Chapter Text
Sansa takes one last look at Winterfell’s bustling courtyard. The blacksmith is heating up the forge, fishermen are delivering today’s catch to the cooks, and scullery maids run between kitchen and well to prepare breakfast for the workers already repairing the bruised but still sturdy castle. On the walkway, squinting at the hazy morning light, stands an equally bruised but sturdy Arya. She’s not to use the stairs until her wounds have healed lest she tears her stitches, and so she merely leans against the railing and lifts her good hand in goodbye. Brienne is next to her, ready to support if needed, her face the picture of worry. A worry Arya doesn’t let show, even though Sansa knows she shares it. Worry and frustration over her injuries keeping her at Winterfell now that Sansa needs her more than ever.
After waving back, Sansa mounts the horse and follows Jon through the gates. All morning, he’s stewed in brooding silence over having to take this journey with her, and that silence extends down slush-filled roads and trails where sprouts of green shine among muddy brown and winter white. Whenever she glances at him, his eyes are either on the road or on the fields surrounding them, so she lets him sulk in peace. He clearly needs it. And after all the chaos lately, a handful quiet hours on horseback isn’t unwelcome to her either. Out here the world is peaceful, the only sounds bird song and snow crunching under hooves and the gentle drip of icicles melting where they hang like glittering spears from the naked branches of birch and oak and elm. When she closes her eyes and lets the horse follow Jon’s lead, she can almost forget the horrors they went through barely a week ago. She can almost forget all those eerily blue eyes and the bony fingers scrambling for purchase on her clothes as she ran and the cries of those less lucky.
At noon Jon leads the horses into a glade protected by the quiet woods, where snow still lingers in deep banks and the shadows chill her to the bones. He finds bread and thick slices of ham in the saddlebags and when he hands her the food and his eyes flicker up to meet hers, he looks at her properly for the first time since this morning. He looks at her and jolts.
With a grimace, he returns his attention to the saddlebag. “Still not used to that.”
Sansa tucks her black braid back under the hood of her cloak. “If you could find it in yourself to actually interact with me, I’m sure that would change.”
“Do you want me to protect you or not? I need to focus.” He gestures at the wood--the rather empty wood. “Now eat your food and stretch your legs. And make water. Once we’re off again, we’re not stopping until nightfall.”
Stuffing his mouth with ham, he peers between the trees as though the men hired to kidnap Sansa have, by some magic, already reached the North and know precisely where to look.
“You could at least make some smalltalk, or this will be a long and boring journey for the both of us.”
Jon sighs and gives a nod. “You’re right. I’m sorry. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” she says, brushing crumbs off her skirts, and then silence settles over them like a musty old blanket.
She blames the truth about his parentage for creating this unease between them. While he and Arya fell back into their old rhythm instantly, something changed between him and Sansa that day. Ever since, whenever Sansa and Jon interact, it’s as if they’re trying to dance together while hearing different songs. They step on each other’s toes, follow different beats, and can’t decide who should lead. When she presses forward, so does he and they stumble into one another. When she stops to read him, so does he and they end up completely still instead of moving forward. And when she backs away, so does he and the divide between them grows. Which was why she was so relieved when Jon volunteered to travel with her. Isn’t this exactly what they need? Time alone to get to know one another again--only for him to make it utterly impossible with all this brooding.
Perhaps they should talk about it, how they struggle in this new relationship of theirs. Sansa glances at him through the corner of her eye. He's honing the blade he's borrowed, his dark curls tumbling over his eyes. He's not the only one getting used to staring at a familiar person with an unfamiliar appearance. His hair is all wrong, Longclaw is back at Winterfell, and he wears another man's clothes, the cloak she sewed him hanging in his wardrobe. This is what he must've looked like when he was a ranger with the Night's Watch and traveled beyond the Wall and lived with the wildlings.
As though he feels her eyes on him, Jon slows down his movements but doesn't meet her gaze and she can't decide whether it's an invitation to talk or wish for her to stay silent, so silent she stays.
When they stop for the night, she can’t hold back a gasp of pain as she dismounts. Her poor body isn’t used to riding this much and protests with each movement, legs somehow both stiff and buckling at the same time. But when she falters Jon is there, wrapping a strong arm around her back and helping her to a flat rock covered with soft moss and a dusting of snow. He brushes off the snow and helps her ease down, brow furrowed with concern.
“Rest,” he says, rubbing her arm. “It’s going to feel even worse tomorrow.”
“How comforting.”
His mouth twists into something resembling a smile. Then he hands her food and, as she nibbles on it, he gathers branches of evergreen which he fashions into a mattress beneath a spruce tree whose branches dip into the snow. In the saddlebags he finds blankets which he spreads over the prickly bed that looks surprisingly inviting to her. Now that the sun has lowered beneath the horizon, the wind is harsh instead of crisp, and she’s already shivering and sick of sitting. It would be so sweet stretch out on that bed, but her legs won’t obey her command, so she tucks the cloak more tightly around her body and watches Jon as he wolves down his food and tends to the horses.
Once he’s done, he takes one look at her and her miserable state and shakes his head. “If you need help, Sansa, all you have to do is tell me.”
“I’m all right.”
“Your lips are blue. Come on.” He wraps his arm around her again. “Up you get.”
Biting her lip, Sansa stifles a string of curses that would make Arya proud and Mother appalled when Jon helps her move between the rock and the tree, where she crawls underneath the canopy of low-hanging branches. In here the world is even more quiet and still, the thick foliage sheltering her from sound and wind. And when Jon joins her in their makeshift bed, shielding her from the draft still leaking in through the gap between branches and ground, and tucks sleeping skins around them, it gets warmer still. If she were to snuggle closer to him, it could even become toasty, but Jon has been careful to leave a hand-breadth between them and Sansa stays where she is.
“Good night, Sansa.”
“Good night,” she says, peering at him in the dark. Her eyes have adjusted to the lack of light and she can see the slope of his nose, the shadow his lashes cast on his cheek, and the soft curve of his relaxed lips. She can also see how those lips tighten when she whispers his name.
“What,” he says but it sounds like a sigh.
“Who are we supposed to be? Shouldn’t we decide?”
“I don’t know. Just pick a name.”
“Jon, during our ride, I was thinking about what would be safest. And I think we should travel as husband and wife.”
He emits an odd, strangled noise. Then he’s quiet for so long she wonders whether it was a snore, but just as she’s about to nudge him awake, he speaks: “We’re traveling as sister and brother.”
“They’ll know to look for a brother and sister traveling.”
“Then we’ll travel as cousins.”
“If we travel as cousins, we can’t share a room if we stay at an inn. We can barely do it as brother and sister! We look nothing alike, Jon. People will assume things, and assumptions create gossip and gossip attracts attention. But if we travel as husband and wife, no one will bat an eye.”
“Let them bat their eyes. We’re traveling as brother and sister.”
“You can protect me better as a husband.”
“I can protect you just fine as a brother.”
Sansa sighs deeply, demonstratively, but he still keeps his eyes stubbornly closed.
“All right, we’ll travel as brother and sister. But who are we? Why are we traveling--and to where? What are our names?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? Just go to sleep.”
“You’re just like when we were children. You never wanted to play.”
He opens his eyes, then, but only to scowl at her. “I played all the time!”
“With Robb and Theon and Arya. Never with me and Jeyne and Beth.”
“I did too.”
“Yes, when we begged you. And you always made it seem like a chore, as though you'd rather be sulking somewhere than play a gallant knight who saved us from monsters.”
“It’s not the same. This isn’t a game. It’s not playing. It’s not monsters-and-maidens, because this monster is actually trying kill you.”
“Are you going to be like this the whole time?”
“Like what.”
“You didn’t have to come, you know. You didn’t have to volunteer.”
“Yes I did.” Struggling to keep the sleeping skins still, he manages to turn his back to her without any cold air rushing in. “Go to sleep. We’re leaving at sunup.”
Brienne’s too tall. And a woman. They’d draw attention to themselves. As would Sansa escorted to the Vale by knights or by a giant snow-white direwolf. Podrick isn’t good enough with a sword. Arya needs to heal from her injuries. And everybody knows the Kingslayer. Everybody knows the Hound too, but that didn't stop him from offering. But he’d barely finished his sentence about protecting lady Stark before Jon had shielded her with his body and practically growled out that he would be the one protecting her. This time no one protested. This time no one said the King in the North needs to stay in the North. Instead Jon and Sansa made their plans, and the morning after Bran told them about the men Cersei had hired, they were off.
They considered going beyond the Wall at first, but while spring is already knocking on North’s door, the lands beyond the Wall are still cold and barren. The animals once thriving there are now few and scattered across the vast distances and once they run out of provisions... Well, what’s the use of fleeing if they still die from starvation or exposure?
Jon’s already snoring softly, but Sansa’s thoughts keep her up for a good while. Long enough for her to hear owls hooting and deer browsing and foxes skittering past--and wondering whether she hears something else entirely.
That’s fear speaking, though, not reason--and she’s with Jon. Sansa snuggles as close as she dares, so close she can breathe in his familiar scent, but not so close they touch. She’s safe with Jon. They might be cousins now, and he might be annoyed with her today, but he still loves her all the same.
Doesn’t he?
In her dreams she chases the answer to that question without success, and when he wakes her the next morning, it feels as if she’s barely slept at all. In fact, it feels as if she rode the whole night through as well and, like he predicted, her body aches even worse than when she dismounted. While breaking her fast, she eyes the saddle grumpily and doesn’t notice the root Jon’s offering her until it’s under her nose. It's a gnarly thing, its long umber body brushed clean from dirt, pale haulm sticking out at the top.
“I found this in the saddlebags. I think Sam packed it.”
“What is it?”
“Chew on it. It’ll ease the pain.”
And it does, a little. Getting back in the saddle is absolutely terrible, but she keeps that root in her mouth and chews and chews its bittersweet taste and hates the dumb silence. Jon’s still pretending to focus on his surroundings when she knows he’s only brooding. The moment Arya is well enough, she and the others will travel to King’s Landing and kill Cersei. Varys knows all the tunnels there, knows how to get them in without having to raise a whole army and march them south. Jon would rather be with them, Sansa thinks, than traveling down forgotten roads with his sister or cousin or whatever she is now.
She tucks the root into her belt and urges her horse to sidle up next to Jon’s. He shoots her a look and jolts this time too, gaze wandering over the black of her hair before finding her eyes.
“Jon,” she says, softly. “I know this is serious. I know it’s not playing. But the truth is horrible and frightening. And we don’t know for how long we’ll have to stay away. It could be months. And we’ll have to seek shelter at an inn eventually, and people will strike up conversation. If we want to blend in,” she says, gesturing at the simple olive green wool dress and thick charcoal gray cloak she’s borrowed from one of the taller maids at Winterfell, “we have to commit to it.”
He holds her gaze for a moment so long a strange feeling stirs in her stomach and she has to fight the impulse to look away.
"As brother and sister?"
"As brother and sister," she says and his eyes fall to read her lips.
“All right." He tears his eyes off her mouth and looks back at the road before them. "I’ll play.”