#jansa

For all her unexpected strength, Sansa would not survive long alone on the road, and as soon as Cersei heard of the girl’s disappearance, soldiers would scour the countryside to drag her back by her hair if need be. He might protest, but it would do little good. Sansa is House Lannister’s and the crown’s claim to the North—for all that frozen landscape is soon to be worth. As much as Cersei raged against the match, when it was made at the expense of his position as Commander of the Kingsguard and their proximity to each other in King’s Landing, she clings to the necessity of it now, as she does every remnant of power. Even as it slips like the sands of the Sunset Sea through her fingers.

“My lord?”

“Pack. As quickly as you can. For a fortnight. Longer. So long as you can carry it.” They’ll leave on horseback, but they might need to abandon their mounts for a less conspicuous mode of travel. Safety, speed, and visibility will be at war with each other as much as the kingdoms themselves.

“Is Daenerys coming?” she asks, as she rises to her feet, pale hands clutched before her waist. Taller now than the day he married her. Slimmer too. Sometimes she looks more a woman and less a child after he’s gone no more than a handful of days.

Abandoning the defenses of Casterly Rock, Jaime left more than a moon ago for a diplomatic summit between his twin, the Dragon Queen, and the King of the North. The meeting exposed a new threat, one even more terrifying than dragons, though their fire will forever cause his heart to pound. That creature, the thing they unleashed before those gathered in the dragonpit should have made any man’s bowels loosen. And yet, his twin proved as untouched by an animated corpse as she is the impossibility of fighting dragons. Cersei would rather have them all die than relinquish her hold on the throne. There was a time not so long ago he would have marched to her tune, not for power or a title, but so they might finally sit side by side. He would have gone to the ground for her.

Not anymore. There is no honor there, and he sees how little love means to her.

He stalks into the room, boots thudding dully, as he takes in her sparsely accommodated chambers with a distracted eye. He doesn’t even know where she keeps her sad grey dresses or the heavier fur he had made for her before his departure, when snow began to drift down from the sky. He hardly knows her, and still he’s made his choice.

Rubbing the space between his brows with his knuckle, he clenches his jaw.

“The Dragon Queen will be dead soon, I wager.”

“Then…?”

“Pack your things. Now,” he says, letting his hand drop to his side. The sharpness of his voice makes her step back until her skirts press into the seat of the chair. “Do it or I will be forced to do it for you, and you’ll wear mismatched gowns and cloaks for the rest of your days.”

Her rosebud mouth flattens into something unbecoming. “I won’t go back to King’s Landing.”

“Good. We’re agreed then, for that’s the last place I’d think to go.” He didn’t ride hard from the place to return to the madness brewing there. Cersei will be furious when she finds he’s fled, ignoring her orders to lead their men into certain death. If he sought shelter there, she would take her fury out on Sansa, the source of his wavering loyalty.

“North?” she asks, sounding suddenly as girlish as the namedays she counts, betraying a hopefulness that should summon naught but pity for her naivete.

It does not. But like calls to like. There is that part of him that longs for beauty and honor and purpose in spite of everything. A part that is not so different from her, which makes it increasingly difficult to mock this young wife his father foisted upon him.

“Yes, well, I should have said that is the last place we’d go. It goes unsaid, as we shall also not seek out the deepest of the seven hells.”

She lifts her nose at him. “Jon would welcome us there if you vowed to help him fight Daenerys. I know he would.”

Before Jaime left for King’s Landing, Sansa did not bother to pass along a message for the young king, perhaps not trusting him to do it. Since word of Jon’s elevation to the title, however, Jaime has suspected Sansa harbored a desire to reunite with him.

“Your brother seeks onehanded knights then?”

”Good men are always welcome.”

Jaime snorts at her smooth lie wrapped in flattery. “It isn’t Daenerys I nor your brother are chiefly concerned with.”

“Did he… ask after me? Did you speak to him at all?”

He might have sought him out and told him of his sister, but he did not. It didn’t even occur to him.

He points at a chest in the corner. “You can pack while you pester me with questions.”

But she doesn’t move. Compliant by tutoring and as a means of self-preservation, she still can be remarkably stubborn when she wants to be.

He stalks over to her, chest expanding in exasperation, as he places his hand on the small of her back to urge her to move along if need be. It is unusually cold in her chambers with winter closing in and no fire lit, but she is warm beneath his touch through all the thick wool and linen underthings. She is warm and supple and full of promise.

His gut twists and he draws his hand back, instantly regretting his impulse to push her forward. Under his protection, no man has handled her roughly. It was the one promise he made her on their wedding night.

Or perhaps it is the other urge he buries that flames his cheeks.

He clears his travel roughened throat. “If your brother was here, he would tell you to stay well away from the North. There will be nothing left of the North to salvage once this winter is over.”

“How most unfortunate for your family, seeing as it is my entire reason for being here.”

“I have assured you countless times that I never wanted your bloody northern claim.” His bark is nearly the last bit of energy he has left. He shifts on his feet. His back is aching and his arse too. He could have gone straight to the kitchen to demand food and drink to revive his weary flesh. Instead, he directed his feet to her chamber, so as to not waste one moment and further risk her safety. “We are all in grave danger. You must try to trust me, Sansa.”

He doesn’t usually speak her name. Not aloud and not in his private thoughts. She is his little wife, my lady, the shewolf, and when he wants to irk her especially, Lady Lannister. But who she is—Sansa Stark, who he vowed to protect—feels more inescapable than ever.

He cannot save Cersei, not even from herself. He couldn’t save his children, none of them. But he could save Sansa.

“You’re frightened,” she says, eyes gone round as her head tilts and she takes him in from dusty boots to sweat stained undertunic.

“With good reason.” He’d be a bigger fool than he already is if he was not consumed by terror at the thought of those creatures crawling through the halls of Casterly Rock, scratching at their chamber doors with empty mouths wide.

“And tired too,” she says with a sigh. Her defiance melts into something else, dewy eyed and intoxicating, that empathy she can’t entirely suppress. He rarely allows himself to see it. Even more infrequently to want it—the sweetness of a wife that he can rightly claim as his own. “Let me call for sustenance. I’ll help you with your boots.”

She makes these small gestures, pretending at being the perfect wife, though they have never even consummated their vows. In lonelier moments, he convinces himself these offers of hers speak to a hidden desire of hers that he might welcome in time.

“A thoughtful offer, but there’s no time for that. We must away. To Essos, as far as can be, as soon as we can. I know you would rather be done with me, but I won’t leave you to die.”

Her throat rolls under the high neck of her modest gown. She is quiet, but not due to a lack of intelligence—there is always something going on behind the blue of her eyes—and he can see it now, the churn of her thoughts. Finally, she nods, as she draws up her skirts in one hand.

“Essos,” she echoes back at him. “Shall I pack for warmer climes then, my lord?”

“We’ll buy you new when we cross the sea. Dress for what we face until then, and nothing too grand.”

He means to take every bit of gold he can stash away on their persons. Enough to book passage and start ten new lives. A life comfortable enough for the heir to House Stark and Westeros’ largest and least hospitable kingdom. Enough to finally fulfill not one but two vows—to protect Catelyn Stark’s eldest daughter and to love her as the septon bid.

If the rest of the world they leave behind dies, then for once, his vows might not conflict and prove impossible to see through.