Chapter Text
“Do we have to go to Jon Arryn’s funeral?”
Sansa rolled her eyes. Arya may have been fourteen, but she could be such a child. Even standing in the middle of Barney’s, she looked terribly immature: her hair was gathered into a tangled ponytail, there was a tear down the arm of her Mackage jacket, and her Converse—Converse, of all things!—were still stained with slush from the previous year. Really, Arya had absolutely no sense of decorum, or respectability—Joff’s sister Myrcella was still in middle school, but she would never be seen looking such a mess.
“Of course we have to go to Jon Arryn’s funeral,” sniffed Sansa. “He was one of father’s closest friends—and besides, he was the Baratheon’s CFO for twenty years. Have some respect.”
“She says, while using his funeral as an opportunity to buy a thousand-dollar dress,” Arya murmured. Sansa ignored her, plucking a black RED Valentino off of a rack and holding it up to herself.
“I think this would really work for me,” she said. “It’s perfectly modest and appropriate, but the lace and frills add a feminine touch, don’t you think?” She spun on her heel, evaluating herself in a mirror. “It’s a shame black isn’t my colour.”
“Nice job defending your case,” said Arya. Sansa caught the eye of a sales associate and had the dress added to her changing room, then turned toward her sister.
“Your turn,” she stated. Arya groaned. Sansa rarely understood her sister at the best of times, but she never, ever understood Arya’s reluctance to shop. It wasn’t although she had to budget.
“Sansa, I already have a black dress.”
“And you already wore it to Aunt Lyanna’s memorial service. Two years ago.” Sansa sighed. Arya was so obtuse. “It’s not like I’m making you wear stillettos! Come on, now, we’ll find you something nice.”
“I have something nice,” said Arya under her breath, picking at the dirt underneath her fingernails. Sansa wrinkled her nose. If Arya had to compulsively bite her nails, she could have at least put in the effort to keep them clean, rather than letting them serve as a Petri dish.
“It’s not a crime to own multiple nice things, Arya,” said Sansa, grabbing Arya’s wrist. “Now, either you’ll come pick out a new dress with me, or I’ll tell mother that you’ve been cutting class to hook up with a Brooklynite—“
“Okay, okay!” Arya trudged along behind Sansa with an astounding lack of enthusiasm. “But I’m not wearing anything girly.”
“Oh, what a shame, I thought we’d pick you out an Alice + Olivia,” Sansa said dryly. “Please. I’m a snob, not a moron.”
Arya rolled her eyes as Sansa led her to a rack of Alexander McQueens. “I don’t see much of a difference,” she said.
. . .
“Sansa! Sansa!”
Like a benevolent queen greeting her adoring subjects, Sansa flipped her hair over her shoulder and graced Jeyne and Elinor with a smile.
“Hi, Sansa,” said Jeyne. “And, um, Arya! Hey.”
Arya glared at her for a moment. Without breaking eye contact, she deliberately placed an earbud in each ear, and continued to glare until Jeyne shot Sansa a pleading look.
“Hey, dolls,” Sansa said coyly. She tried for a playful shrug, but the massive Barneys bag was weighing her down. Where was a girl’s limo when she needed it? “Any news?”
Elinor seemed poised to speak, but Jeyne beat her to it. “Margaery Tyrell is in town for the funeral,” she told her, in a single breath.
Sansa kept her features locked in a smile, as though the words hadn’t knocked the air out of her, and tried to stop her mind from flooding with images of that night, Margaery’s curly brown locks, black La Perla lingerie strewn across the suite, shot after shot of tequila. “Of course she is,” she said, with a sage nod. “All of the Tyells should be attending. Garlan is probably coming in from Duke, too.”
“So she told you?” asked Elinor.
Of course she hadn’t. Margaery and Sansa hadn’t shared a word since that night. “You sound so surprised, El,” Sansa said instead. A fierce, ugly blush crept up Elinor’s cheeks, and Sansa felt a pang of guilt. “I don’t blame you,” she said quickly. “She hasn’t been to the city since, like, New Year’s. Don’t worry about it.” To her infinite relief, the limo chose that moment to pull up alongside them. She kissed the girls on both cheeks, then slid through the open door.
Arya joined her, scowling. “Why do you even hang out with them, again?”
Sansa rolled her eyes. “Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they aren’t my friends, Arya. I know that comes as a surprise to you, since you don’t associate with people who live above 50th, but I like them.”
“They’re not your friends,” said Arya. She whipped her head toward Sansa, her long ponytail flying out behind her, then looked back out the window with an even nastier scowl. “Margaery’s your friend,” she said. “Dany is your friend. The Manderly sisters are your friends—even Arianne is your friend, as long as Joff’s grandfather is out of town. Those other girls are just groupers.”
“You shouldn’t call people groupers, Arya, that is so rude,” said Sansa.
“What? They are!” exclaimed Arya. “They’re like greedy little fish, perusing the ocean floor for any scraps thrown their way—“
Sansa couldn’t help it; she laughed. Beside her, Arya grinned, and the limo finally pulled forward as the light turned green.
. . .
Through the door of her bedroom, she could hear her brother ranting at Jorah. “I refuse!” he was screaming. “I refuse! Robert motherfucking Baratheon doesn’t own me, and I am not getting on a plane to New York for his bullshit CFO’s bullshit funeral!”
“I’ve never heard him this angry before,” Irri whispered to her. “Do you need to come to my place for the night?”
Dany forced out a laugh. “It’s fine, he gets like this pretty often. Jorah’s probably staying the night, he’ll calm Viserys down. He always does.”
Irri frowned, bending down again to paint her next toenail. “I’m worried about you. One of these days, he’s going to crack.” She paused, dipping the brush back into the nail polish bottle. “He should talk to someone.”
“You think we’ve never tried that?” asked Dany. “It was okay when we were still young, but he’s an adult now. No one can make him do anything.” She frowned. “Rhaegar probably could have, if he were still alive,” she admitted, “but now all he has is Jorah, and he doesn’t respect Jorah nearly as much.”
Jorah had been a part of their lives ever since Viserys had gotten involved with a local gang, which wasn’t long after they’d been all but exiled to Miami by the Baratheons. Their leader, Drogo, had always had a thing for Dany, which was kind of flattering now, but was creepy when she’d been thirteen and Viserys had tried to plan her a future as a mob wife. Luckily for her, Drogo had backed off when he realized she was a kid, and not in college like he’d initially thought. People tended to make that mistake when you started wearing a bra at nine.
Irri started on the other foot. “Do you think you’ll end up going to the funeral?” she asked.
“Me? Yeah, probably. Viserys? Who knows.”
“You’d go without him?” asked Irri. A little crease appeared between her brows, as it always did when she was worried about Dany. Dany thought it was the sweetest thing.
“I think Sansa told her parents I’m coming,” Dany told her. “Viserys might hate every single person on the Upper East Side, but Mr. Stark scares him, so I doubt he’s going to object.” As though on cue, her phone beeped, and a Facebook message popped up on her screen.
Sansa: please tell me ur coming????
After Dany and Viserys left New York when she was eight, she hadn’t expected to have any ties to the city. They moved from place to place, testing the waters in Baltimore, Atlanta, and Jacksonville before settling in Miami. She could barely remember her Wall Street brat childhood when she’d received a friend request from Sansa when she was thirteen. At first, she’d assumed Sansa was just trying to seem more popular on her profile, but she’d been proven wrong when Sansa messaged her right away, flipping out that she’d had no idea if Dany was even alive and sending so many exclamation marks she should have broken the key. Two months later, Sansa had wrangled Dany’s address and phone number out of her, and Eddard Stark was calling her house to invite Dany on their two-week trip to Disneyworld.
Sansa: please please please i need you there
Sansa: it’s an emergency
Sansa: margaery’s coming i need you
Dany checked the message three times. Margaery Tyrell? It wasn’t surprising, by any means, but that hadn’t even occurred to her. She called Sansa right away, putting her on speakerphone. Sansa picked up on the first ring.
“Is Viserys letting you come?” was the first thing out of her mouth.
“I don’t know yet, he’s kind of pissed about it,” Dany told her truthfully. “By the way, Irri’s here.”
“Hey,” said Sansa. She and Irri had met last summer in Boca Raton. “But seriously, you have to be there, I’m literally going to die. I’ll book you a ticket and have a room made up for you and everything, I can get a limo to take you to MIA. You have to come.”
“I’ll come, I’ll come,” said Dany. “This is going to be so fucked up, though. Have you even talked to Margaery since… you know, since thing?”
“No,” whined Sansa. “No, oh my god, Willas had his accident the next day and she was gone. I didn’t even text her, like, what the fuck to I say? I don’t even know what she remembers, we were both rolling in it—“
“Chill, Sans. She probably remembers everything you remember.”
Sansa moaned. “What god did I offend to deserve this?”
“Relax, it’ll all be fine,” said Dany. “We can go out and get sloppy drunk that night.” She paused, then grinned. “What were you saying about that limo?”
. . .
“Really, darling, I’m thinking the gold Louboutins are the way to go. Red and gold, just like your mother and uncle and grandfather. You are a lion, aren’t you?”
Myrcella sighed, gazing at her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a lacy black dress her mother had deliberately picked out a size too small from Burberry. One one foot, she wore a dark blue Dior pump, and on the other, the gold Louboutin heel in question. The shoes were gorgeous, of course—you didn’t pay $1500 for shit quality, after all—but there was something sincerely wrong about wearing them to a funeral.
“They’re really not respectful, though,” she said, keeping her voice as mild as she could. In the mirror, her mother scowled behind her.
“We did not respect Jon Arryn in life,” Cersei said, her voice almost a growl, “and we will not start respecting him in death. You’d do well to remember that, dear.” She walked up to Myrcella, all long legs and California tan and too much cleavage for fall in New York, and laid her hands on Myrcella’s shoulders. Her grip was only a little too tight.
Myrcella sighed. “I don’t know, I just—” An idea came to her. “I don’t want to wear red soles with a black dress,” she said. One of her mother’s perfect eyebrows raised. “From the back, I’ll look like a Targaryen.”
Her mother took a step back and looked her over appraisingly. She retreated to the bed and sat on it, gazing at Myrcella with her too-sharp gaze. “You do have a point there, love.”
“By the way,” continued Myrcella, encouraged, “did you know that Dany Targaryen is coming to the service?”
That did the trick. Cersei shot straight up, her eyes ablaze. Her mother hated most people and most things, especially younger, prettier girls with equally pretty names, but none more than Daenerys Targaryen. It had taken a while, but eventually, she had even surpassed Margaery Tyrell in her mother’s list of worst people alive.
“She’s coming to Manhattan?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous. Myrcella hated when her mother got like this, but she’d provoked it on purpose, so she stood her ground and tried to match her mother’s fierce glare.
“Yeah, Sansa just told me.” She made sure not to mention that Sansa was the one who invited her.
Cersei’s snarl was something to behold. “That little cunt,” she said. Myrcella didn’t know which of the girls she was talking about; Dany, whom she’d wanted dead for years; Sansa, who she hated despite her façade of mentorship; or Myrcella herself. She stood perfectly still for a few seconds, then swept out of the room, her hair flying out behind her like a banner.
A minute later, she popped her head back in.
“Oh, and Cella, dear?” she said, her voice sickly sweet.
“Yes, mother?” asked Myrcella, hiding her rising sense of dread.
“Do be sure to skip dessert tonight. You look as though you hardly fit into that dress as it is.” With that, Cersei Lannister strode from the room with all the regality of a queen. Myrcella could not have loved or hated her more.