Chapter Text
There was once a time when Stark Manor was not what it is now.
It stands still, as it always has, stone upon stone, but it does not breathe the same.
Once, it was warm.
Light pooled in the windows at dusk. The kitchen smelled of wild flowers that were hung on the hearth to dry and loaves of bread from the oven. Laughter moved easily through the halls. Brothers called to one another, boots struck the cobblestone, sisters raced through gardens so carefully tended they seemed to bloom out of devotion alone. There was a mother with gentle hands who wove her fingers through Sansa’s hair. There was a father who loved her so fiercely, who did not yet know what awaited him.
The house remembers that version of itself.
Now it stands hollow.
Ash clings stubbornly to the stone, settling into the cracks as if it belongs there. The gardens have surrendered to rot, thorns swallow what once flourished. At night, the wind presses hard against the sagging shutters. Sansa swears that she can still hear the echo of her siblings laughter, the rhythm of their footsteps racing down the corridors that no longer carry their sounds.
Stark Manor is not abandoned.
It is haunted by what it once was.
Ned had brought home a small carved wooden wolf, brought from a traveling peddler who passes through town in early spring. It is bought for Arya–the fierce little thing that she is, forever climbing the trees in the garden and skinning her knees. The man swears his wares are carved himself, though he does not tell Ned the town that he comes from, does not tell him the truth–that he found it in a town filled with rot and emptiness. Ned does not think to doubt the man. Why would he? The world has not yet taught him suspicion.
Bran is the first to fall ill.
He is feverish the following morning, delirious by nightfall. Arya follows within days, her small body burns hot enough that Sansa cannot bear to hold her for long. Catelyn attempts to be brave for her remaining children. She keeps the windows open, despite the chill. She insists the fresh air will help, but it does not. When she begins to cough herself, she hides it behind her sleeve.
Bran is buried beneath the oak at the edge of the garden.
Arya beside him.
Catelyn does not live long enough to see the next full moon. Only after she is gone does the midwife confess what she suspected–that there was a child still growing within her. A boy. Ned names him Rickon in a voice so steady that it frightens Sansa more than his weeping would have.
Robb is the last to die.
He lingers long enough for hope to bloom, foolishly so. Long enough for Sansa to believe that the worst has passed.
It has not.
It is merely the beginning.
When the ground hardens with the first frost, there are five graves in the garden.
And only two Starks are left standing.
Sansa never fully understands why she is the one to survive.
She has asked herself this in the quiet hours, kneeling in soil that never seems to fully grow back foliage. She has pressed her palm against her own chest as if searching for the fever that never comes.
Ned begins drinking before the snow fully settles.
At first it is merely a glass at supper. Then a bottle hidden beneath his desk. Then a decanter left openly upon the dining table.
The first night that Ned throws one of his fits, she learns very quickly to never appear again. She will never find something that she wishes to see.
She finds Ned in the dark, a chair overturned and his breath thick with whiskey and grief. The rope meant for winter meats swings loose from the beam above, frayed and useless where it has snapped. He is on the floor in a heap, staring at nothing as he mutters his first born son’s name as if Robb might answer.
He does not see Sansa, he never knows that she stands and watches him in the darkness.
She thinks that he’s seen her when he stands on uneasy legs. But it is only to throw the large dining room table across the room until it hits the stone hearth with a crack. Plates shatter against the stone, the ones that her mother had hand painted when she was a child. It is as if he intends to break the manor before the manor can attempt to break him again.
In the morning, he stands amid the ruins and demands in a furious voice to know who has made such a mess.
He does not remember any of it, and Sansa does not remind him.
She has learned that silence is easier than truth.
Shae arrives on a gray morning in late autumn a year later.
She is not introduced, so much as deposited.
A carriage stops at the gates, mud splashed high along its wheels, and a man Sansa does not know steps out first. He does not look at the house as though it is grand. He looks at it as though it is useful. Sufficient. The girl who follows him carries nothing but a small leather sack and a defiant tilt to her chin.
She is a bastard daughter, though the word is spoken only once and quietly. Her father has no place for her in his household. No title to shield her. No name that means anything beyond an inconvenience. Women do not inherit much in this world, and bastard girls inherit even less.
Ned keeps her, saying it’s for Sansa’s sake. That the house is too empty for a child to wander alone. Two girls are safer than one.
There is money exchanged. Sansa only sees it in passing–a large pouch handed with a quiet nod between men who do not intend to meet again. Ned tells Sansa it is kindness.
Kindness, she learns, is expensive.
The money does not last.
Some of it goes towards repairs that are mostly never finished. Most of it disappears in town, where lanterns burn late and wooden dice clatter across tavern tables. On certain evenings when the whiskey has not yet claimed him, Ned returns with something small tucked beneath his coat. Sugared almonds wrapped in paper, a ribbon the color of a summer sunset, once even a book of old tales of the north.
He always sets them on the table the following morning.
“For you.” He says, gruff and distant.
Sansa always thanks him quietly.
She believes that her father still loves her. She must believe it. But it sits strangely in him now, as if touching her is like pressing on a bruise. She is the only one of his children that remains. The proof of everything he has lost.
Sometimes loving her reminds him too sharply of the others.
On those nights, the house trembles.
He comes home long after dark, the scent of brandy preceding him through the halls. His boots strike the stone floors unevenly. He shouts into empty rooms as though Catelyn might answer, as though Robb might come thundering down the stairs to meet him.
“Do you hear me?” he bellows once, voice cracking. “I am still here.”
The walls do not reply.
Plates shatter. Doors slam against their frames. His grief turns feral, pacing through corridors that once carried his children’s laughter.
Sansa does not watch anymore.
She has learned where the floorboards creak and where they do not. When the shouting begins, she slips into her room and lowers herself onto the ground. The space beneath her bed is narrow, dust thick against her palms, but it feels smaller than the world beyond it.
She lies flat on her stomach, hands clamped tight over her ears.
She counts the seconds between crashes. She counts until her breathing slows. She counts until the shouting turns to something softer. It often turns to weeping, or in more painful cases, silence.
Shae does not hide.
Shae stands in doorways and watches Ned below.
But Sansa has never been brave in that way. She survives by becoming smaller.
It is sleeting the night that Jon is brought to Stark Manor.
It is not gentle, it does not fall softly.
It comes down hard and slanted, striking the roof in pelts. Water slips through cracked tiles and drips steadily into rusted buckets set out long ago. The sound is relentless as the wind howls through narrow seams in the stone.
Sansa has begged her father not to go into town.
The roads are slick. The air smells of storm. When Ned goes into town, he drinks. When he drinks, he gambles, when he gambles, they do not eat properly for days.
He had gone anyway.
Sansa does not sleep, instead she lies atop her blankets fully clothed with her eyes fixed on the ceiling where damp stains spread like ugly bruises. She waits for the sound she knows far too well–the violent shove of the front door, boots dragging against stone, a voice too loud for the late hour.
Nights when he sits on the edge of her bed and pulls her upright, hands gripping her shoulders as though she might disappear if he does not hold her tightly enough. He studies her face in the dim light, his fingers running through her hair so that they yank at the knots.
“You look so much like your mother,” he whispers, his voice breaking. “So much like my Cat.”
And then the whispers become something sharper as his grip tightens on her shoulders.
Anger at the gods. Anger at fate. Anger at the cruelty of being left with a reminder that is Sansa Stark.
Sansa has learned to brace herself for it.
Tonight, the door slams, but there is laughter instead of anger.
It is loud. Booming. Drunkenly wild.
“Down!” Ned shouts into the wide hall. “All of you, come down and see! Come see what I’ve brought you all!”
Sansa freezes where she lays in bed, her eyes slightly widening at the ceiling.
She slips from her room hesitantly and pads towards the staircase to peek over. Careful to avoid the loose board near the top step. Sleet blows in the half open door below, pooling across the stone entryway.
“Talisa!” Ned bellows. “Podrick! Come and see!”
Talisa appears first from her room by the kitchen, her hair wrapped up in cloth. Podrick squints from the hall, scratching at his cheek. Shae arrives as well, bright eyed almost as if she anticipated it.
“Sansa!” Ned roars, voice echoing upward. “Get down here, girl!”
Sansa does not answer, but crouches halfway down the staircase instead, hidden in the shadows.
She finally sees him in the dim light.
Her father stumbles sideways into the wall, catching himself with a laugh that turns into a wet cough. Beside him stands a boy about her age, or perhaps a year or two older. His hair hangs long and black as a raven's wing, plastered to his cheeks by rain. His clothes are little more than rags, soaked through and clinging to narrow shoulders. Mud streaks his face, his boots leave dark prints across the already filthy floor.
He does not look up.
He stares at the floor as if in hopes that it will cave in and swallow him whole.
He fits here, in Stark Manor, almost too well.
Ned swings his arms wide in a grand announcement.
“I won him,” he clares proudly. “Can you imagine it? Won him clean.”
Talisa stiffens as Podrick shifts uneasily, Shae only tightens her shawl.
“Who would gamble away their own child?” Ned spits, though he laughs almost as he says it. “What kind of fool does that?”
The boy flinches.
“Lucky for you,” Ned continues, clapping a heavy hand down on the boy's shoulder. “I’m a very good man.”
His words slur.
“I’ve brought you somewhere proper.”
Somewhere proper.
Rainwater drips from the boys sleeves onto the cracked stone.
Ned’s gaze sweeps the room before it hits the staircase, he can just spot a glimpse of Sansa’s fiery red hair.
“Sansa,” he calls, softer now but no less commanding as he gestures to her. “Come down.”
She descends the steps curiously.
Up close, the boy smells of wet wool and cold earth.
“This is Jon,” Ned announces. “He’ll be staying. He shall be a good friend to you, won’t you boy?”
Jon does not lift his head.
“A good companion,” Ned says, looking between them as though arranging livestock. “You’ll look after him, won’t you, Sansa?”
Sansa studies the boy.
He is shaking, though whether from cold or fear she cannot tell.
She steps forward.
“You’ll be alright.” She tells Jon quietly.
For a quick moment that she nearly misses, his dark eyes flick up to meet hers. There is something fierce in them.
Sleet continues to melt on the floor into a dirty puddle, it pours into the door until Podrick coughs awkwardly and steps behind Ned to close it.
The sound causes Ned to notice the mess.
“Talisa,” he barks, irritation replacing his pride. “Clean this up.”
He waves a dismissive hand and lurches toward the stairs, muttering to himself as he climbs.
The house slowly settles at Ned’s disappearance.
The wind howls beyond the stone, but no one speaks. Talisa makes a half hearted attempt at the puddle spreading across the entryway before abandoning it all together to go back to bed. The buckets clang as water drips in a steady rhythm.
Jon still remains frozen in the entryway.
Water drips from his sleeves. His worn shoes are caked in mud. He looks as though he has been placed there rather than walked in.
Sansa turns away from him and she climbs the stairs again, not toward her own room, but the eastern corridor.
It is a wing she does not visit.
The air there feels heavier, untouched. Bran and Robb’s room sits at the end, door slightly open from the last time Ned has slept in one of their beds and wept until exhaustion.
She pushes it open to the smell of stale air, Robb’s wooden sword still leans against the wall. Bran’s sketches remain on the tiny desk.
She moves carefully through their belongings.
“I know you won’t mind,” she says softly to their ghosts.
Her brothers had always shared. They would have given boots off their feet if asked.
She opens Robb’s trunk first, hands trembling slightly. She pulls out a clean shirt, though a bit too long, and trousers and a thick woolen coat. From beneath the bed, she finds a pair of boots.
When she returns downstairs, Jon is still in his place.
Talisa has retreated, as well as Shae and Podrick back to their beds.
Sansa steps off the last stair.
“Hello,” she says gently.
Nothing.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
His shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly.
“My father is loud,” she continues softly. “But he won’t hurt you either, as long as you stay out of his way.”
Still no response.
“Your name is Jon?”
Silence.
She steps closer, setting the folded clothes carefully on a nearby table.
“I brought you something dry,” she says, holding out the clothes as proof. “You can change. You can sleep in my bed tonight. We’ll figure something else out when morning comes.”
He does not move to take the clothes.
She studies his face–the sharp outline of his cheek and the stubborn set of his mouth.
“Do you have a last name?” She asks quietly. “Or a title?”
His head lifts then just slightly.
“I am a bastard,” he says, voice rough from cold and something deeper. “I don’t have a title, or a house.”
His jaw clenches.
“I am nothing.”
The words sit heavily between them.
Sansa gives him a small, sad smile.
“Everyone is something.” She says.
He looks unconvinced.
“Perhaps you should choose your own title.” She suggests.
That gives him a pause.
He frowns faintly. “I don’t know what title I could have.”
The wind outside softens.
Sansa glances toward the dirty window. The sleet has hardened into snow, quiet and light. White flecks dot the darkness beyond.
Jon follows her gaze.
She looks back at him.
“What about Snow?” She asks softly. “Jon Snow.”
He considers it.
Snow falls without asking permission. It covers what is broken. It makes the ugly beautiful for a while.
Jon lifts his eyes full to her for the first time.
They are dark. Sad in a way that feels older than he looks.
“Jon Snow,” he repeats quietly, testing it.
Finally, he nods.