he grumbles, which only makes her grin widen. 

He should know better than to argue with her, and he is proven right when she begins to hum the opening strains of The Wolf’s Maid.

He lets out a growl and flips her over onto her back, and her song is interrupted with a delighted squeal.

A raven arrives with news that Cersei Lannister is dead.

That night, Sansa sits quietly in their bed, a lock of her hair twisted around her finger, her book forgotten. “It was not natural,” she finally says, her eyes distant. “Or an accident.”

“You think someone killed her?” Jon asks, sitting up and setting aside his own book.

“The Tyrells poisoned Joffrey,” she says, twisting, twisting, twisting at her hair, until her finger is pale white and bloodless. Jon reaches over and takes her hand in his, unravels it, watches the blood flush back in.

“Are you sad?”

She looks at him. “I do not know how I feel. She was horrible, Jon. She was a miserable woman, but… I saw what King Robert was like, too. Sometimes I wonder, if all this had not happened, if I had married Joffrey, would I have ended up as bitter and hateful as her?”

“No,” Jon says, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing her finger, where the indentations from her hair still linger. “Never.”

She gives him an indulgent smile, as if she is not so sure. “She did teach me one thing that I am grateful for,” she admits, and Jon raises a brow in question. “She taught me that a woman’s best weapon is between her legs.”

Jon frowns at that, unsure how to feel about the words. “I don’t believe that’s true,” he says.

There is another smile, and she reaches out and traces her fingertips along the scar in his brow, as she often does. “But it gave me you. I used what was between my legs to trap you into marriage.”

A sigh escapes him. “How many times do I have to tell you, you did not trap me?”

Her eyes fill with tears, then, and she whispers, “once more. Tell me one more time.”

Progress on Whitewolf Hall is slow, and Jon refuses to allow Sansa there until all the horrors have been removed. Luckily, Robb is in agreement with this, and has allowed them to stay indefinitely. To Jon's surprise, though, the longer they stay, the more he begins to feel like a stranger in Winterfell. Every time he visits Whitewolf Hall, every time he makes a decision with the thought of, Sansa will like that, he leaves a bit of himself behind.

He just hopes Sansa will feel the same, once they move into their new home for good.

It is perhaps two months later when a messenger arrives, with word that Lady Allyria Dayne and her nephew, Edric Dayne, wish to meet with the new King in the North.

For days before they arrive, Jon is a mess.

It is embarrassing, the way his hands shake the morning of their arrival. He hates that Sansa sees it. He knows she does, because she takes one of his hands in hers and holds it as they wait in the yard.

Robb greets the travelers and welcomes them to Winterfell. Jon tries not to stare at the woman, dark and beautiful. Tries not to wonder if his mother looked like her.

“I can see it in your eyes sometimes,” Sansa whispers to him as they wait for Roslin to finish greeting the guests. “The violet.”

“My eyes are grey.”

She regards him, her head tilted to the side. “Not always,” she says. “Not when the light hits them just right.”

Jon blinks, because he does not know when Sansa studied his eyes close enough to notice. It should not send his heart racing like it does.

When Lady Allyria steps in front of him, Jon finds he can barely speak. “This is my wife,” he says, instead of any proper introduction. “Sansa Stark. Lady Sansa.”

Lady Allyria’s mouth twitches into a soft smile, her eyes roving his face. “You look like him,” she says, and Jon nearly reels back, as if he has taken a blow to the chest. He has been told this before, but it sounds different coming from someone who is not Uncle Ned.

“It is lovely to meet you,” Sansa steps forward when Jon’s mouth fails him, and she and Lady Allyria exchange pleasantries.

“Should we head inside?” Robb offers, watching the interaction with a furrowed brow. “Arya, why don’t you show Lord Edric around.”

Arya scowls at the command, eyes up the young lord, then lets out a sigh. “Fine,” she grouses. “Come on.”

Instead of looking offended, Edric Dayne appears pleased by this, and follows Arya.

Jon is left alone with Lady Allyria.

They sit in the great hall at a table by themselves. After a painfully awkward silence, she reaches forward and takes his hand.

“I held you,” she says. “When you were just a babe. You were so small and wrinkly.”

Jon tries to laugh, but it gets caught in his throat. He knows he should make small talk, it would be polite, but he cannot. “What was she like?”

“Beautiful,” Lady Allyria laughs, a faraway look in her eyes. “So, so beautiful. Men fell in love with her wherever she went. But she was sad, too. I never knew why she was always so sad. I do not think she even knew.” There is silence for a while, where Jon does not know what to say. Eventually, Lady Allyria continues. “She did love you. I know it must not feel that way, because she left you, but she did. The world was too much for her, after your father died, then our brother. She could not bear it any longer.”

To his horror, Jon feels a stinging behind his eyes, a clenching in his throat. He wants to run from the room, but Lady Allyria is still holding his hand.

“I was not prepared to raise a child,” she says, her voice wavering. “And I confess, I was afraid of what people would say. I was afraid of the gossip and the rumors, when there were already so many. I did not know how Robert Baratheon would feel about a child with Dayne blood. I thought you would be safer hidden with your uncle.”

Jon nods, trying to look away from her, as if that will stop the tears he can now feel pricking at his eyes.

“I thought of you all the time,” she whispers, her hand tightening in his.

Jon squeezes his eyes shut.

Later, Lady Allyria leaves and fetches Sansa.

He does not want to see Sansa, not with his eyes feeling hot and swollen. She sits next to him and does not speak.

It is only when he rubs at his eyes for the tenth time that she sighs and pulls his hand away. 

“If you are trying to get rid of the evidence, rubbing them will only make it worse.” She turns and reaches for the pitcher of water that had been brought for him and Lady Allyria, and she dips one of her handkerchiefs into it and presses the cool cloth against his eye. “This will make it look less red and puffy.”

He grunts his thanks, which makes her smile. 

“I learned all sorts of tricks in King’s Landing,” she says. “I never wanted them to know they had made me cry. Some days, I was better at it than others.

She continues like that, dipping the cloth into water, pressing it to his eye. Repeating the step with the other eye when the cloth gets too warm. After a while, she seems to think it has worked, because she stops.

“I was supposed to go to the Wall.”

Her head tilts, her brows furrowing. “I remember you mentioning it once.”

“I was going to go. I had talked to Uncle Benjen, I made plans. You and Arya and Uncle Ned were going south, and I thought there was no room for me anymore.”

Beneath the table, her hand slides into his.

“Uncle Ned made me promise to wait a year.”

One year. At the time, it had felt like a punishment, like Uncle Ned was putting his life on hold, when Jon was itching for it to start.

Instead, that year gave him a title, lands, a lady wife. It gave him his mother.

That year gave him a life he never thought he could have.

Dorren greets them as they enter the gates of Whitewolf Hall.

The castle has been transformed - or, as transformed as it can be in such a short amount of time. Gone are the Bolton banners, the heads on spikes, the bodies hanging from the walls. Gone are the skins and the bones and the smoke-filled rooms. The servants are washed and fed. They look human, rather than walking corpses. 

Even the hounds have quieted. Jon knows he likely should have put them down, for they were half feral, but he could not bring himself to. He hopes Ghost’s presence will quell any remaining aggression in them.

“Is it alright?” he asks, as Sansa looks around the bedchamber. Well, it is her bedchamber. He has his own, but he was less concerned with its decoration than hers. He has filled hers with Stark grey and Tully blue.

“It’s lovely,” she tells him. “Though I fear I will not be spending much time in here.”

Jon feels his face heat, for there are servants moving about, airing out the rooms.

His own rooms are more sparsely decorated, though he tells her she can make whatever changes she wants with them. With the whole castle.

Whatever she wants, he will give it to her.

He is sitting by the fire, writing a report for Robb. The numbers on the page begin to blur, and he sits back in his chair and rubs at his eyes. Next to him, Sansa watches him, her embroidery sitting forgotten in her lap.

“What is it?” Jon asks, wiping at his mouth. He had eaten his dinner with very little attention, his eyes on the ledgers. Perhaps there is something on his face?

She sets her embroidery aside and stands, moving to his chair, and she places a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back, until he is reclined in it. Then, with a delicate, ladylike pinch of her skirts, she lifts them, before climbing onto his lap in a very un-ladylike manner. 

Jon drops his quill, the report forgotten.

She wraps her arms around his neck, and Jon is reminded of the night she snuck into his room at Riverrun. This time, though, when she kisses him, it is not awkward or fumbling. It is practiced, her lips and her mouth and her tongue all familiar to him. Her body is familiar to him, even the new swell to her belly. They have done this a thousand times. He has lost count.

She pulls back, but her arms remain around him.

“I love you,” she whispers into the air between them. 

It knocks the breath from his lungs.

After what feels like a lifetime, he can speak again, and he says, “I love you, too.”

“Oh, good,” she says, mouth stretching into a grin. “That works out quite well, then.”

She knew. She knew he loved her, she must have known all this time, though he has not said it aloud. He had not wanted her to feel obligated to say it back.

She kisses him again and his hands land on her waist, his thumbs smoothing over the curve of her belly.

“I love you,” he whispers again. “I have always loved you.”

“I know,” she admits. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“It does not matter,” he breathes, kissing her again, unable to stop.

It does not matter how they got here, just that they did.

On their next visit to Winterfell, they fight the entire leadup to it, and most of the trip.

“Maester Henly says I am perfectly capable of travel,” Sansa huffs, arms crossed above her swollen belly. “Soon I will have to start my confinement, and then it will be hard traveling with a babe. I would like to see my family again before that.”

Jon relents, only because he can never truly say no to her, and so they make the journey from Whitewolf Hall to Winterfell. It takes a full twelve days, because the carriage makes Sansa queasy, and they must stop often. Jon tries not to look smug when this happens, but he thinks he fails more often than he succeeds.

They reach Winterfell at last, both in sour moods.

It is good to see his cousins again, though, and he embraces Robb, and says hello to Roslin, who holds a babe in her arms.

“Gods, but he’s grown big,” Jon says, allowing the child to grip his finger tight, though he pulls back when little Eddard tries to put it in his mouth. 

Later that evening, after a celebratory dinner where Sansa was plied with lemon cakes, she is in a better mood, and so is he - except for the fact that Robb had summoned a bard and made him play The Wolf's Maid at least three times.

As they head back to their guest chambers, she takes his hand and begins leading him in a different direction; out into the night, into the godswood. She stops in front of the weirwood, the carved face with its blood red eyes.

“What are we doing?” Jon asks. Neither of them are dressed for the chilled night air.

“Getting married.”

“Pretty sure we already are.”

She gives a roll of her eyes and says, “in Riverrun, we said we would have one here, but we never did.”

No, in all the disarray of rebuilding and reconstruction, it had been forgotten.

Jon looks around, but they are alone. “There is no one here to give you away.”

She lets go of his hand and walks to the entrance of the godswood, and calls out, “I shall give myself away.”

Then, slowly and steadily, she walks back to him. “I am Sansa of House Stark, giving myself away,” she says.

Jon’s heart is beating heavily in his chest. He does not know why, they are already married. “I am Jon of House Stark of Whitewolf Hall.”

“I take this man,” she says. 

His heart has surely never been this loud.

“I take this woman,” he repeats, following her lead.

“We must kneel,” she whispers, and then they both sink to their knees, with him steadying her. She bows her head, and he does the same.

Then it is a struggle to help her back to her feet, and she giggles the entire time as he hauls her up, her belly making her unwieldy and off balance. It does not help that she has begun to laugh so hard, she is barely helping. 

“I don’t have a cloak,” he grumbles when she is finally righted, and so he does the next best thing and unbuttons his doublet and settles it around her shoulders.

She grins up at him and says, “husband.”

“Wife.”

Then he kisses her, as he has a thousand times before.