#a knight who leaves the city and wanders like a lone wolf leaving behind his weapon with the eternal wolf spirit watching over the land

[torgawl]

i might actually be the luckiest diluc lover to ever exist... or the most cursed genshin player depending on the perspective

[tacitwhisky]

Fic: Jon of the Kingsguard, pt 4

Jon x Sansa - AU where Jon goes to Kingslanding instead of the Wall, there’s no war, and he becomes a knight of the kingsguard even as Joffrey marries Sansa / AO3 Link

The crowning of king Joffrey is a spectacle unlike any other, the crowd that gathers in the square before the sept of Baelor a hundred thousand strong, the sound of them as they cheer deafening. Jon watches it all standing behind the new king and queen in his white armor and white cloak. Arya keeps glancing at him from where she sits, brow scrunched in a frown. Neither she nor Sansa he’d told before he took the oath, and the first she’d learned of it was when she’d seen him in the yard of the Red Keep, white cloak around his shoulders. She’d stopped dead, dumbfounded.

When he’d seen him a moment later Joffrey had laughed. “What are you doing in that cloak, bastard? Take it off or I’ll have it stripped from you.”

“I cannot, your grace. A knight of the Kingsguard serves till death,” Jon had answered coolly, and he’d drawn a savage pleasure from the way Joffrey’s face purpled and he’d begun to sputter. For a moment it seemed as though he was going to call for Ilyn Payne to fetch his chopping block, but Sansa had lain a hand on his arm. “Let my half brother have his jape, your grace. Today you are crowned king of the seven kingdoms before all the realm.”

Joffrey scowled and shoved her hand away. “I want him gone. Take his cloak, Selmy.”

“He has spoken the oath, your grace.” Selmy’s own white cloak played in the breeze. “Only death can take it from him now.”

Joffrey’s face twisted and he whirled and shouted for his horse. Alone for a moment, Sansa had given Jon a sad smile. “You shouldn’t have done that. He will never forgive you.”

Even shining in cloth of gold sewn with the crowned Baratheon stag Sansa had never looked sadder, and Jon realized that she must know well and truly what Joffrey was beyond the shadow of a doubt. He’d felt the sudden urge to reach out, offer her comfort or simply say something, anything. But they have never been close, so in the end all could do was shrug. “Joffrey can bugger himself on a spear.”

Sansa’s mouth curved, and for a moment she looked young again as the laughing, beaming girl she’d been in Winterfell. She reached out and squeezed his arm. “You look gallant.”

And then she was gone, and Jon had fallen in beside his white brothers behind the king he now served.

Tywin Lannister replaces Ned as Hand. He is a hard man, his gaze whenever he sees Jon cold. “Joffrey is only a boy,” Ned warns Jon when he clasps hands with him a final time before he returns north. “but Tywin will stop at nothing to see the Lannisters keep their power.”

“I’ll watch him.”

Ned nods to himself, a look of something like sorrow passing over his face. “Your mother, she- I will tell you of her one day now that Robert is gone. She would be proud to see the man you have become, Jon.”

And you, father? But even a man grown and a knight of the kingsguard, Jon does not have the courage in him to ask. They clasp hands, and then Ned and Jory and all of the Winterfell men are gone.

His white brothers Jon comes to know. Some are easier to love than others. Barristan Selmy and Arys Oakheart were both honorable knights but poor company; Meryn Trant and Boros Blount poor knights and poor company both. And Jaime Lannister... Jon knows him well enough from his time with Tyrion, but he has never trusted him and does not now. Joffrey is his blood, and Jon will always remember him as he first saw him: a gold knight riding into Winterfell beside Robert all those years ago that Bran had mistaken for the king.

Joffrey grows no fonder of Jon as the months pass, a sneer always on his lips when he looks at him. Jon finds his own loathing growing with each passing day. He’s always known Joffrey is a stupid, callow child, but it is one thing to know and another to have to stand silent witness to it. If Robert had been a poor king Joffrey is only worse, callous and cruel to all around him, handing out petty and mocking judgements when he can bother to sit the Iron Throne as justice.

And Sansa… . as a knight of the Kingsguard Jon sees her each day seated with her lord husband at meals or beside him at court, and each day Jon understands more and more why she had taken to spending her days in the tower of the Hand before her marriage. A thousand small ways Joffrey cuts her: sneering jests and petty insults, and a thousand small ways Sansa bears it. Anger fills Jon until he is a cup near to spilling, but he can do nothing more than grit his teeth till they ache and stand silent behind king and queen. Say something, he snarls inwardly, but he does not know if he is speaking to himself or to Sansa, show him a wolf has teeth.

Arya at least shows no hesitation in baring hers. Without their lord father to rein her back she becomes more wild than ever, the lone voice at court without fear of Joffrey’s wrath. “He’s just a stupid boy,” she snorts when Jon tries to warn her, “crown or no.”

Jon shakes his head, but in truth the words only make him miss her all the more desperately. As a brother of the Kingsguard he no longer has the time to spend with her that he once did, to spar or wander Kingslanding or ride out from the city. Every moment he can he seeks Arya out, but if it is once a week then he is lucky. This is the path you chose, he reminds himself, but it is a hollow kind of comfort.

His mind wanders to Alayaya sometimes during long afternoons when he stands guard, the sleek shape of her against him, the slide of her smooth skin against his, the grasp of her fingers around him, the lilt of her voice as she whispered: you will not be the first of your white brothers to visit our house. So easy it would be to slip his white cloak and find Chataya’s again, find a few hours comfort there. You swore an oath, he reminds himself, but in those moments it is hard to remember why.

And during long nights when the sheets of his bed seem suffocating he thinks not of Alayaya, but Dancy and her wicked smile and red hair. The thought stabs a knife of shame in his gut though he does not understand why. I am no Joffrey, and she no Sansa. Was this how his father had felt for Jon’s mother, the same desperate shame like poison in the blood?

Bastards are a gift, Alayaya had told him, but Jon knows it a lie. And so while he shames himself in his thoughts, he resists the urge to visit Chataya’s again. He will not stain his white cloak for lust or loneliness or a few hours fleeting comfort.

Months pass, and under Tywin’s handship the realm is quiet. Across the Narrow Sea Myr and Tyrosh go to war and there are rumors of dragons in the east, but in Westeros summer never ends. In the north his lord father and the Night’s Watch begin to settle wildlings into the gift, Robb marries a Karstark girl, and Bran returns from the Hightower a maester. The news makes Jon smile, but there is precious little else to draw joy from.

And then, late in the year, everything changes.

Jon is not there to see it. Later, he’ll hear of how Arya challenged Joffrey, told him he was no true king, and how Joffrey flew into a rage. When Jon hears of it he abandons his post and strides through the halls of the Red Keep searching for Arya. He finds her already in the stables saddling her horse, Syrio beside her. A look of relief flits over her face when she sees him, and she runs and throws her arms around him. “Jon!”

Jon hugs her tightly, then pushes her to arms length. “What happened?”

“It’s over. Joffrey broke my engagement to Tommen.” Arya’s face twists and her eyes flash. “I’m glad of it. I’m sick of him and the court and all the south. If he’d ordered the gold cloaks to seize me I would’ve killed every one of them.”

Dread knots Jon’s gut. “You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not. But only because Sansa convinced him not to order it.”

“A girl must be leaving.” Syrio has pulled himself onto the back of his horse. His eyes flick hawk-like from point to point outside the stable. “Before a king is changing his mind.”

Arya grabs Jon’s arm. “Come with us. You hate it here as much as I do. We can finally go home.”

Home. It is all Jon has ever wanted, all he’s ever dreamed of since he was a child, but he has no home, not in Winterfell and not in King’s Landing. “I’m a knight of the Kingsguard, Arya. Only death can free me.”

“I don’t care.” Arya’s grip on his arm tightens. “Come north with me. Father will protect you, or you can take the black like you always wanted. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” Through Jon’s mind flits Sansa’s face, the pleading look in her eyes. It hurts like drawing an arrow from his arm, but he pulls himself from Arya’s grasp. “I took an oath. I swore I would serve.”

Arya steps back. She studies his face, her own puzzled and uncomprehending. “You hate it here. I know you do.”

Jon shakes his head. Dearly he loves Arya, but she has never been a bastard: never known the bone-deep shame, never heard the hiss of whispers, never felt the cold gazes of those who watched in mute judgement waiting for him to show his true treacherous nature. “I do. But I swore an oath.”

Hurt flashes over Arya’s face, and she whirls and jumps onto the back of her horse. She turns it to the door of the stable and without a word kicks it into a walk. Syrio gives Jon a nod as he falls in behind Arya, and then he is following her out of the stables and Jon is left alone in the stable but for the whicker of horses in their stalls and the sickly sweet scent of hay.