Sansa visits the crypts exactly once a week, just like she remembers her lord father used to.
She leaves flowers at the feet of his statue, to Rickon's grave, to the spots the statues of her mother and brother Robb she commissioned will occupy soon.
She sits for awhile with the memories of her childhood, with the rage for the bodies that were defiled and unreturned, with the sadness for a pack that dwindled and dwindled until she was all what was left.
She likes the idea someday she might sit there and not be sad, and she will have long silent conversations with her dead about everything they are missing.
It's the romantic in her, stirring for a last breath of life. The coldness that lives in her bones cringes at the vulnerable sentimentality of the gesture and turns her away.
She never lingers too long.
She spends more time in the godswood, sitting in the grass by the spot Lady was buried, a large rock marking it.
She imagines Lady's soft fur under her fingertips, so well it is a nearly physical sensation, and makes believe they are both back to a time they were young and happy.
Lady was sweet and she was good and bound to the best part of Sansa's soul in a way she can't fully explain without sounding crazy, even to herself.
Sansa cant avoid believing that if she had lived...
But she did not, and Sansa is not so sweet nor so good anymore.
In that spent, vacant space Lady's ghost presence used to live like a cut off limb, something else grew, vicious and dark, angry and potent.
She felt it, although she had not recognized it for what it was, the day she fed Ramsay to his dogs.
She was so full of simmering, cold hatred that day, the fresh wound of Rickon's loss turning her to nothing but ice and poison.
She stood there and promised to erase every part of that man as the dogs circled him.
In her hatred, she had wanted to see his horrible face giving out under the angry fangs, had imagined it into such a detail and with such a fever that it was a little thing, that sensation of slipping, edges blurring until her anger became a bottomless hunger. And more.
It slipped into Grey Jeyne 's memory of being a puppy, wetting herself under the booth of her master, her ribs aching from the kicks she had already received. Of Red Jeyne's restless anguish to be left weak until she was released for the hunt, to be forced to run after her meat when her limbs and mind worked against her. Of Kyra's distrust at the touch of hands that could tease her but would smack hard over her sensitive ears if she nibbled at them in warning.
It slipped into Helicent's dismay to be often hit with a wood, and Willow's definite dislike for ... everything basically, and Jez's unfulfilled yearning for affection. Sara 's fear of two-legged creatures, twisting her submissive nature into anxious aggressivity.
Somehow her hatred became theirs and theirs became hers. They blended, a strange comfort blooming from minds entwining, a pack following and a wolf commanding.
Sansa felt for a moment strong and whole and avenged, wounded and healed, powerful and consoled, sad but strong.
She was the bitches and they were her, and she was tearing him to pieces with her theeth and he deserved it.
Later, she shook off the sensation like someone who comes awake from something half nightmare and half a dream.
She did not believe those wisps of images that ran through her mind as nothing more than fantasies.
But she refused to put down the dogs when it was suggested to her.
Instead she fed them herself, petted them when they took to welcome her with wagging tails and wet tongues that looked for her hands.
She spent warm words on their shiny clean coats of black fur and recovering health.
The bitches reminded her more of herself and Theon than of their previous master, so she was somehow satisfied of seeing them thriving after being mistreated for so long.
And maybe she liked to have someone to show affection to, on occasion, and if that sensation of slipping returned, a warmth kindled and shared, she thought little of it. After all, she had far bigger concerns.
It was only two nights after Jon left to assist the Dragon Queen in taking back King's Landing, she had a disturbing dream...
She dreamed of Willow's warm comfort in dozing off nestled between Jez and Sara, Grey Jeyne nibbling playfully on her ear.
Helicent sat apart from them, and wailed a sound thick with longing.
There was suddenly a nostalgia for open spaces cutting Sansa's chest in half, the yearning for a race... it All bled away into the eagerness for the coming hunt, the excitement for the prey, a vivid scent that eased the hunger twisting in her belly ... a woman, naked, and Helicent jumped onto her, half despair and half wild joy, ready to devour.
Sansa came awake suddenly, nausea and horror suffocating her.
She nearly threw up, and swore at once she would bring Helicent, if not the whole pack of monstrous hounds, to be put down. Better yet, she would give the order and never look upon the beasts again.
Only with that certainty in mind she could persuade herself to come back to sleep. Eventually.
In the morning light, naturally, her resolution had looked very silly, the response of a child to a night terror, of a little girl recoiling at a ugly reality she had failed to accept.
She resolved to let the dogs be and just avoid the kennels.
The bitches were used to her by then tough, and they missed her.
She dreamed of puppies wailing, crying, lonely.
She came awake every time with a sadness she had not known since her mother died, cleaving her chest.
She set it all aside.
Then, when they were preparing to leave for King's Landing, Bran, who apparently, truly saw everything, decided to enlighten her.
" You should repair the bond with your dogs before we go. You don't want to see them cagey enough to attack the kennel master while you are away."
And because Sansa hated not knowing everything, what followed was a very long conversation on warging, how it worked, bonding with specific animals, and how it was rather difficult even for an experienced warg to tamper with an animal whose mind was bonded very deeply to a specific person.
Sansa had been half horrified and half satisfied that she had possibly made the Bastard Girls to eat the Bolton Bastard, especially as it was more accident than design.
In light of Daenerys Targaryen bear leveling of a whole city through a dragon she controlled, mystical bonds looked especially dangerous.
But what was danger to one person, was power to another.
Sansa had learned to never waste an opportunity when it presented.
So she went straight to the kennels and allowed the bitches- even Helicent- to lick her face wet.
When she returned, without Bran, but with excellent news, she took care to apply the advice the received in training them better.
Now she always found the time of hunting with the nothern ladies of her court- and she took the dogs with her, spurring them to see as prey other sorts of animals. She allowed them to accompany her when she went out riding, feeling a wonderful sort of safety at the idea the massive hounds, now healthy and muscular, would quite efficiently rip to pieces any bandit who dared to threaten her.
It was liberating to know she was not entirely dependent on her guards for protection. That if ever another man dared to raise a hand to her, she could count on a seemingly docile pet to turn into something lethal.
She was teaching Sara to circle the feast table during banquets, playing at looking for scraps, while she instead aptly went to listen to conversation, Sansa's mind collecting useful bits and directing her.
Sara already knew to rest where the most gossiping among the servants happens.
It has proved a surprisingly useful source of information, even if it started as both a game and an exercise of focus.
Sara is affectionate and obedient, the most willing of the hounds to be taught new tricks - she likes the game of learning, and being useful to her mistress, and being able to demand to receive extensive cuddling and head scratching in recompense. Despite her size and pounds of all solid muscle she is still rather fearful of new people in the castle, and fear still makes her growly and ready to bite and rip. Sansa actively restrains her and guides her the most even because of that, but there's no denying she is her favorite. She even lets her sleeping in her rooms, when the air promises thunderstorms and Sara very deliberately goes to hide there before she can be brought back to the kennel for the night.
If Sara is the sweeter and trainable of her canine companions, Willow is the most willful and cruel.
She always leads during hunts and ill-bears being petted unless she is the right sort of mood. She is very frighteningly good to read human body language tough, and her sense of smell a constant wonder even for a dog. Sansa would never guess human emotions had a scent that lingered- fear especially.
Sansa keeps her close and vigilant when she is receiving petitioners, and allows her senses to entwine with Willow's - it is easier to understand what game is being played if you have the whole picture of who is speaking to you.
Helicent is curious and active, and she will not long for hunt as long as she is allowed to run after her mistress when she goes riding, or trail after her in court. Her curiousity means Sansa has usually a pretty clear picture of everything unusual that happens in her castle, to the point the servants think of The Queen In The North as some omniscient, intimidating creature.
Red Jeyne and Grey Jeyne are the largest and strongest of the pack, but they are surprisingly sociable now they are well cared for. They are the ones who accompany Sansa when she visits Wintertown or more distant locations, and their noses and ears catch every detail of their surroundings.
Jez has a terribly short attention span and will be mostly lay lazying about before the fireplace or in the yard unless she is directed otherwise, but Sansa loves her anyway.
They are not Lady, and Sansa will never be the woman she might have been if so much pain and loss had not touched her life, but those dogs still somehow gave her back something she thought she had lost.
Life is moving forward. It is not perfect , and it is still difficult that Arya decided to leave and Jon went to lose himself among the wildlings but... there's a flow to everything that makes her to feel like she can finally breathe.
The Ironborn are a problem that she will trying to resolve, and she has plans to improve the economy of her kingdom by mining timber and aiding the breeding of sheep.
She is pressing Bronn for more advantageous trading with the reach, and then... she promised her bannermen she will marry in two years' time and no less, because her first concern is stabilize the kingdom.
Of course she is merely biding time - she will need heirs, but she wants to be sure to pick a man whose character will reserve no surprises, and no attempts to usurp her authority.
Maybe a Mormont- she legitimized three bastards from a cadet branch of the family so the line won't die with lady Lyanna and one of them is likely to be a good candidate.
Men of Bear Island have good reasons to respect women in power.
And she would like a daughter with Lady Lyanna fierce spirit and the Starks' long face.
For all that she cannot say she is eager for the marriage bed, she finds the thought of her body someday swelling with life , ensuring her family won't die out, is one , if not happy, at least... nice.
She can never have back the innocence or the pack she lost, but other children will someday play and learn where she and her siblings used to. More Stark children will run across the severe halls of Winterfell, and life will be... good again.
The North is free.
And, finally, so is Sansa Stark.