Sansa and Brienne were at the former's solar, drinking tea and chatting. Brienne was getting near her sixth moon of pregnancy. Things ran smoothly around Winterfell and the North was recovering slowly. Sansa supervised personally the rebuilding of the castle and the distribution of supplies for the villages and settlements most damaged by the wars of the recent years. She also led hearings once a week (as was the custom in Winterfell since centuries ago) where people of any status could expound their needs, troubles and disputes. She tried to conduct them as wisely as she could and provided help for those in risk of extreme poverty. Everyone had to tighten their belts, but Sansa as queen and warden couldn't let her subjects starve and live in miserable conditions.
The young queen felt nervous. Tyrion was going to drop for a visit any moment, He had announced in a letter his intention to travel North to watch its recovery and write down all the requests the Southern crown could provide help with. He wished to have a look at the Wall and its castles as well, to see how the Night's Watch was faring. And of course, he would take advantage of the tour to spend a little time with his old friend Jon.
But Sansa knew there were other reasons under the Hand's official travel. She and the younger Lannister had been developing a growing affection as pen friends and Brienne and Jaime were the only ones updated on this turn of events. Both Sansa and Tyrion had been harshly hurt and they were weary of sentimental attachments. Ramsay's brutal mistreatment had left a permanent scar in her. Her body had healed, but her soul was a different matter. For the rest of her life, she would wake up terrified sometimes in the middle of the night, believing for a few seconds that the sadistic bastard was still alive and raping and torturing her. She remembered the period right after Theon and Brienne rescued her and they went to the Wall to seek refuge. She suffered such intense night terrors that she had to resort to the nightshade essence. Then, time started to heal her little by little, and her strength returned. But the trauma would never fade.
As if she didn't have already a long list of horrible traumas tormenting her spirit. Only by sheer force of will and a fierce determination to overcome her inner pains and to take revenge, was that she had escaped the pit of madness that threatened to swallow her.
Then, she and Jon retook Winterfell from the Boltons and things began to improve. She stopped being a helpless pawn and became the predator to those who had abused her in recent times: Ramsay and Littlefinger. The satisfaction she felt at finishing the bastard with his own dogs was indescribable. And later, when she, Arya and Bran had plotted to get rid of the sneaky monster who had triggered all the wars that had caused their loved ones' violent deaths... She gladly would have spat at the rat's bloody corpse. He had been lucky to have been granted a quick death by a dagger on the throat. She had considered a slower and more painful execution, but deep inside she knew she lacked the cold-blooded attitude necessary to stomach such carnage. What, by the way, Arya possessed by far. Sansa didn't want to imagine the ways her sister had dispatched to hell a few enemies. She had been told about the extermination of the Freys. That proved that the worst thing anyone could do if they wished to go on breathing was to wrong badly Arya and her family and friends.
Sansa wondered what their parents would think of them if they could see what they were now.
But they weren't there and their daughters had to do anything to survive. And with luck on their side, they had outlasted all their enemies. They'd taken their revenge one way or another.
For a while, Sansa had feared that her thirst for revenge was all she lived for. But then, she had regained control and started to return to a semblance of normalcy. Her remaining family reunited and she was responsible for the whole North. That grounded her definitively.
But her heart held open wounds that would never heal completely. She was scared of any involvement with men. After a miserable betrothal to a shit king, a first failed marriage and a nightmarish second one, she had been sure she was done with men. But Tyrion was special. He had earned her respect and compassion back in King's Landing. He always was kind to her and treated her with deference and a politeness very few people showed her far from the North. She was still a girl then and in that snake pit that the Red Keep was, she was too stressed and crushed to appreciate much her husband's qualities. A husband that had been imposed to her, no matter how good-natured he was and that he hadn't wished that marriage either. She felt as trapped as ever.
But in spite of all, they forged a fragile friendship. Sansa sensed she could rely on him to a certain level. He tried to make her life a little more bearable, and she knew he wasn't responsible for his family's atrocities. He failed to comfort her because she didn't le him in, and she tried to help him with small gestures when his family humiliated him. That was the extent of their relationship.
Years later, he returned with the dragon queen, and Sansa's hackles raised. She distrusted the self-proclaimed queen, daughter of the Mad King. Tyrion's smart mind had been recently oversmarted time and again and Sansa didn't know what to feel. She still respected him and although they were almost like strangers after those years apart, they were acquainted with each other in ways complete strangers weren't.
They started to talk again from time to time while his stay in Winterfell for the battle against the Night King. He didn't look at her like a girl anymore. He looked at her like a grown woman and that fact frightened her and stirred something foreign in her. Her self-confidence and straightforward manners (qualities that had been nonexistent or hidden during her miserable time in King's Landing) seemed to add to his admiration.
For her part, once freed from the burdens of her tribulations as a hostage and prisoner, she could fully appreciate his virtues as a man. He was clever (one of the cleverest she had met, despite his mistakes and miscalculations), brave and had a strong sense of honour. He was very funny, witty and loyal to those he loved or who he considered his family and friends. He and Jaime were quite alike in those features.
She wouldn't have guessed in a million years that one day she would come to deeply appreciate the Lannister brothers the way she currently did.
Jaime was like a brother-in-law. He was completely devoted to Brienne and made her very happy. That had melted her initial reservations.
And Tyrion... She would be lying to herself if she said that she didn't look forward to his visit. She missed him. His letters were like a balm to her spirit and they also challenged her intelligence and her skills as a queen and as a person. A ruler himself (or the closest he could be, being Hand), he had ample experience and valuable advice to offer and it helped her a lot to perform her difficult duties.
But he not only wrote to inform her about the state of affairs in the rest of the kingdoms or to give advice. He shared thoughts and impressions about a varied range of topics. He described a breathtaking sunset over the Blackwater, what reminded him of the marvelous sunsets he watched from Casterly Rock as a boy. He once even told her he had seen on the streets a tall young woman with vibrant red hair who looked very much like her from behind. But when she turned around, her face was all wrong and her eyes weren't blue.
He wrote about the music he liked and books he had read. She knew he was a relentless reader. That brought the bittersweet memory of her mother ordering a large supply of candles for the library when King Robert, the Lannisters and their entourage visitied Winterfell a lifetime ago. Tyrion's reputation as a bookworm (along with other less complimentary traits) preceded him everywhere.
Ultimately, she had borrowed from the library some of the books he had recommended. To her relief, they weren't at all the typical sappy stories she liked so much in her childhood, about damsels in distress rescued by their gallant knights. The books Tyrion liked broached all kinds of subjects, fictional and from real life. Sansa had taken to reading them before going to sleep.
A certain younger Lannister used to do that in their chambers in the Red Keep and she understood why. It was a way of evading himself from the shit his family threw at him almost daily.
Well, he would be in front of her, flesh and blood, that same day and her heart was as eager as panicked. Fear battled with excitement in her insides. She tried to strengthen herself with her self-encouraging sentence: the best way of tackling anything is by looking at it directly and stepping forward to the source of our fear. And time would tell.
Much more calm, she finished her tea and walked next to Brienne toward the training yards, in order to watch her sworn sword, Jaime, Pod and the soldiers in action. And that also provided her with an excuse to be near the gates.
