Chapter Text
It was both true and false to say that Sansa had dreamed of this moment.
She had dreamed of it, but that was only recently. In the years between the day Father’s head was chopped off and the night Petyr Baelish summoned her to his solar with a northern scheme, she had thought only once, maybe twice, about what it would be like to reunite with Jon Snow. She certainly never dreamed about it.
On the long road from the Vale, though, his shadowy apparition had haunted her nearly every night. It had been so long she could barely remember his face. Jon’s had been the first to fade, even before baby Rickon’s. She hadn’t even noticed it. Not in the way she noticed when she began to forget how Robb’s smile looked and how Father’s laugh sounded and whether Bran’s eyes were blue or grey or some other color. It wasn’t until this shadowy figure inhabited her dreams on the snow choked King’s Road that Sansa realized she didn’t remember what her half-brother – No, cousin now. Cousin. – looked like.
All she had been able to recall was dark eyes and dark hair and that everyone always muttered about how much he looked like Father – though never in the presence of her lady mother, of course.
In her dreams she couldn’t quite get his figure right either. Had he been tall? Would he be tall now? She could barely remember the boy, so picturing the man he had become in their years apart was an impossible task.
It wasn’t that Sansa hadn’t thought on Jon at all. Quite the opposite. Alayne had demanded ruminations on Jon in nearly every sense and naturally she wondered about him. Where he was, if he liked the Wall, how he had been elected Lord Commander, whether he found joy in that position, what he thought about the utter destruction of their family and home. He was all that was left of her family – of her childhood – so of course she had thought about him.
But thinking was very different from dreaming and dreaming was certainly altogether different than experiencing.
And experiencing was so very different from planning.
Sansa had spent hours with Petyr Baelish, first in his solar back in the Vale and then in his tent along the road, planning out this exact moment. They’d been planning since the moment he’d told her Jon had been declared King in the North by virtue of her brother’s will. The planning only intensified after reports began to come that Jon was no Stark bastard, but a Targaryen one instead.
No, this moment – the moment she and her former brother reunited after seven years and eons apart – had to be perfect. The whole plan hinged on it.
She was to meet him in a public space where his (her) bannermen could witness the moment. She was to refuse to kneel. She was to declare herself the eldest child of Lord Eddard Stark and the eldest sibling of King Robb Stark. She was to assert that Robb’s will was invalid as it had named Jon heir under the mistaken belief he was a son of Winterfell. She was to claim that Robb’s legitimization made Jon a Targaryen, not a Stark, and that the North should never be under the thumb of another Targaryen king.
Petyr had been meticulous in his plotting. He’d already secretly secured the loyalty of nearly half of Jon’s (her) bannermen to her cause as the rightful heir of Winterfell. He’d read her letter after letter describing Jon as unhinged and wild and unpredictable. He’d murmured about strange rumors that he was no man at all – sometimes a wolf, sometimes a wight, most often a wilding (and every northerner knew wildlings were hardly human).
He’d fed her daily affirmations of her own standing as the rightful heir.
He’d commissioned ten dresses of Stark grey and white for her to wear.
Overnight Alayne had vanished and in her place Sansa Stark had risen from the grave to claim her ancestral right.
But all that hinged on this moment.
In her dreams, Sansa sometimes saw herself casting down the shadowy figure of her cousin. The faceless man sometimes bent the knee to her. Other times, he tried to seize her and was killed by his (her) bannermen. Most often, he just vanished much like Alayne had.
No plans or dreams or affirmations could have prepared her for this moment, though. She realized that simple truth as she stood frozen in place by a pair of shocked, grey eyes so dark they nearly looked black in the dying light.
They’d received word that morning that he and his forces were locked in battle. With Bolton or Baratheon loyalists, Sansa couldn’t recall. Petyr had kept her in his tent all day reminding her over and over and over again of their plan; peppering sickening kisses along her neck as he whispered of her power and her claim and her noble birth. Her throat had burned in revulsion and anticipation.
Now it burned with barely suppressed tears.
As soon as their camp received word the battle was won, she and Petyr and an assembly of their most loyal knights and lords of the Vale saddled and rode for the false king's encampment.
She had prepared her words and her actions meticulously.
She hadn’t prepared to actually see him.
Jon was tall. Certainly, taller than he had been at fourteen. His shoulders were broad and body slim, just as a ghost of herself seemed to recall from those years before. He wore a short beard that was as dark as his shoulder length curls, which were pulled from his face in that simple, familiar northern style.
He’d clearly come straight from the battlefield – his armor and leather and sword still on. Blood and mud were splattered across his chest and face. Despite the grime she could make out the distinct white lines of jagged scars across his brow and the haggard dark bruises beneath his eyes.
And his eyes. Oh, those were Stark eyes. Those were Father’s eyes.
Because of course, this is what Father had looked like. She remembered now.
In that moment, it felt as if a chain had been removed Sansa's throat. A weight was released from her chest. An invisible string that had bound her for so many years suddenly snapped and without a second thought she breached the distance between her and those beautiful Stark eyes.
He watched her approach, face still twisted in shock, unmoving and unblinking, until she was so close she could reach out and touch his grisly chest piece. This near to him the scars along his brow were more pronounced. Unbidden, the reports of his madness danced in her ears once more.
A wolf, a wight, a wildling.
He rages.
He’s blood thirsty.
He takes no advice and trusts no one.
He barely sleeps and never eats.
He goes nowhere without that damned, hellish wolf.
He’s unpredictable – unstable - unyielding.
Worst of all, he’s the whelp of Rhaegar Targaryen. The unnatural evidence of Lyanna’s rape.
She felt Petyr’s unwelcome kisses on her throat. She kept her focus on Stark eyes.
Then, without hesitation, Sansa Stark knelt.