Chapter Text
2003
The room is dark, the air musty and stale, but cold enough that it doesn’t offend. They haven’t turned any lights on, and the only illumination is through the window, from the flickering sign outside advertising rooms for rent.
Jon sits on the edge of the bed; the mattress dips harshly under his weight, flimsy and thin. Maybe if there were more light, he’d be able to make out the pattern on the equally thin comforter. It doesn’t matter, he won’t sleep much, anyway. He looks at his hands again; palms first, then turning them slowly. They’re as clean as she could get them, scrubbing beneath his nails with her own shaking hands.
The sweatshirt and sweatpants he wears are cheap and itchy, purchased from a small tourist shop attached to a gas station. Ski Vale! they proclaim. He doesn’t want to think about where the boots he’s wearing came from.
The door opens, and he tenses, but then relaxes when she slips in and shuts the door quickly behind her, sliding the chain lock into place.
“There’s a bus to Winterfell tomorrow morning at nine,” she says, her soft voice cutting through the silence. “There was a schedule in the office.”
A bus to Winterfell, he thinks numbly. And then what?
“Sansa,” he croaks, his voice rough and cracking. It feels like he hasn’t used it in years.
“We’ll take the bus to Winterfell,” she repeats stubbornly. An edge to it that might be tears or anger or terror or disgust. He doesn’t dare ask which.
“And then what?”
She doesn’t say anything, just turns her shadowed face towards the window. The light from the flickering neon sign outlines the bridge of her nose, that stubborn chin. She looks young, like the sixteen year old she was when she left Winterfell.
“We go back to our normal lives?” he continues when she gives no response.
“Yes,” she whispers.
It’s a naive thing to say, but he isn’t surprised by that. Sansa has always been good at pretending things are fine. She’s always been good at building a perfect fairytale world in her head and ignoring the real one. It used to drive Arya crazy when they were kids.
Arya.
“You know we can’t,” he clears his throat and says. “They’ll come looking for you. You’re all over that house.”
He probably is too, now.
Her hands raise to cover her face, and he feels the sharp, distinct urge to stand up and take her into his arms. He wants to comfort her. He wants to reassure her. He wants to save her, but he tries to ignore that. It’s what got them into this, in the first place. He needs to do better at ignoring that urge.
Still, he stands, the bedframe creaking at the movement, and he walks over to where she is, placing one hesitant hand on her shoulder.
She sucks in a shuddering breath and says, “why did you come here?”
ONE WEEK PRIOR
Jon sits back in the chair with a groan, stretching his arms above his head and arching his back until he can feel the popping along his spine. Then he lowers his hands and shoves his fingers beneath his glasses to rub at his eyes. He’d taken his contacts out hours ago, hoping it would help, but they ache all the same.
“Break?” Sam asks, sitting across the library table and looking just as exhausted as Jon feels.
“Why did we think grad school was a good idea?” Jon groans.
“Because we’re masochists,” Sam sighs. It makes Jon laugh. Then, looking at his watch, Sam frowns. “Ah, shoot. I should get back.”
Jon looks at his own watch and grimaces. It’s already after eight. They’ve been here for hours.
“Gilly will be mad if I miss our show.”
“The OC?” Jon snorts, but starts packing up to leave the library, anyway.
“It’s a good show!” Sam defends, cheeks pink. “I think you’d like the one guy, Ryan. You remind me of him sometimes.”
“Uh huh,” Jon says skeptically. Sam doesn’t elaborate, and Jon doesn’t ask him to.
They leave the library and head towards the shuttle stop, catching the bus into the city. Their off-campus apartments aren’t too far, but enough to warrant taking the bus over walking, especially as it dips further towards winter.
“See you tomorrow for another day of academia!” Sam grins, heading for the stairwell next to a small Pentoshi restaurant. The owner sees them through the window and waves at Sam, who waves back as he heads for his apartment above it.
“Enjoy your teen drama,” Jon calls back, before making his way down two more blocks to reach his own. Unlike Sam’s, his is in an actual apartment complex, a towering brick building with hundreds of identical apartments stuffed inside.
There are no lights on when he opens the door, and he sighs as he flips the lightswitch on. Another month, then Arya will be back. If Jon’s being honest, he thought he’d be completely fine living alone for Arya’s three-month internship up in the Frostfangs. He’d practically lived alone when he was a kid, since mom worked so much. But he’d grown used to having Arya around; full of life and filling their apartment with it. It was nice. He misses coming home and bitching about his day, then listening to Arya bitch about hers.
Now he sighs and drops his bag by the door, because it’s only him here so it doesn’t matter where he leaves anything. He heads into the kitchen to start microwaving one of the frozen meals he’s got stocked in the freezer. He hates cooking, and so does Arya, so most of the time their fridge is practically empty and their freezer loaded with these pre-packaged meals.
He grabs one out, opens the box, and stabs vent holes into the plastic cover with a fork. As the microwave buzzes to life, the little plastic tray turning slowly, Jon starts to head for his room to change, but he stops at the hall table when he sees the phone light blinking. The only person he can think that would call the apartment’s landline besides the landlord and telemarketers is Benjen. He tends to forget that cell phones exist, even though they've all told him a thousand times.
He presses the play button on the answering machine before continuing on towards his bedroom, but he’s stopped in his tracks when the message starts to play. It isn’t Benjen's voice.
“Arya, are you there?” the voice whispers. “Arya, pick up, please. Please, I know you hate me but please pick up. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything, just please help me. I need to get out of here, I can’t-”
It cuts off abruptly.
End of messages, the machine tells him.
Jon stands frozen; it feels like it takes forever for him to slowly turn around and walk back to the machine and press play again.
Arya, please, please, please-
He hasn’t heard that voice in nearly five years, but it’s Sansa. He knew it from the first word. With his heart pounding, he plays the message for a third time. Get out of where? The last he heard, she was still living with her aunt and uncle in the Vale.
Or, he supposes it’s just her uncle now, considering the last time he saw her was at her aunt’s funeral a year ago. Arya had dragged him to it, saying she needed him there as a buffer. She and Sansa had basically ignored each other the whole time. In fact, Sansa hadn’t spent much time with her family at all, too busy caring for their cousin Robin. She’d had to leave halfway through the eulogy because the boy was screaming.
During that whole weekend, Jon had said only one sentence to her. I’m sorry for your loss. She’d looked at him, an unreadable expression on her face, and then nodded. She hadn’t said anything back, and he supposes he hadn’t expected her to. It’s not like they’d ever been close.
The microwave beeps. Blinking out of those memories, he tries to clear his head and calm his heart. He’s sure he’s reading too much into the whispered terror in her voice. He’s sure he’s reading too much into the way the message cuts off. It’s probably a joke. Something to spook Arya.
He heads into his room to change, but his rationalizations don’t quite work. Sansa hates practical jokes. He can still remember when they were kids, how mad she was when he and Robb pretended to be ghosts to scare the younger Starks. Sansa had run out of the room crying and hadn’t talked to either of them again for a week. Unless she’s a completely different person now, that message wasn’t a joke.
But still, he’s sure he’s overreacting. She’s probably just mad at her uncle about something and needs cash for a plane or train ticket or something.
As he lays in bed that night, he can’t help but wish that Arya were here. He wishes he could get in touch with her, at least, but she’s basically unreachable up there, except for the few times she’s able to access the lab computer. Robb is equally unreachable, oversees at one of their army bases in Myr.
He stares up at the ceiling, debating whether he should call Benjen or not. But Benjen is busy taking care of Bran and Rickon, and Jon doesn’t want to bother him over nothing.
And it is nothing. Sansa’s always been dramatic, everything was always a ten when it didn’t need to be. It’s nothing. He’s sure it’s nothing.
Still. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if he went down and checked on her. Then he could make sure she was okay and he wouldn’t have to worry anyone else about it. He knows he’s got a thesis to work on, but he can take a few days off to go down and check on her. He’ll be back and studying again in no time.
NOW
The police station looms over them. Or, at least that’s how it feels. Maybe it isn’t as big as it seems, maybe that’s all in Jon’s head. The sky is still dark, and the cold mountain air cuts through the thin, cheap tourist sweatsuit.
“Jon,” Sansa says, catching his arm as he heads for the concrete steps to the front entry. The lighting here is better, and he can see her red-rimmed eyes. “I’ll say it was me.”
For the first time since the gun went off, a feeling comes through - panic. “No,” he says. It comes out louder and more forceful than he meant it to. It makes her flinch back, and he thinks he might vomit. She’s scared of you.
He shoves all that down, letting the numbness spread back through him. That’s better. That’s easier. He heads for the steps again.
Footsteps tell him she’s following, but he doesn’t dare look back and she doesn’t say anything else. There isn’t anything to say. He's made his decision.
Inside, he walks up to the reception desk.
“Can I help you?” a weary looking woman asks.
“I think I need to speak to a detective,” he says, though his mouth and throat are dry. “I need to report a crime.”
Sansa stands next to him, just a little behind, her arms crossed over her stomach; pale in the now-bright overhead lighting, dark circles like bruises beneath eyes that are red and glassy. He tries not to look at her for too long, or he might lose his nerve.
“Alright,” the woman nods. “Brune should be available, hold please.”
Jon nods and steps back, and waits until a short, stocky man comes to greet them. He gives a curt nod and leads them over to a desk, gesturing at them to sit. “Now, what did you need to report?” the man finally asks.
“My name is Jon Snow,” Jon says. “I think you’re looking for me.”
Brune sits back in his chair, brows raising. “Oh? What for?”
Jon takes a breath. He doesn’t look at Sansa.
“Three days ago, I killed Petyr Baelish.”