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Their reunion was to take place at the castle of Bitterbridge.
While much of his host remained at Riverrun, and many of his lords bannermen travelled on to the Twins for Edmure Tully’s wedding, the King in the North and his mother would ride swiftly and secretly to the Reach to meet with members of House Tyrell.
Sansa couldn’t sit still long enough to break her fast, she kept rising from the table to pace circles around the chambers she and Margaery had been given; she picked up small items of clothing or jewellery only to thoughtlessly discard them on the other side of the room. It was when Sansa picked one of the pillows from their bed and began to plump it up that Margaery said, “Must I sit on you, Sansa?”
She said it in an easy tone of voice, but Sansa stopped instantly. She dropped the pillow, and wrung her hands together in an attempt to still herself.
Sansa had learned to walk on eggshells in King’s Landing, and it was a habit that even this last half-year in Highgarden had failed to free her of completely.
Margaery is your wife, Sansa told herself crossly, she has been nothing but kind and patient with you.
"Sansa," Margaery said gently, holding out her hands; Sansa crossed the room and allowed herself to be drawn down onto Margaery’s lap.
Margaery rubbed circles on the small of Sansa’s back, and Sansa felt some of the tension leave her. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen them,” she confessed in a small voice.
What if they'd met Lannister soldiers on the road? What if they were angry with her for allowing the Lannisters to wed her to Margaery?
"You’re nervous," said Margaery. "I’d be nervous too if I’d been kept from Grandmother and Loras for so long, but King Robb won’t get here any faster for you making yourself ill from nerves."
Margaery plucked a grape from her plate and offered it to Sansa; Sansa accepted it, and Margaery pressed her fingers to Sansa’s smiling lips.
*
On the steps of Bitterbridge Sansa sank into her mother’s arms, tears streaming freely down both of their faces. When Lady Catelyn eventually released her she turned to see Robb dismounting his horse; her brother had no crown, he wore plain boiled leather, and he was stained and weary from the road… and he still looked more a king than Joffrey.
There was a quarrel taking place on Robb’s face as he tried to work out if kings were allowed to embrace their little sisters; Sansa couldn’t imagine Joffrey even wanting to embrace Myrcella, which was what spurred her to throw her arms around his neck. Robb smelled of the road, and the North, and unwashed brother, and when Sansa finally released him Grey Wind came forward and butted her in the stomach.
Margaery gasped at the direwolf, there was the scrape of Ser Loras beginning to draw his sword, and Lady Olenna said, “This must be why they call you the Young Wolf, Lord Robb.”
Sansa introduced her mother and brother to the Queen of Thorns and her new good-brother; this was not the time or place to explain that Lord Mace’s absence was no insult but quite the opposite.
"And this is Margaery Tyrell--" Sansa reached back for Margaery’s hand; Margaery squeezed her fingers, which gave her the courage to finish "--my lady wife."
Robb and her mother already knew, of course; word of Sansa’s wedding would have spread across the Seven Kingdoms as an especially clever jape, but saying the words aloud was a different matter.
Margaery was, as usual, unruffled. “Your Grace,” she curtsied to Robb. “Mother,” she said, and Lady Catelyn’s lips thinned although her expression remained polite.
*
The two families dined together, although relations were somewhat strained. Margaery addressed Robb as His Grace; Lady Olenna and Ser Loras addressed him as Lord Robb. The fact that the Tyrells were still technically allies of the Lannisters escaped no-one, and both Lady Catelyn and Robb kept casting their eyes over Sansa and Margaery as if longing to say something. Sansa was glad that they couldn’t see through the table to where Margaery’s hand was resting on her knee.
Margaery gave Sansa’s leg a reassuring squeeze and said, “Grandmother, Loras, let us give Sansa some time to catch up with her family. Surely the technicalities of an alliance can wait till tomorrow, at least?”
When the Tyrells took their leave Margaery pressed a kiss to Sansa’s temple and said, “Come to bed whenever you wish, my love, no need to worry about waking me.”
Sansa waited for the questions about her marriage that she knew her family must want to ask; instead her mother asked her if she had any news of Arya, and Sansa asked if there was any hope for Bran and Rickon, for she hadn't wanted to believe the third-hand news of their fates? There was no good news about any of the younger Stark siblings.
Sansa crawled into bed with Margaery feeling hollow and wrung-out close to dawn. It was one of those times where she wished she weren’t that much taller than her wife, because she would have liked to fall asleep in Margaery’s arms with her head on Margaery’s chest without being in danger of sliding out of the end of the bed.
Margaery rolled over, threw an arm over Sansa’s middle, mumbled something sleepy and incoherent, and pressed a kiss to Sansa’s shoulder, and Sansa was comforted all the same.
*
Sansa’s mother was deep in conversation with the Queen of Thorns, Margaery was with Loras, and whenever Sansa had seen her wife with her own brother at Highgarden she had felt a deep pang of longing for Robb, so she was glad to have her own brother to herself for a time.
The grounds of Bitterbridge weren’t extensive so they were just strolling in a wide loop beneath the castle walls.
"I think mother once hoped for a marriage alliance with Tyrells," said Robb. "When I broke my word to the Freys, I think she wished I’d done it for someone who could aid our cause more."
"And now?" Sansa asked.
"Now I have a wife—" Robb blushed the same red as his hair "—and Margaery Tyrell has a wife of her own, it seems."
"I won’t behave as though I’m insulted by this marriage, Robb," said Sansa, repeating Margaery’s advice from all those months ago when Joffrey had forced them together to humble them both. "If I do that I’m only playing into Lannister hands."
"If I win this war…" Robb stumbled to a halt, started again. "When I win this war, and I’m a king in truth, I could annul this marriage; you could marry again, any one of my bannermen—”
"I don’t want some man who only wants me because I’m his king’s sister, I don’t—" Sansa stopped, waited until Robb stopped too and turned to face her; she took his hands in hers. "I don’t want anybody else, Robb."
Robb didn’t ask if Sansa loved Margaery; he didn’t have to, they’d always been close as children, and he knew her well. “Does she love you?”
Sansa honestly didn’t know the answer to that. She believed that Margaery Tyrell cared for her; comforted her, protected her, seemed to desire her, even. It was more than King’s Landing had taught her to expect.
"As best as she can."
Robb was still and silent for a long moment before he nodded. “I love my wife as best as I can, too.”
*
"I suppose if your brother were to take you from me I might be able to make a life for myself as a courtesan in the Free Cities. I fear you have made me even more unmarriageable than Renly did."
Margaery had said it lightly, casually, as though Robb’s offer to declare their marriage void by kingly decree was of singular unimportance to her, but Sansa was getting better at reading her wife’s moods. She took Margaery’s hands and said solemnly, “Robb won’t do it, it was only when he thought we didn’t care for one another… He’s a good brother, truly, he won’t take me if I don’t wish to go.”
Margaery pulled Sansa to her in a deep, almost bruising kiss.
Margaery did not touch Sansa as though she were made of glass precisely, but she did always treat her gently, carefully. Sansa let out an undignified squeak of surprise, and was just starting to sink into the kiss when Margaery pulled back. “He won’t take you,” she said, her eyes flashing, “not if he wants the swords of Highgarden.”
*
Sansa’s mother had remained largely silent on the matter of her daughter’s marriage.
One evening when Sansa was visiting with her Catelyn was brushing Sansa’s hair, both of them pretending that they were back in Winterfell, she said quietly but bluntly, “They might at least have married you to Ser Loras.”
It was not Sansa’s place to tell her mother that if Cersei Lannister wanted her to have a barren, painfully awkward, and unhappy union then she may indeed have done better to wed her to Loras.
She did not plead with her mother to understand her love for Margaery, it would have been too much like the time she’d begged her to allow her betrothal to Joffrey; Margaery was not Joffrey, the Queen of Thorns was terrifying in her own right but she was not Cersei Lannister, and Sansa was no longer a starry-eyed child but a woman wed and bedded.
She met her mother’s eyes in the mirror. “It is a good alliance. Lady Margaery has been kind to me, as have her family, and if I can use this marriage to help Robb, shouldn’t I?”
Sansa saw the corner of her mother’s mouth twitch upwards. “You sounded very like a Tully there, Sansa, my own father would have rejoiced to hear it.”
"Family, Duty, Honor," Sansa recited dutifully; they were as much her words as Winter is Coming, and now Growing Strong.
Lady Catelyn dragged the brush through Sansa’s hair again, and they lapsed into silence.
*
Margaery had been nervous of Grey Wind at first, although the direwolf seemed to like her well enough, which had done much to reconcile Robb to Sansa’s wife.
"I wonder," Sansa said idly, as three of them sat together on low stone benches in Bitterbridge’s courtyard, Grey Wind at Robb’s feet, "if Lady had lived would she have grown so large as Grey Wind?"
"We would have needed a bigger bed," said Margaery with a teasing half-smile.
Robb turned the colour of his hair again, although whether it was at the suggestion that he slept with his wolf, or the implication that there was more to his sister’s marriage than political expediency and courtly love, Sansa couldn’t say.
It was sweet to see Robb teased; he had been in a dark mood ever since Ser Loras had opined that even the combined forces of the Starks and Tyrells couldn’t take King’s Landing.
"I was thinking about what Loras said earlier…" Sansa ventured. Both Robb and Margaery had turned to watch her; there was a tiny, disbelieving line between Robb’s eyes at his sister venturing an opinion on military matters. "And I wonder if the Lannisters have so many allies as we expect; Lord Tyrion says that even at court there are those who worry that Joffrey is following in the Mad King’s footsteps."
Robb scowled. “How do you know what the Imp has to say?”
"We became allies, of a sort, in King’s Landing. He writes to me occasionally, even now."
"They are great friends," said Margaery, sounding almost proud. "He sends her books, along with letters almost as long again."
Robb threw back his head and laughed. “My sister - marries into the lords of the Reach, and has a spy right at the heart of House Lannister.”
Sansa hardly thought that Tyrion was a spy; she suspected that he carefully weighed every word he wrote to her. But before she could say as much Margaery had leaned over to press a kiss to Sansa’s cheek. “Many would do well not to underestimate my lady wife.”
But Robb didn’t play along with Margaery’s teasing, and continued in a darker tone “—All the while I court the Freys for table scraps.”
Margaery leaned forward and seized Robb’s hands, her bosom nearly spilling out of her corset; she looked at him with wide, soulful eyes. “But don’t you see, you don’t need the Twins anymore, you have us.”
Robb’s eyes glazed over, and he nodded mutely.
Lady Olenna had been right about one thing: Margaery was, in this way at least, wasted on Sansa.
*
"Sweet girl," said Margaery, pressing Sansa into the feather mattress of their borrowed bed, her fingernails leaving little half moon marks on the bare skin of Sansa’s hips, "you know there’s nothing to be jealous of, don’t you?"
Sansa’s breath hitched - she had shocked herself by how much she was enjoying Margaery no longer treating her like something fragile - she managed to say, “Yes— I, ah, yes, I know.”
*
Ser Loras and a company of knights and pikemen would accompany Robb to rejoin the main host of the northern army, while Lady Olenna, Margaery, and Sansa returned to Highgarden. Lady Catelyn had been invited to join them, but after much agonising had decided that she could still be of some use to Robb in the Riverlands.
Her mother’s embrace was fierce, and when she finally released Sansa she said, “I hope to see you soon at Winterfell.” She pulled back until her gaze encompassed Margaery. “Both of you.”
"I’ll pray for you," Sansa swore into the fur of Robb’s cloak.
"We’ll see each other again soon," Robb promised. "You must meet my wife, after all—" this time there was only a tinge of red high on Robb’s cheeks "—I’ve met yours."