Something that ought to have lain there unnoticed Chapter 2, an a song of ice and fire fanfic

Sansa screams more from the shock than the pain, because the severing is… Almost painless.

That is the actual act of severing. The realisation that her bond with Elorian is irrevocably changed, however, is the single most excruciating thing she has ever experienced in her life.

She all but throws Sweetrobin away from her, ignoring the horrified looks of the Lords Declarant as she scrambles awkwardly to her feet (she sprained her wrist or maybe broke it, she's not sure, but it's hard to push up off the floor) and rushes across the too-wide space between her and Elorian, who stands frozen across the way on the far side of the Weirwood Throne, watching her with maddened, desperate eyes the green-brown colour of sunshine in the wolfswood.

Elorian is no longer a magpie. They say traumatic experiences can cause a settled daemon to change shape, and what could be more traumatic than being severed?

She remembers her aunt as Lysa held her out the Moon Door and, as she buries her face in the warmth of Elorian's thick fur, Sansa wonders if mayhaps she and Elorian would have been better off dying then. She cannot imagine what it is she did to deserve all this pain, all this suffering – her family, her home, now Elorian, taken from her every one – but surely an end would just be easier.

Elorian leans into her, snarling over her shoulder at the men and women watching them, and Sansa wonders if he is a direwolf now because, in saving her cousin, in finally doing the truly honourable thing, she has proved herself a Stark.

It is a cruel jape to have done so just as she is ruined in the most important way of all. House Stark will truly end with her now, because no man will marry a severed woman. Nobody knows for certain, but there are superstitions and rumours and hearsay about severed folk, universally accepted knowledge that people who have been severed cannot have healthy children, that there will be something wrong with their children's daemons, a wrongness that will never come right.

Because of Petyr Baelish and his plans and his friends, House Stark will die with Sansa, and that more than anything lends her the strength she needs to straighten her spine and stop her tears. She will not let it be said that House Stark died in weakness.

"Alayne, sweetling, come with me," Petyr says in that oily, unctuous voice of his, and she wants to scream and rage and hit out at him for daring to presume to replace her father, because Ned Stark was the best of men and he was murdered, murdered for being a good man, and Petyr Baelish is many things but a good man is not one of them. "Come with me, poppet-"

Sansa does not scream and rage and hit out at Petyr. Instead, she cradles her broken wrist (it is broken, she thinks, for she cannot move her fingers properly and it is swollen and red and purple and quite horrible to look at) to her chest and, with Elorian's help, rises slowly to her feet.

"No," she says, shaking her head and standing strong, even though she wants nothing more than to curl around Elorian and weep because everything is different and it hurts so terribly. "I will go to the maester and have him set my wrist, if it please you, my lord."

"I will accompany you," he says, moving towards her, but she steps back and Elorian's snarls gain a vicious, violent edge. "Alayne-"

"Excuse me," she says, and she strides as confidently as she can manage towards the doors even though every inch of her is numb save for her heart, which aches and aches and feels empty, and when she is at the door she realises that she is alone. Elorian is still standing at the foot of the Weirwood Throne snarling at Petyr, and Sansa calls him quietly and waits for him to catch her up before taking her leave with a curtsy.

No, no man will ever marry a severed woman. Petyr's plans are in ruins now, she knows, although doubtless he has some plot or other in place to counteract her misfortune.

The maester sets her wrist and pointedly avoids looking at Elorian, and while it angers Sansa she knows that there is no point in being angry with anyone. Why, only an hour before she would have reacted similarly to being forced into close quarters with someone who had been severed, after all.

As she calms – the poppy's milk helps, she thinks, settling back against her pillows and holding her arms wide for Elorian to come lie beside her – she realises that while the pain of the severing is still there, so is Elorian. He feels different, less a part of her and more a reflection of her, but he is still there, still nestled right inside her heart with Mother and Father and Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon, and even Jon Snow.

She does not think the ache will ever fade, not truly, but she thinks that mayhaps if she must live with it as a part of her, she can, just so long as she has Elorian still.

She sleeps and sleeps and awakes feeling famished.

She chooses to lie abed for a moment, though, testing the heavy pain in her chest where her old bond with Elorian lay, matching it against the soft warmth where her new bond with him rests. With the two in balance, she almost thinks she can manage – it is like when she was in King's Landing, balancing her fear and pain and grief with her hopes of Robb's victory, of Joffrey's death, of her escape.

She calls for her maid to come help – there is no chance of her being able to manage her hair, not with her right wrist splinted and feeling swollen and sore under the heavy wrap of bandages – but no one comes. It strikes her as odd until Elorian huffs in disgust and jumps down off the bed and makes his way out into the antechamber.

Ah. So the maids are afraid to come near her because of what yesterday. Mayhaps Randa would help, Randa who is not afraid of anything-

"Good morning, sweetling," Petyr says, pushing the door open wide and patting Elorian's head as he passes (it's as if the change in their bond has made the disgust at being touched even worse, even more acute, and she can hardly bear to stand while Petyr's hand is on Elorian's fur). "How do you feel?"

"Well," she says curtly, moving back until her knees hit the edge of her bed. She refuses to sit, though, even though she wishes she could curl up and hide as much of herself as she can, because Petyr's greedy gaze makes her feel as if he can see right through her nightgown. "I am well, my lord. My maid, though, she is missing. I need her if I am to dress and fix my hair-"

"I will send a maid," he says, tucking a loose curl of hair behind her ear. "That was quite the performance yesterday, my dear."

"Ser Lyn was going to kill Robert-"

Petyr laughs, shakes his head and laughs quietly as if she is being particularly obtuse.

"My dearest girl, Ser Lyn was not going to kill Sweetrobin," he chides. "You were very brave, and you have paid a terrible price for that bravery. It was a ruse, to inspire the Lords Declarant to take my side – I am truly sorry for your pain."

He is truly sorry that his plans are ruined by her pain, she knows, but she says nothing. If she says nothing, mayhaps he will leave her be.

"Does it hurt terribly?" he asks softly, catching her chin and turning her face to his. "Do you feel broken?"

It hurts like nothing she has ever known, and Sansa has known a great deal of pain these past moons.

"I do not feel broken because I am not broken," she says, jerking away from his sharply and frowning. "I would be grateful if you could send a maid, my lord. You should not be here."

"Can a father not visit his daughter after she has been hurt?" he asks easily, and Sansa cannot stop a bubble of hysterical incredulity from bursting past her lips as a laugh. The Starks took the direwolf as their sigil because for years beyond counting they and only they have had direwolves for daemons. Sansa has never heard so much as a rumour of anyone else having a direwolf daemon, and despite Elorian's unusual colouring – shades of brown and russet and copper, sunset and firelight and autumn, somewhere between the colour of her hair and Arya's, a Tully-Stark if ever there was one – he is undoubtedly a direwolf.

"I have reason to believe that having been severed may have restored Elorian's ability to shift," he says, and Sansa shakes her head without even thinking – she may not be quite so completely a part of Elorian anymore, but she knows with absolute certainty that he will hold this shape until the day they die. "No? Are you quite sure, my sweet?"

"Elorian is settled," she says firmly, and it is his turn to shake his head.

"Rogar," he reminds her, patting her cheek in a gesture that might have been fatherly had he not followed it with a kiss to her mouth. "And you are Alayne. Never forget that, sweetling, not now when things are so delicate."

"Unless Lyanna Stark rose from the grave and bore your bastard, I cannot see how the girl is yours, Lord Baelish," Bronze Yohn Royce says flatly, his eagle – a beautiful bird, strong and powerful and terrifying in her loveliness – staring straight into Baresse's eyes until Petyr's usually shameless cuckoo quails and turns away. "There's never been any but Starks with direwolves, and that," he says, pointing to Elorian where he sits at Sansa's side, ruff standing on end because since the day in the High Hall he has been furiously defensive (Sansa knows that it is because he blames himself for their having been severed, because he warned her of Ser Lyn's intentions, so she curls her fingers into his fur to sooth him as best she can and meets Lord Royce's eyes when he looks to her), "is most certainly a direwolf. The size gives it away even if the teeth didn't."

Elorian gives Petyr his toothiest smile, all fangs and sharp edges and fatal points, and Sansa strokes his ear affectionately. They say nothing, though, merely sit and await the judgement of the Lords of the Vale. They are fully aware that it is likely they will be sent back to King's Landing to face trial for regicide, but Sansa finds that she almost doesn't care anymore – she has been told of Cersei's travails since she has been in the Vale, and while she did not take pleasure in the Queen's pain she did feel a certain satisfaction that she thinks her father would have disapproved of in knowing that Cersei has been humbled. She could face the Queen now without flinching, she knows, and to think that Cersei might even flinch to face her – because Sansa, oh, Sansa is a greater freak even than the Queen who lay with her twin and bore his children now that she has been severed – gives her a perverse sort of amusement.

She is prepared to face her fate, and she knows that Elorian is, too. Whatever the Lords Declarant decide, she will abide by – it cannot possibly be worse than remaining here, playing at being Alayne. It cannot.

At dinner that night, she asks the irrepressible Randa, who gamely sits at Sansa's side and does her best not to flinch, how to strip dye from hair.

Randa's eyes slide to Elorian, sitting on Sansa's other side with his chin on the table, the better to glare poisonously at Petyr and Baresse across the way, and then she gives Sansa a quizzical look.

"So it's true, then," she says, tilting her head and grinning. "To think, I've been giving Sansa Stark advice for the wedding bed. We'll strip your hair tomorrow – what colour is it really?"

"Red," Sansa says. "Tully red."

Petyr watches her from across the table, ignoring Elorian's gaze even as Baresse hides from it, and she matches him stare for stare.

It is his fault that she and Elorian were hurt as they were. Let him deal with the consequences on his actions now.

She cries when Randa rinses her hair in that foul concoction for the fifth time and the last of the brown washes away.

"It'll be lovely dry, I'd say," Randa says, rubbing vigorously at Sansa's scalp with a length of linen to remove any residue. "Such a bright colour."

Sansa looks more like her mother than ever, she can see that herself when she looks in the mirror, and Elorian licks her cheek in shared grief as they remember sitting at Mother's dressing table as she combed Sansa's hair and Aridail fidgeted affectionately at Elorian.

Sansa doubts that she will ever have children of her own, daughters whose hair she might comb and sons who she might cheer on in the practice yard, and that makes the memories of her parents all the more painful.

Word reaches the Vale, shut off though it is, of a boy with red hair and blue eyes and a daemon settled early beyond all reckoning, a daemon settled in the shape of a direwolf, found among wildlings on Skagos and brought home to the North, and Sansa dismisses it out of hand. Theon killed Bran and Rickon, and she must train all her attention on the Lords Declarant as they attempt to come to a decision on what to do with her.

But they take a very long time to decide, and the rumours persist, and for the first time in such a long time, Sansa dares to hope. Could Rickon have escaped? Is it possible? If Rickon escaped, could Bran maybe have escaped too?

Sansa hopes even though she knows she shouldn't, and when she does, the ache in her chest eases the smallest amount and Elorian seems the tiniest fragment less angry.

When Lord Royce – Yohn, not Nestor, Sansa does not trust Nestor because he and Petyr are too close for her liking – asks Sansa if he might speak with her in private, she does not hesitate to say yes. Lord Yohn strikes Sansa as the kind of man her father would have liked, and that is the only sort of recommendation Sansa is willing to take nowadays.

"These rumours about one of your brothers having been found," he says without preamble. "If they are true, we will send you to White Harbour. We cannot keep you here, my lady, but we are reluctant to send you to King's Landing. It was a bad business, what was done to your family, a bad business all round, and we have no desire to see House Stark eradicated. Many of us remember your father from his time here in the Vale, my lady, and we all remember how fond of him Jon Arryn was. We'll see you as close to home as we can if these rumours are true."

She thanks him, carefully and politely and demurely as Septa Mordane taught her, the manners polished and honed to a razor-precision in King's Landing coming out reflexively. He smiles, and even if his eyes flit warily to Elorian Sansa thinks that his smile is probably genuine. She hopes it is, anyways.

Petyr comes to her one night, breath smelling of Arbor red and peppermint, and he comes so quietly that Sansa and Elorian, dozing by the fire, do not hear him.

"How sweet," he murmurs, reaching out and running his hand through Elorian's fur, again and again, from the top of Elorian's skull to the base of his tail. Both Sansa and Elorian are frozen in stunned horror, too shocked to so much as move, and Petyr seems to take their lack of reaction as consent.

"You look more like your mother every day, sweetling," he says, dropping to his knees on the hearthrug beside her, hand still moving over Elorian's back. "You have her hair, her eyes, her voice…"

"I am not her," Sansa chokes out. "I am not my mother."

"You could be," he says, and when he lifts a hand to Sansa's face and strokes her cheek she sees how drunk he truly is – he would never usually lay himself bare like this, would never let her see how vulnerable he is before her because she is so like her mother. "You could be mine as she should have been."

Sansa recoils like a shot from that, darting away as quickly as she can and running, not waiting for Elorian but instead running to Sweetrobin's room where she prays Petyr will not try to harm her.

Elorian follows her a moment later, his hackles risen and his lips pulled back in a snarl that would frighten Sansa were he not a part of her, and together they make their way to Sweetrobin's rooms and leave Petyr to his sick dreams.

She finds out the reason for his visitation the following morning.

The boy in White Harbour is Rickon, Wylis Manderly writes, and Sansa is so overjoyed that she cannot even react. She freezes, staring blankly at the scrap of parchment Lord Yohn handed to her as she tries to come to terms with the revelation that she is not alone, that she is not the last of her family left, and she hears people whisper that it must be true, that severed folk don't have emotions.

Sansa dismisses that, because if anything, since being severed it is as if she feels everything more, or perhaps deeper. She does not know, but she knows that whoever it was who spoke is wrong and that is all that matters, because Rickon is alive.

"I must leave as soon as possible," she says at last, looking up to Lord Yohn and smiling tremulously, feeling suddenly close to tears. "My brother will need me, my lord. I must leave soon."

Sansa cannot remember having ever been in White Harbour, but underneath the salt-and-sea smell there is something sharp and clear and cold and clean, something of home, and the pangs of grief that threaten to cripple her as she steps into memories of her family are tinged with a sweetness that she has not known in so long, because she has not been anywhere or known anything of home in such a very long time.

Ser Wylis Manderly is fat, but his daughters are not and they are the ones who make Sansa welcome, quiet Wynafryd and green-haired Wylla, although they, like everyone else, seem not to know what to make of Sansa and Elorian, who has gotten into the habit of wandering too far from her side for everyone else's comfort.

None of them matter when Rickon comes tearing into the great hall with leaves in his hair and muck on his breeches and runs to her, throws himself at her and wraps his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist and just hugs her tight, refuses to let her go, and when he calls her Sanny, Sanny because he couldn't say Sansa when last he saw her and doesn't remember that it's wrong, she presses her face into his shoulder and squeezes as tight as she can, because more than the smell of the North, Rickon is home.

He looks so like Bran and Robb and Mother that her heart clenches, and Sephiel ("Sephie settled, Sanny!") is so like Galia that Elorian does a double take, but none of that matters because baby Rickon is alive, and Sansa is not alone anymore.

The Manderlys want to restore the Starks to Winterfell, and in seeking to see that happen they have bound the North to Stannis Baratheon.

Lord Davos Seaworth is a plain sort of man, a commoner by birth, but he is one of the first people Sansa has met since the incident who does not take exception to her and Elorian's state of being – Rickon is another, of course, and his wildling minder, Osha, seems to bear some strange sort of respect for Sansa – which means she likes him immediately.

He is as ferociously loyal to Stannis Baratheon as Sansa is to Rickon – he is so little to be Lord Stark, the Lord Stark, the Stark in Winterfell – and Sansa finds that she actually enjoys his company, because he is so unfailingly honest and sensible.

She thinks that her father would approve of her and Rickon supporting Lord Stannis – King Stannis – for the throne, and she spares only a fleeting thought for poor little Tommen who will die for wearing a crown if Stannis is victorious.

Sansa wakes up screaming from her nightmares for the fifth night in a row to find Rickon and Sephiel standing at the foot of her bed, hair and fur alike mussed from sleep.

"Are you having bad dreams, Sanny?" Rickon asks, serious as the grave with his furrowed brow and earnest eyes and pouty little mouth.

Sansa can only nod, because she's afraid if she opens her mouth to speak she'll sob and she does not want Rickon to see her so distressed.

He considers her for a moment, and then he nods firmly.

"I'll keep them away," he declares, and that's that – he climbs into bed beside her, leaving Sephiel to curl up with Elorian at the foot of the bed, and tugs impatiently at her hand until she lies down so he can snuggle against her side.

It is an absurdly simple solution, but on the nights Rickon sleeps beside her, Sansa has no nightmares.

Of course, the peace of White Harbour can only be a brief respite from the hell that Sansa's life has become, and within two weeks of sitting with Rickon and Wynafryd and Wylla, Sansa is being handed a missive from Stannis addressed to Lady Lannister, calling her Rickon's regent, and suddenly she is thrown back into the game that she thought she had escaped.

And Petyr. Petyr is back, because somehow he has managed to convince Stannis of his worth via letters, although Sansa can't imagine what he could have said-

At least Rickon detests Petyr so openly that all Sansa has to do to avoid him is stay with her brother, which truly is no great chore. Rickon was always wild, like Arya, but now he is practically feral, and there is much to be done to make him a fit Lord of Winterfell once more.

It does help that he bit Petyr so hard his hand bled on the first day, and that Petyr goes out of his way to avoid Rickon ever since.

Still, Rickon is abed early in the evening, and while Sansa likes Wynafryd and Wylla she also likes to have some small amount of time to herself, to sit with Elorian and remember before, and Petyr finds her during one of those moments.

"You took your leave of the Vale so quickly that I did not have a chance to say farewell, sweetling," he says, smiling even as she vaults out of her chair and backs against the wall. Elorian's growl rumbles deep in his chest and vibrates off the walls of their little solar as Petyr slinks closer.

"My brother had need of me," she says, proud of how level her voice is despite the way her heart is throbbing painfully in her chest, and she is this close to panicking. "The North had need of me."

"And now you are in line to be one of the most powerful women in the realm," he says, and Baresse dances along the arm of Sansa's chair and bops up onto Elorian's shoulder, dodging around Elorian's snapping jaws. "Congratulations, my dear."

"Rickon needs a regent," she says shortly, stretching out a hand to rest on Elorian's hip, trying to calm him. "May I help you with something, my lord?"

"You seem more at home here, I admit," he says, easing himself down into her chair, lifting her cup of tea and sniffing at it. "Hmm, no… Special brews?"

"Just chamomile," she tells him, scratching through the thicket above Elorian's hip as he starts to snarl again. How dare Petyr insinuate that she might need something more powerful than chamomile tea? Does he think her too insipid to understand what he was implying? "It helps me sleep."

"They say your husband has made a place for himself in the Dragon Queen's court," he says, settling back and smiling up at her. "If she truly does come to Westeros, you will be even more powerful than I could have engineered."

Sansa swallows, Elorian snarls, Petyr smirks, Baresse fiddles at the fur on Elorian's shoulder until Petyr beckons her away.

"I think you should leave now, my lord," Sansa says quite firmly, and Petyr might have objected had Elorian's growl not been echoed suddenly by Sephiel's.

Rickon stands in the door, hand twisted into Sephiel's ruff, and glares at Petyr with so much hatred in his silver-blue eyes that he looks older by far than his five short years.

"I heard Elorian," he says. "Are you well, Sanny?"

"I am, sweetling," she promises him, nudging Elorian ahead of her as she crosses the room to her brother. "Come, let us to bed, hmm? Mayhaps you can read to me from the book Lady Wynafryd gave you yesterday."

She takes Rickon's hand and lets him lead her away down the halls, leaving Petyr and the sick twisting in her stomach at memories of his hands in Elorian's fur behind her.

The North remembers, she is told again and again, but sometimes Sansa wishes she could forget.

Rickon is so angry, angrier even than Elorian is, and when he finally boils over and throws the most incredible tantrum Sansa has ever seen (even Arya's tantrums were never this violent) before sobbing fat tears of anguish and clinging to her, demanding to know why Mother and Father and Robb and Jon and Bran and Arry are gone, where are they Sanny, why are we here and they're not, why are we not in Winterfell, Sansa's heart breaks for him. She remembers how he was before, running as fast as his little legs would carry him after the older boys, trying to clamber up the walls after Bran, begging Arya to bring him with her when she took her horse and sneaked out to ride with Jon…

Now he is angry and sad and gods, she misses everyone and everything that was taken from them so much that she wishes she could wrap him up and hide from the world if only that would make the pain hurt a little less.

Jon arrives one day completely unannounced, and Sansa is so startled that she cannot speak for three whole days, can only cling to his hand and smile teary smiles as he sits with Rickon on his knee, asleep against his chest, and tells her of wildlings and elections and red women and kings and knives in the dark.

Seeing him again is just as sweet as she supposed it would be while hiding in the Eyrie.

Jon is much changed, but Ghost is still Ghost and Sansa takes comfort in that, just as she knows Rickon does. Jon looks at Elorian oddly sometimes, but it is not the discomfort most people watch her daemon with and so she asks him.

"When I was with the wildlings," he says, "there was a woman I… I knew. She told me about their ways. Sometimes, when someone wishes to prove themself strong enough to be a leader among the Free Folk, they go to a place high up in the Frostfangs where daemons cannot go, and they… they cross into that place."

Sansa's breath hitches.

"They don't call it severing," he rushes to explain. "They think severing is an abomination, and anyone who severs another person is killed immediately-"

"I am an abomination, then?"

"No! No, Sansa, no, they think the act of severing is an abomination, not people who have been severed – in fact, I think they'd regard you highly for surviving it. It shows how strong you are, Sansa."

To think that she would be considered strong among the wildlings makes Sansa oddly proud, and to think that Jon considers her strong makes her feel that it might be true.

The whole of the North is in chaos, Sansa knows that, but still it shocks her when Jon and his wildlings prepare to leave White Harbour once more.

"We only came because I insisted I wanted to see you and Rickon," he admits. "Now that the Watch will not let me retake my vows, and Lady Mormont and Lord Glover have delivered Robb's will, Stannis is insisting that I take Winterfell."

Which frees Rickon, lets him be a child. Sansa can almost feel her mother's ghost staring hatefully at Jon as they embrace before he mounts up, and her heart throbs painfully as she twists a hand into Elorian's fur and links her other fingers with Rickon's, and together they watch the last Stark-looking Stark left ride off to battle.

It does not take as long as Sansa expected, but then, the Greyjoys and the Boltons took Winterfell so quickly that she heard the two reports barely weeks apart.

The North declares for Stannis Baratheon, the Stark in Winterfell glowering his bannermen into submission when any dare to raise an objection, and Sansa and Rickon stand behind Jon and to the right, Elorian and Sephiel flanking them and growling in harmony, a low rumble of grief-filled threat that dares anyone to tell them that Winterfell cannot be restored, that the North cannot be restored.

Rickon sleeps in Sansa's bed that night, and somewhere near to morning she wakes to find Jon lying on the other side of Rickon, wide awake with tears on his cheeks. Their daemons, all three, are curled together at the foot of the bed, and Sansa is reminded forcefully of the stormy nights when she and Robb and Jon and Arya and Bran and Rickon would pile into Father's bed, Father's because Mother would never have allowed Jon to come into her bed.

She wipes the tears from Jon's cheeks and smiles, smoothes his hair and pets the dark curls until he drifts off to sleep. He pouts just like Rickon in his sleep, she notes, and with Rickon curled against her chest and her hand still resting on Jon's curls, Sansa lets herself sleep.

She wakes up to her brothers leaning over her, Rickon patting frantically at her cheek and Jon looking horrified.

"I- What- I-"

"You had a bad dream, Sanny," Rickon says, his cheeks pale and his eyes huge in his face. "A very bad dream." His lower lip trembles then, and tears fill his eyes. "I couldn't keep this one away, Sanny."

It was a very bad dream, Petyr and Joffrey together with Elorian between them, and her in a wedding dress with a Lannister cloak around her shoulders and manacles of Valyrian steel around her wrists and ankles and a collar around her throat, and there had been so much pain, so much agony-

"You wouldn't wake," Jon says quietly, reaching across her to sooth Rickon. "No matter what we did, we couldn't wake you."

No, she is not surprised by that, because her nightmares never relinquish their hold on her until they reached their finale, until Joffrey and Petyr had savaged Elorian so terribly that had it not been for their bond Sansa would not have known him-

She pushes Jon out of the way and darts to her washbowl to throw up.

"The Red Woman says that I may not be your brother," Jon says over the morning meal later that week. "I… I was dead, Sansa. I died, and she brought me back in her fires."

"If not our brother, then who?" she asks, completely perplexed. Jon is an even more serious, quieter model of her father, from his dark eyes to the way he sets his jaw when he's about to engage an opponent in the practice yard to the way he swings Rickon easily up onto his shoulders just to hear him laugh. "Who else could you be but a Stark?"

Jon hesitates, not looking up from his porridge, and then sighs.

"Lord Reed sent a letter with Lady Mormont," he says. "She said he told her to give it to me, that it would… That it would tell me the truth of who my mother is. I was wondering if you would sit with me tonight while I read it, Sansa."

She sits with Jon as he reads Howland Reed's letter, and she holds him as he sobs for the life that has been a lie from his very first day.

Inevitably, word of Jon's true parentage spreads despite their best efforts, and the whispers follow that mayhaps Jon is the one who should sit the Iron Throne, the true Targaryen heir.

He finds every man who says this and does his best to break their jaws, and it takes all of Sansa's efforts to calm him.

Rickon seems to have gotten into the habit of biting people who displease him during his time among the wildlings (Wynafryd writes that Petyr's hand has yet to heal properly, and that makes Sansa laugh) and so there are plenty who call Jon "Blackfyre" who end up in the maester's rooms to have bloody crescents cleaned and bandaged.

Sansa always makes sure to find lemoncakes for Rickon when she sees a man leaving the maester's rooms scratching at his bandages. Jon is theirs, regardless of what anyone thinks or who his father was, and she will defy anyone who says otherwise.

The man who claims to be Aegon Targaryen and his hissing cobra daemon say otherwise, it would seem, and they expect to be listened to.

Aegon comes to Winterfell himself, having claimed the Stormlands and Dragonstone and much of the coast, demanding that Jon offer proof of his blood and demanding that they bend the knee to their rightful king.

"How are we to know that you are who you say you are?" Jon points out. "Stannis Baratheon is the rightful heir to Robert Baratheon, and therefore he is our rightful king."

They fight, Jon and Aegon, and when Jon wins and stands with one boot on Aegon's throat, Sansa wonders if mayhaps he will kill this man who might be his brother.

But of course not, because he is Jon, so he takes a step back and offers Aegon a hand and pulls him to his feet. They closet themselves away in Jon's solar that night, just the two of them, and the next morning they seem to have come to a sort of uneasy truce.

But when Jon refuses to allow Aegon to name him his heir, Prince of Dragonstone, and refuses to bend the knee, the truce is broken.

Jon swore allegiance to Stannis Baratheon, and Targaryen bastard or no, he is still a Stark, still Ned Stark's son, and he will not break his word.

It matters little, because when Daenerys Targaryen and her army arrive on ships taken from Victarion Greyjoy with dragons screaming in the skies above them, she will suffer no pretenders to her throne.

Her daemon is an exquisite silvery-white horse, and Sansa knows immediately that they are like she and Elorian – there is a difference in the way people like them, people who have been severed, behave around their daemons, no longer needing to check that they are close together because distance has no bearing on their bond any longer – and so she is not surprised when Artel stays in Winterfell when Daenerys mounts her dragon and rides north to the Wall.

Everyone avoids Artel, even Rickon who is so brave at everything and so accepting of Elorian, but Elorian says that Daenerys' daemon is lonely, so Sansa visits him in the godswood where he retreats away from staring eyes and frightened whispers.

She learns a great many things from Artel. She learns, for example, that all Dothraki have horse daemons, and that Artel had settled as a fire-lizard before Daenerys married Khal Drogo (he does not say what happened to cause him to change, and Sansa accepts that without comment). She learns that Aegon's death was slow and painful, because he (like Quentyn Martell, she is told) tried to claim one of Daenerys' dragons and burned for his presumption. She learns that Daenerys may never have children because of a magi's curse, and even if Jon refuses to be her heir his children will be in line for the Iron Throne.

She learns that Tyrion and Kalise rode straight for the Wall, but that Tyrion strongly desires to speak with her should he survive the ordeal that awaits them.

It is Osha who finally explains to Sansa what precisely they are fighting at the Wall.

"White Walkers," Osha says, voice hushed as if just by naming the creatures she is summoning them. "The Others. They takes your daemon, and then they kills you and brings you back as one of their wights. But they always sucks away your daemon first, and you're left empty and dried out like someone what's been-"

Someone what's been severed, Sansa knows, but Osha glances at Elorian in that respectful way she has before continuing.

"They don't sleep," she says. "They don't rest, they don't stop. Only thing what stops 'em is fire or dragonglass or dragonsteel."

Jon is fighting these things that may take Ghost from him, Jon and dozens of others. Good men and women who have lives and families and things that make them important, many of whom will die thankless deaths.

Sansa feels very small and useless indeed, sitting here in the warmth and safety of Winterfell's slowly regrowing walls.

Jon returns riding a dragon, separate but not severed from Ghost and riding a dragon, and Sansa thinks she might choke on how much she wishes Howland Reed had been wrong.

Still, Jon runs forward and scoops Rickon up to say hello, embraces Sansa tightly and presses a kiss to her hair, and Ghost bounds across the yard and tackles Elorian and Sephiel and they roll about, a growling, squeaking mass of fur, and Jon is still Jon, still a Stark no matter that a dragon obeys him and the Queen claims him as her nephew. He will always be a Stark in all the ways that matter.

He is not alone, of course, and Sansa is sure to greet Daenerys and Tyrion as visiting dignitaries, nothing more, and carefully neglects to greet Tyrion as her husband.

She is as appalled as Jon by the condition of Daenerys' most important prisoners, and calls for the maester to come to Stannis Baratheon and his daughter, ushers Shireen inside and sends for a bath, for clean clothes, for furs, beckons the maester in a panic Shireen's greyscale oozes, wonders how Daenerys could bear to see a child suffer this way.

Shireen's daemon, Eubellum, has not yet settled, but he seems to prefer the shape of a young buck (no antlers yet, Sansa notes, distantly amused as she tends Shireen and half-listens to the nonsense Rickon is cheerfully blathering from his spot at the foot of Shireen's bed), the most Baratheon of daemons – Sansa remembers that Myrcella's daemon alternated between an exceptionally lovely lion whose mane she braided with black ribbons, and a delicately antlered stag who always seemed just small enough to follow the princess around the Red Keep unhindered. Sansa wonders if Myrcella's daemon ever takes the shape of a stag anymore, and hopes for Myrcella's sake that he does not.

Shireen recovers quickly enough – she is young and, despite the greyscale scarring and the frostbite on her toes and fingers and the tips of her ears, strong, and so all it takes is a few days of hearty meals and warm furs by the fire to have her back to herself, and she and Rickon sit together and talk animatedly about ghosts and pirates and all manner of things that Sansa thinks are probably inappropriate for children to speak of. She and Jon often stand together in the door of what was once Father's solar, now Jon's, and watch Shireen and Rickon chatting, and she finds herself oddly content, considering the dangers that are visiting at Winterfell.

Shireen shies away from Elorian more than is necessary to be polite, but Sansa can overlook that considering Shireen never shies away from her.

There are three main dangers within the walls of Winterfell now, three dangers brought back from war at the Wall, and they are not fire-breathing dragons.

One of those dangers is dying, Sansa knows, but still she makes a point of personally checking on Shireen's father twice a day.

He took a terrible injury at the Wall, a blade of whatever the Others armed their wights with cutting deep into his gut, and no matter what the maesters try it has no effect, makes no difference. Sansa wishes that there was something she could do, for Shireen's sake, but as it is all she can do is ensure Lord Stannis is as comfortable as possible and in as little pain as they can manage.

He dies in the early morning, his doe – spare muscle and bone under faded skin – nuzzling Shireen's Eubellum gently before disappearing in a gentle haze of golden stardust.

Shireen weeps for her father, and Lord Davos' eyes shine with tears he refuses to shed, but Daenerys seems relieved, which sickens Jon, who Sansa can see was fond of Stannis.

Daenerys is the second danger, but it is the third that Sansa fears the most.

Her lord husband steers clear of her for the first two weeks of his stay at Winterfell, somehow managing to avoid her even at mealtimes, but eventually the evening comes when Sansa looks up at a knock on her sitting room door to see Tyrion and Kalise skulking half in shadow, as if reluctant to bother her and Elorian.

"I see the rumours are true," he says, gesturing towards Elorian, sprawled carelessly on the window seat far on the other side of the room – he finds it too hot to sit by the fire in the evenings – and shaking his head. "Congratulations on surviving one more ordeal everyone probably assured you would kill any grown man."

She smiles slightly and motions for him to take the seat opposite her – Tyrion may have been as unhappy as she was in their marriage, but Kalise's behaviour towards Elorian ensured that Sansa knew he never harboured any ill-will towards her.

"You have done well in your absence," she says lightly, not looking up from her sewing – a new nightgown for Shireen, because she has so little that is truly appropriate for the North – when Tyrion chuckles quietly. "Hand of the Queen and a dragon rider besides. Congratulations, my lord."

Kalise goes as far as she comfortably can from Tyrion and watches Elorian enquiringly, matching how Tyrion watches Sansa.

"As soon as we take the capital, I will see that this farce is ended," he says after half an hour of small talk. "The Faith cannot stand over a marriage such as ours, especially considering…"

His eyes flit to Elorian and away, and Sansa sighs. No, the Faith would never expect him to remain married to someone who, by their teachings, has been broken away from the gods and, because Sansa has not been anointed with the seven holy oils, not been restored to them. She is ruined in the eyes of everyone in the south, and wonders if there might be some way for her to stay in the North.

The following morning, she regrets those thoughts.

"I cannot marry Jon," she says, amazed at Daenerys' request. "He is my brother."

And really, that is a poor argument to use against a Targaryen, but Daenerys' lip curls in amusement and she does not seem to take offence.

"Artel tells me that you wish to stay at Winterfell," Daenerys says, leaning back in her chair. "And Jon is not your brother, Sansa. He is your cousin."

"He is my brother," Sansa insists, disgusted at the thought of being Jon's wife. She is not ignorant to the whispers that trail in her and Jon's steps, of how like Father Jon is and how like Mother she is, how like Robb Rickon is, how they look almost like her parents and brother in the early days after the Rebellion, but she never took them seriously, never imagined anyone could possibly believe that she and Jon would actually marry.

Jon stands behind her chair, Elorian to her right and Ghost to her left, and Elorian snarls in Daenerys' direction when she says "There is no place for you in Winterfell if it is not as Jon's wife."

"There is always a place in Winterfell for any Stark who wants it," Jon says sharply, his fingers tight on the back of Sansa's chair as he glares fiercely at Daenerys. "Sansa and I will not marry, Daenerys."

"You were not her first choice of wife for me," Jon confides as he and Sansa sit in his solar late that night after they've seen Rickon and Shireen to bed. Jon is seven-and-ten, Sansa just gone sixteen, but they feel old, so old, and Sansa wonders if it shows in her eyes the way it does in Jon's.

"Who was?"

His smile is bitter and not a little disturbed.

"Herself," he tells her, and they both take a moment to digest this before bursting into peals of laughter at the absurdity of their situation.

Sansa and Rickon stay to hold Winterfell when Jon and Ghost head south with Daenerys and Tyrion and the dragons, and it seems so big and empty without Jon and Ghost. Sansa feels silly for missing him so much, but she cannot shake the fear that he will not come home, that it will be just her and Rickon left to hold Winterfell for the rest of her days.

Of course, her fears truly do seem silly when word of victory after victory trickles back, because she forgot to factor dragons into things when she worried.

It is after the most recent report – somewhere in the Westerlands, apparently, Tyrion has won a strategically important battle – that Sansa overhears the maids talking.

"Lady Stark never seems happy nor sad," the elder girl says, nose wrinkling. "She just is. I reckon it's 'cause of her being how she is with her daemon. S'not natural."

Sansa's fists clench. Listening to the girl, you'd almost think Sansa had asked to be severed from Elorian, to be given this ache to live with for her whole life, this ache that makes it so hard to get up in the morning, that makes it so hard for her to be normal unless she's with Rickon. What does this girl know of it, anyways, that she thinks she can speak and her opinion should matter?

"I've seen 'er angry," the younger girl disagrees. "Someone said summut about the scarred girl and Lady Stark lost 'er temper something shocking."

"Aye, she can be angry," the elder girl says with an air of such superiority that Sansa wants to slap her, "but that's not a good thing, is it? She's not right, I tells you. Something broke in her when they sliced her daemon away, I'm telling you."

It's not until Wynafryd arrived from White Harbour that Sansa learns the truth, learns that near everyone in the North thinks she's as broken as the kitchen girls do, that they only accept her as readily as they do because she's a Stark and Starks belong in the North, because she's Ned's girl and because they pity her.

She hates the idea of being pitied, and that only makes her more determined to hide how much it hurts to know that she is failing in hiding how hard it is to balance the pain of having been severed with enough good to stop herself from simply giving up.

It is harder to not give up when she and Elorian and Rickon and Sephiel are called south to witness the celebration of Daenerys' victory.

The one mercy is that their journey will ensure Rickon does not see the executions, because Sansa wishes to preserve what little of Rickon's innocence still lingers.

Shireen and Eubellum, recently settled and yes, as fine a stag as Sansa suspected he might be, ride with them, and if Shireen tucks her furs and scarves around her face to hide her scars, who can blame her? Wynafryd and Neiman, her lovely albatross, are with them too, and Sansa is glad of the company even though it annoys her that Wynafryd helps Shireen to hide her scars, to bow to what is expected of her because she is different.

Sansa and Elorian are defiant, though, Elorian scampering off to run through the woods that line the kingsroad, dashing ahead of them as if scouting out what they have yet to see, and Sansa looks at their escort, at the people they meet, daring them to comment, daring them to call her and Elorian unnatural, wrong, broken.

No one dares, at least not to her face, and if Elorian is more snappish than usual well, it is only the stress of travelling, of course.

King's Landing hits Sansa's nose long before she sees it, and she understands abruptly why Elorian was so cold the night before – his nose is so sensitive that he would have smelled it first, and she reaches out to scratch at his ear when she realises the truth.

Rickon complains loudly at the smell, and Sephiel tucks her nose into Elorian's shoulder to hide from it.

Neither Sansa nor Elorian mention that the smell is worse even than they remember, heavy with the scent of death and rotting things.

Rickon jumps clean off his horse's back into Jon's arms when they ride through the gates of the Red Keep, much to Sansa's amusement, and she can see people looking askance when she laughs, when she smiles and lets Jon lift her down from her saddle. Elorian and Sephiel alike gambol like pups with Ghost, who good-naturedly nips at their ears and tails until they came down, but Sansa and Rickon are too giddy to care about propriety because Jon is alive, he is alive and, aside from a new scar on his neck, unhurt.

"You look well, little sister," he says, hefting Rickon up onto his hip with a grin and offering her his arm. "Your journey was pleasant?"

Sansa tosses back her hood before taking his arm and letting him lead her inside. She hates the idea of being here again, but she fears for Jon in the viper's nest of the capital and will brave anything to keep what's left of her family safe.

Elorian, she knows, agrees completely, which is why he disappears to investigate the network of passages in the walls around their rooms as soon as Jon shows them where they will be staying, in rooms adjoining his own, right in the heart of the keep.

It's not until Sansa finds a marvellous garnet and gold earring, fallen behind the dressing table, that she realises whose rooms these were, and the ghost of Cersei Lannister is so strong that she begs Jon to have her and Rickon moved.

There are so many dead to be sent home, so very many who are as lost to their families as Father and Mother and the rest are to her and Rickon and Jon, and it is while helping Daenerys decide who best to send where, where is the most fitting home for some, that she comes across a name she is surprised to see.

Mace Tyrell.

"Lord Tyrell's daughter," she asks, remembering Margaery, remembering how Cosima had tried to comfort Elorian when Sansa married Tyrion even though Margaery could not be seen to comfort Sansa. "She was married to Tommen – what has become of her?"

"She was sent home in disgrace," Daenerys says absently, running a silver comb through Artel's silver mane. "Lord Tyrell was poisoned by the Lannisters, as far as we can tell – he was dead when we took the Keep. His mother and his daughter and his uncle, I think it was, they were sent home to Highgarden. Why do you ask?"

"Lady Margaery and I were… Acquaintances during my time in the city," Sansa says. "She and her family were very kind to me."

Had their plan worked, Elorian and I might still be one, she thinks, feeling something sad and sore under the pain of her changed bond with Elorian at the memory of how they were before.

"The Tyrells are opportunistic rats," Daenerys says, shaking her head. "I have been considering removing them from Highgarden."

Sansa looks at her in shock.

"You cannot!" she gasps, genuinely stunned at the very idea. "Highgarden, it- House Tyrell has held Highgarden for three hundred years! They were loyal to House Targaryen right to the bitter end during the Rebellion, until after your brother was killed! Your Grace-"

"They sided with the Lannisters," Daenerys points out.

"Only because they had no choice," Sansa argues, wondering why she is so defensive of the Tyrells – Margaery's kindness does not warrant this level of loyalty, does it? Mayhaps she has just seen enough of people being accused of treason where they are not guilty. "There was not an option at the time to be loyal to House Targaryen!"

Daenerys smiles slightly, and Sansa wonders if she has been made a fool of.

"If you believe so faithfully in the strength of House Tyrell's convictions, then mayhaps you would be willing to journey to Highgarden to discover the reasons for their not having sworn fealty to me?"

"I- But surely Jon-"

"Jon is needed here," Daenerys says dismissively, waving a hand over her shoulder and not looking away from Artel. "And I am sure I can trust you to remain loyal, Sansa – it will be fair payment for my looking after Rickon while you are gone, after all."

The idea of Rickon being held hostage horrifies Sansa so terribly that Elorian, somewhere within the walls and far away, howls at her anguish.

"You will not be alone on your journey, however," Daenerys goes on, ignoring the ghostly echoes of Elorian's rage. "I have decided that Lord Baelish will go with you – he has proved himself most… Bountiful with regards information on my people."

No, no, she is away from Petyr, she has escaped him-

If Jon were there, she might explain why she cannot travel with Petyr, might confess how and why he makes her skin crawl so, but Jon is not here and Sansa does not trust Daenerys, Jon is out in the city with Rickon and Wynafryd and Shireen, and, and as far as everyone else is aware Petyr and Baresse saved Sansa and Elorian from the Lannisters, from certain death.

Damn.

"You will leave at the end of the week," Daenerys says, smiling over her shoulder. "Tyrion should have returned by the time you have concluded my business in Highgarden, and you may settle your business then, if you are still insistent on annulling your marriage."

"Our marriage brings happiness to neither myself nor Tyrion," Sansa says sharply, sick of Daenerys' attempts to convince her to remain as Lady Lannister, when that is the very last thing either she or Tyrion wants. She is sick of everything, wishes she was at home now more than ever, but she must remain in the south for long enough to annul her marriage to Tyrion.

Of course, now she has no choice but to remain in the south at least that long, but suddenly remaining here does not seem so important.

Jon is just as angry as she is at the notion of Rickon being a hostage, and he shouts at Daenerys for even suggesting such a thing – shouts at her as Sansa never remembers him shouting, not even when she strains her shamefully poor memory of him as a child. Robb was always the loud one, the one who shouted when she refused to play in case she muddied her dresses or mussed her hair. Jon, even when she called him half-brother and refused to be as nice to him as she was to Robb, quietly offered her his hand to help her keep her balance when she skirted puddles in the godswood, put his strawberries on her plate at dessert because he is allergic and she has a sweet tooth. Jon is never loud like this, and to see him shouting because of Rickon makes her heart swell.

"I do not care what she says," he growls, pacing up and down his solar with his hands clasped behind his back, his brow furrowed and his eyes dark and angry. "You and Rickon are my sister and brother. I will destroy her if she harms either of you."

Rickon will be safe in King's Landing so long as Jon is there, and he will go home to Winterfell as soon as Jon leaves. That makes it easier for Sansa to sleep, at least until Rickon creeps into her bed and curls against her side and whispers "Don't go Sanny, tell the queen to make someone else go, please Sanny."

Of course, Sansa could not ask someone else to go to Highgarden, not when Daenerys had all but ordered her to go, and so it is that at the end of the week she says her goodbyes to Rickon and Jon and mounts her horse to ride for Highgarden.

Petyr rides at her side, always at her side, and the only mercy is that Elorian has the freedom to stay well away from Petyr and Baresse while they are on the road, and her guard – Marwin, who reminds her so of Jory – refuses to let anyone disturb her rest at night. It is the only time she is thankful for the pity of the Northmen in her escort, that they think her weaker than normal.

"It is almost as though you are avoiding me, sweetling," Petyr says one day halfways through their journey. "Have I done something to offend you?"

She looks at him incredulously, amazed that he has the gall to reduce what he has done to her and Elorian to a mere offence when it is infinitely more than that.

He smiles when she does not reply, shaking his head as if fondly amused. It sets Sansa's teeth on edge, the way he is so terrible but nobody else seems to realise it.

"Your wrist healed well, I see."

It is a long while since she broke her wrist, since she and Elorian were severed (she does not tell Petyr that she broke her wrist afresh on the way from White Harbour to Winterfell, when her horse threw a shoe and then threw her, because he does not need to know anything about her more than absolutely necessary), and this is a weak conversation starter indeed, so Sansa merely nods and turns back to her cup of mulled wine, pulls her furs closer around her shoulders.

She flinches when Petyr reaches over and adjusts her cloak for her, tucks her scarf closer around her neck, and it takes all of her control not to take from Rickon's example and sink her teeth deep into Petyr's flesh (he has a scar, between his thumb and forefinger, from the bite Rickon gave him at White Harbour) to make him leave her alone.

Elorian curls around her feet and snaps at Baresse whenever she hops close. They can survive this. They must. They have to get home to Jon and Rickon and Ghost and Sephiel.

Highgarden, when they reach it, is like nothing Sansa has ever seen before.

It has snowed almost non-stop since they left King's Landing, soft flurries that have dusted the land in a sugary layer, but the roseroad has been cleared – probably in anticipation of the arrival of the Queen's envoys – from the crest of the last hill right to the gates of the great castle on the banks of the Mander, the same silver-blue as Rickon's eyes in the dull light.

There are winter blooms everywhere, subdued shades of red and purple and deep gold stark against the pale white stone of the keep and the outer walls, framing the huge oak doors and the Tyrells who stand before them.

Sansa allows Marwin to help her down from her saddle, even though she has become a competent rider in recent months, and takes a moment to push back her hood and pat her hair into place before twisting a hand into Elorian's ruff and walking quite confidently towards her assembled hosts.

She has long since trained herself to channel all of her nervousness into the hand that can be hidden in Elorian's fur, and so it is that she does not even shiver as she stands at Petyr's side and greets the Lord of Highgarden, his brothers and sister, his mother, his grandmother, and his great-uncle.

Willas Tyrell's daemon is a strange animal, long-armed and short legged and wrapped around him like a hug, her bright, intelligent eyes looking over his shoulder curiously, with soft hair something the colour of Sansa's own. Sansa wonders how it is that everyone else seems to know instinctively that she and Elorian are severed, because she can certainly not detect anything strange about Willas and, and- Rosaria, wasn't that what Margaery had said? Yes, there is nothing strange about Willas and Rosaria as far as Sansa can see or feel.

Loras' daemon is equally odd, by dint of being male if not for his funny appearance, but at least Sansa has seen Yvan before and so his enormous eyes and striped tail are not surprisingly odd, and Garlan's Hannah is so large and fluffy and sweet-looking as to almost look like an overgrown stuffed bear like the one Arya had when they were little, rather than an actual bear.

Petyr steps forward with his best ingratiating smile firmly in place, and as he introduces himself Baresse peeps a pretty little "cuckoo!", but when he introduces Sansa as Lady Lannister Elorian snarls so ferociously that the Tyrells, to a one, take a step back.

"I am Sansa of House Stark," she says softly, curtsying low and rising with a smile. "I have no intention of remaining a Lannister for longer than is absolutely necessary."

Margaery flashes her something that might have been a grin before stepping forward and offering to show Sansa to her rooms herself, and so it is that, arm-in-arm with the fairest girl in the realm, Sansa and Elorian (Cosima perched on his shoulder, chattering amiably in a manner that reminds Sansa oddly of Wylla) leave Petyr and Baresse behind.

It lasts only a few hours, of course, because they are seated together at dinner that night and Sansa is very careful to guide Elorian to the other side of her, as far from Petyr as possible.

"How have the repairs to Winterfell gone so far, Sansa?" Margaery asks, gamely avoiding any topic that might lead back to Sansa's severing, for which she is thankful – it is hard enough to mention it to Jon or Rickon or Wynafryd, and much as she likes Margaery in theory she is not sure if she can trust her.

"Well enough," Sansa says, smiling just enough to satisfy any who might think to call her cold or unnatural and blame it on her and Elorian's situation. "The outer curtain wall was completed not long before my younger brother and I left for King's Landing, and we received word that the keep has glass in every window just before I started for Highgarden."

Margaery laughs at that, laughs and pats Sansa's hand.

"I know that you are here on official business, but you simply must sit with me tomorrow afternoon," Margaery announces, but Sansa does not miss the glance she sends to her oldest brother, who merely smiles very slightly and nods a little. "Well, provided my brother does not keep you holed up in his solar for the whole day, that is."

"I'm sure I will not be kept too long with business," Sansa assures Margaery. "Indeed, I am not sure what aid I might be in seeing the Queen's will carried out."

Petyr's hand brushes against Sansa's then, and he smiled.

"Oh, I'm sure Her Grace knew precisely what she was doing in sending you with me, my lady," he says, and Sansa's stomach twists as she jerks her hand away and forces a smile for the Tyrells and other guests.

She knots her other hand into Elorian's ruff, and if anyone notices the way he nuzzles into her hip and looks up at her with plaintive eyes, they are polite enough to refrain from saying anything.

The meeting the next morning with Lord Tyrell and Ser Garlan is a farce, but a hugely amusing one from Sansa's perspective.

The Tyrells, as far as Sansa can see, have not yet come to King's Landing to swear fealty to Daenerys for two main reasons. The first is that they are still officially mourning Lord Mace. The second is that they are licking their wounds after the fiasco of siding with the Lannisters. They have neither treason nor malice in mind, and so Sansa thinks that this visit can be concluded quickly and easily, and she can meet with Tyrion and have her annulment, and then she and Rickon and Jon can go home.

Petyr, however, does not seem to understand how he is to react to this, and so it is that he must sit and allow the brothers Tyrell to mock him relentlessly. Sansa can hardly hold back a wave of giggles when Willas asks, quite sincerely to all appearances but for the way his daemon is curled in on herself under the table with her hands clapped over her mouth to stop herself from laughing, if Lord Baelish is quite alright, because he has turned a most alarming shade of red.

Still, the morning passes quickly, which is more than Sansa hoped, and then she is free to sit with Margaery.

Or walk with Margaery, as the case may be.

Highgarden is not falsely named, Sansa could see that as soon as she arrived, but the proper gardens through which Margaery leads her are…

Oh, they are breathtaking, and Sansa cannot believe Margaery when she says that they are much more beautiful in the summer. Sansa did not even know that there were so many winter blooms, but there are, some of them so lovely that she begs for cuttings to be sent to Winterfell. Margaery laughs at that (Margaery laughs a great deal) and agrees readily, looping her arm through Sansa's and tugging her along a pretty avenue lined with bare birch trees, their branches silver against the white sky.

"How have you been, Sansa?" she asks gently once she has guided Sansa onto a little stone bench and sent a girl to fetch something hot for them to drink. "Truly been, I mean, not how you've let everyone else think you've been."

Sansa hesitates, wondering if she might be able to trust Margaery with this, and then it bursts out of her all in a rush.

"I hate it," she blurts, burying her face in her hands. "I can't stand it, Margaery, nobody will meet my eyes as if they're afraid I'll go mad and tear their daemon away from them, and, and-"

Margaery's embrace is very soft and smells strongly of roses and violets, but it is the greatest comfort Sansa has had in some time because she cannot cry in front of Rickon, it would upset him, and she cannot cry in front of Jon, it would make him panic because he is completely useless with doing just about anything regarding comforting someone unless he does it entirely by accident.

Rickon and Jon love her, of that Sansa has no doubt, but the problem is they don't understand. Jon and Ghost are separate now, but not in the same way as Sansa and Elorian – it seems to be part of being a dragon-rider, as far as she can tell, because Daenerys and Artel and Tyrion and Kalise are the same – and Rickon and Sephiel are remarkable in the good sort of way. Sansa is the broken one. Sansa is the freak. Sansa is the one that is either feared or pitied wherever she goes.

So Sansa sits on a stone bench under the bare birches and cries into Margaery's arms as it snows, because she has been hurting so horribly for such a long time and Margaery is the first person to actually take notice.

Sansa is just preparing to leave her rooms for dinner that night when she notices Elorian has gone walkabout.

"Oh, damn it anyways," she says crossly, tucking a last pin into her hair and sighing. "I had better find him before-"

There is a knock on the door, and she freezes. Petyr, her mind shrieks in panic, surely Petyr would not be so foolish as to try anything here where the Tyrells notice everything?

But it is not Petyr who greets her when she opens the door, but rather Lord Tyrell himself, scratching nervously at his beard just under his chin. He blushes slightly when she greets him, dropping his hand quickly and bowing to her.

He is alone, just as she is, and she wonders if mayhaps she might like Highgarden for something other than how beautiful it is.

"I wondered if you would allow me to escort you to dinner, Lady Sansa," he says. He has a very deep voice, but he is soft-spoken in a way that reminds Sansa oddly of Jon. "We should arrive just in time, I think."

She takes his arm with a smile, and closes the door behind her with one last glance about for Elorian.

"I may only walk part of the way with you, my lord," she says, catching his eye for a moment before looking away again. "I should find Elorian, he-"

"He will be safe," Willas assures her. "Nobody in Highgarden will harm him, I promise you – Rosaria spends most of her days in the library, after all, and she has never come to any harm."

Sansa swallows, hardly daring to believe…

"Nobody will… take exception to my arriving at dinner without him?"

Willas shakes his head, smiling that same small smile as he had the night before when Margaery spoke to him.

"No, my lady," he promises. "They are well used to seeing me without Rosaria, after all, so I think they are quite desensitised."

And it's true, Sansa realises when she enters the dining hall on Willas' arm, nobody looks twice at the lack of direwolf at her side, and Margaery chats and laughs just as she did last night when Elorian was leaning against Sansa's thigh.

Well, Petyr looks twice, but he always looks twice at Sansa, and Baresse spends the entire meal watching the space beside Sansa where Elorian sat the night before.

Heavy snows delay Sansa and Petyr's departure from Highgarden, and Margaery is delighted even though she seems sympathetic to Sansa's aching desire to get back to Rickon and Jon.

"You'll get to them soon enough," she soothes, stroking Sansa's arm as they stroll along one of the covered walkways, bundled up in more layers than Sansa feels are really necessary with Cosima snuggled down into Elorian's fur. "The snows will clear soon, you'll see. Patience, Sansa."

And Sansa is patient, has always been good at being patient, but she cannot help an irrational sort of panic that seizes her at night, a panic that mocks her with memories of what happened when last she was away from her brothers, and so she lets Margaery sooth her with gentle words and laughs with Margaery's brothers and enjoys talking with Lady Alerie, who is very sincerely grieving for Lord Mace in a quiet sort of way that brings tears to Sansa's eyes, because it's how she thinks Mother probably grieved for Father.

Lady Olenna still terrifies her, but she seems to frighten Petyr even more, which can only be a good thing.

Still, she nearly cries with relief when a thoroughly battered raven arrives from King's Landing with a letter written in Rickon's uneven hand, detailing a fight between Jon and Daenerys (he has an interesting way of spelling, her little brother) as well as the way he found Jon and Fred (he couldn't quite manage Wynafryd) kissing one day.

He finished it with "I LOVE YOU SANNY" in as big of letters as would fit and still leave room for him to sign his name, and Sansa made sure to keep Rickon's letter tucked into her pocket at all times.

It happens on the first day the snows show any sign of abating, when Elorian makes a mad dash for the gardens because he hates being cooped up inside all of the time but had to admit that being buried in a snow drift was not a desirable pastime, even if digging out of it might have been fun.

Sansa is in the gallery, a long room lined with portraits of past Tyrells and, further down, Gardeners, with Margaery and Loras and Willas when it happens. Cosima and Yvan are there as well, of course, but Elorian and Rosaria had disappeared just after the morning meal and not come back since. Sansa knows where Elorian is only because he expressly told her (although she always has an idea of where she is, of what direction she should take to find him) but, when asked where Rosaria had gone, Willas blushed and Loras and Margaery chorused "Library!", because apparently Rosaria spends most of her days in the library.

Margaery is telling the tale of the particularly gruesome death of a two-hundred-years-dead ancestor of theirs, Loras adding embellishments where he deems necessary and Willas correcting in order to make the tale even gorier, when Sansa falls sideways into Loras' arms.

"No," she gasps, pushing away from him and running, running as fast as she can towards Elorian, "not again," she sobs, pain throbbing under her heart because Petyr has dared, nobody else would dare but Petyr has, Petyr would, and now she has to get to Elorian, has to get him away from Petyr-

"Rosaria!" she hears as she dashes past the library, and becomes aware for the first time of the three Tyrells running along behind her. Rosaria lumbers out of the library, moving on her hands, and swings herself up onto Willas' back as easily as breathing.

"Sansa, what is it?" Margaery asks, out of breath but still determinedly keeping up, face set and Cosima perched in her hair, looking ready to attack. "Sansa, sweetling-"

"Someone is- someone is touching-"

She cannot go on, thinks she might be sick if she does, but she does not need to because three beautiful faces (Loras somehow managed to escape facial scarring, although Margaery confided that the rest of him is a mess) fold into masks of fury and Margaery takes Sansa's hand as she sprints for Elorian, her Elorian, her heart, her soul-

Petyr's hand is on Elorian's head, and Elorian looks as sick as Sansa feels when she bursts out of the cloister and stumbles across the snow to throw herself at them, pushing Petyr aside roughly and wrapping herself around Elorian as completely as she can, sobbing into his shoulder as he whines plaintively, too upset even to tell her what happened.

Margaery's hands on her shoulders bring Sansa away from the pain a little, Margaery's hands on her shoulders and Rosaria's on Elorian, and Willas has Petyr pressed tight to the wall and Yvan has Baresse held by the wing and Loras is looming threateningly at Willas' side, and Sansa doesn't care because Elorian is safe and Margaery and Cosima and Rosaria are urging them gently inside, back into the warmth of the keep, into the library, and Sansa sits on the floor before the fire with her arms around Elorian and shakes and shakes and shakes and then she cries, because this was supposed to stop.

It takes hours before Sansa manages to unfold herself from around Elorian, by which time, she is told, Petyr has been apprehended and placed in a cell in the dungeons for-

"Please don't say it," she chokes out, hiding her face against Elorian's side out of shame. "Please, please don't-"

"Sansa," Lady Alerie says gently, kneeling in a rustle of heavy skirts and carefully stroking Sansa's hair, "you did nothing wrong."

"I should have stopped him-"

"No, poor girl, there was nothing you could have done," Lady Alerie says in that same gentle voice. "Nothing at all you could have done, not with what he was doing to you."

A smell of roses and violets heralds Margaery's arrival, as does the gentle stir of Elorian's fur near Sansa's hand when Cosima lands on his shoulder, and then there are more hands stroking Sansa's hair and her back and she realises that they will tell Jon what Petyr has done, tell Daenerys and Wynafryd and Wylla and Shireen and Rickon, Rickon who will not even truly understand, and she wants to scream because her life was not supposed to be this.

Petyr is to be brought back to King's Landing as a prisoner, to be tried for raping Sansa on numerous occasions, and for a host of other crimes to which Sansa does not doubt Daenerys' questioners will root out confessions.

Still, the looks of pity intensify when word trickles out of what he has done, and Sansa can't help but feel torn between shame and fury. She has survived these things that everyone says should have broken her, is stronger than so many of these girls who look at her in terror because she is the very last thing that they would ever wish to become (at least she will still have her maidenhead should she ever find someone willing to marry a severed woman, she thinks nastily when she sees Ginnie, one of the older unmarried maids, the one who had the most damning opinions of Sansa's state of being, or at least the strongest taste for airing those opinions, sneaking out of Garth the Gross' rooms).

The Tyrells treat her precisely as they did before, though, if a touch more gently, making sure to avoid any chance of coming into contact with Elorian at all costs. She is thankful to them for it, and when the snows finally clear enough to actually ride for King's Landing, she is thankful that Margaery and Willas will be coming with her. She does not think she could bear a journey in such close proximity to Petyr without a friend, even with her guards all around her.

She shares a tent with Margaery, a tent brought all the way from Winterfell and as cosy as any a sitting room, and so it is that her friend (because yes, Margaery is her friend, that makes three, Margaery and Wynafryd and Wylla, four if she counts Randa) sees first-hand just how Sansa spends her nights.

Screaming.

King's Landing is subdued by the winter weather in a way that makes Sansa smile, because she can almost hear Father japing at Mother about poor warm-blooded Southerners not being able to handle cold weather as they ride through streets populated by smallfolk bundled up in as many layers as they could lay hands on.

Jon is waiting for her when they arrive at the keep, and he holds her tight to his chest for a long moment before pressing a kiss to her hair and taking her face in his hands.

"Why did you not tell me?"

She just shakes her head, which he accepts with a sigh, and then steps aside so she can greet Rickon as he comes running down the steps to throw himself at her, babbling excitedly about Sanny, Sanny you missed this and that and the other, and Sansa mouths thank you over his head to Jon, because Rickon obviously has not been told what Petyr did to her.

Wynafryd, though, has been told, and she is waiting for Sansa when she reaches her rooms, Neiman sitting on the top of Sansa's dressing table mirror, and she just smiles and gathers Sansa close and smells of home, and with Wynafryd at her front and Jon at her back and Rickon somewhere around her middle, Sansa sinks to the floor and breathes very hard for a long while to try and stop herself from crying again, because she is very much sick of crying.

The following morning Sansa must face Daenerys, but so must Willas Tyrell and so it is that Sansa finds herself standing outside the small council chambers, leaning tiredly against both Elorian and the wall to ensure her legs do not give out underneath her, when Willas and Rosaria arrive, hand-in-hand and talking quietly between themselves.

"My lady," he says, bowing over her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Are you… at least reasonably well?"

She smiles weakly, waving aside his concern, and pushes herself to stand. She slept hardly at all last night, and she knows that it shows in her face. He is kind not to mention it, a habit Rickon would do well to learn ("Your face is all patchy, Sanny"), and he is kinder still to catch her when her legs do, in fact, give way underneath her.

It is because of her sleeplessness-induced weakness that Jon opens the council chamber doors to find Sansa leaning against Willas' chest, his arms around her, and both of them looking quite startled by how well they seem to fit together.

The council meeting is not as terrible as Sansa feared it might be, because Jon, Tyrion and Ser Barristan carefully guide Daenerys away from asking any questions that they feel might be stressful for Sansa to answer, and Willas' (when did he become Willas and not Lord Tyrell or even Lord Willas, she wonders) vow of fealty is easily accepted once Jon frowns at Daenerys and she sighs and smiles and tells Willas to rise.

Willas offers to walk Sansa back to her rooms, and she accepts his offer if only because she is fairly certain she will make it less than halfway back if she does not. He makes no mention of how heavily she leans on his arm, passes no remark on how obviously she is using Elorian as a glorified walking aid, but when they reach her rooms (and she finds herself disappointed that he declines her invitation to sit with her and Margaery and Fred and Rickon and Jon, who will be along in a bit) he kisses her hand again and this time, this time he blushes

Sansa finds herself very confused from that day on.

Petyr is relieved of every scrap of information in his twisted mind, from his part in Jon Arryn's and Father's deaths to various plots and treacheries, including his plans for the Vale, which prompts Jon to once again ask Sansa why she did not confide in him.

"I couldn't," she says to the fire crackling in the heart in her solar (always hers, Jon seems nervous as asking her to leave familiar environs). "I didn't know how."

Then there is Tyrion, who seems almost shy of asking her to come with him to the Great Sept (she stares unseeingly at the spot where her father knelt, where Mafanwye faded, and then continues inside) so they might sign the papers to arrange for their annulment. The High Septon grumbles something about Sansa submitting to examination to prove that the marriage went unconsummated, but Tyrion's glare is a thing so powerful that the High Septon merely pushes the parchment across the table for them both to sign and affix their seals.

And there is Daenerys, who seems to be torn between admiration for all Sansa has come through and disapproval for her continuous refusal to do as Daenerys wants (either remain as Lady Lannister or become Jon's Lady Stark), and there is Rickon who cannot seem to understand why everyone is treating her so carefully, and there is Shireen who seems completely at a loss as to how she is supposed to behave, and there is Jon who seems to think she needs constant minding, and there are the Tyrells.

Frankly, they are the only thing keeping her sane, because they are the only ones who treat her as neither survivor nor victim.

She thinks that it must be because of Willas, because they are used to at least some of her and Elorian's circumstances because they are the same as Willas and Rosaria's.

"Willas killed the man who severed them," Margaery confides over their embroidery. "He was fighting Ironmen, reavers, near Oldtown with our grandfather and our uncles, Mother's brothers, and a Harlaw attacked Grandfather – of course, Willas is closer to the Old Man than just about anyone save Brightsmile, so he leaped to Grandfather's defence."

Sansa thinks of Lyn Corbray's sneering face and wonders if killing him would have helped the hurt.

"He hates himself for it still," Margaery says quietly, not looking up from her hoop. "He killed many men that day – he is as good as Loras with a sword, better maybe – but it is the bastard who severed him and Rosaria that he regrets. He thinks that it was wrong of him to kill in vengeance. Do you think the same, Sansa?"

She does not know, but…

"If he cannot make peace with it, it will kill him," she says just as quietly as Margaery. "Being severed is… A battle. A constant battle."

Margaery smiles sadly and reaches over to pat Sansa's hand.

"Willas describes it just the same."

Petyr is not executed, although he should be, because he is too useful. Jon argues and gets very angry, but Sansa understands and so does Tyrion, and so Petyr is kept very closely guarded in King's Landing in rooms as far from Sansa's as possible.

It is so easy to slide into something that feels like happiness, even though she knows it's not.

She has her brothers (some of them, anyways), she has her friends, she no longer has Petyr watching her with hungry eyes…

But the pain is still there. The ache. She can ignore it when she is with Jon and Rickon, when she is giggling with Margaery and Fred (who she is almost certain will be Jon's Lady Stark, leaving Wylla to inherit White Harbour to Fred's relief and Wylla's delight, Sansa doesn't doubt), when she is arguing with Daenerys (there is such a lot of arguing with Daenerys, who doesn't actually seem to have the slightest idea how to play the game). She thinks it might ease if she were at home, in Winterfell, but she also wonders if she will ever stop feeling empty if she goes to Winterfell and plays aunt to Jon and Fred's children and, eventually, to Rickon's.

She doesn't know. She doesn't think so, and the thought of living with the emptiness for the rest of her life frightens her.

It is Margaery who makes the suggestion, although Sansa thinks mayhaps it originally came from Lady Alerie.

"You should visit with us at Highgarden again!" Margaery announces over dinner one evening, legs tucked up under herself as she leans back against Willas' legs and holds a bowl of thick chicken stew in her lap. "Oh, do say yes, Sansa! And you, Fred, and Rickon, if you'd like," she adds, pinching Rickon's nose and making him squeal indignantly, because he is near seven now, near a man.

"I could not impose," Sansa says, shaking her head and smiling when Willas hands her the jug of water. "Thank you, but I must refuse."

"You wouldn't be imposing," Willas says softly, clamping a hand over Margaery's mouth when she begins to speak. "And Mother would be so glad to see you again, Sansa. Please?"

Lady Alerie reminds Sansa so much of Mother that she finds she cannot say no, and so it is that she and Rickon are bound for Highgarden (not Fred, though, because Fred returns from the "library" one night with flushed cheeks and a very specific bruise on her neck and says that she has been asked to stay in the city) with Margaery and Willas when they return home.

She wakes screaming one night during their journey to find the two Tyrells being led into her and Rickon's tent by the hand, his little face twisted in panic.

"You wouldn't wake, Sanny," he says, tears spilling down his face as she gathers him close and kisses his hair, promises him that she is well, and avoids Margaery and Willas' concerned gazes.

"Rickon, come with me," Margaery coaxes. "Come, let's let Sansa sleep some, hmm?"

Rickon goes, because he is as fond of Margaery as he is of Fred, and so Sansa is left alone with Willas standing uncertainly near the entrance to her tent, cloak thrown on hastily over breeches and nightshirt and boots.

"It never stops hurting," he says suddenly, pulling his cloak tight around himself and looking away from her. There are snowflakes melting in his hair, his beard, on his shoulders, and for a brief, muddled moment Sansa wonders what it would be like to have the chance run her fingers through the soft chestnut curls that fall over his forehead, to trace the strong line of his cheekbones and down his jaw, where his beard is much lighter in colour than his hair. "There's always an- an ache, an emptiness. It never stops hurting, but it hurts less if you speak of it."

He leaves then, looking embarrassed, and Sansa shuffles aside so Elorian can climb up onto the bed beside her.

She cannot imagine speaking of the pain to anyone save Elorian, because nobody else would-

Oh. Oh. Was Willas volunteering to talk with her?

Highgarden is just as lovely, if a touch more snowbound, when they crest the last hill this time as it was when last Sansa visited. Rickon is beside himself with glee at the adventure of seeing somewhere new, and so Margaery gallops off down the roseroad with him, laughing all the while.

Willas rides alongside Sansa at a more sedate pace, Rosaria tucked against his back under his cloak, her head poking out beside his own. Both looked pleased to be home, if a little frostbitten and windblown, but the pure delight that fills Willas' dark green eyes when Garlan and Loras ride out to meet them makes Sansa brave enough to ask if he would mind her joining him in the library after dinner this evening.

He looks startled for a moment, but then he smiles in that curiously shy way of his and says he would be honoured.

Lady Alerie greets Sansa with an embrace and the promise of mulled wine, and Sansa is only too happy to let herself be ushered inside to the warmth of a fire and a hot meal.

They have arrived just in time to prepare for dinner, and so it is that Sansa has a hasty bath and dons something approaching an acceptable gown and all but runs down the stairs to the dining room, where she is the last to arrive and is seated between Rickon and Margaery, across from Lady Alerie and Garlan and Loras, with Willas at one end of the short table and Lady Olenna at the other.

They are a jolly party, and seeing Rickon so happy proves too much and so Sansa excuses herself with a vague allusion to the privy and instead escapes to the library to stand leaning against the towering bookcases with one hand, the other hand pressed to her midriff as she tries to breathe, tries to catch the breath that has completely left her, and she can't, she's so dizzy and she feels faintly nauseous but she cannot for the life of her catch her breath, and then-

The hands that catch her when she falls are not human, she knows that immediately. The thumbs are wrong, and the fingers are too long, and the skin is somehow too leathery and too soft all at once, and all is silent as Sansa looks down into Rosaria's face and then up to see Willas standing just inside the door, Elorian not much further into the huge room, and they seems as frozen by the phenomenon of Rosaria's hand holding Sansa's as she and Rosaria are.

"Willas, I-"

He swallows magnificently, and then he seems to gather himself together and crosses the room, gently takes her from Rosaria's arms and guides her to sit under one of the high stained glass windows. She is relieved that he does not seem sickened, does not seem horrified by Rosaria having come in contact with her bare skin, and instead there is something glittering in his eyes that she almost but doesn't quite recognise.

"I don't want to hurt anymore," she whispers, quite unexpectedly, if she were to tell the truth, because she had fully intended on apologising to him, first for touching Rosaria and then for disrupting dinner as she had. Instead, what tumbles from her lips is a confession, the sort of which she has refused to give all these months. "I can't stand being so empty-"

And then, quite suddenly, he is kissing her, her face cradled between his lovely long hands as if she is made of glass, as if she might shatter if he is not careful, and gods forgive her but she'd rather he was a little more robust, because this is… This is like nothing she has ever known.

Sansa has been kissed plenty of times, by Joffrey before her father died and by the Hound that once and by Tyrion during their wedding ceremony and by Petyr and by Harry, but never once has she been kissed the way Willas is kissing her, as if his entire existence depends on kissing her and he'll die if he has to stop. It's too much, far, far too much, but instead of pulling away as she rather thinks she should, she twists her fingers into those lovely soft curls of his and kisses him back, opens her mouth under his and arches into him when he slides a hand down her spine and slides the other deeper into her hair, pulling her against him as completely as he can while sitting beside her (without pulling her into his lap, at least) and oh, oh the emptiness seems a little less empty just now, and that is so wonderful that Sansa can hardly bear it.

"Willas, have you found- Willas Tyrell!"

They spring apart, somehow still clinging to one another, and flush with shame at Lady Alerie's carefully polite fury.

"What is this?" she demands, pushing shut the portal door and shutting the library off from the rest of the keep. "What do you think you are doing-"

"My lady," Sansa says, reluctantly pulling her hands from Willas' hair and rising unsteadily to her feet. "Please, don't be angry with Willas, this was my fault-"

"Shush now, Sansa," Lady Alerie says, her eyes burning into the top of Willas' head – the head he is hanging in shame, his cheeks flaming hotter even than his mother's gaze. "Rickon was asking for you."

Sansa knows a dismissal when she hears one, and she barely has the door shut behind her when Alerie Hightower shows that she inherited her father's infamous bellow, even if she keeps it well hidden most of the time.

Sansa tucks Rickon into bed and retreats to her own chambers, barely saying goodnight to Margaery and Garlan and Loras and Lady Olenna, because she is so confused and she so desperately wishes she could kiss Willas again, and that only confuses her more.

She still wonders how it is he wasn't abhorred by her touching Rosaria, and it is with that in mind that she drifts off to sleep.

Margaery looks at her so speculatively the following morning when she comes to Sansa's rooms to share the morning meal that Sansa blushes, to which Margaery responds with a pleased smile that makes Sansa blush harder. Rickon, she is told, is quite taken with Lady Olenna, a feeling that is apparently mutual ("He calls her Olly, which she finds hugely amusing") and so he has been invited to spend the day with her – a rare privilege indeed, according to Margaery.

Willas, Margaery adds with a wicked, wicked grin, is riding out with Garlan today, and would Sansa like to join them, because it is such a lovely day even if it is dreadfully cold?

No, Sansa would not like to join them, because her hands shake so badly at the thought of being near Willas that she almost drops her tea, and Margaery's smug smile fades and becomes confused, but they sit together for the day.

If anyone notices the way Sansa and Willas avoid so much as looking at one another at dinner, they have the good grace not to mention it.

"I can't bear it, Garlan, not for much longer."

Sansa does not mean to eavesdrop – she remembers Mother saying how rude it is, how a lady should never lower herself to do so – but, walking past the alcove on her way to Rickon's rooms, she cannot quite help herself. If Willas is hurting, if he's losing the balance, the desperate fight to stop the pain of severing from overwhelming him-

His voice is wretched, completely wretched, and when she peeps around the archway she can see that he's sitting right on the edge of the window seat, his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced behind his bowed head. Garlan is sitting back against the glass, legs crossed and arms folded, and he looks unimpressed. Hannah's entire body seems to huff in disapproval as she watches from the other side of the alcove, arms folded in what might be an amusing mimicry of Garlan were Willas not so clearly distressed.

"And it's not just because she and Elorian are the same as Rosaria and I, before you say it," he says sharply "it's not that – well, it is slightly that, but it's more. I can't stand being so close to her and not… Not being able to be close to her, Garlan. It's killing me."

No, this isn't about holding the balance. This is about her. He wants to be close to her. Does he… Could he possibly feel the same way?

"You're a fool, Willas. She's recovering from what Baelish did to her, for gods' sakes. You pursuing her now would be taking advantage."

"I know that! Damn it all, Garlan, I know that! Gods, there's hardly a moment when I'm not planning the things I'm going to say to her as soon as Margaery thinks she's ready, when I'm not trying to decide how I'm going to ask her to marry meas soon as Mother thinks it won't hurt her."

She barely holds back a gasp at that, because Willas, gods, Willas wants to marry her, wants her to be his wife, gods, gods-

"I don't even know if she regards me as anything more than a friend," he says, sounding so utterly wretched that she wishes she could step out and kiss him now to show him just how she regards him, and that flummoxes her because oh, when did that happen? Was it when he kissed her the other night? It must have been then. "I can hardly stand to be in the same room as her anymore, I love her so much, and for all I know she may not even see me as anything more than a, a colleague."

"I thought Mother found you and Sansa kissing in the library the other day?"

"I- Well, yes, but that was… That was different."

Oh gods, he can't possibly tell Garlan the truth-

"Sansa was unwell, and she fell and… And Rosaria caught her."

Silence. Gods, Garlan must think there's something wrong with them, something wrong caused by severing, but everything just felt so good that it can't possibly have been wrong.

"I couldn't help myself, Garlan. I couldn't stop myself."

"From what Mother said, Sansa wasn't objecting."

"I didn't give her a chance," Willas says, and his voice is thick with what sound suspiciously like tears. "Gods, Garlan, I- if she doesn't feel anything for me, I, I forced myself on her-"

No, she wants to say, no, you didn't, I've never wanted anything more than I wanted to kiss you and never stop kissing you and just keep kissing you forever and never let go of you. Just thinking about it, about the way it had felt to be wrapped in his arms with his mouth on hers, his heart hammering against her chest and his hair soft between her fingers, is enough to set her heart racing.

"I can't stand it," he whispers, and yes, there are tears dripping from the end of his nose, Sansa can see them silver in the moonlight, and she wants to reach out to him, to walk right out and throw her arms around him and hold him close and tell him yes, yes, she'll marry him as soon as she can figure out how to fix the terror Petyr has left in her, that no, he didn't force himself on her, yes, she regards him as more than a colleague or a friend, so much more than that, more than she can even begin to understand.

But she rushes down the hall as quietly as she can to Rickon's room, heart pounding in her chest, and says nothing at all, because she is so overwhelmed by this sudden conviction that she is sure it must be false.

She and Rickon leave Highgarden three weeks later, and if Sansa finds herself pressed against the wall kissing Willas frantically on the night before they depart, well, that is a secret she will keep to herself, because she is still not sure what to do with all these horrible complicated feelings.

Everyone keeps telling her that severed folk don't feel as strongly as normal people. If anything, Sansa thinks, she has felt everything at least twice as strongly since she and Elorian were parted.

Jon is blissfully ignorant to Sansa's turmoil, but Fred, darling Fred who is Sansa's friend but not Willas' sister, knows right away that something has happened.

"I kissed him," Sansa says wretchedly, "but I- I didn't mean to, Fred, I swear it, I fell and Rosaria was the one to catch me-"

Fred holds her close and lets her cry, and then Sansa feels quite ridiculous.

"Gods, Fred," she gasps, wiping at her face with the back of her hand and sniffing enthusiastically to clear her nose, "I have to write to him, I'm such a fool-"

"No," Fred says, bravely catching Sansa's hands without first offering her a handkerchief, "you have to wait. Wait and let your feelings settle, Sansa – you've been through so much this past few years. Wait, Sansa. Come home for a while first, and then write to him."

But how is she supposed to think about settling feelings and letters that get written and tearstained and, inevitably, burnt to fine ash and then wrapped in a fresh scrap of parchment and burned again, just to be safe, when there is so much to be done?

There is a brief stop off at Riverrun for her and Rickon, for example, because their uncle wants to meet them and Sansa cannot deny that she is curious to meet the last of her mother's family.

It is a debacle, because Edmure Tully seems to expect her and Rickon to be Mother and Robb in some way that Sansa doesn't really understand, and his dog daemon (a dog for a Tully? Even Lysa had an otter, which at least lives on rivers even if it's not a water-bird! He must be ashamed!), Umessa, watches Sephiel with a sort of longing that prompts Elorian to stand between the two as often as he can.

Then there is the rest of the journey north, made without Jon and Fred who have gone ahead to begin preparations for the wedding (which Daenerys still insists will take place in King's Landing, an insistence that Jon has dealt with by quietly ignoring it and organising for everything, right down to the rebuilding of the sept, to be completed at Winterfell in time for his and Fred's agreed date).

And there are the wedding arrangements! Jon is heir to the throne, whether he likes it or not, at least until he and Fred have two children so Daenerys can claim the second one, and so there must be invitations sent to absolutely everyone of note in the realm, and Rickon has gone completely wild again since returning home, disappearing off into the wolfswood with Osha the moment Sansa turns her back, and-

And a letter arrives for her, sealed with green wax and smelling of violets instead of leather, the good kind that riding boots are made of, and she can't quite make up her mind if she's happy about that or not.

Her feelings are still stubbornly settling in a very specific pattern, and Sansa very carefully makes only passing enquiry as to Willas' health when she writes back to Margaery, but Margaery's return letter is as full of detail as Sansa could have dared hope (although she'd never, ever ask).

Daenerys arrives two weeks before the wedding in a huff for two reasons. The first is that she never truly seemed to believe that Jon would actually go through with defying her and refuse to wed in King's Landing, and the second is that she never thought Jon would actually go through with defying her and refuse to wed Sansa.

Fred knows this as well as Sansa does, even if Jon is oblivious (he is excellent at being oblivious, he really is) and simply shows Daenerys how all their hard work in rebuilding Winterfell has paid off so splendidly and talks enthusiastically about relations with the Night's Watch and the wildlings who have populated the Gift in such numbers because, apparently, they don't mind Jon too much because he doesn't expect them to bend the knee.

Some of them are coming to the wedding, too, and Sansa cannot wait to see how the Southron lords and ladies manage with the Free Folk.

Tyrion arrives three days after Daenerys, and after some awkward dancing around one another he and Sansa manage to have quite an enjoyable conversation about how funny the way Jon guides Daenerys around by the hand without her even realising it is.

The keep fills up rapidly from then on, Daenerys' entourage and Tyrion's alike catching up their respective dragon riders, Sweetrobin – not shaking near so terribly now that he is actually being cared for by his maester, and Harry looks at Sansa with a sort of speculative interest that has her running for Jon's chamber to tell him that he is, under no circumstances and on pain of castration and then, maybe, death, to accept an offer for her hand from Harry.

The Martells do not come, which surprises no one, but the Tyrells do, and because Jon is off greeting Tormund Giantsbane, Sansa is left to greet Margaery, her mother, her grandmother and all three of her brothers.

Willas blushes almost as hard as she does herself, which is an odd sort of comfort but it is a comfort.

The wedding is one of the most beautiful things Sansa has ever witnessed.

There are two ceremonies – the actual wedding in the godswood, when Jon sweeps a cloak of white velvet lined with ice-bear fur (a gift from pretty pretty Val, who winks at Jon altogether too salaciously for Jon's blush to be innocent, and delivered in time to be part of the cloak) stitched with a thread-of-silver direwolf (part of Sansa's gift to them) around Fred's shoulders before the heart tree, and then the blessing in the sept, when Jon and Fred kneel between Mother and Father and allow the septon to anoint them accordingly.

Sansa sits between Wylla and Rickon, silly, happy tears in her eyes, and when the musicians begin to play she dances with Rickon and Jon and every man who asks her for the honour, except for Harry who is watching her far too interestedly.

And then she dances with Willas, and once more both of them are surprised by how well they seem to fit together.

She is so caught up in being surprised that she does not notice the way a path clears for them through the throng of dancers, because while everyone else's daemons are crowded onto the floor with them, Elorian and Rosaria are sitting companionably on the floor by the fire, tail-wagging and arm-waving in time with the music respectively.

They are too far away from their daemons, Sansa and Willas, for most to be comfortable, and when Sansa does notice this she stays close to the visitors from the Reach and the Free Folk, the former because they seem not to take exception to it and the latter because they seem to respect her for it.

Jon and Fred don't emerge from the lord's chambers until dinner the following evening, looking rather bedraggled and, in Jon's case, rather smug, to a chorus of such rowdy cheers that Sansa cannot help but blush. Still, two days of enthusiastic happiness in a row is just a shade too much for her, so she retreats early, stops off at her rooms to find her cloak, and then makes straight for the godswood.

It is so quiet here, and there is always an echo of Sansa's lost family among the dark sentinels that surround the ghostly weirwood. Elorian is waiting for her at their rock, the snow already swept off her seat with his tail, and they sit together, his head in her lap, and stare into the gently steaming hot pools.

The crunch of snow alerts her to a visitor, but she assumes that it is Jon – Rickon is louder, always louder – until a feminine voice says "And to think Snow talked about the littler one of you two girls. Doubt she could be as strong as you."

Val smiles, crosses her arms and tilts her head in a fall of sunshine-golden curls, and narrows eyes the grey-blue colour of a storm that isn't quite ready to break yet. Her daemon, a pine marten the grey-purple colour of a storm that has just broken, scampers up her leg and her back and curls sinuously around her shoulders.

"You'll be alright, Stark," she says, nodding as if satisfied with something. "You'll be alright."

Sansa has no idea what just happened, but she feels considerably better as she watches Val crunch away through the snow.

It's a warm and lazy kind of evening when Sansa and Elorian, sitting alone in their solar, look up at a knock on the door to see a sheepish Willas with Rosaria clinging to his back and peeping shyly over his shoulder.

"May I come in, my lady?"

"Of course," she says, startled, and quickly moves to sit up because it is not appropriate for a lady to sit with her head hanging over one arm of her chair and her legs hanging over the other when she has company. He smiles at that, the shy smile she's become so fond of (she doesn't remember becoming fond of it, but she has). "Is there something wrong, my lord? Have you need of anything?"

"Your company, mayhaps?" he tries, settling into the chair across from hers. "We have not spoken much since I arrived."

"Are you liking Winterfell?" she asks, and when he looks at her properly for the first time since he rode through the gates (except when they were dancing, oh, he'd looked at her properly then, and she'd looked at him as if she'd never seen him before and felt a fool for it after), and her skin feels a good deal too small.

"More now than I have been," he says softly, and while his eyes are soft they're also so hot Sansa's quite sure she might melt away right there. "Might I have the pleasure of your company tomorrow, Sansa?"

She bites her lip, and his eyes heat up just a fraction.

"We could ride out," she offers. "The wolfswood is very beautiful, you know."

In the end, they ride out with a dozen or so others, which was not what either of them particularly wanted to do, but Jon is eyeing Willas carefully and Fred is eyeing him hopefully and Daenerys is eyeing his suspiciously and really, it's all very bothersome.

Still, at least they ride side by side, because Jon agreed to Willas riding his great black stallion, the one with legs like tree trunks who is more than capable of keeping up with Sansa's fat-bellied Lady even in the deep snow. Rosaria is quite cheerfully tucked up in the library with Elorian to keep her company, and so it is that Sansa and Willas, entirely unimpeded, find themselves alone in the woods mainly by dint of having horses who were actually bred for this far north during the winter, and even the echoes of the others' voices are faint and faraway when they slide to the ground. Sansa loses her balance because the snow is deeper than she thought, and Willas catches her, and next she knows she's kissing him madly and her back is tight against a tree and he's tight against her front, his hands very big and very firm and very gentle as he holds her close and kisses her like she's the most beautiful woman to have ever lived (if he were to tell her that, she thinks she might even believe that he believes it). The leather of his gloves is freezing, colder around his left ring finger, where he wears his signet, but Sansa barely notices that because she's so warm from kissing him, right down to her toes, that nothing else really seems to matter.

There's no springing apart this time, no embarrassment, not even when Wylla and Margaery catch them up and clear their throats and laugh. Sansa presses closer to Willas, he holds her tighter, and she begins to hope that the emptiness might have something to fill it.

They manage to make sure they are alone again that night, and this time as they stumble back towards the wall Willas throws out a hand to steady himself and it lands on Elorian's head, and the surge of bone-melting pleasure that rushes up Sansa's spine makes her shake so hard he stops kissing her to make certain that she's well.

Once she has touched Rosaria that once and it made Willas' eyes shine that way and he touched Elorian that once and it made her tremble that way, well, they can't seem to stop and-

The urgency does not fade even a fraction. While others go out of their way to avoid touching Willas, as if having been severed is contagious, Sansa goes out of her way to touch him, to run her fingers through his hair or hold his hand or scratch at his beard just under his jaw the way he likes, and he goes out of his way to touch her, to brush her hair back over her shoulder and rest his hand in the curve of her spine and trail his fingertips over her cheekbone the way she likes-

The problem is, they have to be careful about when they touches, because more often than not they seem to fall into one another, kissing frantically and trying to touch all of the other all at once.

And her touching Rosaria and him touching Elorian is…

Whenever she brushes against Rosaria, his shoulders tense and he gasps just barely loud enough to hear. Whenever he bumps into Elorian, Sansa's cheeks flush red and her breath catches. It is so overpoweringly potent that they force themselves not to do it anywhere they might be caught, because when he scratches between Elorian's ears Sansa's eyes roll back in her head, and when she combs her fingers through Rosaria's soft hair Willas' back arches.

It's too much, far too much for anyone to bear, but that doesn't mean they'll stop. They can't stop.

Fred decides to check on Sansa mostly because Willas Tyrell very nervously came to Jon's solar to ask for Sansa's hand before dinner and Jon wants to know how Sansa feels about that, but partially because she needs to laugh with someone about how carefully oblivious Jon is when he wants to be.

She doesn't bother knocking – why should she? Sansa, if she has anything to hide, hides it in her bedchamber, or perhaps under a certain specific large rock in the godswood – and so is greeted with the kind of sight she never, ever expected to see Sansa a part of.

Sansa herself is slumped in her big armchair by the fire, head lolling back and eyes shut in bliss with one hand clamped over her mouth as she makes little soft sounds and her back arches.

Her other hand is combing through the curls of the man who is very busy between her legs, if the blush-inducing wet sounds are anything to judge by, and Fred thinks that the best possible course of action for her to take involves closing the door and leaving as soundlessly as possible.

Just before the door shuts, the firelight glints on the heavy signet ring on the man's left hand, which is curled around Sansa's bare thigh (how very unlike Sansa not to wear stockings, Fred thinks absently).

Jon should say yes to Willas Tyrell, Fred thinks, and she gleefully collects ten gold dragons from Margaery Tyrell, six from Garlan and eight from Loras, because apparently Willas' brothers and sisters thought their brother would not dare to ask Jon to his face for Sansa's hand.

Fred pauses at the library door as she passes, and makes a mental note never to mention the sight of Elorian and Rosaria cuddling to anyone, even Sansa.