The Queen's Sister, Almost
Sansa is braiding Margaery's hair, and once upon a time they were to be sisters. "To practice before the wedding," Margaery had said, and when Sansa had asked why she braid it rather than one of her handmaidens, she'd answered, "Well, who else would I trust better on my wedding day? Come, let me teach you how."
She smells of blackberries and soap, and Sansa is sitting close, her hands lingering meticulously in Margaery's hair. "You will be a beautiful bride," she says, because it is true.
Sansa can feel Margaery's coy smile in the way she breaks her stature under Sansa's fingertips. Sometimes, Sansa thinks that Margaery is more worldly than she reveals she is, finds Sansa more naïve than she says she does; it's that smile that tips Sansa off, and the way Margaery always leans in to brush shoulders whenever she laughs.
"How can you stand to marry him?" she asks now, the words leaking out uninvited.
Margaery is quiet. "I wanted to be the Queen," she says, and somehow she is grand, different.
Sansa was young once, and silly—young girls are so silly, and Joffrey's smile was never even a smile, only a smear on the blemish of Sansa's games—her father's head on the brick has aged her, and she is shivering too hard to be this dishonest, so drowsy. Once upon a time they were to be sisters, and Sansa has few friends, and she sees the way Margaery looks from the orphans to Joffrey and back again.
Outdoors, the summer breeze propels King's Landing further from springtime and bloom and whoever Sansa used to be, or think she was, or love. There is no room at the wind's back for hindsight, and she has no sister now, and she is not a Stark, no she never was.
The orphans, though—for Sansa sees, too, the way they wave to Joffrey how they didn't before, his hand clay in his Queen's in the air. This is not her world; Margaery is not her—sisters would have been close enough to—but Sansa keeps her fingers in Margaery's hair and her breath in her blackberries.
She smells lovely, even lovelier than Sansa's mother does did. Her stomach jolts, and she braids.
A/N: For the lovely Rosawyn. I had to combat a pretty nasty spell of writer's block to get this out, so I hope it's worth your while to read! All of my love to you.