A/N: I saw a post about Sansa and how her insistence that the North stay independent would have made King Robb so proud, and just HAD to write this little head canon down. I've used the show ages as they seem to make more sense.
The crypts were dark when Sansa descended the stairs and stepped onto the rough stones. There was always a damp chill in the air down here, no matter the summer sun outside or the number of candles lit along the walls. It had been why she used to avoid it when she could. There were no candles lit today. It had been too long since she—or anyone, really—had come down here.
Sansa did not want to light them now. When the dead came, she and Jon had decided, they would send those who couldn't fight to find shelter down here. They would need all the candle wax they could salvage then, to light the darkness for those people. It wouldn't do to waste any now.
She walked along the corridors, clutching her cloak and furs closed against the damp, seeping chill, the light from her torch casting long, dancing shadows before her feet. The bends of the narrow corridor leading to her father's statue were too familiar for her liking. In the months she had been back at Winterfell, she'd been to see her father more times than she'd ever visited as a girl. Before they went south. Before all the awful descended on her family.
In front of her was the statue of Ned Stark now, the one topped with the face that bore little resemblance to her father. Her good and honorable father, she thought. Too good. Too honorable. Her father, who'd always looked at her with warmth melting from his eyes. That man was gone now. No one would ever look at her the way her father had, let alone a statue.
Perhaps she would not have the stonemasons sculpt a new one after all. It would make no difference if she couldn't see her father's kind eyes again. She and Arya had talked of it—that when this was all over, when they had all that was left of their family together again, they would commission him a new statue with features that actually resembled his. And then they would commission the statues for their mother and brothers.
She lit the candle stubs around her father, then walked to the alcove beside him. There she had lain an open book and a letter opener tucked into the spine. Her mother's favorite book and the letter opener she would mark her pages with. Neither the Greyjoys nor the Boltons had seen any use in raiding the Winterfell library, and Sansa had found there the book of Riverlands poetry her mother loved so much, sitting on the window ledge where Catelyn used to read in the fading afternoon light. Her letter opener—shaped like a jumping trout—had marked the page she was last reading. Crouching to run her hand along the words and trace the cool metal of the fish, Sansa tried to imagine when her mother had set the book down. Likely it had been before King Robert's arrival. That last afternoon of calm before the arrival of this bloody storm. She would have had no time or heart to sit before her favorite window to read after that. Sansa lit the two candle stubs for her mother, then turned to the next alcove.
Reaching into her dress, she pulled out a stout new candle, lit it from her torch, and set it before the old fox fur neck wrap she had placed in this alcove. The fur was still soft under her touch, but she felt an unmistakable grime that years in a packing chest and the months in a damp crypt had given it. In the torchlight, the furs looked a warm golden brown, but once they had been soft, pure white.
How many years ago today was she presented with this pelt? She counted the years in her mind. It had been Robb's thirteenth name day, she was sure. Father had taken the older boys—Robb and John and Theon—out hunting in the morning, both as a birthday present to Robb and as a way to get out of Mother's hair as she prepared the name day feast for the heir to Winterfell.
Sansa remembered spending the whole day finishing her gift for her big brother, and yet for the life of her she could not remember exactly what it had been. Since she could hold a needle, she'd given all her siblings embroidered trinkets for their name days. She must have done for Robb that day too—something carefully but clumsily stitched together and decorated by the hands of a nine year old—but she could not remember what she'd made.
When the boys returned that afternoon, Robb had pulled her out of her chambers and dragged her down the steps into the courtyard. His voice brimming with pride, he'd told her he had something for her, then held out a fox by its furry tail, the biggest grin she had ever seen lighting up his face.
Sansa had taken one look at the white fox, an arrow sticking out of its bloodied face, and let out a blood-curdling scream. Theon was always the horrid one, the one who liked to scare her with a toad in her bed or a dead mouse in her shoe, but it seemed he was a bad influence on her brother. She turned to run away, but Robb had grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
"Wait, Sansa! Wait, I'm sorry," he'd called, and when she turned back to him he'd hidden the fox behind him. He let go of her arm when he saw that she wasn't going to run, then scratched at the back of his head, looking a little embarrassed.
"I didn't mean to scare ya," he apologized, looking a bit comical with his one hand behind his back and white furs poking out from either side of him.
"Why'd you show me that, then?" she demanded, heat rising to her cheeks. It was just a dead fox, she told herself, but still the bloody spot where the arrow had pieced its head sent a shiver of disgust down her back.
"I…I shot it. All by myself. I shot it when even Theon missed, right in the eye too, so its furs will be all clean."
She looked at him with her head tilted to one side. It was impressive, she had to admit.
When the boys had gone hunting before, most of what they'd shot themselves had been rabbits. Once, a few months ago, Theon had brought back a fox, but that one had been rust colored, and he'd shot it on its neck, so the furs had been largely unusable. But no matter how impressed she was, she certainly wasn't going to tell him now. She still hadn't decided if she should be cross at him for making her scream and embarrassing her, or just for his lack of tact for showing a lady a bloody animal with an arrow in its eye.
"I just thought that, since its fur is so nice, you might like it," Robb continued, and Sansa's eyes grew wide. "You know, to make a neck wrap. It would look good on you."
For a moment Sansa gaped at him. For her? Really? His first fox? Then her lips curled up ever so slightly. She should have known Robb wasn't trying to scare her. Not on purpose. He would never.
"You'd give me a gift today? But it's your name day."
"Why not? It would look good on you," he repeated.
Sansa bit her lip then, her mind overtaken by battle with itself. On one hand, she was loath to see that bloodied white head again, but on the other, Robb had shot this fox for her! She couldn't think of any present more perfect. In that moment, like in so many moments of her nine year old imagination, Robb was like the knight in her stories, gallantly shooting down a fox so he could present its beautiful furs to his lady. Sansa felt her cheeks redden again, but this time out of excitement.
"That's really kind of you," she said, half whispering, unable to keep the smile from her face. "Can I see it, then? Just…I'll not look at where you shot it."
The ear-to-ear grin had returned to Robb's face. He led her to the covered walkway and laid the fox out on the wooden steps that led to the balcony. Carefully, he took off his cloak, which he hadn't bothered to remove before running to get his sister, and laid it over the fox's head.
"You can look now," he said, and Sansa approached the fox. It had the whitest fur she'd ever seen. Though bits of twigs and moss clung to it in places, especially on its fluffy tail, the fur was unstained by mud and dirt.
"Wow," she breathed, and tentatively held her hand out to stroke its body. The fur was soft and light between her fingers, like the way she'd imagined running her hand through a cloud would feel. There was no heaviness about it, none of the oily sheen that the pelts in her chambers gave off. In awe, she stood for a few moments in silence, stroking the fur and brushing away the clumps of moss from its tail. Then she turned to her brother.
"Sorry I screamed," she said shyly. "It's a beautiful present, Robb. I love it so much."
In the days that followed, after Robb had gotten the castle furrier to skin and clean the fox, Sansa, under the careful instructions of Septa Mordane, had made the pelt into a neck wrap, all by herself. Even in summer they wore furs against the chilly winds and occasional summer snow. This would be her favorite neck wrap, she was sure.
The morning she had sewn the last stitches into the backing, she'd wrapped it around her shoulders and hurried down the steps. Leaning over the railing in the walkway overlooking the courtyard, she'd called out to Robb, who was sparring with Jon while Theon shot arrows behind them.
"Robb, Robb, look! Up here!"
All three boys looked up at once, and Sansa felt her cheeks flush.
"I'm going to wear this every day, Robb," she announced, both hands reaching up to her shoulders to grip the white fur. "It's the best present ever."
Even now, in the dark crypts, she could so clearly see Robb's bright beaming face, looking up at her from the courtyard with his wooden sword in hand. So clearly she heard him calling out, give us a twirl then, Sis. So clear were the boys' crisp laughs and hoots when she did as he bid, then gave them all a curtsey before running back up the Great Keep.
Sansa felt herself smiling now, the grin having crept onto her face without her knowing. The corner of her mouth hit something cold, and she licked it away, the salty tang on her tongue making her realize that her cheeks were wet with tears. Taking her hand away from the wrap, she wiped messily at her face, not wanting to cry even when no one was there to see. She had indeed worn that wrap nearly every day until it became too small to fit around her shoulders, and even then she had not let them pass it down to Arya as they had some of the other furs and cloaks she had outgrown. Instead, she'd packed it carefully away in one of her trunks, along with the dolls and dresses she had loved but had grown too big for.
She was thankful, now, that she had outgrown it. Thankful that its existence had retreated to the back of her mind in the couple of years before leaving for the south. Otherwise, she would certainly have brought it with her to King's Landing, as she had brought the flowering cloak pin Robb had given her for her own thirteenth name day. No doubt the pin was lost to her forever now. She had left without any of her belongings the day that Joffrey died.
"They're all dead, you know," she whispered, her eyes staring into the dancing light the candle cast on the wall of the alcove, as if she would see Robb's eyes looking back at her if she stared hard enough.
"The Freys. The Boltons. The ones who betrayed you are all dead. Even Tywin Lannister is dead, I hear. Killed by his own son, just like he deserved. Roose Bolton too. I know Ramsey killed him. They're all dead."
She paused, then sighed. Sansa did not know what she had been expecting. She was speaking to nothingness, but somehow, somewhere in the abyss, she hoped Robb would know.
Sansa stood back up and looked down at the neatly folded fur, her best reminder of the brother she had so admired, who had tried always to protect her, who had started a war to bring her home. The only knight in shining armor who had never disappointed her. He had made mistakes, she knew, and they had gotten him killed, but being crowned King in the North hadn't been one of them.
No, he had been right in taking the title. The north would always suffer—the Starks would always suffer—when they had to answer to some southern king who knew nothing of their people and their customs. They would keep their independence after this war, she would make sure of it. This was Robb's North now. They would be a free North again, to the ends of time, no matter what Jon had done in Dragonstone. Maybe they needed this dragon queen to fight the dead, but when all was done, when this new queen took the Iron Throne, she would see to it that the North would bow to no one ever again. Robb's efforts—his legacy—would not be forgotten. She'd see the North free and independent, even if it killed her.
"Happy name day, Robb," she whispered into the nothingness.