#jonsacentric

a lady of winterfell update, chapter fifteen: the masqueraders

Jonsa Autumn Aesthetic 🍂

Thank you, @amymel86 , I’ve been wanting to write something like this for a while. Hope you enjoy. 💛✨

(I couldn’t think of a title 😬)

Jonsa 5 Word Challenge One Shot:

“What was it like?” Sansa asked, her voice soft and quiet, yet cutting through the silence nonetheless. She sat next to Jon before the hearth, the windows swung wide open, winter wind sighing in.

“What was what like?”

A faint smile played on her lips when she looked down at the cup in her lap. She’d had more to drink tonight than he knew she could take, making her cheeks flush to a lovely pink. It felt like a lifetime had passed since they’d last seen each other on the docks of King’s Landing. The last time she’d been there she was only a girl, dressed in the finest silks, alone, and afraid. She told him once that she’d never go back there. Not for anything or anyone.

But she did go back.

For him.

Just so, he’d once said he was done fighting; said he’d go away to a place where it was warm. And then she asked him to go to war for her; for her home.

So he did. He found himself bloodying his knuckles again.

For her.

She licked her lips and met his eyes again. Her lids were low from the wine, her expression calm, her brow smoothed out. “Riding a dragon,” she said. “What was it like riding a dragon?”

Jon blinked at her and sat upright in his seat, caught off guard by the question.

“When I first saw you on the back of that beast, I...” Sansa shook her head softly as she looked into the fire, as if she could see the memory play out in the flames. “Just one wrong turn, one slip of your hand, and you’d be falling to your death or crushed beneath its wings.”

Had she been afraid for him? Worried for him? He was intrigued by the thought, and found himself wanting to hear more about what she thought.

“Were you worried for me, Sansa?” The words left him before he could stop himself, and Jon remembered he too was well in his cups, and should guard his tongue.

“Worried. Afraid. Jealous.” She shrugged and took a drink after that last word, gulping hard.

Jon raised his eyebrows at her. “Jealous? I can’t really imagine you’d want to be flying on the back of a dragon. They’re ferocious; being on one is like...well, it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve died,” he said, trying his best to make her laugh. “Besides, you’d hate the way they hiss,” he said teasingly. “Awful sound, it is.”

She chuckled. “That’s not quite it,” she said, blushing an even deeper red that captivated Jon in a way he couldn’t understand.

“How do you mean it, then?”

Sansa huffed out a breath and pursed her lips before answering. “It felt like she had so much of you already. And I’d just gotten you—and our home, our family—back. It was just one more string she’d have attached to you that I—we—didn’t.”

Jon wasn’t sure he was understanding. He felt warm from the ale, his head light. Was she...

“You were jealous of Daenerys?”

A name he hadn’t spoken in ages.

Sansa shifted in her seat, obviously uncomfortable by his question. She rolled her eyes and said, “Is that so hard to believe? She walked in here and tried to claim what’s mine. Including you. You were my...”

“Your what?” He was enthralled by the words she let out so freely, and he wanted to know them. All of them.

“You were just mine. That’s all. My brother, my family, my protector. My friend.”

Something inside Jon crumbled in that moment. “Sansa, I...I never stopped being any of those things.”

And looking back on all of it, he realized he never gave her a reason to believe that she wasn’t losing him. He gave up their home and his crown. Two things which to Sansa, meant safety from harm from anyone ever again. Isn’t that what he had promised her? Isn’t that the reason he fought a war against all odds? No, it wasn’t so hard to believe. He felt awful just then, for being another person who let her down after she’d trusted him. After she’d trusted him. What could he say now to repair the hurt he caused in her? The hurt that he didn’t even stop to consider. There were no words he could use to turn back time and do things differently.

He put his cup down and fell to his knees before her, set her cup down and took her hands in his. “Sansa, you have to know...please tell me you know...if I could go back and change it, I would. I’d choose you from the beginning. You and Arya and Bran and Winterfell. Say you believe me, won’t you?”

Sansa looked down at him with wide eyes, brilliant blue like the ocean on a sunny day. She nodded slowly. “I believe you,” she whispered. “I always believed in you, Jon. Before you had a crown or a dragon or the name of a prince.” She took his face in her hands. And not for the first time did Jon find himself drunk and kneeling before a queen by firelight. Only this time was different. This time, he felt a blush creep up his neck from the way Sansa looked at him, felt his heart flutter with the words she spoke. “You made the right choice in the end. We’re all still standing. That’s what’s important.” She leaned down close to him, and Jon froze in place, not sure what to do. He felt her lips on his forehead, her hair brush the side of his face, the scent of her fill his nose, and his breath halted in his chest. She sat back up again, and wore the softest smile on her lips.