Title: Stealing
Fandom: ASOIAF
Pairing: Jon/Sansa, Harry/Sansa
Word Count: 773
Rating & Warning: T
Summary: It's what Targaryen princes do. Start wars over Stark women.
Author's Note: Written for the gameofships Stark Naked Contest; prompt was "as silent as shadows"; winner of Best Ficlet.

Stealing

When he sees her again, he thinks her the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. All rosy lips and ivory skin and soft red curls. It's confusing to look at the woman his sister has become, while knowing she isn't really his sister at all. Even less his sister than when she would unthinkingly point out as children that he was her half brother.

He hasn't been there a week when he concludes that Sansa is a great deal more than beautiful. Maybe she was always meant to embody everything wise and good and kind or perhaps life merely shaped her this way, but Jon thinks her perfect. He's had nothing to do with it, but he feels proud of her nonetheless.

She is not his sister, but he is fortunate to be at her side again. He feels closer to home than he has since he left Winterfell.

Her husband, Harry, should know her worth, should treasure her. Jon almost wishes he was unaware of Harry's failings as a husband, but when he came upon Sansa's cheerful husband with his hand up the skirts of a serving girl, he became personally acquainted with Harry's proclivities.

Sansa should be enough. More than enough.

"Are you happy?" he asks her.

Her hand comes up to brush back a lock of dark hair that hangs before his eyes.

"Are you?" is her soft response.

I could be.

Harry no longer seems the jovial host: he smiles as broadly, but he also watches Jon at table, casting sidelong looks at him that aren't quite as friendly. Jon did not hide his displeasure at finding Sansa's husband about to fuck that girl terribly well.

Harry is not worthy of Sansa.

"How did you come to choose your husband?" he asks, hoping that by asking he has not already revealed himself.

Sansa's smile is lovely, but it doesn't betoken joy. "Women don't choose men."

"Free women do. Women north of the Wall, they are as free to choose as a man is."

"And how do they do that?"

"They steal them."

"Banditry," she says, as if weighing the notion. "I think I might like this wild practice."

"The free people have some things right."

"We are Northerners, are we not?" He nods his assent. "Then perhaps we should adopt more of the Northern ways. Have you any practice in stealing, Jon?"

Sansa more than once married who was chosen for her to secure a title and the power that came with it. She was married before the Seven, not a Heart Tree. Southron ways that should have no claim over Sansa Stark.

When Jon next sees Harry, he doesn't even bother to think of him as Sansa's husband, for it is nothing but Southron ceremonies that have made it so. Harry has not earned her, nor will he ever.

She is a prize far beyond Jon too, beyond all men, but he would dedicate his life to trying to be worthy of her.

"It's what you Targaryen princes do, isn't it?" she muses, while she embroiders a grey doublet that looks too trim for Harry. Her icy blue eyes look into him, cutting through to the quick. "Start wars over Stark women."

"Is that what you think I mean to do?"

"Isn't it?"

Jon moves as silent as shadows through darkened corridors. The castle is asleep. All save Jon, who makes for Sansa's chambers, and Sam, who waits in the courtyard below. Sam, the unlikely romantic hero, knows more than Jon about rescues of this sort.

When he rouses Sansa from her sleep, her arms slip around his neck, and for a moment he worries that she confuses him with Harry.

"Sansa, it's Jon."

Her answer is a press of her soft lips to his, and he can feel the heat of her, warm from the furs, as she holds tight. They must leave soon if they mean to make an escape, but he is sorely tempted to lay her down here in the furs and kiss her until neither of them can catch their breath.

There is no time for that.

"I'm stealing you." He can feel himself flush as he admits it, his lips brushing hers, as she smoothes her thumbs over his cheeks.

Her lips are rosier than ever. Kissed lips.

"Because?"

A thousand reasons, but mostly this: "I love you."

"And if they tear apart the Seven Kingdoms because of it?"

"Let them." The wilds of the North are wide and Harry a Southroner and they Northerners. "Sam is waiting with horses. Will you come?"

"You know I will."

It's what Stark women do.

THE END