Tyrion
Maybe we should have stayed married. He had spoken earnestly enough to Lady Sansa. He thought he saw something behind her eyes as he said it. But he wasn't sure what that something could be.
Tyrion sat alone in his chambers at Winterfell, a place he never imagined he would ever be again. He would be leaving soon with Daenerys Targaryen and her envoy to travel back to Dragonstone. Tyrion sat on a wooden bench, staring into the flames of the fireplace. The air was so cold inside the castle. A few days prior he imagined that he might die at Winterfell. The army of the dead marched on the castle at Winterfell. And Tyrion was made to feel useless. He ought to have been out there, fighting. He said as much, but Lady Sansa-she told him if he were out there he would die. Maybe she was right.
Lady Sansa, Tyrion thought, now she was a woman grown. When he wed her she was a sweet girl of fourteen. He swore that he would protect her. She seemed like a beautiful but frail exotic bird. But she was strong-she had to have been.
"You want to fuck that Stark girl, but you don't want to admit it," Tyrion remembered Bronn's words. She was a child. A tall child. A tall child with an astoundingly long and graceful neck. Sansa was beautiful. Anyone could see that. She was tall, and thin, and graceful, and smelled as sweet as jasmine. She had rich auburn hair and eyes as deep and blue as the sea. She was a tall, thin and graceful child, and he was a man-grown. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to keep her safe. But that was then, and this is now.
Now Sansa is a woman grown. Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell. Where once she was soft and sweet, she has grown hard, and cold. Her armour of courtesy has been replaced by something else, something as far removed as The Wall.
"And now my watch begins," Tyrion smiles as he pours another goblet of wine. He toasted Sansa with those words on their wedding night. He promised her that he would never share her bed, until she wanted him to. Her reply sliced as cleanly through his pride as the axe that had given him the scar that now marked his face.
"What if I never want you to?" Sansa could never love him. Sansa would never love him. He was a monster. He was a foul, misshapen lump of a man, a shame to his father, "the imp." Not even fit to be Lord of Casterly Rock, after his brother Jaime joined the Kingsguard.
Sansa, who wore her courtesy like armor-Sansa, who grew to be woman with a spine of Valyrian steel-would never-
In the crypts, it seemed as if they might die together. What an irony. A beauty, and a beast forced together by circumstance. For a moment, in her fear, Tyrion saw the little bird he remembered. There was a softness in her face. Her eyes were wet, and vulnerable and he wanted to reach out to her and caress her face.
He did not. He took her gloved hand into his own and he kissed it. He wanted to give her something, some comfort, some respect, some devotion as they looked towards uncertainty and death. As he kissed her hand he saw her eyes survey his face, and linger on his mouth. He wanted to reach up and grab her face. He wanted to kiss her on the mouth.
He thought to himself. I could be good to her.