A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Tending the Fire by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
14 Mar 2025
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“My lord, is there anything else I can do for you this evening?”
“No, be at rest, Satin.”
He is hurting, Satin thought, hurting and too proud to ask for help. No, not too proud, too good a man to ask me for help. Satin had known a great many men, but few, if any, like Jon Snow. He would choke to death on his own pain before he could ask me to help alleviate it.
“How can I be at rest, my lord, when you are suffering?”
(Jon Snow is too good a man to ask for Satin's help in this, no matter how severe the pain in his wounded leg grows. Satin watches him struggle for too long before deciding to take matters into his own hands. He tends the fire in the heart of his Lord Commander's chamber and tends his wounds with the same care.)
Series
- Part 1 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Pale Shadow by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
17 Mar 2025
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Satin wondered vaguely if he was being hunted. Had Ghost taken the measure of him and deemed him so little a threat that he might as well be prey? Had the beast seen fit to make a meal of him? The red eyes that followed him did not seem to gleam with hunger or ill intent but how would Satin know if they did? It was men Satin knew, not wolves. He had enigmatic eyes, that much Satin could say. Unreadable eyes, he thought, like his master.
(Ghost has taken to following Satin around Castle Black as he performs his duties. Satin isn't sure about it at first but perhaps the stoic direwolf has a softer side than he presents. Perhaps his master is much the same.)
Series
- Part 2 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Old Habits by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
23 Mar 2025
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Surely, this was it. He was in Jon’s bed, for Seven’s sake. 'I would offer you Ghost but he is not here to warm you', Jon had said, leaving behind what was unsaid to hover like a specter at the end of the sentence – But I am. It could mean nothing else. And yet, Jon laid next to him as still as the grave. He did not curl up behind Satin and slowly run his hand up his flank with greedy seeking fingers. He did not take Satin by the wrist and move it down to his laces. He just laid there. Perhaps Jon needed him to initiate it? Perhaps he clung to his honor too desperately to be the one to start this? Had Jon been waiting for Satin to touch him all these months because he was too good a man to ask for it? He wouldn’t even mind, Satin realized with a start, if Jon wanted to have him, if Jon wanted Satin to keep him warm.
(A cold snap has settled over the Wall, cold like Satin has never known. He spends his nights shivering alone until a solution is offered. Huddling for warmth is a normal enough thing in the North but it presents a change in the delicate balance built between Lord Commander and Steward as old habits haunt Satin and his understanding of himself and the world.)
Series
- Part 3 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Fool, Whore, and Steward by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
27 Mar 2025
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‘Why’s he get you all to himself?’ he had mocked, like Satin was some resource the Lord Commander was hoarding. Jon does have me all to himself, doesn’t he? He thought. And he won’t even have me. Satin wanted to laugh. It was a mummer’s farce, truly. The tale of a fool, a whore, and a steward all wrapped into one. Part of him, perhaps the Fool or the Whore he could not be sure, wanted to wake Jon and tell him what Elyar had said so Jon could assure him that he would keep Satin all to himself, that he didn’t need to worry about the brute and his grasping hands. But that was madness manifested from being overtired and overwarm and too close to Jon. So, instead, he remained the Steward, rolled over, and waited for sleep to take him.
(Most men of Night's Watch leave Satin well enough alone other than a few jeers and japes about his past life as a whore. But a new Black Brother takes his past as an invitation and learns the hard way that Satin is not to be pawed at when the Lord Commander gets involved. Jon and Satin finally have a -somewhat- open conversation.)
Series
- Part 4 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Between Positions by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
01 Apr 2025
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"I’m going to step all over her in front of half the Night’s Watch, the Free Folk, and the Queen’s Men alike.”
“Well,” Satin smiled and stood, placing the maiden’s cloak aside. “We can’t have that now, can we? Lady Alys cannot go to her marriage bed with bloody feet. I know the Pavane. It’s simple, actually. I can teach you, practice with you, and save poor Lady Alys the bruises.”
Jon disguised a choking sound with a clipped laugh and waved his hand dismissively. “No, Satin, you needn’t do that for me.”
Satin stifled the urge to sigh. Ah, I know the steps to this dance too, he thought. I offer. You resist. I offer. You resist again, just a little less and on and on until we end where we were always going to end. If it is to be another turn of this dance, Jon, then so be it. If you insist, my lord.
(Satin's sparring lessons continue. Jon must learn a dance for Alys Karstark's wedding. Luckily, Satin knows it and offers to teach him. They spar, they dance, they circle around each other as tension continues to build between them)
Series
- Part 5 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Waiting by the Weirwood by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
03 Apr 2025
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“What do you feel?”
Satin looked up at the face in the weirwood and let his eyes fall closed. He breathed deeply through his nose and took in a lungful of sharp icy air, focusing his senses on his hand. He felt the rough ridges of the bark pressing into his skin, the cold of the air swirling around them, the stickiness of the sap seeping through the wood and clinging to his fingers like droplets of blood, and the heat of Jon’s hand atop his.
“A tree?”
“Aye, Satin, a tree. What else?”
“Sap. Bark. Snow?” No gods, Satin thought, no holiness to move the soul and shake the spirit like the Septons say. Just trees and cold and you.
(Satin and Jon share a little moment in the Weirwood grove beyond the Wall. Satin grew up in the shadow of the Seven. Jon keeps the Old Gods. They say a man cannot lie before a weirwood)
Series
- Part 6 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Once for Sorrow, Once for Joy by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
05 Apr 2025
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Satin could barely see Jon through his tears, welling up in his eyes unbidden and streaking down his face as they were, burning tracks into his skin as they were. Fool, what good are your tears now? What service will they do him? The logic didn’t matter. The tears came anyway, spilling from his swollen eyes, clinging to his chin before splattering down onto Jon’s unmoving chest. Satin choked on a sob. Jon was dead. Cold. Unmoving beneath his hands. Tomorrow, the men would come down to the ice cells where they were and take his body up to the courtyard and to his pyre. But tonight, Jon rested on a palette surrounded by ice, bare before him for Satin to prepare.
(In the aftermath of the Mutiny at Castle Black, Jon lies dead. Satin must prepare his body for his pyre. He washes him and tends him with care as he weeps for what was lost. It's his duty, after all. It's what he owes Jon)
Series
- Part 7 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Lost in the Flames by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
12 Apr 2025
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Jon was ‘stuck’ again, transfixed by the flames. It was a common enough occurrence now, in the days since Jon’s death and resurrection. This time he was standing in the middle of the room, arms limp by his side, face blank and hollow as he stared forward unblinking. Satin had taken to calling it ‘getting stuck’, for want of a better phrase. Jon would stop mid-step as they crossed the courtyard or falter in the middle of a sentence and simply stare, his eyes grown distant. More often than not, it was fire that caught him. The hearth, a brazier, even something as small as a flickering candle was enough for Jon to get stuck on occasion. It had happened more on the first day after his return, where every fire they passed seemed to take him. But now, four days hence, it was only the odd moment where the flames would take Jon away somewhere deep inside. Satin would come up and coax him back gently, calling his name until recognition returned to him. Stay with me, Satin would remind him, stay here with me, and Jon would nod as his gaze sharpened again.
(Jon Snow has risen from the dead. Satin does his best to comfort him and bring him back to himself slowly and gently, but what comfort can he hope to bring to a dead man?)
Series
- Part 8 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Yours to Command by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
15 Apr 2025
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The tired resignation in his voice clenched at Satin’s chest and he felt the hairs on is arms and the back of his neck begin to stand up. This was not an impulse decision Jon had made. This was something he had been considering, weighing, and deciding on for some time, Satin could sense it. “No. No, Jon. You can’t mean this.”
“Satin, I ride to war.”
“Yes,” Satin said shakily, reaching to touch Jon’s shoulder softly, sweetly, anything to get him to change his mind. “And I at your side. I am your steward and your squire.”
Jon rose from the bed, tossing the furs off them both and brushing off Satin’s hand from his shoulder. Satin shivered as the cold rushed in to wrap around him, his eyes following Jon as he moved through the solar.
“You should go to Eastwatch.”
(Tomorrow, Jon and all the men he has gathered begin the march to retake Winterfell and save Arya. But before that, Jon is worried that maybe Satin would be safer elsewhere. Satin is worried about who would take care of Jon if not him)
Series
- Part 9 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Irrefutable Proof by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
22 Apr 2025
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Satin was aching too, gods was he ever, but in the weeks since they left Castle Black that had become the norm. His thighs throbbed and cramped from the day’s ride. And the day before’s and the day before that’s also. A dull persistent ache had settled in his chest too, and it followed him throughout the day. Quickly, he had fallen into a new routine. Ready to march at dawn, don’t think about Jon lying dead in a pool of his own blood, mount up on his horse, travel south for hours until it was time to stop, don’t remember how cold he was under your hands as you stitched his wounds closed, dismount and try to mask the pulsing pain in his body, help set up camp, serve supper, don’t think of how the water you washed him with ran red with blood, attend Jon at war councils and meetings, run various errands, don’t think about his lips under yours cold as ice and unmoving, massage Jon's leg, then pass out beside him heavy like steel to do it all again the next day.
(Jon and Satin begin the march to retake Winterfell and settle into a new normal. But Satin can only outrun his own emotions for so long, no matter how hard he tries to push them away and focus just on Jon)
Series
- Part 10 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Washed Clean by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
28 Apr 2025
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Words were unnecessary. Satin helped Jon slide into each piece of armor, working quickly to fasten ties and secure buckles. The gambeson padding, the mail, the wrought iron breastplate, the bracers, starched white linen tabard, and grey cloak stayed with a steel wolf’s head clasp. One after the other with practiced efficiency. Let it protect him, Satin thought, or perhaps prayed though he did not know to which gods. Any who would listen, he supposed. Let my hands have been the ones to cover him in the steel that stays any blow. And let it be enough.
(Tonight is the night they re-take Winterfell and save Arya Stark. Or it would be, if Arya Stark was not Jeyne Poole and Jon had not done all this seemingly for nothing. Jon reclaims his home but not his sister and Satin helps him deal with the aftermath of that loss)
Series
- Part 11 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Bloodlines, Rights, and Legacies by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
04 May 2025
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Tomorrow would be another busy day, and Satin would spend it running behind Jon until his feet ached and learning the castle like it was his own. It wasn’t his own, of course. It was Jon’s and Satin was, by rights, a man of the Night’s Watch. He had taken vows before a weirwood. It shall not end until my death, he had sworn, I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come. Yet now he spent his nights lounged in the plush feather bed belonging to the Lord of Winterfell, leagues away from the post at which he had promised to live and die. Satin had been forced to take the Black. The Black or hanging, it had been, and he had chosen the Wall with little other choice. The vows were sworn at the threat of the noose, but they were sworn all the same.
(Jon and Satin settle into a new normal in Winterfell. They slowly find their footing in their respective roles of Lord and Steward, and try to find exactly where they stand with one another after all that has happened and the ever-shifting boundary lines between them continue to blur.)
Series
- Part 12 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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A Favor in Kind by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
11 May 2025
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“There are no wounds to tend, Jon." Satin assured him. "It is just an ache.”
Jon breathed deeply through his nose, that way he did when he was deep in thought or hesitating, as he considered Satin’s words. His brow furrowed as he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. His voice was quiet, almost barely more than a grumble, when he finally spoke. “You tend my aches all the time.”
Satin opened his mouth to tell him that he didn’t mind doing that for him, that they’d been over this and he needn’t feel shame for hurting and needing some relief, that Satin offered so it was all okay, before the look on Jon’s face gave him pause. It wasn’t hesitancy, like he’d first thought. It was something closer to bashful with the faintest hint of color rising to the tips of his ears and the awkward way he was holding his shoulders. The realization came to him slowly in the quiet that followed. Jon was offering. Satin blinked.
(Satin takes a tumble, Jon makes an offer. And Satin - offering, always, offering - is suddenly left to be the one accepting. It's a vulnerable thing, Satin finds, accepting when all you know is offering.)
Series
- Part 13 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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It Takes Two by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
16 May 2025
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Despite the late hour, Winterfell was still awake and bustling. Servants hustled through the corridors carrying food and drink, people danced and stepped on each other’s feet in their eagerness and intoxication, men sang loudly and off-key in harmonies so discordant it wasn’t always clear what song they were singing, and laughter echoed across the castle’s cobblestones. Life was good; the Boltons dead, Winterfell saved and liberated, and the balance of power put to rights, for a Stark – or as close a Stark as was left – ruled in the North again. Just for the night, all was right in the world.
(The feast in honor of Winterfell's liberation is tonight but that doesn't mean Jon and Satin aren't working. The Lord of Winterfell is never free of duties and Satin is never far behind him to offer what help he can. But before the feast, during it between respective dances and conversations, and after the festivities are over, they can still find moments for one another.)
Series
- Part 14 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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A Slow Burning Fire ART and Sketches by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
10 Nov 2025
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A place for me to share digital art and sketches I've done in between writing for the A Slow Burning Fire JonSatin series! I'll also post any commissions for the series I get from other artists here!
I'll post more as I draw them! Feel free to make suggestions!
Series
- Part 15 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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The Direwolf and the Crow by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
23 May 2025
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The completed embroidery piece he’d spent the last month working on seemed almost heavy in his pocket. It was stupid, he knew, but he had made it for Jon. Now that it was finished, the idea of actually giving it to him seemed foolish. What use has he for such frivolous stitchings? he thought. Jon was a practical man, Satin knew. He kept things that had a purpose, gave away what didn’t, and had little interest in pretty things that were pretty for the sake of being pretty. He was Lord of Winterfell, Keeper and Warden of the North, yet he did not drape himself in precious metals and jewels or spun-gold thread. He wore wool and moleskin like every other Northern lord. An embroidered kerchief too delicate to be used to even wipe one’s brow would be useless to him. Still, Satin had made it. Jeyne had wanted to sew with him, and it had seemed the obvious choice at the time. And now it sat in his pocket like a rock, a weight very much pulling at his awareness.
(Satin has been spending time sewing with Jeyne while he keeps her company. His project is done, a gift for Jon. Now all he has to do is give it to Jon and all Jon has to do is accept it.)
Series
- Part 16 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Higher and Higher by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
27 May 2025
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“The North knows no king but the King in the North whose name is Stark.” He said, then raised his massive head, bearded and scraggly from his capture but proud and fierce all the same, to look at Jon. “The White Wolf!” He proclaimed, voice echoing over the stones of the Dreadfort. “King in the North!”
Steel had sung as blades were drawn and raised to the sky. King in the North, the men chanted. The White Wolf, others called. King in the North, they had cried over and over and over. Jon stood silently, watching from the raised dais taking in meticulous mechanical breaths through his nose, with only the slightest widening of his grey eyes betraying his stoic expression. Ghost stood proudly at his side, the white wolf for which they titled him, as tall as most men in the room and fiercer still. His blood red gaze looked over each man, scanning them, learning them with keen watchful eyes.
(Jon Snow takes the Dreadfort, and within finds Robb Stark's will which had named him his heir. Jon Snow, now Jon Stark, rises higher and higher. Satin, ever at his side, supports him though the change to his life as best he can, as he also rises higher and higher.)
Series
- Part 17 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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The King's Steward, The King's Whore by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
03 Jun 2025
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How many times, he wondered, had Jon had some variation of this same argument and with how many different men? At the Wall, on the march, as Lord, and now as King, how many times? Satin was a point of contention, he knew. The king’s whore, they saw him as, some pretty little thing for Jon to make use of. It didn’t matter that his job was done to exacting standards without fail. It didn’t matter that Satin had earned his position here through more than a year of devoted service. None of it mattered. Because he was a whore. The king’s whore, he reminded himself. It wasn’t just he who bore the burden of that label but Jon as well. They think him a lesser man for this, Satin thought, they must. They think him a man who would keep a whore so blatantly, and a male whore at that. Maybe, and it was a very large maybe, it could have been forgiven if rumor had been that he had kept a male whore whilst at the Wall; a man had needs after all. But to bring that whore to Winterfell and raise him up?
(Satin's past lingers over he and Jon in Winterfell, a few familiar faces from Satin's life in Oldtown arrive in Winter Town, and things he thought he'd outran catch up with him. AKA: Satin faces his backstory)
Series
- Part 18 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Wild Child by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
10 Jun 2025
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Satin had always considered himself good with children. He had grown up in a whorehouse and whores were notorious for having heaps of children. For women in the business, it was simply a consequence of the job. As a young boy, he had been one of at least a dozen children in the pillowhouse at any given time. And as he had grown older and his friends had started becoming mothers, he’d started helping care for their babes on occasion. He liked when they had chubby little cheeks and starry-eyed expressions, when they laughed at a silly face he made, or when they babbled back incoherently when he spoke to them. But he also liked being able to hand them back to their mothers when they cried and make a quick exit. But children had always liked him, so he thought, at least the babes of his pillowhouse sisters always had. And he’d bounce them on his knee and tickle them until they squealed. Rickon Stark, however, was not one of those children. And Satin had a feeling he did not much like him. Mostly, Satin figured with time, Rickon did not much like anyone who wasn’t Jon.
(A wolf cub comes home, wild and half-feral. Confused, quick to anger, and in need of love. Jon and Satin welcome him to Winterfell as best they can)
Series
- Part 19 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care
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Tireless by Rosavalda_Freya
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
20 Jun 2025
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Jon rarely ‘lost time’ anymore, as he called it. What had once been a frequent daily occurrence in the first days when Jon had risen from the dead had dwindled to less than once a week at most, and rarely for more than a breath. He’d return to himself with an easy blink and a shudder and little more, usually even without Satin’s aid. But these past few weeks, Satin had come to find him stood staring blankly into the fire as though dead on his feet or slumped in his chair with distant empty eyes more than a few times. Jon, he’d whisper, stay with me and eventually, he’d find his way back with a hazy disorientation. Satin did not like its resurgence, but Jon had shrugged it off when Satin had asked him about it. It’s nothing, he’d said, don’t fuss, Satin, you’re always fussing. So, he had let it go with a sigh and a wary, cautious eye.
(Representatives from the Iron Bank of Braavos are in Winterfell to negotiate a loan. War is on the Horizon. Winter is Here. The Wall asks for aid. Jon works himself to the bone and Satin is there to lead him back to himself, no matter how lost to the flames he gets)
Series
- Part 20 of A Slow Burning Fire, Tended With Care