Musings In A Song

by MoonWitch96

Summary:

A collection of half-finished thoughts in the Universe of A Song of Ice And Fire, which breeches different AUs, genres, and sometimes crossovers. Basically, these are all the stories that probably will never be finished, but I think merited to be seen by someone other than me. Tags will be added as I go, and some stories may be pulled from the chapters if I have major inspiration to finish them as proper stories. Exclusively published on AO3!

Chapter 1: You Shall Marry The King

Summary:

 

Shae sees the lust in her lion’s eyes, as he looks at the young wolf girl. It the same look she has seen in a hundred other men’s faces. And it is in Sansa’s eyes that she see’s something else- something she has not seen since she ran from her father’s reaching hands- long forgotten the soft face of her sister long dead. So Shae smuggles the Princess of the North with the help of a Viper, and another Stark girl touches Dornish soil.

 

Parings: Shae/Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand, Sansa Stark/Young Griff, Mrcycella Baratheon/Tristan Martell,

 

Shae I

 

Shae has come to understand that Sansa Stark trusts her.

 

As much as the terrified girl can trust anyone.

 

And it is on the eve before her wedding to the man that Shae had stupidly fallen in love with, that Sansa Stark’s trust in her is pushed to the limit. She carefully gives the girl the exact amount of the prepared herbs, and Shae makes sure, deliberately, to prepare it in front of her. She turns to the girl Tyrion had forced her to serve, that one that he was to marry the very next day, and silently offers the prepared cup of tea.

 

Sansa Stark is barely four and ten, with a sweet pale face that has turned drawn and quiet.

 

Her eyes are blue- the bluest thing that Shae has ever seen, and when they look at her, there is a quiet understanding and resignation in them. She is dressed in her shift, a thin thing that is much too short, much too tight across her budding breast and hips. But she sits still and poised, and when she reaches for the cup, her lily-white hands do not tremble.

 

“Will it hurt?” is Sansa’s question.

 

“No.”

 

Sansa smiles. A soft thing that turns her brilliant and soft pink lips. There is a slightly crooked nature to her smile, a wry hint of sadness. But in her eyes all Shae sees is pure gratitude.

 

“I- Please. Please, if you can, will you throw my body into the sea? I do not want King Joffery to have his way with my remains.”

 

Shae shudders.

 

She had seen the macabre remains of the King’s playthings. Women who simply wished for coin to feed themselves, to feed the babes earned in their trade, thrown at the feet of the boy King. She knows Tyrion had hired some of the women and had spared no thought to their fates. She had told herself it had been the women who had made the mistake- the woman who had made the choice to risk their lives at the hands of the King. 

 

Now she is not so sure what else she had told herself with the promise of Tyrion’s love. 

 

“I will care for you, my Lady,” she tells the girl, gently.

 

“Run, if you can, afterward. They will blame you for giving me this. They will not make your death easy.”

 

Shae almost corrects her. Almost tells her the truth- But there is a corridor right behind Sansa’s mirror, and she knows that the Queen will place someone there tonight. Whether they are already there, had already heard, or running off to tell the bitch is something she will never know. 

 

“Drink deeply, and quickly.”

 

“Thank you, Shae. You were my truest friend here.”

 

Sansa Stark drinks it all, deeply and easily, her face not even flinching at what Shae’s knows is a truly bitter brew. 

 

She falls asleep quickly, and Shae is already catching the girl in her arms.

 

You were my truest friend here.

 

Shae thinks her heart is breaking. She knew Sansa had trusted her. She knew Sansa had liked her- but there was love in those words. Affection she had buried and held tightly in her heart, only given away with what she thought was her death. Shae is many things. But to think she is loved by this child makes her feel more than the whore to a man that intended to throw her away. Carefully, she presses a kiss to the girl’s head and lifts her easily in her arms. Sansa is tall where Shae is small, but she is undeniably underfed and waisfushly thin. And Shae has always been strong. Shae goes to the fireplace’s hearth and presses into the switch with her hip. It opens yet another corridor- wide enough for her to carry the girl out of the Keep. She gently lays Sansa within the thin carpet in the room and rolls the sweet girl up as neatly as she can. She strips off her clothing, sweet cotton of a handmaid for the rough spun clothing that would not look out of place in the market.  She reaches for the packs she had set aside. Two dress changes for the pair of them, money, some food and water, her Lady’s jewelry, and the doll that the young girl still clung to. She shoulders it before she lifts the carpeted girl again.

 

Shae is quick and quiet. She has mesmerized this path ever since they had announced the betrothal between Sansa and Tyrion.

 

Her heart is hammering.

 

She has done what she hopes is the smart thing- gone to another Lord who has reason to hate the Lions- and who would not want another noble girl destroyed at their hands. A risk. But she has a dagger swiped from the mockingbird man tucked on a strap on her thigh, and a second escape plan if she needs it.

 

And if there is one thing she can do to spite Tyrion for making promises he had never intended to keep, for lusting for a child- it is to take that child out of his hands.

 

You were my truest friend here.

 

I will keep such words true.

---

Oberyn I

 

He awaits on a Dornish ship, for another abused girl from the clutches of the Red Keep, and he wonders if he is doing the right thing.

 

He had not thought much of the red-headed Stark girl, only seen a girl with perfectly poised manners and simpering at the Lannisters’ feet like a kept pet. He did not think much of her suffering or the fact that the child had seen her entire household slaughtered before her eyes, that she had been apparently beaten until the young handmaiden had corned him and his love. Desperation in her eyes and the wariness of a kicked dog, she had told him grimly of the girl's treatment within the Red Keep.

 

And her forced marriage to a man whose family had only given her suffering.

 

And he thought of  Elia- of sweet Elia and her children's bones that Eddard Stark had brought to them despite the fury of their new conquering King. The sadness and wish in  grey eyes that he had been swift enough to save his sister. 

Chapter 2: Wind Winter Howls

Summary:

It comes with a spark of memory, a flash of remembrance. And Sansa refuses to allow her father to die by her words, and the blood of a Stark, tried and true, breaks the hold of lion cubs in a stag’s pelt, of a lioness in her den and a scheming bird whose talons are trying to drag her away. The Starks were once Kings of Winter, an unbroken line beyond reckoning, and that was once more literal than anyone thought. And it awakes in the soft girl that refuses to allow this to pass, a Queen of Winter rises on the day they attempt to take her father’s head.

 

Or Sansa Stark is basically the Avatar, a being that is a bridge between her world and the next.

 

PARING: Sansa Stark/Jon Snow

Book I Autumn:

A Coronation

 

As Ice starts to swing, something in Sansa breaks.

 

Like a needle thread brought too taut, pulled too hastily in impatience, something in Sansa breaks and howls to life in the same instance.

 

It resonates, a song as clear as anything in her heart, and it is done with desperation and refusal. No, it reverts deep, the thought of refusal, the thought of the sword of House Stark being used to remove the head of her father.

 

It had already ran red with Lady, already been touched by the lifeblood of House Stark, with a part of her soul already torn asunder.

 

But this was too much.

 

And as if the Ice has heard her, the sword’s dark gleam turns from a steely gloss to a true and biting glow. The color is cool and cold, a blue, hard and fierce as winter. The crowd gasps in surprise, even as her heart roars in her ears. Ice does not recognize the man that holds it aloft, she knows that with a certainty that should frighten her. The tongueless man barely has time to stumble, before his hands become black and rotted with the cold of the glowing blade, and he gives a wordless and pathetic moan that turns into sobs as frost starts to crawl down his arms. He tries, Sansa sees, tries to let go of the blade, tries to remove its pommel from his grasping hands, but it does not let him.

 

Because she does not wish it. Does not wish this spineless man to take from her, to use the blade and desecrate it with the blood of the one who would wield it.

 

“ You’re Grace, ” the voice is an echo of a thousand voices, of a hundred different voices, but she can hear them, all of them, the voices of kin come to pass. It lingers on a female voice, sweet and wild and husky, and somehow without having ever heard it, she knows it is her Aunt Lyanna. Knows it deep in her bones, in the beat of her heart as Sansa watches the glowing blade slowly freeze over Ser Ilyn Payne for his mistake. 

 

Frost crawls down his arms, and bit by bit the sobbing man is punished for his folly.

 

The last Stark to die will be the one that is the loudest voice within the blade of the Kings and Queens of Winter . Sparks of memories come to Sansa then, and she knew without really remembering that some of the voices within that sympathy were once her own, male and female, strong and soft, loud and sure, and everything in between. In a line of near eight-thousand years, she has come and come again. This is the first life, however, in which she has awoken after the original Ice had broken, and been reforged from the shards, infused with the steel of magic, hot and dark with fire for the Doom yet to come for Westeros. Something a near hundred years after my last death, a herold of the Age of Dragons… An age that should have been much longer. She vaguely remembers thinking it would have been her last life, and as Fire and Blood would come to Westeros, Winter would never truly come again. The age of her would end-

But the world was changing, the Dragon Kings were mostly gone, come and dead before she had reakwaned as Sansa Stark, and it was time for the Winter Queen to return to the North once again.

 

“ Your Grace. Your Grace. Your Grace. ”

 

She blinks.

 

“I am here,” she whispers, to the voices she is unsure everyone can hear. She does not particularly care, and her voice grows, stronger and clear as she calls out to the blade in a ringing tone, “I am here. ”

 

The roar of the crowd has started to fade, silence in horror and shock over Eddard Stark’s execution turning into something else entirely.

 

Instead of a mockery of mercy and justice, it was now a coronation of something that had not breathed in near four hundred years.

 

“Winter is coming. You are not in Winterfell. Our blood lingers within in the walls, a child pulled taut to the skies to fly by a cawing rat, a babe wild and wolf's blood true,” said the chorus , and then Aunt Lyanna’s voice grew even louder, surer, “ A woman of riverbed blood that has borne the seed of our line, a boy frightened by a mantle he is yet to ready to take. A lost boy, my boy, someone promised stands atop the beyond the Wall we once helped build. We are scattered, and our pack will not live if you linger in this godless place. Winterfell needs you, your Grace. ”  

 

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

 

Ice creeps from her fingertips, from the soles of her delicately slippered feet. She feels a tremble of power, and in her mind, she can hear the echo of visions, flashes of sights of the weirwood tree at the heart of Winterfell, and she sees her Mother, beautiful and pale and withdrawn, Robb sits at the roots, with baby Rickon clawing at his trousers, and a silent Bran staring far away. Before yet another hearttree she sees Jon, and mouth open to speak, and she knows he is about to bind himself to a fate that would destroy him.

 

‘Go home, Jon Snow, go to Winterfell. Take no vows, leave the Wall for home , we should never have left,’ the Weirwood speaks in her tongue, sweet and sure, and every man before the tree visibly starts and stares at the tree that spoke for Jon Snow in a girl’s sweet voice.

 

Jon rises, eyes wide, a large boy stands with him, eyes just as wide.

 

“I need to go,” said Jon.

 

She blinks, pushing away the images as she aches.

 

“Where is Arya?” she begs the voice, and she barely feels the tears still running down her cheek, or how slowly, everyone that surrounds the Great Sept has slowly turned from the glowing blade to her and she doesn't care.

 

“ The she-wolf is here, the she-wolf waits for her pack. You must go, ” said the chorus of voices, “ The gods do not wish for you to be here, my Queen. ”

 

She is not really a Queen, she is not such a thing. She a messenger, the mouth of the old gods that has been silent for far too long, and this far South, her gods have been cut, removed from the soul of the people. The line above the Neck calls to her, the whole of the North sings a lament for her return, and Winterfell itself is the voice that calls the strongest. Sansa, who has only ever wished to flee the North, escape its cold hold, suddenly realizes how much of a fool she had been, and how much she had only been running from this. I have been a stupid little girl so scared of myself. She has shrieked her responsibility, turned blind eyes to warnings and signs, all to escape what was coming.

 

The Wall will fall this Winter, and the scourge of the dead shall finally crush the magic that Bran the Builder made when I was but Nessa Nessa the Child, the Blademaker, that my fellow Children poured their lives and bones to lay down, that giants and grumpkins and snarks and shadow cats swore to protect. Everyone has forgotten their promise or died before they could keep it and I will need to remind them.

 

Sansa's breath calms, from the stuttering hysteria and sobs that had filled her throat.

 

“I will return,” she promises the blade she had made so long ago.

 

Ser Ilyan Payne is now a statue carved from the power of Ice. Remnants of what she had infused in the blade’s predecessor across her many lives. Sparks of power, cold and true, dance across her fingertips, as she pushes the goldcloak holding her arms, and she barely reacts or feels anything as the man’s fingertips freeze and chip away from his hands, and she is walking calmly toward her father. Ice and frost lingering in her steps.

 

“SEIZE HER, IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING, SEIZE THE WITCH!” Joffrey’s voice is a wail of a scared child, and Sansa stares at the boy who she had begged for to have mercy. 

 

He, who she thought would love her, promised her mercy and only would have killed her father in mockery with the blade of her kin.

 

She bares her teeth like the she-wolf that she is, lifts a small hand.

 

“I need not your mercy.”

 

Ice comes, steady and sure, pushing across the literal mob of men that would have watched her father be killed with the glee of a flock of carrion birds. She barely has to extend her power, barely has to ask before there is a wall of ice protecting her from the men of the Red Keep. It is twice as tall then Gregor Clegane, the tallest man present, and covers the entirety of the steps of the Sept without much trouble. It traps the gold cloaks that had been holding her, even as they struggled in vain with their stumped hands.  

 

Tears are hot against her skin, even as she reaches for her poor father.

 

“Father,” she whispers, and eyes, grey and shocked, look to her in both awe and confusion.

 

“I hear my sister’s voice,” he said, voice hoarse but loud enough that it could be heard by all, his lovely eyes flickering to the glowing blade, “I hear my sister’s voice calling you a Queen.”

 

She knew she should be alarmed, she knew she should be frightened by this queer action, but as if something long sleeping has awoken inside of Sansa Stark and she is not merely the child who loved songs and wished to be the wife of a handsome knight. Queen is not what she is, she is not a ruler of men and women, but it is as close a title as anything she could have gathered in all of her lives.

 

“I am Queen. I am the Queen of Winter,” she tells him, sure and strong, “I have come for the Second Long Night to come, and I have come to make you keep your Promise. Now, Eddard Stark, father of my blood, tell the truth of why you have come to be killed on the supposed scared steps of the Seven.”

 

He stares, tired, thin and so hurt, but he stands, even with his wounded leg, and his head is held high.

 

“I have lied to save the lives of my daughters,” he tells the people of King’s Landing, “I have no need for the Iron Throne, no want of it, the boy who calls himself Joffery Baratheon is not the blood of King Robert, my household has been slaughtered, my daughter’s lives threatened, so I have lied to spare their lives. But it matters not anymore. I will leave this godforsaken place, with my daughters.”

 

Sansa smiles.

 

“Father, take Ice,” she tells him.

 

Once, she had been strong enough to hold it herself. Back in her last life, before Sansa Stark, she had reforged the blade and held it strong and true. But she is not strong enough, she is too small and not yet ready to retake the sword.

 

But her father is her strength, and she need not carry everything.

 

She reaches for the necklace around her neck, cool and pretty and the collar of a lion about her wolf neck, rips it off, uncaring of the delicate links or expense. She drops it, lets its twisted links scatter at her ice touched feet.

 

Her father touches the blade, and its chorus sings and calls out in recognition of the hold of a Stark of Winterfell.

 

“ Your grace, he is hurt, ” Lyanna’s voice twists, something deeper and warm, a double chorus of two men’s voices, deep and firm.

 

Her father stares at the blade, eyes wide once again.

 

“Father,” he whispers, his voice awed yet again, "Brandon."

 

“Then heal him,” she tells the blade, “Arm him in the armor of the King, touch upon what you would give to me. I am not strong enough to wield you… But my Father is.”

 

And as it has done before, the armor of the King of Winter surrounded her Father.

 

Regal.

 

Holy.

 

Some part of her aches in what is want. For that is her armor. Her burden. But she is not strong enough. Not yet. Not like this, half her soul dead with Lady's physical passing, her limbs weighed by the trappings of a fledgling power not fully awake. She sighs, her lips kissed with frost and winds. 

 

" Arya," she calls, her voice sweet and ripe with something stronger than she would have ever thought of herself.

 

A patter of feet. A man trailing behind a dirty child, who jumps into Sansa's waiting arms.

 

She smells, she is filthy enough to stain her gown on contact, but Sansa only feels something in her settle in peace and relief.

 

"Sansa?" her voice is awed and confused.

 

Sansa does not blame her.

 

"Shh, Arya. It's almost over. I am here, blood of my blood. "

 

The air shivers. Sansa feels the power of the North swell. Feels it swirl her hair in currents of strength she can hardly feel so far south.

 

" Wielder of my blade, take my arm."

 

Her father takes her arm. Sansa feels a weight on her brow. Twined branches of the pale pale wirewood, leaves red and as dark as her hair. Blades of dragon glass line it, the runes of the first men carved upon the swords and the pale flowers of the weirwood trees, not seen since her past life, bloom on her brow.

 

She feels the remnants of wirewoods come back, across Westeros. Sprout, take root from their long-forgotten resting places, and bloom with the barest of life starting anew.

 

Awareness stretches, grows and her power is made yet stronger as the world trembles with her revival.

 

I thought I could rest. Remorse is an ill taste in her mouth. Bitter and pitiful with the fault of the death of the age of Fire and Blood.

 

But it is too late.

 

She is alive again.

 

She is crowned. 

 

The burden of this new Queen of Winter settles on her, and Sansa has already wasted precious time.

 

" I am Sansa Stark, first of her name, the Queen of Winter. Hear me, people of Westeros, Winter is Coming. "

 

And with a song on her ice spewing lips, with a howl of wolves echoing through her throat, Sansa turns a half step.

 

She finishes her step in the roots of the hearttree in the godswood, appearing before her stunned pack.

 

Book I Autumn:

A Promise

 

Arya tumbles out of her arms. Is running for their mother in the same instant, as Sansa drops to her knees. Sansa struggles her chest heaving, magic singing in her veins. She could hear them now as if- the gods- a symphony of greetings, reprimands, and laments singing to her as she came to the oldest heart-tree this side of the Wall, she can feel the amount of power she has done to take her pack home. It’s too much , she thinks, too much for her, little Sansa Stark, to be a Queen of Winter. Her father drops next to her, hands clutching at her shoulders.

 

"Jon has fire in his blood," whispers Sansa, looking up at her father.

 

His face contorts.

 

“How-”

 

“I can feel it. It… The Dragon Kings and Queens. They were supposed to replace me, Summer Kings and Queens. But they’re dead. They were not strong enough. Only by mixing the blood- Ice and Fire- did they stay upon our lands. Jon . He is needed for the Night to come-”

 

“Sansa-”

 

“ You let him go to the Wall! ” she shrieked, and power exploded from her, too volatile, too fragile to exhibit control.

 

Her father falls back, tumbled like a leaf in the wind, and Sansa watched him with tears in her eyes.

 

“You let him leave the pack!” she cried, fingers cool with ice, “It would have killed us all!”

 

“Sansa!”

 

Sansa heaved. Looked to her wide-eyed mother. She snarled, and the entire godswood convolssed. Shook and snarled with her fury. The roots of the wirewood whipped, and Sansa bared her teeth.

 

“ Do not think to command me, river-blood, ” she snarled, and it is an echo of someone she had been before.

 

Her Mother falls back. Drops to her knees. Sansa Shudders. Horror at her actions. But everything is too much.

 

“ Bran, ” she calls out, and her brother is there, crippled, eyes wide.

 

She can feel the talons of the Three-Eyed Raven. Clutching at his heart- at his mind- at his spine and she feels her heart shudder. She struggles to her feet, southern slippers ill footed in dirt and lingering snow, and her legs buckle and tremble like a newborn. But she goes to him either way. Hands a glow, a song on her lips.

 

“Sansa?” he sounds afraid, Tully blue eyes wide and shadowed by a raven’s wing.

 

She places a kiss on his brow, cups his face. 

 

“You are a wolf. Not a raven. Be gone Brendon Rivers. Crawl back to your spite and story keeping. Bran is not to be yours.”

 

Bran’s eyes cloud. And they are white and clouded. A funny smile quirks on his lips. She knows what looks at her from her brother’s face is not him.

 

“ So,” his voice is smooth, much too deep for Bran, and tempered by a Riverland accent, “The Queen of Winter returns.”

 

The godswood writhes. She is angry that he would take from her blood.

 

“And the rat of black wings comes to claim my pack,” she returns.

 

He laughs. Pure and spite and gleeful.

 

“Sweet Queen you have not lost your humor. I have missed you.”

 

“I was to rest.”

 

“But the Summer Monarchs proved too weak for their tasks?”

 

“There is one yet lives…”

 

The Three-Eyed Raven hummed in Bran’s throat.

 

“ Yes. I feel him. Summer King of Fire and Blood. He races home for you. Shall it be fire and ice?”

 

“I know not. But, I tell you to leave my Brother.”

 

"I am sorry. I- I thought you were gone," His face is grim, his eyes, though still white, show his remorse, "It was a desperate gambit. I am old, your grace, and I have not the means to fight the Night King alone. Brandon could have."

 

"It would kill him. So let him go."

 

"It… If-"

 

"I am the Winter Queen. The Summer King rides to me. You will let my brother go. "

 

The godswood shivered with her anger.

 

Book II Winter:

Book III Spring:

Chapter 3: In The Dream of Spring

Summary:

Eddard Stark finds a young girl, broken, bleeding in the godswood, clutching at a sword, a crown on her brow. She calls herself Lyanna, draped in a white gown stitched with blue winter roses, hair like fire and violet eyes straight from Valyria.

Or the Prince that was Promised loved the Queen of Winter, and gave way to the Princess of Spring.

Prologue:

Girl Amongst the Roots

Eddard I

 

It is early morning when he found her.

 

Early morning with the sun just rising, summer snow crisp and white, untouched beneath his boots as he walked amongst the familiar trees of the godswood. His feet follow the familiar path to the hearttree. Praying was a daily occurrence, not for pleas or wishes of guidance. But instead to calm his heart and ease his mind in the quiet compilation.

 

It is in that quiet that he hears a soft cry.

 

Like a sob, and the wind wrestled through the blood-red leaves of the wirewood tree, and it is suddenly as if the whole wood was shaking. Ned jumps, ears straining as he hears that soft cry. At first, he thinks it is a cry of a cat, or some other small animal caught in pain. But then he catches a sob on the wind, and he is running for the hearttree, the direction of the sobs of what sounds like a child. And there she was. Bleeding and broken, laying amongst the roots of the hearttree, sobbing and clutching desperately at the fur of an enormous wolf.

 

No. Not a wolf. 

 

A direwolf as large as the largest horse, as big as a cart, as a wheelhouse. It is white and so large he would have seen the girl if it had not been her crimson hair draped across its mighty back, for it is curled around her protectively, tucked around her in an embrace. It lifts its face. Its eyes are ruby red, as red as the leaves above them, and Eddard’s breath catches. Then, silently, without another sound or gesture on his part, the direwolf unwinds itself from the girl’s shivering form, presses a messy lick to her small face, and disappears amongst the trees in a movement so swift that Ned can hardly track it.

 

A white phantom amongst the trees, gone in an instant.

 

It is the girl’s next sob that spurs him into action. And Eddard Stark carries the girl back to Winterfell, running as fast as he can.

---

A Promise To Wed:

Catelyn I

 

The injured girl that her husband has brought into her home is hauntingly like Sansa.

 

The resemblance strikes her heart. It hits like a hammer’s blow, fierce and staggering. Her hair is a darker copper, perhaps, closer to the color of the heart tree than the brilliant sheen of Sansa’s hair, and much longer, more unruly, and less tamable with curls to daughter’s careful straight hair. Her face is smaller, less long, less oval, rounder and her lips are thinner, her nose shorter, her brow less arched. Less, less, less. But her skin is the same cream, untouched by freckles as Catlyn’s own, clear as untouched snow. Her face is softer than her daughter’s, less defined by the infamously strong Stark features that have turned glorious in Sansa, but it's a similar beauty is in those features nonetheless. Her cheekbones are carved the same way, blunted slightly by a jut of childhood fat, the curve of the brow and the length of her little neck is the same elegance. 

She is a mirror to her daughter, a mirror to her, this child who could be no older than seven namedays, younger than her Sansa certainly, older than her Arya. But she is so alike her child that it made Cat’s breath catch, made her heart hammer against her breast bone in distress at a similar fate befalling her daughter.

 

For this young girl lays bleeding with Maester Luwin hovering over her, unsure if she will live.

 

She refused dreamwine and milk of poppy, spat them both out of her pale pink lips, eyes still closed. She only drank weak broth, water and refused anything else. She sweated in her borrowed shift, nearly soaked through the material entirely.

 

“She staves off infection, my Lady,” said Luwin, careful, thick brows creased.

 

Cat gave a firm, calm nod, stomach in knots as she watched a child so like her own suffer. Her attention turned to the table, the first of the girl’s effects that caught her attention was the blade, a long glorious thing of sliver and red-black. The pommel is an elegant direwolf’s snarling head, the grip’s warp a white leather. It is almost plain, in comparison to the strangely hypnotic beauty of the ripples of black and red that make up the blade. It is polished to a beautiful, full sheen that she has long seen her husband work into his own blade, Ice. She wondered at the name of the blade before her eyes turn to the dress Ned had found her in.

 

It is a beautiful, beautiful thing, even with the ugly gash at the bodice, and the blood that coated the gown in the same place.

 

It is white, made of Yitish silk, a grey so delicate Myrish lace that looks like snowflakes at the end of the sleeves and across some of the top of the bodice, and the softest wool for its underskirts. It had fitted the girl seamlessly in a Northern way, minimal and conservative in the cut. High necked, long sleeves with minimal stitching about the neck, silver thread made as delicate branches. A functional white belt made of leather and studded with silver branches that bramble around the thick band. The true glory laid in the silken skirts, the fullness of them, the way it must have fallen off the girl’s thin waist. And in the intricate stitch work that Cat both admired and had her hands aching to think of. It is a wonderful tangle of blue winter roses, tangled silver branches that mimic the heart-tree, red five-pointed leaves and all. 

 

It is a dress that Cat had always wish she could see Sansa in, the colors of House Stark and House Tully, and she finds it the greatest pity that the bodice has been ruined by the work of a blade.

 

I will clean this, Cat thought, heart-throbbing, And If I cannot I will make the bodice anew for this poor girl.

 

The girl has little jewelry despite her obvious wealth: a small ring meant for her thumb, it matches the belt, another tangle of branches, but holds a small cluster of rubies in the shape of one of the leaves of the weirwood tree, a simple pendant with a strange small, curious horn at its end, and one more thing that had Cat blinking. It is a crown. A crown wrought simply, but a crown nonetheless. Another thing made up of the boroughs of the heart-tree, but amongst the branches and leaves made of rubies, a running direwolf that is so alike her House’s sigel that Cat blinked at the second parallel to her little Sansa. Because in my heart of hearts I know that Sansa will be a princess then Queen, what else can she be with Ned’s friendship with Robert, with the Crown Prince so close in age to her daughter? The only other things that belong to the girl is a sable-fur cloak with a simple clasp of another snarling direwolf, black leather boots that are worn but in good condition, and foreign-looking coins found in one of the many pockets sworn in her dress but cleverly hidden.

 

“I will take this,” she said, quietly, to the Maester, lifting dress and cloak alike, “I will have them cared for.”

 

She wished to linger. She wished to sit at the girl’s bedside, but looking at her and her similar features of her daughter made it difficult. Instead, she goes with the girl’s clothing and she cleans them by her own hand. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed her cloak to remove the blood and left it to dry. She is able to see that the bodice is separate from the skirts, cleaned the few drops of blood that had fallen on the skirts, and worked on the bodice. By some miracle, she is able to remove the blood, and by happenstance, she is able to fix the gash by adding more stitch work that mimics those around the collar. By the end Cat’s hands ache, for the crafter of the original design is masterful but she felt better for her effort, even as she stood to complete a prayer wheel for the young girl’s survival.

Cat has planned to keep her distance, but when she returned the next morning, clothing and prayer wheel within her hands... She only wished to check on the girl. Leave the wheel and her repaired clothing and go about her duties while she awaits her husband’s return, wanting to learn the reason why an obviously foreign girl with the clothing of a princess, injured to the point of near-death and the blade wrought from Valerian steel had come to be within Winterfell’s most sacred place without anyone the wiser. It is in that moment as she came to the room, in the early morning hours, just after dawn has started to fill the Maester’s surgery, that the girl spoke for the first time.

 

“Mama?” her voice is sweet as birdsong but soft. Weak and frail with tiredness.

 

Cat, in the midst of leaving the prayer wheel at the girl’s feet, froze. Her gaze turned to the girl’s ashen face, her eyes open and the palest shade of lilac with threads of grey that caught Cat’s breath. But they are glazed in the girl’s fever, and the sweat that shines at the girl’s brow is apparent. Cat blinked, careful, as the girl’s small hand reached for her.

 

“Mama? Mama?” she pleaded, soft and earnest, and oh how Cat’s own heart throbbed at the plea.

 

Carefully, Cat reached for that small hand, feverishly hot and slick but the girl’s grip is strong and firm.

 

“Mama… Ma- Mother  I couldn’t find you…”

 

“I am here,” Cat said it without mean, the words slipping past her lips to comfort the poor, feverish child that looked so much like her little Sansa. 

 

Still gipping her impossibly small hand, Cat reached out to touch at her brow, soothing away at the wet hair. The girl leaned into her touch, a sob in her throat. Cat’s own throat is tight, and she trembled at this stranger mistaking her for her mother.

 

“I… I was left alone. She left me Oathkeeper and Ghost and told me to run- I couldn’t find you or father or anyone...”

 

Cat just soothed away her hair.

 

“You are safe,” she told the girl.

 

The girl sobbed in return.

 

“They killed her. They killed Lady Brienne, Mother. They killed her and she gave me Oathkeeper and its all my fault-”

 

“No, no, child, it is not,” she told her.

 

“I… They killed Lady Brienne. They killed your best friend, Mother. I’m sorry. I’m sorry mother. Forgive me.”

 

Cat trembles.

 

“Shh, all is well.”

 

The girl continues to sob.

 

“Mother… Mother, please tell me Father is alive. Please tell me Rhaegar did not kill him.”

 

The name startles her. As did the fear of the name ‘Rhaegar’ coming from this young girl’s lips.

 

“I will marry him. I promise,” she whispered sobbed, “I will marry the Summer Prince. Tell Father to stop the Dance, tell him that I will do it, willingly. Please. ”

 

The girl is barely older than Arya, and she speaks of marriage and war. 

 

“I cannot cause you any more pain, Mama, you have lost so much already. Marry me to Rhaeagar, and let this end. I cannot let anyone suffer for me any longer. Our Winterlands shouldn’t suffer for one girl. Please, Mother.”

 

“Shh,” soothed Cat, heart pounding, “Think not of Summer Princes and Wars, sweetling.”

 

The girl’s grip tightens on her hand.

 

“I won’t be scared of him anymore. I promise. I will wed him. Mother, please, tell father I will.”

 

“Shh.”

 

The girl cries tears in her lilac and grey threaded eyes, and sobs pitifully.  Cat can only soothe and touch her fevered head. 

---

Chapter Whenever:

An Ill Mirror

Eddard

 

The man is like him to a startling degree, Ned can see as the cautious party approached the man and woman with an army at their backs, clutching at the young girl that he had all but claimed as his own.

 

The only stark difference is his snow-white hair, but beyond that, it is startling the same. There is a scar on his brow, nearly to his intense grey eyes, slight plumpness to his lips, and his white hair is curled, but the man looked so like Ned it surprised him. He was clinging to little Lyanna, holding onto her shoulders with gloved hands that visibly trembled. The woman next to him is also an echo. An echo of his beautiful Cat, taller and younger, with longer, straighter hair, and no freckles on her paler skin… But it is enough of a resemblance that he hears gasps amongst the crowd.

 

The man, crown on his brow is visibly crying, and the way he clings to the girl can only lead Ned to believe that he is Lyanna's father, the man she had called King Aegon. The woman, after her mad dash, can only be her mother, Queen Sansa.

 

She looks like Cat, fair and beautiful, much too much like his wife, and when she looks up, her eyes are vividly blue, Tully blue.

 

Her eyes linger on him, her brow furrowed, her hand lingering on her husband and Lyanna alike.

 

“I am King Aegon of the Winter Kingdom,” says the man, voice strong and frightfully Northern,  “First of his name, Firebrought, Wolf’s Blood, and you have rescued my daughter in her greatest time of need.”

 

“I am Queen Sansa of the Winter Kingdom, First of her name,” said the woman, voice even and as pretty as a song, tempered by accent like her husband, “Queen in the North, the Rivers, and the Mountains, Wolf’s Blood.”

Chapter 4: The Lioness Rampent

Summary:

A story of a modern woman being reborn as Cersei Lannister, and honestly, it goes as well as you think. In which not-Cersei fucked off to Essos as soon as she could, and only comes back because ICE zombies will eventually freeze the sea, and that might not be the funniest thing to deal with down the line. Or Not-Cersei returns after years away and says a mighty fuck it when the King of Westeros bids her to marry his son.

Chapter I:

The Return

Cersei

 

King’s Landing was a right mess.

 

She knew that as sure as anything, without even looking at the city.

 

And still smelled vividly of shit.

 

Her first thought is that saving the vague memories of the people she hadn’t even liked, even if by sole virtue of tangentially, was wrong. That she should just turn around, and get back to her relatively safe life in Essos. That the fate of the entirety of a continent should not solely be on her fucking shoulders. And that the people of Westeros didn’t need diet-Cersei Lannister to come back from the dead.

 

But then she remembers Jaime's face, sweet and honorable.

 

Tyrion's face, earnest and curious, just born and so innocent of anything to come .

 

She remembers the warmth in Joanna’s lovely eyes, the desperation in which she had held onto life.

 

She remembers the curve of Genna’s smile.

 

The sorrow that clung to Tygett’s face.

 

The way that Gerion had looked the other way when he had found her two years ago, mouth agape at what his niece had become in the time she had left.

 

And the woman that was in Cersei Lannister’s body couldn’t just walk away.

 

So here she was. She felt more then knew that entering the Game would kill her. 

 

Not that she knew for sure.

 

Not with the whole, fucked off for nearly a decade to get away from marrying Robert Baratheon and fucking her own brother. And the whole, Maggoy the Frog coming to her, instead of the other way around. A cackle on her old face. Even when the old bag had reached to taste her blood, Cersei had slapped her hand away. She already knew too much of the future- or a future that she had basically stomped into a quick death by running away.

She didn’t fancy some golden shrouds for the children that would never exist. And taking one look at Robert Baratheon’s pimply face during the Tourney of Lannisport had been exactly what had driven her away. She had been in her seventies at the time of her first death, had never really craved sex in the first place, and though she had her share of lovers, it had been done in service of fulfilling them. Never her. The concept of marrying a child in body, as well as mind, had been so horrifying that she had escaped on the first ship bound for Essos that she could find. Especially knowing that sex would be forced, and at the leisure of a partner, she may not even like. And because of the aftermath of Tywin Lannister freaking the fuck out. A sane person does not live in disdain in the wake of the Hand of the King.

 

“Dāria,” said her beloved guard, Daena walking into her private cabin, “We have arrived into Blackwater Bay.”

 

She was one of the first people to look at the crazy girl from the West stomping all about old Valyria and seen the potential, instead of madness. And she had been the first to pledge herself to her. She had been through thick and thin, and Cersei loved her.

 

“Daena,” she muttered back, shifting a sheet of shimmering blonde hair behind her shoulder, “I am aware due to the bloody smell.”

 

Automatically, Daena set to work, roping her hair into a complex fishtail braid. She had been many things, Daena. Friend, confidant, sworn shield… Being her handmaid was near second nature.

 

“You come from this place?”

 

Cersei heard the disapproval, same as she saw Daena’s nose wrinkle in her pretty face in the mirror. Cersei snorted.

 

“No. My once home is on the opposite coast. We passed it on our way here.”

 

“The rock place that made you cry?”

 

Cersei hummed. She had not expected such emotion, to see the Rock from a distance. They had only sent a few boats for provisions and had not docked in Lannisport due to her own reluctance. A sobbing monarch did not make an impressive thing, and if there was one thing the New Republic of ValyrIa needed, it was to look impressive to the medieval fucks that wanted to use them. 

 

“So it did.”

 

Daena fished her braid with a flourish and reached for the pure weaved valyrian steel veil that would mask the color of her hair, as well as shimmer prettily in the sun. Placed it perfectly on her head, and tucked away all her hair. From the outside, it made her hair look paler, more suitable to the expectations of the people outside. Daena reached for her crown, a circlet of simple steel, that connected to the porcelain mask she would use to further hide her face, an early thing she had adopted to hide her apparent youth, and her beauty. She placed it expertly on her head and reached to help her with the mask.

 

Because the face of Cersei Lannister was indeed one of the prettiest damn things to ever be made.

 

More’s the pity that the soul of an old hag laid inside. Daena always did say it was lucky she was so bloody tall to fool people of her age. 

 

“You can show your face, are they not your countrymen?”

 

Cersei sighed and attached the mask with a firm click.

 

“Dear Daena, my country is the Republic. My home is there. This is just a diplomatic visit. That will more than likely end in a declaration of war.”

 

“Do you believe it will be that drastic?”

 

“They invited me to fuck and breed with their princeling, with the guise of a marriage offer written between the lines of the invitation of one descendent of the once Great Valerian Empire to another to meet.”  

 

Daena’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursed in a way that always shows displeasure and promise of violence.

 

Cersei is reminded of the time she first met her Faceless friend before they had befriended each other. The way she had gripped tightly on her golden hair and threatened to cut her pretty face off of her head. And then had promptly dropped her hold with horror, despite Cersei’s clumsy attempt at theft for science really , for Daena had felt the touch of death on her and had right been scared spitless.

 

Because the many-faced god took everyone in the end, but so rarely gave back, let alone so blatantly and naturally.

 

“ What ?”

 

Cersei smiled at the indignant face her friend took.

 

“See? War. Imagine the rest of the Senate, a foreign power attempting to take me from them. ” 

 

 “Valar morghulis‎,” hissed Daena, voice acidic.

 

“Daena, sweetling, valar dohaeris,” returned Cersei with a smile.

---

Chapter II:

Unyielding

Rhaegar

 

"They say she is the ugliest thing in the world," whispered Tyrion Lannister to his Uncle Gerion, "And that she hides her face from the shame of it. That only a monstrous woman could unite the people of the Free Cities into the Republic of New Valaria."

 

The Wandering Lion's lips twitched. His eyes gleamed.

 

"Oh? You do know she didn’t unite any of the cities. She simply made a new one. If others flock to it, it's hardly her fault."

 

Little Tyrion made a face, wrinkling his nose.

 

"I know that. Uncle, did you not see her face when you went to the Republic?"

 

"Indeed, I did."

 

"And?"

 

"She is the most beautiful thing in the world. She hides her face so that the gods will not become ashamed of their own beauty in comparison," said the young lion, voice teasing to his nephew.

 

The little lion pouted.

 

"No one can be prettier than mother. "

 

Lord Gerion smiled. And Rhaegar was fascinated in the soft look that the usually overly jovial man took.

 

" She is. Lady Joanna is fair, yes, I grant you that nephew. But the Dāria is… Is beyond words."

 

Rhaegar knew the lord to be a wanderer, prone to fanciful talk and tall tales.

 

But his sincerity at that moment was not feigned.

 

He swallowed thickly. To think that his lord father planned to betrothed him to this Queen of the New Republic of Valyria seemed… Idiotic. Even if New Valyria was a new state, formed in the once poisoned land of his ancestors, cleansed by her hand- Dragons found alive all tamed by her song- He knew not what father expected. 

 

Now on top of this, he finds the only woman he was allowed to marry is also the fairest in the world by one so well-traveled as Gerion Lannister.

 

This is madness.

 

That was his thought as he watched the approaching ship . What sort of mad man thought to make a steel ship, and then succeed ? He breathed in astonishment at the sight. It reminded him of the Rhoynish longship, with the thickness of the Western Galleon. Some sort of chimney was in the middle of the ship, a happy trail of steam escaping it as it cut through the waters with impressive speed. It was painted a brilliant white, was beautiful and curious, adorned further by what he recognized but could not fully understand as Ancient High Valyrian written precisely.

 

The metal ship docked.

 

"Where are the dragons?" hissed his father.

 

His answer was a sweet voice raised from the deck, perfectly projected. And the sound of dragon song followed.

 

Rheagar lost his breath.

 

Appearing from the clouds in a dramatic swoop, a dragon, resplendent and golden landed before the ship, easily the size of the ship and then some. It was unlike anything that Rheagar had ever read of. Slender like a snake, limbs thin and delicate, feathered wings great and large, with golden fur crowning its great head, like a lion. It let out a roar that shook his heart. 

 

She will not yield to me. Who would with such power?

 

A procession of splendid figures began to emerge as the gangplank descended with some unseen mechanism, dressed in new and old Essosian dress. The song from that sweet voice was joined by the figures as they began to turn to their waiting party, laden with goods of Essos and the New Valyria.

 

Delights foreign, old magic sang in the air.

 

And at the back of a procession, a figure that took his breath anew.

 

The woman that many thought to be his future bride was a slight figure, just slender and hints of womanly curves. Crowned in splendid silver- no Valyrian steel , a meshwork veil of metal, like armor, a circlet of gleaming blues and runes of old, and indeed as all the rumors had spun, a plain white mask of porcelain to hide her face. Her dress was nearly plain, covered her arms and neck, a white yitish silk, but interlaced with gleaming strands of more valyrian steel, tinted with a spectrum of all colors, ripples interlacing every color imaginable. Even her hands were adorned with gloves, ringed with more shimmering steel.

 

Hidden as she was, Rheagar knew this queen to be wickedly smart to dress as such.

 

Even Tywin Lannister breathed a gasp at the causal wealth and splendor she displayed, head to toe in once mythic steel, as the woman glided down the gangplank. Her movements, and the lips of what he has assumed as part of the mask parted. Her skin is near as perfect porcelain. Her lips painted a vivid red. From a distance, the effect was quite unsettling. An almost human face parting in such a vivid, animated movement. The song that left her lips was Valyrian, and it was only every other word that Rheagar could understand. Ancient and hallowed, even being as fluent as he was, he did not understand every word.

 

More dragon's cries filled the air.

 

And he gasped as they danced through the air, launching from every corner of the ship, some as the dragons he knew, others serpentine as the large one, all in a rainbow of colors. He counted perhaps a half dozen and knew from rumors that this wasn't even half of the fleet that protected the New Republic. The dragons that landed around the Queen in perfect step were just babes, the largest being the golden serpent that followed the song of their mistress in perfect pitch.

 

The baby dragons followed, not as perfect, but in a lovely chorus that lifted his heart.

 

Winter will crumble. Perhaps I am no promised prince in face of this.

 

The dragon song and the chorus of the New Republic held in the air for a moment, before it faded into stunned silence. A woman, young and of valyrian descent with violet eyes and dark skin, stepped forward, from behind the crowned woman.

 

“THE DARIA OF THE NEW REPUBLIC OF VALERIA,” Called out the woman, “OUR DARIA.”

 

The people of the ship cheered and stomped their feet. The figure raised a lily-white hand gloved, and her lips parted in a smile, and the sounds eased off into polite silence.

 

“I greet the people of Westeros,” spoke the Dāria, “On behalf of the New Republic, I am welcomed upon your soil.”

 

His father was vibrating in his seat and launched himself to his feet in a desperate, clumsy movement. Tywin Lannister was startled, as it had been rehearsed that he would speak to announce their welcoming party.

 

"The King of the Seven Kingdoms welcomes you, great Valryian Queen," his voice was a rasp. 

 

And his eyes were full of greed.

.....

“Forgive me,” he said approaching, and the woman, Daena reached for the sword on her hip, “But I was wondering, your Grace, but your name was given as Dāria, is that not the word for-”

 

“Dāria is her grace’s title, not her name,” the venom in the woman's tone was sharp, and it was rare that such vitriol was ever sent his way.

 

Rheagar blinked expectantly. Lady Daena glared at him. Rhaegar cleared his throat.

 

“Prey tell, your Grace, what is your name?”

 

The Dāria’s lips twitch in amusement. Or mockery.

 

“Our Dāria is only to be called Dāria,” hissed Daena, with a lifted brow, “Her name is a secret song. A secret and pleasure of only a few thankful souls.”

 

“It is a necessary notion that the Republic plans to make a tradition,” the monarch’s voice was sweet and fair, even in plain speech, lyrical and he noticed with a jolt flawlessly spoken Common Tongue, “For I am just Dāria,  nothing more or less to my people. When the position is passed, the next Dāria or Dārio will follow this. I live to serve my people. My name is not what matters. It is what I am that matters.”

 

"So your legacy is left to no one," said Lord Tywin, voice disdained.

 

The Dāria tilted her head. And smiled. A smiled that showed all of her teeth it was so wide.

"My legacy is the Republic. My people are the legacy."

Chapter 5: Promised

Summary:

A plethora of people emerge from wildfire, and all the smiles die at the Tourney of Harrenhal. Or one Sansa Stark is utterly confused, naked and alone until she meets the lavender eyes of a man with Jon Snow’s cheekbones and his same bewildered expression. Then, she isn't so alone as her pack stumbles out of the fire too.

Magic is ridiculous.

Parings: Arya/Gendry, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Elia Martell/Rheagar Targaryen/ Lyanna Stark, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark,

Tags: Magical Shenanigans, Sansa is done, Arya and Jon Queenslayers, Jaime Lannister suggests a support group, CRACK!, Time-Travel, Ghost is a good boy, Rhagel is a good girl, Nymeria is a bitting champ,

Rhaegar I:

 

She is beautiful.

 

That is his first thought.

 

A beautiful maiden, naked and stumbling, out of his father’s ‘surprise’. A vat of wildfire tipped over in his father’s cackling, as the green flames came alive. His first movement is to his wife, covering her with his body, hand reaching to run and then he is staring stupefied as the green fire changes. Goes from green to blue, then pure white that changes to form the body of a woman.

 

A gasp.

 

A step.

 

And the flames still and blue, shimmering with white, dancing as the young woman steps out of the vat.

 

His father’s laughter dies. 

 

Turns to quiet awe as she steps out of the blue flame. And the beautiful maiden of fire takes another stumbling step. Automatically, she covers her breasts, and stumbles yet another step. Utterly beautiful, with hair as red as flame, coppery and long, near to her knees, skin pale and luminous white.

 

Everyone is agog.

 

The young woman blinks and snaps her head back and forth, eyes growing wider as she looks around.

 

“Jon?” she asks, voice musical and perfect, “Arya? Bran? Gendry? Ser Brienne? Ser Jaime? Podrick? Sam? Gilly? King Tormund?”

 

She takes another stumbling step.

 

“JON!” she screams, voice desperate, “ ARYA! BRAN! GENDRY? BRIENNE? JAIME? PODRICK? SAM? GILLY? TORMUND? ”

 

Something tugs at his heart. And without his mean Rheager has let go of Elia’s hand and is leaping over the royal platform, hand reaching for the clasp of his cloak. He removes it. And without a thought, he draps the woman of fire in his own cloak. She starts, eyes growing wider.

 

She is a tall, this woman.

 

Tall enough that she needs only to tip her head just the slightest amount to look him in the eye.  Rhaeager thinks he gasps as her blue eyes lift, as they lock on his own. Tully blue. She looks of the Tully girls.

 

She stares.

 

“You are Rheagar Targeryon,” she says, simply.

 

Rheagar stares back. Swallows thickly. His hands linger on the young woman’s shoulders, even as she quickly arranges his blood red cloak quickly and economically to her beautiful form.  

 

“I am.”

 

She stares at him, and it is only because he holds her shoulders does he know that she is trembling.

 

“The Realm needs not a Promised Prince,” she said cuttingly, perfect voice smooth, “It needs a King. ”

 

Rheagar blinks, gaps.

 

The young woman rips herself away from his hold and stumbles back to the vat as it starts to roar.

 

The flames turn golden. And the woman, girl,  thrust her hands into it.

 

A hand reaches back.

 

And she clasps it and out stumbles a man.

 

He is just as fair as the woman, even with one of his hands being made of some dark, gleaming glass, a sword of red and black Valerian steel adhered to it somehow. He is taller then the woman, and his hair is golden and fair-

 

And he is stunningly like young Jaime Lannister-

 

Only double his age. Missing an arm. And he, naked as the woman, drops to his knees before her. A knight before his-

 

"Queen Sansa," he says, and gods even his voice is like Jaime's-" What the Seven hells just fucking happened?"

 

The woman,  Queen Sansa, huffed.

 

"I believe the Mad Queens just tried to kill us, Ser Jaime."

 

"That sounds about right. Gods fucking damn it ."

 

"You lept into fire for me."

 

The knight, Jaime, looked up with vividly green eyes.

 

"I- I would not stand for your death, red-wolf, not in such a manner, not for my Queen."

 

The fire flared blue. A different shade. With no white-

 

Both the naked knight and queen thrust their hands in.

 

Another woman,  gasping, stumbled out.

 

"Wench!" Cried out the male knight, happily.

 

The woman, not fair, but certainly tall and clasping a sword that looked a twin to the one in the man's fake hand, jumped out the vat and punched the knight in the face.

 

"YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"

 

"Ser Brienne," called the Queen, voice a sigh.

 

The big woman dropped to her knees.

 

"Begging your forgiveness, your grace, for the rudeness."

 

"Forgiven. And I also forgive you both for jumping into wildfire for me, you idiots. "

 

Both knights flushed. And the woman realized she was naked and shirked.

 

"Magic is bullshit, isn't it?" Asked Sir Jaime as he jolted for the stands and started ripping at the lion banners, he tossed a long strip to the older woman. 

 

Didn't even notice the young boy that was gaping at him for how identical he looked. The woman, knight? Ser Brienne caught it and furiously tied it around herself, face flushed ruddy red.

 

"Watch your mouth in front of our Queen."

 

"The Queen has heard worse from her sister. "

 

"He makes a fair point, Ser Brienne," said the young Queen of fire, amused.

 

The young, female knight shook her head furiously. 

 

"This is-"

 

The fire turned red. Molten and caustic, white shimmering- And once again the young queen thrust her hands into the flames.

 

A man nearly identical to Brandon Stark stumbles out of the vat. Clutching to the woman's hand.

 

"SANSA!" yelps the Stark look-alike, stumbles naked, and nearly drops on top of her. It is only Sir Brienne steadying that keeps them from crashing into the other.

 

"Jon-"

 

The Stark-looking man drops to his knees and starts- well, crying. 

 

"I swore to protect you-"

 

"Jon-"

 

"Uncle's ghost will kill me, well if Arya doesn't-"

 

"Jon-"

 

"Gods, I killed Daenerys,  I cleaved her head from her shoulders- But the wildfire-"

 

"JON!" said the Queen, loudly. 

 

The man, Jon, mouth snapped shut.

 

"Why on Earth are you in a cloak of my family’s sigyial?" He asked voice confused.

 

The Queen sighed.

 

"Jon, my dear cousin, look around you."

 

The Northerner, Targaryen? Jolted to his feet. Lifted his own valerian sword. He was pale, chest covered in gaping scar wounds that would kill most men. Covered, however, in blood not his own. And he stood uncaring of his nakedness as took in the crowd. His gaze caught Rheagar's. His mouth dropped open.

 

"Griff!" He called and his face bloomed into a broad smile that looked near mad with relief, "Griff! Brother!"

 

He started to walk forward until Sansa's hand rested on his relaxing arm.

 

"Jon. Jon that is not your brother Aegon. Look closer."

 

The young man who called him brother, his smile faded. Dimmed. And his eyes went wide.

 

" Fuck ."

 

The wildfire, flickered, black and violent yellow and Queen Sansa jumped and thrust her hands into the flames.

 

Out of it came two.

 

A man that looked like his cousin Robert and a fair woman that looked like the young Lyanna Stark. Covered in blood, the young woman clutched at a dagger, the other a whip thin blade and jumped into the waiting Queen's arms. Who was apparently very strong for she bore the weight of the young woman easily.

 

"I FINALLY KILLED HER."

 

"Arya, hold your tongue. Look around you, sister."

 

The young woman looked around. Swore as she saw him.

 

"Gendry, get me some fucking cloth to cover our bits."

 

"Yes, my lady."

 

"FUCKING MAGIC!" shrieked the woman, Arya, as she pulled the Baratheon banner around herself.

 

Sir Jaime laughed, "It's you Starks that cause this bullshit."

 

"Fuck you, Lannister."

 

He is Jaime Lannister. 

 

"Fuck you, Queenslayer ."

 

The young woman grinned a wolf's grin.

 

"Jon! We're the Queenslayers!"

 

The man, Jon, groaned.

 

" No. Don't make that a thing ."

 

Jaime Lannister, double the age of the boy Rheager knew, grinned.

 

"It's only fair I get to dub you this. You just murdered my mad cunt of a sister, right?"

 

The young woman nodded eagerly. The older Jaime laughed. The younger one gaped even more.

 

“ Fucking good. ”

 

Good Gods that woman killed his sister and he laughed .

 

The fire flared. An earthy and almost gentle green. The Queen marched and pulled out a large man with another sword and a woman- clutching a baby.

 

"Sam!" Cried Jon, and he rushed them both, “Gilly!”

 

"How many of us will come through the flame?"called out Arya, voice exasperated. 

 

"If my maths are right, three more."

 

"You're shit at maths, Sansa."

 

"Arya-"

 

The flames flared. Red and proud.

 

Out came a wild man of firey red hair

 

"BIG WOMAN!" He called out and bolted for Sir Brienne, lifting her off her feet. Who shrieked once again.

 

“Hello, King Tormund .”

 

“Bloody fuck, that just made me double kissed by fire! Same goes for you, Fire-Kissed Queen!”

 

“Yes, your grace, indeed it does,” called the Queen, a laugh on her lovely lips.

 

"Just call me Tormund, nothing graceful about this bear-fucker."

 

"King beyond the Wall," responded back the Queen, Sansa, voice laughing.

 

“Queen of Kneelers!” sent back the- the wilding.

 

“No one will kneel to me now. We stand, what, two score years in the past?”

 

“Shit. At. Maths, It is twenty and nine years in the past, since this seems to be Harrenhal, I recognize this plot of land, if less fucking savaged,” said the woman, Arya, sagely, “Whatcha reckon, Queen-Maker-Slayer, we make Sansa a Queen again?”

 

The Northern Targaryen, Jon, grinned.

 

“Sansa is the only one of us with sense-”

 

“I swear to the gods old and the new if you idiots make me a Queen again I will be very cross. Beyond that, Jon, we are in no position of toppling your mad grandfather just because I have sense. ”

 

Grandfather. That would make him- The flames changed yet again. White and red. Queen Sansa of twenty and nine years in the future, apparently, rushed forward. And out came-

 

Blood seven hells what is that thing?!

 

“Ghost! Good boy!” said the queen, cheerfully.

 

“If Pod does not come out of that I will be very crossed,” said Sir Brienne, voice concerned.

 

“Well-”

 

The flames changed again. This time purple. Out came a tallish lad when Queen Sansa pulled him out.

 

“Oh, good, hello Pod!” said Queen Sansa with a laugh, “There you go, Brienne, one squire not worse for wear save for his lack of clothing.”

 

“Why are we naked ?! And not dead-”

 

“MAGIC! POD OF THE GOOD ROD!” called out old Sir Jaime with an unrelenting glee, “Lord I can see why!”

 

The man, just his age, covered his manhood with his hands.

 

“Stop calling me that!”

 

“Never!”

 

“This is ridiculous-”

 

Rheagar agreed.

Notes:

This is rough as hell, and if anyone can recognize it, bits of this were used to make ‘Kissed By Fire’. This came first, but then I thought about the premise more seriously and published that separately cause I was really inspired and went past my rule of ‘five finished chapters’ before I publish a story properly.

Now, questions, would you guys like updates on the other chapters if I have them?

I was thinking of making them entirely new chapters because I have re-written or added stuff to them. OR I can update the existing chapter, but ya’ll won’t be alerted to it.

Chapter 6: You Shall Marry The King II

Summary:

Summary:

UPDATE!

Shae sees the lust in her lion’s eyes, as he looks at the young wolf girl. It the same look she has seen in a hundred other men’s faces. And it is in Sansa’s eyes that she see’s something else- something she has not seen since she ran from her father’s reaching hands- long forgotten the soft face of her sister long dead. So Shae smuggles the Princess of the North with the help of a Viper, and another Stark girl touches Dornish soil.

 

Parings: Shae/Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand, Sansa Stark/Young Griff, Mrcycella Baratheon/Tristan Martell,

Shae I

 

Shae has come to understand that Sansa Stark trusts her.

 

As much as the terrified girl can trust anyone.

 

And it is on the eve before her wedding to the man that Shae had stupidly fallen in love with, that Sansa Stark’s trust in her is pushed to the limit. She carefully gives the girl the exact amount of the prepared herbs, and Shae makes sure, deliberately, to prepare it in front of her. She turns to the girl Tyrion had forced her to serve, that one that he was to marry the very next day, and silently offers the prepared cup of tea.

 

Sansa Stark is barely four and ten, with a sweet pale face that has turned drawn and quiet.

 

Her eyes are blue- the bluest thing that Shae has ever seen, and when they look at her, there is a quiet understanding and resignation in them. She is dressed in her shift, a thin thing that is much too short, much too tight across her budding breast and hips. But she sits still and poised, and when she reaches for the cup, her lily-white hands do not tremble.

 

“Will it hurt?” is Sansa’s question.

 

“No.”

 

Sansa smiles. A soft thing that turns her brilliant and soft pink lips. There is a slightly crooked nature to her smile, a wry hint of sadness. But in her eyes all Shae sees is pure gratitude.

 

“I- Please. Please, if you can, will you throw my body into the sea? I do not want King Joffery to have his way with my remains.”

 

Shae shudders.

 

She had seen the macabre remains of the King’s playthings. Women who simply wished for coin to feed themselves, to feed the babes earned in their trade, thrown at the feet of the boy King. She knows Tyrion had hired some of the women and had spared no thought to their fates. She had told herself it had been the women who had made the mistake- the woman who had made the choice to risk their lives at the hands of the King. 

 

Now she is not so sure what else she had told herself with the promise of Tyrion’s love. 

 

“I will care for you, my Lady,” she tells the girl, gently.

 

“Run, if you can, afterward. They will blame you for giving me this. They will not make your death easy.”

 

Shae almost corrects her. Almost tells her the truth- But there is a corridor right behind Sansa’s mirror, and she knows that the Queen will place someone there tonight. Whether they are already there, had already heard, or running off to tell the bitch is something she will never know. 

 

“Drink deeply, and quickly.”

 

“Thank you, Shae. You were my truest friend here.”

 

Sansa Stark drinks it all, deeply and easily, her face not even flinching at what Shae’s knows is a truly bitter brew. 

 

She falls asleep quickly, and Shae is already catching the girl in her arms.

 

You were my truest friend here.

 

Shae thinks her heart is breaking. She knew Sansa had trusted her. She knew Sansa had liked her- but there was love in those words. Affection she had buried and held tightly in her heart, only given away with what she thought was her death. Shae is many things. But to think she is loved by this child makes her feel more than the whore to a man that intended to throw her away. Carefully, she presses a kiss to the girl’s head and lifts her easily in her arms. Sansa is tall where Shae is small, but she is undeniably underfed and waisfushly thin. And Shae has always been strong. Shae goes to the fireplace’s hearth and presses into the switch with her hip. It opens yet another corridor- wide enough for her to carry the girl out of the Keep. She gently lays Sansa within the thin carpet in the room and rolls the sweet girl up as neatly as she can. She strips off her clothing, sweet cotton of a handmaid for the rough spun clothing that would not look out of place in the market.  She reaches for the packs she had set aside. Two dress changes for the pair of them, money, some food and water, her Lady’s jewelry, and the doll that the young girl still clung to. She shoulders it before she lifts the carpeted girl again.

 

Shae is quick and quiet. She has mesmerized this path ever since they had announced the betrothal between Sansa and Tyrion.

 

Her heart is hammering.

 

She has done what she hopes is the smart thing- gone to another Lord who has reason to hate the Lions- and who would not want another noble girl destroyed at their hands. A risk. But she has a dagger swiped from the mockingbird man tucked on a strap on her thigh, and a second escape plan if she needs it.

 

And if there is one thing she can do to spite Tyrion for making promises he had never intended to keep, for lusting for a child- it is to take that child out of his hands.

 

You were my truest friend here.

 

I will keep such words true.

---

 

Oberyn I

 

He awaits on a Dornish ship, for another abused girl from the clutches of the Red Keep, and he wonders if he is doing the right thing.

 

He had not thought much of the red-headed Stark girl, only seen a girl with perfectly poised manners and simpering child at the Lannisters’ feet like a kept pet. He did not think much of her suffering or the fact that the child had seen her entire household slaughtered before her eyes, that she had been apparently beaten until the young handmaiden had corned him and his love. Desperation in her eyes and the wariness of a kicked dog, she had told him grimly of the girl's treatment within the Red Keep.

 

And her forced marriage to a man whose family had only given her suffering.

 

And he thought of  Elia- of sweet Elia and her children's bones that Eddard Stark had brought to them despite the fury of their new conquering King. The sadness and wish in  grey eyes that he had been swift enough to save his sister. And the child who acted like a kept pet while they beat her and her brother played King. Just like once, my good-brother played as a prophesied prince whilst my sister suffered at the hands of a Mad King… Just as I played wander instead of coming for her.

 

"My love," Elliaria's voice is soft.

 

Oberyn flinched.

 

"Yes?"

 

"The handmaid. She's approaching."

 

His heartbeat thundered. Oberyn rushed to the side his love stood by, and saw indeed, the fetching handmaid of Sansa Stark coming up the dock.

No girl insight.  Fury and something else curled in his stomach. A Lannister trick- and then he realized the woman's struggle with what looked like a carpet.

 

It should not weigh so much. Clever, clever woman.

 

She stopped at the ship's plank's foot. Gaze firm, pretty face pale in her lovely skin and clutching protectively at the carpet. Oberyn descended. Hands reaching to relieve the girl- But Shae the handmaiden bared her teeth. White and all-lined in decent place. Eyes glittering a fetching pitch, mouth full and pert, she shook her head.

 

" No," She hissed, Lys accent thick in her throaty voice, "I can carry my own."

 

Oberyn stared. Saw as the young woman lifted her chin. Proud and he admired her for it.

 

"So you can, my Lady. "

 

The Handmaid, Shae, gave a crisp, jerky nod. 

 

"Am allowed to board, Prince Oberyn?"

 

"You and your own are more than welcomed on my ship."

 

Shoulders trembled. Fire lite in dark eyes. The young woman hitched her precious cargo a touch higher on her shoulder and made her way up the plank.

 

"A cabin has been made ready for you."

 

A glance over her shoulder.

 

".... Thank you, Prince," she looked to his love, "Princess."

 

A lovely smile from Ellaria.

 

"I am no Princess, Lady Shae."

 

A steady gaze. No returned smile.

 

"And I am not a lady."

 

She walked into the cabin with the door open and Oberyn followed, as did Elliara.

 

On the bed, as soon as the door was closed, Shae the not Lady unwound the carpet with infinite gentleness, unlike her brisk demeanor. And within it in a shift that was much too small for the growing child, lay Princess Sansa Stark, asleep. He wondered at her ease until he saw the maid bring out a pair of smelling salts.

 

He realized immediately what had happened.

 

"What did you give her?"

 

The handmaid looked over her shoulder.

 

"A common Lylsian herb for sleep. It is the only way I could- I could be sure she would come with me."

 

Oberyn shifted. Unease crept into his stomach. Does not a beaten dog not wish to part from its abusing Master?

 

"Does the girl not trust you?"

 

Does she think her place is in lion's claws?

 

"Enough to let me kill her, as she thought the goblet I brewed was meant to kill. But not enough to assure her safety, I think. I failed her once. Failed to hide her first moon's blood, and it lead her to be betrothed to the little lion," Shae swallowed thickly. He saw how her throat convulsed, "I cannot fail her this time. Not in this."

 

Determination lined the pretty woman's face. She carefully places the salts underneath the girl's nose. It takes a few moments, but Sansa Stark wakes.

 

In a gasp.

 

Lurching into a seated position, Shae jumps in front of her, shushing.

 

" Shae ."

 

"Lady Sansa it is alright-"

 

"What did you do? "

 

Shae flinched.

 

"I could not let you marry him . I could not leave you to suffer any longer."

 

"The queen- the king and Lord Tywin-"

 

"Cannot touch you, now. We are sailing from Blackwater bay. I am to take you home."

 

"What home? Theon burned it. My brother did nothing to recover it. He and all my kin save for a brother at the Wall are dead -"

 

"Sansa-"

 

"Princess Sansa," intersects Oberyn, voice gentle.

 

The Stark girl looks at him. Clutches at her handmaid's reaching hands. And then she stood in her too-small shift and curtsy despite it all. Poised. Perfect. It is so much like his sister that it makes him ache. Elia had acted much the same. Perfected such a movement when she was but a child, and been praised so much for it.

 

"My Prince," she said smoothly, the touch of Northern accent, gone. Hidden by one of-

 

One of the West. Clever, desperate girl.

 

“Please, do not be alarmed.”

 

She is a careful girl. She only dips her head again. Not a beaten dog. But instead, a wolf cub backed into a corner. Gods above.

 

“We mean you no harm. We only wish to help you.”

 

Her lips trembled.

 

“The King and the Queen Mother will be desperate to find me. As would Lord Tywin. I am the key to the North,” she replies, and to Oberyn, before, it would have sounded as if the Lady was threatening him with the Lannisters.

 

But he can see it in her young face. She is resigned. She is not threatening them with her forced guardians, she is warning them of the war that would come if they realized who had taken the Stark girl. Another stolen Stark girl, this one much more unwilling than the last, but not for her own desires. She is unwilling because she is afraid of the ones that kept her.

 

Gently, Oberyn took her hand. Knelt at the poor girl’s feet.

 

“Princess, once, your father did my sister and her children a kindness. He brought them home. Allow me to do the same. We sail for the North, we shall gather your banners to reclaim the home from the people that have taken it from you.”

 

She was shaking. Of course, she was. Her lips parted.

 

“Who would fight for a stupid little girl?” she whispered, and her voice once again became tempered by the North, “My own brother would not even come for me in King’s Landing. The Riverlands run red with the blood of its people, scattered and being ravaged by the Old Lion’s dogs, not fit to rise with Autumn upon us. The Vale has not unleashed its knights to aid the North when it called itself a Kingdom. My own aunt rejected my brother King, why would she move for me?”

 

Oberyn swallowed.

 

Clever girl.

 

“Princess, I would fight for you.”

 

A touch of a bitter smile.

 

“One man- What will that mean against the Lannisters?”

 

“Not much,” he agreed, “Do you wish to return to King’s Landing?”

 

“I would sooner die.”

 

Oberyn nodded. Swallowed thickly around the sick that came to him at the thought of a girl this young speaking so lightly of death. So matter of factly.

 

“Then, would you come to Dorne instead? I promise you safety.”

 

A tear slid down her cheek.

 

“Do I truly have a choice?”

 

“ Yes. ”

 

She laughed. And he had never heard such a sorrowful sound.

 

“Then I shall be most grateful to see the land of Dorne. It seems fitting that another Stark girl is hidden in it.”

---

Ellaria I

 

Princess Sansa Stark was tarring her love apart.

 

Ellaria Sand knew that with certainty.  For this young girl was everything his sister had been, tragic, trapped, and unaided by her kin. But this was one he could save, so he was determined to succeed where they had failed for their princess all those years ago. To think it would be a Stark girl that would offer such penance to her love was near unthinkable, but she cannot deny that the young girl, for that is what she is, is similar to the princess she had known but briefly. And much like Princess Elia, inspired fierce loyalty.

Ellaria stared at the young woman who followed behind what was truly a Princess of Winter, a Shae-not-the-lady, dutifully. She stared because it was hard to look away as they seldom left their quarters, and now they were arguing in the middle of the entire crew.

 

“You’re angry at me,” said Shae to the Princess, firmly.

 

“No,” said Sansa Stark, and she did not say another word.

 

“I wanted to save you,” said Shae, sadly.

 

“Save me, or prevent me from marrying the man you loved?”

 

Shae stopped. Stared. Lady Sansa looked back over her shoulder, face blank and careful. She was good at hiding her emotions, that child, and it broke Ellaira’s heart to see.

 

“You knew?”

 

“It was my safety to know whose’s creature was being sent to serve me. It was strange that it was Lord Tyrion’s, but it didn’t take me long to figure out why he was sending a woman who barely knew what to do to look after me. It was to protect you from the Queen, and to keep an eye on me.”

 

“I never spied on you.”

 

“But you talked about me, and Lord Tyrion was smart enough to gather information from whatever you said.”

 

“He used me,” shouted Shae, the lover of Tyrion Lannister.

 

“I know.”

 

“I just- I just could not bear it. And then he was to marry you and when he looked at you it was disgusting. I loved such a man who lusted for a child.”

 

“I am not a child.”

 

“But you are, Lady Sansa, and that is why I saved you. I am a whore,” said Shae, passionately, “A poor excuse of a handmaiden, but you were my Lady and a child to protect. If that man thought he could take you and bed you with a faulty excuse as his father forcing him, and have me as his mistress then he could rot in the seven hells your people preach about.”

 

Lady Sansa stared.

 

“You didn’t do this because you were jealous.”

 

“I did this to protect you. You are my friend. ” 

 

The princess smiled.

 

And it was so beautiful it hurt to look at.

 

“And you are mine, Shae.”

 

And then the princess embraced her, careful and almost hesitate. Shae fiercely clung back.

Chapter 7: Wind Winter Howls II

Summary:

UPDATE!

It comes with a spark of memory, as her father is set to die by her words, and the blood of a Stark, tried and true, breaks the hold of lion cubs in a stag’s pelt, of a lioness in her den and a scheming bird whose talons are trying to drag her away. The Starks were once Kings of Winter, an unbroken line beyond reckoning, and that was once more literal than anyone thought. And it awakes in the soft girl that refuses to allow this to pass, a Queen of Winter rises on the day they attempt to take her father’s head.

 

Or Sansa Stark is basically the Avatar, a being that is a bridge between her world and the next.

 

PARING: Sansa Stark/Jon Snow

Book I Autumn:

A Coronation

 

As Ice starts to swing, something in Sansa breaks.

 

Like a needle thread brought too taut, pulled too hastily in impatience, something in Sansa breaks and howls to life in the same instance.

 

It resonates, a song as clear as anything in her heart, and it is done with desperation and refusal. No, it reverts deep, the thought of refusal, a flash of remembrance. And Sansa refuses to allow the sword of House Stark being used to remove the head of her father.

 

It had already ran red with Lady, already been touched by the lifeblood of House Stark, with a part of her soul already torn asunder.

 

But this was too much.

 

And as if the Ice has heard her, the sword’s dark gleam turns from a steely gloss to a true and biting glow. The color is cool and cold, a blue, hard and fierce as winter. The crowd gasps in surprise, even as her heart roars in her ears. Ice does not recognize the man that holds it aloft, she knows that with a certainty that should frighten her. The tongueless man barely has time to stumble, before his hands become black and rotted with the cold of the glowing blade, and he gives a wordless and pathetic moan that turns into sobs as frost starts to crawl down his arms. He tries, Sansa sees, tries to let go of the blade, tries to remove its pommel from his grasping hands, but it does not let him.

 

Because she does not wish it. Does not wish this spineless man to take from her, to use the blade and desecrate it with the blood of the one who would wield it.

 

“ You’re Grace, ” the voice is an echo of a thousand voices, of a hundred different voices, but she can hear them, all of them, the voices of kin come to pass. It lingers on a female voice, sweet and wild and husky, and somehow without having ever heard it, she knows it is her Aunt Lyanna. Knows it deep in her bones, in the beat of her heart as Sansa watches the glowing blade slowly freeze over Ser Ilyn Payne for his mistake. 

 

Frost crawls down his arms, and bit by bit the sobbing man is punished for his folly.

 

The last Stark to die will be the one that is the loudest voice within the blade of the Kings and Queens of Winter . Sparks of memories come to Sansa then, and she knew without really remembering that some of the voices within that sympathy were once her own, male and female, strong and soft, loud and sure, and everything in between. In a line of near eight-thousand years, she has come and come again. This is the first life, however, in which she has awoken after the original Ice had broken, and been reforged from the shards, infused with the steel of magic, hot and dark with fire for the Doom yet to come for Westeros. Something a near hundred years after my last death, a herold of the Age of Dragons… An age that should have been much longer. She vaguely remembers thinking it would have been her last life, and as Fire and Blood would come to Westeros, Winter would never truly come again. The age of her would end-

But the world was changing, the Dragon Kings were mostly gone, come and dead before she had reakwaned as Sansa Stark, and it was time for the Winter Queen to return to the North once again.

 

“ Your Grace. Your Grace. Your Grace. ”

 

She blinks.

 

“I am here,” she whispers, to the voices she is unsure everyone can hear. She does not particularly care, and her voice grows, stronger and clear as she calls out to the blade in a ringing tone, “I am here. ”

 

The roar of the crowd has started to fade, silence in horror and shock over Eddard Stark’s execution turning into something else entirely.

 

Instead of a mockery of mercy and justice, it was now a coronation of something that had not breathed in near four hundred years.

 

“Winter is coming. You are not in Winterfell. Our blood lingers within in the walls, a child pulled taut to the skies to fly by a cawing rat, a babe wild and wolf's blood true,” said the chorus , and then Aunt Lyanna’s voice grew even louder, surer, “ A woman of riverbed blood that has borne the seed of our line, a boy frightened by a mantle he is yet to ready to take. A lost boy, my boy, someone promised stands atop the beyond the Wall we once helped build. We are scattered, and our pack will not live if you linger in this godless place. Winterfell needs you, your Grace. ”  

 

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

 

Ice creeps from her fingertips, from the soles of her delicately slippered feet. She feels a tremble of power, and in her mind, she can hear the echo of visions, flashes of sights of the weirwood tree at the heart of Winterfell, and she sees her mother, beautiful and pale and withdrawn, Robb sits at the roots, with baby Rickon clawing at his trousers, and a silent Bran staring far away. Before yet another hearttree she sees Jon, and mouth open to speak, and she knows he is about to bind himself to a fate that would destroy him.

 

‘Go home, Jon Snow, go to Winterfell. Take no vows, leave the Wall for home , we should never have left,’ the Weirwood speaks in her tongue, sweet and sure, and every man before the tree visibly starts and stares at the tree that spoke for Jon Snow in a girl’s sweet voice.

 

Jon rises, eyes wide, a large boy stands with him, eyes just as wide.

 

“I need to go,” said Jon.

 

She blinks, pushing away the images as she aches.

 

“Where is Arya?” she begs the voice, and she barely feels the tears still running down her cheek, or how slowly, everyone that surrounds the Great Sept has slowly turned from the glowing blade to her and she doesn't care.

 

“ The she-wolf is here, the she-wolf waits for her pack. You must go, ” said the chorus of voices, “ The gods do not wish for you to be here, my Queen. ”

 

She is not really a Queen, she is not such a thing. She is a messenger, the mouth of the old gods that has been silent for far too long, and this far South, her gods have been cut, removed from the soul of the people. The line above the Neck calls to her, the whole of the North sings a lament for her return, and Winterfell itself is the voice that calls the strongest. Sansa, who has only ever wished to flee the North, escape its cold hold, suddenly realizes how much of a fool she had been, and how much she had only been running from this. I have been a stupid little girl so scared of myself. She has shrieked her responsibility, turned blind eyes to warnings and signs, all to escape what was coming.

 

The Wall will fall this Winter, and the scourge of the dead shall finally crush the magic that Bran the Builder made when I was but Nessa Nessa the Child, the Blademaker, that my fellow Children poured their lives and bones to lay down, that giants and grumpkins and snarks and shadow cats swore to protect. Everyone has forgotten their promise or died before they could keep it and I will need to remind them.

 

Sansa's breath calms, from the stuttering hysteria and sobs that had filled her throat.

 

“I will return,” she promises the blade she had made so long ago.

 

Ser Ilyan Payne is now a statue carved from the power of Ice. Remnants of what she had infused in the blade’s predecessor across her many lives. Sparks of power, cold and true, dance across her fingertips, as she pushes the goldcloak holding her arms, and she barely reacts or feels anything as the man’s fingertips freeze and chip away from his hands, and she is walking calmly toward her father. Ice and frost lingering in her steps.

 

“SEIZE HER, IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING, SEIZE THE WITCH!” Joffrey’s voice is a wail of a scared child, and Sansa stares at the boy who she had begged for to have mercy. 

 

He, who she thought would love her, promised her mercy and only would have killed her father in mockery with the blade of her kin.

 

She bares her teeth like the she-wolf that she is, lifts a small hand.

 

“I need not your mercy.”

 

Ice comes, steady and sure, pushing across the literal mob of men that would have watched her father be killed with the glee of a flock of carrion birds. She barely has to extend her power, barely has to ask before there is a wall of ice protecting her from the men of the Red Keep. It is twice as tall then Gregor Clegane, the tallest man present, and covers the entirety of the steps of the Sept without much trouble. It traps the gold cloaks that had been holding her, even as they struggled in vain with their stumped hands.  

 

Tears are hot against her skin, even as she reaches for her poor father.

 

“Father,” she whispers, and eyes, grey and shocked, look to her in both awe and confusion.

 

“I hear my sister’s voice,” he said, voice hoarse but loud enough that it could be heard by all, his lovely eyes flickering to the glowing blade, “I hear my sister’s voice calling you a Queen.”

 

She knew she should be alarmed, she knew she should be frightened by this queer action, but as if something long sleeping has awoken inside of Sansa Stark and she is not merely the child who loved songs and wished to be the wife of a handsome knight. Queen is not what she is, she is not a ruler of men and women, but it is as close a title as anything she could have gathered in all of her lives.

 

“I am Queen. I am the Queen of Winter,” she tells him, sure and strong, “I have come for the Second Long Night to come, and I have come to make you keep your Promise. Now, Eddard Stark, father of my blood, tell the truth of why you have come to be killed on the supposed scared steps of the Seven.”

 

He stares, tired, thin and so hurt, but he stands, even with his wounded leg, and his head is held high.

 

“I have lied to save the lives of my daughters,” he tells the people of King’s Landing, “I have no need for the Iron Throne, no want of it, the boy who calls himself Joffery Baratheon is not the blood of King Robert, my household has been slaughtered, my daughter’s lives threatened, so I have lied to spare their lives. But it matters not anymore. I will leave this godforsaken place, with my daughters.”

 

Sansa smiles.

 

“Father, take Ice,” she tells him.

 

Once, she had been strong enough to hold it herself. Back in her last life, before Sansa Stark, she had reforged the blade and held it strong and true. But she is not strong enough, she is too small and not yet ready to retake the sword.

 

But her father is her strength, and she need not carry everything.

 

She reaches for the necklace around her neck, cool and pretty and the collar of a lion about her wolf neck, rips it off, uncaring of the delicate links or expense. She drops it, lets its twisted links scatter at her ice touched feet.

 

Her father touches the blade, and its chorus sings and calls out in recognition of the hold of a Stark of Winterfell.

 

“ Your grace, he is hurt, ” Lyanna’s voice twists, something deeper and warm, a double chorus of two men’s voices, deep and firm.

 

Her father stares at the blade, eyes wide once again.

 

“Father,” he whispers, his voice awed yet again, "Brandon."

 

“Then heal him,” she tells the blade, “Arm him in the armor of the King, touch upon what you would give to me. I am not strong enough to wield you… But my Father is.”

 

And as it has done before, the armor of the King of Winter surrounded her Father.

 

Regal.

 

Holy.

 

Some part of her aches in what is want. For that is her armor. Her burden. But she is not strong enough. Not yet. Not like this, half her soul dead with Lady's physical passing, her limbs weighed by the trappings of a fledgling power not fully awake. She sighs, her lips kissed with frost and winds. 

 

" Arya," she calls, her voice sweet and ripe with something stronger than she would have ever thought of herself.

 

A patter of feet. A man trailing behind a dirty child, who jumps into Sansa's waiting arms.

 

She smells, she is filthy enough to stain her gown on contact, but Sansa only feels something in her settle in peace and relief.

 

"Sansa?" her voice is awed and confused.

 

Sansa does not blame her.

 

"Shh, Arya. It's almost over. I am here, blood of my blood. "

 

The air shivers. Sansa feels the power of the North swell. Feels it swirl her hair in currents of strength she can hardly feel so far south.

 

" Wielder of my blade, take my arm."

 

Her father takes her arm. Sansa feels a weight on her brow. Twined branches of the pale pale wirewood, leaves red and as dark as her hair. Blades of dragon glass line it, the runes of the first men carved upon the swords and the pale flowers of the weirwood trees, not seen since her past life, bloom on her brow.

 

She feels the remnants of wirewoods come back, across Westeros. Sprout, take root from their long-forgotten resting places, and bloom with the barest of life starting anew.

 

Awareness stretches, grows and her power is made yet stronger as the world trembles with her revival.

 

I thought I could rest. Remorse is an ill taste in her mouth. Bitter and pitiful with the fault of the death of the age of Fire and Blood.

 

But it is too late.

 

She is alive again.

 

She is crowned. 

 

The burden of this new Queen of Winter settles on her, and Sansa has already wasted precious time.

 

" I am Sansa Stark, first of her name, the Queen of Winter. Hear me, people of Westeros, Winter is Coming. "

 

And with a song on her ice spewing lips, with a howl of wolves echoing through her throat, Sansa turns a half step.

 

She finishes her step in the roots of the hearttree in the godswood, appearing before her stunned pack.

---

Book I Autumn:

A Promise

 

Arya tumbles out of her arms. Is running for their mother in the same instant, as Sansa drops to her knees. Sansa struggles her chest heaving, magic singing in her veins. She could hear them now as if- the gods- a symphony of greetings, reprimands, and laments singing to her as she came to the oldest heart-tree this side of the Wall, she can feel the amount of power she has done to take her pack home. It’s too much , she thinks, too much for her, little Sansa Stark, to be a Queen of Winter. Her father drops next to her, hands clutching at her shoulders.

 

"Jon has fire in his blood," whispers Sansa, looking up at her father.

 

His face contorts.

 

“How-”

 

“I can feel it. It… The Dragon Kings and Queens. They were supposed to replace me, Summer Kings and Queens. But they’re dead. Or near enough. They were not strong enough. Only by mixing the blood- Ice and Fire- did they stay upon our lands. Jon . He is needed for the Night to come-”

 

“Sansa-”

 

“ You let him go to the Wall! ” she shrieked, and power exploded from her, too volatile, too fragile to exhibit control.

 

Her father falls back, tumbled like a leaf in the wind, and Sansa watched him with tears in her eyes.

 

“You let him leave the pack!” she cried, fingers cool with ice, “It would have killed us all!”

 

“Sansa!”

 

Sansa heaved. Looked to her wide-eyed mother. She snarled, and the entire godswood convulsed. Shook and snarled with her fury. The roots of the wirewood whipped, and Sansa bared her teeth.

 

“ Do not think to command me, river-blood, ” she snarled, and it is an echo of someone she had been before.

 

Her Mother falls back. Drops to her knees. Sansa shudders. Horror at her actions. But everything is too much. Yet not enough. Because there is still much for her to do. She knows.

 

And so does the rat in her brother.

 

“ Bran, ” she calls out, and her brother is there, crippled, eyes wide.

 

She can feel the talons of the Three-Eyed Raven. Clutching at his heart- at his mind- at his spine and she feels her heart shudder. She struggles to her feet, southern slippers ill-footed in dirt and lingering snow, and her legs buckle and tremble like a newborn. But she goes to him either way. Hands a glow, a song on her lips.

 

“Sansa?” he sounds afraid, Tully blue eyes wide and shadowed by a raven’s wing.

 

She places a kiss on his brow, cups his face. 

 

“You are a wolf. Not a raven. Be gone Brendon Rivers. Crawl back to your spite and story keeping. Bran is not to be yours . ”

 

Bran’s eyes cloud. And they are white and clouded. A funny smile quirks on his lips. She knows what looks at her from her brother’s face is not him.

 

“ So,” his voice is smooth, much too deep for Bran, and tempered by a Riverland accent, “The Queen of Winter returns.”

 

The godswood writhes. She is angry that he would take from her blood. That is not the right note in the song. A verging path. A desperation.

 

“And the rat of black wings comes to claim my pack,” she returns.

 

He laughs. Pure and spite and gleeful. A cacophony of raven's cries. She snarls.

 

“Sweet Queen, you have not lost your humor. You have been missed.”

 

“I was to rest .”

 

“But the Summer Monarchs proved too weak for their tasks?”

 

A spasm of pity and regret… Perhaps resentment. They should have been strong enough.

 

“There is one yet lives…”

 

The Three-Eyed Raven hummed in Bran’s throat.

 

“ Yes. I feel him. Summer King of Fire and Blood. He races home for you. Shall it be fire and ice?”

 

“I know not. But, I tell you to leave my Brother.”

 

"I am sorry. I- I thought you were gone," His face is grim, his eyes, though still white, show his remorse, "It was a desperate gambit. I am old, your grace, the oldest a Raven has been. The greensight has dwindled in men. There was no one but Brandon that could fly. I have not the means to fight the Night King alone. Brandon could have."

 

"It would kill him. So let him go."

 

"It… If-"

 

"I am the Winter Queen. The Summer King rides to me. The Raven is but a note, not a melody or beat, so you will let my brother go. "

 

The godswood shivered with her anger. Roots whipped. Magic rippled.

 

Sansa pushed with a song on her lips.

 

For Bran could not fly.

 

It was not in the nature of wolves to do so. They were meant to run , to ghost through earth and wood with their kin. Not touch the past and future on feather and wind and memory. A rustle of feathers and Sansa felt more than saw as talons unwound themselves from Bran, as a whisper of wings left his eyes.

 

"I'm sorry," a faint whisper. 

 

Brendon River lingered one more moment to apologize.

 

Gods, friends, how silent have you gone if even my Three-Eyed Raven is no longer prideful?

 

"You are forgiven, Brendon. Take from my pack again, and I will take your stories to someone else. "

 

"Who else is there? Who else can there be? I fear I will be the last."

Brendon shivered. For he was the inheritor of the Raven she had chosen in her last life… And he would have learned early on when she had picked the Raven as the Keeper of History once before him twice over, and he knew she could take it away.

 

She smiled.

 

"There is one. So lost in stories, so sure of Bran's strength, you do not see the forest beyond your tree. Brendon, what of Jojen Reed? Could he not fly?"

 

A laugh. Bright and joyous. Weak and disbelieving.

 

"How did- Yes. He is my fledgling and inheritor- How did I miss him? How could I mistake him?"

 

"Your strength lies in the past. The ink is dry, Brendon. The future is not so. The ink shifts and quivers upon the page. And Bran is stronger than Jojen. He was hidden in the shadow of my wolf."

 

"Ha. I see. It becomes so clear when you lay down the path. The line is written, the hymn sung, the ink is drying. You have given me hope, your grace."

 

Sansa smiled.

 

"It is my purpose," she said simply.

 

Brendon laughed in Bran's throat. Tears in his eyes.

 

 "Well met, Queen of Winter."

 

"Well met, Brendon Rivers, Three-Eyed Raven of Stories. May you keep your stories well until your fledgling can fly for you."

 

And he was gone from Bran. Sansa felt the awareness of the Raven move. Felt his new strength. She went to her feet. And so did Bran. Stumbled on his feet as his spine righted itself. She breathed in relief and with frosting winds on her breath.

 

He let out a breathing gasp.

 

"You will not fly, Brandon Stark. You will run along with your pack as the White Winds howls."

 

Bran gaped.

 

Mother sobbed and rushed forward on her knees to hug at Bran’s.

 

Sansa made her way to her tree, stepping around them without much thought. The weirwood was not the oldest. Not the strongest- that lay beyond the Wall. Where the Raven made his nest. But this was important. Almost more so. Because the weirwood planted in the godswood of Winterfell was much more her's.

 

Her heart .

The one that had been made from Nessa Nessa the Child, the blade maker, and had come beyond the Wall after the spells had been cast. The one where her first bones had been laid to rest. She reached. And her tree reached back. Roots swayed. Boroughs danced in an unseen wind. And the flowers of the wirewood, pale at first, turned red and vivid blue as a beating heart, and truly bloomed as Sansa touched her heart.

 

" Nessa Nessa, you have come again. I am so glad. I thought you would never return, " and it was the voice of herself from a hundred lifetimes ago.

 

Sansa smiled and felt tears flow down her cheeks.

"I am Sansa now, heart of mine," she whispered, and she sobbed, “I am sorry. I wanted to be far away. I did not want to stay. I was frightened and never meant to awaken again.”

 

“ I forgive you. But you must forgive yourself. You were never meant to return and were frightened. But I am happy that you have, body of mine. ”

 

"The Wall will fall."

 

" And we will endure. The Night King comes for the Queen he has been denied. He comes for us, and he will stop at nothing to crown you as his once and for all."

 

Sansa sighed.

 

The Night King.

 

Once a friend who wished for more, once an ally against the First men that came to consume them… Turned monster by magic beyond his grasp. He had thought himself strong enough to temper winds and ice and snow beyond his grasp thought his love for her would grant him equal status as the Child chosen by the gods to understand their whispers and keep the balance of the world.

 

And he lost himself on his greed and gluttony and pride his conjured powers had wrought.

 

The First Man, Brandon Stark, had reached out then. Touched her hand and begged peace in the wake of the consuming Dark her old friend had wrought. Kneeled at the feet of Nessa Nessa the Child of the Gods, and begged for peace at all costs.

 

She had reached back in acceptance for it had been sung by the gods that the Age of Man was to come.

 

And it would come in the wake of that promised man who knelt at her feet.

 

And something else, then, had blossomed in her. For Brandon. Brandon had been.. a love that had been brave and gentle and strong. It was strange to think that she was her own ancestor, her own inheritor many times over. But it was why the magic of the Children held the strongest in the line of Starks. Nessa Nessa had been their grandmother many times over, and she had been her.

 

“My heart, Winter is Coming, Night will close.”

 

The boroughs of her heart swayed. And it was almost as if she could see the smiling face of the Child she had been in her first life.

 

“ Yet, body of mine,  Spring will Blossom, and the Dawn will Break. ” 

 

And Sansa knew that was a promise that would hold.

---

Book I Autumn:

Jon I

 

Jon saw Winterfell’s walls.

 

He thought he would never see it again.

 

Or well, thought he would never see it as Jon Snow, bastard of Eddard Stark. Instead, he had thought to be Brother Jon of the Night’s Watch. But here he was, still the same Jon Snow, spooked by the words of the heartstree beyond the wall.

 

A hearttree that spoke with Sansa’s voice.

---

Book II Winter:

Book III Spring:

Chapter 8: The Mother of Nopes

Summary:

Summary: Waking up as Daenerys Taregeryon on the eve of her wedding, a transmigrated soul formally known as Daniella Reyna, decides to do the only sane thing. SHE NOPES RIGHT OUT OF THERE. After she steals a few wedding gifts, of course. What would anyone else do with dormant dragon eggs, anyway? Things do not go to plan. Now she has a crazy brother, a Doraki Khal with a disturbing if cute crush, and what seems to be a young Griff hot on her heels. Honestly. It's all the Mother of Nopes can do to stay one step ahead.

Pairings: Daenerys Taregeryon/Nope
TAGS: Crack Fic!, Dani Is Done, OC, OC-INSERT, Modern Girl In Essos, Run-Away Bride, Dragon Babies, Dragon Mama, Dog Train Tackles Dragons, Drogo is Befuddled, And Wanting Moon & Stars, Griff is Entitled, Viserys is Just Goblesmacked,

It takes her about five minutes to assert, that she is indeed not dreaming. A quick, if fierce pinch to her thigh and Danella Reyna understands that yes, she has suddenly shrunk about two feet, grown a lot paler, and now has silvery blonde hair, and sweet if freaky as fuck lavender eyes when she peers into the polished round metal thing she thinks is a mirror. Hard to tell. It’s a crude thing. Effective enough, what she can sort of guesstimate is bronze methodically polished to a reflective sheen, but nothing on the beat-up mirror over her chipped sink. She misses her brown eyes, fiercely, as she stares at the frankly too beautiful face. She also misses her red hair, dyed that it was, but that is neither here nor there. It’s that unfinished look of a teenager that unsettles her more than anything because she’s twenty-five, and frankly, looking so young, even in a body that isn’t her own, is rather alarming.

 

“Right,” she hisses and is even more unsettled by the unsettling prettiness of her voice. Accent. A faintly musical cadence that is not her own.

 

Creepy as fuck.

 

The next thing she realizes, as she peers around the room, grand and fancy thing in the dawn or twilight, that it is that she isn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Her next step is to assert where the fuck this is. ‘Cause, she knows what it isn’t, and that is true if useless information. She glances down at her dress. Thin. A cotton so fine and delicate she can see the faint pinkness of the body’s nips. Yeah. Not cool to be young and what looks all but naked.  She looks around. A trunk, a wardrobe. Dani marches right there and lunges wooden doors open.

 

It’s woefully empty. Just a handful of dresses.

 

One of them has a dress even thinner than the one she has, with embroidery that would probably look dope if inappropriate on her body. It is sleek and form-fitting and feels like water in her hands as she shoves it aside. It glitters in the red sunlight, sliver threads gleaming ruby. Dani ignores that and snaps at the dress that is black, and though very tight, covers her head to toe. The next step is the black boots. It's hot. She must be somewhere in the tropics. But the thin little sandles piled at the bottom of the wardrobe don’t look particularly useful.

 

She shoves herself in the dress, chucking what she hopes was a nightgown on the floor, before stuffing on the boots with pair of cotton socks. Annoyingly high, loose, and baggy, but at least she’s out of the transparent shit. She looks around and heads to one of the door. Outside, it is quiet as the room she woke up in.

 

She walks for a beat, tense and confused.

 

Where every she is well, pretty as fuck. Vaguely reminds her of Arabic architecture, but not quite.

---

Right. Gonna get married tomorrow. FUCK THAT.

 

She nods to the Magister whatever his name, and mumbles her excuses as the V man glares her down.  She is leaving.

 

She knows that with certainty.

 

Because NOPE.

 

Nope, nope, nope.

 

It is only when she passes an open doorway and sees a familiar box that Dani does something stupid. But well, how the hell can she justify taking three dormant dragon eggs?

 

Simple.

 

Because fuck the thought of leaving those weapons of mass destruction in the hands of that spoiled little shit.  

---

It should have gone without saying that scaling down a wall in the body of a fourteen-year-old girl with the strength of tissue paper was… Difficult at best. Dani thinks its only her vague memories of her brother’s lecture of free climbing that saves her from dropping to the floor and breaking her neck.  

Chapter 9: A Burning Heart (PUBLISHED)

Summary:

Summary: In which a wolf girl flies to the burning stag’s side.

Pairings: Stannis Baratheon/Sansa Stark

TAGS: Drabble, Slow burn, Sansa Gambles, Stannis Grumbles, Davos Mediates, Smart Sansa, Stannis Chills His Murder Wagon, Red Wedding Prevented, Alliance of Wolves & Stags, Tried & True Method, Older man/younger woman, I SAID SLOW BURN,

Chapter I

 

“What is it?” Stannis Baratheon ground out, without looking up from the map in front of him.

 

Davos shifted. Stannis could tell from his position that 

 

“There’s an approaching vessel. One manned thought you ought to know because there’s a girl who’s in it, and she manning the Stormlanders’ flag signal of emergency.”

 

Stannis blinked.

 

“A trap?”

 

“Doubt such a young girl would be a trap… She has the look of that Stark Lady.”

 

Stannis straightened in his seat.

---

Chapter II

 

The girl, or well, very young lady that is peering up at him from a ramshackle little dingy, does indeed remind him vividly of Catelyn Stark.

 

She has her eyes, even as small as appear from this distance. Blue and deep, and when they caught his own, firmer then such a young woman had the right too.

 

“Please,” begged the woman, calling out with a shaky, exhausted voice, “Please, I have urgent news for the rightful King of Westeros.”

 

Stannis looked to Davos.

 

Davos gave a helpless shrug, but at his nod, started to climb down the side of the ship. Stannis doubted the girl had enough energy to climb atop his ship.

---

Chapter III

 

The man is very spry, and when he jumps into her stolen boat, Sansa Stark cannot help but flinch. His eyes are kind, however. Something Sansa has long stopped looking for in the eyes of those around her. She gives herself a moment to hope.

 

“My lady?” he asks, hesitant.

 

She cannot blame him. Her drab cloak, made from the darkest fabric she could get her hands on, is also dripping with salt water, and filth from the tunnels underneath the Red Keep, and no doubt she looks less than the lady she was raised to be. She smiles politely but dares not stand up, as the boat is readily rocks fiercely if she so much as moves from her position.

 

“My name is Sansa Stark,” she says, swallowing thickly, “And I have urgent news for your King.”

 

“I am Ser Davos. Do you need assistance, Lady Stark?” he asks, and it is kindly done.

 

Sansa pushes down tears.

 

“Please, if you will be so kind, Ser. I am fatigued from my journey.” 

---

Chapter IV

“You are welcomed aboard,” said the tall, grim man that had stared her down from the deck of the ship.

 

Sansa Stark takes a shuddering breath and slips as quickly as she can out of Ser Davos’s strong arms. She nearly falls. Hours sitting in the same position have numbed her legs. But the tall man is quicker than his straight lanced appearance would lend her to believe, and swiftly catches her by the upper arms. Her world tilts, and her arms burn with the sheer effort she had made to man her stolen boat towards what she knew would be Stannis Baratheon’s fleet.

 

 And when she looks into his storm bright, serious blue eyes, she thinks she has found the King of the six realms.

 

Her breath shudders.

 

“Your grace,” she murmurs, and she swallows thickly, extracts herself from his arms as gracefully as she can manage before she throws herself to her knees, “Forgive me. I am Lady Sansa Stark, eldest sister to the proclaimed King of the North, and I have come to tell you that you are sailing into a trap.”

---

Chapter V

 

Stannis grinds his teeth.

 

He cannot help it.

 

Thinking of another pretender is infuriating. But he also realizes with a start, she has not called Robb Stark a true king. But rather a claimant, which is what the boy is. He cannot change what the Lords of the North have decreed, just as he cannot change the fact that the more immediate thing of import is instead what Lady Stark has declared of the trap that awaits his fleet.

 

He opens his mouth to speak, at least get the girl off her knees when she goes the fold of her cloak. 

 

She splays out sheets of parchment on the Deck and looks up imploringly.

 

“It’s wildfire, ” she tells him, “The Mad King has left caches of it throughout the city, and stockpiled. Lord Tyrion Lannister the acting Hand has means to burn you and your fleet out of Blackwater Bay.”

 

She points to the sheer cliffs that encircle parts of the innermost part of the bay. The strategic points highlighted on a map that looks to be a part of the Hand official maps, if the official seal on the corner is any indication.

 

“There is more. Lord Tywin comes to play relief for the city with House Tyrell,” here she points to a letter.

 

A letter addressed Petyr Baelish, he notices with a sharp surprise, from Olenna Tyrell indicating her shifted alliance to House Lannister after Renly’s death, and of their storming to the Captial alongside the lion troops.

 

“Fuck,” said Davos, seriously.

 

Were he a man to swear, Stannis would have said the same.

---

Chapter VI

 

“How can I trust you, Lady Stark?”

 

Lady Sansa gives a huff of laughter. Bitter and broken in a way that is alarming to hear from a girl her age. Looking at her fair face, Stannis can only guess she is barely older then Shireen.

 

“Why else would I risk my life manning a boat for the first time in my life? In waters so foreign to me as the Blackwater Bay? To a fleet of a mana that will take me hostage? The Lannisters cannot win. They have starved and ruined the city. They have foolishly killed my father, by the spite of a mad fool that guises himself as your nephew.”

 

The death of Eddard Stark had been a foolish, selfish whim of a spoiled, mad child. Stannis thinks that only a fool would have provoked the North into such rebellion. The Lannisters had created enemies abound, but the concept of the Tyrells being roped into their claws was troubling.

 

“Where is your sister?” he asked quickly.

 

The girl blinked, scoffed sadly.

 

“Arya fled before my father’s murder.”

 

Another Lannister lie then. They claimed to have both girls.

 

“And why have you come Lady Stark?”

 

“Because I cannot bare the thought of the death that will follow Joffrey’s true rule of the Seven Kingdoms.”

 

He reaches forward, eyes firm as he lifts her to her feet.

 

“Signal the ships,” he thunders, “We retreat.”

 

Lady Sansa sags into his side.

 

“ Thank you , your grace.”

---

Chapter VII

 

He sets to summon his war council the second they make shore, and he knows that they now are at a disadvantage. With his retreat, King’s Landing will be able to recover from the Tyrell food supplies, better organize their increased army with the Tyrell alliance...

 

But he spares his fleet from death and destruction.

 

And an unnecessary siege that the Lannister’s have maneuvered to their advantage. 

 

What had Melisandre said? To stave off, wait for her? He grits his teeth.

 

And the slip of a girl, Lady Sansa, sits tense, trembling, the savior of his fleet. 

 

He thinks of what she had said- 

 

“What makes you think you are a hostage, Lady Stark?”

 

She jumps. Nearly spills the lemon water Davos had brought her, clutched between her hands.

 

Tully blue eyes fathomless and far too haunted meet his own.

 

“You would be a fool to not use me to force political cooperation from my brother,” she tells him, and she swallows thickly as if her own candor has surprised her, “And I do not think you a fool.”

 

He stares. He is not a fool.

 

“I will treat with your brother, and we will propose an alliance.”

 

“The North will not bend, your grace,” she said simply.

 

Her teeth ground together.

 

“My brother said the same.”

 

Her face, already pale, went a touch paler. He remembers she is a Northern, and they look down on kin-slaying, more so than in the South. He tilts his head.

 

“Renly was the fool.”

 

He tries not to think of that starving little boy in his arms begging for something to eat...

 

“As you say, your grace,” she said quietly.

 

Her hands clenched around her lemon water bottle.

 

And Stannis did not say anything in response.

---

Chapter VIII

 

Sansa woke to a swaying motion.

 

For one, confusing moment, she thought she was being rocked in the arms of her mother.

 

It was not until she opened her eyes that she realized she was in the cabin of man, Ser Davos the Hand of the King, apparently, had graciously given her the cabin.

Notes:

Ya’ll. I need to stop thinking of ASOI&F AUs. I think I have a problem. Seriously.

Chapter 10: The Rise of the Golden King

Summary:

Summary: It seemed that loving Sansa Stark had consequences. At least, that much he could surmise as he woke after his peaceful death in his rooms at Winterfell. Now, he has twenty or so years before he can find the woman he loves again.

Let it be said that Jaime Lannister never had the best impulse control.

Chapters: 22

Pairings: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Past Jaime Lannister/Cersei Lannister
TAGS: Time Travel, De-aging, Body Dysmorphia, Years of Pining, Jaime Centric, Lannister Centric, MASSIVE TIME SKIPS ABOUND, Jaime has the sense of a Dung Beetle And Is Compulsive, Kingslayer Twice Over, Joanna Lannister Lives, Jaime Plans To Take Over the World, Tywin Agrees, Down With the Dragons, Not A Targaryen Friendly Fic, Sorry Not Sorry, Jaime is Patient, But Not Really, Tywin is Utterly Bewildered, But Kinda Down For this Treason, Cersei is Insensed, Tyrion is along for the ride, Joanna tries her best, Sansa is Just Bewildered

0 . The Fool

‘new beginnings, having faith in the future, being inexperienced, not knowing what to expect, having beginner's luck, improvisation and believing in the universe’

Jaime 

 

Jaime Lannister knew that Sansa Stark would be his salvation. His path to honor. But he had never, not in all of his fantasies of being at her back, keeping her safe, being a proper fucking knight, expected at all to fall in love with her. She was barely five and ten when they met, properly, in the Vale. Five and ten girl to his thirty and more. And he would always love his sister, and no other woman had ever been of any consequence in comparison.

 

He was a fool.

 

He had always known. He knew he was not on the same level as his siblings, but not seeing the love that would fill his heart for that woman was especially foolish. For Sansa was everything he had ever wanted. A lady, the epitome of grace and kindness, and when he had come to take her home when she had looked at him with such gratefulness, such awe-

 

Well.

 

It hadn’t taken much. A kind word. A kind hand. Loyalty . True utter loyalty the second he had promised to keep her safe. Without mockery or disdain. Without real price for it. And slowly, as the years past and Sansa Stark grew older and more beautiful and just more… He ignored it. Ignored whatever it was that flickered in his breast at any moment her blue eyes turned his way. Any moment her lily-white hand touched the crease of his elbow as he escorted her. Tried to ignore the way that his left hand went to the pommel of the sword, renamed as Vow , every time a man so much looked at her.

 

He had always been slow.

 

He can admit that. Always too been too stubborn to let himself see the truth. There was a reason why Cersei had kept her claws so long on his heart. It was also why it had taken him much too long to understand what love felt like when it was new. When it was untouched and uncorrupted. When it was an emotion not steeped in shame and twisted from contempt. When she was twenty, as they finally reached Winterfell after years and years of campaigning from the Vale to the Riverlands to beyond, gaining armies and people and triumphing in the Autumn, it was when he realized. When she had reached Winterfell she had turned to him after everything had been settled after she had reached her new rooms and had embraced him.

 

“ Thank you, Ser Jaime, for bringing me home . ”

 

To realize that unnamed emotion was love by that embrace, by the hold of her frail arms and the press of her face into his neck, Jaime had realized how utterly fucked he was. 

 

Because Ser Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer could be the knight of Queen Sansa Stark of the North, the Highlands, as they had started to call everything North of the borders of the Riverlands, but he could not be her husband . No one of the three kingdoms would accept him, and he could not, would not be as he been with Cersei and fuck the queen and cuckold her husband, whatever bastard that would be… So he resolved to bare it, serve his queen, and be glad of her happiness when she found it.

 

Imagine his surprise when Sansa never married at all.

 

Arya Stark became her heir, had children by the liter with Gendry Waters, and the Highlands future was secured plenty. But by his Queen’s line, the North would not be ruled...  She utterly refused to marry in defense of the realms she ruled. She would not favor any house, she would not let any man take from her, and no consort would come to muddle the court of the Queen. He could not blame her and thought not how utterly and fully jaded woman had become from the treatment of the men in her life.

 

And part of him was so viciously glad.

 

But he never ever did anything for it. Because it could be the same as with Cersei. He thinks sometimes when she looked at him that Sansa felt something for him as he did for her. He saw it falling to the same as his first love in his sister. A secret love. Fucking in the dark. Stolen moments... But he knew Sansa would never hide him. Would not do that to him. Could not do that to him. She would not be ashamed of him if they loved each other in full. But, in end it was the same issue. 

 

Jaime Lannister still could not marry Sansa Stark. 

 

And he could not do anything to hurt her rule. 

 

So he kept his love in his heart.

 

  Spent, years were spent with her, years and years after the Others, Dragons roosting in the South, falling to their own greed until Jon Snow of all people became the King in the South for the sake of peace… He lived years at her back, at her table. He died in peace, in his bed, old and frail. Thinking of her, as he always did.

 

And he woke, his mind still on her, in a bedroom he did not know.

 

Jaime blinked.

 

And blinked again.

 

Slipped out of the foreign bed, curiously realizing that it had Lannister colors. Not at all the muted and loyal white, black, and grey he had taken to wear for his queen. Even when she snuck a lion on his clothes, on his cloak, red and gold abound for him never to forget his name, as his own family had tried to force her too. And felt out of sorts as he realized everything was so big. 

 

He would admit that what happened next was not his finest moment. 

 

Because Jaime panicked as he realized it was not big, but rather he was the one that was small and he was not where he should be. Had a bloody hand. Small and young, but a hand nonetheless where dragon-glass should be instead. And unbeknownst to himself at that moment, he started to cry for the woman he loved like the little boy he physically was.

 

“ SANSA! SANSA! ”

 

It is not until he sees his mother that Sansa’s name dies on his lips.

 

Because for a wild moment, he thinks it’s Cersei. But she’s dead. She’s dead and she can never hurt Sansa again as long as I- And he lunges for a weapon, any weapon, grabbing at the red cloaks who try to calm him down. Tries a sword but cannot lift it. Punches and claws away from reaching hands and grabs a dagger instead. Then he sees her true, utter concern on her beautiful face, and a sullen little girl looking around her skirts.

 

“ Mother ?”

 

“My son, what is the matter?”

 

He swallows thickly. He had forgotten her voice. Have I died? Is this the hereafter?

 

“Sansa,” he says simply, “I need Sansa. ”

 

I cannot have left her. Not yet! She needs me-

 

“Who’s Sansa?” hisses the little girl.

 

Cersei. He grips tighter on his stolen knife. He is a breath away from lunging and thrusting it into her neck. It would be quick. She would barely have time to feel it. More mercy than Cersei had ever deserved.

 

“Jaime, sweetly, who is she?” asked his mother again, taking his attention.

 

“She’s-” everything, “She’s mine .” 

 

A lie. But not. She is his. His queen. His love, but not his. And he feels empty without her near.

 

“Sweetling, a girl you know?”

 

More.

 

“She’s my lady,” he says instead, “The only girl I will ever want to marry.”

 

Cersei hisses.

 

“You cannot marry!”

 

He stares. She is so young, but did her madness start here? Did his own madness begin here as a child as well?

 

“I will only ever marry her. She is the most beautiful, kindest woman in the world,” he replied, fiercely.

 

Because if he ever did marry, it would only be to Sansa Stark. His mother laughs. It sounds of a song. And he cannot remember this sound. Cersei scowls.

 

“So you have found your love in a dream, my little lion? So ready you are to search for her through the halls of the Rock until you find her?”

 

She picks him up. He is so small she can lift him easily on her hip. She hums.

 

“Tell me of your lady love,” she says, teasing and light. Dismisses the startled guards and Cersei alike.

 

Jaime swallows. Grips tighter on his dagger as Cersei scowls up at him, clinging to his mother’s full skirts. He looks at his mother’s face. Sweet and so kind, so unlike what Cersei’s face was, for all they looked identical.

 

“She was kissed by fire,” he whispered to his mother, and he marveled at the beauty of her eyes, at the shape of her mouth as she smiled.

 

She had dimples, one in her chin and one in her left cheek. Cersei did not… His mother hums, sweet and gentle.

 

“How can a fire kiss?” she asked, with humor.

 

He blinks. And he swallowed. Forgotten the free-folk saying would not mean anything to anyone, here so South.

 

“Her hair. Her hair was kissed by it. It shimmered like it, flame and silk to the touch. Her eyes were deep, and the color of the sky in summer. Her face was pale, as pale as snow. And she was kind as the Maiden herself but as wise as the Crone...”

 

He was surprised by the way his mother’s brow furrowed. The way she looked at him in quiet shock.

 

“It must’ve been a wonderful dream.”

 

He gripped tightly on the dagger.

 

“She wasn’t a dream. She was real. And she was mine.”

 

“What did you say her name was, sweetling?”

 

“Sansa. My Queen Sansa.”

 

She blinked.

 

~(~O~)~

 

He realizes he is back in the past relatively easily after that.

 

Fool that he is, he is not a complete simpleton. For one, if this was the Seven Heavens, he does not think Cersei would be here. She was too vile, too mad, too set on death and spite to be where his Lady Mother would rest. And he definitely would not be there either, he is sure. Not if he earned heaven. If he has earned redemption, it would not be to see his mother, aunt, and uncles, and Cersei again, whole and well. It would not be Casterly Rock. Perhaps when he had been younger.

 

Perhaps before Sansa, that is what he would have wished for.

 

But, since he is sure that this not heaven, he can only understand that he has been tossed back in time.

 

He is a boy, again, just five namedays, and he dreams of Winterfell and summer snows and red hair that had longed turned white. He dreams of mead at her table and the feel of her small hands on his arm. He also dreams of his friend, the wench, gleaming deep blue eyes that knew him all too well. He cannot fathom the fact that neither his queen nor his dearest friend are alive yet in this world. That he must wait for them. Wait he will, boy that he is. Wait forever if he must. Wait for the years to bring them back to him.

 

But can I allow time to turn just the same? To the horrors that passed my Queen, my friend, and all of the realms as before?

 

Jaime does not think that he will.

 

It is perhaps the Lannister arrogance, perhaps his sheer will to improve things for the women that he had loved, but Jaime thinks they can do better.  

---

1. The Magician

‘it points to the talents, capabilities and resources at the querent's disposal to succeed. The message is to tap into one's full potential rather than holding back, especially when there is a need to transform something.’

---

1. The High Priestess

‘mystery, stillness and passivity. This card suggests that it is time to retreat and reflect upon the situation and trust your inner instincts to guide you through it. Things around you are not what they appear to be right now.’

---

III. The Empress

‘is traditionally associated with maternal influence, it is the card if you are hoping to start a family. She can represent the creation of life, romance, art, or new business’

 Joanna & Jaime

 

Meeting Sansa Stark, Jaime knew, would always have left him without breath.

 

“Your grace,” she said smoothly.

 

He swallowed thickly. He had kept her away from him. He knew he would not be able to see his love as a child without feeling like a monster. And he knew he could not demand her hand from Eddard Stark without tipping off the vultures of her importance...

But this he had never expected.

 

Because when Sansa Stark looks up, he knows.

 

Knows it in his heart and his very bones that the girl of five in ten knows him. And not as a King. But as at knight at her back, at her table.

 

“Lady Sansa Stark,” he said simply, even as he fights the urge to leap from his throne and lift her off her knees.

 

It is wrong. He should be at her feet. But Sansa is a lady and they are not alone. And she will pretend. He wonders how long has she remembered. How long has she remembered when she was a queen herself. When the innocence he had tried so hard to keep her with had been torn away by memory.

 

He is glad.

 

But also frighted what his queen will think of this new world he has brought. Did she approve? Did she see all he had done for the North, for the Others to come, and was grateful? Did she think Lyanna’s survival, and that of Elia’s to be the kindness he had meant it as?

 

Did she know that it had all been for her?

 

“Rise,” he tells her, and he barely holds the urge to tell her she should never kneel for him again. Barely holds back his emotion.

 

Careful, careful.

 

“” 

---

  The Emperor

‘suggestive of stability and security in life. You are on top of things and everything is under your control. It is your hard work, discipline, and self-control that have bought you this far. It means that you are in charge of your life now setting up your own rules and boundaries.’

Sansa

 

Perhaps she should be gentle to him.

 

Perhaps she should rage and fury.

 

Perhaps she should finally grasp his face in her hands and kiss him senselessly as she had dreamed to do for so long.

 

Perhaps all three. Sansa Stark, once first of her name, does not quite what to do with the once commander of her queensgaurd. Ever since she had realized she was in a new version of the world, Sansa had waited in quiet to be before him once again. Because it did not take a genius to understand quickly that it was him that caused all these changes… And to see the man she had loved had been brought back, just as she had.

He comes to her in the Red Keep’s garden. Breathless. Crown askew on his golden head. Next to her, Robb and Jon alike tense. They were faithful, careful brothers(cousin), and they would have been fools not to notice the sheer intensity of the King’s gaze when he saw her for the first time.

 

She lowers herself to the King.

 

His face twists, and had he not just lived his entire new life ruling, she thinks he would have demanded she never do this ever again.

 

“Your grace,” she mummers. 

 

“My lady,” he huffs, and it is possessive and wanting.

 

Sansa tries not to swallow thickly at his voice.

 

“Walk- Walk a turn with me?” he demands, but she hears his question, “Alone?”

 

Robb and Jon alike jump, protest.

 

“Lady will be enough escort,” she tells her siblings, not moving her gaze from him.

 

Jaime beams at her.

 

Handsome.

 

Whole.

 

Her heart flutters as it always did for him. A foolish girl who learned. Yet, perhaps she had never learned to be wary of him. Not after he had brought her home. Not after she realized that she loved the lion-knight with all of herself.

 

Even when she knew he could not, would not allow himself to love her openly back. 

---

The Hierophant

‘tradition and convention. It can represent marriage in an arranged setup. It can also mean a teacher or counselor who will help in learning/education of the querent.’

---

The Lovers

‘relationships and choices. Its appearance in a spread indicates some decision about an existing relationship, a temptation of the heart, or a choice of potential partners. Often an aspect of the querent's life will have to be sacrificed; a bachelor(ette)'s lifestyle may be sacrificed and a relationship gained (or vice versa), or one potential partner may be chosen while another is turned down. Whatever the choice, it should not be made lightly, as the ramifications will be lasting.’

---

VII.The Chariot

‘overcoming conflicts and moving forward in a positive direction. One needs to keep going on and through sheer hard work and commitment he will be victorious.’

---

VIII. Justice

‘the fairest decision will be made. Justice is the sword that cuts through a situation, and will nyou are in a phase of introspection where you are drawing your attention inwards and looking for answers within. You are in need of a period of inner reflection, away from the current demands of your position.’

---

X.Wheel of Fortune

‘introduce an element of change in the querent's life, such change being in station, position or fortune: such as the rich becoming poor, or the poor becoming rich.’

---

XI.Strength

‘the triumphant conclusion to a major life problem, situation or temptation through strength of character. It is a very happy card if you are fighting illness or recovering from injury.’

---

XII.The Hanged Man

‘ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time.’

---

XIII. Death

‘an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore implies an increased sense of self-awareness.’

---

XIV. Temperance

‘you should learn to bring about balance, patience and moderation in your life. You should take the middle road, avoiding extremes and maintain a sense of calm.’

---

The Devil

‘seduced by the material world and physical pleasures. Also living in fear, domination and bondage, being caged by an overabundance of luxury, discretion should be used in personal and business matters.’

---

XVI.The Tower

‘danger, crisis, destruction, and liberation. It is associated with sudden unforseen change.’

---

XVII. The Star

‘inspired. It brings renewed hope and faith and a sense that you are truly blessed by the universe at this time.’

---

XVIII.The Moon

‘illusion and deception, and therefore often suggests a time when something is not as it appears to be. Perhaps a misunderstanding on your part, or a truth you cannot admit to yourself.’

---

XIX. The Sun

‘good fortune, happiness, joy and harmony. It represents the universe coming together and agreeing with your path and aiding forward movement into something greater.’

---

Judgment

‘a time of self-reflection and analysis initiated by an awakening. Issues in your love life that you once ignored may be seen clearly now, and you have the chance to make adjustments.’

---

XXI. The World

‘ signals a feeling of completion and happiness. At times, this card can even suggest moving to the next step of your relationship, such as marriage or starting a family. As you complete one cycle in your life, you are also looking towards the future into next steps.’

Notes:

Not gonna lie. Despite never writing for this pairing, I AM obsessed with Sansa/Jaime. Like I found every good fic to its name and even broke my rule of trying not to read incomplete fics to find me some more. Do I ever think its gonna be cannon? Heck no. I have little hope that G to R to the Martin would write this in despite how much I think it makes sense for their character arcs and how ironically they are each other’s ideal partners as children. But I get it, grim-dark gonna grim dark and they have to grow beyond their child selves. Do I shamelessly love it? Heck yes. Do I lament how much people hate these two? Double heck yes. Do I really think I should stop staring at my ceiling and image more ASOI&F plot bunnies instead of working on my already published stuff? Triple heck yes.

Welp, hope ya’ll like it anyway.

Alternate names for this would be:

‘The Madness of Jaime Lannister’ or ‘The Arcane’.

Chapter 11: A Song of Soul & Pride

Summary:

In which a modern girl is reborn as Lyarra Snow turned Lyarra Stark, aka Visenya Targaryen, secret princess of ice and fire, someone promised and decides that watching the people around her die would be rather off-putting. Wolves run in a pack, fishes swim in a school, lions prowl in a pride, and dragons soar in a flight...

Pairings: Jon Snow/Jaime Lannister, Catelyn Stark/Eddard Stark, Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Implied Lyanna Stark/Rheagar Targeryon/Elia Martell

TAGS: OC-Character, OC-Insert, Always Female Jon Snow, Jon Snow Knows Something, But Not Much,

Note I:

Everyone Is Bad At Maths

Lyarra

 

It is when she is all but three years old, sorry, three namedays old, that Lyarra Snow decides to do something rather spectacularly unsettling.

 

Or, well, unsettling to everyone but herself.

 

It happens to be a bit like mission impossible status to herself; mission, get the bloody truth out. Plan accordingly. A tumble out of her crib to land past Robb’s reaching hands. Even if his little whine of ‘Lya Lya’ was sweet as heck. She tossed him a loud air kiss with a loud ‘mawah’ that he caught with a large giggle. She has just managed to slip past the startled guards at the nursey's door. Took some athletic dodge rolling that may or may not have caused a couple of swears, especially when she kicked a particular guy in face. “Sorry, Jory!” Dodged through rather well-meaning servants’ grasp. “Lyarra!” “NO NAN!”, and made her way into the more formal part of Winterfell so early in the morning without too much of fuss. 

 

Maybe a couple of bitten arms and kicked shins. 

 

And maybe a few servants being sent into a panic.

 

But well, she can’t do much about that now.

 

She toddles into her father’s solar, for he is her father in all the ways that matter , and promptly gets a small amused chuckle from him as she primily closes the door behind her. Even more chuckles escape him when she struggles with the high latch. Couldn’t very well help me instead, could you Lord Ned? She is very much in luck, as Lady Catelyn is there, even as her dark red brows furrow something fierce at her appearance. She knows not what it had been that made her relationship with the woman less tense then the canonical Jon Snow, but she has rather suspected it has been the fact that she is not a man, and hence less likely to be any sort of line of succession over Robb Stark even if she is legitimized. It also could be that the woman had yet to have Sansa, and hence no direct child to compare her too.

Because Robb is the only male heir to Winterfell and maybe that would be enough.

 

 Regardless of the timeline, she was probably already pregnant with the sweet she-wolf. Either way, Lady Cat is not directly disdainful, not directly neglectful, if a little uncomfortable in her presence. There is a soft longing on her face, however, and frustration she cannot hide from watching her interact with Ned and Robb, and Lyarra has no doubt that her presence would only become more hated with the years to come.

Perhaps Jon Snow too, had not been hated when he was a young child, perhaps lacking a dick had given Lyarra some leeway, perhaps she would never know why. But the hate will grow, the resentment will be one day too much. And Lyarra Snow will be sold off or kicked out of Winterfell, or worse follow behind Ned Stark as he goes to die in King's Landing. A bastard daughter has no means to run off to the Wall, and as Danny’s song has shown, trying to gender-bend my way there will only get me killed.

 

It is why in her wisdom, she has decided to do this.

 

Because if L plus R equals L in this version of Westeros, she is rather and utterly spectacularly fucked as it is. Adding on top of being seen as a bastard girl hated by her father’s lady, Lyarra knows she is set to disaster. Even more so if she is a dragon fledgling with Lions and Stags ready to kill her. As much as she avoids mirrors due to her uncomfortable feelings on her appearance, she knows that she is a pretty child; sweet black curls, pale skin as the snow in her name, a face that even soft with baby fat was distractingly pretty and impossible indigo eyes. She thinks she is a perfect blend of her father and mother. The choicest features of her Stark parent and that of her other biological parent. She isn’t quite sure if she is a daughter to the dead dragon prince, but from what little she has dug up, she can confidently say it is about seventy-five percent certain she is. Whether that makes her a trueborn princess or Blackfyre, she can’t be sure.

And the thought of Robert Baratheon, Tywin Lannister knowing a ‘dragonspawn’ lives under their noses is singularly terrifying to her. She has experienced death. It is painful and traumatizing and not something she is looking forward to once again. Not to mention whatever Robert Baratheon would do with a Lyanna look alike running around. Because Old Nan has said she has Lyanna’s looks, the Stark look, but prettier, and that is another can of worms she is not looking forward to. And she would rather not have the Stark Lady hate her in the coming years. Not Stark girl, unlike her children, pretty as a song with the stark looks before the King or lords...  She needs stability and not the threat of eviction every time she displeases a bitter woman. Especially if the second Long Night is truly on the horizon.

 

She walks forward, hands worrying her woolen skirts.  

 

How does one confirm a theory?

 

“Good morning, Lyarra,” is Lord Stark’s amused voice, “What brings you here so early?”

 

“Why is everyone so bad at Maths?” is the first thing that pops out of her mouth.

 

Lady Cat lifts a single brow, even as her father chuckles, again, amused at her. She thinks she will be forever known as a curious child because of her rapid grasp and urge to ask questions, and she curses her inability to be direct and ramble on for long periods of time. She blames her classics background in her first life. Especially because everyone thinks its the cutest thing. Even Cat. Well, in for a copper, out for a gold dragon.

 

“What makes you-”

 

“40 weeks is the average length of a human pregnancy, and that is if you carry a baby to term. Many people average about 37 or so weeks, and some can have a child as soon as 23 weeks and have it live.”

 

Ned Stark blinks at her seemingly random topic. But Lyarra is on a roll.

 

“By all accounts, you returned to Starfall with me in your arms. There is no possible way that Lady Ashara Dayne is my mother, as she had a stillborn baby a week before your return from the Tower of Joy, that was registered to have been conceived long after you had the opportunity to visit her during the war. It is also said that you did not have me when you entered Dorne. You spent all of fourteen weeks in Dorne, if that, which is in no way possible for you to have conceived me during your trip, or before as you were in battle in another part of Westeros.”

 

Ned Stark’s face is pure white, and Lady Catelyn’s is not much better. Tension hovers in the air, and Lyarra feels tears threatening to surface. Three-year-old body chemistry sucks . She knows that she is on the verge of the truth. She knows he can dismiss her. Lie to her, if this is the truth. But she has planted the seed. And there is dawning horror on Ned’s face, while there is a dawning realization on Cat’s. She is only three, after all, and she is spectacularly scared of what this would mean. Keep going.

 

“By all conclusions, I cannot be your biological daughter.”

 

Cat gasps.

 

“Lya-”

 

“Is Rhaegor Targaryen my father?”

 

Lady Catelyn gasps again. Ned Stark stares at her with true horror on his face alarmingly grey face. Lyarra feels her little knees wobble. 99 percent.

 

“Is my mother Lyanna Stark?”

 

“ Lyarra, ” says Ned, voice hoarse and a whisper.

 

“Is that even my name?” she asks more demands.

 

She feels tears gather in her eyes. And with a vengeance she lets them fall. Because there are few people who can lie to a crying little girl. Ned Stark looks devastated and so old. While Catelyn Stark looks devastated and shocked. Also, like she is adding up in her head and she has just reached the same conclusion as everyone on Earth had. 

 

“I am dragonspawn then,” her voice is wobbly, clipped, and high pitched, “And if the King knows he’ll dash my head in like it was done to my brother. Or will he stab my stomach like my poor sister?”

 

Caetlyn makes a strangled noise and surprises the ever-living shit out of Lyarra as she rushes Lyarra. She flinches. She cannot help it. But Cat carries on to lift her up in her arms. Gathers her close and oh is this what a mother feels like? I  had forgotten.

 

“No,” mummers Catelyn Stark, soft and voice weeping, pressing her face into Lyarra's neck, “No sweetling, you will not be harmed by the King. You are our family.”

 

“Even if I am your bastard niece born of rape?” is her returned question.

 

“Your father did not rape your mother,” is Ned’s brilliant response, voice drawn and quiet, “And I have the official documents of his marriage to Lyanna. She was his second wife, wed by the godswood and by a Septon alike. Elia Martell was their witness.”

 

Lyarra feels her stomach drop. Welp. I am a Princess. A secret Princess. Ice and Fire made into a babe. Fucking shit. If Young fucking Griff is in this universe and wants a wife he could suck the dick I should’ve had as Jon.

 

“Did I have a name, before you hide me?” she hissed.

 

“Visenya. You were named Visenya.”

 

After the Conquerors. Rhaeger had his Aegon, his Rhaeneys… And I was to be his Visneya. Three heads.

 

Lyarra started.

 

Instiouscetous bullshit.

 

“A dragon must have three heads,” she said with a mocking tone, “And Prince Rheagor was said to be obsessed with the legacy of his family. Is that why he took a second wife?”

 

Cat’s arms tightened around her, her whole body trembling.

 

“Ned, how could you hide this from me?!”

 

 Lyarra could not help but think; Yes Ned, why did you hide this from your wife you closed-lipped idiot? Jon Snow, you were so fucked it wasn’t even funny.

 

"Cat-"

 

"Ned, Ned you have made it as if she is your shame. As proof of my lack."

 

"I had to protect her- Robert had just sneered at the bodies of-"

 

Lyarra sobs. Presses her face against Cat's head. The two adult Starks freeze. She is genuinely upset, and because she really doesn’t want to see them at each other’s throats. And its the best way to defuses the tension in the room.

 

" I don't want to die, " she warbles, “But will the King not kill you all for having me?!”

 

Catelyn’s arms tighten, and she takes a desperate breath.

 

“No sweetling, no sweetling, no, ” she sobbed, which more or less confirms in Lyarra’s mind that she is pregnant with little Sansa.

 

Only pregnancy hormones can make you so weepy at the drop of a hat.

 

"Family, Duty, Honor, sweet girl. You will not be given to dying for your parents' sins."

 

Didn't I already do so once?

 

Lyarra shivers. Tries not to remember. And clings to the woman who had only shown her indifference.

---

Note II:

Smothering Via A Fish

Lyarra

 

Lord Eddard Stark, uncle to a squirreled away Princess to a dead line of Kings, or at the very least a deposed line of them is in the dog house. Wolf house? After Lyarra had made him confess to his wife, she more or less got the Lady of Winterfell royally pissed. It hadn’t been her intention, not at all, to get good old Ned in trouble. She isn’t living her second life to make shit happen. She wants peace and tranquility, and she wants to minimize as much strife as possible. But she needed to know for planning reasons. And she thought it best to do that with Lady Stark NOT hating the very sight of her.

 

Bit hard when your very existence makes your family a target.

 

Especially in an alternate dimension of the Song of Ice and Fire variety. 

 

Somehow, Lady Catelyn Stark of House Tully has managed to push past all that nonsense. Thrown away the concern of treason and shit like that, because as her House birth demands, Family, Duty, Honor, and Cat takes that sort of thing seriously. Enough to banish The Ned, disavow him for his own lack of trust, and as far as Lyarra could piece together, shove as far away from them as possible. He was living in the guest wing of Winterfell on the opposite side of the Keep from the Family wing, and Lady Stark probably ordered people to warn her if Lord Stark is coming, because Lyarra had yet to see him since that forceful confession all those weeks ago. She cannot confirm, however, much as she guessed the orders. Even if she has been consequentially in the arms of Catelyn Stark seemingly ever since.

 

Yes , Lyarra thinks, 98.5 percent sure that Cat is high on pregnancy hormones. 

 

Or suffering from massive guilt.

 

Porque no los dos?

 

"Lya!" Called Robb, happily, moving his hands rapidly.

 

Lyarra gave a huff of a laugh and waved back. Robb Stark, her elder cousin, is standing up. The three-year-old boy is a cute thing, with riotous red curls, large blue eyes, and freckles by the hands full on his pale, chubby face. He was a handsome bugger, and the easy way he adored her had been very soothing in the traumatic aftermath of her death on Earth. She very easily loved him, even before she understood where she had been reincarnated.

 

“My sweetling,” cooed Cat, and she with a strength that was at odds with her appearance scooped up the heir to Winterfell easily in her opposite arm.

 

Go Cat fish-lady.

 

“My sweetlings,” she corrected herself softly, and she pressed her lips to Lyarra’s forehead. The hesitation was there as well, but she was working on it, Lyarra noticed.

 

Something is thick in her throat. And she feels that traumatized bit of her fade just a bit more. She… Had not had a happy life. Slave to the whims of her parents, and they had tried- Tried to have some semblance of affection to her. But it had been fleeting and sparse. Cat kissing her forehead reminded her of the few bits of tenderness her first set of parents had given her. And though she had died by the fault of her parents and not her own, having parental affection was something she thinks she will gorge herself on. Because I’ll always be that scared little girl who wants her mommy and daddy to look at her. And Cat is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a mother in this life with Lyanna dead.

 

Lyarra sighed. Reached back to caress Cat’s face. She was warm, and her skin soft, and it broke her heart how much that touch felt like so much to Lyarra.

 

“Lady Cat,” she whispered back and reached forward to kiss her cheek sweetly.

 

Cat nuzzles her face. Sweet and easier than ever before.

 

“Sweetling, call me Mother ,” she begs quietly, and tears are in her eyes again. She does that.

 

Cry a lot. And every time something trembles in Lyarra’s own heart in response.

 

Damn it.

 

“But-”

 

“No buts! I am your mother,” said Cat fiercely, and Lyarra feels her heart squeeze, “Your Mother, Lyarra! Do you understand?”

 

Lyarra huffed.

 

“I am still a Snow, my Lady,” she whispered back, “And I cannot overstep.”

 

Lady Cat smiled.

 

“You are far too young to be so serious. If I say you are my daughter, than you are, so you will call me such,” she returned, blue eyes pleading.

 

Guilt, perhaps, and a mixture of her own righteousness compelling her to overcompensate. Lyarra sighs.

 

“People will call you names.”

 

“Lya, no one can call Mama names!” cried Robb, tugging impatiently at her curls.

 

One of his worse habits, in her opinion. She scowled at him.

 

“Robb, people can!”

 

“NO! She is the Lady of Winterfell!”

 

“And I am the Bastard of it.”

 

Lady Cat’s face was really heart-wrenching. Lyarra felt extra bad for it. Really. But she also wasn’t lying.

 

“Wha’s a basatrd?” asked Robb, innocently.

 

Opps.

 

“Nothing for you to worry about,” said Lady Cat, sternly.

 

She turned blue eyes to Lyarra’s and narrowed them.

 

“Never call yourself that, Lyarra, you are of House Stark. You are my daughter. ”

 

She blinked as innocent as a reincarnated, transmitted soul could.

 

“Everyone calls me that.”

 

Catelyn Stark kissed her brow. Gently and firmly.

 

“Not for much longer.”

 

What the hell is that supposed to mean, fish lady?

---

Note III:

Family, Duty, Honor

Ned

 

Ned Stark thinks perhaps that I have underestimated my Lady wife.

 

In his hand is a raven. An official document that legitimized one Lyarra Snow as Lady Lyarra Stark. She has been declared the legitimate daughter of House Stark and that of House Tully, as decreed by King Robert Baratheon, First of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm of Westeros. One of many of these missives has been shipped across the realm, same with an excerpt of his Lady wife’s quiet but heartful pleading for the King to name Lyarra as a true child of House Stark and her own. She has made her in name her own daughter, with decorations of House Tully accepting the claim for the child to be added to the register of House Tully. Hoster himself had declared her his granddaughter by his eldest daughter’s wish, and there is no turning back.

 

Lyarra is now second in line for Winterfell by Cat’s interference. Fourth in line for Riverrun.

 

He swallows thickly.

 

He had thought his greatest secret safe. Safe with Howland, safe in himself, and all it had taken was an inquisitive girl of three namedays to read a little into it to have completely shattered. Lyarra had uncovered her identity by sheer force of logic and child curiosity. He is a fool, and he is worried. Lyarra was a smart girl, to be sure. 

 

But she is not the only one to take such a logical leap.

 

And now that Cat has had her legitimized, more people will look into his daughter. For that is what she is. Matters not who sired her matters not how Lyanna died for her, that little girl is mine. My blood, my kin, my babe.

 

“Lord Stark,” said Cat, cooly.

 

He stared at his wife and his children who clung to her hands. He swallowed again. It is the first time in nearly a moon that he has seen them.

 

“It is done,” he tells Cat, quietly, and he lifts the document.

 

Cat’s ice breaks, and she beams in triumph as she reads them. Ned tilts his head.

 

“I- I am afraid,” he tells them honestly, “I am afraid this will bring attention to Lyarra.”

 

Cat lifts her head.

 

“Even if it does, Eddard, this is declaring her protected by two realms. Any one who dares will have the Riverlands and the North to contend with.”

 

Lyarra surprised them by stepping away from Cat. She looked at Cat.

 

“What did you do? ” she asked, voice high and afraid.

 

Cat smiles gently.

 

“I have protected you, sweetling.”

 

She looked at him. Her lips trembled.

 

“Lord Stark?”

 

He swallowed.

 

“Lyarra, you are now Lyarra Stark,” he told her simply.

 

Her little legs gave way. She dropped, and it was only Cat reaching forward to catch her that saved her any hurt.

---

Note Whenever:

Home-Coming

Lyarra

 

Jaime Lannister is a handsome asshole, is Lyarra’s first thought as the Heroes of the Greyjoy Rebellion streamed into the castle’s gate.

 

And I can see why my male counterpart thought him fit to be a King.

 

Lyarra's second thought was that her father looked wrecked, next to the actual King. And his face was looking for the face of her mother . Lyarra watched as she gave a trembling smile. His own smile is just as trembling. And he jumped off his exhausted-looking horse and was running. Lady Cat broke all protocol- jumped up before given leave by the King, and started running. Lyarra watched as her elegant mother reached for her father, and it was romantic and sweet and Lyarra sighed softly in relief.

 

“Lya Lya,” whispered sweet Sansa, all but three, clutching tightly to her sleeve next to her, “Papa.”

 

“Yes, sweetheart,” she told her, “Papa.”

 

Robb squeezed her arm on her other side, his eyes never leaving the King’s enormous form. He allowed them all to stand, laughing as her mother stammered her apologies.

 

“No need to be embarrassed, Cat! You have the right to launch yourself at old Ned!”

 

He is a gallant, handsome thing. Tall, imposing and it is hard to picture him as a fat fuck that Ned Stark would barely recognize in the future. He jumped easily off of his horse, still clad in shining armor, a golden crown on his brow. For he looks every inch the man described to be great and powerful, and nothing like the pitiful fucker with grand delusions of a love lost. But that is not what Robb sees. All he sees is the man that could murder her for who her biological parents were, take her from him, and he is shaking with the emotion of it.

Somehow, Lyarra knows without question, that this should have never been. She can’t remember if the Baratheon King had ever visited Winterfell before the faithful death of Jon Aryn, but she leans heavily on the ‘NOPE’ on from what she remembers. She doesn’t know what brought this change, and she knows it’s her fault. Ripples in the water, a stone dropped in stillness will cause small changes that lead to larger ones. And she feels Robb tightening his hand on her’s at the sight of his namesake, and she knows without a doubt that her brother would kill the man on the spot if he could. Six namedays and ready to kill.

 

He is afraid of this giant man.

 

Has been afraid of Robert Baratheon since the day their parents told them of who Lyarra Stark is in reality.

 

And Robb has always reacted with anger to his fear.

 

“Don’t,” is her whispered reprime, even as she lets Sansa loose. She is already toddling after their parents, crying out in helpless sobbing joy at the sight of their father who sobs his own laugh and lifts her high in the air and spins the little lady of Winterfell, “Don’t make a mess of it.”

 

“I- I cannot breathe the same air as him , ” whispered Robb, face tight and wane.

 

Lyarra placed a hand on his wrist. Gently squeezed. Shoved one-year-old Arya into his arms. He grunted with the weight of her, and Tully blue met the Targeryon indigo.

 

“You will have to unless you wish me to join my sister.”

 

His eyes tightened. His lips trembled.

 

“ Never. ”

 

“Then play a game, Robb. That man is an honor to have within our walls.”

 

Robb gave a sharp nod.

 

“Ned! What a beautiful family!” called the King, voice booming, jovial.

 

Something in Lyarra twisted. But she beamed. And ran to her father with a wide smile.

 

“PAPA!” she called. 

 

And it was a test. A test whether or not the King would see her eyes and know. So she played with fire and looked right into his eyes from her father’s arms. His smile did not flatter. Did not shift. He beamed at her.

 

“Oh! And who is this beauty!?” he boomed.

 

Lyarra smiled wider, even as she shivered in her father’s arm.

 

“I am Lyarra, your grace.”

 

Robert bowed gallantly.

 

“Oh, what a great pleasure to meet you Lady Lyarra… Stark. ” 

 

He laughed, just a touch mocking. Reached forward and cupped her face with something like affection. She felt Ned Stark shiver. Felt his arm’s tighten around her just a fraction. And was very aware how quickly the King could snap her neck holding her head like that.

 

“She is the picture of sweetness! I can see why you begged on her behalf, Cat.”

 

“She is mine, your grace, no matter what,” replied Cat, voice soft. Her eyes never moved from the King’s enormous paw on Lyarra’s face.

 

Robert squeezed her face, in more affection. A touch too hard. But he was more likely not aware of his horrendous strength.

 

“” 

---

Note Whenever:

The Lion Knight & The Dragon Princess

Lyarra & Jaime

 

Lyarra finds Sir Jaime Lannister, avenger turned mockery, sitting quietly beneath the heartstree, gaze far out, warming his hands absently against the steaming pools.

 

She does not know what to feel.

 

He is a complicated man.

 

But he is not, she thinks , inherently evil . Just a stupid man capable of very destructive choices. And in a position to live through the choices despite everything. She shifts and decides to do the one thing she knows she must. So she steps into the clearing of the godstree, is utterly amused at how quickly the devastatingly young knight stands at attention, and reaches for his sword. He is little more than twenty, she can tell. She guesses he was about the age she had been when her parents in her first life accidentally killed her. His face is handsome, thin and elegant, but has just the tiniest bit of childhood fat that is almost gone.

 

“My lady,” a curve of mockery appears on his face, not really a smile. She knows, in his tone, as he barely inclined his golden head. 

 

All of Westeros thinks her a child born on the wrong side of the ‘sheets’ turned Lady by the kindness and goodness of a stupid woman. Lyarra still not knows what to feel at the way her mother had begged for the King to make her a Stark, but she does know it will smooth things over for her in the long run. She does not want the Iron Throne, quite content to let her aunt and possible brother fight their fill over it. So calling herself a Stark in the eyes of Westeros would at least allow her to be more removed from the line of succession the Dragon Monarchs would wish to impart. 

 

She gives him an innocent look that will hide the fact that she knows what he thinks of her. Soft and easy, a smile on her face.

 

“Ser Jaime Lannister,” she says, and she surprises him by giving him a respectful curtsy, and a brighter smile, “Forgive me for disturbing you. I’ve come to pray.”

 

He stares at her, relaxing posture as he slumps back on the rock he had been sitting on. His emerald eyes are focused, his brow furrowed. And she absently wonders if the Lion is seeing her features familiar and trying to pinpoint them.

 

“Then, it is I who disturbs you, my Lady, I am not praying.”

 

“The old gods offer peace for anyone, Ser, even if you do not pray to them. I find myself hiding here more often than not.”

 

“Are you hiding now? I thought you said you come to pray, or are you lying of your piety?” he asked, amused by her response.

 

She smiles softly this time.

 

“I’m not lying. I come to pray now. But sometimes, I run here when I’m not. It’s quiet. And warm by the pools. Is that not why you came here?”

 

He gave a helpless shrug.

 

“I am not on duty with the King. And I have not thought of where I walked. Seemed good as place as any to rest.”

 

She nodded.

 

“I am glad I found you then, Ser. I wanted- I wanted to say something to you.”

 

“Tell me, the … Lady Lyarra.”

 

A mocking gleam. She wonders at how often this man has to poke and proud at others to  make himself feel better.

 

“Thank you. For avenging my grandfather and uncle. Even if it was never meant that way, you killed the Mad King, and I know that eased their spirits.”

 

She thinks she stunned him, by the way his jaw drops. She lowers her head.

 

“House Stark called you Kingslayer once, and the moniker stuck. But I do not think it should be a curse to you, but rather one to bear with pride. Thank you, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer.”

 

A sound of steel singing. And Lyarra was not surprised to feel the cold bite of cooled steel against her throat. Emerald eyes gleamed, but there was something apathetic in the Lion Knight’s eyes regardless. He would readily kill her. Never mind the fact that she was the eldest daughter of Eddard Stark, never mind that he stood in his godswood. He would slit her throat, and he would walk away with his head high. Any man who could throw a child from a high tower was not averse to killing children.

 

“Are you mocking me?” he said, voice hard and cold.

 

Lyarra restrained a laugh. It wouldn’t help her. But she found it funny that the man that was so intent on mocking her found it insufferable if he thought he received the same treatment in kind.

 

“No.”

 

“What does a bastard girl know?”

 

She blinked. Careful and very aware of the blade on her throat. Lyarra did not want to die at six years old. Hardly better than her personal record of twenty-six. And Jaime Lannister was as impulsive as he would be in his thirties. Time wouldn’t temper that, and she had just pissed him off. Or triggered him. The jury was out in that sense. But if she kept calm, perhaps she wouldn’t accidentally trigger an early war between House Stark and Lannister.

 

Or die. I really rather not.

 

“Not much,” she freely admitted and smiled softly at the way he looked at her. Confused no doubt, at her lack of reaction of being called a bastard, of the sword at her throat, “No one knows. People have claimed left and right it was because your father stood at the city gates. But, I wonder, Ser Jaime, in my ignorance, if you will tell me why you killed the Mad King?”

 

He stared. His sword lowered a fraction of an inch. Lyarra did not dare relax. He blinked. His face twisted, a furrowed brow, a steady but quizzical frown.

 

“I do not think anyone has ever asked me.”

 

“You do not have to answer. I understand if you don’t wish to. I have bothered you in a place of peace. For that I am sorry, but I will not take back my thanks.  It was sincerely meant.”

 

“You’re a mouthy bastard.”

 

She smiled.

 

“According to my mother, it is one of my worst traits.”

 

Ser Jaime lowered his blade again. Away from her neck. She knew without a doubt that he could easily lift it and kill her anyway. He was that good. The Kingslayer, hero in her eyes, gave a huffing laugh.

 

“You’re ‘mother’ as you call her, was thought to be the most stupid woman to beg the King for your legitimacy.”

 

Must’ve been Cersei who said that. I don’t think Jaime would have it in him to care.

 

“It was a kindness and love, not stupidity. Because Lady Stark loves me, and my father, never mind who bore me. She wanted me to have my father’s name because I am her’s and his in equal measure.”

 

Jaime Lannister’s eyes shone then, and she remembers that he has his own son, living under a false name. Joffrey, the little sociopath, the second Mad King to come.

 

“Do you truly want to know why I killed the Mad King?” he asked and put away his sword altogether.

 

“If you will share it, Ser.”

 

He tilted his head.

 

“... You are not mocking me.”

 

“That man murdered my grandfather and uncle. He killed countless other people for so much as breathing wrongly, and he led the Seven Kingdoms to near ruin when he ousted your father as his Hand. I like history, Ser Jaime, and I am not stupid. I’ve read of it. I know some of it to be unreported or exaggerated, as the history is written by the people who wish to glorify the current King, but there is some truth in what is written.”

 

The Lion Knight sat back, on the same large stone surrounding the pools. His emerald eyes are on her face.

 

“My brother would like you,” says the man, voice certain, “Despite how mouthy you are.”

 

She only tilted her head and smiled.

 

“I think I will tell you, Lady Lyarra. I will tell you of why I killed the Mad King.”

 

Lyarra carefully set, arranging her skirts neatly. She stared at the Lion Knight expectantly. He took a breath. And exhaled it after an endless moment. His breath shuddered.

 

“His last words were what he had been shouting at his pyromancers for hours. Burn them all. ”

 

~O~

 

It is when he finishes describing his dazed movement to sit on the Iron Throne that Jaime Lannisters looks down, and realizes how devastatingly young his audience is. She was what, six, seven namedays? She was but a babe and he was sprouting about slit necks and stabbed backs and blood on his sword and fire that licked at flesh and lust of a mad man- Gods . You bleeding idiot-

 

The girl is crying. Hard, but silently. She is looking up with him with her Valeryian eyes and-

 

Valeryian.

 

Jaime feels his breath stop. Because Lyarra Stark, once known as Snow, is looking up at him with the same eyes that Queen Rhealle would look at him with. Sorrow and understanding- Don’t be stupid, Jaime, he tells himself with a hammering heart as the Stark girl delicately whips at her indigo eyes with a handkerchief from a hidden pocket in her skirt. Your mind is full of them.

 

“You are a hero, Ser,” says the girl, voice soft and sweet,  “And you must never be ashamed for your actions.”

 

Something in his heart trembles at that pronouncement from this girl. But he is still slightly reeling from his observation of her eyes. He must be mistaken. Projected the look of her eyes because his mind is full of the memories of the Dragon King and Queen. The King’s eyes had not looked like that. Lighter, almost pink in a certain light. But the Queen’s had been similar. Like that  of Prince Rheagar’s.

 

Was he ashamed? Jaime does not think he is.

 

“It was my finest act,” he tells the girl, truthfully.

 

She smiles. Indigo eyes gleaming.

 

“It was. And the Realm should honor you for it.”

 

“I am a man without need of it. I am Jaime Lannister of the Kingsgaurd. There is enough honor in that.”

 

A thing he has repeated to himself again and again. When he takes his sister to bed, when he thinks of the look in the Mad King’s eyes.

 

“It is not a question of needing it- it is of deserving it.”

 

He huffed a laugh.

 

“You are mouthy, and as your mother has said, it is your worse trait.”

 

The girl laughed. And it was musical and pretty. He really did think of her as someone his brother would like. She was intelligent, far too intelligent for a girl who was once a bastard in name. He thinks of Cersei’s mocking of Catelyn Stark, and the guess of force on Ned Stark’s part to make this girl legitimate. But he has seen Catelyn Stark with this girl with the impossible eyes. She loved this child, even if she was not from her own womb. And he can see why. She stands, dusting dirt and leaves from her skirts. Strides forward and sits next to him on the stone. She smiles, face soft.

 

“Thank you, for telling me Ser.”

 

He blinks.

 

“I am sorry I drew a blade on you,” he says, in return. It is rare he apologizes. But it is out of his mouth before he can truly think more on it.

 

He is surprised once again. She reaches out. Touches his hand. Small hand squeezing gently. Her hands are calloused for one so young, and a girl. But they are warm. Indigo eyes look at him, and Jaime cannot unsee Queen Rhaella in her gaze. And he finds himself thinking of the curve of her cheek is like the Queen’s, that the curl of her dark hair is like her curl’s... But he has never seen Queen Rhaella look so at peace. Or so untouched by the mantle of horror and injuries.

 

“I forgive you,” said Lyarra Stark, daughter to the man that had first called him Kingslayer, with the eyes of the Queen he had failed,  “Ser Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer.”

 

The only one to say the title, he realizes, with sheer and true praise. And hear the forgiveness of  the girl was something he had not realized he would ever want.

Note Whenever:

The Feast of the Kingslayer 

Lyarra ?

 

Lyarra Stark believes that Jaime Lannister’s face is hilarious as her father raises a glass in his honor.

 

“To Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer,” his voice is not mocking, but firm and emotional, “Avenger of my Father and Brother, saviour of King’s Landing.”

 

The North never disappointed. It did as Ser Jaime’s words, it roared in approval and praise and a thunderous chorus.

 

And she thinks it is tragic how bewildered he appeared, how much he looked  affected by this.

---

Note Whenever:

A Vow

Jaime?

 

He finds her again at the end of the night of the bloody Feast of the Kingslayer, as they had sung to him. His feet walk, stalking from the hall at the end of it. Escaping the King’s arm around him with a twisting stomach. Not drunk enough and tired as the seven hells. He feels chased from the hall in shock, the chorus died down just in the first blush of the dawn. Jaime escaped the gazes of awe and praise as if they were wolves snapping at his heels.

 

He never knew the Northerners could smile or be so enthusiastic. 

 

Lyarra Stark, and he finds her in a place he thought fitting for a girl who loved her history and trying to hide from him. In the Library of Winterfell, and sitting, all places, ontop one of the northern oak bookshelves. A good few heads above him. He wonders if she had done so to stay out of reach, or if this was another place she came to hide in. She had a habit, this strange one of being in places just out of reach.  

 

“Lyarra Stark,” he snarls.

 

The girl peers down at him from over her enormous tome. The History of the Westernlands, he noted with little amusement.

 

“You look like you’re going to throttle me,” she said, simply, and does not move from her place above him. She dissively shuts her book. 

 

Smart girl.

 

“I just might. ”

 

She grins. Cheeky little bitch that she is. Puts her book to the side and places  her face into her small hand. Indigo eyes gleam.

 

“It needed to be known.”

 

“ Why ?”

 

“People spoke ill of you! I would not stand it for my friend.”

 

How sad is it, to Jaime, that her words has his fury ebbing? How sad is it that he suddenly realizes in the three moons since the King had dragged his war party North, that his best friend has become a girl with barely seven namedays to her name? And I will not see her for how ever many years when we travel south.

 

Jaime took a breath.  

 

“You should not have spoken of this to your father,” he says, calmer.

 

Her brows furrowed. She scowled at him.

 

“He didn’t want me speaking to you,” she returned, her face blushing pink, “He said he would speak to you to make you stop. He hated you without knowing and I could not stand it.”

 

He huffs a laugh.

 

“You did this to keep speaking to me?”

 

“You’re my friend,” she said softly, setting aside her book altogether.

 

The eyes of Queen Rhaella look down at him. Jaime swallows thickly. Tries not to think of possibilities, of the fact from his casual inquiring that Lyarra Stark had come from Dorne in the arms of her father with Lyanna Stark’s bones with them. And that all that had been said for that lady was that she had been taken in a fever at the Tower of Joy. Birthing fever, is all he can guess that took Lyanna Stark’s life. He thinks of the Kingsgaurd that had been guarding the Lady, including Arthur, Rheagar’s best friend, guarding her. In the land of the Princess that Jaime had known had not been suprened by her husband. Tries not to think that he has stumbled into a secret that Ned Stark would kill to keep. Tries not to think of red cloaks stained with the blood of children he had played with. Tries not to think of Robert learning of this girl’s origins and crushing her beneath his damn war hammer as he did her father.   

 

Tries not to think of his father realizing the blood of Aerys was still on Westroes’ soil and bring his wrath on this innocent babe’s head.

 

“Well, friend, will you keep up there, like a bird, so high?” he asked, and he is proud that his voice does not tremble at the comment.

 

“ I am no bird, and no net ensnares me ,” she replied, with the air of repeating something from somewhere else.

 

He snorted. If she would lean down just a touch, he would yank her down.

 

“I have no net, you little idiot.”

 

“You do have hands, and they look like they will be good at ensuring. Possibly strangling.”

 

He huffed a laugh.

 

“Possibly, my friend.”

 

She beamed at him.

 

“Are you actually mad at me?”

 

Jaime blinked. Let it be known that Lyarra Stark had a way of asking very good questions.

 

“I am not sure. It is a complex thing. I have been branded a hero at your behest.”

 

She smiled. Gentle and soft. And in her smile he saw little Rheaneys. He swallowed thickly.

 

“You will be sung in halls, Ser Jaime,” she said with an air of peace.

 

Something warm settled in his heart.

 

“Thank you, my friend.”

 

“You are most welcome.”

---

Note Whenever:

Bobby B’s Epic Fail

Lyarra ?

 

“So for your service, Ser Jaime Lannister, I release you from the King’s Guard. Go, Hero of King’s Landing, go to become heir to the Lord of Casterly Rock, fuck your fill of pretty maidens, and be not at the King’s service anymore.”

 

If Jaime does not kill me for this, Cersei Lannister just might.

 

Jaime looks at her. Eyes wide. She returns that look. Because she had never meant for this. 

 

And she also debates sprinting from the spot. Because that man is looking so surprised, and now he is looking ready to fight and kill, when he turns to her again. His mouth opens and closes. 

 

Shit.

---

Note Whenever:

A Promise

Lyarra ?

 

Lyarra knew, knew she was so close.

 

Maleficent was weeping, as devastating as dragons could, a wailing lament of pain and horror and Lyarra made her choice. She dragged herself to her feet. She pulled out the last blade of Valyrian steel.

 

And lunged.

 

The last blade on her, the one made from her biological father’s knife, reforged with parts of Ice, and the blade that had sung from her from the Iron Throne. Fire and Blood. Winter is Coming. Ice and fire as I am. It did as no other blade had before. It ran straight through the chest of the Night King.

 

He stared down at the blade, almost curiously, but Lyarra snarled a guttural cry and plunged it deeper.

 

He looked up. Straight into her eyes.

 

Indigo and unnatural blue met.

 

The Night King smiled. Sad and finished.

 

“ You kept your promise, ” said the Night King, simply, voice soft.

 

Lyarra didn’t know why she was crying. But she felt it, tears, freezing on her lashes. She screamed in his face and plunged it further. She felt it then. Felt a a power start to come from her rapier, felt it grow and-

 

She was flung back as light exploded.

---

Note Whenever:

The Return of a Princess

Jaime

 

His breath is knocked out of him.

 

Even as Catelyn Starks cries out in surprise, even as she boldly jumps over the high table with a feat of athleticism he knew her not capable of.

 

Lyarra Stark laughs, indigo eyes full of tears.

 

And it is sweet and so like a song something twists in his stomach. Her arms are open as her mother falls into them. The rest of the wolves descend. Eddard Stark is sobbing just as hard, if not harder then any of the wolves as they reach Lyarra Stark in the middle of the feasting hall. When he had  heard of her disappearance, it had taken all of him not to attempt to track her down. He knew that the girl had some sort of mission- the theft of valyrian blades across the realm had led him to believe little else. But to know her self-imposed mission was across the Wall, in a land of ice and snow had frightened him spitless.

 

But he had trusted her.  

 

Known that Lyarra, princess, knew what she was doing. To know that she had gone missing beyond  the Wall had just near killed him.

---

  Note Whenever:  

The Princess of Beasts, the Mother of Dragons and the Beggar King

Lyarra

 

She extended a hand to the awed girl that was nearly her age, her biological aunt, and smiled. “Do you wish to marry the Khal?”

 

Daenayrs, the Mother of Dragons, only stares at her in awe, before she shook her head.

 

Lyarra beamed, snapped up that delicate hand, and pulled the girl up onto Maleficent with a casual ease.

 

“HEY BEGGAR KING,” she shouted, voice triumphant, “YOU’RE A PAWN TO MAGISTER ILLYRIO WHO WISHES FOR AEGON, THE SON OF RHAEGAR TO BE KING. YOU’RE BAIT FOR ROBERT BARATHEON UNTIL AEGON CAN AMASS A PROPER ARMY. AND YOU, CREEPY JOARAH, ARE A SPY FOR THE FUCKER.”

 

The magister in question turns a horrible shade of puce. Joarah, bless his simping heart, goes terribly white in comparison.

 

Elliot goes in for his first goal, and snaps up Viserys in his talons, a roar in his green throat, even as the Dothraki start to get cute and go for their weapons. Then Elliot goes for the chest of dormant dragon eggs, snaps them up in his delicate claws, second goal accomplished.

 

“ You, Khal Drogo, are not worthy to get a dragon by simply buying her with an army, ” she intones in what she hopes is passible Dorathraki, she’s only been learning enough to say this much, “ You must court a dragon. We ride stallions of pure fire, Khal, we are mythic creatures of old blood. The moon and stars are earned, not given! YIP YIP MY BABIES!” she called out, and her trio of dragons take to the sky.

 

Viserys screams the whole time.  

 

It’s music to Lyarra’s ears.

 

Dany has a tight grip on her waist, and she crying and laughing at the same time. 

 

“Who are you?!” she screams, voice elated. Barely hearable over the wind.

 

“All in good time, Dany!” she screams back.

 

They land in a field of flowers, Mal is immediately crashing into Elliot, a greedy hum in her throat for the baby dragons too be. Dany screams a laugh, delight full and loud as Mal and Elliot playfully tussle..

 

“Blood of my blood! DRAGON RIDER!” calls out Viserys, voice wobbly and disbelieving, he stumbles to her. Freezes in awe over Mal and Elliot as they fight. Elliot let’s him go with a fiery snort.

 

Lyarra tilts her newly white head, and nods to her Uncle.

 

“Hiya, Beggar King.”

 

His face shakes. Turns angry far too quickly.

 

“ What ?”

 

“Beggar King,” she repeats, precisely and even, “King of Begging, King with no crown. That is what they call you, is it not?”

 

“I am the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms-”

 

“Someone who must say he is a King, is no King at all. Your father repeated that to his dying day, and Robert Baratheon stands King of the Seven Kingdoms.”

 

"Bitch- You dare acknowledge the usurper-"

 

Dany's hands squeeze her waist.

 

But Lyarra is already moving.

 

Slips off of Mal, who turns to tussle with Elliot in earnest. Dany follows a step behind her. Like a shadow, hands still on Lyarra’s waist. 

 

"Do you really wish to insult the woman with three dragons?"

 

Viserys visibly starts.

 

Because no doubt, he can count.

 

And all he can see is two of her babies.

 

She smiles.

 

Because Smaug is a sneaky little brat that is already landing from the clouds with an earth shaking snarl. Because he is a dramatic shit like his name sake. Atop him, Ghost has a doggy smile, lopsided tongue. Briar is already jumping off, yipping and tugging at her harness. Lyarra shakes off Dany, and moves to help out her direwolves. Closes her mouth firmly when they try to lick the shit out of it.

 

“ Down Briar. No, Ghost, enough of that, play with the pack.”

 

"And you, lady dragon rider, woman with wolves, who are you? If you are so ready to call me a Beggar King. "

 

"I am Visneya Targaryen. Daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and his second wife, Princess Lyanna Stark. These aren’t wolves. They’re Direwolves."

 

" Visneya ," Dany breathed, eyes wide and dewy," Niece."

 

"It is very nice to meet you, Aunt Daenerys… Uncle."

 

"You are the she-wolf whore’s daughter?"

 

Lyarra tilted her head.

 

"Why is my mother a whore for marrying your brother? She loved him. He died for her. Choking on blood, he called Lyanna. So I can only assume he loved her back. "

 

Viserys reals back.

 

Lyarra grins with all teeth.

 

"And I have brought forth dragons. I have saved you from death at the hands of Aegon's plotters. And I have done… So much more then you could conceive of, Viserys, Beggar King. I need not your approval. Your worth. I have done my duty with my family. I have saved you… Brought you here."

 

She points. 

 

Dany gasps.

 

For it is a small villa. A red door. Lemon grooves ready. It is what she thinks these poor people truly need.

 

"You will have to do your own washing, mending, supplies will come via the docks once a month."

 

She smiles as she goes to mount Mal once again. 

 

"I will visit as much as I can. Live, my uncle and aunt. For you are not the heirs to throne across the water. It is my elder brother Aegon. I wish not to watch you die in a dance. I do not wish to force you to be his pawns."

 

V man stares.

 

"And what will you do niece, be Queen at his side?"

 

Lyarra laughed.

 

"Gods no. I believe I will try to be happy . As far away from the Iron Throne as I can. I have killed the Night King, broken the dawn, brought dragons alive from stone. I am quite content to just… be. "

 

Dany stared.

 

"Why come to us? Why show us this wonder, and not take us home? Truly home?" She begged, “You hold dragons at your command- The Iron Throne should be yours. ”

 

Lyarra sighed. Shook her head.

 

"I do not want it. It is neither mine by right or by choice. You are pawns. A distraction. I think that is a wretched thing to be. I brought you here to spare you that. I have given you a choice. If you do not choose this, I will be absolved of guilt in standing by and doing nothing. My dragons are not for war. Not for the wars of men and that godforsaken chair."

 

Mal set her wings in the ready position. 

 

"So this Aegon is our true King?" Said the older man, face pinched.

 

Lyarra sighed.

 

"He is the one with the largest claim. Oldest of Rheager's children.  He also has the largest support. His side has been gathering allies since your father died. You have been left to rot and distraction for Baratheon. "

 

"This Aegon left us as this?!" He screeched. 

 

His thin face spoke for him. He had starved and scrimped and sold off his family’s legacy to keep himself, and his sister alive. He was a piece of shit, but a pitful, foolish piece of shit. And though she loathed to leave Dany with him, she did not think they would want the separation.

 

"No. His allies did. The men and women who raised him."

 

"And you, niece, Breaker of the Dawn? Daughter to our brother, what are you in this?"

 

"I care not for my brother who has lived in a shadowed, protected ignorance all his life. If he knows of me, he has not looked to meet me. I have done all I can for the world, and I am content. But I could not be so while I knew you were unwilling pawns."

 

Mal started to beat her wings.

 

Briar and Ghost settle back on Smaug, jumping easily to their baskets.

 

"Farwell, Dany, and Viserys. I will come again."

 

Her babies leapt to the sky.

Chapter 12: The Storm Witch

Summary:

Summary: Drabble. In which Renly is Rhaelle instead, and she also happens to have the memories of another life kicking around her head. Or a Baratheon daughter is born with the magic of a witch, who once was a Chosen One. Just her rotten Potter luck she lived to the ripe old age, greeted Death like a friend, and tossed off into ridiculousness nearly equal to her first life. What’s this about a prophecy and the end of the world? NOT AGAIN.

TAGS: Comedy, Drama, A Lighter Take On Westeros, Primrose Potter turned to Rhaelle Baratheon, She would have been Renly, Family Fluff,

Summary: Drabble. In which Renly is Rhaelle instead, and she also happens to have the memories of another life kicking around her head. Or a Baratheon daughter is born with the magic of a witch, who once was a Chosen One. Just her rotten Potter luck she lived to the ripe old age, greeted Death like a friend, and tossed off into ridiculousness nearly equal to her first life. What’s this about a prophecy and the end of the world? NOT AGAIN.

 

TAGS: Comedy, Drama, A Lighter Take On Westeros, Primrose Potter turned to Rhaelle Baratheon, She would have been Renly, Family Fluff,

---

---

Chapter I:

What’s In A Name

 

Death is an asshole.

 

The girl who used to be Primrose Potter is quite sure of that.

 

Because the curious entity had given her a fond kiss on the head, called itself the Stranger with a giggle, and tossed her to the next great adventure with a little too much glee.

 

"Fair thee well, Misstress Primrose," it had cackled. Its voice had been sweet and not, beautiful and wretched. Neither male nor female, but both and not at all.

 

And Prim woke to her own infant wailing in sheer surprise and shock.

 

Because really, one does not expect death to immediately turn to a second life.

 

Bollocks.

---

Chapter II:

The Same

 

Prim is oddly okay after only… Well,  honestly a few months of screeching her head off in denial and indignation of this ridiculousness. 

 

She thinks it helps that she is not the only child in her second life, that she is not the only tragic child of martyrs, but instead a third child to a very happy couple. She has a mother, a father, two brothers. It is strange to say the least. She had been so old. Children and grandchildren by the dozen when she had greeted the asshole that was death. But out of curiosity, she had used the Mirror of Erised just before her death. And of course, it had been the very same image she had seen as a child.

 

But the family lost had instead been with the family she had gained.

 

And she thinks, as she looks up at the beautiful face of her mother, this sweet face woman with shining blue eyes and sweet tumbling blonde hair, that she has always wanted this.

---

Chapter III:

Stanny My Manny

 

Stannis Baratheon, or Stanny as she calls him fondly in her head, is her favorite thing ever. She was nearly a hundred and forty years old in her mind, but one look at his dower little face and she is all infant. Because Prim has never had a brother before, even if the Weasley’s had all but adopted her, and now she has two. Robert and Stannis, fucking what is with that name, and she loves them. But Stanny is special. Stanny is sweet and holds her as if she is the most precious thing. And with a sweet promise of protection that Prim in her first life never ever had before.

 

“It’s not fair she likes you better,” said Robert with a whine.

 

Prim giggles at his sour, cute face, even as Stannis beams in response.

 

“Rhaella is a very good judge of character,” he says, serious as can be.

 

The little shit.  

---

Chapter Whenever:

Come Into My Castle

---

Chapter Whenever:

Twice A Dragon

 

Somewhere, somehow, her first husband is cackling, she has no doubt. 

 

For Draco Malfoy had always been a little shit.

 

Because she is set to marry a dragon. And yes, Draco had always been the jealous type, prat had always hated Ron and Cedric for that very reason, but the irony of her marrying another dragon connected sod would have had him in stitches. Didn’t help that the man, because he was a bleedin’ man near two decades her senior, was just as pale blond as her first husband.

 

This is all Rhaelle thought upon meeting the man she had shackled herself to the second she saved her parents’ life with her magic.

 

And the fact that he looks like the miserable sort.

 

Handsome, truly, as a prince should be, but he had this sad look in his eyes.

 

She wouldn’t blame him. The Tragedy of Summerhall had been a cluster fuck, and she knew a thing about being born underneath dramatic and traumatic circumstances.

 

Also the fucker had the gaul to be so tall.

---

Chapter Whenever:

A Doe

 

Rhaeger has not given much thought to his marriage.

 

He had thought, perhaps, Elia would be his bride, or even the eldest Lannister girl, one close enough in his age, and one politically advantageous.

 

Marrying little Rhaelle Baratheon had not even crossed his mind, even when Steffon Baratheon had sent the missive of her birth all those years ago. But magic had sung, and his father had demanded, so here he was betrothed to a baby.

 

She was all but two namedays, but evident Dragon’s blood won out in the end, for as he looked down at the little Doe he saw her lavender eye, paired with a queer if lovely emerald one, and a frame of scarlet hair tumbling from her head. She was a striking sight, the beauty of a child charming and well-formed, and no doubt would be devastating in an adult woman. However many damn years it would take to get there. But she is just a child he will wed, by his father’s bid. She wore the black and yellow of her house, a bramble of antler stags in black, laid in a rich yellow field that went well with her pale pale skin. He was surprised that she was standing, unaided by her two brothers who were glaring at him as if he had been the one to declare her his bride.

 

She walked surprisingly straight and gracefully, movements easily and elegant for anyone, let alone a babe. Tipped her head back and narrowed her almond eyes at him.

 

“Right,” She said, her voice crisp and high, “You are to be my husband.”

 

Rhaegar blinks. And just manages to hold his jaw together. Because he almost finds himself gaping at the girl. And suppressing a laugh at her blunt manner.

 

“Yes, My lady-”

 

“Elle is just fine, Prince Rhaegar. Don’t see the point for the formalities if we are expected to marry each other. I’ll address you well, but that is only because you’re a prince. Can’t be rude even if I wish to be.”

 

Rhaegar cannot help it. He bursts into laughter.

 

Because how else is he to react?

 

“It’s rude to laugh, you know,” she says to him, tartly.

 

He looks down at her.

 

“Forgive me, Lady Elle, but you took me by surprise.”

  

She smiled.

 

And seven gods she had missing teeth. Perhaps his father had gone mad. 

Chapter 13: Perhcance (PUBLISHED)

Summary:

In which a married Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister return to the past in the second King Robert crosses the gates of Winterfell. Bombastically, magically, they have little recourse but to try and fix the realm that has splintered long before their return. Perchance, they just might pull it off.

Relationship: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark,

TAGS: Magic, Time Rewinds, Jaime is Weirded Out, So Is Sansa But She Has Learned To Roll With It, Sansa Plans, Tywin gets Dragged in, Jaime Stans His Wife, Sansa Stans Her Husband, Dany Wary, 

Summary: In which a married Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister return to the past in the second King Robert crosses the gates of Winterfell. Bombastically, magically, they have little recourse but to try and fix the realm that has splintered long before their return. Perchance, they just might pull it off.

 

Relationship: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark,

 

TAGS: Magic, Time Rewinds, Jaime is Weirded Out, So Is Sansa But She Has Learned To Roll With It, Sansa Plans, Tywin gets Dragged in, Jaime Stans His Wife, Sansa Stans Her Husband, Dany Wary, 

---

Chapter I: 

Music

 

It is strange how much dragon death cries sound like a song.

 

Sweet and unworldly. In Sansa Stark’s mind she can hear it, hear the song of a dying dragon in her mind. Jon had died in that. Died in a foolish dragon dance instead of old and gray in his bed. Dragon fire had consumed her then, bathed her in those wicked red flames as the Mad Queen, Conqueror, sneered down at her, her lovely face contorted with her hate-  Sansa was on fire. Her husband was holding her-

 

Yet she saw as King Robert once again passed the Wolf’s Gate. All of Winterfell goes to their knees, yet Sansa remains standing.

 

“Sansa!” hissed Catelyn Stark, “Sansa you must kneel!”

 

I will never kneel again.

 

Sansa stares straight ahead. Vaguely, she can hear murmuring in the people behind her. Something off of dutiful, sweet Sansa Stark not kneeling before their king. She feels something wet start to seep from her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, and it is only when Arya, next to her, screams that Sansa can guess that it is blood. She can barely feel it.

 

When has Arya screamed in such a way? I cannot remember.

 

“ Sansa! ” cried out Arya, voice cracking, and that was more familiar. She had just screamed her name that way, had she not, when Daenarys had shrieked of betrayal and usperbing dogs? “Help! Something’s happening to my sister! ”

 

Sansa can only vaguely hear her. Blood poured from her, and she felt herself breath in a stuttering hacking thing. The dragon song grew louder in her ears. By sheer force of will she does not teeter. A queen does not falter.

 

“CALL FOR A MAESTER!” is the boom of the Stag King, launching himself off his horse in alarm, blue eyes wide, “THE GIRL HAS BEEN POISONED!”.

 

She watches curiously as one of the men in the white armor of the Kingsgaurd tilts alarmingly to the side on his horse. A helmet tumbles, and all she sees is golden hair. Then it is until blood seeping emerald eyes meet her own. Lips part, familiar, strong, and ever so ready to curl in a smirk. And he does smirk at her, even as blood seeps from his mouth. He throws himself off the horse. And even as her long-dead pack starts to swarm in their panic, Sansa Stark slips from them to reach the knight. 

 

Her husband.

 

Her love.

 

Jaime.

 

Wind swirls, wind blows, and suddenly no one can touch her. She notices it with a strange apathy. And she realizes with a start that the dragon song is still in the air. Rheagal’s death song. Jon’s death song . And that the wind that swirls around her is like the beat of the wings of the dragon. She blinks quickly.

 

“ Jaime! ” a shrill voice calls. She knows without much thought that it is Cersei Lannister, alive again, screaming for her twin as he drops to his knees.

 

Wind continues to blow. And through her blood touched vision, Sansa can still see the magic of a dragon’s death affecting her husband. He does not falter to kneel, and she knows it is for her. Queen in the North. Fire-Kissed Wolf of kneelers, Queen of the Vale and Queen of the Riverlands. The Golden Knight watches her, eyes blazing past his own blood tears. Wind about him as people scream and call out- The horses and wheel house scurry away or are blown away by the force of the wind around him. She walks, head held high.

 

Each step is as easy as breathing, the wind never hindering her.

 

Sansa reaches for his hand even as he reaches back, rising smoothly to his feet. Fingertips and metal gauntlets thread together. And the sound of dragon song reaches its peak. Without much care, Sansa realizes that the unnatural wind is swirling along them both. Fierce as a gale. Pushing all who try to reach them back. Wind and summer snow blow around them. But as always, their gaze flickers to the other. It is hard to look away from Jaime Lannister when he is near.

 

“Well, this is cursed,” he mummers, voice soft and hoarse. His eyes are still bleeding, even if it looks as if it's slowing, a hush reaches the courtyard as magic swirls about Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister in a more lingering way until it is nothing more than a breeze, “Were you ever really this small?”

 

“I am a child,” is her return, and she watches with some amusement as he winces at her high lilting voice, “It is par the course that I am small.”

 

“Fucking strange, dear wife,” is his response, looking her up and down.

 

She laughs.

 

“No thought of hiding, then, Jaime, my love?”

 

“An unnatural wind surrounds us. We are bleeding an alarming amount, yet we do not die nor have we been poisoned. I think we can’t fucking hide our return.”

 

“Magic,” she mummers, “Magic bid time to return to our first meeting.”

 

“I blame your Stark blood. It’s always something magical with you lot.”

 

“Magic, if I ever had it, died in me long ago.”

 

“Well, as your husband, I call hoarse shit. It is not my Lannister blood that has caused this nonsense.”

 

“You call our return nonsense?”

 

“Only because I have nothing else to call it.”

 

She laughs.

 

“Can you hear it? The song?”

 

“Aye, I do, ” he says, voice dipping, “It was perchance, your fucking brother that caused this.”

 

“Still cross?”

 

“He got us killed not five seconds ago, I think I’ll gladly be crossed.”

 

“We gambled on him. We lost.”

 

“It was not something you should have done… If he had been smarter, better- We would not have done this. We would not have to invite that monster to our Realm. And now we are here.”

 

“And now we are here,” she agreed and watched curiously as the magic around them died.

 

All of Winterfell, all of the King’s men looked at them in sheer surprise and dare she think it, shock. She looked at the overturned wheelhouse in which a shrieking Cersei was crawling out of. Wailing Tommen and startled Marcella at her side. Sansa pursed her lips. Her own family was gaping at her. She blinked quickly, blood on her lashes. She barely flinched as Jaime carefully took his white cloak off of his shoulders. Using the top of it to clean up the blood that was on her face. She hummed, reached for the handkerchief in her sleeve, and reached to do the same.

 

“Down,” she barked, and now she was disturbed by the sudden distance her husband’s face had from her own.

 

His lips curled. She pursed her own lips in a thin line as he beamed.

 

“Ha! You are upset by this as well!”

 

“You think returning to the body of a child is not disconcerting?” she said in a slight grumble, whipping at the blood as he kneeled readily on his knees before her again, “I was a women of twenty namedays. I am suddenly one and ten.”

 

He tilted his head. And his lips went soft as did his eyes. His large hand cupped her face. And then, astonishingly, so did the other. Flesh, whole, and he blinked rapidly as his lost hand cupped her face for the first time.

 

“I could not think of it, my love. I am sorry.”

 

“It is not our fault we were sent to this time. We make do as we are, my Lord Husband.”

 

He pressed a careful kiss to her brow. She returned it with two kisses on his cheek, her arms reaching around his neck. Tall as he was, kneeling, he was now her full height as a child. That would take some getting used to.

 

“So we will. Now, I think it is time we face our past,” she said softly, pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth.

 

She could not quite bring herself to kiss his mouth as she was.

 

“I’ll protect you,” he swore reverently.

 

Had Jon not promised the same?

 

“No one can protect me.”

 

“I will do my damndest.”

 

She hummed. A familiar return of his. A kiss against her brow once again. They turned to their past.

---

Chapter II:

Snow

 

Jaime Lannister is, rather rightly, feeling fucking out of sorts.

 

One minute, he is rushing to drop atop his wife and cling to her in their last moments, the next, they are staring across from each other in their younger bodies. And he knows that this is wretched, that this is strange. But how can he not cling to his fucking wife? He can clearly feel her difference. She barely reaches the middle of his chest when they are standing. He has to bend, in some moments, for her to reach him.

 

“It is really cursed,” he tells her, seriously, and she hums, evenly.

Even as her fingers make quick work of his gauntlet. He lets her work the material quickly. The white amoror falls to the muck of the courtyard. If they had time, he would remove all of his armor. He felt ill-fitting to wear the uniform he had long outgrown. As consort of the Queen of the High North, his armor had been a mixture of all of the cultures. The practical Northern furs in his cloak, scaled plates of the Riverlands, the filigree of birds of the vale, all dominated by the she-wolf and the lion of his personal sigil. Wearing the armor of the kingsguard was jarring. The white cloak, now red with Sansa and his own blood, felt useless in his hands. He debates for a moment, before hooking it over his shoulder. He cannot justify letting it drop to the ground.

 But well, he can’t change in the middle of the courtyard by himself, even with his own hand back. And he doubts good old Ned Stark would let him take his daughter to make himself comfortable. Honestly judging on the look of his old long face, he thinks he’s going to cross swords with his suddenly very much alive goodfather.

 

Magic is bullshit.

 

“Well, this is really horrible,” he told his wife, wryly. Even as they thread their fingers together in the customary clasp. Wrong hand. But right hold. 

 

“Could be worse,” she says, easily, “It could have been King’s Landing in which we returned too.”

 

During Joffrey’s reign, Jaime shudders. His mad, mad son. If that hadn’t been a sign of the gods of his mistake of his relationship with his sister, Jaime was truly the idiot everyone called him.

 

“Fucking seven hells,” he says in agreement.

 

She laughed.

 

“Now husband,” her smile turned delightfully savage as Cersei stared at them in horror.

 

He deliberately reached down to kiss the corner of her mouth, flicking his gaze away from his sister.

 

“Wife,” he returned, warm.

 

“Father, please unhand the hilt of Ice,” she said, simply, voice dry.

 

Jaime straightened. Ned Stark was indeed holding onto the great sword’s hilt. He gave his godfather a smirk. Sansa elbowed him. 

 

“Do not antagonize my father.”

 

“He so much like your brother-”

 

“He is not Jon. Do not place your blame on him.”

 

He looked at his wife’s eyes.  Blue so blue and so much her’s. Like in many things, he gave into his lovely wife.

 

“I will try. But I am rather fucking furious at Job Snow. He just got us killed. Give me that much!”

 

“That Jon is gone.”

 

Jaime rolled his eyes.

 

“No,” he told her, and he jerked his free hand at the boy at the back of the gathered people of Winterfell, gapping at them, “He is over there!”

 

“He’s a child!”

 

“At five and ten, I was on the Kingsguard.”

 

“At five and ten, I too was the same as you!”

 

He winced. Hostage of a mad king. Just as Jaime had been. His own bastard, mad son.

 

“Well, he’s still-”

 

“ Jaime. ”

 

“Fine. I will not run your stupid brother through. But I retain the right to dislike the brooding git.”

 

“I never would deny you the pleasure, my love.”

 

He smirked just a tiny bit as the good Lord Ned gaped at his daughter. Sansa squeezed his hand. His sword hand. Jaime thought this was cursed- But- Perhaps this was not so bad.

 

“What shall we address first?” murmured Sansa, softly.

Her eyes gazed hungrily at the people she had lost. Father, Mother, her eldest and youngest brothers. His beloved She-Wolf had her pack again, and that, he knew, was worth any awkwardness that would come.

 

“Right,” he says, decisively, he tugged carefully on his wife and easily brought her hand to his elbow. Even if it was not quite the right height, Sansa did not show any awkwardness, “I am Ser Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer. I was dismissed by King Joffrey First of his name when I begged him to marry my beloved Lady, Sansa Stark. Since I had lost my sword hand, it seemed good enough idea to the King.”

 

She squeezed his arm. He knew she would not be opposed to the lie for the sake of their place with each other. He knows he would start taking lives if anyone dared to try and keep them apart.

 

He had already strangled his own sister for Sansa, no one in this courtyard save for his wife, Tyrion, and Arya meant really anything to him.

 

“I agreed,” Sansa said, voice soft, “Because I had fallen in love with the Hero of King’s Landing, my Kingslayer, for he was a true knight with honor. Brave, gentle, and strong.”

 

His heartbeat fast and true as if he was a green boy. He did not care. Even in necessary lies, his wife managed to uphold him, call him sweet things he barely deserved. Honor him with too much esteem. He lifted her hand to kiss on her knuckles. She smiled, empty and pretty, and he realized she was taking the wings of the dove she so hated to ease suspicion, as well as any doubt as to why she would marry him. He wonders at what plans are swirling in her mind, already.

 

His queen is about to upend the Seven Kingdoms.

 

And Jaime will be her sword, her shield in that upheaval. And it will be fucking glorious.

 

“Sansa,” gasped Catelyn Stark, mouth agape.

 

“Mother?” a smile that was so sweet and lovely, but Jaime can see wariness.

 

It was Catelyn Stark that had pushed for the marriage to Joffrey despite her suspicion of the Lannisters. It was Catelyn Stark that set off the War of Five Kings in taking Tyrion. It was Catelyn Stark that had entrusted her husband and daughters to Petyr Baelish. It was Catelyn Stark that sold her King son for a bridge. It was Catelyn Stark that crawled to them as a Wright but not a Wright, Stoneheart, and wretched thing of anger and pain. 

 

It was Catelyn Stark that had caused her daughter the most pain.

 

And for that Sansa Stark would never look at her without judgment or hesitance. Jaime does not hate her. He does, however, dislike anything that causes his wife pain acutely.

 

“Oh, sweet good-mother!” he called out. Smiling. Baring all of his teeth, "What a joyous day to see you!"

 

Jaime noted that Sansa did not berate him for it. Ha!

---

Chapter III:Red

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Chapter IV:Alarm

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Chapter V:Dying

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Chapter VI:Fan

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Chapter VII:Seek

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Chapter VIII:Hands

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Chapter IX:Two

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Chapter X:Eyes

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Chapter XI:Fault

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Chapter XII:Blue

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Chapter XIII:Ocean

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Chapter XIV:Fire

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Chapter XV:Hunger

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Chapter XVI:Formula

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Chapter XVII:Ice

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Chapter XVIII: Crying

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Chapter XIX: Dare

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Chapter XX:Fruit

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Chapter XXI: Owl

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Chapter XXII: Scream

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Chapter XXIII: River

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Chapter XXIV: Leaves

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Chapter XXV: Nest

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Chapter XXVI: Monster

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Chapter XXVII: Rain

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Chapter XXVIII: Disobedient

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Chapter XXIX: Stone

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Chapter XXX: Path

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Chapter XXXI: Rescue

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Chapter XXXII: Grave

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Chapter XXXIII: Guess

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Chapter XXXIV:Sand

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Chapter XXXV: Moon

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Chapter XXXVI:Habit

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Chapter XXXVII:Holy

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Chapter XXXVIII: High

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Chapter XXXIX: Beacon

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Chapter IL: Snake

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Chapter ILI: Ink

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Chapter ILII: Silence

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Chapter ILIII: Lukewarm

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Chapter ILIV:Fireflies

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Chapter ILV: Compromised

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Chapter ILVI: Prey

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Chapter ILVII: Reverly

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Chapter ILVIII: Songbird

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Chapter ILIX: Stain

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Chapter L: Contact

Notes:

This was meant to be a drabble to get my Jaime/Sansa itch satisfied. And it kinda got away from me.

Chapter 14: And So The Sun Layed Down A Path for the Wolf

Summary:

Summary: There is a girl with sad lupine eyes, Winter in her breathe, weirwood leaves her crown. There is a man with vengeance in his heart, the sun ablaze upon his brow. There was once a princess, the sun her crown, with love in her heart, children at her breast. The girl knows Winter is Coming. The man knows they are Unbent, Unbowed, and Unbroken. The Princess knew she would not go quietly in shame and blood of her babes on her body. Oberyn Martell sees Sansa Stark as a parallel to the sister he lost and decides that her story shall end differently.

And So The Sun Layed Down A Path For The Wolf.

OR RISE, VIPER KING OF THE SOUTH, WOLF QUEEN OF THE NORTH.

Pairings: Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand, Sansa Stark/Jaime Lannister, Elia Martell/Rhaeagar Targaryen, Elia Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen/Lyanna Stark, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister,

TAGS: Drabble, WE DO NOT HURT LITTLE GIRLS IN DORNE, THE DORNISH DESERVED THE THRONE, Oberyn is a Father, Semi-Adopts Sansa, Oberyn Gets Chill, Sand Snakes Don’t, Oberyn Accidentally Raises a Queen, And Stumbles Into His Own Kingship, He Didn’t Ask For This Shit, Jaime Sorta Tags Along, As Does Shae,

Oberyn I

 

It is the way that Sansa Stark held her head, that caught his attention first.

 

Because for a single moment as he gazes at the little girl painted in Lannister colors, he sees Elia .

 

A mirage of grief, instead of physical waste and thirst, perhaps. But it is in that mirage that he unknowingly has, and shifts the course of all of Westeros. It is in that single, simple moment, that the song is rewritten, tempo altered, and pulled into another ballad altogether. 

It is not because Sansa Stark looks anything like his sister, as many histories would later try to argue. Nothing of her face, from its high cheekbones to its slender jaw invoked Elia Martell. Directly the opposite, in fact, there is nothing in either her face or her form that invokes his sister. Where Elia had skin the color of burnished bronze, Sansa Stark is pale as the snow on the tops of the mountains of Dorne. Whereas Elia's hair was the color of black ink, smooth and straight, Sansa Stark has the fire of the sun in her hair, a stream of polished copper in carefully flickering waves.

 

But the way she held her head was very much like how Elia did it. The tilt of her head, demure, yes, but still with a paralleled chin from the ground, still with her eyes upon who she was bowing to. Fathomlessly blue eyes, nothing like the warm caramel of his sister’s eyes, but- but there is a sorrow in them. Just the same. Sorrow, he had seen grow, day by day, moon by moon, year by year as she stayed beside the Dragon Prince’s side. Sansa’s lips full lips, relaxed and bowed, curved into a smile.

 

Beautiful.

 

Full.

 

And utterly empty of true joy. So like his sister’s smile, last he saw her. A trick, an illusion of my own longing and guilt-

 

“My Prince,” she mummers, soft and gentle. A chirp, sweet and filled with nothing, her eyes filled with horrors, “Welcome to King’s Landing.”

 

Oh, no, not another.

---

Sansa I

 

The Dornish Prince eyes follow her.

Chapter 15: A Song of Soul & Pride II

Summary:

Update!

Summary: In which a modern girl is reborn as Lyarra Snow turned Lyarra Stark, aka Visenya Targaryen, secret princess of ice and fire, someone promised and decides that watching the people around her die would be rather off-putting. For wolves run in a pack, fishes swim in a school, lions prowl in a pride, and dragons soar in a flight… The world binds together through love, forgiveness, and the schemes of the long game.

Or Lyarra makes the Seven Kingdoms learn to get their shit together.

Pairings: Jon Snow/Jaime Lannister, Catelyn Stark/Eddard Stark, Past! Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Implied Lyanna Stark/Rheagar Targeryon/Elia Martell, Sansa Stark/Willas Tyrell, Arya Stark/Gendry, Robb Stark/Daenerys Targaryen, Viserys Targeryon/OFC, 

TAGS: OC-Character, OC-Insert, Always Female Jon Snow, Jon Snow Knows Something, But Not Much, Ned Stark is in Trouble, Catelyn Stark Is Guilty, Political Shenanigans, Alliance of the North and the Riverlands and the West, IF D&D Can Ignore the Second Long Night So Can I, 

Note I:

Everyone Is Bad At Maths

Lyarra

 

It is when she is all but three years old, sorry, three namedays old, that Lyarra Snow decides to do something rather spectacularly unsettling.

 

Or, well, unsettling to everyone but herself.

 

It happens to be a bit like mission impossible status to herself; mission, get the bloody truth out. Plan accordingly. A tumble out of her crib to land past Robb’s reaching hands. Even if his little whine of ‘Lya Lya’ was sweet as heck. She tossed him a loud air kiss with a loud ‘mawah’ that he caught in his chubby hands with a large giggle. She has just managed to slip past the startled guards at the nursey's door. Took some athletic dodge rolling that may or may not have caused a couple swears, especially when she kicked a particular guy in face. “Sorry, Jory!” Dodged through rather well-meaning servants’ grasp. “Lyarra!” “NO NAN!”, and made her way into the more formal part of Winterfell so early in the morning without too much of fuss. 

 

Maybe a couple of bitten arms and kicked shins. 

 

And maybe a few servants being set into a panic when she ducked behind a tapestry, and climbed to the window sill behind it, and lost the lot completely.

 

But well, she can’t do much about that now.

 

She toddles into her father’s solar, for he is her father in all the ways that matter , and promptly gets a small amused chuckle from him as she primily closes the door behind her. Even more chuckles escape him when she struggles with the high latch. Couldn’t very well help me instead, could you Lord Ned? She is very much in luck, as Lady Catelyn is there, even as her dark red brows furrow something fierce at her appearance. She knows not what it had been that made her relationship with the woman less tense then the canonical Jon Snow, but she has rather suspected it has been the fact that she is not a man, and hence less likely to be any sort of line of succession over Robb Stark even if she is legitimized. It also could be that the woman had yet to have Sansa, and hence no direct child to compare her too.

 

Because Robb is the only male heir to Winterfell and maybe that would be enough.

 

 Regardless of the timeline, she was probably already pregnant with the sweet she-wolf. Either way, Lady Cat is not directly disdainful, not directly neglectful, if a little uncomfortable in her presence. Constantly keeping just a pace ahead of Lyarra as she plays with Robb. But there is a soft longing on her face, however, and frustration she cannot hide from watching her interact with Ned and Robb, and Lyarra has no doubt that her presence would only become more hated with the years to come.

Perhaps Jon Snow too, had not been hated when he was a young child, perhaps lacking a dick had given Lyarra some leeway, perhaps she would never know why. But the hate will grow, the resentment will be one day too much. And Lyarra Snow will be sold off or kicked out of Winterfell, or worse follow behind Ned Stark as he goes to die in King's Landing. A bastard daughter has no means to run off to the Wall, and as Danny’s song has shown, trying to gender-bend my way there will only get me killed.

 

It is why in her wisdom, she has decided to do this.

 

Because if L plus R equals L in this version of Westeros, she is rather and utterly spectacularly fucked as it is. Adding on top of being seen as a bastard girl hated by her father’s lady, Lyarra knows she is set to disaster. Even more so if she is a dragon fledgling with Lions and Stags ready to kill her. As much as she avoids mirrors due to her uncomfortable feelings on her appearance, she knows that she is a pretty child; sweet black curls, pale skin as the snow in her name, a face that even soft with baby fat was distractingly pretty and impossible indigo eyes. She thinks she is a perfect blend of her father and mother. The choicest features of her Stark parent and that of her other biological parent. She isn’t quite sure if she is a daughter to the dead dragon prince, but from what little she has dug up, she can confidently say it is about seventy-five percent certain she is. Whether that makes her a trueborn princess or Blackfyre, she can’t be sure.

And the thought of Robert Baratheon, Tywin Lannister knowing a ‘dragonspawn’ lives under their noses is singularly terrifying to her. She has experienced death. It is painful and traumatizing and not something she is looking forward to once again. Not to mention whatever Robert Baratheon would do with a Lyanna look alike running around. Because Old Nan has said she has Lyanna’s looks, the Stark look, but prettier, and that is another can of worms she is not looking forward to. And she would rather not have the Stark Lady hate her in the coming years. Not Stark girl, unlike her children, pretty as a song with the Stark looks before the King or lords...  She needs stability and not the threat of eviction every time she displeases a bitter woman. Especially if the second Long Night is truly on the horizon.

 

She walks forward, hands worrying her woolen skirts.  

 

How does one confirm a theory?

 

“Good morning, Lyarra,” is Lord Stark’s amused voice, “What brings you here so early?”

 

“Why is everyone so bad at Maths?” is the first thing that pops out of her mouth.

 

Lady Cat lifts a single brow, even as her father chuckles, again, amused at her. She thinks she will be forever known as a curious child because of her rapid grasp and urge to ask questions, and she curses her inability to be direct and ramble on for long periods of time. She blames her classics background in her first life. Especially because everyone thinks its the cutest thing. Even Cat. Well, in for a copper, out for a gold dragon.

 

“What makes you-”

 

“40 weeks is the average length of a human pregnancy, and that is if you carry a baby to term. Many people average about 37 or so weeks, and some can have a child as soon as 23 weeks and have it live.”

 

Ned Stark blinks at her seemingly random topic. But Lyarra is on a roll.

 

“By all accounts, you returned to Starfall with me in your arms. There is no possible way that Lady Ashara Dayne is my mother, as she had a stillborn baby a week before your return from the Tower of Joy, that was registered to have been conceived long after you had the opportunity to visit her during the war. It is also said that you did not have me when you entered Dorne. You spent all of fourteen weeks in Dorne, if that, which is in no way possible for you to have conceived me during your trip, or before as you were in battle in another part of Westeros.”

 

Ned Stark’s face is pure white, and Lady Catelyn’s is not much better. Tension hovers in the air, and Lyarra feels tears threatening to surface. Three-year-old body chemistry sucks . She knows that she is on the verge of the truth. She knows he can dismiss her. Lie to her, if this is the truth. But she has planted the seed. And there is dawning horror on Ned’s face, while there is a dawning realization on Cat’s. She is only three, after all, and she is spectacularly scared of what this would mean. Keep going.

 

“By all conclusions, I cannot be your biological daughter.”

 

Cat gasps.

 

“Lya-”

 

“Is Rhaegor Targaryen my father?”

 

Lady Catelyn gasps again. Ned Stark stares at her with true horror on his face alarmingly grey face. Lyarra feels her little knees wobble. 99 percent.

 

“Is my mother Lyanna Stark?”

 

“ Lyarra, ” says Ned, voice hoarse and a whisper.

 

“Is that even my name?” she asks more demands.

 

She feels tears gather in her eyes. And with a vengeance she lets them fall. Because there are few people who can lie to a crying little girl. Ned Stark looks devastated and so old. While Catelyn Stark looks devastated and shocked. Also, like she is adding up in her head and she has just reached the same conclusion as everyone on Earth had. 

 

“I am dragonspawn then,” her voice is wobbly, clipped, and high pitched, “And if the King knows he’ll dash my head in like it was done to my brother. Or will he stab my stomach like my poor sister?”

 

Caetlyn makes a strangled noise and surprises the ever-living shit out of Lyarra as she rushes Lyarra. She flinches. She cannot help it. But Cat carries on to lift her up in her arms. Gathers her close and oh is this what a mother feels like? I  had forgotten.

 

“No,” mummers Catelyn Stark, soft and voice weeping, pressing her face into Lyarra's neck, “No sweetling, you will not be harmed by the King. You are our family.”

 

“Even if I am your bastard niece born of rape?” is her returned question.

 

“Your father did not rape your mother,” is Ned’s brilliant response, voice drawn and quiet, “And I have the official documents of his marriage to Lyanna. She was his second wife, wed by the godswood and by a Septon alike. Elia Martell was their witness.”

 

Lyarra feels her stomach drop. Welp. I am a Princess. A secret Princess. Ice and Fire made into a babe. Fucking shit. If Young fucking Griff is in this universe and wants a wife he could suck the dick I should’ve had as Jon.

 

“Did I have a name, before you hide me?” she hissed.

 

“Visenya. You were named Visenya.”

 

After the Conquerors. Rhaeger had his Aegon, his Rhaeneys… And I was to be his Visneya. Three heads.

 

Lyarra started.

 

Instiouscetous bullshit.

 

“A dragon must have three heads,” she said with a mocking tone, “And Prince Rheagor was said to be obsessed with the legacy of his family. Is that why he took a second wife?”

 

Cat’s arms tightened around her, her whole body trembling.

 

“Ned, how could you hide this from me?!”

 

 Lyarra could not help but think; Yes Ned, why did you hide this from your wife you closed-lipped idiot? Jon Snow, you were so fucked it wasn’t even funny.

 

"Cat-"

 

"Ned, Ned you have made it as if she is your shame. As proof of my lack."

 

"I had to protect her- Robert had just sneered at the bodies of-"

 

Lyarra sobs. Presses her face against Cat's head. The two adult Starks freeze. She is genuinely upset, and because she really doesn’t want to see them at each other’s throats. And its the best way to defuses the tension in the room.

 

" I don't want to die, " she warbles, “But will the King not kill you all for having me?!”

 

Catelyn’s arms tighten, and she takes a desperate breath.

 

“No sweetling, no sweetling, no, ” she sobbed, which more or less confirms in Lyarra’s mind that she is pregnant with little Sansa.

 

Only pregnancy hormones can make you so weepy at the drop of a hat.

 

" Family , Duty, Honor , sweet girl. You will not be given to dying for your parents' sins."

 

Didn't I already do so once?

 

Lyarra shivers. Tries not to remember. And clings to the woman who had only shown her indifference.

---

Note II:

Smothering Via A Fish

Lyarra

 

Lord Eddard Stark, uncle to a squirreled away Princess to a dead line of Kings, or at the very least a deposed line of them, is in the dog house. Wolf house? After Lyarra had made him confess to his wife, she more or less got the Lady of Winterfell royally pissed. It hadn’t been her intention, not at all, to get good old Ned in trouble. She isn’t living her second life to make shit happen. She wants peace and tranquility, and she wants to minimize as much strife as possible. But she needed to know for planning reasons. And she thought it best to do that with Lady Stark NOT hating the very sight of her.

 

Bit hard when your very existence makes your family a target.

 

Especially in an alternate dimension of the Song of Ice and Fire variety. 

 

Somehow, Lady Catelyn Stark of House Tully has managed to push past all that nonsense. Thrown away the concern of treason and shit like that, because as her House birth demands, Family, Duty, Honor, and Cat takes that sort of thing seriously. Enough to banish The Ned, disavow him for his own lack of trust, and as far as Lyarra could piece together, shove as far away from them as possible. He was living in the guest wing of Winterfell on the opposite side of the Keep from the Family wing, and Lady Stark probably ordered people to warn her if Lord Stark is coming, because Lyarra had yet to see him since that forceful confession all those weeks ago. She cannot confirm, however, much as she guessed the orders. Even if she has been consequentially in the arms of Catelyn Stark seemingly ever since.

 

Yes , Lyarra thinks, 98.5 percent sure that Cat is high on pregnancy hormones. 

 

Or suffering from massive guilt.

 

Porque no los dos?

 

"Lya!" Called Robb, happily, moving his hands rapidly.

 

Lyarra gave a huff of a laugh and waved back. Robb Stark, her elder cousin, is standing up. The three-year-old boy is a cute thing, with riotous red curls, large blue eyes, and freckles by the hands full on his pale, chubby face. He was a handsome bugger, and the easy way he adored her had been very soothing in the traumatic aftermath of her death on Earth. She very easily loved him, even before she understood where she had been reincarnated.

 

“My sweetling,” cooed Cat, and she with a strength that was at odds with her appearance scooped up the heir to Winterfell easily in her opposite arm.

 

Go Cat fish-lady.

 

“My sweetlings,” she corrected herself softly, and she pressed her lips to Lyarra’s forehead. The hesitation was there as well, but she was working on it, Lyarra noticed.

 

Something is thick in her throat. And she feels that traumatized bit of her fade just a bit more. She… Had not had a happy life. Slave to the whims of her parents, and they had tried- Tried to have some semblance of affection to her. But it had been fleeting and sparse. Cat kissing her forehead reminded her of the few bits of tenderness her first set of parents had given her. And though she had died by the fault of her parents and not her own, having parental affection was something she thinks she will gorge herself on. Because I’ll always be that scared little girl who wants her mommy and daddy to look at her. And Cat is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a mother in this life with Lyanna dead.

 

Lyarra sighed. Reached back to caress Cat’s face. She was warm, and her skin soft, and it broke her heart how much that touch felt like so much to Lyarra.

 

“Lady Cat,” she whispered back and reached forward to kiss her cheek sweetly.

 

Cat nuzzles her face. Sweet and easier than ever before.

 

“Sweetling, call me Mother ,” she begs quietly, and tears are in her eyes again. She does that.

 

Cry a lot. And every time something trembles in Lyarra’s own heart in response.

 

Damn it.

 

“But-”

 

“No buts! I am your mother,” said Cat fiercely, and Lyarra feels her heart squeeze, “Your Mother, Lyarra! Do you understand?”

 

Lyarra huffed.

 

“I am still a Snow, my Lady,” she whispered back, “And I cannot overstep.”

 

Lady Cat smiled.

 

“You are far too young to be so serious. If I say you are my daughter, then you are, so you will call me such,” she returned, blue eyes pleading.

 

Guilt, perhaps, and a mixture of her own righteousness compelling her to overcompensate. Lyarra sighs. Stills when her forehead rests against her own. They shared breathes, and Lyarra could see the flicks of green in Lady Cat’s eyes, they were so close.

 

“People will call you names,” she said, softly.

 

“Lya, no one can call Mama names!” cried Robb, tugging impatiently at her curls.

 

One of his worse habits, in her opinion. She scowled at him. Looking over Lady Stark’s shoulders.

 

“Robb, people can!”

 

“NO! She is the Lady of Winterfell!”

 

“And I am the bastard of it.”

 

Lady Cat’s face was really heart-wrenching. Lyarra felt extra bad for it. Really. But she also wasn’t lying. And if she really been anywhere meantally near a three-year-old, she knew Cat would’ve been the one to cry it the loudest.

 

“Wha’s a bastard?” asked Robb, innocently.

 

Oops.

 

“Nothing for you to worry about,” said Lady Cat, sternly, “And not what your sister is.”

 

She turned blue eyes to Lyarra’s and narrowed them.

 

“Never call yourself that, Lyarra, you are of House Stark. You are my daughter. ”

 

She blinked as innocent as a reincarnated, transmitted soul could.

 

“Everyone calls me that.”

 

Catelyn Stark kissed her brow. Gently and firmly.

 

“Not for much longer.”

 

What the hell is that supposed to mean, fish lady?!

---

Note III:

Family, Duty, Honor

Ned

 

Ned Stark thinks perhaps that I have underestimated my Lady wife.

 

In his hand is a raven. An official document that legitimized one Lyarra Snow as Lady Lyarra Stark. She has been declared the legitimate daughter of House Stark and that of House Tully, as decreed by King Robert Baratheon, First of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm of Westeros. One of many of these missives has been shipped across the realm, same with an excerpt of his Lady wife’s quiet but heartful pleading for the King to name Lyarra as a true child of House Stark and her own. She has made her in name her own daughter, with declarations of House Tully accepting the claim for the child to be added to the register of House Tully. Hoster himself had declared her his granddaughter by his eldest daughter’s wish, and there is no turning back.

 

Lyarra is now second in line for Winterfell by Cat’s interference. Fourth in line for Riverrun.

 

He swallows thickly.

 

He had thought his greatest secret safe. Safe with Howland, safe in himself, and all it had taken was an inquisitive girl of three namedays to read a little into it to have completely shattered. Lyarra had uncovered her identity by sheer force of logic and child curiosity. He is a fool, and he is worried. Lyarra was a smart girl, to be sure. 

 

But she is not the only one to take such a logical leap.

 

And now that Cat has had her legitimized, more people will look into his daughter, and more will question who she is and what that could mean for the North. His daughter is in more danger then ever. For that is what she is. Matters not who sired her matters not how Lyanna died for her birth, that little girl is mine. My blood, my kin, my babe who I kept close. First for the love of my sister, than for the love of that child.

 

“Lord Stark,” said Cat, cooly.

 

He stared at his wife and his children who clung to her hands. He swallowed again. It is the first time in nearly a moon that he has seen them.

 

“It is done,” he tells Cat, quietly, and he lifts the documents.

 

Cat’s ice breaks, and she beams in triumph as she reads them. Ned tilts his head.

 

“I- I am afraid,” he tells them honestly, “I am afraid this will bring attention to Lyarra.”

 

Cat lifts her head.

 

“Even if it does, Eddard, this is declaring her protected by two realms. Anyone who dares will have the Riverlands and the North to contend with.”

 

Lyarra surprised them by stepping away from Cat. She looked at Cat.

 

“What did you do? ” she asked, voice high and afraid.

 

Cat smiles gently.

 

“I have protected you, sweetling.”

 

She looked at him. Her lips trembled.

 

“Lord Stark?”

 

He swallowed.

 

“Lyarra, you are now Lyarra Stark,” he told her simply.

 

Her little legs gave way. She dropped, and it was only Cat reaching forward to catch her that saved her any hurt. Robb called out in alarm. Lyarra shrieked in a way he had never heard from his daughter. She reached for the documents, read as quickly as lightening and looked back at Cat with wide, confused eyes.

 

" Why?! " Wailed his baby girl, “You have endangered your family!”

 

" Family. Duty. Honor, " responded Cat, and she sobbed, "I have failed you before, sweet girl. But never again. For you are my family. "

 

Cat reached for her, and clung. His daughter and his wife sobbed together.

---

Note IV:

Black-Fish

Cat I

 

Cat sees him and she feels like a child.

 

For her Uncle Brynden had always been with her in her girlhood days, and she had yet to see him since she had come North. Her letter, begging for company, had been in service to what she knew would be her children’s protection. She felt guilt- she knew he had gone with Lysa because of her sister’s frail health. But she needed a loyal knight, strong and true, to protect Lyarra and Robb alike. She did not think ill of Northerners, but she cannot think of one man she can trust amongst her Lord Husband’s people to be that protection.

 

She can, however, trust her Uncle the Blackfish.

 

And when he looks at her and it as if she is but a child again, clinging to his scaled mail skirts as they lay her lady mother to rest. He is pulling off his helm and beaming at her.  And she knows that she is not a child to protect. He will do as their words bid, and he will think of Family first. And she knows her children will be safe. With her son in hand, and the precious niece she had nearly thrown away for her own foolishness, pride, and petty resentment on the other, Cat straightens. Lyarra breathes deeply, her small hand tightening for a moment around Cat's. Then her hand falls away. She gives a clumsily, if charming rendition of a curtsy when her uncle comes to them. He takes one look at the little girl she had begged for, and Cat is sure he knows.

 

One cannot be as well-traveled, as well jousted as Brynden Tully, and not recognize the look of the dragon family that once ruled them. See those indigo eyes and think of a mournful, fanciful fool of a Prince.

 

“Cat,” he said, seriously, “Oh Cat, I will murder your foolish husband.”

 

Lyarra wilts. Cat watches warmly as Brynden back peddles. He is many things. Warrior. Fierce. But like when she was a child, Brynden is subjective to the whims of a sweet babe in front of him. She smiles as he drops to his haunches, scaled gauntlet out.

 

“Oh no. I promise to maim your father. Sweet thing, I can see why Cat loves you. Who wouldn’t love such a pretty thing.”

 

She tilts her head, blinks quickly. Stares at his hand.

 

“Do you think I'm unsafe?” she demands.

 

“Little late for that, little wolf,” he says softly, “Very late for that. Things cannot change for decisions already made.”

 

“Lady Catelyn,” she says, seriously, “Has endangered everyone.”

 

“No, child, she has declared you ours, and I will follow her direction.”

 

Cat watched even more warmly when Brynden reached for little Lyarra. Lyarra took his hand. Brynden took it as his cue to lift her high in his arms. Lyarra blinked owlishly at him.

 

“And for a sweet girl such as you, who am I to deny it?"

 

Lyarra’s full, rosey lips pursed. Such a serious child. So much like Ned it used to make Cat feel wretched.

 

"I'm fearful."

 

"Then you are smart. One be afraid to be brave. Can you be brave, child?"

 

"I am unsure. All I know is I have changed everything by understanding the circumstances of my birth. My… My birth Mother tried for change, I think. She ran from tradition.  And the Realm bleed for it."

 

Soft eyes. And Cat knows without a doubt that Lyarra, Visneya , has earned her Uncle's loyalty, if not love for that simple statement. 

 

She knew that this girl was so devastatingly simple to love.

 

"I know not if the world will bleed for you, sweet girl. But know I will do my best to keep our Family safe. What are your words?"

 

Lyarra blinked quickly.

 

" Winter is Coming. Family, Duty and Honor. "

 

Uncle Brynden stared at her steadily. Lyarra breathed deep, whispered so soft Cat strained to hear it, " Fire and Blood. "

 

He hummed.

 

“Aye, little one. Your words bid you to prepare for the coming hardships. Your words bid you to have the thought of your family, and your House. And the last-”

 

“The last are not words I wish to be molded by.  I need not destruction. I need not magic with such a price. They are not words that I claim, Brynden Tully, Ser Blackfish. They are words of ignorance, of fanaticism. They are my warning. They are not my creed.”

 

Bryden Tully touched her forehead with a small thump.

 

“You are not smart. You are wise , little wolf.”

 

“... Why are you here?” she asked, calmly.

 

“To protect my nephew. And my niece.”

 

Lyarra blinked quickly.

 

“Will you teach me to protect myself?”

 

His lips curled.

 

“Of course. Now, sweetling, if you will let me have my salt and bread?”

 

“Yes, Uncle Bryden.”

---

Note V:

Screwing the Time-line

Lyarra

 

Well.

 

She has spectacularly fucked up in the course of one conversation. That’s some sort of record. She is sure. Robb pulls at a springy black curl. Absently, Lyarra bats a hand away.

 

“Lya, Lya,” he chirps.

 

She sighs.

 

"Robb, Robb," she mimics in the same tone.

 

He pouts. She is long immune to it.

---

Note VI

Growing Up Stark

Ned & Lyarra & Catelyn & Robb

---

Note VIl

The Greyjoy Rebellion

Lyarra & Robb

---

Note VIII:

Home-Coming

Lyarra

 

Jaime Lannister is a handsome asshole, is Lyarra’s first thought as the Heroes of the Greyjoy Rebellion streamed into the castle’s gate.

 

And I can see why my male counterpart thought him fit to be a King.

 

Lyarra's second thought was that her father looked wrecked, next to the actual King. And his face was looking for the face of her mother . Lyarra watched as she gave a trembling smile. His own smile is just as trembling. And he jumped off his exhausted-looking horse and was running. Lady Cat broke all protocol- jumped up before given leave by the King, and started running. Lyarra watched as her elegant mother reached for her father, and it was romantic and sweet and Lyarra sighed softly in relief.

 

“Lya Lya,” whispered sweet Sansa, all but three, clutching tightly to her sleeve next to her, “Papa.”

 

“Yes, sweetheart,” she told her, “Papa.”

 

Robb squeezed her arm on her other side, his eyes never leaving the King’s enormous form. He allowed them all to stand, laughing as her mother stammered her apologies.

 

“No need to be embarrassed, Cat! You have the right to launch yourself at old Ned!”

 

He is a gallant, handsome thing. Tall, imposing and it is hard to picture him as a fat fuck that Ned Stark would barely recognize in the future. He jumped easily off of his horse, still clad in shining armor, a golden crown on his brow. For he looks every inch the man described to be great and powerful, and nothing like the pitiful fucker with grand delusions of a love lost. But that is not what Robb sees. All he sees is the man that could murder her for who her biological parents were, take her from him, and he is shaking with the emotion of it.

Somehow, Lyarra knows without question, that this should have never been. She can’t remember if the Baratheon King had ever visited Winterfell before the fateful death of Jon Aryn, but she leans heavily on the ‘NOPE’ on from what she remembers. She doesn’t know what brought this change, and she knows it’s her fault. Ripples in the water, a stone dropped in stillness will cause small changes that lead to larger ones. And she feels Robb tightening his hand on her’s at the sight of his namesake, and she knows without a doubt that her brother would kill the man on the spot if he could. Six namedays and ready to kill.

 

He is afraid of this giant man.

 

Has been afraid of Robert Baratheon since the day their parents told them of who Lyarra Stark is in reality.

 

And Robb has always reacted with anger to his fear.

 

“Don’t,” is her whispered reprime, even as she lets Sansa loose. She is already toddling after their parents, crying out in helpless sobbing joy at the sight of their father who sobs his own laugh and lifts her high in the air and spins the little lady of Winterfell, “Don’t make a mess of it.”

 

“I- I cannot breathe the same air as him , ” whispered Robb, face tight and wane.

 

Lyarra placed a hand on his wrist. Gently squeezed. Shoved one-year-old Arya into his arms. He grunted with the weight of her, and Tully blue met the Targeryon indigo.

 

“You will have to unless you wish me to join my sister.”

 

His eyes tightened. His lips trembled.

 

“ Never. ”

 

“Then play a game, Robb. That man is an honor to have within our walls.”

 

Robb gave a sharp nod.

 

“Ned! What a beautiful family!” called the King, voice booming, jovial.

 

Something in Lyarra twisted. But she beamed. And ran to her father with a wide smile.

 

“PAPA!” she called. 

 

And it was a test. A test whether or not the King would see her eyes and know. So she played with fire and looked right into his eyes from her father’s arms. His smile did not flatter. Did not shift. He beamed at her.

 

“Oh! And who is this!?” he boomed.

 

Lyarra smiled wider, even as she shivered in her father’s arm.

 

“I am Lyarra, your grace.”

 

Robert bowed gallantly.

 

“Oh, what a great pleasure to meet you Lady Lyarra… Stark. ” 

 

He laughed, just a touch mocking. Reached forward and cupped her face with something like affection. She felt Ned Stark shiver. Felt his arm’s tighten around her just a fraction. And was very aware how quickly the King could snap her neck holding her head like that.

 

“She is the picture of sweetness! I can see why you begged on her behalf, Cat.”

 

“She is mine, your grace, no matter what,” replied Cat, voice soft. Her eyes never moved from the King’s enormous paw on Lyarra’s face.

 

Robert squeezed her face, in more affection. A touch too hard. But he was more likely not aware of his horrendous strength.

 

“She looks so much like Lyanna. You will be a beauty.” 

 

Lyarra beamed. Felt her heart shudder in horror.

---

Note IX:

The Lion Knight & The Dragon Princess

Lyarra & Jaime

 

Lyarra finds Sir Jaime Lannister, avenger turned mockery, sitting quietly beneath the heartstree, gaze far out, warming his hands absently against the steaming pools.

 

She does not know what to feel.

 

He is a complicated man.

 

But he is not, she thinks , inherently evil . Just a stupid man capable of very destructive choices. And in a position to live through the choices despite everything. She shifts and decides to do the one thing she knows she must. So she steps into the clearing of the godstree, is utterly amused at how quickly the devastatingly young knight stands at attention, and reaches for his sword. He is little more than twenty, she can tell. She guesses he was about the age she had been when her parents in her first life accidentally killed her. His face is handsome, thin and elegant, but has just the tiniest bit of childhood fat that is almost gone.

 

“My lady,” a curve of mockery appears on his face, not really a smile. She knows, in his tone, as he barely inclined his golden head. 

 

All of Westeros thinks her a child born on the wrong side of the ‘sheets’ turned Lady by the kindness and goodness of a stupid woman. Lyarra still not knows what to feel at the way her mother had begged for the King to make her a Stark, but she does know it will smooth things over for her in the long run. She does not want the Iron Throne, quite content to let her aunt and possible brother fight their fill over it. So calling herself a Stark in the eyes of Westeros would at least allow her to be more removed from the line of succession the Dragon Monarchs would wish to impart. 

 

She gives him an innocent look that will hide the fact that she knows what he thinks of her. Soft and easy, a smile on her face.

 

“Ser Jaime Lannister,” she says, and she surprises him by giving him a respectful curtsy, and a brighter smile, “Forgive me for disturbing you. I’ve come to pray.”

 

He stares at her, relaxing posture as he slumps back on the rock he had been sitting on. His emerald eyes are focused, his brow furrowed. And she absently wonders if the Lion is seeing her features familiar and trying to pinpoint them.

 

“Then, it is I who disturbs you, my Lady, I am not praying.”

 

“The old gods offer peace for anyone, Ser, even if you do not pray to them. I find myself hiding here more often than not.”

 

“Are you hiding now? I thought you said you come to pray, or are you lying of your piety?” he asked, amused by her response.

 

She smiles softly this time.

 

“I’m not lying. I come to pray now. But sometimes, I run here when I’m not. It’s quiet. And warm by the pools. Is that not why you came here?”

 

He gave a helpless shrug.

 

“I am not on duty with the King. And I have not thought of where I walked. Seemed good as place as any to rest.”

 

She nodded.

 

“I am glad I found you then, Ser. I wanted- I wanted to say something to you.”

 

“Tell me, the … Lady Lyarra.”

 

A mocking gleam. She wonders at how often this man has to poke and proud at others to  make himself feel better. She suppresses an eye roll.

 

“Thank you. For avenging my grandfather and uncle. Even if it was never meant that way, you killed the Mad King, and I know that eased their spirits.”

 

She thinks she stunned him, by the way his jaw drops. She lowers her head.

 

“House Stark called you Kingslayer once, and the moniker stuck. But I do not think it should be a curse to you, but rather one to bear with pride. Thank you, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer.”

 

A sound of steel singing. And Lyarra was not surprised to feel the cold bite of cooled steel against her throat. Emerald eyes gleamed, but there was something apathetic in the Lion Knight’s eyes regardless. He would readily kill her. Never mind the fact that she was the eldest daughter of Eddard Stark, never mind that he stood in his godswood. He would slit her throat, and he would walk away with his head high. Any man who could throw a child from a high tower was not averse to killing children.

 

“Are you mocking me?” he said, voice hard and cold.

 

Lyarra restrained a laugh. It wouldn’t help her. But she found it funny that the man that was so intent on mocking her found it insufferable if he thought he received the same treatment in kind.

 

“No.”

 

“What does a bastard girl know?”

 

She blinked. Careful and very aware of the blade on her throat. Lyarra did not want to die at six years old. Hardly better than her personal record of twenty-six. And Jaime Lannister was as impulsive as he would be in his thirties. Time wouldn’t temper that, and she had just pissed him off. Or triggered him. The jury was out in that sense. But if she kept calm, perhaps she wouldn’t accidentally trigger an early war between House Stark and Lannister.

 

Or die. I really rather not.

 

“Not much,” she freely admitted and smiled softly at the way he looked at her. Confused no doubt, at her lack of reaction of being called a bastard, of the sword at her throat, “No one knows. People have claimed left and right it was because your father stood at the city gates. But, I wonder, Ser Jaime, in my ignorance, if you will tell me why you killed the Mad King?”

 

He stared. His sword lowered a fraction of an inch. Lyarra did not dare relax. He blinked. His face twisted, a furrowed brow, a steady but quizzical frown.

 

“I do not think anyone has ever asked me.”

 

“You do not have to answer. I understand if you don’t wish to. I have bothered you in a place of peace. For that I am sorry, but I will not take back my thanks.  It was sincerely meant.”

 

“You’re a mouthy bastard.”

 

She smiled.

 

“According to my mother, it is one of my worst traits.”

 

Ser Jaime lowered his blade again. Away from her neck. She knew without a doubt that he could easily lift it and kill her anyway. He was that good. The Kingslayer, a hero in the Hellenestic sense in her eyes, gave a huffing laugh.

 

“You’re ‘mother’ as you call her, was thought to be the most stupid woman to beg the King for your legitimacy.”

 

Must’ve been Cersei who said that. I don’t think Jaime would have it in him to care.

 

“It was a kindness and love, not stupidity. Because Lady Stark loves me, and my father, never mind who bore me. She wanted me to have my father’s name because I am her’s and his in equal measure. It was love that cause me to turn to a Stark.”

 

And so it was. Love for a sister. Love for a niece, love for a problematic orphan princess.

 

Jaime Lannister’s eyes shone then, and she remembers that he has his own son, living under a false name. Joffrey, the little sociopath, the second Mad King to come.

 

“Do you truly want to know why I killed the Mad King?” he asked and put away his sword altogether.

 

“If you will share it, Ser.”

 

He tilted his head.

 

“... You are not mocking me.”

 

“That man murdered my grandfather and uncle. He killed countless other people for so much as breathing wrongly, and he led the Seven Kingdoms to near ruin when he ousted your father as his Hand. I like history, Ser Jaime, and I am not stupid. I’ve read of it. I know some of it to be unreported or exaggerated, as the history is written by the people who wish to glorify the current King, but there is some truth in what is written.”

 

The Lion Knight sat back, on the same large stone surrounding the pools. His emerald eyes are on her face.

 

“My brother would like you,” says the man, voice certain, “Despite how mouthy you are.”

 

She only tilted her head and smiled.

 

“I think I will tell you, Lady Lyarra. I will tell you of why I killed the Mad King.”

 

Lyarra carefully set, arranging her skirts neatly. She stared at the Lion Knight expectantly. He took a breath. And exhaled it after an endless moment. His breath shuddered.

 

“His last words were what he had been shouting at his pyromancers for hours. Burn them all. ”

 

~O~

 

It is when he finishes describing his dazed movement to sit on the Iron Throne that Jaime Lannisters looks down, and realizes how devastatingly young his audience is. She was what, six, seven namedays? She was but a babe and he was sprouting about slit necks and stabbed backs and blood on his sword and fire that licked at flesh and lust of a mad man- Gods . You bleeding idiot-

 

The girl is crying. Hard, but silently. She is looking up with him with her Valeryian eyes and-

 

Valeryian.

 

Jaime feels his breath stop. Because Lyarra Stark, once known as Snow, is looking up at him with the same eyes that Queen Rhealle would look at him with. Sorrow and understanding- Don’t be stupid, Jaime, he tells himself with a hammering heart as the Stark girl delicately whips at her indigo eyes with a handkerchief from a hidden pocket in her skirt. Your mind is full of them.

 

“You are a hero, Ser,” says the girl, voice soft and sweet,  “And you must never be ashamed for your actions.”

 

Something in his heart trembles at that pronouncement from this girl. But he is still slightly reeling from his observation of her eyes. He must be mistaken. Projected the look of her eyes because his mind is full of the memories of the Dragon King and Queen. The King’s eyes had not looked like that. Lighter, almost pink in a certain light. But the Queen’s had been similar. Like that of Prince Rheagar’s.

 

Was he ashamed? Jaime does not think he is. He has only ever felt shame rarely, and killing that King had never provoked it.

 

“It was my finest act,” he tells the girl, truthfully.

 

She smiles. Indigo eyes gleaming.

 

“It was. And the Realm should honor you for it.”

 

“I am a man without need of it. I am Jaime Lannister of the Kingsgaurd. There is enough honor in that.”

 

A thing he has repeated to himself again and again. When he takes his sister to bed, when he thinks of the look in the Mad King’s eyes.

 

“It is not a question of needing it- it is of deserving it.”

 

He huffed a laugh.

 

“You are mouthy, and as your mother has said, it is your worse trait.”

 

The girl laughed. And it was musical and pretty. He really did think of her as someone his brother would like. She was intelligent, far too intelligent for a girl who was once a bastard in name. He thinks of Cersei’s mocking of Catelyn Stark, and the guess of force on Ned Stark’s part to make this girl legitimate. But he has seen Catelyn Stark with this girl with the impossible eyes. She loved this child, even if she was not from her own womb. And he can see why. She stands, dusting dirt and leaves from her skirts. Strides forward and sits next to him on the stone. She smiles, face soft.

 

“Thank you, for telling me Ser.”

 

He blinks.

 

“I am sorry I drew a blade on you,” he says, in return. It is rare he apologizes. But it is out of his mouth before he can truly think more on it.

 

He is surprised once again. She reaches out. Touches his hand. Small hand squeezing gently. Her hands are calloused for one so young, and a girl. But they are warm. Indigo eyes look at him, and Jaime cannot unsee Queen Rhaella in her gaze. And he finds himself thinking of the curve of her cheek is like the Queen’s, that the curl of her dark hair is like her curl’s... But he has never seen Queen Rhaella look so at peace. Or so untouched by the mantle of horror and injuries.

 

“I forgive you,” said Lyarra Stark, daughter to the man that had first called him Kingslayer, with the eyes of the Queen he had failed,  “Ser Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer.”

 

The only one to say the title, he realizes, with sheer and true praise. And hear the forgiveness of the girl was something he had not realized he would ever want.

---

Note X:

---

Note XI:

---

Note XII:

The Feast of the Kingslayer 

Lyarra

 

Lyarra Stark believes that Jaime Lannister’s face is hilarious as her father raises a glass in his honor.

 

“To Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer,” his voice is not mocking, but firm and emotional, “Avenger of my Father and Brother, saviour of King’s Landing.”

 

The North never disappointed. It did as Ser Jaime’s words, it roared in approval and praise and a thunderous chorus.

 

And she thinks it is tragic how bewildered he appeared, how much he looked  affected by this.

---

Note XIII:

A Vow

Jaime

 

He finds her again at the end of the night of the bloody Feast of the Kingslayer, as they had sung to him. His feet walk, stalking from the hall at the end of it. Escaping the King’s arm around him with a twisting stomach. Not drunk enough and tired as the seven hells. He feels chased from the hall in shock, the chorus died down just in the first blush of the dawn. Jaime escaped the gazes of awe and praise as if they were wolves snapping at his heels.

 

He never knew the Northerners could smile or be so enthusiastic. 

 

Lyarra Stark, and he finds her in a place he thought fitting for a girl who loved her history and trying to hide from him. In the Library of Winterfell, and sitting, all places, ontop one of the northern oak bookshelves. A good few heads above him. He wonders if she had done so to stay out of reach, or if this was another place she came to hide in. She had a habit, this strange one of being in places just out of reach.  

 

“Lyarra Stark,” he snarls.

 

The girl peers down at him from over her enormous tome. The History of the Westernlands, he noted with little amusement.

 

“You look like you’re going to throttle me,” she said, simply, and does not move from her place above him. She decisively shuts her book. 

 

Smart girl.

 

“I just might. ”

 

She grins. Cheeky little bitch that she is. Puts her book to the side and places her face into her small hand. Indigo eyes gleam.

 

“It needed to be known.”

 

“ Why ?”

 

“People spoke ill of you! I would not stand it for my friend.”

 

How sad is it, to Jaime, that her words have his fury ebbing? How sad is it that he suddenly realizes in the three moons since the King had dragged his war party North, that his best friend has become a girl with barely seven namedays to her name? And I will not see her for however many years when we travel south.

 

Jaime took a breath.  

 

“You should not have spoken of this to your father,” he says, calmer.

 

Her brows furrowed. She scowled at him.

 

“He didn’t want me speaking to you,” she returned, her face blushing pink, “He said he would speak to you to make you stop. He hated you without knowing and I could not stand it.”

 

He huffs a laugh.

 

“You did this to keep speaking to me?”

 

“You’re my friend,” she said softly, setting aside her book altogether.

 

The eyes of Queen Rhaella look down at him. Jaime swallows thickly. Tries not to think of possibilities, of the fact from his casual inquiring that Lyarra Stark had come from Dorne in the arms of her father with Lyanna Stark’s bones with them. And that all that had been said for that lady was that she had been taken in a fever at the Tower of Joy. Birthing fever is all he can guess that took Lyanna Stark’s life. He thinks of the Kingsgaurd that had been guarding the Lady, including Arthur, Rheagar’s best friend, guarding her. In the land of the Princess that Jaime had known had not been set aside by her husband. Tries not to think that he has stumbled into a secret that Ned Stark would kill to keep. Tries not to think of red cloaks stained with the blood of children he had played with. Tries not to think of Robert learning of this girl’s origins and crushing her beneath his damn war hammer as he did her father.   

 

Tries not to think of his father realizing the blood of Aerys was still on Westroes’ soil and bringing his wrath on this innocent babe’s head.

 

“Well, friend, will you keep up there, like a bird, so high?” he asked, and he is proud that his voice does not tremble at the comment.

 

Because he does not want to think of death touching this young girl who is his friend.

 

“ I am no bird, and no net ensnares me ,” she replied, with the air of repeating something from somewhere else.

 

He snorted. If she would lean down just a touch, he would yank her down.

 

“I have no net, you little idiot.”

 

“You do have hands, and they look like they will be good at ensaring. Possibly strangling.”

 

He huffed a laugh.

 

“Possibly, my friend.”

 

She beamed at him.

 

“Are you actually mad at me?”

 

Jaime blinked. Let it be known that Lyarra Stark had a way of asking very good questions.

 

“I am not sure. It is a complex thing. I have been branded a hero at your behest.”

 

She smiled. Gentle and soft. And in her smile, he saw little Rheaneys. He swallowed thickly.

 

“You will be sung in halls, Ser Jaime,” she said with an air of peace.

 

Something warm settled in his heart. More then the horror of her life being in his hands.

 

“Thank you, my friend.”

 

“You are most welcome.”

---

Note Whenever:

Bobby B’s Epic Fail

Lyarra ?

 

“So for your service, Ser Jaime Lannister, I release you from the King’s Guard. Go, Hero of King’s Landing, go to become heir to the Lord of Casterly Rock, fuck your fill of pretty maidens, and be not at the King’s service anymore.”

 

If Jaime does not kill me for this, Cersei Lannister just might.

 

Jaime looks at her. Eyes wide. She returns that look. Because she had never meant for this. 

 

And she also debates sprinting from the spot. Because that man is looking so surprised, and now he is looking ready to fight and kill, when he turns to her again. His mouth opens and closes. 

 

Shit.

---

Note Whenever:

A Promise

Lyarra

 

Lyarra knew, knew she was so close.

 

Maleficent was weeping, as devastating as dragons could, a wailing lament of pain and horror and Lyarra made her choice. She dragged herself to her feet. She pulled out the last blade of Valyrian steel.

 

And lunged.

 

The last blade on her, the one made from her biological father’s knife, reforged with parts of Ice, and the blade that had sung from her from the Iron Throne. Fire and Blood. Winter is Coming. Ice and fire as I am. It did as no other blade had before. It ran straight through the chest of the Night King.

 

He stared down at the blade, almost curiously, but Lyarra snarled a guttural cry and plunged it deeper.

 

He looked up. Straight into her eyes.

 

Indigo and unnatural blue met.

 

The Night King smiled. Sad and finished.

 

“ You kept your promise, ” said the Night King, simply, voice soft.

 

Lyarra didn’t know why she was crying. But she felt it, tears, freezing on her lashes. She screamed in his face and plunged it further. She felt it then. Felt a a power start to come from her sword, felt it grow and-

 

She was flung back as light exploded.

---

Note Whenever:  

The Princess of Beasts, the Mother of Dragons and the Beggar King

Lyarra

 

She extended a hand to the awed girl that was nearly her age, her biological aunt, and smiled. “Do you wish to marry the Khal?”

 

Daenayrs, the Mother of Dragons, only stares at her in awe, before she shook her head.

 

Lyarra beamed, snapped up that delicate hand, and pulled the girl up onto Maleficent with a casual ease.

 

“HEY BEGGAR KING,” she shouted, voice triumphant, “YOU’RE A PAWN TO MAGISTER ILLYRIO WHO WISHES FOR AEGON, THE SON OF RHAEGAR TO BE KING. YOU’RE BAIT FOR ROBERT BARATHEON UNTIL AEGON CAN AMASS A PROPER ARMY. AND YOU, CREEPY JOARAH, ARE A SPY FOR THE FUCKER.”

 

The magister in question turns a horrible shade of puce. Joarah, bless his simping heart, goes terribly white in comparison.

 

Elliot goes in for his first goal, and snaps up Viserys in his talons, a roar in his green throat, even as the Dothraki start to get cute and go for their weapons. Then Elliot goes for the chest of dormant dragon eggs, snaps them up in his delicate claws, second goal accomplished.

 

“ You, Khal Drogo, are not worthy to get a dragon by simply buying her with an army, ” she intones in what she hopes is passible Dorathraki, she’s only been learning enough to say this much, “ You must court a dragon. We ride stallions of pure fire, Khal, we are mythic creatures of old blood. The moon and stars are earned, not given! YIP YIP MY BABIES!” she called out, and her trio of dragons take to the sky.

 

Viserys screams the whole time.  

 

It’s music to Lyarra’s ears.

 

Dany has a tight grip on her waist, and she crying and laughing at the same time. 

 

“Who are you?!” she screams, voice elated. Barely hearable over the wind.

 

“All in good time, Dany!” she screams back.

 

They land in a field of flowers, Mal is immediately crashing into Elliot, a greedy hum in her throat for the baby dragons too be. Dany screams a laugh, delight full and loud as Mal and Elliot playfully tussle..

 

“Blood of my blood! DRAGON RIDER!” calls out Viserys, voice wobbly and disbelieving, he stumbles to her. Freezes in awe over Mal and Elliot as they fight. Elliot let’s him go with a fiery snort.

 

Lyarra tilts her newly white head, and nods to her Uncle.

 

“Hiya, Beggar King.”

 

His face shakes. Turns angry far too quickly.

 

“ What ?”

 

“Beggar King,” she repeats, precisely and even, “King of Begging, King with no crown. That is what they call you, is it not?”

 

“I am the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms-”

 

“Someone who must say he is a King, is no King at all. Your father repeated that to his dying day, and Robert Baratheon stands King of the Seven Kingdoms.”

 

"Bitch- You dare acknowledge the usurper-"

 

Dany's hands squeeze her waist.

 

But Lyarra is already moving.

 

Slips off of Mal, who turns to tussle with Elliot in earnest. Dany follows a step behind her. Like a shadow, hands still on Lyarra’s waist. 

 

"Do you really wish to insult the woman with three dragons?"

 

Viserys visibly starts.

 

Because no doubt, he can count.

 

And all he can see is two of her babies.

 

She smiles.

 

Because Smaug is a sneaky little brat that is already landing from the clouds with an earth shaking snarl. Because he is a dramatic shit like his name sake. Atop him, Ghost has a doggy smile, lopsided tongue. Briar is already jumping off, yipping and tugging at her harness. Lyarra shakes off Dany, and moves to help out her direwolves. Closes her mouth firmly when they try to lick the shit out of it.

 

“ Down Briar. No, Ghost, enough of that, play with the pack.”

 

"And you, lady dragon rider, woman with wolves, who are you? If you are so ready to call me a Beggar King. "

 

"I am Visneya Targaryen. Daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and his second wife, Princess Lyanna Stark. These aren’t wolves. They’re Direwolves."

 

" Visneya ," Dany breathed, eyes wide and dewy, " Niece."

 

"It is very nice to meet you, Aunt Daenerys… Uncle."

 

"You are the she-wolf whore’s daughter?"

 

Lyarra tilted her head.

 

"Why is my mother a whore for marrying your brother? She loved him. He died for her. Choking on blood, he called Lyanna. So I can only assume he loved her back. "

 

Viserys reals back.

 

Lyarra grins with all teeth.

 

"And I have brought forth dragons. I have saved you from death at the hands of Aegon's plotters. And I have done… So much more then you could conceive of, Viserys, Beggar King. I need not your approval. Your worth. I have done my duty with my family. I have saved you… Brought you here."

 

She points. 

 

Dany gasps.

 

For it is a small villa. A red door. Lemon grooves ready. It is what she thinks these poor people truly need.

 

"You will have to do your own washing, mending, supplies will come via the docks once a month."

 

She smiles as she goes to mount Mal once again. 

 

"I will visit as much as I can. Live, my uncle and aunt. For you are not the heirs to throne across the water. It is my elder brother Aegon. I wish not to watch you die in a dance. I do not wish to force you to be his pawns."

 

V man stares.

 

"And what will you do niece, be Queen at his side?"

 

Lyarra laughed.

 

"Gods no. I believe I will try to be happy . As far away from the Iron Throne as I can. I have killed the Night King, broken the dawn, brought dragons alive from stone. I am quite content to just… be. "

 

Dany stared.

 

"Why come to us? Why show us this wonder, and not take us home? Truly home?" She begged, “You hold dragons at your command- The Iron Throne should be yours. ”

 

Lyarra sighed. Shook her head.

 

"I do not want it. It is neither mine by right or by choice. You are pawns. A distraction. I think that is a wretched thing to be. I brought you here to spare you that. I have given you a choice. If you do not choose this, I will be absolved of guilt in standing by and doing nothing. My dragons are not for war. Not for the wars of men and that godforsaken chair."

 

Mal set her wings in the ready position. 

 

"So this Aegon is our true King?" Said the older man, face pinched.

 

Lyarra sighed.

 

"He is the one with the largest claim. Oldest of Rheager's children.  He also has the largest support. His side has been gathering allies since your father died. You have been left to rot and distraction for Baratheon. "

 

"This Aegon left us as this?!" He screeched. 

 

His thin face spoke for him. He had starved and scrimped and sold off his family’s legacy to keep himself, and his sister alive. He was a piece of shit, but a pitful, foolish piece of shit. And though she loathed to leave Dany with him, she did not think they would want the separation.

 

"No. His allies did. The men and women who raised him."

 

"And you, niece, Breaker of the Dawn? Daughter to our brother, what are you in this?"

 

"I care not for my brother who has lived in a shadowed, protected ignorance all his life. If he knows of me, he has not looked to meet me. I have done all I can for the world, and I am content. But I could not be so while I knew you were unwilling pawns."

 

Mal started to beat her wings.

 

Briar and Ghost settle back on Smaug, jumping easily to their baskets.

 

"Farwell, Dany, and Viserys. I will come again."

 

Her babies leapt to the sky.

---

Note Whenever:

The Return of a Princess

Jaime

His breath is knocked out of him.

 

Even as Catelyn Starks cries out in surprise, even as she boldly jumps over the high table with a feat of athleticism he knew her not capable of.

 

Lyarra Stark laughs, indigo eyes full of tears.

 

And it is sweet and so like a song something twists in his stomach. Her arms are open as her mother falls into them. The rest of the wolves descend. Eddard Stark is sobbing just as hard, if not harder then any of the wolves as they reach Lyarra Stark in the middle of the feasting hall. When he had  heard of her disappearance, it had taken all of him not to attempt to track her down. He knew that the girl had some sort of mission- the theft of valyrian blades across the realm had led him to believe little else. But to know her self-imposed mission was across the Wall, in a land of ice and snow had frightened him spitless.

 

But he had trusted her.  

 

Known that Lyarra, princess, knew what she was doing. To know that she had gone missing beyond the Wall had just near killed him.

 

"Jaime?" His father calls.

 

He barely hears him. He watches as Ned and Cat Stark set her down. And he is running. His polished boots stomp on fine Reach marble.

 

" LITTLE WOLF!"

 

And suddenly she is in his arms.

 

Like when she was child.

 

She had been a child last he held her.

 

He can barely understand the difference when he lifts her with a delighted laugh. Seating her in the throne of his arms felt as natural as breathing. But the weight is different.

 

The form is different.

 

And Jaime Lannister realizes with a startled jolt as Lyarra’s indigo eyes look into his own emerald, that the little girl was gone. Gone was the plump cheeks. Gone was the haphazard curls and frizz and the unfinished look of her he had seen briefly that last night at Winterfell before she had gone away. A lady of eight and ten is is in his arms. And a beauty that devastates is proven all too strongly when her smile grows wider as she looks at him with adoration.

 

She has never looked so much like her grandmother. And she is so beautiful that it is honestly painful. 

 

He knows she is one of the most beautiful women in the world without much thought.

 

“ Jaime, ” she said warmly, and her arms encircled his neck.

 

Fucking seven hells who allowed my little wolf to grow into a woman.

 

He feels the pressure of her breasts against his cheek, and that is startling and completely not what I should be thinking of.  

 

“ Lyarra ,” the mummers, and automatically, even if he is internally panicked, he presses himself closer to her.

 

A kiss is given on his brow.

 

And Jaime shudders.

 

What the fuck was that .

 

“I’ve missed you, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer,” she said, fervently… Ardently.

 

He swallowed.

 

“I’ve missed you as well, little wolf.”

Chapter 16: Wind Winter Howls III

Summary:

Update

Summary: It comes with a spark of memory, as her father is set to die by her words, and the blood of a Stark, tried and true, breaks the hold of a lion cub in a stag’s pelt, of a lioness in her den and a scheming bird whose talons are trying to drag her away. The Starks were once Kings of Winter, an unbroken line beyond reckoning, and that was once more literal than anyone thought. And it awakes in the soft girl that refuses to allow this to pass, a Queen of Winter rises on the day they attempt to take her father’s head.

Or Sansa Stark is basically the Avatar, a being that is a bridge between her world and the next.

PARING: Sansa Stark/Jon Snow

Book I Autumn:

A Coronation

 

As Ice starts to swing, something in Sansa breaks.

 

Like a needle thread brought too taut, pulled too hastily in impatience, something in Sansa breaks and howls to life in the same instance.

 

It resonates, a song as clear as anything in her heart, and it is done with desperation and refusal. No, it reverts deep, the thought of refusal, a flash of remembrance. And Sansa refuses to allow the sword of House Stark to remove the head of her father.

 

It had already ran red with Lady, already been touched by the lifeblood of House Stark, with a part of her soul already torn asunder.

 

But this was too much.

 

And as if the Ice has heard her, the sword’s dark gleam turns from a steely gloss to a true and biting glow. The color is cool and cold, a blue, hard and fierce as winter. The crowd gasps in surprise, even as her heart roars in her ears. Ice does not recognize the man that holds it aloft, she knows that with a certainty that should frighten her. The tongueless man barely has time to stumble, before his hands become black and rotted with the cold of the glowing blade, and he gives a wordless and pathetic moan that turns into sobs as frost starts to crawl down his arms. He tries, Sansa sees, tries to let go of the blade, tries to remove its pommel from his grasping hands, but it does not let him.

 

Because she does not wish it. Does not wish this spineless man to take from her, to use the blade and desecrate it with the blood of the one who would wield it.

 

“ You’re Grace, ” the voice is an echo of a thousand voices, of a hundred different voices, but she can hear them, all of them, the voices of kin come to pass. It lingers on a female voice, sweet and wild and husky, and somehow without having ever heard it, she knows it is her Aunt Lyanna. Knows it deep in her bones, in the beat of her heart as Sansa watches the glowing blade slowly freeze over Ser Ilyn Payne for his mistake. 

 

Frost crawls down his arms, and bit by bit the sobbing man is punished for his folly.

 

The last Stark to die will be the one that is the loudest voice within the blade of the Kings and Queens of Winter . Sparks of memories come to Sansa then, and she knew without really remembering that some of the voices within that sympathy were once her own, male and female, strong and soft, loud and sure, and everything in between. In a line of near eight-thousand years, she has come and come again. This is the first life, however, in which she has awoken after the original Ice had broken, and been reforged from the shards, infused with the steel of magic, hot and dark with fire for the Doom yet to come for Westeros. Something a near hundred years after my last death, a herold of the Age of Dragons… An age that should have been much longer. She vaguely remembers thinking it would have been her last life, and as Fire and Blood would come to Westeros, Winter would never truly come again. The age of her would end-

But the world was changing, the Dragon Kings were mostly gone, come and dead before she had reakwaned as Sansa Stark, and it was time for the Winter Queen to return to the North once again.

 

“ Your Grace. Your Grace. Your Grace. ”

 

She blinks.

 

“I am here,” she whispers, to the voices she is unsure everyone can hear. She does not particularly care, and her voice grows, stronger and clear as she calls out to the blade in a ringing tone, “I am here. ”

 

The roar of the crowd has started to fade, silence in horror and shock over Eddard Stark’s execution turning into something else entirely.

 

Instead of a mockery of mercy and justice, it was now a coronation of something that had not breathed in near four hundred years.

 

“Winter is coming. You are not in Winterfell. Our blood lingers within in the walls, a child pulled taut to the skies to fly by a cawing rat, a babe wild and wolf's blood true,” said the chorus , and then Aunt Lyanna’s voice grew even louder, surer, “ A woman of riverbed blood that has borne the seed of our line, a boy frightened by a mantle he is yet to ready to take. A lost boy, my boy, someone promised stands atop the beyond the Wall we once helped build. We are scattered, and our pack will not live if you linger in this godless place. Winterfell needs you, your Grace. ”  

 

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

 

Ice creeps from her fingertips, from the soles of her delicately slippered feet. She feels a tremble of power, and in her mind, she can hear the echo of visions, flashes of sights of the weirwood tree at the heart of Winterfell, and she sees her mother, beautiful and pale and withdrawn, Robb sits at the roots, with baby Rickon clawing at his trousers, and a silent Bran staring far away. Before yet another hearttree she sees Jon, and mouth open to speak, and she knows he is about to bind himself to a fate that would destroy him.

 

‘Go home, Jon Snow, go to Winterfell. Take no vows, leave the Wall for home , we should never have left,’ the Weirwood speaks in her tongue, sweet and sure, and every man before the tree visibly starts and stares at the tree that spoke for Jon Snow in a girl’s sweet voice.

 

Jon rises, eyes wide, a large boy stands with him, eyes just as wide.

 

“I need to go,” said Jon.

 

She blinks, pushing away the images as she aches.

 

“Where is Arya?” she begs the voice, and she barely feels the tears still running down her cheek, or how slowly, everyone that surrounds the Great Sept has slowly turned from the glowing blade to her and she doesn't care.

 

“ The she-wolf is here, the she-wolf waits for her pack. You must go, ” said the chorus of voices, “ The gods do not wish for you to be here, my Queen. ”

 

She is not really a Queen, she is not such a thing. She is a messenger, the mouth of the old gods that has been silent for far too long, and this far South, her gods have been cut, removed from the soul of the people. The line above the Neck calls to her, the whole of the North sings a lament for her return, and Winterfell itself is the voice that calls the strongest. Sansa, who has only ever wished to flee the North, escape its cold hold, suddenly realizes how much of a fool she had been, and how much she had only been running from this. I have been a stupid little girl so scared of myself. She has shrieked her responsibility, turned blind eyes to warnings and signs, all to escape what was coming.

 

The Wall will fall this Winter, and the scourge of the dead shall finally crush the magic that Bran the Builder made when I was but Nessa Nessa the Child, the Blademaker, that my fellow Children poured their lives and bones to lay down, that giants and grumpkins and snarks and shadow cats swore to protect. Everyone has forgotten their promise or died before they could keep it and I will need to remind them.

 

Sansa's breath calms, from the stuttering hysteria and sobs that had filled her throat.

 

“I will return,” she promises the blade she had made so long ago.

 

Ser Ilyan Payne is now a statue carved from the power of Ice. Remnants of what she had infused in the blade’s predecessor across her many lives. Sparks of power, cold and true, dance across her fingertips, as she pushes the goldcloak holding her arms, and she barely reacts or feels anything as the man’s fingertips freeze and chip away from his hands, and she is walking calmly toward her father. Ice and frost lingering in her steps.

 

“SEIZE HER, IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING, SEIZE THE WITCH!” Joffrey’s voice is a wail of a scared child, and Sansa stares at the boy who she had begged for to have mercy. 

 

He, who she thought would love her, promised her mercy and only would have killed her father in mockery with the blade of her kin.

 

She bares her teeth like the she-wolf that she is, lifts a small hand.

 

“I need not your mercy.”

 

Ice comes, steady and sure, pushing across the literal mob of men that would have watched her father be killed with the glee of a flock of carrion birds. She barely has to extend her power, barely has to ask before there is a wall of ice protecting her from the men of the Red Keep. It is twice as tall then Gregor Clegane, the tallest man present, and covers the entirety of the steps of the Sept without much trouble. It traps the gold cloaks that had been holding her, even as they struggled in vain with their stumped hands.  

 

Tears are hot against her skin, even as she reaches for her poor father.

 

“Father,” she whispers, and eyes, grey and shocked, look to her in both awe and confusion.

 

“I hear my sister’s voice,” he said, voice hoarse but loud enough that it could be heard by all, his lovely eyes flickering to the glowing blade, “I hear my sister’s voice calling you a Queen.”

 

She knew she should be alarmed, she knew she should be frightened by this queer action, but as if something long sleeping has awoken inside of Sansa Stark and she is not merely the child who loved songs and wished to be the wife of a handsome knight. Queen is not what she is, she is not a ruler of men and women, but it is as close a title as anything she could have gathered in all of her lives.

 

“I am Queen. I am the Queen of Winter,” she tells him, sure and strong, “I have come for the Second Long Night to come, and I have come to make you keep your Promise. Now, Eddard Stark, father of my blood, tell the truth of why you have come to be killed on the supposed scared steps of the Seven.”

 

He stares, tired, thin and so hurt, but he stands, even with his wounded leg, and his head is held high.

 

“I have lied to save the lives of my daughters,” he tells the people of King’s Landing, “I have no need for the Iron Throne, no want of it, the boy who calls himself Joffery Baratheon is not the blood of King Robert, my household has been slaughtered, my daughter’s lives threatened, so I have lied to spare their lives. But it matters not anymore. I will leave this godforsaken place, with my daughters.”

 

Sansa smiles.

 

“Father, take Ice,” she tells him.

 

Once, she had been strong enough to hold it herself. Back in her last life, before Sansa Stark, she had reforged the blade and held it strong and true. But she is not strong enough, she is too small and not yet ready to retake the sword.

 

But her father is her strength, and she need not carry everything.

 

She reaches for the necklace around her neck, cool and pretty and the collar of a lion about her wolf neck, rips it off, uncaring of the delicate links or expense. She drops it, lets its twisted links scatter at her ice touched feet.

 

Her father touches the blade, and its chorus sings and calls out in recognition of the hold of a Stark of Winterfell.

 

“ Your grace, he is hurt, ” Lyanna’s voice twists, something deeper and warm, a double chorus of two men’s voices, deep and firm.

 

Her father stares at the blade, eyes wide once again.

 

“Father,” he whispers, his voice awed yet again, "Brandon."

 

“Then heal him,” she tells the blade, “Arm him in the armor of the King, touch upon what you would give to me. I am not strong enough to wield you… But my Father is.”

 

And as it has done before, the armor of the King of Winter surrounded her Father.

 

Regal.

 

Holy.

 

Some part of her aches in what is want. For that is her armor. Her burden. But she is not strong enough. Not yet. Not like this, half her soul dead with Lady's physical passing, her limbs weighed by the trappings of a fledgling power not fully awake. She sighs, her lips kissed with frost and winds. 

 

" Arya," she calls, her voice sweet and ripe with something stronger than she would have ever thought of herself.

 

A patter of feet. A man trailing behind a dirty child, who jumps into Sansa's waiting arms.

 

She smells, she is filthy enough to stain her gown on contact, but Sansa only feels something in her settle in peace and relief.

 

"Sansa?" her voice is awed and confused.

 

Sansa does not blame her.

 

"Shh, Arya. It's almost over. I am here, blood of my blood. "

 

The air shivers. Sansa feels the power of the North swell. Feels it swirl her hair in currents of strength she can hardly feel so far south.

 

" Wielder of my blade, take my arm."

 

Her father takes her arm. Sansa feels a weight on her brow. Twined branches of the pale pale wirewood, leaves red and as dark as her hair. Blades of dragon glass line it, the runes of the first men carved upon the swords and the pale flowers of the weirwood trees, not seen since her past life, bloom on her brow.

 

She feels the remnants of wirewoods come back, across Westeros. Sprout, take root from their long-forgotten resting places, and bloom with the barest of life starting anew.

 

Awareness stretches, grows and her power is made yet stronger as the world trembles with her revival.

 

I thought I could rest. Remorse is an ill taste in her mouth. Bitter and pitiful with the fault of the death of the age of Fire and Blood.

 

But it is too late.

 

She is alive again.

 

She is crowned. 

 

The burden of this new Queen of Winter settles on her, and Sansa has already wasted precious time.

 

" I am Sansa Stark, first of her name, the Queen of Winter. Hear me, people of Westeros, Winter is Coming. "

 

And with a song on her ice spewing lips, with a howl of wolves echoing through her throat, Sansa turns a half step.

 

She finishes her step in the roots of the hearttree in the godswood, appearing before her stunned pack.

---

Book I Autumn:

A Promise

 

Arya tumbles out of her arms. Is running for their mother in the same instant, as Sansa drops to her knees. Sansa struggles her chest heaving, magic singing in her veins. She could hear them now as if- the gods- a symphony of greetings, reprimands, and laments singing to her as she came to the oldest heart-tree this side of the Wall, she can feel the amount of power she has done to take her pack home. It’s too much , she thinks, too much for her, little Sansa Stark, to be a Queen of Winter. Her father drops next to her, hands clutching at her shoulders.

 

"Jon has fire in his blood," whispers Sansa, looking up at her father.

 

His face contorts.

 

“How-”

 

“I can feel it. It… The Dragon Kings and Queens. They were supposed to replace me, Summer Kings and Queens. But they’re dead. Or near enough. They were not strong enough. Only by mixing the blood- Ice and Fire- did they stay upon our lands. Jon . He is needed for the Night to come-”

 

“Sansa-”

 

“ You let him go to the Wall! ” she shrieked, and power exploded from her, too volatile, too fragile to exhibit control.

 

Her father falls back, tumbled like a leaf in the wind, and Sansa watched him with tears in her eyes.

 

“You let him leave the pack!” she cried, fingers cool with ice, “It would have killed us all!”

 

“Sansa!”

 

Sansa heaved. Looked to her wide-eyed mother. She snarled, and the entire godswood convulsed. Shook and snarled with her fury. The roots of the wirewood whipped, and Sansa bared her teeth.

 

“ Do not think to command me, river-blood, ” she snarled, and it is an echo of someone she had been before.

 

Her Mother falls back. Drops to her knees. Sansa shudders. Horror at her actions. But everything is too much. Yet not enough. Because there is still much for her to do. She knows.

 

And so does the rat in her brother.

 

“ Bran, ” she calls out, and her brother is there, crippled, eyes wide.

 

She can feel the talons of the Three-Eyed Raven. Clutching at his heart- at his mind- at his spine and she feels her heart shudder. She struggles to her feet, southern slippers ill footed in dirt and lingering snow, and her legs buckle and tremble like a newborn. But she goes to him either way. Hands a glow, a song on her lips.

 

“Sansa?” he sounds afraid, Tully blue eyes wide and shadowed by a raven’s wing.

 

She places a kiss on his brow, cups his face. 

 

“You are a wolf. Not a raven. Be gone Brendon Rivers. Crawl back to your spite and story keeping. Bran is not to be yours . ”

 

Bran’s eyes cloud. And they are white and clouded. A funny smile quirks on his lips. She knows what looks at her from her brother’s face is not him.

 

“ So,” his voice is smooth, much too deep for Bran, and tempered by a Riverland accent, “The Queen of Winter returns.”

 

The godswood writhes. She is angry that he would take from her blood. That is not the right note in the song. A verging path. A desperation.

 

“And the rat of black wings comes to claim my pack,” she returns.

 

He laughs. Pure and spite and gleeful. A cacophony of raven's cries. She snarls.

 

“Sweet Queen, you have not lost your humor. You have been missed.”

 

“I was to rest .”

 

“But the Summer Monarchs proved too weak for their tasks?”

 

A spasm of pity and regret… Perhaps resentment. They should have been strong enough.

 

“There is one yet lives…”

 

The Three-Eyed Raven hummed in Bran’s throat.

 

“ Yes. I feel him. Summer King of Fire and Blood. He races home for you. Shall it be fire and ice?”

 

“I know not. But, I tell you to leave my Brother.”

 

"I am sorry. I- I thought you were gone," His face is grim, his eyes, though still white, show his remorse, "It was a desperate gambit. I am old, your grace, the oldest a Raven has been. The greensight has dwindled in men. There was no one but Brandon that could fly. I have not the means to fight the Night King alone. Brandon could have."

 

"It would kill him. So let him go."

 

"It… If-"

 

"I am the Winter Queen. The Summer King rides to me. The Raven is but a note, not a melody or beat, so you will let my brother go. "

 

The godswood shivered with her anger. Roots whipped. Magic rippled.

 

Sansa pushed with a song on her lips.

 

For Bran could not fly.

 

It was not in the nature of wolves to do so. They were meant to run , to ghost through earth and wood with their kin. Not touch the past and future on feather and wind and memory. A rustle of feathers and Sansa felt more then saw as talons unwound themselves from Bran, as a whisper of wings left his eyes.

 

"I'm sorry," a faint whisper. 

 

Brendon River lingered one more moment to apologize.

 

Gods, friends, how silent have you gone if even my Three-Eyed Raven is no longer prideful?

 

"You are forgiven, Brendon. Take from my pack again, and I will take your stories to someone else. "

 

"Who else is there? Who else can there be? I fear I will be the last."

Brendon shivered. For he was the inheritor of the Raven she had chosen in her last life… And he would have learned early on when she had picked the Raven as the Keeper of History once before him twice over, and he knew she could take it away.

 

She smiled.

 

"There is one. So lost in stories, so sure of Bran's strength, you do not see the forest beyond your tree. Brendon, what of Jojen Reed? Could he not fly?"

 

A laugh. Bright and joyous. Weak and disbelieving.

 

"How did- Yes. He is my fledgling and inheritor- How did I miss him? How could I mistake him?"

 

"Your strength lies in the past. The ink is dry, Brendon. The future is not so. The ink shifts and quivers upon the page. And Bran is stronger than Jojen. He was hidden in the shadow of my wolf."

 

"Ha. I see. It becomes so clear when you lay down the path. The line is written, the hymn sung, the ink is drying. You have given me hope, your grace."

 

Sansa smiled.

 

"It is my purpose," she said simply.

 

Brendon laughed in Bran's throat. Tears in his eyes.

 

 "Well met, Queen of Winter."

 

"Well met, Brendon Rivers, Three-Eyed Raven of Stories. May you keep your stories well until your fledgling can fly for you."

 

And he was gone from Bran. Sansa felt the awareness of the Raven move. Felt his new strength. She went to her feet. And so did Bran. Stumbled on his feet as his spine righted itself. She breathed in relief and with frosting winds on her breath.

 

He let out a breathing gasp.

 

"You will not fly, Brandon Stark. You will run along with your pack as the White Winds howls."

 

Bran gaped.

 

Mother sobbed and rushed forward on her knees to hug at Bran’s.

 

Sansa made her way to her tree, stepping around them without much thought. The weirwood was not the oldest. Not the strongest- that laid beyond the Wall. Where the Raven made his nest. But this was important. Almost more so. Because the weirwood planted in the godswood of Winterfell was much more her's.

 

Her heart .

The one that had been made from Nessa Nessa the Child, the blademaker, and had come beyond the Wall after the spells had been cast. The one where her first bones had been laid to rest. She reached. And her tree reached back. Roots swayed. Broughs danced in an unseen wind. And the flowers of the wirewood, pale at first, turned red and vivid blue as a beating heart, and truly bloomed as Sansa touched her heart.

 

" Nessa Nessa, you have come again. I am so glad. I thought you would never return, " and it was the voice of herself from a hundred life-times ago.

 

Sansa smiled, and felt tears flow down her cheeks.

"I am Sansa now, heart of mine," she whispered, and she sobbed, “I am sorry. I wanted to be far away. I did not want to stay. I was frightened and never meant to awaken again.”

 

“ I forgive you. But you must forgive yourself. You were never meant to return and were frightened. But I am happy that you have, body of mine. ”

 

"The Wall will fall."

 

" And we will endure. The Night King comes for the Queen he has been denied. He comes for us, and he will stop at nothing to crown you as his once and for all."

 

Sansa sighed.

 

The Night King.

 

Once a friend who wished for more, once an ally against the First men that came to consume them… Turned monster by magic beyond his grasp. He had thought himself strong enough to temper winds and ice and snow beyond his grasp thought his love for her would grant him equal status as the Child chosen by the gods to understand their whispers and keep the balance of the world.

 

And he lost himself on his greed and gluttony and pride his conjured powers had wrought.

 

The First Man, Brandon Stark, had reached out then. Touched her hand and begged peace in the wake of the consuming Dark her old friend had wrought. Kneeled at the feet of Nessa Nessa the Child of the Gods, and begged for peace at all costs.

 

She had reached back in acceptance for it had been sung by the gods that the Age of Man was to come.

 

And it would come in the wake of that promised man who knelt at her feet.

 

And something else, then, had blossomed in her. For Brandon. Brandon had been.. a love that had been brave and gentle and strong. It was strange to think that she was her own ancestor, her own inheritor many times over. But it was why the magic of the Children held the strongest in the line of Starks. Nessa Nessa had been their grandmother many times over, and she had been her.

 

“My heart, Winter is Coming, Night will close.”

 

The broughs of her heart swayed. And it was almost as if she could see the smiling face of the Child she had been in her first life.

 

“ Yet, body of mine,  Spring will Blossom, and the Dawn will Break. ” 

 

And Sansa knew that was a promise that would hold.

---

Book I Autumn:

Jon

 

Jon saw Winterfell’s walls.

 

He thought he would never see it again.

 

Or well, thought he would never see it as Jon Snow, bastard of Eddard Stark. Instead, he had thought to be Brother Jon of the Night’s Watch. As Uncle Benjen, he would come back to Winterfell to speak with its Lord, play the part of a distant relative, and be content with his roll as Brother Jon… But here he was, still the same Jon Snow, spooked by the words of the heartstree beyond the wall. Fleeing the Wall, because the hearttree spoke with Sansa’s voice, sweet and pure for him to go home . Spoke calmly in the voice of the little lady of Winterfell and called to him to return. 

 

If that was not a direct sign of the gods, than Jon knew nothing at all.

 

“Riders!” called out the night-watchmen.

 

The torchers were ablaze in the courtyard, very unlike the Starks to burn such a thing without the forewarning of guests or late riders. Somehow, Jon is not surprised.

 

“Brothers of the Watch!” called out Uncle Benjen, looked to him, furrowed his brow, “And returning Jon Snow, and Lord Samwell Tarely!”

 

Jon could watch as the gates opened, and felt his heart stutter at the gaze of Sansa Stark waiting for him in the first courtyard. Ablaze in the torchlight, dark cloak around her shoulders. Her hair flickering as fire itself in the torchlight. He should be alarmed. Surprised from the sight of his sister North once again. She had gone South, gone to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms- Yet she is there. Wreath of curious flowers and wirewood branches and leaves atop her head like the Queen she surely isn’t yet. Red and blue flowers, stunning against her pale porcelain skin and red hair. He could glints of something else- swords made of dragonglass. Like the Winter Kings of Old.

 

" Jon, " she cried, and she was running.

 

Somehow, he was off of his saddle and running to her. He barely registered hitting the ground.  It is Ghost who beats him to Sansa. Tackled her. And Sansa laughed. Laughed as pretty as a song bird and as his wolf acted the overgrown pup, licking each where he could reach. Sansa sank into the wolf's side. 

 

Tully blue looked at him.

 

Tears filled her eyes.

 

" Jon. "

 

It was the same voice that beckoned him back from the Wall. Hesitantly, he walked the last few steps to Sansa's side. She surprised him utterly by grabbing his arm and yanking him down to the muck of the courtyard. She placed herself flush against him. Pressed her face directly into his neck. Seemed to breathe him in even as he had no idea where to place his arms.

 

He cannot even remember the last time Sansa had so much as touched him, let alone embraced him.

 

He does not even think they said goodbye to each other when she had gone South, and he North.

 

" We should have never left home ," she sobbed, “Jon they killed Lady and they tried to take father’s head.”

 

It was then that Jon returned her embrace. Pressed her as close as he possibly could. Clung to the soft wool of her dress to the tough leather of his mismatched boiled armor. Pressed his face into her coppery hair, and he realized with a soft twist in his heart that lemon and lavender was the scent of her soap or perfume, and he had missed it. Never knowing the fact that it had belonged to her, and yet he had missed it. Jon felt something work in his throat as he clung to her.

 

"Aunt Lyanna was your mother. She married Prince Rhaegar."

 

The world of Jon Snow ends with a whisper of the girl who hardly spoke to him.

 

And it shatters in her arms.

o)O(o

“We must call the Banners,” said Sansa, voice soft, “And I must go to the Wall. Jon, will you take me there?”

---

Book II Winter:

---

Book III Spring:

Chapter 17: The Lioness Rampent II

Summary:

Update!

Summary: A story of a modern woman being reborn as Cersei Lannister, and honestly it goes as well as you think. In which not-Cersei fucked off to Essos as soon as she could, and only comes back because ICE zombies will eventually freeze the sea, and that might not be the funniest thing to deal with down the line. Or Not-Cersei returns after years away and says a mighty fuck it when the King of Westeros bids her to marry his son.

Parings: Cersei Lannister/Rheagor Targoryon,

Tags: Ace! Cersei, 

Chapter I:

The Return

Cersei I

 

King’s Landing was a right mess.

 

She knew that as sure as anything, without even looking at the city.

 

And still smelled vividly of shit.

 

Her first thought is that saving the vague memories of the people she hadn’t even liked, even if by sole virtue of tangentially, was wrong. That she should just turn around, and get back to her relatively safe life in Essos. That the fate of the entirety of a continent should not solely be on her fucking shoulders. And that the people of Westeros didn’t need diet-Cersei Lannister to come back from the dead.

 

But then she remembers Jaime's face, sweet and honorable.

 

Tyrion's face, earnest and curious, just born and so innocent of anything to come .

 

She remembers the warmth in Joanna’s lovely eyes, the desperation in which she had held onto life.

 

She remembers the curve of Genna’s smile.

 

The sorrow that clung to Tygett’s face.

 

The way that Gerion had looked the other way when he had found her two years ago, mouth agape at what his niece had become in the time she had left.

 

And the woman that was in Cersei Lannister’s body couldn’t just walk away.

 

So here she was. She felt more then knew that entering the Game would kill her. 

 

Not that she knew for sure.

 

Not with the whole, fucked off for nearly a decade to get away from marrying Robert Baratheon and fucking her own brother. And the whole, Maggoy the Frog coming to her, instead of the other way around. A cackle on her old face. Even when the old bag had reached to taste her blood, Cersei had slapped her hand away. She already knew too much of the future- or a future that she had basically stomped into a quick death by running away.

She didn’t fancy some golden shrouds for the children that would never exist. And taking one look at Robert Baratheon’s pimply face during the Tourney of Lannisport had been exactly what had driven her away. She had been in her seventies at the time of her first death, had never really craved sex in the first place, and though she had her share of lovers, it had been done in service of fuffling them. Never her. The concept of marrying a child in body as well as mind had been so horrifying that she had escaped on the first ship bound for Essos that she could find. Especially knowing that sex would be forced, and at the leisure of a partner she may not even like. And because of the aftermath of Tywin Lannister freaking the fuck out. A sane person does not live in the disdain in the wake of the Hand of the King.

 

“Dāria,” said her beloved guard, Daena walking into her private cabin, “We have arrived into Blackwater Bay.”

 

She was one of the first people to look at the crazy girl from the West stomping all about old Valyria and seen potential, instead of madness. And she had been the first to pledge herself to her. She had been through thick and thin, and Cersei loved her.

 

“Daena,” she muttered back, shifting a sheet of shimmering blonde hair behind her shoulder, “I am aware due to the bloody smell.”

 

Automatically, Daena set to work, roping her hair into a complex fishtail braid. She had been many things, Daena. Friend, confidant, sworn-shield… Being her handmaid was near second-nature.

 

“You come from this place?”

 

Cersei heard the disapproval, same as she saw Daena’s nose wrinkle in her pretty face in the  mirror. Cersei snorted.

 

“No. My once home is on the opposite coast. We passed it on our way here.”

 

“The rock place that made you cry?”

 

Cersei hummed. She had not expected such emotion, to see the Rock from a distance. They had only sent a few boats for provisions, and had not docked in Lannisport due to her own reluctance. A sobbing monarch did not make an impressive thing, and if there was one thing the New Republic of Valyra needed, it was to look impressive to the medieval fucks that wanted to use them. 

 

“So it did.”

 

Daena fished her braid with a flourish, and reached for the pure weaved valyrian steel veil that would mask the color of her hair, as well as shimmer prettily in the sun. Placed it perfectly on her head, and tucked away all her hair. From the outside, it made her hair look  paler, more suitable to the expectations of the people outside. Daena reached for her crown, a circlet of simple steel, that connected to the porcelain mask she would use to further hide her face, an early thing she had adopted to hide her apparent youth, and her beauty. She placed it expertly on her  head, and reached to help her with the mask.

 

Because the face of Cersei Lannister was indeed one of the prettiest damn things to ever be made.

 

More’s the pity that the soul of an old hag laid inside. Daena always did say it was luck she was so bloody tall to fool people of her age. 

 

“You can show your face, are they not your countrymen?”

 

Cersei sighed, and attached the mask.

 

“Dear Daena, my country is the Republic. My home is there. This is just a diplomatic visit. That will more then likely end in a declaration of war.”

 

“Do you believe it will be that drastic?”

 

“They invited me to fuck and breed with their princeling, with the guise of a marriage offer written between the lines of the invitation of one descedent of the once Great Valirian Empire to another to meet.”  

 

Daena’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursed in a way that always show displeasure and promise of violence.

 

Cersei is reminded of the time she first met her Faceless friend, before they had befriended each other. The way she had gripped tightly on her golden hair and threatened to cut her pretty face off of her head. And then had promptly dropped her hold with horror, despite Cersei’s clumsy attempt at theft for science really , for Daena had felt the touch of death on her and had right been scared spitless.

 

Because the many faced god took everyone in the end, but so rarely gave back, let alone so blatantly and naturally.

 

“ What ?”

 

Cersei smiled at the indignant face her friend took.

 

“See? War. Imagine the rest of the Senate, a foreign power attempting to take me from them. ” 

 

 “Valar morghulis‎,” hissed Daena, voice acidic.

 

“Daena, sweetling, valar dohaeris,” returned Cersei with a smile.

---

Chapter II:

Unyielding

Rhaegar I

 

"They say she is the ugliest thing in the world," whispered Tyrion Lannister to his Uncle Gerion, "And that she hides her face from the shame of it. That only a monstrous woman could unite the people of the Free Cities into the Republic of New Valaria."

 

The Wandering Lion's lips twitched. His eyes gleamed.

 

"Oh? You do know she didn’t unite any of the cities. She simply made a new one. If others floak to it, its hardly her fault."

 

Little Tyrion made a face, wrinkling his nose.

 

"I know that. Uncle, did you not see her face when you went to the Republic?"

 

"Indeed, I did."

 

"And?"

 

"She is the most beautiful thing in the world. She hides her face so that the gods will not become ashamed of their own beauty in comparison," said the young lion, voice teasing to his nephew.

 

The little lion pouted.

 

"No one can be prettier than mother. "

 

Lord Gerion smiled. And Rhaegar was fascinated in the soft look that the usually overly jovial man took.

 

" She is. Lady Joanna is fair, yes, I grant you that nephew. But the Dāria is… Is beyond words."

 

Rhaegar knew the lord to be a wanderer, prone to fanciful talk and tall tales.

 

But his sincerity in that moment was not feigned.

 

He swallowed thickly. To think that his lord father planned to betrothed him to this Queen of the New Republic of Valyria seemed… Idiotic. Even if New Valyria was a new state, formed in the once poisoned land of his ancestors, cleansed by her hand- Dragons found alive all tamed by her song- He knew not what father expected. 

 

Now on top of this, he finds the only woman he was allowed to marry is also the fairest in the world by one so well-traveled as Gerion Lannister.

 

This is madness.

 

Was his thought as he watched the approaching ship . What sort of mad man thought to make a steel ship, and than succeed ? He breathed in astonishment at the sight. It reminded him of the Rhoynish long ship, with the thickness of the Westeron Galleon. Some sort of chimney was in the middle of the ship, a happy trail of steam escaping it as it cut through the waters with impressive speed. It was painted a brilliant white, was beautiful and curious, adorned further by what he recognized but could not fully understand as Ancient High Valyrian written precisely.

 

The metal ship docked.

 

"Where are the dragons?" hissed his father.

 

His answer was a sweet voice raised from the deck, perfectly projected. And the sound of dragon song followed.

 

Rheagar lost his breath.

 

 Appearing from the clouds in a dramatic swoop, a dragon, resplendent and golden landed before the ship, easily the size of the ship and then some. It was unlike anything that Rheagar had ever read of. Slender like a snake, limbs thin and delicate, feathered wings great and large, with golden fur crowning its great head, like a lion. It let out a roar that shook his heart. 

 

She will not yield to me. Who would with such power?

 

A procession of splendid figures began to emerge as the gangplank descended with some unseen mechanism, dressed in new and old Essosian dress. The song from that sweet voice was joined by the figures as they began to turn to their waiting party, laden with goods of Essos and the New Valyria.

 

Delights foreign, old magic sang in the air.

 

And at the back of a procession, a figure that took his breath anew.

 

The woman that many thought to be his future bride was a slight figure, just slender and hints of womanly curves. Crowned in splendid silver- no Valyrian steel , a mesh work viel of metal, like armor, a circlet of gleaming blues and runes of old, and indeed as all the rumors had spun, a plain white mask of porcelain to hide her face. Her dress was nearly plain, covered her arms and neck, a white yitish silk, but interlaced with gleaming strands of more valyrian steel, tinted with a spectrum of all colors, ripples interlacing every color imaginable. Even her hands were adorn with gloves, ringed with more shimmering steel.

 

Hidden as she was, Rheagor knew this queen to be wickedly smart to dress as such.

 

Even Tywin Lannister breathed a gasp at the causal wealth and splendor she displayed, head to toe in once mythic steel, as the woman glided down the gangplank. Her movements, and the lips of what he has assumed as part of the mask parted. Her skin is near as perfect porcelain. Her lips painted a vivid red. From a distance, the effect was quite unsettling. An almost human face parting in such a vivid, animated movement. The song that left her lips was Valyrian, and it was only every other word that Rheagor could understand. Ancient and hallowed, even being as fluent as he was, he did not understand every word.

 

More dragon's cries filled the air.

 

And he gasped as they danced through the air, launching from every corner of the ship, some as the dragons he knew, others serpentine as the large one, all in a rainbow of colors. He counted perhaps a half dozen and knew from rumors that this wasn't even half of the fleet that protected the New Republic. The dragons that landed around the Queen in perfect step were just babes, the largest being the golden serpent that followed the song of their mistress in perfect pitch.

 

The baby dragons followed, not as perfect, but in a lovely chorus that lifted his heart.

 

Winter will crumble. Perhaps I am no promised prince in face of this.

 

The dragon song and the chorus of the New Republic held in the air for a moment, before it faded into stunned silence. A woman, young and of valyrian descent with violet eyes and dark skin, stepped forward, from behind the crowned woman.

 

“THE DARIA OF THE NEW REPUBLIC OF VALYRIA,” Called out the woman, “OUR DARIA.”

 

The people of the ship cheered and stomped their feet. The figure raised a lily-white hand gloved, and her lips parted in a smile, and the sounds eased off into polite silence.

 

“I greet the people of Westeros,” spoke the Dāria, “On behalf of the New Republic, I am welcomed upon your soil.”

 

His father was vibrating in his seat,  and launched himself to his feet in a desperate, clumsy movement. Tywin Lannister startled, as it had been rehearsed that he would speak to announce their welcoming party.

 

"The King of the Seven Kingdoms welcomes you, great Valryian Queen," his voice was a rasp. 

 

And his eyes were full of greed. Fuck.

 

The Queen from afar tilted her head, gently. A smile twitched on her lips. A touch mocking, Rheagar thought. He could not see her eyes, shadowed beneath some sort of mesh, but he knew without a doubt she was looking at his father and found him wanting. He felt, not for the first time, the shame of his father’s deteriorating condition.

 

“Thank you, King Ayers,” her voice is smooth as silk, her tone even and without flatter at the jagged appearance of his father.

)OOOOOO(

 

“Forgive me,” he said approaching, and the woman, Daena reached for the sword on her hip, “But I was wondering, your Grace, but your name was given as Dāria, is that not the word for-”

 

“Dāria is her grace’s title, not her name,” the venom in the woman's tone was sharp, and it was rare that such vitriol was ever sent his way.

 

Rheagar blinked expectantly. Lady Daeana glared at him. Rhaegar cleared his throat.

 

“Prey tell, your Grace, what is your name?”

 

The Dāria’s lips twitch in amusement. Or mockery.

 

“Our Dāria is only to be called Dāria,” hissed Daena, with a lifted brow, “Her name is a secret song. A secret and pleasure of only a few thankful souls.”

 

“It is a necessary notion that the Republic plans to make a tradition,” the monarch’s voice was sweet and fair, even in plain speech, lyrical and he noticed with a jolt flawlessly spoken Common Tongue, “For I am just Dāria,  nothing more or less to my people. When the position is passed, the next Dāria or Dārio will follow this. I live to serve my people. My name is not what matters. It is what I am that matters.”

 

"So your legacy is left to no one," said Lord Tywin, voice disdained.

 

The Dāria tilted her head. And smiled. One of which showed all her teeth.

 

"My legacy is the Republic. My people are the legacy. What is a name to a country? Merely a passing whisper in the wind. Forgive me. You are?"

 

Tywin stared down at the small queen, and it was then that Rheagar realized how small the queen was. The Hand of the King positively towered over her as he lifted a brow at her. But somehow it meant little with how easily she dismissed his very existence. 

 

“I am Lord Tywin Lannister.”

 

“Ah. Yes. The Hand of the King, which is another word for a servant to the King?” she asked, delicately, she smiled again, “Forgive me. There are so many crests here in Westeros.”

 

“Crests?”

 

“A word for sigal, my Lord,” simpered a Lord Varys. He was looking at the Daria with undisguised fascination.

 

“And you are?”

 

“I am Varys. I am, like you, of Essos… Not of your Republic, I am afraid.”

 

The angry woman, the one of who had acted as the Queen’s harold, stepped forward. Her lilac eyes shone.  

 

“Valar morghulis,” she said, silky.

 

Rhaegar was surprised that Varys visibly paled. Stepped back with a vicious flinch.

 

“You-”

 

“None of your schemes, Whisperer across the Narrow Sea. My Daira is not for the likes of you.”

 

“Daena, sweet, do not scare the poor man.”

 

She turned her mask, lips pulled back and teeth baring to Lord Varys.

 

“However, if you threaten my people, eunuch, I will happily allow Daena to have you. Am I clear? I have no ill will toward you nor the people of this land. Keep your hatred of magic to yourself.”

 

The eunuch flinched again.

 

“Serve your people, Spider, do not come for me and mine.”

 

“I did not mean offense,” whispered the Master of Whispers, and he twitched a step back.

 

“Indeed. But it will be taken if you make a single move against my Republic. My people will not be hurt by your meddling.” 

 

“I serve the people.”

 

“But not mine. And I will not have it, sweetling. Now take yourself away before Daena decides to add a name to her god’s list.”

Chapter 18: The Rise of the Golden King II

Summary:

Update!

Summary: It seemed that loving Sansa Stark had consequences. At least, that much he could surmise as he woke after his peaceful death in his rooms at Winterfell. Now, he has twenty or so years before he can find the woman he loves again.

Let it be said that Jaime Lannister never had the best impulse control.

Chapters: 22

Pairings: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Past Jaime Lannister/Cersei Lannister

TAGS: Time Travel, De-aging, Body Dysmorphia, Years of Pining, Jaime Centric, Lannister Centric, MASSIVE TIME SKIPS ABOUND, Jaime has the sense of a Dung Beetle And Is Compulsive, Kingslayer Twice Over, Joanna Lannister Lives, Jaime Plans To Take Over the World, Tywin Agrees, Down With the Dragons, Not A Targaryen Friendly Fic, Sorry Not Sorry, Jaime is Patient, But Not Really, Tywin is Utterly Bewildered, But Kinda Down For this Treason, Cersei is Insensed, Tyrion is along for the ride, Joanna tries her best, Sansa is Just Bewildered,

0 . The Fool

‘new beginnings, having faith in the future, being inexperienced, not knowing what to expect, having beginner's luck, improvisation and believing in the universe’

Jaime I

Jaime Lannister knew that Sansa Stark would be his salvation. His path to honor. But he had never, not in all of his fantasies of being at her back, keeping her safe, being a proper fucking knight, expected at all to fall in love with her. She was barely five and ten when they met, properly, in the Vale. Five and ten girl to his thirty and more. And he would always love his sister, and no other woman had ever been of any consequence in comparison.

 

He was a fool.

 

He had always known. He knew he was not on the same level as his siblings, but not seeing the love that would fill his heart for that woman was especially foolish. For Sansa was everything he had ever wanted. A lady, the epitome of grace and kindness, and when he had come to take her home when she had looked at him with such gratefulness, such awe-

 

Well.

 

It hadn’t taken much. A kind word. A kind hand. Loyalty . True utter loyalty the second he had promised to keep her safe. Without mockery or disdain. Without real price for it. And slowly, as the years past and Sansa Stark grew older and more beautiful and just more… He ignored it. Ignored whatever it was that flickered in his breast at any moment her blue eyes turned his way. Any moment her lily-white hand touched the crease of his elbow as he escorted her. Tried to ignore the way that his left hand went to the pommel of the sword, renamed as Vow , every time a man so much looked at her.

 

He had always been slow.

 

He can admit that. Always too been too stubborn to let himself see the truth. There was a reason why Cersei had kept her claws so long on his heart. It was also why it had taken him much too long to understand what love felt like when it was new. When it was untouched and uncorrupted. When it was an emotion not steeped in shame and twisted from contempt. When she was twenty, as they finally reached Winterfell after years and years of campaigning from the Vale to the Riverlands to beyond, gaining armies and people and triumphing in the Autumn, it was when he realized. When she had reached Winterfell she had turned to him after everything had been settled after she had reached her new rooms and had embraced him.

 

“ Thank you, Ser Jaime, for bringing me home . ”

 

To realize that unnamed emotion was love by that embrace, by the hold of her frail arms and the press of her face into his neck, Jaime had realized how utterly fucked he was. 

 

Because Ser Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer could be the knight of Queen Sansa Stark of the North, the Highlands, as they had started to call everything North of the borders of the Riverlands, but he could not be her husband . No one of the three kingdoms would accept him, and he could not, would not be as he been with Cersei and fuck the queen and cuckold her husband, whatever bastard that would be… So he resolved to bare it, serve his queen, and be glad of her happiness when she found it.

 

Imagine his surprise when Sansa never married at all.

 

Arya Stark became her heir, had children by the liter with Gendry Waters, and the Highlands future was secured plenty. But by his Queen’s line, the North would not be ruled...  She utterly refused to marry in defense of the realms she ruled. She would not favor any house, she would not let any man take from her, and no consort would come to muddle the court of the Queen. He could not blame her and thought not how utterly and fully jaded woman had become from the treatment of the men in her life.

 

And part of him was so viciously glad.

 

But he never ever did anything for it. Because it could be the same as with Cersei. He thinks sometimes when she looked at him that Sansa felt something for him as he did for her. He saw it falling to the same as his first love in his sister. A secret love. Fucking in the dark. Stolen moments... But he knew Sansa would never hide him. Would not do that to him. Could not do that to him. She would not be ashamed of him if they loved each other in full. But, in end it was the same issue. 

 

Jaime Lannister still could not marry Sansa Stark. 

 

And he could not do anything to hurt her rule. 

 

So he kept his love in his heart.

 

  Spent, years were spent with her, years and years after the Others, Dragons roosting in the South, falling to their own greed until Jon Snow of all people became the King in the South for the sake of peace… He lived years at her back, at her table. He died in peace, in his bed, old and frail. Thinking of her, as he always did.

 

And he woke, his mind still on her, in a bedroom he did not know.

 

Jaime blinked.

 

And blinked again.

 

Slipped out of the foreign bed, curiously realizing that it had Lannister colors. Not at all the muted and loyal white, black, and grey he had taken to wear for his queen. Even when she snuck a lion on his clothes, on his cloak, red and gold abound for him never to forget his name, as his own family had tried to force her too. And felt out of sorts as he realized everything was so big. 

 

He would admit that what happened next was not his finest moment. 

 

Because Jaime panicked as he realized it was not big, but rather he was the one that was small and he was not where he should be. Had a bloody hand. Small and young, but a hand nonetheless where dragon-glass should be instead. And unbeknownst to himself at that moment, he started to cry for the woman he loved like the little boy he physically was.

 

“ SANSA! SANSA! ”

 

It is not until he sees his mother that Sansa’s name dies on his lips.

 

Because for a wild moment, he thinks it’s Cersei. But she’s dead. She’s dead and she can never hurt Sansa again as long as I- And he lunges for a weapon, any weapon, grabbing at the red cloaks who try to calm him down. Tries a sword but cannot lift it. Punches and claws away from reaching hands and grabs a dagger instead. Then he sees her true, utter concern on her beautiful face, and a sullen little girl looking around her skirts.

 

“ Mother ?”

 

“My son, what is the matter?”

 

He swallows thickly. He had forgotten her voice. Have I died? Is this the hereafter?

 

“Sansa,” he says simply, “I need Sansa. ”

 

I cannot have left her. Not yet! She needs me-

 

“Who’s Sansa?” hisses the little girl.

 

Cersei. He grips tighter on his stolen knife. He is a breath away from lunging and thrusting it into her neck. It would be quick. She would barely have time to feel it. More mercy than Cersei had ever deserved.

 

“Jaime, sweetly, who is she?” asked his mother again, taking his attention.

 

“She’s-” everything, “She’s mine .” 

 

A lie. But not. She is his. His queen. His love, but not his. And he feels empty without her near.

 

“Sweetling, a girl you know?”

 

More.

 

“She’s my lady,” he says instead, “The only girl I will ever want to marry.”

 

Cersei hisses.

 

“You cannot marry!”

 

He stares. She is so young, but did her madness start here? Did his own madness begin here as a child as well?

 

“I will only ever marry her. She is the most beautiful, kindest woman in the world,” he replied, fiercely.

 

Because if he ever did marry, it would only be to Sansa Stark. His mother laughs. It sounds of a song. And he cannot remember this sound. Cersei scowls.

 

“So you have found your love in a dream, my little lion? So ready you are to search for her through the halls of the Rock until you find her?”

 

She picks him up. He is so small she can lift him easily on her hip. She hums.

 

“Tell me of your lady love,” she says, teasing and light. Dismisses the startled guards and Cersei alike.

 

Jaime swallows. Grips tighter on his dagger as Cersei scowls up at him, clinging to his mother’s full skirts. He looks at his mother’s face. Sweet and so kind, so unlike what Cersei’s face was, for all they looked identical.

 

“She was kissed by fire,” he whispered to his mother, and he marveled at the beauty of her eyes, at the shape of her mouth as she smiled.

 

She had dimples, one in her chin and one in her left cheek. Cersei did not… His mother hums, sweet and gentle.

 

“How can a fire kiss?” she asked, with humor.

 

He blinks. And he swallowed. Forgotten the free-folk saying would not mean anything to anyone, here so South.

 

“Her hair. Her hair was kissed by it. It shimmered like it, flame and silk to the touch. Her eyes were deep, and the color of the sky in summer. Her face was pale, as pale as snow. And she was kind as the Maiden herself but as wise as the Crone...”

 

He was surprised by the way his mother’s brow furrowed. The way she looked at him in quiet shock.

 

“It must’ve been a wonderful dream.”

 

He gripped tightly on the dagger.

 

“She wasn’t a dream. She was real. And she was mine.”

 

“What did you say her name was, sweetling?”

 

“Sansa. My Queen Sansa.”

 

She blinked.

 

~(~O~)~

 

He realizes he is back in the past relatively easily after that.

 

Fool that he is, he is not a complete simpleton. For one, if this was the Seven Heavens, he does not think Cersei would be here. She was too vile, too mad, too set on death and spite to be where his Lady Mother would rest. And he definitely would not be there either, he is sure. Not if he earned heaven. If he has earned redemption, it would not be to see his mother, aunt, and uncles, and Cersei again, whole and well. It would not be Casterly Rock. Perhaps when he had been younger.

 

Perhaps before Sansa, that is what he would have wished for.

 

But, since he is sure that this not heaven, he can only understand that he has been tossed back in time.

 

He is a boy, again, just five namedays, and he dreams of Winterfell and summer snows and red hair that had longed turned white. He dreams of mead at her table and the feel of her small hands on his arm. He also dreams of his friend, the wench, gleaming deep blue eyes that knew him all too well. He cannot fathom the fact that neither his queen nor his dearest friend are alive yet in this world. That he must wait for them. Wait he will, boy that he is. Wait forever if he must. Wait for the years to bring them back to him.

 

But can I allow time to turn just the same? To the horrors that passed my Queen, my friend, and all of the realms as before?

 

Jaime does not think that he will.

 

It is perhaps the Lannister arrogance, perhaps his sheer will to improve things for the women that he had loved, but Jaime thinks they can do better.  

---

I.The Magician

‘it points to the talents, capabilities and resources at the querent's disposal to succeed. The message is to tap into one's full potential rather than holding back, especially when there is a need to transform something.’

Jaime II

Right, perhaps he should have been a touch more discreet. He knows, had his Queen been in his place, she would have been more circumspect to her return to the past. Brienne- Brienne, well, perhaps she would have tried to be careful, but failed to be so.

 

Jaime himself has sort of thrown caution to the wind.

 

Because he has so much time to try and make his life better, and he will not be idle.

 

It is a miracle he manages only a handful of moons before he brings attention to himself. Part of him blames Cersei, and her covetous nature that allows him this much space. He swings his blunt training sword, easy as breathing now that he has brought some order to his unruly body of five-namedays.

 

He realizes with something apathetic in him his father is in the secluded courtyard, brows raised high on his head.

 

The Old Lion is back from King’s Landing, something he had not known. He wasn’t due for another five moons. He suspects his mother has something to do with that. As did Cersei's wails of him suddenly not being stupid enough for her taste.

---

II. The High Priestess

‘mystery, stillness and passivity. This card suggests that it is time to retreat and reflect upon the situation and trust your inner instincts to guide you through it. Things around you are not what they appear to be right now.’

III. The Empress

‘is traditionally associated with maternal influence, it is the card if you are hoping to start a family. She can represent the creation of life, romance, art, or new business’

 Joanna & Jaime

 

Meeting Sansa Stark, Jaime knew, would always have left him without breath.

 

“Your grace,” she said smoothly.

 

He swallowed thickly. He had kept her away from him. He knew he would not be able to see his love as a child without feeling like a monster. And he knew he could not demand her hand from Eddard Stark without tipping off the vultures of her importance...

But this he had never expected.

 

Because when Sansa Stark looks up, he knows.

 

Knows it in his heart and his very bones that the girl of five in ten knows him. And not as a King. But as at knight at her back, at her table.

 

“Lady Sansa Stark,” he said simply, even as he fights the urge to leap from his throne and lift her off her knees.

 

It is wrong. He should be at her feet. But Sansa is a lady and they are not alone. And she will pretend. He wonders how long has she remembered. How long has she remembered when she was a queen herself. When the innocence he had tried so hard to keep her with had been torn away by memory.

 

He is glad.

 

But also frighted what his queen will think of this new world he has brought. Did she approve? Did she see all he had done for the North, for the Others to come, and was grateful? Did she think Lyanna’s survival, and that of Elia’s to be the kindness he had meant it as?

 

Did she know that it had all been for her?

 

“Rise,” he tells her, and he barely holds the urge to tell her she should never kneel for him again. Barely holds back his emotion.

 

Careful, careful.

 

“” 

 

~(~O~)~

 

Joanna stared. Sansa. Sansa Stark with red hair and pretty blue eyes. Sansa Stark with skin like snow and grace like the Maiden. Unbidden, she remembers Jaime, five namesday old and begging for his Sansa. Begging for his queen. 

 

Joanna had always wondered if the gods had sent her son a vision. A vision of his Kingship. A vision of the fall of the Dragons in the wake of the Lion's. 

 

And now she wondered if that vision had included this girl. Sweet face, glorious in just as he had described as a boy.

 

Fire kissed. Snow skin. Eyes of Summer.

---

The Emperor

‘suggestive of stability and security in life. You are on top of things and everything is under your control. It is your hard work, discipline, and self-control that have bought you this far. It means that you are in charge of your life now setting up your own rules and boundaries.’

Sansa

 

Perhaps she should be gentle to him.

 

Perhaps she should rage and fury.

 

Perhaps she should finally grasp his face in her hands and kiss him senselessly as she had dreamed to do for so long.

 

Perhaps all three. Sansa Stark, once first of her name, does not quite what to do with the once commander of her queensgaurd. Ever since she had realized she was in a new version of the world, Sansa had waited in quiet to be before him once again. Because it did not take a genius to understand quickly that it was him that caused all these changes… And to see the man she had loved had been brought back, just as she had.

He comes to her in the Red Keep’s garden. Breathless. Crown askew on his golden head. Next to her, Robb and Jon alike tense. They were faithful, careful brothers(cousin), and they would have been fools not to notice the sheer intensity of the King’s gaze when he saw her for the first time.

 

She lowers herself to the King.

 

His face twists, and had he not just lived his entire new life ruling, she thinks he would have demanded she never do this ever again.

 

“Your grace,” she mummers. 

 

“My lady,” he huffs, and it is possessive and wanting.

 

Sansa tries not to swallow thickly at his voice.

 

“Walk- Walk a turn with me?” he demands, but she hears his question, “Alone?”

 

Robb and Jon alike jump, protest.

 

“Lady will be enough escort,” she tells her siblings- cousin, he is not my brother in this life- , not moving her gaze from him.

 

Jaime beams at her.

 

Handsome.

 

Whole.

 

Her heart flutters as it always did for him. A foolish girl who learned. Yet, perhaps she had never learned to be wary of him. Not after he had brought her home. Not after she realized that she loved the lion-knight with all of herself.

 

Even when she knew he could not, would not allow himself to love her openly back. 

 

"Queen Sansa," he said, after they had left her guardian wolf brothers far enough behind.

 

"King Jaime," she was not surprised he had known her. How could she? How could she not look into his eyes and see the man who had guarded her back, supped at her table, and brought her home. 

 

"You must have questions."

 

She laughed.

 

"Yes. And no. I have understood what you have done. You have done the world a kindness."

 

He huffed.

 

"I did nothing for the world."

 

Oh, how a girl could swoon for that. But long had Sansa stopped being the girl that swooned.

 

"No. I suppose not. You were never that selfless. But regardless, the world is better for it."

 

He winced.

 

"How long have you remembered?"

 

She smiled.

 

"Do you have instead questions for me?"

 

He laughed.

 

"Yes. Always. I am but a foolish man with a sword."

 

A familiar phrase.

 

"No. Not foolish. Impulsive. But not a fool. Too honorable. One who forgives so many slights to yourself. But never a fool, Jaime."

 

He shuddered when she spoke his name.

---

The Hierophant

‘tradition and convention. It can represent marriage in an arranged setup. It can also mean a teacher or counselor who will help in learning/education of the querent.’

---

The Lovers

‘relationships and choices. Its appearance in a spread indicates some decision about an existing relationship, a temptation of the heart, or a choice of potential partners. Often an aspect of the querent's life will have to be sacrificed; a bachelor(ette)'s lifestyle may be sacrificed and a relationship gained (or vice versa), or one potential partner may be chosen while another is turned down. Whatever the choice, it should not be made lightly, as the ramifications will be lasting.’

---

VII.The Chariot

‘overcoming conflicts and moving forward in a positive direction. One needs to keep going on and through sheer hard work and commitment he will be victorious.’

---

VIII. Justice

‘the fairest decision will be made. Justice is the sword that cuts through a situation, and will nyou are in a phase of introspection where you are drawing your attention inwards and looking for answers within. You are in need of a period of inner reflection, away from the current demands of your position.’

---

IX.Wheel of Fortune

‘introduce an element of change in the querent's life, such change being in station, position or fortune: such as the rich becoming poor, or the poor becoming rich.’

---

X.Strength

‘the triumphant conclusion to a major life problem, situation or temptation through strength of character. It is a very happy card if you are fighting illness or recovering from injury.’

---

XII.The Hanged Man

‘ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time.’

 

---

XIII. Death

‘an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore implies an increased sense of self-awareness.’

 

---

XIV. Temperance

‘you should learn to bring about balance, patience and moderation in your life. You should take the middle road, avoiding extremes and maintain a sense of calm.’

 

---

1. The Devil

‘seduced by the material world and physical pleasures. Also living in fear, domination and bondage, being caged by an overabundance of luxury, discretion should be used in personal and business matters.’

---

XVI.The Tower

‘danger, crisis, destruction, and liberation. It is associated with sudden unforseen change.’

 

---

XVII. The Star

‘inspired. It brings renewed hope and faith and a sense that you are truly blessed by the universe at this time.’

 

---

XVIII.The Moon

‘illusion and deception, and therefore often suggests a time when something is not as it appears to be. Perhaps a misunderstanding on your part, or a truth you cannot admit to yourself.’

---

XIX. The Sun

‘good fortune, happiness, joy and harmony. It represents the universe coming together and agreeing with your path and aiding forward movement into something greater.’

---

XX. Judgment

‘a time of self-reflection and analysis initiated by an awakening. Issues in your love life that you once ignored may be seen clearly now, and you have the chance to make adjustments.’

 

---

XXI. The World

‘ signals a feeling of completion and happiness. At times, this card can even suggest moving to the next step of your relationship, such as marriage or starting a family. As you complete one cycle in your life, you are also looking towards the future into next steps.’

 

Chapter 19: Of Eastern Shores

Summary:

Tyrion took his crofter's daughter and fled across the sea. When the War of Five Kings erupts, Magister Tyrion Lannister is found by his Uncle Gerion and is forced to contemplate his place in the world. Tysha Lannister simply wishes to keep her family together. Joanna Lannister only wants her father to stay the fuck away from the horror she knows is waiting for them across the sea. She can feel the magic of Westeros all the way in Bravos. Or who was once Prim Potter knows a magical shit show in the making. Her Death squad agrees with her.

Tags: Alternate Universe, Tyrion took Tysha and ran to the hills, Political Tyrion Took the Iron Bank and Made it His bitch, Tysha Stands Tyrion, Tyrion Simps Tysha, Joanna is a Witch, But a very Nice one,  Joanna was the Chosen One, Former Potter Same Rotten Luck,  Joanna Just wants Peace Please, But Magical Shenanigans are to be Had, Chosen one Again, The House of Black and White Simp Joanna, Joanna the Six-Year-Old With Assassins At Her Beck And Call, Tyrion Accidentally Rules Braavos ‘Cause of Joanna, He was a good Banker, But Death's Master Literally is Right There, The House of Black and White Wants To Take Care of Their Queen, Joanna Kind Is Done, Gerion Lannister Changed His Quest to Find His Nephew, He isn't good at Questing, Tywin Is Insenceased, Cersei is Losing It as Normal,

---

In all of his travels searching for his nephew, Gerion could admit he had been remiss to been think of Bravos.

 

Fool that he was.

 

But he knows he is the right residence when he spots the little girl in who is entering a few steps ahead of him, followed behind by two fetching women dressed in austere black and white. They freeze, and turn, weapons appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

 

Carefully, the girl turns a fraction of a second after them.

 

Emerald's eyes blink slowly, languidly. Full lips part. The little girl cannot be more than six, but from head to toe, she looks so much like Lady Joanna and Cersei that Gerion would have thought they had shrunk. The girl blinks. Her arms are full of flowers, and roses, all brilliantly purple. 

 

"... You look like my Papa," she says, simply, her voice soft and kind.

 

The women at her side slowly relax. The one on the left takes a single step back, her hands still on the hilt of her knives even as she sheaves her weapons. 

 

Gerion blinks.

 

"It is because I'm his nuncle."

 

She blinks.

 

"Then that means you are my great nuncle?"

 

He is baffled, yet pleased, at the fact that little Tyrion has had a child. Perfect, whole, child. She cannot be more than what, six years old? No sign of her father’s affliction. He knew not what possessed his fifteen-year-old nephew to flee, but judging by the age of the girl in front of him, it must be a woman. Perhaps some Braavosi girl he met at the docks of Lannsport…

 

"I am Gerion Lannister."

 

She hums.

 

"Your one of the good ones, then, that actually cared for my Papa," her lips curl slightly.

 

And he realizes that the girl is a Lannister yet. Their is a shrewd sharpness in her almond shaped eyes, large and fierecer then at first glance. 

 

He blinked.

 

“Of course. He is my nephew.”

 

The girl hummed.

 

A shout, warm and full, of sheer joy. The armed women do not remove their gaze from him, the one on the left, with the knives, narrowed her eyes at him. Fetching color of lovely indigo. A woman, just above a girl, pretty little thing with soft blue eyes and soft brown hair appears from the grand doorway of the residence. She rushes forward to lift the little Lannister girl into her arms.

 

“Mama,” mummers his grand-niece, soft and sweet.

 

The girl is not Bravoosi. She is a Westlander, through and through, Gerion knows, when she mummers a sweet hello to her daughter. It’s in the lit, the slight drawl of the ls’. She’s a Lannisport native, or perhaps from the surrounding farms, he would bet his sword and ship on.

 

“We have a guest,” says his grand-niece.

 

The sweet young woman looks up, sharply. Her soft blue eyes turn to near steel. She shifts his grand-niece easily on her hip. She frowns.

 

“So we do. Welcome to Bravos, Ser Lannister.”

 

“” 

 

Chapter 20: Do Not Stand By My Grave and Weep

Summary:

Sansa Stark sees the souls of the dead. And her closest companion from childhood is a Lady with a crown of blue roses, babies breath and blood dripping down her thighs. Her second is a Queen with the sun in her eyes and a crown of orange dragons upon her brow, with a sword wound gashed across her long throat.

TAGS: Sansa Stark Sees Dead People, Lyanna Stark Clings to her Niece, Elia Martell Clings to Lyanna and Sansa by Proxy, Or Sansa Stark is half-raised by her two Ghost Lesbian Aunts and Anyone Can Fight Me For This AU, 

 

Relationships: Lyanna Stark&Sansa Stark, Past! Rheagar Targyeron/Elia Martell/Lyanna Stark, Elia Martell/Lyanna Stark, Sansa Stark/Jon Snow, 

---

Her first is a lady of six and ten, who wears a crown of winter roses and baby’s breath, and whose blood drips down, down, from the apex of her legs. She wears only a thin shift, her hair a series of riotous curls of dark brown down her back, sticking to her flushed face. Sansa is not afraid of her, because when the Lady sees her, her smile is a beautiful one, crooked, and looks like her father’s when he is truly, utterly content. A rare smile. The Lady gives it out freely.

 

Sansa feels herself smile back.

 

“Does it hurt, Lady?” she asks the Lady, carefully, looking at the dripping blood. 

 

Sansa knows she must not get it on her new dress’s hem. Mother had imported the silk from the Riverlands, or at least, it had been dyed there. And she quite liked how it swished about her. The Lady does not act as if she is hurt. Sansa has seen Theon bleed- the older boy wailed for a simple welt that barely bled at all. And the Lady is able to smile despite her gushing blood.

 

The grey eyes of the young Lady in only her shift, go wide.

 

“ You… ” The Lady’s voice is a whisper on the wind, “ You can see me? ”

 

Sansa tilts her head.

 

“Can’t everyone?”

 

“ No. Not even my son, and he should have magic in his blood. ”

 

Sansa blinks.

 

“That is sad. Do you visit your son, even if he can’t see you?”

 

“ All the time. I am to see him well. ”

 

“That is good, Lady. Mother likes to see me well, too.”

 

“ What is your name? ”

 

“I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell,” Sansa replied, proudly.

 

That lovely smile like Father’s appeared on the Lady’s face.

 

“ Well met. I am Lyanna Stark of House Targaryen. Princess of the Seven Kingdoms. ”

 

Sansa beams.

 

“Mother says I am to be a Princess too!”

 

Princess Lyanna frowns.

 

“ It is not so happy a fate, being a princess. My husband- My husband made many mistakes. And because of it, our children will never be safe. My son is a secret prince, little Sansa, hidden away from anyone who may harm him. ”

 

Sansa frowns.

 

“That is sad. Who is your son, the secret prince?”

 

Princess Lyanna smiles.

 

“ His name is Jon. ”

 

“I have a half-brother named Jon.”

 

“ He is not your brother. He is your cousin. That is my Jon. ”

 

Sansa blinked, innocent as only children can be.

 

“He is my cousin? Is that why he makes mother angry?”

 

“ Your mother does not know him to be my son. ”

 

“Why?”

 

“ Because it is dangerous to know he is my son. ”

 

“Why tell me then?”

 

Princess Lyanna smiled.

 

“ Because you are a good girl. You will not tell anyone, will you, sweetling? Promise me, Sansa. Promise me you will not tell anyone. ”

 

“I promise… If Jon is yours, and he is not my brother, does that make you my Aunt?”

 

“ Yes. ”

 

“Then I will be good for you, Aunt Lyanna. I promise.”

 

“ Call me… Call me Lady, like you did before, child when you speak. It will keep Jon safer. ”

 

“Very well, Lady.”

---

Her Lady comes often. Sansa sees her, blood dripping and all, very frequently. To be kind to her, Sansa decides she must stay with her secret prince cousin. Every time her Lady see’s Sansa with her son, she finds that rare smile of Father on her face. And Sansa so likes to make people smile.

 

More than she does, Jon starts to smile when he sees her too.

 

At first, he was hesitant. Sansa wonders if he thinks her mean- that is the only reason he can think to not smile when he sees her. Everyone usually smiles when they see her. Mother had said to stay away from Jon, and maybe he felt her mean for it… At least, that is all her four nameday old mind can conclude when her secret prince cousin looks so hesitant to be with her at first.

 

“Jon!”

 

Sansa beams. Lady beams. Jon beams. So Sansa knows she has done the right thing.

“Sansa,” his voice is so, so careful.

 

Sansa is not so careful. She jumps into his arms.

Notes:

GAH MUSE LEAVE ME TO WHAT I ALREADY HAVE!

Chapter 21: All Mismy Were the Borogroves (PUBLISHED)

Summary:

Melara Hetherspoon, or well, Melara Lannister, is Mad. But well, you would be too if you were stuck in a loop of constant death, with memories of another life kicking it in your head.

TAGS: OC-Insert, Drabble, Time-Loops, Inspired by Live-Die-Repeat, Inspired by Re-Zero, Mad!Melara, But really Madness is Trauma, Massive Internal Swearing, It’s Warranted, Maggy Thinks Tramua Funny as Fuck, Tywin Also Semi-Adopts Melara because fucking damn it Tortured girls in His Household is a No Go, That’s His Job Damnit, Not on His Watch, Joanna is Just Happy for Another Child, Tygett Lannister is Actually Doing the Child Rearing, He Likes Her Crazy, Jaime is also all Down for Crazy Chicks, I mean he did love Cersei, Melara Gets Herself a Simp, Cersei is losing it, And Constantly Murdering, But really that’s on Brand™, Tywin is a little Perplexed, Really Son Must it be THAT one?, He Grudngily Likes Her But One Does Not Wed Crazy, Modern Girl In Westeros,  Joanna Lannister Lives!, 

Relationships: Melara Hetherspoon/Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister & Melara Hetherspoon, Melara Hetherspoon & Tywin Lannister, Jonna Lannister & Melara Hetherspoon, Maggy the Frog & Melara Hetherspoon, Tygett Lannister & Melara Hetherspoon, 

---

  Loop I:

The Stranger Breaths Upon you:

I

 

The first time it is a shock. She is frightened, with the words of Maggy the Frog echoing in her head like a much-repeated song.

 

Death does not come quickly the first time as Melara.

 

Melara is screaming for Cersei, clawing at the side of the well as she sobbed for her friend to help.

 

She can only see Cersei’s brilliant, golden hair, flashing in the fading sunlight. Then, the lid that had been slightly open before Melara had tripped, slid over the top of her only source of light.

 

Melara cries.

 

And then she dies.

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

I

 

When she wakes she realizes that it is not the first time she dies.

 

Melara- Am I still Melara?- breathes in the fresh scent of fire and the sea. It is only when she tilts her head that she realizes that she is in her bedroom in Casterly Rock. 

 

Melara does the only sane thing then, as she remembers other rooms, other places. Another life before Melara Hetherspoon.

 

She breaks.  

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

II

 

Funny thing about breaking.

 

It is a luxury rarely given to any.

 

Or not so funny thing. Because apparently her second maybe life comes with not only a murderous best friend but also a tragic back story pre-baked in. Her hysterical screams brings in her Lord Uncle rushing to her room, a riding crop in hand.

 

“ SHUT THE FUCK UP BRAT, ” he shrieks.

 

Which. Fucking rude.

 

She’s just been izekaied and/or transmigrated into a foot-note in a psycho-bitch’s story, thank you very much, she’s allowed to freak the fuck out- Not-Melara, is a touch hysterical.

 

Fuck you for thinking it’s not warranted. She’s just died, twice, in what feels like less than twenty-four hours, and woke to a beating for her very righteously freaked-out reaction.

 

The crop comes down. She knows it will. Melara’s memories tell her that she has been beaten bloody by it, scars lingering arcoss her pale back and the tops of her thin thighs- but she can barely register it beyond her own hysterical screaming.

 

But she can feel it soon enough as she is flipped around by a firm hand, held down by more hands as she screams and screams.

 

When Melara breaks this time, it’s actually quite literal.

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

III

 

The beating is not something that not-Melara finds unfamiliar. Being whipped bloody is normal for her.

 

Because Melara remembers many instances where her Lord Uncle, guardian of nearly a year, has raised a hand against her. However, with the context of older memories in her head-

 

Not-Melara is quite fucking pissed instead of numb to it.

 

Like.

 

Excuse you . Motherfucker I am a fucking child are you whipping me motherfucker-

 

The ridding crop comes up again, slides down her Uncle’s hand from the amount of blood on it. The crop is a favored method of hitting her- her Lord Uncle is quite the avid swordsman, strong and sure of his strikes, even in his fury. He knows what not to hit. Never her front. Never her face. Just enough for every movement to be agony, but enough  were she can forcibly function. Her hysterical screams stop. A bit out of her control. Her young body knows better then to  scream now that the numbness is setting into her back. 

 

“What is the matter with you girl ?!” spittle flies.

 

Her Lord Uncle- Not-Uncle? Is a sprayer. Her body flinches. Even as fury bubbles in her throat.

 

“Dreams,” her voice is timid and soft.

 

She hates it.

 

“Gods, can you be more of an imbecile? Lady Cersei needs not a half-wit as a hand-maid,” he growls.

 

She turns, just a bit, to stare at him.

 

Cersei Lannister the brother-fucker, the Mad Queen, the baby murderer.

 

My murderer. 

 

Melara feels hysteria crawl up her throat, another scream building up-

 

A sharp hit to her inner thigh. She keens at the pain. Her Not-Uncle smiles in amusement, lips curling in a teeth-baring smile.

 

“Get your shit together, you little fool.”

 

She nods, swiftly. Another unplanned action.

 

Oh god, jesus, the Seven and the Old- what the fuck.

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

III

 

She watches him leave when he thinks her quiet enough. The ridding crop is whipped on her bloody sheets and hung up by the door. The hands holding her down belong to her handmaiden, a sharp faced women named Jeyne.

 

Not-Merla’s body hurts. But Her mind is whirling.

 

“I was not a child,” she whispers to herself, even as she is harshly thrust off the bed like a rag-doll.

 

The bed is stripped with practice efficienty, and she realizes she has been shooved into a bucket of cold, cold water.

 

It stings.

 

Salt water. Her back and thighs throbs as she sits in the cold salt water.  She had been a crone in her first life when she died. And old maid unwed. But- not. She had been nearly twenty-seven- seven and twenty- and she died via a car crash. Truck versus pedestrian never is in favor of the pedestrian.

 

I izekaied. Transmigrated? That second one. Because I awoke in a body not my own, a life half-lived. But it was also in a fantasy world she knew of.

 

Westeros.

 

Fucking Westeros. And it had to be into the body of a girl that would have- worms taking my maidenhead oh for the love of every living fuck why?!

 

Melara- was she Melara or was she the woman she had been before- 

 

She paused.

 

Her name.

 

Her name.

 

What had been my name?

 

She sobs. She cannot remember her name. She knows the future of the Seven Kingdoms- from the novels and the show and possible interpretations- but I do not know my own name.

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

V

 

I have to get my shit together.

 

She’s going to call herself Merla. She has no other name to herself, and Not-Merla is a horrible disassociative way that leads to an unhealthy reality. For better or worse, she is now this child, this girl in this fantasy universe. She’s died twice. Once via a fucking truck of all the cliche, and once through the actions that had been the original Merla’s doom. The question now is how to proceed. Was it a Re-Zero situation? Would her death trigger her to return to just before she made the choice that made her die? Or Was it Live-Die-Repeat? Would dying loop her back to this day, whatever day it was? Or was her death as Merla-

 

Clawing, begging for her friend as water gathered in my lungs-

 

FUCK HEY TRAUMA FUCK YOU.

 

She buries that forcibly. Not right now, please and fucking thank you. She breathes. Had her death as Merla only been a vision of her coming death? She twitches in her bucket, numbly watching Jeyne the Maid toss her sheets into a laundry tub by the door, humming merrily to herself as if she hadn’t just help hold down a child to be beat to a bloody pulp. Merla looks around, away from Jeyne the Maid. Merla hadn’t been the diary type- parchment was fucking expensive- and her Lord Uncle, the asshole, wasn’t the type to waste shit on her. Nothing like a calendar- because why would a little lady need to know shit like that? She has no idea if this is the morning before, after, or whenever she has rewoken as Merla in that damn well.

 

She purses her lips. She has no context, none-whatsoever.

 

Well fuck .

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

VI

 

She is dressed by her indifferent maid. Her Uncle’s creature. Melara kinda wants to punch her when the woman smirks at her welts as she shoves her out of the wash bucket.

 

She actually pinches the raised welt in her inner thigh. Merla jumps.

 

“Oh My Lady,” she all but purrs, “You should’ve not raised the Lord’s anger. Foolish girl. He does it for you. Now dry yourself you willful thing.”

 

She tosses her a towel- thin as a air and scratchy beyond hell. It is matted already with dried blood. Melara’s blood.

 

He does shit all you crazy sycophant. You just think he will carry you to new heights because he’s fucking you. But he’s also fucking the chamber-maid and some other too young thing.

 

Jeyne is a small-folk women of twenty and then something- and she is reveling in the torture and beating of an eleven-year-old girl. She’s a pretty thing, pretty and shapely, and she help beat Melara because she thought it was fucking funny to watch a noble girl be brought so low. Melara hates her. Hates her, more than her own murderer.

 

And that’s quite a bar.

 

She is dressed, her wounds covered up expertly with actually decent bandages, polituce. She is dressed in scratchy small clothes but fine shift, and an even finner dress atop it. Black and orange, long sleeves to the ground. She feels like she’s dressed in a Halloween ren-fair costume. Beautiful and fitting of the sole remaining heir of Hetherspoon Keep, but a stark contrast to what she thinks is the life a girl being betean for that very right. When she catches a glance at herself in the mirror, she freezes.

 

She’s a pretty girl, with a soft heart-shaped face, eyes a vivid sea green, and fiery red hair in ringlet curls. Freckles dot across her small nose. She like a fae, she is so pretty.

 

“What’s taking you so long, stupid?”

 

The maid drops to the floor in a hastey cursty. 

 

Melara freezes.

 

And turns to her murderer.

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

VII

 

She’s so beautiful it borders on ridiculous. Doe-eyed waif, glorious curls of gold, and sharp feline emerald eyes that linger on her.

 

Melara feels blood seep into her shitty small clothes. Feels her wounds pull as she turns daintly to the daughter of her liege lord, and gives a respectable, if shallow cursty in greeting.

 

“Good morning, Cersei,” an automatic smile, a sweet, boisterous voice escapes Melara.

 

Cersei smirks at her. Her eyes shine with genuine warmth, and Melara remembers nights curled in her bed, feeling safe from her Lord Uncle beatings as Cersei wove tales of her future queen-dom, hands laced in Melara’s red hair, of Melara being her handmaiden in the glory of the capital. She remembers giggling as they learned the steps in a dance, as they played in the golden sands of the Sunset Sea, launched themselves into its clear waters, fat- young Jeyne jesus dang memories with its fat-phobia retric, Jeyne struggling to catch up to them-

 

Remembers golden hair in the fading sun as she cried.

 

Welp, that’s a fucking trip.

 

“You’re here early, My Lady,” snaps the maid.

 

Cersei turns a glare to the woman.

 

“And who are you , to question a Lady of Casterly Rock?” she snapped, she drew herself tall, “I will have you on the streets of Lannisport begging within the hour, girl .”

 

The maid pales. Turns a pleading look to Melara. The welt she pinched burns.

 

“Send her now, Cersei, she’s horrid,” she says simply.

 

Cersei’s glare turns to pure glee.

 

“Of course, Melara, guards! ”

---

Loop II:

The Crone Lives in You

VIII

 

She watches Jeyne the Maid be dragged off ‘for insulting a Lady of Casterly Rock’ with little care.

 

She smiles as the woman’s back is beat bloody, even as Jeyne pleads at her and her Lord to save her.

 

Cersei only cries for more lashes, only cires out lies of Jeyne the Maid’s words against her, her Lady Mother, and the great Lion Lord himself. No one questions Lady Cersei Lannister. No one dare thinks she is making shit up even though she’s ten-years-old and cruel .

 

Melara watches it all numbly, even as Cersei smirks at her.

 

“Why haven’t you told me she was wretched, Melara my friend?” she whispers, giggling, whipping away at fake tears, “I could have done this ages of ago. I am to be the queen, and you are to be my favorite handmaiden- you cannot let anyone be wretched to us!”

 

Melara wonders the same. She realizes that Cersei, before the woods-witch and Melara’s secret crush on Jaime, that Cersei cared for her. As much as she is able. She would not hesitate to kill her, much as she wouldn’t late in life hesitate to throw away her brother-lover when he looses a hand, but Melara still has the affection of Cersei Lannister in her hands… 

 

Why had she never used that before? Why did she allow Her Lord Uncle and Jeyne to abuse her? Her meomories paint Melara as a bold, lively thing, that yet coward underneath her Lord Uncle’s hands.

 

“Melara, why don’t we go to Lannisport. Did you not say there was a woodswitch there yesterday? Let us go get Jeyne, and quickly, before anyone would think to know of us!”

 

Melara tilts her head. Time to test a theory.

 

“...Yes. Yes, let’s do that.”

---

Loop III:

The Warrior Rises Fury Within You

I

 

She does not remember death that night when she wakes in her bed again the next morning, even as Jeyne the Maid comes into it, seemingly without a care, back no longer mutilated by the lashes of the knights of Casterly Rock. Because she had avoided the well and Maggy the Frog altogether, fleeing with young Jeyne.

 

Melara blinks. Poison possibly?

 

Or did her Uncle strangle her in the night for making the women that made her bleed bleed as well?

 

She purses her lips.

 

Fuck.

 

Re-Zero or Live-Die-Repeat it is then. Not a vision.

---

Loop III:

The Warrior Rises Fury Within You

II

 

Well. I need to fucking play this smart.

 

Fact one, I die, and wake up in my bed the morning just before the start of the Lannisport Tourney, temporarily hypothesing on Re-zero rules, I am reviving the moment just before I do something to trigger my death flag.

 

Subect fact one, in Loop I, it was Original-Melara’s descion to sneak away to see Maggy the Frog.

 

Subject fact one, in Loop II, it was letting Jeyne the Maid get beat near half to death 

 

Fact two, I was once someone else before I was Melara Hetherspoon.

 

Fact three, I need to intelligence gather before anything else.

 

“Gods, My Lady,” Jeyne whined, fondling the hanging ridding crop in her hand. She cannot hide her growing glee as Melara stares at her in apathy, “Why must you be so lazy? The sun is starting to rise and yet you stay in bed. I will fetch your Uncle.”

 

Melara breathes shallowly, even as a plan starts to form in her mind.

 

She needs to time this well.

---

Loop IV:

The Father Brings You To New Heights

I

 

“Gods, My Lady,” Jeyne whined, fondling the hanging ridding crop in her hand. She cannot hide her growing glee as Melara stares at her in apathy, “Why must you be so lazy? The sun is starting to rise and yet you stay in bed. I will fetch your Uncle.”

---

Loop IV:

The Father Brings You To New Heights

II

Her screams echo through the halls of Casterly Rock, even as she is screaming, screaming, and running, full tilt to where she can escape. Her torn night shift, her arm dangling uselessly at her side- an overzealous man chasing after her with a riding crop-

 

Melara knows that waking up shrieking is all sorts of off-putting to anyone, but really, her guardian’s first choice to whip her bloody for it is all sorts of uncalled for. Especially since the fucker dislocated her shoulder in the process. Death was supposed to be the end and peace if not torture not a fucking chance for a ONE-UP being used she wants a fucking refund, motherfuckers. Zero out of ten, fuck this noise, this ain’t the mood bitches. It just so happens to be that she shrieks right where the Lannister Family is breaking their fast. She doesn’t care, she scrambles towards them, her flopping arm and everything 

 

Melara knows its her best fucking bet to sell this, and fuck anyone in her first life who called her a bad actor.

 

The look on the Lannister faces, however, are so hysterically funny that her screams stop despite her resolve.

 

She dodges out of the way of her Uncle, not-Uncle’s reach.

 

“I partition Lord Lannister for the right of my own guardianship,” she hisses, straightening her back and glaring at the Lord in question, “And for you to punish my Lord Uncle for the abuse of the rightful heiress of House Hetherspoon.”

 

Lord Tywin stares.

 

And stares.

 

If he were any other man, she thinks he would be gaping at her.

 

“Guards, restrain Lord Micheal.”

 

She got beat to hell and back by a man named Mikey, oh sweet baby Jesus Melara, me or not what sort of bullshit is this. How the hell did I miss his name was Mikey?!

---

Loop IV:

The Father Brings You To New Heights

 

“Cersei, do not touch her arm,” hisses out Lady in the Lannister Fridge, a very pregnant Joanna Lannister.

 

Melara tries not to laugh hysterically at her best-friend-murderer’s put-out face, even as she lowers her reaching hand.

 

Cause what the actual fuck.

 

“I’d be best to reset it,” she tells the lady, firmly.

 

If she wasn’t thirty pounds soaking wet she would be using the firm edge of the stone table in front of her to do it herself. She looked around. A Lannister with blonde-brown hair and scared hands the size of oven mits-

 

“Ser Tygett, would you mind terribly popping my shoulder back into place? It’s easier if someone else does it.”

 

The Knight gaps at her, jaw working furiously.

 

“Of course, Lady Melara,” his voice is stiff, and it sounds like he’s suppressing some rather vivid emotions.

 

Melara vibes with that. She nods, grips absently at Jaime’s waist, who squawks at her actions but sorry sister-fucker needs must, and she pulls off his leather belt one-handed, even as he scrambles to keep his pants up. She stuffs the belt in her mouth and marches over to the towering man.

 

He nods to her, and one-handed pops her shoulder back into place.

 

Sweet Mother and Baby Jesus that fucking hurts. But also you did that with one hand, damn do you lift, or what?

 

She spits out the belt. Permanently marked with her teeth marks. She stares at it.

 

“Forgive me,” sister-fucker, “Lord Jaime. I thought best not to swallow my own tongue.”

 

She is about to use the belt as a makeshift sling, when Ser-Tygett-Lifting-Lannister grabs his own surcoat and removes it, and oh damn that’s pretty. Even through his thin undershirt, she can see he’s well formed. Well-developed muscles- all golden skin. The Knight tares at the bottom part of the peplum of the red velvet.

 

“Pardon, Lady Melara,” he says softly, and oh that’s alright pretty man. He lifts her arm carefully and ties it in a functional swing.

 

“... Thank you, Ser,” she mumbles.

 

He smiles sadly at her, and she marks him as her favorite Lannister on the actual kindness on his face.

---

Loop IV:

The Father Brings You To New Heights

 

“How long has your Uncle been beating you?” It’s Lord Lannister, the Great Lion that speaks, causing the entire room to go deadly silent.

 

Right. Gotta be logical about this shit. He’s not gonna give a fat fucking fig about a girl being beaten by her guardian. He’s only making a point because of my more serious injury, and because he’s in front of his wife. 

 

“Since my parent's death,” she says simply, “Since the will of my father specified that I would inherit Hether Keep upon my marriage, I believe he’s been put out. He also wasn’t supposed to be my guardian. Yet the two in line before him have died within the year.”

 

Lord Tywin straightens. She grins, feral, she knows, and not prettily at all.

 

“He’s been careful. One was a wheelhouse accident with a cracked axle and the other one was a hunting accident. His beatings have been constant, but smart- I become Lady Cersei’s companion for a reason, Lord Lannister, minimalizing my injuries to both not die, and because I was unsure if my accusations would be taken seriously. But this morning he pushed it enough for me to present my case.”

 

His jaw worked.

 

“He has murdered two of my loyal subjects,” he growls, there he is, THERE’S THE MURDER MAN SHE EXPECTED, “Rest assured, Lady Melara, I will seek Justice for this.”

 

She stares at him.

 

“Pretty sure he murdered my parents, too. He was the oldest male after my father, but he directly directed the ownership of Hether Keep to you, Lord Lannister,” she tells him. 

 

The fury on his face- the pure paleness of her Uncle’s-

 

It is glory itself.

---

Loop IV:

The Father Brings You To New Heights

---

Loop V:

The Maiden of your Love

Notes:

AN:

My Readers: Hey Moon Witch when’s *insert fic here* gonna be updated?

MoonWitch’96: …. HERES A PLOT BUNNY THAT IS COMPLETELY UNRELATED.

My Readers, sweet as can be: OOOH. Cool. But no seriously, when is-

MoonWitch’96: *DISAPATES UNTIL THE MUSE STRIKES AGAIN*

But seriously.

My muse and I have been in a fight. Doesn’t help I’m on cough syrup because of the Flu- NOT COVID- and have been staring at my documents for like, the whole week guys. And then starting new ones and wanting to bang my head against something.

Sorry.

~Be Well,
Moon Witch ‘96

Chapter 22: The Lioness Ramp III

Summary:

A story of a modern woman being reborn as Cersei Lannister, and honestly, it goes as well as you think. In which not-Cersei fucked off to Essos as soon as she could, and only comes back because there is a Song that calls her from across the sea, Ice and Fire that is. Or Not-Cersei returns after years away and says a mighty fuck it when the King of Westeros bids her to marry his son.

Parings: Cersei Lannister/Rheagor Targaryen,

 

Characters: Cersei Lannister, Original Female Character, Gerion Lannister,  Rheagar Targaryen, 

 

Tags: Ace! Cersei, Asexuality is a Spectrum Bitches, Izekai, Reincarnation, Joanna Lannister Lives, Cersei fucked off to Essos, Because Fuck Westeros, Magic Abound, Or Magical Girl Cersei, Or Former Archelogist Cersei Sees Your Doom And Raises You Logic, Jokes On Her- she Got MAGIC Instead, Cersei Has Bee AWOL for Years, Avoidance of Incest For Twenty Alex, 

---

Chapter I:

The Return

Cersei I

King’s Landing was a right mess.

 

She knew that as sure as anything, without even looking at the city.

 

And still smelled vividly of shit.

 

Her first thought is that saving the vague memories of the people she hadn’t even liked, even if by sole virtue of tangentially, was wrong. That she should just turn around, and get back to her relatively safe life in Essos. That the fate of the entirety of a continent should not solely be on her fucking shoulders. And that the people of Westeros didn’t need diet-Cersei Lannister to come back from the dead.

 

But then she remembers Jaime's face, sweet and honorable.

 

Tyrion's face, earnest and curious, just born and so innocent of anything to come .

 

She remembers the warmth in Joanna’s lovely eyes, the desperation in which she had held onto life.

 

She remembers the curve of Genna’s smile.

 

The sorrow that clung to Tygett’s face.

 

The way that Gerion had looked the other way when he had found her two years ago, mouth agape at what his niece had become in the time she had left.

 

And the woman that was in Cersei Lannister’s body couldn’t just walk away.

 

So here she was. She felt more then knew that entering the Game would kill her. 

 

Not that she knew for sure.

 

Not with the whole, fucked off for nearly a decade to get away from marrying Robert Baratheon and fucking her own brother. And the whole, Maggoy the Frog coming to her, instead of the other way around. A cackle on her old face. Even when the old bag had reached to taste her blood, Cersei had slapped her hand away. She already knew too much of the future- or a future that she had basically stomped into a quick death by running away.

She didn’t fancy some golden shrouds for the children that would never exist. And taking one look at Robert Baratheon’s pimply face during the Tourney of Lannisport had been exactly what had driven her away. She had been in her seventies at the time of her first death, had never really craved sex in the first place, and though she had her share of lovers, it had been done in service of fulfilling them. Never her, she had never felt much attachment to sex. The concept of marrying a child in body, as well as mind, had been so horrifying that she had escaped on the first ship bound for Essos that she could find. Especially knowing that sex would be forced, and at the leisure of a partner, she may not even like... 

 

And because of the aftermath of Tywin Lannister freaking the fuck out. A sane person does not live in disdain in the wake of that megalomaniac.

 

“Dāria,” said her beloved guard, Daena walking into her private cabin, “We have arrived. We are within Blackwater Bay.”

 

She was one of the first people to look at the crazy girl from the West stomping all about old Valyria and seen the potential, instead of madness. And she had been the first to pledge herself to her. She had been through thick and thin, and Cersei loved her with a fierceness she knew was felt two fold on Daena’s part.

 

“Daena,” she muttered back, shifting a sheet of shimmering blonde hair behind her shoulder, “I am aware due to the bloody smell.”

 

Automatically, Daena set to work, roping her hair into a complex fishtail braid. She had been many things, Daena. Friend, confidant, sworn shield… Being her handmaid was near second nature at this point.

 

“You come from this place?”

 

Cersei heard the disapproval, same as she saw Daena’s nose wrinkle in her pretty face in the  mirror. Cersei snorted.

 

“No. My once home is on the opposite coast.”

 

“The rock place that makes you cry in your sleep?”

 

Cersei hummed. A sobbing monarch did not make an impressive thing, and if there was one thing the New Republic of Valyria needed, it was to look impressive to the medieval fucks that wanted to use them. Only Daena knew of her tears, especially in those early years away from the West. 

 

“Yes.”

 

Daena fished her braid with a flourish and reached for the purely weaved valyrian steel veil that would mask the color of her hair, as well as shimmer prettily in the sun. Placed it perfectly on her head, and tucked away all her hair. From the outside, it made her hair look  paler, more suitable to the expectations of the people outside. Daena reached for her crown, a circlet of more of the mythic steel, that connected to the porcelain mask she would use to further hide her face, an early thing she had adopted to hide her apparent youth, and her beauty. She placed it expertly on her head, and reached to help her with the mask.

 

Because the face of Cersei Lannister was indeed one of the prettiest damn things to ever be made.

 

More’s the pity that the soul of an old hag lay inside. Daena always did say it was lucky she was so bloody tall to fool people of her age. 

 

“You can show your face, are they not your countrymen?”

 

Cersei sighed and attached the mask. It was all very phantom of the opera, covering only her upper face, and the same color as her skin. It was an eerie thing to wear, but it served Cersei all too well.

 

“Dear Daena, my country is the Republic. My home is there. This is just a diplomatic visit. That will more then likely end in a declaration of war.”

 

“Do you believe it will be that drastic?”

 

“They invited me to fuck and breed with their princeling, with the guise of a marriage offer written between the lines of the invitation of one descendent of the once Great Valerian Empire to another to meet.”  

 

Daena’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursed in a way that always show displeasure and promise of violence.

 

Cersei is reminded of the time she first met her Faceless friend before they had befriended each other. The way she had gripped tightly on her golden hair and threatened to cut her pretty face off of her head to use for their own purpose. And then had promptly dropped her hold with horror, despite Cersei’s clumsy attempt at theft for science really , for Daena had felt the touch of death on her and had right been scared spitless.

 

Because the many faced god took everyone in the end, but so rarely gave back, let alone so blatantly and naturally. She was a ‘gift’ from the god of Death, and Daena took shit like that seriously.

 

“ What ?”

 

Cersei smiled at the indignant face her friend took.

 

“See? War. Imagine the rest of the Senate, a foreign power attempting to take me from them. ” 

 

 “Valar morghulis‎,” hissed Daena, voice acidic.

 

“Daena, sweetling, valar dohaeris,” returned Cersei with a smile.

---

Chapter II:

Unyielding

Rhaegar I

"They say she is the ugliest thing in the world," whispered little Tyrion Lannister to his Uncle Gerion, "And that she hides her face from the shame of it. That only a monstrous woman could unite the people of the Free Cities into the Republic of New Valaria."

 

The Wandering Lion's lips twitched. His eyes gleamed.

 

"Oh? You do know she didn’t unite any of the cities. She simply made a new one. If others flock to it, it's hardly her fault."

 

Little Tyrion made a face, wrinkling his nose.

 

"I know that. Uncle, did you not see her face when you went to the Republic?"

 

"Indeed, I did."

 

"And?"

 

"She is the most beautiful thing in the world. She hides her face so that the gods will not become ashamed of their own beauty in comparison," said the young lion, voice teasing to his nephew.

 

The little lion pouted.

 

"No one can be prettier than mother. "

 

Lord Gerion smiled. And Rhaegar was fascinated in the soft look that the usually overly jovial man took.

 

" She is. Lady Joanna is fair, yes, I grant you that nephew. But the Dāria is… Is beyond words."

 

Rhaegar knew the lord to be a wanderer, prone to fanciful talk and tall tales.

 

But his sincerity in that moment was not feigned.

 

He swallowed thickly. To think that his lord father planned to betrothed him to this Queen of the New Republic of Valyria seemed… Idiotic. Even if New Valyria was a new state, formed in the once poisoned land of his ancestors, cleansed by her hand- Dragons found alive all tamed by her song- He knew not what father expected. 

 

Now on top of this, he finds the only woman he was allowed to marry is also the fairest in the world by one so well-traveled as Gerion Lannister.

 

This is madness.

 

Was his thought as he watched the approaching ship . What sort of madman thought to make a steel ship, and then succeed ? He breathed in astonishment at the sight. It reminded him of the Rhoynish long ship, with the thickness of the Western Galleon. Some sort of chimney was in the middle of the ship, a happy trail of steam escaping it as it cut through the waters with impressive speed. It was painted a brilliant white, was beautiful and curious, adorned further by what he recognized but could not fully understand as Ancient High Valyrian written precisely along the hull.

 

The metal ship docked.

 

"Where are the dragons?" hissed his father.

 

His answer was a sweet voice raised from the deck, perfectly projected. And the sound of dragon song followed, answering the call from the deck.

 

Rheagar lost his breath.

 

 Appearing from the clouds in a dramatic swoop, a dragon, resplendent and golden landed before the ship, nearly its length. It was unlike anything that Rheagar had ever read of. Slender like a snake, four limbs thin and delicate, claws like a bird, but feathered wings great and large, with golden feathers crowning its great head, like a lion. It let out a roar that shook his heart as the wings spread. 

 

She will not yield to me. Who would with such power?

 

A procession of splendid figures began to emerge as the gangplank descended with some unseen mechanism, dressed in new and old Essosian, from across the Free Cities. Every single one has represented in their garb The song from that sweet voice was joined by the figures as they began to turn to their waiting party, laden with goods of Essos and the New Valyria.

 

Delights foreign, old magic sang in the air.

 

And at the back of a procession, a figure that took his breath anew.

 

The woman that many thought to be his future bride was a slight figure, just slender and hints of womanly curves. Crowned in splendid silver- no Valyrian steel , a meshwork veil of metal, like armor, a circlet of gleaming blues and runes of old, and indeed as all the rumors had spun, a plain white mask of porcelain to hide her face. Her dress was nearly plain, and covered her arms and neck, a white Yi-Ti silk, but interlaced with gleaming strands of more valyrian steel, tinted with a spectrum of all colors, ripples interlacing every color imaginable. Even her hands were adorned with gloves, ringed with more shimmering steel.

 

Hidden as she was, Rheagor knew this queen to be wickedly smart to dress as such.

 

Even Tywin Lannister breathed a gasp at the causal wealth and splendor she displayed, head to toe in once mythic steel, as the woman glided down the gangplank. Her movements, and the lips of what he has assumed as part of the mask parted. Her skin is nearly as perfect as porcelain. Her lips were painted a vivid red. From a distance, the effect was quite unsettling. An almost human face parting in such a vivid, animated movement. The song that left her lips was Valyrian, and it was only every other word that Rheagor could understand. Ancient and hallowed, even being as fluent as he was, he did not understand every word.

 

More dragon's cries filled the air.

 

And he gasped as they danced through the air, launching from every corner of the ship, some as the dragons he knew, others serpentine as the large one, all in a rainbow of colors. He counted perhaps a half dozen and knew from rumors that this wasn't even half of the fleet that protected the New Republic. The dragons that landed around the Queen in perfect step were just the babes that needed to be with her to grow properly, the largest being the golden serpent that followed the song of their mistress in perfect pitch.

 

The baby dragons followed, not as perfect, but in a lovely chorus that lifted his heart.

 

Winter will crumble. Perhaps I am no promised prince in face of this.

 

The dragon song and the chorus of the New Republic held in the air for a moment, before it faded into stunned silence. A woman, young and of valyrian descent with violet eyes and dark skin, stepped forward, from behind the crowned woman.

 

“THE DARIA OF THE NEW REPUBLIC OF VALERIA,” Called out the woman, “OUR DARIA.”

 

The people of the ship cheered and stomped their feet. The figure raised a lily-white hand gloved, and her lips parted in a smile, and the sounds eased off into polite silence.

 

“I greet the people of Westeros,” spoke the Dāria, “On behalf of the New Republic, I am welcomed upon your soil.”

 

His father was vibrating in his seat and launched himself to his feet in a desperate, clumsy movement. Tywin Lannister was startled, as it had been rehearsed that he would speak to announce their welcoming party.

 

"The King of the Seven Kingdoms welcomes you, great Valryian Queen," his voice was a rasp. 

 

And his eyes were full of greed. Fuck.

 

The Queen from afar tilted her head, gently. A smile twitched on her lips. A touch mocking, Rheagar thought. He could not see her eyes, shadowed beneath some sort of mesh, but he knew without a doubt she was looking at his father and found him wanting. He felt, not for the first time, the shame of his father’s deteriorating condition.

 

“Thank you, King of the Seven Kingdoms,” her voice is smooth as silk, her tone even and without flatter at the jagged appearance of his father.

 

There was mockery in her tone, slight as it is, Rheagar thought, and he… He could not blame her.

 

“ My babes, ” she called in bastard Valerian, looking to the dragons, “ Roost in your nests. Aslan ! ”

 

The strangest dragon, the large golden one landed daintily for all its bulk, causing several of their greeting party to hold their breath, or flinch back. The smaller ones flew in a flurry back towards the ship, disappearing into the depths of its hull via a similar mechanism as the plank. They pressed against it, and doors opened for them. 

 

His father swayed on his feet, his pink-tinged eyes wanton and staring at the queen.

 

Her hands rubbed along his great head.

 

“Aslan,” she cooed, voice as sweet as her song, “Will you protect the ship?”

 

The dragon purred. A thunderous sound akin to a cat. The queen beamed.

 

“Good boy.”

 

“Your Grace, we have prepared the Dragon pit-” started Tywin Lannister.

 

She frowned.

 

“You cannot chain a dragon,” she and her voice was as fierce as her dragon’s roar, for all that she spoke evenly, “And if you attempt to herd any of my dragons to that monstrous hole, I will take it as an act of war. ” 

)OOOOOO(

 

“Forgive me,” he said approaching, and the woman, Daena reached for the sword on her hip, “But I was wondering, your Grace, but your name was given as Dāria, is that not the word for-”

 

“Dāria is her grace’s title, not her name,” the venom in the woman's tone was sharp, and it was rare that such vitriol was ever sent his way.

 

Rheagar blinked expectantly. Lady Daeana glared at him. Rhaegar cleared his throat.

 

“Prey tell, your Grace, what is your name?”

 

The Dāria’s lips twitch in amusement. Or mockery.

 

“Our Dāria is only to be called Dāria,” hissed Daena, with a lifted brow, “Her name is a secret song. A secret and pleasure of only a few thankful souls.”

 

“It is a necessary notion that the Republic plans to make a tradition,” the monarch’s voice was sweet and fair, even in plain speech, lyrical and he noticed with a jolt flawlessly spoken Common Tongue, “For I am just Dāria,  nothing more or less to my people. When the position is passed, the next Dāria or Dārio will follow this. I live to serve my people. My name is not what matters. It is what I am that matters.”

 

"So your legacy is left to no one," said Lord Tywin, voice disdained.

 

The Dāria tilted her head. And smiled. One of which showed all her teeth.

 

"My legacy is the Republic. My people are the legacy. What is a name to a country? Merely a passing whisper in the wind. Forgive me. You are?"

 

Tywin stared down at the small queen, and it was then that Rheagar realized how small the queen was. The Hand of the King positively towered over her as he lifted a brow at her. But somehow it meant little with how easily she dismissed his very existence. 

 

“I am Lord Tywin Lannister.”

 

“Ah. Yes. The Hand of the King, which is another word for a servant to the King? I met your brother, Gerion.” she asked, delicately, she smiled again, “Forgive me. There are so many crests here in Westeros. I did not know it for a moment.”

 

“Crests?”

 

“A word for sigel of a House, my Lord,” simpered a Lord Varys. He was looking at the Daria with undisguised fascination.

 

“And you are?”

 

“I am Varys. I am, like you, of Essos… Not of your Republic, I am afraid.”

 

The angry woman, the one of who had acted as the Queen’s harold, stepped forward. Her lilac eyes shone.  

 

“Valar morghulis,” she said, silky.

 

Rhaegar was surprised that Varys visibly paled. Stepped back with a vicious flinch.

 

“You-”

 

“None of your schemes, Whisperer across the Narrow Sea. My Daira is not for the likes of you.”

 

“Daena, sweet, do not scare the poor man.”

 

She turned her mask, lips pulled back and teeth baring to Lord Varys.

 

“However, if you threaten my people, eunuch, I will happily allow Daena to have you. Am I clear? I have no ill will toward you nor the people of this land. Keep your hatred of magic to yourself.”

 

The eunuch flinched again.

 

“Serve your people, Spider, do not come for me and mine.”

 

“I did not mean offense,” whispered the Master of Whispers, and he twitched a step back.

 

“Indeed. But it will be taken if you make a single move against my Republic. My people will not be hurt by your meddling.” 

 

“I serve the people.”

 

“But not mine. And I will not have it, sweetling. Now take yourself away before Daena decides to add a name to her god’s list.”

 

The man stepped back again.

---

Uncle Gerion is crying.

 

Cersei smiles gently. Even as part of her is loving the gaping face that her biological father holds.

 

“As promised, Ser, if I were to find it. Brightroar, the sword of your House, returned from the ruins of King Tommen’s ship.”

 

Uncle Gerion takes it with trembling hands, even as he easily sinks to his knees.

 

“Your Grace, ” He says, sobbing.

 

“Let it be known, that I keep my promises to my friends, Gerion Lannister.” 

---

“DARIA!” Gerion cries.

 

He throws her Brightroar. She catches it, hilt first. Of course, you knew, Uncle. She lets the scabbard fall as she elegantly removes the blade with a flick of her wrist. Her people start to stamp their feet to the beat of ceremonial battle. Their pounding against the marble before the Iron Throne is the beat of her heart.

 

“ Hear me Roar, ” she intones, fiercely, and she swings her House’s sword.

 

For the first time since she had given it up, its magic is cast. Flames and wind follow the arc of her swing.

 

The man with the blue-tinted lips curses, his own Valerian blade’s magic is nothing to the fire and wind of Brightroar . She smiles, feral.

 

“IMPOSSIBLE! ONLY THE BLOOD OF THE BLADE MAY INVOKE ITS-”

 

She swings harder. More flames and wind. He barely parries. 

 

“ You will not take from my people, ” she snarls, “ Magic is the right of them, not an object to tame and bottle to your fucking whim! It is wild, it is free, and it will not be chained !”

 

…..

She curses to herself, softly.

 

Because it is not until the magic is all but dissipated that she realized what had happened to her mask. Slowly, she breathes. Her hair, golden and fair as spun metal, is a mess of curls about her. Exposed, her veil torn in the torrent of her and the assassin’s magic. Her mask, still partly on her face, has shattered from her skin. Jagged, and her left eye is exposed. Only a fierce movement from being lost. Her only saving grace is that damned hair, curly and riot, that hides her identity from the assembled Lords and Ladies of Westeros.

 

Cersei is so fucking tired.

 

She reaches for her half-destroyed mask. Rips it off, and throws it as hard as she can. It breaks completely against the marble floor. Her chest is heaving with both emotion and her effort. Another fucking drugged-up wizard attempting to steal from her people, for the wonders she so easily gave away when all they wanted was lock it away and for themselves. 

 

“Daria!” calls Daena.

 

Cersei breathes. Her grip on Brightroar is knuckle-white.

 

“All is well, sweetling,” she tells her best friend, tiredly, “All is well.”

 

Daena takes a shuddering breath.

 

“OUR CHAMPION, OUR DARIA!” She calls, voice thick, “SHE HAS DEFEND US AGAIN FROM THE TYRANNY OF THOSE WHO WISH TO CHAIN US.”

 

The beat of feet, the claps of her people is thunderous.

 

“ DARIA, DARIA, DARIA! ” they call. 

 

And Cersei realizes she has nothing, nothing to hide. Her people, as she has fought for them, will fight for her.

 

Fuck everyone who dares to chain me.

 

She turns, and Cersei Lannister faces Westeros for the first time in a decade, as herself. Battle shown, face prettily flushed with the victory against the man set to kill her. She knows her emerald eyes are ablaze, and her glorious curls take in the light beautifully. 

 

Que, she thinks with a feral grin as they begin to realize who she is, chaos.

 

Jaime moves first.

 

Because of course, he does. She feels her smile shift as he steps forward with shaky legs. His mouth is parted in his shock, even as tears start to fall.

 

“Surprise?” she says, laughing, her Westerland accent finally peeking through.

 

He laughs. It is loud-pitched and hysterical.

 

“You. Were. Dead, ” Jaime says, “Father said you died .”

 

She smirks.

 

“Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated.”

 

Jaime sobs. Sobs.

 

“Ce,” he gasps, in a wail, “ Ce! ”

 

She drops Brightroar . And opens her arms for her brother, gripping him tight as he collapses on top of her.

 

“ Father, nearly killed me by mistake,” she whispered, gently, “And…. I saw no reason to stay after he failed. I was a coward.”

 

Jaime’s grip is bruising. Hurtful. She grips him back just as tight. 

 

“I forgive you, Ce, I forgive you.”

---

The last he saw his daughter, his wife had been bleeding and screaming.

 

And Cersei-

 

Cersei had crumpled to ash, as he gripped what he thought was a curse and ill magic against Joanna. He had watched his daughter fade into nothing because he was a fool who knew not what his eldest was doing to save Joanna.

 

His future queen, his perfect babe, died at his ignorant hand. 

 

Or so Tywin always thought. 

 

“How?” he whispered, devastated, “Joanna said I killed you. Joanna- Joanna said I killed you when I broke your magic circle.”

 

Cersei tilts her head, emerald eyes a glow.

 

“It should have killed me. It nearly did. But that is not my Fate.”

 

“The Stranger does not wish to part with you yet, Daria!” hissed her guard, the woman’s eyes full of tears.

 

Cersei sighs.  

 

Chapter 23: There Is Fire In Your Heart

Summary:

The Queen in the North dies at the foot of wirewood tree, pierced through the heart by the one who loves her the most. A babe with sapphire and violet eyes is born to the Realm’s Delight before anything Strong quickens in her womb.

Or in which Sansa is reborn nearly two hundred years in the past with one task-

Prepare for the Long Night. There is no black, there is no green.

There is Red.

Or, Targeryon Uncles have a habit of falling for their nieces.

Tags: Drabbles, Time-Travel, Reincarnation, The Old Gods,

---

She is born to the Realm’s Delight, but once she had been born of Rivers and of Honor and Duty. Her father is the gods, or perhaps it is a Song… Her heart had been pierced by a long claw, with the deep, soulful eyes of a promised prince staring her down as his blade glowed molten hot. 

 

Somehow, somehow her mother of this life understands when she looks at her. For when the Realm’s Delight looks at her, she knows

 

“Sansa,”  her mother murmurs, sweetly, exhausted, voice deeper than the voice of the Lady of Rivers, yet she is little more than a child herself as she holds her warm and safe against her chest. Sansa has not felt warm in so long. She clings back, hands covered in red blood clutching to her white hair, “Her name is Sansa .”

 

“What?” her grandfather's voice is confused.

 

“Her name is Sansa, father, Sansa Targeryon,” repeats her mother, stronger, firmer.

 

“I thought we would give her a- how queer . Her hair is-”

 

Red. Red. Sansa knows. She has red in her hair as the wirewood trees. She is Sansa- Sansa of blood and bone of the heartstree.

 

“It is perfect,” her mother says, sternly, with more strength, “She is perfect. A perfect princess.”

 

She was once a Stark.

 

She will always head that Winter is Coming, Family, Duty, Honor, Hear me Roar-she is stone-

 

But she was dead and born in Fire and Blood as the white wind blows.

---

She lives in a world between dreaming and memory.

 

Ice.

 

Fire.

 

A White wind that howls her name and calls for a lover that was never their’s. 

 

Sansa cries.

 

She has never been in love, never held such tenderness in her breast. The closest to love she has ever felt had pierced her through her chest.

 

A gentle hand against her cheek. A song of a foolish knight and a pretty girl in a maidenpool leaves her mother’s lips. Sansa cannot bring herself to cry when her mother sings to her. How can she, when she feels love and soothing and true?

 

Her mother sings.

 

And Sansa breathes.

---

She meets her kin in this life moons after her birth.

 

Their faces are pale, pale things, and for a single moment she thinks she is dreaming yet.

---

A shriek.

 

A dragon comes for her. Splendid red-streaked and sliver. Like her hair.

 

She feels her. Her Lady, brought back for her in fire flesh. The dragon is here, the wolf is here. Screams.

 

Ice and Fire.

 

Winter and blood and flame.

 

People scream in terror as a Cannibal descends in the sky.

 

Sansa only bares her teeth.

 

Hot blood falls, and Lady holds the head in her jaws.

 

One bite.

 

And the Wolf-Dragon kills it.

 

Sansa walks. Tottering legs against the sand of the beach. Her mother screams her name. She pays it little head. Her heart is ahead, and she is ready to hold it again.

Chapter 24: Starfall(ASOIF& STAR TREK)

Summary:

Star Date, not quite sure, but this is Ensign Rosa Castille of the exploratory ship S.S.Red Star, requesting emergency recovery from a class M planet because I think I accidentally already broke the Prime Directive by crashing into the courtyard of what the locals call the Red Keep. Or the Red Star of the prophecy comes with passengers.

OC/Prince Rheagar Targaryen

“ Systems damage, ” said the computer, and Rosa just held in a swear.

 

“Which ones?” she said, desperately.

 

“ Propulsion. Navigation. A suggestion of Emergency landing,"

 

Rosa breathed deeply. Altair behind her whimpered.

 

"Fuck. Possible points of landing?" She cried as their escape pod bucked.

 

"M class planet. Uncharted. Acceptable levels of oxygen-"

 

Altair whimpered louder.

 

"Getting us there !" she shrieks back. 

 

She focused. She wasn't the best flier- not like-

 

"Status of the S.S. Red Star?" She cried.

Chapter 25: Of Her Wirewood Crown

Summary:

Once, she had been the daughter of Catelyn and Eddard Stark. Once, she had been the Queen in the North, River Queen, and Vale Queen. Once, she died in her bed, secure in the knowledge that her people would be safe and build again. Now, she is the eldest daughter of Lyarra and Rickard Stark, a babe at his feet, with the whisper of the Old Gods in her ears and a call from the North of the terror her sister had already slain.

Or Sansa Stark decides that the game is one she will always win.

Time-Travel, Sansa isn’t Done Yet, Tremble Before the Queen, Old Gods Want a Due Over, They Play for Keeps, Night King Wants His Promised Bride, Fire & Ice & the Dawn Collide, Rheagar is a simp,  Arthur is a simp, Sansa Stark Wrecks the Status Quo,

 

Relationships: Arthur Dayne/Sansa Stark/Rheagar Targaryen, 

---

She takes a careful step. Red hair, darker, even more than her previous body, flutters in the wind. She knows it is an even more perfect match for the colors of the wirewood leaves in this life.

 

“Sansa!” a voice soft and careful.

 

Everything about her once grandmother, now mother, Lyarra Stark, is soft and careful. Soft and careful and tempered by Northern wants and wills. She has lived through two Winters to Sansa’s endless one, and Sansa admires her for it.

 

Adores her, really.

 

There is little else she can do but love her kin.

 

Her hair is dark red, the reason all of the Stark brood of her original generation were the same. 

Chapter 26: And They Were Children

Summary:

Benjen Stark returns from the most hellish Ranging journey with a Child Army behind his back. Chaos ensues.

OR Benjen Stark saves Westeros because apparently, everyone else is too busy to do so. At least he’ll have that adventure he and Lyanna promised they would have. Featuring a Feral! Jon, a 100% done Sansa, a gleeful Blackfish, and Fruit the Child, who will and can cut everyone for their King Benjen.

He returns to the Wall to chaos.

 

But then, Benjen Stark excepted nothing less. It has been… Years? Years, since he left for that Ranging Trip.

 

Gods, he doesn’t even know what year it was. 

Chapter 27: The Girl With the Evil Eye (PUBLISHED)

Summary:

Lucia wants nothing to do with the crazy she is now related to. Too bad she doesn’t have much say on the matter.

TAGS: Modern Girl in Westeros,

 

Relationships: Lucreys/Aemond, Original Character/Aemond

---

She was named Lucia once.

 

Lucia, 

 

And she was born in the place of a Strong Boy meant to die. She was born in the place of the spark, the kindling and flint that began the rage of Fire across Westeros.

 

She is the first note to the Dance.

 

Or, well, she’s supposed to be.

 

But the girl born to the Realm’s Delight had one, single thought about that.

 

Fuck that.

Chapter 28: She Wore A Cloak of Feathers(A Look of Sadness In Her Eyes)

Summary:

During the Greyjoy Rebellion, Sansa Stark is lost in the godswood. From the wild touch of grief, Jon Snow becomes a Stark.

It is years later that Alyane Stone lives under the yoke of her father’s suffocating rules. It is only when her Father begins to look at her with lust, does she realize she cannot bear it any longer, and flees for the one land he hates beyond others. Alyane goes North with songs on her lips, hair dark with pitch and fear in her heart. The Wilds beneath her feet rejoice. Alyane rides wild with a Mother Wolf and pups, and she runs free from all that had nearly destroyed her.

Jon Stark falls in love with a singer in the forest, with black hair and bright blue eyes, the wild girl who runs with wolves and dons a cloak of feathers.

TAGS: Alternate Universe, Role Switch, Sansa Stark is raised a Bastard, Jon Snow is Raised as a Lordling, Vague retelling of Allerleirauh(Alls-Kind-Fur), L+R=J, Catelyn Stark Becomes a Better Person, Ned Stark Trusts His Wife(Eventually), Magic Girl! Sansa, Sorta Music Fic, Sansa Stark refers to herself as Alyane Through most of the narrative, Hidden Identities, Fae Elements, Or In Which the North is More Alive Then Anyone Ever Thought, Westeros Does Grim Fairy Tales, Coming of Age, Slowest of Burn, Sansa is 13, Jon is 15, We Going Show Timeline CAUSE I DON'T CARE, NO BETA we Die Like Ned Stark,

 

Pairings: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Alyane Stone,

 

Character: Alyane Stone, Sansa Stark, Peter Baelish, Jon Snow,

---

Alyane I

 

Alyane Stone knows not when her father went mad.

 

Was it back when his grief began, for her beloved mother? Was it when he failed his promise for wedding her before she died in childbirth? Was it when Alyane had begun to blossom into a woman, instead of a girl? Erasing her in his mind, as she had grown, as her features lost childhood fat, had he seen more and more of his lost love? She has yet to bleed, yet, she is already taller, with budding hips and breasts… Her father’s hands linger there, at her shoulders, her hips, his grip too strong, too steady… She knows not when she had realized that her father...

 

That her father stopped seeing her, and instead only saw the ghost of her mother.

 

“Perfect, sweetling, so perfect. So much like her. Only your skin is different, fairer, for you are safe here with me, instead of hard at work-”

 

She knows the tale, old as time. As familiar as the tale of Joquill and her Fool. Her mother was a common girl who lived in the Riverlands, who talked sweetly to the Lordling ward of Lord Hoster Tully, who sold river flowers by her small barge. She sang as sweet as a dove, she had course hands, she kissed sweetly like Arbor Gold… She was swayed into a not-so-innocent love and fell pregnant by the time that her Lord Father had lost a near-deadly duel to Lord Brandon Stark. All she knows is that her mother had died birthing her, and on that day she had died, her Father had made a vow, to all the gods that would listen, that he would wed no woman but one like her mother.

A woman who would fit the delicate ring he had made for her, all those years ago. He had kept the ring, and Alyane had long heard the tales of the various women that had offered their hand to his, as Master of the Coin, and how he had slipped on that ring as a test of faith.

 And her horror, her horror in realizing when her father had given her the ring, slipped it upon her hand with intent in his pale eyes.

 

Alyane only knows that her only course- her only course now to keep any semblance of dignity is to run, flee into the night, to never see her father again. 

 

She looks across the expanse of the Fingers from her window, fiddling with the ring he had gifted her but moons ago-

 

“Yours, my sweet. But I knew it would be.”

 

It is a ring that she has known all of her life, kept safe and careful by her father. Silver, delicate, set with blood-red rubies and brilliant sapphires, to match her mother’s hair and eyes.

 

To match her . 

 

It is only when- When her father had begun to speak of how fine a wedding cloak for her he would make, that Alyane had seen what he truly wanted, what he was commanding her to do. 

 

I may be a bastard, Alyane thought with grim certainty, But I do not wish for this sin. I do not invite it by merely being, it is my father, sick and twisted by ghosts and grief I had never realized possed him. I know not what no septon would rightly choose to allow incest, but Father is clever, even in madness, his hands are slick with dragons plenty, and perhaps a not-so-pious Septon could be swayed. A stranger far from the Fingers could be brought.

Her wedding was to take place soon, her impossible tasks were made. Her tactics to delay her father, perhaps bring him to sanity, had done naught but encourage him. He was to make her wedding an event, more grand even then that of King Robert and Queen Cersei. She had asked for an impossible maiden cloak, a cloak made of all the feathers of all the birds of the World and he had brought her a cloak made of all the birds of the world. She had asked for a wedding dress like the night sky, sparkling as the stars and the dark of the night, and he had granted her a dress of black Yi-Ti Silk, samite and richly woven silk and gold in Dorne in the shape of stars, that twinkled like the night itself. She had asked for another dress, shining gold like the sun instead, and he had made her a dress of golden silks, with golden jewelry of the West, bright and shining like the Sun. When she had called for yet another dress, shining like the moon, and he had made a dress of velvet white silks, and gossamer layers of Myrish silk that shone like the moon.

 

She was to wear them all, switch between Sept, dancing hall, and just before the bedding…  

 

And he thought her too stupid to realize that he was setting himself up as her groom. He spoke nothing of another man, nothing, and demanded she give him more and more kisses, lingering too close to his mouth- 

 

She swallowed bile, hands trembling around the ring, the stupid ring, that had convinced him of this madness. 

 

If I fling it from this window, Alayne thinks. And she slips it off, raises it, palm slick with sweat-

 

But it is her mother’s, the only thing she has of her, beyond tales of her sweet songs and pretty flowers she had mongered, pressed in a book of sweet poetry that her father kept yet.

 

She breathes. Hands curled around the damning ring, rubbing at the scales of silver that line its side. She has only one choice, really, one she had been thinking of since before this madness has taken her father.

 

He has only ever spoken illy of one Land, one realm in all of his travels, her a babe in his arms.

 

The North is not safe.

 

Wild, untamed, the prison of his childhood friend, Catlyn Tully, the woman he says had encouraged his love with my mother. He called her dear, and he called her mind broken by the ways of the North. The Wilds and cold hold the largest Kingdom of the Seven. I’ve read stories, since I was very young, of the way they flay men alive, the way they drape their enemies from their heathen trees. That it is practiced still, or so all my servants whisper since two Stark girls went missing from their Household. One was raped by a mad Prince, one a babe barely beyond speaking age. 

 

But. But it is in those wilds that she believes she has a chance. Her father is the Lord of the Fingers, a small House thought he may lead, he is Master of the Coin, one of the richest men in Westeros. His reach is upon every land, save one.

 

So, Alyane has planned.

 

Planned for tonight, the eve before my accursed wedding .

 

She breathes. Slips the ring upon her finger once again.

 

She is on a ship to White Harbor before the sun sets. She looks across the reddish sunlight against the water, watching the Fingers slip further and further away. The salt air is cold, biting, hitting like a knife. She wears her cloak of feathers, warmer than she could ever dream, beneath a cloak of plain dark wool, in her pack is her wedding dresses, and a near King’s ransom in coins to make her way to the vast forests that her father had called haunted. Her red hair is now dark as pitch, and her mother’s ring fits on a small chain between her breasts.  

 

For the first time in moons-     

 

For the first time in moons, Alyane Stone smiles .

---

Alyane II

 

She reaches White Harbor, and she thinks it is a dream.

 

For it looks nothing like what her father would have said it to be. For one, it is much grander than the Fingers’ largest hamlet, and though it is nothing to the seat of their House at the Finger Keep, Sansa cannot say it is much pooer either. And, she can say with certainty, even from the docks, the people in the North-

 

Do not look wild.

 

But all of my texts, she thinks, bewildered, even as she browses through the wares at the market, purse tightly against her front. She smiles, laughs, a little, and she wishes, wistfully, that she could stay there, in White Harbor. Foolishly,  

Notes:

In which your girl is listening too much to Talyor Swift, The Sword, and Erutan respectively.

If you’re wondering, for Eurtan, it's her album ‘Raindancer’, for The Sword its ‘Apocryphon’ and for Taylor Swift, its ‘Evermore’.

*Stares at the Fics I have published.*

*Stares at my grinning madly Muse who is channeling the ‘Pepe Silva’ Meme*

*SIGHS*

But no seriously I churned this out in like, TWO HOURS, and I swore to high heaven BECAUSE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON THE SWEETLY SUNG QUEEN GODDAMN IT. Also, sorry if its rougher than usual. I'm going to go bed, and hopefully be inspired by some of the fics I'm supposed to be focused on.

But I also really like this.

....

I might work on this darn it.

Chapter 29: Wayward

Summary:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,” Ser Arthur Conan Doyle.

Salome Aguilar acknowledges that the impossible is that she is stuck in a book, and as a character whose fate is to suffer a busload of injustice and indignities- She decides to change that completely.

OC in Sansa Stark.

TAGS: Transmigation, OC-INSERT, SI! Sansa Stark, Baby! Sansa

Relationships: Ned Stark & OC

She is Sansa Stark, daughter of Eddard and Catelyn Stark.

 

That is what everyone tells, her- Sansa Stark the little Lady of Winterfell, alive and well despite what apparently was an unintended collapse in the family’s ancestral tombs. Found days later, half lucid, and now, fucking ‘amnestic’. 

 

Only that’s not quite true, is it?

 

Her name is Salome.

 

She is twenty-four, not a girl of five, and definitely not the child of the man who stands in front of her, for the second time in several days. The first time, however, that she is alone with him.

 

She swallows thickly, picking at her nail beds.

 

“I’m not your daughter,” she tells the man in front of her, “My name is Salome Aguliar, and I am very much confused about how the hell I ended up in your daughter’s body. I don’t know where Sansa is, but I am not her.”

 

I’m not Sansa Stark, she thinks, and she twitches slightly at the fact that she even has to confirm this to herself, even as Ned Stark reaches for her.

 

“Sansa, sweetling, you are confused -”

 

She doesn’t mean to cringe away from the man. She does, after all, understand that he has a right to try and soothe her as the biological father of the body she is currently hijacking, but she can admit it.

 

Salome knows for a fact that she fucking isn’t Sansa Stark. 

 

And that’s the fucking rub, she thinks, even as she scoots away from Ned, each movement like a stab, each bunched up part of her sickbed’s blankets makes her want to writhe. The man gives her this look- this devastated look that makes her feel about two inches tall.

 

Salome feels like fucking shit.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she wishes desperately she could be more accommodating. But touch-

 

Touch is fucking a no-go for her at the moment. She can’t stand the thought of this stranger gripping at her. She can’t. Her entire body feels like a live-wire, sensitive. Even the thin silk shift she is dressed in makes her skin crawl, and feel off.

 

“Am I to understand,” says Ned Stark, as his hand drops, “That you are not my child? Truly?”

 

She picks further at her nails. It hurts too. But she can’t fucking help the bad habit. Trying to stop something of her urge to fucking cry. 

 

“No, sir,” she replies. Her American accent feels jarring, even to her, and she winces as Ned Stark’s heavy brows furrow in what she can only guess is worry.

 

“I am no ser,” says the man.

 

She winces.

 

“Right, Right! You are a lord?” it’s sounds so fucking awful. Awkward on her lips. But she’s Mexican-American, there’s no lords to fucking name, and while maybe calling him Don Ned would be an acceptable equivalent, she thinks it would just confuse the Westerosi man, “I’m sorry.”

 

Ned Stark gives out a noise that is so deep and slow she doesn’t register it as a sigh until he sits at the foot of her sick bed.

 

“Stop,” his voice is careful, even, and his accent is pleasant eve “Stop apologizing. This is not your fault, child.”

 

She swallows.

 

“I-” what can she say, what? She swallows again, “I stole your daughter’s body. It may not have been my fault, but I still have to live with the consequences. You believe me?”

 

He gives that weightful sigh again.

 

“I am unsure. I am not one to believe in magic. But you act nothing like Sansa in the days since we found you, and while that can easily be explained away to you being addled and confused- Something tells me to listen to you. Never mind that you are not acting like a child.”

 

She shifts in her bed, each movement fucking hurting, but she is unsure if it's because of the wrongness that she is experiencing in a body that isn’t her’s, or because Sansa’s body had been beaten to all hell by the collapse in the crypt.

 

“Thank you,” she says, quietly.

 

Ned Stark looks at her with deep, startingly light grey eyes.

 

“Do you remember anything before you woke as my daughter?”

 

She picks absently at her nail beds. Usually, she can stave off the urge with her fidget rings, but that’s back to where her body is. It hurts to move. It hurts to fucking exist, but she finds the habit coming to her.

 

“I was studying in the Unversity Library, for my thesis assignment,” she sighs, pulling back the awkwardly long hair from her face. If she didn’t feel guilty for it, she would have asked someone to chop it all off, her own hair was cut in a no-fuss pixie cut, and the longer hair was jarring as fuck to deal with, “I think I fell asleep at the desk.”

 

“What Library? I have not heard of ‘Unversity’ Keep,” he asks, and she blinks.

 

And feels horrible. The determined look on his face is about to fucking die.

 

“Um. It would be the Colombia library. Fuck,” his brows rise high on his head at the curse, and she feels Sansa’s skin flush in a dark blush, warmth in her cheeks near unbearable, “Maybe I should mention that I’m not from Westeros? I am from- I am from very far away.”

 

Ned Stark frowns. His fists clench on his thighs.

 

“As you have switched with my daughter, you mean to tell me she is a foreign land? Unfeasibly away from me?”

 

She winces.

 

“And in the body of an adult? I’m twenty-four-years-old,” she says, wincing again.

 

Ned Stark is quiet, for a moment.

 

“And I like to say that I’m unsure if this was caused on my end. My… country doesn’t have magic like Westeros.”

 

Ned blinks.

 

“Magic has long since faded from Westeros.”

 

She lifts a brow.

 

“You say to the bodysnatcher. Try again, my lord.”

 

“Lady Salome,” she jolts slightly at her name, even if it fucking relief to hear it, “You have not stolen. If you were a thief, your course would have not to be to confess the moment you had me alone with my wife. You, along with my daughter, have suffered from this magic. Now, for the sake of my daughter, I must ask, where she is, is she in danger?”

 

Salome blinks quickly.

 

“No. If she is in my body, and just as hysterical as I was when she woke up, I can only assume she was sent to the hospital- a place of healing. Custody would have been given to my parents, as they are stated to be my guardians if I am unwell.”

 

“Would my daughter be considered unwell? Where you harmed as she was?”

 

She frowns.

 

“I fell asleep at a desk in a secured Library. However, claiming to be another person would be alarming to anyone, and waking up in a body that isn’t your own leads to panic, I can assure you. She would be considered unfit to take care of herself.”

 

And sent to a psyche ward for calling yourself a fictional character. But doesn’t think her parents would do that to her. They would try their best to care for Sansa in her place, but that was if Sansa Stark was in her body. She hope the kid was, because the only other thing she could think of was transmigration, and that meant that Sansa and Salome had switched places during death or some sort of cliche fuck-shit like that, and that meant that Salome had bit it in the fucking library of all places.

 

Sansa Stark may have died in the collapse.

 

Dramatic and tragic.

 

Dying from overwork?

 

Yeah, not so much. She decides to keep that close to the chest. Chances are, she would never know. The closest magic she can think to this nonsense in this world is the House of Black & White, and she’s like, eighty percent sure they would kill her on the spot or try to take Sansa’s body for future study, as they serve Death and there’s a possibility that she is technically dead. She isn’t sure of the assassin's true purpose, but in her limited experience, it wasn’t a smart idea to poke a hornet’s nest. Which she thinks is the best metaphor for the death cult that Arya bullheadly rushed into.

 

They took a child’s sight to teach her a lesson, and tried to kill her when she decided ‘No thanks.’. That’s a fucking pass from me.

 

“Than she would be well?” his voice is desperate.

 

Salome swallows.

 

“Yes. Yes, she would,” it isn’t a lie. If she was in her body, Sansa would be fine if she was caught. 

 

Sansa Stark in the narrative was naive, but once shit the fan she was able to more-or-less adapt. She doesn’t think she would fall short of doing the same in another world, especially considering death wasn’t as fucking likely on Earth.

 

“Then I will endeavor to do the same here, for your parents caring for my daughter.”

 

And there’s the guilt, Salome thinks with a suppressed wince.

 

“Thank you, sir,” she replies, and winces, “Er, my lord. Sorry. Sir is a term of respect, not simply for knights.”

 

“I would forgive the mistake, Lady Salome.”

 

“Aguilar. My surname is Aguilar. Um, my House.”

 

“Your words?”

 

She blurts the first quote about eagles that comes to mind, “‘ As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill. ’”

 

She prays that Helen Keller would forgive her for stealing them.

 

“Ah. Interesting. And long.”

 

“Not all of them can be three words,” she replies, blithely.

 

He stares at her.

 

“Where do you hail from, Lady Aguilar?”

 

“The United States of America. My current um, realm would be New York.”

 

“Yet you know of Westeros?”

 

And people call this man fucking stupid.

 

“I have some of Sansa’s memory, my Lord.”

 

He hums.

 

“Most call me Ned.”

 

“Don Ned, then. A term of respect from my parent’s country- erm, kingdom,” she replies. The terminology is a bit hard to remember.  

 

“They are not from the realm of the United States?”

 

“Immigrants of a country called Mexico. They came to move our House to a land of opportunity. It paid off.”

 

He frowns slightly.

 

“Would they believe Sansa of her state?”

 

“No, Don Ned. They would not.”

 

His fists clench again. Than relax.

 

“So they would think her mad.”

 

“She wouldn’t be hurt,” she reassures, “And Sansa is a smart girl. She would adapt, swiftly with her intelligence. I only worry that living as an adult at five… Six? would be as confusing for her. My country’s customs are very different. At my current state in life, Sansa would be woefully unprepared.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I am a scholar.  I… I have the equivalent of several Maester’s chains. Sansa is five. Clever kid that she is, she’s still a kid.”

 

Ned blinks at her.

 

“My daughter is not a goat.”

 

“Kid as in child, Don Ned,” she replies, amused despite the situation.

 

He chuckles. It is stilted.  His expression is very, very sad. She feels horrible all over again.

 

“So what now?”

 

“Now, you recover. Perhaps this magic will undo itself.”

 

Salome hopes for this too, desperately.  

 

“Perhaps.”

---

Recovery is a slow process.

 

While Sansa’s body hadn’t broken any bones by some miracle, she was basically a walking, talking lump of bruised flesh.

 

Her bruises were probably to the fucking bone, and it hurt so fucking much. She doesn't understand how a child would cope with this. She sighs, wincing, as Lord Ned helps ease her into the hot springs beneath the heartstree. Salome tries not too look at the bleeding, weeping face of the tree. Even as every hair on her current body fucking stood on edge, every single time she entered this space.

 

She hisses as the entirety of the water touches her.

 

Ned holds her up, the pads of his fingertips holding her head above water. The touch is feather-light, but she still feels a throbbing pressure for it. The searing heat seeps into her, and she breathes sharply at the heat.

 

“Are you sure this is prudent?”

 

She hums.

 

"It'll help relax the muscles. So yes. It just hurts," she can't stop the tears from leaking from her stolen face, “I don’t have any open sores, and it's been nearly a week. The bruises would do well to heat therapy.”

 

The man is quiet, for a moment.

 

“When you said you were a maester, or the equivalent of one in your Kingdom, did you study medicine?”

 

She huffs.

 

“No. I’m…” how does one describe an athlete? She had been a cheerleader since she was a child. She was no stranger to injuries or muscle strain, if never to the extent of this, “I was studying Mythology.”

 

“Mythology?"

 

“Stories, Don Ned. Stories. Stories of monsters. Of fantastical creatures and people.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I found them fascinating.” 

 

“It does not seem- It does not seem useful.  In a world without magic.”

 

"The stories we tell of the dark can speak a lot. There is a monster of the Philippines, named the Manananggal. It was a monster that preferred to feast on the flesh of unborn children. It is often linked to their cultural fears due to their high infant mortality rate in their countries recent, and far away past."

 

Ned blinked down at her.

 

“That is highly disturbing.”

 

“The word means ‘to separate’ because the creature splits itself in half at night.”

 

He huffed a laugh.

 

"How strange."

Chapter 30: She Wore A Cloak of Feathers(A Look of Sadness In Her Eyes) II

Summary:

During the Greyjoy Rebellion, Sansa Stark is lost in the godswood. From the wild touch of grief, Jon Snow becomes a Stark.

It is years later that Alyane Stone lives under the yoke of her father’s suffocating rules. It is only when her Father begins to look at her with lust, does she realizes she cannot bear it any longer, and flees for the one land he hates beyond others. Alyane goes North with songs on her lips, hair dark with pitch and fear in her heart. The Wilds beneath her feet rejoice. Alyane rides wild with a Mother Wolf and pups, and she runs free from all that had nearly destroyed her.

Jon Stark falls in love with a singer in the forest, with black hair and bright blue eyes, the wild girl who runs with wolves and dons a cloak of feathers.

TAGS: Alternate Universe, Role Switch, Sansa Stark is raised a Bastard, Jon Snow is Raised as a Lordling, Vague retelling of Allerleirauh(Alls-Kind-Fur), L+R=J, Catelyn Stark Becomes a Better Person, Ned Stark Trusts His Wife(Eventually), Magic Girl! Sansa, Sorta Music Fic, Sansa Stark refers to herself as Alyane Through most of the narrative, Hidden Identities, Fae Elements, Or In Which the North is More Alive Then Anyone Ever Thought, Westeros Does Grim Fairy Tales, Coming of Age, Jon Snow Falls Quick and Hard, Sansa Falls Quick and Hard, 

 

Pairings: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Alyane Stone,

 

Character: Alyane Stone, Sansa Stark, Peter Baelish, Jon Snow, 

---

Alyane I

 

Alyane Stone knows not when her father went mad.

 

Was it back when his grief began, for her beloved mother? Was it when he failed his promise to wedding her before she died in childbirth? Was it when Alyane had begun to blossom into a woman, instead of a girl? Erasing her in his mind, as she had grown, as her features lost childhood fat, had he seen more and more of his lost love? She has yet to bleed, yet, she is already taller, with budding hips and breasts… Her father’s hands linger there, at her shoulders, her hips, his grip too strong, too steady… She knows not when she realizes that her father...

 

That her father stopped seeing her, and instead only saw the ghost of her mother.

 

“Perfect, sweetling, so perfect. So much like her. Only your skin is different, fairer, for you are safe here with me, instead of hard at work-”

 

She knows the tale, old as time. As familiar as the tale of Joquill and her Fool. Her mother was a common girl who lived in the Riverlands, who talked sweetly to the Lordling ward of Lord Hoster Tully, who sold river flowers by her small barge. She sang as sweet as a dove, she had course hands, she kissed sweetly like Arbor Gold… She was swayed into a not-so-innocent love and fell pregnant by the time that her Lord Father had been making his way to the Small Council. All she knows is that her mother had died birthing her, and on that day she had died, her Father had made a vow, to all the gods that would listen, that he would wed no woman but one like her mother. A woman who would fit the delicate ring he had made for her, all those years ago, a token of his love, a token meant to turn into the Wedding Ribbons of the Seven, but never had the opportunity to. 

He had kept the ring, and Alyane had long heard the tales of the various women that had offered their hand to his, when he had finally risen as Master of the Coin, and how he had slipped on that ring as a test of faith and the will of Gods.

 

And her horror, her horror in realizing when her father had given her the ring, slipped it upon her hand with intent in his pale eyes.

 

Alyane only knows that her only course- her only course now to keep any semblance of dignity, and sanity in the face of what this ring means to her father is to run, flee into the night, to never see her father again. 

 

She looks across the expanse of the Fingers’s Keep from her window, the sea and the rocky jut of the cliff that the Keep stood on, fiddling with the ring he had gifted her but moons ago-

 

“Yours, my sweet. But I knew it would be.”

 

It is a ring that she has known all of her life, kept safe and careful by her father. Silver, delicate, set with blood-red rubies and brilliant sapphires, to match her mother’s hair and eyes. Scaled and rippled like a fish, in honor of his father’s friend, Lord Tully, for Housing him, her father had told her.

 

It was a match to her , now, and her father in his madness had thought it a sign. 

 

It is only when- When her father had begun to speak of how fine a wedding cloak for her he would make, that Alyane had seen what he truly wanted, what he was commanding her to do. 

 

I may be a bastard, Alyane thought with grim certainty, hands flexing around the damned ring, But I do not wish for this sin. I do not invite it by merely being, it is my father, sick and twisted by ghosts and grief I had never realized possessed him. I know not what no septon would rightly choose to allow incest, but Father is clever, even in madness, his hands are slick with dragons plenty, and perhaps a not-so-pious septon could be swayed. A stranger far from the Fingers could be brought, lied too, and what power do I have to stop it?

 

She is but one and ten, unbled, not a woman, in the power of her Noble father, and worse, a Stone who many would say had bewitched her father for this sin.

 

She had wept her tears.

 

Pleaded to the Seven.

 

She had thrown meal after meal from her stomach into the privy.

 

But she could not stop her father. Not peacefully. Any hint of active resistance has been harshly stopped by him, and his madness has not taken away his command of this Keep, or of her, she has been dismayed to find. Her cursed wedding was to take place, much as she had tried to delay her Father. She had set impossible tasks, fanciful and ridiculous, and Petyr Baelish had done them in a handful of moons. Her desperate tactics to delay her father, perhaps bring him to sanity, had done naught but encourage him. He was to make her wedding an event, more grand even than that of King Robert and Queen Cersei.

She had asked for an impossible maiden cloak, a cloak made of all the feathers of all the birds of the world and he had brought her a cloak made of all the birds of the world. She had asked for a wedding dress like the night sky, sparkling as the stars and the dark of the night, and he had granted her a dress of black Yi-Ti Silk, samite and richly woven silk and gold in Dorne in the shape of stars, that twinkled like the night itself. She had asked for another dress, shining flames like the sun instead, and he had made her a dress of golden, orange, and red silks, with golden jewelry of the West, bright and shining like the Sun. When she had called for yet another dress, shining like the moon, he had made a dress of the richest velvet, white silks, and gossamer layers of grey Myrish silk that shone like the moon.

 

She was to wear them all, switch between Sept, dancing hall, and just before the bedding…  

 

And he thought her too stupid to realize that he was setting himself up as her groom. He spoke nothing of another man, nothing, and demanded she give him more and more kisses, lingering too close to his mouth- 

 

She swallowed bile, hands trembling around the ring, the stupid ring, that had convinced him of this madness. 

 

If I fling it from this window, Alayne thinks, into the sea. Quick and without anyone to know- And she slips it off, raises it, palm slick with sweat-

 

But it is her mother’s, the only thing she has of her, beyond tales of her sweet songs and pretty flowers she had mongered, pressed in a book of sweet poetry that her father kept yet.

 

She breathes. Hands curled around the damning ring, rubbing at the scales of silver that line its side. She has only one choice, really, one she had been thinking of since before this madness has taken her father.

 

He has only ever spoken illy of one Land, one realm in all of his travels, her a babe in his arms.

 

The North is not safe.

 

Wild, untamed, the prison of his childhood friend, Catlyn Tully, the woman he says had encouraged his love with my mother. He called her dear, and he called her mind broken by the ways of the North. The Wilds and cold hold the largest Kingdom of the Seven. I’ve read stories, since I was very young, of the way they flay men alive, the way they drape their enemies from their heathen trees. That it is practiced still, or so all my servants whisper since two Stark girls went missing from their Household. One was raped by a mad Prince, one a babe barely beyond speaking age. 

 

But. But it is in those wilds that she believes she has a chance. Her father is the Lord of the Fingers, a small House thought he may lead, he is Master of the Coin, one of the richest men in Westeros. His reach is upon every land, save one.

 

So, Alyane has planned.

 

Planned for tonight, the eve before guests are to arrive for my accursed wedding .

 

She breathes. Slips the ring upon her finger once again.

 

She is on a ship to White Harbor before the sun sets. She does not even see the City Watch alarm raised when they leave Fingertown’s small harbor.

 

She is both relieved and… Angry, at how simple it was to slip from her Father’s Keep. There were barely any people watching her, careful of her doings, and she wondered if her daughterly obedience had led her father to believe she would never defy him. She has been a good daughter, she thinks, always careful of his rules and his demands, even now. 

 

But had it really never occurred to her father that Alyane would never run from him? 

 

“I like to play a game, sweetling,” He had preached to her about always being aware of people around them, always understanding that the motivations of others are paramount to understanding how to utilize them. And how they are attempting to utilize, or undermine you. And she wonders why, or when he had stopped playing his game with her. When he had stopped seeing her as a person with her own possible wants and needs, as more then just-

 

She swallows, thickly, tears stinging her eyes.

 

She looks across the reddish sunlight against the water, watching the Fingers slip further and further away. The salt air is cold, biting, hitting like a knife. She wears her cloak of feathers, warmer than she ever dreamed, beneath a cloak of plain dark wool, her pack is her wedding dresses, a valerian knife her father had called part of her Trousser, and the most food she could carry for this journey, waterskin, her sewing kit, and a near King’s ransom in coins to make her way to the vast forests that her father had called haunted. Her red hair is now dark as pitch, and her mother’s ring fits on a small chain between her breasts.  

 

For the first time in moons-     

 

For the first time in moons, Alyane Stone smiles , despite her tears.

 

I am free, regardless of anything. Father forgot. Father forgot that I am Alyane, not a ghost who loves him, and that means that I am free of him .  

---

Alyane II

 

She reaches White Harbor, and she thinks it is a dream.

 

When she steps upon the North for the first time, tears begin to leak from her eyes, unbidden. Heaviness she had not known she possessed, lifts from her heart.

 

The North. 

 

The North .

 

It feels right she is upon its soil. She does not know why. Why she is overtaken with such emotion that she stumbles from the ship-plank and finds a tree not far from the surprisingly large market in White Harbor, to lean against. Taken with an emotion she cannot suppress. Tears and tears slip from her eyes. She sits upon its roots, eats the last of her stale bread, sips at her waterskin, and takes it in.

It looks nothing like what her father would have said it to be. For one, it is much grander than the Fingers’ largest hamlet, and though it is nothing to the seat of their House at the Finger Keep, Alyane cannot say it is much poorer either. And, she can say with certainty, even from the scant few minutes she has seen them, the people in the North-

 

Do not look wild.

 

But all of my texts, she thinks, bewildered, even as she stares at the wares and merchants and people at the market ahead of her, her pack tightly against her front. Their clothing is similar, same fabrics, and similar colors, with only the dripping of the woman's clothing being significantly different- The Vale prefers long, draping things about the neck. The North seems to prefer high collars and strictly structured bodies. Even wearing her maid, Myra's clothing, she thinks she stands out. The market of White Harbor is large, much larger than she would think of the North.

 

She smiles, laughs, a little, and she wishes, wistfully, that she could stay there, in White Harbor. Find work, as a seamstress, or perhaps a singer, or even a flower monger like her mother… Foolishly, because, she knows it's but a week from the Finger’s harbor, and her father would find her swiftly. She is not surprised if he has not already sent men after her, in all directions he would think to find her. 

 

She does not think anywhere with people will be safe for her. Anyone can be bought, for the right price, and her father is one or the richest men in Westeros. 

 

Or so he said, something in her whispers, but Father has already proven himself a lair, a craven man. 

 

Alyane stands, but one and ten, and feels so much older, brushing away the crumbs of her stale bread across her skirt. Her namedays feel wrong, illy counted out. I have turned from ivory to porcelain. I feel as if the cold North will shatter me. But perhaps I should reforge myself, like steel.

 

She hums, softly. 

 

She needs more food. Not bread, beyond perhaps a small loaf to eat before she leaves the city. The bread from the Fingers Keep had turned stale within days, and she had learned enough to know that she would not be good at eating much more. Hopefully, she will find things that are ready-made when it comes to the rest of her supplies. New clothes, or cheap cloth if she must make her own. They are in Summer, but Autumn could come at any time, and the Northern climate seems to be frigid, more so than the Fingers already. She is adept enough at the needle, even if she has more practice in embroidery than practical clothing. More dye for her hair for her river journey to Wintertown, her last stop. She is hoping to arrive there, and then disappear into an area of the Wolfswood that would be safe for what she thinks may be years of her life… 

 

“What do you mean the next ship up the White Knife will not be in a fortnight?” her voice is higher pitched than she would like. 

 

The boatsman frowns at her, scratching at his thick beard. Longer than she’s ever seen on any man. The man sighs.

 

“For the last time, girl,” he says, voice impatient, “No goods, means no travel. The White Knife ain’t no Southern river to be flitting up and down at yer fuckin’ leisure.”

 

She flinches slightly at the course language.

 

He stares at her and then sighs again.

 

“Right, if yeh’re that in a hurry, I suggest you make yeh way the ferry near Winterfell. Won’ but take yeh a fortnigh’ to reach it than on horseback. That crosses the Knife abou’ every other day. Town not but a day's ride from there.”

 

She swallows.

 

“How do I reach this ferry? Where is-”

 

“Follow the river North, won’ be hard, miss.”

 

I need a horse then , she thought with desperation, even as the riverman assured her that travel would be in the next fortnight with the goods to Winterfell and that if she was patient, she would be at Winterfell with nearly the same amount of time.  She is not a good horsewoman, but the journey on foot would take her moons she does not have, and the trip up the river would simply give leave for her father to find her.

 

“Are there Inns along the river?” she asks, desperate.

 

“A few. Look, girl, if yer not adept at the travel just wait-”

 

“Thank you,” she says, sweetly, swallowing, and she presses a few bronze coins into his palm, wary to give him any proper coin less he makes a  correct assumption of the wealth she has stashed away, sown mostly into the underskirts of her current dress, “For your time and your advise, thank you.”

 

She left, mind whirling, as she dashed back into the market.

 

First, she went hunting for her food. She buys what the Northern woman assures is jerky and a hard tack that will last her the way to Winterfell Ferry, and recommends the Wolf Inn that is midway up the White Knife, assuring her that her cousin has the best pies in all of the North, and cheap room and stable for her use.  She thanked the woman kindly and took her mention of another kinswoman selling 'proper' clothes for the trip to heart. In the end, she selected two gowns, and an undergarment that the woman at the shop insisted would be necessary in the cold riding on horseback. It was an extremely warm, extremely form-fitting set of small clothes that would cover her neck to ankle. Alyane bought four, out of precaution. She changed in the shop, even if she longed for a bath- She wore a Northern bodice with her Vale skirts, trying to keep her wealth with her, and was deeply grateful for the new smallclothes. They were warm, and with her feathercloak, Alayne did not even think she'll need a fire at night as she traveled. She bought a sleeping roll, flint, and saddlebags for the last of her supplies. It was barely getting to midday by the time she was finished.

 

Agonizing whether or not to stay the night at an inn within White Harbor, Alyane settled for finding a stable instead. The less time she spent here, the less time her father would have means to catch her.

 

The horse she bought was a gentle, beautiful mare. She was white, thick, nearly sixteen heads. She was two dragons, and while she didn't present herself as a girl of means, Alayne could not bear to part with her the second she walked past her in the stable.  For the horse reached its great head out of her stall to press its nose against Alyane's face. Huffed gently across her skin, and Alyane was in love. 

 

The stable keeper was astounded.

 

"Winter don' take to no one," he told her, "Was meant for the youngest Lady Manderly, but she bucked her right off. Been having trouble convincing his lordship to keep her on as breeding stock. Says she's too wild, and I haven't been able to get her to keep any rider."

 

Alyane hummed, ran a delicately gloved hand across Winter's nose. Another necessary purchase.

 

"I will take her."

 

"She's a prize, miss. Won' be much good for travel."

 

Alyane shook her head.

 

"I will take her."

 

"If you can mount her, she's yours's." 

 

Alyane could mount her. She had no idea what the youngest Lady Manderly had done to be thrown off, but Winter was as gentle as a lamb. She hoped that the ferry would allow horses, for Alyane was already desperately fond. 

 

She bought her saddle and tackle, and was on her way along the White Knife before the sun set. 

 

She rode steady, well until the night, and only stopped when Winter took into the trees, away from the road.

 

Alyane nearly screamed as the horse took to galloping, narrowly missing the trees by a few spans of fingers. In her haste, the horse weaved and jumped along the forest with the ease of a deer. Alyane could do little but cling, the half-moon across the sky barely lighting the road. She pressed herself as flat as she could to the enormous horse, and could only pray she did not twist her foot in the roots- 

 

Winter eased into a canter and then a steady walk.

 

Alyane carefully lifted her head, hands trembling on her reins.

 

Winter snorts.

 

“What was that?” she scolds the horse.

The horse prances in place for a beat, before it continues. She tugs at the reins. Winter simply flicks her head, seemingly in annoyance.

 

“I have made a mistake,” she tells the horse.

 

It drops, and Alyane lunges forward with a shriek. The horse makes a snort again. And she realizes that she is in a clearing, a ground full of soft moss. A stream runs through the outer bits of it.

 

She blinks.

 

“Perhaps, I have not made a mistake.”

 

The horse knickers. 

 

Alyane laughs slightly. She sets up camp and is amazed when Winter steps next to her, large head tucked into her neck. Alyane sleeps peacefully. 

---

Alyane III

 

Alyane on the second day of travel, felt agony between her legs. As if she knew, Winter walks with the dantiest of steps. It still sends a rushing throb up her core.

 

Alyane has, at most, done leisure rides upon a horse, maximum, an hour. Now she is feeling the regret of that, and she wished she had thought to add more blankets for the saddle.

---

Jon ?

 

Jon Stark feels as if he has been kicked in the chest.

 

The creature- the girl who he had seen as a creature- sits at the fork of the wild wirewood tree. Her face past the shadow of the quills of her queer cloak, it is-

 

Beautiful.

 

His heart beats like a drum, and he swallows thickly. Her eyes are a vivid blue, so brilliant and large, her cheekbones high and fine, her lips like a bow. Her skin is like the summer snow, where it isn’t touched by a pink like his mother’s blooms in the glass gardens. Her hair is perhaps the worst of her, matted dark, a struggle of long locks that escape her hood of quills, a startling contrast to her lily-white skin. Her foot, bare, foolish, dangles, mud touched, near past her bare and slim ankle. She is what, perhaps, a few years past ten, a girl of perhaps three and ten. He blinks. Quickly. 

 

“I have chased you nearly two leagues,” he tells her, and he swallows thickly, astounded at her speed and grace through the woods, in bare feet, nonetheless, “And here I expected the Snark of the Woods to be more than just a girl.”

 

His blood is up, he can admit, his heart thundering now, as he realizes the thing they had thought a snark or grumpkin or some other fantastical creature is just a pretty girl in a queer cloak. The Snark of the Woods, and it's just some girl in a queer cloak. Jon Stark nearly laughs, even as he swallows thickly past the dryness that has come to him, at the arresting look in her startling eyes.

 

So blue, he thinks, and he blinks quickly. 

 

She tilts her head slightly, her chest heaving. Her queer cloak of feather quivers with the heaving of her, the overlapping quills rippling and moving, and he can see how quickly how sightings of her have made the smallfolk confuse her with something supernatural. He takes a step forward.

 

The girl’s bare leg snaps up, and her hands- her hands so small and pale, brace themselves against the branches of the wirewood. Her skin is the same color as the wood. 

 

“Perhaps not a Snark at all,” he tells her, lifting his hands up, and stepping back, “Instead a Child of the woods.”    

 

Jon can admit it.

 

When the girl smiles, it stops his breath, completely, for a single moment. It is a beautiful smile, and he does not wonder how on earth she had managed to stir the entire North into their older beliefs again. She is as fair as Jonquil, as wild and bewitching as Jenny with her lilies in her hair. With her wild manner and her hood, it is not so queer to him that people have become confused because of her. She has appeared in the North and stirred up trouble. He wonders, with a twisting stomach if she’s a wildling, come over the Wall.

 

“Will you call me a Grumpkin, next, my lord? Snark, Child- I am but a poor girl, who lives in the woods, nothing more, nothing less,” she says, sweetly, and it is a curious voice, a touch of North and- he thinks perhaps the Vale? He is not so sure. It is a lovely voice nonetheless. But it is the cadence of it that makes him dispel the thought that she is a wildling at all.

 

“I would rather call you by name if you would allow me,” he tells her. His voice is breathless. Jon blinks, quickly.

 

“Never mind my name, I ask, Lord, why you have chased me for two leagues?”

 

Her lips purse. She hangs so precariously in the tree that Jon wishes to lunge forward and be ready to catch her. But her grip is sure, as is her footing. She hangs in the tree as if she was born to do it.

 

“I was given a task to catch the Snark of the Woods, but I see no magic here, beyond your beauty,” he replies.

 

She blushes. She blushes, and it is so pretty that he feels his breath stolen once again. Jon blinks.

 

“I am Jon,” he tells her.

 

She bites her lip.

 

“And I am the Snark of the Woods,” she returns, laughing.

 

It is a bell across the woods. His heart beats yet harder. 

 

“Surely your parents gave you a name I can call you by,” he says, smiling-

 

But it is then that the girl’s smile dies. Something dark goes across her beautiful eyes. Sorrow. Terror? He is unsure.

 

“I am called by no man, by no parent nor kin,” she says finally, even if her voice is flat, hard, “Will that mean that you leave me alone, Lord Jon?”

 

He stares.

 

“I have brought you ill memories, my lady?”

 

She lifts her chin.

 

“I am not a lady,” she says, simply.

 

He inches closer.

 

In the fork of the weirwood’s branches, the girl stands, rippling quills. She is tall. Much taller than he expected for a girl with such small hands. He blinks.

 

“Stay back,” she says simply.

 

He stills.

 

“I mean you no harm,” he implores.

 

“Yet you have chased me for near two leagues,” she replies, “I may not be a lady, but I do not appreciate being hunted like an animal. Charming that you are, my Lord.”

 

He breathes, eyes wide.

 

“So you find me charming, Lady Snark?”

 

Her lips purse.

 

“Did I not just say that I am not a lady?”

 

“Yet you are as graceful as any lady I have spoken to,” he replies, grinning.

 

That at least gets him a twitch of the lips.

 

“Have you had little ladies in your time, Lord Jon?” 

 

He smiles.

 

“Many, actually. I boast a lady for a sister, at least. Thought woe any man to call Arya a lady,” he laughs.

 

She blinks. 

 

“You have many siblings, then, Lord Jon?”

 

“Aye, that I do, Lady Snark. I have five- Four living.”

 

Her expression falls. Slightly. Her brows crumple and her lips are bitten. 

 

“I am sorry for your loss,” she replies.

 

“She was young,” he replies, softly, “I remember very little of my other sister. But she was sweet. She loved lemon cakes, and… And she liked hearing the singers in the great hall every chance she could. My lord's father promised her a lemon tree when he left for Greyjoy Rebellion. It stands still, in our glass gardens. We call it her tree. Mother often sits in the roots of it… She was a lady. A child, but the little lady of our keep nonetheless.”

 

Sansa Stark was a distant dream, a lost and fading memory. He remembers her childish beauty, in an off way, remembers how she had appeared the loveliest thing he had ever known, but he does not remember her face. He doesn’t remember much of her- 

 

“I lost my mother to childbirth. I never knew her. Be content, Lord Jon, to remember her as well as you do.”

 

He looks up at the girl.

 

“Just Jon from you, Lady Snark. I am no great lord. Just a second son without a keep.”

 

She smiled, slightly.

 

“Still more than I am, Lord Jon. And if you insist to call me Lady, I shall call you Lord.”

A howl fills the air. The girl looks towards the sound.

“My lady, quick,” his hand goes to the hilt of his sword, Long Claw, " 'Tis a lone wolf. There is danger-" 

 

She frowns.

 

“Stay your hand my Lord, or I will hate you forever more.”

 

He freezes. Looks up at her.

 

“What- there is a wolf- they are dangerous!”

 

She laughs. Sweet and gentle.

 

“Oh no, my Lord, that is much worse. That. That is a Direwolf. ” 

 

It is a beast, unlike anything he has ever known. Even if he has seen its depiction all of his life, he is not ready for the visual of a fully grown direwolf in person. It is enormous, perhaps the size of a draft horse, and it comes from the shadows with pulled-back teeth gleaming in the dimming light. 

 

His Lady Snark slips down the tree, queer cloak rippling.

 

"Behind me, my Lady!" he whispers, even as he tries to reach for her-

 

The wolf presses its enormous head against the girl, and the girl does the same. Soothes her lily-white hands against its giant maw. Jon looses his breath.

 

And then.

 

Five more wolves slip from the darkness of the forest. Young, not as large as the wolf.

 

"Stay your hand, Lord Jon," says the girl, and she lifts her head.

 

Jon- Jon feels his hand slip from 'Long Claw.' The girl beams. Soft and so beautiful Jon loses his breath yet again. She is then astride the largest wolf.

 

Perhaps he had not been wrong, to call her a Child. Or perhaps she is snark still. He blinks, quickly.

 

"Farwell, Lord Jon."

 

The younger wolves flee into the forest, and the largest wolf is a step behind them.

 

“Meet me again,” he calls after her, skidding and slipping against the ground, heart in his throat.

 

The large direwolf stops and Lady Snark looks over her shoulder.

 

She smiles. Bright and lovely as the dawn and Jon cannot think of anything more beautiful.

 

“Mayhaps, Lord Jon, Mayhaps!”

Chapter 31: She Wore A Cloak of Feathers(A Look of Sadness In Her Eyes), PT. III

Summary:

During the Greyjoy Rebellion, Sansa Stark is lost in the godswood. From the wild touch of grief, Jon Snow becomes a Stark.

It is years later that Alyane Stone lives under the yoke of her father’s suffocating rules. It is only when her Father begins to look at her with lust, does she realizes she cannot bear it any longer, and flees for the one land he hates beyond others. Alyane goes North hair dark with pitch and fear in her heart. The Wilds beneath her feet rejoice. Alyane rides wild with a Mother Wolf and pups, and she runs free from all that had nearly destroyed her.

Jon Stark falls in love with a girl in the forest, with black hair and bright blue eyes, the wild girl who runs with wolves and dons a cloak of feathers.

TAGS: Alternate Universe, Role Switch, Sansa Stark is raised a Bastard, Jon Snow is Raised as a Lordling, Vague retelling of Allerleirauh(Alls-Kind-Fur), Vaguely Inspired by ‘The Secret of the Kells’, L+R=J, Catelyn Stark Becomes a Better Person, Ned Stark Trusts His Wife(Eventually), Magic Girl! Sansa, Sansa Stark refers to herself as Alyane Through most of the narrative, Hidden Identities, Fae Elements, Or In Which the North is More Alive Then Anyone Ever Thought, Westeros Does Grim Fairy Tales, Coming of Age, Jon Snow Falls Quick and Hard, Sansa Falls Quick and Hard, 

 

Pairings: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Alyane Stone,

 

Character: Alyane Stone, Sansa Stark, Peter Baelish, Jon Snow,

---

Alyane I

 

Alyane Stone knows not when her father went mad.

 

Was it back when his grief began, for her beloved mother? Was it when he failed his promise to wedding her before she died in childbirth? Was it when Alyane had begun to blossom into a woman, instead of a girl? Erasing her in his mind, as she had grown, as her features lost childhood fat, had he seen more and more of his lost love? She has yet to bleed, yet, she is already taller, with budding hips and breasts… Her father’s hands linger there, at her shoulders, her hips, his grip too strong, too steady… She knows not when she realizes that her father...

 

That her father stopped seeing her, and instead only saw the ghost of her mother.

 

“Perfect, sweetling, so perfect. So much like her. Only your skin is different, fairer, for you are safe here with me, instead of hard at work-”

 

She knows the tale, old as time. As familiar as the tale of Joquill and her Fool. Her mother was a common girl who lived in the Riverlands, who talked sweetly to the Lordling ward of Lord Hoster Tully, who sold river flowers by her small barge. She sang as sweet as a dove, she had course hands, she kissed sweetly like Arbor Gold… She was swayed into a not-so-innocent love and fell pregnant by the time that her Lord Father had been making his way to the Small Council. All she knows is that her mother had died birthing her, and on that day she had died, her Father had made a vow, to all the gods that would listen, that he would wed no woman but one like her mother. A woman who would fit the delicate ring he had made for her, all those years ago, a token of his love, a token meant to turn into the Wedding Ribbons of the Seven, but never had the opportunity to. 

 

He had kept the ring, and Alyane had long heard the tales of the various women that had offered their hand to his, when he had finally risen as Master of the Coin, and how he had slipped on that ring as a test of faith and the will of Gods.

And her horror, her horror in realizing when her father had given her the ring, slipped it upon her hand with intent in his pale eyes. Alyane only knows that her only course- her only course now to keep any semblance of dignity, and sanity in the face of what this ring means to her father is to run, flee into the night, to never see her father again. She looks across the expanse of the Fingers’s Keep from her window, the sea and the rocky jut of the cliff that the Keep stood on, fiddling with the ring he had gifted her but moons ago-

 

“Yours, my sweet. But I knew it would be.”

 

She shudders.

 

It is a ring that she has known all of her life, kept safe and careful by her father. Silver, delicate, set with blood-red rubies and brilliant sapphires, to match her mother’s hair and eyes. Scaled and rippled like a fish, in honor of his father’s friend, Lord Tully, for Housing him, her father had told her.

 

It was a match to her , now, and her father in his madness had thought it a sign. 

 

It is only when- When her father had begun to speak of how fine a wedding cloak for her he would make, that Alyane had seen what he truly wanted, what he was commanding her to do. 

 

I may be a bastard, Alyane thought with grim certainty, hands flexing around the damned ring, But I do not wish for this sin. I do not invite it by merely being, it is my father, sick and twisted by ghosts and grief I had never realized possessed him. I know not what no septon would rightly choose to allow incest, but Father is clever, even in madness, his hands are slick with dragons plenty, and perhaps a not-so-pious septon could be swayed. A stranger far from the Fingers could be brought, lied too, and what power do I have to stop it?

 

She is but one and ten, unbled, not a woman, in the power of her Noble father, and worse, a Stone who many would say had bewitched her father for this sin.

 

She had wept her tears.

 

Pleaded to the Seven.

 

She had thrown meal after meal from her stomach into the privy.

 

But she could not stop her father. Not peacefully. Any hint of active resistance has been harshly stopped by him, and his madness has not taken away his command of this Keep, or of her, she has been dismayed to find. Her cursed wedding was to take place, much as she had tried to delay her Father. She had set impossible tasks, fanciful and ridiculous, and Petyr Baelish had done them in a handful of moons. Her desperate tactics to delay her father, perhaps bring him to sanity, had done naught but encourage him. He was to make her wedding an event, more grand even than that of King Robert and Queen Cersei.

She had asked for an impossible maiden cloak, a cloak made of all the feathers of all the birds of the world and he had brought her a cloak made of all the birds of the world. She had asked for a wedding dress like the night sky, sparkling as the stars and the dark of the night, and he had granted her a dress of black Yi-Ti Silk, samite and richly woven silk and gold in Dorne in the shape of stars, that twinkled like the night itself. She had asked for another dress, shining flames like the sun instead, and he had made her a dress of golden, orange, and red silks, with golden jewelry of the West, bright and shining like the Sun. When she had called for yet another dress, shining like the moon, he had made a dress of the richest velvet, white silks, and gossamer layers of grey Myrish silk that shone like the moon.

 

She was to wear them all, switch between Sept, dancing hall, and just before the bedding…  

 

And he thought her too stupid to realize that he was setting himself up as her groom. He spoke nothing of another man, nothing, and demanded she give him more and more kisses, lingering too close to his mouth- And more and more servants she has known as a child have gone, disappeared.

 

Perhaps even dead, to sell even more to the world that Alyane Stone was not Petyr Baelish’s daughter, but his bride.

 

She swallowed bile, hands trembling around the ring, the stupid ring, that had convinced him of this madness. 

 

If I fling it from this window, Alayne thinks, into the sea. Quick and without anyone to know- And she slips it off, raises it, palm slick with sweat-

 

But it is her mother’s, the only thing she has of her, beyond tales of her sweet songs and pretty flowers she had mongered, pressed in a book of sweet poetry that her father kept yet, and a silver chalice that would have been their wedding goblet. That he told her would be her’s instead.

 

She breathes. Hands curled around the damning ring, rubbing at the scales of silver that line its side. She has only one choice, really, one she had been thinking of since before this madness has taken her father.

 

He has only ever spoken illy of one Land, one realm in all of his travels, her a babe in his arms.

 

The North is not safe.

 

Wild, untamed, the prison of his childhood friend, Catlyn Tully, the woman he says had encouraged his love with my mother. He called her dear, and he called her mind broken by the ways of the North. The Wilds and cold hold the largest Kingdom of the Seven. I’ve read stories, since I was very young, of the way they flay men alive, the way they drape their enemies from their heathen trees. That it is practiced still, or so all my servants whisper since two Stark girls went missing from their Household. One was raped by a mad Prince, one a babe barely beyond speaking age. 

 

But. But it is in those wilds that she believes she has a chance. Her father is the Lord of the Fingers, a small House thought he may lead, he is Master of the Coin, one of the richest men in Westeros. His reach is upon every land, save one.

 

So, Alyane has planned.

 

Planned for tonight, the eve before guests are to arrive for my accursed wedding .

 

She breathes. Slips the ring upon her finger once again.

 

She is on a ship to White Harbor before the sun sets. She does not even see the City Watch alarm raised when they leave Fingertown’s small harbor.

 

She is both relieved and… Angry, at how simple it was to slip from her Father’s Keep. There were barely any people watching her, careful of her doings, and she wondered if her daughterly obedience had led her father to believe she would never defy him. She has been a good daughter, she thinks, always careful of his rules and his demands, even now. 

 

But had it really never occurred to her father that Alyane would never run from him? 

 

“I like to play a game, sweetling,” He had preached to her about always being aware of people around them, always understanding that the motivations of others are paramount to understanding how to utilize them. And how they are attempting to utilize, or undermine you. And she wonders why, or when he had stopped playing his game with her. When he had stopped seeing her as a person with her own possible wants and needs, as more then just-

 

She swallows, thickly, tears stinging her eyes.

 

She looks across the reddish sunlight against the water, watching the Fingers slip further and further away. The salt air is cold, biting, hitting like a knife. She wears her cloak of feathers, warmer than she ever dreamed, beneath a cloak of plain dark wool, her pack is her wedding trousers; her impossible dresses, her mother’s book and silver chalice, a valerian and dragon-bone knife, and the most food she could carry for the week-long ship ride, a full waterskin, her sewing kit, a near King’s ransom in coins to make her way to the vast forests that her father had called haunted and the maid’s dress she wears underneath her cloaks. Her red hair is now dark as pitch, and her mother’s ring fits on a small chain between her breasts.  

 

For the first time in moons-     

 

For the first time in moons, Alyane Stone smiles , despite her tears.

 

I am free, regardless of anything. Father forgot. Father forgot that I am Alyane, not a ghost who loves him, and that means that I am free of him .  

---

Alyane II

 

She reaches White Harbor, and she thinks it is a dream.

 

When she steps upon the North for the first time, tears begin to leak from her eyes, unbidden. Heaviness she had not known she possessed, lifts from her heart.

 

The North. 

 

The North .

 

It feels right she is upon its soil. She does not know why. Why she is overtaken with such emotion that she stumbles from the ship-plank and finds a tree not far from the surprisingly large market in White Harbor, to lean against. Taken with an emotion she cannot suppress. Tears and tears slip from her eyes. She sits upon its roots, eats the last of her stale bread, sips at her waterskin, and takes it in.

It looks nothing like what her father would have said it to be. For one, it is much grander than the Fingers’ largest hamlet, and though it is nothing to the seat of their House at the Finger Keep, Alyane cannot say it is much poorer either. And, she can say with certainty, even from the scant few minutes she has seen them, the people in the North-

 

Do not look wild.

 

But all of my texts, she thinks, bewildered, even as she stares at the wares and merchants and people at the market ahead of her, her pack tightly against her front. Their clothing is similar, same fabrics, and similar colors, with only the dripping of the woman's clothing being significantly different- The Vale prefers long, draping things about the neck. The North seems to prefer high collars and strictly structured bodies. Even wearing her maid, Myra's clothing, she thinks she stands out. The market of White Harbor is large, much larger than she would think of the North.

 

She smiles, laughs, a little, and she wishes, wistfully, that she could stay there, in White Harbor. Find work, as a seamstress, or perhaps a singer, or even a flower monger like her mother… Foolishly, because, she knows it's but a week from the Finger’s harbor, and her father would find her swiftly. She is not surprised if he has not already sent men after her, in all directions he would think to find her. 

 

She does not think anywhere with people will be safe for her. Anyone can be bought, for the right price, and her father is one or the richest men in Westeros. 

 

Or so he said, something in her whispers, but Father has already proven himself a lair, a craven man. 

 

Alyane stands, but one and ten, and feels so much older, brushing away the crumbs of her stale bread across her skirt. Her namedays feel wrong, illy counted out. I have turned from ivory to porcelain. I feel as if the cold North will shatter me. But perhaps I should reforge myself, like steel.

 

She hums, softly. 

 

She needs more food. Not bread, beyond perhaps a small loaf to eat before she leaves the city. The bread from the Fingers Keep had turned stale within days, and she had learned enough to know that she would not be good at eating much more. Hopefully, she will find things that are ready-made when it comes to the rest of her supplies. New clothes, or cheap cloth if she must make her own. They are in Summer, but Autumn could come at any time, and the Northern climate seems to be frigid, more so than the Fingers already. She is adept enough at the needle, even if she has more practice in embroidery than practical clothing. More dye for her hair for her river journey to Wintertown, her last stop. She is hoping to arrive there, and then disappear into an area of the Wolfswood that would be safe for what she thinks may be years of her life… 

 

“What do you mean the next ship up the White Knife will not be in a fortnight?” her voice is higher pitched than she would like. 

 

The boatsman frowns at her, scratching at his thick beard. Longer than she’s ever seen on any man. The man sighs.

 

“For the last time, girl,” he says, voice impatient, “No goods, means no travel. The White Knife ain’t no Southern river to be flitting up and down at yer fuckin’ leisure.”

 

She flinches slightly at the course language.

 

He stares at her and then sighs again.

 

“Right, if yeh’re that in a hurry, I suggest you make yeh way the ferry near Winterfell. Won’ but take yeh a fortnigh’ to reach it than on horseback. That crosses the Knife abou’ every other day. Town not but a day's ride from there.”

 

She swallows.

 

“How do I reach this ferry? Where is-”

 

“Follow the river North, won’ be hard, miss.”

 

I need a horse then , she thought with desperation, even as the riverman assured her that travel would be in the next fortnight with the goods to Winterfell and that if she was patient, she would be at Winterfell with nearly the same amount of time.  She is not a good horsewoman, but the journey on foot would take her moons she does not have, and the trip up the river would simply give leave for her father to find her.

 

“Are there Inns along the river?” she asks, desperate.

 

“A few. Look, girl, if yer not adept at the travel just wait-”

 

“Thank you,” she says, sweetly, swallowing, and she presses a few bronze coins into his palm, wary to give him any proper coin less he makes a  correct assumption of the wealth she has stashed away, sown mostly into the underskirts of her current dress, “For your time and your advise, thank you.”

 

She left, mind whirling, as she dashed back into the market.

 

First, she went hunting for her food. She buys what the Northern woman assures is jerky and a hard tack that will last her the way to Winterfell Ferry, and recommends the Wolf Inn that is midway up the White Knife, assuring her that her cousin has the best pies in all of the North, and cheap room and stable for her use.  She thanked the woman kindly and took her mention of another kinswoman selling 'proper' clothes for the trip to heart. In the end, she selected two gowns, and an undergarment that the woman at the shop insisted would be necessary in the cold riding on horseback. It was an extremely warm, extremely form-fitting set of small clothes that would cover her neck to ankle. Alyane bought four, out of precaution. She changed in the shop, even if she longed for a bath- She wore a Northern bodice with her Vale skirts, trying to keep her wealth with her, and was deeply grateful for the new smallclothes. They were warm, and with her feathercloak, Alayne did not even think she'll need a fire at night as she traveled. She bought a sleeping roll, flint, and saddlebags for the last of her supplies. It was barely getting to midday by the time she was finished.

 

Agonizing whether or not to stay the night at an inn within White Harbor, Alyane settled for finding a stable instead. The less time she spent here, the less time her father would have means to catch her.

 

The horse she bought was a gentle, beautiful mare. She was white, thick, nearly sixteen heads. She was two dragons, and while she didn't present herself as a girl of means, Alayne could not bear to part with her the second she walked past her in the stable.  For the horse reached its great head out of her stall to press its nose against Alyane's face. Huffed gently across her skin, and Alyane was in love. 

 

The stable keeper was astounded.

 

"Winter don' take to no one," he told her, "Was meant for the youngest Lady Manderly, but she bucked her right off. Been having trouble convincing his lordship to keep her on as breeding stock. Says she's too wild, and I haven't been able to get her to keep any rider."

 

Alyane hummed, ran a delicately gloved hand across Winter's nose. Another necessary purchase.

 

"I will take her."

 

"She's a prize, miss. Won' be much good for travel."

 

Alyane shook her head.

 

"I will take her."

 

"If you can mount her, she's yours's." 

 

Alyane could mount her. She had no idea what the youngest Lady Manderly had done to be thrown off, but Winter was as gentle as a lamb. She hoped that the ferry would allow horses, for Alyane was already desperately fond. 

 

She bought her saddle and tackle, and was on her way along the White Knife before the sun set. 

 

She rode steady, well until the night, and only stopped when Winter took into the trees, away from the road.

 

Alyane nearly screamed as the horse took to galloping, narrowly missing the trees by a few spans of fingers. In her haste, the horse weaved and jumped along the forest with the ease of a deer. Alyane could do little but cling, the half-moon across the sky barely lighting the road. She pressed herself as flat as she could to the enormous horse, and could only pray she did not twist her foot in the roots- 

 

Winter eased into a canter and then a steady walk.

 

Alyane carefully lifted her head, hands trembling on her reins.

 

Winter snorts.

 

“What was that?” she scolds the horse.

The horse prances in place for a beat, before it continues. She tugs at the reins. Winter simply flicks her head, seemingly in annoyance.

 

“I have made a mistake,” she tells the horse.

 

It drops, and Alyane lunges forward with a shriek. The horse makes a snort again. And she realizes that she is in a clearing, a ground full of soft moss. A stream runs through the outer bits of it.

 

She blinks.

 

“Perhaps, I have not made a mistake.”

 

The horse knickers. 

 

Alyane laughs slightly. She sets up camp and is amazed when Winter settles to sleep next to her, large head tucked into her neck. She is almost too warm with the horse’s warmth, so she does not bother for a fire. 

 

Alyane sleeps peacefully.

---

Alyane III

 

Alyane on the second day of travel, felt agony between her legs. As if she knew, Winter walks with the dantiest of steps. It still sends a rushing throb up her core.

 

She swallows, thickly, tears stinging her eyes. 

 

Alyane has, at most, done leisure rides upon a horse. Nothing as strenuous to take her more perhaps hours- Now she is feeling the regret of that, and she wished she had thought to add more blankets for the saddle. For perhaps thicker small clothes. Even with the Northern one’s she aches.She keeps her course, she keeps going. Because if she did not, she knew she could very well be caught by her father. 

 

“Thank you, Winter,” she whispers, slouching forward on the horse’s neck. 

 

The horse whinnies, and it shouldn’t have sounded so much like a tired sigh.

---

Alyane ?

 

The lady is crowned with Winter roses and a babies breath.

 

Her great silver eyes gleam with a life there own, like starlight, or perhaps the moon.

 

Alyane breathes a gasp, edging away from the woman, so obviously supernatural.

 

“ What fear do you have, child? ”

 

Alyane swallowed.

 

The men were still at the woman’s feet. Dead, she knows. But-

 

“Why did you help me?”

 

The woman gave along, languid blink.

 

“ Do you think yourself so unworthy to save? ”

 

Alyane flinched back.

 

“I want no blood spilled for me-”

 

“ So much blood was split in my name, sweet, sweet girl, and I think you worthy of such and more . These men meant you harm. To drag you back to a fate much worse then death. ”

 

“And what is your name?” She dared asked.

 

The woman huffed, and laughed like a bird, or a brooke- a sound that did not sound like a laugh of any woman.

 

“ Names have power, child. I cannot tell you mine, not as you are. You called me Lady, and I will take that much. ”

 

“I ask not a name, than, but a reason. Lady, thought perhaps I should call you a queen- you wear a crown of it, a queen of love and beauty,” she returned.

 

The woman smiled.

 

“ To answer your question, sweet girl a promise was made to me, once, ” the woman said softly, sweetly, “ And who would I be to not return the spirit of that promise for the one who loved me so? And oh, I like to be named a Queen very much. Let that be how I be known to you. It is close enough."

 

She pressed a snow white hand against Winter's neck, the horse whinnied painfully. The woman hummed. 

 

Alyane swallowed. Tears following down her cheeks. The arrows in her flanks would have to be removed, tended. Put they were alive.

 

"Your grace, thank you ."

 

The Queen hummed again.

 

" Thank instead this sweet thing. She brought you here, to my attention."

 

"Winter brought me here?"

 

The woman laughed her not laugh.

 

" She has been guiding you. She felt what you hold in you, and she knew I would have need for you."

Alyane shifted. Blinked as the woman was suddenly in front of her.

---

Jon ?

 

Jon Stark feels as if he has been kicked in the chest.

 

The creature- the girl who he had seen as a creature- sits at the fork of the wild wirewood tree. Her face past the shadow of the quills of her queer cloak, it is-

 

Beautiful.

 

His heart beats like a drum, and he swallows thickly. Her eyes are a vivid blue, so brilliant and large, her cheekbones high and fine, her lips like a bow. Her skin is like the summer snow, where it isn’t touched by a pink like his mother’s blooms in the glass gardens. Her hair is perhaps the worst of her, matted dark, a struggle of long locks that escape her hood of quills, a startling contrast to her lily-white skin. Her foot, bare, foolish, dangles, mud touched, near past her bare and slim ankle. She is what, perhaps, a few years past ten, a girl of perhaps three and ten. He blinks. Quickly. 

 

“I have chased you nearly two leagues,” he tells her, and he swallows thickly, astounded at her speed and grace through the woods, in bare feet, nonetheless, “And here I expected the Snark of the Woods to be more than just a girl.”

 

His blood is up, he can admit, his heart thundering now, as he realizes the thing they had thought a snark or grumpkin or some other fantastical creature is just a pretty girl in a queer cloak. The Snark of the Woods, and it's just some girl in a queer cloak. Jon Stark nearly laughs, even as he swallows thickly past the dryness that has come to him, at the arresting look in her startling eyes.

 

So blue, he thinks, and he blinks quickly. 

 

She tilts her head slightly, her chest heaving. Her queer cloak of feather quivers with the heaving of her, the overlapping quills rippling and moving, and he can see how quickly how sightings of her have made the smallfolk confuse her with something supernatural. He takes a step forward.

 

The girl’s bare leg snaps up, and her hands- her hands so small and pale, brace themselves against the branches of the wirewood. Her skin is the same color as the wood. 

 

“Perhaps not a Snark at all,” he tells her, lifting his hands up, and stepping back, “Instead a Child of the woods.”    

 

Jon can admit it.

 

When the girl smiles, it stops his breath, completely, for a single moment. It is a beautiful smile, and he does not wonder how on earth she had managed to stir the entire North into their older beliefs again. She is as fair as Jonquil, as wild and bewitching as Jenny with her lilies in her hair. With her wild manner and her hood, it is not so queer to him that people have become confused because of her. She has appeared in the North and stirred up trouble. He wonders, with a twisting stomach if she’s a wildling, come over the Wall.

 

“Will you call me a Grumpkin, next, my lord? Snark, Child- I am but a poor girl, who lives in the woods, nothing more, nothing less,” she says, sweetly, and it is a curious voice, a touch of North and- he thinks perhaps the Vale? He is not so sure. It is a lovely voice nonetheless. But it is the cadence of it that makes him dispel the thought that she is a wildling at all.

 

“I would rather call you by name if you would allow me,” he tells her. His voice is breathless. Jon blinks, quickly.

 

“Never mind my name, I ask, Lord, why you have chased me for two leagues?”

 

Her lips purse. She hangs so precariously in the tree that Jon wishes to lunge forward and be ready to catch her. But her grip is sure, as is her footing. She hangs in the tree as if she was born to do it.

 

“I was given a task to catch the Snark of the Woods, but I see no magic here, beyond your beauty,” he replies.

 

She blushes. She blushes, and it is so pretty that he feels his breath stolen once again. Jon blinks.

 

“I am Jon,” he tells her.

 

She bites her lip.

 

“And I am the Snark of the Woods,” she returns, laughing.

 

It is a bell across the woods. His heart beats yet harder. 

 

“Surely your parents gave you a name I can call you by,” he says, smiling-

 

But it is then that the girl’s smile dies. Something dark goes across her beautiful eyes. Sorrow. Terror? He is unsure.

 

“I am called by no man, by no parent nor kin,” she says finally, even if her voice is flat, hard, “Will that mean that you leave me alone, Lord Jon?”

 

He stares.

 

“I have brought you ill memories, my lady?”

 

She lifts her chin.

 

“I am not a lady,” she says, simply.

 

He inches closer.

 

In the fork of the weirwood’s branches, the girl stands, rippling quills. She is tall. Much taller than he expected for a girl with such small hands. He blinks.

 

“Stay back,” she says simply.

 

He stills.

 

“I mean you no harm,” he implores.

 

“Yet you have chased me for near two leagues,” she replies, “I may not be a lady, but I do not appreciate being hunted like an animal. Charming that you are, my Lord.”

 

He breathes, eyes wide.

 

“So you find me charming, Lady Snark?”

 

Her lips purse.

 

“Did I not just say that I am not a lady?”

 

“Yet you are as graceful as any lady I have spoken to,” he replies, grinning.

 

That at least gets him a twitch of the lips.

 

“Have you had little ladies in your time, Lord Jon?” 

 

He smiles.

 

“Many, actually. I boast a lady for a sister, at least. Thought woe any man to call Arya a lady,” he laughs.

 

She blinks. 

 

“You have many siblings, then, Lord Jon?”

 

“Aye, that I do, Lady Snark. I have five- Four living.”

 

Her expression falls. Slightly. Her brows crumple and her lips are bitten. 

 

“I am sorry for your loss,” she replies.

 

“She was young,” he replies, softly, “I remember very little of my other sister. But she was sweet. She loved lemon cakes, and… And she liked hearing the singers in the great hall every chance she could. My lord's father promised her a lemon tree when he left for Greyjoy Rebellion. It stands still, in our glass gardens. We call it her tree. Mother often sits in the roots of it… She was a lady. A child, but the little lady of our keep nonetheless.”

 

Sansa Stark was a distant dream, a lost and fading memory. He remembers her childish beauty, in an off way, remembers how she had appeared the loveliest thing he had ever known, but he does not remember her face. He doesn’t remember much of her- 

 

“I lost my mother to childbirth. I never knew her. Be content, Lord Jon, to remember her as well as you do.”

 

He looks up at the girl.

 

“Just Jon from you, Lady Snark. I am no great lord. Just a second son without a keep.”

 

She smiled, slightly.

 

“Still more than I am, Lord Jon. And if you insist to call me Lady, I shall call you Lord.”

A howl fills the air. The girl looks towards the sound.

“My lady, quick,” his hand goes to the hilt of his sword, Long Claw, " 'Tis a lone wolf. There is danger-" 

 

She frowns.

 

“Stay your hand my Lord, or I will hate you forever more.”

 

He freezes. Looks up at her.

 

“What- there is a wolf- they are dangerous!”

 

She laughs. Sweet and gentle.

 

“Oh no, my Lord, that is much worse. That. That is a Direwolf. ” 

 

It is a beast, unlike anything he has ever known. Even if he has seen its depiction all of his life, he is not ready for the visual of a fully grown direwolf in person. It is enormous, perhaps the size of a draft horse, and it comes from the shadows with pulled-back teeth gleaming in the dimming light. 

 

His Lady Snark slips down the tree, queer cloak rippling.

 

"Behind me, my Lady!" he whispers, even as he tries to reach for her-

 

The wolf presses its enormous head against the girl, and the girl does the same. Soothes her lily-white hands against its giant maw. Jon looses his breath.

 

And then.

 

Five more wolves slip from the darkness of the forest. Young, not as large as the wolf.

 

"Stay your hand, Lord Jon," says the girl, and she lifts her head.

 

Jon- Jon feels his hand slip from ' Long Claw .' The girl beams. Soft and so beautiful Jon loses his breath yet again. She is then astride the largest wolf.

 

Perhaps he had not been wrong, to call her a Child. Or perhaps she is snark still. He blinks, quickly.

 

"Farwell, Lord Jon."

 

The younger wolves flee into the forest, and the largest wolf is a step behind them.

 

“Meet me again,” he calls after her, skidding and slipping against the ground, heart in his throat.

 

The large direwolf stops and Lady Snark looks over her shoulder.

 

She smiles. Bright and lovely as the dawn and Jon cannot think of anything more beautiful.

 

“Mayhaps, Lord Jon, Mayhaps!”

---

Jon ??

 

“Fucking fuck! ”

 

The Lady Snark looked down at Theon with disdain in her blue, blue eyes. She did not move the wolf off of him, even as its maw silently pulled back with a silent snarl.

 

“How dare you,” she snarled as if she was to make up for the quiet of the white wolf.

 

Jon felt his breath hitch. He sees the red across the fur of the wolf, and he feels a furry at the sight. The poor thing was doing nothing- and he could have hit the Lady.

 

“He didn’t mean it, My Lady-”

 

“I am not, ” she stalked forward, steps impossibly light, “A lady. I say I would be surprised, by the careless, reckless actions of a Greyjoy, but I am not. You play with things you do not understand, Theon Greyjoy, and I would dare you to raise your weapon to my wolves again. I dare you. ”

 

“Fuck,” mumbles Arya, wide-eyed.

 

“Mind your tongue, child,” said Lady Snark, voice affronted.

 

“He’s an idiot, Lady, er, Snark,” said Robb, voice breathless and alarmed, “Can you not kill him for it?”

 

“Apologize,” she snarled.

 

“I’m sorry Lady Snark-”

 

“To that who you hurt , you idiot!” she hissed.

 

“To the wolf? ”

 

“Quickly, my brother grows impatient,” drawled the girl.

 

“Fuc- Fine! I’m sorry, big bad wolf- dire-wolf, please do not eat me-”

 

The wolf licks Theon’s nosKaty. He clicks his jaw. Theon squeals. Like a pig and Jon cannot help it, he laughs. The Lady huffs, but her lips twitch.

 

“Try not to aim wildly into the woods, Theon Greyjoy.”

---

Ned ?

He prays at the heartstree, and he wonders if somewhere, Lyanna is laughing at him.

 

“ I am in love father. I do not think I can live without her. When she sang to me- I could feel it. It was love. ”

 

A boy is in love by the turn of a song, and he wonders if the realms would bleed for Jon, just as they bled for his mother’s love. His sister’s son is in love with a myth, a fanciful thing, made real by some mummer in a cloak, stirring up the North into superstition and singing sweetly into his boy’s ear. He is worried.

 

He is frightened, he can admit.

 

He does not even know her name. She gave him a song, but no name-

 

“You seemed troubled, Lord of Winterfell,” a voice speaks softly, and Ned can admit it.

 

He starts, reaching for Ice without much of a thought. A movement from the heartstree, and he wonders how the hell he did not hear the Snark of the Woods, his boy’s Lady, fucking sneaking up on him. He sees the cloak that Jon had described, in the barest way, hard to distinguish amongst the red leaves, but he can see it. Just as he can see what seems to be luminous, queer blue lights in the boroughs.

 

That, he knows not what trick she employed for that.

 

His heart pounds.

 

“Am I to assume you are what trouble’s me?” he returns, hand on Ice’s hilt. 

 

A shuffle of leaves.

 

Ned jumps, swirling.

 

The blasted fucking cloak. Quills of feathers, some he knows and most he does not- He breathes, startled, fucking holding back a curse and wondering how on earth the woman had gotten behind him- How the woman had achieved this. Was she a witch, after all? Ned did not believe in magic. But what she had done seemed impossible. She was not as tall as he’d figured her to be, as Jon had mentioned she was startling tall-

 

Did she change shape, to hide from him?

 

“What are you?”

 

“... Curious, for the most part. Jon says he was angry with you. It would take much for a loyal child to turn on its father. I came to make sure you will not hurt Jon. That you have not hurt him.”

 

Bile rises in his throat at the mere thought and the suggestion. I had promised. Promised, promised my sister and then myself, I would protect him.

 

“What sort of monster do you think me, to believe a disagreement would lead me to harm my child? ”

 

The girl tilts her head-

 

And she was gone. Ned whirls, looking, searching-

 

“Not all parents are kind to their children,” the girl says, and suddenly she is next to him.

 

She snatches Ice from his belt. He lunges for it- She is gone. Ice’s familiar sword song sounds out, and she is across the pools, lifting the great sword high above her head. Her head is tilted up, and it is the first he sees any of her face. A delicate chin, pale snow skin, lips full and parted in what- what he thinks is a wonder.

 

“You ask the wrong questions, Lord Stark. If you ask the right ones, you will have the answers you wish.”

 

She faces him. Those full pink lips smile, softly. He swallows.

 

“Who are you? What is your name?”

 

She hums.

 

“Names have power, Eddard Stark,” his knees buckle, and he finds himself taking a step back, “And I have not yet given mine to your son. What makes you think I would give it to you?”

 

He swallows.

 

“Because I worry for him. Whether you truly be some mythic creature as my children claim, they are my children. Do you intend to harm my children, my blood?”

 

I made a promise, he thinks, fiercely. 

 

The girl’s smile- It grows teeth. She is gone. A scabbard sound. Ned whirls, and she is in front of the heartstree again, Ice loosely held out to him. It is in its scabbard again. He catches his breath.

 

“Now, that, is the right question. To answer you, Lord Eddard Stark, no . I wish no harm upon your kin, your blood, or your children. They have been kinder to me than anyone else. They are my friends, and I only wish them safe.”

 

He takes Ice, slowly, carefully. 

 

She makes no other move. Ned swallows and takes a step back. She does not speak of love. He wonders if she has no regard for his son, and panic rises in him. Would he turn a monster, his boy, take like his father, when Lyanna tried to come home? He swallows again.

 

“And your intentions with Jon?”

 

He is startled.

 

She laughs. Sweetly and joyously, innocent and free and beautifully- It reminds him of Sansa . For a moment, he remembers Sansa, and part of him feels as if he will fall to his knees.

 

“I have no answer for that. I- I do not know. I-” the impossibility of her magic is cut slightly, by the bashful way she speaks now, the shy little stutter, “I care for him, Lord Stark. Very much. But know not if this is love. Beyond that… I have work to do. My duty is set. And I will not shriek it for him. I cannot.”

 

He shakes his head, blinking back a girl begging for a lemon tree. 

 

“What is your duty?”

 

She tilts her head. She is gone.  Ned cannot even muster a gasp.

 

“Another right question. I am a Daughter of the North, ” she whispers, and she is in the wirewood tree, “And Winter is Coming , Lord Eddard Stark.”

 

“Why my children?” he calls, even as she seems to fade from his sight, “Why befriend them?”

 

Blue lights in the trees.

 

“Because they are kind. I am glad that their father is as well.”

 

And she is gone with a whisper of wind through the trees.

---

Ned ??

 

She finds him again, the Lady Snark that his son is in love with, at the heartstree. He is startled, he can admit, when he feels her appear next to him.

 

"You pray often," her voice is quiet.

 

Ned shifts in place.

 

"My children have missed you," he replied, soft, "Arya has spoken nothing but of their ride with you."

 

An amused huff. 

 

"Tell Arya that my sister-wolf has missed her. I have no doubt she missed her more."

 

"You call the younger direwolves your siblings?"

 

He wonders at the girl, this mythic creature his children all love.

 

"... their Mother. Their Mother is the only one I have ever known. My human mother- I do not know her, she was taken from me before I could even remember," the girl replied, and her voice has turned pensive. 

 

"So you are human?"

 

The girl laughs. 

 

"I was not always this, Lord Stark. I am not- Not exactly completely human. Not anymore. I took on a role. I was tasked with a duty, and that has made me more then the scared girl who was lost when she escaped into your woods."

 

He blinks. A Daughter of the North. His pouring of the texts in Winterfell have given him mere hints of what that was. Older tomes, of changing seasons and strife across the North. But nothing that told him what this girl was, beyond… Beyond perhaps good. Old Nan had praised her being, her presence as a sign of troubling times that would lead to glory. And his children-

 

His children loved her. 

 

"Are you happy?" He wonders, "In your duty? If you were once more like us, has your change been good to you?"

 

The girl next to him stills. Because for all her airs- his children had called her a girl.  Beneath her hood, her face was young, they said. Whether that be more magic or her truth, Ned would trust them.

 

Had to trust them.

 

It was defiance and misunderstanding that had killed his siblings and father, it was a cruel ruler that had stricken down his innocent kin, that had jumped at shadows not truly there. He wished it not for it to bring his children's woes as well. He had enough of it himself. And in that trust, Ned felt a startling amount of unease, the idea of a child,  even one with power, being alone in the woods. 

 

"... I am happy. I had no purpose, before, Lord Eddard. No protection.  No- no friends or good kin. Why do you ask?"

 

"My children say you are young. I would fear for any child in a circumstance I do not understand. Alone, running about the woods-"

 

"You truly mean that?" she was a girl who could disappear and repeat at will. But Ned only heard the startling awe in her voice. 

 

"Of course."

 

"I have thought ill of you. Accused you of harming your child.  Forgive me, Lord Eddard."

 

"Ned. Most friends would call me Ned."

 

She is gone from his side.

 

"You would claim me, friend?" Her voice is behind him, across the pools no doubt. 

 

He looks at the heartstree in front of him. Keeps his gaze steady. Once, it had been said that no man could lie before a wirewood, before a heartstree. And he feels in front of the Daughter of the North that his children loved, that old magic must have become new again.

 

"Aye, child. I would rather not be a stranger to my children's friends."

 

She is by his side again.

 

A rustle, a crunch of snow.

 

Ned is suddenly surrounded by direwolves. 

 

Somehow, his children saying that they could ride the wolves has not prepared him for the size of them.

 

He-

 

He fucking squeaks.

 

The girl giggles, a tinkling of bells. He blinks, quickly.

 

“Would you like to see the North, Lord Ned, as I do? To know why I am content?”

 

He breathes. Deeply. The largest wolf, the wolf she calls Mother, is the one that comes near him. It is a massive thing, its head just looming over him. Bigger even then the largest draft horse he had ever seen, perhaps more than twenty-five heads tall. He cannot know how he had not seen them approach, but they have magic, perhaps that is why his ancestors picked these creatures as their sigel.

 

“You truly think me friend, child?”

 

“You call me a child, not of those who lived in Westeros before the first men and the andals, but as a girl who you feared for. I would be honored to call you friend.”  

 

“The honor is mine,” he whispers, and he is hypnotized by the Mother wolf, the great impact of her red, red eyes.

 

She is beautiful, fiercely so.

 

She bows and presses her great head against the entire length of his torso. He breathes. She breathes.

 

Tears slip down his cheek, as he lifts a hand to touch her. The Mother wolf sighs, a gust of wind from her large maw. She bows further, and he realizes with a start she means for him to go astride her.

 

The girl is already on another wolf when he turns to her for guidance. Ned does something impulsive, something he should think on more, perhaps informing someone of where he is going.  He mounts the Mother wolf. Blue lights from the depths of her hood- and Ned realizes that the lights are the girl’s eyes. Deep, beautiful blue. It reminds him of Cat’s eyes, if a more luminous shade, if supernatural. And his breath is gone at the realization that this girl used to be human, used to be the child of someone else, who lost her mother.

 

They ride.

 

It’s as if the wolves step on light and wind, running at speeds that he cannot truly understand. They run up the walls of Winterfell’s great stone as if they run across a field, and he feels his heart run with each powerful stride of the Mother wolf. He realizes with a jolt that they are moving so quickly that the day's ride it takes to reach the shores of the White Knife has taken but moments.

 

He nearly screams as the Wolves plunge towards the river-   

 

Only to touch upon the water as if it is ground instead, powerful strides that grow longer and larger, that barely cause a ripple across the stiller parts of the river. They head north, atop the water. He breathes, yet somehow breathless, as the girl leans, nearly parallel to the surface of the water, on her chosen mount the soft grey thing that is the largest of the young wolves, ahead of him, the Mother Wolf following behind with quiet obedience.

 

Her hand touches the water.

 

It leaves a trail of light. Sweet and pure, and he can feel it-

 

The girl is tending to the North, he knows it in his bones, racing into his mind as the entire White Knife behind her begins to swell, grow, turning pitch and silt in its infamously dangerous waters to spread across the roots of the North, across the tributaries and smaller rivers that follow from its source. He knows not how he knows, but the girl is giving fertile soil for the North along the White Knife, growing and tending in their longer Summer, further and further than the North had been able to do without her.  He thinks desperately of the increased crop yields across the North, the number of births of people and animals that have nearly exploded across the North in the two years since the girl had been first spotted and whispered about.

 

For the first time in nearly seven years, the lemon tree sapling he had brought for Sansa had bloomed, well on its way to bearing fruit.

 

Tears slip more and more down his face. 

 

This stranger, this girl is tending to his lands and he had thought ill of her. Thought her a mummer, a monster if not, who had called his children friends for their simple kindness. 

 

They race forward. 

 

They finish with the Knife, the Daughter of the North straightens and he sees the Wall, impossibly, impossibly in front of them. A ride that could take days, in only a handful of more moments. 

 

The wolves pick up speed. Ned clings, even as he cries his tears. 

 

They run up the Wall. The entire length of it. But moments pass. But Ned feels an ancient and strong magic flare beneath them. Calling to her mending in bits and pieces- The Wall shines, and even as they walk, Ned can barely register the shouts of sheer alarm that goes through the men of the Watch. They run past them invisible, unseen- he thinks he hears his brother’s heartbeat , a cadence that rings in Ned’s own chest-

 

Beyond the Wall a horrendous dell of- of something snarls and bites. Death and cold seize his heart.

 

The wolves howl back, defiant and screaming. The girl sings out, and it's the shrieks of birds, the cacophony of snarling animals he cannot even name. It is life and the defiance of anything but life.

 

The horrible sound beyond the Wall seems to choke itself into silence. 

 

They ride. Ride more and more. 

 

Flint down the Wall. 

 

Ned does not know how, but he feels the as they ride around, soaring past the lands of the largest kingdom in the Seven Kingdoms, and he feels his heart swoop and roar with the sheer immensity of his lands coming more and more to life at the steps of this wolf pack, at the tending of this girl who calls herself a Daughter of the North.

 

They reach Winterfell before the sun sets.

 

He hears the toll for the evening meal, and he is breathless as he slips off of his mount.

 

The Mother Wolf steadies him, with bulk and what is almost a hum from its maw. Ned, laughs a breathless sort of laugh, weak kneed and completely awed. 

 

“That was your duty? Your task for your supernatural power?”

 

The girl hummed. 

 

“ Winter is Coming, ” she said, soft and knowing, “And the North has called me its Daughter. I will do what I must.”

 

“The sound Beyond the Wall-”

 

“There is dark and death magic, much as there is light and life, Lord Eddard Stark. The magic your ancestor invoked into the Wall is old and has protected the North more than just those who wished to be free. Something ancient and old has been stirring in The Land of Always Winter, and I fear the Wall, much as I try, will not hold. Too much time has passed. My limits in regards to the Wall is much. I- I am not a Stark, so I cannot do more. I did not set the stones, inscribe the runes and my blood- My blood is not enough to completely mend it, that much I know in my hearts of hearts.”

 

“ Winter is Coming. The O-”

 

“Names have power.”

 

He stops.

 

“They are a story. A myth but I supposed, with you as proof- the world is stranger than I thought. The Age of Heroes tells of a Winter that lasted a generation, of a battle-”

 

“A warning passed on, even in your words, Lord Stark.”

 

“That- They are coming over the Wall?”

 

“They more than likely intended to destroy the Wall, Lord Stark. The magic, ancient that it is, is strong enough to hold them back. It isn’t, however, strong enough to endure if they attack it as it is now. I have been trying to reinforce it.”

 

“They fear you.”

 

“They fear nothing. I am just a partly thing to them.”

---

Cat ?

 

The girl walks like a lady.

 

That is the first thought she has, heart in her throat. She expected some wild, stalking thing, from the words of her children and her husband, but the girl that is magic, some Child-like thing who haunts the lands of her husband, walks with an elegant gait. A dancing easy movement. The other thought she has is that the girl has a soft, delicate chin, soft lips, and the clearest complexion. Or well, at least from the tip of her nose to her delicate chin. The rest of her face is hidden by her horrendous cloak of gleaming quills, the hood engulfing her face in shadow. Her hair is a mess, matted and dark at the tips as if she had dragged it through mud, but it is a lovely shade of copper, rich and dark, burnished and shining in the light where it hasn’t been dipped in whatever it had been. 

 

Jon looks at her with love in his eyes and her delicate, small hand that rests on his arm. 

 

Cat swallows, thickly, heart in her throat. The girl is barefoot, she realizes, as she lifts her skirts and cloak, just a touch. They are clean, at least from what Cat can see. A small blessing. She curtsies, properly.

 

“Well met, Catelyn Stark,” her voice is a pretty, pretty thing, lovely and measured. Her accent is mostly Northern, well cadence of it, but for a few little pulls at her l’s. She wonders how a girl of the Vale and North became what she is, as her husband had said.

 

The utterance of her name, the way she says it, nearly wrenches an unexpected sob from her throat. Cat blinks back tears, heart in her throat. 

 

What magic does she invoke with mere words?

 

“Well met, Lady, Daughter of the North.”

 

The girl smiles, slightly. It is a lovely smile, sweet and whole.  From the depths of her hood, Cat sees a gleaming set of lights, and she shivers.

 

“She’s here for a visit,” Jon says, fondly, eyes soft. 

 

The girl laughs, slightly.

 

“I am here to inquire some things with Lord Ned, and his plans for the Winter… And for a visit. I have yet to introduce myself to Jon’s Mother,” she says softly, and her voice is as shy as any girl who meets the mother of a boy who is besotted with her, “Forgive me, my Lady, I do not know many ladies of your stature.”

 

“I-”

 

“SNARK!” A shriek of happiness.

 

Arya races forward, arms reaching. Cat is astounded when her gangly girl jumps atop the witch, or being. The only response is for her to be caught, and spun in the arms of the Daughter of the North with another tinkling laugh.

 

“Where is she? Were is she-”

 

“My sister is not here. I come to understand that my family is alarming, especially indoors,” replies the girl who is perhaps not a girl, a smile on her face.

 

“Mother wouldn’t-”

 

“Arya,” Cat says, simply, warning in her voice, “Are you telling the Lady to bring wolves, larger than horses, into the keep?”

 

“Nooo?”

 

“I will not, My Lady. But I will tell you, Lady Arya, that my sister will appear later today in the wolfswood.”

 

“Will we ride?”

 

“Mayhaps, but only if you are granted permission,” she soothes down the fly-away hair of Arya’s face.

 

Her daughter looks at the being with adoration.

 

“Won’t you give me permission?”

 

The girl huffs and Cat sees another smile.

 

“From you parents, Arya,” she returned with exasperation.   

Chapter 32: The Girl With the Evil Eye (II)

Summary:

Lucia wants nothing to do with the crazy she is now related to. Too bad she doesn’t have much say on the matter.

Summary: Lucia wants nothing to do with the crazy she is now related to. Too bad she doesn’t have much say on the matter.

 

TAGS: Modern Girl in Westeros, Runaway Targaryen, 

 

Relationships: Lucreys/Aemond, Original Character/Aemond

---

She was named Lucia once.

 

Lucia.

 

And she was born in the place of a Strong Boy meant to die. She was born in the place of the spark, the kindling and flint that began the rage of Fire across Westeros.

 

She is the first note to the Dance.

 

Or, well, she’s supposed to be.

 

But the girl born to the Realm’s Delight had one, single thought about that.

 

Fuck that.

---

She comes to understand at a very early age, that anything she does with the people she has been born that Lucia Reina is powerless. Or well, Lucerae Velaryon is powerless.

 

Princess of the fucking realm or not. 

 

There is too much hurt, too much scheming done before her birth that would make much a difference in the short scant of time she has before she is set to die. This is a moment of truth, in a sense, she is four namedays old and being presented at court. She stares frowns, wondering, silently, at her appearance. She is the second child of the Maegor with teats, and she should be a boy with Strong brown eyes and dark hair.

 

She frowns, slightly at the color of her hair. 

 

It is… It isn’t black. It is not silver and gold, however, but a blinding white mixed with grey. Flat and straight as a pin, the texture much too fine compared to her mother’s hair. When she sees it in her peripheral vision, she expects to see a wizened crone, not a precious youth of four. The eyes that stare at her- One is an odd green in a frightfully pale face, and the other is that fabled Valeriyon violet. One is the color her eyes had been, and the other is proof of the fantasy world she had been thrust into. 

 

She frowns.

 

It’s fucking weird to see such a color in a person, she can admit. There’s a reason she avoids mirrors. But most of it is because she doesn’t look like the boy she was supposed to be. So what does that mean? What does that mean that the dragon she was suppose to have grown with stayed stone in the cradle with her? What does it mean when she has a womb? What is she supposed to do when her life was supposed to end at fourteen?

 

If reincarnation was a contest, I think I fucking lost. I want a refund. 

 

“You will be the next Realm’s Delight,” whispers her father, sweet and soft, tucking her white hair behind her ear, mindful of the jeweled net nestled in her hair, “You must not fret,  little Lu, you look wonderful.”

 

She sighed. Pressed her little hands against the dark black dress. Ornate and horrifyingly expensive to her sensibilities. Rubies are smooth beneath her palm.  Her hand sweats at the fact that several of these stones would feed most people in this world for a lifetime.

 

“If you say so, Father,” she says, simply.  

 

He laughs. Leanor laughs a lot around her. Sweet smiles and happy. She wonders if its because he thinks she’s biologically his? Because of her appearance? 

 

“Doubt, little Lu?”

 

She blinks quickly. He… he is one of her favorites in her new life. And she knows he’s supposed to die too. What does that say to her, that she finds kinship in him for it?

 

“Only skepticism,” she replies, simply, “I am not so pretty. And my skin is too pale. Mother is ever asking for ways to cover up the fact that I look like a reanimated corpse.”

 

He laughs again. Strong and warm.

 

“You have learned your letters too quickly, and have devoured your books too much. You sound much too old, Little Lu.” 

 

“Agree to disagree.”

 

He laughs, yet again, and gives her a sweet kiss on her forehead.

---

The King is horrific to her. 

 

It is a combination of his fixation on his daughter and his hand and his inability to check them both. His condition, pity swelling into her heart and frustration that she can’t do anything about what looks like a condition that would have been treatable in her first life. And the fact that when he looks at her, she thinks he sees his wife.

 

“The finest Princess for the Realm,” he declares, ardently.

 

His daughter is but feet from her. Whose eyes are distant and looking to a place that Lucia desperately wishes she could escape too. 

 

She suppresses a frown. She keeps her head bowed, even as her eyes peak from lower lashes. The Queen is picking at her nail beds. Her jaw works.

---

She stares at the dragon egg.

 

Stares at the smiling king. Stares at her triumphant mother.

 

Stares at the boy that was supposed to fucking kill her. Who’s wide eyed and hurt and furious all in one.

 

Yeah, she thinks, fists clenching, Fucking fuck no.

 

“No, I refuse the egg,” she says simply.

 

The King blinks.

 

Lucia licks her lips.

 

“You have spat on Valerian traditions,” she says, simply, her jaw working, “I am not the eldest child of this House without a dragon.”

 

“Lucerae!” her mother scolds.

 

She sneers.

 

“I will have no dragon until Prince Aemond receives a dragon.”

 

With that, she races from the room. 

---

He hates her. Hates that she has spat in the face of what he so wants-

 

But Aemond would be a liar if he would say he’s not confused.

 

For her spitting in the face of the King- had been done in his name. That is where he is confused. The look on the face of his niece, the only one who is probably a rightful princess of the realm of his sister’s brood… The look on his sister’s face? That would keep him happy for years to come. But his niece’s face? He knows not. 

 

“If you’re going to lurk,” her voice says simply, without looking up from the enormous tomb she is scribbling in, “Would you mind stepping out from the light? You’re blocking me.”

 

Aemond blinks, and carefully sidesteps out of the light.

 

A smile blooms on his niece’s face, sweet and full and Aemond blinks again.

 

“Thank you.”   

---

“LUCERAE!” her mother shrieks.

 

Lucia stares at the Cannibal.

 

He stares at her. Green eyes meet her own, and he flares his enormous wings. 

 

“Oh,” she whispers, softly.

 

He bares black teeth, in an almost smile. 

 

“ Rider, ” he hisses, and it a voice that vibrates in her bones, “ Rider of another World. ”

 

“Yeah,” she returns, “Yeah, that’s me.”

 

She nearly laughs because Dragons fucking talk. 

 

He snorts. The force of it knocks her back. She is very, very tempted to piss her dress. The only thing holding back the liquid is she is unsure how sensitive a dragon’s sense of smell is, and she really rather not offend the dragon. She is close though.

 

“ I have waited and waited for you to come to me. Mine . Rider of another World. You are the only one I will allow to mount me. Tell me your true name, hatchling. ”

 

She blinks. Blinks again.

 

“Lucia. My name is Lucia .”

 

The dragon moves its great head closer. More tears slip down her face. It presses its head against the entirety of her form.

 

“ Lucia , fly with me, away from this place. I have waited many years for you. ”

 

“Okay,” she replies, dazed. 

 

The dragon grips her dress with its teeth.

 

Oh shit -

---

Aemond isn’t sure if he makes a sound, or if he is screaming himself hoarse as he watches his niece gripped in the Cannibal’s mouth.

 

It moves like a snake, belly to the ground as it grips her in its mouth like a fucking mother cat holds a kitten. Next to him, his elder sister makes a keening sound as those wings start to beat.

 

He’s taking her

 

Aemond begins to run. Not towards his niece, with reckless abandon as he so wishes, but rather instead to the dragon caves behind him.

 

I will save her. 

---

She is flying.

 

She has flown before.

 

Lucia Reina has never flown like this before.

 

She shrieks. 

 

With a happiness bubbling in her.

Chapter 33: The Girl With the Evil Eye (III)

Summary:

She was named Lucia Aragón once.

Lucia.

And she was born in the place of a Strong Boy meant to die. She was born in the place of the spark, the kindling and flint that began the rage of Fire across Westeros.

She is the first note to the Dance.

Or, well, she’s supposed to be. But the girl born to the Realm’s Delight had one, single thought about that:

In her second life, Princess Lucerae Velaryon will take note from her surname, and RUN.

Notes:

So. Look, confession time. I’ve read ‘Fire and Blood’ when it first came out… So I’ve read it once, and I use it as a reference when it comes to my fanfics sometimes… But I haven’t seen the first season of ‘House of Dragon’ it’s on my list, but when it premiered me and my sister completely forgot about the new series, and had just finished rewatching ‘GOT’ and I was pretty Fantsy-ied out. Because I had also tried to see ‘Wheel of Time’ and ‘Rings of Power’, and neither show really hit for me-

My general rule, 3 episodes to give the show a chance. I couldn’t with either show, and I really didn’t want to start a new fantasy show when two had really hadn’t hit for me. So I’ve put ‘HOT’ on the back burner. Why am I writing fanfiction?

I read me some good fics after the show came out, and welp, here we are. I don’t think I’ll get very far with it, but I keep adding little bits of this so I’d thought I post it for now.

TAGS: Modern Girl in Westeros, Runaway Targaryen, Runaway Valeryon, Lucreys Self-Insert, OC-Insert, Lucreys is Genderbent,

Relationships: Lucreys/Aemond, Original Character/Aemond.

---

‘Let it bleed through my fingers, a treasure in my hands,’:

I

 

She comes to understand at a very early age, that anything she does with the people she has been born that Lucia Aragón is powerless. Or well, Lucerae Velaryon is powerless.

 

Princess of the fucking realm or not.

 

Reincarnation has come for her, and it is in the shittiest way for possible.  

 

There is too much hurt, too much scheming done before her birth that would make much a difference in the short scant of time she has before she is set to die. This is a moment of truth, in a sense, she is four namedays old and being presented at court for the first time. She stares frowns, wondering, silently, at her appearance. She is the second ‘trueborn’ child of the Maegor with teats, and she should be a boy with Strong brown eyes and dark hair.

 

She is the spark.

 

She is the note of the first Dance of Dragons.

 

She is to die in the jaws of a the queen of old.

 

She frowns, slightly at the color of her hair. 

 

It is… It isn’t black, like it fucking should be. It is not silver and gold, however, but a blinding white mixed with grey. Flat and straight as a pin, the texture much too fine compared to her mother’s hair, yet her hair isn’t fucking black . When she sees it in her peripheral vision, she expects to see a wizened crone, not a precious youth of four. The eyes that stare at her- One is an odd green in a frightfully young face, and the other is that fabled valyrian violet. One is the color her eyes had been, and the other is proof of the fantasy world she had been thrust into. 

 

She frowns.

 

It’s fucking weird to see such a color in a person, she can admit. There’s a reason she avoids mirrors. But most of it is because she doesn’t look like the boy she was supposed to be, or the woman she knows lurks beneath her facade of youth. So what does that mean? What does that mean that the dragon she was supposed to have grown with stayed stone in the cradle with her? What does it mean when she has a womb? What is she supposed to do when her life was supposed to end at fourteen ?

 

If reincarnation was a contest, I think I fucking lost . But what's the phrase? The only way to win the game is to never play. But is a Game of Thrones . You win or you die. 

 

And I am set to die.

 

“You will be the next Realm’s Delight,” whispers her father, sweet and soft, tucking her white hair behind her ear, mindful of the jeweled net nestled in her slippery hair, “You must not fret,  little Lu, you look wonderful.”

 

She sighed. Pressed her little hands against the dark black dress. Ornate and horrifyingly expensive to her sensibilities. Rubies are smooth beneath her palm.  Her hand sweats at the fact that several of these stones would feed most people in this world for a lifetime.

 

“If you say so, Father,” she says, simply.  

 

He laughs. Leanor laughs a lot around her, something of her has lightened a man already joyous. He is all sweet smiles and happy when she is near, and she is the wonder of the world for him. She wonders if its because he thinks she’s biologically his? She knows not what caused her coloring to be what it was, but with her coloring, the whispers of ‘bastards’ rings hollow. She tries not to think about the fact that by technicality, she is above everyone but her mother in line to the Iron Throne. 

 

“Doubt, little Lu?”

 

She blinks quickly. He… he is one of her favorites in her new life. And she knows he’s supposed to die too. What does that say to her, that she finds kinship in him for it? That she hopes in her heart that his death is not so concrete, that he abandons her, rather than die and be discarded by her mother so quickly?

 

Please, please, she prays each night, secretly to every deity she can name. 

 

“Only skepticism,” she replies, simply, “I am not so pretty. And my skin is too pale. Mother is ever asking for ways to cover up the fact that I look like a reanimated corpse.”

 

He laughs again. Strong and warm. Runs a careful hand against her skin. Her skin is like his- darker, richer than most of Westeros, but, there was a touch of grey to her complexion. 

 

“You have learned your letters too quickly, and have devoured your books too much. You sound much too old, Little Lu.” 

 

“Agree to disagree.”

 

He laughs, yet again, and gives her a sweet kiss on her forehead.

---

‘Let it bleed through my fingers, a treasure in my hands,’:

II

 

The empty sockets of dragons fucking bore into her soul.

 

Lucia wonders if they, dead creatures of magic sense it.

 

Sense the interloper in this skin, the false dragon that bares them on her chest. She wears the skin of a dragon, but at the core of her, she is not a dragon. I am light, I am a deep valley, but I am not a fucking dragon. She is a woman out of time, out of dimension, and lost to the place she truly belongs. Do they condemn her for it, these creatures shackled to the blood that runs through her veins, for not truly belonging? Is that why Arrax had refused to stir in their shared cradle? Is that why the dragon petrified rather than come into this world with her? Lucia is full of questions. She doubts she will get many answers. She is a woman in a world that would covet, and hate her for it. She will be paid no mind for it. 

 

The King is horrific to her. 

 

She looks up at him on his monstrous perch of steel and conquest, and all she sees is a fool.

 

It is a combination of his fixation on his daughter and his hand and his inability to check the people around him. She may not agree with a Monarch, and may not like a single person who has so much power, but, she understands it. And she understands that the man above her is a bad Monarch, just as her mother has the makings of a bad one. His mysterious condition yet to come, she can admit she pities him. They’re isn’t any trace of it yet.

 

Yet, when he looks down at her, she knows he does not judge as the dragons around her do. 

 

There is love in his gaze. Love and-

 

Denial. I think he sees his wife.

 

“The finest Princess for the Realm, in this next generation,” he declares, ardently, “Come here, child. Let me look at you.”

 

His youngest daughter is but feet from her. Princess Healena, who’s eyes are distant and looking to a place that Lucia desperately wishes she could escape too. She suppresses a frown. She keeps her head bowed, even as her eyes peak from lower lashes. The Green Queen is picking at her nail beds. Her jaw works. She turns, just slightly away.

 

Lucia knows she is too late, too young, to do anything.

 

She feels rage, rage at her circumstance.

 

She steps forward, until she is at the foot of the Iron Throne.

 

She sinks to her knees in respect she does not feel. 

 

The King makes a noise of surprise.

 

She keeps to her knees.

 

“No- child-” he means for her to step upon the iron throne.

 

To take a step on those fire and blood conquering steel, rise and rise upon those jagged steps to him.

 

Lucia does not move. Keeps her head down. She has no right to that legacy, to that throne, even if her body by his word is technically the only legitimate heir to the throne. 

 

The King laughs.

 

“So shy to your grandsire?” He calls out, and he sounds besotted.

 

The King goes to her. Lifts her in his arms and grins up at her while he holds her aloft. 

 

“The Realm's Delight,” he declares her.

 

The Dragons watch and she has never felt more of an impostor.

---

‘Let it bleed through my fingers, a treasure in my hands,’:

III

 

His little niece has his father’s love, and Amemond knows not to feel about it.

 

For she has it with her breathe, with her meer life, and he cannot recall if his father has ever looked at him. Yet she sits in his arms as if she is his daughter,  as if she is the only child to ever exist.

 

He does feel his mother's pain, but he feels not much against his sire's obvious affection. He knows the King little, truly.

 

And he wonders if he is the only one who sees the discomfort in his niece's face. The way she cringes slightly away from the King. 

---

She stares at the dragon egg.

 

Stares at the smiling king. Stares at her triumphant mother.

 

Stares at the boy that was supposed to fucking kill her. Who’s wide eyed and hurt and furious all in one.

 

Yeah, she thinks, fists clenching, Fucking fuck no.

 

“No, I refuse the egg,” she says simply.

 

The King blinks.

 

Lucia licks her lips.

 

“You have spat on Valerian traditions,” she says, simply, her jaw working, “I am not the eldest child of this House without a dragon.”

 

“Lucerae!” her mother scolds.

 

She sneers.

 

“I will have no dragon until Prince Aemond receives a dragon.”

 

With that, she races from the room. 

---

He hates her. Hates that she has spat in the face of what he so wants-

 

But Aemond would be a liar if he would say he’s not confused.

 

For her spitting in the face of the King- had been done in his name. That is where he is confused. The look on the face of his niece, the only one who is probably a rightful princess of the realm of his sister’s brood… The look on his sister’s face? That would keep him happy for years to come. But his niece’s face? He knows not. 

 

“If you’re going to lurk,” her voice says simply, without looking up from the enormous tomb she is scribbling in, “Would you mind stepping out from the light? You’re blocking me.”

 

Aemond blinks, and carefully sidesteps out of the light.

 

A smile blooms on his niece’s face, sweet and full and Aemond blinks again.

 

“Thank you.”   

---

“LUCERAE!” her mother shrieks.

 

Lucia stares at the Cannibal.

 

He stares at her. Green eyes meet her own, and he flares his enormous wings. 

 

“Oh,” she whispers, softly.

 

He bares black teeth, in an almost smile. 

 

“ Rider, ” he hisses, and it a voice that vibrates in her bones, “ Rider of another World. ”

 

“Yeah,” she returns, “Yeah, that’s me.”

 

She nearly laughs because Dragons fucking talk. 

 

He snorts. The force of it knocks her back. She is very, very tempted to piss her dress. The only thing holding back the liquid is she is unsure how sensitive a dragon’s sense of smell is, and she really rather not offend the dragon. She is close though.

 

“ I have waited and waited for you to come to me. Mine . Rider of another World. You are the only one I will allow to mount me. Tell me your true name, hatchling. ”

 

She blinks. Blinks again.

 

“Lucia. My name is Lucia .”

 

The dragon moves its great head closer. More tears slip down her face. It presses its head against the entirety of her form.

 

“ Lucia , fly with me, away from this place. I have waited many years for you. ”

 

“Okay,” she replies, dazed. 

 

The dragon grips her dress with its teeth.

 

Oh shit -

---

Aemond isn’t sure if he makes a sound, or if he is screaming himself hoarse as he watches his niece gripped in the Cannibal’s mouth.

 

It moves like a snake, belly to the ground as it grips her in its mouth like a fucking mother cat holds a kitten. Next to him, his elder sister makes a keening sound as those wings start to beat.

 

He’s taking her

 

Aemond begins to run. Not towards his niece, with reckless abandon as he so wishes, but rather instead to the dragon caves behind him.

 

I will save her. 

---

She is flying.

 

She has flown before.

 

Lucia Aragón has never flown like this before.

 

She shrieks. 

 

With a happiness bubbling in her. 

---

She is not wearing Black. 

 

That is Amemond's first thought.

 

His niece, four and ten, come back from the dead.

 

Yet the first thing he registers is that she isn't wearing the Black of her mother’s faction. 

 

She wears Valeryon blue.

Chapter 34: UPDATES~

Published Works for this:

1. Perchance
2. All Mimsy Were the Baragroves
3. She Wore a Cloak of Feathers(A Look of Sadness in Her Eyes)
4. The Girl With the Evil Eye

 

Chapter 35: A Song of Victory

Summary:

Lorelei Cortez finds herself in Westeros, afraid, her voice bound by something she cannot understand. She emerges from Winterfell’s pools, cut and bleeding, saved by the Lord of the Keep, Eddard Stark. Que her continued horror when she saves a large, weird dog from an angry stag and realizes as it starts giving birth, how such symbolism means how she has changed the story she had been trying desperately not to alter.

Pairings: Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, 

Tags: Shameless Self-Insert, Self-Insert, This is For My Own Jollies, No Pairings, 

---

First Note:

Ned I

 

They found the girl, clawing her way out of the pools in godswood, paler than death and bleeding, with a queer pack, and even stranger clothing.

 

Specifically, it was Ned who had found her. Ned had just spent time before the Hearttree, and had been making his way to leave when the sound of rustling water had alerted him. He expected perhaps a drowning bird, or his children wishing to play within the pools, as sometimes was their wont, but instead, he finds a girl, just a girl hands on the leaf-strewn bank, attempting to exit the water. Her small pale hands, full of cuts were desperately clawing at the banks, turning dirt and moss beneath her fingernails. It was the sort of desperation, headless of her injuries, a determination of survival that struck him speechless. She made desperate little cries, a muffled sound that sounded like a cat.

 

Ned, after a moment of sheer astonishment, acted without thought, lunging for the girl just as her head slipped beneath the water.

 

She was a small thing, and when he brought her flush against him, he realized that the girl was young, just barely coming into womanhood, if that, at the most by his estimation, could be the same age as his eldest girl, Sansa or his eldest, Jon. She was that sort of age that sort of ran together. The waters run red with her blood, startling the peace before the hearttree, but Ned was already dismissing it, ignoring all reason or questioning logic on how the girl had emerged from the pool that was land-locked. Even as her head rests weakly against his neck, even as her stuttering breath is softer then it should be. Or the fact that her trembling fingertips touch at his face tentatively.

 

A weak noise escapes her throat.

 

Soft and devastating.

 

A wordless plea of pain, of help .

 

He is moving, swiftly, and when he sees the doors to the keep proper, he is already calling for aid, for Maester Luwin to wake in the early morning. It is when this is done when she is beneath the Maester’s care that Ned even pauses to think of the circumstances that he had found her in. But it is Cat that really questions him, pale as she is in whichever clothing she had managed to place upon her body.

 

“Ned, what on earth-”

 

“In the pools,” Ned has never been an eloquent man, and this moment is no exception, “I made my leave after prayer, and heard a sound from the pool. I see the girl attempting to exit the pool by the heartstree-”

 

Cat brows furrow. And her eyes are a light in shimmering Tully blue. Her lips part.

 

“It is a sign, Ned-”

 

Ned frowned. He was not a man that took the moods of the winds or that of the color of the sky and saw things that which were not there. The poor girl had probably been dragged and dumped into the pools, left for dead.

 

Never mind that I was there early, before dawn to pray.

---

Second Note:

Lorelei I

 

Lorelei has long understood that she is not dreaming. Her hands, her precious hands are finally healing, and she thanks whatever deity can hear her, in this strange new dimension where fictional characters are real, and so was motherfucking magic and monsters-

 

Don’t. Don’t think about that. Do that and they win.

 

“Child,” croaks Luwin, carefully.

 

He is unfailingly polite. But she thinks she slighted his pride when she had kicked him for coming at her with a needle, deciding not as clean as proper medical standards, a thin thread in not much better a state. Made of some dubious material she hadn't wanted to be threaded in her flesh. She had forced him to boil everything in their frightfully strong wine, silently growling at him whenever he had tried to protest. Made him fetch silk for it because she wasn’t going to get an infection and fuck the rough wool shit he had tried to use. 

It wasn’t as if Maester Luwin was incompetent, as far as she could decipher, but there was a certain ignorance to the way he did things that was akin to the world he had been raised in. A cultural difference, if you would, in what they demeaned medical ready.

 

She nods, to show her attention, trying not to scowl as the older man gives her a somewhat stately nod in return.

 

“Lord Stark wishes to inquire, whether or not you will feel comfortable to attend dinner?”

 

Lorelei thinks a moment, before she quirks her head at him, raising her brow exuberantly high to show her question.

 

She has become a master of nonverbal communication since her incident.

 

“You know your body best, child. If you are physically strong enough, by all means.”

 

She feels guilty. For harassing the man that had attempted to help her, and had not expected her to be so violent during the whole process. She gives the man a beautific smile, bound hands fluttering uselessly before she extends the hand with the least cuts. He takes it, hesitantly, brows furrowed. She keeps her smile and twists her non-cut fingers around his wrinkled, calloused hand in a faint squeeze. It is the best apology and show of gratitude she can portray.

The old man pats her hands carefully, gently, before he twists his hand to squeeze it in return. And Lorelei feels even worse for her attitude. She felt her brows furrow, by the old man, in the few weeks she had been underneath his care, seemed to have to recognize her feelings quite well.  

 

“You have been a most excellent patient,” he assured her, a faint smile on his face, “If a little unsettled. And with very queer requests… But not unreasonable. Your wounds are better for it.”

 

Despite everything, Lorelei couldn’t help but snort. She had been a pain in his ass.

 

“Well,  perhaps very unsettled.”

 

Lorelei gave him another smile. Then, deliberately, she swung her legs to get out of the very uncomfortable cot bed in the Maester’s surgery, office? Lorelei wasn’t quite sure what it was called. She rummaged around her small suitcase for a pair of clean socks. She reached for a pair of jeans, only for Luwin to clear his throat.

 

“My Lady Sansa has set aside some clothing for you child, as she said that you are about the same size,” said the Maester, gently, “Perhaps it would be best to venture to dinner with something of a local fair?”

 

Lorelei blinked and looked over at the man with a raised brow. How old do these people think I am? Well, maybe this is for the better. She had lost a significant amount of weight since she had fallen into Westeros. She was skeletal at best and downright terrifying to look at when she had been rescued by Ned Stark. Luwin had given her a heavily caloric diet as a result, full of fatty foods and meats that she could barely stomach. When they had discovered she got sick with red meat, they had speculated she had been starved, instead of the alternative that Lorelei had been a semi-vegetarian since she was twenty-two, and had barely eaten the stuff since she was sensitive to it. But well, she couldn’t really contradict them. She couldn’t talk to do so, and she wasn't sure if common was the same written as it was spoken, nor could she really hold a pen or quill.

She had always had a soft, round face that looked much younger than people assumed. She had been scolded one-two many times to count for being underage for some reason or another, and when she had begun being a teacher, mistaken one too many times for one of her students. With her massive weight loss, it was even harder to gauge her age. I miss my boobs.

She reached for baby Sansa’s dress, a soft gray affair that was formless, and looked like it would cover her body more or less from ankle to throat. She drew over her head, careful of her hands, and was grateful the girl had picked a dress with such loose, fluttery sleeves. Luwin was nice enough to get her laces in the back, carefully spiraling the soft ribbons to get the dress to conform around her, and made sure to not draw it too tightly. She pressed her injured hands down the dress, only flinching slightly with the jolt of pain it set. She wore her own boots, slightly heeled and of sturdy leather that had done her well so far. They were doing better against smooth stone, at any rate. She went to her bag and tried to comb her hair, only for Luwin to once again take pity on her. She sighed as he ran her sturdy comb lightly along with her long newly white hair, even after all this time the color sent a jolt to her system as it passed the corner of her vision.  It had grown longer in the couple of months since she had woken up in Westeros, from just below her shoulder blades to closer to her waist.

 

“Ah,” her voice was a squeak, the best she could do before things got weird.

 

“You’re welcome child,” he said, seemingly knowing her intention. 

 

Lorelei sighed. Stubbornly picked her up both her suitcase, and her carry on bag. She followed behind the old man.

 

The Great Hall of Winterfell was beautiful, in an austere, severe way. It was like the architecture of a gothic cathedral, stone and ribbing patterns, but with none of the lightness that came from gorgeous windows or decoration. The tapestries brought no light, for the colors were muted, probably from limited access to dyes, she thought, examining a particularly large one with gorgeous if a little rough embroidery. She was eager to sketch it all. The detail in the embroidery. The tall ceilings... Her hands already drifting towards her pack-

 

“This way my Lady,” called Luwin.

 

Giving the stitchwork one more glance, Lorelei followed behind the Maester. At the table, she realized with a slight jolt, the Lords and Ladies of the castle had been watching her. The Stark children were unabashedly curious, she saw. Robb and Jon looked to be about twelve or eleven, if her guess was right, which depending on the version of the world she was in meant that the King wouldn’t come to Winterfell for another few years. Three years if it was the book events, six if it was the show’s timeline. She counted silently and frowned slightly. Where’s Rickon? A quick glance at beautiful Catelyn Stark gave her an answer. Pregnant. Three years is right, at the least, six if we go by the show. Okay, that’s nice. No immediate threat of death. Well. No more than usual.

Reaching the table, she hesitated, before she lowered herself to the Lady and Lord of the castle. It wasn’t quite good form, she knew, her legs wobbling just slightly, but it was best a curtsy she could give. Catelyn seemed unsatisfied with it, her brow rising slightly down at her. Lorelei snuck a glance at her unintentional savior in Ned Stark. He looks like a morose bastard. Lorelei kept her lowered curtsy and gave as best as a smile as she could manage, eyes down and not looking up again. No one spoke for half a minute, and Lorelei grit her teeth as her legs threatened to collapse under her.

 

“Rise, child,” Ned’s voice was deep, accented to Lorelei’s ears. She breathed in a little before she straightened as gracefully as she could.

 

Judging by Cat’s face, it was probably not very graceful.

 

She kept a placid smile and resisted the urge to reach up and clutch at the straps of her backpack, or fiddle with her hair. Her heart was beating quickly. She does not know what Ned Stark thinks of her, and frankly, his opinion will probably let her live or kill her. The fact that he was thinking she was a child was both good and bad. Good, because he was more likely to go easy on her when it came to suspicion and any labor he placed on her. Bad, because she was not a child and his misconception could really backfire on her. Nothing like a liar to be whipped or beheaded, really, in this dimension where shit went from zero to a hundred in a second.

 

"You look well," started the Lord, calmly, and his gray eyes shinned with what looked like relief.

 

Lorelei gave a small, brief smile, and bobbed her head in agreement. She smoothed down her borrowed skirts, and flinched when her injured fingers touched too roughly on her hip.

 

Ned Stark gave her an assessing look.

 

Fuck me does he give a good stone face.

 

“I was told you were unable to speak.”

 

A shiver went down Lorelei’s spine.

 

Glowing above her, reaching and grabbing at her throat pulling-

 

She blinked, took in a deep breath, a whoosh of sound that came from the fact that she had stopped breathing for a good minute. She bent over, causing everyone in front of her to shift anxiously, but she took a moment. Breathe breathe, breathe, she begged herself, clenching her hands on her bent knees, she wheezed.

 

“ Luwin -”

 

She ruefully shook her head. 

 

“ Ah, Ah, ” she said simply, holding back her tears but only just.

 

“A moment, my Lord,” said Luwin, and he pressed a centering hand in the middle of her back, warm, large, and she focused on that, “It’s alright child, there’s a good lass, take your time.”

 

Lorelei squeezed her eyes together, tightly. Then she whipped her head up, took a deliberate step closer. Shuddered another breath. Then another. She looked straight into Eddard Stark’s eyes. Gray met gray. She lifted a shaking hand to her throat. Clenched what fingers she could, and made a ripping motion. Furrowed her brows and blinked back tears and bile in her throat. Repeated it again and again.

 

Ned Stark’s eyes flickered to her neck, and they stilled and stared.

 

He drew in a sharp breath.

 

“You are trying to tell me someone took your voice? Lass, did someone slit your throat?!”

 

Lorelei grimaced. And gave a half-aborted shake of her head, slipping into a vigorous nod. It was close enough to the truth. Sparing the youngest children a glance, she gripped her high collar with two fingers and pulled down. What was underneath, she knew from hours of staring at the pictures she had snapped on her phone, were both horrific and strange. They looked like scars. Had hurt like someone had branded and carved them into her skin... Pale pink with a sheen of white scar tissue, some strange symbols that she knew she had to try and figure out what they meant.

 

But they were not scars.

 

Had not been placed on her body with a knife or a brand. But… But with magic . She tugged her collar back up and looked up at the Lord of Winterfell. His face was pale with fury, she saw. A deep fury and horror at what he probably thought had been carved into her. Near enough.

 

“If we were to find those who did this to you, would you be able to know them?”

 

Lorelei frowned and gave a helpless shrug.

 

How the fuck am I supposed to let men with pointy swords go after the bullshit that did this to me?      

 

Ned sighed.

 

“My Lord, I would ask to allow the girl to sit and consume her meal- her legs were quite affected by her injuries… The runes of the first men, they… They are all over her body.”

 

Luwin hovered around her shoulders, placing a gentle hand on her uninjured one. Lorelei flinched nonetheless, the sudden contact uncomfortable. Even as he moved to support her. He probably had noticed that her legs were trembling. Catelyn Stark was suddenly looking at her with wide, horrified eyes. And all the displeasure she had shown for her apparent bad manners melted away.  

 

“Sit child, just there,” her voice was soft, sweet, but with a note of regality of someone who always had control, “Dine with us in comfort and safety.”

 

Lorelei, just out of spite, made a show of doing another curtsy, letting her tremble and wobbly legs apparent as she bowed specifically to the Lady of the Castle. The woman, only a few years older than her, paled, and Lorelei gave her a sweet smile as she wobbled out of her curtsy to sit at the end of the table. The victory felt petty, and it was. Lady Stark was just acting as normal to her standards. It didn’t match up to her own... Lorelei sighed and sat primly as she could. She received a sweet smile from Lady Stark, even as she stared concerned at her. 

 

She was sort of surprised to see both Theon and Jon sitting at the family table.

 

And nearly laughed at the looks that Theon was sending her way.

 

Nose wrinkled. Aghast. Funny to her because he would look like her in a couple of years, same sunken in, dried up look.

 

But not really funny.

 

God, the part about Reek was horrific. And he can’t be more then what, fifteen or sixteen right now?

 

"Do you require assistance in eating?" asked a young voice, primly, and Lorelei looked sideways at little Sansa Stark, who was looking at her bandaged hands with this sort of horrified pity.

 

Lorelei smiled softly. She carefully reached over and tapped Sansa’s hands, and when the pretty girl looked up, she kept her soft smile. She gave a nod. Sansa beamed and eagerly helped her, picking choice foods that would be easy for her to eat. Anything that required help to cut, Sansa cut for her before she moved it gently to her place. She’s such a sweet girl.

 

When she was done, Lorelei reached and gave her pinky a careful squeeze.

 

“It’s her way of saying thanks, my Lady,” said Maester Luwin, smiling, as he hovered by the side of the table, "Be careful not to serve her the beef or pork. It does her ill."

 

"She looks like she could use the meat," muttered Theon, voice sarcastic.

 

Lorelei sighed.

 

It was sad how much she wanted to flick a piece of food at him. He was just a kid and a thoughtless one at that. She had dealt with children like him all of her teaching career, brief that it was. But he was not her student, and she was not really in the mood to deal with assholes. Robb did her a favor by giving the Greyjoy boy a swift kick to the shin.

 

Lorelei pressed her lips down in a frown, trying to prevent her smile. 

 

She usually wasn’t one for physical violence, but being isekaid had put her in a shit mood.

---

Note ?:

Jon

 

She was a strange girl, thought Jon.

 

Nervous beyond belief, if her carrying her pack everywhere was an indication.

---

Note ?:

Luwin

 

He sees her, curled in an alcove of the library, a tome, so old it would be falling apart at the seams, and for a moment, he panics. To see a strange child beneath the protection of Lord Stark or not, makes him uneasy to hold such a delicate old thing. Then he sees her eyes. Flickering back and forth in a steady, if brisk pace.

 

She knows how to read.

 

He is surprised, stunned really, to see that in this strange girl from the pools.

 

The Child of the Pools, they have called her. Mocking her as Jonquil come again, but not nearly so fair, even with her pale white hair.

 

“Lass,” he said, carefully.

 

She blinked.

 

Looked up and smiled. She had arresting eyes. Not the dark and even Stark grey. No, her’s were lighter, like the morning mist, with bursts of yellow, green, and pale blue threaded throughout the large iris, with flecks of a soft red, and lashed heavily with pale white. Her nicest feature by far, contended perhaps with her even and white smile. Her teeth were frightfully in good order. 

 

With the fact that she knew how to read in common, her teeth, he suddenly suspects that she is not smallfolk at all.

Notes:

.... I forgot about this one. I think I wrote it when like in... 2016? Or something. I swear, I keep finding the oddest shit in the recess of my hardrives.

Chapter 36: The Girl of the Flaming Tower(House of the Dragon)

Summary:

Her words are 'We Light the Way.'

Her eyes are green like dreams, and she knows she will be nothing but a captive to her womb, her babes, and the blood they will hold at her father's behest. She was someone else once. In the future she has seen, in the world she has read in the pages of a book, her son will set the Dragon's Dancing.

Alicent Hightower laughs at being so subject to anyone but her own choices.

Notes:

…

I’ll stop. I’ll stop I swear but I finally bit the bullet of watching House of the Dragon.

And. Welp.

Here y’all go.

TAGS: Reincarnation, Self-Insert, OC-Instert, The Dance of Dragons, Women Supporting Women, Chaotic Good Alicent Hightower, Aemma Arynn Lives, Baelon Targeryen Lives,  Daemon is still a Punk Ass Bitch, 

 

Pairings: Alicent Hightower/Daemon Targeryen,  Aemma Arynn/Viserys I Targeryen, 

One-sided Daemon Targaryen/Rhaenyra Targaryen, Rhaenyra Targaryen/Harwin Stong,

---

Blood Is Running Deep:

I

 

She makes her decision, relatively early in her new life. She is born, in cusp of Spring. She is born to a Father that sees her nothing but a girl to wed, bed, and ignore. 

 

Waking as the Green Queen to be-

 

Well. 

 

Alice thinks she would be a foll to surfer as that women should’ve become. On the day of the Heir’s Tourney, she bares the doors to the Queen’s rooms. Stone statues she has made gifts to the tragic Queen Aemma, between her and the rest of the Red Keep. They are large, winged dragons, that had taken nearly ten men to carry in. With the hidden mechanism, it takes her alone. 

 

“Alicent,” whispered the Queen, confused, “Alicent what are you doing?”

 

She smiles at the woman, huffs slightly from the strain. Let’s go of the chains she had hidden within the depth of stone, the mechanism of the pulleys that helped her move the ton of stone between her and the men who would kill her the woman in front of her.

 

“They are going to cut you,” she tells the queen.  

 

She knows her eyes gleam green. She knows they are bright. 

 

“Cut me?”

 

“Kill you. Tare you open for your son. He will die within a day. The Heir for a Day.”

 

“How are you so sure, child?”

 

“I have seen it.”

 

The Queen grips at her pregnant belly.

 

“So what do you plan to do?”

 

The woman she had been had been an OBYN nurse. The girl she is has spent moons caring for the woman before her. Cared for her best she could. She knows she became the woman’s handmaid at her word, because she whispered schemes in Otto Hightower’s ears. And for the reason that she has comforted her as no other before her. She sees her exit strategy quite well.

 

“I’m going to save your life.”    

 

The only way to not become queen on the word of her cunt Father is to keep the Queen before her alive.

---

Blood Is Running Deep:

II

 

“By order of the Queen,” shrieks Aemma, through wood and stone, straining in her effort, “Fuck off!”

 

Alice holds in a giggle. The pounding on the door only increases. She works, hand gloved in leather. The closest thing she could acquire to be waterproof, and that she could easily sterlize without it being a terribly pours material in world that uses only organic materials, and that had enough dexterity for this. 

 

“I see a head, Queen Aemma. Breathe. He isn’t twisted, it’s just taking a little more time. You have this. You have this. Think of Rhaenyra. She needs her mother. So does Baelon.”

 

“When did you see this?” she asks, “Your dragon dreams sweet girl?” 

 

Between her legs, Alice only can lift a slightly blood hand and wave dismissively. 

 

“All of my life.”  

 

“Hence the statues.”

 

Alice hums.

 

“Hence the statues.”

 

“Will my child live?”

 

“I haven’t seen that. Chances, high. But, he could die.”

 

“Then all those secret tinctures you tipped into my cups were for not?”

 

She blinks as she coaxes the boy to come into the world. 

 

“Well, maybe. All I know is that you are to die, Queen Aemma, and I wish that not to happen. I have tried to do my best on that score.”

 

“I thought you meant to kill me at Otto’s word. I felt resigned to it, when Maester Mellos looked the other way.”

 

Alice snorts. Holds the woman’s thighs apart carefully. 

 

“Ha. If I wanted to be Queen, all I need to do is wait.”

 

Aemma Targaryen looks at her, her face wroth. 

 

“Oh?”

 

“My father is a monster. And we can use this to run him out of court by lying of a conspiracy of your death. I have left papers, hidden in his solar. Faked. But, well, he did not see me as anything but a cunt for your Husband to fill.”

 

The smile she gives her, it is pure draconic. It is the face of a queen of a House that speaks of Fire and Blood.

 

“You would betray your father?”

 

“He wishes me to betray the Royal House. He wishes me to take your place.”

 

“You do not want it, then, sweet dreamer?”

 

Alice sighs.

 

“Heavy lies the crown on the brow of any man or woman. I want to be free from my Father, and I need not a shackle to change that.”

 

Aemma stares at her.

 

“You are so different than I ever thought, Allicent. I saw my death in you. Not a savor hidden in the shadow of flaming tower.”

 

“I’m sorry if I frighted you these past few moons.”

 

Aemma touched her face.

 

“Oh, sweet girl. Think nothing of this. You are saving me.”

 

Alice and she shared a smile. 

 

And in that, Prince Baelon was born to the world, crying into Alice’s arms.

 

Aemma Targaryen lives.

---

Blood Is Running Deep:

III

 

The door takes a battering Ram.

 

It frightens Baelon from his slumber. Lady Alicent jolts in Aemma’s birthing bed. Her hand is at a dagger, hidden in her silk skirts. Aemma grips the girl, brings her to her hidden dreamer back to her place at her side.

 

Aemma has only known wariness since Alicent Hightower had begun her movements around her. 

 

But now, she knows peace with this girl who had sought to save her.

 

“With me, sweet Dreamer, with me,” she says, simply.

 

She has the strength to rise from her birthing bed, her son safe in her Dreamer’s arms.

 

“Sieze the Maester,” she spits, “Sieze Ser Otto.”

 

They follow her word.

 

Alicent rocks the princes in her arms.  

---

Blood Is Running Deep:

IV

 

Daemon stares.

 

Alicent Hightower stands, rocking his replacement in her arms, covered in the blood of a queen. Her lips are a gentle smile, her green eyes shining.   

Chapter 37: Don't Feed Me Sorrow

Summary:

... Trigger warnings. Mentions of forced abortion, rape, though the rape in question is open to interpretation.

Lysa Tully is a monster.

A monster who suddenly realizes it as the babe she had forced into herself dies in between her legs, that her end is through the Moon Door.

She fractures. A monster is a selfish creature, and she does not want an old man with half his teeth, she does not even want Petyr. She just-

She just wants to be free of it all.

She runs.

A song of rivers is twisted into being.

Lysa Tulley wakes in a pool of blood. 

 

A child's blood , she thinks. 

 

Her own. The infant she had unknowingly aborted. Tansy flowers and a bit of mint. 

 

She realizes, quietly, as she stares at the sticky red remains of growth and life inside of her, covering her thin, coltish legs, how wrong her father was to do this. 

 

Once. 

 

Once her name had been Robin. 

 

Robin Ribeiro. A woman of thirty years, soft and quiet, a life lived on Earth, away from moon tea, and a girl who monstrously climbed atop someone who was drunk .

 

Lysa is a monster, she realizes.

 

She is laughing before she realizes it. 

 

A hysterical crazed laugh. 

 

Because she raped someone. 

 

She- She took a boy and- She howls. Shrieks. Sobs. 

 

She wishes to tear her skin off.

 

All she can do is scream. 

---

Her eye.

 

She stares at it. She is freshly bathed. The Maester attended her, with the steel-eyed gaze of her Father. They shoved opioids down her throat. She feels hazy, disconnected.

 

Numb. 

 

Her eye is a poisonous green in the mirror.

 

Greensight, she thinks, given by the death of my- never born I guess. 

 

She has greensight. 

 

It explains her memories of Robin. Of the things she knows will come to pass. Her father followed ‘Honor’ not ‘Family’ and aborted her child of rape. 

 

She stares at her poisonous eye. 

 

He is a monster.

 

And so is she. 

 

But she wonders if the girl she was deserved her fate. The old man with no teeth, the years underneath Cersei's yoke at court, being tossed out of a window because she was crazy enough to try to murder not only her husband but her own niece. 

 

Lysa doesn't know. 

 

But she does know what she wants. 

 

“Uncle,” her voice us soft, fragile. 

 

The Blackfish looks at her. Eyes soft.

 

“Hey there little fish. Hoster said you've been ill. How are you feeling?”

 

She swallows. As a child, she had always gone to him with her sorrows. 

 

Please she begs to whoever would listen. 

 

“Uncle. I lost my maidenhead to Petyr Baleish. I crawled into his bed whilst he was drunk. He called me Cat as he-” she shudders a breath, her Uncle is pale and furious, “Father gave me moon tea. The babe. It died. Please. Please, help me run . Father chose Honor and Duty above Family. Please. ”

 

She always hid when her problems threatened to overwhelm her. 

 

And this…

 

This was too much. 

 

“Where?”

 

“Essos.”

---

Before Lyanna Stark, before Harnhall, before the smiles die, another Westorisi girl goes missing. 

 

Just as he would have once escaped from profiling Lions, the Blackfish does as their sigil.

 

They swim for freedom. 

 

They are on a ship for a fortnight. 

 

Lysa sobs when the land of her newest birth escapes from the horizon. 

 

She looks to the horizon of the sea, and she hopes. 

---

She calls herself Robin. 

 

It is like a favorite, long outgrown garment, too tight. Too short. Yet, there is comfort in its faded colors and its...

Notes:

... I don't know where I'm going with this.

Chapter 38: I'm Not the River(PT.II Lysa ISEKAI)

 

---

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Descriptions of an infant corpse and the aftermath of a forced abortion. Description of a dubiously consented sexual acts. 

 

Look, when it comes to Petyr and Lysa's first sexual encounter, you could make the pretty solid argument that Petyr was raped by Lysa. I don't want to argue about it, it's my interpretation of what occurred in the books. Petyr wasn't in his right mind, and mistook Lysa for someone else. 

 

Also, just to mention, I am pro-choice. No one should decide what happens to the body of a person with a uterus and ovaries. No one but that person. The thread of the text, however, focuses on someone who went through a forced abortion at eighteen weeks, so the tone is more pro 'life' then I would like. 

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

I

 

Lysa Tulley wakes in a pool of blood. 

 

A child's blood , she thinks. 

 

Her own. The infant she had unknowingly aborted. Panic claws. She knows she should have moons blood while she is with babe. She realizes, quietly, as she stares at the sticky red remains of growth and life inside of her, how wrong her father was to do this. Carefully, she reaches for the remains of a child and sees the fragile little blip of life. It was smaller than her fist. Strangled and dead in the visceral red on her legs.  Her child. Lifeless. No. Never born. Not-Life. 

 

Eighteen weeks.

 

Eighteen weeks and then-

 

She lifts her child into her palms. Ignores the squealch. 

 

It would have had a heartbeat, she thinks.  Her mind. Swirls. Information comes to her, and she doesn't know where it comes from.

 

Eighteen weeks. 

 

Brain function. They would have just begun to think.  

 

A little life yet to form. It could hear , she knows. First from within me. And just now, outside of it. They would have just been able to hear my voice. 

 

Just barely outside of her womb. 

 

Would it have heard her voice, and been happy? Would it have listened to her heartbeat, and think it the most comforting melody?  The only lullaby she would have sung it to hear, unknowingly… She starts at it. The not quite fully formed child she had been growing inside herself.  Her father took that choice from her.  Took from her, took her trust in him, and took this from her. 

 

Lysa can barely breathe. 

 

She looks at her child, and something comes. Rushes through her mind in a gush. 

 

Days. 

 

Nights. 

 

Strange faces. Strange world- Yet not so strange at all. She feels herself fall back, eyes rolling, as she clutches her babe to her chest. 

 

Her left eye burns.  

 

Once her name had been Robin, she remembers.

 

Robin. The name she would give her son, sickly, horrifyingly petulant Robin who made bad men fly. Yet she had been a woman of thirty years, soft and quiet, a life lived on Earth. Happy. Peaceful. And no man would have- could have taken anything from her. She had been away from moon tea and being the girl who monstrously climbed atop someone who was drunk . She makes her first noise then, a startled, hoarse shriek as she realizes that the once life in her palms had been forced into her. That she had slipped into Petyr's bed, and taken from him greedily. And then had felt righteous, delusional anger when he had rolled over, and softly whispered Cat into her hair. She had slipped from his bed, seed still slipping down her legs, and sobbed furiously as she returned to her rooms.

 

She had thought- She had just- taken and been angry when what she had taken would never have been given.   Lysa is a Monster, she realizes.

 

She is laughing before she realizes it.

 

A hysterical crazed laugh.  Because she raped someone. She- She took a boy and- She howls. Shrieks. Sobs. 

 

She wishes to tear her skin off. All she does is clutch at her Not-life in her palms, and cry. All she can do is scream into the small flesh in her palms, innocent of her monsterhood, and wish she could appologize to them for not being able to protect them.

 

And then her father is there, and everything gets worse.

---

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mild mentions of Child neglect and forcefully administered drugs.

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

II

 

Her father is with the Maester. Grim-faced. The maester holds a clean shift, and her father places a basin of steaming water at the foot of her bed. His hands are in fists, and his river blue eyes are fixed on her as she sobs in her not-afterbirth.  She stops her howls.  Her shrieks and laughter.

 

She looks at her father and-

 

And she knows it is he who made her a monster. It did not give her the right to act as she had with Petyr, but it gave her a reason to see the barest hint of affection from anyone and latch upon it with fierce, delusional, and toxic fixation. The lack of attention. Criticism he would lobby at her feet for not measuring up to any standard he set for her. 

And the praise he laid in Cat's path instead of her own. Her road was one of flowers, Lysa realizes. She would lose Brandon, the handsome, brute of Winterfell who fucks anyone he wished, and instead get Ned. Sweet Eddard Stark who would give her five babes, who would do anything to protect the people he loved. Lie to a King, to the world, to keep his children safe. Besmirch his reputation for his sister’s son. She would get fifteen years of peace, her sister, and- And Lysa would wither because of her father’s decisions that would come all too soon. She would wed Jon Aryn in a year’s time.    

 

She feels pain. 

 

He was meant to protect her, her father, and he failed to do so. He has hurt her in so many little ways, she can barely stand it. 

 

“Why?” She asks, holding her not-life to her chest, cupping it against her racing heartbeat, as if they could still hear it, the only lullaby she had unintentionally sung, “Why did you make this choice for me?” 

 

Her father is stone. His face a monolithe that she has seen look down at him all her life. She was afraid of him, desperately, especially now.  She sees that he is angry. She can see it in the set of his jaw. The light in his furious eyes. 

 

“For your Honor, you gave me no choice,” he tells her, his voice thunderous.

 

She takes an unsteady breath. She is so furious she shakes.

 

“Family comes first,” she says, “In our words. This- this was not your choice.”

 

“It is done. The maester will attend you, you will Wed the first man that can bare to marry a girl who no longer a maiden.”

 

Old man with half his teeth. 

 

They go to take the not-life in her palms.

 

Lysa fights. 

 

But she is a girl of four and ten. Fragile and covered in not-birth. Two grown men subdue her quickly.  Milk of Poppy is shoved down her throat. They take her not-child. Lysa will never see them again. She will mourn that fragile weight in her palms for many years yet. 

 

For monstrously as it was made, it had been innocent. 

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

III

 

Her eye.

 

She stares at it. The Maester attended her, with the steel-eyed gaze of her Father. They threw her into a tub of water and scrubbed her body for her. Dressed her in a linen shift. Her sheets and shift, are burned in her own hearth. She is to be confined. They tell the castle she is deathly ill. Contagious. Or so Cat whispers to her from the other side of her door, telling her to fight, to live, to come back to her from her Grey Fever. 

 

Lysa longs for her sister, same as she hates her. 

 

Because she knows if it had been Cat with Child, her father would have thought of family , instead of honor and duty. Betrothal or nor, Cat would have had anyone she loved if she begged their father for it.  Edmund slips little drawings and poems from his lessons underneath the door. Uncle Brynden reads her stories. Stories of love and captured princesses from across the bared and deadbolted door.  Maids slip hard bread underneath the door, thinly sliced, with shallows bowls of water, milk of Poppy, and thin broth. 

 

Neither her father nor the maester have come back, and Lysa believes a week has passed.

 

Her eye is a poisonous green, she realized, as Cat had slipped her a pretty, lovely mirror and brush set that once belonged to their mother. Bats cover them, bats and fish. A gift. To wish her better. She looks into the little silver mirror and stares at the change in her.  

 

Greensight , she thinks, staring at the hand mirror. 

 

She has greensight. 

 

It explains her memories of Robin. Of the things she know will come to pass. Her father followed ‘Honor’ not ‘Family’ and aborted her child of rape.  And from their blood, she has gained greensight. Unlocked it. 

 

Magic has a price. Daenerys would bring dragons from stone with the death of her babe and husband. I unlocked greensight. 

 

She stares at her poisonous eye. 

 

Clutching at the pale span of her flat belly, and the sickening memories of Petyr whispering a different name into her hair. She knows the future.  She knows she would die at Petyr's hand. That he hated her. Used her. Played her for her passing resemblance to Cat and replaced her with Sansa the second he could get his claws in her. Her niece. The niece she would have killed in her anger. 

 

She too, would have betrayed family. 

 

She was a monster.  

 

She weeps quietly in her room. 

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

IV

 

“Could the moon tea have done this?” Her father's voice is stern, the grip on her jaw is tight, as is the fingers that force her left eye open. 

 

She feels tears.

 

The man doesn't seem to care.  She believes he doesn’t. He has locked her away for a month now, she isn't sure and everything in his posture, his face, makes her know that he loathes her. Makes her know that any affection she had gained in her life has been dashed to nothing. 

 

“It shouldn't have,” says the maester. 

 

He is a monster. But so is she.  A Monster is a selfish creature. She watches him carefully through her tears. Her mind whirling. She has a year. A single year. 

 

“Her chances of birthing?” 

 

“The babe passed cleanly. Her recovery seems good enough. Considering the Lady Tully, the chances of Lady Lysa being unable to birth are low. The eye change is concerning, however. … I may make inquiries about the effects of moon tea on the body.”

 

Her father thrusts her face away.

 

“Don't. There is already whispers of what happened. With the illness, we have bought her time. Lysa,” his voice is a snap, “Can you see out of your eye?”

 

“...Yes, Lord Father.”

 

“Any changes in sight, my Lady?” the Maester catches on. His face stern, “Foggyness, or perhaps black spots creeping into your vision?”

 

“...No,” she whispers. 

 

“Then, pay it no mind,” barks her father. 

 

Just as you always done, thinks Lysa. 

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

V

 

But she wonders if the girl she was with deserved her fate. The old man with no teeth, being tossed out of a window because she was crazy enough to murder not only her husband but her own niece. 

 

Lysa doesn't know. 

 

But she does know what she must know more of her power . I don't understand, so I must research. Yet she is confined to her room for a while yet. Perhaps not until Brandon Stark is dead and Jon Aryn calls for arms and her hand in the same breathe.  

 

“Uncle,” her voice us soft, fragile. She hears the voice reading to her pause.

 

“Little fish?” he asks, voice soft.

 

She wonders if he is alone. If he was being watched so she couldn’t tell him. She swallows. As a child, she had always gone to him with her sorrows. 

 

“I…” she swallows thickly, “Could you read me stroies of the Isle of Faces?”

 

“Of that dreary place?”

 

“Please?”

 

A pause.

 

“Alright. Tuck yourself into bed, little fish. You’re still ill. Get away from the door.”

 

“Yes, Uncle.”

 

The stories tell little, beyond that perhaps it will give her answers if she finds herself there. 

 

Quietly, Lysa plans. 

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

VI

 

Her father expects no fight from her.

 

Or perhaps, he anticipates her fight against him to be like a corned animal, fierce, lashing, and shrieking.

 

If her eye was still blue, that would have been Lysa’s reaction. But with memories, she has gained perspective. And perspective tell’s her, it is best to be unnoticed, than to keep their attention. It is how Petyr pit the Starks and the Lannisters against each other. By going unnoticed. 

 

So she needs to do the same. Make herself quiet, let her behavoir mellow to meekness that her father wants.

 

Lysa is a Monster of his own making.

 

She knows this. 

 

Monsters are selfish creatures, and she will not allow herself to be sold like fucking chattel. Her Father had already taken her choice, as she had taken Petyr’s. 

 

I had paid my price, she thinks of the Not-Life in her palms, Twice over. 

 

“You have behaved yourself,” he tells her, voice as cold as the rivers outside.

 

She looked at the ground.

 

“I simply wish to pray in the Sept,” she whispers, “It has been two moons father, please.”

 

He is silent in her mind, she is clutching desperately at alternate plans. 

 

Her father thinks her broken. 

 

“You had greywater fever. Brandon Stark brought some swamp bannermen that you danced with. It is flimsy, but serviceable excuse. Your fever broke yesterday morn, your very weak, but no longer contagious. The Sept and the great hall, and nothing else.”

 

She nods. 

 

She holds back a smile. 

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

VII

 

When she sees Cat-

 

Lysa feels something large nearly burst from her. All the jealousy and-

 

She breathes. 

 

She is a Monster. She, in the future would have turned away from her sister. Chosen Petyr. 

 

And what a choice it would be. Tears and Moon doors and my son and niece in the claws of a Mockingbird. 

 

“Lysa!” She is perfect. 

 

Cat would always be perfect. 

 

Until Jon Snow comes and mars it. Makes all of her self importance twist and turn vile. 

 

Lysa is a Monster. 

 

The thought makes her lips twitch in a pleased smile. 

 

“Good morrow, Cat,” she settles on.

 

She loves Cat. 

 

But she is so wounded that her sister would have never known what was done to her. That her sister would get to live in the bliss and softness of their father's favor. That her own mistakes would have never been seen in the same light as Lysa. 

 

It is the ignorance, along with the jealousy that had made it so easy for Petyr to turn her back on her kin. 

 

Because they never did anything to help me first. 

 

“Come, let us pray to-”

 

“The Stranger.”

 

Cat baulks. 

 

Lysa kneels. Lights a candle. She looks over her shoulder at her sister's bewildered face. 

 

“As a thanks for not taking me,” she lies gently. 

 

She looks back.

 

Care for them, she thinks, and she wished she could press her hand to stomach. Pretend the weight of it is the same.

 

For they are with you, and lady mother. Sing to them, all the lullabies I would have sung. 

 

The songs have died in my own throat. 

 

Lysa pleads, quietly, she begs for her not-life.

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

VIII

 

---

 

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

?

 

In midst of her preparations, she makes a mistake. 

 

She only looks for her father’s men. She does not think of Family.

 

“ What are you doing? ”

 

She flinches, and turns. 

 

The rope in her palms. The nose at the end is too distinct for any with sense ignore it.

 

“Lysa! Lysa sweet girl, please-”

 

“It’s not- It-”

 

He looks at her and-

 

All she sees is fear for her. 

 

Family. Please she begs to whoever would listen.

 

“I lost my maidenhead to Petyr Baleish. I crawled into his bed whilst he was drunk. He called me Cat as he-” she shudders a breath, her Uncle is pale and furious, afraid and desperately looking at the noose in her hand, “Father gave me moon tea. The babe. It died. I held it in my hands. Please. I don’t want to die. This is a trick, a farce- I mean to run . Father chose Honor and Duty above Family. Please. Don’t stop me. ”

 

She always hid when her problems threatened to overwhelm her. 

 

And this…

 

This was too much. 

 

“Where will you go?”

 

“... The Ilse of Faces. I- I need to go there.”

 

Her Uncle looked at her.

 

“What is the trick?”

 

“Rope wrapped around my waist, and then the frayed edges snapping and tossing me into the river. I have a boat prepared.”

 

Her Uncle swallows.

 

“Lysa, you can not do this.”

 

She nearly screams with frustration. She was so close-

 

“Not alone.”

 

Relief and love blooms in her heart.

---

Who is A Brief Life Hearted Enjoyed:

?

 

Hoster watches as his stupid, stupid girl stands on the edge of Riverred’s rappents. A noose around her fragile, foolish neck. 

 

“ LYSA !” His little Cat’s shriek is devastation. 

 

Lysa smiles. Beautifully. Touches at the empty, flat plane of her womb. 

 

Hoster tries. Runs for her. 

 

Lysa jumps.

 

Lysa dies.

 

Family before Duty and Honor, he remembers, just as he falls to his knees. 

That Powerful Presence:

?

They swim for freedom. 

 

They are on a ship with a fortnight. 

 

Lysa sobs when the land of her newest birth escapes form the horizon. 

 

She looks to the horizon of the sea, and she hopes. 

---

?

 

She calls herself Robin. 

 

It is like favorite, long out grown garment, too tight. Too short. Yet, there is comfort in its faded colors and the stretch of the workers of it.

 

Her uncle calls himself her father, and she becomes Robin Rivers in the streets of Braavos, and Brynden Blackfish settles his life as sellsword, guarding the Iron Bank. Their home is a modest one, by the standards of the grandor of Riverrun, but…

 

Lysa thinks a home for a four rooms, two floors and 

Chapter 39: The Beast Howls In My Veins (ASOI&F/Lord of the Rings)

Summary:

Summary:

 

Sansa Stark wakes in the light of the stars, a memory of a song in her mind, curled around a blade of light.

 

With the maw of dozens of beasts brilliant in the starlight around her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TAGS: World Building, Fantasy, Isekai, Slow Burn, Lord of the Rings/A Song of Ice and Fire, Fast and Loose with Canon, No Beta we die like Ned and Boromir, Inspired by Tiny Minsterls, Inspired by Nothing Gold Can Stay, Mentions of self-harm, Mentions of suicide, Mentions of body dysmorphia, Elfling!Sansa Stark, Sansa Is A Wolf Girl, Or Elves freak Out When They Find A Baby Running Around With Wargs, Wargs are Puppies Your Honor, I will Die on that Hill Because Tolkien Didn’t Have the Research, Wolf Pack Dynamics, Wargs Species Redemption I Guess, But Tolkien only used the folklore of Wolves Not how they actually Work, Celebrían’s Captured Is Interrupted, Strong Women, BAD ASS Women,    

Notes:

.....

I KNOW. I KNOW, I HAVE NO SELF-CONTROL.

 

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

I

 

Sansa Stark woke in the light of the stars, underneath dark boroughs, curled around a blade of shimmering light. She remembers this very same blade turning into her heart, it turns to a miniature sun in her as her family looked on at her with horror in their eyes. 

 

She stuttered a breath, hands clawing for the space between her breasts. She expected a gaping, gushing wound. She found nothing.  Not even her breasts. The realization that she was missing her breasts was so alarming she sat up. She is a soft white dress of silk, without her normal form. 

 

The world spun. 

 

Yet as she groped the flat plane of her chest, Sansa saw her hands.  Small. Fat with youth and soft skin. Unblemished. Unmarred by cold or the blood of her heart or anything else. 

 

A child's hands. 

 

She stuttered a laugh. 

 

Perhaps I have magic, after all, she thinks sadly.

 

Bran- Not-Bran, the Three-Eyed Raven with her brother’s flesh had claimed that any budding magic had died when Lady did. Yet, somehow, he had also said it was only her own heart’s blood that they could use to make a burning blade to slay the newest Night King. She still remembers Arya’s face. Arya’s horrified face as Sansa had taken a breath, turned and robbed the sword from her belt. For all her training, even Arya hadn’t been able to do much but stare in shock as Sansa had struck between her own breast at her heart with the blade made of Ice, Needle, and the knife that had destroyed them all without hesitation.

 

She remembers her sister’s horror.

 

“ End this, ” she had said to her sister, simply with her last breath, “ Bring the dawn and spring to our people. ”

 

I am a child, Sansa realizes, staring at her hands. A child born of blood and a burning blade. Her skin is glowing, she realizes, just like starlight. Just like the blade next to her. It is a moonless night. It is only the stars, her skin, and the blade that makes light in the dark.  

 

Magic has reduced me? Turned back the tide of time? She cannot remember much. Just a song, a softness. Gentle hands?

 

Jon had said that there was nothing after death. But she remembered a song. 

 

A soft step of crispy leaves.

 

Sansa looks up. Past her lack of breasts and past her soft horror and bewilderment of her childlike form.

 

She sucks in a stuttering breath.  

 

There. 

 

In the shadows of the trees.

 

Sansa Stark saw the glitter of teeth in the starlight. Eyes reflect starlight, in her skin and the blade.

 

There are beasts around me, she realizes, Wolves, she thinks, even as she carefully tries to rise. Grip at the sword of light.

 

It scatters like dust in her hands. 

 

Her legs, fat and plump with youth buckle underneath her. They cannot carry her. She is vulnerable and young and already set to die.

 

Somehow, it is more a relief than anything. 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

II

 

The wolf is a large, monstrous thing.

 

Even Ghost, the largest of the Direwolves of her kin, would have been dwarfed by this monstrous thing. Its fur is white, somewhat matted, and filthy, and its eyes are brilliant gold.

 

And it, she , can speak. In the Old Tongue. The language of the Free Folk and of her ancestors. 

 

“You are wolfsblood,” the She-Wolf’s voice is deep, dark, but feminine all the same, “Yet you wear the flesh of a she-elf.”

 

Sansa blinks. She does not know what an elf is. She tilts her head.

 

“I was always told I had very little of wolfsblood,” she tells the She-Wolf.

 

Her voice is high. Staringly so. She pushes past it.  

 

The She-Wolf’s ears prick back. Her giant maw curls back.

 

“They have lied to you, Wolf-Cub. You are a wolf, strong and true. I smell it in you,” the Wolf says. Her voice is terrible and powerful.

 

Yet Sansa is not afraid.

 

She cannot seem to muster it in herself.

 

She is so tired.

 

“I see.”

 

“Are you not angry? For the lies of what you are?”

 

“I think I would have been, once,” Sansa speaks honestly, “But I am very tired of anger. I just wanted to keep my pack safe. To live with what little peace I could have. I couldn’t in the end.”

 

The She-Wolf flinches a step back.  

 

“Anger is important to feel in yourself.”

 

“I have tried anger,” Sansa tells the She-Wolf, “I have tried for justice. I have tried sorrow. I have given everything to protect my pack. I am tired, She-Wolf. Anger only makes me more tired, and it solved nothing for me.”

 

She looks down at her child-like hands.

 

She feels tears.

 

Sansa wished to rest.

 

“If you wish to harm me, She-Wolf, please be swift. I am tired . I wish for peace.”

 

She remembers a song. She wishes she was back with it. 

 

“I will not harm you.”

 

“Thank you. It is very kind of you not to harm me,” she tells the She-Wolf.

 

The She-Wolf’s ears shift. 

 

“I smell death in you as well, little Cub,” the She-Wolf replies, tense and fur standing on end, “A darkness of cold and dark. But- like a light has come from you.”

 

Her small hands drift to her chest.

 

“I gave everything for my pack,” she returns calmly.

 

“...You are a cub. Where were your parents?”

 

“Dead.”

 

“You are packless?”

 

“I think I am. I-” she looks at the stars, that had greeted her, looks at them carefully, “I do not even know the stars. I fear my pack is very far away from me now.”

 

“I have a pack, it is here,” the She-Wolf says to her and skits a step closer.

 

Eyes like lanterns flicker closer. 

 

Sansa counts or tries to. There are so many of them. Perhaps three dozen wolves. Sansa is not afraid. 

 

“You would have me with you?”

 

The She-Wolf tilts her head.

 

“I am the Wolf-Chief of my pack. I am Dawn-Dancer from Beyond the Edge of the Wild. My first hunt ended upon the light of the dawn, my steps like music. That is where I gained my name.”

 

Sansa blinks.

 

“I am Sansa Stark of the North,” she replies, “My hearts-blood gave forth Dawn.”

 

The She-Wolf, Dawn-Dancer, comes closer. So close that all that Sansa sees is the golden light of her eyes.

 

“I name you daughter, and Dawn-Heart in the same breath,” she says, softly, “And I will help you remember your anger. I will bring justice. I will weather your sorrow, I will ease your fatigue.”

---

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

III

 

Dawn-Dancer shivers as the cub climbs gently atop her back.

 

Her form is strange, warped. 

 

Magic is heavy in her, heavy enough that Dawn-Dancer wonders if she can even carry the cub at all.

 

But the real weight of the cub is nothing to her strength. Dawn-Heart is thin, in need of fattening for the Winter to come. Furs or more must be given to cover her strange elf flesh that hides the wolf within. Dawn-Dancer remembers that much of the animals that walk about two feet, as her newest cub does. 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

?

 

Celebrían breathes a hacking, stuttered breath, eyes wide.

 

The Orc twitched.

 

The little elleth, perhaps no older than fifty, twisted the sword deeper. The sword was light itself, a burn that shone like the stars themselves. It seems to scatter to dust once the babe releases her sloppy stance.   

 

The girl speaks, and Celebrían shivers at the terrible words that escape her. The language, she knows it not, but it feels harsh and coarse as Western, perhaps even harsh.  Celebrían stares at her helplessly. The girl frowns. She speaks more. Her words are high, lyrical, and poetry. She does not the language. She tries another before she hesitantly says-

 

“Are you harmed, My Lady?” in Western. The babe speaks at least four languages, none Elven. 

 

Celebrían shakily removes her head.

 

“Child,” she swallows thickly, as the blade is now a dagger, instead of a sword, appearing and slips delicately, needle-thin between the crude material of her bonds, “Child did they take you as well?”

 

The girl stares at her. She is a sweet soft thing, a Wood elf, perhaps, Celebrían cannot exactly tell. Her hair is a red so vivid and red that it is stark in the dim light of the fortress. Her features are beautiful, but there is… A harshness to them. A coldness in her flesh that she cannot understand in a babe of what must only be fifty. 

 

“They are oath breakers, I came to dispense justice. I have not been taken, my Lady,” she spits this, “Can you stand?” 

 

“I-”

 

She tries. 

 

Her legs are weak, trembling in distress. 

 

But she can stand. 

 

“I am Celebrían.”

 

The girl stares at her. Her eyes are blue, fathomously deep like sapphire or the waters of the sea.

 

“I am called Dawn-Heart,” she says, after a moment.

 

Celebrían feels her brow crumple.

 

Her next question is drowned out by the howls of Wargs, and the shrill death-screams of Orcs. 

Chapter 40: Good Day Sunshine (Stranger Things/ASOI&F)

Summary:

She cannot quite remember when she remembers her name had once been Stark.

But she does remember nonetheless. That she had been porcelain, then bone, then steel. She is in a new life, a new world, a new family. New terrors await her in the dark.

Winter is Coming.

But this time, as Sansa Mayfield, she is steel from the beginning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: World Building, Slow Burn, Shinning Power Logic, Tramua=Power, Billy Is Better from the Beginning, Better not Good, Sansa Stark Izekai, Izekai, Transmigration, Empath Sansa Stark, Aurora Seeing, Artist Sansa, Warg Sansa, Dart Stays Damnit, Its A Free Murder Puppy Your Honor,

Characters: Sansa Stark, Max Mayfield, Billy Hargrove, Susan Mayfield, Dustin Henderson, Dart the Demodog,

Relationships: Dustin Henderson/Sansa Stark, One-sided Sansa Stark/Steve Harrington(Sansa Crushes on the Boy because he is a himbo with a good heart and the Hair),

Notes:

I am speed.

I wrote this all today and I sometimes hate the way my mind works.

ME:

I’LL REWATCH STRANGER THINGS FOR WHEN DOVES CRY AND WILD THINGS (YOU MAKE MY HEART SING.)

But also I’ve been reading EVERYTHING in cheshire_carol’s Sansa Stark Crossovers:

https://archiveofourown.org/series/4034791

And I am obsessed and I have a problem. Reap the benefits of my woes, my lovely readers.

(;

 

---

Burns My Feet As They Touch The Ground:

October, 1984:

I

---

 

It is as if something walked across her grave, she thinks, lips twitching in morbidity at the thought. It is a persistent thought that has lingered in Sansa Mayfield's head the second she stepped in the boundaries of Hawkins, Indiana.

 

And she cannot dispel it. 

 

As of a girl of House Stark in another life, she did undoubtedly have a grave. A grand one, mayhaps, with a crown upon its brow for the armies she had led and the evil she had stood in defiance against. A statue she thinks, with the Pup of Lady beside her, and perhaps a little bird in her palm. She hummed at the pleasant thought. Already she was imagining the lines in her head, the stark charcoal and white contrasts.

 

A grim tribute.

 

But Hawkins felt grim, to her, despite the cheery Halloween decorations and the festive air.

 

There is something here, she knows it in the marrow of her new bones.

 

Something dark, something evil.

 

Max hit her shoulder with her own, startling her from the gaze out their new living room window and the possible danger that lurked. Her sister, twin, freckled and innocent and blue eyed, grins at her. Her sullen demeanor at the move had slowly shifted as the landscape across the country had. Her Colors had been steadily more sunny, brilliant hues of yellows and greens as they always. Now, it was soft blue in curiosity, yellow in happiness.

 

A soft white of hope.

 

Something in Sansa, despite herself, gentles at the sight.

 

For a girl with dead magic in one life, Sansa had never expected that magic in the next would burst from within her. It was a simple, soft sort of magic, but then, Sansa was always soft and in ways, simple. Her wants had always been simple, at least. She saw the emotions of others in colors, and she was happy for it. 

 

“It seems nice here,” her sister whispered. Her lovely eyes flickered warily to their brother.

She was enchanted by the dark forest, by the actual changed leaves of their broughs. The cold had made her wonder. The thought of new friends excited her, much as Max tried go act sullen. But it was Billy that had taken the move the hardest outwardly. He had friends, he had plans for the summer and collage. Even now, he stood, legs apart, planted, hands on his hips, knuckle white, chewing relentlessly at a piece of nicotine gum. His profile was soft and golden in the setting sun, she could see he was upset, even without the focus on his Colors. 

 

Max mourned the lost of contact with their biological father, and Sansa-

 

She missed the warmth of the sun. When you die in the moonless night, in a cold as devastating as she had, it was warmth she craved. This town that made get feel as if someone stood at top where her body Lady to rest, where she felt a wrongness in the air, made her feel cold. 

 

She missed Malibu. 

 

She missed the sound of the sea, the sun, the air that felt like an eternal bliss of Summer. 

But she couldn't change the decision that their step-father had taken for them.  She nudges her sister's shoulder back. Then she slips forward to stand next to Billy. He twitches. His blue eyes look at her from the corner of his sight. 

 

She doesn't reach for him. She wished she could. 

 

But his Colors are a dark mulled red, displeasure mixed with his usual constant anger. Touching him would make him pull away. Yet, she lingers with him. Stands with him in the vestige of the sun. She waits.

 

Patient. 

 

He is too raw at the moment, at the sight of the smallness and seeming tranquility of Hawkins Indiana makes something in him writhe. He was comparing it all go the sunlight sands of Malibu, and he found it wanting. 

 

She did to. She found it unsettling. The trees. The smallness of it all. The start of the cold.

 

It was too much like Westeros. It was like the North. She hated the reminder, even if her memories of the North were soft, save her death, and she wanted to focus on her new life. She could not linger on the past now.  Not when she had true peace and pack.  His mulled red shifts after a few minutes. She hums.  He hums back. A whistle of a riverland lullaby she unintentionally sung to him when they were younger.  

 

“There is a indoor pool a town over,” she informs him, softly, “Nearly the same distance from here to the beach at home.”

 

Back in California. Their sun-filled home. Sansa is already cold. She avoided the cold for so long in this new life. Now it was Autumn. And Winter was Coming. 

 

She holds back a shudder. 

 

There is darkness here. Their is evil. There is cold. She is afraid. 

 

Her brother blinks. His Colors turn blue with the smallest touch of red. 

 

“How the hell do you know that? We've been here a day, Ankle-Biter,” his voice is a touch of a rasp. The cigarettes had done that. He promised to quit. For her. He was not quite succeeding. He smoked the plant he liked more as a compromise. 

 

She smiles at her brother. Ankle Biter indeed. The moniker came from the fact that she had bitten him viciously once in defense of Max when they had first met. A line of respect had been won that day, especially when she had twisted like Arya had taught her, and pinned him with her scrawny body and screamed in his face. That wary respect had shifted into a cat-like affection. Billy was complicated. Complicated and difficult. She loved him so much, however. How could she not? Not when she saw he had been beaten as he had? How could she not, when he too, had turned to anger for it? She loved him so much she felt like she could die from it at times. This family was everything to her in this gentle new world. And she would gladly suffer from the cold if it meant she was with them. 

 

“I asked our neighbor. She also mentioned that a boy named Eddie sells the plant you enjoy and to stay away from him as good Christian children. Ms. Marshall was quite informative.”

 

“Oh quite,” he snorts. 

 

And because he knows she will squawk in protest, he ruffles her intricately made braid. She does her part, squawks in offense. He grips her in a headlock that is gentle, and loose, mostly an embrace that he will never admit. She leans against him. 

 

He is Irsh Soap and the plant, a touch of tobacco and hairspray. 

 

His hand is careful at the nape of her neck, drifting down to squeeze her shoulders. 

 

He knows how twitchy she can get if someone attempts to grip her neck for more than a few seconds. He had seen her faint the only time he had attempted a true head lock. Seen her go pale and shake like a leaf. Gasp and wheeze as if she was dying. 

 

She had died strangled, after all. 

 

With violet eyes glaring down at her, wispy white gold a curtain around her. 

 

He thinks her biological father did it to her. But, with the beatings that Neil subjected him to, she does not begrudge him the thought. Her biological father was many things, but kind was not one of them. He hadn't hurt her, but he had hurt their Mother. It makes her sorrowful that her mother had not taken that lesson and applied it to her new husband. Or that Max missed him as she did. 

 

At least her mother's lapse in judgment had given her Billy, and she was grateful for that unlearned lesson. 

 

“You got the weed hookup in less than an hour of being here?”

 

“People trust me and tell me things. It's my eyes.”

 

She mimicked making her eyes wide. 

 

He laughed. 

 

Ruffled her hair again. He stepped away, shoulders rolling.

 

Like a cat, she thinks, amused despite herself. 

 

“Anyone give you shit?” he drawls, and his smile twitches, “Like in fucking school and stuff? You come to me, Ankle-Biter.”

 

She shrugs her delicate shoulders. 

 

“I will be in some classes in your school. Some with Max's. Mother has arranged it. I will be fine. I was fine in Malibu.”

 

He frowns.

 

“Fucking smart alec,” he tells her with another ruffle of her hair. 

 

“We got it, Billy,” Max says, and she grips Sansa’s hand, swinging their joined hands. 

Chapter 41: The Beast Howls In My Veins (Lord of the Rings/ASOI&F) P.II

Summary:

Sansa Stark wakes in the light of the stars, a memory of a song in her mind, curled around a blade of light.

With the maw of dozens of beasts brilliant in the starlight around her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TAGS: World Building, Fantasy, Isekai, Slow Burn, Lord of the Rings/A Song of Ice and Fire, Fast and Loose with Canon, No Beta we die like Ned and Boromir, Inspired by Tiny Minsterls, Inspired by Nothing Gold Can Stay, Mentions of self harm, Mentions of suicide, Mentions of body dysmorphia, Elfling!Sansa Stark, Sansa Is A Wolf Girl, Or Elves freak Out When They Find A Baby Running Around With Wargs, Wargs are Puppies Your Honor, I will Die on that Hill Because Tolkien Didn’t Have the Research, Wolf Pack Dynamics, Wargs Species Redemption I Guess, But Tolkien only used the folklore of Wolves Not how they actually Work, Celebrían’s Captured Is Interrupted, Strong Women, BAD ASS Women

 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

I

 

Sansa Stark woke in the light of the stars, underneath dark boroughs, curled around a blade of shimmering light, the last vestige of the sun she had made of it. She remembers this very same blade that she had twisted within her own heart, the same blade she had made a miniature sun in her as her family looked on at her with horror in their eyes.

She made the Dawn within her, in heart's blood, the prelude to the victory against that cold filed dark come to consume them all. Light had pierced the godswood she had made her deathbed, as her heart had made sun, the real one had pierced the unnatural night in truth. She stuttered a breath, hands clawing for the space between her breasts. She expected a gaping, gushing wound. She found nothing.  Not even her breasts. The realization that she was missing her breasts was so alarming she sat up. She is a soft grey dress of silk, embroidered with stars, without her normal form, unmarred by the very thing she had inflicted on herself. A cloak of black and stars cover her shoulders. 

 

The world spun at the realization that she was not in her body.  

 

As she groped the flat plane of her chest, Sansa saw her hands.  Small. Fat with youth and soft skin. Unblemished. Unmarred by the harsh cold of true Winter or the blood of her heart or anything else. No scars. Not even so much as cracked fingernail. 

 

A child's hands. 

 

Sansa Stark flexed her hands, not her hands, once, twice, before she acknowledged they were her own. 

 

Perhaps I have magic, after all, she thinks sadly, wonder in her at the thought.

 

Bran- Not-Bran, the Three-Eyed Raven with her brother’s flesh had claimed that any budding magic within her had died when Lady did. Yet, somehow, he had also said it was only her own heart’s blood that they could use to make a burning blade to slay the newest Night King.

 

“For it must be the most beloved of the Promised, the heart must bleed and give way to purest fire of the sun, Winter will thaw in the wake of love’s heart being pierced. For what is a heart but not hope and love itself? It must be yours Sansa Stark, greatest love of us all.”

 

 She still remembers Arya's and Jon's face at the words. She remembers vividly as both had turned and stared at her in horror. Sansa had taken a breath, turned and robbed the sword from her sister's belt. For all her training, even Arya hadn’t been able to do much but stare in shock as Sansa had struck between her own breast at her heart with the blade made of Ice, Needle, and the knife that had destroyed them all without hesitation.

 

She remembers her sister’s horror the most. In Jon, she had seen grateful understanding. 

 

“ End this, ” she had said to her sister, simply with her last breath, seeing the shrieking terror, grief of the love she held for her in her gray eyes, “ Bring the dawn and spring to our people. ”

 

I am a child, Sansa realizes, staring at her hands. A child born of blood and a burning blade. Her skin is glowing, she realizes, just like starlight. Just like the blade next to her. It is a moonless night. It is only the stars, her skin, and the blade that makes light in the dark.  

 

Magic has reduced me? Turned back the tide of time? She cannot remember much. Just a song, a softness. Gentle hands?

 

Jon had said that there was nothing after death. But she remembered a song. 

 

A soft step of crispy leaves.

 

Sansa looks up. Past her lack of breasts and past her soft horror and bewilderment of her childlike form.

 

She sucks in a stuttering breath.  

 

There. 

 

In the shadows of the trees.

 

Sansa Stark saw the glitter of teeth in the starlight. Eyes reflect starlight, in her skin and the blade.

 

There are beasts around me, she realizes, Wolves, she thinks, even as she carefully tries to rise. Grip at the sword of light.

 

It scatters like dust in her hands. 

 

Her legs, fat and plump with youth buckle underneath her. They cannot carry her. She is vulnerable and young and already set to die.

 

Somehow, it is more a relief than anything. 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

II

 

The wolf is a large, monstrous thing.

 

It's ears touch at the lowest rungs of branches. Even Ghost was merely the size of a horse, and seemed so small in comparison. He would have been dwarfed by this monstrous thing. Its fur is white, somewhat matted, and filthy, and its eyes are brilliant gold that shine like lamps in the dark. 

 

They look at her. 

 

Young.

 

Delicate. 

 

A mouthful, perhaps. 

 

And it, she , can speak. In the Old Tongue. The language of the Free Folk and of her ancestors. 

 

“You are wolfsblood,” the She-Wolf’s voice is deep, dark, but feminine all the same, “Yet you wear the flesh of a she-elf.”

 

Sansa blinks. She does not know what an elf is. She tilts her head. It, as far as she knows, speaks of the Children. But it is an ancient word, a word that Leaf had spat at. Her Old Tongue, to her shame, was not what it should be. It is only with Val, Leaf and gentle Gilly coaxing her that she understood the She-Wolf as she did. 

 

“I was always told I had very little of wolfsblood,” she tells the She-Wolf. Clumsily. Slowly pieced together. 

 

Her voice is high. Staringly so. She pushes past it.  

 

I have lived through stranger things. 

 

The She-Wolf’s ears prick back. Her giant maw curls back.

 

Her teeth are porcelain gleams in the dark, moonless night. 

 

“They have lied to you, Wolf-Cub. You are a wolf, strong and true. I smell it in you,” the Wolf says. Her voice is terrible and powerful.

 

Yet Sansa is not afraid.

 

She cannot seem to muster it in herself.

 

She is so tired .

 

She cannot feel it in herself to be afraid. 

 

“I see.”

 

“Are you not angry? For the lies of what you are?”

 

“I think I would have been, once,” Sansa speaks honestly, “But I am very tired of anger. I just wanted to keep my pack safe. To live with what little peace I could have. I couldn’t in the end.”

 

The She-Wolf flinches a step back.  

 

“Anger is important to feel in yourself.”

 

“I have tried anger,” Sansa tells the She-Wolf, “I have tried for justice. I have tried sorrow. I have given everything to protect my pack. I am tired, She-Wolf. Anger only makes me more tired, and it solved nothing for me.”

 

She looks down at her child-like hands.

 

She feels tears.

 

Sansa wished to rest.

 

I want the song , she thinks. She remembers a song. She wishes she was back with it. It was peaceful there with the gentle hands. 

 

“If you wish to harm me, She-Wolf, please be swift. I am tired . I wish for peace.”

 

“I will not harm you.”

 

She is disappointed. But she hears the kindness in the gesture. 

 

“Thank you. It is very kind of you not to harm me,” she tells the She-Wolf.

 

The She-Wolf’s ears shift. 

 

“I smell death in you as well, little Cub,” the She-Wolf replies, tense and fur standing on end, “A darkness of cold and dark. But- like a light has come from you.”

 

Her small hands drift to her chest.

 

“I gave everything for my pack,” she returns calmly.

 

“...You are a cub. Where were your parents?”

 

“Dead.”

 

“You are packless?”

 

“I think I am. I-” she looks at the stars, that had greeted her, looks at them carefully, “I do not even know the stars. I fear my pack is very far away from me now.”

 

“I have a pack, it is here,” the She-Wolf says to her and skits a step closer.

 

Eyes like lanterns flicker closer. 

 

Sansa counts or tries to. There are so many of them. Perhaps three dozen wolves. Sansa is not afraid. 

 

“You would have me with you?”

 

The She-Wolf tilts her head.

 

“I am the Wolf-Chief of my pack. I am Dawn-Dancer from Beyond the Edge of the Wild. My first hunt ended upon the light of the dawn, my steps like music. That is where I gained my name.”

 

Sansa blinks.

 

“I am Sansa Stark of the North,” she replies, “My hearts-blood gave forth Dawn and a burning blade.”

 

The She-Wolf, Dawn-Dancer, comes closer. So close that all that Sansa sees is the golden light of her eyes.

 

“I name you daughter, and Dawn-Heart in the same breath,” she says, softly, “And I will help you remember your anger. I will bring justice. I will weather your sorrow, I will ease your fatigue.”

 

Sansa is steal. 

 

She has turned to it.

 

But something in her softens at the words. 

 

She reaches for her new Wolf Mother. 

 

She is warm. 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

III

 

Dawn-Dancer shivers as the cub climbs gently atop her back.

 

Her form is strange, warped. 

 

Changed by magic divine, Dawn-Dancer knows. 

 

Magic is heavy in her, heavy enough that Dawn-Dancer wonders if she can even carry the cub at all.

 

But the real weight of the cub is nothing to her strength. Dawn-Heart is thin, in need of fattening for the Winter to come. Furs or more must be given to cover her strange elf flesh that hides the wolf within. Dawn-Dancer remembers that much of the animals that walk about two feet, as her newest cub does. 

 

She is the Wolf-Chief. She is the Mother of this pack, even with her mate dead and all her daughters and sons grown. 

 

But now she has a new cub.

 

Her Dawn Heart. Sweet and true. She sings in triumph. 

 

Her children echo her. 

 

Even Dawn Heart follows the pitch when her eldest daughter,  Swift-Wind, nips gently at her fingertips and whispers for her to song with them. 

 

Her voice is sweet, more of a bird,  but it is powerful. Loud. Though it is not from her teachings, Dawn-Dancer is pleased by the strength of it. 

 

Her daughter would be strong. And she would nor wish for the peace that had remade her. 

---

If You Could Only See The Beast You’ve Made Of Me:

?

 

Celebrían breathes a hacking, stuttered breath, eyes wide.

 

The Orc twitched.

 

The little elleth, perhaps no older than fifty, twisted the sword deeper. The sword was light itself, a burn that shone like the stars themselves. It seems to scatter to dust once the babe releases her sloppy stance.   

 

The girl speaks, and Celebrían shivers at the terrible words that escape her. The language, she knows it not, but it feels harsh and coarse as Western, perhaps even harsher.  Celebrían stares at her helplessly. The girl frowns. She speaks more. Her words are high, lyrical, and poetry now. She does not know this language at all. It sounds like nothing she knows. The babe tries another before she hesitantly says-

 

“Are you harmed, My Lady?” in Western. The babe speaks at least four languages, none Elven. 

 

Celebrían shakily moves her head in a negative.

 

“Child,” she swallows thickly, as the blade is now a dagger, instead of a sword, appearing and slips delicately, needle-thin between the crude material of her bonds, “Child did they take you as well?”

 

The girl stares at her. She is a sweet soft thing, a Wood elf, perhaps, Celebrían cannot exactly tell. Her hair is a red so vivid and red that it is stark in the dim light of the fortress. Her features are beautiful, but there is… A harshness to them. A coldness in her flesh that she cannot understand in a babe of what must only be fifty. 

 

“They are oath breakers, I came to dispense justice. I have not been taken, my Lady,” she spits this as if the mere thought insults her, “Can you stand?” 

 

“I-”

 

She tries. 

 

Her legs are weak, trembling in distress. 

 

But she can stand. 

 

“I am Celebrían.”

 

The girl stares at her. Her eyes are blue, fathomously deep like sapphire or the waters of the sea.

 

“I am called Dawn-Heart,” she says, after a moment.

 

Celebrían feels her brow crumple.

 

Her next question is drowned out by the howls of Wargs, and the shrill death-screams of Orcs. 

 

Chapter 42: I Hold Death's Hand In Mine(MCU/ASOI&F)

Summary:

Sansa Stark goes to the Stranger’s side, yet this is not her end. The Balance is threatened, and Eternity and Death need a proxy in a universe headed for imbalance.

A road is to be taken.

A Queen takes Death’s hand. Starks of this universe are made of iron, and Sansa Stark is rewoven of Eternity and Death. Or a Queen of Winter is born to a Merchant of Death.

Relationships Lady Death & Sansa Stark, The Stranger & Sansa Stark, Tony Stark & Sansa Stark, Dad Tony Stark, Lady Death as an ‘Imaginary’ Friend,

Characters: Lady Death, The Stranger, Sansa Stark, Eternity, Tony Stark,

Additional TAGs: MCU, A Song of Ice & Fire Crossover, Sansa Stark Jumps the Multiverse,

Notes:

AN:

… I finished ‘Agatha All Along’ the other day.

So ‘The Redhead Conspiracy’ continues.

Sigh.

Marching Ever Forward:

I

Queen Sansa of House Stark

Queen Sansa of House Stark, Ruler of the North, Riverlands, and the Vale, woke quietly peacefully, in a garden of the most lush life. Her head was in a woman's lap. The woman was threading her fingertips through her hair like her mother used to. Soft and good, careful not to pull the locks as she went. Sansa looks up and sees not quite kindness, not quite indifference in the woman’s face. But a mixture of the two. Her eyes were dark, like voids in her pale brown face. But what struck Sansa the most was the fact that her face was full- Unlike Sansa’s own, the woman didn’t look like she had been slowly starving for the better part of the year. Her mind whirls. Sansa then realized one thing, and that for the first time, in a very long time, that she was warm. She lets out a breathe she had not known she was holding. 

 

That is right, Sansa remembers. I am dead.   

 

And then everything was quiet and sweet. Her mind stopped spinning. Her mind stopped fearing what was next. For it was no longer in her hands. She was no longer responsible for the fates of her three Kindgoms, and her Northern Realm. 

 

The final battle fought, and Sansa simply did not survive it. 

 

Sansa breathed. 

 

“It was so quick,” She whispers, and her hands drift to touch at her chest. 

 

The chest that Arya had run through. Sobbing. Begging her to be clever and to do it another way. But Sansa had found her cleverness spent, her willingness to survive dwindled, if it meant more of her pack would die to protect her. The solution was this, as their Keep, their Winterfell, was over run. The song of Dragon’s dying keen in the air-

 

The words of the Three-Eyed Raven circling in her head. 

 

“It must be you, Sansa Stark. It must be your heart’s blood, your chest piereced to make the burning blade that kills the Night King. Die, and you will bring the Dawn.”

 

She had begged it of Arya. Her sister, her sweet, wild sister who was the only one of them strong enough to do it. 

 

The last Sansa remembers is the frenzy, the thundering approach of the Night King, screaming in a deep voice for her to become his at last- And the sunlight touching her face for the first time in moons when Arya had finally screeched and pierced her through her chest with a wild sob.  

 

“Your sister gave you mercy,” the woman tells her. 

 

Sansa smiles. Her sweet, wild sister.  

 

“Did Arya slay the Night King with the blade?”

 

“She did. He will never touch you.”

 

Sansa smiles wider. Life lived. The dead rested. It was enough, even if Sansa did not live to relish the peace of it.  

 

“Good. Will I see Father, Mother, and Robb now?”

 

The woman hummed. Shook her head slowly. Her jaw tensed. 

 

“No. That is not your road.” 

 

Disappointment is an old friend. Tears fall despite herself. She looks up at the woman, and she knows.

 

“Are you the Stranger?”

 

Dark eyes glow green. The woman smiles with brilliant mauve-touched lips.

 

“I am.”

 

“May I ask your name?”

 

The Stranger blinks.

 

“Why would you ask it?”

 

Sansa tilts her head.

 

“You are a stranger until death. I am dead. Even if my road is not to meet those I love- I have met you. I am Sansa,” she tells the Stranger gently, “What is your name, Stranger?”

 

The Stranger ran a careful hand against Sansa’s face. Cupped her jaw delicately. 

 

“I have been called many things, through the ages. Death. Stranger, and so many titles it would take a thousand years for all to be spoken,” her voice turns, soft and pleased, “But rarely do people ask of what to call me. I am Lady Death, the personification of Death, the original Green Witch.”

 

Sansa nodded.

 

“It is so good to meet you. Thank you, for your kindness, my Lady.”

 

“You mean that, Queen Sansa Stark? You are only twenty namedays, and you are dead. Do you not mourn how little time you were given?”

 

“Of course I do. But I have mourned since I was one and ten. I am good at it, Lady Death. What is one more mourning?”

 

She laughed. Lady Death’s laughter was sweet and warm. Deeper, perhaps, than normal for a woman, but it was a good laugh.

 

“What is my road now, Lady Death?”

 

“I did not agree to this. I thought the path must be let to run without a proxy, but I see it now. It is because you are this way that you were chosen by Eternity,” Lady Death cupped her face with her other hand, “And now I agree to it. I choose you as well.”

 

Sansa blinked. 

 

“Chosen for what?”

 

Lady Death smiles, sweet and warm. 

 

“ Balance. ”

---

Marching Ever Forward:

II

Tony Stark

She was perfect. 

 

From the abnormally brilliant red hair to his mother's brilliant blue eyes looking up at him, Tony thought her perfect. 

 

Tony is in love. His hands shake as he cups her little face. 

 

“Sansa Maria Stark,” he whispers, gently.

 

The  

Chapter 43: Pajarito Colibrí (ASOI&F/MCU) P. II

Summary:

Sansa Stark goes to the Stranger’s side, yet this is not her end. The Balance is threatened, and Eternity and Death need a proxy in a universe headed for the imbalance. A road is to be taken. A Queen takes Death’s hand. A Queen accepts the task of Eternity. Starks of this universe are made of iron, and Sansa Stark is rewoven of the stars themselves.

 

Or a Queen of Winter is born to a Merchant of Death.

 

---

Relationships  Lady Death & Sansa Stark, The Stranger & Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark & Eternity, Tony Stark & Sansa Stark

 

TAGS: Dad Tony Stark, Papa Stark,  Lady Death as an ‘Imaginary’ Friend, 

 

Characters: Lady Death, The Stranger, Eternity, Sansa Stark, Tony Stark,

 

Additional TAGs: MCU, A Song of Ice & Fire Crossover, Sansa Stark Jumps the Multiverse,  

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

I

Queen Sansa of House Stark

Queen Sansa of House Stark, Ruler of the North, Riverlands, and the Vale, woke quietly peacefully, in a garden of the most lush life. Her head was in a woman's lap. The woman was threading her fingertips through her hair like her mother used to. Soft and good, careful not to pull the locks as she went. Sansa looks up and sees not quite kindness, not quite indifference in the woman’s face. But a mixture of the two. Her eyes were dark, like voids in her pale brown face. But what struck Sansa the most was the fact that her face was full- Unlike Sansa’s own, the woman didn’t look like she had been slowly starving for the better part of the year. Her mind whirls. Sansa then realized one thing, and for the first time, in a very long time, she was warm. She lets out a breath she had not known she was holding. 

 

That is right, Sansa remembers. I am dead.   

 

And then everything was quiet and sweet. Her mind stopped spinning. Her mind stopped fearing what was next. For it was no longer in her hands. She was no longer responsible for the fates of her three Kingdoms, and her Northern Realm. 

 

The final battle had been fought, and Sansa simply did not survive it. 

 

It was as simple as that. 

 

Sansa breathed. Relished the calm, the warmth she suddenly realized that was abundant, and the familiar, lagging ache of her stomach was gone. 

 

And it was good and quiet. 

 

“It was so quick,” She whispers, smiles, and her hands drift to touch at her chest. 

 

The chest that Arya had run through. Sobbing. Begging her to be clever and to do it another way. But Sansa had found her cleverness spent, her willingness to survive dwindled, if it meant more of her pack would die to protect her. She was one person, and this time, it had been her choice. The solution was this, as their Keep, their Winterfell, was over run. The song of Dragon’s dying keen in the air-

 

All other plans were thwarted. 

 

And Rickon, sweet Rickon, begging her to do something. Her baby brother, so young, too young, to die for her. 

 

With the words of the Three-Eyed Raven circling in her head. The solution she avoided so clearly was the only one left. 

 

“It must be you, Sansa Stark. It must be your heart’s blood, your chest piereced to make the burning blade that kills the Night King. Die, and you will bring the Dawn.”

 

She had begged it of Arya. Her sister, her sweet, wild sister who was the only one of them strong enough to do it. Because- Because Sansa knew she couldn’t do it on her own.  

 

Ricken had howled in horror. Only Osha holding him fast holding him back. 

 

The last Sansa remembers is the frenzy, the thundering approach of the Night King, screaming in a deep voice for her to become his at last- And the sunlight touching her face for the first time in moons when Arya had finally screeched and pierced her through her chest with a wild sob.  

 

“Your sister gave you mercy,” the woman tells her. 

 

Sansa smiles again. Her sweet, wild sister.  

 

“Did Arya slay the Night King with the blade?”

 

“She did. He will never touch you.”

 

Sansa smiles wider. Life lived. The dead rested. A Queen died, but Dawn broke,  and the dream of spring to come as assured as a true vow. It was enough, even if Sansa did not live to relish the peace of it.  

 

“Good. Will I see Father, Mother, and Robb now?”

 

The woman sighed. Shook her head slowly. Her jaw tensed. 

 

“No. That is cannot be your road.” 

 

Disappointment is an old friend. Tears fall despite herself. She looks up at the woman, and she knows.

 

“Are you the Stranger?”

 

Dark eyes glow green. Vicious and bright. A magic that feels so warm.  The woman smiles with brilliant mauve-touched lips.

 

“I am.”

 

“May I ask your name?”

 

The Stranger blinks.

 

“Why would you ask it?”

 

Sansa tilts her head. The Stranger still runs her hands gently through Sansa's hair. Her face may be stone, but her hands are gentle. 

 

“You are a stranger until death. I am dead. Even if my road is not to meet those I love- I have met you. I am Sansa,” she tells the Stranger gently, “What is your name, Stranger?”

 

The Stranger ran a careful hand against Sansa’s face. Cupped her jaw delicately. She leaned forward, green eyes shining. It was not- not death in her gaze. 

 

It was life. 

 

Did the Stranger grant life? Was she the first and last to greet anyone? Or was it simply that she held it dearly in her gaze, even as she was everyone's last goodbye?  Held it precious even as she watched it fade, or took it herself?

 

“I have been called many things, through the ages.Stranger, and so many titles it would take a thousand years for all to be spoken,” her voice turns, soft and pleased, “But rarely do people ask of what to call me. I am Lady Death, the personification of Death, the original Green Witch.”

 

Sansa nodded.

 

Death a lady, a Witch. How queer to know, she was gently amused of the Silent Sisters- brides to a woman. 

 

The Stranger smiled. Sweet and wild and a touch too pleased. She winked. Sansa wondered if she heard her mind, heard it and found it as amusing as her. She was not alarmed. She was in the lap of a God, of the Stranger. She was her's now, and whatever her road may lead. 

 

“It is so good to meet you. Thank you, for your kindness, my Lady.”

 

“You mean that, Queen Sansa Stark? You are only twenty namedays, and you are dead. Do you not mourn how little time you were given?”

 

“Of course I do. But I have mourned since I was one and ten. I am good at it, Lady Death. What is one more mourning?”

 

She laughed. Lady Death’s laughter was sweet and warm. Deeper, perhaps, than normal for a woman, but it was a good laugh.

 

“What is my road now, Lady Death?”

 

“I did not agree to this. I thought the path must be let to run without a proxy, but I see it now. It is not because you are this way that you were chosen by Eternity,” Lady Death cupped her face with her other hand, “And now I agree to it. I choose you as well.”

 

Sansa blinked. 

 

“Chose me for what?”

 

Lady Death smiles, sweet and warm. 

 

“ Balance. ”

 

Sansa swallows. 

 

“... Do I have a choice?”

 

Lady Death carefully slipped out from under Sansa’s head. Placed her softly to the sweet grass. She stood tall. Looked at Sansa, and extened her hand. Held it gently in front of her. 

 

“Of course you do. It is this Garden, or the other road. Take my hand, and we will go. Or you may rest. I will grant you that. No matter what anyone else will demand of me.”

 

Sansa knew it immediately what she must do.

 

So she took Death's hand. 

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

II

Queen Sansa of House Stark

 

Eternity dwelled in an endless summer sky, water at his feet that held them as sturdily as ground. 

 

Eternity was unlike any deity Sansa had ever heard of. Perhaps he is one of the many Old Gods, or perhaps he is what the Father truly was- She is unsure. What she does know is that he is the stars, the cosmos, vaguely in the form of a human man. Tall, imposing, still in his peaceful world. He does not speak when she and Lady Death approach. He only cups her face between his enormous palms of stars. Stars touch her. As gentle like the light they give in the dark of the night. And yet Sansa knows suddenly that stars are enormous. Centers of power and fire and force- Yet Eternity makes the stars gentle enough for her to touch. Gentle enough that all that Sansa feels is the good of them. They live, they die, they give forth light, the sun is a star, the world of her kingdom is cradled in a star's embrace-

 

Sansa is-

 

Sansa is awed in a way she could never fully describe. For she feels it. Feels the depth of Eternity's regard. Of his trust in her, his choice is her. Her hand, her hand reaches out and-

 

Lady Death grips it tight. Gentle and warm. She too, has chosen Sansa. 

 

Sansa is unsure as to why.  

 

“I am unworthy of this,” She whispers, trembling and crying, shocked and elated and feeling so small yet so large in the hold of Eternity and Lady Death, “But… But I will do my utmost to fulfill your task, to honor your regard.” 

 

Eternity speaks. 

 

“ Hold true, Sansa of House Stark, hold the steel of your resolve, the depth of your compassion of your fragile heart. You who stirred the love of the star of your world and gave it strength to break from the curse upon it, you who moved the Celestial beneath your feet with your willingness to die and who chose to wake the spring upon its flesh. You who I saw and wanted for this. I have plucked you from the Multiverse, from your Peace, for this task.”

 

“What is my task?” 

 

Eternity tipped his head forward. Rested his head against her own. One palm moved, within it a gleam so brilliant and powerful she wept harder at its light. She could not look at it. 

 

“ Hold this well, and live. Love as you always have. ”

 

He pressed his palm to her chest, and Sansa turned into the stars themselves. 

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

III

Tony Stark 

 

His daughter was born at Dawn, on March 20th, on the first day of spring, 1990. 

 

Tony Stark was twenty years old. 

 

He hadn't meant for a kid. If he was religious about anything, it was protection. The baby mama in question was named Sarah Snow, and she was twenty-four herself and was on the pill. They always wore condoms, and Sarah swears up and down she hadn't slept with anyone else when she came to him, red-eyed, snot-covered face, holding up half a dozen of positive tests. 

 

Tony- 

 

Tony wanted to dismiss it. The oldest fucking trick in the book. But- Something in him whispered, something in him told him, wait, listen .  So he had. DNA tests, conducted by him, of course, had confirmed it. He was going to be a father. Sarah had begged off custody. Begged off his tentative suggestion of marriage. 

 

“It's not what either of us want Tones. I'm having the fetus because- because I'm too late to abort.”

 

She had made it clear. She doesn't want the kid. Tony has some experience with a parent that didn't want you. So it went. Sansa Maria Stark was born. 

 

She was perfect. 

 

From the abnormally brilliant red hair to his mother's brilliant blue eyes looking up at him, Tony thought her perfect. 

 

Tony is in love. His hands shake as he cups her little face. 

 

“Sansa Maria Stark,” he whispers, gently.

 

The name comes to him. If he was anything but hyperfocused on Sansa's little face, he would have questioned how the name had come to him. He had vaguely thought to name her Maria, but it just… Felt right. 

 

He swallowed. 

 

“And her mother?” 

 

Happy could only give a faint shake of his head. 

 

“Already gone, Boss. Signed all the papers. It’s done.”

 

Tony nods. 

 

Sarah had made her choice. 

 

And so had Tony. 

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

III

Tony Stark

 

He didn't realize he could ever love someone as much as his Mother. Tony has thought she was the peak of it for him. No one else would be the same. Ever reach her level. 

 

Even he can admit when he's wrong. 

 

He loves Sansa way beyond what he felt for his mother. Not because she is more to him, necessarily. No, he loves Sansa more because with just a few weeks, he suddenly understood his mother more. Why she had stayed with Howard despite their sometimes tempetous relationship. Why she had always tried with him, even when he was being such little shit. God. 

He would fight Kingdoms for Sansa. Fight the world to keep her little hand holding onto his fingers. Would fight to death to keep the soft breathe against his neck while she slept peacefully. Would cross valleys and scale mountains just to see her smile. She's only a month in a half, and she smiles and all that rushes through his head. 

 

He's a sap. He knows he is.

 

“Hey baby girl,” he mummers, “Daddy's home.”

 

Happy gives a lazy salute. He's the only one that knows. Been playing babysitter while Tony's had four security replacement attempts. 

 

His last guy lasted an hour.  

 

“She's been an angel,” Happy said, and he's trying not to smile.

 

Sansa- his daughter was becoming the reason he got up in the morning.

 

“Is that so, munchkin?” 

 

Sansa reaches for his hand. Curls her small palms around his calloused thumb. Leans her small face against his fingers. Coos. Sweet and soft.

 

And Tony breathes easier.  

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

IV

Tony Stark

 

Sansa Maria Stark breaks news in the most bombastic way Tony can think of. 

 

He rolls up to her namesake's next charity banquet, on his hip and baby bag over his impeccable ten thousand dollar suit. She's his plus one, of course. The bag? He chose this white monstrosity with little puppies on it. Attracted to the colors, Sansa had clapped at the sight of the pastel nightmare. It's a sharp contrast to the custom Channel lace getup he has her wrapped in. And the taser he has strapped to the bag itself. 

 

The second one photographer spots him and Sansa, the world explodes with noise.

 

His teeth are out. He knew the world would clock that Sansa was… His. Eventually. It was too big a secret not to get out. So he made sure he would control how she was presented to the world. 

Sansa lifts her little pudgy chin, and holds her head like a fucking queen. It's hilarious. 

 

He thinks it goes spectacular, especially since he makes a point of perching his enormous sunglasses on her adorable nose to keep the flashes from alarming her. 

 

Baby girl doesn't flinch. 

 

Because she was a Stark, and she was made of iron. 

---

Pide Al Universo, En Tu Ser Entero:

?

Sansa Maria Stark

 

Lady Death smiles. 

 

Sansa beams back, and ignores the spite that slips down her face. How mortifying, she thinks. 

 

Lady Death moves a gentle hand down her face. Clears it of the mess. Sansa is ever grateful. 

 

“How do you feel?”

 

Sansa hums. 

 

“Queerly small,” She speaks. Her voice us high, clear and unsettled. It is pure Westorosi. English, unfortunately, isn’t quite in her gasp. 

Chapter 44: Edge of Seventeen(Sansa's Bizarre Adevnture) (ASOI&F/Jojo's Bizarre Adeventure)

Summary:

Sansa Stark is reborn with a star upon her back. A Joestar lady of proper English breeding is already away at Finishing School that faithful day Dio Brando comes to darken their halls. She returns in the summer to find her faithful dog dead, and her brother isolated from everyone in town.

A She-Wolf feels her Maw part in defense of her pack.

And she will keep such defense ready, each time she opens her eyes with a star on her back, and with her people to protect.

Notes:

I finally caved and watched Jojo(Finished Part I & II). I was introduced to it by a very well-meaning, enthusiastic friend that I make a very pointed effort never to watch shows with.

Because they typically watch things themselves and then show it to others they think will like it.

They are the worst at it because they get excited and skip to the ‘good’ parts. Or really they’re favorite parts and leave it an incomprehensible mess for the person they show it too. I love them, but they are inconsiderate shits(they know this, bless their hearts) and they know to just slip me a recommendation now and wait for me to watch, however long it will be.

Cause I’m the weirdo that LIKES to watch filler.

TLDR, It’s your girl, throwing Sansa Stark into another universe because it’s fun.   

TAGS: Sansa Stark Jumps the Multiverse, Reincarnation, Reincarnation Square, Or Sansa Does not Stay Dead Ever, The Stranger Finds it Amusing To Keep Throwing her At The Joestar Line, Loosely Follows Part I-III of Jojo, Slow Burn, World Building, Dio is Still the Bad Guy, Dio the Epitome of the Disaster Bisexual, Sansa One-Up-Used,  

 

CHARACTERS: Sansa Stark/Dio Brando(One-sided), Sansa Stark/Speedwagon, Jojo/Irina, Lisa Lisa/Jorge, 

---

Phantom Blood I:

In the web that is my own, I begin again:

I

 

Sansa Joestar carefully presses down at the perfectly white skirt, starched to perfection, petticoats full and displaying the vast wealth afford to the Joestar fortune could afford. It was relatively strange, she can admit to herself, to be returning home after a full year away. She cannot even imagine the changes wrought over her absence in London. She smiles, slightly,  Sansa finds it ironic, that in her first life as a girl, all she had wanted was to leave the family home for the capital. And in her second life, she had begged greatly begged her father to let her stay home. 

 

But she was a Lady Joestar, and her station and age required education in London, one which her father was determined to give the best. 

 

The Summer break could not come swiftly enough. Even their brief break for Christmas and her father and Jojo coming up for Easter Sunday could do little to assure the constant, unsettled urge for Sansa to see her father, brother, and their sweet pup Danny well. 

 

And now, she supposed, her father’s new ward, Dio Brando. 

 

She frowned. 

 

Her father had written nothing but enthusiastic praise, but Jojo had been queerly silent about the newest addition to their household. Only briefly mentioning the boy was accomplished in the matters befitting of a gentleman. And how terribly he missed her. She had expected a gushing start of a friendship, of boyhood shared as never before, but part of her wondered instead if a secret resentment had begun between the two boys. It was not quite queer for someone from poor circumstances to hold ill will towards those of richer, Sansa knew that from painful experience. And it was also not terribly queer for jealousy to overtake even the kindest of souls, another thing that Sansa knew very well if this Dio boy was so much more accomplished than Jonathan. The conductor carefully held out a hand, and her Lady’s Maid, Ms. Ane Wilson, took it with a flutter and a flirtatious smile. Sansa took his hand gratefully and thanked him prettily as he disembarked from her private train car. 

She tried not to think how terribly expensive it had been for her father to get a station to come to their remote estate town, nor the fact that he always had a standing car ready for the Joestar private use at any moment. Their father had taken the death of their Mother hard, Sansa knew, but she had not exactly how much that grief extended in the protection of his children until she had realized that in preparation for her leaving for Finishing school, her father had made a point of getting a form of transportation that was available to her would be anything but a carriage.

 

The porter was careful of removing her trunks, and Sansa quietly thanked and tipped the conductor and the young man alike.

 

“SANJO!” a cry, sonorous like a war cry, and she winces slightly at the ridiculous nickname thrown her way this life. 

 

It was better than being called a little dove or a little bird, she supposed.

 

She turned from the blushing porter. 

 

Jonathan .

 

He was easily a head taller, and broader already. How could her brother be as burly as a Baratheon in this life, and she still be as slender as she had been as a Stark? Sansa would not know. He was waving his arms, wildly, held barely in place by their amused, if exasperated Father. 

 

Sansa felt her smile bloom, fully, truly, at the sight of them. 

 

The only part that felt incomplete was the missing spot of Danny, and she felt her heart twinge at the loss. Hearing of the pup’s death had destroyed something quiet and small in her, a reminder that the world could turn upon you at a moment’s notice.   

---

Phantom Blood I:

In the web that is my own, I begin again:

II  

 

Dio Brando’s first sight of Sansa Joestar is of her smile, wide and glittering the summer sun of 1881, her red hair bright like blood around her pale, noble face, stark against the pristine white of her hat, her dress, and dark blue sapphires that her eyes were made of.  

 

He thinks for a moment of his mother, just as pale with death and sickness. 

 

Sansa Joestar’s complexion is fairer than that, but with a touch of rose to it that tells him that she is healthy. The paleness is from her lack of labor and from the lack of being forced before the sun, not from the infirmary or desperation. Like her brother, Dio Brando hates the chit on sight, beyond accepting that she is the opposite of Jojo’s athletic brawn. She is slender and delicate, but tall, equal to Dio’s own superior height Jojo, but she looks like a single breeze will break her. 

 

Unlike Jojo, she does not even attempt to run, or rush forward to greet her family. She, unlike her brother, has actually absorbed the noble education she had been given. She walks with a delicate purpose, with pace, but she does not run. 

 

“Father,” she says, first, and she extends her hand delicately like a lady well beyond her tender age. 

 

“My beautiful Sansa,” the elder Joestar mummers, eyes wide and stunned, “You look so much like your mother!”

 

He kisses her hand like a gentleman, before ingloriously falling to his knees and embracing the girl. The girl returns the embrace carefully.        

Chapter 45: In my exile (Harry Potter/Asoiaf)

Summary:

Her words were once ‘Winter is Coming’ and ‘Family, Duty, Honor’, now her words are ‘Always Pure.’ and it's legacy is nothing like what was once hers. Sansa Lily Black holds her head high regardless, her grace as regal as the crown once upon her fair brow. Upon her shoulders is the sins of a traitor's daughter.

And the Dark hounds her footsteps.

Yet a She-Wolf will not cower in the face of the dark.

 

Characters: Sansa Stark, Nymphdora Tonks, Andromeda Tonks, Ted Tonks, Griphook, Harry Potter,  

TAGS: Sansa Stark Jumps the Multiverse, Asoiaf/Harry Potter, Sansa Stark the half-blood, Sansa Stark As Sirius Black's Daughter, Tratior’s Daughter,  

Sansa Lily Black walks, delicate boots crisp and pointedly silent on the marble floors of Gringotts .

---

Tonks gripped her hand tightly, her cousin's jaw tensed and working as she ground her teeth. Her auror badge stood proudly on her robes, her wand out, if held loosely in her palm. Uncle Ted shoured up Sansa's other shoulder. Aunt Andromeda led them, in front of Sansa, her head held high and the look upon her face to be made of the ancient nobles of their House, serious and above them all. 

 

Honestly, Sansa was touched, if a bit exasperated at the protective nature of her kin.

 

It was not as if the majority of the society knew of her appearance. Aunt Andromeda had made a point of keeping her out of it, after all. 

 

The snakes will eat you, sweetheart. 

 

She had been amused by the very firm declaration as a very small child. 

 

Because once, she had outlived them all. Once, she had been the Last Stark, once, she had held a world at its knees. Once, she had taken a shattered sword, burning blade with the lifeblood of her brother, and screamed down a Monster beyond wrecking, and slain it away. 

 

In the Darkest Night, Dawn had broken. 

 

In the bloody snow, soaked and red with the blood of Starks, Spring had come again. 

 

And in Winter Fall, Queen Sansa Stark, First of her Name, had Risen. 

 

Sansa does not fear much. This world she had been reborn in- 

 

Newly a traitor's daughter- 

 

Sansa is not afraid of it. 

 

No. She is afraid of what she could lose. But she was not afraid of the world itself. 

 

Let it dare come for the Queen of Spring. 

 

“We are here to withdraw from Lady Black’s vault.”

 

The Goblin, whose placard declared him Griphook of the Clan of Grins, at the counter looked down his nose at aunt, as if she was not worthy of his time. 

 

Something old and hunted in Sansa stirred. 

 

Something old within her paced, a wolf at the door.  

 

“And does the Lady Black have the-”

 

Aunt Andromeda shoved the small crystal bottle filled with exactly a drop of Sansa's blood. The ‘key’ of the vault of her Holdings. 

 

Griphook sighed, as if disappointed. 

 

Sansa kept her back straight, with the grace of the queen she once was. And she elbowed her Aunt out of the way. She was a tall child, enough that she reached on the very points of her toes to the counter. Griphook scowled. She smiled, soft and easy as a dove. That, somehow, had carried over. When she looked in the mirror, Sansa Stark’s face looked back at her.  When she spoke, her voice was the same sweetness. The only difference is that one of her eyes was a vivid blue of Tulley waters, and the other was a sharp sliver associated with the blood of her new house. 

 

She was the last to hold its name. 

 

Sansa Lily Black. The last Black. 

 

Well. 

 

Save a traitor in a traitor's place. 

 

Some part of her, old yet so young within her, wondered if her new father was like her first. If it is the Rulers that declared him a murderer, a dozen times over. That he had whispered secrets into a Dark Lord's ear. 

 

Sansa tried not to think of it. Lady Black she may be, but she had no ground to inquire after Sirius Orion Black. 

 

Not yet , something greedy in her hummed. 

“It is my first time, accessing the vault, Griphook of Clan Grins,” the Goblin started at the full name, “Instead of a proxy. I have reached the right age.”

 

Griphook shifted in his seat. 

 

“You may only access your Trust Vault.”

 

She smiled. 

 

“That is only the case if there is a contest against my inheritance or a relative of my direct name that has claimed themselves my proxy now that I have grown to the right time to my magic. As far as I am aware, ser, no such has passed upon House Black. Gringotts, as our trusted Hoarder, would have owled . Unless negligence has been place upon my Hoard?” she asked, sweetly. 

 

Griphook grinned. 

 

He had many, many, sharp teeth. Sansa did not flinch. 

 

“Of course not, Sansa of Clan Black."

 

“Very well. May I receive copies of the account and my holdings?” 

 

“Very well, Lady Black. Follow me.” 

 

Sansa eased off the tips of her toes. 

 

“My kin will follow.” 

---

“May I sit here, I fear the rest of the compartments seem to be utterly full?” Her voice was pretty, which was Harry Potter's first thought of Sansa Black. 

 

He found the rest of her pretty, too when he looked away from the gaggle of redheads. 

 

Very tall for a girl, with curious eyes, with two colors. One bright blue and the other nearly silver. Red hair, straight as a pin, the longest he's ever seen on anyone, neatly past her waist. But what made something in him relax was the fact that she wore jeans, boots, and a crisp white jumper. 

 

She was from the Muggle World. 

 

“Y-yeah. ‘Course.” 

 

She smiled. Sweet and pretty. 

 

Something in Harry's chest moved. Shifted. He blinked. 

 

“My name is Sansa.” 

 

He found himself smiling. 

 

“I'm Harry.” 

 

Her eyes did not flicker to his forehead. 

 

So Harry relaxed further. 

---

The lingering stare of her cousin, Draco Malfoy causes something in her to tighten. 

 

They were kin.  

 

Yet. 

 

Yet his family stood across a divide. She, born of a woman without magic, would be thought of as less than him in the teachings of their forefathers. 

 

Sansa had once worn a crown. 

 

Yet. Even then, she did not think her less than the previous maid, Joan, who cleaned her chamber pot. She keeps her gaze forward as if she were admiring the plain stone stairs in front of her. She knew this confrontation was near impossible to avoid. 

 

But-

 

She did not want more family to think her unworthy, unworthy to save, to live and come home. 

 

“You are Sansa Black,” his voice was measured, drawling, but Sansa saw the curiosity. 

 

Behind her, many gasped. 

 

Sansa turned, slowly, but felt the muggle-born Harry lean slightly toward her. 

 

“Indeed,” she said simply, “And are you, Heir Malfoy.”

 

The boy twitched. He had, after all, called her informally. She was a Lady. Above him, if temporarily, in status. 

 

If the stories were true, Sansa expected that Lady Malfoy had drilled this into the boy's head. 

 

And he had ignored such etiquette.  

 

Black 1, Malfoy 0. 

 

Two spots of a furious pink lifted on his cheeks. 

---

The Black girl's hair was red. 

 

Severus Snape is honest, at least to himself. When he had seen Potter, identical, smirking, looking and gazing at a red-haired girl, he had tensed.

 

Felt something in his stomach drop. 

 

Then Minivera called out ‘Sansa Black’ and Severus had nearly spilled his goblet. 

 

Black had spawned. He knew such. His only child with some muggle woman named Sara Snow… died via suicide after Black had been thrown to rot as he should . The Tonks couple had raised her and had not allowed the girl, prudently, to set foot in the Wizarding World. Odd mentions had circled. But nothing explicit. Andromeda Tonks, nee Black, had viciously squashed any attempt for the girl to be known in Wizarding England. 

 

And, yet, here she was. 

 

The same age as Potter. And like cursed stars, they were seemingly drawn to each other. His jaw tensed. The girl walked to the stool. Andromeda had not done her wrong. She walked with an ease, sweet grace any Pure Blood would nearly beat their girls to perfect. But she is no pureblood, no matter what her title says.

 

She sat. Tucked her ankles demurely. Hands-on her overly long school skirt. 

 

The Sorting Hat delicately dropped her head. 

 

And the girl's back went as tensed as a bowstring. 

 

Severus blinked. 

 

Once. 

 

Twice. 

 

For the Sorting Hat began to weep. 

---

“Queen of Spring,” he breathed, within her mind. 

 

Sansa Black did not like such an invasion. Nor did she like the fact that her Occlumency shields were up, and the Sorting Hat had slipped through like a fish into the river. 

 

“ Your Aunt has not done you wrong, Queen of Spring. But I am not alive. It is not the same.”

 

He sobbed. 

 

Sansa was as she had always been. The strength of others when they so needed it. Like a girl who brought the women who had mocked and hated her to sing Hymns to the New Gods as a city burned and they thought of their rapes and deaths. 

 

“Do not cry,” she whispered, gently, and ignored the fact her voice broke like a wave upon a shore in the silence, her goal was simply to soothe a hurt she had caused, “The past is behind me. It is merely upon wing and memory of a Raven beyond us both.” 

 

“ You have lived a lifetime before this, and it hurts .”

 

Sansa sighed. 

 

“So it does,” she tells him. 

 

The Sorting Hat continued to cry. 

 

“But do you not see?” She asks. 

 

He kept to his tears. 

 

Gently, Sansa Black thought beyond the hurts laid upon her. 

 

Of Arya, throwing peas at her hair. 

 

The Hat sucks in a breath. 

 

Of a Mother who brushed her hair until it shone like polished metal in the light. 

 

The Hat sobbing began to ease. 

 

Of a Father who would lift her into his lap, and look at all her stitches, from her messy snarls to the beginning of mastery beneath her fingertips. 

 

Of Robb who lifted her in his arms and spun her, round and round until the world spun away from them both. 

 

Of Jon who snuck her lemon cakes at nearly every meal. 

 

Of Ricken, who snarled and crawled into her bed at night, to cling to her hair and count each and every one of her scars. 

 

Of Bran with his dying breath  had gasped and told her, “ Lift the blade, Sansa, now!”

 

Sansa Black thought of lemon cakes and summer snows. Sansa Black remembered the warmth and pride in her Aunt's eyes, she remembered the gentle and clumsy love of her beloved cousin Tonks, and she remembered the steadiness of her Uncle's hold on her. She remembers the glory high and bright in her, the first spring she had lived as a Black, heart light and free that it would always come to the world, once a year. 

 

The Sorting Hat stopped its cries.

 

"Oh,"  he says in a still quite sorrowful voice.

 

Sansa smiled.

 

"It's alright."

 

"Well," the Sorting Hat called, loud, and everyone within the hall burst into whispers, then a furious rush to have everyone shush burst through the hall as the Hat continued, "I have looked in your Heart, Sansa Black. I see that your mind is high enough for Bronze Eagles, but never shall I dare call you a litte bird. I see in your thoughts a cunning of Snakes, yet to call you a serpent would ignore the largest part of you. I see... Bravery, true and brilliant, but to call you a lioness would be spitting in the face of your valor and the trials you have faced. So it can only be your Heart, Sansa Black, only your heart that shows who you are in truth. Loyalty at the marrow of, hard work and steady, so it must be, HUFFLEPUFF!" 

Chapter 46: I'm in the Casket that You Carry: (ASOIAF/JJK)

Summary:

Sansa Stark is the Last.

Gojo Satoru is the Infinite.

Between them, there is nothing but hunger.

Song for the fic: 'Birds of a Feather,' Billie Ellish 

Tags: Sansa Stark Jumps the Multiverse, JJK/ASOIAF, YANDERE GOJO, Gojo in School Era, SANSA IS THE LAST, THREE-EYED RAVEN SANSA, OR THE MEMORIES/SOULS OF AN ENTIRE WORLD LIVE WITH SANSA STARK, Not Mama I Can Fix Him Mama We Can Make Each Other WORSE, Or God-Complex Meets an actual demi-Goddess, Dark Gojo, Dark Sansa, Or as Dark As I will Ever Make Sansa, AUTHOR NEEDS TO CATCH UP TO JJK, Woefully BEHIND, ONLY WATCHED SEASON 1 A MILLION YEARS AGO, Woefully misremembering Canon 

Characters: Gojo Satoru, Sansa Stark, 

 

Pairings: Gojo Satoru/Sansa Stark

---

I'm in the casket you carry:

I

 

There's something about the new girl that makes Gojo Satoru-

 

Satoru can barely describe it. 

 

All knows that she walks into the classroom, and every sense in him is screaming. 

 

He is the Chosen. 

 

His eyes are Infinity. 

 

Yet. 

 

When Stark Sansa meets his covered gaze with her own vivid blue eyes, so uncannily like his own, something rings within him. 

 

Infinity sees- 

 

What feels like another World within her. The endless tide, so like the Earth around him contained in one person- it is not Infinity. 

 

But the closest anyone will ever be. 

 

Everything within goes quiet in the second they lock gazes for that single moment. The younger girl blinks once, twice, and she is turning to Yaga-sensei, away from him. Her expression like stone,  perfect and blank. 

 

And something Satoru aches at the glimpse of the World within her. 

 

Something awakens in him, a Hunger he had not known could be stirred within him. In the very marrow of his self, it turns to an impossible howling within him , to never to satiate. 

 

But that is the end. 

 

Their beginning it is only a discomfort, an inkling within him of want. 

---

I'm in the casket you carry:

II

 

She is not form any clan, any creed before them.  Her power, the World within her, is her own. Found by chance, a world away. She was English, and the closest language they shared was Mandarin. 

 

She apparently knew several. She is learning Japanese. 

 

Satoru's English is middling due to his own past disinterest. 

 

He quickly changes that. 

 

His interests, to say the least, are piqued. Suguru-kun laughs, his own violet eyes curious. At their mysterious new classmate. Shoko-chan looks at him and shakes her head. Satoru is singularly focused. Because by all circumstances, the girl should have been killed. An unknown bloodline springing from nothing, suddenly- so powerfully- the old farts should demanding he take her head. Because some part of him recognizes that not much of their world will be enough to take her. 

 

The realization makes his blood sing. 

 

Why she wasn't killed will fester and pick at him until he sees. She is forced before them all. All the Clans are represented. The Elders are there.  Stark-san looks at them, her head titled slightly to the side. A Curse is released. Grade Two. He blinks. Blood singing. 

 

The girl, not raised by Sorcerous society, a civilian for the first fifteen years of her life looks at the monstrous Curse and does not flinch. 

 

“ Seven Kingdoms,” she mummers. Her voice is measured. Calm. Sweet like a melody. 

 

Something moves within Satoru at the sound the first time he hears it. He has yet to speak to her. The Elders kept her separate for the most part. Something in him twitches at the thought. He has practiced. His English- it's enough to get questions he's been holding his tongue. And enough that he can understand her words. 

 

And then- 

 

Domain expansion. 

 

It spreads easily, a flow of steady energy Stark-san holds well in hand. His heart races in his chest. Life flourishes beneath his feet. Trees- red brogues, so like her hair- a tangle of roses up to their waists. Blue and shining like her eyes. 

 

Snow falls from the sky. 

 

“ Winter is coming,” Shikigami, like wolves, six. Howling and ready for a fight. 

 

The girl breathes. Blue eyes shining. 

 

“ Fire and Blood,” she mummers, sweetly. 

 

Dragon. He has no other words for it. One. Black and furred, with great grey eyes that burn. Snarling and ready for a fight. 

 

He hears more than feels the Clan Zenin sputter at her casual use of Shikigami. Seven so far. 

 

And yet she is not done.

 

“ Hear me Roar. ” 

 

They are like two lions. A great Lion with emerald for eyes and its lioness, with large eyes like jeweled sapphires. The male- that one is missing a leg. Front paw. It- it is replaced by a golden limb instead. Roaring and ready for a Fight.

 

Nine. 

 

“ As High as Honor ,” she mummers. 

 

A great large eagle, shrieking and ready for a fight. 

 

Ten.

 

“ Family, Duty, Honor.”

 

A great Black Fish, silent as the grave, it's massive tail curling around her. Ready for the fight. 

 

Eleven.

 

“ Ours is the Fury. ”

 

A stag, cantering, bellowing. Ready for the fight. 

 

Tweleve. 

 

“ Growing Strong.” 

 

A massive golden rose, curling thornes red and vicious. Ready for the fight.

 

The girl breathes, gently. 

 

Thirteen.

 

“ Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.” 

 

And- 

 

It's the sun. A massive of light, within her hands. Ready to fight. 

 

Fourteen. 

 

The curse ends without even a whimper. 

 

“ Kneel,” she whispers.

 

Her domain slips away like nothing. She had not broken a sweat. And Satoru feels every part of him still. 

 

She looks at them all. Her face is calm. 

 

“ I will do all in my power to protect the innocent, the good against the Curse that comes from the depths of Humanity. I will never turn my hand against the Good and Innocent, ” she tilts her head, “ But the Wicked shall fall. I will never faulter against the evil set before me.” 

 

And… Satoru sees a World within her. 

 

He does not think that is all of her.

 

Hunger is an empty thing in him. 

---

I'm in the casket you carry:

III

 

This World is different than the one she carries within her.

 

Once she had been the last creature alive in a Long Night. 

 

But not so different. 

 

Once she had taken everything' of that world, shackled, and swallowed it within herself. Grief, rage and shrieking emptiness within her has the mantle of Queen of Spring and Ashes and Nothing had pressed heavily against her back. 

 

Between Ice and Fire, the World as she knew it died. 

 

And she. 

 

The Last. 

 

Always the Last . 

 

Last Stark. 

 

Last Alive. 

 

Last Queen of a Kingdom of One. 

 

The People in Power resent anything they cannot control. She realized it quickly when they had sent grown men to kill her. It's Sansa's own fault- she had grown careless. Taking care of the monsters that festered in this world had become second nature. And honestly, considering the ‘curses’ level of violence, she should have expected some human resistance.

 

Humanity always fights back. 

 

It is why she had been gentle. Held them captive and demanded they bring her to their elders instead of finding true offense at the attempt on her life. She is not a threat to any but the monsters. 

 

As long as they do not attempt to kill her again. 

 

Sansa Stark had been Queen, once. 

 

She could be Queen again.

 

This world is different than the World within her.

 

But Humanity is so much the same, Sansa feels relief for it. 

 

For the Game is the same. And she will never lose it.

---

I'm in the casket you carry:

IV

 

“Gojo Satoru,” his voice is pitched higher, cutsey. 

 

The Girl with the World in her blinks her so pretty eyes at him. 

 

“Sansa Stark,” she replies, simply.

 

A bell rings within him. 

 

“Sansa-chan,” he sings songs. Casual. He does not think anyone has tried that with her. 

 

The Fear against her is so like how they act with him he is unsure what to feel. Her voice made him still. Her smile, sweet and earnest given at speaking sweet to her, makes something in him tighten and unravel. 

 

The Hunger shifts from vague discomfort. 

 

“It is nice to meet you, Satoru.” 

 

It turns into an ache at her earnest, gorgeous smile.

Notes:

...….

I've been reading JJK fanfiction and you, know me. No self control 🫣. Sorry if I get so many things wrong, lol.

Chapter 47: A Wreath of Shadows(Solo Leveling/ASOIF)

Summary:

They are children when they enter the small, seemingly innocent Gate within the Crypts. An adventure, they call it. The instrument of mana Robb, flinched from Father's Solar, claiming it to be an E Rank Dungeon. All of the Stark family have all awakened, even little E Rank, Sansa Stark. Such an Adventure should have never destroyed them.

Yet the Catelion Temple demands of any who enters it.

SPOILER WARNING: If you hadn't read all of Solo Leveling, and only watch the show, maybe give this one a skip.

Notes:

AN:

Hey demons, it's me, your guuurl.

Or, as it always seems to be, another for the Conspiracy!

TAGS: Crossovers, Sansa Stark Jumps the MultiVerse, Solo Leveling/A Song of Ice & Fire, Playing Fast and Loose with Canon, Based Mostly on the Webcomic, Sansa Stark the Necromancer, ASOIF Magic System Soundly Gets Wrecked, Gates in Westeros, Hunter System, No Beta we Die like Sung-Wo & Ned Stark, Sansa not Found, Sansa is Raised a Queen, Aged up Sansa Stark, She has Lived Ages Beyond Westeros, More Action Oriented Sansa, Spoilers? I guess of Solo Leveling, Show-Watchers beware 

 

Relationships: Sansa Stark & Igris, Sansa Stark & Beru, Sansa Stark/Jaime Lannister, 

 

Characters: Sansa Stark, Ashborn, Igris, Jaime Lannister. 

---

Song Inspiration:

 

‘As the Dark Dresses Darkly’, AURORA

---

To Grieve The Hurt That's Gonna Die:

Sansa & Robb 

 

It is an adventure, all of her siblings croon. The younger generation of Awakened Hunters within the Winterfell all sneak into the Crypts with little to no challenge. No other Hunter stands guard, and the few Castle Guard set at the entrance are easily distracted. There is mayhaps a dozen of them, and all of their faces are bright and eager for the adventure to come. Her brothers and sister are especially excited. Organized this themselves. Decided to take action before the Hunter’s Guild of Winterfell could return from their Hunt at Castle Creywen’s Dunegon, and close this E Gate themselves.  

It is in the blood of all Starks, Wolfsblood, her father calls it. 

Sansa Stark, one and ten, hand tight upon her staff gifted to her by a reluctant mother just a nameday pass when she Awakened, wonders if she is has no Wolfsblood at all.

 

Because the idea of setting foot in the Gate sends a twist through her stomach. 

 

The gently carved grooves of the Dungeon steel on her palm is always achingly cold.  Even if she has held it for hours, and it is even worse now that her uncalloused palms are slicked with sweat. She adjusts her Dungeon leather chest guard across the woolen shirt that Robb had tossed at her, fusses with the Stark white cloak across her shoulders. 

 

“We should wait for Father to return,” she says. 

 

A dozen disappointed faces look back at her. 

 

“Stop being such a Lady,” Arya hisses, her steel grey eyes bright in the blue Dungeon Gate’s light, “You’ll ruin all the fun.”

 

Sansa flinches back from the venom in her voice, the excitement mirrored even in Jon Snow’s usually sullen face. She is a lady, and beyond that, an E rank mage that can barely cast the barest of sparks, barely summon water- All of her spells are useful, of course, in small, everyday magics, but in a Dungeon? She is not Robb, A Rank Tank, whose bare strength can crush boulders. She is not S-Rank Jon Snow ranger, whose arrows fly like magic to their target with stunning precision and speed. She is not Arya, the Rogue, S-Rank like Jon, whose footsteps are like shadows, whose daggers hit with force. Even Baby Rickon, all of four namedays, is a B-rank Berserker. She is the most pitiful of the awakened Starks, and she does not care to muss her skirts or crawl into a cave to kill monsters. Even if the the instrument of mana Robb, flinched from Father's Solar claims it to be an E Rank Dungeon, Sansa feels…

Sansa feels her stomach shift in anxiety as they cross the blazing light of the small dungeon. She does not even like the Crypts of her Forefathers on most days. She is dutiful; she does her best to light candles and leave flowers on even the oldest graves every moon, but it is not somewhere she wishes to be when she would rather the light of the Sept or even the warmth of Godswood to pray and think of them.  

---

The last scene of her eldest brother is flung nearly atop Ricken, as she pushes them both out of the large stone doors of the temple. 

 

She smiles as the closing, even as Robb grips Rickon underneath his arm away from the doors, his blue eyes wide and filled with terror as he lunges as fast away as he fast as he can. Rickon keeps screaming for her.

 

“SANY!SANY!” 

 

The last of the flames around the altar goes out.

 

 

The large stone doors slam shut, deafening her for a moment at the sheer force. 

 

 

The room is still that queer blue, darker, colder, and she knows even as she lunges away, dragging her stump, that the stone doors will no longer open.  Her leg, or where her leg was, aches. Even as she lifts poor Theon’s discarded spear in her hand. She forces herself to move. Buy time. She must. Rickon is Robb’s arms. 

 

Arya and Jon, and Bran are running to the exit. 

 

It will be a Dunegon Break, Sansa understands, heart falling. 

 

Around her, the Awakened children of Winterfell lay as mere stains on the floor, like her very own leg.

 

Sansa sobs. 

 

The stone weapons lift. 

 

The central figure, the King, the God, smiles its terrible smile. 

 

Sansa Stark screams in defiance and fear. 

 

The weapons strike. 

 

Blood spills across stone. The greatest pain, more than losing her leg. Her chest is completely filled with the stone weapons, she realizes, absently. She can’t feel it, after a moment. The world is growing dark. 

 

Save-

 

Save for the most curious thing. A panel, like a slightly aglow plane of blue glass, is in her blurring vision.

 

‘You have met all the requirements for the hidden quest, ‘Courage of the Weak’

 

Quest? Sansa thinks, head slumping. She thinks she can barely move her chest to breathe.

 

‘ Accept Quest Reward: Status, ‘Player? ’ ’

 

Sansa blinks. What game is there to be played that I am a 'Player'? 

 

‘Yes or No?’

 

‘Automatic Refusal in Fifteen Seconds-’

 

Sansa had not known death would be so strange. She blinks, and it seems ten seconds have passed her by.  

 

‘Five’

 

‘Four’

 

‘Three’

 

Sansa Stark has nothing to lose. 

 

‘Two’

 

YES .

 

‘Status, Player Lady Sansa Stark, Level 1, Class: None, Rank ‘E’.’

 

Somewhere in the dark, while Sansa Stark dies, a deep, soft voice calls to her:

 

“Arise. ”

---

‘Razor Sharp As It Cuts Right Through My Soul’:

Sansa Stark

I

 

Sansa Stark wakes screaming, clutching at the chest that must be pierced by a dozen different weapons. 

 

She wakes upon the altar. Blinks. The statues, the monsters . They stand perfectly still. Statues once again. 

 

Sansa breathes, blinking rapidly. 

 

‘ Player Lady Sansa Stark, ’ a box made of what seems to be slightly aglow glass, ‘ Quest One: Escape the Catelion Temple. ’ 

---

Ooh-ooh, oh, I just want to cry

Robb Stark 

II

 

Robb Stark takes the first punch. 

 

And then the next. 

 

And the next, as Jon Snow looks at him with a wild, animal sort of pain. 

 

“YOU LEFT HER!”

---

‘All This Fear, It's Contagious’

Jaime Lannister

?

 

The first Dungeon Break in nearly thirty years, and it is within five days that Eddard Stark comes to be Hand. 

 

If he could blame him, Jaime readily would. It doesn’t help that he is already making Cersei nervous, what with a new, unknown ally by Robert’s side… But really.

 

What the seven fucking hells.  

---

The Warrior is glorious. 

 

Jaime can barely breathe. 

 

Tall, if a touch shorter than his own height. Lean. Slender as a dancer, their short daggers held within their gauntlets like a lover. Wreathed in black armor, his hair is a banner of gleaming red, a stark contrast to the startling near violet sheen of the armor.

 

It stands. 

 

The orc, gurgles as the blades slip clear through its neck. 

 

It dies. 

 

A monster that even Jaime had struggled against, dead. The Crowned Warrior tilts it head. Nudges the head of the enormous orc with one of the daggers. The Crowned Warrior clicks their tongue, flips a dagger in their hand, and throws it, with force, against another approaching orc. The dagger, with a small flicker of his fingertips, flickers back to his side. 

 

Shadows gather at the Warrior's feet. 

 

Jaime's breath hitches. 

 

He thought the Warrior a combat type. A Rogue, perhaps, by the sheer speed. He wagers the Warrior is S-Rank. High. 

 

They are a Mage, not a Rogue. 

 

They summon.

 

The shadow beasts, all horrendously shaped, kneel at the Warrior's feet-

 

The Crowned Warrior tilts his helmed head. 

 

One of the Shadows lets out a shriek, and-

 

Jaime had been a knight since he was fifteen namedays. 

 

A S-Rank Hunter since the Rebellion. 

 

Yet. 

 

He flinches at the shriek. Insect, he thinks, with distaste, and fear. No one speaks of the Isle of Naeth and the Ants that took nest there. He had been there. He had seen their awesome power before the World had fled. The Crowned Warrior holds up a hand. 

 

Slender. Gentle reprimand.

 

The Shadow Ant drops to its knees in an instant. Shoves its head upon the ground in supplication for forgiveness.  The Crowned Warrior hums. A startlingly sweet sound. The Warrior turns to another shadow soldier. Tall. Helmeled. A purple remnant of violet light.

 

“Are you well, Ser?”  The voice that comes from the Crowned Warrior is not what he expects. For it is sweet, gentle, and a woman’s voice. 

He flinches again.

 

“Y- yes,” he settles on.

 

The Crowned Warrior nods. 

Notes:

I wish I could focus. I honestly do, my lovely readers. This girl just finished rereading Solo Leveling, and it's on my miiiind. Honestly, I also have a Stranger as Jun-Wo/Sansa Fic that's even more raw than this one, but it's not nearly as long or worth publishing out yet. IDK.

Chapter 48: A Song of Shadows(Solo Leveling/ASOIF)

Summary:

On the day of Sansa Stark’s wedding to Tyrion Lannister, a Gate of Red Light opens its maw in the Great Sept of King’s Landing.

A Song of Shadows is written in the histories of Westeros when Sansa Stark takes the Stranger’s hand.

Notes:

*Sigh*

For the Conspiracy.

Characters: Sansa Stark, Sung Jin-Woo, Tyrion Lannister, 

 

Relationships: Sung Jin-Woo/Sansa Stark

 

Tags: Drabbles, Cross Over, Solo Leveling/ASOIF, Sansa Stark Jumps the MultiVerse, Sung Jin-Woo Accidental Child-Bride Acquisition, Sansa Stark Not So Accidental God-Husband Acquisition, Jin-Woo’s Metric is Twenty, Sansa’s is Metric is ‘WILL SAVE ME FROM TYRANTS’, They're Idiots Your Honor, Jin-Woo is Korean, Sansa Stark is Westerosi, Cultural Differences, Language Barriers, Slow Burn Romance, Sansa Jumps the Westorsi Ship Like a Plague Rat, Jin-Woo is there to kill Monsters, Sansa Is All Too Willing to Test Her Luck with the man Killing Monsters, Anything but the Lannisters, Set Before Orc Raid, No Red Wedding, Sansa Not Found, Set in both Korea & Westeros, Gates are Portals to Alternate Dimensions and or Planets, Sansa and Jin-Ah Vibe, Sort of Slice of Life, Fluff, Wump I guess, Not as Cracky as it Sounds, Let me Cook, Plot happens later, Awakened Sansa Stark, Cleric Sansa Stark, Lady Comes Back, Shh Let It Happen, 

 

Song for the Fic: ‘Dark Aria’. 

---

‘Far From this Tragedy’

Sansa

I

The day she wed, Sansa Stark kept her head high. 

 

What else was she to do?

 

She, as she chirped and sang to her captor's was a traitor’s daughter, an abused hostage in a lion's claws. As the nobles of the South of Westroes looked on her in her awful, golden gown of a splendor she had once dreamed of, with a pauper's cloak mocking House Stark around her shoulders, she knew she found no allies, no aid amongst these people. 

 

She felt like screaming. 

 

She felt like elbowing Joffrey in the side and making for the door. 

 

She knew she would be dragged by her hair, if need be, to the altar. 

 

She had thought to be released for Joffery, she would-She does not know. She had been stupid. A stupid girl who did not want to understand that the Lannisters would not release her to her kin. Willas Tyrell and High Garden are a wisp of a dream of salvation. With this mandate from Tywin Lannister, she knows she will never, never leave the capital until she is round with a Lannister Cub. 

 

Not that her Kin has even tried to negotiate for her, or Arya, who has fled. 

 

We are just girls, she thinks in despair. In the eyes of the Realm, her own kin, her and Arya's lives were not equal to the Vengeance of their Father’s death. 

 

Even as Joffery whispered vile things in her ear, Sansa did not allow herself to flinch, to run screaming from the room. 

 

She was a Stark. 

 

She could be brave.

 

When she reached Tyrion, horrible, kind Tyrion who looked at her with eyes that lingered on her hips, her legs, her breasts, she did not allow herself to give him the kindness of kneeling. She simply turns around, chin held high, her pauper's cloak about her, her face stone, her eyes forward. 

 

It was then that her gaze caught the statue of the Stranger. 

 

No candles lit.

 

Not one prayer at his altar. 

 

Do the gods feel sorrow? Do the gods feel this aching loneliness in their chest as well, being abandoned, unsung? Sansa knows enough not to pity a god. 

 

But…

 

In that moment, as the Lords and Ladies of the South openly laughed at her one of her captor's deformities, she did not feel pity-

 

Yet instead of an aching kinship. 

 

I pray to you, she thinks, Take me. Make a bride of me instead, let me take your vows of love, of silence, I would never leave your side, I would be yours.

 

Beside her, as if in answer, in front of the Great glass windows of the Sept, a gate of light, red as blood, opened.      

---

‘Far From this Tragedy’

Tyrion 

II

 

He knew he shouldn't be angry at the girl. 

 

She was an unwilling bride. He knew that. Yet the fact that she would not be kind enough to kneel before him to save them both the ridicule of their height difference made his teeth clench.

 

Made his jaw work. Had he not been good to her? Had he not prevented her torment? Would she not do the same to him? 

 

Yet cursed yet. 

 

It isn't even a moment before hell itself breaks her mockery of him.

 

Tyrion Lannister is many things. 

 

He is no warrior. 

 

When the first enormous Beast steps through the swirling gate, Tyrion quite easily forgets his child bride. 

---

‘Far From this Tragedy’

Cersei

III

 

I want Jaime, she thinks, wishing to scream as the closest to the alters of the gods are attacked by Beasts never seen in living memory. 

 

The Stark chit was the smartest of them. 

 

One hint of the queer light, the first claw of a beast through it, and she is lunging for the front doors. Sprinting, full tilt, most of her skirts and wedding cloak in her arms. She is remarkably fast, she thinks, halfway back down the aisle before anyone else so much as thinks to move. 

 

Tyrion does not make it to the third row before he is mauled by one of the Beasts. 

 

She would have laughed if she were not so afraid.

 

But so it was. 

 

A slaughter. 

 

And the noblest of Southern blood touched the stones of the Great Sept as the Stark girl fled. 

---

‘Far From this Tragedy’

Sansa

IV

 

She does not make it to the doors.

 

Sansa holds in a scream as a beast, the head of a lion and a goat, a spitting serpent for a tail, bounds over her to reach the doors first. 

 

Cutting off escape for everyone in the Sept from the Great doors. 

 

There are side doors. 

 

Sansa learned her lesson for the Tower of the Hand. 

 

Keep moving. 

 

 She had learned her lesson from the Bread Riots. 

 

Don't be caught alone. 

 

She turns in the same second she realizes there will be no escape that way. Slamming into a person desperately trying to escape the aisle seat, throwing herself at the crush of bodies. She ignores screams, she ignores the sound of death, and the snarls of monsters. 

 

She does as Bran once had. 

 

She climbs  at the top of the pews of the Sept. Lunges across heads, across bodies in a desperate attempt to reach the side doors. 

 

Survive , something in her snarls. 

 

Do not die, do not dare die. 

 

You are a Stark, you can be brave.

---

  ‘Far From this Tragedy’

Sung Jin-Woo

V

 

It's a double dungeon, Sung Jin-Woo realizes.

 

He grins. 

 

The dropped key, curiously shaped like a snarling wolf, had led to an instant dungeon much like his first in Hapjeong Subway station…

 

But this one was different. 

 

In the middle of it, a real Dungeon Gate spawned. 

 

Red. 

 

His heart was beating double time in his chest. 

 

And Jin-Woo, unwilling to  give up , rushes forward. 

 

What meets him is a slaughter. He registers that there are people. Was it a dungeon break? 

 

His soldiers are moving with one word. 

 

“ Protect. ” 

---

Future: 

 

“Bro?” Her face wrinkled slightly. 

 

Jin-Woo blinks at his little sister, Jin-Ah was looking- Well. A little shocked, if he could piece together her expression.  

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Remember how you said you found Sansa in a raid, having been trapped in an alternate gate dungeon?” 

 

He hums at the lie. Sips his tea. It's late. And as always, Sansa has slipped off to their sorta, not really shared room early. No matter how many times he directed her to Jin-Ah's room, she would slip back into his. He wonders if she just felt comfortable with him, safe. She was always skittish. Jumping at sounds, at cars, at air-planes when they flew through the sky, the way electricity worked. He couldn't blame her. From all of the doctor's tests, Sansa was human . She had been in a dungeon, if a double one, just like the Temple. 

 

The City he had seen from his second Red Gate looked medieval, if vaguely Western. He tried not to think too hard if Sansa was from the past. That meant the Gates were temporal, and he didn't know about physics to understand exactly how that worked, or how it didn't break the space-time continuum or something. He tried not to think about how, before Hunter's and the gates, Dragons and monsters existed in human folklore.

 

Not that it helped much in piecing together the mystery that was his new dependent. Why had she followed him? Why had she dragged that big sword with her when they had picked up her belongings? Why did she laugh when he had killed the knights trying to take her back?  Sansa's insistence on simply being ‘Northern’ gave him little context for what country she actually could be from. 

 

“Well, she told me… She told me in her country, you're legally married.” 

 

He spat out his tea. Luke warm liquid dribbling down his shirt. 

 

“ What?”

 

“That's why she keeps going to your room, instead of bunking with me. She said she belongs with her Lord Husband.” 

---

Sansa looks at him. Rumpled and confused. 

 

“We're not married.” 

 

She tilts her head. 

 

“The rites. You yes.” 

 

He frowns at her. 

 

“Sansa-”

 

She reaches for her journal, the one she's been practicing her Korean. Lifts. Carefully reads out:

 

“Sansa of House Stark stands before the old Gods and New, of Sound Mind and Body, who comes to take her?” she says, stilted, and he realizes it was the first thing she said to him, translated. 

 

He blinked quickly. He remembers. Covered in beast guts, the pale girl in gold stood up, as the rest cowered as his summons made quick work around them. The desperate way she had held out her hand. The way her blue eyes had been wide and pleading.  How he had lunged for the bastard who had gripped her hair and tried to drag her back violently . How she had beamed when he had given his name, how she had gripped his hand, covered in the asshole’s blood, and then jumped into his arms without hesitation when a large lion had lunged for them both. 

 

“I thought you were introducing yourself!” 

 

She swallows. Lower lip trembling, and Jin-Woo flinches back in horror. 

 

“You yes! Ribbon, tied… Contract with kiss!”

 

He blushed, despite himself. He had been surprised in the moment, but was more focused on getting her out of the beast-infested building. 

 

Which apparently was a church? Of New Gods? 

 

“I thought you were just grateful,” he protests, “That it was a gesture of- well, saying thank you.” 

 

She blinks at him. Struggles for a moment. Honestly, Jin-woo is surprised she learned Korean as fast as she did. She was going through leaps and bounds at school, as apparently the Common Tongue, as she called it, was like a cousin of English. She frowned. 

 

“Yes, Lord Husband,” she whispers softly, and he stills at her low voice, “Saved me. Saved me.”

 

He frowned. Watches as she presses desperately against the wolf Shadow, Lady, whose blue light was so different from the rest of his summons. 

 

“What do you mean?” 

 

She smiled bitterly. 

 

“My… Wed day. No matter what.” 

 

He stares at her. 

 

“How old are you, Sansa?”

 

She swallows. 

 

“Five and Ten.” 

 

He frowns. 

 

“You're a child.”

 

She lifts her chin. 

 

“I am a woman. Bleeding. And married!” 

 

Jin-Woo’s head hurt. 

 

“Who were you marrying?” 

 

Sansa swallows. 

 

She hiccups.

 

“Old Man. Bad Family. Lord Husband, Saved me. Saved me.”

 

He stares at her. 

 

Stares, and what the hell is he supposed to do with that? 

 

“Sansa…”

 

“Saved me, husband, husband-” 

 

And she starts to cry. He's always been good with tears. With his Mom, with his sister- but something about Sansa’s tears, so rare, makes him feel a special sort of helpless. 

 

And-

 

He jolts when she strips herself of her shirt. He rushes to make her keep her shirt on, shocked, as she usually so modest, she wouldn't even change in front of Jin-ah-

 

“ Sansa- ”

 

“Look! Saved me! Saved me! Bad House! ”

 

And-

 

Sung Jin-Woo is lost. 

 

In a rage, he had forgotten he could feel. 

 

For there on his very young bride's back are wounds and scars.

---

Sansa is helpless.

 

Feels his rage follow over her like an embrace. 

 

She stills. 

 

She waits. 

 

“ Sansa,” his voice is cold. 

 

So cold. 

 

Yet- all Sansa can do is lean forward and press her tear-streaked face into her husband's chest. His hands on her back are so gentle, she cannot help but weep harder. 

 

“Saved me,” she tells him, stilted in his native tongue, “Saved me. Saved me. My Family no. You saved me. Husband.” 

He embraces her. Still so gentle. 

 

Gentle. Brave. And Strong. Was that not what her father told her? 

Chapter 49: UPDATES II~

The following Stories have been published as their own stories:

 

• The Girl of the Flaming Tower (HOTDRAGON & FIRE AND BLOOD), (Alicent Hightower SI)
•  Don't Feed Me Sorrow/I am Not the River(Lysa SI) as Dive into the Waves Below
• Good Day Sunshine (Stranger Things/ASOI&F)
• The Beast Howls In My Veins (Lord of the Rings/ASOI&F)
• A Song of Shadows (Solo Leveling/ASOI&F), The Sung Jin-Woo/Sansa Stark Pairing one  

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Musings In A Song
• Part 2 of Uncluttering My Writting Folder