Chapter Text
The car ride was quiet in the way that grief was quiet. It was thick and suffocating, pushing against Jon’s ribs, causing each breath to bring a tinge of pain. Ned’s headlights carved through the dark stretch of road ahead, and Jon kept his eyes on his hands which still trembled slightly no matter how much he willed them not to. He dug his nails into his palms until the sting cut through the numbness, but it didn’t help.
Ned didn’t speak for a long while, he hadn’t truly since the phone calls he’d made and the stern conversation with the social worker outside of the hospital. Not since Jon had signed the last of the papers with a hand he had to will to move.
Finally, Ned exhaled tiredly. “Almost home.”
Jon nodded, though he didn’t care. He didn’t want to be there, he only wanted to go back to his own home that smelled like old coffee and cheap soap. The cheap apartment that his father had left him at for most of the time while he was off doing god knew what. But it wasn’t his anymore. It felt like nothing was.
“Jon,” Ned said as he reached across the console and settled his hand on Jon’s shoulder. “I know tonight’s been…hard. But you’re safe now. You’re not alone in this, I promise you that.”
Jon stared out the window into the darkness, seeing his faint, tired reflection in the tint. He didn’t believe Ned, he didn’t believe anything anymore. They turned into a long driveway lit with soft garden lights and Jon swallowed heavily. The house rising in front of him wasn’t just a house–but a mansion, ridiculously oversized with a perfectly manicured lawn despite the creeping autumn temperatures.
When they stepped inside of the house, lemon polish hit him immediately. The floors practically glittered and the ceilings stretched high enough to echo. Jon felt the dirt under his nails and the soles of his worn down shoes and wished he’d just sunk into the carseat and disappeared forever instead of stepping into a place that clearly wasn’t meant for him.
Footsteps fell on the sweeping staircase and Jon looked up to see a woman about Ned’s age with long, dark red hair. She tied the belt of her robe and blinked in confusion at Ned until she saw Jon. The woman froze, the color draining from her face.
“Ned?” she whispered, staring at the boy standing in the foyer like he’d broken in. “What’s going on?”
Ned cleared his throat. “It’s late. We’ll talk in the morning, but Jon is going to stay with us for a bit. He can take the guest room.”
Jon lowered his gaze, feeling her stare rake over him like he was a stain that needed cleaning.
“Up the stairs, first door to the left.” Ned said to him quietly.
Jon nodded and started up the steps. When he passed the woman, she shifted in a flinch. It was subtle, but enough that Jon had felt it, causing heat rise in his chest. The familiar feeling of humiliation. He quickened his steps until he came to the guest room, the door opening with a soft click. It looked too clean, white and untouched like no one had stepped foot in it before.
He shut the door, but didn’t move away from it as voices drifted through the thin wood.
“Are you out of your mind?” the woman had hissed. “Bringing him here? Ned–no. Absolutely not.”
“He needs a place,” Ned said, low but steady. “It’s only until–”
“How long?”
A heavy pause filled the air.
“Until he turns eighteen.”
Her breath hitched. “So almost three years. Three years, Ned?”
“It’s what’s best.”
“For who?” She snapped, voice sharp with what sounded like betrayal. “I don’t care what you do out there in the world. But you brought this home now. You made it our problem. My problem. Our children’s problem. Did you even think to ask me how I felt?”
Jon shut his eyes, his throat burning.
He had no desire to be a problem. He didn’t want to be somewhere where the walls seemed to reject him before he’d even touched them.
“He stays,” Ned’s voice was firm, leaving no room for argument.
There was silence followed by a slam of a door, sharp enough that Jon jumped. He let out a breath, willing to move. He shouldn’t have felt hurt by it. He was used to the feeling.
Unwanted.
Something people tolerated out of obligation, never by choice.
***
Jon had killed before, he wasn’t entirely sure when it’d stopped bothering him. Death was business, survival even. Death was what men like him did when the world didn’t hand him anything without a price, and the night before had been no different.
The bass from the club thudded through the walls of the VIP lounge, practically vibrating the floor and drowning out his thoughts when he let it. He sat back on the leather couch, an arm draped along the top rail. Daenerys was curled up at his side with a drink in her hand, his own untouched on the table. She looked beautiful in the light blue dress that seemed to often make men stare, and she seemed to like when Jon noticed that they were staring. What she didn’t like was when he didn’t react to it.
They’d never talked about what they were. She’d tried once or twice, but Jon always redirected the conversation each time. She took the hint for the most part and they’d used each other for what they needed. Sometimes it was to warm a bed, relieve an ache on occasion, and other times Daenerys’s connections had come to Jon’s aid, which he always repaid her for. That was enough.
Across from the, Oberyn Martell was laughing at something one of the cage dancers had said before she’d slipped off. He lounged on the sofa like a king with his gold rings and silk shirt unbuttoned too low, the way it only seemed to work for him and him alone.
Jon wasn’t drinking, he never did when he was working.
The door to the VIP lounge opened without a knock. Jon didn’t tense visibly, he had trained himself to not years ago, but something in his posture shifted in acknowledgement. His gaze flicked up and met the man in the doorway, hardening at the sight of him.
Daenerys noticed, as she often did, and her hand tightened around her glass.
“I’ll be back.” Jon murmured.
Oberyn lifted a brow curiously at Jon, but didn’t say anything.
He slipped out of the lounge, shutting the door behind him as the music swallowed him for a heartbeat, then faded as he followed the man down the hall and out into the alley behind the club. The night air was cold enough to bite, a streetlight flickered overhead like it was on its last leg.
The man across from him was named Tobias Crane, he shifted anxiously, his breath fogging in the frigid weather as he cast a look down the alley.
“Well?” He asked in a low pitched voice. “Is it done?”
Jon leaned against the wall, shoving his hands in his coat pockets.
“I said it would be.” He replied flatly. “So yes. It’s done.”
Tobias swallowed and wiped sweat from his brow despite the cold. “Darryl wasn’t an easy man to corner. He knew people were after him.”
“Then he should’ve ran faster, shouldn’t have he?”
Jon didn’t go into the gritty details. Darryl had been known to blackmail his business partners and threatened Tobias’s sister. But Jon didn’t care about any of the reasons. A job was a job.
“Thank you,” Tobias said, voice shaking with either relief or the cold. “Truly.”
“Where are the papers?”
The man blinked, startled by Jon’s bluntness, then fumbled inside of his jacket. He pulled out a thick envelope–documents, transfer agreements, and deeds. Everything Jon had negotiated for. He handed it to Jon with both hands like an unsure child.
Jon took it with one.
“Can I ask…” Tobias hesitated and licked his chapped lips. “Why? Why a strip club? You don’t seem like the type–”
Jon’s dark gaze cut him off.
“Not your business anymore,” Jon said quietly.
Tobias nodded quick, then quicker. “Of course. Of course. You’re right.”
He backed away, eager to be gone. When he reached the end of the alley, he turned once more to Jon. “Good luck with it, Snow. It’s a bit of a shitshow.”
Jon didn’t answer and the man vanished around the corner. He opened the envelope and thumbed through the papers, skimming over signatures.
The Red Keep was his.
He tucked the envelope inside of his coat.
Daenerys wouldn’t be happy he slipped away without telling her. She would get over it, as she often did. They drove separately there and Oberyn was enough to keep her entertained. He wanted to see what he’d bartered for, a place to move money without raising any suspicion, or if worse came to worse he could trade it off for something better.
He stepped out of the alley, pulling his coat tighter against the cold.
Jon pulled into the slush covered parking lot not much later, potholes dotting the area like acne scars. He didn’t want anyone that worked there to know he owned it–not yet, anyways. Not until he understood exactly what he’d bought into. He went in like a patron, hood up and shoulders down, just as anonymous as the next man.
The entrance pulsed with a faint red glow from flickering neon. A mountain of a man stood by the door, arms crossed and his expression carved out of stone. He’d later come to know him as Sandor Clegane–but that evening he was merely a lethal looking bouncer.
“ID,” the man grunted.
Jon handed it over. Sandor barely glanced at it before returning it. “Cover’s forty.”
Jon gave him the cash without comment and the bouncer stepped aside and gestured to the velvet curtain, warning him to keep his hands to himself unless he wanted his teeth knocked out.
Heat and perfume hung in the air, clinging to Jon’s skin immediately. The lights were dim, dancing from sharp pinks to deep reds that cut across the crowded floor. Music thudded hard enough to vibrate to the bone. Men slouched in booths they shouldn’t have been in, and women sauntered them through the darkness with glittering eyes. Some of them looked almost too young, some of them too worn, though all of them seemed to be surviving the night the way only people with limited choices knew how.
Jon moved through the bodies and took to a booth along the far wall, half hidden in the darkness. He didn’t remove his coat or attempt to relax. He gathered his hands on the table and eyed up the club, the roof damage, the liquor behind the bar, the subtle smell of something sour beneath it all.
It didn’t take long for one of the dancers to appear, a blonde woman with tired eyes and a smile that must have once been genuine approached his table. She drummed her lime green nails once almost as if to get his attention.
“Hey,” she smiled at him, leaning forward enough for him to smell her perfume beneath all of the cigarette smoke. “Looking for some company tonight?”
“No.”
She blinked in surprise, taken back by the bluntness in the word. “You sure? I do table dances. Private rooms too if–”
“No,” Jon repeated. His voice didn’t rise or sharpen, but it ended the conversation.
She huffed under her breath and stalked off, Jon didn’t bother to watch her leave.
He scanned the floor instead, letting the club settle around him. His gaze caught briefly on a man who kept stepping behind the bar to pour his own drink, wearing a suit as sharp as his eyes. He seemed like a man who thrived on desperation.
The music changed, a reverb heavy pop track rolled through the speakers as the DJ’s voice boomed overhead, loud enough to drown out the crowd.
“And now, give it up for Scarlett!”
Jon barely glanced towards the stage at first. It was only when the spotlight shifted and illuminated the catwalk in red light that something in his chest wound tight. Not in warning, but in recognition that he fully did not understand yet.
The dancer stepped into view and his world seemed to drop out from under him.
It was Sansa fucking Stark.
Not ‘Scarlett’ or a stranger.
Sansa Stark.
He stared before he could stop himself.
She was thinner than he remembered, her cheekbones looked sharp beneath the heavy makeup. Her hair that he would’ve recognized blindfolded was curled in loose waves, the white lace set she wore clung to her too small frame. Even across the room, he could see the exhaustion tucked into her movements, the emptiness behind her eyes. She wasn’t just performing for the men sitting tucked around the stage with their bills, she was enduring. Surviving.
She looked nothing like the girl who’d grown up in a house with chandeliers and enough space for echoes. Nothing like the girl who never spared him more than a few forced, polite words only when absolutely necessary.
That version of her was thin and empty. Despite it all, it hollowed something inside of him he tried to shove away. He tried to look away from her, but he couldn’t. It was only when she began to let the straps of her bra drape at her sides while she worked on the back clasp that he finally stood.
He moved quickly, shoving through the press of bodies and ignoring a drunk who cursed when Jon’s shoulder slammed into his. He didn’t stop until he pushed through the front doors and the night air hit him again. His breath fogged in front of him as he walked to his car with long strides, jaw tight enough to ache.
He sat behind the wheel with the engine off, keys forgotten in his hand. He wasn’t sure why he stayed, but he knew that he wasn’t leaving.
Hours passed. Patrons trickled out and drunks shouted while cigarettes flared to life. Slowly but surely, the lights of the club flicked off.
At 3:12am, Sansa emerged.
Her hair was pulled back from her face, her makeup had been wiped away in smudged streaks. She wore a hoodie that was too big for her and sweatpants that clung to her hips like they were the only warm thing she owned. She didn’t look up before getting into a rusted sedan that flared to life with a bad timing belt.
Jon waited until she pulled out of the lot, and then followed at a distance.
Her home was worse.
The house sagged inward, some of the siding missing like gap teeth. There was a porch that looked so dry rotted it was practically begging to be burned. The living room window was boarded shut.
Jon parked down the block and snapped a few pictures. Not of Sansa, but the state of the house. Her license plate. The address. He stayed until the sky began to lighten to a pale pink.
At 6:41am, a beat up pickup truck pulled into the driveway. Robb Stark stepped out wearing an oil covered jumpsuit. His shoulders were slumped, he looked worn, nothing like the proud, privileged boy Jon had watched grow up.
Jon took a picture of him as well.
At 7:03am, the front door creaked open again. Arya came out first in an oversized hoodie despite it being no more than twenty degrees outside, followed by Bran who didn’t even wear a coat, and Rickon in a jacket that didn’t fit him.
Their clothes were worn, their shoes even worse. Their faces looked tired in ways children shouldn’t have had to.
Jon took pictures of them, too.
Then he started the engine and pulled away from the curb. He wasn’t sure what any of it meant yet, what he was going to do with the situation. He only knew one thing with certainty, a fact that settled into his bones like a cold he couldn’t fully shake off.
His past had just collided with his present, and Sansa Stark was at the dead center of it.
***
The detention center stank like disinfectant so sharply that Jon felt it in the back of his throat. The guard led him down a short corridor lined with scuffed floors and flickering lights before unlocking the small visitation area.
Ned Stark was already there. He looked older. His shoulders had lost their familiar square set and his hair had gone more gray than Jon remembered it. His hands were clasped in front of him on the cold metal table, his knuckles a pale white.
“Jon,” he breathed, as if speaking the name summoned something in him he wasn’t ready to face. “I was…surprised to–” he cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s good to see you.”
Jon sat in the chair, not returning the greeting. He simply looked over Ned, something like disappointment stirring faintly in his chest. Ned searched Jon’s face for something–perhaps warmth, even familiarity. But Jon didn’t give anything, he had nothing left to give him.
“How are things?” Ned asked finally, the question sounded like a habit rather than genuine interest.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Ned blinked. “I ask because I care, Jon. Whether you believe it or not.”
Jon reached into his coat. “That doesn’t matter, either,” he repeated quietly. “This does.”
He slid the photographs across the table.
Ned’s eyes dropped to them and whatever color had remained his face drained out entirely.
The first picture was of Arya, Bran, and Rickon standing outside of the house that was practically falling apart. Jon knew that it’d strike a nerve.
Ned lifted the picture with trembling fingers.
“Jesus christ.” He managed to whisper out, his throat working as if he were attempting to swallow glass. “Where…where did you get this?”
Jon leaned back in the chair, his voice flat. “I saw Sansa last night.”
Ned’s head jerked up, hope flaring for a moment before it collapsed again. “Sansa? How–how was she?”
“Not good, from what it seemed.” Jon didn’t elaborate. Not yet. He’d only tell Ned if he needed to. “So I followed her home.”
Ned shut his eyes, not from anger–but devastation.
From the unbearable weight of being trapped somewhere he couldn’t reach his children.
“When I left I had things set up. They had the apartment–they had support–they had funds–they–they had–” his breath hitched. “What happened?”
“I think you know just as well as I do that all of that runs out.” Jon answered dryly.
Ned stared at the photograph again. His lips parted and a sound escaped him. It was small and broken, and Jon found it nearly to be pathetic. He pressed a palm to his eye, the picture trembling between his fingers.
“I can’t help them from in here,” Ned’s voice trembled with what sounded like defeat. “I can’t do anything–I can’t–”
Jon cut him off. “You can.”
Ned looked up at Jon.
“If you want them to have a better life,” Jon said slowly, his words deliberate. “I need information.”
Silence fell between them.
Ned searched Jon’s expression and whatever he saw there made his shoulders straighten a fraction.
“Information on what?” He asked quietly.
“On who let this happen.” Jon answered. “On the reason why you're in here. On the people you were tied to before you got arrested.”
Ned swallowed. “You’re asking me to betray people who–”
“Betrayed you first.” Jon said bluntly. “And left your family to rot in what you left behind.”
“If you want them safe, I’ll take care of it. But you need to give me names.”
He slid a pen across the table with a scrap of paper.
Ned stared at it for a moment, and then finally picked up the pen. His writing was shaky, but seemed determined.
When he finished, he pushed the paper back to Jon and closed his eyes as if bracing for an immediate consequence. Jon folded the paper once and slipped it inside of his pocket.
Ned watched him rise, grief etched into the lines of his aged face. “Jon,” he called. Jon fell still, turning a cheek back to Ned. “Whatever you’re going to do…just be careful.”
Jon paused at the door.
“I’ll do what needs to be done.”
The guard opened the door and Jon walked out without looking back.
Ned Stark bowed his head over the photograph of his children, pen still trembling between his fingers.