FIC: Her Heart Beat Like a Wolf (Sansa) for fauxkaren
Recipient: fauxkaren
Title: Her Heart Beat Like a Wolf
Rating: PG
Characters: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Bran Stark, Rickon Stark, Arya Stark, Robb Stark
Word Count: 3,200
Summary: There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, or: Sansa goes home.
Warning: Spoilers for A Dance with Dragons
1.
She is seated in the High Hall of the Arryns when the guardsman finds her, come with the message that there is a man down on Sky - all in black, a survivor of the Battle of the Wall - claiming to be her brother. She orders him sent away; Alayne Stone never had a brother, nor Lady Arryn, and all of Sansa Stark's brothers are dead.
"As you command, my lady. But he did ask me to convey a message, he said: Winter is Coming."
It can't be true. It can't be. No one in the vale knows about Sansa Stark. The plan had been to reveal her true identity after the war, but then Harry never returned from the Wall and Petyr... Sansa's glance strays briefly to the Moon Door. As far as anyone knows the current Lady Arryn is the bastard daughter of the late unlamented Lord Protector, a widow without a babe in the belly to secure her claim.
"Is that all he said?"
"No, he said: Winter is Coming, Little Sister."
Jon never called Sansa little sister, and Sansa never called him anything other than her bastard half-brother, Jon Snow.
"Bring him up. Bring him up at once."
*
Sansa nearly cries when she sees Jon. Standing there somber and long-faced, he is the image of their father, Eddard Stark come again.
In her brother's arms the apologies trip over Sansa's tongue until she isn't sure what's she's apologising for or who to. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"What for?"
"For not being a better sister, for being so unkind when we were children."
Even as she says it, Sansa knows it sounds foolish, a childish hurt that Jon probably hasn't thought on in years, but she needs to say it anyway. Alanye Stone has felt almost more real than Sansa Stark at times, and Alayne needs to say it.
"Sansa, we were children."
It's as he pulls back that she sees the scar across his throat, red and ragged and exactly - she can't help but notice - where an axe or greatsword would fall. She also notices for the first time that he holds himself like an injured man.
"Old wounds," he assures her as her fingers linger against the scar. "They pain me little. Although I would not refuse the offer of rest and a meal, that's quite a mountain you have out there."
*
The Vale has been largely untouched by the harsh winter or the years of warfare, even the dragons only passed overhead, and Sansa has the servants serve them a meal in what had been her fath-- what had been Littlefinger's solar.
Sansa tells Jon of the happier of her two brief marriages, and Jon speaks of a wildling girl he loved. He does not talk of the day the Wall fell, and Sansa does not tell him about Lady Stoneheart; she would have told Robb, she thinks, if he'd been the one to live.
That first evening they talk around Winterfell; it's too painful elsewise.
*
It takes time, but they get around to discussing what matters: snow melting in Robb's hair, Arya's perpetually dirty face, Bran jumping from trees or roofs and startling people, Rickon being completely dwarfed by Shaggydog.
It's only then that Sansa thinks to ask, "...Ghost?"
"Down in the Vale, with... a friend."
Mya has already scampered up the mountain to tell Sansa of the red priestess waiting at the first waycastle, but Jon says no more of it.
*
"When are you returning to Winterfell?" Sansa asks.
"I'm not going back to Winterfell."
Jon cannot mean to keep to his vows, there's no longer a Wall to man. "What? Why not?"
Jon's fingers brush the scar at his throat. "I've lingered here too long already. I mean to go on to King's Landing and from there to Asshai."
"But Robb and father, they would want--"
"A king offered me Winterfell once, and I told him what I'm telling you now: Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa."
In her bones Sansa knows that Jon speaks the truth; the Vale is not her place. Harry might have taken the name when he came into Jon Arryn's lands and titles, but Sansa is no Lady Arryn, and if she stays here she will end her days as insane as her Aunt Lysa.
Leave Mountain and Vale to the Royces, who've always coveted it, or the Waynwoods, who can claim kinship with the Young Falcon. Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell, and that is her place.
*
It takes time to ready herself for departure. Sansa discards all her gowns in the colours of Houses Tully and Arryn and has new ones made in grey and white. A she-wolf is shot for her pelt, and the smith makes her a wolf's head broach to fasten her new cloak.
Most men would hurry her along, but Jon doesn't. Thousands of leagues from the ruin of the Wall he still dresses all in black, and Sansa thinks he understands the importance of looking like what you are.
She thinks of asking Mya to come with her, but she sees the gleam in the girl's eye as she hurries up and down the mountain; maybe Alayne Stone won't be the only bastard to rise from the ashes of war with a new name and a new purpose.
*
They travel together as far as Gulltown, then Jon and his priestess book passage on a ship headed for King's Landing and Sansa and her small entourage of guards and servants prepare to turn north.
"There's something I need to tell you before I leave," says Jon, and Sansa thinks it's going to be a final goodbye; Winterfell and Asshai are worlds apart, and there's been a sense of finality to Jon throughout their journey. She is not expecting it when Jon says, "Bran is alive."
2.
Winterfell is a ruin of what it once was, but at least the godswood still stands. Alone, Sansa makes her way to the great white weirwood with its angry face of red sap. As a child that face had terrified her, now she reaches out and touches it as tenderly as she would the face of a lost loved one.
"Bran... I don't know if you're listening... Jon told me..." she swallows, thinking about what Jon had told her; Bran, underneath the ice and snows of the far north, seated upon a weirwood throne, roots growing around and through his ruined legs, watching over the North through the carved red eyes of the heart trees.
"I'm so glad you're alive. I wish I could come and see you, but I need to be here now. You remember what father used to say? That there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, I don't think any of us expected it to be me."
The wind whispering through the leaves could easily be mistaken for a boy's laughter.
*
Sansa is afraid that Robb's Lords Bannermen - her Lords Bannermen now - won't come. In the end, all she has to do is raise her Direwolf standard over the ruin of Winterfell and half the North converges on her, if only to refute her claim.
("Ned's girl married the Bastard o' Bolton."
"That was the other girl, I thought."
"No, she was an imposter."
"Don't matter, Theon Turncloak killed all the Stark pups."
"No, just the sons.")
The Greatjon takes Sansa's chin in his hand, tilts her face up till she's looking him in the eye.
"She's got the Young Wolf's look, aye, and I'll wager she's got some of his steel too. I'll follow her, it's been too long since there's been a Stark in Winterfell."
He lays his sword at her feet, and those few lords who don't follow his example are swayed by the raven that arrives from the queen on the iron throne, naming Sansa Stark the last trueborn child of Eddard Stark and the rightful heir to Winterfell.
Sansa knows enough of the game of thrones to know that Queen Daenerys hasn't helped her just to be kind. One day there will be a price; when that day comes she'll pay it, and happily, until then she has her ancestral seat to rebuild.
3.
Of all the children of Eddard Stark, Sansa is last one who might have been expected to devote her life to raising castles.
Everywhere there are plans for the reconstruction of Winterfell, in her bedchamber, her solar, rolled out across the high table when she takes her meals. Thank the Gods the great keep is fit for habitation. Really, Sansa thinks, it's not all that different from building a Winterfell in miniature from snow and twigs, just on a much larger scale.
Sansa watches the bell tower and the library tower rise. She goes back and forth on rebuilding the broken tower; it was part of her childhood at Winterfell, yes, but it was also where Bran fell.
She will have to send for panes of glass from across the Narrow Sea before the glass gardens can be finished. Sansa sighs, the glass gardens always were a problem. But, when the dark winter descended and the wildlings came south pursued by other, and worse, things, half the North had starved. Even in the midst of this long summer, Sansa does not mean to ever be caught so unprepared.
There is great surprise when Sansa orders the sept rebuilt. Old Lord Eddard only had it built for the sake of his southron bride, and all the folk of Winterfell have noticed their lady's new devotion to the Old Gods, every spare hour of her day she spends in the godswood, before the heart tree.
As a child Sansa spent a lot of time in the sept - the only wolf cub to favour the Seven - kneeling beside her lady mother, smelling the incense, watching the flickering candles, and sneaking glances at Lady Catelyn. As she'd grown older, she'd prayed alone, making offerings to the Maid as befit a highborn maiden. Robb was the only one of her siblings who ever ventured into the sept. He never prayed, but just sometimes, when he grew tired of the endless mock battles and tomfoolery he indulged in with Theon and Jon, he'd seek Sansa out there and talk with her for a while or just sit quietly together.
"Praying for a husband?" she remembered Robb asking once, sprawled messily on the floor next to where Sansa was kneeling primly.
"You shouldn't mock me. Good brothers don't."
"And what do good brothers do?"
"In the stories, when the princess is betrothed to an unworthy man, her brother challenges him to a duel and presents her with his head."
Robb had laughed then. "I swear, Sansa, there is more bloodshed in one of your stories than all of Bran's tales of monsters and knights." And then Robb had said something that Sansa had clung to all through her betrothal to Joffrey, he'd said, "I would you know, challenge anyone."
"Yes, I know."
The sept is rebuilt, yet Sansa never enters it. If the years have taught her anything it's that the Mother's mercy, the Father's justice, and the Crone's wisdom are fictions, she needs must make her own wisdom, justice and mercy. Instead, she speaks to the Old Gods, to the heart tree, to Bran.
4.
The harvest festival arrives and Winterfell is full of Sansa's Lords Bannermen come to renew their fealty to her and, that courtesy done with, complain about one thing or another. But the topic most discussed is Sansa's prospective marriage.
She must marry again, this she knows. What has been the point in reclaiming Winterfell if she intends to allow House Stark to extinguish itself? And she does have more offers than many women twice widowed could expect, obviously the prospect of becoming Lord of Winterfell is enough to overshadow any lingering ill-fortune surrounding Sansa.
Once upon a time she would have giggled with Jeyne Poole, earnestly discussing each suitor's comeliness and valour. Now, the prospect of another marriage is something of a headache.
She goes to the godswood after breaking her fast and talks to Bran. In Sansa's mind Bran is eternally eight years old, his mouth twisted in distaste as his sister regales him with her marriage prospects. The thought makes Sansa smile.
"Alys Karstark recommends her brother Harrion to me; well, she would, I suppose, and talks of uniting our houses. The Martell prince is a possibility, but all the talk says he's still in mourning for his lioness. It was even suggested that the queen might offer her own nephew for me, by all accounts Prince Aegon is comely and charming--" it is a still night, but the leaves of the heart tree rustle angrily, which makes Sansa smile. "Yes, I know, Joffrey seemed comely and charming at first too. At any rate, were I even to consider Prince Aegon I would want to know why Daenerys sits the iron throne when his claim is better and why all men call him the mummer's dragon."
"I'm sorry, Bran," sighs Sansa. "This is the sort of thing I should be discussing with a sister, but... I wish I knew what happened to Arya. She must be dead. She would have come back if she was alive." Jon was in Asshai. Bran was far north. Even Sansa herself had nearly stayed in the Vale. "She would have come back, wouldn't she?"
*
Sansa is at the high table discussing the matter of the Bolton holdings with the Lords Umber, Manderly and Glover when she thinks she sees Arya. Just for a second, just out of the corner of her eye. When she looks again all she sees is a serving woman she doesn't recognise.
Her mind is playing tricks on her. Her head has been filled with thoughts of Arya of late, and she's been longing for a sister to discuss the matter of her prospective husband with, totally unsuited though Arya would have been to that task.
Arya is dead. She's dead. She must be.
Yes, Sansa thinks, but dead like father is, or dead like Bran?
No, that way madness lies. She turns her attention back to the subject at hand, the lands and castles formerly held by House Bolton. This has long been a thorn in Sansa's side, the Dreadfort too cursed a place to bestow on a loyal servant, too great a prize to be given to anyone she doesn't quite trust.
*
In her dreams she see Arya. Her sister tells her that all her suitors are stupid.
*
The next morning they find a Frey lordling with his throat cut. Sansa wouldn't have suffered him under her roof, but it was at the queen's insistence and he had guest right.
Arya, Arya, she thinks, was this you?
5.
Months pass and Sansa is no closer to answering the questions of marriage or land ownership.
Queen Daenerys has granted lordship of Bear Island back to Ser Jorah Mormont and Sansa is minded to grant Lady Maege's branch of the family lands of their own in reward for their unflinching loyalty to House Stark. The Bolton lands are out of the question, but there's the Hornwood if it could be cleared of bandits, and Barrowtown is a distinct possibility.
The remnants of House Baratheon have suggested a match between Sansa and Edric Storm, King Robert's baseborn son. Not so long ago the mere suggestion that the lady of Winterfell might marry a bastard would have been laughable, but Sansa has seen for herself how bastards can rise high, and a man with no name of his own might be minded to take Sansa's. Lady Shireen has written to Sansa as well, assuring her of her cousin's worthiness and difference from that cuckoo in the nest, Joffrey so-called Baratheon. Yes, Sansa can see the possibilities of Edric Storm. On the other hand, Sansa supped with Prince Aegon when she last travelled south to renew her fealty to the queen and he was very comely and charming.
But it is not any of these whirling thoughts that pull Sansa from sleep, it is the beast in her bedchamber. The huge black wolf stares at her with malevolent green eyes.
Sansa blinks once, twice, holds her hand out and says, "Hello, Shaggydog."
The direwolf licks her fingers, more, Sansa thinks, for whatever shade of Lady resides within her than for Sansa's own sake.
"Let's go, then," says Sansa, shoving her feet into boots, wrapping herself in her wolf fur cloak and following the big black wolf out of the great keep.
The man is standing in the shadow of the hunter's gate. Sansa is tall for a woman, everyone says, of a height with more of her sworn men than not, but Baby Rickon towers over her. If Robb favoured their mother and Jon their father, then Rickon most resembles the statues Sansa has seen of the old kings of the north, fierce and bearded and stern. She is almost scared of him until he says, surprisingly softly, "I dreamed of this place."
"Me too," Sansa whispers, "every night for years."
"Shaggydog watched from the wood, he saw the silent sisters coming up the Kingsroad, with Robb's bones."
"The Freys finally sent him home, the queen commanded it. Come with me." Sansa takes Rickon's hand with only briefest moment of hesitation and leads him to the crypt.
They linger by their father's statue, then Robb's, and Sansa realises that for all his height and apparent fierceness Rickon is little older than Robb was when the Freys cut him down, and she feels a sudden desperate protectiveness.
They walk arm in arm through the crypt until they can no longer remember the names of the dead Starks they're passing. Afterwards, she takes him to the lichyard where a stone wolf marks where Lady's bones are buried and Shaggydog cries and paws at the earth.
"You could stay," she tells Rickon, back at the gate. He could; though he wears skins and carries a bronze sword in place of steel, he looks like a lord of Winterfell, like a Stark of old. Sansa tries to dismiss her discomfort with the idea of giving up Winterfell as unworthy of her.
"I couldn't. I've been with the free folk too long to kneel." Rickon gives her a wry smile. "Or even be knelt to."
Sansa tells herself that she isn't relieved. "You'll visit me though, won't you?"
"Of course, me and Shaggy. Whenever we come south."
Sansa hugs her baby brother for a long time; on impulse she hugs Shaggydog too.
*
Sansa sits by the pool in the godswood and tells Bran about Rickon, and about her suspicions about Arya.
"I never wanted Winterfell, you know," she says. "I never felt passed over for any of you; I had three strong brothers and I was going to marry a prince. And, now, I still have three brothers and I may yet marry a prince, but there's Winterfell and its people too, and I can't give that up. I won't."
Title: Her Heart Beat Like a Wolf
Rating: PG
Characters: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Bran Stark, Rickon Stark, Arya Stark, Robb Stark
Word Count: 3,200
Summary: There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, or: Sansa goes home.
Warning: Spoilers for A Dance with Dragons
1.
She is seated in the High Hall of the Arryns when the guardsman finds her, come with the message that there is a man down on Sky - all in black, a survivor of the Battle of the Wall - claiming to be her brother. She orders him sent away; Alayne Stone never had a brother, nor Lady Arryn, and all of Sansa Stark's brothers are dead.
"As you command, my lady. But he did ask me to convey a message, he said: Winter is Coming."
It can't be true. It can't be. No one in the vale knows about Sansa Stark. The plan had been to reveal her true identity after the war, but then Harry never returned from the Wall and Petyr... Sansa's glance strays briefly to the Moon Door. As far as anyone knows the current Lady Arryn is the bastard daughter of the late unlamented Lord Protector, a widow without a babe in the belly to secure her claim.
"Is that all he said?"
"No, he said: Winter is Coming, Little Sister."
Jon never called Sansa little sister, and Sansa never called him anything other than her bastard half-brother, Jon Snow.
"Bring him up. Bring him up at once."
*
Sansa nearly cries when she sees Jon. Standing there somber and long-faced, he is the image of their father, Eddard Stark come again.
In her brother's arms the apologies trip over Sansa's tongue until she isn't sure what's she's apologising for or who to. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"What for?"
"For not being a better sister, for being so unkind when we were children."
Even as she says it, Sansa knows it sounds foolish, a childish hurt that Jon probably hasn't thought on in years, but she needs to say it anyway. Alanye Stone has felt almost more real than Sansa Stark at times, and Alayne needs to say it.
"Sansa, we were children."
It's as he pulls back that she sees the scar across his throat, red and ragged and exactly - she can't help but notice - where an axe or greatsword would fall. She also notices for the first time that he holds himself like an injured man.
"Old wounds," he assures her as her fingers linger against the scar. "They pain me little. Although I would not refuse the offer of rest and a meal, that's quite a mountain you have out there."
*
The Vale has been largely untouched by the harsh winter or the years of warfare, even the dragons only passed overhead, and Sansa has the servants serve them a meal in what had been her fath-- what had been Littlefinger's solar.
Sansa tells Jon of the happier of her two brief marriages, and Jon speaks of a wildling girl he loved. He does not talk of the day the Wall fell, and Sansa does not tell him about Lady Stoneheart; she would have told Robb, she thinks, if he'd been the one to live.
That first evening they talk around Winterfell; it's too painful elsewise.
*
It takes time, but they get around to discussing what matters: snow melting in Robb's hair, Arya's perpetually dirty face, Bran jumping from trees or roofs and startling people, Rickon being completely dwarfed by Shaggydog.
It's only then that Sansa thinks to ask, "...Ghost?"
"Down in the Vale, with... a friend."
Mya has already scampered up the mountain to tell Sansa of the red priestess waiting at the first waycastle, but Jon says no more of it.
*
"When are you returning to Winterfell?" Sansa asks.
"I'm not going back to Winterfell."
Jon cannot mean to keep to his vows, there's no longer a Wall to man. "What? Why not?"
Jon's fingers brush the scar at his throat. "I've lingered here too long already. I mean to go on to King's Landing and from there to Asshai."
"But Robb and father, they would want--"
"A king offered me Winterfell once, and I told him what I'm telling you now: Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa."
In her bones Sansa knows that Jon speaks the truth; the Vale is not her place. Harry might have taken the name when he came into Jon Arryn's lands and titles, but Sansa is no Lady Arryn, and if she stays here she will end her days as insane as her Aunt Lysa.
Leave Mountain and Vale to the Royces, who've always coveted it, or the Waynwoods, who can claim kinship with the Young Falcon. Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell, and that is her place.
*
It takes time to ready herself for departure. Sansa discards all her gowns in the colours of Houses Tully and Arryn and has new ones made in grey and white. A she-wolf is shot for her pelt, and the smith makes her a wolf's head broach to fasten her new cloak.
Most men would hurry her along, but Jon doesn't. Thousands of leagues from the ruin of the Wall he still dresses all in black, and Sansa thinks he understands the importance of looking like what you are.
She thinks of asking Mya to come with her, but she sees the gleam in the girl's eye as she hurries up and down the mountain; maybe Alayne Stone won't be the only bastard to rise from the ashes of war with a new name and a new purpose.
*
They travel together as far as Gulltown, then Jon and his priestess book passage on a ship headed for King's Landing and Sansa and her small entourage of guards and servants prepare to turn north.
"There's something I need to tell you before I leave," says Jon, and Sansa thinks it's going to be a final goodbye; Winterfell and Asshai are worlds apart, and there's been a sense of finality to Jon throughout their journey. She is not expecting it when Jon says, "Bran is alive."
2.
Winterfell is a ruin of what it once was, but at least the godswood still stands. Alone, Sansa makes her way to the great white weirwood with its angry face of red sap. As a child that face had terrified her, now she reaches out and touches it as tenderly as she would the face of a lost loved one.
"Bran... I don't know if you're listening... Jon told me..." she swallows, thinking about what Jon had told her; Bran, underneath the ice and snows of the far north, seated upon a weirwood throne, roots growing around and through his ruined legs, watching over the North through the carved red eyes of the heart trees.
"I'm so glad you're alive. I wish I could come and see you, but I need to be here now. You remember what father used to say? That there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, I don't think any of us expected it to be me."
The wind whispering through the leaves could easily be mistaken for a boy's laughter.
*
Sansa is afraid that Robb's Lords Bannermen - her Lords Bannermen now - won't come. In the end, all she has to do is raise her Direwolf standard over the ruin of Winterfell and half the North converges on her, if only to refute her claim.
("Ned's girl married the Bastard o' Bolton."
"That was the other girl, I thought."
"No, she was an imposter."
"Don't matter, Theon Turncloak killed all the Stark pups."
"No, just the sons.")
The Greatjon takes Sansa's chin in his hand, tilts her face up till she's looking him in the eye.
"She's got the Young Wolf's look, aye, and I'll wager she's got some of his steel too. I'll follow her, it's been too long since there's been a Stark in Winterfell."
He lays his sword at her feet, and those few lords who don't follow his example are swayed by the raven that arrives from the queen on the iron throne, naming Sansa Stark the last trueborn child of Eddard Stark and the rightful heir to Winterfell.
Sansa knows enough of the game of thrones to know that Queen Daenerys hasn't helped her just to be kind. One day there will be a price; when that day comes she'll pay it, and happily, until then she has her ancestral seat to rebuild.
3.
Of all the children of Eddard Stark, Sansa is last one who might have been expected to devote her life to raising castles.
Everywhere there are plans for the reconstruction of Winterfell, in her bedchamber, her solar, rolled out across the high table when she takes her meals. Thank the Gods the great keep is fit for habitation. Really, Sansa thinks, it's not all that different from building a Winterfell in miniature from snow and twigs, just on a much larger scale.
Sansa watches the bell tower and the library tower rise. She goes back and forth on rebuilding the broken tower; it was part of her childhood at Winterfell, yes, but it was also where Bran fell.
She will have to send for panes of glass from across the Narrow Sea before the glass gardens can be finished. Sansa sighs, the glass gardens always were a problem. But, when the dark winter descended and the wildlings came south pursued by other, and worse, things, half the North had starved. Even in the midst of this long summer, Sansa does not mean to ever be caught so unprepared.
There is great surprise when Sansa orders the sept rebuilt. Old Lord Eddard only had it built for the sake of his southron bride, and all the folk of Winterfell have noticed their lady's new devotion to the Old Gods, every spare hour of her day she spends in the godswood, before the heart tree.
As a child Sansa spent a lot of time in the sept - the only wolf cub to favour the Seven - kneeling beside her lady mother, smelling the incense, watching the flickering candles, and sneaking glances at Lady Catelyn. As she'd grown older, she'd prayed alone, making offerings to the Maid as befit a highborn maiden. Robb was the only one of her siblings who ever ventured into the sept. He never prayed, but just sometimes, when he grew tired of the endless mock battles and tomfoolery he indulged in with Theon and Jon, he'd seek Sansa out there and talk with her for a while or just sit quietly together.
"Praying for a husband?" she remembered Robb asking once, sprawled messily on the floor next to where Sansa was kneeling primly.
"You shouldn't mock me. Good brothers don't."
"And what do good brothers do?"
"In the stories, when the princess is betrothed to an unworthy man, her brother challenges him to a duel and presents her with his head."
Robb had laughed then. "I swear, Sansa, there is more bloodshed in one of your stories than all of Bran's tales of monsters and knights." And then Robb had said something that Sansa had clung to all through her betrothal to Joffrey, he'd said, "I would you know, challenge anyone."
"Yes, I know."
The sept is rebuilt, yet Sansa never enters it. If the years have taught her anything it's that the Mother's mercy, the Father's justice, and the Crone's wisdom are fictions, she needs must make her own wisdom, justice and mercy. Instead, she speaks to the Old Gods, to the heart tree, to Bran.
4.
The harvest festival arrives and Winterfell is full of Sansa's Lords Bannermen come to renew their fealty to her and, that courtesy done with, complain about one thing or another. But the topic most discussed is Sansa's prospective marriage.
She must marry again, this she knows. What has been the point in reclaiming Winterfell if she intends to allow House Stark to extinguish itself? And she does have more offers than many women twice widowed could expect, obviously the prospect of becoming Lord of Winterfell is enough to overshadow any lingering ill-fortune surrounding Sansa.
Once upon a time she would have giggled with Jeyne Poole, earnestly discussing each suitor's comeliness and valour. Now, the prospect of another marriage is something of a headache.
She goes to the godswood after breaking her fast and talks to Bran. In Sansa's mind Bran is eternally eight years old, his mouth twisted in distaste as his sister regales him with her marriage prospects. The thought makes Sansa smile.
"Alys Karstark recommends her brother Harrion to me; well, she would, I suppose, and talks of uniting our houses. The Martell prince is a possibility, but all the talk says he's still in mourning for his lioness. It was even suggested that the queen might offer her own nephew for me, by all accounts Prince Aegon is comely and charming--" it is a still night, but the leaves of the heart tree rustle angrily, which makes Sansa smile. "Yes, I know, Joffrey seemed comely and charming at first too. At any rate, were I even to consider Prince Aegon I would want to know why Daenerys sits the iron throne when his claim is better and why all men call him the mummer's dragon."
"I'm sorry, Bran," sighs Sansa. "This is the sort of thing I should be discussing with a sister, but... I wish I knew what happened to Arya. She must be dead. She would have come back if she was alive." Jon was in Asshai. Bran was far north. Even Sansa herself had nearly stayed in the Vale. "She would have come back, wouldn't she?"
*
Sansa is at the high table discussing the matter of the Bolton holdings with the Lords Umber, Manderly and Glover when she thinks she sees Arya. Just for a second, just out of the corner of her eye. When she looks again all she sees is a serving woman she doesn't recognise.
Her mind is playing tricks on her. Her head has been filled with thoughts of Arya of late, and she's been longing for a sister to discuss the matter of her prospective husband with, totally unsuited though Arya would have been to that task.
Arya is dead. She's dead. She must be.
Yes, Sansa thinks, but dead like father is, or dead like Bran?
No, that way madness lies. She turns her attention back to the subject at hand, the lands and castles formerly held by House Bolton. This has long been a thorn in Sansa's side, the Dreadfort too cursed a place to bestow on a loyal servant, too great a prize to be given to anyone she doesn't quite trust.
*
In her dreams she see Arya. Her sister tells her that all her suitors are stupid.
*
The next morning they find a Frey lordling with his throat cut. Sansa wouldn't have suffered him under her roof, but it was at the queen's insistence and he had guest right.
Arya, Arya, she thinks, was this you?
5.
Months pass and Sansa is no closer to answering the questions of marriage or land ownership.
Queen Daenerys has granted lordship of Bear Island back to Ser Jorah Mormont and Sansa is minded to grant Lady Maege's branch of the family lands of their own in reward for their unflinching loyalty to House Stark. The Bolton lands are out of the question, but there's the Hornwood if it could be cleared of bandits, and Barrowtown is a distinct possibility.
The remnants of House Baratheon have suggested a match between Sansa and Edric Storm, King Robert's baseborn son. Not so long ago the mere suggestion that the lady of Winterfell might marry a bastard would have been laughable, but Sansa has seen for herself how bastards can rise high, and a man with no name of his own might be minded to take Sansa's. Lady Shireen has written to Sansa as well, assuring her of her cousin's worthiness and difference from that cuckoo in the nest, Joffrey so-called Baratheon. Yes, Sansa can see the possibilities of Edric Storm. On the other hand, Sansa supped with Prince Aegon when she last travelled south to renew her fealty to the queen and he was very comely and charming.
But it is not any of these whirling thoughts that pull Sansa from sleep, it is the beast in her bedchamber. The huge black wolf stares at her with malevolent green eyes.
Sansa blinks once, twice, holds her hand out and says, "Hello, Shaggydog."
The direwolf licks her fingers, more, Sansa thinks, for whatever shade of Lady resides within her than for Sansa's own sake.
"Let's go, then," says Sansa, shoving her feet into boots, wrapping herself in her wolf fur cloak and following the big black wolf out of the great keep.
The man is standing in the shadow of the hunter's gate. Sansa is tall for a woman, everyone says, of a height with more of her sworn men than not, but Baby Rickon towers over her. If Robb favoured their mother and Jon their father, then Rickon most resembles the statues Sansa has seen of the old kings of the north, fierce and bearded and stern. She is almost scared of him until he says, surprisingly softly, "I dreamed of this place."
"Me too," Sansa whispers, "every night for years."
"Shaggydog watched from the wood, he saw the silent sisters coming up the Kingsroad, with Robb's bones."
"The Freys finally sent him home, the queen commanded it. Come with me." Sansa takes Rickon's hand with only briefest moment of hesitation and leads him to the crypt.
They linger by their father's statue, then Robb's, and Sansa realises that for all his height and apparent fierceness Rickon is little older than Robb was when the Freys cut him down, and she feels a sudden desperate protectiveness.
They walk arm in arm through the crypt until they can no longer remember the names of the dead Starks they're passing. Afterwards, she takes him to the lichyard where a stone wolf marks where Lady's bones are buried and Shaggydog cries and paws at the earth.
"You could stay," she tells Rickon, back at the gate. He could; though he wears skins and carries a bronze sword in place of steel, he looks like a lord of Winterfell, like a Stark of old. Sansa tries to dismiss her discomfort with the idea of giving up Winterfell as unworthy of her.
"I couldn't. I've been with the free folk too long to kneel." Rickon gives her a wry smile. "Or even be knelt to."
Sansa tells herself that she isn't relieved. "You'll visit me though, won't you?"
"Of course, me and Shaggy. Whenever we come south."
Sansa hugs her baby brother for a long time; on impulse she hugs Shaggydog too.
*
Sansa sits by the pool in the godswood and tells Bran about Rickon, and about her suspicions about Arya.
"I never wanted Winterfell, you know," she says. "I never felt passed over for any of you; I had three strong brothers and I was going to marry a prince. And, now, I still have three brothers and I may yet marry a prince, but there's Winterfell and its people too, and I can't give that up. I won't."