Chapter Text
The first time is strategic; the calculated act of a woman yearning for peace and a touch of kindness.
Jon Snow stands at the table set up in the far corner of the tent with worry lining his face, where he has been for hours already. Though Jon is not the same boy she knew — by the gods, he is not even who she believed him to be at all — she knows he will take no rest until he finds the answer he craves.
“You’ll find nothing on an empty stomach,” she says to him when she brings food to him.
Jon looks up from the map pinned at the corners with wide-eyed surprise, one hand tucked neatly behind his back, the scarred fingers of the other tracing lines across the drawn facsimile of the North. Sansa’s heart flutters in her chest. She knows better now than to think that Jon is her half-brother, but he looks so like her father. For a moment, she feels like she could be back home in Winterfell, in Lord Eddard’s study, having interrupted her father’s work for an indulgent kiss on her hair.
It is no surprise that they found each other on the same errand, though she came from the Vale in the south and he from the Wall in the north. What they each hoped to accomplish on their own might have been near impossible, and what they might yet do together far more than they dreamed at all. With Winterfell secure, they are able to turn their attention to regrouping the northern forces and preparing for something worse even than the ravages of war.
They are both cold and lonely, have seen too much of the horrors the world offers them, but planning the defense of the North and the persistent food scarcity in Westeros leaves no time for any meaningful kind of comfort. Jon spends his hours planning fortifications and worrying how they will find enough dragonglass to save them when the time comes. Sansa writes letters, spends hours in meetings with what she has come to think of as her small council as they summon bannermen, call for aid, and negotiate for what they need from those who will give only in exchange for the precious little the North has to trade.
With all of this, Sansa knows there may never be time again for this, and that is what convinces her that this is the right thing to do. It is not only for her, she thinks stubbornly. Jon needs it, too.
“I brought dinner,” Sansa explains, lifting the tray with a half-smile. There is no butter for the dark, heavy bread, but the stew is thick with root vegetables and fish and the spices mulled into the hot wine will help it go down easily for both of them. It might make it easier for her to ask for the thing she wants of him.
A piece of something lost, however small.
Jon eats as long as Sansa is there with him, drinking wine from a horn and willing herself to say the words that will set this in motion. She feels fluttery and warm after a while, though there are no braziers lit in this tent, and color finally comes back to Jon’s face.
She wills herself to cover the silence hanging heavy as ghosts in the tent, leans toward him, her eyelashes casting long shadows over her cheek. Surely he wants this, too. Sansa has heard about the women Jon loved, knows she is not like them, but she does not need him to love her in that way.
All she needs is for him to step into the empty place left by all that has been ripped away. And in return, she will do all she can to fill the the one in him.
“Jon,” Sansa breathes with intent. She extends one shaking hand to float over his, but she cannot bring herself to look at him directly. It is too painful how he so resembles all the things she longs for. Jon Snow is not her brother, has never been, and perhaps it’s better that way.
When he closes his hand into a fist and draws it away with a kind smile and a half-mumbled excuse, Sansa is surprised to find that she is relieved.