ASOIAF/GOT fic: The glaciers made you
Title: The glaciers made you (and now you're mine)
Pairing: Jon Snow /Jeyne Westerling
Rating: R
Length: 3,358 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Sex, violence, swearing. Spoilers through A Dance with Dragons
Notes: Written for asoiaf_exchange Summer 2012. Title and cut text from Great Lake Swimmers' "Your Rocky Spine."
The glaciers made you (and now you're mine)
Ghost finds her, half-frozen in the woods by the road to Castle Black. She’s a tiny thing, starved and haggard, and he has half a mind to end her misery right there. But Ghost growls and licks her cheek, and the direwolf’s action tugs at something strange in his chest. He lets his hand fall away from his blade.
The girl curled against him in the saddle, he rides for the castle.
It takes all of Sam’s skill to save her fingers from frostbite, all that and more to keep her from slipping away when a fever sets in.
Ghost sits vigil by her bedside, and Jon finds himself doing the same, for reasons he doesn’t not understand, reasons he cannot name.
The girl - woman, really - shifts in her sleep, mumbling nonsense about traitors and poison cups.
Sam tells him it’s normal for people to talk when beset by fevers. He pays it no mind until he hears his own name, garbled as the rest of her speech is, but clear enough.
“Go to the Wall. Find Jon.”
Ghost whines and inches closer to her. Jon closes his eyes; as Ghost, he can smell the acrid scent of her fear, rising above the cloying smells of fever and sickness. But under the fear and the sickness and all the scents she carries with her from her travels, she smells like family. Like Robb.
He wrenches himself away from Ghost with a start, opening his eyes as a man once more. He stares down at her, studying the dusky hue of her skin and the cheekbones set high in her haggard face, a horrible sort of suspicion building in the back of his mind, in the pit of his stomach.
When his brother’s name spills brokenly from her lips, he leaves the room on unsteady feet; he cannot bring himself to stay.
Her fever breaks the night he walks out. She wakes two days later, asking for him.
The door creaks when he opens it, hinges groaning, and she jumps at the sound. He watches her gather herself as he steps in, visibly smoothing the fear from her face.
He waits for her to speak.
She doesn’t.
“I am Lord Commander Snow,” he says into the heavy silence. “You’ve been asking for me.”
Her carefully arranged face crumples at his words, but she does not cry. She looks him in the eye, and when she speaks, her voice does not tremble.
“Yes. I am Jeyne Stark, your brother’s widow. As dowager Queen in the North, I seek sanctuary with my husband’s kin.”
The words are regal, but the statement itself is stilted, spoken in a rhythm as if from long practice. The woman before him is no queen demanding sanctuary. She’s a worn, desperate widow playing the last of her cards.
He knows the circumstances of Robb’s death - ravens fly to the Wall as surely as they fly to Winterfell. He wants to ask if she was worth it. He wants to throw her to the mercy of the wildlings, the wights, the White Walkers, whoever finds her beyond the Wall. He wants to speak with her of Robb, ask if his brother ever spoke of him.
He does none of those things.
Instead, he sighs and sinks into the chair beside her bed. It feels as if his bones have frozen in his body, bearing down on him with the weight of winter until he can no longer stand. His tongue is heavy behind his teeth when he speaks, but the words blow through him like winter wind.
“Welcome to the Wall, Jeyne Stark.”
He hides her as best he can from Stannis and his red priestess. Stannis wants the Iron Throne, wants all the Seven Kingdoms. If he finds her here, he will have her put to death as a false queen.
So he hides her.
It is strange having a woman in his chambers, but he bears it. Robb’s widow keeps to herself, shivering even in her furs as she mends first her own clothing, and then what of his needs mending. She stares into the fire, or out the windows of the tower, or at Ghost.
She does not stare at him; she has not met his eyes since the day she woke, nor has she spoken to him.
The silence chafes at him, but he does not think to break it. What would he say? He does not know what words would come to his lips if he spoke to his brother’s widow, and he does not want to find out. Part of him still wants to rage at her, while another wants nothing more than to hear of Robb. He has not felt so torn since Sam told him of Robb’s war, since he tried to abandon his post.
He thinks he could hate her for it, if he didn’t already hate himself for the turmoil roiling through him.
I am the sword in the darkness, he thinks. I am the watcher on the walls.
For the first time in a long, long time, the words do nothing to settle him.
She breaks her silence one night when Ghost stalks about his chambers, tension in every line of his body.
She’s readying her pallet - she’d refused the bed - when she speaks. Her voice is quiet, and he’s almost sure he’s imagined it until he looks at her, only to find her looking back.
“I was afraid of Grey Wind,” she tells him. “He was so big, as big as some of the horses. Robb-” her voice cracks on his name, but she continues. “Robb said he would never hurt me, but I was so afraid. He had him on a tether whenever I was near.”
Something like shame is thick in her voice, shame and sorrow and a hundred other emotions he’s hasn’t cared to look for in her since Ghost found her frozen in the snow.
“It was wrong,” she says.
He’s done her a disservice, he realizes. She’s lost here at the Wall, alone with nothing but her memories and her husband’s bastard brother, who hasn’t said two words to her since she awoke.
“I’m sure Robb understood,” he tells her, but the sentiment falls flat. If Robb ever closed his eyes and opened them as Grey Wind, as Jon does with Ghost, he would never have understood. He would have hated chaining up something so wild and free.
He tries again.
“But even if he didn’t,” he says, “he loved you. He wouldn’t have tethered Grey Wind for any other reason.”
It feels true - when Robb loved, he loved to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It was how he loved Winterfell and Eddard and Catelyn, how he loved Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon.
How he loved Jon.
“He loved you,” he says again.
Jeyne does not smile, but perhaps she does not look so lost. Tentatively, she stretches out a hand to Ghost.
The direwolf ceases his pacing, coming to rest by her side, muzzle pressing into her palm. She shivers, but does not move. Delicately, Ghost licks her fingers before settling at her feet, his head on his paws, red eyes drifting shut.
Jeyne follows him into sleep soon after, curled near Ghost on her pallet.
Jon stays awake, and thinks of his father and his brother, of Ygritte and the war he knows is coming. But those thoughts drift away, and when he succumbs to sleep it is with his thoughts full of Jeyne Stark.
Her confession changes something between them. It is a slow change, gradual as the shifting of glaciers, but a change nonetheless.
She speaks to him at night, when he’s locked the door and shut out the duties of the day. When she speaks, he’s not the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, not Lord Snow or the Black Bastard of the Wall. He’s just Jon Snow, hearing stories of his brother.
She is no bard, but her soft voice gives life to Robb, to her brothers and her sister. She never speaks of her mother.
She talks of how Robb took the Crag, how she never meant to love him, never meant to trap him. If she could have died in his place, she says, she would have.
He believes her.
“But,” she tells him. “I didn’t. I was at Riverrun, safe in Lady Catelyn’s old solar when they butchered him.”
Her hands shake, and she puts down her mending, steadies herself with a breath, then another.
“The Blackfish is the one who helped me escape,” she says. “The Lannisters had laid siege, and my mot- and it was clear that I was not carrying an heir. There was talk. Of surrendering me to the Lannisters, of killing me for dooming Robb.”
He does not flinch at that, but it is a near thing - he remembers his thoughts when he first spoke with her.
“Ser Brynden came to me in the solar one morning, and told me that Riverrun was going to fall. ‘It does not matter,’ he said, ‘if you are grieving. It does not matter that you have no heir. You are Robb’s queen, and he would not see you fall into Lannister hands.’ He showed me a gate beneath the north wall of the keep, and told me to keep heading north. ‘Go to the Wall. Find Jon Snow. It’s what Robb would have wanted.’ So here I am.”
Jon never met Brynden Tully, never met any of Lady Catelyn’s family, but he can imagine the man - taller than Robb, face lined and hair gray with age. If he lives still, Jon owes him a debt, for seeing Jeyne to safety.
He wonders when he started thinking of her as Jeyne, rather than as Robb’s widow.
Their easy peace lasts until Jon receives the letter.
Bastard, it says. The word has long since lost its bite, but it angers him all the same.
He announces that he is to march on Bolton, and his command fucks everything to the seven hells.
The men turn on him. Ghost is locked away and there are blades and faces he can’t see and then-
Darkness.
He dreams of blood, of tearing throats and a woman screaming, the smell of fear and the carrion stench of death, and blood.
“Jon,” a voice wails from far away, “no, you can’t die, you can’t die,” but the voice is far away, and the dreams fade and slip away, leaving him in darkness once more.
Perhaps there is the scent of smoke or a hint of warmth, but then there is nothing, nothing at all, not even darkness.
He wakes to Jeyne, to her fingers clenched tight around his hand.
Every inch of him hurts, feels as though he has been dragged through the snow over broken glass. All of that pales in comparison to the pain that lances through him when his eyes find Jeyne’s face.
She is pale with terror, eyes wide and haunted.
“You were dead,” she whispers. “I saw you. They stabbed you clean through, Jon. You were dead.”
She stops then, shaking now and still white with fear.
“I don’t remember,” he says, his voice a rasp. It’s true. He remembers Ghost’s anguished howl, remembers blades and pain. A voice, Jeyne’s voice perhaps, and darkness. Then nothing.
“They killed you,” she says again. “I left the tower when I heard Ghost. He’s always so quiet, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t get to him in time, you were dead by the time I managed to free him.”
A memory flashes through him, teeth and claws rending soft flesh, blood on white fur. Ghost’s memory, then.
“Ghost killed them,” he says.
A low growl drifts up from the foot of his bed. She pales further still, but makes no move to run.
“Ghost killed them, all the men that betrayed you. The rest…” she trails off.
“The rest?” he prompts.
“They burned you,” she says, “or they tried.”
Her grip on his hand only tightens.
“They put you on a pyre, but you wouldn’t burn. Your wounds started to close, but you wouldn’t burn. The red priestess, she looked into the fire and chanted something, and babbled about about salt and smoke. She called you ‘The Prince That Was Promised’ and made the men bring you here when the fire burned out.”
“Jeyne,” he says, but he doesn’t know else to say. He falls silent, and she says nothing into the quiet that follows.
He expects her to leave, expects her to run, expects- he doesn’t know what to expect. He doesn’t know anything right now. Ygritte’s voice echoes in his head, you know nothing, Jon Snow, but the words are faint, formless.
Jeyne’s face is limned with firelight, and though her fear is scrawled across her features, plain to see, there is something else marking her face, something he cannot decipher.
He knows nothing, except that he wants her to stay.
He falls asleep with her hands still wrapped around his.
Their easy peace is gone. She moves from his chambers as soon as he is well enough to stand without aid. He does not try to stop her, just makes sure she is settled far from the rapists, in a hall with men he still trusts.
His heart thuds painfully in his chest as she carries the last of her meager possessions out, but he says nothing.
What is there to say? He’s a dead man come back to life, and Ghost’s eyes are as red as the blood that painted his fur; he has nothing to offer quiet Jeyne Stark, who trembles at violence and mourns for her dead husband, who sought sanctuary with his bastard brother and was rewarded with a nightmare.
Better not to think of it, especially when he has so much else to think of. Melisandre has turned away from Stannis. She calls him Azor Ahai, calls him Jon Targaryen, and tells him that he will bring light back to the world.
He tells her his name is Jon Snow, and says nothing of the rest. He waits to hear of Tormund’s ranging, helps the wildlings settle the Gift, arranges for men to garrison the empty castles. He walks Castle Black as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Ghost a silent phantom at his side, and plans for war.
He does all of these things, and still he thinks of Jeyne.
She comes to his chambers one night, some months after he failed to burn on his pyre. Ghost stirs at her approach, and his heart hammers against his ribs when the door swings open to reveal Jeyne, wrapped in her furs, her eyes filled with that strange emotion he could not name.
She shuts the door behind her, and stands awkwardly before him where he is seated at his desk.
A thousand words sit heavy on his tongue, but he swallows them back. Jeyne came to him; he will let her speak her piece.
“I miss Robb,” she says, and he can’t stop his breath from coming sharp. Her eyes widen at the sound, but she continues.
“I miss Robb, and it pains me. It hurts like an old wound that won’t heal, like a bruise that’s still dark and tender.” She swallows, and his eyes follow the movement of her throat.
“But when I thought you were dead,” she says, her voice softer than he has ever heard it, “I have never known a pain like that.”
He’s half-risen from his chair when she takes a hesitant step toward him.
“I loved Robb with all my heart, but he is gone.” Her breath catches on the words, but her voice does not tremble. “He is gone, and you are here. I would not lose you.”
He stands fully as she steps toward him once more, and they meet somewhere in the middle.
She moans when his mouth finds hers, and they press against each other, desperate for contact. They stumble back toward the bed, falling atop it in a heap of furs. He strips them away with frantic hands as she twines her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer and closer to her.
Her mouth tastes of wine and spices and something uniquely Jeyne, and she bites at his lower lip when his hand finally meets her skin, tracing the curve of her hip, skimming higher to cup her breast.
She arches against him, and one hands drifts from his hair to grasp his shoulder, bare of furs and cloth now, nails digging deep into the muscle.
His hips stutter against hers, and he knows he won’t last long. He moves out of her reach, kissing his way down her body until he reaches the apex of her thighs, spreading her legs wide as she gasps his name.
“Jon,” she breathes, and the sound undoes him.
He lowers his mouth to her, breathing in her scent before pushing his tongue into her.
She tastes different, hotter and sweeter than Ygritte, but he can’t think of her but for a moment, not with the taste of Jeyne flooding his senses as he licks and sucks at the wet heat of her until she trembles and shudders and shatters around him
He eases her through the tremors, stroking her gently as she comes down, lapping at her until she tugs sharply at his hair, pulling him up to her mouth once more. She kisses him without reservation, bold where he expects her to be shy.
Her lips pull up in a little grin as she stretches up to kiss him, and he starts at the feeling of her slender fingers on his cock. He groans when she tightens her grip, hips jerking and his breath coming short.
“Later,” she whispers against his mouth, squeezing him once more before guiding him into her body, her head falling back against the bedfurs when he starts to push in.
Her hands find his shoulders as he rolls his hips against hers, fingers finding her clit as he thrusts against her. He kisses the line of her throat, the ridge of her collarbone, wanting to taste every inch of her, wanting and aching with that want until everything is eclipsed by the feel of her shuddering around him, his hips stuttering into hers as he loses his rhythm to the sound of her moan.
He spends himself inside her, his vision gone white. When it finally clears, his head is pillowed on her chest, her fingers carding through his hair. He shifts his hips, slipping out of her, and her breath catches.
“Don’t leave,” she says, “don’t leave. I’ll stay.”
He stills and nods against her chest, presses his lips to her skin.
“Okay.”
They stay like that until sleep claims them both, the wind howling like wolves beyond the walls of his chambers.
She brews a tea in the morning, a sad smile on her lips, but she stays. Robb still haunts her thoughts, and she pales every time Ghost touches her, but she stays.
That’s all that matters.
“Winter is coming,” she says one night as they lie tangled together beneath his furs. Her voice is soft, but the words ring true, shivering through the both of them, quiet and ominous.
Melisandre stares into her fires and Stannis still wars for his throne. The wildlings run south, as far south as south goes. Beyond the Wall, the wights roam and the White Walkers are stirring. The nights grow longer and the Wall seems smaller to him with each passing day.
He was dead, but he lives still. He doesn’t understand it, but his bones hum with the words of Eddard Stark’s house, the words of the man he will always call father.
Winter is coming, he thinks. Winter is here.
Given enough time, the Starks are always right.
Jeyne twines her fingers with his, and he grips them tightly. They lie together in the dark, curled about each other, waiting for the dawn.
It is a long time coming.
Feedback is love!
Pairing: Jon Snow /Jeyne Westerling
Rating: R
Length: 3,358 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Sex, violence, swearing. Spoilers through A Dance with Dragons
Notes: Written for asoiaf_exchange Summer 2012. Title and cut text from Great Lake Swimmers' "Your Rocky Spine."
The glaciers made you (and now you're mine)
Ghost finds her, half-frozen in the woods by the road to Castle Black. She’s a tiny thing, starved and haggard, and he has half a mind to end her misery right there. But Ghost growls and licks her cheek, and the direwolf’s action tugs at something strange in his chest. He lets his hand fall away from his blade.
The girl curled against him in the saddle, he rides for the castle.
It takes all of Sam’s skill to save her fingers from frostbite, all that and more to keep her from slipping away when a fever sets in.
Ghost sits vigil by her bedside, and Jon finds himself doing the same, for reasons he doesn’t not understand, reasons he cannot name.
The girl - woman, really - shifts in her sleep, mumbling nonsense about traitors and poison cups.
Sam tells him it’s normal for people to talk when beset by fevers. He pays it no mind until he hears his own name, garbled as the rest of her speech is, but clear enough.
“Go to the Wall. Find Jon.”
Ghost whines and inches closer to her. Jon closes his eyes; as Ghost, he can smell the acrid scent of her fear, rising above the cloying smells of fever and sickness. But under the fear and the sickness and all the scents she carries with her from her travels, she smells like family. Like Robb.
He wrenches himself away from Ghost with a start, opening his eyes as a man once more. He stares down at her, studying the dusky hue of her skin and the cheekbones set high in her haggard face, a horrible sort of suspicion building in the back of his mind, in the pit of his stomach.
When his brother’s name spills brokenly from her lips, he leaves the room on unsteady feet; he cannot bring himself to stay.
Her fever breaks the night he walks out. She wakes two days later, asking for him.
The door creaks when he opens it, hinges groaning, and she jumps at the sound. He watches her gather herself as he steps in, visibly smoothing the fear from her face.
He waits for her to speak.
She doesn’t.
“I am Lord Commander Snow,” he says into the heavy silence. “You’ve been asking for me.”
Her carefully arranged face crumples at his words, but she does not cry. She looks him in the eye, and when she speaks, her voice does not tremble.
“Yes. I am Jeyne Stark, your brother’s widow. As dowager Queen in the North, I seek sanctuary with my husband’s kin.”
The words are regal, but the statement itself is stilted, spoken in a rhythm as if from long practice. The woman before him is no queen demanding sanctuary. She’s a worn, desperate widow playing the last of her cards.
He knows the circumstances of Robb’s death - ravens fly to the Wall as surely as they fly to Winterfell. He wants to ask if she was worth it. He wants to throw her to the mercy of the wildlings, the wights, the White Walkers, whoever finds her beyond the Wall. He wants to speak with her of Robb, ask if his brother ever spoke of him.
He does none of those things.
Instead, he sighs and sinks into the chair beside her bed. It feels as if his bones have frozen in his body, bearing down on him with the weight of winter until he can no longer stand. His tongue is heavy behind his teeth when he speaks, but the words blow through him like winter wind.
“Welcome to the Wall, Jeyne Stark.”
He hides her as best he can from Stannis and his red priestess. Stannis wants the Iron Throne, wants all the Seven Kingdoms. If he finds her here, he will have her put to death as a false queen.
So he hides her.
It is strange having a woman in his chambers, but he bears it. Robb’s widow keeps to herself, shivering even in her furs as she mends first her own clothing, and then what of his needs mending. She stares into the fire, or out the windows of the tower, or at Ghost.
She does not stare at him; she has not met his eyes since the day she woke, nor has she spoken to him.
The silence chafes at him, but he does not think to break it. What would he say? He does not know what words would come to his lips if he spoke to his brother’s widow, and he does not want to find out. Part of him still wants to rage at her, while another wants nothing more than to hear of Robb. He has not felt so torn since Sam told him of Robb’s war, since he tried to abandon his post.
He thinks he could hate her for it, if he didn’t already hate himself for the turmoil roiling through him.
I am the sword in the darkness, he thinks. I am the watcher on the walls.
For the first time in a long, long time, the words do nothing to settle him.
She breaks her silence one night when Ghost stalks about his chambers, tension in every line of his body.
She’s readying her pallet - she’d refused the bed - when she speaks. Her voice is quiet, and he’s almost sure he’s imagined it until he looks at her, only to find her looking back.
“I was afraid of Grey Wind,” she tells him. “He was so big, as big as some of the horses. Robb-” her voice cracks on his name, but she continues. “Robb said he would never hurt me, but I was so afraid. He had him on a tether whenever I was near.”
Something like shame is thick in her voice, shame and sorrow and a hundred other emotions he’s hasn’t cared to look for in her since Ghost found her frozen in the snow.
“It was wrong,” she says.
He’s done her a disservice, he realizes. She’s lost here at the Wall, alone with nothing but her memories and her husband’s bastard brother, who hasn’t said two words to her since she awoke.
“I’m sure Robb understood,” he tells her, but the sentiment falls flat. If Robb ever closed his eyes and opened them as Grey Wind, as Jon does with Ghost, he would never have understood. He would have hated chaining up something so wild and free.
He tries again.
“But even if he didn’t,” he says, “he loved you. He wouldn’t have tethered Grey Wind for any other reason.”
It feels true - when Robb loved, he loved to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It was how he loved Winterfell and Eddard and Catelyn, how he loved Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon.
How he loved Jon.
“He loved you,” he says again.
Jeyne does not smile, but perhaps she does not look so lost. Tentatively, she stretches out a hand to Ghost.
The direwolf ceases his pacing, coming to rest by her side, muzzle pressing into her palm. She shivers, but does not move. Delicately, Ghost licks her fingers before settling at her feet, his head on his paws, red eyes drifting shut.
Jeyne follows him into sleep soon after, curled near Ghost on her pallet.
Jon stays awake, and thinks of his father and his brother, of Ygritte and the war he knows is coming. But those thoughts drift away, and when he succumbs to sleep it is with his thoughts full of Jeyne Stark.
Her confession changes something between them. It is a slow change, gradual as the shifting of glaciers, but a change nonetheless.
She speaks to him at night, when he’s locked the door and shut out the duties of the day. When she speaks, he’s not the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, not Lord Snow or the Black Bastard of the Wall. He’s just Jon Snow, hearing stories of his brother.
She is no bard, but her soft voice gives life to Robb, to her brothers and her sister. She never speaks of her mother.
She talks of how Robb took the Crag, how she never meant to love him, never meant to trap him. If she could have died in his place, she says, she would have.
He believes her.
“But,” she tells him. “I didn’t. I was at Riverrun, safe in Lady Catelyn’s old solar when they butchered him.”
Her hands shake, and she puts down her mending, steadies herself with a breath, then another.
“The Blackfish is the one who helped me escape,” she says. “The Lannisters had laid siege, and my mot- and it was clear that I was not carrying an heir. There was talk. Of surrendering me to the Lannisters, of killing me for dooming Robb.”
He does not flinch at that, but it is a near thing - he remembers his thoughts when he first spoke with her.
“Ser Brynden came to me in the solar one morning, and told me that Riverrun was going to fall. ‘It does not matter,’ he said, ‘if you are grieving. It does not matter that you have no heir. You are Robb’s queen, and he would not see you fall into Lannister hands.’ He showed me a gate beneath the north wall of the keep, and told me to keep heading north. ‘Go to the Wall. Find Jon Snow. It’s what Robb would have wanted.’ So here I am.”
Jon never met Brynden Tully, never met any of Lady Catelyn’s family, but he can imagine the man - taller than Robb, face lined and hair gray with age. If he lives still, Jon owes him a debt, for seeing Jeyne to safety.
He wonders when he started thinking of her as Jeyne, rather than as Robb’s widow.
Their easy peace lasts until Jon receives the letter.
Bastard, it says. The word has long since lost its bite, but it angers him all the same.
He announces that he is to march on Bolton, and his command fucks everything to the seven hells.
The men turn on him. Ghost is locked away and there are blades and faces he can’t see and then-
Darkness.
He dreams of blood, of tearing throats and a woman screaming, the smell of fear and the carrion stench of death, and blood.
“Jon,” a voice wails from far away, “no, you can’t die, you can’t die,” but the voice is far away, and the dreams fade and slip away, leaving him in darkness once more.
Perhaps there is the scent of smoke or a hint of warmth, but then there is nothing, nothing at all, not even darkness.
He wakes to Jeyne, to her fingers clenched tight around his hand.
Every inch of him hurts, feels as though he has been dragged through the snow over broken glass. All of that pales in comparison to the pain that lances through him when his eyes find Jeyne’s face.
She is pale with terror, eyes wide and haunted.
“You were dead,” she whispers. “I saw you. They stabbed you clean through, Jon. You were dead.”
She stops then, shaking now and still white with fear.
“I don’t remember,” he says, his voice a rasp. It’s true. He remembers Ghost’s anguished howl, remembers blades and pain. A voice, Jeyne’s voice perhaps, and darkness. Then nothing.
“They killed you,” she says again. “I left the tower when I heard Ghost. He’s always so quiet, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t get to him in time, you were dead by the time I managed to free him.”
A memory flashes through him, teeth and claws rending soft flesh, blood on white fur. Ghost’s memory, then.
“Ghost killed them,” he says.
A low growl drifts up from the foot of his bed. She pales further still, but makes no move to run.
“Ghost killed them, all the men that betrayed you. The rest…” she trails off.
“The rest?” he prompts.
“They burned you,” she says, “or they tried.”
Her grip on his hand only tightens.
“They put you on a pyre, but you wouldn’t burn. Your wounds started to close, but you wouldn’t burn. The red priestess, she looked into the fire and chanted something, and babbled about about salt and smoke. She called you ‘The Prince That Was Promised’ and made the men bring you here when the fire burned out.”
“Jeyne,” he says, but he doesn’t know else to say. He falls silent, and she says nothing into the quiet that follows.
He expects her to leave, expects her to run, expects- he doesn’t know what to expect. He doesn’t know anything right now. Ygritte’s voice echoes in his head, you know nothing, Jon Snow, but the words are faint, formless.
Jeyne’s face is limned with firelight, and though her fear is scrawled across her features, plain to see, there is something else marking her face, something he cannot decipher.
He knows nothing, except that he wants her to stay.
He falls asleep with her hands still wrapped around his.
Their easy peace is gone. She moves from his chambers as soon as he is well enough to stand without aid. He does not try to stop her, just makes sure she is settled far from the rapists, in a hall with men he still trusts.
His heart thuds painfully in his chest as she carries the last of her meager possessions out, but he says nothing.
What is there to say? He’s a dead man come back to life, and Ghost’s eyes are as red as the blood that painted his fur; he has nothing to offer quiet Jeyne Stark, who trembles at violence and mourns for her dead husband, who sought sanctuary with his bastard brother and was rewarded with a nightmare.
Better not to think of it, especially when he has so much else to think of. Melisandre has turned away from Stannis. She calls him Azor Ahai, calls him Jon Targaryen, and tells him that he will bring light back to the world.
He tells her his name is Jon Snow, and says nothing of the rest. He waits to hear of Tormund’s ranging, helps the wildlings settle the Gift, arranges for men to garrison the empty castles. He walks Castle Black as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Ghost a silent phantom at his side, and plans for war.
He does all of these things, and still he thinks of Jeyne.
She comes to his chambers one night, some months after he failed to burn on his pyre. Ghost stirs at her approach, and his heart hammers against his ribs when the door swings open to reveal Jeyne, wrapped in her furs, her eyes filled with that strange emotion he could not name.
She shuts the door behind her, and stands awkwardly before him where he is seated at his desk.
A thousand words sit heavy on his tongue, but he swallows them back. Jeyne came to him; he will let her speak her piece.
“I miss Robb,” she says, and he can’t stop his breath from coming sharp. Her eyes widen at the sound, but she continues.
“I miss Robb, and it pains me. It hurts like an old wound that won’t heal, like a bruise that’s still dark and tender.” She swallows, and his eyes follow the movement of her throat.
“But when I thought you were dead,” she says, her voice softer than he has ever heard it, “I have never known a pain like that.”
He’s half-risen from his chair when she takes a hesitant step toward him.
“I loved Robb with all my heart, but he is gone.” Her breath catches on the words, but her voice does not tremble. “He is gone, and you are here. I would not lose you.”
He stands fully as she steps toward him once more, and they meet somewhere in the middle.
She moans when his mouth finds hers, and they press against each other, desperate for contact. They stumble back toward the bed, falling atop it in a heap of furs. He strips them away with frantic hands as she twines her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer and closer to her.
Her mouth tastes of wine and spices and something uniquely Jeyne, and she bites at his lower lip when his hand finally meets her skin, tracing the curve of her hip, skimming higher to cup her breast.
She arches against him, and one hands drifts from his hair to grasp his shoulder, bare of furs and cloth now, nails digging deep into the muscle.
His hips stutter against hers, and he knows he won’t last long. He moves out of her reach, kissing his way down her body until he reaches the apex of her thighs, spreading her legs wide as she gasps his name.
“Jon,” she breathes, and the sound undoes him.
He lowers his mouth to her, breathing in her scent before pushing his tongue into her.
She tastes different, hotter and sweeter than Ygritte, but he can’t think of her but for a moment, not with the taste of Jeyne flooding his senses as he licks and sucks at the wet heat of her until she trembles and shudders and shatters around him
He eases her through the tremors, stroking her gently as she comes down, lapping at her until she tugs sharply at his hair, pulling him up to her mouth once more. She kisses him without reservation, bold where he expects her to be shy.
Her lips pull up in a little grin as she stretches up to kiss him, and he starts at the feeling of her slender fingers on his cock. He groans when she tightens her grip, hips jerking and his breath coming short.
“Later,” she whispers against his mouth, squeezing him once more before guiding him into her body, her head falling back against the bedfurs when he starts to push in.
Her hands find his shoulders as he rolls his hips against hers, fingers finding her clit as he thrusts against her. He kisses the line of her throat, the ridge of her collarbone, wanting to taste every inch of her, wanting and aching with that want until everything is eclipsed by the feel of her shuddering around him, his hips stuttering into hers as he loses his rhythm to the sound of her moan.
He spends himself inside her, his vision gone white. When it finally clears, his head is pillowed on her chest, her fingers carding through his hair. He shifts his hips, slipping out of her, and her breath catches.
“Don’t leave,” she says, “don’t leave. I’ll stay.”
He stills and nods against her chest, presses his lips to her skin.
“Okay.”
They stay like that until sleep claims them both, the wind howling like wolves beyond the walls of his chambers.
She brews a tea in the morning, a sad smile on her lips, but she stays. Robb still haunts her thoughts, and she pales every time Ghost touches her, but she stays.
That’s all that matters.
“Winter is coming,” she says one night as they lie tangled together beneath his furs. Her voice is soft, but the words ring true, shivering through the both of them, quiet and ominous.
Melisandre stares into her fires and Stannis still wars for his throne. The wildlings run south, as far south as south goes. Beyond the Wall, the wights roam and the White Walkers are stirring. The nights grow longer and the Wall seems smaller to him with each passing day.
He was dead, but he lives still. He doesn’t understand it, but his bones hum with the words of Eddard Stark’s house, the words of the man he will always call father.
Winter is coming, he thinks. Winter is here.
Given enough time, the Starks are always right.
Jeyne twines her fingers with his, and he grips them tightly. They lie together in the dark, curled about each other, waiting for the dawn.
It is a long time coming.
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