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Sansa welcomed the warmth of her bed chamber. Though the fire was running low, heat emulated from within the walls themselves. The room was by far the warmest in the castle. When her lady mother had moved from the Riverlands, during the harsh of winter, Eddark Stark had made arrangements for the lords chambers to be relocated to the place where the water from the hot springs under the castle ran hottest. The room was smaller than the original lord's chambers, which was located in one of the back towers. This was a place Sansa had not ventured into since she and Jon had reclaimed Winterfell. If they weren't about to take part in the battle of the living and the dead, Sansa would have seen that the old lord's tower was demolished. It was the place almost all of her nightmares took place.
Sansa sat herself in the chair by one of the windows, glancing out to the courtyard below. She saw familiar faces of Northerners going about their daily business, beginning the preparations for the battle. A young man, who had been riding within Jon's guard, was seeing to the unloading of the dragonglass that had been mined from under Dragonstone. Dragonglass had been the reason Jon had gone south. He had returned with not only dragonglass, but a Dragon queen and her children as well.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sansa saw a small figure slide into the chair opposite her.
"Why didn't you greet them at the gates with me?" Sansa asked her sister, never taking her eyes off the window.
"I was there," Arya said slowly. Sansa looked up at her sister, giving her a stern look. "It's not my fault that no one saw me."
"And what did you think of our Lord brother?" Sansa asked cooly, folding her hands in her lap.
The look on Arya's face was one she never showed outside the company of her family. With everyone else, she was still No-one, a strange girl who had once been Arya Stark. No-one paced the corridors, her footfalls making no sounds. No-one gave people looks that made them feel as if she could see into their minds eyes. Sansa herself had been on the receiving end of one of those looks before, and it had been most unsettling.
The Arya sitting across from her now had a look of concern on her face. There had been few things that Arya had inherited from their mother, but this look was one of them. Her brows furrowed and her eyes widened.
"He's still Jon, Sansa." She said in a soft voice, sounding almost like a child again. "He's still the boy we grew up with."
Sansa smiled sadly, nodding her head in agreement. "I know he is. That's why it's so hard to be angry with him about her."
Arya reached a small hand out to Sansa. Sansa took it with both of her own. "Don't try too hard to be angry, Sansa. We all need each other now."
The words of their father no longer needed to be said aloud. His words and memory ran through the castle, just as much as the hot spring water. Sansa squeezed Arya's hand gently and let go.
"You should go to him," Sansa told her. "He's desperate to see you."
"I will." Arya stood up from her chair, and just like that she was No-one again, her expression indifferent. She gave a curt nod to Sansa and left the room, hands clasped behind her back.
Sansa looked out the window again. She watched as one of the Unsullied soldiers climbed atop the wall above the gates, placing large banner embroided with the red dragon of house Targaryen upon the post alongside the grey Stark direwolf. The way the wind blew made it look as though the dragon was breathing fire down upon the direwolf.
Despite the warmth of her chamber, Sansa Stark shivered.
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