with pins in your fingers, you held yourself up high | sansa stark, sansa/margaery | 895 words
When it is all said and done, and wild Rickon has sunk his teeth into the throats of all the enemies of his blonde, one-eared lion bride, gathering a tenuous, nervous peace around the Seven Kingdoms, Sansa Stark washes Alayne Stone from her auburn hair and Petyr Baelish's screams from the inside of her skull. When she rides for Winterfell the next morning, they are still scraping his skin off the rocks below the Moon Door. Her face is hard as she slows her horse, and snow gathers in halos around her bright head. She does not yield, but clenches her jaw ever tighter. Wolves are not kind to mockingbirds, my lord.
They sit her in her father's chair, place a delicate circlet of silver and diamonds on her head, and call her the Queen in the North as it shines above her eyes like ice. They do not recognize her, those who knew her as a child; she had once been the summer itself, though she has given herself to winter now, and winter become, her features carved by snow. Her cheekbones can cut like the diamond points on her crown, like the ice come once again to drip in shards from the trees. Winter, and the death of all things. When she smiles her thanks, her teeth are so sharp the people who shout their accolades cannot remember how they ever mistook her for a fish, when she's a wolf through and through.
In the crypts below the castle, with their fresh stone faces carved in the likenesses of all those she ever loved, she lights a thousand candles in vigil. For her father, her mother, Robb, Arya, Bran, even Jon. Rickon sends ravens from the South with vials filled with the blood of those who had ever done the Starks wrong, and Sansa dashes them against the ancient stones in sacrifice. Debts are repaid, sins are atoned, and she does not weep, not even when curled alone in her childhood bed. She screams, and bares her teeth, and bays for blood.
Theon Greyjoy prostrates himself at her feet, proclaims himself her servant, begs forgiveness. She raises him up to kiss him, presents him with the hilt of Robb Stark's sword, watches as he weeps. It should have been me. Her face is a mask of beautiful ice, no emotion at all, and clasps his hands and wipes his tears and names him the head of her Queensguard. He sleeps on a pallet at the foot of her ornate bed, says that until the day he dies he will give his life for hers. Like Florian and Jonquil, she thinks, and does not smile. But the stories aren't true, she knows that now. She wonders how she could ever have been such a fool as to believe them.
It takes time, but she becomes accustomed to the empty castle, and they become accustomed to her demeanor, cold as the stone and ice and iron her homeland is forged from. Though there's none of the girl left, only the bright, hard queen, they have trouble separating what is from what was, and when Sansa screams in the night Theon is there ready to cradle her, though she bats his arms away and shouts him off. She would feel sorry at the hurt look that crosses his ravaged face if she could feel anything at all, but his comfort is so much a reminder of her childhood, of Robb, that she can do nothing but refuse. She has no companion but her sorrow and her unbending will, and when they bathe her the servants do not linger over her scars.
It's a surprise, then, when Margaery comes, uninvited and unannounced, bringing with her cartloads of roses from Highgarden, moving into the dim courtyard at Winterfell like the rainbow from the crystal in the sept Sansa hasn't visited in years. Our way is the old way, and it crunches beneath her teeth like ice. But there's the Widow Queen, resplendent in gold and green against the drab white and grey of the North. Nostalgia hits at Sansa's heart like hail, like fire, like the wind buffeting the Eyrie and it all she can do not to sink to her knees, bowled over by memory and the scent of the roses, so strange, so oddly comforting. There is a warmth she has not known in years in Margaery's smile, and the dark haired woman brings the northern queen's hand to her lips and melts her heart with one kind glance.
There was a home in her heart for Margaery from the moment they met, she knows that much to be true. Now, years later, she brought what Sansa had lost, had stripped herself of in order to survive. She'd become as icy and blue eyed and dead as the Others but within moments she's sobbing against her old friend's skirts, no words, no confessions, simply all the tears held clenched inside her chest for so long. Margaery doesn't ask, of course; she knows already. She curls her long fingers into the younger woman's hair and tucks her into bed, holding her cheek against her breast.
"You are as kind as my lady mother was," Sansa Stark says, cheeks red with grief, no longer looking carved from ivory.
When she wakes the next morning, there are lemon cakes.
They sit her in her father's chair, place a delicate circlet of silver and diamonds on her head, and call her the Queen in the North as it shines above her eyes like ice. They do not recognize her, those who knew her as a child; she had once been the summer itself, though she has given herself to winter now, and winter become, her features carved by snow. Her cheekbones can cut like the diamond points on her crown, like the ice come once again to drip in shards from the trees. Winter, and the death of all things. When she smiles her thanks, her teeth are so sharp the people who shout their accolades cannot remember how they ever mistook her for a fish, when she's a wolf through and through.
In the crypts below the castle, with their fresh stone faces carved in the likenesses of all those she ever loved, she lights a thousand candles in vigil. For her father, her mother, Robb, Arya, Bran, even Jon. Rickon sends ravens from the South with vials filled with the blood of those who had ever done the Starks wrong, and Sansa dashes them against the ancient stones in sacrifice. Debts are repaid, sins are atoned, and she does not weep, not even when curled alone in her childhood bed. She screams, and bares her teeth, and bays for blood.
Theon Greyjoy prostrates himself at her feet, proclaims himself her servant, begs forgiveness. She raises him up to kiss him, presents him with the hilt of Robb Stark's sword, watches as he weeps. It should have been me. Her face is a mask of beautiful ice, no emotion at all, and clasps his hands and wipes his tears and names him the head of her Queensguard. He sleeps on a pallet at the foot of her ornate bed, says that until the day he dies he will give his life for hers. Like Florian and Jonquil, she thinks, and does not smile. But the stories aren't true, she knows that now. She wonders how she could ever have been such a fool as to believe them.
It takes time, but she becomes accustomed to the empty castle, and they become accustomed to her demeanor, cold as the stone and ice and iron her homeland is forged from. Though there's none of the girl left, only the bright, hard queen, they have trouble separating what is from what was, and when Sansa screams in the night Theon is there ready to cradle her, though she bats his arms away and shouts him off. She would feel sorry at the hurt look that crosses his ravaged face if she could feel anything at all, but his comfort is so much a reminder of her childhood, of Robb, that she can do nothing but refuse. She has no companion but her sorrow and her unbending will, and when they bathe her the servants do not linger over her scars.
It's a surprise, then, when Margaery comes, uninvited and unannounced, bringing with her cartloads of roses from Highgarden, moving into the dim courtyard at Winterfell like the rainbow from the crystal in the sept Sansa hasn't visited in years. Our way is the old way, and it crunches beneath her teeth like ice. But there's the Widow Queen, resplendent in gold and green against the drab white and grey of the North. Nostalgia hits at Sansa's heart like hail, like fire, like the wind buffeting the Eyrie and it all she can do not to sink to her knees, bowled over by memory and the scent of the roses, so strange, so oddly comforting. There is a warmth she has not known in years in Margaery's smile, and the dark haired woman brings the northern queen's hand to her lips and melts her heart with one kind glance.
There was a home in her heart for Margaery from the moment they met, she knows that much to be true. Now, years later, she brought what Sansa had lost, had stripped herself of in order to survive. She'd become as icy and blue eyed and dead as the Others but within moments she's sobbing against her old friend's skirts, no words, no confessions, simply all the tears held clenched inside her chest for so long. Margaery doesn't ask, of course; she knows already. She curls her long fingers into the younger woman's hair and tucks her into bed, holding her cheek against her breast.
"You are as kind as my lady mother was," Sansa Stark says, cheeks red with grief, no longer looking carved from ivory.
When she wakes the next morning, there are lemon cakes.