Work Text:
It is a crisp early summer morning as people wander in and out of the Great Hall to break their fast, no one there thinks the day will bring anything much important. Everything appears normal enough – with the sole exception that the Lady Sansa is slightly late. Even that is no cause for concern to anyone, mayhap she just needs a little longer to get her beautiful dress just right this morn.
Nobody pays much attention when Sansa arrives. It is not an important day, so even the Lord’s eldest daughter appearing is no cause to disrupt your eating for longer than it takes to nod politely at her. Her dress is beautiful, of course, fit for a noble girl of two-and-ten not yet flowered going to an everyday morning meal within her lord father’s hall.
No one truly starts paying attention yet when she walks past her usual seat. Mayhap she wishes to whisper something privately to Rickon down the table before sitting down. It is only when Sansa bypasses the head table entirely that eyes begin to follow her on her way all the way to Jon.
Sansa is holding her back straight and her head high as she walks. The seat she seeks is a little further back than the middle of the tables strewn about. It’s an ordinary day, the placement of the tables and the seating is not formal. The bastard has chosen not to sit with his siblings to better avoid Lady Catelyn before eating but he is not banished to the back of the room.
Truthfully it is only because Robb wanted to speak to his mother about something that the heir of Winterfell is not yet seated there. Absent a formal occasion Robb usually follows where Jon chooses to sit as they continue their discussion about battle strategies and any other boy topics. Arya, too, sits with Jon whenever she can. She must be off causing mischief somewhere or else she is sleeping in.
Any other sibling sitting down at whichever table currently hosts Jon is the most common sight one can have during a casual meal at Winterfell. Yet this morning it is the Lady Sansa who is making her way towards her bastard brother, the Lady Sansa who follows her mother in all things and has not deigned to be seen close to Jon in… years. No wonder her every step is followed by stares.
Jon is watching his eldest little sister with wide eyes as she sits down on what would be Arya’s chair with firm resolve and fills an empty plate from the table’s offerings. She doesn’t truly look at Jon, the expression she flashes at him cannot rightfully be called a smile. The knuckles around the mug of tea in her hand are white. Yet she sits there, ignoring the startled calls from her mother. She takes a sip from the tea. She puts a small piece of pastry in her mouth.
Jon watches her in confusion and with a faint hint of suspicion. It all looks very much like the set-up for a prank to get him into trouble, except Sansa would be more reluctant if it were. She is not malicious, his sister, regardless of the many quarrels she gets into with Arya. She hurt his feelings when she began avoiding him but she has never sought to cause him pain, never. She has seated herself here beside him of her own free will, going against her mother’s wishes in full view of the Hall.
Not quite knowing what to say and not wanting to call down even more attention Jon tries to act as if what just happened is entirely natural. He resumes eating. An uncomfortable awkwardness is beginning to form between them the longer neither of them says a word – until Robb plops himself down in the seat next to Sansa. “So this is where we’re eating now?”
Arya is giving Sansa an odd look as she clambers onto the bench on the other side of Jon. A heartbeat later and Bran is also there. All they are missing is Rickon, but Rickon is in his wet-nurse’s arms, too young to join his siblings on his own.
“Uh, why are we here?” asks Arya, as if she does not sit beside Jon every chance she gets anyway. Her tone is a lot less belligerent than she might have tried for.
Sansa takes a breath. She sets down her mug. She has made a scene this morning, deliberately so. She knew before she did it that she would have to explain herself.
“I went through the histories with Maester Luwin,” she says. “There are seven times that the ruling Stark has been usurped. Seven in more than eight thousand years.”
“Wolf Packs are loyal,” Robb cuts in, proud, but looks at his sister expectantly. Waiting for her to get to her point.
Sansa nods. She turns so that she can look Jon directly in the face. “Two uncles. One cousin. Four brothers. All seven of which were or were born to second sons. None of them were bastards.” A short silence as Jon and the trueborn Starks process that. “Seven usurpations in eight thousand years and not a single one attempted by a bastard. Mother has called you a danger all my life, Jon, when the one Robb ought to be afraid of is Bran!”
They all look at Bran. Bran looks back at them, aghast. “Me?!” He looks so outraged and devastated that the others cannot help but laugh.
Sansa laughs as well, but her hand is still clenched around her mug. She is angry, Jon realizes. Her mother has put her in opposition to her pack, and she was wrong. Eight thousand years have proven it utterly unlikely that any of her fears will play out. Lady Catelyn has separated Sansa from Jon for nothing.
She would argue that I might be the first, Jon thinks but keeps to himself. Someone is always the first, and why should not the bastard whose mother Ned Stark forsook his honour for be the one who breaks the mold?
Lady Catelyn may well believe that even if Sansa shows her all the precedences she has found. But unless Jon actively does something to the detriment of their pack Sansa will no longer see him as a threat. No more than she will see a threat in Bran or Rickon or their future sons. Less so, going by the result of the extensive research she must have performed.
She must have done so to find concrete proof that she must needs make every effort to hate him. Torn between the love for a brother and a mother who was her mother and must surely be right. What she found instead was that a Snow born to a Stark may argue fiercely with their trueborn brother who wears the crown – or is the Lord Paramount of the North, now – just as Brandon Snow argued with Torrhen Stark the King who Knelt before he bent the knee to Aegon I Targaryen. But never has a bastard Stark overthrown or attempted to overthrow their trueborn brother or their trueborn brother’s son. And neither will Jon.
Sansa Stark is a true lady. The stance she has picked is backed by millennia of Northern history. Jon is her brother, and even if it should break her mother’s heart, never again will she allow the beliefs of the South to make her ashamed to share a pack with him.
.