#yes i'm obsessed with the idea of sansa not realizing they're related

[greenhikingboots]

Jonsa Prompt - Kiss

My contibution to the Jonsa prompt “kiss” is under the cut because, like everything else I’ve ever written, it ended up being about 4x times longer than anticipated. (about 2,200 words total, more than intended for a ficlet).

It’s inspired by pre-canon + kissing game theories and that canon line, “He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but “my half brother” since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant.”

[Disclaimer! I’m not sure how old they’re supposed to be here. As I wrote it, I was thinking Sansa and Bran have a larger age gap between them than they do and that this ficlet would take place before he was born. But a quick Google search two minutes ago told me there’s only four years between them, so just go with it, I guess. 🙃]

They approached the tree in which Sansa hid from opposite directions. Theon from the left, Jon from the right. Due to their necks being strained upwards, their eyes searching for her, neither of them noticed the other until they were close by and spoke at the same time.

“Aha! Got you!” Theon shouted. “There you are,” Jon said softly. They looked at each other, frowning, then back at Sansa who kicked her feet lazily below the tree branch. She would need one of them to help her get down just as she had needed Robb’s help to get up. That was the reason she hadn’t wanted to play this new game, Maiden in the Tower. She’d have much preferred Hide and Find, a game with a similar concept but without the requirement of her sitting in a branch high above the ground. The boys had insisted, though. “It’s more fun with a reward,” Robb had said. “Make Arya be your maiden, then,” Sansa had counted. “You know that wouldn’t work. She can’t sit still long enough.” And so Sansa had relented. Far be it from her to spoil the fun of the three boys she loved best, even if they were also the three boys she found most obnoxious. “Now what?” she asked two of them some thirty minutes after the onset of the game, her feet still kicking through the air. “Now the winner gets a kiss from the maiden,” Theon said. He sounded exasperated, like he couldn’t fathom why he had to explain the rules to her a second time. “And the loser takes the next turn against Robb,” he added, sounding quite the same. Sansa glared at him. “I meant how do we decide who’s the winner and who’s the loser when you spotted me at exactly the same time.” Theon grinned. He often did that. Everything was amusing to him, even matters which shouldn’t have been. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps you should choose the winner, fair maiden. Which of us would you like to bestow with a kiss?” At that, Jon scoffed and turned to walk away. Just as Theon often grinned, Jon often assumed he would be overlooked. Sansa supposed it was because he was a bastard and they were often overlooked. “I choose Jon,” she announced primly. It delighted her to behave unexpectedly every now and then. It also delighted her to disappoint Theon. All the boys in the castle thought better of themselves than they should, even Jon who couldn’t be bothered to respond graciously when he was truly overlooked. But Theon was the worst offender. He needed a lesson in humility, Sansa decided. And so, a lesson she would give him. Jon spun on his heels and looked at Sansa. He looked at Theon. A moment later, when he shrugged, it seemed as if he wanted to appear less pleased than he was. He reached up to help Sansa out of the tree, and then her feet landed in front of him with a quiet thud. Sansa left her hands placed on Jon’s arms as she rose on her tiptoes to kiss him. Any other day and she would have puckered her lips to keep them firm. She would have made the kiss short and without feeling. Today, however, she did the opposite. Sansa kissed Jon with tender lips and with a hint of appreciation and longing. He pulled back almost immediately, his face flushed with surprise. Good, Sansa thought. That means the difference was noticeable. She turned to Theon with a smug smile on her face, but it slipped away when he burst into laughter. “Seven hells, Sansa,” he said. “I know you tire of my arrogance, but you don’t have to commit a sin to prove a point. I apologize for assuming you’d pick me over Jon.” Theon’s apology pleased Sansa, but part of it confused her too. “But kissing isn’t a sin,” she said. Not even kissing with tender lips. Not even when done outside of marriage. She knew this for certain because she’d asked Mother once, after her friend Jeyne Poole admitted to wanting to kiss Robb. “It’s a sin if the person you’re kissing is your brother and the way you’re kissing him is like that,” Theon insisted. Sansa rolled her eyes. So Theon wanted to make her feel foolish because she’d made him feel foolish? Fine. She could handle that. “Well, good thing Jon is no more my brother than you are,” she said. Both Theon and Jon’s expressions twisted into ones which were difficult to read, though they hinted at a belief that Sansa had turned into a fool. That worried her. Jon wouldn’t look at her that way unless she’d done something to deserve it. “Was that a jape?” Theon asked. “If so, it’s not a very good one.” For one wild second, Sansa considered agreeing. Why, yes, that was a jape, she might have said. But the word sin gnawed at her. She didn’t understand. What had she done wrong? “I love you both as well as I love my brother,” she said, “but you, Theon, are a ward. And you, Jon, are a bastard. Meaning you aren’t truly related to me. So why —” Sansa never finished her sentence for Theon burst into another fit of laughter, this one as loud as any she’d heard in her life. She kept her eyes glued to him, expecting him to rasp out a few words through his fit, to say something that would make his reaction make sense. Instead, it was Jon who spoke through Theon’s laughter. “Stop it, Greyjoy,” he said. “Can’t you see she’s embarrassed enough as it is?” Theon clutched his chest and quieted himself. “Sansa. Oh, Sansa,” he said, still grinning. “What is it, exactly, that you believe a bastard to be?” Though she knew her answer would be wrong, she gave it anyway. What else could she do? “An orphan raised in a castle,” she muttered. She left out the part about a kind-hearted lord or lady having to first take favor on the orphan. To her, that part seemed essential, even if it was implied. Hadn’t it always been worded that way? This is Jon, Lord Stark’s bastard. But to say so now would do her no favors, she realized. Theon laughed again, and Jon moved towards him with a clenched fist. Theon backed away, his arm stretched in front of him like a shield. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he rushed to say, though amusement still shone in his eyes. Jon slowed his steps and loosened his fist, but he didn’t fully yield until they heard Robb calling out to them. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “She kissed him,” Theon hollered in reply.

“Well, that is the point of the game,” Robb quipped. “No, no. She really kissed him.” Robb stopped in his tracks. His eyebrows furrowed. “Why would you do that?” he asked Sansa. “I didn’t know it was wrong,” she whined. “I still don’t understand why it was. They haven’t explained it to me.” “Because he’s your brother,” Robb said, as if that was obvious. “No he isn’t,” Sansa insisted. “He’s a bastard.” “He’s your half-brother and a bastard.” Robb sounded like he thought that should settle it, but Sansa still didn’t understand. She threw up her hands, too frustrated to be embarrassed any longer. “I don’t know what that means. How can someone be half a brother?” A loud bark of laughter shot out of Theon before he clasped his hand over his mouth to muffle the noise. Sansa ignored him and faced Jon, who she hoped she could count on for a kinder explanation than the other two were likely to give her. But Jon, she saw, was facing Robb, so she gave in and did likewise. “Father wasn’t faithful to Mother during the war,” Robb said. “He put a babe in another woman’s belly and now that babe has grown up to be Jon. He’s our half-brother because we share one parent but not the other. And he’s a bastard because he was born outside of a lawful marriage.” Sansa felt like she’d been hit over the head with the pommel of a sword. How was she supposed to have known all that? No one had ever told her before. “Who explained that to you? Was it Father?” she asked. Robb seemed to consider the question rather seriously for a moment. “I don’t remember him telling me, though I suppose he must have when I was quite young,” he said. “Perhaps he told you when you were young too,” Jon suggested, looking at Sansa now. “But you forgot, same as Robb.” “That’s ridiculous. If Father had told me something like that, I’d have remembered it. He must have thought only the boys needed to know.” Sansa was seething. She could hear her little sister’s voice sounding off between her ears. Girls are important too! That was true, and they deserved to understand the ways of Westeros just as much as boys did. She wanted to march off and tell her Father so. She might have done it right then, had she known what part of the castle to find him in.  “I’m done with this game,” Sansa declared. “I’m going to my chambers to rest.” Theon made an odd sound, something like a protest. They all turned to stare at him. “But Robb and I have two wins each,” he said. “Let’s have one final round. Please, Sansa? I bet it’ll help settle your uh… your anger.” Had Theon wanted to say embarrassment? Either way, Sansa doubted very much that he had the right of it. But since neither Robb nor Jon spoke up in her defense, she decided it was better to agree. Perhaps even if another round didn’t help settle her embarrassment or anger, it would help settle Theon’s fits of laughter. “One more,” she said, “but that’s it.” The four of them walked back to the front of the godswood, just as they’d done before each previous round of Maiden in the Tower, though this time they walked in silence. Once there, the tension lingered. Sansa noticed the way Jon scuffed the dirt with his boots. He doesn’t want to initiate the next part, she thought. He doesn’t want to be alone with me. “Jon, you won the last round,” Robb said, “but Theon and I are tied, remember? That means it’s your turn to help Sansa find a tree.” “Right,” Jon grumbled with a nod. He turned over his shoulder and beckoned Sansa to follow him. “Let’s go, my dear half-sister,” he added after a moment. “Are you trying to be funny,” she asked as she caught up to him. “I’m trying to lighten the mood, yes. I don’t want you feeling badly about what you did.” Sansa thought to argue, to say that she didn’t feel badly. The way she kissed him had been an honest mistake. But then the word Theon had used came back to her. Sin. “Do you think it’s truly a sin?” she asked Jon. He shook his head. “Had you known better, it would have been. But you didn’t and so I’m sure the gods won’t hold it against you.” “What about Father? Will the gods hold his sins against him?” They hadn’t yet reached a tree fitted for their game, but Jon came to an abrupt stop and so Sansa did too. She looked at his face and saw that something like regret was etched across it. Was this why he hadn’t wanted to be alone with her? He hadn’t wanted to discuss Father?  “I won’t make excuses for the worst of his mistakes,” JOn said, “but at the same time, I won’t regard him as anything less than an honorable man.” “And that’s the position you think I should take as well?” Sansa asked. “It’s not my place to tell you what position to take.” That made Sansa smile, though she’d felt far from able to a moment earlier. She thought how, despite his tendency towards moodiness, Jon always found his way back to level thinking. She liked that about him. Admired it, even. She gave him a nod of acknowledgement and then began to walk again. Jon followed and soon enough they found a tree worthy of a maiden’s tower. Sansa stood with her back to the branch. “Ready?” she asked Jon. “Ready.” He put his hands on her waist, then lifted her into the tree. “I’ll go to tell the others they can begin their search now,” he said before walking away, leaving Sansa to stare at the back of his head. “Jon?” she called out suddenly. He spun on his heels, just as he’d done when she’d chosen him to receive her kiss. “Fair maiden?” he teased. “I wanted to say thank you. For not laughing at me earlier. And for trying to get Theon to stop.” Jon smirked. “That’s quite alright. I’m sure it is I who should be thanking you.” “What for?” “For bestowing me with your kiss, of course.” “It pleased you?” Jon ran a nervous hand over the back of his neck. “Don’t tell the others,” he said. “They’ll think it means something it doesn’t.” Sansa’s heart fluttered with appreciation at that. As Jon walked away for good, she said a silent prayer to the gods, thanking them for giving her such a wonderful half-brother. I’ll never call him a bastard again, she thought. He’s more to me than that.