Chapter Text
The bells are ringing. The sound pervades every corner of the Red Keep, even the empty chambers tucked away in the back of the castle where she sits now, idly dragging her fingertips through the thick layer of dust on the floor. The room somehow seems more dangerous stripped of the Kingslayer’s things—without his white cloak spread out across a chair, without his sword leaning against the crimson blankets of his bed, without his golden armor gleaming in the soft light of the single window. With the window boarded up, the room sits in complete darkness. The bare, gray walls are oddly imposing even in the blackness, and the stone floor is always cold to the touch.
On her orders, her men tore apart the room, leaving no corner unexplored. Nothing had been found, of course. She took great care to remove the Kingslayer’s sole parting gift first—a folded piece of parchment addressed to Tyrion Lannister—before anyone but she and Father knew he was gone at all.
She isn’t sure why she chooses to hide away here, in this dark, dirty room that belonged to such a contemptible man. But when she can’t fake another smile or force any more sweet words from her lips, it is this room she finds herself running to.
“The bells are ringing, Your Grace.”
She pulls her hand away from the floor and frowns. It is too dark to see his face, but she recognizes the voice and the short, slender frame leaning in the doorway. “You don’t say?” she drones. She stands and slaps her hands together, watching the dust cloud around them and barely resisting the urge to wipe her dirty hands across the front of her dress. “I’m quite certain they can hear them all the way in the Vale, Lord Baelish.”
“Perhaps,” Petyr says, his white teeth flashing from the shadows. “But you asked for them specifically, if I recall correctly.”
“I did, didn’t I?” It is a decision she regrets now. She had hoped the bells would signal her excitement for the Northron party’s return, even if her Father would not be among them. Instead, it only feels like she’s celebrating when she ought to be mourning. Her rise to power meant she couldn’t leave the Red Keep to travel with Arya and Father to Winterfell for Robb’s wedding. It meant she couldn’t see Mother or Robb or Bran or Rickon again.
And she knows she won’t be seeing Arya or Father again any time soon. She asked her father to relinquish his title as Hand and return home. The day he and Arya left, she wrote to Mother, pleading with her to make Father see reason and stay in Winterfell where he would be happy instead of returning to King's Landing despite her orders. She knows he wanted to go home more than anything, and things hadn’t been the same between them since the night Jaime left. He never asked her about what happened, never asked her if she had any involvement in Robert’s death or the Kingslayer’s escape, and never mentioned her mumbled confession, but she could see his suspicions plainly. It proved too difficult to leave the memory of Robert and Jaime behind her and rule as a new woman with her father’s disappointed eyes following her every step. But now she finds herself praying under her breath he comes through the gates. She imagines him kneeling before her, holding her hands between his, and saying that even if she doesn’t want him as Hand, he won’t leave her to do this alone.
The white and gray banners of her father’s men—now her men—make her chest tighten. She thinks they must have been hanging all across Winterfell for Robb’s wedding. They would have looked beautiful against the dark stone and brilliant white snow.
Petyr seems to sense her melancholy, because he pouts his lips slightly and asks, “Do you miss your home, Your Grace?”
“Of course I do, Lord Baelish.”
“Lord Hand, you mean,” he corrects genially.
Only if my father does not come back. “Do you miss your home, Petyr?”
Petyr’s smile falters for a moment. She delights in his brief loss of control. It is only these rare moments that allow her to convince herself she has not gotten in over her head with this man. “Never. There is not much there to miss but stones and toothless women.” Petyr chuckles lightly and rests his hand on her shoulder. It might have been a comforting gesture from another man, but the press of his fingertips makes her skin crawl. “You’ll see them again soon, Your Grace, at your own wedding.”
At your own wedding. Since her father left, Petyr has tried to push a staggering number of men at her. She had been sure he would suggest himself as her new king the moment Robert fell and Father was not there to stop him, but the idea has not yet crossed lips. Once you know what a man wants, you own him. She’s never been completely sure of what Petyr wants, and now she is even less sure than she had been before.
What surprised her even more than Petyr’s apparent lack of interest in her hand was that a few of the names Petyr suggested actually appealed to her—sweet and pious Willas Tyrell, handsome and admired Harrion Karstark, and shy but capable Quentyn Martell. She thought the last thing she would want after Robert’s death and Jaime’s devastating confession was another husband, another man to break her heart, but with her family all in Winterfell, Jeyne pregnant and happily married, Myrcella and Tommen disappeared to some land across the Narrow Sea, and Margaery back in Highgarden, she has found herself terribly lonely. Rickard and Lyanna are the only things keeping her going, and she thinks it would be nice to be able to share their sweet smiles and amusing antics with someone other than Petyr.
“Your dress is awfully filthy, Your Grace. It’s distracting.”
She tried to keep her grimy hands away from the dress, but there are now unsightly streaks down the front of it regardless. She’s quite sure the back of her dress is just as bad, if not worse. She shakes out her skirts, but it has little effect. “Yes, well, perhaps it was not very queenly of me to sit on a dusty floor.”
Petyr’s eyes narrow slightly. Her voice is light, but he is clearly not amused. She also relishes these moments, when she disappoints him and proves herself not to be the perfect queen he has tried to craft her into over the years. She loves these moments nearly as much as she loves the moments when he looks at her with something akin to worship in his eyes, when she correctly picks out a dangerous lord’s motivations or soothes an indignant lady’s worries with a simple smile and gentle touch of her hand.
The gates are open, and the Northron party grows closer with each breath she takes. She tries to mask her emotions, but she can feel her eyes frantically searching the ranks of men for her father on his sturdy, brown horse. He is nowhere to be found. None of her family is anywhere to be found, and it feels like her heart is breaking in her chest.
Tears are pooling in her eyes, making it difficult to see much of anything. She does her best not to let any of them fall. She has no desire to see the inevitable disgust in Petyr’s eyes at her weakness or to make her subjects think she expected anything different from the Winterfell party’s return. It will not do well to have spurious whispers spread that her father has abandoned her.
But she will have to address them. It is a Queen’s duty to personally welcome her people into her castle, but she doesn’t trust her voice not to waver. She works to think up some excuse to flee the scene without speaking, some mysterious, feigned illness they won’t question, but a flash of black hair makes her mind go blank and her jaw fall open before she can. The girl is moving toward her as quickly as is possible without breaking into a sprint. Her eyes are a familiar, brilliant gray, but her skin is darker than Sansa remembers, no doubt from her months of travel.
“Sister.” The girl—no, the woman, it would seem by the way her muddy breeches now cling to rounded hips—folds her arms in front of her stomach and bows at the waist like a man would. “You look stunned.”
“Arya,” Sansa chokes, suddenly not caring who sees her cry. Of all her family, Arya is perhaps the person, aside from Mother, she most hoped would walk through the gates but least expected. “You’ve returned.”
A smirk stretches across Arya’s lips. “I have.”
Sansa lifts her arms to embrace her but stops short when she notices Arya’s eyes flicker to the side, to where Robert’s oldest bastard stands with his blue eyes opened wide in astonishment that could rival Sansa’s own. “Oh,” she whispers, her arms falling back to her sides. “Arya,” she begins, leaning forward to whisper in her sister’s ear, “If you’ve returned for Gendry, you must know that I would allow you to bring him North and that he would be more than happy to follow you all the way to Asshai if you wished it of him.”
Arya furrows her brow and looks at Sansa with a bemused, almost insulted expression. “I did not return for Gendry,” she whispers back. “I returned for you. Did you think I would leave you to do this alone? Even if Father cannot understand, I do. I would have killed that man a thousand times over if you asked it of me.”
Sansa can’t suppress the sob that escapes her lips, as she throws her arms around her sister and holds her close. Arya tenses and only weakly returns the embrace, but Sansa doesn’t care. If she had her way, she’d never let Arya go.
Joffrey has been missing for nearly a moon’s turn when Jaime finally gives up hope on ever finding the boy. The empty bed taunts him from the corner of the small, damp room he and Joffrey once shared. It makes him feel like a failure.
Make Joffrey a better man. That is what she implored him to do. And he thinks it’s what Cersei would have wanted as well. Joffrey had always been her favorite. She would despise Jaime for losing him to the fragrant but deceptively dangerous streets of Lys.
“I did my best,” he mumbles, as he rips the now dusty blankets from Joffrey’s abandoned bed. None of Cersei’s children—his children, he still has to remind himself sometimes—had taken particularly well to the truth of their parentage, to the revelation that they would never return to King’s Landing and their former lives again. Myrcella did little to hide her disgust and Tommen had cried and cried and cried, but Joffrey’s reaction had been the most disturbing. There was no rage in Joffrey’s eyes, no explosive temper tantrums like Jaime had expected. Instead, the boy simply refused to believe anything Jaime told him. Instead, he continued to insist on returning to King’s Landing and claiming the crown and throne and beautiful queen that were undoubtedly still waiting for him there.
“He boarded a ship,” Myrcella says from his door, arms crossed in front of her chest. Her unimpressed green eyes linger on the bare bed. “They told him they would bring him back to King’s Landing and make him a great king. That’s what the whores at the port are saying. He was so sure of himself that he didn’t even realize they were laughing at him. There’s no telling what they expected to do with him, what they are doing with him, but I rather doubt they have any plans to put a crown on his head.”
Jaime’s gut twists, more from the indifference in Myrcella’s voice than the possible gruesome fates of his eldest son. Neither Tommen nor Myrcella have shown concern over Joffrey’s disappearance, and he wonders whose fault it is that Joffrey turned out to be such a monster. “That’s what the whores told you, huh?”
“They see everything because everyone underestimates them.” The hint of admiration in her tone makes his stomach coil even tighter. Lys has changed Myrcella.
They have fallen into a comfortable, if simple, life in Lys. Their house is small and often damp with humidity, but it is close to the azure shore and the large windows allow the magnificent, sweet-smelling breezes of the city to flow through the rooms freely. Lys is strikingly different from King’s Landing, but the three of them are doing their best to adjust.
It is a city concerned chiefly with pleasure. Beautiful women and men strut across the crowded streets adorned in bright silks and thin gauzes that do little to hide the soft curves of the women and the muscular lines of the men. Beauty is currency in Lys, and Myrcella has proven the richest of the displaced Lannister clan, even with her hair dyed black as night. They cannot even walk through the marketplace without someone fawning over her and claiming he or she can make her into the most sought out courtesan in the East. Men and women will shower you with gold for only one touch of your lips, a strange man with strange tattoos curling across his entire body had claimed just yesterday. They will speak of your emerald eyes and raven hair even when the sands of time claim your body. They will whisper your name until the end days, my beautiful girl.
Jaime had flashed his sword and scared the man off quickly enough, making note to watch the girl—his daughter—more closely in the future. But it didn’t sit well with him that she has clearly been growing closer with the whores at the Lyseni port, a place where both crude sailors and refined foreign princes frequent.
“I would prefer you stay away from that crowd, Myrcella.”
“Kerra. That’s my name now, remember? And yours is Silas.”
Silas. He hates the name. It feels wrong whenever somebody utters it, even more when it passes his own lips. Jaime is what Cersei sighed when his lips dragged across her skin, Jaime is what Cersei panted when he parted her thighs, Jaime is what Cersei screamed out whenever he made her body tense and quiver like a drawn bow. Silas has never loved. Silas is not the man Cersei loved. Silas is a stranger.
“My name is Father to you,” he counters.
“Funny, you never wanted to be called such a thing before.” The quick, sharp retort surprises him. Myrcella has taken the best to their new home. She has molded a new person around the name Kerra. But what she doesn’t seem to realize is the more she grows into Kerra, the most she grows into her mother. He sees Cersei in the way her jaw clenches when she’s being stubborn, he sees Cersei in the way she flutters her lashes when she wants something from a man, and he sees Cersei in the flash of ambition in her eyes every time someone offers to make her the most powerful courtesan in the East.
“Myrcella—”
“Kerra,” she corrects through clenched teeth. “And this isn’t Westeros. Whores hold power here, the ones who are free at least. They are not so looked down upon. Some, especially the ones in Braavos, are even admired and sought out as much for their counsel as they are for their bodies. Courtesans, they call them.”
“Yes, Cella, I’ve heard the word often enough,” he grumbles. “Don’t let them fool you. They only—”
“I am not a woman easily fooled, Father.” And there is it is again. Cersei. In her narrowed eyes, in her balled up fists, in the impossible straightness of her back, and in her pursed, red lips. There is little of him in her, but he thinks he loves her best for that. She has her mother’s fire, but it is tempered enough to allow her to wield it more effectively than Cersei could ever manage. He wants to protect her, but, like Cersei, he suspects she would have little use for his protection.
Seeing Myrcella act so like her mother fills him with longing. It makes him long for Casterly Rock. It makes him long for the kiss of his sweet sister’s lips. It makes him long to feel Cersei's body pressed so perfectly against his own, like he remembers from when she used to sneak into his room as children, before kings and a war tore them apart.
It is his golden sister he longs for, but it is a redheaded whore he fucks. Who Silas fucks, at least. Never Jaime.
She is a sweet girl, with foggy blue eyes and a mysterious scar she refuses to explain running along her neck. She’s shy and blushes more than any whore ought to. She makes bawdy jests at times, but they are often more awkward than amusing, and it is clear enough they do not come naturally to her.
They never fuck in the dark, and they never fuck facing each other. He prefers to stare at the colors of her hair when he trusts inside her. He likes the way the light catches the warm golds and different shades of red that run throughout her thick locks. If the lights shine too brightly, the colors sometimes appear too dull, too muted, but if only a few candles are lit, as he insists upon, sometimes he can fool himself.
“Who is it you imagine when we are together?” she purrs in an accent he can’t quite place one night. It’s certainly not Westerosi, and he’s been in Lys long enough to recognize it’s not Lyseni either. He suspects there’s an interesting story behind this girl, but he’s never felt compelled to ask her for it. “Did you leave some great love behind when you came here?”
My great love died. It is not Cersei he imagines when he fucks her, never Cersei. There is no one who could fit against him so well that he could imagine her Cersei, even for a moment. And he knows his sister would curse him to all the seven hells if he ever dared imagine another woman her equal, if he ever dared sully the memory of their skin pressed against each other’s with another woman’s flesh.
“I lusted after a queen once,” he admits, caught off guard by his own honesty. I loved a queen once, he almost says, but even the thought feels like an infidelity, because Cersei was never queen to him, Cersei was always sister—Sansa is queen, and he cannot love both women. “A queen whose love I could never deserve. You remind me of her.”
The girl blushes a deep shade of red. “I remind you of a queen?”
“A bit, yes.”
A grin comes to her face, revealing the set of crooked but white teeth behind her lips. “What was her name?”
His arousal abruptly begins to fade. He doesn’t like speaking with her for too long. Her voice is too deep and eyes too unguarded to maintain the illusion, and the thought of actually speaking her name makes him feel ill. “She was a great beauty,” he whispers in lieu of a real answer. He pulls a purse of coins from his pocket and drops it on the small table by her bed. He leaves her room without another word and without taking the services he brought the money for, and she does not follow after him.
It is an especially dark night. The moon is thin, but the stars are shining brilliantly against the black sky. It reminds him of the night he sailed away from Westeros on a ship with black sails, never once turning his head to look back. Her voice had been ringing in his ears, as the ship pulled away. Her voice always seems to come to him in the black of night, when he finds it hardest to hide from his own thoughts.
You’re a monster, just like your vile son and your vile sister. You’re all monsters.
He regrets the confession nearly as much as he is thankful for it. He hates recalling the disgust and horror in her eyes nearly as much as he revels in the memory of it. He prays she still thinks of him nearly as much as he prays she has not spared him a single thought since that night.
“The dragons are coming. Westeros will be covered in fire soon. Mark my words,” he hears a man say. “They say she’s most beautiful woman in the world, the Mother of Dragons, and that she will not rest until she reclaims her father’s throne.”
Jaime stops short at that and positions himself behind one of the few trees that stand in Lys. He hears a woman scoff. “It’s her nephew the throne rightly belongs to. Ami has it the two have made common cause.”
“Well, I imagine the Queen’s dragons didn’t leave him much of a choice. She’ll take the throne herself. Mark my words, Alya.”
“You’re a godsdamned fool, Benito. The throne is rightly the boy’s.”
“And what do you care for Westerosi law? They’re both more Essosi than anything. She won’t care for the law either, not with those dragons of hers. Mark my words, Alya.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, your words have been marked, Benito.”
The two walk away from him after that, and he emerges from behind the tree with a pounding heart. He has heard rumors of dragons in the slaver cities before, of a violet-eyed queen conquering cities and setting any man or woman who wears chains free. But he has never heard of her marching toward Westeros or of a nephew, a nephew who could only be the dead son, or maybe not-so-dead son, of Rhaegar Targaryen.
As he runs back home, only one thought runs through his mind. I have to warn her.
Sansa can’t tear her eyes away from the puddle of white silk and gray lace on the floor of her chambers. The dress is her mother’s creation. Sansa resented the dress at first, hated it even, but she has to admit she has never felt more beautiful than when wrapped in the delicate fabric her mother crafted to fit her to perfection. It is a shame for such a garment to lay discarded on the floor. But her husband had made quick work of it, caring nothing for the magnificent pearls that spilled across the floor when he tore open the bodice. Even if it is ruined, she thinks she ought to pick it up, ought to try to salvage whatever is left of it, but she remains frozen in the chair by her window.
She looks away from the dress and closes her eyes, as the cool, night breeze washes over her skin. There’s a gallingly satisfying ache between her legs and gooseflesh still raising the hairs on her arms. There are more than a few things she dislikes in her new husband, but she cannot deny his beauty or his prowess in at least this aspect of being a husband.
It was an awkward wedding. Few were satisfied by the outcome. The majority of the wedding guest wore scowls instead of grins, and the bride and groom heard more appeals for positions on the Small Council or pleas for control of lands the war had left wrecked and unclaimed than well wishes or words of congratulations. It doesn't truly bother Sansa. She has learned the mark of an effectual compromise is that no one is left happy.
She might not love her new husband, but she does not regret her marriage, not when it has put an end to a war that stole the lives and lands and loved ones of far too many, including herself. Tempers are still running high. There are Targaryen loyalists who still whisper that it was her sister—the Shadow, that’s what they named her during the war—who slashed the dagger across Daenerys Targaryen’s throat, and Jon Snow’s dear friend Samwell Tarly who arranged the death of the dragons with his allies at the Citadel. The Stark loyalists have whispers of their own, that Aegon is not the son of Rhaegar Targaryen but an Essosi bastard masquerading as a prince—a man not even worthy of breathing in Sansa’s presence, let alone sitting the Iron Throne in her place.
Convincing her people to accept Aegon as their King had been the most difficult part of the compromise. It is Jon they wanted her to marry. It is Jon they believe to be the true blood of Rhaegar Targaryen at Howland Reed’s word. It is Jon they wanted as their King, because it was Jon who stole Aegon’s dragon and defeated the Others before they could turn the North into a dead, barren wasteland. But Jon denied his claim and killed the last dragon himself, choosing to forsake all claims to the kingdom and his Targaryen blood to put on a black cloak once again and rebuild the Wall the war had left in pieces.
And then it was she who denied her own son’s claim, who cast her beloved Rickard off his throne for a Targaryen she cared little for. There were still too many men behind Aegon’s cause, and even if she could have defeated him in the end, too much blood had already been shed. And so it came to be that she is no longer Sansa Stark or Sansa Baratheon but Sansa Targaryen, a name she never could have imagined she’d wear even in her wildest fantasies.
Rickard hates her for it, and Lyanna hates Rickard for hating her for it, and Aegon hates them both for existing, for having the blood of the Usurper running through their veins. It is not the family she imagined for herself as a girl, but with time, she is confident she can douse the burned bridges that are keeping them apart. She has faced greater challenges than this with fewer allies on her side.
If he ever hurts you, I will destroy him. Just say the word, and I will. That’s what Arya had whispered in her ear before Rickon walked her down the aisle to her dragon husband. It should have been Father she linked arms with, but he perished in a sea of dragon fire. It should have been Robb she linked arms with, but he died in a sea of ice. It should have been Bran even, but he refused because the Kingslayer had left him a broken man. And so it was Rickon, her wild little brother, who rumors have it killed a thousand Others with a single obsidian dagger and his own teeth.
Sansa had smiled at Arya. I know, sister, she whispered back. But she was not afraid, still isn’t afraid. Aegon won’t hurt her. He may suffer from a childish temper, but there is none of the darkness in him she sometimes senses in other men. He may look at her sister in a way that reminds her of her first husband, but she will win him over quickly enough, and if she can’t, she’ll destroy him like she’s destroyed the other man who got in her way. If she can ruin Robert Baratheon, the man who struck down Rhaegar Targaryen at the Trident, if she can ruin Jaime Lannister, the man who stabbed the Mad King in the back, and if she can ruin Petyr Baelish, the man who came from nothingness to pull the strings of nearly the whole of Westeros before his mysterious death, then she can ruin this petulant little husband of hers. And she can ruin him without those whose loyalty he still commands ever realizing it was her.
She does not love him, and he does not love her, but it matters surprisingly little to her. Love has brought her no happiness in life. Sometimes she thinks it is only in her to love monsters, to love men who will bring her nothing but misery. Perhaps it is better she does not love Aegon. Perhaps he might actually bring her some measure of happiness because of it.
She doesn’t realize what she’s doing until she hears the click of the wooden panel coming free from the back of her writing table. Only a single piece of parchment sits in the hidden compartment. Petyr kept stunning jewels and the darkest secrets of the kingdom hidden here once, but she only hides a letter, only half of a letter really. Most of it is addressed to Tyrion Lannister, only three sentences were written for her.
Please listen when Tyrion gives you my warning. The dragons are coming.
I’m sorry for everything.
Jaime
She has read those words every night since Tyrion presented the letter to her and told her they must prepare for war. She has run her finger over them so many times that the words are barely legible anymore. But the ink could fade completely, and she would still know the words by heart.
I’m sorry for everything. She tries to imagine those words in his voice, tries to imagine the look on his face and the set of his shoulders when he says them. She didn’t believe his first apology. There was no remorse in his eyes when he revealed he pushed her brother from a tower to protect his sister. She’s not sure if she believes this apology either, but since she received the letter, she has not been able to stop reading it. She hates him for writing to her. She hates him for pulling her back with these words after pushing her so far away.
I should burn it. She thinks the same thing every time she runs her fingers across the crumpled, faded parchment. I should burn it. But she never does. She always folds it back up carefully and then tucks it in the compartment she’s sure also once held the phial of poison that stole her first husband’s life.
She suspects Jaime was hoping for a response. Tyrion asked her once if she wished to send something back. Her only answer had been narrowed eyes and a terse shake of her head. What could she possibly say to the man who left her heart broken when she was sure it had hardened too much to ever break again? She couldn’t offer him forgiveness, because she had not forgiven him. She couldn’t offer him kind words, because she barely had enough kind words left for her own family. She couldn’t even bring herself to thank him for the warning, too overcome with the shame and disappointment and rage that threatened to overwhelm her when her mind lingered on him for too long.
She never wrote back, and she never burned the letter.
“Come back to bed, wife.” Her husband’s muffled voice comes just as she pulls her hand away from the secret panel. She turns to find his indigo eyes—not quite violet, not quite the color they should be as the son of Prince Rhaegar—running over her body. She might not love him, but the look sends a pleasant shiver down her spine.
“I thought you would have tired yourself out, husband,” she says coyly, as she moves toward him and reaches out to run her fingers through the soft, silver locks of his hair. When she looks at him, she thinks the princes she conjured up in her youth were always golden only because she could not conceive of this kind of beauty.
He sits up and pulls her into his lap. He twirls a strand of hair that has fallen free from her evening braid around his finger and sighs. “I think I will never tire of having you, wife. Some would call me a traitor for it.”
“Our love will heal those wounds in time.” There is no love in her heart for him yet, but if she says the word often enough, she thinks she can at least convince him that he loves her. A loving husband will be far more pliant and far easier to trust.
“Mm,” he mumbles his agreement against her neck, as he drags his lips across her pulse. When he presses her against the bed and runs his hands across her skin, she tries to concentrate only on how her body responds to him, on how he makes her back arch and her toes curl. She sacrifices herself completely to those feelings, because she cannot bear the emptiness she feels when they are entwined.
The wedding is an obnoxiously lavish affair. He thought Cersei’s wedding to Robert impossibly gaudy, but that ceremony could never compare to the extravagance of this, of the Sealord of Braavos marrying the Black Dove.
The room is covered in expensive silks and intricate Myrrish laces. Everything seems to be made out of silver and encrusted with emeralds to match Myrcella's eyes. It makes for breathtaking scenery, but he thinks Myrcella is the centerpiece of this particular masterpiece. It is a feast for the eyes, but the guests, like her new husband, seem to only have eyes for her.
Even with the name Kerra, even with raven hair, he thinks she is pushing their cover a bit too far. Westeros cares little about the affairs of the East, but this celebration will certainly interest them. No doubt they will hear talk of the Sealord marrying a courtesan, no doubt the sailors will talk off the Black Dove’s famed beauty and lovely green eyes.
It worries him less than perhaps it should. Sansa is a married woman now, busy piecing together the burnt shambles of her kingdom. If she discerns the Black Dove’s true identity, he doesn't think she will have any interest in pursuing them, in scolding him for not keeping them as well hidden as she asked him to. It was Sansa herself that predicted Myrcella could never be bound by a simple life.
Tommen, on the other hand, has found happiness in the daily routine of their world in Lys. He works for the man who runs the menagerie in the city. It is filled with all sorts of rare animals that the wealthy men and women of the East pay outrageous amounts of coin to see up close. Tommen loves to tell him stories of his adventures taking care of these creatures. When he talks of taming the lions, of teaching them to do tricks, Jaime realizes he is no longer a boy. He’s thinned out and grown stronger and taller over the years. Lyseni girls giggle when he passes, whispering about the handsome Dryden of the Lions, as they’ve come to call him. One of those girls will catch his eye soon, and he will leave the little house on the water just as Myrcella did, but Jaime doesn’t mind. They deserve the lives he and Cersei could never have.
“It was good of you to come, Father.”
It feels like his breath has been knocked out of him when he turns to see Myrcella up close. She is more radiant than he has ever seen her, draped in shocking green and silver silks with a silver and emerald circlet holding back her raven tresses. He finds himself wishing he could have seen Cersei like this at their own wedding. It killed him when he realized he could never marry his sister, when he realized he would never be able to show the world their love. “You look stunning, daughter. I hope your Sealord recognizes what he has.”
She gives him a wicked smile he never could have imagined on the face of the bashful girl she had been in King’s Landing. “Oh, he does, trust me.”
“And are you happy?”
“Happier than I have ever been.”
The people around them look at her like she is their queen and perhaps, in a way, she is. There are no queens in the Free Cities, but the Sealord’s wife is certainly the closest one can get to such a title. She would have made for an amazing queen, Sansa had told him, and once again, she had been right.
“Then I am happy for you.”
When he arrives back home, he can think of nothing but weddings. He remembers the wedding he imagined for he and Cersei when he was a boy, when he was too silly to understand the ridiculousness of such a dream. He also considers what Sansa’s wedding to the Dragon King had been like. He wonders if it had been a somber ceremony, if their supporters stood on opposite sides of the sept like they were preparing for battle and glared at each other all through the vows.
Even if he hates the Targaryen boy on principle, even if sometimes he still dreams of Sansa calling upon him to kill the pretender and help her take her kingdom back, he hopes she has found some happiness with him.
I love you, Jaime.
Part of him fears that he crushed that possibility for her forever. He is another shattered dream for her when she had so many already shattered, and it makes him feel like the monster she claimed he was when he thinks on it for too long.
He sits at his writing table and begins to scratch familiar words of apology across the parchment. He has written these words a thousand times, whenever he finds himself regretting not putting more into the warning letter he sent to Tyrion.
I’m sorry, Sansa. That’s how they all begin. And they all end tossed in the fire. She will not appreciate his words, no matter how poetic he can manage to make them. He made the right decision when he pushed her away, and he will not allow himself to pull her back.
The wedding is a simple affair, but it is still more than she ever expected for her sister and Gendry. They have been lovers since before the war, but Sansa and Gendry have never quite managed to convince Arya to say the marriage vows until now.
She knighted Gendry for his valiant service during the war and considered offering to make him a member of Rickard’s Kingsguard to keep him close to Arya. She’s glad she didn’t now, Aegon wouldn’t stand for another Baratheon at court, and he and Arya could have never had this moment if he accepted. But she did offer him a lordship. With so many of the Stormlords dead after the war, there were an abundance of lands and holdfasts perfect for a Baratheon bastard to assume, but he refused her before she could even finish asking.
She’s glad of his refusal now. A lady’s life is not the life for Arya. Instead, she and her bastard lover have traveled across the East and all the way to Sothoryos, only now finally returning to Winterfell to live a different, simpler sort of life. Gendry loves Winterfell’s forge, and Arya loves being so close to Jon, and Bran loves having all the Starks back in Winterfell, and Sansa loves seeing them all so happy again. It has been a long time since they were all together, since before Father died and Mother followed him only shortly afterwards.
The long journey to Winterfell has left her exhausted. Overjoyed as she is to see her family and Winterfell, she is not sure how much longer she can resist the rest her body is desperate for. Before she can protest and insist she’s perfectly fine, her son Rickard, a man grown now, sweeps her up into his strong arms. He is the spitting image of how she remembers Renly Baratheon, beautiful and lean and always smiling. “Don’t even try to claim you’re not worn out,” he warns, teasing, “Now where is it you want to go?”
She is so thankful he decided to come that she almost can’t hold back tears. Even though he forgave her giving up his throne for peace, he still fled King’s Landing at his first opportunity. He never liked Aegon, and he and his half-sister Elia are far too stubborn to ever see eye-to-eye on anything. Their fights are louder and more brutal than she and Arya’s ever were, but so far they have both managed to be civil. It helps that Lyanna and Jaehaerys have come as well. They are the levelheaded ones of her four children, and the only ones who can force Elia and Rickard to make peace, at least for their mother’s sake. It is good to finally have all of her children with her, but it is especially good to see Rickard—her first babe and her first love, the child that kept her going even when she was truly miserable, the child’s future she was forced to sacrifice for a kingdom.
“To the crypts, if you would. Did Bran ever show you were they were?”
Rickard is the Lord of Storm’s End now, but he has traveled to Winterfell many times over the years, far more than she has been able to. “Of course he did.”
They descend into the dark crypts. When they reach the bottom of the stairs, he sets her down and hands her a torch, allowing her to lead the way. Tears fill her eyes, as she passes Father’s and Robb’s statues, but it is Lyanna Stark’s she stops in front of, recalling the pale woman in the black gown from her dream. “I almost died during Lyanna’s birth, you know,” she sighs, running her fingers over the grooves of Lyanna’s dress. “I passed out and had a dream I was back in Winterfell. Lyanna told me I was rushing the sands of time and that I needed to go back and fight. I think it’s the only reason I’m alive.”
Rickard is not looking at Lyanna’s image. He is looking resolutely at her instead. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, Mother. I’m sorry about how angry I was.”
“Oh, my love, it is no matter—”
“No, it matters,” he interrupts, bowing his head. “You did what you had to do to save the realm and to save Lyanna and me from harm. I was godsdamned fool to be angry with you, after all you’ve been through, and I’m sorry.”
I poisoned your father. I made a pact with the Kingslayer to kill him. And I would have fucked the Kingslayer had he wanted me. For a moment, she considers being honest, but she stays quiet like she always does. She couldn’t bear to see the disgust in her son’s eyes. “I never blamed you, son. I wanted you to be the King so badly. And please never tell your brother, but some days I still wish you were to be King.”
Rickard wraps his arms around her increasingly frail body. “Jaehaerys will make for a fine king.”
Sansa nods, knowing it’s the truth. He’s a good boy, kind and patient and always willing to compromise, nothing like his hot-blooded father and sister. Even if he looks the most foreign of her children with his pale silver almost white hair and bright violet eyes, he reminds her the most of her father. “Yes, he will.”
Yes, Jaehaerys is a sweet boy, and Lyanna and Elia have also made her proud in their own ways. Elia looks the most like her with her summer blue eyes and fiery red hair. Her youngest child is a strange mix of herself and Arya, always taking care to look perfect but wielding sharp retorts instead of courteous words as her weapons.
Lyanna, on the other hand, is entirely Sansa save for the love of swords. She is sweet and gentle and always courteous. But that all fades away when she grips a sword in her hand and challenges her brothers to duels she wins more often than not, at least against Jaehaerys.
She loves them all so much, and she’s come to love her husband as well. He is a good man at heart who has kept only to her bed all these years, even now that she is old and gray while he only seems to grow more handsome with age. It is not an all consuming, passionate love. It is nothing like the surge of overwhelming emotions she felt for the Kingslayer, but she has decided that is a good thing. It is a slow-burning love, a mutual respect they grew into something more over time, a love like Mother once described to her when she spoke of her own marriage.
Her mind still wanders to him sometimes—when Aegon bows between her legs like the Kingslayer had that night in the godswood, when she hears tales of the Black Dove with her mesmerizing green eyes from across the Narrow Sea, and when she pulls his letter from its hiding place at night and runs her fingertips over the now all but vanished words. It is never quite clear to her how she feels when she thinks of him, if it is love or wrath that fills her. She never allows herself to think long enough on it to decide.
When she and Rickard emerge from the crypts, she can’t help but laugh when she sees Lyanna and Arya sparring in the yard with the rest of their family watching on. Aegon is cheering for Lyanna, and Jaehaerys is grinning from ear to ear with Rickon’s daughter Cat balanced in his arms. Elia has turned her nose up at the display, but Sansa can see the smile she’s doing her absolute best to hide. Rickard dashes over quickly to catch the end of the battle, but Sansa turns away from them.
She doesn’t want to go where she knows her feet are taking her. She wishes she could talk herself out of it, but before long she is standing underneath the tower and staring up at the window Bran must have been standing in when he saw the Lannister twins together. She looks at the ground under her feet, and can hear the screams again. She can hear Mother’s violent sobbing and the way Summer had whined and whined while he paced in front of Bran’s bed. This is where it happened. This is where he pushed my brother.
She is older now. She knows there are different kinds of love, not just the beautiful, adoring version she clung to during her younger years, before Jaime Lannister broke her heart and before she married Aegon Targaryen. Love can be cruel. It can be mean and destructive and hurt more than it heals. Love can be beautiful. It can be sweet and lovely and give those who have all but given up a reason to hope again. Love can be fast and consuming like fire, and it can be slow and aching like ice. It can fill one with happiness and satisfaction, and it can fill one with the most dreadful guilt.
It is guilt she feels now, as she stands beneath the tower. It manifests as a gnawing in her gut and a low buzzing in her ears. It is guilt because sometimes she worries she loved the Kingslayer—a monster, a villain, a murderer—better than she has ever loved her husband. It is guilt because sometimes she worries she still wants fire more than ice, passion instead of respect, and she hates herself for it.
“Feeling all right, Sansa?”
Gendry places one of his large hands on her shoulder. The touch pulls her out of her thoughts, and she forces herself to smile. “Fine, just—there’s just so many memories here.”
Gendry nods. “Some good and some bad, I imagine.”
“More good than bad. I didn’t realize how much I loved this place until I left it. It really is the perfect place for you and Arya to finally call home.”
Gendry smiles and says, “Your sister is my home.”
It is a simple statement, but it strikes Sansa to her core. She does her best to cut their conversation short without being rude and flees to her old room. She takes out Jaime’s letter from the hidden pocket of her fur-lined cloak, where it has been hiding since she left King’s Landing, and presses it down on the writing table. There are no words that can express her anger and her regret and all of the other feelings churning in her gut when she thinks of him and reads his words—I’m sorry for everything—but she finds herself writing some anyways.
I am well. I am happy.
It is all she can bear to write, and she doesn’t even know why she wants him to read this. But when she folds the paper, she is relieved to realize the claims don’t feel like a lie. She is well, and she is happy, even if she’s never entirely let him go.
It will be a tricky thing to get the letter to him. She knows from Tyrion where he resides, and she knows from rumors where Myrcella now calls home, but to send a letter across the Narrow Sea is no easy task. Still, she has managed greater feats than this. She has saved a kingdom from death and dragon fire; surely she can send a letter.
She finds a man who insists his brother captains a ship that travels between White Harbor and the Free Cities twice a year. She gives him a heavy bag of golden coins, and he promises to do as she wishes. She’s not sure if she believes him. It wouldn’t surprise her at all to one day learn he ran off with her money and threw her letter into the sea, but it still feels good to watch him ride off with it and to know she will never pull it out at night to read it ever again. It feels like an ending. It feels like closure. It feels like peace.
And it will be enough.
It still feels strange to walk past the room Myrcella and Tommen shared and find it empty. Tommen has moved into a home in the heart of the city and runs the menagerie on his own now. He has not seen Myrcella in years, since her wedding to the Sealord. He is alone, but it is okay. He might have failed with Joffrey, but Myrcella is living the life of a queen and Tommen is happy with his animals, and it gives him some satisfaction to know he helped make that happen.
The smell of roasting pig drifts into his room from the fire outside. He doesn’t remember when Cala started coming by his home to cook evening meals or when she stopped asking for coin after they fucked or when she started acting in the way his wife might have, had ever had a wife. They rarely speak—in fact, they can go entire weeks without saying a single word to each other—and they can go moons without even fucking now, but her mere presence staves off the loneliness he suspects would consume him otherwise.
He doesn’t love the redheaded whore who always appears in the evenings and is always gone by the time sun rises, but he never hoped to find love anyways. Cersei’s ghost still walks at his side, waiting for him to finally join in her in the afterlife like he should have when she drew her last breath so many years ago.
Sansa Stark haunts him as well, in a way, especially when he finds himself entranced by the colors in Cala’s hair and can’t stop hearing Sansa’s declarations of love in his ears. But he decided a long time ago that it is good he didn’t have longer with either woman. It is good he lost them both. His love for Cersei was destined to turn them into something twisted and ugly, to crash and burn in the way all great passions eventually do. And his love for Sansa would have been a lie. It would have meant acting, constantly pretending that he was a better man.
It is good that he is alone. He is a sad and gray old man, and even Cala is more than he deserves, but he can’t quite bring himself to send her away.
There is a folded, faded piece of parchment sitting on his writing table that he doesn’t notice until he lights the candles by his bed. It is tough and wrinkled from moisture. The ink of whatever was written on the front has run down the parchment in unreadable black streaks. Cautious not to destroy the letter further, he unfolds the parchment and gasps when he sees the small, perfect script written beneath his final words to Sansa.
I am well. I am happy.
There is no name signed at the bottom, no indication of whom the words are from, but he knows they were written by one of Sansa’s delicate hands. He collapses into his chair, as his eyes travel across the six simple words over and over again, desperately searching for the meaning behind them.
They do not read like forgiveness. They do not read like gratitude or longing or loathing or anything at all really. But, nevertheless, they ease some of gnawing in his stomach that hasn’t faded since he sailed away into the night.
They read like acceptance. It isn’t much, and perhaps it isn’t what he hoped for. But it will be enough.