Hi Jonsas, thank you so much for your active participation in the Jonsa Halloween 2025 event. Kudos to everyone who submitted their entries and also to all those who reblogged/commented on their work to show support. Truly appreciated 👏
Chapter 3: Blood, Costumes & the Beast @jonsa-halloween
Sorry for the late entry!
Sansa had stared out at the Haunted Forest until her eyes felt like sandpaper. She did not see the blinking red she had seen the night before, but she thought she saw something. A shadow even darker than the black of the forest running between the trees. She knew if she mentioned it to any of her siblings, they would just say the same as they had when she’d seen the eyes: a wolf, a moose, a bear. Nothing to be worried about.
It’s not like monsters and beasts were real, after all.
In the grey light of morning though, Sansa saw something else covering the golden leaves just beyond the windows.
Blood.
Blood, and carcasses.
Squirrels and rabbits in a pile just feet from where she stood.
“Robb!” Sansa cried, stumbling away from the glass. “Robb!”
Robb sprinted in beside her, nearly barreling into the glass.
“What the hell?” He wrapped a hand around her wrist, pulling her back.
“It’s weird, right? Like, that’s not normal?”
“One or two maybe…”
Her other two siblings rushed into the sunroom then.
“The fuck?”
“This is an animal, right?” Sansa asked, letting them all push in front of her, closer to the window. Letting herself hide behind them. “It’s not some locals playing some super disturbing prank?”
“Probably…”
“It’s kinda weird that they’re piled like that though,” Robb said. “And that they don’t look that eaten.”
Sansa hadn’t even considered that. Hadn’t looked closely enough for that thought to occur to her. She had hoped that her siblings would all just say yeah, it’s probably a wolf, and reassure her.
She didn’t like that they seemed as on edge as she did.
“I mean, the fauna up here developed differently than anything south of the Wall. Consider all the megafauna that still exists here. Winterfell’s wildlife has more in common with the midlands than it does anything from up here. Maybe the wolves up here let their prey decompose for a day before they eat.”
Sansa was glad that hers was not the only head that whipped toward Bran.
“What?”
“It’s as a likely explanation as anything else. Maybe we can ask somebody tonight. Jon said he’d bring a few friends,” Arya shrugged.
“I’ll get some gloves. Take care of it before the party,” Robb offered, and that action plan was enough to send Arya and Bran into the kitchen before Robb asked anyone for help.
Leaving Sansa alone in the room that she was suddenly realizing was way too much made of glass, facing the heap of dead woodland creatures and the trails of blood that led from the Haunted Forest straight to where she stood.
-
After breakfast and coffee, after showering, and after Robb had cleaned everything, even the leaves, the sight Sansa had woken up to felt more like a dream after watching a horror movie than anything. Nothing about it felt real. Not compared to the tangible ordeal of getting the cabin ready for the party.
Arya had tasked Sansa with preparing the punch, hanging fake cobwebs in all the doorways, and switching out lightbulbs with artificial flames.
Sansa’s mind focused so heavily on making the house as creepy as Arya desired and then getting her costume ready that she forgot all about the sight she had woken to.
In all honesty, Sansa had not trusted Arya’s pick yesterday, even with how she explained it was practically a witch, just more ancient. The only reason Sansa went with it was because she couldn’t remember the last time she and Arya had bonded over clothing.
But, staring at the dress now, with her hair and makeup done, Sansa understood the vision.
It had been ugly in the thrift store, ugly and dated.
The dress was a crushed velvet spaghetti strap with a high slit. Yesterday, with the fluorescents, Sansa thought the color was garish, something between a mustard green and a khaki yellow. With it hanging against the glass, the forest a backdrop, she realized it was chartreuse. That specific autumnal shade of a golden leaf still clinging desperately to the green of summer.
And with Arya’s help with her hair—having braided in tiny sections last night so it was large and wild this morning after being brushed out—and the theatrical brown eyeshadow, dramatic contouring, Sansa clearly got the look Arya had tried to pitch to her in the thrift store yesterday.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The Red Woman asked Sansa what she was willing to give up to bring him back.
She may as well have asked her what she would give up to see her home again–to gaze upon her father's solemn eyes or her sister's smile once more, to smell the first cold frost in the air from within Winterfell’s walls, to feel safe again.
So Sansa answered honestly. “Anything. Everything. If it will bring Jon back, tell me the price and I will gladly pay it.”
Jon has witch's blood but has never felt connected to his magic, choosing to chase his studies instead.
Sansa is a vampire, lonely and searching for new answers in an old manuscript that has been missing for centuries.
~
An altered, shortened version of A Discovery of Witches for Jonsa Halloween 2025.
Jon has witch's blood but has never felt connected to his magic, choosing to chase his studies instead.
Sansa is a vampire, lonely and searching for new answers in an old manuscript that has been missing for centuries.
~
An altered, shortened version of A Discovery of Witches for Jonsa Halloween 2025.
My day late entry for @jonsa-halloween event day 3: costume is on ao3 now!
Preview:
“Small world.”
“Sure is,” Jon remarks, something unreadable in his gaze.
Or she tries not to read into it, at least.
“I like your costume,” Jon tells her. “Little Red,” he says, his eyes flicking down and up again. She feels herself flush and swallows.
“Yours too,” Sansa says.
He looks at himself and shrugs. “It’s not much.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten this if not for Jeyne insisting I should.”
Jon bites his lip contemplatively before taking a gulp of his own drink. “Jeyne was right,” he mutters the words like they were pulled from him, eyes heated when they meet hers.
---
Sansa unexpectedly meets her brother Jon at a Halloween party on campus. A bit of a prequel to "Hot Days in Winterfell"
Hi! I was really looking forward to participating in this, but I forgot. Could you possibly keep the collection on AO3 for a few more days? I know it's a lot to ask and I understand it might not be possible. Thanks anyway. ❤️🩹
Hey, we are not going to close the collection. So you can still add your work to it whenever you are done.
We will be posting event masterlist on tumblr over next weekend so it's possible that your fic may not get added in that if its not posted before. But ao3 collection will still be open 😊
She had stayed in the sunroom all night, but it took an hour of hiding under her blanket and periodically checking to see if they eyes were still there before she fell asleep.
The eyes had vanished sometime after she had scrambled back into bed and yanked the covers over her head. By the time she had poked her head out the first time, they were gone.
Because the room was mostly windows, she woke with the sunrise, far earlier than she would’ve liked given how long it had taken for her to get to sleep.
Coffee. Liters of coffee, she thought, stumbling from the daybed.
She spared one glance into the forest.
With the rising sun, it was pretty, she had to admit. Frost covered the naked tree branches, as though they were encased in crystal. The ground was covered in leaves of crimson and amber and bronze, not yet browned and soggy. Mist swirled between the trees, almost making her believe it was some sort of magical fantasy land.
Not somewhere where red eyes glowed six, seven feet in the air in the middle of the night.
A part of her had hoped to see a birdfeeder, some racoon trap, that would’ve explained the red she’d seen.
The trees were empty though, and a part of Sansa wondered if maybe she hadn’t imagined it.
-
It was an hour or so later that everyone else woke up. Sansa was on her second cup of coffee and used the fact that she’d made the coffee before everyone else was up as an excuse to not make breakfast.
Bran volunteered instead—probably still feeling bad about the gas station, Arya scaring her—and left Sansa and the other two sitting around the living room.
“How’d you end up in that back room? I got up to pee in the middle of the night and your bunk was empty,” Arya asked.
“It was too bright. Needed some place darker.”
“Surprised you could sleep with all those windows. Didn’t freak you out?”
Sansa paused, ceramic mug pressed to her lip. Did she tell them?
“I…I think I saw something, in the woods. Looked like eyes.”
“Like a racoon?”
“Or a bear?”
A bear, she thought. If it was standing on its hind legs…
“Maybe? Would a bear come that close to a house?”
Would it have red eyes?
“Dunno. Maybe. I mean, what else could it be?”
Monster, Sansa thought again.
“A moose?” Bran suggested.
“A wolf?” Arya added. Then she grinned. “A werewolf?”
Down South the leaves would have barely begun to brown, but here in the North they’re red, golden, falling by the hundreds. When he’d awakened that morning there was frost on the grass.
He’d expected a few more weeks to find a job. Now, he wasn’t entirely certain what he’d be doing or how’d he survive. There was a field of pumpkins he passed yesterday, and he was so dadgum hungry, he’d nearly tried to eat one, only he figured it might be worse to be sick than hungry.
He ducked between some barbed wire fencing to step onto the road. He’d try to find a town and see if there was an odd job or two he could take. He’d just reached a field of shriveled corn stalks when a raven caw-cawed from a tree, startling a flock of crows form the fields to the skies. Their wings beating against it as if they’d like to tear it down around his ears.
He lifted his worn cowboy hat and tried to see the danged bird, and could only blame himself when it swooped down at him. Flapping his hat at it didn’t dissuade it none. It kept squabbling even as Jon trudged on. Never particularly cared for birds. He scratched at the thick scars slashed through his eyebrow. Nope, hadn’t any use for ‘em at all. His eye caught a flash of red, auburn hair, on a boy sitting in a motionless rocking chair.
He’d assumed the dilapidated house was abandoned, but there was the boy, eyes intently watching him. By the looks of it, they had nothing to spare themselves, who ever lived there, but it had beens days since he’d eaten and who knew how long ‘til he found a town.
“Hiya!” He shouted more friendly than he felt.
The boy did not speak, merely sat somber and still as a judge.
Suddenly, from around the corner of the house a little girl ran to stand between him and the porch, her small hands on her hips. “We don’t take to strangers, you can go on and git!”
There was motion in the house too, a woman just behind the dented screen on the door. “Go back to the chickens, Arya. Collect the eggs for breakfast.”
Arya must be the girl, the girl who obviously never did anything she didn’t want as she stomped up the steps and plopped herself down. No intention of heeding a command.
He hesitated, the mention of breakfast couldn’t be ignored. “Ma’m, ain’t want no trouble, but I thought you might have a chore I could handle for ya. In exchange for an egg or two.”
“You didn’t come because of the advertisement?”
“No’m, can’t say as I’ve seen a paper anytime recent.”
The woman stepped out onto the porch, and if he wasn’t so preoccupied with the sick sensation in his stomach and his aching, cold feet, he might have been a little lost in the brilliant blue of her eyes. Kind eyes. She looked at him as if he weren’t no trouble, when for as long as he could recall, that’s all he’d ever been.
He fumbled quickly for his hat and clasped it to his chest, waited. He could smell something awful good coming from the kitchen, coffee too.
“As it happens,” the beauty said after one long moment of silent consideration, “I do have something you could help me with.”
“I killed a man” the little girl blurted out. She had pulled a knife from the pocket of her overalls and instead of whittling, she balanced it perfectly on her finger. “Didn’t like the way he looked at my sister.”
“You hush. Don’t mind her. She’s just a child. You know how they can be.”
“Can’t say I do.“
“What’s your name?” Asked Arya.
“Jon.”
“What’s the whole name?” She insisted, now tossing her knife between her hands.
“Ain’t got another. Only the one.” He shifted his feet.
“In the North we call bastards Snow.” She offered helpfully.
“You can call me that iffen you want.”
At last he was rescued by the lady with the kind eyes and gentle voice.
“We’ll call you Jon. No need to stand on formalities. Bran,” she indicated the boy. Must be her brother he figured, she wasn’t old enough to be his mother.
“Arya.”
The small girl, well, it may have been a smile, but he rather thought it resembled a grimace, no, ain’t that neither. An animal bearing his fangs, a dog, no, a wolf.
“—and I’m Sansa.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Jon blurted out without thinking. Then blushed. He never complimented a girl in his life before. Bein’ ‘lone in the woods had him acting peculiar ‘round folks. Must be that.
Arya guffawed, went off in over exaggerated whoops, and left him to his recriminations. Making a fool of himself had one benefit then. The little one no longer thought him a threat.
Sansa blushed prettily at his words. He bet she did just about everything pretty. His heart beat rapidly against his chest. Must be not havin’ eaten fer so long.
“Come and have breakfast. Eat first, then I’ll—well, I’ll explain.”
She disappeared into the house, and Jon aimed to follow, took the steps in one long stride, but the boy, Bran, silently proffered a newspaper. Jon hesitated then took it, thinking to find the ad Sansa had mentioned.
As he scanned the inked pages, wings beat the air and his raven friend from the road abruptly settled on the back of Bran’s chair, rocking it to and fro in a slow, ominous rhythm.
The bird made a low trill deep in his throat.
Bran never took his eyes off him.
Jon traced his finger down the print searching for anything that might possibly be what Sansa had referred to, until there, buried deep in the wanted section in tiny type, it said, clear as day, although he blinked a few times to make sure he didn’t imagine the words:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Last one for @jonsa-halloween this year! Went with Blood for my prompt.
Blood.
So much blood Sansa is sure it will stain her trembling hands forevermore. One patient to the next and she saves only half—the rest bleeding out or succumbing to other injuries. The Long Night is over; the Night King has evidently fallen. But her work is far from over.
The hands of a mage are always in demand after a war.
--
Or;
Jon bleeds. Sansa heals.
Thank you so much to the hosts for running this event, I've had such fun participating the last few years and seeing what everyone else creates! Happy Hallowe'en!!
