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She woke up panicked and frozen in place, the cold light of a new day shining through her closed eyes. There was breath on the back of her neck, and in her troubled state of mind she half-expected to turn to find Tyrion lying in bed with her, naked. Suddenly, a tongue lapped at her shoulder, jolting her awake. Reaching back tentatively, she found warm fur, a snout, and a wet nose, then breathed a sigh of relief. It is a Ghost, she thought, not an Imp. Tyrion was in King’s Landing, and her husband no longer.
Sansa had dreamed of the Great War. After all these years, that living nightmare still plagued her dreams. Marching on Winterfell were the Others with an army of wights dragging themselves along behind their masters. An army of wights full of faces she knew, her mother and father, her brothers Robb and Rickon, her friends Beth Cassel and Jeyne Poole and Margaery Tyrell, Jory, Hullen, Hodor. Surrounding her, protecting her were the living, the ones she loved more than any other on this earth. Arya and Brienne, back to back at the gates. Bran in the godswood, surrounded by direwolves as he worked his green magic. Jon, in the front lines and yet standing by her side on the battlements, fending off all their foes with Longclaw in his hand. Then, where in truth they had won their greatest victory, they were falling. Arya, slain by an Other, Bran, a horde of wights,Brienne, an ice spider, every one of them struck down, all at once, all her family dead at last. Then Jon turned to her with blue eyes and breathed out, setting her ablaze.
There was no danger to her in Winterfell, she had to remember. Her sister was in the next room, and her husband slept in her bed at night. As the fog over her mind cleared, though, she realized that if Ghost lay beside her, he was not here this morning. Where is he? Sansa felt the panic rise in her throat once more, but she pushed it down. When she found him, everything would be all right.
Getting out of bed, she walked across the warm stone of the floor to the wardrobe, staring at her clothes. It would be proper to dress before she searched. She was, after all, the Queen in the North. Yet when she considered the difficulty of putting on her clothes by herself, or of finding a maid to help her with them, she dismissed the idea. I am their queen and they love me. They can see me in my nightgown and robe. Pulling it from the chair and her slippers from under her bed, she began her search.
First she checked in Arya’s room, where those two giggled and sparred and played like children before she woke. They were not there. At first, she thought they were off on some mischief together. Perhaps they were on a ride and did not want to invite her when they knew she could not go. Racing through the woods was not possible in her condition. She dismissed the thought a few moments after she first conceived it. When she had first felt Robb kicking from inside her, Jon had wrapped her in his arms and told her that while she carried his child, he would do nothing she could not. He had not broken that promise since.
Once she dismissed that possibility, her second thought was that there was an emergency, but Jon had not wanted to wake her in her condition. Respecting her opinion was of great import to him, but he was always protective when she was pregnant. If he did not come to me during a crisis, he would go to Davos next.
As she walked, she tried to understand what could have gone wrong. The glass gardens built a few years ago had been successful in nearly every castle she had built them in, so it could hardly have been famine. The Bolton supporters had been cast out of their castles, now ruled by their heirs, with Stark loyalists watching over them. Northern inheritance was no issue, for Sansa had lands and titles set aside for all her children. There would be no discord between them for jealous powers to exploit. Sansa and Arya had mended the gap between them as well, to the best of both of their ability. The Others were long gone… or so they had thought.
The Others were the only possibility she could think of for trouble. The cold of the air had seemed like nothing, merely the temperature, but what if it wasn’t? Is that chill the North, or more? Her chest seemed to cave under some pressure, her throat seemed to hurt from inhaling. Blue eyes swam across her line of vision, and chills ran down her back. No, she thought. No, not again. Spiraling down into a void of ice and lust and knives and wights and tourneys and cruelty and eyes, brown and black and red and green and blue-
-but her brain was getting too far ahead of her. Too hasty to jump to the worst conclusion. Arya and Jon were close still, she reminded herself. They were likely getting up to some mischief in the castle. That had always been what Arya's way when they were children, getting up to some mischief and dragging Jon along behind her. Sansa remembered her mother’s stern looks at Arya’s silliness, and the judgement Sansa herself had often lain upon her. They were children then. None of them ever would have suspected that they would be grown so soon. That one would be a wildling, one a prisoner, one an assassin. Sometimes, when Sansa looked at her own sons, she wished they were children once more.
The children. She could think of one other place her husband could be.
“Robb!” she called, as she walked down the hall to her sons’ room. “Eddard!” Both boys looked like her, with red hair and bright blue eyes. Before Robb was born, she had thought to name him Rickon. Her brother deserved that honor, but when she heard his first cry, it reminded her too much of a boy she had held gently in her arms so many years ago. Of a boy who had laughed and played in the sun with his direwolf, wild and free. Of a boy who died with his head in the dirt and arrows in his back, on a battlefield a league from home, a hands breadth away from his brother. She heard his cry, she thought of Rickon, and she could not bring herself to do it.
Instead she named him for another brother who had died. Her valiant older brother, who had been the first King in the North in three centuries. Who had been her hero, from the time she was a little girl. Who had never lost a battle, who had chased Tywin Lannister himself across the continent. Who had died at their uncle's wedding. Little Robb would be as great a man as his namesake, though she hoped he would live all his life in peace.
There had been no debate around the name of their second son, though little Eddard didn’t look like her father. He was kind and good and honorable already. She could tell from the moment he came into the world. He would bear her father's name, the name that had saved her everywhere she had been a prisoner. He would bear the legacy of Eddard Stark, as Sansa and Jon did now. He would be brave and gentle and strong, just like his father. Just like his grandfather.
Lost in thought, she paused as she noticed an ajar door. The door to her sons' room. Pushed open with one hand, the door revealed an empty room, the covers and furs on both beds tossed to the side. It was puzzling. The boys were not prone to waking up early unless someone woke them, and there was no reason they would be escorted from the castle that Jon would not have woken her for. Remembering her train of thought before, she realized that the boys shared Arya's mischievousness, and she continued to share it with them. Sansa breathed out a sigh of relief. The only trouble here is my sister. She remembered Jon covered in flour, pretending to be a ghost haunting the crypts as she cried and ran away. And my husband too, I think.
Searching would be fruitless for a little while though, for if Jon had gone to the trouble to sneak out of bed, the plots at hand were sure to be against Sansa. She could not know what they planned, though. Her family’s kind of trouble was far less predictable than the political type. Instead of trying to find them, she wandered the halls, feeling the warmth of the floors radiating through her slippers and up into her feet. The feeling was so pleasant that she considered taking her shoes off for a moment and curling her toes against the warm snow. Fighting against the urge, she thought of her mother. Though Lady Catelyn had loved the warmth within Winterfell’s walls as well, she would never have conducted herself with such indignity. Turning the next corner, Sansa was happy she had stopped herself as she saw the face of a friend.
“Lord Davos,” she said with a smile. “Your Grace,” was his reply, always the picture of politeness and chivalry. An outside eye might have missed his slight smile of amusement as he glanced down at her in her shift and her robe.
“What are you doing up so early, my lady?” he asked as he offered her his arm. "Are you searching for something precious, to steal you from your bed?" Sansa had the unshakable suspicion that Davos knew where her children were, and her siblings as well. He gestured with his head towards the open door behind him which led out to the godswood. She thought she heard the faint sound of giggling from behind it.
“I was looking for my husband and my sister, and two little gallant knights, but I cannot find them anywhere. I fear I am in great danger without them to keep me safe.” The giggling grew louder, followed by shushing.
“Perhaps you should go to the godswood, Your Grace. To pray for their safe return.”
“I shall.” She smiled at him and removed herself from his arm, tiptoeing towards the door. “Thank you for your sage advice.”
"I wish you luck in your search, Your Grace." He bowed before he turned to walk away; she grabbed his arm and smiled, directing her speech at the door where little ears were listening.
"You should return to Lady Marya while I search for my husband." She raised her voice. "And when I find him, any person who protects him will be tickled mercilessly." Davos snickered, composing himself before answering her at equal volume.
"I shall take you up on that advice." He bowed once more, then began to walk away, with a finger to his lips. "Thank you, Your Grace."
Sansa crept toward the open door, then hesitated as a cold breeze blew through the hall. Wind called back bad memories for her now. It was the whipping of her hair as her aunt held her out of the Moon Door. It was the ice cold fear running up her spine as her cousin almost fell off the mountain coming down from the Eyrie. It was the Others, approaching in the night. When the cold winds blew, she was a scared little girl once more. But I am strong here, she remembered. I have always been stronger within the walls of Winterfell.
She stepped out into the snow.
From the outside, the castle was white and pure, a stark contrast to the bright red of the weirwoods' leaves. It was hard to tell if she could see flashes of red hair, or if it was only the leaves. She heard footsteps, but it was only Ghost. Sansa walked further into the wood, towards the heart tree and the hot spring at its roots. Children's whispers seemed to follow her, as well as other, stranger things; slight sounds that had no visible source. A sword was being sharpened. A woman hummed a hymn to the seven. An arrow thrummed against its target. The direwolf is not the only ghost in these woods.
She heard more whispers from behind her, more tangible ones this time. “Shh!” a woman’s voice reprimanded, following by a bout of childish giggling. Sansa smiled to herself as she reached the bank of the spring, pausing as if in contemplation to allow them to catch her off guard. She turned around to a fierce onslaught.
“Winterfell!” cried Arya, as a ball of snow hit Sansa in the arm. Hard. “Winterfell! WInterfell!” cried Robb and Edd, her echoes, as half-formed handfuls of snow pelted Sansa's legs. Suddenly, from behind her, a bucket of snow was dumped over her head, its bearer as silent as the wolf who stood by his side. Sansa turned to her husband, incredulous. Trying to restrain a smile, he looked solemnly at her for a beat, then, giving up, lifted the bucket over his head in victory.
“WINTERFELL!” His children rallied around him, whooping and hollering, Arya equally at fault. Sansa stared at them for a moment, then turned and fled further into the godswood, already scooping up the snow to start an arsenal.
“Sansa,” Jon called out as he chased after her. She hid behind a tree, packing a snowball into a perfect sphere, then another, then another. It was easy for her to hide here amongst the weirwoods, with her clothing all white and her hair bright red.
“Sansa, ” he called again, closer this time. "I'm sorry." If he had been in earnest she might have come out, but she suspected that the words were only to draw her out for another bucket of snow. She pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from giggling. To giggle was to reveal her location, and that would mean giving up the element of surprise. She felt light and carefree, almost like a girl again. There had been many times when they were all children that her siblings teamed up to ambush her in these snowball fights. Robb or Bran or sometimes Jon, when she was very little, had protected her as the others set up their traps. It had made her angry then, but now she did not mind so much. She was stronger in Winterfell, and these were the kinds of ambushes she preferred.
Sansa picked up the first of her snowballs and hit her husband in the back, ducking behind a tree before he could see her. Though she could not see him, his footsteps indicated a sharp turn. "Are you angry, Sansa?" he asked, his attempt at slinking in her direction undermined by his heavy boots. She tsked under her breath. He would not draw her out so easily.
“You have no need to worry, my love,” she called out, slipping out from behind her tree to another; her slippers made no noise. gathering her munitions in her arms. He came around the tree she had stood behind before, his bucket half-hidden behind his leg. Her view of him was good, but branches blocked his view of her.
“Truly?” her husband asked. “Truly.” She hit him with her second attack, smiling at the outrage she saw on his face. As his gaze nearly hit her, Ghost came to his side. It was a good distraction, giving Sansa time to move out of Jon's line of vision. Ghost is on my side then, I suppose. She had to smile at that. It was almost like Lady was still with her.
As she looked up from her snowballs to the surroundings of her new hiding place, she saw little Ned. He saw her and, delighted that he was the one to discover her location when his father could not, pointed.
"Ma-" he began to say, but she held her finger to her lips and, miraculously, he listened. Her finger still held to her lips and a smile playing on her lips, she hit her husband again. Her son burst into giggles.
"There is no honor in attacking without provocation, Your Grace!" Jon cried out dramatically. She hit him again, then in a different direction before he could find her.
"I am no attacker, Jon Stark. I am a defender!" She hit him again, again, again, spinning around and out of sight whenever he looked for her. Yet as she continued her assault, she grew closer and closer to Jon, Ned watching her in delight and giggling all the while.
“Defender of what, oh Sansa Stark?” She approached him from behind, silent as Ghost as she walked across the snow. Ghost, who walked ahead of Jon now, as if catching scent of something. His master's gaze followed him, as Sansa approached from the opposite direction. The old gods are with me now. Lady is with me now.
She tackled him, and he fell face first into the snow. She sat up on his prone figure, threw her head back in victory and crowed, “Of Winterfell!”
Little Ned hesitated to approach them, but Robb was bolder by far, wanting to play at whatever his father did. He pushed his brother to the side and tackled Sansa himself.
“Winterfell!” Robb cried again, his brother following after him, as he always did. “Winterfell!” Ned said, and suddenly she felt the weight of the two boys on her back. Arya found them then, a pile of bodies in the snow with a direwolf watching over them. All of them were laughing, and Arya laughed loudest of all.
“Raaargh!” Jon cried out as he lifted himself off his stomach, depositing his wife and children onto their backs. He scooped the cold snow into his hands and dumped it on her dress. They both laughed, drawing closer to each other until he pulled her into a warm embrace.
“You are the defender of Winterfell, Sansa,” he said. “Truly.” She thought of her sons, her sister, her husband, and all the people of the castle who she had kept safe while the wights crawled against the doors. She thought of Arya and Jon fighting back to back against the Others, Longclaw in Jon’s hand and a dagger of Valyrian steel in Arya’s. Once, she would have said it was them alone, that the brave knights had protected her from the forces of evil. She was sure that is what the singers would say. But Jon knew who she was. Jon knew what she could do. Jon had known since they were reunited.
“I do not defend Winterfell by myself, dear husband,” she said, her breath intermingling with his in clouds as she touched her forehead to his. “We can do that together.”
And they did.