Chapter 1. Circle I. Beware of Wishes.

ATTENTION — PLEASE READ:

We all know that when Game of Thrones starts, Sansa is thirteen. In the Middle Ages, that would make her a grown woman. And although some people are able to brush this off as historical context, this age for her simply isn't going to work for this fanfic and for me as an author and as a person. Therefore, I would like to invite you all, alongside myself, to imagine Sansa older than that. While I insist that she is older, I will not specify her age, because I would like to leave it to your, my readers', individual discretion. Understanding that she is quite a young woman, imagine her at that age which makes you comfortable — it will vary depending on your culture and world views. Imagine her such that you can enjoy this story. It's the only detail for which I place the burden onto you — I promise to supply the rest. Enjoy!

Sansa awoke with the dawn, as she always did, but not in a manner that reflected her habits. She was used to waking up in Jaime's arms, and now that the War for the Dawn was over and the Targaryen host had left Winterfell, she would luxuriate for a few additional hours in the warmth of her husband's embrace before beginning her ever busy day. Besides, Jaime always grumbled if she tried getting up too early and woke him. For all that she half-seriously protested, she secretly loved it when, sometimes, as the list of all she had to do would wake her and she would try crawling out of bed before daylight, his heavy arm would wrap around her tightly and keep her at his side. But today, for a reason she did not understand, she woke up alone. Woke up from the very feeling that there was not enough warmth around her, that his body was not shielding her from nightmares and from the world. Jaime never got out of bed before her. Where the hells is he? she grumbled mentally, before even opening her eyes. I swear, if he is doing something dangerous, he will never hear the end of it from me! How can he be so careless still? You'd think he'd learn caution from losing a hand and incurring countless wounds but he sure as the Stranger didn't! Damn this careless Southerner for being a mindless idiot and for leaving me to wake up alone…

She was going to be cranky all day, and she would make him feel the full weight of her ire — maybe that would teach him the error of his ways. She yawned in annoyance, irritable from having been left alone — he could have at least kissed her before leaving if he absolutely had to abandon her! — and opened her eyes. Immediately, cold dread invaded her entire body. This room. It was the only place she could not make herself enter in Winterfell. No matter that she had been able to overcome what had happened to her here, she could not cross this threshold. It was the room of her girlhood — and the room where the last vestiges of it had been brutally, humiliatingly stripped from her. Feeling nausea overtake her and her lungs constrict, she tore from the bed and ran out of the room. Now, she was worried. Under no circumstances, would have Jaime let her to wake up alone in that room. Fear, no longer of the past, but of the immediate present overtook her, and her blood turned to ice water in her veins. One thought, and one thought only, circled through her desperate mind: Where's Jaime?! As she ran down the hall, she came upon a servant girl. Grasping at her arm, she demanded:

"Where's your master?"

The girl looked at her in concern, having observed her agitation.

"Lord Stark is in the dining hall, Lady Sansa. Are you all right?"

Lord Stark?

"What are you talking about?" Sansa exclaimed in irritation. What Lord Stark? Bran? But no one really called him that. And certainly not even the stupidest wench would ever think that when Sansa said, "your master," she meant anyone other than Jaime. And what was it with calling her Lady Sansa? No one had called her that in years. Since her mother's death, she had been by right Lady Stark. Since her marriage to Jaime, she had been occasionally called Lady Lannister. But no one called her Lady Sansa. It was a title reserved for girls.

"What do you mean, Lady Sansa?" Asked the girl, confused.

"What Lord Stark?!" Sansa barked in real anger. Her fear was intensifying. Where is Jaime?!

"Lord Eddard Stark, my lady," the girl squeaked, terrified.

She looked at Sansa as though her mistress had gone insane. Sansa was about to shake the servant violently for the impudence of playing a cruel joke on the lady of the castle, when, suddenly, the girl's face burst into Sansa's memory. She had not seen this face since she had left Winterfell with her father and Robert Baratheon's retinue. Her nausea doubled and cold perspiration broke out on her forehead. What nightmare was this? She had not had nightmares since Jaime started guarding her sleep, and never had she had one like this. She felt faint, her heart was beating faster than a rabbit's. The vertigo that was overtaking her was broken into by a voice that made her insides turn to shattered glass:

"Sansa? Darling, what's wrong? You look so pale! Are you ill? What is it, my heart? Did you have a bad dream?"

Her mother was but a few feet away, and coming towards them. A small frown of worry was marring her kind face and concern was clear in her large blue eyes. She came to stand next to them and placed her hand on Sansa's forehead. In the deepest of the Seven Hells and the highest of the Heavens, Sansa would know the touch of this hand. Its gentle skin, just a little wrinkled, just a little hardened. This touch — soft and healing — she would recognize anywhere in the universe. It was Lady Catelyn. The real Lady Stark.

"Mother?" She rasped, her voice constricting, her bones crumbling to dust. She looked to her mother's neck, searching for scars that must be there, ghastly scars, but the skin was smooth, except for a few wrinkles, the map of which she had known so well. It was her mother — and it could not be her. The hallway span around Sansa and she felt her knees give out. Distantly, she heard her mother's worried voice call for Maester Luwin and the servant girl's chirp of acquiescence. Then, there was nothing at all.

Sansa regained consciousness to the touch of a strong male hand holding hers. She was finally waking up. She sighed in relief. Jaime would soothe her — he always did.

"Jaime…" she began and opened her eyes. It was not green eyes that she had hoped to see, but light grey ones that met hers. Eyes she had last seen when standing on the battlements of the Red Keep; eyes that had turned a ghastly shade of blood-red.

"How are you feeling, dear girl?"

Her father's gentle voice tore into her soul. Memories of his execution, and everything that had followed, broken onto Sansa's mind like a torrent smashing a dam. She screamed. A ghastly, animalistic sound, which spoke to the terror of the most primeval kind, echoed in the room.

"Sansa, child, what's wrong?"

She had lost her mind. That, or she was in the deepest delirium. But she did not have a fever when she had fallen asleep the night before. Was she…?

"Father," she croaked out against a throat constricted with tears. "Am I dead?" She whispered. "Is that why I'm here? Why I can see you?"

Her father's eyebrows shot up and his eyes were filled with concern. He was about to say something, when the door opened. Sansa turned to it, frantically expecting Jaime would come into the room and chase away this nightmare, but it was Catelyn. She was frowning — much as she had done before.

"How are you, darling?" Catelyn asked Sansa, but looked to her husband. "I sent for Maester Luwin, he did say to call for him once she stirred."

Ned nodded. He, too, did not bear any scars. Not that he could have formed them.

Sansa began to cry. Had someone killed her and Jaime in their sleep? But what had she done to deserve an afterlife without him? What great crime had she committed to be punished so cruelly? Was she to relive all the nightmare her life had been? Without him? She realized dimly that her parents were trying to soothe her hysterical cries, but it was no use. She heard footsteps, and Robb came into the room, Bran and Rickon at his heels. All of them looked worried and young — so young! Bran a boy and Rickon only a toddler. Neither scarred, and Bran — walking on his own! She was so stunned, she hiccuped and stopped crying.

"How are you feeling, sister?" Robb asked. "I heard you fainted."

His own head attached to his neck; not his wolf's.

"Are you all right, Sansa?" Bran questioned, and his query was reflected in small Rickon's serious eyes.

Sansa began crying anew. What was happening to her? This was a cruel nightmare, indeed, to be ripped away from Jaime and taunted with the faces of her dead.

They all tried soothing her, calming her down, but the more they were around her, the more her sanity seemed to bend under the weight of her resurfacing pain.

"Sansa? What's with you?"

Arya's voice. Higher-pitched than she had grown used to. Sansa lifted her head to see her baby sister — a little girl from so many years ago — and next to Arya, half-hidden in the darkness of the hallway, Jon Snow. A youngster, not the scarred, wise man she had come to know. From behind them, trotted in a small direwolf, its fur light grey and white. Lady.

The wolf jumped onto the bed next to Sansa and pressed its cold, wet nose into her palm. It was the first thing that felt real to her, even though it must have been as much of a mirage as everything else. But somehow, feeling the wet and the cold against her skin seemed to tie her to this strange reality, to embody her within it.

"Lady?" She whispered, and the direwolf's eyes stared into her face. Trusting, sweet eyes.

"Mother?" She turned to Catelyn, whose worried face was relaxing a little as she watched her daughter stop crying — even a small smile tugged at the older woman's mouth. Sansa reached her hand to the hollow at her mother's throat, where a pulse beat evenly; she traced with her fingers the soft skin of her mother's neck, a skin untarnished with knives. Catelyn felt more real than any memory, more real than anything in the world. Sansa turned to her father, reaching for the face undamaged by execution, watching his eyes — alive and clear and warm — look at her with the same expression of relief that was in Catelyn's face.

"Father?"

He smiled.

"Yes, child. We are all here."

Not all. Jaime isn't here.

But she turned to look at Robb, who came near her, having noticed that his sister was oddly comforted by the possibility of touching her family's faces. She brought her palm to his neck, the skin of which was whole and young and alive.

"Robb."

"Darling," her mother broke in softly. "How are you feeling?"

Sansa only nodded and turned to Bran.

"Bran?"

He smiled at her. The goofy, happy grin she had almost forgotten after looking for so long upon the blank face of the Three Eyed Raven.

"Jump, Bran!" She told him. Laughing at his sister's silliness, this young, carefree Bran jumped. Rickon jumped, too, and the boys started jumping with the agility of mechanical toys.

Sansa laughed at their antiques. She turned to Arya and Jon, who were watching her with a mixture of bewilderment and surprise.

"Arya," Sansa called. "Please, come here."

She was certain Arya would not want to, that her sister wanted to be outdoors again as quickly as possible, and now that the little she-wolf knew Sansa was in no real danger, Arya would wish to be free once again from the castle's confines. Under the insistent gazes of her parents, however, Arya approached.

Sansa knew that her sister had significant scar tissue on her stomach, which still bothered the fierce young woman for all that she ignored it. Without warning, Sansa delivered a light tap on her younger sister's midsection. The Arya she knew would have winced and grumbled; the Arya who was before her now — the little girl she could barely remember — snorted and returned the tap. Sansa looked up at Jon, whose face was clear of the ravines torn by eagle claws, and who was looking uncomfortable amidst this impromptu reunion of the Stark family. Her cousin. Not her half-brother. And he was as ignorant of his true parentage now as he had been when she had found him in Castle Black. How strange this all was. She could almost believe herself back in Winterfell before Robert Baratheon had come to ruin their lives. She could not pursue this train of thought, however, because Maester Luwin came in. His old face was as kind as she remembered, his eyes filled with wisdom and love for the Starks.

"Ah, Sansa, awake and well, I see?" He asked. "But you look quite shaken. Do you hurt anywhere?"

"No," she answered, her mind reeling. This felt too real to be an illusion, the product of a fever or of a weakened mind. Time trickled too slowly for a nightmare or a dream. It moved with a measured speed, with a determined reality to its confident step. Yet how could it be?..

The family retreated, allowing Maester Luwin to approach her. He checked her pulse and felt her forehead.

"Healthy and strong, but with a very vivid imagination," he diagnosed with a smile. "You had a very bad dream, dear girl."

The whole family visibly relaxed, and only Arya humphed in disdain.

"Leave it to Sansa to make the whole family run around like chickens with their heads cut off because she's a ninny with nightmares," she commented.

At the mention of cut-off heads, Sansa flinched. But she looked to her sister and said:

"Don't be unkind to me, Arya, I would not mind peaceful sleep. And I will do everything in my power to make sure you never awake from or live the nightmare I have seen."

Hearing this proclamation, they all looked at her strangely. She knew she had been far too superficial in her carefree, younger days to pronounce something so ominous or determined. She called back to her the mask she had worn for so many years. How ironic that she must now use it with her own family. She smiled sweetly, as though she had not a care in the world — a practiced smile — and said:

"I'm sorry I worried you so much. It was just a very bad dream. I'm all right now that — "

Suddenly, she realized what room she was in, and her face went white in spite of her efforts. She swallowed hard against a constricting throat.

"… Now that I am awake and you are here," she finished with difficulty.

They all smiled and released the breaths they had been holding. They began to leave the room, but Sansa grabbed her mother's hand, and Catelyn stayed behind with her. She sat next to her on the bed and pushed some of her daughter's red locks from her face.

"You must have had an awful nightmare, my dear," Catelyn said quietly, her voice laden with sympathy. "When you fainted, you kept repeating a name I did not recognize."

Sansa felt her breath catch in her throat.
"What name?"

"'Jaime,' I think it was," her mother answered. "I don't know anyone by that name — and I don't think you do either. Was it in one of your ballads?"

Of course, it would not occur to Catelyn that her daughter was saying the name of the one Jaime she definitely did know, but had simply overlooked.
"I… I think so… It must have been in the one I finished a few days ago," Sansa said. It was not entirely a lie — Jaime had been a ballad come to life, and only a little while ago she had lain in his arms. Of course, she had been calling for Jaime. Without her lips saying his name, her soul kept calling for him even now.

Catelyn smiled.

"When you were little and had a nightmare, you would call for me just like that," she said, a little wistfully.

Sansa sighed as her mother caressed her cheek. How she had missed this. Whatever strange imagining this was, she would enjoy it while it lasted. And then Jaime would wake her up, surely, and she would smile with a bittersweet memory of being back in her girlhood and the relief of being back where she belonged — with him.

But even in a vision, even with her mother next to her, the walls of the hated room were pressing against her. She could not stay here another moment. Besides, if her mother kept her in this room, she would know the dream for the nightmare it was.

"Mother," she began, hesitantly, "I really do not like this room. Could I have any other, please? Please?"

Catelyn looked at her with surprise and a patient smile.

"You spent months begging me to have this room," she said. "Now you want to have another? This is the biggest bedroom in the castle, except for your father's and mine."

It was true. Sansa remembered all the whining she had done to get this room. She grasped at a straw:

"I don't need a big room! It gets cold here, and I'd rather be back in my old room."

"Arya has it now, Sansa, you know that. Can you imagine the howl she'll raise if I try to place her back in her old room and give hers to you?"

"Not my old room, then. Any small room. Any room other than this."

Catelyn sighed at what she perceived as her daughter's caprice, but Sansa squeezed her mother's hand with the desperation that, she knew, was etched on her face.

"Mother, dear, please: any other room. I much rather sleep in the stables than here. Any small room, I promise I won't mind at all. Just not here. Please have the servants move my things right away."
"You need to get dressed first…"

"I'll dress in the other room. Any one will be fine. You know, there is a small cozy one far down the hall? It's empty now. I'd love that one. And I promise, I will never complain about my room again."

It had been Jaime's room when he had first come to Winterfell to join the fight against the Night King. She had slipped into the semi-darkness of that room so many times; so many times, she had found love, happiness, and boundless pleasure in the arms of its occupant. When they had settled in the main bedroom of the castle after the war and the departure of Targaryens, Sansa had not allowed anyone the use of the small room that had previously been their haven. She had secretly hoped to make it a nursery one day. Yes, she wanted that room. For however long this strange vision lasted, she wanted to keep a piece of Jaime with her. She knew she would feel the safest there even in his absence.

Catelyn protested:

"But it's small, and its windows face onto the wilderness — you've always preferred the courtyard."

Sansa had, indeed. She kept hoping her knight would come riding in. Little did she know he would arrive many years from now, on a dark, cold night when she was no longer waiting for him.

"I know, mother, but please. I promise — this is my last caprice."
She had not been capricious in years. She had forgotten how to be. Well, Jaime was spoiling her again, and she was almost remembering what it was like to pout when she did not get her dream on a golden platter as soon as she wished for it, but… Jaime was not here, and with him gone, she felt again as cold as she had been before she had seen him walk into the great hall on that dark, cold night.

Catelyn sighed.

"Very well, I'll send the servants to prepare it for you. But you change here. I don't want you running around the castle in your nightgown again," she finished sternly; however, at seeing Sansa pale further as her eyes widened, Catelyn offered: "I can stay with you while you dress, if you like."

Although the thought of being naked in this room even for a moment made Sansa's stomach turn, she knew her mother could not be convinced otherwise — no more than she could allow Catelyn to see the scars that marred her body, much as she would have wished for her mother's presence.
"No, that's all right. I'll be dressed in no time. Thank you, mother, thank you for letting me have another room — again," she finished with a broken smile.

Catelyn looked worried again, sensing something was amiss with her daughter. Unable to imagine what it could be, Lady Stark kissed her girl and left to give the order to the servants concerning the impending change of rooms for Lady Sansa.

As the door behind her mother closed, the walls moved in on Sansa, trapping her with memories as hideous as the scars she bore. Sansa grabbed the first dress her hands reached, and closing her eyes in an attempt to shut off the room and the memories it held, she began to change hurriedly. As she threw off her nightgown, she began to tremble violently in her whole body as horror and pain overtook her mind, and she pulled the shift and dress on as quickly as she could, hearing seams protest her hurried efforts. She chanted Jaime's name, as if by doing so she could call to her the sound of her husband's soothing voice, the only voice that could dissipate the nightmare that was engulfing her in this room. As the fabrics covered her back, she sensed that her body was strange, different from what she knew. The material had slipped against her back like water against polished marble. Almost as if… But this was impossible! Her eyes flew open, and her bafflement was such that the room's gnawing atmosphere receded. She threw off the clothes she had pulled on and turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her back was as smooth and silky as porcelain; so was the rest of her skin. Not a single blemish marred the perfect snow-white surface. Hesitantly, she touched her back, as though the mirror had lied to her. Her skin was as smooth as steel and as soft as a lady's smile.

No scars.

This meant no Ramsay.

It meant no Joffrey.

No Red Wedding.

No Baelor Square bloodied with Stark blood.

No Jaime.

She fainted, falling to the ground as quietly as an autumn leaf.

By the time she had awoken again, she was already in a different room — the room that had been Jaime's for many months of his stay in Winterfell. Having found her daughter unconscious again and having noticed her previous dislike of the large room, Catelyn had dressed her and had her moved to the new room right away. Herself and maester Luwin were gathered around Sansa when she came to her senses.

"Sansa, dear," her mother said to her in a concerned voice, "has someone hurt you? Has something happened? Please, tell me, what has frightened you so that you've fainted twice in a single morning?"

Watching her mother's face, Sansa felt her throat contract with painful tears. All her memories, all her pain, all her fears were suffocating her and clawing at the inside of her neck. The desire to weep and tell her mother everything, regardless of whether this Catelyn was real or a ghost, was overpowering. And yet… She could not speak a word of her past. Not only because, as far as Catelyn knew, it had never happened, but because she simply would not understand. There was no way to make her mother imagine the horrors and the monstrosities her daughter had lived, let alone believe the gruesome tale. Catelyn would soothe her, doubtlessly, but, in the end, she would say, "it was only a nightmare, darling." The person who understood Sansa's pain, the person who had helped her carry it and to throw it off almost entirely, Jaime, was not here. He was either on the other side of this fantasy, unable to wake her, or — if she allowed herself to believe that she truly had travelled back in time — her Jaime had disappeared, just like her scars — if not her memories. She needed solitude and quiet to gather her strength and examine her mind, to force her way through this confusion. She drew on her reservoirs of fortitude, dug deep over the years, released a strained breath — and lied to her mother for the first time in her life:

"I must have slept too little because of the nightmare, mother. I'm sure I just need some fresh air. I'll go for a walk and be much the better for it."

Sansa, it turned out, had quite forgotten what it was to be a little girl and to have one's decisions questioned and reversed. Her mother would not hear of her walking alone — a preposterous notion! — and Sansa was thus forced into the company of septa Mordane at the very time when she most wanted to be alone. Upon leaving the keep, her first destination was the Godswood, which had been partly burned and tarnished with impious axes so many years ago, but which now appeared to her in all its former glory — filled with red and green, offering an air fresher and cleaner than any other she had ever breathed. Under the pretext that she was cold, she sent the protesting Septa away to fetch her a shawl and walked on her own deeper into the woods, seeking refuge in the solitude and peace of this sacred corner of her land. She walked in the softly cool air, which was moist with a recent rain. The leaves and the brushwood shuffled cheerfully under her feet.

So, what had happened? Still, even now, this place felt too real for a dream, and she was forced to consider the possibility that she had either died and that her surroundings were the environment of her afterlife or, alternatively, that she had travelled back in time. Strangely enough, neither possibility in itself perturbed her.

After all, she thought grimly, I've seen dragons that breathe fire and those that breathe ice. I've known a man who had been brought back from the dead and a woman immune to fire. I've plunged a dagger into a creature made of ice. I married the man who killed the Night King.

She had seen enough magic and enough madness that even the prospect of time travel or afterlife did not seem impossible to her. Perhaps, nothing could fully disconcert her anymore — nothing except…

Jaime.

Whether she was dead or a time traveller, the prospect of losing him made her heart ache until her mind seemed ready to give out. Her feet would carry her no further. In the depth of the woods, she leaned her forehead against the hard bark of a Weirwood tree.

No Jaime.

This was the last stroke. She had lived a cruel life. Of all the different varieties of pain — be it loss of loved ones, of one's dignity, of one's hope, of one's dreams, of one's very body — she had been spared none. She had been dragged through ever kind of hell, each time to the very point when she thought she would break, yet she had survived each time. And then, at the end of all these dark, uncharitable paths, she had found what she had come to believe was her life's due — a love that had cured her fears and her pain; a man who had allowed her to believe that, having lost all that she had, she could now, at last, find haven and happiness; that dreams and hope were not to be abandoned, no matter the darkness of one's past. And now…

Now, she had lost that last source of joy, had been thrown into confusion and a fictitious place filled with happy ghosts. She could not believe them real. They could not be real. Not only because they had died as surely as her skin had been ripped; but also because, if they were the truth, her memories no longer were.

If they existed — then Jaime, her Jaime, did not. It was so simple.

And there was no hypothetical, she suddenly realized. Whatever the reason for her presence here, in this realm,they existed and Jaime did not. She had lost him, and she had never felt so utterly defeated, so weakened. Her last happiness was torn from her, replaced with illusions that did not comfort her.

As the stark reality of the Weirdwood tree's bark bit into the skin of her forehead, she knew with utter conviction that this was not afterlife. The great beyond could never feel… so palpable. The sensation of walking on solid ground, this certain, uninterrupted time that moved on when she fainted, the crispness of feeling the wet, and the cold, and the hard, unforgiving surface of the woodbark, the rich scent of petrichor she gulped down with every breath… No, this was not death. This was life. Life without Jaime.

She began to cry. Sobs as torn as rags, sounds as ragged as her diced heart.

"Don't force this bargain on me," she whispered to the heartless face of the tree. "I cannot bear it. Not this."

Yet it all fit so perfectly into the hideous tapestry of her life — to lose the most important, the most precious for an illusion. It was how her life had begun; it was how it would continue and end. She did not know how long she wept, her heart as if ready to come out by way of her mouth as she chocked on her tears. Exhausted, she sat down into the humid, chilling moss, her back resting against the trunk of the tree, her head falling into the hollow of the weirwood's toothless old mouth.

I've lost. Lost again. Just when I thought I had won.

She sat there a while, waiting for the next part of her hideous life to unfold. Numbed by her heartbreak and her unnatural habituation to it, she felt a disinterested curiosity as to what horror would come next. Surely, if she had travelled between realms or back in time, she had ended up in one realm or timeline that was even worse than the previous. She could simply sit here in defeat, waiting for the news that would make her double over in pain, since, clearly, no matter how hard, how desperately she fought, she would always lose.

"What the hells are you doing here?"

Arya's high-pitched voice tore into her wretchedness. Her younger sister was scrutinizing her with perplexity and disgruntlement. Sansa gave a humorless smirk.
"Me? Oh, I am contemplating the inevitability of defeat. That I am destined to suffer, to be tricked into thinking all will be well only to lose — and then," she gave a hideous chuckle, "to do it all over again."

Noticing that her sister was in true agony, Arya crept closer.

"You aren't a loser," the younger sister mumbled unwillingly. "You always do everything perfectly," she announced with distaste. "Your embroidery, your sewing, your hair, and your dresses. You're a lady," she pronounced the last word with a mixture of envy and disgust.

Sansa was touched by Arya's words, knowing only too well they did not come easily to her sister, even at this young age. It reminded her of them standing on the walls of Winterfell while Baelish's blood was being washed away from the stones in the great hall.

"You're the strongest woman I know," Sansa whispered to Arya — both the little girl before her and the fearless young woman she would always see when looking at her.
Arya clearly seemed taken aback by Sansa's words, and she came closer still to her sister, as if to verify whether she was serious.

"No matter what you set your mind to, you achieve it," Sansa continued. "But me… No matter how strong I try to be, no matter how much I try… I just… fail."

Arya moved to sit next to her, and the little girl's ever-restless fingers fidgeted with a ribbon of her sister's dress while her huge eyes contemplated the handiwork.

"You're a lady," Arya stressed again. "And even if, sometimes, you fail, you just do it all over again until you get it right."

At these words, Sansa felt as though lightening had struck her.

"If you fail, you just do it all over again until you get it right."

All over again.

Until you get it right.

She grabbed at her sister's arm, as if to tether herself to this wretched earth.

All over again. Until you get it right.

This was not hell; this was not defeat. It was a second chance.

A chance for her family — all of her family, including Jaime. A chance for all of them.

She hugged her sister to her, kissing her head despite the sweet brat's angry protests.

"Arya!" She cried. "You're right! It's too early to give up! We haven't gotten it right yet!"

As the days went by, Sansa had grown convinced that she had found herself not in another realm, and surely not in the afterlife, but in her very own past. It was not just that time moved as it did in life and not in dreams, but also — and especially — the little things. Stimulated by her surroundings, her mind remembered details she had never thought it continued to contain: when a stable boy tripped over a bucket of water, falling face-first into the mud to the great amusement of his peers; when a red-cheeked maid, rushing from an interlude with her lover, hastening to return to her duties before her absence had been noted, would, to her great misfortune, run into septa Mordane; when the arrows released by Bran's inexpert hands would fly far off the target — she knew ahead of time where they would land; the dresses her mother wore and how she accidentally tore the hem of the grey and blue one when walking in the courtyard. This, without a doubt, were Sansa's days. She remembered them all down to the most insignificant detail now that she was reliving them. She had no more doubts, and in this she found peace. She had travelled back in time, retaining her memories, and of this she meant to take full advantage. For instance, no matter what it cost her, her father would never leave Winterfell and her aunt's note would never reach her mother. If it meant poisoning Robert Baratheon under her father's very nose, or pushing Lysa Arryn through the moondoor herself, or slicing Baelish's throat without her sister's help, she would keep her family from near annihilation. In that, her hardened spirit was unyielding. The understanding that her knowledge gave her the power to alter the course of history and to challenge fate brought a grim smile to her lips. But one thought, one aspect of this reality, caused her to lose sleep until dark circles appeared under her eyes.

Jaime.

In all the times she had wished her family alive, in all the times she had imagined her father giving her away at her wedding to Jaime, and her mother braiding her hair on that same wedding day, and Robb scowling at her golden husband, she had not bargained on losing Jaime.

It brought her utter, inconsolable misery and dark, unquenched despondency when she imagined him — her husband, her soulmate, her golden, darling hero — in bed with Cersei Lannister again, the memories of their lives together and of their love erased from his mind. Speaking as an expert, she could say that there was no torture on the face of this gods-forsaken earth greater than this. When she imagined his green eyes looking at her as if she were a stranger, condescendingly and coldly, she felt as though someone was skinning her soul right inside of her. Expertly, she would force the thoughts away, knowing that if she let the images overtake her, she would break, but the more time passed, the longer she was without him, the more difficult it was becoming to turn away from her despair, her jealousy, and her total, complete heartbreak.

The faces of her family, whom she had long accounted irrevocably lost, surrounded her with love and kindness. Once, she had thought that going back to this time in her life would make her completely happy. It was a bitter realization to find that it had not, could not. She could not breathe easily among them, not even because of the dangers she knew loomed ahead, but because her heart was missing. She could not feel happy at this restoration of her girlhood, because there was no erasing her memories of its loss and because she had come to want the future — not the past. And although she never would have believed this only some months before, every night when she closed her eyes, her involuntary thought was, Let me wake where I belong. Let me wake next to Jaime.

But she woke up in Winterfell every day, disappointed — and sick with guilt.

Belatedly, she had been given back what she had wanted once, and she had lost what she valued even more. Such was the cruel arrangement of the scales. In one weighing dish, lay her real life and her real happiness; in the other, lay a mirage of those she had lost years ago. She still could not become familiar with their presence; she still looked upon them and saw ghosts instead of real people.

She had cried over them, and buried them, and mourned them, and one way or another she had made her peace with their passing. Oh, it made so much of her heart numb and broken, she had barely anything left — or so she used to think before Jaime had come to Winterfell. And now they were returned to her — back from the dead and from the time that had taken them away from her — and she just was not happy. In her misery, she knew herself to be a selfish creature, and she burned with shame and self-hatred in equal measure. She was grieving one more loss, which felt the cruelest of all, and the intensity of her grief was reaching such levels that she did not even feel ungrateful anymore, because she had lost him. If anyone had actually offered her to trade him for them she did not think she would have dared to take that bargain. Now that it had been forced on her, she hated it. Because, for all that it made her feel like a monster, she now knew she would have chosen him. Not because she did not love them — but because, after all that she had been through, they seemed like happy ghosts to her, unreal — and he… He was… He had become… Everything. My everything.

When her pain fully overwhelmed her, and this happened frequently as time slipped by, she would hide in the Godswood and weep, her heart and face contorted in her pain — and her anger at her fate. Sometimes, and increasingly more frequently, Arya would find her there, as if happening upon her by pure chance, and the elder girl would cry into her sister's fragile little shoulder. Arya looked at her with sad, confused eyes of a sympathetic child, who was utterly perplexed by this first manifestation of anguish that she had ever seen, but she asked no questions. And this was fortunate, for how would Sansa have answered them?

Arya kept her wordless secrets.

If life had taught Sansa anything at all, it was that her limits of endurance were like the horizon — each time she thought she would reach them, they magically receded further away. In the weeks that followed, her overwhelmed mind had grown accustomed to the perturbing altering of the path of her destiny, and her wretched soul had stopped writhing, settling into a numb pain. Having recognized her family's reality, she could be soothed by the merest fact of their existence, for all that it had now brought her pain as well. Slowly, she was able to find a precarious balance in the days, which she spent mechanically performing her sewing and other lady-like activities, while her cold mind was busy calculating, planning, imagining the course she must take in the labyrinth of chaos and brutality that lay ahead. Keeping in mind all the variables and all the possibilities, the ambitions and the schemes of all who played the dangerous game for the throne, gave her a regular headache.

This was not all that preoccupied her, however. Knowing now the fragility of peace and happiness, and in spite of her grief, she treasured those whose seminal importance for her heart she had last recognized too late. She sought to make amends. Her capriciousness long lost, she surprised everyone who had known her with a bizarre stoicism that oddly combined itself in her hardened nature with consideration. Ever fearful of the future, she spent more time with those whom she had lost. She often made her way into her father's solar or shadowed him here and there, much to his consternation, for all that he did not mind. She spent more time with Robb, easily braving Theon's restored and nasty sense of humor (and he soon grew to fear her tart tongue). She barely let Rickon leave her arms, and even Catelyn warned her that the youngest brother would never learn to walk if the sister did not give him a chance to practice. Sansa clung to her mother whenever she could — even more so than before; but this no longer came at the expense of Arya — or of Jon Snow.

What astonished the inhabitants of Winterfell more than anything else in the overnight transformation of Lady Sansa, was her peculiar indulgence of her younger sister, whom she had always teased and criticized, and the even stranger friendship she bore Jon Snow, whom she had never before failed to call "half-brother" with the coolness borrowed from Catelyn. Now, she rivaled even Ned Stark in the kindheartedness she showed the bastard of Winterfell and the ready defense of her tomboy sister. Her blue eyes froze anyone who spoke to Jon in anything but the most courteous tones. Her frigid civility in reminding them of his belonging to the Stark family and the respect that was due him had created a wall around the young man that even Ned Stark had not quite managed to build. There was something disconcerting in the blue eyes of Lady Sansa — eyes that looked old, and cold, and dangerous in her young face — and no one thought to challenge her. And if Catelyn found troubling her daughter's liking of the bastard son her husband had brought from the wars, she did not bring herself to say it outright.

As for Arya, she had suddenly witnessed her sister turn from an adversary into her greatest ally. Sansa readily and discreetly did Arya's needlework for her, without asking for anything in return. If the Septa commented on Arya's unkempt appearance or disarrayed hair, Sansa rolled her eyes in a way that the younger sister saw and her critic did not. More importantly still, Sansa helped Arya carve out the time to sneak out and get herself into trouble, which the elder sister covered up with what the younger considered devious masterfulness. And once, as the family was dining in the great hall, Sansa did something that left her sister breathless — and forever in her debt.

Sansa had casually remarked on the embroidery she had been doing that day, which sparked a memory in the mind of the Septa, who was never far away, of how Arya had sneaked out to fight with the boys outside. This, naturally, led to Catelyn's expostulation on the subject of Arya's penchant for behaving wildly like no young lady should. Ned, unwilling as he was to restrain his wolf-pup, had been dragged into the conversation. And just as Arya accounted everything lost and mentally cursed her sister for bringing up the damned embroidery, Sansa noticed in the most negligent manner that Arya would never stop sneaking out to fight and getting into scrapes. This, of course, occasioned a conversation concerning Arya's safety, which, if possible, was even worse than the preceding expostulations. Arya wanted to use her fork to the effect of poking a few holes in her sister, when Sansa observed quietly, as if it were no more than the bare truth, that Arya had better be taught fighting, lest, one day, she get herself into serious trouble. Ned ceased onto the idea, while a dumbstruck Catelyn and Septa sought in vain to understand how a conversation about an embroidery had led to the decision by the Stark patriarch to order Ser Rodrick to instruct Arya in the art of sword-fighting. Arya, even in her jubilance, noticed her sister's cunning little smirk — but she felt no more able to betray her observation of Sansa's mirth than of her tears, especially when her amusement was so entirely in Arya's favor.

There was one person in the immediate Stark family to whom Sansa's alteration caused no end of misery. That person was Bran. No one had ever hounded him so about his climbing like this Sansa did. It seemed that every wall, nook, and cranny of Winterfell had been tied to his sister's eyes, because he could not climb two feet up without her appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, to chide and upbraid him while she compelled him to descend or dragged him down by force. She was so utterly annoying and so profoundly inescapable, that Bran was beginning to give up on his favorite pastime. She, quite literally, made it impossible. Bran was a shy, good boy and he utterly loathed being the object of his sister's rancor and admonitions. What was worse, never when she scolded him, did he fail to see in her eyes a combination of emotions that made him shudder inwardly — fear, despair, concern, anger, and grim determination. Every time he even thought of climbing, she was there, watchful and troubled, and he knew that his preferred occupation filled his sister with something dark and painful, which never failed to awaken his growing feeling of guilt. Little by little, Bran was beginning to give up on climbing. He noticed, for instance, how Sansa's eyes glowed when she saw him reading a book or practicing swordplay or riding a horse — and his sweet child's heart was swayed by seeing her happy and knowing she approved of him, this odd and suddenly grown-up sister, who commanded Winterfell now no less well than their mother and whose deep-seated strength they were all beginning to discover — and to which they unconsciously yielded.

Sansa's time was indeed taken over during the day with her many concerns. Out of habit, she undertook little by little the responsibilities to which she had grown accustomed as the Lady of Winterfell, and her mother, proud of her daughter's abilities, shared the running of the castle happily. Between those duties, her increasingly urgent desire to spend more time with her family, her paranoid and restless plotting of revenge and the averting of deaths, Sansa was always busy. But these were only the days.

Her nights were becoming unendurable.

It seemed that the more she resolved herself to not dwell on her loss of Jaime during the day, the more she sought to resign herself to the bereavement or even to nurture the hope that all may yet be well, the more thoughts of him and memories of him overtook her at night. She could not sleep for remembering him, and her heartache was in equal supply to her ever-increasing desire for him. She not only missed her love but also her lover. Her entire being craved him, until she she would jump from the bed and pace the room, her body overheated, her appetence overtaking her mind to the point that she seemed not to have a mind at all. Her heart ached, her body burned, and her mind was weak and powerless to subdue her longing. Sensuality and possessiveness often walk hand in hand, and on most nights Sansa's fervor was rivaled only by her excruciating jealousy. Images of him with Cersei had the power to drive her mad, they made her want to claw at walls in her helpless fury. Sansa wanted Jaime back, she needed him back, and she felt there was nothing she would not do to be by his side, in his arms again. Whenever she felt she could no longer stifle herself with silence, she would open the window of her room — his room, their room — and whisper into the frigidly cold air: "Jaime… Jaime…"

She knew that no one could hear her.

Jaime was stirring from sleep with the distinct understanding that the vixen he had for a wife had again slipped out of bed before dawn. What was there to be done with the woman? This was what a self-respecting Southerner got for marrying a Northern fox. No end of trouble and remarkably little sleep. He decided to drowse for another half-hour before finding his wife and repaying her abandonment of his person by throwing her over his shoulder and returning her to bed regardless of whether he found her alone or in company. He could almost hear her laughter — the happiest sound in all the world. It was bizarre that such a dark place could have produced a creature to make so pure a sound.

Sleep reclaimed him.

He was torn from it again, most rudely, by the horrifically unpleasant sound of a bugle. There was nothing, nothing at all in this whole damn world, that Jaime hated more than the sound of bugle in the morning, especially when he woke up alone. Damn it all to the Seventh Hell! Whichever Northerner had made that sound, he was gutting the blasted cur like the uncivil animal that it was — and facing the disgruntlement of his wife later. With that determination, he opened his eyes — and could not comprehend the sight they offered him.

He was in a tent. What the Stranger was he doing in a tent? He was absolutely sure he had fallen asleep next to his wife, in their own bed, in the cursed northern castle he was begrudgingly beginning to like. So why in the name of all the Others was he in a tent? His wife he accounted a woman more likely to poison or stab him than throw him out into the cold, and, besides, it was not cold. The air in the tent, and clearly, outside it, was warm. Paradoxically enough, the very warmth of outside temperature made Jaime's entire body turn positively cold. He reached for his doublet, threw it on left-side first, as he had grown accustomed, and then, as he pushed his right arm, stump-first, through the sleeve, he felt his heart stop as utter shock overtook him. The fingers of his right hand, fingers and hand he had not felt in years, not even in dreams anymore, got stuck in the sleeve because of the oddness of his maneuver for a normally-limbed fellow.

Covered in cold sweat, he freed his right arm from the fabric and stared at the place where his stump used to be — and where his wrist now merged into his right hand. He made to move the fingers, and they moved, obeying the command of his mind, the movement bringing unutterable confusion and horror into his heart. He threw on the doublet and rushed out of his tent, nearly colliding with a servant wearing the livery of house Baratheon. Feeling that he must have lost his mind, Jaime turned to look about him wildly. He was back in the South again, though he could not say how he had contrived to get there. More specifically yet, he was on the Kingsroad, some seventy miles north of King's Landing. Just as he was beginning to wonder if the Targaryens had gotten it into their heads to use their dragon for pranks, he saw the bloated figure of Robert Baratheon make its way drunkenly from the wagons, which contained the whores traveling alongside the soldiers. The fat old king stumbled his way past the Lannister, who might as well have turned to stone for the stupefaction in which he contemplated the bulging man hardly identifiable with a stag.

His eyes wide, his breathing labored, Jaime was turning around crazily, failing to understand why, in this light of breaking dawn, he was where he was and not in the least where he had expected to find himself. He was deliberating whether he was going insane or had an imagination the power of which he had not previously suspected, when a familiar, sarcastic voice called out to him:

"Dear brother of mine, I surely am beginning to think you've caught a venal decease. You look like a madman, and I am sorry to say that you should have taken your vow of celibacy more seriously."
Tyrion's voice brought a measure of calm to Jaime, anchoring him in reality. His younger brother made his way toward him, a flask of wine held negligently in his small hands. When he reached Jaime, he added in a sardonic whisper:

"I did warn you that sleeping with some of our relatives could have awful consequences… But — " Tyrion cut himself short as he observed his brother's disturbed expression and heavy breathing; he grew concerned. "Jaime, you do look rather haggard. Is something the matter? Did you have a nightmare… or simply seen our sister?" He could not help finishing on a more derisive note.

A nightmare. Yes, this must have been it, Jaime was driven to reflect. What else does one account an imaging of losing one's sword hand, one's father, one's children, one's brother and sister? And yet, not all of it was nightmare. There was this woman with hair redder than fire and more auburn than autumn and eyes bluer than sapphires or sea.

Sansa.

But this was laughable. Imagining himself anyone's husband, let alone that of Ned Stark's daughter… Jaime chuckled. A bizarre dream this had been. He grabbed onto the relief of knowing that life as he found it presently was the normal state of affairs and that there must have been something in the wine and the fresh air of the countryside that had given him such strange visions. Yet a boundless sense of loss was overtaking his soul even as his mind sought to anchor itself in what he accounted rational. By gods! Ned Stark's son-in-law. For all he knew, Ned had only sons!

But no, that was not quite true. He felt entirely certain that Ned Stark had three sons and two daughters. He could rehearse their names and he knew some of their faces as well as those of the Westerners he had grown up with. That struck him as bizarre. He had never met any one of them in his life. Well, assuming that his nightly visions were no more than that — visions. There was, moreover, an easy way to prove the dream or nightmare, or whatever it was, the fiction that it had to be.

"Tyrion," he turned to his brother, noting absent-mindedly that his sibling looked unfamiliar without bear and scar, "tell me about that accursed Northern family we are all so hard-pressed to meet."

If he had been startled by his brother's question, Tyrion Lannister did not show it.

"Why, they are a large brood from what I hear," he began in the mockingly philosophical air that had been common to him in past years — no, that was common to Tyrion, period. Veered momentarily off course by his mind's ludicrous observations, Jaime focused his attention on keeping up with his brother's account of the Stark brood. To Jaime's bewilderment, it matched his own intuitive knowledge most precisely, except that Tyrion accounted Jon Snow the bastard of Ned Stark, whereas he was actually the son of Lyanna Stark and —

But Jaime cut his thoughts off and walked away from his brother, who looked after him in confusion.

No, Jaime thought, this was entirely ridiculous. He might have an imagination more active than he could have ever dreamed, but this did not mean he would give into fantasy. He must have heard the names and dreamed up the faces. And the red-haired girl, whose image made his heart constrict in the oddest way, could be no more than a figment of his imagination. Still, he could not shake her. Fictitious memories of her invaded his very being until he could almost swear they had had a life together — or at least the beginning of one. Stranger still and by far the most disconcerting of all, was that memories of a dream of this northern creature were so entirely overpowering that for the next several days he was compelled to forget entirely the existence of his sister. In fact, he had been so lost in contemplation of his oddly detailed and long dream, that, had he not neglected to spur on his horse and had the wagon bearing the queen not caught up with him, giving Cersei the opportunity to demand his attention, he may not have remembered that he was supposed to be enamored of her and not of the girl whose image danced before his mind's eye. And even reminded of their affair by his sister's lustful gaze and the seduction that lay heavy on her smiling lips, he discovered with a degree of apprehension and not a little consternation that the dream had more power over his heart than reality did. He did not want the woman who was before him; he wanted the dream that was wedged in his heart.

He would spend the next days riding ahead of the royal party or falling far behind, examining his dream-induced memories with an inescapable compulsion. He had never dreamed anything like this; and not being by nature a man inclined to either spirituality or superstition, still he could not help but intuit that there was at play here some element he could not grasp. By the time they had reached the Riverlands, he had almost — but not quite — convinced himself that dwelling on dreams, no matter how real they appeared, was the occupation of madmen. His mind insisted with easy assurance that the feeling of confusion and uncertainty, the instability that the dream seemed to have placed at the very center of his world, would dissipate the moment he entered Winterfell and confirmed, as it was only reasonable to expect, that although there may be a Sansa Stark, the girl who had invaded his heart while sleep had left it unprotected, did not exist. And his heart appeared to turn to a thing of ice whenever such a possibility presented itself to him.

She could not be.

Yet she had to be.