A/N: Hi all! Thank you if you are still reading this, and welcome if you're new! Quick important note: I accidentally deleted chapter 1 of this story and I do not have it backed up anywhere because it's five years old... My deepest apologies. I am going to go sit in a corner now.
If you allow for his escape does that make you merciful or does it just make you weak?
Theon Greyjoy had imprisoned the innocent but he had also served as a prisoner himself.
Daenerys knew little of Westerosi culture but she had come to discover through Sansa's confessions that Theon had been a ward of Winterfell for the duration of the boy's life; he was just as much a Northerner as he was an Iron Islander, maybe even more so.
Perhaps Daenerys had been a ward growing up as well, to Illyrio, and Pentos, and a house with a red door...
Although not once had Dany considered killing Illyrio and destroying his home; the Pentoshi magistrate had shown her more kindness than anyone had during her formative years, and he had gifted her the three eggs that would become her fire-breathing children.
When Dany thought of home, it was difficult to think of Dragonstone or King's Landing- one could not call a place they had never been to "home". Instead she thought of a house with a red door and a lemon tree outside of her window; the only place she had ever felt remotely safe. Therefore, she had to wonder if that is how Theon Greyjoy felt about Winterfell.
No, she tried to tell herself. Theon had a home, he had a family, he even had a throne. She did not wish to compare herself to a traitorous murderer.
From her vantage point in the library tower Dany had a clear view of the inactive kennels; all had been quiet throughout the morning. Ramsay had taken all of his dogs- his girls- on the hunting trip he left for nearly three weeks earlier, and the resulting peace that had immediately settled over the castle had been welcomed by all perhaps none so much as Lady Sansa.
The girl was bent over a large, leather-bound book with yellowed pages which seemed to produce a small cloud of dust with every turn. In fact, most of the volumes still housed in the Winterfell library were ancient looking as if Brandon the Builder himself had put them there. The light from the small tallow candle at her elbow threw a veil of shadow across one half of her face and shifted when Sansa tilted her head every so often.
"This is strange," Sansa murmured into the book.
Turning away from the frosty window, Daenerys stepped around her seated companion to peer over her shoulder. A HISTORY OF HOUSE BOLTON: RED KINGS OF THE DREADFORT was scrawled at the top of the page while below it quite some ways rested Sansa's fingertip beneath a passage referencing the Night's King.
Dany's brow furrowed. "What is strange?"
Sansa turned in her seat to engage her companion.
"Well... It's unusual to see reference to folklore in a history book." Sansa glanced at the open page once more as if allowing opportunity to see otherwise. "Old Nan- I mean, I was told a lot of stories both true and make-believe as a child. I remember hearing about the Night's King, he was supposedly the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch until he fell in love with a woman whose skin was as cold as ice and pale as the moon. Supposedly they ruled from the Nightfort for thirteen years and did horrible things to the men of the Night's Watch until Brandon the Breaker and Joramun brought him down."
Daenerys contemplated this legend for a moment before asking, "are you suggesting that the Night's King never existed?"
Sansa laid her palm upon the open tome as if shielding it from their view.
"I was always led to believe that he was just a myth, yes. There exists no living record of him, and besides, this was during the Age of Heroes. The lines between fact and fiction tend to get blurred when you look that far back in time."
Daenerys broke eye contact with Sansa to look at the book.
"Why would it be then, that mention of the Night's King would appear in a history book about the Northern houses, and why in the details of the Boltons?"
Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, Sansa shook her head. "I don't think I can answer that question."
Moving towards the window behind Sansa, Daenerys glanced down at the dark mountain of glistening scales shifting in the courtyard.
"I don't know if I believe in the boundary between real and imagined anymore." Dany could feel Sansa's gaze on the back of her head. When she turned to face the Stark girl again she suddenly felt an overwhelming calm.
"Nothing that has happened to me would be believed if it existed in a thousand-year-old book." She chuckled. "None of it was believed until very recently."
Dany noticed the patient way Sansa watched her, allowing her to share as much or as little as she felt comfortable with. This sense of belonging reminded her of the companionship she shared with young Missandei, whom she realized she missed more and more each day. In the company of Sansa however, Dany felt an unfamiliar level of intimacy; perhaps it was the shared status and responsibility of being from high births. Yes, Lady Sansa was Queen in the North, the heir to Winterfell; she was born and bred to understand the unique position of compliance expected from her.
"After my dragons were born there was never any room for doubting fate and magic," Daenerys continued. "I exist in the space between a history book and a bedtime story told to children. I've seen things, I've done things myself that no person would believe without question." I am not like you Westerosi.
Dany paused. She felt heat rising to her cheeks as if the thought of her differences made her upset… They did make her upset, did they not? She had just admitted it herself: I've done things myself that no person would believe without question. It was not the choices themselves that upset her, no. She did what she had to do- what was right to do. It was the isolation those choices created for her that upset her.
Now Sansa Stark was staring at her, a slightly concerned expression on her delicate face. A page of the book rested gingerly in her fingers as if she was debating reading further if her companion would allow it.
Daenerys sighed, the tenseness in her shoulders easing. Now she was at a loss for words.
A slightly uncomfortable silence wedged its way in between the women, neither wanting to break it for the wrong reasons.
Finally, Sansa cleared her throat quietly. "I did not mean to suggest that your life is… surreal, Your Grace."
Again with the 'Your Grace'. Daenerys rolled her eyes slightly. She appreciated Sansa's apology but she was not sure if it was needed. In an act of amnesty, she smiled warmly. "I suppose I cannot pretend that my experiences are easy to comprehend." Her fingers absentmindedly twirled the ring on her pointer finger- her mother's ring.
Sansa chewed on her bottom lip momentarily before rising from her seat. "Will you take a walk with me, Your Grace?"
Daenerys contemplated Sansa shortly before agreeing, "only if you stop calling me 'Your Grace'".
Blood red stains dotted the gray landscape of stone and sky and bark.
Despite the chill and the threat of snow in the air, the leaves of the weirwood stood in full bloom.
The Godswood of Winterfell was the place where Sansa Stark felt the most comfortable; the most shielded from harm. The ancient trees had been standing guard for thousands of years here listening to her ancestors' prayers, and they would be here for thousands of years after she was gone.
Centuries of Starks had prayed under these trees, married under these trees, and pledged their lives under these trees. Now Sansa was the only Stark in Winterfell, no choice but to pledge her life and pray that the Old Gods will deliver her safely through this time in her life.
A gentle snowfall had begun, the crisp flakes swirling around the pairs of feet as they picked through the path leading deeper into the forest. Sansa felt her heart quicken with their arrival into the place she felt the highest regard for. It was allowing a virtual stranger to share a secret that Sansa was unwilling to lose any control over. The Northern girl quickened her pace so that she walked slightly ahead of the dragon queen, glancing over her shoulder to get insight into any expression that Daenerys wore.
Just ahead loomed the largest Heart Tree in the forest, perhaps in all of the Seven Kingdoms. As Sansa came to a soft stop she stared at the tree's face. Frozen in a mask of stern concentration, its eyes eternally fixed wide, seeing everything and nothing at once. Sap the color of blood made trails down the bone-white bark in the memory of tears falling from a corpse's eyes. Southernors found the Heart Trees frightful at best, vestiges of a time of barbaric Children of the Forest and their inexplicable magic, instead trading the Godswood for the more palatable images of the Seven.
Despite Sansa's knowledge of the Targaryen's history with religion and the seven gods, she did not assume that Daenerys herself was particularly religious or would necessarily take offense to their visit to the Heart Tree. As the silver-haired woman stopped beside her, Sansa drew in a sharp breath as if to speak but as she felt Daenerys' eyes on her profile she exhaled in a cloud of mist instead.
The pair stood in silence for moments more, shards of hesitant sunlight setting the light layer of snow to glittering around them. Sansa thought it unlikely that anyone had ventured into these woods save for her since her brother Robb brought his cause South. Suddenly she felt silly for bringing Daenerys Targaryen here, for being here at all. Looking down at her gloved hands, Sansa felt half a mind to turn around without a word and walking back to the castle. Something about being here with company made the deaths of her family feel renewed, and Sansa had already spent an uncountable number of hours and days crying.
"The weirwood trees live an extraordinarily long time, do they not?" Daenerys' soft voice cut through Sansa's overwhelming feeling of regret.
The Stark turned her face towards her guest but left her eyes to linger somewhere around the exposed roots of the tree. "Yes, that is right." She managed.
Dany looked into the tree's eyes but did not feel moved by anything other than a respect for something so ancient. When she looked at Sansa she felt moved by something completely different.
Here was an individual with immeasurable integrity, grace, and vulnerability. As impressed by the Heart Tree Dany could have felt, she felt twofold more impressed by Sansa Stark.
That hesitant sunlight pushed forward to filter through the deep red leaves and scatter across Daenerys' skin. For a brief moment she wondered if she felt warmth, and glancing at her gracious host she believed it may have been warmth after all.
Perhaps it was the confident way in which the Targaryen queen stood sentry beside her but Sansa felt restored enough to speak again. "Even when the weirwoods die, they do not rot," she explained. "They say that things made from the wood of these trees can last as long as stone."
A secret smile had its beginnings on Dany's face as she lingered upon the new offerings of Sansa's never ending inspirations. "I believe that I may have found my new favorite tutor," she offered coyly. Sansa blushed pink, or so it appeared to Daenerys but the cold air created contest. "It has been many years since I had a proper tutor," Dany qualified, "several were appointed to myself and my brother Viserys when we were children in Pentos but my coming of age put an abrupt stop to my ability to learn, apparently." Sansa gave a courteous giggle, glad to have the easy conversation to punctuate an otherwise emotional walk. "Well, I cannot guarantee my own knowledge greatly extends your own, Your Grace, I have not had any lessons in some time either." Which caused Sansa to remember Old Nan and Maester Luwin, two figures in her former life of whom she had known since birth.
Dany considered that, chewing lightly on the inside of her lips. "Perhaps formal lessons, yes," she ventured, "but I do not believe that you ever stopped learning lessons, Lady Stark."
Sansa had gathered quite quickly that Daenerys had a natural ability with words, an important quality for a leader to have, she believed. She also believed that while highborn girls were still not afforded the same amount or quality of tutoring that boys were, much of their learning took place outside of a maesters' instruction. Daenerys knew this too, it was plain. Daenerys seemed to know many things that she wore close to the chest, only parsing out small morsels of her true ability when inspired to do so. Sansa believed that Daenerys Targaryen was just as intelligent as any man, perhaps more so than many.
A quick shiver from the mother of dragons broke Sansa from her musing. "I have kept you outside for too long, Your Grace, please forgive me." Sansa quickly reached for Daenerys' arm to begin the journey back towards the castle. Daenerys smiled kindly but shook her head, "I am still waiting to adjust to this Northern weather," her teeth chattered, "but I've asked you nicely to please stop calling me 'Your Grace'." Dany's gloved hand slipped down the length of Sansa's outstretched arm and into her own gloved hand, giving it a squeeze. Sansa startled, both by Dany's gesture and by her own mistake. "I- I- please forgive me… I am still adjusting as well."
The pair began to walk hand-in-hand out of the Godswood. "If it truly makes you uncomfortable, I will not push the matter," Dany offered, "I am not here to make you uncomfortable, Sansa Stark."
"No," Sansa breathed, very aware that a queen's hand was nesting in her own. "I can manage to do what you ask of me, Daenerys." The name felt foreign yet pleasant in her mouth.
Dany's mouth broke open into a wide smile, practically giggling as she crossed her other hand over to rest on Sansa's forearm. The pair stepped in amicable silence, smiles on their faces as they were welcomed back into the mouth of Winterfell's gates.
