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The first time her brother brings home a stray werewolf, she’s eleven.
He’s a straggly boy with scratched knees and the wolf behind his eyes is wild and untamed.
Wild and untamed just didn’t interest her at age eleven, or age even age eighteen. Her brother is known to bring home strays but never an outside werewolf but a lone werewolf is a dangerous thing, to himself and to the pack, and so he gets to stay.
And she hated the boy for that. She never got the gene, she’ll never know the freedom of a run or the joy of a hunt that her siblings talk about. How come a stranger gets to spend more time with her siblings and father than she did because of some stupid gene?
Her mother always tried to calm her with gentle words, and her slight touch. Tully’s are blessed with the magic that runs within the waters, there’s something dangerous and strong inside water too, her mother would sometime whisper to her. No moon could ever control you, for you belong to the waters.
But Sansa still wanted to be in the pack despite how much she loved the magic in her bones, and she hated the boy for that.
The first time she realised that the boy was jealous of her magic she was sixteen. Joffrey had hit her the first time six months ago, and she was too scared to break up with him. She tried once but the words had died on her tongue.
Joffrey had no magic, no shape-shifting abilities but the Lannisters were fierce werelions who were not afraid to pounce and the Baratheons had earth magic in their bones. He brought up the damage he could do to her family when she started to hint at taking a break.
Her brother and Jon were home for the holidays. She was using a healing salve on a few bruises that had yet to heal, when she accidentally dropped the salve and cut herself when she tried to pick up some of the pieces. He was walking past and smelled the blood, and came knocked anxiously on her door asking if she was alright.
“I’m fine,” Sansa desperately tried to keep her voice from wavering, she couldn’t allow anyone to see any weakness, “I just dropped something, I’ll be absolutely fine!”
She’d stolen the ingredients from her mother’s cupboard and made it herself, not willing her mother to ask too many questions, and her mother would absolutely kill her if she’d know what Sansa had done but also she’d ask why-
Her internal monologue is cut short when he comes through the door, probably picking up on her elevated heartbeat.
“Sansa-“ He blinks taking in the scene, her crouching on the floor, her hand cut, bruises on her wrist and tears in her eyes.
“Sansa, what the hell happened?”
Sansa kept the tears at bay as she tried her excuse again, “I just dropped it and cut myself, I’m fine you don’t have to worry about me.”
He crouched so he was next to her and gently took her hand and looked at the cut.
“It isn’t deep, but let’s wash it and see. And then I’ll clean up.”
He took her into her bathroom, and brought her hand underneath the tap.
“Hold it there, while I get the plasters.”
She did as instructed and tried her best not to flinch when he appeared next to her and held her wrist to move it into better lighting. He caught the flinch, and the bruise on her wrist though.
“I’m going to kill him. Sansa, I’m going to kill him.”
His voice was hard, and she found the courage to look him in the eyes. She could see the wolf rising in his eyes, probably that desire to protect the pack but she isn’t part of the pack, she’s just a stupid witch and-
“Hey, let me get Robb and he will never come near you again,” his voice was gentle but she knew that his threat was real.
“You can’t go after him, you can’t. His mother is Lannister, you know what that means? And his father is Robert, I-“
Can’t do that to Father, can’t make him choose.
He pulled her to him, and let her cry into his shoulder, the strange boy with the untamed wolf gently rocked her as she cried.
“Promise me, promise me you won’t tell anyone or go near Joffrey.”
He blinked, as if surprised she would ask that of him.
“Please.”
“Alright fine,” Jon sighed and slowly eased himself away to continue cleaning. “But you should use your magic to help protect you, even if you won’t let me.”
Every other werewolf in this house says the word magic with contempt (or mockery in Arya’s case) but Jon’s voice didn’t hold bitterness
“Joffrey hates magic. He says all witches should burn.”
“Joffrey is a jealous asshole who wants what he doesn’t have. Your magic is a part of you.” His voice is matter of fact before he gives her a gentle smile and leaves with the broken shards.
As far as she knows he kept to her word, he never went near Joffrey or told her family but he helped her make a good luck charm, a bravery potion and an ill omens spell.
Joffrey broke up with her later that week.
The first time she kissed the boy, she was nineteen and it was New Years.
Nobody does holidays quite like the Starks, it was always an adventure with the pack. Last year, three fist fights broke out, two couples split up and another couple got together (not related to the other two couples splitting up ironically).
Sansa was pleasantly tipsy, she’d successfully dodged smarmy Uncle Petyr’s wondering hands when she ran into Jon in the kitchen. He’s leaning against the counter, drinking a beer when she stumbles in. He smiles slightly at her, when he notices her stumble in the doorway.
He looks good. He’d filled out more since she’d been away, and he had gained more confidence when he went to college, but now he seems to be more sure of himself. She never noticed how handsome he is, and he also smells good because she hugged him when she came home and it made her mind go blank.
Focus, Sansa.
She makes her way to the fridge to get herself a drink, and then stands beside him against the counter.
“How’s your mom?” it’s the first thing she can think of, besides she loves Lyanna, the woman is as hard as steel but she would always have time to talk to Sansa about her favourite stories.
“She’s good. She’s working tonight, but said to give her love to everyone anyway.” He takes a swig of his beer, then reaches over to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear that had come loose of her elaborate braid.
“Thanks. I’m sorry to miss her. I’ll have to go see her before I leave again.” She takes a sip of her drink (it was beer, even though she hated beer, she had just grabbed the first drink she saw) to try and clear the awkwardness in the room.
Jon smiled softly at her, and said, “She’d like that.”
They look at each other for a few seconds before breaking eye contact. The silence hangs in the air, clinging to them, because they weren’t friends, they never were but when she’d seen that he’d brought a date, her stomach had dropped and it felt like her lungs had stopped working but why¸ why would it matter? It’s just Jon and he just looks so good tonight.
As she opened her mouth to speak, she heard someone call his name from the door. They both spun around to see his date standing there. Jon gives her another smile, and goes to join his date.
Sansa watches them leave which makes her feel cold until takes a breath and then a swig of her drink and goes to re-join the party, determined to catch that pleasant tipsy feeling again.
She’s talking to Beth Cassel, asking her how it feels to date a pixie when a fight breaks out. Sansa sighs, and sees her brothers go over to break it up before their mother can kill the culprits.
Her brother yanks up a man that almost looks like Jon, but Sansa can’t believe it. Jon doesn’t start fights, he just backs up Robb, what is he doing?
Her mother enters the room, and gives Sansa a look while tilting her head where Robb is holding Jon by both arms and speaking quietly. Her mother goes to join her father and Jory in talking to Smalljon Umber and his two friends. Sansa quickly makes her way to Jon and Robb.
“Come on, I know you’ve got super healing skills, but let me help heal them anyway.” She’s not really asking Jon, more of directing, because she knows the family secret of ensuring the fight doesn’t start later, divide and conquer.
She drags him to the kitchen, where she takes out some of the healing salve and plasters for him.
“What were you thinking? Taking on three men like that?” She roughly uses the salve on his split knuckles which causes him to hiss.
The wolf behind his eyes is fierce and wild, and that should scare her shouldn’t it?
“He said that you were a whore. He really shouldn’t have.”
“You’re a fool,” she smiled to show that she was joking, and she gently wiped off the excess salve from his hands, and started to pack up.
“Someone needed to stand up for you.” His gaze never wavered, and when did their faces get so close? She should move, she should really move, he has a girlfriend and she had just got out of a three year relationship but still, her throat closed up at his words and she did not move.
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet, and she hoped he could hear it over the roaring voices in the living room. “It sounds like midnight has come.”
“It has. Happy New Year, Sansa.” The way he said Sansa, as if he was cherishing it, almost kissing her name in his mouth, it was glorious and hypnotising.
She gently pressed her lips against his for a brief moment. “Happy New Year, Jon.”
She’s out the door before he can say anything else.
She’s twenty-two, and she’s moved to a new city. She had moved to White Harbour six months after graduating for her new job, and she misses home. And then she finds a reminder of home in her favourite coffee shop on an arbitrary day.
Jon is sitting at a table obviously waiting for his coffee, on his phone. She hasn’t seen him since her graduation, she knew that he was in White Harbour but she never could manage the courage to call him, her hand shaking every time she went to his contact.
He looked amazing. His hair was pulled back, he had a new scar above his eye, but it was faded, and instead of making him look threatening, it just made him look handsome. She debated leaving without her coffee, when they call out his name and his head snaps up. He makes eye contact with her then and he smiles at her, and his smile warms her frozen limbs.
She does to stand next to him once he’s collected his coffee, to wait for hers and to speak to him because suddenly she’s desperate to talk to someone from Winterfell.
“Hi, Jon.” She’s sure her voice is steady, but she’s actually happy to see him once she got over the initial shock and she doesn’t know how to communicate that.
“Hi Sansa, how’ve you been?”
Before she can answer, her name is called out. She gives him a smile, and holds up her finger to indicate one minute, and goes to collect her coffee. Jon gestures to his seat which he left, which is still unoccupied in the nearly empty coffee shop.
They sit, and there an awkward moment of silence that’s almost claustrophobic but she wants to hear his voice, and his accent, and maybe she should have hugged him?
“How do you like White Harbour?” His voice breaks through her internal panicking, and she forces her body to relax in a more natural pose before answering.
“It’s alright,” she searches for the right words before continuing, “it’s not quite home but it’s still good.”
The wolf isn’t behind his eyes today, they’re gentle, and he looks at her as if he understands exactly what she means, and isn’t that lovely to have someone to understand?
That accidental meeting turns into a not-accidental lunch, and they fall into a friendship, meeting for coffee, which turns into hanging at each other apartments, with dinner and Netflix, and most importantly, cuddles. The cuddles are strictly platonic, obviously. Neither of their couches are large, so it’s for comfort more than anything. And Sansa has just been single for so long that any man’s arms feel good around her, that’s it.
They’re watching a history documentary at Jon’s apartment and she’s exhausted, it was a long week and despite it being Saturday, some asshole blasted music in her neighbour’s apartment at five in the bloody morning. Sansa feels her eyes drooping, and she rests her head on Jon’s shoulder, letting the words from the documentary wash over her and lull her to sleep.
Heat, warmth, comfort. She wakes up warm, extremely warm. Her magic is sated in her bones, and she blinks her eyes open. She and Jon were still on his couch, she’s lying on his chest, and he has her arm around her waist, which is why she’s so hot. Werewolves always run hotter.
She contemplates leaving, but she’s warm and his arms just feel safe, so she stays and drifts off again.
She wakes up to Jon moving slightly, she feels his lips at her hairline, and then him moving her so that she’s in front of him, and he’s holding her from behind, rather her on top of him like before.
“Sorry, my arm was asleep.” His accent is thick with sleep, and a shiver runs down her spine hearing it.
Before she could over think it, she turns around in his arms, and kisses him. Not the chaste kiss she had given him on that New Years, but an actual kiss. He’s still for a moment before he groans and opens his mouth.
He kisses her back, and she feels as if she could fly in this moment, his tongue run along her bottom lip, and then he nips at her bottom lip, and god is he a good kisser.
Eventually, they stop, and they look at each other and laugh. He bumps his nose against hers softly as the laugh dies down.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long.” She whispers this to him, because words would be so loud, too loud, and she doesn’t want to ruin this fragile thing that was hanging between them.
“I wanted to kiss you too,” his voice was as soft as hers, “I’m glad you did it though, now I can take you on an actual date.”
She hasn’t felt this joyous when she was asked on a date, not for Joffrey or Harry or anyone else. “But first, this couch isn’t that comfy, why should we lie here when you have a perfectly good bed?”
His grin at her words is positively wolfish, he disentangles himself from her, and everywhere that he touched was cold at the loss of him. He stands up and stretches, before immediately bending down and picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder.
Her laughter sounded like home to him.
They move home together at twenty-three, to be closer to the pack and to home and for each other.
She’s twenty-four and she loves him, and she nearly loses him.
Sometimes she can hear her magic, in the howling of the winds, in the crashing of the waves on the shore, of the gentle drops of rain, and the softness of the petal beneath her hands. But this? This wasn’t anything like that. Her magic felt violent, almost gripping her lungs in terror, telling her to wake up, wake up, he’s in danger, wake up.
She wakes up, and without thinking she dials his number because something is wrong, she can feel it, her magic calls to her to fix it.
“Come on, pick up, pick up.” The phone goes to voice mail, and her heart almost splinters in her chest, and she dials Arya’s number as quickly as she can.
“’Lo?” Arya’s voice is rough, and she knew something had happened, her light bulb flickered on and then off as Sansa’s anxiety increased.
“Arya? What’s wrong? Is Jon okay? What happened?” The words come tumbling out, she can’t and won’t stop them.
“It’s just happened, Sansa, I haven’t had time to call anyone yet. But Jon-” Arya’s voice breaks on his name, what the hell happened, “Jon was attacked by dragons.”
Hatred welled up within her, and her light bulb shattered next to her. Sansa jumped in surprise, she hasn’t been this out of control since she was a child.
Dragons? The only dragons were the Targaryen’s and Rhaegar didn’t want anything from him.
“Arya, tell me which hospital.”
Sansa couldn’t tell you anything about the drive there except that maybe she broke a couple of speed limits.
She spots her sister in the waiting room who tells her that Jon is in surgery, and the doctor is a good doctor, he’s a fae which means that they have both medicine and magic on their side.
But dragons are as old as fae, and once they claim something, it is hard to get them to stop.
“It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Rhaegar. It was his younger sister, Daenerys. He had rejected to join the family or something and apparently he had rejected her years ago when they met at university.”
Sansa can’t believe what she’s hearing, she attacked him because she was jealous?
“Where is she?” Sansa’s voice is hard, and she struggles to put her mask on, and get her magic under control, she can see her sister’s wolf threatening to come up, and Sansa’s magic is just beneath her fingertips.
“She fled. She left her magic and just fled.”
Bloody dragons. Sansa could feel her magic react to her anger, but also could feel the soothing magic of her mother as her family entered the hospital.
Her family entered like a hurricane, with a flurry of questions for Arya, and hugs for Sansa. Catelyn held her hand as they all waited for news. Robb had never looked so pale, and Arya looked so angry as if she was going to track down that dragon for herself. Ned’s jaw was tight the whole time, he was the leader of the pack, and he had let a member down. The pack was strongest together but Jon was alone, but that still didn’t erase the sting of guilt that Ned felt.
Eventually, news came. He was out of surgery, but his chances were still dire. Sansa was allowed to see him, and when she saw him, she just knew. Her magic knew that Jon wasn’t going to live the night, she could feel the death lingering in him mixed with the dragon’s claims.
She staggered to the bed and took his hand, desperation welling within her, and she can feel the rain outside getting worse.
“I love you, don’t leave me.” She whispers into his hand, kissing it and she feels something harden inside her. She’s not losing him, she’s never losing him because she loves him. She’s a Stark, she has magic in the marrow of her bones, in the depths of her soul and she’s not letting this wolf go.
She’s going to rip out any of the dragon’s claims as one withdraws poison from a wound, and she’s going to tie his life with hers. She’s going to make their soul one, and no dragon is going to stop it.
She carefully takes his face in her hands, and presses her forehead against him. She pushes her magic against him, and she can feel his wolf rise up to meet her. She whispers the ancient words as she holds him, and she forces the dragon leave his soul, and binds his life-force to hers. Eventually, she tires her magic out, she does not know whether it is a minute, hour, or day, but she knows that he will live now.
He’s going to live, she thinks joyfully.
A blood-bond, a soul-tie and now she is his, and he is hers, and their souls are united as they are supposed to be.
When he wakes up, she’s the first thing he sees. And she kisses him, her tears landing on her cheeks but he doesn’t say anything about that. Instead he whispers that he loves her because he knows what she has done, he can feel his wolf is now bound to her magic, but he doesn’t care, he just loves her wholly and the fact that she loves him as much makes his wolf threaten to rise against his best wishes.
“Before the whole family comes in, I want to let you know, that I withdraw all of her magic from you. You belong to me, not a dragon. Your wolf is free and untamed and you are mine, and I cursed her and her scales and she will never come this far North again.”
Sansa never needed to be a wolf to be wolfish, she’s claimed her mark, and goddamn does he love her for it.
She’s twenty-eight when she marries him. She’s surrounded by her family and the pack, but she didn’t need the wedding to know that their love was written in the stars. She may not be a werewolf, but she doesn’t need to be one to love him, or the pack.