#also didn’t realize until i finished that i used the show’s sigil for house stark instead of the book one?

[aphemera]

— Bran thought about it. ❝ Can a man still be brave if he's afraid? ❞

❝ That is the only time a man can be brave, ❞ his father told him.

Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell

[bisexualgendryas]

jonsa + gendrya soulmate/soulmark au

(not gonna really write it till I’m done with the bodyswap but I was imagining a scenario where getting soulmarks, which are house-related, from a witch is like, a tradition among nobles (esp in the Riverlands) and thought of an interesting thing imo. this got....a LOT longer than I thought, I expected to literally just write up a smol outline and uhhh yeah there’s some more than that. some is almost written like an actual fic lol. here y’all go tho.)

at some point when the Stark Kiddos are young, like a couple or a few years pre-asoiaf, Cat brings up to Ned how her father had taken her to get a soulmark, and that her house Stark mark was part of why her father reached out to Rickard (though this is also evidence it’s not the most accurate, as engagements generally would be made with the eldest children, in her case Brandon, when she did ultimately fall in love with Ned, but whatever. it’s a tradition, and she’s taken the concept to mean that daughters would be wed to better husbands, and since she’s got two daughters that’s pretty damn important to her.)

so Cat takes Robb, Sansa, and Arya on a trip to a woods witch in the wolfswood. Robb never has a mark show up, and Arya's takes a really long time, long enough that Cat practically forgets and when she asks later Arya says she hasn’t noticed one (she has a small stag, but she doesn’t want her parents to have a reason to marry her, let alone to a prince, so she assumes a little white lie won’t hurt. later, after having met Joffrey and Tommen, she still stands by that, even though Tommen doesn’t seem horrible).

Sansa’s mark, though, is...problematic. more problematic, even, than Cat knows, but still problematic enough that along with the weirdness of her only other potentially marked siblings’ situations Ned and Cat decide that they’ll just arrange marriages for Bran and Rickon (and the others) normally...because Sansa has a little three-headed dragon on her back, saying that their poor daughter was meant to bind them to the exiled house Targaryen. 

Ned suggests perhaps it had been meant to be Elia’s son, knowing better than to up and admit that they have a Targaryen at Winterfell, and Cat tells him that the marks fade if the soulmate dies - if the gods had meant her to love Aegon, the mark wouldn’t have shown itself, so surely it means Viserys.

Sansa can’t see it herself, so, for the most part, she forgets it, though she’s careful not to get too much help from her handmaidens with bathing and such. Shae’s the only one she explicitly tells, and they get to be sad about her lost chance at love - but then, perhaps there’s someone else out there, Shae suggests, for the mark remains well after Westeros has gotten word of Viserys’ death. perhaps there’s a bastard out there, or perhaps it means Daenerys. Sansa thinks neither would be quite so bad, certainly not as bad as Joffrey, but clings to the idea of a bastard - she had a bastard brother, after all.

her mark does fade, at one point, years later, after she’s been wed to Ramsay and he’s forced her to explain ‘herself’. “your mad dragon prince is gone, my wife. he’s not coming to save you, no one’s coming to save you,” he mocks, but when Ramsay leaves the castle to fight Stannis off, she saves herself, with a few helping hands. in the chaos, it’s Brienne who notices, a few weeks later, that the mark has returned to her back. surely that means Ramsay was only lying to hurt her, or even that the magic isn’t accurate (which would really be fine with Sansa, because the whole thing hadn’t really done their family good), or maybe even that he really had died and there’s some other resurrected bastard out there, but really, what would be the chances?  

(it’s really not important to her anymore - she’s long since known no one will marry her for love, so what’s the point of her childish hopes for it? she just continues to hope for her family, and most of those hopes are answered, even if things are very different than they used to be.)

she, like their parents, had thought that Arya didn’t have a mark, and while Arya is uncomfortable when Sansa mentions her own soon after their reunion, Sansa doesn’t jump to thinking she’s been wrong, only that it’s related to their displeasure about Jon giving up northern independence - until Arya says she thinks the marks are “bullshit”, because she has one and hers hasn’t even ever disappeared, and there aren’t any Baratheons left, not even princess Shireen, not even Robert's bastards, who were all hunted by Joffrey and Cersei soon after Robert's death...but Sansa has always wanted and deserved love, so perhaps there is some Targaryen bastard out there. Arya will concede on that point and that one only.

for a couple months, at least, that is.

Sansa gets the whispers from one of her handmaidens that Arya's taken a liking to one of the smiths, and soon enough, Arya is up in arms because she’s spent years ignoring her little stag mark and has just found out that the blacksmith she’s, well, courting, is in fact, Robert’s bastard, which means...any number of things, none of which she’s sure how she feels about. but Sansa encourages her to tell him about the mark, because she just ran away from her soulmate on what could possibly be their last night alive. if Jon is with his love, and many others were, too, shouldn’t Arya spend the night how she wants, with someone she loves?

“I already hated the idea of losing him - of losing anyone - but if I never have to see that stupid stag mark after tomorrow, I...”

“you’re stronger and more stubborn than anyone else I know, but I imagine any man who loves you could come close. what if you both live? what then?”

“what if it’s not even him?”

“only a few moments ago, you told me you wanted to be together without even knowing. why wouldn’t it be him?”

it’s not really what Arya wants to hear, but she leaves anyway, seemingly accepting that that’s Sansa’s final answer, and Sansa goes to find Theon. the sisters reunite a few hours later, up on the ramparts as the castle finishes what battle preparations it can, and while Arya doesn’t give Sansa any details before handing her a dagger and telling her to go down to the crypts, she confirms that she went back to him, if only for the one night.

it’s not the one night, though, because they do survive, and while she’s happy for Arya she still has to try not to be jealous, even as she encourages Arya to marry her soulmate, while her own is nowhere to be found.

then, Jon puts himself in between them and Daenerys for what she dearly hopes is the last time, and Arya decides they need to talk about it - privately. 

he says, again, that he’s not a Stark, and they both fight him on it, but Bran does not. Jon looks to Bran and Bran looks at Jon and says it’s his choice as though they’re supposed to know what that means, even though Jon is the only one who does. and so, Bran tells them that Jon is not their father’s son, but their aunt’s - and Rhaegar’s. 

their first moments are full of too much emotion to name, and Sansa’s swept up in Arya’s insistence that Jon will always be a brother to her, and gathered up into hugs, and then it’s the moments after, when they’re all silent, standing there with Ghost between them and tears in all their eyes, that she realizes what that means about the sigil on her back. and from the concerned glance that Arya meets her eyes with when Jon turns away from them, Sansa knows that she’s realized too.