The polished product of a short exercise that I unexpectedly loved finishing.
Set Post-Winter in an Autonomous North.
Best read while listening to From Gold by Novo Amor.
to thaw
(would be the sweetest surrender)
The silence is deafening as the two halves of two kingdoms break apart.
His implication hangs thick in the air. Marry me, and together we will right all the wrongs that have befallen our Realm.
Snow falls over their heads just as the wind sings its songs through the trees. Sansa shivers despite herself, for Targaryens have been known for taking what they desired without objection. And oh, how Aegon wants her (and maybe an inkling of a little bird's ghost inside her may have wanted him to want her all along).
But in her years of learning the game, and the succeeding years of having played it, Sansa had learned, among everything else, that love seldom held its place alongside duty.
The Winter Queen loves her family; she loves her council, her court, and her crown—but she finds it hard to bear within her the bane of learning to love anyone else besides.
But King Aegon has, without a doubt, undone her, and it is with a heavy heart that she's kissed him among the grove of the Old Gods, and allowed the act to plant such foolish words onto his mouth.
Sansa inches away from the Silver King to take refuge beneath the heart tree. Wherein the face in the old weirwood would have unsettled her otherwise, now its timeless stare only serves to instil within her a sense of comfort and safety. At least here, sheltered beneath its knowing arms, Sansa can attest that they're never truly alone—her and this King from the South.
When the Queen of the North finally finds her voice, she draws her furs tighter around herself and chides him with such flawless composure. "You'd best learn well from history that this is no wise move, Your Grace."
Aegon frowns like she knows he would.
"Why?" he asks plainly (as if it's a question of sums—of whether east is really where the sun rises and west is truly where it sets). "Is it because you're a Stark and I'm a Targaryen?"
Those pale violet eyes find hers again, and Sansa becomes very much thankful for the distance. Otherwise they would have drawn her back in without incident—and that is the last thing she wants to surrender to at the moment.
She doesn't flinch, nor does she thaw under his stare; she believes it too gentle to be real. Life is not a song, she reminds herself (like a prayer from lifetimes ago), though it doesn't need to be to sing—and oh how she'd sing of him and those gentle eyes if a Queen had not grown out from the skins of a foolish girl. "It may very well be."
Sansa can almost imagine it: can taste it on her lips the same way she's tasted it on him not only moments ago. She can almost taste love—and the prospect of singing and singing and making a home by his side.
But a Queen is made of stronger things than songs, and the stories she used to glorify have always been half-truths, if not lesser. At the end of the day, she could not bear to undo all that she's done for her kingdom—all for a King in the South where her childhood horrors cloyed in the shadows.
And so Sansa doesn't have to force the next words out of her mouth. They're the truth; they're her freedom from a game she's outlived, outgrown, and eventually stopped playing.
"I am already a queen; and as a daughter of the North turned its Mother, my place is here."
There it is again: the deafening silence.
From the look on his face, Aegon knows this is something he wouldn't dare spirit away with fire and blood.
Instead, he reaches out for her, all warmth and promises. She doesn't recoil like Alayne Stone would have urged her to do, in all her carefulness. No: Sansa Stark closes her eyes, the distance, and her arms around his neck as she allows the Silver King to kiss her again.
Fire and Ice.
"But, My Queen, you must be mistaken," the King breathes against her. He worries her lip with such sweetness that the pulse on her wrist flutters when he grabs hold of her hand. It's cold to the touch and cannot find a cause for calm—more so when he finally pulls back and looks at her, half-hidden beneath those beautiful lashes.
"I believe your place might actually be here." He leads her hand's journey to rest against his beating heart. "I can feel it."
Her hands warm; her cheeks warm. In that moment—despite her cold, better judgement—the Winter Queen almost thaws to a pool beneath her Southern King's feet.