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The days begin to melt together long before the fever takes hold, and in her more lucid moments, Margaery finds it something of a relief. The hot dampness of her skin is not, perhaps, more comfortable than the icy chill she has grown accustomed to, but it is different, at least, and after all these months it is nice to be warm.
Her head aches, and at times feels too heavy to move, but she has little reason to. She sleeps instead. Her dreams grow brighter, more vivid, and though at times she wakes with a scream in her throat (Loras and the scorched shell of his king’s armor, Grandmother, “kof, kof, kof”), she thinks that is a small price to pay for the dreams of home. It is not winter in these dreams, and the flowers of Highgarden bloom before her eyes, the familiar scent of honey and sweetgrass making her dizzy and delirious.
The days go by, and the fires burn, and Margaery waits to die.
She remembers little of the men who come for her, or the days that follow - there is a bed, almost unrecognizable in its softness, and cool water on her face, a hand smoothing her hair (or perhaps that is a dream too, perhaps dying is not so terrible in the end).
When she wakes, truly wakes, she is alone but for a man by the door wearing a spiked helmet. She swallows, her tongue feeling heavy and dry. “Ser,” she whispers, and coughs. “Ser.”
The man turns to face her. He is dark skinned and expressionless, and even as she struggles to sit up, he leaves the room without a word. Margaery falls back, lungs tight and throat tighter, and again she swallows, turning her face into the pillows and blinking hard.
The moment she saw the dragons, dark screeching shapes heading straight for King’s Landing, she knew it was over. She had wished for her mother in that moment, her lovely mother who had supported her husband’s ambition but never shared it, seemingly content with her home and her children. She had wondered, as the dragons descended, how different things might have been if she had been more like her mother and less like her grandmother.
But, like her grandmother, she had little use for such fantasies, and instead had watched and waited.
She saw it all from her high tower, finding a strange peace in the lack of control left to her. It had been a surprisingly clean coup. The dragons and the Queen’s army seemed intent on keeping King’s Landing intact, foregoing the ransacking and looting she would have expected, and what few disturbances she saw in the streets were handled deftly by the Queen’s men.
She hasn’t seen any of her father’s men since the fighting stopped. Margaery isn’t sure when her father died, but knows he must have, whether by dragonfire or greatsword after the fact; she is only certain that he did not fall in battle.
She starts as the heavy wooden door creaks open, and turns her head back to face the figure being escorted into the room. It is a woman, tall and elegantly dressed, her face nearly as expressionless as the guard behind her. She does not look at Margaery.
“Thank you,” the woman says, and Margaery’s breath catches. “I will let you know if we need anything.”
The guard inclines his head, closing the door behind him, and Margaery finds herself alone with Sansa Stark.
She wonders, for a long mad moment, if this is another dream - Sansa had appeared in some of her happier ones, even before the fever took hold. The long lazy afternoons eating cakes and riding through the woods, drinking wine and curling together, giggling, on plush featherbeds. They had whispered and stroked each other’s hair - Margaery had loved Sansa’s hair, red and soft - and sometimes Margaery would kiss her. Sansa always kissed back.
But this woman is not the girl in her dreams; she is taller, with high cheekbones and hair that is more brown than red. The freckles that had dusted her face and neck when they were together last are gone, leaving behind pale clear skin. When she meets Margaery’s gaze her eyes are sharp, and it is only the quick intake of breath and the tightening of her mouth that betrays any emotion.
“Sansa,” Margaery gasps, and again struggles to sit up. Sansa moves forward, seating herself in a chair beside the bed that Margaery hadn’t noticed, and pours a glass of water from the pitcher as Margaery arranges herself. “Sansa - my lady,” she corrects herself, dizzy with shock and the effort of rising, and the quickly dawning realization that this is not the Sansa that she remembers.
Sansa smiles tightly, raising the glass to Margaery’s lips and helping her drink. Her hand is cool on her cheek. Margaery remembers the vague sensations of similar hands tending her in her illness, and she has so many questions that she doesn’t know where to start.
“Your Grace,” Sansa says quietly when Margaery has managed several small sips.
Margaery looks to her, confused, running a useless hand over her tangled hair. “I’m sorry?”
“That’s me,” Sansa says, and chuckles mirthlessly. “The Queen in the North. Who would have thought?”
Margaery gapes, stunned, and finds herself suddenly, shockingly overwhelmed. She bites her lip, hard, against the hot tears pricking at her eyes, and tastes the iron beneath the dry chapped flakes.
“My family,” she finally whispers. “Sansa - Your Grace - do any of them live?”
Sansa hesitates, but the pity in her gaze says enough, and Margaery swipes an inelegant hand across her eyes. She is not surprised, but until this moment the knowledge had been an emptiness inside her, a hollow space. Now that space seems to have been filled with something solid, hot and heavy, and it leaves her wearier than her illness had.
“I’m sorry,” Sansa murmurs, and Margaery nods jerkily, not looking at her.
“And what of me?” she asks, failing to hide the quiver in her voice and twisting her fists in the sheets. “Am I to join them?”
Sansa shakes her head harshly, and for the first time, Margaery sees a spark in her, a violent sort of brightness that is not familiar but is at least more reminiscent of the girl she knew than the determined distance she has displayed so far. “No,” she says. “No. You will live.”
“Why?” Margaery asks bluntly, raising her arm to reach again for the water. Sansa hands it to her, and when she helps her lift it, her grip is a little tighter than before. Margaery coughs again as she swallows, and Sansa makes as if to rub her back, but clenches her fist and pulls away before she makes contact. What happened to her? Margaery wonders, feeling the ache in her chest tighten, her grief expanding to include the woman sitting next to her. She had already lost a great deal when they first met, and even more by the time they parted; she doesn’t want to think about what she had left to lose in the time since.
Sansa sits back, folding her hands in her lap. “Queen Daenerys is merciful,” she says, but her words have a hollow sound to them. “She recognizes that women like us had little control over our roles in the war. She has heard how you reached out to the smallfolk and cared for her people when no one else did, and she admires that.”
Margaery stares at her. That’s not how it was, she thinks, shame twisting in her belly. “Who has she heard this from?” she asks, knowing the answer and hating the tremor in her voice. Sansa merely looks at her, and Margaery suddenly finds it very hard to hold her gaze.
“You’ve been very ill,” Sansa says abruptly. “I’m sorry it took so long for you to be tended to. I only just arrived a few days ago, and the Queen hadn’t realized you were still in King’s Landing.”
Margaery ignores her. “If I am not to die,” she insists, “then what happens to me? I do not wish to spend my life as a prisoner.” Sansa’s eyes flash at that, and it occurs to Margaery that of all people to speak to of being a prisoner, Sansa is perhaps the worst.
She doesn’t comment, however, for which Margaery is grateful. “I will be in King’s Landing for a few weeks,” she says, “but the North is in chaos, and Queen Daenerys has requested that my cousin and I lead the recovery efforts while she oversees the peace in the south. Jon is already at the Wall, and I am leaving for Winterfell shortly.” She pauses, moistening her lips and smoothing the fabric of her skirts. “You shall join me.”
Winterfell. Margaery knows little of it - Sansa had not spoken often about her home, preferring instead to ask about Highgarden and Willas, the life she might lead rather than the one she had lost. The thought of never seeing Highgarden again pains her nearly as much as all of her other losses, but she is strangely sad to think that Sansa will never see it, either. She would have been happy there. Perhaps she will be happy to be back in Winterfell, but if she is excited, she doesn’t show it - she simply looks tired.
She is beautiful, Margaery thinks, even with her strange dark hair and wary eyes. The first time she kissed her Sansa had tensed, but Margaery stroked her cheek and curled her fingers in her hair, and after a moment Sansa had melted into her. When she pulled back she’d taken in the younger girl’s flushed cheeks and swollen lips, her wide surprised eyes, and thought the same thing - she is beautiful - and when she said as much, Sansa had lit up like the rising sun.
But in those days Margaery was surrounded by beautiful people and beautiful things, and it had cost her nothing to say it. She had spoken of happy things, and spent happy afternoons with Sansa and her cousins and even her kings and their mother, and everywhere she turned her future was bright. Sansa - Sansa had been a prisoner even then, she realizes now, truly realizes for the first time. It was no wonder she took such pleasure in such simple things, when the only light in her life had been what shone through the bars of her cell.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, wiping her cheeks furiously again, but the tears are falling fast now, and she is so tired, and her head is starting to spin. Sansa frowns, looking concerned, and moves to sit beside her on the bed, pulling a pillow out from under her and helping Margaery lie down properly once more. A hot flush creeps across her face at how she must look - helpless, unwashed for gods know how long, her hair a tangled sweaty mess - but there is little room for the embarrassment to take root, and she focuses on the softness of Sansa’s hands instead. When Sansa tries to pull away, Margaery grabs hold of one.
“You should rest,” Sansa protests, a hint of color blossoming on her own cheeks. “I’ll come back later, when you’re feeling better.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Margaery whispers, the familiar haziness clouding her vision again, but she blinks against it. “I’m glad you survived.”
Sansa’s smile seems a little more genuine this time, though there is a sad twist to it, and somewhere in the back of her mind Margaery supposes that she will get used to that. She smooths back the hair on Margaery’s forehead, stroking it like her mother used to when she was a child. “I suppose someone had to,” she says.
They sit in silence for several long moments, Sansa’s hands growing warm around Margaery’s. She smells like lemons, she thinks absurdly, she always loved lemons. She pictures them in her mind, fat and yellow, and she pictures yellow roses with their long stems and velvet petals, and she wonders if there are flowers in Winterfell.
She doesn’t realize that her eyes have closed until she feels the light brush of lips against the corner of her mouth. But perhaps that was just a dream, too, because by the time the room comes back into focus, all that remains is an empty chair and the echo of a door being pulled shut.