Jon x Sansa - AU where Sansa is born the bastard of Littlefinger and raised in Kingslanding. When she travels to Winterfell with king Robert’s procession she meets the Stark bastard: long faced and grey eyed Jon Snow who she finds herself strangely drawn to / AO3 Link
Photo Credit: Sophie Starke
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Down one of Winterfell’s dozens of old stone halls Sansa walks as outside the howl of a direwolf fills the air. The sound had woken Sansa that morning; too distant to hear, but she’d felt it somehow, a raw keening that clenched a fist of dread in her gut as she dressed and combed her hair and slipped out of her tent into the grey morning air.
Jon’s door is simple oak, the latch undone, but still Sansa pauses outside of it a long moment, chewing her lip. Despite her week at Winterfell she’s never once seen his room, and now...
Carefully, Sansa places a hand on the oak and pushes it open, slipping into a small and square room with a simple cot against one wall. On the edge of the cot Jon sits staring at his feet, Ghost beside him. The direwolf’s red eyes latch onto Sansa as she closes the door behind her and leans back against it, hands still clasped on the latch behind her.
“Jon?” She asks hesitantly, voice breaking the silence of the room. “I heard what happened.”
Jon shakes his head, not looking up from his feet. “It doesn’t make sense.” His voice is hollow. “Bran never falls.”
Sansa’s throat tightens. Perhaps a dozen words she’s spoken to Bran, but he’d been bright and shy each time, and the sight of Jon sitting dull eyed at the edge of his bed tears at Sansa, peels away something raw in her chest. “I’m so sorry,” she blurts, “truly, Jon, I am.”
Jon looks up at her finally, his normally piercing eyes clouded. “Maester Luwin says he may never wake.”
“He will.” Sansa swallows and crosses to the cot. She takes a seat beside Jon on the bed and tries to give him as reassuring a smile as she can dredge up. “He will, and when he does you’ll be there to see him.”
“I won’t though.” Jon shakes his head, voice small. “I’ll be at the Wall by then. And I won’t even have said farewell. Lady Stark hasn’t left his side since he fell, and I-” Jon’s voice catches and he looks away, angrily blinking back the tears pricking his eyes, face flushed with shame. “I’m a coward.”
“You’re not.” Sansa bites her lip. She reaches down and takes his hand, threads her fingers through his, and squeezes gently. “Don’t ever say that, Jon. Bran will wake, and when he does you’ll see him again.”
“Sansa-” Jon starts, then stops and swallows. He looks down at her fingers threaded through his, then up at her, eyes apprehensive. “You don’t have to stay.”
“But I will.” Her heart thuds loud in her ears as Sansa gazes back at him, very aware of how close they are: of the rise and fall of her chest, the dark of Jon’s hair and grey of his eyes and part of his lips, of how easy it would be to lean forward and kiss him just as she almost had the day before. You want him . The thought is strange, foreign, but so obvious Sansa feels a fool for not realizing it before. She looks down at their hands laced together, her heart in her throat. Is this what it’s like to want instead of just be wanted? “I’ll wait with you, Jon.”
Jon’s fingers whisper against her cheek as he cups it in his palm and raises her gaze to meet his again, eyes grey and somehow unimaginably fierce as he studies her face, fierce as though she is all there is in the world. “Thank you.”
All Sansa can do is nod, caught in his gaze, her mouth dry. Would it be so wrong? To kiss him, to give into what she wants, give into the heat and desperate ache in her? You could have it all. Petyr’s voice is a whisper, soft and sibilant. Not just him, but all of it, all we’ve worked for. It would be simple, wouldn’t it? You’ve done so well with him already. Let him do as he likes with you, take comfort in you, spill his seed in you. He will marry you for that: a son of the honorable Lord Stark, even a bastard, will do no less, and he has already said he will father no bastards.
Jon’s eyes flick from her eyes to her lips. Hesitantly, he leans towards her, his lips brushing hers feather-soft in a tentative kiss that nonetheless fills Sansa with something she cannot describe, coils the heat in her stomach and make her chest feel tight. And before she can stop herself she’s kissing him back, forehead pressed to his as she pulls a moan from low in his throat out through his lips. He slips his free hand to her other cheek, cupping her face as he firms and deepens the kiss in a way that flares the heat in Sansa’s stomach up through her chest and limbs until she’s flushed and aflame from her fingers to her toes.
Would it really be so wrong? Sansa pleads with herself silently. He wants you too, he does. Not just as some giggling serving girl to be used and tossed aside, not just some slender maid to be bedded and bragged of, not just some bastard girl, but you. You.
The knowledge shivers Sansa’s skin like a living thing, and she presses herself to Jon as if doing so can somehow contain it, can ease the ache in her chest that pleads for his hands to fit to the curve of her ribs and small of her back and warmth of her skin. But instead Jon slides one of his hands to tangle in her hair, fingertips pressing firm against her scalp as he draws her to him, and somehow that’s so much better, takes her breath away and makes her tangle her fingers in his shirt, makes her moan low in her throat, makes-
Let it happen, sweetling. It will be over soon. You’re doing him a kindness.
It hurts like a physical thing, like ripping the scab from a wound, but Sansa jerks her head to the side and tears her lips from Jon’s, forehead still pressed to his as she squeezes her eyes shut and takes a long shuddering breath.
“I didn’t mean to-” Jon’s voice is hoarse. “I’m sorry I-”
“Don’t be.” Sansa shakes her head, forehead rocking against his, eyes screwed shut. She runs a hand through the back of his hair, locks soft between her fingers, just the feel of them flushing heat through her anew. She shakes her head again. “Don’t be sorry, Jon. I’m not.”
For a long moment they sit: just as they had the day before, close and apart, Sansa’s breath evening and the heat in her slowly slipping away to leave a yawning, aching hole in its place.
It hurts all over again to draw back from Jon, to meet his sad eyes and try to smile. She’s always been so good at smiling: at hiding behind the curve of lips that always tempts men somehow, but the only one she has it in her now is small and sad. There is so much more she wants to say. So much more she wishes she could tell him. So much more she longs for. But she can’t. Not with the hole gaping inside her at the thought of never seeing him again.
Gently, she slips her hand from his and rises, turns and crosses to the door without looking back.
If she does she will be lost.
---
The next few days dawn cold and gray, the howl of the direwolves faint on the air. Sansa keeps to the king’s camp, helping Betta the homely baker’s daughter with her chores, or simply idly listening to the other lowborn girls of the procession as they gossip and laugh.
She doesn’t look up at Winterfell. Doesn’t look up at the castle that’s become more familiar to her than the Red Keep ever has. Doesn’t look up at where she knows Jon waits.
It wouldn’t have been right. She clings to the thought like a drowning man, clings to it as she walks between the tents of the camp or lifts a bucket with Betta or forces herself to smile at some joke one of the other young women makes, hearing it as if deep underwater. It wouldn’t have been right. Not like that. He deserves his song.
On the third day king Robert takes his leave of Winterfell, men collapsing the tent camp quickly and cleanly, folding great swathes of canvas and lashing the poles to the back of wagons. All around Sansa bannermen and washerwomen and riders hurry back and forth, the whole camp abuzz with activity. She finds herself apart from it, watching as if from afar, a stone at the bottom of a river as she walks the lane between collapsing tents.
It is only when the high walls of Winterfell rise above her does Sansa realize her feet have carried her to its gate. Sansa’s heart is a painful throb in her throat that she cannot seem to swallow as she gazes up at it, at the old dark stone ancient as the foundations of the world. Has he already left for the Wall? Through the open gate she glimpses lord Stark and his bannerman in grey and dark blue livery milling about as they mount their horses. And what would it matter if he hasn’t? He will soon enough, and you will never see him again.
“Sansa?”
Sansa turns to find Jon standing behind her, as though just come from the camp. His eyes are guarded and unreadable as they watch her. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Here I am.” A bitter laugh wells in Sansa’s throat as it strikes her suddenly: the cruel humor of where they stand, Winterfell behind her while the road behind Jon. She swallows down the laugh, forces herself to smile no matter how much it makes her ache inside to do so. “I meant to bid you farewell before you left for the Wall,” she says. And then, in a rush; “you’ll make a gallant man of the Night’s Watch, Jon.”
Jon blinks slowly. “I’m not leaving for the Wall.”
Sansa’s heart thumps to a painful stop. “What?”
“I’m staying. Until Bran wakes. Or… until he doesn’t.” He shakes his head. “I have to know.”
“I’m glad.” Something tight and painful lodges in her throat. “You- you deserve to be here come what will, Jon. He’s your brother.”
“If not for you-” Jon’s jaw works silently. “I wouldn’t have had the courage-”
“You would’ve. You’re braver than you know, Jon.” Sansa looks down to the worn cobbles of the road and forces her voice high and bright, pushes through the smiling girl she should always be. “And after? You’ll go to the Wall then?”
“No, I-” In the corner of her vision Jon takes a step forward, then stops. “I’m not going to the Wall,” he says softly. “After Bran wakes I mean to follow my father south.”
Sansa snaps her gaze up to Jon, hear pounding in her ears, breath caught in her throat as she searches his face, hoping, fearing- “Truly?”
Jon nods, a smile tugging at his lips. “Truly.”
A giddy warmth flushes through Sansa, and she cannot help the smile that splits her face: wide and foolish and nothing like the restrained and light and faint expressions her father has taught her, but Sansa cannot bring herself to care: not here, not now, not with her heart singing in her chest as though at any moment it will burst.
A horse neighs as it leaves Winterfell’s gate, and Sansa flushes and steps back to give it a chance to pass. She smooths her skirts to gather herself, and when she looks up again Jon has crossed the road and stands only a pace or two away, eyes watching her hesitantly. “Do you… do you have to go now?” He asks.
Sansa nods, though it hurts to do so. She looks around her, to Winterfell rising high above her and the long desolate hills in the distance that she wishes she never had to leave. “I do.”
Jon bites his lip and nods. He sweeps his gaze to where the riders and wagons of the king’s procession have already begun to trundle down the road as they spoke. “Do you have a horse?”
“Not all of us have a stable of our own, Jon.” Sansa tries to grin, but it is a strangely bashful thing. “The back of any of these wagons will do as good as another for me.”
Jon smiles faintly. Together they walk slowly to the nearest, Sansa all too aware of the prickle of his shoulder so close to hers. The wagon is a sturdy thing, the back stacked with tent poles and folded canvas, but there’s enough space left on the edge for a person to sit.
“Here,” Jon says, turning to her as she makes to hop on the edge. In a single smooth motion his hands circle her waist and he lifts her onto the edge of the wagon. The movement steals the breath from Sansa, and she finds herself staring into his eyes, caught by the grey of them as he gazes back into hers, faintly aware that he hasn’t stepped back, that his hands still circle her waist. Their breathes mingle in the cold, the scent of leather and thyme and pine filling her nose.
Jon’s dark hair falls over his eyes, and Sansa reaches up and brushes back his hair, realizing as she does that perched on the edge of the wagon she is for once the one a head taller than him. Somehow it makes her bold. She shouldn’t, not here where all the world can see, but there is nothing in her that cares for that as she loops her arms around Jon’s shoulders and dips her head to kiss him: presses her lips to his as she’s wanted to since that day in his room, long and desperate and hungry. He kisses her back, shy and fierce and sweet, hands around her waist, anchoring her as Sansa lets the world slip away from around her, lets herself melt against him, lets the clatter of hooves on stone and shouting of men and creak of wagons fall away.
When their lips eventually part for breathe Sansa doesn’t pull away, arms looped loose around Jon’s shoulders: unwilling to leave the shelter of their arms just yet, the world there, the way her heart is singing in her chest. “Come south when you can, Jon Snow,” she whispers, lips tingling. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I will.” Jon grins back; small and fierce and just for her, here in their little world. “Nothing could stop me.”
