Work Text:
Fitting, that snow should start falling right as Harald Karstark knelt on the frigid ground. When he stiffly placed his neck over the execution block, Sansa lifted her chin a little higher. The eyes of Winterfell, of the North, of the gods and the ghosts were all on her.
While she had looked like a she-wolf, decked out in silver-grey fur and cloth, ever since taking up the helm of her home, this was the first time she felt like she had teeth, had claws, at least since the war had concluded. As snowflakes melted on her nose, she thought briefly of Jon in King’s Landing (well, Queen’sLanding now, she supposed) and Arya traveling abroad. She thought of Bran at the wildling settlement and Rickon training with their bannermen only a few hours’ ride away.
They had their place; this was hers. She had paid for it in blood and soul, in pride and sorrow. Winterfell was hers, and she was going to make those who had helped take it from her pay.
With a twitch of her hand, she called for Brienne. The fierce woman stepped to her side, as they had discussed. She held out the hilt of the sword and Sansa reached for it, no hesitation. The metal was chilly even against her gloved hands, but she was used to it by now. Warmth pooled in her chest as she pulled it from its sheath without pause, without a tremble in her muscles.
For months she had been practicing with Brienne because who better than a lady to teach her how to fight. Early mornings, sore nights, bleeding callouses and aching limbs–she never liked it, never enjoyed it, but she was good at it now at least (she knew far better than to assume she’d never need to fight for her life, for her loved one’s lives, in the future). All of that was worth it to stand here in the gray morning light, flurries swirling around her, with this sword made from her father’s sword gripped in her capable hands.
With the training came changes to her body. She had burst open the sleeve seams on more than a few of her gowns as her arms got stronger, bigger. It didn’t matter, not like it would’ve before; it didn’t shame her, like it would have before. Instead, she just sewed new sleeves, new dresses, ones she could move easier in and would allow her to change as she became better. After all, she had been sewing her own dresses long before she had needed a blade sharper and more deadly than a needle.
Sansa wanted both to laugh and cry at that thought–Needle. She remembered the glint of that thin blade, the glint in her sister’s eye whenever she wielded it. If only Arya could see her now.
The tree branches rustled in the breeze as she bowed her head and began to speak. “In the name of Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons, I, Sansa, of the House Stark, Lady of Winterfell and Wardeness of the North, sentence you to die. Will you speak a final word?”
Lord Karstark sneered, snow in his hair, hate (and a little bit of fear) in his eyes. “Not for you, Lady Bitch.”
Sansa breathed–she had been called worse–then hefted the sword, letting it fall in one swift motion.
Slice, crack, thud, drip.
His blood pooled on the ground, but she did not stare at it. She did not stare at his head, nor his now stump of a neck. She didn’t stare at the solemn bannermen around her, not at Brienne shifting tensely, proudly at her side. No, Sansa didn’t look at any of them. She looked instead at the sword, the weapon coated in her enemy’s blood, the blade made from the one her father had wielded so honorably.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.
The winds brought his words to her across the hills and through the years she could never get back, from the ghostly beyond where half her family–half her heart–resided. She thought of her family who was far away but still alive, and she thought of what her sister said (valar morghulis) and what their new queen said (but we are not men).
As the sun broke through the clouds, the sword gleamed and Sansa smiled.