Tyrion was woken by the feeling of Dany trembling violently in bed beside him. She had her back to him, and the early morning light scarcely lit up her silhouette; but through the obscurity of the silver dawn he saw her curled up like a dead leaf; her hands covering her mouth and smothering the sound of her own breath.
Tyrion gently put one hand on her shoulder.
'Dany.'
She turned to face him, and her beautiful eyes were lilac with tears.
'Tyrion,' she whimpered softly, 'Tyrion –'
He stared at her for a moment. He couldn't speak. His voice was gone, and his breath with it, because Daenerys almost never cried; not even in private. She did not grant herself the right to. 'I cannot cry, and be a queen.'
He pulled her softly to his chest and held her there. It was like holding a frightened child. Her fingers traced frenetic circles on his chest, and her limbs were taut as bowstrings; nightmare still piercing her skin and filling up her lungs. Tyrion kissed her forehead and stroked her hair; his fingers looking as clumsy and ridiculous against the molten silver tresses as those of a child playing unsupervised with his mother's jewellery. His instincts were telling him to say something to her despite what he knew to be her own wishes, but all that came to mind was some ill-conceived (if typical) jape about a deformed demon monkey standing loyally at hand to personally remove the balls of any person that tried to hurt her.
Pathetic pathetic pathetic.
'I dreamed of Lannisport,' Dany whispered, 'when I first smelled the smoke, and knew. I told myself it must be coming from Casterly Rock. I wanted it to be. But then I looked towards the sea. I saw the smoke. And the screaming started.'
Tyrion remembered everything about that day, but above all else, even above the fall of Casterly Rock, he remembered her.
'I want it stopped,' she had shouted at Aegon when Lannisport had begun to burn and scream in the distance; raped and destroyed by Lady Sansa's armies, 'I want it stopped!'
But Aegon had not heeded her, or summoned Sansa to answer for disobeying his orders that Lannisport be spared, and thousands of women and children had died only hours after their men had burned to death. Dany had stood motionless for hours in her black and red Targaryen armour, watching the smoke rise; unable to hold her tears back and snapping at every person that acknowledged them. Her hair had hung loose and undressed about her shoulders; as though she were a woman in mourning, but she had not granted herself the right to cry. 'I cannot cry, and be a queen.'
'Everything's wrong,' Dany murmured; her voice like a hole in the earth, 'isn't it? The day I married Aegon, everything went wrong. I did it to avoid killing innocents. Now I begin to think that…less blood might have been spilled had I simply sent Arya after him and taken his men.'
'They wouldn't have come,' Tyrion whispered.
'I did not want Lannisport to be…I did not want…my coming was not meant to end in this way. Not like this…there was too much blood at the beginning…too much pain. What we did to your homeland…to your brother – it was –'
'Jaime deserved every minute of the pain you inflicted on him, trust me,' Tyrion grunted; remembering the screams, and the refusals, let me speak to him, just let me talk to him for five minutes…
'Tyrion,' Dany murmured; her voice growing in strength, 'you don't mean that –'
'I do mean it,' Tyrion growled; glaring at her and her sad, glorious, uncomprehending eyes.
'Tysha was not –'
'I don't want to talk about Tysha.'
Dany fell sharply and abruptly silent, and said nothing for some time; her hand creeping into his, and holding it hard when he did not pull away. He wound his fingers through hers and kissed them.
'Have you spoken to him?' Dany asked, 'since your return?'
'No,' Tyrion grunted; marvelling, for the thousandth time, at her constant desire to save all the world regardless of her own feelings towards them, 'I've been far too busy wiping my arse with the contents of my desk.'
'Tyrion,' she retorted.
'Don't 'Tyrion' me, Daenerys,' he snapped wearily.
'It's his wedding today,' she pressed on, 'there shouldn't be strife between you.'
Tyrion gave her a withered look.
'It's a wedding, not a funeral. Well –'
'It is a heavy burden that we place on his shoulders,' Dany persisted, choosing to ignore the most important part of his previous comment, 'he won't be able to do it alone.'
'He won't have to,' Tyrion droned, irritated by her persistence, 'I'm supremely confident that he and Lady Sansa will have murdered each other before the week is out. We should prepare the city for war at once. I wonder if confetti can be used to soak up blood.'
'I thank you for your confidence in our ability to rule, my lord,' Dany growled; glaring at him as anger began to colour her voice.
'Our ability to rule?' Tyrion repeated theatrically, 'I was under the impression that you wanted Aegon dead.'
'So do you.'
'Yes, only I'm smarter about it.'
Dany's eyes flashed black, and indigo. She shoved Tyrion away from her, ripped the covers off and got out of bed; almost tearing her bed robe in half as she draped it around her shoulders and began to pace the room in rage; her eyes blazing and looking for something to throw.
'Have I offended you?' Tyrion drawled, looking about for wine, 'I meant it as a joke.'
'I doubt you'd be so inclined to jest if you were the one who had to bow, scrape and be fucked day after day!' Dany spat.
'Watching it happen to you is hardly pleasant, believe me!' Tyrion shot back; rising and beginning to dress.
'But joking about it is?' Dany raged.
'It is too soon for him to die!' Tyrion exclaimed; sick to death of this having this argument, and wondering if she understood him at all, 'if he dies so soon after your marriage, all anyone will see is another king in a long line of kings that have conveniently dropped like flies. Everyone would know it was you, and you would be neither feared, nor respected, nor loved for it. Everything that the conquest achieved – gone! It would make the monarchy as fragile, as disrespected and as pitiful as it was during the war years. It would show people that three dragons are poor weapons against poison, or a knife in the dark – '
'They are, Tyrion!' Dany interrupted.
'True, but do you really want the entire realm to know that?' Tyrion agreed, losing his temper, 'do you? You make me wonder how in seven hells you didn't get yourself killed when I was away!'
'My existence depends on you, does it?' Dany shouted.
'You know perfectly well I don't think that!' Tyrion shouted back.
'On spreading my legs and keeping my mouth shut until you say otherwise?'
'You agreed to this! It's a little late to start complaining about it now!'
He regretted the words the moment he spoke them. They made him feel like his father. And Dany was glaring at him in utter fury; seeing him for the cunt that he was.
'What did you say?'
'Forgive me; I spoke without thinking –'
'Did you?'
'Dany, please –'
'I am your queen and the blood of the dragon, not some painted whore!'
'I have never called you a whore!'
'That hasn't stopped you treating me like one!'
'I've done nothing of the sort, believe me!'
'Only you would know!'
'True enough!'
He immediately regretted saying that too. But it was too late. They were standing in silence, half-dressed and glaring cruelly at each other, and in Daenerys' rage Tyrion saw her as he had dreamed of her every night during that entire year in Braavos; as he knew she would be if she ever learned of the drinking and the whoring that he had reverted to during his time away from her; the comforting debauchery that he had lived in for most of his life, and that he had promised her was over. He could see the accusation in the way that she looked at him, and it made him angry rather than regretful: angry at himself for being such a stupid, weak fool; angry at her for imagining that he would ever mention her in the same breath as the women that made him such a stupid, weak fool…and angry at Varys. Because he had told her. There was no other way that she could have discovered it.
You have nobody to blame but yourself, you fool. No one but yourself.
Tyrion walked to the nightstand beside the bed, bowed and quietly left through the secret passage; all without looking at her; all without speaking. Dany made no attempt to stop him, and he stumbled back to his chambers in the dark; imagining his fingers as they tightened around the eunuch's neck.
Her corset laced up, and her hair dressed, Sansa sent her ladies away and sat alone before her looking glass. Her wedding dress hung by the window, spirit-like against the red sandstone of her bedchamber; cloth of silver woven with black pearls; turquoise silk worked into the dagged sleeves; excess upon excess; the South and all that she hated about it. Aegon had insisted on it, and she had obeyed him. A rare occurrence. Obeying the king at all was something that she only did grudgingly. When she had no choice. When it was necessary.
A sudden tactless rustling behind her made her whirl around in alarm; her heart thundering and her hand darting across the table for her dagger. But it was only her sister; leaning sheepishly against the wall, wearing those dreadful white leathers, and looking rather gaunter than was healthy. Sansa had not heard her enter the room at all. Perhaps it was a trick that she had learned at Faceless Men school; far away and safe across the Narrow Sea, when real people were fighting the real war: the war for the North.
'Sansa,' Arya greeted hesitantly.
'Sister,' Sansa coldly acknowledged; remembering the tourney.
'I'm sorry I haven't come to see you before now,' Arya said, 'I was afraid.'
Sansa had also been afraid, though she would never say so; declaring to all and sundry that she had come to court to see her little sister, only to change her mind each time she found her feet turning in the direction of the white sword tower. A rare carelessness on her part. A rare weakness.
'I heard that you had a run-in with a pig,' Sansa half-sang, half-smirked, 'do the Faceless Men not teach their initiates to deal with that sort of thing?'
'No,' Arya mumbled; blushing in embarrassment.
'Not even to practice on?' Sansa enquired; her voice dripping with sarcasm.
'No,' Arya insisted, 'we practice on humans.'
When Sansa snorted disdainfully in reply, Arya fell silent, and the anger, surprise, and hurt on her face were sufficient to make Sansa hesitate. She had only seen Arya from a distance since her return from Braavos, but Sansa had always been close enough to observe, and then to mock at the almost alarming coldness and reserve of Arya's demeanour; at the fire that had gone out; the fire that Sansa had hated as a child; calling it uncouth, unladylike and barbaric. Until she had discovered it within herself, and seeing her sister without it had become almost unbearable.
But today she could see it burning bright in Arya's eyes again; raw and unchannelled and unstoppable, and the rush of emotion that she felt; the weakness that she felt at the realisation…
'You practice on humans, do you?' Sansa repeated; the ridicule not leaving her voice, 'and that left you so ill-prepared for the task of hunting pigs that it took one pig to save you from another?'
'If Ser Jaime were a pig, he would have let me bleed to death,' Arya told her; as though she were discussing the weather.
'Nevertheless,' Sansa snapped, 'it seems a rather tame thing to call a child killer.'
Arya shrugged in response and winced in pain; the fingers of her left hand twitching as they fought the involuntary urge to move to her arm. As she watched her, Sansa felt the howling void in the pit of her stomach that had also come to her a fortnight ago, when she had heard the story of how her sister had been the first of the hunters to take up residence in the maester's tent after Ser Jaime had found her covered in blood, in a state of near-madness and missing most of her upper arm after some fuck-up involving a boar. Enquiries made of her own spies soon assured her that it was nothing more than a bad bite, and that Arya's good health and compulsive inability to be a good patient had left the maesters confident of a full recovery.
Many times Sansa had found herself on the point of having her horse saddled and riding out to the Kingswood herself. She had refrained from doing so just as many times. Her own initial panic had frightened her by virtue of its resemblance to the fear that seized her whenever she thought of her son in harm, and she could not afford to be compromised by such feelings now. It was only wise to distance herself from her sister, especially now, especially if tonight went ahead without Aegon or Varys managing to stab her in the back. But looking at Arya – her face like their father's, her hair worn like their mother's, and the return of the iron within…
'How is your arm?' Sansa asked; her tone somewhat kinder.
'Fine,' Arya mumbled grumpily.
'Don't lie,' Sansa remarked.
'I'm not lying,' Arya persisted.
'Why aren't you in armour, then?'
'It's not my fault! Ser Barristan won't let me go on duty again until it's completely healed. What's the point of that? I didn't hurt my shoulder; I didn't break my leg; I'm not even right handed!'
'If you're not on duty, you should be wearing a gown, then.'
'No, I shouldn't.'
'Yes, you should.'
'No, I shouldn't!'
'It's only ladylike, Arya!'
'I'm not a stupid lady!'
'Shut up!'
'You shut up!'
'No, you –'
Both stopped; both realised; and Arya smiled, then Sansa. The past seemed to rise between them like a bridge; making them who they had been, and who they were, and Sansa remembered Winterfell, and being part of a pack; the days when she and Arya would have clawed each other's eyes out twenty times a day if left to their own devices; unconscious and uncaring that their lives would never be so simple, or so happy, again.
Sansa went to her sister and embraced her. It was the first time that she had ever done so without squirming or wrinkling her nose. She felt Arya's hands winding hesitantly around her waist; as though she were afraid of being touched, and Sansa realised with discomfort that her sister had no smell; not even of sweat or old leather. It was like hugging a ghost.
'I'm sorry that I can't be a real sister to you today,' Arya told her, 'and that I couldn't be there for all the other times, to brush your hair and help you into your gown, and other…stuff. I don't know about any of it.'
'I don't need you to brush my hair or help me into my gown,' Sansa replied; the depth and abruptness of her emotion and honesty both surprising and frightening her, 'you're my blood. You're all I have left.'
Arya did not reply. Or perhaps she could not.
When they broke apart, they stood looking awkwardly at each other; the lingering pieces of a circle that could not be completed until they both died: the same blood; the same circle; and yet, strangers. And suddenly Sansa wanted to know everything about her sister, and she wanted to tell her sister everything about her.
I can't. It's too late. It's too fucking late.
'I'm not all that you have left,' Arya said suddenly, 'I hear I have a nephew.'
'Yes,' Sansa nodded, smiling, and ignoring everything that her common sense was telling her.
'How old is he?' Arya asked, smiling back; the grin seeming strange on her face.
'Remind me which arm you hurt,' Sansa commanded.
'The… right one,' Arya replied, clearly baffled by the non-sequitur as Sansa took her left arm and led her to the window seat.
'My boy is eight,' Sansa said proudly as they sat down, Arya's smile warming her more than she would have…'he has blue eyes like his father's, and the most ridiculously red hair that could be conceived of. He's small for his age, but fierce, and stubborn as a mule.'
'A true Stark, then,' Arya grinned.
'He is, may the gods help me,' Sansa beamed, 'the master at arms says he might have been born with a sword in his hand. Each time he falls, he gets up again and carries on; even if he's bruised and bleeding.'
'What name have you given him?'
'Eddard.'
Arya's eyes filled with tears, even as Sansa's did, and when her sister's fingers laced tightly through her own, Sansa did not pull away. She could see their father on the floor before them; his body lolling grotesquely as the Kingsguard leapt forward to retrieve his head before the crowd tore it to shreds. As a girl, she had fainted at the sight. She would never do that again. Never.
'This marriage will mean being separated from my son,' Sansa murmured; her heart heavy, 'I shall have to go to Casterly Rock, no doubt, and…'
'– there must always be a Stark in Winterfell,' Arya finished.
'A Hardyng, in this case,' Sansa corrected testily, 'I have applied to the king to have his name changed; so that our line may continue. He refused me.'
'He's always been a cunt,' Arya growled.
'An inexperienced fool, but hardly a cunt,' Sansa observed, surprised at her sister's rancour, 'he may be a great king someday.'
'He needs to be a great king now,' Arya stated firmly.
How perceptive she is, Sansa thought, perhaps I might…
No. Too late. Too fucking late.
There is no guarantee that she can be trusted, no guarantee that –
'I pray you will excuse me, sister,' Sansa said; trying hard to make her tone as cold as possible, 'my ladies will return soon, whereupon they will attempt to lace me into that monstrosity.'
Arya looked at the wedding gown and pulled a face; showing no sign that her sister's abrupt dismissiveness had wounded her.
'I understand completely,' she said, getting to her feet, 'speaking to you has been…well…'
Sansa nodded regally in response, and watched as her sister crossed the room and closed the door behind her.
As the silence rushed in to fill the void, Sansa raised one hand and rang the bell for wine; determined to forget that this conversation had ever taken place.
