A Song of Ice and Fire fic: Now My Watch Begins

[metamorphagi]

Title: Now My Watch Begins
Fandom(s): A Song of Ice and Fire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,489
Summary: Jon may be her hated bastard brother, but he’s the only other fragment of a family that’s either dead or missing.  By the old gods and the new, she’s not going to let him leave her, too.
Author’s Notes: Response to this prompt.  I’m sure this wreaks havoc with timelines, but I did my best.  Spoilers for Jon’s last chapter in A Dance with Dragons.



Now My Watch Begins
The letter hadn’t been meant for her. Littlefinger, mayhaps; she couldn’t think of anyone else in the Eyrie who would be so horrible as to be in contact with such a sender. She went to the rookery occasionally, high in the clouds to look out at all the land. It was calming, somehow. The ravens cackled and cawed loud in her ear, but at least they didn’t expect anything of her besides crumbs. Up there she didn’t have to be Alayne Stone for once. She had started coming up here for just that reason, in fact; for too long she’d been someone else. It was getting difficult to recall what it was like to be Sansa Stark, the real Sansa Stark.

The maester knew her comings and goings, and so more often than not would leave her be. She didn’t do any harm, she didn’t send any letters, he had nothing to worry about. And she hadn’t ever given him reason to.

Except for then, when a raven came flying through the window to his perch, holding out his leg to deliver the attached scroll. She took it with all intent to set it aside for the maester, when she caught sight of the seal insignia. Or, rather, lack thereof: there was no imprint of a house sigil, only a black drop of wax. Nothing good, surely.

Her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened it carefully, scanning the contents inside. It was short, ominous.

Lord Commander Snow is gravely wounded. I expect he shan’t live long.

Lord Commander Snow, she’d repeated inside her head. She hadn’t exactly been privy to the goings-on of all of Westeros, especially in the North, and she knew next to nothing about the Night’s Watch order. The surname Snow is hardly uncommon, and yet Sansa has no speculation as to whom else it could be. She’d known only one Snow to go up to the Wall, and though thinking of him in a position of power was strange, it was not entirely inconceivable. After all, he’d gotten very nearly all the lordly training that Robb had, and was just as stubborn. If anyone could become a Lord Commander in a place where status didn’t matter, it would be him.

She had no reason to think more about the letter than mayhaps a brief moment of lament-it wasn’t as though she and Jon were ever more than unfriendly acquaintances-yet for an hour she held it in her hand and mulling it over.

Of all people, it was her betrothed Harrold Hardyng who helped her. He had no more reason to do so than she did to leave, and yet that night found them conspiring and planning, and before the dawn had broken, she’d saddled a horse with provisions and galloped away from the rocky slopes of the Vale. Harrold had also given her warnings, primarily to stay as far off the Kingsroad as possible without losing the trail, though he’d left out what could happen if she did. The horse she decided to take was one who had made regular trips to Winterfell and back, and thus knew the path much more accurately than she herself. Harrold had also warned her not to go alone, but her reply had been plain: the fewer people to know the better.

At the time, it made sense. But three weeks later when the weather turns icy and she approaches and surpasses the outlying villages of Winterfell, she feels panic set in her chest. She’d never been this far north, most assuredly not by herself. The road is uneven and slippery and there are no landmarks save for trees that all look alike, but she presses forward. If she dies, at least she would die on her own lands.

She’s sure she gets turned around more than once, but the horse remains stalwart, and before the fortnight is out the forest begins to clear on either side of her and the enormous Wall, previously entirely hidden by clouds and fog, comes into view. She tries not to think about it, about what it’s holding back, instead focusing on her task at hand. What she assumes to be Castle Black appears a day later looming and desolate, and a horn somewhere in the distance bellows a single blast. Guards patrolling the gates dressed in black leathers and furs have scabbards at their hips, but their swords are aimed unwaveringly at her as she approaches, ready to tear her to shreds if need be. They only hesitate slightly when they notice that she is a woman.

“State your business,” says one of the guards. His breath makes large plumes in the brisk air.

Sansa dismounts as gracefully as possible and leans against the horse’s sweaty side for support. Her voice, however, is solid. “If you please, I would have my horse fed and watered, and myself as well,” she says. “We have ridden long and hard.”

“State your business,” the guard repeats.

There is no point in trying to lie; even if she were as feisty as Arya, she’d never be able to take so many guards as browbeaten as she is. “I wish to see your Lord Commander,” she says.

The guards regard each other solemnly, and the other says, “The Lord Commander is currently indisposed. And even if he weren’t, we wouldn’t let some girl in without explanation.”

The hostility is unanticipated-Sansa had been taught of the Night’s Watch hospitality towards weary travelers-but at the same time, she can understand their wariness. Rolling her shoulders back to stand up straight, she announces, “I am Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell. Lord Eddard Stark was my father, and the father of your Lord Commander. I do not think he’d be pleased to know that you refused his sister a visit.”

The guards hide their shock well. It’s plain to see that they don’t trust her one bit, but her name is familiar, and her Tully appearance is hard to dispute. Much of the Night’s Watch composition still holds little honor, but they do know orders. Without a word they step aside to let her in, the guard who had first spoken leading her to the stables, where she abandons her horse. At the prospect of nourishment and a straw bed, he whickers happily. She wishes she could enjoy such simplicity.

He then brings her through the maze of a castle, and eventually they reach a set of chambers a shade more spacious than the ones they’d passed previously. There is a man outside this door as well, who studies Sansa suspiciously. He’s thick-bodied with a coarse auburn beard, and though Sansa doubts he’s the sort of person who would be good at sums, she’s certain he makes up for it with brute force.

“Grenn,” greets the guard.

“Who’s this?” Grenn asks.

“Jon’s sister,” says the guard. “Came a long ways, she said.”

Grenn appraises her with a deep frown. “Sister?” he asks curiously. “Thought he said Arya looked like him.”

Sansa knows she has no right to feel hurt, given how they’d all grown up, but she does nonetheless. It’s not too late to turn back now, she thinks to herself.

Her mouth doesn’t let her. “My name is Sansa,” she tells him. “His…other sister.”

The guard looks at Grenn’s considering face and lets out a short bark of a laugh. “Yeah, I never heard tell of another sister neither.”

Sansa hesitates-out of all her contingencies, she hadn’t considered they wouldn’t let her see him.

“No, he’s mentioned her before, I’m sure of it,” says Grenn after a while.

The laughter dies from the guard, though Sansa can’t do anything but stare at Grenn in gratitude. “She’s your responsibility,” the guard mutters, quickly striding out of the hallway.

Grenn gives Sansa what she presumes is meant to be a smile. “Any kin of Jon is kin of ours,” he says. “Lord Snow’s a better person than any of us a hundred times over.”

Sansa doesn’t respond, unsure of how to. She’s a little surprised at the amount of deferential obedience he’s giving her bastard half-brother, but then, she supposes they all have changed. She herself can barely remember the girl whose biggest concern was if her stitches were straight. She can’t imagine Jon is the same boy he once was either.

“Grenn…” Sansa trails. “What happened?”

Grenn winces. “Disloyalty,” is all he says, and in that one word is more meaning than if he had given her a speech.

“Thank you,” she replies, and steps through the door. It snaps shut behind her.

Jon’s room is dim with dwindling candlelight but surprisingly warm, and a large fire blazes in the grate. There is a great big lump on the end of the bed the size of a small horse, and though she hasn’t seen a direwolf in years, she knows instantly what and who this one is. Ghost raises his head and his red eyes pierce her bone-deep. He raises his hackles at first, jumping to the ground to stalk towards her, ready to attack her for daring to come close to his master.

Sansa leans down towards him, and holds out her hand palm-up. “Ghost,” she says calmly.

He continues to glare at her balefully, but sniffs her proffered hand. There’s a beat, and then Ghost looks up, an entirely different expression consuming him. His tail wags once, the only warning before he rears up on his back legs and puts his front paws on Sansa’s shoulders. She nearly buckles under his weight, but wraps her arms around his thick middle and gives a small smile when he licks her cheek. She’d been even less close to Ghost than she had been to Jon, but she can’t blame the wolf-after all, he too had lost all of his siblings.

After a few more moments, Ghost comes to all fours again, regaining his vigil at the foot of Jon’s bed. It’s then that Sansa cautiously turns to the room’s only other occupant. Jon had always been pale, they all had, but now he looks as white as Ghost, and there is a heavy sheen of sweat on his brow that drips into his weeks-old beard. His curls stick limply to his skin and apart from the lazy twitching of his eyes under their lids, he looks like death.

Her twelve-year-old self would be appalled at her current self’s actions, but she doesn’t much care. There is almost nothing left of her old life. Her direwolf, dead. Her father, dead. Her mother, dead. Her brothers, dead. Her sister, gods know where. But Jon…she’d never been like Arya or Robb or Bran or Rickon and considered him her brother, not truly, but now she realizes he is all she has from before. They may look as different as the sun from the moon, but in his face she sees Father and Arya, she sees Winterfell, and it makes her heart ache. She closes her eyes and breathes deep, and he smells of home, too-smoke and steel and winter. It’s how Father and Robb used to smell, and it’s all she can do to not cry.

There is a chair set up by his bed with a cloth and bowl of water used by the maester to tend to his wounds and his fever, and though the water is lukewarm by now, Sansa soaks the cloth with it anyway and dabs at Jon’s forehead. She’s not sure she’s actually helping anything, but it’s a distraction at the least. When Jon’s face is nearly as wet with water as with sweat, Sansa sighs and sets aside the maester’s tools. Instead, she rests her elbows on her knees and stares at his motionless body.

She grabs his hand like she’d seen her mother do to her father when she needed him to listen, and holds it between her own. Maester Luwin had once told her that the sick and dying could hear their loved ones talking to them, that somehow the voices were able to penetrate whatever ailment they were suffering.

Sansa would not consider herself a loved one of Jon’s, but he does have her blood. “I know I’m not who you want here right now,” she leads, her throat tightening at how ecstatic Jon would be if it were Arya in her place, “but…”

She pauses. This isn’t quite as easy as Luwin had made it sound.

“I don’t know what to say. Just…” She swallows thickly. “Just…please don’t die. Don’t leave me all alone again. Please…”

Jon gives no response, and Sansa is sickeningly reminded of how utterly still Bran was after his fall. Part of Sansa wants to pull back the blankets and check on Jon’s injuries herself, but at the same time there’s nothing she wants less. Knowing that he’d suffered innumerable wounds and seeing those wounds are two entirely different things. Ghost wriggles on top of Jon’s legs to nuzzle her arm, and she buries her head in the direwolf’s fur.
Neither Sansa nor Ghost leave their positions unless forced to, and after the first week, the Night’s Watch had resigned themselves to Sansa being there. She had endured a few lewd remarks initially-he’s only your half-brother, eh, missy? Don’t worry, we won’t tell-but even those had backed off eventually. Sansa thinks Ghost’s intimidation has something to do with that. The men of the Watch had accepted the wolf easily enough when Jon had arrived at the Wall, but they’d also never had Ghost’s fury pointed directly at them before. A few bites at the men’s fingers is all it takes for them to silence any complaints or comments.

One night an stooped man with a thick grey beard she hasn’t seen before pays her a visit. He is old but commanding, and his shoulders are broad and packed with muscle. He inclines his head when he enters the room, and Sansa stands up clumsily to give a short curtsey. Even after so long, she hasn’t forgotten her courtesies. “My lord…?” she tests.

The man chuckles and corrects, “Hardly, m’lady. I am Ulmer, an archer of the Watch.”

He is peculiar, but the lines around his mouth would suggest he used to laugh often and much. “Archers are quite respectable,” she rambles.

He cuts to the point. “Lady Stark, you should know that in Lord Snow’s…absence, I have assumed his duties. Lord Snow’s attackers have been dealt with.”

Sansa doesn’t know how the order of the Night’s Watch works, whether this grizzled archer is supposed to be next in line, but she doesn’t object. “You are faithful?”

Ulmer levels her with a glare. “Tread carefully, m’lady,” he says. “You’re accusing me of treason.”

“No,” Sansa backtracks quickly. “No, I swear I’m not.”

“I am faithful,” Ulmer answers anyway. “Lord Snow is a fair Commander. That’s all we can ask for, hmm? The men follow Jon, they tolerate me.”

Sansa exhales in relief. “Ser…why do you tell me this?”

“I am no ser,” Ulmer reminds her. “I mean to keep you informed. I shan’t require you to leave, though we are not supposed to keep travelers here for long, but I must remove the guards; we are short as it is.”

“There is adequate protection,” says Sansa, gesturing to Ghost. “Thank you, my lord.”

Ulmer gives up trying to correct her titles, and so merely nods as his only valediction before taking his leave without sparing so much as a glance towards the direwolf.

He hadn’t been lying. Where previously a steward had brought her hot meals, from the day Ulmer informs her of the new state of the Watch, she is visited by no one. She ventures out into the courtyard and the dining hall to retrieve provisions, and finds that the men pay even less attention to her than they used to. Everyone bustles about so thoroughly that Sansa gets stepped on a dozen times.

Sansa Underfoot, she thinks ironically.

As she finally makes her way to the kitchens, someone grasps her wrist, hard, forcing her to turn. She is faced with a thin man, stubbled and dejected, although that doesn’t tell her much: she’d be hard-pressed to find a man of the Watch who doesn’t fit such a description.

“Sorry for startling you, m’lady,” he says, tripping over her soubriquet. Sansa wonders if he’d ever used it before. At her confusion, he elaborates, “I’m Pyp, I was, I am, one of the Lord Commander’s friends.”

Sansa hadn’t thought one way or the other about friends amongst the Watch-everyone just seemed so frigid all the time-but she supposes they must. Grenn had seemed enough like a friend. She stays silent, not quite sure how to respond.

She needn’t worry, for Pyp continues, “No one knows or will say how he is. Mayhaps you could?”

“No better nor worse than he was,” she replies. She wishes she could give him a firmer answer.

Pyp sighs heavily and looks at the ground for a moment before dragging his eyes back up to hers. “Well, that’s something, I s’pose,” he says. “He’s lucky, though.”

“What?”

“To have a sister to keep watch over him,” Pyp says. “Most of us don’t deserve such allegiance.”

He departs before Sansa can reply, not that she’d know what she’d say. All she feels at his words is guilt. If only he were aware just how disloyal she’d always been. She knows she’s not here expressly out of shame, but she can’t deny that there is some. Jon had taken the black because he felt it was the only course of action, was driven away from Winterfell by her mother and even by her, treated as no better than a lowborn bastard.

At the time, it had made sense to her.

She’s lost her appetite, but Jon needs the sustenance, so she goes through with her mission and brings back soup and water, as well as some raw, tough meat for Ghost to gnaw on. The direwolf accepts the meal readily, his sharp teeth devouring the meat in no time at all. Sansa sits herself in the maester’s chair and helps the soup down Jon’s throat-a task often the maester’s for when he checks Jon’s wounds, but one that she had lately taken to doing. She’d expressed to the maester that because the deep gashes in his back were healing, that must mean he would wake soon. A pitying glance was all the response she got.
Two full moons past Sansa had ridden through the gates, and two full moons later finds her still at the unforgiving Wall. To her, little had changed. To everyone outside, much had, primarily the ever-increasing threat of the Others, but she doesn’t concern herself with any of it. What could she do, anyway? Whether the Watch would be victorious or not would have very little to do with Sansa’s existence.

Jon stays much the same, too. Every once in a while his hand would twitch or his face would contort in a grimace, but otherwise there was nothing new. Ghost had become more despondent the longer his master slept and taking to growling at anyone but Sansa herself. His appetite had diminished to near nothing, and no matter how much Sansa would try to coax him to eat or to venture into the forest to hunt, he wouldn’t budge. The most he moved was between Jon’s bed and the floor, and occasionally the yard to relieve himself. Not that Sansa could fault him; she wasn’t much more active.

Her ministrations became so regular the Night’s Watch nearly set their own schedules by it. It helps, acting as a successful preoccupation for her mind. In the darkest of night, she would allow herself to sadden, to have one-sided but lengthy conversations with Ghost. And every night she would fall sleep with the same words on her breath:

“Please don’t die. Don’t leave me all alone again. Please.”

Winter finally comes, the Stark words coming true with a vengeance, and Sansa takes to climbing under the furs next to Jon with Ghost at her back. Jon’s wounds have almost healed, leaving puckered white scars marring his skin, yet Sansa still avoids them as she had when they still bled. His arm is rigid underneath her, and more often than not it’s Ghost she ends up curling into, lulled to restless slumber by his deep breaths and large paws slung over her middle.

She’s so used to Ghost doing just that, that when there’s a movement next to her she doesn’t react. At least, not until she realizes that the movement is not coming from the direwolf. Suddenly fully awake, she twists around to face Jon. His squirming is slight, but slight is much more than none. Sansa scrambles into a sitting position, one hand moving to Jon’s shoulder, the other pinching her knee hard. It stings, and she realizes this isn’t a dream.

At her touch, Jon angles towards her and, for the first time in three moons, opens his eyes. They’re glassy and contracted, but the grey, the Stark grey, is the same as it’s always been.

“Sansa?” he groans. She can barely catch the word his voice is so hoarse from disuse. There’s confusion there, too, which she understands. She must be the last person he expected to see.

“Jon,” she gapes. “You’re awake.”

She thinks he says something like “Am I?” but can’t be sure because at that moment Ghost leaps over her and settles himself on Jon’s chest, furiously licking at his master’s face. Jon gently moves Ghost aside in order to breathe, though there is a small smile playing about his lips.

He falls asleep again not long after with Ghost still half over him, but Sansa can tell this time it’s one he will easily wake from. The minute he closes his eyes she dashes to tell the maester, who nearly passes out himself from surprise. He hurries into the room and checks Jon over, declaring him healthy. Exhausted, mayhaps, and he would need to be observed for the next week or so, but healthy. She informs Pyp and Grenn next, and they’re so excited that Pyp smiles for the first time since she’s seen him and Grenn kisses her full on the mouth without bothering to apologize. She doesn’t mind much, considering.

Things busy when news of Jon’s awakening spreads, and Jon is assaulted with what has transpired and what he would need to know both of Ulmer’s temporary ascension and of the fates of the men who had stabbed him (death, he’s told, by cause of devoted Night’s Watch brothers and wildlings alike). Ulmer is overly amicable in returning Jon’s title and duties with little fanfare and Sansa has a feeling he’s more than glad to do so.

The maester had demanded that Jon stay abed for a while, regardless of his positive diagnosis, about which no one is more displeased than Jon himself. Sansa takes the limited time she has to begin packing her things and sleep far away from him in the chambers she’d originally been delegated. She can hardly remember why she’d come to Castle Black in the first place. It seems such a strange prospect, now. The Wall establishes itself to her as an unbearably cold and merciless place, and she longs for warmer weather. She tries to convince herself that that thought includes the Vale.

She is in the middle of folding a coat when there is a soft knock on her door, but she doesn’t get more than a few steps before it opens. Jon stands there with an ashen face, and Sansa gawks-it had been but three days since he’d awakened. By all rights he shouldn’t even be on his feet, let alone trekking through the chilled castle to her room. Tense, she abandons her folding to gaze properly at him. He carries himself gingerly but stands straight, towering over her and seeming much older than his seventeen years would suggest.

Is this what Robb would have looked like?

“Why did you come here, Sansa?” he asks. His words aren’t unkind, but they are laved with confusion.

She diverts her rampant thoughts by folding a dress, and shrugs as unladylike as Arya once did. Finally- “How much do you know of the south?”

“Not as much as I’d like to,” he admits. “Things have been consuming.”

Sansa can hardly fault him; though the politics of Westeros are formidable, she can’t imagine what the threat of beings who are supposed to be extinct must be like. Still, words are difficult when she tries to explain. “None of us are as we were,” she settles. “I’m certainly not.”

Jon clearly wants her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. “Indeed.” He steps towards her and with a strange quirk adds, “Have you stopped hating me yet? After all, I didn’t leave you all alone again.”

If she had her preference, she would say something like how she’d never exactly hated him, but nothing of the sort emerges. Instead, startling to even herself, tears spring to her eyes and before she knows it she bursts into sobs. Jon rushes forward despite his fatigue and envelops her stiffly in his arms. She clenches her fists in his coat and soaks the leather, but he doesn’t loosen his hold.

“You’re all I have left,” she murmurs. “I have no one else.”

“I still don’t-”

She shakes her head against his chest to cut him off. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I plan to leave on the morrow.”

Jon pulls her away from him to peer down at her with a frown on his face. “Where will you go?”

“Back to the Vale, I suspect,” Sansa replies.

She tries not to let her trepidation show, but if anything Jon’s uncanny talent for observation has only increased since he left Winterfell. “You’re not going to the Vale.”

He doesn’t know why she doesn’t want to return, he doesn’t know what she’s gone through, but it doesn’t matter, not to either of them. “I can’t stay here,” she protests weakly. “I’m a woman.”

“And I’m the Lord Commander,” he replies. “I’ve brought wildlings into our forces, I’ve more or less allied with Stannis Baratheon, I’ve planned for the Others and survived the mutiny of some of my Watch brothers. The rules can change if I want them to.”

“But why?” Sansa envisions their childhood, how horrible she’d been to him, how little communication they’d had.

Jon lets out a short laugh. “You’re still my sister, Sansa.”

She begins sobbing again, and Jon presses a chaste kiss to her forehead. It’s a promise, and in that promise, Sansa realizes that Jon had been aching for his fractured family mayhaps even more than she had. It doesn’t change everything, if anything, but in Jon’s embrace it’s easy to pretend that things will be good again.