Chapter Text
Sansa counts his breaths.
She counts to fifty. Loses track. Starts again. Her hand stays on the blanket near his ribs so she feels the rise and fall.
One of the maids brought water and tea earlier. Sansa dips a cloth in the water and wets Jon’s cracked lips. It’s almost time for supper and someone will bring broth for Sansa to spoon feed him like her mother did after Bran’s accident. They will bring her food as well and Sansa will dutifully try to eat. It will taste like nothing at all.
The Night King is dead. Daenerys and her troops have gone south. The castle around her is noisy and alive again despite all the loss.
And she doesn’t see any of it. She barely leaves Jon’s side.
Arya tried to drag her away from his side after the first few days. Brienne tried too, with a steady hand on her elbow and quiet talk about food and bed. Sam offered to stay in her place, promising he would send for her the moment Jon woke, then promising again when she did not answer.
Sansa didn’t move.
She eats what they push into her hands. She sleeps on a cot next to his bed. Sometimes she falls asleep on the chair with her cheek on her folded arms so she wakes up with a stiff neck and pins and needles in her fingers and a sharp bolt of panic that she has missed something. Every morning, she presses two fingers to Jon’s wrist before she even blinks properly. Every time.
Arya has started to sit with her without arguing. She leans against the wall near the bed, sharpening Needle with short, harsh strokes, or reading out loud to Sansa and Jon from one of Sam’s books. Sometimes Bran has himself wheeled in and stays by the hearth. He is the only one who hasn’t told her to rest or take a break or go to her own room. Sansa is grateful. Her brother is still strange and far away, but at least he doesn’t try to pull her from this room.
***
It is during one of those visits that Bran tells them about Jon’s parents. The door is shut. The fire burns low. Jon’s breath whistles a little at the end of each exhale.
“Jon isn’t Father’s son,” Bran says. “He’s Lyanna’s. And Rhaegar Targaryen’s.”
Sansa’s hand tightens on her skirts. Her first thought is of her father. Of all the years she looked at Jon and felt that quiet, sour anger on her mother’s behalf. It comes apart at once. Her father never broke his vows, he never betrayed her mother.
Her next thought is not as selfless. They are not brother and sister. There’s something akin to hope. Her feelings for him fit more neatly in the rules of gods and men. Still, the thought disappears quickly, buried under a mountain of filthy guilt.
She looks at Jon on the bed. His hair is a mess. She tried to brush it a few days ago, but it was too knotted. He also needs a shave. Satin could do it since Jon trusts him and he’s already in charge of bathing him with one of the servants. It’s one of the few things Sansa cannot do for him; it wouldn’t be proper.
Bran tells them that Jon told Daenerys. Sansa swallows the bile that rises up her throat.
She forces herself to focus on his face again.
Even after just a few weeks of being bedridden, his face is hollowed out. He still looks like Jon. The boy at the back of the hall. The brother who made her feel safe. The king who tried so hard to be worthy of a name that was never truly his. The man who has known who he really is, but has not trusted her enough to tell him. Still, it would be unkind of her to be angry when he’s not really there.
Later, when Bran has gone and Arya has grown bored and left to shout at the men in the yard, Sansa thinks about Daenerys. About the way the queen came to see him before going South, how she insisted she could not wait for Jon but still wanted to say goodbye. Sansa had wanted to say no, but Daenerys asked in front of everyone during one of the few times Sansa took a meal in the hall while Sam saw to Jon. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her face. So Sansa said yes and led her to the room.
“I won’t be long,” Daenerys had said.
Sansa had waited outside the door with her back against the cold stone and her hands shoved under her arms for warmth. She stared at the opposite wall until her eyes hurt. She wanted to open the door and tell Daenerys to leave. She stayed where she was.
When Daenerys came out, her eyes were red and her mouth tight. She didn’t look at Sansa. She gave a short nod and walked away. That night more northern men refused to ride south. Sansa did not argue. She watched them speak in low voices. She watched them look to her instead. Then she went back to Jon’s room and sat until the fire died and she couldn’t feel her feet.
“I need to go south,” Arya had said. “I need to kill Cersei.”
Sansa still doesn't know what her sister saw on her face that night, but it was enough that it only took one simple please stay from her to get Arya to agree.
She had not gone to see the queen and her men off. It was probably a slight and against everything she was taught by her parents. Sansa had not found it in herself to care.
They haven’t had news from the South in a couple of days, but she has the urge to write to Daenerys and say she knows about Jon and make it clear he’s still a Stark. Instead, she takes one of the poetry books she borrowed and reads to him until she falls asleep.
***
Arya comes two nights later and hovers around the room until Sansa asks her to just tell her whatever she has in her mind.
“You need to come down,” Arya says finally. “Tomorrow. The lords won’t stop asking for you. They want to know what happens now.”
Sansa has been working on a doublet for her, embroidering direwolves she hopes look like Nymeria along the hem.
“You can tell them you’re the person in charge,” she replies, her fingers still moving. “I’m busy. You know what I would say.”
“That’s not enough,” Arya says. Her steps cross the floor. She stops on Jon’s other side. “You’re the Lady of Winterfell. They need to see you. Jon would expect you to—”
“This isn’t about what Jon would expect,” Sansa snaps. “I am here. I am making sure he doesn’t stop breathing while everyone else talks about grain and stone and southern wars.”
Arya’s mouth shuts. Heat climbs up Sansa’s neck. The needle slips. She suppresses a curse and sucks the bead of blood forming at the tip of her finger.
“He died once already,” Sansa continues. “He died at Castle Black. I wasn’t there—none of us were. He died again under the godswood. I wasn’t beside him. Every time he falls, I am somewhere else. I won’t do it again. If he stops breathing while I sit in that hall, I won’t forgive myself.”
“Sansa,” Arya says. She hates the way her sister’s voice turns soft and sympathetic so fast. Sansa must truly be losing it if Arya has resorted to speaking to her as if she were an ailing animal. “Sam says his pulse is strong. He says his mind could still—”
“That doesn’t matter. He could just stop. That is all I think about. I wake up and have to touch him to be sure. I hear my own heart and I wonder if his has quit while I’ve been sleeping.”
Arya looks at her in a way Sansa hates. Careful. Worried. It makes her look away.
“I can take care of the rest for a while,” Arya says with a resigned sigh. “I’ll handle the lords. Bran can help. Davos and Lord Reed have been helping. You stay here if that’s what you want.” She glances at the table. “But you have to promise you will rest.”
Sansa nods because she has no strength left to argue. She continues embroidering the fabric until she hears Arya leave and her eyes become blurred with tears.
Sansa knows Arya is not blind. She knows Arya sees more than she wants her to. There’s nothing she can do about it. She just stares at Jon’s face and counts his breaths. Every time she reaches fifty she starts again.
***
The raven from the south comes a week later. Sam brings the news, but Sansa hears the commotion before he even reaches the door.
“Daenerys is dead,” he says.
She had been standing and stretching her legs when Sam came in. Sansa has to sit on the edge of Jon’s bed. Her hand wraps around his wrist. She feels his pulse under her fingers. She looks up.
“How?” She asks.
“She tried to burn King’s Landing,” Sam explains. “With the dragon. Jaime Lannister killed her before she could finish.” His eyes flick over the letter. “There will be a council of the remaining great houses. To decide what happens next. They’re asking for someone from the North to join.”
Sansa takes the parchment. The seal lies broken on the table. The words swim, then steady. She reads them over and over again. Cersei is dead as well. Both queens dead. Her enemies gone. Nothing feels like triumph when Jon is still not well and there are so many dead.
“We won't bend the knee again,” Sansa says.
“What should I write?”
She thinks of the North and the survivors. She thinks of her siblings and her parents and all the friends who died for them. She thinks of Jon bending the knee because he thought there was no other choice.
“You’ll write that the North is independent,” she finally says. “That we won’t be ruled from the South. If they want to speak to us, they do it as equals. Otherwise, they leave us alone.”
Sam hesitates, then nods. He sits.
“There’s something else,” he tells her shyly. “There was another letter,” he adds after a moment. “From the capital. They say Lord Varys was burned for treason. For…for spreading the news about Jon. About who his parents are.” His eyes flick up to her and away. “No one is certain how he knew, but he told everyone he could.”
“So it’s out,” Sansa says. Her voice feels thin. “Everyone must know by now.”
Sam swallows and nods.
“It seems so.”
She looks at Jon’s face, still impassive and unaware that his life will be much different once he wakes. Whatever say he might have had in it is gone.
“I’ll ask your siblings to come to you,” Sam offers before leaving.
Arya looks furious when she arrives, which means she already knows the news.
“They’ll twist your words if no one is there,” Arya says. “Someone should tell them no in person.”
“We must be there,” Bran tells them. Sansa wants to push and ask what he knows, but she knows he won’t give her the answers she seeks.
Sansa looks between them. She wants to be there. She wants to look them in the eye and say the North is done with them. She also sees Jon on this bed every time she closes her eyes. She sees him waking up to a cold room and faces he doesn’t know.
“You can go. Both of you. Take men you trust. Say the North’s piece. Do not give them more.”
“And you will be queen?” Arya asks.
“No,” she answers. “We have a king. He will wake up.”
Arya studies her and then looks away. Sansa wonders what her sister saw.
“We leave in three days.”
“Fine.”
***
That night she lies awake in the cot and thinks of how she’ll tell him Daenerys is dead once he wakes up. And he will wake up. Every version in her head ends with him staring at her like she is the one who slid the blade between Daenerys’ ribs. He will wake up weak and hurting and she will have to tell him when he asks. He will grieve a woman he loved. She feels jealous of the dead and hates herself for it. She feels tired in a way sleep will not fix. It’s bone-deep and ancient.
He loved Daenerys. He bent the knee. He told her his truth. He doesn’t love Sansa like she wants him to. He’s never looked at her like that.
Sansa presses her thumb harder into his wrist until he shifts faintly. She pulls back at once. Her eyes burn. She cries in silence like she used to when she didn’t want to give Ramsay the satisfaction of seeing her hurt. It's easier if she doesn’t have to explain her tears to anyone.
***
She falls asleep sometime before dawn. Her feet feel frozen beneath her stockings. The fire is mostly embers.
The room feels wrong when she wakes up.
Jon’s breathing has changed. It is faster and rougher. Not the steady rhythm she knows.
Her head snaps up. His chest rises quicker. His fingers move against the blanket. She is on her feet before she can even process what she’s witnessing.
“Jon?” Her voice comes out cracked.
His eyes are open. At first they slide over the ceiling and the rafters. Then they blink and settle. They move to the side and find her.
Her heart slams in her chest so hard she has trouble breathing. Every practiced word she had lined up in her head vanishes.
“I’ll get Sam,” she says. Her hands feel numb, but then again, her soul feels separate from her flesh. “And Arya. Just—just stay here.” What a silly thing to say, he won’t be able to go anywhere.
Her steps pound down the corridor. The stone underfoot is freezing. She nearly slips on the last stair and catches herself with both hands on the rail. The guards call after her. She doesn’t stop. She pushes Sam’s door open without knocking. He’s in a tunic and breeches pacing the floor with the babe in his arms.
“He’s awake,” she practically yells. Her chest burns. “Jon’s awake.”
“Gilly, take the babe,” Sam says at once. Sansa doesn’t wait for him, choosing instead to get Arya.
They’re both breathless by the time they reach Jon’s room. Arya at least had the sense to throw a robe over her shift. Sansa’s own dress is disheveled and wrinkly. It’s a simple wool frock that fits loosely and doubles as a nightgown.
Jon is sitting against the headboard. Sam is already at his side holding his wrist.
Jon watches them come in. His eyes go to Sam. Then to Arya. They slide past Sansa like she is part of the wall.
Sam checks his pulse, his temperature, the wounds. He speaks in a calm voice. “Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are? What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Jon Snow,” Jon says. His voice is rough and dry. “Winterfell.” He coughs. Sam lifts the cup and tips a little water to his lips. Jon drinks in small, clumsy swallows. Water spills down his beard. “We fought the Night King. I remember the cold. Falling.”
He shuts his eyes for a heartbeat, then opens them again. Sansa’s fingers bite into the back of the chair she has grabbed. She waits for him to look for her. He doesn’t.
“What happened?” Jon asks. His head turns toward Arya. “Did we win?”
Arya lets out a shaky breath. “You don’t remember killing him?”
Jon frowns. “Bits,” he explains. “Pieces. It’s foggy.”
Sam and Arya tell him the rest. They talk about the battle. About the godswood. About Melisandre. About the weeks he has lain here. They do not mention what has been happening in the South. Jon doesn’t ask to see Daenerys. Sansa watches his face. His jaw tightens. His eyes move between them.
After a while Sam seems satisfied. “You need rest,” he tells his friend. “But you’re yourself. That’s good. I’ll be back soon.” He looks at Sansa. “Will you…?”
“I’ll stay,” she says before he has a chance to finish.
“I’ll return in a bit. I’ll ask Satin to come help him bathe and get dressed. It will be good for him to walk around the room at least.”
“And i’ll go get Bran,” Arya offers. She glances at Sansa and then at Jon. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
After weeks without it, Sansa finally sees him smile. It feels as if winter is truly gone.
“I’ll try,” he tells Arya.
Sansa hears her own pulse in her ears when they leave and the room is silent again.
She moves closer to the bed. Her legs feel unsteady.
“Jon,” Snasa says. “How do you feel? Do you need more water? Are you cold?”
He turns his head and looks straight at her. A line that quickly deepens forms between his brows.
“I’m alright,” he replies.
“I’ll step out once Satin gets here. “Are you hungry? I could ask—”
“I’m sorry, my lady,” he apologizes. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”
For a second she thinks she misheard.
“It’s me. Sansa.”
He flinches a little at the name. His eyes run over her dress, her shawl, the loose braid over her shoulder. His mouth tightens.
“Sansa,” he repeats. He says it slowly. “Forgive me, my lady. I don’t…”
He stops. He looks past her at the wall.
“You don’t what?” She asks. Her voice comes out sharp and a little desperate. She can’t change it.
He swallows. His fingers scratch weakly at the blanket edge. “Know you,” he says.
The air goes thin. Her heart beats too fast. All the long nights, the counting, the things she let herself admit only in the dark—everything crashes against her. He must be joking. That must be it. Maybe—
“Could you get my sister?”
His eyes hold no recognition at all. Wherever she should be in his mind, there’s just a blank space.
“I should get Sam,” she tells him. “He’ll know what to do.”
She steps back. Her fingers slip from the bedframe. The room tilts. She thinks she will fall as soon as she turns.
Her fingers fumble with the latch. The corridor hits her with light and sound. A boy walks past carrying a bucket of water, some spills onto the floor. The splash is too loud. Her own footsteps echo as she starts toward Sam’s chamber again. Her vision narrows.
Her hands shake. Her mouth is dry. Her skin feels too tight. She is half certain she is about to laugh or make some other sound she won’t be able to stop. What comes out instead is a broken sob.
She keeps walking. She has to find someone who will fix this. She has to keep moving. If she stops, she will slide down the cold stone and stay there.