Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sansa had been out of the crypts for only an hour or two—had hugged Arya and Bran, had shed tears as she walked through the fire and the turmoil of her home—when she found Davos standing in the courtyard at the front of Winterfell with eyes still trained out into the snow beyond. 

“Do you know where the Red Woman is?” she asked with a terrible sense of ferocity. She knew she should say kindness first, welcome him to the land of the living that survived, perhaps even offer him a pat on the arm or a smile. She held nothing but respect for the man beside her, though he may have at times supported Jon is decisions that were less than wise. 

His eyes stayed trained forward, though, and she had a sinking feeling in her gut. He did not care that she had forgotten her courtesies. 

“She’s dead.” His voice was sort of empty. 

In another circumstance, Sansa might have been more responding. It was obvious Davos was feeling something deep and horrible. Sansa could understand that. But she didn’t have it in her to do the right thing, the kind thing, perhaps. Instead, she could only seem to focus on the way her chest collapsed further. 

“She can’t be,” she said, and she clenched her hands in front of herself and her eyes tightly until she only saw the pitch black and static white. 

For a moment that was truly unbearable, the darkness behind her lids was replaced with Theon’s face. His dirty curls, his waxy skin, and the pools of blood that seemed too large to have all come from him. Her knees had sunk into the red snow, and she sat there until her knees were chilled. Then, she sought out the Red Woman. When she had seen Davos, he had seemed like the most likely to know. 

“I wanted to kill her,” he said, “for what she did to Shireen and all those people she burned in the name of a fire god.” 

She looked out at the snow and thought she could finally see the dot of red that must have been her. “I wanted her to bring him back,” she whispered. It had been her last hope, the last thing keeping her together. 

Davos looked at her now, and she barely wanted to return the look but she felt as if she had to. When she turned, he was looking at her with something close to pity, but she thought it might just be understanding. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “There has to be some reason for them to come back.” 

“There is.” I love him. I never got to tell him what he meant to me, not really. Should that not be reason enough? He could have lived a fuller, happier life than she the one he had endured the years previous. He could feel redemption and finally embrace an inch of happiness. Maybe he never would have felt redeemed, though. Maybe he would have always needed more. 

For me then, she thought, but perhaps she never would have been enough for him to live for. Perhaps she was merely being selfish again putting her desires above all those people around her. There were others who had lost so much more, and she still had her family and her home. I want him, too, she couldn’t help but think . He’s my family, too. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she knew he meant it. 

“Me too.” She stepped away then past the walls and toward that blink of red. 

It would just be her body, she knew that, but Davos didn’t stop her. He must have sensed the lasting tension of desperation that existed around her. Maybe he was still grappling with his own. There was little more than her dress left. The fabric fluttered with the wind, and Sansa sunk to her knees in front of it. 

How fitting, she couldn’t help but think. His blood was still soaked into the fabric of her dress. Her own blood was dried by her wrist. She let it both sink into where Melisandre fell, and she thought for a second before she knew she would have to compose herself, have to get back up, have to be a Queen for her people—

Let me see him one more time, please. Bring him back to me. 

The landscape didn’t change, the wind kept whistling, and Sansa stayed alone. 

Saint Petersburg, Russia 1692

“You are a princess,” he said in a calculated tone. 

Sansa sat at the long wooden table in the library, books spread out around her, as her guard stood by the door. It was quite fun, truthfully, to see the way his brow stayed sturdy. She could name on one hand the number of times she had gotten him to crack, but oh how she cherished those times. 

The quirk of Theon’s lips upward at one side, the sparkle in his eyes, a roguish sort of danger. Sansa was a princess who saw little of the world. Unlikely to do little in her life besides be married off to a good match for a better alliance. In her head, though, she thought of her personal guard as Theon though she had never been granted permission and thought daily about what it would be like to hear him call her anything besides princess . 

“You are an Imperial Guard. I do love when we speak facts to one another. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t join me. Sit yourself down. Or perhaps we could go for a walk?”  Her eyes darted to his lips, begging for a small quirk. All she needed was a small rise, a miniscule movement, and she could card it away for days. 

Her life was rather dull, quite frankly. Guard Theon Greyjoy had been the highlight for years, before she even properly understood why he was the highlight. That reason being, in fact, that she was sort of in love with him. 

Though, she wasn’t all that sure she was allowed to have an opinion on love. All she knew of it was from books and her parent’s marriage when she was gifted with its presence. Most days it was her in this empty palace. She remembered the days of her childhood when the halls were fuller. Bran and Robb and Arya and Rickon. Robb was off on diplomatic tasks along with her parents. Bran at boarding school. Rickon and Arya sent off to their Uncle Brandon and Aunt Lyanna respectively for a more “cultural education”. 

Sansa was fairly sure “cultural education” was a kind way of saying you two are too spirited and need a watchful, respectful eye. If Sansa was smarter when she was younger, she would have realized that to get the attention she craved she should have been wild. Ripped edges of her skirt and unruly hair. 

Maybe then she would be in Paris like Arya or Spain like Rickon. Instead, she sat in an empty estate waiting for the day she would end up sold off like a broodmare. Until then she studied her languages, thought up stories of adventures for her siblings, and teased Theon Greyjoy into an inch of his life. 

“I thought you were supposed to be reading your histories, heiress,” he replied, eyes not even looking at her. 

Sansa thought if he ever did dare to meet her gaze, she might fall apart on the spot. 

“I’m not sure there is much more to learn. It’s all the same. War, death, revolution, pain. Every once in a wild night a good man wins and defeats the evil. Most of the time it is nothing of the sort. What is the point, though, I have to wonder.” 

“The point of history?” he asked. He was in a good mood today, she could tell. Sometimes he would sit there and say nothing at all to her questions, just small grunts of approval or the opposite. 

“Of me learning it,” she corrected. “I doubt whatever man wants my connection and takes me as wife will care for my historical, political, and personal opinion on any matter.” 

He returned to a grunt. Sansa felt like she was back peddling. Her eyes roamed outside—the fluffy, white snow. It looked beautiful, picturesque. Sansa knew if she stepped out, though, it would not take long at all to freeze right through her. Some days, she felt exactly like that snow. She wondered why she felt such a pull to it. 

“Theon,” she said, losing her own game. She tried not to let him know how much she thought of him, but any time she said his name there was a strange effect. 

His eyes snapped toward her, for a brief moment she saw beneath the mask. Then back to nothing. Saying his name aloud felt as if she was out of her body and somewhere else. Like somehow she had said his name a million times before, and yet there was always something new for her to snag her tongue around. 

“Yes, Princess?” he asked. 

“Can I go out? For just a second?” Her eyes trailed away from his jaw to watch the snow again. She longed to hold her hand out and let the white melt against her ivory skin. 

She wondered what he must have seen on her, heard in her voice, to answer kindly. “For a minute,” he answered. 

When she turned to look at him, there was something foreign over his features. A softness. A sadness, almost. It was gone again before she could ever learn to understand it. 

Sansa spent hours upon hours watching the snow many days. She sat in the window sill that was built into the end of the long hallway on the second story, the other side of the house from her bedroom. Most of that wing of the house was closed off, and she thought she liked the silence of it. A purposeful silence instead of the silence that was near her bedroom and library, silence that was meant to be filled but lacked the people to do it. 

At the oddest moments, she could have sworn she saw glimpses of red. A stray red bird, floating through the wind. A swatch of fabric intermingled within the fluttering snow. A single splotch of blood splattered into the ground. But it never lasted long. Her eyes played tricks on her, ghosts around corners and memories there, too. 

Maybe that was all ghosts were. Memories that didn’t want to be forgotten. 

“Princess,” Theon usually said after finding her, a warm exasperation in his voice. 

She wasn’t sure why, since he had to know she was here. 

“What’s the outside world like?” she asked today, feeling the melancholy sort of feeling take over she usually tried everything in her power to avoid. 

“I spend just as much time here as you do, Princess.” 

“I am sorry,” she said then, turning toward him with sad eyes. Wet and near full. She couldn’t tell why the emotion had struck her so fully, so heavily, but she couldn’t seem to throw it off. Looking at him somehow made it feel more acute. 

“ Princess ,” he whispered. As she brought her knees to her chest, he sat himself on the other edge of the sill. His brows were crashed together, a deep crevice between them. His hand reached up and fluttered in the space between them like a butterfly before landing softly on her cheek, his thumb a light wing wiping away the moisture. 

“Maybe I wasn’t meant for consumption,” she told him. His hand did not move. “Maybe that is why I am locked away, and you are stuck with me.” 

“You want to be consumed? ” 

Her lips twitched. “I want to be .” 

“You are, you know,” he told her. “The… most alive. I am not stuck with you. I never have been.” 

Sansa brought a hand up to his cheek, both holding the other, and she looked into his eyes. There was… so much in there she could not name but felt she knew. Like perhaps the same was right within her, too. “Theon.” 

He let out a shuddering breath before dropping his hand and standing back up, pulling away. There was so much cold air between them. 

“Princess.” He nodded, stepping back and already looking to turn away. “Please return to the library in an hour. Your french tutor will be here.” He did a little bow before shuffling away. 

Sansa turned back to the white snow. She saw no red, just blinding white. 

There were piles upon piles of food in front of her. The table itself decadent. The seats around her, though, were bare. Even Theon looked particularly down about the whole affair. He was growing more lenient by the minute. .

“Princess…” he trailed off. “They will be here for the Winter Ball. The whole family. Things kept your father and mother this time, but—”

“Ask the staff if they’re hungry,” she said as she stood up, dropping her napkin to the chair. Her dress fluttered around her ankles. Earlier she had looked at herself in the mirror and felt like a finely iced cake, glittering and sweet and beautiful. Too tempting to look away from. 

Now, frankly, she felt nothing but ridiculous. 

“You haven’t eaten anything,” he replied. 

She was a few steps away from him. He always stood near the door, but often it made her feel like she was always leaving him. Or he was always a second away from leaving her. 

Feeling dangerous, she took a step toward him. He stood taller in his uniform, looking toward her in that way that seemed to say I know something you do not . She had spent hours upon hours as she sat at her window sill, watching the snow, wondering what exactly it was he thought he knew 

“Say my name,” she ordered. 

“Princess,” he warned. 

“My name ,” she said as she pushed her shoulders back. “Say it, will you. Do you know how long it has been since someone said it?” 

“Sansa,” he breathed it out, and oh. Maybe he had never said her name before for the same reason she rarely said his. It was like someone had dug into her chest and opened it right up. They had laid her bare, but she was bare only in front of him. Did he love her the same way she loved him? It felt as if he must. 

“Are you going to leave me?” she asked. Her voice was sharp. She wasn’t sure she had ever felt like a weapon before, but no one had ever shown her their underbelly before either. Put a blade into her hand and said you can hurt me, but I’d rather you didn’t. 

He shook his head. “No, Sansa. I will not leave.” 

Her hands itched at her sides for more. She wanted him, truly. There was such danger in that, though, and she didn’t know how to vocalize that in the least. How do you tell someone take me I am yours when they are paid to protect you from anyone taking you, hurting you, laying a finger on her. 

“Good,” she said, and it was raw and she wanted to say so much else. She wished she was someone else so often, but what could she do? 

So, she did what they were always doing to one another. She left out the open door. 

“What would you be? If you could be anything?” she asked, looking up from her book. 

“I don’t know, Princess.” But it almost sounded like he was trying not to say yours. I would be yours. 

She hummed and looked back at the words, unsure if she was dreaming it all into existence. “Me too,” she whispered. 

Her hair was done up in so many complicated braids she could not begin to fathom where the end of her strands were in the design. The dress on her felt heavy with richness, and her face was clear and bright. It was the happiness that did it, she was pretty sure. 

Because right now she may have stood at the edge of the ballroom, taking a quick break from dancing (she had just finished with Robb, who was now talking to a pretty girl on the other edge of the room), but she was watching her family in their home. Everyone was home. 

A hand broke her out of her thoughts as it clasped onto her upper arm. “We have to go,” came the whisper. 

She turned over her shoulder to see Theon. He was already tugging her out of the ballroom and down a corridor they rarely used. “What are you doing? ” she asked. 

“Protecting you,” he answered tersely, continuing to tug her. 

She ripped her arm from his grasp. “Is something happening? We have to get my family, then. I can’t leave.”

“You must,” he ordered, his words harsh. His face was wearing something entirely unfamiliar, and it took her a minute to name it, but then she was releasing a small puff of breath with it. Guilt. 

“What did you do, Theon?” she asked. 

He took a wobbly step backward. “I didn’t realize. I didn’t mean… If I had known. ”

“What did you do ,” she growled, stepping closer. There was no fear, only the chance to be disappointed. 

“They’re just coming to steal some things. They weren’t meant to harm anyone, but…”

“I loved you.” She shook her head, taking a step back. “I love you.” 

“I love you ,” he replied, face like a shattered plate on the wooden floor. Splintered and broken and irreparable no matter the work you did to find all those slivers to put back together again. 

“Then you know,” she said, taking a step back toward him and clasping his jaw. “I will not leave them. I have to know they are alright.” 

“Please, don’t,” he said. “Let me protect you. You deserve… so much more than this. They don’t know what they miss out on. How many smirks I’ve had to hide due to your wit and joy and…” 

She dipped forward and kissed him. Lips against lips. First and last all in one. 

“It was for you,” she told him, dropping her hands and turning around. “But I will not leave them.” 

She grabbed her skirts, and she disappeared down the long hall in a glittering mass of white. The only red the heel of her shoe, later found in a pile of snow outside the western side of the house. Only one, though. Singular. Alone. 

January 1775

Dear Theon, 

I’m ecstatic you write to me, as Robb seems to find it beneath him to find the time to respond to his dear, lovely sister. You three found yourself an adventure going off across that wide ocean, and here I am left behind dealing with the ridiculous intricacies of the London social scene. I care little for the restriction of courtesy these days. It’s all been spoiled by the Lannisters, really, and I don’t quite know how to put on a joyful face when all I do is miss you quite terribly. 

That was perhaps a bit more bold than I intended, but now that I’ve written it down I cannot seem to want to unwrite it. I think you might have expected the truth to those words for some time. An ocean keeps us apart, so perhaps there is nothing to that phrase but heartbreak. Why I’ve made myself quite sad now, let us move to happier topics, shall we? 

Arya ran away again, and this time father found her at the blacksmiths learning how to make horseshoes. She was covered in soot head to toe, and I believe the apprentice has taken quite a liking to her. Mother, quite naturally, is furious. 

There are too many rumblings, Theon, and I know how you three like to find yourselves in the heart of trouble. Please, for the sake of a girl a continent away who holds you dear in her heart, be careful about these rumors of rebellion. I would like to be able to visit you all soon, and I fear how I will find the colonies when I do. 

With all my love, 

Sansa Stark

July 1775

My dearest Sansa, 

I know you may be furious. I amend it. I know you are quite furious without you needing to say it. We’ve found ourselves in the middle of a war, but it is a war worth fighting. Who are we if we don’t fight for what we believe in, truly? How am I possibly someone worthy of you? We are doing quite well for ourselves, though, I promise it. 

Robb has found a natural route to leadership as was expected of him. Any battle he has helped lead has gone quite famously, and I would not be surprised if at the end of this he easily finds himself in a political position of power. 

Jon fell in love, can you imagine? War time, too. A fiery redhead (I can not possibly imagine the appeal) who holds revolutionary meetings in her brother’s bar. Quite too good for him, I do say, but maybe I am not one to speak. 

I am quite enamored with the best woman I have ever met, and I do not deserve an ounce of her time. She’s beautiful and smart and too witty for her own good. If she was here I quite imagine she’d be inspiring people by the masses to the cause. 

I will do all I can to protect your brothers, Sansa. I want to make you proud. Please don’t be too furious with us all (at the very least me. Take it out on Jon if you must, I pray you). 

All I can hope is to be reunited soon. Perhaps it will be done in a free country. 

Yours, 

Theon Greyjoy

September 1775

Theon, 

I had the strangest dream last night, and I haven’t found a way to shake it, yet. So now I suppose comes the time to tell it to you. I couldn’t quite tell you where we were, though I know it was as cold as ice. A sort of cold that settled deeper than your bones, a cold you’re sure you can never escape from. 

It was white and blurry, the snow flowing around, and I saw red. A flash of it, like light fabric flowing in the breeze, but I knew I had to follow it. You were there. I know you were there, somewhere, though I couldn’t for the life of me see you. I walked through the snow, and the snow seemed to pause for me. 

The red stopped in front of me, finally, but when I reached out to touch it the color disappeared into the snow. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure you were there at all. I felt so alone, Theon. What could it possibly mean? 

It’s been too long since I’ve heard from you or Robb. Jon did send a letter recently, and I worry. I worry for you all. 

Mother wants me to marry. There are suitors—men from good families with good prospects. I don’t know how to explain to her that my heart is not in this country, but a strange one I have never even been to in the chest of a boy I have known all my life. 

With love,

Sansa 

December 1775

Dear Theon, 

It’s been near a half year since I’ve heard from you. Arya has told me to give up on you, but I’m not sure I know how. It is this feeling, I suppose, like I’ve loved you before. I don’t know if I can make it make sense to you, especially because I am not sure it makes much sense at all or you’ll ever even read this letter. 

When I realized I loved you a few years ago, there was nothing surprising about it. Suddenly, I looked at you and I knew. I knew I had loved you, and I would love you. It was as if I’d opened this box of love, and it was old. It somehow existed before either of us, and I knew it would exist beyond us. Somehow, as if the love wasn’t tied to any place or time but just… to us. For us, somehow. 

I don’t know what you’ve done or where you’ve gone. I don’t want to exist without you, though, so if you have gotten these letters the last few months I implore you to at least let me know you’re okay. 

Arya and Gendry are planning to go to the colonies, and I believe I am going to join them. You can imagine the reaction my mother had, though I think (or perhaps I am merely hoping) there is a sense of pride there as well. I hope to see you three when I make it. At the very least, I hope you can all stay alive long enough for that. 

With all my heart (for it is entirely yours), 

Sansa Stark

“Sansa?” 

Her gaze startled up, and she noticed Jon walking toward her. “Oh, Jon!” She was up onto her feet in seconds, throwing herself into his arms and tugging him tightly to her as he did the same right back. 

It had been so long since she had held any of them in her arms. The feeling of his grasp was bittersweet. 

“It’s so lovely to see you,” she said as they both pulled back. She wasn’t sure exactly what her face looked like, but she had to imagine he was mirroring something of her own expression. A look like seeing a ghost, a life you couldn’t remember, that you had never really appreciated when it was there in the first place. 

“How did you know…” he trailed off, turning his gaze toward the tree. 

There were two small headstones there. One for Robb. One for Theon. 

“I got here and… I felt it,” she said as she turned her gaze to the still fresh earth. “I can’t quite explain it.” 

“They’re not really there, of course,” Jon said as he took a step closer to her side so they were both staring at the dual graves. “Robb’s wooden sword, though, from when we were little? I buried that. I can’t believe he brought it all this way with him, truthfully. And for Theon… I buried that picture of Pyke. He carried it around with him all the time, but he must have known because before he left he…” 

The words fell to silence. The silence gave way to sounds of nature. 

“How did it happen?” Sansa asked. 

She couldn’t explain it. She had followed Arya and Gendry into the makeshift home Jon had settled into, and she needed to come to the backyard. Her bags dropped and forgotten, not bothering to wait for Jon to come back from whatever he’d been doing down the street, she rushed toward the tree out the back.

Somehow, she’d known they were dead before Jon’s letter arrived right before they’d set out to sea. Sansa remembered watching Arya open it, her face falling, and feeling like she had walked into a room that had been closed off behind her for months. She’d known the room was there. The door had just been stubbornly shut. 

Coming over the ocean had been bizarre. They’d all been dealing with the mixture of their own grief and still a persistent hope for the future in different ways. The headstones in front for her were a final confirmation, and perhaps a final goodbye. 

“We were on different paths briefly,” he said. “Robb was off leading a set of men, and Theon… he thought he’d let Robb down. He had trusted someone he shouldn’t have, and he paid for it, but… He thought he had to make it up to him. He went North to Canada under Arnold. I never got any confirmation, but the word is that those who didn’t die in battle were taken by the pox.” 

She’d known he was dead. It didn’t make her feel any better to know how, though, that it was so close to the end of this revolution and peace and her being here. She wished it could have all been different. 

“What happened to Ygritte, Jon?” she asked. She could sense that similar grief that she had a feeling they would be wearing together for the rest of their lives. 

He shook his head, no words finding his lips. Sansa reached out a hand and took Jon’s in her own. 

“Now we face it without them,” she said. “We try to make them proud.” 

Dresden, Germany 1843

Sansa wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders, smoothing a hand over the waist of her dress, as she stepped out the side door of the theater. Robb would be waiting for her near the front, ready to escort her back to her apartment, but she only wanted… a second. One moment to catch a breath. 

“Senta?” came a voice, oddly familiar. “What are you doing out here?”

She turned her head, trying to find the face. It was a man, cigarette between his fingers, as he leaned up against the building across from her. His hair was dirty and curly, his jaw unclean. His eyes peered from his face like jewels from the mud. 

“It’s Sansa,” she replied. 

He chuckled and pushed off of the wall until he was standing tall. He was about the same height as her, but there was an air of disarray about him. Something constantly askew. 

“I know,” he told her. “I was referencing your character. Senta? Did you forget the opera you just performed in, already?” 

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t… That was silly. What are you doing skulking in this alley? Someone might get the wrong impression.” 

“Have you gotten the wrong impression?” he asked. He dropped the cigarette to the ground, grinding it dead. “I believe your brother is waiting in the lobby.” 

“I just needed a moment,” she replied, staying away from the first question. She knew she was staring, and she should probably stop, but she felt as if her gaze was pulled to him. As if she was turning it in front of her, a rock in her palm over and over, trying to find the side of it she’d seen him. “You pull the curtain,” she realized, announcing it with a flair. 

For a moment, his lips turned with a genuine smile and not a smirk. “I wondered if you ever noticed the man who opens the stage for you. Why do you need a moment?” 

“It’s…” she trailed off, bringing a hand up to the flesh of her neck. She noticed his eyes trailed it there, landed on her pale skin and struggled to pull themselves away. “Sometimes, I feel as if I have to shake her off. Senta. I need a moment to remember where and who I am.” 

“And do you?” he asked, stepping closer. 

This was dangerous. A strange man in a dark alley behind the theater, but she didn’t feel fear. She didn’t feel anything close to it. She felt as if there was a string wrapped around her ribs, tied with three knots tightly, and it was pulling her from the middle right toward him. 

“She flung herself into the sea to die so she’s faithful to her lover until death.” Her eyes failed to leave his, a magnet to metal. “No. I can’t shake her off in the least. Though I’ve never known a love like that.” 

“Sansa,” he breathed, and she closed her eyes as if the utterance of that name was the sun and she was arching her face toward it for a sliver of warmth.

His hand cupped her jaw, and a second later his lips were on hers. Sansa felt consumed. She felt as if she had went from turning her face toward the sun to living within it, the heat on all sides of her. Her arms went around his neck, pulling him closer, and still it wasn’t enough. Her back against the wall, him curving into every part of her. More, more, more. 

“Theon,” she whispered into his lips. 

He groaned, kissing her again. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered, taking a break from her lips to press his mouth into the curve of her neck right below her ear. 

“Theon,” she repeated, letting his hand grab her thigh and hold it near his waist. It felt electric. She felt on fire. Red, red, red. Her hair and lips. 

There was a yell of something, probably a driver to a pedestrian on the street, but it was loud enough for them to tug back from one another. The moment slipping between their fingers like sand. 

“I’m going to miss the train,” he said. He looked wrecked. He looked like he was swimming to the surface, and he was confused by the view above water. “Off to somewhere better than this.” 

“Who will open the stage for me?” she asked, bringing a finger up to her swollen lips. 

“I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding someone new to do it,” he replied, dipping forward to kiss her lips again. Chaste. Quick. “I’ve quite wanted to do that for a long time. In another life, Sansa.” 

He reached down to pick his bag up, a bag she hadn’t noticed until this moment, and  held it tightly in his hand. She could tell because his knuckles looked seconds from bursting through his skin. 

Her jaw already ached from where his facial hair had scratched into it. “I hope you live a lovely life,” she told him. 

“You too,” he said with a smile. It looked… so sad, but also something near hopeful. “Safer without me, I’m sure.” 

“What are you…” Her brow crashed, but he was already turned away. He wouldn’t see it. “Goodbye, Theon.” She hadn’t said it loud enough for him to hear, anyways, but when he got to the end of the alley he turned and waved one last time. Then, he blew a kiss and disappeared. 

It wasn’t until she was back in the lobby with Robb that she realized he had never told her his name. She hadn’t known it. That all those strange little bits of conversation finally began warring in her head. 

When she’d kissed him, it had tasted like lemons and snow and home. She had felt, for an instant, like she was on the parapet of a castle with a hand in her own. It had felt like a dangerous, hopeful sort of future. 

Perhaps that feeling of jumping was just left over from the opera. Her final scene was jumping off a cliff into the sea, anyways. Theon for a brief minute had simply looked like that sea. Right before he turned into the lover sailing away instead. 

Another life, she thought. Perhaps then. 

Vida, Montana USA 1918

“It’s only going to get harder,” Arya called a few fence posts down. “The longer you wait the more tired your arms will be!” 

Sansa didn’t bother calling back to her. She readjusted the hat on her head instead, grateful it was keeping the sun off of her bare neck and face, though her arms were surely going to be feeling sore and red tomorrow. She picked up another fence post to pound in, wishing for the millionth time that day she had listened to her mother when she told her the farm life would not suit her. 

You could marry anyone. Be a lady of a lovely home, a mother, she had said. And you want to work a homestead with your sister? Why in the world?

You know why , was all Sansa had needed to say. 

Uncle Benjen had left it to Jon and Robb. Neither of them were there to take it as they fought overseas, but Sansa and Arya were. Sansa and Arya who had only now begun to understand each other in their emptiness, hoping to create something for their brothers far away. Sansa without Robb. Arya without Jon. Really, all they did was ache with longing and the hope for a safe and swift return.  

So, Sansa knew that Option A would have been an easier life, but she wouldn’t trade it. She would keep hitting the fence posts in even if she was nowhere near strong enough to do it properly because it was the option she had chosen. The life laid before her. 

The sound of horse hooves came from behind, sharp and quick against the dirt. Sansa turned, hand holding her hat to keep it in place, to see Yara Greyjoy from the homestead over riding with another horse quick behind. 

“Have you heard?” Yara yelled as she came to a quick stop. Sansa felt herself shaking her head no. “The Tarth farm is going up in smoke. Come on.” She reached a hand out to Arya who threw herself up onto the back of the saddle before they were quickly off. 

Sansa turned to the other horse and saw Theon Greyjoy for the first time. She assumed it was Theon, anyways, as she had never actually met him. Yara was always coming around, bothering them for a cup of coffee and some chat on her way to town. The little she did say of her brother was that he liked to stay close to the homestead, that he offered little in conversation, and that he had returned from war only a couple months prior. 

Here, in front of her, he seemed searching. He was attractive in a way that probably would not have turned her head at home, but now she could appreciate. Brown hair and inquisitive eyes and an even face. He showed the mark of someone who worked hard, and that was a quality that had grown to perhaps be the most attractive since she had found herself in the prairie. 

He didn’t say anything now, but he held his own hand out to her, and she took a deep breath before accepting it. Callused, like she had expected, but a loose grip. As if he knew what it was to be held tightly, and he didn’t want to force it on anyone else. 

She stumbled slightly into the saddle (horses were still something she was getting used to, and Arya usually chose to hop up on theirs willingly so Sansa didn’t bother) but Theon was steady in front of her. 

“You can hold onto me if you like,” he said. 

His voice was a bit gruff, and Sansa couldn’t tell if it was naturally like that or from misuse. She wrapped her arms loosely around his waist, and then the horse took off with a jolt.  

Out of all their neighbors, it looked like Sansa and Theon were perhaps the last to arrive. Even Margaery and Loras, who were further away and near the edge of town, were heaving buckets of water onto the barn with the rest of them. 

Sansa ran over as quickly as they could manage, but it was clear there was little to be done. Most of the people were at the front trying to tame the flames as best they could, and Sansa was a second away from joining them when she heard… something. She kept running past the crowd to the back of the barn, more covered in flames. She heard it again. 

Something sad. A bleat.

Sansa grabbed her skirts with one hand and pushed the barn door open with her foot. It was stuck, and she had to lean her back against the wood to get leverage. She could feel the heat against her skin already, and it felt as if she would melt underneath it. The smoke billowed out in thick clouds, and she was already coughing. 

Another bleat. Sansa didn’t realize it would be this hot (a stupid thought, god why was she always so stupid ), but she was in now. She could hear the bleat near the corner, could avoid the thick of the flames the best she could (though it meant dealing with the majority of the smoke), and she wouldn’t leave. 

She had been a lamb in a burning barn once upon a time. She wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. 

A wave of smoke hit heavier now, and the cough she released shook and weakened her body. She was nearly on the floor with the force of it, but she kept her pace. Finally, she could see the white shape of the small lamb tied up. Her hands struggled to release the rope, and when the lamb turned she could see one of the Lannister’s baby goats, too. 

“Come on,” she said to the rope. One of the beams cracked under the weight of the fire, and Sansa felt her heart jolt. It was too hot. Everything was so hot. It felt like she was inside the flames themselves, and the smoke was thick as water. Her lungs must be full of it. “Please,” she begged, closing her eyes for a second because the smoke was making them well with tears that were pouring rivers down her cheeks. 

The rope came loose, and Sansa bent forward to pick the baby goat up under her arm. The lamb made a quick path to the door and Sansa followed, stumbling as her vision blurred, as she felt the heat against her back grow stronger. To burn alive , what an absolutely horrible way to go, she thought. 

Finally, the opening of the Lannister’s backyard. Her body tilted to the right, and the goat was released from her arms, and Sansa turned to see Arya being restrained by Gendry as the two of them yelled back and forth. 

“Sansa!” she screamed, eyes finding her, and her face was stricken. 

Sansa’s lips curved upward, a small smile of pleasure, before her legs gave way beneath her. 

When Sansa woke she knew she must not be in her own bed because it was far too comfortable. There was extra space and blankets, and she could hear the soft voices of others discussing. 

“She’ll need a bit of rest. That is the best I can offer right now, but if she worsens send for me immediately, okay?” 

“Thank you, Luwin,” came what Sansa thought was Jaime’s voice? 

That would make sense, then. She was still at the Lannisters. The fire and the sheep and the collapsing. It all came back in a rush, and she slowly opened her eyes. The light of the room was dim, coming from a candle in the corner, and Sansa saw Arya leaned against the back wall with a blanket wrapped around her. There was some soot still on the side of her face, and she was in her work overalls from when they’d ridden over to help with the fire. Sansa had no idea what day it was. 

“You’re up,” Jaime said, creeping closer. He kept his voice soft, as if to let Arya sleep, as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?” 

“My chest hurts. So does my throat, and I’m tired,” Sansa said. “But besides that,” she said with a light smile, leaning back into her pillows. The smile fell. “Jaime, how’s the barn?” 

His face darkened. “We’ll have to rebuild, but it was an ugly old thing, wasn’t it? Time to start fresh. We got most of the animals out, and no one was hurt. Besides for you, of course. Why would you do that you stupid, pretty thing?” 

None of those words were hurtful because Jaime was staring at her with the sort of affection that made Sansa feel warm all over. It was the same way her father used to look at her—like you could do anything and you knew you still had unconditional love. That you were loved for exactly what you were and what you were not. 

“I heard its cries,” she replied. “I couldn’t not do something.” 

He tsked, but he reached forward and clasped her hand. “Brienne and I are grateful. Though, I’m sure she might have a few stern words before she gets to that.” 

“Jaime… was it because of Pod?” she asked, her voice softening just in case. 

He ran a hand through his hair, and Sansa could see who he used to be so clearly she felt as if she was looking at a photograph. Maybe that was why Sansa had bonded to him so instantly, so easily. They had both been destined for a very different life once upon a time, had been made for it really, and still they chose differently. His sharp jaw, attractive features, piercing eyes. He was made for luxury, and he’d chosen grit and dirt instead. 

He sighed. “I think so. We can’t prove anything, but Viserys and his crew have only been getting more violent with him when he goes in town. Brienne keeps making excuses why she needs to be the one to go instead of him.” 

A tear came to her eyes, and she couldn’t help but let it spill. Podrick was a good man. A good help to the Tarths, too. He was more family than hired help, but he was German. With a war across the ocean, people weren’t feeling all that friendly about Germans right about now. 

“I hate hate,” she hissed, the words cut off with a sharp cough. Jaime reached for a glass of water and handed it to her. She took a grateful sip. “When can I get back? Arya and I are already behind on the fencing, and we need this harvest. Benjen didn’t exactly leave us in the best spot.” 

Sansa hadn’t heard Arya wake or stand, but she was beside Jaime’s left shoulder now. Her face was coated with the bleariness of the sleep, but her words were nothing but sharp and clear. “You need to rest. Don’t worry about any of that.” 

“Arya…” Sansa trailed off. 

“We can take you back in a few days with the wagon if you’re feeling better, but you can’t exert yourself for a while. It could be bad for your breathing.” 

How was she so good at ruining things? At walking into disaster? And you want to work a homestead with your sister? Why in the world? There were her mother’s words again, reminding her how much of a fool she was for thinking she could do this. Why had she ever thought she was capable instead of a giant impediment? 

“Sansa, just sleep,” Arya said. “We’ll figure it all out tomorrow, promise.” 

Jaime stood up and blew the candle out, and Arya gave Sansa’s hand a squeeze. She was reminded that while Sansa was lonely a lot on the prairie, she was not in the least alone. The darkness surrounded her, and she let herself fall asleep. 

Luwin had given her some sort of medicine to help her sleep off the pain of her chest, and Sansa felt it still weighing down her limbs as she made her way back home. Home, she realized. It was now, wasn’t it? She just hoped she could make it through the harvest. 

The wagon came to a stop. Jaime hopped down from the wagon first to give her a hand, carefully holding her waist as she settled onto the ground. 

“Thank you, Jaime.” She dipped forward and kissed his cheek. 

“Stop being sweet on me, Sansa. Brienne will get jealous.” 

“Please,” she deadpanned, pulling up by their sides. “Take him.”

“You love me,” Jaime said, almost as if reminding her. 

She rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately.” 

Sansa laughed, feeling lighter than she had just a few minutes ago thinking about her unfenced land. Arya grabbed onto her arm, offering support and guiding her toward their small near shack. One night her and Arya had laid in their shared bed, turned toward each other to whisper underneath the covers, and talked for hours about how they would build their proper house after a fruitful harvest. 

Now, the reality of it felt far away. 

As she turned, though, she saw an endless line of fencing. Straight and sound and much better than she would have ever been able to do. Gendry came forward and offered a smile, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. 

“How— What—” She didn’t know how to finish her words. Sansa turned to Brienne and Jaime who were smiling at her, and she whipped her head back around to Arya. “It’s all done!” 

“We figured we could offer you some help,” Gendry said with a shrug. “A fearless gal like you deserves a little help.” 

“You all are… too kind,” Sansa said as she felt her eyes well up. Another thing to help them take a step closer to success. She wouldn’t have to go back to her nice dresses and dances and being kind to people who did not in the least deserve it for the sake of society. 

“You need to thank Theon, really,” Gendry said. “He was out here the last two nights. Honestly, he couldn’t be stopped. I don’t know where he got the energy.” 

“I will.” She nodded, feeling calmer than she had for days. Weeks, honestly. “Can you help me in?” she asked. 

Gendry offered a hand around her waist while Arya took her other arm, Jaime and Brienne behind her, and Sansa felt the closest she had to family in near forever

Her knuckles rattled against the wood of the door. The house was better than her and Arya’s (which wasn’t hard to do considering their home wasn’t really a house )—probably a two bedroom affair, and it looked like there might actually be curtains in the window which was a fair amount better than most people in Vida. 

Sansa was about to turn around, thinking no one was home, when the door finally opened. 

It was Theon in a white linen shirt and wearing a confused expression. His face softened when he noticed the plate in her hands. 

“You’re supposed to be resting. Aren’t you?” 

Sansa rolled her eyes. “People need to stop telling me that. What do you they expect me to do? Lay around forever? I can still bake. ” When Theon stayed where he was blocking the doorway, Sansa shook the pan. “You should let me in. We can both have biscuits. Your sister usually tries to steal the whole batch.” 

“Oh, yes. Sorry,” he said, opening the door. “I don’t normally…” He squinted and then turned. 

Following him toward what she assumed was the kitchen, she noticed for the first time he had a limp. His body moved in uneven steps across their creaking wooden floor. When he arrived in the kitchen and finished starting the kettle, turning around to see her watching him, his face was unreadable. 

“War injury,” he replied with a grimace. “That’s why I’m here and not fighting. Coffee?” 

“I would love some,” she said as she sat herself down in a chair, adjusting her skirts. “You sound defensive about that.” 

He shrugged and sat down in the other chair. Sansa imagined him and Yara here, eating and talking about their day’s work. Sitting across from him this close she could see freckles coating his cheeks and nose she hadn’t that day of the fire. The sun had that sort of effect on them. She assumed her own face would start to do the same if it was so inclined. 

“I used to be someone.” 

“Shooting guns and killing people is the only way to be someone?” she asked. 

His lips curved upward, and he puffed out a laugh. “A pretty, whip smart girl like you has never known how to not be someone. You’re someone by just walking into a room.” 

Her eyes narrowed, and she put her palms on the table. “You don’t know me, Theon Greyjoy. I just wanted to thank you for the fence since that was an awfully nice thing to do, but I don’t see that nice man in front of me today, so I’ll be on my way.” 

“Don’t,” he told her before she could even push up. “ Please. I’m just…” 

His face was warring with both frustration and regret. Sansa stayed in her chair and took a deep breath. 

“We’ll start over,” Sansa said. Her hands went to smooth her skirts again in a practiced gesture, her nervous tick. She felt like somehow Theon could tell, and his eyes landed on it. “I think the coffee is ready..” 

He nodded and pushed up, making his way over to the stove. “You did something brave. Something right. I just wanted to try to pay that back as best I could.” 

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

When he met her eyes, she felt… seen? A little bare? He looked down to fill their cups, and she took a stunted breath. “The world doesn’t repay good deeds. I thought I could try to repay it for the world instead.” 

“What an odd thought,” she told him, but she thought her words were kind enough for him to understand what she felt. That it was a kind gesture. That it had helped save her. The silence stretched in front of them. “Do you play chess, Theon?” 

His lips twisted up, and it was bizarre how easily he shed the darkness. He was a boy who had never seen war, who smirked at a girl with all the secrets of the world. “Oh, Ms. Sansa Stark do I. I don’t play, I win.” 

She laughed, a lightness bubbling in her chest. “Well, we can see about that.” 

Working on a farm was hard. It was tiring, and very rarely did you ever feel like you could see the progress of what you were doing. Arya and her got on much better now, but the sun and the exhaustion sometimes threw them into fits of argument that were exhausting in their own right. 

Sundays, though, could be counted on as a good day. There was church and her quilting circle and there was Theon Greyjoy. 

Theon Greyjoy sitting across from her at the table playing chess. Theon Greyjoy eating whatever she had baked and giving her a smile that made her stomach turn, who never made her feel weak when she still released a chest-rattling cough but offered her a hankie or a glass of water all the same, who told her one night—Yara still out at the Tyrell’s—about the war. 

I’m not good like you. I was… war changed me. I got so lost in it, like a fever I couldn’t shake, and when I was discharged ‘cause of my leg it felt as if I was chewed up and spit out. Yara barely recognized me. But this farm helps, the nature and work helps… you help, too. 

Her heart has a good amount of people firmly rooted inside of it, and it had never been a problem. Love was not quantifiable, and Sansa had more than enough of it to give. But she couldn’t deny that Theon had wormed himself somewhere safe and warm, somewhere secure, right in the middle of it. 

“Sansa! The peddler is here if you still want some of that… perfume or whatever,” Arya called from the back of the house. 

Sansa set down her tools and grabbed up the edge of her skirt, jogging back to their structure to see the peddler sitting at their barely-still standing card table. 

Her hair was redder than Sansa’s, a red that didn’t seem natural, and her face was sharp and clean and white. She looked too clean to be a peddler walking the country. Sansa wasn’t sure she could get herself that clean even if she spent hours scrubbing. 

“Do you have any perfumes?” Sansa asked. “We have a dance coming up soon to raise money for the war effort, and I thought it would be nice.” 

“I think I have something.” She stood up and rifled through her big case, filled with trinkets and sparkling things. There were ointments and jars that Sansa didn’t know how to identify. “I have something from Paris.” 

“Oh, wow,” Sansa said as she took the delicate bottle in her hands. She sprayed it onto her arm and sniffed. Light, floral, and lovely. “I’ll take it.” 

“I’ll give it to you for half the price,” the woman said as she reached for her own coin purse. She took the coins from Sansa and dropped them off. There was a clean line to her eyebrows that was for some reason fascinating. “Anything else I can do for you, dear?” 

“You look so familiar,” she replied, feeling the desire to reach out. 

“I come through every few months. You must recognize me.” She gave an inquisitive smile to Sansa, tilting her head and reaching out a hand for her face. She had an energy as if she knew that wasn’t why Sansa knew her, but she was willing to play the game. 

For some reason, Sansa let the red-haired woman take her chin between her delicate fingers. 

“I would avoid the dance if I were you.” The red woman dropped her hand and stepped back. “Good luck with your crops.” 

She was gone in a flash of red, so quickly Sansa was sure she had merely seen a ghost. 

The hail came out of nowhere. One day Sansa felt the growing crops between her fingers, and the next three quarters of their fields were destroyed. Barely enough to pay off a fraction of their debts. It stung like alcohol on an open wound. 

The dream crashed swiftly. Harshly. Sansa would have to go home and get married.

“I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think this would work,” she said to Theon. 

He was sitting on the other end of her table, his eyes scrunched and his lips pursed. His whole body seemed tense. Slowly, he reached a hand across the table and took hers. 

“It wasn’t stupid. You can’t stop a hail storm. You would have made it.” 

“That makes it worse.” Sansa tightened her hold on his hand but let her face fall to the tabletop. The wood was rough against her cheek. “What will I do?” 

“Well, I hear there’s a dance going on,” Theon began. When she looked up her was giving a roguish smile in her direction. “My mother used to say the best way to shake off the blues was to dance them away.” 

Sansa’s brows met in the middle. “Did she really? I don’t get that impression looking at you or Yara.” 

He shrugged. “Come to the dance with me. We’ll figure it all out from there.” 

Her world was crashing around her, and there was still a war going on overseas. Her farm was a mess, and Sansa had no idea what the world held for her., but Theon’s hand was warm, and his smile enticing, and she didn’t want to say no. 

If she had to leave Vida, maybe she could at least enjoy herself one last night. 

“Can you help me?” Arya asked, struggling to get her skirt to stay in place. 

Sansa couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her sister in a skirt. It had to be before Montana, back with their mother and some unwanted social event. After grabbing a safety pin, Sansa helped get the skirt tight enough to stay straight with her thinner frame. “There. All done.” 

Arya turned toward her, and she looked pretty. Her hair was combed, and she was in a simple outfit, but it was different than the dirty coveralls she usually found herself in. Sansa wanted to ask if this wasn in an attempt to impress someone, but she bit that comment back down. 

“You look beautiful.” 

Arya scoffed as she went to adjust her hair. “Nothing compared to you.” 

Sansa rolled her eyes and reached for the delicate bottle of perfume. “You’re the moon. I’m the sun. You don’t need to compare them for both to be stunning. Perfume?” 

“Sure, why not,” Arya said, already wincing as if she was about to be attacked and not just sprayed with a fine mist. 

I would avoid the dance if I were you. Sansa remembered how red and clean the woman had been. How there was still an itching at the back of her skull like Sansa should be able to place her. 

What harm ever came from a dance, though? 

There were a few whoops from the yard, and Sansa went to the window to see Jaime, Pod, and Brienne waiting on their wagon. 

“Fancy a ride?” Jaime called. 

Pod gave a little wave and a friendly smile. Brienne looked about ten seconds away from murdering her husband before she laughed and turned toward him, planting a rough kiss on his cheek. Sansa grabbed Arya’s hand, and they ran to hop into the back. 

The church hall had been cleared out and minimally decorated, but it felt like a palace. Theon smiling at her across the room? Something like a prince. 

Sansa had been courted by men before. Joffrey and Willas and Harry. None of them made her feel anything the way Theon did. Secure and genuinely appreciated, understood. When she first met him she thought his gaze left her bare, but that wasn’t it. Bare was uncomfortable. His gaze felt like it was already inside of her, already knew her, and the best part about it? She’d invited it in willingly. 

“A dance?” he asked with a twist of his lips. He seemed happy and playful tonight. 

When he held out his hand, she took it. They twisted toward one another, fitting their bodies together. When they were dancing they moved a little slower than everyone else to adjust for Theon’s leg, but Sansa didn’t mind. It felt as if the two of them were in their own world. 

“Where will you go?” Theon asked. 

She couldn’t see his face as they were cheek to cheek, but she could imagine what his face might look like. There was something empty about the question. 

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to go back to my childhood home, though.” She pulled back enough to see his face as they kept swaying. The song would only last so long before something quicker jumped in and the moment would crack around them. 

He cleared his throat, eyes darting around the room before coming to meet her own. “What if you stayed.”

“Theon…” Her heart beat in her chest wildly, a bird in a cage. “Arya and I failed. We couldn’t prove the claim in time. We’ll never be able to recoup our losses with what we can harvest, but it might be enough to get me somewhere. San Francisco, maybe. I’m not much suited for farm living.” 

“I think you can live whatever life you want. I just wish I could be a part of it.” 

His eyes were honest, and his face was open. An invitation like an open front door, welcoming her in. 

She shrugged. She realized, suddenly, that neither of them were actually moving anymore. Their arms were still wrapped around one another, but they were standing there and discussing and staring into each other’s eyes. Sansa didn’t care in the least what sort of image they made. 

“Maybe you could,” she told him. “How do you feel about the ocean?” 

“I—” He nearly looked surprised. How had he not known this was coming with the way their conversation was progressing? “What about your sister?” 

“I have a feeling she won’t be leaving Montana,” Sansa said, tilting her head before they both turned to look at her. 

She was in Gendry’s arms, the two of them dancing around though neither had much grace. Her smile was genuine, though, and every few words one of them laughed a full-belly laugh. When Sansa turned her eyes back to Theon, he was already watching her. 

“You look at me too lovely.” She brought a hand to his cheek, rubbing a thumb over the sun-worn skin. 

“You are lovely,” he said. “Sansa, the truth is I will go wherever you want me to. The thought of not being with you…” 

“I don’t want to pull you from your life.” 

He shrugged before bending closer, bringing his lips to her ear. “If you haven’t realized already that you basically are my life, then you aren’t quite as whip smart as I first thought you were.” 

Her arms pulled tighter around his neck, clinging to him the way a drowning man does a life vest. 

“I love you,” she told him back, planting a heavy, long kiss on his cheek. “You were the best thing to come out of these beautiful wide open plains.” 

His hand came to her neck, and Sansa was about to throw it all away—any care for propriety or situation—and kiss him straight on the lips just the way she had wanted to every Sunday looking at him over the chess board, spilling their secrets with biscuits and coffee. The moment, right there and ready for the taking, but then…

A yell. A crash. Everyone in the church hall going still. More yelling. 

“We have to go see what’s happening,” Sansa said, tugging Theon behind her. 

“Sansa, don’t,” he begged.

Brienne and Jaime had just disappeared out the front, and there was a cry loud and clear. 

“Podrick!”  

Sansa pushed through the crowd out the front door and into the town’s main road. Podrick was on the ground, Viserys and his men surrounding him, and Jaime was pushing him away. Brienne was holding someone else back, but Podrick was on the floor alone. There was blood pouring from his nose, and the sight of his nice dress shirt coated with red made her heart twist. 

She ran toward him without thinking, hearing Theon trying to hold her back, but she needed to help and make sure he was okay. Why wasn’t anyone else doing anything to make sure he was okay? 

Her knees fell to the dusty road, and she brought a hand up to Podrick’s face. 

“Are you alright?” she asked. 

He blinked slowly, as if he wasn’t fully there, but his hand came to her wrist and squeezed. 

“Someone help!” Sansa screamed. 

“What do you think—”

“Stay away from—”

“Jaime!” 

When the blow came, Sansa was looking at Podrick’s face. She was thinking Will San Francisco be different than this? She was hoping for a more peaceful future, a more simple life. Her and Theon, in their cheap apartment looking for a future where they could—

Washington D.C., 1973

Sansa opened her eyes to the alarm clock blaring. She could still feel Theon’s arm over her waist, and she turned toward him. Was he even awake? It was so hard to tell from his face with those closed eyes and soft breaths.  

“I’m not doing this anymore,” she told him. 

He tried to pull her waist closer. “You say that every time. You’ll be late to work if you don’t get moving, love.” 

“Don’t love me you spaz.” 

He scoffed, tickling at her sides, and she jolted out of bed. The second she was gone he was huddling further into the sheets, tugging them around himself like a cocoon. This apartment really was sort of a shithole, but she couldn't say it was any better than her own. They were both young people without much money to spare, but at least hers had proper air circulation and food in the fridge. 

“Go save the world or whatever it is you do,” he mumbled into the pillow. 

Shit, she hadn’t even contemplated that she was at his apartment. She didn’t have anything to change into. Moving forward, she tugged the blanket off of him, and he looked up at her with a sense of betrayal. 

“I need a shirt.” 

His eyes trailed down to the one she was currently wearing which was loose and old and his. “The one you’re wearing looks so good, though.” 

“I hate you.” She was surprised she could grit the words out between her tightly clenched teeth. “A shirt. With a collar. Something I can tuck into my skirt.” 

“You’re bossy in the morning,” he said as he hopped onto his feet and walked over to the closet. 

“I’m always bossy. It’s how I get anyone to respect me.” 

“I know. It’s one of my favorite things about you.” 

Sansa was pretty sure Theon had meant to say it as a joke, and she couldn’t see his turned away face to prove it either way, but the words themselves had come out sort of soft.

“Here. Respectable?” he asked. 

The shirt had a collar and was blue. That was about all Sansa could say positively. Normally, Sansa would not be caught dead in it. Today it was good enough just so no one knew she hadn’t spent the night at her own apartment. 

She changed quickly and looked at herself in the mirror. She’d definitely looked better, but it was fine. She was just going to the office for them to most likely shoot down her ideas, anyways. You’re making a difference, she reminded herself. 

“Good as it’s going to get,” she said to the mirror. 

He pulled up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his head into her neck. “And it’s so good. Don’t leave.” 

“Some of us work.” She turned around and gave him a kiss—that comfortable middle ground for them between sweet and passion, a feeling unnamed—before stepping away. “Have fun doing whatever it is you do when I’m gone.” 

“Miss you, mostly,” he replied with a smirk. 

“Liarrrrrr,” she sing-songed as she picked her bag up from the table near the door. She threw it over her shoulder and got on her way. 

Sansa met Theon at a bar, his sister’s bar more specifically, roughly four months ago. She’d had a shit day at the office and wanted to go somewhere no one knew who she was. Pyke seemed as good a place as any with its minimal inside and supportive regulars. A place you could slip between the cracks.  

Theon was working the bar (how cliche really ). He spent most the night fucking with her. Teasing her for her drink choices and making jabs at her fancy nails and hair. They got into a debate about politics, which they both had some pretty strong opinions on—

“How can you not think being part of the political process matters, ” she practically yelled, her lips looser after a few drinks. 

His forearms were leaned against the bar, and she did not let her eyes trail over every vein. God he had good arms. How fucking annoying. 

“I went to Vietnam,” he said, his voice finding a raspier quality now. “That’s how I know the political process doesn’t matter. The world is fucked. And those men in their finely fitted suits just keep fucking it up.” 

“But that's why it matters,” she told him, her voice going softer. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it now that she thought she could sense that trauma on him. A war worse than all the other wars. Dying for no reason at all. “We can change that. I work on Tyrion’s campaign. He wants to change that.” 

He snorted. “Of course you’re working on Lannister’s campaign. You really think you can make a difference?” 

She tilted her head, saccharine smile on her lips. “I know it.” 

She could tell he was trying to stop the smile that spread across his lips—one of satisfaction, of pleasure like Sansa was a gift that just kept giving. 

“You should come back to mine,” he had said. 

Sansa had a no on her lips already wrapped with a little bow, ready to give with no regrets. But then she remembered why she had come here in the first place. She had wanted to forget, and she had. He had made her do that, no matter how frustrating of a method to oblivion it had been. 

So she shrugged, and sent him a coy look though there was absolutely nothing coy about her at this point, and said, “Why not.” 

That had been the beginning of them, the months that followed of sleeping together and occasional moments of intimacy but still pretending it could end at any minute. Of Sansa telling him she hated him and of him continuing to push her buttons. 

They were probably both just too scared to admit they might need each other and their lives probably weren’t going to fit for much longer. How those two things were diametrically opposed, and they had no idea how to rectify that. It kept going, anyways. On and on because they didn’t know how to not be them anymore. 

“You seem… a bit frazzled,” Tyrion said, eyeing her with a tilt of his head. 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t. What do you need me to do today?”

“I know it’s not your job…” he began. 

“None of it is my job, but it’s not my fault your campaign team is lacking.” 

Tyrion laughed. She liked him because she didn’t have to toe the line, and he actually listened to her campaigning strategy despite being the volunteer head and occasional office manager. She was working her way up, though, and if Tyrion won. Well, she had a feeling she could work up a lot easier. 

“My team isn’t lacking, Stark,” he told her, tapping his pen against his desk. Sansa thought he usually did it to build suspense and make it clear he had the power in the room. She also thought he liked her because she didn’t let that get to her. “You’re just very good.” 

“Then aren’t you lucky?” Her smile was sweet, though. 

She actually really liked Tyrion, and that was why she put up with the bullshit. His nephew who got a job on nepotism alone. The men in the office who thought it was a joke she was there. She felt it deep inside her—she could do this. 

“Back to work, Stark.” 

“What happened this time?” Theon asked as he opened his door. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She shook her head, stepping through and already tossing her jacket off. It had been raining, and there was moisture in her hair and still on her lashes. Though the lashes might be from a welling of tears. It had been a long day. 

She was thankful for the rain covering that one up for her. 

“Then what do you want?” he asked with a coquettish smile. 

“You.” She tugged him closer, working over his lips with her own in desperation. 

It was like a drug, kissing him. Intoxicating. Exhilarating. The second she took a hit she could feel all her limbs relax. “Just you,” she whispered into the skin of his neck. 

He smelled like salt and comfort and other things… things she knew she shouldn’t feel… things that were dangerous. 

The drugs had always been there, Sansa assumed, but like other things she ignored them. Like the fact that he sometimes drank too much or he had cigarette burns on his arms that were definitely not from the war. The war, even, which he only ever released to her in small bouts and sometimes left him restless at night. Maybe ignore wasn’t the right word. She just… didn’t know how to touch it. Not when she barely knew what they were, and she figured if he wanted to talk to her about it… 

In June it seemed fine. In July a little worse. By August he was using enough that Sansa could see the trail marks on his arm and his sister had reached out to her at the bar. 

“Can you keep an eye on him? I’ve never… I’m worried,” she said. 

Yara was a rough sort. Tough and unwilling to admit to anyone she was anything but (though Sansa was pretty sure she was). So if she was doing this, speaking openly about Theon… Sansa knew it wasn’t good. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. 

He looked at her, and it was sort of cold. It left her skin crawling. “When have you and I ever talked?” 

She didn’t know how to argue that, so she didn’t. 

“You need to move up,” Tyrion said with a laugh, looking through her canvassing proposal. 

“What?” she asked. 

He shook his head. “You should be truly part of this campaign. You are a brilliant mind, and I can’t waste you. I want you to come across the country with me as I do visits. We can figure out the title soon, but I want you working by my side. It’ll be long hours, and on the road, but if you want in, then—”

“Yes,” she cut him off, reaching forward and shaking his hand. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

Tyrion smiled. “Then it’s yours.”

Sansa thought she might have always known they would be destined for breaking. Theon Greyjoy was the sort of boy who should come with a warning sign. The kind that would crawl right inside of you, and you knew you couldn’t pull them out without never being the same again. 

But maybe she was the same in return. Maybe she should have known that Theon saw something in her and wanted to water it, give it sunshine, let it grow the same way she wanted to. Maybe he had taken a single look at her and knew he would be fine breaking because of her. 

Her bags were packed in her apartment. They had been for two weeks now. She’d set up for her friend Jeyne to sublet the space while she was gone. She’d stored her car at Robb’s house outside the city with his wife. Myrcella had bought her a nice travel briefcase with her name finely printed in the leather and a new notebook to jot her ideas. Everything was in its place. Everything was ready. 

Still, though, Sansa hadn’t been able to break things off with Theon. She hadn’t really told him, even. It had… sat there. It was the fear probably that she would break him further. Or that without her helping to hold him together he would find something worse to hold him together—more drugs, more alcohol. 

His apartment was wrecked when she knocked three days out from leaving. The door opened with her knock, and the first sound she heard was a crunch of glass underfoot. There were glasses cracked against the wall. There were books laid with their spines cracked. Barely any light at all was coming in, and there in the middle of it all—head in his hands—was Theon. 

“Theon!” she exclaimed. She wanted to run toward him, but she couldn’t… figure it out. How to move one foot in front of the other and go to his side. “What happened?” 

“I had,” his words cut off into an incomprehensible mumble before he ran a frustrated hand through his hair and looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, distant, but they came closer to the surface when they finally landed on her. “I keep having these horrible strange dreams where I die over and over again. In these woods by a tree with red leaves or in the dead of winter, and I can’t make sense of them. The drugs have been helping—”

“This is helping?” she asked, sweeping her arms around her. “Theon, you’re a mess. ” 

“The trip I just had, it…” He rushed to his feet, breaking the space between the two of them what felt instantaneously. “I was hallucinating this woman. She was in all red, and her face was sharp like it could cut you. She was telling me about this… dance, I shouldn’t let you go to this dance, and I… She was horrible. Red and horrible, Sansa.” 

She reached forward and grasped his cheeks between her palms. “You’re not making any sense, Theon. I think we need to take you somewhere you can get clean. Maybe with my brother or you could stay with your sister for a while or—”

“You’re not hearing me,” he said with a shake of his head. “We’re doomed. I don’t know how to make us not doomed.” 

“How about a drive?” she asked, searching for his keys. “We’ll go for a drive, maybe get a soda, let the fresh air help us? Huh?” 

“I don’t want it to end, Sansa,” he said, and his voice was crystal clear. The sort of certainty Sansa had only heard a few, rare times in her life. “The beach… the beach .” 

“The beach?” she asked. His keys shone from beneath his leather jacket, and she reached out with a triumphant humph. “Babe, let’s go for a drive, okay? You need to get out of this apartment.” 

He dipped forward and pressed a soft kiss to her lips, so light it was barely there. It tasted like a back turned away from her that wouldn't turn around. “Okay,” he told her. “You drive.” 

They’d been driving for forty minutes in silence except for the low hum of the stereo. Theon was clumped toward the door, head leaned over the open window to let the fresh air rush past him and ruffle his hair. The shining sun somehow seemed to taunt her. 

“You’re leaving, aren’t you? For the campaign trail?” 

Sansa’s hands tightened on the wheel. “How’d you know?” 

“You’ve felt different lately.” He sighed and sat up straight, twisting his head to lean it against the seat now and watch her. “I’m slow, sometimes, but I’m not dumb.” 

She felt so close to crying, and she hated it. “I didn’t want to lie to you.” 

“You didn’t, you just… thought you were protecting me.” 

“We can’t go on the way we’ve been going on,” she told him. “I wanted there to be a way, but there isn't.” 

“Nah, Sansa Stark,” he said with a smile, a true one—bright and beautiful against the exhaustion of his face, “you can’t be weighed down by me. You’re going to do crazy things. Want to know a secret?” 

She nodded, not trusting her own throat to release the words. 

“I’ve loved you since the moment you walked into that bar. I’ve always just been shit at holding things I loved.” 

“Oh, Theon,” she began, whipping her face toward him, “don’t you know that—”

His eyes widened, and his arms jolted forward. “Sansa!” 

The car swerved and slammed, hit by something much bigger and much faster, and it didn’t take any effort for them and their car to fly through the guard rail and into the water. They sunk like a stone, the water pouring through the open windows like a starving man. 

In the right light, maybe, something like a baptism. 

Boston, Massachusetts 2017

Since practically day one, there had been Theon. 

Mostly, he was sticky and rude and took too much of Robb and her father’s time. Sansa wanted little to nothing to do with him, and he seemed just fine to return that attitude. He stuck his tongue at her behind Robb’s back and tugged on her pigtails, and when they got older it kept going much to that effect. 

Theon would make fun of her before dates. She would make cracks about his lack of dates. He said he got to the more interesting parts. Rebuttal. Remark. Sharp words going back and forth and back and forth until everyone around them was exhausted. 

Then he went away to college, and Sansa sort of found herself missing him. Not that she would ever saying anything like that aloud, but she felt it. She sort of thought Robb knew, too. Apply to Boston, anywhere he told her. We can find a three bedroom. 

A three bedroom turned into a four bedroom, and that was how she found herself living with her brother and his two best friends. In theory it seemed sort of horrible. In actuality… it was also sort of horrible at times, but there were nights with all them squished into the couch or them doing homework sprawled in the living room and it was… nice. It was everything she wanted.

Or maybe not everything she wanted. 

“Do I look good?” Theon asked. 

Sansa did not bother to turn away from her laptop. She was on her stomach, laid across her bed, and about two paragraphs away from wrapping this bad boy of a paper up. 

“Hello to you, too. I love when you knock. ”

“Sansa.” Theon sighed. 

She looked up and her typing stopped abruptly. Her eyes had widened a little, and her lips parted with a breath. He looked… good. Cleaned up. His facial hair neatly trimmed and his hair had some gel keeping it combed. The shirt he was wearing must have been stolen from Robb because it had no holes and buttons. Though it hung slightly loose on him it looked put together, which was something he rarely looked.  

Sometimes, when she was being honest with herself, she also wanted him. 

“Is it bad then?” Theon asked, looking down at his outfit. It was simple, really. Jeans and a button up, his worn boots. He nearly looked like himself, just not exactly. 

“No,” she said quickly, hopping up to her feet and moving closer. His collar was flipped on one side, and she reached out to fix it. “Hot date?” 

“I want to impress her. I don’t want her to think I don’t care, you know?”

Sansa paused, still too close, and felt her stomach jolt. She wasn’t sure she could name this feeling, but it might be something like jealousy if she dared to think it. “You really like her?” 

He nodded, but his eyes darted way. “I want something real.” 

She took a step back, too close to breath, and gave him a glance. “You look handsome, Theon. Any girl would be lucky.” 

His smile was toothy and wide. He took a step forward, wrapping his arm around her neck, and kissed at her crown. “Thanks, Sans. Good luck with your paper.” 

The space he left was thunderous. 

Sansa fell onto the couch where Jon was already sprawled out. He offered her the joint in his hand, and she took it with a sigh. 

“Ygritte still not calling you back?” she asked. The smell of weed was already strong in the space, but it grew stronger with the big puff she released. She coughed a little, and he handed her over a glass of water. “Thanks,” she muttered. 

“No, she thinks I was getting too serious,” he said with a groan. He held his hand open for the joint, and she handed it right back. “Your brother isn’t coming home anytime soon, is he?” 

“Nah, he’s out with Margaery. Not that we would be able to clean this smell out before then.” Sansa’s hands itched at her sides. “I think I’m gonna get a beer, want one?” 

He shrugged. “Why not.” 

His shoulders slumped as she walked away, and Sansa was reminded again of how dramatic Jon Snow could really be. It was probably why they got along so well now. He was her favorite person to mope with, really, because he had perfected the mope all his life. 

“Why are you bummed?” he asked as he took the beer and sipped from it. “Usually you’re not so eager to smoke pot I stole from your brother.” 

“I really hope that brother is Bran and not Rickon.” 

“Avoiding the subject,” he said.

Sansa sighed. The couch sunk lower beneath her. “Theon is on a date? I feel weird about it.” 

“I have been waiting for this to happen,” Jon said. 

Sansa’s eyes snapped to him. “What do you mean you’ve been waiting for this to happen?” 

His face was even, but there was amusement flickering in his eyes. “He’s been in love with you since he was 18. You’ve been in love with him since you were 18. Though apparently you’ve only realized that now.” 

“Love?” she asked. What did she know of love. 

“It sure is a bitch,” he replied as he dipped his beer to clang against hers. Sansa was too stunned to respond. 

The next morning, a bleary mix of hungover and foggy, Sansa grabbed her laptop and headed to the nearby coffee shop. There was no hope of getting anything done in the apartment, and she couldn’t seem to stomach seeing Theon. What if he’d fallen in love with someone else? Just when she’d realized she loved him? The thought ached. 

She went to the front to order a latte when she saw the red in the corner of her eyes. It was quick, fluttering, but when she turned she couldn’t deny the way it was the strongest sense of deja vu she had ever felt. 

Abandoning the now confused cashier, Sansa trailed after the woman until she was nearly a foot in front of her. Sansa reached out for her arm, trying to grasp it carefully, but there was a hunger that took over. She pulled the Red Woman (when had she begun to call her that in her head?), and the woman turned toward her with a smile as if she’d been waiting for the grasp. 

“Yes?” She took a drink from her coffee cup in her other hand. 

“I know you, don’t I?” Sansa asked, some of her bravado wavering.  

Her red hair was fire. It was the crisp outline of a firetruck, a splatter of blood against fresh white linens. Her smile was less heat, more sharp. She tilted her head in amusement. “This will be easier.” 

“Easier?” Sansa asked, unsure what the words meant, but the woman was already reaching out and cupping Sansa’s cheek. 

The second the fingers splayed, Sansa felt as if she was digging further into herself. She had always thought of herself as one thing, singular, but now there was something else. She was a Russian nesting doll, and this was merely the most recent outside. 

“Melisandre,” she said. Melisandre preened with the name, and there was almost… a sense of relief? Sansa couldn’t be sure. “The Red Woman.” 

She nodded. “Yes.” Her head turned, surveying the room. “Should we sit?” She motioned to the table in the corner, and Sansa moved with her. 

It was strange even to walk, now. She thought about being Queen of the North. A Russian heiress. She’d lived through the American Revolution, been both an opera singer and a politician. Yet, all of them felt real. All of them felt like her , and it shouldn’t make a lick of sense how her, the same person, could be so much.

She sat and ran her hands over her jeans before crossing her legs and laying her hands in her lap. In the same way Sansa used to when she was a queen, she pushed her shoulders back. “You were dead.” 

Melisandre’s expression stayed the same, but there seemed to be an edge of amusement there as well. “So were you. And then you were not.” 

Sansa bent forward, closer. “I kneeled in the snow where the ashes of your body fell, a bare dress. Davos wanted to slay you, but you killed yourself. I wanted to beg you for his life, and you were dead. How—”

“Do you remember what Jon Snow told you about death the first time? In your first life?” she asked. 

Sansa nodded. She would never forget. “There was nothing. Just darkness.” 

She nodded, reached out for a drink from her cup, set it back down. “There was darkness. In the darkness I could still hear, though. I heard you, and I channeled a simple prayer to a fire god. Then, in the darkness, I found something else.” 

“What?” 

Her eyes glazed over. “More darkness. A deeper darkness, and in that darkness I was able to crawl further into myself. It… is like nothing I can quite explain. I spent centuries there thinking, but not being gets dull. So… here I am.” 

“Here you are,” Sansa replied, letting the words sink in. She picked at the edge of her shirt before hearing several different versions of her mother chastise her. Too many lessons in her head, too much history to hold comfortably. “You brought me and Theon back.” 

“I wasn’t sure I could. I wasn't… anything, really, but you brought blood to the altar of what I was and prayed to the Red God. He listened it would seem.” 

“I kept having dreams, every life, like slips of something else. Of other people, I…” she trailed off, bringing a hand up to her hair and flinging it from one side to the other. Her head hurt.

“The human brain is flimsy,” Melisandre replied. “It can only hold so much. When it has to push too many pasts away, it’s like the memories are put into tupperware containers. You can’t access it, but you can see it through the gray plastic.” 

“Seeing you say tupperware seems the most bizarre thing that's happened yet today,” Sansa said dully. That and perhaps the cropped top Melisandre was wearing. It was strange to think of her own wardrobe when she used to wear hooped skirts or golden gowns. She had slaved on a prairie and sung on a stage. “So, him and I we’re just… going to keep going?” 

Melisandre shrugged. “I was just the altar you prayed at. I didn’t enact the magic, really. This is unknown territory, the same way bringing Jon Snow back those lifetimes ago was.” 

Let me see him one more time, please. Bring him back to me she had said, kneeling in the snow and begging for Theon Greyjoy’s life. She had gotten to see him more than once since then, had even gotten to hold him and love him to some degree. But none of it was full or real. None of it had lasted, and none of it was… not enough per say because anything was better than nothing. 

Her brain was frazzled, and she couldn’t think straight. 

“Why everyone else?” she asked. “If it’s just Theon and me who I prayed for, then why is my family in every life? Why did I marry Podrick Payne in Germany? Oh Gods, I married Jon after the American Revolution. We were both so heartbroken…” 

“What is a game without the secondary and tertiary players? Without the knight Jon, the Pawn Robb, Bishop Bran, Rook Arya. The players change, sometimes, the roles too. But a story is a finely woven tapestry. The strings interconnect to make the image. You and Theon cannot exist without the setting, the scene, the rest of the story.” 

In her first life, the one that still felt truest to Sansa in the depths of her heart, Melisandre had looked like something otherworldly. Perhaps it was because Sansa knew what she could do. She had seen a gorgeous, red woman who had brought back Jon from the dead. She had tried to sacrifice Gendry, and she had sacrificed Shireen. She had done wicked things, and she could do so much beyond what a human should be capable of. 

Seeing her in tailored pants, a red tied-up shirt, and high heels felt so… plebeian. So unfairly normal. 

“If you aren’t in control of this anymore,” Sansa said, holding her hands up to her sides and waving them around, “then what do you do with all your time?” 

Melisandre narrowed her eyes, not cruel, simply in contemplation. “I attempt to make amends.” Her fingernails tapped against the table, once, twice, then they stopped. “I’ve never been all that good at it, but Shireen has lived a few happy lives. Davos, too. I’ve helped them find each other twice, and I’ve helped Gendry find his way to Arya when the two of them are too stubborn.” 

“What about me?” Sansa asked. “Why don’t you try to let me be happy?” 

Her smile twisted, curved really, and it was sort of pitiful. Or maybe it was pitying. Sansa couldn’t hold it right. “There have been a lot of Gods created and destroyed in all of our time, before us, and after us too surely. They all know one thing, though, supremely and truly. They make a point of tragedy. Tragedy and love are just different sides of the same coin. What hurts more than love? I can’t make you happy, Sansa. I didn’t even think I could bring either of you back. Yet here all of us are, trying to do it better. It’s in your hands. It always has been.” 

“My hands,” Sansa said as she walked back from the coffee shop, her bag flung over her shoulder. 

It was hard to have so many lives in her head. There was her, the her she had been before Melisandre woke her up, and there were all the other hers, too. The simple Sansa of this time had been concerned with Theon and her midterm paper. Now, with all these lives in front of her, the problems seemed silly. 

Sansa had seen Theon’s fallen body after only just having him back. She’d watched him across a chess board on the Montana prairie. She had loved him and lost him in more ways than she ever anticipated experiencing. 

“Theon!” she called as she rushed through the door. 

Jon and Robb were on the couch—Jon reading, Robb flipping through channels—but they both looked up as the door slammed against the wall and her voice fought through the space. Jon, who she had watched go off to the wall, who she had loved in a lifetime in the way two people loved one another because no one else could understand the loss of love. Robb, her brother. Oh her brother. 

“Are you alright?” Robb asked, looking between Jon and her as if he might be able to enlighten him on Sansa’s actions. Jon merely shrugged. 

Sansa realized that her cheeks were wet, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from crying. She reached a hand up and dabbed at the wetness, feeling a laugh take over her. 

“Jon. You need to tell Ygritte you love her. She’s probably just scared, but you two need each other.” 

“Okay?” Jon asked. He paused, watching the seriousness of her face. He nodded. “Okay. I will.”

“Theon is down the hall,” Robb offered, pointing as if there could be any confusion over which direction it went. He seemed frazzled by the whole interaction, not that Sansa could blame him much. 

She followed the hall and pushed through Theon’s door, not contemplating the whole manner of inappropriate things she could be walking into. Thank god, though, he was just sitting on his bed and listening to music. His head turned slowly toward her, eyebrows crashing together. 

“What’s up?” 

“I love you,” she said. 

That got his attention. “What?” 

She practically jumped onto the bed, kneeling in front of him. In his eyes she felt like she could see every version of him—the ones that had betrayed her, the times he’d held her, the times he’d been so close she thought about it but was too afraid to breach that gap. 

“Do you remember any of it?” she asked, reaching out a hand to his cheek. 

His face fell into the touch without doubt, without hesitation. His eyes stayed firmly trained on her, though, as if waiting for the joke to be up. 

“Remember what, Sansa?” 

The memory came back to her of kissing Theon in the alley in Dresden after her performance of The Flying Dutchman. It was perhaps her shortest experience of having him, and yet one of the few she had kissed him. He had said, now she remembered, In another life as if he knew. He had to, didn’t he? That was why he must have left, thinking it some sort of sacrifice so they wouldn’t destroy one another. 

“In another life,” she continued, hoping it would pull something from him. He was still staring at her like she was crazy. “If you’ll have me.” 

There. A flash of something in his eyes. “What are you saying? Sansa, you aren't making any sense? Did Arya put you up to this?” 

“Fuck it,” she muttered, and then she caught his lips with her own. 

His hands came to her back, pulling her closer, and she was in his lap seconds later. The position had lent it to them, really. He was kissing her back, open-mouthed and wanting. 

“Sansa,” he breathed out into her collarbone after placing a small kiss there. “Have we done this before?” 

“Something like that,” she said, kissing him again. It had never felt so easy, so close, so real. She wanted him to remember, but she knew he would and could if given the time. 

“I love you, too,” he said. “Always have.” 

She paused and sat back on her heels, smiling at him. “Good. Keep doing that.” 

He reached forward and wrapped his arms around her waist, tugging her to him and not letting go. 

Six months later Theon collapsed during a presentation in his Accounting class. 

Sansa waited only long enough to pick Robb up on the way to the hospital, and then they both sat on either side of his bed and held a hand each as the doctor told him of the cancer that was spreading through his body. Quick. Aggressive. Treatments would do nothing but make Theon’s short time left more miserable. 

“What are we going to do?” Sansa asked later, curled into his side. 

His hand was running through her hair, pausing every few breaths to scratch at the scalp. “I’ve always felt like going to Canada. Or should we do something totally different? Croatia? What do you think?” 

“Theon…” Sansa didn’t know how to finish that thought. She could cry until there were no tears left. She could scream until her throat was raw. Anger and sadness and a feeling that the world was not in the slightest fair warred within her. 

“Don’t be sad,” he said, dipping his forehead against her own. “We got each other this time around, didn’t we?” 

“You remember?” she asked, searching his eyes. 

“Some,” he said. His face was near blissful, but Sansa was sure that had more to do with the drugs than the memories. She could see it on him now, though, some of  that grave wisdom of more lives. The set jaw of the Imperial Guard. The tired limbs of the prairie farmer. But maybe tired was just a constant for Theon the way both of them were given hard lives over and over again. 

“Not as much as you,” he continued as he opened his eyes back up again. “It’s like I can feel what happened but not see it. The only time I feel like I can see it at all is when you talk about it. Then I see it crystal clear.” 

“It’s not fair. I want you,” she said. “I want a whole life with you.” 

The medicine was creeping up, and she could feel it in his limbs holding her as they loosened and see it in his face as it slackened. “You’ll have me,” he told her. “For as long as I can, you’ll have me. And then I have a feeling you’ll have me again.” 

“Okay, Romeo,” she teased. She was trailing fingers over his face, trying to memorize the lines so she would remember this moment. Her words softened. “Okay.” 

“Make him better,” Sansa said. 

Melisandre stayed by the stove, mixing together spices as she cooked something that reminded Sansa of the feasts in King’s Landing. Though, she couldn’t for the life of her place it. 

“Darling, I can not.” Her eyes were hard, but not in a harsh way. They were hard in a way of familiarity that she had done this before, that she knew there were some things magic could not fix and that was forever it’s greatest tragedy. 

“You brought Jon back. You can bring him back.” 

Melisandre picked up the salt shaker and shook it into her palm before releasing it over the pan. For a second, it reminded Sansa of her as a little girl building snow castles. The way she would pick up a handful of snow and try to make it sprinkle over her creation.

“There are no such things as prophecies anymore. You’ve been gifted one of the biggest feats of magic I’ve ever witnessed, and I dare suspect I will never witness anything like it again. Do you know how rare that is? How lucky we are to be standing here at all?”

Sansa breathed deep and felt the clip of her nails in her palm. “Then why don’t I feel very lucky? Why doesn’t it feel like a gift?” 

She sighed, turning her body toward Sansa, and in the strangest way Sansa nearly felt as if she could feel the same pain. As if maybe she had been feeling it for every minute of her existence. 

“Magic rarely does.” 

He sat at the counter of the apartment, head resting on his crossed arms as he watched Sansa. His eyes were always on her these days, and she wondered if he was trying to soak her in. Was he worried about forgetting? Was he worried this was their last? 

“Where do you think we’ll meet next time?” he asked. 

Sansa dropped her knife to the cutting board and turned fully toward him instead, resting her own forearms against the granite. It brought her closer to him, but not close enough. She wanted to be constantly touching him, reminding herself what it had felt like when he was here. 

She remembered what it felt like when he wasn’t, and she didn’t want to do it again. She knew she could because she had, but she was tired. Tired of only getting fleeting moments of happiness before it was ripped away and the possibility of it being near the last hanging over their heads. 

But she had him now, she reminded herself. For however long she got him, she would cherish that at least. 

“Somewhere cool. Somewhere hip,” she told him. “I’ll probably be famous.”

He laughed. “And what? I just worship the ground you walk over? Follow you around until we fall in love?” 

“That’s what happens every timeline,” she joked. 

His smile widened, a beam really. “I love you. You know that, right?” 

She reached out for his hand and clasped their fingers together, tugging it over the counter, though it was at an awkward angle to pull it over her heart. “It’s stitched into me. In the heart of every version of me, there is always love for you. I’m not me without you.” 

“You are,” he said. He took his hand back and walked around to meet her on the other side of the counter. One hand found her waist, the other pet over her hair. “You are… everything. I am lucky to have you.” 

“When did you fall in love with me this time?” she whispered. 

“Fall?” He shook his head, smirking over at her. “No, there has always been you. And an annoying frustration with the perfect Sansa Stark that I someday realized was love all along.” 

“Wow, romance isn’t dead.” She rolled her eyes, but she was tugging his waist closer and wrapping her arms around his back. “I will always find you.” 

“And I will always stay as long as you’ll have me.” 

They held onto each other tightly, entirely, with no thought of letting go. 

“Tell me the best one,” he whispered, eyes closed. His skin was wan, and his voice thin. 

Sansa curved further into him on the hospital bed. She was happy his eyes were closed because she could feel the prickle begin behind her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she tried to keep it at bay. Her hands wound into his hair, running through it and scratching at his scalp. 

“My father was a Lord, and my mother once said that their marriage was built stone by stone. They had five children, and a bastard who was really their nephew, and a ward who was family to the children. Well, most of them, anyway. They lived in a beautiful home called Winterfell, and when it snowed there you felt it in your bones.” 

“This isn’t happy,” he said. His eyes were open now, and he scooted closer to rest his head on her shoulder. “How can this be the best one?” 

“Because it’s where we all started. It’s the first time I found you, and if I had never found you then we wouldn’t be here now. We would have never tasted sushi or gone to the cinema or…” 

“Watched Robb go viral on Vine.” 

“Exactly!” Sansa laughed, wrapping her arms around Theon the best she could. He was growing frailer every day, and there was little to be done. Nothing to be done, actually, but she hoped he went peacefully. She hoped she didn’t have to wait a century to see him again. 

“What’s your favorite?” she asked. “What one of our lives?” 

He shook his head. A blast of A/C ran through the room, and he shivered. “I don’t remember them the way you do. Just bits and flashes. Dresden, Germany had its upsides.” 

Sansa snorted. “Because you pushed me against a wall and made out with me!” 

“You sung… beautifully .” The smile on his face was full, and his eyes were closed as if he was watching it again. As if he was there. “The lights… they sparked against your hair. Oh, the lights…” 

“Theon…” she trailed off, face growing with concern. His heart seemed to be slowing, and then he wasn’t responding, and then…

It was a whirlwind—Theon’s death. It lasted for days, but the whole time Sansa felt the way one did when you did somersaults in the pool. Head over heels, head over heels, no distinguishable up or down and lungs bursting for breath. 

“He’s gone, Sansa,” Robb said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go home.” 

It’s here. He’s right here. His face was peaceful in death. “I’ll be seeing you,” she whispered. She turned to Robb and hugged into his side. He squeezed right back. “Let’s go home.” 

Nowhere 2095

There was peace in the end of the world. For Sansa had known it had ended many times before, and yet… it had not. She was alone, and in silence she had found her own joy. Always moving toward something. Always searching for what was next. 

Always searching for him. 

Once there was Robb. Once there was Arya and Gendry. There was Bran and Rickon and Margaery. There was the big house in the middle of nowhere (though everything now was nowhere, so the distinction did little) with a large garden and enough rooms for everyone. A solitude. A peace. 

“Where’s your family, girl?” he asked, rough and angry. 

Sad, probably, too. He seemed the sad angry sort. A story behind his half-burned face and rough hands. 

She motioned to her dog in the back. She’d left her other family, but she would go back. She would. She just had to complete it the best she could first. Find the missing parts to make it all whole.

“You really don’t talk? This will be a fucking long car ride.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. She watched to make sure they stayed there. “Come on, a single word.” 

Her eyes narrowed. Her middle finger sprung up and she turned it to him. 

He grunted out a laugh. “Fine. You’re probably too pretty to say anything interesting anyhow.” 

Both middle fingers up. He laughed harder. 

“We haven’t seen him. Sorry, sweetie.” 

Sansa tucked the picture back into her pocket. Except it was actually just a clumsy drawing. She had trained her fingers this time, working and sketching until she could get as close to him as she remembered. Otherwise what would she have to go on?

The memories had come early on. It hadn’t been painful at all. They had simply settled in her, and as she grew she remembered the ways she had grown before. The other people she had been, always her at the middle. 

Maybe he didn’t even look like her drawing in this lifetime, but she had to hope. Always hoping. 

“You want a room, though?” 

She nodded and motioned to her dog. 

The owner smiled. “As long as I can pet him, then he can stay, too.” 

The rest of them could not remember a world before this. Sansa remembered everything. 

She remembered the way her and Ned would go to the gas station to pick up doughnuts on Sundays. She remembered plowing the fields with Arya, the sun beating down on their necks. She remembered pouring over letters Theon and Jon and Robb had sent her. The calming pull of her mother’s brush through her hair. 

The world now was quiet and misshapen. The buildings crumbled from weapons, and the power out for no reason any of them could ascertain. Sansa thought it was interesting how quickly the world could burn, but then again she’d seen it before with a golden-haired queen on the back of a dragon. 

Anything could be burned or broken. Anything could be touched by death. 

Usually she walked. Sometimes she could catch a ride or find a car. They were few and far between though, picked up over the years and damaged frequently by inexperienced hands. 

She liked walking, though. She had her backpack and her dog, named Lady of course. She was less wolf this time around, but just as sweet and loyal. 

The world was beautiful and quiet. Sansa loved it even in its destruction. She knew better than anyone how beautiful that could be. 

“Where are you going?” Her hair was dark and curly, and her brother stood a few feet behind lean and tall. 

Sansa was pretty sure they must be Meera and Jojen. She had never met them in her first life, though, and they had not come around in much of the others. Melisandre probably would have called them tertiary players in her and Theon’s story. 

While she knew her own lives, Sansa did not know what came after them. Did Meera or Jojen ever steal Bran’s heart? Did they come around and help put him back together after her? Or were they all floating stars of the same constellation, connected some but not enough to keep them close. Part of the image still, though. 

Sansa motioned around. 

Meera’s brows scrunched together, and she shot Jojen a look over her shoulder. “You have a map you can show us? Anything?” 

She pulled the drawing from her back pocket and opened the crinkling paper to lay it flat on the hood of their car. Meera tilted her head at the image. 

“Well, I’ll be damned. Doesn’t that…?” 

“Yeah,” Jojen agreed. “Looks like Theon.” 

Sansa nodded enthusiastically, eyes widening and lips tilting up. 

“You’re going to need a boat to get to the island, though,” she said. “I’m sure Davos should be around to do that for you, though. Go west to the coast, and get to the island Pyke. We’d drive you, but we’re going the opposite way.” 

Sansa jolted, holding out her hand and snapping. She felt in her own pockets, finding nothing. Jojen and Meera shared a look, and she mimicked the act of writing until one of them pulled out a pencil. The sight of a nicely sharpened number two pencil seemed hilarious, and she shook her head with mirth. 

On the back of a piece of trash, Sansa wrote the directions to her nowhere as best she could. 

A safe place. Good people. A garden and enough space for everyone, she wrote. She hoped it would be enough to send them that way, to try to bring Bran with these people who had meant so much to him. 

Sansa had no way of knowing if they’d listen to her when they left, but she liked to believe they had. That when she brought Theon back with her, they would already be there. 

There was no Davos at the shore. Sansa saw no boats, though she could see Pyke in the distance across the stretch of water. She turned to Lady and wondered how much food they had to last them before they’d have to turn around. 

Sansa sat herself on the edge of the water, dipping her hand in to touch the wet. Cold not freezing. She leaned back, setting the backpack under her head, and let the slight sun seep into her bones. 

Lady’s low growls woke her up, and Sansa popped up to her feet with her hand already reaching for the knife stuffed into the back of her pants. 

“What are you doing out in the open like that? Goddamn stupid.” Yara looked at her like she was the dumbest thing she had ever seen, which to her she might just be. “You trying to get to Pyke?” 

Sansa hated meeting people she had known once and not being able to explain. Don’t be wary of me, she wanted to yell, we have fought together. We have loved Theon both with all our hearts. We drank and ate together and held each other in the darkest times. 

Still, yet, her and Yara could be so much more if they were given the proper time. The proper lifetime, really. 

Not knowing if it was a good idea or not, Sansa pulled the drawing out to show her. It was on its last legs, but it must have been close because Yara looked at her with a sharp suspicion. 

“That’s my brother.” 

Sansa nodded. I know. 

“You really never talk?” 

Sansa nodded again. 

“Get in the boat, then. You’ll have to help row.”

It was a small wooden fixture with just enough space for two people, and a net full of fish dripping at the bow. Sansa threw her bag over one shoulder, picked Lady up with a grunt, and stepped into the waves and the boat. 

Theon and Yara lived in a small structure that looked old, but there was a mix of differently colored woods making up the outside that brought Sansa to the conclusion that they must have been working on updating the property over the last few years. 

“Theon! There’s some redhead here to see you,” Yara called as she kicked off her boots by the front door. Then she picked up the fish and kept walking. Sansa could hear the sounds of a backdoor sliding open, and she found herself alone in the house. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Theon called. 

Sansa didn’t say anything. She never was able to say anything. 

When he stepped into the living room slash frontway she was standing in, Lady dutifully beside her, Theon dropped the swiss army knife he had in his hands straight to the ground. “Shit,” he hissed, looking down before bending to pick it back up. Back at full height, he stared at her like he couldn’t believe what was in front of him. “Sansa.” 

The breath caught in her throat. He remembered. Without needing to be told, without limitations, he remembered. 

She ran to him, and his arms were open and ready. One hand of his found the back of her head, the other clutching her to his chest. He was solid in front of her. All that wandering and searching had brought her here. Had brought her to him, and now she could bring him back home. 

“Sansa,” he repeated, pulling back slightly as if any inch of skin not touching skin was unbearably painful. His hands were still holding onto her elbows, trying to make sure she wouldn't pull away completely. 

As if she ever would or wanted to. 

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he asked, eyes searching her face. 

She held a hand up to her throat, and then she signed. I can’t. 

“I don’t know how to read sign,” she said, brows pushing together. “I can’t…” He sighed, gripping her to his chest again. His lips placed kisses over the crown of her head. “Can you teach me?”

She traced her fingers over his face, running her pointer finger over his nose and above his brow. How she had missed him desperately. Her last image of him had been clean and stuffed in a coffin, but here he was looking healthy and happy. 

The end of the world? Who knew it could do them such good. 

Her lips found his, and she kissed him slowly, sweetly. Like they might actually have time for once. Like she didn’t have to try to rush all of him in because he would be leaving. 

“I love you, too,” he whispered. 

His rough palms wiped away the tears down her cheeks. She didn’t know how she was supposed to pull away. 

“Are you going to stay?” he asked. 

For a second she looked toward the back window, noticing Yara gutting fish at a picnic table. How could she ask Theon to leave this? Part of her thought it would be easy to stay. Part of her knew she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t return to her family. 

She shook her head but reached for his hand, holding it tightly, trying to say but I can’t go without you. 

He nodded. “Okay.” His eyes turned back to Yara, watching her in the back. “I don’t know if she’ll want to come. I don’t…” His eyes returned to Sansa. “Are they all there? Robb, Jon, Arya…” 

She nodded, a pleased smile on her lips.  

“Could we really be happy?” he asked. 

Sansa thought saying that question aloud was dangerous, but maybe if she kissed away the space after it they would be okay. 

“I won’t go,” Yara said, eyes darting between the two of them, “but I won’t stop you.” She reached out a forearm to Sansa, who gripped it securely in reply. “Take care of him.” 

Sansa crossed her fingers over her heart. Yara gave her a smile in return. 

“I saw her, you know,” Theon said from the passenger seat. Lady was in his lap despite there barely being enough room for it. 

Sansa raised a brow. 

He nodded. “I did. She was on Pyke because she thought Daenerys was there, but she wasn’t. She looks tired. Wasn’t even wearing red, can you imagine that? Her hair is still blinding, though.” 

Theon scratched at Lady’s neck, cooing into her ear as she lapped at his face. He laughed and turned back toward Sansa. “She was honest with me. She said the magic of this world doesn’t seem to be holding, that it’s cracked across the surface. I think this is our last life, Sans. Why else would we both wake up with our memories?” 

Sansa shrugged, but she enjoyed the thought of it. She wanted to get Theon and be happy, and then she thought maybe it would all be okay. Maybe it was what they deserved. Just some time , and then it would all be over. 

Would she be fine with that? They’d gotten so much more than anyone else, and she should consider herself lucky even if their stories were dotted with angst and tragedy. It was something. It was so much more than she bargained for. 

“I wish I could tap right into your brain and know all your thoughts.” 

He’d let his hair grow so long this time, the curls going past his jaw. She reached out and tugged at it, watching the way his smile grew with a warmth in her chest. His jaw lined with stubble, his eyes tired but there. Weirdly, he reminded her a lot of her first Theon. 

“Okay, teach me something. I have to start learning. Who will I be if I can’t hear your quips back at me.” 

She motioned quickly with her hands, and he laughed. “Let me guess. You said fuck off.” 

She smiled faux-sweetly at him, the look dissolving into laughter quickly. His hand reached for hers, and she squeezed back. 

They had to drive a long way into the woods to get to the big clearing that was their home. All the cars were in the driveway, and Lady ran off to the front door the second they were out of the car. Sansa tugged Theon excitedly behind her. 

She should have known something was wrong by the quiet. That no one had come out to greet them. By the sudden harsh barks by Lady. 

She didn’t, though. She never had expected the devastation that followed. Robb’s body crumbled to the floor, lifeless eyes, a pool of blood at her feet. 

They searched the house for anyone else, but there was no one. There was nothing. 

“We’ll find them,” Theon told her, tears tracking down his own cheeks. He held her tightly to him, cupping her head as she he could erase the vision from her eyes simply by keeping her face securely in his chest. “They have to be somewhere. Wee have each other, Sansa. We will figure it out.” 

Slowly, carefully, she wrapped her arms back around him. They did, and that was a comfort, but it didn’t feel… not enough, maybe, but not right. 

Maybe it would be better if this was their last. Maybe there was only so much tragedy two bodies could take. 

New Melbourne, Australia 2142

Sansa had a little house near the beach. A ten minute walk further east and you’d hit Margaery and Robb’s. To the west you’d hit Arya and Bran’s. Rickon was off traveling the coast, wanting to see what the rest of Australia looked like now. 

She couldn’t imagine it was that much different than here. Most of the cities were destroyed. Rubble was everywhere. The best place was to be near the coasts where it was clearer and calmer. 

From her second window facing the water, the one her sewing machine sat right in front of, she could see him out early in the mornings. She used to sleep in longer, but now she woke up and did easy stitching with a cup of tea and watched him row his boat out. 

It might be a bit creepy now that she thought about it, but it was her routine. He was merely an unknowing participant in it. 

A knock came at her door. “Come in!” she called. 

“Darling, why are you drooling?” Margaery had a pile of dresses over her bent arm, clearly from pre-WWIII by the faded color and fine fabrics. She closed the door behind her and set them delicately on Sansa’s long, wide working table for Sansa to look them over. 

“I am not drooling. ” 

Margaery raised a perfectly plucked brow. “Why so shy all of a sudden.” She walked to the window, peering out with a soft hum. “Oh, so that's what this is about. Theon Greyjoy?”

Sansa rushed to her best friend’s side, the two of them peering through the window. “You know him?” Sansa asked. 

Margaery nodded. “His sister was the best lay of my life.” 

“You’re married to my brother,” Sansa replied, raising a brow. 

“Did I stutter?” Margaery laughed at Sansa’s expression, bending forward to give a kiss to her cheek. “Your face. That will get me through all week. Now can we look at these beautiful dresses I found? With your artful hands they will be wearable again.” 

Sansa cracked her knuckles and turned toward her canvas. 

Sansa was fixing the beading on dress #3 of Margaery’s when there was a knock at her door. Hair held up with a fabric pencil and pins sticking from her mouth, Sansa went to open it. 

Theon Greyjoy stood on the other side. His skin was tan, his eyes intense. They looked like the ocean he rowed out onto every day. Sansa already felt lost in them. Realizing the mess she must look, she pulled the pins out of her lips and ignored the fact that one of them stabbed her palm. 

“Hi,” she said. “What’re you…” 

He looked both confused and amused. “You sew, don’t you?” 

She turned toward the plaque near her door and pointed to it. Arya had carved it from a piece of wood for her herself. Sansa Stark. Seamstress. 

“Ah, yeah,” he said, turning his eyes back on her. “I need some repairs.” 

She saw now his hands were holding several pairs of pants. Rough fabrics meant to be durable. He must have worn them to the absolute limit. 

“Come in,” she said, widening the door and stepping to the side. 

She imagined what her home looked like to his eyes. There was only a single bedroom, and she did little in it but sleep. The rest of her house was one big room. A kitchen in the far back. A living room/workspace in the middle. Her sewing machine against the closest wall. There were fabrics flung about, covering the walls, and drawings scattered too. 

Sometimes, Sansa thought she was meant for a different time the way her brain wandered over designs. Some time she could have built beautiful, fabulous outfits and not mostly worked on repairs for the people of the New Melbourne coast. She wouldn’t just make pants and practical shirts. She could do beautiful dresses and costumes. At least Margaery brought her intricate projects. It helped to have something to channel her creativity into. 

“This is…” he trailed off. 

“Messy, I know.” Her eyes wandered the space for the nearest chair, but it was covered in piles of denim. “Sorry, I don’t really have a lot of sitting space.” 

“That’s fine,” Theon told her, waving her off. His eyes were still circling the place, as if he kept finding new things to be intrigued by. “This is so different than what I do on my day to day.” 

“I can imagine,” Sansa replied. He tilted his head and scrunched his face. Sansa reached for his upper arm and carefully pulled him to her sewing spot. She pointed through the window. “Every morning you go out with no fish, and you come back with a boatload of them. It’s nice to put a name to the face.”

“Oh, so you’ve been spying on me, have you? I’ve never had a secret admirer. This is exciting.” 

She leveled him with a gaze that made her brothers wither. He didn’t even look perturbed. “What do you have for me, Theon.” 

“Well, Sansa,” he began, and she hated how much joy he seemed to get out of saying her name. Sort of loved it, too, “I have some pants that need some mending.” 

“Let me see.” She held out her hands, and he looked like he didn’t want to put anything into them. She groaned and grabbed the pants right from out his hands. 

They weren’t un-salvageable, but they weren’t in great shape, either. They were worn and falling apart. She laid them out on her table (after pushing some other things to the side to make space), and stared at them as if they’d give her answers. 

“These don’t fit you, do they?” Sansa asked, eyes staring too long at his waist as she tried to figure out the measurements. 

“With a good belt they’re just fine.” 

Sansa tutted, moving over to her pile of sturdy fabrics. Most of her fabrics were sturdy and boring because that's what people around here needed. She’d been saving one, though, for nice pants for Robb’s birthday. She’d already drawn the design, the way she wanted the pockets to lay so he could put his tools in right when he was woodworking. They would be good fisherman’s pants, though, given a little thought. Versatile too, though.

She grabbed up the fabric and turned, eyes darting between them and him. 

“Nuh uh,” he said with a shake of his head. “I need pants fixed. Not new ones.” 

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll fix your pants, don’t worry. You need new ones, though. A pair that will last you.” 

He shook his head. “I’m sure they’d be great, but I don’t have anything to pay for them with.” 

She chewed on her cheek, pondering the thought. “How about… a fish every other day? For a month? That's more than enough. You’ll be giving me free dinners.” 

“It’s nowhere near enough.” 

Sansa couldn’t explain why she wanted to do this so badly. Why she felt like she had to. 

“Then have one of those dinners with me,” she told him with a shrug. 

His smile turned to near a smirk, but he looked stubbornly pleased. “Alright then.” 

“Have you heard about the storms?” Robb asked as he set the table. 

Sansa kept cutting the tomatoes Arya had brought from Gendry’s garden. God bless Gendry and Meera or none of them would ever have any fresh produce without paying for it. All the Starks had horrible green thumbs. They killed every plant they ever tried to love. 

“I heard a recent one took out the whole northeast coast. A whole long stretch of it,” Arya said from her place at the table. 

Sansa stopped cutting. “That can’t actually be true.”

“But it is,” Margaery said. “We have some people at the ports who were recently on the continents and they said it’s a whole global worry. Storms have been taking out whole cities. Tornados and hurricanes and the like.”

“Should we be worried?” Sansa asked. 

Robb shrugged. “If the world hasn't ended yet? I don’t think it will.” 

Theon sat at the table across from her, drinking from a beer she’d bartered with Hot Pie specifically for at the market. She’d cleared half the table, giving them enough space for their fish and vegetables and freshly baked bread. 

“I don’t get it.” 

Her silverware paused. “What don’t you get?” she asked, bringing another bite of fish to her mouth. He was good at cooking it. She’d eaten a lot of fish in her life, but nothing ever this good. 

“Why you want to have dinner with me.” 

“Boredom, probably,” she teased, reaching for her own wine glass. He chuckled, and she laughed too. “Is it weird to say I feel like I know you?” 

His eyes were piercing. They could burn her to the ground. “No.” He shook his head slightly, bringing a hand to the back of his neck. “No, I feel the same.” 

She shrugged. “Then maybe there’s nothing more to get.” 

“You have any new fabrics for me, Mel?” Sansa asked, holding the woven basket over her forearm. It was filled with thread and new pins right now, but nothing else. 

Mel nodded slowly, looking over her booth. Her hair was long and white, but it was the strangest thing. Every once in a while when she turned her head, Sansa could have sworn it was as red as the setting sun. Then she would peer back at her with her curving inward body and her sunken face, and Sansa was sure she was going crazy. 

“Only one. Something on the house,” Mel said as she handed over the most delicate lace Sansa had ever seen. 

“I can’t,” Sansa said through a gasp, afraid to hold it in her hands. “Why?”

Mel shook her head but stopped when the movement seemed to be too much for her. “There’s never enough time, darling. Use it for yourself.”

“Are you feeling alright?” 

She nodded as she smiled with her yellowing teeth. “The clearest I’ve felt in lifetimes.” 

Sansa stepped carefully through the water to the boat, pausing with one foot in to balance against the wood before sitting down. 

“You don’t seem to have good sea legs,” he commented as he hopped in easily behind her. His hands went for the oars instantly, beginning their movement in smooth pulls. 

“I’ve never went anywhere,” Sansa said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been on a boat before.” 

“Never?” he asked, eyes widening. It was clear the open landscape of the water was integral to him. 

She nodded. “Never. So show me it right or I’ll never come back.” 

His rowing paused, and Sansa felt her cheeks redden. 

“What? Did I say something wrong?” 

He bent over the oars and kissed her lips once—chaste. When he began to pull away she grasped his cheeks and held him there to kiss him good and proper. The dip of a tongue and a bit more pressure. A kiss that said I’ve wanted to do that a long time, and I’ll keep wanting to do it even longer. 

“You make a compelling argument on the boat front,” she said through a goofy smile.

He shook his head as he began to row again. Their legs were interlaced between them. “I think you’d make just about anything bearable, Sansa Stark.” 

Sansa came home to find Arya on her roof, hammering fresh wood. 

“What are you doing?” she yelled up to her. 

“The storms are getting worse! And closer!” 

Sansa went inside to grab her sister some lemonade. 

“Do you like them?” Sansa asked as she stood behind him, fingers in his belt loops and head resting on his shoulder. The mirror wasn't quite big enough to get the full view, but they could see enough. 

“They fit perfectly,” he told her. 

“I happen to know your waist size very well.” 

He turned in her arms and kissed her. “Thank you.” He kissed her again. “I think they’d look almost better on your floor, though.” 

Sansa bit her bottom lip and took a step back. “Well, let’s see it then.” 

His smirk grew, and a second later he was rushing forward to throw her over his shoulder, walking to the bedroom, and dropping her onto the bed. 

She found these days she was using the bedroom for a lot more than just sleeping. 

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Sansa wrapped her sweater tighter around her shoulders and stepped onto the front porch. Theon had his head tilted upward as if letting the rain wash something off of him. 

“I don’t want you going out on the boat anymore!” she called to him. 

He turned. It seemed to pain him to nod. “I know.” 

A flash of lighting—bright. A crash of thunder—angry. 

“Come back inside.” She held out her arm. 

He walked slowly in from the rain. 

The rain stopped for 24 hours before it started again. Sansa was at Robb and Margaery’s, and it came down in thick sheets. Sansa couldn’t see anything. “Theon,” she whispered to herself. 

He had told her this morning he was going to go out. She didn’t wait to slip on her shoes before she was running through the downpour and down the beach back to her own home. That little window she used to watch him through every morning. The place they had whispered I love you into each other’s hair while rolling around in bed. 

Sansa came to the front of her house and searched the waves with her eyes. He’d started storing her boat right by the side of her house, but it wasn’t tied up. Her eyes scanned more fervently, more frantically. 

“Theon!” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. Her chest was heaving. “THEON!”

“Sansa.” 

She flipped around to find him running down the shore. He was drenched, though she was, too, so she had no way of knowing if it was from the ocean or the rain. A chair flew furiously down the beach before hitting the waves. Sansa looked to her house to see if it was still in tact. The whole structure was swinging from side to side. 

“I think this is it,” Theon said, and the words flashed something in Sansa. She couldn’t hold onto them right, but it felt like the start of pilot light before the stove’s flame flared to life. 

Except that was an outdated reference. Sansa had never used a stove that was powered with electricity and gas. How did she know that sound so familiarly, though? So intimately? The click click before the fire started. 

Did he mean the end of the world? It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be possible. 

She reached out for him desperately, and he met her in the middle. 

He kissed her as if by instinct, and she could remember it all. Every life. Every moment. The good was so good, and the bad so heavy, but she remembered . All of it sat inside of her, swirling and swirling like the water at the bottom of a drain. 

“I have loved you… so many times,” Sansa said with a gasp. She felt awake. 

The wind whipped around them louder now. The storm would take over everything soon, and it would be it, she thought. This world would be lost. But for now they had each other. That had always been a constant. 

“I’ve loved you,” he answered, dipping his forehead against her own. “I will always love you.” 

“And that's why we have to let go.” Her words could barely be heard over the harsh winds despite her yelling. Water slapped at her skin, and her hair whipped behind her. It was strange how the peace settled inside of her like it had always been there waiting to be let out. “Baby, we have to let go. We can’t keep coming back.” 

He didn’t want to agree with her. She could sense it. A wind rushed past them so harshly they tilted to the side, and they clasped their arms tighter together to keep upright. The sky was dark; you could barely look at it with the way the rain was pouring and the storm warring in the sky. 

The magic was loosened. It had been let out of a cage it had been locked in for centuries, and finally it was given its own chance to be free. Sansa couldn’t find it in herself to be mad about that. All she continued to feel was… serenity. The calm ocean Theon would row himself out onto every morning to gather his fish. 

“Okay,” he told her. Sansa thought he might be crying, but she couldn’t tell with the way the storm raged on. “But not yet.” 

She smiled. It was the only act of rebellion she could have against the true ending of this world and this life… all the lives she had lived. One small moment of true joy, knowing it all and accepting it anyways. Being happy anyways. 

“Not yet,” she repeated. She kissed his lips, and then they wrapped their arms around one another. They held on the way they’ve held onto one another for centuries. 

Something new, though. A knowledge that it might actually be the last. An acceptance that it was. A relief, almost.

“Sansa Stark,” he called into her ear. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.” 

We have been happy, she thought, and we have been sad. And we have done it all together. 

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she told him. 

“Not a one?” He joked. “Are you sure about that?” 

But the storm was there now, and she didn’t have the lung power to reply. She barely had it to breathe. 

She held on. She blinked. She kissed his neck. She blinked and blinked. 

I love you more than this world, she thought. 

She blinked again, and the darkness took over. There was only black surrounding her, like she was swimming in it. There was… nothing. 

But perhaps, somewhere, there was more darkness to dip her toes into. 

Yet for now she stayed.