Work Text:
HOUR: ONE.
Jon comes to with a gasping, grasping breath, an aching thing that wrenches his insides and is as much an exhale as it is an inhale. His first life ended with pain, his second life starts with it.
That's the first thing he notices. The second is Ghost, whining and nudging at Jon's hip with his cold nose.
Davos comes into the room, staring at Jon like —
Like Jon has just risen from the dead, which is impossible. Should be impossible.
Jon doesn't know what to say, so he turns back to Ghost and sinks his hand — his trembling hand, because he has a pulse — in his fur.
Davos is calling for someone. There are quick footsteps shaking the wooden planks that are the floor, the wooden table Jon's on.
He ignores everything except the feel of Ghost's soft fur between his fingers, everything except the muted sound of Ghost sniffing him and snorting, sniffing and snorting. Then Ghost licks him, long and wet against his wrist, and Jon has to clamber away with a shudder so he doesn't die all over again.
Melisandre calls his name with too much reverence in her voice, and Jon flinches away as if there were somewhere for him to go.
There is nowhere. There is nothing.
Davos is draping his cloak over Jon, the fabric too rough and too warm yet nowhere near as rough or warm as it should be. Jon shudders.
"What do you remember?" Davos asks.
Jon looks down at his own chest, clean of blood (as it shouldn't be), and shudders again. "Everything."
His voice cracks, too low and too loud for his own ears, weak like it hasn't been used in too long. Jon shudders a third time.
Melisandre kneels before him, like she's at prayer or Jon is a king. Neither of those things is true.
"Afterwards — after they stabbed you, after you died — where did you go? What did you see?"
"Nowhere," he says. "Nothing."
Davos nods resolutely. "Guess blackness is a better fate than others."
Jon shakes his head. "Not blackness." He closes his eyes and sees it, blackness, and says, "Nothing at all."
HOUR: TWO.
With Melisandre, Davos, and Tormund prodding him incessantly, it takes Jon a while to finish dressing. They only stop when Jon feels so sick to his stomach that Ghost gnashes his teeth at them.
He hasn't tried to lick Jon again, but that's as far away from Jon as he's stayed.
Edd watches the whole thing from a corner of the room, quietly staring with wide eyes that are equal parts terror and wonder.
Someone brings him a bowl of stew. Jon has two mouthfuls and then he really is sick, retching as violently as he'd gasped alive.
(If alive is what he is.)
There isn't anything in his stomach for him to throw up though. Nothing but burning bile.
After that, they trade his ale for water.
HOUR: TWO.
Every beat of his heart pains him. Every breath of his lungs pains him. He can't stand the ends of his hair brushing his cheeks.
HOUR: THREE.
"Olly," Jon croaks. It's the first thing he's said in a while, one of only a handful of words he's said at all.
Davos and Edd exchange a look. Davos fidgets and purses his mouth, Edd clears his throat.
"Ah, yes. Olly — yes," Edd says, wincing like Jon doesn't already know.
He isn't asking. He's stating, because maybe that will make it real. There's a difference there that Jon wouldn't be able to explain if he tried. It's a difference that he feels the way he feels the stab wound in his heart — sharply and tugging and there but also not.
Jon knows. He knows Olly is responsible for that wound, he knows Thorne is responsible for the first. He knows he needs to eat something at some point, knows there is no way he could keep anything down right now. He knows Melisandre cut his hair, threw it in a fire, and —
Something.
Things Jon knows are true: too many.
Things Jon is certain are real: none at all.
HOUR: FOUR.
"What do you want to do about — you know?"
Jon isn't sure whether it's Davos or Edd or Tormund who asks the question, even though they sound nothing alike. He supposes it doesn't truly matter. "The punishment for mutiny is hanging," he says, not looking away from the fire.
He wants to stick his left hand in it, just to see if he can get it to match his right. Just to see if it will hurt.
His chest hurts, but that is only a leftover from his (previous) life.
Jon digs the heel of his hand into the wound over his heart, grunts at the pain —
"Ey." Tormund slaps Jon's hand away. "Don't be stupid, little crow."
Jon sighs and runs a hand through his hair — and startles for the second time at the shorter length.
He wants his longer hair back. He wants to shave his head.
"Try this," Davos says, pushing another bowl of food at Jon.
It looks like watered-down stew. He puts it aside immediately and ignores Davos's sigh.
Tormund takes it instead and offers it again to Jon. "You want to die again, crow?" he asks with raised eyebrows.
Jon stares at him, unblinking and silent. It wouldn't be again, he's tempted to say.
He takes the bowl and drinks the stew in long gulps that spare him the worst of the taste.
HOUR: FIVE.
Jon nearly retches again when they finally herd him outside and the brightness hits him like a fist to the face. He manages to hold it together, but he can't be arsed to find something to say to the tens of eyes gawking at him.
"They think you're some kind of god," Tormund leans in to say, and the stench of ale and sour goat's milk in his breath makes Jon shut his eyes.
If he were a god, he would be anywhere but here.
Edd tries to hold him back with a hand on his shoulder, but Jon shrugs it off and makes his way to the corner of the yard everyone is conspicuously staying away from.
It has to be Jon's own imagination that makes it seem darkened, as if there were shadows slithering out of the stain of his blood on the ground to form the shape of where his body should be.
You belong here, Jon hears the shadows whisper. You belong to us.
His fingers are almost touching the bloodied snow when Ghost barrels into his side.
Jon stumbles back and glares at Ghost, moving forward to try again —
Ghost growls, low and unyielding, eyes redder than Jon's blood ever has been.
Jon clenches his jaw, glares at Ghost for another moment, and turns to head back inside.
HOUR: SIX.
Nobody follows him this time, and finally he gets some blessed fucking silence.
Jon hates it.
The silence is loud, and for the first time in a long time, Jon thinks of Sansa. Sansa and the poems she used to read aloud sometimes, stanzas of half-incomplete sentences that spoke of things like loud silences and made little to no sense to Jon.
He gets it now.
He wishes he didn't.
He feels like he's suffocating. If it weren't for the deafening sound of his own breathing in his ears, Jon would be convinced he is. He's nearly convinced to take off the stifling jerkin he's wearing, but then —
Jon rubs against the leather over where he knows his wounds are. He can feel every one of them, reaching deep into his insides, pulling pulling pulling with every move he makes.
They hurt. He should (still) be dead.
He stretches. The wounds pull at his insides, but they don't pull him any closer to death (or any farther away from it).
HOUR: SEVEN.
"The nooses are ready," Edd says as he enters the room.
Jon nods. He keeps his eyes on the fire.
He hears Edd drag a chair beside him, sitting down heavily and staring at him like he isn't going to notice.
Of all of them, Edd is being the most calm about all of this — whatever this is. Magick. Miracle. Dreaming. Horseshit.
(A lie.)
"You look like you," Edd says eventually. "Is that still you in there?"
This probably isn't the moment to say that Jon hasn't got a godsdamned clue who he was. Is.
He imagines, briefly, Maester Luwin's face if Jon were to ask him which is correct to say when you're dead but maybe alive but supposed to be dead —
It isn't enough to make Jon laugh, only frown deeper at the fire.
"Jon?"
He sighs. "Aye, still me. I think so."
He glances at Edd, who is looking at Jon like he doesn't believe him.
"I'll get there," Jon adds, and has to wonder whether he does it for Edd's benefit or his own.
Edd stares at him for another breath, then nods and turns back to the fire. "You better."
Or what? Jon thinks. What can you possibly threaten me with?
HOUR: EIGHT.
He's tempted to make them wait longer, make them wait as long as he was dead, but Jon is still not sure that this is real, so he can't decide how long that would be.
Besides, Jon's already decided that he's not staying. The sooner he gets the fuck out of here, the better.
The weight of the men's eyes on him makes his skin crawl, and the incessant sound of their whispering is giving him a headache.
More pain, because that's all this second life seems to be about. In truth, the first one hadn't been all that different.
If there isn't any difference, if nothing has truly changed, is he really alive after all?
As easy as he can ask himself that question he can ask another. If there isn't any difference, if nothing has truly changed, was he ever truly dead?
They feel like the same question with the same answer: it doesn't fucking matter.
"You shouldn't be alive. It's not right," Marsh tells him shakily. His last words.
"Neither was killing me," Jon answers, because he can't say, I didn't ask for this. Not in front of the other men.
Yarwyck is a coward. Jon doesn't bother replying to him.
Jon doesn't want to bother replying to Thorne, doesn't want to care about anything that comes out of Thorne's mouth, but he does. He always has.
"But you, Lord Snow — you'll be fighting their battles forever."
Thorne has always known what to say to get under Jon's skin, to hit him where it will do the most damage. Jon can do nothing except stare up at him until he looks away, and then Jon lingers a moment longer.
Nothing he has done since he woke up has been something he's wanted to do, but this —
Jon would do the rest of it over and over again if only he didn't have to do this part.
Olly's eyes are wet, his mouth puckered angrily and shaking, and Jon thinks he would die over and over again if only he didn't ever have to see Olly like this.
It hurts more than the wounds in his chest, and still, Jon cannot look away from their thrashing bodies as they die. He hates it, hates them, hates himself —
He knows where they're going and it's nowhere. The end is the end. It makes death seem final in a way it never had before, back when the question was still unanswered.
And still.
Things Jon knows are true: there is nothing after death.
Things Jon is certain are real: none at all.
"My watch is ended," Jon tells Edd, shoving the Lord Commander's cloak into his arms and walking away before Edd can say anything.
HOUR: NINE.
Despite the roiling of his stomach, Jon downs enough ale to pass out. He doesn't though, doesn't even feel especially drunk.
He feels empty. Emptied out. His blood is staining the ground outside, his bowels got cleared when his heart stopped, his mind is scrambling for thoughts that won't form, and this ale isn't fucking working. He might throw it up before much longer.
Jon has been telling himself he's going to leave since he started drinking however long ago he came inside, but all he's done is drink and stare at the fire.
Nobody bothers him except for Ghost, who whines and butts his head against Jon's leg and, once, when Jon glares down at him, growls loud enough to make Jon wince and hunch his shoulders around his ears.
He closes his eyes and drinks.
HOUR: TEN.
Jon does, in fact, throw up.
HOUR: ELEVEN.
It's too late now for him to leave today. As much as he'd like to, Jon isn't fool enough to venture out in the dark of near-winter.
He considers that it wouldn't matter, not with where he's going, but he hasn't truly decided if he's going anywhere at all.
Davos comes by with food, more stew and some bread. He takes a seat but doesn't try to talk while Jon eats in small sips and bites, thankfully. Eating is hard enough without someone's voice buzzing in the air.
Davos does eventually speak though, says, "You're going to be fine, lad."
It manages to sound like a comforting statement, an imperative, and a plea all at once. Jon doesn't know how to answer, so he chooses not to answer at all.
HOUR: TWELVE.
Davos gets replaced by Tormund, who is a damn lot less quiet. Tormund wants to make jokes about the size of Jon's cock, jokes about Jon's new haircut, jokes about Jon's relatively hairless body.
All the jokes fall flat, and at some point, Tormund stops. He grants Jon a few minutes of (blessed, hateful) silence, and then he says, "You need to fuck someone, little crow."
Jon gives him a look of wide-eyed horror.
But Tormund nods insistently. "Aye, nothing more life-affirming than a good, feral fuck. Gets the blood going." He pauses, thinks about it, and adds, "Some sweet love-making would do the trick too, but you're even more out of luck there."
Jon stares —
And huffs, the closest thing to a laugh he's capable of at the moment.
Tormund grins. "Like that idea, eh?" he says, waggling his eyebrows obnoxiously. "The witch'll probably do it if you ask nice enough."
Jon winces. "No."
He hadn't been especially interested in Melisandre before. Now, he can't even begin to imagine bedding her.
"I can take you to our camp," Tormund suggests, only a little hesitantly.
Jon swallows and shakes his head. "No," he says again.
He wants to be in that cave with Ygritte. He wants to be home with his family. He wants (to not want) to be dead.
"You want a hand then?"
Jon peers at Tormund and sees him staring expectantly, eyebrows raised vaguely at Jon's lap.
He huffs again, shakes his head no again. "Go away, Tormund." His tone isn't mean, but he adds, "Please," just in case.
Jon isn't angry. At least, he isn't angry with Tormund or Davos or Edd. Melisandre is — another case entirely, though Jon knows it is unfair to blame her entirely.
"If I do, are you going to pull one off yourself?"
Jon doesn't respond.
Tormund sighs — it sounds more like a groan — and gets up. "Have it your way then. Keep sulking. Find me when you change your mind."
"Don't send someone else in," Jon says for an answer.
"Aye, aye," Tormund says, batting a hand. "I get it. Lonely sulking." He hesitates at the door, looking back at Jon sternly and pointing a menacing finger to say, "Don't be stupid now, little crow."
HOUR: THIRTEEN.
Out of pure desperation, hopefulness or hopelessness or both, Jon does end up shoving his hand in his breeches.
The feel of it — his too-soft cock in his hand, his too-rough hand on his cock — makes Jon shudder, but he works himself awkwardly within the confines of his pants.
He thinks of Ygritte in the cave. He thinks of Ygritte with her red hair fanned all around her and her cheeks flushed pink.
(He remembers Sansa, flushed with anger —)
He thinks of Ygritte and undoes his laces. It's easier but not better, everything still too wrong, too much.
He thinks of Ygritte, he thinks of red, he thinks of caves. He moves his hand, he moves his hand.
(Jon is still not hard.)
The images in his head are jumbled unhelpfully. Ygritte and Sansa and Tormund, all kissed by fire —
He tries to think only of Ygritte, caves, kisses.
(He thinks of red, he thinks of fire, he thinks of the fact he can never bring Ygritte back because he burned her body —)
He's going to be sick. He's going to —
He lets go of his still-soft cock and falls off his chair, landing a little too close to the fire on his hands and knees.
He stays there, suffocating (if breathing is what he's doing). He might be sweating, he might be crying with his whole body. He thinks of red, he thinks of fire, he thinks of the fact if Sansa is dead, Jon can never bring her back, either, because he has no idea where her body might be.
He thinks of red, he thinks of fire. He wouldn't be here if they had burned his body instead of his hair.
When he stops feeling like he's going to vomit his lungs out, Jon sits up, tucks himself back into his pants, and does the laces tighter than strictly necessary.
Then he undoes the laces of his jerkin and examines his own (bloodless) chest.
The wounds are still wounds, a long way yet from being scars. The skin remains split open over the red flesh that managed to heal while Jon (has been) was dead.
(Deader than he is now, if alive is what he is.)
He looks like stitchwork coming apart, like seams ripping open from overstretching.
He wonders whether Arya has used Needle. He wonders what the latest thing Sansa has sown is. He wonders whether either of them is even alive.
Things Jon knows are true: there is nothing after death. He will never see his family again.
His fingers skim over the jagged edges of the wounds, making him flinch.
He reaches the wound over his heart — the worst of them, curved in a way Jon can't tell is because Olly meant it that way or because he'd never stabbed someone before —
Jon curls his fingers in against the seam, his blunt nails slip into the narrow gap, he digs in —
And nothing happens except he grunts, so he digs in harder, and harder, and the flesh doesn't split and his blood doesn't spill. His (bastard) blood is still staining the snow outside. Jon wishes his nails were longer and he wishes he could feel something other than the cold and the sharp pulling of the wound and he wishes he would bleed and he wishes —
He wishes he would stop, he wishes he wanted to stop, he —
Jon only registers the movement once he's flat on his back, Ghost growling threateningly over him.
He blinks up at Ghost and tries to suck breath in through the weight of Ghost pinning him to the floor. He barely can, only barely, and Jon finds he's comfortable like this. Then he has to close his eyes in shame, because Ghost whines as if he hears Jon's thoughts.
Jon knows he does, in a way. Like he hears Ghost's thoughts, in a way.
He wonders what Ghost felt while Jon was dying, when his heart stopped. (When it started again.)
Ghost whines again, as high as he used to when he was a pup, and drops down to lie atop Jon.
I'm sorry, Jon thinks. I'm so sorry.
HOUR: SIXTEEN.
Jon startles awake from a dream about being back in Winterfell. It's nearly as painful as coming back to life.
HOUR: EIGHTEEN.
When he's close to falling asleep again, Jon pushes Ghost off him and redresses.
He doesn't know where he's going until he's standing in front of the door. Melisandre opens it before Jon can even knock.
Neither of them says anything for a while. She watches him with a mix of fascination and something akin to pride, perhaps. It makes Jon's skin crawl.
"What you're contemplating doing — I must advise against it," Melisandre says, after the third time Jon has pushed his too-short hair away from his face.
He raises his eyebrows questioningly. "Leaving?"
"Leaving, yes." Her mouth twitches. "But I do not mean Castle Black."
Jon wants to correct that he isn't contemplating that — it's already decided. "Anywhere else I go would be leaving Castle Black," he says instead, just to be fastidious.
Melisandre gives him a pointed look.
"Don't say something about your Lord," Jon warns.
She purses her lips. "Do you not wish to see what He has prepared for you? What He has prepared you for?"
"More fighting, I imagine." Jon shakes his head, looking away at the fire. He thinks of Thorne, he thinks of Ygritte. "It's always more fighting," he says.
I lost, he doesn't say. I fought and I lost, and I lost, and I keep losing. I'm tired of losing.
I'm tired. I'm sorry.
Jon thinks Melisandre is going to answer with more drivel about the Lord of Light, but she never answers at all. When Jon looks at her again, her eyes are turned toward the fire, unseeing.
He leaves eventually.
HOUR: NINETEEN.
In the moonlight, his blood is blacker than the sky. Jon stares at it for too long. The cold doesn't bother him.
HOUR: TWENTY-ONE.
Ghost tries to lick him again, and this time, Jon squeezes his eyes shut and lets him do it twice more.
Thrice would be too much, so Jon moves away gently and wipes his hand on his breeches even though he'd never minded having Ghost's spit on him before.
He should pack, but Jon knows if he starts he'll leave as soon as he's done, and he hasn't really got much to pack. However much he wants to leave without having to say goodbye, he owes his friends that much at least.
So he sits to wait for the sun to rise.
HOUR: TWENTY-TWO.
At the last moment, minutes before the first rays cross the horizon, Jon decides to venture up to the top of the Wall. For old times' sake, for nostalgia.
He wonders how Sam and his family are doing. He wonders whether Grenn and Pyp also found nothing at all after death.
The wind hits him differently without a cloak flapping around his legs. It numbs Jon, the cold and the abrasiveness of the current, until he feels as though he could be part of the wind itself.
Daylight breaks in reds and oranges. Jon thinks about his blood staining the snow, Ygritte's blood staining his hands. He realizes, then — Jon Snow died in the snow. Jon Snow died with his bastard blood spilling all around him.
He wonders what his father would say, what Robb would say, whether Lady Catelyn would sigh with relief.
It's a fitting end, somehow. It sounds like it could belong in one of Sansa's poems, perhaps one of her sadder songs. Of the snow he is and to the snow he shall return, of betrayal he was born and to betrayal he will die.
Jon Snow died in the snow, still and forever a Snow, not a Stark there to mourn him.
HOUR: TWENTY-THREE.
"You could stay, you know," Jon tells Ghost. "I won't be travelling for long, and you like it better up here. Edd would take care of you. Not that you really need it."
If Ghost could talk, Jon thinks he'd be saying something about what a coward Jon is being. Something about pack never abandoning each other.
"I'm sorry," Jon whispers, reaching out to pet Ghost when he whines. "Stay. You don't belong south, and I — I don't belong here anymore, boy, you know that."
Ghost puts his paws on Jon's shoulders.
"Maybe you'll find another wolf and start a pack, eh? Have a litter of pups and teach them how to hunt."
Ghost huffs.
"At least we get to say goodbye this time."
HOUR: TWENTY-FOUR.
"I know that face," Edd tells him. "That's the face you make when only direct orders can stop you."
As far as Jon can tell, he isn't making any kind of face.
He starts to rummage through the scattered papers on his desk, checking whether there's anything amidst the many official letters about the Watch that he could want, then realizes he has no use for keepsakes and stops.
In truth, he has no use for any of the things he's packing. He's going nowhere at all.
"You made me Lord Commander. I could order you to stay."
Jon shakes his head and is reminded of the new length of his hair. "My watch is ended," he reminds Edd, and finally sets about finding something he can tear a strip of cloth from.
Edd sighs. "Will you come back after you've got your head on straight?"
I won't have a head for too long — but that wouldn't be true. He can't exactly behead himself.
"No, I'm not coming back," Jon says. He finds a shirt whose hem is fraying.
"What about the Night King?"
Jon is the one to sigh then. He can't find scissors, so he tears the strip he needs with his hands and congratulates himself on managing to not destroy the shirt entirely. It'll still fit someone else.
"I wouldn't make a difference," he says to Edd, giving him a look that Jon can feel is pleading. "And I can't stay here."
Edd frowns as though he wants to argue, but after a moment he says, "It's not you, is it? In there. Not really."
Jon wishes he could say no. He wishes he could say he doesn't know. He wishes he were (not) dead, then he wouldn't have to say anything at all.
"It's me," Jon answers, because he knows it's true.
Understanding flashes across Edd's face. It looks too much like defeat. "And that's the problem?"
Jon swallows and nods. "Aye, that's the problem."
HOUR: ONE.
When Jon sees her, the lurch of his heart is more painful than the stab wound that pulls at it.
Sansa, standing in the middle of the courtyard as if Jon had yanked her out of his dreams overnight, only in his dreams Sansa is still a child, barely older than Arya, shorter than him and Robb.
This Sansa —
Jon doesn't know what to think about this Sansa except that she makes his legs tremble as he walks down the stairs toward her, and when she throws herself at him Jon has to lock his knees to keep from tumbling back, and when her sobbed breath hits his ear —
Things Jon knows are true: his sister is in his arms. His sister is alive.
Things Jon is certain are real:
"You smell like home," Jon says into her hair, knowing he must be imagining it.
Sansa half-laughs, half-sobs, tightening her arms around him and rubbing her cheek against his again. She pulls back enough to find his eyes, then farther still, studying him closely.
One of her hands moves from his shoulder to his jaw. "What happened to you?"
Her voice is deeper than Jon remembers it, raspier. He can't tell whether it's the obvious exhaustion she carries or whether that's just what she sounds like now.
There are too many answers he could give her, but ultimately it's easy — too easy — to choose one.
"I got killed," Jon says, bracing himself for confusion, shock, horror.
Sansa gazes at him steadily. Her thumb brushes the soft skin under his eye. It almost feels like she is gazing through him.
Jon swallows back the sound that wants to come out of him and returns the question. "What happened to you?"
He watches her debate with herself on how to answer him, her pale eyes flickering over his face. Jon doesn't think he imagines the shadows in them, or the odd sort of hollowness in her voice when she finally speaks.
"I almost killed myself."
Jon's lungs squeeze, his focus snaps to the stain of his blood behind Sansa and back to her face again. He sees the shapes that the shadows in her eyes form.
Things Jon knows are true: he and Sansa both have wounds that aren't yet scars.
He rests his forehead against hers and says, "I'm glad you didn't."
Sansa's smile is small, worn. Relieved. She places his hand at her breastbone and moves her own to his chest (right over his wounded heart). "I'm glad you didn't, either," she says.
Jon closes his eyes. He thinks of his bastard blood spilling on the snow, Sansa’s fire-red hair spilling over his hands. He thinks of betrayal. He realizes, then —
Things Jon is certain are real: this, them.