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He doesn't wear flowers in his hair. The sun doesn't glint so bright on his steel and he doesn't smile like a song. He is not his brother.
But there's a balcony on the east side of the Red Keep that overlooks the rocky crags where Sansa sometimes goes alone, when day fades into night or out again and the light sparkles on the sea like the Volantis jewels that Old Nan used to tell stories about, and waits. She throws flowers into the sea, plucking off petals one by one, and watches them flutter and drown and thinks far away, poetic things about jumping in after them. About getting out and away.
But then him.
Margaery holds her arm very tightly and whispers into her ear with her warm, tinkling voice and Sansa laughs and blushes prettily, deliberately and lets herself be introduced.
"Sansa Stark," Margaery says, "daughter of the First Men and flower of the North." She giggles with the words, brushes her cheeks with her eyelashes, makes it look very easy.
"A traitor's daughter," Lady Olenna says, with a spark in her eye and a curve of her mouth that suggests that she approves of this.
"How do you do?" Willas says. And he doesn't wear flowers in his hair and the sun doesn't so bright on his steal and - and he doesn't even truly smile, but. Here is salvation. He offers his arm and she takes it and Margaery lets her go like a father giving away a bride, clapping and chattering behind her, putting on the show of girlish excitement that she so loves to perform. There is hair growing on his fingers and he moves awkwardly, walks with a limp, his conversation genial, but uncolored, uninteresting.
She nods politely and smiles as charmingly as she can. No one said that salvation was beautiful.
Well, someone did, because all the heroes in all the stories sweep in and take the girl away, stranded and helpless as she is, and they run fast and ride strong steeds and smile just like a song. They are handsome and they are good and they save and renew, and Willas Tryrell is a decent man, surely, but - but that is all he is.
It's a crime to want for more, she's sure, but that doesn't stop her standing on the balcony, staring down at the sea, plucking petals, and imagining. It's not that far down, really - plenty of things are farther.
---
"I told him to bring you flowers, even handed him the bouquet, but he's too nervous. He keeps asking what you like to talk about and if you like to talk about anything, or just to sit and smile." Margaery stands behind her at the low table, running a silver comb through her hair - "A family heirloom, you know," - as Sansa examines her face in the glass.
She ought to feel insulted, but she cannot quite muster it. "That's unkind," she says, quietly, which makes Margaery laugh louder than is perhaps proper.
"You asked me the same about him not a day ago."
"I didn't," Sansa says. "I didn't say anything about him smiling."
The comb is beautiful and Margaery's fingers are long and thin and lovely and Sansa's face is clear and clean and bright and she should feel some pride, some sense of accomplishment in that, but she feels instead dull and far away from herself. As if she's at someone else, someone who's body she has borrowed for the duration but whom she's never even met before. She hadn't looked like this at Winterfell. "They grow up so fast," her mother used to say, and Sansa thinks, who?
Who is left to grow up?
"I told you," Margaery says, setting down the comb and using her fingers, "he's nervous."
Sansa sighs. "Does he even like me?"
"Do you even like him?"
Margaery forgets to take her comb with her when she goes and Sansa stays up half the night playing her fingers along its fine teeth and dreaming, airily and half-awake, of the sea outside.
---
And she thinks, who is left? And she thinks, what is salvation, exactly? And she thinks - and knows the answer to, and laughs quietly to herself while throwing petals into the sea - where have all the heroes gone?
She goes into the garden with a handmaid and picks a selection of roses. The girl winces every time Sansa almost pricks a finger, but she never does, of course, and all the worry is for naught. Sansa is many things, has become many things in her time here, but she not stupid and - and she does not bleed easily.
"Ser," she says, curtsying when she finds him with his grandmother, having tea in the south garden. That's all he does, have tea and go hawking. Of course, that's all Margaery does, too, and Sansa only manages half that much. They all do nothing and they are all stuck together for the duration, so she says, "Ser," to him and holds out her bouquet.
Lady Olenna frowns studiously, but Sansa knows well enough to tell when she is very pleased, and she is very pleased.
"For me, My Lady?" Willas asks, with a short, kind laugh. Sansa nods and he takes them with grace. He pricks his fingers on one of the thorns, he bleeds easily, and Sansa watches it. It drips on her dress. She considers fainting, just for effect, but it seems like a lot of trouble and she'd rather stay with him in the end, holding the bandage to his hand as they take tea in the garden and make plans to go hawking later.
---
She still goes up to the balcony on late nights and early mornings. Getting to love someone is not a slow-burn thing and instead comes in skips and bursts, half a decision and half an involuntary reaction, and then one day they're picking roses together, handing them off to each other when they find something beautiful, and he tells her stories about his ancestors from across the seas, about roaring battles and great loves from the histories.
"Why do you throw your flowers into the sea?" he asks her, the first time she takes him up to the balcony with her. The sun is setting, making warm glass fractures across the water as the ships come in and go out, setting back in the directions they'd come, splitting the view into beautiful, maddening shapes.
"Why don't you wear flowers in your hair," she asks him, with a quaint smile, "like your brother?"
And she thinks that's the end of it, the stop to the discussion, but then he's cupping her hand and slipping the bent stems out of her fingers - gently, too gently, so gently she's not sure how to feel - and tucking one of her flowers behind his ear.
He smiles, but not too wide, never too wide, and she smiles back. And this, this is salvation.