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asoiaf/got fic: sigh no more
Title: sigh no more
Pairing: Jon/Jeyne
Rating: R
Words: ~2,000
Summary: The men were polite to Jeyne where Jon could hear, offering her courtesies that rang hollow and smiles that didn't touch their eyes. They called her Lady Stark when they addressed her -- for she was Lady Stark, if not yet Jon's Lady Stark -- but they named her Kingslayer over their meat and mead, in the reaches of the yards and the shadows of the armory, blaming her for Robb's death and the loss of so many good northern men, for the destruction of Winterfell, for the fact that the North was once again part of the Seven Kingdoms.
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
asoiafkinkmeme, for the prompt Jon/Jeyne, they call her "the Kingslayer" but Jon knows better than anyone how much she loved his brother. Originally posted here.
sigh no more
Jeyne arrived at Winterfell just as autumn began to court winter; Jon met her under a drab, leaden sky, wind tangling through his hair and snow piling at his feet.
Her escorts displayed Targaryen colors over their leather and mail, had the broad, fat-bellied look of eunuchs, kept their backs straight and their spears ready, as if Jeyne was a prisoner, as if she was a threat. She wore a man's cloak over a dress so dark it was nearly black, too wide across the shoulders and spattered with mud and grass, the large hood sagging open around a heart-shaped face that was haunted and drawn.
She bristled slightly as Ghost trotted to Jon's side, watched warily as he bumped his head against Jon's hip. Jon slipped into his skin just long enough to catch her scent -- her fear was bright and sharp in the grey chill of Winterefell's courtyard, but there was something else hidden just beneath it, something bitter, almost sour.
"You don't look like him," she said quietly, and Jon couldn't decide if she was disappointed or relieved.
+
"Her Grace expects you to marry Jeyne before the moon turns," Sam said carefully.
He laid Daenerys' letter on the table, his chain rattling softly as he moved, and Jon sighed, poured himself a cup of wine. He'd only met the queen twice -- when she'd come to the Wall to make him a Stark, when he'd traveled to King's Landing a few months later to swear fealty as the new Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North -- and he'd found her to be thoughtful and shrewd, but also prickly and sharp-tongued. Both times she had tried to arrange a marriage for him, and both times he had quietly refused, had insisted Winterfell was far too derelict, not yet fit for a lady's company.
It still was not, was still scorched in some places and tumbling in others, but the lady was here. She wandered the hallways like a shadow, trailing her fingers over the blackened walls and taking careful steps around the gouges in the floors, and she frowned whenever she saw Jon, wore Robb's ghost around her shoulders like a shroud.
"I had planned on marrying one of Tormund's granddaughters," Jon said, swirling his wine. "Or someone from Sigurd's household -- someone who will strengthen our ties to The Gift."
"Her Grace is not worried about The Gift. She is worried about Robb Stark's widow," Sam said, perching in his favorite chair in Jon's solar, a low and sprawling thing tucked beside a window. "Your brother was King in the North, if only for a year. Anyone who marries Jeyne could make a claim as his heir."
"How does she know I wouldn't do the same?" Jon asked darkly.
Sam laughed, low and throaty and warm. "I doubt Her Grace has even considered it. She had a hard enough time convincing you to take Winterfell."
+
The men were polite to Jeyne where Jon could hear, offering her courtesies that rang hollow and smiles that didn't touch their eyes. They called her Lady Stark when they addressed her -- for she was Lady Stark, if not yet Jon's Lady Stark -- but they named her Kingslayer over their meat and mead, in the reaches of the yards and the shadows of the armory, blaming her for Robb's death and the loss of so many good northern men, for the destruction of Winterfell, for the fact that the North was once again part of the Seven Kingdoms.
She walked in the godswood and prayed in what was left of the Sept, took her meals in her chambers and avoided Jon at every turn. He paused whenever he caught a glimpse of her, a tight knot burning in the back of his throat; he wondered how the men could so easily lay the fault on her slim shoulders, hated how quickly they had forgotten the Greyjoys and Boltons and Lannisters and Freys.
"It is not something you can change," Sam said mildly, hunched over a book that looked older than Winterfell's walls. His turret was dusty and cluttered and cold, and ravens cawed unhappily from their cages near the window. "If you command them to stop, they will only be quieter about it."
"I fear they will always mislike her," Jon said.
"They will never truly love her, but once she bears you a son, they may be easier on her."
Guilt twisted inside Jon's chest like a living thing, stabbed sharper and deeper than Bowen Marsh's knife. He had already taken so much that should have been Robb's -- his name, his holdfast, his birthright and titles -- and now he would take Robb's wife as well, father the children Robb had been denied.
"Jeyne didn't kill Robb."
"No, she didn't," Sam said, glancing up from his book with a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth, "but she is here and Roose Bolton is not."
+
Jon sent her a formal invitation for supper, written on thin parchment with the bright blue and green inks Sam saved for his letters to Gilly. He was surprised when she accepted, thought perhaps she was just too courteous to refuse; she arrived at his solar in a red dress so dark it washed the color from her face, and they ate in an awkward near silence, slow and thick and horrible. She avoided his eyes as he walked her back to her chambers, her long hair loose and casting strange shadows around her face.
"Will you join me again tomorrow?" he asked.
"You are very kind," Jeyne said, a spray of winter roses in her hand. Jon had picked them in the afternoon; his fingers still stung from the prick of their thorns. "You needn't go to all this trouble."
"We're to be married in a fortnight," Jon said, brushing his thumb over her wrist. "I'd like to know you better."
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, offered him a small, sad smile.
+
The men grumbled and frowned as the wedding approached, cast dark looks in Jeyne's direction when she passed them in the halls. Jon brought her more flowers, paid too much gold for a merchant's last bag of Dornish apples, sent out for bolts of soft-spun wool in Jeyne's favorite colors because she'd mentioned she'd like to make a new dress. He took her riding in the Wolfwood, stopping in the places where he and Robb had hunted as children, and he walked with her in the godswood, sitting beneath the heart tree wrapped in furs he'd stolen from his bed.
She talked about the Westerlands and the Crag, her voice thin and sad as told him of the holdfast she had loved despite it having fallen into ruin, of the endless, rushing sounds of the winds and the waves, of the little brother she had doted on and the mother she still hated for her part in Robb's betrayal.
"I loved him," she said, her head on Jon's shoulder and a handful of weirwood leaves scattered across her lap. "I never knew she meant him harm."
Jon careful rested his hand on top of hers. "I know."
The godswood was quiet, perfectly still; steam rose from the hot pools, curling up toward a sky the same color as good steel.
"What was it like at the Wall?" she asked.
The scars on Jon's chest had faded into smooth, white lines, and his burned hand no longer stiffened in the cold. He thought of the arrow in Ygritte's chest and Melisandre's twisting, writhing night fires, of dead men rising from the snow and the way Janos Slynt's head had bounced as it rolled across the yard.
"It was cold," he said, lacing their fingers together.
+
She kissed him three days before they were due to be married, her hands warm against his jaw and her tongue tart with the Dornish wine from supper.
"My lady," Jon said, catching her wrists, running his hands up her arms. The heat under his skin was sudden and terrifying; it had been years since Ygritte died, long enough that he'd almost forgotten what wanting felt like. "Jeyne."
"You don't look like him," she said, much the way she had the day they met.
"I never will."
Jeyne traced a finger down a nose that was too long, over a chin that was too sharp. "I'm glad."
She kissed him again, pressing closer, making a soft, pleased noise in the back of her throat when he slid his hands down to her hips, wrapped his arms around her waist. She was bolder than he expected, pushing her tongue into his mouth, knotting her fingers in his hair, kissing him in a way she must have learned from Robb -- Robb, who had always been brash and honest, unapologetic about the things he did, the things he wanted. Her teeth caught his lip, sharp and teasing, and he moaned quietly, walking her back toward the desk in the corner of his solar, slipping his hands under her arse to sit her on top of it.
Her dress was cut from the new wool he'd bought her, a soft green that darkened the pink flush blooming high on her cheeks; he brushes his hands over her knees as he pushed her skirts up out of the way, stroked his knuckles along her thighs as he rolled her smallclothes down her hips and pulled them down her legs. Her skin was warm and impossibly soft, and she was wet when he drew his fingers over her; he slid a slow kiss up the inside of her thigh, tucked another into the crease of her hip, then nosed at the brownish curls hiding her cunt, slipping his thumbs up to part her as he leaned in and licked into her.
He had almost forgotten this as well -- what a woman tasted like, sweet and perfect, what a woman's thighs felt like trembling against his cheeks, what a woman could sound like, high and sharp and desperate. Ygritte had always been loud and shameless, unafraid of anything, even the needy hitch in her own voice; Jeyne was quieter, hiding her moans in the back of her throat, but she sounded no less beautiful for it, and Jon curled his tongue inside her, slid his mouth up to suck on her nub until she whimpered and gasped and pushed her fingers in his hair to tug his mouth away.
Jon kissed her as he fumbled with the placket of his breeches, as he curved his hands over her hips and thrust inside her. The desk creaked in protest, legs shrieking against the stone floor, and Jon curved his hands underneath her arse, thought about stopping long enough to carry her into the bed, but her fingers were digging into his arms, and her mouth was at his jaw, hot and open and wet. She whispered his name in a way that made the heat in his belly twist and flare, and he slid his hands up her back, pulling her close enough that Robb's ghost could not fit between them.
+
Jeyne had been raised to worship the seven; Jon was surprised when she said she'd prefer to say her vows in Winterfell's godswood.
"Your brother married me in a sept, for all the protection it gave him," she said, brushing her fingers over his jaw. "Perhaps your gods can protect us both."
They knelt before the heart tree, the humus deep and silent beneath them and the dull, heavy sky hidden behind the canopy of weirwoods. Steam rose up from the hot pools, and sentinel needles drifted in the wind, catching in Jeyne's hair. Jon's white and grey direwolf cloak was warm and thick, sewn with Jeyne's careful stitching, and she smiled softly as he laid it across her shoulders.
He stood and offered her his arm. "Lady Stark."
"Yes," she said. "I am."
Pairing: Jon/Jeyne
Rating: R
Words: ~2,000
Summary: The men were polite to Jeyne where Jon could hear, offering her courtesies that rang hollow and smiles that didn't touch their eyes. They called her Lady Stark when they addressed her -- for she was Lady Stark, if not yet Jon's Lady Stark -- but they named her Kingslayer over their meat and mead, in the reaches of the yards and the shadows of the armory, blaming her for Robb's death and the loss of so many good northern men, for the destruction of Winterfell, for the fact that the North was once again part of the Seven Kingdoms.
Notes: Written for
asoiafkinkmeme, for the prompt Jon/Jeyne, they call her "the Kingslayer" but Jon knows better than anyone how much she loved his brother. Originally posted here. Jeyne arrived at Winterfell just as autumn began to court winter; Jon met her under a drab, leaden sky, wind tangling through his hair and snow piling at his feet.
Her escorts displayed Targaryen colors over their leather and mail, had the broad, fat-bellied look of eunuchs, kept their backs straight and their spears ready, as if Jeyne was a prisoner, as if she was a threat. She wore a man's cloak over a dress so dark it was nearly black, too wide across the shoulders and spattered with mud and grass, the large hood sagging open around a heart-shaped face that was haunted and drawn.
She bristled slightly as Ghost trotted to Jon's side, watched warily as he bumped his head against Jon's hip. Jon slipped into his skin just long enough to catch her scent -- her fear was bright and sharp in the grey chill of Winterefell's courtyard, but there was something else hidden just beneath it, something bitter, almost sour.
"You don't look like him," she said quietly, and Jon couldn't decide if she was disappointed or relieved.
+
"Her Grace expects you to marry Jeyne before the moon turns," Sam said carefully.
He laid Daenerys' letter on the table, his chain rattling softly as he moved, and Jon sighed, poured himself a cup of wine. He'd only met the queen twice -- when she'd come to the Wall to make him a Stark, when he'd traveled to King's Landing a few months later to swear fealty as the new Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North -- and he'd found her to be thoughtful and shrewd, but also prickly and sharp-tongued. Both times she had tried to arrange a marriage for him, and both times he had quietly refused, had insisted Winterfell was far too derelict, not yet fit for a lady's company.
It still was not, was still scorched in some places and tumbling in others, but the lady was here. She wandered the hallways like a shadow, trailing her fingers over the blackened walls and taking careful steps around the gouges in the floors, and she frowned whenever she saw Jon, wore Robb's ghost around her shoulders like a shroud.
"I had planned on marrying one of Tormund's granddaughters," Jon said, swirling his wine. "Or someone from Sigurd's household -- someone who will strengthen our ties to The Gift."
"Her Grace is not worried about The Gift. She is worried about Robb Stark's widow," Sam said, perching in his favorite chair in Jon's solar, a low and sprawling thing tucked beside a window. "Your brother was King in the North, if only for a year. Anyone who marries Jeyne could make a claim as his heir."
"How does she know I wouldn't do the same?" Jon asked darkly.
Sam laughed, low and throaty and warm. "I doubt Her Grace has even considered it. She had a hard enough time convincing you to take Winterfell."
+
The men were polite to Jeyne where Jon could hear, offering her courtesies that rang hollow and smiles that didn't touch their eyes. They called her Lady Stark when they addressed her -- for she was Lady Stark, if not yet Jon's Lady Stark -- but they named her Kingslayer over their meat and mead, in the reaches of the yards and the shadows of the armory, blaming her for Robb's death and the loss of so many good northern men, for the destruction of Winterfell, for the fact that the North was once again part of the Seven Kingdoms.
She walked in the godswood and prayed in what was left of the Sept, took her meals in her chambers and avoided Jon at every turn. He paused whenever he caught a glimpse of her, a tight knot burning in the back of his throat; he wondered how the men could so easily lay the fault on her slim shoulders, hated how quickly they had forgotten the Greyjoys and Boltons and Lannisters and Freys.
"It is not something you can change," Sam said mildly, hunched over a book that looked older than Winterfell's walls. His turret was dusty and cluttered and cold, and ravens cawed unhappily from their cages near the window. "If you command them to stop, they will only be quieter about it."
"I fear they will always mislike her," Jon said.
"They will never truly love her, but once she bears you a son, they may be easier on her."
Guilt twisted inside Jon's chest like a living thing, stabbed sharper and deeper than Bowen Marsh's knife. He had already taken so much that should have been Robb's -- his name, his holdfast, his birthright and titles -- and now he would take Robb's wife as well, father the children Robb had been denied.
"Jeyne didn't kill Robb."
"No, she didn't," Sam said, glancing up from his book with a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth, "but she is here and Roose Bolton is not."
+
Jon sent her a formal invitation for supper, written on thin parchment with the bright blue and green inks Sam saved for his letters to Gilly. He was surprised when she accepted, thought perhaps she was just too courteous to refuse; she arrived at his solar in a red dress so dark it washed the color from her face, and they ate in an awkward near silence, slow and thick and horrible. She avoided his eyes as he walked her back to her chambers, her long hair loose and casting strange shadows around her face.
"Will you join me again tomorrow?" he asked.
"You are very kind," Jeyne said, a spray of winter roses in her hand. Jon had picked them in the afternoon; his fingers still stung from the prick of their thorns. "You needn't go to all this trouble."
"We're to be married in a fortnight," Jon said, brushing his thumb over her wrist. "I'd like to know you better."
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, offered him a small, sad smile.
+
The men grumbled and frowned as the wedding approached, cast dark looks in Jeyne's direction when she passed them in the halls. Jon brought her more flowers, paid too much gold for a merchant's last bag of Dornish apples, sent out for bolts of soft-spun wool in Jeyne's favorite colors because she'd mentioned she'd like to make a new dress. He took her riding in the Wolfwood, stopping in the places where he and Robb had hunted as children, and he walked with her in the godswood, sitting beneath the heart tree wrapped in furs he'd stolen from his bed.
She talked about the Westerlands and the Crag, her voice thin and sad as told him of the holdfast she had loved despite it having fallen into ruin, of the endless, rushing sounds of the winds and the waves, of the little brother she had doted on and the mother she still hated for her part in Robb's betrayal.
"I loved him," she said, her head on Jon's shoulder and a handful of weirwood leaves scattered across her lap. "I never knew she meant him harm."
Jon careful rested his hand on top of hers. "I know."
The godswood was quiet, perfectly still; steam rose from the hot pools, curling up toward a sky the same color as good steel.
"What was it like at the Wall?" she asked.
The scars on Jon's chest had faded into smooth, white lines, and his burned hand no longer stiffened in the cold. He thought of the arrow in Ygritte's chest and Melisandre's twisting, writhing night fires, of dead men rising from the snow and the way Janos Slynt's head had bounced as it rolled across the yard.
"It was cold," he said, lacing their fingers together.
+
She kissed him three days before they were due to be married, her hands warm against his jaw and her tongue tart with the Dornish wine from supper.
"My lady," Jon said, catching her wrists, running his hands up her arms. The heat under his skin was sudden and terrifying; it had been years since Ygritte died, long enough that he'd almost forgotten what wanting felt like. "Jeyne."
"You don't look like him," she said, much the way she had the day they met.
"I never will."
Jeyne traced a finger down a nose that was too long, over a chin that was too sharp. "I'm glad."
She kissed him again, pressing closer, making a soft, pleased noise in the back of her throat when he slid his hands down to her hips, wrapped his arms around her waist. She was bolder than he expected, pushing her tongue into his mouth, knotting her fingers in his hair, kissing him in a way she must have learned from Robb -- Robb, who had always been brash and honest, unapologetic about the things he did, the things he wanted. Her teeth caught his lip, sharp and teasing, and he moaned quietly, walking her back toward the desk in the corner of his solar, slipping his hands under her arse to sit her on top of it.
Her dress was cut from the new wool he'd bought her, a soft green that darkened the pink flush blooming high on her cheeks; he brushes his hands over her knees as he pushed her skirts up out of the way, stroked his knuckles along her thighs as he rolled her smallclothes down her hips and pulled them down her legs. Her skin was warm and impossibly soft, and she was wet when he drew his fingers over her; he slid a slow kiss up the inside of her thigh, tucked another into the crease of her hip, then nosed at the brownish curls hiding her cunt, slipping his thumbs up to part her as he leaned in and licked into her.
He had almost forgotten this as well -- what a woman tasted like, sweet and perfect, what a woman's thighs felt like trembling against his cheeks, what a woman could sound like, high and sharp and desperate. Ygritte had always been loud and shameless, unafraid of anything, even the needy hitch in her own voice; Jeyne was quieter, hiding her moans in the back of her throat, but she sounded no less beautiful for it, and Jon curled his tongue inside her, slid his mouth up to suck on her nub until she whimpered and gasped and pushed her fingers in his hair to tug his mouth away.
Jon kissed her as he fumbled with the placket of his breeches, as he curved his hands over her hips and thrust inside her. The desk creaked in protest, legs shrieking against the stone floor, and Jon curved his hands underneath her arse, thought about stopping long enough to carry her into the bed, but her fingers were digging into his arms, and her mouth was at his jaw, hot and open and wet. She whispered his name in a way that made the heat in his belly twist and flare, and he slid his hands up her back, pulling her close enough that Robb's ghost could not fit between them.
+
Jeyne had been raised to worship the seven; Jon was surprised when she said she'd prefer to say her vows in Winterfell's godswood.
"Your brother married me in a sept, for all the protection it gave him," she said, brushing her fingers over his jaw. "Perhaps your gods can protect us both."
They knelt before the heart tree, the humus deep and silent beneath them and the dull, heavy sky hidden behind the canopy of weirwoods. Steam rose up from the hot pools, and sentinel needles drifted in the wind, catching in Jeyne's hair. Jon's white and grey direwolf cloak was warm and thick, sewn with Jeyne's careful stitching, and she smiled softly as he laid it across her shoulders.
He stood and offered her his arm. "Lady Stark."
"Yes," she said. "I am."
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