This is a gift for @alittlestardustcaught. I decided to go with your mythology request and a reverse Persephone/Hades fic! I really hope you like the art and the fic attempt! ^^;
Every spring it was his duty to escort her to the godswood.
She had asked it of him. She loved her family, but out of everyone it was Jon who gave her the most solace on her walk of shame.
Her brother Robb had been the first escort, but that hadn’t lasted long. By the end of their trek to the godswood he would work himself to a whirlwind of outrage. “It isn’t /right/,” he’d snarl, teeth clenched and fists shaking. His eyes would flash something dark and he’d stalk up the stony path like a cornered beast. “She can’t /do/ this!” Sansa would end up soothing him, with what little time she had left. Eventually she resented him for making her most trying day about him, however unintentional.
As for her father- his silence only filled her with shame for having brought this punishment upon herself. He needn’t say a word, in the time it took to walk to the godswood her mind would supply guilt enough. His grief would hang above her like a shroud, and when they’d reach the heart tree she’d find herself a child again weeping in his arms. This too she grew tired of.
Jon though, Jon didn’t make her feel so ashamed.
She knew the others wondered at her choice, but with what little he did say Jon comforted her, and despite his feelings on the matter he didn’t let his wrath consume him like Robb, or make her feel a pitiful thing like with her father.
The only one truly satisfied with the arrangement was her mother. Giving Jon the task was just another reason to hate him, as if he were to blame for taking her favorite daughter away from her.
For every flower the maiden had plucked, a month above.
She’d been foolish then, the winter child with fire-kissed hair and summer dreams. She had been too naive and too full of envy to understand that even the most beautiful things could be rotten beneath. That flowers came with thorns, and that Queens with golden hair and golden sons had thorns of their own.
All she had intended was to make a crown of flowers for herself when she had snuck away to the gardens above. Had she known that the punishment for her crown would be to spend her months whipped and beaten, separated from her family and begging for Winter, she never would have left the cold caverns of the Underworld.
The Queen of Summer was so cold.
“Winter is coming,” Jon promised her. It was their father’s words, their people’s words. He hoped it offered some solace, and he thought it did because she’d give a tearful smile each time.
“You must seal your promise with a kiss,” she’d demand with feigned authority, voice shaky but determined. When this had first began, he’d been the one to kiss her as a brother would a sister, with a farewell kiss to her brow or to her cheek, something gentle to add to the warm embrace. She didn’t know when it had changed to something more, but she was grateful that it had.
He’d acquiese to her little order each time, gifting her one last semblance of control before Cersei snatched it all away. In those moments when his cool lips would match hers, she’d never felt so loved, so cherished -and it didn’t hurt quite so badly when she’d have to pull away.
“Til Winter,” he’d say, a hand brushing through her hair one last time, his frown dour as always but eyes gentle and sad.
“I will look for Ghost,” she replied hands resting against his chest one last time, fingers clutching his winter furs to remind herself of the cold, of Jon, of home. To give her strength for the coming months.
