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Jon returns only to his chambers long after it is dark. His wife is already there, sitting at her small vanity with her ankles crossed. When he closes the door behind him, she glances to her mirror where she can see him. When their eyes snag, they both offer small smiles--Jon's relieved, hers restrained and meaningless.
"How were the discussions with the Manderlys?" Sansa asks, unthreading one earring and placing it on the desk. Her hands are slow and careful. Even now, in their chambers at the end of the day when it is only them, her words and gestures are still sometimes carefully guarded.
He tips his head back against the door and shakes it.
Sansa's responding sigh is small but unmistakable.
Her disappointment is enough to bring a few words to his tongue. "I understand their arguments--sympathize with them, even. White Harbor is a true city, with a great many inhabitants."
"Perhaps as many as the rest of the North combined," Sansa agrees, but cautiously.
"And yet?"
She's silent for a moment, removing her other earring and laying it with the first with a soft clink. "White Harbor is on the southern coast--there are even a few lemon trees there, I hear. The sea mitigates the worst of the cold. And they trade so much with the Southern Kingdoms. Of all places in the North to be during a winter, it is one of the safest and most well-fed. But the houses farther north . . . Karhold, Last Hearth . . . they are in far more danger. The people who betrayed us are dead, anyhow. Their children don’t deserve to pay for the mistakes of their parents. And . . ."
"Winter is coming," Jon finishes. "Yes, I know. You've said all this before."
She purses her lips, cheeks pinking. "I'm sorry to have bored you, then."
"Sansa."
In the mirror, she bites her lip, looking down. "Will you help me with my hair?"
"Gladly." Relieved, he pulls himself from the door and moves to stand behind her, fingers landing lightly on her shoulders.
They wear faces, both of them. They must, as the King and Queen in the North. From his time in the Night’s Watch, he knows well the power of a mask, and before that he had long observed its use by their lord father. The Lord of Winterfell was someone entirely other than Ned Stark. From what she has said of her time in the South and the Vale, it is the same for her. Yet while Jon is relieved to be removed from his burden at the end of the day, it is more difficult for her. But most nights he can coax her out of her mask, given time and patience.
She tilts her head to one side, exposing her neck. His fingers drift to a slim braid over her ear, feeling for pins and sliding them out gently, handing them to her one by one so she can set them in her neat rows.
Once her hair would have confounded him. Jon recalls--though he cringes to--the first time she asked him to do such a thing. It was a scene not unlike this one, with her on the stool looking back at him over her shoulder. In a quiet voice she’d asked him for help taking her hair down, and he’d responded with bafflement. I can call your maid back, he’d suggested, with no small amount of uncertainty. Unease, even. The true emotion is easier to admit years later. At his response, she’d turned away, and in her mirror he saw her disappointed look, though at the time he couldn’t fathom the cause. Surely he was a poor choice to help her, he reasoned, and she did it fine herself anyway.
It wasn’t for some months that he’d recognized the gesture for what it was: an invitation to intimacy. Ygritte had never invited him to do any such thing; her idea of intimacy was slipping into his furs every night, and he’d thought that quite intimate enough, thank you. The realization of his mistake had chagrined him, although it had taken several more weeks and two goblets of wine to offer his help. The strokes of his sword might be graceful, but at this task his hands were clumsy; on many occasions she’d hissed in pain at his less-than-tender ministrations.
He’s much more practiced now. Gentle exploration tells him where the pins are, and he has some familiarity with her many hairstyles.
On the rare occasion he’d imagined marriage when he was younger, nothing like this had ever come to mind. He’d thought of children, and ruling, but never of the simple, unspoken familiarities that flow naturally from close quarters, the unexpected ways their lives have come to fit together.
Her eyes slip closed as he works. He’s not even sure she realizes the sigh of relief she breathes out when his fingertips press light circles into her scalp.
“I’ll talk to Wynafryd and Wylla in the morning,” she murmurs. “Wylla likes Alys, and Alys has two children she probably wouldn’t like to see starve. Not that they would, but . . .”
“Am I speaking to the queen still?” he murmurs, pressing his thumbs into the base of her neck.
In the mirror her eyes flick open, big and blue. “And who else should I be?”
“My wife.” He catches his mistake after he speaks, when her brow creases. That might be only another role for her to slip into, dutiful and distant. He's seen it before. “Or . . . Sansa. Just Sansa.”
She remains silent, but thoughtful. He tugs out the last pin and rubs her scalp there. Her next exhalation is deep and shuddering, and she leans back to rest the crown of her head against him.
He squeezes her shoulders. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
Sansa blinks slowly. It reminds him of how she looks when she wakes in the morning. “Tomorrow I’ll have to put it all back up.”
She might mean just her elaborate hairstyle, but either way it’s the same. He leans over and presses a kiss to her mouth, supporting the back of her head as he does. “Yes, but not tonight,” he murmurs against her lips.
One side of her mouth curls up. There’s a glitter to her eye he doesn’t often see during the day. “And what’s left for me to do tonight, before I sleep?” she teases.
Jon tugs gently on the laces of her gown with one hand, the other moving her hair out of the way so it doesn’t catch. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”