It had been an eventful day in the Stark household, Sansa mused, spinning around in her desk chair. There hadn't been so much drama in her house for ages. She rested her head on top of the small mountain of textbooks and papers cluttering her desk.
At least Arya had a more tumultuous week than she did. On Monday, her sister had received a letter, stamped with King's Landing University's official seal, informing Miss Arya Stark that a full scholarship waited for her, if she chose to take it.
The news of the scholarship had gotten Arya pats on the back from her brothers, kisses from Dad, and their mum promptly announced a pizza dinner to celebrate. Sansa didn't think anything could've topped that announcement.
She had been wrong.
A few days later, they'd had Arya's fencing coach Syrio over for dinner that night, as they did every few months. But Syrio had brought more than plastic light sabers (that really lit up) for Bran and Rickon. He'd brought news that had undone the neat ties that seemed to have strung up Arya's future.
"Your daughter, she is good. She is very good. Arya is good enough to make a career of fencing. It is the Olympics I am speaking of, international competition. But she must work very hard. If she wants to do this thing, Arya must come with me to live in Braavos, to be training full-time. She is good, yes. But she could be great."
Arya's future had become a hotly debated topic for the rest of the night. Mum had brought up the great opportunity provided by the scholarship, and how wonderful it would be to have her two daughters going to college together. Rickon had challenged Bran to a light saber duel ("Arya, I do it like this, right? Hyah!") Robb began pontificating, ("It's an amazing opportunity Arya, a great school, but…but it is incredibly cool, and it's Syrio saying you could do it, and he was First Sword of Braavos…). Theon eyed the walls critically, discussing where they would put her gold medals. Jon had hugged her and mussed her hair, quietly congratulating her. Sansa had tried to smile at her, but Arya was staring at the table, her brows furrowed and her eyes far away.
Sansa sighed. Speculating about her sister's life wasn't going to finish her Gender Studies paper. She pulled a textbook from the precarious pile of academia on her desk.
She heard a quiet knock at her bedroom door and the squeak of hinges. Sansa swiveled around in her chair. Arya stood in the doorway, rubbing her neck.
Usually when Arya came to visit Sansa's room, she'd knock briefly before barging in, already talking about one thing or another as she fell back on the bed. After being at odds with each other for so long, Sansa savored the easiness between them.
Which was why Sansa watched Arya with concern as her sister, princess of all things bold and brash, lingered awkwardly at the threshold now.
"Can I come in?" Arya asked hesitantly.
"Of course," Sansa replied lightly. Arya crossed the room and sat gingerly on Sansa's neatly made bed. "What can I do for you, Arya?" Sansa asked, linking her fingers together like a cartoon villain. But Arya didn't laugh.
Sansa changed tactics. She waved a hand at her desk. "Clearly, I'm working very hard here." Arya rolled her eyes.
"Clearly," she scoffed. Then she leveled Sansa with a solemn look. Her eyes darted away to glance at the ceiling, then the floor. Just as Sansa was about to cut in, Arya's eyes returned to her. "Sansa," she said.
"Arya," Sansa replied, eyebrow raised. Arya inhaled sharply through her nose.
"Brush my hair?" Arya swallowed. She folded her hands. Was she trying to look …polite? If so, she wasn't doing very well; the tic in her jaw gave her away. "Please."
Sansa felt her jaw drop in a very unladylike way. She closed it abruptly. "Are you serious?" Arya nodded shortly, a look of greatest agony on her face. "Arya. You hate having your hair brushed. The last time someone tried, you threatened to use your saber to poke so many holes in them they'd be mistaken for Swiss cheese."
Arya leaned across the bed to pick up the brush on Sansa's nightstand. She held it out to her. "Does that mean you don't want to?" Arya asked.
Once when they were children, Arya had asked Sansa if she wanted to make mud pies with Arya and the boys. Sansa had turned up her nose, still miffed that Arya had called playing tea party with her stupid. Arya had crossed her arms (how old could they have been? Arya four, Sansa six?), and cried "Fine! I don't want to play with you anyway! You're stupid and boring!" Then she ran off, her hands curled into tiny fists. After all this time, Sansa could still hear her sister's peeping little voice, asking sissy to play with her.
Arya was eighteen and Sansa twenty, and they got along better than Sansa had ever dreamed. But she could still hear her sister's voice at fourteen, twelve, eight, calling her names, and she could feel echoes of insults in her own mouth.
Sansa blinked herself back to the present. Arya's shoulders were beginning to hunch defensively- Arya, whose shoulders were always straight and proud- and Sansa needed to act.
"Are you kidding me? My childhood dream realized." Sansa took the hairbrush from Arya, climbed up on the bed, and settled down behind her.
They had to take a moment to shift around the decorative pillows and get comfortable. Once Sansa was satisfied, she eyed her sister's head, wondering where the hell she would start. Arya played with her fingers nervously.
Arya had not let anyone brush her hair since she was very little. It would get so tangled from running and wrestling that it resembled a thicket more than the hair of a tiny girl. When their mother or their nanny tried to comb out the knots, it hurt Arya so much that it used to make her cry. From about three on she would pitch a fit whenever someone neared her with a hairbrush.
But Sansa had a trick up her sleeve. Her roommate Margaery had taught her a way to stop the hurt of picking through snarled hair. She teased a section of Arya's hair out, held it around the middle, and then began brushing the very ends of it.
At first, Arya held herself taut. Sansa took extra care to be gentle, and slowly, slowly, Arya began to relax. Sitting cross-legged behind her, Sansa smirked.
Okay, Arya. I'm going to find out what's wrong, little sister. She smoothed a lock of hair she had brushed out over Arya's shoulder
"Do you really think you're going to cut it all off?" Sansa asked as she fingered another section of matted hair.
"Yoren says it would be more practical," Arya shrugged. Sansa pursed her lips in thought.
"When it's not all knotted up, your hair looks nice long-"
"It's my head," Arya grumbled. Sansa felt a bit taken aback. It was, as Arya liked to say, just hair. The bristles of the brush slid down her scalp as Arya's head sagged just a bit. Sansa tugged it free as Arya got up onto her knees to turn around so she could look Sansa in the eye.
"I- sorry. I'm kind of stressed out." Sansa nodded encouragingly for her to continue, even as a voice in the back of her head noted that it was rare for Arya to admit any vulnerability.
"I didn't come to talk about my hair," Arya said.
"What? I'm shocked! Here I thought you were genuinely interested in hair care."
Arya flipped Sansa the bird. "Ugh, Sansa, I'm being serious here. Let me do that." Sansa's smile fell from her face. She scooted back to give Arya a little more room.
"Sorry. I'm all ears." Arya took a deep breath.
"With this scholarship, and the stuff that Syrio said- I wanted to ask you what you thought about all of it."
"What about it?" Sansa asked.
"What do you think I should do, is what I'm asking," Arya said firmly. Sansa snorted a bit. Arya frowned.
"What?" She asked defensively.
"It's just…. when have you ever cared about my opinion, Arya?" Sansa asked in disbelief. Arya huffed and crossed her arms.
"Gods, see if I ever ask you a question again." Arya made to get up. Sansa stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"No, don't go. I'm just surprised."
"What is there to be surprised about?"
Sansa felt an old wound sting. "I've always been too stupid to ask about anything important. I'm dumb enough to like rom-coms and Home Ec and makeup." Arya stuck out her chin.
"Oh, sorry, have I offended the princess? Arya Horseface who always embarrassed you and wasn't a proper girl?!"
A thousand images flashed through Sansa's mind: Arya in torn jeans, Arya who laughed when Sansa asked if she wanted to play Barbies, Arya blurting out whatever was on her mind.
"Did it matter what I called you? You've never cared what I thought. You've always just gone ahead and done whatever you wanted to do, no matter what I-or anyone-said about it."
To Sansa's shock, tears of frustration welled up in Arya's eyes.
"I always cared about your opinion! You think I didn't know that I wasn't the little sister you wanted? You wanted me to be you, Sansa! Everyone did! But even though it hurt like hell, when you made fun of me and the things I liked, I did what I needed to do to be happy."
Sansa felt her heart drop.
"Arya…"
"No!" If they were a few years younger, Arya might've gotten up from the bed and stamped her foot. She wiped her eyes brusquely, then looked at the back of her hand as though she was surprised to find it wet. Arya shook her head and looked back at Sansa. "You always tried to make me into something I wasn't."
"I thought you were jealous of me, at first," Sansa blurted out. Arya looked at her incredulously. Sansa backpedaled. "I know that was silly. But then you called everything I liked stupid. You think I'm weak because I like traditionally girly things, but I'm not, Arya! I'm not like you, but I'm not weak."
Arya started shaking her head.
"I don't think you're weak." Sansa opened her mouth to interrupt, but Arya beat her to the punch. "Maybe I thought that once, but that wasn't right. You and your friends called me gross and wrong all the time, and then the boys I would hang out with would tell me that the things you liked were stupid and that you were just a silly girl. It didn't occur to me for a long time that it was okay for us to be different, and that one way of being wasn't better than another."
Sansa sniffed. "This is why Gender Studies needs to be a required course of study."
Arya smiled a little. "Says the Gender Studies major." Sansa stuck out her tongue, and the corners of Arya's mouth quirked up further. "But for real. The people who told us that crap needed a good kick in the nuts."
Sansa took a pillow and held it to her chest. "Maybe a class in 'don't listen to the dumbass that insults your sister' would've been more appropriate for both of us," she said quietly. "And violence is not the answer, Arya," she added, with a mock-snooty nod.
"Violence is not the answer. It's the solution," Arya retorted with her best shit-eating grin. Sansa felt a goofy smile cross her face that Arya returned. A thought occurred to Sansa, and the smile slid off her face as she felt her brow furrow in consternation.
"So you didn't care what I thought because I was mean to you and the people who were nice to you didn't like people like me."
"No. I always cared what you thought, but I didn't want to be you. I wanted to be me. To be myself. And I wanted you to want me to be myself, too." Sansa sucked in a breath. Arya sat before her, gray eyes more open than Sansa had ever seen. Carefully, she reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind Arya's ear. She steeled herself- she had one chance to say this, and she needed to say it right.
"Arya. I do want you to be yourself. Now more than ever. I love how you are, even though you still drive me insane sometimes-" Arya chuckled. Sansa pushed on. "I love how you are, because you're you. And in response to your original question…I think you should choose whatever makes you happiest. If that's going to university with me, great. I'd love to have you there. And if you decide to go to Braavos, that's great, too. I'm with Syrio; you'll go to the Olympics and win a bunch of medals and Mom and I and secretly Theon will cry at the ceremony. Arya, I love you and I wouldn't want you any other way. You're my baby sister. And I know whatever you decide to do, you'll kick some serious butt at it." Sansa felt her cheeks grow red at the sentimentality, but she would stand by what she said, gods damn it.
Arya looked up at her, eyes unfathomable.
Suddenly she leapt into Sansa's arms, holding her tightly. Sansa slowly put her arms around her sister in return, and then hugged her just as fiercely. Arya buried her face in Sansa's shoulder and Sansa held her all the more tightly.
They were slow to part. Sitting across from one another, Sansa and Arya shared a comfortable silence. Then, Sansa sat up.
"Now, for the real question," Sansa said. Arya looked at her apprehensively. Sansa looked back with great gravity.
"Are you going to cut your hair?" Arya burst out laughing, and after a moment, Sansa joined her.
Giggling, Arya said, "Well, it would be nice not to have it in my face all the time. Do you think Mum would flip her shit if Yoren did it for me?"
"Is that even a question? Here, I have an idea." Sansa slid off her bed and crossed the room. She bent down to collect an armful of magazines she had bought recently (someone in the family had to keep track of the trends), and flicked through her DVD collection. She returned to the bed and nonchalantly tossed Arya the movie she'd chosen.
Arya's face lit up. "The Princess Bride?"
"As you wish," Sansa said, curtsying. She set down her stack of magazines beside Arya and clambered back up onto the bed.
Two hours later, the flickering light of The Princess Bride DVD menu on a loop illuminated Sansa's bedroom. I should turn that off, Sansa thought drowsily. She could not summon the energy or the will to move, for Arya's head rested on her shoulder, hair finally brushed smooth. On Sansa's nightstand, there was a pile of magazine cutouts of short hairstyles Arya had liked. Sansa had promised to go with Arya tomorrow to get her hair cut.
Sansa glanced to the side. Arya's face was peaceful, still as she never was when awake. Content, Sansa rested her cheek against Arya's head and closed her eyes.