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Stannis Baratheon’s war camp was a cold, miserable affair. But, after the horrors back in Winterfell it was more a great, oppressive annoyance to Jeyne than anything torturous. Most everyone was wont to just leave Jeyne alone, knowing she couldn’t very well leave, but also having no true inclination to keep her in any one place either.
There were scant few other ladies about, and those there were stern and harsh warrior-women. But they were kind enough to her, keeping her fed and entertaining her questions when they could be bothered to. The men were just as stern and glum, and the mutterings of a fire god from the Baratheon troops scared Jeyne, so she kept away from those with the fiery heart-stag emblazoned on their chests in favor of those with more familiar Mormont bears and Umber giants. Others filtered about, too, more often than not unfamiliar to her.
It was mid-morning, and Jeyne sat between a she-bear and a she-kraken in a tent roughly designated for eating, all three of them picking at hot porridge as chilled breaths of wind easily pushed past the shield of the campfire outside. Her cloak was too large— fit for a soldier, rather than a girl of three-and-ten, but that was nothing to complain about when its unruly size granted her such an excess of warmth.
The wound at the end of Jeyne’s nose stung and itched at once. The man who cut the frostbite away (a medic some degrees shy of a maester) had warned her against agitating it too much. But that was a difficult task, when she could see the red end blurry and transparent in her periphery, and the itches spread out over the rest of her face like a continuous and annoying explosion. She sniffed and flicked uselessly at the juncture of her cheek and nostril to mitigate the worst of it, but it was hardly enough.
Her breakfast companions were silent that morning, and normally she would let them at it. But in a rare burst of loneliness, she decided to break the spell.
“Is Theon well?” Jeyne asked the she-kraken: the short-haired, pointy-faced woman she had recently learned was Theon’s sister.
She thought the notion odd; in her years growing up around Theon, he had never struck her as boy who had siblings, much less one so crass and unpleasant as Asha Greyjoy. If anything, she had considered Sansa and Arya the closest thing Theon would ever have had to sisters, and they talked so little with him that it was hardly a notion she fancied very seriously.
At any rate, Lady Asha’s kinship with Theon granted her some short glimpses at him that Jeyne was not privy to, and she wished horribly to know the state of her fellow runaway. Asha looked sidelong at Jeyne, a little quirk of distaste pulling at her mouth before she shrugged.
“He’s alive,” she muttered. “Stannis has him strung up in his quarters, but he’s not got any more chunks taken out of him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It wasn’t, but Jeyne was glad to hear it nonetheless.
“Lord Stannis won’t kill him, will he?” she asked. “I know he’s a turncloak, but he’s been very kind to me— couldn’t they just send him to the Wall? Jon Snow knows him, and he’s Lord Commander! Surely they’d take him in!”
Lady Asha just scowled into her porridge, not granting her an answer.
“Jon Snow would as quickly kill him as any of Ned Stark’s brood, after everything he’s done,” Lady Alysane Mormont pointed out from Jeyne’s other side. “It is good that he was kind to you, Lady Poole, but most of those who would gladly help you would not be so forgiving with Theon.”
“I suppose,” Jeyne sighed, hating the truth in her table-mate’s words. She had hated Theon too, after all. But she hated the Lannisters much more for killing her father, and keeping her hostage in King’s Landing for so long, after all.
Her first sight of Theon upon returning to Winterfell had brought with it a lingering sting of anger and fear that she guessed must have been something running in her Northern blood. Mostly, she was confused, that Theon would be like that, and that he would be so servile to Ramsay Bolton. But after a while, she understood, and it became a lot easier to forgive (or else, forget) the sins of his recent past.
She wondered, then, if Sansa would have hated her for forgiving Theon. It was a sickening thought.
Memories of Sansa claimed her unfortunately little as recent. Of the Stark girls, Arya took up most of it, so taken up with being Arya that scrambling for any memories of her overshadowed her recollections of the elder of Stark daughter. But now that Jeyne was Jeyne again (at least, to Ladies Alysane and Asha), the pang of longing for her dear best friend had reclaimed its residence within her, strong as when she was first taken from the Red Keep so long ago now.
She wondered so much about Sansa.
Had she killed King Joffrey? It seemed both horribly strange of her, but also entirely possible.
Where had she fled? Jeyne assumed she was still in King’s Landing for weeks after the Purple Wedding, hiding in Flea Bottom or else taken to the poorly industries the Lannisters had relegated herself to. But as the weeks drew on, she began to think otherwise— that she had taken a merchant ship to Essos, or Dorne, or some other place rich and warm where she would be happy and taken care of.
Or maybe she had found Arya, wherever she had flown months before Sansa, and they were together somewhere safe, the last of their family besides their half-brother at the Wall. Arya would probably be gladder with Jon than Sansa, she mused, but for the lack of girls at the Wall, she guessed the two of them were better off elsewhere.
That was all she truly hoped of Sansa— that she was treated as she ought to be, and kept kind and optimistic and away from the terrors of men and war. If there was any good in the world, Jeyne hoped that it had served Sansa better than it had served her.
Jeyne’s face stung cold, and she wiped at it, realizing that it was the wet of tears that drew the chill there.
“Lady Poole! What’s happened?” Lady Alysane asked.
Jeyne just shook her head and filled her mouth with porridge, unwilling to speak lest putting words to her worries would draw forth more icy tears. Lady Asha scoffed some words about the weepiness of little girls, but she felt one of her rough hands begrudgingly come to pat at the back of her shoulder before she resumed ignoring her.
“What will become of me, Lady Alysane?” Jeyne asked, instead of lingering on poor Sansa. “I would rather not like to be here when Lord Stannis attacks Winterfell.”
‘If Ramsay defeats him,’ she did not need to add. The blunt of her nose itched where it had scabbed, but she remembered in time not to rub at it.
“As Stannis still believes you to be Arya Stark, I’ve heard talk of you going to Jon Snow at The Wall, until Winterfell is retaken or else until we can find a more hospitable noble family to keep you until you can reclaim your father’s inheritance or marry someone better suited to you than the Bolton Bastard,” Alysane explained.
“Okay,” Jeyne nodded, sure that some disappointment leaked into her voice. Jon was never entirely fond of Jeyne, and he would undoubtedly be upset to find her there instead of the favorite sister he must quite sorely miss. It would surely be better than Winterfell, but Jeyne could not feign relief at the prospect.
“Fuck me, you Northwomen are miserable!” Lady Asha groaned, pushing herself up from her seat. “All your sighing and frowning, you’d think yourselves the prisoners!”
“Oh, and you’re much better,” Lady Alysane scoffed.
“Not in your company, I’m not!” her sneer accompanied a clap to Jeyne’s and Alysane’s shoulders which felt far too sharp to be anywhere affectionate. “I’ll go see if anyone else can muster up some amusement.”
Alysane just waved her dismissal, and it was with a final derisive glare shot at the Mormont that Lady Asha stalked out of the tent, a gust of cold air blowing in her wake.
“She acts as if she’s free to do as she pleases,” Jeyne’s remaining companion grumbled. “Ironborn audacity, if ever I’ve seen it.”
Jeyne hummed, picking at her food as a contemplative silence fell between them. After a time, Lady Alysane let out a breath and pushed her bowl away, making to stand. “Would you like to come tend the horses with me, Lady Poole?”
In another life, Jeyne would have taken the tenderness of the woman's tone for pity, but she was eager enough for the distraction that she took it instead as a kindness and nodded.
It was miserably cold outside of the tent and cook-fire, but Jeyne was glad of Lady Alysane’s attempt to distract her. Though the state of her future was disheartening and unknowable, it was far from Ramsay, and that had to count for something.
News of The North came frugally and infrequently to the Vale.
Sansa wished dearly for it, increasingly so as what did reach them told of armies moving towards Winterfell from the Wall. Alayne shouldn’t care (or even really know) about such concerns, however, so she bit back her desperate curiosity as best she could.
In the secret parts of her mind, Sansa imagined Jon at the head of the march, though she knew Night’s Watchmen swore against taking up arms in wars south of their domain. It was a tough image to keep; Sansa’s memory of her half-brother wasn’t great, and more and more, her image of him was just a vague, blurry replicate of their father, lacking a beard and a head or so of height. That must have made it easier to imagine him at war, though— she doubted looking upon Jon as he was would have inspired her so greatly.
But thinking too much about Jon and their father eventually led to memories of beheadings and cruel boy-kings, so she tried to ignore the both of them. To Alayne, they were just a faceless traitor and an equally unknowable celibate, anyways.
“Alayne!” Myranda Royce’s voice reached her through the cloud of her thoughts, and Sansa shook herself back into her present moment. Rough bark clung at the wool of her dress where she leaned against the tree, tucked away in a corner of the courtyard of Lady Myranda’s keep, and the woman herself stood over her. The purple brocade of her skirts brushed at Sansa’s outstretched feet as she asked, “Might I interrupt your pondering for a spell of company?”
“Of course!” Sansa nodded, crossing her legs to give Myranda room to join her on the ground. “I was just… thinking about winter.”
A little smile pulled at Myranda’s mouth as she sat, her skirts bunching out around her and the long trails of her sleeves catching briefly under her legs before she situated herself more properly. “This will be your first winter, won’t it?”
“For what it’s worth,” Sansa replied. “I was barely three when the last one ended. It’s so cold already, and I fear I know not what to expect.”
Truly, it was cold, but not nearly so unbearable as some of the summer chills Winterfell had bore during Sansa’s life. Compared to King’s Landing, however, she felt herself caught between two unrelenting blocks of ice; it was a difference which she felt quite tenderly. Her siblings would surely have laughed, to see her already doubling her layers and changing her fine silks and linens for thicker wools— but her siblings were too dead to judge her, and those little Southron weaknesses were now comforts she would gladly take.
Myranda laughed, but it was not a laugh of derision, but of commiseration. “The cold will only get worse, I am sorry to say! But we have firewood and friends, and pleasantries aplenty to pass our time by! I believe it will be most survivable.”
“I hope so,” Sansa hummed, thinking less of herself in her protected keep and, rather, where she might have been, in another life.
Years ago, she had daydreamed about her first winter with Jeyne, her dear, lost best friend. They planned how they would pass the time away together, and schemed to convince their fathers to foster them to the Baratheons in Kings Landing to avoid the chill entirely. Arya had rolled her eyes whenever she heard them go on about it, but she had been eight at most, and could not possibly cared about such a far-future problem as a winter.
Sansa and Jeyne had been older and more practical than Arya, and their ideas had seemed entirely realistic at the time. Now, as winter rolled near and the North became more and more inaccessible, Sansa wondered what they all would have done, shut in Winterfell’s keep together for years. And there was no Jeyne or Arya to guess along with her, now.
She wished dearly to ask after them, everywhere she had been after losing them. There were whispers of Arya Stark landing in the hands of the Boltons; she knew not whether to be relieved that she was no longer missing, or else to despair that she had found such dreadful company.
She dared not ask after Jeyne, for how would Alayne know of such a girl? Who would possibly know her whereabouts, anyways? Lord Baelish said he didn’t know of Jeyne and was not inclined to ask after her on Sansa’s behalf. She understood why, of course, but it still made her sad.
Jeyne hadn’t been guilty of anything but her friendship with Sansa— her father was no traitor, and she was not wrapped up in any dangerous betrothals. That was Sansa, and yet she was the only one to make it out of King’s Landing.
“What glum thought has caused that sorry face now, Alayne?” Myranda asked, and Sansa shook herself back into the present.
“Nothing important,” she sighed. “I am… homesick, I suppose.”
Myranda hummed, her wry smile returning. “Ah, I do suppose high castles and lordly step-brothers must be awfully different from where you grew up.”
Sansa nodded. “Something like that. It is an honor to be recognized by my lord father, of course.”
“Of course!” Myranda agreed, her voice lilted with humor. “The dream of any bastard child, I am sure.”
Sansa hummed, less sure. Recognition hadn’t pleased Jon much, after all, whereas Mya seemed more than satisfied without. But Alayne Stone was pleased to be recognized by her father and honored to be kept in the company of Lords, rather than the coast-town Lorn Baelish told her she hailed from. Certainly, her story must not be so entirely uncommon of bastards!
Some pebbles crunched to Sansa’s left, and she looked over to find Mya approaching them from the stables, tearing off tattered work gloves to better adjust the scarf wrapped about her head.
“How are you two just lounging about in this chill?” she cried in disbelief as she reached them.
“It is better than managing Lord Arryn inside,” Sansa muttered.
Mya laughed and dropped to a crouch beside Myranda, shoving her gloves back on.
“Since you said it, the little Lord Arryn was just asking for you, Alayne,” Mya told her.
Sansa poorly hid a sigh. “Is it another fit?”
“Merely boredom I think, and Lord Protector Baelish is occupied with matters of the realm,” she replied, and Sansa took comfort in that, at least.
“I believe I can let my lord sit in his boredom some brief time longer,” Sansa hummed, wishing more than anything to remain with Myranda and Mya. “Are the mules well, Mya?”
“They’re just fine!” she nodded. “Heartier than I am against the cold, it seems. I trust nothing horribly interesting has happened elsewhere in the castle?”
“Oh!” Myranda’s eyes lit up and she leaned in between Mya and Alayne, “I hear we’re to be expecting guests soon! Father and Lord Protector Baelish are planning a tourney.”
“A tourney!” Sansa gasped, something long-buried in her chest lighting up at the thought. Lord Baelish had mentioned something about guests, but she wasn't supposed to have been listening at the time, so hardly had to wherewithal to ask about it.
Mya groaned, “Seven spare me! Suppose you’ll find yourself a husband in the lot, then?”
Myranda laughed. “If my prayers prove fruitful, I shall! Any man hardy enough to carry himself on a steed exceeds the merits of my poor first husband, at any rate!”
“My- a tourney! I suppose there are a thousand gallant and comely knights waiting to have a go with a lance before winter takes all ease away from travel!” Sansa sighed, scooting in towards Myranda and Mya’s huddle. Of all the bad memories Sansa tried to forget from King’s Landing, the Tourney of the Hand was one she would forever cherish. And after all that had happened since the Tourney, the promise of another was a sudden, refreshing excitement for her.
‘Maybe Lord Baelish wishes to marry me to one of the knights,’ she thought. ‘It is more an honor than a baseborn girl such as Alayne could hope for.’
“A thousand’s a stretch,” Mya answered with an amused grin. “And gallant and comely are even further one, for Valemen, but it won’t be boring I suppose.”
“Oh, it couldn’t possibly!” Sansa insisted, receiving a sound of firm agreement form Myranda and a laugh from Mya. “Who is attending?”
“Well, the call for participants have only just been sent,” Myranda explained. “And I am sure your lord father would know more about the prospective guest list than I. But if I may hazard at some conjecture…”
“Then you will start listing every lord you find half-a-bit appealing?” Mya guessed. “With Lord Harrold Hardyng at the very top?”
Myranda shrieked out an appalled laugh and swatted at her friend, face coloring itself rosy, “He is not at the top of the list, you wretch!”
“Not if Lady Waynwood has any say in the matter,” Mya shot back. “But you? Who else even makes the top?”
“Oh, be quiet! Alayne needs not to hear your nonsense!” she pleaded, still blushing bright and laughing, taking a feeble scoop of fallen leaves and tossing them at Mya in retaliation. Myranda had mentioned her poor-fated attempt to wed Harrold Hardyng some time previously, and had some comments on his looks and general manner besides that did little to refute Mya’s assertions.
It reminded Sansa again of Jeyne, flushing and scoffing and pelting Sansa with snowballs when she accused her of similar affections for whichever boy they decided to zero in on that day.
“Does Lord Hardyng joust?” Sansa asked, conspiratorial. “You could offer him your favor.”
“Alayne!” Myranda whined. Mya, now peppered with dusty-crunched leaves, cackled.
“Lady Alayne?” a woman’s voice called, and Sansa turned to the sound to find one of the servants from the Eyrie standing at the end of the courtyard, presumably looking around for her.
“Probably Lord Arryn’s calling for you,” Myranda noted as Mya hummed in agreement and picked the leaves from the knitting of her cloak.
“I shouldn’t keep him waiting too much longer anyways, lest his boredom turn into a fit,” Sansa grumbled, standing at last with a begrudging sigh. “I am sorry to go.”
“Do as you must, Alayne!” Myranda assured her around a smile. “We’ll see you at supper!”
“You will,” Mya corrected. “I’ve got mule matters tonight.”
“Tomorrow then, Mya,” Sansa said.
After a series of waves and good tidings, Sansa left her friends for whatever drudgery awaited her in the company of her little cousin.
Both being girls and neither fostering any convictions towards the Watch, is was an odd spin of fate that Sansa should expect to meet her sister once again at The Wall.
‘Arya is with Ned Stark’s bastard at The Wall,’ Lord Baelish had told the lords of the Vale weeks ago, when word arrived entreating Lord Robert Arryn for aid. He likely thought it inconsequential news for Lady Myranda and her retainers, and Sansa figured it was. But in that carelessness, he underestimated how blasé Myranda would be with the news, and just who she would relay it all to in idle chit-chat. Alayne and Mya hummed with the half-interest matters of Lords and war necessitated from unaffected bastards. Sansa had reeled and let herself at some dangerous grasps of hope.
Lord Baelish had not sent Jon any help, and Sansa dared not plead with him for it, suspecting displeasure from him for her knowing more than he readily let on.
He must be awfully displeased now, to find her missing, and must also suspect it was with Myranda’s aide. But with winter well and truly settling in around Sansa, there was little chance he could muster a fast enough force to catch her before she reached her siblings.
Thinking of it all made Sansa nervous, but also eager in such a way as she had not allowed for herself in months. Years, possibly. It was the same as she had felt on the long ride to King’s Landing, wearied then only by Lady’s death. She dreaded to let herself hope now, and yet hope she did, and she found herself so very eager to see Jon and Arya again, though they had been her least favorite siblings before.
‘What a great fool of a girl I had been!’
The ship carrying her north— the last one making voyage to the Wall from the Vale for a long while, according to Myranda— was a little goods-vessel, taking a quaint cargo of fruit preserves and prisoner-recruits up to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Ocean-sailing was a wretched affair, Sansa came to learn. The Wall had consumed a fair corner of the skyline by the time her gut settled enough to allow her anything close to verticality.
The prisoners mostly ignored Sansa, and Sansa ignored them in turn.
‘The Watch takin’ little girls, now?’ one had asked upon first seeing her huddled in the hold with them, and had just laughed at her when she explained that her brother was Lord Commander. ‘Keep that sense of humor about you, girl. It’ll do you good in company!’
They had not so much as grunted in her general direction after that, keener to grumble their bleak futures into the space between them and pick at what rations the ship captain allowed them. Sansa had been too seasick for company, anyways, and now that she had her bearings, she spent too much time on-deck, watching the Wall grow impossibly bigger and bigger before her, to turn her attention back below.
“You’ll be one of a real small list ladies this decade to grace Eastwatch,” the captain commented from his spot at the wheel, paces away from her. “If it weren’t for Lord Stannis’ party takin’ port there, I’d have dared to call you the only one in so long.”
“There are ladies in his war party?” Sansa asked, not paying attention as much as being polite.
“Ah, well, the men at port say he’s brought his queen and little girl along with ‘em, and that Red Witch is fabled to never stray so far as the train of his cloak,” he answered. “I can’t say if they’re still there, now— news only travels as far as the end of the docks, most of the time. This brother of yours at Eastwatch?”
“How would I know that?” Sansa asked. “He’s Lord Commander— I imagine he’s got to go all over The Wall to keep it up.”
“Right,” the captain hummed, obviously just as convinced of that as the men below-decks, thought he had the decency to temper his amusement. Myranda had paid him too much to do otherwise, Sansa suspected.
A frigid wind hit Sansa’s side, blowing newly-again-red hair all across her face so that she had to pluck it out of her mouth and hold the whole of it back with one hand, keeping purchase of the taffrail with the other. Her last hairpin had broken a week ago, and her very best styling skills could not keep it tied up against the Northern gales.
“Lord Commander’s usually at Castle Black, if my memory serves me right,” the captain added. Out of some seeming pity, he drew a length of hempstring from his pocket and handed it over to Sansa for her hair.
“Castle Black,” Sansa repeated, tying her hair back quickly so that she could grab ahold of the railing once more. Castle Black was where Uncle Benjen stayed, she remembered: a large fort which hosted the great majority of what remained of the Night’s Watch. Soon also to host all that remained of House Stark.
That thought made Sansa sad, as it always did. She, Arya, and Jon were the last: the failed attempt at a king’s bride, the unruly extra daughter, and the half-tolerated bastard. All else: beloved heir and doted-on youngest sons, courtiers and knights and Lord and Lady alike, all felled or gone someplace from which they would surely never return.
Sansa missed Jon and Arya more than she had ever truly desired for their company before. But more, she missed those she could never get back. Father and Mother. Her brothers. Jeyne Poole, whose absence had been the lest expected of all of them.
‘Where did you go, Jeyne?’ Sansa prayed it wasn’t where the rest of them had gone, but all she knew of the world whispered those hopes to miserable vanity.
The Wall grew and grew until at last it swallowed up the horizon, and as the sky burst orange with the sunset, the ship lurched itself against the docks at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Sansa stumbled from her self-assigned post at the taffrail with the movement, and with it she was thrown from the trance of her sorrows.
“Alright, Girl,” the captain announced from the steering wheel as his crew darted about with ropes and shouts to the Brothers at port. “Go find that brother o’ yours.”
Somewhere between the end of the docks and Castle Black lived her sister and half-brother, unknowingly awaiting her own arrival. Was it the rocking of the ship or the thought itself which made Sansa queasy?
She nodded, and was led off of the ship and into the hands of the Night’s Watch.
“Lord Commander, another sister-claimant’s come to call.”
Ghost’s ear flicked at the new voice, inadvertently swatting the spot of Jeyne’s nose which was still somewhat tender. Half-buried under the great beast of a wolf, she couldn’t see which Steward stood in the doorway, but the wearied sigh from Jon’s desk said more than she needed to know about the news.
Jeyne had, at least, the wherewithal to feel sorry for Jon Snow, remembering how he had deflated upon seeing her, rather than Arya, at the gates of Castle Black weeks prior. Apparently, Lady Alys Karstark had caused him some similar turmoil some time previously, and though he kept both of them with all due courtesy and protection, Jeyne could tell the prospect of a third such let-down wore him quite thin.
Jon had aged considerably in the two years since Jeyne had last seen him, but maybe it was not the fledgling beard and scars that did it. Maybe it was the great weight of Lord Commandership that he seemed to always carry in the constant pinch of his brow and the irrevocably tense strain of his shoulders. It all likened him awfully to his late lord father, and Jeyne suspected that in another handful of years, only his black clothes and Ghost looming at his side would have distinguished them from each other if Ned Stark yet lived.
But for all that he looked older, his composure was largely unchanged— still glum and solemn, and entirely uninterested in Jeyne’s conversation. She wondered what he thought of her own changes, but figured he had not known her well enough back in Winterfell to make much of her aside from her stunted nose and extra half-step in height.
At least Ghost liked Jeyne— she was so frequently chilled to the bone in the keep that his frequency at her side (or, indeed, atop her wherever she chose to sit), was a welcome intrusion. It endeared her to Jon too, she suspected, for he never told her off for following him and his dog around like a stray, though it was rare that he spoke to her beyond curt formality.
“Another Arya?” Jon asked the man in the doorway, wearied. “Dark of hair and scrawny enough to seem two-and-ten at a glance, I guess.”
“No, My Lord,” the Steward replied. Ghost picked his head up, and in the change Jeyne spied Jon similarly perking up with curiosity. “Red of hair and claiming to be the elder, Lady Sansa.”
“Sansa?” Jon repeated, real surprise betrayed by his voice.
“Sansa!” Jeyne gasped, wriggling out from under Ghost even as he whined. “She’s here?”
“It might not be her,” Jon reminded, though he stood up just as fast as she and regarded the Steward once more. “Where is she?”
“Great Hall.” Jon dismissed the Steward with a nod of thanks, and the door closed again so that Jeyne and Jon were left staring at each other over Ghost’s high back, speaking through equally bewildered looks as the wolf loitered contentedly between them.
“You should- it might not be Sansa,” Jon began, moving around Ghost towards her. “I’d hate you to be disappointed, going all the way down there and it isn’t.”
“But it might be her!” Jeyne retorted, her voice turned breathless at the thought.
“I know.” That same quality was in Jon’s voice. “I… suppose you’ll follow me if Ghost comes along, anyways?” She nodded, and was rewarded with a rare twitch of a smile from him for it. “As you will, My Lady. Come on, then!”
They trailed down stairways and through the narrow corridors of the Lord Commander’s towers, their legs quickening the further they went.
By the time they reached the courtyard, Jon and Jeyne were both running for the Great Hall, The former’s longer strides made up by the latter’s quicker pace, though both were outmatched by Ghost, who had also begun to rush seemingly in response to their own excitement. Jeyne’s pulse was a wild drum in her ears, and though it was but a short distance, she was entirely winded when they reached the doors. Jeyne’s feet ground to a halt, and her nerves so wholly overtook her that she could not take another step forward if she tried.
“Jon…” she began, clutching at his arm. Her hands shook, and her excitement had been replaced with something akin to fear, though she could not imagine why.
“Deep breath, Jeyne,” he told her, patting her hand such that she was comforted. She nodded and forced as much of the cold winter air into her lungs as she could, and waited as Jon did the same before turning once more to the door and letting it open with a shove.
In a sea of black-clad men, it was easy to spot Sansa’s pale blue cloak where she perched near the fireplace across the hall. She faced the door, and Jeyne and Jon had barely made it a few steps into the room before she stood and ran towards them.
“Jon!” she cried, and it was unmistakably Sansa’s voice.
“Gods- Sansa!” Jon breathed, voice drowning with disbelief and relief as he ran to meet her. Ghost barked, his tail a ferocious, happy whip behind him as he lingered beside Jeyne, watching as, with a great leap, Sansa was in her brother’s arms, the two of them spinning with the force of their embrace.
The men around them grumbled and rolled their eyes, but Jeyne found herself smiling, her excitement and joy creeping upon her once more.
“Third time’s the charm, I suppose,” a Watchman grumbled to his companions at a table near Jeyne, the other men laughing in agreement.
Jeyne’s feet began to move again, and she passed the men by, less interested in their remarks than the reappearance of her dear friend. Sansa’s back faced her as she approached. She and Jon had relieved each other of their embrace, though now the elder was tilting the younger about, appraising her for any obvious injury as he had done for Jeyne weeks prior. What he had found on Jeyne, he seemed relieved to find absent on his sister, if the breath he let out was any indication.
“I’m fine, Jon!” Sansa laughed, batting his hands away and laughing yet more as Ghost picked up for him, snuffling at her and licking her face happily.
“Well, forgive me for making sure,” Jon clipped back, though there was no venom in it. “I thought you a prisoner in King’s Landing!”
“And I thought you no more than a Watchman! When did they start making sixteen-year-olds Lord Commander?” Sansa replied. “And where is Arya? Isn’t she here too?”
Jeyne’s stomach dropped, and suddenly she wished not to be directly behind Sansa, deceiving her so.
“That was an… unfortunate miscommunication, I fear. I know just as much of Arya’s whereabouts as you,” Jon sighed, pausing for a moment of thought before he added, “And if you assumed that, you must have been in the Vale. They were the only ones I wrote of Arya to.”
“But…” Sansa’s voice was one of confusion, and Jeyne felt herself take a step back, away from her as dread built itself back up within her. “Lord Baelish spoke of her in Winterfell! And- and he told Lady Royce that she had escaped and…”
Something awful twisted in Jeyne to think about Sansa in the hands of Littlefinger, and that melted into anger when she realized he knew she wasn’t Arya, and had let Sansa believe so anyway!
“He lied!” she found herself shouting. The tension in her gut reached to her chest and left through her throat so sharply that Stark, Snow, and the men around them jumped. They all turned to face her, Sansa spinning around and noticing her there for the first time. Jeyne took another step back, daunted.
“He- Lord Baelish knew it wasn’t Arya! He was the one who gave me to the Boltons,” she added, eyes darting from Sansa’s shocked face to Jon’s sympathetic one and then down to the fur-lined, wildling boots Jon had lent her, face burning.
“...Jeyne?”
Sansa’s question was a breath, released between them. Jeyne could not return it but for a miserable nod, shamed tears watering out her vision. Littlefinger was a liar, but so was she.
“Jeyne!” it was a happy shout which followed, and Jeyne was startled from her fear in an instant as the blue wool of Sansa’s dress filled around her boots, and her sight was overwhelmed by Sansa’s shoulder as she was pulled into a tight hug.
“Oh, Jeyne!”
“Sansa…” Jeyne’s hands found each other around Sansa’s warm back, and her heart hammered so strongly she thought that it must feel like a punch to Sansa’s chest as well.
“I missed you so!” Sansa breathed into Jeyne’s ear. “I thought…” She didn’t finish the thought, instead taking a small step back, looking over Jeyne in a mirror of her brother’s ministrations to her just before.
“Frostbite,” Jeyne said when Sansa frowned at her nose, voice half-asqueak under her friend’s attention. It would be the only injury remaining that Sansa could see around her clothing, at least. “It’s… not as bad as it looks.”
Sansa hummed, smiling and watery-eyed as she continued to look Jeyne over. Jeyne was sure she looked something similar, also appraising the years’ changes to her dear old friend.
Sansa was taller than her, now. Not by much, but enough that she knew they were no longer of a height. Her face had sharpened so that she now further resembled her late lady mother, though there was yet a glimmer of her youth in her cheeks and eyes, and the little heart-shape of her smile that must have come from some older relative Jeyne had never met. But Sansa was mostly the same as she remembered: a face she had not hoped to see again, and a voice that brought with it memories of summer and fleeting joy.
“Where have you been?” Jeyne asked, lacking the words for anything else.
“Where have you been?” Sansa parroted back at her through a teary laugh. “I thought the Lannisters had killed you!”
She shook her head. “They sold me to Ramsay Bolton as Arya. And I kept up the lie to make it here, Sansa, until Jon found me out. I’m sorry you were tricked by me, too.”
“Don’t apologize! I’ve been lying, too,” Sansa sighed, pulling Jeyne in for another hug. “Until some weeks ago, I was in the Vale as Lord Baelish’s bastard daughter.”
Jon surprised them both and, it seemed, several of the Watchmen near to them with a laugh at Sansa’s words.
“Ah, Sansa, I would give many things to see you play at bastard!” he said, petting Ghost when the wolf lumbered over to him. “But I guess you must have done well enough, to have gone unnoticed!”
“Alayne Stone was a much different sort of bastard than you, Jon,” Sansa replied, a laugh in her own voice as well. “And I imagine you were a much different sort of Arya Stark than the original, Jeyne.”
She nodded as best she could with her cheek pressed up against Sansa’s. “Ramsay didn’t know the difference, so I suppose it didn’t matter.”
“I hear he’s dreadful,” Sansa muttered. “I am sorry.”
Jeyne tried a nod again, shoving away the image of Ramsay that came to mind. She would not let him ruin this, too. “And I am sorry you had to be with the Lannisters after all they did to your family.”
“Oh!” Sansa gasped, turning apologetic in an instant and facing Jon. “I know not how Lord Baelish reacted to my leaving his watch in the Vale, but I suppose he will not be happy with you for taking me! I only hope winter set in before he decides to do anything about it.”
“And I with Ramsay!” Jeyne agreed, a fear she and Jon had hashed out before coming to mind again. “He will assume Arya Stark fled to you, and is a horrible foe to bear!”
Sansa relinquished Jeyne of their hug, but claimed one of Jeyne’s hands with her own to make up for the loss. With a word, Jon sent Ghost to the pair of them, the wolf eager for yet more attention and pets.
“We have worse foes than a few jilted lords,” Jon said. Jeyne knew it was a reassurance in his own way, but with his demeanor, it felt less than comforting. “My men and I will keep you safe. I promise.”
Jon bade them, then, to sit at a table and fussed over Sansa some more before going to arrange suppers for them. Ghost rested happily at their feet, and Sansa’s hand stayed firmly in hers for the rest of the evening.