Chapter Text
Seeing the only family Sansa Stark had left to her was the only motivation keeping her astride the horse. Jon Snow is at Castle Black. He’ll protect you. It had been so long since she felt safe, felt protected. She yearned for the security of familiar arms and someone who cared for her because she was Sansa and not a Stark. The nerves she may have felt over arriving at Castle Black alone to see the half-brother she had not seen—had barely thought of—in years did not consume her, nor did she allow herself to feel disappointment that it was not Robb or a trueborn brother to save her.
He is the only brother I have left, she thought, and he will protect me.
Myranda Royce had told Alayne Stone that Jon Snow had been made Lord Commander, so upon her arrival that was Sansa’s request, tired and frozen as she was.
The men who had opened the gates and helped her down from the foaming horse glanced at each other. If she had had any more wherewithal, Sansa may have asked why they looked hesitant with her request, but as it was, she was using everything she could to stay upright.
“Mayhaps you would like a meal and a room, first, my lady?”
I want to see Jon, she thought, but mayhaps the men were right. A meal, some rest, perhaps a bath, would do her good before she saw him. She reasoned that it was possible that Jon wasn’t even available to see her—as Lord Commander, he was sure to be busy.
“Aye, mayhaps you are right. But I would like to see the Lord Commander as soon as possible.”
The men shared a glance again before escorting her into the keep proper.
“The men said you’re here to see Jon Snow?” a man asked, sitting across from her. Sansa paused the hunk of bread she had been chewing. “I apologize. I’m Eddison Tollett, but the men call me Dolorous Edd.”
“I am. I was told Jon Snow was Lord Commander here and he’s…” All I have left. “My brother.” It was more than she should admit, but if her identity was her only bargaining piece and if that was what it took to gain an audience with Jon Snow, then so be it.
“I thought Jon had no trueborn siblings.”
“No, no,” she murmured. “He is only my half-brother. We were raised together. But he’s also the only brother left to me. My trueborn brothers were all slaughtered in this war and my sister hasn’t been seen since our lord father lost his head.”
The man called Dolorous Edd swallowed, looking away.
“My lady, you must believe that it pains me to say this. Your brother was the Lord Commander and my friend. There was a mutiny.” He paused long enough for Sansa to feel that all too familiar sense of dread. “He was killed.”
“No,” she breathed before she could reign in the onslaught of grief.
Sansa closed her eyes, fighting for the calm mask that had become her face in King’s Landing. Drudging up the steely skin that had saved her countless times in the South, Sansa looked Dolorous Edd levelly in the eye.
“Take me to him.”
“I-I…”
“His body, wherever you buried him. He is my brother and I deserve to say goodbye.”
“Ah—We…We haven’t buried him. We burn the bodies here, but the Red Woman forbade it.”
Sansa should have asked who the Red Woman was or why she would keep them from laying Jon’s body to rest, or maybe even why they burn their dead, but she didn’t believe any of those things to be important in that moment.
She was too focused on the fact that Jon Snow, her half-brother, would be the first and only member of her family she was being granted the opportunity to say goodbye to.
“Please,” she whispered.
Dolorous Edd took her down to a set of cells made almost entirely of ice. The numbness of her grief meant she felt nothing from the chill of the cells.
“I’ll wait for you outside, whenever you’re ready,” Dolorous Edd murmured before pushing a door open and stepping aside so that she could enter.
Sansa’s eyes were immediately pulled to the naked body laid out on the bed of ice. Nothing but a sheet of linen covered him from knees to shoulders.
Alone with her dead brother, Sansa stumbled forward, her hands falling on the cold, hard skin of his arm. She should have jerked her hand away in revulsion. Instead, she clung to him as she collapsed, burying her face in the scratchy cloth covering him and wept.
Jon Snow had been her last hope. The only brother, only family, she had. Who would protect her now?
Sansa had not realized until the moment she saw her last hope’s corpse before her that the stupid little girl who left Winterfell, the one who believed in knights and heroes and songs, was still buried deep beneath the hardened skin Sansa had grown in order to survive the horrors she had endured in King’s Landing and the Vale. She had not realized a piece of her heart had remained unscarred until it broke, seeing Jon Snow’s too still body, feeling his too cold skin.
“I thought you would save me,” she cried, tears streaming from her cheeks. “I thought I was finally safe.”
Sansa had stopped praying when the gods kept sending her monsters instead of knights, but she couldn’t help the prayer to the old gods and the new and whatever the people beyond the Wall worshipped, because she would have given anything to have her brother back.
Sansa stayed in the cell of ice long enough for the grief to be replaced entirely by cold. Her teeth chattered and her hands shook but she refused to let go of Jon Snow’s frozen fingers.
When she heard footsteps, she expected it to be Dolorous Edd or another one of the Black Knights coming to fetch her. She did not expect a woman’s voice.
“You weep over this man as if you loved him.”
The voice was low and musical.
Loved? Sansa thought, raising her head from where she had rested it on his unmoving chest. Mayhaps, she had, when they were children. Mayhaps, she did still, to weep so openly over his corpse.
“Who is he to you?”
Sansa turned then and saw a tall, beautiful woman with hair a darker shade of red than hers had been when it was still Tully auburn. It took little thought to recognize her as the Red Woman, the one who was refusing to allow Jon Snow’s body be properly laid to rest.
“Someone I thought may save me,” she whispered.
Sansa was unsettled by the woman and was well aware of the power of her identity. She didn’t want to offer the Stark name only to become another pawn so quickly.
“He spoke of a sister he wished to save. I thought I saw her in my visions, but you are not who I saw.”
He spoke of me? Of saving me? Or did she mean Arya—the one they had married to Ramsay Bolton? Had news of that reached so far North? Sansa herself had only just heard that rumor while she was fleeing to Castle Black.
Sansa kept her questions behind her teeth for fear of exposing herself.
“He had a lover with red hair, though my fires saw her death.”
A lover?
The Red Woman swept closer, bringing her torch and the light with it into the cell. Sansa blinked against the sudden light. Sansa wondered if her true hair color was beginning to show with the light shining directly on the crown of her head. The woman gripped her chin, holding her face and seeming to examine it. It took all of Sansa’s restraint to neither flinch nor bite that too-hot hand.
“I have seen Jon Snow in my fires. The Lord of Light has told me he will be instrumental in the wars to come. I have not seen your face, for you are neither the sister nor the lover, but something in between. And yet…” the Red Woman trailed off, her gaze fixating on the flame she held yet. “Your life seems to be interwoven with his.”
She stepped away then, dropping her hand. Sansa felt compelled to fling her body against Jon’s and protect him from this woman and her fires.
From the way she had said instrumental, as if he was a weapon to be wielded.
“What would you give to have him back?”
“Men can’t be raised from the dead.”
“Are you so willing to let him go that you wouldn’t try?”
Sansa studied the woman for a breath, her hand still holding onto Jon Snow’s.
“Could you? Bring him back?”
“The Lord of Light has granted his priests the power through the Kiss of Life, but Jon Snow has been dead for longer than the limits allow.”
Sansa’s hand tightened.
“I shall need your blood.”
The Red Woman produced a dagger from her skirt. Sansa blanched, everything in her stilling.
“A small bowl’s worth is all that will be required. Your blood has the power to create his breath, should you agree.”
Sansa stared at Jon Snow’s open, unseeing eyes. She had seen her lord father’s head impaled on the spikes of the battlements in King’s Landing. She recalled how unrecognizable the face was. Looking at Jon Snow was nothing like seeing those heads. If it weren’t for his too pale skin or the way he never blinked, he could have been asleep.
Jon Snow was the only family left to her. Even if it was only temporarily that the Red Woman was able to bring him back, it would be longer than she had gotten with anyone else. It would be long enough to say goodbye.
A few drops of blood seemed an inconsequential price to pay to have a single member of her family back.
The blade stung against her palm but Sansa bit her tongue, keeping her cry silent. She watched the blood drip steadily, filling the small bowl. It hurt more than she had expected but it was less blood than what had soaked her sheets during her first flowering.
When the Red Woman took the bowl from her, Sansa expected her to ask for something more. Instead, she turned, removing the cloth Sansa had soaked with her tears. She only caught a glimpse of the raw wounds scattered across his stomach before the Red Woman blocked her view.
“From here I must work alone. One of the men outside will escort you.”
Sansa wanted to argue. She wouldn’t leave Jon Snow. She couldn’t. But between the pain in her palm, her tiredness from her journey, from the hours weeping over Jon Snow’s body, and her dizziness from the spiced smoke that emanated from the Red Woman, she felt faint. When the Black Knight stepped in, Sansa dutifully followed, sparing Jon Snow one final glance.
Within the keep, Sansa was passed from one knight to another until she came to stand before Dolorous Edd.
“You said you were raised in Winterfell with Jon?”
“I was.”
“Do you recall that he had a direwolf?”
Lady’s name echoed with a pang through her.
Another name closely followed—one she hadn’t thought of since that fateful day she left on the King’s Road.
“Ghost,” she whispered.
For the first time, something akin to a smile brightened Dolorous Edd’s face.
“Aye, Ghost. I thought, if you remembered him, he might be a comfort to you here. And you to him. As I’m sure you can assume, he has been distraught since the mutiny.”
“Of course. I had a direwolf of my own… She didn’t survive the journey South.”
“Fitting then, that you and Ghost found each other. A Stark without a wolf and a wolf without a Stark.”
Something about those words settled heavily on Sansa. She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that she was being referred to so openly as a Stark or the fact that Dolorous Edd seemed to be implying that she would inherit Jon’s wolf.
Or mayhaps it was the oddity of hearing Jon Snow referred to as a Stark.
“There’s truth in that, I suppose.”
Dolorous Edd gave her a half bow before wishing her a good night and leaving her to the privacy of her chambers. Within, a massive white direwolf took up most of the space, teeth bared and hackles raised. His size gave Sansa a brief shock—Lady had been a pup yet at the Trident—but Dolorous Edd had been correct in that there was a familiarity in seeing him. Even if, Sansa thought, she had not remembered Ghost accurately. There was a detail that she could not quite place, but Sansa assumed that must have been due to his unexpected size.
Once the door was shut firmly behind her and the sound of footsteps fell away, Ghost seemed to sniff the air, his hackles lowering.
The easy way he stood down told Sansa that he was unquestionably the direwolf that had been raised in Winterfell. With gentleness she had seen from Lady but wouldn’t have expected from the massive white wolf, he approached, sniffing her newly bandaged hand.
“Oh, Ghost,” she whispered, collapsing onto the bed. The wolf curled beside her, and Sansa began running her fingers through his fur, as she had once brushed out Lady’s.
It was while quiet tears slipped from her eyes that Sansa realized that the pup she remembered Jon Snow having had been white, yes, but Sansa recalled him also having red eyes.
The eyes of the wolf beside her were a dark grey.