Archive of Our Own

Jon returns to Winterfell in the early hours of the morning, the sun still low on the horizon, the cloudy sky just hinting at pink and gold. He yawns loudly as he guides his horse through the postern gate, exhaustion burning his eyes and pulling at his skin. He had pushed his party to ride through the night, unwilling to make camp only a few leagues from home, not when another storm is brewing north of the Wall, waiting to press in from the Frozen Shore.

Last night's snowfall is just starting to melt; Sam greets Jon outside the stables with mud spattered on the hem of his robe. He has his daughter on his hip, a little girl who'd been conceived on the ship to Oldtown, who Gilly had only begun to call Calla a few days before Jon rode for The Gift.

"How fares Lord Thenn?" Sam asks, holding the reins as Jon dismounts.

"He was loud," Jon replies mildly, his mouth twitching at the corners. "Loud and drunk."

Sam laughs softly, tilting his head as he tugs his chain from Calla's curious hands. "Val will be looking for you. She asked me no less than five times when I thought you would return."

Val finds him on the stairs that lead away from the Great Hall; her hair is loose, tumbling brightly over her shoulders, and her dress is grey wool, finely cut but plainly made, no embelishment save the salt-and-pepper fur lining both the collar and simple sleeves. She narrows her eyes at him for a moment, then nudges him into the shadows of an alcove and fits her mouth against his, her breasts pressed against his chest, her small hands warm as they slide along his jaw.

"Val," Jon murmurs, wrapping his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. He has missed her these last two moons, a sharp ache twisting deeper in his chest with every day; he noses at her cheek, curls his fingers into the hair behind her ear. "Where are the children?"

"Jeor is in the godswood with Gilly and Aemon," Val says, her lips moving against his jaw. "Our daughter is with her nurse."

Jon smiles tiredly, his mouth curving against her temple. "Have you decided on a name, yet?"

"In another year, we will call her Aidith."

"A pretty name for a pretty girl."

Jon slides his hand over Val's hip, squeezing lightly as he starts to pull away; his exhaustion has spread into his neck and shoulders and back, has deepened the slow ache in his thighs from sitting a horse through the night. Val catches his arm before he takes two steps, twists her fingers in his sleeve as she holds him back against the wall, sets her feet atop his to better match their heights. She kisses him again, harder than before, her tongue sweet and insistent as it pushes into his mouth, and he returns it in spite of the weariness itching under his skin, stroking his fingers over the hollow of her throat, moaning softly when she rubs her hand across the front of his breeches.

"Val," he says, unable to still his hips, to stop himself from arching into her touch. He has wanted her skin under his hands every day since he left, has wanted to have her beside him as he sleeps. "We shouldn't -- not here."

She just smiles at him, sharp and dangerous, raises her skirts enough to show him the tops of her thighs, the golden hair curling around her cunt. "I want you to touch me," she says, tugging his hand between her legs. "I am tired of touching myself."

Jon can't help but picture it, Val spread out across the bed they share, one hand curved over her breast, the other sliding over her cunt, her hips lifting off the mattress as her fingers twist and rub and curl. He groans as she presses closer, as she grinds herself against the heel of his hand, as she shifts until his fingers slip inside her, until his thumb brushes over her nub; her cunt his hot and tight around him, wet in away that shocks and thrills him at once, and heat flares in his belly as she clutches at his arms, as she rocks her hips into his hand, as she presses her open, panting mouth against his jaw.

She peaks with her eyes closed and her teeth scraping the point of his chin, her hand knotting in his hair as she gasps and shudders against his chest. His cock his hard and aching, curving against the front of his breeches just from the sound and feel of her; she kisses him roughly, then drags her mouth down to his neck, sucking a warm, wet bruise below his ear as she tugs on his laces, laughing when he tries to stop her from sliding to her knees.

"No," he says, stroking her hair, his breath catching as she runs her hand over his cock. They are practically out in the open, scarcely hidden by a few shadows; he can hear voices on the landing above them, people moving around in the Great Hall below them. "You -- we could be caught."

"I want you," she says simply, her eyes narrow and dark, daring him to argue. "I don't care who knows it."

Val sucks him in slowly, her mouth hot and wet and perfect, and Jon curves his hand over her cheek, traces his thumb along the slow stretch of her lips. It should shame him more, how desperately he wants her, how he lacks the restraint to take her up to their chambers, but she is beautiful like this, her tongue curling and her cheeks hollowing, nearly as beautiful as she is when his mouth is on her, when she's twisting and gasping and pushing her cunt against his face. He spends with his hand in her hair and his head tipped back against the wall, his frayed nerves jumping at every noise on the stairs, at how loudly his low, throaty moan seems to echo off the walls.

She kisses him as she tucks him away, her cheeks flushed pink and her tongue still tart with his seed, and he leans into her with a sigh, pulls her as close to him as he can. Her belly is slightly thicker than he remembers, the gap between his thumbs larger when he spans her waist with his hands; he doesn't ask if she is with child again, knows she will tell him when she is ready, but hope wells in his chest, sweeter and brighter than the guilt licking at the pit of his gut. They are still not properly wed, not in any way that is recognized south of the Wall, but half the people in his lands are free-folk now, and the other half -- Northern men who have sworn oaths to him, whose fathers had sworn oaths to his father -- are just happy enough to have peace and quiet and a Stark at Winterfell once again.

He falls asleep as soon as he reaches his chambers, barely pausing long enough to remove his boots before sprawling across the bed. The linens and furs smell of Val, of the lavender soap she uses to wash her hair, and Jon dreams of Winterfell as it had been before the sack -- when his father had still lived, when Catelyn's hatred had been his biggest concern, when Robb had been his dearest and truest friend -- wakes briefly in the slow, golden light of late afternoon to find Aidith cuddled into the curve of his arm. She has Jon's coloring and Val's looks, her dark hair curling wildly around her heart-shaped face and rosebud mouth, and Jon presses a kiss to her forehead, traces the soft lines of her cheeks and jaw until he drifts off again with her head tucked under his chin.

Winterfell has been Jon's for close to three years, is still broken in some places and blackened in others, the restoration taking more time than Jon had ever imagined, needing more gold than Jon has to spare. The glass gardens have been repaired, and the stables have been given a new roof, but the armory still leans to one side, and parts of the Great Keep are still ruined and charred. Workers bring huge chunks of stone in from the quarries in the hills, and masons carefully carve them into bricks, and Jon paces the yard as he frets about the cost, as he worries that the monthly taxes will not cover the losses, thinned down after so many of the smallfolk marched south with Robb and never returned, after more were killed by Theon's raiders and Ramsay's fires.

"It will be enough," Sam says mildly, the ledgers open on one of the many tables in his cluttered turret. Jeor and Aemon are seated at his feet, playing with a dozen brightly-colored wooden blocks Sam had painted by hand shortly after Gilly arrived at Winterfell. "We need to be careful, but it will be enough."

Jon still paces in the yard from time to time, often with Aidith balanced on his hip and Jeor holding his hand, but he repeats Sam's determined words in the back of his mind, takes comfort in his wife, who never falters, never seems to tire. She learned her letters her first year at Winterfell, has grown better at sums than Jon and Sam combined, runs Jon's household just as efficiently as Catelyn had run his father's; Jon watches her as she orders more pigs slaughtered for salted pork, more vegetables pickled in wine, more fruit sugared into preserves, and his chest fills with pride until he aches with it, grateful for everything he's been given, everything he'd never thought he'd have.

She brings him out to the godswood some afternoons, her hand tight around his wrist as soon as the children go down for their naps, urging him to put his mouth on her in the soft stretch of humus beside the hot pool, to fuck her on all fours under the heart tree, her fingers grasping at the fallen weirwood leaves as he thrusts into her, his hands digging into her hips and her skirts pushed up just enough to bare her cunt. She bites his ears when he sits at his writing desk, slips her hand inside his breeches when he's meant to be penning letters, pushes him back against walls to suck bruises into his neck. He wonders if it is the pregnancy that drives her, her belly now large enough that he splay his hands on either side of it, but she laughs when he mentions it, kisses him with her thumb pressed to the well of his lip.

"A woman can want to fuck as much as a man," Val says, tugging on his hair, dragging her tongue up the line of his jaw. "You should have taken a kneeler to wife, if you wish for someone who will wait for you to come to her."

"I wouldn't want a kneeler for a wife," he admits, drawing her nipple into his mouth, licking and sucking until she gasps and pushes his hand between her legs. "I only want you."

Snow blankets the yards almost every morning, wind hissing and howling once the sky blackens for the night, the moon hidden behind a thick layer of dark clouds. Gilly sews heavier cloaks for the children and Sam sends ravens to the Citadel reporting on the Northern weather; Val orders more rain barrels filled with snow and packed into the cellars, and Jon spends more gold and silver he cannot spare, hiring men to cut enough lumber and stone to repair the damage Ramsay's fires did to winter town.

They cut more firewood and dig more wells, plant new seeds in every available patch of dirt in the glass gardens.

"Harder," Val pants, her voice sharp in the dusty air of the larder, twisting her hips as Jon fucks her while he should be doing a hundred other things, his face burning hot, shame curling around the heat in his gut because he cannot keep his hands off her no matter how hard he tries. She arches her back as he thrusts, her hair a sweaty tangle against the floor, her belly large enough now to be a hindrance; he sits up on his heels, spreading her thighs over his so he can fit his hand between his legs, spends watching her bite her lip and tug at her nipple, her throat fluttering softly as she moans his name.

Val's pains start as the clouds press and gather for another storm, a month earlier than Jon expects, in spite of how big she has grown in the last few weeks, but she only squeezes his arm as her women lead her into the birthing chamber, smiles in a way that says she knows something he does not. He sits outside in the hallway, just as he had with Jeor and Aidith, his shoulders hunched and his back against the wall, Ghost sprawled out across the doorway like a sentry, but he has Sam with him this time, his grey robes pale against the stone floor and his round face pulled into a frown.

"I should be in there with her," Sam says, his chain rattling softly as he shakes his head.

"The free-folk believe men are ill luck at a birthing," Jon says quietly, patting Sam's knee. "You'd only upset them." He smiles and nudges Sam with his elbow. "Besides, I need someone out here with me."

The sun rises and sets, hidden by wind and snow and clouds, and Val's screams echo off the walls, rattle into Jon's bones as he chews his fingernails, as he bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. It's three full days before the doors open, long enough that Jon finds his feet like an old man, his knees popping and his thighs aching, his hands clumsy and numb, shaking with nerves and exhaustion; he blinks when the midwife tells him he has two sons, is sure he has misheard her until he sees them -- a pair of tiny babes with pink faces and faint dustings of dark hair, so identical he ties a bit of leather thong around the eldest's wrists in order to tell them apart.

"I will let you name them," Val says tiredly, smiling as he presses a kiss to her sweaty temple. "In two years."

"In two years," Jon agrees, his throat so tight he can barely speak.

He sits in a heavy wooden chair beside the bed, holding Eddard in the crook of his arm, stroking his thumb over his soft, tiny cheek as he watches Val nurse Benjen, her hand cradling his head as she coaxes her nipple into his mouth.

"Did they finish the new well?" Val asks, her voice sharp and weary at once.

"Last night."

"What about the firewood?" she presses, wincing slightly as she tries to sit up straighter. "I wanted them to fill that second storeroom."

"It's done. Sam saw to it this morning."

"And the water barrels?"

"All full," Jon says. He rises from the chair, holding Eddard closer to his chest as he perches on the edge of the bed and covers her hand with his. "You've just birthed two babes. You can leave the household to me for a few days."

"Winter is coming," Val says, sounding for all the world as if she had been born a Stark.

Jon smiles and kisses the top of Eddard's head. "We'll be ready."