THE FULL AND LONELY HART | JON SNOW & ROBB STARK X OC [ASOIAF/GOT]

PART I

PART I
Winterfell

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"Love, we must part now: do not let it be
Calamitious and bitter. In the past
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more eager to be free,
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see
The grain going forward to a different use.

There is regret. Always, there is regret.
But it is better that our lives unloose,
As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light,
Break from an estuary with their courses set,
And waving part, and waving drop from sight."

(PHILLIP LARKIN, 'LOVE WE MUST PART NOW')

ch 1 — northern hospitality
"Forgive Sansa her dreams of knights and princes and romance." Robb stepped into her chambers without invitation. Clad in leather and furs, she could sense so little of that boy she once knew: small and ruddy-cheeked and impish. The boy who blushed at her scrutiny, who offered her winter roses and baulked when she bested him in a race. This boy was different. She thought he might almost make a passable Lord Stark, if misfortune pronounced it.

ch. 2 — the heart remains a child
There was nobody, truthfully, who undid him like she could. Jon had thought often of seeing Maelle again. Once he had dared to ask his father if they could ride to Dragonstone to see her, but he had been shut down. Winterfell needed the Starks. Even in peacetime, they could not afford to abandon the castle, especially just for a social call. So Jon settled instead for dreaming.

ch. 3 — fell and cruel hounds
But he was right. She cursed him for it, but he was: she was of marrying age. She had been for a long time. In fact, she had been lucky to remain unpromised for as long as she had. That was the rational side of it, she considered, each time the anger receded. And then it flared up great again as she watched him thunder through the gates from across the courtyard. She wanted to leave as easily as he could. She wanted to see the world! To tour the lands her family held like a proper liege lord, to mix with sellswords on the kingsroad and smugglers on the Narrow Sea, to voyage out to the Summer Isles and see the place her darkness came from.

ch. 4 — the wound
"I can't do it with one arm," he admitted. She hated herself for how his look affected her: his eyes were gentle and his cheeks tinted red. Embarrassment, most likely, but she saw too that he was seeking forgiveness. In place of giving it to him, she slid herself onto the desk so that she was facing him, and reached down to unhook the steel button at the base of his throat.

ch. 5 — nine lives
He was walking through the crypts of Winterfell. A shadow chased him, a feeling in the shape of darkness. Get out, boy, it whispered. Get out, get out. It sounded like Lady Catelyn, sharp and shrill and pained, as though his presence alone was a dagger in its throat. Yes, the words came choked out and twisted. But he had no mind to pay heed to them. He was intent on something. Old Kings of the North watched him with baleful granite eyes, as if they knew he was not welcome here, but they were frozen in time, unable to throw him out.

ch. 6 — prayers and dreams
From whose womb had he sprung, dark-haired and straight-nosed, ivory and fierce? It did not matter, after all. No matter how long he dwelled on it, he would remain at that low table tonight, marooned amongst drunks he did not know, kicked aside like a beggar of a dog. Though he was more than that. He was a son and a brother. And yet. Yet.

ch. 7 — the king's feast
So when the feast came, she watched him from her place on the dais. Long rows of trestle tables stretched between them, each filled with men packed shoulder-to-shoulder, with the gaps between tables woven with dogs and servants alike. At the beginning they had made a game of staring for periods, then of sneaking glances, mouthing words. Insipid, he'd mouthed as Robb entered with Myrcella on his arm. She frowned. Cold-hearted, she'd shot back at him.

ch. 8 — a bastard's honour
"Oh, say that again," she retorted, quick and hot. "I'm a vain, wicked creature. And if you are listing my flaws, you forgot pride, and what old Maester Cressen calls 'wilful petulance.'" She fell beside him into the furs, breathless. Her body was so warm, thrumming with life in a way that was infectious. Amongst the sorrow of leaving this place behind he was quite sure the only thing keeping his blood working was her.

ch. 9 — a lady's grace
Beneath the fine dresses she had come to love and the lady's manipulation she reluctantly learned to wield, she was the same wild, headstrong girl. The kind whose pride often tangled her in mischief back home, the kind who lied to Septas and drank too much wine, wormed her way out of responsibilities and kissed Ned Stark's bastard son under his stepmother's nose.

ch. 10 — sad, bloody aftermath
That morning, as the grey clouds caged the sun and a stiff, bleak mist dropped low to hang in the castle, Jon picked his way through the grounds and down to the lichyard, where the bones of the old Kings of Winter lay. He threaded through the yard with solemn bearing, Ghost a white shadow trailing behind. Age-old legends of men dwelled beneath his every step. Their bodies were piled high with soil and commemorated with lichen-eaten tombstones. Even kings received no honours in death, Jon thought.

ch. 11 — sallar and shanta
The half-moon stained her black hair near blue. Her pale eyes watched him from beneath a sweep of long, dark lashes, and she had let her hair down from its updo to let it fall over her shoulders. The moon had to work that much harder to highlight each tight curl.

ch. 12 — love we must part now
The future frightened her. It seemed to her like a permanent recollecting, a negotiation with memory. Moons from now she would bathe herself in the Red Keep, caressing her own limbs, telling herself: Jon Snow had touched me here once. But she would be unable to retrieve the feeling of his touch. All she had was words. Or she might take to the balcony and look down at the red roofs, groping  at the rushing feeling that came to her when astride the southern wall with Tyrion. What use was memory? It was a fickle, insubstantial beast.