Sansa

"The Gods have no mercy, that's why they're Gods."

"Come again," Cersei actually looked up this time, having ignored all her pleading up to this point.

"A saying I've heard," Sansa replied. She didn't want to say anything of the future to Cersei, but at least this remark got her attention. But it was the Queen and Littlefinger whom she knew would do everything they could to squeeze out everything she had to their own benefit, were they ever to discern the truth about her.

"Doesn't sound like something Ned Stark would say," Cersei remarked, just a little suspicious at her now.

"The King, your husband, I heard him say it to my father in Winterfell," Sansa lied, wondering if there was any way she could steer this conversation now that the queen was finally listening to her. "Your Grace, I mean no offense, but...you're not a god. Neither is King Joffrey..."

"Keep speaking, girl, and my son won't be the one to change his mind about your father."

She's bluffing, Sansa realized. No, she's not bluffing. Bluffing would mean she were serious. She's playing with me.

"The King is strong of will," she said, toeing her line. Cersei had seen through her pretenses the first time around, they all had; Littlefinger, for all his faults, had been the first to tell her the truth of it, it was just that none of them had seen her as a serious enough threat to call out her awful attempts at acting. So she must play the same role now, that of a stupid girl, pretending she's smart, not realizing how stupid she looks to all the smarter southrons around her. "But he is young. My father is a traitor, that is true, and his betrayal has raised up other traitors across the realm. I fear he will feel the need to be too strong, so much as to forget the need to listen to the wiser counsel of his mother and his advisers. This war between our families...the war my traitor brother has started...it makes my soul weep."

"You don't want your traitor brother to win, is that true?" Cersei questioned. She was still toying around with her, but Sansa sensed her words had triggered something inside the woman, enough for her to realize there was something intangible she was missing. "Do you pray to the Gods that my son slaughter your own in battle?"

"I pray that we may all sit down in a room and talk and work things out and agree to make peace between all our houses," she said, an idea so foolish that even the naive girl she had once been could have never believed such a thing. But let Cersei believe it, because it's what she wants to believe. "But my brother Robb...he has fire in his blood. I fear...I fear what he's capable of...only father's words could calm him. It's always been that way, when we were children."

A lie. But again, another lie Cersei would wish to believe, to reinforce her notion that northerners were all uncontrollable wildmen and savages.

"Your brother's no less of a child than my son," Cersei said dismissively. "Do you really believe your future husband would be so stupid as to provoke the northern armies, with the Baratheons nipping at our heels to the south, thanks to your traitor father?"

She wondered if they'd captured the Kingslayer yet, and cursed that she never reconciled these old timelines before coming back. But then, she'd never expected to travel back in time, did she? How does one prepare for such an occurrence? Jaime's capture would be the only thing that could convince Cersei to do something drastic, such as keeping Joffrey from attending her father's trial in the afternoon. Blurting that out could save her father's life, but more likely than not, Cersei would not believe her. Not until the news came, at which point she'd find herself in worse danger as a prophet in the hands of her enemies. And what if, by some odd twist of fate, she did believe her, and Jaime had yet been captured? Could she not send a raven to Tywin Lannister, warn him, and possibly get her own brother killed were the Lannisters smarter to the situation at Whispering Wood?

"The King is too just," she replied instead, gathering herself, knowing she was running out of time and chances. "I worry justice blinds him, when it is mercy that will save his realm."

Cersei sighed. "I'll speak to him, little dove. You'd have a hard time believing how little my words matter to him sometimes, after his father died."

Oh, I believe it, she thought, as she walked back to Varys, who'd said not a word the entire exchange, more than you can imagine now.

"You know something," he said to her, once they had returned to her chambers. "You were playing the Queen...more than any child of Ned Stark ought to be able to."

Yes, she screamed in her mind, I know everything, or have you yet to notice that yet, oh wise Spider?

"They say the Starks have magic in our blood...that we come from wolves, that through the beasts and the trees and the old gods, we can see through eyes not open to others."

"Common tales to children in the north, I'd imagine," Varys said, though she could tell her words unnerved him.

"There are things I know, even as I have no right to know them." If Bran could become a Three Eyed Raven, if he could have dreamed the future before even venturing beyond the Wall, why could such things not be possible for his sister? In the mind of a southron, at least?

"It's how I know about Daenerys and her three dragons. It's how I know that Joffrey will ignore everything his own mother and his counselors tell him, and kill my father today." Even as she said those words, she felt the truth in them, despite all her measly efforts, despite any even more pathetic efforts Cersei could make on his behalf. She looked up at Varys. "I know you will die, Lord Varys. It will not be of old age, or of your own choosing. If my father dies today, you will die also, at the sentence of a tyrant."

It was a threat, a suggestion that perhaps he ought to sneak out her father, just like he'd done so with Tyrion so many years later. There was something in his eyes that indicated that he did believe her, but then, it was probably too late, wasn't it? The Spider had had days, maybe even weeks, to prepare for Tyrion Lannister's escape. He had a day for Ned Stark perhaps, when she returned, reduced to mere hours now.

"How do I die," he asked, she knew, against his better judgment. "Why?"

"Because for the first time in your life, you realized the extent of your mistakes, and you decided to do the right thing."


She had not fainted this time. Instead, she'd looked towards the statue of Baelor, where she saw Arya, and mouthed to her as best she could, while she cried out in grief and pain.

I'm sorry. I tried.

"The gods are cruel," she screamed to the walls of her cage. "Why? Why? Why send me back, when everything still happens the same?!"

But then she shut up, because who knows who could be listening in on her still? She knew what would happen later, when Joffrey would take her up onto the bannisters and show her her father's head. She thought about ignoring the Hound this time around, doing it, truly doing it, pushing Joffrey off, perhaps taking herself along with him. But what good would dying again do? A part of her wondered whether it would just return her back to Cersei's room, doomed to repeat the cycle again and again until the gods were done tormenting her.

So when Meryn Trant beat her savagely this time around, she did not cry out, because his blows barely counted as pain after Ramsay. She saved the fool's life, just as she'd done before, because it was the decent thing to do. They'd need the fool to kill Joffrey, she knew, but it didn't matter, because she had no intention of letting him live so long as to see the day of his own wedding to Margaery. Varys ignored her, probably because she'd been right, both about her father, as well as the dragons, and that scared him more than he could ever admit to himself. Not that she needed him anymore, with her father dead, though she knew he would return in due time, because a man who lusts for information wouldn't be able to help himself.

They all left her alone, for one reason or another, except Cersei and Joffrey, whenever they sought a plaything to torment. She smiled for them as she'd done before, played dumb for them as she did before, the polite responses, the barbed retorts all coming to her without a second thought. But mostly, she hid in her room and thought and planned, because it was quiet there, because once things started happening, she wouldn't have a chance to truly think everything through again. And she could not afford to make one mistake, not with so much on the line. At least this time around, she did not have to live with the uncertainty, that lingering dread that Joffrey and Tywin Lannister could hurt Robb. Because they could and would, but they underestimated Robb, all of them, and that bought him years to his life, and years enough for her to save him.

Robb and mother, they were still alive, and she needed to keep them alive. Arya and Jon, she hoped she had not changed things enough to affect the paths they would take before returning to Winterfell. As bad as it was, she needed Arya to suffer, enough so to devote herself to the Faceless Men. And Jon...he needed to see what was beyond the Wall, so as to get the North to believe, along with the rest of the realm. If only he didn't have to die doing so this time around.

And she needed Daenerys, and her dragons too. Often she'd thought about shoving a dagger into Joffrey and Cersei, stepping up onto the throne herself, and ordering Varys to kill the Targaryen girl and her dragons once and for all, before the Kingsguard came for her, but she knew that she needed them...the realm needed them, the Dragon Queen, and all her three dragons, fully grown, for the Great War ahead. If somehow she could get that point in time, and they could defeat the dead again...she'd need to betray Daenerys...not as she'd done before...but Cersei's and Littlefinger's way, behind her back, through methods which would bring shame and dishonor upon her own name, if not that of her family's for all ages to come. And where would that leave her, a woman who'd lived two lives, who would save the world from ice and fire, only to live with the residue of hatred and disgust from her own family whom she'd saved?

One day at a time, she told herself. She needed to survive King's Landing first.


"My king. I dreamed of your sister last night."

"Oh," he asked, curious rather than cruel for once.

"I dreamt of her in the desert, by these beautiful fountains and gardens of...water. Below flags bearing a sun. With a stick poking through it."

"Spear," Joffrey corrected. "The spear of House Martell."

"Oh, it must be Dorne then," Sansa said innocently. "I did know Dorne's a silly country, but 'Cella there? I apologize for troubling Your Grace with my foolishness."


"Tell me the truth, Lady Sansa," Tyrion said, reaching out to pour her a glass of wine, before remembering her age, and pulling back to pour a goblet only for himself. "You don't really mean to betray your brother."

"My brother is a traitor," she said, wondering just how much of the woman she could let slip through. Tyrion she could trust, more than most, but his aim was still to preserve his own life first, his father's pride in him second. If only he'd know how disappointed he'd be in the latter. "But he's a successful traitor...as my King has seen fit to remind me."

"I'm so sorry about that, my lady," he said sincerely, and Sansa remembered the kindness he'd shown her, the first time around...and the second time. "Believe it or not, the King is difficult to...counsel, these days. Even when it comes to his own mother."

"The King is strong. He must be." She smiled sweetly. It was getting easier to manage now, the need to act well at acting poorly. "He has so many enemies now...all stronger than he...how is he to prevail, if he does not believe himself stronger than they?"

It seemed he almost choked in his wine, at her words.

"My Lady, you don't have to play this game with me. I know you wish bear no good tidings for your King. Or his dwarf for a Hand, for the matter."

"I love King Joffrey," she said, somehow holding back her vomit as she uttered the words. "But...," she made sure to look hesitant, "I love my brother, even if he is a traitor. I've no wish to watch the two men I love kill each other on the battlefield."

Not that Joffrey would ever step foot on a battleground against Robb, so much as she wished it could happen.

"If only you could tell your brother to bend the knee to Joffrey, and if only I could tell Joffrey to accept his surrender without taking the head of another Stark." He drank again, a deeper gulp down his throat.

"It's Stannis you worry about, isn't it," she asked, perking his interest. "His is the larger army, after he murdered Renly."

"They say your mother was behind Renly Baratheon's death," Tyrion said, probably surprised himself to be confiding in her. Perhaps he was testing her, perhaps he had spoken to Varys about the dumb girl's occasional bouts of smartness.

"She was there, along with Brienne of Tarth. But Brienne loved Renly, she would never betray him. And King Renly had just agreed to the independence of the North, before Stannis killed him. Why would my mother agree to such things, then kill the man who would have destroyed her enemies for her?"

"That's not true," he began dismissively, before stopping himself, and thinking, and realizing that everything she said was more than plausible. He leaned forward, conspiratorially. "How do you know such things? Even Varys knows not of what truly happened in Lord Renly's camp."

"I just do." She bit her lip, shyly. "Stannis has a larger army now, and he doesn't have Tywin Lannister standing at Harrenhal, between him and the capital."

"Varys told me about you," Tyrion said, eyes fearful, same as the Spider;s when they'd last spoke. At this moment, his mind was certainly calculating all the ways the stupid little girl could have overheard such things from the various comings and goings in court...including the most sensitive of his father's troop dispositions. So she couldn't allow him to keep thinking.

"I know you're more worried about Stannis than Robb. That's why you've been preparing the wildfire..."

He gasped. "Do you have spies? Varys?" He shook his head nervously. "Has Littlefinger been speaking to you?"

"You love Shae," she said, understanding she was truly treading on dangerous ground, knowing that the Half Man would kill for the sake of his love. "Don't worry, she doesn't know I know. And you haven't told her anything that would endanger her more than you already have, why would you, you love her."

For a moment, she wasn't sure whether he was about to deny it, or choke her with his bare hands. She'd put up a fight, to be sure.

"As I've said, I know things. But believe me when I say I'm on your side. And hers. I wish for the two of you to be happy."

"Be careful what you wish for," he said, uttering the words darkly and lamely, because he had no response once she struck too close to his own heart.

"Let me write a letter to Robb," she said, making her move. "You may read it. Even the Spider too. Even your sister...I only ask you not show it to Littlefinger."

"Littlefinger? Why not him?"

She shuddered nervously. "I don't like the way he looks at me." Still he hesitated. "You don't trust me?"

"It's not that I don't trust you," he muttered, running his fingers through his hair. "It's that I don't trust my own mind were I to believe these things."

"Yet you did hear me, my words were not a trick of your mind, were they?" What she left unsaid now was that she had power over him, with her knowledge. "My Lord Tyrion, let us work together. We both have so many enemies already, we don't need new ones, not with each other."

He didn't answer her. In fact, he didn't speak for quite some time. But he did walk over to his desk, and take out a piece of parchment, handing it over to her along with a pen.

"Write," he ordered, watching her fingers carefully as she did so.

"My dear brother. The King and the Lannisters treat me well in the capital. You must know that mother had nothing to do with Lord Renly's death. I trust she will arrive soon in your camp, along with her sworn sword. Show this letter to her, so that she knows I am well, and that I know she is well, for there is none more honorable nor so strong who can protect her, than Brienne of Tarth. Do not show this letter to anyone else but her.

The girl is beautiful, I hear, and kinder than she is beautiful. Your heart carries you across the Narrow Sea, but be wary of those who sail the other seas.

You sent our dear brother Theon to Pyke for his father's support. He has betrayed us. He will take Winterfell, if he has not done so already. For my sake, I pray you won't be too harsh on him, his father Balon is horrible, and he knows not what he does. You may hear news that he has killed our brothers Bran and Rickon. You must have faith in ALL our brothers, that they are not as weak or as horrible as what they will tell you.

You were wrong to trust in Theon. You will also be wrong to trust in those you were promised to, and those who serve you bearing sharp blades. The fish is foolish, he swims aimlessly, lacking intelligence or purpose, and he will strike at mountains blind, not unless you show him the truth.

Arya is well, and strong.

Your beloved sister Sansa."

Finished, she handed him the scroll.

"These are...things you believe will happen?"

"I see it, yes."

"What do you see exactly," he asked. "Do you dream these things?"

"It's not like that," she answered cryptically. "It's not dreams, nor visions...nor is it everything. But the things I know, I just know. Like Shae. And the wildfire."

"And the battle with Stannis," Tyrion pressed. Taunt him. Taunt him with what he wants to hear. "Will the wildfire help? Will Stannis take the city?"

She shook her head, denying him his much needed peace of mind. "No." Seeing his shoulders slump in defeat, she continued. "Not without your father's help. He's made cause with the Tyrells, you see, but he can't march south, not with my brother ready to capture either Casterly Rock, or fall upon his rear." She pointed at the letter, picking it up and waving it to his face as if she were a still a foolish girl, playing with a toy she didn't quite understand.

"Don't you see? Once my brother reads this, he'll believe me, when he hears of Winterfell himself. And he'll march north, especially when he hears that his own men are not to be trusted...not even my mother's family...and he'll stay north, he'll take our home back, and maybe afterwards he'll never step foot south of Moat Cailin again!"

"The Tyrells," Tyrion muttered, and Sansa realized this was the first he'd heard of this detail from Tywin's plans. "And why are you helping me? Why don't you want to see us crushed by your brother and Stannis? And don't tell me it's because you love Joffrey, we both know what joke that lie is."

"Because Robb's own men will betray him." This was the truth, and she used her genuine sorrow, from a past life, to her fullest extent. "And his own blood, his uncle Edmure, that will be the betrayal he sees last, and the one which breaks him and my mother. I'd rather he return home alive, than rescue me. You'll save King's Landing, Stannis's armies will be crushed. Joffrey may rule over only six kingdoms, but I'd trust both of you would prefer six over nothing, when you're both dead. And even if Joffrey and your father march north for Winterfell, I'd rather Robb there, rather than here. Stark men do better north than south, you see?"

"Stark women though," he said, as if seeing her for what she was the first time. "What about you? What, after your brother leaves you to the lions?"

She smiled again, sweetly. "Then I become a lion, my brother remains a wolf, and I am happy, because the two men I love most both live."