Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sansa selects a 45 from the stack and smiles hearing the piano as the turntable starts to spin.  She's got some newer records purchased for sixty-five cents at Marsh's when she was feeling indulgent one day last month but she loves this one.  She turns to stare at the contents of her wardrobe trying to decide what to wear as Billie Holliday starts to sing.

"Blue moon...

you saw me standing alone

without a dream in my heart

without a love of my own..."

She's got a job interview tonight.  What should she wear?  She’s never had a job interview before because she’s never had a job. That was never part of the plan for a girl like Sansa growing up.  She'd been raised to be a homemaker, to care for children.  Most of the girls at her college had giggled amongst themselves that they were there seeking their M.R.S.  She'd done what everyone expected her to do.  It'd just turned out...disappointing.

She wants to make the right impression but supposes housekeepers spend little time and money on things like hair and makeup.  Finally, she chooses the black and white plaid dress with the Peter Pan collar she’d made, copying the design from an issue of McCall’s, and puts her long auburn locks up in a somewhat severe bun. She decides the simplicity will suit her.

But not too much simplicity. It is a man she’s going to meet for this interview.

She picks up her tube of Revlon’s Super Lustrous Fire and Ice. She gives a pout in the mirror once it’s applied and then leaves a red blot on her white handkerchief before tucking it into her handbag. The taxi cab is here.

It’s a bit like acting, slipping into a new role. From debutante and sorority sister to blushing bride. From blushing bride to wife of a soldier off to serve. From jubilant at his return to heartbroken within a matter of months. From wronged wife to divorcee at the ripe old age of twenty-six…and in desperate need of a job.

Wanted: Live-in Housekeeper for manor home. Experience not necessary. A discrete nature and ability to work nights required.

The offered wages (very generous) had her dialing the number listed before she even considered the advertisement thoroughly. Well, that and the fact that she would finally have a place to live away from her parents. They mean well but a failed marriage is quite the scandal in Winterfell here in the autumn of 1957 and she knows her presence back in the house just as they’d got Rickon sent off to college has overturned their newly empty nest.

“It seems strange for him to be interviewing you so late, Sansa,” her mother had said.

“I think he must work long hours, Mother.”

“Your mother and I should be home from the club by nine, pumpkin. Ring if you need a way home.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

She may need the ride. The taxicab pulls to a stop and a bit of haggling ensues before Sansa steps out to behold what may be her future home.

The manor upon the hill is not as grand as she’d expected though it is large.  It's a bit on the ramshackle side and the moonlight gives it an eerie glow. She'd heard that it had been unoccupied for several years before it's current resident moved in. The indifferent state may mean her potential employer is not a stickler when it comes to an ideal cleanliness. Like the song, she is determined to accentuate the positive.

The paving stones are worn and lichen-covered under her high heels. The trees have all lost their leaves, like silvery black fingers reaching towards the sky. That seems odd since most other trees in town are still covered in their colorful autumn foliage.

It’s dark out despite the moonlight and once she reaches the house’s shadow, she feels blinded. There is only a lone lantern (quite old-fashioned looking) burning out front and its wan light does not illuminate her surroundings that well. It’s alright. Your eyes will adjust soon, she tells herself.

She swallows her nerves as she raises her gloved hand to knock. Her hand barely makes a sound against the thick oak door and her knuckles hurt just thinking of knocking again. But now there is a bell pull which she had not noticed before, a brass contraption in need of polish with what looks like a dragon’s head on the end. She grasps it and gives a pull, wincing at the discordant shriek it seems to set off within. Who would want such an unpleasant doorbell?

She waits with bated breath to see if there’ll be an answer. What will she do if no one does? The taximan which brought her here said he could not wait. She’d relied on at least being able to call for another one or her father if she must.  There's been a couple of people go missing around the area over the past year. Old Mr. Frey was one of them.  

There’s a sound from the end of the porch. Has the owner been out for an evening stroll? She hears a soft growl. Perhaps he has a dog.

She squints against the lantern light into the darkness at the corner of the house. Red eyes stare back at her and beyond a mass of white. She yelps and jumps back a step…just as the front door swings open.

“Good evening, madam,” a man says, wearing what might be a long black dressing robe or something more like a cloak of all things.

His voice is gruff as though he doesn’t use it often but pleasant to the ear. There’s a wisp of something old-fashioned, nearly foreign, in his accent.

In the background, she can hear the scratchy strains of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' coming from a record player.  How appropriately creepy.  Did she come to a house or is she at the drive-in theater with Rickon and his friends watching some monster movie?  

Light spills out around him from within. There is a great deal of red to it and the interior is not brightly lit but obviously more than the porch. He shifts so they are equally bathed in light and she is grateful for that. But again, she is waiting for her eyes to adjust and then they do and…oh.

Sansa stares even though she knows staring is intolerably rude. But between those red eyes at the end of the porch and the dark grey eyes before her now, she seems to have lost her tongue.

He is not what she’d expected, no more than the house. His dark hair with a tendency to curl is touched with silver at the temples though he is not an old man.  It's hard to guess his age.  He has a timeless quality to his face like a few of those screen actors she's swooned over in the past.

And like them, he is also strikingly handsome.

There’s not a single man of her acquaintance who wears a full beard like his these days but it seems to suit this man. When she was a little girl, her father had let his beard grow out for a time after he’d broken his leg in an automobile accident. The memory of his bearded face and smiles brings her a strange comfort and she snaps out of her stupor.

"Hello."  She fumbles through her handbag for the paper she’d saved, the advertisement circled in red ink. “Are you J. Targaryen, sir?”

One corner of his mouth turns upward in a half smile.  It's quite fetching to be honest. “That is me. Are you Mrs. Hardyng?”

“Stark.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Sansa grimaces. She’s already off to a bad start. She’d told him Hardyng over the telephone. Housekeepers are generally Mrs. Somebody, aren’t they?

Now, she’s forced to tell her tale.  Resigned to getting this out of the way, she stands a bit straighter. “I was Mrs. Hardyng but I have divorced Mr. Hardyng. I would prefer Miss Stark or just Sansa if that is alright, sir.”

“Sansa.”

He rolls it over his tongue, stretches it out, caressing the syllables and making the second S sound more like a Z. No one has ever made her name sound quite so…intimate. He says it almost as if he's speaking a loved one's name for the first time in a very long while.  She’s suddenly feeling breathless once more. Shamefully, she doesn’t think it’s all due to nerves. There’s something nearly hypnotic about it.

She gives herself a shake as he seems to be doing the same.

“Why did you divorce Mr. Hardyng?” 

No sooner than the words are out of his mouth, Sansa can tell he regrets them.

Her furrowed brow and frown haven’t even fully formed when he says, “I do beg your pardon for my impertinence, madam.  It is not my business and you do not have to answer.”

She nods, her frown slowly vanishing like fog in the daytime. Curiosity can be forgiven. It can be more readily forgiven than adultery.

We were not happily wed. I thought we were until I realized our bed was not enough for him.

She cannot tell a stranger that. It is humiliating enough as it is. It's not like she'd married that monster poor Jeyne Poole from her grammar school days did.  It's not like Margaery whose brilliant quips and sundresses have been been replaced by nervous glances and long sleeves after four years of marriage to Joffrey. 

Harry never once laid a hand on Sansa like that.  He just laid his hands elsewhere.  And girls who can’t satisfy their husbands, can’t keep them from straying are to blame to some extent for that, aren’t they? Isn’t that what the world Sansa comes from really thinks?

A fierce and feral snarl follows her thoughts and she gasps. Did it come from the end of the porch? The man before her? Or herself? She is not sure. She must be going mad.

To prove she is not remotely mad though and not imagining sounds in the night, she smiles at him sunnily next, waiting to see if he’ll invite her in and conduct an interview for the post or not. Please, please, please, I need this.  She will not beg aloud.

He studies her for a few seconds longer, those dark grey eyes seemingly probing her inner thoughts. Of course, that’s quite silly.

Will he object to her as a divorced woman? Some people consider divorce quite immoral. But perhaps her total lack of experience with keeping house beyond helping her mother with chores and taking care of a one-bedroom apartment for a few years will work against her despite the wording of the advertisement. Her youth may even be seen as a problem. Most housekeepers in the movies and on television are older, women who won’t fly off to get married (again) and have babies, leaving their employers high and dry.

She starts to panic. Will he close the door in her face? She swiftly glances towards the end of the porch, fearing being left alone in the dark with those red eyes again. 

“Were you looking for something?” he prompts. That half smile is back.

“I thought I saw…never mind.”

She meets his eyes again and sees more. There are flecks of violet in the grey she had not noticed before. Those eyes, she wonders what all they’ve seen. They are bright but brimming with something which does not speak of youthful verve. It’s like looking at a soul through a kaleidoscope.  Heavens, Sansa.  Where is your good sense tonight?

His lips twitch in amusement. “Very well. I bid you welcome to my home and hope you’ll be comfortable here...Sansa.”

That same electricity when he speaks her name scatters her wits and leaves her wondering if she’s just been hired on the spot.  She must suppress a giddy, relieved smile to not appear too gauche.

But the next moment, a wavering howl splits through the quiet night not far off and she’s startled from her giddiness. She’s jumps, moving closer to Mr. Targaryen than she means to.

“Oh, I beg your pardon.  It's just the…”

“It’s alright. The Children of the Night can give all mortals a chill, can’t they?” he chuckles. “But won’t you come in out of the dark?”

He steps back from the threshold with a bow waiting to see if she will enter.

She does. 

The chill of the night recedes to be replaced by an unexpected warmth that seems to twist and twine through her chest, cradling her heart almost like an old friend.  

Chapter Text

“Drink from me...”

Sansa’s eyes flutter open as the words chanted and hissed at her in the dream begin to flit away like specks of dust in a breeze.

Grey eyes, purple eyes, pale eyes like chips of dirty ice.  Rough hands.  Sharp white teeth.  

A gentle caress. Tears sliding down his cheeks, dripping onto her own face, warm and wet like blood. 

A dark night and a coldness that wouldn't fade.  Heartbreak and then...nothing.

Like loose threads, the images dangle before her, just out of reach.  She tries to grasp them again, hold them, understand what they mean. The dark green velvet canopy of the four-poster bed is what she focuses on, trying to spell them out upon it in her mind’s eye, but it is no use. They are gone and she is alone in the predawn light.  A new day will soon begin.

She has a very fine bedroom for a servant but there are several bedrooms and there is only Mr. Targaryen and herself in the house so he’s given her this one. She lights the lantern beside her bed and snuggles under the covers a little longer. The swirling floral pattern looks like demons dancing when the flame wavers slightly.  "Drink from me..."

Yes, there is electricity but not in this room or any of the other bedrooms according to Mr. Targaryen. The house was built nearly two centuries ago and the wiring, added to the house before the Great War, is faulty and in need of replacing.

She huffs a breath, watches it billow forth from her mouth like smoke in the chilly morning. She would like a cigarette, a habit she picked up from Harry and from watching too many glamorous actresses smoke in the movies, but has none. She’s been here three weeks and, while she goes to the market once a week driving Mr. Targaryen’s sleek Thunderbird, she hasn't bought a pack.  She would rather quit smoking than waste her wages on them.  

"Do not worry over expenses," he'd told her, showing her where he kept cash on hand in the house for her trips to the store.  "Purchase whatever you need for the house or for yourself."  

She doubts there are many employers who would trust a new housekeeper to that extent.  Does he not fear being swindled?  She will not swindle him though.  The money is always there, more than Harry ever handed over to her once he returned from overseas and yet, she takes only as much as she thinks she'll need.  Frugality had been learnt at her mother's knee.  

People at the market and in town, especially the other housewives she’d once been friendly with when she was Harry’s wife, give her such curious looks when she drives Mr. Targaryen’s car.  She grins, remembering the feeling of freedom she'd experienced driving that Thunderbird the first time and listening to Johnny Mathis on Pypar's Pop Hour Showcase.

"Chances are 'cause I wear a silly grin

the moment you come into view

Chances are you think that I'm in love with you..."  

Joffrey's surly mother had watched her pull into a parking spot out front of the A&P with disapproval.  Old Mrs. Stokeworth had been by her side and the two of them had started whispering together as Sansa passed them.  She was never friendly with them anyway.  They're miserable with their husbands but they think Sansa some dangerous rebel for divorcing hers.  They probably think her a kept woman now. She finds she doesn’t care like she might have once upon a time.

She rises to stoke the embers in the fireplace. Such a meager bit of heat they give. She wonders how he withstands the cold in his own bedroom.  She wonders if he would wish to be warmer.  That is a dangerous thought.  

It is an odd house and her employer is…eccentric. But she is growing used to it and to him.

More than used to him.

She fears she grows infatuated, like some silly girl. She thought she'd grown immune to men and their honeyed words.  But she wouldn't call his words honeyed.  There's too few of them for one thing.  They are always kind though.  Perhaps therein lies the trouble; a kind man, a handsome man, a single man, alone together in this house. 

She has grown lonely since the divorce in a way she had not anticipated she might.  All those books she'd read about how to be a good wife when Harry had been away in the army and later when he'd returned and she'd felt him slipping away, they'd all spoken of the things a wife must do for her husband, to please him, to satisfy his wants and needs, never what a wife might want or need. 

Does she want her employer in that manner?  She blushes just thinking that she might.      

She dreamt of him again and the dream had been...improper before it turned so strange.

“ Drink from me…”

She shudders, her nipples tightening from the cold or something more perhaps. Such strange and fanciful longings find her at night.  She burns and aches with desire far more than she had as a wife. What has come over her?  Should she visit Dr. Luwin?  Or should she let Robb arrange a date for her with one of the fellows from his office?  

But I am not sick and I do not want a date with a stranger.  Besides, I have work to do here.  The advertisement mentioned working nights. 

So far, Mr. Targaryen has told her to keep her usual hours though his are strange. He sleeps during the day, shut away in the master suite in this very hallway. By night, she hears him poking about usually when she is already tucked into her bed with a book. She nestles down, quiet as a mouse straining her little mouse ears to hear him.  She is silent as a mouse, too.  She is frightened of disturbing him. Or is it him she’s frightened of?

He holds no employment. He’s the first man of working age she’s ever met without a job except for poor Dontos Hollard, the town drunk.  Mr. Targaryen is nothing like him. 

He’d inherited the house years ago but decided to move into it last year after time spent living abroad.  She wonders if he saw Paris or Rome or somewhere romantic like that after the war?  Did he fight in it?  She hesitates to ask. 

Sansa's not seen much of anything outside of Winterfell.  Her parents are comfortable but not wealthy.  At least, to Sansa's mind they aren't.  Some people might say otherwise.  They'd had five children to take care of anyway.

Her mother thinks there's likely some grand fortune to go with the house he inherited.  Sansa wonders if her mother thinks that Sansa could go from a divorced housekeeper to a rich man's wife working here. 

"Unless he's a 'confirmed' bachelor," her mother had said with a questioning look. 

Sansa isn't a little girl and she knows what her mother had meant by that.  The ladies of her mother's little hive may be curious about Mr. Targaryen and his interest in women but they'll have to go on being curious.  He has not asked any more impertinent questions since the night they met and Sansa would never dream of doing so.

Even without regular employment, he isn’t idle. At least, she doesn’t think he seems idle. He appears too strong and well-muscled for that. He’s not afraid of the dark or the howls that surround the manor by moonlight either. 

"Jeepers, Sansa," Jeyne had said when they'd met at the market a few days ago, "I'm glad you got the job but that house looks so spooky from the road.  And there's wolves around those nearby woods, I've heard."

"It's not so bad.  I'll have it spruced up in no time.  Mr. Targaryen said I can hire some painters if I want or whatever needs doing, too."  It's like her project on top of a job now.  She relishes it.  She likes feeling like she's making a difference beyond washing his sheets and clearing away cobwebs. She wishes she could make a difference for Jeyne.  "The wolves are active at night but I've never seen them."  Not really.  "Mr. Targaryen says not to worry about them."   She doesn't.  Not too much.    

"That sure is a swell car, he's got."  Her friend had plucked nervously at her collar, attempting to cover more of her neck (where the bruises are fading.)  "Ramsay says if he gets the promotion at the factory he expects he'll buy one for himself.  Not a Thunderbird maybe but something fast."

And what will he buy you?  And what will he do if he doesn't get the promotion?

She hadn't asked her friend that.  "Mr. Targaryen likes taking strolls in the evening for physical activity.  He enjoys calisthenics, he says."

Jeyne had nodded piously as if calisthenics are a new step of praying the Rosary.  Her poor friend tries so hard to please her husband, an animal who cannot be pleased by anything good or decent.    

Pulling on her dressing robe over her nightgown, Sansa goes to the wash closet down the hall. There’s a radiator in there and the boiler in the basement works at least.

He has not asked her to cook for him yet which is a pity. She’d become fairly adept at simple dishes when she was a wife and she’d helped her mother often enough, even feeding the whole brood a few times as a teenager when her parents would go to the club for a night away.  She thinks he would like her cooking if he’d give it half a chance. But he’s only asked her to tidy up his house so far.

Some nights, she hears the front door open and close very late, well after his evening stroll. Where does he go? Is he like Harry going out to meet loose women in the night? Except Mr. Targaryen is not married. He’s a bachelor. He may go and visit any women as he pleases, she supposes.

However, she doesn’t think that’s where he goes. He must eat dinner when he leaves. He’s mentioned liking the cinema in town.

Some nights, he just sits in his parlor drinking red wine. She’s never seen him eat.

“Not at all?” her mother had inquired, horrified by the notion of any man who isn’t a slave to his stomach at least some of the time.

“Not that I’ve seen though I’m sure he eats when I’m not around.”

Meanwhile, she is the housekeeper and he only asks her to tidy up his house as it suits her, saying he can manage for himself. But she has to eat as well. A bowl of hot oatmeal with butter and sugar would suit her this morning.

The tidying of the house is an ongoing effort. It’s draughty in places and neglected most everywhere save the parlor, her bedroom and the water closet. She’s not seen his bedroom yet. He tells her to get it later. Little by little, she’s making a dent.

Fresh from her shower, she has her wet hair wrapped up in a towel. Her body was mostly dry but her dressing robe is still clinging to her when she makes her way quietly down the hall, not wishing to disturb him.  Sometimes, our wishes are not granted.  How well she knows that.    

A door opens and she freezes.

“Sansa?”  

Slowly, as if she cannot help herself, she turns even in her improper state, looking atrocious with her hair in a towel, no doubt. He's dressed in black trousers and white shirt with that old-fashioned cloak he seems to prefer. Even having been up all night, he looks like he always does, devastatingly handsome.  

“Yes, sir?”

“Are you…” His lips twitch at the towel and she can feel her cheeks warming.  His eyes quickly flicker up and down her form, widening as he realizes she’s likely nude (which she is) under the dressing robe. “Forgive me for interrupting your, um...I was only going to ask if you might wish to join me for dinner tonight.”

“You’d like me to make you dinner, sir?” she asks, beaming and forgetting all about her dressing robe and toweled head. The next time she telephones her mother she’ll be able to tell her that Mr. Targaryen does indeed eat.

“You don’t have to make dinner if you prefer not to. I can arrange a meal for us. I asked if you would wish to join me."

"Join you?"

"I know it might seem irregular but I get lonely always eating by myself when I’m here.”

“Oh…”

She had not expected that.  Her own husband hadn't seemed to care if she sat down for two seconds all together during their meals so long as his food or coffee was hot and the newspaper was laid out and waiting on him.  Surely, housekeepers dining with their employers is not done, no matter how eccentric the employer is.  

But he's looking at her nervously now as if he suspects he has committed some faux pas and she hates for him to twist with doubt this way.  He's lonely...and so am I.  

“I would be happy to share a meal with you if you wish and I would enjoy making it.”

He smiles and nods.  There is a warmth in his eyes she’s only beheld a few times though he is a kind man.  It looks like...happiness.  With a pang, she wonders if he is not a happy man in general and the feeling is rare for him.  The way the warmth fades and his eyes skitter away from her own seems to confirm it.  

“I could make a roast. I believe Gage’s has it on sale this week and I was going to the market anyway.”

“If that would please you, Sansa.”

“Oh, what I want doesn't matter," she demurs.  "What would please you, Mr. Targaryen?”

He licks his lips. His eyes are darker as they drift over her dressing robe again.  "What would please you?"  Had she been thinking something else when she'd asked that?  She is now.  She is suddenly aching to hear his response, desirous of a most scandalous response which she knows he will not give her.

“What you want matters," he tells her firmly.  "Do you like roast?"

"I do like it.  I like my mother's recipe for it."

"Very well.  Make the roast.”

“Yes, sir.  Do you have any wine here?” 

He smirks.  "None that you will like, I fear.  Take whatever money you need and choose something to your liking.  And I prefer my roast bloody if you don't mind preparing part of it that way.”

“Of course, I’ll-”

“And please call me Jon.”

“Jon,” she repeats, swallowing hard.

She’d learnt his first name when she’d been tidying away in the study and found old letters stuffed in a desk drawer. The handwriting had been hard to distinguish but oddly familiar.  The letters looked so fragile she'd feared touching them for long.  They’d been in the same feminine hand and all began with the same salutation: Dearest Jon.

Suddenly, despite his eccentricities, his unusual habits and hours, she can see him being someone’s dearest quite easily.  

And somehow, the name feels so natural slipping from between her lips.

He walks forward as if he’s drawn to her like a magnet. Is that her imagination?  Oh, certainly it is.  The way her mind takes these fancies of late, she'll find herself at one of those sanatorium's like poor Mrs. Greyjoy, Theon's mother, one day.  

Yet, when he comes to a stop before her, when they are face to face, he looks at her so intently as her chest rises and falls waiting to see what he will say or do that her magnet analogy seems correct.  She feels drawn to him, too.

“I’d like it if you didn't draw the curtains in this hallway today. I won't be lying in as late and too much direct sunlight gives me headaches.”

“Yes, sir.” He tuts at her, half a grin, and she's quick to realize why. “I mean…yes, Jon.” 

She's blushing again and that warmth is back in his eyes but underneath there is a fire starting, she thinks.

Like something from her earlier dream, he lifts a pale, cool hand and, with a feather-light touch, caresses her cheek, the fingers gliding downward to her jaw and throat. This isn't remotely proper at all, her rational mind is screaming.  She's his housekeeper, not his whore. 

But she’s mesmerized, paralyzed by his touch. She cannot move. She doesn’t wish to. Every second of contact, of skin on skin, has her nerve endings screeching for more. She rocks forward involuntarily, like a hand at the small of her back wishes to bring her nearer to him.  Her fingers itch to untie her robe and let it slip to the floor.  She aches for him to pick her up and carry her off to...

"Drink from me," echoes in her mind.  

Suddenly, he gulps, jumping back as if she's slapped him.  He lets his hand drop. She’s dizzy and ready to weep when he does.  The warmth is gone again from his eyes to be replaced by shock and something akin to fear.  

“Forgive me.  You should go and dry your hair now, Sansa. You’ll catch a chill otherwise.”

She is shivering but she does not blame a chill.  He’s already striding away when she whimpers, “Yes, Jon.”

Chapter Text

Afternoon is creeping in. The long-held breath of day will soon sigh out. He is glad. Lengthy shadows stretch across the rug in his study. He should've asked her to leave the curtains closed in here as well. The shadows and the dark are where his power lies. He walks between the sundrops as graceful as a cat to take a seat at the desk.

This house has belonged to his family for many, many years but he is the last of them, the last of the Targaryens.  He is not sorry for it.  Let that name die.  The Starks have endured. 

Do the townspeople still tell their tales of his family though?  The deeds of his monstrous kin and their kind on autumn nights before their fires when they wish to have a fright?  He suspects they do given the latest horror film he saw at the cinema last month.

He'd never wanted to set foot in here again, in his grandfather's house, but even the undead need a safe place to lay their heads, especially when the moon is slumbering and the sun mercilessly blazes forth in the sky.  No, he doesn't fry up like a crisp in sunlight but it leaves him feeling weak and sickish.  Shadows and night are his friends.    

He smiles to himself hearing Sansa singing along to Ella Fitzgerald from the kitchen while she prepares dinner. She thinks he cannot hear her but she has no idea how well he hears. Only Ghost hears better than he does.  He should introduce her to Ghost.  Once upon a time, her own family had much to do with wolves.  

She’d brought her own record player when she’d moved into his home. He’s encouraged her to listen to her music whenever it pleases her and not worry if he’s asleep.

“I sleep like the dead anyway.”

She’d laughed, not knowing the kernel of truth he’d shared.  Slowly, he is tearing down her walls and making her more at ease here.  He will not force her to stay but he never wants her to leave.  

“That old black magic's got me in its spell

That old black magic that you weave so well

Those icy fingers

Up and down my spine

The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine…”

He’s glad she’s more cheerful now. She had not been happy upon her return from shopping. Something had upset her. He wants to know what but cannot read it yet. Her thoughts are still her own. Perhaps at dinner he’ll discover what it was.

He had sensed her disquiet though, the way it had filled the whole house like lead, as readily as he can smell her alluring fragrance. No, not the fragrance that comes from that coveted bottle of Gourielli Moonlight Mist which sits on her dresser. The scent of Sansa, something far more complex and intoxicating than any manufactured perfume ever could be.

Fresh from her shower this morning, he’d nearly been overwhelmed by it as she’d drifted down the hallway. He’d crept from his bedroom just to get closer to it, to breathe it in and let it surround him. He hadn’t been able to resist. He’d had to hurriedly think of an excuse for confronting her in her state of dishabille when he’d wanted nothing so much as to lift her into his arms and carry her to his bed, to indulge all of his desires along with the ones blossoming inside of her.

You are a fiend to pursue her.

I have not yet even begun to pursue her…and I was already a fiend.

He notices some of the old letters have been disturbed from their place. She is a curious little cat at heart. He cannot help smiling at that but sobers when he opens the letter at the top of the stack.

Dearest Jon,

Can you forgive me? Daenerys wove her tales and made me doubt for a time but I see now she meant to mislead me and drive a wedge between us. I cannot live this way. Our families may never forgive us but I am resolved that none of them will keep us apart.

If your hopes and wishes are unchanged, meet me tomorrow night at our secret spot. I will know no rest until you hold me in your arms again.

-S.

The tears come as they always do when he thinks too long on her, on the girl she was then. I was coming, my love. I was coming. He was too late.

One hundred and sixty-four years have passed but she still bewitches him, his beloved who had refused the poisonous gift he had foolishly been tricked into accepting and received an equally deadly one.

“Did you need a ride, Miss Sansa?  There's room in my wagon."

“No, thank you, Mr. Bolton. I do not have far to travel."

"It's a dark night for a pretty girl to be out walking this lane alone."

"The moon is full so it's not so dark and I won't be alone for long.  My beau is coming soon...I hope.”

“Lucky man he must be,” the monster had told her before showing her his white teeth.

“Drink from me.  Just a little, my love.  Drink from me and live.”

He'd torn a great gash into his arm and raised it to her pale lips.  She had already been too weak, her blue eyes unseeing as he'd screamed and wept.  She had passed too soon for him to save her...for him to damn her. 

Jon had sought his unholy revenge afterwards.  The man's shrieks had been heard over a mile away.  Manners say one shouldn't play with their food but Jon had.  The local villagers had named part of the forest Satan's Hollow for the screams that had come from there one dark night and the mutilated corpse of a man found the next day.  He would've killed him a thousand times over if he could've but it had not brought her back. 

But now?  

There were things he had retained.  The softness of her hair.  The way it glowed like burnished copper in the lamplight.  Her beautiful voice raised in song.  Her scent.  Those things he had remembered.

But her face had faded from his memory with the passage of time.  The single portrait he’d had of her had burnt along with Daenerys in her final fire, the one which had consumed his father's house, her corpse and her wicked heart.  He'd forgotten his love's face...until he'd seen it again.

“Sansa.”

Like one soul speaking to another, he had realized it then even though it had taken him a few days to be certain.  Will she ever see him the same?  Will she ever know?  All this time he’s waited to see if she might return to him. And he’d only had to put out an advertisement for a housekeeper for her to find him.

“You're the lover

You're the lover

You're the lover

You're the lover

I have waited for

The mate that fate had me created for

And everytime your lips meet mine

Darling down and down I go,

Round and Round I go…”

He wipes his eyes, sweeping away the past and still unsure about what the future holds for them. There is no Daenerys to interfere now, no parents and their old blood feud raising objections to their amore and no dark hearts waiting in the shadows to harm a young girl alone in the moonlight.

No dark hearts but my own.

A gentle knock draws him fully from his memories. The shadows on the rug have grown longer and the music has stopped playing. How long has he sat here?

“Dinner’s ready, Mister-…I mean, Jon,” she calls through the door.  Soon, she will call his name as confidently as ever.  Someday, he hopes he will hear her crying it out in ecstasy like he once had years ago beneath the branches of their tree, the secret meeting spot of young, star-crossed lovers.    

“I’m coming, my love.” I was coming to meet you.  I would never have left you alone in the dark.      

My love.  He said that.  He can hear her sharp inhale. She will tell herself she imagined him saying those last two words.

“Thank you. I am coming, Sansa.”

Red damask covers the walls of the formal dining room.  A long, dark table made of walnut dominates the room.  It can seat twenty.  He sits at one end and her at the other.  The long line of wood lays between them, dotted with three silver candelabras.  She’d lovingly polished the wood and the silver last week thinking how grand it would be to dine here.  Now, it feels too distant, doesn’t invite the intimacy she should not be wishing for. 

Who dines like this with their housekeeper? 

Jon does.  He does tonight anyway. 

Why did she dress up? 

Pearls and the royal blue swing dress that’s been tucked back in her wardrobe, never worn until tonight.  She’s a little fool. 

“I hope you will not think me too forward when I say you look beautiful, Sansa,” he murmurs from the other end of the table.

“Thank you, Jon.”

She’s a little fool whose whole heart pounds like a drum hearing those words from him.

The table at her parents’ house could seat eight and was always full of dishes to be passed.  It could hold ten total in a pinch.  It was always noisy when she was young. 

It had a scratch or two and one water ring left by a sibling years ago.  The water ring had incited a witch hunt but the children had all kept their mouths firmly shut and denied any wrong-doing.  No fingers were pointed either.  Her mother had been vexed until her father had chuckled that at least they were a tightknit crew of bandits.  “Like a pack of wolves protecting their own.”  Only then had her mother relented and told them all to go and clean their bedrooms.  

The light scrape of cutlery has been the only noises to be heard for five solid minutes now.  He is relishing each bite.  She wishes she might.  She’d prepared the roast rare to suit his taste.  It’s bloodier than she’s ever had it.  it's not the same as biting her own tongue and tasting that unpleasant coppery flavor but, and after her trip to the market earlier, the blood makes her think of poor Jeyne. Ramsay didn't get his promotion and he'd brought his rage home.  

“You’ve barely touched your dinner.  You said you like your mother’s recipe.  It’s quite good.”  He sticks another bite into his mouth to prove it. 

She smiles wanly, wishing she could be better company.  “I’m sorry.  My appetite seems off tonight.”

“I hope you’re not feeling unwell.”

“Not unwell.”

“It’s too bloody for your taste, isn’t it?  I could stick it back in the oven for you for a few minutes if-”

“Oh no, sir!  You needn’t trouble yourself!” she gasps, mortified at the suggestion.  What kind of housekeeper is she if she would let her employer take care of her instead of the other way around?  “I am only preoccupied and…never mind.  It’s nothing.”

She eats another bite of her cool and bloody roast before quickly picking up her wine glass, gulping instead of sipping, hoping to avoid more questions.  The wine is heady and she is not used to it anymore.  She mustn’t drink too much or else she’ll be blabbing away or worse, crying on his shoulder. 

And her concerns aren’t something Jon will want to hear about.  Men rarely wish to listen to much of women’s troubles, do they?  Especially if a man is responsible for them.

His chair scrapes back from the table and she raises her head to see him pacing towards her, an intent look upon his face.  Has she been so discourteous?  Will he come and take her plate to the oven regardless? 

Distressed, she’s fidgeting nervously when he stops at the chair to her right and takes a seat.  He takes the fork from her hand and pokes at the roast which sits in a pool of blood.  “Bloodier meals than this have been consumed at this table," he muses in a strange tone.

"I'm afraid if I had prepared it much rarer it would moo at me."  She claps her hands over her mouth.  How could she say that aloud?!  Will he consider her jest in horribly poor taste?  Will he ever wish to dine with her again?

No.  He chuckles before asking her softly, "What happened today in town?” She wets her lips and starts to demur but he shakes his head.  “Forgive me but I could tell something was the matter when you returned earlier.  I do not wish to impose on you but I am concerned with your welfare.”

“You needn’t be.”

“But I am.  You don’t have to answer but I'm offering a willing ear to bend if you would like it.”

She smiles despite herself.  He is kind and observant, too.  She hadn’t meant to be so obvious. She’d been quite cheerful preparing dinner even, forgetting her friend’s troubles but now…well, she supposes it does not hurt to speak a little of it.

“I ran into two women at the market today.  One I had not seen in a long while and one is a dear friend.  Both encounters were not pleasant for me.  The first one is…or was a woman my husband had been seeing when we were married."  She feels her cheeks growing hot.  This is not a proper topic of conversation for mixed company but she wishes for someone to hear it, to take her part.  Will he?  "You understand what I mean by that, don’t you?” 

“I do though I cannot understand a man like your ex-husband.”

He doesn't understand infidelity?  But he is a bachelor.  Fidelity isn't a test for him.  Would he make a faithful lover and husband though?  Those are questions she has no business asking. 

She falls back on what experience has taught her when it comes to men's opinion on the matter.  "They say men's needs are sometimes more than one woman can..."

"Bah, an excuse and a feeble one.  And how could any man ever need more than you?"

She does not know what to say to that though it makes her pulse thrum.  Or is it his proximity doing that?  Like this morning when he’d stroked her cheek, she feels that magnetic pull. It's like a voice whispering in her ear.  Overcome, she tears her gaze away from his.  The candlelight flickers and the blood is still on her plate. Bloodier meals than this...   

Cissy had smirked at her when they’d passed each other by the canned goods.  Sansa doesn’t know why it should bother her.  Harry didn’t leave Sansa for Cissy.  Sansa left him.  He’s not married Cissy.  Sansa knows he won’t.  She’s too low class for Harry’s mother to tolerate.  And why buy the cow when it already gives its milk for free?  Cissy is a fool.  She should feel sorry for her.  It’s not her Sansa should feel any anger towards but the knowing smirk still stung.  You tried but you weren't enough woman for him.  You'll never be enough.   

“It must hurt being reminded of his faithlessness,” Jon prods, gently.  

She lifts her eyes from where she'd been staring at the blood.  His eyes search hers, worried and kind.  “A little.  It is a fading wound though, nearly faded to nothing.”

“I’m sorry.  He did not deserve a loving heart like yours.”

What do you know of my heart?  “It’s alright.  I'm not sure he could ever have touched my heart too greatly.  Disappointment is the greatest emotion I can summon when I look back on our marriage.  Barely any tears were shed and within a month I had no more left for him.  I was quite young and caught up in the idea of marriage when we met.  I think if I’d been a little more prudent, if I’d waited until he returned from overseas to marry him…”

“He might still have deceived you.  Either way, you are not to blame.”

It is the first time anyone has said that to her so plainly.  She sighs, accepting his words and appreciating them. 

“Who was the other woman you saw today?”

“I’m not sure I’m at liberty to share her tale.”

“I will not repeat it.”

His advertisement spoken of discretion and he's offering her his own.  It would be nice to share the burden with someone else with hopes that he is no talebearer.

“The other woman was a friend of mine from childhood.  Like myself, she didn’t marry wisely but her husband is...he's a monster.”

His eyes are no longer gentle looking.  They have darkened, the flecks of violet in them obliterated and he wears an eerily grim smirk when he asks, “What sort of monster?”

“Could Jeyne go somewhere else?”

“Her parents have passed.  She’s alone.  She’s afraid of what he’ll do if she tries to leave and he finds her.”

“She can come here.”

“You would…you don’t have to go to…”

“I have many rooms and you could use some help.”

“But I-”

“Having tasted your excellent cooking, I think I will be wanting more of it.  A spare set of hands might be useful, yes?”

“You are very kind.”

“I don’t know about that.  But ask your friend if she should like a job and place to live.  Perhaps it will be unnecessary though.  Perhaps Mr. Bolton will grant her the divorce she wants without violence.”

“Perhaps…but I doubt it.” 

The autumn winds howl tonight.  A storm is coming.  Good.  Let it match his rage.

Of course, he cannot show her that.

Sansa is humming along to her records, lounging on the parlor settee and sipping more wine, looking so lovely in her blue dress.  She is tipsy.  Talking had made her thirsty and nervous both and she’d drank more than was probably wise.  She’ll soon nod off.  She’ll have a headache tomorrow, poor girl.   

He waits until she’s asleep, pulls on his black cloak once more, the cloak made for him so long ago.  

He closes the door behind him as he steps outside.  The Thunderbird will stay where it's parked tonight. Sansa can enjoy it.  He loves driving it but doesn't need it now.  He especially doesn't need it seen out tonight.   

“Ghost,” he whispers.

The wolf creeps out of the shadows.  Jon lovingly strokes his great head.  The wolf's intelligent red eyes burn like hot coals.  Those eyes are even older than his own.  Would she know him?     

“Tonight, we hunt, my old friend.  Tonight, we feed.”

A thousand times over, he would kill him, the beast who killed his love over a century and a half ago, the beast who has harmed her friend countless occasions the past six years.  Sansa has returned to him and Jeyne will smile without fear again.  He was nothing.  He is nothing and Jon will see him become nothing once more.  Nothing but a meal for me and Ghost.    

Swift and silent, they move as one, two hunting partners.  They barely make a sound even upon the fallen leaves.  A vampire must feed.  A hungry wolf must, too.  Sansa’s cooking is quite good but it will not nourish him like this and dark hearts are his favorite dish. 

Some souls were twisted from the start and stay that way.  The darkest of hearts filled with evil deeds, past and present. 

I will hunt you down and perhaps you will not return.  But if you do, I’ll do it again.  A thousand times over, I will kill you.

A low glow from the sitting room window of a little house on the other side of town.  In the back bedroom, the woman waits curled up in a ball on the edge of their bed, wishing to be smaller, invisible.  Her fear is palpable to Jon and to Ghost even though they are outside.  She hopes he’ll fall asleep in his chair tonight and leave her be.  It will not go quite that way.

He sits in his favorite chair with six empty beer bottles lined up on the TV tray.  The television flickers illuminating him through the window.  The night’s broadcasts will end soon but he’ll be dead before they do.

His eyes are heavily lidded.  A puffy face, too much indulgence.  He is not the madman, the halfling beast of that former life.  He is just an angry and cruel little man who beats his wife, takes out his life full of disappointments on her.    

Jon looks to Ghost and the wolf raises his head.

“ARRRR-OOOOOOO!”

Startled by the noise, the man is woken from his drowsy state. 

“Come out, come out, come out,” Jon chants beneath his breath.  “Come and see what waits for you.” 

“ARRRR-OOOOOOO!  ARRRR-OOOOOOO!”

Annoyed, Ramsay grabs a rifle and comes outside to investigate.  Curiosity will kill this cat. 

Any blood that falls will be lapped up by the wolf or washed away by the rain.  The police will be mystified when they find his rifle lying on the front steps of his house the next morning and no other signs of him anywhere.  

There’s a rustling that stirs her.  He smells of rain and pine trees.  “Jon?” she queries drowsily.  Her head feels heavy, her limbs languid.  

“Shhh, it’s me.”  His hand is cold and damp.

“Is it raining?”

“It is.  I was caught out in it when I went for my nightly walk.”

“You should be more careful.”

“I’m alright.  How are you?”

“I fell asleep.”

“You did.  May I help you up to your room?”

“I had such strange dreams.”

“What dreams?”

“The wolves were howling.”

“Did they frighten you?”

“No, they made me…glad.”

“Come on, my love.”

He’s tugging at her hand and she feels so tired.  Too much to drink.  What did he say?  “You shouldn’t call me your love.”

“What?  Oh, of course, I didn’t call you that.  Let me help you.”

She’s flying.  No, she’s being carried.  He lifts her like she weighs nothing at all.  She can barely hold her head up. 

Up the stairs and down the hall, it passes like a hazy daydream and she smiles like a silly, love-struck goof at him.  He is so handsome even with water dripping from his hair onto his collar and her blue dress. 

She raises one hand to stroke the silver at his temple and pushes a stray curl behind his ear.  He gazes back at her.  He gazes at her in a manner that her ex-husband never did.  Warmth pools in her tummy and elsewhere.  She is so relaxed and…needful. 

He shoulders his way into her room and gingerly lays her upon the bed. 

He starts to retreat but she grasp his hand.  “I don’t drink wine often, never that much.”

“I didn’t think so.  You didn’t eat much either.”

Again, he tries to move away but she doesn’t want him to go.  Can’t he see what he does to her?  

He does.  He sees.  Does it repulse him? 

He sinks back down onto the mattress beside her.  He sighs, raking one hand through his hair.  "You should rest, Sansa."

“I've rested.  I’m hungry.”

That fetching half smile plays upon his full and inviting lips.  “What are you hungry for, Sansa?”

She sits up and cups his face, forces herself to keep her eyes open as she leans forward.  “I’m hungry for this,” she murmurs before pressing her lips to his. 

A handful of seconds and he doesn’t reciprocate the kiss.  He stays woodenly rigid as she kisses him.  She has lost her mind and she will likely lose her job.

But then he does kiss her back.

At first, it's just a return of pressure, his lips against hers but then one of them moves.  Maybe both of them do.  Slowly, deeply, tenderly, Sansa's mouth parts and his arms are around her, pulling her closer.  "My love," he mutters.

"Yes," she sighs. 

He kisses her with hunger and passion and...love.  Her eyes close in bliss.  Her blood is pumping through her heart with frightening speed.  Every nerve-ending is alive.

In return, he devours her, drinks from her, sets her aflame.  If this is wrong, she does not care.  She is lost.  So very lost in Jon.  She’s forgotten how this feels.  Or has she ever known?  This is nothing like the kisses and embraces she’d known in her marriage.  But it feels familiar.  Jon feels so familiar. 

She falls back upon the bed, inviting him, begging him.

"You've had too much to drink."

"In vino veritas."

"It can as easily lead us to folly though," he says.

"Please, Jon."

A plea is all it takes.  The words are barely past her lips when he shifts and surges forward, capturing her mouth again and covering her body with his own, hard muscle against her softness. 

She grasps his shoulders, savors the weight of him and the strength.  His fingertips graze her lips, her throat.  He cups a breast and grinds against her.  She moans wantonly, her sex throbbing with longing. She will spread her legs for him next and not think twice about it. 

His cock is hard and digging into her thigh.  She dares to feel him through his trousers, relishes his helpless grunt and involuntarily thrust against her hand.  She feels powerful and desired and free.  She is a woman.  She is enough.  She has always been enough.

"More than that.  You're everything to me."  What does that mean?  His next words distract her from the question.  "I can smell you," he growls in her ear.  "Your scent is always haunting me but now I am undone at the thoughts of your cunt, of how it's dripping wet for me. I want to taste it, Sansa.  I want to taste all of you.  I want to fuck you and..."

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," she sobs in answer to his filthy words, words that stir her lust into frenzy.  She can feel her loins tightening up, an explosion of desire building, threatening to consume everything.  She needs it.  Merciful God, how she needs it, how she wants him to give it to her.   

The hand cupping her breast moves to her thigh, shoving her dress up, a hot, rough hand tugging desperately at her stockings. 

"Yes, yes," she cries, panting, doing her best to help him before she melts into another kiss.  She curls her fingers into his damp hair.  He slants his mouth and takes the kiss deeper.  She opens to him eagerly.   Let the busybodies in town think her a kept woman.  She will be Jon’s woman. 

But as their tongues wrestle for dominance, she tastes the unmistakable coppery tang of blood and blinks.  Not blood from the roast.  This is not that.  Some instinctual fear sparks.  What is...

One blink and he is there, drawing back from that last kiss, his eyes open and watching her.  

The next blink, he is not.  He's gone, a phantom.  

“Jon?”  She sits up, confused and aching.  “Jon?!”

Silence.

She is alone in her bedroom and the door is shut as if he was never there.  That's not possible.  No one can move that quickly.  

A wolf howls mournfully outside and she takes several shaky breaths.  Did she imagine it all?  Did she climb the stairs by herself?  Were his kisses and his arms around her the ravings of an unsound mind?

“No,” she whispers to herself. 

Her lips are hot and swollen.  She can feel the prickle of his beard upon her softer skin.  Her dress is rucked up nearly to her hips.  It's still damp from his wet hair, as damp as her panties.  She can still smell the pine trees.  She can still taste the blood. 

“You were here.  I know you were." 

She can still feel his presence.  He's in her blood. 

What are you?  What was that? 

"No matter.  You will not run away from me forever,” she promises him as the wolf howls again.      

Chapter Text

“What about this room, Sansa?” Jeyne asks, her hand already reaching for the knob.

“Oh no! Not in there. That’s Mr. Targaryen’s study.”

Sansa thinks he might be in there. There have been no sounds of him upstairs where the electrician is working on the wiring today.  The whole house will have electricity soon.  It's about time. Little by little, the manor will be pulled completely into the Twentieth Century which is already more than half way done.  

She looks to the study door.  Surely, he's there since he can't hide in the solitude of his room like usual.  They won't come to the study though since it already has electricity.  And if anyone is going to disturb him, it’ll be Sansa.

“He may be working so I’ll see to tidying it.”

Jeyne nods rapidly. She has barely met Jon but she is like a frightened mouse in his presence. Does he effect other people that way? Once, Sansa had felt the same but not now, not since he ran away from her.

You are the mouse perhaps. I will be your wolf.

No, that’s not right. Jon is no mouse and Sansa does not wish to eat him. She thinks she wants something else from him.  Answers.  Yes, that but something else, too.  I am become a wanton woman.

“Would you mind checking the linens out on the line? It’ll be dark soon and I don’t wish to leave them at the mercy of the falling damps.”

“Of course.  And we don't want to wait until those wolves start howling,” her friend replies, nervously.

Despite the howling at night, Jeyne’s grateful to be here what with all the rumors swirling in town. No one has called Jeyne a suspect or anything with regards to Ramsay’s mysterious disappearance. The authorities aren’t even sure any foul play is involved. He’s just missing. He may have run off. He was denied a promotion at the factory a few days earlier and he disappeared.  Sometimes, husbands do that though wives go missing more often.

A violent man with violent interests, he may have met the wrong sort at that dive he frequents. He has a girl over in the next town, too.  He may have put a bullet in his brain though his rifle was left behind.  

Sansa nods encouragingly.  She keeps smiling until Jeyne is out of sight. Her cheeks hurt from the smiles she feigns for her friend.

Ten days have passed since that stormy night, the night they had their bloody roast for dinner and Sansa tasted blood on Jon’s tongue, the night Jeyne’s husband disappeared.  She has seen precious little of Jon since then but he had left a note reiterating his offer of employment and a place to stay for her friend in the kitchen the next morning.

Jeyne could go home to her house at night but what if Ramsay should return? She is safer here and Sansa wants her friend to be safe.

Still, there is a small part of Sansa which regrets the additional company. She eats every meal with Jeyne in the kitchen. Jon rarely stirs before twilight. He’s gone most nights or sits alone in his parlor after Sansa is tucked into her bed.  He's avoiding her.  If they were alone, she thinks she would not hesitate to confront him about that night.

Jeyne is outside.  The electrician is upstairs. Confront him now.

She places her hand on the doorknob and turns it.

He is not here. Where is he hiding? Perhaps he’s in his bedroom after all.

She enters the study. It’s dark. She decides to draw back the curtains. The afternoon sun does not give her headaches. She does not need his shadows.

She’d washed the heavy things by hand not long after she’d arrived. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Her hands are not as soft as they were even though she applies her Pacquins Hand Cream every night. A washerwoman’s hands, she laments. Still better than being Harry’s wife. 

She glances at the freshly vacuumed rug with satisfaction.  She'd bought a brand new Electrolux vacuum cleaner the other day.  Jeyne had been shocked watching her go right to the drawer where the cash is kept before driving Jon's Thunderbird to town to get it.  "Did he say it's alright for you to get it?" her friend had asked.

"No, but it's perfectly alright," she'd replied with confidence.  "The rugs need cleaning and I'm not beating them all clean by hand."  

The autumn sunlight floods the room, warms her face and leaves her eyes dazzled until spots start to form. She closes her eyes and moves away as there’s a rustling in the corner of the room.

“Somebody there? Jon?”

Nothing.  She’s alone in here.

Wiping her hands together, she glances at his desk. There are some papers there, receipts and bills, business matters. She will not snoop. She is not greatly interested in his business matters. He pays her each week and that should be the extent of her interest in his finances.

However, she is interested in another variety of business. She had started reading one of the letters the other day, a love letter addressed to Dearest Jon.  The strange thing was, even though the faded handwriting was a little difficult to make out initially, before long she was able to read it quite well.  In fact, it was almost as if she'd known exactly what the writer was going to say before she read it. 

The writer's tone was sweet, the words of a younger woman filled with an innocent but sincere first love.  She had ached for the girl and for herself.  Even when she'd dutifully written her letters to Harry overseas, she doubted she'd ever felt that depth of passion.  Did Jon ever reply to her?  Were his letters equally soulful and sweet?  Harry never said much in his letters home beyond what he was doing, crass jokes he'd hear and what he might like for her to send him. 

What happened to Jon's girl?  He is a bachelor and he has kept these letters all this time.  Whoever the letter writer had been, Jon must have loved her very much.  Her heart is aching again.

She opens one drawer and then another. The letters, where are they? They’re gone.

Frustrated, she huffs, blowing loose strands of her hair off her forehead. She looks back to the corner where she’d thought she heard rustling. She pictures someone there, watching her, amused.  She can almost hear them laughing.

There’s nothing there. No eyes are watching her. Is she going mad?

There are no monsters under your bed or in the shadows, silly goose.

She leans back in his chair. This is the first time she’s actually sat in it.  Her hand caresses the supple leather. She turns her head into it, tries to see if she can catch that scent of pine which clung to him that night…assuming she didn’t imagine it all.

It’s not there.  Only leather and mustiness. Probably that old cloak of his. Why does he wear it so much? Under the leather and mustiness though, there’s something else. A whiff of something that reminds her of damp leaves and rot.

She glances behind her at the wall where a sheet is draped over some painting. She has yet to wash that sheet. It’s bound to be horribly dusty. Why has she ignored it until now? Jon had said to leave any covered paintings be but that doesn’t mean she can’t wash the sheet and then cover the painting again.

Slowly, she rises from the desk and walks over to the painting. It’s a large one from the looks of it. She grasps one corner and tugs. Dust assault her nostrils and she starts sneezing before the sheet even lands at her feet.

When her sneezes end, she’s looking at the painting. It’s not just any painting. It is a portrait, a portrait of a young woman. Silver blonde hair and eyes the color of lilacs, she’s beautiful but strange, an ethereal beauty with some quality which Sansa can only describe as 'otherness.'

Sansa’s heart sinks just looking at her. He has this hanging in his study.  Are their other portraits of this woman hanging in the bedroom he has asked Sansa not to bother with yet?  The missing letters in his desk spring to mind. Each one written in a delicate feminine hand and addressed to Dearest Jon. Were you her dearest? Was she your love?

But the dress is wrong for her to have known Jon, isn’t it? No woman has worn a dress like that in the last century unless she was in a historical play or film. She may be some ancestor.  

The shadows waver, the sunlight pouring through the windows at her back flickers and the eyes of lilac seem to see her. They move to look at her!  That cannot be.  The spots appear before her eyes again and her knees are weak.

“You’re selfish. You only want to keep him to yourself.”

“I love him! I only want what’s best for him!”

“What’s best for him? Or what’s best for you? You want him to turn his back on us! He’s talking about not going through with it because of you!”

“Because he doesn’t want to! Why should he become a monster?  Your family is selfish! He only wants to be…”

“One of us! He’s one of us!  A Targaryen!  All Targaryen's take the covenant!  He will, too!”

“But he doesn’t want to be like the rest of you!”

“He does.  You're lying to yourself...or maybe he lies to you.  What words has he whispered to you in the moonlight? What promises did he make when he mounted you under that ugly tree, you little whore?”

“H-how-how could you know about that?”

“He told me. He told me what a wanton little beast you are for him, panting after him like a dog. I promise you, he’s whispering different things in my ear, wolf girl. He makes different promises when he’s in my bed.”

“I…no. No!”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying!”

“Why would I lie about it? You know about my family. You know what we are. Our coven is…”

Sansa opens her eyes, the hissed words of the argument fading away. She’s lying on the rug beside the sheet. It smells of ashes more than dust. Was there a fire? When did she fall?

The portrait looms above her, a disturbing smirk on the woman’s lips from this angle. She is not so beautiful after all. She’s more like…a monster.

“Who were you?” Sansa whispers to the portrait.

“Her name was Daenerys,” a voice says from behind her, his voice. “Has she hurt you?”

Sansa scrambles to a sitting position but he is already kneeling at her side, his grey eyes warm and concerned. She’s shaken and confused. “How could a painting hurt me?”

He doesn’t answer, merely looks her over then rises quickly and throws the sheet back over the portrait, blocking the malicious purple eyes from seeing her. That’s ridiculous. A painting cannot see.

Jon is standing in front of the portrait, apparently lost in thought for several moments. Was she your love? Were you her dearest?

“I would remove this if I could but I cannot remove the ones he hung.  I am not that strong.”

“Was she…were you and her…”

“My grandfather hung this one himself. She was his only daughter and youngest child, my aunt though we were close in age. I cannot remove the ones he hung,” he says again as he bows his head.

“That is, um…loyal of you.”

He snickers and turns back to her. “It has little to do with loyalty. I am the black sheep of the family.”

"I'm sorry."  She wishes she could offer him comfort like he had the night they'd dined together but she doesn't know what to say to him since what happened after and since he's avoided her until now.  

"Don't be sorry for me, Sansa.  I'm the sorry one."

“I was going to wash the sheet.”

“Leave it be, Sansa. Believe me, she deserves her shroud of ashes.”

Ashes. Funny that he also uses that term for the dust.

He helps her to her feet. His hand is cold but gentle. “Your hands are so soft.”

She grimaces. “They’re not really. They’re…”

“They always were.”

She blinks, growing even more confused by this strange conversation and by the conviction that she's missing something.  Like my marbles.  Clearly, I have lost those.

“I meant, they are to me, Sansa.”

She looks at him now, really looks. He’s paler than she recalls. His brow is furrowed and he wears a pinched expression. The silver at his temples seems to have increased.

All thoughts of a confrontation regarding that night have left her. “Are you unwell, Mr. Targaryen?”

He flinches. Is that because he is or because she’s reverted to the more formal mode of address?  “The sunlight is…it’s very bright and…”  A soft moan of discomfort follows.

She gasps and raises a hand to her mouth. “The curtains! I’m so sorry, Jon.” And, she is. She’d opened them in one frame of mind. She closes them in another. She doesn’t wish to hurt him.

Even if you have hurt me.

Did he? Did he kiss her, leaving her a wanton mess before fleeing?  Has he purposely avoided her up until now since that night?  Or is he just busy and she is nothing but his housekeeper who he was kind enough to invite to share a meal with him the other night?

She may have imagined the whole thing like the moving eyes of a portrait, like the semi-conscious argument that made no sense which she surely dreamt. His kisses and caresses were likely figments of a madwoman’s desperate longings. She hadn’t expected to go mad at such a young age. She hadn’t expected madness at all.

“You are not mad. You were never the mad one,” he murmurs.

She did not imagine that.  “Stop it. You…you cannot read my mind,” she protests.

His eyes grow wide. “I…Sansa, I didn’t. I was just…”

Frightened. He is frightened. So is she. She is a frightened mouse after all. She is no wolf.

She flees with an excuse about preparing dinner. He lets her go. The last she sees of Jon, he is standing in his study by the portrait of his aunt, covered in ashes and looking as miserable as she feels.

Even in the face of disappointment, he doesn't let his smile flicker out.  He can't.  He's too good of a salesman for that.  "I'm not sure I understand, Mr. Arryn."

"Well, Harry.  It's not that we don't appreciate you here.  You're an asset to the agency to be sure."

"Then, why am I not getting the promotion?"  The smile is still in place but the anger has seeped into his tone.  This promotion was his.  It was supposed to be his!  Everyone said so.

Mr. Arryn looks sympathetic but only nominally so.  He places a hand on Harry's shoulder, like he's his boy.  I'm not your boy.

"You and Young Royce have both be doing fine work for us but..."

"Royce can't top my sales!"

Mr. Arryn removes his hand, a frown starting to form.  He's got to mind his temper.  "You know how it is, Harry.  Royce has a wife and two little ones to support."

Harry's lip curls back in a snarl.  "I was married.  I..."  I might have a brat to support someday.    

"Was.  We've not had any divorced men here before but...well, you're a good employee and I'm sure you'll be considered for the next promotion."  Harry starts to shuffle out of Mr. Arryn's office when his boss adds, "You'll need to keep those appetites under control when you remarry.  Honor is in our company logo.  We like steady family men here at our agency."

Family men.  Agency men.  Does he even want to remarry after the collapse of his marriage?  And who would he marry?  He's not marrying Cissy no matter how hard she's trying to make him slip, trying to get him to get her pregnant.  He can't marry Saffron.  He didn't marry any of the trash in those clip joints he'd visit on leave overseas either.  He was probably lucky to come home without some disease.  

Sansa won't take him back, wouldn't even let him make it up to her after she found out.  She'd seemed like a good little wife but one slip (alright, a couple) and she turned cold and unforgiving.  His wife...she's cost him this promotion.

Sansa, he thinks angrily as he heads out that afternoon with the smirks of his fellow insurance salesmen following him. They'd all considered him a lock for the promotion as much as he had.  They'll have a grand time at his expense learning they were wrong.  They'll all be laughing at him behind his back.  A man's pride can only take so much.  

He heads to the A&P to buy himself a frozen dinner.  Turkey pot pie again.  He'd thought he might be enjoying steak out on the town tonight but he didn't get the fucking promotion!

There's no good little wife in her apron waiting with a hot, homecooked meal with her lipstick perfectly applied as she tilts her head back and waits for a kiss.  No Sansa in the pretty silk dressing robe he'd bought her overseas after he's finished with the evening paper and she's finished cleaning up the kitchen.  No wife to lay back on the bed and wait for him to take the lead and take her when the lights are out. 

Cissy's mother is sick so she can't cook for him.  Saffron's father has taken her to the coast to get her away from Harry before he completely ruins his daughter.  The little whore down at the corner bar will suck his cock when her electric bill is high but he wouldn't let her into his apartment.  She'd probably rob him blind.  

"Oh, Harry!  How are you?  I just spoke to your mother the other day."

Who is this old bat?  He smiles anyway, out of habit.  His memory is soon refreshed.  Tanda Stokeworth, one of his mother's acquaintances from church...not that he cares.  

However, he does care when she clucks her tongue and pats his hand sympathetically in the frozen food section, telling him how shameless that little Stark trollop has turned out and how he's better off without her.

"What?"

Alone in his bedroom, he wakes to the sound of music from the parlor below.  Sansa and Mrs. Bolton enjoy listening to their 45s in the evenings after dinner on the gramophone, or record player as they call it.  It’s his parlor.  He should go and join them.  If only he weren’t a coward. 

He longs to leave this room, to go out into the night.  He's been bored out of his mind on top of ravenous to eat and, even more, for her company.  He longs to see her, to hear her speak his name again.

Is that why you hid from her in the study the other day? 

The electrician had been working in his bedroom.  He hadn't wished to see the electrician, hadn't wished to be seen.  He'd gone to the study to fetch her letters, thinking he would read back over them in his room later.  Then, Sansa had come in.  His living, breathing Sansa who he loves as dearly as that girl she'd once been, Sansa who he would do anything for. 

She had been intoxicated that night and, deep down, that had not felt like the right time no matter how they'd both been burning with desire.  But he cannot lie to himself.  It was fear which made him flee, fear of her questions about him and fear that her clever mind was starting to connect the dots, fear that she will leave when she knows and his world will be nothing but shadows of the past again.     

“Every time I look at you
Somethin' is on my mind
If you do what I want you to
Baby, we'd be so fine!

Life could be a dream
If I could take you up in paradise up above
If you would tell me I'm the only one that you love
Life could be a dream, sweetheart
(Hello hello again, sh-boom and hopin' we'll meet again) boom sh-boom…”

The rhythm of the music seems to stir him, makes his toe tap impatiently. 

He remembers bonfires and festival nights from his mortal youth.  He recalls the first time he’d set eyes on her at the harvest ball in Old Flint’s barn.  He can almost hear the fiddles sawing away and the revelers clapping in time. 

She’d been dancing a jig with another man, some would-be suitor approved by her kinfolk, and he’d been so full of the confidence of youth that night, too much cider and too little sense, keeping him from caution.  He doesn’t regret it.  How could he? 

He’d boldly asked her for a dance and she’d boldly said yes.  All around their families had watched with pursed mouths and neither of them had cared.

The lanterns had made her red hair glow and her blue eyes were filled with merriment.  The moon was full and her elders had been itching to leave the barn for the fields but she was just a girl, no trace of the wolf in her yet.  She’d been too young…as he had been. 

Her hands had been warm and soft in his own as they’d whirled around that barn to tune after tune.  He’d been lost from that night.  By the time the sun had rose that next morning, Jon had already been in love, a love that would never die. 

Here’s hoping we’ll meet again. 

How long had he hoped for that? 

So, why is he sitting here?

He can picture her in her blue dress from that night, swaying to another song as they’d drank wine in the parlor together before he’d gone out and solved Mrs. Bolton’s little problem.  Well, Sansa had drank the wine. 

Which reminds him…he’s not fed since that night.  He’s famished.  He’ll have to go out soon.  He doesn’t have to feed every night or even every sennight but it’s been two weeks.  He shouldn’t wait any longer. 

If he could still see his reflection, he wonders how ghastly he’d look, pale and drawn, a worn out old man.  Sansa had grown so touchingly concerned the other day in the study when she’d seen it in his face.    

The parlor makes him think of the portrait there.  He stares at the sheet covering nearly half of one of the walls in here where a giant family portrait hangs.  The family of monsters all together. 

Of course, it had been painted when Jon and Aegon had still been boys and Rhaenys and Daenerys just girls.  They would not be changed until they reached a certain age. That was how their grandfather had wanted it.  And what Aerys had wanted, he had generally got.  Just like the paintings that are bound to these walls, the ones that cannot be removed because Aerys wanted it that way.  Jon hopes he’s roasting in hell with the rest of them but he’s not entirely sure he believes in hell. 

He can almost picture their eyes staring back at him through the sheet, dark eyes, indigo eyes, violet eyes, eyes full of censure.  He hopes it torments them all that he’s the last, that the half-blood spawn with a human mother is the last of them and will be the last of them. 

There are ways to put an end to his existence.  He has not attempted them yet.  He won’t now so long as Sansa draws breath. 

Sansa.

In his mind, he calls out to her.  Can she feel it?  Is she even slightly aware of their past?  Of the connection he feels to her?  He thinks of holding her the other night, of kissing her as though she was the nectar that could heal his wasted soul.  He thinks of all the other things he’d wanted that night, how her scent and softness had nearly overwhelmed his better judgment.    

A light rapping on his bedroom door sounds.  She’s come to him!  She must have felt his call. 

He zooms across the room, too fast for human feet to move and opens the door just as she’s straightening from bending over.  

But it is the mouse instead.  He tries not to scowl at her. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Targaryen!  Sansa suggested I bring your supper up and…I’m sorry.”

He masters his scowl and smiles.  She shouldn’t be afraid of him.  He would never hurt her.  I killed for you. 

Don’t lie.  You killed him for Sansa.

Yes, he did.  He’d do it again.  He’d kill anyone Sansa wanted dead. 

“Thank you, Jeyne.  That’s very kind of you both.” 

Sansa has been leaving food without knocking.  He hears her footsteps.  He can hear her footsteps when she’s down in the kitchen even.  He hears her hurt, her confusion and her fear, too.  She is not going mad.  He has been a coward.

He stoops and picks up the tray.  “Actually, if you don’t mind and if you don’t think Sansa will, I’d enjoy eating this in the parlor with you both.”

“With us?” she gulps.

“Yes.”

“Of course, of course.  It’s your house, sir.  If you wish, we can…”

“No, no.  Please, stay and enjoy your music.  I promise not to disturb you.”

She’s ready to babble on about how he could never be a disturbance since it is his house but he doesn’t want to listen to Mrs. Bolton.  He wants to see Sansa.

The record is changing and he feels that stirring in his toes again. 

“ One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight

Put your glad rags on and join me, hon'
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight…”

“Sansa?  Mr. Targaryen wanted to come down and join us!”

He’s already in the parlor before Mrs. Bolton is finished squeaking out the news. 

Sansa is so busy shimmying to the rockabilly hit from a couple of years earlier she doesn’t notice right away.  What a picture she is in her circle skirt with her hair in a ponytail instead of in a bun tonight.  She looks so young and free and lovely.  If he were that boy from the harvest festival, he’d ask her to dance.  Perhaps he will anyway.

“Oh, Mr. Targaryen!  Won’t you take a seat?” she cries as soon as she spies him.

Does he look so poorly?  Does he remind her of her grandsire?  He must feed or she will be tucking him under a dozen blankets and slipping minced prunes into his meals.

He sits down upon the parlor settee because he’d said he would come and eat with them.  He waves away her offer of pillows and other comforts. 

“I’m not unwell.”

She looks like she doesn’t believe him.  Well, she may have a point.

“You’re supposed to call me Jon,” he murmurs next.

Her eyes soften and a sadness descends.  “It’s probably better this way.”

She means to pull away.  He pulled away that night and she means to do the same now.  He has hurt her.  He has frightened her.  He is a fool.

A chiming is heard, a melodious sound, and it takes him a moment to realize what it is.  “Is that the door?”

“The new doorbell.  The electrician installed it,” Sansa chirps before heading out of the room.

Huh.  That’s very interesting.  Aerys had liked the dragon bell, it’s awful shrieking sound to announce visitors had been part of the house for ages.  Could the electrician work other sorts of magic on this house?  Can he take down portraits?

 Jon’s whimsical thoughts leave him when he hears the door open and Sansa saying, “Harry?  What are you doing here?”

He can smell the liquor from here.  He hears his harsh, slurred words, hears the hammer click back and her gasp. 

Outside, Ghost howls.  In the parlor, Jon snarls.  And, Mrs. Bolton yelps when he flies from the settee to his front door. 

A blink of an eye. 

One moment, Harry had been before her with a gun, fueled on gossip and drunken, resentful rage. 

The next blink, he was gone as if he’d not come here at all tonight.

The leaves on the front porch scuttle and swirl around her feet as if the breeze has suddenly kicked up though the tree branches are all still.  She must be going mad. 

Not mad. 

The handgun is lying at her feet, unfired.  Something brushed past her when Harry was still there, something made her circle skirt sway like the nonexistent breeze, something made Harry let go of her wrist.  Someone saved her life.

Nothing moves that fast. 

Something does. Someone does.  You didn’t imagine that night.  He moved that fast the other night, didn’t he?

ARRRRR-ROOOOOO!

A chill grips her out here on the porch.  The wolf is hungry.  She is frightened by him tonight though she knows he means her no harm. 

“Sansa?” Jeyne asks from the hall behind her.  “Are you alright?”

“Yes, Harry was here but he’s left.”

“What did he want?”

“To complain about his job.  I told him it’s no longer my job to listen to him.”  She sounds so steady.  How can she lie so smoothly?  Had he really come here to shoot her?  

He did. 

The newspapers love to sensationalize the stories of random strangers murdering women but the truth is more women die at the hands of their husbands, or ex-husbands, and lovers than at the hands of random strangers in the dark.

Jon saved your life.

“Where is Mr. Targaryen?”

“Not here.  I’ve not seen him.”  He moves too quick.  What are you?

“He left the parlor when we heard Harry’s voice.  He left so quick I…I don’t know.  For a second, I almost thought I was going mad,” she chuckles.

“No, you're not mad, Jeyne."  Perhaps the Cheshire Cat would say we're all a little mad here but not really.  "This old house can play tricks on me, too.  We’ll feel better tomorrow morning.”

Jeyne nods, shakes her head, nods again, trying to convince herself of it.  She must take care of her friend, protect Jeyne like Jon protected her.  And did he protect Jeyne too?

Sansa hears growling out beyond the porch, growling and something else.  She turns back towards her friend and smiles.  “I'd guess Mr. Targaryen’s probably turned in.  He wasn’t looking well and he can be shy of company.”  Sansa steps back over the threshold, feels that familiar warmth embracing her.  This is home now.  “You look very tired.  Why don’t we both turn in as well?”

They lock the front door. She supposes he has a key or doesn’t need one.  They turn down the parlor lights and turn the record player off.  They bid one another goodnight outside their bedrooms. 

Sansa sits in her room thinking, recalling certain things about Jon and his habits.  She thinks of the big things, the portrait with the lilac eyes and angry words, Jeyne’s missing husband, missing since the night Sansa told Jon of her friend’s trouble. She thinks of smaller things like the old letters that she's beginning to remember writing in her sleep, the curtains he doesn’t want drawn and the last film she saw with Harry before the beginning of their end.  She wonders if any of this can be true.  She waits until it’s very quiet and she’s sure Jeyne’s asleep. 

She pulls out her pretty blue dressing robe, the one made of silk that Harry had brought back from overseas.  He’ll never see her in it again but Jon will.  Jon will have everything Sansa feels like giving him, not out of duty but because she wants to give it to him.  She takes her ponytail down, brushes out her hair and heads down the stairs.

She’s waiting in the darkened parlor when he comes back inside an hour later.  He’s wearing that cloak of his and his face is a pale oval in the soft light but he does not look as haggard and wan as earlier.  The silver at his temples has receded somewhat.  He looks refreshed, satisfied...fed. 

She can smell the pine on him.  She can almost smell the dirt, the wolf and the blood.  She did not imagine Harry’s visit tonight.  She did not imagine Jon’s visit to her bedroom the other night.  He will not run from her this time. 

He eyes her warily, grey eyes glittering from his kill before stalking over to the liquor cabinet.  “Wine?” he asks.

“Yes.”

She watches his movements, how graceful he is.  If she ran at him, knocked the glass from his hand, would even a drop of it spill?

“Maybe,” he huffs under his breath.

“So you can then?”  You can read my mind.

“Sometimes.  Mostly.  It's imperfect.  The mind is not a book.  I like the things you think.”

“It seems rude.”

“I don’t intend to be intrusive.  I didn’t mean to be this way.”

"What are you?"

"Something...different than a man."

"Explain it to me," she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

He turns to face her, misery etched across his brow.  "There's quite a bit to explain."

"I'm not going anywhere. We have all night.  My employer keeps odd hours.  He won't complain if I lie in tomorrow."

He wants to smile but he can't.  His eyes grow shiny with tears.  "If I tell you, if I tell you all of it, will you leave me?"

"Is that what you fear?"  Oh, it is.  He looks like a heartbroken boy standing before her.  

"I fear it more than anything."

"Why?  You could hire another housekeeper."

"You're more than a housekeeper to me, Sansa."

“Why do I feel like there’s more to the story between us?  Why do I feel like I know you?  Like I've known you?”

“Because you have."

"Did you kill Harry?"

He gulps.  "I'm...I had to protect you.  He won't ever touch you again."

"Thank you...I think."

"Shall I start explaining?” he asks, handing her the wine.

“Yes and no.  I didn't answer your earlier question about leaving once you tell me."

"You don't have to answer.  You can make up your mind once I tell it."

"You'd let me leave if I wanted to?"

"I would never hold you against your will, Sansa."

That was all she needed to hear.  She sets down her wine glass and cups his cheek.  "I'm not going to leave you, Jon.  I'm going to kiss you."

His eyes widen in surprise.  He had not expected that reply.  He can’t read her completely then.  That makes her smile.

She starts to lean forward but his hand is on her chest. "Wait.  I'll taste like..."

"You'll taste like Jon to me," she tells him before closing the distance. 

She sees his grey eyes turn to onyx as her own flutter close.  She presses her lips to his, feels his arms closing around her waist.  His snarl does not frighten her when her dressing robe puddles to the floor at their feet.  If he is a monster, he will be her monster. 

"Yes, I will be.  I am.  I always have been yours," he vows when he guides her towards the settee.   

Chapter Text

The silk of her dressing robe cannot compare to the softness of her flesh. She was bare beneath that robe. She’d come down here like that and waited for him. She wants him.  She wants him even knowing that he's wrong and different and something she should probably fear.  

The realization makes it harder for him to resist. It’s making other things harder, too.

They're kissing, she slips her tongue into his mouth and doesn’t care that he killed her ex-husband a little over an hour ago, doesn’t care even though he knows she can faintly taste his blood.

I’ll tell her to add mouthwash to her shopping list.

What else will you tell her? You said you’d explain it. She deserves answers. She should have the truth.

But she’s on his lap, naked and glorious, kissing his lips, nibbling at his ear, softly saying dirty words about the things she wants as his hands explore every satiny inch of her he can reach. He’ll give her everything she wants. Like the other night, he can smell her arousal. He must have her, he must taste it.

He cups her sweet face and kisses her gently. He knows she was expecting something rougher, more rushed. He doesn’t want to rush. He wants to worship her.

She returns the gesture, framing his face between her own two hands. The sweetness of it kills him. Or would if I wasn’t already dead.

“I’ve never kissed a man with a beard until you,” she murmurs, her fingernails lightly raking at his beard.

You've never kissed a vampire until me either.  “Shall I shave it off?”

“No!”

“Good. I’m not sure that I can, to be honest. Pretty sure it wouldn’t grow back if I did.”

He can tell that scares her a little, reminds her of the difference between him and breathing men. But she doesn’t want to be scared. She’s braver than she knows. She’s also adept at putting from her mind things that she doesn’t wish to dwell upon.

She straddles his lap, shoves his cloak over his shoulders. He needs to rid himself of his trousers. He needed to be rid of them five minutes ago.

“Why do you wear this old thing so much?” she says, giggling as the cloak falls back behind him.

“Because you made it for me.” She startles. He’s breaking the mood for her. “Sansa…I’m supposed to be explaining some things.”

She sighs in acknowledgement and he reaches for her robe.

“As much as I hate to ask, could you put this back on while we talk? It’ll be hard enough for me to focus knowing that you're naked under it.”

She shakes her head at him but she’s grinning. She pulls the robe back on but leaves it untied. He gives her a pained look. “You’ll just need to practice on focusing.”

“Is this a punishment?” he damn near whimpers.

“It is.”

“For Harry?”

“No. For leaving me wanting you the other night.”

“Fuck. I didn’t want to leave, Sansa.”

He rises and starts to pace as she lounges back on the settee with her untied dressing robe, mussed hair and glass of wine. He wants to worship her. He’ll start with her cunt. He’s ready to pounce but he needs to talk first.

Talk fast.

“I am a vampire.”

No need beating around the bush.  

A long exhale from her. He can see the war between what she knows and what she thinks she knows raging behind those blue eyes.

He drops to his knees, kisses her free hand and brings it to his chest. “This heart has not beat for many years.”

A ragged breath before she accepts the truth of his statement. “What did you do to Harry?”

“I drug him into the woods, bit his neck and drained him dry. He struggled…just not very effectively. I then took pains to make sure his body would never be found and had to do something with his car. It’s at the bottom of the lake. Do you hate me for it?” he asks, beseechingly.

She said she didn’t think her heart had been that deeply touched by Harry but what if that was only a method of coping with the pain? What if she loved Harry despite the fact she’d divorced him?

“No, Jon. I don’t hate you at all. I hate what he did tonight and that violence was the recourse he’d settled on when he came here. You protected me. How long ago did you die?”

“One hundred and sixty-four years ago, September of 1793. I had just turned twenty.”

"You don't look twenty."

"No, despite what some stories you've read might say, immortality can leave its own mark."  It takes a toll over the years, a heavy one when you've been as guilt-ridden and lonely as me.

"I didn't say you looked bad or anything.  I wouldn't want you to look twenty." 

She's smirking which makes him happy.  She doesn't hate him.  She isn't running away...yet.  

“And how did you die, Jon?  How did you become what you are?”

“My grandfather drained me to the brink of death. My heart had slowed and nearly stopped. Then, he had me drink his blood as the rest of the family watched.”

“Your grandfather…and as your family watched? Oh Jon…”

“One by one, he turned us all. We were all meant to be vampires, he said, meant to be stronger, faster, immortal and better in every way than our prey.”

“Your prey?”

“Yes, mortals. He was a madman in life and some very foolish vampire gave him the gift of immortality and this cursed life long before I was born.”

“Cursed?”

“We are damned, Sansa.”

“Are you? You saved my life tonight. You killed Jeyne’s husband too, didn’t you?”

“It does not make up for the others I’ve killed over the years.”

“Do you kill indiscriminately?”

“I have in the past but, with my ability to read minds, I’ve learned to seek prey that…well, I don’t know if they deserve the fate I bring. I am not arrogant enough to believe it is my right to deal out judgement but I do deal out death.”

“You kill bad people. You protect other people when you do,” she says softly. She wants to believe the best of him.

“I try to. Dark hearts are my favorite dish,” he says with a grim smile.

“Didn’t you have any say in becoming what you are?”

“No…and yes. I told them I wouldn’t take the covenant as they called it. See, even born of vampyr, we do not become one until we take the covenant, until we are drained and  drink the blood of our kind.  We are half-bloods and mortal until then.  Except my mother was a mortal so I was even less than half.  We were supposed to take the covenant upon our twentieth name day but I'd planned to refuse.  I’d told them they could kill me but I wouldn’t drink their blood.”

“But something changed that. Or were you forced to?”

“Something changed. I was miserable. I was a miserable, moody, brokenhearted fool in love. My life seemed to be over so why not become the monster they all thought me to be, that you thought I was?  You and I had…”

“You and I? Tell me about you and I, Jon.”

“We were two young people of this village.  I was barely seventeen when we met in the autumn of 1790.  You were not yet sixteen.  I know it sounds crazy to you but you’re not the first reincarnation of someone from that life I’ve run across.”

“And I was Sansa then?”

“You were. You look the same, just a little older.”

“But I’m not the same girl.”

“No but you are at heart. You were my love. You are my love.”

She turns away, conflicted.  “I think you love a memory, Jon.”

“No, I love you, Sansa. No matter the time, no matter the place, you’ll always be Sansa to me and in all the ways that matter.  And I love this reincarnation of you.  I love your strength.  I love your singing.  I love your softness and your boldness.  I love the wonderful workings of your mind and your determination to make the best of things.  I love...you.”

She's looking at him again.  He can tells she wants to believe him. He’ll devote eternity to proving it if he must.

“I saw those letters in your study."

"You wrote them to me.  Dozens of letters over the course of our secret three-year courtship, pieces of our hearts slipped into the knot of our old tree or hung out on clotheslines to be found when we could not see each other."

"You wrote me letters, too.  I remember...I remember how my tummy would twist with excitement when I'd see one fluttering on the line, how I'd race outside to fetch it before anyone else could spy it.  I remember reading each one with tears or laughter, hugging them to my chest, hiding them under my pillow, kissing the ink where you'd signed your name.  I remember...how can I remember that, Jon?"

"Because you lived that life, my love.  You've been waking to that old life slowly upon entering this house, I think." 

She wishes she could see the letters he wrote her.  He wishes he could give them to her.  I'll write her new ones. 

Her enthusiasm for love remembered dulls next.  "Our love story is a sad one, isn’t it, Jon?”

“It was, my love, but we don’t have to be sad now.”

“Tell me more of it.”

He said he'd tell her and he will.  “Our families hated each other, an old blood feud that went back over a century.  The wolf and the vampyr had always been enemies.  But one autumn night, I saw you at the harvest dance.  You were so beautiful.  I asked you to dance, not caring that you were a Stark and I a Targaryen.  You said yes and stole my heart that night.  I never wanted it back.”

“Like Romeo and Juliet?”

“Yes, a real tragedy. I told them I wouldn’t take the covenant, that I wanted to be with you. My mother was mortal and my father a vampire when he mated with her. It was dangerous for her to give birth to a half-blood but my father didn’t do anything to prevent it. She died. I couldn’t risk that with you and neither of us wanted to live this way. We wanted a normal life and children someday. I knew that if I only remained as I was, still a mortal and with your wolf blood, we’d be-“

“My wolf blood?”

“I’ll explain that next. Anyway, they were all furious, both sides with both of us but mostly me since I was the boy.” Sansa huffs impatiently and he must stifle a chuckle. “They sent Daenerys to reason with me. It didn’t work so she took it upon herself to visit you, hoping to charm you. We’d made plans to run away but then one day you refused to see me. Your menfolk had already threatened to kill me if I set foot on their lands again.”

Sansa sits up straighter, pulls her robe closed and her eyes fill with tears. “Daddy wouldn’t let them on the property. Hated them all, called them monsters.”

“He was not wrong.”

“We grew up being taught about our enemies but he was away that day and Daenerys wasn’t…she hadn’t been turned yet.”

“No, she hadn’t. She was a few months younger than me.”

“She was friendly at first and I thought she was there to pass me a message from you.  She stood on my front porch and told me lies. I…believed her."

"When her charms did not work, she would always turn vicious. That was always her way. Sweet when she thought it would work to her advantage, vengeful and cold and harsh when it did not."

"Your cloak, she had the cloak I made for you."

"The one I still wear."

"She said you'd both laughed over me sitting long hours by the fire making you a silly cloak like a stupid little girl.  She said you were going to burn it but she'd asked for it instead."

"She'd stole it from the clothesline that day when I was bathing, Sansa.  I wore it everywhere.  It, um...grew a bit ripe and needed washing.  I never would've laughed over the sweet gift you made me."

"Then, I wrote that letter, trying to understand how you could've used me so and calling you a monster."

She starts to cry and, with the way it pierces him, he knows that even a heart which cannot beat can still break. “I burned that particular letter later on.  I didn't want to remember those words and how her deceit had led us both to folly.  Please, don't cry, my love. It’s in the past now and it's alright.”

He sits again and holds her, so grateful to have her in his arms. She is safe and she is with him. He will protect her always.

When her tears stop, she tilts her precious face up to his and asks, “What happened to me in that life, Jon?”

That part is the hardest to tell but he will anyway. “I was coming, my love. I would never have left you alone in the dark,” he says as the tears slip down his own cheeks.

“Ghost,” he says softly when they step out onto the back porch of the manor. 

The moon is full and through the woods she sees his white coat glowing as he trots towards them, like an overly large dog being called by its master.  She’s been hearing his howls for weeks and weeks now. 

“He is no dog and I am not his master.”

Still, when he kneels and beckons the wolf, it comes to him, red eyes smoldering in the dark.  I know those eyes.  I saw them my first night here.  “He’s an albino.”

“Yes.”

“And my family raised him and others like him all those years ago?”

“Yes.  Ghost was part of a pack that came to your family when your father was a boy.  The Starks were always wargs, or they were then.  That magic passed from your blood over the following century but your family has endured.”

“And we were mortals?”

“Yes, but stronger than regular folk.” 

“And the vampires and wargs were enemies?”

He sighs heavily.  “Yes.  It was one of the first things Aerys would have us taught because unlike most mortals, your kind were actually a threat to us.  My father believed that shouldn’t be the case and he thought one day one of us would make a pact with the wolves, that we would become stronger together.  Of all of them, he was the only one who didn’t argue vehemently against me seeing you once they all learnt of it except his reasons had only to do with making us more exceptional, never about what was in my heart.”

“I see…I think.”

“It is a great deal to take in.” 

The wolf is staring at her.  She hadn’t realized how much larger than dogs wolves are until this moment.  But Jon says he will not harm her and she believes it. 

“Ghost,” she whispers, kneeling the way Jon does.

He abandons Jon at once, lopes over to her, knocks his big furry head into her chest, nearly knocking her over.  She laughs and is amazed as a dozen flickers of memory flash before her eyes. 

Her family but different than they are today, warm nights around the fire, wolf pups underfoot tugging at skirts and shoelaces, her mother’s baking and singing, her father’s stories and the laughter of her siblings.  Her father and uncle’s voices on the night of the full moon.  And a grown wolf, solid white. 

“I know you,” she tells Ghost who promptly licks her face. 

Other memories come to her.  One dance on that autumn night, no harm at all.  Everyone was dancing.  A second and mother’s worried look.  Three dances and his smiles as her heart seemed to soar above it all.  Her father’s gruff rebuke and being sent to church with her siblings and Ghost to keep watch the next morning. 

Ghost walking by her side along the lane a few days later.  Him stepping out from behind a tree with his hands shoved in his pockets and an adorable grin on his face.  Her telling the wolf not to worry, giving his great head a pat.   

“He’d appointed himself as our chaperone,” she says, flushing. 

Jon scrubs at his beard, charmingly embarrassed.  “He wasn’t the best at it.”

Hands held beside the stream, kisses in Mr. Tallheart’s abandoned hayloft, more than kisses beneath that old tree where she’d tuck her letters for him to find.  Her skirts pushed up, his shirtsleeves pushed back, sweat on his brow on that summer afternoon as they both trembled with nerves and he promised to love her always with the wolf hunting hare nearby. 

“Where was he the night I died?”  Ghost would’ve protected her. 

“Fighting alongside the others and your elders, fighting against your family’s enemies.”

“Your family?”  He nods.  “It was a distraction, wasn’t it?”

“Part of my grandfather’s plan.  Like a fool, I’d let him turn me but then I received your last letter after you’d learnt that Daenerys had been lying about us.”

“Aegon told me the truth, your half-brother.”

“Yes.  He was never the worst of them.  He was…he was alright.  It’s why I personally never went after him later on.”

He’d already told her of what had happened later on, of the years he’d spent fighting against his own kind, bringing down his own house, his successes and failures on that front, his grandfather’s death at the hands of a vampire hunter and his aunt’s fiery end when she’d been trapped and knew he was coming for her. 

“I’d hoped you’d still accept me as I am and planned to leave the coven but my grandfather could read minds, too.  He sent the others to fight your elders and sent his halfling beast Ramsay out looking for you.”

Ramsay, Jeyne’s husband, but in another life, another incarnation.  She can almost recall the bite of the steel.

“It’s so unfair.”

“It was.  You were too weak when I found you, too much blood had already been spilled.  I remember thinking you’d hate me for changing you, for making you what I am but then I couldn’t even get you to drink.  It was too late for even that to save you.” 

He’s on the verge of tears again and she cannot bear it.  He has lived with his guilt and alone in his misery for so many years when it wasn’t his fault at all. 

“How did Ghost come to be with you?”

“After your death, after what I did to Ramsay and after my final break from the family, your father came to me.  He said the feud had taken his daughter as surely as the beast.  He said if I wanted him, Ghost could come and live with me.  He was part of you, part of your family and I wanted something of that.  Not because I wanted the power of wargs like my father but because I wanted something to remember you by besides your letters.”

“How is he still alive?”

“Warg wolves were often blessed with unnaturally long lives but Ghost is exceptional.  I do not know his precise age and I don’t know how he still lives but he does.  He has hunted with me for many, many years now.”

“It’s cold out here.  Do you ever bring him inside?”

“He’s a wolf, not a lapdog.”  He’s right of course.  His heart is free out here.  “To my knowledge, he won’t enter my grandfather’s house.  He likes me but he could never tolerate the others.”

“What if I invited him in?  It was your grandfather’s house but I think it’s becoming yours now…or ours.”

“Ours.  I like that.  As for Ghost, I suppose we could find out if he’ll come indoors for you.  Is that what you want to do right now?”

One of his eyebrows lifts in a fetchingly alluring way.  She bites at her bottom lip and promises Ghost she’ll come back out to visit him tomorrow. 

She twines her fingers with Jon’s and they turn back towards the house.  “Is there more I must know tonight?”

“Not really. I’m sure there’s more but it can wait for now.”

“Take me inside, Jon.  I’ll catch my death out here in this thin thing.”

When she stands upon the threshold, she feels that familiar warmth again.  Does he feel it, too?  He will.  She'll make this dark house a home. 

She begins untying the dressing robe once more as his dark eyes dance with delight.  Then, quicker than quick, he scoops her up in his arms and carries her up the stairs.  Her quiet laughter echoes in the hallway.

“What?” he asks, nervously when he places her back on her feet.  She’s busily looking all around and she doesn’t need the ability to read minds to see it worries him.  “Would you have preferred your room?”

She eyes the covered painting on the wall with distaste but that’s not the issue.  There’s certainly a good deal of black, the drapes, the bedding, the chair by the old fireplace even.  She’ll need to get after those cobwebs in the corners, too.  Or maybe she’ll put him to work on that. 

“Sansa…”

“I half expected to find a coffin in here.”

He starts chuckling and she loves that, loves that she can make him laugh.  He’s been alone for so many years with only Ghost for company.  He should laugh more.  She’s going to make sure he does. 

He points to the large bed which occupies most of the room.  “I sleep there…” He paces closer, his fingers slipping under the edge of her robe by her collar bone and making her knees weak.  “From this night on, I hope you’ll be sleeping there, too.”

“Whatever will Jeyne think of us, Mr. Targaryen?” she yelps in a mock scandalized tone.  “My reputation will be tarnished forever if it should get out.”

“Well, I always liked that line from Rhett Butler, ‘With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.’”  His eyes dip downward where she knows one breast is exposed. 

“Kiss me, Jon.”

He does.  He takes his time with it, too.  They stay kissing for a long while, his beard prickly upon her softer skin as he sinks one hand into her hair and clutches her to him with his free arm. 

She desperately clings to his shirt and thinks of that old cloak of his.  She’ll make him a new one.

“Do you know how long I’ve had it?” he says, breaking off their kiss and looking as if she’s thought about kicking Ghost or something equally heinous. 

“Approximately.  It’d fall to ribbons in the new washing machine you’re going to buy.  I’ll make you a new one, Jon.”

He looks a little sullen so she nips at his ear, making him growl softly.

“I’m the one who bites here.”

“Would you bite me?”

He stills, looking serious.  “Sansa…I could but…”

“We have time to discuss that later.  I meant, could you bite me, feed from me without really harming me?”

He groans pitifully.  “I’ll admit there’s a beast within that would really like to but I’m afraid it would hurt.”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

“Yes, you are but I think tonight, I’d rather taste you in another way.”

“Another way?”   

“Let me show you, my love.  I was half a boy when we did this last and it’s been a very long while but I think I still remember how to make you fall apart for me.”

The knot behind her navel is tightening in anticipation already as he leads her to the bed.  She thinks she may come undone right here, swaying in his arms beside the bed, with how much she wants him. 

He tightens his grip on her hair slightly, gives a growl before plucking at the robe again.  “Can we take this off now?”

Numbly, she nods and the robe falls to the floor once again. 

Nothing in her marriage bed had ever wound her up like this, had her so eager.  She can barely catch her breath.  

“I’m going to make you feel good, Sansa.” 

Stormy grey eyes devour her naked form with a hunger that impossibly seems to match her own. 

But his touch is gentle when he softly traces her lips which are swollen from his kisses. His hand drop to her hip next, fingers brushing along her stomach, making her quiver for him. 

“I can smell you.”

It’s obscene and she should be shocked. 

She drops to the bed instead, spreading her legs for him, inviting him to feast to his heart’s content. 

But he doesn’t start there, oh no.  Her monster means to torment her some more.  Just a little bit, a tortuous treat.

“Tell me if it feels good, my love,” he says, hovering over her, perched on hands and knees.  His breath is hot on her face, tickling her neck. 

She nods and his thumbs sweep across her pale skin, drawing circles on her stomach to be followed by kisses.

“Jon…”

“What, love?”

“I want…” She bucks her hips.  Harry never would.

“I know what you want and I'll give you everything you've been denied in this life.  But I’ve waited decades and decades for you, my love.  Let me relish you just a bit.”

She wonders if he can hear how fast her heart is beating.  He tells her he most certainly can.  He places a hand there, calls it the sweetest of sounds.  He kisses her chest, right over her heart, before moving to one of her breasts.

She arches her back, the cool bedding a contrast to her heated flesh as his mouth closes over a nipple.  It feels so good but she wants more.  “Jon.”

His answering groan sends that shiver all over her body again, that knot in her belly is coiled into a spring, ready to break free soon.

She whines at the way he teases her, languidly laps at her nipple, but then he starts suckling harder and one hand slips down from her hip to…

“Yesssss…” She tugs at his trousers.  “Take these off.  Take everything off for me, dearest Jon.”

His eyes grow wet, tender hearing the endearment but he’s quick to obey. 

She wants her own chance to relish him.  Her hands explore smooth, hard muscle, a beauty different than hers but no less wonderful.

She means to tell him that but he’s already moving lower.  He kneels at the foot of the bed where most of her legs are still hanging off.

Her skin feels stretched tight.  She’d howl like that wolf for him.  He places one last whisper soft kiss on her navel.

His thumbs are pressing into her thighs now, she feels his mouth at the inside of her thigh.  He sucks at the tender flesh.  He’ll leave a mark.  Let him mark her.  She is his.  She’ll try to mark him, too.

“I’m not sure that’ll work but I’m yours forever, my love.”

In the still of the night with those other monsters slayed, the bedroom is quiet except for the sound of her rapid breaths.  He slips a finger inside of her, pumps it in and out, takes her slick and smears it across her folds.

It feels good but it’s not enough yet. 

“I said I wanted to taste you,” he says, popping that finger in his mouth.  His eyes roll back as he hums with satisfaction.  “Sweet, musky...mine.”

He presses a kiss just above her entrance now, breath hot and teasing.

She shudders at the first swipe of his tongue. His arm circles her stomach and pins her down but she doesn’t mind it, not with Jon.  This is not domination.  This is loving. 

One hand cups her bottom as her hands find his hair.  She fears hurting him and he huffs a laugh. “You’re not going to hurt me, love.”

His tongue is joined by fingers again.  Softly and then urgently, he licks and sucks and fondles her. 

She watches it all hazily from where she lays, her eyes turns down her torso where her nipples are stiff peaks and his dark eyes stare back at her.

When she comes with a little mewl, warmth spreading through her in waves, Jon keeps lightly licking her, drinking her in until he’s pushing two fingers inside of her, making her gasp when he curls them against her walls, working on a most sensitive spot.

Curls and spots, oh yes.  Her toes curl as that tension builds rapidly again.  The first wave was only the start.  She’s never known this…not in this lifetime anyway.  Spots dance behind her eyelids when he sucks hard and sets her blood to singing.  She cries out and fades away.

When her eyes open again, he’s sitting on the bed, smiling down at her, holding her hand.  “I did well?”

She starts laughing at the unnecessary question.  “I think you know you did very well," she says, blushing.  "So that was what they call la petite mort, I believe.”

“The only mort for you, my love,” he says, sweetly.

Perhaps so.

Their kisses had turned fevered again soon enough.  It's like they cannot get enough of each other.  He’d let her taste herself on his lips, his arousal only heightened by her own.

She was so tight around him, her wet heat surrounding him, nearly making him lose his mind just like that first time so very long ago under the tree with the wildflowers all around, his Sansa.  She will always be his Sansa, he hopes.

“I love you,” he’d told her, nearly choking with emotion, so happy and unable to believe he could be so lucky as to find her again.  No, she found me.  

He’d stroked her hair back, slowly thrusting, savoring the feel of her. 

“I love you, too,” she’d sighed and, for a moment, Jon would almost swear that his unbeating heart had given a flip in his chest.

After that, he’d not lasted so long as he might’ve liked.  She’d been coming a third time, crying out his name, her cunt clenching around his cock.  His eyes grew unfocused as that tension had been building, building, building inside of him.

He'd pulled out swiftly, knowing his limit was near.  “I can’t…not in you,” he’d said, apologetically.  He wishes he could give her children but it is a risk they cannot take with her a mortal.  

She hadn’t cared.  She’d grinned wickedly and stroked him with one small hand and pulled him to her fiercely with the other.  She’d bit down hard on his shoulder, enough for him to feel a flicker of pain, a sweet reminder of what it was to be a breathing man, almost as sweet as the release.  He’d had to muffle his roar when he came with Sansa’s hand pumping him dry, covering her belly with his seed. 

He’d collapsed in dramatic fashion afterwards beside her, making her laugh.  How he loves her laughter.  He’s going to make her laugh every day if he can. 

She’d been catching her breath so he’d pulled her to him, let her sag against him, gently rubbing her back until she’d been relaxed and her heart had no longer been hammering so hard. He loves the sound of her heartbeat even more than her sweet voice raised in song.

She’d drifted off for a spell after that as he’d laid there watching her, inhaling her fragrance and listening to the steady thump-thump he’d fear he’d never hear again.

When she wakes again, he has a surprise for her.  The gramophone from the parlor sounds quite scratchy.  Maybe they need one of those new high fidelity players that are gaining in popularity.   

“In the still of the night
I held you
Held you tight
'Cause I love
Love you so
Promise I'll never
Let you go…”

“Jon?”

He straightens from setting out the platter of food he’s raided from the refrigerator.  “How did I get by without all these modern conveniences before?” he jokes before feeding her a bite of apple.

The juice drips down her chin and he’s pretty sure he’ll need to lick her clean soon…in lots of places.  He needs some messier foods.    

“How indeed?  But despite your capes, draughty halls and oil lanterns, you seem like a Thoroughly Modern Millie as vampires go to me, far more so than most men I could name.”

“I read books and watch movies to keep up with the times.  Maybe we’ll get a television set.  I was dining at a Mr. Frey’s house one night…”

“You were dining at Mr. Frey’s house?”

“Rather an unpleasant man and a little on the anemic side.”

Her mouth falls open rather adorably.  “Jon…”

“Anyway, I watched an episode of Gunsmoke while I was there.  I enjoy a good Western.”  She shakes her head at him, not sure if she’s more amused or horrified.  “Dance with me, my love.”

He opens the old drapes and restarts the record.  “But we’re naked.”

“No one can see us from the road.  Naked dancing.  We’ll start the newest craze at the sock hop.  Let’s dance in the moonlight tonight.”

“You’re mad, you know.”

“I’m mad for you.  Will you dance with me?”

“Gladly, my dearest Jon.”

He pulls her close and they just sway, a vampire and his housekeeper, two fools in love.

“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him the word that I'm not a rover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over…”

Jeyne wakes to the sound of the record drifting softly down the hall.  She rises a little later than usual, feeling rested and well again after the oddness of last night. 

She slips past Mr. Targaryen’s bedroom where the music’s coming from.  Sansa has that record.  Maybe he borrowed it.

She hurries down the hall, not wishing to disturb him.  It’s not that Mr. Targaryen isn’t kind but he does give her the creeps sometimes.  Sansa doesn’t mind him though.

She thinks her friend is taken with him. She’s pretty sure he’s taken with her, too.  Jeyne is glad for Sansa if so.  She deserves a sweet romance after Harry.  Maybe someday, Jeyne will find that, too.

So long as Ramsay never comes back. 

It is a fear of course.  Whatever happened that night, there is no guarantee he’s gone for good.  She doesn’t like people whispering behind her back when she goes into town but she liked Ramsay’s rages far, far less.  And people whispered when she came to the store with her eyes black or her lip split, too.

Let them fear me instead of feeling sorry for me, she thinks boldly and then feels silly.  No one will ever fear her.  No one will ever consider her anything more than…

“Good morning, Jeyne.”

She gasps and spins, never expecting him to up.  It’s well past nine and he’s always sleeping by now.  Where is Sansa?  He’s carrying a tray stacked full of dishes and a wine glass.  He must have had them in his bedroom.  He really should let them see to it for him.

“Good morning, Mr. Targaryen!  Did you want some breakfast?” she asks, offering to take the dishes. 

He doesn’t let her.  He sets them in the sink and turns on the water.  “No, thank you.  I dined very well last night.”

He must have.  He looks quite improved from when she’d seen him in the parlor last night before Harry had stopped by.  His complexion is still pale but there’s a brightness to his eyes and…wasn’t there more silver at his temples last night?

She smiles and nods, not sure what to say.  Is he staying up?  Should she leave him be?

“Get your breakfast, Jeyne.  It’s raining cats and dogs this morning and I can wash these.  You work hard enough.  I'm very glad you're here.”

It is rainy but why should that matter?  She is very pleased by his kind words.

Jeyne sits down to eat her oatmeal not sure what to think.

She’s even less sure what to think a short time later when she spies a white wolf in the parlor!  

"EEEEEEKK!!!" she shrieks.

She turns to run away but Mr. Targaryen is there again. She slams right into his chest and nearly falls backwards but he deftly catches her.  He’s carrying a tray again.  However did he manage not to drop it? 

“It’s alright, my dear lady.  Ghost will not hurt you.  Sansa insisted and he listens to her so he’s decided to come in out of the rain.”

“Gho-ghost?” she stammers.

“He’s, um…like my pet…in a way.”

“And he’s tame?” she asks, eyeing the beast suspiciously. 

“More or less.  He will not harm you, I swear.”  Mr. Targaryen takes her hand then and gives her a sincere smile.  “Jeyne, no one’s ever going to hurt you here and you may stay with us so long as you like.  I hope you believe that.”

“I…I do.”  She does.  She blinks and knows she’ll cry if she doesn’t mind herself.  “Thank you, Mr. Targaryen,” she says, sniffling.  He is a kind man though odd.  She hopes him and Sansa will fall madly in love.

“Oh yes, without a doubt,” he says almost as if he’s read her mind.

“Sir?”

“This coffee and milk is going upstairs with me.  I may lie in a bit.  We’ll let Ghost back out later, shall we?  He seems content by the fire.”

Indeed, the creature is snoring. 

“Of course, sir." 

Quietly, she follows him up the stairs because she needs to tidy the hall bathroom.  She watches him balancing the tray effortlessly in one hand as he opens the door to his bedroom with the other.  She frowns as she notices something odd.  Why are there two cups on the tray?

“There you are,” she hears her friend call to him from within.  Sansa is in his bedroom?  “I’m desperate for coffee this morning after coaxing Ghost in out of the rain.”

“Is that all your desperate for?” he asks, with a joy in his tone Jeyne has not heard before.

"That and for someone to warm me up perhaps."

Oh!

Jeyne ducks into the water closet, flushing scarlet, and hoping Mr. Targaryen hadn’t noticed her following him up the stairs.

How will she look her friend in the eye later?! 

She looks are her own wide eyes in the mirror, as wide as any frightened mouse. 

Or maybe an amused one. 

In fact, she spends the next five minutes laughing heartily in happiness for her friend.  

Chapter Text

Three Months Later

Buddy Holly is playing on the new radio in the parlor. Jon’s glad the curtains are still closed. Not only because it’s sunny out today but because any nosy neighbors would likely faint dead away to see the recently widowed Jeyne dancing as she vacuums.

“All of my love
All of my kissin'
You don't know what you've been a-missin'
Oh boy, when you're with me
Oh boy, the world can see
That you, were meant, for me”

Ramsay Bolton’s body had been found three weeks after she’d moved in the next town over. Young Detective Podrick Payne from Winterfell’s Police Department had come to the house to break the news. Jeyne had been suitably aggrieved as Sansa had sat by her friend’s side, holding her hand and wiping away crocodile tears of her own.

Jon had quietly thanked the detective and asked if there was any leads into what had happened.

“Well, to be honest, Mr. Targaryen…we’re not sure what happened to him. It looks like a wild animal got hold of him and it was lucky he had a tattoo from his navy days to even make is possible to…”

Jeyne had given a pitiful sob and rushed out of the room at that point. No, it was not completely an act.  Jeyne has a gentle heart though that monster didn't deserve a single one of her tears.  Thankfully though, her grief has been very short-lived…especially when their handy electrician comes over.

Grenn, the electrician, may not be an Einstein as the kids like to say but he knows his way around electrical wiring and most of the new-fangled gadgetry these days which Jon is certainly no master of and he's a good-hearted man. 

He's strong as an ox which came in very handy when it came to removing the Targaryen family portraits that Aerys had hung.  Whatever dark magic had been used to hang them, it has been weakened by the love that blooms in this old dark house now.  Or perhaps the fact that Ghost is indoors so quite often now has some effect.  Regardless, Grenn had helped Jon remove the portraits, one by one. 

Grenn had asked what Jon had planned to do with them. He'd said he was putting them in storage.  Instead, he and Sansa had had a little bonfire that night.  He would swear he could hear their hateful voices cursing him one last time as he tossed the match onto the pyre.  He hadn't cared one bit.  

But back to Grenn, he is also single.  He’s a bit of an Elvis fan, wears a leather jacket and his hair in a pompadour.  Wonder if he likes Buddy Holly.

“Jon? It’s ready now,” Sansa says from the entryway to the parlor.

The delivery man left a little while ago after weeks of waiting for her orders from Gimbels and the Sears & Roebuck catalog to come in and Sansa’s been busy. He’d offered to help but she wants to surprise him.

“Wait, what’s that?” he asks as she holds out a swath of fabric.

“It’s got to be a surprise.”

He could tell her that if he wanted to spoil her surprise, he’d just try and read her mind but she already knows that and he doesn’t want to spoil her surprise. And her tinkling laughter has him submitting to whatever she wants as always as she ties the fabric securely around his eyes.

The smell of paint is strong but it’s her fragrance that teases him, leads him along in her wake as they climb the stairs. He can smell the blood of every mortal in his house as well as the wolf. He’s growing hungry but no one under this roof need fear him. He’ll feed soon.

“Just a few more steps, dearest Jon,” Sansa tells him, guiding him down the hallway next. He never fails to smile when she calls him her ‘dearest Jon.’

It’s a novel feeling for him, being blindfolded. Of course, his hearing and sense of smell is as keen as ever but not being able to see, putting himself in Sansa’s power holds a certain allurement.

“I think I’m going to ask you to blindfold me again later,” he tells her, letting the innuendo drip from his tongue.

A startled squeal and some amused feminine laughter remind him they are not alone at the moment. Sansa squeezes his hand though and he knows she’s not adverse to the suggestion at all. His hungers are only matched by her own.

Their little audience, Margaery Baratheon, Alysanne Bulwer and Alys Karstark, are busy repainting one of the other bedrooms.

They’d all come down to the kitchen earlier, in pedal pushers or dungarees depending upon their tastes with their hair covered by scarves, to tell him of their plans over breakfast. He’d simply nodded and told them he couldn’t wait to see what they would do. All of the women here can express themselves freely and fix up their new rooms as they please without fear of what a man (or vampire) will think or say.

Margaery had come to them two months ago after Sansa had paid a call upon her old dear friend and invited her to come and live here if she should ever wish to leave her husband, Joffrey Baratheon, D.D.S.  The Baratheons and even some of the Tyrells were outraged when she took Sansa up on the offer. It’s a scandal, her seeking a separation. She’s left her picture perfect housewife life behind to be someone’s hired help. Her parents think it's a phase that will pass.  Her mother-in-law is thinking of hiring a hitman.  Of course, Margaery's life was far from a picture perfect life and she’s happily left the bruises her husband would leave upon her skin behind, too.

Margaery’s husband, Joffrey…Jon’s been waiting for him. He's more than ready to feast but too many dead husbands or relatives connected to their house at once might pose a risk.  Best to wait a month or so in between anyway.  Poor Detective Payne already has enough cares what with Harrold Hardyng disappearing after being denied a promotion shortly before Ramsay’s body was found. Harry’s body will never be found. Jon had made sure of that. Sansa already had her divorce. Now, Jeyne is free as well.

Margaery’s young cousin Alysanne was the next to join their household. Her parents, members of a very severe fundamentalist set, had been pushing the girl, not quite fifteen, towards a marriage with some man from their church, a much older man. She hadn’t wanted it but had thought she had nowhere to go until Jon had learnt of her plight from Margaery.  Now, she is here.  So long as her narrow-minded parents are simply content to say she's disowned, Jon has no reason to pay them a call...for now.

Alys Karstark is a friend of Jeyne’s. Her parents had passed away last year leaving her with a good bit of money but her uncle, with the help of some of his nefarious business associates, has been trying to have her committed to a sanatorium so he can claim it for himself.  Her views on communism, sexuality, organized religion and the proper role of women are much at odds with their current society's thinking.  She reads the sort of books Alysanne's parents would see burned.  She possesses a brilliant wit and a razor sharp tongue.  

Concerned over her safety, Alys had asked Jeyne if Mr. Targaryen might need any extra help. She’d been told with the house being fully renovated extra help would be most welcome.  Perhaps someday, Aly might speak her opinions outside of this house without fear. Meanwhile, she is safe here and is happier.  Her and Margaery are becoming fast friends as well.  

Her uncle recently took a swan dive off his office building. Though the coroner ruled it a suicide, it was noted there wasn’t much blood in his body when he was autopsied.  It must've all been washed away by the rain that night.  

“Here we are,” Sansa says, opening the bedroom door and removing the blind fold.

Jon steps inside and looks around his bedroom, or rather, what was his bedroom. It’s their bedroom now and he’s very glad of it.

But does it have to be so…turquoise?

“Well? What do you think?” Sansa asks from beside him, her hands clasped together as she beams at him.

“There’s a great deal of color.”

There’s not a whiff of black anywhere in here, save for himself. At least, he’s got his nice new cape for dark nights. It hides the blood of dark hearts well and is, thankfully, machine-washable.

“I know! Isn’t it dreamy?”

She’s left most of the furniture, saying it was well-made and not in need of replacing, but the walls have been papered (a pastel floral print) and there’s carpeting in here rather than the old moth-eaten rug. Cobwebs all gone, nary a speck of dust. A new mattress (nice and firm and being thoroughly broken in), new draperies, new bedding, a newer table with two chairs added by the hearth for when they wish to dine upstairs and alone (he doesn’t mind that addition one bit), it’s like a brand new room.  And no bloody Targaryens glaring at him from behind a dusty sheet.  

He glances at his love and how happy this makes her and realizes he wouldn't care if the bedroom was covered in polka-dots or that it now resembles a turquoise powder poof so long as she’s sharing it with him.

He reaches for her hand, gives it a kiss. “The blue is almost as pretty as your eyes, my love.”

She flushes and holds a finger up to her mouth. They are not alone.

“I think Grenn’s figured out you’ll be sleeping in here with me,” he whispers.

“Mr. Targaryen,” she quietly gasps before giggling like a girl. “Just remember that Mother and Daddy are coming for dinner tomorrow night and we’ll not be saying such things then.”

“Yes, love,” he grumbles playfully, making her giggle some more.

He has no wish to offend them. It’s just a shame that they look at him with so much suspicion. Granted, they’re a couple of wise old wolves and not fooled by Sansa’s ‘Mr. Targaryen this’ and ‘Mr. Targaryen that.’ They’ve figured out more is going on between their daughter and her employer and think he’s taking advantage. Maybe he’ll win them over in time. He’s already been secretly shopping for a ring. It’s good that it’s dark so early in winter so he can get out before the stores close. He’s not ordering that from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Grenn stands from where he’s been crouched over in the corner with his shirt tail hanging out and dusts off his hands. “Here we go now. If you wanna give it a try, sir.”

Jon turns the knob and there’s a flicker and fuzz.

“Hang on,” Grenn says, expertly toying with the rabbit ears until…

“Wow…Gunsmoke.”

“Yes, sir. One set for the parlor and now one right in your own bedroom. Fancy that, eh?”

“Thank you, Grenn. It’s perfect,” Sansa chirps as Jon sits on the edge of his newly made bed, mesmerized. 

So many years living in the shadows, he's admittedly swept away by the various places he can visit in the movies and now here inside his home even.  "Marvelous."

Jeyne comes in to announce there are sandwiches if anyone’s hungry for lunch. Sansa starts elbowing Jon in the ribs but he’s already well aware that Jeyne and Grenn will be engaged in a bashful little staring contest like usual and having some amorous thoughts about the other even if they’re not quite ready to believe the other person could possibly be thinking the same.

Just kiss her, for God's sake. Or you kiss him.

Mortals can be so tedious. Do they think they’re going to live forever?  He supposes they’ll figure it out in time.

"You two go ahead without us," he tells Jeyne and Grenn.  "We'll be down shortly." There, I helped.  

Sansa smirks at him as he tugs her hand, pulling her down into his lap.  "What do you think you're doing, Mr. Targaryen?"

"Now that our bedroom is finished, I was planning on trying out the bed properly."

She bites at her bottom lip bewitchingly.  "Is that so?  Are you sure you're not distracted by your spiffy new television set?"

"What television set?" he asks before twisting them around so that he's on top of her, making her shriek with laughter.

His beauty is surrounded by the turquoise bedspread that seems to set her hair aflame.  Everything about this room is perfect.  How could it not be?  Sansa's in it and she has made it so.

“But you’re happy, darling?  He makes you happy, does he?”

“Yes, Mother.  Completely and utterly happy.”

“Well, he is quite gentlemanly and the house is coming along splendidly,” Catelyn Stark concedes as she dries the next dish passed her way.  “And the other women here are…”

Sansa resists the urge to roll her eyes at her mother’s leading statement.  She knows her mother is concerned more with Sansa’s welfare than anything.  “They are my friends but they just work and live here.”

“I see.  And you're sure there's nothing of Harry to Jon?  No roving eye or...”

"No, there's not a drop of a man like Harry in Jon."  Except for all the blood of his Jon drank.  "Shall we go join Daddy and Jon in the parlor?”

They leave the freshly-painted lemon yellow kitchen behind to rejoin the men.  The other women went out for burgers and the drive-in tonight so they could have this dinner to tell her parents about them.  Not everything of course. 

Once the meal was done (roast again though less rare), Sansa had made excuses about the dishes, knowing her mother would never be easy until she’s had a chance to question her alone about Jon now that she’s aware there’s something going on between them.

Jon had shot a pitiful glance her way when she’d suggested he take her father into the parlor.  She doesn’t have to read minds to know he wants them to like him and that he’s stung by some of their concerns regarding him.  She hopes that maybe they've had a nice conversation.  Instead, when Sansa and her mother walk in, they are watching an episode of Perry Mason and completely absorbed by it.  Men.  Oh well. 

“I never should’ve allowed your father to buy a television,” her mother laments.  “He’s worse than your brothers were over their comic books.”

Actually, Sansa must admit she’s touched by them sitting side by side.  Ghost had been brought in tonight and, though initially, her parents had looked as if they feared being eaten more than getting to eat their dinner, they’ve warmed to him.  He’s quite a civil wolf for those Sansa loves. 

He currently has his big furry head resting on her father’s knee.  Her father is absently scratching behind his ears and a flash of memory comes to Sansa of another Ned Stark sitting by a roaring fire and petting this same wolf as he told his children a story.  Her eyes begin to well up.  

“Sansa?” her mother asks, her smooth hand caressing her cheek, “Are you feeling alright?”

Jon’s head turns from the program and he gives her a soft smile.  He knows.  He understands. 

“Yes, Mother,” she says sweetly before taking a seat on the arm of the new sofa beside Jon.  He wraps one arm around her waist and she leans into him contentedly.  They're the picture of domestic bliss.  Her mother doesn't need to worry.  Sansa's never been happier.  

Three nights later, Jon is looking wan and the silver at his temples is more noticeable.  He’s tired and hungry.  He must feed.  Margaery, Alysanne, Jeyne and Alys have left for a short vacation with Margaery’s grandmother to her beach house six hours away.  Now is the perfect time.  Margaery will have an alibi and Jon and Sansa don't really know Joffrey at all.  

All the same, must he be so dramatic?

“What?  I like getting into the spirit sometimes before I go out.  I’m so happy these days, my love.  It makes it harder to get into the right frame of mind.”

“The right frame of mind?  You’re a vampire, Jon.”

“A vampire who loves his new record player.” 

She laughs as ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ continues to play, the horns swelling ominously.  “How appropriately creepy,” she tells him, straightening the collar of his new cloak and kissing him lightly on the lips.

“Don’t I get more of a kiss than that?”

“You’ll get more kisses than that once you return…and use the mouthwash I bought you before you come to bed” 

He grimaces like a boy.  He doesn’t like the taste of the antiseptic but she has no desire to taste Joffrey Baratheon's blood on her lover’s tongue.

“Ghost,” he calls when he steps out into the night with Mussorgsky’s music still running through his head.

The wolf lopes out of the woods, tongue hanging out and red eyes burning.  He’s always ready to join Jon in a dish of dark hearts. 

“Let’s go hunt.”

Joffrey Baratheon, D.D.S.  His mother had wisely suggested the occupation to him back when he entered college.  He likes hurting people.  Why not get paid for it? 

A fancy office space downtown.  He’s taken to working late on Tuesdays and Thursdays since his wife left.  She’s not home to toy with so he’ll toy with his patients...as much as he can get away with it. 

Jon enters the office where the reception desk is already vacant.  The poor lady gets tired of the screaming.  He can hear the drill whirring as Joffrey finishes with his last patient of the night, his last patient ever. 

The older gentleman comes out clutching a handkerchief to his jaw, thinking the toothache was almost better than the cure.  He dons his hat and coat that have been waiting on the rack and leaves without noticing the man or wolf sitting in the shadows. 

Jon locks the front door after him and walks down the hall, his new loafers clipping softly along the tiled floor.

“Who’s there?” Joffrey calls from the examination room where he's inhaling more Nitrous Oxide.  Can't let him have too much to dull the coming pain.  

“Your death,” Jon whispers, knowing he will not hear him.

Joffrey pokes his head out into the hall.  “Who are you?”

“I'm Jon.  I don’t have an appointment but a friend of your wife recommended I pay you a call.”  Joffrey scowls.  "I have cash on hand to pay," Jon says, flashing a stuffed money clip, knowing Joffrey's avarice will work to his advantage.  

Joffrey sizes him up, sneers at the lovely black cloak Sansa made him and nods.  He likes hurting people and thinks he’ll get to hurt Jon and bleed him dry of cash.  That's not quite how it'll go.

“What’s the trouble?” Joffrey asks, indicating the strange chair where Joffrey works on his victims. 

“There’s something odd with my teeth.”

Joffrey rolls his eyes.  “Obviously or you wouldn’t be here.  Take a seat.”

Jon does, he lays back and smiles.  His smile is making Joffrey nervous.  Ghost growls softly down the hall.  Joffrey didn’t hear it but Jon did.

Joffrey picks up a couple of his instruments of torture, already figuring he’ll bill him double and make him sorry he came so late in the day.  He leans over Jon, his hot, foul breath right in Jon's face as if he seeks to intimidate him with the position and says, “Open up.”

Jon does gladly.  He shows Joffrey his perfectly white fangs as Ghost’s toenails clack hurriedly down the hall.

The police will think there may be some psychotic killer on the loose when Joffrey is found the next day after the receptionist’s screams startle the entire block the next morning.  The newspapers will relish the grisly details of how the man was found strapped to his own exam chair, all of his perfect teeth pulled out, one by one, and him eviscerated with his green eyes still open but unseeing. 

People around Winterfell will keep close to their hearths at night for a few weeks afterwards perhaps but, in time, they’ll move on.  They always do.  This modern world keeps spinning and people are becoming numb to horror, it seems.  Maybe they always were in some ways.

“I used mouthwash,” Jon tells her two weeks later when he’s slipping under the covers to join her. 

“Mmm.”  She stretches and rolls to face him, giving him a light kiss.  “Ghost?”

“He’s downstairs by the fire.”

She chaffs at his bare arm.  “You’re freezing cold.”

“It’s snowing in the woods.”

They’d needed to feed and the police won’t notice if some deer or rabbits go missing.  “I would warm you if I could.”

“We’ll warm each other.”

He pulls her into his arms, nipping at her chin.  He places his hand on her chest, feeling for her heartbeat.  She know how much he loves hearing it. 

“I do…so much,” he says, his voice full of emotion.  His thumb glides over her throat. 

“I know you do but, if it’s cold and snowy the next several weeks, I’ll be wearing my scarves.” They have been discussing it. 

“Sansa, are you sure you want this?”

“You promised to love me always.  Do you remember saying that to me?  Once upon a time beneath our tree?”

“I do.  I will love you always, no matter what, no matter when, my love.”

“I know but I don’t want to grow old without you.  I don’t want you to be alone again.  I want us to have always together, Jon.”

“We’ll be plenty old together if you join me in this life.”

“It’s what I want.” 

“Then, you will have it.  But we will go a little slow, yes?” 

She nods, knowing what he means.  He wants her to get used to being bitten first before he drains her and has her drink his blood. 

“And will you marry me, Sansa?  Will you be my wife?”

She pretends to ponder the question.  “I don’t know.  I rather like being a liberated woman.” 

He grins, knowing she teases him.  “You’ll always be free to me, Sansa.  No one will ever hold you back from the things you wish to do.”

She knows he means it, too.  “I’ll marry you, Jon,” she tells him before giving his chest a push and climbing over him. 

He laughs, rolling to his back so she may be on top, his she-wolf.  “Good.”  He nips at her shoulder.  “I am still a bit peckish.”

She pulls her nightgown over her head, her hair falling in waves in the low lamplight.  She loves the way his eyes drink her in with adoration. 

Her breasts bob before him and he licks his lips.  “Peckish?  What are you in the mood for?” she asks, leaning forward.

He suckles one breast and then the other, sending sparks of desire shooting all through her body and making her wet.  Sansa slides down his cock, taking him in with a hiss of pleasure.  He wraps one hand through her hair and pulls her closer, her chest touching his. 

“Ride me,” he tells her as his eye-teeth grow longer. 

Her hips begin to move, a torturous undulating rhythm that drives them both to the brink of madness.

When her peak is upon her, he sinks his teeth into her neck, not hard, never enough to kill, just enough to drink.  The pain pushes her over and she cries out in ecstasy.  He is hers and she is his.  They’re going to have eternity together. 

Halloween 1959

“You're mine
And we belong together
Yes, we belong together
For eternity

You're mine
Your lips belong to me
Yes, they belong to only me
For eternity…”

Jeyne wipes her eyes as the Thunderbird pulls to a stop in front of the A&P.  The Ritchie Valens hit from last year always makes her cry ever since February. 

Grenn chuckles softly beside her, taking her hand for a kiss before saying, “Come on, Pretty Kitty.  We got eats to buy up.  We’ll cry over poor Ritchie some more later.”

“Yeah, Grenn’s right.  And how often do we get to say that?” Alys asks from the back seat, making everyone laugh.

Jeyne laughs along and nods, climbing out so they may do their shopping.  There’s going to be a party tonight. 

The stares greet them when they enter the store like they always do but none of them care anymore.  You’d think we’re a biker gang with a bad rep.  Yes, there's a small part of Jeyne that enjoys being considered a dangerous woman, even if it's only by fools.  

Margaery and Alys head off ahead of the rest, holding half of Sansa’s lengthy list and holding hands, not caring one bit if Old Mrs. Stokeworth or anyone else inside has a stroke over it.  They're perfect together, two pieces of the same puzzle that's been missing each other until fate had brought them together.  

Grenn, Alysanne and Jeyne go to work on the rest of the list.  It’s not just the party they’re buying for.  They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed at their house.  It’s more than just a house now, too.  Any woman in need of a safe refuge is welcome at Mr. and Mrs. Targaryen’s home.  Wives, mothers, daughters and lost souls, they're all treated as old friends when they step across the threshold. 

Some stay for a little while. 

Amerei Frey had moved in last autumn, needing a place to stay after her husband had caught her with another man and beat her black and blue.  She’d moved out a few months later. 

Sarella Sand had come to them after she’d unfairly lost her post at the local library due to the boss’s bigotry and then lost her apartment.  She’d found a new job though and has since got herself an apartment in town.

Some stay for longer.

Alysanne has been with them nearly two years but she’s talking about going to college next fall and Jon’s going to make sure she can just like Sansa made sure she got reenrolled at Winterfell High last year so she could finish after running away from home.  Jeyne is going to miss her so much but she’s happy for her, too.

And some will stay always. 

At one time, Jeyne had thought that would be her fate.  But now, Grenn’s bought her a ring and asked her to be his wife, the wife of a good man, one who treats her like a queen.  She’d happily said yes.

Jon and Sansa had married the previous winter.  Sansa had been sick the three weeks leading up to it and kept to their bedroom but Jon had assured them all he fully expected her to recover.  Ghost had kept guard over her whenever Jon could not be by her side.   

And when she’d come out that late January evening in the tea-length wedding dress she must’ve been working on in secret, she’d looked as beautiful as ever though a little different.

There was a fiery steel in her blue eyes which Jeyne had not remarked in them before and her pale porcelain skin seemed even paler though no less lovely.  The freckles on her shoulders had faded away without the summer sunshine.  

But her red hair had seemed to glow in the romantic candlelight and she’d clearly been radiantly happy as her father had walked her across the parlor to exchange vow with the man she loves.  Jon had stood in a new black suit beside Samwell Tarly, the local Justice of the Peace, and, with his teeth brilliantly white in the candlelight, he'd looked fit to burst with joy.

Sansa and Jon are…well, they are a little odd but Jeyne does not let it bother her.  They take care of them all and they’re so kind.  She loves them and knows they love her, too.

Their items all gathered, the five of them reconvene at the front of the store to check out. The check-out girl is friendly, wishing them all a Happy Halloween.  For every Tanda Stokeworth, there’s a friendly face these days. 

Some of the less pleasant faces around town have faded away completely though.  Ramsay, Harry, Joffrey, Alys’ uncle, all gone.  Samwell Tarly’s horrible father passed earlier this year along with Joffrey’s awful mother.  There's been more than a few who have died mysteriously or disappeared over the past couple of years. 

Jeyne knows it’s probably wicked of her but she doesn’t miss a single one of them.  Honestly, beyond poor Detective Payne, whose job it is to care, she doesn’t get the feeling that any of them are that sorely missed here in Winterfell.   

“Well?  How do I look?” Sansa says, stepping out of the new private bath they share.  Grenn knows lots of handymen who work wonders with their ever-evolving house.  It hardly resembles the dreary looking manor it was with she first laid eyes on it in the moonlight two years ago.

“Like a vampire,” Jon says as he turns with a smirk from the record player where he’s just started a song.  But his smirk has already vanished as he looks her up and down.  His mouth has fallen open and his eyes have grown dark and hungry.  It's flattering to a girl (or vampire) to say the least.  

"My love must be a kind of blind love
I can't see anyone but you
(Sha bop sha bop)..."

She huffs.  “I’m supposed to be a witch!”

“Oh, you’re an adorably sexy witch, my love,” he promises, stalking closer to inspect the costume.  “I especially love the pointed hat.  Should we get you a black cat?”

“I would if I wasn’t afraid Ghost would revolt…or eat the poor thing.  I’ll be a witch with a white wolf instead of a cat.  Aren’t you going to get dressed?  Our guests will be here soon.”

“I am dressed,” he says, holding out his cape.  “I’m Count Dracula.”  He'd been in stitches watching the Dracula remake last year.  They were lucky not to be asked to leave the theater where everyone else was covering their eyes in horror.  

She sighs playfully.  “A vampire impersonating a vampire?  Ground breaking.”  

He laughs as she knew he would and pulls her close.  “I love you.”

“And I love you, my dearest Jon.”

“Dance with me?  Alone here in our room before we go down?”

Of course, she will.  She’ll gladly be dancing with him forever. 

“ Are the stars out tonight (sha bop sha bop)
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright (sha bop sha bop)
I only have eyes for you dear
(Sha bop sha bop)

The moon may be high
(Sha bop sha bop)
But I can't see (sha bop sha bop) a thing in the sky
I only have eyes for you…”

The chiming of the bell below recalls them to their duties as hosts.  They can’t let the ladies and Grenn manage everything alone. 

“It’s Mother and Daddy,” Sansa says, already sensing their presence.

She flies down the stairs, though not so fast as to raise alarm, and opens the door with a smile.

Her parents have come to accept the changes in their daughter.  No, they do not know and yet they know something is different.  But what matters to them and Sansa’s brothers and sister is that Sansa is happy and Jon is good to her. 

He would’ve been good to me in that other life as well. 

That’s the past.  This is their life now. 

Soon their other guests are arriving, either from elsewhere or just upstairs, and Sansa is enjoying seeing everyone in costume.  She particularly loves Margaery as Cleopatra and Alys as her Roman general but Rickon’s werewolf costume is a hoot especially when his howls are met by real ones from just outside which gives all the mortals a chill.

The doorbell has been chiming on and off as there are more than a few trick-or-treaters who are brave enough to visit this house this year.  It's probably a dare for them.  Little cowboys and princesses, ghosts, witches, mummies and skeletons, clowns, black cats and even a few little Draculas have all paid their calls with Jon and Sansa greeting each one with smiles and candy in between their dances. 

But as the party is winding down, the doorbell chimes again and Sansa answers to find a young woman in a shabby coat on their doorstep, teary and heavy with child.

“My mother named me Gilly,” she tells them after apologizing for interrupting their evening.  She’s a runaway from further north.  She wipes her eyes saying she’d heard of their house through a friend.  “I’m sorry.  I have no place to go.”

“You have a place now, Gilly,” Jon tells her.  “You can stay here with us as long as you like.”

“But I’m expecting soon and…”

“My wife and I would enjoy having you and your little one here, I promise." 

Sansa nods with enthusiasm.  The mother and child will of course be welcome here but the practice may come in handy as well since Sansa suspects they'll have their own little bundle of joy arriving several months from now.  They might grow up to be playmates...with some interesting differences. 

"In a few days," Jon continues, "when you are settled and feeling up to it, we’ll have you seen by Dr. Luwin."  He glances at Sansa.  "And maybe we'll pay a call on Detective Payne and Samwell Tarly at City Hall?”

“Oh, sir!  I don’t want him to find me!  I don’t want him to…”

“Don’t worry, Gilly,” Sansa assures.  “You're safe here and he won’t ever touch you again.”  The halls of justice are one thing but there are other forms of justice for men like Gilly's father.  Samwell is single though and maybe they might be introduced later on.  

Sansa escorts the poor girl upstairs and shows her to one of the free rooms, telling her it's hers and they'll go find a crib before long. 

Once Gilly is settled, Sansa glides back down to find Jon.  Most of the guests are gone but Jeyne and Grenn are cleaning up.

“Do you want me to leave any of the food out, Sansa?  I never saw you eat a bite all night.”

Sansa’s eyes meet Jon’s and he gives a subtle nod.  Outside, Ghost howls, eager for the hunt.

“That’s alright, Jeyne.  If you two don’t mind putting it away, we’ll see to the rest of the clean-up.  Mr. Targaryen and I have decided we’ll be dining out tonight.”