Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sansa’s first memory is warmth.

Not a hearth’s red glow, not winter fire cracking against the cold... no.

This is golden warmth, soft and drowsy, like morning sunlight deciding to stay forever.

And there is someone beside her.

Someone breathing in the same rhythm she does.

Someone whose existence feels stitched into her bones.

A twin.

For a moment, she doesn’t understand the feeling tugging at her chest... not fear or confusion but something stranger, something she has never felt in any life

There is someone who belongs to me.

And I belong to him.

A laugh bubbles in her tiny throat before she even knows the word for laughter.

Ambarussa — though she doesn’t know his name yet, curls against her with a sleepy sound, and she thinks

Oh. This is what it feels like.

Jon and Arya had each other.

Bran and Rickon were a pair.

Rob had Theon, always shadowing, always at his side.

And she… she was always the odd one out.

The lady, the proper one, the one who stood alone in windows while the others chased shadows across Winterfell.

But here, in this new golden world... she is not alone.

She will never be alone again.

Her tiny fingers find his hair, soft and bright as dawnfire, and she holds on.

He holds back.

Twinborn.

When her eyes open properly, she sees a ceiling painted with light — real light, dripping from the branches of Trees she does not understand yet. She sees her mother’s gentle smile, her father’s shining eyes, and a room that looks like it was carved out of moonbeams and jewels.

But she is a child, and children simplify what they cannot grasp.

So she thinks only,

Pretty.

And then 

Warm.

And then 

Home.

But the most important thing is still her twin.

She turns her head, sees him squirming like a kitten, hears the tiny squeak he makes when someone touches his cheek, and her entire heart folds around him like a second cradle.

This is her person.

Hers in a way no one ever was before.

She reaches for them.

Pointed ears.

So strange.

So pretty.

Ambarussa huffs — a tiny indignant baby huff — and bats at her hand with his own. Their fingertips brush and spark the kind of joy that makes her whole body wriggle.

She stares at his ears, then touches her own.

Pointed too.

And she giggles.

Because it feels like they match.

And matching feels right.

Always, she had felt a little separate from her own family — gentler than Arya, warmer than Jon, softer than Bran and Rickon, quieter than Rob. Winter pulled her into its quiet, but she never felt made of the same frost.

But now she looks at her twin and sees herself in him.

We match, she thinks, delighted. We match.

Later, much later, though still in her early years — she sees herself in a polished silver mirror.

She stops.

Her breath catches.

It is not that she is vain. She has been called lovely before, Septa Mordane, Queen Cersei, her lady mother. But this face is something else entirely

Like a storybook princess.

Like the heroines she used to dream about while doing her embroidery.

Like the maidens in songs that make soldiers cry.

Ruby-red hair spilling like molten dawn.

Eyes bright as summer sky.

Skin that glows as if made from the Trees’ own light.

She touches her cheek, half-afraid it might be someone else’s reflection.

But it is hers.

Daenerys had beauty like fire.

Cersei had beauty like a blade.

But Sansa’s new face is beauty like magic.

It feels unreal and yet deeply, softly right.

As if some part of her has always been meant for a fairy-tale world.

Everyone calls her princess.

She giggles every time.

Because the word fits now — not like the stiff, stiff titles in Westeros where it meant duty and marriage and expectations, but like a flower crown placed gently on her head.

She walks through light instead of snow.

She is adored by a mother who never stops smiling at her.

She is cherished by a father who looks at her as if she is the best thing he has ever crafted.

And through it all...

Ambarussa is there.

Right beside her.

Breathing in the same rhythm.

Laughing when she laughs.

Crying when she cries.

Holding her hand without thinking.

For the first time in any life

Sansa Stark is never alone.

Chapter Text

The second warmth in Sansa’s life, after Ambarussa — is her mother.

Not a queen-mother.

Not a lady of Winterfell.

Not a woman wrapped in duty and quiet sacrifice.

Just… Amme.

Warm, bright, soft, powerful.

Sansa’s new mother carries her and her twin as if they weigh no more than goose-feathers. It doesn’t matter if she is sculpting, drawing, shaping a block of stone taller than she is — the moment one twin squeaks, she is there.

Nerdanel drops her tools and scoops them both up without a scrap of hesitation. Arms strong, embrace stronger, voice soft enough to melt stone.

Sansa curls into her chest and thinks:

This is not Catelyn Stark.

And the thought feels like a bruise pressed too hard.

Because her lady mother had loved her.

Loved her fiercely.

Had given up the Lannister hostage… given up the war itself — for her daughters.

No one can say Catelyn Stark did not try.

But Catelyn’s love was winter sunlight — pale, stretched thin, fighting its way through so many layers of fear and duty.

Nerdanel’s love is midsummer.

It burns warm and bright and immediate.

There is no thought of propriety.

No fear of being seen as unfeminine.

No worry of how a crown princess or a lady ought to behave.

Nerdanel laughs with her whole body — loud, ringing, delighted.

She works with her hands until they are dusted with marble flakes.

She hoists boulders bigger than herself across the floor because she feels like sculpting in that direction instead.

Sansa is sure that somewhere, somehow, Catelyn Stark would faint dead away.

It happens on an ordinary day — if days in Valinor could be called ordinary.

Sansa sits propped against her twin while Nerdanel studies a block of stone the size of a horse. She tilts her head, hums a little tune, then decides it must go elsewhere.

She crouches.

She grips.

She lifts.

Stone rises.

Sansa’s eyes grow round as moons.

Her twin squeals.

Their mother laughs — laughing harder when the twins try to imitate her by lifting their hands.

She carries the boulder across the room, sets it down with a thud that shakes Sansa’s toes, and murmurs to herself about “better light” and “a clearer angle.”

Sansa has never seen a woman lift more than a basket of laundry.

This… this strength —feels like magic.

It feels like freedom.

It feels like safety.

Catelyn Stark had brushed her daughters’ hair with steady, careful hands.

Nerdanel braids Sansa’s hair with fingers that smell of clay and sunshine, humming softly, weaving strands the way she weaves ribbons of bronze into her sculptures.

Catelyn had dressed her in gowns chosen for alliances and comportment.

Nerdanel wraps her babies in soft towels, still smelling of heat from the sun, and kisses their foreheads because she simply wants to.

There is no “ladylike.”

No “sit straight.”

No “mind your words.”

There is only:

“Come here, my sparklet.”

“Hold your brother.”

“You are lovely as the stars today.”

“Let me see your smile.”

Sansa melts into it every time.

And feels guilty for loving it so much.

But her mother holds her as if guilt is something she can sculpt away, something that will crumble beneath her fingertips.

One day, Nerdanel lifts Sansa high — higher than her father lifts her, until Sansa is eye-level with the shimmering light that pours through the workshop windows.

She taps Sansa’s nose.

“Nariellë. My bright one.”

Sansa blinks.

A name.

Her name.

Not “little one,” not “child,” not “Little bird.”

Not a pet name whispered in rushed goodbyes during war.

A true name, shaped with love and meaning.

Bright one.

Clear one.

Light-born.

She giggles, presses her forehead to her mother’s, and whispers it back in her baby voice — or tries to.

Nerdanel beams, the way a sculptor beams at the first perfect line on unmarred stone.

Beside her, Ambarussa squeaks indignantly until he is lifted too.

Nerdanel tucks one child on each hip and says their names like a spell that binds them all together:

“Nariel. Ambarto. My twins of fire and dawn.”

And Sansa feels it...

deep, warm, permanent.

This mother would fight the Valar, the fates, the gods themselves.

She would fight the world.

She would fight even death.

Catelyn Stark tried.

Nerdanel would succeed.

And loving her isn’t a betrayal.

It is a new beginning.

Chapter Text

Sansa learned quickly that in this new life, fire was not a danger. It was a comfort.

Her mother was a hearth-flame…warm, crackling, folding her children into her arms like they were made of spun sugar.

But her atto …

Her father was a blaze.

Fëanáro burned with brilliance even when he was still, and somehow he poured that brightness gently into his children, as though the fierce fire of his spirit softened into gold the moment he looked at them.

He spent more time with the twins than she expected any father to. In Westeros, fathers loved from a distance—behind titles, behind duties, behind the walls of wars and winters. Here, Fëanáro was present in every breath of her day. He rose before the light touched the windows, lifting her from her cradle with hands that could craft wonders and destroy kingdoms but held her like she was the most fragile treasure ever forged.

He insisted on feeding them himself. He carried them everywhere as if his arms were made to cradle them alone. Ambarussa hung off him like a mischievous spark. Sansa, Nariellë now  was always nestled close to his chest, where the steady thrum of his heartbeat felt like a lullaby.

He taught her letters before she could even sit straight. He guided her hand through ink with infinite patience, murmuring ancient lore and bright histories as if she were already old enough to understand. He spoke to her like she mattered. Like her curiosity was a jewel he wanted to polish.

When she tried to be the lady she once was… prim, careful, unwilling to scatter toys, he didn’t sigh or urge her to be like other children. Instead, he studied her, eyes glinting with interest, and then carved for her something new: smooth, shining blocks in brilliant colors, each polished and perfect.

He saw the way she lined them up, edges aligned, colors sorted, everything in precise order. He didn’t think it strange. He thought it remarkable.

“You seek harmony in shape,” he told her, voice warm. “A maker’s mind.”

And then he made her more—different shapes, different patterns, toys crafted not to be thrown about, but arranged, understood, admired.

It felt like being seen for the first time.

She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she wasn’t.

Fëanáro adored her. Not the idea of her. Her. He praised the shade of her hair, like flamelight through copper and the shape of her eyes… echoes of his mother he had lost long before. He lifted her up as if she were something sacred, something perfect. And when he spoke of his daughter, pride spilled from him naturally, overflowing without restraint.

He never loved Ambarussa less. But even Ambarussa, with all his chaos and laughter, accepted that she was their father’s shining one. His jewel. His star.

And instead of feeling guilty, she felt warm all over.

Still… there were moments when she thought of her first father. Ned Stark, carved out of quiet honor and winter resolve. He had tried. Gods, he had tried. She loved him for it, loved him for doing his best in a world that gave him no easy choices. But his love had been a steady, silent thing—a shield he held up even when she never saw him lift it.

Fëanáro’s love was nothing like that. His love was loud, fierce, endless. He loved like the sun… bright, inevitable, all-encompassing.

Was it betrayal to love another man as her father?

The thought hurt her. But not enough to push this new love away.

Because Eddard Stark would never begrudge her more love. He who stood unmoving as a mountain would understand that hearts were not small, that they did not fill up and stop. Sansa had room. So much room.

And when her atto bent to pick her up, because she tugged his sleeve, because she wanted him, his hands were warm, his arms sure, and she felt safe. Safer than she had ever felt.

Her twin cackled on the floor, knocking over something he definitely shouldn’t have touched. Fëanor laughed, a full, rich sound that filled the room like heat. Then he looked down at his daughter with eyes that held a universe of devotion.

Sansa pressed her cheek to his chest and let herself believe—truly believe—that this father would let the world burn before he let her be harmed.

Not for honor.

Not for duty.

Because he chose her. Because she was his.

Because his fire, for once, warmed instead of consuming.

Chapter Text

Sansa never had an elder brother who embodied safety.

Robb was beloved, yes, but he had been a boy leading boys into war. Bran was a dreamer. Rickon was wild. Jon was a shadow of longing. Theon was half-brother, half-storm.

But Maitimo—

Maitimo was something else entirely.

He was warmth shaped into a person.

The first time she remembered seeing him clearly, he was leaning over her cradle, the light of the tree caught in his red hair, eyes soft as dawn. Everyone said there was no elf in Aman better shaped, better made, better tempered—his mother’s perfection wrapped in his father’s fire, softened into grace. Maitimo to the Noldor was what the first light was to the world: a sign of beauty, promise, and presence.

To Sansa, he was simply the safest place she had ever known.

She had an army of brothers now, but it was Maitimo’s arms she ran to when she scraped her knee. He lifted her as if she weighed less than a song, examining the wound with the care of a healer and the worry of a father. He cleaned it with gentle fingers, humming under his breath—some old tune older than memories—soothing her even before the sting faded.

She never compared him to anyone in Westeros.

There was no point.

There had never been anyone like Maitimo.

Makalaurë was the soft-voiced one, but it was Maitimo—the tall, broad, steady eldest, who made her feel like the world could not touch her if he stood in front of it.

He was sunshine through red leaves, he was the heat of a forge without the burn, he was the quiet steadiness she had never known she had been missing.

Every morning, she waited for him.

And every morning, he let her braid his hair.

Others laughed at the idea—little Nariellë with her tiny hands and her great concentration, taming the long copper-red waterfall that nearly glowed on its own, but Maitimo never once looked anything but honored. He knelt to be level with her, bowed his head, and let her twist the braids however she wished.

“You do it better than all the maidens of Tirion,” he always said, which made her glow like embers suddenly stirred.

In return, he braided hers—gently, slowly, fingers careful not to snag, not to tug, not to hurt. He was patient even when Ambarussa flung mud or paper or tiny carved stars at them just to see what would happen.

Maitimo never snapped.

He never scolded.

He only smiled, shook his head with fondness, and cleaned up every mess.

It became clear that he was half a father to the rest of her siblings. Maybe because he had been the firstborn son of the House of Fëanáro, maybe because his gentleness was woven into his bones—or maybe because he simply loved them that fiercely.

Sansa remembered the day she tried to sculpt.

She had gathered leftover clay from her mother’s workshop, much… too much for someone her size. She decided to make a direwolf. It had felt urgent, and she didn’t understand why, only that she had to. The clay ended up everywhere—her dress, her arms, her hair. She looked like a small, damp creature dragged out of the river.

Maitimo found her sitting in a puddle of mud and ambition, the world’s saddest clay wolf flopped beside her.

He didn’t laugh.

He knelt. He wiped her cheeks with his sleeve. He gathered her in his arms without a moment’s hesitation, as if she were precious no matter what state she was in.

And then—gently, meticulously, he worked through every strand of her hair, cleaning clay from each curl without snapping a single one.

Anyone else would have cut the tangles out. He refused.

“You are too lovely to lose even a hair this way,” he murmured.

She remembered crying into his tunic—not from hurt, but from something like relief.

Later, he placed her clay wolf on a shelf in his room.

He never let anyone touch it.

And then there was Ambarussa .

Fëanáro’s forge glowed like the trees, forbidden to children but irresistible to any child with curiosity and a lack of fear. Her twin had both. He wandered in one day, climbed onto a worktable, found a perfect diamond her father had left… and tried to eat it.

“It sparkled,” he later explained, completely unrepentant.

Maitimo found him with the gem halfway in his mouth.

Most would have panicked.

Maitimo simply sighed, plucked the diamond out with one finger, and tucked Ambarussa under his arm like a wayward parcel. He scolded him gently on the way home, voice warm and exasperated, while her twin wriggled and giggled the entire time.

Sansa watched all of this with a swelling heart.

She loved her father, Fëanáro’s, with awe. She adored her mother, Nerdanel, with devotion. But the love she felt for Maitimo was something quieter, deeper, something that rooted itself beneath her ribs.

He was the brother she never had in Westeros.

The brother she would have dreamed of.

The brother who made her feel small in a good way—protected, cherished, unhurt.

Maitimo did not bring ghosts.

He did not remind her of loss.

He did not echo the tragedies she’d lived before.

He was all light. All presence. All warmth.

And every day, Sansa loved him a little more.

Chapter Text

If Maitimo was light and warmth,

Macalaurë was melody.

Sansa loved him... of course she loved him but loving Macalaurë was like loving a star’s reflection on water: soft, distant, always shifting, always slipping through her fingers.

He did not mean to be gone so often. It was just that music lived in him like breath. It never left him alone. He hummed while walking, sang while eating, tapped out rhythms even in his sleep. Sometimes, when he was truly carried away—his voice echoed through every corner of the house until the walls themselves seemed to vibrate.

Sansa, who had never carried a tune in her life, both adored and envied him.

She could play instruments, yes, harp, flute, even the small lap-lyre her father—Ned Stark had carved for her from the weirwood, when she was barely old enough to hold it correctly. But she had never made music beautiful. Not the way Macalaurë did, shaping sound into something living, something luminous, something as delicate and impossible as silk spun out of starlight.

When he played, even the Ainur listened.

It bewildered her at first. Gods that walked? Gods who paused to hear her brother’s song? She had known only the old gods—quiet, remote, watching through weirwood eyes and never speaking aloud except in visions that broke boys apart. She had known gods who meddled, who demanded, who punished.

But here…

Here the Valar strolled through Tirion like benevolent giants, gentle and curious. Here whispers spread that Varda herself had smiled upon Macalaurë’s voice. Here the Maia came to his recitals just to hear how he shaped the air.

And Sansa watched this with awe.

This was not the world of Westeros.

This was a world where creation itself was worship.

Yet she rarely saw him.

Macalaurë lived with the musicians and scholars, coming home only in bursts—floods of laughter and sound, carrying new compositions and half-finished verses and the scent of open air. When he was home, he spent most of his time with Maitimo, two brothers so close in heart that they sometimes did not need to speak to understand each other.

Still, he tried.

Tried to be a good brother to the only little sister he had ever known.

Tried, and often failed, in the most endearing way.

He simply had no idea what to do with a little sister.

He knew how to handle little brothers—he had four of them, and half the time they behaved like small, exceptionally clever disasters. But a sister, delicate and cherished and precious to the whole house…

Macalaurë was eternally confused.

One moment he treated her like she was made of glass. The next he forgot she was not one of the boys and tossed her up into the air like Ambarussa or Curufinwë, only to have a horrified Nerdanel yell his full name from across the courtyard.

“SHE IS LITTLE! PUT HER DOWN!”

Macalaurë froze every time.

Every. Time.

He always obeyed.

He always panicked.

He always apologized far too dramatically.

And Sansa always forgave him.

She had always known why they all worried so much. Her first breath in this life had been a fragile thing, whispered about even now.

So she tried to shine a little brighter, hoping it might ease the fear they still carried.

After all, how could she not?

Especially on the nights when the past clawed its way into her dreams.

Those were the nights when she slipped from her bed, shaking, breath tight in her throat. Nights when Bolton’s hounds howled in the darkness behind her eyes. Nights when she saw Rickon falling, Bran screaming, wolves dying, the Red Keep burning, the world collapsing under Lannister gold and Stark blood.

She never told Maitimo.

She never told her parents.

She told no one.

She only went to Macalaurë.

He never asked questions.

He simply sat up, pulled her into his arms, and started to sing.

Not grand compositions.

Not court ballads.

Not the pieces that made the Valar pause.

Soft songs.

Songs of rivers and leaves and peace.

Songs of children chasing butterflies.

Songs of home—not Winterfell, not Tirion, but a place that existed only in the safety of his voice.

He sang until her trembling stopped.

He sang until her breath steadied.

He sang until sleep gathered her up again.

And then he kept singing, even after she drifted off—just in case the nightmares tried to return.

Sansa adored him for that.

She loved him like one loves moonlight—soft, gentle, always there when darkness came. He was not the brother she ran to in the day. He was not the steady guardian that Maitimo was, not the patient teacher that her atto was, not the fierce shield that her amme was.

He was her shield against the night.

Her confused, too-loud, too-dramatic, musically obsessed brother,
who didn’t know how to braid a girl’s hair,
who didn’t know how to talk to her half the time,
who frequently forgot she wasn’t one of the boys...

but who never let her face her nightmares alone.

Little by little, he learned.

Little by little, she grew to treasure every baffled, awkward, tender moment.

Macalaurë may have belonged to music.
But the softest songs he ever sang belonged to her

Chapter Text

Tyelkormo the Fair is, without contest, the one who steals her breath the easiest.

Not because he tries. He is simply like that, brighter than sunlight she no longer has, wilder than any boy she grew up beside, golden in a world lit only by Trees.

And she envied him terribly.

Not because of Huan… though, perhaps, that too, but because of his hair. That shimmering, bright gold-silver threaded with glints like freshly hammered mithril. A color that caught the light just so and made her heart twist. It reminds her devastatingly of Daenerys, beautiful in a way that is almost sharp, but Turkafinwë wears that beauty like a wolf wears its pelt, thoughtless and effortless and entirely unaware of its effect.

Other times she desired it because it felt like a promise of who she could have been had her life not been written in red, red, red. Her family always called her fiery hair “unique,” a wonder, a jewel, but it wasn’t the color she wanted. Not when Turko walked in trailing starlight from his braids.

He is never home, not truly. Oromë’s hunts claim him for days, sometimes weeks, and he returns smelling of wind and long grass and some indefinable “outside” that feels like Winterfell’s forests if one squints hard enough. And because of that, he becomes her favorite without anyone noticing... perhaps even without Sansa noticing at first.

But the true reason is Huan.

Huan, great-hearted and solemn-eyed, who has nothing in common with Lady except loyalty, except warmth, except the simple miracle of being there. Sansa throws her arms around Huan’s neck the very first time they meet, burying her face into his thick fur just to remember what it felt like to be understood without words. Huan chuffs softly and leans into her, as if he knows. Of course he knows.

And Turko… golden, wild, dirt-smudged Turko watches her cling to Huan with a kind of bewildered tenderness, as though he cannot fathom someone loving him through his hound, yet that is exactly what happens.

He always brings her something when he returns. Never the grand things her father showers her with—not jewels, not silks, not the wrought wonders that the Noldor craft by hand. Turko’s gifts are smaller, quieter: a flower pressed in a book because it reminded him of her hair, a piece of polished bone shaped into a bird, a feather caught in Huan’s fur from some impossible creature. He leaves them without fanfare, as though they fell from his pockets by accident, but she knows better.

Gifts chosen because he had thought of her while wind was biting at his cheeks and branches snapping beneath his boots.

And Sansa treasures each one more fiercely than rubies.

Because Turko is the most Stark of her brothers, even without meaning to be—the wild one, the one who runs, the one who comes home scraped and scruffed and triumphant. He is Rickon’s laughter and Arya’s untamable restlessness and even a shadow of Jon’s quiet steadiness when he sits beside her and lets Huan rest his enormous head on her knees.

He shines like a legend, but he loves like a boy.

And that, Sansa thinks, is why he is secretly... quietly—her favorite.

Tyelkormo always moves like a creature half-made of wind... fast, bright, impossible to pin down until he decides to be caught. And this time, when Sansa, barely twenty years old in elf-years, (How strange, because in her first life twenty had been the age of battles, endings… death.) still small enough that her feet barely brush the floor when she sits, asks him why he is leaving again… something in him cracks a little.

She doesn’t mean to make him sad. She never means it. But her big, blue eyes go soft and watery and her little hands clutch the edge of his tunic like the world might end if he walks out the door.

It is devastating.

And Turkafinwë, son of Fëanáro, hunter of Oromë, golden child of the Noldor, is absolutely helpless against it.

“Ah,” he says, voice cracking just slightly. “Little squirrel… come here.”

He sweeps her up in his arms in one smooth motion, as if she weighs as much as one of the flowers she braids into Huan’s fur. Sansa squeaks, startled, and then giggles as he settles her on his shoulder... high, safe, the world suddenly huge beneath her dangling feet.

Before she can protest, Turko snatches a sheet of parchment from Makalaurë’s music desk and scrawls something cheerful and utterly unapologetic:

Dearest Mother, Father

borrowing Nariellë for a hunt.
She is perfectly safe with me.
Please do not let the others panic.

—Turko (and Huan).

Maitimo reads the note over his shoulder and sighs. Makalaurë looks up from his harp in despair.Ambarussa immediately protests.

“But I want to come too!”

“No,” Turko declares solemnly, lifting Sansa higher as if she’s a royal banner. “This is sacred bonding time. Brother and sister. Not brother and brother. You already have four other brothers.”

And with that, he spins on his heel, whistles for Huan, and marches directly out the door with the confidence of someone who knows very well that none of his family will bother to chase him.

Sansa learns more in the first hour than she learned in all her lessons combined.

She learns why Arya loved the saddle so fiercely.

She learns why Rickon laughed like a wild thing when the wind hit his face.

She learns why Robb called freedom a horse’s back.

Speed here is nothing like Winterfell’s fast ponies or even the great destriers of the South. Turko rides as though the land itself is bowing out of his way, and Sansa clings to his cloak and gasps, because the world is flying and she suddenly understands that freedom can be a physical force—something that lifts.

And then… she sees Him.

Oromë 

Oromë is the first Vala she meets, and he is nothing like the Old Gods.

The Old Gods whispered through leaves. They watched from weirwoods. They spoke in dreams and rivers and blood.

But Oromë stands right in front of her.

Towering, radiant, terrifying in the way a mountain might be terrifying if it suddenly decided to walk toward you. Power shimmers off him like heat over snow, and Sansa feels every inch of it. It presses against her ribs. It hums in her bones. It makes her aware... painfully aware of how tiny she really is in this shining, impossible land.

He turns his gaze toward her.

And for a heartbeat she wonders if he can see everything—her fear, her past, her broken pieces, her memories of a world where gods did not walk but still ruined everything.

She wonders if he can tell she is wrong.

A mistake.

Out of place.

But Oromë only smiles, and the Trees’ mingled light pools gold in the lines of his face.

“A daughter of Fëanáro,” he says, voice like the echo of a drumbeat rolling across fields, ancient and warm. “Be welcome in my company.”

He sees only what she is here.

Not what she was.

Not what she fears she might still be.

And that difference... small, soft, razor-sharp, plants the first seed of something heavy in her chest.

Not quite sadness.

Not quite awe.

Something like, If even the gods cannot see the truth of me… am I truly myself at all?

It is the first time insecurity curls itself quietly around her heart.

She must think too loudly, because Telko touches her shoulder gently, grounding her in an instant.

“You’re safe,” he murmurs, bending slightly so she can hear him over the rustling of Oromë’s great steed. “He likes you. Huan likes you. I like you. There’s nothing else that matters.”

Huan nuzzles her hand to second the opinion.

And somehow, it helps.

In the middle of all that impossible majesty, in the light of gods and the whisper of ageless trees, it is Tyelkormo —golden, messy, loud, ridiculous Telko—whose presence keeps her from being swallowed by her own fear.

He is her anchor in a world too large.

He is her brother before anything else.

He is the piece of home she didn’t know she needed.

Chapter Text

Carnistir is the first person in the household Sansa learns she must not approach directly.

It isn’t that he is unkind, none of her family are truly unkind to her, but Carnistir has a silence that feels like a wall. Not cold. Simply… impermeable. He sits for hours bent over ledgers, scrolls, tax codes, grain census sheets, analyses of trade routes, and abstruse mathematical treatises that even Makalaurë sees and quietly backs away from.

And Sansa, who once managed the North under war and winter, recognizes enough numbers to respect his focus but not enough to share in his passion.

Still, she tries.

Because she loves all her brothers with that instinctive, startled loyalty of a Stark, and she wants to slot into their rhythms—in whatever small ways she can.

And Carnistir, for all his prickly solitude, is the brother she understands the least. 

So she tries the hardest.

She learns quickly that asking him questions is useless.

He’ll answer, yes... but only in clipped, precise sentences, the sort that end conversations rather than begin them.

She tries sitting beside him while he works.

No reaction.

She tries helping him sort the ledgers.

He fixes one long, unimpressed look upon her and reorganizes every stack she touched.

So she adapts.

Instead of intruding, she simply finds a bright patch of light in his study—by one of the tall, slender windows, and settles there with Turko’s ruined tunic draped over her lap.

At first, she just means to mend the torn seams.

But her hands remember more than this life has taught her.

Winters.

Endless repairs.

A mother guiding her stitches by candlelight.

Years when warm clothes were life itself.

Her hands fall into familiar motion, weaving thread and memory into something far finer than a mere repair. A running wolf’s head emerges along the hem, its lines delicate as spider-silk, its eyes tiny chips of garnet that shimmer in the Trees’ mingling light.

She doesn’t notice how often Carnistir looks up.

She doesn’t notice that every time her needle flashes, his quill stops.

She doesn’t notice how his sharp, restless mind—so easily irritated by the smallest distraction, falls perfectly still.

All she notices is that this is the quietest room in the house.

And the safest place to work without Turko stealing back his tunics, or Ambarussa trying to help and unraveling everything, or Makalaurë humming a tune at a rhythm her needle can’t keep up with.

Here, her hands move freely.

Over the next days, Carnistir never asks her to leave.

One morning, when she finishes the wolf and folds the tunic with care, Carnistir finally speaks. “Where did you learn this Nariellë?” His voice is quiet but intent, sharper than any blade.

Sansa meets his eyes.

There is no safe way to answer truthfully.

Her past belongs to another world, another life.

“I simply… know how to do it,” she says softly.

Carnistir studies the stitches again. Something like awe flashes through his expression so quick she might have imagined it.

“Your fëa leans towards your craft,” he murmurs.

The words feel like a blessing.

Sansa does not know why Carnistir brings the tunic to Fëanáro.

What she does know is that the reaction is immediate and catastrophic.

She hears the shout from two rooms away, a startled, breathless yell, followed by the unmistakable crash of something expensive hitting the floor.

Before she can rise, her atto bursts into the corridor, hair wild, eyes blazing, the tunic held aloft like a holy relic.

His expression does something she has never seen on him—something raw, unguarded, luminous with shock.

Within a heartbeat, he is kneeling in front of Sansa, holding the tunic to his chest like it is something fragile and holy.

“Nariellë,” he breathes, voice shaking, “this… this is Þerindë’s craft. Your grandmother’s craft. The craft lost with her spirit.  yenya, how… how do your hands know this?”

Sansa flushes, overwhelmed. “I only mended what felt right…”

Fëanáro closes his eyes.

For a moment, he looks like a man struck by sudden, impossible joy.

When he rises, he does so with the blazing pride of a father whose heart has been split open.

“This is no mere mending.,” he declares, voice ringing through the corridor. “This… this precision, this balance, this life in the stitch... this is craft. Þerindë reborn!” He whirls toward Nerdanel. “Do you see? At last! One among my children has inherited my mother’s gift!”

Before Sansa can correct him, before Sansa can even think to—her brothers descend.

Maitimo beams like the sun.

Makalaurë looks two breaths away from composing a ballad or bursting into tears.

Turko nearly tears the tunic from their father’s hands to admire it.

Caranthir endures the chaos with his usual stoic, faintly offended expression. But beneath the faint scowl, there is a quiet, guarded satisfaction… as though he alone knew this was coming.

Curufinwe mutters feverishly as he tries to analyze the pattern.

Ambarussa  beg—loudly, for her embroidery on all his clothes.

They treat her stitches as if they were jewels.

They treat her… her… as if she’d performed a miracle.

And Fëanáro… Fëanáro looks at Sansa with a kind of fierce, luminous pride that makes her throat tighten. As though she carries some fragment of a grandmother she never knew. As though she has restored something lost.

Sansa swallows, warmth flooding her chest.

This life has given her many miracles, but this, being cherished this fiercely, this openly, may be the greatest of all.

The next morning, Sansa finds a stack of fine linen handkerchiefs folded neatly on her table. A note rests atop them, Carnistir’s handwriting sharp and exact:

If you require a quiet place for your craft,

my study is open.

Not affectionate.

Not elaborate.

But it is the warmest invitation he knows how to give.

Because Carnistir... aloof, analytical, fiercely private, saw her.

Truly saw her.

Not as a child, not as a princess, not as a novelty.

She smooths the linen and sets her needle.

Her past taught her to stitch for survival.

This life lets her stitch for love.

And she treasures that more than any jewel in Aman.

Chapter Text

Sansa’s fifth brother is the only one she grows up without.

In her earliest memories, Curufinwë exists only as a rumor. A shadow in the forge. A name muttered with fond exasperation by Maitimo, and with a long-suffering sigh by Nerdanel. A story Turko tells sometimes, about the brother who once tried to smelt tin and copper into a new bronze formula and nearly set half the courtyard on fire.

He is gone before she’s old enough to walk.

Gone in apprenticeship under Mahtan, her grandfather.

Gone deeper still in tutelage under Fëanaro.

Gone, apparently, into the heart of someone who matched him spark for spark, temper for temper, metal for metal—an apprentice-bronze smith who argued with him so loudly that even the Maia fled the workshop.

Sansa grows up surrounded by brothers, but Atarinkë is always the missing one.

The empty chair.

The voice she has never heard.

Until she is forty-five.

Still young, still the elven equivalent of a little girl... when the world shifts.

It is loud. The day he comes home.

Everything about Curufinwë is… is loud.

Not in the way Tyelkormo is loud—wild with joy and hunt-songs.

Not in the way Makalaurë is loud—music spilling everywhere like spilled honey.

No, Curufinwë is loud like metal striking metal.

Like forge-fire flaring when cold air hits it.

Like a mind too sharp to be contained in silence.

He storms into their home with no warning except a servant shrieking, “Prince Curufinwë has come home! And he brought—” But whatever else the servant meant to say is lost, because Fëanaro is already flying down the stairs, and Nerdanel is shouting at him not to run indoors, and Maitimo is laughing so hard he nearly falls off the railing.

And then he appears.

Curufinwë. Bright-eyed, soot-smudged, hair half-wild, hands full of gifts.

And behind him stands the woman who is clearly his intended, Arathelë, her arms crossed, her glare sharp enough to cut mithril. She was dressed in forge-leathers trimmed with bronze instead of gold, callused hands, smoke-touched braids, and the unmistakable biceps of a woman who wrestled metal for a living. 

Sansa thought she looked rather magnificent.

Sansa stands very still as her fifth brother drops his bags, storms forward, and hugs every single one of his brothers in a flurry of elbows and ecstatic greetings.

And then he sees her.

Then Curufinwë freezes.

Absolutely freezes.

Her brothers have described him before... brilliant, volatile, intense—but they did not prepare her for the way he stares.

“This is her? Our Nariellë” He demands it of the entire room, as if they’ve all conspired to hide her existence.

“Yes, Curvo,” Maitimo answers, laughing. “Our sister.”

He laughs aloud and ruffles her hair in a way that nearly knocks her over.

“You,” he declares, “are far too grown.”

And then, as if this is a failing she personally inflicted upon him, he adds, “I leave for a few years and you grow like a sapling!”

“I am forty-five,” she protests.

“You are a child.”

She remembered that when Curufinwë left, she’d been barely five—small, round-cheeked, hardly more than a toddling bundle of curls. Now she looked sixteen in mortal years, near grown by Westerosi measure, and certainly not the “child” he proclaimed to the room.

And he beams at her.

He beams like someone who has just been handed a treasure he did not know the world contained.

Then Curufinwë unstraps a bundle from his belt.

A box, slender, beautifully forged, decorated with spiraling designs that shimmer with the light of the Trees.

He flips it open and draws out a small dagger.

It is elegant.

Perfectly balanced.

The sort of tiny blade that could cut parchment… or a throat.

“For you,” he says proudly. “A letter opener.”

His intended, Arathelë, stomps forward immediately.

“A what?”

“A letter opener,” he repeats, innocence dripping like honey off his voice.

“You gave a weapon to a child!”

“She is not a child. She is forty-five.”

“She is a baby!”

“Her hands are steady... look at them!” He grabs Sansa’s wrist and shows her hand to the room with brotherly pride. “Perfect grip. Natural balance. She can defend herself.”

“She does not need to defend herself, Curvo!”

Sansa watches them argue in circles, both of them forging each sentence like metal being hammered into shape.

Curufinwë fires back,  “She must be armed!”

Arathelë retorts, “She must be SAFE!”

“She is safe because she is armed!”

“Curufinwë, give me that dagger!”

“No!”

“CURVO!”

Sansa stands between them clutching the dagger...the letter opener, and is struck by two sudden realizations.

Curufinwë loves violently. Entirely. Like fire that has found something it refuses to burn away.

His beloved loves him exactly the same way.

And suddenly the peaceful house she grew up in becomes a forge at full blast, heat and sparks flying. And, she sees the last missing piece of her family—not a quiet scholar like Carnistir, not a gentle musician like Makalaurë, not a bright sun like Maitimo, nor a wild wolf like Tyelkormo, nor the free spirit like Ambarussa

Curufinwë, is all his fire and noise, makes the house vibrate with life.

And Sansa, clutching her new “letter opener” to her chest, thinks:

This is what a family sounds like.

Not peace.

Not perfection.

But warmth, noise, chaos—

and love loud enough to fill every corner.

Chapter Text

For fifty years the House of Fëanaro had lived in blissful, industrious exile in his forge-district manor, a place where day starts to the sound of anvils, where walls glowed with heat, and where no one remembered the stiff silences of court unless absolutely necessary.

The twins had been presented at the Court, once before — newborn and swaddled in soft fabrics, held up before the court like rare jewels.

Sansa remembered none of it.

Ambarussa remembered even less.

This would be the first time they walked into court under their own names, their own shapes, their own chosen attire. Their first step into the eyes of Aman as people — not miracles, not infants, not whispered prayers of “may she survive the night.”

Sansa did not know… not truly, how close she had come to fading as an infant.

She did not know how her father had stopped sleeping for weeks, nor how her mother had sung healing songs until her voice nearly broke.

She did not know how her brothers had been commanded by Fëanaro, by love, by fear, to stay close, to keep her warm, to keep her in laughter, to keep her in light.

All she knew was that she was adored.

But that adoration had roots in terror... the terror of losing a daughter who came into the world too quiet, too cold, too shadowed.

So even now, even fifty years later, her father piled jewels on her with trembling devotion, and her mother kissed her forehead as if reassuring herself she still breathed.

Now they were fifty… the age when immortal bodies settle into their lasting form.

That day was the twins' first formal debut at the Court as the prince and princess of Ñoldor.

And so, naturally, her atto decided this meant war.

Well… presentation, but to Sansa, and to everyone trapped inside the manor that morning, it felt very much the same thing.

Sansa had taken to the preparations like a fish to water or more accurately, like a spark to tinder.

Her father had created an entire jewelry set for her over the past decade: a matched ensemble of woven mithril and tiny opals that shimmered with inner fire. There were seven whole versions of this same set because he could not decide which pattern best expressed her “luminous essence.”

In everyone else’s words: he had gone fully, gloriously, Fëanaro.

Sansa sat on a cushioned stool while jewels were layered onto her in precise, obsessive sequence. Each time she thought they were done, her father would dramatically halt everything and replace three pieces because the tones were “one shade off.”

Sansa — Nariellë now, sat happily as jewelry was layered, adjusted, debated over, and replaced.

She loved this.

She loved the rules, the elegance, the tradition.

She loved the feeling of being shaped into finery, of stepping into the world as something properly presented.

Her twin, meanwhile…

…was plotting rebellion.

Ambarussa, who cared for freedom more than spectacle, who had always been happiest in the treetops or the rooftops or anywhere he wasn’t supposed to be, now stood between Matimo and Carnistir like a prisoner about to be sentenced.

“I’m going without jewelry,” he announced, in precisely the tone heroes used before leaping off cliffs.

The entire household froze.

Without jewelry.

WITHOUT JEWELRY.

Turko dropped a comb.

Makalaurë gasped.

Curvo swore in three languages.

Carnistir opened his mouth, closed it, and opened a taxation ledger out of stress.

In Eldarin court fashion, that was not simplicity... it was nudity.

A prince showing up bare-necked and bare-handed?

They’d faint.

The heralds might die on the spot.

“It will be,” Turko muttered, “it will be a scandal written into song.”

“Why not?” he insisted. “Let them stare. Let it be a new fashion.”

Sansa just laughed, bright and warm.

Her twin.

Her wild, beautiful, boundary-breaking twin.

At last, after a morning of chaos and familial shouting:

Sansa watched Ambarussa tug irritably at the embroidered collar Fëanaro had chosen, the copper-threaded patterns that shone under the light.

Even without the jewelry he refused, he looked princely, every stitch perfect.

Utterly perfect.

And completely miserable.

She smothered her amusement behind elegant fingers.

The contrast between them had always been a source of quiet delight:

She loved rules; he broke them for breakfast.

She loved protocol; he danced around it.

She shone through adornment; he shone through freedom.

In all the chaos, her eyes kept drifting to Ambarussa  — her constant, her other breath.

Her twin knew her secrets before she did.

Knew the shadows she sometimes slipped into.

Knew the memories she hid — the ones she shouldn’t have had in this life.

He never told anyone.

He never would.

He guarded her heart the same way she guarded his freedom — fiercely, quietly, absolutely.

If the world narrowed to one soul, she would choose him.

And he her.

That truth hummed between them stronger than any jewel their father crafted.

And she would not trade him for anything in Arda.

Not for all the jewels their father could forge.

Not for all the stories their mother could sculpt.

Not for the approval of the court.

He was her other half, the twin who understood every tremor of her spirit, the one who knew she sometimes woke from dreams too old for her age.

He pulled her out of shadows.

She kept him grounded in the world.

Together, they made sense.