Chapter Text
Sansa is ready to hate Jon Snow afore he ever crosses under the gates of Winterfell. He's come as a stranger to claim the North for his queen. And yet, when first Sansa spies him, bearded and draped in heavy furs, her belly flips. He looks nothing like the silver-haired figment she conjured in her mind. Jon Snow might be a stranger, but he looks shockingly like her father, like her sister, like the North.
She has been accustomed to judging on appearances, but his surprising resemblance to those she loves proves appearances can be nothing more than a veil. He hails from abroad. Not even from the South but from somewhere much more foreign, a fact outwardly disguised by his person, but made plainer in the dress, looks, and manners of his aunt. It doesn’t cling to him the way it does Daenerys, but he is still not of this place.
How could he be one of them? While he is a Stark by virtue of his mother’s family, their dragons, fell beasts Sansa despises as much as the direwolves do, blot out the watery winter sun. The outlines of red dragons snap upon pennants held aloft by men born on another continent. Arriving at the place of Lyanna Stark’s birth, Jon Snow rides in the company of dragons alongside Daenerys, the conqueror.
The South fell to her dragon fire and an army of former slaves and nomads. They fell to Jon Snow's sword.
The North, however, will not bleed or burn. Winterfell will not crumble. The reason for their escape lies in their subjugation. Her lord father and brothers bend the knee. Her lady mother lowers her head.
Daenerys stands in Winterfell’s courtyard two paces ahead of her tall, lean nephew, whose hair is ruffled by the wind, as he surveys the family hitherto unknown to him with dark eyes. Her family might have nothing to be ashamed of, for they act with their people’s security in mind, putting aside their fierce family pride. But Lyanna’s son ought to be ashamed to bring his mother’s people so low. He might have called for an alliance without harsh terms; he might have spared them.
A long winter is coming and there is something beyond the Wall. It is evil and alive with ancient, dark magic. Robb and Theon whisper of it over their ale, thinking the girls do not hear. The threat from beyond trumps the one which sweeps into Winterfell, dripping with entitlement. They must bend. They must seek—beg even—assistance for the looming battle and spare Northern lives a fruitless one that would only cripple their future efforts.
The conquerors walk down the line of Starks arranged from eldest to youngest, and as Jon moves from Robb to take her gloved hand in his own, Sansa fights an urge to curl her fingers against her belly in refusal. That isn’t her way: she is all courtesy, raised to please and welcome and support. But she has never felt this gut-wrenching wrath before. Forced to watch her father and brother give way to these interlopers, it tempts her—the cool snub.
The Northern wind saves her from her dark urge. Her fingertips have barely brushed his palm, when a strand of hair whips across her face, catching in the moistness of her parted lips. It gives her an excuse to pull away from his touch. Hooking the curl with her finger, she pulls it free. He tracks her movement with a flick of his grey eyes to her mouth and away to some point in the milky sky above her head.
Despite Sansa’s exemplary courtesies, which ought to ensure that she is as pleasing a person as the newcomers are like to meet with here, there is no word spoken between them at this first greeting. She makes no move to express the barest greeting and he remains equally silent. No, “your Grace,” no grimly voiced, “my lady” passes between them before the prince sidesteps, moving on to Arya, and Sansa is left staring ahead with her breath caught tight in her chest.
It’s for the best, for she fears what she might have said if given the chance.
If any of them were expected to act with outright indignation, regardless of the instructions given to them by their lord father, it would be her little sister. Arya is willful and wild. No one would be surprised should she act poorly. And yet, it is Sansa.
In an uncharacteristic show of defiance that sends a thrill of satisfaction to her core, she stares icily at the banquet given to honor the unwanted queen’s arrival and Jon’s welcome to the bosom of his family. It is a choice she makes—rudeness—which makes it all the more powerful when so little choice is open to any of them now. She is in perfect control of herself when without any uptick of the corners of her mouth to make herself appear pleasant, she stares at the silver-haired queen and her dark nephew.
He might be kin, a cousin she never met before by virtue of an exile necessitated by the now-fallen King Robert’s reign. Under different circumstances, she might feel some sympathy for him or the call of familial ties, but it is hate that fires her belly.
It is not an accustomed feeling for a young lady raised to love, to be trained since childhood to be a wife and mother. Sansa has always thrilled at songs of romantic heroes. A handsome face shrouded by mist and a love of her own has filled her dreams for years.
This is the first prince she has ever had cause to meet, and though he is young and Jeyne won’t stop tittering at her side about how handsome he is, Sansa is not buoyed up by romantic feelings, when she looks upon him. When she follows the line of his sharply angled jaw and the curl of his dark hair over his brow, no longing stirs. This is not a man she could ever bring herself to like, much less with whom she could find happiness. He is cold and distant and disdainful.
His eyes skirt to Daenerys and away again and again, as he sits with an uneasy look on his face. If he had any natural feeling for the respect due to his mother’s family, it would be Daenerys’ high-handed treatment of the Starks causing his discomfort. But Sansa is not ready to ascribe any decency to this dark-eyed stranger.
Hand extended to those that approach her, Daenerys smiles, evidently assured of their love for her. Her eyes crinkle at Arya’s outburst about the feeding of the dragons, as though Sansa’s sister’s very real concern over the safety of their people is a source of amusement. She carries herself with egregious confidence in her ability to win them over.
In a gauzy gown pulled across her shoulder, exposing a show of skin not fit for the cold, Daenerys touches Lord Stark’s arm with too much freedom, whenever his solemn attention drifts to Lady Stark or one of his bannermen. She believes them grateful for her forbearance in not raining destruction down on their heads. She forgives Sansa’s lord father for his part in the former rebellion, acknowledging in an offhanded way that some say her father suffered from madness—a fact they are well acquainted with, having been victims of it as a family—and while she can’t speak to whether that was true, he made choices she would not. She will be a better queen, a fair queen.
A queen who feeds families to her dragons.
Those who refused her kind offers of conquest burned as her army moved across the South. How is that any different from the fate Sansa’s uncle and grandfather met in the South? How is she any less cruel or mad with power? It is a fiery take on diplomacy that does not inspire any great love in Sansa’s breast.
And so she stares, making plain how little she thinks of all this performative pageantry.
Her lord father bid them to warmly welcome Jon. In some ways, this was the reunion for which her father had yearned. Ned Stark wanted to raise Jon here, but Jon’s safety required he be carried abroad as a babe alongside Daenerys and Viserys. He couldn’t return to the North or Westeros. Until his aunt hatched dragons and turned her eyes on these shores, and then it was not for Jon’s safety anyone need worry any longer.
Lord Stark is glad to have his sister’s son here, though Sansa imagines her lord father wishes it was under different circumstances. Robb seems glad enough of it too, clapping Jon on the back, as he returns to his seat, and suggesting they spar tomorrow to see whether Jon’s supposed prowess is an invention or not.
Bran is excited that someone who has seen so much of the world, who has fought, and who is not ancient is here within their walls and willing to answer some of his quick patter of questions. Arya reserves her judgment in her surly, observant way, and Rickon, who is still a child, doesn’t seem concerned with Jon at all, and instead, revels in the arrival of so many warriors and the beastly dragons.
At least Sansa is not alone in her feelings. Theon Greyjoy, her lord father’s ward, ignores Jon with practiced coolness, which Sansa noticed with a soft bloom of approval. Her lady mother also takes no joy in Jon’s arrival. Though she keeps her countenance in a show of ladylike superiority, Catelyn Stark is well aware that Jon is a threat to Winterfell, to the North, to the Starks, more so as Lyanna’s son; she will never welcome him into her heart.
Nor will Sansa. She hopes Robb beats him handily in the training yard, humiliating their dour cousin.
That is Robb’s gift—his skill with a sword. The talent for which Sansa is known, putting everyone at ease, won’t be on display tonight. She has no intention of smoothing over whatever it is that troubles him sitting here at her father’s high table.
Finally, Sansa’s glare catches Daenerys’ attention. Leaning around her nephew, she tilts her head. “I had heard you were a great beauty, Lady Sansa. Do you have any other talents?”
Though her voice rises and falls in confidential tones, as though she means to make a friend of Sansa, the question smacks of hidden meanness. Sansa takes it she is not as pretty as Daenerys was led to believe or the queen believes her to be devoid of any substantive qualities. Perhaps the queen has decided she's neither pretty nor useful and revels in pointing out those failings.
At his aunt’s right-hand side, Jon watches, mouth tipping down before he buries his face in a cup of ale.
“I couldn’t say,” Sansa says breezily without adding the appropriate honorific.
Daenerys notes the slight. Sansa reads it in the bat of her lashes and slow inhale.
“What do you say, Jon?” the queen asks, hand light upon her nephew’s wrist.
“We have only met. I could not judge,” he replies, staring down into the cup he swirls restlessly.
She fights the urge to squirm in her seat. As if he has the right to appraise her, trueborn eldest daughter of Lord Stark. She can't fight the heightened color that floods her cheeks, however, and the only thing preventing him from seeing her thrown into disorder is a servant, who has taken the prince’s relentless attention to his cup as a hint. The servant darts in, obscuring Jon's view of her.
“Cannot judge her beauty?” Daenerys prods, as the servant slips back, revealing Daenerys’ head inclined towards her nephew’s shoulder and her fingers wrapped around his arm. One almond nail scratches at the black woolen weave of his tunic. “You have eyes and a man’s discernment.”
“Cannot judge her talents. Her beauty is plain to see,” he says, rigidly facing forward and refusing to acknowledge Sansa’s person even as he shockingly speaks of her.
Her only buffer between their guests, Robb pauses in his sawing at his guinea fowl to wink at her. He isn't quick to jump in and redirect the conversation, however, as he stabs with the end of his knife at a juicy bite.
Daenerys’ white teeth gleam in the guttering candlelight. “I knew he would find you pretty,” she says, leaning once more around her nephew. “He had a bedwarmer for some time with hair like yours. A shade brighter perhaps. What was her name, Jon?”
His jaw works. “Enough.”
Jeyne titters at Sansa’s side, amused by the jape. Sansa doesn’t quite grasp its meaning but suspects it is at her expense. It pricks her pride, and if Jon missed the high color on her cheeks some moments earlier, he certainly will see it now, as she flushes brightly.
“I ought to recollect. It was an unusual name,” Daenerys say with a playful bat at his arm. “You’ll tell me later tonight.”
When Jon doesn’t respond, Daenerys turns her pretty smiles on Robb. “Robb, switch your cousin seats. Sit by me. I would speak with you more easily and he might appreciate an up-close view of Northern beauty.”
Sansa pretends not to understand the import, twisting to whisper to Jeyne. “I’m overtired.”
Jeyne hasn't been the best friend to her tonight, but Sansa knows that if she could get her alone and explain, Jeyne would act differently.
Jeyne’s eyes fix upon the shuffle going on behind Sansa, the pushing back of chairs and throwing down of napkins in the men's efforts to do as the queen says. “But the prince—”
“I don’t care about that.”
Jeyne nudges her friend with her elbow as the chair next to Sansa screeches over the stone floor. “I think you must.”
Jeyne is right and Sansa catches even her lady mother looking her way with eyes rounded in warning, so she stays put. Not fleeing immediately, however, will be her only concession. That is her determination, as he settles in beside her, looking furious.
Lips pursed, she twists back forward in her seat. She reaches for her goblet. She's hardly touched it and she takes several long swallows to fill time.
She can feel him stewing, struggling perhaps with her refusal to acknowledge him or make him feel welcome. Let him flounder.
Raised in exile alongside the Targaryen princess, Jon surely knows better than most what Daenerys is. She is a kinslayer, who would slaughter his kin too, should they stand in her way. Having accompanied her on her march across Westeros, Jon Snow’s allegiance is clear. He is just as guilty as she is.
Prince Joffrey was fair like his beautiful mother, or so Sansa was told. Like a prince in a song—fair and kind. King Robert was her father’s dearest friend. They would have never thought to make the Starks beg for anything. They would have done what was right to ensure the safety of the Seven Kingdoms with evil encroaching from beyond the Wall, and someday, Sansa might have visited the South. She might have been a guest of the beautiful prince. He might even have fallen in love with her and her lord father and the king would have celebrated the match.
But they are dead, all of them, and Sansa’s lord father, who helped bring down the Targaryen dynasty, must carefully cloak the anger he feels here in his own hall.
It might be his lack of ale that eventually draws him to swing those somber eyes on her. Without a cup to nervously fidget with, there is nothing to do but attempt conversation.
He roughly clears his throat. If she’d missed the hint, Jeyne delivers a more obvious one, with another jolt of her bony elbow.
She looks sideways at him: it's the only opening she means to offer him.
“I’ve wondered about the North.”
“And how do you like it? It’s yours now.”
His brows furrow almost angrily. “Not mine.”
She sniffs. “Hers then. What does she make of it?”
Her. She. If Jon picks up on her refusal to grant the queen any courtesies, it doesn't show.
“I haven’t asked Daenerys’ opinion.”
“I’m sure she’ll give it in time.”
He makes a low grumbling kind of noise, which she finds impossible to interpret. “Neither of us knew anything about the North.”
“Other than you wanted to take it for your own.”
She's shocked by her own intemperate boldness and knits her hands tightly in her lap, fearing his reaction. He might yell. He might tell Daenerys. Or her lord father.
His fingers tap against the table and her eyes are drawn to the veins that stand out on the back of his hand. “I didn’t grow up around anyone who could tell me anything about it.” His hand stills and he fixes her with a heavy look. “My mother, your aunt— are you like her?”
“No.”
It’s rudely brusque, and his eyes leverage down her person until he’s staring at the floor between them with thinning nostrils. The noise of the hall sounds suddenly loud in her ears, as silence reigns between them. His hand grips his thigh, fingers spread wide. She watches his fingers dig into the dark fabric and muscle beneath. Her heart goes out of rhythm.
Sansa knows enough about her dead aunt to know this man who sits beside her looks more like Lyanna than she ever will. It is Arya whom her lord father says takes after Lyanna. And not just in appearance but in temperament as well.
As awful as Jon is, he also has no mother, and if he’s better off without Rhaegar Targaryen, the same can’t be said of her. Of course, Sansa’s always known it, was raised with the fact of Lyanna’s kidnapping and death, as much as she was raised with the knowledge of Jon's necessary exile abroad. But he sits here before her and that tragedy feels more real. It doesn't seem fair that while Sansa doesn’t know all that much about Lyanna, it’s a great deal more than he does.
It isn’t a good feeling. It complicates her dislike of him at least a little. Her curt response to his probing question has damaged her position of moral superiority.
Struggling with the discomfort lodged in her breast, she draws a deep breath that pulls the blue bodice of her gown tightly across her ribs. Usually gifted with the ability to put people at ease, she has accomplished the opposite here: Jon raises his hand to cough into his fist, his face going a dark shade of red.
That was her aim, make him miserable, but there's little triumph there.
His jaw is tense. His arms folded over his broad chest. His chin tipped down.
“You take after your lady mother,” he roughly says, and she realizes belatedly the focus of his angry stare. Her lady mother has captured his attention. “But are you—?” With a visible swallow, he looks back at her. “What do you do? Do Northern girls sing and dance?”
“Of course, we do,” she says, making some small attempt not to sound as if she thinks him stupid. “Unless you think us barbarians.”
“I don’t,” he says with another quick flick of his eyes over her that threatens to unseat her shaky composure. “Is that commentary?”
Sansa blinks. “On what?”
His mouth goes flat. “Doesn't matter, but don’t repeat that in front of your new queen.”
“A warning?”
In her own home. A threat. It’s just what she would expect from them.
“Advice.” The muscle in his jaw works. “Kindly meant.”
His dark hair is pulled severely back, exposing the line of his jaw and emphasizing the sharp cut of his cheekbone. He doesn’t look as if he’s accustomed to doling out acts of kindness.
Nevertheless, she almost believes he means it as one, and despite all her intentions, she finds herself making another concession, a small one. The sort of kindness she is known for.
“Arya takes after your mother,” she says, tone softened for the first time. “That’s what our father says when he can stand to speak on it. If you get to know her better, you’ll know what I mean.”
For a long moment, he holds her in the impenetrable weight of his stare before he clears his throat as if to ask more of her or begin over again.
And while no one has bid the company goodnight, not yet, Sansa decides she's endured enough. Normally she would not think to be the first. Not only because of her careful courtesies but also because she hates the very idea of missing out like a child on whatever passes in the hall. Tonight, however, is different.
She pops up in a noisy scratch of her chair over the stones. With a bracing of his hands on the table, Jon attempts to hurry to his feet. It's discourteous for a man to remain seated, while a lady stands, but she’s given him no warning, and he doesn’t quite manage to beat her. There’s an awkward moment where his chair is caught and she’s standing, watching with pinched disdain at his struggle.
“You must excuse me,” she says, as he pulls up to his full height.
They say he’s elegant on the battlefield. More skilled with a sword than most. He doesn’t look elegant here. More like he’s all long legs and a long face twisted by emotion.
“I must retire for the evening.”
His face flushes that same dark red as earlier, caused either by his fumbling or her eagerness to flee. It doesn’t matter which, she thinks, as she smiles falsely and curtsies deeply with her eyes submissively lowered.
Go ahead and let him think she wishes to escape his company: for it is true and she’s happy to have him know it.