Chapter Text
I’ve been meaning to tell you,
I think your house is haunted,
Your dad is always mad and that must be why,
And I think you should come live with me,
And we can be pirates,
And you won’t have to cry,
Or hide in the closet
From her spot at the top of the slide, Sansa could see the boy standing in the shadows at the edge of the park. He was under the trees, where the sandbox ended. Only he wasn’t playing in the sand—he was just standing there.
“Robb!” she called. He was supposed to be rescuing her from the tower, but the older boys were playing basketball over by the parking lot. Robb liked to think he should be playing with them instead of with her and Arya, even though he was only ten and the boys by the parking lot were in middle school.
Arya joined her first, crawling up the slide the way you weren’t supposed to.
“I called Robb.” Because Robb was older, and because he was a boy. She thought he might know who the shadowed boy was.
“Yeah, but I beat him. Pirates win,” Arya declared.
“We’re not playing anymore,” Sansa huffed, turning to look for her brother.
“Why not?”
“Robb! Come up here!”
He finally turned away from the older boys and climbed the jungle gym the way you were supposed to.
“What?”
“Do you know that boy?” Sansa asked. Her mother taught her it was rude to point, but she didn’t know another way to show who she was asking about. He must have seen her because he suddenly stepped away from the sandbox, closer to the trees. Sansa dropped her hand guiltily.
“That’s Jon. He’s in my grade.”
“Do you think he wants to play?” Arya asked, because Arya was always asking if people wanted to play. She asked the middle schoolers all the time, which annoyed Sansa. “He can be a pirate with me.”
Robb shrugged. He didn’t say anything else about Jon, so Arya slid back down the slide—the proper way—and ran towards the trees.
“Is he your friend?” Sansa whispered.
“He sits alone at lunch. And he stays inside for recess in the winter.”
Sansa took that to mean no. She also took that to mean that Jon didn’t have many friends, if he sat alone at lunch. She there were a couple girls in her grade who did.
Arya came back from the shadows then, the boy—Jon—behind her. For once, Arya climbed to the top of the slide using the steps and ladder instead of going up it. Jon followed her.
“He said he’d play with us. He’s a pirate too. Sansa’s the princess and Robb’s the knight.”
“Knights and pirates aren’t from the same time,” Sansa said.
“So?”
Jon looked at her, and even though he was in the sun now, she thought he still looked like a shadow.
“Wait, that’s not fair,” Robb started, when Jon and Arya started to climb down. “Only one of you should be able to get to Sansa. The other should guard her, so it’s fair.”
“Whose team is Jon on then?”
“He has to guard her from whoever comes up first.”
“So, he’s on my team,” Sansa reasoned.
“No, you’re not on a team. You’re the princess.” Sansa decided not to argue and, with everyone agreed, Robb the knight and Arya the pirate climbed down.
“I’m Sansa Stark,” she stated, sticking her hand out the way she’d seen adults do.
“Jon Snow.”
His voice was quieter than she expected, and his hand was a little rough and dirty, like Arya’s usually were in the summer.
“We live over there,” Sansa pointed—she knew pointing was okay if she wasn’t pointing at somebody. They lived on the other side of the park, which is why they spent most of every summer playing on the swings and jungle gym.
“I live in the house on the hill, over there.”
Jon pointed in the opposite direction.
Sansa knew the house on the hill he was talking about. It was the one she thought belonged in a fairy tale with its winding driveway and fairy gardens.
“I love that house! I always thought a princess lived there.”
“Nope. No princess.”
Sansa was going to ask if fairies actually lived in the garden like she suspected, but Arya’s screech startled her. She looked over to see her sister charging across the park.
The sky was turning orange when Sansa heard their mother’s voice calling them home for dinner.
“We have to go,” she told Jon. “It’s dinner time.”
“Yeah, yeah. Me too.”
“We’ll be back tomorrow. If you want to play.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, Jon,” she waved before sliding down the slide and starting for home, Robb and Arya behind her.
The summer passed in bright, vibrant days spent at the park. Most days, Sansa was the princess trapped at the top of the slide and Jon was her guard. Some days, she was rescued from pirates by Robb and others she was captured from her castle by Arya.
As the early summer days stretched into midsummer, their games evolved. Arya, Robb, and Jon found sticks to serve as swords, which meant that Sansa spent more time waiting to be rescued.
It meant that she and Jon started to become friends while waiting for him to have to guard her.
He told her stories about the fairies that lived in the gardens at his house on the hill—I knew it, she’d whispered when he told her. Arya had called her stupid when Sansa told her, but she shut up when she said Jon was the one who’d seen them.
Sansa told him about the character she’d made up as the princess she was playing, and about Arya’s pirate. When he asked, she made up characters for his guard.
They spun tales and stories and shared dreams, but Sansa, never asked the questions she wanted. The ones she’d been raised too polite to ask.
Why he wore long pants in the summer, why he seemed to only have a handful of t-shirts, and why his shoes looked too small for him.
Those were questions that Catelyn overheard her asking Robb, because she wanted to know. Robb didn’t have any answers but Catelyn made her promise not to ask him that. She hadn’t planned on it, but Catelyn’s response made her more curious. Especially when she started asking more questions about Jon.
“Where’d you meet him?”
“At the park. He’s in Robb’s grade.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“In the house on the hill with the fairy gardens.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“Yeah, and he knows the fairies. Do you think I could go over there and meet them?” Sansa asked. She thought if she met them she could get proof and then Arya wouldn’t call her stupid anymore.
“I don’t think so. It’s probably best to just play at the park.”
“Okay.”
Two days later, Jon wasn’t at the park. He was normally waiting for them by the sandbox, digging little holes with his stick-sword. Today he wasn’t there. He’d never not been there.
“Should we go get him?” Arya asked.
“No. Mom said to only play in the park.”
“But I thought he just lives over on the hill.”
“We should wait for him,” Robb said. “Maybe he’s just late.”
Arya huffed but went and found her stick to go swing at the trees. Robb joined her. Sansa didn’t feel like going to the top of the slide without Jon to keep her company, so she went to the swings instead.
She thought maybe if she could get high enough, she could see Jon’s house. Even as she pumped her legs, going higher than she had before, only the top of the house was visible on the other side of the trees.
Sansa knew what Catelyn said, but she was pretty sure the house was just through the trees and up the hill. It was almost part of the park, the way her house was. She used to think of it as part of their yard until Robb told her anyone could play there.
“Maybe Arya’s right,” Sansa told Robb, once she’d left the swing and crossed the sandbox. “I can see his house from the swings.”
Arya was already past the first few trees. Sansa and Robb had to run to catch up.
Once they were through the trees, Robb took the lead, because he was the oldest, he said.
Sansa had been planning on going up to the door and asking if Jon could play, but Robb stopped them when they got to the start of the driveway that wound up the hill.
“You said this is where Jon lives?” Robb asked.
“Yeah. The house on the hill with the fairy gardens.” Sansa had been hoping to maybe see some on her way to the front door.
“This doesn’t say Snow, though.”
Robb was pointing at the mailbox and the name along the side. Sansa knew that’s where your last name went. Their mailbox said STARK on the side and then the numbers of their address down the post.
Robb was right. It didn’t say SNOW. She didn’t know the name that was faded on the side; it wasn’t one she’d heard and it wasn’t a word she knew how to read.
“Maybe it’s on the other side?” she asked, walking around the mailbox. That side was blank.
“Maybe it’s a few houses down,” Robb suggested. “We’ll just check to the end of this street and go back,” he decided.
Sansa wasn’t sure—this was definitely further than they were supposed to go—but she also wanted to find Jon.
She took Arya’s hand, because she’d already tried to dart across the street to check that mailbox even though she could barely read. Sansa let Robb lead now because she’d never been on this street alone and she didn’t know how much trouble they could get in.
The house on the hill Sansa had always thought belonged to a princess. It was a big house, and even had a tower. The houses around it weren’t the same. It was like a village from one of her stories, with the big castle and little houses around it for all the village people.
The other houses on the street were small, smaller than theirs, and several looked like a witch might live there, she thought.
It wasn’t until they got to the end of the street, on the other side from the fairy garden house, that Robb said it was Jon’s. Sansa read the mailbox herself because she couldn’t believe it.
If the other houses looked like witches’ huts, this one looked haunted. It was one she heard other kids avoided on Halloween.
“I don’t think we should go up there,” she whispered, stepping behind Robb. She expected Robb or Arya to call her scared, but they didn’t. They just stared at the house.
Then the yelling started. Both her siblings jumped and Sansa shrieked. She’d never heard yelling like that—so loud it echoed out to the street.
“Let’s go.” Robb tugged on her hand, and they took off down the street and back to the park.
“Should we tell someone?” Sansa asked once they were back to the sandbox.
“We weren’t supposed to leave the park,” Robb pointed out.
“But… What if Jon needs help?”
“We can’t tell Mom and Dad that we left the park,” he repeated.
Sansa turned to Arya, thinking she’d be on her side, but her sister’s eyes were wide still.
“Maybe we should go home.”
Thunder rumbled then, even though the sky was still mostly blue.
“Yeah,” Robb agreed.
The next day the storm continued, keeping the Stark children inside. Sansa wanted to ask if she could go just long enough to see if Jon was waiting for them, but Catelyn said she doubted anyone would be playing at the park in the storm.
After what she saw and heard yesterday, Sansa wasn’t sure that Jon’s parents would keep him inside during a storm, but she bit her tongue because she wasn’t Arya. And the three of them promised that they wouldn’t say where they’d gone yesterday.
Sansa was playing with her dolls and watching the storm by the back patio door. It was around the time they normally were called home, and Sansa could smell that dinner would be ready soon. Plus, Catelyn was talking to Ned on the phone, which Sansa knew meant he was on his way home.
A tapping on the glass of the door startled her enough she yelped. She had thought maybe Arya had snuck out to scare her, but that wasn’t who was staring at her with shadowed eyes.
It was Jon.
Sansa scrambled to open the door and pull him dripping out of the rain.
She knew he was the same age as Robb, but she thought he looked small, younger. He was pale, almost blue, and shivered like he’d been out in the rain for a while.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t play yesterday,” Jon said. She almost couldn’t hear him from the pounding of the rain and the roll of thunder.
Sansa had planned on asking why he lied about living in the princess house, and if he’d lied about the fairies too, but he sniffled and she knew she had to get her mom.
“Stay here.”
Sansa raced from the room and into the kitchen, where Catelyn was just hanging up, which meant Ned would be home any minute.
“Can Jon stay for dinner?” she asked, pulling herself onto one of the barstools so she could see what Catelyn was cooking.
“Not tonig—Stay?” Catelyn repeated. “What do you mean, stay?”
“He’s here.”
“Where?”
“In the den. He came to the patio door.”
She watched Catelyn snap off something on the oven before heading for the den. Sansa hopped down to follow.
“Oh my, you’re soaked,” Catelyn gasped. Sansa peeked around her to see Jon looking small, shy, and shadowed, like he had when they met at the park.
“Sorry,” Jon muttered.
The sound of the garage door going up then made Jon jump.
“Dad’s home,” Sansa supplied.
“Go tell Dad to set an extra spot for dinner. I’m going to have Robb bring down a change of clothes for you,” Catelyn said.
Sansa scurried off, eager to have her friend over for dinner.
At dinner, Jon was sat between Robb and her and dressed in Robb’s clothes. Sansa thought he still looked pale and small.
“Jon, Sansa said you live over in the house on the hill?” Ned asked after everyone was served. Sansa tried not to look panicked. Did they know?
“I live on that street. On the other end,” he admitted quietly.
“Ah.”
“Do your parents know you’re here? Should you call them?” Catelyn indicated to the phone on the wall.
“No. Mom works late.”
“How late?”
“She gets home after I’m asleep.”
Sansa knew there was an important reason to why her parents were asking these questions, but she thought it looked like Jon shrank with each answer. Like he became more shadow. She didn’t like this shadowy Jon. She preferred him in the bright sun standing guard on top of the slide. She’d come to think of that sunny one as her Jon.
Thankfully, her parents stopped asking him questions after that and instead Ned asked how they all spent the day since they were stuck inside.
Jon spent the night because her parents didn’t want him walking home in the storm and in the dark. Ned called the number Jon gave him and left a message explaining that Jon would be sleeping over and to call if his mom needed anything.
They set him up in the den, pulling the couch out into a bed.
Sansa, Arya, and Robb all wanted to stay and sleep in the den with him—a slumber party—but once bed time rolled around, they were each shuffled off to their own rooms.
Sansa was snug in bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals and pillows that smelled like home. The singular sleepover she’d been on, she’d brought her own pillow and one animal to sleep with, to remind her of home. She realized Jon didn’t have any of that. He wasn’t even wearing his own pajamas—those were also borrowed from Robb.
The house was still and quiet when she opened her door, clutching her favorite stuffed wolf. Sansa tiptoed down the stairs and across the first floor to the den at the back of the house.
She thought again how small he looked, curled up like the rolly bugs Arya liked to dig up.
“Jon?” she whispered, in case he was asleep. He sat up quickly, his head snapping towards her. “I brought you this. She helps me sleep.” She held the wolf out to him and when he didn’t immediately take it, she felt stupid. She’d forgotten he was older, and a boy. Robb didn’t sleep with stuffed animals anymore. He hadn’t for years.
“Thank you,” he said, taking it before her hand dropped.
She started back for the door, to go to bed, because her parents had said she couldn’t sleep in the den, even in her sleeping bag.
“Wait.”
Sansa knew, even then, that she’d stay if Jon asked her to.
“I’m sorry. I lied about where I live.”
“I know. We went to your house yesterday but your name wasn’t on the right mailbox.”
“You came to find me?”
“You didn’t come to the park. But then we found your house and we heard yelling…” She stopped. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that part.
“My mom’s boyfriend,” Jon said quietly. “That’s why I couldn’t play.”
“Oh. Did you get in trouble?” Arya got grounded sometimes and wasn’t allowed to play. But Jon’s eyes did something that told her it wasn’t like when Arya got in trouble. “Are you okay?” she asked instead.
“Yeah. I hide in the closet when he gets mad.”
“Is he mad a lot?”
It was just light enough in the room that she could see his shrug. She could also just see how he held the stuffed wolf tightly to his chest.
“He’s okay when Mom’s around. It’s just when I’m home all the time in the summer.”
Sansa nodded like she knew what he was talking about, but really it sounded scary. And like his house actually was haunted. She thought she should tell her parents, but she wasn’t supposed to come back down, so she thought maybe not.
“But summer just started.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Good night, Jon.”
“Night. Sansa.”
The summer slipped by quickly, June into July. Days at the park into nights full of fireflies. Sansa didn’t ask Jon again about his haunted house, mostly because he came to the park every day still. He didn’t miss another day like he had the day before the storm, so Sansa didn’t worry.
Every day, he waited for them by the sandbox, and even when Robb and Arya grew bored and tried to see who could swing higher or race across the park faster, Jon sat with her either on the swings or the top of the slide.
He told her more about the fairies and even though she knew he was lying—how could he know about fairies if he didn’t even live in the princess house—Sansa listened because she liked that he made up stories for her. No one else told her fairy tales—they all warned her she’d have to grow up eventually.