JONSAWARRIORS

Jon sits at the pub table and waits, one hand clenched around the gin he ordered, but hasn't found the courage to drink yet, the other tapping a rhythm on the table. When he notices he's doing it, he stops, flattens his hand on the smooth, slightly sticky wood tabletop.

He shouldn't have agreed to this, he knows. No good will come of it, but when he had received a letter from her asking to meet...

When she walks in, he knows before he even sees her. He knows because every head turns to look at her. She's that kind of girl. The kind that people notice. The kind that people notice even more in a place like this, but this is where she had asked to meet.

She's as lovely as he remembers, it sets his heart going. Sets his teeth on edge. The last time he had seen her, she'd been in his arms, bright smile on her face as she danced with him all night. He still remembers the way she laughed at how annoyed Robb was about it all, still remembers the way Robb had slung a drunken arm around his shoulders and said, “don't go getting any ideas, Snow.”

Sansa had laughed at that, the sound light and musical and perfect.

He used to think about that laugh, back in the trenches. Used to close his eyes and try to remember her face. Her eyes, her smile, her hair. The way she smelled, the way she felt in his arms. The way she hummed along with the music when it was slow, her head resting on his shoulder. Her laugh.

But that was before.

Before he cracked his skull open against the hard-packed earth. Before he lost two fingers on his left hand. Before shrapnel nearly tore him apart.

Before Robb died.

When she sits, she isn't smiling. Her face is pale and her eyes look tired and rimmed with red, as if she'd cried before coming here. Still lovely, though. Still just as beautiful as she was that night. That one, perfect night.

He's tapping on the tabletop again, and he stills his hand, flattens it out. Father says it's annoying, and it draws attention to the fact that he only has eight fingers now. He lets his injured hand slide beneath the tabletop. He doesn't want her to see.

“Thank you for meeting me,” she says, and there's none of the warmth that her voice held that night.

“Of course,” he says, every muscle in his body tensed. “Of course.”

“I was hoping,” she starts, then pauses. Swallows hard and blinks rapidly, against tears he guesses haven't quite left her. “I was hoping I could ask you some questions. About Robb.”

Ice slides through his veins, though he knew this was why she asked him to meet. Of course this was why. She didn't send him a letter to follow through on her promise. Find me when it's over, she had whispered in his ear that night, her friends giggling off to the side as they waited for her, as Robb moaned and whined about it. Find me when it's over and I promise I'll let you take me dancing again. A kiss pressed to his clean-shaven cheek.

But that was before.

He brings his good hand up to rub at his new beard, the one he should shave because father says he looks like a degenerate with it. But these days, he finds it hard to care about much, his appearance even less. Now he wishes he'd shaved.

“About how he died,” she goes on when he says nothing. “They didn't tell us anything. But you were with him.”

“I wasn't,” Jon says, and his voice sounds too rough. He clears his throat, lifts his glass to take a sip.

“But you were in the same regiment,” she argues, brows furrowing together, voice pitching up in distress.

“We got separated on the field,” he tries, the words coming out hoarse, his throat tightening up as he remembers. The wide open field, trampled and ruined. The gunshots and the cannons and the screams. “It was-” his voice gives out completely and he has to close his eyes because he cannot look at her bright blue eyes. They remind him of Robb. But of course, closing his eyes is worse. In the darkness, he can see it all so clearly. The bodies and the blood. The blast that knocked him back. The blast that should have killed him.

Embarrassment curls in his stomach, sours it, makes him wish he'd never come here. It takes what feels like forever before he can open his eyes again, before the phantom smell of death and gunpowder leaves his nose, before he can uncurl his fists. Before he can breathe again.

“I don't know how it happened,” he finally says, gritting his teeth and forcing the words out. “Robb went ahead of me.”

Of course he did – that was Robb. Running headlong into danger, invincible, until he wasn't.

“Why?” she asks, her voice wavering. “Why didn't you-”

That sourness in his stomach turns and rolls. He might vomit up the one sip of gin he took.

“You're right,” he says, hands shaking. “It should have been me.”

It should have. Robb is the first born, set to take on his father's title. Robb had a girl back home – a real one, not just a promise of dancing. A girl with a baby in her belly, waiting for her husband to return. Jon had stood by Robb's side at their quick wedding. Jon's just a second son – a no one, with no one at home praying for his safe return.

Sansa's eyes go wide and glassy as she says, “that's not what I meant-”

“It's fine,” he says, pushing back his chair and standing up. “I don't have any answers for you, Sansa. You should go home, you don't belong in a place like this.”

“Jon-”

She follows him out of the pub and onto the street, and he waves down a cab for her.

When he turns back to look at her, though, he realizes he used the wrong hand. Her eyes are still wide and glued to his left hand. The empty space where two fingers should be.

“Jon, I didn't mean it that way,” she whispers. The cab pulls to the curb and he opens the door for her.

“Yes, you did,” he tells her. “But it's alright, I don't blame you for it. It should have been me.”

Her puts her in the cab and ignores her sniffles and the painful way she looks at him, and he shuts the door on the life he could have had. The life he dreamed of, those nights he spent in the trenches. The girl he met once, the girl he'd fallen in love with over a drink and a dance.

But that life isn't for him anymore.