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I’m the hero of the story (don’t need to be saved)
Jon’s father was once fostered by Jon Arryn when he was a child, and Jon has always wondered what it was like for Ned Stark to leave the north and come to The Vale. So he finds himself seeking refuge there when he wakes up from death and learns that Arya is not at Winterfell. He no longer feels at home in the north, no longer feels right in his body. His body is broken, the wounds from his brothers’ betrayals won’t heal, and he’s not sure if his soul came back all in one piece either.
The Lord Protector, Petyr Baelish, is welcoming enough when he arrives, although he knows better than anyone to be wary when someone looks at him like they can take advantage of him. His brothers of the Night’s Watch looked at him that way after all, right before they killed him.
And then there is Baelish’s bastard born daughter, the lovely Alayne Stone. She's more beautiful than anyone he's ever seen, the type of woman they write songs for and sing about for a hundred years. He would never have dared look his fill on a woman like her before he died. But then he died, and she was a bastard like him. He feels fearless as he pursues her, in fact he is not sure he feels much at all, but still she fleets away from him, try as he might to get close to her.
During his welcome feast, Baelish sits Alayne next to him, but she ignores him through the night.
“Where did you grow up Lady Alayne?” he asks gently, more gently than he feels with his broken soul.
She frowns at him and glares, and his heart stutters, wishing for just one smile from her pretty mouth. “I’m not a lady, Lord Snow.”
He smiles at her glare. “And I’m not a lord, but won’t you do me the courtesy of answering my question?”
“You are the last Stark, so you must be the lord,” she answers, ignoring his request.
“I am not a Stark, and what is a lord without a keep?”
Her mouth twists as if she wants to say something unkind, but she answers softly instead, “The Boltons do not have the north’s support, and what is a lord without the people to lord over?”
“I would disagree with that insight, my lady, but I do not have the north’s support either.”
“You haven’t asked!” she insists, raising her voice. Jon’s eyebrow cocks up in curiosity, unsure why Alayne responds so passionately about the north, but he likes it. He wants her to raise her voice during other discussions, activities.
“And why should I?” he asks sourly. “There is nothing there for me at Winterfell.”
She frowns and refuses to respond to him again, try as he might to engage her again. He feels an immense loss at the quiet of her voice, but he does not know how to bring it back.
It feels like the harder he pursues her, the harder she flies and flutters from him. She always has a disapproving frown every time he tries to express his interest, and it drives him mad to remember the same frown on his younger sister Sansa. He has never wanted Sansa like he wants Alayne. He cannot remember wanting anything after he died until he met her.
Finally, he corners her in one of the libraries she spends so much time in, hiding away from the world, hiding away from her father. She looks lovely perched on a window sill, as the soft light brightens her features. He cannot remember wanting anyone so bad.
“Why do you look at me with such disdain, my lady?” he asks.
She frowns as she looks up from her book, and he wants to press his lips against hers until she is gasping and cannot frown anymore. “I do not look at you with disdain,” she says.
“Yes you do,” he insists. “I see it every time I catch your eyes.”
She sighs, “Well perhaps I disapprove of you.”
“How so, my lady?”
She puts her book down and stands up to meet his eyes. “Perhaps I disapprove that you will not fight for Winterfell when it is your home,” she answers.
The answer surprises Jon. He did not realize Alayne paid enough attention to him to know what he was to Winterfell, but he supposed if Baelish kept Alayne near him he must teach her these things. “Do you think I'm craven?” he asks.
“Yes, I do. Winterfell belongs to the Starks.”
“And as I said, I am not a Stark.”
Her eyes narrow and her frown deepens. “And is Eddard Stark not your father?”
He nods curtly. “Aye, he is.”
“Then surely you are a Stark.”
He laughs bitterly. “And just as surely, you are a Baelish and not a Stone.”
Her face flushes red with indignation at his insult to her.
“Bastard men can rise up high in the world,” she retorts. “Look at Tommen Baratheon and Ramsay Bolton, a king and a Lord of Winterfell, both pretenders.”
“And what about bastard women?” he asks pointedly.
She gives an unladylike shrug. “Only if they catch the right eyes.”
Sansa stalks off infuriated by Jon. He had arrived at the Eyrie a fortnight ago, and still she has no idea what he is doing. He has run away from his duties as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and yet instead of taking back Winterfell, he rode south to The Vale. Jon was always broody and sulky when they were growing up, but she had never taken him for a fool. She sighs in frustration. Perhaps she is the fool to have been so happy to see her brother who does not even recognize her, who does not even want to fight for their home. She can hardly recognize this man who will not fight for his favorite sister, Arya.
He stares at her too much, full of unbridled attraction towards her. It makes her sick knowing she is lying to her brother who shares their father’s blood. She should tell him the truth, but a man who will not fight for his favorite sibling will not fight for his least favorite. He is not someone that can help Sansa.
On top of it all, he has caught Petyr’s interest, which is never a good thing. Petyr must laugh himself to sleep every night that Jon stays in the Eyrie. His mind must be full of amusing thoughts of how Jon is in lust with his own sister. Petyr will use this against him the first chance he gets, just as he tried and failed to use the real father of Cersei’s children against her.
Petyr has started whispering disgusting things into her ears that makes her shiver at their vileness.
“Jon Snow wants you,” he whispers to her in his solar as he forces her to sit in his lap. She’s much too grown to be sitting in any man’s lap, and she detests this nightly ritual. “You should give him what he wants.”
She tries to play innocent. “I don't know what he wants.”
“No need to be coy, my dear. He wants what all men want,” he says gripping her waist tightly. She shudders, and he takes it as an invitation to press himself closer to her.
“And what is that?” she hisses.
“Your body of course.”
She tries not to pull away from him in revulsion. “He is my brother.”
Petyr shakes his head. “No, he is Sansa Stark’s brother. You are Alayne Stone, my daughter,” he insists.
The statement makes the nausea high in her stomach worse. She swallows it down and asks, “Why must I give him what he wants, Father?”
“Because, my sweet, it will get us what we want.”
“Which is?”
“Winterfell of course. Make him fall in love with you. Give him your body if you have to, but make him know that you will only return your feelings if he wins back Winterfell.”
She tastes the bitterness of bile on her tongue, tastes the depravity of what Petyr is saying. “I can't!” she cries out. This trickery will drive Jon to madness. She knows because she can already see it as he devours her with his eyes.
Petyr shushes her with a press of his lips against hers, and she almost cannot keep the bile down. “You can, my sweet. You must.”
She refuses to follow Petyr’s instruction. She thinks she would rather die than bed her brother. Instead she tries to convince Jon with words everyday that he should fight for Winterfell.
She attends to him during his stay at The Vale, bringing his food and dressing him in the morn. She prepares his bath in the evenings, and sometimes they have supper together. And all this time she tries to portray just how much he needs to retake Winterfell. Her sweetened words fall to deaf ears, and Jon hardly listens, too busy trying to change the discussion to different topics.
“Are you engaged to someone?” he asks.
He’s sitting in his bath, and normally she would have left as he cleansed himself, but he asked her to stay, damning propriety. He does not care that she is an unwed woman, and Lady of Eyrie in all but name. Desperate to make headway with him, she relents and sits on a stool and tries to avoid staring too closely at her brother’s body. She’s seen unhealing wounds that his brothers from the Night’s Watch had left him when she helped him dress in the mornings. She’s seen his hard muscles flex and twist before, but she’s never seen him wet, glistening. A depraved thought of wanting to lick the droplets of water flashes through her mind when she stares for too long.
“Yes,” she answers.
“To whom?”
“Harrold Hardyng.”
She watches him try to place the name to a face, and she watches how his mouth twists into a frown when he realizes it’s the arrogant handsome knight that he spars with most days.
“Did you choose him for yourself?”
She shakes her head softly, a loose lock of brown escaping from her braid. “No, Father chose him. He is the Heir Presumptive to The Vale,” she says.
“And I suppose that makes him a good match for you? Does he have the right set of eyes you mean to catch?” he says, his tone displeased with the new information.
“Of course, a bastard can only dream of becoming a lady of a great house,” she answers.
He clicks his tongue. “And yet he already has bastards of his own. They’ll undermine your own children.”
Sansa frowns. “Is that what you did to your own family? Is that why you won’t fight for Winterfell?” she accuses.
He jumps out of the bath, anger seeping out of his skin. Sansa cannot look away from his naked form fast enough. The part of her that marvels at the beauty of his body claws at her heart, threatening to overwhelm her, making her ill. He stalks to her, uncaring that he is dropping water all over the ground, all over her. He reaches out and forces her to look at him in the eyes. He gently pushes her loose lock of hair past her ears, a sharp contrast to the harshness of his words. “Do not presume to know what I have done to my family. I have died for them,” he hisses.
Sansa wants to weep and cower at the life that he had lost, but she can only sit still until he removes himself from her space and begins dressing himself. She despairs alone.
Every night that she fails to convince Jon that he must fight, that he must play the game, Petyr whispers haunting words into her ears.
“Do you know what men like Jon Snow crave, my sweet?” he asks. She does not want to know the answer, to know another trick to use to deceive and betray her brother.
“No, what does he crave, Father?” she asks back.
“Love,” he says. She holds back a sob at the truth of it, because bastards like Jon Snow and Alayne Stone want the same thing and will never have it.
“I have no love for him,” she lies.
“No, but you can pretend my dear Alayne.” Sansa doesn’t want to pretend anymore, doesn’t want to be Alayne anymore.
“How?” she asks.
“Touch him, hold his hand, men like him crave a mother’s touch after all.” So do I, she wants to say, but instead she is touched and violated by a false father.
Sansa has no choice but try Petry’s warped advice on how to make her brother fall in love with her. Her last argument has put her out of sorts with Jon. He denies her attention and refuses her service, and she is no closer in convincing him to fight for Winterfell. They are running out of time. Arya should not be left in their home while it is filled to the brim with monsters in the flesh of men.
So she ambushes him in his chambers, though he has not requested her. He’s standoffish, still upset at her days later. She cannot stand it; she is the one that is used to ignoring him, not the other way around.
“What are you doing here?” he asks angrily.
“I came to apologize, my lord, for my transgressions,” she says softly, walking closer to him, slowly invading his space, as he had done before. He does not cower as she did, instead he leans towards her, gravitating towards her.
“And what do you believe your transgressions to be?” he asks.
She reaches out and presses her palm on his chest. “I have insulted your position at Winterfell and what you have sacrificed,” she answers. “I have seen the wounds, but I did not understand.”
He places a hand on top of hers. She tries not to flinch back and slow her heart. Her heart refuses and hammers on, dissimilar to his steady, strong heart beat.
“I want you to understand more than anyone,” he whispers.
“Why, my lord?”
“I believe that if anyone can understand my heart, it is you,” he says.
“Because I am a bastard?” She flutters her eyes as she looks into his eyes. She feels him gasp as their eyes connect.
“No, that is not all. I cannot explain it, but I feel such a strong connection to you Alayne. I’ve never felt anything like this with anyone before. You must feel it too,” Jon says.
She wants to scream at him to stop talking, that he does not know what he is saying. He does not know her at all. She does not want to feel this connection that he speaks of. It shatters her to know his heart, to know what he wants. She wants to answer that she feels nothing, but it is a lie even to herself.
“I think I do,” she responds instead.
“Allow me to get to know you better, my dear Alayne,” he presses.
She swallows. “Yes,” she agrees. “Come to my chambers tonight for supper.”
She adorns herself in a light blue dress with a low neckline that brings out her eyes. It’s a gift from Petyr. She knows he gave it to her to seduce Harry, but it’s worse that she’s wearing it to seduce her brother.
Sansa feels her soul unravel at the decision she makes, but she has no other choice, she insists to herself. It can't be so bad, afterall Cersei bedding her brother birthed Kings of Westeros. She tries to bury the unbidden thought that one turned out to be a monster and both of them died in the end.
His eyes roam her body when he enters her chambers that evening. She tries to steer him towards their supper, but he crowds her against a wall instead.
“I want to make love to you, my sweet Alayne,” he says, pressing his arousal hard against her. She wants to beg him not to call her that. It’s all moving too fast, there’s nothing she can do to slow it down, to stop it. Maybe there was never anything to be done once he laid eyes on her as Alayne and not Sansa. It is her fault for engaging him in this mummer’s farce to begin with.
“I will give you anything,” he promises.
“I am a maid,” she whispers, and she can feel him shiver against her, at the thought that he will be her first. It makes her want to convulse in horror.
“I will make it so good for you,” he insists. “Tell me Alayne, tell me what it is that you want.”
“I want to be your wife,” she says. Shock fills his eyes, thinking that he would never have heard those words come out of her mouth, thinking his hopes would never be answered.
“Yes, of course,” he says, softly kissing her lips. She wants to pull away, but she stays her body.
“Father will never allow it unless you have something better to offer than The Vale,” she says. She can see his mind spinning towards the obvious solution.
“I will give him Winterfell,” he answers, and she knows this is the moment of no return.
She starts crying, and she hopes he thinks they are tears of joy as she presses her lips to him, instead of tears of anguish as she gives him everything. She weeps that first night. He is kind and gentle. He even manages to steal a gasp and a moan or two from her lips, but no amount of softness can erase the sin that they commit. Her soul is fracturing into a thousand unmendable pieces. Jon will never forgive her for her sins. It is the price to pay to return to Winterfell. She knows it is worth it.
When he sneaks off into the night so as to not call into question her honour, she retches everything within her to try to expunge the affliction in her soul.
By the second night, there are no tears and the shock has worn off, and to her horror, she finds pleasure in the act with her brother. Everyday after the first, she is complicit in their tragedy as she takes satisfaction in having her emptiness, her darkness, filled by him. In return she fills him too. He touches her all the time when they are alone. Petyr is right in that he was starving for attention all this time, but she is not her mother, despite what Petyr thinks, what Jon reminds her.
She hates that she loves fucking Jon, her brother, so much. It makes her want to weep, makes her sick at how much she craves him inside of her during the day. She’s a vile woman, and he's a wicked man. She wants to fill herself with him and nothing else. He twists and pulls and pinches her in ways she never imagined. She screams and cries, and sobs at the pleasures he brings her, and when she peaks so hard after he sticks a finger in her arse, she thinks she would consider even letting him bugger her arse so he can fill that as well.
She lets him fuck her in a way no lady should, but she's Alayne and he’s Jon, and it makes sense for two bastards fucking.
He will hate her for this. She hates herself for this. She has ruined him. She has ruined everything. She has saved Winterfell.
He never, ever saw it coming at all
They ride north a sennight after he takes her for the first time. He has never known such pleasure, such joy in his entire life, and he cannot stop thinking that he might have this for the rest of his life with Alayne by his side.
He takes her every night while they gather allegiances and promises of reluctant lords, uncertain if they should back the Bostons or Eddard Stark’s bastard son. Sometimes their denial of his Stark blood is so intense, he questions if he has the right to fight this war all. He hates war. He hates the politicking, the killing, the blood lust. He wishes they could just run away and never go back. They could have a family, away from all of this. He tells this to Alayne, and she shakes her head. Alayne always brings him back from his reverie with her soft kisses and even softer cunt. He loves her. He's never loved anything in his life. He knows he’ll never love anything else.
He relays this to Alayne as he holds her in his arms while they lay in her bed roll. In a couple of hours, he must go back to his tent and spend the rest of the night alone. “I love you so much, my dear Alayne.” She shivers in his arms. “I want to marry you now.”
She shakes her head, turning to look at him. “I want to be married in the godswood in Winterfell.”
He cups her cheek, and she leans into his touch. She has been more open to him and his touches recently. It drives him to madness. “And I want to give you that dream so badly, but who knows what will happen in battle. If anything should happen to me, I want you to be protected. You will be my heir, the northmen loyal to me will be loyal to you.”
He can see her hesitate, but she answers, “Let us keep it between us and only note it down within your will. There are many people who would be unhappy with our marriage.”
So they marry at the nearest heart tree with no witnesses and no evidence save for his will that he gives to her for safe keeping. He fucks her in the woods like never before, and she screams and cries out his name and begs for him to never stop. He has her and she has him. He has never felt such high as this. It is his rallying cry through the battle for Winterfell.
He’s merciless through it all.
He’s asked her to meet him in the godswood after he reclaims Winterfell. They’ll wed again in front of the northern lords, so that they may know that she is his and he is hers.
Instead, she catches him in his chambers as he is changing out of his mud and blood covered tunic.
Her hair is bright red, and he reels from it. He knows her. He doesn’t know her at all.
“Alayne?” he asks, shaking his head, as if he can shake away the image in front of her.
Alayne shakes her head, and he knows. “Sansa,” he chokes. His knees buckle, and he barely holds himself up by leaning against the pillar of his bed.
He feels his heart stop painfully, just the same way it did when it was stabbed straight through by his brothers. Nothing feels real. It is all a hazed dream. He will wake in a moment. Nothing is right, but this is reality. He married his gods damned sister. The memories of her naked skin against his, her tears that first night, her moans and gasps and cries all blend in together. He wants to retch it all out of him. He claws at his throat, desperate for air. He can’t remember if he forced her.
He sees nothing but red. He wants blood; he doesn’t know whose blood. He could die from this. He should die for his bastardy, for his sins. He should throw himself from the tallest battlement, run himself through with his own sword, for the things he has done to his own sister. He has debased her. He had taken her maidenhead. He gags.
“You have poisoned us Sansa!” he screams at her. She does not flinch, but she starts crying.
“I know! I’m sorry! Please you must understand. You would not fight for Winterfell.”
“I would have fought for you!”
“I couldn’t have known. I didn’t know Arya was not at Winterfell. I wanted to save her so badly, and you refused every reasoning I gave. I needed to go home so desperately. I needed to get away from Petyr so desperately,” she cries.
He turns on her and watches her carefully. “Tell me that Petyr forced you to do this. That it was all him and his plotting, and I will forgive you.”
She lets out a strangled sob. “I can’t.”
“You must Sansa.”
“I can’t! He whispers things to me in the dead of night, but the choices, no matter how limited, are always mine, just as yours are.”
“You’ve condemned us both,” he hisses. “I loved you!”
He loved her in a way that no man should love his sister. He would never be able to erase this stain in his life.
“Why did you let me marry you?” he asks. He wants her to answer it is because she felt the same about him, that not all of it was a lie, because at least then he would not be alone in his depravity.
Her answer is another stab to his heart.
“Some days you were so reluctant to fight, and I needed to be sure,” she whispers. “No one was ever going to know, and Alayne Stone isn't real.”
“She was to me!”
He wants to grab her and shake her, to force her to tell him more lies so that he does not have to live with the consequences of her lies.
“I'm sorry Jon. I'm so sorry.”
Sansa did not love him more than she loved a brother. She was only using him to get to Winterfell. She took advantage of his love for Alayne.
“What if you became with child?” He feels insane, gagging at the words. What if they created a child in their image? It would be so wrong. It would be lovely. He wants it so badly.
“I made sure.” And that hurts him more than the thought of them having an inbred child together. He wants a family so badly. “Please Jon, it’s not so bad. I made sure that there would be no consequences that mattered.” She’s begging him now, but he doesn’t know what for.
“And I suppose then the fact that you’ve ruined me doesn’t matter?” he hisses.
“Of course that’s not what I meant.”
“You have made me the very thing that your mother feared. A baseborn man who lusts and loves after his sister, who seeks to take what is not his, but is what is rightfully yours!” he continues.
“I know, I know!” she answers, though she tries not to hear him.
Jon paces around the room. “I cannot stay here.”
She reaches out to grab for him, but he pulls away. Another broken sob escapes her lips. “Please, you are the King in the North. We need you here at Winterfell. I need you.”
“I do not care what you need Sansa. I cannot stay here!”
She wrangles her hand painfully, leaving red marks. “Where will you go?”
“I will go south. The dragon queen has taken Dragonstone for her own. I will entreat with her for an alliance against the war with the Others.”
She gives him a pained look, and he cannot bear to see her heart break even as his own is irredeemable.
“Will you offer a marriage alliance?” she asks softly through her sniffling.
“I will offer what needs to be done in order to secure the alliance for the north, for Winterfell, just as you have done what needed to be done,” he retorts.
He loves her. He hates her. She is the sun in his sky. She is the ice that freezes his heart. He can only see despair as he finds himself in the arms of another.
The northern lords are confused and shocked as Jon leaves them to seek an alliance with a foreign queen and Sansa is left to lord over them in his absence. They are distrustful of her after learning her trickery and disguise. If they knew the half of it, they would sentence her to death for her odiousness.
Petyr hardly blinks an eye at the immorality of what Sansa has done.
“You must marry Harry in order to secure The Vale, for this fight for your brother;” Petyr whispers in her ear when they are alone in her solar. He no longer whispers it as she is in his lap, for she is no longer Alayne Stone, but Sansa Stark of Winterfell.
“Harry and the Knights of Vale rode for me to reclaim Winterfell, why will they not fight for me to keep it?” she asks.
“That was when you were my daughter, now you are a Stark, and they have no allegiance to the Starks,” Petyr reasons.
Sansa wonders if she would ever willingly go back to being Petyr's daughter if it meant securing the Knights of Vale. She thinks about how he groped and touched her as his daughter, and she thinks about how she fucked her own brother. What is selling her body to another man now, she reasons with herself. She knows she and her siblings will need Harry, especially after what they're about to do to Petyr. It is always one lie then another with her, ever since they killed Father at the Sept of Baelor, since they made her watch and look at his rotting head. She does not know who she is or even if she truly lives, perhaps she had died the same day Father did, and came back not unlike Jon, something broken and twisted inside.
Petyr keeps pushing forth his agenda, knowing that he has an unshakeable hold over them through Jon’s love for Alayne. Gods, she wants to cry at the thought of the truth being revealed. No one could ever know. She needs to rid her family of Petyr.
When they hold Petyr's trial, and his blood mars the floor of the great hall, she does not feel sorrow nor joy. She feels hollowed out, because she no longer knows who she is. Not for the first time she wishes Jon was home so he could fill her, but then he would never fill her again because he is her brother.
Then Jon returns with his dragon queen. She’s as beautiful as Petyr said. She resents how often Petyr was right now that he’s gone.
When Jon finds out about her marriage to Harry, she can tell he is simultaneously overjoyed and resentful that she is married to another, because perhaps if she is married she will not haunt him, and they can bury what they did.
“I see you married Harry the Arse after all,” he says, cornering her in her solar. It’s the first time that they have truly spoken since he had left. She is simultaneously surprised and not that this is the first topic that he brings up.
“Yes, I did. It was for the good of the north,” she responds.
He sneers at her, and wishes she did not flinch. “Aye, you’re always doing what is best for the north aren’t you?” Like fucking your own brother, are the words that he does not need to say. “And now you also have hold over The Vale.”
“What are you saying?” she asks, dreading his answer.
“You’ve planned this all along. You only wanted me to take Winterfell, and now that you have it, you want more, so you’ll take The Vale as well.”
She laughs incredulously. “So that’s it then? You think me a power hungry woman?”
“Aren’t you?” he hisses. She wants to cry at the accusation. She wants to convince him she only wanted to come home; she never meant to have so much power over the realm, over him.
“And what about the dragon queen, who claims the Iron Throne as her birthright, is she not a power hungry woman?”
“At least she does not hide it!” he yells.
“Oh yes, because a power hungry woman who openly burns people alive is much better than me!” she yells back. “Yes, Jon, we are exactly the same person. That must be why you’re fucking her.”
She continues, “You said we needed men to fight the Others. You said it was one of the reasons why you bent the knee, or was just that an excuse to fuck her?” He flinches at the accusation, and she does not need to know anymore, does not want to know anymore.
Jon ignores her, and at the same time she wishes he would address it, so she could understand this jealousy sitting too close to the surface of her skin. He is her brother, but she does not want him in the arms of another. “Don’t tell me that this was also another ploy from your dear father Baelish,” he accuses.
“Petyr was not my father!” she hisses in response. “But go ahead and tell yourself whatever you need to, if it will make it all easier for you.” Go on, she wants to say, pretend that we did not have the same father so what we have done is not so repungent.
“You do not get to be angry about the lies that you made!”
She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. “What do you want from me Jon?” she asks shakily.
“Nothing, I don’t want anything from you ever again.” He stalks off, and she begs herself to not cry.
Later, Jon will spend his time rediscovering his brother and sister, all the while ignoring Sansa. She cannot stand the vast emptiness of her being. She attempts to find comfort in her husband, and though he gives her momentary respite, he hollows her out more.
They call her Good Queen Sansa, behind the dragon queen’s back. They think her to be pure and honest and good, but she knows she is filthy and disgusting and painted black, the darkest, rotting blood, by her actions. She destroyed her goodness when she lost her maidenhead to her brother.
She is drowning in despair without Petyr whispering future plans and sweet nothings in her ear, without the warmth of Jon’s body filling her, buoying her up. She feels the onset of madness setting in her bones, and she sees it mirrored in the dragon queen. Sansa knows Daenerys is mad because she is mad herself. The madness is itching and scratching to get out. She lusts after her own brother, while married to another, while bedding another.
But Sansa hides her madness better than the dragon queen. She learned well in King’s Landing. She hides it in her false affections with Harry, but the best place to hide it is in her steadfastness for Winterfell. As a Stark of Winterfell she should fight for her home, give her life for her home, give her body for her home. Her obsession is not madness if it is what is expected of her.
“What about the north?” she asks the dragon queen. She insists for the north, unbending, unlike Jon. The northern lords respect her for it, but she is only hiding her madness. She can hardly care, not when Jon refuses to look at her, to see her, though she gave up so much for Winterfell. She hides it well, and the men and the dragons go to war with the others for Winterfell.
His love for her is a sickness he has tried to draw out from himself but have failed. His cock has found a new cunt, belonging to a soft, willing, and beautiful woman, yet he cannot draw out Alayne, Sansa, from deep within him. The gods know he has tried when he left for Dragonstone for almost a year. He has tried to love Danaerys as he should, but his murdered heart refuses to beat for another.
He finds himself as cold as the frozen tundra beyond the wall, and the only thing that will warm him, burn him to ash, is thoughts of Sansa, her brown, red hair, her startling blue eyes. The way she screams and cries his names as he holds her down and fucks her into the bed. He will never have her again, and the thought brings him to his knees more than the truth of Sansa being revealed.
The thought of her fucking another man levels him. He's always detested Hardyng, ever since he learned of his intention with Alayne, and now he is married to Sansa. He has the love and life that Jon wants. He cannot stand it. He wants to destroy it, destroy him.
“Sansa and I are doing well,” Hardyng says, as he rides up next to him on their journey to the north.
“I didn’t ask,” he responds roughly.
“I hope that she will be with child when we return,” Hardyng continues anyways. Jon wants to run him through with his own sword and watch him bleed out as the light in his eyes disappears. He can’t bring himself to imagine Sansa with a child and family that is not with him. He hates that he imagines Hardyng fucking Sansa. He hopes that she kept on with her moontea even after Jon left her in Winterfell. He loathes himself for this weakness.
“And I hope you focus long enough in what is ahead to make it back to her,” he lies. He wants to make sure that he doesn’t return from the war against the Others. But Hardyng is a fool, and does not see his murderous intent. He happily rides ahead to engage and flirt with Daenerys right in front of him.
When Hardyng is cornered in a battle, Jon is reluctant to save him. He delays his rescue, his spitefulness and jealousy overwhelming him, until he knows that they need men alive, lest they turn into the Others against him. He grudgingly rescues him from his death, only for him to die from infection from a wound days later. At least he cannot be blamed for this, at least it is not another mark of darkness upon his soul. He knows it might as well have been, as he gleefully sends Sansa a letter entailing the death of her husband. What is another husband gone and lost for Sansa when she's had three?
They win the war. Harry is dead, and Sansa should be sad for her dear dead husband, but she cannot even think of it, for Jon is alive. She knows he must have tried so hard to die, to bury his sins, but he’s alive. He came back. She wants to pretend that it was for her.
She doesn’t bother hiding her joy when she sees him ride into Winterfell. She runs into his arms as soon as he steps off of his horse. In his surprise, he holds her for the first time since he learned the truth of Alayne Stone. He lets her kiss his face everywhere, barely missing his lips. It's not proper, not at all, but he died and almost died again, and so she cannot begin to care. But eventually he catches the dragon queen’s eyes. Soon he cares and pushes her away. She grieves the loss of his arms around her.
She realizes then that her worst transgression is that she loves Jon and that she does not care that he is her brother.
When the real truth is revealed by both Jon and Bran, she lets out a laugh-cry in her shock. The madness wants to crawl out of her mouth. Poor, poor Jon, running out of the arms of his sister into the arms of his aunt. Her heart breaks for him. Maybe he could have recovered from his brothers’ betrayals. Maybe he could have recovered from Alayne’s betrayal. But there's no way that he’ll be able to recover from Sansa’s next and last betrayal. She doesn't even bother hating herself this time. She's hated herself long enough, and in the end she didn't have to because they were cousins. She wants him, she needs him, she’ll do anything to wrest him out of the dragon queen’s grasps.
Jon has the better claim to the Iron Throne, and Sansa has dominion over three of the seven kingdoms. This is how they unite a realm. They belong together. If the truth had been known, father would have arranged a marriage surely. Instead their lives and their soul were twisted and mangled by all the lies. Was she so terrible to love her brother if he was not really her brother at all? But what if the truth was never revealed? What if Jon did not end up her cousin. She resolves herself. She has no use for what ifs.
So she tells Tyrion the truth, who then tells Varys, who burns for it, just as King’s Landing burns for it. She hears the screams of burning men and women and children in her dreams, though she is hundreds of miles away. Their blood is on her hands. No, it’s on the dragon queen’s, and then the dragon queen’s blood is on Jon’s hands. There’s always so much blood on Jon’s hands. Did Sansa put it there? She must have for the way that he lashes out in anger at his fate at her.
No one’s got it all
He resents that he was brought back to life. He should have stayed dead if all that was left was for him to live through this misery. He hates her. He hates himself. He comes back to her anyways. He understands why she did what she did; it was for the same reasons why he did what he did. They did it for their home, their family. Still, he cannot stop the rage.
They try to trap him in King’s Landing after he murders his aunt for her crimes against King’s Landing. They want to force him to the damned throne that he never wanted. When he rejects the throne, they try to exile him instead, to ensure that he will never press his claim for the throne again. Perhaps before he had died, before he had met Alayne, he would have happily self-exiled beyond the wall to be with the wildlings. But he had died, and he had met and loved Alayne, and now he can only think of resenting the woman who was her but not. So he comes back to her, despite what they try to make him do.
“You could have been king,” she says when she finds him in the godswood the first night he returns to Winterfell.
“I didn’t want to be king.”
“What did you want?”
“I wanted to marry Alayne Stone and fuck her and put as many babes in her as I could. And after everything that happened, all of the blood that I’ve spilled, the kin that I have slain, all I want to do is come back to Alayne Stone, but she does not exist.”
“I'm not sorry for what I did. I was willing to do anything, everything, to get back Winterfell, even fuck my own brother,” she says.
“I'm not your brother.”
She snorts, and only she could look and sound so graceful doing so. He resents her even more for it. “And thank the gods for that. The one thing they deigned to bless us with is at least we're not like the Lannisters or the Targaryens.”
“No, you were the only one blessed not to be a Targaryen,” Jon retorts. The gods gave him nothing. “Only you were spared.”
“You're not a Targaryen, Jon,” Sansa insists.
“And I'm not a Stark either,” Jon responds.
“But you could be.” Sansa grabs his hand, ignoring the way that he flinches and tries to pull away, despite her tight hold. “I could make you a Stark.”
He knows what she's trying to do, and he doesn't like it. She would try to marry him, promise him the name Stark that he once coveted in a bid to control him. She wants him to be king. He can see the ambition in her eyes, though sometimes he lies to himself and tells himself that it is love not ambition. But he loved Alayne Stone, loved her more than he wanted to live, loved her so much he would rip out his own heart with his own bare hands and present it to her on her knees. But Alayne Stone was a lie and those dreams are dead, burned up in King’s Landing by dragon fire.
He pulls away from her. “I don’t want to be king!” he says.
“I don’t care if you are king or not,” she insists. She pulls herself closer to him. They wear thick cloaks to protect themselves from the winter freeze, but he swears he can feel her body heat emanating from her. Perhaps it is a memory. It makes him want to reach out and tear off their clothing so he can make his imaginings true. “You loved me before. Why can you not love me again?”
“I didn't love you. I loved Alayne,” he hisses.
“Do you want me to dye my hair then? So that when you fuck me, you are grabbing brown hair not red? So I look even more like your sister, though I am not? So that I have a northern look instead of southern?” Yes! he wants to scream. He wants to go back to before he knew the truth. He cannot stand the fact that he loved her through everything. He does not recognize the beast that he has become. He cannot stand himself.
“You're not that woman.”
“But I can be! I can be whatever you want! They taught me how,” her voice is raised, and he can see she is fraying at the edges. He feels good about it. She continues, “I can be that sweet Alayne you chased, who gave her maidenhead for the promise of Winterfell, who you married and fucked in the godswood in front of the old gods.”
He becomes breathless at the memory. “Stop it.”
“Do you want me to lie through my teeth? Be subservient to you as you punish me?”
“And how should I punish you?” he asks, his voice rising too. He wants to punish her. He wants to make her bend, maybe the same way Daenerys wanted them all to bend. Maybe it is the dragon’s blood in him that makes him want to conquer her. He wants her on her knees, gasping and begging. He wants to make her suffer as he had suffered, to make her lose her mind as he had lost his after the first betrayal and then again after the second betrayal. “By undermining your rule by marrying you? By forcing you in a loveless marriage?”
She pushes him down to the ground, undoes his breeches, mounts him like a horse.
“What are you doing?” he hisses.
“I love you,” she answers. His mind screams, liar! It is another deceit, another trick for Sansa to get her way. He does not believe her. She can see it in his eyes. “I can be whoever you want. I can be the one you love.”
The problem is he does not know who he loves. Does he love Alayne, who insisted on Winterfell, who fell apart in his arms every night as she moaned wantonly for him, who lied to him for moons, who made him love like he has never loved before? Does he love Sansa, this mad, broken creature insisting she can change her soul like their sister changes faces? Does he love a dream, his sister, his cousin? He anguishes because he does not know. He anguishes because he feels more wicked and vile than Daenerys, though she burned millions in King’s Landing. He anguishes because he does not care who she is because he loves her.
She rides him until they both peak.
“I will prove I love you,” she says. “For the rest of my life.”
She kisses him. He kisses back with anger and fury because he is giving up, because he is weak. He has always been weak to her, even before he fell in love with Alayne. She was the sun that blinded him when they were children. He could never hope to win against her, a queen of love and beauty, a master player of the game, but the hideous truth is that he never wanted to win in the first place.
“There will not be a third betrayal,” he says, pulling back from the kiss. “Neither of us will survive it.”
Sansa nods, knowing it is a promise of a future edging between violence and madness. Still, she looks at him softly, full of everlasting hope, the same hope that saved his second life from despair, and he knows all her promises will be true.
He turns them over so he is on top. He grabs hold of her neck and squeezes, so she is breathless. They peak harder than they ever had before, tears streaming down her eyes as he cries out her name and his love for her. He will make sure her promises are kept one way or another.