Missing

Winter's Child Preview WIP (Surprise!)

Some of the pieces I have written for Winter's Child are more edited than I realized, so I thought I'd share one here as a treat for all of you who have stuck with the story through my accidental hiatus. We start reeeeally getting into some of the lore I've developed for the story going forward, and I'm excited to hear what you think of it!

“It’s so dark, father.” Sansa shuddered as her eyes flicked around her and she clutched tight at her father’s hand. She was all of eight years old, and had never been this far back into the crypts. Her other hand was firmly ensconced in Bael’s fur as she held onto his leg. “Why must our kin rest in such a- a lonely place?”

Her father chuckled, the sound echoing in the cavern.

“’tis not lonely, child.” He told her, easily lifting her up onto his hip. “Our crypts hold our kin- the history of our house. Hard men and honorable men and men who survived many winters. Can you think of better company for us in death?”

Sansa had to admit that this made sense. she snuggled closer to her father, tucking her head in his neck. Lady seemed wary as well, sticking close by Bael’s side. She was still tiny, next to the massive adult direwolf, and kept darting under him, eyes flicking around at the stone figures.

“You’re freezing already, sweetling.” Her father frowned, putting a hand to her cheek. “Your skin is like ice.”

“I’m not cold.” Sansa insisted, stubbornly. She didn’t want to go back yet. The crypts frightened her, but it was so rare that her father’s attention was focused on her and her alone. “Why are our crypts underground?”

“Where should they be?”

“Mother’s family lay their kin to rest in the rivers.” She murmured, playing with a lock of her father’s dark hair. “The Targaryens burned their dead, Maester Luwin said.”

Her father smiled at her.

“Would that your brothers paid half as much attention in their lessons.” He shook his head. “We return to the embrace of the earth- to rest under the roots of the weirwood and the eyes of the old gods.” he was quiet for a moment as they reached her aunt Lyanna’s tomb. “The old gods grant us the privilege of their power while we live.”

“Our gifts.” Sansa murmured. “The direwolves.” Bael leaned his head down, nuzzling at her dangling feet and she giggled.

“Yes, sweetling.” her father murmured, his eyes flashing for a second. “We return that gift to the earth when we die. The stone keeps in our bones, but our ancestors rest on the earth itself.” he gestured towards the older tombs, overrun with great, twisting white roots. “We feed the weirwood in death, allowing her to take back our magic.”

“Old Nan told me that the crypts are deep enough to keep our wild magic in.” Sansa told him. “Especially the Starks of old. Before Torrhen. The kings of winter.”

“Perhaps she is right.” Ned murmured, setting Sansa down to stand next to him in front of Lyanna’s statue. His gaze was indecipherable as he looked on her stone face. She had been beautiful, Sansa knew. Everyone always said so. She was beautiful even in stone, her companion, Alya, carved beside her. “The gift granted to the Starks of old was different from the wolves, sweetling. Harsher, wilder- more dangerous. Those who could call winter to their fingertips do not rest easily.”

“Why not?”

“To hold sway over winter was to call and command death itself.” Her father told her, his voice soft. “To live with one foot in the world of the gods. It was a wild gift, Sansa, and not one to be taken lightly.”

She nodded, solemnly. She had read the stories of the Stark kings of old. She wasn’t sure she would ever want to meet one, even if they were kin. One question kept tugging at the back of her mind, though.

“Father?”

“Yes, sweetling?”

“Why did the gods take it from us? The winter-blood gift, i mean.”

“I wish I knew.” Ned told her, his gaze not directed towards her, but rather to his sister’s face. “But none but Torrhen Stark and his immediate kin would know, and his bones remain silent. They hold no answers for us here.”

The two were silent for another moment.

“Do you think the gods will ever give it back to us?” Sansa asked, softly.

Her father’s face momentarily crumpled into a deep grief before he seemed to steady himself, digging a hand into Bael’s thick fur.

“Perhaps.” he murmured, laying a wreath of evergreen atop his sister’s tomb. There were snowflakes etched up and down the stone. Sansa had always thought it oddly beautiful for something so grim. “We can only wait on the gods, sweetling. One day, they may answer your question.”

Jonsa kissing cousins ❤️

We Run the Gamut (Let's Run Away)

boy and girl meet. live parallel lives. and, one day, they start to come together. scenes inspired by all the different types of love for the @jonsa-valentine event 2024.

AGAPE

love for everyone

"Hello? Is anyone home?"

Jon looks up from where he's been sulking in the dark to see one of the Stark girls — the redheaded daughter — standing outside the front door to the guest house. She'd knocked once already, but Jon had ignored it, thinking whoever it was would just go away. Now, he can see she's still out there, silhouette illuminated at the top of the stairs. The porch light catches copper highlights in her hair and makes them glow.

He wonders if she's annoyed she has to knock instead of just letting herself in. Maybe she used to spend a lot of time in the apartment over the Starks' detached garage. Or maybe she never came out here. Maybe her bedroom in that fancy old house is already so big and private she never bothers to explore anywhere else.

"Hello?" she calls again. "Mrs. Snow?"

When Jon finally answers the door, flicking on the living room light as he goes, he sees that the girl — Sansa, he thinks — hasn't come empty-handed. In her arms is a ceramic dish full of some sort of baked good, little tarts or custards with cooked lemon slices on top.

read the rest on ao3

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

One wave short of a shipwreck

word count: 654

tags: college/university, sororities, casual sex, sexual content

He’s barely dated enough girls to subscribe to a type, and loathes the idea of being predictable enough to have one, but it doesn’t exactly take rocket science to understand that whatever that type is, Sansa Stark is definitively Not It.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

She has a picture of her winning Miss Teen Pennsylvania on her dresser in her cluttered little single freshman dorm and the social media christened title of Miss Bamarush and a personalized, monogrammed jewelry box that could have very well paid a solid chunk of her tuition if her parents weren’t already doing it for her and more pink clothes than he thought was physically possible.

She carries a tiny sewing kit in her bag. Like an actual sewing kit.

Everything she knows about football is against her will.

When he asked her—with no small amount of surprise, he’ll admit, though it was completely unintentional—You got into Yale?—she stared at him, mouth curling into a sneer that was sugary sweet, It wasn’t like it was hard.

From that very moment, she decided she couldn’t stand him, which he supposed was fair.

The sex is insane.

*

She’s got this cross necklace, a flash of 22 karat gold just between her breasts. It triggers something like a Pavlovian response in him after they hit the two month mark, makes his mouth water and his breath quicken. It brushes cold against his chest whenever she rides him.

Jon is 20 when he recalls why sex makes people do the craziest things.

Eight years of gymnastics, she says, a little haughtily, when he marvels at the limberness of her body. She folds her legs perfectly over his shoulders so she can open wider, presses her knee almost flat against her stomach just so he can be deeper, arches her back when he’s behind her because they are now so in tune with what the other likes.

She likes his mouth, on her throat, sewing hickeys into her skin like glittering red sequins, and bracketed by her thighs when she straddles his face from above. Oh please, she snaps, when she’s just about had it with him and she’s gonna let him know, then: Please, muffled into her arm when his hands are on her hips and he’s pulling her back onto him.

He likes messing her up. He likes tossing her prissy little headbands to the side and leaving a rash from his stubble between her legs and shoving down her tube top and winding her hair around his hand, making it known on her body that he was here, even if the assholes stumbling over their feet on campus can’t see them, he knows—

He knows.

“You’re the worst,” She grumbles, dabbing concealer on her neck before she heads back to her dorm in time to get ready for date night.

Roaring 20’s is the theme.

Her flapper dress is the color of starlight. She tried it on in front of his mirror, and he pretended to do his homework while she twirled in front of the mirror.

He didn’t know what he liked better—when she didn’t know he was watching or when she pretended not to notice.

“You could stay,” he offers, casual, like his heart isn’t in his throat, like she isn’t under his skin.

Sansa’s gaze slides over to him in the mirror as she strategically drapes her hair around her neck.

He breaks first, looking away.

This happens a lot with her.

“If I did,” She says, voice lilting and airy, “You’d never get anything done.”

Probably not. Then, as she makes his way towards him, he amends that, “Definiteky not.”

Sansa kisses him, soft and brief, tasting of cherry chapstick and him.

“Thanks,” it’s sweet and it’s quiet and it’s sincere and that’s probably the worst part of all, because that’s just who she is. It probably means nothing.

He doesn’t even want it to.

She isn’t even his type.

“Daddy?”

“Find Jon,” Ned said frantically as the capital guards hovered. They only had minutes before she’d be shoved onto the train.  

“Jon? I don’t understand,” Sansa said, frantic.

Ned held his daughter’s face in his hands. “Jon. He’s my sister Lyanna’s. Do you remember her?” 

How could Sansa not remember. Lyanna Stark was the only District 12 tribute to have ever won the Hunger Games. Every child in District 12 knew her name. She’d returned home after her victory only to announce that she would marry her primary sponsor—a man from one of the most prominent families in District 1. Ned had always suspected she’d been coerced, but suggesting as much would have only endangered her life. Why do that after everything she’d already survived? 

“Her son is the tribute for District 1. Seek him out. He’ll help you.” 

“He’ll kill me,” she sobbed. “I’m going to die.”

“Find him, Sansa. Find a way.”

—–

Jonsa Hunger Games AU in which the Starks live in District 12, where Ned is a leader and once upon a time, a young Lyanna was reaped and went on to win the games. Years later, Sansa’s name is called at the reaping, and as she’s carted off, Ned reminder her that his sister’s son—a District 1 tribute raised to win the games—will be in the arena with her and might help keep her alive. 

Game of Thrones by Pablo Olivera

not to stan on main but i honestly love everything about sansa stark?!?!?! seriously, even at her most controversial moments i still love her. like “she wasn’t nice to tyrion when they were married” so?? she was a political prisoner and child bride, next. “she lied about the nymeria incident” um an 11 year old made a decision on the spot while being grilled by the queen to appease a tyrannical douchebag and maintain the alliance between stark and baratheon. “she fights with her sister” please point me to a pair of siblings who have never fought in their lives. “she didn’t fight her way out of king’s landing” and? if she had tried to stab everyone she would have immediately got her throat slit???? “she likes stories about knights and princesses” bitch me too tf.

i think there’s something so beautiful and relatable about a soft-spoken and observant teenager who made some silly teenage decisions but rolls with the punches and rejects the teachings of corrupt mentors in a time when everyone around her is morally bankrupt. i love how some people immediately love her and for some she’s an acquired taste. i love how her mental activity becomes more and more thought-provoking as she develops and she de-romanticizes court life. i love how she’s an excellent foil for arya, her likeness in all the ways that matter. on the outside she appears complacent as people mock her and the starks but on the inside she’s becoming a powerhouse of empathy and refining her sense of justice.