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breakingdreamsTitle: Overlapping Shadows
Pairing(s): Sansa & Cersei, Arya/Sansa, Daenerys/Sansa, Harry Hardying/Sansa
Wordcount: 4581
Summary: Once, when Sansa was still young and foolish with a head stuck in a cloud of songs and fairy tale endings, she loved Cersei.
Warnings: Sibling incest, one scene that could be seen as dub-con, character deaths EVERYWHERE (though it's mostly in the background/only mentioned), spoilers for various events/characters in the entire series.
Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership over the A Song of Ice & Fire books.
Notes: I meant to post this here on the same day I posted it tofemale_fest, but I suppose that it slipped my mind. This was written for the prompt "Cersei & Sansa - sometimes the people we hate the most shape us the hardest".
I'd like to take the time to extend my thanks towards![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dornfelder for beta-ing this fic for me! You were a fantastic help. Any mistakes remaining are my own.
Crossposting this toasoiaf_slash.
Overlapping Shadows
Once, when Sansa was still young and foolish with a head stuck in a cloud of songs and fairy tale endings, she loved Cersei. How could she not? Cersei was beautiful, elegant, kind, the perfect queen. The perfect mother to the perfect prince.
In those days, Sansa hungered after her love, drinking up every smile, every kind word, every sign that Cersei could, would love her as desperately as any starved orphan child might.
She was no orphan child, not then. She had mother and father both, and loved them with all the complications of any girl-child coming into their own. She could not help but love her mother a little more than her father, however, in that selfish way any summer-child may allow themselves to choose. Her gracious mother, southern-born with all the elegance that gave her. How could Sansa not love her with all that she was? Her mother was what she had strived to be all her life, only she, Sansa thought, would be married to southern lord rather than a northern one.
And then Cersei came. Joffrey too, of course— Joffrey, who she thought the culmination of all her dreams, Joffrey, who she saw as her perfect golden prince in the silly manner of a summer child who had only known songs and love.
But in some ways, Cersei was even more. She came into Sansa's life as a shining beacon, as if sent by the Seven themselves. She was kinder, more beautiful, more elegant and gracious than anyone Sansa had ever known, and Sansa had wanted. Had wanted to be her with all the hunger of a wolf at the end of a long winter, had wanted Cersei to look at her with love in her eyes and on her tongue, to call her, "Daughter," and smile.
It didn't matter, then, that she had her own mother and father, that she had both sister and brothers, brothers and a sister who she fought with and loved and who loved her and fought with her in return. It didn't matter, not when all she wanted was Cersei and Joffrey and their beautiful, southern world.
It didn't matter.
Not then.
Not until Joffrey ordered her father's head removed, when Robb and Bran and Rickon and her mother all died. Not until she was an orphan-child in truth, did she understand, and the taste of Cersei's love turned to bitterness in her mouth.
It was then, there in the beautiful courts of her childhood dreams, when she looked at Joffrey's face and the beautiful curve of Cersei's smile, that she truly began to learn what it meant to hate.
*
Sweetrobin dies a horrible, choking death, wracked with fever and pain. He screams for poppy milk and relief, for his mother and Alayne. Sansa stays by his side throughout that long, awful night, wiping the sweat from his brow and whispering soothing nothings to his panicked cries, until the moment his heart stutters to a halt in the early hours of morning.
She thinks she is too exhausted for tears, but they slip down her cheeks regardless. She cannot say if they are from sorrow or relief— the lives of her family are slipping through her fingers and yet she cannot say that she loved him, for all that he was her cousin.
No. Those are dangerous thoughts. To Alayne Stone, Robert Arryn is nothing but a child and lord she cared for. She cannot think otherwise.
Not yet.
*
Harry Hardying's arrival at the Vale falls like a shadow soon after Sweetrobin is put to rest, and he is named Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie not long after, Alayne's father stepping aside with feigned grace.
Her chance comes sooner than she thinks it will. As Lord Harrold Hardying looks upon his household, his gaze lingers on her for longer than it ought. The next day, he seeks her out.
"Who are you?" he murmurs, voice low with interest.
"I am—" She hesitates. A mistake, but a planned one. "Alayne. Alayne Stone, Lord Petyr's daughter.""
"Alayne," he repeats. He does not say, Stone, but she has learned enough to know where his thoughts lie.
It is enough. He is caught.
Her father will be pleased.
*
Littlefinger wastes no time setting his plans into motion. It's all so simple, so surprisingly simple, in a way that has Sansa keeping an eye on Harry and his men. Once Petyr comes to him with the truth— that the beautiful bastard girl he's planning to tumble in the sheets is truly Sansa Stark, the key to claiming all the North— everything unfolds just as Petyr has planned.
"But is she not already wed, to the Lannister?" Lord Hardying asks, his final show of hesitation before the fall.
"He is dead, of course," Littlefinger lies, the words coming easy off his tongue. "Why do you think the Lannisters have not found him yet, with all their searching? It would have been a massive oversight had I left her so unprotected."
And then, the finale. Before he leaves the room, Sansa approaches him with doe eyes. "My lord," she says, her cheeks rosy and her smile shy. "I am glad that it is you who became Lord of the Vale; I would not have been able to trust my secret so easily with another."
And so he falls.
*
Harry Hardying is quick to propose marriage to her after that. They are wed within a fortnight; Petyr's doing, of course. Had Harry had his way, he would have shouted his intentions for the world to hear, and invited them all to come. Foolish, in a war. Better to marry quickly and secure her safety. Quickly, when he is still swept away by desire and ambition, before he questions her love or her claim.
Those who attend will be enough to verify her marriage, later.
When the time comes to replace her wolf cloak with his falcon, Sansa gazes into his eyes, and feels nothing but a calm certainty.
Love is a poison, the memory of Cersei's voice whispers into her ears. A sweet poison, but a poison all the same.
Once, she would have discarded those words for no reason more than the simple fact they are hers, but she has learned much from Petyr and one of those things is this: knowledge from an enemy is still knowledge, and knowledge should never be discarded.
Instead, she tucks those words close to her heart, and smiles her sweetest smile at Harry as he removes her family's wolf and with it, the last shred she has of home.
Poison, after all, has ever been a woman's weapon.
And Sansa has never been anything less than a lady.
*
Petyr touches her often. Nothing improper, of course— a kiss upon the hand before others, perhaps, nothing that a favored lord cannot ask of his betters. More, perhaps, when they are in private, but that is rarer these days. Now that Sansa is the Lady of the Vale, she is rarely alone. Months pass before he is able to take a kiss from her again.
When he does, she thinks, I am no longer Alayne Stone, and I am no longer his daughter. I am Sansa Stark, Lady of the Vale and Winterfell both, and I will suffer this no more.
But she doesn't make her move, not yet. She tells herself that it would be too suspicious, too soon after the wedding, but even as she thinks her words she knows them to be lies.
He saved her.
He used her.
The scales tip, back and forth.
A Lannister always pays their debts.
But she is no Lannister.
She makes her decision.
Littlefinger dies within a month, his heart giving out one evening as they dine. Sansa cries pretty tears over the death of the one who had been her only protector in her darkest time, and Harry Hardying is quick to swoop down and comfort his beautiful, grieving wife.
It's the first time she has ever felt powerful in her life. As Harry holds her close, muttering meaningless words and kissing away her tears, she discovers that she loves the taste of it. It is heady, exhilarating.
She wonders if this is how Arya felt, holding a sword.
*
Brienne of Tarth finds her after her womb has already quickened with child, with the heir who will secure her ever more closely to Harry's side. She comes alone, although the eaves rustle with rumours of the man she leaves in the village below. The golden Kingslayer, though Sansa cares little for that. She has known enough of mad kings— his being Cersei's brother is the worse crime of the two.
She listens to Brienne's tale with outward grace, with an emotion she cannot name quickening her heart. When Brienne is finished, Sansa says simply, "My mother is dead."
It is true, twice over. The news of Lady Stoneheart's return to death preceded Brienne's arrival by merely weeks.
Sansa had not wept when she had heard. The shade had not been her mother, whatever the Red Priest liked to claim. There is no longer any mother for Brienne and her Lannister to return to, and has not been for a very long time.
Besides, she is no lost lamb, searching for her shepard.
She does not say any of this. Instead, she says, "If your Kingslayer wishes to fulfill his promise to my lady mother, then tell him this: bring my family together again."
"My lady," Brienne begins in protest. "Your family..." She trails off, but Sansa can fill in the words that she will not say. They are all already dead.
"My sister Ayra's death is as of yet unspoken for," Sansa answers. "Bring her— bring whatever is left of my family to me, and I will forgive him for his crimes against us."
Brienne watches her with troubled eyes, but she inclines her head, accepting her words easily enough. She leaves that same day.
It took them many months to find Sansa, and she was hiding in plain sight. Arya has always been sly and tricky, and she never had the scruples Sansa had even before everything went so terribly wrong. Sansa dares not hope that she can be found, if she even still lives. Jaime Lannister's quest is a fruitless one.
When her lord husband asks what is troubling her, Sansa smiles and laughs and makes a small lie. She raises her duties as wife and Lady as a shield, and does not allow herself to kindle the small spark that Brienne's arrival has lit in her chest.
*
In the ashes of Aegon's defeat and bloody death, so soon after his reappearance from the grave, her child is born. It is a son, a proper heir, and Harry boasts of his good fortune to all who would listen. Sansa names him Eddard, after her father, yet another link to chain her to her name and Winterfell
When the news of Aegon's defeat reaches them, mere hours after their son's birth, Harry sweeps it aside in favor of celebrating his good fortune.
Sansa remains in her chambers with Eddard. While Harry feasts and drinks and celebrates, she closes her eyes and holds her child close to her chest, feeling the war creep closer to her doorstep.
*
Eddard is nearly a month old when the boy comes to the Eyrie.
He is a skinny, lithe creature, all hard edges with an unremarkable, freckled face and watery blue eyes. In fact, he is unremarkable in all ways, except for how he watches her, disconcerting and familiar.
He comes before her and her lord husband when servants catch him stealing from their stores. A petty crime, one whose punishment is easily served— except that it is winter, when food is more precious, and the fact that he must have slipped through their defenses to do so.
"How old are you?" Sansa asks in the lull between questions, when his familiarity becomes too much. She has never seen this boy in her life, and yet, she knows him.
Harry throws her a startled look at the interruption, which she ignores in favor of the boy before her.
He watches her with wary eyes, but there is no hint of a lie when he names an age two years less than her own. It is the first clear answer he has given. It only strengthens the question that lurks in the edges of her mind.
"What is your name?" Harry asks, swooping in too quickly after the silence in his eagerness to take advantage of this sudden openness.
"I am no one and nothing," the boy says, and Sansa knows he is lying when he looks at her in that infuriating, familiar way.
"You carried a sword with you. Are you able to use it?" Sansa asks in the silence that follows.
She sees the spark that lights in his eyes, but she does not know if anyone else does. "Of course," the boy says, curling his lip.
She nods, and turns towards Harry. She will have to phrase her words carefully, she knows— that thought, that question that whispers in her mind is a mad one, and yet, she must know. The boy cannot leave before she does.
"My lord husband," she says, angling herself so he can see wife and child both. "I ask that you make this boy my personal guard, so that he may protect us when necessity dictates that you cannot be here, so that you may be free to serve our people without worry."
He frowns. "Perhaps it would be wise to assign you a guard, but why this boy? We've no guarantee outside of his word, worthless as it is, that he has any skill. Even if he does, he should be punished for his crime, not honoured."
"He will suffice," Sansa says, turning her gaze back on to the boy. He scowls back at her. "Believe me. For him, this will be punishment enough."
"And if he does not protect you?" Harry presses.
"He will," she says, firm. "He will hate it, but he will protect Eddard and I with all that he is."
Outside, the wind sounds like the howling of a wolf.
*
The boy never gives her a name, so she continues to simply call him, 'the boy'. He is a sullen creature and she cannot mistake his dislike, but he watches those around her as a hawk, his hand playing idly on his strange, thin, familiar blade.
His affection for Eddard, however, she never doubts from the moment she first grants the boy permission to hold him. It's the first time she's seen a proper expression on him, something not cold and angry and bitter.
She wants to call it love.
"Eddard," he whispers under his breath, sometimes, so low she thinks that she isn't meant to hear.
*
Tides change as she hears whispers of the dragon-mother, Daenerys Targaryen approaching. When word comes that she has reached Westeros, and that not even Stannis' red sorceress was able to stand before her, Sansa stands and goes to her lord husband.
He refuses her proposition immediately, and Sansa sees the truth behind his pretty words. Petyr spoke true, Sansa sees, but his words hid lies. Harry Hardying is gallant enough, but he is just a summer knight, and dragons are far too close to a winter's tale for his liking. He wants no part of this war— the glory he wishes for is that of tourneys, not battle. He is content to let it rage by while he sits in the Vale, waiting to claim Winterfell once danger has passed.
He does not understand that war has always been there, sleeping in Sansa's heart until the roar of Daenerys' dragons woke it up.
Cersei Lannister has sat in King's Landing long enough.
*
When Lord Hardying dies in a sword yard accident by the hand of one of his most faithful men, Sansa weeps regretful tears. He was a good man, a better husband than she had expected when Petyr had come to her with his schemes so long ago.
He simply had loved her too much to understand her.
She declares her support for Daenerys Targaryen as soon as her husband is laid to rest, spinning pretty stories of his deathbed wishes for his grieving men.
The boy, who heard all, says nothing.
Later, after she has put Eddard to bed for the night, she kisses the boy full on the mouth. He jerks back almost immediately, hand on his strange sword, demanding to know why he shouldn't cut out her tongue.
She laughs then, a full rolling sound. "Would you deny a grieving widow?" she asks. When he says nothing— just stares at her with bewildered, frustrated eyes, she laughs again, and leaves for her bedchambers.
She leaves the door cracked open, but he does not come.
Outside, a storm rages.
*
Sansa sends a messenger and a troop of her men to meet with Daenerys as soon as the storm has passed. She sends them with enough supplies to reach her and then some, then turns her attention to other matters within the Vale.
There is a night where Eddard wails and wails and wails and will not stop, no matter what Sansa or any of the servants do. Eventually, she dismisses everyone and sits on the bed, rocking him back and forth. She sings him songs, and when that doesn't work, she begins to tell him stories, stories of Winterfell and all the people he will never know.
Finally, he quiets and drifts to sleep. When she looks up, it is to find the boy watching her. She had not noticed his entrance.
She wonders how much he heard, what he thought about the tales she told.
His eyes are blue. She knew that before, but now the color frustrates her— she wants that watery color to sharpen into something else.
It's irrational, that feeling.
Her eyes linger on his sword.
*
When Daenerys swoops down from the sky on her large black dragon, Sansa does not show her surprise, although she feels plenty. She had expected some communication from the dragon queen, but she had not expected her to send herself.
Instead, she orders the boy to go to Eddard. He does not protest; he, she knows, remembers what happened to Daenerys' nephews, and what role Sansa's family played.
She meets Daenerys down in the courtyard where the queen landed alone, despite her men's protests. The dragon shifts as she approaches, watching her with one large, reptilian eye. A tremor works its way down her spine. She can feel the untamed wildness roiling beneath its skin, so similar to Nymeria, and Grey Wind, and the rest of her family's direwolves, but greater, fiercer.
She holds no illusions as to how this could end, if things went wrong.
"Your Majesty," Sansa says once she has reached the queen. She drops into an elegant curtsy, drawing her courtesies to her as a shield.
Daenerys wastes no time. "I have made it no secret that I hate the Usurper, and that I bear no great love for the Starks," she says. "Why would you, Sansa Stark, wish to aid me?"
Her bluntness startles Sansa into speech. "Because you are more worthy to be queen than any Lannister," Sansa replies, unexpectedly candid. She meets Daenerys' eyes. "Because I have never loved the House of Baratheon, and because I am tired of sitting by and watching my fate be determined by the actions of others."
Daenerys nods, thoughtful. "I will not hold you to your father's actions," she says. "If you are genuine in your support, then once I have the throne, I promise you all the support in your own ventures that a queen and her dragons may offer."
Sansa smiles, a wolf's smile. "All I wish is to see Cersei Lannister dead, my queen."
*
Sansa withdraws into her rooms early that evening. When the door closes behind her, she catches the boy with a hungry kiss, her hand already settled on his hip when he gains the presence of mind to pull away.
She caught him off guard. She can't help but allow herself a pleased smile at the thought.
It only serves to increase the boy's temper. "Why?" the boy snaps, harsh and angry. "I am no one— you know nothing of who I am."
"Are you ready to tell me who that person is?" she asks then, careful and calm. The boy growls in frustration, and she laughs.
"Very well, boy," she says. "But know this: I make my choices with eyes open." The sentence has not fully left her mouth when she presses him against the wall, and dips her hand beneath the waist of her trousers, where her fingers meet only woman's flesh. She presses against him— her— then withdraws her hand, steadily meeting his furious eyes.
"Or should I not call you that?" she asks, viper-soft. "Since, clearly, that is a lie as well."
The boy—girl— lets out a wordless snarl, and crashes her mouth into Sansa's without warning. There is no desire in it, only fury, the need to win, but Sansa smiles into the girl's teeth, knowing that this is just another victory for her.
*
"I know you," Sansa says one day.
The girl snorts. "Of course you do," she says, disdain dripping off her every word. "I'm your guard."
Sansa does not contest this, and tucks her smile close to her chest. Instead, she asks. "Why did you stay?"
This time, the girl rolls her eyes. "I was ordered to, remember?"
"You snuck in easily before," Sansa points out. "It was only chance you were caught. You could have left, if you wished." She deliberately does not look at Eddard.
The girl does, just a glance, and scowls. She stands. "I'm going to the courtyard," she announces, and stalks off.
Sansa watches her go. She does not ask, why did you come?
She's not sure if she knows the answer to that one, yet.
*
King's Landing falls.
*
Daenerys summons her from her seat upon the Iron Throne. Eddard she leaves at the Vale, behind the guard of her men. Children do not fare well in King's Landing.
The girl, she takes with her.
It is not long after she arrives when she is summoned to Daenerys rooms. She goes alone, and when she enters, Daenerys is standing at the windows. Her body is framed by the light of the setting sun.
"Your Lannister is in the dungeons," Daenerys says as she turns to face her. "I thought you would like to meet her, before I decide her fate."
"You are too kind," Sansa murmurs. Her heart begins to race with something she thinks might be joy.
Daenerys watches her carefully. "Many of the north joined my cause once it became known that Sansa Stark supported me," she says.
"I am happy to serve," Sansa replies.
Daenerys studies her a moment more. "The rumours spoke of a dove, content to sit in her cage," she says. "But you truly are a wolf, are you not, Sansa Stark? I must keep you close."
"If that is what my queen desires," she says, her lips curving into a pleased smile. She recognizes the way Daenerys is looking at her, has seen it a hundred times on a hundred different people. She already knows how this will end.
So when Daenerys steps closer she moves forward, and when Daenerys extends her hand Sansa takes it. And when Daenerys pulls her close she feels no surprise. She merely closes her eyes as she accepts Daenerys' kiss, and remembers Cersei's words from so long ago.
Love is a poison, that she knows well. It killed her aunt Lysa, Robb, Petyr; even her father had died for his love of her. But, she thinks as she smiles into Daenerys' kiss, desire, sex— now that is power.
*
Sansa visits Cersei Lannister early that next morning. She takes only the girl with her when she goes. Somehow, taking anyone else does not feel right. The girl's hand hovers over the hilt of her sword, stroking it almost obsessively.
Sansa thinks, she hates her almost as much as I do.
The girl's eyes are darker now than they have been, less blue. It suits her.
When she reaches the entrance to the dungeons, she leaves the girl behind, and walks out to meet the former queen alone.
Cersei's beautiful golden hair has been shorn, and her face is streaked with grime. But she raises her head with pride, and still she sits with poise, every inch of her a queen.
"So the little wolf bitch has returned," Cersei says, and Sansa wonders what it means, that Cersei and Daenerys are the only ones who have ever seen her as a wolf instead of a bird.
Sansa wants to see her hurt.
"They call you the Whore Queen, you know," Sansa says conversationally. "King Robert the Usurper and his Whore Queen— it sounds well together, does it not? Almost like a song."
"Better the Whore than the queen's whore," Cersei retorts, sneering. "Tell me, does this barbarian queen of yours expect you to share her bed with her dragons as well?"
So Cersei still has her sympathizers hidden within the court, spying upon the new queen. The part of Sansa that's cold makes a note to tell Daenerys this when they meet next. But it is the other part of her, the silly little girl she had been when she had left Winterfell so many years before, who opens her mouth and speaks.
"I once wanted to be your daughter," and her voice is quieter now, wistful, almost. "Now I can't remember why I ever thought you worth anything at all."
Cersei's face twists with rage. "You will fall," she spits. "You will fall, and you will be nothing."
The ghosts of Sansa's past fall away like particles of dust. "No," Sansa says. "No, I will not end up like you, because I will be better than you." Everything you could have taught, I already know, she does not say.
She looks down at Cersei, and thinks, I hope you suffer when you die. I hope Daenerys tortures you, and that you will roast alive in the flames of her dragons.
I hope that you suffer, for every hurt you and your family have inflicted on mine.
She does not say this. Instead, she curtseys, and when she looks up again she gives Cersei her prettiest smile. "Excuse me," she says. "I really must be going."
She leaves. The girl joins her side at the entrance, looking at her with something like respect in her startling grey eyes. Her hand settles on the hilt of her sword, and Sansa wonders, idly, if Daenerys will even get the opportunity to pass her sentence on the fallen queen behind her.
She will not weep, however it is Cersei dies.
They leave the dungeon behind together, the girl's presence a steady constant at her side. It is then, as her every footstep takes her further away from Cersei Lannister, that Sansa feels the weight that has sat on her chest for all these years finally begin to lift.
Pairing(s): Sansa & Cersei, Arya/Sansa, Daenerys/Sansa, Harry Hardying/Sansa
Wordcount: 4581
Summary: Once, when Sansa was still young and foolish with a head stuck in a cloud of songs and fairy tale endings, she loved Cersei.
Warnings: Sibling incest, one scene that could be seen as dub-con, character deaths EVERYWHERE (though it's mostly in the background/only mentioned), spoilers for various events/characters in the entire series.
Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership over the A Song of Ice & Fire books.
Notes: I meant to post this here on the same day I posted it to
female_fest, but I suppose that it slipped my mind. This was written for the prompt "Cersei & Sansa - sometimes the people we hate the most shape us the hardest".I'd like to take the time to extend my thanks towards
dornfelder for beta-ing this fic for me! You were a fantastic help. Any mistakes remaining are my own. Crossposting this to
asoiaf_slash.Once, when Sansa was still young and foolish with a head stuck in a cloud of songs and fairy tale endings, she loved Cersei. How could she not? Cersei was beautiful, elegant, kind, the perfect queen. The perfect mother to the perfect prince.
In those days, Sansa hungered after her love, drinking up every smile, every kind word, every sign that Cersei could, would love her as desperately as any starved orphan child might.
She was no orphan child, not then. She had mother and father both, and loved them with all the complications of any girl-child coming into their own. She could not help but love her mother a little more than her father, however, in that selfish way any summer-child may allow themselves to choose. Her gracious mother, southern-born with all the elegance that gave her. How could Sansa not love her with all that she was? Her mother was what she had strived to be all her life, only she, Sansa thought, would be married to southern lord rather than a northern one.
And then Cersei came. Joffrey too, of course— Joffrey, who she thought the culmination of all her dreams, Joffrey, who she saw as her perfect golden prince in the silly manner of a summer child who had only known songs and love.
But in some ways, Cersei was even more. She came into Sansa's life as a shining beacon, as if sent by the Seven themselves. She was kinder, more beautiful, more elegant and gracious than anyone Sansa had ever known, and Sansa had wanted. Had wanted to be her with all the hunger of a wolf at the end of a long winter, had wanted Cersei to look at her with love in her eyes and on her tongue, to call her, "Daughter," and smile.
It didn't matter, then, that she had her own mother and father, that she had both sister and brothers, brothers and a sister who she fought with and loved and who loved her and fought with her in return. It didn't matter, not when all she wanted was Cersei and Joffrey and their beautiful, southern world.
It didn't matter.
Not then.
Not until Joffrey ordered her father's head removed, when Robb and Bran and Rickon and her mother all died. Not until she was an orphan-child in truth, did she understand, and the taste of Cersei's love turned to bitterness in her mouth.
It was then, there in the beautiful courts of her childhood dreams, when she looked at Joffrey's face and the beautiful curve of Cersei's smile, that she truly began to learn what it meant to hate.
*
Sweetrobin dies a horrible, choking death, wracked with fever and pain. He screams for poppy milk and relief, for his mother and Alayne. Sansa stays by his side throughout that long, awful night, wiping the sweat from his brow and whispering soothing nothings to his panicked cries, until the moment his heart stutters to a halt in the early hours of morning.
She thinks she is too exhausted for tears, but they slip down her cheeks regardless. She cannot say if they are from sorrow or relief— the lives of her family are slipping through her fingers and yet she cannot say that she loved him, for all that he was her cousin.
No. Those are dangerous thoughts. To Alayne Stone, Robert Arryn is nothing but a child and lord she cared for. She cannot think otherwise.
Not yet.
*
Harry Hardying's arrival at the Vale falls like a shadow soon after Sweetrobin is put to rest, and he is named Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie not long after, Alayne's father stepping aside with feigned grace.
Her chance comes sooner than she thinks it will. As Lord Harrold Hardying looks upon his household, his gaze lingers on her for longer than it ought. The next day, he seeks her out.
"Who are you?" he murmurs, voice low with interest.
"I am—" She hesitates. A mistake, but a planned one. "Alayne. Alayne Stone, Lord Petyr's daughter.""
"Alayne," he repeats. He does not say, Stone, but she has learned enough to know where his thoughts lie.
It is enough. He is caught.
Her father will be pleased.
*
Littlefinger wastes no time setting his plans into motion. It's all so simple, so surprisingly simple, in a way that has Sansa keeping an eye on Harry and his men. Once Petyr comes to him with the truth— that the beautiful bastard girl he's planning to tumble in the sheets is truly Sansa Stark, the key to claiming all the North— everything unfolds just as Petyr has planned.
"But is she not already wed, to the Lannister?" Lord Hardying asks, his final show of hesitation before the fall.
"He is dead, of course," Littlefinger lies, the words coming easy off his tongue. "Why do you think the Lannisters have not found him yet, with all their searching? It would have been a massive oversight had I left her so unprotected."
And then, the finale. Before he leaves the room, Sansa approaches him with doe eyes. "My lord," she says, her cheeks rosy and her smile shy. "I am glad that it is you who became Lord of the Vale; I would not have been able to trust my secret so easily with another."
And so he falls.
*
Harry Hardying is quick to propose marriage to her after that. They are wed within a fortnight; Petyr's doing, of course. Had Harry had his way, he would have shouted his intentions for the world to hear, and invited them all to come. Foolish, in a war. Better to marry quickly and secure her safety. Quickly, when he is still swept away by desire and ambition, before he questions her love or her claim.
Those who attend will be enough to verify her marriage, later.
When the time comes to replace her wolf cloak with his falcon, Sansa gazes into his eyes, and feels nothing but a calm certainty.
Love is a poison, the memory of Cersei's voice whispers into her ears. A sweet poison, but a poison all the same.
Once, she would have discarded those words for no reason more than the simple fact they are hers, but she has learned much from Petyr and one of those things is this: knowledge from an enemy is still knowledge, and knowledge should never be discarded.
Instead, she tucks those words close to her heart, and smiles her sweetest smile at Harry as he removes her family's wolf and with it, the last shred she has of home.
Poison, after all, has ever been a woman's weapon.
And Sansa has never been anything less than a lady.
*
Petyr touches her often. Nothing improper, of course— a kiss upon the hand before others, perhaps, nothing that a favored lord cannot ask of his betters. More, perhaps, when they are in private, but that is rarer these days. Now that Sansa is the Lady of the Vale, she is rarely alone. Months pass before he is able to take a kiss from her again.
When he does, she thinks, I am no longer Alayne Stone, and I am no longer his daughter. I am Sansa Stark, Lady of the Vale and Winterfell both, and I will suffer this no more.
But she doesn't make her move, not yet. She tells herself that it would be too suspicious, too soon after the wedding, but even as she thinks her words she knows them to be lies.
He saved her.
He used her.
The scales tip, back and forth.
A Lannister always pays their debts.
But she is no Lannister.
She makes her decision.
Littlefinger dies within a month, his heart giving out one evening as they dine. Sansa cries pretty tears over the death of the one who had been her only protector in her darkest time, and Harry Hardying is quick to swoop down and comfort his beautiful, grieving wife.
It's the first time she has ever felt powerful in her life. As Harry holds her close, muttering meaningless words and kissing away her tears, she discovers that she loves the taste of it. It is heady, exhilarating.
She wonders if this is how Arya felt, holding a sword.
*
Brienne of Tarth finds her after her womb has already quickened with child, with the heir who will secure her ever more closely to Harry's side. She comes alone, although the eaves rustle with rumours of the man she leaves in the village below. The golden Kingslayer, though Sansa cares little for that. She has known enough of mad kings— his being Cersei's brother is the worse crime of the two.
She listens to Brienne's tale with outward grace, with an emotion she cannot name quickening her heart. When Brienne is finished, Sansa says simply, "My mother is dead."
It is true, twice over. The news of Lady Stoneheart's return to death preceded Brienne's arrival by merely weeks.
Sansa had not wept when she had heard. The shade had not been her mother, whatever the Red Priest liked to claim. There is no longer any mother for Brienne and her Lannister to return to, and has not been for a very long time.
Besides, she is no lost lamb, searching for her shepard.
She does not say any of this. Instead, she says, "If your Kingslayer wishes to fulfill his promise to my lady mother, then tell him this: bring my family together again."
"My lady," Brienne begins in protest. "Your family..." She trails off, but Sansa can fill in the words that she will not say. They are all already dead.
"My sister Ayra's death is as of yet unspoken for," Sansa answers. "Bring her— bring whatever is left of my family to me, and I will forgive him for his crimes against us."
Brienne watches her with troubled eyes, but she inclines her head, accepting her words easily enough. She leaves that same day.
It took them many months to find Sansa, and she was hiding in plain sight. Arya has always been sly and tricky, and she never had the scruples Sansa had even before everything went so terribly wrong. Sansa dares not hope that she can be found, if she even still lives. Jaime Lannister's quest is a fruitless one.
When her lord husband asks what is troubling her, Sansa smiles and laughs and makes a small lie. She raises her duties as wife and Lady as a shield, and does not allow herself to kindle the small spark that Brienne's arrival has lit in her chest.
*
In the ashes of Aegon's defeat and bloody death, so soon after his reappearance from the grave, her child is born. It is a son, a proper heir, and Harry boasts of his good fortune to all who would listen. Sansa names him Eddard, after her father, yet another link to chain her to her name and Winterfell
When the news of Aegon's defeat reaches them, mere hours after their son's birth, Harry sweeps it aside in favor of celebrating his good fortune.
Sansa remains in her chambers with Eddard. While Harry feasts and drinks and celebrates, she closes her eyes and holds her child close to her chest, feeling the war creep closer to her doorstep.
*
Eddard is nearly a month old when the boy comes to the Eyrie.
He is a skinny, lithe creature, all hard edges with an unremarkable, freckled face and watery blue eyes. In fact, he is unremarkable in all ways, except for how he watches her, disconcerting and familiar.
He comes before her and her lord husband when servants catch him stealing from their stores. A petty crime, one whose punishment is easily served— except that it is winter, when food is more precious, and the fact that he must have slipped through their defenses to do so.
"How old are you?" Sansa asks in the lull between questions, when his familiarity becomes too much. She has never seen this boy in her life, and yet, she knows him.
Harry throws her a startled look at the interruption, which she ignores in favor of the boy before her.
He watches her with wary eyes, but there is no hint of a lie when he names an age two years less than her own. It is the first clear answer he has given. It only strengthens the question that lurks in the edges of her mind.
"What is your name?" Harry asks, swooping in too quickly after the silence in his eagerness to take advantage of this sudden openness.
"I am no one and nothing," the boy says, and Sansa knows he is lying when he looks at her in that infuriating, familiar way.
"You carried a sword with you. Are you able to use it?" Sansa asks in the silence that follows.
She sees the spark that lights in his eyes, but she does not know if anyone else does. "Of course," the boy says, curling his lip.
She nods, and turns towards Harry. She will have to phrase her words carefully, she knows— that thought, that question that whispers in her mind is a mad one, and yet, she must know. The boy cannot leave before she does.
"My lord husband," she says, angling herself so he can see wife and child both. "I ask that you make this boy my personal guard, so that he may protect us when necessity dictates that you cannot be here, so that you may be free to serve our people without worry."
He frowns. "Perhaps it would be wise to assign you a guard, but why this boy? We've no guarantee outside of his word, worthless as it is, that he has any skill. Even if he does, he should be punished for his crime, not honoured."
"He will suffice," Sansa says, turning her gaze back on to the boy. He scowls back at her. "Believe me. For him, this will be punishment enough."
"And if he does not protect you?" Harry presses.
"He will," she says, firm. "He will hate it, but he will protect Eddard and I with all that he is."
Outside, the wind sounds like the howling of a wolf.
*
The boy never gives her a name, so she continues to simply call him, 'the boy'. He is a sullen creature and she cannot mistake his dislike, but he watches those around her as a hawk, his hand playing idly on his strange, thin, familiar blade.
His affection for Eddard, however, she never doubts from the moment she first grants the boy permission to hold him. It's the first time she's seen a proper expression on him, something not cold and angry and bitter.
She wants to call it love.
"Eddard," he whispers under his breath, sometimes, so low she thinks that she isn't meant to hear.
*
Tides change as she hears whispers of the dragon-mother, Daenerys Targaryen approaching. When word comes that she has reached Westeros, and that not even Stannis' red sorceress was able to stand before her, Sansa stands and goes to her lord husband.
He refuses her proposition immediately, and Sansa sees the truth behind his pretty words. Petyr spoke true, Sansa sees, but his words hid lies. Harry Hardying is gallant enough, but he is just a summer knight, and dragons are far too close to a winter's tale for his liking. He wants no part of this war— the glory he wishes for is that of tourneys, not battle. He is content to let it rage by while he sits in the Vale, waiting to claim Winterfell once danger has passed.
He does not understand that war has always been there, sleeping in Sansa's heart until the roar of Daenerys' dragons woke it up.
Cersei Lannister has sat in King's Landing long enough.
*
When Lord Hardying dies in a sword yard accident by the hand of one of his most faithful men, Sansa weeps regretful tears. He was a good man, a better husband than she had expected when Petyr had come to her with his schemes so long ago.
He simply had loved her too much to understand her.
She declares her support for Daenerys Targaryen as soon as her husband is laid to rest, spinning pretty stories of his deathbed wishes for his grieving men.
The boy, who heard all, says nothing.
Later, after she has put Eddard to bed for the night, she kisses the boy full on the mouth. He jerks back almost immediately, hand on his strange sword, demanding to know why he shouldn't cut out her tongue.
She laughs then, a full rolling sound. "Would you deny a grieving widow?" she asks. When he says nothing— just stares at her with bewildered, frustrated eyes, she laughs again, and leaves for her bedchambers.
She leaves the door cracked open, but he does not come.
Outside, a storm rages.
*
Sansa sends a messenger and a troop of her men to meet with Daenerys as soon as the storm has passed. She sends them with enough supplies to reach her and then some, then turns her attention to other matters within the Vale.
There is a night where Eddard wails and wails and wails and will not stop, no matter what Sansa or any of the servants do. Eventually, she dismisses everyone and sits on the bed, rocking him back and forth. She sings him songs, and when that doesn't work, she begins to tell him stories, stories of Winterfell and all the people he will never know.
Finally, he quiets and drifts to sleep. When she looks up, it is to find the boy watching her. She had not noticed his entrance.
She wonders how much he heard, what he thought about the tales she told.
His eyes are blue. She knew that before, but now the color frustrates her— she wants that watery color to sharpen into something else.
It's irrational, that feeling.
Her eyes linger on his sword.
*
When Daenerys swoops down from the sky on her large black dragon, Sansa does not show her surprise, although she feels plenty. She had expected some communication from the dragon queen, but she had not expected her to send herself.
Instead, she orders the boy to go to Eddard. He does not protest; he, she knows, remembers what happened to Daenerys' nephews, and what role Sansa's family played.
She meets Daenerys down in the courtyard where the queen landed alone, despite her men's protests. The dragon shifts as she approaches, watching her with one large, reptilian eye. A tremor works its way down her spine. She can feel the untamed wildness roiling beneath its skin, so similar to Nymeria, and Grey Wind, and the rest of her family's direwolves, but greater, fiercer.
She holds no illusions as to how this could end, if things went wrong.
"Your Majesty," Sansa says once she has reached the queen. She drops into an elegant curtsy, drawing her courtesies to her as a shield.
Daenerys wastes no time. "I have made it no secret that I hate the Usurper, and that I bear no great love for the Starks," she says. "Why would you, Sansa Stark, wish to aid me?"
Her bluntness startles Sansa into speech. "Because you are more worthy to be queen than any Lannister," Sansa replies, unexpectedly candid. She meets Daenerys' eyes. "Because I have never loved the House of Baratheon, and because I am tired of sitting by and watching my fate be determined by the actions of others."
Daenerys nods, thoughtful. "I will not hold you to your father's actions," she says. "If you are genuine in your support, then once I have the throne, I promise you all the support in your own ventures that a queen and her dragons may offer."
Sansa smiles, a wolf's smile. "All I wish is to see Cersei Lannister dead, my queen."
*
Sansa withdraws into her rooms early that evening. When the door closes behind her, she catches the boy with a hungry kiss, her hand already settled on his hip when he gains the presence of mind to pull away.
She caught him off guard. She can't help but allow herself a pleased smile at the thought.
It only serves to increase the boy's temper. "Why?" the boy snaps, harsh and angry. "I am no one— you know nothing of who I am."
"Are you ready to tell me who that person is?" she asks then, careful and calm. The boy growls in frustration, and she laughs.
"Very well, boy," she says. "But know this: I make my choices with eyes open." The sentence has not fully left her mouth when she presses him against the wall, and dips her hand beneath the waist of her trousers, where her fingers meet only woman's flesh. She presses against him— her— then withdraws her hand, steadily meeting his furious eyes.
"Or should I not call you that?" she asks, viper-soft. "Since, clearly, that is a lie as well."
The boy—girl— lets out a wordless snarl, and crashes her mouth into Sansa's without warning. There is no desire in it, only fury, the need to win, but Sansa smiles into the girl's teeth, knowing that this is just another victory for her.
*
"I know you," Sansa says one day.
The girl snorts. "Of course you do," she says, disdain dripping off her every word. "I'm your guard."
Sansa does not contest this, and tucks her smile close to her chest. Instead, she asks. "Why did you stay?"
This time, the girl rolls her eyes. "I was ordered to, remember?"
"You snuck in easily before," Sansa points out. "It was only chance you were caught. You could have left, if you wished." She deliberately does not look at Eddard.
The girl does, just a glance, and scowls. She stands. "I'm going to the courtyard," she announces, and stalks off.
Sansa watches her go. She does not ask, why did you come?
She's not sure if she knows the answer to that one, yet.
*
King's Landing falls.
*
Daenerys summons her from her seat upon the Iron Throne. Eddard she leaves at the Vale, behind the guard of her men. Children do not fare well in King's Landing.
The girl, she takes with her.
It is not long after she arrives when she is summoned to Daenerys rooms. She goes alone, and when she enters, Daenerys is standing at the windows. Her body is framed by the light of the setting sun.
"Your Lannister is in the dungeons," Daenerys says as she turns to face her. "I thought you would like to meet her, before I decide her fate."
"You are too kind," Sansa murmurs. Her heart begins to race with something she thinks might be joy.
Daenerys watches her carefully. "Many of the north joined my cause once it became known that Sansa Stark supported me," she says.
"I am happy to serve," Sansa replies.
Daenerys studies her a moment more. "The rumours spoke of a dove, content to sit in her cage," she says. "But you truly are a wolf, are you not, Sansa Stark? I must keep you close."
"If that is what my queen desires," she says, her lips curving into a pleased smile. She recognizes the way Daenerys is looking at her, has seen it a hundred times on a hundred different people. She already knows how this will end.
So when Daenerys steps closer she moves forward, and when Daenerys extends her hand Sansa takes it. And when Daenerys pulls her close she feels no surprise. She merely closes her eyes as she accepts Daenerys' kiss, and remembers Cersei's words from so long ago.
Love is a poison, that she knows well. It killed her aunt Lysa, Robb, Petyr; even her father had died for his love of her. But, she thinks as she smiles into Daenerys' kiss, desire, sex— now that is power.
*
Sansa visits Cersei Lannister early that next morning. She takes only the girl with her when she goes. Somehow, taking anyone else does not feel right. The girl's hand hovers over the hilt of her sword, stroking it almost obsessively.
Sansa thinks, she hates her almost as much as I do.
The girl's eyes are darker now than they have been, less blue. It suits her.
When she reaches the entrance to the dungeons, she leaves the girl behind, and walks out to meet the former queen alone.
Cersei's beautiful golden hair has been shorn, and her face is streaked with grime. But she raises her head with pride, and still she sits with poise, every inch of her a queen.
"So the little wolf bitch has returned," Cersei says, and Sansa wonders what it means, that Cersei and Daenerys are the only ones who have ever seen her as a wolf instead of a bird.
Sansa wants to see her hurt.
"They call you the Whore Queen, you know," Sansa says conversationally. "King Robert the Usurper and his Whore Queen— it sounds well together, does it not? Almost like a song."
"Better the Whore than the queen's whore," Cersei retorts, sneering. "Tell me, does this barbarian queen of yours expect you to share her bed with her dragons as well?"
So Cersei still has her sympathizers hidden within the court, spying upon the new queen. The part of Sansa that's cold makes a note to tell Daenerys this when they meet next. But it is the other part of her, the silly little girl she had been when she had left Winterfell so many years before, who opens her mouth and speaks.
"I once wanted to be your daughter," and her voice is quieter now, wistful, almost. "Now I can't remember why I ever thought you worth anything at all."
Cersei's face twists with rage. "You will fall," she spits. "You will fall, and you will be nothing."
The ghosts of Sansa's past fall away like particles of dust. "No," Sansa says. "No, I will not end up like you, because I will be better than you." Everything you could have taught, I already know, she does not say.
She looks down at Cersei, and thinks, I hope you suffer when you die. I hope Daenerys tortures you, and that you will roast alive in the flames of her dragons.
I hope that you suffer, for every hurt you and your family have inflicted on mine.
She does not say this. Instead, she curtseys, and when she looks up again she gives Cersei her prettiest smile. "Excuse me," she says. "I really must be going."
She leaves. The girl joins her side at the entrance, looking at her with something like respect in her startling grey eyes. Her hand settles on the hilt of her sword, and Sansa wonders, idly, if Daenerys will even get the opportunity to pass her sentence on the fallen queen behind her.
She will not weep, however it is Cersei dies.
They leave the dungeon behind together, the girl's presence a steady constant at her side. It is then, as her every footstep takes her further away from Cersei Lannister, that Sansa feels the weight that has sat on her chest for all these years finally begin to lift.
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Date: 2012-09-14 12:24 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if I should be happy that I'm the first, or sad at the lack of femslash, but I think I'll be an optimist. ^^
thank you!