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Chapter Text

Jon woke up a couple hours before dawn and it was a miracle he didn’t scream. 

He would have if he hadn’t opened his eyes sooner. It bubbled in his throat like boiling water. After staring at the ceiling and counting his ragged breaths, he swallowed that fear. Hot and scalding.

Ygritte still slept soundly beside him, shoulders rising and falling as her snores filled the room. 

Jon’s own shoulders were heaving. His body poured with sweat. He pushed the covers that were starting to stick to his skin away from him, but made sure to cover back the empty space he left in the bed, so Ygritte wouldn’t feel the draft. She didn’t even stir. 

The draft cooled him. The bucket of water they kept in the bathroom even moreso. He took a cloth to his face and his neck, squeezing his eyes shut. 

He couldn’t remember the dream for the life of him, but the feeling was still there. Bone deep. The kind of feeling he got in the woods whenever he heard a growl. The kind of feeling he got hearing the crunch of Peacekeeper boots against gravel. The kind of feeling he got in the rain that day, starved and close to death.

The bucket trembled. Jon’s hand was still in it, and it was shaking. It made him want to throw it, but the thought of making another trip all the way to the well to replace it exhausted him. 

He hated feeling like this: helpless. Out of control. But fear; that was not new to him. Fear, he could handle. So he blew out the lantern burning in the bathroom and stood there for a very long time.

He waited for something in the dark to scare him rather than the unknown.

The sun rose.

Ygritte found him in the bathroom and didn’t ask. Just like she didn’t ask about his tossing and turning. Just like she never asked about anything. She knew he preferred it that way. It was one of the things he loved most about her. The trust between them was a strong and steady thing. She never asked any questions unless she felt like she had to.

“Let’s go hunt.” She said instead, arm around his waist. “What do you say?”

Jon didn’t say anything, but he got dressed, and he grabbed his bow and arrow. He followed her to the wood. This was how things played between them on normal days, too. 

They didn’t hunt, though. Rather, Ygritte sat on a log next to the stream, and pulled out a bulging cloth. At the center was a loaf of bakery bread, golden and a little smushed. She broke off a hunk and handed it to him. Jon made the mistake of hesitating.

“What’s got you so bothered that you can’t eat?” She asked. “You’re always hungry.”

Every northern kid that grew up near the Wall was always hungry. Starvation happened just as often as mining accidents and those happened as often as full moons.

“Nothing.” Jon took the bread from her and bit into it. It was cold, but so soft. 

She held a berry to his lips until he opened his mouth and accepted it. Her thumb did not leave his lower lip.

“Don’t make me beg.” She said, in that voice she knew he liked so much. But even that was not enough to shake him of this feeling.

“I just have a bad feeling today.” He confessed quietly.

Ygritte snorted at that. “Everybody has a bad feeling today.”

Children more than others, and the parents of those children more than that. Jon had no parents, and felt as if he came out of the womb an adult. Being 18 was more of an empty symbol to him than anything else, but the age itself was a gift. It meant that this Reaping would be the last he held his breath for, praying they didn’t call his name. 

“I had this dream—” He began. 

Her eyebrows rose playfully. “You had a night terror?”

The cloying taste that the berry left on his tongue suddenly soured. “Forget I said anything.” He snapped. 

He got up off the log and made to leave for the house when Ygritte’s hands found his waist. Rough, working hands. But they were soft when they wanted to be, and they must have wanted to be in that moment, as she tugged him back towards her. 

Jon had no choice but to look down at her. At her dark blue eyes. At her hair she barely even bothered to comb sometimes. At her crooked mouth that was meant for smiling. She was not smiling then, almost uncharacteristically serious. 

“How many times is your name in that bowl?”

“48.” He answered. The number was all he could think about sometimes. 

“Do you know how many times mine was in there?” Ygritte demanded.

He didn’t. She never told him. 

“96.” She answered. “And they never got me. They won’t get you, either. I won’t let them.”

He hated when she talked like this, so fierce and sure of herself that he wanted so badly to believe her. But he loved it, too. So he couldn’t help but laugh. “You won’t, huh?”

“We’ll run away before they can.” Ygritte declared. “West.”

“There’s nothing west.”

“Nothing but forest and game. That’s all we need.”

They hadn’t been the first to talk about a plan like this. They wouldn’t be the last. How many Avoxes were the result of a plan to run west or east? How many times had the people behind those plans been girls with fire in their eyes, like Ygritte? Or boys who waited in the dark for imaginary monsters to chase off bad feelings, like him?

“We could leave right now.” Ygritte reached up a hand to cup his face. “It’s barely dawn.”

A dangerous sort of fierce hope lit up her face. It made her beautiful. It made him ache. Rather than telling her no and taking away that look from her face, he kissed the corner of her mouth instead, and her throat. He felt her shiver, and lean into him as she looked up.

“Coward,” She said, sounding breathless as he kissed that very same spot again, but longer. 

“I’m tired of feeling bad.” He said against her skin. “I want to feel good.”

This time, she reached up to kiss him.

The Hall of Justice. Every citizen gathered dressed in their finest, which really wasn’t fine at all. Jon bathed in scalding water, hoping to scour the bad feeling from his body. But as he made his way to the square, it only grew worse.

He was separated from Ygritte after their thumbprints were taken. She stood in the back with the adults and he stood with the rest of his fellow eighteens. He could still see her if he turned around, but just barely. There weren’t a lot of people with red hair in the district. It gave him comfort that he could just turn around and find her.

They arrived pretty early. It was a while before the square started to flood in earnest. Jon felt like he was drowning. Not just in the crowd, but in that feeling. Just staring at the stage made his heartbeat echo in his ears. He could see it well from where he was standing. The people on it. The podium. The two glass balls filled with paper slips. In the boys one, there were 48 slips with his name written on it. 

All it would take was one.

Tyrion Lannister. District 12’s personal escort since Jon was 10. The queen’s not so beloved younger brother. A rumored lecher and an infamous drunk. It was not a wonder he didn’t get a better district. 

Jon hated him with a passion. He hated the way he mimed conducting the national anthem that played over the video they showed. He hated him for playing that video every single year. He hated him for having the nerve to be drunk and so cavalier while the lives of children were literally in his hands, on slips of paper. He hated him for always saying, “Ladies first,” because his entire life stood at a standstill while he announced the other one that he was taking.

But he did all of those things, as he did every year. He played the video. He drank from his flask. He said, with a grotesque looking smile, “Ladies first,” and as always, Jon looked down the endless abyss at the bottom of that treacherous cliff, waiting for the moment he would be pushed in. If he was chosen to be pushed in. 

“Arya Stark.”

It was easier to watch them go when you didn’t know the person. But he knew her. 

The baker’s youngest niece. 13 years old. A tiny little thing with spindly arms and a thin face that didn’t resemble the rest of her family in the least. She was kind, if not a little brusque. She was always trading him for his squirrels. She gave him tips on how to make better fish hooks. She was the hunter of her family since the death of her father and brother in the mines, so she was good at that sort of thing.

And she was too young.

That couldn’t have been more apparent when all of her peers backed away from her, as if she had the pox. She was so much smaller than them. So much skinnier. Her entire body shook and her eyes were wide with something like fear, but her chin was still high. Her jaw was ground tight. She stepped forward.

There was a choked noise that cut through the silence, and he didn’t look to see who it was. He didn’t have to. If he had any doubts, the second strangled cry that erupted erased them away. Even if he hadn’t known the sound of her voice, it could be no one else. 

She was calling her name. Arya’s shoulders stiffened, but she kept walking. A northerner through and through. Stubborn as all hell. Determined not to reveal any cracks in that ice armor of hers. Jon wanted to call out too, but he wanted to tell her to run. Right onto that stage. Shake Tyrion’s hand. Somehow, he knew what was about to happen. Somehow, he knew that this was it. This was the cause of the fear that startled him awake, the one that stayed with him for this very moment.

She didn’t make it.

Arya was shoved back, shoved behind her older sister, who somehow had gotten through the peacekeepers. She had a bloody lip to prove it. Her arm trembled like a leaf as she held it up to keep Arya from taking another foot on those stairs. 

“I volunteer.” She choked out. “I volunteer as tribute.”

Sansa Stark stumbled onto the stage as if in a daze.

Tyrion was talking to her, as he offered her a hand. He was always talking. But Jon couldn’t hear what he was saying. His ears were ringing. His mouth tasted like blood. Arya was screaming, thrashing against peacekeepers and a blond boy who looked her same age. She was crying, but not out of helplessness. She was crying out of rage. Because she was so angry. 

Sansa did not seem to hear any of it. Just as her sister ignored her, she did the same on that stage.  Her face was ashen as she said her name into the mic. She kept smoothing out the invisible wrinkles of her blue dress. Her fingers shook. The more he watched her, the more he could not breathe. But he couldn’t have looked away if he tried. Not even as Tyrion’s hand moved toward the second bowl to reach for a slip. For another name.

Not even as he said his.

The rest was admittedly a blur. 

He did not remember walking to the stage. He did not remember shaking Tyrion Lannister’s hand. He did not remember listening to the mayor read the Treaty of Treason. He did not remember the faces in the crowd. He didn’t even remember if he searched for Ygritte among them. But he remembered her.

The tremble of her lower lip. The wisps of autumn red slipping free from the braid up on her head. The way tears had silently begun to slip down her cheeks the moment their eyes met. Like she was crying for him. 

Jon had never hated her more than he did in that moment.

He was somehow faintly aware of Tyrion telling them to shake hands, but still he did not move. It was Sansa who extended her hand first, even though it wavered. Jon had no choice. He took it. 

It was soft. Callous free. Shaking.

They were given three minutes to say goodbye.

He had somehow forgotten Ygritte existed until she burst into the room that they were keeping him in the Hall of Justice. She threw her arms around his neck and he felt each silent sob wrack her body.

“We should have left.” She said into his neck. “I told you, I told you—”

“Shhh.” He said into her hair. There were still two Peacekeepers outside that door. He wouldn’t let them take her as well as him.

Jon pulled back. The numbness that spread through him was beginning to thaw at the sight of her in such pain. He wiped her tears away with his thumbs and more appeared. It made him want to cry too, but he knew she would hate him for it.

“You’re gonna need to take care of things when I’m gone.” He forced out instead. “Pick up the extra hunting. Teach Pyp. He's decent with a bow. Good enough to replace me. And Edd is as good of a leader as any. The Watch will listen to him.”

His group of misfits. The Watch was full of kids just like him, ones who didn’t have parents. Who never had the chance to be children. They took their chance on the streets rather than rot away in the community homes. There were dozens of homes near the wall, and all of them made sacrifices so that the children that lived in them now would not suffer what they had to back then. It was most likely the reason he was here now. All those times he had signed up for tesserae when pickings in the forest were scarce, he added his name to the bowl. All those times, it had been to feed those children, the ones that looked so much like the child he used to be.

Ygritte slapped him. Her hand was heavy and left his cheek stinging. 

“Don’t you dare.” She hissed. “Don’t you dare talk like you’re not coming back, Jon Snow. If you’ve already given up, you’re not the man I thought you were.”

Her voice was the same as it had been this morning; confident, scathing, and demanding. Even though it shook ever so slightly. Even though her chin quivered as she spoke. 

“You’re gonna win.” She said. “You are. I won’t allow you to do anything else. You’re strong. You’re fast. You’re smarter than all those career pricks combined. If anyone has a chance out of the lesser districts, it’s you.”

Jon wanted so badly to believe her. But it was those career pricks that were stronger. Faster. That had been born and bred for the purpose of these games. That were shipped off to military academies as soon as they could walk. They’d been circling each other in sparring rings while he dug through trash for food.

“It’s just hunting. And who’s better at that than you?”

His stomach turned at her choice of words. “I hunt animals. Not people.”

“In a week they’ll have you trapped in that arena like a bunch of animals.” Ygritte snapped. “There is no difference in this situation. They’ve made it so that there’s no difference, Jon. Don’t let your head get you killed.”

She was right. He hated that she was right.

There was a rap of knuckles on the door, and Ygritte was hugging him close to her again. He held her back and was sure they would have to pull him away from her, until she pulled back from him first, and gave him the most gentle kiss she was capable of.

“Promise me.” More tears rushed down her cheeks. 

“I’ll try.” He said. For her, for the Watch, he would.

“You will.” Ygritte corrected. 

The door opened. The two peacekeepers strode through to take her.

Jon would remember the last words she spoke to him for the rest of his life. Not because they were sweet, or tender, but because they were anything but. 

“You’ve already got one less competitor.” Ygritte said.  “She’s dead already. 22 more to go.

The words were meant to comfort him. They didn’t.

Jon was not expecting another visitor. 

Ygritte’s words still rang in his ears. He was staring at the floor, willing the sick feeling inside of him to go away. He did not trust himself to close his eyes. He would be back there, in the rain. Starving. Watching the back door to the bakery open—

The door opened. The door in front of him, now. Arya Stark walked through, and he felt his stomach drop. 

The peacekeepers closed the door behind her. 

She did not speak at first, she just stared at him. Her face was gaunt and her eyes were rimmed with red. Still, her shoulders were square. Her chin was held high. Like she was preparing for battle. And she had been. Until Sansa came along.

“I am—” Arya hesitated. Her voice was hoarse from screaming. “I’m not here to ask you to protect her. That wouldn’t be fair to you. You don’t owe her anything. Or me.”

Jon’s fists clenched helplessly at his side. He was biting the inside of his cheek so hard he was tasting blood again. 

“But if you could…” Tears started to run down her cheeks, and she wiped them away as if furious with herself. “But if you could just show her mercy.”

Mercy. The word made a shiver crawl down his spine. He began, “Arya—”

“She’s too gentle. She’s too soft.” She almost spits the words out. “You know as well as I do that she doesn't stand a chance. That’s why I’m not asking you to save her. You can’t help someone who can’t help themselves.” 

She said it all so spitefully, so disgustedly, but he knew it was all aimed at herself. She blamed herself for what was happening to her sister. Part of Jon blamed her too and he hated himself for it.

“If the Careers get to her…” Arya’s shoulders shook, but she did not sob. She did not break. “If it ever gets to that point, promise me you’ll just kill her quickly. If you’re able to.”

He thought of that choked sound she had made that day as he sat in the rain. That same sound she made when Arya’s name was called. He thought of her tears.

“I promise.” He heard himself say, before he even really had time to think about it.

That day in the rain.  

He was 14. It had only been two weeks since he left the community home. He was starving. He took to digging through the trash of the merchant sector for meals. That day, there was nothing edible, not even an apple core.

He remembered stumbling past the bakery as a customer walked out. He remembered the smell of fresh bread making him fall to his knees. He couldn’t get up, not even to crawl to their trash cans. His vision was fuzzy at the edges. All of his limbs felt heavy and clumsy. The pain in his stomach was sharp. His heart hurt with every beat.

The baker’s wife came out. She screamed at him to move, though Jon could not understand a word she was saying, as if his head was underwater. But he understood the kicks to his ribs well enough. They knocked whatever resolve was left in him as he lay on the wet, cracked concrete. He hardly had the strength to keep breathing.

She left at some point. Jon opened his eyes and found she was gone. Like she had vanished into thin air. If not for the pain in his stomach, he would have questioned whether it happened or not entirely. He did not know how long he sat there before the door to the bakery opened. He smelled the sweet, heavy scent of bread. It was the closest thing he had to food. He contemplated just staying there. Damn the peacekeepers. He would be dead before long anyway. Feet sloshed through the mud. He was sure the witch had come back to finish the job.

But it wasn’t her. Or her husband. It was a girl. 

He knew her. They went to the same school, but she was a year or two below him, and she was taught with the rest of the merchant sector kids anyway. But they walked home the same way sometimes. Or they used to. He hadn't been to school in a while.

Suddenly, she was kneeling over him. She was talking and he could not hear her. She was nudging him insistently, so vigorously her hood fell off. She was pushing something into his hand, and it took him a moment before he realized what it was. 

Bread. A whole loaf. Fresh and hot, wrapped in a threadbare scarf meant for much warmer weather. Jon looked at her, disbelieving. His hands tightened around the bread, scared she would change her mind and take it back.

But she wasn’t. Her mouth was still moving. Go, she kept saying. The one word he kept catching. And then peacekeeper. That made him move then. Jon stuffed the bread under his shirt and ran on shaky legs and didn’t look back. 

The bread lasted him for a week. Long enough for him to gather the courage and try to teach himself how to hunt. Long enough for him to meet Ygritte and the rest of the foundlings that were like him. She gave him the chance to live long enough to have a life. A family.

You don’t owe her anything. 

For the past four years, Jon had never been able to shake the feeling that he owed her everything.

Petyr Baelish. The only victor the northern district had ever had, and because of this, their mentor in the games. He met them at the train station, having missed the Reaping due to “Court business,” as he called it, with a flick of his white hand. Jon did not miss the way Tyrion sneered at him, perhaps bitter he had no court business. 

Baelish was a small man, and he had been a small boy during his games. He used that to his advantage, playing the weak and helpless little boy that his fellow tributes forgot about because he had such a knack for staying out of sight. He did not reveal his cunning until the last minute, when he stabbed a tribute that was twice his size in the neck. Jon kept that in mind as Baelish shook his head and expressed his most humble apologies and sincere greetings. He wasn’t to be trusted, mentor or no.

“You look exactly like your mother.” Baelish said to Sansa, whose eyes widened.

“You knew my mother?”

She sounded so desperate that it hurt to listen to her. He often wondered what was worse: losing your parents young or never having them at all. But Jon could not bring himself to compare their suffering. 

“A beautiful, headstrong woman.” Baelish said. “Who clearly raised a beautiful, headstrong young lady.”

At that, Sansa blushed, ducking her head. But her smile was forced, and he knew she was lost in the memories of the mother she lost. Maybe even her brother and father too. 

Baelish led her to the train with his hand on the small of her back. Jon didn’t like that, but he wasn’t sure if that was because of the clear favoritism their mentor was already showing her or simply because he was touching her.

He did not want to know.

They had supper on the train. It came in courses. Creamy soup. Leafy salad. Lamb chops. Green beans. Cake. Jon ate until he couldn’t eat anymore. He had not allowed himself to indulge in the luxuries provided in the room they gave him—hot running water and well tailored clothes—but he allowed himself this. He would need to put on as much weight as he could before the games, and turn it into muscle. The clothes were out of the question, though. He would not become their doll.

Sansa obviously did not feel the same way. She looked every inch the King’s Landing beauty in her new clothes. Her blouse was the color of the sugared violets on the cakes at the bakery. Her hair was loose and flowing down her shoulders. He had never seen her wear pants before. He would have remembered. He hated even begrudgingly admitting that to himself. 

They were on yet another course, but Jon could not eat anymore. He fought to keep his food down. Sansa did not look much better, but she still looked at her chocolate cake forlornly. He would have thought she had her fill of cakes, living above a bakery. Apparently not.

It was at that moment Baelish spoke, eyes flicking between them. “What do you think the key is to surviving the arena?” 

Jon did not answer, afraid he might throw up and not feeling too amiable towards Baelish besides. Sansa didn’t answer, and for a moment he thought she had more spine than he thought.

“Fire?” She offered tentatively. “To cook food and keep warm?”

“Fire will get you killed. It lets everyone know where you are.”

The words left his mouth harsher than he intended them too, but he could not find it in himself to care. There was no way she could be so naive, could she? She would be the Career’s first meal if she was. 

She looked at him. Her cheeks were pink, and her mouth was turned down slightly at the corners. Her chin set stubbornly. “There was that year five tributes froze to death because they couldn’t light a fire in the arena.”

“Better to die a popsicle than bludgeoned.” Jon retorted. “If you’re stupid enough to light a fire, then you should at least be able to protect yourself.” 

You can’t. He didn’t say it. But the implication was there. He watched her suck in a breath as if he hit her. His chest felt like it was burning. Once again, he hated her.

“He’s right about that first part.” Baelish said, patting Sansa’s hand. “It’s best to keep the fires to a minimum, my dear. Even for food.”

Sansa nodded at that, eyes moving back to her plate.

“So what’s your answer?” Tyrion asked, swirling his wine in his cup.

Jon was not fond of Tyrion either, but since he had shot down her answer so passionately he had to offer a rebuttal or else he would look foolish.

“Weapons.” He said shortly. 

“Where are you gonna get weapons from?”

“The cornucopia.”

Tyrion snorted at that. “You’ll be dead before you get your hand on these weapons you speak of. The cornucopia’s a bloodbath. Most of the tributes that die on the first day die because of the cornucopia. You’ll have to think smarter if you want to survive.”

Fury clawed his way up his throat, warring with embarrassment. Fury won. “What the hell do you know about surviving?”

“Jon.”

She had never said his name before. She was saying it now. Jon looked at her, and he knew she understood. The audacity for someone to say this never having lived like them. Never having to fight like them. But ever so slightly, she shook her head, as if to tell him it wasn’t worth it. He wished he really did hate her.

But Tyrion simply smiled, mouth curving. “More than you know, boy.”

He bristled at being called that, but he did not say anything back. And he did not look away, either. He stared at Tyrion in his ugly face, in his mismatched eyes. He stared until Tyrion cleared his throat and looked away.

“He’s also right.” Baelish said, smiling that serpentine smile. “The cornucopia is a risk that only careers can afford to take. The rest of us….” He did not finish, but drank some wine.

Sansa took that opportunity to ask, “So what is the key?”

“Sponsors, my dear.” He seemed pleased with her inquisitiveness. “One parachute can be the difference between life and death. You want to survive? Make them love you. Make them want you.”

He was touching her hand again. Jon wanted to cut it away from her. The way he looked at her made his skin crawl. He searched her face for any sign of the same.

But Sansa was standing up, heading toward the windows. He had avoided them with purpose the entire time. He did not want to see his home fade behind him.

It wasn’t home outside that window. It was a city. Large, sprawling, and cluttered. Even through the window, he could hear the screams. Not of sorrow or horror, but joy. Excitement. 

“They’re all waiting for us.” She said in astonishment. 

He did not have to go to her side to visualize what she saw. Hundreds of thousands King’s Landing sycophants jumping up and down in their ridiculous fashion, screaming their throats hoarse. Not for them, exactly, but for their blood. At the prospect that in just a week, it would be spilled. 

And yet, Sansa waved at them.

She waved, and she forced a smile, bright and blinding. It made him stop breathing even from the side. The screams got louder. She waved more. 

“Not a slow learner at all, that one.” Tyrion mused, tipping his drink towards her, as he slid a glance over at him. “You better watch out.”

The opening ceremonies. A tradition that introduced the tributes to King’s Landing in a more formal way. It would be the first chance sponsors got to take a look at their prospects. Considering what Baelish said at dinner on the train and then again at breakfast this morning, it was just as important as any training. As he was pushed into the arms of several gaudy looking female stylists with brightly colored hair that left them looking like a flock of tropical birds, he tried to keep that in mind. 

They hosed him down with hot water. They scrubbed his body until they had removed all the dirt. Then they hosed him again, and proceeded to dry him off and grease him up with lotion. It alleviated the stinging but he felt like a domestic teacup pig. 

They put him in an empty room, wearing a paper gown he felt immensely stupid in. He had asked for his clothes back, rather civilly he thought, but the women just gave him a disbelieving look before turning their noses up and leaving. He found himself wishing he had snapped at them. 

Sansa came in not long after, wearing the same paper gown. She had to be helped into her seat with the help of one of her prep team. Her legs were wobbling, pale, shiny and smooth. It took longer than he cared to admit to stop looking at them.

Jon looked at her face and instantly wished that he hadn’t. They had done something to it. It was brighter. Her eyebrows had more of an arch. Her mouth was soft and glossy. She had been beautiful before, but now she was something else entirely. He found it hard to keep looking at her, so he stopped.

“Ellaria will be with you both momentarily.” The woman who had helped Sansa sit down said. Her skin was turquoise.

Her prep team left them alone. They sat in silence. He did not speak. Neither did she. He was glad for it. He closed his eyes and pretended that she wasn’t there at all. 

Their stylist was a woman. Stunning. Dornish, with thick dark hair that tumbled down her back. Compared to her team, she was understated. No dyed skin. No absurd wigs. The most she had was a golden tattoo of a viper that wrapped around her arm. Her dress was the same color.

“That was very brave of you.” Ellaria said. “What you did for your sister.” 

She looked at Sansa as she said it. She was apparently not one for introductions. Part of him would have been glad for it if he hadn’t watched Sansa stiffen in the corner of his eye. 

“Thank you.” She managed to say stiltedly. 

“I’m sorry this happened to you.” Ellaria turned to look at him, then. Her dark eyes were warm. Disarmingly gentle.  “Both of you.”

Sympathy. There was no place for it at the Wall. There wasn’t here, either. He hated that she was being so nice. It would be much easier to stay focused and angry if he wasn’t being reminded of how unfair this all was.

“All anyone has done is congratulate us.” Sansa said in a small voice.

Jon thought of the way Mayor Umber had shaken his hand after his name was drawn and he thought of the way his own prep team had chirped about how exciting it all must be for him. His hatred rose up again, his rock and old companion.

Ellaria’s mouth tightened. “I don’t see children being sent to their deaths as something worth congratulating.” 

She was the first person he had ever heard say something like that. Ever. At least the first person of her kind. He didn’t know any King’s Landing civilians that took such a stance. It shocked him, but almost immediately, it numbed him. Because what could she do about it?

As if she had read his mind, she said, “I am here to help you to make sure you aren’t those children.”

The more attractive the tribute, the more sponsors they tended to get. Jon looked over at Sansa and figured that maybe she did have a chance. It relieved him and frightened him at the same time. If they both had a chance to win, they’d have a chance to kill each other. 

“You have to make them love us.” She said, and sounded the fiercest he ever heard her. Us. Like they were a team.

Maybe she didn’t have a chance after all.

The corner of Ellaria’s mouth quirked up, almost sadly. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

Ellaria promised they wouldn’t actually be on fire. 

But that wasn’t necessarily true. Jon had expected fake flames out of a spray can or something—not that he knew the logistics of that, but Dornish Scientists were most resourceful when they wanted to be. Ellaria did indeed produce a spray can, but it sprayed out something clear. No fire. 

She showed them how it worked. She sprayed her hand first. And, much to Sansa’s horror, took a torch to it. Flames engulfed her palm, but Ellaria’s face didn’t contort in pain. Nor did her skin blister and blacken. 

“It worked!” She cried, relieved. 

Jon’s eyes narrowed. “You set your hand on fire without knowing if it would work?”

“Nevermind that.” Ellaria waved him off. “Who wants to go first?”

Sansa did, ever the people pleaser. She endured it regally, straight backed and still. Her cape caught aflame, and she flinched minutely. But when the rest of her body did not follow, she sighed in relief, and allowed Ellaria to spray the crown on her head too. Jon went next, and was surprised to find the most he felt from the flames was a warm breeze. 

“They’re gonna love you.” Ellaria said to Sansa, and when she turned to him, said, “As much as they fear you.” 

Like the tributes ahead of them, they were loaded into a chariot led by four horses. They had minutes before they would leave for the dragon pit. His stomach clenched. They weren’t even in the arena yet, but they were definitely playing the game. 

“Chins high.” Ellaria commanded, gesturing to her own neck. “And remember what I said about love and fear. You’ve already got the fear part. The love part is up to you two. Smile.”

Smile. Jon sneered to himself. He didn’t even smile when he wasn’t counting down the days to his death. How did anyone expect him to start now? Before he could answer that for himself, the horses kicked into a trot and the chariot was off. 

At the sight of them, as Ellaria predicted, there were the initial screams of fear and alarm. But after they got over it, everyone gasped in awe and started to shout again, but this time in delight.

There were huge screens up on the skyscrapers of the ceiling. He saw himself there. The firelight illuminated some of his face and left shadows in others. He looked mysterious. Fierce.

Sansa looked different.

It was her hair. The crown on her head made her look like the term Ygritte always used to describe herself: kissed by fire. Her smile was dazzling. He knew he did not imagine the crowd screaming even louder when she blew a kiss. She wasn’t just beautiful, she was—

Striking.

The girl kissed by fire was on fire.

Jon found it in himself to somewhat follow her lead. He raised a hand to wave, and more people screamed. He did not smile, but he did his best to look somewhat amiable, softening the hardened features he saw on the big screen.

He felt something soft brush his palm, Sansa’s fingers lacing through his. He immediately pulled away, but Sansa held onto him fast and looked over at him, and suddenly he was frozen.

“Love and fear, remember?” She whispered.

When she laced his fingers together, he did not pull away. It was as if he was outside of himself. The crowd started chanting for their district. She held up their joined hands, as  if they were a team. Roses were thrown at them, as the crowd went wild. They clearly bought it. Jon didn’t. 

He couldn’t afford to. 

The Gamemakers were generous enough to give them two weeks to train. 

For that duration of time, they would live at the Tribute Center, honing the skills they’d use in the arena every day. Baelish, however, recommended otherwise the morning before their first training session. 

“It would be prudent to keep the skill you may have with any weapon under wraps.” He said at breakfast. “They will file that away and use it against you. Especially the Careers.”

Jon remembered how Baelish won his games and knew this information was from experience. As if it was exactly what he had done. 

Unfortunately, he saw the wisdom in the advice. So each day at the training center, Jon would focus more on everything that could help him survive than picking up a weapon. He tested his knowledge on poisonous and edible plants. He learned to make several different kinds of knots. He practiced making snares, and covering them up. And through all the mundane work, he took note of his fellow tributes. 

The careers were the most dangerous. Val, the girl from one, was better with a bow and arrow than him. The boy from her district was huge, almost seven feet tall, and responded to nothing other than the Hound even though his name was Sandor. The girl from four was called Joy, and could throw knives at objects, moving or not, from a considerable distance. Her companion, Darkstar, was deadly with a broadsword.

But none of them made him feel as uneasy as the tributes from two. Ramsay was good with an axe. Myranda preferred to fight with a sickle. Two impractical objects, yet they both moved with them like the weapons were just another limb. They took joy in talking about their favorite games. They took even more joy talking about their favorite kills.

There were other tributes that caught his eye, too. Brienne from three, who could lift a hundred pounds in each arm easily. Satin from 8, who could seemingly make a weapon appear out of nowhere. Shireen from 11, their youngest at 13 years old, who could blend into shadows as if she was a shadow herself. She seemed to like Sansa’s shadow the best, though, following her for three stations in a row. Jon kept an eye on her. 

Sansa did not seem to notice. Jon did not know if she was observing the other tributes like he was, but she certainly took Baelish’s other words to heart, and worked on her survival skills. Although she had no skill with weapons in the first place, it was better to let them think she did. She tended to be a station behind him rather than just coming to the stations with him. Perhaps she didn’t want to be seen together. That was fine with him. The more he separated himself from her now, the easier it would be in the arena later. 

One day, though, he saw her at the camouflage station. He had only been there once since they arrived, but he noticed Sansa visited it everyday. The instructor that manned it was always pleased to see her, and gushed over her work. It wasn’t until Jon found himself making his way toward her that he realized why. 

There was no paint in the wild, so there was no paint at the station. They were only to use a combination of mud, berry juices, and sap. Sansa somehow did just that to transform the skin of her pale arm into tree bark.

“How did you do that?” He couldn’t help but ask.

She beamed at him. Her smile was glowing, and Jon felt like he was standing in the sun. She said, a little bashfully, “It’s like a cake.”

He remembered the cakes in the window of her aunt and uncle’s bakery. He remembered the sugared violets, and the crests of whipped cream, and the birds on the frosting, wings splayed in flight. There were a lot of mockingjays on those cakes. 

He wondered what the cakes looked like back home now. If there were any still left with mockingjays on them. If there would be any after all this was over.

He knew she loved mockingjays because he knew she loved to sing. 

It was almost a week after she gave him the bread. He had skipped school and spent the day in the forest instead, trying his hand at hunting and failing again. He was surviving on plants at that point, but he wanted more than that. He had to have more if he didn’t want to waste away into skin and bone. 

He was walking back from the forest. The mockingjays wouldn’t stop whistling. He found himself wishing he could use a bow and arrow so he could shoot them all. But he couldn’t, so he didn’t. Instead, he trudged home back to the collapsing, abandoned house he was staying in. It was then that he started to hear the noise encouraging them. Not a whistle at all, but a soft and melodic run, and then, when it was repeated back, a laugh. 

He did not know her laugh. He barely knew her at all. That wasn’t what made him stay. It was the sound of her voice, so sweet and hopeful that just for a second, it made him imagine he was somewhere else. Just for a second, he was able to forget. 

She must have been walking them all home from school that day, Arya and her brothers. They were standing in the meadow so they could sing to the mockingjays. She had dandelions in the braid over her shoulder. Arya was trying to teach her how to whistle rather than just sing, but her brothers insisted that she kept singing. So she did.

Until she saw him standing there in the brush. Arya pointed just near where he stood, swearing she saw a rabbit, and he made the mistake of stepping back. A twig crunched underneath his feet. Four sets of eyes found him, squinting into the forest. 

Sansa and her brothers had the same eyes, clear summery blue. But the boys looked at him with curiosity. Wonder. She looked at him like she saw a ghost, and it wasn’t until she turned around fully that he realized why. 

Below her right eye, there was a half healed welt. The bruising around it was dark and fading. That told him at one point, it had been much worse. He didn’t have to remember the way the baker’s wife had kicked in his ribs to figure out how it happened. 

Jon didn’t know what to say. 

He didn’t have to say anything. Sansa clapped a hand over her face to cover her bruise, and began to hurriedly usher her siblings down the road. 

She walked so fast the dandelions started to fall from her hair. 

It was halfway through the first week that Sansa made the mistake of trying her hand at the archery station. Her arms trembled as she drew the drawstring back. The first arrow barely made it halfway to the target. The second one was no better off. 

Laughter erupted from where the Careers were swinging their swords. He did not miss that that was the opportunity Ramsay decided to take that moment to cut the head clean off one of the dummies. He didn’t miss the way Sansa’s fingers trembled at her side either. 

Jon gritted his teeth.

He should have stayed where he was. He should have focused on his knots. But he couldn’t help but remember his promise of mercy to Arya. He couldn’t help but remember that day in the rain. 

You don’t owe her anything. 

He owed her a life debt, there was no question about it. But what was the point in paying it if she would die by someone else’s hand just as soon as he was gone?

“You’re too weak.” He said to her, once he reached her side.

Sansa’s cheeks colored. She set the bow back down on the rack. “I know.”

“I don’t mean that as an insult. You have no definition in your arm muscles. You need to start developing upper body strength before you even go near a bow and arrow.”

Jon didn’t tell her that there was no time for that. Instead, he said, “If you want to start practicing with a weapon, it should be a knife.”

That one word seemed to make her pale. “I don’t know how to use a knife, either.”

“Anyone can use a knife.” He said, maybe a little too harshly. “Just stab.” 

She flinched at that, even though she tried her best not to. He almost repeated Ygritte’s own words to him. It’s just hunting. But Sansa had never been hunting a day in her life. That was Arya. 

“Killing is killing. Knife or arrow, it doesn’t matter. You either kill them or die. Do you understand that?”

She looked at him, and for the first time since they arrived, he realized that despite her following Baelish, Tyrion, and Ellaria’s directions to the letter, that maybe she had no real intentions of surviving. A scary thought occurred to him, one that wondered if she would even try. 

“Look. If you can’t kill, you run.” He instructed. “I’ve seen you run. You can be fast when you want to be. And you climb. That’s what you should be working on. Climbing. The Careers are all too broad to follow you up if you get high enough. You’re tall, but you’re still skinny. That will help. And the other tributes will be focusing on running from the Careers. So you climb and you run. Do you hear me?”

Sansa stared, chin quivering, but she nodded. She did not cry. She took several steadying breaths and nodded again, more to herself. 

He was just about to walk away, cursing himself for even trying, when she said his name. That was all it took to stop him.

“Why are you helping me?” She asked, voice barely above a whisper. “I thought you hated me.”

He did hate her. He hated her for volunteering in Arya’s place, who would have had an infinitely better chance at surviving. He hated her for saving his life and hanging this debt over his head. He hated her for singing to those mockingjays. For wearing those dandelions in her hair. 

“I do.” Jon said finally. “More than you know.”

Her eyes were even more glassy, but not a tear was shed. She shivered.

He walked away from her, hoping she feared him enough to be smart but secretly wishing she didn’t.

Sansa kept her distance from him afterward, but she took his advice. Thereafter, she was always climbing—the towering steel bars and the trellis of rope. Jon did not monitor her progress. He already allowed himself to care too much. Instead, he kept faking. Kept observing. 

Evaluations came sooner than he would have liked. They would have one more night in King’s Landing before they would leave for the arena after this. One more night until the 24 of them would start to drop like flies, and only one remained. 

“Use those skills you’ve been hiding this entire time.” Baelish told them that morning at breakfast. “Make sure they remember you.” 

“If you don’t, you’re dead already.” Tyrion added darkly. 

They started with District 1, so naturally, district 12 was last. Two hours had passed before it was finally their turn. To Jon’s surprise, they called his name first.

He was about to open the door when he looked back. He didn’t know why. But he found she was already looking at him.

She offered him a tentative smile. “Shoot straight.” 

Jon’s brow furrowed. He’d been careful not to reveal any of his strengths. “How’d you—”

“Arya buys your squirrels.” Her cheeks were flushed as she spoke, but she did not duck out of his gaze. “She likes that you always hit them right in the eye. Every time.”

Jon thought of home. Of hunting with Ygritte. Of trading to Arya. Of his promise in one hand in his debt in the other. He wanted to ask if she still remembered what he told her. He wanted to tell her to pull out every trick in the book. To paint. To run. To climb. To do whatever it took to live. To not give up. 

He did not. He walked right through those doors instead.

He repeated his name for the third time, a little louder.  “Jon Snow.”

The tide of chatter among the evaluators quieted into a whisper. They still did not appear too interested. If anything, they looked bored. Kevan Lannister, the head gamemaker, merely said to him, “You have 10 minutes.”

Then he turned back to his conversation.

Jon tried not to pay it any mind, just as he tried his best to ignore the fury rising inside of him. Instead, he picked up the bow and arrow waiting at the station. The strings were more taut than what he was used to. He shot at the target, and missed. Laughter sounded from above. He clenched his jaw. 

Pay them no mind. 

He started again. This time, he aimed for the dummy used for knife practice, a more narrow target than the bullseye provided. He worked best like this; leaving himself no room for mistakes. When he released the arrow that time, it pierced the heart. He shot again and again, until the dummy was covered in them. He even aimed for the rope holding up the sandbag, skewering it so that it busted open on the ground. All the way from across the room. 

But, he reminded himself, Val was good with an arrow too.

So he picked up a sword, and pressed the button he had seen Ramsay press again and again, initiating the simulation of an attack. A shade of a faceless figure flickered before him, poised to fight. He did something he would not normally do, and attacked first.

He regretted it.

The clang of steel against steel was real. It felt real, jarring his teeth. He did not let that deter him. He pressed himself out of defense and into offence, swinging and slashing until he pierced the defense, thrusting clean into the belly of his attacker. The wet slide of the blade against flesh made him want to drop the weapon immediately. But Jon held onto it fast, until the figure exploded into a shower of sparks. Sweat poured off of his body and he felt like he was gonna be sick when he finally looked up above him.

Kevan Lannister wasn’t even watching. 

His back was turned, and so were the backs of several other Gamemakers. Only a few had watched his display and nodded in approval at him. One even clapped. But the rest—most of them—couldn’t even be bothered with him. 

Jon was so angry his entire body shook. 

Blood roared in his ears. His heart pounded. He did not have the excuse of not thinking. He was thinking all too clearly. About how his fate rested in the hands of these people who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to him. These people who had done nothing to be better than him and the other people who lived in 12 other than be born. These people with their running water and working electricity and expensive clothes. All granted to them by the people in the districts who broke their backs for them, only to have their children sacrificed in return. 

Jon dragged one of the biggest weights they had over. He lifted it off the ground only a couple inches at first. It had to be close to a hundred pounds. But he was so angry, he lifted it the rest of the way easily. 

And he threw it.

It sailed through the open window, landing right on top of the glass table, shattering it upon impact. The Gamemakers gasped in unison, before whirling to look over their shoulders. 

They remembered he was here now. 

Jon bowed only slightly, before he took his leave.

“Are you out of your mind?” Sansa nearly shouted. 

It was right before dinner when she stormed up to him. The scores would be announced at any second. He had been hiding in his room since, staring at the door, waiting for someone to come get him, a steak knife he stole from dinner the other night in hand. He would not go quietly.

But nobody came to take him at all.

“It appears he is.” Baelish said, but there was an amused gleam in those gray green eyes. “At least a little bit.”

Sansa ignored that. “You’re gonna get yourself killed before you set foot in the arena!”

“If anything, he got himself a first class ticket to the Victor Parade.” Tyrion said, as he had finally stopped laughing long enough to speak. The second Jon came into the room, he burst into a fit of chuckles, and hadn’t stopped.

“By trying to hurt the Gamemakers?” She hisses incredulously. 

“By trying to hurt Kevan. My sister hates our uncle. Naming him Head Gamemaker was more out of necessity than anything else.” Then he leaned back, grinning over at Jon. “Anyone who embarrasses him has her stamp of approval.”

Jon sat there, stunned. He remembered the queen at the opening ceremony. Her beautiful face. Her cold emerald green eyes. The permanent smirk that seemed to curve her mouth. As if she was waiting to be amused. Apparently, he had amused her, alright.

“But the queen isn’t a Gamemaker.”  Sansa insisted.

“No.” Tyrion shrugged. “She just hired half of them so they’ll all do exactly what she says.”

“If there’s one thing the queen loves, it’s a good show.” Baelish agreed, before inclining his head. “Not bad, Snow.”

But Sansa was not pleased. As a matter of fact, her fists were clenched at her side like she was of mind to hit him. “We’re supposed to be making them love us. Not resent us for causing the queen to force their hand.” 

She was right. Jon hated that, so he pretended as if he couldn’t care less about what she was saying so she couldn’t tell. “Your strategy. Not mine.”

“I doubt you even had a strategy.” She snapped back. “You probably weren’t even thinking at all.”

Anger churned inside of him. He pushed off of the couch fast and had barely made a step towards her when he saw her flinch.

Jon didn’t move.

It was gone, the welt and the bruising on her cheek from all those years ago. But in that moment, he saw it clear as day like he did in the meadow. That day when he did absolutely nothing after he saw it. Not even thank her. Not even apologize. He just let her go back to that bakery, to that evil woman. He never saw a bruise on her again, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He had no way of knowing just how much she endured over the years, but he did know however small or big it was, it was his fault. 

And by the way she stepped away from him, she knew that.

The national anthem started playing on the screen, letting everyone know that it would be time soon. Sansa turned her back on him and sat beside Baelish. Jon followed suit, making his way back to his seat stiffly.

Ellaria and their prep teams came to watch with them too. He had no idea why, but he was glad for it. It seemed to brighten Sansa’s mood, if only by a fraction. She kissed Jon’s cheek before taking her seat on Sansa’s other side, lacing their fingers. 

Illyrio Mopatis prefaced the scoring by explaining how it worked, as if they hadn’t been doing this for close to 80 years now. First, they showed a picture of the tribute—the ones they took that first day of training in the tribute center—and their score would flash underneath. The highest score was 12. Careers usually scored within the 8-10 range. Sometimes, the other tributes got lucky too.

Joy got an 8. Darkstar was the first 10. Val was the next, and Sandor followed her. Myranda got a 9. Out of all of them, only Ramsay got an 11. 

Brienne faired pretty well for herself, scoring a 9. Beric, the boy with the eyepatch from District 11, surprised everyone and scored the second 11. But they were the only ones. Everyone else could hardly score above a four. But the little girl, Shireen, managed to score a 7. It was not until Sansa’s photo came up that he realized it wasn’t his score he was worried about. 

5.

Not the best. Not even halfway to the best. It was just barely average. It wasn’t the worst score, but it was still at the bottom. 

Sansa’s hands shook. 

“The scores are just so people can place their bets. They don’t really mean anything.” Ellaria squeezed her hand. “There was a Victor with a three that won once.”

“It’s something we can still work with.” Baelish said, and he did not seem worried at all. “Not to worry, my dear.”

He felt like he did at the Reaping. Numb. Powerless. Hopeless. He was about to get up to leave, when he heard his name. Saw his picture. Read the number underneath it.

12.

“What did I tell you?” Tyrion said smugly, as Ellaria leapt up screaming to throw her arms around him. She kissed both of his cheeks. Both prep teams congratulated him excitedly, swarming him like jovial little bees. He must have thanked them over and over again, though he didn’t feel very thankful at all. Thanks to the queen’s generosity, he had a target on his back. He would be the Career’s first hunt. 

Over Ellaria’s shoulder, he found Sansa staring at him, white faced, and he knew she had realized the same. 

“I told you that was stupid.” 

She was waiting for him at the door of his room, right after dinner. She had excused herself early. Jon had been relieved. He was not sure how much longer he could take her staring at him.

“Why do you care?” He snapped at her. “You should be celebrating. If the Careers are busy hunting me down, then they won’t be paying attention to you. And once they pick me off, that’s one less person you have to look over your shoulder for. One step closer to victory.”

“If having what it takes to win means pretending I don’t care what happens to you, then maybe I don’t want to win.” She said hotly. 

The way she was looking at him burned him. Burned through him. Her jaw was set stubbornly and her fists were balled at her side. She meant every single word. She was prepared to fight him on this. He hated her for that, too. Why did she always have to fight for the wrong things?

“We are not friends. Get that through your head.” Jon said quietly. “You can’t play this game in teams.”

She was breathing so heavily, that he saw the moment she stopped. The moment the hurt flickered across her face. The moment she stiffened. 

Jon sidestepped her and went into his room,  shutting the door behind him. 

The interviews. Jon spent the entire first half of the day rehearsing for it with Tyrion. It was more than just answering practice questions. He was also forced to practice his posture—caveman like according to Tyrion—the way he walked—his strides were too long—and the way he talked—he didn’t enunciate clearly, being from the north. The last critique angered him probably more than he should have, which led him to making a snide comment about Tyrion’s alcoholism, to which he pointedly poured himself another glass of red.

When he left during the afternoon to get ready, he felt no more ready than he had when he woke up. But there was no time to worry about it. His prep team set to work on him. They trimmed his hair. They shaved him. They dressed him—all black again with accents of red. No tunic, this time. A suit that fit him perfectly.

“You’ll do just fine.” Ellaria said to him, fingers combing through his hair. She had glitter on her hands. 

“Tyrion said I have the personality of a piece of coal.” He told her. He had no idea why he did, but he found he needed to tell someone. “A stubborn and mulish piece of coal.”

“That just means there’s a diamond lurking underneath.” She replied. 

Jon said nothing. He was afraid he would sound nervous. 

“Just pretend that you’re talking to someone you like. Like a friend. You have those, don’t you?”

He wanted to remind her that none of these people were his friends. Not even her. But this was something he needed to do if he wanted to survive. 

He thought of the Watch back home. If they saw him now, they would probably laugh their throat hoarse. Then he’d probably punch them. And then they’d drink some of the alcohol they used to treat their hurts. And they’d probably start fighting again. 

“We’re not very nice to each other.” Jon admitted. “Sometimes, I don’t think they like me that much.”

Ellaria gave him a look. “Sansa said you have no clue of the effect you have on people.”

He had done so good at pretending she didn’t exist all day. It was easy, as she did all of her rehearsals with Baelish. And now here she was, back in his head again. 

“She should learn to mind her own business.” He said. “Tell her I said that. I’ve already told her several times, but maybe she’ll listen to you. She likes you better than me.”

Ellaria tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. A motherly gesture that catches him off guard. “You and I both know that’s not true.”

Jon bit the inside of his cheek so hard that it bled. 

Later, when they were leaving for the Dragon Pit, Ellaria, Baelish, Sansa, and her prep team were missing. He told himself it was none of his business in the elevator. He repeated this in the car. But then he was backstage with all the other tributes, waiting for his turn, and Sansa was still nowhere to be seen. Each interview was only five minutes. Shireen, the district 11 tribute, was onstage by the time Sansa finally showed up, with Baelish and Ellaria behind her.

He could see why she was late. 

Everything about the way she looked was precise. Careful. The way her hair was arranged at the top of her head, with several wavy strands framing her face. The golden crystals that dusted her bare shoulder. The full red of her mouth. The way the gems on her dress reflected everytime she moved, as if she was catching fire. When she looked at him, he felt like he had been flung out to outer space and had come face to face with the sun. She was radiant. Deadly. Jon had to look away from her in order to breathe.

“It’s about time.” Tyrion said, but Jon did not miss the way his eyes roved over her, again and again.

“Am I too late?” Sansa asked, eyes wide. 

“Not quite.” Baelish said, when Shireen walked off the stage and the district 11 boy took her place. “It’s almost time.”

“You will both do great.” Ellaria said, kissing both of their cheeks. At Sansa, she paused. “Remember what we talked about. Don’t forget to spin.”

She nodded, smiling a little tremulously. 

Baelish only gave her a significant look, to which she nodded once. Then he kissed her cheek too, before him, Ellaria, and Tyrion left to go take their seats in the crowd. 

They were alone. They said nothing to each other. There were so many words crowded in his throat that Jon resolved to say nothing at all. Sansa did not seem to feel the same. She acted as if he didn’t exist. 

He almost gave in, but only because he wanted to know if in that moment, she was as scared as he was. He never got a chance to ask her. The moment her name was announced, she walked onstage.

She was on fire. 

When Sansa spun around just like Ellaria asked her to, smoke curled at the edges of her gown. The more she spun around, the more flames licked her dress—orange, red, purple. She was a tornado of heat and flames. The crowd screamed louder than he had heard it so far tonight. She spun so hard, so fast, she had to clutch Illyrio Mopatis’ arm to keep from falling when she stopped, giggling.

They loved her.

When she laughed, the audience laughed. When Illyrio asked her about her sister and she got somber, dozens of people in the audience seemed close to tears. And when she answered Illyrio’s questions like they were old friends, pretending to confide in him and the audience as she would a closest confidante, they leaned forward, honored and enraptured. 

“A beautiful girl like you—surely you must have suitors lining up out the door.” Illyrio teased. 

“Please.” Sansa blushed, the perfect image of the shy maiden. 

“Oh, come on! You’re telling me there isn’t one special lad?”

She hesitated.

Illyrio’s eyes grew wide. He crowed back at the crowd, “So there is a boy.”

Jon’s skin felt incredibly tight. It was an effort not to gnaw on the already scarred inside of his cheek.

“Yes...I’ve loved him for so long I forgot when it all started.” Then she folded her hands in her lap, shaking her head. “It’s complicated.”

“Any boy would fall over himself for a chance with you! Am I right, folks?”

The crowd cheered their agreement in response, hands up, as if they wanted to comfort her.

Before he dropped out of school, Jon remembered that so many boys liked her.  They would dress in their finest Reaping clothes and take what little they had that was worth of value to buy something sweet just so they could see her. Even some of the men at the mines talked about her, despite her age. Jon never said anything. The more they talked, the louder he pounded his pick axe. 

Whoever this boy was, he had certainly never heard of him.

“Not this boy. I don’t think he knew I existed until the day of the Reaping.”

“Impossible!” Illyrio cried, before clasping her hand. “Here’s what you do, girl on fire. You win this. You go home. And he’ll notice you then. He’d be a fool not to.”

The crowd cheered, and Sansa smiled at them. It was a sad, soft smile that made their applause die off immediately. “I don’t think winning will help in my case.”

“How could it not?” He frowned.

“Because...” She hesitated. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were trained on her hands in her lap. “He came here with me.”

The gasp from the crowd was collective. The silence after was deafening. 

Or maybe he just couldn’t hear. Jon was still, frozen in time as everything else moved around him. His heart was beating so loud that he could feel it in his ears, taste it at the back of his throat. He couldn’t have moved if he tried.

The buzzer must have sounded. Illyrio was standing up and shaking Sansa’s hand, showing her off to the crowd one last time. Their cheers, their applause—it was thundering. Her responding smile was shy. Tentative. Relieved at their acceptance. 

And suddenly, Jon knew better. 

This entire time, he had been talking to her about the game, when really, she knew her angle all along. She knew how to play everyone, including him. He shouldn’t have been mad. This was what he wanted. For her to fight to live. To do whatever it took. But he was more than mad, more than furious—because for a second he thought it was real. 

Illyrio announced to the crowd a commercial break was going to take place, and Sansa left the stage, the minute she was backstage, Jon didn’t waste any time. 

“What the hell did you just do?” 

Sansa met his eyes with a fierce gaze. Her face was still flushed. But gone was that shy, lovesick girl. “You have your strategies, I have mine.”

His words. She was using his own words against him. Jon was furious, and he could not stop himself from stepping forward. 

“When your strategies involve me, then you tell me.” He snapped. 

Sansa narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought we couldn’t play this game in teams, remember?”

“My dear.” 

Baelish was approaching them grinning widely, Without thinking, Jon grabbed him by the throat, and shoved him against the wall. 

“This was you.” He snarled, squeezing his hand. Baelish only gasped, clawing at his hand. 

“It was me!” Sansa shoved at his shoulder, but he still didn’t let go. She did it again. “It was my idea! He just helped me execute it.”

He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to look at her. So he just stayed there, his fingers digging into Baelish’s skinny neck. 

“Hey.” Tyrion yanked at the sleeve of his suit and although it wasn’t nearly strong enough to pull away, Jon let go, because he needed an excuse to. Baelish dropped to his knees, gasping. Sansa was at his side in an instant, trying to help him up. 

He turned away from her. 

“Are you out of your mind? ” Tyrion bellowed at him, uncharacteristically serious. 

“They made me look like an asshole in front of everyone—” Jon began heatedly.

“She did you a favor. Now there’s a chance of you making it through this interview without insulting someone, or worse.” Tyrion sneered. 

He opened his mouth, but he cut him off. “Your whole brooding bastard gig was starting to wear thin. She showed the audience a different side of you. She made you accessible. One of the most beautiful girls in Westeros wants you. If you play this right, all the sponsors are gonna be thinking about when you step into the arena is the two star crossed lovers from the north, and how to keep them alive.”

If he played this right. 

If he played this right, they’d be fan favorites. If he played this right, it was possible the Careers would hold off on hunting him in case it meant losing their own sponsors. He would be alive, at least long enough to figure out his own plan.

Illyrio was onstage. The cameras were zooming in. The commercial break was about to end. His palms were sweating. He rubbed them against his pants. He wondered if this was a part of her plan, too. Saving his ass.

He decided he did not want to know.

The Dragon Pit seated hundreds of thousands. 

And they were looking at him. They were all looking at him. The moment he came out, they clapped ferociously, and the moment he sat down, they stopped. As if someone had flipped a switch.

Illyrio was watching him expectantly, and Jon realized that while he was looking at the crowd he must have said something. He said, “What?”

Illyrio looked back at the crowd, sharing an exaggeratedly sympathetic look with them all. It irritated Jon, but he was determined not to let that show.

“I asked if you were backstage, listening to our girl on fire.” 

He raced through Tyrion’s lessons and coachings. They all sifted through his fingers like grains of sand. But it was a simple enough question. The truth would do. “Yes.”

“What do you think about what she said?” Illyrio leaned forward. “About you not noticing her?”

Pretend like you’re talking to a friend, Ellaria had said. But he would never talk to his friends about this. About her. He did not think he even said her name aloud to anyone before today. Or at all. He had no calculated response. No clever deflection. Only the truth.

He could not look at Illyrio as he said it. “She’s impossible not to notice.”

If he was going to make it through this, he could not look at the crowd. But he heard their reaction. Their gasps and swooning. 

“That’s what I told her!” Illyrio exclaimed. “Everyone saw her tonight, did they not?”

The crowd went wild at that, crying out their enthusiastic assent. All Illyrio had to do was hold his hand up and it was quiet once more. 

“How did you feel when you saw her walk out tonight in that red dress?”

Confess. He seemed to be goading him. In front of everyone. The entire city. The whole country. Everyone back home. Ygritte. But he was doing this for her, wasn’t he? For a chance to get back to her?

“My heart stopped.” He said. “And I hated myself for it.”

Illyrio’s brow furrowed, the perfect picture of mystification. “Why was that?”

This truth, he had to force out. He had to yank it out from deep inside of him. It had been there for so long, and he hid it cleverly. It was not a relief to let go of. It felt like he was offering a part of him. The ugliest, most shameful part. 

He said, “Because I was wishing things were different.”

Jon didn’t sleep that night. 

He should have. It was the night before the games. He would be on the hovercraft by dawn. This was the last time he would be able to sleep safely. But he couldn’t make his eyes close. He tossed and turned in his bed, before ultimately making his way downstairs. 

Sansa was in the living room, curled up on the sill of the window. He would have gone back upstairs if she hadn’t looked over her shoulder at him. He should have. But that night, he ignored a lot of things that he should have done. He watched the city lights flicker over her pale skin as her chin rested on her knee. He couldn’t help but remember that this was the last time he would see her like this. Safe.

“I didn’t have a lot of choices.” She whispered. “I’m not like you.”

Not exactly an apology. He wasn’t expecting one. He didn’t need one, either. Before he could stop himself, he came to stand beside her. 

“You’re not like anyone.” He said back. 

She looked up at him. Her arms hugged her knees to her chest. “You could really win this.”

Jon looked away, unable to take the look in her eyes. He had no clue what it meant. “I could just as easily lose.”

“You won’t. You’ll win. You have to.”

His heart pounded so hard in his chest that it hurt to breathe. Hurt to talk. He tried both, but Sansa only cut him off. 

“You owe me.” She told him, voice quavering. “For that day in the rain. You owe me. You wouldn’t be alive without me. All I’m asking you to do in return is stay alive. Do whatever it takes to get back home. Tell Arya—”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them. With trembling fingers, she withdrew something from the pocket of her silk trousers and pressed it into her palm. It was a circle. A pin. A direwolf made of silver. 

“You give this back to her.” She finishes. “And you tell her it wasn’t her fault. And that I love her.”

“Tell her yourself.” Jon grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “When you get back. When you win— ”

“I can’t win!” She chokes out, “I can’t fight! I can’t hunt! I can’t kill— ”

“Then do what I told you.” He said fiercely. “Run. Climb. Survive. And don’t tell me you’re not a survivor, either. I know you are.”

Tears ran down her cheeks as she glared at him. “Why do you care so much?”

It was the same question he’d asked her the other day, when she had gotten mad at him for shooting at the Gamemakers. But that was different. He hadn’t saved her life four years ago at the cost of a beating. Her heart hadn’t stopped when she heard Tyrion say his name, and then her own because she realized she was absolutely powerless to keep him alive when she couldn’t even keep herself alive. 

As much as there was anger in her eyes, there was desperation. Desperation to understand this. Him. He wondered if he told her that if it came down to them at the end of all this, then he would slit his own throat without even flinching. She just had to get there, first. He wondered if he told her that, and why, would she believe him. 

“Because I owe you a debt.” He said. “Remember?”

The catacombs underneath the arena.

Despite the sterility of the chamber he stood in, it smelled like it always smelled underground—dank. Wet. He wondered if that meant they were somewhere tropical. But the outfit Ellaria gave him to wear contained nothing thermal: a thin hooded black jacket. A black shirt. Leather boots. Black cargos. 

He thought he was finished when Ellaria pulled something out of the folds of her loose, gauzy dress. A circular, silver pin. The one Sansa tried to give him last night. 

“She said she wanted you to have it.” Ellaria told him, fastening it to his shirt. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Jon thought of the last time they saw each other, on the hovercraft. Ellaria sat between them. They got their trackers inserted into their arms at the same time. They hadn’t spoken; she hadn’t looked at him and he hadn’t looked at her. It felt too much like a goodbye, even though that’s exactly what it was. Or would have been had they spoken to each other. 

There was nothing he could do but accept the pin. He hoped he would have a chance to give it back to her. To prove her wrong. 

A female voice announced that it was time to prepare for launch. That was when he realized that Ellaria was still with him.

“You should be with her.” Jon said. 

Ellaria smiled sadly. “She didn’t want me there. We said our goodbyes. Petyr is with her.”

The idea of Baelish being the last real person that Sansa saw made him angry. But once again, there was nothing he could do, so he went to go stand on the circular metal plate. 

The glass cylinder lowers around him. Ellaria presses her hand to the glass. He was surprised to find her eyes shining with tears. 

“You have the spirit of a warrior, Jon.” She said to him. “Whatever happens, don’t forget that.”

She did not tell him to win. He loved her for it. He pressed his palm to hers through the glass. He imagined if he had a mother, then perhaps it would feel something like this. 

The cylinder began to ascend, and the catacombs disappeared below. Jon is alone in the darkness, bracing himself for the sight of the arena, the voice of the announcer cutting through him. 

Chapter Text

Those last 60 seconds. 

Sunlight blinding his eyes. Blood roaring in his ears. The announcer must have still been talking. Jon couldn’t hear any of it. He was  too busy blinking hurriedly, willing his eyes to adjust. They did, finally. 45 seconds left. He had to make them count. 

His immediate surroundings: a stretch of ground, hard packed with dirt. A ring of 24 tributes around the Cornucopia, the mouth of it spilling with everything they’d need to survive. To win. Weapons. Food. Garments. The closer they were to the inside of the Cornucopia, the more valuable they were. He spied a sword, long and broad—valyrian steel, maybe? It was deep inside. Too deep. To even attempt to grab it would be suicide, especially with him being number one on the Career hitlist. The bow and arrow….that was closer. More achievable. If Val didn’t get to it first. He searched for her, and found her closer to the end of the semi circle. Could she even see it from there? Even if she could, he was fast. He could get in, get the bow, and get out and—

And do what?

There was a lake to the right—the most immediate water source. That was purposeful. To the left, there was a sprawling wood. Get to shelter and find water. Those had been Baelish’s immediate directions. But it seemed they were at odds with each other. Jon’s eyes drifted once again to the bow, already strung. The backpack next to it, possibly full of supplies he could use to survive. He had no other choice. 

13 seconds left.

He wasn’t supposed to look for her. To try to see her one last time. But she was too easy to find, just five tributes away. The sunlight lit her hair up just as good as any flame. The worst part of it all was that she was already looking at him. Shaking her head ever so slightly. A warning. Somehow, she knew. He hated her for it. Hated her for the way she seemed to be pleading to him with her eyes. How many times did he have to tell her to worry about herself?

5 seconds left. 4 seconds. 3...2—

Jon couldn’t afford to hesitate. So he didn’t.

Those first 60 seconds.

Running. Legs pumping. Arms flying. Ears ringing from the blast of the gong. His mind was scattered from fear and from her and from fear for her. Ygritte’s words echoed in his head. Don’t let your head get you killed. So he pushed her from his mind entirely, just as he approached the Cornucopia.

The first thing he saw was loaf of bread. He grabbed it, unsure of when he would get to eat next. That made him remember hunting, remember the bow. But it was already in Val’s hands, and Jon looked away just in time to hear an arrow fly and find its home in a coltish looking boy. He crumpled to the ground. The first kill. If he did not move fast, he would be the next.

Jon saw a backpack. Black. Perfect for camouflaging. Full. He reached to grab it at the same time as the male tribute from District 10. Yanking it from him was nothing, but it wasn’t until blood gurgled from his mouth that Jon realized why. The sharp edge of a steel blade jutted through his chest. 

Darkstar. Blood was spattered across his face already, and his eyes were gleaming. He did not bother withdrawing the sword—he had another in his right hand. The time that would have bought Jon was lost. All he could do was raise the pack right over his head right before Darkstar came down with his blade. It nearly cut through the fabric clean. Jon did not think. He pushed his leg out to kick, and thanked every god that didn’t exist anymore that he caught Darkstar in the abdomen. He stumbled, but only for seconds.

That was enough. 

It took both hands to withdraw the sword from the dead tribute, and he barely had it up in time to ward off Darkstar’s second attack. The clash of steel made his bones jar. Darkstar pressed in, intent, his strength all too obvious. Jon was only just barely able to twist right out. 

Speed. That was his advantage. Always had been. But with Darkstar, it was different. He wasn’t one of the kids from the Wall, skin and bones, just barely heavy enough to withstand a strong wind. He was broad. Every strike of his sword was carried out with the strength of his body. It made every blow that came that much harder to fend off. 

Jon was no Career. His teacher was a retired crippled peacekeeper who gave him lessons in exchange for food for his family. It was no military academy education, and he was no Darkstar. He was a hunter. Hunters didn’t thirst for blood. They tried to avoid it. They looked for the quickest, neatest conclusion that would serve them in the long run. Neat wasn’t an option here, but he could be be quick. 

He moved out of the way just in time for Darkstar to throw himself off balance in a lunge. 

The bigger they were, the harder they fall. Wasn’t what Cassel always said? Jon might not be Darkstar, but Darkstar wasn’t Jon, either. Darkstar had endurance for strength, not speed. Maybe he could have been fast, if he wasn’t so insistent on rallying his every last bit of strength behind his blow. But he wasn’t. 

It was a dangerous game, luring him in, like a farmer with a bull. He went from a strong defense to an intentionally weak offense. It lured Darkstar into a false sense of complacency. When he lunged and Jon dodged, over and over again, perhaps he thought of it as a game. After all, it was a game to all of them. 

Darkstar was tiring. His arms trembled. Like a fool, he continued to push his offense. He was growing bored of this game, and as such, he was growing lazy. He started to miss some of Jon’s blows altogether, not that it mattered to him, because they had been so weak. He blocked only the essentials. Chest. Gut. Abdomen. They were the only places he could afford to be consistent, and in the end, it was consistency that got him. 

Jon thrust his sword right into his neck. 

He did not know what he expected. He remembered that day in the training center, the manufactured feeling of his sword cutting through his artificial opponent. This was much worse. Darkstar did not dissolve into pixels. He clutched at his throat. When his mouth opened, blood spilled out. When Jon withdrew his sword, the wet slide of flesh against steel made his stomach turn. He had never stabbed something living before. It was always arrows. Snares. Never this. 

Jon remembered where he was all too late, even if only seconds passed. That was all it took for a blade to end up at his throat. 

“Well, what do we have here?”

The curve of the sickle was already wet with blood, and wasn’t quite touching his skin. Myranda was out of breath, but her weapon was steady. All it would take was one tremor. His next move should have been more calculated, more careful, but the pure and utter glee on her face stirred something dark within him. She had just killed, and she took pleasure in it. Like the citizens of King’s Landing took pleasure in watching it. 

He refused to die for her entertainment, or anyone else’s.

Jon grabbed the blade, pushing past the biting pain of it slicing through his skin as he yanked it out of her grasp. He slammed the hilt of it into her face, leaving her stumbling.

He didn’t waste anytime. The pain of his hand was inconsequential as he grabbed another pack. It was the adrenaline, rushing through him, urging forward. Go go go. But just as he was about to make a break for the woods, there was Val near the brush. A dead girl at her feet. An arrow strung up and pointed straight at him.

He froze.

But she didn’t shoot. She didn’t need to. Jon felt the weight of the broadsword, resting at the base of his neck. His spinal cord. He did not have to hear the menacing growl behind him to know it was the Hound. Only one person could hold a sword so big so comfortably. One slash, and he’d be dead. But the sword didn’t move.

“Has nobody ever told you it isn’t polite to hit a lady?” 

Jon could only turn a fraction of an inch, it was all the Hound would allow him. Ramsay stood before him, axe in one hand, sword in the other. He was somehow shorter than Jon remembered, but that made him no less menacing. Blood spatter covered his face. His smile was so big it nearly split it into two. And his eyes—feverish. Gleaming. Victorious. 

“The 12 who got 12.” Ramsay nearly sang, axe twirling in his hand. “Isn’t this just a treat?”

Myranda was behind him, nose gushing with blood and furious. She started forward, sickle gripped tightly in hand, but Ramsay held his axe out, banning her from moving any closer. She froze immediately. 

A little ways from behind her, Joy, the female tribute from Darkstar’s district, was perfectly still save for her fingers twitching around her blades. But she didn’t move either. It took Jon a moment to realize why.

None of them wanted to be first to draw blood. 

It would follow them for the rest of the games, however long they lasted. The death of one of the star-crossed lovers from District 12. They would be nationally hated. Perhaps they would still have the few sponsors from their home districts, but the ones in King’s Landing, the ones that mattered? They could very well be lost to them. This was the protection Sansa had afforded him. Killing him would come with consequences. But were those consequences worth it to them?

There was still a sword point on the back of his neck for a reason. There was still an arrow aimed to skewer his heart for a reason. Joy’s daggers. Myranda’s sickle. Ramsay’s axe and sword.

They didn’t know. 

Ramsay stared at him. Even though they were all animals in a sense, only he reminded Jon of the deepest, basest kind. Something savage. Something rabid. He was capable of forethought, as shown when he stopped Myranda from killing him, but was he capable of mercy? 

“Darkstar thought you must have fucked someone for that score.” Ramsay said finally. “Guess you showed him.”

He held out to him the sword in his left hand, hilt first, still grinning.

Jon did not move. His heart was beating so hard he could taste it in the back of his throat. Never had he been so truly at someone’s mercy. Not since that day in the rain. 

He’ll never know if he would have taken the sword had he not thought of her. But he did. He thought of her running through the woods, putting as much distance between herself and the Cornucopia because she knew as well as he what would happen next. He thought of her hiding up in a tree somewhere, no food or supplies. He thought of her plea to him last night for Arya. He thought of Arya’s plea to him for her. The vow he made because of it. 

Jon took it.

It did not feel like mercy. 

10 dead. The cannons were fired as soon as the Gamemakers judged that all of the bloodshed was over. Jon forced himself to check the bodies. He hadn’t seen her run into the forest. Would she have been stupid enough to go after him? Or maybe change her mind?

She wasn’t. Four of the bodies were girls, and none of them were her. One of them was bludgeoned beyond recognition, but she didn’t have red hair. Jon allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. 

He turned their pants and jacket pockets to make it seem like he was searching them for something that could be useful. It was reasonable, because whenever the hovercrafts came to take the bodies, they’d take all their possessions and any weapons they might have gained throughout the games. He searched the boys, too. He came up empty, save for a silver medallion with a dragon on it. 

“It’s real.” Joy said, after biting it. 

“Does it do anything?” Myranda asked.

“Of course not.” Ramsay said with an eye roll. “They have an entire committee dedicated to which district tokens could be considered dangerous. If that made it through, it’s probably useless.”

Myranda looked properly chastised, while Jon resisted the urge to touch the direwolf pin on his shirt. He wondered if Ellaria had gotten it cleared or snuck it to him. He was glad his jacket covered it up.

The hovercraft came to get the bodies not long after. Then, they started sorting through their bounty. Storage containers full of food. Blanket rolls. First aid kits. Backpacks. Remembering how Darkstar eviscerated his, Jon grabbed a new one. He did not stock it though, as much as he wanted to. If they had any suspicion that he planned to leave the second things went left—which he did—they’d kill him. Sponsors or not. He’d have to move gradually. Carefully. 

“We should camp here.” Val said. “No sense in moving it all when the lake is here.”

“Good.” The Hound grumbled. He was sliding a gauntlet onto his massive arm. It just barely fit. “I wasn’t moving all this shit.”

“You don’t think we’re too exposed?” Joy asked, skeptical.

Jon could see her point. They were in the middle of the arena. No coverage. Sitting ducks. But the term sitting ducks applied to people who were oblivious and helpless to their situation. Not to six teenagers with an entire armory to defend themselves.

“Not after tonight.” Ramsay held up a knife. The point was sharp, shining just like his eyes. “Tonight—we send a message, friends.”

It was a Career tradition. They called it the hunt, for as long as Jon could remember. The Careers that allied together would spend the first night prowling the woods instead of sleeping, making up for the time they lost taking the Cornucopia. It was why Baelish’s advice had been to run away instead of finding a weapon. Not only because of the initial slaughter, but because of the one that would come after.

They made camp, and had fish from the lake for dinner. They cooked it over a fire because with almost every single weapon in the arena at their disposal, they could. As predicted, no one jumped from the trees to attack them. Jon could tell that they hoped someone would. That they were itching for a fight.

It wasn’t long after they finished eating that they began to argue about who was going on the hunt. Ramsay said two of them had to stay behind to watch their supplies. Just in case. Myranda said she was the obvious choice to go. Joy said that just because she was fucking him didn’t mean she should be guaranteed on the hunt. Val said she got higher scores in her evaluations than both of them, so of course she should go.

The last thing Jon wanted to do was go on this hunt. The Hound seemed of the same mind, as he was still sucking on the bones of his fish. Jon couldn’t afford to be so nonchalant. He made Arya a promise. If he didn’t go on this hunt, he’d be reneging on it.

“Bow and arrow’s no good in the dark.” He spoke up. “Even with a torch and a flashlight.”

For the first time since she threatened to kill him, Val looked at him. Her glare was icy. “I always hit my target.”

“When you can see it. You’ll have a better chance doing that here. More space.” Then he pointed up at the moon. “More light coverage.”

“He’s got a point.” Ramsay said. 

Val said nothing in response. It seemed that Ramsay had been declared the unofficial leader of this alliance. Not because they trusted him or his judgement, but because they all feared him. Maybe even the Hound did too. Jon hadn’t truly feared him until he saw the bludgeoned female tribute. He was the worst kind of dangerous. A mad dog kind of dangerous.

Myranda sneered at Jon, “Let me guess. You’ll take one for the team, and stay behind too?”

He didn’t need her to say this to know none of them trusted him. There would always be an unspoken agreement not to leave him alone, as long as they were in this alliance. They would never trust him, no matter what he did. But if he played his cards right, they’d trust his ambition.

“There’s no way you’re cutting me out of this.” He said. 

Ramsay chuckled at that, but Myranda’s face only darkened. He could not tell if Ramsay was convinced, but she sure wasn’t. Ramsay wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in.

“He wants to come, I say we let him come.” He said in her ear. Then he turned to the Hound. “How do you feel about staying behind, dog?”

The Hound snarled at that. “You call me that again, I’ll break your neck.”

But Ramsay just laughed. Jon had a feeling that nothing truly amused him. Not really. He was merely going through the motions of how he thought a real person would act.

“Then it’s settled.” He said.

They armed themselves to the teeth. Joy, Ramsay, and Myranda took full advantage of their arsenal, their signature weapons of choice along with anything else they could carry. Knives, finger blades, spears. Jon only took two weapons: the valyrian steel sword that had caught his eye before the gong sounded, and a knife. Too much steel would weigh his body down and create noise. The Careers seemed oblivious to this fact, and Jon knew it was probably because they had little to no hunting experience. Hopefully, the other tributes would use that to their advantage.

Dusk came, and they still hadn’t left. Jon wondered why, until the anthem began to play. The names and faces of the dead tributes were shown in the sky, all 10 from the Cornucopia. No more. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until it ended, and looked away. He would have missed the smoke completely, had Joy not pointed it out. 

“Look!” She pointed to the sky. “Do you guys see that?”

A thin, faint, stream was curling towards the sky. Their own fire was still burning beside them. When he looked at Ramsay, he knew the purpose of theirs hadn’t just been to cook. It was to create a sense of false security.

He rested his axe on his shoulder, mouth curving upwards. “Looks like we have an invitation.”

As they crept through the woods, Jon’s heart beat loud in his ears.

He couldn’t stop thinking about that first conversation on the train. The one where Sansa said the first thing she would do was build a fire. He’d shut her down immediately, but would she have really been so stupid? After all, he’d been stupid enough to ignore Tyrion and Baelish’s advice.

But Sansa wasn’t like him. Her volunteering for Arya was the only time he had ever seen her do anything impulsive. She picked up things fast, and she rarely made the same mistake twice. She wouldn’t be lighting a fire. That wasn’t a part of the plan. But there was still a small part of him that couldn’t be assuaged, that was still holding his breath. 

They combed through the woods carefully. Quietly, in case their voices carried. In pursuit of the fire starter, they did not find anyone in the first hour, which was to be expected. No one would dare stay so close to the Cornucopia, even for the lake. So they kept walking, following that trail of smoke as the sky got darker. He didn’t know how much time passed before they saw the fire in the distance for the first time, a burning orange flower.

Myranda broke into a run.

Jon ran faster than he ever had before. Faster than he had when that gong went off. He pushed at branches and stumbled over roots, but he did not stop, though his heart felt too large and fast in his chest. He ran because as much as he had reassured himself otherwise, there was still a possibility he was running to her—

He wasn’t.

It was a girl. Small. Petite. Unassuming. She had fallen asleep by the fire, curled up near a log. At the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, she sat up immediately. But it was too late. Her eyes widened, as if she was realizing this. 

“Please.” She began to back away, still on the ground. Her voice wavered. “Please.”

Myranda snatched her up by a handful of her brown hair. She cried aloud as she dragged her to her feet. Myranda was almost breathless with excitement, sickle pressed against the girl’s throat. She pressed until blood was drawn. The girl’s pleas turned into wailing, agonized sobs. They echoed in Jon’s ears, and he found himself wishing Myranda would end it like she seemed so eager to. But she was looking at Ramsay, as if she was waiting for his encouragement. His approval. 

“Let 12 do it.” Ramsay said. “It can be his initiation.”

He said it as if it was a fly of the moment decision of his, so innocently nonplussed. But Jon saw the look in his eyes. That calculating, feverish glitter. He knew it was anything but. This would be a win for him, whatever happened. If Jon refused to kill the girl and helped her escape, he’d have an excuse to kill him without losing any sponsors. If Jon agreed to kill the girl, the Capitol would start viewing him more as a Career rather than one of the star-crossed lovers from District 12. And that would make it easier to kill him.

She was just a girl.

Well and truly small, in a way that reminded him of Arya. But she looked a little older. She had no choice, just like the rest of them had no choice in being here. She had lit a fire because she was cold. Her cheeks were so red. Her teeth chattered through her sobs. It was possible she grew up in a home where her parents lit her fires for her. Jon knew at that moment he would rather die than kill her. 

But he also knew, unlike Ramsay, he only had one option here.

Because if he died protecting this girl, the people of King’s Landing may weep for him, but the minute his corpse was out of sight, he would be out of their minds and hearts. And so would Sansa. And all she had done to protect herself, protect him, would have been for nothing. 

Jon drew his knife. 

Myranda let go of her, shoving her forward. The girl fell to her hands and knees at his feet. She tried to back away from him, but Jon pulled her up roughly by the arm, yanking her body towards him. The last thing that ever left her mouth was a bloodcurdling scream. 

Right before he slashed her spinal cord. Then her throat. 

The boy that came after her was the worst. 

He tried to run, which was the stupidest thing he could have done. Not only because he was already well hidden, but because Ramsay and Myranda enjoyed the chase. And because they enjoyed it, they didn’t want it to end, even when Joy caught the boy with a dagger to the back. 

Ramsay pinned the boy underneath him. It took a while for Jon to realize what he was doing, not stabbing but carving. The number two. Before he could finish, Jon slit the boy’s throat with his knife. The cannon went off.

“He was mine.” Ramsay said, mouth tight and eyes dark.

“He was gonna be dead before you finished, anyway.” Jon snapped back. 

He didn’t know if it was true or not. But he knew he couldn’t have continued to listen to him screaming. Killing he could do. Killing he had to do. Torturing was another thing entirely. But he couldn’t give them a reason to suspect that.

Myranda, satisfied Jon had done something to earn Ramsay’s ire, wrapped a hand around his forearm leaning in close to him. “We’ll get another one. And you can have him all to yourself.”

Ramsay snatched his arm away. He did not like being pacified, apparently. But he looked at Jon, that smile lit up his face again, as if it never left. “I think 12 should get the next one. He’s on a roll tonight.” 

And in a motion so quick Jon could have missed it had he blinked, Ramsay’s axe went up and came down. Right on the boy’s neck. His head came clean off. 

He leaned in then, with a conspiratorial wink. “I think you might like the killing more than I do.”

There was no next one. There should have been. 

It was a boy. Lean. Well off, judging from his district token: and emerald brooch. He did not try to run. He was like the first girl, backing away from them on his hands. “I can help you!” He shouted. “I can help you!”

The last boy said the same thing before Ramsay pinned him to the ground. Jon tried to erase that from his head as he drew his weapon. It was no easier than when he had done it the first time.

“I doubt that.” Joy sneered.

The boy’s back hit a tree. He shifted to get up, as if to run. Jon used his sword and slashed the backs of his knees. The boy cried out, falling to the ground. It was better this way, Jon told himself. It was worse when they ran. 

“District 3!” He screamed. “I’m from District 3!”

At that, Myranda grabbed him by a handful of his hair, hissing into his ear. “So you think you can be one of us? Is that it?”

District 3 wasn’t a Career district. They’d been involved too closely in the rebellions. Like the rest of them, they were still being punished for it.

“No! I–I know weapons!” He stammered, voice shaking. “Tech. That kind of stuff. I can protect you—”

At the insinuation that a Career would need protecting, Myranda snatched him up by the scruff of his neck, curve of her sickle pressing into his neck as she made to yank it across his throat, but Ramsay stopped her. 

“Let him finish.” 

He was amused again. It was evident on his face, as he leaned toward the boy, knife in his hand. He ran the edge of it along his cheek, drawing blood. The boy soiled himself.

“And just how do you plan to protect us, Renly Baratheon?”

The boy’s—Renly—throat bobbed as he swallowed. Panted. Looked around at all of them. 

“Explosives.” He said. “I can make you guys explosives.”

Dawn came.

They headed back to camp. Renly came with them. He talked the entire way back about what he planned to do for them and how he planned to do it, as if they’d change their minds any second. Jon did not blame him, but at the same time, he hated him for it. He couldn’t stop thinking about that first girl. How she begged to live too, and it hadn’t worked for her. But it did for Renly.

The sky was pale by the time they got back.  They were finally allowed to sleep, but they had to do it in shifts. Myranda took first watch, and Jon knew it wasn’t because she was wide awake. He didn’t miss the way she watched him. Jon should have taken out his sleeping bag and closed his eyes so not to raise his suspicion, but he was afraid to. Not of them, but of what he would see as soon as he was left alone with his own thoughts.

He drained his water skin. He went to the lake to fill it up again. He splashed water on his face. It felt like ice, so he plunged his hands underneath. At least because of the cold, they’d have an excuse for shaking. 

Jon caught a rustle in the trees. He went for the knife in the scabbard on his hip. But it was just a bird, white with speckled dove gray feathers. Perched on a branch and chirping whimsically. Almost immediately, the same exact tune was echoed back. Once. Then twice. Then again and again. 

A mockingjay.

Jon’s eyes stung. He scrubbed at his hands until they were raw.

If you asked him what happened those first couple days, he couldn’t have told you.

Just that it was always the same. The hunting. The planning. And more hunting after that. He did not get used to it. He would never get used to it: the screaming, the begging, the agonized last words. But it happened so often he learned to go away inside, even when he was the one doing the killing. 

Sometimes, it felt like they had been there for weeks. He used the anthem as a calendar. When he lay under the stars every night, watching the faces of the dead tributes appear in the sky, most of which he was responsible for, he counted it as another day done. Then, very briefly, he allowed himself to think about her.

She was alive. That much he knew. She was alive, and out there somewhere. He would allow this to sink in, before shutting her back out again. Thinking about her more than that meant thinking about her possibly thinking about him. Which meant thinking how she would react if she knew all he had done these past couple days. And upon realizing that this was the last thing he wanted to know, he made it a rule. Don’t think about her. Keep your promise. No more, no less.

It was what Ygritte would say to him. She’d probably call him stupid for making such a promise in the first place. It was why he tried not to think about her, either. But sometimes, it helped. Sometimes, all it took to keep from breaking was knowing how much she would despise him for it. He did not want her to think he was weak. 

But he was. He was weak for making Arya that promise. He was weak for falling into the Careers trap. He was weak for killing whenever they asked him to. But most of all, he was weak for the way he disappeared inside of himself while he did it, going back to that day in the meadow, when he watched a girl with dandelions in her hair sing, and even the birds stopped to listen.

When it finally happened, Jon hadn’t been paying attention. 

His lack of sleep was finally starting to get to him. He’d barely closed his eyes since they arrived in the arena. The one time he had, the girl he killed that first night had been waiting for him. He’d learned her name the night after, when the anthem played, and it haunted him ever since. Jeyne. From District 9. 

Ygritte always used to tell him his footsteps were like velvet. They weren’t that day. He was trudging rather than walking. A headache was pounding at the base of his skull. They had been up since morning, scouting for bodies of water to root out more tributes. The Hound went east. Joy was supposed to go with him, but she claimed he creeped her out too much to go anywhere with him alone, and Val was back at the camp supervising Renly.  So it was Jon with Joy, Myranda, and Ramsay that day, heading west.

He heard it too late. They all had. The telltale splashing of water, like someone moving in it. The source was a springfed pool, still rippling from the disruption. And there it was—the sound of twigs cracking in the distance, of feet crunching against the forest floor. Jon cursed inwardly. It was worse when they ran.

Ramsay took the lead. 

It’s worse when they run. Jon repeated it to himself, over and over again. It was the only thing keeping him going, tired as he was, knowing he had to be there to make it less worse. Until they finally stopped. Until he finally caught his breath enough to look up. And then, because they were at the base of a tree, he looked up again. And he caught it, the flash of copper red underneath the dying sunlight. 

Red.

He felt like the wind had been knocked out of him all over again.

Sansa was in the tree, far enough from the ground that she didn’t have to worry. Just like he told her to. She looked nothing like he had last seen her. Her face was gaunt, and her lips were dry and cracked. She must have been searching for water. He wondered how long she had been dehydrated for. He couldn’t blame her for stopping to find it, but he wanted to. 

“Come on down, girl on fire!” Myranda trilled. She was pink cheeked, breathless with excitement. “Don’t be shy!”

“You’re among friends.” Ramsay looked over at him, then. He had that look in his eyes. The same one he saw when he was carving into the boy the other night. “We even have your lover boy.”

Jon’s ears were buzzing. He was biting the inside of his cheek so hard when their eyes met, and his mouth tasted like blood. He watched her swallow, yet her face betrayed nothing. Not one single emotion. It was her hands that did it. They were resting in the fork of the tree. From where he was standing, he could see them tremble. 

Mercy. Arya had asked for it on her behalf what felt like ages ago. He’d promised it to her. You owe me, Sansa had said on their last night in King’s Landing. But she never forced him to promise her such a thing. Maybe she hoped it wouldn’t come down to this.

She was still looking at him. Not like she expected him to save her, or like she was pleading with him, but like she just needed to look at him. Did she know about what Arya made him promise? Even if she didn’t, she would understand. He knew that. Was that why she was looking at him like that? Because she wanted him to?

Jon couldn’t move. 

“I’ll make you a deal.” Ramsay called out. “You come down now, and I promise I’ll make it quick for you. Or slow. However you like.”

A shiver crawled down his spine as rage filled him. His hands shook, and his blood roared in his ears but he had to think. He had to think. It was three against one. If he attacked now, he would die. And he’d leave Sansa alone with these monsters, breaking his promise. 

Sansa flattened her hands against the bark of the tree to steady their shaking before she turned to look at Ramsay. Then she spit at him. It was something Arya would do, and he wondered if she was watching back in District 12, as proud as she was scared. 

But it only made Ramsay grin. He turned to Myranda. “Get her down.”

Myranda used the knife in her belt to drag herself up, and at the same time, Sansa began to climb further up the tree. They were the same height, but Myranda was packed with too much wiry muscle. It was over before it started, as the branch that held her feet broke underneath her. She crashed to the ground. 

“You do it.” Ramsay commanded Joy. He was getting impatient, now. 

“She’s too high.” She argued. Still, she tried and threw her knives anyway. The closest she got was about ten feet below where Sansa’s feet were placed. In the tree, she went so still she could have been a statue.

“I’ll go get Val.” Myranda said furiously, still embarrassed from her failure. “She can just shoot her down.” 

Unlike Joy and Myranda, Val wouldn’t miss. 

“By the time she gets here, it’ll be pitch dark. It’s already almost sundown.”  Jon snapped. “We could be doing something valuable with our time.”

He tried to act like he couldn’t have cared less, like this entire thing was above him, but his heart was beating so hard it felt like his entire body was pulsing with it. He had to think. He just needed time to think—

“You don’t think she’s valuable?” Ramsay arched a brow. “That’s not what you said on TV.”

He’d be tearing down everything Sansa built to protect them both. That is, if the audience believed him. They could be seeing right through him, just like he felt like Ramsay was seeing through him right now. Still, he had to try. 

“She’s not even worth waiting out.” Jon ground out. 

Ramsay feigned an exaggerated grimace. “Ouch.” 

“He’s trying to buy her more time.” Myranda hissed.

“Jon wouldn’t do that. He’s killed with us. He is one of us. Isn’t that right?”

He said it loud enough so that his words were unmistakable. So that even high up in the tree, Sansa would hear them. Jon didn’t even look at her. He couldn’t. He couldn’t find the words to speak, either.

“Whatever he is, it’s not like he’s wrong.” Joy said, sounding aggravated. “It’s gonna be dark soon. If you really wanna kill her so bad, we’ll camp here so she can’t go anywhere. Then we’ll deal with her in the morning. If she can even stay up there all night.”

Jon hoped she could, though he knew the hope was in vain because it didn’t change a thing. Not about their situation, and not about his promise. The same one he was starting to doubt he could keep.

“She’s right.” He forced himself to say. “If she doesn’t try to escape, she’ll fall out of the tree from exhaustion. And I’ll finish the job myself.” 

Ramsay loosed a low chuckle that made his skin crawl. “What did I tell you?” He said to Myranda. “Always taking the initiative, this one.”  

Then he smirked, pointing his axe up at the tree. “But I’ve got first dibs, 12. Once I’ve had my turn, you can do the honors.”

Jon thought of the boy from the first night. The beginnings of a two carved into his chest. He thought of Sansa, as beautiful as she was gentle. He knew it would be worse. He knew exactly what worse entailed from people like Ramsay. His stomach roiled. It took everything inside of him to remember. Think. You have to think. Don’t act. Think. But he’d never felt a rage like this. The intense need to kill like this.

“Sandor won’t be pleased.” Myranda said, though she obviously was. “You promised to share her.”

The Hound. His half burnt face. His huge, life crushing hands. All over her. Making her suffer as he enjoyed it. You promised to share her. There would be nothing left after they were done with her, this Jon knew. 

His first thought was that the Gammemakers wouldn’t let that happen. His second thought was that the Gammemakers were the ones rounding up children in an arena and forcing them to kill each other in the first place. All for a good show. Anything that didn’t make for a good show, anything that was too depraved for the sensitive palettes of the King’s Landing citizens, they would just edit out. Turn the cameras away. 

“He’ll get over it.” Ramsay said.

Jon looked up at her in the tree. The way her entire body seemed to tremble as she tried to her best to seem unaffected. Her eyes met his. Even during that last night before they entered the arena, he had never seen her look so frightened. So hopeless. It doused him like ice water. He wanted to tell her, I won’t let them touch you. He wanted so badly to tell her, I’ll get you out of here. But he didn’t, because he didn’t know if he could.

But he had to try. And if he couldn’t, then he’d keep his promise to Arya after all.

Night fell just as they started setting up camp. Their fire was in full effect by the time the anthem started playing. That night, Jon did not look up to see the faces of those who died. And he didn’t look up at the tree either, though he wanted to so badly. He couldn’t make it seem like he cared, even if they all saw through him. 

As tired as he was before, he was wide awake now. The rabbit Myranda caught, cooked, and divided up between them sat like a rock at the bottom of his stomach. But he ate, because he needed his strength for whatever tomorrow brought. 

It was two of them. Two against three. Practically one, because Sansa had no idea how to fight. Even if he was able to hold them long enough for Sansa to run, it was likely they’d just catch her again, or she’d end up in another tree. Only he’d be dead, and there would be no one to save her. 

There was no saving her. 

Every plan, every scenario he ran through, it always came down to that single fact. It was either he killed her himself, or he let Ramsay do it after he tortured her. How many times had he made this same exact decision over the last couple days? With Jeyne? With the boy that came after her? He had no obligation to them but he still gave them mercy. Why did it have to be different with her? He hated himself at that moment. More than Ramsay. More than the Gamemakers. More than Sansa for Volunteering. More than Arya for making him promise. He hated himself for accepting that promise. He hated himself for feeling.

He hated himself for being too weak to protect her. 

He fell asleep. 

Jon didn’t realize it until he jerked awake, and he almost swore aloud. It was a lucky thing he caught himself at the sight of Myranda, leaning up against the tree, snoring. She was the one on guard the last time he was awake. Exhaustion must have gotten the better of her like it had of him. In her lap, Ramsay was snoring so loudly it nearly drowned out the morning birdsong. And Joy was curled up on her side, equally as dead to the world. All three of them—asleep. Hope had his heart stuttering to life in his chest, as he looked up—

The tree was empty.

The fork Sansa had been waiting them out in was empty. For a second, he thought she outsmarted them all and escaped the moment she saw they were all asleep. But then he saw the leaves of the tree rustle and realized that she was just higher up. He saw her shoes, using the base of a branch as a foothold, as her body stretched away from the trunk, as if she was reaching for something.

What was she doing?

He couldn’t see her. A low hanging, leafy branch gave her good coverage. But he could hear her: heavy, labored, breathing and suppressed whimpers, and a consistent, dull scraping noise. It was familiar. Not only because he recognized it as the noise that woke him up but because the sound was almost like—sawing. Jon realized all too late that the knife Joy had thrown into the tree was gone.

Seconds. Mere seconds of understanding was all he had before he watched an object fall out of the sky and onto the ground, and all hell broke loose. 

Jon had only ever seen them in pictures before. 

On flyers posted around the District. On the fence him and Ygritte bypassed everyday to go hunt. If you grew up in 12, you knew exactly what a Tracker Jacker wasp was, because more than any other region in Westeros, the North was rife with them. Courtesy of King’s Landing during the rebellions, thanks to their refusal to kneel. If you got stung, their venom was not only lethal, but caused hallucinations that could drive people to madness. And if you disturbed their nest, they would find a way to sting you. That was another thing about Tracker Jackers, they were uncanny hunters, and they hunted to kill. 

It took him two seconds too long to remember this. Two seconds after the hive cracked open on the forest floor like an egg, and that dreadful, heavy buzzing filled the air. Two seconds after the wasps filtered out of the remains of their home, a swarm of gold bodies. Two seconds just before Joy and Myranda began to scream.

Jon shot out of his sleeping bag and into a run.

Fast. With his mind still groggy and his eyes still sticky with sleep, he ran, stumbling over gnarled roots and crashing through the brush. But it was not fast enough. The two seconds he had lingered in confusion were enough time for some of the swarm that emerged from the hive to lock in on him. He dared to look back—

Jon tripped over a root, hitting the ground hard. The wind wasn’t even knocked out of him before a sharp pain stabbed through his shoulder. He swatted at it, knowing there was no point. It was already dead. In vain, he pushed up off of the ground to keep going, and felt a second sting on his leg. The effects of the venom hit him immediately, A third on the back of his neck. He felt immediately woozy, the effects of the venom hitting him full force. He couldn’t hear Joy or Myranda screaming anymore. Just white noise.

Jon had to cling to a tree to get to his feet again. One by one, he ripped all the barbed stingers from his flesh. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t being stung anymore. Had he really been so lucky?

Not lucky enough. His mind felt like it was spinning, and the places the tracker jackers had found their mark on him were swelling by the second. The puncture marks the stingers left were oozing, foul smelling. His stomach lurched. Jon looked down at his hands and saw four instead of two. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, they were gone. He had to think. He had to focus. But he didn’t want to. His entire body hurt. His mind was not his own. 

He didn’t know how he managed to hear her scream. 

It was like it came from somewhere distant. A tunnel. It echoed in his ears, terrified and desperate, slicing through him as if he was made of ribbon. 

And Jon was running again.

Through the pain. Through the haziness of his mind. The trees were curving, and the leaves looked like they were melting, but he pushed past them. He’d forgotten about her. For who knew how long, he’d forgotten about her—

Sansa was on the ground, clawing at the foliage, trying to get away. Ramsay had her by the ankles, pulling her towards him. She tried to kick him, but he was trying to sit on her legs, to pin her underneath him, the unbridled, savage rage on his face turning him beastly. 

Jon shoved him off so hard that they fell together onto the ground, intertwined with each other. Despite the pain, his strength was not fully gone. He muscled his way to the top, Ramsay underneath him. He punched. And punched. And punched. But when he blinked, there were six Ramsays, and they were all smiling through mouths full of blood. Jon didn’t know where to punch anymore, and so Ramsay used that moment to knee him in the stomach, taking the upperhand. He heard Sansa cry out, just before he felt the impact of knuckles crushing against the side of his face.

“I was wondering when you would finally crack.” He snarled, big ugly face looming above him. It was just one face again. There was a sting the size of a plum on his cheek. “She was the key all along, huh? And I was starting to think you’d just been putting on an act.” 

Ramsay’s hands were around his neck, growing tighter and squeezing. Crushing. Jon could barely see. But he saw her crawling to him, gasping for air. She was crawling towards him instead of running away. He wanted to scream at her, but he didn’t have the breath. 

“Look who's back.” Ramsay grinned nastily. “Maybe she’s changed her mind and she wants me after all. Maybe I’ll make you watch.”

Sansa wasn’t deterred by that. No, she kept going. Ramsay was back to paying her no mind, hands strangling the life from him. His vision was hazy. Ramsay’s entire’s face looked like it was melting. It would have been the last thing he saw, if the rock hadn’t hit his arm.

It bounced off the inside of Ramsay’s arm and hit Jon’s shoulder. It was about the size of his palm, and covered in blood. Sansa’s blood. She had been the one to throw it. Not very heavy, but sharpened almost to a point. 

Sharp.  

It caught Ramsay’s attention. He looked over his shoulder at her, and laughed. His hands loosened around Jon’s neck just enough. “That’s the best you can do?”

Sharp. One of Jon’s hands, the hand that wasn’t clawing at Ramsay’s wrist, went to his waist, the scabbard belted around it. The hilt inside. Cold. Real. And the steel connected to it. Sharp. 

“No.” His voice was raw, unrecognizable in his own ears. “I’ve got something better.”

Jon shoved the knife into his side. Ramsay made a sound like an animal, falling to the side. Jon pushed him off, breathing deeply. Waiting for the air to flood back into his lungs and the burning in his throat to subside enough for him to rise. Or try to. His knees felt so weak. He could only just barely crawl to her.

Sansa was on the floor, on her side. The fabric of her pant leg was ripped above her knee, revealing a wide gash. There was so much blood. Her face looked so pale.

“They could come back.” He rasped. “We have to go. Come on.”

The Tracker Jackers. Joy and Myranda, wherever they had gone to escape them. Judging from how wet Ramsay was, probably the spring. But were they even still alive? Ramsay had come for Sansa alone, but that didn’t mean they were dead. Jon didn’t want to find out.

“I can’t.” Tears streaked her cheeks, leaving tracks of dirt. “He got me—I can’t.”

“You have to.” Jon snapped. “Get up.”

It took every last bit of strength he had to push himself to his feet. The entire world swayed, but he planted his hand against the tree. Took in his surroundings to grasp a hold of his bearings. Ramsay was still on the floor, his entire body melting into a puddle. If Jon looked at him for too long, he would be sick. So he didn’t. He searched for his sword instead, clumsily sliding it into his scabbard. He got his backpack, though it made him feel incredibly heavy. Sansa was still on the ground, struggling against the base of the tree. He clutched her forearms to keep her from sliding back down. If she did, she would never get back up. 

“Please.” He begged her. 

She made a choked sound, but she found her way to her feet, and though her knee buckled, she did not go back down. 

Jon could not carry her. He didn’t trust himself to. So he slung her arm over his shoulder and helped her walk. It was slow work. She was so heavy. When did she get so heavy? Her own backpack certainly wasn’t helping matters.

“You’ll move faster without me.” Sansa panted. 

“Shut up.” He snarled back. 

She did, for awhile. Though there was the occasional gasp of pain and hiccup through her tears. She didn’t complain, but she didn’t need to. Right before they started to descend an inclining slope of terrain, her knees buckled and she began to sob. Jon barely caught her before she hit the ground. His arms were shaking. 

“We just have to find shelter.” He promised. “We just have to make it until then—”

“You have to make it. Not me.” She cried. “You promised me.”

For a horrible moment, he thought she was talking about his promise to Arya, but her hand was on his chest, on the direwolf pin she gave him.

“I didn’t.” Jon said vehemently. 

“Then promise me now.” She insisted. “And everything will be okay.”

She wasn’t crying anymore. That was what scared him most of all. Her hands were gentle on his shoulders, and her forehead brushed his. 

“I promise.” Her voice shook, and he did not know if she was prompting him or making her own vow.

It didn’t matter to him. None of it did. Not his promise to Arya of mercy. Not his promise to Ygritte that he would try. At the end of the day, he could not keep them because he could not kill her. He could not leave her to die. If he did and he ended up winning, he would never truly leave the arena. Not really. She would haunt him forever, just like she’d been doing since the day they met.

Jon slung her arm back over his shoulder, and struggled to lift her into his arms. They felt like rubber, but he didn’t let go. Sansa began to protest again, but he shut her down, firm. Frantic. 

“I’m not leaving you.” He said. “That’s my promise.”

Her eyes filled with tears again, and as she shook her head, he knew in that moment that she loathed him. 

The trees were still dripping leaves. The grass grasped at his shoe laces. Each step he took felt like he was taking it in quicksand, walking against some invisible force that pushed him back. But he couldn’t stop. He had a new promise to keep, and he was determined to keep it. 

Until something blunt hit the back of his head, and everything went dark. 

He remembered still being on the hill.

He remembered his head swimming, his entire body screaming at him to stay down. The venom raking dull knives through every single part of his body. The bile at the back of his throat.

He remembered Ramsay. Stumbling down the hill towards him, clutching his side with one blood rusted hand and dragging his axe with the other. He wasn’t melting, but whole and unsmiling. All six of him were. 

He remembered her calling his name. Soft, and choked. She was far from him, sprawled at the bottom. Her cheek was bleeding. She was crying so hard her body shook. But he could not hear it. She was saying something. Perhaps, I told you so. 

He remembered trying to crawl to her. He remembered needing to get to her more than he needed to breathe. He wasn’t breathing properly either. His lungs burned. His mouth tasted like ash. Like smoke. 

He remembered failing. He remembered a foot shoving him back into the ground. Pressing so hard that any breath he had was pushed from his lungs, before a meaty hand snatched at the collar of his jacket. 

He remembered trying his hardest to stay. Just long enough to pull his sword from his scabbard. Not to attack, but to throw. Right down that hill. Right to her. If he could not keep his promise to Arya, then she could. It landed just a foot away from her.

But Ramsay had him on his back, helpless again. No rocks or secret knives. Just exhaustion and a mad man with an axe. He had no more tricks. He had nothing left in him, the venom had seen to that. Just his pride, and he wouldn’t face his death without it. Jon watched Ramsay struggle to lift the axe off of the ground, over his shoulder—

And he watched the world explode in green fire behind him.

Chapter Text

He still wasn’t sure whether it was real or not until Ramsay screamed.

It felt real. That blast of heat, blowing back the trees before they all caught flame. The plumes of smoke filling his throat, threatening to choke him. His eyes watering. But it didn’t look real—towering green flames, eating up terrain like some alive thing, turning everything into ash.

But then Ramsay screamed. 

He caught the brunt of the explosion while hovering over him, and hurriedly dived to the ground to get rid of the flames on his body. He rolled around like a feral sort of animal, but already there were parts of his skin peeling and boiling. 

Wildfire. 

Another wartime invention. Not as common up North as it was in the South, because it was so volatile that it was a bitch to move. In school, they taught them that it could turn someone’s bones into ashes in under a minute. That was how powerful it was. That is what the gamemakers decided to unleash upon them.

And it was starting to surround him. 

Jon covered his nose with his elbow, stumbling to his feet. He could barely see. How had the smoke gotten so bad so fast? He thought of the ashy taste he had in the back of his throat as him and Sansa made their way through the woods. Just how long had the world been burning down around them while neither of them noticed? 

Sansa. He shouted her name, again and again. He could hear no response back. He couldn’t see anything. Panic surged inside of him as he stumbled his way down the hill, and tripped over something and crashed back to the ground. 

Her backpack. 

But she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He called her name again and again, even as he started to feel lightheaded. The smoke was threatening to choke him, as his hands swiped at the ground, trying to find where she had been. He found nothing. Not even his sword. 

In the distance, through the crackling of the fire, a cannon sounded. The sound ripped through him, leaving him hollow and numb.

Until the most searing, intense pain he’d ever felt came from his left forearm. It was on fire. Through his jacket, burning a hole through the material. Jon shoved it off. Underneath, his arm was bubbling and blistering. He gagged and swayed and for a second, he contemplated letting the fire take him. It was at his back, closing in and nipping. It would be easy. But then he looked at the backpack in his hand. Her backpack. 

Promise me, She’d said to him. And it’ll be okay. 

Though it was too late, though he’d already broken the only other one he ever made to her, he did. 

And he ran. He did not stop. 

The fire would have been easier to endure than what came next. 

He didn’t know when he stopped feeling the heat against his back, because he was too focused on dealing with everything else. The trees that seemed to appear out of nowhere just for him to almost run into. The others melting into blood as he braced himself against them to walk. Weeds growing through the bubbling blisters on his arm.

He didn’t remember stopping, falling that last time and just deciding not to get up, but it must have happened. Because as soon as his hands touched the ground, the weeds growing through his right arm connected to it, rooting him there as the earth beneath him began to give away.

Jon fought it, but the more he fought it, the more fierce the arena seemed in its efforts to keep him. Soil filled his mouth, as he was tugged deeper and deeper. His screams were muffled, as the daylight above him faded. And then there was nothing.

He wished it stayed that way. 

He did not remember it all. If he did, he wouldn’t have survived.

Every time he woke up, the venom had mangled another part of him. Discovered something else that could possibly make him break and used it against him. He saw the Watch in front of a Peacekeeper firing squad. He saw his district being razed to the ground. He saw the faces of all the lives he took over the past couple days. He watched himself kill, over and over again.

And he heard her scream.

Sansa was screaming for him, screaming his name, and he couldn’t go to her. He couldn’t even crawl to her. He couldn’t move. He shouted back, wanting her to know he was trying, wanting her to know he was going to get to her, and then he was begging, begging for her life to be spared.

But she just kept screaming , eventually all he could do was scream himself because even after everything else, watching his friends die and his home turned to ashes and Jeyne’s tear streaked face, begging for her life, this, he could not handle.

This was the worst.

Jon woke up above ground.

He waited for the next nightmare, perfectly still. He waited to watch his friends die. He waited to watch himself sentence others to die. He waited to hear her scream. But it never came.

That was when he realized that the world looked normal again. No melting, dripping trees. No persistent, hungry grass. Jon rolled onto his back to check his blisters—he was still locked in a fetal position—and they had no weeds growing through them. In fact, the skin was pink and puckered, as if it was tentatively healing, and covered in a thin, oily sheen. He lifted it to his nose, recognizing the chemical, sterile scent of medicine. 

Someone gave him medicine.

Jon sat up immediately, or at least he tried to. His entire body had a sort of stiffness to it that told him that he spent a lot of time at the mercy of the tracker jacker venom—perhaps too much time. A day? Two? He looked up at the sky. The sun was bright, but starting to sink low. It had still been morning when everything went to hell, and now it was most likely the late afternoon of another day. 

Which meant he spent maybe a day here. In this shallow looking ditch. Not below ground; that had been a part of the nightmare. His backpack wasn’t far away, camouflaged in some leaves. Jon reached over to drag it towards him, and underneath it, he found a small plastic silver pot attached to a white parachute. 

His first gift from a sponsor. 

Despite all of the talk about how important sponsors were, Jon hadn’t expected to get any after what happened the night of the interview, when he almost choked Baelish out. As their mentor, Baelish controlled the money that came from their sponsors and chose what and who to spend it on. And it wasn’t likely he was gonna be of any help to the person who assaulted him. Jon meant to swallow his pride and apologize, but decided he’d rather eat an arrowhead than apologize to Baelish. Even if he had, it was likely that Sansa was still gonna get more gifts anyway. 

Sansa. The thought of her made his chest so tight that he couldn’t breathe, as if he inhaled a bunch of smoke again. He remembered her screaming. The sound of the cannon blasting. More than that, this gift was proof that she was really gone. Baelish extending his helping hand meant he only had one more chance to secure a District 12 victor. He’d push his bruised pride aside in the name of ambition. That should have relieved him to a certain extent, but all he felt was an ache that was bone deep. He wished he was back underground, facing all those nightmares. She had been alive there. 

But he had a promise to keep. 

He had no will to do anything, hardly even to breathe, so he had to give himself commands. Open your backpack. Everything inside was accounted for, save for his sleeping bag and his weapons, both of which he had lost thanks to the tracker jacker chaos. Drink some water. He had a quarter of a bottle left. He finished every last bit. Find something to eat. He took out a strip of jerky and chewed, though it tasted like ash. He needed his strength. He had to win this. For her.

A twig snapped somewhere close. 

Jon was suddenly all too aware he had no weapons, but he rose anyway, pack in hand. If push came to shove, he could at least hit anyone that came his way. 

He didn’t see anyone. Not at first. But he was a hunter, and he was used to peering into shadows. It was possible that if he wasn’t, he would have never seen her.

She was good, but it was the tip of her boot that gave her away, peeking out just behind the tree she used to hide. Jon remembered the way she moved in the Training center, blending into her surroundings though the light made it nearly impossible. He remembered the way she followed Sansa, too. The one thing he did not remember was her name, and it took him longer than he would have liked to place her.

“Shireen.” He called out. 

Just like that, the tip of her boot disappeared, as she pressed herself further into the dark, the shadows concealing her entirely.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He said. “If you thought I would have, you should have let me die.”

The medicine had been applied fresh, perhaps within the last half an hour, and judging from the healing of his blisters, it had also been applied often. She was the only other person around. No one else could have applied it. No one else could have hidden his backpack. And she hadn’t even taken anything. Not his food, or his other supplies. Not his life. While he had been at the mercy of the tracker jacker venom, unbeknownst to him, he’d also been at hers. She could have killed him. She should have killed him.

What was her game here?

Instead of asking her this, he asked, “How long have I been out?” 

More silence elapsed, until part of Shireen’s face emerged from behind the tree trunk. A single bluish green eye stared at him. Studied him. She must have taken his previous words as truth, because she didn’t run. 

“Three days.” She answered. 

Three days. He’d spent three days in a ditch, losing his mind. A sitting duck, with no one but a child to protect him. He could only hope that the other Careers—if they survived—were equally incapacitated. Which brought him to his next question. 

“Who’s dead?”

Shireen did not take so long to answer that time. “The boy from 8. The girl from 1. And the boy from 3.”

The boy from 8. That had been Satin, the one who was good with knives. Dead. The girl from 1—Joy. She either died from the fire or the tracker jacker stings. Whatever the case, good riddance. And the boy from 3; that was Renly. He’d outlived his purpose. Which meant that every single item that the Careers amassed from the Cornucopia was being protected by the explosives he had hidden in the ground. Which meant that no one had to stay behind anymore, and the Careers could hunt together in full force—or what was left of them anyway. 

“Ramsay’s alive.” He said. 

Shireen nodded.

Of course the explosion hadn’t killed him. If the killer wasps, or the knife wound to the abdomen hadn’t done it, an explosion would probably be a piece of cake to survive for him. But there was no way he wasn’t injured. He was still out there, weakened, even if only slightly. That wouldn’t stop him from searching for him as soon as the venom left his system, if it hadn’t already. Jon had escaped him twice, and he knew for someone like Ramsay, where the kill was everything, it was eating him up inside. 

But if Joy had been the only one not to survive that morning, if she had been the one responsible for that singular cannon shot he heard as the fire closed in around him….

“And the—” he had to force the words out of his throat, still raw from the smoke he had inhaled and nearly being strangled. “The girl from my district?”

Shireen hesitated. 

The most awful feeling clenched the pit of his stomach. “What?” Jon demanded. 

“I think she’s alive. I mean—she has to be. They haven’t shown her picture or anything.” Shireen chewed on her lower lip. “But I can’t find her anywhere. It’s like she’s disappeared.”

Not dead, but gone. Vanished. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. The arena was huge. Shireen couldn’t have possibly combed through every part. But how far could Sansa have really gotten on that leg, especially with the wildfire on her heels? Could someone have helped her?

Was someone keeping her?

No. He’d know. If the Careers had her, they would have found a way to make sure that the entire arena knew so there was no chance Jon didn’t know. Ramsay would be using her to lure him out by now. But he wasn’t, because he didn’t have her. 

She wasn’t safe, not by far. She was out there somewhere injured, possibly still under the influence of tracker jacker venom. But she was hidden somewhere not even Shireen, who was well versed in hiding, could find her. He wanted to start looking for her immediately. But there was still Ramsay to deal with, who’d have find the both of them as top priority. Jon because he was evidence of his failure, and Sansa because she was a prize he’d been denied.  He was following either one of two plans now: finding him to get to Sansa or finding Sansa to get to him. 

Jon had to stop him before he could put the plan in motion. 

He stood up. His limbs were still stiff, but that was nothing a little walking wouldn’t fix. He had too much to do before dark came.

“Where are you going now?” Shireen asked.

Jon zipped his backpack up, slinging it over his shoulders. It was lighter without the sleeping back. “To kill the Careers.”

He started to walk away, but judging from the footsteps coming from behind him, Shireen was following him. This was confirmed when she spoke again, and her voice sounded closer. 

“You’re gonna take all four of them by yourself?” She sounded both awed and dubious. 

Ordinarily, he would have told her to mind her own business, but she had just saved his life so he decided to humor her. Just a bit. “No. I’m gonna come up with a plan so they do the work for me.”

He thought that would be a sufficient enough reply for her, but Shireen still didn’t leave. She persisted. “What kind of plan?”

“A dangerous kind of plan.” He said shortly. “So go away.”

“Does it involve the mines?”

Jon stopped in his tracks to turn and look at her. What he saw surprised him. That same little girl from the Tribute Center, yes, but instead of a wide, frankly sort of forgettable face, the left half of it was covered in Greyscale. It was not the kind of thing you forgot. Her stylists had probably managed to cover it up with makeup, up until now. 

As if she knew what he was thinking, Shireen’s cheeks turned pink, but she held his gaze almost defiantly, waiting for him to say something. Jon had a feeling she’d heard it all before. 

“How do you know about the mines?” He asked instead. 

Shireen seemed too astounded to reply for a moment, blinking multiple times. But she regained her composure quickly. 

“I’ve been watching them. I know where they put them, too. I have a good memory. My papa always said.” She boasted almost proudly. “I’ve been taking stuff, and they haven’t even noticed. See?”

Shireen shrugged the backpack off her shoulder, It looked similar to his. Inside was a blanket roll, packets of dried fruit, a smushed loaf of bread, a knife, and a slingshot. Way at the bottom, there was also a smaller, familiar black pack. 

“That’s not yours.” Jon snapped, snatching Sansa’s pack away. 

Hurt flickered across Shireen’s face, as she shrunk back. “It’s not yours either.”

No. It wasn’t. But for some reason, he felt like she had touched a part of him without permission. He didn’t admit this, though, saying nothing. 

“I was gonna give it back.” Her voice was small, and her face was a stinging pink. “I just—I just wanted to see.”

Jon remembered the way she followed Sansa around the Training center, like a stray cat. She said you have no clue of the effect you have on people, Ellaria had said to him. But really, it was Sansa who affected people. It was Sansa who had all the men back home eating out of the palm of her hand, Sansa who had gotten King’s Landing to fall in love with her as well as this child.

It was Sansa who had to survive. 

“It’s okay.” He said finally, because it was what Sansa would want him to do.

“I really can help you.” Shireen said, sounding almost desperate. “I know their watch rotations. I know when they leave. I know which paths they take and how long they’re gone. I could be useful.”

Jon’s first instinct was to say no. She was too young, and the last thing he wanted to do was get close to anyone else. But they were all too young. And this was just one plan. One team up. They’d go their separate ways afterwards, and hopefully someone else would kill her before he had to. It was bound to happen, anyway. She was too gentle. Too trusting. 

But she was also clever. 

“You want an alliance?” Jon asked. “With me?”

Shireen shrugged a little, shuffling her feet around. “It’s only a matter of time before Ramsay finds out someone’s been stealing. I don’t really have a lot of options before he comes looking for me.”

He didn’t, either.

“And—” Shireen paused, looking up at him. “I think he’s scared of you. I think you’re the only one here he’s really scared of.”

Jon wasn’t sure that was true, as he doubted Ramsay feared anything, but he hoped it was all the same. 

“He should be.” He said. “Because I’m gonna be the one to kill him.”

Jon hadn’t been in this stretch of woods before. Shireen told him that they were little more than an hour from the lake, east. Where the Hound had been hunting the day of the tracker jacker attack, and still did, according to Shireen. Jon felt comfortable making camp there because of it. More than bloodthirsty, the Hound was lazy. He wouldn’t be doing any nighttime hunts. They walked until they found water—a stream that possibly ran off into a greater river somewhere deeper in the forest. So they could hydrate and cover their tracks. 

Shireen might have been a magpie, but she was no hunter. She gathered instead, surviving off roots, nuts, and berries. The slingshot she created was a clever invention, but she wasn’t very good at actually using it. It wasn’t a wonder that she looked so thin. It had been so long since she last had meat. 

Jon decided to find them some dinner. He took the time to set up a couple snares. He didn’t think he’d catch anything tonight, but at least she’d have a source of meat in the future, long after they went their separate ways. Shireen watched him, alternating between asking questions and making sounds of wonder as she followed him from tree to tree. When he finished, she sat at one of the snares and watched it intently, as if she expected a rabbit to appear inside of it at any minute. 

Jon was glad for it, because her shadowing him was starting to grate on his nerves. He used that time to hunt. He could have fished, but the fish in the river were all small, unlike the trout at the lake. And from the way Shireen was staring at the snare, he knew she would need more than two fish. Since he had no bow and arrow, he took her slingshot and knife instead. 

He found a strange looking bird that resembled a wild turkey and took a considerably large rock to knock out. When he brought it back to camp, Shireen sprung up to her feet, running up to him.

“A groosling!” She cried in delight. 

That didn’t sound real. Jon stared at her blankly. “What?”

“We have them everywhere in my district.” Shireen explained, stroking the feathers. “I have a couple at home. They’re not mine, but I feed them sometimes.”

She looked so young then, and Jon knew she was thinking of her home. Whether she would ever see it again. He hated himself for bringing the bird back, then. He wished he had settled for fish instead.

“You go start a fire. A small one. Dusk will help hide the smoke.” He said to her, trying for gentleness. “I’ll clean it. And then we’ll eat. Okay?”

Shireen nodded, her shoulders rising from their slouch slightly. 

So he cleaned and plucked it, discovering that it wasn’t as big without feathers, but it was still big enough. He arranged the pieces carefully and allowed Shireen to place them on the coals. They watched them roast in the quiet.

“I can fix your stings.” She burst out after a while, as if she had just been dying to say it.

The swelling of his stings hadn’t gone down any, though the effects of the venom were gone. They itched a lot, so much it was almost distracting. “How?”

Shireen unzipped her backpack and held out a handful of leaves. They looked familiar, like something he’d seen Ros use. Ros was a whore in the merchant sector, but she was also their healer. And in exchange for keeping bad guys away from her door, she’d heal just about anything. 

“You should take off your shirt.” Shireen said, averting her eyes. Her face was red. “There’s a sting on your back, too. I saw it.”

Jon took off his shirt, and rolled up the leg of his pants to reveal the sting on his leg, too. Shireen took the leaves and shoved them all in her mouth, chewing vigorously before spitting it out in her hand. He had never seen Ros do that before, and was about to protest when Shireen pressed a glob of chewed up leaves on his shin and spit. It was as if all the pain was being leached from his body, replaced with a feeling of icy relief. He let out a groan. 

“Told you.” Shireen said, pleased with herself. 

She did his neck, and his shoulder blade too. Then, Jon made her show him where she got the leaves so that he could pack some of his own. By that time, their food was ready, and his appetite was back now that the pain was gone. The meal was the best he had since they arrived in the arena, filling him up as he tore into it. 

Shireen ate even more enthusiastically, grease dripping down her chin. She confessed, “I’ve never had a full leg to myself before. There’s a lot of us at home.”

And though he wished she wouldn’t, she began to tell him about her life at home. She told him about working in the fields. She told him about her parents, who had taken her in after they found her abandoned in an alley with a touch of grey scale, not even a year old. She told him about her seven older brothers, and though it was clear she loved them very much, it was obvious why there wasn’t enough food at home.

It had been the same at the orphanage, even when Jeor was running it. Too many mouths, and not enough food. It was just one reason among many he swore to never have kids, as much as he ached for a family of his own blood sometimes. What was the point when you couldn’t keep your promise to protect them? From starving? From the Reaping? Shireen’s parents sounded as if they loved their children very much, but Jon could not help but find them selfish. 

Jon held out the other leg. “Do you want this?”

“Me?” Shireen’s eyes widened. “You’re not hungry?”

“I’ve got this.” He gestured to the other half of the breast he hadn’t eaten. “Go ahead. Take it.” 

She took it, thanking him almost sheepishly, and tore into it. Jon put out the fire, and put away what remained of the groosling. He wasn’t hungry anymore. The anthem would be playing any minute, now. While he hadn’t heard the cannon go off this entire time, something could have happened when he was asleep. He went to go take out his sleeping bag before realizing he didn’t have a sleeping bag anymore. He settled for laying against the log instead.

“Are you thinking about her?”

“What?”

“You have that same look on your face as you did when you were sleeping.” Shireen said. “You were calling her name.” 

He had called her name in his sleep. No wonder Baelish could afford to send him the medicine, especially a couple days into the games where the price of things like that skyrocketed. The sponsors had all but thrown their money at what they thought was a lovesick boy, trying to survive. He hoped that meant Sansa got medicine too, but he didn’t voice that hope. And he definitely didn’t admit he was thinking about her. 

The anthem played. No Sansa. Only the boy from District 8, Satin, showed up in the sky. Jon did not know his death was so recent. Either the Hound and Val had done that dirty work themselves, or Ramsay and Myranda were back to terrorizing the arena. He would find out soon enough tomorrow. A plan was starting to form in his head. If he was gonna stand a chance against any of them, he’d have to break their alliance completely. Make them go their separate ways. 

“She has a sleeping bag, you know.” Shireen said, as she tucked into her own later on. “You should use it.”

The backpack was still next to him. He hadn’t opened it. Couldn’t bring himself to do so under Shireen’s gaze. Even so, it didn’t feel right to enjoy the warmth of her sleeping bag when she was probably out there cold somewhere. 

“I’m not cold.” He lied.

Shireen curled up on her side, facing him in the dark. “Can I ask you a question?” 

“No.” Jon said immediately, because he knew exactly who it would be about.

Even in the dark, he watched her visibly deflate out of the corner of his eye, shrinking further into her sleeping bag so that it nearly covered her entire face. Inwardly, he cursed at himself. 

“Fine.” He all but snapped. 

Shireen’s head poked back out, and she was facing him again. If she had any hesitation about her question, he didn’t hear it in her voice.

“When did you know you loved her?”

Love. The word caused him to stiffen. He didn’t love her. There was one woman he loved, and she was back at home, in the house they shared, probably loathing him more by the second. What she must think of him, after that interview. Could she tell it all hadn’t been a lie? He couldn’t think about that right now. 

The truth. That was what he told Illyrio that day on stage. Jon could tell Shireen that now. He did not love her, no, but he felt something. He always had. More than gratitude. More than loathing. That gray area in between. 

“When I heard her sing.” He said quietly. 

“She can sing?” In the dark, Shireen’s eyes were black and shined with wonder. 

His chest suddenly ached fiercely, but still, he continued for some reason. “When she does, even the birds stop to listen.”

Shireen was quiet for a moment, as if she expected to hear the singing any second. Then she sighed, wistful. “She is so beautiful. I wish I was as beautiful as her.”

He tried to see Sansa through her eyes. Beautiful, soft spoken, gentle Sansa. Who rode a chariot wearing a crown of flames. Who had the people of Westeros falling at her feet. Who spun around in that red dress until she was on fire. How could anyone not want to be her? Especially a girl like Shireen, who despite her loving family, must have grown up a pariah in her district.

“You can be the most beautiful person in the world and it won’t make you any less cruel.” He said after awhile. “It wasn’t her beauty that made me…..I didn’t see her for her beauty. It was her kindness. Her selflessness. Her heart. That made her beautiful to me. You’re selfless and kind too, Shireen. That makes you beautiful, too.”

It was meaningless, his platitudes. So much less than what he wanted to give her. He wanted to give her a way home, back to those brothers she loved so much. He wanted to send her home back to her farm and her grooslings and her foolish parents. He couldn’t give her any of that, though. So he would settle for this. 

He knew Shireen’s face had turned red in the dark from the way she pulled up her sleeping back to cover her cheeks. But her eyes were crinkling, so he knew she was smiling at the very least. But she did not say anything to him. Not until she was half asleep. He could hear it in her voice. Her hand was curled up underneath her cheek. 

“I wish I could find love.” She whispered. “The kind that you guys have.”

Once again, he wanted to tell her that it wasn’t love, but he found himself saying instead, “It’s the worst kind. You’re better off.”

They got up early the next morning, right before dawn broke, and had a breakfast of roots and leftover groosling. Jon spent that time grilling Shireen for every scrap of information she had more than he did eating. She told him everything—about their sleep schedules, where they liked to hunt, what weapons they left behind, and exactly where the mines were. If Jon had any doubts on the veracity of her information, they were settled when he got to the Cornucopia to see it for himself. 

Shireen had a clever hiding spot, a thick brush of bushes that concealed them both plenty well as she spied. That was where Jon gathered his intel. They moved their campsite to the lake, just like she said. All of them were asleep. Jon couldn’t tell if that was because they were so secure in the safety the mines bought them, or if like the day of the tracker jacker attack, they succumbed to exhaustion. He wondered if Ramsay blamed Myranda, and how she had paid for it. He couldn’t make them out well enough from here, but every sleeping bag had their own space. Ramsay and Myranda usually slept together. 

If there was already discord between them, his job just got way easier.

All of their supplies were 30 yards away, near the Cornucopia. The holes Renly had been digging up to plant the mines were covered, and the freshly turned earth was impossible to differentiate from the rest of the terrain. It was all hard packed dirt. Maybe he’d have better luck if he was closer, but who was to say he wouldn’t be blown sky high by then? It was a good thing he had Shireen. 

Their plan was easy enough to grasp—trigger the mines, blow up their supplies and cut off their resources. With limited supplies, they’d be fighting amongst themselves over what they had left, and it would only be a matter of time before they killed each other. At the very least, it would cause them to go their separate ways. And that was the goal. 

But as solid as the plan was, Jon had no way to execute it without getting himself blown up. He had time to figure it out. And besides—they were still at camp. He couldn’t very well destroy their supplies while they were there. 

So Jon started on lunch instead: rabbit, courtesy of one of his snares. He’d gotten to skinning and treating when Shireen burst through the brush, breathing heavily. He stood, instantly on high alert, but found her excited, rather than wide eyed with fear. 

“Will this help?” She asked breathlessly, holding out her pack to him.

The pack was open. Inside was a crossbow and bolts. It hadn’t been there yesterday when she showed him what was inside of her pack. There was only one place she could have gotten it from. 

“Are you insane? ” Jon hissed at her.

“They were fishing at the lake. They didn’t even see me.” Shireen said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “This means we can do the plan now, right? We can use this to trigger the mines without getting too close.”

As much as he wanted to shout at her for being so foolish, he could not help but be impressed. Not only did this prove that she really did know where every single mine was, but it also gave them a way to blow up the pyramid. How else would he have done it? He probably would have had to send her to get a weapon anyway. She just took initiative. 

Jon took out the crossbow, weighing it in his hand. Ygritte always called it a woman’s weapon, because it was easier to shoot than a longbow, and took all of the skill out of it. Shooting with a longbow was art in her eyes. Shooting with a crossbow was cheating. But the way he saw it, he could use a bit of an advantage at the moment. 

“Will it work?” Shireen pressed. 

He loaded the crossbow with a bolt, picking a tree about 50 yards away. There was a scope, and as soon as Jon squinted his eye through it, he saw the tree. Clear as day, as if it was right in front of him. He pretended it was Ramsay’s head.

The arrow head pierced the tree, twanging. 

“Yeah.” He said. “It’ll work just fine.”

By late afternoon, they were ready to go. 

Jon helped Shireen collect and place the wood for the three campfires—beacons to draw the Careers far away enough from the Cornucopia. It was possible that by the second one, they’d know something was going on. But Ramsay wouldn’t be able to resist the idea of a hunt, so it would keep them all occupied, while Jon worked on blowing up the supplies. 

“Light this one last.” He said. “And then we’ll meet back at camp. Follow the water.”

Shireen nodded, determined. “We should have a signal. In case one of us gets held up.”

He wanted to tell her no at first. If he got caught by the Careers, he didn’t want her risking her neck to save him. But if it was the other way…..he imagined little Shireen at the hands of the Careers. It made him feel sick to his stomach. This was his plan. It wouldn’t be fair if she was punished for it. 

“Alright.” Jon said. “Like what?”

Shireen’s gaze darted to his chest, then her face lit up. “Here. Watch.”

Then she whistled, an melancholy four note tune. Seconds later, it was echoed back to her from the trees in a higher pitched, sweet sounding, Mockingjay song. 

“Aren’t they just wonderful?” Shireen beamed toothily at him. “You try.”

She had never reminded him more of Sansa than she did in that moment, and it made his chest feel tight. But Jon parroted the whistle.

She nodded her approval. “If we hear that, it means that we’re fine, and we’ll see each other soon.”

She was still smiling, but there was something about it that was forced. Shaky. As if the excitement had faded, and the danger of their situation was starting to sink in for her again. He thought about telling her that she didn’t have to do this, not if she didn’t want to, but somehow he knew she’d say she wanted to anyway. 

“If you don’t hear it, assume I’m dead.” Jon said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Shireen’s brow furrowed at that, her chin jutting stubbornly. “What if you aren’t dead?”

If Sansa couldn’t win, Jon hoped desperately Shireen could. But he did not tell her that. He settled for squeezing her shoulder, repeating, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

The plan. 

Val, the Hound, Ramsay, and Myranda were all at the lake, up and walking around. It was just as he suspected—both were still recovering from the tracker jacker attack. Even from this distance, Jon could see the large lumps on their bodies. The medicine the Cornucopia had granted them no reprieve. But that didn’t make Jon feel any better. Seeing Ramsay for the first time since the tracker jacker attack filled him with an unspeakable amount of rage. He could taste it in the back of his throat. It took everything in him not to just shoot him dead. There was no guarantee he’d be able to kill the other Careers before they got to cover, and if he didn’t, they’d catch him.

The plan. He had to stick to the plan.

Not even five minutes later, Val shouted something, pointing up at the woods. Jon knew it was Shireen, following her part of the plan. And mice with cheese, the Careers began to follow the plan, too. They armed themselves, and began to head in the direction of the fire.

But right before they left, Ramsay paused at the edge of the forest, turning back around. He was preternaturally still. Even though Jon knew he was covered well, he still crouched closer to the ground, holding his breath.

Ramsay cracked his neck, axe over his shoulder, and disappeared into the brush completely.

Jon gave it 15 minutes before he let out a sigh of relief. 

When Jon had been with them, Renly was still digging up the mines, and the Careers had been arguing over where they should have gone. But from what Shireen told him, they had been smart enough to not set up the mines so closely together. One going off would set off a chain reaction, and their best defense would be gone. No, they were smart about this. So Jon wouldn’t be able to just shoot at a single spot in the ground and be done with it. He had to be smart about this. 

He started to edge around the circumference of the clearing, looking at the pyramid from all angles, unsure really of what he was looking for. There were bins and crates—too heavy to topple over with a single bolt. The smaller ones were more realistic, but it was possible he’d lose all his bolts before it got knocked over. He thought about just setting it all on fire, and quickly dismissed it; the Careers would get back in time to put it out. He circled the pyramid again and again, hoping to find something new.

Across the way, Jon saw that the second fire had started. He was running out of time. Panic started to rise in him, and irritation at the panic when he saw it: a burlap sack of apples. It looked like there was a lot, but were there enough to trigger every last mine? Or at least the ones closest? He didn’t have any other options. But that was how he worked best. No room for mistakes. He moved into range.

He gave himself three bolts to get the job done.

The first tore through the top of the bag, splitting open the side. The second widened that same split to a gaping, promising hole. On the last bolt, he didn’t breathe as he reloaded. As he pulled back one last time. As he shot.

The very last thing he saw was those apples spilling free and teetering toward the ground in what seemed like slow motion, before the world exploded around him.

The aftermath. 

All of the wind, knocked out of him from being blown back to the ground. The earth, still shaking with explosions. The rain of debris coming down all around him. The utter, deafening silence. 

He couldn’t hear. 

Jon touched his ear, the one that had been turned towards the explosion. It came away bloody. Sick rose up inside of him, not at the sight of blood, but at the thought that his hearing might be lost to him for good. He pushed the thought away. He had to get out. They’d be back any minute. 

When he stumbled to his feet, he was dazed and dizzy. The world was spinning fast, and his entire body hurt. At first, he had no choice but to cling to the trees for help as he made his escape. While walking, he allowed himself brief, 30 second pauses to grasp his bearings. To try to force the world steady again. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed, or when exactly his hearing came back, just that it started with a ringing, and only in his right ear. Jon snapped his fingers in his left. Still nothing. He felt unbalanced. Vulnerable.

On another one of his pauses, Jon saw it, a blur of white and blue feathers twitching in a tree. A mockingjay. Then he remembered. Shireen.

He whistled her song she taught him, that melancholy four note tune. He watched the mockingjay in the tree parrot it back, before he heard another do it. Then another. Then another. Until it was all he heard. Then nothing at all.

He hadn’t heard a cannon go off, but he hadn’t been able to hear until now. And the explosions could have hid them. What if she was dead because of his plan? Or worse, what if Ramsay decided to keep her alive? 

Jon went back to the site of the third campfire. It was never lit. Fear started to spike inside of him, as he tried to trace his way back to the second campfire. Once again, he whistled. The mockingjays started to echo him.

And that was when he heard her scream.

He had a bolt in his crossbow before he could blink, and he was running. 

It could have been a trap. It could have been exactly what the Careers wanted him to do, for all he knew, but in that moment, he did not care. Shireen was screaming, and it was the scream of a child. It jarred him to the bone, almost as much as the sound of his name did. She was crying his name.

Jon wanted so badly to call out to her, but he couldn’t risk it. It might draw the Careers closer to her. If one came, he could fight them off. But if all four of them came, they were both as good as dead. So he ran to her instead, as hard as he could.

Shireen was on the ground, trapped in a web of netting. She was thrashing as best as she could, to no avail. Jon got on his knees, using the arrowhead of a bolt to slash her out. When she was free, her entire body was shaking, and she launched herself into his arms, holding onto him tight. He was too weak with relief to stop her. So weak that he allowed himself to shut his eyes. He never saw it coming.

But he pulled back to look at Shireen just in time to see the arrow enter her body.

Jon was faster.

Val died before she could pull out another arrow, the same bolt he had loaded into his crossbow earlier skewering her throat. In the end, it came down to prep time. Seconds. In the end, he didn’t even watch her hit the ground. 

It was stupid of him, but he turned his back on her. On the forest that could have possibly been hiding the rest of her allies. But Jon didn’t care at that moment. Shireen had crumpled to the ground, and his arms were coming up around her. She had never seemed so little.

“Hold on.” He said to her, hands shaking. “Just—hold on, Shireen. Everything’s gonna be—”

It wasn’t. He knew it as soon as he opened her jacket, and found the spearhead buried up to the shaft in her stomach. He knew it the moment he saw her bloodless face, draining of all the color it once had. He knew it, and he knew she knew it to, from the way she looked up at him with her blue green eyes, already glassy.

“I can’t…” she choked out.

“It’s okay.” He said, even though it wasn’t. “It’s fine.”

Her hand—it was so small—grasped his, more tightly than he expected it to. He squeezed it just as tight, fearing that if he didn’t, she’d slip away completely, though she already was. 

“You blew up their supplies?” She asked.

“Sky high.” He said to her. 

“That’s good.” Her swallow was visible. “Will you go to her now?”

Jon didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. She was dying, and still the one thing on her mind was love. He could not answer, so he just nodded. 

“That’s good.” Shireen repeated, voice faint. “You should. While you can.”

She did not point out the obvious—that with only six of them left now, it would be harder to separate. She did not remind him that only one of them could win. And most importantly, she did not ask him to win. She didn’t make him promise that to her, or anything else for that matter. And he loved her for it. He always would.

Her voice trailed off. “I wish there was a way…”

“Don’t worry about me.” Jon forced out. “I’m gonna be just fine.”

Shireen smiled at that, though it was tremulous. Then tears began to slip down her cheeks. She exhaled sharply. “I’m scared.”

Something shattered inside of his chest.

“Don’t be.” A cannon fired. He gathered her closer to him, as if that would prevent it from firing again. “Just think of it like you’re going to sleep.”

She nodded as much as she could, before her hand tightened around his. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He said. 

Shireen’s lip trembled, and Jon would have rocked her in his arms if he didn’t think it would pain her. He settled for stroking her hair with his free hand. He told her to close her eyes. He told her to think of her farm. Her family. Her grooslings. He even whistled her song, and like they always did, the mockingjays sang back.

“Do you hear them?” His voice threatened to crack. 

Shireen didn’t speak, but she smiled a little, right before closing her eyes.

Her cannon fired not even two minutes later. He counted every second. 

She was only sleeping.

It was what he had to tell himself to get himself to set her body down on the forest floor. Head cupped, and gentle. She was just sleeping. It was the only way he was able to leave her long enough to do what he had to do next. 

Earlier, when they were trying to find a good place to set the third fire, they had passed a bank of wildflowers. Shireen had gasped in wonder at all the different colors. Pink, purple, white—

Yellow. 

He’d seen them around the arena before that. And just like every time he saw the mockingjays, it made him falter, because it made him think of her. This time though, Jon didn’t. He didn’t have time to falter. He used the arrowhead of a bolt to cut off the stems of six of them. Then a bunch of violets.

She was only sleeping. 

Right where he left her. He took off her backpack so she could lie on the ground comfortably. The wound was a stain of dark red against her green shirt. Jon zipped back up her jacket, because he could not look at it any longer. He placed the violets on top of them for good measure, resting her hands on the stems. They were still warm. 

She was only sleeping. 

By the time he was done, it really looked like it. Her eyes were closed. The wound was covered. Her dark hair was woven through with dandelions. She always wanted to be beautiful. Jon imagined that if she woke up, she’d be so happy. But she never would. 

It began to sink in for him as he stepped back from her, faced with the reality of leaving her. Leaving her here and like this. Her last thoughts had been of her family and her farm, and now she was going back to both in a box.

Jon looked at Val’s body. The hovercraft would be here for her soon, too. Her and her bow and arrow. The weapon that killed Shireen. He didn’t want it, but in close combat, it would be handier than a crossbow. So he took it, and her pack. 

He wished taking these things from her corpse him some satisfaction, but it didn’t, and neither did killing her. She seemed so defenseless in death, so small. A child. They were all children, at the end of the day. Children who’d been forced into this situation by the throne. The rage spreading through him was an icy, numbing thing. The person he blamed for Shireen’s death wasn’t in this arena. She was in a cushy palace, watching them all right now, probably bored out of her mind. But not for long. 

If he knew the gamemakers, they probably wouldn’t show this part. To do so would be showing everyone in Westeros that they weren’t so easy to control after all. That as hard as they tried, they couldn’t make every single tribute a piece in their games. 

In the end, they’d have no choice. The hovercraft would come for Shireen, and they’d have to show what he did then. Maybe then the gamemakers and their queen would know what it was like to have their hand forced. 

Jon waited until the hovercraft left. 

It was a stupid thing to do. He should have been making a quick exit. The rest of the Careers could have been well on their way to see who survived. For all he knew, Ramsay could have come bursting through that brush at any second, axe swinging. But he didn’t, and Jon stayed until he saw the hovercraft disappear from view. When he left, it wasn’t as fast as he should have.

He was looking for trouble.

He knew it the moment he came to pass by that third and final unlit campfire, and wasted no time taking a match to the wood. He knew it the moment he sat there and waited, bow strung and at the ready. What he’d done for Shireen hadn’t been enough. He wanted a fight. And if he couldn’t fight Cersei Lannister, or the gamemakers, then he’d fight the next best thing: their rabid career district dogs.

But Ramsay and Myranda didn’t come. 

They had to know that Val was dead by now that she hadn’t come back to camp, that it was him that survived. Jon would even bet money that Ramsay knew he was behind the mines blowing up. That should have made him angry. It should have made him stupidly angry, enough to come after him full throttle. What was it that held him back? His injuries from the tracker jacker attack? The splinter in his uneven Career alliance with Val gone? No. It was probably the fact that Jon had used fire to lead him on a wild goose chase earlier, and Ramsay wasn’t falling for it again.

Still, Jon hoped. He hoped, and he stayed until the fire burned and when dusk set in, it was nothing but dying embers. He had no choice but to kick it to ashes, and keep moving. 

He made camp two hours later. It wasn’t much of a camp. He had two sleeping bags now thanks to Shireen and Val, but he used neither of them. He couldn’t bring himself to eat, either. Or drink. 

Jon tried to force himself to go to sleep before the anthem started playing so he wouldn’t have to see it, but there she was in the sky. The picture from their first day at the Training center. She was smoothed faced thanks to her King’s Landing make up, and her blue green eyes were reminiscent of a doe’s. She was stiff. Frightened. Jon wondered how she imagined her death before arriving in the arena, if she had at all. He wondered if it was better or worse.

Then he shut his eyes against the tightness of his throat, and tried to bring back the image of the last time he saw her. Eyes closed. Violets in her hands. Dandelions in her hair. She was only sleeping.

They hadn’t heard from him since the first day. 

Mace Tyrell. The announcer for the games. Their only connection to the outside world besides those sponsored parachutes. Jon was still half asleep when his voice boomed throughout the arena. His first thought was that they’d crowned a victor, and his second god awful thought was that it was him. 

But if anyone else died, he would have known. He would have heard the cannon in his sleep. This was something else. A game within a game. The gamemakers always introduced things like that when the competition was getting stiff. 

“Attention tributes. The regulations requiring a single victor have been suspended. Two victors may be crowned…..but only if they each originate from the same district.” 

Two victors. The words pounded in his head, a pulsing, alive thing. He remained still for a moment, everything else that left Mace Tyrell’s mouth was pure white noise going in his right ear and out his still deaf left ear. Two victors—

Before Jon could stop himself, he choked out her name. 

Dawn was beginning to break, but Jon couldn’t just sit around and wait for it to come. He’d lost enough time as it was. 

Shock. It was shock that rendered him so weak yesterday, after Shireen...He hadn’t been thinking clearly. He hadn’t been thinking about her. He was so ashamed of himself, especially after his last words to Shireen—then it hit him. Had it been Shireen’s last words that prompted such a rule change from the gamemakers? “I wish there was a way.” She had said. Now, suddenly, there was. Had him and Sansa really grown so beloved in King’s Landing that it would be too dangerous to kill them? Had Shireen’s words made the gamemakers realize this? It made Jon miss her even more, but he had no more time for grief. And he was done sitting around. 

Jon took inventory of all the packs he accumulated. Val’s had a blanket roll, a waterskin, jerky, and a first aid kit—handy for when he finally found Sansa. Though she had survived for so long, she did so with festering wounds. She’d need all the help she could get. 

He checked her pack next. Another sleeping bag. Another water skin. A twine of rope. A box of matches. All courtesy of sponsors, he knew. Her strategy to make them love her actually worked, just like Baelish and Tyrion had promised it would. It worked so well they had a chance to go home.

Jon knew the contents of Shireen’s bag well, but he still checked. What was left of their rabbit from lunch. Dried fruit, a water skin, a knife, her slingshot, and what was left of her bread. Her backpack was bigger, so he consolidated all he accumulated into that bag, and slung it over his shoulders. He covered the other three now empty bags in foliage in pine needles, stuffing them between a rock crevice where no one could find them. Then he ate as much as he could, so he wouldn’t have any excuse to stop for a break.

Today, he would find her. And tomorrow, they’d be one step closer to going home.

Jon tried to think of everything she had ever said to him.

Something, anything that would shed some light on where she was. But he came up with nothing. He spent most of the morning heading west, a pretty vague damn direction as it turned out. But it was the last place he saw her, and it was all he had. 

He didn’t know why he expected to find the charred remains of the part of the forest where the wildfire blew. The gamemakers liked things pretty. Of course they would have restructured it as soon as they destroyed it. But there was no way of telling if they simply replaced what they had wrecked, or redesigned the terrain completely. It felt like hours before he finally got his answer.

The same springfed pool Sansa stopped to rest at before they caught her.

It had to be. They spent hours scouring for water sources in this same area, and had come up empty save for this pool. And while it was possible the gamemakers could have rearranged the terrain, the stretch of forest before him looked too familiar to dismiss it.

From there, Jon ran, recreating that chase to jog his memory. The headache that pounded his head throughout his head that day, the sound of foliage crunching underfoot. Myranda’s awful laugh. And finally—

The tree where they cornered her. Where the tracker jacker hive dropped from. There was no evidence of the husk now, but Jon was willing to bet there was a spanking brand new hive up there now.

But that was inconsequential, and so was the attack. What had happened after he broke through the trees to find Ramsay dragging Sansa by her ankles, trying to pin her down? What happened after he punched him over and over again? 

They ran. 

No, not ran, Jon remembered as he followed the path. They were in no condition to run. Sansa kept pleading that he leave her, but he wouldn’t, and then…..the hill. 

And then he was right where he last saw her, at the bottom of that hill with his sword, in way worse shape than him. Stung, injured, and potentially suffering from burns,, just how far could she have gotten? And how the hell had she stayed alive for so long afterward? With no supplies, no food, no water—

Water. 

There was no way in hell she could have survived this long without water. 

So Jon kept walking, as straightforward as possible, the pounding of his heart filling his ears. He wanted badly to call her name, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, or her potentially. So he settled for jogging, and almost fell right into it.

It was a stream. The same stream him and Shireen camped near the night before last? He was almost positive that if he followed the stream and went back that way, he’d find their campsite. But what lay west? 

Sansa was smart. She wasn’t just going through the motions with those survival instructors at the Training center, she would know that following it was the smartest thing she could do. And if she took it a step further, she would have walked in the stream to hide her tracks. Jon unlaced his boots and did the same.

The foliage around them slowly and steadily started to disappear, as the stream twisted into a part of the woods he was uncomfortably unfamiliar with. Roots and hardpacked dirt with sprouts of grass turned to muddy banks covered in tangles of water plants, which turned into moss covered rocks that grew large in size. So large that it put him on high alert. If someone were to come down on him and attack him from here, he’d have a hell of a time fighting his way up. Jon was forced to navigate out of the water and put his boots back on, climbing the rest of the way. He was starting to doubt Sansa would have been able to make the trip herself in such a state without seriously hurting herself when something shot up to grab his ankle. 

He stumbled back, notching an arrow and ready to send it flying before he saw it, the unmistakable blue of her eyes in the mud and green leaves.

Jon choked, before he fell to his knees, and he began to feel. When he found what he thought was her body, he began to dig frantically, throwing away smaller rocks and clumps of moss and anything else that prevented him from getting to her.

Until he could pull her up and into his arms. 

He felt like he was finding land after treading water for so long. He felt like he could finally breathe, and he spent most of that breath talking, saying “You’re okay,” over and over again as he held her fast to him. Her entire body was trembling. But Jon wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. 

“You s-stepped on me.” She croaked. 

“I’m sorry.” He pulled back to inspect the damage. There was so much mud on her face. He wiped at it with his ragged sleeve. He wiped at it until he could see her pale skin underneath, until she was recognizable to him. 

“You came f-for me.” She looked almost bewildered.

“I’m sorry I took so long.” His throat felt tight. “I’m sorry—”

And he wanted to tell her everything at that moment. How he was sorry for breaking down yesterday when she needed him to be strong for both of them. He wanted to tell her about Shireen, who had loved her without even knowing her. How because she called his name, she died and it was all his fault. He wanted to tell her how he was sorry for Jeyne and even Val and all those that came in between, because he knew she’d find out when they got out of here and never look at him the same. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Sansa told him hoarsely.

Jon said nothing, but when he buried his face back in her neck, he almost wept.

He couldn’t stop touching her.

Checking her wounds was a necessity, but it also provided a good excuse. Jon found himself afraid that if he wasn’t in contact with some part of her body, that she’d disappear on him, and if that happened again, he was sure he would disappear, too.

He wanted to get her into the stream to clean her up so he could assess her wounds better, but her body was so wracked with shivers thanks to half hiding in the stream for three days, he didn’t think it was a good idea. He settled for using his water skin and wetting several bandages to clean her up, and relying on her to tell him of her hurts. Just like he thought, she’d been burned in the wildfire explosion, from her wrist, to the back of her elbow. He took care of that first, applying some of his burn cream. 

He wondered why Baelish sent it to him instead of her. He had known she wasn’t dead, yet he left her to suffer? Had he expected her to be dead by the time he could round up the money from the sponsors? Or had he merely thrown in with a victor he thought had a chance? 

“I know something that can help with these.” Jon said, when she pointed to her stings.

“M-more medicine?” Sansa asked, so pitifully and hopefully that he hated himself more than anything for not having any. 

He ran a thumb over her knuckles. “The closest we’re gonna get.” 

Jon took out some of the leaves Shireen had helped him pick, and chewed, just as he had seen her do. Then he began to apply them. At first, she reared back, horrified, but the moment the leaves touched her welts, she moaned in relief. 

“T-that’s….” She exhaled deeply. “That’s d-disgusting.”

A relieved, frantic laugh burst from him, as he continued to smear the wet, ground up leaves on her stings.  If she was well enough to complain, maybe she’d be okay after all.

This thought left him mind as soon as he took a look at her leg, which she had managed to avoid mentioning. He saw why. The gash on her leg was heavily inflamed, and the skin around it was swollen. It was still oozing pus and blood. He could smell it. 

“It’s b-bad, isn’t it?” She asked.

“It’s fine.” Jon lied. “We just have to clean it good. I think the burn cream could help with the infection.”

He could tell she didn’t believe him, and he hated her for it. He hated the way she almost looked like she felt sorry for him.

“Everything’s gonna be fine.” He said, more harshly than he should have, but he couldn’t help it. He’d fix her, because there was no other option. Leaving without her wasn’t an option. 

Sansa’s eyes shined with tears, but she nodded for a moment before she spoke, voice cracking. “I believe you.”

And that—her lying to spare his feelings—that hurt worse than any sting. Any blow. 

The cave. Jon found it while looking for shelter on higher ground. From the side, it looked like just another one of the many huge rocks that littered this stretch of forest. Perfect for camouflage. The climb was steep, but he managed to get Sansa inside without incident. She didn’t complain, fading in and out from fatigue. Holding herself up as he did his best to tend to her had drained the little energy she had. It was only when Jon went to lay her down that he noticed the blue tint of her lips. Then he checked her fingernails, and his heart sank.

“Sansa.” He touched his hand to her cheek. “Are you with me?”

Her eyes were on his, but unfocused. He had to grip the back of her neck a little firmly to get her to focus, to bring her back to him. Eventually she nodded.

“You’re hypothermic.” He told her. “If we don’t get your clothes off, you’re gonna freeze to death.”

Sansa swallowed visibly, teeth chattering. “I d-don’t want to.”

“I know. But it’s just until you get better.”

Then she looked at him. “I-I mean I don’t w-wanna freeze to death.”

A joke. It took him a moment to realize she was joking. She was freezing to death and she was joking. She must have seen how scared he was of losing her in that moment. More scared than he’d ever been in his life.

“I’ll put them back on as soon as you’re better.” He promised, and she nodded. 

Jon covered her entire body in one of the sleeping bags. He began to take off her clothes from underneath the best he could. Her pants were easy, and had become a little loose on her. Her underwear was a different story. To make sure they didn’t snag on her gash, he pushed the sleeping bag up to the tops of her thighs so he could pull them down. The second it was past her knees, he averted his eyes. 

He could hear Sansa hold her breath. 

Jon cleaned the gash the best he could, bandaging it. Then he covered her back up again, and moved up top. She was not looking at him, so he didn’t look at her. But when he asked her, very quietly to raise her arms up, she did, and he took her shirt off, too. Then, with her help, her bra, lifting it from underneath her breasts, to over her head. 

Her teeth were still chattering, and for some reason, he was shivering too.

He zipped her up in the sleeping bag. He added the other two on top for good measure, bundling her up so tight she probably found it difficult to move. But if she did, she did not tell him so.

“S-sponsors?” She asked him, when he finished tucking her in.

Once again, Jon drove Shireen from his mind. If he went there, he was scared he would not come back, and he couldn’t afford that right now. He needed to be strong for both of them.

“A friend.” He left it at that. “Rest. Focus on getting warm.”

Outside, the sun was sinking lower and lower in the sky, and with dusk as coverage, Jon started a fire. If Sansa wanted to call him out for being a hypocrite, she didn’t act like it. Instead, she exhaled shakily, curling towards the fire. She even unzipped her sleeping bag a little, stretching her hand out beside it. It seemed to help her for a while. He alternated between watching the sunset and her. 

When he was forced to put out the fire before night could fall, it was as if her shivering had only got worse. The chatter of her teeth was more audible than ever, and her slow, heavy breathing was starting to worry him. Jon began to strip off his own clothes, excluding his undershorts. 

She must have not been able to hear him move over her own shivering, because when he reached her side, she jumped slightly. 

“Move over.” He said quietly.

Sansa didn’t question it, but when he brought her close to him after zipping back up the sleeping bags, she made a noise like gasp. Thinking he frightened her, he almost moved away, but she turned and clung to him properly, face in his neck, breath washing hot against his collarbone. Her entire body was freezing, but this was what made him shiver.

He did not know how long they stayed like that, silent. Just that he was doing everything to distract them both from the cold. Running his fingers through her hair. Tracing the curve of her jaw. Brushing his lips against her forehead. Her cheek was on the inside of his shoulder. The cold tip of her nose pressed against his pulse. Her hands rested between them. He had never, in all his life, felt a closeness like this to anyone. 

“Thank you.” She whispered. “For coming to find me.”

She wasn’t shivering so hard anymore, and she wasn’t stammering. That was a good sign. 

“You would have done it for me.” He murmured, though it was more than that.

“And you would have cursed me for it.” She said back.

Jon didn’t deny it. He rubbed circles into her back with his fingers, hoping the motion was soothing. He heard her breathing slow, and for a moment, he thought she fell asleep. 

“You can’t stay here.” Her voice cracked. 

Another silence lapsed.

“I don’t see anything wrong with here.”

“I’m dead weight, Jon.”

“Then I’ll carry you.” He said stubbornly.

“You already tried that.” Her fingers brushed against his neck, the evidence of Ramsay’s hands still there.

“Then I’ll try again. I’ll try until we win. That’s what I promised you, remember? I said I’d never leave you.” He hated the way his voice shook, but he couldn’t stop it. “So don’t make me break it. Don’t make me leave you.”

Her eyelashes were wet with tears. Her nose brushed against his. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. In between them, her hand dropped from his neck to his heart.

“Why not?” She asked.

Jon remembered her words back at the Training Center. I thought you hated me. He remembered his response. More than you know. The surprise on her face when she realized he’d found her. You came for me. She thought he hated her. She thought this was nothing but guilt and obligation. He wished it was.

His heart was beating hard in his chest, right underneath her palm. He wanted to shout at her, that’s why. But he didn’t. He pressed his forehead against hers, nose brushing. Her cheek fit perfectly in his palm, as if it belonged there. The realization made him feel like the world as he knew it was disintegrating. 

And still, he kissed her.

Chapter Text

It was too much.

From the moment their lips brushed, he knew it would be too much for him. It was her lips, cold on his. Their knees knocking together. Her hand, still curled up against his slamming heart. Then it was the inside of her mouth, warm and soft, and her head tipped back to meet him, because then she was kissing him back. Hesitantly. Tenderly. He felt like he was burning. It was too much. 

He stopped, pulling away. He kept his eyes closed, so he could get further away. From the softness of her body pressed up against him and the memory of her lips and the way she kissed him. Jon counted his breaths. He counted hers, too.

When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him. The moonlight from the mouth of the cave illuminated her just barely enough. Her mouth was bruised and slightly parted and her eyes were widened in something like wonder. That was too much, too. He should have closed his eyes again, but he couldn’t stop looking at her.

Sansa buried her face into his neck, and he didn’t have to. He thought it was all over. But then he felt it, her mouth on his skin. Pressing against the bruises that Ramsay’s fingers made, each and every one. Jon loosed a shuddering breath. 

“Don’t ask me to leave you again.” He said, after her mouth left his skin and he felt he could think right again. Her cheek rested against his pulse. “Promise.”

It wasn’t fair. For him to ask this after he denied her, but he couldn’t help himself. And if Sansa thought the same, she did not say so.

“Promise.” She whispered back.

The parachute came after dawn broke.

Jon watched it float down from the mouth of the cave, and disentangled himself from Sansa’s sleeping body to get dressed. It was waiting for him by the rocks, still beeping.

Jon stumbled down the incline to get to it, so relieved that he could have passed out. Medicine. It had to be medicine. He clumsily undid the tie, in a rush to get it out. 

But it was only a pot of broth. So hot there was steam still wafting from it. Resentment spiked up inside of him. He almost threw the pot into the stream. 

It would be just like the gamemakers, wouldn’t it? To let him find her just so he could watch her die and do nothing about it. Nothing said starcrossed lovers more than that. Wrong place, wrong time.

But Baelish wasn’t one of the gamemakers. He wanted them to win, even if it was for his own gain. That was clear when he sent Jon the medicine—perhaps he knew of the rule change beforehand and trusted that he’d do whatever it took to find her. And now, he sent this broth. It was likely buying the burn cream had nearly cleaned out their donations. Maybe this was all he could afford, and this was his way of telling them this. And if that was true, then what he was really saying was—

Give me more. 

Belatedly, Jon realized they both must have put on a good show last night. The desperate hunt. Their reunion. How he patched up her wounds. The way they laid together to keep warm. The donations must have been pouring in by the second. After all, it was day 7, and that broth wouldn’t have come cheap. And neither would Sansa’s medicine.

She was still asleep when he made his way back to the cave. After the night she had, the last thing he wanted to do was wake her, but they couldn’t risk losing the audience’s attention. Not now.

Jon was unsure of how to rouse her, so he settled for brushing her hair off her shoulder, and resting his hand on her neck. It was warm. He was so relieved his throat felt tight.

Sansa stirred, eyes fluttering open. It was a moment before her gaze met his, and when it did, her cheeks turned pink. Better than the pale state of them yesterday.

“You look better.” His hand feels too hot against her skin, but he doesn’t take it away. “How do you feel?”

She pulled the covers further up, until they were touching her chin. “Naked.”

He wished he could have lied and said it completely slipped his mind, but it hadn’t, especially after waking up this morning. Jon nodded a little too fast, not quite looking at her. “Your clothes are probably dry by now. I’ll go–yeah. I’ll get them.”

He left the clothes to dry on a rock by the cave. They were mostly dry, if not a little cold. He helped her dress, and like yesterday, she hid her body from him and the cameras using one of the sleeping bags, and like yesterday, she did not look at him. Spending a night naked in his arms hadn’t robbed her of her shyness. But when he had no choice but to look at her after pulling the sleeping bags over her legs again, he found she was already looking at him. 

It was the same way she looked at him last night, but only this morning, in the daylight, did it remind him of Shireen, when he told her about Sansa singing. That same look of abashed wonder. As if he was something to behold. It was too much to take. Jon wished he’d never woken her. But then he thought of Shireen, and her last words. The words that helped make it possible for them to be here. He couldn’t let that be in vain. He couldn’t let her down.

He was no good at affection. At least the gentle kind, which Ygritte often only partook in to embarrass him in public. She liked everything bold and rough, like her. But if she was rough, Sansa was the softest silk. She was not the kind of girl who would respond to what Ygritte liked. 

Tentatively, Jon brushed his fingers against the back of her hand, down to her fingers. Sansa’s hand went still, but she didn’t move away. He looked up and saw she wasn’t even breathing. She reminded him of the deer he encountered in the woods, the ones who were too smart for their own good. Her eyes were searching, yet cautious. 

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. 

She exhaled shakily, and it was only then that he realized he hadn’t been breathing either. 

“Baelish sent us something.” He said, stroking the spot where his lips were.

Sansa’s fingers curled, so that they were just barely interlaced with his. “Medicine?” 

A sharp edged pain bled through his chest. “Not yet.” He forced his voice to sound even. “broth.” 

She wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps she knew the answer before he even told her. Whatever the case, she just shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You should still get something down.” He insisted. “When was the last time you ate? You need your strength.”

If she was gonna have to hold on until the medicine came, she needed as much strength as possible. And turning away a sponsored gift wasn’t a good look either. But Sansa looked as if she was fading away, and he knew she wasn’t thinking about things like that right now.

Jon kissed her the back of her palm again. Then he took her hand in between both of his and squeezed. His voice was wavering slightly, but he didn’t care. “Please.”

Sansa’s shoulders drooped, but she nodded.

Every spoonful was an uphill battle. It took an hour to get down a third of the pot. He tried being gentle and he tried being harsh, but nothing worked like kissing. He kissed her temple, and her cheek, and her jaw, and pleaded until she would sigh brokenly, and take the spoon in her mouth. And he did it again. And again.

Until she vomited it all back up. 

Right outside the cave, with his hand holding back her hair. Every bite he forced down was gone as she heaved, body wracked with shivers. But her skin was hot to the touch, and dry. A shiver crawled down his spine. Yesterday, she had been close to freezing to death. And now she was close to boiling to death.

Jon got her back inside. He changed her bandages, the gash looking just as bad as it did yesterday. He picked some mint leaves and made her chew them to help with her nausea. He reapplied some medicine to her burns. At the bottom of the first aid kit pack, he found fever pills. The same he used back home when he could afford them. They worked fine then. But he never suffered from an infected leg back home. 

“You’re just running a little hot.” He poured some of the pills into his hand. His hand was shaking so badly he accidently poured too much. “That’s all.”

“It’s better than being cold.” She said, though she was shivering underneath the sleeping bag. 

“Here.” Jon dropped three of the tablets into her mouth, and pressed the waterskin to her lips. “Drink. It will help.”

He did not know if that was true, but Sansa drank it anyway. Then she finished the little that was left of the bottle. Throwing up must have left her dehydrated. 

“More?” He asked, and she nodded.

Jon poured a little of the water from Shireen’s waterskin into his own. He didn’t want to chance her throwing up again. Sansa drank it all, but she didn’t ask for more.

“Better?” 

“Yes.” Her smile was faint, and weak, but it was there. “Much better.”

They both knew she was lying.

That afternoon:

Sansa slept. Jon picked some elderberries in case she woke up and decided she was willing to try to stomach something. He collected more mint leaves. He filled up all four waterskins. He sat at the mouth of the cave, arrow at the ready. Just in case. 

Every 15 minutes, he crawled back inside and pressed his fingers to her pulse. Just to make sure she was still with him. 

Early evening:

He forced himself to eat, because he had to be strong enough for both of them. He caught two small fish and ate the rest of the jerky. The food sat like cement in his stomach. He should have forced himself to eat more, but he couldn’t bear being away from her for too long. 

She woke up for a little while. He made her eat a couple berries, and when she didn’t throw up, he got some water in her too. Her entire body was a furnace, but she was still shivering. So he held her. Rocked her. Pressed his lips into her hair.  He stayed there, even when she was asleep again. 

The anthem played. No casualties. Not yet. 

That night:

The sleeping bag was too warm—it was reflecting her fever. But the temperature had dropped so rapidly that he was scared the cool night air would do more harm than good. Jon dampened a bandage and placed it on her forehead, and he waited.

He counted her ragged breaths. He refreshed the bandage. He pressed lightly against her faint pulse. He refreshed the bandage. He listened to heart.

He prayed.

He prayed to gods he hadn’t prayed to since he was a child. He prayed to gods he had never believed in at all. He prayed to anyone who would listen. Anyone who could make it so that she wouldn’t leave him. 

There was only the sound of her breathing. The beat of her heart. His prayers. And then, later on, soft, melodic humming. Fingers carding through his hair.

“It helps my brothers.” Sansa whispered hoarsely. “Singing.”

So she sang for him. And he hid his face in her hair so no one could see him cry.

That morning:

Dawn came in fractured, sluggish increments. Streaks of rosy pink across the blue sky. Dull gray light filtered through the entrance of the cave. Jon used the dim lighting to refresh the bandage, but just as he was about to drape it across her forehead, he noticed the sheen of sweat on her upper lip. The clamminess of her neck. Her fever had broken.

He released a ragged, choked breath before he kissed her awake.

She must have sworn to him hundreds and thousands of times that she was feeling much better.

He didn’t have to kiss her to get her to eat a few more spoonfuls of broth, but he did so anyway, because he knew she was really trying for him. When she kept that down, he fed her more berries and water. 

“You’re trying to fatten me.” Sansa accused, after accepting another berry. 

It wouldn’t hurt. Over a week in the arena had turned her into skin and bone. But he suspected that wouldn’t be something a woman would want to hear. Though when he told Ygritte she was built like a scarecrow after they wrestled once, she laughed for an hour, and took any and every opportunity to dig her bony sharp limbs into his body afterwards. 

“We need to keep you strong.” He said instead. “Until the medicine comes.”

Sansa didn’t say anything to that. She looked away from him, towards the entrance of the cave where it was bright with sunlight. Was she looking for a parachute? Or had she already given up? No. She couldn’t have. He wouldn’t let her.

Jon tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve always liked you the way you are. For the record.”

She looked up at him through lowered lashes. “Always?”

“Always.” He whispered back.

That time, she kissed him. 

She was good at pretending. 

So good, it crossed his mind from time to time that maybe she wasn’t. Every time she leaned her head on his shoulder, or she intertwined their fingers together. Or every time she blushed when he looked at her for too long.

Jon knew he wasn’t pretending. He knew it the moment he had found her again. But it was hard to tell what she knew. Did she know why he kissed her? Or did she think that it was just to put on a show? He didn’t know what was true, but figuring it out wasn’t important. They had to stay alive. 

Around noon, they both sat at the mouth of the cave because she wanted to feel the sun. As always, it set her hair aflame. But she looked pale and sickly in its light, and Jon found himself wishing they stayed in the dark. It was hard to see her like this. 

“You’re gonna fade away if you stay up any longer.” She said.

Her fingers were tracing the shadows underneath his eyes, featherlight and gentle. He caught her wrist, taking her hand into his.

“I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t. He was exhausted. He hadn’t slept since the night before, and that was only briefly because he was so focused on trying to keep her warm. He knew he would crash soon if he didn’t get rest, but the thought of closing his eyes even for a second and losing her stopped him from even trying. 

“So am I.” She said to him. “I can keep watch for a little while so you can rest. It’s not like anyone is gonna find us here, anyway.”

She was right. As long as they stayed inside the cave, nobody would be able to find them. It was as close to safe as they were gonna get.

“You can’t protect me if you can barely keep your eyes open, Jon.”

That day up in the tree was a testament to that. 

Still, Jon started to shake his head, and started to tell her again that he was fine, when her hands came up to frame his jaw, bringing him close to her. And she kissed his nose.

“Please.” Her hands were so soft, and her mouth was still so close to his, and his eyes were so, so heavy. “Just for a little while.”

He sighed.

“Just for a little while.” He repeated reluctantly. 

So they went back inside, and Jon laid down. He got on top of one of the sleeping bags instead of underneath it. He didn’t want to get too comfortable and sleep for longer than he had to. Sansa sat leaning against the wall, bad leg stretched out in front of her. They were in the same positions as they were that very first night he found her, just reversed.

“Just for a few hours.” He said again. “And then you can wake me.”

She didn’t answer him, but her fingers were brushing his hair off her forehead like they did last night, and he forgot he even said anything at all. She sang to him, too. Happy songs, and sad songs. Every single one she knew. He fought to stay awake only so he could hear her voice.

He only recognized one song. It was no lullaby. It was a haunting, macabre tune about a hanging tree. When he was younger, kids used to sing it while skipping rope, blissfully unaware of just how sinister it was. Even then, they knew not to sing it in front of teachers, or where peacekeepers could hear. Jon wondered if she could get in trouble for singing it here, but it wasn’t like they weren’t already in trouble.

wear a necklace of hope / side by side with me

“I thought it was rope.” He said through a yawn.

“I changed it.” She wasn’t looking at him, but at the world outside the cave. “I thought we could use some hope.”

He fell asleep soon after that.

When Jon woke up later on, he knew he had slept too long. The sun was sinking low, making it early evening. The air breezing in through the mouth of the cave was cool. And there was no one inside but him. 

He shot up instantly, so fast he almost tripped over his own two feet. Fatigue made him dizzy, but the fear spiking within him was more powerful than that. 

Jon checked outside the cave, where they both had been earlier. She wasn’t there. She couldn’t have gotten much further than that, not on that leg. Unless someone saw her and took her. Would he have heard it? With how tired he was?

Jon slid down the rocks more than he climbed down the gravel skittering everywhere. He called her name, or at least he tried to. He was breathing too fast, and too hard. He should have made her promise not to leave the cave. He shouldn’t have ever gone to sleep in the first place. The world—the arena—was suddenly four walls closing in tight around him, and he was forgetting how to breathe. How to stand. 

But he still heard it. The whistle of a mockingjay.

He followed it. Somehow, over the white noise boxing his ears and the thudding of his heart in his chest, he followed it. It was coming from down by the stream. He weaved through the boulders, and once again aware of how vulnerable he was at such a vantage point, he remembered he left his bow back at the cave.

But he did not need it.

Sansa was leaning up against a rock, bad leg stretched before her. Her hand was in the water, moving back and forth. The mockingjay she must have been singing to was on the ground nearby, jumping up and down, still chirping the tune she must have taught him. As if he was trying to impress her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” 

She jumped, looking over her shoulder. When she saw him, she relaxed. That made him even more angry.

“You scared me.” She said. 

“I scared you? I woke up and you were gone!”

He was shouting. A part of him knew he should have been quieter, even with the sound of the rushing stream camouflaging their voices, but he didn’t care. That was how angry he was.

Sansa held up two of their waterskins. “I just wanted some water.” 

“We had water.”

“I drank it all.”

“Then you should have woken me.” Jon said through clenched teeth. 

“I knew if I did, then you probably wouldn’t go back to sleep.” Her voice was small. “I was just trying to help.”

He counted to ten as he scrubbed his face, trying to remember how to breathe. 

“Look what I found.” He heard her say, tentatively bright. “I hid it really well. It took some digging.”

It was his sword. The one he gave her the morning of the tracker jacker attack. The steel gleamed despite being streaked with soil. Jon hadn’t thought about it since he saw it was missing at the bottom of the hill. He should have felt relieved to see it, because it meant he didn’t have to use the bow anymore. He didn’t have to use the weapon that killed Shireen. But the walls of the world were closing in again, and his throat felt tight. His knees felt weak.

“Jon?”

He didn’t sit as much as he slid down against a boulder. His legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. He felt so drained, suddenly. So tired. 

“You scared me.” He repeated. 

Sansa crawled to his side. It wasn’t something she should have been doing with her leg, and he should have stopped her. But speaking felt like too much effort. Breathing was already taking everything in him.

“I’m sorry.” She said softly. 

Jon couldn’t look at her, so he turned away, but her hand was on the back of his neck, pulling him back toward her.

“Love.” She whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes and tried his best not to shiver.

Sansa kissed him, but it was wrong. Earlier, she had been warm. But now, she was just as warm as she had been the day before, like a coal stove. 

“You’re burning up again.” Jon said, pulling away.

“I feel fine.” She assured him.

But when he reached for her injured leg, she tried to stop him, hand on top of his. Her eyes pleaded with him. He pushed her touch away, heart in his throat, as he unwrapped her bandage.

It was worse.

Everything about it was worse. The swelling, the inflammation, the pus. But the part that scared him the most was the patches of red on the underside of her calf, and her thigh. Blood poisoning.

Jon bit his cheek until it bled.

“There’s nothing you can do.” She said quietly.

He began to wrap the wound back up slowly, so his hands did not shake. “We’ll get medicine.”

Her voice rose slightly. “From where?”

He looked at her and saw that she was breathing heavily. The fact that he couldn’t tell if it was from anger or because she was finding it hard to breathe scared him. But it was clear that she was tired of pretending to have hope, because that was what she had been doing this whole time. For his sake. 

“When we win.” Jon said firmly.

Sansa sighed, exasperated. Before she turned away from him, he saw that her eyes shined with tears.

“Hey.” He willed his voice to be softer, gentler, as his hand cupped her jaw. “All you have to do is hold on a little while longer. You can do it. I know you can.”

Tears spilled over her cheeks, and he tried to wipe them as fast as they came, but the sight of each one broke something inside of him. 

“Please.” Jon begged her. 

He knew this was like the promise he made her swear earlier. It was too much. It wasn’t fair. But it wasn’t fair for her to try to leave him alone here, either. Not after he just found her. 

“I’m so tired.” She said to him. 

It wasn’t a yes. And that scared him more than anything else. 

Jon carried her back up to the cave. He changed her bandages. He gave her more fever medicine. He gave her some more berries and roots and tried to get some rabbit meat in her, but Sansa refused, and he had no energy to coax her. Besides, it was raw and he didn’t want to risk it making her more sick anyway. 

That was what he tried to tell himself. That it could have been worse.

Jon didn’t watch the anthem play in the sky that night. He held her instead. Though she did not speak to him, she didn’t turn away from him either. She was so quiet, he thought she was still angry with him. But when he pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, her fingers stroked the back of his hand, right before squeezing.

“Do you remember?” Sansa asked. “That day in the rain?”

Her voice was so quiet, so faint, if he was anywhere else in the cave he would not have heard it at all. His eyes stung, but he made sure his voice was even when he answered her. “Yes.” 

“I was at the window.” She told him. “I watched her hurt you.”

Then, she began to shake. For a moment, he believed it was from the cold until she spoke again, and her voice was just as tremulous. “I should have done something.”

“You did.” Jon held her closer to him, tighter. “You didn’t have to, but you did.”

She did more for him than anyone else ever had, aside from Jeor Mormont. He always knew deep down, that that was the reason he formed the watch. Not just because he knew what it was like to be a kid and go hungry, but because she had given him another chance at life. The least he could do was use it to do something meaningful. And he did.

But he never even thanked her.

“I’m sorry.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “That she hurt you. I never….I’m sorry.”

“She would have found another reason. I look too much like my mama. I never blamed you.”

“Still. I should have apologized. I should have...I’m the one that should have done something.” 

Jon thought of all the days after he saw her in the meadow, where every time he saw her body, he looked for bruises. He told himself that if he did, he would do something, though he didn’t know what. But he never did. And she had suffered because of it. She should hate him for that, alone. 

Her hand squeezed his. “There was nothing you could do.”

He could have told the peacekeepers, but what would they have done? They were too lazy to stop people from hopping the fence to hunt. He could have taken her away. But would she have left her sister and brothers? And where would he have taken her to? Her words didn’t make him feel any less guilty. If anything, they made him feel more helpless. He couldn’t protect her then, and he couldn’t protect her now.

“I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.” She confessed. “That day in the meadow was torture enough. I was….I was so embarrassed that you’d seen me like that.”

Jon remembered the way she had covered her face, and all but ran away from him. This entire time, he thought it was because she hated him. But she just didn’t want him to see her at her weakest. Jon knew the feeling. He wondered if that day he saw her haunted her like the day she saw him in the rain haunted him. 

Sansa shifted, though he knew her body must have ached fiercely. She made it so his entire arm was across the front of her body, and her head was nestled into his shoulder. He felt that hole she had knocked through his chest earlier start to cave in.

“Do you remember that wrestling competition? At school?” She said into his neck. 

There was a competition every year, but he only remembered competing in one of them. “Yes. Why?”

“You beat Robb.”

“Barely.”

He was 13 and Robb was 14, and broader and taller besides. He was stronger, but Jon was faster, and in the end, that mattered a little more. He barely won by the skin of his teeth. That much, he remembered. And the begrudging, bone crushing handshake Robb gave him afterwards. 

“That was the first time I saw you.” She said. “I remember.”

I remember. The way she said it made him try to remember too. But he hadn’t seen her that day, or at least he couldn’t remember seeing her. He couldn’t remember the first time he saw her, either. Just that he’d always known she was there. Like the last step on a staircase in the dark. 

“You know the path from school? Through the forest?”

Jon was not sure he could take anymore. He didn’t answer, cheek against the back of her head as he squeezed his eyes shut. It was the only part of her body that wasn’t warm.

And her entire body began to shake again, even her voice. “I only started walking home that way just so I could see you.”

He couldn’t breathe. 

“I need you to know these things.” Her voice broke through. “Just in case I—”

He kissed her, probably more firmly than he should have. Her mouth was still too hot, but he stayed there for a long time. He stayed there until he had no choice but to pull back and breathe, but even then, his forehead was still pressed against hers. 

“Do you remember? That day in the meadow?”

As if she was remembering it at that moment, Sansa tried to turn away from him, fingers over her cheek, but he caught them. And he caught her chin, holding her close. 

“You had dandelions in your hair.”

Her eyes were shut, but tears ran down her cheeks anyway. He tried, but he couldn’t stop every single one. Just like he couldn’t stop what was happening to them.

“It was the first time I ever heard you sing.” He took her face in both of his hands. “And it was the only thing I wanted to listen to for the rest of my life.”

He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t take that away from him. That he couldn’t take her away from him. He wanted to make her promise she wouldn’t leave him. But he didn’t want to hear her say she couldn’t. 

“Do you remember?” He had to whisper it, so his voice didn’t break. 

Sansa opened her eyes. Her lashes were wet. 

“I remember.” She said, hand touching his cheek.

He didn’t let go of her that entire night.

Only to dampen the bandage again, and place it on her forehead. Only to adjust them both to make sure she was still comfortable. He held her close, so he could feel her heartbeat and the breath entering and leaving her lungs. She was still breathing. He had to keep it that way.

In his head, he cursed them all. He cursed Ramsay, and their sponsors, and the gamemakers, and Cersei Lannister. And he cursed the gods he had prayed to yesterday, for not just giving him this one thing.

But Sansa’s breath stuttered in her sleep, and Jon pressed his hand on her heart, fear spiking up inside of him. But it was still hammering away, too hard and too fast. She whimpered, fingers curling into his shirt.

And instead of cursing, Jon started to pray again.

He thought it worked, at first. 

But that morning, when he saw her in the daylight, he knew they were running out of time. Her lips were tinged blue, like they had been the day he found her, but her skin was stove hot. She could barely lift her head, and when he talked to her, he wasn’t sure she was listening at all. She was already starting to leave him. 

Jon made her take more medicine, but when he tried to feed her a dried apple, she shook her head smally.

“It hurts.” She croaked. “To chew.”

He swallowed.

“I’ll make you soup, then.” He stood up. 

Sansa shook her head again. “But fire—”

“We don’t have a lot of other options. And you need to get your strength up.”

It came out harsher than he intended it to, and he wanted to take it back immediately. But he was afraid if he apologized he might break down instead. So he just left the cave, grabbing the iron pot. 

He didn’t need to use a fire, anyway. By the time he had given up hunting and finished setting up some snares, it was scorching hot outside. A couple hot egg sized stones got the water in the pot boiling just fine, especially under the sun. He minced the rabbit from yesterday and used some of Shireen’s roots.

He was no cook, but he knew how to make soup—near the Wall during the winter, with not much of value to barter, soup was sometimes the only medicine they had, and a good way to warm up. Sansa didn’t need anymore warming up, but she did need medicine. Or something like it. So Jon cooked and checked on her from time to time. Cooked and checked. Cooked and checked. Every time, she was sleeping. It was just another sign of how sick she was. She could barely stay awake. Jon was in the entrance of the cave, watching her chest rise and fall sharply, when he heard it. The sound of trumpets. 

Mace Tyrell.

“Attention, tributes…”

A feast.

Mace Tyrell was inviting them all to a feast—of course he was. This late in the game, when there were only six contestants left, and they had reached a sort of stalemate. It must have been too long since the last death. The gamemakers wanted to lure them and get them fighting again. Jon wasn’t stupid.

But neither were the gamemakers.

“Each of you has something you need. Desperately. And we plan to be generous hosts. ”

The quiet flooded back in, as his voice disappeared.

Jon’s heart pounded loud in his ears, as he breathed, “Medicine.”

“No.” 

Behind him, Sansa was sitting up, back braced against the cave. She was pale, almost sallow looking, but her voice was firm. “You’re not going.”

The smart thing to do would have been to lie. He should have tried to convince her that it was the last thing on his mind. But Jon had run out of patience. He was tired of waiting, and he was tired of being helpless. 

“I don’t have a choice.” He said, voice just as hard.

“It’s a trap.” She nearly shouted.

There wasn’t a doubt about it. Jon had no doubt that this feast was specifically for them, to lure one of them back into the lion’s den with everyone else. Willing to die for love made good ratings. But actually dying for love—that made ratings skyrocket. They wanted a martyr.

Well, he wouldn’t give them one.

Jon counted all his arrows—13. He slid his sword into the scabbard around his waist that had previously been empty for days. Mace Tyrell said the feast was at sunrise. He needed a plan, but his mind was racing, and Sansa wasn’t helping matters. 

“You’re not gonna risk your life for me.” She said stubbornly. “I’m not gonna let you.”

“I’m risking my life for you just sitting here!” He exploded.

Sansa flinched as if he hit her. 

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. But if hurting her would get her to let him go, he would beg her forgiveness later. For the rest of their lives, even. As long as they had lives to live.

“You’re deadweight. You said it yourself.” Jon forced out. “What do you think you’ll be after we cut your leg off so the infection doesn’t spread? You’ll become even more of a burden than you already are.”

He knew nothing about medicine, but he knew that if he wanted to take her leg, he probably should have done it earlier, before the blood poisoning. It was an empty threat. But Sansa still turned paler than she already was, so he knew it was working. But he did not know if it was that, or his last statement that made tears shine in her eyes.

“I’m....” I’m desperate, He wanted to say. I’m sorry. I’m not hurting you because I want to.  

“I’m not asking for permission.” He said finally.

She lifted up her quivering chin to stare him down, jaw ground tight. “Then I’ll follow you.”

“You’re not getting anywhere on that leg.”  He snapped. 

“I’ll drag myself. I’ll crawl.” Sansa shot back. “Maybe I won’t make it to the Cornucopia, but if I’m yelling your name, someone will definitely find me. And I’ll be dead anyway.”

Just yesterday, she managed to drag herself all the way down to the stream. Even if she didn’t make it to the Cornucopia, it was possible she could follow the stream and make it far enough to put herself in danger. And with Ramsay out there hunting them, there was too much to leave to chance.

Jon kicked the backpack into the wall. 

She didn’t flinch that time, though the sound was loud. She averted her eyes for just a moment before she looked up at him again and she still had that same stubborn look on his face. 

“You’re the one who promised you wouldn’t leave me.” She said. “So keep it. Or I’ll make you keep it.”

Jon didn’t go back in the cave for a long time. 

He was too angry. He couldn’t even look at her. He had never been this angry with someone before, to the point where it hurt to breathe. In that moment, he hated her more than Ramsay, more than Cersei Lannister. He hated her because she was gonna leave him, and she was just gonna make him watch. 

But it was mostly fear inside of him. Fear that he’d wake up one morning and that her body would be cold beside him. Fear at the thought of her leaving him here alone. Even when he was at the Training Center, and with the Careers, he still had her. After all he’d done to push her away, she was still there. And now, when he was finally doing his best to keep her, she was slipping away from him.

Jon was once again thinking that he’d do whatever it took to keep her with him when the answer came floating down towards him from the sky.

He didn’t allow himself to hope.

Not after that announcement. Their sponsors would have heard it as well, and wouldn’t have bothered to buy them medicine after the opportunity to get their own had already been presented. Especially when it was so expensive by now, If they hadn’t bought it before the announcement, they wouldn’t have bought it now. 

But still, there was a snap second after Jon unlaced the parachute, holding the silver vial in his hands that he was fooled. Medicine came in vials, after all. But it was so small. Too small. He uncorked it, lifting the vial to his nose just to be sure and inhaled a sickly, sweet scent. A familiar one. 

Sleep syrup. 

A common medicine back in 12, where pain from phantom limbs thanks to mining accidents was also very common. A few years back, a fever hit the Wall pretty bad, and besides the old, no one suffered worse than the small children. It fell on the Watch to get everyone medicine, and the best they could do was sleep syrup, He still remembered the smell of sick permeating the orphanages, and the taste of the medicine. Too many people tried to sell them fakes, so they all made sure to know the taste well.

But sleep syrup wasn’t going to help a fever of this magnitude, and it wasn’t going to stop the infection. If Baelish was of that belief, he would have sent it to him earlier. Yet he sent it to him today, after Mace Tyrell’s announcement. After Sansa swore to him she’d follow him to the Cornucopia on her hands and knees if she had to. The entire vial, though small, would be enough to knock her out for an entire day. It was late afternoon, now. She’d be knocked out until the same time tomorrow at least. Way past sunrise and the feast. It was more time than he needed. 

And still, he hesitated.

He’d be drugging her. Taking away her free will in this choice. If she didn’t catch on, there would be no harm, no foul. Only his conscience would be evidence of what happened. But if she did, even if he came back with the medicine, it was possible she’d never forgive him for it. 

But he’d never forgive himself for not trying. 

Jon corked the vial, and tucked it back into his pocket. 

The soup was ready. She was still awake when he came back inside. He took one look at her, and he knew that it was taking a lot from her to stay that way. The wall of the cave was supporting her entire body and her head was threatening to loll back, but when he came in, she straightened immediately. As if she was readying herself for another fight.

It was a shame how often he had to keep reminding himself to be gentle with her.

Jon knelt by her side. When she didn’t move, he sat down properly. Sansa’s eyes flickered toward the soup, before she held her shaking hands out.

“I can do it.” He said. 

Her hands slowly retreated back to their resting place.

He raised the spoon. She swallowed with a grimace. He couldn’t tell if it was from the taste or the pain. The vial was burning a hole in his pocket. 

“You can’t expect me to sit here and watch you die.” His voice cracked without his permission.

But he didn’t care. If it meant it would get her to understand, if it meant he wouldn’t have to do what Baelish had told him to do next. 

“Then I won’t.” She said. She no longer sounded fierce, though he knew she was trying her best to. Her voice started to wobble. “I’ll stay as long as you do. I won’t leave the cave. I’ll eat whatever you want. I won’t throw it back up. I’ll get better. Stronger. I promise. I’ll do anything you want me to. Just don’t leave. Please. I’m not worth it.”

Jon bit into the inside of his cheek, eyes burning. 

“Okay.” He said. 

Her ragged, whimpered exhale of relief was a swift blow to the gut. She took his hand in hers. He let her. Even squeezed hers back.

“Come on.” He lifted the spoon again. “Finish.”

Sansa did. She accepted every bite without complaint. Selfishly, Jon kept holding her hand. Returning it to hers every time it was forced to leave it. He tried to memorize the feel of her palm; soft as velvet, He knew after this, it was possible she would never allow him to touch her again. 

He gave her some more fever medicine, before he left the cave again. He washed out the pot. Picked some berries and threw them inside, mashing them up. Then he threw the syrup inside, too, ignoring the way his stomach turned.

She hadn’t left him a choice. Maybe one day, she would understand that. 

“It’s a new patch.” He told her when she peered into the pot. 

It wasn’t. Just purple gooseberries rather than the green ones, but it was dark mush, so she couldn’t tell. And she believed him anyway. Of course she did. She accepted the first bite so willingly. So trustingly. How many times had he told her not to trust him? 

It was a good thing she had never listened.

“They’re sweet.” She said after the third bite. “What are they called?”

“Don’t remember.” He held the spoon up to her mouth again. “The name was hard to pronounce, though.”

Sansa closed her mouth around the next bite. “It tastes familiar.”

“They only grow in the wild. Your sister probably brought them home once.”

They were down to the second to last bite when she smacked her lips, pausing. Again, she said, “They’re so sweet.”

“You like sweet.” He poked the spoon around her mouth until she accepted it, almost reluctantly.

“Yes, but—” That very last bite. She took it, hand still in his. “It’s almost like syrup.”

Sansa froze.

Her eyes were wide, and when she opened her mouth, he realized she hadn’t completely finished that last bite. She went to spit it out. Jon plastered his hand against her mouth and held her nose so she had no choice but to swallow. He was on top of her, and she writhed and thrashed, until she started to breathe again, and he knew that despite her best efforts, that last bite was gone. He let her go. She tried to vomit it up, fingers in her mouth, and he was forced to hold her hands down. But not for long. She was starting to lose consciousness, and she wasn’t fighting him anymore. Though she was looking at him, wounded and betrayed, and he knew that things would never be the same between them again. 

She was asleep. He tucked her back into the sleeping bag. He wanted to tell her sorry, but he had lied to her enough. He was not sorry. Not if this would keep her safe. 

Instead, he told her, “You’re worth everything.”

The night before:

He prepared. Counted his arrows. Sharpened his sword. Forced himself to eat even though he was sick to his stomach. Then he lay beside her. It felt wrong, after what he did, but he had done a lot of wrong things since the start of these games. 

He could have slept in a separate sleeping bag, apart from her. He did the former, but not the latter. He lay close to her. He listened to her breathe. He ran his fingers through her hair. Traced her own in the dark. 

There had been so much kissing in the past few days, that he struggled to remember the last. He thought of them all instead. The memory of her mouth. Her in his arms. The way she looked at him. Would she ever look at him like that again? He told himself it did not matter.

But then it was time. A couple hours before dawn. He slid out of the sleeping bag. He left her the first aid kit, and some fish he caught for himself last night. A water skin. He left the sword too. 

Jon kissed her forehead. Then he mouthed the words he hadn’t even allowed himself to think into her ear, so the cameras couldn’t read his lips.

And he left.

The feast.

He was behind a tree, close enough to the fray he could feel its breath. The Cornucopia was empty, picked clean like the husk of a carcass. At first, Jon thought he had the wrong place, then hated himself for thinking such a thing. He remembered what Mace Tyrell said verbatim. Now was not the time to second guess himself.

It wasn’t long before he was proven right. The morning birds had started to sing when the plain ahead of him shuddered. The ground splits into two, and from the inbetween, a table draped in blood red ornamental cloth appears. The same color of the queen’s coat of arms. 

There were five backpacks, each marked according to the district. One, two, three, eleven, and twelve. Three and one were big, while eleven was only decently sized. Twelve’s was small, and so was one’s. Were Ramsay and Myranda in need of medicine too? What else could be in their pack?

Jon contemplated trying to find out,

The ground was barely whole again when movement stirred the Cornucopia. A whisper. Right before the person responsible darts for the table, snatching the backpack labeled three up without even stopping and sprinting away. A crop of blonde hair glinting gold in the sunlight, and broad shoulders. Brienne. 

He wouldn’t have suspected such a cunning idea from her, but she had managed to stay alive for this long. Clearly, she wasn’t dumb. Jon was furious with himself for not coming up with a similar plan. Brienne had made it so she was guaranteed a safe escape by going first. No one was gonna go after her and risk leaving their prize behind for someone else to snatch up. It was genius. 

Jon had no time to dwell on it. Any moment, one of the other tributes could come up and snatch up his backpack and his last chance of saving Sansa’s life. And what he did would be for nothing. He moved without hesitation.

He sprinted towards the table, bow in hand. It took more maneuvering than he would have liked to swipe the bag of the table—unlike Brienne, he was not weaponless. He kept going nonetheless. But just as he rounded the Cornucopia he saw her, knife in hand and at the ready. It whizzed towards him, and Jon barely had time to drop to the ground to avoid a fatal hit.

It sliced his eyebrow, sending blood flowing into his eye. Still, he was on his knees, notching an arrow and aiming it at her. He missed. She tackled him to the ground.

His one knee sent them off balance, rolling and grappling. She was stronger than he expected her to be. Lean hard muscle from years of military training. She clearly wasn’t the one who was ill. The second he was on top of her, he tried to pin her down with his hands, but her knife sliced at his palm. She aimed at his stomach and he barely reared back in time. Then she was on top of him again, knife to his neck so he couldn’t move. 

“You have no idea how much we’ve missed you, 12.” Myranda hissed in his ear, knife pressing into him. “Ramsay especially. He would have come, but he has a date. I hope your girlfriend dressed nice.”

Fear tasted sour in his mouth as his heart started to slam in his chest. No. The cave was safe. The cave had been safe the entire time. He camouflaged it well enough. She was safe.

But still. At any second, the gamemakers could change that.

“He said I couldn’t kill you, but I’ll make it good for him.” Her teeth were clenched. “I’ll cut off your head and give it to him as a present. Or her. Maybe we’ll keep her alive and play with her for a while.”

Jon wanted to shove her away. But his knife was at his throat. He was half blind, and without a weapon. Myranda had countless knives in the belt around her waist—from Joy, probably. Even if he got up and ran, she could catch him in the back. He had to get them away from her. He had to think. But his head was pounding, and he felt so dizzy. 

“We’ll kill her eventually. Don’t worry. Just like we did your little ally. The ugly one who was screaming your name like a little baby. What was her name? Shireen?”

Jon kneed her in the stomach, but it wasn’t hard enough. He tried to take the knife at his neck from her, but she elbowed him in the face. He was seeing stars, so dizzy, he thought what came next was apart of his imagination. 

That he was his imagination. 

Myranda was gone. He felt the weight of her leave him abruptly, then he heard her scream. He opened his eyes just in time to see her body being slammed into the wall of the Cornucopia, leaving her gasping for breath. 

Beric was towering over her, hands around her neck. “ You killed her?”

He was towering over her, and he seemed gigantic in that moment. Jon thought of all the other times he saw him. Tall and lean, sure, but never like this. Never imposing and frightening. He had too kind of a face. But it was twisted up into a snarl now, teeth bared. 

Myranda was clawing at his hands, then reaching for her belt. But in being thrown against the Cornucopia, it had fallen from her. She was defenseless. She screamed Ramsay’s name. 

“You killed her?”

“No!” She said, in between pleas. “It wasn’t me—I—”

“I heard you!” Beric thrashed her body against the Cornucopia again. “It was you?”

She screamed again, and Beric hand closed around her throat. “Don’t say his name. Say hers. Say it.”

Myranda began to turn purple, knuckles white against the sleeve of his jacket. She could not have spoken if she tried. Then he made it so she could never speak again. 

He slammed her head against the Cornucopia, hand on her chin. Once. Twice. Again and again until she was slack jawed and limp. Her body fell to the ground when he was done. There was blood on the Cornucopia. Her eyes were still open. 

Jon was still on the floor.

He should have ran. He should have taken that opportunity to leave while Beric was questioning her, but he was frozen for some reason he could not explain. Fear? Shock? Dizziness? He did not know. 

Beric walked past him as if he did not exist. He went bsck to the table. Then he grabbed the pack labeled two that Myranda had failed to get. He already had his own slung over his shoulder. Before he left, their eyes met. He was still shaking with rage. Jon remembered how after he killed Val, it did not make him feel any better. Just as he remembered who he did it for. 

So did Beric.

“Just this one, 12.” He said, his breath uneven and his hand shaking as he brought it up to point at him. “For her.” 

Then he was gone. Into the woods. 

He didn’t remember how he ended up back in the cave. 

Just that he stumbled inside when the sun was high in the sky, ripped shirt sleeve pressed to his brow to stop the bleeding. It was soaked all the way through. He threw it to the side. Blood began to flow in his eye again. He didn’t care. He didn’t have to worry about covering his tracks anymore. 

Sansa was still there. Still sleeping, undisturbed. Despite how that came to be, she looked peaceful. She had moved. Her hand was curled underneath her chin. Her breathing was slow, and slightly uneven. 

His hands were bloody, staining the backpack as he ripped it open, fumbling for the medicine. He found a box. He ripped it open. It had a syringe. He pulled out that hand curled underneath Sansa’s chin so that it was extended, and plunged the needle in her arm. She didn’t even stirr. 

He didn’t remember passing out either, but that happened too.

Chapter Text

Jon woke to the sound of thunder, to the gentle, broad stroke of something damp across his forehead.

To her.

Her face floated over his, grime-free and shadowed. At the sight of his eyes, the damp stroking stopped. Her hands found the sides of his face, one dry and one wet.

“Sansa,” His tongue felt thick and his voice cracked.

She sighed, long and ragged, eyes squeezing shut.

“Don’t move,” She said after a moment, voice cold and flat.

A flash of lightning illuminated her face, cracking and sharp. He jolted, despite the bone deep ache of his body all over. Her hand went to his shoulder before it returned to his head, continuing to wipe.

“It’s just a storm,” She whispered, a little softer. “Don’t move.”

But with his body now tense, he couldn’t relax again so easily. The tension coiling him tight brought back the memory of the feast, like a rising tide of sick. Myranda. Then Beric.

Everything he did before that just to get there.

Sansa didn’t meet his eyes, and he knew she hadn’t forgotten.

She was bandaging his forehead—the scar, he recalled, easy to do with the ache radiating from it—and her mouth was pressed into a thin line. The bruises underneath her eyes weren’t as prominent as they were before, and her face was flush with color. Almost swollen with it.

It wasn’t until he felt a drip on his arm that he realized it was from her tears. 

Jon reached out without thinking, his tongue still heavy in his mouth. This time, from shame rather than exhaustion. 

Sansa flinched. She shrugged the reaction off, him too. Said: “Stop moving.”

He did. Not because her words were all steely and hard again, but because he didn’t think he’d be able to take the sight of her flinching away from him again. 

“Is it bad?” He asked, throat tight, after awhile. Just to have something to say to her. 

“Don’t talk either.”

He didn’t. 

“No,” She said after a moment, “I was just cleaning up the excess blood and changing your bandage.”

He’d been out long enough for her to wake up and find him, then clean him up and bandage him at least twice. How long had it been? Hours? More than a day?  Maybe two?

The longer the game lasted, the more impatient the gamemakers got. 

“Drink,” She held a waterskin to his mouth;  a demand, not a request.

It wasn’t until that moment that Jon realized just how thirsty he was.

It was completely full, and he nearly drained the entire thing. He exhaled, head falling back against the cushion beneath him—the backpack. He only closed his eyes for a moment, just to catch his breath.

There was a swipe underneath his lower lip, and he opened his eyes to find Sansa wiping excess moisture away with the ragged edge of her sleeve. Her fingers were trembling.

When he looked at her, she looked away, off to the side. Her shoulders shook. 

Jon wanted so badly to hold her. 

“I’m fine,” He insisted, though his voice was still so weak that he couldn’t even fool himself. “I swear,” He emphasized, just a little stronger.

She sniffled. 

Then she turned her back on him, rising to a half crouch. She half hobbled over to a corner of the cave, where for some reason, their food now resided.

She—she hobbled.

She walked. 

Upon returning, she was still crying,  but she appeared just as thunderous as the weather. 

“If you ever do that to me again,” She hissed with venom, “I swear to the old gods and the new—”

The second she was kneeling down in front of him again, Jon’s arms were around her shoulders, squeezing her close.

“You’re okay,” He choked out.

She was breathing properly on her own, she was walking on her own—she was okay.

Sansa stiffened, but she didn’t pull away. Not immediately. 

“I’m not the one who was stupid enough to get my head sliced open,” Her voice wasn’t as harsh as her words.

Her hand was touching his arm.

Jon pulled back to inspect her leg. It no longer felt constricted by the fabric of her pants.

After a moment, she rolled up her pant leg. Those red streaks in her skin weren’t gone, but they seemed almost half faded. Her gash looked dark pink and puckered. It was starting to heal. 

His eyes blurred.

“The swelling is almost gone,” He heard her say, hesitant. 

He wiped at his eyes, watching her pull the fabric back down. 

“I’m not sorry,” His voice cracked.

“And I’m not thanking you,” She snapped. “You drugged me. You could have died, you could have—”

She didn’t finish.

“Eat,” She placed the wrapped fish in his lap. 

He pushed it back toward her, “I left this for you.”

“Like I’d trust anything you gave me again.”

Jon flinched.

Sansa looked away again.

“Just eat it,” Her voice wavered, “You need strength more than I do.”

“I’m not eating unless you do,” he said, quieter.

Her wet eyes met his, but she didn’t shed a tear. 

Jon unwrapped the fish. It was stiff, but cooked and edible. He tore off a piece and stuck it in his mouth, chewing the whole thing and swallowing, before he handed it to her.

She was still hesitant when she took the fish, tearing off a piece for herself. She placed it between them.

They ate with the same urgency; he suspected she hadn’t eaten since he left, same as him. The realization made him feel sick to his stomach.

“I’ll hunt for us tomorrow,” He said, after the fish was gone.

Sansa wiped the grease from her mouth with her sleeve. “No one’s going hunting in this weather.”

They both looked outside, then. The rain was coming down hard, and it was starting to slip through the cracks of the cave. If she hadn’t moved the food, it would have been ruined.

“It’s like they’re trying to flush us out.”

Even if it were a couple days ago, Jon wouldn’t have agreed. They were the reason that the feast happened. They got enough donations to get sleep syrup. At this moment, they were primetime television. Ratings gold. The gamemakers were going to squeeze every last drop from that.

But what was romance without a little gore?

“Not us,” He said, “Beric and Ramsay.”

Since yesterday morning, Beric would be the one person in the arena that Ramsay wanted to kill more than them.

Sansa’s face blanched. “You saw him?” 

“No. It was Myranda who came. And she came after me,” He touched the bandage on his head, absent. 

“I saw her last night in the sky. I thought—” She shook her head. “Honestly, I thought that maybe he did it. What happened?”

Jon told her. He told her about Brienne, then Myranda and Beric. Then he told her about Shireen, because he didn’t have a choice. His throat constricted around the words. 

For a moment, when he woke up, he forgot. But now, the pain was back, and almost blinding.

“You never told me she was your ally,” said Sansa.

Her hand was close to his, and her voice was thick. But Jon knew if she tried to hold him now, he would break down, and he refused to give the Capitol the satisfaction. 

“You were sick,” He cleared his throat, “But you’re fine now. We’re—we’re fine.”

Her pinky brushed his. 

“You should get some rest.” She whispered. “If you insist on going out tomorrow.”

He did want to rest. But not in this cave, or in his bed back at the training center. Not even at home, with Ygritte and his nightmares.

He thought of the scratchy cot Jeor used to tuck him in every night when he was little, before he got sick and things got bad. The last place he felt safe.

But he could never go back there. He could never go back home. 

“Lay down,” Sansa pressed a hand to his chest. “I’ll listen for the anthem. Rest some more.”

Jon laid down. He didn’t have the energy to fight her. Suddenly, he didn’t have the energy to do anything at all. The sleeping bag was pulled back, and Sansa slid in beside him.

Underneath the covers, her hand found his, soft and small.

Selfishly, he wanted to keep it for himself. He didn’t want her to ever let go.

“Are you still angry with me?” He said into the growing dark.

She turned on her side to face him, “Yes.”

Her blue eyes were soft, and new tears were on her cheeks. Her free hand came up to rest on his chest. She sniffled. 

“But I need to listen to your heart,” She said. 

He didn’t answer her, but he squeezed her hand tight.

He watched her chest move up and down, listening to the swell of her breathing as he fell back into sleep. 

Jon woke to the news in the morning. Brienne and the Hound are dead.

The rain must have smothered the sound of canon fire last night. Regardless, it was their pictures in the sky that Sansa saw, side by side.

“What do you think happened?” She asked.

Jon didn’t know. The feast was all he had to go on. Maybe it was them that the storm was meant for. Not Beric and Ramsay. Regardless of the purpose, it worked. Death was what the gamemakers wanted, and death was what they got.

“They went down trying to kill each other,” said Jon.

Sansa stared outside the cave. The rain was still going. Perhaps the gamemakers hoped to get more out of it.

“I hope Brienne killed him more than he killed her,” She whispered.

Jon didn’t know Brienne, but he knew the Hound, so he hoped the same. He didn’t have time to lament on it.

Their deaths left them with Beric and Ramsay.

Sansa didn’t say it, but she knew from the way that she was looking at him then, that the same thought had occurred to her.

“Do you think he has a chance?” She asked. “Beric?”

Ramsay was still weak from poison and he managed to survive this entire time. But Beric was strong, and on a mission of vengeance besides. That might appeal to some donors in the Capitol. It could give him more of an edge.

“He’s nothing to sneeze at,” Jon said finally.

He wanted Ramsay to die, but he didn’t wanna kill Beric. He wanted to kill Ramsay himself, but he didn’t want Ramsay to kill Beric.

“I hope they kill each other too,” Sansa said.

Her throat started to tremble then, and she looked down at her hands. They were shaking too. He knew she was thinking about Ramsay.

In that moment, as sorry as he would be to see Beric die, he knew killing Ramsay would be worth it.

“We’re going home,” Jon touched her jaw, “I promise.” 

She met his eyes. She didn’t say anything, but she gave a slight, hesitant nod.

He knew that for the first time all game, she almost believed him.

The canon came before nightfall. The rain stopped minutes later.

That evening, Beric’s grim, handsome face appeared in the sky.

In the cave, Sansa was sleeping for the first time in days. He resolved to tell her in the morning.

Jon listened to the remainder of the anthem play out, watching his face until it disappeared.

He promised him vengeance. But more than that, remembrance.

Jon had to survive so that Beric and Shireen could never be forgotten. 

Sansa didn’t react at first.

She woke up, took in the lack of rainfall, the clear skies, his bow in his lap, and she knew.

She squeezed her eyes shut and for a minute, he thought she was gonna be sick.

Jon took her hand in his.

“He’s gonna be hunting us now,” He told her.

It was barely light out, but Jon knew that as long as he could move, he would come for them. 

Sansa opened her eyes. Her hand was limp in his like something dead.

He laced his fingers through hers. He said, softer, “We have to move.”

She knew he was right. Ramsay had probably combed close to every inch of this arena by now. There were only so many places left for him to look. 

Her lower lip trembled, “But we’re safe here—“

“Not anymore.”  He interjected. “The traps are bare. The fish in the stream are dead.”

Jon discovered that last night when he realized they were floating, not swimming. He picked one up. Its eyes were bleach white.

They’re starving us, he wanted to say, but couldn’t. And they took away their water source too.

When she met his eyes, he knew that she knew it.

“Can you run?” He asked,

Her leg was leagues better than it was before. The scar was scabbed over and the swelling was gone. But still, Sansa hesitated.

“I’ll climb,” She said finally.

Jon squeezed her hand before he let go. 

“Come on,” He said, and rose with his bow. Then, so did she.

Wading down from the caves, into the rocks, they found that the stream was bare. Nothing but dried, cracked earth. Beside him, Sansa shivered.

He was awake all night, and hadn’t even heard the gamemakers drain it. 

With Sansa’s leg still healing, they had no choice but to move tentatively. She made twice as much noise as an able-bodied person, and they walked twice as slow to curb it. To the best of their ability, they searched for new water sources. They found two—both bone dry. 

There was only one place left that they could go, and they both knew it. They were just dragging their feet.

The sun started to sink low in the sky, and the shadows of the forest grew in size. He didn’t know the exact time they left the cave, but he knew it was only a couple minutes after dawn.

It shouldn’t have been any later than noon.

“Why is it getting dark?” asked Sansa.

The thought came immediately, unbidden: Because they need it for whatever is gonna happen next. 

Jon notched an arrow, fingers clammy with sweat. “Keep walking.”

That was all they could do. Keep walking. 

They were nearing the arena, along with him and Shireen’s camping grounds. Jon could tell by the increase in mockingjay song. He’d heard it that second morning by the lake, and that day he and Shireen split up to set the fires. It was like it was everywhere, a chorus of random melodies.

Then, one in particular that made him freeze.

“Do you hear that?” asked Sansa.

It was her song. Shireen’s song. Four notes, and hauntingly beautiful. The birds remembered.

“Jon,” Her fingers found his sleeves, trembling.

He realized too late she wasn’t talking about the song.

Then, the mockingjays began to scream.

There was no more singing, only shrieking. Discordant and panicked. They began to flutter, flashes of speckled white in the dark.

It was the last warning they got. 

Then, the howl of something terrible in the not too far off distance. 

Jon snatched her up by the wrist, “ Run.”

It was a pack.

A pack of what, Jon didn’t know. He didn’t look back. The one time Sansa tried. He nearly yanked her arm out of her socket to keep her moving. Everything was against them: speed, strength, fate. Risking anything more by looking back was not an option. There was only forward.

But he could feel them closing in.

Hungry, snarling, and bounding. They were too fast. He could hear their footsteps and their panting breaths. He could see the clearing before them. Beside him, against her will, Sansa was starting to slow.

Can you run?

I’ll climb.

And there, in the center, the black Cornucopia stood tall, shining dully in the moonlight.

They made for the jutting, bulky tail, and still feet away he said, “You’re gonna climb!”

Climb was a word she understood, but at the singular word you’re, she shook her head, red faced, hiccuping.

“I’m right behind you! Go!” He shoved her the last couple feet and drew his bow again.

He almost dropped it.

10 feet away and closing, there were direwolves.

Capitol monstrosities, he knew, engineered in labs the same as tracker jackers and jabber jays, but they looked like direwolves. The same animal on his pin. They used to be real thousands of years ago. In 12, they were things of myth and legend, three times the size of real wolves and even more blood thirsty. They were the symbols of winter. Of strength.

And here they were in the arena, hunting down two kids from 12.

Jon loosed an arrow and hit one right in the eye. It died instantly, and the two behind it stumbled. He took advantage of that moment and bound for the Cornucopia. Sansa made quick work of the climb, bad leg and all. She was already pulling herself atop. 

He began to climb using the tail for leverage. The surface of the horn felt jagged stone, almost like the gamemakers designed it with this moment in mind. But Jon wasn’t a climber, and he had a harder time of it. His fingers were slick with sweat, and just as ankle raised another inch, something snagged at the corner of his pant leg.

On the ground, a direwolf’s teeth were mere inches from his ankle, blue eyes fierce with savage hunger. Jon kicked it in the snout, earning a sharp wail. He scurried higher up the horn before another direwolf could take its place. One tried, and pawed just centimeters below his foot.

The sound of her scream pierced the air, chilling his blood.

He could no longer see Sansa on top of the cornucopia. 

Jon climbed so fast that he almost lost his grip. He nearly falls to his death when his hand slaps against the top of the horn, and it takes everything in him to pull himself up, to try to get to—

Ramsay stood on top of the Cornucopia, holding a knife to Sansa’s throat.

His face was bloody and mashed, and he was whispering something in her ear. She was clawing at his arm, but she didn't dare move the rest of her body. Her face was wet with tears.

Jon drew an arrow far too late. He had to concentrate to keep his fingers from shaking.

“Careful,” laughed Ramsay, and the sound rattled in his ears, “You shoot me, and she’s bleeding out in your arms.”

Jon didn’t move, heart pounding in his ears.

Sansa was shaking in his grip, face white. She didn’t make a sound. 

“Or,” Ramsay said, his red grin like a gash stretching across his face. 

He dragged her closer to the edge of the horn where he stood. Jon could not see anything, but he knew with certainty that over there were the hounds that chased Ramsay there too. 

“I could feed them dinner, then neither of us gets her.” He said, “A fitting end for you barbarians, no?”

She started to inhale and exhale deeply. Her loud breaths were visible puffs of cold in the air. Her eyes were squeezed shut. As if she was bracing herself.

“Or you could do us both a favor,” Ramsay sneered, words slurring together, “Kill yourself and give us a bit of alone time—”

“You’re gonna be the one that dies today,” Jon cut him off.

He just had to think.

Could he shoot faster than Ramsay could cut? He didn’t know. Would he be able to take her to the ground with him when he stumbled over the edge? He didn’t know. He felt like it was that day in the forest, and she was back in that tree all over again, and he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to save her.

“You don’t seem too sure about that, 12.” said Ramsay.

He wasn’t.

But Sansa was. 

She stepped on his foot with all of her might and Ramsay yelled like a kicked hound. When he tried to draw the knife across her throat, tired of the games, her fingers covered the blade, and instead, it sliced her skin to the bone.

She didn’t scream. 

She wrenched his hand from her throat as best as she could and bit him. Hard.

Ramsay did scream. Reflexively, he dropped his knife and dropped her arm, too. Anything to get away from her at that moment. Sansa twisted to the side, and there his chest was, an open target.

Jon shot him.

His arms went slack to the side as he stumbled back, almost shocked, then horrified. Even though he was already dying, blood blooming underneath his shirt, he still tried to catch himself from falling to ground, still tried to save himself. 

Sansa stumbled to her feet, planting both hands in his chest and shoving him over the edge.

He screamed, but it wasn’t until the direwolves tore into him that he began to wail.

Swaying, Sansa fell to her knees, hands smearing the Cornucopia with blood.

Jon ran to her.

She was hunched over, shoulders trembling, and when he tried to touch her, she recoiled. But then she saw it was him, and she crumpled into him. She wept and he clung to her, eyes shut. He could feel every sob hitching in her throat, every single breath wheezing from her body. Over her shoulder, he watched day break. The pale blue of the sky and the yellow of the perking sun blurred together as his eyes stung. 

They won, but this didn’t feel like victory.

He didn’t realize he was waiting for it—the blaring of the trumpet, the hum of the hovercraft—until it never came.

The direwolves were gone. He didn’t know when or how, but they disappeared. They were on the ground again, and her hand was in his. When Mace Tyrell’s voice boomed throughout the arena, they were still watching the sky for a hovercraft that didn’t intend to come.

“ Attention tributes, there’s been a slight rule change…”

As soon as he spoke, Jon knew what was coming. He felt numb, as if he’d been submerged in snow.

In his hand, Sansa’s bloodied fingers froze.

“The previous revision allowing for two victors from the same district has been revoked. Only one victor may be crowned—”

His stomach dropped. She shook her head back and forth, so fast that it could have given her motion sickness. 

“— and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Sansa was still shaking her head, only now she was turned away from him. Her breath was coming out long, then short. She was starting to wheeze.

Jon’s sword was still in his scabbard. He knew what he needed to do.

“Stop,” He tugged at her wrist, “Look at me—”

She yanked her wrist from his grip, shouting, “No.”

He knew from the look on her face, stricken and betrayed like that night in the cave with the syrup, that she already knew what he was gonna say. 

Jon said it anyway.

“It has to be you.”

“No—”

“You have your family,” He insisted, speaking slowly so that his voice didn’t shake. “Your sister. Your brothers. They need you.”

He wasn’t scared. Before this arena, sure, he feared death. 

But then he entered it, and he encountered the one thing worse than that: the possibility of losing her. 

He wasn’t scared, but he realized in this moment that he thought that if they could just make it out of this arena, they would have more time. For what? He didn’t know.

He never would. 

“They don’t need me!” She shouted. “That’s why I volunteered! People need you ! People are relying on you . Nobody needs me—”

Jon yanked her to him, and it took everything inside him not to shake her. “I need you.”

After all this time, how could she not understand? How could she not know?

He kissed her one last time.

And maybe because it was the wish of a dying man, after a moment, she kissed him back.

All he could taste was blood, but he didn’t care. Selfishly, he held her close to him. He kissed her fiercely, hoping that when he died, he could still feel the imprint of her lips on his. 

When he tried to pull back, she clung to him, fingers capturing her face in his hands, blood smearing against her cheeks.

She kissed him so slowly, so gently, that he foolishly thought this was her surrender.

After all this time, it was him who should have understood. It was him who should have known.

When Sansa pulled back, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew a handful of berries dark as ink. 

Terror rose up inside of him, swift and sharp, and he moved to smack them out of her hands, the same way Ygritte did when he showed them to her all those years ago during a hunt.

Those are nightlock, you idiot. You’ll be dead before the taste can linger on your tongue. 

Sansa cupped her fist around them, moving her hand out of the way just in time. She stared into his eyes, trembling but resolute. With her other hand, she took his. 

“Trust me,” She whispered.

He had this whole time, despite his better instincts, up until now.

How did she know about nightlock? Where did she find it? Why did she have it just sitting in her pocket? When did she—

“Jon,” She squeezed his hand, urgent. 

He saw it in her eyes, that she didn’t intend for either of them to die today.

When she dropped the berries in his hand, in full view of the camera, Jon was too busy reeling to do anything but take them. 

“Together,” She said.

We’re leaving here, she meant. Together.

He wasn’t sure if he believed her. He wasn’t sure if he believed in anything at the moment.

But how many times had he put her in the same position, and she tried her best to believe him anyway?

“Together,” He repeated finally.

Sansa tipped the berries into her mouth and so did he.

They hardly even touched his tongue when Mace Tyrell’s voice burst into the air, frantic.

“Wait!”

Then, the victory trumpets began to blare.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” he said, voice tremulous, “May I present the winners of the 74th hunger games.”

After: 

The roar of their loyal crowd from the Capitol, live through the speakers. Berries spat onto the grass. The staggering wind from the hovercraft, the sight of it eclipsing the sun. 

All of these things were distinct within the same increment of time. What came next was a blur.

He didn’t remember climbing the ladder, didn’t remember getting in the hovercraft, but he remembered Sansa collapsing in his arms. He shouted for help until his throat was raw, and when it came, when a masked and gloved figure tried to take her away from him, he seized them by the throat.

It was soon after that the pinching sensation came. A huge needle, stabbed into his arm. Then there was nothing at all. 

Later, he would see it as payback for how he betrayed her in the arena; the indeterminate amount of time they left him sedated. 

He woke up in a room so white it hurt his eyes, restrained at the waist. Every time he gathered his wits enough to try to escape, the drugs only coaxed him back to sleep. These were wispy snatches of memory, as corporeal as smoke. 

His first thought when he woke up was always of her, and she was the last thing he thought of before he was pulled back under. 

The next time Jon woke up, it wasn’t to a room that was white, but one that was familiar.

The olive colored walls. The nightstand holding a glass of water. The duvet underneath him. The floor to ceiling windows. Outside, there was a forest at nightfall, one that reminded him of home.

He knew that it was an illusion. Just like he knew that this was his room at the Tribute center. He was in the Capitol.

He was alive. Out of the arena.

And Sansa—

“She’s resting.”

In the doorway of his bathroom, Ellaria stood—tall, bronze, and beautiful. She wore a blouse as warm and brown as her eyes. She watched him with her hands clasped.

“She was a bit worse for wear than you,” She explained as she made her way to his side, “But she’s okay.”

His relief was a distant, vague thing, like he couldn’t quite trust it. His throat still felt tight, so he didn’t say anything at all.

“I can’t see her,” He said after a moment.

It wasn’t a question. He knew better.

“I’m afraid not,” Ellaria sat on the edge of his bed. “They want to do the reunion on camera.”

Jon didn’t care what they wanted. He wanted to see her. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to make sure for himself that she was still alive.

That all of it hadn’t been for nothing.

“I’ve seen her myself,” Her hand covered his, warm. “She’s okay. I swear on the lives of my children, alive and dead.”

It occurred to him that he didn’t know that she had children. Why would he? Why would she have told him before, when he was a dead man walking?

She was telling him now, now that she knew she could get attached to him. Now that she knew he was going to live. 

He was going home.  They both were.

Jon shut his eyes. They were beginning to burn.

Ellaria was quiet for so long that he thought she left him. Then, her slender fingers brushed his cheek.

She wiped his tears away with the pads of her thumb, and that was all it took for him to break.

“I’m going home,” He said, voice ragged.

“You are,” said Ellaria softly.

“It won’t be the same.”

A moment of silence passed.

“No,” She said, like the word had been torn from her like a tooth.

I still died in that arena, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t stop sobbing.

“I know,” Ellaria whispered back.

She held him, even after he stopped crying.

Here, victory: 

Jon stood underneath Illyrio Moptatis’s stage, listening to the pandemonium of the crowd above him, waiting for him, and all he could think about was those nightlock berries.

He spent every single day thinking about those nightlock berries.

Little did he know, the Capitol was doing the same.

Jon heard footsteps behind him, measured and careful, but he didn’t care to turn around. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so surprised to see Petyr Baelish.

“My boy,” he greeted him with a smile.

In the past week, he’d only seen Petyr Baelish twice. Jon knew exactly which victor he preferred to spend his time with. 

The thought of them alone together made his skin crawl.

When Baelish embraced him, Jon was so startled that he had to remind himself that there were probably cameras watching him right now, so that he didn’t grab him by the throat.

“Listen to me,” Baelish said in his ear, breath cold from spearmint, “Put your arms around me. Look like you like me.”

After a moment's hesitation, Jon did as he was told. 

“For some reason, in that arena, that girl decided you were worth everything. Even the rest of your lives.”

The words drenched him ice cold.

“Cersei is furious,” Baelish continued, “The Capitol is furious. We are in more danger than you could ever imagine.”

Dread turned his blood into lead. His heart pounded inside of his chest.

Baelish pulled back from him, still smiling. He reached forward as if he were adjusting his tie.

“So?” said Jon.

So what do we do? So how do we fix this? So how do I save her? Us? 

For a moment, Baelish’s grin faltered, then it returned. But his eyes, evergreen and as cold as ice, betrayed the truth. 

“You are in love,” He said, and to anyone who might have been watching, it could have been a fond observation. A wistful remark.

But Jon heard the truth.

You are in love.

Tell them you were so in love that you couldn’t live without her.

You are in love.

Show them that rebellion was the furthest thing from your mind.

You are in love.

Make them take pity on you. Beg them for mercy with longing glances. Convince them you are children who didn’t know better.

You are in love.

You fell in love, and not only have you damned yourself, you’ve damned us all.

You are in love.

It will be to blame for everything that comes next.

On the other side of the stage, she looked like a dream. 

She wore a blue dress made of tulle. The only fire that remained of the girl on fire was her hair, and that was pulled back from her face. Her freckles were visible on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were framed with long lashes. She looked every inch the girl she was.

Jon knew that was purposeful.

Her skirt only reached the tops of her knees. He could see them shaking. To the crowd, this was merely fright. But Jon knew better. He knew that Baelish gave her the same talk, or perhaps Tyrion. He knew it the second their eyes met.

But her mouth betrayed nothing.

She smiled, and around them, the crowd went berserk. Jon found himself looking out at them, at the crowd that occupied the crescent shaped stands. In the top, at the very center. There was a box with an umbrella and the royal seal. Though distant, Jon could see a gleam of blonde. 

He approached Sansa on legs that felt like they were made of wood. 

Much to the delight of Illyrio and their audience, he reached for her first, folding her into his arms. For days, he thought about this moment, but now that it was here, it felt wrong. 

Sansa buried her face in his neck, and the crowd swooned.

“I’m sorry,” She said into his collar, against his neck, where the cameras couldn’t see.

He knew she was. He felt it.

But still, Jon wanted to ask her: Do you know what you’ve done?