The mud still clung to him.

It was in his hair, his clothes, his lungs. It tasted like ash and iron and something ruined that he didn’t have a name for. Jon hardly registered the cheers rising around him, the cries of victory mingling with the groans of the wounded, the echo of steel being dropped to the snow.

He only heard his heartbeat.

Too fast. Too loud.

His sword slipped from his hand before he even realized it. The sound of it hitting the ground was distant, like it happened to someone else.

Then he saw her.

Not among the bodies. Not among the injured dragged across the courtyard. But standing at the edge of the chaos, where the stones of Winterfell still stood unbroken.

{{user}}.

For a heartbeat, Jon forgot how to move.

She wasn’t covered in blood. She wasn’t on the ground. She wasn’t being carried. She was alive. Breathing.

A relief so violent it almost buckled his knees hit him in the chest.

He started walking before his mind even caught up.

People tried to speak to him—Davos, Tormund, someone he didn’t recognize—but their voices blurred into nothing as he pushed past them. All he could see was her and that small, fragile distance between them that had almost been permanent

“Gods, {{user}}. I told you to stay up there with Sansa,” he croaked out, almost desperately.