Queen of the North

louisaeve


Sansa Stark is no longer the smiling, polite girl who blushed over the old Prince Joffrey or who stammered and curtseyed in front of the former Queen Cersei. She no longer wishes for fancy ballgowns and sits and painstakingly sews, she no longer recites songs of knights and ladies and honour, no longer giggles over shirtless Ser's.

Instead she is North itself. She is ice and snow and the godswoods and fireplaces all at once. She has retaken the North, become as cold and silent and polite and cool as she need to be and she will bring the all home, all the Starks in the lands, dead and alive and she will lock them away in Winterfell, throwing away the keys and vowing to never be alone.


Arya's off with the knight blacksmith that's employed in the castle (Gendry Arya reminds her with a roll of her eyes). To be honest Sansa is almost glad. A bastard he may be and lands he may not have but Arya is never going to have children, never going to keep a castle's books, never check any coin except in her purse. And as long as the smith stays in Winterfell, Arya stays.

With an amused smile on her face (that didn't quite reach her eyes) Sansa makes her way down to the stable and nodded at the stable hand who quickly fetches her horse.

One of her Queensguard (Ser Brienne of Tarth, her mothers sworn and now her own) accompanies her, swinging one of her own long legs over her horse as Sansa does the same (Sansa may be tall and thin and long but the blonde woman is taller and longer).

They ride out of the gates of Winterfell, and into the green lands outside. The snow has mostly melted now and Winter has come, and it is now summer and summer means that the chill is being chased from her home.

As the Queen of the North rides out she can't help the grin that is lifted to her face. The cold doesn't bother her - it comforts her and as it whips her hair around her head like a halo, like something other worldly, she spots a figure riding towards them, a streak on a giant . . . wolf.

Sansa's breath catches in her throat and her eyes look over the frame of a boy - a man - on the back of a direwolf. Her heart raises it's beat, pounding fast in her chest, it's ribs a cage, and she tries to calm herself (tries oh how she tries). But the boy - younger than her and Arya and just the right age she can't help but think - jumps off the back of the wolf as she and Brienne approach. "Halt!" The Knight of the Queensguard calls out in protest of the boy nearing her Queen.

But Sansa's eyes drift over the boy and his figure and her breath catches and she presses a hand to her mouth, and pulls herself down from her horse (she's done worse than dismount from a horse herself), and walks over to him, although the part of her heart that is still a girl trembles and wishes desperately to run, and she begs herself to remain calm to remain a Queen.

And the boys eyes moisten (those wild, wild eyes for a wild, wild thing) and he calls "Mama?" out, heartbreaking and bittersweet.

Sansa shakes her head, and her eyes are prickling in a way they haven't since Arya's return, her eyes are prickling because this dear boy, this poor boy, thinks she's his mother, his mother with red hair. Brienne looks at her questioningly, but for once she ignores the woman who has become one of her dearest friends and advisors and moves towards the lad with long strides. "No," and for once her voice comes out clear when she wants it to. "I am the Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, the Queen of the North. And you?"

"Sansa?" And the boys eyes are so wide that she can't bear to keep up this pretence anymore and her heart is aching and everything is telling her that this boy must the one, must be him. So she wraps her eyes around this one, this little piece of wild and unwavering.

"Rickon?" Her voice trembles and the boy wraps his arms around her fiercely, tightly in a way that is sure to break her if she is a lesser woman.

"Sansa," the boy replies and it's Rickon, it's Rickon, it's Rickon. It's the littlest Stark boy, back from the dead and it's her baby brother.

After the two have hugged for so long that even Sansa can feel her toes chilling (Brienne's lips are blue despite her many layers) the two decide that they should head back to the castle, and tell the rest (tell Arya they both think).

The two ride off, Rickon on Shaggywolf and Sansa on her horse, racing to the castle in a bout of childlike behaviour and Sansa thinks that Rickon may not be brought up in Winterfell, may not be educated, but he is the North, and the North remembers. Rickon shall fit in. He already does.