Chapter Text
Her mother looked tired. There were dark shadows under her eyes and loose tendrils of hair escaping from her normally kept bun. She needed a break from all of this. Sansa could handle the arrangements and the guests. Her mother didn’t need to shoulder all of the responsibility. It would do her some good to find rest amidst the chaos that would inevitably befall them in a few short hours.
“Mum.” She approached warily, footsteps light on the wooden floorboards as if she was a lion sneaking up on a gazelle, but even as tentative as she moved, her mother still startled. Wide blue eyes, glassy and unfocused, looked back at her. Sansa placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let me do this, please.”
“The catering isn’t even here yet,” her mother said. “I told them to be here by one, but they’re not here. We can’t – we can’t start without the food, Sansa.”
Her grip tightened. “Mum, go rest. I’ll deal with the catering.”
There was a long pause as the two Stark women stared at each other. Her mother appeared to be considering refusing the offer, but thankfully, exhaustion wore out and she nodded, retiring to her room. Sansa gave a sigh of relief once the door clicked shut. It was easier to think with her mother gone. Since it happened, her thoughts had been loud, pulsing, achingly present and jumbled. With the silence of the house as company, Sansa could still it into something more manageable. She’d always been good at compartmentalising.
The call to the caterer went as smoothly as she’d expect from today, which meant they would arrive half an hour before the guests were to arrive. It was better than no catering at all, so she was resigned to letting that one particular problem go. Then, Sansa dealt with the florist and the arrangements for after. She did everything she could do, and yet all the while knowing she was avoiding the one thing she had to do. It was a problem she couldn’t face right now, figuratively and literally, and that might make her the most awful person in the world, but couldn’t she be awful for just one day? For just today?
The backdoor opened around two. At first, Sansa had hoped it was the caterers coming half an hour early, but the voices reached her from where she sat in the kitchen and her heart sank to the soles of her feet. Not the caterers. No, it was the one person she didn’t want to see right now, more than the problem she’d been avoiding all day.
“Sans.” Her sister took one look at her and sighed. She wrapped her in her tiny arms, face pressed against Sansa’s chest. “You look like shit.”
That drew out a surprised laugh that Sansa didn’t know was still in her. She tightened her own arms around her sister. “Yeah, so do you.”
“Mum?”
“Asleep for now,” she said. “The boys?”
“Out back in the tree house.” Arya pulled back and glanced over her shoulder. “So are you two just going to ignore each other for the rest of your lives?”
Sansa sighed, pulling her hair over one shoulder to plait it. A nervous tell. “I’m not ignoring him.”
“You’re not even speaking directly to him,” her sister pointed out. “Jon, c’mon. At least you be the mature one here.”
She heard him move from where he’d been standing in the doorway and she finally tore her gaze up to look at him. His curls were still as unruly as they’d always been – soft, bouncy and flopping over his forehead. And he looked good in his black shirt, the broadness of his shoulders filling it out nicely. But Sansa had always been attracted to Jon. This wasn’t new, nor would it ever stop being new for her. What was new was the droop in his shoulders, the way his eyes never really quite reflected the half-smile on his lips and the way he looked at her, like he couldn’t quite understand her anymore. It had been over a year since Sansa last saw him. Maybe he didn’t anymore. Maybe no one did anymore.
“Arya, can you give us a minute?” The gravelly tone of his voice made goosebumps dance along her arms. She ignored it, opting to watch as her sister left without any fanfare.
“We have to talk about this.”
Sansa ran her fingers through her plait until it pulled her hair loose again. She couldn’t meet his eyes. A coward’s move, but she was a coward today. “I don’t know what there is to say.”
“We have to figure this out, Sansa!” He was aggravated, she realised, finally looking at him and seeing the careful mask begin to crack. He could never hide himself from her. That was what was terrifying about being near him. “We have to do this. For them. It’s what they wanted, right?”
Sansa was like her mother in many ways. They were pragmatic women, skilled in knowing when to push emotions aside to get things done, cool and calm under pressure, but never with him. She broke every time.
“Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped, standing up to face him. “It’s all I’ve thought about! I just don’t know what to do! I don’t know how they could think that I’d be a good –” Sansa stopped herself, unable to even say the word. She shook her head. “I’m not ready for this, Jon. I don’t want any of this.”
She crumbled before him; a pathetic mess when she should be strong. Sansa hid her face in her hands, capturing her tears against the crevices of her palms. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t ready. Not like this.
Warm, calloused hands circled both her wrists and pried them from her face. Jon studied her, those grey eyes feeling like they could reach inside of her soul and pull out the secrets she kept so hidden to her heart. “Me neither,” he whispered. He dropped her hands, but used his thumb to wipe away her tears. “But we’re here now. We have to do it.”
“What if I mess it up?” She didn’t want to consider even the possibility of what she was asking, but this was a world beyond her realm of understanding. Failure seemed so likely, so inevitable, that she couldn’t help the insecurity from surging inside of her and choking her lungs of oxygen.
“I’ll be there to help clean it up,” Jon said. “And if I mess it up, you’ll be there too. Sansa, we can do this, but only together.”
“They’re asking a lot from us,” Sansa replied, shaking her head. “They must’ve known that.”
He laughed. “I think they always thought if it happened we’d figure it out by then. I don’t think they expected us to have to do it or that it’d happen so early on.”
Sansa took his hand, squeezing tightly. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”
“We will,” Jon answered her.
He tugged on her hand and pulled her along with him, leading Sansa away from the kitchen and up the stairs. She knew where he was taking her, but she didn’t want to pull her hand back. He comforted her in ways she’d long denied from herself. Today, she needed him, and she suspected he needed her too.
The brightly painted door opened with a creak as Jon poked his head through. The two of them walked towards the centre of the room, hand-in-hand, and peered into the crib. There in a pale lilac onesie was a six-month-old girl with a crop of dark hair and beautiful blue eyes. She gurgled, blinking up at them as she reached her tiny fists forward. Sansa’s heart simultaneously swelled and ached for this darling girl.
“She won’t remember them,” Jon said softly, dropping Sansa’s hand to cradle the baby in his arms. “She won’t know.”
“We’ll have to tell her.”
“When she’s old enough,” he said firmly. He met her eyes. “But if we do this, we can’t just be surrogates, Sansa. You know this, right?”
That was what she’d been afraid of, but there were no other options. This girl was her responsibility now, whether Sansa was ready or not, and she would fight tooth and nail to make sure she did right by her. “We’ll be her parents, I know.”
They descended into silence then, both too transfixed with watching the baby chew on Jon’s shirt. In light of what had happened, it should be impossible to feel such happiness, but being here in this moment to witness something so inane made the world just that touch brighter.
“For what it’s worth,” Jon spoke quietly. “Robb and Margaery didn’t make a mistake when they chose you. You’ll be a great mother, Sansa. I believe that.”
Sansa leaned forward to drop a kiss on Jon’s cheek. “You’ll be a great father too.” She then dropped another kiss onto the baby’s cheek. “Isn’t that right, Chloe?” The baby giggled that melodic, wondrous sound that only a child could make. “I think she agrees with me.”
“Yeah, that’s why.”
“Whatever happens, we’ll love her as much as we loved them,” Sansa said to him, placing a hand over his arm. “As much as they loved her. That’s all we can do. Everything else, we’ll figure out.”
“Together,” Jon nodded, smiling at her. It was the soft kind of smile that had once captured her heart so intensely in its web. She wasn’t convinced it still didn’t have that same effect, but there were more important things now. What Jon and Sansa might have had was a past they didn’t have time to explore. Chloe was priority. That was what mattered.
But she had to say something, a feeling she couldn’t readily deny even if she wanted to. “I’m glad you’re home, Jon. I’m glad you’re back even under these circumstances.”
“Me too.”