Disclaimer: Not mine

A/N: First fic in a long time, and I'm definitely still feeling out how to write these characters.

The night Arya came home, winter was in its final throes, but the snowdrifts were still lapping over the outer curtain wall, blowing snow as fine as dust over all of Winterfell. It was all the men could do to dig out paths between the reconstructed buildings, which were really just the great hall and family chambers, the kitchens, and half the stables. The gates themselves couldn't be opened; save for the Hunter's gate by the ruined kennels, even if anyone had seen her approach. As it was, no one claimed to have admitted her into the castle, heard her calling from beyond the walls, or noticed her tracks.

But there she was all the same, sitting quietly in a rough hewn chair in the solar that had once been their father's, sipping mulled wine that no one in the kitchens had seen her take.

When Sansa saw her there, both of their faces so different even in the anemic light of a tallow candle, she felt as if she would faint and did nothing more than breathe for a moment. When the disbelief passed, she sat beside her at the low table and accepted the cup of wine Arya held out to her.

"I didn't look for you," she chose these words to break the silence, because it felt like anything else, any relief or kindness, tears and smiles, would be a lie until she had told her.

"I hid, changed my name and hair and family. I hid in the Vale and never once thought to look for you. I prayed to the Mother and the Maid that you lived, but didn't really hope."

Arya did not look mad or hurt, or anything in truth. Sansa kept waiting for her to bite her lip like she always did. She didn't even jiggle her leg.

"I knew where you were and I didn't come for you either. I knew Winterfell had fallen and Jon had been reborn. I knew that you had not killed Joffrey, even though you should have. I knew who Alayne Stone was, and I didn't come for you."

"Arya..."

"I lived, Sansa, and so did you. Winterfell is ours again. These are the things that matter, not how we managed it."

"Where were you?"

Arya just took her hand.

They drank the rest of the wine, spoke very little, and clasped hands under the table until morning came. As Arya clutched Rickon to her chest and pressed one of Bran's hands to her lips, Sansa fled to the collapsed kennels, scrambling over debris and snow packed into rock. Then she pounded her fists against the rotting wood and wept and wept and wept. Thank you, she thought as she buried her face in her hands, thank you thank you thank you.

Later that day, Winterfell's master-at-arms fell into step beside her as they left the solar for the lower levels.

"Why do you look displeased?" Sansa hissed as she and her siblings trotted down to the Godswood, Bran insisted on acknowledging Arya's return to the old gods. Hodor hummed happily at his lord's joy.

His face remained passive, "Do I not always looked displeased?"

On another day Sansa would have rolled her eyes, but today she fought the desire to kick his shin, "Even more than usual."

"How did she get in, my lady?"

Sansa shook her head, confused, "I did not ask her."

"And where had she been, my lady?"

Sansa halted for a moment, pretending to adjust her skirts, allowing the others to gain distance, although Summer turned his massive head to look at her, his ears twitching in a way she found suspicious, "She would not say."

He opened his mouth to speak but she held up a hand to stop him, "I won't distrust my sister. There are things about out time apart that I will never tell her either. There are things…" she paused to inhale sharply before starting anew, "We Starks survived because we were made for winter. And we know that sometimes, honor is a summertime virtue, for songs and harvests, and knights who only lift a sword for tourneys. I'm sure she did what she had to. Just as we did."

"Have you left your honor behind, little bird?" he asked innocently, but the burnt half of his lips twitched slightly.

"I will not say," she told him primly, gathering her skirts to catch up to her family.

She barely let Arya out of her sight for days, worried that her brothers had been gift enough and that her only sister's life must be a dream or cruel trick. She sat beside her at meals and attended her at baths and insisted she sleep with her at night, until her own chambers might be outfitted. Her favorite part of the day was when Arya pushed the long wooden tables of the great hall against the walls and used the empty room to teach Rickon the Braavosi style of swordplay or spar with the Hound using long wooden staffs.

"So you were in Braavos," Sansa said after the first of such lessons, smiling as Arya retied her short brown hair with a piece of twine. "Is that where you learned to use a sword?"

"I learned the waterdance while we were still in King's Landing. My dance lessons, remember?"

Sansa did, she remembered the angry black bruises on Arya's knuckles and the weeks where half-infected cat scratches lined her arms. "Then you were not in Braavos?"

Arya only answered, "The snow has stopped and the sky seems clear. Bran's set some of the men to raise a new roof on the kennels."

That night Arya came to her chambers and collected the clothes Sansa's had had the seamstress make. Arya had been empty handed when she returned.

"I've had a cot placed in Robb's old room, I'll be sleeping there from now on."

Sansa's stomach dropped, the fear of losing her, even if it was just to another part of the keep, ignited a panic that made her chest feel tight, "No! You may stay with me! We always slept together as girls when it was winter, otherwise we'd freeze!"

"I think there is someone else who misses warming your bed more than me, Sansa."

Discretion was a second nature to Sansa, had been for years. Brown dye could be washed from hair but she would never be clean of the stain that Petyr left.

"How could you possibly know that?"

Arya did not answer. It was not fair that most of her answers were silence.

"I am not asking for details, Arya. I have not asked if you were beaten or raped or slaved! I have not asked if you've killed men or stolen or forsaken our gods. But you are a stranger to me now, Arya. All I am asking is where were you?"

Arya put her clothing down and drew her sister into a hug. Sansa, a whole head taller than her fierce sibling, rested her chin atop Arya's brown thicket of hair.

"I wasn't harmed, not as you fear I was if I had been a prettier child. But the rest of those things…." She didn't have to say anymore. She gathered up her clothing and unlatched the door, and whispered, "I am a stranger to myself now, too."

When Sandor Clegane slipped into her bed in the dark hours before dawn, Sansa merely turned her face into his neck and let him stroke her hair.

"She will not tell me."

"Have you told her where you were?"

"Aye," Sansa ran a hand under his linen shirt to rest above his heart, "That I hid in the Vale."

"No," Clegane propped himself onto one elbow. "You were never in the Eyrie, it was Alayne Stone. Just as it was some brutish brother on the Quiet Isle, never truly me. Tell me, bird, where was Sansa Stark?"

I am a stranger to myself now, too.

The kennels were completed after only a handful a days, and while they waited for one of the bitches to whelp, Arya regaled Sansa with tales of Beric Dondarrion's hollow eyes and Thoros of Myr's fiery kiss. Sansa told Arya how their aunt truly died.