Chapter Text
Sansa will tell a single small lie to everyone after. She realized something was up with Arya very early.
They really should have all suspected something when Arya didn’t object to returning to King’s Landing. Sansa even did. The first visit had been exciting, even if it had ended poorly. Their return to Winterfell had felt to Sansa like waking up from a lovely dream, but there was no way they could have stayed with the horse cough sweeping through the city.
So many people died. And it didn’t discriminate. Peasants, merchants, the king’s very household. The king had been spared, but his wife and eldest son hadn’t been so lucky. Sansa had been inconsolable when she’d heard. Her perfect story, ruined. She ignored the relieved look on her father’s face. When they’d returned, their mother had hugged the both of them tightly and gave thanks to every god she knew for returning them to her.
It was recognized, eventually, as the start of winter.
Winterfell gets blanketed in snow. Northerners know how to deal with the cold, they always have. Sansa sits closer to the fire during needlepoint, and Arya scampers through the halls instead of the fields and stable. Sansa begrudges her this less now. She’s had her own experience with seeing something beautiful and it now being forever out of reach.
When the first blizzards of winter clear, they are called back to King’s Landing. Sansa is disquieted, not sure what to expect, but to her surprise, Arya doesn’t object at all. She’s nearly passive, packing her things, then repacking them when Mother criticizes her technique.
They’re all together this time, traveling more slowly for the weather. Mother comes with them this time as well, telling them that she’s not comfortable with them leaving her sight. Robb and Bran look lonely, but certain, behind them as they leave Winterfell.
One night, Sansa finds Arya standing outside the ramshackle inn staring off into the woods. She opens her mouth to tell her to get back inside, but stops when she sees the look in her eye.
“I keep thinking that if I stare out into the trees long enough Nymeria will be there again”.
It hits Sansa like a ton of bricks. This is the same area, probably the same inn, where it had happened. Honestly, most of the road looks the same to Sansa. The anger swells up in her chest again. It’s been over a year, but the injustice still eats at her. Her and Arya haven’t spoken about it, even when they see Bran with Summer or Shaggydog by himself betraying Rickon somewhere unseen.
“If she came back, I would share her.” Arya looks inexplicably childish now. “It wasn’t fair, any of it. Lady wasn’t even there, Cersei had no right.”
And suddenly, Sansa feels just as childish as Arya looks. Deep down, her gut still cries out that it was all Arya’s fault, even though her mind has slowly come to accept that it really wasn’t. When the plague came, suddenly the fairy story Sansa had built up about their time there just melted away.
“The Queen is dead now,” is all she can say. And she didn’t even have it in her to curse her properly for what she had done until she was. She had somehow managed to twist it in her mind that it was somehow acceptable for her to have done it even.
“I wouldn’t want her, “ she says, a bit haughtily, “She was your wolf, and she rolled in the mud even more than you.”
The retribution for this slight is the realization when they step back inside the inn, that both her and Arya have mud on their shoes. Sansa returning to her usual fastidious self and lambasting Arya for it.
King’s Landing is different. It had been hot before, but this time, while it can’t hold a candle to Winterfell, there’s a dusting of snow over the grounds, though the days are usually cold and clear.
The hall of the castle feel cold and clear too. The illness wiped out a good deal of the household staff, and they are clamoring to find replacements and keep up with the workload.
Myrcella walks the halls, looking like a ghost. Tommen is usually right behind her. He had been seriously ill but had miraculously pulled through, and the stress has robbed his cheeks of much of their plumpness.
Sansa minds her manners, gives her condolences, and doesn’t say another word.
“I wonder how the king’s doing?” Arya wonders.
“He lost his wife and his eldest son. I can’t imagine well.” True, neither of them had ever seen Robert spend any real time with Joffrey or Cersei. They hardly see Robert at all during their visit, Father saying he spent most of his days drunk, though now he seems to be trying to numb himself rather than give himself life.
“If Mother and Robb died, I don’t know what Father would do. I don’t know what I would either.”
The thought pricks at Sansa’s heart. The idea of seeing her father in such a state is horrific.
It’s a weighty thought. Though, in winter, there are still some pleasures to enjoy here in the south. One day, after a particularly heavy snow, Myrcella invites them to come on a sleigh ride outside the castle grounds. Arya, of course, doesn’t show up.
“What does your sister do all day? I never see her,” Myrcella comments, leaning on the edge of the sleigh as the groom hitches up the horses.
Sansa shrugs. It’s not her job to keep track of Arya’s movements, and Septa Mordane seems to have nearly given up. Mother’s been spending her days trying to assist Father with bringing Robert around, and barely notices Arya as long as she’s back for meal times.
“Probably with her dancing master, or bothering someone in the stables.” she pauses. The first one doesn’t work, Syrio Forel having returned to Winterfell with them the first time, and is still there as of now. “I think she might even sneak out and go into King’s Landing some days”.
“Oh, that probably explains why her breeches were muddy yesterday, “ Myrcella comments idly, “She brought me an apricot tart, so I didn’t tell anyone.”
Sansa’s shocked that Arya would so do something so dangerous and flagrantly against the rules, but when she confronts her later, Arya just shrugs.
“There’s lots of ways out of the castle, there’s tons of secret passages. Besides, the city is much quieter now, there’s more room it seems. The baker I bought the tart from said more people are trickling in.”
And so, despite her admonitions, Arya continues to sneak out and spend every few days in the city. Sometimes she comes back even dirtier than usual, but she’s always unharmed, and manages to return on time, though Septa Mordane scolds her repeatedly for missing lessons.
But, a few weeks pass, and Father and Mother say they will return to Winterfell. They’ve convinced Robert to name his brother Stannis as Hand of the King, and feel like it’s a good time to go home. Arya isn’t around to be told, but Sansa promises she will prepare her sister for it.
When she finds Arya, she’s in one of the large hallways. When she notices Sansa, she nods, before running past her.
“Gotcha!” she yells, jumping onto the edge of one of the staircase bannisters and grabbing onto a small cat.
“What in the world are you doing?” Sansa demands, befuddled.
“Catching Ser Pounce,” Arya says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “He got out yesterday and I brought him back, so Tommen said I could use him to practice.”
She hoists the cat higher in her arms and pets him on the head.
“But let’s get you back to your prince now.”
Tommen doesn’t seem perturbed at all by his pet’s condition, and accepts him back happily.
Suddenly Sansa recalls what she was supposed to be finding Arya for.
“Father says we’re returning to Winterfell at the end of the week.”
She’s not sure what surprises her more, Arya’s look of disappointment, or Tommen’s disappointed words.
“Oh, I’m going to miss you. It’s nice having other people here.”
Sansa’s suddenly at a loss, and so reverts to her courtesies.
“I’m sorry, you must miss your brother terribly-”
Before she can even mentioned the Queen, Tommen cuts her off.
“Not really. Sorry, I know you wanted to marry him, but Joffrey was the meanest person I’ve ever met”.
Arya gives her a look that makes Sansa think she wants to say ‘I told you so’, and Sansa feels the urge to yell at her, but it seems they’ve both become better at controlling themselves.
“Once he took my cat and shot it for fun. It was going to have babies, he didn’t care.”
When Sansa and Arya leave the hallway, Sansa has her hand over her mouth, but they daren't speak of Tommen's words. Well, Sansa daren't. She's convinced herself, really she had. Even after Lady, even after what everyone told her.
“I’m sad we have to leave, “ Arya comments, “I’ve got friends here.”
“We’ve got friends back home”
Arya pauses a long time before agreeing.
And so, they return again, to the North and the blizzards and the glowing hearth fires like nothing’s changed. Sansa’s as devoted to her lessons as ever, though her fantasies have been spoiled. Arya’s as disinterested as ever, but she’s not as hostile.
It’s as though seeing the world around her gave her confidence that she could free her restraints.
But for all the girl’s lives seem to go back to normal, their father seems preoccupied. He spends much time having hushed conversations with Maester Luwin and eyeing the sky waiting for ravens. Sansa’s not sure what’s up, and hopes it’s nothing dangerous.
It’s apparently stressful enough that one night during supper he groans and rests his face in his hands. Sansa and Arya both sit up straighter. They’d quarreled earlier about Arya borrowing one of Sansa’s furs without asking so she could go riding in the cold (“You don’t even wear it anymore, it’s got a hole!”) and worried now that Mother had burdened him with it.
“Maybe I should have stayed. Mediating Robert and Stannis...it’s like dealing full time with you two,” he gestures to Arya and Sansa, “Only you’re both grown men who have an army.”
“Robert and Stannis aren’t your worry anymore,” Mother assures him.
“But I do. Robert’s never been in the greatest of health, and Stannis is clearly still feeling slighted.”
“And the winter is cold and should give them time to reflect.”
Sansa’s brain wanders off at this point. Sometimes she wonders if she should pay more attention. Septa Mordane may tell her that her duty is to be a Lord’s wife and mother to his children, but from what she saw in King’s Landing, there is clearly more to it, and her lack of knowing could be dangerous.
That night, she hears a noise outside of her chambers. Sticking her head out, she sees Arya sitting in the window between their rooms that looks out over the forest. She’s got her furs wrapped around her over her night dress, and though the night is freezing, it’s clear and she doesn’t appear troubled.
“Arya you should be in bed”.
Arya’s voice is oddly quiet.
“I know, I won’t be long.”
Sansa pulls herself up onto the ledge. She gazes out the window. It’s a beautiful night, clear, with a huge full moon and bright stars. If it weren’t so cold, it would be the perfect night for a stroll.
“Do you think we’ll still fight when we’re grown up?”
Sansa’s taken aback.
“Mother always seems to tell me that we’ll get along more when we grow up, but we already are, and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting more alike. And she never sees her sister at all.”
Sansa finally finds her words,
“We’ve gotten better at avoiding each other when it matters. This morning aside, we don’t fight much anymore, you haven’t thrown food at me in forever.”
“I didn’t mean that to be personal, I was just mad you were fawning over Joffrey like an idiot.”
Sansa chooses to ignore that.
“You’re right thought, we should try and get along. We’re both going to be ladies after all.”
Arya snorts.
“Everyone can say that, but I’ll never be a lady. Even if I get married off to some drunk old lord twice my age, I’ll never be able to be what they want me to be. Even if I did want to be, I’m not good at any of it. That’s you.”
Arya jumps down from the window.
“But I don’t want to end up like Robert either. He’s the king of the Seven Kingdoms and still squabbling with his brother like a child.”
And with that, Arya stands up and returns to her chambers. Sansa stays for a moment n her spot, gazing out into the winter night.
The winter days are feel long, and the weeks and months longer. Clearer days have snow fights and winter rides. Days heavy with snow bring thick stews and roaring fires, and songs and stories to try and hold off the raging of the winter wind. During those days of blizzard, Arya finds the only reprieve in the handful of letters Jon has sent from the wall.
Six moons or so after Arya’s fourteenth naming day, Winterfell has a series of clear days that seem to go on forever. Old Nan calls it a “little summer”, and tells everyone to make the best of it.
During the first days of this little summer, a stranger comes to Winter Town, and Father says all the children should come to greet her.
The stranger is a girl Robb’s age with dark hair and blue eyes, who comes up the Kingsroad on a mule, leading a team.
She introduces herself at Mya Stone. Sansa bristles at the name, recognizing it as a bastard’s name, like Snow.
“Why’d you come up here during the winter?” Arya wants to know, petting one of the beasts on its face.
“I’m from the Vale. My team and I lead people up to the Eyrie, but in the winter there’s not too much call- too treacherous even for us. Your father wrote and requested my team come to Winterfell to help with transporting goods from White Harbour.”
She feeds her mount a carrot as a treat while she unsaddles him.,
“You might like riding one,” Arya tells Sansa. “They’re more solid than horses and won’t even try to do anything dangerous”.
The beast is a bit smaller than the rest of the steeds in the stable, so Sansa agrees, and the two sisters help Mya bring her team to the stables. It’s true, she does feel more sure in the saddle than usual. Sansa would be the first to admit she was a poor rider.
“Mules aren’t generally good for beginners,” Mya tells her as they dismount. “They are hard to train. If they think something is unsafe, they straight up won’t do it, and if you try to make them, they will remember.”
“Well, “ Sansa says, her feet a bit wobbly. She’s never like the smell of the stables, but in the winter it’s not so strong. “Good thing I wouldn’t ask that of them.”
Mya’s not the only stranger who comes to Winterfell that season. Soon, there’s a new kitchen maid with a young daughter. Rickon takes a liking to the girl and seems very confused as to why she can’t chase after Shaggydog when she’s barely toddling.
When Father takes them out to greet the next, a blacksmith, Arya hangs back a bit from the rest, to Sansa’s confusion. Shy is one thing Arya has never been. Even when they all enter the smithy, she stands close to the door.
Though when they meet Gendry, Sansa understands why she might be. He’s tall, and broad in the chest, with dark hair. He’s fairly soft spoken with the group, not seeming entirely sure why he’s there. Father shakes his hand, then moves to start returning to the keep.
Arya hangs back again. Intrigued, Sansa hangs at the door. She sees Gendry hand Arya something wrapped in a cloth. She can’t see what it is, but it makes Arya smile and laugh.
“What is that?” Sansa butts in when they get back to the castle and are close to alone.
Arya unwraps it and shows it to her. It’s a hair pin, made of curling scrap iron, beaten and shaped to resemble a wolf’s head. It’s not the greatest bit of smithing Sansa’s ever seen, but since Arya immediately separates the two parts and slips it into her hair, it must have meaning to her.
“Why did-” is all Sansa can say.
“He was one of the friends I made in King’s Landing. He was an apprentice in Flea’s Bottom then. I think he used to think I was annoying, always hanging around when he was working. Then one day someone on the street stole his bundle, and I chased and got it back for him. He didn’t complain much after that. He said he’d make something for me out of scrap, so I could see how good he’d gotten, but we left before I even got to say goodbye.”
“You chased a thief!” Sansa says, horrified. “You could have gotten hurt!”
Arya shrugs.
“It was just a child, no older than Rickon is now. I just grabbed and carried him back like that. He was crying though, until I told him I wouldn’t tell the guards. I think someone older must have made him to do it.”
Sansa stands back alone to watch her sister. She’s gotten taller, and her hair longer, though in the leather’s she’s pilfered from Bran (though honestly, he’s too tall for them now anyhow) she still looks like a wild child to Sansa.
But to someone else?
“Did he knew who you were?”
Arya shrugs again.
“Father apparently came to speak to him once before, though he didn’t know why. He also said it wasn’t hard to pick out a highborn girl from a crowd, so I guess he put two and two together”.
She looks oddly pensive.
“He told me now that Father actually asked him if he’d ever wanted to learn how to swing a sword.”
That shocks Sansa.
“But why?”
Arya shrugs again, “Can’t say, He wasn’t interested though.”
Gendry’s the last newcomer for a while. The little summer ends and the snowfall start back up.
On the days when the snow isn’t too heavy, Sansa often finds herself with Mya in the stables. Her other siblings don’t care about the snow as long as they can see, and brave the whole grounds, but Sansa finds the comparative warmth of the stables inviting.
And Mya’s nice to have around, when she is. Her trips to White Harbor happen during the clear days, though she tells her about the once her and the other grooms got stuck in the woods when it began snowing heavily. They’d been forced to shelter under a thick tree, with their animals forming a wall to keep the warmth in.
“We were lucky it stopped that night, otherwise we might not have been able to get back”.
Even though her stories make Sansa shudder, it’s nice having a friend close again. The past year, Jeyne Poole had wed a young knight who had just earned his spurs, and she had hardly seen a bit of her since.
One day, when they’re in the stables grooming the mules, she asks Mya if she’s always wanted to work where she is.
“Didn’t you ever want to find true love and get married?” Is how she puts it.
Mya laughs.
“I thought I had true love once.”
“What was his name?”
Mya stares at the ground. “Mychel, of House Redfort.”
Redfort. Sansa doesn’t quite known the names of all the noble houses, but she does know this one, and suddenly she knows where this story is going.
“He said we would marry, when he became a true knight. I believed him, and I think he did too. But then his father ordered him to marry Ysilla Royce, so the houses could be joined.”
Just as Sansa thought. It wasn’t fair. Even though she was a bastard, Mya was very nice and deserved to have been happy.
Mya laughs to herself. “I’ve always known I was a bastard, it never bothered me.” She finishes up brushing the mule she was working on, and pats it on the ears. “I remember my father coming to see me when I was young, though I don’t really remember him. Then he didn’t, and it was just me and Mother. I love the mules, and I love leading them, and helping people. I guess I just dreamed too highly.”
She looks at Sansa, who’s holding her bucket of grooming tools.
“Doesn’t it ever bother you? That you’re getting married is treated like means to an end?”
Sansa doesn’t have an answer to that. Despite her love of the old songs, she’s not given any more thought to getting married herself since King’s Landing. No one wants to marry in winter anyhow, so the topic hasn’t really come up, but deep in her mind is the niggling fear that anyone who she became betrothed to might end up being another Joffrey.
As the winter goes on, Sansa turns eight and ten, and Arya six and ten. On her naming day, Arya surprises them by asking for her gift that year if she could keep and raise one of the ravens from Maester Luwin’s newly hatched flock.
Mother and Father agree, but seem as confused as Sansa is.
“Sometimes I wish I knew exactly what was going on inside your sisters head,” Mother confides in her one day. She does seem a bit pleased that Arya’s desire was something more ladylike this year. Truly, Sansa has no more insight than her into Arya. She’s taken to disappearing from the grounds as often as she used to in King’s Landing. Sometimes Bran disappears at the same time, and she hopes that they're together, but Bran often returns alone with no idea where his sister has spent her day.
And Arya loves the bird, training it to sit on her arm like a hawk. She’s named it Lyanna, after their deceased aunt.
“You know ravens can’t hunts like hawks and falcons can right?” Sansa asks her one day.
“I know, but ravens are really clever, “ Arya says, feeding Lyanna a bit of corn. “Maester Luwin’s trying to train this flock to fly between two points, not just back to Winterfell. I wanted to help him.”
And so Sansa continues not understanding her sister.
Near on a year later, while they break their fast, Rickon and little Barra rush in, being trailed by Shaggydog. They’re both clutching handfuls of the blue-purple crocus flowers that grow in the Godswood. Everyone at the table murmurs excitedly.
The crocus flowers blooming is the first sign, Old Nan tells them, of the coming spring.
That day, another stranger comes to Winterfell. Edric Storm is a tall, handsome young man who travels under the banner of Renly Baratheon of Storm’s End. Because of the coincidence, and because this guest will not be staying long, Mother and Father suggest a festival in the town over the next two nights, weather permitting.
There is rejoicing in both the castle and the town. This winter had been long, and the North has little enough of the celebration as the rest of the Seven Kingdoms as it is.
Food sellers set up stands, craftsmen set to sell their wares. There will be games and competitions that Robb and Bran are excited about. There’s a singer traveling with Edric who invites any musicians in the town to join him. Sansa’s overcome by the thought of being able to play her harp for the crowd.
Even Mother and Father seem happy to have some merriment in Winterfell, at last as winter comes to an end. Everyone dresses in their best, even Arya (though when Sansa looks closely, she realizes she’s wearing thick leathers under her dress).
The festival may be small compared to anything in King’s Landing, but to Sansa it feels far grander. She eats honey biscuits from one of the bakers, and cheers when Rickon wins the under-12’s pony race.
She laughs when she walks outside the smithy, and finds Arya and Bran, both in boiled leathers, going back and forth with swords in front of a crowd. Gendry’s speaking to a few of them, while his master works the forge behind, extolling “fine craftsmanship, good enough even for a Lord’s children.” She hopes they won’t get hurt, but it doesn’t look like a true fight. In fact, it almost looks practiced, like a dance. Maybe that’s where the two of them have been doing when they disappeared together.
When night falls, and the lanterns are lit, Sansa joins the musicians, and they go through so many of the classics, “The Roadside Rose”, “Flowers of Spring”, and “Six Maids in a Pool”. By the time they stop, she feels more aglow than she has in years.
While packing up her harp, Father approaches and asks if she can track down Arya before coming back.
“She was with Bran last I saw,” she says, unsure if Father and Mother knew what the two of them were getting up to, “Does he know where she might be?”
“He says that last he saw her, she was by the smiths”.
Everyone on the grounds is pretty much packing up to leave. It’s quite late, and Sansa’s not really sure where she even expects to find Arya.
But the last place she expects her is tucked on the far side of the smith, locked with Gendry in a loving embrace, seemingly oblivious to the world.
Gendry’s seated on the chair beside the emptied exhibition table, Arya half on top of him. Their faces are turned away from her, but are so close together they might as well be one. Arya has the fingers of one hand wrapped in his hair. Gendry has one slung over her shoulder and the thumb of the other touching the side of her face. Softly.
She doesn’t really mean to, but Sansa lets out a squeak of shock that apparently is enough to break their trance. Arya, whose face is pretty flushed at this point (flushed? Arya?) goes white when she sees her.
“Mother and Father want us to head back,” Sansa manages to get out. Arya nods wordlessly and Sansa turns to start back without looking either of them in the eye.
The walk back is completely silent. When they return, neither of them say a word to anyone, merely head into their own chambers to go to bed.
When they reach the hallway, Sansa manages an “Arya…”
Her sister opens the door, and gestures with her head for Sansa to follow her.
As soon as Arya closes the door, Sansa explodes.
“Seven hells Arya, what are you thinking? What if Mother and Father find out!” There’s a bunch more she wants to say too, about irresponsibility mostly, and station, and how Mother and Father were going to have a hard enough time with her as it was, but Arya cuts her off.
“Well they haven’t found out so far”.
So far? How long has this been going on?
Arya takes a deep breath.
“Can you keep a secret Sansa?”
Sansa is once again befuddled, and doesn’t remember saying “aye” but apparently she does, because Arya reaches under her bed and unrolls a bundle to show her.
“Oh”.
It’s simple, made of cheap linen that wouldn’t even be warm in spring. The wolf sigil rather more resembles a blob made of lines and points. The shoddy stitching is definitely Arya’s handiwork though, no one else’s. And it is without a doubt, a maiden’s cloak. And she’s clearly worked on it a while.
“I had to hide it,” Arya tells her. She’s sat down on her bed and clutches the cloak on her lap. “Me sewing anything of my own volition would have alerted every single person in this castle.”
Sansa is genuinely speechless. When she finally finds her words, all she can manage is,
“I thought you never wanted to get married?”
Arya laughs.
“Being a wife and being a lady aren’t the same thing.”
She sounds so certain.
“So I take it you haven’t told Mother and Father.”
“I thought it would be better to ask forgiveness than permission. No matter how hard they must think it will be to marry me off, they would never let me marry a baseborn blacksmith, even if he was a king’s bastard.”
Sansa’s words are stolen again. “What?”
Arya goes a bit pale again. “You, you never realized?” Sansa shakes her head.
“Not just Gendry, all of them. Mya, little Barra. Even Edric, but his mother was noble so he’s always been treated better. King Robert was never apparently a faithful husband.”
They…
Well, they do certainly all look alike. Thick black hair and startling blue eyes. Even Barra had tufts of thick black hair despite her mother’s tawny curls.
“How did you-:”
Arya ducks her head into her chest.
“I heard Mother and Father talking. They said something about...about people wondering if Myrcella and Tommen were really the king’s children.”
Oh. That.
It’s all too much.
Arya tugs at one of the strings on the embroidered sigil. It really is awful. All these years, why did Sansa never offer to help her with her sewing? Truly, Arya probably wouldn’t have accepted. But still, she ought have offered at least.
“Gendry says all he’s ever wanted is a family. His mother died when he was little. Back in King’s Landing I told him to come up north and we would be his family.”
“What did he say to that?” Back in King’s Landing Arya had just been a girl, and Gendry’s older than the both of them.
She laughs, and kicks her feet. “He told me that if he did that all I would ever be was ‘Milady’. That made me so mad you wouldn’t even believe.”
Sansa can believe, completely and truly.
Arya reaches back and touches her hair. Sansa notices she’s wearing the hair pin Gendry gave her those years ago when he first came to Wintefell. Gods above, even then?
“Do you...do you two have a plan?” is all Sansa can say.
Arya nods.
“Edric’s leaving in five days. We’ll go with him, Mya too. Barra’s mother didn’t want to go, she’s still too little, but the rest of us are going to Storm’s End. Edric says Renly Baratheon wants them there, that he considers them all family.”
“You’re going to elope?”
“Is it really eloping if you don’t leave first? There’s a Godswood here at Winterfell.”
The Godswood, so they’re….
“Just the way of the Old Gods?”
Arya nods. “I don’t really know much about the old and the new and all of that, but the Old Gods are Father’s Gods, the Gods of the North, so that feels right. Gendry says he doesn’t mind one way or another, but we might want to go in front of a Sept in Storm’s End just to be sure no one can say otherwise.”
Arya’s quiet for a long moment after that.
“Will you stand in for Father, Sansa? I was going to ask Mya...but I want it to be you, if you will.”
Sansa feels herself go red. Everything inside of her is telling her to say no, to tell Father and Mother, that Arya could be throwing her life away.
But…
She remembers how Arya looked earlier tonight, in Gendry’s arms. Happy. And she remembers how Gendry had been looking at her. And suddenly, Sansa feels a tugging deep in her stomach, that she recognizes as envy.
“Do you love him?”
Arya’s eyes go wide.
“Seven hells, Sansa, do you think I would do this if I didn’t? I’ve spent my whole life being told that no one would ever want me how I am, and here I am, not only have I, but he’s managed to find me again through and through?”
Her voice quiets.
“He asked me after my naming day. I wasn’t in a dress, my hair was a mess, and I had spent much of the day throwing snowballs at the outside of the forge. And he asked me after all that.”
The envy in Sansa’s gut is heavier than ever. It takes even more time for her to find her voice again.
“Tell me what you need,” is what she says. She tugs at the cloak on Arya’s lap.
“And let me have at this, but I can’t make any promises.”
Over the next five days, Sansa pulls out the worst offending of Arya’s stitches and renders the sigil as something more recognizably a direwolf.
If it weren’t for Mya telling all the others that she was leaving with Edric, everything might have seemed normal.
“It’s been the best, but there’s not much call for me here come the spring. Storm’s End is near the Red Mountains, I should be able to find good work there.”
Arya’s face is cool, unknowing. In another life, she ought to have been an actress.
She occasionally has attacks of doubt. But Arya is right, Mother and Father had long bemoaned how difficult she would be to marry off. And really, it is terribly romantic.
The night before, there’s drinks in the Great Hall to see Edric’s group off. They say they wish to leave before first light, to make the best time. Sansa thinks, that that will make it easier to Arya to slip among them unnoticed.
She fidgets the whole night. She doesn’t understand how Arya can not be. Gods above, she’s even talking about helping Bran with his archery the next morning!
But late night still comes, and no one else is any the wiser.
The castle is so still this late, Sansa thinks, as she stands outside Arya’s door. Not even any servants, they won’t come down here until it’s time to wake them in the morning. Arya soon emerges, holding her pack, and Lyanna’s cage, where the bird sleeps.
The pack seems so small.
“Do you have everything you need?” Sansa whispers.
Arya nods. “Clothes, Lyanna, Needle. A couple things to sell if we need to. Edric’s been told, so there’s enough provisions for someone extra.”
She gestures.
“Lets stop at the stable and see Mya first. I want to give her my things so nothing gets forgotten.”
It hits Sansa when they exit the castle (with near shocking ease) and creep their way to the quiet stables, that she’s losing her sister. For real. This has always been in the back of her head, that one day all of the children would marry and go their separate ways, but suddenly it’s real, and it hurts, and whispering to Mya makes tears run down her face.
Mya hugs both of them, and then takes Arya’s bundle and Lyanna’s cage.
“Meet me with Edric’s entourage when you’re done. Everyone’s outside the hunter’s gate so they won’t have to go through town. The bridges are down now so we can leave on time. I’ll keep you to the middle, so you won’t be seen.”
And with that, Arya and Sansa leave her behind.
Passing by the guest house is easy. Even if most of the guests hadn’t been sleeping or preparing to leave, the group is privy to their secret. The kennels is a bit tougher, they must be quiet so as not to wake any of the hounds.
They enter the Godswood, and it is silent. The moon that night is full, and huge, but the canopy of trees is so thick it is nearly blacked out.
“Does Gendry know how to get here?”
“I gave him directions the other night, and Mya led him in earlier when everyone was joining in the Great Hall. I hope he didn’t fall asleep.”
Sansa looks her sister up and down. She is wearing a dress, but layered over her leathers and a thick lambs-wool pullover. She said it was one less thing to pack, and they might not let her in the Sept in the south without it. Now that they can’t be seen, she’s pulled on the rough-sewn maiden’s cloak.
Sansa reaches out to touch it.
“You won’t have a gown….”
Arya fixes her with a look like she wants to call her a mean name. That’s silly of course, they haven’t called each other names in years. Out loud anyway.
“That was you. Besides, I won’t ever wear this again after tonight.”
She does reach into a pocket and pulls out several rolls of paper, labelled to each of their family members.
“Make sure we’re all gone before you give everyone these tomorrow. I hope I explained myself well. “
Sansa looks at them. Mother and Father, Robb, Jon, Bran.
“You didn’t write one for me?”
Arya gazes at her.
“I figured I would be able to convince you to help me pretty easily...you’re…”
“What?” Sansa asks, trying not to sound too cross.
“A hopeless romantic.”
When they reach the black pool in front of the weirwood, and Arya spots Gendry sitting still beneath it, Sansa spots the smile that sprouts itself on her sister’s face. And admits to herself, that she’s probably right.
Arya turns and suddenly hugs her fiercely.
“I’ll write as soon as I can. Lyanna should be able to get back here no problem. And if me and Luwin’s training takes, she should be able to find her way back to me and the perch I made her.”
Then Gendry notices them and stands, and Sansa suddenly feels as if she needn’t even be here at all. When she watches the way Gendry looks at her sister, a lump swells up in her throat and she feels as if she might not be able to do her part.
But eventually she finds her words, and the three of them all manage the proper ceremonial words without stumbling too much (though Gendry nearly does forget his own name). Sansa asks Arya if she accepts Gendry, and she agrees, and the two of them grasp hands and kneel and Sansa can’t stop herself from crying at all. The tears blur her vision as the two stand and Gendry removes the rough cloak and replaces it with his own, thick and lined with fur, and Arya looks so much more like herself in it, that Sansa can hardly stand it.
The two turn to her now, and Arya quietly reassures Gendry.
“We’re family for real now, all three of us.”
And she reaches out to hug Sansa again.
“You should start back now, or you might get caught.”
Sansa nods, still tearing uncontrollably. She can’t stop her next whispered question though.
“You haven’t already…”
“Gods no, I could barely convince him to kiss me. He was so sure someone would pop out of nowhere behind him and geld him for it.”
That gets her to laugh.
Sansa lets her go and goes to embrace Gendry as well.
“Be good to her or we’ll all set the wolves on you.”
Gendry laughs at that, but also looks suitably warned. Taking one long, last look at the two of them, Sansa finally makes herself turn and return to the castle, Arya’s notes clutched in her hands.
When she’s nearer to the end of the clearing, she hears Arya let out a playful shriek.
“Told you I could still pick you up like this.”
“I said that you shouldn’t, not that you couldn’t!”
And Sansa continues her walk back with a huge smile on her face. Old Nan was right, this winter was truly at its end.
And spring was coming.