Chapter Text
Chapter One - Sansa
The Lone Wolf dies, but the Pack survives.
She was in childbed, crimson blood everywhere. Ramsay’s child was tearing its way through her body.
Make it be dead. She screamed in agony at the child’s first cry.
Dragonfire, wildfire, screams, dead bodies, ashes everywhere, falling from the sky, in the water, clouding the horizon and hiding the sun. Arya fell before the horse, Sansa dismounted and rushed to her sister, blooded and shocked, afraid, disoriented.
‘They have Jon, they want to execute him.’ She barely whispered before she could collapse. Sansa’s eyes were wild, fighting the bile rising in her throat.
Sansa woke with a startle, groaning as she sat on the unfamiliar bed, pushing back the clinging hair from her sweaty forehead. The bloody place woke every nightmare deep buried in her heart, the heat from the bloody South made everything worse.
They had chosen a different chamber for the Queen in the North, her previous quarters had collapsed under the Dragon Queen’s attack. She hated that chamber anyway, she had almost set it on fire herself, while trying to hide her first flowering. Gods, how many first times she had in that place, and now she was there for one more wrong start.
She stood up from the bed, poured some water in a cup and tried to swallow it down, even the water tasted different there. The North’s water came from boiled snow, this one was coming from wells, it tasted like the city, repulsing.
She set down the cup and moved towards the open doors leading to the balcony, the sea breeze ruffling her nightgown, raising goosebumps on sweaty skin. Humid, warm air, filled with salt, she missed the crisp feel of the air in Winterfell.
Her return to the North would only mean the death of her baby brother -or whatever Bran had turned out to be-. She wished this would happen soon and then she hated herself for wishing such a thing.
It had been four years, four hard years of recovery for the North and the Six Kingdoms under the Stark rule. Once already, the realms came on the verge of starvation and only through effort, the Wolves across the continent stopped it before it began. The North had been hit hard after the Battle for the Dawn, Spring had arrived but the land had been burren for decades before it. Hard to give fruit and unyielding, Sansa had driven herself in personal debt to White Harbor and House Manderly for the needed resources. She had promised to repay the loan both with money and in kind, and she had been lucky the Manderlies’ successors were girls. She would pay them however, after her own successor was old enough, she would, when any possible fruit of her own womb wouldn’t matter anymore because frankly, she planned to have none.
The South had been savaged by the wars, the Capital’s sacking had been the beginning of an era full of problems and financial instability. The Iron Bank demanded its money. Essos struggled to maintain their trade with Westeros due to both continents' slow recovery in all levels. The Free Cities left in a disarray as great as the one Westeros were in after the Dragon Queen's "liberation". Bran and his council had hoped for Highgarden’s support but Bronn had become its Lord by Tyrion, a movement seen with hatred from the Reach, made by the last Lannister whose family had destroyed House Tyrell and never elected one of the families there for Master of Coin. And Bronn had proven as incapable as someone would expect, wasting coin without much reason and ending up relying on mobs and a kingsguard made of mercenaries to keep the peace in the streets of the starving King’s Landing.
Sansa sighed as she stood behind the bench of the balcony, watching the sleeping city. Bran was sick and dying, Arya was gone. Jon… Sansa sighed at his thought. He was gone too, she had to accept it even if it was hard to. Either because he died, or because he decided he would never give a signal of life. But even if the final months close to him were awkward and hard, Sansa believed to have known him. Jon wasn’t a cruel man, if it was upon his hand, he would have replied to one of her wandering ravens, he would let her scouts find him. His complete silence only led her to believe he was truly gone.
The wet snout in her palm jerked her out of her thoughts, and valified them. Ghost had shown up, out of the blue, many moons back. And Sansa simply verified her worst fear, Jon was dead, and the direwolf searched for the closest person he knew was family. And Sansa, left with the remains of her pack, she had accepted Ghost warmly, her new protector, her wolf and companion.
The Red Wolf, the Independent Wolf, Ice Queen, the Queen in the North, The Winter Rose. The Bringer of Spring. So many titles and names given with love by her people, but she only cared for their wellbeing and prosperity. She had bled for the North as Lady of Winterfell, as Lannister and Bolton, as the Bastard and the Murderer, the Whore, the Unfortunate. And she kept bleeding, as she spread balms on the scars of her body every night, as she fought for the grain storages to be full, to feed her people. She tried so hard to be just and honourable. She had wished to be Queen, but she had never expected her wish to come true thus.
Yet again, what dream of hers didn’t come true twisted and strange?
The hammering at the door had Sansa jumping in her skin and Ghost growling as Brienne burst inside the room. Only the female knight would be sent to invade like that, any other and Ghost would have devoured them. Brienne searched the chamber with her eyes before they could land on Sansa, lips closing, composing herself, she didn’t seem surprised to see Sansa awake, Brienne knew very well how nights unfolded for Sansa. She had been there, shaking her lady awake from nightmares that didn’t differ very much from the ugly images Sansa had seen that very night.
‘Sansa…’ Brienne spoke the name as they were in private. She hadn’t heard her name in a long time, always called with titles, yet by the tone she knew, her friend was there for the expected. ‘Your brother, the King…’ Brienne whispered and Sansa nodded, grabbing her robe. ‘It’s time.’ she only added, they both knew, they would be leaving the South together. Sansa had allowed Brienne to stay in the South, where she belonged, extending her service on taking care of Bran. But Bran’s life was finishing and Cersei Lannister’s ghost in the Red Keep was too much for Brienne as much as it had been for Sansa herself.
Queen and knight rushed towards the King’s chambers, wolf on toe. The door was guarded but opened before Sansa could reach for it. Bronn was there among Tyrion, Sansa passed by them, reaching her brother’s bed quickly. Sam was trying to keep him calm but the young king was writhing on his bed, eyes wide, body weak and withering.
He had been taken by sickness little by little over the past years. Sam had tried to explain the condition in one of his many letters. The South melted away the crippled, young man. He didn’t belong there and that was mirrored in his appetite, his senses, even his mentality. He frequently became delirious, speaking of an old tree among the snow. He spoke of his old protector Hodor and Meera Reed. Sansa had tried to reach Meera, she had received a heartbreaking refusal.
Bran gripped at Sansa’s hand and she held at him as he whispered deliriously. She tried to understand what sounds he made through his chipped lips.
‘I’m right here, Bran, right here.’ Sansa tried to soothe him. She had held him as a baby, after her Lady Mother had given birth to him. She had been sad he was a boy, she had hoped for another baby sister. She had never expected how little she would live close to him, how soon he was to be gone. ‘Bran, look at me, it will be alright.’ Sansa tried to persuade him in vain. He gasped through clenched teeth and struggled to focus on her.
‘I… I was never meant to be Lord of anything.’ Only Sansa knew what these words meant. That day in the Godswood, when he had stirred all her agonies back at her.
‘You did your best,’ Sansa tried to pacify him, she would never turn his failures at him. Bran shook his head stubbornly.
‘He’s coming,’ Bran tried through gasps of air, his face screwing up in pain as he tried to breathe. Sansa glanced frantically around his small council before she could look back at her baby brother who was struggling to remain with them.
‘We’re all here, Bran. Who’s coming?’ She tried again, soothing, pacifying, burying her family, she had been used to it. She would be returning home with the bones of yet another Stark to be added in the crypts.
‘The Dragon...’ Bran whimpered before he could drag out his final breath, body relaxing, grip going slack, eyes stilling as they looked away.
The room fell silent, for moments or hours, everyone remained still and silent. Until realisation kicked in, succeeding confusion and shock. Sansa leaned in, whimpers escaping her lips, tears running down her cheeks. Picking up her brother by the shoulders, skin and bone, he had lost weight, literally withering away, he was still warm. She closed his eyes in her arms, eyes that had seen so much, eyes that once had been full of mirth, the eyes of a child who loved to climb. Like she had done with Rickon and Arya, like she had wished she could have done with Robb and her mother, Sansa Stark cried for Bran and the world remained silent for the lone wolf’s howl to be heard from the Southern capital and across the world.