Chapter Text
They made the journey to the north together, after leaving King’s Landing separately to appease the Unsullied. Jon met up with her on the Kings Road, and they travelled north with the northmen who had stayed in King’s Landing long enough to see all decisions made. It was a small company, but made up of good fighting men, and with peace tentatively laid down, Sansa wasn’t too worried about running into trouble on the roads. She couldn’t relax exactly, but she could ride ahead and finally try and get a few relatively private conversations in with Jon, if he was in the talking mood.
He wasn’t though, these days. She would have thought the time spent as a prisoner in King’s Landing would have given him enough time to think through everything, but either it hadn’t or he didn’t really want to talk to her. She felt very tentative around him, afraid to anger him, afraid he was angry with her for her role in all that happened. She felt guilt too, for the way things had transpired, a guilt that laden on top of all the other emotions of the past ten years, was oftentimes too much to think about. So she hedged around it in her own brain, determined to keep composure every day in the company of the northerners, for she was to be their new Queen and she needed to be queenly. No man would respect a queen who wept in front of them. So she didn’t. She rode ahead, with her cousin who wouldn’t look at her or even speak to her for weeks, and she kept a straight back and dry eyes.
Finally, after they finally reached the Neck, she couldn’t take the silence anymore, she was sick of doing this on her own, and one night she set off to Jon’s tent determined to speak with him. She strode straight into his tent without pausing for fear of losing her nerve, and she encountered a startled shirtless Jon. Sansa, still determined, refused to turn around, so kept her eyes fixed on his eyes, no lower, and internally cursed the color creeping up her neck.
“Sansa, what are you doing?” Jon asked her while frantically putting on the shirt he had held in his hands. She was pleased that at least he was more flustered than her.
“Oh so you haven’t lost your tongue. I was beginning to wonder.” She spat out at him, going against all that she had rehearsed to say. She couldn’t help the anger she felt rising.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me!” Jon exclaimed from underneath the shirt he was tugging over his head.
“And why wouldn’t I? We went through so much Jon, and you’re the only one I can talk to about it now, and you won’t even look at me. I’m sorry Jon, for spilling your secret, I’m so, so, sorry.” She said passionately, her emotions rising, tears of anger and frustration traitorously gathering in her eyes.
“I’m not angry with you Sansa, I’m the one who should apologize.” he said quietly, stepping forward. He looked as if he wanted to comfort her, but didn’t quite know how. He settled for a hand on her arm. She felt his touch like a hot iron, and looked up at him, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m the one who caused all of this, I know I am, Tyrion told me what happened with her. I should never have said anything to him. Then maybe everyone would still be alive, those hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children would still be alive. How can I be a queen to anyone after what I’ve done?” Sansa abruptly sat down on a chair, and buried her face in her hands.
“Sansa, we all had a part to play in this, I know, but you cannot blame yourself, you did what you thought was right. I thought about this a lot, how everything happened, what I could have done differently, what Daenerys could have done differently, what everyone could have done differently, and it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. Bran said this was the best possible scenario, but I don’t know if I believe him. I don’t know what to believe. I do know, that of the people left in this world, I feel the most to blame. I wish I could have been a better liar, I wish I could have stopped her.” Jon kneeled down in front of her, his breath coming roughly, his eyes full of sadness and anger. He again looked like he wanted to comfort her, but the hand he went to put on her knee, he pulled back it before he touched her.
“What do you mean? You haven’t told me your side of what happened. I heard Tyrion’s but I know you and her were --”, she paused looking at him, “close.”
“I don’t know that I want to talk about it.” He said softly, looking down.
“Please, Jon, I can’t keep this to myself anymore, it’s killing me, I have to move past it. I know you loved her, I know how hard this must be for you.” Sansa felt the familiar pain of thinking of Jon loving Daenerys, the outsider, the one who wanted to burn down Sansa, her family, and the world.
“I didn't, Sansa. I tried, but I didn’t” Jon said bitterly, tears welling up in his eyes, despair spreading over his face. “That’s what I mean, I couldn’t convince her that I did, had I been able to, I might have saved them all.”
“I thought you loved her. I thought I understood why you would abandon your family for her, because you loved her and you were being a stupid idiot in love. If you didn’t love her, then why? How could you, why did you do it?” She stood up again, anger overtaking her.
“For you.” Jon said simply, looking into her eyes, and Sansa felt her chest constrict a little and then after a pause, he looked down and said. “And Arya, and Bran and the North. I thought at first that maybe she wasn’t so bad, I could be honest with her, that I would never bend the knee, that the North would never bend the knee again. I thought she was good, and that maybe with time I could actually love her, it’d make things so much easier. So I tried really hard to convince myself that I did, when I still didn’t know her true nature. Maybe I did love her a little, I don’t know, I tried so hard to, maybe it worked. But eventually, I knew I didn’t, I saw what she was after she found about who I really am, and even though I didn’t want to believe what she was, deep down I think I really knew. Oh I tried to lie to her, and tell her I loved her when she thought the world was against her, but she knew the truth. And they paid the price, all of these innocents paid the price, for my failures.”
Sansa shook her head violently through her tears. “You didn’t kill them, she did. Jon you tried, and I ruined it by telling Tyrion about who you really are.”
Sansa heard Jon sigh, and she felt his arms around her as she cried into his shoulder. She sobbed violently, and not prettily. She felt a little ashamed to let him see her this way, and that thought finally stilled her chest, and she was able to breathe a little more normally. She noticed then, how warm and strong his arms were around her, and she hastily moved away from him, hiding half her face behind her arm as she used her sleeves to dry it.
Some look that she couldn't place flashed across his eyes for a second, but then it was gone, and he smiled a little, sadly. “Sansa, I don’t think we’re ever going to feel okay about what happened, but I think the thing we have to do is move forward and try and do better. That, and hope Bran will actually be a good ruler, and that this truly was the only way. At least, this is what I’ve told myself over the past month.”
Sansa nodded, and said “Maybe that’s all we can do. Try our best to ever prevent this from happening again.” She paused and looked at Jon in silence, and then said, “Thank you, you know, for talking to me.”
“We can talk whenever you'd like. Any questions you have Sansa, I’ll always be there. For anything you need. I know I’m to be exiled to the North, but if you ever need me, know I’ll be there.”
“I know Jon.” She smiled sadly. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Aye, but I should.” He said, looking sad and determined.
Sansa turned to go but Jon said suddenly, “Wait, Sansa. I know we were never close growing up. I know we never really talked or anything, and I don’t know that you ever considered me a brother. But, we are family, we are cousins. And I’ll do anything I can for you.”
“And I for you, Jon.” She smiled again, sadly, her eyes still red and puffy, her cheeks still damp with tears and turned to go. “Good night.”
It was a couple more weeks before they made it back to Winterfell, and things fell into an easier rhythm, comparatively speaking. Things between Sansa and Jon seemed a little bit comfortable, at least they sometimes spoke, and the silence gave time for Sansa to work through some her feelings on the topic. The others they traveled with seemed almost as exhausted as they were, and few talked to her outside of asking when she wished to stop, what she would like to eat, etc.
She still didn’t really understand her and Jon’s relationship. The most time they had ever spent together had been to take back Winterfell from the Boltons, and even then they hadn’t ever really talked as true individuals, simply as the Stark children taking back their home. Her anger and grief then had consumed her, and she had kept going because she had to, because the other choice was to give up and to give in, and she refused. Growing up as children, she spent more time with her mother who hated Jon, and knitting inside fantasizing about meeting a prince. When she was growing up she had been stupid, and had never paid any attention to Jon. Jon had grown up on the outskirts of her family, learning to fight and hanging out with Arya and Robb. While she’d always thought of him as family, she never really thought of him as her brother, despite what Arya had always called him. It had made a great deal of sense to her when she found at that he was her cousin, but it also kind of changed things. She no longer had to try and fit him in the brother mold in her brain, but instead cousin, more distant relative.
She felt herself watching him often, and occasionally he’d notice, and give her a nod, or even a shadow of a smile. She found it easier to remember how to smile when facing this road with Jon by her side. The thought of him leaving soon loomed continually large in her mind. She’d be alone, again, in Winterfell. Sure Bran and Arya were alive, but they were nowhere near by. It’d be up to her and only her to rule the north. The panic often threatened to overcome her, but she shoved in back down, in the way she had lots of practice doing. She wore the armor that she'd spent the last few years perfecting, the one that served her as well as any knight's armor. The crown she wore served to remind her of the purpose of all she'd done, all that she had yet to do. She'd turn everything they had gone through into prosperity for the north, or die trying.