Chapter Text
Sansa’s hands shook as she wrung out the rag she’d cleaned herself with. The blood was proof she was not with child… gods she could feel everything cracking at this singular threat removed. But then it wasn’t just this, it was having Jon back, it was Ramsey being gone, it was the Dustins and Ryswells leashed, the Ironborn runoff, that horrible flickering hope. A tiny flame she’d thought lost. It was seeing that nothing but scars would linger from Ramsey, already the physical pain had faded almost entirely a few weeks ago. But that this last, possible, horrible hook he might have had in her had never been planted.
She felt sick, nausea rolling in her gut. Sansa thought she might puke. Her breathing was shaky, her sweat felt cold as her body nearly shuddered from it all. It was going to be alright, it might actually be alright. But oh, she was going to puke, a retching shiver raced up her spine, but she refused to bend to it. Instead, she fought back the rolling tide of nausea and horror and memory and terror. She couldn’t stop the silent tears spilling down her cheeks.
Her feelings did not control her. She refused to let them control her. This wasn’t the time or place to be weak. It wasn’t safe. Nowhere was safe, but Barrowtown was certainly not. It was stupid, this shouldn’t be affecting her like this. It wasn’t safe. Someone could see, could realize that she was weak. And then there was a shearing sound of metal snapping and movement.
Sansa almost jumped out of her skin as she turned, the window blew open, Daisy rolling to a stop before coming to her feet. For a minute the god was standing there, eyes sharp and looking ready to fight as her eyes swept the room. It was only after she’d checked the room that it felt like she was really seeing Sansa.
“Are you hurt? Do you need a Maester?” Daisy’s voice was quick, a soldier assessing the situation. Concern and readiness to slay whatever threat there may be painted across her.
Sansa let out a choked sound, her eyes wide. Because of course Daisy would come flying to her rescue now of all times. And then a strangled laugh, her head falling against one hand. She couldn’t stop the dying, desperate laughter that lacked any humor.
It was after the horrible laughter faded that Daisy paused, her entire posture shifted to be unthreatening, her hand hesitated half reached out, that Daisy spoke. Her voice was cautious, eyes wide, her head tipped ever so slightly to one side. “Sansa? What’s going on?”
“I…” Sansa half slumped against the table with a ceramic bowl on it. “I’m not pregnant.” It wasn’t as if Daisy was a fool, the realization of Sansa’s moonblood was hardly a thing she would miss given two seconds to think on what she had already seen.
Realization and horror spilled across Daisy’s face. “Ramsey?”
Sansa’s whole frame shuddered at the concern in the other woman’s voice. She sucked in a breath through her teeth, her knuckles turning white from attempting to hold herself up. It felt like something cracked open in her, her weakness was painted across her and all it brought was kindness. Sansa crumpled an agonized keen coming from her chest as she lost the last fragments of whatever had been keeping her on her feet.
Daisy jolted forward catching Sansa’s forearms, and holding her up before she could hit the ground. Her touch felt like a rush of living heat as she guided Sansa down onto the carpet. Sansa barely noticed it as horrible ugly sobs ripped through her. Her vision was utterly stolen from her by her own tears, her sounds were near howling.
The sound of wrecked sobs had long since faded, leaving them in the silent room, the only sound now the crackling from the fireplace. All that was left behind was an aching emptiness that left Sansa feeling hollowed out with something that might be relief. The moment didn’t feel real, a surreal air like a dream blurring the edges of reality. Sansa scratched at her left arm, a stinging like a light burn itching under her skin. She didn’t need to look to know that Daisy was there a few hands breadth away from her.
Sansa’s voice cracked, a hoarse quality to it from crying as she spoke. “You touched me. You haven’t done that since Ramsey.”
“I’m sorry? I know you don’t like to be touched, I just kinda acted.” Daisy’s voice was hesitant like she was unsure if she should apologize or not.
Sansa let out a disbelieving huff, staring at Daisy confounded by her strangeness. “I appreciate my knees not being bruised.” She looked at Daisy for a long moment. “Why are you still here?” Her fingers dug into the fabric of the blanket around her shoulders where it was wrapped over her left arm while she looked at the god that had sat with her while she ugly cried her guts out.
Daisy’s compassion was tangible. “Because no one should be alone when they fall apart.” She shifted slightly, looking at her cautiously before she asked the obvious. “Was pregnancy a worry?”
“Yes.” Sansa’s body tensed, and then she just slumped, what even was the point of hiding? She couldn’t look more pathetic, weaker if she tried to. So she spoke, her voice dull. “I took moontea but I never bled and I couldn’t be sure.”
Daisy shifted slightly. “If it’s ever a concern, ask me next time, please. I can feel heartbeats, even small ones.”
“I...I’m stupid.” Sansa replied as that truth sunk into her bones.
Daisy turned fully to face her with a quiet intensity. “You’re not stupid. Hell, I couldn’t do half the things you do. I couldn’t even keep a single team together and you’re forging a nation! You’re a better leader than me and I’m apparently a god. I don’t think that sounds stupid at all.”
Sansa stared into the fire, bitterness robbing any warmth from Daisy’s kindness. “I chose to be married to him. I didn’t want to, but it sounded like a chance and I let him convince me. I knew better, but I did it anyways and what good did it do? I may not carry his child or feel him in my body any longer but I carry his marks.” She spat out the last part. The self-hatred was hotter than the prickling sting in her arm.
Daisy wrapped her arms around her knees. “I don’t know what you went through. It’s not...but I do understand.”
“How? You’re a god.” Sansa was just exhausted, too exhausted to be angry at it.
Daisy didn’t reply immediately.
Sansa looked at her, the air left her lungs at the expression on Daisy’s profile, the god’s hand wrapped around her own throat as she looked into the fire. Suddenly Sansa wanted to take back her question.
“There was an ancient god, Hive.” Daisy’s voice was soft, a kind of forced emptiness. “He was a monster, needed human bodies to possess, to have physical form. But it wasn’t just his hosts he could control.”
Sansa was silent, but the weight of what she was being told hung in the air.
“I was the leader of a team of inhumans, demi-gods I guess.” Daisy scratched at the side of her neck, the pain and loss leaving her voice hollow with heartache. “Joey could melt metal, Elena could move faster than any arrow in the space between a heartbeat and the next, and then Lincoln. Lincoln controlled lightning. The gods that made us were the Kree, we were just cannon fodder for their wars. Powerful, human life spans, easy to enslave and control. At least they thought so at first. But they made Hive and he was the first of us. He could use the human dead as hosts for his mind. But he could enslave the other inhumans. Just a few seconds for his powers to latch onto you and it was like...every bad thing didn’t matter. He was what mattered. But he fought off the Kree, banished them from our world, and then turned to control it. The inhumans that weren’t under his sway banished and imprisoned him. And it worked, for thousands of years but then he got free. I...we were going to stop him. He couldn’t be allowed to conquer our world. But just seconds...I didn’t know, didn’t see him fast enough.”
Daisy kept speaking, her words stalling slightly in places as if she’d never put this into words before. “I was still me...but I was his. He needed blood so I gave him mine. He needed things from SHIELD, so I hurt my family, team for it. He wanted people dead so I killed them. I am dangerous, and he made me his weapon. He could have asked anything I’d have given it, done it. Been happy to do so. Andrew died to free me from Hive’s control.” She swallowed thickly with what was clearly pain.
“You didn’t choose that.” Sansa hurt for her, that the person beside her had suffered that despite being the kindest person Sansa had met. A person who’d burst in here looking ready to fight anything to protect her. Horror shouldn’t haunt her. Someone like her should never have been forced to go against everything she was.
Daisy blinked rapidly, her voice thick. “No, I didn’t. But when I went back to him, when I begged for him to take me back I did. I couldn’t live with what I’d done.” She ignored Sansa’s sharp inhale. “He couldn’t though, Andrew’s powers made it so I couldn’t be taken back. So I fought him, not to stop him, not to save people, but to make him suffer like I was suffering outside of his control. And I thought...I thought I could die, stop all of it. If I took him high enough, into the stars, and blew us up with well...basically wildfire. We’d be too high to be saved even if the explosion didn’t kill us. It worked.” Her throat closed then. “But Lincoln took my place. So no, I don’t know what it means to be raped. But understanding having your body not be your own. To not be in control of what’s done to you.” Daisy scoffed wetly then. “And then I guess there was the whole Fitz thing.”
Neither of them said anything then. Just sitting on the floor by the fire. The ugly, painful truth and rawness of honesty hanging between them.
Sansa broke the silence finally, her fingers digging into her left forearm, the burning went from her fingers to her heart. She shoved the discomfort down, she was too exhausted to worry about her body rebelling against her for an unknown reason. “I told Queen Cersei everything. I thought I was in love with Jeoffry, that being sent home would ruin everything. Instead, I gave her what she needed to destroy my family. I was just a tool after that, for the child I could bare for someone else to control the North.”
“It’s fucked up.” Daisy offered, succinct and honest. “They say it gets better, that you move past it.”
Sansa turned, facing her fully again, “Do you believe that?”
“Maybe?” Daisy shrugged, she looked so human it hurt in the flickering light. “I tried running from it, to get myself killed in a ‘noble’ way. Ended up half-dead chasing evil men with a demon. Didn’t help.”
Sansa made a sound of understanding. “My first husband would say to use it as armor so no one else can hurt you with it.”
“How’s that going for you?” Daisy’s voice had the faintest sarcastic lilt, but it didn’t feel mocking.
Sansa let out a fairly unladylike sound that was nearly a snort. “We’re here aren’t we.”
“And they aren’t.” Daisy pointed out like it was an offering of…something.
“Hmmm.” Sansa adjusted the blanket before settling again. “They all take and take. Sometimes it feels like there will be none of me left after it all.”
Daisy’s shoulders shifted with something like discomfort, her fingers pressing into the side of her neck. “I don’t have an answer to that. But I think you have more ahead of you than just being picked apart.”
It settled something, to hear Daisy’s words. The hollowness just a bit less gaping. It almost felt nice, the quiet understanding and companionship. Sansa wondered when the last time she’d felt just…comfortable was. Because it dawned on her that was what this was. Here, sitting next to a living god that was more human than most actual mortals, was the calmest she’d felt in…longer than she could remember.
Sansa hissed, reaching up and scratching over her heart, rolling her shoulder. The burning sensation wasn’t stopping. She startled slightly at Daisy’s hand gently touching her wrist. She looked up at the other woman. “Sorry, it’s just an itch.”
“Scratching won’t help, it’ll pass. Probably another hour.” Daisy ducked her head slightly.
She frowned slightly, there was a thread there. “Daisy, how can you know that?
“You or I guess, we never touched before just a bit ago. At least, our skin had never been in contact, right?” Daisy was watching her, though refusing to meet her eyes for more than a few fractions of a heartbeat at a time.
Sansa likely should have been more worried, but at this point, the idea Daisy would hurt her felt ridiculous. “Why is that important?”
“The grey words on Jon’s neck, they’re because his soulmate died, right?” Daisy actually met her eyes then.
Sansa frowned slightly, that was…not what she was expecting. “Yes, words turn grey when our other half passes?”
“Fitz and I don’t have words, that’s not how souls find each other in our world. Here, in your world, it's the first words spoken between two people. For us, for us it’s not words, it's touch.” Daisy didn’t keep speaking, there wasn’t a need to, the implication of her words were clear.
Sansa swallowed, “I never had words.”
“It’d be kinda awkward if you did 'cause I’m about to have your soul painted up my back and the side of my neck. Which is going to be impossible to hide.” Daisy tapped at an area just curling at the edge of her jaw.
So it was going to be impossible to hide. “It won’t be words then?”
“No, the itching kinda burning feeling would be a mark forming. It’s different for everyone.” Daisy swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think this-” Her words cut off before she managed to keep going. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes turned to the floor, shoulders bowed, the fabric stretched over her shoulders was damp.
Sansa reached out touching Daisy’s shoulder in disbelief, the wool was wet beneath her fingertips. Somehow the fact Daisy was disheveled stood out. “You’re wet?” She should have noticed when Daisy had first appeared in the room but she hadn’t. Or perhaps it was the believable enough inconsistency it was easier to comprehend than just…the rest of it.
Daisy snorted but shifted slightly. “Flying. Probably depressing to just sit here in damp clothing though.”
Even as Sansa pulled her hand back steam rose as the fabric dried out. And she wondered what she was supposed to feel. She’d wanted nothing so much as to wake one morning with words written across her skin when she was a girl. Like Jon or Robb who’d always had marks that the gods had blessed them with. Here she was, the truth that had been all but stated outright sitting there between them. A truth Daisy must have realized that first moment she’d touched her. Sansa’d ignored the rush of warmth and thought it a part of her panic. But Daisy had to have realized what the truth of the sensation was. A truth she had not mentioned till it was becoming impossible to ignore. “If all it was was that first rush of heat when you touched me, would you have said anything?”
“No.” Daisy pushed some of her chaotically messy and frizzy hair behind her ear. “Not tonight at least? I don’t know about later, but I wouldn’t have said anything tonight.”
Sansa wiped at her face with the corner of the blanket. She was too wrung out to cringe at what a pathetic mess she was. The fact there was snot as well as mostly dried tears to wipe away was just miserably to be expected. Looking down at her left wrist she could see blue beginning to form the shape of intricate lines made up of what looked like it might end up letters. She wasn’t entirely sure.
Her eyes flicked to Daisy despite herself. The emerging black lines that disappeared under the god's collar were beginning to look suspiciously like the jaws of a wolf. But it wasn’t the fuzzy but darkening lines that had Sansa’s attention. It was just how…human she looked. Human and not really there, wherever her head was it wasn’t in the room. Daisy had a thousand-yard stare as she was looking at the mantle of the fireplace.
Sansa felt a sharp pang of self-recrimination. What was she doing? Of course, she was so completely pathetic anything close to dignity wasn’t even a possibility. But to just sit here in silence for gods knew how long? That was unacceptable. But what was there to say? The situation was absurd.
Daisy, no matter how human she could be, was a god. And not just a god, a terrifyingly important one. Not that Daisy had ever defined it specifically, but in the divine court Daisy held a position, almost certainly of a line of divine royalty. For Sansa and her to be bonded together was ridiculous. Sansa was a broken, used, and discarded mortal. It was horribly mismatched, a thing that shouldn’t happen. How could she apologize for her existence shackling a god to her?
It was certainly the end to her tiny flicker of hope for the future. Not that she’d had much hope. But it’d been something. A desperate hope to be able to stay in her home. To be a Stark, to have her brothers, to maybe live. That was no longer her place. Her place was where Daisy told her it was.
“I’ll get a scarf or muffler or something and someone has to have make-up or even just paint,” Daisy spoke into the silence startling Sansa slightly.
She looked at Daisy’s profile. “What?”
“Yours looks like it’ll stay where your clothing will cover it. I just have to cover part of my neck. It would give you a chance to…it’d give you time.” Daisy winced, tightening her arms where they were wrapped around her legs.
Sansa swallowed back hurt. She wondered which was worse, for Daisy to want or not want her? Not that there was a choice there, but Sansa didn’t know which she would wish for if she had the chance to wish for anything. “Of course, I could adjust something if you want.” Her words tasted of pain in her mouth. “What is expected of me? I do not know what you require of me.”
“Nothing!” Daisy startled looking at her, eyes widening. “Fuck, ok no. This is a mess and the timing is kinda terrible but we’ll figure something out but this is your world. Your rules, ok?”
The air caught in her lungs, and Sansa couldn’t even help as she replied. “What?”
“You’re the one with stakes here?” Daisy was looking at her uncertainly. “And you were married to a psychopath a couple of months ago. We’re sitting on the floor because you just found out you’re not pregnant from the piece of shit. I mean you wanted me to pretend to court you so you could avoid being pressured into a relationship. So what do you need me to do? I’ll do it.”
Sansa had no words for that as she faced the sincerity being shown in every gesture and expression before her. “I don’t know.”
Daisy nodded sharply. “Then we buy you time till you do know. A scarf won’t kill me.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I know alcohol doesn’t work on me but is there alcohol in here?”
That was something she could do. Sansa got up and walked to the armoire and pulled out the case of wine Barbrey had apparently kept hidden in there. “Let’s hope Lady Dustin has good taste in wine.”
“She just kept a whole crate of it in her dresser?” Daisy snorted, but easily accepted the crate, neatly ripping it open despite being nailed in place. She easily popped the cork out without touching it as she pulled a bottle of wine out.
Sansa accepted the bottle. “My first husband would have despaired at not being able to get drunk.” She winced, her stomach dropping slightly, mentioning having been married before to the person she was soul bound to was in horrible taste. It would be bad enough if the truth wasn’t as horrible as it was. It was a miracle Daisy was even willing to be in her presence knowing what she did.
“I haven’t been willing to risk it since I first got powers.” Daisy opened a bottle of her own, taking a swig. “My powers require control, made it kinda dangerous. Got drunk off and on after Lincoln died, but never enough to do more than hurt myself with my powers. I wouldn’t have risked other people.”
Sansa watched Daisy carefully, going over what the other woman had already told her about her powers before tonight. “Your bones?”
“Cracked ‘em pretty good.” Daisy had a wry look on her face.
She wasn’t entirely sure where the bravery came from, but she reached out, laying her hand on Daisy’s forearm. “I’m sorry you lost him.” She held back that Lincoln sounded like the kind of man who should have been bound to Daisy.
“So am I.” Daisy’s smile was sad. “He had a mark, it was a willow tree on the side of his leg. She’d died a few years before I met him.”
There was something tragic there, in the way that songs were. That a demi-god having found love again after the loss of his soulmate would rather die than suffer a loss like that again. Poetic till you lived it, then it was ugly and just hurt. She looked away from Daisy. “When I had no words by the time I was ten we knew I would never have them. If I’d known this was possible, well if anyone had known I wouldn’t have been betrothed.”
“Well if we’d had words our first meeting would have been awkward.” Daisy frowned. “Probably a good thing, didn’t I call you Lady Bolton the first time we met? That’d have kinda sucked to have written on you. And my handwriting is terrible.”
Sansa had spent her life in a world where remembering the first words a person spoke was ingrained into them. And that first meal with the Boltons and Daisy had been tense enough to have etched itself in her memory for all time. “You said ‘Your name was Sansa?’ the first time you spoke to me.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you with them, ever.” Daisy met her eyes. “I knew what Ramey was the first time I saw him. I’m not perfect, but I’d never have left you with him. Probably would have killed him a day earlier if we had words though.”
It wasn’t hard to believe, Daisy’d ended the Boltons at the first moment of their cruelty being enacted before her. And her soft spot for children was marked. Which wasn’t getting into Daisy’s everything else. It was idealistic and foolishly noble, but then it was becoming increasingly clear that described Daisy quite well. Sansa swallowed the too-sweet wine. “I believe you. I wouldn’t have then, but I do now.”
“Probably a good thing it was like this.” Daisy huffed, she shot an amused look at Sansa. “And considering who I came into contact with the most before I got here, I think this is best case scenario for me. Like I have def had nightmares about punching a Nazi and that doing it.”
Sansa felt a shiver at the thought of that. Of just touching a person, even an enemy and suddenly being bound to them. “What is a Nazi exactly?”
“Political terrorist group. They believe in control, power, and they don’t care how they get it, they’re monsters. They’d have gotten along with the Boltons. But they offer safety, purpose, and everything terrible is someone else’s fault. It's a lie, but vulnerable people do stupid shit.” Daisy took a long swig from her bottle of wine. “It's what Hydra is. And before I was here I spent the six months before that in space shaking down slavers and gangsters. So your political situation is a mess, and the timing is terrible, definitely complicated as hell, and even if we don’t work out, I’m glad it’s you.”
Sansa felt something softly warm at Daisy’s words. It was unfair how easily her words affected her. “How? I’ve been married twice, I’ve certainly humiliated myself before you, and you’re-” She gestured at Daisy unsure of what exactly was more confusing. That Daisy was a god or that she was kind.
“Uh, first of all, I don’t care that you’ve been married before.” Daisy’s gaze was fierce. “I care that you were hurt. Not whatever you think I should care about. And everyone breaks, you haven’t humiliated yourself, ok?”
Sansa had to look away as she nodded. Her mouth felt dry, and she’d been wrong. Daisy wanted her, or at least was considering it. But it didn’t feel like a threat that she did. Sansa’s eyes found her arm, the blue ink of swirling letters was clear now. She was unsure of what the strangely shaped letters and symbols meant even if she recognized some. They were in an outline of daisies winding around her arm and disappearing under her shift’s sleeve where it was bunched at her elbow. She looked at Daisy. “What does this say?”
“May I?” Daisy gestured to her arm.
Sansa held out her arm. “Please.”
Daisy’s hand was gentle as she touched her arm, her eyes trailing across the writing where it twisted and turned. A faintly disbelieving smile pulled up her lips. “It’s a firewall.” She looked up, meeting Sansa’s eyes. “A type of shield for protecting things. My soulmark on you is a shield made of daisies. That’s…wouldn’t have expected that.”
“It suits you.” And it did, for a representation of a soul that suited Daisy very well from what Sansa had seen.
Daisy dropped Sansa’s arm. “Want to see yours?”
“I would like that.” Which Sansa hadn’t expected she’d want to. But she did.
Daisy’s fingers immediately reached up as she began to unlace her aketon before shucking it to one side carelessly. She twisted so that her back was to Sansa as she yanked her shirt out of her pants and then shrugged it up and over her head. One hand casually pulling her hair over her right shoulder and off of where the black ink was.
Sansa had known, at least been able to guess from what was showing above Daisy’s collar, but seeing it was…different. “That’s the shape of my soul?”
“Yeah,” Daisy raised a brow from where she was looking at her over her shoulder. “It’s totally a wolf isn’t it?”
She reached out, her fingertips touching the solid black lines. “It’s Lady, if she’d been allowed to become grown.” The wolf was wrapped around Daisy. Sansa couldn’t see it, but she guessed the tail was wrapped around Daisy’s front just below her breasts. Lady’s back was wrapped over the upper part of Daisy’s back till her jaws were partially open in a snarl up the side of her neck.
“Lady?” Daisy asked.
Sansa pulled her hand away like she’d been burned. “My direwolf when I was a girl. The Lannisters had her killed.” And it burned in her chest to see that this was the picture of her soul. The proof she was a Stark to the fabric of her soul, that nothing had been able to take that from her.
“Can’t think of anything better to have on me.” Daisy pulled her shirt back on while turning.
She smiled in gratitude at the other woman. It mattered. The kindness mattered. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” Daisy said.
It was a lot. All of it was a lot. “I’m glad it's you as well.” She held Daisy’s gaze as she spoke, and she knew in this at least she’d spoken the right thing as a brilliant smile lit Daisy’s face. Sansa was scared, and she was unsure of what to expect exactly, but she thought she might be right to hope it would not harm her. It wasn’t much to hope for, but it was more than she’d had in years. For now, that was more than enough.
And when she woke the next morning, having clearly been carried and laid to rest there after falling asleep before the fire, water and note telling her to drink it beside the bed, she thought mayhaps she might be permitted to hope for more. Not today, not yet. But staring at the blue daisies that looked painted on her arm, maybe.