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i.
“Will I find love one day?” Sansa muses, looking at herself in the mirror. She is a child of Winterfell. Her mother brushes her long, red hair.
“Of course, little wolf,” Catelyn says. “And you’ll be the Lady to his Lord, and you’ll have his children.”
“A prince?” Sansa asks hopefully, her eyes brightening at the prospect. “Love like you and father?”
“Of course,” Catelyn replies.
Love exists. Sansa thinks, happily. Love exists, much like in those songs. I’ll have it one day, and I’ll wed the prince and have his children, and we’ll live well until we're old and grey.
That was, sadly, not the case.
ii.
Somewhere, out there, a prince exists, and he will take her away from Winterfell and bring her to his palace. Just as the way the song would go.
Joffrey was a prince
“I love him, father!” she exclaims. He is my prince, she thinks, determined. This is the prince of my dreams. “I love him!” she says, louder.
But Joffrey was a monster: he had her Direwolf killed, had her father beheaded, had her stripped and beaten repeatedly by his soldier.
And when he demands her to look at his father's severed head, Sansa knows that she doesn’t love Joffrey. For he was unkind, selfish, vile, and cruel - everything a prince shouldn’t be.
Sansa thinks for the first time that her mother was wrong and that love doesn’t exist.
iii.
Loras was a knight.
Loras was kind, sweet, noble. He had hair that glistened in the sun and a smile that won over half the girls in the kingdom. He was the Knight of Flowers, the Prince of Highgarden. He must be my destined prince, Sansa thinks. Let Margaery have Joffrey. Loras is my prince.
If I were to love someone, please let it be him, she prays to the gods.
Let the Tyrells take her to Highgarden. Let her be with Loras. Anything to save her from the Lannisters in the Red Keep.
But Cersei had other things in mind. And so did Littlefinger. Soon, they wed her to the Imp.
I can’t find love anymore, Sansa thinks. Not like this. She cries herself to sleep.
iv.
Robb dies. They chopped off his head and sewed Greywind's atop his body. He fell in love, he chose love, and he died.
Sansa learns that people can do stupid things when they're in love. After all, she, too, did stupid things when she thought she loved Joffrey.
She can’t pray anymore. Not for love, not for safety. Not for family. Not for home.
The world is cruel and miserable, no one is there to save her, and she just wants to be alone.
I don’t want to fall in love, Sansa decides. I don’t want a prince, I don’t want a lord.
When Sansa tells herself to be brave as Robb, it's the strength she needed to wake up in the morning. Not love in the form of a lord or prince.
Cersei Lannister once said: The more you love, the weaker you are.
And Sansa refuses to be weak.
v.
Sansa is in Winterfell, but she is under the hands of someone more brutal than Joffrey.
Her skin burns at his every touch - harsh, desperate, hungry. This is her home, she must not be frightened. Yet the walls of Winterfell no longer felt familiar, and Sansa sometimes thought they were burying her alive. She learned to sing and sew and walk within these walls. She dreamt of love within this walls. But that girl was gone.
Ramsay was no prince, he was no knight, and what he has with her was not remotely close to love. He was, without a doubt, the worst man in all of Westeros.
This is Winterfell, the home she's longed for for so long. But it's filled with ghosts and strangers and a monster like Ramsay.
Sansa did not think of love. She did not think of what was beyond the walls of Winterfell. Not when all she could think of is how Ramsay could be the end of her.
vi.
“Brienne can keep you safe,” Theon says to her. “More than I ever could.”
Theon averts his eyes, and Sansa feels her heart plummet to the ground. “You’re not coming with us?” her voice breaks.
“I would’ve taken you all the way to the wall,” he says. Sansa looks at him. Ramsay truly wrecked him - a violent earthquake that broke his every bone, his body covered in bruises and cuts that reflect little of the horrors that Ramsay inflicted on them both. “I would’ve died to get you there.”
Winter was here, and it covered the forest like a pale, white blanket. Sansa reached out and hugged him, afraid to let go. For a moment, the world filled with monsters didn’t exist.
Because this was her and this was Theon, and though Ramsay is still in Winterfell and would want to hunt them both, Arya, Rickon, and Bran are still out there alone, Robb is dead - nothing else mattered. They are alive, they got out of Winterfell together, and Theon is leaving for the Iron Islands. Sansa didn’t know when she would see him again and the thought of it makes her heart ache.
Love still exists, Sansa reflects softly, as they both sobbed in each other’s arms. White flakes fell obliquely around them as the world faded back into view. The world is cruel and unkind, but love still exists.
vii.
Sansa reaches Castle Black and reunites with Jon. When she runs to him and embraces him, she feels a lift on her chest. She couldn't remember the last time she felt something that was neither pain nor sadness.
Castle Black isn’t Winterfell, but Jon is here. And Jon feels like home.
But Sansa knows that this wasn't for long and soon, they have to take Winterfell back. It's where they belonged.
Weeks after, when she arrived at the battle of bastards, the Knights of the Vale behind her, Sansa thinks: love is fighting for our people, our home.
She watches Ramsay’s hounds devour him alive.
viii.
She knows exactly what Littlefinger wants.
But love is not a concern, nor is it even in Sansa’s mind. Only a fool would trust Littlefinger. There were many things to be done before the war against the dead: warm clothing, shelter, enough food to last the winter. Jon is still in Dragonstone, and he has yet to come home.
When Littlefinger kneels before her, begging for his life, telling her he loves her more than anything, Sansa thinks: if love comes in the form of betrayal, then I don’t want it.
She didn’t blink when Arya slits his throat and lets him bleed on the floor.
ix.
Jon is in love, Sansa realizes, as soon as she sees her brother with a Targaryen queen at his side. “The North is beautiful as your brother claimed,” she states, but her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “As are you.”
“Winterfell is yours, your Grace,” she said. She knows this game. It’s exactly what the Targaryen queen wants to hear.
(Sansa knows that Winterfell will never belong to anyone whose name isn’t Stark)
x.
“Why her?” Sansa says out loud, gazing towards the dragons seemingly dancing through the crowds. Why the dragon queen?
Jon is her brother, but then not really. Jon loved her too, but also... not really.
“You seem determined to dislike her,” answers Tyrion.
Sansa has many things to say to that, but decided against it. “I don’t trust her."
I don’t trust her. I don’t trust the Targaryen queen. I don’t trust that the North will be safe as long as she’s here. I don’t trust love, I don’t trust men in love. I don't trust what she could do to him.
Sansa loves Jon, truly loves Jon, and she doesn’t trust her with him.
xi.
“I want to fight for Winterfell, Lady Sansa,” Theon says to her. “If you’ll have me.”
Sansa rushes to wrap him in his arms. The Theon she grew up with. The Theon who took her out of Winterfell. The Theon who came back to fight for the Starks. The Theon who came back for her.
Love is coming back. Love is fighting for the ones you love.
Later, she sits in front of Theon. It was the night before the long night, the dead are coming, and Sansa knows it could be their last.
This is love, she thinks sadly. This is love, real love.
But I can’t have it.
xii.
We have to fight for the ones we love. She is sitting at a counsel meeting, ready to take up arms for the freedom of her brother. The Northerners are here. She’ll bring Jon home.
But they have decided to send Jon to the Wall. He killed the Targaryen queen, and the Unsullied and the other Lords demand justice. Bran is King of the Six Kingdoms. The North is free and independent, and her people have finally won, but Jon may never come home.
“Can you forgive me?” she asks him. When he hugs her goodbye, Sansa realizes, that sometimes love was about letting go.
xiii.
Arya wanted to travel. The counsel meeting is over, the Unsullied have left, and Arya said she wanted to go West. Sansa wants to feel happy for her sister, but she can’t help but feel that it might be a long time before she sees her again.
“Sansa,” Arya says, nudging her out of her thoughts.
“What is it?” she looks at her. Arya tilts her head in front of them.
“Queen Sansa.” A voice says. Sansa looks over and sees the Martell Prince.
The Prince of Dorne is handsome, clad in gorgeous robes of gold and ember, his black hair was wild and stuck up in places. His eyes were brown, they reflected well in the sunlight; and they were looking at her as if she were the sun. Sansa felt herself blush.
“Lord Martell,” she addresses. She could feel Arya shift from beside her.
The prince gently takes her hand and places a kiss atop it. He tells her how much he’s admired her courage and her wit, how he’s heard stories of her strength. He tells her how it was a pleasure to finally meet the woman behind the stories of the Red Wolf - now Queen - of the North.
And later when he bids farewell, Sansa could still feel the heat on her cheeks. She has almost forgotten how it felt.
Perhaps I can still find love, she thinks for the first time in such a long time. If her father Ned found it in Catelyn, if Robb found it with Talisa, if Arya found it with Gendry, then there truly must still be love out there.
The Prince of Dorne writes to her in the week that followed after.
xiv.
If I am Queen, I will make them love me.
When they crown her as the Queen in the North, Sansa looks over her people, the ones who fought, the ones who lived, the ones who swore loyalty to her and her family. This is what her father Ned wanted and what her brother Robb started. But she was alone.
Mother was right, Sansa thinks. Love does exist. But not in the same way as the songs she used to sing. Love was her family: it was Robb, and Arya, and Rickon, and Bran. Love was her father Ned Stark and her mother, Catelyn Stark, and the children they died to protect. Love was Theon. Love was Jon.
Love was the people who were with her until the end, the ones who now have their swords raised to her - their Queen. Love didn’t come in the form of a prince, or a knight, or a lord, nor did it come from someone who would save her from the cruel monsters in the world.
It comes from the people of the North.
It comes from herself.
Love was Winterfell, and Sansa finally understands.