Title: Woe Be Gone
Pairing: Jon/Sansa
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Genre: Romance, Fluff, Starkcest
Length: One-shot
Prompt: "We may not be as happy as you always dreamed we would be, but for the first time let's just allow ourselves to be whatever it is we are and that will be better." - Garden State (Originally posted ASOIAFKINKMEME)
Word Count: 2, 466
Disclaimer: The characters belong to George R. R. Martin, I know, I know~

{The food had been cleared and the tables and benches were pushed back against the walls to make room for the dancing. As the music grew louder with drummers and booming voices joining in, Jon decided to retire for the night. He walked past to the rear to avoid striding across the hall with men and women littered everywhere; they spun round and round on the stones, moving along the rhythm of gaiety while Jon noticed the lifting of their brows and the unspoken question on their lips. He was a stranger still to these folks of Winterfell, the survivors of the war, and so were they to him.

It was only three moons past when Jon went home, of what he used to call home. He had found that the Kingdom in the North now in addition consist of people from the South, West, and even from the far East, an odd band his sister had collected from her travels from the Vale to reclaiming North and withholding its strength from war-torn times.

The door of the Great Hall opened up on the castle yard and Jon stomped on. Closing his eyes and trusting only his rusty memories, he wandered, slightly limping, along the covered bridge to the armory and on to where the weapons practice was done in his time. When he opened his eyes, he found himself right on track, Ghost welcoming his vision from the armory shed. He protruded a hand to his direwolf and ruffled his furs, Sansa and her men successfully rebuilt this place, he thought. I was right; it belonged to her, truly.

Jon felt some crumbs of bread being thrown at him, or to Ghost, now that he had a better look of where the flying scraps were mostly directed to. He wandered his eyes around, and then glanced up. For certainty, he whirled himself and looked up from the training yard where he saw her sitting on one of the lowered turret's roof.

"Hello Ghost, Lord Snow."

She had that easy smile on her lips that he has seldom seen and her gorgeous eyes were wrinkled and lidded depending on the shadows casted on her face—she looked nothing else but a beautiful drunken lady to him.

"W–What are you doing up there?" he called for her in slight panic, arms already stretched in the air while walking towards her, as if beckoning her to fly down his arms. He was well aware that the mortar used to hold the stones together were still afresh but surely it could support her weight?

Ghost at his side padded wearily, his red eyes fixed curiously on the person on the roof.

"It's so warm and stuffy in there. I just had to take some breath of fresh air, Jon," she answered as she put down the piece of lemon cake she was holding, or at least what looked like bread to Jon a while ago, on her lap, and licked off the icing from her fingertips.

"San–Sansa?" Jon dropped the pretext of curtsying to her for he knew he was talking right now to Sansa and not the Queen of the North from the moment he gazed up to see those striking blue eyes unguarded. The mixed cascade of her long auburn hair and brown hair at the ends, a receding effect from her natural hair color winning back against the dyes seemed aglow from the pale moonlight.

Sansa was perched on the roof with her toes peering from her gown, carefree and stripped with her usual proprieties and yet just as Jon was dead sure a while ago, now she looked nothing like the Sansa he knew, then again, he had to remind himself that she hasn't been the Sansa he knew back in his childhood from the time he had met her again.

"Jon?" she mimicked him.

"How long have you been up there?" he noticed the flush of her cheeks and the absence of her fur coat, and was that two wineskins at her side? "And how did you get up there Sansa? Come down now, the chill wouldn't be good for you if stay there any longer."

She just smiled at him but it never reached the light in her eyes. It was as if frost covered her eyes, of what used to be sparkling sky blue. "You'd know too Jon, all you have to do is remember how Bran used to climb these walls…"

Her words and that simple thought made his breath hitched in his throat. He swallowed it back and took a lungful of air before responding to her with tenderness that it surprised him coming out as harsh and cold, "I don't remember… don't want to, sometimes."

A lie, he wondered why he had lied to her.

Ghost let out a grunt of disapproval, nuzzling Jon's legs.

"Come join me here?" she only replied, her left hand drawn out to him.

"Sansa—"

"Jon—"

Jon then let his arms extended towards her fall down to his sides and sighed. Sansa was drunk, and he felt like a fool for chiding with her for bringing up Bran's memory. "I–I think not… besides, you have to be in your chambers… b–before the people feasting in the Great Hall found you in this state, or before the whole of Winterfell found out that their lovely queen has been out of wits from drinking ale," and he smiled at that, thinking that it would surely rouse her from her stupor, her reputation was at stake after all.

Only, he was rewarded with a hearty laugh from her. "Do you think I'm lovely Jon? That's a relief to know."

Jon's face fell, his lips twisting into a thin line. Has he really spouted that she was lovely? But she really was, has always been, is... and then he caught the words inside his head and mentally glared at them before some of his unbidden thoughts towards her sister—cousin now, a chiding voice grunted inside his head—rouse inside him.

"Fine," he hissed at Sansa, "Stay and I'll have two of your handmaidens escort you to your chambers," and then he turned his back on her, he was only two steps away when she called after him again.

"Jon–"

"To me, Ghost," was what he only said when he realized that the direwolf didn't move a single fur from his previous spot. When he turned, Ghost had a reproachful look in those red eyes of his and Jon felt betrayed for his direwolf obviously taking Sansa's side. "You guard her then," he commanded.

He continued on his way afterward.

"Jon… I found, I lost who I was…"

That did stop him. Her voice was so small, almost a whisper in the winter wind, it was even surprising he had snatched her words.

"I've forgotten what Sansa essentially is. Only courtesies and games of the court were left of her now. I never was truly me… do you understand Jon?"

That made Jon freeze on the ground, his body all taut and he felt like he was losing himself too from the whirlwind that was her disheartening words, and he just wanted her to stop that instant.

"I… who am I, really? I lost myself somewhere in the stronghold of Maegor's Holdfast, washed out in the Vale. I don't know… I don't remember Sansa…"

I'm not who I was once either. We aren't who we once were, Jon stiffly thought. He made himself turn around and look up at her once more. Sansa was anything but crying though tears were pouring out of her eyes, to Jon, they simply were.

She was void of any expression, her arms clutching the ledge of the roof. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at Jon afterwards… the way she looked blank and empty.

He bid his time.

Ghost sat on his haunches, seemingly anxious as his head turned from Jon to Sansa.

Jon settled his eyes back to the ground and cleared something in his throat and in his chest. He placed both his hands inside the pocket of his trousers and spoke anxiously, "I remember Sansa who's splendid in needlework, and I see Sansa now who mends the cracks of the castle and stitches back her broken people."

Jon took a careful step although what he feared was stumbling over his words, he was scared of baring the truth but when he thought starting it was the hardest, he never suspected that stopping the sprint of kept feelings would surpass it. "I remember Sansa who loves all things beautiful and I see Sansa now radiate that in the hearts of her men, her women, her children."

He took another step towards her, mindful of their labored breaths no matter their distance towards each other against the backdrop of merriment and music in the hall. Jon's wary of second-guessing if it was wise to tell her such things, if it would breach something in what they had both established as a distant relationship of Lady Stark, Queen and Warden of the North, and Lord Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

"I remember Sansa who loves songs and tales of knights, and I see Sansa now trying her best to keep them true, realized."

Finally Jon looked up at her again and he could see the quiver of her lips, a thousand emotions long hidden finally broke through her tear ducts, passed her cheeks and down to her delicate chin, Jon felt a tremor shook his whole being from the sight. It was then that he realized Sansa had wanted it, that he too, had wanted for those barriers to fall.

"And I remember Sansa who loves lemon cakes, the haughty redhead Stark girl, and I see that she's still a bit like that though a woman now, wise beyond her years… who, I suppose wants nothing at this time but to jest with her half-brother," surprising himself even more, a snicker escaped Jon's lips; he spied a sloppy lopsided grin from his direwolf when his view brushed down before coming back up to gauge Sansa's reaction.

And it was just in time as he caught her eyes lighting up, the blue in them thawed at last, and she giggled through her tears and Jon swore there's nothing more endearing and charming than it.

It was as if he even imagined Eddard Stark's somber features flash on Sansa's, only to loosen up and become a swirl of Robb's prominent Tully features, overwhelmed with bliss.

The way his father—well, what Jon used to think of the man who raised him as his bastard son—the way Lord Stark's cold and strict demeanor would lighten up whenever he found his children jesting with each other, would soften up whenever he would gaze to his lady wife, was what ultimately reminded Jon when he lingered his eyes on Sansa's then ghosting smile. She's much a Northerner now more than ever.

She stood abruptly, swaying on her toes over the ledge; the half-eaten lemon cake has long fallen to the ground. "I–If you want to save me, now is the right time."

Before he could ask, before he could even comprehend the meaning behind it, his senses and his body acted faster than his wits. He stretched his arms widely once more and kept his feet firm on the ground, and both Jon and Ghost waited. From the sudden quietness in the air and the tension above them, the whole of Winterfell waited, it would seem.

The impact of her falling to his body was slow and fast, light and hard at the same time. Jon sincerely thought that the scene of her falling down to him, her flowing red and muddy locks against night, against the dancing light from the windows of the hall and against the soft breeze and the surge of her dark grey wool clothes, the colors of her house, and he supposed still his too, in contrast to her pale yet creamy skin, burned his vision, he sincerely thought that it would be forever imprinted in his mind.

Their burdens shedding all at once when both of them finally decided to be open, just like that, Jon couldn't even believe how easily it transpired.

Then one moment they were clutching each other desperately and tight, all warm and all the more alive; the other they fell and stumbled on the cold trodden earth.

Ghost's howl of laughter was like a music accompaniment to them both.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her, peering down his lashes to the strands of Sansa's silky hair and inviting eyes though strained from tears.

"No," she answered breathlessly as she gazed softly at him, "are you?"

"Never better," Jon mumbled with a relieving sigh.

Sansa bit her lower lip then squirmed against Jon's hands and she inclined her head up Jon's neck, her lips reaching for his ears. "Jon, I'm not drunk. That's something I think you needed to know…"

He just laughed at that all the while being tickled by her warm breath against one of his ears; Jon realized he was breathing in her scent. "That's a relief to know."

"Would it? Now that we have the privy eyes of the North all to our own?" she whispered while bobbing her head towards the window sills and the opened doors, once again childlike as she was about to confess that she didn't mean to take another piece of lemon cake just before supper.

And in an instant Jon became rigid; a sinking feeling eerily familiar to guilt bloomed in his chest, his hands uncurling from Sansa's frame.

And then suddenly, all years turned back, and he was just the green boy Jon Snow who had annoyed young Sansa from sewing dolls, who hugged her openly before Lord Eddard's amusement, Lady Catelyn's frown whilst nursing the babe Arya, young Robb's hoots to fight, and young Theon's yell of cowardice, so he could avoid her curled fists.

They shared a look and Sansa laughed to his face, a merry laugh washing away Jon's thoughts of dishonor and embarrassing frivolity, and then she began saying, "I think, it's a relief for them too… to see us finally having fun."

When Jon remained tight-lipped, Sansa said to him in that haughty manner he knew oh so well he could weep seeing it again, "You can't be a prude forever, Jon."

"Clearly, you're not," doubtless Jon's face was anything but a grin, Sansa on the other hand at least had the grace to look abashed.

A pair of snort, then giggles, then open laughter echoed all throughout those walls of supposed frozen Kingdom in the North.}

A/N: Posted! There! I could breathe out now. Also let it be known that I'm really anxious writing this 'cause I'm still half-way with Book 2 of ASOIAF and all my supplementary knowledge came from spoilers of XD Jon/Sansa is my end game though, and I'm just really itching to write something about them. Reviews, please? :)