Rest in the Bed
They don't bother to keep her bound in chains.
She is just a scrawny thing. Tall, but as flighty and frail as a birdling, with crumpled wings and bleary eyes that dart around from one face to the next. She doesn't present much of a threat and offers no struggle as they march her into the empty room. There's no furniture either so she sits on the floor - palms flat against the cold stone - and stares out of the thin slit in the wall onto the outside world. She can barely slide her hand into it, but it serves it purpose: a view of billowing grey clouds and a bite of cold air.
Sansa Stark sighs to herself. It's been a long time since she's breathed fresh air.
She's sure they've locked him up somewhere near, although probably not in a tower as they've done with her. His reputation surely, is enough to ensure that he'll be kept somewhere far within the keep, dark and cold and underground. Away from birdsong and daylight and anything that could give her the comfort of knowing that he looks upon the same clouds as she does, swallows in the same frigid air, listens to the same clattering of horses hooves across a stone courtyard below.
She feels his absence like a physical blow. It doubles her over some nights, wheezing at the pain in her chest and stomach. Even her heart seems to have shrivelled to a crisp inside her ribcage; her trembling hands and stiffening fingers a sure sign of the frail, bloodless husk that she's become. The traitor. The condemned.
They had spent years planning it. Endlessly waiting. Forging alliances, calling the banners.
It hadn't worked.
The only remaining daughter of Eddard Stark, long-dead Warden of the North and traitor to the Targaryen throne. She was a beacon for some, a hope; but it was not a title that endeared her to everyone, least of all to Aegon Targaryen.
They'd been moved up and down the Seven Kingdoms, never staying in one place for more than a few months at the most. The red-headed Stark girl held a fascination for many, the dragon prince realised. It would be best to keep her on the move, out of harm's way, where all chance of her gathering support, solicited or otherwise, would be killed stone dead.
But none of this matters to her. Her jailors may treat her kindly, they may whisper sympathetic words in her ear or pass her cryptic messages smuggled into her cell in the hem of their cloaks; they receive no reward for the risks they take. She burns the parchment in the grate, halts their kindly concerns with a detached stare. She has no need of supporters now. The only thing she truly wants, is the one thing she never gets.
To see him.
Days turn into weeks, turn into months. The cold wind blows and Sansa Stark has nothing to do, but sit and regret.
How could it have all gone so wrong? How could so many have died?
Her heart bleeds for them, for all those who put their trust in her, all those she failed.
The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
She used to repeat that to herself like a mantra. In the months after her father's death, when she longed for grey clouds and the cold and for Winterfell. Her mother was out there, her brothers and Arya too; her pack was scattered, but not broken.
But now she sits in her cell, rubbing her freezing hands over each other in an effort to instil some warmth in her bloodstream, wondering how she could have been so stupid. Stupid, stupid Sansa.
She let others overwhelm her, as she'd done her entire life. The glittering emerald eyes of Cersei Lannister stared back at her in their reverent gazes. The soft-spoken, persuasive charm of Petyr Baelish swam in her ears as she listened to their voices, raised in anger as they sat around the table, arguing over which way was best to curry favour with the southron lords, or whether it was foolhardy to imagine that the Golden Company would ever break their contract with the silver prince from the East.
They saw her as their saviour, a true northern princess come to return them to the old ways, but it was a burden that she took on with only half a heart. All she wanted, all she'd ever wanted, was Winterfell. Not the power, not the throne. She wanted to sit in her father's seat - but not to rule. Instead, (she had dreamed the moment a thousand times in her mind), she would trail her fingers lovingly over the direwolf carvings, curl up within the seat and perhaps fall asleep, finally sleeping soundly for the first time since she had left the castle's maternal embrace all those years before.
He'd stood at her shoulder throughout it all. He never once questioned why the little bird kept flapping her wings, battling through the storm that threatened to engulf them at any moment, but he should have. After all, what was the use of a great castle if she had no family to fill it? She'd become so preoccupied with Winterfell, with stone and earth and dirt, that she had forgotten the one thing that had truly made it home.
Now, imprisoned in her frozen, solitary cell, she remembers.
In the midst of all the madness, there is only one thing of which she is certain; an inescapable conclusion that dogs her, haunts her waking hours, her restless sleep. She waits for it, day in and day out, not knowing whether it has happened already or has yet tohappen, but spends her days in a haze of confusion, her mind tip-toeing the line between threadbare hopefulness and utter despair.
One evening, she recalls a conversation they'd once had a long time ago. He told her then he didn't believe in the gods. 'I'm going to the deepest of the seven hells, little bird, and don't you forget it,' he'd said.
'But where does that leave me?' she had wanted to scream.
Alive, is her answer. When all those she has loved, and still loves, have left her.
After all this time, she still isn't sure just quite how to define their relationship. He mocked her too cruelly and too often to be considered a friend, yet they'd rarely spent more than a day out of each other's company. They weren't lovers, though the rumour grew more fervent with each passing year. He wasn't a father either; she'd already had one of those and didn't want another. He was none of those things and he was all of them, and slowly, so slowly that she would be hard pressed to pin down the exact day, or month, or even year, he had become as much a part of her as the breath in her lungs, as the pounding of her own heart.
So when she finally hears the news - whispered through the bars in her cell from a sympathetic would-be conspirator - that she will not be forced to endure an eternity without him, such relief crashes over her heart that she falls to the ground, her body heaving with great, wracking sobs.
She has prayed to the gods, and they have been merciful.
A man comes to visit her one evening soon after. Aegon Targaryen is not without honour it seems; Sansa discovers that a noble lady, even a traitorous one such as herself, is accorded the dignity of knowing the time and manner of her own demise. Not that she even cares, for the first question to fall from her lips is about him.
'Tomorrow morning,' the man answers. 'And then yourself, the morning after.'
A great weight lifts from her shoulders at his words. 'Is there anything you'd like?' he asks gently. Perhaps a visit from the Septon?'
If this place had a heart tree, she might ask to pray before it for an hour or so. But they are in the south, and the old Gods hold no sway here. 'Thank you, no. That won't be necessary.'
She excepts him to go, but he steps closer to her and lowers his voice. 'I can send some milk of the poppy. It will help to dull the pain.'
She shakes her head at him.
He looks at her, eyes full of concern. 'Do you not fear death, my lady?'
She wants to laugh at his question, but that would be a discourteous thing. 'No,' she replies. 'There are things in this world much worse than death. That is what I fear.'
If he wonders what she means, he doesn't ask. Instead he nods his head and turns to leave, but she calls him back just in time.
'Please, would you bring me a box?'
'A box?'
'Yes.'
He hesitates, but a quick glance skywards satisfies himself that the rafters are far too high for her to reach, so he relents. 'Of course.'
'Thank you.'
When it happens, she stands on the box and watches through the slit in the wall; the crowd, the blow, the bite of red that drips from the scaffold. He doesn't flinch once, even when they make him kneel. He is as unyielding in death as he was in life, and she cannot help but think that some of him must have rubbed off on her; her hands barely shake.
Instead, she turns and smiles. She has waited so long for their reunion that one more night seems almost too much to bear, but she must be patient. Tomorrow it will be her turn.
In the morning, she walks onto the scaffold and welcomes death with open arms.
A/N: Written after listening to 'Rest in the Bed' by Laura Marling, and inspired by these lyrics:
'Rest in the bed of my bones,
all that I want is a home,
and all you can do, is promise me bold,
that you won't let me grow dark, or cold,
as long as we both shall live.'
Thanks for reading, reviews are greatly appreciated!