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It was a risk, it was among the most dangerous decisions Sansa had made, but should it work, she would never have to make most of them at all. She would never, technically, have made this one. She would never have been so desperate as to open time and return her mind and soul to the day she told the queen of her father’s plans.
She had her plan and all she could do is hope it worked.
She would beg of her father to explain why he was sending her and Arya away. She needed some way to disguise the knowledge that she should not have and this would have to how, there was no other way that people would believe of her then. She would listen intently and plead to help, to give guidance, she knew people and how to handle them, let her help him gather allies.
She wouldn’t tell Cersei this time, she wouldn’t doom him before it started, but she would have him tell Stannis Baratheon earlier. She would have him make an alliance with Renly. She would force him not to trust Janos Slynt. She’ll find a way to make him return to Winterfell with her and Arya as well. She will.
She knows the way forward, she knows it as certainly as if it has already happened, but she worries she’ll not be believed. Sansa was never obvious enough not to see how they saw her, that she was more childish than she should be, that she was frivolous and shallow, that she was too romantic for her own good. Perhaps she was, perhaps she is still, but that doesn’t matter now so much as getting people to listen as intently as she will seem to when she finally goads her father into telling the truth to her. Will he? Will anyone listen to her that actually has the power to prevent it all?
She has to believe so. If she despairs now, before any of it is even attempted, she will be doomed to failure and that cannot be. She has to keep hoping, hoping as fervently and grandly as she used to, because if she doesn’t, the battle is already lost and she will simply relive it all again but without the slight protection she once knew. She can’t let that happen.
This will work.
She won’t accept otherwise.