Freedom, Sansa thought, felt an awful lot like being in a cage. A new cage, bigger than that she had in King's Landing, though occupied by all the same trappings and pitfalls, operated and guarded still by Petyr Baelish. That her aunt Lysa had joined that guard meant little – stuck on the road with her, traveling to the Eyrie, Sansa began to doubt the existence of true freedom at all.
The Bloody Gate could not come upon them soon enough.
Though happy to be rid of Littlefinger's decrepit, coastal keep, she grew weary; the trip from Sea to Sky proved a long, rocky, uncomfortable hassle, even when confined to a wheelhouse. The vessel jostled along, bumping and rocking too badly for even a moment's rest, a problem that did not wane when forced to sleep on it's hard, wooden seats overnight.
When their journey finally ended, it was with a jolt of the carriage that shook Lysa from her sleep with a startled snore. "At last," the Lady of the Vale mumbled once her whereabouts dawned upon her, though she had hardly even been awake for an hour of the day's ride. Promise of supper and proper boarding were on her lips as she left to greet Ser Donnel Waynwood at the Gate's mouth, so Sansa complained only in the privacy of her thoughts.
Mayhaps a bath I can take, too, she thought with a yawn, running a hand through the lengths of her curls, sticky and stiff and dark with dye. Being Alayne was bothersome at the best of times – and the hair was the least of it.
But as she, too, stepped from the wheelhouse, fresh air, free of salt or city rank, rolled off of mountains higher than any she had yet seen; the stress of playing her farce seemed suddenly small in comparison. Cold breeze hit her cheeks, pinking them and urging her lips to turn up in joy. The carriage driver only gave her a brief look as she hopped off, a twirl in her step as more mountain air sieved through the many layers of her dress. She was a bird once again, but one emancipated – a falcon free of her hood.
Only, a tether still roped her talons down to the earth – a weaselly rope of a man, currently huddled in hurried discourse with the young Knight and Lysa. Little was clear from her distance, though both her tether and his wife must have taken poorly to the chill, all clustered close and stiff in posture, though the cold was only mild. Sansa had dealt with worse in summer, and with the sun still dancing free of the mountain's ridge, warmth abound around her in battle with the winds.
We must be closer to the sun here, she thought, squinting to see the keep with clarity.
Sansa found it to be far from the grand staircase to the sky that she envisioned, even through the glare. More a small, two-towered toll bridge carved from the mountain itself, the only stairs in sight were those leading up to the keep's entrance, the road so thin ahead that not even the wheelhouse could cross. It would be on foot from there, she reckoned, the thought kicking her bright mood back to the earth.
There is naught to change it, she reasoned, and made a seat of a nearby rock with little issue. If she must wait, then at least she could do so with the day's last sunlight hitting her skin.
But the sun's greatest weakness was the hour, and the wind pressed its advantage as day dimmed to evening. Light—and, thus, warmth—now barely spilt over the ridge, and neither Lysa nor Littlefinger had yet returned to fetch her. Humming, then tapping her feet, then counting the pores of a nearby rock failed to keep her occupied for even half of the wait.
Not for the first time since their stalling – not even for the tenth – Sansa strained her neck towards her keepers, where they had been in conversation for what seemed like an eternity. Her hopes were high that finally, finally, one of them may be on their way back to the wheelhouse. A Gate guard, even. Just anyone who could show her to a half-decent bed and scrounge up a stew to tide her furious appetite.
Alas, neither had moved a muscle. The gate itself was only wedged open. Sansa groaned and wrapped her cloak tighter around herself. She may be there for a while yet, and did not much fancy a shiver on top of her boredom.
Sansa cursed herself for leaving her embroidery supplies back in the Red Keep, and scrambled for any activity to fill the time. First she took to tossing pebbles. One struck the carriage driver's boot and he gave her a nasty look, so she moved on to dragging her heel through the dust, counting the crevices in the mountain's face.
Arya could just disappear in a nook like that, Sansa thought, eyeing a particular crack a meter up from the road, half-a-hundred paces back from the party's rear. Where the thought came from, she was unsure, but it stirred a dormant flame, a small hope that her sister had found some similar nook all those months ago and escaped the worst that King's Landing had to give her.
Perhaps if I sacrificed my cloak, so could I. There was a promising tooth to the rock's edge that would block the eyes of any looking behind them, though it hardly seemed deep.
Rough rock ran beneath the palms of her hands as she contemplated the ruse. The surface had good grip to it. Whatever clothes she did not leave behind would be scuffed beyond saving, but they were drab things anyway – common and grey. Hardly her first choice of dress, and nothing to be missed. Alayne knew nothing of finery.
She could imagine doing it: climbing up and squeezing herself in the wedge, waiting until the last of the party were through the Gate, and then…
And then…
A great sigh forced itself out her mouth, and Sansa crossed her arms, slumping back into the rock-face. And then some mountain clansmen butcher me on the road whilst I run away, alone. No wandering knight would she find to whisk her away from peril. Not here.
Not anywhere.
Winterfell had been taken, burned, and sacked. Lord Baelish had spared her no reminders of that fact since their landing. Home was wherever Sansa would not be killed, her family dwindled down to besieged and imprisoned uncles, an aunt who's kindness stank of duty, and a half-brother so far away that only her dreams could reach him.
Alayne Stone never watched her pack crumble to the least deserving few. Alayne Stone had a home and a future, as bleak as it may be. Alayne Stone had a father, who, at that moment, caught her eye from the Gate and nodded her forward.
At last, she rejoiced, springing up from her rocky seat. Perhaps there was no escape today. At least, hidden away in the impenetrable Eyrie, there would be no threat of death either.
"My natural daughter, Alayne Stone," Baelish introduced her to the Knight of the Gate once she hurried over. With one tense hand on her back and the other gripping her shoulder, there was not much she could do aside from nod her own greeting. "She will be under mine and Lady Arryn's care from now on."
Ser Waynwood smiled, brief and forced. "A pleasure."
The crack in his voice was subtle, but no less notable. A new air filled through to hear it, the veil of a courteous-if-tired introduction lifted to reveal three adults flustered with concern. Even the hand on her shoulder turned to panicked talons in that second, and Sansa frowned.
"Is something the matter, Father?" she asked, though it was hardly a question; the look on Littlefinger's face could comfortably compare to being slipped Dornish pepper in one's wine. Lysa, too, pursed her bottom lip tight enough to turn it white, hands firm on her ample hips. At least on her aunt, displeasure was a usual sight.
The two looked between each other, then to the knight, who gave a small but urgent shake of his head.
"It is nothing to concern you, dear Alayne." His smile was quick, and held not a morsel of comfort. With a quick pat to her head, he motioned Waynwood over from his whisper-sharing with Lysa. "Ser Knight, might you find suitable accommodations for my daughter?"
The Knight complied, ushering the three through the Gate, which creaked shut behind them. What Sansa could see of the inner keep was just as lackluster as the outer, the only notable difference being the number of personnel milling about through corridors and the meager patch of yard. Donnel kept them to the cobbles. A younger man than Sansa would have expected to lead such a guard, maybe a handful of years older than her eldest brothers, he wove nimbly through the keep's narrow halls. They passed a kitchen and small feast hall where hints of roast meat and spiced stew set Sansa's stomach growling. Then out into a second courtyard, even smaller than the first, concealed on one side by the mountain itself and on three others by walls of gray brick.
Lysa labeled the area the guests wing, though Sansa questioned the Bloody Gate's need for a wing with capacity even as limited as it was.
Before she could ask, though, another smell put thoughts of food to the back of her mind. It hit her like a stone as their small party brushed past a closed threshold, like a poultice of all of the strongest herbs had been thrown at her feet with enough force to burst. She staggered with it, halting Lysa, too, who's grip on her shoulder had not lightened since first they passed the Gate.
Her aunt wrinkled her nose against the stench, then leapt a foot off the ground when a high, keening shriek leaked from the putrid chamber.
Lord Baelish paled. Ser Waynwood tried in vain to move them along. Sansa balked, then gasped when a second whine filled the air.
"What is that?"
The knight shook his head and hurried her along.
"Only the maester's quarters, Lady Alayne," he coughed, nose pinched at the caustic stench of the hall. "One of the men took a fall—painful things, broken bones are. Nasty, wretched. You needn't be bothered with it."
"But that sounded like-"
Littlefinger interrupted her, too quickly: "-It would shock you to hear the noises men make in the throes of pain." The man in question howled again, though Sansa heard nothing human in the noise. With it came a clear, panicked curse from another man and noise of a scuffle – the thump of wood against stone, a sharp shatter, and again more swears.
"Hold it, hold it down!" came a third voice, which to Sansa seemed already an extreme number of attendants for one man's broken bones.
Then something growled, loud and desperate and familiar, and a surge of gooseprickles raced up Sansa's back. Lord Baelish tried to usher her forward once more and gave a pitiful noise when she twisted out of his efforts. Something was greatly amiss. Was he not at all curious? Did they all think her too dull to tell an animal's cry from a man's?
Memories of Nymeria sprang forth with another growl and a furied cry – a wolfish cry.
Both Ser Waynwood and Littlefinger scrambled backwards when the door began to rattle, like someone forcing against a locked door with claws and might alone. Great, shearing creaks and carves pulsed the door's hinges. Sansa feared it may fly off and took a staggered step backwards, as well.
The hinges gave. Something – she closed her eyes too fast to be sure what – hurled out, all frenzy and fury and howling fire. Oh Gods, I am going to die! Sansa panicked, arms clenching around herself and body tilted sideways, bracing for a blow.
It never came.
When she deigned to peek, she almost thought herself in a dream – one she frequented many a night, a gray-furred muzzle inches from her nose, golden eyes meeting hers. A beast's breaths huffed against her cheeks, blowing about the baby-hairs curling at her scalp.
Sansa gasped, "Lady?"
Her fingers melted into the fur of the direwolf's neck, all pretense of fear forgotten as it stood before her. The fur was matted and stained enough for the beast to have risen from the dead, though her wolf had not the chance to grow so large as this one. But no—even ignoring that, Lady's fur had not been so grey, her eyes more golden brown than this one's shining yellow.
The wolf whined and nudged its massive head against hers. Pained and heavy, breaths labored out of a muzzle caked with grime—with blood, dried and browned and flaking off as her fingers brushed through. This was not the visage of a wight come back from death, but a beast narrowly escaped from its grasp.
Sansa froze, a realization hitting her was she met the beast's eyes: Lady was not the only of her litter to have died – or, at least, believed to.
Her voice wavered on the brink of tears.
"It cannot be..."
Sansa caught Littlefinger's eye over Grey Wind's shoulder. The other guards had fallen back from their attack, weapons down and faces alight with confusion. To them, she was only Alayne, only a bastard girl in need of saving. They did not know. No one knew. Someone had ensured that—someone who's posture was stiff with the weight of accusation as he kept her eye from the threshold, his own gaze teeming with the guilt of a man caught in a ruse.
Anger and hope burned in equal measure when she asked, "That's no Gate guard, is it?"
He coughed.
"Alayne-"
"You were never going to tell me," Sansa realized. "My brother is alive and you were never going to tell me!
"Alayne, dearest, please-"
"-My brother is alive. And you lied to me!"
Ser Waynwood uttered a confused "her brother?" which gave Lysa and Littlefinger twin winces. Sansa stood straighter and hoped the hall's torchlight brought out the red beneath her dyed curls.
She could see it, the moment the knight worked it out, a look of surprise thrown at Lord Baelish, then something softer, something resolute, as he moved towards her.
"You are Sansa Stark?"
"I am."
He nodded, slowly meeting the eyes of each person in the hall, his lips twisted in thought. A gloved hand pointed to her keeper, whose weaselly face pinched at the attention.
"He smuggled you from the Capital?"
Sansa followed the Knight's direction to glare at Littlefinger. "He did."
That earned a nod from Ser Waynwood, who gave his lips one last twist before his full attention returned to Sansa, squatting down just enough to meet her eye. His were serious, yet soft. Like her father's. All the same, her grip tightened in Grey Wind's grimy scruff.
"The Guard found your brother half-dead, dragged by that wolf a mile south of the Gate. They thought him an outcast from a mountain clan until one found this." He reached into a small pouch on his belt, then dropped something heavy and iron-cast into Sansa's palm – a pin in the shape of a wolf's head, a small crown sitting atop. Robb's personal coat of arms. "His wounds are severe, and massively infected. How he lived this long, no one is sure."
The words hardly processed fast enough for Sansa to nod, understanding hitting at the same time as a queasy dread. How he lived this long... It repeated in her head, a truth, a terrible truth. All she had heard, all the horrible, horrible things she had heard were done to her brother – both during and after his murder. Images left to her mind to conjure during it's worst bouts of creative illusion.
And he lived?
Littlefinger chose to open his mouth again.
"Sansa, my dove. Yes, your brother is alive now. The maester is doing what he can, but, alas… come morning, that will likely not be the case. It was never meant to reach you only because such grief would do you nothing but harm. You have already mourned for your brother once-"
"Stop! Just stop!" Sansa shook her head, the world spinning as she clung to Grey Wind's pelt just to keep standing.
Yes, she had already mourned Robb, through tears kept silent lest her captors think her partial to treason, through the mask of a girl unaffected. She would not do it again. She couldn't. With a wolf beside her, none dared come near enough to trap her once more. So Sansa turned and made towards the chamber.
"Just wait a moment, you cannot-!"
Whatever Sansa could not do, she did not hear. But before her feet could carry her a foot forward, the door creaked open once more, louder than even the deafening fuzz of her own pulse.
A small, withered man in Maester's robes, hands full and bloodied, peered into the hall. He emerged with a grumble on his wrinkled lips for Ser Waynwood, a shallow bow for Lysa, and a curious glance towards the rest of their frantic group.
"Lady Arryn's niece, Sansa Stark," Ser Waynwood clarified, sliding himself between Sansa and Littlefinger. He would notice that, surely. Grey Wind whined against her shoulder, but looked up at the Maester with sad eyes and a sniff to pruny hands coated in drying blood.
"She would hear of her brother's condition, Maester Symon."
The small man's eyes bugged at her introduction, his mouth a small "o" as he glanced worriedly at the burden he held: In one hand was a basket. In that basket, a heap of discarded rags and bandages and instruments, all red with Robb's blood. Worse was the pail he shifted quickly out of her view – though not quick enough to hide the viscera within or the stench of rot he carried with it.
Suddenly, Sansa was not so sure she wished to hear what this Maester had just done to her brother.
The man kept it simple, for her benefit: Robb's infection was cut away, his wounds stitched closed, and milk-of-the-poppy left him too asleep to feel any pain. He did not say her brother would survive it. He did not permit her visitation, either.
Sansa just nodded and let herself be let away, queasy and numb, her head spinning with worry. And beneath it all, anger.
—
"I'm staying. here." Sansa crossed her arms, pouted her lips, and whipped around on her seat to face the fireplace. "You cannot move me."
The hour was late, but never once did sleep beg her to bed. Not for a lack of wanting, but for the persistent company she shared.
"Dammit, girl! I am trying to help you!" Lord Baelish was properly miffed, hours of her refusals to be carted up the mountain by mule grating away his patience. Both of Sansa's parents had been from stubborn stock. Only recently did she come to realize the benefits of flaunting that particular trait.
"You have helped me greatly up to now, my Lord. Robb will know you aided me in my hour of need," she dismissed, hoping her time suffering Cersei Lannister showed in the tone with which she cloaked her wavering confidence.
"If he lives long enough to hear it – if he is not found here before then. How many eyes do you think the Crown has in this keep? You are not a fool, Sansa."
Robb had inherited more than a little stubbornness from Tully and Stark both. Gods be good, he would cling to his dwindling life with the same force he clung to all those petty arguments with Jon when they were boys, to all of the petulant grudges he'd kept a strangling grip on for longer than was proper or noble. She had to believe he would refuse to die on her now.
"No," she agreed, "and Robb will hear of your kindness. Goodbye."
That was a thought that had crossed her mind, if only briefly – and under the assumption that it was Littlefinger, not Cersei or Varys or any other cretin of the Capital, who placed those eyes at the Gate. He was the only of them to have any reason, after all, the only one with any pretense regarding the Vale's rule. And what need had he of even that, now that Lady Arryn was his wife?
"I would help both of you in this current hour of need! Your poor mother, she was your image in every way. How she would grieve now to hear you turn away the help of your kin. The Eyrie is the most defensible-"
"-Robb is my only kin. Goodbye, Lord Littlefinger." Cold met her back as she turned once more towards the fire, certain she may be sick if another second of his company she must keep. Lord Baelish must have forgotten that Catelyn Stark had been willful, too, and far braver than Sansa felt in that moment, heart pounding with the weight of her defiance. Gods, what am I doing? He helped me this far, and he is right – the Eyrie is impenetrable.
He lied to you, another voice screamed. He murdered Dontos, remember? Right before your eyes! What about when you run out of use? Do you trust him with your life once he needs it not? Even the part of her (the Tully, she presumed) that chose not to believe Lysa capable of harming her own niece shook its head, knowing the only family she could trust now slept sick and bloody in the next room over.
So, Sansa kept her back stiff and straight, willed her breath to stay even, and pursed her lips tight. Robb needed her now. There was no one left but them, Sansa and her brother, and even that little hung from a teetering precipice.
"Tell Aunt Lysa I wish her and Robert a safe winter."
A seething sigh sounded behind her, then the door slammed. Sansa remained a statue until Littlefinger's footsteps fell beyond earshot.
—
Night fell upon the Bloody Gate. Wether the hours actually passed faster at this altitude or Sansa's thoughts kept her from moving at a normal pace, she could not tell. Bravery was an ordeal more exhausting than Sansa ever anticipated. She could not be sure if it was minutes or hours that she spent steadying her breathing and collecting herself, the only certainty laying in the heavy set of limbs which refused to move from their sprawl across the mattress, and the fuzz of a thousand simultaneous thoughts and fears flooding her mind.
Beside her, Grey Wind whined in fitful sleep. Though not half as imperiled as Robb, the wolf had certainly taken a beating – a large patch on his rump was shaved bare to expose a gash for mending, and an arrow had caught his front leg in the bloodbath.
"What do we do?" Sansa asked the wolf, a hand running through the scruff behind his ears. Only a whine did she receive, unconscious and piteous. Poor thing, the thought, and scratched his head all the more.
A knock on the door roused her attention before she could engage further conversation, and Ser Waynwood peeked his head into the chamber, a dubious turn to his eyes as he noted the direwolf laying sprawled half across Sansa's matress.
"We tried to keep him in the stables," the knight began. "You can probably guess how that ended."
Sansa wiped her eyes dry and smiled shallowly. "Winterfell's horses were frightened by them even as pups."
"As any creature with half a working brain should be." He eyed Grey Wind, who abandoned his seat beside Sansa to investigate the newcomer. She would not blame him for being wary, stiffening in posture as the beast limped over, but commended his restraint. Hope at subduing Grey Wind would be folly.
Sansa pushed herself upright and brushed down the wrinkles in her skirt. Drab though the thing was, she would not be seen a crying, crumpled mess atop it all. Her mother had taught her better than that.
"It may be much to ask," she started. "I know what you risk by keeping me here, but… my brother-"
The knight raised a palm and shook his head.
"You ask nothing I would not readily give, my Lady. We wanted to aid him. Your mother sent her pleas, and the men of the Gate seconded those – but if Lady Arryn was dismissive with her sister, the answer she gave us was all but a threat to remain at our posts." He sighed, letting Grey Wind sniff his other hand in appraisal. "We knew that Baelish character was no good. Lady Lysa has been a good ruler, if… uptight. But the ravens started coming in, then he started making visits, and suddenly there was no more reasoning with her. The Blackfish was not our Knight for long, but he left a mark on us all – when he fled in favor of the North's cause, we feared the Gate may loose most of its men in following him westward."
The wolf huffed in approval, but gave Donnel Waynwood no further attention, preferring Sansa's scratches.
"You are welcome to stay with us for however long you need, my Lady. It is the least I can do for you. For your brother."
Sansa wrung her hands together in her lap, palms clammy with worry. "Is he…?"
The small smile Ser Waynwood offered put all fears to the back of her mind. For the moment, at least.
"Awake," he said. "Incoherent, but awake. It is a good sign."
With those words came a relief greater than Sansa expected. Sleep could finally take her with that strain off her mind, but she would not yet let it.
Neither would she trust Ser Waynwood so quickly, just from a few kind sentiments.
"May I see him?"
The man thought for a moment, clear distaste twisting his lips thin, but it was a short decision. "If you must," he relented. "Would you break your fast first, or afterwards?"
"After, please," she answered, and wasted no more time rushing to her brother's side.
—
Black was all Sansa saw at first, the dim dawn daylight barely brushing the east-facing window sill. No precious candles did the Maester leave burning in this hidden little chamber, the hearth-fire long since dwindled to gentle embers.
The quick lecture he had given her at the chamber's threshold did not spur confidence. 'There is a bottle of poppy on the nightstand, if his pain be unbearable,' he'd said with little preamble, clearly not thrilled that she was allowed into the sick room at all. 'A waterskin sits beside it. Your brother needs drink.' With that, and a sharp demand to call him back should anything seem amiss, the Maester left them for privacy.
The chamber was so quiet, so stifled and still, that even her racing heart seemed to echo. That, and sharp wheezes from a far corner. Pale and pink in the morning's first light, the edges of a bed took shape, rimmed in the meager glow. Sansa blinked for a moment, letting each one draw the room into greater focus, letting the light that caught barely-parted eyes grow visible. They blinked back.
"Robb-" Sansa croaked, barely a whisper. If her brother saw her, she could not be sure. Her feet held her there, paces away from his sick bed, frozen to the floor in sudden queasy fear.
She had never seen her brother ill. And Gods, did it make her want to hurl to see him so close to death.
Struggling to focus through both the dark and the waning poppy, Robb squinted and strained and twitched his vision back and forth. The blue of his eyes was all but lost to blown out pupils, to the same darkness that stole his focus. Sansa was surprised to see that blue at all, to see her brother awake so soon after the Maester finished closing his wounds.
Nevertheless, a twitch caught her eye – a weak, half-effort of a motion as Robb made to lift his arm from under the covers. His wheezing became a dry, pained gasp, finally untethering Sansa from her statued state. Three shaky steps brought her to his bedside. In that time, the sun must have peeked its face ever so much over the mountains.
Three things became clear in that moment:
First—though his eyes were open, her brother saw nothing. Not her, peering down an arm's length from his face, not the rising day he'd lived to, nothing. She doubted how awake he truly was, recalling their father after his run in with the Kingslayer, when she had visited his sick bed only to meet a fevered, poppy-ridden wraith hardly reconcilable to her memory. That sight had brought her to tears for the subsequent evening.
Second—seeing the bandages around his shoulder, pasted to his cheek, and adding visible mass to his left leg sticking out from the blanket, seeing the sick flush of his sunken face, Sansa realized she would not get her brother back.
Third—she would not leave him, regardless. Not now. Not ever. Never again.
A name slipped from his mouth, but it was not Sansa's. His fingers trembled, whether from the earlier effort of reaching them up or from his fever, she could not be sure. Then, his lips parted, dry and cracking and colorless, and more words threatened to spill forth. Another gasping agony cut that effort short.
The poppy! Sansa remembered, and whipped around to the side table, where a green glass vial caught the dawn.
But for that, there was no need; Robb was out again by the time she turned back to the bed. Sansa sat, vial of poppy wrung tight in her shaking hands, and wept herself to sleep beside him as the sun rose high and golden.