Sansa

Before, he had never given her a second thought, except as a means to accentuate his own power. Today, as she stepped into the tent, it was not the faces of the men she knew, or her own family's she paid heed to, but Tywin Lannister's, his steely eyes fixated curiously upon her...the man who had plotted the betrayal and murders of Robb and mother at the Red Wedding.

"Lady Sansa," he said sternly. "I see no reason for a girl like yourself to be present in this Council. Your brother has demanded it, understandable, you are his family, and he wishes to be assured of your safety. Yet, my own son insists also upon your presence, along with Stannis Baratheon, a man whom you'd met but several days ago, your only encounter being, based on what was told to me, a most interesting parley. But they also tell me all of us are gathered together, because of you. So I'd imagine both Lord Stannis and Lord Stark are most eager to hear you justify your presence here with us."

You're a little girl. Prove why you deserve to sit with the big tough men of Westeros. She'd forgotten that this was Tywin's first time meeting her and now, perceiving her as a threat for the first time in two lifetimes, he needed to project his strength, even as he sat the weakest party at the table.

"Lord Tywin," she said, seating herself, resisting the urge to run up to her brother and her mother and cry and hug them fiercely, because she needed them all to take her seriously, rather than see her as a scared little girl. "Believe me that I hate you more than near everyone, and I have no wish to sit across any table from you, except that none of us have a choice in the matter."

"Your father's death, I had no part in that, I assure you," he said, truthfully. "Joffrey's decision was his own, just as the King's foolish death was also his own."

Was it really?

"And this war between Stark and Lannister was started not by myself, or any of my children, but by your own lady mother."

Before her mother could protest, Sansa stepped in. "By Littlefinger, actually."

"Littlefinger," Catelyn asked, horrified. By the gods, she still trusts him. "Petyr?"

"Jaime Lannister pushed my brother out the tower, he's already admitted that to you, hasn't he, mother?"

"Sansa...how do you know?"

She really wished her first words to her mother after so long weren't the usual confusion she sowed whenever she spoke.

"And no need to pretend to Lord Tywin you still hold his son, we all know you let him go against Robb's wishes, with Ser...I mean, Lady Brienne accompanying him."

"Is this true?"

She watched as Robb shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He can't lie. Same as Jon, he hates lying.

He needs to learn.

"It tis," was all Robb could admit.

"He'll be on his way to the capital. Slowly, they travel the back roads. But this is a distraction. It was Littlefinger who talked our Aunt Lysa into poisoning Jon Arryn. It was Littlefinger who talked her into sending a letter to my mother, blaming the Lannisters for the crime, and it was Littlefinger who paid for the sellsword to kill Bran, then blaming it on Lord Tyrion."

All of them looked to her in shock, except Stannis, who seemed merely disinterested.

"Why?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself. He's fled, according to Lord Varys." The problem, she realized upon hearing that news, with changing the future, was that she could no longer control it, once it had changed. "My guess is he's gone to the Eyrie, where he'll continue to speak poison into my aunt's ears."

"I will have his head," her mother uttered, and Sansa knew she meant it. Tyrion admitted to her that she was a force to be reckoned with, but Sansa herself had never seen this side of her mother. Until today. "My dear Sansa, I don't know how you could know such things, but...Lord Tywin, I beg your forgiveness, for my unfair treatment of your son, and I ask that we set aside our grudges and bring justice to the true perpetrator of these foul crimes."

"Don't forgive him too quickly mother," Sansa interrupted. "He would have had your head, and Robb's, in a way most foul and treacherous, had he a chance to continue his plotting."

"I know not of what lies the girl speaks of," Tywin said accusingly, in a tone which indicated she'd struck too close to the truth, "though her imagination, I'll admit, far exceeds her father's."

"Have you married her yet," she asked Robb.

"I have not...," her brother began shakily.

Seeking to put an end quickly to his discomfort, Sansa looked back at Tywin. "He would have sent letters to the Freys, the moment you broke the engagement. He may have even sent them now, if he's heard word of your affair with Talisa. As for Roose Bolton, I'd imagine he'd have promised him Warden of the North the moment Littlefinger brought him the Tyrells...is that right, Lord Tywin?"

"Your letter," Robb said, putting the pieces together, "you're saying it's Tywin Lannister who would have plotted their betrayals?"

It was Tywin Lannister who shifted uncomfortably in his seat this time. "My Lady Sansa, many appear to be convinced of your abilities to...know things you ought not know. Including my son, and the self-proclaimed King Stannis, First of his Name. But I assure you," he said, looking at a disbelieving King in the North, "your sister's fantasies, are just that...fantasies."

Perhaps it was too early in the war, that Tywin barely knew of his own guilt, Robb not giving him the opportunities he needed just yet. Besides, she'd never have proof to the conspiracy, her brother's distrust of his enemies, known and unknown, the best she could hope for in revealing the future. But if Tywin were close to breaking, there was one last card for her to play.

"Your cupbearer at Harrenhal," she said, catching his attention just after he'd tried deflecting it from himself, "she called herself Arry, didn't she? You were the only one who saw she was a girl. You were the only one who saw that she wasn't lowborn, that she was a northern girl." Silence, so she continued. "That was my sister, Arya Stark."

"Arya," Catelyn shouted, turning angrily at Tywin again, moreso than when Sansa told her of his plotting with the Freys and Boltons. "You told me she was in King's Landing...not Harrenhal!"

"You told me you had Jaime. It would seem we are even in our lies."

"Where is she," she asked first Tywin, then Sansa. "Do you know, Sansa, where is your sister?"

"Hopefully halfway to Braavos by now," Sansa said with a smile, thinking fond thoughts of Arya. Rather than the gruesome ones of seeing her the day of her father's execution, or that dreadful memory of hearing her dead because of the Dragon Queen, causing her to finally give up on any hope or urge to keep clinging to her own life.

"Braavos? Who does she know in Braavos?"

"No one," Sansa answered Robb, still smiling.

"Enough," Stannis said, finally speaking for the first time in the council. "I don't care who killed or didn't kill whom, or who tried or who failed. I don't know how she knows, but the truth's out. As king, I'll bring Lord Baelish before the King's justice, to answer for his crimes, and settle this war between your two families."

"They killed my husband," Catelyn said, eyes red as she pointed her finger accusingly at Tywin Lannister, "and the father of my chlidren."

"They besmirch the good names of my daughter and your own brother Robert," Tywin shouted back at Stannis.

"My lords, my kings," Sansa interrupted fervently, knowing how tenuous the truce was, "now is not the time to argue amongst ourselves."

"She's right," a bearded man answered beside Stannis. It was Davos Seaworth, who many never enter her brother's service this time around. At least not for many years. "If a little girl can get us all together in this tent, surely we, the most powerful men in Westeros, can settle this rotten business in a way which avoids further bloodshed."

"The Great War is coming," Melisandre added, looking at her appreciatively. "His Grace Stannis is the Prince Who Was Promised, and the only hope all your families and houses have against the dead."

Tywin smirked, ignoring the Red Woman and addressing her lord instead. "Yes, the girl knows many things she ought not know...but don't tell me you believe in these northern folk tales."

"I saw it," Stannis remarked glumly. "She showed me, last night in the fire, I saw it myself...a great battle, in the snow."

The way he said it, Sansa could discern he hadn't fully believed her previously, at the parley.

"Jon will be among the first to see with his own eyes," she said directly to Robb. "He'll kill his first White Walker beyond the Wall."

Robb stared at her with disbelief. "He'll survive it," he asked, concerned for the man he thought his brother by blood. "You see him surviving it long enough to come south to warn us?"

"For a time," Sansa answered. "He'll need our help." Again, she turned to Stannis and his Red Woman. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, but I lied the other day, below the gates of the city. Many of those I spoke of we'll need in the war against the dead. But not all of them. Not you, Lord Stannis," she said, before turning, "and not you either, Lord Tywin."

"What puzzle do you speak now girl," Stannis asked angrily, betrayed.

"I don't mean to be rude," she said nicely. "Your men will help, of course, all the realm's men. But more than anything, it's her dragons we need."

"Dragons," Tywin asked incredulously.

"It's true," Tyrion said, next to her. "Lord Varys informed me half a fortnight ago that he's received reports from the east, in Qarth. Daenerys Targaryen has acquired, in one manner or another, three baby dragons...as predicted by Lady Sansa before Ned Stark's death, in front of your own daughter, along with Lords Varys and Baelish and Grandmaester Pycelle."

"They'll grow," she said, before they could question her further, "those horrible beasts, they'll grow to be the size of Balerion the Dread."

Stannis eyed her warily. "Horrible? I thought you said we needed them."

"We do. That doesn't make them any less horrible." Standing up, leaning forward, knowing this was the key moment she needed to take charge of the council, she pressed her last and most important point. But before that, one last detail. "Lord Tywin, I ask you ask your son to leave."

"Me," Tyrion asked, betrayed.

"You," Sansa answered coldly.

His father had no qualms at her request. "Do what she says, Tyrion."

"After everything I've done," he muttered as he left the tent, no humor in his voice. I'm sorry. It must be done.

"This is why I've called you here," she said, once her first husband departed, "all three of you. Daenerys Targaryen will save the realm. Then she'll destroy it with the dragons...starting with King's Landing, she'll wipe this city off all the maps." Looking into the eyes of all who sat across from her, she continued. "Lannister. Stark. Baratheon. Martells. It matters not, she'll burn all our families to dust and all our castles to the ground...unless we bend the knee to her...and live as slaves to the dragons and their Queen. You want your dynasties, my lords? You want an independent North Robb? She'll burn all your wants and wishes away."

"Sansa, you're convinced of this," her mother asked. She thinks me insane. My own mother.

"I've seen it," she said, "just as I've seen Theon taking Winterfell, just as I've seen Bran and Rickon escaping, just as I've seen Lord Tywin persuading the Freys and the Boltons to slaughter you." She laughed, the laugh of a bitter old woman, a woman who'd once died, burning. "They'll call it the Red Wedding afterwards. They'll stab Queen Talisa a dozen times in her stomach, killing the heir to the North. They'll slice your throat to the bone, mother, and toss you into the river like a pauper. Roose Bolton will stab you in the heart, Robb, but only after they've riddled your body with arrows. They'll kill Grey Wind too, then they'll cut off both your heads, and sew his onto your body."

By the time she finished, she was trembling.

"You hate me," Tywin said, his own jaw shaking a little. "So it would seem I may give you ample reason to feel that way."

"I hate her," she said, with more invective than she'd thought possible. "That's why I need to keep you alive, Lord Tywin, much as I would like to tear you limb from limb...because I need you, because I fear a man less than I fear her dragons. And I need you, Lord Stannis, even though I know you're the man who'll burn your own daughter for the sake of claiming your throne." He drew back in his chair, but she pressed on. "You think it'll clear the snows, so you can march on Winterfell, and take it from the Boltons. But it'll be for nothing...I've seen it with my own eyes...you'll have less than a thousand men in the end, and the Boltons will destroy what remains of your army down to the last man, and you'll die alone in the snow, bloodied and broken."

"What is it you suggest then," Stannis asked her, and she had to hand it to him for keeping his composure, even as his priestess stared at her in horror. "If you hate us so much, yet you need us so much...what will you have us do?"

"You're the three most powerful men in Westeros," she stated plainly. "Use your power. Use your minds, your bannermen, use your strength, and strengthen the realm...so that when she comes, we are not divided, we stand as one, behind one Iron Throne. Use her dragons, when she brings them here, so that we can destroy the Night King and the dead...then kill her. Kill her dragons, kill their queen...and save the realm twice over, once against ice, once against fire."

She looked to her brother. "Robb...I know better than anyone how proud the Northern lords are. But the North is the first to fall to the Army of the Dead. You must bend the knee, I don't care, to Stannis, to Tywin, Tommen, hells, even Ser Davos here. Let them defend the North alongside our own, and afterwards, if there is an afterwards, you may judge whomever sits on that throne on their own merits."

Then to Tywin. "Lord Tywin, Joffrey is dead. Cersei is a drunk, and mad to boot. Whether or not Tommen is King Robert's trueborn son, he's a boy, and you can't hold seven kingdoms together with just the Tyrells...especially not against Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons and her tens of thousands of Unsullied and Dothraki bloodriders."

Suddenly, she felt invisible as the three men regarded each other, silently dividing in their minds the kingdoms between them, now that they'd been presented it by a little girl.

"Stannis is the rightful King," Davos Seaworth began, breaking the silence, "whether through blood, or through conquest. You're weak, Lord Tywin, your armies have no morale, not after getting destroyed by Robb Stark, not after losing their King, then seeing Flea Bottom in drowned in blood afterwards. If Lord Stark bends the knee to King Stannis, you'll be destroyed before the sun rises tomorrow, Tyrells or not."

"I want my family unharmed," Tywin finally said to Stannis, after staring at his hands, clasped tightly together, for some time. "And I want my son released from his vows...if he ever makes his way back to the capital."

"Your family usurped my rightful throne," Stannis replied. "I can't let treason go unpunished. Or none in the realm will respect me by the time the girl's dead men and dragons come for us."

"Joffrey usurped your throne," Sansa said. If these men were unwilling to work things out in the face of mortal danger, then by the gods she'd lead them by their noses. "Joffrey is dead." When Stannis remained unmoved, Sansa continued. "Cersei betrayed both our families. But we both know Lord Tywin will never give her away. Use her then, she could still make a useful marriage to someone. Or take one of his sons, except rather than burn them, send them to the Wall, or exile. Jaime."

She paused.

"Or Tyrion."

"You can have Tyrion," Tywin said, almost too quickly as to be comical to her.

"He won't go to the Wall," Sansa said. "Lord Commander Mormont wouldn't have him, I don't think."

"Then Essos," Tywin said, not caring a bit for the difference, "so long as you allow me to give him enough gold to settle there."

"Essos is fine," Stannis said. He turned to Robb. "And you, you'll bend the knee and give up your fight against the Lannisters."

"If what my sister said is true, then how am I to trust the Lannisters, when they'll have me questioning the loyalties of my own bannermen?"

"Handle your own as you see fit," Stannis said. "You'll be Warden, the North is yours, as it was under your father. You'll have little interference from me, until the threat beyond the Wall shows itself."

The man they were about to proclaim King looked back at Tywin. "She'll marry your grandson."

Slowly, it dawned upon her whom he spoke of. "Me? Marry Tommen? He's a child!" And his mother will see me join the Army of the Dead before they ever cross the Wall.

"You're a child," Stannis shot back, "or so you've seemed to have forgotten." He looked to Robb, who was about to protest further. "I'll have peace between the Starks and Lannisters, if I'm going to keep the realm together for everything the girl claims to have seen. I don't care if it's her to Jaime, or Cersei to Lord Stark himself, or his brother Rickon, so long as I'm satisfied there'll be no further war between your families."

"I'm satisfied by the terms, so long as the former King in the North agrees."

"I won't give Sansa away again," Robb protested, looking his sister in the eye. "Whatever we agree to, she has to agree to it. None of us would be here without her...we'd be fighting amongst ourselves and leaving the realm vulnerable to far worse enemies, if what she says is right...and by the Gods, I believe her, the Starks have never been good at lying."

"I agree," she said, falling into their trap even after she'd trapped them. "Tommen...he's a child, but he's a kind child." She looked over at Robb and her mother, trying to assure them. "I can of think of far worse."


"I know she'll help us Robb, and we'll need her help. But you must be able to lie to her, you must hide your intentions from her."

"You ask me to betray and murder a woman who would save us all," Robb asked, indignant.

She stopped. With everything settled, there was no reason not to allow her time alone with her family, in their camp.

"A bear looms over you, about to claw your throat out. Before he can, a lion kills the bear, then looks to eat you just the same. Do you spare the lion, and die, just because she killed the bear?"

"We speak not of beasts, but of people!"

"Dragons aren't people," Sansa said with gritted teeth.

"My dear daughter," her mother said, pained. "I know you, I know it's still you in there. But not the things you say, the things you'll have us do...the way you say such things...with such coldness...what have they done to you?"

They loved her, but they clearly saw her as almost a stranger now. Which she was, in many ways, to them.

"Many things," she replied, clasping her mother's hands. "They beat me, they sold me, they raped me, cut me..."

Seeing the horror in her mother's eyes, along with a building rage in her brother's, she stopped. "Not this time, yet. Not the worst. And it wasn't all just the Lannisters. There was Littlefinger too, who sold me to the Boltons."

"How," Catelyn cried, horrified. "What happened to you, daughter?"

"I died," she said simply, trusting her family with the truth. "I survived everything...Jon and I, we took back Winterfell from the Boltons, we beat the dead with Daenerys...then she destroyed our family, and she burned me alive..."

Her mother looked as if she were about to collapse onto the ground, and this time, it was Sansa who held her upright. "But I'm here...the gods, they have a cruel sense of humor...but they sent me back here. I tried to save father, but there was no time...but I spoke to him, and I apologized for being so awful, and...and..."

It was all too much for her, so she finally allowed herself to cry, in the arms of her mother and brother, and it seemed several fortnights before she stopped.

"I can't imagine what you had to go through," Robb said, teeth still clenched, "my little sister."

"It's all worth it," she said, "to save you and mother. And Talisa." She smiled. "I'd like to meet her, before you march back north."

"You will," her brother promised.

"Rickon and Bran will live. Theon holds Winterfell with merely a few dozen men...they'll abandon him the moment you show up with the entire North at your back, with the Baratheons' and Lannisters' support."

"I'll cut off his head myself," Robb swore, as Sansa knew he would.

"Please don't, for my sake."

"Why not?"

"He saved me. They...the Boltons, they did far worse things to Theon than you could ever imagine, dear brother."

He drew back. "They flayed him."

"Yes." She closed her eyes. "And worse than that. So bad, he forgot who he was, for a time. But he remembered, and he fought with us, for our family, for Winterfell, and he died defending Winterfell."

Robb hugged her again, because her brother likely couldn't come up with the proper words to say to her. How could he comfort her, when it looked like he needed comfort himself right about now? "Maybe a few weeks in the dungeon will clear his head."

"I'm sure it will be," Sansa smiled. And Theon needed to suffer a little, this time around, to get the arrogance beaten out of him. But it'll be an improvement from what happened before.

"These Boltons," Catelyn said, still horrified, not forgetting what she'd said earlier to them, "you said...Petyr sold you to them."

"Roose is a cold man, and ruthless. His bastard Ramsay...," she paused, wanting to relive as little of those memories as possible, "there's not a crueler man in the seven kingdoms. He's worse than the Mad King, he's worse than Joffrey, or Tywin, or all of them, put together."

"And he...," Robb hesitated, afraid to speak the words, so Sansa spoke them for him.

"He was my husband, for a while." Abruptly, she turned to her mother. "You were always too harsh on him. But Jon saved me, he fought for me, he nearly died for me. And we took Winterfell back, Jon and I...then I fed Ramsay Bolton to his own hounds."

"By the gods," Cat swore, though Robb, horrified as he was, couldn't help but see his curiosity piqued.

"You had an army, you and Jon?"

Sansa shook her head. "Not much of one. Some wildlings. A few dozen from Bear Island."

Robb choked in laughter. "I'll need to release Jon from his vows and have him commanding my men...what a great battle that must have been."

"It wasn't," Sansa said, half in pride, half in horror, unsure as she had been at the time, until Littlefinger arrived. "They used Jon's goodness and kindness against him, just like they used father's honor against him, or would have used your honor and goodness against you...the battle was lost from the beginning...and I nearly feared Jon dead. But I called the Knight of the Vale to help us, and they won the battle and routed the Boltons, just before it was too late."

So it was settled. She was a stranger to them, even as they remained the same as she remembered, except younger than how she'd pictured them in her mind all these years.

"But worry no more. None of this will happen. None of us need suffer ever again."

"Except you did suffer," Robb said, pained. "I couldn't protect you."

"You don't need to now." She looked at her brother, fire in his eyes, so bright, so spirited...so innocent still, and at her mother, so protective of her, of them both. "It was worth it all. You're both alive. Here. With me."


"Lord Tywin?"

"Girl," he nodded, allowing her entry into his tent. "I hope you're not here to kill me. I suppose we'll be kin soon, which will make you a kinslayer."

She could see where Tyrion got his cleverness from.

"Do you trust me, Lord Tywin?"

He regarded her with amusement first, then seriousness.

"You ask me a question I know not myself." Reaching from his chair, he grabbed the poker, and tended to the small fire. "My daughter told me once of a witch they said lived in the woods, outside Casterly Rock. I never believed in such things..."

"I'm not a witch," Sansa said plainly.

"What are you?"

She took a deep breath. "Not your enemy. I don't have to be."

"If what you claimed were true, you ought to be."

"It's just the two of us here, there's no point in you denying it...not when the secret's long out anyway."

His silence signaled his surrender.

"Tell Cersei I won't harm Tommen, I promise you that. He's good. Too good, I think. I'll try to keep him that way."

"Stannis was wrong," he said quietly. "Tommen's a child. But you're not."

"No," she admitted. "I am a child, your eyes don't lie. But the things I've seen...it's hard to remember what I was before."

"You remind me of your sister, in a way."

"Stark girls are a different breed from Stark men," Sansa said, missing Arya all over again.

"So I've seen."

"I can be your ally."

He turned his head.

"You are my ally, by order of His Grace...Stannis, First of..."

"Don't lie to me. You're not satisfied by the results today, with Stannis taking the Throne from your family. And my soon to be family."

"Treason's a hard thing to quit, hmm?" His humor echoed not amusement, but like Robb earlier, interest.

"Give yourself time to see if you can live with him as your king. Perhaps you can, then you need never bother with me again, except at the odd feast, where you'll give me odd looks and your daughter hateful ones."

"And if I can't? Will you call another great council with your visions, and name another king?"

She would tread on dangerous ground now. But if it broke, it would sink them both together.

"The things I know...the things I knew...I know less now, because I've changed things. But what remains, I withhold from Stannis, and counsel you, when the time comes."

A pause, as he considered her offer. "All I hear are vague promises of things you admit you're no longer sure of."

She had indeed confessed her weakness to him. That, the more of the future she changed, the less power she held. He needed to hear this concession, in order to feel himself powerful, and less threatened by her.

"I may see more. I may not. I don't know. But I know the dead...and I know the Dragon Queen."

"The one you would have us betray," Tywin said cautiously. "What does your brother think of that, the honorable Robb Stark? How can I trust you haven't been whispering to Stannis the same things, on how to betray me? After all, Stannis will never send letter to Roose Bolton or Walder Frey."

Sansa shook her head, and wondered how ridiculous it must look, to those who had not attended their council, who had not spoken to Tyrion or Varys, for a girl of fourteen to be settling the future of the seven kingdoms, alone with Tywin Lannister.

"To be honest, I don't know Stannis well. But I do know he's not the kind to compromise. He'll never yield the Throne to Daenerys. That's good. But after, he'd never yield the North to Robb."

Tywin laughed knowingly. "The heart of the matter then. You want a kingdom, for yourself?"

"For my brother," she replied. "For my family, though I'll be half a Lannister by then. Declare yourself the King, after Stannis and the Dragon Queen are dead, or your son Jaime, or Tyrion, it matters not...but of Six Kingdoms. Let my brother keep his crown. You'll never hold it anyway, not against an unwilling North."

Tywin Lannister stood, the old man's frame still imposing, still intimidating, even as he was less than half the warrior his son was. "I saw your brother today, this King of the North, with my own eyes. He's Ned Stark's son, in every way. What makes you think he'll betray Stannis after he's given his word, much less this dragon queen of yours?"

"He won't," Sansa said, agreeing with him. "He won't betray Daenerys, unless his King orders him to. Then he'd refuse the northern crown, until you leave it in front of him and run away. But he'll take it, I'll make him take it."

"How," Tywin asked. There was a gleam in his eye as she spoke her last words.

"The North is his. But I know the North, just as much as he. Better, even. Whatever he refuses to do, I'll do in his name." When he hesitated, she continued. "It will be House Baratheon that will be remembered for losing the North, House Lannister claiming what remains."

They regarded each other for some time, a standstill.

"The way you speak, it would seem as if you know everything."

"I do." Not a complete lie. But not a complete truth either.

He walked up to her, until they stood nearly chest to chest. "You're not your father's daughter, are you?"

"I am," she replied vehemently. "But I've spent more time south than he."

Without another word, he turned from her, sitting back into his chair, returning to his solitude.

"We'll speak again, Lady Sansa."

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Notes: Thanks to all for reading and reviewing thus far! And yes, Sansa did hold KL for a time, with Tyrion and Varys effectively shutting Cersei down for a few days (my assumption, based on the show, is that Littlefinger wasn't in KL during the Battle of the Blackwater). But now she's effectively ceded all her power back to Stannis and Tywin and Robb...so we'll see what happens from here.