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Chapter Text

ONE

Obi-Wan struggled to let go of his grief as he looked down upon the lifeless body of the beautiful young woman who had meant more to his Padawan, his brother, than life itself. The woman who had meant more to Anakin then even the Galaxy or the Jedi or the Light. 

He had known Anakin well, for all that his Padawan would have denied it. Without her… without her, Anakin would have never had a reason to turn back to the Light. Killing him on Mustafar had been the only mercy Obi-Wan could give the boy he had so loved. 

“Even when dead, still trouble he is causing,” Yoda grumbled, and Obi-Wan took a deep breath and reminded himself of how shaken the grandmaster was by the sudden destruction of the Jedi Order, and that the callousness of the comment was not intended to be cruel. 

Beside Yoda, Bail Organa was shaking his head. There were tear marks on his face as he kept reaching out to touch Padmé’s sweat-matted curls. 

“Triplets, Padmé,” he kept repearing. “How in the galaxy did you manage to hide them from us all?” 

Obi-Wan would like to know that too. He knew that Anakin kept Padmé constantly shielded in the Force, a bit of favouritism that had the old guard of the Jedi Order grumbling at his obvious attachment to the Queen turned Senator, but he’d never realised that the shielding had done more than than just protect Padmé, it also hid the three bright lights forming within her as the new life-forms blossomed. 

Two of the younglings positively radiated their purity in the Force; the boy with tufts of bright blond and the girl with a few dark wisps, like the grandmother she would never meet– “Lukeen” and “Leyah”, Padmé had named them between her sobs and screams. The third twin, “Leela” as crooned lovingly by Padmé even as she choked and gasped for breath that would not come, had her mother’s lighter brown hair, already with a few matted curls. She also felt… different in the Force. Obi-Wan couldn’t quite describe what it was about her that felt different, just that there was an anomaly present. Not Dark, just… an anomaly. Yoda seemed to sense it too.

"Something interesting, I sense, in this youngling,” the Grandmaster mused, peering at the infant with the few tiny curls, his bat-like ears flapping lightly. “An interesting child, she will grow to be.” Yoda sighed then, shoulders stooping. He looked old and tired, thought Obi-Wan. As old and tired as Obi-Wan felt in his very soul. “Not possible it is, to keep them together. Even with the Apprentice gone, the greater threat the Sith Lord is.”

Obi-Wan shuddered against the lancing pain in his chest where his heart screamed its agony at Yoda’s blunt words, looking down at the three sleepy babies and then over at their dead mother, his mind unwillingly lingering on that terrible moment when their screaming father was swallowed alive by molten lava. 

“I cannot take one,” he rasped. “Please, I cannot do it.” 

“Breha and I have been looking to adopt,” Bail offered. He reached out to gently stroke the head of the darker-haired baby. “I think this one will look less like either of her parents, so it will be safer for her to live closer to the Core.”

“Agree with you, I do.” Yoda nodded, ears flapping with the movement. “The boy…“

Obi-Wan and Bail looked at each other and grimaced. “He looks like he could grow into the very image of An– of his father,” Obi-Wan said reluctantly. “The Hero With No Fear has been all over the news and plastered on billboards, thanks to the war. He’s practically been the face of it.” 

“Then the boy should be taken somewhere in the Outer Core, or in Hutt Space,” Bail suggested and Obi-Wan couldn’t help but see the sense in the suggestion, as much as he loathed the idea. 

“The triplets have estranged family on Tatooine. Hutt Space certainly gets very little news from the rest of the galaxy.”

“You should probably hide out there for a bit too,” Bail advised. “If Skywalker was the most famous Jedi, you were easily the second most famous.”

Unfortunately, Obi-Wan could not come up with any arguments against Bail’s perfectly sound reasoning. It would also, he admitted, be good to stay close to Anakin and Padmé’s son, even if he could not bring himself to raise the boy. Not after what he’d done to the last Skywalker he’d raised. 

“And the final baby?” Bail asked. 

“Too much like its mother, it will look, so to the Senator’s family she must go,” Yoda decided after a moment of contemplation.

“As the only one of us who isn’t a Galaxy-wide wanted criminal, I think Bail should be responsible for getting Leela to the Naberries,” Obi-Wan suggested, and if there was a bit of spite in his voice because of Bail’s suggestion of Tatooine, well, he just dared Bail to try and call him out on it, considering the absolute shit-show the last few days of his life had been. 

Bail groaned. “I hope you know that Sola and Jobal are both going to punch me in the face, and it will absolutely be all your fault,” he accused.

Actually, it would be An– Leela’s father’s fault, but Obi-Wan supposed it was his fault that Leela’s father was not there to take the punch himself. He would close his eyes against the fresh wave of agony this thought brought, but he knew that all he would see behind his eyelids was his padawan, the boy he’d raised and loved, with acid-yellow eyes, screaming in pain and hatred as he burned alive.

With a shudder, Obi-Wan attempted somewhat futilely to release his emotions to the Force and focus back on the present.

“Sorted then, the younglings are, and part ways now, we must,” Yoda said gravely, and Obi-Wan could almost feel the shift in the air as the weight of the situation settled back on his shoulders. 

“Do you know where you’re planning to go?” He asked Yoda, who nodded, ears flopping. 

“To seek answers, I must go,” he said gravely. “To protect young Lukeen, you must go. And Obi-Wan?”

“Yes, Grandmaster?” Obi-Wan asked, wondering if he would ever get the chance to address Yoda as such again. 

“To seek out the wisdom of those who have left us, do not be afraid,” Yoda said cryptically before turning and hobbling off. 

“Never a straight answer with him,” Obi-Wan muttered. 

At least that never changed, even if everything else had and would never be the same again. 

Chapter Text

TWO

Depending on the circumstances, death by drowning could be brutal if one fought and struggled up until that bitter, final end. Sansa would know, for when she had been so very young, back in the halcyon days of her innocent youth, she and Robb had snuck out to play in the Godswood. Distracted by the eerie carved red face of the weirwood tree frowning down at her, Sansa had slipped and fallen into the partially iced-over of water of the deep pond under the largest of the weirwoods.

Sansa remembered fighting for breath as the water had dragged her under, forcing its way down her throat and into her lungs like sharp knives as her heavy skirts had dragged her under into the unforgiving depths.

Sansa had nearly drowned that day, and it had been her Tully mother, a daughter of the Riverlands, who had saved her. Her mother, her beautiful, brave mother, had pushed aside the maester despite the shouts of the guards and bruised Sansa’s ribs black and blue to beat the water out of her lungs, forcing air into Sansa’s body using her own breath, her mouth pressed against Sansa’s blue-stained lips, until Sansa was able to draw in air on her own, her heart a weak flutter in her chest, yet still beating.

Sansa’s ribs had ached for weeks, stabbing painfully with each breath she took. She had taken to her bed for weeks on end, unable to partake in any activity more strenuous than practicing her embroidery or the hand-held harp her father had commissioned as an early life-day present out of his grief over her near-death experience.

By all rights, water ought to have terrified her. It had certainly put Robb off approaching the godswood with its deep, still pools of water, as if he was afraid they would swallow him whole as they had once tried to swallow Sansa.

Sansa though, once released from her confinement, found herself drawn back to the godswood and its deep, mystical pools, over and over. She was careful not to approach the water too closely, instead sitting by the largest of the weirwoods, leaning against its pale wooden trunk under its foreboding carved face to practice her harp and sing softly.

At first, her parents and the maids would become frantic with panic when they could not find her until eventually they realised where she was wandering off to. Sansa was scolded many times for her wilfulness, yet she found she just could not stay away. “The girl is god-touched,” Old Nan announced in her usual brisk manner after Sansa had suffered through another such scolding, uncaring of any breach in protocol in addressing the Lord and Lady of Winterfell in such a manner and causing Sansa’s parents to fall silent. “She died in the sanctuary of the Gods. Breathing life back into her does not mean our Gods have forgotten her, nor has she forgotten them. They have forged a covenant, and only a fool would try to stop her from communing with the Gods now.”

Although Sansa knew her mother remained skeptical and dismissive of Old Nan’s claims, at least her father stopped forbidding her from visiting the godswood and Sansa would spend hours upon hours sitting up against that old weirwood, idly strumming her harp to songs she could never remember unless sitting in the weirwood clearing, staring into the still waters, like glass mirrors reflecting the faces of the weirwoods around her. Sometimes, she could even swear she saw the faces move in the reflections.

The deep water of the pool beside the largest of the weirwoods was not still as she approached it today, however. Rough and slapping at the bordering rocks sides despite the lack of wind in the air to stir the water, Sansa could barely make out the tears of blood-red sap dripping from the carved eyes of the weirwood as if it was weeping with her, half-blinded as she was by her own tears as she stumbled down the familiar path to the clearing in the godswood.

Sansa had never felt so betrayed as she did in this moment. Not when Joffrey had promised her mercy for her father then ordered him executed, not when Cersei had allowed Joffrey to beat her and said nothing to try and stop him, not when Tyrion had promised to be a kind husband then proved anything but, not when Petyr had promised her safety and vengeance for her family then sold her to the Boltons.

Perhaps it was because she had never truly trusted those people. Had never truly believed them to be her kin, her family, the ones she loved . But she had trusted Jon. She had trusted him with the broken shards of her shattered heart, had offered up the most vulnerable parts of herself to him when she had found him at Castle Black. Sansa had made Jon, a man who was no more than a baseborn boy with Eddard Stark’s blood into the King of the North over herself, Lord Eddard Stark’s only remaining trueborn child, the only legitimate living heir to King Robb Stark, or so they had thought at the time.

Sansa had stood by Jon, had governed the North in Jon’s absence, taking on all his kingly duties as he kept his focus turned towards the battle against the Night King, forgetting all other responsibilities that came with being King over all the North, such as collecting taxes and tolls, negotiating tariffs, organising treaties, ensuring tithes were paid, monitoring trade caravans, ensuring the granaries were filled, hearing the petitions of smallfolk, and more.

Sansa had worked tirelessly to fulfil those duties without offering complaint or discontent, in addition to completing her duties as Lady of Winterfell, which involved managing the household accounts to ensure the staff, such as the maids, cooks and guards, were paid and the kitchens were supplied, in addition to managing all household disputes and ensuring accomodation, food and supplies were supplied to all the men arriving to fight against the Night King and their kin who travelled with them.

As if that was not enough, Sansa had also found herself needing to step up to complete the duties of Queen in the North, as Jon had neglected to assign any other maiden, matron, or even one his favoured free folk shieldmaidens to the role, which involved managing Jon’s court, providing ongoing prompting to assign a Hand in addition to Masters of Ships, Coins, Laws, and such, managing all correspondences, supping with merchants to organise trade deals for arms and medicines in preparation for the battles ahead, and organising the various charities in Wintertown to ensure there was enough food and winter clothing available for even the poorest of the peasants travelling to Wintertown as the weather turned colder and colder.

There was never a spare moment, and although Sansa loved Arya and did her best to love the version of Bran that had been returned to her, and though her heart ached with joy to see them alive, neither offered her aid with the duties she tirelessly attended and not even her siblings seemed wise to the powders, creams, and rouges she was forced to use to disguise her wan pallor, the growing thinness of her face and the deepening of the shadows under her eyes.

At least the majority of the Northerners themselves, her people, seemed to recognise her efforts, even if her closest kin did not. Smallfolk would stop on the streets to bow to her and call out their thanks to “the Great and Gracious Lady Sansa!” and servants, Lords, and Ladies alike all bowed deeply to her when they crossed paths, deeper even then they bowed to Jon as their once-King and now Warden of the North.

Selfishly, Sansa found herself grateful for their recognition of her tireless efforts. She ought to have known better. She ought to have remembered her mother’s teachings, her beautiful, gentle mother who loved and guided her children in a world she knew would seek to crush them down. Lady Catelyn had always taught her that for a woman, pride always came at a price– the higher you were, she would say as she ran a brush gently through Sansa’s hair as Sansa squirmed guiltily after boasting about a piece of embroidery her Septa had praised earlier that day, the further you would fall.

Lady Catelyn was, as she always seemed to be, correct.

Sansa had not been expecting Daenerys and Jon back from Kings Landing so soon, that fateful day. Perhaps they wouldn’t have, if it had been a true battle they faced, if fire and blood had been required to conquer the city as she suspected Daenerys had hoped. It seemed that the Lords, Ladies, and knights of the Red keep, however, had not fancied their luck in facing dragon fire and, much like the betrayal of the Queen Argella Durrandon by her men, Queen Cersei Lannister was stripped naked, bound in chains, and delivered to the feet of Daenerys, along with the official surrender of the city.

It disgusted Sansa. For all that Cersei was a despicable creature, and truly she was, there were some crimes that no woman deserved. If there was any consolation to be had in the once-Golden Queen’s ordeal, at least Cersei had been spared Argella’s fate; a war bride, raped by a baseborn man, a bastard, forced to bear his sons, have her House sigil and colours stolen and her House name erased.

That did not mean, however, that Cersei’s fate had not been cruel.

Sansa heard that Cersei’s execution had been made a public spectacle. She heard that unlike Argella, who was at least covered by Orys Baratheon’s cloak in a single act of decency from yet another despicable man with rotten Targaryen blood, Cersei was left bare and bruised for the masses to feast their greedy, covetous eyes on before Daenerys set fire to the pyre Cersei had been chained to– truly, Daenerys was her father’s daughter. Sansa heard that Cersei screamed for a near half hour before the smoke caused her to lose consciousness and her body was fed to one of Daenerys’ foul beasts.

If that was not bad enough, worse were the rumours Sansa’s spies had passed on that in the time between the surrender and her execution, Cersei had been repeatedly raped by the Dothraki, and by her own brother, Sansa’s once-husband Tyrion. ‘There was a rumour,’ Sansa’s spy had told her. ‘A rumour that when he swore himself to the Targaryen Queen, he said the only reward he asked for is that he be allowed to rape and kill his sister.’*

And this is the Queen that Jon assures me will be a just ruler, Sansa thought in despair before summoning Arya to give her the news of Cersei’s death and Jon’s return, along with that of his lover and their monstrous beasts.

“Good riddance,” Arya scoffed after listening to how Cersei died, albeit with the rapes omitted to preserve what little dignity Sansa could for a woman who was hateful yet still a woman deserving of a clean death. Seeing the vicious delight in Arya’s face at Cersei’s suffering, all Sansa felt was ill.

“Do you remember what father said?” She asked her sister.

Arya frowned at her. “Father said lots of things.”

She was not wrong, Sansa thought. Maybe if her father had said a few less things, he might have kept his head on his neck where it belonged. In this case, however, she thought his words wise.

“He said that the one who passes the sentence ought to swing the sword,” Sansa told her sister, lips tight. “To burn a bare woman alive before an entire city… Westeros is not a land of barbarians. Are we to adopt the cruel and savage ways of this foreign conqueror with her army of slaves and rapers? Are those the depths we are to sink to, the uncivilised monsters that who we are to become, with her as our new Queen?”

“Jon has already bent the knee,” Arya argued, though she at least looked uneasy now. Sansa turned away from her sister, looking out in the direction of Wintertown.

“Aye, Jon did bend the knee to her,” she agreed. “And when he did, he swore himself to that beautiful lover of his.” She then looked back over her shoulder to Arya. From the way Arya flinched slightly, she knew her expression must look as cold as her rage felt. “What Jon did not do was swear the North to her. We are not his to swear in service to a Targaryen Queen. Not after all the men, the women, the children, even the babes who suffered and bled and died for our freedom. Jon can kneel for his lover all he wishes, the North will not kneel with him . We know  no  King or Queen but the King in the North. The moment Jon bent the knee, he was King in the North no more, and as such, could no more swear the North to a foreign Conqueror as any other bastard , Stark blood or no.”

Arya reacted then as she always did when she felt threatened or angry or uncertain, scoffing and jutting out her chin. It reminded Sansa of their father and her chest ached at the memory.

“Without Daenerys we would never have defeated the Night King,” Arya argued. “She gave up a chance for the Iron Throne to fight for the North! We can’t betray her after all that she sacrificed for us!”

Hearing all the same arguments from Arya that she had from Jon many times before, behind closed doors, Sansa could not help but wonder how many of those ‘private’ conversations had made their way to Daenerys’ ears. It saddened her, that she could no longer trust her own blood. It grieved her, that they could not see the threat in Daenerys that she did. It infuriated her, that they could not see danger in the North’s rage at Jon’s actions. It angered her, that it was likely a careless slip of her own family’s tongues that would lead to her death.

Still, Arya did not have the excuse of being in love with Daenerys to be so blind– only with Jon, Sansa half-suspected. Perhaps she could be reasoned with, as Jon could not.

“Without Daenerys’ demands for proof, the Night King would never have had a dragon as a weapon. And without a dragon wight, the Wall could have held for another eight thousand years,” Sansa told Arya, as she had told Jon what felt like a thousand times over, before waving a hand.

“And to say Daenerys made a sacrifice by fighting the Night King is ignorant at best and foolish at worst. Daenerys gave up nothing by fighting the Night King in the North; if she had not, the North would have fallen and the army of the dead she faced in the South would be almost double in numbers, if not more. It was a purely tactical decision– the North’s population is more spread out, unlike the half a million people crammed into Kings Landing, which means less corpses to turn into wights while the Night King marches into battle if she fights in the North, closest to the Night King’s territory, as opposed to all the dead of the North and the dead of all the kingdoms between the North and Kings Landing if she waits to fight them while she sits the Iron Throne.

”As for betraying her?” Sansa could not help but laugh. “We did not barter our armies to beg her assistance in fighting another kingdom or an invader– the Night King was not the North’s enemy, he was the enemy of all the living. If Daenerys had not fought, if the North had fallen, she would have had to fight the Night King regardless, only he would have had a larger army for her to attempt to defeat. We do not owe her our fealty for her assistance. If anything, she owes us for apprising her of the danger– after all, the Night King proved himself quite capable of killing her dragons.”  

When Arya scowled and opened her mouth, looking ready to rebut, Sansa sighed. “Enough, Arya,” she said. “I am not here to fight with you. I simply wished to pass on a message.”

“A message about what?” Arya asked, her face set in a sulky frown, eyebrows drawn angrily together. Their father’s eyebrows used to do that also. Ironically, the sight made Sansa feel calmer instead of upsetting her or riling her up.

“There have been sightings on the horizons,” Sansa told her. “Sightings of two dragons. I assume Jon and his Queen are returning to Winterfell.”

Watching Arya’s face lit up as she immediately ran off, Sansa had to admit to herself that despite her efforts, she had no ally in her sister for this battle ahead. And it would be a battle. Daenerys had seen how beloved Sansa was by the people of the North, she knew how much influence Sansa held still over the Riverlands and the Vale. Daenerys would be a fool to underestimate Sansa, and while Daenerys was no doubt mad, she was no fool.

And yet, when she found herself sitting across from Daenerys in the solar that had once belonged to Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and was now mostly utilised by Sansa herself, Sansa realised she had utterly failed to predict this specific angle of attack as Daenerys’ next move. She found herself struck silent as she stared at the woman clad in red velvet and a cloak lined with black-dyed furs, a ruby-encrusted crown fixed upon her many silver braids. Daenerys smiled back at her, all teeth and malice.

“Pardon, I am afraid I do not understand,” Sansa finally managed to force the words out despite how paralysed her entire body felt. Daenerys’ smile grew wider, all predator with her prey finally in sight.

“As your Queen,” she said, clearly relishing her use of the title, “I have declared your marriage to the baseborn Bolton as invalid by the laws of Westeros, as you were already wedded and bedded by my Hand, Lord Tyrion Lannister, at the time of the sham marriage arranged by the traitor to the Usurper’s Crown, Petyr Baelish. As such, I am afraid you have been neglecting your duties as Lady Lannister, and your husband agrees with me. You are expected to pack your belongings and return home to Casterly Rock with haste, so as to fulfil your wifely duties as Lady of the Rock.”

Sansa could not feel her hands. Her face was numb. It was obvious to her what Daenerys was attempting to do, removing her from Winterfell where Sansa was strongest and beloved and best supported by the people around her. In Casterly Rock, she would be a stranger, an interloper, and at the mercy of the Lannisters once more. And she would no longer be a child, under that precariously thin veil of protection that had prevented Tyrion from outright raping her in their marriage bed.

( the only reward he asked for is that he be allowed to rape and kill his sister )

How very cruel a plan it was. How very fitting of Daenerys, for all that she could see Tyrion’s influence to it.

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” Sansa managed to say through numb lips, refusing to address the woman by a royal title, for Daenerys would never be her Queen. “My marriage with Lord Tyrion was never consummated, therefore ‘twas declared annulled by the septon consulted by Lord Baelish. It was officially recorded as such by the septon.”

Daenerys gave her a mockingly pitying smile.

“Oh sweet girl,” she crooned, as if Sansa were years younger then she, as if Sansa had not endured months of the marital bed for Ramsey’s pleasure and knew intimately the pain of a bedding. “Lord Tyrion told me how you used to drink copious amounts of liquor before the act to relax yourself. It is not uncommon for a young maiden to forget things when she has been drinking. Lord Tyrion quite assures me that you were appropriately wedded and bedded.”

Sansa felt abruptly nauseous, remembering the dark liquors Tyrion would give her to drink, usually when she was experiencing her moonblood. She used to be so terribly embarrassed when he told her that it would help with the pain, yet he was her lord husband and her warden and jailor both, how could she refuse him when he seemed so insistent? The liquors would make her so awfully dizzy and she would often wake up in her bed without remembering how she got there, aching and bleeding between her legs. She had always assumed it was her moonblood, yet to hear this now…

Sansa wished she did not have to keep a straight face, she wished she could break down into hysterics. There was a part of her, a very small part, that had wanted to trust that Tyrion had tried to do right by her, for all that he had been a Lannister, for all that he had groped her bare breasts on their wedding night and told her how much he wanted to fuck her, for all that he had likely committed an unspeakable crime against the sister he hated. Sansa had wanted to believe that he did have at least a thought towards her best interests buried somewhere deep down in his Lannister heart. Now that almost-trust had splintered like a dropped hand mirror, its shattered surface reflecting the broken woman left behind.

“How soon exactly will Lord Tyrion and I be returning to Casterly Rock?” She asked woodenly, for this trap had been sprung well. A married woman, no matter their station, was the property of her husband. Only Jon, as Warden of the North, had the power to annul this marriage, and with Daenerys supporting it, she doubted even her begging and pleading would be enough to make him consider.

“After the wedding, of course– I cannot get married without my Hand present,” Daenerys said, her face losing all its vicious mockery as she turned to Jon, who had remained pointedly silent throughout the entire conversation. As Daenerys turned to face him, however, his entire face softened, one hand reaching up to cradle her face, the other reaching down to–

“You‘re pregnant,” Sansa realised, horrified.

“Yes, we are,” Jon agreed. There was no guilt in his voice as he looked over at her, just defensiveness and defiance.

“Our child will have the blood of the dragon,” Daenerys declared, sounding dreamy. “He will be the birth of a new dynasty. The Prince who was Promised.”

And quite suddenly, Sansa understood everything.

Jon would not take her side against Daenerys, not now and not ever. He would not defend Sansa, not against the woman he loved and who carried his child.

Arya would not take her side. Arya would follow Jon wherever he went, she would not fight against him, especially if it were she, Sansa, on the opposing side.

Bran… Bran was gone. Whatever creature possessed him, it would not fight for anyone. It only… existed.

Sansa was alone.

“May I be excused?” She asked quietly. “I must pack my belongings, if I am to travel so soon.”

“Of course,” Daenerys dismissed, not looking away from Jon whose gaze softened once more as he turned back to his lover. To his soon to be wife and mother of his child.

Sansa made her way to her chambers first; she had chosen her father’s solar to conduct her meetings and busywork, however she had chosen her mother’s chambers for her personal use. It had helped her feel closer to the woman who had loved her so dearly, who had never made her feel as if she did not belong in the North, even when her other siblings made fun of her for enjoying playing the harp, embroidery, singing, and writing poetry, instead of horse riding or archery or hunting.

Placed on the armoire beside a delicately carved jewellery box and a pile of parchment that required her sigil was a gift Sansa had been preparing for Jon. A merchant had recently presented her with a pallet of blue silk following a successful trade agreement; she had used the silk to hand sew a wreath of winter roses for Jon to place on the statue of his mother in the crypts. Instead, she now placed it on her own head, securing it in place with several diamond-topped pins before releasing her hair from its tight braids and gently brushing it out with her mother’s silver-and-pearl plated hairbrush.

Slipping out of the bed chambers without being seen was easy. Sansa had spent more than half her childhood sneaking out to the godswood, and this time was no different, despite the fact it was entirely different.

When she arrived at the godswood, she gently laid a hand on the pale bark of the weirwood tree who had watched over her for so many years.

“Thank you,” she murmured through her tears. Then she carefully toed off her silk slippers and stepped up to the deep pool of water, watching as the rough surface turned glass-smooth at her first touch. She could see her mirrored reflection on its still surface; she looked shockingly young, she thought, for how old she felt. Pale bruises visible under bright eyes, fair skin stretched tight over bone, hair fluttering freely about her face and shoulders, pinned away from her forehead by the wreath of winter roses. Sansa closed her eyes and kept wading onward.

Death by drowning could be brutal if one fought and struggled. Alternatively, if one only accepted the sheer inevitability and surrendered, there was a certain peace to a watery grave. And when Sansa felt her heavy fur-lined cloak drag her under and she opened her mouth to let the water pour down her throat and flood her lungs, it felt like the easiest thing in the world.

Chapter Text

THREE 

The very first of the memories Leela Naberrie regained from her dreams – nay, her nightmares – was a feeling of weightlessness, of slowly sinking, sinking, sinking, then opening her mouth and choking as icy water flooded her mouth, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe—

And then she woke, curled in her soft bed, coughing and gagging as her chest spasmed painfully with the memory of drowning.

It took time and many more unwanted memories invading her mind during her waking and sleeping hours to truly understand. To put together the scattered pieces in her brain as if the memories were handfuls of sand slipping between her cupped fingers, or perhaps they were more akin to a crystal vase that had shattered on marble, splintering into thousands of pieces that drew blood as they burrowed painfully under her skin while she tried picking up the shards one by one and attempting to fit them together to make the vase whole again.

In the end, Leela – Sansa – did manage to understand what was happening to her– or rather, what had happened to her. Even if, in truth, her ignorance would have been far kinder.

She, Sansa Stark, had died.

She had died for the fear and ambitions of a madwoman who commanded monstrous beasts and believed it gave her the right to conquer the North and rule the people of the land whom Sansa Stark was bound by oath and honour to protect. 

She had died for the weakness of her half-brother, who fell in love with a madwoman.

She had died for the favouritism of her sister, blinded by childhood feuds.

She had died for the attempt to save the North from bending the knee under threat of dragonfire.

And she had died to escape a lifetime bound in matrimony to a monster. 

Recalling her death in the godswood of her ancestral home, the home she had painstakingly pieced back together, running herself thin taking on the duties of both King and Queen of the North in addition to the Lady of Winterfell as Jon focused his attentions solely on the threat of the Night King in the absence of all others, Sansa could not help the sickening combination of acute betrayal and sheer rage that she felt at the circumstances that had led her to that final choice. 

She remembered all her many labours for the sake of her family and the good of the North, working from earliest dawn to latest dusk, missing meals due to the busyness of her schedule, going without even a personal lady’s maid to assist her with dressing or bathing or styling her hair, just to ensure there were enough coppers in their coffers to pay for the shipments of dragonglass, steel, and grain to arm and feed the men. 

All that Sansa had done and more, to keep the North safe and free and as prosperous as she was able while on war footing and following years unrest, instability, and loss.
Yet in the end, it all came down to nothing. Worse than nothing, even, with Jon bending the knee to a foreign Queen, breaking faith to the Lords of the North and the Old Gods, spitting in the face of her mother and Robb’s sacrifice, and destroying everything Sansa had built up from ruins.

And if that were not enough, her home, her safety, and her very personhood was taken from her too. 

Mad Queens did not like competition. They did not like to share their power. They did not appreciate others having power that could threaten their own. Having Tyrion Lannister claim Sansa as his legal wife and therefore his property in the eyes of the Lords of Westeros would see the troublesome she-wolf far removed from the lands of the North, the Vale, and the Riverlands where she could create dissent against Daenerys’ rule, instead leaving Sansa thoroughly defanged and at the mercy of the merciless lions of Casterly Rock.  

Sansa knew that marriages between nobles were truly contracts and nothing about them came down to love, other than by sheer luck or heavy work. She had always understood marriage to be her duty, that to wed and bed a husband and bear him his heirs was her responsibility to her House, her kin, and her ancestors. She also knew, however, that she would die before willingly bedding Tyrion Lannister and bearing Lannister heirs. 

And so, Sansa had been left to make the only choice that remained to her, in a world that had stripped her of all other choices. She had calmly stepped into that pool of water with her head held high until she was completely submerged, every responsibility, every fear, every grievance that weighed her down drifting away and leaving her weightless even as she began to sink further and further down into the watery depths until she opened her mouth and–

And then she woke. 

Laying face down on the pillow beneath her, Sansa-and-Leela raged. She screamed. Then she sobbed and wailed until she had no tears left to cry and was forced to face the final truth of the situation, forced to confront those final, terrible moments of her life as Sansa Stark that had led up to her death.

And then, to her rebirth.

And not into Westeros, no, into a new world– a changed world, one dramatically different from Westeros as she remembered it, where flying carriages– ships– floating in the sky and travelling the stars were ordinary sights. And there were all sorts of bizarre looking beings in all varied shapes and sizes– sentients, it seemed, was the polite term to call everyone now, not humans or people. For there were sentient beings of all shapes, sizes, and sexes.
 
If Sansa-and-Leela had been unable to remember most of the life she had lived as Leela Naberrie she would be utterly lost, for this world– this Galaxy– was quite unlike anything Sansa could possibly compare to, larger and stranger and too impossible to ever comprehend. 
 
It was odd, the memories and how they confused her sense of self. She knew that she was Sansa Stark of Winterfell. She could not deny that. Her memories were as clear and sharp as if she had lived them herself, because she truly had lived them herself. Yet her memories of being Leela Naberrie, although the earlier years were muddled by age, were just as clear and sharp as if she had lived them also. For all intents and purposes, Sansa-and-Leela was quite certain that she was exactly that– she was Sansa and she was Leela. Somehow, Sansa Stark had been born again as Leela Naberrie, and it was only now that was she remembering the life she had lived before being reborn. She just did not know why, with even her memories as Leela unable to explain what had happened to allow her to live once more.  
 
Stumbling out of bed, she padded over to the full-length mirror she knew could be found inside of her closet and stared at herself– something she had done before as Leela, but never as Sansa-and-Leela, which had her examining her reflection with new, critical eyes. 
 
She was a very pretty child, she decided. Built on the shorter side for her age, which required a small mental adjustment considering how tall Sansa had always been for a woman and the years of distress it had caused her. She had a head of softly curling brown hair which framed a lightly sun-tanned face with a few freckles dotted over the nose. Her eyes were a little too large for her face, but they were a lovely sky-blue colour, like a warm summer’s day.
 
It was odd. She recognised the face and body as her own, as Leela’s, for it had been hers all her life. Yet it was also one of a stranger’s, one Sansa had never seen before. There was a certain cognitive dissonance there, a difficulty with recognising and adjusting to the two concepts, of hers and not-hers, of familiar and not-familiar. 
 
Except for the eyes.
 
Sansa’s mother, Catelyn, had always told her that Sansa was her summer child with summer-blue eyes— except for when she was angry. When she was angry, Sansa’s eyes had been described by her siblings as cold chips of ice. 

These eyes appeared unchanged to how Sansa recalled her original eyes to be. 
 
Curiously, the blue eyes did not look anything like her mother, Sola’s, eyes. Or like her older sisters Ryoo and Pooja’s eyes, which were the same dark brown as Sola’s. Perhaps she got her eyes from her father. Leela didn’t quite understand it, therefore neither did Sansa, but Sola did not have a husband or partner involved in the care and raising of any of her three daughters and nobody appeared to think lowly or even oddly of her for it. Sansa felt strangely conflicted; part of her was deeply disturbed and horrified to be born a bastard, while the part of her that was Leela did not even know what being a bastard or baseborn meant, as it was never a term that had applied to her. She was legally a Naberrie, that was all that mattered. 
 
Sansa breathed in then out, watching the body in the mirror do the same.
 
She was no longer in Westeros. She was no longer just Sansa Stark. And she had utterly no idea why. Perhaps it was as Old Nan had said. That when she almost drowned as a child, she had forged a covenant with the Old Gods, that it was why she had always been so drawn to the godswood, to the weirwoods and the deep pools of water. Perhaps the Old Gods who had watched over her all her life had given her a second chance, after she had willingly given herself over to their watery embrace. 

If they had, then she had no intention of wasting it.
 
She was Sansa Stark and she was Leela Naberrie and she would live.

Chapter Text

FOUR

Sola Naberrie was not a fool. She may not have been as smart as her sister, who was Queen at fourteen and Senator at eighteen, but that didn’t mean she was unable to recognise when there was something wrong with the daughter of her heart, if not of her body. She had raised Leela since birth, she knew her child.

Learning of Padmé’s death along with Anakin’s fate had nearly destroyed the Naberries. Those stolen moments their family had spent together during the war with Sola’s sister and her husband had meant everything to the Naberries; Sola treasured every memory she had, like her sister’s second wedding, the one demanded by Jobal, where a blushing Anakin had kissed a laughing Padmé’s cheek rather then her lips in front of her parents, or the way the pair stared at each other as if nobody else in the Galaxy existed, or how gentle Anakin was when he played with Ryoo and Pooja, floating them through the air with the Force as Padmé laughed, that full belly, snorting laugh that Senator Amidala would never be caught making…

Padmé and Anakin had loved each other more than there were stars in the sky and losing them had felt like Sola lost part of herself also. Her father could not stop crying after they were given the news and her mother seemed to turn to a hollow statue of herself. Ryoo and Pooja were too young to really understand what had happened, which was a blessing, yet the distress of the family was distressing to them also and  Sola had felt like she was the only one keeping their family together as she worked alongside Naboo’s Queen to organise Padmé’s funeral, which their new Emperor had ordered must be a public affair, refusing them even the dignity to grieve in private.

Then had come the evening knock on the door of her parents’ home, days after the funeral, and there stood Bail Organa, holding an infant.

Leela , he told them Padmé had called the baby, along with some ridiculous story about Sola’s sister dying of heartbreak. Did he really think Sola had obeyed the Emperor’s orders to forgo an autopsy? Especially when he had oh-so graciously supplied her with Padmé’s body to prepare for the funeral?  ‘Multiple organ system failure via an unknown, external cause unable to be medically identified’ the secret coroner had grimly concluded, which the Naberries took to  mean her death likely involved Dark Force-fuckery not “heartbreak”. The coroner had noted that there was evidence that Padmé had given birth, though given the lack of a child to be found, Sola couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents that the baby may have survived and had been taken by an unknown.

She did later wish she had, if only so she could question Bail further about the circumstances in which he found Leela and the extent of their new Emperor’s involvement. Yet perhaps that wouldn’t have been wise anyway, considering all the uncertain allegiances in those tumultuous times. It was better not to give anyone leverage that could later be used against you.

When Bail warned them that the Emperor, Sheev Palpatine, was a Sith Lord, Sola could barely bring herself to be surprised. She had never liked the man, though it was more because she thought he liked spending far too much time around people much younger than him and she disliked the attention he paid her sister and Anakin. Also, he was a politician and they were untrustworthy by nature– Padmé always stole the last biscuit and she always talked her way out of trouble. Bail warned them that Leela was in danger from the Emperor because of her parentage and her potential to be powerful in the Force, that she would have to be hidden for her safety. He warned them that Anakin had Fallen, become Palpatine’s Apprentice and helped kill the Jedi at the Temple– and then, with much pushing, he reluctantly told them of Anakin’s fate.

Sola had taken the baby from his arms, handed the tiny bundle to her father, and then  punched Bail in the face. She couldn’t help it. Not when she saw the satisfaction on his face when he spoke of Anakin, her Anakin, Sola’s brother in all but blood, burning alive. Sola’s mother had to hold Sola back as for the first time since learning of her baby sister and Anakin’s deaths she finally broke down. Her father, still holding Leela like she was the only thing holding him back from attacking the pale-faced Bail himself,  ordered Bail to leave and never show his face to them again.

Sola had taken Leela in, of course, claiming the child as her own. How could she not? The baby reminded her so much of her sister, the same soft curls and freckled nose, with Anakin’s bright eyes– like forget-me-nots, she used to tell him, blue as the sky that he loved so much.

Leela. 

Bail had told them that Padmé chose the name before she died, but Sola knew exactly where the name really came from.

Anakin hadn’t liked to talk about his life growing up on Tatooine. Sola didn’t blame him. The bits and pieces that did slip out tended to paint a horrifying picture of deprivation, poverty, and perversion, a gross abuse of his sentient rights. He did like to tell Ryoo and Pooja folktales, though– Sola had always suspected there was a deeper meaning to the stories, as his voice seemed to take on a particular reverence when he spoke of them, but she did not ask.

Sola knew enough from her research into the slave trade after a nine-year-old boy raised in slavery had helped save her sister’s life and their entire planet to know of the storytelling and oral history of the enslaved and how folktales could be used to hold onto cultures in environments where they were forbidden or pass coded information about meeting places or escape plans to one another. There were simply some things that did not have to be said aloud to be understood, and the warmth in Anakin’s eyes when he smiled at her said everything she needed to hear.

One of the tales he told Ryoo and Pooja was that of Leela the Bed-Slave. He had used euphemisms when telling her very young children Leela’s story, for it was a dark, sorry tale indeed, yet Sola had the impression that it was another who had told him to edit the story for younger ears, that when Anakin himself had been a little boy, he had heard the story in its rawest form. 

Sola could still remember it now, and she recited it to herself nearly every night so she could remember how Anakin had told it so one day she could pass it on to Leela, as Anakin had passed it on from his mother before him.

After discovering his bed-slave attempting to escape, the Master killed her and demanded a new bed-slave brought to him each night, then each morning he would have the bed-slave beheaded so she would not escape. The Master had killed one thousand slaves when the clever, quick-witted bed-slave Leela was brought to him. Leela knew the fate of her thousand slave sisters before her and the fate that awaited her, so that night she told the Master a story so enthralling that when she refused to tell him the ending until the next night, he left her alive. Night after night she spun the Master story after story, always refusing to tell him the ending until the following night even under threat of many terrible punishments.

On the thousandth night, Leela spun the most wondrous story of all that when she stopped the Master threatened then pleaded then finally begged her for the ending. “Free me,” Leela told him, “and I will tell you the ending.” So eager was he to hear the end of the story that the Master cast off her chains and Leela did tell him its ending. When the Master then demanded another, Leela laughed. “I have told you exactly one thousand stories for my one thousand slave sisters,” she told him, “and now I am free and I have no more stories for you”.

Sola thought it suited Leela, to be named after a girl who earned her freedom through her silver-tongue as the little girl was as clever and quick-witted as Padmé had been, with Anakin’s penchant for talking her way out of mischief.

It was her desperate attempts to remember as much of Anakin’s culture and customs as possible that led Sola and her parents to Leyah.

When Sola read in the holo-news of Breha and Bail’s adopted daughter, the Princess Leia Organa, she had wanted to scream in rage, for she remembered the story Anakin had told her daughters of the slave girl Leyah who wanted to learn to read so she could teach all the other slaves. Only, the Master would not let her learn so Leyah had found a way to trick the Master and learn herself.

“How dare he!” She had shouted and raged as she paced up and down in her parents’ kitchen, her children all with a neighbour. “He stole her! He stole Padmé’s baby!”

Her parents were just as furious, yet it was Jobal who pointed out the hard truth of it. “We cannot accuse him of kidnapping,” she said gravely, “not without putting both children in danger. If the Emperor so much as suspects that Padmé and Anakin’s child lived, let alone that there are two of them…”

Sola thought of Leela in the Emperor’s cold, wrinkled grasp, thought of her lifelong suspicions of Palpatine’s fondness for surrounding himself with those much younger then himself in addition to all the dangers associated with the Dark Side of the Force that she’d heard Anakin mention here and there as well as the warnings from the slimy traitor Bail of what Palpatine was truly capable of, and shuddered in horror and revulsion.

“He cannot get away with this,” she couldn't help but plead anyway, and Jobal nodded, her eyes cold.

“He will not,” she promised. “I will ensure it.”

Sola had left the Naberrie’s vengeance on House Organa for Leyah’s abduction in her mother’s capable and cunning hands and focused on raising her children, dedicating herself to them as she processed her grief, eventually reaching acceptance as she watched Leela grow up to be more and more like her parents, bright and curious and so clever, too clever, even, for her own good.

It was because she knew her child so well that she recognised something was wrong with Leela the very moment she saw her the morning of Leela’s seventh birthday.

“What is it?” She asked immediately. “What’s wrong?”

There was something strange about her daughter’s eyes as Leela looked at her, something wary and distrusting about them, almost as if she was assessing to see if Sola was a threat.

It reminded Sola of Anakin, when he first met her. She felt her heart beat faster in panic as she dropped to her knees before her little girl, trying to lower herself to reduce any intimidation by lowering herself to Leela’s level.

“Leela, my flower,” she gently coaxed her daughter, “has someone hurt you?” If they had, Sola would tear them apart with her bare hands before sending them to the afterlife for Padmé and Anakin to torture for eternity.

“Something odd happened this morning, mama,” Leela said slowly. She twisted her hands together, hesitating, as if struggling to find the words to explain. “I think I had a… a vision.”

A vision. Sola exhaled, unsure whether to be alarmed or relieved. She had hoped that the Force genes or whatever they were had skipped Leela– Leela had never levitated the furniture or answered unspoken questions or any of the other things Anakin used to do without even noticing. But visions… she knew Anakin used get those and they never seemed to end well for him.

Padmé had quietly told her and Sabé all about the visions he’d had of his mother. She’d also told them about what Anakin had done after, with the tuskens, wanting their opinion on if she was allowing her feelings for Anakin to cloud her better judgement. Sabé, who had lost her own mother to the camps during the Trade Federation blockade, had had no sympathy for the Tuskens and let it be known that she thought Anakin’s reaction entirely understandable, though she did admit it might have been a little more extreme then she herself would have acted in the same situation. Sabé always had been the most violent of Padmé’s handmaidens, it was why she made the best decoy Queen– it always took potential assassins, attackers, and various abductors by surprise when it turned out the “Queen” could break both their arms then flip them over her shoulder without even ruining her painstakingly extravagant hair arrangement.

Sola, inspired by the research into the slave trade in Hutt Space she had done years earlier, had at the time been writing her university thesis on the social, economic, and legal structure of the outer-rim planets with a focus on how history and culture was influenced by location, leadership, and resources, had agreed with Sabé that Anakin’s actions though extreme were understandable given the circumstances, though her reasoning for this had been significantly different. Tatooine was effectively governed by Hutts. To expect it to have any sort of functional judicial system would be an exercise in foolishness and without justice, sentients went for vengeance. Anakin knew the only justice he would get for his mother would be the justice he took, and take it he did in the only way the world that raised him had ever taught him– through brutal violence.

If her Leela was starting to get visions… Sola dreaded to think of what the Force could have shown her sweet girl in her dreams, considering the tragedies that Anakin’s visions had led to.

“Can you tell me about this vision?” She asked. Leela hesitated, another warning sign. Leela didn’t hesitate. She was never lost for words– if she didn’t want to answer a question, she could have an entire conversation with a person without ever giving a straight answer and without them ever realising it, all the while smiling sweet as spun sugar.

“I am not so sure it was just a vision,” Leela said finally. There was a minute shift to her shoulders, her posture relaxing slightly. Sola almost breathed a sigh of relief as she realised that she had passed some sort of test, that it seemed Leela had decided to trust her. “I think– no,” Leela corrected herself, “I know they were memories. Memories of another me, a past me. One that lived before I was born as Leela.”

Of all the things Leela could have told her, not much could have shocked Sola as much as this did. Her automatic reaction was that she wanted to deny it, to refute it as a child’s overactive imagination, but she knew Leela better than that. And she trusted her child. If that was how Leela understood the situation, then Sola would believe her until she knew otherwise. After all, the Force was known for many things, all wonderful and terrible and absolutely fucked up.

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Did you get all the memories at once, or only a few?”

Leela blinked a few times, looking startled. “You are… taking this well,” she said cautiously.

“I believe you, my flower,” Sola immediately promised, and she could see how Leela immediately relaxed, no doubt feeling the truth in Sola’s words through the Force, however subconsciously. “I know we haven’t spoken much about the Force,” or at all, really, as Sola had hoped that ignoring it would reduce Leela’s chances of ever using it, “but I know it can do strange things that most people would say are impossible. I’ve seen it.” She’d once watched Anakin and Padmé fly through the air together like the angels Anakin had always accused Padmé of being, the pair of them wondrous and otherworldly as Padmé’s wedding gown spun and flared while Anakin held her tight in his arms.

“I only had a few dreams at first,” Leela told her, pulling Sola from her wistful memories, “I did not truly understand them then. They… frightened me.”

“Frightened you how?” Sola asked gently. Leela looked apologetic, as if she knew what she said next would hurt. 

“Because I was dreaming of how I died,” she said, and Sola’s entire body flinched. She couldn’t help it then, she had to shuffle forwards and take her child into her arms, had to feel her warm body, her little arms wrapping around to hug her too. “I am sorry, mama,” Leela whispered.

“Don’t be sorry, my flower,” Sola said, somehow managing to keep her voice from choking up as her entire being flinched away from the very thought of her child dreaming of her own death, over and over. Was it possible to murder the Force? 

“Why don’t we move to the couch? I think it might be a bit easier on my knees to talk there,” Sola suggested, when she could finally bear to let Leela go. Leela agreed, and when they were seated together on the hideous yet criminally comfortable fuchsia couch with its magenta fringe trimming that Sabé had bought her as a joke and Sola refused to get rid of just to watch her guests cringe when they saw it, Leela continued to explain.

“Last night was different,” she said, seeming struggle to find the words to describe what she had experienced. “Last night… last night, I remembered everything. I remembered who I was, before I was Leela Naberrie. I lived in a very different world to this, one with no space travel or electricity. It had a feudal system and my father was a lord of one of the seven kingdoms of the continent of Westeros. I had… I had a good childhood.”

Sola’s heart sank.

A good childhood.

“Oh my flower,” she murmured.

“Things did not go so well for me after I turned eleven,” Leela whispered. “I do not wish to talk about it. I was nearly seventeen when I died.”

“Oh baby,” Sola pulled her little girl back into her arms. Even with the addition of a second set of memories her child was still younger than her and it broke her heart. Even Padmé had lived longer. Even Anakin had. “Can you tell me what your name was? Or is? Do you have a preference?” She asked. It would be difficult, changing Leela’s name, but if she wanted to, Sola would do it. She would do anything for her little girl.

“My name is Lady Sansa of House Stark,” Leela said, and there was a confidence and authority ringing in her voice as she announced herself that Sola was unused to hearing Leela project. Her child’s voice then softened as she continued on to say, “I am also Leela Naberrie, and I am proud to be Leela Naberrie. Changing my name will not be necessary.”

“But working on your contractions might be, I see,” Sola said, managing a little smile even as her heart ached. Leela’s brow furrowed and she pouted, the same way Padmé used to pout when Sola poked fun at her.

“Contractions sound awfully lazy,” she complained, “and Galactic Basic Standard is such an inelegant language!”

“Well, my little Lady Leela, once you test out of your Galactic Basic Standard classes, you can pick something a bit more to your tastes, hm?” Sola teased. The sudden gleam in Leela’s eyes, though, made her regret setting that challenge before her daughter– because that gleam was all Anakin and she knew just how capable he was of achieving the impossible. It would be just like his daughter to follow in his footsteps.

Chapter Text

FIVE

After the revelations of the morning, Sola had asked if Leela wanted her to cancel the party. It had taken Sansa a few moments to recall that Leela’s life-day party had been planned for later that morning in celebration of her turning seven standard years old by the Galactic standard calendar. She was tempted to say yes, yet she knew it was a small party and she would have to meet the attendees, her mother’s closest friends and their two young children, sooner or later.

Reviewing her memories as Leela, Sansa suspected her mother may be involved in some sort of relationship with Rex Tsabin and his wife, Sabé, yet she was not sure. She had never observed any openly romantic embraces, just noted their rather constant presence in Sola’s home and frequent physical closeness to her mother, all sorts of lingering touches that would be so scandalous in Westeros yet as Leela she hadn’t thought twice about. It left Sansa confused if it was Leela’s youth and naivety or perhaps different cultural standards of propriety. She was certain she could adjust, either way, or at least mimic it; she had learned how to adapt to her surroundings and imitate those around her first in the Red Keep, then later at the Vale. 

Agreeing to the life-day party, however, brought to her mind another issue, one that Sansa found herself feeling not nearly as ready to face. Yet as the minutes trickled by and the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, the pinks and purples of early dawn replaced by a burnished orange and warm gold, she knew that time was fast running out. After all, it would not be long now before Pooja and Ryoo woke and made their way to the kitchen for breakfast.

Leela Naberrie’s relationships with her sisters, Pooja and Ryoo, were very different to the one Sansa Stark had with Arya. To begin, Leela was the youngest of the sisters; Ryoo was three years older than Leela, and Pooja nearly six, while Arya had been younger than Sansa by two years– and Sansa had quite felt every minute of that age gap.

Being the youngest was odd. Pooja and Ryoo… Sansa was unsure what to think of them, unsure how to make sense of her relationships with them.

Pooja was often busy; she was president of the Azul Club at her school— and was not ‘school’ simply marvellous? Azul was a complex strategy board game and Pooja was considered quite the prodigy, often travelling to play in national competitions across Naboo though Sola had refused to allow her to play in any Galactic competitions until she was an adult by the standards set for Galactic standard humans.

Despite how busy she was with her schoolwork, managing and promoting the Azul Club, practicing, and competing, Pooja still managed to find the time to be with her younger sisters, patiently teaching them both to play Azul as well as engaging in their interests with them. Sansa considered Pooja to be thoughtful and kind, noting from her memories she appeared more comfortable with calm and quiet environments then noise and bustle, though she would submit herself to discomfort for the sake of others.

Sansa couldn’t help but wonder if Pooja’s preference for calm and quiet was influenced by the early years of her childhood, tainted as they had been by the bloodied shadow of a galaxy-wide war which had ultimately claimed the lives of Pooja’s aunt and uncle. Pooja had been young, yes, but she would have been at least five name days at the conclusion of the war— old enough to remember Padmé and Anakin, and certainly more than old enough to be traumatised by her memories of the insecurity and fear so prevalent amongst populations during wartime. Sansa knew that she herself would never forget the horrors of war, no matter that she had rarely seen any actual battle or bloodshed.

Ryoo was closer to Leela in age, so it had been natural that Leela tended to spend more time around her than Pooja. Ryoo was a bright, pretty girl who hated to get dirt under her fingernails and sighed dreamily over her favourite celebrities. Ryoo dreamed of starring in a holo-film or becoming a news-reporter, any career that would allow her to become a famous celebrity. She loved playing “make-overs” and “dress-up” with Leela, as well as acting out scenes from famous holo-films. She was a member of the theatre, monologue, and film clubs at school, so Sansa had to admire her dedication to her goals even if she didn’t quite understand the allure of seeking out fame.

As Leela, she had truly enjoyed the time she spent with Ryoo, and she had to admit that a young Sansa Stark would have adored a sister like Ryoo or Pooja. She had always struggled to relate to Arya. When Arya was very small, a toddler still, and Sansa had been just a young child herself, she had been thrilled to have a little sister to play mothers and babes and host tea-parties with, to sing and memorise poetry together, and do all those things that grown Ladies did and Sansa dreamed of one day doing herself. Robb and Jon had gotten quite sick of being served lemon cakes at her tea-parties and bored of always crowning her Queen of Love and Beauty while playing Princess and Knights as they got older, and she had missed having companions to spend time with.

When Arya got older, however, it quickly became clear that she was not going to be the sort of sister that Sansa had been dreaming of. In her disappointment, a young and bitter Sansa had not treated Arya as she ought to have, she could admit, even when her mother had organised companions for her in her dearest Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassel, both of whom had shared all of Sansa’s interests in being perfect Ladies.

As she and Arya got older, Sansa’s anger and upset at how wild and unladylike Arya acted only grew. She could never understand why her father would permit Arya to bring such shame to their House with her behaviour. It mortified Sansa every time Arya acted out before visiting Lords and Ladies, as if she did not realise how her actions reflected on Sansa, or how they could affect Sansa’s own marriage prospects. What Lord would wish to marry his Heir to a wild wolf instead of a perfect Lady, no matter her status or dowry? Did Arya not realise the sort of miserable marriage she could be condemning Sansa to, one far below her status with a Lord old enough to be her grandfather?

It had become a vicious, toxic cycle, as the more Arya acted out, the more Sansa would lash out, which would lead to Arya acting out even worse than before. When Arya had actually had the nerve to fling food at Sansa before the King and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms , in addition to the Crown Prince who Arya knew full well was the highest possible potential marriage prospect for Sansa in Westeros, Sansa had wanted to scream and claw Arya’s eyes out with her fingernails. It mattered not that Joffrey turned out to be a beast, or Robert was a drunk and Cersei a monster, for they knew none of that at the time.

Perhaps if she and Arya had had a chance to grow and mature together, their relationship may have healed. Sansa knew not. All she knew was that in her final days when she had needed Arya most, her once-sister had not been there, and where Leela trusted her sisters without question, without hesitation, Sansa was warier then that.

Trusting Sola… trusting Sola had been easier. Sola was her mother , and Sansa had loved and trusted Catelyn Tully with all her heart.

Catelyn Tully, her gentle mother who had been uprooted from her comfortable Southern life and sent to the rugged, wintry North where, on the orders of her father, she wed and bed a stranger, bore him his heirs as was her duty, and built with him a home and a love and a family, stone by stone. Catelyn had borne the insult of another woman’s bastard raised within her home, alongside her own children, a bastard with her husband’s look who was given a Lord’s education, with a quiet dignity that Sansa envied of her mother. Even if Sansa now knew the truth of Jon’s true heritage, his safety had come at the cost of her mother’s humiliation, her shame, and her constant questioning of her place at Winterfell and in her husband’s heart, and that was a crime that Sansa could never forgive. Any other Lady would have seen the infant smothered in his sleep. Bitterly, thinking of Jon’s betrayal, Sansa wished that her mother had.

Catelyn Tully had never forgotten the true purpose of the war that Robb had started, she had never forgotten just why the North had called its banners and marched South. It had never been about defeating House Lannisters or claiming the Iron Throne, it had been about rescuing the Starks being held hostage at the Red Keep— Sansa, Arya, and her Lord Father.

After her father’s execution, after Robb was crowned, Sansa knew that the war had come to represent so much more to the North then the single injustice of where it had begun. And yet, Catelyn had still remembered its humble roots, had still held Sansa and Arya cradled lovingly in her heart, and when Jaime Lannister was captured in battle, along with other valuable Lannister hostages, she had begged and pleaded with Robb to ransom them for her daughters, for Robb’s sisters, for the very cause for which they had begun the war. And when she was turned away, Catelyn had committed treason, risking her life and her liberty, just for the mere chance that Jaime Lannister had enough scraps of honour left in his Lannister heart to return her daughters to her.

How could Sansa not love her mother? How could she not trust her to protect her?

Sansa was unsure to what extent her feelings for Catelyn had transferred over to Sola, the lines between the parts of her that were Leela and the parts of her that were Sansa blurring further by the minute, yet when she had looked at the woman standing in the kitchen wearing a loose linen tunic and trousers with her deep, kind eyes, she felt nothing but love and trust for the woman that her heart called mother, as familiar to Sansa as she was a stranger.

Telling her everything, it was not even a choice, it was a given. Had it been Catelyn in Sola’s place, Sansa would have done the same, would have gladly handed her heart to her beloved mother without hesitation, trusting her to keep it safe. How could she possibly trust Sola any less when every part of her, every instinct she had, was urging her that, like Catelyn, there was nothing Sola would not do, no line she would not cross, to keep her safe?

But Pooja and Ryoo…

“You look worried, my little forget-me-not,” Sola murmured, running a gentle hand through Sansa’s hair, careful not to get her fingers snagged in the curls. Still curled up on the hideous couch, Sansa leaned into her mother, hiding her face in her thick, dark brown hair. It smelled like citrus, almost like lemons. 

“My… sisters,” she said hesitantly, speaking into Sola’s hear instead of looking up, and the hand on her head paused.

“What would you like me to tell them?” Sola asked and Sansa felt a wave of relief at the careful lack of pressure implied in the question.

“Can I decide later?” She asked.

“Of course,” Sola answered immediately, resuming running her hand through Sansa’s curls. “I can just tell them that you need your space this morning. Take as much time as you need to decide what you’d like them to know. It’s your decision, my sweet flower.”

Confident in her belief that Sola would respect any choice she made, Sansa only tensed slightly when Pooja finally wandered into the kitchen, yawning, still in her nightclothes with her thick, dark brown hair uncombed and hanging in long, tangled locks that brushed her elbows. Sansa and Sola had moved back into the kitchen, Sola serving up a bowl of fruit for Sansa that she both recognised and didn’t, for she had certainly never seen purple not-quite-apples in Westeros.

Looking at Pooja, it was… disconcerting for Sansa to realise that when she had been the same age, she had already witnessed her father’s execution, had been beaten by the Kingsguard in open court, and was forcibly wed to Tyrion Lannister. If Daenerys’ claims were true, she had also been repeatedly raped by Tyrion after the occasions where he had forced her to drink those dark liquors until she passed out, claiming it was to help her pain. Pooja just looked so… young . Had Sansa looked that young when she was on the cusp of thirteen? So small and slender, barely any womanly curves to speak of, still with childish fat clinging at her cheekbones?

Pooja looked like a child, Sansa concluded. Just a little girl preparing to take her first cautious steps into womanhood. The thought of anyone hurting Pooja the way that Sansa had been hurt, the thought of a grown man stripping her of her clothes, leering at her bare form, and groping at her budding breasts while asking if it frightened her that he wished to fuck her* made Sansa burn with fury. She felt sick to her stomach with rage and grief both and she couldn’t stop herself from pushing away from the table where she had been picking at her bowl of strange fruit, and hurrying over to her sister, clutching at Pooja with desperate fingers as if to reassure herself that nobody had ever hurt Pooja the way that she had been hurt, as if her presence alone would defend Pooja from the evils of the world.

“I love you, Jija,” she told her sister urgently, the nickname from back when she’d struggled to say Pooja’s name properly slipping out automatically. Pooja seemed confused by her behaviour but smiled down at her, her deep brown eyes, the same eyes as Sola’s, soft and warm.

“I love you too, Leela,” she said. “Happy life-day!”

Sansa just closed her eyes and hugged Pooja tighter, pretending her heart wasn’t breaking to pieces in her chest. Even in this child body, Pooja felt so small in her arms. Had Sansa felt so small in Tyrion’s arms? Had he even cared? Or had he liked that? Had Petyr liked that? Had Ramsay?

Seeing Ryoo for the first time since regaining her memories as Sansa was much less confronting, the younger of her two sisters bouncing happily into the kitchen while Sansa was still clinging to a confused Pooja. Unlike Pooja, Ryoo would never even think of leaving her room without her appearance being perfectly in order. At ten years old, she was already promising to be a great beauty and she knew it. She had a mass of shiny, cocoa-brown curls framing a perpetually smiling face with rosy cheeks and long lashes framing deep brown eyes. She was a dainty little thing, almost doll-like, and she was incredibly fussy about her appearance, absolutely hating anything she wore to be crinkled or unfashionable, and she loathed even the thought of getting sweaty or muddy or having a hair out of place.

“Leela!” She said brightly, immediately skipping over to where Sansa and Pooja and not even hesitating to join the hug. Ryoo smelled sweet and fruity, like the perfume she liked to dab on her wrists and neck and behind her ears. “Happy life-day!”

Sansa felt herself instinctively relax into the hug as Ryoo kissed the crown of her head several times. Leela had not doubted for a moment that her sisters loved her, and despite her initial hesitation, Sansa found herself beginning to believe that.

A close-knit family that loved her and supported her, she marvelled quietly. It truly did seem too good to be true.

There was a stirring feeling inside her, an insistent, nudging instinct that Sansa could not quite pinpoint nor explain, that seemed to agree. But what could she possibly be missing? What sort of dark secret could this sweet, loving family that Sansa had been reborn into have hidden behind their kind eyes and warm, open hearts?

::

Chapter Text

SIX

“Sola,” Sabé said, her voice almost conversational if it wasn’t for the undercurrent of tension. “What in the name of Shiraya happened to Leela?”

Sabé, Rex, and their children had arrived about an hour ago for Leela’s life-day. It had been Leela’s request, when planning her life-day earlier that month, that she just wanted a quiet day with family. Sola and her parents had chosen to celebrate Leela’s life-day as the day that Leela came into their lives as opposed to the day that Padmé lost hers; this meant that it was celebrated three days after Empire Day. Because of all the festivities of Empire Day, Leela usually did prefer a quieter celebration of her life-day. This year, to Sola’s relief, they had only planned lunch and presents with Sabé, Rex, and their children, Reyna and Ranav, followed later by dinner with Sola’s parents.

Sola had commed Sabé before she and Rex arrived, advising them to give Leela space, though she hadn’t gone into any further detail. Not without permission from Leela. It felt odd, needing to take into such consideration the wishes of her seven-year-old child as opposed to making the choices that, as her mother, she felt were best for her, but Leela wasn’t just her little girl anymore. Her child’s eyes were so much older than seven and there was a lost innocence to them that had Sola’s heart aching. If Leela said she didn’t want anyone else to know, Sola would respect that and she would make Sabé and Rex— and Jobal and Ruwee too, for that matter, as she didn’t doubt her parents would notice— respect that, no matter how much they worried. Sola couldn’t betray Leela, not when she remembered the reverence and desperation both in her child’s eyes when Leela had clung to her, not when she could see even now the way Leela constantly looked back over, checking to see where she was.

Sola knew what loss looked like, she knew what it felt like to glance over her shoulder for someone who would never be standing there again, and it broke her heart to realise that both versions of her Leela had had her mother torn from her, and that this Leela, her Leela, only had Sola left as a replacement. She loved Leela as much as she loved her own daughters, yet Sola knew it couldn’t compare to the type of love Padmé and Anakin had had for their child, for both Leela and Leyah, even before the girls were born.

There was nothing ordinary about Sola’s sister and her husband; they were magnetic and they were magnificent. Black holes failed to have a pull nearly as powerful, nebulae weren’t as beautiful and complex, supernovae and flare stars both seemed dull and dim. Even before the twins were born, Padmé and Anakin had loved their unborn child with the type of intensity that could swallow worlds, devour stars, and burn up the universe.

Sola had never been interested in a romantic or sexual partner; the closest she’d ever had to a relationship was the close friendship she shared with Sabé and Rex. It was a friendship that had been born in their shared grief and grown into something more, something like a family. But Padmé… Padmé had never settled for anything less than extraordinary, in every aspect of herself and her life, including in who and how she loved.

When Anakin looked at Padmé, he didn't look at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the galaxy; he looked at her like she was the entire galaxy. He looked at her like he would lay every planet and every star at her feet, if she just said the word. And Padmé, with all her passion and burning will, all her fire and fierceness, had gripped onto him as if to declare to everyone that had ever dared mark him, ever dared lay claim to his life or his liberty, you will never own him like I own his heart, he will never be yours like he is mine .

Their love was so all-encompassing, so all-consuming, that sometimes Sola just couldn’t bear that Leela and Leyah would never experience it, couldn’t bear that the girls would never know how it felt to just bask in its presence, let alone have it be the cradle in which they grew up, that rocked them to sleep, that sang them lullabies of tender, lilting war ballads passed down from a beloved grandmother, until that love was as familiar to them as their own heartbeat.

Sola was interrupted from her maudlin thoughts— always more prevalent around this time with the overlapping dates of Leela and Leyah’s life-day and the anniversary of Padmé and Anakin’s death, even when she hadn’t been both terrified and horrified by unexpected revelations from her adopted daughter— by Sabé’s elbow digging into her side.

“Ow,” she said pointedly. There was no remorse on Sabé’s face.

“You’re having stupid thoughts again,” she said sharply. “Cut it out. Padmé and Anakin know you love the girls, and that it’s because you love them both so much that you are making the sacrifice that you are to leave Leyah where she is, to keep her and Leela safe, and that you are giving Leela the best life you possibly can.”

Sola breathed in then out, then repeated the exercise several more times, before sighing. “It’s been a terrible day,” she told Sabé quietly. “And it’s not even lunchtime yet, gods above!”

“I’m serious, Sola— what happened to Leela?” Sabé repeated, dark eyes shining with concern. “Can you even see what she’s doing?”

Sola looked over at the children. Leela had joined Pooja at her Azul board, while Ryoo and Reyna were gossiping together over a data pad about some celebrity or other, while little Ranav was sitting on Rex’s knee, with Rex giving the appearance of being completely engaged by his chattering toddler even as he kept glancing over at her and Sabé, a worried furrow in his brow. 

Sola wasn’t quite sure what Sabé was talking about. She’d actually been disturbed at how… normal  Leela had been acting, considering the circumstances. She had greeted Reyna and Ranav as she always did, giving Sabé and Rex a distracted wave as she disappeared off with the other children into the house. Throughout the morning, she’d seemed completely engaged with the other children, nothing about her behaviour in any way different from how she usually acted apart from the subtle glances she kept sending in Sola’s direction, glances that Sola only noticed because she was looking out for them.

Children shouldn’t be so good at hiding their emotions, they shouldn’t be so good at putting up an impenetrable mask and play-acting the role expected of them regardless of how they truly felt, as Leela was proving herself able. That was a skill that had to be learned— and the best teacher was always experience.

Sola honestly could not guess what Sabé had picked up on from Leela’s behaviour if she tried.

“She’s… playing Azul with her sister?” She suggested tentatively, settling on a very literal interpretation of Sabé’s question. Sabé’s lips pressed together, thinning.

“Sola, she has not let Rex get between within reaching distance or between her and an exit to the room even once since we arrived,” she said quietly, looking at Sola with solemn eyes. Sola felt as if she had been punched simultaneously in the chest and the gut. She had to grip the table in front of her to keep herself upright as she felt both winded and abruptly nauseous, her stomach churning violently as she struggled for breath.

Things did not go so well for me after I turned eleven. I do not wish to talk about it. I was nearly seventeen when I died.

Sola knew the horrors that could befall little girls better than most who came from peaceful Mid-Rim planets like Naboo— she and Padmé had made it their mission to properly educate themselves after an ashamed Padmé told her of her shock and ignorance to the living conditions of the local population when she’d crash-landed on Tatooine. Sola’s thesis had been focused on the Outer-Rim planets, which inevitably included planets unofficially considered to be ‘Hutt-space’, or under the control of the Hutt cartel. The economy of Hutt-space relied heavily on the practice of slavery; it provides the labour and income to support their drug running, prostitution, extortion, and arms trade operations. And the Hutts, Sola knew, started training their pleasure slaves young. It had been heartbreaking, for her and Padmé both, to learn that Gardulla the Hutt losing a five-year-old Anakin in a bet would likely not have spared him from all the horrors that that implied.

To think that Padmé and Anakin’s daughter had not been spared either…

Anakin would have razed entire worlds to ashes to prevent anyone from so much as laying a finger on his daughter. Sola only wished she could do the same, or that the ones who might have harmed Leela when she was Sansa were somewhere she could reach.

“I can’t explain it yet,” Sola managed to say to Sabé, before her prolonged silence could lead to Sabé coming to even worse conclusions than she already had. “All I can say is that there was a Force vision involved.”

Sabé hissed through her teeth, all too familiar with Anakin’s visions and the suffering they had brought him.

“I hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with any of that Force shit,” she said. “I hated seeing what it did to Anakin. At least the Jedi can’t try and take her away anymore.”

“Sabé,” Sola warned sharply, “don’t let Rex hear you say that.”

“I know, I know,” Sabé said with a grimace. “It’s not something we’ll ever agree on, so we don’t bring it up. I’ll never understand why he didn’t resent them, he’ll never understand why I do resent them. As if they didn’t use him and his brothers as meat droids, never arguing in the Senate to get them actual rights! As if he didn’t see what they did to Anakin, how every Jedi he ever met treated him like he was less than them!”

It was how Sabé and Rex had met, actually, through Anakin— Rex was the Captain and later the Commander of the 501st Legion, which Anakin had led as their General. Along with the long-suffering Sabé as Padmé’s chief attendant and undercover bodyguard, Rex had helped cover up Padmé and Anakin’s clandestine meetings. Sola’s sister may have been the clever one, but she and Anakin always seemed to lose all their good sense around each other, often to the detriment of their ‘second-in-commands’. Sabé and Rex had ended up spending so much time together that one thing had led to another, and when the Republic had collapsed and the Jedi were massacred, well, there hadn’t been anything left to keep them apart. That didn’t mean they didn’t have their disagreements on how things had gone down, though, at the end.

“You know you’re biased,” Sola pointed out sensibly. Sabé would never forgive the Jedi for not intervening sooner during the Trade Federation’s invasion, only sending one Jedi Master and a Padawan to first ‘negotiate’ and then, after a useless Senate session, sending back just that same pair to fight an entire droid army and a Sith apprentice. Honestly, nine-year-old Anakin had done more to defeat the droid army than the Jedi had, which had unknowingly earned him Sabé’s fierce support going forwards. It had also given her a blind spot to his faults.

“Anakin was never suited to being a Jedi,” she told Sabé. The significant trauma and abuse he’d suffered as a child would never have allowed him to find the inner peace the Jedi Code Anakin had ranted about on more then one occasion was based on. “He only stayed out of a sense of duty to the Republic,” and probably out of a need to prove himself to everyone who said he couldn’t, Sola thought to herself but didn’t say. “He would have left them after the war finished.” After all, if Bail had been telling the truth about Anakin helping murder the Jedi at the Temple, Sola was fairly certain that proved beyond any possible doubt that he would have picked her sister over the Jedi. He certainly seemed to have picked Palpatine over them, and she was confident that he had loved Padmé more than he was devoted to Palpatine.

“They still didn’t treat him right,” Sabé said. Her dark eyes were shiny, wet. “Anakin or the Clones, the Jedi didn’t treat any of them right. I don’t think they should have been massacred for it, little gods no, but sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of the consequences of their choices.”

Sola gave up then on even attempting to thresh out the old argument, knowing there was no point. Sabé wasn’t about to change her mind. Still, Sabé’s observation of Leela lingered with her throughout the remainder of the small party. She could feel the horror sunk deep into her bones at the thought of what her child had suffered through in her first life and struggled to feign a smile even as they sang over cake and gave Leela her presents. Leela’s eyes, blue as forget-me-nots, looked knowing when they caught Sola’s own.

Sola pulled Leela aside after the presents, the small celebration winding down. “Leela, my flower,” she said softly, “I have to ask, are you willing to speak with Sabé and Rex about what you told me this morning?”

Leela tilted her head slightly, her eyes sharpening. There was a sudden weight to her presence, a sense of more , as if Leela was taking up more space. Sola wasn’t sure if it was the Force, or if it was more of Sansa stepping forwards.

“Are you in a romantic relationship with Mister and Missus Tsabin?” Her child asked her suddenly. Taken aback, not having expected that question from her seven-year-old— her not seven-year-old, she reminded herself— Sola took a moment to answer.

“Am I in a romantic—?” She repeated, surprised, before shaking her head. “Oh most definitely not, no. They’re just close friends. I’m not interested in… romance.” Or sex, but that was not something she was comfortable discussing with Leela yet.

Leela nodded slowly. Sola wasn’t sure what Leela had gleaned from her answer, but it seemed to have helped her make up her mind. “I will talk to them with you,” she said, and Sola nodded, relieved.

“Why don’t you wait for us in the lounge?” She suggested. “I’ll send the other children outside for a bit.”

Rex and Sabé were keen to be getting answers, yet Sola wondered if what they heard would just make it worse for them. Oh, she knew that Leela’s… “vision” was far from the worst thing either of them had heard or seen in their lives, Rex having spent nearly half of his on the frontlines of the bloodiest war in over a thousand years while Sabé faced off opponents who were just as vicious and bloodthirsty while acting as Padmé’s decoy. That didn’t change the fact that Leela was a child that they’d both watched grow from a helpless newborn to the sweet little girl she was now. Leela was all they had left of Anakin and Padmé and she knew that, like herself, they had both promised that they would keep her safe for the sake of their lost loved ones. Hearing that they couldn’t protect her from the machinations of the Force would be heartbreaking. It had certainly broken Sola’s heart.

Leela was waiting for them in the lounge, looking so small perched on one of the couches, her posture as perfect as it had always been; back straight, chin high, hands neatly folded across her lap. A perfect little lady, Jobal had always called her.

I am Lady Sansa Stark , Leela had introduced her past life as. How much of Lady Sansa had already been bleeding through into Leela before the dreams had even begun? Sola wondered. Oddly, the thought was actually comforting. It reminded Sola that Leela was still Leela, new memories or not.

“Has mother told you anything yet?” Leela asked, her gaze piercing. She still had that presence about her from earlier, and Sola finally found the word she was looking for to describe it— commanding. Leela’s presence was commanding, that of someone who was used to being heard— and obeyed.

“I haven’t told them anything yet,” she told her daughter, and Leela nodded thoughtfully.

“What happened to me, it is… difficult for me to describe,” she said to Rex and Sabé. “Mother explained that it is because of the Force that it happened, though as I am not familiar with the Force, I could not say one way or the other if this is true.”

Her speech patterns had already shifted, Sola noted, back to the formal style that she had used earlier that day when it had just been her and Sola talking together. She could see that Rex and Sabé had also noticed the change. “It seems,” Leela continued, “that I have… awakened the memories of a past life of mine. One where I was a young woman by the name of Sansa Stark.”

“I believe her,” Sola added quietly but firmly. If she was expecting Rex and Sola to have trouble believing Leela, however, she would have been disappointed.

Rex shrugged. “I’ve seen the Force do some crazy things before,” he said. “This wouldn’t be the craziest.”

“It does sound like a very Anakin sort of thing to happen,” Sabé agreed.

“Anakin? He was my uncle by marriage, was he not?” Leela queried and Sola had to refrain from glaring at Sabé.

“He was my General, back during the war,” Rex told Leela, neatly preventing Sola from having to decide whether or not to lie to Leela’s face. It was one thing to lie to her when she was a seven-year-old, but now? What was she supposed to do now? Tell her the truth about her father?

“He was a Jedi Knight,” Rex added, “one of the best. He was also absolutely mad— we used to call it weird Force shi-shenanigans, all the stuff he did. I can’t even count the amount of times he threw me off a cliff from all the way across a battlefield, or just casually talked about having visions of the future, or I’d be having breakfast and he’d walk up to me to continue having a conversation that we’d been having in my dreams,” Rex shook his head. “Absolute maniac,” he said wistfully, and Sola’s heart ached at the deep pain she could see in his face.

“What can you tell us about Sansa Stark? Do you know what planet she was from?” Sabé asked. Leela tilted her head slightly.

“I can tell you everything about me,” she said. “I am Sansa, and I am Leela. There is nothing separate about me or my memories from either of my lives, though as Sansa I lived in a very different world to this. There was no space travel, or electricity; we did not even have a water closet, rather I used a chamber pot for a privy.”

Sola couldn’t help her surprise at hearing this. Leela had told her that the planet she’d lived on when she was Sansa had been fairly under-developed, but she hadn’t realised it was to that extent!

“That sounds very… medieval,” Sola said carefully.

“I am not familiar with that word,” Leela admitted. “But I was fortunate. I was born into nobility, and was raised in a Keep with maids and servants to attend to my needs.”

Sabé, Sola was surprised to see, looked even grimmer to hear this then before. She didn’t keep asking questions, however, instead thanking Leela for sharing. Leela nodded gracefully before bidding them a polite farewell, slipping off the couch to her feet and leaving the room, off to join the other children, Sola hoped.

“Damn it,” Rex sighed, once Leela was out of earshot. The old soldier looked weary as he slumped in place on the couch and Sabé leaned into him, looking sad. “I really, really hoped that she’d taken after Padmé.” 

“Me too,” Sola murmured, desolate.

“Knowing about the planet that she… remembers from her past life does answer most of my questions, though,” Sabé said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Sola asked. Her friend seemed to almost sink into herself. Her expression was resigned.

“If there’s something that’s fairly consistent about medieval societies across different planets, it’s that women were treated as little more then chattel, the property of their fathers and brothers,” Sabé said quietly, “especially noble women.”

“What are you saying?” Sola demanded, even as her heart sank.

“I’m saying,” Sabé said, her dark eyes sad, “by our definition of the word, Leela was little more than a slave.”

Chapter Text

SEVEN

Sansa Stark had never met her grandparents.

Lady Lyarra Stark, her grandmother, had taken ill with the sweating sickness when Sansa’s lord-father was but a boy of ten. Her grandfather, Lord Rickard Stark, had, of course, been burned alive by the Mad King. On her mother’s side, her grandmother, the Lady Minisa Whent, was yet another casualty of the birthing bed, while her grandfather, Lord Hoster Tully, had taken ill during the War of the Five Kings— Sansa had felt sorrow for her lady-mother to hear of his passing, though she would later be relieved that he had not survived to learn of the fate that befell his favoured daughter and eldest grandson.

Leela Naberrie, however, adored her grandparents— and Jobal and Ruwee Naberrie doted on their grandchildren.

Leela’s memories of Ruwee were of a quiet, thoughtful man. A guest lecturer at Theed University and President of the Refugee Relief Movement, a disaster aid, relief fund, and resettlement agency, he was as devoted to education as he was to sentient rights. Sansa could not recall a single occasions where he had raised his voice or a hand towards his wife, daughter, or granddaughters, and there was a softness to him that she found the men of Westeros to lack.

Leela’s memories of Jobal were of a strong, proud woman who dedicated her time to planning fundraising efforts for the Refugee Relief Movement, specifically the subgroup that oversaw the freeing, relocation, and provision of housing and education to sentients who had been enslaved. Due to her charitable efforts, Jobal was active amongst the upper class of Naboo, and even moved amongst Imperial circles, despite her quiet disapproval of Moff Tanaka.

Meeting them as Sansa-and-Leela was… startlingly comfortable. Sansa was unsure what she had been expecting. Not cruelty, of course— her memories as Leela were clear enough that she knew better than that. It was only the lack of any reference at all as to what to expect from a grandparent that had her feel as if she were standing upon unsteady ground, unsure of which direction was safe to step.

Sola’s warm hand on her shoulder had coaxed her forwards when she hesitated at the threshold of their doorway, and Jobal had immediately knelt down, enveloping her in a warm, gentle embrace.

“Happy life-day, darling angel,” her grandmother murmured, pressing a kiss to Sansa’s brow.

“Thank you,” Sansa whispered back, closing her eyes and melting into the embrace.

It was painfully difficult to believe that, for Sansa, it had only been yesterday that she had been betrayed most wretchedly by the kin she ought to have trusted, and had drowned herself in the godswood to escape the terrible fate that threatened her. It was even more difficult to believe that she had then awoken to this wonderful family, to these kin who treasured her, who would protect her.

It was a gift, she knew, a blessing of the Old Gods, for what else could it be? Yet still, her fragile heart could hardly dare to believe it true.

Ruwee’s large hand, lightly scarred from decades of manual labour as a volunteer builder, rested gently on her shoulder, and Sansa, still in her grandmother’s arms, looked up to see his warm smile.

“Happy life-day, lovely Leela,” he repeated Jobal’s words, and Sansa’s mouth trembled as tears welled in her eyes. She could not help but weep then, burying her face against Jobal as her body shook, overwrought with the emotions of the day. How was it possible, she wondered, that these people could love her so dearly, when Sansa Stark’s family could not?

Her grief spilled over in great, gasping sobs that shook her body and stole her breath. Jobal pulled Sansa tight in her arms, rocking her like a babe, and Sansa clung to her, seeking the comfort as she remembered her terror, her desperation, and the terrible clarity that settled over her as she realised there was but one option left to her, branded as she was the wife of Tyrion Lannister, property of a monster, unable to bear the horror of fulfilling her marital duties with a beast— not of appearance, she was not the shallow child she had once been, dreaming of golden princes and handsome knights, but a beast of heart and soul.

Sansa was a dutiful lady, a loyal woman, an honourable daughter of House Stark— but she could not bear to bed and bear the heirs of Tyrion Lannister, who had aided a foreign invader, who had raped his sister, who had murdered Shae. She could not. She would not. She had not. If Sansa had shamed her ancestors with her refusal to do her duty, then so be it— she would bear the weight of that sin with her chin held high, for what other choice did she have?

“Shh, my girl, shh,” crooned Jobal, the familiar fragrance of her perfume, the rich and sweet notes of plumeria, surrounding Sansa as her grandmother continued to rock her to her breast. “I have you, my sweet love. You are safe, I have you.”

Sansa’s sob, ragged and wretched, felt as if it had been pulled from her soul. Safe. When had she last been safe? She could not remember. Perhaps there had been a moment after the Battle of the Bastards had been won, after she had watched Ramsey be torn apart by his hounds and had felt the mantle of Lady of Winterfell settle over her, the freedom as sharp and crisp as winter’s kiss on her tongue, that she had almost felt so. A kind mirage, torn away too soon by a foolish child and the lords who would prefer to crown a bastard for the cock between his legs then the trueborn daughter of Lord Eddard Stark. Sansa had thought of her lady-mother then, of poor Lady Catelyn who had lived years fearing a recognised bastard raised under her own roof and given a lord’s education, dreaming restlessly of Greystark rebellions, and she had known to be afraid, to fear the power Jon now held over her. And she had been right to.

Sansa had not been safe in Westeros. She had not been safe in Winterfell, not until she was sinking beneath the water in the godswood. She wondered if she even remembered what safety truly felt like.

Closing her eyes, Sansa pressed her face against Jobal and quietly mourned.

Sola explained for her this time, after the family, including Pooja, Ryoo, and her grandparents, gathered in Jobal and Ruwee’s parlour. Sansa was curled between Jobal and Ryoo, tucked under her grandmother’s arm, as Sola told the family of her vision  and of the memories Sansa had awoken. Blessedly, Sola did not tell them that Sansa remembered dying— perhaps that was for Pooja and Ryoo’s sake, or perhaps she could see how fragile Sansa felt, barely clinging to the shreds of her composure that remained.

“Does this mean that Leela’s like Uncle Ani? Is she a Jedi?” Pooja asked quietly once Sola had finished talking. The young girl was twisting her hands on her lap, chewing on her lower lip. Sansa could almost feel her anxiety, sharp and bitter.

There was a tenseness to the adults in the room, something heavy and unspoken in the air as they glanced at each other, then away. Sansa frowned. Sabé and Rex had brought up her uncle, Anakin, earlier too. Leela’s memories of him were fleeting, an uncle who had died before she was born, lost to the war that had swallowed Sansa’s aunt, Sola’s sister. The Jedi General.

Jedi.

It was not a word that Leela was familiar with. Rex had spoken of strange magicks that Anakin had possessed— were those Jedi magicks? Was that what the ‘Force’ that Sola thought responsible for her ‘vision’ was?

“The Jedi are gone,” Sola said abruptly. “We don’t talk about them, Pooja. You know that.”

Pooja’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “We should,” she said. “We should talk about them. It isn’t fair that we just— just forget about Uncle Ani and Aunt Padmé!”

Jobal sighed, reaching across Sansa to gently caress Pooja’s face. “Oh sweet girl,” she said, “it breaks our hearts to stay silent. If I could, I would shout their names from the Palace towers until I lost my voice entirely. I would scream them from the Imperial Centre itself. But I have you to think of, and your sisters, and your mother, and your grandfather. And for their sakes, and yours, I keep my silence. There are some truths that are not safe, and some secrets that must be kept.”

Pooja bowed her head, her hands clenched into fists on her lap. “It’s not fair,” she whispered.

“I know, baby,” Sola said heavily. “I know.”

“What is a Jedi? Can you… can you say that?” Sansa asked tentatively. Uncertain.

Her grandparents and mother looked grim. “You must never refer to the Jedi outside of these walls,” Sola warned. “The Emperor has been… thorough in his attempts to erase them, and it is the smarter choice to follow along with his wishes.”

Sansa nodded obediently, even as her mind spun. The Emperor. He was a looming figure over Leela’s childhood, and yet one she had been kept sheltered from. That would have to change— Sansa preferred to be aware of the dangers she faced.

“A Jedi…” Sola trailed off, grimacing slightly. “They were a religious order,” she finally decided on. “A very old one. They were devoted to the Light side of the Force, and served as peacekeepers for the Republic. Later, they served as generals during the conflict between the Republic and the Separatists.”

Sansa frowned. “What is the Force?” She asked. She had heard it referred to many times, yet nobody had ever given an explanation of what it actually was.

“Oh gods,” Sola grimaced. “That is… a very difficult question to answer. I’m not a Force Sensitive, which means I don’t have the ability to use the Force— and I really don’t understand it, I’ve never been taught about it. All my knowledge of it comes from what I learned through Anakin, and secondhand through Padmé. The best way I can describe it is a sort of energy created by living things that binds the universe together. Those who are Force-sensitive are capable of using the Force to do…” she paused and sighed, shaking her head, “strange, terrible, and wonderful things, just as Rex explained earlier.”

Sansa’s mind spun, confused and dizzy with it. Yet, there was one question that stood out above all others.

“What happened to the Jedi?” She asked, and the mood of the adults in the room immediately dipped, Sola’s expression turning tense while Jobal stilled beside her, and Ruwee bowed his head. Even Pooja’s breath hitched. “What happened to the Jedi?” Sansa repeated when no answer appeared to be forthcoming.

“They’re gone,” Jobal said, quiet and solemn. “The Emperor claimed they committed treason. As a result, he ordered them to be executed.”

Sansa nodded. It made sense— a King had to set an example lest he appear weak, for weakness invited dissent in the lower ranks, and dissent invited treason and uprisings.

Her easy acceptance seemed to disturb the adults, with Sola clarifying, “it’s estimated that around nine thousand Jedi were killed, including the crechelings.”

Sansa grimaced at that. It was always cruel when children were caught up in the conflict of adults and her heart ached at the memory of Rickon’s too-small body riddled with arrows before she forcefully pushed it aside to focus on the conversation at hand.

“You said that the Emperor claimed they committed treason— do you have reason to believe otherwise?” She questioned. Sola looked startled, as if she had not expected Sansa to ask.

“There are… reasons that the Jedi would have been interested in seeing the Emperor dead,” she said, after a pause. “And for those same reasons, the Emperor would have been very interested in seeing the Jedi Order gone, and the Jedi dead. I think it is very possible that the Jedi did attempt to… remove the Emperor from office, before he was Emperor, and that he took advantage of that to remove a threat to the Empire he planned to establish.”

Sansa’s mind spun and she found herself intrigued, even as she remained stuck on one point. “How does one become Force-sensitive?” She asked. “And why do you think my… vision means that I am?”

“There’s no becoming Force-sensitive,” Jobal said gently, “someone is either born Force-sensitive, or they’re not. It is… a very rare gift, and a very dangerous one now— the Emperor does not suffer threats to his power, and he has declared those who use the Force to be such. It is very important that you do not speak of the Force or the Jedi outside of this family,” she reiterated firmly, and Sansa nodded.

“As for why we believe your vision is a sign that you’re Force-sensitive,” Sola added, “Anakin had visions, of the past and present. It’s a known… power of the Force.” 

Sansa tilted her head, observing her mother. Sola was being honest, she knew, yet there was an instinct that pressed at Sansa, that told her to keep pushing, that there was more to Sola’s suspicions— she could almost see the unspoken words in the air between her mother and grandparents.

“There’s something else,” she said, “something you’re hiding.”

Jobal stiffened beside her, while Sola’s face fell and Ruwee looked away.

“Leela, flower,” Sola stood, closed the distance between them so she could kneel before her, gently taking Sansa’s hands in her own, her dark eyes meeting Sansa’s, “do you trust me?”

“I do,” Sansa answered immediately. She trusted Sola, just as she had trusted Catelyn Tully— with her entire heart. Sola had never given her reason to doubt her love, had never given her reason to doubt that she would not wage war for her daughters, just as Catelyn Tully had done.

“Then please, Leela, please trust me— there are some secrets too dangerous to be spoken,” Sola said earnestly.

Sansa hesitated, her trust in Sola warring with her need for knowledge, her need to understand the threats she faced— knowledge was power, Petyr had taught her, and Sansa knew well how it felt to be powerless. There was little she would not do to prevent herself from being put in such a position again. The very thought terrified her. Yet, Sola asked for her trust, asked for Sansa to put her faith in this new family of hers, in Leela’s kin, and the desperately lonely woman that Sansa had been found herself desperate to do just that. She had been alone for so very long that the thought of surrendering herself to this love they offered, even if it meant offering up her trust and surrendering her need for answers in return, was a tempting one. Sansa had paid far bloodier prices for less.

“I will trust you,” Sansa agreed softly, and Sola exhaled heavily with her relief.

“Enough of this heavy talk, now,” Jobal said abruptly, “I’ve prepared us a dinner, and it’s Leela’s life-day— a day for celebration, both of her birth and of her rebirth.”

Sansa couldn’t help but flush, warmed by Jobal’s kind words— she knew that Sola was merely concerned, yet her mother seemed so grief-stricken by Sansa remembering her life in Westeros, it was lovely to hear that Jobal thought it ought to be celebrated that Sansa had a second chance at life.

“Ooh!” Ryoo, who had been silent throughout the majority of the conversation, finally piped up. “Are we allowed to ask you questions, Leela, about you being Sansa? Did you have sisters in your other life too? Were they like us?”

“I had one sister,” Sansa admitted, amused despite herself by Ryoo’s bright-eyed enthusiasm. “She was… not much like you at all— she liked the outdoors.” To put it mildly. “I also had three brothers, and a… half brother.” It took effort not to call Jon a bastard, out of both habit and spite. She held it in, however, not wishing to explain his circumstances.

“Were you the baby of the family?” Pooja asked, with a shaky attempt at a teasing smile.

“I was not, thank you very much,” Sansa attempted to tease back, with a haughty sniff. “I was the eldest daughter of my parents, and my mother’s second eldest child. My brother, Robb, was her eldest.”

“How does it feel to be the baby now?” Pooja asked, curious.

“Odd,” Sansa admitted. “Part of me has always been the youngest, yet part of me expects to be taller, and remembers being a woman grown.”

“So, you were an adult?” Ryoo asked. “That’s weird as! What was it like? What job did you do?”

Sansa hesitated, her eyes flicking over to the adults, all whom were listening intently to the children’s interrogation of her. “I was seventeen when I passed,” she eventually confessed, before the silence could draw out so long that it was uncomfortable.

“Oh my gods, what happened?” Ryoo demanded shrilly, leaning forwards and up into Sansa’s space. Sansa had to resist the urge to flinch back.

“Nothing too dramatic,” she managed to say, keeping her expression even despite how her stomach churned. “I drowned, I’m afraid.”

“That’s terrible,” Ryoo declared, horrified, flinging her arms around Sansa and squeezing.

“I’m so sorry, Leels,” Pooja added, sympathetically.

“We can organise swim lessons for you, flower, if you think they would be helpful,” Sola said gently.

“Thank you, mother,” Sansa murmured, not prepared to admit that she was a capable swimmer— she had the blood of trouts, of course Catelyn Tully had taught her children to swim.

“Enough questions now, girls,” Sola added. “Your grandparents have cooked a lovely dinner, and we’re letting it get cold.”

Sansa was grateful for the reprieve, and Sola winked at her when Pooja and Ryoo weren’t looking.

Still, after she had retired to bed later that evening, in a room that was familiar in all the ways that it was not, Sansa found herself struggling to fall asleep, tossing and turning, flinging off the sheets. Eventually, she slipped from the bed, padding through the house on silent feet until she was carefully turning the locks on the door, cringing as the hinges creaked. Stepping outside, Sansa felt relief as the cool night air hit her face.

The grass was a lush carpet beneath her bare feet as she walked beneath the moon, the sprawling garden stretching out before her.  There was no godswood, and Sansa’s heart ached for it, yet there was a pond, its surface a silver mirror under the pale light of the moon. Sansa knelt beside it, bowing her head. She wondered if her Gods could hear her, in this strange universe. She wondered if Sola and the others were correct in their thinking, that Westeros was part of another planet in the galaxy, one that had yet to discover how to travel the stars. Sansa was unsure.

Closing her eyes, Sansa breathed in slowly, then exhaled, attempting to settle herself, to let go of the overwhelming thoughts and emotions as she prayed for the guidance of the Old Gods, for their wisdom, for enlightenment as to why they had sent her to this place, as to why they had given her this second chance.

As Sansa’s mind gradually quietened, an eddying whiteness swirled behind her eyelids, akin to the flurries of a snowstorm. Almost trancelike, Sansa felt herself ease, immersing herself within the brightness, unafraid. Fragments began to emerge from the light, colourful flashes akin to half-remembered dreams that floated through her awareness.

A little girl, dark of hair and eye, surrounded by towering mountains and heavy snow, by overgrown evergreen forests and unexplored moors. Upon her head rested a crown, upon her small shoulders the mantle of rebellions.

Twin suns that scoured burning deserts, endless seas of sand that stretched as far as her eyes could see, arid winds that scraped flesh from bone, and a boy, golden and bright, from his hair to his skin to his smile.

A shadowed figure, hidden from the light, broken chains around his neck, broken manacles on his wrists, and her lungs burned, her limbs burned, and a scorching heat crept over her skin as flames danced before her eyelids—

Sansa gasped, opening her eyes and shuddering as she shook her arms, smoothing her palms over her flesh, reassuring herself of the absence of burns. “I don’t understand,” she whispered aloud, shaken by the experience. Was this what Sola, Sabé, and Rex had meant by visions? Had that been a true vision? Who were the people she had seen? The little girl, the little boy, and the cloaked figure, the one in chains and hidden in the shadows?

Sansa felt even more lost then she had before her prayers, though she bowed her head again to the Gods, grateful that They had chosen to answer her, even if she could not yet decipher Their meaning.

The Naberrie family had secrets, she understood— secrets that seemed centred around her Aunt and Uncle, both lost in the war, and the mysterious Jedi Order. Resolution firmed within her as she stood. It was clear to Sansa that the answers she sought, perhaps the answers to why she had awoken as she had, may lie in those final hours of the war— and she was determined to uncover them.

Chapter Text

EIGHT

It was but two days after her awakening as Leela Naberrie, the youngest daughter of Sola Naberrie, that a new challenge dawned for Sansa.

School.

Leela had enjoyed attending school, finding a fulfilment in learning and creating and spending time with peers her age, much as Sansa had once found pleasure in learning the women’s arts and her duties as a Great Lady. Attending school now that she had awoken her memories as Sansa, however, was far more difficult than it had been when she was an innocent child, untroubled by the evils in life that dug their hooks into Sansa’s mind, dragging her apart from her once-peers until she did not even recognise herself in the bliss of their youthful ignorance.

Still, Sansa had agreed to try and attend the school, even when Sola had offered her the option of staying home a few days more. It had intrigued her, the idea of the freedom of information at her fingertips, and she was determined to learn the truths that were hidden from her, no matter how kind the lies.

It was daunting, to set foot in the classroom; she wore the same uniform as the students around her, a checkered dress of blue and white with a soft blue cardigan with a white border and shiny silver buttons embossed with the school seal, her curls braided back with ribbons of white and blue, yet amongst the milling children, Sansa felt like a wolf who had donned a cloak of wool to prowl unnoticed amidst a flock of lambs. They were other to her, and there was a distance between them, a gaping abyss of horrors, that separated her from her once-peers. Sansa felt more alone when seated in a classroom, surrounded by her peers, then she did hiding away in the school yard in the quiet haven she had found under the canopy of a lone tree, its graceful, pendulous branches sweeping the ground as its leaves of soft pink and snowy white cocooned her in a private sanctuary.

Sansa could see the teacher’s concern when she gently yet firmly redirected the attention of Leela’s once-friends away from her, uninterested in play-acting the lamb she had been, and, she would admit, if only to herself, afraid of the danger of her fangs and claws to those too innocent to protect themselves, yet she was resolute in her decision. She would attend school to learn, to discover all she could of this new life she had awoken to, to uncover everything she needed to understand to protect herself from any dangers, not to attempt to maintain the bonds that Leela had once forged amongst her peers.

Despite her resolutions, Sansa was quick to realise that the slow pace of classroom learning, designed as it was for young children of six and seven, was most frustrating; more often than not, she found herself swiftly completing the assignments set by the teacher and left to sit with her boredom. It was only if she was lucky that the teacher would allow her to visit the school’s library, instead of encouraging her to attempt to engage in artistic endeavours such as drawing or writing poetry in this spare time.

The librarian, a lovely woman by the name of Panya, spent several hours teaching Sansa how to use a data-terminal so that she was able to access the school library’s electronic archives. It was here that Sansa was finally able to familiarise herself with the history of the planet she now called her home.

It was important for Sansa to understand the politics and governing structure of the planet and the world— the Galaxy— she had found herself in. Knowing who the major players of the game were had been a matter of life and death for her in her formative years as a hostage in the Red Keep, and had continued to be a matter of survival as she had shed what remained of her ignorance and innocence to become a player of the game in her own right.

Leela, as a young child, had had very little knowledge or interest in matters of politics and governance which meant Sansa did not have any true knowledge base to go off, other than a vague understanding that Naboo was governed by Kings and Queens who were elected by popular vote, a process in which the population voted in favour of a candidate, and who could then serve a maximum of two terms in the role, totalling four years at most.

The idea of elections and terms of office were bewildering to Sansa; as she understood it, Kings and Queens ruled by right of blood or conquest— or both. She was not unfamiliar with the concept of a vote, King Jaehaerys had called a Great Council of Lords to decide upon his successor, yet it seemed that every citizen of Naboo above the age of twelve was permitted to vote for their candidate of choice, no matter their position in society. Not that Naboo appeared to have a clearly defined class structure; there were wealthier families than others who were considered more ‘upper class’, but no nobility or royalty, other than the elected Queen.

Less bewildering but still intriguing to Sansa was the youth of Naboo’s elected monarchs. From the references she had located, it was to her understanding that the cultural beliefs of Naboo held that the young possessed a form of pure, childlike wisdom that the adults lacked, and that it was this wisdom that would allow them to better govern Naboo with tolerance, openness, and progressiveness. As a result of this, their royalty was rarely older then seventeen when elected. It was a surprise to Sansa to see a familiar name in the archives as she read that her aunt, Padmé, was the youngest Queen to be elected at just fourteen.

Despite the romantic idealism of it all, Sansa found herself sceptical. While in theory Naboo’s beliefs in their youthful monarchs sounded progressive, Sansa knew herself at eleven, at twelve, at fourteen, at seventeen; she knew the child that she had been, and the Queen that she could have grown to be. She understood firsthand that youth had nothing to do with wisdom. In her own youth, she had informed Cersei of her father’s plans, an obedient child raised to obey her King and Queen’s innocent mistake that had ultimately resulted in the slaughter of their House’s guards and servants, Arya’s disappearance, her own imprisonment, and her father’s execution.

And childlike? Anything ‘childlike’ about Sansa had long-since been stolen before she had even reached her twelfth year. Her entire childhood had been lost to her from the moment she had watched Ser Ilyn Payne swing that sword and witnessed her father’s head separate from his neck, hitting the ground with a dull thud that seemed to ring in her ears for hours despite the raucous of the crowd. If any innocence had possibly remained after the beheading, after Joffrey’s torment, after the beatings of the Kingsguard, it had been stolen when she was but ten-and-two and wedded against her will to Tyrion Lannister, stripped bare before him, her breasts roughly groped as he told her how he’d like to fuck her.

No, it was not through youth but through her suffering that Sansa had gained her wisdom, her strength. Though perhaps there was something pure about suffering, something pure about pain. The afflictions, the trials, the torments, the horrors that one suffered, it cleansed a person, stripping them down to their barest, purest form. When cast into flame, did iron and lead not become pure and bright? Perhaps it was the same for individuals, that through the darkest of agonies that she had suffered, Sansa had been purified to her realest, truest self.

No matter. It was not Naboo’s governmental structure that truly interested her; planetary governments in themselves had limited overall power when compared to that of the Galactic Empire, the Galaxy-wide regime which just seven years prior had assumed control over nearly every planet and civilisation within the Galaxy. With the establishment of the Empire had come the diminished power behind the Naboo throne, with the authority once claimed by the monarch and governor transferred over to the Moff chosen by the Emperor.

For all the historical precedence otherwise, it was clear to Sansa that it was the Emperor who held the true political power in Naboo, as he did across the Galaxy itself— he was the true player, the one who sat on the galaxy’s metaphorical Iron Throne. Yet, to Sansa’s frustration, there was little information available in the school archives on the Emperor, or on the establishment of his Empire. It made her uneasy— she knew better then to embrace ignorance, and the lack of knowledge left her feeling vulnerable, akin to a knight venturing to battle with no armour to protect her tender flesh, no shield to deflect her enemy’s blows, no sword to strike at her foes.

She wondered if it was intentional, the lack of information available to the school children – surely it had to be, for how could they not have records of the Emperor, a man born on this very planet? Why did they not fete him, why did they not celebrate his name in every classroom, why did they not have his portrait on display in every hall? It made little sense to Sansa, and the lack of understanding agitated her.

She had been attending school for six weeks, gritting her teeth through each day as the seeds of boredom planted in her brain flowered, the roots both pervasive and invasive as they spread, the unfurling petals a constant distraction from the droning of the teacher’s voice as he repeated basic principles that Sansa had long-since grasped, when a meeting was called between Sola, her teacher, and the headmistress. Ruwee and Jobal had also attended, though Sansa was not invited, much to her displeasure.

“The school is concerned that you are not benefiting from a traditional learning environment,” her mother told her, that evening. Sansa couldn’t help the guilt she felt, at how exhausted Sola seemed.

“I find the pace of learning… difficult,” Sansa admitted, looking down at her hands, not wishing to see the potential of disappointment in Sola’s eyes. “I know there is much I have to learn, but the versions of the concepts I am being taught are frustratingly simple and I don’t feel challenged or interested by them, I just feel… bored.”

“It’s not your fault, love,” Jobal said gently, resting a warm hand on Sansa’s shoulder. “We don’t blame you. Padmé didn’t attend a mainstream school either – the standard curriculum doesn’t meet everybody’s needs, even if we don’t take into account your unique circumstances.”

“We’ll organise a tutor for you,” Ruwee explained kindly, with a warm smile that wrinkled his whiskers. “One that can meet your… particular needs.” By which he meant Sansa’s advanced knowledge in certain areas, significant gaps in others, and lack of interest in socialising with her same-aged peers.

“Thank you,” Sansa said, feeling lighter then she had in weeks.

It was Jobal who hired the tutor— Madam Minoo Gol, an old friend from her university days who she had kept in touch with through her charity work. Minoo was renowned for tutoring Theed's best and brightest, including famous politicians, classical musicians, artists, architects, and more. She had tutored four monarchs of Naboo in her lifetime, including Sansa’s aunt, Padmé. Although she had retired, when Jobal reached out Minoo hadn’t hesitated to agree to tutoring Sansa, telling Jobal that she had staked her claim on any and all Naberrie childreen, so help anyone else who tried to get their grubby paws on one of her future students.

Sansa had liked Minoo from their first meeting. An older woman of quiet dignity, tall and willowy, her dark hair sprinkled with silver and elegant lines on her face, Minoo spoke with great eloquence and moved with exceptional grace. Sansa found herself responding automatically to Minoo’s familiar bearing, leaning into the courtesies that were ingrained into her as Sansa Stark, the eldest daughter of the Warden of the North and a Great Lady of Westeros, earning her Minoo’s approval from the start.

After thoroughly testing her across a range of subjects and attributes, from deportment and penmanship, to mathematics and history, to poetry and music, Minoo had constructed a curriculum for Sansa that spanned the next two years, and Sansa found herself keen to begin. Minoo was a patient yet exacting tutor. She had high expectations of Sansa, and Sansa was as determined to meet them as she had been her lady-mother’s and her septa’s. Under Minoo’s instruction, Sansa took her first, true steps into embracing her new life, being introduced to Naboo’s famous playwrights and artists, reciting sonnets and dissecting historical speeches, learning of the ancient philosophers and the distinguished mathematicians upon whose principles the modern system of mathematics had been built.

It was through Minoo that Sansa learned of the history behind Naboo’s choice to establish an elective monarchy as opposed to a hereditary one. Minoo taught her of King Xarxes the Cruel who had inherited the Naboo throne following the death of his grandfather, General Jafan, the first King of Naboo. King Xarxes’ short yet bloody reign had convinced the people of Naboo of the dangers of relying on a bloodline to inherit as he plunged Naboo into civil war against the gungans with whom Jafan had sued for peace, attempting a genocide upon the planet’s indigenous species. His policies had been so horrific, his pages in Naboo’s history soaked with so much blood, that the people had sworn never again.

As Sansa contemplated three hundred years of increasingly unstable Targaryens and shuddered at the recollection of Joffrey, she found that she couldn’t help but sympathise with them. She was the child of a bloodline of Kings eight thousand years strong, and she was proud of that heritage, yet she could not deny that not every Stark ancestor had been worthy of his crown, just as not every man who had sat the Iron Throne was worthy of it. It was still… difficult for her to consider, that her lineage alone did not denote her right of inheritance and rule. She had been raised with the understanding of her duties as a Stark, yes, but also with the understanding of what she was owed as a Stark— fealty of the North, a suitable dowry, a betrothal worthy of a Lady of her status, and a right to rule over those born of a lesser status. Sansa was determined to keep an open mind, however, even when confused, distressed, or angered by what she was taught, and by how it differed from Westeros. 

Minoo’s tutoring was not constrained to a classroom— or rather, to the parlour of her home where she conducted Sansa's lessons. Under her caring direction, Sansa was introduced to painting and sculpting, to baking and flower arrangement, and - Sansa's personal favourite - dance lessons. Sansa had swiftly moved through the ballroom style dances, the steps coming easily and naturally to her even as she adjusted to a body smaller and slimmer then the one she remembered, and onto ballet.

Sansa loved ballet.

From the very first lesson, she had fallen in love with the exacting precision and the elegant beauty of it. She never felt more settled in her skin then when holding her leg at a careful angle with her arms raised in a graceful arc, every movement carefully controlled as she kept her body perfectly in line, hyperaware of the placement of her fingers and toes. Every time she slid into a new position, she felt the heaviness of her memories float away as if they were snowflakes caught in a gentle breeze, leaving only a sense of contentment behind, at one with herself, her body, and the world around her.

Minoo had declared Sansa to be a natural, the movements coming to her instinctively— sometimes it seemed as if she didn’t even need the music or Minoo’s coaching, all she needed was to close her eyes and feel the energy around her, feel it moving through her, carrying her along like a rushing river, guiding her across the polished wooden floor, strong and sure, quick and light.

After her base lessons were complete, Sansa had requested that she be able to continue on with formal lessons and Sola had been thrilled by her show of interest in an activity outside of her tutoring, especially one that had her involved with peers even if they weren’t necessarily of an age with her, some older, some younger, depending on their skill level. Minoo had agreed that Sansa should follow her passion, declaring that it would be a crime if she were to give it up, and so she had been signed up to a local studio where she attended lessons four times a week.

Even with the unanswered questions that lingered over her and the shadow of the Empire, the mysterious figure of the Emperor never spoken of within the Naberrie household or by Minoo despite his humble origins on their planet, Sansa found herself truly settling into the life of Leela Naberrie, her mind occupied by Minoo’s tutoring while the ballet lessons tired out her body. It kept her thoughts quiet, allowing no space for the memories to creep through, invasive and poisonous, her exhausted sleep dreamless but for vague, broken fragments of colour that she struggled to recall upon waking.

She ought to have known that Sola would not allow her to continue on exhausting herself as she had. Her mother cared for her too much to allow that.

It was after dinner one night and Sansa was seated on the couch, her legs tucked under her and a datapad on her lap, lost in the sonnets that Minoo had assigned her to read as she enjoyed the gentle beauty of them, when Sola finally confronted her.

The abrupt removal of the datapad from her lap had Sansa blinking in surprise, turning her confused stare in Sola’s direction.

“Mother?” she asked, puzzled.

Sola gently placed the datapad on the couch beside her and sighed.

“You’re pushing yourself so hard,” she said softly. “There’s no rush, my flower. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

Sansa hesitated, her hands clenching at her side in the sudden rush of anxiety. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do with myself, if I’m not doing something,” she admitted, looking down so she didn’t have to look at Sola’s sad face. “The past year, there was always so much I had to do, so many lives that I was responsible for…” every time she had laid down to sleep, Sansa had felt such guilt, knowing all the work she had turned away from to rest, the weight of the North heavy on her shoulders as she struggled to keep her people alive in the face of famine, the living dead, the Night King, dragonfire, a Mad Queen, and a Faithless King.

“My sweet girl,” Sola murmured, shifting over so she could wrap an arm around Sansa, enveloping her in a cloud of her mother’s perfume, a fragrance of crisp autumn spices, as she was tucked into Sola’s side. Sansa leaned into the embrace, closing her eyes as her mother stroked her hair, a gentle silence settling over them both. “All I want is for you to be happy,” Sola whispered. “I wish I knew how to make you happy.”

“I am happy,” Sansa protested, even as she pondered the truth to her words. Was she truly happy? Or had she simply adjusted to her new routine, accepting it as the escape that it was, her interests and enjoyments second to her desperate need to bury the memories of her past?

“Oh my flower,” Sola said gently, running her hand through Sansa’s curls, “I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty. You don’t have to pretend, not for me.”

Sansa let out a shuddering sigh, the breath shivering through her body. “I just… I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “There’s this – this hollowness where I kept the people of the North cradled to my heart, knowing that everything I did, everything I suffered, it was for them, for my people, for my kingdom. And I can’t bear the emptiness and I can’t bear to sit with the memories of that loss, or of how I lost them.”

The betrayal of her kin had carved such deep wounds into her soul that Sansa doubted they would ever stop weeping blood. It was agony to think of it, to think of the loss of her home, her kingdom, it was unbearable to even contemplate the suffering of the North under the reign of the Targaryen Queen and her faithless Consort.

Sola’s arms were strong and firm around her, holding Sansa together even as she trembled, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill.

“My sweet girl,” her mother murmured, pressing a kiss to Sansa’s forehead. “My sweet, sweet girl.”

“I’m sorry,” Sansa said helplessly, and Sola clicked her tongue.

“No apologies, my flower,” she said firmly, and they sat together, Sola holding Sansa and stroking her back as Sansa curled in her arms. It was Sola who spoke first.  “You’ve heard your grandfather talk about his work,” she said.

“Yes,” Sansa confirmed, shifting back slightly so she was able to look her mother in the eye as they spoke, “the Refugee Relief Movement.”

“Your sister, Pooja, she’s joining him on his next aid mission,” Sola explained, “there’s been a recent earthquake on an Outer-Rim planet that has displaced over two million people. My sister, Padmé… she was like you. She had such a big, beautiful heart that embraced anyone and everyone who needed help or support. She was always at her happiest and most fulfilled when she was helping others. She used to join your grandfather on his relief missions, back when she was younger, before she became involved with politics. Would you… would that be something you were interested in?”

Sansa pondered it, quietly. It was not something she had considered, for in Westeros her focus had always been the North, the kingdom and the people that were her own. It seemed… odd to her, to offer aid to another kingdom – or planet – yet had Margaery not offered aid to the orphans and the poor of Kings Landing? She had not yet been Queen, and they had not been her people, yet that had not stopped her – and perhaps it ought not stop Sansa.

“Yes,” she told Sola, “I would like to join them.”

Sola smiled, her eyes heavy with emotion as she told Sansa, “Padmé would be very proud of you.”

Chapter Text

NINE

It was unnerving, hurtling through space. Sansa could feel the intense, rhythmic hum beneath her feet as unseen energy coursed through the starship. Strange machines lined the walls of the ship, and it seemed to her as if the pilot was surrounded by countless buttons and gear-sticks, surely too many for one person to remember their use. The starship had exited the swirling nebulae of hyperspace only a short time ago and there was a breathtaking vista of glittering stars spilled out across the empty void of space visible from the ship’s viewport. Sansa’s hands had not stopped trembling, so unnerved she was by the sights and sensations that surrounded her, for surely this was the realm of the gods, not men, and she half-expected their ship to be struck down for daring to venture where no mortal ought.

Sansa was dressed in a sleek red protective jumpsuit, her soft brown curls pulled back in a tight, practical braid. Thick-soled boots were laced up to her knees, and she flexed her fingers in the thin material of the protective gloves she had been given— they were made of Karlini silk, Ruwee had explained, able to absorb the impact of a blaster bolt if needed, preventing the need for the RRM workers to sacrifice precision in trade for protection when going about their duties.

Turning to Ruwee now, Sansa spotted her grandfather talking to the pilot of their ship, a serious expression on his face. He caught sight of her looking in his direction and gave her a quick smile before returning to his conversation as Sansa returned her focus to the viewport where ahead she saw a planet orbited by a trio of moons in the distance. Carlac, she assumed – their destination. Their  starship soared closer to the lonely sphere of icy blue, arcing around its moons, and she felt the jolt as they were caught in the gravity well of the planet and started to be drawn inwards towards its surface.

So caught up by her captivation with the expanse of space around them, Sansa startled at hearing Ruwee’s voice so close behind her. “What do you think of your first space flight?” Her grandfather asked, a gentle apology in his eyes for surprising her.

“Terrifying,” Sansa said. And yet, it was also— “freeing,” she admitted, her eyes drifting back to the expanse of void around them even as the ship’s trajectory hurtled them towards the thin veil of Carlac’s atmosphere, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so free.”

Amidst the stars and the moons and the planets, soaring through the void of space, there had been a part of Sansa, hidden beneath the overwhelming terror of it all, that had sung for joy, a little bird whose wings had spread wide enough to carry her free of any cage, to soar through the swirling expanse of the cosmos.

Ruwee smiled at her, and there was something nostalgic and sad in his smile.

“Hold onto that feeling,” he told her, “it’s the most precious gift your ancestors have given you that you could imagine.”

Sansa nodded, then followed as Ruwee beckoned, leading her over to where Pooja stood, her older sister looking nervous in her own protective jumpsuit, coloured the same vivid red as Sansa’s. Her dark hair was braided back, out of her face, and she kept biting her lower lip.

“Before we land, I wanted to talk to you both,” Ruwee said seriously. “What you will see down there will be confronting. A terrible, tragic thing has happened to these people, and they will be grieving, and they will be angry. Many will have lost their lives, and although I will try to protect you from the being faced with such sights, I cannot guarantee that I will be successful. If at any stage you find yourself struggling or if you find that it’s too much for you, I need you to tell me at once. Nobody will be upset with you— I tell all my workers, not just you two, that if they want to help take care of others, the most important thing they can do is make sure they take care of themselves first.”

“I understand, Grandpapa,” Pooja said solemnly, and Sansa nodded alongside her sister even as she wondered if there was such thing as a horror left in the galaxy that could still shock her.

She thought back to the press of starving bodies during the Bread Riots, the swords of the knights cutting down the screaming smallfolk as people were crushed to death underfoot, or torn apart by the enraged crowds.

She thought back to the Battle of the Bastards, of cleaning her youngest brother’s body, little more then a babe of six yet riddled with arrows, Rickon’s small body further evidence of Ramsey’s depravity as Sansa uncovered the Bolton sigil carved into his back, spanning between his shoulder-blades and midway down his spine. She remembered weeping, her tears those of rage, and how the North had wept with her when Sansa ensured word spread of what Rickon had endured, determined to destroy any remnants of goodwill towards the Boltons that any Northern Houses may hold.

She thought back to the hundred thousand dead men-turned-wights she’d had to organise to be buried in the aftermath of the Battle for the Dawn, the corpses in various stages of decomposition, some already ravaged by dragonfire, some little more then bones, others bloated and rotting with gaping eye-sockets and fluids oozing freely. She thought of how it was her who had coordinated the efforts amidst the weary common soldiers and horrified staff of Winterfell to separate their dead and their injured from the fallen wights of the Night King’s army, to organise for carts upon carts of corpses and the bones to be wheeled out of Winterfell and to the pits she ordered dug for mass burials.

She remembered her exhaustion as she helped to sew up the ripped and torn flesh of the Northern men and women, lowborn and highborn both, who had helped fight the wights and white walkers, uncaring of the blood that soaked her hands, or the filth that dirtied her gown as she saved some lives, lost others, and all the while felt the weight of the worshipful gazes of her people rest upon her knowing how helpless she was to protect them from the threat that lurked within her very halls, the threat their once-king had welcomed into Winterfell along with her three dragons.

Sansa sincerely doubted that anything she saw on this aid mission could truly shake her. Not when she knew herself to be so inured to the sight and smell of blood, of destruction, of death, that even her dreams ran cold and dark and red with it.

Oblivious to her bloodstained, ashen thoughts, Ruwee smiled down at her and Pooja. “Regardless of what happens down there, I just want to say how very proud of you both I am,” he said, his dark eyes, the same as his daughter’s and his granddaughter Pooja’s, as warm as his voice. “You give me hope for this Galaxy, even in these dark years.”

Sansa tilted her head slightly.

“Dark years?” She asked, and a shadow briefly crossed Ruwee’s face before he shook it away, as if shaking fallen snow from his shoulders.

“Forgive an old man’s nattering,” he said, with a strained smile, “I need to go and prepare the brief before we land – it won’t be long now, girls.”

Sansa watched him hurry away, incredulous. “Does he think us fools?” She asked Pooja.

“I think he’s forgotten your real age,” her sister said with a sigh. “It’s easy sometimes, when you look like you do. And he knows that I already know what he means. And I think that you should too. I don’t know why they don’t tell you anything— it’s stupid.”

“Then let them be fools,” Sansa told her sister, calm and certain, “and do better. Be better. Tell me the truth.”

Pooja sucked in a breath between her teeth, hesitating before resolve firmed her features. “He’s talking about Emperor Palpatine,” she said, her voice hushed. “They hate that he destroyed the Republic, they hate that he’s used Aunt Padme as a martyr, and they hate that he’s erased Uncle Ani from the public’s memory – the Emperor is a monster.”

Sansa looked at Pooja, surprised to hear the vitriol in the normally placid girl’s voice. “I know there’s… tension about his rule,” she said carefully, “I didn’t realise it was considered quite so… dire.”

Pooja nodded grimly. “Mum said he’s dangerous,” she said quietly. “Especially to you, like they warned us when we learned you’re Force-sensitive– he hates Jedi. He killed Uncle Ani because he was a Jedi. He’ll kill anyone who he thinks is dangerous to him. All he cares about is power – and if he thinks people are trying to take away his power, then he kills them, just like he killed the Jedi.”

Sansa nodded slowly, thoughtfully. To be truthful, Sansa saw little difference in Pooja’s description of the Emperor to the Kings and Queens and the Lords and Ladies of Westeros, who likewise would not have suffered threats to their seats of power to rise against them. There was no prison in Westeros for crimes such as attempted treason, just cells to keep prisoners before they were either sent to the Wall or executed.

It did not strike Sansa as abnormal that Emperor Palpatine would have chosen to act with such force against the Jedi Order, not if they were a risk to his power. In fact, she would be more inclined to think poorly of him if he had not retaliated with an appropriate show of force, for how else could he have demonstrated that he had the strength to maintain his rule over the Galaxy? Yet also she understood why the Naberrie family, born and raised on peaceful Naboo with its elected monarchs and bloodless systems of governing as opposed to Sansa, who was born and raised in Westeros, where broken laws and false oaths were met with a sharp edge of steel, no trial required, would be horrified by such demonstrations of power – not to mention the difficulty involved in maintaining objectivity when the Naberries had personally been made victims of the Emperor’s execution of the Jedi Order through the death of Padme’s husband.

“What did happen to Aunt Padme and Uncle Anakin?” Sansa asked, making sure to keep her voice very, very quiet so Ruwee would not overhear. “I know that they died on Empire Day, but nobody has ever given me any details.”

“Nobody has ever really given me any details either,” Pooja admitted, speaking just as quietly, “but they weren’t as careful, back when I was younger and the deaths were… fresh, to not talk in front of me, and Ryoo. I remember more then I think they realise – Aunt Padme, something terrible happened to her. The Emperor said they couldn’t do an autopsy, but Mum had one done in secret – I don’t know exactly what the coroner found, but I do know that it really upset Mum, and that it had something to do with her heart and the Force. And Uncle Ani,” here, Pooja shuddered, her face drawn tight with horror. “I heard Mum cry about this once, when she was with Uncle Rex and Aunt Sabe,” she whispered. “She said – she said Uncle Ani was burned alive.”

Sansa bowed her head, shuddering. She had dreamed of dying by dragonfire since the first time she saw those foul, winged beasts. It was a terrible fate.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Pooja softly, and Pooja took a deep breath and attempted to smile despite the tremble to her lips.

“I want to talk about them. I want to remember them,” she said. “It’s not fair that you never got to meet them, and when Mum, and Nana and Papa, and Aunt Sabe and Uncle Rex all refuse to talk about them, it feels like they’re dying all over again, in our hearts as well as in body.”

Sansa reached out to grasp Pooja’s hands, squeezing them. “I want to hear about them,” she told her, “please. When we get back to Naboo, I want to hear everything, every precious moment.”

Pooja squeezed Sansa’s hands back. “Do you… do you have any precious people you’d like to talk about too? To make sure they aren’t forgotten?” she asked, and Sansa felt her eyes prickle with the threat of tears.

“I… I would like to tell you about Rickon,” she said softly. “And Lady. And – and my first mother, Catelyn.” Her love for them, her grief, was pure, untainted. It felt… right, to share that grief, to let them be remembered.

“I want to hear all about them,” Pooja promised, “like you said – every precious moment.”

Sansa felt lighter of heart, even with the unsettling revelations of her family’s stance against the Emperor and the possible role he had played in her Uncle Anakin’s death, as she and Pooja gathered with the other RRM workers on the starship transport to listen to Ruwee speak.

“We will be arriving at Ming Po Town, the capital city of Carlac,“ Ruwee addressed them. “Carlac’s government have announced that there are over 500,000 survivors of the earthquake who will need to be relocated to the resettlement camps that are being established around the city. Our responsibility will be to assist with providing basic services to these camps, including medical supplies, bottled water, water filters, ration packs, foam mattresses, and blankets. I want to be honest with you now that this will be a massive and daunting task, but I have confidence in the strength and goodness of all of you who stand with me today. You have dedicated yourselves to the well-being of others, and the Galaxy is a brighter place for your presence and for the difference you have made to lives within it.”

There was a round of applause amongst the RRM workers and volunteers, and Sansa and Pooja joined in, both stirred by their grandfather’s heartfelt speech.

“I’m so nervous,” Pooja whispered to Sansa. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m scared I’ll freak out and Grandpapa will be embarrassed by me.”

“He won’t be embarrassed by you,” Sansa said firmly, reaching over to squeeze Pooja’s hand. “All that matters to him, to anyone, is that you cared enough to try. That’s more then most ever will.”

Pooja took a deep breath and nodded. “That’s… really sad, but it also makes me feel better,” she admitted. “Which it probably shouldn’t.”

Both girls giggled quietly, nerves settling as as the starship pilot searched for a suitable landing zone, scouring the landscape of the planet below before the ship began to decrease in altitude as it lowered to Carlac’s surface, easing into a soft touch-down.

Ruwee came over to help Pooja and Sansa finish putting on their protective gear, checking it all fit. The helmet locked into place over Sansa’s head with a gentle hiss of air. Sansa felt odd with her head encased within a bubble yet Ruwee had explained it was necessary for their safety, as it was unknown what toxins had been released into the air following the massive earthquake.

As the canopy to the starship retracted, exposing the planet they had arrived on to Sansa for the first time, she found herself understanding Ruwee’s precaution. Carlac must have once had a haunting beauty to it, its pale sun casting an ethereal light on the distant, icy plains and the sloping white terrain of the planet below. Sansa could imagine the beauty of the city that had once been built up along that terrain, yet that was not the sight that greeted her eyes now. Instead, a huge cloud of dust and smoke hung over the remnants of what had been Ming Po Town, the capital city of Carlac. It seemed as if the buildings had simply slid down the sloping hills, leaving them in ruins and the streets a maze of rubble and broken houses that stretched in every direction.

At Sansa’s side, she could hear the gasp of horror that Pooja had let out, and Ruwee sighed sadly.

“Come, girls,” he said. “Our help is needed.”

The trek to the closest resettlement camp took them through part of the city and had them passing by the ruins of countless buildings. People coated in dust wandered the debris-strewn streets of their once-proud city in a daze, some crying, some screaming, others begging for help as they knelt on the ground, pawing helplessly at the rubble. There were bodies on the streets, and while Ruwee initially attempted to divert Sansa and Pooja’s attention from the sight of them, Sansa brushed him away and joined the rest of the RRM workers and volunteers in kneeling down to check for pulses, waving for assistance if she found one or rolling them to their back and closing their eyes if the person was deceased.

She pretended not to notice the first dozen people she had pronounced as dead be double-checked, knowing the other workers as right to be doubtful of her skill when considering her young appearance. As she was proven to be correct in every instance, however, they were quick to decide to trust her judgement— though they did not have much of a choice, not when there were so many bodies and only so many of them.

Pooja struggled with the confronting task, staying close to Sansa’s side, her eyes wide and wet and her breath quick and ragged. Sansa gently directed her to help with those who were injured, a task better suited to her gentle sister who was relieved to apply bacta patches and dressings and provide painkillers to assist and encourage those who had fallen, unable or unwilling to carry on, to make the trek to one of the resettlement camps, so they were not left collapsed and abandoned on the streets of the ruined city, exposed to the elements and at risk of infection and illness.

“How are you able to just… just do this?” Pooja asked Sansa helplessly, after watching her close the eyes of a deceased child no older then Ryoo, the back of his skull cracked open by one of the collapsed buildings, Sansa guessed— it was a miracle he’d managed to stagger as far as he had before collapsing. Tears were streaming down Pooja’s cheeks that her helmet prevented her from wiping away.

“When I was fifteen, I watched my brother be murdered in front of me,” Sansa confessed quietly, and Pooja let out a strangled sound, her dark eyes widening with horror. “He was barely six years old, and his death was… violent,” she continued, and Pooja started to cry, soft and nearly silent. “I was the one who prepared him for burial, after. I bathed his cold flesh to cleanse it of the dirt and the blood, I sewed shut every wound, every cut, every hole torn into his small, helpless, little body, I combed his hair, the same beautiful shade as our mother’s, I dressed him in Bran, our brother’s, clothes, the only ones we had, clothes that were too big for him and that he would never get the chance to grow into, and I kissed each eyelid shut, knowing they would never open again. Compared to that… this simply does not compare to that,” she said quietly. “I grieve for these people, and for these lives that have been lost, but it is more… distant to me. Seperate.”

“I’m so sorry, Leela— Sansa,” Pooja corrected herself, and she pulled Sansa into a tight, fierce hug, her body still shaking with quiet sobs, “I’m so sorry. You should never have had to lose your little brother like that.”

“Nobody should ever have to lose the ones they love,” Sansa said softly, hugging Pooja back, “that’s why this, what we’re doing here, today, is so important.”

Pooja pulled back, sniffing but with a new resolve on her face. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s— let’s keep going. There’s people who need our help.”

It was getting dark by the time they arrived at the closest resettlement camp, the sun sinking closer to the horizon, turning the sky a blood red that reflected strangely with the dark clouds of dust and the white terrain of the planet’s vast, icy desert. There were a mix of species present at the closest resettlement camp, predominantly the Ming Po, who were near-human in appearance, with a scattering of others, some familiar to Sansa, others not.

Wooden fires had been built and huddles of people were cooking in large pots, while others were beginning to construct three large shelters that would house them for the indefinite future; one for men, one for women, and the last for the third gender that Sansa was much less accustomed to, where a species either possessed both male and female sexual organs, or reproduced asexually. Sansa certainly saw the benefit of it— thoughts of the marital bed sickened her to this day, her memories of Ramsey making her want to claw at her skin even when she knew this flesh was untouched by his perversions. Yet, she had always wanted a child, she thought wistfully, looking over to the dirty-faced children, huddled together on the ground, some playing quietly, others too shocked to do anything but rock back and forth or cry.

The speeders that had been loaded with crates of medical supplies, water filters, bottled water, ration packs, foam mattresses, and blankets, in addition to providing transportation to people who had been found along the way whose injuries prevented them from walking, even after receiving basic first-aid, were parked on the fringes of the camp. The RRM workers and volunteers set to work unloading, and Sansa and Pooja spent the next few hours handing out supplies to the never-ending queues of people, all of them desperately hungry and thirsty, and all of them in various states of shock, grief, and anger.

The three moons were high in the sky before Ruwee called an end to the day. Sansa was exhausted, but it wasn’t a feeling she was unused to— it was almost nostalgic, even, to ache with tiredness yet have people who relied on her keeping her upright and moving. As the adults set up the tents, Sansa and Pooja sat with a group of children, ranging in ages from two or three, to those closer to Pooja’s thirteen or perhaps a year or two older. Their faces were dirty, marked by tears. Sansa did not ask where their parents were— if they were not with them, they were either helping build the shelter, or they were buried in the ruins of the city. Instead, she gently pulled two of the smallest of the babes into her arms, encouraging others to lean up against her.

“I’m scared,” whimpered one of the little boys, who clutched onto her hand. “I don’t want the ground to start shaking again.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Sansa soothed, “I know everything must seem so frightening now, but do you know what helps? Holding each other tight. That way none of us are alone. See?” She lifted their joined hands.

The little boy sniffled but settled down, laying his head on Sansa’s lap, between the two younger babes who she had tucked against her.

“Have you heard of the Lullaby of the Wolf?” She asked, and heard a few of the smaller children mumbled a negative, while the older ones stared ahead with empty eyes. “Do you want me to sing it?” She coaxed, and when a few of the children nodded, she cleared her throat and sang, high and sweet.

“Late at night when the moon is high
The Wolf will make its eerie cry
Echoes in the valleys deep
And the mountains that are steep

Then they travel far and wide
To find that soothing lullaby
They do not stop not once at all
Until they find that lovely song

And all the children sing along.” *

“Pretty,” one of the little ones she was holding whispered and Sansa smiled.

“Does anyone else have a song?” She asked.

Tentatively, one of the other children piped up, the voices of the others joining in.

“Goodbye now, good-bye now, we leave you now and home we go.

Good bye now, good bye now. Good bye to all of you.

Good bye now, good bye now, we’ll see you soon again.” **

Sansa had to blink away a tear, even as she smiled at the simple, childish, yet heartfelt song.

Another one of the children picked a song to sing, those around him joining in, and then another, and another, until the adults were singing too, tears and mourning replaced by music under the gentle moonlight that bathed a city in ruins and a people displaced yet not without hope.

Ruwee’s eyes were wet as he sat down beside her, careful not to disrupt any of the children curled around Sansa, some clinging to her, others resting their heads on her lap. “Just like your mother,” he whispered. “She would be so proud.”

It was an odd comment, but Sansa paid it little mind, too caught up in the moment, an ache in her chest as she listened to the music around her, of a people who had been battered yet not broken. If she closed her eyes, with the cold air she could feel even through the fabric of the protective suit, she could almost imagine she was amongst her people, in the North.

That night, Sansa dreamed of Westeros.

Chapter Text

TEN

They pulled Lady Sansa Stark’s body from the godswood at dawn.

The Lady Arya Stark was nearly as pale as the corpse of Winterfell’s Lady, the blood drained from her cheeks as she cast her eyes upon the waterlogged remains of her sister, bloated from the hours she was left floating in the still pond beneath the weeping heart-tree, yet still recognisable as the Lady Sansa, beautiful even in death.

One of the Winterfell household guards had found her, raising the alarm as he pulled her from the water. It could almost be an accident, a terrible, tragic accident, but for the wreathe of blue, silk roses still pinned atop Sansa’s brow – the North remembered the last Stark daughter to wear such a wreathe, and they remembered the Targaryen Prince who had placed that wreathe upon her before stealing a Lady of Winterfell, with only her bones to return.

The rumours were fast to travel about the Keep. The Northerners hissed of their Gentle Lady, of Lord Eddard Stark’s eldest trueborn daughter who the Dragon Queen had intended to force to wed and bed the Lannister imp, the half-man, the traitor, the cursed kinslayer. They hissed of how she intended to steal their Gracious Lady from the North, just as her brother had stolen the Lady Lyanna, raped her, and left her to die on a bed of blood.

Word spread quick about the kingdoms; ravens flew on dark wings to the Vale, to the Riverlands, to the Westerlands. Lord Robin Arryn was said to be so distraught at the news of his beloved cousin’s fate that Lord Yohn Royce, with tears in his eyes, had to hold the young Lord to his chest to keep him upright as he wailed his grief.

In the Riverlands, Lord Edmure Tully roared with rage, cursing the Lannister and Targaryen names before he collapsed to his knees and pleaded to the ghost of his sister for forgiveness for failing to protect her child.

In the West, resentment and disgust abounded amongst the Lords, the Ladies, and the smallfolk, all to whom word was quick to spread, none pleased at the presumption of the Targaryen Queen and the kinslayer who dared believe he would be accepted as Warden of the West after he murdered his Lord-Father in defiance of the laws of the gods.

If the rumours and unrest were the kindling, the Dragon Queen declaring her Consort, the newly legitimised Jon Snow turned Aegon Targaryen, as Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell was the spark that set the North aflame – for Daenerys Targaryen was known by many titles, yet unlike the Lady Sansa, in the North she was not loved.

The people of the North knew of their Lady Sansa’s hurt, of her poor treatment as a hostage of the Lannisters and later the prisoner of the Boltons, forced to wed a bastard, and they wept for her. They knew of her kindness and devotion, as she worked herself to weariness to see them fed and sheltered, and they spoke of her graciousness, of her sense of duty, and gave thanks in their prayers. They learned of the Dragon Queen’s plans to steal their Lady, to wed her to a Lannister, a kinslayer, and to give her stolen birthright to a Targaryen bastard, and they howled with rage, with fury – and with the thirst for vengeance.

The Targaryens had been a blight upon the North, upon Westeros, and upon their Lady Sansa, and the people would not let the insult stand, they would not allow their Gentle Lady’s death to go unanswered.

The Dragon Queen had flown upon dragon-back with her Consort to Winterfell, after her victory in Kings Landing – no guards had accompanied them, so confident she was in her Consort’s protection and in the strength of her beasts. That strength mattered little, however, when the thousands of smallfolk, still housed in tents at Winterfell in the wake of the Long Night, stormed the Keep – and the household guard stepped aside to allow them.

Armed with the discarded weaponry of the Battle for the Dawn, the smallfolk stormed through the halls of Winterfell, reaching the chambers of the Lord of Winterfell where they hacked through the thick oak doors and burst into the rooms.

The Dragon Queen and her Consort fought, Jon Snow turning the floors slick with blood of the fallen as he cut down man and woman without hesitation in his bid to protect his pregnant lover, but the overwhelming numbers forced him back, pinning the Dragon Queen and her Consort against the wall. Outside the Keep, the dragons could be heard screaming their rage and panic, the Dragon Queen’s face twisted in rage and horror as she cradled her abdomen protectively and screamed, “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

The Consort was first to fall, a spear piercing through his throat. The howling, raging Dragon Queen was next, her protector fallen, crushed beneath the rioting smallfolk, their axes hacking into bone, spears piercing through organs, daggers burying into flesh, grasping hands yanking and tearing, until all that was left of the last of the Targaryen Dynasty was bloodied, pulped flesh, unrecognisable as human.

Outside the walls of the Keep, the dragons were screaming and screaming, their flames melting the snow and leaving the grounds and walls of the Keep blackened with ash. The guards and knights alike were shouting and coordinating amongst themselves, the steel scorpions the Lady Sansa had ordered constructed in secret wheeled out to the battlements, loaded with bolt after bolt.

The dragons were distraught, confused – the smaller one was quick to be felled, the scorpion bolt burying itself in the dragon’s chest, piercing its heart and sending it crashing to the ground even as the larger dragon roared its rage, spilling fire on the battlements, melting steel and burning scores of men alive.

It was Ser Brienne of Tarth who turned the battle around – Valyrian sword in hand, she leapt bravely from the battlements of Winterfell, landing above the dragon’s right wing, her sword sinking deep into its flesh, providing her a handhold. The dragon’s pained roar was deafening as it attempted to dislodge her, but Ser Brienne held steadfast. She used her grip to climb its side to straddle its neck, just barely navigating the sea of shifting black scales as the dragon screamed and thrashed. With her legs clamped tight about the dragon’s neck, Ser Brienne wrenched her sword free and, gripping the hilt with both hands, plunged it down between the dragon’s skull and neck.

The dragon screamed again as it spiralled erratically to the ground, neck thrashing side to side, fire spilling uncontrollably, yet Ser Brienne kept her seat, deepening the wound until the dragon hit the ground, the collision with the earth sending her tumbling.

It was Ser Jaime who rushed first to her side despite the dragon still shrieking its pain and rage as steaming blood melted the ground beneath it. As the dragon struck out at Ser Brienne with its terrible, serrated maw, it was Ser Jaime stood between them, and as the dragon’s jaws clamped shut about his armour-plated arm, his sword pierced up through the roof of its mouth.

Ser Jaime roared in pain and Ser Brienne screamed, stumbling to her feet and seizing one of the spikes above the dragon’s eye, using it as leverage as she drove her sword through the eye-socket as far as it would go. The dragon swayed before it collapsed sideways, its jaw slackening and releasing Ser Jaime – the bones in his arm crushed, but his arm still attached.

Ser Brienne staggered to Ser Jaime’s side, drenched in dragon’s blood, and they clung to each other even as those in the Keep spilled out about them, the Lords, the Ladies, the guards, the free-folk, and the smallfolk all.

“For the Lady Sansa!” Ser Brienne shouted out, raising her bloody sword high. The silvery sheen of the Valyrian steel caught on the light of the pale winter’s sun, casting a bright, blazing shine, akin to the light of a star. Battered and bloody at her side, Ser Jaime lifted his golden hand, his sword still embedded in the dragon’s skull, his sword-arm crushed within the plates of his armour.

“For the Lady Sansa!” he roared.

“For the Lady Sansa!” Came the reply of the crowd, screamed and shouted and wailed, the people beating their feet, their chests, the ground, overcome by the moment.

“For a free North!” Another voice shouted, and the cheers were just as deafening, as people cheered and wept and the skies shifted, a whirling, eddying blur of white—

—Sansa gasped as she found herself standing amidst a canvas of white that stretched out around her, like standing in the midst of a blizzard, a snowstorm, only there was no cold, no ice, no flurries of snow – nothing at all. It was terrifying and a low keen escaped her, arms wrapping around herself, cradling her chest, and Sansa realised with a start that it was not a child’s body she stood in, but that of a woman grown.

“Hello Sansa.”

She startled, turning in the nothingness, the white, to face the figure before her. As she did, the white began to shift, impressions of shapes blurring into existence – the stolidness of a trunk, the curve of branches, the drape of leaves, a splash of red amongst the pale. And beneath the tree, a familiar face.

“Bran,” she whispered.

Bran smiled at her, his grey eyes warm as he sat in his wooden chair. “Hello, sister,” he said. “It’s been a very long time.”

“Has it?” Sansa asked, even as she stepped cautiously forwards, unsure if the light beneath her was solid enough to support her. When she found it was, she threw away her caution and hastened to her brother’s side, throwing her arms around him. He was warm and solid in her arms, and his returned embrace was as gentle as his arms around her were strong, holding her against his beating heart.

“I have missed you,” he confessed, and Sansa laughed tearily.

“I have missed you too,” she said. “Is this even real? Is this a dream?”

“It is,” Bran answered, “and it isn’t.”

Sansa thought she ought to be frustrated. Instead, a swell of fondness had her pulling back and smiling tearfully down at Bran. “You are still as mysterious as ever, brother,” she teased, “and it is still impossible to wrest a straight answer from your lips.”

“I like to think I have improved with age,” Bran admitted. “A King who is lost in visions of the past or the future is not fit to rule in the present, where his people have need of him. That is a lesson I learned well, over the decades. Letting go of the Raven was… difficult, but I became a better man, a better King, because of it.”

“So you ruled the North,” Sansa murmured, sighing softly with relief. “I am so pleased to hear it, little brother. I feared…”

“You feared Daenerys Targaryen,” Bran said gently. “And you were right to fear her. Her rule would have led to naught but fire and blood, the twisted babe birthed from her womb ushering in an era of true darkness over Westeros. Your sacrifice, as tragic as it was, prevented that darkness from rising. It saved Westeros from damnation, even if it was not your intention.”

“I was so afraid,” Sansa confessed, unable to meet Bran’s eyes. “I was so afraid, and I could see no escape.”

“You did what you had to do,” Bran said solemnly, his hands reaching for hers. His touch was warm, solid, real in this place of blurring and impressions and shifting light. “There is no fault in that, sister.”

“What did happen to Westeros? After my death and after… after the death of the Targaryens?” Sansa asked, unable to speak Jon’s name, shaken by the memory of witnessing him be trampled and hacked apart by the furious mob – in spite of his betrayal, he had still been of her blood, he had still been her kin. And once, he had been all she had left in the world. It was difficult to separate the kinder Jon of those memories, from the traitor who had looked away as she was to be sent in chains to a Lannister to be raped and imprisoned, far from the North.

“The Seven Kingdoms split apart once more,” Bran answered her. “Cousin Robin rose as King of the Vale, Uncle Edmure as King of the Riverlands, a Martell as Queen of Dorne, Edric Storm as King of the Stormlands, Yara Greyjoy as Queen of the Iron Islands, and Jaime Lannister as King of the West, with his bride, Ser Brienne.” Bran paused and smiled. “They were succeeded by their daughter, Queen Sansa Lannister, called the most beautiful lady in the Seven Kingdoms with her hair of gold and her eyes of sapphires. There was also a Princess Sansa Tully and a Princess Sansa Arryn in that generation.”

Sansa dabbed tearfully at her eyes. “And the North?” she asked.

“Well, the Lady Meera Reed agreed to wed me, much to my surprise,” Bran said with a small smile, and Sansa beamed at him, delighted.

“Oh Bran!” she said.

“We had three sons,” Bran continued, “Rickon, Cregan, and Jojen. All wed North and gave Meera and I many grandchildren to spoil – including a Princess Sansa Stark, the firstborn of our heir, Rickon.”

“Bran,” Sansa said again, her eyes welling with tears, “oh Bran.”

“Never doubt that your absence was not a wound in our hearts, for as long as we lived,” Bran told her, squeezing her hands, still grasped so gently within his. “You are loved, Sansa Stark, and you will be loved for as long as there are hearts that beat in the North.”

“I miss you,” Sansa whispered, “I miss you all.”

Even Arya. Even Jon.

“Your fate is beyond us now,” Bran said gently. “You have a destiny that travels the stars, choices before you that will build or break an entire galaxy.”

Sansa shook her head in denial. “You are wrong,” she said, “Leela Naberrie is a normal child, I have no destiny, not in this life.”

“Oh Sansa,” Bran said, his eyes kind, his smile sad. “When have you ever been normal?”

Sansa shook her head still, and her brother leaned forwards, prompting her to lean in, allowing him to press a kiss to her brow.

“I do not think we will get the chance to meet like this again,” Bran admitted, and Sansa tightened her grip on him, a silent protest of his words. “The Force loves you, it felt your need for closure… just as it feels your need to let go.”

“I can never let go of my family,” Sansa protested, and Bran smiled warmly at her.

“Of course you can,” he said gently. “We are at peace – allow yourself to find your own peace. Accept that we are gone, but know that our love remains with you always.”

Sansa’s breath hitched with a sob as she leaned forwards to hug Bran once more, closing her eyes as she felt him begin to fade in her arms so she didn’t have to watch her brother disappear before her once more, leaving her alone in the endless expanse of white until she startled awake, finding herself bathed under the light of three moons, alien children curled at her sides, Pooja’s hand gripping hers even in sleep.

There were tears on her face that she could not wipe away, not while she wore the protective helmet, and Sansa drew a shaky, uncertain breath. That had felt real – too real, for how impossible it was.

The Force is capable of strange, terrible, and wonderful things, her mother had said. Sansa was not certain which category the… dream-vision would fall under, perhaps all three, but as she stared up at the night sky above her, at the trio of moons that shone in the sky, she felt as if something broken inside her had shifted slightly; it had not healed, the cracks were still there, Sansa thought they would always be there, but there was shining starlight now to fill those cracks, to hold those broken pieces together.

Gripping tighter to Pooja, Sansa carefully turned so she did not dislodge any of the children clinging to her and closed her eyes.

She did not dream again that night.