Work Text:
Sansa Stark does not believe in soulmates. More specifically, she does not believe in her own. She has no reason to.
Growing up her mother told her that one day her mark would appear, just as hers did as a young adult when she met her father while on holiday.
Jeyne finds her soulmate at 16, and Mya at 18, Sansa waits as her friends say hers will come soon enough.
Robb gets married to his quicker than their mother would have liked, and Arya sneaks out late at night when she believes the rest of the house to be sleeping to meet hers.
She doesn't like to think about where her soulmate might be, or who they were in a past life together. It creates an empty feeling in her chest that she would rather forget entirely. So, she shoves herself into her schooling, then university, then work, until her days are a collection of always going and never settling down to let herself think for even a moment. She goes on dates, and tries to ignore the pain she feels when she sees that soft pink mark on the blonde haired boy’s neck who’s had a little too much to drink and is slurring his words as he ignores every sense of her personal space. She pushes him away and decides to not go on dates anymore.
She cries into her pillow that night, and longs for the feeling of weight next to her on her mattress.
The mark does not appear like her mother said it would.
~
The sound of her alarm going off for the fifth time finally manages to pull Sansa out of her slumber, and gods she really should not have stayed up so late watching that romance film her sister told her she would like.
( especially since she drank a whole bottle of wine afterwards )
Because now she’ll be late to work, and even as the head of her department it’s not a good image for those working under her to see. But at this hour the streets of King’s landing are rushing, and Sansa simply cannot deal with that today.
So, she takes her time. She takes a short shower, moisturises, spends a little extra time combing out her hair, and has a small breakfast.
Then she leaves her flat, and starts walking.
~
She doesn’t even realise it, in truth, the small drop of her lip gloss tube onto the concrete sidewalk. Until suddenly a stranger is suddenly calling after her and placing a hand onto her shoulder,
“You dropped this,” they say, the sparkling pale pink tube she thought she had just placed into her coat pocket in their hand.
When Sansa meets the strangers eyes, they’re beautiful and warm like the golden honey from her grandparents bees she’d visit as a kid, with creases on the outside edges from a constant smile. “ Oh ,” is all she manages to say, but it comes out more as a loose breath.
She stares for a moment longer than she should, and goes to take her lip gloss, fingers gently brushing against the others, and suddenly it all comes flooding back.
Images flash against her eyes like a wild burning light. She sees herself kneeling in prayer against an old cut tree, and the stranger again but differently. Her hair was longer and full of soft waves. Her gown of a brocade and green silk, the neckline going down to her breasts.
“ What did you pray for? ,” the stranger asks her in an almost whisper, full of light and tenderness, but teasing too.
“ I can't tell you.” Sansa replied, and the not so strange-stranger merely laughed and pulled her away from the stump. “ Why not? I’ll tell you what I prayed for in the Sept this morning.” She saw herself laughing and smiling against her, shyly holding onto her arm as others passed by them in an overgrown garden.
In another image she spoke of weddings to kings and brothers, harvest feasts with magnificent costumes and Highgarden, the old seat of a noble family in the Reach from long ago. She had a look of regret in her eyes as if she dreamt of something, or someone, else. Sansa held her gaze through it all, and felt the same regret in her own eyes.
Then the stranger plucked a pretty flower out of a rose bush, thorns scraping her thumb in the process. Sansa wrapped the girl’s thumb herself with her own cloth, blood seeping into white cotton. The flower yellow tipped with red in hand, the meaning far too clear.
“ I want you very much to be happy, Sansa,” her stranger says, and grasps her cheek in a soft motion. “ You make me happy.” She replies in truth.
Memories of sweet touches and warmth ran through her mind. The stranger combing her long auburn hair, the strands shining like copper in the candlelight. Her fingers twisting as she silently braided it back, sneaking a quick kiss on Sansa’s cheek as she watched in the mirror. Giggles escaping from both of their mouths afterwards. Laying in the darkness, fabric dripping off the tops of a wooden canopy bed, encasing them in a world made solely for them. Memorising each other's body because gods , how much longer do they have left of this? How much longer until she’s wed to that monster, and Sansa… whatever the gods plan for her.. the love they formed out of truth no longer in their reach. Burned down to nothingness like a mere dream.
Suddenly she’s being whisked away from her stranger, she hears shouting and sees men and women fleeing the scene, she runs and runs and does not dare look back until the man she’s pulled by tells her to climb into a rickety boat. Bells are ringing around the city in alarm, and it scares her to remember what thing must have happened to cause such a fuss.
As fast as it had come it was gone again, the line between then and now began to blur in her mind.
She knows the stranger saw it too by the look on her face, mouth gaping open with wide eyes. And now Sansa knows too.
Tears well in her eyes at the woman who stands before her, the one she’s been waiting for all this time. She hums to test her voice before speaking, “Margaery?”, she asks out loud to herself and her. Margaery nods feverishly, and does not hesitate to pull her into a hug. “I found you,” she murmurs softly into Sansa’s ear. “I found you,” she repeats yet again.
The grip they have on each other is enough to make them both breathless, but they have gone long enough apart, their foreheads lean into the other’s, even with the busy street around them it’s peaceful.
They pull apart for just a moment, and Margaery is already brushing back the loose strands of hair that lie in Sansa’s face. “Your hair has always been too long.” They both let out a laugh as she rolls her eyes.
Maybe she’ll just have to braid it again for her.
Maybe being late to work isn’t as bad as Sansa previously thought.
(and just maybe, Sansa believes in soulmates)