Archive of Our Own ^beta

How does a god fall?

With dreams of her. 

(this is where it begins. where it ends.)

He does not wake with a gasp.

There is no thunderclap, no shudder of breath as if he has breached water. No cry to the gods, no blood in his mouth.

Only silence.

His eyes open.

And he knows.

He lies still for a long moment, blinking at the stone ceiling above, too low, too close. The room is small, the air unmoving. The bed beneath him creaks as he shifts, rough wool prickling his skin.

Not a king's death.

Not a king's return.

No tomb. No banners. No crown.

Only Winterfell.

And the cramped cot that should've been burned years ago.

He sits.

The furs slide from his shoulders, and his feet touch the ground, bare soles meeting stone.

It is cold.

Bitter and ancient, the kind that seeps through walls and bone, a cold that remembers everything. It does not welcome him.

He feels soot on the floor. Ash. As if someone once burned here and no one ever bothered to sweep it clean.

The cold does not want him here.

His toes curl against it anyway.

Because Jon Snow is used to being unwanted.

He doesn't go to the hall.

Doesn't dress for ceremony. Doesn't descend to be seen.

Instead, he climbs.

Past the still chambers and the old armory. Past stairwells choked with dust and memory. Up toward the wind and the wall walk above the courtyard, where the snow sits undisturbed and the stones remember every footstep ever taken.

From here, he can see everything.

The stables. The godswood.

The people below, moving in soft rhythms of duty and survival.

And her.

Sansa stands in the yard; cloak unfastened at the throat, Lady pressed tight to her side. A strip of lush silk is knotted at the direwolf's neck—pale, fragile, beautiful. The kind of thing a girl might tie in her hair, not around a direwolf's throat.

The wind shifts.

And he smells her.

Faint but unmistakable—lavender and woodsmoke, and something warmer beneath, something that lives in his blood now. It catches in his throat, sears down his spine. He swallows hard against it, jaw clenched.

Even from here, she leaves her mark.

She doesn't speak to anyone. She doesn't smile. She only watches the sky like it’s told her something she hasn’t yet decided to believe.

Even from above, she looks like the heart of it all. The thing the cold is circling. The thing Winterfell is waiting for.

Only she isn’t the girl from before.

She lifts her hand.

Slow. Steady.

Her gloved palm tilts upward to catch the falling snow. The flakes melt instantly, vanishing against wool and skin like secrets too soft to last.

And still—he watches.

Watches as if the moment is sacred.

Because it is.

Because even now, with silence thick in his throat and the snow gathering in his hair, Jon knows: this is why he rose. Why he fell.

He exhales, breath fogging the air.

And still, he does not move.

Not yet.

Because this—this want, this ache—didn’t begin here.

It began long before the snow. Before the crown. Before the gods ever knew his name.

He used to think Arya was his.

It made sense, then. Sansa was Robb's—braids and chatter and careful steps beside their mother's skirts. Arya was different. Wild. Loud. She followed Jon with grass-stained knees, and her fists already curled. She was easy to love.

But Sansa—

Sansa was a girl of soft things. Of ribbons and courtesies. She smiled in a way Arya never did. Sweet. Measured. Polished, but not false.

The first time he caught it—not the grin she gave to their lord father, not the pinched one for Catelyn, but the real one, the one that slipped free when she thought no one saw—it settled in his chest like a bruise long before he was sent to the Wall.

It wasn’t a child's want. Not even then.

Arya never made him ache.

But Sansa—Sansa changed something in him. Marked him, somehow, without knowing she had. It was there in the scent of her when she passed too close. In the flicker of her lashes. In the heat that rose in his throat without warning.

He told himself it was nothing. That it would pass.

It never did.

That was the beginning of the never-ending ache.

Jon has always felt too much.

Sansa, too little.

She feels one emotion at a time—never more. Her weariness, her judgment, her silence—all of it sets his teeth on edge.

And the worst part—the unbearable part—is that she's right. She, who once tangled with lions dripping in gold and monsters who masqueraded as men bending on one knee. Who shed her scales like a fish and slipped away before anyone could pierce her skin.

While he lay between silk sheets with a dragon, it was his cousin who haunted him—a wolf—her phantom teeth sinking into the hollow of his throat.

He remembered her eyes at his death.

Not the bloodied one.

The other. The day when he said his vows to his aunt, draping his cloak over her shoulders, and let Sansa go.

He wore a crown that day. And he burned.

Not from wildfire. From her gaze.

It plays out again, almost exactly.

Not in the yard this time, but just beyond the old armory—where the stone still bears the memory of wooden swords and boyish shouts, where boot scuffs ghost the floor like echoes too old to name. The air smells of rust and sweat, of smoke long settled into the walls. The snow falls quieter here, beneath the overhang—slow and watchful.

Theon is laughing already. Loud. Strained. Too eager by half.

He leans in, voice slick with bravado, whispering filth about the village girls—what they’d let him do, what they’d beg for, what they’d offer with their legs already open. He talks of rutting between their thighs, of slick dripping down his chin, of the taste—tarter than any fruit he’d ever stolen.

Robb listens.

His ears turn pink even as he tries not to. But he does. He always does.

Because Robb is still green. Still aware of the eyes that watch him—his mother’s, his father’s, the gods’. He knows the rules. Knows better than to dirty the skirts of a maid before marriage. Knows that a Frey bride waits for him in the Riverlands, untouched, expectant.

He cannot shame her.

He cannot tempt the succession.

But still—he wants to know. Wants to be ready.

He’ll fumble with the whores first. Learn the tilt of hips and curve of moans. Learn what pleases, what doesn’t. Then, when it matters, when he has to perform with soft hands and silk sheets and a closed door—he’ll know how to be kind. He’ll be careful. Gentle. Precise.

And she will tremble. Or cry. Or smile, if she was raised well.

Jon watches.

Watches the dance of it—of power exchanged in whispers, of boys posturing like men, of paths too neatly laid.

Watches himself too—or rather, the shadow of who they think he still is.

Only this time, he doesn’t play along.

He doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t nudge Robb with his shoulder. Doesn’t meet Theon’s eye with the grin Theon craves—the one that says, Yes, I want this too. I am like you. I am less alone.

He simply steps aside.

Lets the words fall to stone and snow like they were never meant for him.

Robb doesn’t notice. He never has. Too certain. Too assured. An alpha born with the weight of expectation already stitched into his spine. He would lead the North. He would marry. He would breed heirs. He would rule.

He was made to be followed.

But Jon sees what Robb cannot.

Sees the quiet desperation behind Theon’s grin—the edge of something fraying. Not hunger for women. Not really.

Hunger for place.

Hunger to be claimed.

To belong to something.

Jon knows that hunger. He’s seen it before—in the courtiers who knelt too quickly, in the bastards who reached for thrones with blood still fresh beneath their nails, in the broken who would wear any name if it meant they wouldn’t be forgotten.

And Theon—Theon was always drifting.

Even now, he’s not leading this moment. Not following it, either.

Just clinging to it. Trying to matter inside it.

That broken creature, that searching, unsteady boy; Reek was always there, Jon thinks, just beneath the skin.

And Robb—Jon sees him, too. Not just as he is, but as he will be.

Sees the girl who isn’t his betrothed. The one who’ll steal him away.

Sees the shape of him years from now: shoulders squared beneath a crown, jaw set in pride, hands calloused from war and not enough wisdom. Sees the girl he was promised and the one who will undo him. Sees his teeth buried in a throat that was never meant to be his. Sees the bond forged in heat, in breathless silence, in a bed that doesn't belong to them. Sees the blood that comes after.

He sees it in every life.

And every time, it ends the same.

(he is damned.)

Grey Wind lifts his head. He doesn't growl, but he watches. Hackles barely rising. A flicker of recognition beneath the yellow eyes—older than Robb, truer than any vow. Jon meets the direwolf’s gaze and knows: he sees it too.

He stands there a moment longer.

The cold does not bite. The silence does not press.

Jon turns away.

From Theon’s empty bravado. From Robb’s unspoken name. From the wolf who sees what the man will never understand.

He turns before Robb can speak.

Before the ache of youth tries to slip back under his skin.

That boy is gone.

What remains has sharper teeth.

From somewhere above, he hears her.

Soft and sweet, her voice catches on the wind like birdsong dulled by frost—uncertain, untrained, but trying. A tune she barely remembers. A girl’s song. The kind meant to please, to be heard, to be loved for.

It wavers. Trills.

Then softens—softer than snow, softer than breath—until it is no longer a song at all but a hum meant only for him.

It curls in his ear like a touch. Like hands cupping his face. Her voice, not as a queen, not as a wolf—but as a girl. Calling him in.

He doesn’t need to see her to let her in.

He hears the dull, familiar thud of Lady’s paws hitting packed snow, the lighter steps of another girl—brisk and careful, half trying to keep up.

Later, he’ll learn that one stays close to Sansa. The only one who does. The one allowed near when Sansa slips into her strange silences—when she holds her own hands too tightly or curls them to her chest like a secret. When grief comes unannounced and roots itself in her spine.

But now she is laughing, and he takes a step forward-

And two steps back.

There is a feast, meager and sweet.

Winterfell does not overreach. The tables are narrow, the food plain. Bread thick at the crust, broth ladled into mismatched bowls, steam rising slow and patient. The ale is weak, the fire bright, the laughter louder than it ought to be.

The bodies pressed close are not urgent. No hands wandering beneath linen, no mouths at throats. Just the weight of familiarity—shoulders bumping, backs bowed together in quiet conversation. Comfort, not hunger.

Jon sits among them.

Raises his glass.

And sees somewhere else entirely.

Another place. Another hall. One gilded with heat and want, where shadows danced on silk-draped walls, and bodies curled into each other like vines. That feast was an orgy of flesh and flame, of honeyed wine and open mouths, of gold against skin and teeth against necks.

There was nothing soft. Nothing sweet.

Only his nails pressing beneath grape skins, slow and deliberate, peeling back the flesh to feed the ones at his feet. Grasping and wanting; greedy to know the one who sat above.

He gave them sin, and they called it salvation.

The world that became his was vast, washed in blood, worship, and want. Everything that was wrong held its shape long enough to feel right.

Kingdoms fell to their knees with his name in their mouths, blood still steaming on the altar. His voice echoed in chambers once held by kings. The old gods went silent. And the new ones bent.

He became more than they ever dreamed he could be.

More than even she had imagined.

With her silver tongue and hands that trembled when no one watched, Daenerys had thought him hers. Had believed he would follow her flame. That his hunger would mirror hers.

She hadn't known.

None of them had.

What it meant when he looked northward, even then.

When he left it alone.

He could have ruled it all—the southern cities, the free ports, the blood-bound courts with their gilded lies. He could have swallowed the world whole and still had room to speak her name.

But he never touched the North.

Not truly.

Not because he loved it.

Because it belonged to her.

To the girl in the yard with frost in her lashes and a wolf pressed to her side. To the woman who never needed him to rise, who never asked for his hand or his sword or his fire.

And yet—he dreamed of kneeling still.

Dreams that Daenerys realized too late.

She saw it in his silence. In the way, he looked north when she spoke of conquest. In the way, he refused Winterfell, not out of loyalty, but possession. His.

Not hers.

At first, she mistook it for humility. For duty. She thought him noble. Thought he knelt only for the realm.

But she began to see the shape of her mistake— he never redrew the borders, never sent his banners north. Not even when her advisors whispered of consolidation. Not even when she asked him to.

She asked. Then demanded. Then begged.

And he said nothing.

How many slipped through their fingers, drifting north like smoke?

Whispers of safety, of cold sanctuary. Caravans gone missing on the Kingsroad. Missives sent and never answered. Letters sealed in dragonwax returned unopened, or not at all.

They called her queen. But it was Sansa they petitioned.

The Queen in the North did not bend. And neither did he.

"She hasn't answered," Daenerys said once, low, almost to herself. "Does she think herself above me now?"

Missandei said nothing.

Her gaze skittered sideways as if the words themselves had teeth.

"She forgets who I am," Daenerys continued, voice like cooling steel. "Remind her."

The letters were sent. Then intercepted. Then, stopped altogether—quill stilled before it ever touched parchment. It was said the king would not allow it. That he no longer read what did not interest him. That nothing surprised him. Nothing stirred him.

And in the quiet hours, Missandei began to wonder if he even slept. If he only lay there, golden and bloodless, watching. Watching. Always watching.

She had once believed him chosen. Now she thought him cursed.

Still, she said nothing. She was always there—still, silent, loyal in shape but not in thought.

And when the silence stretched too long, Daenerys acted.

She sent one of the dragons once. Just one. A warning wrapped in shadow and fire.

It turned back midflight.

Daenerys never forgave that.

Not the refusal. Not the silence.

But the fact that they—even the dragons—no longer burned for her. Nor did it live, as Jon stripped its wings from it, as it allowed him to.

She wept in gold-tiled halls, her fury quiet at first, then wild. She stood before him, hands outstretched, teeth bared in grief, in rage, in something older than either of them.

"Why not Winterfell?" she asked.

"It was never yours to take," he said.

Then, after a breath:

"It was never mine to give."

It was the end of false things between them; his lies and their hate laid bare.

He wakes over and over again.

The sheets never warm.

The days blend.

Arya won't train with him anymore.

Not since the first hunt.

He had returned with blood staining his collar and his eyes black with heat, something wild still crackling in his bones. The wagon dragged behind him, groaning under the weight of what they'd taken. Stag after stag, too many to count—slaughtered with precision, stacked for the larder. The men whispered about it later. The way Jon moved through the woods without sound. The way the animals had seemed to freeze before the blade ever fell. As if they knew.

She saw him then, stepping from the snow, red to the elbows and breathless. Not from exertion. From restraint.

And she stayed away after that.

There was a time she begged him for sparring, teeth flashing, blade in hand. No form, all instinct. She moved like a storm—messy, glorious, unafraid.

But now, she slips away when he enters the yard.

No excuses. No challenge. Just the stillness of a girl who sees something she does not name.

He knows what she is meant to become—what the world once demanded of her. A girl who traded her face for silence, who killed because she had to, because no one else would.

Her cruelty was a necessity. A barren seed cracked open by grief.

But his?

His is something else.

Older. Hungrier.

Incurable.

When he finds her with Needle, tucked beneath her furs like a secret she still believes in, he takes it.

Not out of malice.

Out of mercy—for the reckless child she is and the one she'll never get to be.

She lunges when he snaps it. Claws at his chest, teeth bared, eyes wild while repeating every word she's overheard the stableboys use.

But she isn't what she was. Not yet. Not feral. Not empty.

She's still small enough to think she can win.

She spits in his face when her nails don't land.

He lets her.

And then he shows her.

Just enough of what he is now. Just enough to make her still.

She doesn't speak when he breaks it for good.

Just watches—silent—as wood splinters, steel buckles, and the last piece of her old self snaps in his hands.

Some things, once broken, do not mend.

He doesn't stay to see her turn away. Doesn't wait to see what remains of her once he's gone.

He goes to the pump behind the kennels, where the water runs too cold and too clean. His hands are sticky with stag's blood—fresh, slick, almost black in the snow. It was a pale imitation of before; hunger coiled in his stomach, and his throat parched.

The fall of stags was nothing like the fall of man.

They'd looked at him with eyes too wide, too knowing. The last had barely moved. It only trembled.

He'd buried his blade in its throat anyway.

Now, he scrubs. Hard. Until the raw meat stench lifts and the skin beneath his nails turns pink. Until the pump wheezes and the trough runs dark with old memory.

The blood doesn't fight him. It never does.

Only Ghost follows him now, lean and rangy with fur gone dull from too much waiting. Something feral lives in him still. But he doesn't flinch when Lady brushes her muzzle against his, accepting of her litter mate still.

Now, he trains alone.

His muscles ripple beneath sweat-damp linen, shadows sliding across skin that bears no marks, no slashes, no burns, no memory.

But he remembers.

He feels the scars winding beneath the surface, invisible and hot, taut as a drawn bowstring. They burn sometimes. When he moves too fast. When the steel catches just right. When he thinks too long about what he's done.

They did not come back with him.

But they never left.

He moves like a man twice his age—like one who's seen too much and buried more. Like someone who never left the battlefield, only learned how to carry it beneath his skin.

The others watch him from a distance. They whisper. He hears them.

But none dare draw near.

Not for the first time, he feels her eyes on him.

She doesn't remember, not entirely. But something lingers beneath her skin. A quiet kind of knowing. Gone is the girl who once begged to go south, who dreamed of golden-haired princes and courtly love. Now, she says little at all. Her hands are always in Lady's fur, knuckles white with the need to touch, to ground herself.

She needs someone who won't leave. Someone who stays.

Once, she'd begged him to stay.

And he'd turned his head. And his heart.

For the North, he'd said.

(he'd lied then.)

She doesn't ask him now. She only lets her eyes skid past his at supper. She rushes past him in the hall without a word but always looks back when she thinks he's not watching.

And he can feel her.

Threaded beneath his skin. A pulse he doesn’t name. The ache he carries when the wind shifts and her scent brushes past him—barely there, soft as linen warmed by fire. It curls into his lungs before he even thinks to breathe.

She's working her way in and out of him, stitch by stitch, through places that never healed.

"Ñuha kēliar—sȳz riña," Jon murmurs under his breath, voice just above the snow. My curious one—sweet girl.

She pauses. Just enough to be felt.

Her boot stills in the drift, her fingers flexing against Lady’s ruff. She doesn’t turn. She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t ask what it means. She never does.

And that, too, is how he knows.

She still dreams.

She still aches.

She still feels him—somewhere deeper than memory.

"What are you looking at, Sansa?" a voice whispers nearby. Girls half-hiding behind branches—like they used to, when there was nothing to fear and everything to dream of.

"...Nothing."

But he hears the hitch in her breath.

Small. Involuntary. Like she’s caught a scent she doesn’t recognize. Like her body remembers before her mind does.

No one, she almost says, but hesitates.

He had once been a bastard boy dreaming of a home carved from ice.

Of honor. Of endless loneliness made from stone.

Of a place among men who wore quiet like armor and gave their sons to the cold without question. Men who feared what lay beyond the border not because they'd seen it, but because they hadn't. Because they knew better.

Jon does not remember what that kind of wisdom feels like.

He remembers only fire now. And the sharp, metallic scent of hunger.

It was easy, in the end.

Easier than he thought it would be.

To give himself to it.

Power.

It slid into his blood like heat. Like wine. Like poison that soothed as it sank its teeth into him. And once it was there—once it whispered through his bones—it never left.

No one had to crown him. No sword needed to be drawn. He became.

The world he ruled with Daenerys was not made for wise men.

It was made for the ones like him—those who rose from ash and betrayal and let go of the idea that they were meant to be good. The kind of men who watched empires fall and learned how to walk barefoot across their remains.

He did not belong to the North then. Not truly. Not anymore.

He belonged to something limitless.

To desire.

To indulgence.

To the deep, bone-sick thrill of being wanted by every voice in the room—by queens with blackened mouths, by lords who bowed before they even saw his face, by things older than fire that stirred when he walked into temples long abandoned.

They called him wolf-king. Blood-dragon. Stranger's son.

He did not correct them.

Even Daenerys, with her hands always reaching, with her fever-dream eyes that mistook obsession for love—she could not tether him. He turned from her more often than not, face blank, gaze cast elsewhere.

Toward the things that moved just out of sight.

Toward the echo of footsteps in the hall that never stopped haunting him.

Toward the thought of her.

Because even then, even at the height of it, when the world bowed low, and the sky split open for him, Jon found himself thinking of Winterfell.

Of red hair and pale knuckles. Of a voice that did not tremble, not even when it should have.

Of a girl who watched him marry a dragon and made no sound at all.

He finds his way to her rooms.

Not to wait. Not to linger.

Just to see.

They aren't the rooms of a young girl anymore.

There's no color here. No blush of southern dreams, no golden trim or perfumed water. But they aren't the rooms of a queen, either. They hold no chill, no steel crown glinting in the firelight. No mantle of the North.

Just stillness.

The hearth has long gone cold. The shutters are drawn.

But there are touches of a nest. A wreath of dried flowers, faded and delicate, rests on the windowsill, its petals scattered across the stone floor as if they tried to bloom and failed.

In the corner, a bed has been laid out for Lady. It's pieced together from scraps of Sansa’s old dresses—not court gowns, but worn silks and cotton in soft creams, muted pinks, pale blue, moss green. Colors that still suit her age, though quieter now. The stitching is careful. Layered. Protective.

Ribbons hang nearby, embroidered by hand. Delicate vines, foxgloves, a sliver of moon. Nothing bearing a sigil. Only beauty. Only quiet things.

There are no house colors here. No gold or crimson. No grey sigil. No books scattered across the floor or stacked three deep on her shelves. The stories she once recited by memory have all been packed away or forgotten.

She has emptied the room of what once defined her.

And filled it with what little she can still hold.

Her scent lingers. Lavender. Smoke. And something beneath it, barely there, like singed silk or sorrow not yet named. It curls in his chest and tightens around his ribs.

It makes him want to gather things for her—soft things, pretty things. Silks worn thin with washing, downy wraps, cushions that hold their shape. Things she can press her cheek into, trail her fingers across, bury herself beneath. He wants to build her a nest she could disappear into, lovely and quiet and warm. A place where nothing aches. A place made only for her.

(would she let him in?)

A work table sits beneath the window. Thread spools lie tangled across it, needles uncapped. A handkerchief sits folded too precisely at the edge.

He picks it up.

The cloth is soft from handling. The stitching is uneven, crooked, and pinched in places, as if someone had tried and failed, then tried again.

There are no lions. No southern symbols. No sigils at all.

He turns it over.

The back is frayed. Threads half-pulled, seams started and undone.

It takes him a moment to see it.

His name.

Or what's left of it.

Letters unpicked with care. Removed. Re-stitched. Removed again.

Erased, and not.

He touches it as if it were something he could worship.

Lifts it to his lips. Draws his mouth across the place her needle once passed, slow and reverent.

A kiss, not to her hand—but to the echo of it. To the memory of her fingers, the shape of her wanting.

"Sansa," he breathes.

The word barely lives in the air. But it's enough.

He folds the cloth again, more gently this time, and leaves it where he found it.

He sees the paths like pages in a book he's already read.

Robb, still more boy than man, shoulders bent beneath a weight he doesn't yet understand. The burden of command, of glory, of southern crowns and Lannister steel.

Jon knows what he could say. What he could do. How easy it would be to reach southward, toward the prowling lions, the broken throne, the woman who waits across the sea with her dragons and dreams.

He turns his back on it.

The North has always been his home.

It doesn't take long for the dam to break.

Robb falls ill. His skin flushes with fever, his breaths shallow, erratic. And when the night quiets—

"How could you?!" Catelyn shrieks.

Her voice splinters down the hall, where Jon stands near their chamber door.

"You tell me this now—when our son is dead—?"

Not for the first time, their marriage shatters because of him.

He hears the crack of her fists against Ned's chest, the low thud of it—dull, useless, and full of pain. Not enough to bruise, only enough to shame. Her sobs break through clenched teeth, humiliation thick in her throat, hate laced with grief too wide to hold.

A good man, an honorable man, can be far crueler than a bad one.

And Ned Stark has always been the best of men.

Which is why he lets her do it.

Lets her cry and rage and curse the child he raised, the truth he buried, the silence he kept like a blade in his belly. He stands there, quiet beneath the blows, like he deserves every one.

(he does.)

Once, Sansa whispered something to Jon—something he had never forgotten.

"You have to be smarter than Robb. Smarter than Father."

He hadn't known what she meant then.

Now, he does.

Honor didn't save them.

It didn't keep your sisters safe.

It didn't stop you from starving, or screaming, or begging the gods to make you small enough to vanish.

It only kept your hands clean while everyone else bled for you.

Jon slips away from the door, the chill wrapping around his ankles like smoke. He knew the moment he opened his eyes, when he returned to this life, that nothing would be the same.

Not when it was his own blood he fed his good brother—offered from his wrist, dark as tar, rich with envy, not meant for saving.

How could you?

There is mourning.

There is grief.

And for a moment, the whole of Winterfell bends beneath it.

The keep is too quiet. The air tastes of ash and cold stone. Catelyn's screams have gone still, but the walls remember. They hold the echo like a bruise.

Jon does not return to the hall. He does not go to the godswood.

He finds himself in the old sept instead—built for Catelyn, still unused, still too southern to feel like anything but a tomb.

The candles have long since guttered out.

The tapestries hang limp.

And yet, the silence is sacred.

He kneels, not in prayer, but in posture. One hand braced against his knee, the other curled in his lap like it might rise of its own accord.

He does not expect her.

But he waits for her all the same.

Because this is where she comes when she is afraid. When the dreams claw too deep, and the walls of Winterfell bend with memory. It is not the godswood she runs to.

It is here.

It is him.

He hears her before he sees her. The low creak of the door. The hush of her steps, careful and quiet, like she's afraid the room might scold her for entering. The air shifts—just slightly—as if it recognizes her presence.

And then—her voice.

Soft. Cracked. Nearly inaudible.

"Let me be good. Let me be quiet. Let me be still."

A child's prayer. Half-remembered. Recited like penance.

"Let me please them. Let me not make them angry. Let me not make them look at me."

The sound cuts through him. Not sharply. Not suddenly. But slowly, like something sliding under the skin.

She's dressed in black. Not midnight silk or mourning lace, but roughspun wool that bunches at her shoulders and pools at her wrists. The hem drags behind her slightly. It swallows her frame. Dulls her.

It is the color of grief, but on her, it looks like retreat.

Her hair is half-plaited, the rest falling in soft tangles down her back. A single ribbon, blue once but faded now, dangles loose at her temple. Her braid is crooked as if she forgot halfway through what she was doing. As if she meant to finish but never did.

Her cheeks are flushed. Red, not from the cold but from tears already cried.

And still, she does not turn away when she sees him.

She only steps forward, eyes wide—not frightened, not quite—and voice barely above a breath.

"You weren't supposed to hear that," she says.

He doesn't answer at first.

Because she's so young.

In the way her voice wavers, in the way her hands twist at the hem of her sleeve like she doesn't know what to do with them. There's something unfinished about her. Soft in a way the world hasn't yet beaten out.

And he knows that he helped beat her, too.

Not with fists. Not with fire.

But with silence.

With the way he looked past her. The way he left her to her grief and her ghosts. With every unspoken kindness. Every time, he chose the cold instead of her.

He had always lived in the cold.

(alone.)

The girl who was always just beneath the surface. The one who wanted to be cosseted. Adored. Told she was good. The one who shrank when she didn't please. Who smiled too tightly, too often, because she thought that was what love wanted from her.

(why wasn’t she enough?)

He remembers her in pieces—shaky hands at Castle Black, too proud to ask for seconds, too hungry to ask for more. A child who wanted warmth and learned instead how to bear the cold.

And now—

Now she stands in front of him in a gown too big, grief pooling in the folds.

And the thread of her—always pulled taut—is fraying.

The silence between them stretches long enough that her gaze drops. She twists her fingers together, fidgeting.

"I'm sorry," she adds, quieter. Not just about the prayer. Something else. Everything else. She's the only one who remembers he's lost a brother too.

He shakes his head. "Don't be."

She hesitates for a moment longer. Then moves closer.

Then kneels beside him.

The shift of fabric on stone. Her hands settle in her lap, too still at first. Then—slowly—start to move again. Fidgeting with the edge of her sleeve, then the ribbon at her braid, then the hem of her dress.

He can feel her beside him. The warmth of her grief. The way she shivers—not from cold, but from whatever's inside her that won't settle.

She doesn't look at him.

Until she does.

Her voice is soft when it comes. Tented with something that sounds like fear or maybe longing.

"Do you think they hear us?"

He turns to her. Really looks.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, lashes damp but clear. There is no shame in them. No pretense. Only the desperate honesty of a girl who still hopes the gods might answer her.

"The gods?" he asks.

She nods once.

"I think you believe they do," he says. It's not a deflection, not quite. More an offering. A small truth in the silence.

She bites her lip, presses it between her teeth until the skin goes pale. "I do," she says.

Then, a whisper, like a thread snapping:

"I want them to. Because I don't know what else to ask."

He could tell her the truth—that he came back from death and heard nothing. That the gods had gone quiet in his bones. That when he reached for them, there was only frost and ash.

For a long time, he mistook the silence for punishment.

Until he learned to hear another voice.

Not the gods.

His own.

But she wouldn't understand. Not yet.

Instead, he says, "They'll listen to you."

The sept is quiet around them, filled with the kind of stillness that feels almost hollow. The statues are southern—tall and solemn and faceless. The Mother clasps her hands in prayer. The Father bears his scales. The Maiden, delicate and blindfolded, gazes forward with lips pressed shut. Their robes are carved from pale stone, smooth as ice. The Stranger waits in the shadows near the alcove, hooded, faceless. Watching.

Sansa's eyes flit between them.

She doesn't know where to look.

Her fingers twist in her lap, plucking at the fabric of her sleeve. Once. Twice. Again. Her knuckles pale from effort. There is something raw in the movement, something desperate.

She wants to believe.

He watches her for a long moment. Then, without a word, he reaches across the distance between them.

His hand covers hers. Large. Steady. Warm.

Her fingers still beneath his touch—like a shivering animal unsure whether to flee or lean in.

He does not squeeze.

Only holds.

And slowly, her grip tightens. Her shoulders fall. Her breath slips free in a tremble.

She does not look at him.

But her hand does not leave his.

He does not feel sorry for Catelyn.

He won't.

He remembers her gaze—sharp, cold, gleaming with old hate. Not just suspicion, but loathing that curdled in her bones the moment she looked upon him.

She carried it like grief, wore it like armor, whispered it into her children when she thought no one listened. It was Sansa who listened most of all as she clung to her mother's skirts with wide eyes and soft hands, eager to please, too young to understand anything more than this: her mother hurt when she saw Jon.

Her father's bastard.

(never her brother; never her cousin.)

Catelyn's face now—twisted in pain, wet with loss—he watches only from the corner of his mind.

There is something obscene about it. About the way women are made to grieve. To wear humiliation like silk, soft and inescapable. Dragged across their skin like the furs they think protect them. As if motherhood were not just a role, but a performance to be played until it breaks them.

Still, he will not pity her.

She has not earned it.

She will never know what it means to be reviled by blood itself. To be punished for existing.

Jon has.

And now, he no longer cares if they hate him. He welcomes it.

Let them bare their teeth. Let them drown in their wails and sharp, feminine grief.

He is not here to be forgiven.

Ned takes him to the crypts to tell him the truth.

There, beneath stone kings and ice-veined queens, he peels back the last of his shame.

Jon listens, his face carved from grief and granite, and says all the right things. He thanks him for protection, for shelter, for being a father, even when he never claimed the word.

He does not thank him for making him heir.

"It should be Bran," he says instead.

Ned shakes his head, his mouth tight. "The North will not kneel to a boy with broken legs. Not even a Stark."

And Rickon?

Still a child. Barely past fevered nights and shaky steps. The kind of boy who gets snatched from his bed when no one's watching.

He doesn't mention Sansa.

But Jon knows he's thought of it.

Of a southern engagement that crumbled in blood and bile and broken legs. Of Joffrey's doublet soaked through when Sansa vomited at his feet—red, and not from her courses that have never come. Of her silence, her refusals.

And Arya—wild as the wind, vanishing when the snow falls.

The North would not kneel to a woman.  

"This is what you were meant for," Ned says. His voice carries the weight of too many ghosts. "You were born for this, Jon."

Jon thinks of the mantle that once crushed him. The weight he begged for, longed for, when he was nothing but a name with no place to rest.

He used to imagine this moment—how it might feel, to be chosen. To be seen. Absently, he wonders what his younger self would have done. Cried, maybe. Fallen to his knees. Tried to give it back.

But the lost boy that he was and the man he became are no more.

And the words he once hoarded—meant for that life, that version of himself—turn to ash. As he watches Ned, sees the trembling of his hand and the guilt in his eyes; Jon thinks how small the game has become. 

He should feel shame.

He doesn't.

He thinks of how it bent Ned. Quiet. Steady. Noble. Until it broke him.

It had buckled Jon, too, once, when he still feared what the end might mean.

But not now.

Now, there is no fear. No flinching. No blood left to give.

That was Ned's burden.

Not his.

He is no longer a man.

And he knows exactly how it always ends—head bowed, sword falling.

He hears her screams before anyone else.

They splinter through the keep at night, low and broken, like they're trying not to be heard. But Winterfell is old. It listens.

Jon doesn't need to see her to know. He feels it in his marrow. She's curled beneath the furs, damp with sweat, her lashes clumped, her throat raw, her ribs shrinking in on themselves. Her body remembers more than she does, and it punishes her for it.

The nightmares are changing her.

They twist her inward, splinter her in places no one else sees. At dinner, she touches the edge of her cup more often than she drinks. She forgets what's been said halfway through the answer. Her gowns hang differently. She startles when Arya speaks too quickly. Her ribbon is always slipping from her braid.

No one says anything.

But Jon watches.

Ned notices.

He watches her, his brow drawn tight, concern flickering in his gaze like a candle never quite catching flame. He asks questions in the hall. Sends servants with broth. Tries to speak to her when she lingers too long in the yard. She nods, answers softly. Always softly.

And then she forgets what he asked.

Even Arya—who has never understood her sister and never will, Arya, who snarls instead of soothes—begins to watch. Not openly. But with the strange, sharp vigilance of someone who has known a person her whole life and knows when something has shifted.

She is young but not blind.

She knows what grief smells like. What pain tastes like when it's bitten down too long. And her sister is unraveling.

And Jon is already waiting at the seam.

He doesn't intervene. Doesn't warn. Doesn't speak.

Because her unraveling is not a surprise.

It's an answer.

“Bisa issa ñuha naejot.”

This is his undoing.

His right.

The castle breathes around it. Accepts it.

Servants step wide around her chambers now, their boots scuffing in quieter hallways, their mouths clamped shut. Some say nothing at all. Others whisper of her illness, her sorrow, her silence.

But they never linger near her door.

He makes sure of it.

There is a hush in that wing of the keep now. No laughter. No rattling trays or dropped buckets. Just the slow creak of wood and the occasional sweep of wind that bends the flames without sound. Something about it warns them away. As if grief were catching. As if the shadows there belong to someone who might open the door and never let them go.

He doesn’t mind the silence.

It makes space for the truth.

So he begins to sit outside her door.

Not out of duty.

Not guilt.

But because this is where it begins. Again.

A soft claim, barely spoken. The shape of a right not yet named. He takes up space slowly, deliberately. First in the hall, then in the scent that lingers near her door, then in the rhythm of the keep itself.

It becomes a ritual—his body at her threshold, his back against stone, sword across his lap like it can protect him from something more ancient than blades. He sharpens it some nights. Polishes it others. But always, he hums.

Low. Steady. The same Valyrian tune she heard him hum once while training, when she thought he didn't know she was watching him. 

But she listens.

He knows she does. He hears her breath catch through the wood. Hears the floor groan as she leans near, only to hesitate again.

Wise girl—the wisest of them all.

Only she can't help but draw close again. Once, her shift rustled—so close he could almost feel her warmth through the door.

She's always listened.

And it's the only time he feels cold.

Not from the stone beneath him or the drafts curling around his ankles—but from memory. From knowing this is what he left her to once. When she had no one. When she was too young to name her fears, and still bore them anyway.

And still, he doesn't knock.

He waits.

He knows waiting.

Knows what it shapes.

He waited as a boy, quiet and obedient, hoping to be chosen. To be claimed. He waited with a bastard's hunger—tight in his chest, knotted in his gut—until he mistook pity for affection and silence for love.

Then he died.

And came back gasping. Scrambling to become a man again—scrambling to feel like anything at all.

But the truth is: he was already this. Already cruel, already cold, already aching to take instead of ask. His death didn't change him. It simply revealed what had always been beneath the skin.

He doesn't pity that boy.

He doesn't mourn the man.

Because waiting taught him this: not everything worth wanting comes with blood. Sometimes it comes soft. Unwilling. Trembling.

Sometimes, it comes to the door with nothing left but fear.

And so he waits—not to be let in.

But to be needed.

He leans his head back against the stone, eyes half-shut, and lets the cold settle in his bones. Lets it still the fire that never truly leaves him.

“Ābrar iā perzys,” he murmurs.

A woman. A flame.

His.

A breath.

The faint scuff of linen on wood. The softest shift of weight.

Footsteps. Small. Uncertain.

He hears them. Hears her.

The hush before surrender.

And then, from the other side of the door:

"Jon?"

His name, from a voice that is still young—and not. Still soft—and not. This little one of his.

He closes his eyes.

"Sansa," he says, her name sweeter than any arbor wine on his tongue.

She sinks down on the other side of the door. So does he. Neither of them speaks again.

But she stays.

And so does he.

Night after night.

Only she wasn’t made from stone and silence.

Not like him—carved from granite, shaped by cold, hardened by hunger and hate.

She is flesh. Trembling. Still learning how to carry herself through a world that demands too much.

He hears her hand on the door before he sees it shift.

Pushing it open—

Just enough for light to spill across the stones. Just enough for him to rise. She stands there in her shift, hair messy from sleep, her arms loose at her sides like she isn't quite sure how to hold herself.

She doesn't flinch when he reaches up, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. His touch is gentle, reverent. And when her lashes lower—not from fear, but from something quieter—he breathes her name again.

She doesn't speak.

Lady stands behind her, low to the ground, while a low whine bubbles up from her throat.

But the wolf doesn't move.

Not when Sansa shrinks away. Not when her shoulder grazes the stones, as if the weight of her own body is too much to carry.

This—this isn't something a wolf can take away.

Jon steps inside and closes the door.

He builds the fire himself, breath and flint and stone. Slow. Careful. The way he did when he lived beneath ice, when warmth was something earned.

She doesn't speak. She only sits, knees tucked to her chest, arms around them like they might keep her from breaking apart. Her shift clings where the sweat hasn't dried. Her eyes are wide, wide, wide—and he doesn't think she sees him at all until she flinches when he kneels beside her.

He murmurs her name just once. Not loud. Not demanding.

Still, she doesn't look.

"I'm here," he says again, brushing hair from her damp face. His knuckles trail across her brow, soft as breath. "I'm here, Sansa. You're safe."

Her lips tremble. Not from cold.

"No one can protect me," she whispers, voice flat. Empty. Not meeting his eyes.

He remembers those words.

The first time she said them.

The way they landed like knives.

"No one can protect anyone."

She meant them then. She means them now.

But when he wraps his arms around her, she doesn't pull away.

She folds into him like she's always belonged there. Like she doesn't know how not to. Her face presses to the hollow of his throat, her breath hot and shallow against his skin. Her fingers curl into his tunic—clutching, not clawing.

And still, she shakes.

He holds her tighter, lets the fire crack and spit and warm the room one stone at a time.

Lady doesn't move. She only watches. Silent. Steady.

She knows that he will help.

And Sansa whispers—

"I want you here."

“Please.”

It's the first truth she's spoken in weeks.

He won’t give this up.

He can’t, as she draws him further in—night after night, breath after breath.

He knows the creak of her bed now. The way the frame groans when she shifts in her sleep. The heat that builds between them beneath the furs. The places where her skin is softest, warmest, least guarded.

And he knows everything she doesn’t understand.

The way her scent changes when she’s near him. The flush that rises in her throat, sharp and confused. The way her fingers drift over his scars like they’re looking for something just beneath the surface. A key to something they don’t remember losing.

The way she tilts her head when he murmurs in tongues she doesn’t speak. The way her breath catches—not from fear, but from recognition she cannot place.

Some nights, they talk.

About nothing. About the wind. About the past, but never the truth of it.

She’ll ask if he remembers when Robb dared them to jump from the kennels into the snowdrift.

He’ll lie and say he doesn’t.

Some nights, they say nothing at all.

Just eyes and hands. Just skin and breath and silence, thick as smoke between them. It’s not love. Or maybe it is. It’s more than he’s ever had. More than he’s ever been allowed.

And still—each night feels like the first.

Like discovery. Like trespass.

Like instinct clawing to the surface. Like something ancient pulling at her bones, even as she pretends not to feel it.

A secret, he’s digging deeper, deeper, deeper—until no one can find them.

Until he’s hidden her in his bones. In his marrow.

He tells himself he’s being careful. That he’s giving her time.

But it’s a lie.

He wants her too close. Wants her caught.

(please.)

Wants her bound by this thing between them—

This heat, this ache, this unspoken name.

Wants her lost in him.

He holds himself under the water.

Longer than he needs to.

The hot springs beneath Winterfell run deep, quiet, and old as the gods themselves. He presses his palms to the stone, feels the weight of silence above him, the burn in his lungs. He doesn't rise until the ache flares sharp, until his body screams—but not for air.

When he does surface, the breath he draws is out of habit. Not need.

He imagines her here.

Bathing in this same pool, steam curled around her shoulders. Rivulets of heat trailing down her back, between her breasts, over the sharp bones of her hips. No one watching but him.

He would be gentle. Reverent.

He would make her clean.

His fingertips would trace each notch of her spine, trailing devotion like a litany. He'd follow the water’s path—over her shoulder, her hip, the delicate hollow where her thigh opens for him.

And beneath it—he can almost taste it—her slick, gathering slow and warm, scent rising soft and sharp, blooming in the steam.

Her scent would drive him mad. Sweet and aching, something fragile at the edges. Her gland pulsing where her neck meets shoulder, begging for his mouth. For his teeth.

And he would soothe her.

His tongue would pass slow over that swell, pressing reverence into skin. A kiss, not a bite—not yet. Just pressure. Just presence. The promise of safety. Of permanence.

She would feel it then.

Not the rut. Not the hunger.

The keeping.

That she is safe. That she is his.

Her breath would catch—just once—when he pulled her gently back against his chest, when her body settled into his without resistance. When she let him.

That moment—when she lets him in—is the one that undoes him.

It always is.

Because it is not lust that drives him. Not only.

It is hunger. Yes. But deeper still—need. To cherish her. To wrap himself around her. To build something quiet and unshakable between her skin and his teeth. To bury her in a nest of warmth, of scent, of forever.

And in this dream, she leans into him.

Her cheek rests against his shoulder. Her fingers find his thigh beneath the water. And he buries his mouth in her hair—wet strands clinging to his lips—and breathes her in like something holy.

Because she is.

“Fuck—”

His hips stutter and still, milky white seed covering his hand.

These are the dreams of a man.

Of the boy he once was.

Of want without consequence. Of touch without fear.

Of a world where she never burned, where he never froze, where he never learned how intoxicating cruelty could be.

But he did.

And even now, even in the steam and silence, he knows—

If she stood before him in the water, flushed and trembling, slick between her thighs and her scent thick with want—

He would not ask.

He would take.

Gently. Completely. As if he'd waited lifetimes for this.

(falling over and over again.)

The first night.

The first fall.

She smells like lavender soap and snowmelt. Like dust in old corners and the blood of forgotten gods. She smelled the same then, only covered in leather and furs until she had no skin left to expose and no one could hurt.

Now her scent comes softer. Warmer. Still tinged with grief, but threaded with something that tightens low in his belly when she draws near. Something that calls to him—quiet and uncertain. Her skin gives off the faintest sweetness, just beneath the surface. A pull. A need.

Jon doesn't move.

He simply lets her lie against him, her fingers curled beneath his jaw like she's still uncertain whether he's real.

"Will you stay?" she asks, barely above a breath. Her voice scratches at the edge of sleep, all ragged corners and things unsaid.

As if he hasn't already—for days now. As if he wouldn't, forever.

"I'll stay," he murmurs. His hand moves slowly, reverently, brushing the strands of hair from her temple. "Even if you tell me not to."

Her brow knits an ache in her head that never goes away. "You left before."

"I died before."

She tenses—just slightly.

"You—" Her words halt like a bird caught mid-flight. "You always say such strange things."

"I think strange things," he says. "And I remember too much."

Her breath hitches faintly, but she doesn’t pull away. She only presses closer, her nose brushing the hollow of his neck. Her scent flares again—barely there, like crushed flowers and salt.

Lady huffs low at the foot of the bed, the room swaddled in darkness and fur and the scent of pine smoke curling from the hearth.

He doesn’t tell her about what he remembers. The memories he clings to, of when he last saw her in the flesh.

He doesn’t tell her about his wedding. The day she stood behind marble columns in a northern gown and watched him take Daenerys Targaryen’s hand. The day everything between them curled in on itself and turned to ash.

Her eyes had passed over him as if he were already gone. And maybe he had been.

Already, he’d begun to play the games of his forefathers—balancing truths on his tongue, saying one thing while meaning another, wearing armor beneath his skin. He told himself it was for the realm. For peace. For the North.

But he’d known, in that moment—when she blinked once and never again—how badly he wanted to break her.

To tear her apart and bury himself deep inside her. To scent her skin, her slick, her heat, and leave the mark of what they were etched in places no one else could see. Even as another queen clung to his arm and whispered of destiny.

He thought of fire then, not as something to fear, but something to wield.

He thought of Aegon. Of Rhaegar. Of his father.

And saw himself.

But she hadn’t flinched. Hadn’t begged or wept or run. She’d only turned and walked away.

And now—now she lies against him like she’s never done it before. Because she hasn’t. Not in this life. Not like this, soft and trusting and real.

He watches her fingers curl softly into his tunic. Her breath is slow, measured. She’s not asleep—he knows her well enough to feel it—but she’s pretending to be.

And gods help him, he wants to stay in this moment.

To never tell her what she was. What they were. To never let her remember.

Because this softness—this sniffling warmth at his throat, this fragile ache in her voice—is not something she’ll give him if she ever becomes who she was. If he ever becomes who he was.

“Do you know,” he murmurs, voice low against her hair, “you used to stare at me like I held the whole world in my hands?”

A huff of breath, almost a laugh. “You're imagining things.”

He smiles faintly against her temple. “Maybe. You were always better at pretending.”

She’s quiet a moment, then says, softer now, “You never looked back at me.”

“I was afraid to.”

“Of what?”

“Of wanting you,” he says. “Even then.”

Her breath stills. Just for a moment.

Then: “You're strange. But you stay.”

There’s a pause. A small shift in the dark.

“Not just the things you say,” she adds, barely above a whisper. “You.”

She says it like it explains everything. Like it absolves her of needing to ask.

Then she moves.

Not far. Just enough. Her nose brushes the place where his neck meets shoulder, where the skin is thinner and warmer. Where his gland lies buried beneath the skin. He feels the first graze of it—a pass, not a press—and goes perfectly still.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Not consciously.

But her body does.

Her breath comes slow. Hesitant. She inhales again, softer this time, as if something in her is reaching toward him without her permission.

Jon stiffens.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. He lets her scent him—just enough to soothe her, to satisfy whatever ache is blooming behind her ribs.

And still—he can feel the heat start to pulse in her blood. A question. A pull.

Then she pulls back, just slightly, like something touched too hot.

She fears it.

Not him. But the thing that curls low in her belly when she breathes him in. The way it makes her skin feel too tight. The way it makes her bones remember something her mind refuses to name.

He stays very still. Lets the moment pass like wind over stone.

She doesn’t speak again.

But she doesn't move away.

The silence stretches between them, thick and unmoving for nights on end.

Neither of them speaks.

She only shifts, slowly, drawing one of his hands to her chest and holding it there like she’s afraid it might vanish. Her fingers are soft—too soft—and he wants to cover them with his own, press until the shape of her touch carves itself into him. Until she leaves a mark he can’t wash away.

“I used to dream of knights,” she says. “Golden ones, with soft voices. I used to think one would save me.”

He waits.

“And now?”

She hesitates, then breathes against his collarbone.

“Now I dream of snow. And a door I can’t close. And something warm wrapped around me that won’t let go.”

His pulse stutters beneath her grip.

“Skoros morghot vestri?” he murmurs, lips brushing her hair. What do you fear? His voice coils low, half prayer, half invocation.

(what does he want her to remember?)

A question Jon has answered.

(he hasn’t.)

Because it isn’t just one memory—it’s all of them. Her voice in the hall, taut with anger. Her mouth against his, blood-bright and desperate. Her hands fisted in his shoulders, holding like she might vanish if she let go. The way she looked at him—then and now.

He wants—

Her softness. Her sweetness. Her fury. Her ache.

He wants all of it, every fractured piece. He wants the girl she was and the woman curling against him now. Wants what he was never meant to have.

Wants her and nothing else.

How long has it been since he was honest? Since the shame burned away, leaving smooth flesh behind and mottled lungs. This selfish, damned creature he has become.

“What?”

“What do you fear?”

She is quiet for a long time.

Then:

“You,” she says softly. “Sometimes.”

His breath doesn’t catch. It freezes.

But her hand is still holding his.

“And yet,” she murmurs, “I feel warm with you.”

Her nose brushes just beneath his jaw—close to where his scent gathers. Where his gland lies hidden beneath skin and pulse. He thinks she’ll retreat again. That she’ll stop, unsure.

But she doesn’t.

She shifts closer, slowly, deliberately. And her mouth grazes the spot with a softness that shouldn’t be possible. Not a scenting. Not a claiming.

A kiss.

Barely there. Thoughtless. Or maybe not.

She doesn't know what she’s done. Not truly. But something in her moves like a girl who was raised in a world that whispered what men expect of women—and chose not to listen.

Because this isn’t about that.

It isn’t submission. It isn’t seduction. It’s something else.

He stays perfectly still, every muscle drawn tight in reverence. In restraint.

Because to him, it means everything.

And to her, it’s only comfort. Warmth. Contact she can’t name but still needs.

He lets his head fall to hers, breath mingling in the hush between them.

“You don’t have to remember,” Jon says, eyes shut. “I remember enough for both of us.”

And it ruins me.

She makes a sound—not quite a sob, not quite a sigh—and presses closer, threading herself into the hollow of his body. She doesn’t understand everything he says. And somewhere deep down, she doesn’t want to.

He tucks her in tighter. Watches the firelight play across her brow, casting her in gold and shadow. And he leans in, whispering into her hair:

“Nyke ābrar.”

I am yours.

And if she ever remembers—truly remembers—

If the fire returns to her bones, if the girl becomes the wolf again—

Then he will burn for her all over again.

The room is brimming with them; their hands intertwined.

Only him.

Only her.

In the soft dawn hours, he feeds her.

Decadent things. Simple things. Soothing things.

Always by hand.

A fig split open along the seam. A peeled apple slice, pressed gently past her lips. A honeyed oat softened in warm milk. Sometimes something sweet, sometimes salt—whatever the day allows, whatever she’ll accept. And she always does.

He watches her bloom again, bit by bit.

Not in joy. Not yet.

But in presence. In warmth. In the way she no longer turns her head away and the bruises beneath her eyes are fading.

She still loves lemon cakes.

He’s sure of it—though she hasn’t asked for them, hasn’t smiled at the mention like she once did. But he remembers. So he catches snow in his palms and gathers ash from the hearth, cups them like sacred offerings, and kneads them together until something warm and golden rises from his hands.

Something that tastes of before.

Of home.

Of her.

Small golden confections, dusted with powdered sugar, warm enough to melt when touched. He sets them on a cloth in the candlelight, watching the way her eyes track the movement of his hands.

And she lets him feed her.

She doesn’t lift her own hand. Just opens her mouth softly as he brings the cake to her lips. Her tongue peeks out, catching a crumb, then flicks lightly against the tip of his finger.

It’s instinctive. Thoughtless. But he nearly forgets to breathe.

Powdered sugar dusts the edge of her cheek. He brushes it away, slowly, reverently—only for her to turn slightly into the touch, the barest lean, like a creature learning how to be held again.

She doesn't understand.

Not yet.

Not fully.

But she lets him do it.

Lets him tuck each bite past her lips. Watches him like she’s searching for something she’s too afraid to name.

And he watches her. Watches the way her mouth moves, the quiet sound of her swallowing. The slight hitch in her breath when his knuckle grazes her lip again.

She tastes of citrus and silence. Soft things. Things that make him ache.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t need to.

But then—

She shifts.

Quietly. Slowly. Her eyes lower to the plate between them, to the last cake nestled against the cloth. Her fingers move, unsure at first, hovering too long before she picks it up.

He watches her. Doesn’t move.

She doesn’t meet his gaze as she lifts it, only leans forward, hand trembling faintly. Powdered sugar gathers at her fingertips, and when she brings it to his lips, her breath stutters—just once—like her body realizes something her mind can’t name.

He parts his mouth.

Lets her place the cake on his tongue.

Lets her feed him.

Her fingers linger a heartbeat too long. He could take them in—gently, reverently—but he doesn’t. He swallows instead. Slow. Controlled. Every muscle taut with restraint.

She finally looks at him.

And for a second—just a flicker—he thinks she knows. Not everything. Not the past, not the weight. But the feeling.

Of being his.

Of him being hers.

Her cheeks flush. She withdraws her hand.

But he catches her wrist—softly, only with two fingers—and presses a kiss to the sugar-dusted knuckle.

She doesn’t pull away again.

Outside, the rumors have begun.

The kitchen girls whisper that the Lady Sansa weeps within her father’s solar. That she won’t marry. That she says nothing at all, save one trembling confession:

“I can’t.”

But here, in the dark, she leans forward again.

And Jon—he brushes the last crumbs against her tongue, smearing tangy cream across her lip like a mark.

As if to say: You already have.

She kisses him.

Softly, at first. But then her hands slide into his collar, and her body moves like something decided. The plate rattles to the floor, forgotten. Sugar dust and juice staining the stone.

She presses him back onto the bed with a gentleness that feels like a vow.

And he goes—

Breathless.

Stunned.

Undone by the smallest part of her weight.

Her fingers tremble as they find the edge of his collar. She doesn’t tear—only loosens. Unfastens.

And he lets her.

He’s never felt more breakable.

Not when he took the throne. Not when he woke beneath cold stone.

Only here. Beneath her hands. Beneath her silence. Beneath her scent, curling around him like the hush before a storm.

There’s heat at the base of his spine, slow and building. Her scent blooms with it. Not perfumed—no—but warm.

Living.

A touch of crushed lemon rind and whatever sweetness lingers in the hollow of her throat.

It’s not time. He knows that.

And still—his body answers. His skin prickles, his breath deepens, his pulse begins to stutter.

Not because of a rut and or a heat and gushing slick.

Because of her.

Because she touches him like she wants to remember. Like her hands are searching through skin and heat and heartbeat for something long buried.

Her lips trail from his mouth to his jaw, to the base of his throat—pausing, briefly, above the place where his gland pulses, low and steady.

And then—soft as breath—she kisses it.

Not hunger. Not instinct.

Just knowing.

(he was always meant to be hers.)

He shudders. His fingers fist the sheets. Every part of him goes still.

She doesn’t know what it means. Not fully.

But her body does.

She noses along the curve of it, lips brushing once more. His scent spikes, thickening the air around them, dragging something helpless out of him—some whimpering, guttural sound he swallows too late.

But she doesn't pull back. She only shifts above him, her thighs straddling his hips now, pressing him into the mattress with more weight, more want.

Her eyes meet his.

She’s flushed. Her lips kiss-bitten. Her breath shallow.

He reaches up, curls a hand around the back of her neck, and drags her down again. Their mouths crash this time—open, wet, real.

She tastes like sugar. Like lemon. Like the past he wants to forget and the future he would burn the world for.

His other hand slides along her waist, over her ribs, slow and careful. She presses into the touch. Hips rocking once—just once—and he chokes on the sound it pulls from him.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he says hoarsely, though he doesn’t try to stop her.

Her mouth ghosts along his cheek. Her breath tickles his ear.

“Yes, I do, Jon,” she whispers.

And gods, maybe she does.

Because her heat is dampening against him now, her scent spiraling, blooming, sinking into his skin. The gland beneath his jaw throbs, aching with the need to soothe, to scent her back, to keep her.

She kisses him again.

Deeper.

Hungrier.

And he breaks.

Something in him claws forward—instinct, possession, need. To mark her from the inside out. To fill her with him. To knot deep and hold.

To watch her swell with what they’ve made.

He is unmade by the thought, even as he recognizes it isn’t time—she hasn’t made her pretty nest yet, lining it with dreams in place of the nightmares still nipping at her heels.

(she is everything.)

He rolls her gently beneath him, cradling her with one arm as if she might vanish. His other hand finds the curve of her breast, fingers brushing the soft skin reverently before trailing lower—slow, cautious, aching.

She gasps softly against his mouth as he touches her—fingers slipping down, down, until he finds her heat.

She’s soaked.

His breath catches. Her thighs part beneath him, not in invitation, but inevitability.

There’s want and need and everything between.

And there’s the terrifying, tender truth that he loves her—has always loved her—even when he couldn’t say it.

Even when it wasn’t allowed.

Even when it hurt.

(it still does.)

Her hips lift into his touch, the rhythm hesitant at first—push and pull, press and retreat—as if her body is remembering before she does. Her slick coats his fingers as he strokes her weeping cunt, gentle but insistent, dragging a whimper from her throat that undoes him more than any plea ever could.

He mouths at her throat, her collarbone, the place just above her breast where her heartbeat flutters like a bird trapped in silk.

Her scent is in his mouth, in his chest, flooding his skin with want.

He presses his forehead to hers.

He presses into her slowly, reverently. Her hands curl around his arms. Her eyes close. Her breath catches.

And gods, he goes slow.

As slow as she needs.

As soft as the moment will allow.

She clings to him—not out of fear, not out of confusion.

But because something in her remembers. The shape of him. The weight of him. The way his scent wraps around her like home and coaxes tears down her cheeks.

He makes her feel cherished. Safe.

(he is everything.)

She bites his shoulder when she comes. Her nails dig crescents into his back. Her breath shatters in his mouth.

And he follows her over—quiet, overwhelmed, worshipful.

Winterfell is changing. Becoming unrecognizable.

Its sighs fall quieter. Its weight shifts. The old stones no longer hum beneath other feet. They’re listening now. Watching. As if the castle is holding its breath—not in dread, but in a kind of haunted longing.

The godswood watches her. Not him.

The shadows do not follow Jon when Sansa is near. They follow her. They wait for her. As if she is what the keep has been mourning all this time—not the blood, not the banners, not the sons. But the girl. The one who stood in the heart of it and did not burn.

And the children—they change too.

Arya watches from thresholds now. Lurks in doorways where she once charged through without care. Her hands stay behind her back. Her words are sharper. Fewer. She says she wants a knife. Says she hates her gown. But she doesn’t ask Jon to teach her anymore.

She goes to the forge instead. The blacksmith’s son lets her watch. He doesn’t speak much, just shapes the steel and lets her hover in the shadows. And she does. She watches the fire eat the metal, the hammer shape it, the edge cool.

But her hand trembles when he offers the hilt. She doesn’t take it.

It is not the same.

She is not the same.

It started the night Jon showed her his face. Not cruelty. Not pride. Just truth—his truth—held in his eyes like frost. And Arya, who once said she feared nothing, had flinched. Now, she avoids his gaze. She still runs, but not toward anything. Only away.

Catelyn does not weep. She calcifies.

She watches Jon with grief honed to a blade. Her hands twist in black wool. She wears no Stark colors now. Only mourning. Not for Jon. Not even for Sansa. For Robb—the son who was meant to live. The son who was supposed to hold the line.

She sees what Jon is becoming. She feels it gather like a storm just beyond her reach. And she hates him for it.

Rickon is too young to name any of this. But he feels the shift. He feels the chill, the hush, the shadows that change shape when no one’s looking. And when the quiet becomes too loud, he goes to Sansa.

He doesn’t speak. Just finds her. Leans into her side. Clutches her dress with both hands like a child afraid of waking. Lady noses his cheek. Sansa strokes his hair. Neither of them say a word.

And Sansa—Sansa stays.

She weaves through the unraveling with thread no one else thought to use. Not anchoring, not healing, just remaining. When it grows too sharp—when her mother’s silence cuts, when Arya vanishes, when Rickon shakes in his sleep—she comes to Jon.

Not with words. With breath. With the hush of her weight beside him. With the way she doesn’t look at him, and then always does.

When the firelight touches her, he sees it: the flicker of something unnamed. Want. Wonder. Recognition. Rising in her like smoke. Her eyes are too wide to hold it all, and still they try.

Her bottom lip pulls between her teeth like she’s holding something in. He hopes it’s his name. He’s always hoped.

Who he was then and who he is now are not the same. And yet, they are.

Because he has always wanted her.

And she—

She chooses him.

In the quiet. In the dark.

When there are no names.

No gods.

Only skin.

Only breath.

Only him.

“Cousins,” she whispers.

“Cousins,” he agrees, the word curling into a smile against her neck before he kisses her there—slow, sure, as if the name means nothing at all.

As if this is the only truth that matters. 

Elsewhere in the keep, Bran dreams. Or tries to.

Sometimes his eyes linger too long. Sometimes he listens too hard. But the birds no longer come to him. The wind carries no answers. The trees do not whisper. The godswood does not stir.

Whatever thread was once his to follow is fraying.

Because she is here.

And Jon is with her.

There is no place for the raven in this dream.

No use for the watcher when the memory lives and breathes and weeps in his arms.

The song is no longer Bran’s to keep.

The raven starves.

And in that silence, Ned watches.

He says nothing. He never does. But Jon sees the flicker—too late, too faint—in his father’s eyes. He sees the quiet dread, the haunted recognition. The way the hall bends around Jon’s presence. The way Sansa’s silence deepens when he enters.

And sometimes, alone at night, Ned wonders.

If Jon is truly his sister’s son.

Or something else. Something his father left behind.

It’s an unfathomable thought. So he buries it.

He’s good at that.

Carrying what others cannot.

Though his wife has always carried more.

And he cannot look at her for it.

“Skorion gevives.”

Let it rot.