AN: Again split in two, or it would have been another 20.000 words monster and I had delayed updating long enough. But, for all those that feel this is a filler... well, sue me, perhaps it is, perhaps its not. I love Sansa and she is part of this story... and i like planting seeds quietly. But there is however complete continuation from this chapter to the next. (which is 5/6 done by the way and will be posted in a couple of days)

- You will hear a lot of talk about 'the Lannisters' in this chapter, and just try to remember that when Sansa especially speaks of them, she means the Lannisters she knows, meaning those Lannisters that live in the Red Keep - the queen, her brothers, Tywin and the occasional family in court, who by extension of being courtiers would be just about the worst creature that can encumber this earth to Sansa. And of course, when Catelyn speaks of Lannisters, her definition is quite broader, if you catch my drift. It's all about perspective. This chapter weights a lot on that.

- Ok, this took a lot longer and was a lot harder for me to write than I initially thought. Sansa proved to be a real challenge to write coherently… and I have honestly vowed that I will not touch her character again unless my life depends on it because she is excruciating. I love her to bits, but she exhausts me. So… hope you like, and to all the book-readers, please have patience with this chapter, cause I am one of the show-watches (and internet dablers) and don't know Sansa so well as I would like.

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6. … all the secrets you will tell

"There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see."

Leonardo da Vinci

Sansa understands her mother better now that she is a little older and not quite so blinded by that image of perfection she'd had as a child. In these last few weeks, they have spent most of their time together, speaking of what has happened since they last saw each other. Her mother tells her of how she'd left Winterfell and journeyed to King's Landing, and then to the Vale. How she had returned to the Riverlands only to set for the Reach, and after that to Storm's End, and then back to her home in Riverrun again. Catelyn Tully had traveled half of Westeros in a time when most noblewomen raised as her mother had been raised, had feared putting a single toe out of their high walls. Her mother's bravery, the unflinching nerve, shake Sansa to the core. Catelyn Tully had ever been to her eldest daughter the model to live by, the perfect lady that Sansa always aspired to. And when she learned of the lengths her mother had been willing to go for them all, Sansa was astounded… and reassured. It comforted something in her when she learns that no matter what her mother's lessons on propriety, she would have shoved a dagger through the soft flesh of Joffrey's throat herself, if that would had brought her daughters back to her. Somehow, knowing that she was not alone in those violent thoughts made Sansa feel rather better about having them.

And there she goes, dissecting herself again…

It had been such a long time since Sansa last thought she needed anyone's permission or blessing on anything having to do with her own thoughts – her mind being the only thing over which she had indisputable dominion over, a small freedom that she had guarded jealously, to the point where it became her sanctuary. But being back among family proved that this independence was not quite so real now that Sansa did not wish to be alone with her head anymore. The fact was that Sansa longed so much for her family's love and approval that to have it, she was willing to appear as whatever they wanted her to. She did not want to be changed for them, even though she was. She wanted to be someone they could love without regret.

It was no small thing to Sansa to try and tuck aside all that she had made herself into and teach herself to be the girl of Winterfell once more. A person could not be built in a day and the same, an identity and a way of thinking could not be shed in a day either, no matter how much Sansa might wish it. But she kept trying, because in her heart she knew that neither could ever be done completely. Pieces of one self or the other always remained. They lingered in a past that was the foundation of her being, in memories that were unwilling to be denied and that that lived frail lives on their own, hushed and stilled, like echoes in the dark. People were made of layers and that was a truth that was of comfort to Sansa, because it meant that nothing ever got lost. Once she admitted that, the real matter became bringing forth from dusty corners the right layers of yourself, and letting them see light. So she strived every moment gladly, to be the person she chose to be.

Some would say she was lying to herself and all those around her… and perhaps she was, but that was not all the truth. Sansa honestly wanted to fit in to where she belonged again, and the person she had learned to be in the Red Keep felt like an old dress that fit ill and one she wanted to be rid of. And so what if she had nightmares and scars, if she could wriggle out lies and intentions just from looking at the way a man moved or if he blinked too many times; or if she could lie so well it had saved her life? So what if she felt oftentimes deformed on the inside, and ugly, and that sometimes she felt utterly lost as well, even among friendly faces, even among family? So what? She did not care, it did not matter. All that would be mended in time. Her family loved her, and if only for that Sansa knew she would find a way to be worthy of that love. She did not want to be for them someone who had once been a daughter, a sister; someone who only looked like Sansa Stark. She would be more than that, and learn to live again as her father had meant to teach her – as Robb did every day. I am a Stark, she had always told herself in the Red Keep to find the strength inside herself. I too can be brave[1], I too can be strong. I too can do whatever I need to do.

It was the deepest fear she'd had, once she got back: that she would seem to them so changed, so altered that her mother and brother and sister would reject her despite their love. Once the first shock of being free was past, Sansa had felt so foreign, so misplaced. She'd felt more alike to Myrcella, than she had to her family… and that had hurt Sansa deeply. Which was why it was so very important for her to know that even her gentle lady mother was capable of anything and everything for her children's survival. That fierceness that lived in Catelyn Tully, in her brother, in her sister - Sansa could see herself in that, she could find herself in it. But that she can find the same brutality even in her gentle lady mother eases Sansa's soul more than anything; it becomes proof that perhaps Cersei and her monstrous son have not succeeded in warping her as completely as the queen had liked to make Sansa believe. Sansa is still her mother's daughter, and she can say it pridefully.

But she is also herself, a woman grown and different, in all the good and the bad. Which is why nowadays Sansa can truly see her mother for what she is: a woman as flawed and mortal as any other, and not infallible as Sansa had once believed. Catelyn Tully is wise and beautiful and brave… and to Sansa's mind, her mother's only flaw was that she was the perfect product of the world she was born in and shaped by. Her mother believed that there was a way the world worked and it could not be any other way but that… and failed to understand that sometimes the world functioned in more fluid ways and that there is no absolute truth, but rather as many truths as there are eyes to see them.

But Catelyn Tully could not truly bend her ways, even if she wanted: she looked at Jon Snow and saw only dishonor, her husband's disloyalty and her own shame. She looked at Petyr Baelish and found the idea of him lying to her unconceivable, because he had once loved her… or so he claimed. And she looked at Myrcella now and saw only an extension of Cersei and Jamie Lannister and could not, in her rigidity of vision, see anything at all that mattered beyond that.

Sansa on the other hand had her own eyes from which she saw the world and they saw things differently. She felt a good many feelings when she thought of Petyr Baelysh, for example, and none of them were kind; almost all of them centered around his blood, warm and sticky, on her hands. The thought of it thrilled her deeply, as deeply as her hatred for them man sprung from. Sansa found herself particularly bloodthirsty whenever she thought of his slimy smile, those soft small hands. How she longed to slit steel through that soft white throat, lick his blood off her fingers...

But that was over now. No use in wasting time over plans that were too far off in the future to contemplate.

Thinking of Jon on the other hand, was entirely different. Jon called to her heart, same as Bran and Rickon did, same as Robb had. But unlike her other brothers, there was a certain sharp guilt there with Jon, one that Sansa had discovered at the most lonely point of her imprisonment at the Red Keep. She had dreamt of all her family during her captivity, of her home and even the godswood. Most of her dreams were about flying away from the Red Keep, soaring high into the sky, like the little bird she was so often referred as, and finding freedom. And just as she dreamt of the sky and the air between a pair of wings she did not have, Sansa also dreamt of home. But her dreams of Winterfell had been plagued with deep anxiety and the sharp longing of the imposable, so much so that she sometimes dreaded them more than monsters in her nightmares. When loneliness felt unbearable, the only way to make it worse had been to think of her family and wish she were beside them. And yet, there had been days when Sansa would have given her right hand for the sight of a single friendly face among enemies. Even his face would have been welcome, her bastard brother's face, him whom she had thought of last, whom she had almost forgotten entirely… him who looked more like her father than any of her other brothers. Even his… until one day there was no difference anymore between 'half-brother' and 'my brother', between bastard and trueborn. No difference at all, because he would be family, he would be her blood.

It had not been such a shocking revelation, on the contrary: it had come naturally, as her awareness of the true nature of the world had grown. Details from a previous life had faded, just like a great many other things that had had seemed important once, had dwindled into ridiculousness in the Red Keep. Porcelain, ivory, steel… she'd told herself that every time she'd felt like she was about to shatter.

Even though it had been almost three years ago, Sansa could still remember Joffrey's smug face when he told her that Robb and her mother had been killed and declared with sick joy that she was now the last Stark left alive. They had thought Bran and Rickon dead too at the time... and Sansa still remembered how she had cried and cried until there were no more tears left in her, no more pain to feel or sobs to choke on. The world had come at an end, all hope had left her. She had contemplated the height of the towers of the Red Keep that night, and the cliffs of Blackwater Bay. She had known what would happen as surely as if it had already come to pass. She knew that Tywin Lannister would start his plans to marry her off to someone and control the North through her. She had even an inkling as to who it might be. She had been filled with the fire of revenge then, and sworn to herself that the north would never forget as long as even a single drop of Stark blood flowed through her veins. The thoughts of heights and impossible drops were shed into those flames and a new creature arose from them, like the dragons of old: a creature hungry for flesh and blood and unrepentant, unapologizing. Sansa remembered how she had sworn her revenge with tears and with blood and promised to herself and all her dead, that she would kill them all![2] and burn their bodies; that she would crack the steps of Baelor, set fire to the great sept and raze the Red Keep to the ground if only she be given the smallest chance. She would marry the heir to Casterly Rock, yes, have a son… and then kill Jamie Lannister or Tyrion or whoever they chose for her. Kill him slowly, with sweet poisons and sweeter words.

In my womb I will carry my avengeance[3]...

It had been with those thoughts that she had slept that night, so late that the night was as its deepest, at its darkest. And that had been the night that she had dreamt of Jon Snow... and that it had been a dream unlike any other dream before it. She had dreamed of having four legs instead of two or even wings; she had dreamed of hunting in deep woods, with the scent of snow and deer and blood, warm on her snout as she sunk her jaws into its throat and ripped it out and feasted on its insides and hard pieces of bloody meat and entrails (the taste of it had lingered even when she woke, it had been so real). And then she had run through hills, walked among men in black and found him who looked so much like her father that Sansa had almost tackled him to the ground in her haste to lick his face, leaving bloody prints on Jon's pale cheeks. Because it had been Jon, she knew that, she smelled it and knew it without knowing why or how. Not that it had mattered. She still remembered how he had laughed. It had been a foreign sound. Jon had so rarely laughed in Winterfell... not that Sansa had cared at the time. But she cared now, very much so.

She had woken feeling dried tears on her cheeks, mixing with the taste or iron and salt in her mouth and a new resolve in her heart. Oh, she had still wanted revenge with the same fire she had the night before, and from then on it had been that thirst that had propelled her forward through the most hopeless situations. But Sansa had felt something else too: she was not quite as lost as she thought yet, no. She was not alone in the world. She still had one brother left.

Looking back on that night made Sansa think it was no wonder what she had become after it… though sometimes she did wonder why she feared rejection so, by the very same family for whom she had transformed into such a creature for. She had changed to survive when she had thought nobody was left to save her; to avenge them. A wolf she had seen herself becoming, a true killer of the night: silent and stealthy, but her bite of death so sweet you'd never know it until it was too late, her lies as pure as her pretty face allowed them. A killer as the Red Keep had demanded. A bloodless liar.

And there it was, the reason why. Sansa knew that winter demanded its killers to be honest, as it was itself. Winter was not the games of puny castles. Winter was the falling darkness and all the things that dwelled within it. An honest killer - though so many, for some reason, confused that with mercy. Those were usually the first to die. Winter is ruthless, it is cruel and merciless, never pretended to be anything but… and no Stark ever forgot it.

Winter is coming.

But those were thoughts from a different time, thoughts of a different creature. Sansa could be simpler now, she could survive in honesty… or something like it. Even though she had not forgotten – could not forget – that there were still wrongs to avenge, blood she yet longed to spill. Sometimes, when she remembered what she had suffered, she thought her thirst for it would never quench. Those were dark thoughts that Sansa did not like to indulge in often, but they were thoughts that made her more into a wolf than she had ever been as well, and Sansa liked that very much. Many had forgotten, in the stray of her father's so remarkable honor, that direwolves were creatures of winter, that they scented blood and hunted it better than any other; that the Kings of Winter had the honor and ruthlessness of the First Men that bid them to slit a man's throat with their own swords upon the roots of their weirwoods and feed their honest gods their red bounty… and that Sansa and Arya and their brothers were of that ancient old blood, of the same brutal gods and red-stained swords.

Which was also the reason why, coincidentally, Sansa Stark could look at the southern princess in their midst now and find herself… inspired by the many possibilities that Myrcella presented. If she had been a wolf, Sansa would be licking her chops at the thought of it. Hunger growled in her too... though Sansa had to admit, she truly did mean the princess no harm. Indeed, though Myrcella was too proud to be pitied and too strong to be helpless, sometimes… just sometimes Sansa looked at the princess and, being so intimately familiar with how very hard she tried, Sansa had the urge to feel sorry for her, of all things (something that Myrcella would have taken offence over, no doubt). But still, Sansa sometimes wanted to tell her: it's useless, stop trying to win them over. They will never love you. You will forever be their enemy… and yet, Sansa had a feeling that the princess already knew that. Which meant this was a hand that Myrcella was playing, and if Sansa had to guess, she'd say that the princess was just a patient enough sort of person to play for the long run. Oh, Sansa liked the princess well enough to be sure, but there was no doubt in her mind that the quiet lion in their midst was not to be underestimated.

But - and here came the important part - she disagreed with her lady mother under one very important point: Lady Catelyn had been hard towards Myrcella, unmovable from the start, making her disapproval known in no uncertain terms. Sansa on the other hand preferred a subtler approach, simply because of the sheer number of further possibilities it could offer: you should never to openly challenge a threat that was merely a potential one, lest they prove to have their usefulness as an ally. You keep them close instead, (but never too close!) and learn their ways. Learn what they want and possibly how to cage them in, how to control them.

Now, for the sake of honesty, Sansa had to give it to the princess: controlling Myrcella was easier said than done. Though by nature and inclination the princess was rational, meticulous and organized, she was also capable of the most spontaneous bursts of impulsivity when one least expected it, making predicting her reactions a guessing game rather than a study. Sansa had seen firsthand just how unpredictable Myrcella could be when she had a mind to it. The princess hated being manipulated with a passion that she demonstrated for almost nothing else and could smell the intention of it from a mile away somehow – which was probably why controlling her was like trying to control wildfire sometimes. In that, the Princess was so remarkably like Joffrey that it seemed she had taken a page off her brother's book - lacking his insanity, obviously... which, one could argue, probably made the princess more vicious than her King brother, because where Joffrey was mindless, Myrcella was always perfectly aware of the damage she was causing. But though she might seem chaotic to some, Sansa could see the truth for what it was: everything Myrcella did was almost obsessively planned out.

But, for all her shrewdness and unpredictably fickle morality, Myrcella was human and all humans were fallible in their desires: we all want something. Myrcella was no different, though perhaps her desires might be a little more shrouded in mystery than most. Find out what those were however and Myrcella, like any other person, could be brought to heel.

And Sansa thought she had a fairly good idea of what the princess wanted… but it was only an idea, after all.

"What do you mean?" Robb had asked, a little confused when Sansa had broached the subject to him one afternoon. They were alone with mother in their uncle's solar, which had been temporarily given to Robb to run his affairs until their departure further north.

Sansa took great care in speaking, in forming the words to the right idea.

"You must know what her purpose she is to serve here, surely? Or rather, the purpose Tywin Lannister wants her to serve." Because Sansa felt there was considerable difference between those two concepts.

"A political hold over the north, through its queen." Robb droned, almost in a sigh as he leant back on his seat. He was probably much too tired of speaking of this. No doubt his bannermen had broached the same subject at every turn.

"Yes, but that's just the obvious part of it." Sansa said carefully and when her brother's eyes found hers, there was no judgment there, only curiosity. 'Go on' his eyes seemed to tell her. It was what they always told her. And how well she loved him for it… "He wanted Myrcella to be the mother of you heir, to be your queen and all that comes with it, but what I think he most wants is her to be your wife."

Sansa watched the comprehension dawn in Robb's blue eyes, watched the heavy frown darken his features and from the corner of her eyes she saw her mother too, putting down her embroidery, now not even pretending to disregard the conversation anymore.

Sansa continued, sounding surer of herself as she spoke, no matter how she felt about what she was saying.

"She's young, beautiful and charming enough to impress all the Red Keep and Tywin himself… and you're only a man after all." Robb raised a single amused eyebrow at that, his lips twitching up at one corner. He doesn't need to be annoyed at being underestimated, Sansa realized with a tinge of satisfaction. He has nothing to prove to anyone: he's already won. "Don't you see how perfect it would seem to him: a Lannister spy at the very heart of your Kingdom, in your bed of all places?" she went on, speaking of what she had seen and heard in the Red Keep, but in not so many words. Because this here was the important part. "I don't know what Tywin Lannister's plans are, but I doubt he considers the North's independence as a fact. He could not defeat you in the field and he could not win the war with the North in the way he might have liked, but he will never give up as long as he takes breath." Sansa knew that for a fact. She knew enough of the man she spoke of to be sure of it. "I think he is just biding his time to rectify and situation in some way and I think that Myrcella is bound to play a pivotal role in that, because Tywin Lannister only ever trusts those with his own blood in his veins for that."

"I've already heard all this." Robb said again, looking towards mother. Yes, Sansa knew what her mother thought; all knew what her mother thought about this. But there was a little secret that Sansa was keeping: something she knew to be true and that so very few people seemed to realize.

She leaned forward a bit, instinctively – an act of gentle insistence, insisting to be heard as if Robb would deny her.

"I know you have. But most don't seem to realize that Tywin Lannister has a fundamental flaw to his character." And as she had anticipated, that drew Robb's attention sharply. "The man is so consumed by the idea of his family, that it blinds him to the reality of his actual family completely[4]. If it did not, he might have seen it immediately that Myrcella is not the best person to pin such hopes and plans on, Lannister or not." Sansa finally said, dropping that truth on her brother with a certain amount of dread for his reaction. In turn Robb's frown did not ease but he did not break her suggestion outright. On the contrary…

"What is it that you're talking about Sansa?" he asked, more confused than ever as their mother reached them and sat in the chair near to Sansa's looking at her daughter in the face.

Sansa took a deep breath and looked at her hands, clasped together tightly in her lap. She had to say this. She was not afraid of saying it, she knew it to be true… but what would her family think of her once she was done? What kind of mind was able to come up with such mercenary ideas, they would wonder.

It was no matter, Sansa decided. She was doing this for Robb and for their family, which was far more important than her own wishes and needs. She would deal with the repercussions of all her actions when they came. After all… aside from being worthy of their love, you were to be honest too with your family, weren't you?

"She could be an asset to you… if you know how to make her yours." Sansa said slowly, and before Robb's shock over why she thought that made itself know into words, she tried to explain why she thought that.

As all those that had been directly involved in the war of five kings, Myrcella too had lived through strenuous circumstances (though so very few seemed to be privy to all the details of those circumstances), and as anyone might - as Sansa herself had - the princes had been shaped and marked by her experiences. Shaped into someone that might turn out to be an asset of value for Robb, and indeed, all the Starks that were to have the princess in their midst, if they were able to work her the right way. There was a dichotomy in nature in the princess, something that Sansa had found out slowly through careful observation, and that was what she was trying to explain it, when her mother interrupted.

"She is a Lannister." Her mother said, eyes flickering from her daughter to her son. "Her loyalty will always be with the Lannisters first."

"Oh, she is a Lannister, there's no doubt about that." Sansa agreed. Myrcella too was capable of cruelty as much as any of them – just as much as anyone really, if Sansa were to be honest - and sometimes it seemed to Sansa that the only reason the Princess had survived all that had happened to her, was an incapacity for any genuine feeling at all. Indeed, there was something in Myrcella's cold and calculating intellect, in that uncompromising, total way she set herself about any goal, which reminded Sansa of Tywin Lannister's way of doing things. "But taking her and her loyalties for granted is a mistake that Tywin Lannister has already made, and it's not one you should so readily follow him on, Robb."

Sansa wanted to be understood, though there was something like anxiety in her that was scattering her thoughts, making her less precise than usual. This was a matter too important to be silent about, but it was also so very delicate. Sansa knew that she had to make herself clear in a way that made sense, in a way that could convey sensations, feelings, knowledge that was gathered as if form the edge of a blade through careful observation. There had been those in the Red Keep that had been stunned with the princess: among all Lannisters, hers were the hair that shone most golden, the eyes that most recalled the thick green hue of wildfire and which shone like lit torches out of her skull sometimes. Indeed, tall and lean and haughty, outshining the queen by leaps and bounds, Myrcella had looked the most Lannister of them all.

But she was so different, so stubbornly her own self that she was unassailable in her convictions, especially when the grapping hands had been her family's.

"Myrcella and Tommen were always different from Joffrey and their parents both." Sansa started again. "Especially Myrcella: she was always braver than her brothers and brighter and more confident[5]. But what's more important now is that she has been so cut off from King's Landing for so long, in a country so foreign that she's grown into someone alienated from the ways and especially the interests of her family almost completely. I think they've lost her."

They had lost her to Dorne and dornish ambiguous morals; to Obara Sand's honest love and Elia Sand's true friendship. And there was something else too, something that Myrcella nor anyone else about her ever spoke of, but still Sansa wondered if the Lannisters had not lost Myrcella's young heart to a dornish prince's love as well. But there was more to it than simple sway of emotion. The scent of horrific truths clung about the Princess always, her history was carved on her skin – undeniable. Whatever casual horrors may have happened on her, they seemed to have changed her even more than Sansa's own had, because unlike Sansa, Myrcella made no effort at all to reconcile who she had become with who her family demanded her to be. On the contrary, the princess resisted her family's efforts to shape her back to their own image with a kind of lingering, silent resentment - especially where Cersei was concerned. There was much that went unsaid between those two, and fueled the fire between them like a hot summer wind.

Myrcella's differences with her Lannister family were hardly of the obvious kind, but they whispered loudly in the small details, things that people without an eye for the invisible perhaps would miss (but Sansa was not one of those people): details like Myrcella's way of understanding affection and the way she chose to acknowledge the existence of limits, though sometimes she too failed at practicing them… or her refusal to simply give trust and respect when the only claim for it was shared blood. It had seemed such a strange way to behave, as foreign in the Red Keep as the hot desert-country from which the princess had been taken… It had been, Sansa had later come to realize after marching with the dornish, a wholly Martell way of understanding relationships between people that Myrcella had taken off the Snakes; a way of life and being that the princess seemed to have internalized more deeply than any other… so deeply in fact that to her it was natural. Myrcella could not seem to exist in any other form, though flexible enough to adapt to any and all of them. But that to Sansa did not seem fantastical. It seemed true: the lessons that take root the deepest within us are the ones carved into us with the hot steel of blood, and pain, and death. If, in a rare unguarded moment, one were to look closely into Myrcella's Lannister eyes, one could see all three in those wildfire-green orbs.

Myrcella perhaps didn't realize just how loudly the glitches of a behavior such as hers resonated in a place as the Red Keep, how achingly misplaced she had seemed sometimes among lions, though she was so undoubtedly one of them. Or perhaps the princess did realize her own precariousness… After all, Myrcella distrusted her family and treated them with a level of disillusionment (and sometimes distain) that to Sansa had felt as familiar from the very first moment she had witnessed it.

To Sansa all of this was proof that at least the direction of her own theory was right. But few would be those that would ever have the patience to listen to that. Robb might have been one… of their mother were not so bent on interrupting.

"A Lannister will always be a Lannister, till the day they die. Take Genna Frey for an example and you'll know what I mean." But it really was her mother's scornful tone and that told Sansa what she meant, more so than her words. "They are all the same."

Sansa blinked her astonishment away - this was her mother after all, no matter how blind she could be sometimes to what was so obvious. "Indeed mother, they are not. I have lived among them long enough to know that. And believe me when I tell you that – though in different ways - Myrcella is as much of an oddity among her family as the Imp is."

And how ironic was that to those that looks mattered above what lay beneath: the perfect Lannister and the Lannister disgrace, two peas in the same pod.

"It was the Imp that tried to kill Bran a second time, don't forget that." Her mother immediately countered, eyes clouding over with sorrow.

Sansa swallowed, and with that she swallowed back the words that had been on the tip of her tongue. She could say what she knew to be true… she could, but it would hurt her mother too deeply, too acutely. And Sansa would not do that.

Some truths were better left for the dead.

"Still, even if they had not lost her to Dorne quite as thoroughly as I believe they have, they would have once she was brought back to the Red Keep because of Joffrey's unchecked depravity, Tywin Lannister's indifference and the queen's powerlessness against it." Sansa said with the decision that was fueled only by truth, keeping her tone blank.

And it had been a blessing, in Sansa's opinion, that Myrcella's grandfather was an emotionless block and that the princess despised him for the way he treated his family as if they were his possessions; that the queen loved her son too much to begrudge him anything even in cruelty, not even his obvious devilries and Myrcella hated her for it; that Jamie Lannister had not been there at all to sway the princess' affections at all. (… though sometimes Sansa had wondered which was worse: to be fatherless and cut off from the rest of your family; or have your parents still living and your family all about you, and still fell just as alone and as much of an orphan.) The truth was that Myrcella did not like the game, despised her families ambitions and resented all that they had done to pursue it – and of those things Sansa was more than certain because Myrcella had not once made a secret of her feelings in that regard. Indeed they had been the grounds for the clashes between her and the queen often. But more importantly, Myrcella had none of their hunger for power. It was quite true that the princess had a deep craving as well, as each and every one of her family members did, but it was for different things.

"As it is, the only Lannister holding sway over Myrcella's heart is Tommen-." Sansa said, in the meantime thanking the gods for the boy's existence, otherwise she might have never known whether or not the princess was even capable of true feeling. "-and the little prince is as sweet as the kittens he so likes, and luckily just as useless."

Tyrion Lannister too was in that short list of two people, but more than her heart, the true sway the Imp had over Myrcella was of the mind. There seemed to be nobody whom the Princess was more willing to respect than her dwarf uncle and, at first, it had seemed as if it was done for the sole purpose of annoying the queen… but after months of watching them on and off in court, Sansa was not so sure. She remembered how, before she was send to Dorne, the princess and the little prince had loved their uncle openly... and seemed to be willing to love him still even after so much time, though differently. Truth be told, the relationship between those two was perhaps a bit more complicated than Sansa's careful eye stretched, but it didn't matter: what mattered was that Tyrion Lannister was too far away to do any harm and much too despised by the rest of the lions himself to be a real threat.

"Be that as it may-" Robb finally said, after he was certain that Sansa had spoken her own mind. "-I still don't understand what it is exactly that you are proposing here. Nor do I understand how the princess not having any affection for her family, or even going so far as to despise them, makes her a more trustworthy to us."

"Not to us." Sansa said, looking at her brother in the eye. "To you."

That seemed to startle Robb visibly, but only lasted a short moment. Understanding downed on him quickly and sharpened everything about him.

"If I knew how to make her mine…" Robb repeated her words back to her, but this time they sounded like both a question and a reflection. It took determination to keep holding his eyes when she felt their weight on herself so keenly. Robb sighed, as if tired and (though she knew it was only her imagination) disappointed with her. But when her brother spoke, there was no distain in his voice, nor judgment. The only thing Sansa perceived was a calm resolve.

"It doesn't matter how alienated the princess has been from her family or how much, by some miracle, she might come to care for me - they will always be her blood. Even if her loyalty could be swayed, she'd still never let them go completely. I don't think she is of that kind." And then, as he leaned forward and linked his fingers together, elbows on the table, he pinned her with an unflinching gaze and spoke in flat tones, just to make a point. "If you hated me and despised me and yet someone tried to kill me, would you still leave me to my fate?"

His question was a challenge. The immediate response was in the way Sansa's back straightened immediately. You're my brother! was her first thought, outraged - and there it was, his answer.

Sansa felt her insides curl up in tension. How could she possibly explain all that she knew? All that she had learned from them by watching them, living with them for years. Surviving them. All that Sansa had gathered from her so careful observation of the princess herself: of how Myrcella resisted and resented, how she rejected and hated… and – dare she say it? - yes, even how she loved. And, for all her strength, how lost she would be the moment the dornish left her in Winterfell. As adrift as a ship at the heart of a storm… how easily swayed.

But the right words failed her. She would have to use clumsy ones, but not for that reason, less true, less certain.

"They're not like us, Robb. The only thing that makes the Lannisters what they are is that, though they might hate each other – and they do - they would still do unimaginable things for family, because to almost all of them, and Tywin Lannister first among them, 'family' is not the people in it as much as the name they carry. And their name and the power its capable of yielding is all that matters to them." Sansa's eyes blaze then, almost feverish in her conviction. "That is exactly the sort of connection that Myrcella lacks. I'm not sure she even cares about it. Her idea of family is not the Lannisters'. It's… its Oberyn Martell's eight daughters and the one they have taught her." Sansa took a deep breath, time enough for her next words to bear the weight of that small silence. "That is something you could give her."

A truer family to belong to than Myrcella has ever known; a place she will be able to call home for the first time in her life, without regret.

It was a daring assumption to make, and not only because it was unsteady enough to be borderline reckless. It was daring because Sansa was very much aware that, for all her ability in wriggling secrets out of people, she didn't know the princess half so well as to foresee her reactions with any kind of certainty.

But Sansa did know some other things though: she knew that though the princess did not feel the smallest connection to her Lannister name, she was prepared to do unimaginable things for those she loved – be them Lannisters or not. That was as true now as it had been when she had almost stabbed Joffrey for hurting Tommen one night, months ago. It had earned her a beating, but she had still spit on Joffrey's face afterwards, dotting his face with blood of her own mouth. It had felt true when Elia said that Myrcella had almost killed a man to protect her. And Sansa knew that the princess did not trample over all that was moral and right just because her family demanded it and that Lannister laws for her were not the only laws: living in Dorne had made sure she realized that keenly.

The truth was that if only the princess had not been so strong of character and independent of mind, she would have been an easy target: she was like a kite with its string cut; a wanderer without a home and nowhere to belong: too Lannister for the dornish, too dornish for the Red Keep, not nearly as fixed anywhere to belong. And above anything else, what Myrcella wanted was to belong somewhere. To have a home.

That was the princess' secret, her dark heart.

And it was one they could use.

"She'll have your children and they'll be Starks – that will bind her to Winterfell one way or another, but if you really want to be sure that she'll never turn against you, the best way to go about it is this that I'm telling you." Sansa hesitated, but only just. She knew it to be true… and as all truths it was ugly. "Get her to believe that you believe she belongs with you."

"She will be my wife. By the laws of gods and men she will always have a place by my side." Robb said almost a little impatiently, but Sansa interrupted him with a shake of her head, immediate. Not the point, it said.

"I'm not speaking of the place assigned to her by others, or the place she will make for herself – because she will. Securing her own position will be the first time she will do, have no fear of that, but… but if you get her to believe that you want her with you, that…" How do I say this without sounding as cold as the bite of steel, Sansa wondered? "- that she won't have to work against you to make a place for herself… If she believes that you are willing to have something true with her, a life she can call her own in Winterfell, by your side… for that alone she will never harm you."

Her brother's eyes hardened, his mouth pressed on a close line. "Like Theon never harmed me. I loved him like a brother. He still betrayed me."

Sansa bristles. For so long she had believed that Theon Greyjoy and truly killed her little brothers and burned their corpses. It was not for a long time afterwards that she had been told otherwise.

"Myrcella is not Theon. Theon never belonged in Winterfell. He was heir to Pyke." Sansa tried.

Robb looked away from her and it was as clear an admission as if he'd actually spoke. But their mother did fill the silence for him.

"And neither does a Lannister." Her mother said, severely. Sansa felt her first never begin to fray.

"Indeed, a Lannister could never belong in Winterfell, but try to remember, mother, that she will be your Robb's wife and the son she might give him will be King after him. It would be most unwise to treat her bitterly when all she wants is to be accepted." Sansa said, a little more impatiently than she meant to perhaps. She tuned to her brother then, if only so that she didn't have to see the surprise on her mother's face for being spoke to that way. "If you manage to turn her mind, if you manage to make her believe that her place truly is in Winterfell, then she'll be an asset to you. Someone that, when the time comes will not turn her back on you and might even warn you against Tywin Lannister and whatever scheme he is concocting in the meantime."

"That is a big gamble to take over so little evidence." Her mother said after a bout of silence, sounding so hesitating that Sansa could easily imagine her thoughts: as if she could hardly believe what she was considering. But she was indeed considering it. What her mother said was the truth of course. It was a lot to gamble on the basis of a hunch, just Sansa's own perception of someone's character.

"I know." Sansa admitted looking at her mother in the eye. "But the possibility of victory is better than the certainty to defeat."

"You seem to be forgetting, both of you, that this princess among us is not exactly the simples person to lie to." Robb said, his tone bordering on dry, as if to reprimand them both. Sansa knew the reason for his irritation. They were speaking of a person thus, as if they were speaking of a thing. A girl that personally, Sansa even liked. Someone that her own brother might like as well. It would be easy to do so. Myrcella was someone that could draw you in immediately, if she had a mind to lure you. She had the easy charisma of someone who had been charming men and women for so long she hardly had to think on it anymore.

But she was still a Lannister.

"Yes, you're right. She is an accomplished liar herself, she cannot be played easily." Sansa said firmly, knowing what she was saying beneath those words. "But for all her intelligence and perception, Myrcella is not above being manipulated. Just look at how marvelously the dornish have turned her: half the time she thinks like them and she doesn't even realize it."

"I doubt that." Robb countered immediately. "That she doesn't realize it, I mean." And his eyes were so far away as he spoke. What was he thinking of? When his eyes were raised to hers, Sansa felt almost slapped with the knowing look they held, as if he knew her mind back and forth. She felt a child again. "And let's say it as it is, shall we: what you want is for me to make her believe I love her."

Sansa gulped. "Love is a strong word… and one that Myrcella doesn't hold in any particularly high regard, so she might not even believe you if you said so. But caring for her… that she might believe."

Her brother's eyes felt like ice-chirps on her skin and she could not tell whether it was her brother or her king that was speaking to her right now. He was not unkind, but the strength in him, of him, resonated in that moment. As if everything about him revolted at the idea of such a base deception.

Sansa had never felt the warped ugliness of who she was inside more keenly than in that moment.

"And what makes you so sure of that, sister?" he asked her. It was a question, not a taunt. He wanted to know. But it still felt like a challenge.

Sansa sighed, and looked at her hands. "I have gotten rather good at sniffing out people's weaknesses these last years. And I can tell you that one of the princess' weaknesses is her compulsion to find a home somewhere, be wanted somewhere." A need to be loved, Sansa thought – that was what Myrcella Baratheon hungered for. A weakness if there ever was one… it made her so easy to me manipulated. All it would take was just the slightest bit of true feeling. "If you offer her that, she will want to believe it."

And Sansa knew better than anyone that when you want to believe something, you do half the job yourself: you will lie to yourself most easily, just to have a taste of that which your heart most wants. But she didn't need to say that aloud: Robb already knew it. But the way he looked at her made Sansa wonder, would he really want to hear her say it then. Admit it honestly, what she wanted to do, how she wanted to lie?

"And what is my weakness then? Can you tell me that?" he finally asked her instead.

It was worse, she found.

But Sansa still met her brother's eyes unflinchingly, and knew that he knew his own weakness better than she could. A rarity for a man in his positon.

Why did he want her to say it? But he did want her to, that was why he had not blinked as he looked at her.

"You should guard yourself against believing your own lie." Sansa said softly, knowing full well that the only reason their mother had been silent so long was probably shock.

The ghost of a smile curved Robb's lips, an acknowledgment. But it made him look so sad and tired for a moment…

"Must it be a lie?" he asked himself softly, not looking at anything in particular. Sansa felt her mother stiffen, felt all the words that Catelyn Tully was not saying stuck between tightly gritted took a deep breath before speaking. Her words came out softer than she intended…

"It would be easier if it were. Less complicated perhaps."

Her brother sighed and rubbed his eyes, as if the conversation had wearied him. Perhaps it had.

"Yes. So many things would be less complicated if we had them the way we want them." Robb said with a sigh.

"Robb!" their mother called, looking at the edge of fretting as she looked from one child to the other. "You cannot mean it!"

But Robb only looked at her as if he was silently asked her to stop now, before they started a conversation that they had long exhausted, and that had tired him of patience.

"Mother…" Sansa tried, but Catelyn Tully would not be deviated from her course. Sansa should have known that, of course.

"That girl is dangerous. I would not care if she were the most harmless purest maid in the world, she would still be a Lannister. It will be through her that Tywin Lannister will act, just as your sister said: keep her too close and she'll shove a dagger in your heart at her first chance."

Robb finally lost his air of tranquility and that patience he had been conducting his talk with Sansa with, snapped.

"What would you have me do?" He said, almost raising his voice. It was not quite a shout, but certainly he spoke more loudly than before.

They have talked about this for far longer than I thought, Sansa realized.

"Would your bitterness be satisfied if I did as Karstark says: rape her the first chance I get, have her guarded like a criminal and have her killed the moment she births me a son? My own wife?! Is that the kind of son you raised? The kind of King you want?"

With every word his anger and frustration grew and by the end he really was shouting.

Sansa found herself shocked by his words, by the depth of hatred they reflected. Had Karstark really suggest that?! Was the man mad completely? She should find a way to listen in the next time her brother met with his bannermen, if this were the kind of things that they discussed. But that was a thought of another time. Her mother flinched at the coarseness of the words that Robb spoke so bluntly, but she should not have. It was what she wanted, was it not? If it had not been, she should have made her disagreement known. Sansa searched her mother's eyes. She saw distaste there… but not disapproval. It did not shock her – little shocked her anymore, but it did made her wonder.

What is it that we have become?

But when she looked at Robb, she was pleading. She was the mother Sansa remembered.

"Don't you understand, my son? Before you, there were seven kingdoms and one king. You changed the rules, Robb. After you… all is possible." And then, her eyes grey hard her face set and her voice sharp. "You think Tywin Lannister will ever forgive that? Or that he will ever accept it? I tell you now that he will not. And he will retaliate in the fashion Tywin Lannister always has."

Robb got up from his chair and went to the window, turning his back on both of them for a moment. No doubt, he wanted to have a moment to himself, to think in quiet, so Sansa gave him that silence that he had asked for.

When he turned, it was at the maps laid on the table that he looked at.

"Once we cross the Neck, there will be no way to attack the North. And the Ironborn…" Robb scowled when he spoke the word, as if it were a curse. "We will crush them so hard that it will be a thousand years before they ever think on leaving those shitstained rocks they call home[6]." The fierceness in his face as he said it made Sansa believe it. She knew that plans were already in motion. It was no coincidence that they had not ridden ahead to Winterfell with a small garrison. "What even one such as Tywin Lannister can do then, with hundreds of miles between us, I wonder."

"He will do what he always does: take with trickery and deceit that which he could not take any other way. You're wrong to think that that man has limits Robb: he does not know them." Sansa filled in, sensing the tension between her brother and her mother. "He only knows his goals. Whatever means he uses to get them is plausible to him, no matter how low."

But she was careful to speak ever so softly, as not to provoke him again. He needed to see reason, but also to remember that she and their mother were arguing different sides here.

"You seem to know him well." Robb said, but it was not judgment, at least not only. His crinkling brow seemed to be utterly puzzled by her knowledge of a man that not so many could claim to know half so well. But Sansa had had good reasons to study him. And study him deeply too. He had been the main source of her hatred once she learned what true monsters looked like – those that knew how to hurt beyond the body, and give pains that lasted for years and years.

In that moment, facing her brothers so honest inquiry, Sansa decided to tell the truth. It was an impulsive decision, but she ran with it, not giving herself time to overthink it, to doubt herself.

"There was a time I thought I was all that was left of house Stark." She carefully kept her voice in check though, without realizing she sounded so very cold. "And I believe in knowing my enemies well, so that I will know, when the time comes, where to sink the blade that will hurt them the most."

Sansa saw the realization in her brother, the way he blinked his eyes open to her, to the truth in her that she was finally letting him see. She daren't look at her mother, but had hear the sharp intake of breath, had seen the tightening of those long fingers on the arms of the chair. Why should she be so surprised? Had she not proved herself capable of equally base thoughts just a moment before?

It was the small smile on Robb's lips that shocked Sansa the most. Immediately she drew the wrong conclusion, as most usually do when taking hasty decisions.

"You don't think I could have done it? That I could have avenged our family?" Sansa found herself gritting her teeth. It had been almost two years since she had thought herself alone in the world, but the pain was still as sharp and fresh as if it had been yesterday… perhaps that was why she confessed to her darkest desire so easily. "I would have torn them apart. I would have killed all of them, till there was no Lannisters left to make a shade upon this wretched world. That is who I was willing to be for us."

She bites the words out one by one, whole and cold and clear… and for once, true and honest as well in her spitefulness. She means them, with every drop of virulence she has ever felt for that accursed family and had so hurt her own. But she does not mean to speak quite so freely… Sansa feels her mistake when the smile fades from Robb's lips and his eyes turn grave.

"I never doubted it." He said then, his eyes boring into hers, mirror images of each other. "You are a Stark of Winterfell. And it was pride of that, which you saw before, and not mocking."

Sansa blinked back her surprise, though his honesty, so freely given - same as he always gave it - hit her as suddenly as a slap might have. The fierceness bled out of her in a moment, and she was left a little sister again. Her shoulders sagged with a sigh, and she looked at her hands. Sansa should have known Robb would have said something like that. She should now many things and yet, she seemed to forget them just as often. But she should have not forgotten how, every time she felt forced these past few weeks to play herself, just as often Robb had gently demanded, without even knowing what he was searching for, that she be herself.

Do you see me now, brother?

But he could not. Not half so well as he would have liked, anyway. There were secrets in her, dark deeds that Sansa did not dare confess, not even to her shadow. She did not dare repeat them to her own heart.

But one truth remained however.

"It's been a long time since anyone looked at me and saw something more than a pretty face and delicate limbs, I'm afraid. It served a purpose before… but I'll never play any games with you Robb, I promise. You'll always hear the truth from me." Especially when it's so ugly everyone else will be afraid to speak it. And this time Sansa looked her brother in the eye, begging him silently to believe her. She knew she would not be able to bear it if he did not. After so much time longing to go home, there could not be a home if they could not trust one another.

Robb's eyes softened, his face mirrored a smile that was not there, but that could come at any moment. "I believe you. I would not doubt that."

Sansa feels her heart swell so much it hurt, at the tone of those words, at their fearless conviction. That is what truth sounds like, she told herself. And right after that… oh brother mine, you should. You should doubt, always. But resoluteness was firm in her. Why should he lower himself? It took a dark mind to concoct such things and Sansa had built herself such a mind. She could snatch all the dark things from the air and Robb would be forever untainted by them, their shining sun of hope[7], and all the things they should live by again.

Sansa smiled at herself for those thoughts. She was making him into an ideal, into someone he was not. Robb was a great man now, but he was just a man after all. And he had not won this war by being upright and honorable always. He had won it by making allies and keeping them at hard costs, by putting fear in the hearts of his enemies. It took a measure of necessary brutality to do that, a certain talent for it… one that her brother had had to learn, no doubt. But all men and women need something to believe in, and out of all the gods, Sansa felt safer in believing in someone she could love and that could love back.

"As for the Princess… I will do as I decide its best." Her brother said when sufficient time had passed. He looked at their mother when he said it, and spoke with a certain finality that left no room for inquiry.

But Catelyn Tully had spent too much time among men to bend quite so easily, even in front of a king. "Robb, you must see reason…" she said, though she sounded as stubborn and she did pleading.

But Robb had lost the patience for the topic the moment he had seen no way out of it. "Enough." And he sounded so harsh that it Startled Sansa into blinking. Immediately though, after the King's command, the son spoke, more softly this time. "We've talked about this long enough, I think."

He sounded so tired, so very worn out that Sansa immediately felt her shame like a brand. There was a reason she had been so hesitant about speaking of this, so very careful. This was an underhanded strategy that Sansa had been planning and it was against all northern virtues of directness and honesty… and unfortunately for her ever hungry conscience, Sansa knew that very well. But it was also the one that would save her brothers conscience the most, out of all his alternatives.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Robb." Sansa said softly…

"I never said that I didn't think it a sound idea." Robb admitted, and Sansa could tell by his tone alone that he was doing so against his will almost.

"But you don't like it." And she raised her head to look at him. The answer was in his eyes before it came out of his mouth.

"No, I don't." he said curtly, but his eyes were those of her brother. He took a deep breath and Sansa felt him takin her arm, urging her to stand up so that they could look eye to eye. He always did that, come to her level or make her come to his, so that she didn't have to look up or down to him, whenever he felt he had something important to say to her.

It reminded Sansa of their father so acutely that it hurt.

"I know that you take such great care about all you do and say, but you're not in the Red Keep any longer, Sansa. You don't have to watch every single step so carefully. Everything you think I should know, you must tell me and not be so skittish about it. Though I would be glad to know what it is that you fear, even here with us."

It was in moments like these that Sansa was most cutely reminded that her brother was not just anyone anymore. That he was a king – had been for years – a king forged in war and loss and pain, and that if he had been perceptive about people before, now he was older and more experienced, and all that had made him more able in detecting discomfort. He could detect it even in her, read it in her silences perhaps, in her fidgeting whenever she made up her mind to speak things she knew he would not like. In all the discrepancies between who she used to be and who she was now.

Sansa smiled inwardly at that. Families have long memories… And as the differences in time had been transparent for Myrcella in the Red Keep, so they were for Sansa now, among other was in times like these that Sansa understood how, despite her sharpness and so careful mind, she too could be as big a fool as any in that place where her insecurities lived.

"I'm not afraid of anything, not really. I'm just being silly most of the time." Sansa finally said, giving him a smile. Robb didn't buy it at all, she knew, but just as he had not asked her directly before, about what she dreaded and what lived in her silences, so she knew that he would not ask her now either.

She was grateful for that.

Especially in times like these when, as uncomfortable as she was with being of such a different mind with her brother and mother (thought for completely different reasons) Sansa was also convinced that she was right. She did not by any means repudiate her northern culture and its virtue, but she also was of the very strong opinion that when dealing with liars you must never be too bold and never show all your cards. As was a truth to be respected the one that said you should never alienate a piece that could be swayed your way with just a little bit of work. Because, unlike her lady mother, so perfectly rigid in her way of thinking, Sansa looked at Myrcella and saw how what an asset Myrcella could be, if only there existed a way to be certain of her loyalties, at least by a little.

But, to Sansa's great bereavement, her mother proved to be quite the surprise, not in her way of doing things, but on the potential for destruction that her next move proved to have… and even after Sansa could not say she was sure whether Catelyn Tully had been trying to really take a full measure of the Princess, or whether she was making sure that the closeness Sansa had suggested never came to pass.

[1] From the book, I think.

[2] Robb, in Game of thrones.

[3] A little like the line in 'Alexander', from Olympia. 'In my womb I carried my avenger'

[4] Quoted from Cercei Lannister, at the end of season four, as I'm sure most of you know.

[5] Taken directly from the mouth of Sir Aerys Oakheart, Myrcella's guard in Dorne. I love finding quotes like this in the book!

[6] Yes, I did steal the Ramsay Snow's line there… shame on me, but I liked it anyway ;P

[7] For those who will say I'm getting melodramatic… I am, but that is Sansa's mind, and also, I loosely based her vision on the meaning of Robb's name, which is 'bright one' or something closely like it.