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Stories are woven like tapestries, threads upon threads, embroidered and picked apart and faded by time and sunlight. In time truth becomes story, and what is said overtakes what is real. And people say many things.
They say: We will bend our knee to no King, save the King of the North.
For a Stark, though, they would still kneel. After everything that Sansa Stark had been, and with everything that she had become, they will follow her.
They say: The North was set aflame by the dragons.
When Sansa heard, she laughed, because even wildfire could not burn snow itself. But it was the laughter of the weary, of the woman whose halls were full of the injured and the dying, who had used her marriage to Casterly Rock to buy food for starving mouths. Winterfell was still little more than a ruin, and now it became the shelter where people ran from the war.
They say: The Queen fell.
The night that the battle raged its fiercest, the flames could be seen all the way to Winterfell. Sansa could see them from where she knelt in the godswood, its ragged remnants hung with ice and snow, only the weirwood offering true shelter from the continuing fall. For a moment she half-slumbered, from an exhaustion that had cooled in her bones, and a voice in her ear whispered that she had to go north, further north, to the cooling battlefield.
Even Sansa could not say quite why she did. Perhaps it was because there had always been some magic in the Starks; perhaps because loyalty ran deeper than fear; perhaps because the voice reminded her of a younger brother that she had lost many years ago.
They say: She looked like a flame against the snow.
The battlefield could hardly be called white. It was grey and black and red, covered in ash and blood, and fires still smouldered here and there in any case. Sansa rode as far as she could, and walked the rest, following a string that had been tied around her heart. She stumbled over the stones beneath the surface, felt the water soaking slowly higher into the pale grey wool of her dress, but gritted her teeth and continued on, the bannermen that had accompanied her following cautiously behind.
"Lady Stark," called Alysane Mormont. "What are you looking for?"
She would know when she found it. The smoke stung her eyes and the air was so fiercely cold that she could feel it in her bones, no matter how many furs she wrapped around herself. It simply held no fear for her any more.
She almost did not see the red eyes of Ghost, against the snow. He turned a baleful gaze on her, and she heard her bannerman ready their weapons. Without looking round, Sansa raised a hand to still them, and then reached out to Ghost once again. He sniffed her hand, then rose to reveal the figure he had been hunched over.
Even then, Sansa did not recognise her. Some slip of a girl with blood-matted silver-white hair, with ragged burnt remnants of fabric clinging to her wrists and draped over her shoulders.
Sansa knelt, in the bloody snow, and pressed her fingers to the woman's throat. A pulse fluttered there, faint but still tangible. Rising again, she turned to her men, and gestured to the figure. "Bring her home."
They say: They met as queens of Fire and Ice, the mother of dragons and the daughter of the snow.
It was not until Sansa had washed the blood from the woman's hair and the ash from her skin that she even realised this was Daenerys Targaryen. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse as soft and fleet as the footsteps of a wolf across the snow.
She could have walked away from the woman's bedside, not just to see to the stores of food but for good. She could have let her wither away and die, here in this northern winter which could never have been meant for a Targaryen. But Sansa had been betrayed by too many people who had called themselves friends, and helped by too many people of whom she would have thought of enemies. So she cleaned the wounds of this dragon queen, and laid cool cloths on her forehead when her fever raged, and did not wonder for very much more than a moment why it was that she wished to save the girl when one family had played a part in the destruction of the other.
The first words that Daenerys said came from delirium. She asked for people named Missandei and Jorah and Irri, and cried for someone called Rhaego, and all that Sansa could do was murmur that they would come, when they could.
On the fifth day, Sansa returned from speaking with Samwell Tarly, one of the men of the Night's Watch who still lived, to find Daenerys's purple eyes fixed lucidly upon her.
"Who are you?" said the mother of dragons, her lips cracked and sore, a cut becoming a scar across her forehead.
Sansa sat beside her, weary and clad in grey and with her hands raw from working to hold her home together. "I am Lady Stark of Winterfell."
She had grown so used to Ghost's presence that she did not realise the direwolf was at her shoulder until she saw Daenerys looking there. "Mother of wolves," said the Queen, and it was something between a question and a statement.
But Sansa shook her head. "Sister of wolves," she replied.
They say: The Dragon Queen rose from the snow like a fury, turning her gaze southwards once again.
It took days for Daenerys to be able to sit up, still more to stand. When she heard that her dragons were dead, she fell to the ground again and wept, eyes terrible and hollow and dark. Sansa remembered that terrible look, the look that had been in her mother's eyes when Bran had fallen, and without even thinking for who they were she fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Daenerys's shoulders, and held her close.
She rocked her, murmured soothing nothings, and felt the sting of tears in her own eyes at the anguish to which Daenerys gave voice. It seemed like an eternity passed, and Daenerys's tears ran down the skin of Sansa's chest, but finally she fell still and quiet and allowed Sansa to push back her silver hair and wipe her eyes.
"You should return to bed," said Sansa tenderly. "It will do you good."
"It would do me good to ride," Daenerys replied. "To fly again. And I cannot."
Sansa thought of the Moon Door, of her aunt. "Sometimes flying is only falling," she said.
She had found some time ago that she had the strength to pull someone to their feet, to lead them back to their bed. Daenerys felt as brittle as dragonglass to the touch, and Sansa would have wondered how it was that this woman could conquer cities and tear down armies, had it not been for how many stranger things she had seen.
They say: They spent many hours talking, those Queens of Fire and Ice, of politics and history and lands long gone.
They spoke of their brothers, and of their husbands, and Daenerys spoke of her children and touched the faint silvery scars that marked her abdomen and wept afresh. But her tears were cleansing now, no longer violent, and she and Sansa would sit with their hands tightly clasped together.
They spoke of the lies that they were told when they were children, lies that were called fairy tales and histories, and of how they had both come to salvage scraps of their worlds rather than build ones anew.
"It has been a long time since anyone has spoken to me like this," said Daenerys, as the wind howled outside and she huddled in her furs for warmth. Sansa sat on the bed beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip, as neither of them had done with another for many moons now, but even Winterfell could hardly hold back the cold. "You know, you have not called me 'Your Grace' even once."
Even in these last few years, Sansa has seen and spoken to more Kings and Queens than she could ever wish for. "Would you have me do so?"
"No," said Daenerys, so quickly that she must have anticipated the question. "I like it." She took a deep breath, luminous in the firelight. "I must leave for King's Landing soon."
"I will see to it that you have an escort," said Sansa. "Of those you led in the battle, and of the northmen. Night's Watch and wildlings and freemen. And I will see that you have my bannermen to lead them."
She had her own banners, the wolf of Winterfell, but had defiantly drawn up some that were quartered with the Lannister colours as well. She had learnt to use what they had forced upon her, made it a strength. No lion could hope to subjugate a wolf.
"Will you lend me Maege Mormont?"
"If you so desire," said Sansa, not meaning to ask why.
But Daenerys's hand snuck out from the furs and wrapped around Sansa's. Her fingers felt warm after the cool air. "The Mormonts were good to me, once," she said. "And only one of my betrayals has been at a woman's hand."
To that, Sansa had no response.
"I would that you came with me," Daenerys continued, still softly. It was the request of one woman to another, not the order of a Queen. "I will have need of wise voices among my Small Council."
"I have never claimed to be wise," Sansa replied.
"The Night's Watch say that you have helped them, and Winterfell is more orderly than many of the places I have seen in my time. You have less, and make more of it. What else is that, but wise?"
It sometimes seemed to Sansa very strange to think that they were almost of an age. Then again, it sometimes seemed strange to think that she was the Lady of Winterfell, that there was no Lord, that the world in which she had been a child was so far gone. "Thank you," she said, and meant it.
Daenerys's thumb stroked the back of her hand. "And I will need such on my small council. The winter is not yet done, and from what I hear it may last years yet. The world needs to be rebuilt, not to be more destroyed. Come with me," she said, and paused. "Please."
For a moment, Sansa thought of it. She had liked King's landing once, with its sunshine and trade, its parties and gaiety. Perhaps she could learn to like it once again. Finally, though, she shook her head, and thought of the ruins of the North. "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell," she said.
For a reply, Daenerys kissed her.
It seemed like a long time since she had been kissed, and Daenerys was very gentle. Her warm hands came up to cradle Sansa's cheeks, and her warm tongue traced Sansa's lips, and slowly, achingly, she drew Sansa down into the furs beside her.
They say: And thus the bond was made, between the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and the Warden of the North, that the lands might know peace once again.
Peace was never that easy. There were still those who wished to find King Robert's bastards and place one upon the throne; there were northmen who would have Sansa for Queen, though she had no desire for it, or who swore that one of her younger brothers must live still. There were Lannister cousins who wanted revenge, and Jaime Lannister who sought only penance. For his fighting at the Wall, he had been granted it, and there were those who were angered by that as well.
There were even those who claimed that Daenerys spoke lies, that dragons were dead and wights were children's stories, though at least the men and women who had held the Wall and stood in the shadow of Drogon and Rhaegal and Viserion could speak out in support of her.
"And the North is a realm unknown to me," Daenerys admitted, in a letter to Sansa. "Thus without you, I could not hold it."
They did not meet again as the winter fought on, and even their letters could only be sparse when they winds were at their foulest. But words were more than nothing, and as Sansa drew together what she could of the north, feeling like all of her years of embroidery were nothing more than preparation for the stitching of wounds, she was at least relieved that, far to the south, Daenerys wished for the same.
"The North is yours," Sansa wrote back, "as am I."
They say: As Spring broke, so did the Lady Stark present Queen Daenerys I Targaryen with the greatest of gifts.
In that, and in only that, might the tales have been right. The greatest work that Sansa had been left was the rebuilding of the North, and before it could be rebuild the rubble and the remnants had to be cleared away. Help came from the Flints and the Knotts and their kin, of course, but Sansa knew that she had to be there, to help with her own hands to clear the old pain away, her lady's hands now crossed with scars and bruises. They reminded her of Arya now.
She found the eggs among the rubble of the Queenscrown, as if the dragons had known its name, remembered it in some way passed down. To Sansa's hands, they were cold, but Daenerys had told her that only she had felt the warmth of the eggs of her dragons. She gathered them to her, wrapped them securely, and had them sent to Winterfell to await the coming of their mother.
When Daenerys saw them she wept and laughed and clung to Sansa so tightly that her nails cut into the northwoman's shoulders and it seemed her legs would not support her. Sansa held her, and felt tears running down her cheeks as well even as she smiled, and pressed a mostly-hidden kiss to Daenerys's hair.
"Thank you," said Daenerys, winding her arms around Sansa's neck and pressing their foreheads together. "You bought them back to me. My children's children."
She smelt of the snow through which she had travelled, and the south from which she ruled, and the foreign lands from which she came, all drawn together. Sansa closed her eyes as she breathed in the scent of Daenerys, and wished not for the first time that she could go south with her dragon queen. But she would not be happy in King's Landing again, even if it did belong to a Queen, and there must always be a Stark in Winterfell.
They say: And so the song of ice and fire was sung, and the stories of its Queens were known forever more.
The white raven came, announcing the spring, and the North slowly, slowly thawed. The dragons did not hatch for Daenerys, nor for Aegon, nor any others that came forward to try their hand. But they would hatch one day, Daenerys said. The dragons would come again. They always did.
Sansa stood as Warden of the North, and drew her kingdom together in her careful hands. She buried her tears in Ghost's fur, the last of the direwolves and the last of the Starks together as broken pieces, and wrote to Daenerys as often as she could bear.
All the same, they lived on, although their names were faded away and their selves more so, and Sansa came to understood what it meant to become part of a fairy tale. The ones which Old Nan had told her had not had happy endings, which Arya and Bran had thought was marvellous but Sansa had shuddered over. She understood, now, that those unhappy endings only made them all the more real.
She wrote often to Daenerys, not as her Queen but as a woman she had held and kissed and cried with, and treasured each reply. One day, she promised herself, she would go to King's Landing, unafraid though Daenerys was of the North and its ways. One day, she would trust Winterfell in the hands of another and return to Daenerys.
Until then, she breathed the perfume of the paper, and remembered soft lips and amethyst eyes. Spring turned to summer, and the world grew warm again, and no more did Sansa fear whether or not she would live happily ever after. It was enough, after all that had been, simply to live.