ARYA I
Couching down so she could peek through a small crack in the thick wooden doors, and only taking small shallow breaths so no one could hear her, Arya watched her sister loudly argue with their mother. Again.
This time it was over Sansa cutting her hair with scissors she had found in the kitchens.
Only able to see the back of her head through the crack, Arya would have sworn that the child arguing with her mother was a boy. Sansa's auburn hair had been cut short, only reaching her ears, and was so messy that one would think she had been rolling around in the woods or in dust for hours. Knowing her sister both could have been true.
She looks like Robb or Bran, Arya suddenly realized.
Arya smiled to herself and almost let a chuckle escape her lips.
She always knew that something was strange about her older sister, even when she was little. Well, littler. Arya liked to think that at nine years she was smarter than most people cared to admit, even if her mother and nasty old Septa Mordane did not.
Sansa would agree with her though. That was probably the strangest thing about her Arya thought, smiling even harder.
She never says I can't do something just because I'm a lady. And she never complains when I forgot my courtesies, Arya happily reflected, though she had to admit it was probably because Sansa wasn't any better at being a proper lady.
Distracted by her reminiscing Arya almost didn't notice the moment when the two began to lower their voices.
It was quicker than usual this time, but the cycle was consistent. Sansa would do or say something strange and their mother would be so bewildered she'd drag her eldest daughter to her bedchamber to have their argument in privacy so the smallfolk, or worse, visiting lords and ladies, would not see them and gossip. Catelyn would say that Sansa was being unladylike, rude and a bad example for her sister, and Sansa would fire back about how "backwards" everyone was being. But no matter how terrible one of their fights would get, no matter how much they shouted at one another or threw accusations, they'd eventually temper themselves, apologize, and reconcile.
Every time.
Arya envied that a little. Her fights with her mother didn't always end so neatly.
"Sorry, Mother." Arya heard Sansa say under her breath.
Catelyn knelt down to touch Sansa's cheek and lock her blue eyes with her daughter's.
"I only want the best for you, Sansa. I want you to be happy." She started, shaking her head in tired exasperation. "You're almost old enough to flower and when that happens everything will change," she noted matter-of-factly, but with a tinge of melancholy.
"And you'll have to change, too. You can't continue to do this, sweetling. Playing these silly games of yours," she said, pointing a finger to her hair.
Arya couldn't see her sister's face, but she knew it must have looked tired too. It usually did after she fought with their mother.
"I know, Mother. I know. I just wanted to…"
"What? Whatever could you want?" Catelyn asked, pleading in that way that always made Arya feel ashamed, even when she thought she was in the right.
"Be myself. If only for a little while longer." It was only a whisper and Arya strained to hear it through the door, but even so the desperation in it was palpable.
Catelyn just looked at her for a moment before taking Sansa into her arms and holding her close.
Arya could hear her sister softly crying. She wanted to go inside and hug her too, but instead she looked away. She knew Sansa would hate for her to see her crying.
"Big brothers don't cry, so why should big sisters," she remembered her sister saying after she caught her weeping alone one night in her own bedchamber. She never did learn why she was crying or why it looked like she had torn the gown she was wearing. Sansa just told her that she wouldn't understand and that no one ever could.
Arya heard her sister's sobs slowly lose their strength as Catelyn whispered comforting words to her.
"I know you're scared, sweetling. I was too when I was young. But things won't be as bad as you fear. Your father and I will find you a kind husband who will love you and give you children that you'll love even more," she promised, with a warm smile.
"But I…" Sansa began, quiet defiance laced in her words. But Arya could tell, even without looking, that her sister was spent for words and defiance.
"You're right, Mother," she said sheepishly, defeated once again. "I guess I just don't want to be a woman quite yet."
Catelyn rose back to full height and looked down at Sansa, her face full of sympathy. "But you will be, Sansa. And a beautiful one at that. Which is why the Maiden Above must be weeping for the travesty you've made of your hair," she said firmly, but not unkindly.
Sansa only bobbed her head in response.
"You are a lady of Winterfell, Sansa. Soon lords from Houses across the North and even south of the Neck will seek your hand for their sons. I promise you I'll do everything I can to find you a proper husband, but you'll make that task impossible if continue as you are."
Pausing for a moment, Catelyn used her fingers to raise her daughter's chin so that she'd look her in the eye. "So please, swear to me you won't do something like this again. For my sake and your sister's if not your own. She looks up to you and I fear she'll always act the reckless child if you do too."
Arya bit her lip. It's not Sansa's fault that I'm the way that I am, she wanted to say. I have too much wolf blood. Like dead Lyanna and poor uncle Brandon. That's what her father always said anyway. Thinking on it for a bit, Arya figured that Sansa must have too much wolf blood, too.
In the end, Sansa made her promise and then some. She'd never cut her hair so short again without leave from Catelyn first and neither would she deliberately rip her dresses, fight with Septa Mordane over lessons, or sneak out of her chambers in the dead of night to go to the library tower. She also swore she'd stop pulling pranks on Theon, but Arya knew that was a promise that her sister would never keep even if she bothered to keep all the others.
With that done, mother and daughter hugged one another once more, with Catelyn placing a kiss on her daughter's tear-stained cheek before finally moving to leave the bedchamber.
Arya hastily made her escape from the door. Moving away as quietly as she could, she made it to the end of the hallway that connected Sansa's bedchambers to others in the Great Keep just in time to see her mother turn a corner and go the opposite direction.
With her mother's footsteps slowly fading away Arya pondered whether she'd immediately console her sister or wait for her in the library tower. Arya knew that Sansa would inevitability retreat there to forget her troubles, like she always did.
It turned out that she didn't have to make a choice at all.
"I know you're there, sis," Sansa shouted from the bedchamber. "I could hear you scurry about when mother left."
Annoyed that she was caught easedropping again, but too excited to play coy, Arya rushed to meet her sister.
When she made it to the bedchamber, Sansa was using one hand to wipe away the few remaining tears on her face and the other to pat a spot on the bed for Arya to sit. She was smiling too but Arya could tell she was only doing it for her sake. It doesn't quite reach her eyes, she recognized. Arya couldn't remember who first taught her that. It could have been father, Ser Rodrik or Jon, but she could almost always tell if someone was faking a smile by looking into their eyes. Arya didn't bother to bring that up Sansa though. It would only make her sad she reckoned and she was supposed to be doing the opposite.
Avoiding the stray books and papers taken from the library tower that were scattered across the room, a perpetual sight whenever she visited her sister's chambers, especially in recent weeks, Arya took her place beside Sansa on the bed and waited for her sister to speak first.
It wasn't a custom they had knowingly thought up for themselves, but over the years it more or less became such whenever one of them got upset. Arya absently thought that it was probably one of the only courtesies that she could always remember and get right.
"So, I suppose you heard all of that, huh," Sansa at last spoke.
"Most of it, yes." Arya looked at her sister and scrunched up her face. "Mother was being stupid. So what if some stupid lord doesn't like your hair. It's just hair, not something that matters."
"But it does, Arya." Sansa said solemnly, looking much older than her eleven years when she did. "Mother's right. I need to look pretty so some idiot king will think me worthy of his even stupider son, and no matter what I say or do that won't change. It's just how this story goes," she uttered, spitting out the last words like they were a curse.
Arya didn't really know what to say to that. Her sister could get so angry and sullen sometimes. Usually she understood why, or at least thought she did. Like when father wouldn't let either of them go on a boar hunt but would take Robb and Jon, or when Septa Mordane would say they had the hands of blacksmiths because their embroidery was so crooked.
Other times though she was at a loss. Once, the lord of the Dreadfort came to Winterfell to speak with their father. The man never said more than courtesies to either of them in his strange whispering way but Sansa looked at him as if he was monster the whole time he was at Winterfell. She would sometimes give the same look to Theon and always treated the Greyjoy like a stranger.
Whenever Arya had the courage to ask Sansa why hated them so much her answer would always be the same.
"You wouldn't understand and I hope you never do," she'd say before messing her hair and pretending she never asked the question. The younger Stark sister hated that. She hated how she it felt like her sister was keeping secrets from her. Like she knew something important but refused to tell. It wasn't right Arya thought. Mother and Father had their secrets and their hushed whispers, but she and Sansa were sisters. They were supposed to be honest with each, or at least try to be.
Pushing those dark thoughts to the side, Arya remembered that she still wasn't sure what to say to Sansa in the here and now, so she simply said the first thing to come to her mind.
"Well I think this story's stupid then."
Sansa laughed at that and mussed her hair like always. "You have no idea how right you are, sis. No idea."
Finally looking towards her sister, Sansa began to smile in earnest and Arya couldn't help but do the same.
"But I suppose it's not all bad," Sansa began to say, half-serious. "There's you, Father, Robb, Bran, Rickon…"
"And Jon! Don't forget him." Arya interrupted. He was family too, if only by half.
"Yes, and Jon, too." Sansa corrected.
"Mother, as well." She continued. "I used to hate her for how she treated Jon when I was…" Sansa paused for a moment, as if trying to figure out just the right word to say. "Younger, but she's kind and I can't blame her for being how she is sometimes," she said philosophically, before quickly adding, "And you shouldn't either by the way," giving Arya a pointed look.
Arya had half a mind to argue that point, but thought better of it.
"I don't hate her. I never did. It's just that sometimes she can be…" Arya didn't have the right words for it, but sometimes it was hard to understand her mother and why she thought she had to be different from how she was. Arya didn't like to think of it but she always feared her mother was ashamed of her.
Sansa offered an answer. "Overbearing, controlling, intrusive?"
"Yes! All of that," Arya practically screamed out.
Sansa just laughed and rolled her eyes. "All the same, she still means well, Arya. I know that's hard to see sometimes, gods know it took me no small amount of time to figure that one out, but it's true."
Sansa continued on, speaking more to herself than her sister now. "She was right about the hair," she conceded, though to Arya's eyes it looked like it pained her to do so. "And about many other things, too. Sometimes… sometimes you have to lose a little of yourself to get what you want, I think."
That scared Arya. She never heard her sister sound so defeated before, so resigned. It always seemed like Sansa had some argument to make when others said things had to be one way, and while Arya didn't always understand her reasoning she respected her defiance nevertheless. The girl beside her now was a tired shadow of the one Arya knew and loved.
Again Arya found herself not knowing what to say. She was never great when it came to soothing words, memories of telling Bran to stop whining whenever he got hurt playing monsters and maidens or rats and cats with her uncomfortably coming to mind.
"Whatever, I still think it's all stupid," was all Arya could reply with. She knew it wasn't much of a rebuttal but it was all she could muster. She had at least hoped that it would make Sansa laugh again if not nothing else, but her sister just sat there sullenly on the bed, lost to thoughts that Arya could not fathom.
Arya knew this wasn't going well. She was supposed to helping, but instead, it felt like she was adding to her sister's misery more anything.
If she would just tell me what was wrong I could help, Arya thought bitterly. There was something more troubling her sister than their mother's words or stupid lordling boys, she knew it, but as to what Arya could not say. In that, Sansa could be so such like her brother Jon. So obviously hurt over something but rarely deigning to tell Arya what.
Despondent and wanting to change the subject the younger Stark asked a question that had been lightly buzzing in her head since Sansa mentioned the possibility.
"Do you really think you'll be betrothed to a prince?" She innocently inquired. Even as the question left her lips Arya chastised herself for asking it. Father would never allow it. Starks are made for the North, he enough said, and whenever they went south tragedy seemed to follow.
To Arya's surprise, the question brought Sansa out of her stupor. Shifting from her spot on the bed so suddenly that it startled Arya, she stared at her sister as if she had caught her in a lie. Arya saw different emotions play on her sister's face within the span of a few moments. First embarrassment, then apprehension, and lastly hope. She looked as she was about to tell her what was wrong, and for a second Arya had hope that she would. I can help, I swear it, Arya's face all about said. But the moment passed like a shadow on the wall and Sansa did what we always did.
"You wouldn't understand," she said, faking another smile that failed to mask the sadness in her voice.
"And I hope you never do."
Author's Notes - This is a Sansa SI that I've been working on for awhile. I wanted to seriously explore just how isolating and miserable it would be to actually be reincarnated in Westeros in a body that isn't your own and being forced to live someone else's life, all the while knowing that things are only going to get worse.
The SI himself isn't based on me, but probably has a couple aspects of my personality. I used Arya as the POV because I thought it would be interesting to see how her relationship with her "sister" would change. The next chapter will be from the SI's perspective and will showcase just how much of a psychological mess he is (body dysphoria and culture shock are a hell of a thing) and how he deeply regrets not paying attention in high school science class. OK that last one was a joke, but don't expect flintlocks to show up in this story.
Criticism and reviews are always welcome. Peace